RTHK: Police identify person of interest in July 4 shooting

Six people were killed and at least two dozen wounded when a man with a high-powered rifle opened fire from a rooftop at a Fourth of July parade in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Highland Park on Monday, turning a civic display of patriotism into a scene of panicked mayhem.

Police said they had identified a person of interest in the shooting, 22-year-old Robert E Crimo III, who was from the area. They said he was driving a silver 2010 Honda Fit automobile.

"He is considered armed and dangerous," sheriff's department spokesperson Christopher Covelli told journalists, adding that people should not approach him if they see him.

Officials said a rifle was recovered from the scene.

More than 36 people were injured, mostly with gunshot wounds, said Jim Anthony, a spokesman for the NorthShore University HealthSystem. The 26 victims taken to the Highland Park hospital ranged in age from 8 to 85, said Brigham Temple, an emergency room doctor.

At least one of those killed was a Mexican national, a senior Mexican Foreign Ministry official said on Twitter.

The shooting comes with gun violence fresh on the minds of many Americans, after a massacre on May 24 killed 19 school children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, which followed a May 14 attack that killed 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.

Children waving American flags, riding tricycles or enjoying a ride in a wagon pulled by adults froze as people in the crowd screamed while gun shots rang out, video on social media showed.

One cellphone video, seen but not verified by Reuters, recorded what sounded to be about 30 rapid shots, a pause, and then another roughly 30 shots. Between the two bursts, a woman can be heard saying from the side of the parade route: "My God, what happened?"

Police said the gunman remained at large.

"He could be in the city. He could be somewhere else," Covelli said earlier.

He said the shooting took place from the rooftop of a business that the gunman reached via an alley ladder attached to the building that was not secure.

Police asked the public for tips and cellphone images and surveillance video to help find him. They did not have a motive for the shooting.

President Joe Biden said he and his wife Jill were "shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day."

Biden said he had "surged federal law enforcement to assist in the urgent search for the shooter."

In his statement, Biden referred to bipartisan gun-reform legislation he signed recently but said much more needed to be done and added: "Im not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence."

Amarani Garcia, who was at the parade with her young daughter, told the local ABC affiliate she heard gunfire, then a pause for what she suspected was reloading, and then more shots.

There were "people screaming and running. It was just really traumatizing," Garcia said. "I was very terrified. I hid with my daughter actually in a little store. It just makes me feel like we're not safe anymore."

Social media video showed a marching band suddenly breaking formation and running away, and other images of people leaving their belongings behind as they sought safety.

"Everyone was running, hiding and screaming," said CBS 2 Digital Producer Elyssa Kaufman, who was at the scene.

A 36-year-old native of Highland Park who wanted to be identified only as Sara, told Reuters she had attended the annual parade most years since her childhood.

"Not even five minutes after, very shortly after, the police and firetrucks part of the parade had gone by I heard pop, pop, pop, pop, pop," she said, adding that she first thought they were muskets some times used in parades.

"I looked and there were no muskets. The popping didnt stop ... again it went pop, pop, pop, pop, pop and I turned and I said those are gun shots, run!

Highland Park's population is 30,000 and nearly 90% white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About a third of the population is Jewish, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The shooting is likely to rekindle the American debate about gun control, and whether stricter measure can prevent mass shootings that happen so frequently in the United States.

After the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings, Congress last month passed its first major federal gun reform in three decades, providing federal funding to states that administer "red flag" laws intended to remove guns from people deemed dangerous.

It does not ban sales of assault-style rifles or high-capacity magazines, but does take some steps on background checks by allowing access to information on significant crimes committed by juveniles. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2022-07-05. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Chinese off-road cars debut in Saudi Arabia

Xinhua) 08:47, July 05, 2022

People look at a off-road vehicle displayed at a press conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on July 3, 2022. Two off-roaders from China's Great Wall Motor Company have made their overseas debut in Riyadh. (Xinhua/Wang Haizhou)

RIYADH, July 4 (Xinhua) -- Two off-roaders from China's Great Wall Motor Company have made their overseas debut in Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh.

"Tank 300" and "Tank 500" are two models from the company's "Tank" brand, aiming to tap into the overseas market.

"The Middle East is the main market for high-potential off-road vehicles in the world, and it is also the preferred market for the globalization of the 'Tank' brand," said Xu Huanzhi, general manager of Great Wall Motor Middle East Company, at a press conference on Sunday night.

Gautam Arun, product director of Great Wall Motor Middle East Company, said the "Tank 300" model provides a new off-road experience catering to users' individuality, and breaks the barriers between off-road SUVs and urban SUVs.

Market data provided by the Great Wall Motor shows that the compound growth rate of the company in the Saudi market from 2018 to 2021 reached 204 percent, and its sales volume ranks among the top Chinese brands of vehicles in Saudi Arabia.

"Chinese cars, especially luxury cars, are more and more popular among Saudi users because of their good quality and service," said Majed Yahya, managing director of ADMC, the general agent of Great Wall Motor in Saudi Arabia.

People look at a off-road vehicle displayed at a press conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on July 3, 2022. Two off-roaders from China's Great Wall Motor Company have made their overseas debut in Riyadh. (Xinhua/Wang Haizhou)

People look at a off-road vehicle displayed at a press conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on July 3, 2022. Two off-roaders from China's Great Wall Motor Company have made their overseas debut in Riyadh. (Xinhua/Wang Haizhou)

A "Tank 500" off-road vehicle is displayed at a press conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on July 3, 2022. Two off-roaders from China's Great Wall Motor Company have made their overseas debut in Riyadh. (Xinhua/Wang Haizhou)

Gautam Arun, product director of Great Wall Motor Middle East Company, introduces the "Tank 300" off-road vehicle at a press conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on July 3, 2022. Two off-roaders from China's Great Wall Motor Company have made their overseas debut in Riyadh. (Xinhua/Wang Haizhou)

Photo taken on July 3, 2022 shows the interior of a "Tank 300" off-road vehicle at a press conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Two off-roaders from China's Great Wall Motor Company have made their overseas debut in Riyadh. (Xinhua/Wang Haizhou)

A "Tank 300" off-road vehicle is displayed at a press conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on July 3, 2022. Two off-roaders from China's Great Wall Motor Company have made their overseas debut in Riyadh. (Xinhua/Wang Haizhou)

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
The two sides also discussed international and regional issues including Afghanistan.

"The two sides discussed various elements of bilateral relations including progress on the Chabahar Port. Foreign Secretary underscored India's commitment to strengthen bilateral cooperation with Iran in addressing shared opportunities and challenges," a Ministry of External Affairs release said.

External Ministry Affairs Minister Arindam Bagchi said in a tweet that the two sides discussed ways to further strengthen the bilateral relations and reviewed progress on Chabahar Port.

Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian had paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month during his official visit to the country.

The Prime Minister had warmly recalled the long-standing civilizational and cultural links between India and Iran. The two leaders had discussed ongoing bilateral cooperation initiatives.

During the visit, Hossein Amir Abdollahian also met External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and both sides acknowledged the significance of bilateral cooperation in the field of regional connectivity.

They reviewed the progress made at the Shahid Beheshti terminal, Chabahar port.

India and Iran agreed that the Chabahar Port has provided much needed sea-access to landlocked Afghanistan and has also emerged as a commercial transit hub for the region, including for Central Asia.

They reaffirmed their commitment to continue to cooperate on the development of Chabahar Port and noted that the teams from both countries will be meeting soon to address operational aspects. (ANI)
Fata Qaumi Jirga (FQJ) expressed its concern over the peace turmoil in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) areas merged with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and said that unless the tribes were given their rights and FATA's original status is not restored, till that the struggle will continue. Fata Qaumi Jirga (FQJ) is an association of prominent tribal elders and landlords formed against the merger of former Fata with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Dawn reported. Earlier, the proscribed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) also stated that it would not budge from its demand for the reversal of the merger of Pakistan's erstwhile FATA with the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In an interview published on YouTube, the chief of the outlawed group Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud said that negotiations between the TTP and the Pakistani government were in progress but no major breakthrough had been made. This remark comes on the heels of the meeting between TTP and a delegation of tribal elders in Kabul to negotiate an extension of a truce with the Pakistani Taliban. The outlawed group are a separate group but allied with the Afghan Taliban, who grabbed power in Kabul last August, after the US drawdown. "Our demands are clear and especially the reversal of Fata merger with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is our primary demand which the group cannot back down from," Mehsud was quoted as saying by Dawn in the video interview. "The talks have yet to reach a conclusion," said Noor Wali. The head of the outlawed group confirmed the Afghan Taliban were facilitating the negotiations, adding that if the Pakistani government showed "seriousness", then a breakthrough in talks would be possible. Notably, Pakistan Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah had recently ruled out the reversal of the FATA merger with Khyber which was done through a constitutional amendment in 2018. Earlier, on May 21, 2018, Pakistan made the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) under the 25th Amendment to reform tribal areas and to bring it within constitutional jurisdiction. (ANI)
Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's coalition partners - Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) on Tuesday voiced concern over the increasing role of country's premier spy agency ISI on civilian affairs. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif granted the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) status of a Special Vetting Agency (SVA), thus empowering it to conduct verification and screening of all government officers before their induction, appointments and postings, as well as promotions. Some members belonging to allied parties even criticised the prime minister for not taking the coalition partners and parliament into confidence, vowing to take the matter to the court, reported The Express Tribune. They quipped that the premier should also consider including politicians in the notification as "most of the traitors" were there. "This has been done behind the back of coalition partners and parliament," Pakistan People's Party (PPP) General-Secretary Farhatullah Babar said, asking why the decision was taken as it is not a single-party government. In a tweet, Babar said that the decision must be unacceptable to many coalition partners, and they must protest to reverse it, adding that unilateral alteration in civil service rules must be challenged, reported The Express Tribune. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz's (PML-N) former information minister Pervaiz Rashid also questioned the move in a tweet, saying that if the task of investigating civilian officers was included in ISI's responsibilities, then the premier spy agency should also be placed under civilian control and be accountable to the parliament. PPP Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar chided the premier on tasking the intelligence agency to vet government officers by "requesting" that PM Shehbaz include all public office holders in the notification at once. "Why discriminate against politicians?" Khokhar asked, adding that "after all, traitors are more common in our ranks". Similarly, PPP's former chairman Senator Mian Raza Rabbani also said that the notification issued by the federal government, declaring the ISI as the SVA, was "surprising", reported The Express Tribune. "The verification and screening of all civil servants before their induction, appointments, postings and promotions by the SVA amount to ceding civilian space," Rabbani said. Besides, he added, the civil servants were already working under the pressure of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) law. An official of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) said that the decision was surprising for the party too as no discussion had taken place in the party meetings on the issue. With the special status and powers, some bureaucrats said, the spy agency would keep an eye on the moral and financial affairs of the government officers and would submit details to the promotion boards, especially the high-powered board and Central Selection Board (CSB). The political set-up in Pakistan has been military-driven for ages and it is also perceived in Pakistan that politicians need the military's backing to come to power, however, after the newest reform, many now fear that bureaucrats could also need the same support for their appointment and postings. The move has placed the verification and screening of government officials in charge of postings, appointments, and promotions in ISI hands, leading to concerns of a shrunken civilian space. The recent reform issued by PM Shehbaz Sharif has raised fears about the military increasing its control over the country's public life. (ANI)
Vivek Wadhwa an academic, entrepreneur, and author of five best-selling books thanked Dalai Lama for "all he does for humanity -- and for the inspiration he provides to all" on the occasion of his 87th birthday. Describing Dalai Lama as an embodiment of compassion and clear thought, Wadhwa shared his experience about his wife Tavinder illness, who died due to cancer and how His Holiness gave him the strength to go on in life, reported Tibet Rights Collective (TRC). "I lost my wife, Tavinder, to cancer in June 2019. It was completely devastating, because she was everything to me, someone I considered my soulmate," said Wadhwa, adding, "His Holiness has given me the strength to go on in life." Author of five best-selling books: From Incremental to Exponential; Your Happiness Was Hacked; The Driver in the Driverless Car; Innovating Women; and The Immigrant Exodus, Wadhwa is based in Silicon Valley and researches, speaks and writes about advancing technologies that are transforming the world. His wife Tavinder was a devotee of the Dalai Lama and cherished his values. "What kept me going was her wish that I dedicate the rest of my life to preventing people from suffering the way she did and to help others. She knew that this is the only thing that would give me purpose," said Wadhwa. With the help of some brilliant scientists and oncology researchers -- the same people who tried to help save Tavinder, Wadhwa developed a grand plan that may lead to cancer cures. "It uses technologies such as genomics, synthetic biology, organic drug synthesis, and artificial intelligence and creates open-sourced data on an unprecedented scale to try to address many cancers and other conditions for which we currently have no adequate treatment. And it provides a platform for holistic treatments such as those HHDL advocates," he said. However, Wadhwa realised that the plan was so ambitious and radical that the US, with too many vested interests in the status quo, can't possibly implement it, reported TRC. To overturn the US medical industry, Wadhwa went to India to meet Dalai Lama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi as India has leaders ready to think big. "What I really hoped for more than anything from His Holiness was his blessing for Tavinder. His Holiness gave this blessing and much more; it was an incredible, spiritual experience. I was able also to be at His Holiness's side, at his residence in Dharamshala, for 1 1/2 hour and hear his advice to 300 others. He listened carefully to everyone, reflected on their needs, and offered thoughts touching on their wisdom. I was amazed at how much he really cared and at his true compassion," said the acclaimed author. Dalai Lama talked about everything from agriculture to medicine to public policy and quantum physics with him. "He fully understood the power of advanced technologies and the value of traditional medicines. And in response to my own thoughts, he offered to host a global conference of scholars to discuss the role of Ayurveda and Tibetan and Chinese traditional medicine in treating cancer," said Wadhwa. He said that Dalai Lama has not only a deep understanding of modern and traditional sciences but is also an embodiment of compassion and clear thought. With Dalai Lama's inspiration and the support of PM Modi, a world-changing project was launched in Kerala in late 2020 called Karkinos Healthcare. "It implements the key ideas of the grand plan and creates a comprehensive and distributed cancer network for India. It is already helping tens of thousands of people in South India and will soon help millions all over India and abroad -- and provide a foundation for global research that could lead to natural and allopathic cures for cancer and other diseases," said Wadhwa. Tibetans across the world are set to celebrate the 87th birthday of the Dalai Lama on July 6. Dalai Lama, throughout his life in exile, has achieved prominence among the world's political, religious and social leaders as a universal icon of peace, harmony and non-violence. Moreover, he has been successful in exposing the true nature of the anti-democratic, anti-religious and anti-humanistic attitude of China and the untold sufferings of the Tibetans under the Chinese administration. China has always interfered in the matters of Tibet and has strongly condemned them from exercising their spiritual practices. It continues to sinicize Buddhism, recently by imposing a ban on sharing religious content on social media. Dalai Lama has won widespread international support for the Tibetan independence movement. Dalai Lama has been fighting with non-violence for the last many decades and has been convincing the international community on the right to their homeland, and culture, the restoration of the thousands of Buddhist monasteries which were destroyed by China and the freedom of hundreds of Tibetans captured by Beijing. (ANI)
The Toronto-based Aga Khan Museum, which landed in trouble for the inappropriate depiction of Hindu Gods, has expressed deep regret for "inadvertently causing offence" to members of the Hindu and other faiths. In a statement, the museum said Toronto Metropolitan University brought together works from students of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, as part of Canadian multiculturalism for the project 'Under the Tent.' The museum said one of 18 short videos from 'Under the Tent' and its accompanying social media post inadvertently caused offence to members of the Hindu community. "Toronto Metropolitan University's project presentation was hosted at the Aga Khan Museum in the context of the Museum's mission to foster intercultural understanding and dialogue through the arts. Respect for diverse religious expressions and faith communities forms an integral part of that mission," the statement. "The Museum deeply regrets that one of the 18 short videos from 'Under the Tent' and its accompanying social media post have inadvertently caused offence to members of the Hindu and other faith communities," it added. Indian High Commission on Monday urged Canadian authorities to withdraw the disrespectful depiction of Hindu Gods showcased as part of the 'Under the Tent' project at the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto. "We urge the Canadian authorities and the event organizers to withdraw all such provocative material," the Indian High Commission in Canada said in a statement. A poster for a documentary directed by filmmaker Leena Manimekalai has drawn flak on social media for hurting religious sentiments with the depiction of Goddess Kaali. The Madurai-born, Toronto-based filmmaker had earlier taken to Twitter to share a poster of her film which depicted a woman dressed in a costume portraying the Goddess and smoking. A flag of the LGBT community is seen in the background. "Our Consulate General in Toronto has conveyed these concerns to the organizers of the event. We are also informed that several Hindu groups have approached authorities in Canada to take action," the release added. Meanwhile, Filmmaker Leena Manimekalai has landed in legal trouble after a police complaint was filed against her for hurting religious sentiments through a poster of her documentary 'Kaali'. The portrayal of Goddess Kali in the poster did not go down well with a section of social media users who have demanded the poster be withdrawn. Some even demanded strict action against her and the hashtag '#ArrestLeenaManimekal' is trending on Twitter. Activist Rahul Easwar has called it a "hate poster" and stated that "this is spreading hate against the Hindu community and defaming our deities." Speaking to ANI regarding the controversy, Easwar said, "Liberty comes along with sensitivity, freedom comes along with responsibility, can we live in the world without being sensitive, respectful and responsible? What happened with the Kali poster is that Leena created a hate poster against Hindu community. She's purposefully demeaning, defaming one of the most revered deities of Hindus, Kaali Maa." (ANI)
Pakistan journalist Imran Riaz Khan was arrested on Tuesday on the outskirts of Islamabad, hours after he claimed that his life was under threat. Khan was heading to Islamabad when he was arrested in connection with a treason case registered against him in Attock, Pakistan's Dawn.com reported. He was named in 17 treason cases across Punjab province, the report said. In a pre-recorded video on his popular video channel, he said, "This video is being recorded for the time of my arrest. They may kill me. After a gap of five hours, if they will harm me, then I will upload such a video on my channel that will cause a furore. I will name everyone. Just wait for 5 hours." Besides this, he also posted on Twitter condemning the "fascist regime" in Pakistan. "Many of us r facing cases just because of our journalism. 20 cases on me. Where is democracy and freedom of speech." Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan condemned the arbitrary arrest and said Pakistan is descending into fascism. "I strongly condemn the arbitrary arrest of @ImranRiazKhan by Punjab police tonight. The country is descending into fascism just to make our nation accept an Imported Govt comprising mega crooks. It is time for everyone, esp the media, to unite & stand up against this fascism," Khan tweeted. PTI Secretary General Asad Umar also condemned the arrest, saying that expression of opinions should be met with counterarguments instead of arrests. In a recent video on his Youtube channel, the journalist addressed Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa and alleged that he was threatened after asking questions from military sources about the country's current political and economic situation. Several cases have been lodged against journalists in Pakistan for allegedly spreading hate against the army and state institutions. This latest arrest comes in the backdrop of a growing crackdown on journalists in Pakistan. Earlier this week, police raided the home of journalist Rana Abrar Khalid in Rajanpur, Punjab following his investigation last year into former prime minister Imran Khan's use of public funds and Toshakhana. Last week, senior journalist and former parliamentarian Ayaz Amir was assaulted by unknown persons. "We see it as another cowardly act intended to silence independent voices. HRCP demands an investigation and those found responsible for this act must be brought to book," the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said. (ANI)
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday named new UK Health Secretary and Finance Minister shortly after Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak tendered their resignation, media reports said. UK Cabinet chief of staff Steve Barclay has been appointed as the new health secretary. Meanwhile, UK education secretary Nadhim Zahawi was named as the new finance minister. In his resignation letter, Sunak said he was "sad to be leaving the government", but has come to the conclusion that he "cannot continue like this". "The public rightly expect the government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously. I recognise this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning," Rishi Sunak said. Javid said he had lost confidence in Boris Johnson's ability to govern following multiple scandals, saying he could "no longer continue in good conscience". The minister said that many lawmakers and the public had lost confidence in Johnson's ability to govern in the national interest. In his resignation letter, which he posted to Twitter, Javid told Johnson that "the values you represent reflect on your colleagues," and in light of recent scandals, the public had concluded that their party was neither "competent" nor "acting in the national interest." The exit of the top minister comes amid the row involving the former Conservative party whip Chris Pincher, who was accused of sexual misconduct. Last week, Pincher quit as deputy chief whip after claims that he groped two men but Johnson knew about allegations against him as far back as 2019. Boris acknowledged he should have sacked Pincher when he was found to have behaved inappropriately when he was a Foreign Office minister in 2019. The British PM said he regrets giving Pincher a government role as Deputy Chief Whip following the revelation of a misconduct complaint against him. "In hindsight it was the wrong thing to do and I apologise to everyone who has been badly affected by it. I just want to make absolutely clear that there's no place in this government for anybody who is predatory or abuses their position of power," he said. (ANI)
The US special envoy has said there is no reason that girls should not be in school in Afghanistan as she blamed the Taliban's "policies against the Afghan population" for the continuing sanctions on the country. "It is the most repressive regime in the world. It is a situation which Afghan women are describing as gender apartheid. It is the worst situation in the world," Rina Amiri told BBC's Yalda Hakim in an interview. "There is no Muslim majority country in the world that supports the actions of Taliban," she added. Amiri said that the "Taliban rendered Afghan women invisible." Afghan female activists believe that country led by Taliban will not be recognized if it does not provide women with their rights, TOLOnews reported. "If the Taliban maintains the treatment of women like this--not providing the right to education for girls and the right to work for women, I am sure they will never be recognized by the international community," said Darya Nishat, a women's rights activist. "The sanctions will continue on the Taliban no matter what, but the Afghans are mostly suffering from its economic effects," said Torek Farhadi, a political analyst. The Human Rights Council last week held an urgent debate on the human rights of women and girls in Afghanistan. Michelle Bachelet, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that since the Taliban took power, women and girls in Afghanistan were experiencing the most significant and rapid roll-back in enjoyment of their rights across the board in decades. Bachelet said that since the Taliban took power, women and girls in Afghanistan were experiencing the most significant and rapid roll-back of their rights across the board in decades. Since the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan in August, a grave human rights crisis has been unfolding, especially for women and girls. Many governments have spoken out against the abuses; the Taliban's March 23 decision to continue their ban on girls' secondary schooling may be the first time a rights violation prompted condemnation from the European Union and 16 female foreign ministers. Rights groups say it's time for governments to turn consensus that the Taliban's actions are unlawful into coordinated actions that show the Taliban that the world is ready to defend the rights of Afghans, particularly women and girls, in meaningful ways. "It's time for governments to turn consensus that the Taliban's actions are unlawful into coordinated actions that show the Taliban that the world is ready to defend the rights of Afghans, particularly women and girls, in meaningful ways," said Heather Barr, Associate Director, Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW). (ANI)
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I am only a Black woman on Sundays. Let me clarify. I am a 21-year-old Black nonbinary person. I was assigned female at birth. My pronouns are they/he. I am a lesbian. I am a journalist and an artist, and sometimes I am a musician. When I am not in school or at work, I love to crochet, visit farmers markets and spend time with my friends and my partner. For me, being nonbinary is having the space to exist as a human. Its sometimes hard to define, but at its roots, my identity is about releasin
Two Philadelphia-area law enforcement officers were injured in a shooting that took place as tens of thousands of people celebrated July Fourth by congregating for fireworks and live music Monday, authorities said.

Police confirmed to NBC Philadelphia that two officers were stabilized at a hospital after being struck by gunfire near throngs who gathered at and near the city's famed Museum of Art.

At an overnight news conference, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said both have been treated and released. One was described as a traffic officer for the city department; the other was a member of the Montgomery County Sheriffs Office Bomb and Hazardous Device Disposal Unit assigned to the Philadelphia department.

Both were working security during the festivities, she said, and had not heard gunfire when they were struck, the commissioner said. One man is 36 years old, and the other is 44.

It's not clear why pandemonium ensued if gunfire was not heard, although NBC Philadelphia did indicate that police shooed crowds away from the concert stage.

The root of the gunfire was still a mystery, Outlaw said, noting that possibilities including everything from someone taking a shot from afar to ricochet from celebratory gunfire.

One of the officers suffered a graze wound to his head, the other a gunshot would to his right shoulder, the Philadelphia station reported. It broadcast a photograph of a bullet lodged in an officer's cap that included a memorial card for a late police chaplain.

The gunfire was reported in the Fairmount Street-Art Museum area as people were in the area for multiple events, including the last day of the holiday weekend's free 2022 Wawa Welcome America Concert featuring Jason Derulo.

Various people could be seen running from near the Benjamin Franklin Parkway after reports of two officers reportedly being shot in Philadelphia on July 4, 2022. (NBC Philadelphia)

The gunfire broke out around 9:47 p.m. near the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the final day of the Wawa Welcome America festival as throngs of people watched a fireworks show following a concert headlined by Jason Derulo on the parkway, police said. (NBC Philadelphia)

Music had ended and fireworks had begun when the gunfire happened shortly before 10 p.m., reported NBC Philadelphia, which had a reporter at the center of the chaos near the Benjamin Franklin Parkway Stage.

Witnesses said the situation resulted in pandemonium as spectators streamed from the neighborhood. The station reported that a SWAT team at a high-rise residential building near the museum was responding to a person with a gun who ended up being unrelated to the violence.

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It did not appear that anyone was in custody.

No civilian injuries were reported. A child may have gone missing among the confusion, the station reported.

Mayor Jim Kenney said during the news conference that he was tired enough of gun violence that he does not want to be mayor anymore. He said high-profile events in his city are no longer reasons for celebration, but rather preludes to heartache.

"I dont enjoy the Fourth of July," he said.

Alex Dzomba, 28, was celebrating a few blocks away at a friend's high-rise residence when she saw the tidal wave of humanity spilling from the concert grounds adjacent to Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Possibly because fireworks were also sounding off, Dzomba said, she didn't hear gunfire.

"All I saw was people screaming and fleeing the parkway," she said.

Police urged people to stay away from the Fairmount-Art Museum area. A reunion location was set up at the Free Library of Philadelphia, police said.

After two pandemic years of mostly staying in for a holiday with roots in the city, Philadelphians were looking forward to celebrating July Fourth outdoors.

In suburban Chicago on Monday a suspect opened fire from a rooftop, killing six and injuring 38 others who were spectators and participants in a July Fourth parade in the city of Highland Park, authorities said.

CORRECTION (July 5, 2022, 8:56 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated that both law enforcement officers struck by gunfire are with the Philadelphia Police Department, based on initial information from authorities. One is a highway patrol officer with the department; the other is a Montgomery County sheriffs deputy. Both were part of the security detail for the festival.
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UNITED NATIONS (AP)  A U.N. armored vehicle hit a mine Tuesday in central Mali, killing two Egyptian peacekeepers and seriously wounding five others in another deadly incident targeting the U.N. mission in the West African nation that has faced a decade-long Islamic insurgency.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said 10 U.N. peacekeepers have died in Mali in the first six months of 2022.

In Tuesdays incident, he said, an armored vehicle from a U.N. logistics convoy hit a mine on the route from Tessalit, the north-central oasis town in the Sahara, to the central city of Gao.

Dujarric said a U.N. rapid intervention force was sent to the scene and the injured were evacuated.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission strongly condemned the attack, which may constitute a war crime under international law.

Dujarric said the mission noted with concern the frequent use of improvised explosive devices intended to paralyze the operations of the U.N. mission and to obstruct the return to peace and stability in Mali.

The U.N. Security Council condemned the attack in the strongest terms and called on Malis transitional government to swiftly investigate and bring the perpetrators to justice. Its members expressed their concern about the security situation in Mali and the transnational dimension of the terrorist threat in the Sahel region.

Mali has been in turmoil since a 2012 uprising prompted mutinous soldiers to overthrow the president. The power vacuum that resulted ultimately led to an Islamic insurgency and a French-led war that ousted the jihadists from power in 2013.

But insurgents remain active and extremist groups affiliated with al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have moved from the arid north to more populated central Mali since 2015, stoking animosity and violence between ethnic groups in the region.

Malis current ruling junta seized power in August 2020, and in April the junta leaders said a transition to civilian, democratic rule would take at least two years.

The U.N. mission says over 255 of its peacekeepers and personnel have died since 2013, making Mali the deadliest of the U.N.s dozen peacekeeping missions worldwide.
Three people were killed and more than 20 were injured in acts of violence that swept across Indianapolis over Independence Day weekend.

Most recently, officers were dispatched to the 3600 block of North Grant Avenue on report of two men shot on the city's east side about 6 a.m. Tuesday. Officers found two people with gunshot injuries. Both were taken to a hospital, police said.

One man was later pronounced dead. He was identified as 26-year-old Anthony Higginson Jr. Officers say the shooting stemmed from a familial dispute.

The killing was one of several overnight investigations launched into acts of violence that contrasted celebrations of the holiday weekend.

"Our heart goes out to the families of all these people that had tragedies this weekend," said IMPD North District captain Kimberly Young at the scene of the shooting on North Grant Avenue.

One person is dead following a shooting on the 3600 block of Grant Avenue. Another person was also discovered with gunshot injuries on July 5, 2022.

As of 1:30 a.m. Monday  the most recent data available from Indianapolis police  the weekend violence brought the city's criminal homicides to 109 for the year, which is 12 fewer than the same period last year. Nonfatal shootings stood at 292 with 339 people shot. At this point last year, there were 328 nonfatal shootings with 368 people injured.

During an event related to food insecurity prevention efforts in the city Tuesday morning, Mayor Joe Hogsett said while the weekend violence saddened him, the overall trends are encouraging.

"The numbers are going in the right direction," he said, referencing the 9.9% reduction of homicides compared to last year.

The mayor again emphasized the city's attempts to curb violence in recent years. Those attempts were bolstered by funds from the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021 when Hogsett announced the city was dedicating $150 million in ARPA funds toward a three-year, anti-violence plan, which includes the peacemaker program.

Lauren Rodriguez, director of Indianapolis Office of Public Health and Safety, said her department analyzes crime data for the city on a daily and weekly basis, including data from the holiday weekend.

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She agreed the homicide number being down this year compared to last year is positive, but said she is far from satisfied.

"This past weekend there were not zero shootings so that means our work isn't done, Rodriguez said. We need to make sure we are constantly engaging and getting out to the community where those shootings are occurring to connect them to the resources."

OPHS will canvass the neighborhood nearby after a shooting. A lot of times the residents wont speak with them right away, she said.

The first part of it is creating that rapport and that trust, Rodriguez said.

This can mean connecting residents with jobs or resources for mental health or domestic violence or even just providing groceries, she said. Some residents may know people who could potentially be involved in gun violence and could benefit from the help of one of OPHS life coaches, Rodriguez said.

It's always nice to see the (homicide) numbers going down but... we are also looking at the qualitative piece, Rodriguez said. Making sure we are talking to the people impacted in that community.

OPHS uses shootings as an opportunity to go into the community and address the root causes of violence, but also works in the community using preventative approaches, Rodriguez said.

We see the tragic news every single day, all day from locally to internationally, but we can remind our community there's hope, Rodriguez said. There's money that is coming, there are people that care, that support them and want to find them the help they need.

Seven shot overnight

Reports from IMPD overnight Monday totaled seven people shot, including the two people on North Grant Avenue.

IMPD was called to Eskenazi Hospital after a person arrived with gunshot injuries about 12:30 a.m. Tuesday. Police say the person was awake and breathing.

About 1 a.m. Tuesday, a person was shot on the 5500 block of West 34th Street. The person was reported to be awake and breathing.

About 1 a.m., a person was found in critical condition after officers were called to the 800 block of Eugene Street on report of a person shot.

About 4 a.m. Tuesday a person was found with critical gunshot injuries on the 600 block of East Thompson Road.

In the same hour, officers arrived at the 2300 block of South Oxford Street where a person was in stable but serious condition after being shot.

Three children, two adults injured Monday, July 4

One person was awake and breathing after they arrived at Community East Hospital with gunshot injuries around 5:30 a.m., according to IMPD.

Two children were injured at a shooting at the intersection of East 38th Street and North Arlington around 7 p.m. Monday. One child is in critical condition. Later a man arrived at Community East Hospital with a gunshot wound. Police say the man shot and the shooting involving two children could be connected.

Six shot, one dead on Sunday

Just after 7 a.m. police responded to the 7000 block of Bretton Wood Drive where they found a man, identified Monday as Medhat Saad, 31, outside suffering from gunshot wounds. He died at the scene. Detective Brad Nuetzman is investigating this case. Those with information on Saad's death can contact the detective at 317-327-3475 or email him at Brad.Nuetzman@indy.gov.

Other violent events Sunday included:

One person was shot but reported to be awake and breathing at the 3500 block of North Drexel Avenue around 2:45 a.m. Sunday on the city's east side.

About 4:30 a.m. police responded to Community East Hospital after a person arrived with gunshot injuries. The person was reported to be awake and breathing.

At roughly 7 a.m. another person arrived to Community East Hospital. The person was reported to be awake and breathing.

Police responded to the 1500 block of Stadium Way around 5:30 p.m. just outside downtown on the west side. Officers found a person with gunshot injuries, but their condition was not reported.

A person with gunshot injuries was discovered at the 4200 block of David Street in Lawrence Township just after 11 p.m. Their condition was not reported.

One killed, five shot Saturday

Just before 9 p.m. Saturday officers responded to the 4700 block of E. 34th Street where they found a man, identified as 53-year-old James Mason, with fatal gunshot injuries. He was pronounced dead at the scene. His death is being investigated by Sgt. Scott Stauffer who can be reached at 317-327-3475 or via email at Scott.Stauffer@indy.gov.

Other violent events Saturday included:

One person was shot on the 4000 block of North High School Road around 2 p.m. on the city's northwest side. As of Saturday, the person was reported to be in stable but serious condition, officials said.

A person arrived at Community East Hospital with gunshot wounds about 8 p.m. Saturday.

About 10:30 p.m. officers responded to Eskenazi Hospital's downtown location after a person arrived with gunshot injuries.

Around 10:10 p.m. police responded to a report of a person stabbed at the 800 block of Carrollton Avenue on the east side of downtown.

At roughly 11 p.m., officials responded on report of shots fired at the 3900 block of Gateway Court on Indy's northwest side. Two people were discovered with gunshot injuries. One person was in stable condition and the other was in critical condition at the time of the report.

Police ask that if you heard or saw something this weekend, say something, Young said.

"I know it was a lot of fireworks, a lot of noise, but (for) some of those, somebody heard something (or) somebody saw something," Young said.

People with information about the shootings are asked to contact IMPD at 317-327-3475. Alternatively, those with information can also submit an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers at 317-262-8477.

In other tragic news over the weekend, an infant was critically injured in a dog attack in the 10000 block of Penrith Drive around 9 p.m. Monday. No other details have been publicly released in that case.

During the July 4 holiday weekend  from July 2-5  in 2021 at least seven people were killed in 11 separate shootings in Marion County, according to past reporting.

This article will update.

IndyStar reporter Lizzie Kane contributed to this article.

Contact Hannah Brock at hannah.brock@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter @hannah_m_brock.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indianapolis shootings over July 4th holiday: 3 dead, 20 more hurt
PAMPLONA, Spain (AP)  Dozens of animal rights activists dressed as dinosaurs were chased by fellow activists through the streets of the Spanish city of Pamplona on Tuesday to protest alleged animal cruelty in the world famous San Fermin Running of the Bulls festival.

In the protest Tuesday, the dinosaurs were supposed to represent bulls and the mob behind the San Fermin revelers. The activists carried placards reading, "Bullfighting is Prehistoric." They said the point was to show runs could be lighthearted and held without any cruelty to animals.

It was the 18th annual protest led by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, and the Spanish NGO AnimalNaturalis. The protests are normally held a day before the festival gets underway with the traditional chupinazo firework blast at midday in Pamplonas town hall square. The runs begin Thursday.

Bullfighting is the long ritualized execution of bulls and many tourists who come to the bull-runs dont actually realize that the same bulls they're running down a couple of streets with are later killed in the bullring that day, said Chelsea Monroe, PETA senior digital campaign officer.

Theyre stabbed over and over again for 20 minutes until theyre dead, said Monroe. We want the tourists to know that their money is supporting this really cruel industry.

The protests do little to dampen enthusiasm for San Fermin, which normally sees Pamplona's population of 200,000 balloon to some 1 milllion during peak days of the nine-day festival.

The festival was suspended for the past two years because of the coronavirus pandemic. Authorities fear crowd activities at the festival may lead to a major increase in infections this year as well.

The festival highlight is the early morning encierro, or run, which sees thousands of people running like mad to avoid six bulls as they charge along a winding, cobblestoned route to the citys bullring.

The rest of each day is for eating, drinking, dancing, and cultural entertainment.

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The six bulls are invariably killed in bullfights each afternoon during the festival

The debate over the future of bullfighting in Spain has never been so alive and the authorities must take a clear stance, said Jana Uritz of AnimalNaturalis in a statement. "We demand the necessary courage from them to say whether they favor animal torture or, on the contrary, are ready to prohibit such barbarities.

Bullfighting is still immensely popular in Spain although the movement against it has gained much momentum in recent years. Bullfighting is banned only in the Canary Islands although it is not practiced much, or at all, in some other regions such as Catalonia and the Balearic Islands that include Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza.

The animal rights groups cite Culture Ministry figures, saying 90% of Spaniards did not attend any festival event involving bulls in 2014-2015, the last year the issue was surveyed.
Akron's downtown was largely empty by the time a 9 p.m. curfew began Monday one night after pockets of violence the night before shattered days of peaceful protests.

The recent killing of Jayland Walker, who was shot 60 times by Akron police on June 27, has sparked days of passionate demands for justice and police reform.

There were "no significant incidents" and no arrests overnight, Akron police said at noon Tuesday just one day after reporting 50 arrests from early Monday.

Jayland Walker police shooting: What we know  and still don't know

Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan announced Tuesday afternoon he intends to lift the curfew on Wednesday.

"The community respected the curfew which we put in place last night and did not further damage our downtown corridor," Horrigan said. "I expect tonight to be the same. In an effort to support all those who are peacefully protesting, I plan to lift the curfew in our downtown footprint starting tomorrow."

Protesters leave before curfew

The scene was peaceful about 7:30 p.m. Monday as about 75 people gathered at the Justice Center.

"We're tired of being murdered," said MJ Ross, an 18-year-old Akron resident. "We will escalate if our demands are not met."

Those demands, issued by the Freedom BLOC group on Saturday, include prosecuting the involved officers and installing dash cameras in every police vehicle.

A protester calls for justice for Jayland Walker during a demonstration held outside the Harold K. Stubbs Justice Center on Monday.

Ross said they are looking for nonviolent ways to increase pressure on the city, but said they will not "lay down and take it."

Police surveilled the scene from a nearby rooftop as other officers inside geared up. Protesters taunted the cops on the roof, telling them to jump and calling them "guilty murderers."

Seven seconds of shooting: What 13 police bodycam videos show in Jayland Walker's death

As darkness drew nearer, protesters were increasingly disgruntled about the impending curfew. One man, who did not give his name, said: "It's the Fourth of July and they're (expletive) all over the First Amendment. How patriotic."

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Around 8:15 p.m., one organizer gave a final warning to the crowd.

"Anyone who does not feel comfortable getting arrested, this is your chance to leave," he told the crowd. Several others passed out notecards with information for a bail fund and a lawyer.

An Akron police officer in riot gear announces the 9 p.m. curfew outside the Harold K. Stubbs Justice Center on Monday.

The crowd began to splinter as about half of them left. Others passed out makeshift shields constructed from a steel barrel lid and cardboard.

"What's one night in jail when we're already in cages?" asked 23-year-old Winter Carter. "As a Black woman, I already move through the world with a target on my back."

By 9 p.m., the crowd had totally dispersed.

Despite an empty High Street, about 50 officers in riot gear stepped outside the justice center and lined up for several minutes before returning inside at the time of curfew.

One officer made an announcement that any non-media professionals needed to vacate the area or they would be subject to arrest.

The curfew remained in place Tuesday for downtown from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Akron resident Winter Carter, 23, protests Monday at the Harold K. Stubbs Justice Center in Akron n response to the shooting death by police of Jayland Walker.

Protesters target Mayor Dan Horrigan's house

Earlier in the day, protesters marched to Horrigan's home. The group of at least 100 people, including some who were armed, were watched by a large law enforcement presence.

Protest organizers said two activists were arrested and they were making plans to bail them out of jail once the march came to an end.

The protest was organized by The Freedom Black Led Organizing Collaborative (BLOC), a local organization that aims to build Black political power and to equip the Black community with capacity-building tools.

The Akron SWAT team stands on the front step of the Harold K. Stubbs Justice Center on Monday.

Arrests announced after curfew

The Akron Police Department reported Monday afternoon that about 50 adults were arrested after a curfew was declared just after midnight Sunday. Charges included rioting, failure to disperse and misconduct during an emergency. Those arrested included Akron residents as well as some residents of neighboring cities and counties, the department said in a news release.

"A team of officers provided multiple verbal commands and other instructions and offered a reasonable amount of time to comply," the release said. "Due to growing concerns that the situation could further escalate, paired with the refusal to comply with a lawful order to disperse, officers deployed a chemical irritant to prevent further rioting and property damage."

Many were making video court appearances Tuesday morning.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron curfew will end Wednesday if peace maintained
Local and national NAACP officials are asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the fatal police shooting of Jayland Walker.

We are asking for Department of Justice to come in, said Akron NAACP President Judi Hill. We want a consent decree from the state. We are looking for real change. And, so, we know it can't happen within. It hasn't happened to date.

Akron NAACP President Judi Hill and other local and national leaders have asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the fatal shooting of Jayland Walker by Akron police.

More: What we know  and still don't know  about the police shooting death of Jayland Walker

The NAACP demand for a federal review comes on the heels of locally elected Black officials in Summit County requesting DOJ involvement. The officials want more than the state of Ohio and the city of Akron to review the matter, which is being investigated internally by the Akron Police Department and, at the request of the chief of police, externally by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation at the Ohio Attorney Generals Office.

What Ohio lawmakers are saying about a Jayland Walker investigation

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown's office said: "Senator Brown is in close contact with the Department of Justice and his office is ready to assist however needed."

U.S. Sen. Rob Portman and U.S. Reps. Tim Ryan and Shontel Brown did not respond to requests for comment made Tuesday.

More: Who was Jayland Walker? 'He was the most sincere, most kindhearted person,' friend says

But Shontel Brown, in a statement Friday, said she had requested that DOJ monitor the investigation, adding, "The senseless killings of unarmed Black Americans are tragic events our country continues to relive.

Ryan's office said the congressman has not been in contact with DOJ regarding the incident, but he issued a statement Sunday supporting the Walker family, the Akron community and "a thorough, independent investigation to understand what happened and ensure accountability.

Akron NAACP president calls for changes to police procedures

Hill called for changes to police procedure in Akron.

What I'd like to see happen is that, first of all, any equipment violations should never lead to the death of anyone. That's number one," said Hill. "You go to Cleveland, you go anywhere, they take a picture of your license plates, and they send you a frickin ticket. Send me the ticket.

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An Akron police officer attempted to stop Walker on Tallmadge Avenue at 12:30 a.m. June 27 for what has been reported as a cracked taillight, non-working license plate light and an unspecified traffic violation. The officer pursued Walker onto state Route 8 where the sound of gunshot can be heard in his body-worn camera footage and a flash consistent with a muzzle blast was captured in the driver's side window of Walkers silver Buick, according to a traffic camera from the Ohio Department of Transportation.

The chase ended a block east of Main Street on Wilbeth Avenue where police set up a road barricade. Walker ran from his vehicle, leaving a handgun that appears to be unloaded in the car beside a magazine clip and a wedding ring. At least 13 officers chased Walker. Two appear to have fired Tasers, according to body-camera footage released Sunday. Eight officers fired on Walker, who fell instantly. Some fired only briefly and called for a cease-fire while several others emptied their clips into Walker as he laid on an asphalt parking lot.

More: Gruesome videos, Jayland Walker's motions intensify debate; attorney disputes city's claims

Police Chief Steve Mylett said Sunday that he would not be surprised if the number of bullets that hit their target is consistent with the 60 or more gunshot wounds photographed in a preliminary autopsy report.

Hill said federal officials should be reviewing the citys police chase policy, which states that pursuits must be based on the pursuing officers reasonable belief that the immediate danger to the officer and the public created by the pursuit is less than the immediate or potential danger to the public should the suspect remain at large.

Mylett said Sunday the routine traffic stop became a public emergency when Walker allegedly fired a single round after turning onto the highway.

Hill questioned how a police supervisor would allow 10 or more cruisers to pursue Walker.

We should never have a car chase for one person. There has to be some discernment, and an understanding from our police department. It can't just be wild, wild west," she said.

More: Seven seconds of shooting: What 13 police bodycam videos show in Jayland Walker's death

Hill is also asking that the city revisit the ordinance it crafted on the prompt release of body-camera footage in deadly force cases. The law allows the city to cut the video off at the point of the shooting.

What happened after that? Why is it stopped there during a situation like this? Because then you can see how the scene was handled completely. And so that's another concern for me, Hill said.

Akron NAACP president calls for changes in city, culture

Hill said shes not sure how weve gotten to this place in America where a white man accused of a shooting rampage killing at least six people at a July Fourth parade in Highland Park, Illinois, is taken into custody without incident and "a young (Black) man running with no gun in sight is gunned down.

More: 'Jayland's life mattered!' Akron march continues overnight over police shooting

We can't bring Jayland back, Hill said. There's nothing we can do to bring him back. It's got to be about real change.

We've had a change in personnel, she said, referring to the citys two new police chiefs in the past five years. And that hasn't made a difference. Now we have to make changes within the culture and what we do in the city.

Reach reporter Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-719-1756.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron NAACP calls for federal DOJ to investigate Jayland Walker police shooting
The group accused of attacking a man in Boston during a white supremacist march on Saturday should be prosecuted "within the fullest extent of the law," the city's mayor said Tuesday. Mayor Michelle Wu said there's an ongoing investigation into the alleged assault.

Wu's comments come after dozens of masked white supremacists marched through downtown Boston on Saturday, CBS Boston said.

One man, 34-year-old Charles Murrell, said he was surrounded and attacked by men with shields, CBS Boston reported. The alleged assault left him with cuts on his head, hand and eyebrow, he said.

Boston police told CBS Boston that they responded to the area on reports of an assault, and that the victim was transported to receive stitches. They said the caller told them he was shoved by the group of men and that he swung his arm to get away before the men knocked him down and kicked him.

CBS Boston reported that the men, some of whom carried flags and police shields, were members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front. The men were wearing T-shirts that said "Reclaim America," and that some had American flags and police shields, CBS Boston said. No arrests have been made.

The group makes a speech in front of the BPL as they march through the city of Boston on July 2, 2022 in Boston, Massachusetts. / Credit: Stuart Cahill/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald

Wu said Tuesday that the investigation into the alleged attack was hampered by the fact that the men were wearing masks. But Boston Police Superintendent in Chief Greg Long said a large amount of video has been recovered, adding that charges will be brought if the men can be identified.

ADL New England Regional Director Robert Trestan told CBS Boston that more than 100 Patriot Front members were in attendance.

"People are characterizing it as a protest but I think we need to take a look at everything that we saw and heard which really has all of the indicators of an act of defiance, an act of intimidation," Trestan said.

The incident comes about a month after another group of men, who were also believed to be members of Patriot Front, were arrested near a pride event in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. The 31 men were found in a U-Haul, and police said they were likely intending to riot, noting that authorities found shields and at least one smoke grenade inside the truck.

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Investigators piece together clues in Highland Park, Illinois parade shooting
Fireworks celebrations were interrupted in multiple cities as panicked crowds fled suspected gunshots amid the ongoing epidemic of gun violence and mass shootings across the U.S.

The scenes unfolded after six people were killed and dozens more injured by a suspect armed with an assault rifle in the normally calm Chicago suburb of Highland Park on Monday morning.

In Philadelphia, police say two officers were shot during a Fourth of July celebration in the evening, prompting spectators to break into a run as fireworks continued to burst behind them.

Twitter users posted footage from the citys Ben Franklin Parkway, which show event-goers screaming and running away from the Wawa Welcome America Festival. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported the show had just begun before accounts of a shooting began to spread through the crowd, prompting a stampede down the roadway.

I didnt hear the shots, but the cops were like, Run, run, run, one woman told local news station NBC10.

Police say the officers were injured in front of the Philadelphia Art Museum while working security at the event. A bullet allegedly grazed the forehead of one officer and improbably lodged in his cap; another officer was injured after a bullet grazed his shoulder. Both were discharged from the hospital later that evening.

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Its unclear where the shots were fired from, or if they were intentional, authorities said. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said she was extremely grateful that this wasnt worse than it was, noting no one else was shot at the event.

No arrests have been made.

This is our reality.

Laying in the dirt in a tent.

We made a fort around us with catering equipment.

Everyone is crying or screaming. #July4Phillypic.twitter.com/c5fLF0U4dv  Karen Hua (@K_Hua) July 5, 2022

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said he was continually worried about gun violence at large events, saying he was waiting for something bad to happen all the time.

The weather was beautiful, the concert was beautiful, but we live in America and we have the Second Amendment and we have the Supreme Court of the United States telling everybody they can carry a gun wherever they want, Kenney said at a news conference early Tuesday morning. We have to come to grips with what this country is about right now. We had a beautiful day out there today except for some nitwit ... who has a gun and probably shouldnt have had it.

Following the shooting of two police officers during a packed concert and fireworks show at the Ben Franklin Parkway, Jim Kenney said he looks forward to no longer being Philadelphia's mayor and having worries about shootings at large events. https://t.co/zCo7f9JSlLpic.twitter.com/6HZVgFV2o6  NBC10 Philadelphia (@NBCPhiladelphia) July 5, 2022

Other suspected shootings also prompted widespread alarm Monday night.

In Orlando, security video showed what appeared to be the start of a stampede, begun by two people running through a crowd before a flash appeared. People then started running away.

But Orlando Police Chief Orlando Rolon said authorities had found no evidence of shots fired, according to WESH 2 News.

Another panic was set off in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, after a fight broke out and firecrackers were set off, local police commissioner Thomas Carter told ABC 27 News. Authorities similarly found no evidence of gunfire amid the holiday celebrations.

Next thing you know, we hear somebody yell gun, one witness said. Children were separated from parents and grandparents during the chaos.

Police named 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III as a person of interest in the Highland Park shooting, then said authorities had arrested him after a brief chase later on Monday. Videos that emerged from the bloody scene showed crowds sprinting away from rapid, heavy gunfire.

President Joe Biden reacted to the Illinois carnage by saying he and first lady Jill Biden were shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day. While he touted the bipartisan gun control legislation signed into law last month, Biden noted there is much more work to do to combat the problem.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

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Atlanta police are searching for a missing 18-year-old and they are asking for the publics help in finding him.

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Police said Jason Giersch, 18, went missing on Monday, July 4. He was last seen at 515 Page Ave NE, wearing a white shirt, red pants and driving a gray Honda CRV.

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IN OTHER NEWS:
An Australian TikToker living in Malaysia surprised her Southeast Asian followers when she claimed that people from down under use forks while eating rice dishes.

In her recent video, TikTok user Georgia says that Australians think that using a spoon to eat rice is unusual.

She admits, however, that using a spoon makes so much more sense and declares that she has converted to eating rice with a spoon.

More from NextShark: Video of Shanghai residents screaming out their windows during strict COVID lockdown goes viral

Why do we use a fork when all the bits of rice fall through it? she says in her video.

Georgia told Malaysian news outlet Says that she only realized people use spoons for rice after living in Singapore and Malaysia. She shared that her friends and colleagues in Singapore would tease her for choosing a fork over a spoon.

Commenters were quick to highlight the benefits of using a spoon over a fork, while some suggested that eating by hand is even better.

More from NextShark: Russian tourist who posed naked on 700-year-old sacred tree for photos will be deported from Bali

Sometimes, we pair rice with lots of gravy/sauce.. so definitely have to eat them with a spoon, one user wrote.

Georgia explained that utensil preferences may be attributed to the differences in how food is prepared and consumed in Australia and Asia. She noted that knives and forks are often used for most of the dishes in Australia, and spoons are meant for soups and desserts.

Rice is notably consumed in a variety of ways in Asia depending on the type of rice eaten and the local cultural norms.

More from NextShark: Thai YouTuber discovers the only known bamboo-dwelling tarantula species in the world

In Japan and China, short-grain rice is usually eaten with chopsticks. Meanwhile, Koreans tend to consume this type of rice either with chopsticks or with a long metal spoon. In Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia and the Philippines, many eat rice using a combination of a spoon and fork. The use of bare hands also remains popular in many parts of the region, as well as countries such as India.

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Georgias video, which has ignited a positive discussion on the subject, has so far been viewed over 91,000 times on TikTok.

More from NextShark: Inner Mongolia teacher goes viral for donning Ultraman costume in video to surprise his students

Featured Image via @simplegreensoul
By Renju Jose

SYDNEY (Reuters) -Torrential rains kept battering Australia's east coast on Tuesday, intensifying the flood crisis in Sydney as thousands more residents were ordered to leave their homes after rivers swiftly rose past danger levels.

About 50,000 residents in New South Wales, most in Sydney's western suburbs, have been told to either evacuate or warned they might receive evacuation orders, up from Monday's 30,000, authorities said.

"This event is far from over," New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet told reporters. "Wherever you are, please be careful when you're driving on our roads. There are still substantial risks for flash flooding."

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who returned to Australia Tuesday after a week-long trip to Europe, said he would tour the affected regions on Wednesday along with Perrottet.

The federal government has declared the floods a natural disaster, helping flood-hit residents receive emergency funding support.

The latest wild storm cell - which brought a year's worth of rain in three days to some areas - is likely to ease in Sydney from Tuesday as the coastal trough moves north, the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) said.

But the risk of flooding could remain through the week with most river catchments already near capacity even before the latest deluge. Some regions have received 800mm (31.5 inches) of rain since Saturday, eclipsing Australia's annual average rainfall of around 500mm (20 inches).

About 90mm (3.5 inches) of rain could fall over six hours in the state's mid-north coast from Tuesday, reaching up to 125mm (5 inches) in some places, BoM said.

Winds up to 90 km per hour (56 miles per hour) are also forecast in several flood-hit places, raising the risk of falling trees and power lines.

Battling rough seas, emergency crews continued their rescue operation on Tuesday to tow a bulk carrier ship that lost power off Sydney's coast after tow lines broke in severe weather, officials said.

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Major flooding is occurring at Windsor in Sydney's west, its third and most severe flood this year, according to the weather bureau.

Footage on social media showed submerged roads and bridges, while emergency crews rescued stranded people from partially submerged vehicles that became stuck in rising waters.

Nigel Myron, a Windsor resident, said he has kept an inflatable boat ready if he had to evacuate though he is looking to move back to his place once waters recede.

"At the end of the day, what can you do? It is what it is and we dust ourselves off from the ashes and rebuild after the floods have come and gone," Myron told ABC television.

'SUBSTANTIAL ECONOMIC IMPACT'

Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers warned the economic impact from the floods "will be substantial".

Floods have likely inundated several food-producing regions and that would hit supplies and lift prices, further straining family budgets already reeling under soaring prices of vegetables and fruits, Chalmers said.

"There's no use tiptoeing around that ... that inflation problem that we have in our economy will get worse before it gets better. It's got a lot of sources, but this (flood) will be one of them," Chalmers told Sky News.

The Reserve Bank of Australia flagged the floods "are also affecting some prices" as it raised its cash rate a hefty 50 basis points on Tuesday and flagged more tightening ahead to tame surging inflation.

The Insurance Council of Australia, which declared the floods a 'significant event', urged affected people to apply for claims, even though the full extent of damage was unknown now.

(Reporting by Renju Jose; Editing by David Gregorio and Lincoln Feast.)
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden on Tuesday bestowed the nation's highest military honor to four Army soldiers for heroism during the Vietnam War, bravery that he said had not diminished even with the passage of time.

Biden presented the Medal of Honor to Staff Sgt. Edward N. Kaneshiro, Spc. Five Dwight W. Birdwell, Spc. Five Dennis M. Fujii, and retired Maj. John J. Duffy. Speaking at a ceremony in the White House East Room, Biden praised their heroism, noting that many like them don't receive the full recognition they deserve.

Today, we're setting the record straight. We're upgrading the awards of four soldiers who performed acts of incredible heroism during the Vietnam conflict, Biden said.

Its just astounding when you hear what each of them have done, he said. They went far above and beyond the call of duty. Its a phrase always used but ... it takes on life when you see these men.

Addressing the three living soldiers and relatives of Kaneshiro, who is deceased, the president said, I'm proud to finally award our highest military recognition, the Medal of Honor, to each of you.

Biden noted that more than 50 years had passed since the jungles of Vietnam where, as young men, these soldiers first proved their mettle. But time has not diminished their astonishing bravery, their selflessness in putting the lives of others ahead of their own and the gratitude that we as a nation owe them.

Kaneshiro, killed in action by hostile gunfire in Vietnam in 1967, received his honor posthumously for a Dec. 1, 1966 raid where his unit came under fire by North Vietnamese troops. His actions were credited with helping his unit withdraw from the village where they were fighting. Kaneshiro was born and raised in Hawaii, a son of Japanese immigrants.

Birdwell was honored for actions helping to head off an assault and evacuate wounded at Tan Son Nhut Airbase near Saigon on Jan. 31, 1968, despite injuries to his torso and face, during an opening salvo in what is known as the Tet Offensive, an especially bloody period of the war.

Story continues

Birdwell, a member of the Cherokee Nation and a lawyer in Oklahoma City, had received a Silver Star for his actions. Biden said it took Birdwell's commanding officer decades to realize that Birdwell had not received the proper recognition and took steps, even in retirement, to make this day possible.

At long last, long last, your story is being honored as it should have been always, Biden told Birdwell.

Fujii received a Medal of Honor for actions over four days in February 1971 treating wounded and directing air strikes against enemy positions after his air ambulance was forced to crash land.

Duffy was recognized for leading troops who came under ambush after their commander was killed in action, repelling attackers and evacuating wounded, despite his own injuries. Duffy went on to become an author and once was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

He is the definition of a warrior poet, Biden said.
The recent 15% drop in Big Technologies plc's (LON:BIG) stock could come as a blow to insiders who purchased UK524k worth of stock at an average buy price of UK2.80 over the past 12 months. Insiders purchase with the hope of seeing their investments increase in value over time. However, due to recent losses, their initial investment is now only worth UK416k, which is not great.

While insider transactions are not the most important thing when it comes to long-term investing, we do think it is perfectly logical to keep tabs on what insiders are doing.

Check out our latest analysis for Big Technologies

Big Technologies Insider Transactions Over The Last Year

Over the last year, we can see that the biggest insider purchase was by CFO, Company Secretary & Executive Director Daren Morris for UK322k worth of shares, at about UK2.98 per share. That means that an insider was happy to buy shares at above the current price of UK2.22. While their view may have changed since the purchase was made, this does at least suggest they have had confidence in the company's future. In our view, the price an insider pays for shares is very important. As a general rule, we feel more positive about a stock if insiders have bought shares at above current prices, because that suggests they viewed the stock as good value, even at a higher price. Notably Daren Morris was also the biggest seller.

Over the last year, we can see that insiders have bought 187.20k shares worth UK524k. But insiders sold 5.00k shares worth UK14k. Overall, Big Technologies insiders were net buyers during the last year. The chart below shows insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last year. If you want to know exactly who sold, for how much, and when, simply click on the graph below!

There are always plenty of stocks that insiders are buying. So if that suits your style you could check each stock one by one or you could take a look at this free list of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them).

Story continues

Insiders at Big Technologies Have Bought Stock Recently

At Big Technologies,over the last quarter, we have observed quite a lot more insider buying than insider selling. CFO, Company Secretary & Executive Director Daren Morris spent UK87k on stock. But CFO, Company Secretary & Executive Director Daren Morris sold shares worth UK14k. The buying outweighs the selling, which suggests that insiders may believe the company will do well in the future.

Does Big Technologies Boast High Insider Ownership?

I like to look at how many shares insiders own in a company, to help inform my view of how aligned they are with insiders. I reckon it's a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. Big Technologies insiders own about UK182m worth of shares (which is 28% of the company). This kind of significant ownership by insiders does generally increase the chance that the company is run in the interest of all shareholders.

What Might The Insider Transactions At Big Technologies Tell Us?

It is good to see the recent insider purchase. We also take confidence from the longer term picture of insider transactions. Along with the high insider ownership, this analysis suggests that insiders are quite bullish about Big Technologies. Looks promising! So these insider transactions can help us build a thesis about the stock, but it's also worthwhile knowing the risks facing this company. For example - Big Technologies has 1 warning sign we think you should be aware of.

But note: Big Technologies may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with high ROE and low debt.

For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We currently account for open market transactions and private dispositions, but not derivative transactions.

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



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Secretary of State Antony Blinken will see his Chinese counterpart this week at a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 bloc of nations that will likely exacerbate splits over Russias war in Ukraine.

While strained U.S.-China ties will be the focus of Blinkens talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the broader G-20 gathering in Indonesia of leading industrialized nations will almost certainly be overshadowed by the Ukraine conflict and its effect on global food and energy security. And Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will be there, marking the first time he and Blinken will be in the same room, let alone the same city, at the same time in nearly six months.

The State Department announced Tuesday that Blinken would meet with Wang in Bali, but had little to say about the possibility of him seeing Lavrov, whom the U.S. has shunned since the Ukraine invasion in February. U.S. officials have accused Lavrov and other Russian diplomats of a lack of seriousness in the run-up to the Ukraine war.

The Biden administration has ruled out business as usual with Russia while it remains in Ukraine and U.S. officials said there would be no formal discussions between Blinken and Lavrov in Bali. But they could not rule out the possibility of a chance encounter, which would their first since they last met in Geneva in January.

"The secretary intends to engage fully in the G-20. Im not going to speak to any plans on the part of Foreign Minister Lavrov ... but I can tell you the secretary will be a full and active participant in the G-20, which we see as a valuable forum," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

Like many recent international diplomatic gatherings, the Bali meeting will be focused on Ukraine as the participants set the stage for a summit of G-20 leaders, also to be held in Indonesia, in November. But unlike, the Western-dominated G-7 and NATO summits that were held in Europe last week, the G-20 will have a different flavor.

Story continues

China and many other participants, including India, South Africa, Brazil and several other large developing nations, have resisted signing onto U.S. and European opposition to Russias invasion. Some have outright refused Western entreaties to join condemnations of the conflict, which the U.S. and its allies see as an outright attack on the international rules-based order that has prevailed since the end of World War II.

The divergence has set the stage for a potentially contentious preparatory meeting ahead of November's summit, amid questions about whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend. The U.S. has made clear it does not believe Putin should attend but has urged the Indonesian hosts to invite Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy should the Russian leader participate.

In the meantime, the U.S. and China are separately at severe odds over numerous issues ranging from trade and human rights to Taiwan and disputes in the South China Sea.

Blinken's meeting with Wang was announced after Chinas envoy to trade war talks with Washington expressed concern about U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports in a call with with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Neither side gave any indication that progress has been made on the matter.

In his meeting with Wang, Price said Blinken will reinforce our commitment to working with international partners to confront global challenges, including food and energy insecurity and the threat Russias continued war against Ukraine presents to the international order.

From Bali, Blinken will travel to Bangkok, Thailand, to make up for a trip to the Thai capital that he was forced to cancel late last year due to COVID-19 reasons.
Boris Johnson is clinging to power by a thread after the twin resignations of his chancellor and health secretary over the Chris Pincher scandal plunged him into his biggest crisis yet.

The disintegration of the cabinet  long seen as the event most likely to force the prime minister out of No 10  dramatically cut the odds on his premiership ending within months, or even weeks.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, walked out telling Mr Johnson the Conservative party is bigger than any one individual  while Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, protested that standards are worth fighting for.

Earlier, No 10 had admitted the prime minister knew a misconduct complaint had been upheld against Mr Pincher when he promoted him to the whips office, triggering an eruption of Tory anger.

The resignations came just moments after a grovelling apology by Mr Johnson for the mistake of promoting the minister  a move No 10 had spent five days defending.

Keir Starmer said it was clear clear that this government is now collapsing and lashed out at ministers who had been complicit as the prime minister disgraced his office.

Bim Afolami, a vice chair of the Tory party resigned dramatically on air, and David Frost, the former Brexit minister, called on Mr Johnson to go.

But other cabinet ministers rallied around to stem the bleeding, including Liz Truss, Dominic Raab, Michael Gove, Nadhim Zahawi and Kwasi Kwarteng.

Jacob Rees-Mogg brushed off talk that the end was near, arguing the prime minister had only made a minor mistake and saying: Losing chancellors is something that happens.

The dual resignations came after the tactic of filming cabinet meetings backfired when its members were captured with worried, gloomy faces  prompting speculation that a revolt was near.

Senior Tories had urged Mr Johnsons top team to pull the plug on his premiership, as party rules prevent  for now  a second no-confidence vote for one year.

Backbenchers have done all they can. It is up to the cabinet to decide if they will put up, or if they will continue to shut up, the former health minister Steve Brine told The Independent.

Story continues

Nick Gibb, the respected former schools minister, likened the situation to the crisis in the US where you worry whether democracy is safe, as he also urged the cabinet to act.

We have to make sure that doesnt happen in this country. We have to get rid of the rot in our political system, he told BBC Radio 4.

Tim Loughton, another former anti-Johnson minister, said: At last, weve got two very senior cabinet ministers who have absolutely done the decent thing. And I hope this will now set the course that we do need, a change of leader at the top.

more follows
Boris Johnsons Cabinet has begun to unravel amid anger over his handling of misconduct allegations against Chris Pincher, with both Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak resigning.

Their departures come amid rising Tory fury at the scandal, after No 10 admitted Mr Johnson was aware when promoting Chris Pincher to a role in charge of MPs welfare that a misconduct complaint had been upheld against him.

Downing Street denied accusations from former Foreign Office permanent secretary Lord McDonald that it was not telling the truth when asked previously about the matter, instead insisting that Mr Johnson did not originally recall being told about the complaint against Mr Pincher.

Forcing an urgent question in the Commons, Labours deputy leader Angela Rayner labelled the governemnt paralysed by scandal and claimed Mr Johnson was either negligent or complicit.

Multiple Tories expressed their discontent in the Commons, with the PM reported to be touring the Westminster tearooms in a bid to assuage their anger  to which senior MP Simon Hoare responded: Been there. Done that ... It wont wash any more.

Key Points

New: Rishi Sunak steps down as chancellor

Breaking: Sajid Javid resigns from Cabinet

Boris Johnson forgot misconduct complaint against Chris Pincher upheld, No 10 says

Top civil servant accuses No 10 of lying over Pincher allegations

Johnson was given first-hand account of allegations against Pincher before promoting him

Unions urge speaker to take action as they claim 'political parties cannot be trusted'

Carrie Johnson openly questioned Chris Pincher's suitability as a government whip, report says

No 10 reject Diane Abbott's claims about Johnson

Time to wheel the lectern out? asks Angela Rayner

18:24 , Andy Gregory

Labours deputy leader has asked whether it is time to wheel the No 10 lectern out.

Time to wheel the lectern out? pic.twitter.com/AY5P2iaL5M  Angela Rayner  (@AngelaRayner) July 5, 2022

Its all over for Boris Johnson, minister says

18:22 , Andy Gregory

Story continues

Heres the damning verdict from one Cabinet minister on the double resignation, according to Sky News:

Boris will have to go now. It doesnt matter what the rest of us do. Once you lose your chancellor and health secretary its all over.

Says one cabinet minister currently not resigning!  Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky) July 5, 2022

Breaking: Rishi Sunak resigns as chancellor

18:17 , Andy Gregory

Rishi Sunak has gone now too.

The chancellor said: The public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously.

I recognise this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning.

The public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously.



I recognise this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning.



My letter to the Prime Minister below. pic.twitter.com/vZ1APB1ik1  Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) July 5, 2022

Johnson expresses regret over Pincher allegations response

18:11 , Andy Gregory

Dodging the question on whether he did say Pincher by name, pincher by nature, Boris Johnson said: What I can tell you is that, if I look at the background of this and why I regret it so much, is that about three years ago there was a complaint made against Chris Pincher in the Foreign Office, the complaint was cleared up, he apologised.

It was raised with me, orally, I was briefed on what had happened. If I had my time again I would think back on it and recognise that he wasn't going to learn a lesson and he wasn't going to change and I regret that.

Breaking: Sajid Javid resigns as health secretary

18:06 , Andy Gregory

Sajid Javid has resigned from the Cabinet, saying he can no longer continue in good conscience.

I have spoken to the Prime Minister to tender my resignation as Secretary of State for Health & Social Care.



It has been an enormous privilege to serve in this role, but I regret that I can no longer continue in good conscience. pic.twitter.com/d5RBFGPqXp  Sajid Javid (@sajidjavid) July 5, 2022

Johnson dodges question on alleged pincher by nature comment

18:04 , Andy Gregory

Boris Johnson has appeared to dodge a question on whether he once said: Pincher by name, pincher by nature.

Boris Johnson apologises for mistake of promoting Chris Pincher

18:02 , Andy Gregory

Boris Johnson has apologised for the mistake of promoting Chris Pincher despite being made aware of an upheld misconduct complaint against him.

I apologise to everyone whos been badly affected by it and I just want to make absolutely clear that theres no place in this government for anybody who is predatory or abuses their position of power, the prime minister said.

How much more pain do we have to take: Tory anger at Boris Johnson continues

17:34 , Andy Gregory

The Tory anger towards Boris Johnson appears to be spilling over from the Commons (see post at 17:07), with a number of MPs venting their discontent in the past hour on social media, to journalists, and to each other.

Responding to reports that the prime minister is touring the tearooms at Westminster in a bid to assuage their anger, senior Tory Simon Hoare said: Been there. Done that ... It wont wash any more.

Been there. Done that. Purchased the t shirt. Im sorry. I will listen. I will learn then joke behind closed doors I dont see any problem etc. It wont wash any more. That tactical ship has sailed (and sunk) https://t.co/IuRrC95JXd  Simon Hoare MP (@Simon4NDorset) July 5, 2022

And Anthony Mangnall accused the PM of doing appalling damage to the party, government and country, adding: It isnt good enough and each day that passes those who sit in Cabinet will be more complicit with this farcical situation.

Here are more from The Mirrors political editor, who was told by one MP: How much more pain do we have to take? Its the first time I've seen so-called loyalists really pissed off.

One MP tells me: "How much more pain do we have to take? It's the first time I've seen so-called loyalists really pissed off. Even some of the 2019 intake have had enough."  Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) July 5, 2022

Boris Johnson touring tea rooms ahead of TV interview

17:20 , Andy Gregory

Boris Johnson is rumoured to be planning a television appearance later, however the details remain oddly sparse, prompting speculation over the reason for the potential interview.

Political reporters from Sky News, the Daily Mirror and the Spectator are reporting that an interview with the PM is due to appear, although it remains unclear with whom.

You do this when you want to give everyone minimal time to process pre evening bulletins  Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky) July 5, 2022

Meanwhile, Mr Johnson is claimed to be touring tea rooms in an attempt to assuage anger among his colleagues in the wake of No 10s admission that the PM promoted Chris Pincher to the whips office despite having been told of an upheld misconduct complaint against him, which Downing Street claims he did not originally recall.

Boris Johnson has been touring tea rooms trying to quell Tory anger over handling of Pincher row.



Hearing PM to do TV clip shortly.



No 10 debating whether to batten down hatches or go for full transparency - though some concern this doesn't work if original decision flawed.  Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) July 5, 2022

Men abusing men a deliberately hidden scandal in Westminster, Labour MP says

17:10 , Andy Gregory

Men abusing other men is a scandal in Westminster that has been overlooked and deliberately hidden, the Commons has been told.

Labour MP Luke Pollard warned in some cases the very highest people have sought to protect others by forgetting that things have happened.

Cabinet Office minister Michael Ellis claimed there is no such culture in parliament before encouraging any victims of abuse to come forward.

Senior Tories vent anger over PMs handling of Pincher allegations

17:07 , Andy Gregory

Here are more details of the Tory discontent in the Commons in the wake of fresh revelations over Boris Johnsons response to the misconduct allegations against Chris Pincher, as minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Ellis fielded questions on the matter.

Former minister John Penrose asked Mr Ellis when he would finally say enough is enough and no longer defend the government, whilst the Tory chair of the public administration and constitutional affairs committee, William Wragg, urged ministers to consider their position.

Sir Bernard Jenkin, chair of the liaison committee, demanded to know why those with the wrong attitudes and the wrong behaviours are promoted by their leaders, asking: Isnt that exactly what gives permission for the wrong attitudes and the wrong behaviours to persist?

Meanwhile, Jackie Doyle-Price, a former minister and assistant government whip, insisted the whiff of rumours and historic incidents surrounding Mr Pincher should have been enough to tell the PM his appointment to the whips office was not wise.

She also called for a complete reset of standards and a complete reboot of the Ministerial Code.

Tory MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham asked why Mr Pincher was not sacked at the time, never mind given another job, if the allegations brought against him were similar to those made about bad behaviour at the Carlton club, as asserted in Lord McDonalds letter (see post at 07:55).

Johnson now odds-on to quit this year, with Mordaunt clear favourite to replace him, Betfair says

16:42 , Andy Gregory

The odds are now in favour of Boris Johnson quitting this year, with Penny Mordaunt emerging as the clear favourite to replace him, according to Betfair Exchange.

The prime minister has become odds-on with Betfair at 20/21 to quit in 2022, lengthening to 7/2 the following year, and 5/2 in 2024 or later.

Meanwhile, the former defence secretary Penny Mordaunt is the new clear favourite to be the next Conservative leader at 6/1  soaring ahead of Jeremy Hunt, Ben Wallace and Liz Truss at 8/1.

Scottish independence referendum bill referred to Supreme Court

16:32 , Andy Gregory

Scotlands chief law officer has referred Scottish Government legislation on holding another independence referendum to the Supreme Court.

Following an announcement by Nicola Sturgeon of plans to hold another vote on 19 October next year, Scotlands first minister said Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain QC had agreed to ask the Supreme Court to opine on whether Holyrood had the necessary powers to hold such an indicative vote.

On Tuesday, an 18-page reference was submitted to the court, in which the Lord Advocate wrote: The Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and the people of Scotland and the wider United Kingdom ought to have clarity on the scope of the relevant reservations on this issue of fundamental constitutional importance.

Being questions of law, only this court can provide that clarity and unless the issue is judicially resolved there will remain uncertainty and scope for argument about the powers of the Scottish Parliament. That is not in the best interests of the people of Scotland or of the United Kingdom.

In these circumstances, the Lord Advocate has determined that it is appropriate for her to obtain a judicial determination from the Supreme Court. Accordingly, the Lord Advocate makes this reference, in exercise of her retained functions, under paragraph 34 of Schedule 6 of the Scotland Act.

It is the first time this power has been exercised by the Lord Advocate. That is a measure of the fundamental importance of the issue and its exceptional nature.

Ms Bain told the court that she would need to have a necessary degree of confidence  currently lacking  in the competence of the Scottish Parliament to legislate on a certain topic before a Bill could be introduced, and would need to clear a statement to that effect.

15:43 , Thomas Kingsley

Tory MPs lined up in the House of Commons to publicly condemn Boris Johnson's handling of the Chris Pincher affair, with senior figures urging ministers to consider their positions.

On Tuesday, Labour was granted an urgent question in Parliament to address the growing scandal over the past behaviour of Mr Pincher and what the prime minister knew about the allegations.

As Cabinet Office minister Michael Ellis kept defending the appointment of the MP for Tamworth as deputy chief whip, it soon became clear that disquiet among Tory MPs is growing, with several venting their anger and frustration in the lower chamber.

Conservative former minister John Penrose asked Mr Ellis when he would finally say enough is enough and no longer defend the government, whilst the Conservative chairman of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, William Wragg, urged ministers to consider their position.

Chris Pincher: Who is the former deputy chief whip at the centre of Westminsters latest sleaze scandal?

15:11 , Thomas Kingsley

-Boris Johnsons government once again finds itself mired in scandal in the wake of the resignation of deputy chief whip Chris Pincher last week after he allegedly groped two colleagues at a social event while drunk.

The 52-year-old MP, who has represented Tamworth in Staffordshire since 2010, was the subject of two complaints over his conduct at a 30th anniversary reception for the Conservative Friends of Cyprus at the Carlton Club, a historic private members club.

Read the full story below:

Who is Chris Pincher and what are the allegations against him?

Watch: Boris Johnson was briefed in person about Chris Pincher allegations, Lord McDonald says

14:45 , Thomas Kingsley

14:32 , Thomas Kingsley

Labour's Jess Phillips (Birmingham Yardley) challenged Cabinet Office minister Michael Ellis to say whether the MP for Tamworth (Chris Pincher) would have been able to get a job if she had been deciding about appointments.

She said: There's always something that is meant to be for the standards for the public, that a minister stands there and leans on to try and get out of - basically telling untruths to public, allowing sycophancy rather than morality to be the reason why people are given their jobs.

My final question to the minister is, if it had been me giving out those jobs, does he think the MP for Tamworth (Chris Pincher) would have been able to get one?

Responding, Cabinet Office minister Michael Ellis said: I would expect (her) perhaps more than she would expect of me, and by that I mean, that I would expect her to act fairly. So I hope that answers her question. If she was in that position of responsibility to make decisions about appointments I would expect her to act fairly, full stop.

Ministers should consider positions in government after Pincher response, Tory MP suggests

14:15 , Thomas Kingsley

Ministers should consider their positions in Boris Johnsons government amid mounting anger over No 10s response to misconduct complaints against Christopher Pincher, a Tory MP has suggested.

The remarks from William Wragg came just minutes after minister Michael Ellis admitted the prime minister was made aware in late 2019 of concerns relating to Mr Pincher  then a minister at the Foreign Office.

Prompting laughter in the Commons, the Cabinet Office minister, however, insisted Mr Johnson did not immediately recall the exchange when fresh allegations emerged about Mr Pinchers conduct last week.

Read the full story below:

Ministers should consider positions in Boris Johnsons government, Tory MP suggests

Boris Johnson needs to show honesty and accuracy, former head of Civil Service says

14:00 , Thomas Kingsley

The former head of the Civil Service has called for honesty and accuracy from Boris Johnson over Chris Pincher's appointment as deputy chief whip and said there is a pattern of Number 10 trying to mislead and confuse stories.

Lord Kerslake told Radio 4's World at One programme: There must be a complete openness and transparency from No 10 and the prime minister.

We do need to understand why action was taken to appoint Chris Pincher to be a deputy chief whip, a role that is, after all, about the wellbeing of MPs as much as anything.

Why was that appointment made and, if needs be, an apology.

The cross-bench peer also said it is inconceivable that those around the prime minister were unaware of sexual misconduct claims.

I cannot believe that they weren't aware of previous allegations and indeed substantiated allegations," he said, adding that No 10's handling of the story in recent days demonstrates a "pattern of constantly trying to mislead, confuse stories and not come clean when the issue arises.

Zelensky holds talks with Boris Johnson amid Pincher row

13:43 , Thomas Kingsley

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said he has held further talks with Boris Johnson about the latest situation in Ukraine.

Mr Zelensky tweeted: Thanked (Mr Johnson) for the unwavering support of - the recent decision to provide 1 billion in security aid and today's - 100 million.

Talked about food security for the world and security guarantees for Ukraine.

Minister also admits Boris Johnson knew Chris Pincher complaint was upheld

13:24 , Andy Gregory

Speaking in the Commons shortly after No 10 admitted that Boris Johnson knew that a complaint against Chris Pincher had been upheld, paymaster general Michael Ellis said the same.

Officials raised concerns with the permanent secretary concerning Mr Pincher in October 2019 and the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office commissioned work to establish facts, undertaken by the Cabinet Office, he said.

Mr Ellis added: The exercise established that while the minister meant no harm, what had occurred caused a high level of discomfort ... the minister apologised and those raising the concern accepted the resolution.

The prime minister was made aware of this issue in late 2019, he was told that the permanent secretary had taken the necessary action. No issue therefore arose about remaining as a minister.

And last week when fresh allegations arose the prime minister did not immediately recall the conversation in late 2019 about this incident. As soon as he was reminded, the No 10 press office corrected their public lines.

No 10 admits Boris Johnson knew misconduct complaint was upheld against Chris Pincher

13:16 , Andy Gregory

Our deputy political editor Rob Merrick has this breaking update:

Boris Johnson knew a misconduct complaint had been upheld against Chris Pincher when he promoted him to the whips office, No 10 has admitted.

But the prime ministers spokesman denied Downing Street lied when it claimed, last week, that he was unaware of any specific allegations against the minister.

Mr Johnson did not originally recall being told about the complaint, he said, adding it was a brief conversation that took place around three years ago.

The spokesman also conceded the prime minister was told of a separate allegation  when Mr Pincher was promoted in February  but argued that was unsubstantiated.

No 10 admits PM knew misconduct complaint was upheld against Chris Pincher

Government paralysed by scandal, Angela Rayner says

13:14 , Andy Gregory

Labours Angela Rayner has described Boris Johnsons government as being paralysed by scandal.

In a Commons debate forced by Labour in response to the Chris Pincher allegations  amid a row over Mr Johnsons handling of the claims  the partys deputy leader said: What message, Mr Speaker, does this send about the standards of this government and what they set?

What message does this send to the British people facing a cost of living crisis while this government is paralysed by scandal? When will this minister [Michael Ellis] stop defending the indefensible and say enough is enough.

Rayner warns of ethical vacuum in Downing Street, with no accountability'

13:12 , Andy Gregory

Launching a barrage of questions at Paymaster General Michael Ellis, Labours deputy leader has claimed there is an ethical vacuum in Downing Street, with no accountability in place  and accused Boris Johnson of being either negligent or complicit in his handling of allegations against Chris Pincher.

Angela Rayner told MPs: Lord McDonald says the prime minister was informed about the complaint that was upheld of inappropriate behaviour against the then minister. Does the minister here accept Lord McDonald is telling the truth, or is he telling us the prime minister wasnt aware of it?

What happened to the complaint, Mr Speaker, and why was nothing done at the time? A minister of state at the Foreign Office has a deeply sensitive role in national security. Was this issue even raised or brought up in the vetting process and was the prime minister informed?

And why was this conduct not considered a breach of the ministerial code? Why did the prime minister allow him to stay in post? This goes to the heart of why there are issues here, Mr Speaker, and the public have had enough.

Since the resignation of another of the prime ministers ethics advisers last month, there has been an even bigger ethical vaccum in Downing Street, with no accountability in place.

How can the minister come here today and say that this simply just wouldnt happen again? The prime minister was personally informed about these allegations, and yet he was either negligent or complicit.

PMs defence over Pincher row completely blown apart, says Angela Rayner

12:55 , Andy Gregory

Boris Johnsons defence over the Chris Pincher allegations has been completely blown apart, Angela Rayner has said.

Responding to minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Ellis in an urgent question on the mechanisms for upholding standards in public life, Labours deputy leader said: This constant charade just will not wash.

These latest disturbing allegations about the ministerial misconduct are all about abuse of power. And there is one common fault with the system currently that the minister spoke about. And thats the power thats granted by this prime minister.

The minister [Mr Ellis] spoke about personal responsibility. Well the minister needs to remind the prime minister of his personal responsibility.

Last week the prime minister said he knew nothing of specific allegations of misconduct against the member for Tamworth But the truth is out today. And that defence has been completely blown apart.

12:40 , Andy Gregory

Cabinet Office minister Michael Ellis is responding to Labours urgent question in the Commons on the mechanisms for upholding standards in public life, in response to the Chris Pincher allegations.

He says it is incumbent on us not to prejudge these decisions.

Here is the response from ITVs Paul Brand:

Michael Ellis says it is very important that we do not prejudge any case against Chris Pincher. Sounds like the new government line to buy time.  Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) July 5, 2022

Let me say that no system can replace the fundamental importance of personal responsibility, Mr Ellis says. We all know this to be true. Codes and rules and oversight bodies are there to guide us, but we all ultimately in public life must choose for ourselves how to act.

Boris Johnson accused of ignoring victim of predatory sexual behaviour'

12:37 , Andy Gregory

In the Commons, Labour shadow justice secretary Steve Reed has accused Boris Johnson of ignoring the victim of predatory sexual behaviour in relation to accusations linked to Chris Pincher.

Members across the House want to see victims needs put first, Mr Reed said.

So why does the secretary of state tour the TV studios to defend the prime minister for ignoring the victim of predatory sexual behaviour by a former Foreign Office minister when he promoted him to deputy chief whip, despite having been alerted to that behaviour by the permanent undersecretary, and despite the minister in question having admitted to the behaviour?

Justice minister Tom Pursglove said: My clear understanding is that the honourable gentleman is wrong about this. But of course it is right that the processes that have been set out are allowed to take their course.

All of us in this House, I believe, take a very dim view about people being ill-treated, and its right that the due process is now able to be followed. What is not in question ... is that this is a government that is determined to make sure that outcomes for victims are better.

Boris Johnson 'has trashed the reputation of Tory Party, senior backbencher says

12:33 , Andy Gregory

Senior Tory backbencher Sir Roger Gale has accused Boris Johnson of sending ministers effectively to lie on his behalf, and said Lord McDonalds letter (see post at 07:55) had convinced him that a change in the 1922 Committee rulebook was necessary to allow another confidence vote in the PM.

Mr Johnson has for three days now been sending ministers - in one case a cabinet minister - out to defend the indefensible, effectively to lie on his behalf. That cannot be allowed to continue, he told the BBC.

This prime minister has trashed the reputation of a proud and honourable party for honesty and decency, and that is not acceptable.

I have been saying for days now that I was not in favour of changing the rules of the 1922 Committee to permit another vote of confidence within the one-year timescale. Lord McDonalds letter has changed my view. It is so blatant a lie it has to be acted upon as swiftly as possible by my party.

Justin Welby condemns leaders who dont offer all people freedom, safety and opportunity

12:23 , Andy Gregory

The Archbishop of Canterbury has criticised political leaders who do not offer all people freedom, safety and opportunity, after recently condemning the governments plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda  which he warned should shame us as a nation.

The Most Reverend Justin Welby told a human rights conference in London: When you as politicians extend freedom of religion or belief, you show you care for your people. When you take it away, you show indifference.

We know that when freedoms of expression and worship are restricted, other freedoms are lost - women, minorities, other people miss out. Leadership is a hard task. You know that. If you dont offer people freedom, safety and opportunity, or if you only offer this to some people and not to others, you are not really leading.

Boris Johnson and foreign secretary Liz Truss both also addressed the event, with the prime minister sending a video message.

Zelensky thanks Boris Johnson for unwavering support'

12:16 , Andy Gregory

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said he has held further talks with Boris Johnson about the latest situation in Ukraine.

Held talks with @BorisJohnson. Thanked for the unwavering support of  - the recent decision to provide 1 billion in security aid and today's - 100 million. Talked about food security for the world and security guarantees for . Grateful for s willingness to host #URC2023    (@ZelenskyyUa) July 5, 2022

Watch: Conservative MPs sport grim expressions during Cabinet meeting amid Chris Pincher scandal

12:07 , Thomas Kingsley

11:52 , Thomas Kingsley

Boris Johnson has said the voices of those persecuted on the basis of their religion is ignored at our peril, as he addressed an international conference promoting freedom of religion or belief.

In a video message, the prime minister told the UK government-hosted event in London on Tuesday: Today, millions of people live in fear simply from following their religion or because of their beliefs, people who face the humiliation and indignities of everyday discrimination to devastating attacks, mass murder and appalling atrocities.

We ignore these voices at our peril, not just because of the ineluctable link between this and many of the human rights that we cherish, but because free societies are stronger and more prosperous and advance the global cause of peace.

He added: It's only through joint action and common purpose that we will defend the right of everyone to enjoy religious and other freedoms and peace.

Watch: Rees-Mogg caught out when trying to suggest vaccine roll out was thanks to Brexit

11:30 , Thomas Kingsley

Pictured: Cabinet ministers gather amid Pincher row

11:15 , Thomas Kingsley

(AFP via Getty Images)

(POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

(AFP via Getty Images)

(REUTERS)

NEW: Labour granted urgent question on Chris Pincher row

11:05 , Thomas Kingsley

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner has been granted an urgent question in the Commons on the Chris Pincher row at around 12.30pm.

She will ask Cabinet Office Minister Michael Ellis to make a statement on the mechanisms for upholding standards in public life.

Boris Johnsons desperate attempts to cover up what he knew about sexual assault complaints against Chris Pincher before appointing him have been blown out the water, she said in a statement.

It is now clear that the Prime Minister knew about the seriousness of these complaints but decided to promote this man to a senior position in Government anyway. He refused to act and then lied about what he knew.

Boris Johnson is dragging British democracy through the muck. His appalling judgment has made Westminster a less safe place to work.

Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner said Lord McDonalds letter showed Boris Johnson had lied about the appointment of Chris Pincher as deputy chief whip.

'It makes no sense: Minister openly criticises government decision to freeze civil service fast stream

11:00 , Thomas Kingsley

One of Boris Johnsons ministers has publicly criticised the governments decision to freeze the civil service graduate fast stream for at least year, saying it makes no sense.

The comments from Greg Hands come after it was revealed the highly competitive scheme would be suspended as part of Mr Johnsons controversial plans to reduce the civil service heacount by a fifth.

He told the cabinet in May that we have got to cut the cost of government to reduce the cost of living, as he outlined proposals to cut the civil service to 2016 levels  a reduction of 91,000 staff.

Read the full story below:

Minister openly criticises government decision to freeze civil service fast stream

Watch: Dominic Raab clashes with Susanna Reid over guilty Chris Pincher

10:45 , Thomas Kingsley

Tory MPs feel very sorry for victim Chris Pincher, Michael Fabricant says

10:30 , Thomas Kingsley

Conservative MPs feel "very sorry" for Tory MP Chris Pincher and believe he is a "victim in his own way", one of his colleague has said.

Mr Pincher quit as a government whip this week and lost the Conservative whip after he allegedly groped two men in a private members' club. The allegation is the latest agains the MP, an earlier on of which led to an investigation by Whitehall authorities in 2019.

Speaking on BBC Radio 5Live Michael Fabricant, who represents the constituency of Lichfield next to Mr Pincher's in Tamworth, said:

On the one hand, of course, we're all very sorry for people who've been affected by Chris's action's but we also quite frankly feel very sorry for Chris in many ways.

Read the full story below:

Tory MPs feel very sorry for victim Chris Pincher, Michael Fabricant says

Boris Johnson seeks to move past Pincher row in Cabinet meeting

10:17 , Thomas Kingsley

Boris Johnson focused on the economy and taxation as he opened Cabinet as he sought to move on from the row over Chris Pincher's behaviour and how much he knew about the allegations surrounding his former deputy chief whip.

Speaking ahead of Wednesday's cut in national insurance contributions, the prime minister said it was part of a package to help people grapple with the rising cost of living.

He told the Cabinet: It will be in people's pay packets from tomorrow onwards and amongst other things it is there to help people up and down the country with the cost of living.

It's part of the 37 billion that we are able to spend to help people through the current pressures on food prices, on energy prices, that we are seeing.

It shows that the Government is firmly on the side of the British people.

Boris Johnson lied about Chris Pincher appointment, Angela Rayner says

10:02 , Thomas Kingsley

Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner said Lord McDonald's letter showed Boris Johnson had lied about the appointment of Chris Pincher as deputy chief whip.

Boris Johnson's desperate attempts to cover up what he knew about sexual assault complaints against Chris Pincher before appointing him have been blown out the water, she said in a statement.

It is now clear that the prime minister knew about the seriousness of these complaints but decided to promote this man to a senior position in government anyway. He refused to act and then lied about what he knew.

Boris Johnson is dragging British democracy through the muck. His appalling judgment has made Westminster a less safe place to work.

Watch: Chris Pincher's conduct in 2019 didn't require 'formal disciplinary action', Raab says

09:45 , Thomas Kingsley

No 10 need to respond to Lord McDonald letter, Tory MP says

09:30 , Thomas Kingsley

Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood said the prime minister and No 10 do need to respond to the letter written by Lord McDonald who says Downing Street are still not telling the truth about Chris Pincher.

Lord McDonald of Salford has submitted a formal complaint to Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone.

He said: They need to understand the scale and the gravity of the story and, indeed, get ahead of it. It is dominating the news day-after-day-after-day.

He added that junior ministers and ministers are being sent out with the lines to tell the media which only lasts a number of hours until it has to be corrected.

Mr Ellwood also told the programme: This is just overshadowing the efforts to try and focus on the bigger issues, which I think is where the country would actually like us to focus. This is very, very serious indeed, but the Government strategy right now in dealing with this particular issue is not wise at all.

You have to do the right thing, Lord McDonald says after writing to Parliamentary Standards Committee

09:15 , Thomas Kingsley

Former permanent under-secretary to the foreign and commonwealth office Lord Simon McDonald explained that he wrote to the Parliamentary Standards Committee about Downing Streets handling of allegations against Chris Pincher because what he had seen and read over the past few days he knew to be wrong and that things get to a point where you have to do the right thing.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4s Today Programme after sending a letter of complaint to the Standards Commissioner, Lord McDonald of Salford said: It is very unusual for a retired official to do what I have done this morning. I did it by myself, because what I have seen and read over the last few days I knew to be wrong.

And you know, things get to a point where you have to do the right thing.

He added: First of all, Number 10 have had five full days to get the story correct and that has still not happened.

And second, I do not approve of anonymous briefings behind the scenes. If I was to do this, I should put my name to it rather than just phone a journalist and tip them off.

Boris Johnson not aware of 'any substantiated complaints' against Pincher, Raab says

09:00 , Thomas Kingsley

Former Tory minister accuses No 10 of lying to ministers over Pincher allegations

08:50 , Thomas Kingsley

A former Tory minister has accused No 10 of lying to ministers over whether Boris Johnson knew about allegations against Chris Pincher.

Former justice secretary David Gauke wrote on Twitter: A minister can expect to have to go out and defend an unpopular line and that can be uncomfortable. But a minister is entitled to expect that they wont be lied to by No 10.

It comes after childrens minister Will Quice said Number 10 had given him a cast iron, categorical assurance that Mr Johnson was unaware of any specific allegations against Mr Pincher before appointing him.

It has now emerged that Boris Johnson received first-hand accounts of allegations against Mr Pincher in 2019 when he was foreign secretary.

A Minister can expect to have to go out and defend an unpopular line and that can be uncomfortable. But a Minister is entitled to expect that they wont be lied to by No 10.  David Gauke (@DavidGauke) July 5, 2022

PM was not briefed directly about Pincher allegations, Raab says

08:35 , Thomas Kingsley

Deputy prime minister Dominic Raab says Boris Johnson was not briefed directly about a complaint of inappropriate misconduct by Chris Pincher made while he was a foreign office minister in 2019.

On a complaint made in October 2019, Mr Raab, who was foreign secretary at the time, told BBC Radio 4s Today Programme: In relation to what happened in 2019, Im not aware that the Prime Minister was briefed directly about it.

I have discussed this with the Prime Minister over the last 24 hours, it is not my understanding that he was directly briefed.

He added: In relation to the 2019 allegation or complaint, whilst there was inappropriate behaviour, it didnt trip the wire into disciplinary action.

Downing Street needs to come clean, Lord McDonald says

08:24 , Thomas Kingsley

Lord McDonald says Downing Street needs to come clean over untruths on Chris Pincher.

They need to come clean. the language is ambiguous. Its sort of telling the truth and crossing your fingers at the same time Lord McDonald said.

It comes after the former foreign office chief wrote a letter accusing No 10 of changing its story on the allegations surrounding Mr Pincher. He claimed in a letter to the parliamentary standards commissioner that Boris Johnson was briefed in person about an investigation into Chris Pinchers conduct as a foreign office minister.

08:18 , Thomas Kingsley

Chris Pincher was investigated over a complaint about his conduct when he was a foreign office minister but it did not lead to any formal sanction, deputy prime minister Dominic Raab has said.

Mr Raab, who was foreign secretary at the time, said the Cabinet Office ethics and propriety team and the then chief whip Mark Spencer were informed in October 2019.

However, he said that he did not believe there was any reason why Boris Johnson would have been told.

I updated and reported back to the chief whip so that he was aware given the wider responsibility the chief whip has, but I wouldn't have expected in relation to something which didn't merit a formal process, let alone a sanction, to go directly to the prime minister, he told Times Radio.

Breaking

07:55 , Katy Clifton

The former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office Lord McDonald has said in a letter to the parliamentary standards commissioner that Boris Johnson was briefed in person about an investigation into Chris Pinchers conduct as a foreign office minister.

Posting his letter on Twitter this morning, Lord McDonald wrote: This morning I have written to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards - because No 10 keep changing their story and are still not telling the truth.

I spoke to Pincher to make sure the behaviour was not repeated'

07:47 , Katy Clifton

Mr Raab has said he had spoken to Mr Pincher when he was a foreign office minister about his conduct and warned him that it must not be repeated.

He told Times Radio: There was a complaint made in October 2019. It was a complaint of inappropriate conduct. I immediately agreed with the permanent secretary he should conduct an assessment whether it warranted disciplinary action.

He did so. The permanent secretary did not think independently that any formal action under the Civil Service disciplinary processes in the Foreign Office was warranted. He spoke to Chris Pincher. I also spoke to Chris Pincher to make sure the behaviour was not repeated.

I also, for assurance and to make sure we had taken the most rigorous approach, referred the matter to the Cabinet Office ethics and propriety team who looked at it and they confirmed there wasnt a case for proceeding under the Ministerial Code.

We followed the processes  I did  to the letter, in fact beyond what was recommended.

Raab says Pincher was investigated while he was foreign office minister

07:35 , Katy Clifton

Dominic Raab has said Chris Pincher was investigated over a complaint about his conduct when he was a foreign office minister but it did not lead to any formal sanction.

The deputy prime minister, who was foreign secretary at the time, told Times Radio earlier this morning that the Cabinet Office ethics and propriety team and the then chief whip Mark Spencer were informed in October 2019.

However, he said that he did not believe there was any reason why Boris Johnson would have been told.

I updated and reported back to the chief whip so that he was aware given the wider responsibility the chief whip has, but I wouldnt have expected in relation to something which didnt merit a formal process, let alone a sanction, to go directly to the prime minister.

No 10 refuses to deny Dominic Cummings' claim over Johnson's comments about Pincher

07:10 , Maroosha Muzaffar

After it came to light that the PM had been given a first-hand account of the inappropriate sexual behaviour before Chris Pincher was promoted to whips office, Downing Street has refused to comment on Dominic Cummings claim that Boris Johnson had referred to Mr Pincher as Pincher by name, pincher by nature.

The official spokesperson said: I have seen those unsubstantiated source quotes and I dont intend to respond to them.The spokesperson continued: Im simply not going to comment on the content of what was or wasnt said in private conversations.

Boris Johnson says Ukraine 'must prevail' against Russian invasion

06:50 , Maroosha Muzaffar

Boris Johnson said that Ukraine must prevail in a statement of unity with allied countries against the Russian invasion.

He said during his address to the Commons on Monday afternoon after having returned from last weeks Commonwealth, G7 and Nato summits that the summits exceeded all expectations in the unity and single-minded resolve of the alliance to support Ukraine for as long as it takes.

He added: All of us understand that if [Vladimir] Putin is not stopped in Ukraine he will find new targets for his revanchist attacks and we are not defending some abstract ideal but the first principle of a peaceful world, which is that large and powerful countries cannot be allowed to dismember their neighbours and if this was ever permitted, then no nation anywhere would be safe.

The prime minister said Ukraine must have the strength to finish this war on the terms that President Zelensky has described.Meanwhile, Mr Johnson told MPs that the G7 has also pledged nearly 30 billion dollars of financial support for Ukraine this year.

Tory MP questions Johnson over defence spending commitment

06:30 , Maroosha Muzaffar

A former Tory whip has questioned Boris Johnsons commitment to getting defence spending up to 2.5 per cent of GDP by the end of this decade.

Mark Harper said: When the prime ministers remarks at the Nato summit were reported last week, the 2.5 per cent commitment to spend on defence appeared to be really quite solid. His remarks today are less so. So assuming it is a commitment, can I just ask him, is it a commitment? And secondly, how are we going to pay for it?

Mr Johnson responded: This is a straightforward protraction - prediction - based on what we are currently committed to spending under the Aukus programme and under the FCAS [Future Combat Air System] programme as well. These are gigantic commitments. I think theyre the right thing for the UK.

He continued: They will take us up to that threshold. Of course, much depends on the size of our GDP at the time. Much depends on the growth in the economy. I think were going to pay for it out of steady and sustained economic growth.

Earlier, the PM had said: If you follow the trajectory of our programmes to modernise our armed forces, you will draw the logical conclusion that the UK will likely be spending 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence by the end of this decade.

Unions urge speaker to take action as they claim 'political parties cannot be trusted'

06:10 , Maroosha Muzaffar

More than 1,000 parliamentary workers  representing two unions  have written to House of Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle, urging parliament to take action over the Chris Pincher scandal.

The unions jointly called parliament an unsafe space to work and general secretaries of the unions have said that political parties cannot be trusted to deal with the misbehaviour of their own MPs.

FDA and Prospect have asked that parliament act to stop the seemingly endless allegations of sexual misconduct by MPs.The unions said that politicians were time and again failing to deal properly with sexual misconduct by one of their own.

Starmer rules out rejoining EU or single market

05:50 , Maroosha Muzaffar

Sir Keir Starmer has ruled out rejoining the EU or the single market if the party comes to power.

During a speech on Monday evening, Mr Starmer pledged to tackle what he called a fatberg of red tape and bureaucracy caused by Mr Johnsons Brexit deal.

He insisted that rejoining the EU would create more division in Britain. And added that Labour intends to grow the economy  the details of which he will reveal later  but insisted that the first step was to make a success of leaving the EU.

He argued: We will be the honest broker our countries need. We will get the protocol working and we will make it the springboard to securing a better deal for the British people.

No 10 reject Diane Abbott's claims about Johnson

05:30 , Maroosha Muzaffar

After Labour MP Diane Abbott said on a BBC Radio 4 show that Boris Johnson is rumoured to like assaulting women, No 10 has responded saying the claim is untrue.

Ms Abbott also accused the prime minister of hypocrisy while responding to a question about allegations surrounding Chris Pincher.

The PMs official spokesman said: Obviously that claim is untrue. But Im not going to get into engaging on political points beyond that.

During the segment on the show, host Paddy OConnell queried her claim and added: Diane, youve got to answer my questions rather than raising new claims.

The spokesperson also said that the BBC had temporarily removed the programme from its catch-up service to edit out the segment.

Carrie Johnson openly questioned Chris Pincher's suitability as a government whip, report says

05:10 , Maroosha Muzaffar

Carrie Johnson had openly questioned Chris Pinchers suitability as a government whip five years ago, according to a report.

Sky News said that Ms Johnson questioned how Mr Pincher ended up in the whips office.

Last week was the second time Mr Pincher resigned from the whips office. He first resigned in 2017 after a Conservative candidate accused him of making an inappropriate advance.

The Independent, meanwhile, learned that Boris Johnson was given a first-hand account of allegations against Mr Pincher before he was promoted to the role of deputy chief whip.

Johnson was given first-hand account of allegations against Pincher before promoting him

04:45 , Maroosha Muzaffar

Boris Johnson was given a first-hand account of inappropriate sexual behaviour by Chris Pincher before his appointment to the role of deputy chief whip, The Independent has learned.

Read the full story here:

Johnson was given first-hand account of claims against Pincher
Jul. 5Boulder is hosting a virtual information session to share more about three transportation projects planned for the 30th Street and Colorado Avenue corridors.

The meeting, scheduled for 6 to 7 p.m. July 20, will discuss the 30th and Colorado underpass project; the 28th and Colorado intersection improvements project; and the 30th Street corridor multimodal improvements project.

According to a news release, the projects are meant to enhance safe and efficient transportation connections between the many popular community destinations in the area, including the University of Colorado Boulder's main and east campuses, student housing, public parks and 29th Street shopping and services.

Improvements include the construction of pedestrian underpasses, intersections with enhanced signal timing for people walking, rolling and bicycling, protected bike lanes and intersections and bus-priority lanes, the release states.

Learn more about the projects and register for the session: bit.ly/3I6W5fk
Jul. 4Fourth of July revelers floated down Boulder Creek, played pick up games of Spikeball and enjoyed plenty of barbecue at Eben G. Fine Park on Monday.

By midafternoon, numerous cars, trucks and other vehicles had already lined the neighborhood streets leading to the park at 101 Arapahoe Ave. for several blocks.

Although Boulder does not host a formal event at Eben G. Fine Park on the Fourth of July, the site has become a hotspot for residents and visitors alike to cool off in the creek and enjoy a family picnic on the federal holiday.

Nate Roberts, 22, drove up from Denver for the day to go tubing down Boulder Creek through the park.

"It's been really nice all day," Roberts said of the tubing conditions as he prepared to take another float. "Best of the year."

Although tubing has been banned in past years as a result of high water flows, that was not the case Monday and plenty of folks like Roberts took advantage of the ideal current.

"It's a hot day," Roberts said before taking off again.

With high temperatures in the upper 80s, park goers welcomed the sporadic rain that made its way through the Boulder area Monday afternoon.

While college students and other younger revelers flocked to the back of the park, families in red, white and blue attire gathered closer to the park's entrance, where they enjoyed ribs, hot dogs, hamburgers, watermelon, baked beans and other traditional Fourth of July fare under the shade of the park's trees.

Some in attendance strummed acoustic guitars as others played impromptu games of Spikeball, which has been likened to a combination of volleyball and four square.

Kayli Karie, who has lived in Boulder for a little more than four years, said she enjoyed coming to the park on the Fourth of July because of its family-friendly environment. She said she was glad to see uniformed police officers in the area.

"It's a nice place to sit by the river," Karie said. "It's a family-oriented area."

Story continues

For Karie, one of the highlights of the day was the Mexican corn on the cob she ate that included mayonnaise, cheese and Tajin spice.

Since 2013, when outside alcohol was banned from Boulder Reservoir in an effort to try to make the area more family friendly, locals have turned to Eben G. Fine Park as their go-to location for the Fourth of July.

Police officers, some on foot and others on bicycles, patrolled the park Monday at times reminding people of the rules against alcoholic beverages. Department officials said any other details about enforcement activities at the park would not be available until Tuesday.

As people took in the sights and sounds of Eben G. Fine Park on Monday, over 1,000 miles away in Highland Park, Ill., a gunman killed at least six people at a Fourth of July parade.

"I feel very safe right here," Karie said. "The (police department) has been around."
LONDON (Reuters) -British Health Secretary Sajid Javid resigned on Tuesday, plunging Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government into crisis.

Javid said he had lost confidence in Johnson's ability to govern in the national interest after a series of scandals, saying he could "no longer continue in good conscience".

He said that many lawmakers and the public had lost confidence in Johnson's ability to govern in the national interest.

"I regret to say, however, that it is clear to me that this situation will not change under your leadership - and you have therefore lost my confidence too" Javid said in a letter to Johnson.

Finance minister Rishi Sunak also resigned on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by William James and Michael Holden)
(Bloomberg) -- Brookfield Asset Management Inc. is heading into Europes swelling market storm with its checkbook open.

Most Read from Bloomberg

As many of its rivals refrain from committing capital to the region amid an ever-growing list of risk factors, the $725 billion Canadian investment giant is making plans to buy in sectors ranging from clean energy to technology, open new offices and raise fresh money.

Frankly, we love these kinds of markets, Anuj Ranjan, who runs business development at Brookfield and leads its private equity arm in Europe and Asia Pacific, said in an interview in London. The reason we are excited is that this makes the market less competitive.

At more than $12 billion this year, Brookfields spending in Europe has already hit an annual record, data compiled by Bloomberg show, fueled by acquisitions of UK household repairs provider HomeServe Plc, property firms Hibernia REIT Plc and Befimmo SA and slate producer Cupa Group.

In a further sign of its dealmaking ambitions, the infrastructure specialist also teamed up with Cellnex Telecom SA to pursue a bid for Deutsche Telekom AGs $20 billion towers unit.

For our infrastructure and renewables sectors, we expect the back end of the year to be busy, said Connor Teskey, Brookfields head of Europe. Very busy.

New Outposts

Brookfield made its first investments in Europe some 20 years ago. Its early bets were in real estate before the 2008 financial crisis saw the net cast wider to capture opportunities in infrastructure, renewable energy, private equity and credit.

It now manages more than $125 billion in Europe, up from roughly $6 billion a decade ago, according to Teskey, and employs around 300 people in the region. While most are based in London, there are plans to establish operations in Europes other main financial hubs.

Story continues

Weve got Iberia covered out of Madrid. Were now increasingly looking at Germany. No question France is coming shortly after that, he said. There is nothing that we see in our business today that suggests that our European expansion would slow down.

Read more: CEO of $189 Billion Ontario Fund Eyes Private Equitys Turf

Brookfield has sought growth in turmoil before. In the years following the financial crisis it struck two transformational deals, buying into Australias Babcock & Brown Infrastructure Group in 2009 and US mall operator General Growth Properties Inc. the following year. Both helped increase its exposure to key areas like infrastructure and real estate.

We are actively looking at transformational opportunities like that in this environment, Rajan said, adding that technology is one relatively new area of interest for the group -- particularly mature software and tech services companies.

To be sure, Brookfield and other buyers are facing an increasingly challenging market for securing debt financing for big deals. Banks are cutting their exposure to the leveraged loan market for fear of being stuck with debt they cant sell.

Capital is available for quality businesses and sponsors, said Rajan. Its like we say, when theres vacancy in the office market, the Grade A buildings are always occupied.

Transition Time

A key area of focus for Brookfield is the worlds move toward cleaner forms of energy -- a shift thats been given new impetus by Russias war in Ukraine and its impact on the price of fossil fuels.

In June, it raised $15 billion for a dedicated energy transition fund to be co-led by Teskey and Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England. Brookfield already has agreements to spend about $2.5 billion from the fund, including on renewables projects in Germany and the UK. In addition, itll look to invest in businesses that want to decarbonize but havent either the capital or operational expertize to do so.

If the world is going to hit its broader net zero goals, you cant simply get there by building out more of what is perfectly green and clean and pristine, said Teskey, who also runs Brookfields renewable power and transition group.

Brookfield gathered the $15 billion a time when market volatility is cooling the red-hot fundraising environment for private equity firms more broadly. Thats seen investors direct new flows of capital to the industrys more established names.

This should be our biggest year ever for fundraisings, Teskey said.

Return to Work

As one of the worlds biggest property investors, Brookfield has also been doubling down on the return of workers to their offices after the pandemic. This years acquisitions of Belgian real estate investment trust Befimmo and Irelands Hibernia followed an agreement to take Germany-based Alstria Office REIT-AG private in 2021.

In 2020, just as the UK was locking down its city centers to combat the spread of the coronavirus, Brookfield decided to build a big stake in landlord British Land Co. Brookfields presence in UK real estate is already well established as the co-owner of Canary Wharf, one of Londons main financial districts.

Given our significant office holdings around the world, we felt like theres a reason why offices exist, said Brad Hyler, managing partner and head of European real estate at Brookfield. Particularly the higher quality ones, where we thought people would come back. It was just a matter of time.

Read more: Blackstone Almost Doubles Its London Staff by Luring Bank Dealmakers

(Updates with detail of Brookfield dealmaking in fourth paragraph.)

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New coronavirus cases leaped in Pennsylvania in the week ending Sunday, rising 53.3% as 18,900 cases were reported. The previous week had 12,326 new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19.

Pennsylvania ranked 41st among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the latest week coronavirus cases in the United States increased 11.8% from the week before, with 800,077 cases reported. With 3.85% of the country's population, Pennsylvania had 2.36% of the country's cases in the last week. Across the country, 38 states had more cases in the latest week than they did in the week before.

Bryce Phelps, 3, picking a lollipop after receiving his first Pfizer vaccine at Bloom Pediatrics in Birmingham, Michigan, on June 22. Vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are now available to children as young as 6 months.

Johns Hopkins University has been getting data on an erratic schedule from Pennsylvania, skewing week-to-week comparisons.

Bucks County reported 1,143 cases and six deaths in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported 690 cases and four deaths. Throughout the pandemic it has reported 134,394 cases and 1,946 deaths.

Montgomery County reported 1,405 cases and six deaths in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported 957 cases and five deaths. Throughout the pandemic it has reported 170,052 cases and 2,379 deaths.

More:Amazon Fresh, Fusion Gym, Chick-Fil-A and an overhaul on Route 1 at Oxford Valley Road coming

More:These 20 Bucks County and Montco women were pioneers in high school sports

Within Pennsylvania, the worst weekly outbreaks on a per-person basis were in Montour County with 247 cases per 100,000 per week; Warren County with 222; and Franklin County with 210. The Centers for Disease Control says high levels of community transmission begin at 100 cases per 100,000 per week.

Adding the most new cases overall were Philadelphia County, with 2,185 cases; Allegheny County, with 2,053 cases; and Montgomery County, with 1,405. Weekly case counts rose in 63 counties from the previous week. The worst increases from the prior week's pace were in Allegheny, Philadelphia and Bucks counties.

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>> See how your community has fared with recent coronavirus cases

Across Pennsylvania, cases fell in four counties, with the best declines in Armstrong County, with 49 cases from 57 a week earlier; in Wyoming County, with 10 cases from 17; and in Wayne County, with 34 cases from 40.

In Pennsylvania, 109 people were reported dead of COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday. In the week before that, 77 people were reported dead.

A total of 3,006,257 people in Pennsylvania have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 45,766 people have died from the disease, Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the United States 87,843,561 people have tested positive and 1,017,848 people have died.

>> Track coronavirus cases across the United States

More:Grundy Library and Museum, Bristol icons, are getting facelifts. Here are the plans

Pennsylvania's COVID-19 hospital admissions staying flat

USA TODAY analyzed federal hospital data as of Sunday, July 3. Likely COVID patients admitted in the state:

Last week: 3,569

The week before that: 3,555

Four weeks ago: 3,836

Likely COVID patients admitted in the nation:

Last week: 65,244

The week before that: 61,335

Four weeks ago: 56,288

Hospitals in 33 states reported more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier, while hospitals in 28 states had more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care beds. Hospitals in 40 states admitted more COVID-19 patients in the latest week than a week prior, the USA TODAY analysis of U.S. Health and Human Services data shows.

The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control. If you have questions about the data or the story, contact Mike Stucka at mstucka@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Bucks County reported 1,143 additional COVID-19 cases this week
India Demolitions

Authorities demolish the residence of activist Javed Ahmad they say has been constructed illegally in Prayagraj, India on June 12, 2022. Credit - Rajesh Kumar SinghAP

Ever wondered what is it like to be a Muslim in the undeclared Hindu state that is India? To be constantly humiliated, demeaned, and brutalized? To have your soul destroyed by the state? And sometimes, your home, too?

From our faith and history to our eating habits and clothes, the Hindu supremacists ruling India today have spared nothing in their campaign against our community. During the eight years of Narendra Modis government, they have taken a sledgehammer to our countrys secular foundations by routinely finding ever newer ways of targeting us. Last month they brought a bulldozer to my home.

In late May, a national spokeswoman of Modis ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) made derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad on live TV. Muslims in India, and far beyond, were outraged. Shortly afterward, on June 10, Muslims in some parts of India held protests after Friday prayers. One such protest was held in my city, Prayagraj (erstwhile Allahabad), snowballing into violence. A swift police crackdown followed, leading to arbitrary arrests and detentions of Muslims across the city.

Read more: Is India Headed for an Anti-Muslim Genocide? A Muslim Student Activist Has a Message for the World

My family found itself at the receiving end of brutal state power with the arbitrary and illegal detention of my father, a community leader and rights activist. Police picked up my mother and sister from our home in the middle of the night without an arrest warrant and made them sit at a police station for more than 35 hours, in violation of all rules of detention.

The city authorities and police then forced the family out of the houseby threatening my mother and sister with torture and formal charges if we didntand slapped a backdated notice on our gate on the night of June 11, claiming the building was an illegal construction and would be demolished the next day. The house was suddenly labelled illegal even after we have always paid all relevant taxes and have all our property documents in order. The trigger for this government action was ostensibly a complaint by three respected people of the neighborhood, who, incidentally, none of the neighbors can identify.

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An Indian paramilitary solider stands guard as residents watch from behind a bolted iron gate during the demolition of Muslim-owned shops in New Delhi's northwest Jahangirpuri neighborhood on April 20, 2022. Altaf QadriAP

Our home thus became part of the now-familiar pattern of what has come to be known as bulldozer justice in India. This is how it works: the government links Muslims to grievous crimes such as participating in protests, then blames them for violence, and destroy their homes. Earlier this year, during a Hindu festival, sword-wielding Hindu militants marched into Muslim neighborhoods in many cities, sometimes belting out obscenities over loudspeakers in front of mosques during the Ramadan, before launching targeted attacks on Muslim homes and businesses. Then too, police blamed Muslims for the unrest, arrested hundreds of innocent Muslims, including minors, and razed their houses with bulldozers. Theres, of course, no legal provision for such demolition of private property, even if individuals are indeed found to have been involved in violent acts. But it doesnt matter; the whole idea is to demonstrate that Muslims have no legal protection in a Hindu state. We are not equal citizens.

My father has been in jailand on TVever since our own home was demolished. Our faces plastered on prime-time debates, anchors have been spinning stories about our life and activism, peddling conspiracy theories, calling us anti-nationals and jihadis. I have been receiving death and rape threats. Now that everybody knows what I look like, Im afraid of stepping out in public. I live like a prisoner.

Read more: What It Feels Like to Be a Muslim Woman Auctioned Online by Indias Right Wing

Theres no arrest warrant against me; theres no need for those things anymore. Most of my fellow Muslim student activists who are in jail were arrested without any due procedure or paperwork. Sometimes when they go missing, their parents dont even know whether they have been arrested or kidnapped by Hindu extremiststhe line between the two is blurring quickly, anyway. I have imprisoned myself because as a young Muslim woman in Indiawhere ultra-right Hindus auction us onlineI have to ensure my own and my familys safety, online and offline, mental and physical. This is what freedom for me looks like in the worlds largest democracy. And, I am forced to live like this for no apparent reason other than being a Muslim. Worse, an outspoken Muslim.

Indias descent into lawlessness

How did India get here? How did I? How did my family find itself in the vortex of Indias rapid descent into this lawless pit of majoritarianism?

I had a fairly middle-class upbringing. My father, my Abbu, was a businessman and an activist. Despite their limited budget, Abbu and Ammi, my mother, sent me and my four siblings to the best school in the city and raised us as fiercely independent, god-fearing, socially responsible and civic-minded citizens. They shouldnt have. Those are not the qualities Hindu supremacists appreciate in a people who they believe are not worthy of the equal citizenship guaranteed by our inclusive constitution. We are not meant to assert our religious identity. We are called radical, or jihadi, if we do. We are not meant to be seen or heard, because for them, our very existence is a crime.

In 2017, when I was studying at the Aligarh Muslim University, Ajay Singh Bisht became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, the northern Indian state I belong to. It is Indias biggest and the most politically important state, with a population of nearly 245 millionmore than Brazilswith Muslims accounting for a fifth of it. A monastic head who represents the more radical wing of Hindu supremacism, Bisht (commonly known by his monastic name of Yogi Adityanath) is notorious for his hate speech and policies against Muslims.

Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath performs yoga along with others to mark the International Day of Yoga in Lucknow, India, on June 21, 2022. Rajesh Kumar SinghAP

As Bisht rose to power, my life was about to change. The social climate in the state began to worsen as extremist Hindu politics picked up pace. Marginalized in politics, Muslims began to be obliterated culturally. Muslim-sounding place names began to be changed. The name of my city was changed from the Mughal-era Allahabad to Prayagraj.

I became more conscious about the existential threat our community now faced and wanted to stand up to this injustice. I contested the students union election and was elected president, using the platform to speak out against Bishts hate-mongering and the rising threat to Muslims all over India. The ugly right-wing retaliation I faced only made me more determined to push back. As a student leader, I was called a free-thinking, modern Muslim woman taking on patriarchy. But everyone chose to ignore the identity I was really trying to assert the most: that of an Indian Muslim. I started wearing the hijab to assert my presence as a Muslim woman in spaces where I felt unwelcome or that stereotyped everything I represented.

Read more: How Long Will Joe Biden Pretend Narendra Modis India Is a Democratic Ally?

My activism led me headlong into the nationwide protests that broke out in 2019 against a new citizenship law that discriminates against Muslims. Like many Muslim student leaders, I faced a media trial from the shamelessly biased television channels that are the prime vectors of hate in India. They misrepresented my speeches and branded me a secessionist.

Many of my friends were arrested and Muslims were killed in orchestrated and state-sponsored pogroms in the national capital to stop the protests. In responding with violence to a non-violent civil rights protest by Muslims, the state had a clear message for us: even a mere exercise of constitutional rights is overstepping our boundaries; Muslims have no rights.

As the pandemic hit, the protests were called off. Our (now-demolished) home became a food distribution center, where we handed out monthly rations to people who would have otherwise starved during the Covid lockdown in 2020. Those in the business of distributing hate were equally hard at work: now blaming Muslims for the spread of the virus in India. The government made the community a scapegoat to escape accountability, because hate against us trumps all rationality.

Read more: For Indias Muslims, Eid al-Fitr Brings Little to Celebrate

And so, it has been: every passing week a new frontier of attack on Muslims, a new trick in the Hindu supremacist playbook, new outrage, new fears. Ramadan this year thus felt like a blissfully familiar break from the toxicity slowly consuming the community, but it was too good to last. The violent Hindu processions started, leading to more violence, crackdowns and arbitrary demolitions of Muslim homes and establishments. Sometimes Abbu had trouble sleeping, feeling helpless against the rising tide of hate. He continued to fight back in the way he knows bestfiling petitions and complaints with the judiciary and police.

Muslim women shout slogans during a demonstration in support of Muslim activist Afreen Fatima, in Kolkata on June 15, 2022. Sankhadeep BanerjeeNurPhoto/Getty Images

Following the ugly comments on the Prophet Muhammad by BJP spokespersons, he appealed on Facebook to constructively channel the anger and pray for the community. Protests ensued anyway after the Friday prayers on June 10. More crackdowns. More demolitions. Only, this time bulldozer justice literally came home to us. They destroyed our home and telecast it live. Media allies of the ruling BJP gloated at this latest show of collective punishment for Muslims.

Days have passed by in a blur since  not knowing whats happening to Abbu in police custody, preparing for the legal battle facing us despite knowing how compromised the state institutions are, and not knowing if Ill ever have a good nights sleep again. It has been punishing. This state of beingof having to prove innocence, of anxiety, of vulnerability, of painitself is the punishment. For being a Muslim in Modis India. Does the world know how we live? Does it care?
Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that it was impossible to cut Russia off from the rest of the world, and that sanctions imposed by Western countries would not turn the clock back on Russia's development. Since sending troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, Russia has been hit with a barrage of Western sanctions, designed to isolate it from the global economy, that have deprived it of access to goods including commercial electronics, semiconductors and aircraft parts. "Not just restrictions but the almost-complete closure of access to foreign hi-tech products is being deliberately, intentionally used against our country," Putin said, speaking to a video-conference with government figures.
In an interview with a German news outlet, NASA chief Bill Nelson criticized China's "military space program." VCG/VCG via Getty Images

NASA chief Bill Nelson said China wants to land on the moon and tell other nations to "stay out."

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson rebutted the remarks, calling them "irresponsible."

He accused the US of "constantly smearing China's normal and reasonable outer space undertakings."

A Chinese government spokesman has rebutted NASA head Bill Nelson's warning that China might be planning to take over the moon.

In an interview with the German news outlet Bild published on Saturday, Nelson said, "We must be very concerned that China is landing on the moon and saying: It's ours now and you stay out."

He also criticized China's "military space program" and claimed that the country was formulating means to "destroy other people's satellites," per the outlet.

"China is good. But China is also good at stealing ideas and technology from others," Nelson told Bild.

Responding on Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, said during a press conference that China "firmly rejects such remarks."

Separately, Chinese state media outlet CGTN reported Zhao saying: "Some US officials are constantly smearing China's normal and reasonable outer space undertakings."

Per the outlet, he added that the US was creating a "great threat" to space exploration while insisting that China's space program was only meant to meet the country's technological, scientific, and security needs.

The Global Times, another Chinese state media outlet, also lashed out at Nelson via an anonymous op-ed, calling the NASA chief "colonial-minded" and accusing him of exaggerating the "'China threat' in space."

China and Russia are building a space station together, a project which may be close to completion.

The International Space Station  also known as the ISS  is the only fully operational space station. However, cracks have been found in the station's Russian module, and the station is likely to be deorbited sometime in the next 10 to 15 years.

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The Chinese also plan to send astronauts to the moon by the 2030s. In November, Chinese astronaut Wang Yaping became the first Chinese woman ever to complete a spacewalk while on a mission to the Tiangong space station, which is still being constructed.

In June 2021, a Chinese company also said it was working on plans for a "space ladder" to beam humans and cargo to Mars in a capsule.

Read the original article on Insider
BYD EV car store in Shanghai, China, in 2021. Robert Way/iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus

Shenzhen-based automaker BYD has soared past Tesla as the top-producing electric vehicle company.

BYD sold 641,000 cars in the first half of 2022, compared to 564,000 sold by Elon Musk's firm.

Tesla was hit by supply chain hiccups and a Shanghai lockdown this year, missing sales targets.

BYD, a Chinese automaker backed by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, has soared past Tesla as the world's leading electric vehicle seller, according to company filings published Sunday on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Shenzhen-headquartered BYD sold 641,350 new energy vehicles in the first half of 2022, a 314.9% increase from its sales figures in the first half of 2021. Of those sales, 323,519 were battery electric vehicles.

By comparison, Tesla delivered 564,743 vehicles in the first two quarters of 2022, faltering in the second quarter as a lockdown in Shanghai slowed production at its Gigafactory in the Chinese city.

BYD's shares have surged 36% since January, with the automaker approaching a one trillion Chinese yuan market capitalization, equal to around $149 billion. Beijing's push for citizens to cut down on their personal carbon emissions has helped BYD's rapid ascent as China's largest domestic automaker.

The EV company has continued to grow sales and share price despite a pollution probe into one of its factories in Hunan Province. The probe came after residents in the area reported suffering from nosebleeds, vomiting, and breathing troubles.

BYD's factories have been able to remain open throughout a series of regional lockdowns across China as they are largely based away from COVID hotspots like Shanghai, where Tesla has its largest Chinese presence.

Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory 3, responsible for half of its 2021 global production, was shut for 22 days in May because of the city's COVID lockdown. Even once the factory's production restarted, it fumbled as it attempted to reach pre-pandemic levels due to ongoing parts shortages.

Read the original article on Business Insider
The Telegraph

Dustin Johnson held off a final-day charge from fellow American Bryson DeChambeau to claim the spoils and secure his first win of the season, emerging triumphant from a dramatic final round as the worlds best went toe-to-toe on the grandest course of all. As we know, this is not what happened at the 150th Open Championship. This is what happened at the LIV Golf Open Championship.
A federal court on Tuesday reinstated endangered species protections that were loosened under the Trump administration.

Judge Jon Tigar, an Obama appointee, vacated the rules in question.

Under the Trump rules the Fish and Wildlife Service no longer provided the same protections to species that are considered threatened  those that are likely to become endangered  as they do for species that are endangered.

The rules also would have allowed for the consideration of economic impacts in deciding whether to protect a species. Conservationists additionally raised concerns that the rules could limit the consideration of climate change.

The Trump administrations changes faced significant resistance from environmentalists, who brought the lawsuit.

The whole point of the Endangered Species Act is to give protections to species that are on the brink of extinction, Kristen Boyles, an attorney at Earthjustice, told The Hill.

The Trump rules that have today been repealed did nothing to help species and in fact did affirmative harm to how species are protected in this country, Boyles added. By the court ruling today, we go back to the regulatory interpretation that had been in place for over 40 years.

The Trump administration said at the time it finalized the changes that it was easing the regulatory burden on the American public.

Last year, the Biden administration had asked the court to order a second look at the Trump rules, but did not ask the court to nix the changed rules in the meantime.

It said that getting rid of the Trump rules while it reassesses them would cause confusion  by abruptly altering the applicable regulatory framework and creating uncertainty about which standards to apply.

Nevertheless, in the case, Tigar argued that since the Biden administration has indicated that it would reevaluate the regulations, it seems doubtful that getting rid of them entirely would add to the confusion.

Interior Department spokesperson Tyler Cherry said that the department was reviewing the decision when asked for comment.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Don't miss CoinDesk's Consensus 2022, the must-attend crypto & blockchain festival experience of the year in Austin, TX this June 9-12.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the decades-long constitutional right to abortion and effectively rendering legal abortions unavailable in large swaths of the United States.

Within days, members of the crypto community sprang to action, forming decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) and non-fungible token (NFT) projects aimed at raising funds (in crypto, of course) for pro-choice organizations.

ChoiceDAO  whose core contributors include the founder of Girls Who Code and former core contributors to ConstitutionDAO and Ukraine DAO  is attempting to raise $1 million for various reproductive rights organizations. LegalAbortion.eth, an initiative by UnicornDAO, offers would-be donors a wallet to which they can send crypto donations, which will then be converted to fiat and sent to seven preselected pro-choice groups. CowgirlDAO is selling an NFT collection to raise funds for abortion access, with a goal of $3 million.

The crypto communitys response so far has been tepid compared with other collective fundraising efforts. Donations to pro-choice campaigns so far have been a trickle compared with the outpouring of support for Ukraine following Russias invasion. (At least $20 million in crypto was donated to Ukrainian military and civilian causes within three days of the start of that conflict, and the sum now stands at $135 million.)

Nadya Tolokonnikova, a member of Russian feminist activist group Pussy Riot and the leader of UnicornDAO, told CoinDesk that she thinks the crypto community should be more vocal about the loss of bodily autonomy in the wake of Roes overturn.

Ive seen people who identify themselves as libertarians and support peoples rights and non-invasion of governments into peoples rights and peoples bodies  they support things like Canadian truck drivers, but now are being silent about whats happening to women, Tolokonnikova told CoinDesk.

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I want to encourage people to be more empathetic, because I know that the space still disproportionately consists of mostly men, Tolokonnikova added. Maybe its more difficult for them to get connected to a problem that does not concern them directly.

A missed opportunity for crypto?

Some privacy and crypto advocates, including Fight for the Futures Lia Holland, see the industrys underwhelming reaction to the end of Roe as a missed opportunity to showcase the real-world utility of crypto.

This may be the moment where the rubber meets the road on the promises that crypto and blockchain make, said Holland, who serves as campaigns and communications director for Fight for the Future. We have not truly seen DAOs  or crypto, quite frankly  in the U.S. prove themselves as tools for marginalized people to fight oppression directly and evade state surveillance on the scale that surveillance is about to be conducted.

Holland told CoinDesk that, in the case of abortion access, the utility of Web3 could go far beyond fundraising.

Digital rights activists are concerned that we will see similar deplatforming, both in terms of financial and essential health information and support that we saw in the wake of the passage of FOSTA-SESTA, Holland said, referring to a controversial law meant to stymie sex trafficking, which led to a wave of censorship and deplatforming at Web2 companies.

Big Techs censorship of abortion information has already begun. Facebook and Instagram have cracked down on posts offering abortion pills, deleting them and banning the transgressors. Facebooks parent company, Meta (FB), told employees last Friday they were not allowed to openly discuss the ruling on Slack.

Though Holland doesnt discount the role of fundraising (Its a good thing to be doing, she said), the real benefit could come from establishing a place to share information and offer support without the risk of surveillance and deplatforming that comes with Web2 platforms.

There could be  and I think, so far has been  an opportunity lost [for the crypto community] to respond to a moment like this by saying, Bitcoin fixes this or what have you, which is essentially the conversation that happened when OnlyFans said they were going to stop hosting sex workers under pressure from payment platforms, Holland said.

We need the signal of crypto to be acting strongly and responsibly, to provide real utility for the people and organizations that very well may be about to need it the most weve ever seen in the history of the internet, she added.

For its part, ChoiceDAO hopes eventually to become more than a vehicle for crypto fundraising.

The goal is to kick-start a flywheel of participation that causes the DAO to continue to grow and work on important initiatives in the future, a spokesperson for the DAO told CoinDesk.

At the end of the day, focusing on pure capital discounts the community  which in many ways can be more powerful than money.
By Patricia Weiss

BERLIN (Reuters) -CureVac has filed a patent lawsuit in Germany against BioNTech over its use of mRNA technology, marking one of the first known cases of a company going to court amid the fierce competition to develop a vaccine against the coronavirus.

The German-based biotech company is seeking "fair compensation" from BioNTech and two subsidiaries for infringement of its intellectual property rights, it said on Tuesday.

When asked in a media call, Chief Executive Franz-Werner Haas did not rule out further legal action against BioNTech partner Pfizer or mRNA vaccine maker Moderna.

BioNTech said its work was original. "We will vigorously defend it against all allegations of patent infringement," BioNTech said in a statement.

CureVac said that its claim to intellectual property rights was based on more than two decades of work on mRNA technology, some of which was used by BioNTech and Pfizer for the development and sale of their Comirnaty coronavirus vaccine.

"Many years of our research have also contributed to the success of the mRNA vaccines and made that possible," Haas told reporters. "From our point of view, it is self-evident to respect the associated property rights."

Vaccines and drugs using mRNA technology instruct human cells to produce therapeutic proteins. Long regarded as an obscure technology with uncertain prospects, mRNA was brought to bear for the first time when used in vaccines during the pandemic.

Haas did not provide a value that CureVac, which posted a 2021 loss of 412 million euros ($423 million), would see as fair compensation.

BioNTech expects up to 17 billion euros ($17.5 billion) in vaccine revenue this year, down from last year's 19 billion euros with the pandemic easing.

CureVac said that it was not seeking an injunction, nor intended to take legal action that would impede the production, sale or distribution of the vaccine.

At the height of the pandemic, it would not have occurred to CureVac to point out patent infringement, but now that there is better control over the pandemic, it believed it was the right time to do so, Haas said.

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BioNTech shares fell as much as 4.9% after the news but regained territory, trading 2% higher at 1354 GMT. German-listed CureVac's shares traded 1% higher after initially gaining as much as 4.8%.

The court in Duesseldorf, where CureVac submitted its lawsuit, declined to comment.

Haas was coy about potential further legal action, indicating that first a basis was needed regarding CureVac's fair share in product development and sales in Germany and how that would be appropriately valued.

Asked whether he would rule out legal action against Moderna, he said: "We are not ruling anything out. We are looking at it very carefully."

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in China, has killed more than 6.3 million people and spurred a race among pharmaceutical companies to be the first to develop a vaccine, with BioNTech and Pfizer coming to dominate the field in the Western world.

After failed efforts to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to market last year, CureVac intensified its work with partner GSK on improved versions of vaccine.

CureVac and GSK said in April that their second-generation vaccine candidate targeting two recent COVID-19 variants had been shown to be highly effective in pre-clinical studies on mice.

($1 = 0.9733 euros)

(Reporting by Patricia Weiss; writing by Miranda Murray; additional writing by Tom Sims; editing by Jason Neely, Barbara Lewis, Tomasz Janowski and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Feb. 24, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. AP Photo/John Raoux, File

Democrats are taunting Gov. Ron DeSantis by inviting Floridians to their states.

Invitations have been offered to New York City, Colorado, Connecticut, and California.

A DeSantis spokesman said Floridians "pay no mind to the pathetic smear campaigns."

Democratic politicians are mocking Gov. Ron DeSantis by slamming Florida's controversial laws and inviting Floridians or Florida businesses to their states.

It's a strategy that has been used recently by New York Mayor Eric Adams, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, and with a $105,000 ad buy over the July 4 weekend, by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

"I urge all of you living in Florida to join the fight," Newsom says in an ad. "Or join us in California, where we still believe in freedom: freedom of speech, freedom to choose freedom from hate, and the freedom to love. Don't let them take your freedom."

The jabs come as DeSantis seeks reelection as governor and is seen as a potential contender for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Video: Florida growers trying to combat citrus infestation

DeSantis has become a leader in Republican culture wars, backing measures that include the state's 15-week abortion ban that's been blocked by a Florida judge, a math book bans on the basis of "critical race theory," and the law known as "don't say gay," which bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in a "manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate."

Newsom, also the subject of 2024 speculation, targets Florida's policies on abortion, children's books, and LGBTQ communities in his ad, which shows a photo of DeSantis shaking hands with former President Donald Trump.

Asked to comment, DeSantis for Governor campaign spokesperson Dave Abrams said Newsom "might as well light a pile of cash on fire."

"Pass the popcorn for his desperate attempt to win back the California refugees who fled the hellhole he created in his state to come to Florida," he wrote in an email.

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Adams' billboard campaign in Florida, criticizing the "don't say gay" law, urges Floridians to "Come to the city where you can say whatever you want."

"They're saying you can say whatever you want, but you know they're the ones that will force a mask on your face and muzzle you in public," DeSantis responded.

Other Democratic governors have made appeals to Florida businesses, including Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont's invitation to the Nutmeg State in response to a Florida judge temporarily blocking the state's 15-week abortion ban.

"This may be a time for you to think about taking a look at Connecticut as a place to move your business," Lamont said in a video address on July 1. "A place where maybe your employees feel more at home, perhaps you feel more at home, your customers could identify with our values."

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis did the same thing back in April, inviting Twitter and Disney to relocate to the Rocky Mountain state.

Polis called DeSantis' threats to penalize the companies "authoritarian socialist attacks on the private sector" and promised  tongue in cheek  that the state would "grant Mickey and Minnie full asylum in Colorado."

Abrams said Floridians "pay no mind to the pathetic smear campaigns from the Democrats and their allies in the corporate media."

"We're too busy enjoying the freedom Governor Ron DeSantis has created in the Sunshine State," he said in his statement.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Oscar Clifton was convicted of the attempted rape and murder of 14-year-old Donna Richmond in 1975.

All those residents flocked to the first Inside the Visalia Ransacker Investigation forum in April to hear behind-the-scenes stories of the burglar/rapist/murderer who turned out to be the notorious Golden State Killer will be intrigued by Part II.

Lawyer and private investigator Tony Reid was brought into the investigation differently. His agency in Los Angeles was asked to research a murder unrelated to the Visalia Ransacker. Another man, Oscar Clifton, was convicted and sent to death row. He died in jail. His family wanted to know why he was convicted on what they described as scant evidence.

Reids research led him to retired Sgt. John Vaughan headed the search for the Ransacker after Claude Snelling was murdered in 1975. Reid and Vaughan shared information and agreed that the Clifton investigation had been flawed, and the murder should have been attributed to the Ransacker.

The Inside Story of the Visalia Ransacker: Top cop to tell gripping story behind manhunt

Reid started a podcast on the case, which led to a book just out this week, which will be the focus of the Part II forum at 6 p.m. Thursday at College of the Sequoias.

In 2019, though, the Tulare County District Attorney's Office reopened the case and found "ample evidence to support the conviction" of Clifton for the murder of Donna Jo Richmond.

Upon completion of this latest review, I am again confident, just as this office was the previous times we reviewed the case, that the countless hours of report analysis, evidence evaluation, court transcripts, and DNA evaluation solidifies that Oscar Clifton tragically and violently ended the life of Richmond in an orange grove the day after Christmas in 1975, Ward said in 2019.

A convicted sex offender, Clifton was prosecuted and convicted in July 1976 for the kidnap, attempted rape and death of Richmond. He was 35 years old at the time of his arrest.

The evidence collected at the scene at the time of the homicide and a prior sexual assault conviction from 1965 solidified the DA's ruling, including a partial DNA profile developed from semen found on Richmond's body. That profile found DeAngelo's DNA was not consistent with the DNA found on Richmond and Clifton's DNA was consistent with the DNA found on Richmond.

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In addition to the DNA results, there were several eyewitnesses who placed Clifton in the area where Richmond went missing.

New book

12/26/75 book cover

The book has all the intrigue of a captivating mystery  but its all true: Connections to other murders, shocking corruption by the Sheriffs Department investigation, illegally destroyed evidence, clever misleading clues left by the Ransacker, and a wrongly-convicted suspect.

At the forum, John Vaughan will return to join Reid in discussing why they concluded that the Visalia Ransacker was responsible for more local murders than Claude Snellings.

I want to make sure John gets full credit for his powerful police work and getting it right, said Reid. He and his team were the only ones who got it right.

Oscar Clifton was convicted of the attempted rape and murder of 14-year-old Donna Richmond in 1975.

The book is dedicated to Vaughan.

When the Ransacker left the Visalia area, he committed other vicious crimes such as the East Area Rapist in Sacramento, the Original Nightstalker in L.A., and the Golden State Killer. He wasnt apprehended until 2018.

It was Vaughan who told Sacramento that the Visalia Ransacker's planting of evidence was a deliberate ploy to confuse the police and frame, other suspects, said Reid. Vaughan told them this was the Ransacker/East Area Rapists most unique MO point Sgt. Vaughan is the true hero. Any credit Ive ever received for my work, I will tell anyone and everyone that it was Johns help that made this possible.

Tony Reid

12/26/75

The book is entitled 12/26/75, the date that 14-year-old Donna Jo Richmond was murdered and later found in an orchard in Exeter. The murder that brought Reid into the case. The murder that Oscar Clifton was convicted of.

For those who have followed Reids 12/26/75.com podcasts, his book is more than an adaptation of those podcasts. It shares new insight formed during the investigation, provides a first-hand look at the crimes, and exposes the faulty evidence used to get a false conviction.

The website, social media, and podcast episodes[were] launched as a way to contact people in Exeter and Visalia, said Reid. That worked, too. Some of the best information that came in was from locals. People still had valuable information on the homicides and the ransacking burglaries. Perhaps it's just as important as making connections with other people who wanted to help, even in small waysasking other people to share their information or their questions.

FIle photo from the Times-Delta

Books emphasis

Reid emphasizes that the book is not about Joseph DeAngelo Jr., the Visalia Ransacker.

Instead, the focus is on the Visalia investigation led by Sgt. Vaughan, and on Visalia police agents William McGowen and Duane Shipley, who worked alongside him from 1975-78Equally important, we also wanted to make sure that Claude Snelling is never forgotten, both as a member of the community and as a brave hero to his family, Reid said.

"Of course, the book is also about Oscar Cliftons wrongful conviction. In Oscar's words from prison, here are the facts for the whole world to read about the wholly preventable and tragic results for him, his family, and DeAngelos later victims.

Now Retired Sgt. John Vaughan

Books goal

Reids and other investigative work have resulted in several media programs.

In all honesty, I expected that ABC 20/20 and the six-part HBO special would cover Visalia PDs original work on the case, said Reid. They would finally tell the world about the incredible act of bravery and sacrifice by Claude Snelling... I also thought that, since [Tulare County Sheriffs Office] had named DeAngelo a suspect in Jennifer Armours homicide (July 2018), there would be renewed interest in seeing her killer brought to justice. None of that happened.

So what does Reid hope the book will achieve?

In the end, the book's purpose is all those things, but to bring the information together in a new form. To tell the story of the investigation unfolding and share the new information we collectively discovered about key witnesses and evidence. I hope everyone agrees that those goals come together in the book.

How to attend

Inside the Visalia Ransacker Investigation: Part II. Featuring private investigator/author Tony Reid and retired Visalia Police Sgt. John Vaughn. 6-8 p.m. Thursday, July 7 at the College of the Sequoias Ponderosa Lecture Hall, 915 S. Mooney Blvd., Visalia (behind the theater). Free, open to the public. Reid will bring and sign copies of his new book.

This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: Visalia Ransacker investigation turns from true crime podcast to new book
This Independence Day, people across the Carolinas may be interpreting freedom in different ways.

While some used their Fourth of July celebrations to protest for abortion rights, others are gearing up for their effort to enact full-fledged abortion bans.

Its kinda hard to celebrate independence when peoples freedoms and rights are being stripped away, protester Courtney Steinberg said.

Among American flags flying in the wind in downtown Concord Monday afternoon, there were also protests following the Supreme Court overturning the ruling that made abortion a federally protected right.

They demonstrate that they dont care about our rights and standing up for the rights of people, added Jaymond Bryant-Herron.

Groups pushing to hold on to abortion rights, like Steinberg and Bryant-Herrons group, the Cabarrus Justice Coalition, said the purpose of the demonstration they organized was twofold: Firstly, supporting those who come to North Carolina seeking access to care. Its really getting money and whatever they ask us for, whatever support they need, were gonna try and get to them, Steinberg explained.

But Mondays protest was also designed to make an impression on voters. We have to defend Governor Coopers veto power by electing more democratic people to the legislature in Raleigh, added Mackenzie Reedybacon, who is with the Young Dems of Rowan-Cabarrus.

ALSO READ: Hundreds protest in Fort Mill against proposed tougher abortion restrictions in SC

Their sense of urgency was likely sparked by the pace of reaction to the Roe v. Wade ruling. North Carolina is hanging on by a thread, Steinberg said. We are like the only state left in the southeast that has access to abortion care and we are even considered a hostile state.

Later this week, the South Carolina House is expected to begin work on a bill that would outlaw all abortions, with few exceptions.

On this day and days to come, babies are going to be killed in abortion clinics until we make abortion illegal in this state, said Sen. Richard Cash of the South Carolina State Senate.

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Cash, a Republican, represents the northern part of Anderson County. He co-sponsored a bill that would outlaw abortions at any stage of pregnancy unless the mothers life is at risk.

Im representing my district, but also representing what I believe to be what is true and what is moral and right, Cash explained. If we can pass this bill in South Carolina, I think its the right thing to do.

The South Carolina Senate is said to be still formulating a plan to meet to discuss abortion legislation.

(WATCH BELOW: Hundreds protest in Fort Mill against proposed tougher abortion restrictions in SC)








The Carlyle Group has hired Doug McNeely, a top Black executive from BlackRock, to work with its major clients on pension funds and endowments.

Bloomberg reports McNeely will join the Carlyle Group later this year as a partner and his move reflects the private equity industrys growing influence amid a fight for diverse talent. At BlackRock, McNeely managed some of the firms most important clients and worked with pensions from Connecticut to California.

At Carlyle, McNeely will join roughly 10 senior relationship managers who focus on institutional clients. In a memo sent to BlackRock employees, Zach Buchwald, BlackRocks head of institutional business for the U.S. and Canada, praised McNeelys tenure of building lasting relationships with key clients of the firm.

Buchwald also added McNeely, who will stay with the firm through September, helped develop BlackRocks Impact Opportunities Fund that invests in Black, Latino, and Native American communities and initiatives.

The Washington D.C.-based group formed in 2021, shortly after Kewsong Lee became Carlyles sole chief executive officer. Lee, and his top lieutenants, have helped Carlyles customers think through more customized ways to invest across the firm.

The service could assist Carlyles sales teams in focusing on different business lines, people familiar with the situation told Bloomberg. The service could move Carlyle closer to its goal of raising about $130 billion through 2024.

The Duke University alum has spent more than 15 years with BlackRock serving in various positions, including global operating committee member, impact opportunities fund co-founder, and investment committee member.

McNeely talked with Black Enterprise Senior Vice President Derek Dingle at the 2021 Black Men Xcel Summit and discussed how his team was able to thrive despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

We have a great team, McNeely said. You have to surround yourself with great people that share your ethos and share your commitment to excellence. As much as COVID has shown us that were all individuals, it also showed us its important to stay connected, and weve been very connected using all forms of technology to work with each other and also engage our clients as well, but its taken quite a bit of effort.
Spanish police said Monday they had seized three underwater drones capable of transporting large quantities of drugs from Morocco to Spain and broken up a gang suspected of manufacturing them.

Officers seized three so-called "drone submarines" which were under construction and arrested eight people in Spain, a police statement said.

"The three -- two of which were being built and one which was practically completed -- were to be delivered to French drug traffickers for transporting large quantities of cocaine," it said.

Police released video of the seized drones on social media and said each one could carry up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of product.

Desmantelada una organizacion que fabricaba #drones y #semisumergibles capaces de cruzar el Estrecho con hasta 200 kg de drogaHay 8 personas detenidas en #Cadiz, #Malaga y #Barcelona1 vez que se intervienen vehiculos que operan bajo el agua sin tripulacion a bordo pic.twitter.com/P81cRwjIVx

 Policia Nacional (@policia) July 4, 2022

Police said it was the first time they had seized such devices, which are officially known as unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs).

"These devices could allow drug traffickers to transport large quantities of narcotics remotely across the Strait of Gibraltar," the statement said.

The gang also manufactured aerial drones, with police seizing several large UAVs with 12 motors each and a range of 30 kilometers, more than enough to cross the 15-kilometer (nine-mile) strait between Spain and Morocco.

The gang also built false bottoms into vehicles to transport drugs, officials said.

One of the drug-laden devices was "intercepted when it was on its way to Denmark aboard a tow truck with the intention of avoiding possible police checks," police said.

Their customers included criminal gangs in Denmark, France, Italy and Spain, police said.

Spain's physical proximity to Morocco, a major hashish producer, and its close ties with former colonies in Latin America, a major cocaine-producing region, have made it a key entry point for drugs bound for Europe.

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Police said the operation, which lasted 14 months, concluded with the arrest of eight people. Six of the detainees, who are accused of drug trafficking and belonging to a criminal organization, have been remanded in custody.

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Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said he met Sudan's coup leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Nairobi on Tuesday and that both committed to "dialogue" to resolve any differences.

Their talks follow a clash in a volatile border region last month in which Khartoum said that Ethiopian forces had captured and killed Sudanese troops -- claims denied by Addis Ababa.

"We have both agreed that our two countries have plenty of collaborative elements to work on peacefully," Abiy said in a Twitter post, accompanied by a picture of the two men.

"Our common bonds surpass any divisions. We both made a commitment for dialogue & peaceful resolution to outstanding issues," he said.

Both leaders were in the Kenyan capital for a summit of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) regional body.

Sudan's ruling sovereign council said only that there had been a "closed-door meeting" between Burhan and Abiy.

IGAD and the African Union had both voiced alarm last week over the escalating tensions between Ethiopia and Sudan following the incident in the disputed Al-Fashaqa border area.

Khartoum said the Ethiopian army had executed seven Sudanese soldiers and a civilian in a clash on June 22 in Al-Fashaqa, and announced it was recalling its ambassador.

But Addis Ababa claimed that Sudanese forces had crossed into Ethiopian territory and that the casualties resulted from a skirmish with a local militia, denying its soldiers were in the area at the time.

Al-Fashaqa is a fertile strip of land that has long been a source of friction between Addis Ababa and Khartoum.

The region, which lies close to Ethiopia's war-torn northern region of Tigray, has long been cultivated by Ethiopian farmers but is claimed by Sudan.

The dispute has sparked sporadic clashes between the two sides, some fatal.

The rift also feeds into wider tensions over land and water between the neighbours, particularly stoked by Ethiopia's mega-dam on the Blue Nile.

Sudan and Egypt, both downstream countries, have been opposed to the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and pushed for an agreement on the filling of its reservoir and the dam's operations.

Tensions were heightened further after fighting erupted in Tigray in November 2020, sending tens of thousands of refugees fleeing into Sudan.

ayv-txw/ri
NAIROBI (Reuters) -Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the military leader of neighbouring Sudan said on Tuesday they had reached an agreement to peacefully settle all issues, following the most recent flare-up connected to a border dispute late last month.

However, the long-running dispute over a contested fertile border region, al-Fashqa, was not mentioned, nor were any other specific issues cited.

Abiy met Sudan's military leader, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on the sidelines of a meeting of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an eight-member regional bloc for the horn of Africa and neighbouring states.

"We both made a commitment for dialogue (and) peaceful resolution to outstanding issues," Abiy tweeted on Tuesday.

Sudan's ruling council later issued a similar statement, adding that the meeting had been "fruitful and extremely successful".

The long-running dispute over al-Fashqa has fuelled a surge in tensions between the two countries in recent years.

In the latest accusations between the nations, last month Sudan accused Ethiopia's army of executing seven Sudanese soldiers and a civilian who had been taken captive. The men had been seized on Sudanese territory on June 22 and taken into Ethiopia where they were killed, according to the Sudanese foreign ministry.

Ethiopia denied responsibility and blamed the killings on a local militia.

A day after the countries traded accusations over the killings, an Ethiopian official said Sudan's armed forces had fired heavy artillery during clashes in the disputed area.

(Writing by Elias BiryabaremaEditing by James Macharia Chege, Peter Graff and Leslie Adler)
Actress Rachel Brosnahan and singer-songwriter Richard Marx, both of whom grew up in Highland Park, Ill., each condemned the shooting there that took at least six lives and injured at least two dozen others on Monday.

Brosnahan, the star of the Amazon Prime series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, said in a tweet that the Fourth of July parade where the shooting occurred is a highlight of the year for many families.

Im sick to my stomach every time news like this comes out, but I dont wish the pit in your stomach as you call your family and friends to make sure everyone is okay on anyone. No words, she said.

Brosnahan also tweeted a link to donate to the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, a nonprofit advocating against gun violence.

Marx, known for songs including Right Here Waiting and Shouldve Known Better, tweeted that he is reaching out to people he knows from Highland Park to check on them.

My heart is always broken by these constant mass shootings no matter where they occur but today Im extra heartbroken, Marx said. And extra angry at the senselessness.

Police have identified 22-year-old Robert Bobby Crimo III as a person of interest in the shooting. He is believed to be driving a 2010 silver Honda Fit and law enforcement considers him armed and dangerous.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
PORTLAND, Ind.  A former Redkey police officer has been charged with obstruction of justice.

Authorities allege Bradley A. Ridenour, 45, of Portland, last October added a syringe to potential evidence seized from a trash bin outside a Redkey home as part of a drug-related investigation.

Another officer reported Ridenour  who had collected the contents of the trash bin with a colleague  brought those materials to the Redkey Police Department.

He then allegedly retrieved the syringe from the department's property room, and added it to the pile of potential evidence.

When interviewed by an Indiana State Police investigator, Ridenour said he had added the syringe  which he said he had earlier found in a Dunkirk park  to the contents of a "trash pull" as a "joke."

More: Mental competency raised in case of Portland man charged with murdering his father

The trash had been seized as part of an investigation of alleged heroin dealing stemming from an overdose. Ridenour's written report concerning the contents of the "trash pull" did not refer to the syringe.

The former police officer was arrested last week, and was released from the Jay County jail after posting a $3,000 bond.

An initial hearing is set for July 11 in Jay Superior Court. Colin Andrews, a deputy prosecutor in Wells County, is acting as special prosecutor in the case.

Obstruction of justice is a Level 6 felony carrying a maximum 30-month sentence.

STAY INFORMED AND SUPPORT LOCAL JOURNALISM: Subscribe today using the link at the top of this page.

Douglas Walker is a news reporter at The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@muncie.gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Former Redkey officer accused of adding syringe to 'trash pull'
Concerns that China is planning to attack Taiwan may be misplaced, according to a leading Chinese scholar.

"I should say that I am very concerned about the Taiwan issue, but I have not heard any senior Chinese government officials talking about reunification by force, nor have I heard of a timetable for them to use armed forces to solve the Taiwan issue," Wang Jisi, an international relations professor at Peking University, told academics and diplomats at the World Peace Forum hosted by Tsinghua University on Monday.

"There are people in the US who are playing up this [concern], and I wonder if this kind of advocacy is a bit presumptuous or mischievous. I do have this concern that some people want to pull China and the US into a war, and this is something we need to avoid."

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.

Wang, who said tensions over Taiwan had become "very high", also told a panel discussion about how to stabilise relations between China and the US: "We certainly hope to avoid war but I cannot say for sure that there will not be a war between China and the US in the near future.

"If there is a war between the two sides, the greatest danger is in the Taiwan Strait, because the Taiwan issue has been the core and the most sensitive issue in Sino-US relations."

Wang noted that Beijing and Washington had gone through previous crises over Taiwan, including one in 1995 after Washington granted Lee Teng-hui, the then Taiwanese president, a visa to visit the US.

Beijing responded by recalling its ambassador to the US for consultation, cancelled a defence ministers' meeting, and test-fired six missiles into waters about 100 miles from Taiwan.

Officials in Beijing have criticised Washington's increasingly close relationship with the island and its sales of defence equipment. Meanwhile US officials, including Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, have repeatedly warned against provocations after the People's Liberation Army stepped up activity around the island.

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James Stapleton Roy, the US ambassador to China between 1991 and 1995, also expressed concern about the risk of a war breaking out over Taiwan, saying the two sides may be distracted because of major domestic events later this year.

Taiwan is seen as the most likely trigger point for a war between the US and China. Photo: AP alt=Taiwan is seen as the most likely trigger point for a war between the US and China. Photo: AP>

China is expected to see a major leadership reshuffle at this autumn's Communist Party congress, while the US midterm elections are held in early November.

Roy also expressed concern Taiwan would become "a strategic pawn" between the two powers, saying: "When we established diplomatic relations [in 1979], Taiwan was neutralised - the US couldn't use it against the mainland, and the mainland couldn't use Taiwan against the United States, but that situation is changing and that's a very dangerous potential change, and we need to stabilise that situation."

Wang said concerns over a war over Taiwan also made the need for engagement more important than ever, saying they had benefited from this in the past.

He cited the example of President Xi Jinping's state visit to the US in 2015, when Beijing sent its top security official for Beijing 10 days beforehand to discuss cybersecurity - a major concern for the White House at the time - to ensure the visit was a success.

But he noted that, despite a less formal visit to Florida, Xi had not made a state visit to the US since then, while the last such visit by a US president was Donald Trump in 2017.

He also urged the two sides to resume diplomatic interactions that have largely been frozen since the start of the pandemic in 2020.

"The more pressing issue now is that flights between China and the US should return to normal so that diplomats of both countries and the missions of both countries can carry out more normal activities, which I think is very useful to prevent strategic miscalculation and to understand the real thoughts of the other side," he said.

He also said business had a role to play. "If we have many specific issues to resolve, it is important to enhance mutual exchanges through diplomatic contacts, not only between diplomats, but also between commercial officials and between enterprises."

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.
Jul. 5Federal prosecutors want a judge to throw out an Olyphant woman's attempt at getting her Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot charges dismissed.

Last month, Deborah Lynn Lee's California-based lawyer, attorney John M. Pierce, argued the written charges against her are too vague and don't offer enough proof she committed a crime.

In his response filed last week, federal prosecutor Michael J. Romano says the vagueness claim is unjustified because Lee never explains why the charges are vague.

"Lee declines to identify any portion of the text of any of the four statutes she is charged with violating that would create confusion in the mind of a reasonable person about the boundary between lawful and unlawful conduct," Romano wrote. "She apparently expects the court and the government to undertake that task. But this Court should not do (Lee's) work for (her)."

Lee, 55, is charged with entering and remaining in a restricted building; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building; violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds; and parading, demonstrating or picketing in the Capitol.

A criminal complaint shows video of her outside Capitol doors.

"I'm live. I'm at the Capitol doors. We're all the way inside the building. We're trying to get in. We got the glass broken," a woman narrator of a video posted on her Facebook account says, according to the complaint.

Other video shows Lee inside. In private messages to other Facebook users, Lee said, "I broke into congress (sic) and there were guns on us" and "It's our house. Our capital (sic). We had every right to occupy."

Lee rejected a plea bargain earlier this year and decided to go to trial.

Pierce also wants U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to bar federal prosecutors from using closed-circuit television video at Lee's trial. He says FBI investigators can't verify the video as real because they didn't record it.

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Romano says the defense can't show the closed-circuit video is unreliable and assumes prosecutors won't be able to show it's reliable. Romano also wants Pierce's attempt to move the trial out of Washington, D.C., dismissed, because he hasn't proved Lee can't get a fair trial there.

Romano does not contest Pierce's attempt to stop discussion of possible punishment during the trial, but said that's because federal court rules already bar punishment talk.

Pierce has until July 12 to respond to Romano's claims. Jackson set July 18 at 2 p.m. for a hearing on Pierce's motions.

Contact the writer:

bkrawczeniuk@timesshamrock.com;

570-348-9147; @BorysBlogTT on Twitter.
LYSYCHANSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - Up-ended Ukrainian police cars, riddled with bullets, hulking local government buildings scorched and holed by shells and the damaged golden dome of an Orthodox church.

A Reuters reporter in Lysychansk, captured on Sunday by Russia and its separatist allies, found few residents in a city that was once home to nearly 100,000 people and widespread destruction, testament to the ferocity of the battle to take it.

A few civilians, all women, surveyed the damage, armoured vehicles manned by Russian-backed forces trundled around the streets and the red Soviet victory banner - a World War Two symbol adopted by Russian forces - hung above the entrance of a wrecked local government building, the offices inside exposed to the elements.

The fall of Lysychansk to Russia and its proxies was hailed as an important moment by Moscow which is now in total control of the wider Luhansk region, one of the aims of what President Vladimir Putin calls his "special military operation" to eliminate what he has cast as a dangerous threat.

For Ukraine, the city's capture was a painful defeat in what it says is an unjustified war of aggression designed to take swathes of its territory and leave it smaller and weaker.

It says the city is of little strategic value and that it was able to hold off Russian forces trying to take it and a nearby city for weeks while it took back some territory in the south of the country.

In Lysychansk on Monday, a Reuters reporter who visited with the help of the self-proclaimed Russia-backed Luhansk People's Republic, found a city that, bar the sounds of birds, was eerily quiet in some places after most of its residents fled.

Olga, a 67-year-old pensioner who had stayed behind, welcomed the new-found calm.

"The situation is good now. We are only afraid of it (the fighting) coming back," she said, saying the first thing she wanted to do was to visit her children in Russia.

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Otherwise, she said her goal was "to stay alive".

In other parts of the city, a scorched grey brick local government building sporting the Ukrainian emblem stood empty, its upper floors missing windows.

Burnt out cars littered the streets with the wreckage of at least two police patrol vehicles, one upside down, its windscreen riddled with bullets.

A long low-slung shopping centre had many of its glass-panelled windows blasted out and the golden dome of an Orthodox church was holed with the roof beneath it stripped back to its metal frame.

Some signs of the city's Ukrainian identity remained: a small pile of bedraggled Ukrainian passports inside the roofless local prosecutor's office and a Ukrainian flag abandoned on a road not far from a crumpled van.

(Reporting by Reuters reporter; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
By Robin Emmott and Sabine Siebold

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -NATO's 30 allies signed an accession protocol for Finland and Sweden on Tuesday, allowing them to join the nuclear-armed alliance once parliaments ratify the decision, the most significant expansion of the alliance since the 1990s.

The signing at NATO headquarters follows a deal with Turkey at last week's NATO summit in Madrid, where Ankara lifted its veto on the Nordic membership bids following assurances that both countries would do more to fight terrorism.

"This is truly an historic moment," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said alongside the foreign ministers of the two countries. "With 32 nations around the table, we will be even stronger."

The protocol means Helsinki and Stockholm can participate in NATO meetings and have greater access to intelligence but will not be protected by the NATO defence clause - that an attack on one ally is an attack against all - until ratification. That is likely to take up to a year.

It was at an allied summit in Madrid in 1997 that Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic were invited to join, in the first of several waves of NATO's eastern expansion - seen as an achievement for the West but which has angered Russia.

Moscow has repeatedly warned both countries against joining NATO. On March 12, the Russian foreign ministry said "there will be serious military and political consequences".

Stoltenberg urged allies to swiftly ratify and assured the two Nordic countries of NATO's support in the meantime.

"The security of Finland and Sweden is important for our alliance, including during the ratification process," he said.

"Many allies have already made clear commitments to Finland's and Sweden's security, and NATO has increased our presence in the region, including with more exercises."

TURKISH WARNING

NATO's ambassadors and Stoltenberg stood together for a photo in which the foreign ministers of Sweden and Finland held up their signed protocols, before breaking out into applause.

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"Thank you for your support! Now the process of ratification by each of the allies begins," Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said on Twitter.

However, Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan warned last Thursday at the NATO summit that Finland and Sweden must first keep promises made to Turkey in a deal or ratification will not be sent to the Turkish parliament.

After weeks of diplomacy, Erdogan and his Finnish and Swedish counterparts agreed measures to allow the two Nordic countries to overcome a Turkish veto that Ankara imposed in May due to its concerns about terrorism.

According to a signed memorandum, Finland and Sweden pledged not to support the Kurdish militant PKK and YPG groups or the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, which Ankara labels a terrorist organisation.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott and Sabine Siebold, Editing by William Maclean)
The Sacramento County Sheriffs Office on Tuesday announced the April 14 arrest of the former president of USA Softball who is accused of sexually abusing a girl over six years.

John Gouveia, 61, of Castro Valley was arrested on suspicion of committing lewd and lascivious acts with a child younger than 14 years old in Sacramento County, according to a Sheriffs Office news release.

Gouveia on April 14 was booked at the Alameda County Jail on an arrest warrant with $250,000 bail, sheriffs officials said. Gouveia posted bail and was released from the jail that same day.

The Sheriffs Office announced his arrest on Tuesday as investigators sought information from the public that is relevant to the ongoing criminal investigation in Sacramento County.

Gouveia worked for the national governing council for Team USA Softball from 1991 through 2019. Sheriffs officials said his work included extensive travel nationally and internationally as Commissioner of USA Softball of Northern California and the President of USA Softball.

He also worked with the Hayward Area Recreation and Park District for 40 years until he retired as its general manager in January 2016.

Sheriffs officials said the victim in the allegations that led to Gouveias arrest was not associated with USA Softball or the Hayward Area Recreation and Park District, and investigators were not implicating those organizations. The Sheriffs Office did not release any further details about the alleged crimes.

The Sacramento County District Attorneys Office filed a criminal complaint on April 18, the same day Gouveia was arraigned in Sacramento Superior Court. He is scheduled to return to court for a hearing Aug. 11, according to court records.

Gouveia has been charged with eight counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child younger than 14. Prosecutors allege Gouveia sexually abused the girl from Sept. 19, 2015, through Nov. 13, 2021, when she was 7 to 13 years old, according to the criminal complaint.

Investigators asked anyone with information relevant to this child sex abuse investigation to call the Sheriffs Office Child Abuse Bureau at 916-874-5191 or Sacramento Valley Crime Stoppers at 916-443-4357.
A massive $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit by a voting machine company over Fox News election lies got a whole lot more serious last month when a judge ruled the action can proceed in a scathing ruling against Rupert Murdoch and his son.

Dominion Voting Systems was given the green light in June to proceed in its suit against both Fox News and Fox Corp, its parent company, by Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric David.

He determined that it was a reasonable inference that Murdoch and son Lachlan either knew outright that Dominion had not manipulated the election or recklessly disregarded the truth when Fox disseminated lies initially launched by Donald Trump.

Conservative news outlets OAN and Newsmax have also been sued by Dominion for defamation for $1.6 billion each.

Dominion has a very strong case against Fox News, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a constitutional law professor at Floridas Stetson University and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, told The Guardian.

All of the conspiracy theories about Dominions machines were just pure bunk, she added. Fox as a news organization should have known that and not given this aspect of [Trumps] big lie a megaphone.

Whats particularly bad for Fox, she noted, is that Dominion asked the network to stop disseminating the lies and correct the record, yet Fox persisted in spreading misrepresentations about the voting machine company.

A particularly intriguing development could be the exposure of text and email messages among the Trump White House, Fox News personalities, and even Rupert Murdoch.

I think once you start to pull the discovery material, what youre going to find is there was a lot of communication between the Trump people both internally and externally about pushing very specific lies and narratives, Angelo Carusone, chief executive of Media Matters for America, told The Guardian.

A Fox spokesman told the newspaper: We are confident we will prevail in this case, as the First Amendment is the foundation of our democracy and freedom of the press must be protected.

Story continues

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article referred to Eric David as a Delaware Supreme Court judge. He is a judge on the Superior Court of Delaware.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Related...
A Kentucky deputy killed in an ambush that left three officers dead in a small Appalachian town was laid to rest Tuesday.

Floyd County Sheriff John Hunt fought back tears at the funeral for his deputy and longtime friend, William Petry, who along with two other officers walked into a hail of bullets from a gunman holed up in his home Thursday evening.

Petry, a veteran officer who joined the Floyd County sheriffs office after retiring from the state police a few years ago, was honored Tuesday during an emotional funeral service in Prestonsburg, the county seat.

William loved law enforcement. He loved the job. He loved the people, Hunt said in a eulogy for his longtime friend Tuesday morning. He is a hero ... and I know he will never be forgotten.

Related video: 3 officers dead in Kentucky shooting

The shooting is likely Kentucky's deadliest incident for law enforcement in nearly 100 years and one of the deadliest in the nation since 2016, when three Baton Rouge, Louisiana, police officers were fatally shot by a gunman. Petry and Prestonsburg police Capt. Ralph Frasure, both 60 years old, died at the scene and Prestonsburg Officer Jacob Chaffins, 28, died in a hospital Friday night. A police dog was also fatally shot.

The man arrested in their deaths, 49-year-old Lance Storz, was taken into custody in the small community of Allen after family members helped police secure his surrender Thursday night.

Dozens of uniformed law enforcement officers gathered Tuesday at the funeral at Prestonsburgs Mountain Arts Center. Petry's family gave permission for media to livestream the event on local news stations. Frasure, Chaffins and the police dog, Drago, will be laid to rest after funeral services later this week.

Chaffins, who joined the department in 2019, left behind a wife and young daughter. He also served on the Prestonsburg Fire Department and was a member of the National Guard. Frasure had been married for more than 40 years and had four grandchildren. He had been an officer with Prestonsburg police since 1983.

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Frasure's daughter wrote in a Facebook post Friday that her father was a great man who loved his family like no other.

An evil evil man took my daddies life today, Stacy Frasure McGuire wrote. I know I should forgive but how do I do that?

Floyd County Deputy Kevin Thacker said he took a phone call from Petry last week, a typical issue about a towed car, he said. But at the end of the call, as had become ritual, Petry told him he loved him.

That was his last words to me, Thacker said at the funeral. And I'll never forget that.

Police went to the house in Allen on Thursday after a family member called to say Storz's wife was being held in the home against her will and was being abused, Hunt said in a news conference over the weekend. The wife was waiting for them when they arrived, telling the officers Storz was asleep, so she was able to get outside. Four officers, including Petry, returned to serve a protective order against Storz, Hunt said. Storz watched them approach from a window and began shooting, Hunt said.

The officers' deaths were the most in a single incident since a 1923 prison riot in Eddyville that left three corrections officers dead, Prestonsburg Police Deputy Chief Ross Shurtleff said Sunday. Storz is facing three counts of murder of a police officer and is being held in jail on a $10 million cash bond.

Petry's death will be a huge loss for the department, Hunt said, because he worked so well with younger, inexperienced officers who revered his experience and calm.

The young officers respected him like nobody Ive ever seen in such a short time," Hunt said.

Four other officers were injured in the shooting, though none wounds were life-threatening, state police said over the weekend. One civilian was also hurt in the shooting, state police said.
Big tech companies are gaining more and more power

The incident points to there being a real crisis in the work of advertising platforms, which are losing control over the flow of user data.

In the immediate aftermath of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, US Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner told Google to be on alert for exploitation of (their) platform by Russia and Russian-linked entities."

Read also: Ukraine's Digital Ministry invites global IT companies to conduct digital lend-lease for Ukraine

In April, a group of U.S. senators sent another letter to Google and other major adtech companies, saying that "user data is a goldmine for foreign intelligence services," which could use the information to spread propaganda, hack attacks, and blackmail.

Despite all warnings, Google shared potentially sensitive user data with the sanctioned Russian advertising company RuTarget, owned by Sberbank. According to a study by the digital advertising analytics company Adalytics, among the users whose data went to Russia were also residents of Ukraine.

Googles cooperation with Russian company

The company was not deterred by the fact that RuTarget is a Russian company that was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, nor that it belongs to the largest Russian state-owned bank, which was sanctioned by the U.S. on April 6. Moreover, the U.S. Treasury specifically mentioned RuTarget as a company that should be subject to sanctions and a ban on cooperation.

However, Adalytics analysts counted about 700 cases where RuTarget received user data from Google after the start of the full-scale invasion.

The company only stopped sharing data with the Russians on June 23, when ProPublica reached out to the company for comment.

Among these data were unique identifiers of mobile phones (the IMEI code, which is unique for each device and allows to identify a specific phone among others), IP addresses, information about the location of users, their interests, and activity on the Internet: which products are viewed, which websites are visited, etc. Such data is sufficient for the Russians to track specific people, experts say.

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Read also: Googles Russian subsidiary declares itself bankrupt

Google representative Michael Aciman noted that the company banned RuTarget from using software products back in March. Since then, Russians have stopped buying advertising directly through Google. However, he admitted that despite all the bans, RuTarget continued to receive user data before journalists approached the company.

According to him, now RuTarget cannot buy advertising either on its own or using a third party, which could act as an intermediary and thus allow itto bypass sanctions. However, Aciman refused to comment on whether this ban works in practice. In addition, he did not say whether data about Ukrainian users was transferred to RuTarget.

Krzysztof Franaszek, head of Adalytics, notes that the volume of data at Google's disposal, along with information that may come from other data sources such as military intelligence or hackers, can actually be a great danger.

The looming ad war

American Senator Mark Warner said he considers it "disturbing" that Google could not immediately sever all relations with the Russian company. He is sure that all companies are obliged to check their activities to make sure that they do not cooperate with companies that support the war in Ukraine.

Adalytics analysts note that their research illustrates the complexity of such inspections and, especially, obtaining honest information about the companies' activities. For advertisers, media, and even platforms like Google and Meta, it may not be so easy to identify and track everyone with whom they directly or indirectly work.

And this is actually one of the main problems of the Internet. It has given free rein to tech companies that have established their dominance, gradually expanding their influence beyond the online world. As a result, they increasingly evade control. For example, in 2021, when six US senators asked Google's CEO to provide a list of foreign companies that had obtained the data of American users, the company refused to do so, citing a non-disclosure agreement. When the journalist Joseph Cox of Motherboard reached out to Google with another request, the company did not respond to him at all.

Most users find it difficult to grasp the technicalities of how online advertising works. However, many will probably be surprised that by clicking "Agree" on another cookie consent box that pops up, you may agree to share your data with a sanctioned company.

Many websites, in particular mass media, actively cooperate with Google and its advertising platform. And so, due to the fact that Google does not check its partners well enough, the information about users that is collected on these sites can be transferred even to companies like RuTarget.

Adalytics

For example, Adalytics analysts discovered that several large American and European publications and websites asked users for permission to send their data to a sanctioned Russian company. Among them are Reuters, ESPN, Tripadvisor, IGN, The Atlantic, National Geographic and many others.

Why these websites offer users to send their data to a Russian company is unknown.

Reuters Senior Communications Director Heather Carpenter said this was a standard list of Google ad providers provided by the company. She stresses that user data collected on Reuters has not been shared with RuTarget since April 6.

Read also: YouTube strips Russian bloggers of income, country heads deeper into global isolation

On the RuTarget website, BMW, Audi, Nintendo, AliExpress, Master Card, Sony, and many other large companies from completely different market segments are listed among the brands that cooperated with the company.It is unknown whether the brands themselves know that their logos are placed on the website of a sanctioned Russian company, whether they worked with it in the past or are currently working with it. All declined to comment on the findings except for Pfizer, whose spokesman said the company had already severed all "working relationships with the aforementioned organization."

Adalytics experts point out that companies may not suspect such cooperation if it was carried out with the help of branches or subsidiaries. The opaque policy of Google and digital advertising in general will lead to the fact that sooner or later any website that works with Google could be involved in such "cooperation" with the Russians.

Data kills

"Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebodys life. If you have enough metadata, you dont really need content." This quotation from NSA counsel Stewart Baker in 2013 shows just how important personal data can be.

The words of the former director of the NSA and CIA, General Michael Hayden, sound even more threatening: "We kill people based on metadata." The Washington Post previously reported how the NSA used cookies to identify its next targets for hacking.

User data is a huge database that can be used for various non-advertising purposes. In the hands of an enemy, they can help sow discord in society, change people's behavior, track them, and their interests, and manipulate that information to their advantage, the Army Cyber Institute writes.

Due to technical difficulties, many users are not in a hurry to understand how metadata works, why it is actually important, and how to keep yourself safe on the Internet. For this, you do not need to read every popup about cookies, constantly use a VPN or download the Tor browser  it is enough to spend at least 5 seconds to turn off the optional trackers that the platform offers you to connect.

Google now transfers information about users to hundreds of companies around the world, and at least 16 of them are Russian.

If neither regulators, nor consumers, nor publishers, nor advertisers, nor  most importantly  platforms, can monitor exactly what happens to user data and where it is sent, then are privacy and transparency really the basic principles of the work of advertising services, as Google and Meta claim?
UPDATED on July 7: Republican Baton Rouge Sen. Bodie White is having surgery and won't be able to attend a veto override session if lawmakers choose to convene July 16, further eroding any GOP chance to overturn Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards' vetoes.

USA Today Network obtained White's letter to Republican Senate President Page Cortez of Lafayette informing him of his absence through a public records request.

White wrote that the "urgency of my health issues dictate my immediate attention to these health matters."

Senate Republicans were already one GOP vote short of the two-thirds needed, 26, to override a veto because Republican Denham Springs Sen. Rogers Pope said he won't vote to overturn any vetoes.

White's absence drops the number of Senate Republicans who would attend a veto override session to 24.

In the House, "five or six" Republicans have previous commitments, according to House Conservative Caucus Chairman Jack McFarland of Winnfield. That could cut Republicans numbers in the House to as few as 63 with 70 votes needed to meet the two-thirds threshold for an override.

Following is the original story first published July 5:

It's becoming increasingly unlikely that Louisiana GOP lawmakers will have the votes to overturn any of Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoes if they convene in a special session July 16, making it more likely legislators will opt out of returning to the Capitol.

Veto override sessions are automatic unless a majority of members of the House or Senate send in ballots to opt out.

Republican Senate President Page Cortez of Lafayette conceded that GOP lawmakers in both chambers are short of the two-thirds vote needed to overturn any Edwards veto, though he didn't rule out members may still choose to convene.

"Senators have come to realize that neither the House nor the Senate will have the votes necessary to override any bill, so as we move forward it appears a veto override session would be a waste of taxpayers' money," Cortez said in an interview with USA Today Network.

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In this 2020 file photo, Louisiana Senate President Page Cortez, R-Lafayette, front, and House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, R-Gonzales, rear, conduct a press conference.

"All we've been hearing is the House is short a number of (GOP) members who will be unavailable because of travel or surgery, which makes an override vote even tougher," Cortez said.

All aboard: Is passenger train service coming to a Louisiana city near you?

Read this: Louisiana at forefront of abortion pill battle; US attorney general says states can't ban drug

Republican lawmakers have felt increased pressure to come into a veto override session because the House Conservative Caucus led by Chairman Jack McFarland of Winnfield advocated for one.

McFarland said he still believes convening for a veto override session was the right choice, but admitted Republicans are short of the votes needed to overturn any vetoes and said "five or six" GOP members have told them they can't attend.

"If we don't have two-thirds it kind of defeats the purpose (of having a veto override session)," McFarland said. "I'm absolutely concerned because I've heard from a lot of (GOP) members who have pre-planned obligations and I understand that.

"But collectively, the caucus believes a number of the bills vetoed by the governor could fundamentally improve Louisiana if they are enacted into law," he said.

McFarland specifically mentioned bills restricting vaccine mandates, toughening previous criminal justice reforms and allowing parents to take state funding to pay for private education.

The Legislature had always opted out of the sessions before 2021, but last summer lawmakers convened for the first time, though they failed to override any of Edwards' vetoes.

Lawmakers did, however, overturn Edwards' veto of a new congressional map during an override session on March 30 of this year.

Veto overrides require a two-thirds vote in both the House, 70 votes, and Senate, 26 votes.

Republicans hold 69 seats in the House and 26 seats in the Senate, but Republican Sen. Rogers Pope of Denham Springs told USA Today Network he won't vote to overturn any of Edwards' vetoes if lawmakers convene, dropping the Senate one Republican vote short of the threshold.

Lawmakers have a July 11 deadline to return their ballots if they want to opt out of a veto override session.

Greg Hilburn covers state politics for the USA TODAY Network of Louisiana. Follow him on Twitter @GregHilburn1.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Republicans lack votes to override Edwards' vetoes; session in question
A Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, ended in tragedy Monday as a rooftop gunman shot into the crowd, leaving six people dead and more than 30 others injured.

Now details are emerging about some of the victims who lost their lives at the event, as well as acts of heroism that took place as the frightening scene unfolded in the Chicago suburb.

Image: 6 Dead After Shooting At Fourth Of July Parade In Chicago Suburb (Mark Borenstein / Getty Images)

There were a number of heroic actions from members of the community, by police, by first responders that rushed in and immediately tended to the victims, tried to get them help," Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Chris Covelli told reporters.

And, as one witness told TODAY, even the youngest members of the community raced to assist those around them.

Kristen Carlson recalled a lost boy telling another child that his name was Blake, "and the other little boy said, 'Blake, run, run!' and he grabbed Blakes hand, and he joined up with his family. This family took Blake to safety."

Nicolas Toledo, the grandfather who died in the parade shooting. (TODAY)

Among those who died in the shooting was Nicolas Toledo, a 76-year-old father of eight and grandfather to many.

One of Toledo's grandchildren spoke to The New York Times, and noted that, at first, they had no idea what was happening when the gunshots rang out.

We were all in shock, Xochil Toledo told the Times. We thought it was part of the parade.

Then they noticed that the family patriarch, who'd been watching the parade from his wheelchair, had been shot. He was struck three times and died at the scene, the Times reported.

Jacki Sundheim, one of the victims of the shooting in Chicago during 4th of July. (TODAY)

Jacki Sundheim, a lifelong congregate and staff member of the North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, Illinois, was also among the dead.

"Jackis work, kindness and warmth touched us all," read a memorial message on the NSCI website. "There are no words sufficient to express the depth of our grief for Jackis death and sympathy for her family and loved ones."

According to police, the gunman who fired on the parade used a high-powered rifle and took a sniper-like position from a nearby roof.

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More than eight hours after the shooting took place, Chicago police took 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III into custody as a "person of interest" in the shooting.

Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering spoke about the tragedy with Hoda Kotb on TODAY Tuesday. She said she knew Crimo because he was a Cub Scout when she was a Cub Scout leader years ago.

"Our community is never going to recover from this wound," she said.
ATHENS, Greece (AP)  Greeces prime minister said Tuesday that Russia's war in Ukraine is a turning point in the course of Europe, stressing that any type of outcome that could embolden aggression by other nations on the continent must be avoided.

Greece, which has long-standing disputes with far larger neighbor Turkey that brought them to the brink of war three times in the last half-century, has voiced strong support for Ukraine in its war against the Russian invasion.

The battle of Ukraine is not just another event on the international scene. It is a turning point in the course of Europe, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.

We owe it today to Ukraine to avert any type of fait accompli which could be imitated tomorrow by new potential trouble-makers," he said.

Mitsotakis noted he was referring to the constant aggressive behavior of Turkey, with which relations have shown increasing strain over the past two years. Although both NATO members, the two countries have decades-old disputes over a series of issues, including territorial claims in the Aegean Sea and energy exploration rights in the eastern Mediterranean.

Recent quarrels have focused on Greek islands off Turkeys coast, with Ankara accusing Athens of maintaining a military presence there in violation of treaties. Greece counters it is acting according to international law and is defending its islands in the face of Turkish hostility.

One thing is certain, we do not need new revisionism and the revival of imperial fantasies, Mitsotakis said. And another thing is also certain, Greece will not tolerate any questioning of its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The Greek prime minister said his country was keeping our doors shut to threats, keeping our windows open to peaceful contacts. Disputes between nations are resolved based on international law, not through bullying.

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Last Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Greece of violating its airspace  something which Greece frequently accuses Turkey of doing to its own airspace, and denies violating Turkey's.

We dont have an issue like lets go to war with Greece, lets make war. But Greece is not standing by their promises, Erdogan said after Friday prayers, accusing Greece of having violated Turkish airspace 147 times.

Of course, if youre going to violate our airspace like this, then what falls on us? My air force will give you the necessary visuals. Thats what our air force is doing, Erdogan said, adding that our armed forces are doing their duty and if these airspace violations continue after this, we will continue to do our duty in the same way.

The Turkish president said the leaders of many NATO countries had tried to reconcile him and Mitsotakis. Erdogan said that we are not thinking that right now, but would see what happens in the future and evaluate it then.

___

Zeynep Bilginsoy contributed to this report from Istanbul.
The Daily Beast

Kelly Wilkinson/USA Today Network via ReutersFour people are dead and several injured after a man with a rifle walked into a food court at Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana and began shooting, local authorities said Sunday evening.One of the dead is the suspected shooter, according to Greenwood Mayor Mark Myers. The gunman, an adult male, has not been identified. Police said he had been carrying a long rifle and several ammunition magazines.This tragedy hits at the core of our community, the mayo
Twenty-nine films into the Marvel Cinematic Universe  a playful and flexible narrative arena in theory, too often a realm of granite solemnity in practice  if you cant mess around a little then really: Why make all that money in the first place?

In other words, the giant screaming goats hit the spot in Thor: Love and Thunder, which should be called Thor: Love, Thunder, Goats, Guns N Roses. The digital vessel-haulers known as Toothgrinder and Toothgnasher enjoy a modest but welcome amount of screen time in co-writer and director Taika Waititis aggressively nutty follow-up to Thor: Ragnarok (2017). That film zazzed up Thors corner of the MCU enough to justify more of the same. This time were confronted with stranger things, more outlandish detours and wilder tonal shifts. Plus four Guns N Roses songs, to set the mood.

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Natalie Portman, left, and Chris Hemsworth in Marvel Studios' "Thor: Love and Thunder." (Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios/TNS)

Its a strange result: half inventive, half shopworn. Pictorially Waititis sequel is a little bit heavy metal album cover, a little bit H.R. Pufnstuf  garish, bright, willfully tacky in a big-budget way. The tackiness is part of the joke in the scenes set in the coastal town of New Asgard, where Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson, sporting strapping new battle armor and a Phantom of the Opera sweatshirt, depending) oversees a heavily touristed attraction, full of Thor lore and merch. Thor: Lore and Merch also works as an alternate title.

Against the grain of Waititis comic streak, Love and Thunder raises the emotional stakes straight off. Were reintroduced to Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) at a crisis point: She is a cancer patient with a Stage IV diagnosis. The plotline derives from one of the Thor comic book series; the goats come from another.

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In her guise as Mighty Thor, wielding ex-boyfriend Thors hammer, Jane is the powerful hero she cannot be in her earthly human form. Its a bold move, opening a largely antic movie with a womans debilitating medical condition. Love and Thunder establishes in the prologue the latest threat to intergalactic extinction: an ordinary soul on a planet far, far away, played by Christian Bale, wandering with his daughter in the desert. He suffers a grievous loss and then transforms into Gorr, the God Butcher, hellbent on wiping out those privileged paragons who, in this outing, forsake mere mortals left, right and center. Suffering for your gods is your only purpose, the Bale characters tormentor informs him at the start.

I suppose every Marvel movie needs one of these menacing, one-note types to destabilize the worlds depicted. But even a crafty, compelling actor like Bale has a hard time making Gorr distinctive. Love and Thunder is more at home with the love, and the comic frills, than with the thunder.

Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie and Natalie Portman as Mighty Thor in "Thor: Love and Thunder." (Jasin Boland / HANDOUT)

Chris Hemsworths Thor is learning, uneasily, to be a more progressive and empathic specimen of godly hunk, a team player instead of a solo act. The storyline concerns, among other things, the children of New Asgard, swept up and kidnapped by Gorr (dark shades of Chitty Chitty Bang Bangs Child Catcher). Their rescue leads the Thors and Valkyrie straight to the enemy.

Do these zigzags and mood swings work? Not entirely. But at its fizziest, the camaraderie among the principals buoys the picture. Hemsworth and Thompson in particular toss off their lines with throwaway aplomb. Waititis heart plainly belongs to the muttered asides and the eccentric details; the action sequences, meanwhile, squeak by, and barely. Many will find Love and Thunder too frivolous and Ragnarok-y. Whatever. Im Team Goat, because theyre genuinely funny running gags, the gag being the amount and pitch of their screaming  panicky airplane passenger about to die-level screaming, straight out of the Airport movies.

Thor: Love and Thunder  2.5 stars (out of 4)

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, language, some suggestive material, and partial nudity)

Running time: 2:00

How to watch: Premieres in theaters July 7

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Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

mjphillips@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @phillipstribune

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.
WEST PALM BEACH  Julian Cathirell acted in a "cold and calculated manner" in killing twin brothers, dumping their bodies along the Beeline Highway and burning them beyond recognition, a judge said in imposing multiple life sentences Friday.

Circuit Judge Jeffrey Gillen sentenced Cathirell to consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole in the first degree-murder of Brandon Allen, and life with the possibility of parole in the second-degree murder of Brandon's twin brother, Brian Allen.

Gillen also sentenced Cathirell, now 27, to concurrent terms of 23 years in prison on two counts of tampering with evidence and one count of being a delinquent in possession of a firearm in the March 14, 2017, fatal shootings. A jury found Cathirell guilty of the charges in April.

Jullian Cathirell consults with his attorneys before the verdict is read his murder trial. He was found guilty of second-degree murder and first-degree murder in the March 2017 deaths of twins Brian and Brandon Allen.

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'This man is going to jail for the rest of life. But justice has been done'

Relatives of Brandon and Brian Allen praised Gillen's ruling as they left the courtroom. Cathirell's mother, who testified on his behalf, told him she loved him before tearfully exiting the courtroom.

"It's just so senseless, all this Black-on-Black crime" said Revona Mitchell, a cousin of the Allen brothers who traveled from Atlanta to witness the sentencing. "My heart is hurting.  Three lives are gone. This man is going to jail for the rest of life. But justice has been done."

Shortly after Cathirell's trial, Assistant Public Defender Scott Pribble requested a new trial, arguing that the court erred by denying the defense's request to re-cross-examine a witness regarding Brandon Allen's purported anger issues, and in allowing the state to misstate the law regarding justifiable use of force.

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Gillen denied the request, along with one from the defense to vacate one of the two tampering convictions.

Click here to view the homicides tracker in a larger window 

At trial, prosecutors told the jury Cathirell shot and killed the 21-year-old twin brothers during an argument in the garage of the West Palm Beach apartment he shared with the siblings and their sister.

Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office detectives said another man, Darin Byrd, prevented Brandon Allen from escaping the gunfire and later helped Cathirell dispose of the siblings' bodies, dumping them along the Beeline Highway the next day and burning them beyond recognition. Byrd is awaiting trial on two counts of first-degree murder.

Defense attorneys argued that Cathirell fired in self-defense after being confronted two-on-one by the Allen twins. Assistant Public Defender Stephen Arbuzow told the jury Cathirell feared for his safety because of a dispute with Brandon Allen.

Judge rejects self-defense argument, saying gunman had other choices

Jullian Cathirell appears in court Wednesday, March 29, 2017, facing murder charges in the deaths of Brandon and Bryan Allen two weeks earlier.

During Friday's hearing, several people spoke on Cathirell's behalf, including his mother and one of his older brothers.

"Jullian isn't the type of person that just goes and reacts for no reason," Darius Dailey, Cathirel's brother said.

James Garbarino, a professor emeritus in the psychology department at Loyola University in Chicago, testified via Zoom, telling the court it was too soon to know if Cathirell was capable of being rehabilitated and reintegrated into society. He described Cathirell's support from family and friends as an encouraging sign.

In issuing his ruling, Gillen determined that the killings were not only premeditated, but also carried out in a calculated manner.

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"If Mr. Cathirell genuinely felt tension or was in fear while resident as a guest in the home he was residing in, he had ample time and opportunities within which to leave," Gillen said.

"Instead, even though he knew he was prohibited from owning or possessing a firearm, he obtained a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun and planned in advance to eliminate the source of his reported fear."

Julius Whigham II is a criminal justice and public safety reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at jwhigham@pbpost.com and follow him on Twitter at @JuliusWhigham. Help support our work: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: West Palm double murder 2017: Judge gives life sentence to gunman
A stretcher is seen after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade in downtown Highland Park, Ill. AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh

The Highland Park, Illinois, mass shooting suspect legally obtained the weapon used in the massacre, the local mayor said.

"There are weapons of war on our streets," Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering told NBC's "Today" show.

Rotering also said she knew the shooting suspect as a child from the Cub Scouts.

The Highland Park, Illinois, mass shooting suspect legally obtained the weapon used in the deadly Fourth of July parade massacre, the city's mayor said on Tuesday as she slammed the United States for its "gun culture."

Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said during an interview on NBC's "Today" show that she did not know where the gun used in Monday's shooting came from but said, "I do know that it was legally obtained."

Six people were killed and dozens were injured when a shooter opened fire at an Independence Day parade in the Chicago suburb.

Officials said they recovered a "high-powered rifle" from the scene of the rampage, which comes on the heels of deadly mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York.

"There are weapons of war on our streets that people can legally obtain and take out dozens of people," Rotering said.

"I think at some point this nation needs to have a conversation about these weekly events involving the murder of dozens of people with legally obtained guns," the Democratic mayor added. "If that's what our laws stand for, then I think we need to reexamine the laws."

Rotering said her community attended the parade to "celebrate our nation."

"As a result, because of this gun culture, our nation turned its back on us," she said. "I don't know how many more of these events need to occur."

The mayor said during the "Today" show interview that she knew the parade shooting suspect as a child from the Cub Scouts.

"I know him as somebody who was a Cub Scout when I was the Cub Scout leader," she said. "He was just a little boy."

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She added: "And it's one of those things where you step back and you say, 'What happened? How did somebody become this angry, this hateful?' To then take it out on innocent people who literally were just having a family day out."

The suspect was arrested on Monday following an hours-long manhunt.

Read the original article on Insider
By Selena Li

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong's stock exchange said on Tuesday it had enlisted banks including HSBC and companies such as China's Tencent to help it develop a global carbon market.

Worldwide efforts to combat climate change have spawned voluntary carbon markets, which allow emitters to offset their carbon by purchasing so-called credits, which are issued by projects targeted at removing or cutting emissions.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd (HKEX) said in a statement that it was setting up the Hong Kong International Carbon Market Council but did not say when it planned to launch a market.

Six international and Chinese lenders, HSBC, Standard Chartered, BNP Paribas, ANZ, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Bank of China, are among the inaugural members, HKEX said.

Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific Airways and Chinese tech giant Tencent are also members of the council, which HKEX CEO Nicolas Aguzin said would "play a vital role in supporting our vision to build a leading carbon market".

"This is a significant step forward in our collective journey to achieving net zero," Aguzin added.

Singapore in May 2021 said it aimed to roll out a global marketplace and exchange for quality carbon credits this year. Named Climate Impact X, this is a joint venture between Singapore Exchange, DBS Bank, and sovereign fund Temasek.

(Reporting by Selena Li; Editing by Alexander Smith)
WNBA star Brittney Griner asked President Joe Biden to bring her home from detention in Russia, where she is being tried on drug smuggling charges, telling the president in a handwritten letter: "I'm terrified."

As I sit here in a Russian prison, alone with my thoughts and without the protection of my wife, family, friends, Olympic jersey, or any accomplishments, Im terrified I might be here forever, Griner wrote.

A spokesperson who released excerpts of Griners letter Monday said the document was delivered to the president at the White House on Monday. The White House didnt immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.

Brittney Griner (Michael Gonzales / NBAE via Getty Images file)

Griner, 31, a Houston native who is a center for the Phoenix Mercury, was detained in February by Russian Federal Customs Service agents at Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow. She plays for a Russian team during the WNBA's offseason.

I miss my wife! I miss my family! I miss my teammates! she wrote to Biden. It kills me to know they are suffering so much right now. I am grateful for whatever you can do at this moment to get me home.

Russian authorities allege that she was in possession of cannabis-derived vape cartridges. Griner's representatives havent addressed the technical substance of what she is alleged to have possessed, and the line between non-psychoactive cannabidiol  better known as CBD, which is popular among athletes as a possible aid in workout recovery  and psychoactive cannabis isnt recognized in Russia. CBD is generally recognized as legal in the U.S., and the World Anti-Doping Agency removed it from its list of prohibited substances in 2018.

In her letter, Griner recognized July Fourth as a time to celebrate the nations freedoms.

"On the 4th of July, our family normally honors the service of those who fought for our freedom, including my father who is a Vietnam War Veteran," Griner said. "It hurts thinking about how I usually celebrate this day because freedom means something completely different to me this year."

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She implored Biden to continue working to free her.

"I realize you are dealing with so much, but please dont forget about me and the other American Detainees," she wrote. "Please do all you can to bring us home. I voted for the first time in 2020 and I voted for you. I believe in you. I still have so much good to do with my freedom that you can help restore."

The White House has been steadfast in its stance that Griner is being wrongfully detained; officials have said they're working behind the scenes to free her. "The U.S. government continues to work aggressively  using every available means  to bring her home," National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement Monday, adding that the administration is in "regular contact" with her family.

"National Security Advisor Sullivan has spoken twice with Brittneys wife over the past two weeks and the White House is closely coordinating with the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, who has met with Brittneys family, her teammates, and her support network," Watson added.

The situation is surely complicated by the animosity between the U.S. and Russia. Griner was arrested less than a week before Russia invaded Ukraine and set in motion economic sanctions, the withdrawal of Western businesses and the shipping of arms and technology to Ukraine.

On June 28, national security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke with reporters about Griner's situation aboard Air Force One en route to Madrid, saying the matter "has the fullest attention of the president."

"The Russian government should release her and allow her to be returned and reunited with her family and come home safe and sound," he said.

Sullivan said he and Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Griner's wife recently and expressed their sympathy for what the family was going through.

Griner was photographed in Russian court Friday. The next hearing was scheduled for Thursday.
Motley Fool

Senate Bill 4400, also known as the College Savings Recovery Act, may be a short piece of legislation, but the implications could be far-reaching. If you are one of the 14.83 million Americans with a 529 account, you may be eligible to give your retirement savings a boost, if this legislation goes forward. The newly-introduced legislation would create a special tax rule allowing a rollover from qualified tuition reimbursement programs, such as a 529 plan, to Roth IRAs.
REUTERS/Kate Munsch

Cushman and Wakefield, the real estate firm used by Donald Trump to allegedly inflate the value of his real estate properties, has been ordered by a New York judge to pay a daily $10,000 fine for failing to turn over evidence to state investigators.

On Tuesday afternoon, a clearly irked Justice Arthur F. Engoron signed an order ripping into the real estate behemoth for missing a deadline to turn over documentsafter having two months to meet it.

In his order, Engoron said he is incredulous as to why Cushman & Wakefield would wait until two days after the court-ordered deadline had lapsed to initiate the process of asking for yet another extension.

Judge Says Real Estate Giant Broke Rules for Trump

He criticized the company, which routinely helped Trump value properties in ways that benefited him directly, for dragging its feet.

Cushman & Wakefield fails to identify any good cause for blowing the deadline, he wrote.

The massive, national real estate firm was supposed to deliver documents related to its valuations of all kinds of propertiesso that state investigators could compare how the company treated other projects compared to Trump developments.

The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James issued subpoenas between September 2021 and February 2022 that the firm still hadnt complied with, so the judge ordered the company play ball in April. But the firm fought that in appellate courtand lost.

Judge Engoron then set a new deadline for Cushman and Wakefield to deliver the goods: June 29. The real estate firm then missed that deadline.

Time is of the essence. State investigators are set to interview former President Donald Trump and two of his childrenDon Jr. and Ivankain closed-door depositions the week of July 18. And investigators have said they need to review the evidence from Cushman and Wakefield before those interviews.

The New York AG Will Finally Get What Shes After in Trump Org Probe

But on Wednesday at 11:32 p.m., with less than half an hour to go before the midnight deadline, the real estate companys lawyers filed a document in court asking the judge for a last-minute delay.

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On Friday, the A.G.s office asked the judge to step in and force the company to comply with a subpoena to turn over key evidence.

In his letter, Assistant Attorney General Austin Thompson noted that the real estate company had actually slipped up by seeming to admit that it didnt do any work at all for several weeks because it had essentially made a stupid bet and lostholding off on accumulating the mountains of evidence because it thought its appeal would win.

He pointed to this sentence in an affidavitwritten on the very last day of the deadlineby the outside company helping Cushman and Wakefield sort through the evidence: Platinum has been working around the clock for more than a week to accomplish its delegated tasks.

Thompson pointed out that the real estate firm had eight weeksnot oneto get started.

This suggests that Cushman waited until [it lost its appeal] to begin the process of compliance in earnest. If Cushman made a strategic decision to assume it would obtain a stay and to not use the eight weeks since the April 26 order to prepare to comply, it is not incumbent upon [the attorney generals office] or the court to relieve it from the consequences of that decision, he wrote.

In a statement to The Daily Beast on Tuesday, the company said it has gone to great expense and effort to identify, collect, review and produce the massive set of documents. It criticized the attorney general for misleading the court by belittling our significant efforts to comply with the courts order.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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A convicted murderer known as the Killer Poet will soon be a free man.

On Tuesday, a parole board granted Norman Porters release from prison.

Porter is serving a life sentence for the 1960 murder of 21-year-old store clerk John Pigott during a robbery in Saugus. He was also convicted for his role in the murder of Middlesex County jailmaster David Robinson during a violent escape the following year.

Dottie Johnson, Pigotts cousin, feels Porters victims have been denied justice. Johnson was just 13 years old when Pigott was shot and killed by Porter in a clothing store on Rt. 1.

Two people are dead, Johnson said. Two good people are dead, and never got the opportunity to live their lives.

Porter never returned from a furlough in 1985. On the run for 20 years, he was known as the other Whitey Bulger.

Porter was ultimately caught in 2005 in Chicago, where he was living as a poet and activist under the name JJ Jameson.

The now-82-year-old had unsuccessfully filed for parole three times. He was most recently denied medical parole at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

In granting Porter parole this time around, the board said he has remained disciplinary report free and has remained in programming despite limitations from his health issues and COVID-19. The board also cited his significant support network, which includes a former deputy commissioner of the Department of Correction and his home sponsor, a physician he has known for more than 50 years.

In forming this opinion, the Board has taken into consideration Mr. Porters institutional behavior, as well as his participation in available work, educational, and treatment programs during the period of his incarceration, the board wrote.

BREAKING: MA Parole Board is GRANTING parole to Killer Poet Norman Porter. He was convicted in 1960 Saugus mx and death of Middlesex Jail Master David Robinson during violent 1961 jailbreak. Porter was a fugitive for 20 yrs, called The Other Whitey Bulger @boston25 #TrueCrime pic.twitter.com/M9WZs1PZAv  Bob Ward Boston 25 (@Bward3) July 5, 2022

At a parole hearing in March, Porter said his health is failing but argued that he is a reformed man.

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I deeply regret my behavior, my actions, Porter told the board. To the families of John Pigott of Saugus and David Robinson of Cambridge, I deeply regret my behavior.

The board agreed, writing that Porter is rehabilitated and merits parole at this time.

He has great regrets, Tom Herman, Porters longtime attorney, said. He knows he can never make this right.

For Johnson, however, the decision is defeating.

Now were struck out. The game is over, she said.

A release date for Porter has not yet been determined.

Previous:

So-called killer poet seeking parole, asks for mercy

Killer Poet Norman Porter denied medical parole during COVID-19 crisis

Killer poet Norman Porter files for medical parole

'Killer poet' Norman Porter fighting for his release after decades behind bars

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Lorraine Mirabella

Lorraine Mirabella is a business reporter for The Baltimore Sun. She writes about retail, consumer affairs, workplace issues and other financial news. She joined the business staff in 1992 and has covered real estate, energy, manufacturing, business trends and companies such as Under Armour and McCormick & Co. She is a Towson University graduate.
Kourtney Kardashian called out paparazzi in an Instagram post over the weekend.

She addressed paparazzi who "monetized" her and Travis Barker's "nightmare" after he was hospitalized.

Kardashian pushed back on suggestions that she left Barker's side while he was hospitalized.

Kourtney Kardashian called out paparazzi for "monetizing" her husband Travis Barker's medical crisis in an Instagram post on Saturday.

Both Kardashian and Barker posted to social media over the weekend, updating their followers on Barker's condition, Insider previously reported. In a series of tweets, Barker said that during an endoscopy on June 27, he had a small polyp removed in a "very sensitive area" that led to damage to a pancreatic drainage tube, resulting in "severe life-threatening pancreatitis."

He reassured people that he was doing "much better" following treatment. According to Today, Kardashian also thanked her followers for their "prayers," which Barker's daughter had previously asked for on social media.

In a subsequent post on Instagram, Kardashian addressed paparazzi, according to screenshots preserved by the Instagram account @kardashiansocial that were cited by BuzzFeed News. In the post, she pushed back on allegations that she had left Barker's side, saying that paparazzi had released weeks-old photos of her to make it appear that she had not been at the hospital.

"To the paparazzi who sold pictures of me 'out and about' while my husband was in the hospital fighting for his life...these were photos actually taken weeks ago," Kardashian wrote, saying that she couldn't remember the last time that she wore the sweatsuit pictured in the photo.

Kardashian did not specifically name any companies or media outlets that had published such photos. TMZ published a story on June 30 reporting that Kardashian had been spotted on Wednesday at a shop in Encino, California. The story was later updated with a note saying that the photo agency that had licensed the pictures represented that they were taken Wednesday, but that sources close to Kardashian said that the photos were weeks old and she had not left Barker's side at the hospital.

"I didn't forget about you," Kardashian continued in her Instagram story post. "A new level of low, monetizing off of our nightmare. Really savagely uncool when I actually didn't leave his side...shame on you."

Read the original article on Insider
Filibuster protest

LGBTQ+ legal groups are calling for an expansion of the Supreme Court, a code of ethics for justices, an end to the Senate filibuster, and other reforms in light of recent decisions by the high court that they say have undermined its legitimacy.

We believe the time is long past due to recommit to the essential protections of liberty and equality and the right to vote for all Americans and for generations to come, said a statement issued Friday by Lambda Legal, GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the Transgender Law Center. The Supreme Court has lost the publics confidence in its integrity and has eroded its own legitimacy.

In an additional statement, Lambda Legal said these recent decisions constituted legally unsound and devastating upending of long-settled precedents, heedless of the harmful impacts on the American people.

Lambda cited the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to ban or severely restrict abortion, as well as decisions that weakened the Environmental Protection Agencys authority, undermined church-state separation, expanded gun rights, and more.

To justify its elimination of some protections and substantial constriction of others, this Court has employed ahistorical readings of American history, and a bizarre mode of analysis that limits essential rights exclusively to those that ostensibly were recognized and enjoyed by the people who had full legal status a century or two ago, thus excluding any specific legal needs of women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people, among others, Lambda Legal wrote.

The joint statement calls on the Senate to lift the filibuster rule, under which it takes 60 votes to end debate on a bill and move to a vote on the bill itself, at least to allow Senate consideration of Supreme Court reform and voting rights restoration.

The groups seek passage of the Judiciary Act of 2021, which would increase the number of justices on the court to equal the number of circuits in the federal judiciary, which is 12. They also urge passage of For the People Act of 2021 and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021, both of which would expand and protect voting rights, and the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, which would make the District of Columbia a state called Douglass Commonwealth, named after abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and giving it voting representation in Congress. These three bills have all passed the U.S. House of Representatives but stalled in the Senate.

Lastly, the organizations call for an enforceable code of ethics for Supreme Court justices. Concerns about justices political involvement have been raised recently due to the connections of Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to Donald Trumps efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Lamba Legal cited the specter of justices refusing to recuse in situations presenting blatant conflicts of interest.

Recent confirmation processes especially have flouted public expectations of openness and fairness, and the lack of enforceable ethics rules for confirmed justices leaves them unaccountable for actions considered unethical when committed by other federal judges, Lambda Legal added. As a result of the Senates process failures and the now-overwhelming record of the Court erasing critical legal protections via legally unsound, results-driven reasoning, public confidence in the Courts integrity is lost.
The incident, which occurred at around 10.20pm on Monday, happened at the main entrance of the Giant Hypermart outlet at the Tampines Retail Park. (SCREENCAP: Security Association Singapore/Facebook)

SINGAPORE  A police report has been filed against a man who punched a security officer repeatedly after he was told not to enter a supermarket in Tampines as he was not wearing a mask.

The attack left the officer, Sures Perimal, with bruises and contusions, said the Security Association Singapore (SAS) Chief of Staff Nicholas Gerard Lim Jia Sheng in a statement on Tuesday (5 July).

In response to queries by Yahoo News Singapore, Lim confirmed that the report was made by the victim with the support of his employer and SAS member Twinrock. Lim added that he is unaware whether the assailant has been apprehended by authorities.

The incident, which occurred at around 10.20pm on Monday, took place at the main entrance of the Giant Hypermart outlet at the Tampines Retail Park. The four-minute encounter was captured on a closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera.

Sures was on duty at the outlet and had to ensure that COVID-19 safe management measures were complied by patrons, such as the wearing of masks indoors, Lim said.

After encountering an unmasked man who tried to enter the outlet, Sures told him that mask-wearing was mandatory indoors and that the man could get a mask from a Guardian outlet at the entrance of the building.

"The person was unhappy that SO (Security Officer) Sures had called him out for not wearing a mask, and after shouting some vulgarities at SO Sures, he entered the building," said Lim. "SO Sures continued carrying out his duties after this initial encounter with the person."

Shortly after, the man rushed out of the building and without warning, pushed Sures while shouting vulgarities at him, Lim added.

In the CCTV footage, the assailant could be seen shoving and punching Sures, who shielded himself from the blows with his arms, multiple times.

Members of the public, as well as a Giant Hypermart staff member, could be seen approaching the assailant and intervening to stop him.

READ & WATCH: Man who attacked security guard at Tampines supermarket under police investigationhttps://t.co/kvzuTnjj7M pic.twitter.com/ay9iKZRUVI  Yahoo Singapore (@YahooSG) July 5, 2022

'Sickening incident'

SAS "strongly condemns this unnecessarily senseless and violent act of abuse against SO Sures, who was merely carrying out his duties", Lim said.

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Security agency TwinRock's managing director Terence Stahlmann described Sures as a responsible employee who has been with the company for over six years. "He is soft-spoken and diligent. I cannot imagine why anyone would confront him and assault him in this way," he added.

SAS president Raj Joshua Thomas called the attack yet "another sickening incident of abuse" against a security officer who was on duty. "The police attended to the matter at the scene and we will leave it to the authorities to investigate and take the appropriate action."

Thomas said he was heartened by those who stepped in to defend the officer and thanked them for their civic-mindedness and responsibility.

"Security officers...often have to deal with difficult people and situations. We all have a responsibility to support them and cooperate with them. We must have zero tolerance for any abuse of our officers," he added.

In view of such similar incidents, a new Medal for Professionalism will be awarded on 21 July to recognise the efforts of security officers who have continued to maintain professionalism and carry out their duties in difficult situations.

Amendments to the Private Security Industry Act, which took effect from 1 May, will see those who assault or use criminal force against security officers face enhanced penalities  a maximum jail term of two years or a fine of up to S$7,500, or both.

According to the findings of a survey  conducted by the Union of Security Employees (USE) and Singapore University of Social Sciences  released last December, some two in five security officers said they had experienced verbal or physical abuse while on duty, most of whom were older officers.

An average of about 150 cases of such abuse were reported each year from 2018 to 2020. So far this year, 18 such cases have been handled by and reported to USE via its customer service centre and mobile app.

Do you have a story tip? Email: sgnews.tips@yahooinc.com.

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The Memphis Police department is searching for a man who burglarized a business using an excavator.

Police said it happened at Dynospeed Racing on 5250 Pleasant View on June 25, around 5:00 a.m.

When MPD arrived they saw a construction excavator that had been used to tear down a side wall of the business to enter.

This is an ongoing investigation.

Anyone with information about this incident should call Crime Stoppers at 528-CASH. You will be given a personal ID number, and your identification will remain completely anonymous.

Download the FOX13 Memphis app to receive alerts from breaking news in your neighborhood.

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Gen-Z is the loneliest generation in history since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The global self-service ticketing and experience platform Eventbrite has announced The Social Connection Project in partnership with actress and executive producer, Marsai Martin.

Martin and Eventbrite have joined forces to curate a collection of free multi-year Eventbrite events to empower the goal of increasing social connection and decreasing social isolation in Gen Z.

As the world has gone back to regular programming, meaningful connections have diminished following a year of isolation and quarantine.

BlavityU had the opportunity to chat with Martin about social isolation in Gen Z, transitioning into her 18th birthday, mental health awareness in celebrities, and more.

Whats special about this campaign is they pulled up with this amazing social connection project that helps Gen Z and just people around the world that just need to get back out there, especially in this time of crazy social isolation, Martin said.

Its just kind of being away from our loved ones and our family and our friends and all the above. And its been a lot for most people. But unfortunately, Gen Z, even in the times of social media where we think we are the closest, we are at the height of being the most isolated generation in history, Martin said.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Eventbrite (@eventbrite)

Eventbrite co-founder and CEO Julia Hartz is looking forward to building a community based on social interaction.

Eventbrites mission to bring the world together through live experiences is rooted in the belief that people have an innate and irreplaceable need to gather, Hartz said in a statement. Every day, the events our creators host around the world are creating community, and we are amplifying their power with The Social Connection Project to create a world with more meaningful social connection.

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Despite how social media has become lucrative for generation Z from brand deals, entrepreneurship, and even working alongside some of Hollywoods finest  social media has still put a dent in meaningful encounters and mental health.

Find your group, find your people. Social media is not what it seems. Dont look at the comments because that can easily be. whatever. Just please dont take none of it to heart, because respectfully, people dont matter, Martin advises her peers who heavily use social media.

You got to constantly be supported by the people that you love, be in a space that feels like your comfort zone. Social media, theres up and down to it as well. But I would say the thing that gets most people down is other peoples opinions and constantly people-pleasing. That is what social media is. A way to People, please. I get annoyed when people like, to people, please. I dont like it, Martin chuckled as she shook her head.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Marsai Martin (@marsaimartin)

Martin isnt the only young superstar who has opened up about living life with depression or anxiety on social media; Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles have previously shared their truths with fans about dealing with anxiety or depression during pivotal career moments.

Martin hopes her supporters and fans will recognize that depression and anxiety can knock at anyones door no matter the stature and that they can overcome it with the right people around them.

I hope they take away that we are human as well. I feel like many people put us on a pedestal because they see us on TV, which Im very grateful for, but thats not the case all the time. None of us are, Martin said.

As Martin gears up for her 18th birthday, she acknowledges that tough transitions come at every stage of life.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Marsai Martin (@marsaimartin)

We all go through our ups and downs, and were constantly trying to figure out what is next? And like I said, Im going through this tough transition at the moment where theres constantly ups and downs. And going into my 18th, its crazy. There are even transitions for growing people as well, Martin continued.

Its a weird period. Its a weird time, and so many people go through it. So, yeah, hopefully people will take away that you are not alone, especially the people that you look up to, Martin said. We go through the same thing, and that doesnt mean you guys stop aspiring to do whatever, but it should hopefully continue to push and do whatever you love and just achieve your goals in whatever shape or form because whoever you are looking up to is going to do the same thing. So you are never alone.

Anyone who goes to Eventbrite.com/Marsai can get free tickets for Marsais favorite Eventbrite events for making new connections by using code CONNECTION2022.
These days  when inflation is sky-high, economic uncertainty is the norm and store shelves are more likely to be empty than full  its easy to feel pessimistic about the future of local small business. As director of the Marshfield Chamber of Commerce, I talk to local business owners daily about what we can do to provide the certainty, stability and resources to grow their business, hire more employees and keep Massachusetts moving forward. As a small-business owner myself, I see firsthand the challenges of inflation, labor shortages and record fuel prices.

Through my conversations and my work, I have seen how many people dont realize the vital role that private investment funds  like hedge funds  can and do play in helping to support small businesses in our communities. These financial tools help provide critical capital to companies across the South Shore, enabling them to grow their operations and hire more workers. This is more important than ever as we enter a period of economic uncertainty and, potentially, a recession in the next year or two.

Coastal Connection: New national flood risk rating rating system proving to be a success story

'An asset for the whole town': Marshfield unveils bigger, better senior center

All across the country, private funds contribute $716 billion in credit to businesses of all sizes. This money helps them expand more rapidly than they could with traditional financing. In turn, that means they can hire more people, buy more equipment and otherwise expand. When businesses grow, the coffee shops, restaurants and retail stores in their area also benefit because workers often shop and eat near their office.

In addition to providing access to capital, managed funds help spur innovation at our small and mid-size businesses  something essential regardless of industry or size. That means empowering companies to reach broader consumer markets through e-commerce, keep up with technological changes and develop new ways to deliver the products and services that individuals and families depend on.

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Housing: Rising interest rates, banks putting pressure on real estate market

Help wanted: South Shore employers forced to get creative to fill jobs amid pandemic

One of the most beneficial aspects of private funds is their ability to navigate all market conditions, delivering returns on investments even during tumultuous times like those we live in now. We saw this during the 2008 financial crisis when many private funds stepped up to help support businesses when many could no longer access capital through other means. This creates much-needed stability and certainty  not only for markets but for our small-business owners.

Unfortunately, many people  including policymakers in Washington  dont understand what a lifeline private funds are for small and mid-size businesses. Instead, they are pushing regulatory and legislative proposals that would make it more difficult for small-business owners to access capital, innovate and hire.

Instead of pretending that hedge funds and other large financial institutions are harming local businesses, politician should be honest that they work in concert and both benefit from pro-growth, pro-business policies. A booming economy helps large, medium and small businesses. Likewise, a bad economy will hurt the Fortune 500 and the corner store.

Lara Brait is the executive director of the Marshfield Chamber of Commerce.

During these uncertain times, we must do everything we can to help the employers and job creators who keep our communities and economies strong  not introduce unnecessary and misguided roadblocks to growth. In my work with the Chamber of Commerce, Ive seen the energy and spirit that make small businesses the heart and soul of our communities. They deserved elected officials who genuinely help them, not ones who push empty anti-business talking points.

Lara Brait is the executive eirector of the Marshfield Chamber of Commerce and is the owner of Brait Point, a real estate development firm in Marshfield.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Hedge funds provide critical capital to companies across South Shore
PORTLAND, Ind.  The mental status of a Portland man accused of killing his father remains unresolved.

Jeremy W. Kelly, 50, is set to stand trial Aug. 22 in Jay Circuit Court on charges of murder and robbery resulting in serious bodily injury.

According to court documents, 71-year-old Gary W. Kelly died on Feb. 25 as a result of blunt force injuries suffered in an attack at his South Vine Street home.

Witnesses said the father and son had a heated argument the night before the slaying. When he was later apprehended in Wayne County, Jeremy Kelly allegedly had his father's wallet and credit cards.

In April, the younger Kelly's defense attorney, Brandon Murphy, filed a "notice of defense of mental disease or defect," the first step in pursuing an insanity defense.

More: Lawyer: Muncie man charged in Greenway slaying not competent to stand trial

That prompted Judge Brian Hutchison to appoint a local psychologist and psychiatrist to examine Kelly, who is being held in the Wayne County jail.

One of those mental health professionals later reported to Hutchison he went to the jail in Richmond to meet with Kelly, whom he described as "calm and polite."

However, the prisoner declined to participate in an evaluation, and later reportedly told a corrections officer the mental health professional was an agent in a scheme by the judge to kill Kelly.

"In summary, Mr. Kelly did not cooperate long enough to complete a psychiatric evaluation," the report indicated, adding that the Portland man is "unlikely competent to stand trial" without receiving treatment.

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Douglas Walker is a news reporter at The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@muncie.gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Murder defendant's lawyer plans mental disease or defect defense
(Getty Images)

Actor Mona Hammond has died at the age of 91.

The Jamaican-British TV star was best known for portraying Blossom Jackson in the hit BBC soap EastEnders.

Marcus Ryder, the chair of Londons Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (Rada), confirmed news of Hammonds death on social media.

It is with sadness that I wake up to the news Mona Hammond has died, he wrote. Among her numerous achievements she co-founded Talawa Theatre Company in 1985.

She was also a @RADA_London graduate and received an honorary Rada Fellowship in 2019.

Hammond appeared regularly on EastEnders between1994 and 1997, later reprising the role in 2010.

Born in Jamaica, she moved to the UK in 1959. Besides her time on EastEnders, Hammond also had a prolific career in TV, appearing in programmes including Coronation Street, Doctor Who and Casualty.

One of her best-known roles saw her play Susu in the sitcom Desmonds from 1990 to 1994. She then repeated the role in the shorter-lived spin-off Porkpie (1995 to 1996).

Actor Mona Hammond photographed in 2003 (Getty Images)

As well as her many screen appearances, Hammond was also a distinguished stage actor, and was celebrated for co-founding the Talawa Theatre Company, one of the countrys foremost Black theatre groups.

In 2015, Hammond was awarded an OBE by the queen.

Tributes to the actor have poured in on social media following news of her death.

Mona Hammond, a trailblazer in every way, wrote ITV presenter Charlene White. Thank you.

RIP Mona Hammond, wrote radio presenter and journalist Lorraine King. An extremely talented Jamaican actress who did theatre and TV but will always be Auntie SuSu from Desmonds to many of us.

She will be sorely missed. May she sleep peacefully.
Amber Ketran was sitting in the garage with her dad when they heard the shots on Saturday.

Like many people in their Haltom City neighborhood, they thought the noises were fireworks. She and her father went outside and saw dirt flying up in a neighbors yard, and they realized the sound was gunshots.

The two ran inside as the shots continued. Those first bursts of gunfire they heard, she said, were the shots that killed Collin Davis. According to police, Edward Freyman shot and killed Davis, 33, and Amber Tsai, 32, at about 6:45 p.m. at Tsais home in the 5700 block of Diamond Oaks Drive North. Freyman also shot and wounded three police officers and a woman who lives across the street before killing himself, authorities said.

Neighbors said Freyman, 28, was Tsais boyfriend and appeared to have been living at her house. Police have said the shooter and victims knew each other but did not disclose details of their relationship.

Earlier that day at about 11:45 a.m., Ketran said, Freyman came to her familys door and spoke to them for the first time. He asked if he could borrow a crowbar to move a boulder, she said, and she gave him a large pole.

At about noon, Freyman went to Krystyn Rodriguezs house, next door to Tsais home, and told Rodriguez her gate was open, and shook her hand, Rodriguez told the Star-Telegram.

Rodriguez and Ketran both said it was odd behavior from the man theyd only seen from a distance and didnt think to be very social.

Minutes before the shooting, Ketran and her dad saw Davis pull up on his motorcycle in front of Tsais house. Ketran did not know Tsai or Davis personally, but saw Freyman at the house frequently enough that she believes he lived there.

A memorial is set up Tuesday, July 5, 2022, in front of the house where Saturdays shooting killed two people in Haltom City. The gunman also shot and wounded three police officers and a woman who lives across the street before killing himself, authorities said.

Tsai and Davis were great friends, Tsais sister told the Dallas Morning News.

When Ketran and her dad saw Davis on his motorcycle just before the shooting, he drove slowly down the street and pulled in front of the house. Police said he was killed in the driveway, and Tsai was killed inside the house.

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When she realized the bangs were gunshots, Ketran called 911. She learned later that her neighbor across the street had already called the police after she was hit by a bullet. The woman, Ketran said, was in her living room when the bullets went through her house and she was hit in the leg. She was still in the hospital Tuesday.

Amber Tsai, the 32-year-old woman shot and killed by gunman Edward Freyman in Haltom City on Saturday, will always be remembered for her humble heart and for making friends everywhere she went, her sister Abigail wrote on a GoFundMe page.

The police arrived quickly, Ketran said, and ran through the yard with their guns drawn.

Ketrans niece had been at Rodriguezs house, she said.

Rodriguez ran outside when Davis was shot to see if he was OK, but the police told her to get back.

I saw him on the ground, Rodriguez said. I just froze. I didnt know what way to run.

Rodriguez said she and her family are still processing what happened. The family was in the back yard and the kids were playing when the shooting started.

Its not even the Fourth yet, her son yelled, throwing his hands in the air and mistaking the gunshots for fireworks.

But when the gunshots continued, the family realized what it was and went inside.

Now Rodriguez said she, her family and most of the neighborhood are going to need time to heal from what they experienced.

Every time we walk outside, itll be there, Rodriguez said.

The neighbors took cover inside their homes as the shooting continued.

They watched as Freyman shot at the cops, and three of them were hit by bullets. One of them was pulled into an SUV and another ran into the Ketrans yard after being hurt. Some officers returned fire, police said, and Freyman ran out of the back of the house. Authorities estimated Freyman fired hundreds of rounds.

Ketran said she has had some negative experiences with law enforcement, but gained a new respect for them after Saturday.

I have so much respect for the police and what they did that day, she said. I know it was scary, but they protected everybody and saved lives.

Ketrans parents have lived on the street for 20 years, and while Haltom City has some bad areas, Ketran said, the neighborhood has always felt safe.

But as far as this guy having an AR-15 two doors down, it can happen anywhere, she said.

Police have said Freyman had a military-style rifle and a handgun, both of which were found near his body after he shot himself about half a mile away from the original shooting scene.

According to Army public affairs, Freyman was enlisted as an infantryman in the U.S. Army from October 2014 to October 2019 and attained the noncommissioned rank of sergeant. Freyman joined the Texas Army National Guard in October 2019 after he left the Army. He served as a sergeant infantryman until March 2021.

He was never deployed, according to the Army.

The Texas Military Department said Freyman was honorably discharged from the National Guard after completing his term. He does not appear to have a criminal record in Tarrant County, according to court records.

A neighbor who has spoken with Tsais family told WFAA-TV that Tsai talked with her sister about Freyman suffering from PTSD.

Amber, with her heart, wanting to help him, Mabel Figueroa told WFAA, It was something beyond like her sister said, was beyond her help. I believe thats how this tragedy cost her life.

A GoFundMe for Collin Davis funeral expenses started by his cousin Melody Hallmark says he was senselessly killed July 2nd in the Haltom City mass shooting when he went to Tsais house expecting to have a small hang with his long time gal pal.

A GoFundMe for Collin Davis funeral expenses started by his cousin Melody Hallmark says he was senselessly killed July 2nd in the Haltom City mass shooting when he went to Tsais house expecting to have a small hang with his long time gal pal.

Hallmark told KTVT-TV that Davis was her first best friend.

When you walked into the room, everyone wanted to hang out with him, wanted to know more about him, wanted to be his friend. Ive never met anyone who didnt like Collin, she said.

In a Facebook post Tuesday, the Haltom City Police Department said two of the injured officers, Officer Jose Avila and Corporal Zach Tabler, remain hospitalized but are in good spirits. Officer Tim Barton was released from the hospital on Sunday and is recovering at home.

Haltom City police on Sunday identified three wounded officers as Cpl. Zach Tabler, who has been with the department for seven years; Officer Tim Barton, with six years of service; and Officer Jose Avila, with five years of service.

Authorities have not commented on a motive for the shooting. The Texas Department of Public Safety has taken over the investigation and did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

All involved officers have been placed on administrative leave per policy while the incident is being investigated by the Texas Rangers, Haltom City police said in a news release Tuesday. We will not release information or respond to additional inquiries until the investigation is complete. This will protect the integrity of the investigation and ensure the most accurate information.

A car is riddled with bullet holes on Tuesday, July 5, 2022, in front of the residence where Saturdays shooting killed two people in Haltom City. The gunman also shot and wounded three police officers and a woman who lives across the street before killing himself, authorities said.

The shooting shook up the neighborhood, Ketran said. Afterward, another neighbor hung blue ribbons up to show support for the police.

I feel so bad for the kids, Ketran said Tuesday. We didnt even shoot off fireworks yesterday because it was so traumatizing.
Belarusian artillerymen fire from Gvozdyka self-propelled howitzers during a recent military training

"So far, up to 7,000 military personnel have been deployed on the territory of Belarus on the borders with Ukraine," he said.

Read also: Lukashenko accuses Ukraine of trying to strike at military facilities in Belarus

"There is no hammerhead there. Therefore, it would be at least not correct, not true, to talk about hostilities beginning there tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. That number of military personnel is clearly not enough to launch any offensive against Ukraine."

At the same time, according to Denysenko, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has kept in place the infrastructure used by the Russian army ahead of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Lukashenko on July 3 said he had decided that Belarus should participate in Russia's war against Ukraine "some time ago."

Read also: Ukrainian intelligence assesses the risk of Belarus invading Ukraine

He also stated that he had ordered his military to "aim at" the decision-making centers in the capitals of Minsk's opponents.

At the same time, Lukashenko said that Minsk "does not want to fight against Ukraine" and that "a bad peace is better than a good war."

The Ukrainian intelligence said that the threat of Belarus invading Ukraine from the north remains, although it is unlikely.

Read also: Lukashenko says he decided Belarus should take part in attack on Ukraine long ago

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba believes that the risk of Belarus' direct participation in the war against Ukraine will grow in proportion to the possible successes of the Russian army.

Belarus has been conducting mass military exercises, which practice the "transition from peacetime to wartime" since the beginning of June. It was reported on July 1 that the exercises of the Belarusian armed forces at the country's training grounds had again been extended. They will continue until at least July 9, according to reports.
Kiera Feldman

Kiera Feldman joined the Los Angeles Times as an investigative reporter in 2019. She came from ProPublica, where her reporting on New York Citys private trash industry exposed labor abuses and corruption, leading to a federal investigation and new city laws. She won the Livingston Award in 2015 for an investigation of college sexual assault mishandling. A longtime magazine journalist, before coming to the Times she reported for Harpers, New Republic and elsewhere.
An extraordinary journey to bear witness to the struggle and strife of displaced Ukrainians  and to comfort them as well as observe relief efforts on their behalf  took place recently, as a group of dedicated individuals from Temple Emanu-El's congregation on the Upper East Side of Manhattan traveled to the border of Ukraine and Poland amid the war in Ukraine.

The mission was one of faith, compassion and care toward the innocents of Ukraine, whose country was invaded and torn asunder by Russian forces beginning on Feb. 24, 2022  over 130 days ago now.

When most Americans were just beginning to embrace the beginning of summer on Memorial Day weekend this year, a group from Temple Emanu-El  New York Citys leading Reform Jewish congregation  traveled to Ukraine instead.

UKRAINIAN FAMILY'S HEARTBREAK AS A FATHER MUST SEND HIS SON AWAY FROM HARM

What they saw and learned amid their travels has stayed with them since.

Martin Bell, one of the travelers, told Fox News Digital in a recent phone interview that it was the inspiring words of his senior rabbi, Rabbi Joshua M. Davidson  in a message to temple members  that made him choose to leave behind the comforts of home to travel to Ukraine on behalf of those suffering.

"When I read the rabbi's message," Bell said about the trip and the meaningfulness of it, "my feeling was, 'How could I not go?'"

"As we watch with grave concern the events unfolding in Ukraine," shared Rabbi Davidson in a message to members of Temple Emanu-El, "many of us feel helpless, wishing to be of aid to the millions who are suffering the atrocities of the unjust war. Individually and communally, we have sent funds and goods to the organizations engaged in critical relief work, and we will continue to do so."

"And now," Rabbi Davidson continued, "we have another way to answer conscience's call."

The rabbi went on, "Together we will bring much-needed supplies, offer comfort to those fleeing the war  and bear witness both to the suffering and to the extraordinary efforts of the agencies offering relief from that suffering."

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Bell told Fox News Digital the rabbi's message deeply inspired him and others.

A local resident is shown walking through the destroyed second floor of her multi-generational home while searching for salvageable items in April, in Hostomel, Ukraine, outside the city of Kyiv. John Moore/Getty Images

"There are three key messages there. One is to help end the suffering," said Bell, "and we saw that. We talked with one refugee who had spent 18 hours traveling with her daughter to the border"  in order to flee the violence and destruction, he said.

"And she must've seen things that were so horrific"  including the gruesome deaths of fellow Ukrainians  that all she said, bluntly and directly, to the group was, "We hate them all," Bell related.

The woman was referring to the Russians who were trying to destroy Ukraine and who were brutally killing innocent people and wrecking property.

Bell added how important it was for the rabbi to share that the temple's team would "bear witness to the extraordinary efforts" of the relief efforts toward these people.

"You would think this would have made us mournful" in terms of seeing the charitable operations required for the Ukrainian people, Bell said.

"It was the opposite. It was so inspiring. We came back renewed, just to see the way the Polish people are supporting these immigrants"  and have been supporting them and helping them since the very early days of the war, he said.

"There are about 5 million people who have left Ukraine," said Bell. Some "3.5 million of them went to Poland."

UKRAINE NEWS: HOW CAN AMERICANS DONATE TO THE UKRAINIAN MILITARY EFFORTS?

The group from Temple Emanu-El brought duffel bags filled with donated supplies from temple members for the desperate Ukrainians who have fled for their lives, said Bell.

Trip members from the temple had their eyes opened at virtually every stop along the way, Bell indicated.

"We were right at the border, right at the checkpoint where people come through," and "right there, there are dozens of tents" filled with volunteers and staffers to help the displaced, said Bell. Tents are filled with food, clothing, medical supplies, SIM cards for cell phones  and much more of the items the Ukrainians need, he said.

Some of these operations are run by NGOs; others are run by everyday people.

Every place the group went, Bell related, they saw relief efforts that had been "started initially by everyday Poles"  and they have continued to run them to help the displaced Ukrainians, he said (the displaced are mostly women and children).

These everyday people "just saw the need and rose to the challenge," said Bell.

He added, "The part about bearing witness  that's what really resonated with me and with everyone in our group. In part, that's maybe a Jewish reaction in a world where there are Holocaust deniers," said Bell. "We wanted to go there so that we could then come back and tell other people what we saw."

"It's a story that should be told. It's a story that must be told," he also said.

REV. FRANKLIN GRAHAM ON UKRAINE WAR: CHILDREN ALWAYS SUFFER THE MOST DURING WAR

Fox News Digital also spoke to Wendy Gerber, another temple member who made the journey.

"It was wonderful" to be able to help the Ukrainian refugees, said Gerber, though "we can't really capture the devastation and destruction that has occurred in their lives."

She shared some examples.

"I became very close with a refugee named Sarah, who came from Mariupol. She's 37 and has three children, one of whom is autistic. And they stayed in their home as long as they could. [But] when the shelling" moved dangerously close to them," added Gerber, "they had to head to the basement of a friend's house, "where they stayed for more than 30 days along with three other families."

"Things just continued to get progressively worse  and they knew they needed to leave," said Gerber.

But when the young Ukrainian mother "recounted the story of her decision to leave, she was in tears with us," said Gerber.

"The green corridors were supposed to be safe evacuation zones for the Ukrainians," she said  "but the Russians were still shooting at Ukrainians," she said.

"Finally, they made the decision that they needed to go" and that they had to risk it, Gerber said.

"And as they were driving out of Mariupol, they were passing bodies on the street  and I can't even imagine how difficult that must have been. I have three children myself," added Gerber, "and it's hard enough for someone to do something like that on their own  but just knowing that their children, too, had to experience this must have been truly excruciating."

UKRAINIAN ORPHANS STRANDED AS AMERICAN FAMILIES STRUGGLE TO SAVE THEM FROM WAR

She said the family's first stop on the way out was at a synagogue  where they paused for a blessing, said Gerber. "When I learned that, I thought, Wow, these are really devoted, devout people," she said.

The woman's husband actually drove Sarah and their three children to safety  said Gerber  and then he went back into Ukraine.

And he brought 25 other people out of Ukraine to safety, added Gerber.

"What was amazing to me is that Sarah and I have stayed in very close touch since we parted in Warsaw," said Gerber. "And on an almost daily basis, she'll send me notes, photos  it's just heartbreaking."

The woman saw her former apartment building  her home  get demolished, she said. They were able to escape just with some clothing, some papers  but not much more. "They left behind laptops, photographs, all of their treasured items," said Gerber.

She shared that Sarah showed her a photograph of her son, who is 12  and how, to this day, he carries a piece of shrapnel in his hand.

The boy said to her, "Why is it that God doesn't like me, [since] he destroyed my building and he destroyed my home?" But then he also said to his mother, "Or maybe God does like me  because I'm alive today."

Gerber said she was extremely moved that a young boy would have to think such thoughts  the type of thoughts no young person should have to contemplate.

She said she spent time drawing and coloring with some of the young children in one of the shelters  "and they were just having a lighthearted, friendly conversation as they were drawing."

Gerber later learned from one of the people at the Jewish agency that what the children were talking about  and they were only about 7 or 8 years old, she said  was this: One of the kids had "only brought one toy with her from home, because the rest of the toys had been blown up."

WHY UKRAINE'S HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS ARE TAKING SHELTER IN ISRAEL

Said Rabbi Davidson at a Friday evening temple service in June as he described the extraordinary trip, "It was a congregational effort."

He thanked members of the congregation who donated supplies that were flown to Ukraine and distributed to the needy and displaced. He said there were also monetary donations made in the form of grants.

"For each of us who made this journey, the experience was a profound one," said Rabbi Davidson, "in ways we anticipated it would be  and in ways we did not."

"We made the journey to bring relief," said Rabbi Davidson.

"But we also made it to bear witness to the suffering of the Ukrainian people, in a world that too often not only turns a blind eye to human suffering but allows it to be written out of history altogether. We just know from our own experience that bearing witness is a sacred duty."

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He also wanted to remember "the extraordinary heroism of countless Polish citizens" who are helping the Ukrainian people on a daily basis, giving of themselves and thinking of others, day after day  and bringing hope for "a brighter tomorrow." To this as well, said the rabbi, it is important to bear witness.

Rabbi Davidson also noted that in Krakow especially, the group experienced a "growing, vibrant, young Jewish community."

Also, the group realized that "Poland today is not the hotbed of anti-Semitism we might suspect it to be because of 20th century history there. There is, in fact, an increasing interest in Judaism within the country because of the importance of Jewish cultural life through centuries of Polish history prior to the Holocaust."

Finally, he said, "all of us felt an extraordinary sense of pride in the work of the Polish Jewish community to care for Ukrainians of every faith."

It was "a powerful journey," said the rabbi.
(Reuters) - The fast-spreading BA.4 and BA.5 sub-lineages of Omicron are estimated to make up a combined 70.1% of the coronavirus variants in the United States as of July 2, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday.

BA.4 and BA.5 made up 52% of U.S. variants for the week of June 25. They were added to the World Health Organization's monitoring list in March and designated as variants of concern by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended last week that COVID-19 vaccine makers change the design of their booster shots beginning this fall to include components tailored to combat BA.4 and BA.5.

BA.4 made up 16.5% of the variants in circulation, the latest data showed, while BA.5 accounted for 53.6%.

(Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
European police arrested more than 130 people suspected of being involved in human trafficking and identified more than 130 possible victims in an operation that spanned 22 countries, authorities announced.

In a joint operation with the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, also known as Europol, European border agency Frontex and International Criminal Police Organization officers in 22 countries made the arrests from June 6 to June 13, Europol said in a news release Tuesday.

Europol said almost 22,500 officers took part in the operation at "European sea, land, and air borders, with an additional focus on heavily (utilized) routes into Europe." In total, nearly 1 million people were checked by authorities in 13,500 locations.

In addition to the arrests, authorities said they identified 60 suspects and 220 forged documents. Of the 130 possible victims of human trafficking identified, Europol said more than a dozen were minors.

Countries that were part of the operation included the United Kingdom, Germany, Greece, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine.

'All about the money': 53 dead in San Antonio reveals harsh world of human smuggling

Beyond troubling: Current, former government officials tied to human trafficking probe in Georgia

News of the operations comes the same day as police in the U.K. and other European countries announced the arrest of people in multiple countries suspected of smuggling migrants to Britain on small boats.

In a statement, the Britains National Crime Agency said the operation targeted "criminal networks suspected of using small boats to smuggle thousands of people into the U.K." French judicial authorities said the operation targeted a "major organized crime group" suspected of facilitating human smuggling across the English Channel from France to Britain.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Follow Jordan Mendoza on Twitter: @jordan_mendoza5.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: European police arrested over 130 suspects in human trafficking sting
The big shareholder groups in West African Resources Limited (ASX:WAF) have power over the company. Institutions often own shares in more established companies, while it's not unusual to see insiders own a fair bit of smaller companies. We also tend to see lower insider ownership in companies that were previously publicly owned.

West African Resources has a market capitalization of AU$1.3b, so we would expect some institutional investors to have noticed the stock. Our analysis of the ownership of the company, below, shows that institutions are noticeable on the share registry. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about West African Resources.

See our latest analysis for West African Resources

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About West African Resources?

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

West African Resources already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of West African Resources, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Since institutional investors own more than half the issued stock, the board will likely have to pay attention to their preferences. We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in West African Resources. The company's largest shareholder is Van Eck Associates Corporation, with ownership of 13%. With 5.0% and 4.4% of the shares outstanding respectively, L1 Capital Pty. Limited and Sprott Asset Management LP are the second and third largest shareholders. Additionally, the company's CEO Richard Hyde directly holds 1.8% of the total shares outstanding.

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After doing some more digging, we found that the top 15 have the combined ownership of 50% in the company, suggesting that no single shareholder has significant control over the company.

Researching institutional ownership is a good way to gauge and filter a stock's expected performance. The same can be achieved by studying analyst sentiments. There is a little analyst coverage of the stock, but not much. So there is room for it to gain more coverage.

Insider Ownership Of West African Resources

The definition of company insiders can be subjective and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO.

Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group.

Our most recent data indicates that insiders own some shares in West African Resources Limited. As individuals, the insiders collectively own AU$48m worth of the AU$1.3b company. Some would say this shows alignment of interests between shareholders and the board. But it might be worth checking if those insiders have been selling.

General Public Ownership

With a 39% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over West African Resources. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.

Private Company Ownership

It seems that Private Companies own 4.1%, of the West African Resources stock. It might be worth looking deeper into this. If related parties, such as insiders, have an interest in one of these private companies, that should be disclosed in the annual report. Private companies may also have a strategic interest in the company.

Next Steps:

While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important. To that end, you should be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with West African Resources .

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

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

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



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

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan on Tuesday said it had arrested a militant who provided technical support for a deadly suicide bomb attack on Chinese teachers at Karachi University in April.

A suspected female suicide bomber killed three Chinese teachers, drawing strong condemnation from Beijing, in the first major attack this year against nationals of long-time ally China working in Pakistan.

Four people died in total, including the minibus driver and the three Chinese staff from the Confucius Institute, a cultural and educational program that China operates at the university.

The attack was the result of the combined efforts of two separatist groups, the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), Sindh province information minister Sharjeel Memon told a news conference.

The accused man, Dad Bakash, was arrested from Karachis district west on Monday and confessed to being commander of a sleeper cell of the BLF, he said.

He confessed to carrying out surveillance of Chinese nationals at Karachi University and important installations on the task given by Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and met and provided assistance to the female suicide bomber and her husband.

Recently, Pakistan has been under increasing pressure from Chinese government to provide foolproof security to Chinese working in Pakistan.

Mineral-rich Balochistan houses a deep-water port in Gwadar city which Beijing is developing under the China Pakistan Economic-Corridor (CPEC) project, part of President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road initiative to expand trade linkages.

The accused told investigators that the militant network is spread across neighboring countries and they are also in contact with the separatist groups in these countries, Memon said.

The Baloch separatist guerrillas say they are fighting for the complete independence for Balochistan as well as for a greater share in the region's mines and minerals. The groups usually attack gas projects, infrastructure and the security forces.

(Reporting by Syed Raza Hassan, Editing by William Maclean)
ISLAMABAD (AP)  A prominent Pakistani TV anchorperson known for publicly supporting former Prime Minister Imran Khan was arrested Tuesday on the outskirts of the capital, his colleagues said.

It was unclear on what charges police arrested Imran Riaz Khan, who is not related to the ex-premier.

The arrest of the TV journalist comes weeks after a court in Islamabad ordered police not to arrest him and several other journalists after complaints were lodged accusing them of inciting hatred against the military.

There was no immediate comment from the government.

Khan, the former premier, took to Twitter to condemn the arrest of the anchorperson.

Khan was ousted as prime minister through a no-confidence vote in the parliament in April. He contends his removal was part of a U.S. plot, a charge Washington denies.
Peter Obi

A wealthy businessman with a reputation for being frugal, Peter Obi has emerged as a powerful force ahead of Nigeria's presidential election next February, energising voters with messages of prudence and accountability that are amplified by an army of social media users.

In a country that seems to always be on the lookout for a messiah to solve its myriad problems, young social media-savvy supporters have elevated Mr Obi to sainthood and are backing his largely unknown Labour Party against two septuagenarian political heavyweights.

His name is often trending on social media on the back of numerous conversations sparked by his supporters, instantly recognisable from their display picture of his image or the white, red and green logo of his party.

These are mostly urban under-30s who refer to themselves as the "Coconut-head generation", because they are strong-willed, independent-minded and contemptuous of older politicians who, they say, have done little for them.

Many of them, like Dayo Ekundayo from the eastern city of Owerri, were involved in the EndSars protests that forced the disbandment of a notorious police department two years ago and also morphed into calls for better government.

Now, they are deploying the same strategies that mobilized hundreds of thousands of young Nigerians and raised millions of naira within weeks for the 60-year-old who they consider an alternative to the two parties that have dominated politics since the end of military rule in 1999.

"Which Nigerian politician has ever held office and has his integrity intact? I do not see any other logical option for young people in Nigeria," said Mr Ekundayo.

He has already been involved in a march for Mr Obi, and is providing logistics and mobilising students for the campaign as he did during the EndSars protests.

But opponents say Mr Obi is a political impostor, one of many who spring up at election time with delusions of being a third force that will wrestle power from the traditional parties.

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Many supporters of the main opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP) and neutral observers agree he is head and shoulders above the other candidates, but say he lacks the nationwide popularity to win the election and have warned his supporters that they risk wasting their votes.

They believe he is a distraction from the common goal of removing the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) from office, and could split the opposition vote.

A devout Catholic from eastern Nigeria, they point to his lack of popularity in the Muslim-dominated north, whose votes are considered critical in winning presidential elections.

And his critics question whether he truly represents a break from the corruption he routinely lambasts, pointing out that his name popped up in the leaked Pandora Papers which exposed the hidden wealth of the rich and powerful in 2021.

While he was not accused of stealing money, he failed to declare offshore accounts and assets held by family members, citing ignorance.

He was also accused of investing state funds, as governor, into a company he had dealings with. He denied any wrongdoing and points out that the value of the investment has since grown.

Mr Obi repeatedly says he is not desperate to be president, which is ironic for a man who has changed parties four times since 2002.

He dumped the PDP just days before its presidential primary in May and the party went on to choose the 75-year-old former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar as its presidential flagbearer.

Mr Obi was Atiku Abubakar's running mate in the 2019 presidential election which the PDP lost to the ruling APC

Critics say he pulled out of the contest because he knew his chances of winning were slim but he cited wrangling within the PDP, where he was a vice-presidential candidate in 2019, for deciding to cross over to the Labour Party.

His supporters are also convinced that he was pushed out of the PDP because he refused to bribe delegates at the party primary and have coined the phrase: "We don't give shishi (money)" as a buzzword for his famed frugality and his prudence in managing government funds in a country with a history of wasteful expenditure by public officers.

They regard him as an unconventional politician prepared to take on the APC and PDP behemoths seen as different sides of the same coin, who they accuse of dipping their fingers into the public purse.

There is also a religious and ethnic twist to his candidacy.

In a country where roughly half the population is Christian, his supporters hope that this will bolster his chances of winning, as after eight years of President Muhammadu Buhari they would not want another Muslim - the APC's Bola Tinubu, 70, or the PDP's Mr Abubakar - to take office.

Some also support Mr Obi because of his ethnic background. Igbos make up the country's third largest ethnic group, but Nigeria has had only one Igbo president, largely ceremonial, since it freed itself from British colonial rule in 1960.

Many Igbos accuse successive Nigerian governments of marginalising them and hope that Mr Obi will rise to power so that the south-east, where most of them live, would see greater development and so counter the pull of secession groups like the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob).

A philosophy graduate, he worked in his family's retail businesses before going on to make his own money, importing everything from salad cream to beauty products, and baked beans to champagne, while also owning a brewery and holding major shares in three commercial banks.

You can normally recognise a Nigerian billionaire from a mile off but Mr Obi is thrifty and wears it as a mark of pride.

He is quick to point out that he owns just two pairs of black shoes from midmarket British chain Marks and Spencer, prefers a $200 suit from Stein Mart to a $4,000 Tom Ford suit, and always insists on carrying his own luggage, rather than paying someone else to do it for him.

Even his children are not spared his frugality. His 30-year-old son was denied a car, he said, while his other child is a happy primary school teacher - a rarity in a country where a politician's name often opens doors to more lucrative jobs.

The OBIdients

Despite the financial controversy, his tenure as governor of Anambra state has become a reference point for his presidential campaign.

His supporters point out that he invested heavily in education and paid salaries on time - the simple things that most Nigerian state governors tend to neglect.

He also left huge savings in state coffers at the end of his two four-year tenures, another rarity.

Most of those supporting Mr Obi were involved in anti-police brutality protests in 2020

But Frances Ogbonnaya, a university student in Anambra state when Mr Obi was governor, is surprised by the praises being sung in his name, describing his tenure as unremarkable.

"Who saves money in the face of hunger? Who saves money in the face of a lack of facilities?" she asked rhetorically.

But it is his reputation for frugality and sound management that has attracted a horde of supporters, known as OBIdients.

Some have been accused of cyberbullying and labelling anyone who does not vote for him in next year's election an enemy of the state.

He responded with a tweet calling on his supporters to "imbibe the spirit of sportsmanship", but it has done little to calm them down.

They are quick to show anyone who tells them that elections aren't won on Twitter, the crowds at offices of Nigeria's electoral body where they have been flooding to register as first-time voters.

But this is not the same as actually turning out to vote on election day.

With months to the election, there is no denying the momentum building behind Mr Obi but cynics also point to the lack of a nationwide party structure to support the view that, while possible, an Obi presidency remains highly improbable.

He retorts that his structure is "the 100 million Nigerians that live in poverty [and] the 35 million Nigerians who don't know where their next meal will come from".

If half of those turn out to vote him on election day, it might very well be all that he needs.

Nigeria's other main presidential candidates:
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney gave a raw response to Monday night's shooting.

Kenney said gun violence has been a constant worry for him while in office.

"I'll be happy when I'm not here  when I'm not mayor, and I can enjoy some stuff," Kenney said.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said gun violence has been such a constant stress for him while in office that he's looking forward to his second term expiring in 2024.

"I'm concerned every single day," Kenney said after two police officers were shot and injured during a concert and fireworks show on the night of July 4. "There's not an event or a day where I don't lay on my back at night, look at the ceiling, and worry about stuff. So everything we have had in the city over the last seven years, I worry about."

"I don't enjoy the Fourth of July," he continued. "I didn't enjoy the Democratic National Convention. I didn't enjoy the NFL Draft. I'm waiting for something bad to happen all the time. I'll be happy when I'm not here  when I'm not mayor, and I can enjoy some stuff."

Kenney, who wore a Real Madrid soccer jersey during the press conference, lamented the culture of gun ownership in the US and the lack of action on gun safety measures.

In Philadelphia, lawmakers are unable to regulate firearms because of a Pennsylvania state law. The 1996 state supreme court case Ortiz v. Commonwealth overturned assault weapons bans in both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with courts interpreting the state law as preempting any regulation of firearms at the local level. Pennsylvania's Republican majority legislature passed a law to strengthen the preemption statute back in January, but it was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.

"This is a gun country," Kenney said. "It's crazy. We are the most armed country in world history and we are one of the least safe. So until Americans decide that they want to give up the guns and give up the opportunity to get guns we are going to have this problem."

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Mayors in the City of Brotherly Love are limited to two four-year terms in office.

When asked to clarify if he truly meant he was looking forward to not being mayor, Kenney doubled down.

"Yeah, as a matter of fact."

Read the original article on Business Insider
Finland's Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, left, Sweden's Foreign Minister Ann Linde, right, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg attend a media conference after the signature of the NATO Accession Protocols for Finland and Sweden in the NATO headquarters in Brussels, July 5, 2022. (Olivier Matthys/AP)

BRUSSELS  The 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland on Tuesday, sending the membership bids of the two nations to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals  and possible political trouble in Turkey.

The move further increases Russias strategic isolation in the wake of its invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February and military struggles there since.

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This is truly a historic moment for Finland, for Sweden and for NATO, the head of the alliance, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, said.

The 30 ambassadors and permanent representatives formally approved decisions made at a NATO summit in Madrid last week, when the leaders of member nations invited Russias neighbor Finland and Scandinavian partner Sweden to join the military club.

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Securing parliamentary approval for the new members in Turkey, however, could still pose a problem even though Sweden, Finland and Turkey reached a memorandum of understanding at the Madrid summit.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Ankara could block the process if the two countries failed to grant Turkeys demands for the extradition of people it views as terror suspects. The people wanted in Turkey have links to outlawed Kurdish groups or the network of an exiled cleric accused of a failed 2016 coup in Turkey.

He said Turkeys Parliament could refuse to ratify the deal. It is a potent threat since NATO accession must be formally approved by all 30 member states, which gives each a blocking right.

Stoltenberg said he expected no change of heart. There were security concerns that needed to be addressed. And we did what we always do at NATO. We found common ground, he said.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has given the process added urgency. It will ensconce the two nations in the Western military alliance and give NATO more clout, especially in the face of Moscows military threat.

We will be even stronger and our people will be even safer as we face the biggest security crisis in decades, Stoltenberg said.

At a news conference, the foreign ministers of Sweden and Finland were asked whether the memorandum specified people who would have to be extradited to Turkey. Both ministers said no such list was part of the agreement.

We will honor the memorandum fully. There is, of course, no lists or anything like that in the memorandum, but what we will do is to have better cooperation when it comes to terrorists, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said.

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Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto was equally adamant.

Everything that was agreed in Madrid is stated in the document. There are no hidden documents behind that or any agreements behind that, Haavisto said.

Every alliance nation has different legislative challenges and procedures to deal with, and it could take several more months for the two Nordic nations to take their place as official NATO members.

Denmark and Canada were quickest out of the blocks. They handed over their ratification documents in Washington as the first NATO countries just hours after the accession protocols were signed in Brussels, Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod told The Associated Press by phone.

It was a good signal not only to Sweden and Finland, but to other NATO countries that the speed of ratification is important, he said. We hope this inspires other countries to react fast.

The documents need to be handed over in Washington because NATOs founding treaty was signed there in 1949.

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Germanys parliament is set to ratify the membership bids Friday, according to the Free Democrats, a partner party in the countrys coalition government. Other parliaments might only get to the approval process after long summer breaks.

I look forward to a swift ratification process, Haavisto said.

In the meantime, the protocols approved Tuesday bring both nations deeper into NATOs fold already. As close partners, they already attended some meetings that involved issues that immediately affected them. As official invitees, they can attend all meetings of the ambassadors even if they do not yet have any voting rights.

Geir Moulson in Berlin, and Karl Ritter in Unterseen, Switzerland, contributed to this report.
Police are searching for a man who they say shot a driver to death in Rome.

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Rome police were called to reports of a vehicle crash Sunday afternoon around 6 p.m. on Tolbert Street.

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Officers found the driver, identified as 40-year-old Derricus Whatley, behind the wheel with a gunshot wound. Whatley was taken to the hospital, where he died.

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Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of the suspect, 20-year-old Stephano Green on murder charges. Police are still searching for him.

Its unclear if Whatley knew the suspect or what prompted the shooting.

Anyone who knows where Green might be is asked to call 911 or the Rome Police Department at 706-238-5111.
JUBA, South Sudan (AP)  Hundreds of people braved a scorching sun Tuesday to welcome Pope Francis' envoy to South Sudan's capital, Juba, where many were disappointed last month when the pontiff canceled a trip to this East African country.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's secretary of state, was received by religious leaders, government officials, and hundreds of who sang and danced upon his arrival.

It is a good chance for us, said a nun, Sister Adriana. "We are to be blessed.

Another nun, Sister Flexisita, said: Im so excited. I was able to greet him and kiss his ring because that is a blessing."

Francis canceled a planned July trip to two African countries, South Sudan and Congo, on doctors orders because of his knee problems. Parolin said Tuesday the pope remains willing to visit South Sudan.

It is a great joy for me to be with you and to be able to stay for a few days to celebrate and pray and to meet people on behalf of the Holy Father Pope Francis, Parolin told reporters at the airport in Juba.

The pope had sought to promote peace in South Sudan and Congo  countries long wrestling with deadly violence  before he had to cancel his trip.

South Sudan, the world's youngest country, remains vulnerable to civil unrest that first erupted in December 2013 amid a political dispute between President Salva Kiir and his deputy, Riek Machar.

Parolin later this week will visit a remote camp for internally displaced people. He also will meet with Kiir, Machar and U.N. officials in the country.

South Sudan feels blessed right away from the time His Holiness Pope Francis made the decision to come and visit South Sudan, said senior presidential adviser Kuol Manyang Juuk. The whole government is happy to receive (Parolin) and the population of Juba and South Sudan and all the Catholic churches are happy for his visit."
Jul. 5SOMERSET, Pa.  When Randy Ickes' battle with cancer started to become a losing fight this spring, the Jennerstown native turned to UPMC's In Touch Hospice House in Somerset.

For the past two months, Ickes said, he's been treated by hospice employees like part of their family.

"Everyone knows their reputation," said Ickes, describing the facility as "caring and personal."

On Tuesday, Ickes was facing the reality that he'll soon have to stay elsewhere  and facing officials from the health system that made the decision to close the 10-bed inpatient facility.

Ickes was among a crowd of more than 120 people who gathered outside UPMC Somerset to plead for the hospital's owners to drop the plan to close its affiliated hospice. Despite heavy rain at times, the group stood outside the hospital doors for an hour, holding umbrellas and signs that read "Save Hospice House."

They got a chance to voice their concerns to UPMC Somerset President Andrew Rush.

"When my aunt was dying ... she had angels on earth at her side," Josette Mickey, of Berlin, told him, referencing the center's staff. "They stayed with her, held her hand and talked her across to the light."

"Where can you get that kind of service anywhere else?" she said, before answering her own question. "You can't, around here."

Rush said that there's no disputing the level of care people have received at In Touch Hospice House over the years.

"Their inpatient services have been extraordinary," he said.

But the demand for inpatient hospice care has decreased in recent years, Rush said. Time after time, when people are admitted to UPMC Somerset with serious health issues, they choose to remain in their own homes when given the choice about hospice services, he said.

"If they have the option ... they usually want to be at home with loved ones," Rush said.

Many among the crowd protesting the upcoming Aug. 1 closure questioned that, saying some don't have  or want  the option to stay at home.

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Gary Marker, a 30-year hospice volunteer, was one of several who questioned if the center's $23 billion parent company, UPMC, was choosing profit over people.

'You can't beat the service these people are receiving here," the Rockwood man said. And the center's beds, he added, are often filled.

Rush indicated that the overall decrease in demand for the hospice's services helped lead to the decision. It's a reason that facilities such as In Touch Hospice House are being closed, not just in Somerset, but also across the nation, he said.

He estimated that UPMC Somerset averages more than 150 to 200 patients receiving hospice care at any given time  almost all of them at home.

There's a demand for those specialized hospice and home health-type services that is only growing  and UPMC is preparing to hire additional nurses and to train existing ones for the job to meet that demand, he said.

Rush said efforts are also being ramped up to educate Somerset County residents about those at-home services and to eliminate the misconception that hospice care is only available for those in their final days of life.

For people dealing with serious medical issues, including terminal cancer, hospice care might be the right choice for someone, even if they still may have a year to live, he said.

UPMC is working with employees during the closure of the hospice to place them in other UPMC positions, the company said.

The building itself, built through a donation by the Wheeler family in 2009 at 1474 N. Center Ave., will continue to operate as an office for hospice and home health administrators, while plans aren't yet final for the soon-to-be-vacant portion of the building, UPMC officials said.
Pontchartrain Park in New Orleans was put on the National Register of Historic Places two years ago. Its new marker was unveiled Thursday.

Residents of the historic Pontchartrain Park neighborhood in New Orleans celebrated a new marker that declares their community as a safe cradle for Black hope and prosperity.

Pontchartrain Park was put on the National Register of Historic Places two years ago, as noted by NOLA.com. The designation came during the summer of racial reckoning  in June 2020.

Pontchartrain Park, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places two years ago, celebrated a new marker that declares their community as a safe cradle for Black hope and prosperity. (Photo: Screenshot/WWLTV/YouTube.com)

Former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, now the president of the National Urban League, spoke at the dedication ceremony on Thursday, held in advance of the Essence Festival of Culture, which recently took over The Big Easy.

For the recognition to be done while we are all still here is also significant, said Morial, so we can recognize it and enjoy it. Its a proud moment.

Also in attendance at the dedication ceremony was Morials mother, Sybil, a former Xavier University administrator, who owns two homes in the district that she bought with her husband Dutch Morial  also a former mayor of New Orleans.

In 1955, when the district was commissioned, its founders envisioned it as a place for Black homeowners, one that would keep them segregated from their white counterparts. The neighborhood birthed many famous New Orleanians, including famed jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard and former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson.

It was built because the city fathers were trying to maintain separate but equal,' Morial said, describing Pontchartrain Park as a neighborhood of strivers and hard-working families.

It was just an incredible place to grow up in, he told those gathered. It was like a little village unto itself.

Like many other areas and monuments in the city, Pontchartrain Park faced serious challenges after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, and Hurricane Ida in 2021. Like its legendary city, this neighborhood continues to win against all odds.

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Its still a great place to raise a family, said Gretchen Bradford, who serves as neighborhood association president and whose family has lived in the area since 1958, per NOLA.com. We are a very diverse community now, but just about everyone who lives in the neighborhood, they really enjoy this neighborhood and the amenities.

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The post Residents of Pontchartrain Park celebrate historic marker declaring area as safe cradle for Black hope appeared first on TheGrio.
The Lemon Man by Keith Bruton (Brash Books)

Patrick Callen, a Dublin, Ireland hitman with a mild case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, stays organized by making lists. On his first day in Keith Brutons debut novel, the list includes:

 Buy Food

 Sleep With Olivia

 Visit Ma

 Kill Henry ONeil

Patrick, who navigates Dublins streets on his 1950s Modello Oro bicycle, was pedaling home from the market when he stopped off to deal with ONeil, a drug runner and junkie who owed his supplier more than he could pay. Worried that someone might nick his bag of lemons, Patrick slipped it off the handlebars and took it with him to do the hit. From then on, he was known as The Lemon Man.

The details of the ONeil hit precisely convey Patricks attitude about his chosen profession.

I reach back into my shorts and pull out the gun, shooting little Henry ONeil dead center in the forehead, bulls-eye. He falls back into the chair with a bullet in his head. I touch my top lip with the top of my tongue. My moustache is getting long... I scratch my head with the silencer. Its warm.

But just when youre sure that Patrick is a psychopath, he discovers an infant in ONeils filthy drug den, cant bear to leave it there, and takes it with him.

Suddenly, the antihero of The Lemon Man is struggling to change diapers and trying to figure out what toddlers eat. But hes also got a job to do. There are people who need killing and others willing to pay to have it done. So he finds himself taking the baby along on the job or leaving him in the care of his equally flummoxed girlfriend, Olivia, whose work as a prostitute doesnt bother Patrick in the least.

Caring for an infant while working as a hired killer is not a good mix, and the inevitable complications soon threaten to get Patrick and Olivia killed. The result is a fast-paced crime novel that is both hilarious and hardboiled, its main character both ruthless and oddly sympathetic.

I dont care what you think, Patrick says. I take care of (i.e. kill) people when they dont obey the rules. The rules of the street.

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Brutons tight, colorful prose captures the idiosyncrasies of Irish English without ever leaving American readers behind, every unfamiliar word clear in contest. And his hard-eyed portrayal of Dublin street life is so vivid readers can smell the streets and feel the cold rain on their faces.

___

Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Mystery Writers of Americas Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including The Dread Line.
ROMAN PETRENKO  MONDAY, 4 JULY 2022, 21:45

Mihail Mishustin, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, admitted to a "certain slump" in the Russian economy in the fifth month of Russias war against Ukraine and of Western sanctions against Russia.

Source: Meduza, an independent Russian news website, quoting Mishustins statement at an industrial exhibition

Details: The head of the Russian government said that "there is a certain slump in some sectors", but noted that it was not to a "critical point".

Mishustin said that moving forward, the Russian economy has to "shift from a catch-up model of development to an outperforming one."

Quote from Mishustin: "Weve made good progress and in many ways this has allowed our industry to hold out [against the Western sanctions - ed.] and to avoid any sort of dramatic scenarios which our opponents forecast and expected.

Yes, some sectors are seeing a certain slump, but nowhere have we approached a critical point. Quite the contrary, we are seeing an increased growth in the electronic, pharmaceutical, and other sectors."

Earlier: In May, Vitaliy Savelyev, Russias Minister of Transport, said that the Western sanctions have "virtually wrecked all logistics" in Russia.
Roman Petrenko  Monday, 4 July 2022, 22:51

Russian forces fired missiles at Sumy Oblast on 4 July in two attacks, injuring six people.

Source: Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, head of Sumy Oblast Military Administration, on Telegram

Details: The Russians fired missiles at a school in the hromada (Amalgamated Territorial Community - ed.) of Esman after 13:00. Four people were injured.

The Russians destroyed a commercial facility and power grids with mortar fire in the hromada of Nova Sloboda at about 17:00.

After 18:00, mortar fire started coming from Russian territory, targeting the hromada of Bilopillia in Sumy Oblast. [There were] 24 mortar bursts. The aggressors also used a drone to drop a grenade.

The Russians launched missiles targeting one of the villages in the hromada of Bilopillia twice between 19:00 and 20:00. They fired a total of 5 missiles. There also have been 4 bursts of mortar fire. The mortar fire and attacks with self-propelled guns continued after 21:00. At least two people were injured.
Sainsbury's said it still expected underlying pre-tax profit for the year to be between 630m and 690m. Photo: Hannah McKay/Reuters

Sainsbury's (SBRY.L) has reported a fall in sales as shoppers cut back on spending amid intensifying "pressure on household budgets".

Sainsbury's chief executive Simon Roberts said the chain was "doing everything we can to keep prices low".

We really understand how hard it is for millions of households right now and thats why we are investing 500m and doing everything we can to keep our prices low, especially on the products customers buy most often, he said.

The pressure on household budgets will only intensify over the remainder of the year and I am very clear that doing the right thing for our customers and colleagues will remain at the very top of our agenda.

Read more: UK disposable income fall 3% as price rises force more to borrow to pay bills

The group said that same-store sales, excluding fuel, were down 4% in the 16 weeks to June 25 compared with the same period a year ago. Grocery sales fell 2.4% in the period, partly reflecting strong comparative figures from last year when the hospitality industry was largely closed due to lockdowns.

Shares were up in early morning trading despite the drop in sales.

Roberts said some shoppers are switching from brand-name products to Sainsbury's cheaper own-brand alternatives.

Last month, a BBC-commissioned survey suggested that people were cutting back on food, fuel and clothes as prices rise.

Were working hard to reduce costs right across the business so that we can keep investing in these areas that customers care most about, Roberts added.

The progress we are making on improving value, quality, innovation and service is reflected in our improved grocery volume market share.

The retailer said its improved value position has helped its performance against competitors, with the group investing heavily into improving prices, such as through its Sainsburys Quality, Aldi Price Match campaign.

The company also revealed that fuel sales jumped 48.5% over the period, driven by increases in the price of petrol and diesel.

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Read more: UK shop prices jump at the fastest pace in almost 14 years

Sales at Argos, which the supermarket group acquired in 2016, were down 10.5% year on year in the 16 weeks to June 25. That followed a 20% decline in the final quarter of the previous financial year.

Sainsbury's said it still expected its underlying pretax profit for the year to be between 630m and 690m.

Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor, said: "Although the company is maintaining guidance for full-year underlying pre-tax profit to come in between 630m and 690m, this would represent a decline from the previous years number of 730m, underlining the pressure on sales despite the groups other strategic measures.

"Despite something of a relief bounce in opening exchanges, the share price has reflected the companys current travails, having dropped by 23% over the last year, as compared to a marginal gain of 1% for the wider FTSE 100. Competition in the sector remains intense, ranging from a resurgent Tesco to the price discounters Aldi and Lidl."

Matt Britzman, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, added: Jubilee celebrations might have provided a temporary distraction for consumers who indulged in Pimms, Prosecco and strawberries, but were very much back to reality now.

"It doesnt come as much of a surprise that management are warning of a consumer thats watching every penny as the cost-of-living crisis takes its toll, and the groups expecting that pain to only get. Its positive then to see guidance remain intact, though its worth remembering its been raised and lowered already this year."

Watch: Worst 'yet to come' for food price rises that could last over a year  Ex-Sainsbury's CEO
(Bloomberg) -- SAS AB filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after a pilots strike grounded a majority of the Scandinavian airlines flights, worsening the travel chaos thats gripped Europe at the height of the summer season.

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The carrier canceled 236 flights on Tuesday, or 78% of planned departures, according to tracking website FlightAware.com. Travelers reported widespread disruptions at airports in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, where SAS has hubs.

The company has said the pilots walkout threatens its existence. The flight cancellations have turned the Nordic region into a new chokepoint in Europes snarled travel networks, following cuts to many airlines schedules and growing labor unrest.

The Chapter 11 filing will help tackle a crippling debt burden, SAS said. Though other European airlines have seen surging demand this summer after pandemic restrictions eased, the Scandinavian carrier has had a slower-than-expected recovery, and its been struggling with structural problems that predated the Covid crisis.

The Stockholm-based company is in well advanced discussions with a number of lenders to secure additional debtor-in-possession financing for up to $700 million, according to a statement on Tuesday. Shares fell as much as 13.2% in Stockholm to a record low of 0.536 kronor per share.

The legal move comes as the Nordic regions biggest carrier remains in talks with its creditors to convert 20 billion Swedish kronor ($1.9 billion) of outstanding debt and hybrid notes into shares while seeking to raise additional equity for about $1 billion.

SAS, which already restructured its debt in 2020, has been burdened by an uncompetitive cost structure that has prevented it from reaching its full potential, chairman Carsten Dilling said in a conference call on Tuesday. Its recovery from the Covid-19 slump has been dented by personnel costs, high debt and strikes.

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Read more: SAS Shareholders Approve $1.6 Billion Recapitalization Plan

SAS and certain of its subsidiaries filed voluntary petitions in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The airline said it expects to complete the court-supervised process within nine to 12 months.

Pilot Strike

The decision to start court proceedings was accelerated by the pilots strike, which went into effect immediately and left some travelers stranded. The airline said it would issue refunds or vouchers to affected passengers.

SAS chose the US over other jurisdictions for the Chapter 11 filing because it allows operations to continue while the company is restructuring, and the fleet stays under control of the company, according to the CEO.

Bankruptcy processes in the US are open to foreign companies that have assets or operations in the country.

The chapter 11 process gives us legal tools to accelerate our transformation, while being able to continue to operate the business as usual, Chief Executive Officer Anko van der Werff said no the call.

In the filing, the carrier listed assets worth between $10 billion and $50 billion, and liabilities between $1 billion and $10 billion. The debt pile includes 6 billion kronor of hybrid notes bought by the governments of Denmark and Sweden during the last bailout in 2020, as well as commercial hybrid notes, lease liabilities, Swiss-franc bonds and various term loans.

Sweden, Denmark

The company has been struggling to get the backing of its largest shareholders for the restructuring plan.

While Denmark said its open to adding to its holding, Swedens government flagged it will accept a conversion of debt it is owed into equity, but wont participate in a new capital raise. The two governments have a 21.8% stake each in SAS.

The Norwegian government, one of the creditors and a former shareholder of the company, also said wont participate in a share sale.

Wallenberg Investments, the vehicle of one of Swedens wealthiest families and a minority shareholder, said it fully supports the decision to file for bankruptcy protection and pointed out how the airline had been burdened with too high costs for decades.

The case is SAS AB, 22-10925, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York.

Read More: Europes Airline Turmoil Spreads as Scandinavia Faces Strike

(Updates with details from conference call with management from fifth paragraph.)

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2022 Bloomberg L.P.
In reference to the Highland Park mass shooting which left at least six dead and dozens injured, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D, IL) said the last time she heard such rapid gunfire was in Iraq and not on American soil.

During a Fourth of July parade in downtown Highland Park, Illinois, a shooter fired a high-powered rifle at a large crowd of watchers full of the elderly and children, from the rooftop of one of the buildings, according to police.

As seen in a clip posted on Twitter shortly after the incident, onlookers initially mistake the sounds of gunfire for fireworks. Many remain seated for several seconds before fleeing from their spots.

More from NextShark: Ex-NFL Assistant Coach Told He Was Not the Right Minority in Job Interview

In a press conference on July 4 following the mass shooting, Duckworth took to the podium following Illinois Gov. Pritzker to comment on the tragedy.

After listening to the videos captured at Highland Park, I thought to myself: the last time I heard a weapon with that capacity firing that rapidly on a Fourth of July was in Iraq. It was not on American soil. We can and we must and we will do better. pic.twitter.com/jKxDcAn5eq More from NextShark: Shocking video of women diners brutally attacked by men sparks China nationwide outrage  Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) July 5, 2022

I just listened to the sound of that gunfire from one of the videos that was captured, said Duckworth, with law enforcement behind her. And let me tell you that the last time I heard a weapon with that capacity firing that rapidly on a Fourth of July was Iraq.

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More from NextShark: Man Charged for Fatal Stabbing of Portland Kimchi Entrepreneur

It was not the United States of America.

Sen. Duckworth is a decorated war veteran and Purple Heart recipient. While serving in Iraq in 2004, a helicopter she was co-piloting was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. She lost both of her legs as a result of the attack.

The senator also added that bipartisan compromise on gun laws was not enough, calling on the need to ban assault weapons.

We have to do more to keep our communities safe. We have to get rid of assault weapons, high capacity magazines and so many other additional common sense reforms that majorities of Americans are crying out for.

She finished her statement by insisting, We can and we should and we will do better.

Featured Image via WGN News
RCEP keeps releasing dividends

09:09, July 05, 2022 By Wang Wenzheng ( People's Daily

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) has entered into force for more than six months. Constantly expanding its circle of friends, the regional free trade agreement has released huge dividends for enterprises and consumers from participating countries in the past half a year.

The first direct export shipment under the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership starts at the Damaiyu port, Yuhuan, Taizhou, east China's Zhejiang province, June 6, 2022. (People's Daily Online/Duan Junli)

The coming into force of the RCEP has lowered market access, thus allowing more Chinese products to get into the international market.

Our company has applied for nine RCEP Certificates of Origin for ceramic tiles exported to South Korea, which involve 2.58 million yuan ($384,988) of products. We are expected to enjoy a tariff reduction of over 100,00 yuan, said Zhu Zhifang, a ceramic tile producer in south Chinas Guangdong province.

Besides, more high-quality imports are entering the Chinese consumption market thanks to the RCEP, said an official from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM).

During the first half of this year, we saw more and more premium products from overseas and the price of some of them was going down, said a citizen surnamed Chen from Beijing.

The RCEP lowers the cost of imported products by eliminating 90 percent of the tariffs on goods traded between its signatories. The high-level trade facilitation measures under the agreement also allows consumers to buy imported products at a fairer price and a faster speed.

The RCEP is the world's largest platform of institutional opening up. Its participating countries account for around 30 percent of the world's total population, economy and trade volume. As a free trade pact with enormous market potential, the RCEP is expanding win-win benefits for all countries related.

Consumers buy imported products at a shopping center in a comprehensive bonded area in Jinyi New Area, Jinhua, east China's Zhejiang province, Jan. 17, 2022. (People's Daily Online/Hu Xiaofei)

In the first quarter of this year, Thailands total trade volume under the RCEP exceeded 2.7 trillion Thai baht ($75.8 billion), up 23 percent year on year. In particular, the growth in the agricultural sector surged by 43 percent.

Monthong durians have a huge market in China. They make up a majority of our products, said a farmer running a durian farm in Chanthaburi province, Thailand. The woman told Peoples Daily that she will breed better varieties to cater to the diversified demands of international consumers.

In the same period, Vietnams total trade volume with China, Japan, South Korea, and other ASEAN countries grew by 10 percent. Japans trade volume with other RCEP participating countries neared $200 billion, accounting for 47.6 percent of its total foreign trade.

Since the RCEP entered into force for South Korea on February 1 this year, the countrys export hit $63.48 billion in March, up 18.2 percent year on year. Since 1956, this was the greatest amount the country has ever seen.

According to estimation, the RCEP is expected to help its members increase export, stocks of outbound investment and GDP by 10.4 percent, 2.6 percent, and 1.8percent, respectively by 2025.

HSBC forecasted that the share of RCEP members will rise to over 50 percent of global output in 2030. A report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said the RCEP has become a new focus of global trade for its size and vitality, which would significantly mitigate the negative impacts from COVID-19 on regional economy and restore confidence in global recovery.

A number of promotional activities about the RCEP were held before the agreement went into force, which greatly helped us further expand the Japanese market, said Li Hui, whos in charge of customs affairs of a special material company in Zhuhai, south China's Guangdong province.

Over the past six months, local governments and departments across China have rolled out substantial measures for better releasing the dividends of the RCEP.

Earlier this year, the MOMCOM, together with other departments, issued a guideline on the high-quality implementation of the RCEP, guiding local governments, industries, and enterprises to better suit the opener environment and more fierce competition after the RCEP came into force.

A representative of the Liuzhou branch of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade issues the first RCEP Certificate of Origin in Liuzhou, south Chinas Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, to a local company, Jan. 1, 2022. (Peoples Daily/Li Hanchi)

In April, the MOFCOM held a thematic training event about the RCEP for major enterprises. The event introduced the RCEP, the rules of RCEP market access and origin, access commitments of RCEP service trade and investment market, as well as the challenges and opportunities facing Chinese industries.

Chinas efforts to align the Chinese market with the RCEP and fulfill the countrys commitment to opening up mirror its resolution and sincerity to further expand opening up.

China takes the RCEP as an important platform to deepen institutional opening up, and is ready to fulfill 701 binding obligations and 170 encouraging obligations under the agreement, said Gu Xueming, president of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.

The country requests government departments and local governments to fulfill the RCEP at a high level, so as to nurture a sound environment for deepening reform in accordance with RCEP standards, Gu added.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
A woman pauses to visit a memorial in Port Clinton Square in Highland Park on July 11, 2022. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

A number of towns and suburbs on Chicagos North Shore, and elsewhere, have canceled their fireworks and other July 4 events in response to the mass shooting Monday at the parade in Highland Park.

In Highland Park, the parade was to have been followed by Fourth Fest, the Bitter Jester Music Festival at Wolters Field and fireworks, all canceled Monday after more than a dozen people were shot, at least five of them fatally, in the north suburb. No concerts had been scheduled Monday night at the local Ravinia Festival. The Ravinia family is reaching out with love to our Highland Park community, the festival posted on social media.

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Elsewhere:

Deerfield

The second day of Deerfield Family Days and the parade have been canceled and the village just west of Highland Park. An alert on the Deerfield website urged residents with any information about the shooting to call 911 or the FBI tip line.

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Glencoe

Village officials announced on social media they were canceling the Fourth of July parade and urged residents to remain home with the threat still at large. The village posted on Twitter: There have been no incidents or direct threats to Glencoe. Public Safety are monitoring the situation and recommend avoiding public and crowded areas at this time.

Due to local events, the Village has decided to cancel todays Fourth of July parade out of an abundance of caution. There have been no incidents or direct threats to Glencoe. Public Safety are monitoring the situation and recommend avoiding public and crowded areas at this time.  Village of Glencoe (@VGlencoe) July 4, 2022

All Glencoe Park District facilities will remain closed and all programs will be canceled on July 5 according to a tweet from the village.

Evanston

The beaches in Evanston were closed, and the Fourth of July Parade and fireworks were canceled out of an abundance of caution. A city news release stated: Our thoughts and prayers are with our neighbors to the north.

Glenview

The Fourth of July parade and fireworks have been canceled, and the Glenview Park District has closed all its facilities and canceled all programs through Tuesday, July 5, according to Glenview police.

Lake Forest

The north suburb announced that due to the shooting in Highland Park, the City of Lake Forest is canceling the Annual Lake Forest Festival and Fireworks at Deerpath Community Park out of an abundance of caution. The Forest Park Beach is also closed.

Elgin

The City of Elgin is postponing celebrations at Festival Park, a concert and fireworks, due to both the weather and events in Highland Park.

Skokie

The downtown parade, live music and fireworks have been canceled, as announced on the park districts website.

Northbrook

All remaining July Fourth events have been canceled, according to an alert on the village website. Our thoughts are with our Highland Park neighbors.

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Morton Grove

The Morton Grove Police announced on Twitter that amid the developing situation, the parade, carnival, Morton Grove Days festival and fireworks would be canceled.

Mount Prospect

Fireworks in Melas Park and the rest of the Lions Club Festival are canceled, according to the village.

Buffalo Grove

The village has canceled Fourth of July events including the Symphonic Band concert and fireworks.

Arlington Heights

The citys annual Frontier Days closed for its final day Monday.

Huntley

Fireworks July 4 are being postponed in the far northwest suburb, out of the utmost respect to those that lost their lives in Highland Park today.

Itasca

The fireworks and celebration have been canceled, according to the village website.

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Rolling Meadows

Fireworks at the Community Center have been canceled and may be rescheduled to a later date.

Oak Park

Oak Park fireworks are canceled in response to the tragic mass shooting, according to a village alert.

Libertyville

Planned fireworks will be postponed to a date to be announced later, Libertyville posted on its website. Like all surrounding communities, we are saddened by the tragic events today in Highland Park.

Lombard

Consistent with the recommendation of the DuPage County Sheriffs Office, the village has canceled fireworks.

Lincolnshire

The towns annual Red, White, & BOOM! fireworks, parade and cardboard boat regatta have been canceled out of an abundance of caution.

Mundelein

Mayor Steve Lentz posted that village has decided to cancel all July Fourth festivities this evening due to the Highland Park tragedy.

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Vernon Hills

The police in northwest suburban Vernon Hills announced on Twitter the fireworks would be canceled.

Winnetka

The local park district announced fireworks at Duke Childs Field would be canceled out of respect for the victims of the shooting in Highland Park earlier today.

Kenilworth

Afternoon Briefing Daily Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon. >

The Village of Kenilworth has closed their beaches until further notice according to their website saying, We feel it is best to avoid permitting large gatherings until the perpetrator(s) are captured.

Elk Grove Village

Mayor Craig Johnson posted a message that the Fourth of July concert and fireworks would be canceled, out of caution and consideration. He added that the fireworks would contribute to Elk Grove Rotaryfest on July 23.

Vernon Hills

Out of an abundance of caution, the village has canceled a concert and fireworks at Century Park. We extend deepest condolences to our neighbors in Highland Park.

Wilmette

The Village of Wilmette Park District has closed all facilities in response to the shooting and an increased police presence will be downtown, according to a news release from the village.

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Waukegan

A news release from the City of Waukegan said fireworks have been canceled in response to the shooting saying it stands in solidarity with our neighbors in Highland Park.

White Sox

The planned Monday night game between the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins will play as scheduled, starting with a moment of silence and without the postgame fireworks.

Our hearts are with the Highland Park community. pic.twitter.com/QMfJ9xdfoj  Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) July 4, 2022

dgeorge@chicagotribune.com
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Forces of the Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics are moving towards the Donetsk region after Russian forces took full control of Luhansk region last week, the Russian state news agency TASS cited Donetsk People's Republic leader Denis Pushilin as saying on Tuesday.

Russia has made control of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, which together make up the Donbas region, the central objective of its "special military operation" in Ukraine.

Though Russia took the final Ukrainian strongholds in Luhansk region last week, Ukraine still controls around 45% of the neighbouring Donetsk region.

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
It's easy to match the overall market return by buying an index fund. While individual stocks can be big winners, plenty more fail to generate satisfactory returns. Unfortunately the Beazer Homes USA, Inc. (NYSE:BZH) share price slid 35% over twelve months. That falls noticeably short of the market decline of around 18%. On the bright side, the stock is actually up 25% in the last three years. More recently, the share price has dropped a further 23% in a month.

So let's have a look and see if the longer term performance of the company has been in line with the underlying business' progress.

Check out our latest analysis for Beazer Homes USA

There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect underlying business performance. One imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.

Even though the Beazer Homes USA share price is down over the year, its EPS actually improved. Of course, the situation might betray previous over-optimism about growth.

It's fair to say that the share price does not seem to be reflecting the EPS growth. So it's well worth checking out some other metrics, too.

In contrast, the 3.4% drop in revenue is a real concern. If the market sees the weak revenue as jeopardising EPS, that could explain the lower share price.

The company's revenue and earnings (over time) are depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

We know that Beazer Homes USA has improved its bottom line over the last three years, but what does the future have in store? You can see how its balance sheet has strengthened (or weakened) over time in this free interactive graphic.

A Different Perspective

While the broader market lost about 18% in the twelve months, Beazer Homes USA shareholders did even worse, losing 35%. Having said that, it's inevitable that some stocks will be oversold in a falling market. The key is to keep your eyes on the fundamental developments. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 1.5% over the last half decade. We realise that Baron Rothschild has said investors should "buy when there is blood on the streets", but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality business. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. To that end, you should learn about the 3 warning signs we've spotted with Beazer Homes USA (including 1 which is a bit concerning) .

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Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of companies we expect will grow earnings.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US exchanges.

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



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Sir Keir Starmer gave a speech in which he pledged that Labour would not take Britain back into the Single Market - Leon Neal/Getty Images

Sir Keir Starmer is facing a Labour revolt over Brexit after he vowed not to take Britain back into the Single Market.

In a keynote speech on Britains future outside the European Union, Sir Keir pledged to make Brexit work and said he would not seek to join the Single Market or a customs union.

But before he had even delivered his remarks, the Labour leader faced a backlash from within his own ranks, with Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, openly contradicting him.

It comes as Sir Keir is expected to find out this week whether he will be fined over beergate, when he was caught on camera drinking a beer in a local MPs office after a day of campaigning for local elections last spring.

At the time, Covid rules meant indoor gatherings were banned except for work purposes.

Sir Keir has always maintained that he did not break any rules on the basis that the dinner was work-related, but has promised to resign if he is sanctioned and reiterated that promise on Monday.

Mr Khan is seen as a potential contender should the Labour leader be forced to stand down.

Speaking on Monday, Sir Keir said: Under Labour, Britain will not go back into the EU. We will not be joining the Single Market. We will not be joining a customs union.

We will not return to freedom of movement to create short-term fixes. Instead, we will invest in our people and our places and deliver on the promise our country has.

However, speaking to the BBC ahead of the speech, Mr Khan said he believed the UK should join the EU Single Market because it would make the countrys future more prosperous.

Told that it sounded as though he disagreed with Sir Keir, he replied: Keirs job is to be leader of the Labour Party, my job is to be the Mayor of London. Thatll mean on many occasions I agree with the Labour Party, on some occasions I may disagree.

Londoners elected me to be their champion, their advocate. I believe that our city and our countrys future is best served being members of the Single Market.

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Mr Khan was not the only senior Labour figure to voice dissent against the party line. Stella Creasy, the MP who chairs the Labour Movement for Europe, said: We are only just beginning to understand the damage Brexit is doing to Britain.

So we urge Keir to make sure nothing is off the table as a solution in the fight to tackle the cost of living crisis and protect jobs, trade and security.

Sir Keirs position on Brexit also potentially puts Labour on a collision course with the Liberal Democrats, whose stated aim is to rejoin the Single Market.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats have been accused of operating an unofficial pact in order to win by-elections amid speculation they could form a coalition in the event that Labour wins a general election, but without enough seats to form a majority.

In that situation, the Lib Dems could put pressure on Labour to back down on their Brexit stance.

In the behind-closed-doors speech for the Centre for European Reform think tank, Sir Keir acknowledged that his Brexit position would not please everyone in his party.

After stating that Labour would not rejoin a customs union or the Single Market, he said: I know some people dont want to hear that, but it is my job to be frank and honest  you will always get that with me.

Nothing about revisiting those rows will help stimulate growth or bring down food prices or help British business thrive in the modern world.

It would simply be a recipe for more division, it would distract us from taking on the challenges facing people and it would ensure Britain remained stuck for another decade.

Sir Keir also used the speech to set out how he would fix the Northern Ireland Protocol by eliminating most border checks and creating a new veterinary agreement for agricultural products between the UK and EU.

We will work with business to put in place a better scheme to allow low-risk goods to enter Northern Ireland without unnecessary checks, he said.

He added he would tear down unnecessary barriers to trade as well as strengthening security cooperation with European allies.

Sir Keir campaigned to remain in the EU during the 2016 referendum, before serving as Jeremy Corbyns shadow Brexit secretary and backing a second referendum.

But his speech on Monday was his strongest signal yet that he now wants to steer the party away from any association with the Remain camp.

Last month, a shadow minister said Labour would seek to at least rejoin the EUs Single Market and a customs union once in power.

Anna McMorrin, a shadow justice minister, told supporters that Labour should renegotiate the current deal with the EU, suggesting that could be a path to rejoining fully.

Speaking to the Labour in Communication group, Ms McMorrin said when asked whetherBritain could return to the Single Market: I hope so, I really hope so.

But she later rowed back on her comments, saying: Labour policy on Brexit is clear. We have left the EU, Labour voted for the deal. It is now the job of all of us to make it work.

David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary and another potential leadership candidate, has also backed reworking ties with Brussels.

Of course, if we were in government there are aspects of our relationship with the European Union that do need to be determined, he told LBC last month.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Spirit Airlines will get valuable takeoff and landing times that Southwest Airlines is abandoning at busy Newark-Liberty International Airport near New York City.

The U.S. Transportation Department said Tuesday that Spirit is most likely to provide the lowest fares to the most consumers at the airport in Newark, New Jersey.

JetBlue Airways  which is locked in a bidding war with Frontier Airlines to buy Spirit  also tried to get the 16 available slots, and Alaska Airlines applied for four of them.

Southwest acquired the takeoff and landing rights at the congested airport in 2010, after the Justice Department required United Airlines to give them as a condition of buying Continental Airlines. United is still the dominant airline at Newark. Southwest dropped Newark in 2019 to consolidate its area service at New York's LaGuardia Airport.

Federal officials limit takeoff and landing rights at big airports in New York and Washington in an attempt to avoid gridlock.

The Transportation Department said that because of concern about canceled and delayed flights, it will require Spirit to report more than the usual amount of information about any disruptions at Newark.
Sadie Sink said she laughed the first time she saw Vecna on the "Stranger Things" set.

The villain's look was achieved with prosthetics on actor Jamie Campbell Bower rather than CGI.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Stranger Things" season four, part one.

Sadie Sink said that the first time she saw Jamie Campbell Bower in costume as Vecna while filming "Stranger Things" season 4, she burst out in laughter.

Sink has played Max Mayfield on Netflix's hit supernatural drama "Stranger Things" since its second season, which premiered in 2017. The final two episodes of the fourth season of "Stranger Things" were released on July 1.

While Sink had met the actor who plays Vecna, Jamie Campbell Bower, at a table read prior to the pandemic, she had no idea what his villainous form was going to look like before seeing him on set to film a confrontation between their two characters.

"When I first saw him, I started laughing uncontrollably," Sink told Vulture. "Just total laughter. I didn't know what I was looking at, you know? I was scared, but fascinated, and feeling such a weird array of emotions that it just came out as laughter."

Vecna's appearance fits right in with the slimy, vine-based aesthetic of the Upside Down, a parallel dimension from which the series' monstrous antagonists are based. His look, however, wasn't achieved through CGI but with prosthetics that Bower wore, Insider previously reported.

The official "Stranger Things" Instagram account posted a featurette showing Bower getting into costume, a process that the actor told The Hollywood Reporter took more than seven hours.

Sink told Vulture that Bower was "so convincing and believable" as Vecna that she "forgot there was a human" underneath.

Furthermore, she wasn't the only actor to have a visceral reaction to Vecna on set. Bower told Variety that Millie Bobby Brown, who plays Eleven on the show, "burst into tears" the first time that she saw him on set.

"I was looking at Vecna and I remember meeting Jamie in person, out of his Vecna costume," Sink told Vulture. "I heard his voice before I saw his face. And I was like, 'Oh my god, is that Jamie? Is this a sick joke?' Then I realized that's what he looked like underneath all of that."

"Stranger Things" season four is streaming on Netflix.

Read the original article on Insider
A look at some of today's top stories, the weather forecast and a peek back in history.

Women of color in Arizona, particularly Latina and Black women, will disproportionately feel the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, experts say.

Tribes across the U.S. and in Arizona are studying three Supreme Court decisions, and ponder what another case means for the future.

Fairmont Scottsdale Princess is getting ready to unveil new high-end rooms and suites for an extra luxurious experience. Here's what awaits guests.

Today, you can expect it to be partly sunny, with a high near 103 degrees. Clear at night, with a low near 83 degrees. Get the full forecast here.

For more stories that matter, subscribe to azcentral.com.

Today in history

On this date in 1865, the Secret Service Division of the U.S. Treasury Department was founded in Washington, D.C., with the mission of suppressing counterfeit currency.

In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act.

In 1940, during World War II, Britain and the Vichy government in France broke off diplomatic relations.

In 1943, the Battle of Kursk began during World War II; in the weeks that followed, the Soviets were able to repeatedly repel the Germans, who eventually withdrew in defeat.

In 2011, a jury in Orlando, Florida, found Casey Anthony, 25, not guilty of murder, manslaughter and child abuse in the 2008 disappearance and death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: AZ Briefing: Supreme Court's Roe reversal felt by AZ Latina women
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, center, looks on as Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto, left, and Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde bump fists after a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels in January. JOHN THYS/AFP via Getty Images

NATO members signed an agreement to move Sweden and Finland to the final stage of joining the bloc.

Now parliaments of current NATO members will vote on their membership, and will likely approve.

Their application was prompted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and is a blow to Putin.

Sweden and Finland on Tuesday advanced closer in their applications to join NATO, decisions made after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Ambassadors of the alliance's current members signed the bloc's "Accession Protocols" on Tuesday, leaving just one step left for the nations to join the Western military alliance.

The two countries now just need the unanimous support of all of NATO's current members to be able to join the alliance.

This now seems assured after NATO member Turkey dropped its objections to their joining after striking a security deal with the two nations.

It is not clear how long it would take between the signing of the Accession Protocol and Sweden and Finland's joining the bloc. Previous processes have taken two years, though NATO has said that it would fast-track the two Nordic countries' applications.

"This is a good day for Finland and Sweden. And a good day for NATO," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at the start of the signing ceremony on Tuesday. "With 32 nations around the table, we will be even stronger."

"And our people will be even safer as we face the biggest security crisis in decades."

NATO officials finished their talks with representatives of the two countries on Monday, marking the completion of one of the steps in the NATO membership process.

Sweden and Finland already have a close relationship with NATO, having taken part in military drills together. The military bloc see the two countries as bringing immediate benefit, especially in terms of fighter jets.

Sweden and Finland both first applied to join NATO in May, moving away from decades of neutrality after Russia invaded Ukraine.

NATO's enlargement is the opposite of what Russian President Putin wanted.

Story continues

He has tried to justify his invasion of Ukraine by arguing that he was reacting to the possibility of NATO expanding eastwards.

Instead, he has prompted attempts at such an expansion.

Read the original article on Business Insider
LUGANO, Switzerland (Reuters) - Switzerland has given a cool response to calls from Ukraine's prime minister to use frozen assets of ultra-wealthy Russians to help fund his country's $750 billion reconstruction project.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal told a conference in Lugano that $300-500 billion of Russian assets had been frozen by the United States, European Union and Britain, money he said could help rebuild wrecked schools, hospitals and homes.

"We propose to find (a) formula to create national and international legislation for (creating the) possibility of confiscation of frozen assets in case of unprovoked aggression," Shmygal said, referring to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Such a step would improve global security by deterring unprovoked and unjustified aggression, he told a news conference as the two-day recovery conference wrapped up.

But Switzerland, which in May reported 6.3 billion Swiss francs ($6.50 billion) of frozen Russian assets, has resisted an automatic handover of wealth. The country, which has adopted EU sanctions against Russians, has long been a popular destination for Moscow's elite and a holding place for Russian wealth.

Swiss President Ignazio Cassis said it was important to protect individuals against the power of the state and to create a legal basis for confiscating funds.

"According to the rules we have in the vast majority of democracies..., we can freeze assets, we can freeze in order to clarify where these assets are from," Cassis told reporters.

But questions about the links between the money and the war in Ukraine and about the proportionality of measures also needed to be addressed, Cassis said.

"Now we can take a decision which is perfect for Ukraine but we create the possibility to take the same decision in many other possibilities and...give much more power to the state and away from the citizen."

($1 = 0.9688 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
TAMPA  Mayor Jane Castor was driving home from an event last year when someone in a nearby car threw a Styrofoam cup out the window.

Then they threw another one, the mayor said.

Castor got the car to pull over. The Uber driver said she told her passenger not to throw trash out the window, but he did it anyway.

Im like, This is our city. This is our home, Castor said. You cant just throw things out the window. The passenger picked up the cups.

I think cleanliness says a lot about your community, Castor said. It just drives me crazy to see litter.

On Saturday, the city is embarking on an anti-littering effort called Keep It Clean, Tampa! aimed at waterways, parks and neighborhoods.

A recently procured, specialized boat named the Litter Skimmer will work the Hillsborough River and the waters off Davis Islands and Bayshore Boulevard.

Litter Skimmer wont pick up submerged trash  like those downtown e-scooters vandals regularly throw into the river  but it will capture floating garbage. Crews will spend eight hours a day, four days a week removing debris on the water, according to a city spokesperson.

The city, the Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful organization and neighborhood leaders are gathering hundreds of volunteers for a trash clean-up. Volunteers are encouraged to clean up their own neighborhoods or pitch in at one of four designated parks on Saturday: Cheney Park at 801 E Yukon St., Borrell Park at 808 E 26th Ave., Gadsden Park at 6901 S MacDill Ave. and Grant Park at 3724 N 54th St.

Volunteers are encouraged to bring sunscreen and wear closed-toed shoes.

Also, volunteers who have their own kayaks can launch at Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park on the west side of the Hillsborough River just south of Interstate 275 for a water clean-up. Boats will be on hand to collect trash from kayakers starting at 9 a.m.

The city has been working on other initiatives, including businesses adopting bus shelters and the installation of catches at the end of stormwater drains to keep litter from getting into the waterways when it rains, Castor said.

This particular day will be the focus, but we want it to continue on, she said.

For more information, go to Tampa.gov/KeepitClean.
Prosecutors on Tuesday filed murder charges against the man suspected of firing upon crowds gathered for a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park on Monday morning, killing at least seven people and injuring more than 30.

Robert E. Bobby Crimo III, 21, is charged with seven counts of first-degree murder in what Lake County States Attorney Eric Rinehart called a premeditated and calculated attack. Crimo was apprehended late Monday afternoon following an hourslong search involving more than 100 law enforcement agencies.

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Rinehart said he anticipates dozens more charges as the investigation continues.

Man accused in Highland Park July 4th parade shooting ordered held without bail; another victim is identified. Read more here >>>

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Crimos attorney Thomas Durkin declined to comment Tuesday, citing the early stage in the proceedings and noting that he has had limited contact with his client.

Details about the attack and the background of the alleged shooter emerged throughout Tuesday, as the Highland Park community continued grieving the losses. Authorities said that in 2019 police were called to Crimos home after he threatened to kill everyone, but he wasnt arrested.

Crimo planned the parade attack for weeks, police and prosecutors allege, then climbed a fire escape ladder to the roof of a building and fired as the Independence Day parade was in full swing. He dressed as a woman in order to evade detection, according to Chris Covelli, a spokesman with the Lake County Major Crime Task Force.

[ These are the victims of the Fourth of July parade shooting in Highland Park ]

After firing dozens of shots, Crimo exited the roof, dropped the rifle, slipped into the crowd and went to his mothers house, Covelli said. The gun that was used in the attack was purchased legally in Illinois by Crimo, authorities said.

Parade attendees described hearing a barrage of bullets while watching floats and marchers on the street. People grabbed children and ran, taking cover in nearby shops. A tuba player recalled watching people running in panic while his band played.

In all, about 45 people were either killed or injured during the attack, authorities said.

The Lake County Major Crime Task Force officials released this photo they say shows suspect Robert "Bobby" E. Crimo III, 21, dressed as a woman in order to evade detection. (Lake County Major Crime Task Force)

Among the dead were Katherine Goldstein, 64, of Highland Park; Irina McCarthy, 35, of Highland Park; Kevin McCarthy, 37, of Highland Park; Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63, of Highland Park; Stephen Straus, 88, of Highland Park; and Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78, of Morelos, Mexico. Officials have not yet released the name of the seventh victim.

The Highland Park community, like so many before us, is devastated, said Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering. We know it will take time to heal.

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The investigation

On Tuesday, officials described a sweeping investigation that involved speaking to witnesses and survivors, viewing footage from cellphones and surveillance cameras and an expedited trace on the weapon conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Investigators havent determined a motive, though Covelli said detectives have been in discussions with Crimo. No one else appears to have been involved in the shooting.

[ Highland Park parade shooting: What to know ]

Investigators believe Crimo disguised himself as a woman in order to hide his facial tattoos and aid in his escape from the scene, according to Covelli.

After the shooting, Crimo walked to his mothers house and borrowed her vehicle, Covelli said. There is no indication he shared anything about his alleged involvement in the shooting with his mother.

Following a police alert for the vehicle, an alert member of community saw it and called 911, Covelli said.

Before being captured, Crimo drove into Wisconsin and returned to the north suburbs, Covelli said.

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After he was apprehended, officers found another rifle in the vehicle, Covelli said, which also appeared to have been legally purchased by Crimo. Three other weapons that were legally purchased were found in his Highwood home.

Investigators are asking members of the community to come forward with any video they may have of Crimo at the parade. They also are trying to identify a female witness who, on surveillance, appeared to see Crimo drop an object inside of a red blanket behind a Ross Cosmetics store near the shooting scene, Covelli said.

People watch as law enforcement continues to investigate the scene along Central Avenue on July 5, 2022, the day after a mass shooting at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

The community has been absolutely terrific as it comes to reporting information they may have, things they may have witnessed, turning over video, Covelli said.

Details on the original purchase of the weapon came from an expedited trace conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the wake of the shooting. The weapon has been described by authorities as high powered.

The expedited trace provided a major lead to investigators, according to Covelli.

He also told the Tribune that the FBI is sending in an expert team to reconstruct the shooting, which means items left along the parade route will likely remain for several days.

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Law enforcement members pick up items left behind by paradegoers along Central Avenue on July 5, 2022. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

The suspect

The full portrait of Crimo remained hazy Tuesday, though some details emerged. Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering told the Today show she remembers being a Cub Scout leader when Crimo was a little boy, and she wondered what allegedly led him to the rooftop above the parade.

(Its) one of those things where you step back and you say, What happened?  she said. How did somebody become this angry, this hateful to then take it out on innocent people who, literally, were just having a family day out?

Crimo posted online videos under the name The Awake Rapper, some with chilling references to violence, including one that features footage of a young man in a bedroom and a classroom along with cartoons of a gunman and people being shot.

[ Purchase of rifle allegedly used in Highland Park massacre highlights limits of Illinois gun laws ]

In September 2019, family members reported that Crimo threatened to kill everyone and that he had a collection of knives, Covelli said. Highland Park police responded to the home and removed 16 knives, a dagger and a sword from the home. Police notified Illinois State Police of the matter, but otherwise didnt have probable cause to make an arrest, authorities said.

An ISP spokeswoman said that at that time, Crimo did not have a firearm owners identification card, required for the purchase of firearms, to revoke or review.

Earlier, in April 2019, police were called because Crimo had attempted suicide about a week earlier. Officers determined that the matter was being handled by mental health professionals.

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Attorney Steve Greenberg, who is representing Crimos parents, said they are heartbroken and in shock. They have close ties to the community and many of the shooting victims are friends, Greenberg said.

Imagine waking up in the morning knowing that theres a real good chance that your son that youve raised, that you loved, that you nurtured through life, may spend the rest of his life in prison, Greenberg said. Imagine you wake up and you have a realization that this person that has taken so much of your life to raise them has done something like this. I think theyre in shock.

[ Vice President Kamala Harris visits Highland Park following shooting and calls for federal ban on assault weapons ]

Greenberg said Crimos parents did not monitor his online activities, and were not aware of some of the videos with disturbing imagery that Crimo apparently posted.

There werent really any warning signs that the family saw. They dont know of any reason why he would have done this, he said. These are very loving, caring and responsible parents, and if they had had concerns they would have expressed them.

Public records indicate Crimo is the son of Bob Crimo, former owner of a Highland Park deli. The elder Crimo unsuccessfully ran against Rotering for the mayors job in 2019.

Karen Warner, spokeswoman for Township High School District 113, said Crimo attended Highland Park High School for his freshman year but left two days into his sophomore year.

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Ethan Absler, 22, said he shared a gym class with Crimo and recalled him as alternatively reserved and disruptive. Once, he said, Crimo was suspended for plastering the school with stickers promoting his music, but Absler saw no sign of the violence Crimo now stands accused of committing.

I was never worried about it, he said. The people Im friends with, who had (other) classes with him, felt like he had some behavioral red flags but nothing that indicated he was violent or angry at the town or a specific group of people. It just seemed like classic bad school behavior.

Matt Loarie, 23, said he frequently saw Crimo at the family deli, a popular hangout spot for kids in the suburb. As they grew up, though, Loarie said Crimo appeared troubled.

I never even thought that would happen, but, I mean, the kid was kind of off, Loarie said. He seemed like he had some demons he was struggling with.

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With a shaking voice, the suspects uncle, Paul Crimo, expressed his condolences to those affected by the shooting.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families, he said. Thats from the bottom of my heart. Im heartbroken, and Ill probably be heartbroken forever.

[ In painful, chilling detail, witnesses recount deadly mass shooting at Highland Park Fourth of July parade ]

Other than the 2019 suicide attempt and alleged threat that prompted police to confiscate his knives and sword, Crimos record contains a 2016 tobacco possession violation in Mundelein that was disposed of with a fine and 90 days of court supervision.

Tech platforms rapidly erased Crimos online trail after the shooting, but enough was captured by the Tribune and other news organizations to create a disturbing but incomplete picture.

Much of Crimos content involves his fledgling musical career. He went by the performing name Awake the Rapper  Awake is tattooed above his left eyebrow  and Crimos uncle told WFLD-Ch. 32 his nephew was a YouTube rapper and an artist.

Crimos music videos on YouTube are imbued with a morose and sometimes threatening mood, showing cartoons of a man shooting a rifle and bleeding figures. Some songs and lyrics posted on other sites contain incredibly violent imagery.

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Crimos videos also showcase a symbol of interlocking triangles some observers compare to a rune adopted by a Finnish far-right group. But the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is still poring over Crimos online record, said its meaning, if any, remains unclear.

While there are guesses that the symbol the suspect used is similar to some extremist symbols, we have not unearthed the personal meaning of this symbol, said Rachel Carroll Rivas, senior research analyst with the SPLCs Intelligence Project.

Crimos politics are equally opaque. A Tribune photographer captured him at a 2020 Trump rally wearing a Wheres Waldo costume, but its not clear he was a genuine fan: One of his Twitter accounts shows that among dozens of entertainers, gamers and mainstream news sources, the only politicians he followed were Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

A musician who said on Twitter that he worked with Crimo until 2018  and posted photos to prove it  said he did not know Crimo to be on the extreme right or left.

I know that  sounds really interesting. But its not the truth, he wrote. He was an isolated stoner who completely lost touch with reality.

Aftermath

On Tuesday morning, downtown Highland Park was still littered with detritus left behind during the shooting. The parade route was lined with abandoned lawn chairs and strollers.

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Some stunned residents tried to keep to normal routines, while bracing for more news of the dead and injured. Others picked up trash outside of the area still cordoned off by police.

In one case, officers let a sobbing woman through the police tape to retrieve a car seat.

A couple retrieves two car seats on July 5, 2022, in Highland Park, near the scene of Monday's mass shooting. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

Outside of the Highland Park Police Department, two young girls wrote in multicolor chalk on the pavement: Thank you first responders.

Small memorials began emerging in the area on Tuesday. Samantha Lanty and Meghan Higginson, both 20, leaned under yellow crime scene and placed a bouquet of white flowers on the sidewalk. The women recalled attending the parade as a child, as well as growing up attending active shooter drills.

How many events to keep occurring before someone steps up to change something? Lanty said.

Among the injured was Chicago Public Schools teacher Zoe Kolpack, who was shot in the femur while attending the parade with her husband, Stephen; their two young children; her parents; and Stephens family, according to family friend Samantha Whitehead, who is raising money for medical costs.

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[ Highland Park shooting victims include both parents of toddler found wandering alone after gunfire: Are Mommy and Daddy coming soon? boy asked grandfather ]

Whitehead said Stephen Kolpack and Zoes dad, Mike Joyce, were shot in the leg as well, while Stephens brother, Nicholas, was shot in the kneecap. The injuries are not life-threatening, and the Kolpack children were unharmed, Whitehead said.

Whitehead said Zoes mother, Nancy Joyce, grabbed the two small kids and hid in a nearby building for about 45 minutes, until they were given the all-clear.

Meanwhile, Zoes dad was hovering (over) her and protecting her because she couldnt move. And she just said that, like, people were just running past her, and she was just screaming, help, help. She said she felt like it went on for like 30 minutes, Whitehead said.

Whitehead had raised about $140,000 through GoFundMe as of Tuesday morning.

A man pulls a child's trike from the parade route along Central Avenue, July 5, 2022, following the mass shooting in Highland Park on Monday. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

Afternoon Briefing Daily Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon. >

In a statement, CPS said it was devastated to learn that one of our CPS teachers and her family members are among those who were injured in Mondays mass shooting in Highland Park. Zoe, who has worked for the district since 2017, teaches preschool at William Dever Elementary School on the Northwest Side. CPS said support services will be available to support the Dever Elementary staff and students as needed.

A block from the parade route, a group of men met for coffee near a Starbucks, where theyve gathered every morning for 15 years. They had to bring their morning coffee from Dunkin because their store remained closed.

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We meet here every day to talk normally about fun stuff. Today is not so fun, Highland Park resident Andrew Stone said. This is such a small community. Were all going to know someone who was injured.

The men tried to find out who among the people they knew was shot. A family friend took a bullet to the foot. A woman at the temple had been killed, they found out.

They argued over why it happened here, in the tight-knit community they once thought was safe. Across the table, Jim Terman said he had been watching the parade from the block where the shooting happened. He cant stop thinking about it.

It just runs through your mind, he said.

Freelance reporter Clifford Ward contributed.
Two Shelby County Sheriff's Office deputies shot a man after he hit one of the deputies with his vehicle Monday night in Cordova, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said.

The deputies responded to a disturbance call in the 9200 block of Durhamshire Drive around 9 p.m. when they encountered the man, TBI said. The man ran over one of the deputies with his car, the Shelby County Sheriff's Office said in a tweet. Both deputies then shot into the car, according to TBI.

TBI agents remain on the scene this morning of an officer-involved shooting from Monday night in Cordova.



The involved individual as well as two Shelby County deputies were hospitalized following the incident.



MORE:https://t.co/IyrlseIuN7  Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (@TBInvestigation) July 5, 2022

The man was taken to Region One Health in critical condition, according to SCSO. Both deputies were hospitalized with non-critical injuries, TBI said, and a SCSO spokesperson told the Commercial Appeal both officers have been released from the hospital.

The Shelby County Sheriff's Office identified the suspect as 23-year-old Charlie Gibson. He remained in critical condition as of Tuesday afternoon.

Gibson has a criminal record, including charges for theft, felony possession of a firearm, possession of marijuana with intent to sell, and aggravated assault.

He spent five years in prison before being released in October 2020, however many of the records are spotty.

TBI is investigating the shooting at the request of Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich. TBI will submit findings to the DA, who will review the officers' actions.

SCSO is on scene at the 9200 block of Durhamshire Dr. in Cordova where at around 9pm a suspect involved in a disturbance ran over a deputy. The deputy shot at the driver. The deputy was transported non-critical to Baptist East. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/GvYh6sT0wy  ShelbyTNSheriff (@ShelbyTNSheriff) July 5, 2022

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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Find reporter Rachel Wegner at rawegner@tennessean.com or on Twitter @rachelannwegner.

Lucas Finton is a breaking news reporter for the Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at lucas.finton@commercialappeal.com and followed on Twitter @LucasFinton.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Man shot by Shelby Co. deputies in Cordova, Tennessee officials say
Three people were killed and seven people were wounded at a mass shooting in Gary, Indiana.

The shooting took place in the early hours of Tuesday morning at around 12.45am at whats thought to have been a July 4 block party.

Gary police have said that they were called to the scene before 1am following reports of several people with gunshot wounds, according to NBC5 Chicago.

When police arrived at the scene of the shooting, they found three people who were unresponsive and seven with gunshot wounds.

Police have said that information gathered in the early stages of the investigation indicated that a holiday block party may have been going on when the shooting erupted.

The Lake County Coroners office said that those who were killed included Marquise Hall, 26, Laurence Mangum, 25, and Ashanti Brown, 20.

More follows...
The parents of a 2-year-old toddler who was found at the scene of the Highland Park shooting have both died, authorities confirmed Tuesday.

At a press conference, Jennifer Banek, the coroner for Lake County, read names of six of the seven victims who had died, including 35-year-old Irina McCarthy and 37-year-old Kevin McCarthy of Highland Park.

Friends of the couple have since taken to social media to mourn the couple and express their grief. A GoFundMe page has also been created to raise money to support their orphaned son, Aiden McCarthy.

The organizer of the page said it was created on behalf of his family, and with their permission. Aiden McCarthy will be raised by his grandparents, and the organizer shared that he is left in the unthinkable position, to grow up without his parents.

The GoFundMe page had raised well over $1 million as of 9:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Aiden was rescued from the shooting after a woman and her companions saw him pinned under his father, who was unconscious, while she on her way to get breakfast, The Daily Beast reported.

The woman, Lauren Silva, told the outlet that while she took Aiden back to her car, her boyfriend and his son tried to help his father, who was bleeding. Silva later told The New York Times that she was told that first responders were unable to stop the fathers bleeding and had covered him with a blanket.

The tragic news comes after police said that the suspect in the shooting, Robert Bobby Crimo III, planned the attack for several weeks before killing seven and wounding dozens more at a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb.

The other victims identified by The Lake County Coroners Office include Katherine Goldstein, 64, of Highland Park; Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63, of Highland Park; Stephen Straus, 88, of Highland Park, and Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78, of Morelos, Mexico.

Police said they are in discussions with Crimo but declined to share additional information. Law enforcement is still working to determine a motive.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Kourtney Kardashian, left, and Travis Barker appear at the 64th Grammy Awards in Las Vegas in April. (Jordan Strauss / Invision / Associated Press)

Travis Barker and Kourtney Kardashian were in the mood to hit the open road Monday, nearly a week after the Blink-182 drummer was hospitalized for pancreatitis.

The husband-and-wife duo took to Instagram to share their Fourth of July activities, which included taking an oceanside ride in a topless truck with the reality star's youngest kids.

The rocker and Kardashian posted a series of Instagram Stories on Monday chronicling the outing and shared a glimpse of Barker  albeit his foot on the gas pedal  as they drove along the coast with Kardashian's daughter Penelope, 9, and son Reign, 7, in tow.

Kardashian also posted a floral arrangement sent by her mother, "momager" Kris Jenner, and boyfriend Corey Gamble.

The business-as-usual social-media updates come two days after the PDA-loving couple released a statement on Barker's condition, which landed him in the hospital for much of last week.

On Saturday, several days after few official updates from his family and plenty of speculation about his health, Barker, 46, said that he was feeling much better after a life threatening bout with pancreatitis.

I went in for an endoscopy Monday feeling great. But after dinner, I developed excruciating pain and have been hospitalized ever since, the Blink-182 drummer wrote on Twitter and Instagram.

He added that the endoscopy was meant to remove a small polyp but "damaged a critical pancreatic drainage tube" and that he received "intensive treatment" to resolve the inflammation.

I went in for an endoscopy Monday feeling great.

But After dinner, I developed excruciating pain and have been hospitalized ever since.  Travis Barker (@travisbarker) July 2, 2022

During the endoscopy, I had a very small polyp removed right in a very sensitive area, usually handled by specialists, which unfortunately damaged a critical pancreatic drainage tube. This resulted in severe life-threatening pancreatitis.  Travis Barker (@travisbarker) July 2, 2022

It was previously reported that Barkers pancreatitis was the result of a colonoscopy, rather than an endoscopy, which is a procedure used to visually examine the upper digestive system with a tiny camera on the end of a long, flexible tube, according to the Mayo Clinic.

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Kardashian, who was with Barker throughout the ordeal, also shared a message of gratitude about her husband, whom she married in May in an elaborate ceremony in Portofino, Italy.

"Our health is everything and sometimes we take for granted how quickly it can change, wrote "The Kardashians" star, the elder sibling of Kim, Khloe and Rob Kardashian.

I am so grateful to God for healing my husband, for all of your prayers for him and for us, for the overwhelming outpouring of love and support. I am so touched and appreciative, she added on Instagram Stories, also thanking the medical team at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

But her words were not as laudatory for the paparazzi.

Kardashian, who had been photographed with Barker on Tuesday as he was being transported between medical facilities for care, also blasted the photographers who sold photos of her "out and about" while Barker was "fighting for his life."

"[T]hese were photos actually taken weeks ago," she said, adding, "I didn't forget about you. A new level of low, monetizing off of our nightmare. Really savagely uncool when I actually didn't leave his side ... shame on you."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Monday was a deadly night on Central Florida roads.

At least three people were killed in traffic crashes, according to Florida Highway Patrol.

READ: Troopers: Motorcyclist dies along John Young Pkwy, bike missing from crash site

Troopers investigated two separate fatal crashes in Orange County.

Shortly after 10 p.m., troopers responded to a crash along Fort Christmas Road near State Road 50 in east Orange County.

Investigators determined a man driving a Ford pickup truck was traveling eastbound along Fort Christmas Road when he was unable to negotiate a curve and traveled off the roadway.

Troopers said his pickup overturned and he was ejected.

The man, 23, of Christmas, died at the crash scene. FHP has not released his name.

Shortly after 11 p.m., a deadly crash in west Orange County prompted an investigation at Indian Hills Road near North Pine Hills Road.

READ: No evidence of a shooting: Scare sends panicked crowd running from Lake Eola fireworks show

A WFTV news crew captured video of a car with heavy front end damage and road blockage.

Troopers said a man on a bicycle was heading northbound on Rolling Way. When he attempted to make a righthand turn, investigators said he drove into the path of an SUV traveling eastbound on Indian Hill Road.

The bicyclist, 58, of Altamonte Springs, died on scene.

FHP said the driver of the Ford Escape, 23, of Orlando, was not hurt and stayed at the crash site during the investigation.

Wreckage from both crash sites have since been cleared and all impacted roads have reopened.

A third crash turned deadly in Brevard County early Tuesday.

READ: People were getting trampled: Hundreds run from Lake Eola fireworks show after noise scare

Around 3 a.m., troopers responded to State Road 520 near Myrtice Avenue on Merritt Island.

Investigators said a man was driving a 2008 Land Rover the wrong way on the Merritt Island Causeway (SR 520), traveling eastbound in the outside westbound lane.

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As the driver of a Toyota Prius approached, traveling in the same lane, troopers said the drivers attempted to avoid a collision.

But both veered left and the Land Rover struck the Prius, causing it to then hit a concrete wall barrier.

The driver of of the Prius, 35, of Cape Canaveral, was rushed to Rockledge Regional Hospital but did not survive.

Troopers said the wrong-way driver, 35-year-old Damian Dobrosielski of Merritt Island, was impaired at the time of the crash.

Dobrosielski was booked into the Brevard County Jail on charges including DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide.

The crash shut down the westbound lanes of the Merritt Island Causeway for several hours, but they have since reopened.

Troopers said these deadly crashes could have been prevented and urged drivers to stay alert.

Stay with WFTV.com for updates on these deadly crashes and watch Eyewitness News for the latest traffic conditions throughout Central Florida.

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 fireworks stand worker stopped two accused armed robbers by opening fire on them, Texas police say.

The Travis County Sheriffs Office reported responding to a call about a robbery at approximately 2 a.m. on July 5. According to KVUE and CBS Austin, the robbery took place at a Big-Tex Fireworks stand in North Austin, Texas.

It was an aggravated robbery, Kristen Dark, senior public information officer at the Travis County Sheriffs Office, told McClatchy News.

Two armed suspects robbed the stand, Dark said. However, a stand worker was armed and fired on the suspects, hitting one of them.

The injured suspect was taken to a local hospital, Dark said, but details on the suspects current condition were not released.

The incident is under investigation. Authorities could not release any additional details.

Truck carrying thousands of pounds of fireworks goes up in flames, New Jersey cops say

11-year-old dies in fireworks mishap, Indiana cops say. Ill never see my son again

Man dies after illegal fireworks blast on Fourth of July, California reports say
Tyrell Malacia becomes first signing of the Erik ten Hag era at Manchester United (Manchester United)

Manchester United have completed the signing of Tyrell Malacia in an initial 15m (12.9m) deal from Feyenoord, with a further 2m (1.7m) in add-ons.

The 22-year-old left-back has signed a four-year contract at Old Trafford with the option of a further year.

Malacia becomes United's first signing of the summer and the first of the Erik ten Hag era, having passed his second round of medical checks at Carrington on Monday.

The Netherlands international is now set to join the rest of the first team squad on their pre-season tour of Thailand and Australia, with United flying out to Bangkok on Friday.

United's priority in the summer market has been midfield but, due to the protracted nature of negotiations with Barcelona for Frenkie de Jong, left-back Malacia becomes Ten Hag's first recruit.

Lyon were in talks with Feyenoord for the Netherlands international last week until United formalised their interest.

Malacia made 50 appearances in all competitions for the Rotterdam-based club last season, having come through Feyenoord's academy.

The 22-year-old will provide Luke Shaw with competition for the first-choice left-back spot in Ten Hag's side, with back-up Alex Telles' Old Trafford future now in doubt.

Christian Eriksen is expected to follow Malacia through the door at Old Trafford, with United having reached an agreement in principle for the 30-year-old free agent on Monday.

Negotiations with Barcelona for De Jong - who shares an agency with Malacia - remain ongoing, with talks centered around the add-ons to a guaranteed fee of around 65m (56m).

Ajax's Lisandro Martinez is also a target for Ten Hag, as United look to head off competition from Arsenal for the 24-year-old's signature.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday urged authorities to pursue a credible investigation into deadly violence in Uzbekistan's autonomous province of Karakalpakstan last week.

Eighteen people were killed and 243 wounded during protests over plans to curtail Karakalpakstan's autonomy, Uzbek authorities said on Monday - the worst bout of violence in the Central Asian nation in 17 years.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price in a statement urged parties to seek a peaceful resolution and called on Uzbekistan's authorities to "protect all fundamental rights, including peaceful assembly and expression."

"We urge authorities to pursue a full, credible, and transparent investigation into the violence, consistent with international norms and best practices," he added.

Uzbekistan is a tightly controlled former Soviet republic where the government clamps down hard on any form of dissent. It was the second outbreak of unrest in Central Asia this year, after Kazakhstan crushed mass protests in January and Russia and other former Soviet republics sent in troops to help the authorities restore order.

The protests in Uzbekistan were prompted by planned constitutional changes that would have stripped Karakalpakstan of its autonomous status. In an about-turn, the president dropped those plans on Saturday.

Karakalpakstan - situated on the shores of the Aral Sea, for decades an environmental disaster site - is home to the Karakalpaks, an ethnic minority group whose language is distinct from Uzbek, although related.

There are an estimated 700,000 Karakalpaks among Uzbekistan's 34 million people, most of them in the autonomous republic. Geographic and linguistic proximity has led many to seek work and sometimes relocate to neighboring Kazakhstan.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; editing by Grant McCool)
By Doina Chiacu

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran added demands unrelated to discussions on its nuclear program during the latest talks and has made alarming progress on enriching uranium, the U.S. envoy for talks on reinstating a nuclear deal said on Tuesday.

U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley said that there was a proposal on the table for a timeline by which Iran could come back into compliance with the nuclear deal and Washington could ease sanctions on Tehran.

Indirect talks between Tehran and Washington aimed at breaking an impasse over how to salvage Iran's 2015 nuclear pact ended in Doha, Qatar, last week without the hoped-for progress.

Malley said Iranian negotiators added new demands.

"They have, including in Doha, added demands that I think anyone looking at this would be viewed as having nothing to do with the nuclear deal, things that they've wanted in the past," he said in an interview with National Public Radio.

The demands included some that the United States and Europeans have said could not be part of negotiations.

"The discussion that really needs to take place right now is not so much between us and Iran, although we're prepared to have that. It's between Iran and itself," Malley said. "They need to come to a conclusion about whether they are now prepared to come back into compliance with the deal."

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Twitter after speaking with the EU's top diplomat Josep Borrell, "Agreement is possible only based on mutual understanding & interests. We remain ready to negotiate a strong & durable agreement. US must decide if it wants a deal or insists on sticking to its unilateral demands."

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said there was currently not another round of talks on the book with Iran, adding that Tehran has repeatedly introduced, over the recent weeks and months, extraneous demands that go beyond the confines of the nuclear deal struck in 2015.

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"To introduce anything that goes beyond the narrow confines of the JCPOA suggests a lack of seriousness, suggests a lack of commitment. And that, unfortunately, is what the team saw once again in Doha," Price told reporters.

Under the nuclear pact, Tehran limited its uranium enrichment program, a potential pathway to nuclear weapons, though Iran says it seeks only civilian atomic energy.

Then-U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned the deal in 2018, calling it too soft on Iran, and reimposed harsh U.S. sanctions, spurring Tehran to breach nuclear limits in the pact.

Now, Tehran is much closer to having enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb, Malley said, though they do not appear to have resumed their weaponization program.

"But we are of course alarmed, as are our partners, about the progress they've made in the enrichment field," Malley said.

Iran has enough highly enriched uranium on hand to make a bomb and could do so in a matter of weeks, he said.

Malley said Americans were also working a parallel track to secure the release of Americans detained in Iran. Siamak Namazi, who was detained in 2015 and is the longest-held Iranian American prisoner, made a plea for help in a New York Times piece on Sunday headlined: "Im an American, Why Have I Been Left to Rot as a Hostage of Iran?"

"We hope that regardless of what happens with the nuclear talks, we'll be able to resolve this issue because it weighs in our minds every single day," Malley said.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Additional reporting by Dapne Psaledakis; Editing by Alex Richardson and Marguerita Choy)
What haunts longtime Highland Park resident Dana Gordon now are the words of the mother of one of the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting victims.

Just days ago, Gordon helped organize an event in Highland Park dubbed a community art action against gun violence. It was prompted by the Uvalde shooting in May, and the names of its 21 victims were read.

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Moments after a mass shooting rocked her own hometown Monday, Gordon found herself recalling the words of Kimberly Rubio, the mother of Uvalde victim Lexi Rubio, from her video testimony to Congress: Somewhere out there, theres a mom listening to our testimony thinking, I cant even imagine their pain, not knowing that our reality will one day be hers unless we act now.

[ Highland Park shooting: In painful, chilling detail, witnesses recount deadly mass shooting at Fourth of July parade ]

And now here we are, Gordon said Monday. Next time we will have to read the names of our own victims.

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It was a horrific coincidence that members of the Highland Park community had gathered to mourn victims of another American massacre not 10 days before someone opened fired during the local Fourth of July parade. Yet Highland Park has had a prominent history of gun rights activism and controversy.

In this affluent suburb abutting Lake Michigan with a large Jewish population and predominantly liberal politics, Highland Park leaders enacted a ban on assault rifles in 2013 that was swiftly challenged by a local doctor and the Illinois Rifle Association.

That legal fight was appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case, allowing a lower court ruling in favor of the ban to stand.

A ban on assault weapons and largecapacity magazines might not prevent shootings in Highland Park (where they are already rare), but it may reduce the carnage if a mass shooting occurs, the appeals court wrote.

[ Timeline: List of recent high-profile shootings in the US ]

But while the Supreme Court took a pass on the case in 2015, Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion, saying they would have heard the case and that the appeals court flouts two of our Second Amendment precedents.

Just this year, the current iteration of the Supreme Court made a ruling that limited the way states could restrict concealed carrying of guns outside the home; the ruling led legal observers to speculate that it would be harder for lower courts to uphold local regulations on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Afternoon Briefing Daily Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon. >

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Gordon, one of the organizers of last months art in action event in Highland Park, advocated for the assault rifle ban. More recently, after Illinois concealed carry law went into effect, she was among local gun control advocates who went door to door to local businesses, lobbying them to post signs saying concealed carriers were not welcome.

[ Liam Hendriks calls out gun laws after Highland Park shootings. The access to the weaponry ... totally needs to change, Chicago White Sox closer says. ]

At the June 25 event in front of The Art Center in Highland Park, members of Moms Demand Action participated, as did some of the politicians who were present later at the parade when the gunshots rang out, including Mayor Nancy Rotering and U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider.

An installation by local artist Jacqueline von Edelberg was also set up and remained on display in front of the art center Monday. The work features tens of thousands of pieces of orange fabric, each symbolizing a child dead from gun violence, the color reportedly in honor of Hadiya Pendleton, the Chicago teen whose 2013 shooting death inspired an annual Wear Orange Day.

Now Gordon, who said she knows at least two of the people who were shot in Highland Park on Monday, recalls the warning of Uvalde mother Kimberly Rubio.

Its absolutely devastating, Gordon said, and infuriating.
The Pentagon is working on a new plan to rise above competition from China and Russia: balloons.

The high-altitude inflatables, flying at between 60,000 and 90,000 feet, would be added to the Pentagons extensive surveillance network and could eventually be used to track hypersonic weapons.

The idea may sound like science fiction, but Pentagon budget documents signal the technology is moving from DoDs scientific community to the military services.

High or very high-altitude platforms have a lot of benefit for their endurance on station, maneuverability and also flexibility for multiple payloads, said Tom Karako, senior fellow for the International Security Program and Missile Defense Project director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Pentagon continues to invest in these projects because the military could use the balloons for various missions.

Over the past two years, the Pentagon has spent about $3.8 million on balloon projects, and plans to spend $27.1 million in fiscal year 2023 to continue work on multiple efforts, according to budget documents.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is working on its own hypersonic weapons program, despite Wednesday's failure of the latest test.

A bright spot for the U.S. is the balloons may help track and deter hypersonic weapons being developed by China and Russia.

China surprised the Pentagon in August by testing a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, which narrowly missed its target by roughly two dozen miles.

Russia began ramping up hypersonic weapons development in response to the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. The Russian government claimed to fire a hypersonic missile in an attack on Ukraine in March, marking its first use in combat.

Thats one way the balloons could be useful  augmenting expensive satellites in tracking the missiles. The teardrop-shaped balloons harvest complex data and navigate using AI algorithms.

Hiding in plain sight

For years, DoD has conducted tests using high-altitude balloons and solar-powered drones to collect data, provide ground forces with communication and mitigate satellite problems. The Pentagon is quietly transitioning the balloon projects to the military services to collect data and transmit information to aircraft, POLITICO discovered in DoD budget justification documents.

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The Covert Long-Dwell Stratospheric Architecture (COLD STAR), a project designed to locate drug traffickers, was widely reported in 2019. At the time, the Pentagon launched 25 surveillance balloons from South Dakota as part of a demonstration.

The Pentagon confirmed to POLITICO that the COLD STAR program has transitioned to the services. DoD would not disclose details about the effort because it is classified.

Another initiative aims to tie all the technology together. The Pentagon is conducting demonstrations to evaluate how to incorporate high-altitude balloons and commercial satellites in an attack, known as the kill chain.

They can be trucks for any number of platforms, whether it be communication and datalink nodes, ISR, tracking air and missile threats, or even various weapons  and without the predictable orbits of satellites, Karako said.

DoD is also working to use drones equipped with stratospheric payloads along with balloons to track moving ground targets, provide communications and intercept electronic signals. The idea is for the technology to transition to the Army and U.S. Special Operations Command, according to budget documents.

Finding other ways to track ground targets is a priority for the Pentagon as the Air Force retires airborne surveillance aircraft.

Not your average balloon

Raven Aerostar, a division of Raven Industries, produces the balloons. Raven said they consist of a flight control unit, powered by batteries that are charged using renewable solar panels. They also have a payload electronics package that controls flight safety, navigation and communications, Russell Van Der Werff, engineering director at Raven Aerostar, said in an interview.

Wind currents allow the balloon to float along a desired flight path, and the company takes advantage of different wind speeds and directions to move the balloon to the target area.

But thats not all. Raven Aerostar uses a proprietary machine-learning algorithm that predicts wind directions and fuses incoming sensor data in real time, Van Der Werff said. The company also employs a software program to pilot and monitor its balloon fleet and has a mission operations center manned with trained flight engineers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he added.

The balloons can supplement work performed by traditional aircraft and satellites, and stratospheric balloons can be built and launched at a fraction of the cost and time. For example, the cost to launch and operate balloons for weeks or months is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, versus millions  or tens of millions  needed to launch and operate aircraft or satellites.

Not the first time

NASA was flying helium-filled stratospheric balloons as early as the 1950s, and the Army in recent years has experimented with these systems at lower altitudes.

The private sector is also investing in the balloon market. Alphabet deployed balloons in 2017 to provide mobile communications in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

In the mid-2010s, the Army was investing in a spy blimp program that it ultimately canceled in 2017. The effort is known as the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Elevated Netted Sensor System, or JLENS.

The blimp was tethered, unlike the high-altitude balloons, and designed to track boats, ground vehicles, drones and cruise missiles. The balloons DoD is using now are smaller, lighter and can fly considerably higher than the spy blimp.

Starting in 2015, the Army conducted a three-year exercise to determine whether to keep buying JLENS blimps from Raytheon. But the blimp broke free from its mooring station near Baltimore, flying for three hours and eventually landing near Moreland Township, Penn.

The Army decided to drop the program. JLENS cost nearly $2 billion to develop and was designed to deploy in U.S. Central Command.

If we can just grow up and get over our hang-ups about the JLENS event, the future can be bright for dirigibles, balloons and aerostats, Karako said.
LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was made aware of allegations against lawmaker Christopher Pincher in 2019 but he did not "immediately recall" it when fresh reports surfaced last week, cabinet office minister Michael Ellis said on Tuesday.

"Last week when fresh allegations arose, the prime minister did not immediately recall the conversation in late 2019 about the incident," Ellis told parliament of former deputy chief whip Pincher, who resigned over his conduct last week.

"Further inquiries will be made, but the position is that the prime minister acted with probity at all times."

(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan, writing by Muvija M)
Valentyna Romanenko  Tuesday, 5 July 2022, 21:56

The Air Defence of the Ukrainian Air Force shot down three cruise missiles launched by the Russians from the Black Sea.

Source: The Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Press Centre on Facebook

Details: The Russian aggressors struck with sea-based cruise missiles from the Black Sea at about 20:00 on Tuesday, 5 June.

Air Defence units of "Zakhid" ("West") Air Command shot down three aggressors missiles.
SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team Two prepares to launch from US Navy attack submarine USS Philadelphia during an exercise. US Navy photo by Chief Photographer's Mate Andrew McKaskle

SEAL Delivery Vehicles are a highly specialized asset unique to US Navy SEALs.

US Special Operations Command and the SEALs are working on two new and improved vehicles.

The Mark 11 submersible and the Dry Combat submersible will round out that fleet for decades to come.

To remain effective in an era of near-peer warfare and to counter China's growing military, US Special Operations Command and the Navy SEALs are working on two new and improved mini-submarines that are expected to enter service soon.

The two new special-operations mini-subs  the Mark 11 Shallow Water Combat Submersible and the Dry Combat Submersible  will be the backbone of Naval Special Warfare's submersible fleet for decades to come.

The Mark 11 will replace the Mark 8 Mod 1 mini-sub. The new mini-sub comes with an increased operational range and payload, more advanced sensors, improved navigation systems, and a new command-and-control structure that will allow new technologies to be introduced more efficiently.

A photo of a SEAL Delivery Vehicle Mark 11, altered for security purposes, at Pearl Harbor, May 13, 2020. US Navy/Chief Mass Comm Specialist Christopher Perez

At 23 feet long, the Mark 11 will be able to carry six Navy SEALs: two crew and four combat divers. The mini-sub will be to dive to about 165 feet and will be flooded while in use, meaning the SEAL operators will be exposed to the elements and will have to use dry suits and oxygen tanks. (The British Special Boat Service has also ordered the Mark 11.)

SOCOM expects the Mark 11 to hit initial operating capability this summer. Should everything go according to plan, the new SEAL Delivery Vehicle will begin to phase out the Mark 8, which has been in service since the 1980s.

The Dry Combat Submersible is much larger and heavier. The 40-foot mini-submarine will have a vastly longer operational range and greater payload capacity than the Mark 11 and be more comfortable for the 10 commandos  two crew and eight combat divers  it will be able to carry.

At a recent industry conference, Cmdr. John Conway, SOCOM's program manager for special-operations forces undersea systems, likened the Dry Combat Submersible to "an electric truck" that can do a lot of things at the same time and can be adapted and improved with new sensors and systems in response to future threats and operational environments.

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A photo of a SEAL Delivery Vehicle Mark 11, altered for security purposes, at Pearl Harbor, May 13, 2020. US Navy/Chief Mass Comm Specialist Christopher Perez

Naval Special Warfare is also looking at "other nontraditional ways to launch" the Mark 11, such as "a containerized solution" off of "some vessel of opportunity or things like that," Navy Cmdr. James Hanlon, SOCOM's program manager for special-operations maritime systems, said at the conference, according to Defense News.

In addition to the new Mark 11 and Dry Combat Submersible, Naval Special Warfare is working on a service-life extension program for the Dry Deck Shelter, which is attached to a submarine's hull and allows SEALs and other combat divers to exit and enter the submarine while underway.

The Navy's six Dry Deck Shelters were built between 1982 and 1991 and were expected to have service lives of 40 years. The planned extension would allow them to operate until the 2050s

The Navy SEAL team's secret

US Navy submarine USS Dallas with a dry deck shelter attached, July 19, 2004. US Navy/Paul Farley

The Navy SEAL teams are most well known for their direct-action capabilities. High-profile operations over the last 20 years, including the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, have fostered a belief that all that SEALs do is kick down doors and go after bad guys.

But SEAL teams have other capabilities and are proficient in many skill sets. The SEAL Delivery Vehicles are perhaps one of their most exotic capabilities, and the two SEAL Delivery Vehicle teams specialize in three mission sets: underwater insertion and extraction of special operations troops, underwater special reconnaissance, and underwater special operations.

In addition, SEAL Delivery Vehicle teams can support maritime counterterrorism operations by stealthily moving special operators close to a target that is in or near the water.

Generally, SEAL operators avoid an assignment to a SEAL Delivery Vehicle team because of the extremely difficult mission set. Although all Navy SEALs are combat divers, SEAL Delivery Vehicle team members take combat diving to the next level. Eight- to 10-hour dives are not uncommon.

Naval Special Warfare Command, which oversees the SEALs, has two delivery vehicle teams, which were first stood up in the early 1980s.

A SEAL Delivery Vehicle being loaded onto USS Dallas in Norfolk, Virginia, February 6, 2006. US Navy/Chief Journalist Dave Fliesen

SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One, now based in Hawaii, is dedicated to the West Coast and operations in the Pacific. SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team Two was deactivated in 2008 but reestablished in 2019 amid the shift toward great-power competition. SDVT-2 is based in Little Creek, Virginia, and is the dedicated delivery vehicle unit for the East Coast and operations in Europe.

The delivery vehicle teams are now part of Naval Special Warfare Group 8, which was created in 2020 through the consolidation of two other special warfare groups. The officer who led the group with the delivery vehicle teams was selected to lead Group 8 when it was formed, suggesting SDVs will have an important role going forward.

SEAL Delivery Vehicles are SOCOM's only special-operations submersible capability. In a conflict with China, mini-subs paired with the Navy's attack submarines would be ideal for getting SEALs into tough spots and denied areas, which will be essential for countering China's anti-access/area-denial umbrella over the Western Pacific.

"Our relationship with our submarine force has never been closer," Rear Adm. Hugh Howard III, commander of Naval Special Warfare Command, told senators in May. "We see the undersea as absolutely critical to deterrence. I think that it is a place that we maintain advantage, and it is a place where we must maintain advantage to critically deter our peer adversaries."

Read the original article on Business Insider
U.S. Air Force F-35 stealth fighter jets arrived in South Korea on Tuesday to conduct flight operations alongside their South Korean counterparts amid tensions with North Korea.

The aircraft are expected to fly with several others over South Korea and surrounding waters as part of a 10-day training mission, U.S. Forces Korea said in a statement. South Korean F-35 aircraft are expected to fly with the American aircraft.

The familiarization and routine training flights will enhance the interoperability of the two Air Forces to perform and operate on and around the Korean Peninsula, the statement said.

The aviation training is also an opportunity for the aircrews to perform sustainment and maintenance duties to support the latest in military aircraft technology, it added.

In a separate statement, South Koreas defense ministry said the drills are aimed at demonstrating the South Korea-U.S. alliances strong deterrence and combined defense posture, as well as improving interoperability between the two Air Forces, according to Yonhap News Agency.

Tuesdays deployment is the first time in five years the U.S. has publicly deployed stealth warplanes to South Korea. Washington last publicly disclosed sending stealth fighters in December 2017, when it sent F-22 stealth fighters and F-35 aircraft to participate in a joint aerial drill.

The drills also come amid escalated tension with North Korea, which appears to be ramping up its missile tests.

In early June, the U.S. and its allies flew dozens of jets over the Korean Peninsula in exercises aimed at responding to provocations from Pyongyang, The Associated Press reported at the time.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol welcomed President Biden to Seoul in mid-May, during which the two expressed an interest in expanding combined military drills around the Korean Peninsula.

Both leaders agree to initiate discussions to expand the scope and scale of combined military exercises and training on and around the Korean Peninsula, the leaders said in a joint statement on May 21.

In addition, the U.S. also reaffirmed its commitment to deploy strategic U.S. military assets in a timely and coordinated manner as necessary, as well as to enhance such measures and identify new or additional steps to reinforce deterrence in the face of DPRK destabilizing activities.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
(Bloomberg) -- The US is pushing the Netherlands to ban ASML Holding NV from selling to China mainstream technology essential in making a large chunk of the worlds chips, expanding its campaign to curb the countrys rise, according to people familiar with the matter.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Washingtons proposed restriction would expand an existing moratorium on the sale of the most advanced systems to China, in an attempt to thwart Chinas plans to become a world leader in chip production. If the Netherlands agrees, it would broaden significantly the range and class of chipmaking gear now forbidden from heading to China, potentially dealing a serious blow to Chinese chipmakers from Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. to Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd.

American officials are lobbying their Dutch counterparts to bar ASML from selling some of its older deep ultraviolet lithography, or DUV, systems, the people said. These machines are a generation behind cutting-edge but still the most common method in making certain less-advanced chips required by cars, phones, computers and even robots.

Shares of ASML gained as much as 2.6% in Amsterdam on Wednesday. Its American Depository Receipts closed down 3.9% on Tuesday following Bloombergs initial report. Nikon Corp., a smaller rival to the Dutch firm in that sphere of chipmaking gear technology, closed down 5.1% in Tokyo on Wednesday.

The issue arose during US Deputy Commerce Secretary Don Gravess visit to the Netherlands and Belgium in late May and early June to discuss supply chain issues, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private. During that trip, Graves also visited ASMLs headquarters in Veldhoven and met Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink.

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What Bloomberg Intelligence Says

ASMLs sales could narrow by 5-10% if its banned from selling deep ultraviolet tools in China. As the chip equipment makers revenue already reflects a ban on extreme ultraviolet tool shipments to the country, it may experience less impact vs. peers such as Applied Materials which derives 25-30% of its sales from China.

- Masahiro Wakasugi and Brian Moran, analysts

Click here for the research.

The Dutch government has yet to agree to any additional restrictions on ASMLs exports to Chinese chipmakers, which could hurt the countrys trade ties with China, the people said. ASML is already unable to ship its most advanced extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, lithography systems, which cost about 160 million euros ($164 million) per unit, to China as it cannot obtain an export license from the Dutch government.

The US push on ASML comes as President Joe Biden separately considers easing some of the Trump-era tariffs on consumer goods from China. While China may welcome such a move at a time of tense relations between the two powers, Bidens administration has continued his predecessors efforts to restrict Chinas access to US technology.

The US Department of Commerce and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment.

The discussion is not new. No decisions have been made and we do not want to speculate or comment on rumors, an ASML spokeswoman said.

ASML is the worlds top maker of lithography systems, machines that perform a crucial step in the process of creating semiconductors. ASMLs dominance of the market for that type of equipment means that further cutting China off from access to its products would undermine the Asian countrys ambitions to make itself more self-sufficient in production of the crucial electronic components.

Chinas share of the global chip-equipment market is negligible, said Alex Capri, a research fellow at the Asia-based Hinrich Foundation, characterizing chip production as a choke point in Chinas plans to bulk up its semiconductor muscle.

The older generation of machinery, DUV, is less capable than more advanced EUV lithography equipment but remains indispensable in manufacturing many of the types of chips that are currently experiencing acute shortages. Washington is focused on banning sales of the most advanced type of DUV technology, immersion lithography machines, the people said.

American officials are also trying to exert pressure on Japan to stop shipping the same technology to Chinese chipmakers, one of the people said. Japans Nikon competes with ASML in this area.

Immersion lithography is also known as argon fluoride immersion, or simply ArFi. According to China-based Founder Securities, ASML sold 81 ArFi systems in 2021, compared with four from Nikon, giving the Dutch firm a 95% market share.

We have no information regarding this matter, a Nikon spokeswoman said.

READ: Chinas Chipmaking Power Grows Despite US Effort to Counter It

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said in June he is against reconsidering trade relations with China and called for the EU to develop its own policies toward Beijing. China is the Netherlands third-biggest trade partner after Germany and Belgium.

ASML opposes a ban on sales of DUV lithography equipment to Chinese customers because it is already a mature technology, Wennink said earlier this year. Chinese-based facilities, run by either domestic or foreign companies, account for 14.7% of ASMLs total revenue in 2021, according to company disclosures and data compiled by Bloomberg.

ASML is also alleging potential IP infringement by a Chinese tech firm supported by the countrys government.

US efforts to block the export of chipmaking equipment began under the Trump administration. Washington pressured the Dutch government to prevent sales of EUV lithography systems, which are required to produce the most sophisticated semiconductors and in which ASML has a monopoly.

Major US chip-equipment makers including Applied Materials Inc. and Lam Research Corp. are already banned from selling certain advanced products to SMIC due to national security concerns. The potential DUV ban could further hit SMIC and its Chinese peers.

Lithography equipment is the most difficult equipment for China to replace when it comes to semiconductor production, said Johnson Wang, an analyst at Taiwan Institute of Economic Research. Without access to foreign DUV lithography equipment, the progress of Chinas chip industry could come to a halt.

(Updates with share action in fourth paragraph)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

2022 Bloomberg L.P.
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan criminal investigators have launched inquiries into the murder of an indigenous leader, who was killed on June 30 in the country's southern Amazonas state, the police said on Tuesday.

Virgilio Trujillo Arana, a 38-year-old indigenous Uwottuja man, was a defender of the Venezuelan Amazon and had set up community groups to act as guardians of the Autana municipality of Amazonas.

He opposed armed groups and illegal mining.

"Drug traffickers and paramilitaries who intend to take over national territory are presumed to be involved in the event," Douglas Rico, director of the Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigations Corps, wrote in a message on Twitter.

Police have sent a team from the homicide investigation division to assist with the task, he added.

Advocacy groups defending indigenous rights have asked authorities to investigate the murder since last week.

Non-governmental organizations have reported the presence of criminal groups in Amazonas that control gold mines in the jungle and have accused them of murdering people.

The Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has asked the government to regularize mining activities and guarantee that they are carried out under international and environmental standards.

(Reporting by Mayela Armas; Writing by Oliver Griffin; Ediging by Bill Berkrot)
GoFundMe

A married couple in their 30s whose toddler is now terrifyingly alone. A preschool teacher. A great-grandfather visiting from Mexico. A financial adviser who rode the train daily.

These are some of the lives that were snuffed out by the gunman who opened fire on the Highland Park Fourth of July parade on Monday.

A little over a day after the killing stopped, officials released the names of all but one fatal victim of the latest mass shooting nightmare in America. They identified the deceased as 64-year-old Katherine Goldstein; 35-year-old Irina McCarthy; 37-year-old Kevin McCarthy; 63-year-old Jacquelyn Sundheim; 88-year-old Stephen Straus; and 78-year-old Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza of Morelos, Mexico.

A seventh fatality was not identified because they died outside the jurisdiction of the Lake County coroner.

Kevin and Irina McCarthy of Highland Park, first identified on Tuesday, were described by friends on social media as parents to a 2-year-old left behind after the disaster. A GoFundMe and local news reports suggested theirs was the blood-smeared toddler rescued by Lauren Silva, another mom who went out for pancakes and found herself in the middle of an American nightmare.

Jacki Sundheims synagogue, the North Shore Congregation Israel in neighboring Glencoe, previously announced that she was was one of the seven people killed.

There are no words sufficient to express the depth of our grief for Jackis death and sympathy for her family and loved ones, the synagogue wrote in an email to congregants. Jackis work, kindness and warmth touched us all, from her teaching at the Gates of Learning Preschool to guiding innumerable among us through lifes moments of joy and sorrow, all of this with tireless dedication, it continued, adding that Jacki was survived by her husband and daughter.

Nicolas Toledo, 78, was is survived by his eight children, a slew of grandkids and one recently arrived great-grandchild. On Monday, he was sitting on his walker and surrounded by his family when he was hit by bullets.

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We all threw ourselves to the ground, his daughter, Josefina Toledo, told The Daily Beast after the shooting. My dad, since its difficult for him to walk he was sitting on his walker and he was hit in his back and in his head.

He was visiting Highland Park, where he used to live, from Mexico, where he was born and had retired. His family attended the parade every year as a tradition.

Josefina said one of her nieces boyfriends was also one of the dozens injured in the attackhe was in a stable condition on Monday but was facing surgery to remove a bullet from near his lungs. There isnt a safe place anymore, Josefina added.

A third victim, Steve Straus, was a financial adviser and daily commuter at age 88 who left behind a wife, brother, and other relatives aghast at his demise after such a full and active life.

He was an honorable man who worked his whole life and looked out for his family and gave everyone the best he had, a niece told The New York Times. He was kind and gentle and had huge intelligence and humor and wit.

More than two-dozen others were wounded, including four members of a single family, according to a GoFundMe.

Sharing a link to a medical bill fundraiser on Tuesday morning, the Chicago Teachers Union said William Dever Elementary School teacher Zoe Kolpack and her husband, named elsewhere as Stephen Kolpack, were wounded in the attack.

They were with their two children, who were unharmed, the tweet read. The fundraisers creator, who called Zoe her best friend, added that the teachers father and brother-in-law were also hit. They are all in the hospital undergoing various surgeries, which will seriously impact these families financially, the fundraiser description reads.

Dever Elementary teacher Zoe Kolpack and her husband were among the victims of todays shooting in Highland Park. They were with their two children, who were unharmed. Please support. https://t.co/ecaTEYY2ua  ChicagoTeachersUnion (@CTULocal1) July 5, 2022

Doctors who treated the dozens of wounded people at local hospitals said the victims ranged in age between 8 and 85. David Baum, a local physician who attended the parade with his family, saw some of the devastating wounds firsthand when the shooting stopped.

I saw horrific, devastating injuries, the kind that you normally see in a war, Baum told The Daily Beast on Monday, adding that the bodies of those killed were literally blown up by those bullets.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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A massive bar fight sparked by a womans assault left two people injured, Ohio police said. Authorities are still looking for the man accused of assaulting the woman.

The Logan County Sheriffs Office responded to several 911 calls about ongoing fights at a bar in Lakeview, Ohio, on July 3, authorities said in an incident report. Callers reported that a person had been beaten by a mob and suffered serious injuries, including what was described as his eye hanging out.

A 26-year-old woman from Urbana, Ohio, told authorities that she was romantically pursued throughout the night by another male bar patron, according to the incident report. She said the man persisted even after she told him that she was not interested and that she believes she said something that may have insulted the man.

In response, he pushed her to the ground, the incident report said.

The woman told authorities she fought back in self defense only for the man to hit her again, according to the report.

Other bar patrons got involved, and the fight escalated as people tried to defend the woman and break up the fight, authorities said in their report.

The woman was left with visible redness about her face, a small lump above her right eye and her legs and feet were covered with scratches, abrasions and parking lot gravel dust, the incident report said.

Around the same time, another fight began outside the bar, according to the report. A man  who had been kicked out of the bar three separate times that night  shouted a racial slur, a witness reported to authorities.

A mob of bar patrons began beating a 25-year-old man from Lima, Ohio, authorities said. According to the report, deputies were uncertain if this man was the same one who was kicked out multiple times.

The attacked man was taken into a purple car and driven away, the incident report said. Soon after, a nearby deputy identified the car and stopped it.

The driver tried to flee on foot, but a deputy tackled the man to the ground. Still, he resisted, attempting to stash a plastic bag of Xanax under a nearby fence, authorities said in the report.

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Looking in the passengers seat of the car, the deputy saw a shirtless man in swim trunks covered in blood. His eye was heavily swollen and protruding, the report said.

The man was taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital, deputies said. No further updates were released.

When deputies arrived at the bar, employees had broken up the fights and the man accused of assaulting the woman had fled, witnesses reported.

The female victim told authorities that she planned to press charges, and authorities said they will issue warrants for the arrest of the man accused of assault.

Lakeview is about 70 miles northwest of Columbus.

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A woman pauses to visit a memorial in Port Clinton Square in Highland Park on July 11, 2022. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

ROME  Pope Francis called Tuesday for a rejection of violence and respect for life as he mourned the dead from the senseless shooting during an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago.

In a telegram of condolence to Chicagos archbishop, Francis said he was praying for the six people killed Monday and for healing and consolation to the injured and bereaved.

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[ [Highland Park shooting: What to know] ]

Quoting the Bible, he called for for everyone to reject violence in all its forms and respect life in all its stages.

The telegram to Cardinal Blase Cupich was signed by Francis secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

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A shooter firing from a rooftop in Chicagos Highland Park suburb sprayed the parade crowd with bullets, killing six people and injuring 30. Police detained a suspect but have not cited a motive.
The World Health Organization program for the fast-tracking and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics is likely to close in its current form in the fall, according to two individuals familiar with the matter.

The program, known as the ACT-Accelerator, is a collaboration among the WHO, governments and global health organizations that works to ensure equitable access to Covid tools. It faced significant obstacles to get vaccines to low- and middle-income countries, but it eventually succeeded in shipping over one billion shots. As Covid cases have declined from the height of the pandemic, ACT-A has struggled to secure funding with only Germany, Norway, Sweden and Canada promising the requested financing this year.

The most well-known ACT-A initiative is the vaccines pillar COVAX, which aims to ensure shots are distributed around the world, particularly in countries that can't afford them. An end to the current project raises questions about how the global health community, including the WHO, will continue to fund the fight against Covid. ACT-A is the largest global health consortium committed to ensuring equitable access to life-saving treatments and vaccines for people living in low-income countries.

Without the ACT-A, its all but guaranteed that lower income countries will be left without adequate supplies of vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments that can save lives, said Jenny Ottenhoff, senior policy director of global health at the ONE Campaign. The ACT-A was never intended to be a long-term solution but it does not make sense for it to wind down until the whole world is ready to transition to a longer-term sustainable response to the virus.

In a series of recent calls, representatives of the consortium have discussed the likelihood that the current ACT-A will fold or transition in September, according to the two people familiar with the matter. The calls have focused on the future of the distribution of Covid tests, vaccine and therapeutics, and whether some portion of the program would exist after that time, the people said. One of the people described how ACT-A is already transitioning with fewer meetings among those involved in its coordination. There are also questions about whether something similar to ACT-A would be created to prepare for the next health crisis.

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There seems to be a pretty clear consensus that the ACT-A that we have known will not exist next year, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

A spokesperson for the ACT-Accelerator said the support that ACT-A agencies provide will continue, though likely in a different form.

As the pandemic isnt over, ACT-As work to enhance equitable access to COVID-19 tools will continue. As countries are moving from managing COVID-19 as an acute emergency to integration into longer-term disease control programs, the spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the consortiums strategic plan was always supposed to end in September. In this context  work is underway to develop a plan to manage this transition.

A spokesperson for Gavi, the organization helping oversee the ACT-A vaccine pillar, said its board in June ratified an extension of the COVAX Facility through 2023. COVAX is housed within Gavi.

The WHO  along with the European Commission, France and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation  launched the ACT-A consortium in 2020, with organizations like Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic and Preparedness Innovations, and the Wellcome Trust tasked with taking the lead on ensuring access to vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics.



The questions about ACT-As fate come at a time when funding for the global Covid fight is winding down and as governments and major global health organizations turn their attention to other health issues, including pandemic preparedness. This spring, Congress failed to approve $5 billion in funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development to help ramp up vaccination rates in low-income countries. In the EU, work has pivoted to readying the bloc for the next crisis, with a consultation on a new global health strategy launching Monday.

An agenda for a Wednesday meeting of the ACT-A council that provides political leadership for ACT-A states that the last meeting of the council will be in September. Participants are asked to discuss how they want to keep abreast of ACT-A activities during the transition phase and how ACT-A can transition to long-term COVID-19 control.

Since the beginning of 2022, several countries, including Canada, Norway and Sweden, have pledged billions more to ACT-A  some of which will not be available for use until later in the year, raising questions about what will happen to the money should the consortium sunset.

Over the last two years, the ACT-A consortium has raised more than $23 billion to fund its efforts. And in February, representatives of the consortium asked the world to donate $16.8 billion in 2022 to help end the Covid pandemic. So far, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Canada have promised to pay the amount requested of them. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday called on others to follow their lead, warning: Our job is not over. We must ensure that all countries are equipped to fight future waves of Covid-19.

While wealthy western countries have achieved high rates of distribution and administration of tests, vaccine and therapeutics, many low-income countries have fallen far behind. In Africa, the vaccination rate is 19 percent, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition, about 22 million tests have been administered in low-income countries  less than 1 percent of the global total, according to ACT-A data. Out of the projected demand of $1.7 billion, only $13 million in Covid drugs have been shipped, according to the latest figures.

Those percentages have been a source of controversy within ACT-A and in the large global health community as people have raised concerns about the consortiums ability to scale distribution during the pandemic. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recognized those shortfalls in a report almost a year after Covid first emerged.

This effort is still well short of meeting its goals, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman wrote.

Members of the ACT-A ethics and governance working group also have raised concerns about ACT-As governance and accountability. The roles of the various organizations in ACT-A decision making are unclear, obscuring who might be accountable to whom and for what, states a January paper in the Lancet, authored by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Suerie Moon and other members of the working group.
ROANOKE  After spending years as the superintendent of Appomattox Courthouse National Historic Park and later the Booker T. Washington National Monument, Robin Snyder said her goodbyes to park staff last week as she prepares for a new role in the National Park Service.

Snyder will be moving to North Carolina later this month as the new deputy superintendent of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site and Wright Brothers National Memorial. It is a bittersweet move for Snyder.

Its been a tough decision, to be honest with you, Snyder said.

She was named superintendent of the Appomattox park in 2015 and began overseeing the Booker T. Washington National Monument, in Franklin County, in 2019.

In her time as superintendent of the two parks, Snyder said she has grown to love the staff at each as well as the important history each park provides. Booker T. Washington National Monument has a team of eight she said are passionate about the park and its history.

Snyder said she is proud of the accomplishments of the team during her three years as superintendent. They include the development of a long-range interpretive plan for the park, new research on the parks historic tobacco barn and new research on the parks Sparks Cemetery just to name a few.

Its been a busy three years, Snyder said. The move to North Carolina wont be a totally new experience for Snyder. She accepted a four-month detail in late 2020 at the three parks as the temporary deputy director. She also admitted to being fond of the area for several years, often taking vacations there.

The new position will be a step up for Snyder with Cape Hatteras National Seashore seeing more than 3 million visitors each year. That is a large increase from Booker T. Washington National Monument, which usually averages around 25,000 visitors per year.

While Snyder may be moving, she said she will still keep close connections with the team at Booker T. Washington National Monument. You stay connected with the good people you work with, she said.

With the move by Snyder, Booker T. Washington National Monument is currently without a superintendent. Snyder said a temporary superintendent will be put in place within the next few weeks.

Temporary superintendents will be placed in the position on 120-day rotations until a permanent replacement can be found. Snyder said that likely will happen sometime in the next six months.
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (AP)  The governor of the last remaining eastern province partly under Ukraine's control urged his more than 350,000 residents to flee as Russia escalated its offensive and air alerts were issued across nearly the entire country.

Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that getting people out of Donetsk province is necessary to save lives and enable the Ukrainian army better to defend towns from the Russian advance.

The destiny of the whole country will be decided by the Donetsk region, Kyrylenko told reporters in Kramatrosk, the province's administrative center and home to the Ukrainian military's regional headquarters.

Once there are less people, we will be able to concentrate more on our enemy and perform our main tasks, Kyrylenko said.

The governors call for residents to leave appeared to represent one of the biggest suggested evacuations of the war, although it's unclear whether people will be willing and safely able to flee. According to the U.N. refugee agency, more than 7.1 million Ukrainians are estimated to be displaced within Ukraine, and more than 4.8 million refugees left the country since Russia's invasion started Feb. 24.

Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy said air alerts were issued Tuesday night in nearly all of the country, in many places after a long period of relative calm during which people searched for an explanation.

You should not look for logic in the actions of terrorists, Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. The Russian army does not take any breaks. It has one task  to take peoples lives, to intimidate people  so that even a few days without an air alarm already feel like part of the terror.

Much of the military activity appeared concentrated in Ukraine's east. The Kramatorsk governor said that because they house critical infrastructure such as water filtration plants, Russias main targets are now his city and a city 16 kilometers (10 miles) to the north, Sloviansk. Kyrylenko described the shelling as very chaotic without a specific target ... only to destroy civilian infrastructure and residential areas.

Sloviansk also came under sustained bombardment Tuesday. Mayor Vadim Lyakh said on Facebook that massive shelling pummeled Sloviansk, which had a population of about 107,000 before Russian invaded Ukraine more than four months ago. The mayor, who urged residents hours earlier to evacuate, advised them to take cover in shelters.

At least one person was killed and another seven wounded Tuesday, Lyakh said. He said the citys central market and several districts came under attack, adding that authorities were assessing the extent of the damage.

The barrage targeting Sloviansk indicated that Russian forces were advanc ing farther into Ukraine's Donbas region, a mostly Russian-speaking industrial area where the country's most experienced soldiers are concentrated.

Sloviansk has previously taken rocket and artillery fire during Russia's war in Ukraine, but the bombardment picked up in recent days after Moscow took the last major city in neighboring Luhansk province, Lyakh said.

Its important to evacuate as many people as possible, he warned Tuesday morning, adding that shelling damaged 40 houses on Monday.

The Ukrainian military withdrew its troops Sunday from the city of Lysychansk to keep them from being surrounded. Russia's defense minister and Putin said the city's subsequent capture put Moscow in control of all of Luhansk, one of two provinces that make up the Donbas.

The office of Ukraine's president said the Ukrainian military was still defending a small part of Luhansk and trying to buy time to establish fortified positions nearby.

The question now is whether Russia can muster enough strength to complete its seizure of the Donbas by taking Donetsk province, too. Putin acknowledged Monday that Russian troops who fought in Luhansk need to take some rest and beef up their combat capability.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that the war in Ukraine would continue until all of the goals set by Putin are achieved. However, Shoigu said the main priorities for Moscow at the moment were preserving the lives and health of the troops, as well as excluding the threat to the security of civilians.

When Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine more than four months ago, his stated goals were defending the people of the Donbas against Kyivs alleged aggression, and the demilitarization and denazifaction of Ukraine.

Pro-Russia separatists have fought Ukrainian forces and controlled much of the Donbas for eight years. Before the invasion this year, Putin recognized the independence of the two self-proclaimed separatist republics in the region. He also sought to portray the tactics of Ukrainian forces and the government as akin to Nazi Germany's, claims for which no evidence has emerged.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian military said Russian forces also shelled several Donetsk towns and villages around Sloviansk in the past day but were repelled as they tried to advance toward a town about 20 kilometers (12 miles) to the city's north. South of the city, Russian forces were trying to push toward two more towns and shelling areas near Kramatorsk.

Meanwhile, Moscow-installed officials in Ukraines southern Kherson region on Tuesday announced the formation of a new regional government, with a former Russian official at the helm.

Sergei Yeliseyev, the head of the new Moscow-backed government in Kherson, is a former deputy prime minister of Russias western exclave of Kaliningrad and also used to work at Russia's Federal Security Service, or the FSB, according to media reports.

It wasnt immediately clear what would become of the military-civic administration the Kremlin installed earlier. The administration's head, Vladimir Saldo, said in a Telegram statement that the new government was not a temporary, not a military, not some kind of interim administration, but a proper governing body.

The fact that not just Kherson residents, but Russian officials, too, are part of this government speaks clearly about the direction the Kherson region is headed in the future," he said. "This direction is to Russia.

Kherson's Russia-installed administration previously stated plans for the region to become part of Russia, either through a referendum or other means.

There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials.

In other developments:

 The 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland, sending the two nations' membership bids to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals. The move further increases Russias strategic isolation. Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg hailed the signing as a "truly a historic moment for Finland, for Sweden and for NATO.

 The war in Ukraine has drawn millions of dollars away from countries facing other crises. Somalia, suffering a food shortage largely driven by the war, may be the most vulnerable. Its aid funding is less than half of last years level while overwhelmingly Western donors have sent more than $1.7 billion to respond to the war in Europe. Yemen, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Congo and the Palestinian territories are similarly affected.

 Spain boosted military spending in an attempt to reach its commitment to NATO to dedicate 2% of gross domestic product to defense. Spains Cabinet approved a one-off Defense Ministry expenditure of almost 1 billion euros ($1 billion) that the government said was necessary to pay for unexpected expenses from Russias invasion of Ukraine. Spain has sent military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine and deployed more troops and aircraft to NATO missions in Eastern Europe.

Follow AP's coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
NORFOLK  Zoe, a 3-year old border collie, ran along the Hampton University waterfront, looking for birds to chase away.

But there werent many. Most of the Canada geese that wreaked havoc on the campus for years already have been run off by Zoe and the other border collies.

Just three years ago, Hampton University students were accustomed to the geese overtaking the grassy lawn by the marina. They were barely able to sit and study or relax at the waterfront most of the time, due to the amount of geese feces on the lawn. At times, the geese even chased and attacked students, said university spokesperson James Parker.

The university then employed Flyaway Geese, a wildlife management company run by Rebecca Gibson, who has trained dogs her whole life. Her border collies are trained to run the geese off campus humanely, and there wasnt a goose in sight Wednesday. Gibson estimates 300 or so were on campus when her North Carolina-based company began work.

[Zoe] moves a lot, like a wolf or a coyote, Gibson said. So you get the presence of a predator, but a border collie doesnt have a kill instinct. So shes not interested in hurting the birds in any way, shes herding the birds.

When Gibson and her husband first began working on the campus, they would come out five or six times per day and hit different spots. Within a month or two, Gibson said, the birds knew they werent welcome. Now, Flyaway Geese visits once per day to try to keep the campus goose-free. There are a few spots Gibson and her dogs know to check, and they hit them at random times so the geese dont see them coming.

The geese had been on campus for 40 years, but when the Virginia Department of Transportation started clearing the south islands of geese for the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel expansion, more geese fled to the university, said Bill Thomas, Hamptons associate vice president.

It made the situation unlivable, Thomas said.

The university had to dedicate more funding toward cleaning up the feces. The geese were a health problem too, as students would track droppings into their dorms, potentially spreading viruses.

Zoes a seasoned pro  shes been training since she was a puppy and started herding Canada geese at 7 months. Most of the border collies Gibson trains begin doing contract work after they are a year old. Gibson estimates Flyaway Geese has about 40 to 50 border collies working across the country. The border collies also have chased away unwanted geese on Hampton Roads bridges and tunnels.

On a recent maintenance visit, Zoes audience included a couple bystanders on the grass, eating lunch and studying by the water  they didnt have to worry about stepping in droppings.

Everybody loves the dogs, Parker said. [Rebecca] comes on campus, everybodys in their office windows looking out as the dogs do their work.
A Gretna recruit is spending the next six months at the Nebraska State Patrol Training Academy.

The State Patrols 66th Basic Recruit Camp began Monday, July 5, in Grand Island, according to a news release. Graduates of the camp will receive the rank of trooper.

Theyre coming into camp as individuals, Capt. Greg Miller said in a provided interview. By the time they get out of here, theyre going to be a pretty tight-knit group.

Trysten Whitted joins 18 other recruits at the camp, which mixes an academic program with hands-on training. After the 22-week program, they will have an additional 800 hours of field training paired with veteran troopers.

The next six months is going to be very stressful, Miller said. Were going to test them mentally and physically.

The other recruits are Ethan Broker of Hayes Center; James Coon of Bird City, Kansas; Dylan Cramer of Merna; Ashley Elrod of Omaha; Clarissa Fitzgerald of Kearney; Mark Fluckey of Omaha; Anthony Franks of Saint Paul, Minnesota; Steven Johnson of Waverly; Logan Krein of Des Moines, Iowa; Johnathon Lawrence of Ord; Zachary Matthews of Neola, Iowa; Kailey Ortiz of Fleming, Colorado; Lazaro Pena of Grand Island; Zachariah Sporer of Colorado Springs, Colorado; Justyn Stindt of Belleville, Kansas; Tessa Stump of Funk; and Trysten Whitted of Gretna.

Theyve chosen a life of public service, NSP Superintendent Col. John Bolduc said in a release. That attitude will be a tremendous asset as our Training Academy troopers equip them with the knowledge, skills and abilities necessary to make a difference across our state.

The State Patrols next application period begins Thursday, July 7, with Camp 67 scheduled for January 2023. Find more information at nebraskatroopers.com.

NSP is marking its 85th anniversary, and Gov. Pete Ricketts recognized the agency in his weekly column and encouraged interested Nebraskans to consider a career with the law enforcement agency.

On behalf of all Nebraskans, thank you to the NSP for the 85 years of service to keep our communities safe, Ricketts said. Their mission has been successful because of the thousands of men and women who have answered the call to serve.
Oxford Democrat Kevin Kinney picked up another endorsement from the other side of the political aisle in his re-election campaign for Iowa Senate District 46.

Kinneys campaign announced Tuesday the endorsement of one-time Republican challenger Michael Moore, whom Kinney defeated in a race for an Iowa Senate District 39 seat in 2014.

Moore, former CEO of United Presbyterian Home, a retirement community in Washington, Iowa, said he considers himself more of a centrist, but is a registered Republican.

Kinneys campaign also announced the endorsement of Moores wife, Elaine, who is a member of the Washington City Council.

He looks at every side of an issue, talks to anyone who wants to talk and plays it down the middle, Moore said of Kinney in a statement. Thats a truly rare quality in a public official these days, and we believe we need more of that in our politics.

Were proud to stand behind Kevin, and we ask our fellow Republicans to join us in supporting Sen. Kevin Kinney this November.

Its the second Republican endorsement Kinney has picked up for re-election campaign in two weeks.

Retiring Republican state lawmaker Jarad Klein of Keota endorsed Kinneys re-election over that of Republican Sen. Dawn Driscoll of Williamsburg.

Kinney has served in the Iowa Legislature since 2015 and currently represents Senate District 39. Due to redistricting, he is running for re-election in Senate District 46, which includes rural Johnson County as well as Iowa and Washington counties.

JEWISH COUNCIL ENDORSES FRANKEN, MATHIS: The Jewish Democratic Council of America  which promotes socially progressive, pro-Israel, Jewish community values  has endorsed Iowa Democrats Mike Franken and Liz Mathis in Iowas U.S. Senate and new 2nd Congressional District campaigns.

Mathis, a state senator and nonprofit leader from Hiawatha, is running against Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson.

From expanding access to health care to combating climate change, state senator Mathis is fighting for the issues Jewish voters care about most, JDCA spokesperson Samuel Crystal said in statement released by the Mathis campaign.

Franken, a retired admiral from Sioux City, is running against Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley.

Admiral Franken is fighting for the issues Jewish voters care about most, including access to health care, reproductive freedom, and preserving democracy at home and abroad, Crystal said in a news release from the Franken campaign.

He understands the rising threat of antisemitism and white supremacy facing American Jews and is committed to ensuring fairness and equity in our government.
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.  Police say a gunman on a rooftop opened fire on an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago, killing at least six people, wounding at least 30 and sending hundreds of marchers, parents with strollers and children on bicycles fleeing in terror.

Authorities said 21-year-old Robert E. Crimo III was named as a person of interest in the shooting and was taken into police custody Monday evening after an hourslong manhunt.

The July 4 shooting was just the latest to shatter the rituals of American life. Schools, churches, grocery stores and now community parades have all become killing grounds in recent months. This time, the bloodshed came as the nation tried to find cause to celebrate its founding and the bonds that still hold it together.

The shooting occurred at a spot on the parade route where many residents had staked out prime viewing points early in the day for the annual celebration. Dozens of fired bullets sent hundreds of parade-goers  some visibly bloodied  fleeing. They left a trail of abandoned items that showed everyday life suddenly, violently disrupted: A half-eaten bag of potato chips; a box of chocolate cookies spilled onto the grass; a childs Chicago Cubs cap.

Theres no safe place, said Highland Park resident Barbara Harte, 73, who had stayed away from the parade fearing a mass shooting, but later ventured from her home.

Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Christopher Covelli said at a news conference several of the deceased victims died at the scene and one was taken to a hospital and died there. Police have not released details about the victims or wounded.
On an idyllic summer morning, from a rooftop high above the Highland Park Independence Day parade, a gunman aimed down at the floats and lawn chairs and strollers and opened fire.

The high school marching bands members sprinted for their lives, still carrying their flutes and saxophones. Bystanders scooped up young children and fled. In all, seven people were killed. Some two dozen others were injured, either by rifle fire or in the stampede away from the scene.

After an hourslong search, authorities arrested 21-year-old Robert Bobby Crimo III. A day later, he was charged with seven counts of first-degree murder in what Lake County States Attorney Eric Rinehart called a premeditated and calculated attack.

Heres what we know about shooting.

For the latest news, visit chicagotribune.com and sign up for our alerts here.

Heroism and healing: Highland Park parade survivors speak of shooting and its aftermath

A woman pauses to visit a memorial in Port Clinton Square in Highland Park on July 11, 2022. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

48 people were shot in addition to the seven killed, according to the Lake County states attorneys office. Bobby Crimo III, 21, is being held without bail at the Lake County Jail on seven counts of first-degree murder.

Another six people suffered injuries in the aftermath of the shooting. And countless others  from survivors to witnesses and heroes  carry the emotional scars as they too recover from the trauma.

>>> Read the full story here

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8-year-old boy paralyzed after Highland Park shooting in very critical condition following urgent surgery

Cooper Roberts, an 8-year-old boy paralyzed from the waist down after being wounded at the Fourth of July parade shooting in Highland Park, is back to critical condition. He's the son of Zion Elementary School District 6 Superintendent Keely Roberts, who was at the Highland Park parade with Cooper and his twin brother Luke, when shooting erupted. All three were shot. (Roberts family)

Cooper Roberts, the 8-year-old boy paralyzed from the waist down after being wounded at the Independence Day parade shooting in Highland Park, was in very critical condition after undergoing his seventh surgery on Wednesday, a family spokesman said.

Though his condition after the surgery initially seemed positive and the boy was breathing over the ventilator, as the day progressed Coopers fever returned. A CT scan also revealed fluid building in his esophagus, lungs and now around his pelvis, the family said through their spokesman, Anthony Loizzi.

>>> Read the full story here

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Highland Park shooting: Attorney for parents of man charged in July 4th massacre says theyre cooperating with authorities, defends dads consent on FOID application

The entrance to the rear unit where the alleged shooter lived at the Highwood home of his father, July 7, 2022, three days after a mass shooting at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

An attorney who represents the parents of the man charged with murder in the Highland Park mass shooting on the Fourth of July said they have been cooperating with the law enforcement investigation of the shooting.

In response to concerns that Robert Bobby Crimo IIIs father sponsored him for a firearm owners identification card, attorney George Gomez said, We still take the position at the time the father (Robert Crimo Jr.) consented to the FOID application, that he was not aware that the son was a danger to anyone else or himself.

>>> Read the full story here

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Highland Park survivors and suburban mothers march on U.S. Capitol calling for assault weapons ban: This is not political

Portrait of Kitty Brandtner at her Winnetka home on July 9, 2022. Brandtner is meeting with Congress members for a rally she is organizing in Washington, D.C., in response to the Highland Park mass shooting and others around the U.S. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

Hundreds of people, including survivors of the Highland Park Fourth of July shooting, are marching at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday to pressure legislators to enact a federal ban on assault weapons.

As Highland Park and surrounding communities began to grieve in the wake of tragedy, Wilmette resident Kitty Brandtner sprung into action, founding a group called March Fourth with a mission of ensuring that the seven people killed in Highland Park are among the last Americans to lose their lives in mass shootings carried out with assault-style weapons.

>>> Read the full story here

Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering urge President Biden to take federal action on guns

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We will never be exactly who we were: Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering on how Independence Day mass shooting has changed her town

Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering speaks with the media at the end of Central Avenue following a mass shooting on Tuesday, July 5, 2022 in Highland Park. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

Mayor Nancy Rotering had just started walking in Highland Parks Independence Day parade when the music from the high schools marching band ended abruptly, replaced by an ominous cadence.

I didnt realize it at the time, but what I was hearing was the gunshots, she said.

Rotering, a near-lifelong resident of Highland Park and its mayor since 2011, was immediately thrust into a global spotlight while trying to lead her town through an unimaginable crisis and pressing for changes to Americas gun laws. Nine years ago, Rotering signed a city ordinance banning assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, and on Monday she and Gov. J.B. Pritzker joined President Joe Biden at the White House to commemorate the passage of new restrictions.

>>> Read the full story here

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As Highland Park sits in the national spotlight, its residents want you to know a few things

A new banner hangs on a business in downtown Highland Park as residents return to some of their daily routines on July 7, 2022, after a mass shooting at the city's Independence Day parade. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

Highland Park, located on the North Shore of Chicago, sits between the suburbs of Highwood and Glencoe. On the Fourth of July, after a gunman killed and wounded dozens during the holiday parade here, social media was alive with expressions of shock and grief, outpourings of sympathy and surprise at where this happened  but also reminders that Highland Park is one of the wealthiest suburbs in America.

But actually, Glencoe, to its south, is much richer. And Highwood, to its north, has a poverty rate only slightly above Chicagos. Comparably, Highland Park is well-off. Pretty wealthy, just not as uniform as some of the suburbs that surround Highland Park.

It is a town shouldering some misconceptions  of what a Midwest suburb looks like now, and what sheltered still means.

>>> Read the full story here

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These are the victims of the Fourth of July parade shooting in Highland Park

A half-mast flag flies in Highland Park on July 5, 2022. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

The parents of a toddler. A father of eight and a grandfather to many. A synagogue employee known for her kindness. A family man who loved the arts.

Here is what we know about the victims of the shooting who ranged in age from 8 to 85 years old.

>>> Read the full story here

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Its going to be hard: A new normal begins to emerge in a deeply wounded Highland Park

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 79 Elizabeth Vazquez, from left, hugs 8-year-old Abner Toledo while standing next to Ricardo Toledo, 35, and Anna Vazquez, 14, as they attend a vigil outside Highland Park City Hall on July 13, 2022, for victims of the July Fourth mass shooting. Ricardos grandfather Nicolas Toledo, 78, was among the seven people killed in the shooting. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

The citys main street will never look the same to Courtney Mann, who grew up going to the Fourth of July parade.

You go two blocks away from here and it seems like life is normal, Mann, 46, said.

Late into the morning, FBI agents loaded abandoned lawn chairs and strollers into U-Haul trucks and drove them away. Central Avenue began to look clean again as the rain dried up.

>>> Read the full story here

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Police records paint picture of turbulent home life for alleged sniper in Highland Park mass shooting

A painting apparently depicting a person holding a rifle is visible on the back of the Highland Park home of the alleged shooter's mother, July 7, 2022, three days after a mass shooting at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

Highland Park police were called to the family home of the alleged Independence Day parade sniper at least nine times between 2010 and 2014 in response to domestic disputes, according to newly released police records.

>>> Read the full story here

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Man accused in Highland Park parade shooting ordered held without bail

Robert "Bobby" E. Crimo III appears at his bond hearing via video on July 6, 2022, at Lake County Circuit Court in Waukegan. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

A Lake County judge ordered Robert E. Bobby Crimo III, accused of carrying out the rooftop massacre at Highland Parks Independence Day parade, held without bond as his prosecution on seven counts of first degree murder begins.

Calling Crimo a threat to the community, Judge Judge Theodore Potkonjak ordered him to remain in jail. Crimos next hearing is set for July 28.

>>> Read the full story here

Alleged shooter charged with 7 counts of murder in premeditated and calculated attack

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Photos: Belongings left behind after Highland Park parade shooting

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 24 Bicycles and other items remain at the scene of a mass shooting that killed seven people and injured more than 30 others during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

Those attending Highland Parks Fourth of July parade left behind many personal items in the rush to flee the scene. Their belongings are slowly being released by law enforcement as their investigation of the mass shooting continues.

>>> See the photo gallery here

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Victims include both parents of toddler found wandering alone after gunfire. Are Mommy and Daddy coming soon? boy asked grandfather.

Irina McCarthy, 35, and Kevin McCarthy, 37, both of Highland Park, left behind a 2-year-old boy, Aiden McCarthy. (gofundme)

Toddler Aiden McCarthy was found wandering alone in the chaotic aftermath of Mondays mass shooting in Highland Park as strangers sought to reunite him with his family.

Tuesday it emerged that the parents of 2-year-old Aiden, Irina and Kevin McCarthy, were among the seven people killed when gunfire erupted at the start of the local Fourth of July parade.

>>> Read the full story here

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Family of Eduardo Uvaldo, the seventh victim in Highland Park shooting, prayed for a miracle

Highland Park Fourth of July parade shooting victim Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, right, with his wife Maria Uvaldo in an undated photo. (Uvaldo family)

The family of Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, prayed for a miracle after the grandfather was shot while attending the Highland Park Fourth of July parade. His daughters, on social media, pleaded with others to join them in prayer, sharing a photo of Uvaldo sitting in front of the Louvre in Paris, wearing a blue shirt and a soft smile.

But Uvaldo didnt make it and requests for prayers for a miracle turned into prayers for strength for the family he leaves behind.

>>> Read the full story here

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Highland Park shooting victim Katie Goldstein remembered fondly by her neighbors. She was a lovely lady.

Katie Goldstein, whose neighbors describe her as welcoming and lovely, brought them baked goods during the holidays.

On the Fourth of July, however, she attended the Highland Park parade where a gunman killed seven and injured dozens. Goldstein was one of the seven killed, leaving behind her husband and two daughters.

>>> Read the full story here

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Highland Park shooting: Mexican grandfather among those killed called a hardworking man that has contributed to this country

Nicolas Toledo was a father of eight and a grandfather who was shot and killed during the Independence Day parade in Highland Park on July 4, 2022. (Toledo family)

Nicolas Toledo, 76, arrived a few months ago from his native Morelos, Mexico, to spend time with his family after retiring several years ago.

Minutes after the parade had started, Toledo  sitting in a wheelchair surrounded by his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren  had been smiling as horses marched down the street, a relative, Elizabeth Vazquez Toledo told local Chicago Spanish news stations the evening after the shooting.

>>> Read the full story here

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Highland Park shooting victim Steve Straus, 88, remembered as a family man who loved the arts and Chicago

Steve Straus, 88, was an exceptional joke-teller, an avid reader and a culture vulture who enjoyed the artistic fruits of the Art Institute and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, family members said Tuesday. Energetic beyond his years, Straus commuted on Metra five days a week to his office downtown, where he worked as a stockbroker.

Straus, said his son Peter Straus, was very curious about the world.

>>> Read the full story here

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Highland Park shooting victim touched countless lives with her work at synagogue: Every life cycle event, you shared with Jacki

Jacki Sundheim. (North Shore Congregation Israel)

Jacki Sundheim coordinated events and bar and bat mitzvahs at North Shore Congregation Israel, according to the synagogues website.

Sundheim also taught preschool at Congregation Israel, where she was a lifelong member, according to a message from the synagogue. It also said her work, kindness and warmth touched us all and that she guided innumerable among us through lifes moments of joy and sorrow, all of this with tireless dedication.

>>> Read the full story here

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Vice President Kamala Harris visits Highland Park following shooting and calls for federal ban on assault weapons

Vice President Kamala Harris visits the Central Avenue crime scene on July 5, 2022, the day after a mass shooting at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

Weve got to be smarter as a country in terms of who has access to what, in particular assault weapons, said Vice President Kamala Harris, who was joined by Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering and other Democratic politicians. And weve got to take this stuff seriously. The whole nation should understand and have a level of empathy to understand that this could happen anywhere in any peace-loving community. And we should stand together and speak out about why its got to stop.

>>> Read the full story here

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Highland Park parade was not the first time a mass shooting took place in the Chicago suburbs

Jasmin Olvera, 22, lights candles next to a memorial outside the Henry Pratt Co. plant where on Friday six people, including the gunman, were fatally shot Sunday Feb. 17, 2019, in Aurora, Ill. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

The shooting at Highland Parks Fourth of July parade put the North Shore town in chilling company with other communities across Chicago and the suburbs where neighbors, co-workers, students and residents have faced terror and tragedy when gunmen opened fire.

>>> Read the full story here

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Column: Highland Park parade shooting was an experience I could not have comprehended I would ever experience

As my long-time partner Margie, left, and I were ready to flee the Highland Park Fourth of July Parade, she told me not to put the chairs in their cases, just get them and go. They are still not back in the cases. (Steve Sadin / HANDOUT)

Having moved to Highland Park with my family as a 10-year-old, the city has been the place where I raised my children, and now get to watch grandchildren play baseball on the same diamonds where I played as a boy.

It is home and a very good one.

Fourth of July parades were often part of my experience as a child, as a parent, as a reporter and now as a grandparent. A few times, the parade was a three-generational experience with multiple grandparents. Thankfully, that was not the case Monday.

>>> Read the full story here

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How to talk to kids about the parade shooting

People watch as law enforcement continues to investigate the scene along Central Avenue on July 5, 2022, the day after a mass shooting at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

In the past, Chicago-area parents may have been able to avoid difficult conversations with their young children about mass shootings in other areas of the country. But the Highland Park shooting has made that nearly impossible for many parents.

If youre living in northern Illinois, everyone is going to be talking about this, and if a child is older than a toddler, theyre going to have some level of exposure to it, said Gene Liebler, executive director of behavioral health and community at La Rabida Childrens Hospital in Chicago.

>>> Read the full story here

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In painful, chilling detail, witnesses recount the deadly mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade

Items are left on the ground along the parade route on St. Johns Avenue near a mass shooting crime scene July 4, 2022, in Highland Park. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)

The first popping noises sounded like firecrackers or maybe a gun salute honoring the American flag. Then someone screamed, Theres a shooter.

And, in an instant, everyone understood the reality.

They grabbed their children under their arms and ran. They left behind strollers, lawn chairs, cellphones and purses. They took only what mattered.

People were terrified, screaming, Highland Park resident Joe Leslie said. It was a scene from a nightmare.

>>> Read the full story here

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Timeline: List of recent high-profile shootings in the US

Two officers stand guard near 2nd and Central avenues at a mass shooting crime scene on July 4, 2022, in Highland Park. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)

The most deadly incident since May happened when a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24. And on May 14, a racist attack led to the deaths of 10 African Americans at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

>>> Read the full story here

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Bulls call for action while mourning victims of the Highland Park shooting: Our connection with the community is personal

The Bulls hold close ties to the Highland Park community. They practiced for more than 20 years in Deerfield, less than 10 minutes from the site of the shooting, and Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen were among many Bulls players and coaches to live in Highland Park during their tenure with the team.

In its statement the team called for increased action to combat gun violence. The Bulls previously partnered with other city teams to form the Chicago Sports Alliance, which directs grants to organizations such as the Chicago Crime Lab.

>>> Read the full story here

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Liam Hendriks calls out gun laws after Highland Park shootings. The access to the weaponry ... totally needs to change, White Sox closer says.

Liam Hendriks, who was born in Australia, said he is baffled by American gun culture.

Thats what America is known for, he said. There are a lot of things that are good over here, but you look at the news and its just a complete  I can walk into the stores as a non-American and buy a handgun in certain states. And that baffles me because I had to take a driving test when I came over here. I wont have to take a test if I want to get a gun. Thats stupid. Whoever thought that was a great idea is an idiot.

>>> Read the full story here
Members of the Andean Parliament, led by Senate Speaker of Chile, Fidel Espinoza Sandoval, have been dazzled by the socio-economic development accomplished in the Moroccan Saharan city of Laayoune.

They toured the city on the sidelines of the first ever joint session held Monday by the Moroccan and Andean Parliaments in the capital of the Moroccan Sahara.

The event shows the strong support of the Latin American institution to the realistic and credible autonomy plan offered by Morocco under its sovereignty for a lasting and peaceful settlement of the Sahara regional issue.

Several local Sahrawi elected officials availed this opportunity to boast about the freedom and respect for human rights enjoyed by citizens across the Southern Provinces.

Fourteen MPs of the Andean Parliament visited on Monday the brand-new University Hospital of Laayoune, the medical school construction site, the trades & skills village, Womens club, the library and the Town Hall wherein they were informed about a series of projects funded by the USA, Spain, the UAE, Italy and several other countries.

They were also provided detailed explanations about various development projects launched within the frame of the New Development Model set for the Southern provinces.

Morocco is an observer member of the Andean Parliament, which is the deliberative body of the Andean community (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile). The Andean Parliament is formed of 25 elected MPs, five from each member country.
Libyas Minister of Oil and Gas Mohamed Aoun has accused the National Oil Corporation (NOC) Chairman Mustafa Sanalla of withholding production data, amid plans to replace the board of directors of the company.

Aoun, who has been at odds with Sanalla for some time, has revealed that he has not got data on production since last April 3, Libya Observer reports.

The minister also indicated that Tripoli-based Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah has been informed of this, and the issue was raised at a cabinet meeting in Jadu town on June 23.

Both Dbeibeh and Aoun floated the idea to replace Mustafa sanalla and replace the entire NOC board of directors but the plan has been rejected by the House of Representatives (HoR).

Aoun accused Sanalla of infringement, arrogance, defiance, and disrespect of the law and of his superiors, disclosing that he submitted a memorandum to the PM in this regard for the third time since no action has been taken against him, Libya Observer adds.

It is unclear why the NOC boss is allegedly holding data but it is coming amid showdown between Dbeibeh and his rival Fathi Bashagha backed by the HoR.

The parliament replaced Dbeibeh in February by the former Interior Minister Bashagha and asked the NOC to stop financing Dbeibehs administration.
Morocco has reiterated its position to the UN envoy Staffan de Mistura that autonomy under the kingdoms sovereignty and territorial integrity is the only solution to the regional conflict over the Sahara.

This came during talks on July 5 in Rabat between Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita and de Mistura.

The Moroccan delegation also expressed Moroccos attachment to the political process of round tables in line with resolution 2602, which called for a political, realistic, feasible and lasting solution based on compromise, Moroccos foreign ministry said in a statement.

King Mohammed VI has affirmed in a speech in November 2021 that autonomy was the exclusive political solution to the Sahara conflict.

UN resolutions have described the autonomy plan as a serious and credible proposal.

De Misturas visit to Morocco came at a context of increasing support for Moroccos autonomy plan.

The US, most of the Arab World and Africa, and many powerful players in the EU have all supported Moroccos autonomy initiative.
LINCOLN  The Nebraska Department of Agriculture is taking applications for grants to small meatpacking processors from federal COVID-19 aid.

The Independent Processor Assistance Program Grants are being financed by $9.8 million of Nebraskas share of American Rescue Plan Act funds, the department said in a press release.

Small processors have until Aug. 12 to apply for the grants, which could cover up to $80,000 of pandemic-related expenses incurred after Aug. 28, 2021.

Our livestock producers and meat processors have already faced many unique challenges created by the pandemic, and yet they continue to find solutions to keep the food chain operating, said NDA Director Steve Wellman.

New or existing meat processors may use the grants to facilitate improvements, enhancements or expansions that will increase harvest capacity and/or product throughput.

Eligible processors must operate as either a USDA-FSIS facility or a federally regulated custom-exempt slaughter and processing facility, while also complying with federal regulations.

Existing operations must be domiciled in Nebraska and be registered in good standing with the Secretary of States Office to conduct business in Nebraska.

Its existing sales revenue must be less than $2.5 million, and it must employ fewer than 25 people.

Applications are available online at nda.nebraska.gov/promotion/meat_processors.

Completed applications may be submitted via email to breanna.wirth@nebraska.gov or mailed to the Nebraska Department of Agriculture, P.O. Box 94947, Lincoln, NE 68509.

For more information, contact Wirth, the departments legislative coordinator, by email or by calling 402-890-1509.
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Mazars Veteran Brings Top-Tier Experience to Executive Team

GREENWICH, Conn., July 05, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Fieldpoint Private, the fast-growing private banking firm serving entrepreneurs, families, businesses and institutions, announced the appointment of Gina Omolon, CPA, as Chief Financial Officer, succeeding Ian McMahon, who will be retiring in October after almost ten years with Fieldpoint.

Omolon joins Fieldpoint with more than 20 years experience, most recently serving as senior manager and partner at Mazars USA.

"I am pleased to welcome Gina to Fieldpoint. Her diverse and extensive knowledge base is already making a difference," said Russ Holland, President and CEO of Fieldpoint Private. "Her background as a leader at a top audit and tax advisory firm, and service to well-known financial firms both nationally and abroad, brings an important breadth of perspective to our executive team."

Since 2020, the firms banking unit has emerged as one of the fastest growing banks in the country with assets up 42 percent, placing it among the 6-percent fastest growing banks in the U.S. according to S&P Global data. Fieldpoints footprint includes its Greenwich, Connecticut headquarters and offices in New York City, Atlanta, Miami/Coral Gables and Orlando/Winter Park.

Based in the firms Atlanta office, Omolon will lead the finance team, overseeing all areas of the banks financial activities and serving a vital role in the banks strategic initiatives. Her 13 years at Mazars USA included leading internal teams as well as auditing, accounting and consulting engagements for high-net-worth banks, broker-dealers, private equity firms and asset managers. She began her career as a senior associate with Ernst & Young International, performing audits for a variety of international and domestic businesses.

About Fieldpoint Private

Headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, Fieldpoint Private (www.fieldpointprivate.com) has $1.6 billion in bank assets and provides personalized, custom private banking and wealth transfer services. Catering to successful individuals, families, entrepreneurs, businesses and institutions, Fieldpoint Private develops a comprehensive understanding of our clients individual financial circumstances and furnishes comprehensive advice and personal service to free up the one resource that regardless of means no one can ever have enough of: time.

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Banking Services: Fieldpoint Private Bank & Trust. Member FDIC.

Registered Investment Advisors: Fieldpoint Private Securities, LLC, is a SEC Registered Investment Advisor and Broker Dealer. Member FINRA, MSRB, SIPC. Accounts managed by FPS are not FDIC insured.

Trust services offered through Fieldpoint Private Trust, LLC, a public trust company chartered in South Dakota by the South Dakota Division of Banking.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220705005062/en/

Contacts

Michael White

Fieldpoint Private

203.413.9340

mwhite@fieldpointprivate.com
NevGold Corp.

Vancouver, British Columbia, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NevGold Corp. (NevGold or the Company) (TSXV:NAU) (OTCQX:NAUFF) (Frankfurt:5E50) is pleased to announce closing of the option agreement (the Option) to acquire the Nutmeg Mountain Gold Project (the Project or Nutmeg Mountain), and C$1 million strategic investment by GoldMining Inc. (GoldMining, TSX:GOLD, NYSE:GLDG).



NevGold CEO, Brandon Bonifacio, comments: NevGold is very pleased to close the option agreement on Nutmeg Mountain and the C$1M first tranche of financing with GoldMining. With current treasury and the C$1M financing we are funded to continue to advance our projects. We also have a further C$1.25M lead order from GoldMining in a future financing which gives us flexibility over the coming months. We are expecting more assays out of Nevada imminently, so it is shaping up to be an extremely busy 2nd half of 2022. We welcome GoldMining as a new strategic partner and investor, and we look forward to the next chapter of NevGold with a larger scale platform and significant valuation re-rate potential.

Terms of the Transaction

Under an option agreement among NevGold, GoldMining, and their respective U.S. subsidiaries:

In consideration for the grant of the Option, NevGold issued 4,444,444 common shares to GoldMining at a price of $0.675 per share , representing C$3 million of value based on the 30-day volume-weighted average price of NevGold shares. GoldMining becomes a large, cornerstone, strategic investor of NevGold with a 10.5% interest;

Concurrently with the above issuance, GoldMining made an initial Investment of C$1 million, subscribing for 1,481,481 NevGold shares at a price of $0.675 per share , and commits to a further lead order in an amount up to C$1.25 million in a future financing by NevGold ;

In order to exercise the option, NevGold will pay the following amounts, or at its discretion, issue shares to GoldMining with an equivalent value, on the following schedule: January 1, 2023: C$1.5 million July 1, 2023: C$1.5 million January 1, 2024: C$3.0 million

In order to exercise the Option, NevGold will also be required to make qualifying expenditures on the Project totalling C$2.25 million: $1.5 million on or before June 1, 2023 a further $0.75 million on or before December 31, 2023

On completion of the total C$9.0 million in equity issuances and/or payments to GoldMining and total C$2.25 million in qualifying expenditures by January 1, 2024, NevGold would own 100% of the Nutmeg Mountain Gold Project

NevGold commits to a schedule of future success-based contingent payments totalling C$7.5 million to GoldMining, payable in cash or shares at the election of NevGold: C$0.5 million on completion of a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) on the Project C$2.5 million on completion of a Preliminary Feasibility Study (PFS) on the Project C$4.5 million on completion of a Feasibility Study (FS) on the Project

NevGold entered into an Investor Rights Agreement with GoldMining with customary rights including pre-emptive equity participation rights and a right to appoint a Board member





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NevGold has received approval of the TSX Venture Exchange (Exchange) to the Option and the initial Investment by GoldMining of 1,481,481 NevGold shares at $0.675 per share. Further issuances of securities pursuant to the option agreement with GoldMining are subject to the approval of the Exchange. The NevGold shares issued pursuant to the closing of the Option and the initial Investment by GoldMining are subject to a hold period expiring on November 5, 2022. All securities issued in connection with the Option and the Investment will be subject to a hold period ending four months and one day after issuance. NevGold intends to use the gross proceeds of the initial Investment by GoldMining to advance the Project.

Strategic Investment  GoldMining

Prior to the acquisition of NevGold Shares disclosed herein, GoldMining did not beneficially own or exercise control and direction of any NevGold Shares. Immediately thereafter, GoldMining beneficially owned and exercised control and direction of 5,925,925 NevGold Shares, representing 10.5% of the outstanding NevGold Shares, based upon 50,344,287 outstanding NevGold Shares as of July 4, 2022, and 56,270,212 NevGold shares post-closing.

The NevGold Shares were acquired by GoldMining for investment purposes, and in the future, GoldMining may acquire additional securities of NevGold, dispose of some or all of the existing or additional securities GoldMining holds or will hold, or may continue to hold its current position, depending on market conditions, reformulation of plans and/or other relevant factors.

An early warning report (the "Report") will be filed by GoldMining pursuant to NI 62-103 on SEDAR at www.sedar.com under the profile of NevGold. GoldMinings head office is located at 1030 West Georgia Street, Suite 1830, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6E 2Y3. To obtain a copy of the Report, please contact GoldMining as follows:

GoldMining Inc.

Attn: Pat Obara, Chief Financial Officer

1030 West Georgia Street, Suite 1830

Vancouver, BC V6E 2Y3

Tel: (855) 630-1001

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Signed

Brandon Bonifacio, President & CEO

For further information, please contact Brandon Bonifacio at bbonifacio@nev-gold.com, call 604-337-4997, or visit our website at www.nev-gold.com.

About the Company

NevGold is an exploration and development company targeting large-scale mineral systems in the proven districts of Nevada, Idaho, and British Columbia. NevGold owns a 100% interest in the Limousine Butte and Cedar Wash gold projects in Nevada and the Ptarmigan silver-polymetallic project in Southeast BC, and has an option to acquire 100% of the Nutmeg Mountain gold project in Idaho.

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 that are based on the Companys current expectations and estimates. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as plan, expect, project, intend, believe, anticipate, estimate, suggest, indicate and other similar words or statements that certain events or conditions may or will occur. Forward looking statements in this news release include statements with respect to regulatory approval, exercise of the Option, use of proceeds from GoldMining and the Companys future exploration plans with respect to the Project. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from estimated or anticipated events or results implied or expressed in such forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein.




Recent rumblings online have had residents howling, so to speak, about coyotes in northern Opelika around the fairgrounds area.

Some reports have had residents concerned for their own safety as well as that of their pets. And while the city acknowledges that there are coyotes living in the area, they dont consider them to be a concern, so long as people take the proper precautions.

Always be observant, and if you see something thats out of the ordinary with these animals let us know, said Terry White, director of environmental services for Opelika. Be particularly aware of things late in the day, at dusk or early evening.

According to White, the problem is one of simple urban spread. As the city continues to grow, it encroaches on habitats natural to a variety of species, including coyotes.

What we think is happening is the city continues to expand and build these neighborhoods and when they do, theyre kind of running these coyotes out of their natural habitat, White said.

Marianne Gauldin, outreach coordinator with the Department of Natural Resources, couldnt agree with White more. Shes a naturalist by trade with plenty of experience using forests as classrooms.

Coyotes are common statewide, Gauldin recently told Opelika-Auburn News. They can be found in every county in Alabama, including rural, suburban and urban environments. They are highly adaptable. They eat a variety of food sources, and they are able to thrive in close proximity to humans.

As neighborhoods continue to spread, cities create what Gauldin refers to as edge habitats.

The very nature of the structure of neighborhoods and our communities create edge habitats, where rabbits thrive, where deer thrive. Brush piles where rats and mice will be and those types of things are food sources for the coyotes, she said.

As coyotes come into neighborhoods, their adaptability allows them to acclimate to human activities. Common things like grills and trash and small pets attract them as well. Its an issue that Gauldin feels people need to be aware of.

The No. 1 thing that they can do is to minimize attractants, she said of residents. A lot of the complaints that we receive about coyotes are in response to coyotes that are being inadvertently attracted to peoples homes.

Those things include leaving pet food outside overnight, leaving pets and especially cats.

If you have a free-roaming cat, that is something that will attract coyotes, she said. In addition, anything that will attract a stray dog will potentially attract a coyote, for example, stinky trash, food left outside, a grill that hasnt been cleaned in a while and it has a strong smell of food.

She said late spring and early summer are common times for humans to encounter coyotes, which mate during the winter, so this time of year is pup-rearing season for them.

When a mother coyote is nursing, she needs a lot of calories to be able to support her growing family and then also to feed those pups, Gauldin said. So, seeing these animals moving around during the day does not mean they are sick. It doesnt mean theyre behaving abnormally. It means theyre out foraging, looking for food to support themselves and their pups.

And if you hear what sounds like a pack of coyotes at night, Gauldin says not to worry too much about that either.

One thing to remember is when you hear coyotes, oftentimes their howls will echo and reverberate quite a bit, she said. You may think youre hearing a lot of coyotes, but it actually may not be as many as you think. But this is the way that coyotes are communicating with each other. Its not a sound that humans need to fear. Basically, whether youre hearing them or not, coyotes are there.

If someone does see a coyote, they shouldnt be scared, she said. A healthy coyote will usually run away if a human reacts to it the same way they would any wild animal.

Spook them away, you know, clap your hands, holler at them, dont become complacent and let them feel comfortable getting closer and closer and approaching your property, if you dont want them there, Gauldin said. If you see them, holler at it, clap your hands and shoo them away much as you would shoo away a stray dog. A healthy coyote will move away from people.

However, if there are any problems with coyotes, White says to give the city a call.

You know, theyre wild animals out there, White said.Theyre just living their life. But if that ever changes, if people pick up the phone well certainly investigate and respond appropriately.

We will continue to watch everything and monitor. We do that all the time, anyway. Its part of our process.
Hours after a Mexican grandfather was killed and several other family members injured in the deadly shooting at Highland Parks Fourth of July parade, several of his relatives described to the media the scene of horror they lived on a day that was supposed to be a celebration.

But their pain and grief no longer allows them to speak about the tragedy, said one of his daughters-in-law.

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Nicolas Toledo, 76, arrived a few months ago from his native Morelos, Mexico, to spend time with his family after retiring several years ago. The father of eight and grandfather to many, was one of the seven people killed in a mass shooting that has left not only the Toledo family but an entire community traumatized.

Nicolas Toledo was a father of eight and a grandfather who was shot and killed during the Independence Day parade in Highland Park on July 4, 2022. (Toledo family)

Minutes after the parade had started, Toledo  sitting in a wheelchair surrounded by his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren  had been smiling as horses marched down the street, a relative, Elizabeth Vazquez Toledo told local Chicago Spanish news stations the evening after the shooting.

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Shortly after, they heard the gunshots that initially appeared to be a part of the celebration but that suddenly struck Toledo, killing him instantly as one of his sons tried to shield him, Vazquez recounted. Three other members of the family were also injured.

We are living a nightmare, she said during the interview with Univision.

About 15 members of the Toledo family gathered to attend the parade as part of a family tradition to celebrate the independence of the country that became their home after Toledo immigrated to the area in the 1980s.

Afternoon Briefing Daily Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon. >

He was a loving man, his granddaughter Xochil Toledo wrote on a GoFundMe page created by the family to collect funds for the funeral expenses.

But today Nicolas is our guardian angel, Xochil Toledo added. We ask you (to) please keep our family and all the families of this horrible tragedy in your prayers and stay strong as a community.

[ These are the victims of the Fourth of July parade shooting in Highland Park ]

Though Toledo spent most of his life in the Chicago area, his family said his wish was to return to his beloved Morelos and rest there. They have been in direct contact with Ambassador Reyna Torres Mendivil, the consul general of Mexico in Chicago, to arrange the repatriation process.

We are saddened by the tragedy that has so deeply impacted members of our community, Torres Mendivil said. It pains us to lose a hardworking man that has contributed to this country, she said.

Torres Mendivil said that the consulate will provide financial and legal services for the Toledo family as needed to ensure that Toledo can rest in his beloved Morelos, but also to assist the family as the investigation of the shooting continues.

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I want to thank every single person from the bottom of (my) heart to anyone who has donated. Words are not enough to say how thankful we are for everyone in our community helping us out in these tough times, wrote Xochil Toledo on Tuesday afternoon.

larodriguez@chicagotribune.com
which has been billed as being tonally similar to The Big Short, American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street





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I was going to make this post, but I was going to say "Living Legend to star in Netflix movie, also Chris Evans is here."

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oh this does not sound good

like the combination of folks involved + tone + netflix, seems bad man

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A movie starring a white guy called Chris?



Groundbreaking.

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The problem is there are so many of them running around now.



P-rat needs to retire to devote his life to his church & that would eliminate some of the movies.

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This sounds terrible. Netflix movies are pretty forgettable and Chrevans has shit taste in roles.

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Yeah, Ive seen Netflix movies that Ive enjoyed but I wouldnt think of any of them as standouts

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He really didn't use his Knives Out role to show he could be doing more interesting stuff

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Seriously. Same with Snowpiercer. One good role every five years and he never leverages it.

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So netflix is going to continue to piss away money paying HW stars and watch their subscriber numbers fall.

Dummies

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At least it's not another film with Scarjo or Ana de Armas. He's slowly branching out.

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Tbh he should just do movies with ScarJo. Guaranteed chemistry haha

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I wish he had been tom cruises character in that one Emily Blunt movie. Ive never seen her in anything else.

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She's absolutely delightful

How have you only seen one of her worst movie?

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 why yes, yes I have. Got any recommendations?

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What

I mean hes a horrible cult person but talent wise hes much better tHan Chris

The edge of tomorrow was a good movie Chris wouldve ruined it hes a black hole of charisma

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Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ

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i hope j.lo's character comes back

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Lmao stop. She cant act.

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With reading about the opioid crisis and the Sacklers, this puts a bad taste in my mouth. I feel like Blunt's character is going to be pushing the sale of opioids and get rich quick and then it's going to come back to her and she'll see how many lives she's ruined or something like that. I hope it's something different and not dramatizing the horrible opioid crisis, but I guess we'll see.

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Mte. I can't imagine there being an audience for a film where rich people ruin other people's lives these days. It just sounds depressing.

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It actually sounds similar to the real life 'story' of someone in The Crime of the Century, an opioid doc on HBO. The woman, Sunrise Lee, actually did jail time for her involvement in the pill pushing.

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Oof. I haven't seen the doc, but I know a lot about the case against the Sacklers. The name sounds familiar, though. So many people were involved and getting rich while exploiting patients who were in pain.

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Is his ass owned by netflix now?

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Yet another Chris Evans project that I have absolutely no desire to watch. Keep it up, bland king!!

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"Her charm, guts and drive catapult the company and her into the high life"



Lmao, what year is this set in? This does not sound....current, lol. Someone in a strip mall single-handedly saves a company with her.... charm and drive? ok lol

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China is taking advantage of the current geopolitical climate, buying up as much Russian oil as it can.

When the Trump administration slapped sanctions on Venezuela and Iran, China became the largest buyer of these countries crude oil despite repeated warnings by Washington officialsand not just warnings but action, toothat there is such a thing as secondary sanctions.

Now, China has also become an even bigger buyer of oil from the worlds biggest exporter, incidentally the subject of not just U.S. but European Union sanctions, too. And while oil prices for most of the world are rising, for China, they are falling.

Bloomberg reported this week that Iran has had to cut the price of its already discounted crude in order to be able to compete with Russian crude sent to China. The market is important for Iran, as it is one of very few where its crude is accepted amid the still continuing U.S. sanctions.

The only competition between Iranian and Russian barrels may end up being in China, which would work entirely to Beijings advantage, said energy analyst Vandana Hari, as quoted by Bloomberg. This is also likely to make the Gulf producers uneasy, seeing their prized markets taken over by heavily discounted crude.

This might hint at the possibility of discord within OPEC+, but then again, it will take a while for such discord to manifest itself. Meanwhile, Iran, per the Bloomberg report, is cutting its oil prices to some $10 per barrel below the Brent benchmark to compete with Urals, which has comparable properties and which Russia heavily exports to China.

The main buyers of both Iranian and Russian crude are the private refiners in Chinathe so-called teapots. Unlike the state-owned majors who need to tread carefully around sanctions and who have fuel export quotas, the teapots are oriented towards supplying the domestic market, and the recent wave of Covid lockdowns have done nothing good for domestic fuel demand.

Even before Russia joined the sanctions party, however, China was gobbling up Iranian and Venezuelan barrels that pretty much nobody else wanted. Beijing may very well be secretly celebrating the sanctions on Russia as they gave the country access to a lot more crude: Venezuela has limited production capacity, and Irans plans to boost its capacity hinge on a new nuclear deal with the West.

Related: Canada May Expand Energy Infrastructure To Help Europe

Industry commentators and analysts have been noting since March that Russia may not be able to place all of its oil exports that went to Europe before the war in Ukraine to another buyer. But this is not something that concerns China. China has emerged as the biggest buyer of all sanctioned oil, benefiting from discountedoften heavily discountedcrude, while the U.S. President is being forced to go to Middle Eastern producers and pretty much beg for more oil.

What is even more important is that while China is likely to continue getting all the volumes of Russian, Iranian, and Venezuelan oil it needs, there is a pretty good chance that Bidens visit to Saudi Arabia will not result in additional oil output from the Kingdom or its fellow Middle Eastern OPEC members. Because of something called spare capacity.

The news, broken earlier this month by Reuters, that Saudi Arabia and the UAE may not have as much spare production capacity as estimated by agencies such as the EIA and the IEA, made substantial waves in the oil market, as it deepened fears that oil supply is not about to rise meaningfully anytime soon.

Oil prices continued rising, albeit tamed by growing fears of a global recession, making fuels even more expensive for drivers in Europe and North America. Not in China, though.

Fuel prices in China are currently on the decline after several months of increases. Yet compared to the increase in U.S. and EU fuel prices, Chinas price increase is quite insignificant. It might have something to do with those sanctioned barrels coming in from Venezuela, Iran, and Russia.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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A lack of major oil discoveries and meager proven reserves of 2 billion barrels saw Colombia look to hydraulic fracturing as a means of securing the future of its economically crucial hydrocarbon sector. While it is believed that the Andean country possesses considerable unconventional oil potential fracking is attracting considerable opposition from a wide cross-section of Colombian society. That opposition along with considerable uncertainty as to whether the national government can effectively regulate the controversial technique saw Colombias highest administrative tribunal the State Council place a moratorium on fracking in 2018. This decision was made on a precautionary basis with the judicial body finding that the proposed regulation did not fully contemplate the environmental and community impacts of allowing fracking in Colombia.

While that effectively quashed the shale oil ambitions of President Ivan Duque and Colombias petroleum industry, there was a small ray of light with the tribunal excluding fracking pilots from its ruling. That saw state-controlled Ecopetrol, of which Bogota is the majority owner holding 88.5% of the companys stock, commence two fracking pilots, Kale and Platero, in the Middle Magdalena Basin. The Middle Magdalena and Llanos Basins contain the marine deposited Cretaceous shale formations that will allow Colombia to significantly boost its meager conventional proven oil reserves. The La Luna and Rosablanca Cretaceous shales in the Middle Magdalena Valley Basin are estimated by the U.S. EIA to contain recoverable resources of 4.6 billion barrels of shale oil and 18 trillion cubic feet of shale gas. The Cretaceous Gacheta shale in the Llanos Basin is believed to possess a recoverable resource of 0.6 billion barrels of shale oil and 2 trillion cubic feet of shale gas. Those estimates indicate that Colombia has recoverable shale resources amounting to at least 5.2 billion barrels of oil and 20 trillion cubic feet of gas. Related: How Oil Prices Could Hit $65

If those numbers prove to be correct, then the exploitation of those shale formations will be a game changer for Colombias petroleum industry where meager proven conventional oil and gas reserves are weighing heavily on its future. That is, however, proving to be increasingly difficult to achieve in a country where there is considerable opposition to the introduction of fracking. In April 2022, the First Administrative Court of Barrancabermeja suspended the Kale projects environmental license and the licensing process for Platero. The court ruled that Ecopetrol had not appropriately consulted with local communities about the project's impact per Colombias legal requirements. The national oil company appealed the ruling which was subsequently overturned by a higher court in the department of Santander early last month. The Administrative Court of Santander stated (Spanish):

The ruling dated April 21, 2022, by the First Administrative Court of Barrancabermeja is hereby revoked and the request for legal protection is ruled inadmissible,

This decision allows Ecopetrol to progress with the Kale project which was granted an environmental license by Colombia's National Environmental Licensing Authority in March 2022. It also allows Colombias national oil company along with partner Exxon to proceed with the Platero development which is in the process of obtaining the required environmental permitting. There are expectations that the plaintiff will appeal the decision to put a cloud over both fracking pilots.

While this is a particularly positive development for the introduction of fracking in Colombia, which is the only means of ensuring a future for the countrys crucial oil industry, latest election results will stymie any further positive developments. Leftist candidate and senator Gustavo Petro emerged victorious from the June 2022 presidential runoff and he will be sworn in as Colombias next president on 7 August 2022. Petro intends to end Colombias dependence on extractivist industries, notably coal mining and oil drilling. He intends to do this by discontinuing contracting for oil exploration while allowing existing production contracts to continue operating until proven reserves fall to unsustainable and non-commercial levels. A central part of Petros platform is to ban fracking in Colombia. This according to an interview with CNN (Spanish) will be one of the first three measures he will implement upon becoming president. That includes bringing an immediate end to the Kale and Platero fracking pilots, indicating that despite the higher courts favorable decision there is no future for either operation. This makes any investment to date by Ecopetrol and Exxon worthless while further disincentivizing foreign investment in Colombias petroleum industry.

By Matthew Smith for Oilprice.com

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Water shortages and outbreaks of waterborne illnesses are two of the major issues the region will face in the coming decades amid rapid population growth.

While international aid can play a key role in solving these issues, it can also undermine the long-term goals of the region if it isnt effectively distributed.

Environmental degradation and climate change are deepening human security dilemmas in Central Asia. In developing more effective responses, foreign governments and international donors need to abandon a one-size-fits-all approach, a new report argues, and adopt more targeted policies that establish clear benchmarks while accounting for the regions legacy of authoritarianism and graft. The report, The Nexus of Environmental Issues, Poverty, and Political Authoritarianism in Central Asia, outlines a wide array of environmental hazards, from Semipalatinsks heritage of nuclear waste to intensive cotton cultivation. Perhaps most worrisome, the report warns that rising temperatures may cause the Caspian Sea to follow the Arals example and dry up. The level of the Caspian Sea is expected to decline by at least 9 meters by the end of the 21st century, the report states. This would result in a loss of 25 percent of the Caspians total area and the uncovering of some 93,000 km2 of dry land, an area roughly the size of Portugal.

The human cost of climate change and environmental damage keeps climbing. Industrial and agricultural pollution, to give just one example, is poisoning water supplies. The report notes about 80 percent of those living in rural areas of Tajikistan currently lack access to clean drinking water. Even in Central Asias most prosperous state, Kazakhstan, a majority of rural residents dont have safe drinking water. Outbreaks of waterborne illnesses, including typhoid and cholera, are likely to intensify in the coming decades amid rapid population growth, warns the report, which was prepared by the Brussels-based International Partnership for Human Rights, and released in June.

The UN forecasts that the estimated population growth will lead to an increase in demand for water by about 2 km3 a year, the report states. If this situation is not addressed, there will be significant risk of disease from stressed supplies, water pollution, and a lack of access to drinking water.

A complex tangle of factors hinders local efforts to address environmental challenges. Most governments in the region lack the money and expertise to implement mitigation plans. Some have embraced environmental protection on paper, but not in deed. Autocrats discourage initiative and innovation; corruption and a lack of transparency define regional political systems. Meanwhile, widespread poverty, unemployment, and inadequate infrastructure tend to keep the popular focus on day-to-day economic issues, not on the environment. Environmental groups are active, but their effectiveness as advocates for change is hindered by a lack of resources, an inability to spread messages via mass media, and poor coordination.

To date, efforts to address the harmful effects of pollution and warming in Central Asia have depended on international governments. But foreign involvement can do just as much harm as good.

"It is important to acknowledge that the involvement of foreign actors can have the unintended consequence of sustaining poor government policies," the report states. "Although foreign financial assistance can be an essential support in the context of budgetary constraints, the funding of large projects by foreign institutions has led Central Asian governments to implement policies based more on ad hoc decisions taken in response to the availability of funding rather than on an existing, thought-out strategy."

Related: Canada May Expand Energy Infrastructure To Help Europe

Tweaks in the donor communitys approach are needed to promote more effective policymaking, the report recommends. Donors should scale back ambitions and broaden their horizons, opting to support smaller projects with a greater likelihood of full implementation, and expanding partnerships to include more non-governmental actors, not just relying on political authorities. The report also recommends better monitoring and evaluation frameworks, with clearer standards for projects that hold aid recipients more accountable.

The engagement of the international community must take into account the authoritarian and neo-patrimonial nature of the political regimes in the region, which impacts how environmental issues are addressed, the report says.

Donors should strengthen efforts to build the capacity of independent civil society working on environmental and climate change issues and to support research and education.

While urging changes in donor approaches, the report does not cite any case studies or examples that highlight flaws in past projects. The report also refrains from recommending clear tactics that address strategic concerns.

Iskandar Abdullaev, the Tashkent-based deputy director at the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Institute (CAREC), generally applauded the reports findings. Foreign funding will continue to be needed, but the onus for the development of specific projects should shift to local actors, he believes. Stakeholders in the region need to become more of the owners of the process and decide in their own way, Abdullaev told Eurasianet.

To accomplish this, Abdullaev said the donor community should invest in networking, promoting cross-border connections among stakeholders from both the governmental and non-governmental sides. Given the on-the-ground realities, the environment is perhaps one area where authoritarian-minded leaders can cooperate with activists. Maintaining the status quo, Abdullaev added, means the international community would "have to be present forever to solve the problems of the region.

By Eurasianet

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ExxonMobils slew of major oil discoveries in offshore Guyana since 2015 has seen the deeply impoverished former British colony become a hotspot for offshore drilling activity. That has sparked considerable interest in the oil potential of neighboring Suriname. The one-time Dutch colony, which until July 2020 was embroiled in a series of scandals involving former President Desi Bouterse, shares the Guyana-Suriname Basin. That basin is the focal point of one of the worlds largest offshore drilling booms with recent discoveries pointing to it possessing greater petroleum potential than was assessed by the USGS in 2001. Suriname, which has modest proven oil reserves of 89 million barrels and is pumping 14,000 barrels daily from onshore fields, is poised to enjoy an epic oil boom on potentially a similar scale to that occurring in Guyana where 2021 GDP grew by a stunning 19.9%. This has the potential to significantly boost the impoverished former Dutch colonys economy which was sharply impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is believed that offshore Suriname possesses considerable oil potential. TotalEnergies, which is the operator, and 50% partner Apache have made a slew of quality light oil discoveries in offshore Suriname Block 58. The first was at the Maka Central-1 well which was drilled to a depth of 20,670 feet and found light oil and condensate with API gravities of 40 degrees to 60 degrees. The latest discovery occurred at the Krabdagu-1 well, located 11 miles south-east of the Sapakara South-1 appraisal well, which was drilled to a depth of 17,300 feet, It is the fifth quality discovery in Block 58 with 295 feet of net oil pay identified in what Apache described as good quality reservoirs.

Source: TotalEnergies.

Recently, Apache announced the successful flow testing of the Krabdagu well. According to the U.S.-based driller, data indicates there are oil resources in place of up to 180 million barrels. The crude oil found was identified as light with API gravities of 35 degrees to 37 degrees. That successful appraisal drilling comes after the November 2021 announcement of a successful flow test at the Sapakara South appraisal well which identified a single oil reservoir holding 325 million to 375 million barrels of light black oil with a 34-degree API.

Surinames Block 58 is believed to be situated on the same petroleum fairway which runs through Guyanas offshore Stabroek Block. It is here that Exxon, along with partners Hess and CNOOC, has made over 30 high-quality discoveries which are estimated to contain 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil resources. The latest developments in Block 58 support investment bank Morgan Stanleys 2020 calculations that it contains 6.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent resources. If that modeling is proven correct then Block 58 will become the key driver of Surnames offshore oil boom. TotalEnergies and Apache are continuing operations aimed at defining the considerable potential held by Block 58 with plans to drill a further three exploration and appraisal wells in the block during 2022. After completing the Krabdagu exploration well flow test drilling was started on the Dikkop exploration well in the central portion of Block 58. If sufficient oil resources are identified a final investment decision is expected from TotalEnergies and Apache by the end of 2022.

Exploration activities arent only occurring in Block 58, Apache announced in mid-June 2022 the completion of drilling activities in offshore Suriname Block 53. Apache with a 45% working interest is the operator of the block while Malaysias national oil company Petronas controls 30% and the remaining 25% is held by Spanish energy company Cepsa. While no statement has been made as to whether crude oil was discovered with the Rasper well drilled in the northwestern segment of Block 53 appraisal activities are continuing. Apache also stated that there are plans to drill the wildcat Baja well in the southwestern corner of Block 53 at a location approximately seven miles northeast of the Krabdagu discovery Block 58. In December 2020, Petronas, which is the operator, disclosed that along with 50% partner Exxon the discovery of oil in offshore Suriname Block 52 with the Sloanea-1 exploration well drilled to a depth of 15,682 feet.

The latest developments demonstrated that Surinames nascent oil boom is gaining momentum. This will deliver a significant fiscal and economic windfall for Paramaribo which is still struggling to rebuild Surinames economy after it was significantly impacted by the pandemic. While according to IMF data every economy in South America, except Venezuela, grew during 2021 Surinames shrank by a worrying 3.5%. Even in 2022, when many regional economies are expected to post robust growth, Surinames GDP is forecast to expand by a paltry 1.8%. Those numbers underscore the urgency with which Paramaribo needs to attract foreign energy investment and accelerate Surnames burgeoning offshore oil boom.

By Matthew Smith for Oilprice.com

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Despite serious supply problems in the market, oil prices crashed on Tuesday morning due to renewed recession fears and the prospect of demand destruction.

Whilst most of 2022 could only be characterized as a period of hardship for Europes embattled industries, things are about to get even worse as Russian pipeline supply falls and power prices across the continent soared.

- Day-ahead prices in Italy and France have soared above 400 per MWh, with Germany trending slightly lower  attesting to the tightness, annual 2023 forward prices are only marginally lower than the current pricing range.

- Despite its gas-focused power generators struggling, with main sufferer Uniper (ETR:UN01) losing some 60% of its stock value since the beginning of June, Germany is still reticent about its plans to declare a gas emergency.

- Poor hydro performance has also aggravated the situation, with Platts estimating a loss of 6GW across Europe, whilst nuclear continues to be kneecapped by recurring French strikes and outages, as well as German decommissioning.

Market Movers

- As we had predicted, Algerian national oil and gas company Sonatrach confirmed it would be seeking to review gas pricing formulas with all its clients, moving away from the oil peg.

- UK-based energy firm Shell (LON:SHEL) signed a deal with QatarEnergy for the North Field East expansion project, taking a 6.25% stake in the project, the same stake as TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil.

- Speculation is rife that US oil major ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) might be in for its best-ever quarterly performance, with Q2 operating profit moving above $16 billion, probably much to the ire of the Biden Administration.

Tuesday, July 05, 2022

A look at todays stock market is enough to understand the main concern for oil markets right now, recession. Whilst most assessments expected recession to kick in later this year, its first signs are already emerging with European economies potentially entering a recession in Q3. Seeing Brent futures losing a hefty 10% today and dropping close to $102 per barrel, one would perhaps fail to notice that supply remains very much an issue  Libyas almost complete degradation into an all-out internecine conflict and Norways offshore production seeing the first massive strike campaign of recent years have narrowed potential supply sources even further. Moreover, Saudi Aramcos August OSPs also point towards little if any remaining spare capacity. Yet all of this is not enough to break the cycle of fear.

Saudi Aramco Flirts with Record High OSPs. Due to weak supply, robust demand, and exorbitantly steep backwardation, Saudi Aramco increased all its August 2022 formula prices, with the Asian Arab Light benchmark set at $9.30 per barrel, only 5 cents off the all-time high seen in May.

Germany Overhauls Bailout Law to Help Energy Firms. Confronted with an ever-aggravating outlook for Uniper (ETR:UN01), the German government revamped legislation that would allow Berlin to provide firms with bailout packages modeled on pandemic relief for airline Lufthansa.

JP Morgan Warns of $380 Oil After Price Cap. Analysts from US investment bank JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM) warned that in case a price cap is introduced on Russian crude, the subsequent (deliberate) cutting of oil production could send oil prices more than tripling to $380 per barrel.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait Want More Crude from Neutral Zone. Negotiators from Riyadh and Kuwait met this week to discuss ways to develop output from the jointly managed Neutral Zone, seeking to move the current production of 175,000 b/d to the nameplate capacity of 500,000 b/d.

Security in Libya Gets Even Worse. Tensions have reached an apogee this week as Libyan protestors not only continue blocking oil fields but have also stormed the parliaments of both the Tripoli and Tobruk governments, decrying never-ending power cuts across the North African country.

Pakistan Is Looking Into Russian Crude. Impressed by Indias sudden ramp-up of Russian crude imports to almost 1 million b/d, the Pakistani government has asked its refineries to look into its discounted purchases as a means to alleviate the impact of a soaring energy import bill.

Norway Goes for Offshore Oil Strike. Starting from today, a union-organized strike of offshore platform workers will be gradually paralyzing some 10% of Norways oil and gas production after previous rounds of negotiations failed to yield any progress on wage demands.

Uneven Outlook Scares Oil Permabulls. Amidst a deteriorating economic outlook, the past week has seen another decrease in long positions held in petroleum contracts by investors, though the sale of 9 million barrels last week is much milder than the hefty 71 million barrels in the week to 21 June.

Green Investors Pledge to Go Hard on Utility Firms. Less than a week after the US Supreme Court curbed federal powers on environmental regulation, activist green investors vowed to follow even more thoroughly the ESG performance of utility companies.

US LNG Exports Continue Their Decline. US outflows of LNG have fallen to their lowest level since February at 6.42 million tons as the shut-down of Freeport LNG continues to kneecap export possibilities, whilst hot weather has so far kept domestic gas prices from plummeting.

Russia Finds Light Oil in Offshore Arctic. Russias largest oil producer Rosneft (MCX:ROSN) has announced a more than 600 million barrel discovery of light sweet crude in the Pechora Sea in the Arctic, claiming that it has the competence to go it alone.

India Slaps Windfall Tax on Fuel Exports. With India seeking ways of managing its fiscal deficit, the government in New Delhi has introduced a windfall tax on exports of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, despite actual exports being lower than last year amid strong domestic demand.

Chile Moves Closer to Implementing Copper Mining Royalties. The government of Chile has introduced a draft bill that would increase copper mining royalties to fund its social programs, whilst also taxing the adjusted margins by a marginal rate of 2%-40%, depending on the current market prices.

By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com

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The British government says it will introduce a new round of economic, trade, and transport sanctions on Belarus and the regime of authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

In a statement on July 4, the British Foreign Office said the package of sanctions "extends some of the significant measures made against Russia to Belarus."

It said the new sanctions will be formally announced and take effect on July 5.

Western governments have imposed financial sanctions on Russia to punish it for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Belarus is not a direct participant in the war, but it has provided logistical aid to Russian troops, many of whom crossed the border into Ukraine from Belarus, leading the West to also impose sanctions on Minsk.

The statement said the British government will also restrict "Belarus's access to the U.K.'s world-class financial services sector -- banning more Belarusian companies from issuing debt and securities in London."

"The Belarus regime has actively facilitated [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's invasion, letting Russia use its territory to pincer Ukraine -- launching troops and missiles from their border and flying Russian jets through their airspace," the statement said.

Lukashenka "has also openly supported the Kremlin's narrative, claiming that Kyiv was 'provoking Russia' in order to justify Putin's bloody invasion."

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, while plagued by a series of scandals at home, has taken a leading role among Western states in hitting Russia and Belarus with sanctions following the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine.

The Foreign Office said the new action built on the "wide-ranging measures" the government had imposed on Minsk, including a 35 percent increase on tariffs on a range of goods originating from Belarus.

It has also placed sanctions on Lukashenka and senior government officials "for their continued human rights violations and undermining of democracy."

Lukashenka, 67 years old and in power since 1994, has tightened his grip on the country since the 2020 election by arresting -- sometimes violently -- tens of thousands of people. Fearing for their safety, most opposition members have been forced to flee the country.

The West has refused to recognize the results of the election and does not consider Lukashenka to be the country's legitimate leader.

Many countries have imposed several rounds of sanctions against his regime in response to the suppression of dissent in the country.

By RFE/RL

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Russias lower house of parliament approved on Tuesday amendments in the countrys tax code that would slap a windfall tax on Gazprom of the equivalent of $20 billion between September and November, which will boost Russias tax revenue income.

The amendment still needs to be approved by the upper house of the Russian Parliament and President Vladimir Putin before becoming law.

Under the plans, gas giant Gazprom will pay $6.5 billion (416 billion Russian rubles) per month for three months, on top of its other taxes. For September to November, this means that Gazprom will have to pay an additional $20 billion (1.25 trillion rubles) for those three months.

Gazprom and Russia are seeing a windfall of revenues from gas sales as the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent energy prices soaring. Gazproms recent reduction of gas supply to Europe has also pushed up European prices higher amid concerns that the EU will face a winter of recession and rationing if it doesnt have its gas storage at least 80% full by October.

Russia is said to be earning more than $100 million every day from the gas it sells to Europe despite the slashed deliveries to major EU consumers in recent weeks, according to data from Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS) cited by Bloomberg at the end of last month.



Related: Germany Considers Allowing Bailouts For Energy Firms

Due to the rallying natural gas prices, Russian revenues from gas exports are believed to be equal to the revenue last year, when Moscow wasnt limiting gas flows to Europe and wasnt (yet) on a collision course with the EU.

Despite the EU embargo on Russian seaborne oil, to take effect by the end of the year, and the drastically reduced pipeline gas supply, Russia continues to benefit from the high oil and gas prices. Despite Western sanctions designed to hurt Russias oil revenues and war chest, Moscow is still getting a lot of additional billions of U.S. dollars in oil and gas revenues.

By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com

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The 30 NATO allies have signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland, sending the membership bids of the two countries to the alliance capitals for legislative approval, in a historic step brought on by Russia's unprovoked war in Ukraine.

"This is a good day for Finland and Sweden and a good day for NATO," alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in a joint press statement with the Swedish and Finnish foreign ministers on July 5.

"With 32 nations around the table, we will be even stronger and our people will be even safer as we face the biggest security crisis in decades," he added.

The historic shifts by Sweden and Finland came in the face of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine in February and other aggressive moves by the Kremlin in the region. Public opinion in the Nordic countries quickly turned in favor of NATO membership following the invasion.

Every alliance member has different legislative challenges and procedures to deal with, and it could take several more months for the two to become official members.

"I look forward to a swift ratification process," Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said.

"Thank you for your support! Now the process of ratification by each of the allies begins," Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said on Twitter.

Ankara initially said it would veto their bids, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accusing them of providing havens for Kurdish militants operating in Turkey and for promoting what he called "terrorism."

Following negotiations, Erdogan said he would drop his objections but indicated he could still block their membership bids if they failed to follow through on promises, some of which were undisclosed.

By RFE/RL

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Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Democratic leaders in the Illinois General Assembly are pushing back a planned special legislative session aimed at increasing legal protections for abortion providers and patients in Illinois.

Pritzker, Senate President Don Harmon of Oak Park and House Speaker Emanuel Chris Welch of Hillside released a joint statement Tuesday stating they would call lawmakers back to Springfield in the coming months to work on strengthening the already formidable abortion protections in a state where the procedure is enshrined in law as a fundamental right.

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Just two weeks ago, the three Democrats had said they planned to hold a special session after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed the right to obtain an abortion with minimal government interference. One aim of the special session is also to make sure Illinois is prepared for a greater influx of people from other states crossing into Illinois to terminate a pregnancy, Pritzker has said.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker during an interview at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Chicago on June 29, 2022. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

When the high court struck down Roe in a June 24 ruling, Pritzker said he and the legislative leaders would call a special session in the coming weeks and were committed to taking swift action to further enshrine our commitment to reproductive health care rights and protections. Welch added he expected the session to occur in July.

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As we build on Illinois nation-leading abortion protections and access, it is essential to bring lawmakers and advocates into the room to continue to work together, the trio said Tuesday in their joint statement. In the coming weeks, as the ripples of the decision to overturn Roe are felt throughout the nation, we expect to get an acute sense of our needs and how Illinois can play an even more vital role in standing up for reproductive freedom.

A day after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade left six dead, Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh said there had not been discussions about whether to add gun safety measures to the special sessions agenda.

As for taking more time before convening lawmakers on abortion, we need to look at how this is already impacting states and how it will impact states over the next couple months, Abudayyeh said.

During a White House call with Democratic governors on Friday, Pritzker called for additional federal funding to help states where abortion remains legal.

The first-term Democrat has made his support for abortion rights a central theme of his reelection campaign. In the November general election, he faces conservative state Sen. Darren Bailey of Xenia, who has said he is opposed to abortion in all cases except to spare the life of the mother.

Ed Yohnka, a spokesman for the ACLU of Illinois, said the organization supported the delay as a careful, deliberate approach and that the goal of the special session is to put in protections that are holistic, well-researched, include the voices of providers and advocates and can withstand the inevitable challenge of anti-abortion foes in Illinois.

dpetrella@chicagotribune.com

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Japan is facing an energy crisis that can severely hurt the world's third-largest economy as it is forced to tackle a combination of a weak local currency, the fallout from the Ukraine war, and a heatwave.

Japan already had a significant energy import bill as it depends on foreign oil and gas for 90 percent of its needs. But as the yen fell to the lowest in 20 years, Japan's bill became even bigger, with the price rise in crude oil, which has been some 40 percent in dollar terms since the start of 2022, reaching a whopping 70 percent in yen terms.

"A confluence of factors, including the higher fuel prices since the war and the tumbling currency, is putting a significant pressure on Japan's energy security, making this one of the most serious energy crises Japan has had," said Jane Nakano, a senior fellow at Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

Because of its extreme dependence on imported energy, Japan has had to continue importing Russian oil and gas despite its verbal commitment to sanctions against Moscow.

Recently, the head of one of the biggest shipping companies in Asia, Mitsui OSK Lines, said that Japan has no choice but to continue importing Russian LNG, citing the country's nuclear plants that are still offline after the Fukushima tragedy and soaring energy prices.

"We cannot use many nuclear power stations therefore the supply and demand balance of the power industry is quite tight," Takeshi Hashimoto told the Financial Times earlier this month. "Nowadays, the spot market of both LNG and coal is quite expensive. That is one of the reasons why Japan is so reluctant to stop the LNG imports from Russia."

It could be because of its heavy energy import bill that Japan proposed to the G7 to cap Russian oil export prices at half the current rate.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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British authorities warned drivers of "serious disruption" on Monday as protestors seeking relief from high fuel costs used "go-slow" convoys to cause traffic jams on major UK motorways over a wide swath of territory.



Organized via social media under the banner of "Fuel Price Stand Against Tax," rolling, slow-moving roadblocks of cars, trucks and tractors started their protests around 7am. According to The Guardian:

Motorways in the Bristol area, Devon, Cornwall, south Wales, Essex, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire were among those affected. Two tractors caused long tailbacks into Aberdeen by driving slowly side by side along the A92 northbound.

Police escorted some of the blockades, only to block them at their turnaround points and make arrests. The PA News Agency reports a dozen motorists were detained after blocking traffic across the Prince of Wales Bridge between South Wales and Somerset. The Telegraph reported the bridge was hardest hit in the protest, with traffic closed for more than an hour.

The right to protest under UK law must be balanced with the rights of the wider community who may be affected," said Gwent police chief superintendent Tom Harding. UK authorities say the protests threaten to impede the response of emergency services.

The founder of the FairFuelUK, Howard Cox, told the Scottish Sun that protestors were targeting three-lane freeways, with the intent to slow traffic in two lanes while leaving the "fast lane" free.

The price of petrol in the UK has surged to to a record 191.53 pence per liter, which equates to $8.78 a gallon.the highest among the five largest European economies.

The protestors are bent on achieving a cut in fuel taxes. None of their quoted rhetoric connects the dots between the price at the pump and Western sanctions against Russia. In March, the UK declared it will phase out Russian oil imports by December, as will the European Union.

Related: The Futuristic Vehicles That Could Compete With EVs

Cox told The Independent the effort is largely driven by small business owners:

People are at the end of their tether. This is hard-working, decent people who are fed up to their back teeth with the high cost of pump prices. Across Europe, diesel is on average 25p cheaper and petrol 20p cheaper than in the UK. Germany cut fuel tax by 26p, Spain by 20p and Ireland by 17p. Why cant the Government do the same? They did 5p in the Spring Statement and it didnt even touch the sides.

That 5 pence tax cut came in March and is slated to last until March 2023. At the time, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak touted it as "the biggest cut to all fuel duty rates ever." The 8.6% cut left the tax at 53 pence per liter.

Protestor Vicky Stamper told The Guardian she and her partner quit their jobs because they couldn't afford the commute. It was costing us 380 [$460] a week just to get to and from work. I then lost a job two weeks ago because the company couldnt afford to put fuel in that many lorries so last in, first out, she said.

Protestors warned their next action might come in the form of a blockade on oil refineries. When previously employed in 2000 by farmers and truck drivers fighting taxes so high they represented 80% of the cost of gas, just one week of the tactic caused havoc, from huge lines at gas pumps to mail stoppages and grocery-rationing.

The Royal Automobile Club (RAC), akin to the American Automobile Club, told Bloomberg the rising price at the pump is inconsistent with a five-week drop in wholesale prices. We would love to hear their reasoning for keeping their prices so high in this instance, said RAC spokesman Simon Williams.

By Zerohedge.com

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6 dead, 30 hurt in shooting at Chicago-area July 4 parade

HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. (AP)  A gunman on a rooftop opened fire on an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago on Monday, killing at least six people, wounding at least 30 and sending hundreds of marchers, parents with strollers and children on bicycles fleeing in terror, police said.

Authorities said a man named as a person of interest in the shooting was taken into police custody Monday evening after an hourslong manhunt in and around Highland Park, an affluent community of about 30,000 on Chicagos north shore.

The July 4 shooting was just the latest to shatter the rituals of American life. Schools, churches, grocery stores and now community parades have all become killing grounds in recent months. This time, the bloodshed came as the nation tried to find cause to celebrate its founding and the bonds that still hold it together.

It definitely hits a lot harder when its not only your hometown but its also right in front of you, resident Ron Tuazon said as he and a friend returned to the parade route Monday evening to retrieve chairs, blankets and a childs bike that he and his family abandoned when the shooting began.

Its commonplace now, Tuazon said of what he called yet another American atrocity. We dont blink anymore. Until laws change, its going to be more of the same.

Motive likely not terror-related in brutal Danish shooting

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  A gunman who killed three people when he opened fire in a crowded shopping mall acted alone and apparently selected his victims at random, Danish police said Monday, all but ruling out that the attack was related to terrorism.

Authorities filed preliminary charges of murder and attempted murder against a 22-year-old Danish man, who will be held for 24 days in a secure mental health facility while authorities investigate the crime, prosecutor Sren Harbo told reporters.

After the custody hearing, defense lawyer Luise Hj said she agreed to have her client undergo a mental exam. She did not comment on the charges. Police have said the man was known to mental health service without elaborating.

Police have not identified a motive for Sundays attack inside one of Scandinavias biggest shopping centers. The suspect, carrying a rifle and knife, was quickly arrested, and Copenhagen chief police inspector Sren Thomassen said the man also had access to another gun. He said the firearms were obtained illegally but gave no further details.

It was the worst possible nightmare, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Monday, calling the attack "unusually brutal.

In rural West, more worries about access to abortion clinics

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  In the central Oregon city of Bend, the sole Planned Parenthood clinic serving the eastern half of the state is bracing for an influx of patients, particularly from neighboring Idaho, where a trigger law banning most abortions is expected to take effect this summer.

We've already started hiring, said Joanna Dennis-Cook, the Bend Health Center Manager.

Across the U.S. West, many abortion providers serving rural areas were already struggling to meet demand in a vast region where staffing shortages and long travel distances are barriers to reproductive services for women. Oregon alone is larger geographically than the entire United Kingdom.

Some facilities serving rural communities in states where abortion remains legal worry those pre-existing challenges could be further compounded by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, as more patients travel from states where the procedure is banned or greatly restricted.

Anticipating an abortion ban in Idaho, Oregon lawmakers earlier this year created a $15 million fund to increase access to abortion services.

Uneasy US tries to fete a July 4 marred by parade shooting

A shooting that left at least six people dead at an Independence Day parade in a Chicago suburb rattled Monday's celebrations across the U.S. and further rocked a country already awash in turmoil over high court rulings on abortion and guns as well as hearings on the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The latest mass shooting came as the nation tried to find cause to celebrate its founding and the bonds that still hold it together. It was supposed to be a day for taking off work, flocking to parades, devouring hot dogs and burgers at backyard barbecues and gathering under a canopy of stars and exploding fireworks.

On a day that we came together to celebrate community and freedom, we are instead mourning the tragic loss of life and struggling with the terror that was brought upon us, Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said.

The Highland Park parade began around 10 a.m. but was suddenly halted 10 minutes later after shots were fired. Hundreds of parade-goers  some visibly bloodied  fled the area, leaving behind chairs, baby strollers and blankets. Authorities brought a person of interest into custody Monday evening.

As the Highland Park community mourned, fireworks began thundering in neighboring towns and across the country. Pyrotechnics bloomed shortly after nightfall in Boston and New York City, where a kaleidoscope of color exploded over the Hudson River and illuminated skyscrapers.

Flight cancellations ease slightly as July 4 weekend ends

DALLAS (AP)  Travelers flying home from July Fourth getaways faced flight delays Monday, but airlines were canceling fewer flights than in the days leading up to the holiday weekend.

Since holiday weekend travel picked up on Thursday, airlines have canceled more than 2,200 U.S. flights, and another 25,000 were delayed.

Airports were packed.

More than 9 million flyers flocked to U.S. airports between Thursday and Sunday, peaking at 2.49 million, a pandemic-era record, on Friday, according to figures from the Transportation Security Administration.

By late Monday afternoon on the East Coast, more than 2,200 U.S. flights had been delayed and more than 200 canceled, according to FlightAware.

Griner sends letter to President Biden pleading for his help

Brittney Griner has made an appeal to President Joe Biden in a letter passed to the White House through her representatives saying she feared she might never return home and asking that he not  forget about me and the other American Detainees.

Griner's agent Lindsay Kagawa Colas said the letter was delivered on Monday. Most of the letter's contents to President Biden remain private, though Griner's representatives shared a few lines from the hand-written note.

As I sit here in a Russian prison, alone with my thoughts and without the protection of my wife, family, friends, Olympic jersey, or any accomplishments, Im terrified I might be here forever, Griner wrote.

On the 4th of July, our family normally honors the service of those who fought for our freedom, including my father who is a Vietnam War Veteran," the Phoenix Mercury center added. It hurts thinking about how I usually celebrate this day because freedom means something completely different to me this year.

The two-time Olympic gold medalist is in the midst of a trial in Russia that began last week after she was arrested on Feb. 17 on charges of possessing cannabis oil while returning to play for her Russian team. The trial will resume Thursday.

Sydney floods impact 50,000 around Australia's largest city

SYDNEY (AP)  Hundreds of homes have been inundated in and around Australias largest city in a flood emergency that was impacting 50,000 people, officials said Tuesday.

Emergency response teams made 100 rescues overnight of people trapped in cars on flooded roads or in inundated homes in the Sydney area, State Emergency Service manager Ashley Sullivan said.

Days of torrential rain have caused dams to overflow and waterways to break their banks, bringing a fourth flood emergency in 16 months to parts of the city of 5 million people.

The New South Wales state government declared a disaster across 23 local government areas overnight, activating federal government financial assistance for flood victims.

Evacuation orders and warnings to prepare to abandon homes impacted 50,000 people, up from 32,000 on Monday, New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet said.

Video shows Akron police kill Black man in hail of gunfire

AKRON, Ohio (AP)  A Black man was unarmed when Akron police chased him on foot and killed him in a hail of gunfire, but officers believed he had shot at them earlier from a vehicle and feared he was preparing to fire again, authorities said Sunday at a news conference.

Akron police released video of the shooting of Jayland Walker, 25, who was killed June 27 in a pursuit that had started with an attempted traffic stop. The mayor called the shooting heartbreaking while asking for patience from the community.

It's not clear how many shots were fired by the eight officers involved, but Walker sustained more than 60 wounds. An attorney for Walker's family said officers kept firing even after he was on the ground.

Officers attempted to stop Walker's car around 12:30 a.m. for unspecified traffic and equipment violations, but less than a minute into a pursuit, the sound of a shot was heard from the car, and a transportation department camera captured what appeared to be a muzzle flash coming from the vehicle, Akron Police Chief Steve Mylett said. That changed the nature of the case from a routine traffic stop to now a public safety issue," he said.

Police body camera videos show what unfolded after the roughly six-minute pursuit. Several shouting officers with guns drawn approach the slowing car on foot, as it rolls up over a curb and onto a sidewalk. A person wearing a ski mask exits the passenger door and runs toward a parking lot. Police chase him for about 10 seconds before officers fire from multiple directions, in a burst of shots that lasts 6 or 7 seconds.

US: Israeli fire likely killed reporter; no final conclusion

WASHINGTON (AP)  U.S. officials said Monday the bullet that killed veteran Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was likely fired from an Israeli position. But they said it was too badly damaged to reach an absolute determination, and that there is no reason to believe she was deliberately targeted.

State Department spokesman Ned Price, announcing the results of the probe, said independent, third-party examiners had undertaken an extremely detailed forensic analysis of the bullet that killed her after the Palestinian Authority handed it over to them.

The results, announced ahead of President Joe Biden's visit to the region next week, were unlikely to lay the matter to rest. The Palestinians reiterated that Israel was to blame, while Israel said its own investigation would remain open and did not address the U.S. conclusion that its troops were likely responsible.

Abu Akleh, a veteran Palestinian-American correspondent who was well known and respected throughout the Arab world, was shot and killed while covering an Israeli military raid on May 11 in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian eyewitnesses, including her crew, say Israeli troops killed her and that there were no militants in the immediate vicinity or any exchange of fire at the time she was shot.

Israel says she was killed during a complex battle with Palestinian militants and that only a forensic analysis of the bullet could confirm whether it was fired by an Israeli soldier or a Palestinian militant. It has strongly denied she was deliberately targeted, but says an Israeli soldier may have hit her by mistake during an exchange of fire with a militant.

'Hell on earth': Ukrainian soldiers describe eastern front

BAKHMUT, Ukraine (AP)  Torched forests and cities burned to the ground. Colleagues with severed limbs. Bombardments so relentless the only option is to lie in a trench, wait and pray.

Ukrainian soldiers returning from the front lines in eastern Ukraines Donbas region  where Russia is waging a fierce offensive  describe life during what has turned into a grueling war of attrition as apocalyptic.

In interviews with The Associated Press, some complained of chaotic organization, desertions and mental health problems caused by relentless shelling. Others spoke of high morale, their colleagues heroism, and a commitment to keep fighting, even as the better-equipped Russians control more of the combat zone.

Lt. Volodymyr Nazarenko, 30, second-in-command of the Ukrainian National Guards Svoboda Battalion, was with troops who retreated from Sievierodonetsk under orders from military leaders. During a month-long battle, Russian tanks obliterated any potential defensive positions and turned a city with a prewar population of 101,000 into a burnt-down desert, he said.

They shelled us every day. I do not want to lie about it. But these were barrages of ammunition at every building," Nazarenko said. The city was methodically leveled out.
Deadly July 4 parade: Shots, then a frantic rush to escape

HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. (AP)  For many people, the mass shooting that killed at least seven people and injured 30 others in a Chicago suburb on July 4 was yet another reminder that any place, any event in the U.S. can turn dangerous or deadly. Highland Park is one of the countrys safest towns, and July 4th parades among the most American of celebrations. Even before Mondays killings, some people already were on edge, questioning whether to venture into large gatherings, looking over their shoulders during even the most run-of-the-mill activities, from grocery shopping to going to school or catching a movie.

Ukrainian governor urges evacuation of 350,000 residents

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (AP)  The governor of the last remaining eastern province partly under Ukraine's control urged his more than 350,000 residents to flee as Russian troops escalated their offensive. The governor of Donetsk made the plea Tuesday, after Russia declared it had seized the neighboring Luhansk province. In Donetsk province, a city in the path of Moscows offensive came under sustained bombardment Tuesday. The mayor of Sloviansk reported massive shelling that killed at least one person and wounded seven in the city. Russian forces are apparently positioning to advance farther into Ukraines Donbas region. The mostly Russian-speaking industrial area is where Ukraine's most experienced soldiers are concentrated. In nearly all of Ukraine Tuesday night, air alerts were activated.

Judge wont block law banning most Mississippi abortions

JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  A Mississippi judge has rejected a request by the states only abortion clinic to temporarily block a state law that would ban most abortions. Judge Debbra K. Halford rejected the request Tuesday. Attorneys argued over abortion laws in three Southern states in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave states the power to limit or outlaw the termination of pregnancies. Elsewhere, Floridas new 15-week abortion ban was blocked but then quickly reinstated Tuesday. In Louisiana, the state attorney general has asked the state Supreme Court to allow enforcement of a ban on most abortions.

Parade shooting suspect bought 5 weapons despite threats

HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. (AP)  The man accused of opening fire at an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago legally bought five weapons, including two high-powered rifles. Authorities said Tuesday that the purchases were allowed even though police were called to his home twice in 2019 for threats of violence and suicide. The suspect was charged with seven counts of murder. Lake County States Attorney Eric Rinehart promised that dozens more charges would be sought and that the man could receive a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole. The assailant sprayed more than 70 rounds from a rooftop into a crowd in Highland Park, an affluent community of about 30,000 on the Lake Michigan shore.

Georgia subpoenaing Giuliani, Graham in Trump election probe

ATLANTA (AP)  The Georgia prosecutor investigating the conduct of former President Donald Trump and his allies after the 2020 election is subpoenaing U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to testify before a special grand jury. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Tuesday filed petitions with the judge overseeing the jury as part of her investigation into what she alleges was a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere. The move marks a major escalation in a case that pose a serious legal challenge to the former president as he weighs another White House run.

New evacuations for communities near California forest fire

JACKSON, Calif. (AP)  Evacuation orders have been expanded for remote communities near a wildfire that's chewing through California forests. The Sierra Nevada Gold Country fire tripled in size to more than 4.7 square miles Tuesday. The fire erupted on the Fourth of July at a recreation area packed with people. Between 85 to 100 celebrating at a river were forced to take shelter at a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. facility. Amador County Sheriff Gary Redman says they were safely evacuated. Evacuations are in place for parts of Amador and Calaveras counties. Redman suggested fireworks or a barbeque as a possible fire cause.

Wisconsin court to rule on immunity in sex trafficking case

MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Wisconsin's Supreme Court is set to decide whether a sex trafficking victim accused of homicide can argue at trial that she was justified in killing the man who trafficked her. The ruling Wednesday could help define the extent of immunity for trafficking victims nationwide. Prosecutors allege Chrystul Kizer shot Randall Volar at his Kenosha home in 2018. She was 17 at the time. She contends Volar was trafficking her for sex and wants to argue that she's immune from prosecution under a state law that absolves trafficking victims of any offenses resulting from being trafficked. Prosecutors counter that immunity can't possibly extend to homicide.

FDA temporarily suspends order banning Juul cigarettes

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Food and Drug Administration has issued an administrative stay on the order it issued last month for vaping company Juul to pull its electronic cigarettes from the market. The agency says the stay temporarily suspends the marketing denial order while it conducts further review, but does not rescind it. The FDA issued the initial order banning Juul sales on June 23. A day later, a federal appeals court temporarily blocked the government ban. The initial FDA action was part of a sweeping effort by the agency to bring scientific scrutiny to the multibillion-dollar vaping industry after years of regulatory delays.

As 'Run 3' begins, CERN touts discovery of exotic particles

GENEVA (AP)  The physics lab thats home to the worlds largest atom smasher has announced the observation of three new exotic particles that could provide clues to the force that binds subatomic particles together. The observation of a new type of pentaquark as well as the first duo of tetraquarks at CERN offers a new angle to assess the so-called strong force that holds together the nuclei of atoms. Tuesday's announcement came as CERN was resuming collisions of subatomic particles for third time in a so-called Run 3 that's expected to last early four years.

2 sets down, Djokovic wins 26th consecutive Wimbledon match

WIMBLEDON, England (AP)  Novak Djokovic erased a two-set deficit against 10th-seeded Jannik Sinner to reach the Wimbledon quarterfinals for the 11th time. Djokovic came back to win 5-7, 2-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 at Centre Court. It is his 26th consecutive victory at the All England Club. Djokovic is pursuing a fourth straight title at the grass-court Grand Slam tournament and seventh overall. He will face Cam Norrie of Britain in the semifinals. Norrie won a five-setter against David Goffin to reach his first Grand Slam semifinal. Third-seeded Ons Jabeur and Tatjana Maria also reached their first Grand Slam semifinals with victories on Tuesday.
6 dead, 30 hurt in shooting at Chicago-area July 4 parade

HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. (AP)  Police say a gunman on a rooftop opened fire on an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago, killing at least six people, wounding at least 30 and sending hundreds of marchers, parents with strollers and children on bicycles fleeing in terror. Authorities said 21-year-old Robert E. Crimo III was named as a person of interest in the shooting and was taken into police custody Monday evening after an hourslong manhunt. The July 4 shooting was just the latest to shatter the rituals of American life. Schools, churches, grocery stores and now community parades have all become killing grounds in recent months.

Motive likely not terror-related in brutal Danish shooting

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  Police say a gunman who killed three people when he opened fire in a crowded shopping mall acted alone and apparently selected his victims at random. They all but ruled out that Sunday's attack was related to terrorism. Authorities on Monday filed preliminary charges of murder and attempted murder against a 22-year-old Danish man. Prosecutor Sren Harbo told reporters that the man will be held for 24 days in a secure mental health facility while authorities investigate the crime. After the custody hearing, defense lawyer Luise Hj said she agreed to have her client undergo a mental exam. She did not comment on the charges.

In rural West, more worries about access to abortion clinics

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  Across the U.S. West, rural residents have historically faced barriers in accessing abortion, such as long travel distances and lack of transportation. Now, abortion providers serving rural areas are concerned those pre-existing challenges could be further compounded by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, as more patients travel to their clinics from states where the procedure is now banned or greatly restricted. In Oregon, the sole Planned Parenthood clinic serving the eastern half of the state is hiring more staff in expectation of an influx of patients from neighboring Idaho, where a trigger law banning most abortions is expected to take effect this summer.

Uneasy US tries to fete a July 4 marred by parade shooting

Independence Day celebrations in the United States have been rattled by a shooting that left at least six people dead at a parade in Illinois. The shooting further rocked a nation already awash in turmoil over high court rulings on abortion and guns as well as hearings on the Jan. 6 insurrection. Police say at least 30 other people were wounded in the attack in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park. Authorities brought a person of interest into custody Monday evening. The latest mass shooting came as the nation tried to find cause to celebrate its founding and the bonds that still hold it together.

Flight cancellations ease slightly as July 4 weekend ends

DALLAS (AP)  The number of U.S. flights being canceled is slowing down, but plenty of travelers are facing long delays as they try to get home from trips over the July Fourth holiday weekend. By late Monday afternoon on the East Coast, more than 2,200 U.S. flights had been delayed and more than 200 were canceled, according to FlightAware. The good news is, that's fewer delays and cancellations than we've seen in recent days. Industry experts say airlines are struggling because demand for travel has recovered from the bottom of the pandemic faster than anyone expected. That's causing airports to be almost as crowded as they were in 2019, before the pandemic.

Griner sends letter to President Biden pleading for his help

Brittney Griner made an appeal to President Joe Biden in a letter passed on to the White House through her representatives saying she feared she may never return home and asking that he not forget about me and the other American Detainees. Griner's agent says the letter was delivered on Monday. The Phoenix Mercury All-Star and two-time Olympic gold medalist is in the midst of a trial in Russia that began last week after she was arrested on Feb. 17 on charges of possessing cannabis oil while returning to play for her Russian team. The trial will resume Thursday.

Sydney floods impact 50,000 around Australia's largest city

SYDNEY (AP)  Hundreds of homes have been inundated in and around Australia's largest city in a flood emergency impacting 50,000 people. Officials said Tuesday emergency response teams made 100 rescues overnight of people trapped in cars on flooded roads or in inundated homes. New South Wales state Premier Dominic Perrottet said evacuation orders and warnings to prepare to abandon homes impacted 50,000 people in and around Sydney. That's up from 32,000 on Monday. Days of torrential rain have caused dams to overflow and waterways to break their banks, bringing a fourth flood emergency in 16 months to parts of the city of 5 million people.

Video shows Akron police kill Black man in hail of gunfire

AKRON, Ohio (AP)  Authorities say a Black man was unarmed when Akron police chased him on foot and killed him in a hail of gunfire, but officers believed he had shot at them earlier from a vehicle and feared he was preparing to fire again. Akron police released video Sunday of the pursuit and killing of 25-year-old Jayland Walker. The mayor called the June 27 shooting heartbreaking while asking for patience from the community. It isn't yet clear how many shots were fired by the eight officers who were involved, but Walker sustained more than 60 wounds.

US: Israeli fire likely killed reporter; no final conclusion

WASHINGTON (AP)  U.S. officials have concluded that the bullet that killed veteran Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was likely fired from an Israeli position. But they say it is too badly damaged to reach an absolute determination, and that there is no reason to believe she was deliberately targeted. State Department spokesman Ned Price, announcing the results of the probe on Monday, said independent, third-party examiners had undertaken an extremely detailed forensic analysis of the bullet that killed her. Abu Akleh was shot dead during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank in May. The Palestinian Authority handed over the bullet to U.S. investigators but is opposed to any Israeli role in the investigation.

'Hell on earth': Ukrainian soldiers describe eastern front

BAKHMUT, Ukraine (AP)  Cities burned to the ground and colleagues with severed limbs. Bombardments so relentless the only option is to lie in a trench, wait and pray. Ukrainian soldiers returning from the front lines in eastern Ukraines Donbas region  where Russia is waging a fierce offensive - describe life during what has turned into a grueling war of attrition as apocalyptic. In interviews with The Associated Press, some complained of chaotic organization, desertions and mental health problems caused by relentless shelling. Others spoke of high morale, their colleagues heroism, and a commitment to keep fighting, even as the better-equipped Russians control more of the combat zone.
The National Weather Service issued a severe weather threat Monday due to two developing storms, one of which prompted a tornado warning.

Around the time of the warning, the NWS posted on Twitter that the storm was moving East-Southeast and a tornado could touch down at any moment.

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The warning expired at 3:15 p.m. with no reports of a tornado on the ground, according to a National Weather Service Chicago spokesperson.

Tornado Warning including Tonica IL, Lostant IL and Cedar Point IL until 3:15 PM CDT pic.twitter.com/KF8UGDf1N8  NWS Chicago (@NWSChicago) July 4, 2022

According to the NWS website, the area is at risk of severe weather until 4 p.m.

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Another storm is moving southeast from Wisconsin, resulting in severe thunderstorm warnings for most of Winnebago County, part of Boone county and part of Livingston county, according to the NSW. As noted via Twitter, damaging winds, are the primary threat.

The storm is expected to hit the Chicago area around 5 p.m. this evening.

Its headed for the Chicago area, very possible it could create some severe weather here, said a National Weather Service Chicago spokesperson.

The NSW will issue warnings should the storm remain severe as it approaches the Chicago area.
BLOOMINGTON  On the Fourth of July, Sabrina Cavanaugh helped organized a Bloomington protest she said that shows: We dont have our independence.

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 24 overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion. Cavanaugh said Monday that the high court's decision had taken away the rights of many women to control their own bodies, and were pretty upset with America right now.

Over 300 people attended the Monday rally in Withers Park. It was also organized by McLean County Young Democrats Chair Krystle Able, who shared with attendees what the term solidarity means to her.

Able referenced the work of bell hooks, a Black feminist scholar who articulated the difference between support and solidarity. "Solidarity keeps us in things for the long run. Solidarity is unconditional. Solidarity is without exceptions," Able said. "Support is conditional."

Able explained that verbal solidarity is helpful, but it doesnt do much more than showing marginalized communities that you support their fight. She also said theres reactionary solidarity, which is what Mondays demonstration was  a reaction to a negative policy development.

Yet afterwards, people tend to go home from a protest, forget about each other, and the movement fizzles out, Able said.

What she said the Young Democrats are aiming for is transformative solidarity: The type of solidarity that gives us the power to make change.

Able said that may look like educating people about the way things intersect, surrounding themselves and building long-term relationships with like-minded people, and those who share the same struggle with you.

She encouraged people to meet someone new at the event, and get to know them and their struggle in this community.

Cavanaugh also helped organize a protest the Sunday before last outside of Planned Parenthood in Bloomington, and heard from others that they should hold another rally on the Fourth of July. She also created a Facebook group, the McLean County Pro-Choice Warriors, that now has hundreds of members.

Im glad that a lot of other people are sharing the same feelings of being upset and angry and wanting to stand up for pro-choice rights, said Cavanaugh.

She also advised people who wish to make a difference to donate to Planned Parenthood, join an organization and to vote in the general election on Nov. 8.

One young attendee was Juin Jones, a 17-year-old student at Normal West High School. She made a protest sign saying every reason to get an abortion is a good reason.

Jones explained that she doesnt believe someone should have to suffer through violence just to choose what happens with their body.

There's so many reasons why someone would need to get an abortion and every reason is valid, she said.

Another attendee was Jackie Schneider, who said she was celebrating our nations history. But on Monday, she said, the days most important issue was to defend reproductive rights for women and our rights to privacy.

Schneider came with Susan Woollen, who noted the day is also about exercising the constitutional right to freedom of peaceful assembly.

Woollen added theyre also present to protect their reproductive rights and tell the rest of the country how they feel about the Roe v. Wade decision.

She continued her message to the nation: And, we are protectors of reproductive justice as well."

Kristi Scheel of Bloomington was among the speakers, sharing the story of an abortion she had in 1988. She said she became pregnant at an early age and in a very, very abusive relationship.

Abusive to the point of almost being shot twice, said Scheel, who said she was raised by her Catholic grandparents and did not feel she could ask them for birth control, nor could she get financial help for the abortion.

So she went to Planned Parenthood, where she was given a slip of paper with a number on it. She said she called and was sent to a Peoria church, where she met with a nun who paid for part of the procedure.

Scheel recalled being asked why she needed the abortion. "He will kill me. Period," she responded, referring to the baby's father. "There's no way around it. He will kill me, and he will absolutely harm this child."

While she said it wasnt the proudest day of her life  and she mourns the loss of the child every day  Scheel said did not regret her decision, and she was grateful the abortion was legal and safe. Without it, Scheel said, she probably would have committed suicide.

Seeing young girls in attendance at the rally, Scheel said, she felt heartbroken thinking that they might not have the same choice. She said was hopeful that the decision could be overturned: "Because I don't want to see anything happen to you kids," she said. "And when you're in that situation, trust me, you'll do just about anything."

Another speaker was Janna Alshabah, a sophomore at Bloomington High School, who said she wanted to stress that the overturning of Roe v. Wade was not only an issue of women's rights. The decision affects transgender, nonbinary and intersex people as well, she said.

Alshabah, who organized a demonstration in support of Palestinian rights in downtown Bloomington earlier this year, said she is sometimes asked why she is out protesting at only 16 years old.

The adults that are running my life, and our lives around us are making decisions that are going to impact us negatively, said Alshabah, and we have to be the change in the world because unfortunately, they're making it harder for us.

She noted the overturning of Roe v. Wade would have a disproportionate negative effect on people of color, "and that's why we need to fight."

Alshabah said she observed a lot of white people in attendance Monday, adding thats not a bad thing. But she encouraged them to act as a shield for protesters of color.

You need to be their shield, she said.
100 years ago

July 5, 1922: Yesterday was the sanest Fourth of July in many years in Bloomington. Not a drunk was arrested during the day, not a drop of blood shed, not a disorder of any kind reported to the police. Never before, according to the police, has the Fourth passed with so little excitement. The only interruption of tranquility was early in the morning, when a shotgun was fired in the city limits.

75 years ago

July 5, 1947: Special events promising to make the 1947 Eureka Pumpkin Festival "bigger and better" were announced by chairman Ben C. Leiken. The event, to be held Sept. 26 and 27, is set to feature crowning of the 1947 Pumpkin Queen by Ronald Reagan, Warner Brothers motion picture star, president of the Screen Actors Guild and a 1932 graduate of Eureka College. Thousands of free pumpkin pies are also part of the event.

50 years ago

July 5, 1972: The office of McLean County Clerk Paul D. Morris is prepared to issue marriage licenses to 18-to-21-year-old males who the attorney general says are no longer required to have parental consent for licenses. Attorney General William J. Scott has issued an opinion that Illinois law requiring men under 21 and women younger than 18 to obtain permission of a parent before marrying discriminates against males.

25 years ago

July 5, 1997: The state's decision to put a freeze on new building projects has left Heartland Community College facing the possibility of limiting enrollment. The college was on the capital funding list to receive $21 million for its new campus on Raab Road in Normal, with work set to begin next spring, but lawmakers did not pass the capital budget. "We were the victims of politics," said Heartland President Jonathan Astroth.
Roe was ruled on in 1973. From 1977-1981, Democratic President Jimmy Carter had a Democrat-controlled congress. Yet, reproductive rights were not legislated nationally.

From 1993-1995, Democratic President Bill Clinton had a Democrat-controlled Congress. Yet, reproductive rights were not legislated nationally.

From 2009-2011, Democratic President Barack Obama had a super-majority in Congress. He explicitly campaigned on passing legislation protecting reproductive rights. Again, reproductive rights were not legislated nationally.

Currently, Democratic President Joe Biden has a Democrat-controlled Congress. Despite having almost two months to prepare for Roe being overturned, the Democrats have done nothing to protect the right to bodily autonomy.

Elections have consequences. That should include the 2020 election, whose consequences are actively occurring (despite the delusions of some in the GOP). Instead of action, people are being told the only thing they can do is vote blue in November. From the president all the way down to the local McDems, vote blue no matter who, and if you arent actively working for the party machine to elect more politicians (and consolidate the power of the Democratic status quo) you are just as bad as those darned Republicans not currently in control of Congress.

This is gaslighting, period.

Anyone who thinks Democrats have a chance of retaining control of Congress in November after the innumerable broken promises of the Biden Administration is as nihilistic as those who say, Believe in God, so you can go to heaven. Its utter fantasy.

When a handful of Republicans did the literal bare minimum and voted to impeach Trump, local parties formally censured all of them, and their careers died. Local Democratic parties should actively warn Democrats in Congress that failure to protect bodily autonomy will be the end of their political careers.

Democrats we call your bluff, .

Zachary Gittrich, Bloomington
Workers of Hollard Ghana, with subsidiaries Hollard Insurance and Hollard Life, fondly called Hollardites, last Tuesday, June 28, hit the streets of Accra, Tema, Kumasi, Sunyani, Takoradi, and Tamale to mark the National Insurance Awareness Day.



National Insurance Awareness Day is a day designated annually to increase insurance awareness worldwide. To celebrate the day, Hollardites took to the streets of significant lorry parks and market centres to engage people about the essence of insurance. The visit included 37 Lorry Station, Tema Community One Lorry Station, Sunyani Central Lorry Station, Takoradi Kwesimintsim Taxi Station, Tamale GPRTU Central Station In Shaa Allah, and Harper Road Adum through to the Komfo Anokye stretch.



Speaking on the motivation for the market storm, Group Head of Marketing and Corporate Affairs, Cynthia Ofori- Dwumfuo said:



Every June, in line with global convention, we celebrate Insurance Month at Hollard culminating in World Insurance Awareness Day on June 28th. We dedicate the month to continuous education on the importance of financial literacy within our communities as seen via the nationwide market storms we organised.



At Hollard, we believe in enabling more people to create and secure a better future. So, through these community-focused public engagements, we are helping to make insurance less daunting and more a part of our daily lives. Little by little, we will increase insurance penetration in the country, she added.



The Chairman of 37 Trotro Station, Mr James Addo, urged drivers and passengers to take advantage of insurance policies for a secure future. He also congratulated the management of Hollard Ghana for their initiative to educate the drivers on the need for insurance to lessen their financial burden during unforeseen circumstances.



About Hollard Ghana



The country's favourite insurance group is Hollard Ghana, with subsidiaries Hollard Insurance and Hollard Life Assurance. The group combines its deep local knowledge of the market, having operated in Ghana for 25 years as Metropolitan Insurance with the world-class expertise of an international insurance brand in 18 countries worldwide. With feet firmly planted on Ghanaian soil but headquartered in South Africa, Hollard delivers innovative insurance solutions customised to the unique risks Ghanaians face. Hollard through its subsidiaries offer various life and general insurance products, including funeral, personal accident, motor, business, travel, home, and more, and can be reached via the following means: 0501603967 (Hollard Insurance) and 0501533698 (Hollard Life). Beyond various nationwide office branches and Hollard 2U franchise shops, Ghanaians can find Hollard at Shell Fuel Station Welcome Shops, Melcom stores and online at www.hollard.com.gh and www.jumia.com.gh for all their insurance needs.





Source: Peacefmonline.com









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Armed assailants killed at least 22 civilians in northwest Burkina Faso on Monday, a local official said, the latest deadly attack in an area marred by militant activity.



The attackers raided a rural commune in the province of Kossi, around 55 kilometres from the border with Mali, in the hours between late Sunday night and early Monday morning, regional governor Babo Pierre Bassinga said in a statement.



"The provisional death toll of this terrorist attack is 22 dead, several wounded and material damage," it said.



Military forces have been deployed to the scene and measures are in place host those who fled to nearby cities, the statement added.



Burkina Faso has been battling Islamist militants active in northern regions, some with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State, since 2015.



The fighting has displaced more than 1.85 million in the West African country alone and killed thousands across the Sahel, where militant activity that took root in Mali has spread over the past decade.



Army officers angry about the escalating attacks overthrew Burkina Faso's president in January and vowed to improve security, but levels of violence have remained high.



Armed men killed at least 100 civilians in another rural district in northern Burkina Faso last month, the deadliest attack the country has seen in at least a year.

Source: Reuters









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The Chief Executive Officer of the Ho Teaching Hospital (HTH) Dr. John Tampori has commended the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) for the sustenance of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) for nearly two decades. He stated that his facility holds the NHIS in high esteem following its unwavering financial support for quality healthcare delivery in Ghana.



Dr. Tompari stated categorically that the NHIS sustains the Ho Teaching hospital as 98.2% of patients who seek healthcare at the facility are registered members of the Scheme. He made this known when the CEO of the NHIA Dr. Okoe Boye paid a working visit to the facility during his 3-day working tour of the Volta Region.



Dr. Okoe Boye lauded the management and staff of HTH for their good work and reaffirmed that the hospital remains the biggest NHIS provider in the Volta region where lots of providers within the region and beyond can draw lessons from their long-standing relationship with the Scheme.



Dr. Okoe Boyes visit to the Ho Teaching Hospital forms his very first visit to a provider site since he began his regional tour of NHIS regional and district offices. He reiterated the need for the NHIA to see providers such as the Ho Teaching hospital as partners of the Scheme whose services and contribution cannot be overlooked.



After this, he visited the Miracle Life Health centre, a credentialed NHIS provider within the Ho district to interact with staff, and sample member/patient experience on the use of the National Health Insurance at a primary healthcare provider level



As a means of strengthening provider relations and relieving them of financial constraints, Dr. Okoe Boye announced the newly approved 30% increment in Medicines Tariffs effective 1 July 2022. This is to say that henceforth, NHIS providers will receive an upward payment of 30% for all medicines captured on the NHIS medicines list. He hinted that another review will be done in 12 months to ensure providers get value for money. Dr. Okoe Boye further indicated that the Scheme is committed to providing cover for the aged and vulnerable thus NHIS members aged 70 and above will soon benefit from instant activation of their membership after renewal or fresh registration to ensure on-the-go access of healthcare.



Dr. Okoe Boye was accompanied by Dr. Ernest K.P. Kwarko, Board Chairman of the NHIA, Mrs. Joyce Zempare NHIA Board Member, Mrs. Yaa Pokuaa Baiden, Deputy Chief Executive in charge of Administration and Human Resources and other directors of the Authority.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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At a structure made out of corrugated iron in Havana informal settlement on the outskirts of Windhoek, capital of Namibia, children were drawing images of idyllic scenes of peace, social issues, objects and ideal environments, reflecting their aspirations.

"This is a poster of a lady. I used an old magazine, discarded box, which I pasted on paper, and then coloured it. I like drawing beautiful ladies; imagining a world where society protects women," 13-years old Lavinia Tobias interpreted her drawing.

Tobias is one of the 40 youngsters hosted at the Frans Nambinga Art Training School in Havana, one of Windhoek's most populated informal settlements.

The school, started in 2018, is teaching art techniques to children and youth amid perennial challenges in informal settlements.

"We offer performing and visual arts classes to people in the community. Not only to nurture talent but to avoid children being pushed into sly activities on the streets," said Frans Nambinga, artist and school founder.

A trip to China, where Nambinga partook in a six-month-long program under the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held in Hangzhou in Zhejiang province in China in 2013, further ignited the idea.

"In China, I learned a lot about the creative art industry, especially after visiting museums, galleries, factories, and observing how they run art programs for children," he said.

Nambinga also lends industry experience and qualifications from the College of Arts and John Muafangejo Art Centre to impart skills.

The school also fuses art education with culture in the form of history, dance and food to transmit traditions across generations, according to Letisia Hamukoto, a trainer at the school.

The school has since given a chance to feed the dreams of young people, with many keen to make art their mainstay.

Tobias, who started the program at the age of six, said it had become her escape from the bustle of streets in the informal settlement.

"I feel safer here rather than being on the street. Art allows me to dream and share my artistic passion with friends and neighbours. I hope to go far with it, even China or America, to showcase my craft and learn from others," Tobias said.

The youngsters also learned social skills. "Being here teaches me how to mix and work in a team with others," said 12-year-old Leticia Ndamekele, who has been with the program since 2019.

What is more, extramural activities at the art school have a ripple effect of improved academic performance in mainstream schools, especially in art subjects.

"We received feedback that school-going children develop a different way of thinking and exhibit more confidence in presentation," Nambinga said.

Moreover, it also creates employment and study opportunities for the youth.

"The youth maximize skills learned to make a living through music or visual arts. We also provide those who wish to pursue further studies with a certificate and portfolio that would qualify them for admission into art colleges," he added.

In the interim, the centre has registered an increasing demand for arts education in the area, creating both benefits and unintended challenges. COVID-19 outbreak, inadequate space, resources and funds to expand are a hurdle. This is more so because artistic work, mainly the school, is the primary source of income.

"This is my lifeline. However, programs do not always generate substantial income as most locals and parents cannot afford to pay the standard 100 Namibian dollars (6.72 U.S. Dollars). I do not chase them away; I teach them regardless," Nambinga said.

Complementary support also comes from collaborating with institutions on joint projects.

According to Nambinga, some institutions partner with the school to execute an idea through an exhibition or performing arts to raise awareness about a social issue.

"Host institutions fund such projects, which brings in an income. But we need more support," he added.

Despite the challenges, Nambinga hopes to grow the school and accommodate more children.

"It is not easy being an artist in Namibia due to limited support and commercial prospects. But I am optimistic about the future. We hope to expand through continued strategic collaborations to nurture youngsters, so they succeed," he said.

The art school has trained about 100 young people since its inception.
The Ghana Police Service provided health services to members of the Islamic community who were in transit at the Hajj Village, as part of the police strategy to take policing closer to the public and win the hearts and minds of the people in a bid to strengthen partnerships for effective policing.



Two Police Mobile Clinic vehicles were deployed and stationed at the Village to support the Hajj Village clinic to provide health care services for the people.



The mobile hospitals come fully equipped with an X-ray machine, Surgical theatre equipment, Mobile ventilator, Defibrillator, Oxygen delivery devices, Laboratory oven, centrifuge and microscope as well as a 9 bedded tent with power supply and accessories among others.



There were also medical doctors, nurses and other health professionals on board to attend to the patient.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will be the Guest of Honour at this year's 19th Plenary Assembly of Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) in Accra.



The Conference, under the auspices of the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference, will take place from July 25 to August 1 at Ghana Institute of Management and Public Relations in Accra.



The opening ceremony would take place on Tuesday July 26 at the Christ the King Parish in Accra on the theme: Ownership of SECAM: Security and Migration in Africa and its Islands.



The closing ceremony to be preceded by Holy Mass will be held on Sunday July 31 at the Holy Spirit Cathedral, Adabraka in Accra.



Most Rev Gabriel Kumordji, acting Treasurer of SECAM and Bishop of Keta- Akatsi Diocese on Monday in a press briefing said, the Assembly would bring together about 130 participants, including Cardinals, Bishops, and Representatives of Church Institutions from the continent of Africa, representatives from Pope Francis, and others from the US.



He said the Assembly was initially scheduled to take place in Burkina Faso, but due to the political instability in the country and the non-recognition of the military regime by both the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in that country, it was changed to Ghana.



Ghana hosted the 15th Plenary Assembly in 2010 to mark the 40th Anniversary of SECAM.



Most Rev Kumordji said the Bishops of Africa have been speaking out and working against the growing imbalances between the Northern and Southern part of the world, as far as the distribution of resources was concerned.



He said, in a recent message known as the KAMPALA DOCUMENT, the bishops pointed out the damage being done to creation that is the environment; and the political and economic crisis



"An analysis of the performance of governance in Africa strongly reveals some deficits-the growth in economic, social and political inequalities, which do not guarantee any peaceful future for human beings and social stability.



"Festering corruption often institutionalised as mode of governance, absence of obligation for accountability, and the reign of impunity, all from the same Document, he said.



Most Rev Kumordji said SECAM had since 2015 maintained an Observer Status at AU which was an important platform for bringing issues concerning the Church to the attention of African governments, organisations and the entire world.



The Bishops of Africa have set aside a day Known as SECAM DAY that is observed annually on July 29 at the Diocesan, national, regional, and continental levels in Africa.



SECAM seeks to accomplish together in Africa, Christ's mandate to proclaim the message of redemption to all nations, to foster, promote and preserve solidarity, communion, and collaboration among the bishops of the continent.

Source: GNA









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The Member of Parliament for Buem in the Oti Region, Kofi Adams has joined the Roman Catholic Church of Ghana and the diocese of Jasikan to celebrate the centenary memorial of the ordination of the Very Reverend Father Anastasius Odaye Kofi Dogli, the first indigenous Catholic Priest of the Gold Coast.

In statement read on the floor of Parliament on Friday July 1, 2022, Mr. Adams said Father Dogli impacted significantly on the expansion of the Catholic Church, as his ordination inspired many. He noted that there was a spike in baptisms and many of the locals were keen to have one of their own baptize their children.



The House was informed that Father Dogli encouraged young men and women to enroll in the seminaries and encouraged parents to send their boys and girls to school to receive formal education.



Father Doglis first station was Kpando. He travelled with Bishop Herman (on bicycle) to Papase and Kete Krachi where he opened stations. He was sent to Gbi-Bla from Kpando in 1928. While at Kpando, he was requested by Bishop Herman to open and to start the Catholic Church at Jasikan. He worked at Kpando, Jasikan, Hohoe, Abor, Liati, Baglo and Lome, Mr. Adams stated.



The Buem MP said he was exceptionally pleased that in memory of Father Dogli, a Vocational and Technical institute has been established in New Ayoma to eulogise the first indigenous Catholic Priest. He called on the Minister of Education and the GETFUND to support the infrastructural needs of the school.



Father Dogli who spent 48 years in priesthood died on May 28, 1970.



Kofi Adams expressed his sincere appreciation to the Most Reverend Gabriel Akwasi Ababio Mante, the Bishop of the Jasikan Diocese and the organising committees for the planning and celebration of such a memorable centenary memorial of the ordination of an illustrious son of Buem.



Below is the full text of Hon. Kofi Adams statement to Parliament:



STATEMENT ON THE ORDINATION ANNIVERSARY MEMORIAL OF THE LATE REVEREND FATHER ANASTASIUS DOGLI, BY HONOURABLE KOFI ADAMS, MP FOR BUEM.



Mr. Speaker, 2nd July 2022 marks a significant day in the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Ghana and especially the Catholic Dioceses of Jasikan. It is an exceptionally special day for the peoples of Baglo in particular and Buem in general. It is in this respect Mr. Speaker that I begin this statement by rendering my sincerest appreciation and gratitude to the Most Reverend Gabriel Akwasi Ababio Mante, the Bishop of Jasikan Diocese and the organizing committees for the planning and celebration of such a memorable centenary memorial of the ordination of an illustrious son of Buem, Very Reverend Fr. Anastasius Odaye Kofi Dogli, the first indigenous catholic priest of the Gold coast.



Birth and Provenance

Mr. Speaker Odaye Kofi Dogli was born in Baglo in August 1888 to his father Yawo Okanta Dogli and his mother Justine Nzowu Englobe. Baglo is one of the towns of the Buem traditional area, a group of indigenes belonging to the Lelemi-speaking people with the paramountcy located at Bodada. Anastasius Dogli was the third of five siblings.



Baptism

On 25th December 1904, Dogli was baptized at Baglo by Fr. Heinrich Schroder, SVD, his name appearing in the baptismal register in Kpalime. The entry NLB 156 records his name as Anastasius Deikofi which is probably a corruption of the name Odaye Kofi.



Formal Education

Fr. Doglis formal education began about 1902 at Lipke Avedzeme. In 1903, having impressed the missionaries who found him to be a brilliant and zealous soul, he was taken to Agome where he received training as a catechist under a three year bond with the German SVD missionaries. Having completed his formation, he subsequently served as a teacher-catechist and organist from 1907 through 1912. He was appointed to teach at Gbi-Atabu. In 1909, Dogli was promoted Head-teacher after he successfully completed training at the Ackerbauschule in Notse. It was after this that Dogli was transferred to Adzanu Fiagbe.



Marriage, Family and Widowhood

On April 19, 1909, in the Church of the Holy Spirit, in Agoue, Kpalime, Anastasius Dogli married Agnes Doklo. Mr. Speaker their marriage was blessed with a daughter, Philothea Akosiwa Dogli. The joy of the family was however to be short-lived as in April 1912, Agnes passed away leaving Dogli behind with their fourteen-month-old infant. He would take his daughter Philothea to the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles in Keta later and request of them to raise her up.



Vocation to the Priesthood

The death of Doglis wife, turned a page in his life. Dogli was now set on becoming a priest. According to Bishop Hummel, Dogli during his days as a teacher with the missionaries had manifested the desire to become a priest. He again recounted that Doglis request to the Divine Word Missionaries to be accepted as a seminarian in 1912 was born out of a desire he had nurtured for a long time rather than out of shock from the death of his wife.



Preparation for the Priesthood

Dogli was admitted as a mature student at the minor seminary at Bla (Hohoe) in 1913 where he began his study of Latin. In the 1914 academic year, Dogli was permitted to work as a teacher at Gbi-Atabu during the day and take lessons at the seminary in the evening. His formators, realizing the challenge the situation posed, recommended that Dogli be transferred to Anecho (in Togo), in 1915 as a full-time seminarian.



In 1917 due to the First World War, the missionaries left Anecho and this brought Dogli to Lome where he continued his formation to the priesthood. In June 1919, after having successfully completed two years of philosophical studies, Dogli commenced his theological studies. It was during this period that Dogli received the first tonsure. Dogli was subsequently sent to continue his theological studies at Keta to study under Fr. James Fisher. In August 1920, the minor orders were conferred on him. He was subsequently received into the subdiaconate on Easter Sunday, April 16, 1922 and was ordained deacon on Pentecost Sunday, June 4, 1922. Both events took place in Cape Coast.





The First Indigenous Catholic Priest of the Gold Coast

The period of immediate preparation for Doglis ordination to the presbyteral order began in December 1921 when Bishop Hummel wrote to Cardinal Van Rossum in Rome requesting to ordain Dogli after having completed three years of theological studies. A positive response of Cardinal van Rossum led to the ordination of Anastasius Dogli to the priesthood on Sunday, July 2, 1922.



The event was one of great joy for the entire city of Cape Coast and the Catholic Mission. A large and compact crowd attended the celebration, including protestants and pagans as well as many youths, who saw in Dogli, a role-model for perseverance and success, one who had demonstrated that it was not impossible for one of their own to arrive at the altar. In response to a presentation made to him on the said day, Dogli is reported to have said that he was no extraordinary person. It was God in his mercy who had been good to him. He thus urged other young people to follow this example and come to the assistance of the missionaries.



On July 23, 1922, Dogli was in the Cathedral in Lome to celebrate his first Holy Mass. According to Bishop Cessou, the celebration began on the vigil of that Sunday with a procession which took about two hours. A dense crowd welcomed Fr. Dogli with songs and acclamation. The reception received by Fr. Dogli, made a deep impression on the European missionaries some of whom remarked to Bishop Cessou, that not even the governor would have had such a reception.



This Bishop Cessou observes was the final evidence, that a black person could become a Catholic priest. The faithful listened with rapt attention to his homily, as he also narrated his vocational journey to the priesthood, emphasizing the need for indigenous priests, while urging the youth to respond to the vocation to the priesthood and religious life and encouraging parents not to oppose the call of their children. The impact of the celebration on the people was huge. For the seminarians in particular, to see before their eyes a man like themselves climb the altar as a priest, represented the greatest encouragement to their vocations.



Other communities Fr. Dogli visited after his ordination were very welcoming. He was very warmly received in Keta, Kpalime, Gbi-Bla, Kpando and in his own hometown of Baglo during the months of August and September of 1922. On August 6, 1922, the first record of Fr. Doglis baptisms appears in the Baptismal Register at Kpando. Similarly, Fr. Doglis first baptism at Baglo is dated August 30, 1922. Twenty-nine baptisms are recorded between this date and September 17, 1922, with Fr. Dogli as minister, indicating a spike in baptisms on his arrival, and suggesting that some locals might have been eager to have their children baptized by the indigenous priest.



Fr. Doglis charisma as a man who earned the respect and admiration of his people is not in doubt. The above testimony of Bishop Cessou is ample evidence of the kind of impact his ordination had on the faith of the ordinary Christian of his day. His personal validation of struggles as necessary for achieving the goal of an indigenous clergy, must have been crucial in encouraging the young seminarians present to persevere in their own vocations. This would have led to the altering of perceptions both among the faithful and of potential indigenous candidates for the priesthood, that it was indeed possible for an African to become a Catholic priest.



Activities as a priest

Fr. Dogliss first station was Kpando. He travelled with Bishop Herman (on bicycle) to Papase and Kete Krachi where he opened stations. He was sent to Gbi-Bla from Kpando in 1928. While at Kpando, he was requested by Bishop Herman to open and to start the Catholic Church at Jasikan.



He worked at Kpando, Jasikan, Hohoe, Abor, Liati, Baglo and Lome. In his zeal to have financial support for the printing of the Lelemi Book (Vol. 1-12), he went to Rome and Holland. He finally settled at Baglo to continue his ministry. He died on May 28, 1970 after 48 years of priesthood. May his soul rest in perfect peace.



Mr. Speaker, it is worth knowing that, Fr. Dogli did not only encouraged young men and women to enroll in the seminaries and novitiates. He also whipped up the interests of his compatriots to allow boys and girls to pursue formal education. I am personally happy (and am sure Fr. Dogli is happy too in heaven) that a Vocational/Technical Institute has been established in his memory at New Ayoma. I entreat the students of Fr. Dogli Memorial School to embrace the ethic of hard work and commitment to God as championed by the great Fr. Dogli of blessed memory. I wish to take this opportunity to appeal to the Minister of Education and the Administrator of GETFUND to support the infrastructural needs of this great school. It will not be out of place Mr. Speaker for government to adopt and upgrade this school as one of the programmed TVETs institutions in the country in honor of this respected patriot



Mr. Speaker, you will agree with me that we are celebrating the life and ministry of a distinguished son and priest of this country from Buemland. He is our ancestor; and I dare to say also that he is our saint who braved the challenges of life and left us a legacy of courage, hope, and tenacity of purpose.



Mr. Speaker who would have thought that our great, great grandfather, Fr. Anastasius Dogli, will learn different foreign languages, marry, raise a child, go through Catechism, Philosophical and Theological studies and become a priest in the Roman Catholic Church? It sounds very impossible and daunting tasks to fulfill by the poor son from Baglo-Buem at the time he did it. But, with God all things are possible. He followed his dreams and aspirations with determination and faith. He trusted in the Lord and in his capacities to succeed. It is my hope that we can also trust in the Lord our God, walk in the light of his word, do his good will as we forge ahead to fulfill our individual and collective dreams. As a minister of the Gospel, Fr. Dogli fought a good fight of faith. He finished the race. We are confident that the Lord, the just judge, has granted him a seat among the angels and saints at the table of the heavenly banquet.



Fr. Anastasius Dogli!!!

We honor and salute you!!!

Ye ma wo mmo!!!

Buteo Yiiduu!!!







Source: graphiconline.com









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The Nigerian government has offered slots for students who fled the war in Ukraine to continue their education at local universities and other tertiary institutions in the country.



In a statement, the Nigerian foreign affairs ministry says efforts are being made to "facilitate their placement into various Nigerian tertiary institutions".



The ministry has provided a registration form that interested Nigerian students can fill in on its website.



Thousands of Nigerian students were evacuated from Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion of the country - disrupting their studies.



But even if they get placements to complete their studies in Nigeria, it is likely to prove difficult because lecturers in local public universities have been on strike for several months over pay and working conditions.



It is not clear when the institutions will reopen.

Source: BBC









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An Accra High Court has set July 25, 2022 to determine whether the Office of the Attorney General has made enough case against the 10 persons standing trial for allegedly planning to overthrow the government in a coup, to warrant them to open their defence.



This was after the prosecution led by Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), Yvonne Atakora Obuobisa, informed the court that they had closed their case after their 14th and last witness, Chief Inspector Michael Nkrumah, who was discharged following conclusion of cross-examination by defence lawyers.



The three-member panel of the court, presided over by Justice Afia Serwaa Asare-Botwe and assisted by Justices Hafisata Amaleboba and Stephen Oppong, indicated that the outcome of their decision will determine whether or not any of the accused persons would be ordered to open their defence, which will ultimately inform a case management conference.



The court said the defence lawyers as well as the prosecution may file submissions if they intend to do so by July 12, adding that the court will not bother to read any submissions filed beyond July 12.



The ten made up of civilians, a senior military officer, a senior police officer and some soldiers are before the court on charges of high treason and abetment of high treason for allegedly plotting to overthrow a democratically elected government.



They are Dr. Frederick Yao MacPalm, proprietor of the Citadel Hospital at Alajo in Accra who is suspected to be the mastermind of the plot; Donya Kafui aka Ezor, a local weapon manufacturer; Bright Alan Debrah Ofosu aka Bright Alan Yeboah or BB, Lance Corporal Ali Solomon, Lance Corporal Sylvester Akanpewon, Lance Corporal Seidu Abubakar and WO II Esther Saan Dekuwine aka Mama Gee.



The rest are Johannes Zikpi, a civilian employee with the Ghana Armed Forces, ACP Dr. Benjamin Agordzo of the Ghana Police Service and Col. Samuel Kojo Gameli of the Ghana Armed Forces.



The prosecution during the trial called 14 witnesses, including undercover operatives who were able to infiltrate a WhatsApp group created by the accused persons where they allegedly planed the coup, as well as meetings attended by some of the accused persons where the alleged coup plot was discussed.



The prosecution also tendered the guns, the improvised explosive devices (IEDs), bullets, an anvil and other equipment confiscated at the X-Ray department of the Citadel Hospital owned and operated by Dr. Fredrick MacPalm.



One of the prosecutions witnesses, Deputy Staff Officer (DSO) Frank Aboagye, during his testimony also told the court that Dr. MacPalm was habouring the desire to become president upon the overthrow of government.



The court also heard audio tapes of the meetings attended by some of the accused persons, and WOII Esther Saan, the only female among the accused persons, was heard on the tape saying President Nana Akufo-Addo must be eliminated when captured on the day of the coup.



A prosecution witness also told the court that the accused intended to use Take Action Ghana, a non-profitable organisation for charitable works, to garner support and later register it as a political party to contest in an election after the coup had been carried out.







Source: Daily Guide









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The Christ Apostolic Church International (CACI), Bantama Central Assembly, has donated quantities of relief items to three needy institutions in Ashanti Region.



The institutions are the Bekwai Destitute Infirmary, Kumasi Childrens Home and Remar Rehabilitation Centre.



The items worth GHc40,000.00 included bags of maize, rice, bags of beans, gari, tins of milo and milk, boxes of oats, 300 pieces of bread, drinking water, soft drinks, cooking oil, cleaning detergents, toilet tissues, clothes and shoes among other things.



The Church also presented an undisclosed amount to the beneficiary institutions.



Apostle Samuel Amponsah Frimpong, the General Secretary, CACI, presenting the items to the beneficiary institutions, said the church had a responsibility to reach out to the less privileged in the society.



He indicated that it was a blessing and relief when Christians offered such gestures towards the welfare of people in the community.



The donations, according to the Church, were to climax activities of a 40-day fasting and prayer organised by the Church.



It has since 2018 donated quantities of such items to the needy in society, assuring them of hope, love, selflessness and task of being Christians.



Apostle Frimpong commended CACI Bantama Central Assembly for their continued support to the disadvantaged and called on other religious bodies to make efforts of donating to needy people.



He used the occasion to counsel Ghanaians to refrain from undertaking actions that were likely to cause chaos and turmoil to the peace that the country was enjoying.



Every Ghanaian has the right to express him or herself but we must be conscious of our actions, especially, when demonstrating against pressing issues.



The least careful you are can turn a peaceful demonstration into a bloody one, and this can mar the peaceful Ghana we enjoy today, he observed.



Apostle Frimpong pledged that the Church would continue to reach out to the less privileged in the society and give hope to them.



Mr Samuel Joe Amissah, the Director of Remar Rehabilitation Centre, who spoke on behalf of the beneficiary institutions, expressed appreciation to the Church for its support to them in the past years.



He said the donations had come at a timely hour where the economic situation in the country had challenges, indicating that the items would go a long way in addressing their feeding and clothing needs.



Mr. Amissah called on individuals and corporate organizations to continually reach out to needy institutions with help.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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Pope Francis has expressed his support of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade.



He compared abortion to "hiring a hitman to solve a problem" and reiterated the position of the Catholic Church that life begins at conception.



Speaking from his residence at the Vatican, he said: "I ask, is it legitimate? Is it right to eliminate a human life to resolve a problem?"



The 85-year-old Pontiff was then asked whether someone, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is pro-choice, should be allowed to receive communion.



Recall that Nancy Pelosi was denied communion by the archbishop in San Francisco.



Responding to the question, Pope Francis said: "When the Church loses its pastoral nature, when a bishop loses his pastoral nature, it causes a political problem. That's all I can say."









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Following the success of its innovative smart tech clean water pilot in Abomosu, Grundfos Ghana Water Initiative (GWI) announced that it is developing 12 additional sites in collaboration with the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) to give over 100,000 people across rural Ghana access to clean water by the end of 2023.



The Ghana Water Initiative (GWI), a project by SafeWater, a strategic business unit within Grundfos, aims to reach one million people in underserved communities in Ghana with clean water by 2026, providing drinking water that is both safe and easily accessible, from a reliable source that is sustainable and efficiently run.



In 2019, GWI installed seven centrally located, solar-powered, digital AQTaps (water ATMs) to serve the first pilot community in Abomosu village, located in Atiwa West District, Eastern region of Ghana, in partnership with the Community Water and Sanitation Agency and the Atiwa West District Assembly. The innovative, smart water ATMs by Grundfos allow the user to manage their usage, and access treated, potable water using a pre-paid card, topped up via mobile money, from a source that is reliable and accessible 24/7, all year round.



Today, safe running water is available throughout the community, pumped from a 90m borehole 1.5km from the village to a 120m water tank. Over 8,000 local residents now have reliable access to clean water for the first time, including 262 smart household water connections going directly into residents homes.



Anise Sacranie, SafeWaters Senior Partnership Development Manager commented: We have demonstrated that this model is successful, so working closely with the CWSA, the next step is to take the model to scale, encouraging private sector engagement and entrepreneurship to establish financially sustainable, high-quality water services to underserved communities across Ghana.



We are about to finalise our next project (in Otoase) which is a completely new build and are on track to have a total of 13 projects running by the end of next year, including Abomosu, giving over 100,000 people access to clean drinking water within the next 18 months.







Xorlali Yao-Kuma Kpodo, Grundfos Ghana Water Initiatives Engagement Manager said, Over 8 million people in Ghana still do not have access to safe, drinkable water because the current water supply in many areas is inefficient and untreated and therefore unsafe to drink when it flows.



Since the start of the Abomosu pilot initiative 2 years ago, the feedback from local residents has been overwhelmingly positive so we are excited to be moving to the next phase, providing clean water to more underserved rural areas.



GWIs approach to improving water access is to refurbish existing CWSA systems or establish new infrastructure where no system exists, providing water to both households, public standpipes and refillable water dispensers.



The Abomosu project involved upgrading an existing system that had fallen into disrepair, requiring two new boreholes, piping, and treatment system, as well as the Grundfos AQ Taps (water ATMs). GWI staff work with local teams to maintain the new system and are developing a vocational curriculum for water system operations and maintenance to ensure skills are transferred to local staff for ongoing maintenance of the project in the future.





Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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NDC Member of Parliament(MP) for Bolgatanga Central, Isaac Adongo, believes President Akufo-Addo can blame no one but himself for the current state of economic affairs after surrounding himself with virtually all his family members who had poor appreciation of the economy.



To him, Akufo-Addo will go down in the annals of the country's political history as the worst president ever.



Speaking on Okay FM's 'Ade Akye Abia' programme, he accused the NPP Government of having relied so much on borrowing to such unprecedented levels even though there was nothing to show for it that the country lost all avenues for future borrowing.



"The argument about Covid-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war should not be mentioned as the cause of the collapse of the economy. The NPP government borrowed and spent the money on irrelevant projects that did not aid in the country's development. The Finance Minister has mismanaged the economy to an extent that no institution does not want to even lend the country money again," he asserted.



He added that some projects like the National Cathedral which has already swallowed more than 35 million dollars and the Agyapa deal will forever cease to exist when IMF looks into the books of the country and decide to assist the country.



"The Finance Minister who has poor knowledge in finance and economic management should be no where near the IMF team to help design a policy for the rebound of the economy.



"But President Akufo-Addo has caused his own failure because he has surrounded himself with his family members who had poor appreciation of the economy and they have eventually ruined his administration. President Akufo-Addo will go down in history as one of the worst presidents the country has witnessed. The woes of the economy are due to wrong decisions taken by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta," he added.



However, he is confident that the IMF will insist on the protection of the poor during negotiations, adding that he will support any eventual plan that will protect the interest of the poor and vulnerable.



The poor must have an economy in order to be protected. We currently dont just have an economy and so if there is anything that will bring back an economy that supports the poor, it is very important that we support it.



Watch video below





Source: Isaac Kwame Owusu/Peacefmonline/[email protected]eacefmonline.com









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Former Finance Minister, Seth Terkper, has asked the government to deploy measures to cut down on expenditures as it seeks an International Monetary Fund, IMF bailout.



According to him, doing so will help redirect the economy back onto the path of recovery.



In an interview with Accra-based Joy FM, Mr. Terkper observed that governments flagship programmes including the Free SHS was taking a huge chunk of it resources.



He said the cost of sponsoring the programme was unsustainable.



Free SHS in its unfettered form is not sustainable. Your debt is not sustainable, and youre borrowing. Youre using your whole revenue to cover compensation and interest. Youre borrowing for the past debts that youve borrowed to repay the past debt that you borrowed to support free SHS. Thats not a palatable discussion, he said.



Recounting how the Mahama-led administration dealt with an economic downturn, Seth Terkper said it had to tighten its belt in the continuation of some of its flagship programmes.



He indicated that the government then had to scale down on the number of E-block schools it was constructing.



We were in the Fund [IMF], when crude oil prices fell in 2015/2016. [Then,] our flagship programme was the E-schools. We initially stated that we were going to construct 200 schools.



"But when the reality hit, President Mahama indicated that we were not going to be able to complete all the 200, we may be able to do 150 and even with that, we rolled it into 2017, and 2018. We were able to construct about 70 when we were leaving office, he recalled.



So thats the sort of decisions you have to make, he added.



Background



President Akufo-Addo on July 1 ordered Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta to begin formal engagements with the IMF.



In a statement signed by Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the engagement will be to invite the Fund to support an economic program put together by government.



"Among other things, the government says the IMF support will provide balance of payment support as part of a broader effort to quicken Ghanas build back in the face of challenges induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, and recently, the Russia-Ukraine crisis.



Meanwhile, the IMF team is expected to arrive in the country July 5 for the first engagement to take place.























Source: ghanaweb.com









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The 2022 China-ASEAN Youth Hand-in-Hand Event was held Monday in Nanning, the capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The event aimed to deepen cultural and people-to-people exchanges between China and the ASEAN countries, with over 300 participants from the countries joining both online and offline.

During the event, the representatives from countries including China, Laos, and Thailand shared stories that they experienced through the win-win cooperation of China and ASEAN countries, covering topics such as international cooperation against COVID-19 and cultural exchanges.

Praporn Puppateerawanich, a Thai teacher at Guangxi Arts University, shared a story of music exchanges between China and Thailand.

"The event is very helpful for the cultural exchanges between China and Thailand, as face-to-face communication can help us better understand each other's culture," she said.

"People-to-people and cultural exchanges and mutual learning among the youths are important ways to enhance people-to-people bonds between China and the ASEAN countries," said Sun Jin, deputy secretary of the Guangxi regional committee of the Communist Youth League of China.

"I hope young friends will carry forward friendship, pursue common development and engage in practical cooperation, and contribute their wisdom and strength to the building of a closer China-ASEAN community with a shared future," Sun added.
Information Minister Kojo has said: I dont think its about an apology or no apology in response to demands for an apology by the government to the people of Ghana for seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund despite the insistence of some government officials that the Akufo-Addo administration would never resort to the Bretton Woods institution for help in coming out of the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic and the collateral damage caused by the Russia-Ukraine war.



In Mr Oppong Nkrumahs view, Its about dealing with the realities of the situations in front of us, adding: The reality of the situation is that we have a twin crisis that has exacerbated our domestic challenges.



Early this year, Mr Ofori-Atta said Ghana is a proud nation of strong people with the capability to find her own solutions to problems and, thus, will not run to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help.



Speaking at the third in a series of town hall meetings in the Northern regional capital of Tamale in February, Mr Ofori-Atta said:  I can tell you, as my colleague Deputy Minister said, we are not going to the IMF; whatever we do, we are not; the consequences are dire, we are a proud nation, we have the resources, we have the capacity.



Dont let anybody tell you  like when Joshua, Caleb and the 10 others went to spy on the Promised Land and only two of them came to say that, We can do it, and the 10 went around the community murmuring, You cant; da da da da da da; we are not people of short sight and we had to move on, so, lets think of us as who we are: a proud, strong people, the shining star of Africa and we have the capacity to do what we want to do if only we can speak by one language and ensure that we burden-share in the issues ahead.



However, upon the orders of President Akufo-Addo, Mr Ofori-Atta recently opened discussions with the IMF for a bailout.



Mr Oppong Nkrumah explained the reason for the U-turn in an interview with Accra-based Citi FM on Monday, 4 July 2022.



The domestic programme, which would have enabled us to deal with it has had its own challenges. The president has asked that we open the IMF window and start engagement with the fund. Lets give ourselves the opportunity to go through it, he added.



According to Mr Oppong Nkrumah, Mr Ofori-Atta will be leading Ghanas negotiation team.



He admitted the Fund may not hold all the answers to Ghanas economic problems talking to.



The Fund is not a single bullet to answer all the questions that we have but if they can come to support the programme that we have on the table. The President has made that decision, and we have started putting in place the mechanisms, Mr Oppong Nkrumah added.



On calls for Mr Ofori-Attas resignation, Mr Oppong Nkrumah said the Finance Minister is responsible for fiscal policy and had earlier expressed a view supported by the government that it is better to use domestic measures to deal with some of these challenges than to find yourself in a situation where you need external help of this nature.



Unfortunately, the domestic measures have been challenged. At the time theyve been challenged, theres a twin global crisis that is biting hard. Any president that is feeling the pain of his people, would explore what options work best. This is the window the president wants us to open and engage with to deal with the short-term problem but at the same time deal with the bigger economic problem.



People think the Finance Minister is responsible for the economy. The Minister of Finance is responsible for fiscal policy, and the Bank of Ghana is responsible for monetary policy. The real sector, and broader economic policy, sit with the president, he has an economic management team under him. The president was the one who spoke to the funds managing director on the phone.





Source: class fm









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A group calling itself Akyem for ALAN has urged delegates of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to honor tradition in voting for the candidate to lead the party come 2024 election.



Speaking to Starr News during the launch of Akyem 4 Alan campaign at Kyebi in the Eastern region, lead convener for the group, Fiifi Ofori-Atta reiterated the need to respect tradition and vote for the Trade Minister, Alan Kyerematen.



The line from 1992 Adu Boahen then to Kuffuor and he handed it over to Nana. Kuffuor told Nana that I will go and then you take over and in the same way Nana told Alan at the famous Legon in December 2007 and I was there. Nana told Alan that everything that he has done and he said that Alan after me you are next.



So what has changed and in this party if we dont stick to our traditions, if we dont stick to it then we are doomed. A Society without respect for their culture and tradition is doomed so NPP is not going to get doomed because the delegates and people know that it is Alans time, Mr. Ofori-Atta disclosed.



He said Alan is the one that has the message and Ghanaians want him to come and transform this country.



Ghana with all these challenges that we are going through we need industrialization. We need to build our industries and Alan is the only person who can do that and do it successfully so that our GDP can be better for job creation, the Convener stated.



According to him, the move is an announcement to tell the whole Akyem State that we are bringing or we have to support our brother and our in-law.



The whole Ghana must know that we are going to support our brother and after this we are going to do the hard work going to the ground and meet with each and every delegate in the Akyem State, he added.





Source: starrfm









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Ashanti Regional Chairman of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bernard Antwi Boasiako, aka Chairman Wontumi has expressed gratitude to some party kingpins who helped him to retain his position.



His office in a statement said "thank you" ahead of a dinner night to have a chitchat with them.



"The office of the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) wishes to express sincere gratitude to Asantes in Accra for their decision to host a dinner in his honour towards unifying the party for victory 2024."



"The Ashanti Regional Chairman sees this event as an opportunity to court the support of all interested parties and institutions towards the 'Ashanti Agenda To Break The 8'."



"It will also afford the Regional Chairman and his team the chance to interact with appointees of Asante root on how to better address challenges facing the region."



"Once the Regional Chairman wishes to express his heartfelt gratitude for this important invitation."The statement reads







Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr., has expressed disappointment in the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, as he drives Ghana to the International Monetary Fund(IMF) for a bailout.



The President, in a statement issued by the Minister of Information, has directed the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta to "commence formal engagements" with the IMF, "inviting the Fund to support an economic program put together by the Government of Ghana".



Seeking Solace Under IMF



Explaining this economic program for which Ghana runs back to the IMF despite the President's vow never to take the country to this international financial institution which endeared many Ghanaians to elect him to be the Head of State, the Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, in an interview on Peace FM's morning show 'Kokrokoo' on Monday, July 4, 2022 stated that their kind of going to the IMF is for a "balance of payment" to shore up the economy unlike the erstwhile Mahama administration.



" . . when the country was handed over to former President Mahama, there was no external global crisis. It was his own domestic management but at the end, he said to us that they have chewed the meat to the bone, so they are going to the Fund for bailout. This is his words, not mine. What tended up happening is that when they went for the bailout and we came into power, from 2017 to 2019, we saw how the Ghanaian economy performed.



"Today, our economic state has called for us to also go for bailout but it's a different scenario. It's not our internal domestic management that is the cause but the external issues and external pressures that have necessitated our decision to go for this facility," he expounded.



IMF Bailout Equals Guggisberg Economy?



Discussing the issue during 'Kokrokoo' on Tuesday, July 5, Kwesi Pratt alluded to President Akufo-Addo's promise not to send Ghana back to the economic environment pervading during the colonial era of Brigadier-General Sir Frederick Gordon Guggisberg and wondered if going to the IMF doesn't defeat the promise.



It would be recalled that in the first term of his presidency, President Akufo-Addo told Diplomats at a meeting that the country has outgrown the status of exporting commodities in their raw state without adding value.



Sadly, however, the structure of our economy has not changed substantially since the era of Governor Gordon Guggisberg  an exporter of raw materials with little or no value-addition activities. This is why I have called our economy the Guggisberg economy, he lamented, whiles promising that his governments economic vision will focus on executing an integrated industrialisation programme, with a clear bias towards supporting our small and medium scale enterprises with access to science and technology, incentives and markets to make them more productive and competitive.



It is in this light that Mr. Pratt asked; "Are we not going back to the Guggisberg economy today with this IMF bailout?"



To him, the IMF is not a solution to Ghana's problems because history has proven time over time that any moment the country went for an IMF facility, the economy turned worse.





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Seasoned Journalist, Kwesi Pratt says corruption is not the cause of Ghana's problems.



As the nation returns to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) despite calls on the President not to consider such move, especially when he promised Ghanaians he wouldn't take that route, government officials and members of the governing New Patriotic Party(NPP) have begun to build a defence for this decision.



According to Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the Akufo-Addo government is going to the IMF for a "balance of payment" support, therefore shot down arguments that the President and the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) should apologize for deceiving Ghanaians as they berated the previous Mahama government for doing same.



The Minister argued that the former President John Mahama and his government went to the IMF because they had messed up the economy, but President Nana Akufo-Addo is going for a bailout due to external factors; referring to the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine/Russia war among others.



" . . when the country was handed over to former President Mahama, there was no external global crisis. It was his own domestic management but at the end, he said to us that they have chewed the meat to the bone, so they are going to the Fund for bailout. This is his words, not mine. What tended up happening is that when they went for the bailout and we came into power, from 2017 to 2019, we saw how the Ghanaian economy performed.



"Today, our economic state has called for us to also go for bailout but it's a different scenario. It's not our internal domestic management that is the cause but the external issues and external pressures that have necessitated our decision to go for this facility," he said in an interview on Peace FM's "Kokrokoo" Monday morning.



Contributing to the Tuesday edition of 'Kokrokoo' programme, Kwesi Pratt spoke against the IMF bailout saying the government should spare Ghanaians the stories about external factors affecting Ghana so bad that the government must resort to the IMF.



"Did the external factors jump over Togo, Burkina Faso and La Cote D'Ivoire to affect Ghana alone? . . . How is that possible?", he queried.



He also opposed the notion in the minds of Ghanaians that the country's progress is crawling because of corruption.



To him, he doesn't believe "corruption is the cause of what we are facing today".



He stressed; "Corruption is a problem, no doubt but it is not the main cause of the problems we are facing today".



Mr. Pratt stated emphatically that "the problems we are facing today are a structural economic problems; fundamental structural economic problems".





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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Judge Otis Wright of a United States Central District Court in California has postponed the sentencing of Nigerian fraudster Ramon Abass known as Hushpuppi to September 21.



At the request of counsel, the Sentencing is CONTINUED to 9/21/2022 at 1:30 PM before Judge Otis D. Wright II, as to Defendant Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, the court said



According to court documents by the United States Department of Justice (DoJ), Hushpuppi in April 2021, pleaded guilty to the multi-million-dollar fraud charges filed against him by the United States government.



A version of Hushpuppis plea agreement filed in June outlined his role in a school finance scheme, as well as several other cyber and business email compromise schemes that cumulatively caused more than $24 million in losses. He pleaded guilty to Count Two which is Conspiracy to Engage in Money Laundering, an offence that attracts a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment among other punishments including full restitution, his plea agreement with the U.S. government states in part.



Acting United States Attorney Tracy L. Wilkison said Hushpuppi allegedly faked the financing of a Qatari school by playing the roles of bank officials and creating a bogus website in a scheme that also bribed a foreign official to keep the elaborate pretense going after the victim was tipped off.



Wilkison stated that Hushpuppi played a significant role in the scheme, funded his luxurious lifestyle by laundering illicit proceeds generated by con artists who use increasingly sophisticated means.



Hushpuppi was arrested in Dubai, the United Arab Emirate (UAE) in June 2020, and subsequently flown to the U.S.. He pleaded guilty to the charges in July 2021 and was ordered to remain in custody pending sentencing.



The sentencing hearing was initially moved by Judge Wright from February 14 to July 11 and has now been moved to September 21 at the counsels request.



He has been in custody since his arrest in Dubai and rendition to the U. S. in June 2020.



Hushpuppi entered into a plea bargain agreement with the U.S. government in July 2021, in the hope of getting a lighter punishment. Despite pleading guilty, Hushpuppi will not be exempted from paying restitution.



The prosecutor said the maximum penalty for the offence that Hushpuppi hopes will be reduced at his sentencing include 20 years imprisonment; a 3-year period of supervised release; a fine of $500,000 or twice the gross gain or gross loss resulting from the offense, whichever is greatest; and a mandatory special assessment of $100.









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" " U.S. residents are encouraged to fill out the 2020 Census online rather than mailing a form in. U.S. Census Bureau

In the United States, the census is officially a big deal (see How the Census Works to learn exactly how big a deal it is). Originally, the census was meant to be a way to count everyone so that the members of the House of Representatives could be allocated properly to the states. Every 10 years there would be a count, and states with more people got more members in the House. Over time, the government has gotten significantly more complicated, and today, the federal government allocates billions of dollars to states for all sorts of programs, much of it based on population. The census provides the only official head count.

For 2020, the Census Bureau is encouraging U.S. residents to fill out the census online, using a special code they will receive in the mail. (If you don't have the code, you can still fill it out online with your street address.) On the Census website is this message: "Everyone living in the United States and its five territories is required by law to be counted in the 2020 Census." So what does that mean in practice? If you don't fill out the form, will you get into trouble?

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Someone is very likely to notice if you do not fill out and return your form. After April 1 in a census year, all of the responses received by the U.S. Census Bureau will be compared to major lists of U.S. residences. If your response has not been received  or if you didn't complete all the questions on your form  someone from the census will contact you for that information.

If you refuse to give out the information or you deliberately give inaccurate information, you can be in legal trouble. According to United States Code, Title 13 (Census), Chapter 7 (Offenses and Penalties), SubChapter II, if you're over 18 and refuse to answer all or part of the census, you can be fined up to $100. If you give false answers, you're subject to a fine of up to $500. If you offer suggestions or information with the "intent to cause inaccurate enumeration of population," you are subject to a fine of up to $1,000, up to a year in prison, or both. Here's the official verbiage:

Sec. 221. Refusal or neglect to answer questions; false answers

(a) Whoever, being over eighteen years of age, refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary, or by any other authorized officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of the Secretary or authorized officer, to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any census or survey provided for by subchapters I, II, IV, and V of chapter 5 of this title, applying to himself or to the family to which he belongs or is related, or to the farm or farms of which he or his family is the occupant, shall be fined not more than $100.

(b) Whoever, when answering questions described in subsection (a) of this section, and under the conditions or circumstances described in such subsection, willfully gives any answer that is false, shall be fined not more than $500.

(c) Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, no person shall be compelled to disclose information relative to his religious beliefs or to membership in a religious body.

Sec. 222. Giving suggestions or information with intent to cause inaccurate enumeration of population Whoever, either directly or indirectly, offers or renders to any officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof engaged in making an enumeration of population under subchapter II, IV, or V of chapter 5 of this title, any suggestion, advice, information or assistance of any kind, with the intent or purpose of causing an inaccurate enumeration of population to be made, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

Note that the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 has increased the fine for any criminal misdemeanor to as much as $5,000. In practice, though, no one has been prosecuted for not filling out the census since 1970, according to a 2014 PolitiFact article.

However, even if you don't get fined for not filling out the census form, there are some good reasons you should do it anyway. Seats in the House of Representatives seats are apportioned by population, with the most populous states receiving the most seats. Federal and state governments rely on census data to budget for social welfare programs that assist the poor, elderly, disabled and veterans. Cities and private industry use demographic figures to plan new hospitals and housing developments, and to assess the need for new schools or new strip malls. So, not filling out the census form may cost you something in the long run.

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Originally Published: Apr 1, 2000
" " MOOCs can be attended by thousands or even hundreds of thousands of students at a time. Plus, you don't have to be packed into a lecture hall. Westend61/Getty Images

If you have an online degree, or are pursuing one, you may be seeing a shift in the way long distance learning is perceived by employers and the public in general. Early resistance to online education may have been caused by concern about diploma mills or worry about a lack of oversight in the virtual classroom. Those notions and other ideas about using computers and the Internet to educate students may soon be up for revision, too.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are making waves in academia, and although it's too soon to determine their ultimate impact on the ivy-covered halls of universities across the country and the world, they are inspiring a lively debate among educators and students.

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The first MOOC arrived on the scene back in 2011 when two Stanford professors offered their artificial intelligence class online -- for free. Enrollment topped 160,000, and the unprecedented success of the experiment inspired other schools, many of them top tier universities, to mount their own offerings [source: Morrison].

On the pro side of the MOOC debate, proponents believe making quality educational instruction available to the masses will provide higher quality and lower cost for many, and might easily be the best instructional model for the future. MOOCs can be attended by thousands or even hundreds of thousands of students at a time. In fact, Sebastian Thrun, one of the Stanford professors who started it all, sees a day in which as few as 10 universities fulfill the world's higher education needs.

That may be an extreme view, but a number of companies are springing up to take MOOC learning to the next level, including Coursera, Udacity and EdX. Many big universities are participating in MOOCs to one degree or another, too. Some examples are Stanford, Princeton, the University of California Berkeley and Duke University [source: Webley].

Where MOOCs may provide quality instruction for many, detractors often cite that very fact as its biggest failing. MOOCs don't offer any individualized training, much less tutoring or mentoring, and some educators feel adopting it as a for-credit standard in the future will leave some students behind and alienate others. A common argument is that individualized, face-to-face teaching works best in many cases because no single instructional technique will fulfill the needs of all students. The lively exchange of ideas that can electrify a classroom is the province of the brick-and-mortar school, not the virtual classroom [source: Leef].

Some find other aspects of MOOC instruction troubling. In the first MOOCs, plagiarism was a problem and overall completion rates were low. This may have been because some students were curious about the format rather than focused on scholarship. Still, for MOOCs to be widely offered for credit, they will have to be structured to provide oversight, consistency and student accountability.

How will MOOCs fare in the future? No one knows for sure, but the ultimate modern classroom may turn out to be a blend of the old and the new, with on-campus activities like labs, debates and other interactive engagements working in concert with massive online offerings to provide a comprehensive, flexible learning experience that's cost effective and convenient [source: PBS News Hour].
Molecular magnets. Credit: P. S. Ferreira et al.

Scientists from the University of Lisbon (Portugal) and the University of Stuttgart (Germany) have managed to synthesize and extensively characterize a series of cobalt molecules that exhibit the properties of molecular magnets, an encouraging result for the future of quantum-scale computing.

The current demand for the exchange and manipulation of data through information technologies, caused by the massification of electronic devices, has led scientists to reflect about more efficient computation methods. Storing information in binary systems works by switching between two stable states under ambient conditions, by applying a stimulus. A new model of spin electronics (spintronics), based on the orientation of electron spins to store binary information, allows for non-volatile memory, increased processing speeds, lower energy consumption and lower integration densities.

The research team has studied a series of cobalt molecules that can switch between two magnetic states, albeit at low temperatures. These molecules that exhibit magnetic bi-stability are called molecular magnets, and characterization techniques such as high-field electronic paramagnetic resonance allow the evaluation of the response capabilities that these materials exhibit in the face of magnetic fields.

Based on previous work by the research team on cobalt complexes published in Polyhedron, which had been hitherto unexplored for this application, computational studies on atomistic models were carried out to provide the physical origin of their properties and yield a rationale to optimize their performance. The results now published employ characterization techniques such as high-field electronic paramagnetic resonance that allow for the evaluation of the response capabilities that these materials exhibit in the face of magnetic fields.

Nuno Bandeira, member of the research team and researcher at Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (Portugal), says that "there are currently two 'battle fronts' with regards to research of single molecule magnets: one of them handles research with lanthanide complexes. And indeed, one may obtain gigantic magnetization reversal barriers from them. But lanthanides are costly to produce. The other research front handles first row transition metals which are cheaper to obtain but the magnetization barriers are much smaller, which means they can only function adequately at very low temperatures. Ideally one would like to attempt to obtain a single molecule magnet that operates at room temperature."

The output now published is encouraging: "These results point the way to the improvement and design of new types of ligands, for better performing molecular magnets with increasingly higher temperatures. Altogether, these results represent a milestone in the evolution of our knowledge and in the search for better materials for application in spintronics and quantum-scale computing," adds Bandeira.

The research is published in Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers.

Explore further Unique quantum material could enable ultra-powerful, compact computers

More information: Patricia S. Ferreira et al, Single-ion magnet behaviour in homoleptic Co(ii) complexes bearing 2-iminopyrrolyl ligands, Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers (2022). Patricia S. Ferreira et al, Single-ion magnet behaviour in homoleptic Co(ii) complexes bearing 2-iminopyrrolyl ligands,(2022). DOI: 10.1039/D2QI00601D Tiago F.C. Cruz et al, Synthesis, characterization and magnetism of homoleptic bis(5-aryl-2-iminopyrrolyl) complexes of iron(II) and cobalt(II), Polyhedron (2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.poly.2018.06.026

Provided by University of Lisbon
Coral rings. A cross-sectional scan of coral reveals growth rings. These correspond to different years, so researchers can look for markers to see when certain atmospheric changes took place. Credit: Yokoyama et al.

For the first time, researchers can offer a strong quantitative definition for the start of what is known as the Anthropocene, thanks to traces of radioactive material in marine sediments and corals. The Anthropocene period is considered important by researchers in many fields as it effectively marks a milestone for humanity's impact on Earth's environment and ecosystem.

Researchers combined records of nuclear fallout from atomic tests present in ocean sediments and coral skeletons. These records show a clear change in the ocean environment before, during and after a period of worldwide atomic testing, which the researchers have defined as marking the beginning of the Anthropocene.

There are many reasons to visit the resort city of Beppu in southwest Japan, famous for its historical hot springs, beautiful beaches and vibrant traditional festivals. However, during a recent trip there, Professor Yusuke Yokoyama from the Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute at the University of Tokyo, Michinobu Kuwae, associate professor at Ehime University and leader of the Beppu Bay project, and their colleagues were visiting not to soak up the local ambience, but to investigate some interesting properties of the local seafloor. It might not sound like everyone's preferred beach activity, but they were looking for evidence of plutonium from nuclear bomb tests in the Pacific Ocean that took place over 50 years ago, and other chemical imprints left by humanity.

"Beppu Bay is one of several areas around the Pacific that contain well-preserved records of humanity's impact on the environment because of sediments that form layers on the quiet seafloor. For example, plutonium fallout from nuclear testing during the mid-20th century is preserved," said Yokoyama.

"Our task was to find clear indications of fallout from the 1950s up to 1963 when testing largely stopped. We took core samples from the bay area, and there are clear signals of the plutonium from fallouts. However, we also collected coral skeletons from the island of Ishigaki, southwest of Okinawa, which contained fallout. Comparing sediments to corals allows us to more accurately date the signatures we see in the sediments."

Beppu Bay. An aerial view of Beppu Bay, where the sediment samples were collected. Credit: Yokoyama et al.

Even though sediment samples can record evidence of past environmental changes, they are deposited so haphazardly and can be disrupted easily. This is why the team needed to cross-reference the core samples with coral, as coral, like trees, grow in such a way that their internal structure leaves distinct rings corresponding to each year of growth. The reason both kinds of records are useful is that sediments tend to capture a broad range of environmental information but lack precision, and coral, thanks to their growth rings, can offer great historical precision, but don't capture as much information about past environmental change. Thanks to this, the team found clear evidence in coral skeletons of fallout from 1954; other markers in that coral also found in the sediments meant that the wider range of chemical signatures in the sediments could be linked to that same year.

The reason Yokoyama and colleagues are keen to find geological and chemical records of nuclear fallout is that they are part of an initiative to redefine how we refer to the modern age. Our period of history is broadly known as the Holocene, which extends back around 12,000 years. However, humanity's unprecedented impact on the Earth since the industrial era began has proved so monumental that researchers in many fields relating to history, biology, atmospheric science and more, seek to create a new precise definition for this modern post-nuclear era, which they are calling the Anthropocene.

In the lab. The equipment needed to accurately date sediment and coral samples using minute quantities of embedded plutonium from fallout created during nuclear tests in the 20th century. Credit: Yokoyama et al.

"It was challenging to analyze plutonium within our samples, as during the period in question, three tons of plutonium were released into the sea and atmosphere, but those three tons dispersed far and wide. So we're actually looking for incredibly small signatures," said Yokoyama.

"Nevertheless, this work is important not just to solidify the definition of the Anthropocene, but also because the successful use of our method means it could also be used to improve ocean and climate models, or even help explore past tsunamis and other geological hazards."

The research was published in Scientific Reports.

More information: Yusuke Yokoyama et al, Plutonium isotopes in the North Western Pacific sediments coupled with radiocarbon in corals recording precise timing of the Anthropocene, Scientific Reports (2022). Journal information: Scientific Reports Yusuke Yokoyama et al, Plutonium isotopes in the North Western Pacific sediments coupled with radiocarbon in corals recording precise timing of the Anthropocene,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-14179-w
Police release body-camera footage of African American man fatally shot by officers in Ohio, U.S.

Xinhua) 09:23, July 05, 2022

Jayland Walker, 25, suffered more than 60 gunshot wounds and was unarmed at the time. Eight officers directly involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave as part of the protocol in a police shooting.

WASHINGTON, July 4 (Xinhua) -- Police of Akron in the U.S. state of Ohio released on Sunday body-camera footage of the fatal shooting of African American Jayland Walker by multiple officers last week.

The shooting happened shortly after midnight on Monday as officers attempted to pull over Walker on unspecified traffic violations, according to the Akron Police Department.

The officers were said to have chased Walker's vehicle on the expressway for several minutes. Walker then allegedly jumped out of his car while the footage showed officers pursuing him on foot before opening fire.

The police department said officers "reported a firearm being discharged from the suspect vehicle" during the encounter.

The screenshot taken from the police-released body camera footage shows Jayland Walker exiting his car before being chased and shot by several officers in Arkon in the U.S. state of Ohio on June 27, 2022. (Xinhua)

Walker, 25, suffered more than 60 gunshot wounds and was unarmed at the time, according to Akron Police Chief Steve Mylett.

Eight officers who were directly involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave as part of the protocol in a police shooting, Mylett said.

The city had contacted the Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation and requested an independent investigation into the incident. The process is underway.

Walker's family has questioned the use of deadly force against him by the officers.

An attorney for the family, Bobby DiCello, said that he has not seen any evidence yet regarding allegations that Walker had shot at officers and that the man was unarmed and fleeing when being shot.

The screenshot taken from ABC's web streaming shows people protesting against the police killing of Black man Jayland Walker in Arkon in the U.S. state of Ohio on July 3, 2022. (Xinhua)

Protesters have taken to the street in Akron for several days in a row to oppose police brutality and racism, and demand justice for Walker.

Akron canceled its Independence Day celebrations after protests broke out in the wake of Walker's death.

"I completely understand that some residents and guests will be disappointed by the decision to cancel the festival this holiday weekend. Independence Day is meant to be a celebration and a time of gathering with friends and family," Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan wrote in a statement. "Unfortunately, I feel strongly that this is not the time for a city-led celebration."

NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) President Derrick Johnson said in a statement that Walker's death wasn't self-defense, but "was murder. Point blank."

"This doesn't happen to white people in America," Johnson said. "We are just trying to live our lives, and we are tired of being hunted like prey. We know that pulling over for the police is often a death sentence."

African Americans are nearly three times more likely to be killed by police than white people in the United States, according to data from Mapping Police Violence.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
The 2nd San Yue San Ethnic Groups Film Exhibition exhibited 10 critically-acclaimed films featuring Chinese ethnic groups and highlighting their cultures.

The films, selected from more than 300 titles, were screened during the five-day event in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, from June 29 - July 3. The name of the film fest was inspired by Guangxi's "San Yue San" folk festival, also known as "Sam Nyied Sam." The exhibition aims to bring a broader audience to ethnic films, enhance the communication and integration of people of all ethnic groups, inherit and carry forward the ethnic cultures, and foster cultural prosperity of ethnic areas.

The roster list from China's nine provinces and autonomous regions included the opening film of "A Noble Spirit" (2014), a film by female director Miao Yue chronicling the life of a devoted ethnic Tibetan official in Sichuan province. Other films included Su Li's classic "Liu San Jie" (1960), Ma Huilei's "Spring Returns to My Homeland" (2018), Wang Lusha's "A Story of Ulanfu" (2019), Fang Junliang's "Kashi's Beauty" (2020), Meng Xiaoqing and Xie Yong's "Guard of the Tree Spirit" and a Xinjiang musical "The Wings of Songs" (2021) by Gao Huanggang and Abdukerim Abliz. The exhibition showed the unique ethnic stories of Zhuang, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur, Miao, Dai, Blang, and other minorities.

The exhibition comprised five sectors, with a themed forum aiming to explore the new means of shooting ethnic-themed movies. There was also a posters collection, an ethnic costume exhibition, and an ethnic intangible cultural heritage exhibition. The events demonstrated the vividly colorful ethnic cultures and new progress in China's ethnic films.

Cui Zuojun, head of the film administration of Guangxi, said that since the 18th CPC National Congress, ethnic-themed films have entered a golden period of development. "More and more minority-themed films have theatrical releases, entering the market, and gaining access to households, becoming a unique and beautiful feature of the Chinese film market."

He added that ethnic films are the treasures of the Chinese cinema's gallery, carrying the mission of presenting the multicultural characteristics of various ethnic groups and playing an important role in highlighting and building the Chinese nation as one united but diverse community.

Rao Shuguang, president of the China Film Critics Association, noted that Chinese filmmakers have forged ahead in the tide of industrial development since the 18th CPC National Congress. They have worked hard and created many excellent minority-themed films, attracting domestic audiences with their profound thought connotations, diverse artistic techniques, and rich ethnic cultures. They have also made achievements in major film festivals at home and abroad.

"An excellent ethnic-themed film must reflect the new life and outlook of ethnic minorities, convey their cultural customs, enhance the cultural identity of each ethnic group, and fulfill the mission of building a community of the Chinese nation. However, it must also shoulder the mission of building a shared spiritual home for the Chinese nation and form a strong spiritual bond of people's cohesion and unity," he said.

Rao suggested ethnic films should also follow rules of art and film creation. He said making more high-quality ethnic films would be the key to the survival and development of ethnic cinema. He also pointed out at a forum at the exhibition, although many current ethnic films rely heavily on folk culture and replica relics, this must not be the ultimate goal. "More importantly, the creation must pursue the meaning of the human spirit."

The film exhibition also promoted China's poverty-relief cause. Fei Qiang, an official once stationed in a village under Hezhou city in Guangxi, said after watching "A Noble Spirit," he was inspired and touched, and the film made him remember his work in the village.

"As a village official, you should build the village as your own home. It is the responsibility of officials to revive inheritance and memory with culture, and promote poverty alleviation with culture."
Photograph of Canadaarm2 hit by a piece of space debris. Credit: NASA

The United States Government has declared that it will no longer be performing tests of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons. In a public statement during a visit to the Vandenberg Space Force Base, Vice President Kamala Harris confirmed that this policy has the primary purpose of setting an example to other countries. It represents an important step in the direction of establishing "space norms" for all countries to follow.

ASAT weapons go as far back as the early years of the Cold War. According to the Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapons Systems, ASAT weapons were designed for strategic and tactical military purposes. Satellites have long been used by the military for navigation, communication, and gathering intel on enemy movements and activities through sophisticated satellite imaging: Spy satellites.

Although ASAT weapons have never been used in actual warfare, China, India, Russia, and the U.S. have all demonstrated their capability. These weapons have so far only been used by these countries in tests against their own targets, such as decommissioned satellites.

If you're wondering why it would even be necessary to blast your own satellites out of the sky, it may help to remember that this reminds anybody who's watching that they can destroy a satellite at will. It's a threat: "If you threaten our infrastructure, we can retaliate." But each successful test hurls thousands of new pieces of debris into orbit.

The risks of space junk might not seem obvious at first. After all, space is enormous, and you might not think it's very likely that a few bits and pieces might hit something important. But it's worth remembering that every single object in space, from the International Space Station (ISS) down to the smallest fleck of paint, is hurtling around the Earth at enormous speed, and we keep putting more things up there.

The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) keeps an index of objects launched into space. At the end of January 2022, this list counted 8261 individual satellites, an increase of almost 12% over the previous 10 months. And as Starlink and its rivals settle down to the business of building their mega-constellations of communications satellites, this growth is only going to accelerate. In fact, there have already been collisions between satellites, and it is no longer unusual for satellite owners to dodge each other's satellites.

So as harmless as it may seem to explode your own things in space, there is a very real threat looming. Every time a satellite is destroyed, whether it was attacked by ASAT weaponry or simply collided with something, that results in thousands of tiny bits of debris spreading out across the original satellite's orbit. On earth, this would just mean a lot of litter to pick up, but in space, and in orbit, this means thousands of shards of metal, plastic, and ceramics orbiting the planet many times faster than a rifle bullet.

A good example of this was when Russia performed its most recent ASAT test in November 2021. Debris from the destroyed satellite came dangerously close to the International Space station, and emergency action was needed to move it out of harm's way. This is at the heart of the problem. Most of the larger debris from tests like this can be tracked with ground-based radar, which is how satellite operators can be warned in advance, but the smaller stuff is effectively invisible. Depending on how high up it is, it could stay in orbit for a very long time.

Addressing this problem has been the main purpose of VP Harris's announcement. By setting norms like this, it is hoped that other countries will follow suit. According to Robin Dicky, chief analyst at the Aerospace Center for Space Policy and Strategy, "There are tons of different norms conversations happeningthere's no one size fits all solution for how to develop them. The approach that you take is likely to be very different depending on the content and context."

The global astronomy community and scientists worldwide fully support the idea of eliminating space debris, which includes the use of anti-satellite testing, but it may still take time for this to become a reality. Russia and China have disconnected themselves from European and US Space programs, which makes the prospect of a "universal protocol" difficult to achieve at this stage.

It may take longer than we hope, but circumstances aren't as bleak as they may seem. Projects like ClearSpace1 are underway to manage "space junk" by collecting it and performing controlled atmospheric burns. And if we can reach a global agreement to end ASAT, it sets the groundwork for sustainable long-term management. This historic announcement by VP Harris is an important step in the right direction.

At the rate that we're putting things into orbit, reaching a consensus between all private enterprises and space agencies will become vital. According to the MIT Technology Review, by 2025 there could be as many as 1,100 satellites launching each year. As Dicky puts it, "Setting these common expectations for what's acceptable and not acceptable in space is a crucial step to make sure that space is safe and usable for all in the decades to come."

Explore further US pledges to end anti-satellite missile tests
Distribution of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5 and H5N1 in North America, 2021/2022. Updated June 03, 2022. Credit: USGS

Due to the possibility that bird flu viruses could mutate and gain the ability to spread easily between people, avian influenza poses a significant pandemic threat to birds and humans alike. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been monitoring for illness among humans exposed to infected birds since outbreaks were detected in poultry and wild bird populations in late 2021-2022. As of July 5, 2022, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported 40.09 M birds in 36 U.S. states to be infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).

Out of the 382 flocks to test positive for the virus, 186 were commercial and 196 were backyard flocks. Yet, only 2 human cases associated with this particular group of avian influenza have been detected globally1 in the U.S. and the other in the U.K. Understanding the history of this virus, as well as current guidelines and recommendations for investigations and response (i.e., monitoring for human infection and person-to-person spread) are extremely important for public health.

History of highly pathogenic avian influenza

It was 1878 in northern Italy, and veterinarian Edoardo Perroncito observed a problem. A contagious respiratory disease was spreading among poultry with a high fatality rate. At the time, "fowl cholera," a deadly respiratory disease, caused by the bacterium Pasteurella multocida, was common and believed to be the culprit of the disease. As other investigators studied Perroncito's findings throughout the 1900s, they determined that the disease was caused by a virus small enough to pass through a filter, which was later determined to be a highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and was officially renamed as such in 1981.

As HPAI continued to spread globally throughout the 1920s, sporadic outbreaks occurred, including several in the U.S. From 1959-1995, the emergence of HPAI across the world was reported on 15 separate occasions. All infections were caused by the influenza A virus, but the subtypes varied between H5 and H7 groups. (Note: Influenza A virus is divided into subtypes, based on the properties of hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N) proteins present on the virus's surface). Interestingly, up until 1996 the U.K. was disproportionately impacted by the disease, while only 1 outbreak was known to have occurred in all of Asia.

In 1996, things changed. A new strain of HPAI subtype H5N1 was introduced to poultry via migratory waterfowl in the Guangdong province of China, resulting in a mortality of greater than 40% in aquatic birds. Subsequent reassortment events between HPAI and low pathogenic avian influenza strains (LPAI) led to an HPAI strain that was disastrous for Hong Kong, resulting in the culling of the entire poultry population, 18 human infections and 6 human deaths. This was the first time a lethal case of HPAI in humans had been documented; human infection with HPAI was previously believed to be improbable.

After the outbreak of HPAI in Hong Kong in 1997, things remained quiet until 2003 when 2 humans were diagnosed with HPAI H5N1 after returning from China. From 2003-2018, human cases were reported from 16 countries resulting in hundreds of deaths.

Symptoms and transmission of avian influenza in birds

Fortunately, many avian influenza A viruses exhibit low pathogenicity, causing few signs of disease in infected wild birds. Low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) viruses are either asymptomatic or cause mild/subclinical disease (such as ruffled feathers and a drop in egg production) in chickens and poultry.

However, these viruses are primed for continual emergence and pandemic potential, and some low-pathogenic viruses can mutate in poultry into highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses. HPAI viruses often cause severe disease and high mortality in infected poultry. HPAI A(H5) or A(H7) virus infections can cause disease that impacts multi-organ systems with mortality as high as 90-100% in chickens, often within 48 hours. HPAI A(H5N1) is one of the most contagious viruses occurring among birds, and the clinical outcome is typically deadly, especially in domestic poultry. However, ducks can be infected without any signs of illness.

HPAI A(H5) and A(H7) virus infections in poultry can also spill back into wild birds, resulting in rapid geographic dissemination of the virus with bird migration. While some wild bird species can be infected with some HPAI A(H5) or A(H7) virus subtypes without appearing sick, other HPAI A(H5) and A(H7) virus subtypes can cause severe disease and mortality in some infected wild birds, as well as in infected poultry.

Transmission of avian influenza from birds to humans

When birds are infected with this virus, they shed bird flu virus through their saliva, mucous and feces. Human infections are likely caused by accidental inoculation of virus into a person's eyes, nose or mouth or via respiratory routes. Inhalation of virus occurs when the virus is in the air (in droplets or possibly dust) and a person breathes it in, or possibly when a person touches a fomite (contaminated object) that has virus on it then touches their mouth, eyes or nose. No human bird flu infections have been reported from proper handling of poultry meat or from eating properly cooked poultry or poultry products.

Credit: CDC

Bird flu transmission from humanto-human is very rare, and when it has happened it has only spread to a few people. Human infections with bird flu viruses have ranged in severity from asymptomatic/mild illness to severe disease resulting in mortality. Asian lineage H7N9 and Asian lineage H5N1 viruses have been responsible for most human illness from bird flu viruses globally, including the most serious illnesses and illness with the highest mortality.

Research has also reported that companion animals, especially cats, may be at risk of disease and/or death from HPAI. Dogs may also be susceptible, but only in rare instances. Some strains of the virus can affect mammals, such as pigs, cats, horses, dogs and ferrets.

Symptoms of avian influenza in humans

What does a bird flu infection in people look like? The reported signs and symptoms of this type of infection in humans range from asymptomatic to mild (e.g., conjunctivitis/red eye) or mild, flu-like (e.g., upper respiratory symptoms), to more severe (e.g., pneumonia requiring hospitalization). Fever (temperature of 100F [37.8C] or greater), cough, sore throat, congestion, achiness, headaches, fatigue and shortness of breath or difficulty breathing are common. Diarrhea, nausea, vomiting or seizures may be observed more rarely.

One Health epidemiology for tracking and prevention

The One Health initiative is a collaborative, multisectoral and transdisciplinary approachworking at the local, regional, national and global levelswith the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes, recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, plants and their shared environment.

HPAI is a 1 of many examples that illustrates the ongoing and critical importance of a One Health initiative for zoonotic and/or vector borne diseases that intersect animal and plant health, environmental space and human health. A recent Health Alert Network (HAN) CDC Advisory for Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5N1) Virus: Recommendations for Human Health Investigations and Response was released for multiple entities and personnel.

For full guidelines and descriptions of the recommendations, please see the CDC HAN Advisory.

Current state of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and prevention

The pandemic risk associated with HPAI is high. The combination of rapid mutations in hemagglutinin and neuraminidase glycoproteins and increased risk of HPAI spillover from poultry to humans is cause for significant concern. H5N1 HPAI was replaced by H5N6 and H5N8 subtypes from 2014 through 2020. However, in 2021 H5N1 emerged again and seemed to be more fit to predominate. Since early 2021, the new H5N1 HPAI that is responsible for the ongoing outbreak has effectively displaced other H5 HPAI viruses. While the reason for this is not entirely clear, it is believed that the explosion of cases is due to the introduction and spread of the virus by migratory birds. In the U.S. alone, the current outbreak of HPAI H5N1 has led to the death of over 37 million poultry.

The first human case of the current avian influenza outbreak in the U.S. occurred in a worker who was culling a flock of poultry with suspected avian influenza in Colorado in April, 2022. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) stresses that the increased detection of H5 influenza in birds does not change the risk to the general public's health, and the risk of members of the general public acquiring infection with avian influenza is low. While no human-to-human transmission has occurred with the avian influenza that is currently circulating in the U.S., the CDC is closely watching for signals that might indicate increased risk of infection for the general public.

Although a vaccine against HPAI in poultry is available, it is not commonly used and presents many challenges. Mass poultry vaccination has been successfully accomplished in countries with good veterinary infrastructure, but barriers include regular reformulation of the vaccine, limited cold chain capacity, government participation and costs. Furthermore, if vaccination is not performed properly it can contribute to the emergence of new field strains.

The greatest risk of infection is for individuals who directly handle or work around poultry. This is an exceptionally important risk to consider, given that the COVID-19 pandemic and fears of food shortages contributed to an exponential increase in backyard poultry ownership. The CDC has developed individual guidance documents for various audiences, which include hunters, the general public, poultry producers (including those who have backyard poultry), poultry outbreak responders and healthcare providers.

Explore further Wisconsin fox kits test positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza
A woman fans herself at an advertisement boards on a bus stand reflecting a masked commuter as they wait for buses in Beijing, Tuesday, July 5, 2022. Credit: AP Photo/Andy Wong

From the snowcapped peaks of Tibet to the tropical island of Hainan, China is sweltering under the worst heatwave in decades while rainfall hit records in June.

Extreme heat is also battering Japan, and volatile weather is causing trouble for other parts of the world in what scientists say has all the hallmarks of climate change, with even more warming expected this century.

The northeastern provinces of Shandong, Jilin and Liaoning saw precipitation rise to the highest levels ever recorded in June, while the national average of 112.1 millimeters (4.4 inches) was 9.1 % higher than the same month last year, the China Meteorological Administration said in a report Tuesday.

The average temperature across the nation also hit 21.3 degrees Celsius (70.34 Fahrenheit) in June, up 0.9 C (1.8 F) from the same period month last year and the highest since 1961. No relief is in sight, with higher than usual temperatures and precipitation forecast in much of the country throughout July, the administration said.

In the northern province of Henan, Xuchang hit 42.1 C (107.8 F) and Dengfeng 41.6 C (106.9 F) on June 24 for their hottest days on record, according to global extreme weather tracker Maximiliano Herrera.

In this file photo released by Xinhua News Agency, rescuers evacuate stranded residents in flood water in Tuojiang Township, Jianghua Yao Autonomous County, Yongzhou in central China's Hunan Province, June 22, 2022. From the snowcapped peaks of Tibet to the tropical island of Hainan, China is sweltering under the worst heatwave in decades while rainfall hit records in June. Credit: Jiang Linfeng/Xinhua via AP, File

Workers gather along a section of flooded railway in Shangrao in central China's Jiangxi province on June 21, 2022. From the snowcapped peaks of Tibet to the tropical island of Hainan, China is sweltering under the worst heatwave in decades while rainfall hit records in June. Credit: Chinatopix via AP, File

A woman wearing a face mask fans herself as she walks on a pedestrian bridge in Beijing, Tuesday, July 5, 2022. Credit: AP Photo/Andy Wong

A girl runs through a fountain at an outdoor shopping area on an unseasonably hot day in Beijing, Saturday, June 25, 2022. From the snowcapped peaks of Tibet to the tropical island of Hainan, China is sweltering under the worst heatwave in decades while rainfall hit records in June. Credit: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File

China has also seen seasonal flooding in several parts of the country, causing misery for hundreds of thousands, particularly in the hard-hit south that receives the bulk of rainfall as well as typhoons that sweep in from the South China Sea.

China is not alone in experiencing higher temperatures and more volatile weather. In Japan, authorities warned of greater than usual stress on the power grid and urged citizens to conserve energy.

Japanese officials announced the earliest end to the annual summer rainy season since the national meteorological agency began keeping records in 1951. The rains usually temper summer heat, often well into July.

On Friday, the cities of Tokamachi and Tsunan set all-time heat records while several others broke monthly marks.

Large parts of the Northern Hemisphere have seen extreme heat this summer, with regions from the normally chilly Russian Arctic to the traditionally sweltering American South recording unusually high temperatures and humidity.

In the United States, the National Weather Service has held 30 million Americans under some kind of heat advisory amid record-setting temperatures. The suffering and danger to health is most intense among those without air conditioning or who work outdoors, further reinforcing the economic disparities in dealing with extreme weather trends.

 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
WA researchers are monitoring coral-eating snails at Rottnest amid concerns of a future outbreak on the famous island.

Every month, Murdoch University Ph.D. student Veera Haslam dives into the ocean at Rottnest to search for Drupella cornus snacking on the island's reefs.

"They're very cryptic," she says. "They've got a lot of [algae] growing on their shells, so they are hard to see."

"They hide in the branches of corals or underneath coral."

Sometimes they can be found just hiding in small crevices in the sand.

The tiny sea snails typically grow up to 4.5cm long and loves munching on fast-growing corals found in shallow waters off Rottnest Island.

An early warning

A few years ago, Veera's research led to the second recorded observation of Drupella at Rottnest.

However, in recent months, Veera is starting to spot more and more of the species around Rottnest.

"I was at Parker Point this Saturday and I did encounter multiple, multiple juveniles," says Veera. "It does seem like the numbers have increased."

Veera stresses that the snails belong to the reef and are not currently in outbreak numbers. But she says the juveniles could be a warning sign.

A familiar story

Previous Drupella outbreakssuch as at Ningaloo Reef in the early 1990sstarted with large numbers of young snails. The Ningaloo outbreak reduced coral cover on parts of the reef by more than 75%.

"In the 1990s, they reckon the outbreak started with larger numbers of juveniles that suddenly were able to establish and settle and start feeding," says Veera.

"And we have been seeing larger numbers of juveniles [at Rottnest]. Where that leads  we're just going to have to wait and see. We don't know yet."

Veera's also unsure if there are natural predators that would reduce Drupella numbers.

"We don't know what predators would be able to consume them," she says.

Tipping point: unknown

Murdoch University marine biologist Dr. Mike van Keulen says one of the problems with Drupella is their very heavy shell.

"It's quite difficult for regular predators to feed on," he says. "You need particularly heavy-duty fish to be able to tackle them. So that becomes a problem in terms of keeping them in check."

Mike says it's still unknown what caused Drupella to reach plague proportions at Ningaloo or why their numbers returned to normal without intervention.

"They're obviously a natural part of the ecosystem, but we don't know what triggers them to get out of control," he says. "I think that's what we need to focus on."

The other unknown is climate change.

"Particularly for Rottnest, which is at the receiving end of stronger tropical currents," says Mike.

"It's important to keep an eye on it because things can change quite rapidly."

Veera says Drupella are very good at feeding on stressed coral.

"With climate change and [storms], we get more and more stressed coral, which makes it a lot easier for Drupella to feed."

So far, it seems Veera's monthly scuba dives will be needed for a long time yet to keep a watchful eye on Rotto's coral reefs and unravel some of the mysteries of this cryptic sea snail.

Explore further Ningaloo corals are ill-equipped to handle future climate change

This article first appeared on Particle, a science news website based at Scitech, Perth, Australia. Read the original article.
Temporal and geographical data coverage. Notes: Regional disaggregation follows the GADM2.8 classification, color-coding refers to the number of years for which the regional GDP data is available. Credit: Resource and Energy Economics (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.reseneeco.2022.101313

To push ahead with the now urgently needed global coal phase-out, the concerns of the affected regions about their future viability must be taken seriously. New coal-fired power plants, as damaging as they are to the climate, have been economically lucrative in the past. A new study by the Berlin-based climate research institute MCC (Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change) now shows how great the effect is, through which channels it is generated, and what this means for a realistically designed climate policy. The study is published in the journal Resource and Energy Economics.

For the analysis, the research team combined extensive empirical data on power plant projects with that on regional economic development. The sources were the WEPP database of the US financial services provider S&P Global, which covers 65 percent of the entire global power capacity installed between 1960 and 2015, and a regional dataset for more than 1,400 geographical units in 77 countries, which was developed specifically at MCC and used for an earlier study on climate damages. Using an event study design, observing the real development before and after a power plant is built, the researches quantified the effect of different types of power generation on the regional economy. Thus, for the first time, this correlation has been researched worldwide, rather than just for individual cases.

"Four years after installing 100 megawatts of new coal-fired power capacity in a region, the research shows an average boost in prosperity of 0.2 percent per capita income," reports Lorenzo Montrone, a Ph.D. student in the MCC working group Climate and Development, and lead author of the study. "We find similar effects for hydropower plants, but not for the other energy sources studied such as gas, nuclear, and renewables. This helps us understand why governments have relied so heavily on coal in the pastand what accompanying regional economic support is likely to be needed with a coal phase-out policy."

The growth effect of coal-fired power generation might spread from the extraction of the fuel to, for example, the building of new railway lines, roads or ports that help the coal to get to the power plants. Such infrastructures could also be triggers for further industrialization. In addition, the reliability of coal-fired electricity might be an argument for energy-intensive industries to locate near new power plants.

For the average region considered in the study, with two million inhabitants and an annual per capita income of just under 10,000 dollars, the wealth gain amounts to 153 million dollars. The local damage to the environment and health could well be smaller, and the study warns that politicians may be eyeing the local benefit-cost ratio rather than the global climate.

"Even in the most recent economic history, coal has been a driver of industrialization and jobs worldwideand the benefits have gone far beyond the mere provision of electricity," says Jan Steckel, working group leader at MCC, and one of the study's co-authors. "We need to take these promised benefits, as perceived by many governments, into account when designing climate policy. The industrialized countries must help the Global South to achieve sustainable industrialization and structural change and to prosper even without coal."

Explore further Coal still top threat to global climate goals: report

More information: Lorenzo Montrone et al, The type of power capacity matters for economic developmentEvidence from a global panel, Resource and Energy Economics (2022). Lorenzo Montrone et al, The type of power capacity matters for economic developmentEvidence from a global panel,(2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.reseneeco.2022.101313

Provided by Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) gGmbH
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

The U.S. National Science Foundation and the Czech Science Foundation, or GACR, are partnering on a new collaborative project of scientists from the University of California San Diego and Extreme Light Infrastructure Beamlines in the Czech Republic which aims at demonstrating efficient generation of dense gamma-ray beams.

Stellar objects like pulsars can create matter and antimatter directly from light because of their extreme energies. In fact, the magnetic field, or "magnetosphere," of a pulsar is filled with electrons and positrons that are created by colliding photons. Reproducing the same phenomena in a laboratory on Earth is extremely challenging. It requires a dense cloud of photons with energies that are millions of times higher than visible light, an achievement that has so far eluded the scientists working in this field.

As the first international laser research infrastructure dedicated to the application of high-power and high-intensity lasers, the Extreme Light Infrastructure, also known as ELI ERIC facilities, will create the necessary conditions to test the theory that suggests high-power lasers ought to be able to produce a photon cloud.

The roughly $1 million project, jointly funded by NSF and GACR, combines theoretical expertise from UC San Diego, experimental expertise from ELI Beamlines, and target fabrication and engineering expertise from General Atomics.

"We are thrilled to be working with our counterparts in the Czech Republic to further expand international scientific cooperation in artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and plasma science research. I am optimistic this will be the first of many collaborative projects between NSF and GACR," says NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan.

These experiments will provide the first statistically relevant study of gamma-ray generation using high-power lasers. Researchers hope the work will open the way for secondary high-energy photon sources that can be used not only for fundamental physics studies, but also for a range of important industrial applications such as material science, nuclear waste imaging, nuclear fuel assay, security, high-resolution deep-penetration radiography and more. Such "extreme imaging" requires robust, reproducible and well-controlled gamma-ray sources. The present proposal aims exactly at the development of such unprecedented sources.

GACR President Petr Baldrian added, "This is the first project funded by the Czech Science Foundation and the U.S. National Science Foundation. I believe that the new collaboration between the agencies will lead to a number of successful projects and collaborating scientific teams from the Czech Republic and the U.S. will benefit from it."
Credit: ESAOlivier Paques

In a bold vision to secure Europe's role in space exploration and so benefit from the many scientific, economic, and societal rewards, ESA is publicly releasing its new exploration roadmap after its presentation to its Council, the agency's highest ruling body.

Called Terrae Novae 2030+ (Latin for new worlds), the document lays the groundwork for Europe to ensure its leading role in space exploration for future prosperity.

"This new long-term roadmap for exploration is now available to guide decision-makers who will ultimately make the choices on how far to take Europe on the journey of deep-space exploration," says ESA's director of Human and Robotic Exploration, David Parker.

"Terrae Novae is not only literally about exploring new worlds, but by describing the limitless opportunities for discovery, economic growth and inspiration it also expresses our ambitions for Europe's future innovators, scientists and explorers.

"We hope that everyone can use this roadmap to make our three-part vision a reality: to continue a strong presence working in low-Earth orbit, to send the first European astronauts to explore the Moon throughout the 2030s, and to prepare Europe's role in the first historic human voyage to Mars."

While ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti continues her Minerva mission on the International Space Station, the first European Service Module for Artemis awaits its launch and construction of the lunar Gateway gathers momentum, ESA is already looking forward to exciting new projects. These include the European Large Logistic Lander designed to support human exploration of the Moon; and the Earth Return Orbiter, the spacecraft that will return from Mars with invaluable scientific samples as part of the NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return campaign.

Terrae Novae is ESAs exploration programme. Terrae Novae is not only literally about exploring new worlds, but by describing the limitless opportunities for discovery, economic growth and inspiration it also expresses our ambitions for Europes future innovators, scientists and explorers. This video shows the many exploration activities ESA is conducting or has planned in our Solar System, from the International Space Station to the Moon with the European Service Module and lunar Gateway modules for Artemis, and on to Mars with the Mars Sample Return campaign. Credit: ESA - European Space Agency

Against this background, the array of candidate new exploration campaigns draw on all of ESA's world-class abilitiesfrom space transportation (including future launchers) to operations, technology, communication, navigation, applications, and commercialization. The underlying capability of being able to launch and deliver payloads to low-Earth orbit, the Moon and Mars is a unifying theme which will ensure constant scientific breakthroughs and technological developments, and so ensure Europe retains a place in the first rank of space explorers.

As ESA's Director General Josef Aschbacher explains: "More than any other space activity, space exploration offers a unique blend of curiosity and opportunitythe curiosity to venture into the unknown in search of new horizons and new knowledge; and the opportunity to return to society the many benefits of making the journey.

"I now invite our political decision-makers to define Europe's level of ambition so that ESA, together with all its stakeholders, can translate this strategy roadmap into reality."

Explore further NASA, ESA discuss sending first European to moon
This schematic shows how the Distributed Acoustic Sensing, called DAS, works. A laser pulse is sent from the shore station through a fibre optic cable by an interrogator (a). The fibre has evenly spaced nodes on it, called defects (b). Underwater sounds cause the defects in the fibre to be slightly displaced, which delays the backscatter a signal back to the interrogator, which then interprets the time delay as a strain on the fibre. That in turn can be interpreted as acoustic data. Credit: Graphic: Marte Finsmyr/Lea Bouffaut

Whales are huge, but they live in an even larger environmentthe world's oceans. Researchers use a range of tools to study their whereabouts, including satellite tracking, aerial surveys, sightings and deploying individual hydrophones to listen for their calls. But now, for the first time ever, researchers have succeeded in passively listening to whalesessentially, eavesdropping on themusing existing underwater fiber optic cables.

The technique, called distributed acoustic sensing, or DAS, uses an instrument called an interrogator to tap into a fiber optic system, turning unused, extra fibers in the cable into a long virtual array of hydrophones. The research was conducted in the Svalbard archipelago, in an area called Isfjorden, where baleen whales, such as blue whales, are known to forage during the summer.

"I think this can change the field of marine bioacoustics," said Lea Bouffaut, the first author of a paper just published in Frontiers in Marine Sciences. Bouffaut was a postdoc at NTNU, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, when she worked on this research and is now at the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at Cornell University, where she continues expanding this work.

Fiber optic cables are everywhere

Bouffaut said the beauty of the system is that it could allow researchers to take advantage of an existing, worldwide network.

This system could become like satellites in the ocean.

"Deploying hydrophones is extremely expensive. But fiber optic cables are all around the world, and are accessible," she said. "This could be much like how satellite imagery coverage of the Earth has allowed scientists from many different fields to do many different types of studies of the Earth. To me, this system could become like satellites in the ocean."

Bouffaut said that other types of whale monitoring that rely on sound often only provide single or a few points of location information from a hydrophone. Point locations provide limited coverage of an area, and of course aren't evenly spread across all oceans, which can make it challenging for researchers to study migratory routes, for example.

In contrast, DAS not only allows researchers to detect whale vocalizations, they can use the fiber network to locate where the whales are in both space and time, with an unprecedented spatial resolution, she said.

"With this system, which is what we can basically call a hydrophone array, we have the chance to cover a much bigger area for monitoring. And because we receive the sound at multiple angles, we can even say where the animal wasthe position of the animal. And that's a huge advantage. And if we take it even further, which still requires some extra work, this could happen in real time, which would really be a game changer for acoustic monitoring of whales," said her colleague Hannah Joy Kriesell, one of the paper's co-authors.

Can hear boats, earthquakes

The technology also allows researchers to hear other sounds carried through the water, from large tropical storms to earthquakes to ships passing by, said Martin Landr, an NTNU geophysicist who was a co-author of the paper. Landr is also head of the Centre for Geophysical Forecasting, a Centre for Research-based Innovation funded by the Research Council of Norway.

We detected at least four or five different large storms that occurred and we could go back to the meteorological data and identify them by name.

Two whales recorded in the area off of Svalbard. Youu can hear that the whales are in different areas if you wear headphones to listen. The first whale is most likely a North Atlantic blue whale producing a stereotyped sound and D-calls; whale 2 is a short down-sweep, potentially a fin whale. Credit: Lea Bouffaut

"If anything is moving close to or making an acoustic noise close to that fiber, which is buried in the seabed, we can measure that," he said. "So what we saw was a lot of ship traffic, of course, a lot of earthquakes, and we could also detect distant storms. And last but not least, whales. We detected at least 830 whale vocalizations altogether."Landr said that detecting distant storms was possible because of the low frequency seismic signals that are generated by the waves from big storms. This method of detecting large storms from low-frequency waves at great distances was established by the oceanographer Walter Munk in 1963, when he measured waves from Antarctic storms on the Pacific Island of Samoa, Landr said.

"We were able to see storms that occurred in the South Atlantic 13,000 kilometers away on the low frequency part of the data, and we could determine the distance to the storm," he said. "We detected at least four or five different large storms that occurred and we could go back to the meteorological data and identify them by name."

COVID-19 and a trip to Svalbard

The researchers worked with Sikt, the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research, which provided access to 250 km of fiber optic cable in Svalbard, buried on the seabed between the archipelago's main town, Longyearbyen, and Ny-Alesund, a research settlement on a peninsula to the northwest. The cable goes from a sheltered fjord, called Isfjorden, and out into the open ocean, where 120 km of the cable was used as a hydrophonic array.

The DAS sensing and whale observation experiment shows a completely new use of this kind of fiber optic infrastructure, resulting in excellent, unique science.

The research group also included Alcatel Submarine Networks Norway, which provided the interrogatorsthe instruments that allowed the group to tap into the Sikt fiber optic cable.

Two researchers traveled to Longyearbyen in June 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and were able to use the interrogator for 40 days, listening along the length of the 120 km long cable.

"The fiber cable between Longyearbyen and Ny-Alesund, which was put in production in 2015 after five years of planning and prework and mainly funded by our ministry, was intended to serve the research community and the geodetic station in Ny Alesund with high and resilient communication capacity," said Olaf Schjelderup, head of Sikt's national R&E network and another paper co-author. "The DAS sensing and whale observation experiment shows a completely new use of this kind of fiber optic infrastructure, resulting in excellent, unique science."

Schjelderup noted that another advantage of the experiment was the high-capacity data communication capacity provided by the Norwegian R&E Network, (namedmUninett), which allowed near real-time streaming of the raw data from the DAS sensing unit in Longyearbyen all the way to Trondheim.

"The researchers could, from Trondheim, almost instantly, start studying the signal recordings from the sea outside Svalbard. This is a very good example of a paradigm shift in distributed data collection," he said. "What has been done at Svalbard here paves the way for rolling out more of these kinds of fiber optic sensors as permanent infrastructurecollecting and processing data from different geographies and locations in near real timeboth for research and different operational purposes."

7 terabytes per day

Bouffaut and Kriesell, a researcher at NTNU's Department of Electronic Systems, worked on analyzing the 40 days of round-the-clock data from the experiment. In total they had to analyze 7 terabytes per day, or roughly 250 terabytes of data for the entire period. They started by looking at signals from locations on the fiber that were 10 km apart, which "made it manageable," Bouffaut said.

The challenge, in addition to the amount of data involved, was that "we're looking for signals without knowing exactly what to expect. This is new technology and a new type of data that no one has looked at for finding whales," Bouffaut said.

This audio is series of non-stereotyped arched sounds and down-sweeps, likely from a North Atlantic blue whale. Recorded using Distributed Acoustic Sensing. Credit: Lea Bouffaut et al.

The work was painstaking, but "it was very, super exciting, especially when we started seeing whale signals," Bouffaut said. "But I get this question a lot, even from bioacousticians: how do you know this is a whale? And I say, 'how do you know it's a whale when you've recorded from a hydrophone? We recognized the frequency, the pattern, the repetition, and we listened to it.'"

Bouffaut added that now that the researchers know the data better, they could train machine learning models to simplify and automatize the data analysis process.

Bouffaut and Kriesell identified what are called stereotyped calls for North Atlantic blue whales outside of Isfjorden. These kinds of calls are associated with male vocalizations. They also saw what are called D-calls, which are vocalizations in which the sound sweeps down, and can be made by males, females and calves. They detected these calls inside the sheltered waters of the fjord. Previous researchers have linked D-calls with foraging or social contexts, the researchers said.

The changing Arctic

Bouffaut said the value of this kind of system was especially clear in the Arctic, where warming from climate change is happening two to three times more quickly than average.

"The Arctic is changing very fast. And both animal and human use of the area is changing as fast as the ice melts," Bouffaut said.

Whales such as blue whales aren't year-round users of the region yet, but as the ice melts, this could change, she noted.

At the same time, the disappearing ice cover opens the Arctic to increased shipping, fishing and other activities, such as tourism.

"So if whales are changing their uses of this area, and maybe using this area for more than for foraging or for activities where they're very vulnerable, then having this type of technology can help us monitor these changes," Bouffaut said.

It is possible to see whales when they come to the surface to breathe, but sound is acknowledged as the best way to study whales because they're otherwise very elusive"So by studying their sound production, their calls and their vocalizations, we can learn a lot about them. We can learn where they are during different seasons, and how and where they migrate to. So we get a lot of information by eavesdropping on them," Kriesell said.

And if DAS can be set up so that the information can be analyzed in real time, the information could be relayed to ships traveling in waters where whales are feeding or socializing, and inform stakeholders for direct conservation action, Bouffaut said.

"We could potentially reduce the risk of ship strikes with whales. That would be a very big deal," Kriesell added. "Arctic ice is melting, and ship traffic has drastically increased in the Arctic. And that's a problem for the animals. So if we have a means to inform ships about the location of whales in real time, we could stop or at least reduce the risk for ship strikes."

More information: Eavesdropping at the speed of light: distributed acoustic sensing of baleen whales in the Arctic, Frontiers in Marine Science (2022). Journal information: Frontiers in Marine Science Eavesdropping at the speed of light: distributed acoustic sensing of baleen whales in the Arctic,(2022).
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

An international team of scientists, including Uwe Fritz and Christian Kehlmaier from Senckenberg, has made an astonishing discovery in the Zubbio di Cozzo San Pietro cave in Sicily, a burial site from the Copper/Bronze Age: bones of a giant tortoise. The skeletal fragments have been dated to 12,500 years ago, which is at odds with the temporal context of the other finds in the cave. Nevertheless, they are considerably younger than the previously known remains of extinct giant tortoises on the Mediterranean islands, which are at least 195,000 years old. Therefore, giant tortoises existed in Europe for much longer than previously known. The animals were contemporaries of modern humans, which may have contributed to their disappearance.

The Zubbio di Cozzo San Pietro site is a prehistoric burial ground where the tortoise bones got mixed in with a younger archaeological layer. "It was a stroke of luck that an intact femur was among the finds," says Prof. Dr. Uwe Fritz of the Senckenberg Natural History Collections Dresden, and he adds: "Due to their stability, femurs are among the most common and best-preserved remains of large fossil tortoises. They are an important clue as to what species is involved."

Comparisons of the femur with other tortoise species made it possible to determine the size of the animal. The Sicilian species had a carapace length of 50 to 60 centimeters. It was thus up to three times as large as Hermann's tortoise (Testudo hermanni), a species still found in Sicily today, but significantly smaller than the modern-day giant tortoises of Galapagos, for example. Moreover, the shape of the Sicilian giant tortoise's femur differs significantly from that of all extant tortoises today, and from most fossil species. However, very similar bones are known from other giant tortoises of the Mediterranean region, which already became extinct earlier.

The publication's lead scientist, Prof. Dr. Massimo Delfino from the University of Turin, explains that they "therefore conclude that these species from the Mediterranean region represent an evolutionary lineage that is now entirely extinct. They are so different from all other tortoises that they can be considered as the separate genus Solitudo. The newly discovered Sicilian species Solitudo sicula is the representative of this genus that has survived the longest and may have been hunted and eaten by Paleolithic humans."

However, whether hunting by humans actually contributed to the extinction of the Sicilian giant tortoise is still unknown. Fritz adds, "But when I look at global patterns of extinction events, it seems reasonable to assume that humans played a role. The collapse of relatively large and easily hunted species often occurred alongside the spread of modern humansand Sicily is likely no exception in this regard."

The findings were published in Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Explore further New giant tortoise species found in Galapagos after DNA study

More information: Pietro Valenti et al, The last of the large-sized tortoises of the Mediterranean islands, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society (2022). Journal information: Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society Pietro Valenti et al, The last of the large-sized tortoises of the Mediterranean islands,(2022). DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac044
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

One evening in early June, a week after 19 students and two teachers were shot and killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, extremism researcher Kesa White started seeing media reports of another mass shooting, this time at a medical center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

In turn, she picked up each of the three phones she uses for research and got to work, scrolling fast. Apps. News sites. Twitter, and other more obscure social media platforms. In the minutes after a shooting, she would need to learn as much as she could.

The news of another attack, so soon after the racist attack in Buffalo and then the Uvalde shooting, was shocking, as always. But for White it also crystallized another emotion: dread. This, she feared, could be the one she had been waiting for.

White had spent the last week watching for what extremism researchers call a "copycat" shooting: that another disturbed young man would try and kill more people than the 18-year-old shooter had in Texas. Her research showed her all the signs: Increasing rhetoric and violent chatter on encrypted messaging apps; a blooming of support for the Uvalde shooter in dark spaces online; loose cannons increasingly firing shots across cyberspace.

"It made me think, somebody's going to try to do something similar pretty soon," White said. "I think there's going to be some sort of copycat attack."

Before long, details started to emerge about the Tulsa shooter: His race and name were revealed, and researchers and journalists concluded that the attack had not been ideologically driven. Tragic, but not a copycat.

But White's sense of dread never truly goes away. It is a part of the job for people like her, an informal team of researchers, academics and professional intelligence-gatherers who have taken it upon themselves to monitor the poisonous melting pot of American extremism.

Connected by Twitter and encrypted messaging apps, these researchers scour the nastiest corners of the internet, watching for new trends, tricks and terminology. Some create "sock puppet" accounts to get inside secret chat rooms and eavesdrop on hateful groups. Others pore over data and messages scraped from social media or hacked from extremist groups, searching for clues and the identities of modern racists and bigots.

They are a diverse collection of personalities, but on the whole, they shun publicity, balking at the suggestion their work is exciting or dramatic, and sometimes rejecting the idea that they are "hunting" for extremists. What unites them is the desire to do thankless, often boring, research they hope will shed more light on the country's dark underbelly.

"It's kind of embarrassing, the whole 'Extremism Hunter,' 'Antifa's Secret Weapon' stuff," said Megan Squire, a research fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center, who was bestowed the "Secret Weapon" moniker in a 2018 WIRED Magazine article. "It feels like people want you to be more amazing or more spy-like or something, when what it actually is is just a lot of deliberative ploddingwriting stuff down and being super-organized."

Through this methodical work, this network of extremism-watchers has become an invaluable resource for journalists, law enforcement agencies and the general public. Their sleuthing is responsible for much of what eventually becomes known about mass shooters, extremist groups and other domestic terrorists. Their monitoring occasionally sparks investigations and arrests, and their willingness to put themselves online to face harassment or worse from extremists fills a vital gap in the nation's understanding of a growing threat, said Daryl Johnson, a security consultant and former senior analyst for domestic terrorism at the Department of Homeland Security.

"I'm glad that network exists," Johnson said. "I'm glad it's been expanded. I'm glad there's more and more analysts and resources being brought to bear on this problem, because when we have more people looking at it, you get answers, and then the picture becomes clearer."

How it begins: 'Trying to save the world'

Sara Aniano, a far-right researcher who recently completed a Master's thesis at Monmouth University on Instagram comments in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 insurrection, began focusing on extremism during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like many people, Aniano was furloughed from her job and found herself with a lot of free time.

"One day I was on the beach, and a friend of mine texted our group chat, talking about how Ellen DeGeneres was on house arrest, and adrenochrome, and 'save the children,' and I was like, 'Hold on, is she joking? Surely she's joking," Aniano said.

Aniano's friend, like millions of Americans, had fallen into the trap of nonsense and disinformation sold by people like Alex Jones and spread on fake news sites like Infowars and by some Fox News anchors. That someone so close to her was spreading QAnon-related conspiracy theories was a wake-up-call, she said.

Almost overnight, Aniano said, she started digging into disinformation networks and conspiracy theories on Instagram and other platforms. Before long, she realized she could apply what she was learning to her Master's thesis, and within a year she was in regular contact with other extremism and disinformation researchers, sharing what she knew, searching for new leads, and falling down ever-more complicated online rabbit holes.

"I'm basically always online," Aniano said. "It looks like I'm just on my phone, but I'm actually trying to save the world."

Several researchers who spoke with USA TODAY described similar personal experiences that led them to full-time roles monitoring extremists. For Squire, it was tracking and reporting a local neo-Confederate hate group in her home town in North Carolina.

For White, who now works at the Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab, or PERIL, at American University, it was a confrontation with a racist hate crime on her university campus, where somebody scrawled the initials of a predominantly Black sorority onto bananas and tied them up with string made to look like nooses.

Aniano, who was recently hired by the Anti-Defamation League to continue her work, said she eventually grew apart from her friend, who fell deeper into disinformation. But she and other researchers made the decision to run straight at a phenomenon that was unfolding across America after the election of Donald Trump. As domestic extremist groups flourished and hate crimes spiked in the late twenty-teens, an informal network of individuals determined to understand, monitor and chronicle that movement was also flourishing.

How they do it: Building a puzzle one piece at a time

A typical day for an extremism watcher often involves hours of scrolling through hateful content online.

As extremists have been pushed off mainstream social media sites like Facebook and Twitter for violating their terms of service, these experts constantly readjust their tracking to new platforms, networks and messaging services.

A lot of their time is now spent on the encrypted messaging and social media app Telegram. Often dubbed "Terrorgram" by researchers, the app, founded by a 37-year-old Russian billionaire, with its laissez-faire attitude towards extremists, has become the go-to communication platform for many extremist groups and conspiracy mongers.

Researchers monitor groups' public and private "channels" on Telegram, where users cross-post content from different channels into their own, creating a daisy-chain of hate that is trackable across the platform.

White describes her often-monotonous work as like trying to piece together a never-ending jigsaw puzzle, without knowing what the image she's ultimately building will be. She said she's essentially just watching and learning every day, trying to keep up with the latest hateful language and memes, learning about up-and-coming hate groups and new conspiracy theories.

"I'm just, like, falling into rabbit holes all day, every day," White said. "Because you're always learning something new, and what I learned today is going to be different from what I learn tomorrow, and sometimes something that I learned yesterday is no longer relevant."

Along with the day-to-day monitoring, there are also periods of frantic action.

In the hours after a mass shooting, for example, researchers scramble to learn as much as possible about a suspect before the person's online life disappears.

"You're racing against the clock to collect as much information as you can get before social media companies remove it," White said. "It's going to help paint a story of them, because you always have that one person saying, 'But they were such a nice kid, we didn't see the warning signs.' But you go on their social media account and you see them posing with guns and saying racist things online."

How they specialize: Working together

Several of the researchers have formed sub-groups that focus on a particular topic, group or conspiracy theory. The Q Origins Project, for example, is a small collective of researchers focusing primarily on the early days of the QAnon conspiracy theory and the ensuing community that grew from it.

Another collective, the Accelerationism Research Consortium, focuses on the white supremacist concept of accelerationismthe concept of seeking to foment a race war and ensuing dystopia to bring about a race-based new global order.

The researchers are always trying to understand the relationships between these groups, said Alex Mendela, an extremism researcher and member of the Q Origins Project.

"Our work focuses on how QAnon relates to the broader conspiratorial far-right, and the pathways that that individuals could take to more programmatic extremist movements and eventually violence," Mendela said.

Adding to the complexity is the ever-growing network of websites and social media platforms dedicated to hosting extremists. Researchers who spoke with USA TODAY said they monitor accounts on Gab, Gettr, Parler, DLive, Rumble, Cozy and former President Donald Trump's social media site Truth Social, to name just a few.

This process of watching and learning is a big part of an extremism researcher's job. And occasionally that work surfaces real, actionable leads, or what law enforcement agencies consider "credible threats" of violence in the real world and not just online.

And that's where the watchers sometimes become more than just passive observers.

How they respond: To report or not report?

One day in August 2019, Squire was folding laundry while "flipping through Telegram channels" when she noticed one conversation in a channel that was more stark than the typical flow of hate.

"One White man with a gun walked into two mosques and killed 50 invaders, Another walked into a mall and killed 20. Another walked into a church and ended more," wrote a user named "Anti-Kosmik 2182," who Squire had already identified as Jarrett William Smith, an ex-soldier formerly stationed in Kansas. "Have you not seen the impact of 3 amateur shootings?"

"I thought, 'I'm gonna make a copy of this real quick, because this doesn't seem right and also, this guy is using his real photo as his profile picture. I thought, well, that's kind of unusual," Squire said. "So I made a copy of the chat."

Researchers like Squire sometimes face ethical dilemmas when they come across this sort of information: Should they report these individuals to law enforcement? Or just keep monitoring them until they announce actual plans of violence?

In this case, Squire didn't have long to debate. "About 14 days later, the guy was arrested for plotting to bomb some houses," she said.

Smith was later sentenced to two and half years in prison for distributing information on social media about building a bomb.

The researchers who spoke to USA TODAY were split on the question of whether they should act as a conduit to the police. Some said they are quick to report open threats as soon as possible. Others said they see their work more as journalism: Watching threats and writing about them, but not contacting the cops directly.

Most full-time extremism researchers are aligned with institutions of higher education, which have their own rules about ethical responsibility and invasion of privacy.

"There are boundaries on what we can and can't do, and I think we follow a very ethical standard," said Matt Kriner, a senior researcher at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. "If it's availableif anybody can get to itwe'll look at it."

Kriner said much of the work he and other researchers do isn't really focused on tracking individuals anyway.

"I think ultimately, everybody wants to say we're trying to stop a shooter from shooting, right?" he said. "It's a romantic notion. It's one that can occur, but it's not typically the one that we're trying to accomplish."

Instead, Kriner said, extremism researchers focus more on movements and trends. Their job is to help the public understand the connections between the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017 and the Jan. 6 insurrection, for example, he said.

"What law enforcement does is look at islands based on the critical thresholds that you need for investigations," Kriner said. "What we're doing is we're looking at the broader landscape."

How they survive: Support in a 'never-ending cycle'

The work this network of researchers does can be physically and emotionally draining. And there's always more work than they can possibly do.

"It's completely overwhelming," Squire said. "I could clone myself six, eight times over, and it wouldn't be enough people."

Rather than compete, extremism researchers instead tend to collaboratereaching out to one another to swap ideas and share tips. In the wake of a domestic terrorism incident, or after a big leak of hacked data from an extremist group, the network swings into action to try and learn as much as possible.

"A lot of what we've tried to do is put people in contact with one another, to have really granular discussions about 'Why does it matter that this person put X symbol on their gun?' 'What are we seeing across the table?'" Kriner said. "We share tips and tricks, we talk to each other about what works and what doesn't, and why it's important for us to be shifting to this topic area versus that topic area."

But the collaboration isn't just academic, Mendela said "These guys are my rock," he said. "We often discuss things from our personal life, personal achievements. We hold dungeons and dragons games as a good way for us to connect off the clock."

The extremism watchers know they're never going to "win." Their work will never eradicate hate and prejudice. They will never know or understand all the extremists or even all the extremist groups in America. But at the end of the day, at least they're doing something.

"It's a never-ending battle and we're pretty much just pawns in their little game," White said. "In terms of end goals, of course, you want world peace and everything like that, but it's just a never-ending cycle."

Explore further Far-right groups move to messaging apps as tech companies crack down on extremist social media

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China's top economic planner said Monday that it will take timely measures and tighten market oversight to prevent sharp increases in hog prices.



The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in a statement that it has held a meeting with industrial associations, hog farming companies and slaughtering houses to ensure market supply and stabilize prices.

The price of pork, a staple meat in China, has been rising due to the drop in market supply in recent weeks. From June 20 to 24, the average pork price tracked by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs went up 5.4 percent week on week. The price was 31.6 percent higher than a year ago.

The NDRC attributed the excessive price hike partly to "irrational reluctance to sell" in the market, as well as the practice of fattening hogs that are already ready for the market for higher profits.

Hog production is currently within a reasonable and sufficient range, and pork consumption has been weak, so there is no basis for continuous sharp increases in hog prices, said the NDRC.

The NDRC ordered large hog suppliers to slaughter pigs at a regular pace and warned them against hoarding and price rigging. It would work with other government departments and punish related violations to protect market order and safeguard the sound development of the industry.
Credit: birdphotos.com, CC BY 3.0

Though gopher tortoises have persisted for millions of years, they now face a barrage of threats from loss of habitat and developers with permits that allow the reptiles to be buried alive.

From 1991-2007, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission issued incidental take permits (ITPs) allowing land owners to pay a fee that would allow them to legally "take" tortoises. Though developers could relocate tortoises on-site, many were buried alive in their burrows underneath homes or roadways, forced to endure a slow, painful death.

Though new permits aren't being issued by FWC, existing ITPs are grandfathered in and can be transferred when land changes hands.

Carissa Kent, a Tampa native who spent years living in Central Florida, first heard about ITPs when reading a Humane Society article detailing a Deltona Walmart project that was burying the creatures. Although Kent had a career with the Seminole County Sheriff's Office and aspirations of working for the FBI, this was a turning point that would change her life.

"When a house, a sidewalk or infrastructure gets put on top of them, they're stuck. There's someone's living room above their burrow, and they just go back down and slowly suffer and die," she said. "I couldn't sleep for about four days, and I decided to change my career."

Having no experience in biology or conservation, Kent, then 28 years old, spent countless hours researching and reaching out to potential allies, often being "stonewalled" by people who wouldn't give her the time of day. Then, she found Dr. Jennifer Hobgood, a former director of the Humane Society in Florida, and Dr. Matt Aresco, director of the Nokuse Plantation in the Florida Panhandle.

"Carissa and I met in 2006. She contacted us, it was the very first project she was working on," Aresco said. "We agreed to accept the tortoises from that project. ... We have about 27,000 acres of good gopher tortoise habitat."

The next spring, with some hard work from Kent and her team, around 700 tortoises found a new home on the preserve.

An 'incredible loss'

The idea behind FWC's incidental take permit program for gopher tortoises was that money earned from ITPs would be used to make up for habitat loss through new conservation lands.

Permits were issued based on the acreage of tortoise habitat affected. For example, in 2004, Lake Nona Land Co. paid $104,114 for an ITP on a 206-acre site that contained 62 acres of gopher tortoise habitat, allowing them to "take" an estimated 205 reptiles.

Other permits have been issued to Central Florida projects managed by Disney, Orange County Public Schools, the Florida Department of Transportation, Valencia Community College, Target, Walmart and Avalon Park.

But Aresco said that only a fraction of tortoise habitat was purchased to offset massive losses.

"The sad thing is that [ITP] money got taken by the Legislature and put into general revenue instead of being used for what the intended purpose was," he said.

Using data from public records requests, Aresco determined that nearly $80 million was raised from the 15-year incidental take permit program.

"From 1991 to 2007, the estimate was 170,000 acres of gopher tortoise habitat loss under those permits," he said. "They only purchased about 16,000 acres of land and only about 6,500 acres of actual gopher tortoise habitat. That's only about a 4 percent offset of what was lost in habitat during that time."

In his research of the more than 3,000 ITPs that were issued, Aresco estimated that more than 100,000 gopher tortoise lives could have been lost.

Getting to work

When Kent and Aresco joined forces to begin relocating gopher tortoises from ITP sites, there was a sense of urgency to their work, but funding and support were initially hard to come by.

After six years of serving with the Seminole County Sheriff's Office in child abuse investigations, Kent was vested and left her position to cash out her retirementin the name of rescuing these reptiles. In 2006, she founded Saving Florida's Gopher Tortoises and partners like Hobgood helped find grants for funding.

"I ended up becoming a process server working 40-60 hours a week and doing the gopher tortoise stuff on the side," she said. "It was daunting at 28 years old to have a busy job and then also get this launched."

While Kent and her team diligently worked to relocate tortoises to Nokuse Plantation, Aresco found environmental allies.

"They thought they were doing a good thing by collecting this money to buy habitat with it," he said. "As it turns out, the program did not work very well and not very much habitat was actually purchased for the incredible loss in the number of tortoiseseven the offset for loss of habitat."

In early 2005, longtime Orlando Sentinel environment reporter Kevin Spear wrote an article with the headline: "Developers' legal gopher-tortoise killings rile foes," a story that Aresco credits as a turning point for the public outcry against ITPs. In the years to follow, picketing, behind-the-scenes work and a March 2007 visit to Gov. Charlie Crist helped win the day for environmental activists.

Still, those same environmentalists had to reckon with the fact that existing permits would still be valid.

"People get confused because they think when the species was uplisted in 2007 and the permits stopped being issued that developers couldn't use them anymore. But the permits were grandfathered in so they can," Kent said.

She and Hobgood first worked with FWC to create an amendment to ITPs that would allow for off-site relocation. Though the officials once in charge of the ITP program are no longer with the agency, FWC still deals with the legacy of these permits.

"FWC recognizes that ITPs do not expire and the permit allows the taking of gopher tortoises from development-related activities on the site," said Carli Segelson, public information director with the FWC Division of Habitat and Species Conservation, in an email. "FWC has also implemented projects to conduct targeted outreach regarding humane relocation efforts to permittees with incidental take permits."

Silver linings

Kent and her team have been able to relocate or rehabilitate close to 15,000 tortoises through years of effort.

"With reptiles, you have to do extra hard work to get people on board with conservation. They're not cute and cuddly, and they're not adorable," she said. "It hasn't been an easy road, but I wouldn't have it any other way."

On a weekly basis, Kent enlists the help of partners such as Longwood-based Ecological Consulting Solutions Inc., who will use backhoes or excavators to dig burrows on ITP sites that are up to 30 feet deep.

Since 2017, the Saving Florida's Gopher Tortoises project has received funding from the Department of Defense to relocate tortoises onto Eglin Air Force Base in the Panhandle. Jeremy Preston, an endangered species biologist with the base, said these tortoises are helping the Air Force meet its conservation goals.

"We're not just thinking about an individual tortoise, but what's really valuable is a population of animals that are successfully breeding, laying eggs and having hatchlings survive," he said. "The Air Force is benefiting from having viable populations of this particular species restored back onto our landscape."

However, future funding is unclear and Kent is raising money on GoFundMe to help ensure the longevity of this project. For years, she has partnered with Swamp Girl Adventures in Central Florida, as they can accept donations for her mission and help with tortoise rehabilitation.

In addition, some developers are now more willing to pay for relocation services, even if they are legally permitted to "take" tortoises.

"It's about $200-$300 a tortoise for us. That's not how much it costs for regular relocation, but we don't make any profit on top of what it takes to break even and pay hour for hour," Kent said. "We're getting 800-1,000 tortoises a year on average  That's well over $200,000 to do that."

The conservationists know they need to keep fighting to save gopher tortoises still out there on these permitted parcels.

The gopher tortoise's shell "protects it from just about everything there is in nature. Yet, it's so vulnerable to development and roads and human disturbance," Aresco said. "We do what we can to save the species from decline, and that's what we're going to keep doing."

Explore further Critically endangered tortoises released into wild in Bangladesh

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Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

New research by a scientist at the Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath suggests that "selfish chromosomes" explain why most human embryos die very early on. The study, published in PLoS Biology, explaining why fish embryos are fine but sadly humans' embryos often don't survive, has implications for the treatment of infertility.

About half of fertilized eggs die very early on, before a mother even knows she is pregnant. Tragically, many of those that survive to become a recognized pregnancy will be spontaneously aborted after a few weeks. Such miscarriages are both remarkably common and highly distressing.

Professor Laurence Hurst, Director of the Milner Center for Evolution, investigated why, despite hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, it's still so comparatively hard for humans to have a baby.

The immediate cause of much of these early deaths is that the embryos have the wrong number of chromosomes. Fertilized eggs should have 46 chromosomes, 23 from mum in the eggs, 23 from dad in the sperm.

Professor Hurst said: "Very many embryos have the wrong number of chromosomes, often 45 or 47, and nearly all of these die in the womb. Even in cases like Down syndrome with three copies of chromosome 21, about 80% sadly will not make it to term."

Why then should gain or loss of one chromosome be so very common when it is also so lethal?

There are number of clues that Hurst put together. Firstly, when the embryo has the wrong number of chromosomes it is usually due to mistakes that occur when the eggs are made in the mother, not when the sperm is made in the father. In fact, over 70% of eggs made have the wrong number of chromosomes.

Secondly, the mistakes happen in the first of two steps in the manufacture of eggs. This first step, it had been noticed before, is vulnerable to mutations that interfere with the process, such that the mutation can "selfishly" sneak into more than 50% of the eggs, forcing the partner chromosome to be destroyed, a process known as centromeric drive. This is well studied in mice, long suspected in humans and previously suggested to somehow relate to the problem of chromosome loss or gain.

What Hurst noticed was that, in mammals, a selfish mutation that tries to do this but fails, resulting in an egg with one too many or one too few chromosomes, can still be evolutionarily better off. In mammals, because the mother continuously feeds the developing fetus in the womb, it is evolutionarily beneficial for embryos developing from faulty eggs to be lost earlier rather than be carried to full term. This means that the surviving offspring do better than the average.

Hurst explained: "This first step of making eggs is odd. One chromosome of a pair will go to the egg the other will be destroyed. But if a chromosome 'knows' it is going to be destroyed it has nothing to lose, so to speak. Remarkable recent molecular evidence has found that when some chromosomes detect that they are about to be destroyed during this first step, they change what they do to prevent being destroyed, potentially causing chromosome loss or gain, and the death of the embryo.

"What is remarkable, is that if the death of the embryo benefits the other offspring of that mother, as the selfish chromosome will often be in the brothers and sisters that get the extra food, the mutation is better off because it kills embryos".

"Fish and amphibians don't have this problem", Hurst commented. "In over 2000 fish embryos not one was found with chromosomal errors from mum". Rates in birds are also very low, about 1/25th the rate in mammals. This, Hurst notes, is as predicted as there is some competition between nestlings after they hatch, but not before.

By contrast, chromosome loss or gain is a problem for every mammal that has been looked at. Hurst commented, "It is a downside of feeding our offspring in the womb. If they die early on, the survivors benefit. It leaves us vulnerable to this sort of mutation."

Hurst suspects that humans may indeed be especially vulnerable. In mice the death of an embryo gives resources to the survivors in the same brood. This is gives about a 10% increase in survival chance of the others. Humans, however, usually just have one baby at a time and the death of an embryo early on enables a mother to rapidly reproduce againshe probably never even knew her egg had been fertilized.

Preliminary data shows mammals such as cows, with one embryo at a time seem to have especially high embryo death rates owing to chromosomal errors, while those with many embryos in a brood, like mice and pigs, seem to have somewhat lower rates.

Hurst's research also suggests that low levels of a protein called Bub1 could cause loss or gain of a chromosome in humans as well as mice.

Hurst said: "The levels of Bub1 go down as mothers get older and as the rate of embryonic chromosomal problems goes up. Identifying these suppressor proteins and increasing their level in older mothers could restore fertility.

"I would hope too that these insights will be one step to helping those women who experience difficulties getting pregnant, or suffer recurrent miscarriage."

Explore further Chromosomal errors that develop early lead to embryonic loss in assisted reproductive technology

More information: Selfish centromeres and the wastefulness of human reproduction, PLoS Biology (2022). Journal information: PLoS Biology Selfish centromeres and the wastefulness of human reproduction,(2022). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001671
The Compact Muon Solenoid detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Credit: CERN

Ten years ago this week, two international collaborations of groups of scientists, including a large contingent from Caltech, confirmed that they had found conclusive evidence for the Higgs boson, an elusive elementary particle, first predicted in a series of articles published in the mid-1960s, that is thought to endow elementary particles with mass.

Fifty years prior, as theoretical physicists endeavored to understand the so-called electroweak theory, which describes both electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force (involved in radioactive decay), it became apparent to Peter Higgs, working in the UK, and independently to Francois Englert and Robert Brout, in Belgium, as well as U.S. physicist Gerald Guralnik and others, that a previously unidentified field that filled the universe was required to explain the behavior of the elementary particles that compose matter. This field, the Higgs field, would lead to a particle with zero spin, significant mass, and have the ability to spontaneously break the symmetry of the earliest universe, allowing the universe to materialize. That particle became known as the Higgs boson.

Over the decades that followed, experimental physicists first devised and then developed the instruments and methods required to detect the Higgs boson. The most ambitious of these projects was the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN. Since the planning of the LHC in the late 1980s, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation have worked in collaboration with CERN to provide funding and technology know-how, and to support thousands of scientists helping to search for the Higgs.

Credit: (c) 2022 CERN

The LHC is a 27-kilometer-long underground ring through which protons are accelerated by superconducting magnets to just under the speed of light. Two beams of protons traveling in opposite directions are focused and directed to collide with each other at specific points where detectors can observe the particles produced by these collisions. The use of major detector facilities with different designschiefly the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and the A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS (ATLAS)enables scientists to conduct a wide variety of experiments to test the predictions of the Standard Model of which the Higgs boson is a part, to search for new particles and interactions that lie beyond the standard model, and to verify each other's results. The detection of the Higgs boson, announced on July 4, 2012, was based on the analysis of an unprecedented amount of data collected by CMS and ATLAS.

Harvey Newman, the Marvin L. Goldberger Professor of Physics at Caltech and one of the leaders of the Caltech team, which is part of the CMS collaboration, calls the discovery of the Higgs boson "a milestone in human history" that "has permanently changed the way we view the universe."

Humorously called the "God particle" in 1993 in a book of the same name by authors Leon Lederman and Dick Teresi, the Higgs boson plays a crucial role in the Standard Model of physics: it provides the mechanism through which elementary particles acquire mass. As particles traverse the Higgs field and interact with Higgs bosons, some glide over the surface, not changing at all. But others are caught in the weeds, so to speak, and gain mass.

The Standard Model has yet to explain dark matter or gravitation adequately, but time after time its predictions have been confirmed experimentally. "It is a striking, and surprising result that through the analysis of increasing amounts of data, with increasingly sensitive methods, the agreement with the Standard Model has continued to improve in all its details, even as the first signs of what lies beyond, in terms of new particles and new interactions, has continued to elude us," Newman says.

Any deviation from results predicted by the Standard Model suggests the presence of other particles or dynamics that may one day provide the groundwork for a new, more all-encompassing model of physics.

Collisions that produce Higgs bosons are very infrequent. For every billion protonproton collisions, only one Higgs boson is created. To further complicate this picture, Higgs bosons decay very quickly into other particles, and it is only by measuring the characteristics of these particles that the prior existence of the Higgs boson can be inferred. Caltech's Maria Spiropulu, the Shang-Yi Ch'en Professor of Physics and the other leader of the original team of Caltech researchers who helped to detect the Higgs, describes it as the "proverbial needle in the haystack problem."

Technological improvements to the LHC and its detectors have enabled higher energy and greater precision in the colliders and their detectors. Since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, experiments at the LHC have revealed further information about the Higgs boson and its mass and decay processes. For example, in 2018, Newman, Spiropulu, and other Caltech researchers worked with an international team that produced evidence showing the Higgs boson decaying into pairs of fundamental particles called bottom quarks, work that Spiropulu described at the time as a "Herculean labor." Prior to that discovery, the CMS team made the first observation of the Higgs boson directly coupling to the heaviest standard model particle, the top quark.

In 2020, Spiropulu and her colleagues documented a rare decay process for the Higgs boson that results in two muons. "Probing the properties of the Higgs boson is tantamount to searching for new physics that we know has to be there," said Spiropulu.

"I was just graduating from high school when I heard about the Higgs discovery at the LHC," says Caltech graduate student and CMS team member Irene Dutta (MS '20), who worked on the muon research. "It is humbling to know how well the Standard Model can describe elementary particles and their interactions to such precision."

Most recently, a Caltech-led team of researchers working on the CMS experiment have used machine-learning algorithms based on neural networks to develop a new method to hunt for what may be an even more elusive prey than the Higgs itself: an exceedingly rare "pair" of interacting Higgs bosons that, according to theory, could be produced during proton collisions.

After a three-year shutdown to further upgrade the LHC accelerator and experiments, the LHC began final preparations for a third run (Run 3) early in 2022. The start of Run 3, scheduled to continue to the end of 2025, will take place on July 5, producing the first collisions at the new energy of 13.6 tera-electron-volts.

"The Higgs discovery is a milestone on a long road ahead," says Caltech's Barry Barish, Ronald and Maxine Linde Professor of Physics, Emeritus, the former leader of Caltech's high-energy physics group (and co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017 for his work on another large-scale physics project, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO, which made the first detection of the ripples in space and time known as gravitational waves in 2016). "Particle physics is moving onward keeping in mind that the Standard Model describes only a tiny fraction of what we know is there and more questions are unanswered than answered; yes, we do have a great simple parametrization in the Standard Model, but the actual origin of the electroweak symmetry breaking is unknown. We have a lot more work ahead," says Barish.

Reflecting on a decade of exploring the Higgs boson, Newman notes that the research "continues to motivate us to think harder and design upgraded detectors and accelerator improvements enabling us to vastly expand our reach now and for the next two decades." This includes the second major phase of the LHC program, known as the High Luminosity LHC, scheduled to run from 2029 to 2040. It will provide substantial upgrades of the accelerator complex and detectors that will lead to a projected increase in the collected data by a factor of 20 relative to what CMS and ATLAS have today.

The Caltech team also includes Si Xie, research assistant professor of physics, as well as research scientists Adi Bornheim and Ren-Yuan Zhu, all of whom have dedicated decades of study to discover and understand the Higgs boson. The Caltech group is leading novel ultraprecision-timing detector upgrades for the High Luminosity LHC and developing novel AI-based data-analysis approaches that will allow for accelerated near-real-time discovery. The group has produced more than a dozen Ph.D. theses and enabled approximately 100 undergraduate students and interns to engage in analysis, instrumentation, and computation research since the discovery of the Higgs.

Explore further ATLAS and CMS release results of most comprehensive studies yet of Higgs boson's properties
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Four in 10 children in the United States grow up in households in which a parent or co-residing adult faced at least one criminal charge, were convicted of a felony or spent time in prison, a University of Michigan study shows.

This dwarfs estimates from the Bureau of Justice Statistics that less than 1 in 40 children have a parent in prison in a given year, says Michael Mueller-Smith, assistant professor of economics and faculty associate at the Population Studies Center at the U-M Institute for Social Research.

Prior efforts to quantify the extent of crime and justice spillovers within households have been hampered by severe data limitations, he says. Federal data collection fails to capture non-incarceration events, track intergenerational spillovers within families that depart from the nuclear family model or follow children over time.

"Data limitations have left us in the dark on just how many kids grow up in households with justice involvement," Mueller-Smith said. "That we find estimates with close to half of U.S. children having intergenerational exposure to crime and justice is a wake-up call to the failures of our public policy to date. Even if the justice system were completely overhauled today, we will be living with the damage done to current and former generations for decades to come."

Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Treasury Department and Criminal Justice Administrative Records System, Mueller-Smith and colleagues were able to overcome data limitations that have constrained this area of research for decades.

In addition to finding dramatically higher rates of intergenerational exposure overall, the researchers found that child exposure is heterogeneous in the U.S. population. More than 60% of Black and Native American children and kids from households with below-median income have intergenerational exposure to the justice systemtwice the rate of white children.

"Circumstances during early childhood play an important role for a range of lifetime outcomes. It is quite alarming that the modal experience for minority children in the U.S. is one of indirect exposure to the criminal justice system," said Brittany Street, a co-author of the study and assistant professor of economics at the University of Missouri. "These findings have important implications not just for criminal justice policy, but our overall social policy in the U.S. more generally."

Early life exposure is highly correlated with a range of negative child development outcomes, including cognitive difficulty, being behind in school, teen fertility, teen crime and death by age 18, even after controlling for a range of factors including household income, place of birth, age, sex and race, the researchers say.

The expansive prevalence, demographic heterogeneity and estimated relationship with child outcomes provide strong evidence that the justice system is a major factor in the intergenerational propagation of economic inequality and racial disparities in the U.S.

Explore further New study shows welfare prevents crime, quite dramatically

More information: Measuring Intergenerational Exposure to the U.S. Justice System: Evidence from Longitudinal Links between Survey and Administrative Data. Measuring Intergenerational Exposure to the U.S. Justice System: Evidence from Longitudinal Links between Survey and Administrative Data. sites.lsa.umich.edu/mgms/wp-co  xposure_20220609.pdf
A Sotheby's New York employee demonstrates the size of a Gorgosaurus dinosaur skeleton, the first to be offered at auction, Tuesday, July 5, 2022, in New York. Credit: AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson

The fossilized skeleton of a T. rex relative that roamed the earth about 76 million years ago will be auctioned in New York this month, Sotheby's announced Tuesday.

The Gorgosaurus skeleton will highlight Sotheby's natural history auction on July 28, the auction house said.

The Gorgosaurus was an apex carnivore that lived in what is now the western United States and Canada during the late Cretaceous Period. It predated its relative the Tyrannosaurus rex by 10 million years.

The specimen being sold was discovered in 2018 in the Judith River Formation near Havre, Montana, Sotheby's said. It measures nearly 10 feet (3 meters) tall and 22 (6.7 meters) feet long.

All of the other known Gorgosaurus skeletons are in museum collections, making this one the only specimen available for private ownership, the auction house said.

A Gorgosaurus dinosaur skeleton, the first to be offered at auction, is displayed at Sotheby's New York, Tuesday, July 5, 2022, in New York. Credit: AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson

A Gorgosaurus dinosaur skeleton, the first to be offered at auction, at Sotheby's New York, Tuesday, July 5, 2022, in New York. Credit: AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson

A Gorgosaurus dinosaur skeleton, the first to be offered at auction, is displayed at Sotheby's New York, Tuesday, July 5, 2022, in New York. Credit: AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson

"In my career, I have had the privilege of handling and selling many exceptional and unique objects, but few have the capacity to inspire wonder and capture imaginations quite like this unbelievable Gorgosaurus skeleton," Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby's global head of science and popular culture, said.

Sotheby's presale estimate for the fossil is $5 million to $8 million.

Explore further Sotheby's ramps up NFT operations

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Realistic colour view of Jupiters moon Europa. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute

NASA has recently announced US$600,000 (495,000) in funding for a study into the feasibility of sending swarms of miniature swimming robots (known as independent micro-swimmers) to explore oceans beneath the icy shells of our Solar System's many "ocean worlds". But don't imagine metal humanoids swimming frog-like underwater. They will probably be simple, triangular wedges.

Pluto is one example of a likely ocean world. But the worlds with oceans nearest to the surface, making them the most accessible, are Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.

Life inside ocean worlds

These oceans are of interest to scientists not just because they contain so much liquid water (Europa's ocean probably has about twice as much water as the whole of Earth's oceans), but because chemical interactions between rock and the ocean water could support life. In fact, the environment in these oceans may be very similar to that on Earth at the time life began.

These are environments where water that has seeped into the rock of the ocean floor becomes hot and chemically enrichedwater that is then expelled back into the ocean. Microbes can feed off this chemical energy, and can in turn be eaten by larger organisms. No sunlight or atmosphere is actually needed. Many warm, rocky structures of this sort, known as "hydrothermal vents", have been documented on Earth's ocean floors since they were discovered in 1977. In these locations, the local food web is indeed supported by chemosynthesis (energy from chemical reactions) rather than photosynthesis (energy from sunlight).

Cross-section through the outer zone of Europas south polar region showing plumes, the fractured ice shell, the liquid water ocean (cloudy at the base near hydrothermal plumes) and the rocky interior. Credit: NASA/JPL

In most of our Solar System's ocean worlds, the energy that heats their rocky interiors and prevents the oceans from freezing all the way to the base comes principally from tides. This is in contrast to the largely radioactive heating of the Earth's interior. But the chemistry of the water-rock interactions is similar.

Enceladus's ocean has already been sampled by flying the Cassini spacecraft through plumes of ice crystals that erupt through cracks in the ice. And there are hopes that NASA's Europa Clipper mission may find similar plumes to sample when it begins a series of close Europa flybys in 2030. However, getting inside the ocean to go exploring would potentially be much more informative than merely sniffing at a freeze-dried sample.

In the Swim

This is where the sensing with independent micro-swimmers (Swim) concept comes. The idea is to land on Europa or Enceladus (which would be neither cheap nor easy) at a place where the ice is relatively thin (not yet located) and use a radioactively heated probe to melt a 25cm-wide hole through to the oceanlocated hundreds or thousands of metres below.

A vent on the floor of the northeast Pacific. A bed of tube worms feeding on chemosynthetic microbes covers the base. Credit: NOAA/PMEL

Once there, it would release up to about four dozen 12cm long, wedge-shaped micro-swimmers to go exploring. Their endurance would be much less than that of the 3.6m long autonomous underwater vehicle famously named Boaty McBoatface, with a range of 2,000km that has already achieved a cruise of more than 100km below the Antarctic ice.

At this stage, Swim is merely one of five "phase 2 studies" into a range of "advanced concepts" funded in the 2022 round of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) programme. So there are still long odds against Swim becoming a reality, and no complete mission has been scoped out or funded.

A lander of Europa uses a probe to melt a hole through the ice, which then releases a swarm of swimming robots. Conceptual impression, not to scale. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The micro-swimmers would communicate with the probe acoustically (through sound waves), and the probe would send its data via cable to the lander on the surface. The study will trial prototypes in a test tank with all subsystems integrated.

Each micro-swimmer could explore maybe only tens of metres away from the probe, limited by their battery power and the range of their acoustic data link, but by acting as a flock they could map changes (in time or location) in temperature and salinity. They may even be able to measure changes in the cloudiness of the water, which could indicate the direction towards the nearest hydrothermal vent.

Independent micro-swimmers, deployed from a probe that has penetrated the ice crust of a moon. Not to scale. Credit: NASA/JPL

Power limitations of the micro-swimmers may mean that none could carry cameras (these would need their own light source) or sensors that could specifically sniff out organic molecules, though. But at this stage, nothing is ruled out.

I think finding signs of hydrothermal vents is a long shot, however. The ocean floor would, after all, be many kilometres below the micro-swimmer's release point. But, to be fair, pinpointing vents is not explicitly suggested in the Swim proposal. To locate and examine the vents themselves, we probably do need Boaty McBoatface in space. That said, Swim would be a good start.

Explore further Swarm of tiny swimming robots could look for life on distant worlds

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Credit: University of Montreal

Every day, large quantities of human-generated synthetic chemicals enter Quebec's wetlands and waterways, altering natural cycles.

One example is triclosan, a chemical compound found in a wide range of everyday consumer goods such as toothpaste, soap and deodorant. Triclosan is used as a preservative and antimicrobial to inhibit the growth of bacteria, fungi and mold.

But once released into the environment, triclosan can harm organisms at the bottom of the food chain, such as algae and microalgae, and the fetuses of some fish and frogs. It also affects microbial populations, contributing to the development of potentially antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.

Laurianne Bedard, a master's student in biological sciences at the University of Montreal, is studying the possibility of removing this contaminant using constructed wetlands.

Her project involves 50 mesocosmscontrolled environments that reproduce natural settingscomposed of three plants native to Canada: spotted joe-pye weed, American reed and prairie cordgrass.

Under the supervision of Joan Laur and Jacques Brisson, professors in the Department of Biological Sciences at UdeM, Bedard is assessing the plants' filtration potential, individually and in combination.

"We already know that American reed and prairie cordgrass are effective in removing a number of other contaminants," she said. "But the idea is to find out whether they also work for triclosan and to see if biodiversitycombining plantsenhances the effect. Conversely, if the results are negative on both counts, we'll know that these species are not the best for this purpose. And if a species is found to be very sensitive, it could potentially be used as a bioindicator for monitoring the contaminant in the water system."

A simple green solution to a major issue

Triclosan is one of the most commonly detected contaminants in aquatic environments. It can also be found in soil and sediments, and can even build up in living organisms, including humans.

"Human urine contains triclosan," said Bedard. "So do sebum and breast milk. Some studies even suggest that triclosan may cause neurological disturbances, but this has yet to be established."

In view of these impacts, Bedard is hopeful that the three selected species will be shown to be effective green options for the management of contaminated water, especially where treatment plants are insufficient or non-existent.

"Treatment plants can generally remove 90% of triclosan but that doesn't prevent it from being one of the 10 most detected pollutants in the world's waters," Bedard noted. "There are also many municipalities in outlying areas that do not fully filter their water and where effluents still contain triclosan. Constructed wetlands containing these species could be added at the end of the treatment cycle. People with remote cottages could also create a corridor with these plants at their water outlet, particularly since the three species all grow in Quebec and can easily be purchased at nurseries."
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

As expected, in West Virginia v. EPA, the Supreme Court continued its radical right-wing and ideological effort to limit the regulatory authority of federal administrative agencies. This terrible decision among a series of terrible decisions is unfortunate but far from fatal to efforts to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Fortunately for our planet, fossil fuels are already more expensive than renewable energy. Moreover, this price gap will only continue to grow. The sun is free and will outlast our species. Fossil fuels are finite and must be extracted from the ground, transported, and burned. Each step pollutes and costs money. In contrast, solar cells, wind, and battery technologies continue to advance and become more reliable, efficient, and less expensive. In the long run, there is little doubt that renewable energy will drive fossil fuels from the marketplace. The problem is that climate change requires a more rapid transition away from fossil fuels.

The Supreme Court's ill-advised decision will set a precedent that will impair critical efforts to promote America's health and welfare, but in the case of climate change, it simply compels another approachand one that I favor. Rather than forcing utilities to switch away from fossil fuels, the federal government should pay them to do it. Rather than raise the price of energy, we should subsidize itbut limit the subsidies to renewable energy. Some may say that the right wing and fossil fuel industry will use their typical political disinformation tactics to fight this subsidy; it will be our job, then, to paint them as favoring higher energy prices.

The form of subsidy could be a long-term loan for new renewable energy generation, storage, and transmission facilities that would be repaid by the difference between fossil fuelbased electricity rates and lower renewable energy rates. Renewable energy costs less, and with federal capital, the price difference can be used to pay for new, modern renewable energybased electrical systems. Utility bills would maintain a charge for the capital costs of renewable energy construction until the debt is retired.

The traditional method of compelling behavior changecommand and control regulation or taxes and user feeshas the effect of raising prices as they compel behavior. This approach has the benefit of mass coverage via compulsion. A pivot to a subsidy reduces political friction and would not violate the Constitution if enacted by Congress. But utilities might still resist accepting the subsidy. We saw this under Obamacare, where states run by conservative ideologues refused to accept federal subsidies to help insure people who could not afford health care. Perhaps these radical right-wing state governments will be more willing to lower energy prices for everyone than to allow the federal government to subsidize health care for their poor citizens.

The headlines last week indicated that the Supreme Court dealt a death blow to climate regulation and the drama and extremity of the action attracted attention. According to Adam Liptak in the New York Times:

"The Supreme Court on Thursday limited the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, dealing a blow to the Biden administration's efforts to address climate change. The vote was 6 to 3, with the court's three liberal justices in dissent, saying that the majority had stripped the E.P.A. of "the power to respond to the most pressing environmental challenge of our time." Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr, writing for the majority, only glancingly alluded to the harms caused by climate change. Justice Elena Kagan began her dissent with a long passage detailing the devastation the planet faces, including hurricanes, floods, famines, coastal erosion, mass migration and political crises. The question in the case, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, turned on the scope of the language of the Clean Air Act. Under it, he wrote, Congress had not clearly given the agency sweeping authority to regulate the energy industry.''

Roberts and his colleagues must be reading a different Clean Air Act than the one enacted by Congress because, indeed, it does provide "sweeping authority." Americans had seen the smog in Los Angeles and gave the government the power to clean it up. Still, by my reading of this terrible decision, the EPA could still regulate carbon dioxide emissions at individual power plants. The people who wrote the Clean Air Act knew that technology would advance in ways they couldn't predict and left it up to EPA to address new threats as they emerged. As I wrote a few weeks ago, the impact of the Supreme Court on climate change may be far less than its impact in more complex, technical areas that are more difficult for legislators to understand. The radical, extreme view of this court precludes appropriate delegation of technical decision-making from elected officials to agency experts. Climate change is far easier to understand than issues like genetic engineering or social media algorithms. This ruling reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the dangers of modern technology.

Despite the ideological idiocy of the Supreme Court, there are many ways to control greenhouse gasses other than the approaches now envisioned by EPA. A little creativity and a pivot away from the approach rejected by the court is certainly called for. Rather than focusing on policies to reduce climate change or greenhouse gas pollution, we should build support for the modernization of our energy system. Make it more efficient, resilient, and reliable, and power it with renewable energy. If you have a home system and the grid is your backup, you may never lose power, and your cost of energy will go down. Reduction of greenhouse gasses and pollution from fossil fuel extraction would be a pleasant side effect of this more technologically advanced energy system.

A lower cost and more reliable energy system would have universal appeal. You would not need to care about a greenhouse gas reduction policy to support that goal. The importance of electricity in our daily life makes this issue highly salient. Refrigeration, the internet, smartphones, television, computers, cooling, and, in some cases, home heating and water heating all require electricity. More and more of our time is spent utilizing these technologies. Electricity is almost (but not quite) as important to modern life as food and water. If you think I'm wrong, visit a home with teenagers lacking wi-fi or cell coverage during a power blackout. It's not a pretty picture.

While the Supreme Court has embarked on a dangerous path, I think the headlines about the death of climate policy are incorrect. The time frame of this transition needs to be addressed more realistically than it has been to date. We are hooked on fossil fuels, and all the political will in the world can only do so much to speed the transition to renewables. This change will take time, and we need to approach it with determination, creativity, and flexibility.

Reading the headlines and listening to environmental advocates, I sometimes think the reaction to these setbacks simply feeds into the polarized good guy/bad guy mindset that plagues our politics. This Supreme Court, like the court that FDR faced during the New Deal, is overstepping its powers and undermining its own legitimacy. While FDR's court-packing strategy failed, his attack on the Supreme Court probably resulted in more moderate decisions. President Biden needs to study FDR and the court's attack on the New Deal and use the presidency to fight back. While he does not have FDR's congressional majority, public support for the right to choose and the right to breathe clean air and reduce extreme weather events remains strong and available to mobilize.

The Supreme Court decision in West Virginia v. EPA reinforces the sense of dysfunction in our national government. Action will need to focus on state and local governments along with powerful corporations and institutions to continue forward motion in the transition to environmental sustainability.

Explore further US Supreme Court limits government powers to curb greenhouse gases

This story is republished courtesy of Earth Institute, Columbia University http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu.
Soil tillage equipment moves large amount of material down slope as it is pulled through the soil' Credit: Professor John Quinton

Plowing and tilling on hilly slopes is causing farm soils to thin and threatens future crop yields, a new study published in Nature Food finds.

Scientists behind the study, from Lancaster (UK) and Augsburg (Germany) Universities, argue that unless farmers stop tilling hill slopes, over the long-term the soils on hillsides could thin to the point where growth of food crops is severely threatened.

For centuries, farmers have tilled the soil in their fields to provide seed beds in order to produce crops. Once undertaken using traditional animal-drawn plows, as farming has mechanized within the last century the tilling process has shifted to heavier and faster tractors.

Tilling soils, which includes plowing, is known to move significant amounts of soil down slopes and adds to erosion caused by weather. On sloping land, tillage causes soils to move down off the concave parts of hills, and is deposited in valley bottoms.

As soils thin on slopes, material from the subsoil mixes with topsoil, reducing its growing quality because of inferior nutrients, biological activity and reduced water storage.

Professor John Quinton, of Lancaster University and one of two Principal Investigators of the study, says that "the role of tillage in reducing soil depth remains an under-recognized threat to plant production. While we have known that tillage moves significant amounts of soil down slopes, often exceeding the amount moved by water and wind erosion, we have known little about how the resulting thinning of the soils affects crop yields, until now."

Professor Peter Fiener of University of Augsburg and second Principal Investigator says that "as machines continue to grow and climate change increases the frequency of droughts the impact of erosion of soils by tillage on crop production in rolling topography is likely to become more severe across many parts of the world."

The researchers looked at wheat and maize crops grown in the northern German region of Uckermark, which is a highly mechanized and very productive agricultural region in Europe. Although agricultural production has been possible in Uckermark for at least 1,000 years, the researchers' modeling predicts that over the next fifty years wheat and maize yields are likely to decline as modern mechanized agriculture accelerates erosion caused by tillage on slopes.

The researchers used published information of crop thinning on crop yields and applied soil redistribution and crop growth models to examine the effects of tillage at a regional landscape scale.

Soil tillage equipment moves large amount of material down slope as it is pulled through the soil. Credit: Professor John Quinton

This enabled them to determine whether the yield gains in the parts of the landscape that gained soil from erosion, the concave parts, outweighed the losses caused by thinning soils on slopes.

Their calculations show that by continuing along a business as usual approach to tilling on slopes, farmers across the Uckermark region will see combined declines of winter wheat yields of up to 7.1 percent within 50 years and up to 10 percent over a century (in normal to dry years).

For maize, the researchers predict yields to reduce by up to 4 percent over fifty years, and 5.9 percent over 100 years (in normal to dry years).

The effects of thinning soils will be most pronounced in times of drought as thinning soils are less able to hold on to moisture and nutrients. Wetter years, although not as pronounced as normal and dry years, will also see yields fall over 50 to 100 years.

These reductions equate to thousands of tons of lost food production from the Uckermark region alone. The researchers believe reductions in crop yields due to soil erosion are likely to apply across the world where tilling takes place on slopes.

They argue that this projected increase highlights the need for urgent action to reduce soil thinning caused by tilling.

Professor Quinton says that their "modeling shows that if we keep tilling our soils then we will see declines of crop yields at a regional scalethis will be worse during periods of droughts as thinner soils are less able to retain water for plants."

Professor Fiener says that they "show that the business as usual approach will depress crop yields in the long term. Farmers could look at mitigations such adapting tillage speeds depending on slope position and overall reducing tillage depths to slow the erosion process, but really farmers need to be looking at moving away from tilling on slopes to protect their soils and future yields."

Although the researchers did not model the effects of climate change, they believe that the pressure of tillage erosion will likely be amplified as climate change increases the frequencies of dry spells during crop growing seasons.

Explore further Less ploughing enables carbon storage in agricultural soils

More information: John N. Quinton et al, Tillage exacerbates the vulnerability of cereal crops to drought, Nature Food (2022). Journal information: Nature Food John N. Quinton et al, Tillage exacerbates the vulnerability of cereal crops to drought,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s43016-022-00533-8
Hauling produce, Madhya Pradesh state, India. Credit: Kevin Krajick/Institute

Groundwater depletion in regions of India where grain is grown for public distribution is a huge challenge for the country of 1.4 billion people. A new study identifies specific adjustments in the Indian government's procurement and distribution system that could rectify this issue, particularly in regard to irrigation systems that utilize groundwater pumped by subsidized electricity. This kind of irrigation has long been seen as vital for India's food-security goals.

"Electricity for farmers in India was heavily subsidized, so they had no incentive to save their water," said lead author Naresh Devineni, a City College of New York civil engineer and affiliate of the Columbia Water Center. "Instead, they tried to maximize produce at the expense of the groundwater. This is not sustainable."

The study appears in the June issue of Nature Communications.

The researchers used over 100 years of daily climate data, along with economic, crop yield and other related variables to demonstrate that crop revenue could be optimized by changing where crops are grown and procured. The study also found that the government's procurement targets could be met without irrigation. This, in turn, could increase farm income, while stopping groundwater depletion. The study also says that more sustainable irrigation practices could potentially grow the average farm income by 30 percent.

Additionally, the study noted that decreasing electricity subsidies in areas with groundwater depletion could assist in reducing the need to redistribute farm income, which remains a key impediment to political changes required to change the procurement system.

"This is not the end of the study," Devineni said. "We can now start the conversation with policymakers, and see if the model from the paper can be modified by new proposed solutions. We have shown that this solution is possible, but we still have more work to do."

The study provides a novel perspective that could help realign and increase crop production in India and potentially elsewhere, say the authors.

"The topic should have broad interest," said co-author Upmanu Lall, director of the Columbia Water Center. "Our paper shows how this problem can be addressed accounting for climate variations."

Explore further Sustainable irrigation can feed billions, make agriculture resilient to climate change

More information: Naresh Devineni et al, Solving groundwater depletion in India while achieving food security, Nature Communications (2022). Journal information: Nature Communications Naresh Devineni et al, Solving groundwater depletion in India while achieving food security,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31122-9

This story is republished courtesy of Earth Institute, Columbia University http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu.
China secured a bumper summer harvest of oil crops this year, with an uptick both in rapeseed output and procurement prices, the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration said Tuesday.



By June 30, the country had purchased 660,000 tonnes of rapeseed, an increase of 320,000 tonnes year on year. The procurement prices of the oil crop ranged from 6 yuan (about 0.9 U.S. dollars) to 7.2 yuan per kilo, 0.8-1.8 yuan higher than last year.

China has stepped up efforts to advance the expansion of oil crop planting to wean itself off imports. Currently, China's dependency ratio on edible vegetable oil imports is 70 percent.

As the major cooking oil, rapeseed oil accounts for half of the domestic oil consumption and plays a core role in ensuring the security of the edible oil supply.

China's rapeseed output will likely reach 14.95 million tonnes in 2022/23, and rapeseed imports are expected to be 2.8 million tonnes, according to the China National Grain and Oils Information Center.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

How does preterm birth affect children's school grades? Using Swedish registers for children born 19821994, a new study, published in Population Studies, investigates how prematurely born pupils perform in school at age 16.

"We have examined how school grades are affected by degree of prematurity," says Anna Baranowska-Rataj, Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Umea University, "Our results show that the negative effects of preterm birth are observed mostly among children born extremely preterm, that is, after less than 28 weeks of gestation. Children born moderately preterm suffer no ill effects." Baranowska-Rataj conducted the study together with her colleagues Kieron Barclay (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research), Joan Costa-Font (London School of Economics and Political Science), Mikko Myrskyla (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research) and Berkay Ozcan (London School of Economics and Political Science).

Better socioeconomic resources did not lead to better grades

The researchers also wanted to learn more about what role the environment played when it came to preterm children's school performance. They studied characteristics of the children's school districts and their families' socioeconomic resources.

"In this study we examined two types of environments that may potentially support preterm-born children," says Anna Baranowska-Rataj. "The first type is private resources of families in which children are raised. The second, and so far less studied type of environment, are school districts. Regarding our results, we do not find any evidence for the moderating effect of parental socioeconomic resources. Apparently in Sweden, richer or better educated families are not necessarily better equipped to support children born preterm. But we do find that extremely preterm children in the top decile of school districts have as good grades as full-term children in an average school district. This raises hopes that schools can play a compensatory role and might help children with some types of early-life health disadvantage."

Sibling comparisons

To avoid making misleading conclusions, the researchers compared preterm children with their siblings.

"Families differ in terms of genetic background, economic resources, housing conditions, or lifestyle. All these factors may matter for things we focus on in this study: a probability of being born preterm and a child's school grades," says Baranowska-Rataj. "Therefore, comparing children from different families may lead to misleading conclusions. But when we look at two children from the same family, one born preterm and another born at full term, we can be more confident that any differences in their school grades are related to gestational age instead of resulting from substantial differences in family-specific factors that are not observed for a researcher."

School environment may reduce educational disadvantage

In future research, Baranowska-Rataj thinks it would be interesting to find out what specific aspects of school principals' decisions can be helpful for children who are in a more difficult health-related situation.

"This study contributes to a broader debate about how local authorities and schools can support children who have health-related problems. Previous research paid a lot of attention to families' private resources that can be mobilized in order to provide support for children who might need extra help. But when families are regarded as the chief source of support, this only strengthens educational inequalities. Our findings imply that the schooling environment may be a relevant factor for reducing the educational disadvantage of children who suffer from health problems."

Explore further Risk of developmental difficulties remains high among children born early

More information: How do preterm birth eff Anna Baranowska-Rataj et al, Preterm birth and educational disadvantage: Heterogeneous effects, Population Studies (2022). Journal information: Population Studies How do preterm birth eff Anna Baranowska-Rataj et al, Preterm birth and educational disadvantage: Heterogeneous effects,(2022). DOI: 10.1080/00324728.2022.2080247
As of late May, in the three months since Russia invaded Ukraine, 6.8 million refugees had fled the war into other countries. The majority, some 3.6 million people, headed to Poland, while another million went to Romania. European Union nations and others began offering visa waivers and other schemes to help Ukrainians. The UK, for example, is currently home to about 60,000 refugees from Ukraine.

Further east of Europe, the people of Afghanistan are experiencing conflict which has lasted for over 40 years. More than 2.6 million Afghan refugees are registered with the UN's refugee agency alone, with an increasing number of people fleeing the country in the wake of the Taliban takeover.

Do people think that refugees from one of these two countries deserve more help than the other? Are people's views mirroring the racist double standards that characterised much of the coverage of conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East? We set out to find out what the British public believes. Caught between their desire to show solidarity for people affected by war and their evergreen concerns that too many people are coming to the UK, legally or illegally, we wanted to know how recent events have shaped their views.

To do this, we conducted an online survey, as part of ongoing research, with a representative sample of 1,690 adults in Great Britain contacted via YouGov. Among other questions, we asked respondents: "do you agree or disagree that we should let refugees fleeing conflict-affected areas come and stay in the UK?"

To get to the core of the matter, however, we actually deployed three slightly different versions of this question, with each respondent only seeing one. In one version, we asked the question as it is, in one further version, we added a reference to Ukraine as the conflict-afflicted area, and in a third version, Afghanistan was used as the example.

For people receiving the neutral version of the question, levels of support for helping refugees were high, with 71% agreeing that the refugees should be allowed to come and stay in the UK. We found similar levels of agreement when we ask about Ukrainian refugees, with 70% of respondents agreeing we should help.

However, in the version where we ask about Afghan refugees, the proportion of respondents agreeing that we should help dropped by a staggering 21% to 50%. The difference is statistically significant and shows a specific, rather than universal, feeling of responsibility among the UK public.

Stark difference between Conservative and Labour voters

We investigated this interesting gap by comparing the responses we got for a series of political and demographic groups. The gap between support for helping refugees from Ukraine and Afghanistan is at its largest for those respondents who voted Conservative at the last general election. Of all Conservative voters, 67% thought we should let refugees come and stay in the UK, compared with 65% when we used the Ukraine frame, and only 36% with the Afghanistan frame.

This is not to say we didn't find a gap with Labour voters, but it was much smaller. In this group, 81% said that the UK should let refugees come and stay, compared to 82% for those who received the Ukraine question, and 76% with the Afghanistan frame.

Overall, there is a 21% gap for the general population, which grows to 31% for Conservative voters, and shrinks to 5% for Labour voters.

The smallest gap is observed among young respondents aged 18 to 24. In this group, 58% thought we should help when asked with the neutral frame, 60% with the Ukraine frame, and 59% with the Afghanistan frame. So, while the gap is almost gone, support levels for helping refugees, in general, were also lower than for older groups in our sample.

Thinking beyond ourselves

For all those optimist proponents of a reawakening public spirit favouring international cooperation and solidarity in the face of conflicts, pandemics or perhaps even climate change, these results are a reminder that there are limits beyond surface shifts in the public mood.

The war in Ukraine has clearly prompted British people to think about their role in helping those who suffer and to build a fairer world. But charities, NGOs, and governments, through their efforts, are apparently still not able to bridge the gap in the public's mind between the specific case of Ukraine and the broader cause of helping all those afflicted by conflicts worldwide.

To better understand what is driving the sense of exceptionalism regarding Ukraine, we might look to the higher levels of media attention that are currently being given to the crisis there. Another factor may be a perceived cultural or social nearness to Ukrainians (or, conversely, a sense of distance from or even racism towards Afghan refugees). It's also possible that British people are more open to helping Ukrainians because their plight leaves them with a stronger sense that something similar could happen to them.

Thinking "it could be me" will move many to take action, but it won't give us the chance to engender the radical change in our care for all people around the world. Once the emergency is over in Ukraine, the work to make the world a place without suffering will still go on.

Explore further War could see Ukraine's population fall by a third

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Ingerophrynus galeatus. Credit: Anna Rauhaus

As was highlighted in the foreword to the WWF Greater Mekong Report 2021, written by Prof. Dr. Thomas Ziegler, Curator for Herpetology, Ichthyology, and Invertebrates, at Cologne Zoo (Koln, Germany), there is an urgent need for more studies that identify the gaps in species conservation.

In a new scientific article, published in Nature Conservation, Ziegler and his team present precisely such an analysis, focusing on the world's most threatened vertebrate class: the amphibians. The share of amphibian taxa classified as threatened with extinction41%is a clear indicator for the decline in global biodiversity and a warning sign for significant environmental degradation.

The scientists examined the threat status of the Vietnamese amphibians, building on the bachelor thesis of Marie Krzikowski of the University of Cologne, Germany.

They identified 275 amphibian species known from Vietnam, noting that the number is likely to go up. The country is classified as a biodiversity hotspot, and the rate of discovering new amphibian species remains relatively high. Of these 275 species, 95 (35%) species are endemic to the country, with more than half of them reported exclusively from a single locality, which makes them especially vulnerable to extinction. Vietnam's Central Highlands were revealed as the region with the highest species diversity (130 species), the most regionally endemic species (26 of total 67 regionally endemic species), and the most species classified as threatened by the IUCN Red List (11 species), which highlights it as a site of particular amphibian conservation concern.

Tylototriton vietnamensis. Credit: Anna Rauhaus

In terms of threat status, 50 of the 275 species recorded so far from Vietnam (18%) are classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as threatened with extinction. These include 27 endemic species. Most of them are frogs, followed by salamanders, where 60% of the listed species are classified as threatened with extinction.

Alarmingly, 13 endemic species, including two threatened species, have been recorded exclusively from unprotected areas. For two-thirds of Vietnam's endemic amphibians, there is no conservation data available, as their IUCN Red List status is either missing or outdated.

According to data from the Zoological Information Management System, 29 (11%) of the total 275 species reported to occur in Vietnam are represented in global zoos, including five threatened species, with the highest diversity concentrated in zoos in Europe and North America.

Tylototriton ziegleri. Credit: Thomas Ziegler

Paramesotriton deloustali. Credit: Thomas Ziegler

These facts, now compiled in the overview paper by Marie Krzikowski, Truong Q. Nguyen, Cuong T. Pham, Dennis Rodder, Anna Rauhaus, Minh D. Le and Thomas Ziegler, reveal for the first time some obvious gaps in conservation. Importantly, they will provide a directory to authorities, conservationists, rescue centers, and zoos, so that they can follow up with appropriate actions.

In particular, the conservation of microendemic species can only be addressed by organizations, NGOs or partner institutes on site, for example in the form of field work, regulatory support or protected area establishment.

Where species are at risk of disappearing rapidly, for example, species with a very limited distribution range, the establishment of ex-situ programs by local partners in cooperation with international zoos could help, in addition to in-situ conservation measures as part of the IUCN's One Plan Approach, which combines in-situ and ex-situ efforts and various expertises for the optimum protection of a species.

Explore further Lost or extinct? Study finds the existence of more than 500 animal species remains uncertain

More information: Marie Krzikowski et al, Assessment of the threat status of the amphibians in VietnamImplementation of the One Plan Approach, Nature Conservation (2022). Journal information: Nature Conservation Marie Krzikowski et al, Assessment of the threat status of the amphibians in VietnamImplementation of the One Plan Approach,(2022). DOI: 10.3897/natureconservation.49.82145
SARATOGA SPRINGS  Four people are facing felony and misdemeanor charges following a burglary in Saratoga Springs.

Police received a call at about 12:30 a.m. on June 28 reporting a robbery at a residence on Division Street. The 28-year-old victim told police that he had gone outside his home to speak with a male acquaintance who had called him.

Once outside, the victim discovered three additional men with whom he was acquainted. All of them went into the victims home, where the four stole property from the residence, according to a news release.

During the incident, one of the four men displayed what appeared to be a pistol and threatened to shoot the victim if he caused any issues. The victims 6-year-old son woke up at that point and witnessed the event. The four men left the residence.

Officers on patrol located the suspect vehicle shortly after the 911 call and arrested the men. The weapon involved was found to be an imitation pistol that appeared very similar to a Glock handgun, police said.

Arrested were: 18-year-old Michael C. Green, 20-year-old Christopher C. Rothaupt and Eric T. Murray, who all live in Saratoga Springs, and 18-year-old Gansevoort resident Evan A. Jenkins.

They were all charged with felony counts of first-degree burglary, first-degree robbery and fourth-degree conspiracy as well as misdemeanor charges of second-degree menacing, endangering the welfare of a child and petit larceny.

The four men were arraigned in Saratoga Springs City Court and sent to Saratoga County Jail with bail set at $25,000 cash or $50,000 bond.
Democratic congressional candidate Matt Castelli on Friday announced that his campaign raised more that $300,000 in the second quarter, April-June, and had more than $500,000 in his campaign fund, as of Thursday.

I am grateful to every donor, volunteer, and voter who is supporting this campaign and who helped us exceed our fundraising goal this quarter, he said, in a news release.

Detailed campaign finance reports for the quarter are due to be filed by July 15.

Castelli, a former CIA counterterrorism official from the town of Saratoga, is running in an Aug. 23 primary against Matt Putorti, a lawyer from Whitehall, for the Democratic nomination to challenge U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, in November.

Putorti and Stefanik had not yet announced their quarterly fundraising totals, as of Tuesday.

In other regional political news:

Elvis for Elise

Elvis Presley tribute artist James Cawley, in character, marched with U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, in the Ticonderoga Best Fourth in the North parade on Monday.

An automobile behind them had a sign that read Elvis backs the Blue (referring to police officers) and we back Elise.

Cawley, a nationally known Elvis tribute artist, also is owner of Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga.

State Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, also marched with Stefanik and Cawley.

Farther back in the parade, Democratic congressional candidate Matt Putorti marched with a group of supporters.

Putorti, a lawyer from Whitehall, is running in an Aug. 23 primary against Matt Castelli for the Democratic nomination to challenge Stefanik in November.

Stefaniks score improves

U.S. Rep. Elise Stefaniks grade improved by nearly 20 points on the latest American Conservative Union, also known as CPAC, scorecard, making her the leader among New Yorks Republican House delegation.

But she remains quite a ways behind the head of the class among House and Senate Republicans.

Stefanik received a 77 out of a possible 100 points on the political groups latest scorecard, based on her 2021 voting record, bringing her to a career-long score of 50.76.

Her 2021 score was the same as U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Missouri.

A total of 104 Republican members of Congress received 100% scores for 2021.

Stefaniks scores in previous years are as follows: 2020, 57.14; 2019, 58.62; 2018, 32; 2017, 40.74; 2016, 40; 2015, 33.33.

Elsewhere in the region, Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, received a 3 on the latest scorecard, an increase from 0 on the previous annual scorecard.

CPAC rates legislators

State Assemblyman Matt Simpson, with 84 out of a possible 100 points, had the highest score of area state legislators on a newly released scorecard from the American Conservative Union, also known as CPAC.

The scorecard is based on votes during 2021.

Scores for other area legislators are as follows: Sen. Daphne Jordan, R-Halfmoon, 74; Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, 70; Assemblyman Jake Ashby, R-Castleton, 66; Sen. James Tedisco, R-Glenville, 53; Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, D-Round Lake, 30.

Stec on gun bill

State Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, predicted that the U.S. Supreme Court will strike down New Yorks latest gun law, which Gov. Kathy Hochul signed Friday, the same day the hastily drafted law passed the Senate and Assembly.

All youre doing is making New Yorkers less safe, and youre stripping them of their God-given right to defend themselves in public, Stec said in remarks on the Senate floor, recorded and posted on his Senate office Facebook page.

The law prohibits the carrying of concealed firearms at schools, government buildings, health care facilities, on public transit and in Times Square.

Stec said the law does just the opposite of its intent, by providing would-be shooters confidence that they will not encounter defensive fire in those places.

The law also establishes a comprehensive application process for a permit to carry a concealed firearm in New York.

Stec said that county clerk offices will be overwhelmed with the new process, creating lengthy delays for those applying for concealed carry permits.

The law was in response to the Supreme Court recently striking down a century-old New York law that required a permit to carry a concealed handgun in public.

Joy endorsement

The Police Benevolent Association of New York State Troopers on Monday announced its endorsement of Republican congressional candidate Liz Lemery Joy.

The union represents more than 6,000 active and retired state police officers.

The challenges facing members of the law enforcement community are greater than ever before, and we need individuals like Liz Joy in leadership positions to help law enforcement officers better serve the residents of New York state, said Thomas Mungeer, the unions president.

Joy, a former blogger and speaker from Schenectady, is challenging Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, in the 20th Congressional District.
SEA ISLE CITY  The citys Independence Day fireworks display Monday night suffered technical difficulties, causing the overall show to be shortened, city officials said.

Like many shore towns, Sea Isle holds a fireworks spectacle on July 4, setting them off from a barge floating in the ocean of the 50th Street beach.

About two minutes after the show began at 9 p.m., gaps in fireworks being launched occurred, followed by one of the 6-inch shells exploding inside the firing mechanism, city officials said Tuesday in a news release.

The explosion led to further delays and ultimately shortened the show, officials said.

Shore celebrates Fourth of July OCEAN CITY  South Jersey celebrated the 4th of July weekend in style, with many events retu

No injuries to the fireworks team or tug boat crew that moved the barge were reported.

Despite the mishap, the team managed to set off a majority of the fireworks, officials said. The city also is coordinating with Pyrotechnico, which provided the fireworks, on obtaining credit for the ones that were not launched.

The most important thing is that no one was injured, Mayor Leonard Desiderio said. Even though there was a problem with the fireworks show, it was still a great Fourth of July in Sea Isle City.

Both the barge and tug returned to their dock with no problems, officials said.
WILDWOOD  Four juveniles visiting the Boardwalk over the holiday weekend were threatened by another group found with a gun reported stolen eight years ago in South Carolina, police said Tuesday.

Officers stationed in the 3200 block of the Boardwalk were approached by the juveniles about 6 p.m. Sunday. The group told police they were involved in a verbal fight in the 3500 block of the Boardwalk with three other people, including two juveniles, police said.

During the altercation, one of the individuals brandished a gun later found to be a .22 caliber pistol stolen from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in 2014, police said.

After using surveillance footage and provided descriptions, officers detained Elizabeth Mademann, 36, of Hamilton, Mercer County, and two juveniles. While searching the suspects, they found the firearm and five rounds, police said.

Each juvenile was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm and receiving stolen property. One was additionally charged with possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and aggravated assault.

Mademann also was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm.

All three were released on summonses pending court.
METUCHEN  Gov. Phil Murphy on Tuesday signed seven new bills into law aimed at curtailing gun violence, including legislation to allow the state attorney general to pursue lawsuits against the firearm industry.

Murphy, a second-term Democrat whos already signed a number of measures focused on gun violence, invoked the fatal Independence Day shooting in Illinois, as well as recent fatal shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas.

In the wake of horrific mass shootings in Highland Park, Illinois, Uvalde Texas, and Buffalo, New York, it is necessary that we take action in order to protect our communities, Murphy said.

Previewing what could be more legislation to come, he said theres more work to be done, particularly on how New Jersey will address the Supreme Court striking down its justifiable need requirement to carry a handgun. Murphy said after signing the new laws that in response to the courts expansion of gun rights, he wants to see the Democrat-led Legislature address where handguns can and cannot be carried, as well as expanding the list of people prohibited from carrying.

This is a huge step forward for commonsense gun safety and for safer communities. But it cannot be our only or last step, he said.

New Jersey has among the strictest gun laws in the nation, a major factor explaining few cases of firearm-related violence compared with other states, acting Attorney General Matt Platkin said.

South Jersey Democrats lambast local gun resolutions Some Atlantic County Democrats are criticizing a series of gun-rights resolutions that Repub

The bills Murphy signed:

Authorize the states attorney general to bring public nuisance claims against gun manufacturers and others who market firearms.

Require a safety course in order to get a firearm purchasers identification card in New Jersey. Training to get a carry permit had already been required.

Hold those moving from out of state to New Jersey to the permitting requirements residents must follow. That means applying for a purchasers permit within 60 days and registering weapons with law enforcement.

Require gun sellers to retail so-called microstamping firearms  weapons that imprint each round of ammunition with identifying information once such technology is certified to be available by the state attorney general.

Require a state registry to track ammunition sales.

Increase the penalties for people who purchase firearms parts to manufacture weapons without serial numbers from a third-degree crime to a second-degree crime, taking the possible punishments from 3 to 5 years in prison to 5 to 10.

Ban .50-caliber guns.

Murphy signed the bills alongside public officials in a packed municipal building that was also filled with anti-gun violence activists wearing red Moms Demand Action T-shirts.

Second Amendment advocates opposed the legislation, testifying against it in the Legislature, which voted on the measures the same day the Supreme Court delivered its opinion in the New York case.

Gov. Murphys bill package chooses to target law-abiding gun owners while ignoring criminals and those with dangerous behavioral issues who are responsible for most violence in New Jersey, said Scott Bach, executive director of the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs.

Murphy seemed to acknowledge criticism Tuesday that the measures might not prevent gun crime, but said that if they reduce gun-related violence, then theyll be worth it.

Millville man convicted in 2016 drug bust BRIDGETON  A Millville man arrested as part of a 23-person drug bust in 2016 was convicted 

If by signing these laws today we can improve our batting average, in other words you measure your batting average by fewer gun crimes, fewer fatalities, fewer injuries, more positive street team work, better prosecution  whatever it might be  better holding the manufacturers more accountable. All of that may not move the needle to batting a thousand, but it improves our batting average and thats what we are all in this to do, he said.

The measures  some of which had been pending for years  sped through the Legislature after the Supreme Courts ruling last month.

They come more than a year after Murphy had unveiled the latest round of measures aimed at cracking down on gun violence, but legislation he previously sought was not among the new laws the governor signed Tuesday.

A measure requiring guns be kept in safes or lockboxes and legislation upping the age to 21 from 18 to purchase long guns in New Jersey are still pending in the Legislature.
Contractors building the county's new juvenile detention center may be required to pay a "prevailing wage," if a proposal by a Scott County supervisor clears the five-member board.

Democrats on the board support a plan that would require contractors to pay an average of what workers in similar jobs make within the region, called a prevailing wage. But others say supervisors are required by Iowa law to award contracts to the lowest bidder, regardless of what they pay their employees.

The county's decision will hinge on a complicated slew of state and federal laws that dictate how municipalities can contract with companies on public projects.

Because the Youth Justice & Rehabilitation Center is funded by more than $7 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds, union representatives and the board's two Democratic supervisors have argued that its construction should follow standards of the Davis-Bacon Act, a 1931 law that requires private contractors on federally funded projects to pay at least a certain wage and benefits determined by the Department of Labor. The federal requirements for the funds, however, don't explicitly require governments to hold to the standard.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury, which sets the rules for how COVID funds can be spent, "encourages" agreements with contractors that adhere to "strong labor standards," including paying at or above the prevailing wage. But Treasury doesn't require it.

The National Association of Counties, in a March presentation on the Treasury's final rule, advised that counties had to follow the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage standards only if they used other federal funds coupled with the COVID-19 relief dollars.

Scott County Assistant Attorney Rob Cusack cautioned supervisors on Tuesday that the Iowa Supreme Court issued a ruling in 1993, city of Des Moines v. Master Builders of Iowa, that stated requiring non-federally funded projects to follow a prevailing wage violates state laws that require counties to award contracts to the lowest responsible bidder.

"The requirement that employers 'offer wages at or above the prevailing rate' has been found by the Supreme Court of Iowa to be inconsistent with the competitive bidding statute and is preempted under ERISA," Cusack wrote in a memo, referencing the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

Ryan Drew, a business representative with International Operating Engineers Local 150, said the difference in the amount between contractors with or without union workers was marginal compared to the difference in wages and retirement benefits that workers could then spend in the community.

"Whoever's more efficient, whoever's got cheaper aggregates or whatever the case might be, let them compete on that, but let's not let them compete on exploiting workers or cheating them on the retirement benefits that's going to make our community strong," Drew said.

Supervisors are expected to vote Thursday on language that would require the county to award the Youth Justice & Rehabilitation Center project to contractors who "pay their laborers and mechanics not less than the prevailing wage rates and fringe benefits."

"We want to have the determination to protect local workers, and the local taxpayers, who will eventually pick up those bills," Supervisor Ken Croken, a Democrat, said.

Supervisor Brinson Kinzer, himself a labor union representative and a Democrat, said they weren't asking the county to bid every project with prevailing wage, just the ones with federal dollars.

"We're asking these projects to adhere to the federal dollars using their language to abide," he said. "It encourages, doesn't say, shall, it just encourages (us) to do that."

Supervisor Chair Ken Beck asked whether adopting a requirement for a prevailing wage could open up the county to a lawsuit from other bidders.

"Could you not be subjecting yourself to lawsuits from other bidders who said that, 'Yes, we were experienced enough, but you arbitrarily set these artificial barriers there which in the end costs the taxpayers more money?" Beck asked.

"The short answer to your question is, 'yes.'" Cusack replied.
China is considering releasing pork from its central reserves and guiding local pork reserve releases to prevent sharp hikes in hog prices, the country's top economic planner said Tuesday.



The country is taking measures to ease the decline in market supply of pork caused by some hog producers' reluctance to sell hogs that are ready for the market, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.

The price of pork, China's staple meat, has been rising in recent weeks. From June 20 to 24, the average pork price tracked by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs went up 5.4 percent week on week and rose 31.6 percent from a year ago.

The commission said in an earlier statement that it has held a meeting with industrial associations, hog farming companies and slaughterhouses to ensure market supply and stabilize prices.

It will also guide local authorities to release pork reserves in a timely manner to create a regulatory synergy.
The wife of an inmate at Thomson Prison is alleging retaliation after speaking to the media about the alleged abuse of her husband.

Shawanna Edwards said her husband, Jackie Edwards, has suffered retaliation in the form of physical abuse and torture that nearly killed him as a result of stories in the Quad-City Times and Dispatch-Argus detailing other incidents of interrogation, abuse and overuse of solitary confinement.

Jackie Edwards, 61, was an inmate at USP Thomson, serving the remainder of a five-year sentence for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. He was transferred to USP Thomson on Feb. 28 from Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago. As a nonviolent offender with good behavior, he was sent to Thomson's satellite minimum-security camp.

On April 14, Shawanna Edwards said her husband was removed from his cell and taken to the main facility where he was beaten until he was unconscious and placed in solitary confinement. He remained in solitary confinement for 65 days and was only allowed two phone calls, on May 4 and June 4.

Shawanna Edwards said Jackie also was denied personal hygiene items and access to an attorney, despite requesting to speak to an attorney many times. She said she heard from him again on June 18, where he called her from a transit facility. He said he had been physically assaulted by correctional officers because of the media attention and transferred from Thomson for "causing too much noise."

"He told me they taunted him after my story ran," Shawanna Edwards said. "Jackie told me he laid in the interrogation room for 18 hours on a table, positioned like an 'X' and chained."

Scott Taylor, spokesperson with the Federal Bureau of Prisons Office of Public Affairs and Information, declined to comment on specific complaints.

"While we decline to comment on anecdotal allegations or, for safety and security reasons, provide information about conditions of confinement for any particular inmate, we can provide you with the following information  The Bureau of Prisons is committed to ensuring the safety and security of all inmates in our population, our staff and the public," Taylor said.

The federal prison in Thomson currently houses 916 inmates: 785 in the maximum-security facility and 131 at the adjacent minimum-security camp.

The U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General's Office opened an investigation into USP Thomson June 9 amid the allegations of abuse and the deaths of seven inmates over a two-year period.

Shawanna Edwards said her husband is grateful to be transferred out of the "hell hole."

"I am not going to stop fighting for him," she said. "There are way more deaths than are reported and way more acts of torture on inmates than we know. I will continue to raise awareness about this prison; these doors need to close. If (most of) the staff knows of this abuse and nothing is done, why are we as taxpayers, paying their salary?

"This entire prison is corrupt," she said. "This entire prison knows of these assaults and nothing is done. My husband is a U.S. citizen, a businessman, a father, a son and a human being; not a stray animal and not just an inmate number. He is not a punching bag for these officers' sick amusement. How do they go home and sleep at night after abusing people all day, every day? This is insane; this is pure torture. This is unjust and this behavior must be stopped."
A Pine Ridge man has been charged with first-degree murder following an Independence Day drowning at Memorial Park in Rapid City.

Walter Mousseau, Jr., 27, is facing the murder charge after he reportedly drowned 43-year-old Sheldon Glenn of Rapid City in Memorial Park Pond just before 7 p.m. Monday, while dozens of people were nearby at a concert.

Around 6:50 p.m. the Rapid City Police Department responded to a report of a man holding another man down in the water. When police arrived, Glenn was still underwater and in an unknown location within the pond, according to a RCPD press release.

Witnesses identified Mousseau as the suspect, and police located and detained him. The Rapid City/Pennington County Water Rescue Team responded to retrieve Glenn, and a passerby who witnessed the altercation jumped into the water and helped find him.

A medical unit transported Glenn from the scene, and police later learned he had died.

Mousseau was taken to the Public Safety Building for an interview with the RCPD/Pennington County Sheriffs Office Criminal Investigation Division. After the interview, Mousseau was charged with first-degree murder.

He appeared in court on Tuesday for his initial appearance and is in custody at the Pennington County Jail on a $250,000 cash only bond. Mousseaus preliminary hearing is scheduled for 1:45 p.m. on July 20.

Brian Peck, a local man who said he knew Glenn from volunteering at free food events for the homeless community, told the Journal that Glenn was a veteran who struggled with post traumatic stress disorder and alcohol use. Peck said Glenn was scheduled to travel to Arizona next week for a treatment program.

Peck said Glenn had been helping him build a structure in his backyard for him to occupy, but that Glenn insisted it be used by a homeless family rather than himself.

Its not just another dead Indian. Its Sheldon, Peck said, recalling when he overheard someone say It is just another dead Indian in response to Glenns death.

RCPD spokesman Brendyn Medina said the department does not believe the incident was random and that Glenn and Mousseau were most likely associated in some way.

The investigation is ongoing and the RCPD asks witnesses of the incident to contact Detective Justin Gizzi at 605-394-4134 with any information regarding Glenns death.
Brett Walfish and Katie Smirnova left a Pennington County Commission meeting June 21 with an approved Planned Unit Development Overlay from the Board of Commissioners, a step months and multiple meetings in the making.

The approval signaled the green light for the three-week Rushmore Music Festival out of their home off Klondike Road, beginning July 9.

The PUD overlay took Walfish and Smirnova down an unexpected road of controversy, with multiple public hearings bringing neighbors before the commission, voicing concerns over road safety, altered landscape and land use, among others. The commission ultimately granted the PUD overlay with 30 conditions.

What we got approved for is what our needs are for this year, Smirnova said.

The festival is on. Walfish and Smirnova founded the Rushmore Music Festival eight years ago, but their PUD overlay meant a permanent home for the festival. Having previously rented space at Black Hills University, they can now conduct the camp on their 17 acres of property, at their own home, to include four practice sheds. This year also marks the second year theyve been able to offer the festival tuition-free.

The Rushmore Music Festival is an intensive solo and chamber music program aimed at students 12-18, attracting advanced musicians from across the country and globe. The three-week program focuses on individual technical mastery and artistic growth. Students also have the opportunity to attend faculty concerts and rehearsals throughout the program.

For Walfish and Smirnova, both classically-trained, professional musicians, music has influenced most of their lives.

Smirnovas musical background began in St. Petersburg, Russia, when she was six years old, before moving to the United States when she was 10. She has a doctorate degree in violin performance from Stony Brook University and bachelor and master degrees in violin performance from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, and studied at the Juilliard School Pre-College Division.

Walfish has been playing since he was three, starting on the violin and transitioning to viola. He holds a master's degree and a graduate diploma in viola performance from the New England Conservatory, as well as a bachelor's degree from Indiana Universitys Jacobs School of Music.

They have performed all over the country and the world, but decided to bring their musical talents to the Black Hills when they fell in love with its beauty through visits to Smirnovas mother, a chemistry professor at South Dakota Mines.

The festival began as a day program, working from 9 a.m. to noon Monday-Friday, with beginner to intermediate-level students. As the years progressed, they added an overnight program and started seeing the level of students rise.

For Walfish and Smirnova, the vision of the festival has always been to leave their students with positive experiences through music.

And that's including when they have those low points, Walfish said. When you're working hard on anything, and they make their way and they have that breakthrough that pulls them out of it

thats when growth happens, Smirnova added.

They see that hard work and perseverance can bring accomplishments they never dreamed of, Walfish said. Walfish and Smirnova also want their students to see them putting in the legwork.

We do everything, from backstage to picking up food, to teaching and performing, Smirnova said.

They run streaming, paint walls and install cabinets.

And for them to see that someone who went and majored in music has to do that, in order to create something unique. I think thats pretty eye-opening for them," Smirnova said,

The program also offers student instruction in audience engagement, in hopes of rewriting a narrative where people see classical music as a boring, dying art form. Walfish and Smirnova educate their students on how to engage with the audience, both verbally and from the stage.

Twenty-one students are lined up for the 2022 festival. Joining the program is a rigorous process of auditions and interviews, almost like a college admissions process, Walfish said. This years group brings students from Florida, Hawaii, even Spain  and one Rapid City native.

Asher Burke, 17, has participated in the camp for two years, this summer marking his third and final time. A viola player, Burke began taking lessons with Smirnova and Walfish in 2019.

Articulate and well-mannered, Burke exemplified the programs audience engagement training, speaking of the festivals influence on his own relationship with music.

It gave me a whole new perspective on learning music as a group, he said. It opened my eyes to writing my own, as well.

The festival also brings the ability to learn music with like-minded people, he said  something theres not a lot of here.

Their 2022 program will begin Saturday, as Walfish and Smirnova put the finishing touches on their home and prepare to welcome students. Their hope is a review from the Pennington County Planning Department in August will open more doors for the camps future, including more concerts and being able to house all faculty and students under their roof.

For more information on the Rushmore Music Festival, visit rushmoremusicfestival.org.
Third foreigner ordered to death challenges sentence in Supreme Court of DPR

MOSCOW, July 5 (RAPSI)  Briton Aiden Aslin, who had been ordered to death along with two other foreign citizens in the Donetsk Peoples Republic, challenged his sentence.

A cassation appeal filed by Aslin has reached the Supreme Court of DPR, a statement published on the highest instances website reads.

Earlier, another British man Shaun Pinner and Moroccan Brahim Saadun also convicted in the case lodged similar appeals.

In early June, the judicial panel of the Supreme Courts Appeals Chamber of the self-proclaimed republic considered a criminal case against the men and found them guilty of mercenary activities, violent coup, committing a crime by a group of people in conspiracy and training with the aim to conduct terrorist activity.

On the totality of the committed crimes, they were sentenced to death.




HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.  A gunman on a rooftop opened fire on an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago on Monday, killing at least six people, wounding at least 30 and sending hundreds of marchers, parents with strollers and children on bicycles fleeing in terror, police said.

Authorities said a 22-year-old man named as a person of interest in the shooting was taken into police custody Monday evening after an hourslong manhunt.

The July 4 shooting was just the latest to shatter the rituals of American life. Schools, churches, grocery stores and now community parades have all become killing grounds in recent months.

This time, the bloodshed came as the nation tried to find cause to celebrate its founding and the bonds that still hold it together.

It is devastating that a celebration of America was ripped apart by our uniquely American plague, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at a news conference.

Im furious because it does not have to be this way ... while we celebrate the Fourth of July just once a year, mass shootings have become a weekly  yes, weekly  American tradition.

The shooting occurred at a spot on the parade route where many residents had staked out prime viewing points early in the day for the annual celebration. Dozens of fired bullets sent hundreds of parade-goers  some visibly bloodied  fleeing. They left a trail of abandoned items that showed everyday life suddenly, violently disrupted: a half-eaten bag of potato chips; a box of chocolate cookies spilled onto the grass; a childs Chicago Cubs cap.

Theres no safe place, said Highland Park resident Barbara Harte, 73, who had stayed away from the parade fearing a mass shooting, but later ventured from her home.

Highland Park Police Chief Lou Jogmen said a police officer pulled over 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III about five miles north of the shooting scene, several hours after police released the mans photo and an image of his silver Honda Fit, and warned the public that he was likely armed and dangerous.

Police declined to immediately identify Crimo as a suspect but said identifying him as a person of interest, sharing his name and other information publicly, was a serious step.

Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Christopher Covelli said at a news conference several of the deceased victims died at the scene and one was taken to a hospital and died there. Police have not released details about the victims or wounded.

Lake County Coroner Jennifer Banek said the five people killed at the parade were adults, but didnt have information on the sixth victim who was taken to a hospital and died there. One of those killed was a Mexican national, Roberto Velasco, Mexicos director for North American affairs, said on Twitter on Monday. He said two other Mexicans were wounded.

NorthShore University Health Center received 26 patients after the attack. All but one had gunshot wounds, said Dr. Brigham Temple, medical director of emergency preparedness. Their ages ranged from 8 to 85, and Temple estimated that four or five patients were children.

Temple said 19 of them were treated and discharged. Others were transferred to other hospitals, while two patients, in stable condition, remained at the Highland Park hospital.

The shooter opened fire at around 10:15 a.m., when the parade was about three-quarters through, authorities said.

Highland Park Police Commander Chris ONeill, the incident commander on scene, said the gunman apparently used a high-powered rifle to fire from a spot atop a commercial building where he was very difficult to see. He said the rifle was recovered at the scene. Police also found a ladder attached to the building.

Very random, very intentional and a very sad day, Covelli said.

President Joe Biden on Monday said he and first lady Jill Biden were shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day. He said he had urged Federal law enforcement to assist in the urgent search for the shooter.

Biden signed the widest-ranging gun violence bill passed by Congress in decades, a compromise that showed at once both progress on a long-intractable issue and the deep-seated partisan divide that persists.

Several nearby cities canceled holiday events including parades and fireworks.
Actor Max Irons had no idea why friends looked shocked when he told them he was considering a role in Flowers in the Attic: The Origin.
A Colorado man is facing multiple charges in relation to fleeing from a Virginia State Police trooper on Monday morning.

At around 10 a.m. Monday, a state troopers radar registered a 2010 Toyota Corolla traveling at 90 mph in the posted 70 mph zone on Interstate 295 near the 7-mile marker in Prince George County, according to state police.

The trooper initiated a traffic stop with his emergency lights and sirens, but the Toyota refused to stop and instead accelerated at a high rate of speed, according to police. The Toyota was traveling northbound on I-295.

As the Toyota sped on I-295, at times surpassing 100 mph, it took Exit 15B to Route 10 toward Chester. As the sedan turned onto Meadowville Road, police said, it lost control and rammed into two troopers patrol vehicles in the 11500 block of Meadowville.

The driver, a 55-year-old man from Colorado Springs, Colo., then ran on foot before being apprehended by state police and taken into custody without further incident.
The fast-changing coronavirus has kicked off summer in the U.S. with lots of infections but relatively few deaths compared to its prior incarnations.

COVID-19 is still killing hundreds of Americans each day, but is not nearly as dangerous as it was last fall and winter.

Its going to be a good summer and we deserve this break, said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.

With more Americans shielded from severe illness through vaccination and infection, COVID-19 has transformed  for now at least  into an unpleasant, inconvenient nuisance for many.

It feels cautiously good right now, said Dr. Dan Kaul, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor.

As the nation marks July Fourth, the average number of daily deaths from COVID-19 in the United States is hovering around 360. Last year, during a similar summer lull, it was around 228 in early July. That remains the lowest threshold in U.S. daily deaths since March 2020, when the virus first began its U.S. spread.

U.S. regulators told COVID-19 vaccine makers that any booster shots tweaked for the fall will have to add protection against the newest omicron relatives.

The Food and Drug Administration said the original vaccines would be used for anyone still getting their first series of shots. But with immunity waning and the super-contagious omicron family of variants getting better at dodging protection, the FDA decided boosters intended for fall needed an update.

Treatments are improving. After being infected with COVID-19 earlier this month, Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president and director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, experienced a rebound after taking the antiviral pill Paxlovid and said the drug kept him out of the hospital.

Things are not as rosy everywhere in the world. Tourism is booming again in France  and so is COVID-19 and hospitalizations. French officials have invited" or recommended people to go back to using face masks.
An Alexandria man is facing charges after a customer at City Dogs restaurant on West Main Street was shot to death on Sunday night.

At around 10:26 p.m., Richmond police were called to City Dogs for a report of random gunfire. They responded and found Kyle Stoner, 36, of Richmond with an apparent gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Virginia State Police, meanwhile, placed 24-year-old Derrick Adjei under arrest after a car chase on Sunday.

At around 11 p.m., a Virginia State Police trooper observed a Toyota 4Runner traveling north on Interstate 95 at 101 mph in a posted 70 mph zone. The trooper activated his emergency lights and sirens to initiate a traffic stop near the 127 mile marker in Spotsylvania County. The Toyota refused to stop and, instead, accelerated and sped away from the trooper.

A pursuit was initiated and continued north through Stafford County and into Prince William County, with the Toyota passing vehicles on the shoulder and traveling in excess of 100 mph.

Once it entered Prince William, the Toyota exited I-95 at Exit 161 in Lorton and headed north on Route 1. When the Toyota tried to turn onto Sacramento Drive, the driver lost control and the SUV ran off the road, struck a utility pole and then a tree.

The driver, Adjei, was taken into custody. He was transported to a hospital for treatment of minor injuries sustained in the crash. Adjei was then transported to Rappahannock Regional Jail. A firearm was recovered from the Toyota.

State police charged Adjei with one felony count of eluding police and with reckless driving. Further investigation resulted in the state police making contact with the Richmond Police Department concerning that agencys ongoing homicide investigation.

Richmond detectives charged Adjei with malicious wounding. Other charges are pending.

City Dogs at 1309 W. Main St. posted on Facebook that the shooting happened on its patio.

We are deeply saddened by the heinous crime that happened on the patio of City Dogs last evening. Kyle Stoner was a long time regular and friend. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of our patrons and employees who witnessed this tragic, violent event. We love you guys and truly appreciate your bravery, the post reads.

The state medical examiner will determine the cause and manner of death.
China is willing to work with countries around the world to put development front and center on the international agenda, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Monday.

Xi made the remarks in a congratulatory letter to a forum on global development attended by think tank and media representatives in Beijing.

Currently, the world is affected by the combined impacts of major changes and a raging pandemic, the global economic recovery is fragile, and there is a widening North-South gap, Xi said.

"As the world enters a new period of turbulence and transformation, promoting development has become a major topic facing humanity," Xi said. "Therefore, China proposes the Global Development Initiative."

China stands ready to work with other countries in upholding the people-centered approach, and pursuing inclusiveness and benefits for all, innovation-driven development and harmony between human and nature, Xi said.

The country is also willing to push for putting development front and center on the international agenda, accelerate the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and promote a stronger, greener and healthier global development, he said.

Xi's letter was read out at the forum by Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, who also delivered a speech at the event.

The "Global Development: Common Mission and Contributions" Think Tank & Media Forum was sponsored by the State Council Information Office.




Heat and humidity have returned to Virginia and, for the next couple of days, there will not be a dramatic change in conditions.

A heat advisory is in effect for Wednesday from Richmond to Hampton Roads. The combination of heat and humidity, known as the heat index, will approach 105 during the hottest part of the day, making it especially difficult for the body to cool itself.

Every day through Friday will bring a chance of a shower or thunderstorm, with the chance each day just a little bit better than a coin flip. Weak disturbances will move in from the northwest to help trigger the occasional shower or thunderstorm, but a real perceptible break in the heat and humidity will have to wait until the weekend.

For Richmond, the recent surge in high humidity comes a little bit later than in an average year and may be why last month did not feel especially hot, even though it was warmer than normal for June.

Last month was the least-humid June in a decade in Richmond. Not coincidentally, it had the coolest nights of any June since then.

The average low temperature last month in Richmond was 64.3 degrees, which was the lowest since 2012 (62.3 degrees). And 2012 was the only June so far this century that had nights, on average, that were cooler than the full 20th century average.

The cooler nights can directly be tied to the lower humidity last month, as drier air cools more easily than humid air. Humidity can be measured in two ways. The relative humidity is relative to the temperature. If the air is saturated, the relative humidity is 100%, whether the actual air temperature is 32 or 82 degrees. When it comes to summer humidity, the percentage is not easily perceived by the body.

A more direct way to measure humidity is the dew point temperature, which is the temperature at which saturation occurs in the atmosphere. When that number is higher, more water molecules are physically present in the air, and that is what our bodies notice when heading outside.

During summer in Virginia, dew points in the lower-to-middle 60s are quite nice. Occasionally, they will edge downward into the 50s, which gives the air a spring or fall feel. But most of the time, the summer dew point in Richmond is between 65 and 75. Once that value gets above 70, the air has a truly muggy feeling to it. And above 75, it is genuinely oppressive.

It is rare for the value to climb as high as 80, which would be stifling. It also serves as a reminder that 95 degrees with 95% humidity doesnt really happen in Virginia. If that were the case, the dew point would be 93 degrees, and that wouldprobably make it legitimately dangerous to be outside.

Over the last 70 years, the average June dew point in Richmond is 64.4. But since 2010, only three Junes have been below that average: 2012, 2016 and 2022. The value for this past June was 63.6.

But the long term trend is upward. As the planet warms, more water can evaporate into the atmosphere. Examining the first 20 years of the record compared to the last 20 years illustrates the slow but steady upward tick.
All but one of my plants started as seeds in pint-sized clay pots. Now they're big, lush and more than 3 feet tall. They've all been transplanted, either into the ground in friends' gardens or into 15-gallon grow bags if they're on a deck.
Virginias red flag law has only been used five times in the Roanoke and New River valleys since its inception two years ago.

The state statute allows prosecutors and law enforcement officers to file petitions for Emergency Substantial Risk Orders. After 14 days and a hearing in a circuit court, those emergency orders can turn into Substantial Risk Orders that last up to 180 days.

A judge has to determine by clear and convincing evidence that a flagged person poses substantial risk of personal injury to self or others in the near future by the persons possession or acquisition of a firearm.

If the judge finds relevant evidence and is concerned for the communitys safety, the risk order is served and the flagged individuals firearms must be turned over to another adult, with qualifications set by the law, or to a law enforcement agency.

Both emergency orders and risk orders can be extended by a judge after a hearing.

While that seems simple enough, commonwealths attorneys filing risk orders in the region have experienced repetitive case continuances and gun seizure complications. And because the rules for red flags are still new to many of them, theyre not sure what details about specific cases they can provide to members of the press.

Of five cases identified in the Roanoke and New River valleys, two were in Franklin County, one was is Salem, one was in Botetourt County and one was in Montgomery County.

Confrontation in Christiansburg

Much of the Montgomery County case was described in the public record.

In March 2021, Vernon Lorrell Raggins Jr., then a 27-year-old living in Christiansburg, began a series of confrontations with law enforcement officers that eventually led to an Emergency Substantial Risk Order, then a longer order, and criminal charges.

The risk orders centered on Raggins insistence that he be allowed to carry a pistol into the Montgomery County courthouse.

An affidavit filed by Capt. Ed Hertling noted that in 2019, Raggins and his girlfriend were charged in a robbery case. At a jury trial in 2020, Raggins was acquitted. His girlfriend was convicted.

Last year, Raggins and Hertling spoke on the phone and Raggins said that three shotguns seized in the robbery case were his and he wanted them back.

Hertling wrote that after a contentious conversation, he told Raggins he would research the status of the shotguns. He found there had been a court order for their forfeiture.

A prosecutor gave him a trial transcript in which Raggins, testifying at his girlfriends trial, said the guns were given to her by her grandparents and belonged to her.

Hertling said he relayed this information to Raggins by phone and email.

About two weeks later, on March 24, 2021, Raggins came to the sheriffs office, located in Christiansburg on the same block as the courthouse, and said that he still wanted the shotguns returned to him, Hertling wrote. Raggins left but then called a dispatcher and said he was on his way to the courthouse with a pistol. Raggins said he was telling us this so we wouldnt be taken off guard, Hertling wrote.

Lt. Aaron Meadows of the sheriffs office, who supervises courthouse security, then called Raggins and explained that it was against the law to bring a firearm into the courthouse. The officer talked with Raggins for about an hour, Hertling wrote, but Raggins would not accept the gun restriction.

Meadows then met Raggins in front of the sheriffs office. Raggins wore a pistol on his hip. The two spoke for about 45 minutes more, Hertling wrote, and Raggins said that it was a violation of his 2nd Amendment rights to not be allowed to take his pistol inside.

The next day, Meadows again talked to Raggins on the phone. Raggins again said he wanted to bring his gun into the courthouse and that he planned to talk to the circuit court clerk.

Im coming to the courthouse with my gun and there aint a goddamn thing anyone is going to do about it, Raggins said, according to Hertlings account.

Meadows obtained a warrant for Raggins on a charge of making a threat by phone. Officers at the courthouse prepared to intercept Raggins if he arrived at the courthouse. Hertling wrote that he called Raggins to try to de-escalate matters and offered another meeting to discuss things, but Raggins declined. This talk lasted about 90 minutes, Hertling wrote.

On the phone, Raggins read Hertling what he said was federal code about his rights, but I recognized through my training that the rhetoric was textbook sovereign citizen propaganda, Hertling wrote, referring to a quasi-legal theory  that has been repeatedly rejected by courts  that denies various types of government authority.

Hertling wrote that he asked Raggins where he was getting this stuff and Raggins said Facebook. Hertling wrote that he told Raggins that he was just reading sovereign citizen talking points, and Raggins replied that he was not a sovereign citizen, but an armed one.

Hertling wrote that he decided Raggins might be making some form of protest and offered to have officers meet him outside the courthouse and arrest him if that was what he wanted. He advised Raggins to approach the building with his hands on his head so no one could think he was reaching for his gun.

Raggins answered that if anyone pointed a gun at him, he would draw his and a gunfight would ensue, Hertling wrote. He would not accept that an officer might use deadly force legally if it appeared he was reaching for his firearm, Hertling wrote.

Raggins denied that he was suicidal, Hertling wrote.

Eventually, Hertling and Raggins agreed to meet at the town square monument opposite the sheriffs office. Officers soon saw Raggins, his 9mm pistol on his hip, walking down Christiansburgs Main Street toward the meeting. Hertling and two other officers took Raggins into custody without incident, Hertling wrote.

After Raggins was booked on the threat charge, a magistrate ordered that he be released with a promise to go to court when the case was heard.

Hertling sought a Temporary Detention Order on mental health grounds, but wrote that Raggins refused to take the COVID test needed to be admitted to a mental health facility.

Hertling then sought an Emergency Substantial Risk Order, offering an account of his and Meadows interactions with Raggins. Also, Hertling wrote, Raggins told a deputy after his arrest that if he did not get his shotguns back, he would buy bigger guns, and that when officers encountered him again, he would not be as polite.

In asking for the emergency order, Hertling said that he thought Raggins was a danger to the public and would force a deadly confrontation with officers.

On March 26, 2021, Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Robert Turk approved an emergency red flag order forbidding Raggins to possess or buy guns. The court file did not mention who took custody of Raggins pistol. No firearms were relinquished to law enforcement officers, according to court paperwork.

On April 1, 2021, a Substantial Risk Order was issued extending Raggins firearm prohibition for 180 days.

On June 8, 2021, he was charged with carrying weapons into the courthouse and other offenses. And on June 17, 2021, Raggins was charged with purchasing or possessing a gun while under Substantial Risk Order, with brandishing a firearm, and with other charges.

Court files did not list details of what happened in the June incidents, although the second one apparently did not occur at the courthouse because part of its resolution was an order barring Raggins from Walmart.

Pettitt did not reply to a message seeking information about the charges that followed the Substantial Risk Order, nor did an attorney who represented Raggins. Another attorney who also represented Raggins last year declined to comment. The Montgomery County Sheriffs Office did not reply to questions about the enounters with Raggins.

Raggins himself could not be contacted for this article.

Court records showed that eventually, Raggins was found not guilty on the threat by phone charge from March 2021.

In the first June incident, the charge of carrying weapons into the courthouse was dropped but Raggins was convicted of trespassing and was sentenced to serve two months in jail with another 10 months suspended.

In the second June incident, Raggins was convicted of the two firearms offenses and also of public intoxication. The rest of the charges were dropped.

According to court files, Raggins was sentenced on the gun charges to 12 months in jail with another 12 months suspended. He was ordered to forfeit a Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun and shells.

Behavioral issues in Franklin County cases

In Franklin County, Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Ashley Neese discussed the cases of two people who were flagged in the last year.

One substantial risk order involving Chase Lashawn Hughes, 29, of Rocky Mount is still pending.

He has pending criminal charges in another jurisdiction, Neese said. This matter continues to be pending here as well, since theres pending criminal charges and whats going on in that case. I cant really talk about that, because its not our jurisdiction.

Court documents indicate that Hughes is facing felony charges in Henry County. On Sept. 28, 2021, he was arrested and charged with grand larceny of a motor vehicle and two counts of possession of a firearm on school property.

Risk order documents in Franklin County reveal that, prior to his Henry County arrest, Hughes was displaying odd behavior on Rocky Mount downtown streets.

On Aug. 6, 2021, the Rocky Mount Police Department began investigating a subject walking through the downtown area of Rocky Mount during the night with what appeared to be an AR-15 rifle wearing a motorcycle helmet, court documents read.

Seven days later, they responded to a call about suspicious behavior at Hughes home on Sycamore Street.

Officers observed and were advised by relatives of Hughes that he was paranoid and thought people were following and trying to kill him, court documents read. Hughes advised that he never goes anywhere without his guns because all of the people trying to kill him. Hughes admitted he was the subject downtown and advised that he had been hiding from subjects that were after him.

An Emergency Custody Order was issued for Hughes on Aug. 13, 2021. Three month later, on Sept. 27, police responded to Sycamore Street again.

Hughes advised someone had broken into his residence through a window and was trying to get him, documents read. No evidence of entry was located and Hughes again exhibited paranoid behavior.

The next day, Hughes took his mothers vehicle without her consent and left the residence with his AR style rifle and handgun.

Hughes was not located, and an emergency risk order was petitioned. Hughes was arrested in Henry County that same day.

An emergency substantial risk order was issued on Hughes in Franklin County in April. It has been extended twice already. A hearing to review a third extension is scheduled for July 12.

Hughes next court appearance in Henry County is scheduled for July 22. The courts online case information system indicates a medical examination is to be reviewed.

Franklin Countys other red flag case was resolved last fall. Jason Wayne Smith, 50, of Gainesville, Georgia, was flagged in June 2021.

Sgt. Megan Huston, sheriffs office public information officer, said the emergency flagging was purely connected to Smiths mental health.

A family member had called in for a well-being check on the individual due to some suicidal and homicidal comments made towards family, Huston said in an email. The person ended up being mentally evaluated, committed to a hospital, and then lost their gun rights through the process. The family was able to take possession of the weapons.

An Emergency Substantial Risk Order was issued on Smith on June 17, 2021 and extended three times through Oct. 5, 2021. Court documents indicate that the case was continued to allow Smith to complete his 28-day program at Fellowship Hall, a drug and alcohol recovery center in Greensboro, N.C.

On Oct. 5, Smiths Substantial Risk Order was denied. An order is denied when, based on relevant evidence, the court finds that there was not clear and convincing evidence that an individual poses a substantial risk of personal injury to self or others.

The names of the other two individuals flagged in the region were not disclosed by prosecutors.

In Salem, Deputy Commonwealths Attorney Matt Pollard was hesitant to reveal details about the specific case because the cases hearings were borderline sort of a mental health proceeding.

The case in Botetourt was also closely related to mental health. Commonwealths Attorney John Alexander said the risk order in that case was not extended.
Rosemarie Sawdons op-ed of June 7 (The ignored history that led to invasion) reminded readers of the provocative danger of NATO expansion that started 23 years ago. There is great resistance in the public and the mainstream media to admitting this obvious fact, because it would expose the U.S. national security complex Eisenhower warned us of 60 years ago, and its NATO allies, as fellow provocateurs in their proxy war against Russia.

The provocative nature of NATO expansion was deplored over the years by numerous luminaries of U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy. The most dangerous expansion effort occurred in NATOs 2008 invitation (still pending) for Georgia and Ukraine to join. Had Ukraine agreed a year ago to forego efforts for NATO membership and embrace neutrality  a most honorable position for any nation-state  it is likely that war could have been avoided.

Counters to the truth of provocation appeared in Edward Champions letter of June 15 (Ukraine war commentary got facts wrong) and James Morrisons of June 22 (Putin at fault for war in Ukraine). Champion brazenly criticized The Roanoke Times for printing Sawdons op-ed. Whither free speech?

Champion cited a New York Times article saying that a promise not to expand NATO towards Russia was not part of the treaty allowing German reunification, and quotes the Soviet Unions last premier Mikhail Gorbachev to that effect. Thats a straw man, because Sawdon never claimed a promise not to expand was part of that treaty. If Champion was fair, he would have quoted the next sentence in the article where Gorbachev said that NATO expansion was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990.

Champions next distortion involves the nuclear arms agreement which returned nuclear weapons in Ukraine to Russia. A fortunate thing because Ukraine, being a deeply cleft state best described as the separate countries of West Ukraine (non-Russian) and East Ukraine (largely ethnic Russian) in a troubled marriage, should not have been trusted with such an arsenal. Champion correctly claims the agreement required Russia to not attack Ukraine, but that omits an important point. The Budapest Memos leading to Ukraines de-nuclearization stated that none of the weapons of the U.S., U.K., and Russia will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. The self-defense provision was necessary to avoid giving West Ukraine a blank check to provoke and undermine Russias security.

In 2004, the West Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko promised upon election to refuse renewal of Russias lease on its major and highly strategic warm-water port in Crimea on the Black Sea bordering Russia. The Budapest self-defense provision became relevant in February 2014 when West Ukraine, with great help from the U.S. State Department and others, violently overthrew the legitimately elected East Ukraine president, Viktor Yanukovych. Remembering Yushchenkos promise, Russia did what it had to do to protect its security: it organized an election in largely Russian Crimea, whereupon citizens voted overwhelmingly to leave Ukraine and go with Russia.

Champions third point accuses Russia of having forces in the eastern rebel region of Donbas in violation of point 10 of the now-defunct 2015 Minsk-II accord. Cherry-picking one item from a complex 13-point agreement is misleading! The failure of Minsk-II requires a lengthier discussion than can be done here. Suffice it to say that Russian troops (if any) in Donbas would be a result of other more serious failures by Ukraine to carry out the terms of the accord, particularly on constitutional reform.

Morrison says President Yanukovych in 2014 attempted to back away from an agreement with the European Union, probably under Russian pressure, and that this led to the Ukrainian uprising and that presidents fleeing to Moscow. More accurately: (1) in October 2013, Yanukovych rejected Russias offer of $15-billion to meet debt obligations and turned to the EU; (2) when Yanukovych learned of the extreme austerity conditions the EU and IMF were going to impose, he went back to Russia; and (3) the uprising was carried out by right-sector extremists who threatened Yanukovychs life, firing at the motorcade which Yanukovych had luckily avoided by taking a helicopter. Morrisons pablum on such events is another example of soft-peddling how West Ukraine went rogue and staged a violent unconstitutional coup detat to subjugate East Ukraine.

Its high time the U.S. stopped its 32-year provocations of Russia to drive it from European affairs and accepted that conflicts with other nations must be negotiated fairly and not dictated. The U.S.s unipolar moment enjoyed after the Soviet collapse is over, and good riddance to it.
 
Global warming, La Nina and a fluctuating northeast cold vortex are all contributing to more severe climatic conditions across China this year, and from July to August, fluctuations in weather conditions will cause periodic droughts and floods, according to the China Meteorological Administration.

Rain will hit most parts of the country, except the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, and some areas in Northwest, East and Central China that may experience more periodic droughts and heat waves than normal, said Yu Yong, deputy head of the China Meteorological Administration.

Since the start of flood season on March 17, there has been more rain in the south than in the north of the country.

Precipitation in the Pearl River basin for the period has broken the historical record.

Data from the CMA showed that from March 17, 18 regional torrential rain events occurred in China with 17 of them in the south. The national average precipitation was 241.5 millimeters, 11 percent higher than normal.

Guangdong and Hainan provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region were hit the hardest.

More than 470 counties have been affected by hail, thunderstorms and strong winds, Yu said.

Rainfall caused hundreds of rivers in southern parts of China to flood. On June 15, an extremely high tide was recorded in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, causing the suspension of all passenger ship routes, according to the local authorities.

Yu said that since spring, affected by La Nina, a weather pattern stemming from cooler-than-average ocean surface temperature in the equatorial Pacific, the rainy season began earlier than normal.

Zhou Bing, chief expert of the administration's meteorological service department, said that as well as La Nina, global warming is also causing a less stable atmospheric circulation system and increased precipitation.

Especially since June, the northeast cold vortex, a major rain-bearing circulation system over northeastern China that can lead to severe convective weather in summer, has become more active and moved to the south, leading to unusually heavy rain, Zhou said.

In some parts of North and Central China, it is a different story. In Xuchang, Henan, the ground surface temperature reached as high as 70 C, causing asphalt roads to melt and break up.

The administration's data showed that moderate to severe droughts had affected land covering 857,000 square kilometers, about 9 percent of the country's total land area. The main areas affected include Henan, Hubei, Gansu and Jiangsu provinces.

Since June 13, high temperature has affected more than 600 million people, it said.

Yu said that China's climate is also affected by changes in sea temperature in other ocean areas as well as snow cover and polar ice.

"There are great uncertainties in the climate impact. Meteorological departments will keep monitoring and revising climate forecasts," Yu said.




BEAUFORT, S.C. (AP)  Former Beaufort Mayor Billy Keyserling says he has a new perspective on life after nearly drowning six weeks ago in a sailing accident on the Beaufort River, and new mission: promoting CPR training.

Keyserling was basically a goner when people reached him May 12 after the cat boat he and his brother Paul were sailing May 21 in the Beaufort River tipped in a gust of wind, sending both men into the water.

I was blue, Keyserling said. My eyes were just sort of staring into nowhere. Totally unresponsive to anything. No pulse. But that team just wouldnt quit.

Or at least thats what hes told.

Keyserling doesnt remember people pulling him from the river, rushing him to land and resuscitating him.

No pain, Keyserling says, no struggle, no memories of anything.

Keyserlings spoke to the newspaper on his 74th birthday. His face was ruddy; he was grateful to be alive.

That team  passersby in two motorboats, including, luckily, a nurse, and later firefighters and EMTs and Beaufort Memorial Hospital employees  are credited with bringing Keyserling back from the brink.

Two weeks after nearly drowning, Keyserling met with firefighters who were involved in his rescue.

I got very teary and I said, I was dead, Keyserling recalled. Im alive two weeks later. Look at me. Its because of you.

It was an emotional meeting for everybody. But one of the firefighters said something Keyserling says he will never forget. What the former mayor did not realize, the firefighter said, was that they train each day to save people, but they cant save everybody.

It makes us feel good that all the training and everything we do worked, said Keyserling, recounting what the firefighter told him. It does something for our morale to have a win. And taking somebody who is totally blue, with no sign of life and (being) able to bring them back, makes what we do that much more important to us.

Keyserling, a life-long Beaufort resident, says hes been recreating on the water alone since he was 7 and never has been trained in CPR, despite seeing countless advertisements for training over the years.

Had I been in the power boat and come across the distressed sailor who was in my condition, would I have been equipped to do what they did for me? he says.

As a result of his experience, Keyserling says he plans to promote the idea of bringing boaters together, perhaps once a year, for CPR training. Its criminal, he says, that we have this water and we use it but were not aware of what it can do  and what we can do to make it safer for other people.

Keyserling spent three days in the hospital. Ten ribs were broken in the process of getting water out of his lungs and restarting his breathing. For five weeks, he slept in a recliner because of the pain.

Once he got off the pain medication, and his head began to clear, he realized he had to drop all of the things he typically worries about and just take care of himself. He kept it simple: No. 1 was keeping his oxygen concentration at 95%. No. 2 was getting up and walking a little bit. No. 3, eat. No. 4, get some sun.

Thats how you make it through the first three or four days, Keyserling says.

Given it hasnt quite been six weeks since the rescue, Keyserling calls his recovery remarkable. His ribs are healing. Hes getting his lung capacity back. Im surprised every day, he says.

The experience affirmed his belief in humanity but specifically Beaufort.

Keyserling doesnt remember anything other than going sailing and getting ready to race his cat boat. A cat boat has a gaff rig. That means theres a little boom off the top of the mast, as well as a regular boom. The gaff rig became twisted in a line so part of the sail went one way, and part of the sail went one way.

At the same time a huge gust of wind came from absolutely nowhere and just knocked us down, Keyserling says.

He remembers the boat being on its side and halfway underwater. Keyserling said he went under to try to grab a line with the thought that he could give the line to one of the boats that had arrived to help. And thats the last thing I remember until I woke up in the hospital.

Keyserling had already served on the City Council  and two terms as a state representative  before he was elected mayor in 2008 and reelected in 2012 and 2016. He left office in 2020 but hasnt slowed down. Now hes involved with a not-for-profit called Second Founding of America: Reconstruction Beaufort, whose mission is telling the untold stories of the Reconstruction Era, which includes restoring and conserving historic structures from that period.

All of his life, Keyserling says, hes given 150% in everything Ive done. But now, he says, he wants to spend more time with his friends, maybe those he hasnt seen in a few years, and traveling to places hes never experienced before. Its not going to prevent me from doing what I needed to do, he says of reserving more time for his personal life.

Keyserling visited the Grand Army of the Republic Hall on Newcastle Street one day earlier this week with former Beaufort County Coroner Ed Allen. Built in 1896, its one of the historic structures Keyserlings group is involved in preserving. Allen kidded Keyserling about the sailing accident, saying he survived because he still has work to do.

You were too bad to go to hell, Allen said, and not good enough to go to heaven. So right now, youre still with us.

For now, Keyserling plans to take a break from sailing  and smoking.

For years, he says, hes been looking for an excuse and the courage to quit smoking. Part of his recovery includes breathing exercises using a bubble blower.

You know, the funny thing is when I want a cigarette I get my little bubble blower, Keyserling says, and I suck on that instead of a cigarette and I know Im clearing my lungs instead of cluttering my lungs.

Keyserling says nearly drowning has affected his perspective.

I guess Ive come to realize no ones immortal, he says. And there are many things wed like to see in the world change, that no matter how hard we work on them, how much we dedicate ourselves to, theres only so much we as individuals can do.
FLORENCE, S.C.  American Legion Post 1 celebrated Independence Day in style with hotdogs, beans, chili, hamburgers, more deserts than anyone could eat and quilts. A whole pile of them.

But not just any quilt, Quilts of Valor quilts from Swamp Fox Quilters.

A Quilt of Valor is a quality, handmade quilt that is machine or hand quilted. It is awarded to a service member or veteran who has been touched by war, according to the organizations Web site.

Its a completely volunteer effort. We have quilters who do the tops, others who do the quilting, others do the binding and its done with love and honor. Some people cut, some iron, some sew and some do it all, said Timi Bronson, co-leader of Swamp Fox Quilters Quilts of Valor group.

Nobody has a dry eye. Its a very moving ceremony, Bronson said. Some of these guys are Vietnam vets and they were not treated right when they came home. Its a privilege to be able to do a civilian honor for them.

The goal of quilts of valor is to cover every veteran and service member with a quilt, Bronson said. We do fundraisers to buy more fabric so we can wrap more veterans.

Some quilts can be done in a day, some it takes two-three days to make the top and another day to quilt it and bind it, she said.

Mondays presentation started out as a plan by the Legion to honor the quilters for their work on the Quilts of Valor program for Pee Dee Veterans. And Post Commander Johnny Guest did present the quilters with certificates of appreciation just ahead of the quilting and Post members who had already been quilted paraded through the room with their quilts.

The American Legion contacted us and said theyd like to honor our group for all that we do for the veterans in this area and we were thrilled, Bronson said. We said wed do a presentation on the same day and they were thrilled and here we are.

The honorees were called to the front of the room where the quilters wrapped them in their quilts.
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (AP)  A day after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory in seizing an eastern Ukraine province essential to his wartime aims, his troops escalated their offensive in the neighboring province Tuesday, prompting the governor to urge a mass evacuation of residents.

Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that getting the 350,000 people remaining in Donetsk province out is necessary to save lives and to enable the Ukrainian army to better defend towns from the Russian advance.

The destiny of the whole country will be decided by the Donetsk region, Kyrylenko told reporters in Kramatrosk, the provinces administrative center and home to the Ukrainian militarys regional headquarters.

Once there are less people, we will be able to concentrate more on our enemy and perform our main tasks, Kyrylenko said.

The governors call for residents to leave appeared to represent one of the biggest suggested evacuations of the war. According to the U.N. refugee agency, more than 7.1 million Ukrainians are estimated to be displaced within Ukraine, and more than 4.8 million refugees left the country since Russias invasion started on Feb. 24

The governor said that because they house critical infrastructure such as water filtration plants, Russias main targets are now Kramatorsk and a city 16 kilometers 10 miles) to the north, Sloviansk. Kyrylenko described the shelling as very chaotic without a specific target ... only to destroy civilian infrastructure and residential areas.

Sloviansk also came under sustained bombardment Tuesday. Mayor Vadim Lyakh said on Facebook that massive shelling pummeled Sloviansk, which had a population of about 107,000 before Russian invaded Ukraine more than four months ago. The mayor, who urged residents hours earlier to evacuate, advised them to take cover in shelters.

At least one person was killed and another seven wounded Tuesday, Lyakh said. He said the citys central market and several districts came under attack, adding that authorities were assessing the extent of the damage.

The barrage targeting Sloviansk indicated that Russian forces were positioned to advance farther into Ukraines Donbas region, a mostly Russian-speaking industrial area where the countrys most experienced soldiers are concentrated.

Sloviansk has previously taken rocket and artillery fire during Russias war in Ukraine, but the bombardment picked up in recent days after Moscow took the last major city in neighboring Luhansk province, Lyakh said.

Its important to evacuate as many people as possible, he warned Tuesday morning, adding that shelling damaged 40 houses on Monday.

The Ukrainian military withdrew its troops Sunday from the city of Lysychansk to keep them from being surrounded. Russias defense minister and Putin said the citys subsequent capture put Moscow in control of all of Luhansk, one of two provinces that make up the Donbas.

The office of Ukraines president said the Ukrainian military was still defending a small part of Luhansk and trying to buy time to establish fortified positions nearby.

The question now is whether Russia can muster enough strength to complete its seizure of the Donbas by taking Donetsk province, too. Putin acknowledged Monday that Russian troops who fought in Luhansk need to take some rest and beef up their combat capability.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that the war in Ukraine would continue until all of the goals set by Putin are achieved. However, Shoigu said the main priorities for Moscow at the moment were preserving the lives and health of the troops, as well as excluding the threat to the security of civilians.

When Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine more than four months ago, his stated goals were defending the people of the Donbas against Kyivs alleged aggression, and the demilitarization and denazifaction of Ukraine.

Pro-Russia separatists have fought Ukrainian forces and controlled much of the Donbas for eight years. Before the invasion this year, Putin recognized the independence of the two self-proclaimed separatist republics in the region. He also sought to portray the tactics of Ukrainian forces and the government as akin to Nazi Germanys, claims for which no evidence has emerged.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian military said Russian forces also shelled several Donetsk towns and villages around Sloviansk in the past day but were repelled as they tried to advance toward a town about 20 kilometers (12 miles) to the citys north. South of the city, Russian forces were trying to push toward two more towns and shelling areas near Kramatorsk.

Meanwhile, Moscow-installed officials in Ukraines southern Kherson region on Tuesday announced the formation of a new regional government, with a former Russian official at the helm.

Sergei Yeliseyev, the head of the new Moscow-backed government in Kherson, is a former deputy prime minister of Russias western exclave of Kaliningrad and also used to work at Russias Federal Security Service, or the FSB, according to media reports.

It wasnt immediately clear what would become of the military-civic administration the Kremlin installed earlier. The administrations head, Vladimir Saldo, said in a Telegram statement that the new government was not a temporary, not a military, not some kind of interim administration, but a proper governing body.

The fact that not just Kherson residents, but Russian officials, too, are part of this government speaks clearly about the direction the Kherson region is headed in the future, he said. This direction is to Russia.

Khersons Russia-installed administration previously stated plans for the region to become part of Russia, either through a referendum or other means.

There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials.

In other developments:

 The 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland, sending the two nations membership bids to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals. The move further increases Russias strategic isolation. Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg hailed the signing as a truly a historic moment for Finland, for Sweden and for NATO.

 The war in Ukraine has drawn millions of dollars away from countries facing other crises. Somalia, suffering a food shortage largely driven by the war, may be the most vulnerable. Its aid funding is less than half of last years level while overwhelmingly Western donors have sent more than $1.7 billion to respond to the war in Europe. Yemen, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Congo and the Palestinian territories are similarly affected.

 Spain boosted military spending in an attempt to reach its commitment to NATO to dedicate 2% of gross domestic product to defense. Spains Cabinet approved a one-off Defense Ministry expenditure of almost 1 billion euros ($1 billion) that the government said was necessary to pay for unexpected expenses from Russias invasion of Ukraine. Spain has sent military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine and deployed more troops and aircraft to NATO missions in Eastern Europe.
Fusillade dans un defile du 4-Juillet pres de Chicago: au moins 5 morts et 16 blesses

Au moins cinq personnes ont ete tuees et seize blessees dans une fusillade survenue lundi dans le nord des Etats-Unis, lors d'un defile pour la fete de l'independance americaine, selon des responsables locaux cites par les medias locaux.




JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  As attorneys argued about abortion laws across the South on Tuesday, a Mississippi judge rejected a request by the states only abortion clinic to temporarily block a law that would ban most abortions.

Without other developments in the Mississippi lawsuit, the clinic will close at the end of business Wednesday and the state law will take effect Thursday.

One of the clinic's attorneys, Hillary Schneller of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the judge should have blocked the law.

People in Mississippi who need abortions right now are in a state of panic, trying to get into the clinic before its too late," Schneller said. "No one should be forced to live in fear like that.

Mississippi legislators passed the trigger law before the U.S. Supreme Court recently overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. The clinic, Jackson Women's Health Organization, sought a temporary restraining order that would have allowed it to remain open while the lawsuit played out in court.

This law has the potential to save the lives of thousands of unborn Mississippi children, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves said after the judge's ruling. It is a great victory for life. I also believe it is critical that we showcase to every mother and child that they are loved and that their communities will support them.

The closely watched lawsuit was part of a flurry of activity nationwide since the Supreme Court ruled. Conservative states have moved to halt or limit abortions while others have sought to ensure abortion rights, all as some women try to obtain the medical procedure against the changing legal landscape.

Elsewhere in the South, Floridas new 15-week abortion ban was blocked but then quickly reinstated Tuesday after an appeal from the state attorney general in a lawsuit challenging the restriction. Judge John C. Cooper issued the order temporarily halting the law after reproductive health providers argued that the state constitution guarantees a right to the procedure. The state quickly appealed his order, automatically putting the law back into effect.

The Florida law makes exceptions if the procedure is necessary to save the pregnant womans life, prevent serious injury or if the fetus has a fatal abnormality. It does not allow for exemptions for pregnancies caused by rape, incest or human trafficking.

The law, which went into effect Friday, was passed by the GOP-controlled legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis this spring.

In Louisiana, the state attorney general has asked the state Supreme Court to allow enforcement of a ban on most abortions. Louisianas anti-abortion statutes include so-called triggers that were designed to instantly take effect if the U.S. Supreme Court were to reverse abortion rights. But a state judge in New Orleans last week blocked enforcement of the law pending a court hearing on a lawsuit filed by a north Louisiana abortion clinic and others.

The Louisiana suit says the law is unclear on when the ban takes effect and on medical exceptions. The attorney generals application to the Supreme Court, filed over the holiday weekend and announced Tuesday, says the order blocking enforcement should be dissolved.

The north Louisiana clinic's attorneys argued in a Tuesday afternoon brief that it's premature for the high court to get the case before the district judge and an appellate court have had a chance to more fully consider the issues.

Mississippi was one of several states with a trigger law contingent on the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The law passed in 2007 and has never been challenged in court. It says abortion will be legal only if the pregnant womans life is in danger or if a pregnancy is caused by a rape reported to law enforcement. It does not have an exception for pregnancies caused by incest.

The clinics lawsuit cited a 1998 Mississippi Supreme Court ruling that said the state constitution invokes a right to privacy that includes an implied right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.

The state attorney general's office argued that the 1998 ruling was rooted in U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 1973 and 1992 that established or protected abortion rights but were overturned on June 24. But Rob McDuff, a Mississippi Center for Justice attorney representing the clinic, argued that state justices never said their ruling was made because of the federal Constitution.

They never said it would evaporate if Roe was ever overruled, McDuff said in court Tuesday.

The state attorney generals office said the Mississippi Constitution does not recognize a right to abortion and the state has a long history of restricting the procedure.

In the past two weeks, the state of the law has changed dramatically, the state solicitor general, Scott Stewart, argued Tuesday in court.

The lawsuit was filed three days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in a case that originated in Mississippi. The clinic had continued to see patients, but owner Diane Derzis said it will close if the near-ban on abortions takes effect.

In rejecting the clinic's request hours after the hearing, Halford wrote, The plain wording of the Mississippi Constitution does not mention abortion. She added that it is more than doubtful that the Mississippi Supreme Court would continue to uphold its 1998 ruling now that the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned its own previous abortion rulings.

McDuff told The Associated Press that clinic attorneys will review Halford's decision and consider whether to appeal it to the state Supreme Court.

Outside the courthouse in Mississippi's capital city, several women held signs supporting abortion rights while two men took turns using a microphone to tell abortion rights supporters that God would punish them for eternity.

Youre bloodthirsty. Bloodthirsty, abominable filth in the eyes of God," said one of the anti-abortion protesters, Allen Siders. Consider your ways today, sinners. Consider your ways today. Shame on you.

An abortion-rights supporter performed an improvised dance in front of Siders to mock him, and several women laughed.

Anthony Izaguirre reported from Tallahassee, Florida, and Kevin McGill reported from New Orleans.
The latest mass shooting came as the nation tried to find cause to celebrate its founding and the bonds that still hold it together. It was supposed to be a day for taking off work, flocking to parades, devouring hot dogs and burgers at backyard barbecues and gathering under a canopy of stars and exploding fireworks.

On a day that we came together to celebrate community and freedom, we are instead mourning the tragic loss of life and struggling with the terror that was brought upon us, Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said.

The Highland Park parade began around 10 a.m. but was suddenly halted 10 minutes later after shots were fired. Hundreds of parade-goers  some visibly bloodied  fled the area, leaving behind chairs, baby strollers and blankets. Authorities brought a person of interest into custody Monday evening.

As the Highland Park community mourned, fireworks began thundering in neighboring towns and across the country. Pyrotechnics bloomed shortly after nightfall in Boston and New York City, where a kaleidoscope of color exploded over the Hudson River and illuminated skyscrapers.

President Joe Biden, in remarks Monday celebrating 246 years of Americas independence, sought to reassure a nation both exhausted and unsettled by recent events.

In recent days, theres been reason to think this country is moving backwards, that freedom is being reduced, that rights we assumed were protected are no longer, Biden said in remarks to military families and administration officials enjoying a picnic on the South Lawn of the White House. I know it can be exhausting and unsettling, but tonight I want you to know were going to get through all of this.

Biden said many people see a divided country, but I believe we are more united than we are divided.

He tweeted earlier in the day about the shooting, calling it senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community this Independence Day.

"I will not give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence," the president tweeted.

These are precarious times: An economic recession lurks, and the Highland Park shooting will weigh on a national psyche already raw from mass shootings like those seen recently at a Texas elementary school and a New York supermarket.

Sharp social and political divisions have also been laid bare by recent Supreme Court decisions overturning the constitutional right to abortion and striking down a New York law limiting who may carry a gun in public.

Nevertheless, many had reason to gather and celebrate for the first time in three years amid easing coronavirus precautions.

Nathans Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest returned to its traditional location in Brooklyns Coney Island neighborhood after two years elsewhere thanks to the pandemic.

Its beautiful to be back here," Joey Jaws Chestnut told ESPN after winning the men's competition by downing 63 hot dogs and buns  even as he momentarily put a protester who rushed the stage in a chokehold. Miki Sudo chomped 40 franks to win the women's event.

Colorful displays were scheduled to light up the night sky from coast to coast. However, others, particularly in drought-stricken and wildfire-prone regions of the West, would forgo them.

Fireworks were the suspected cause behind a fire in Centerville, Utah, that led to the evacuation of dozens of homes and the cancellation of some of its Independence Day events, officials said.

It was a different matter in Phoenix, which is again going without fireworks  not because of the pandemic or fire concerns but supply-chain issues.

In emotional ceremonies across the country, some swore oaths of citizenship, qualifying them to vote in the upcoming midterm elections.

During a ceremony for naturalized citizens held at Mount Vernon, the Virginia home of George Washington, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told 52 people originally from 42 different countries that they were essential to building a strong labor force.

Immigrants strengthen our workforce, and, in the process, help drive the resiliency and vitality of our economy, Yellen said in remarks prepared for the Monday event.

For many, July 4 was also a chance to set aside political differences and to celebrate unity, reflecting on the revolution that gave rise to historys longest-living democracy.

Theres always something to divide or unite us," says Eli Merritt, a political historian at Vanderbilt University whose upcoming book traces the fraught founding of the United States.

But he sees the Jan. 6 hearings probing last year's storming of the U.S. Capitol as a reason for hope, an opportunity to rally behind democratic institutions. Even though not all Americans or their elected representatives agree with the committee's work, Merritt is heartened by the fact that it's at least somewhat bipartisan.

Moral courage as a locus for Americans to place hope, the willingness to stand up for what is right and true in spite of negative consequences to oneself," he said. "That is an essential glue of constitutional democracy.
Syncing your circadian rhythm to a natural light-dark cycle could improve your health and well-being. nambitomo/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Anyone who has suffered from jet lag or struggled after turning the clock forward or back an hour for daylight saving time knows all about what researchers call your biological clock, or circadian rhythm  the master pacemaker that synchronizes how your body responds to the passing of one day to the next.

This clock is made up of about 20,000 neurons in the hypothalamus, the area near the center of the brain that coordinates your bodys unconscious functions, like breathing and blood pressure. Humans arent the only beings that have an internal clock system: All vertebrates  or mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish  have biological clocks, as do plants, fungi and bacteria. Biological clocks are why cats are most active at dawn and dusk, and why flowers bloom at certain times of day.

Circadian rhythms are also essential to health and well-being. They govern your bodys physical, mental and behavioral changes over each 24-hour cycle in response to environmental cues like light and food. Theyre why more heart attacks and strokes occur early in the morning. Theyre also why mice that are missing their biological clocks age faster and have shorter lifespans, and people with a mutation in their circadian clock genes have abnormal sleep patterns. Chronic misalignment of your circadian rhythm with external cues, as seen in night-shift workers, can lead to a wide range of physical and mental disorders, including obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

In short, there is ample evidence that your biological clock is critical to your health. And chronobiologists like me are studying how the day-night cycle affects your body to better understand how you can modify your behaviors to use your internal clock to your advantage.

How biological rhythms affect your health

Your biological clock affects your health by regulating your sleep-wake cycles and fluctuations in blood pressure and body temperature. It does this primarily by syncing your endocrine system to environmental light-dark cycles so that certain hormones are released in certain amounts at certain times of day.

The pineal grand in your brain, for example, produces melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate sleep in response to darkness. Doctors advise reducing exposure to artificial blue light from electronic devices before bedtime because it can disrupt melatonin secretion and sleep quality.

Your circadian rhythm also affects your metabolism. Among other things, sleep helps you regulate leptin, a hormone that controls appetite. Your leptin levels fluctuate throughout the day according to a rhythm set by your circadian clock. Insufficient or irregular sleep can disrupt leptin production, which can make us hungrier and lead to weight gain.

Your hormones fluctuate rhythmically over the course of the day. The stress hormone cortisol typically peaks in the morning, while the sleep hormone melatonin typically peaks in the night. Pikovit44/iStock via Getty Images Plus

In recent years, researchers have discovered even more ways your circadian clock can affect your health. For example, there is now research suggesting that eating at set times of day, or time-restricted feeding, can prevent obesity and metabolic diseases. Depression and other mood disorders may also be linked to dysfunctional circadian control that lead to changes in how your genes are expressed.

The time of day when you take your medicine can also affect how well it works and how severe any side effects might be. Likewise, your biological clock is a potential target for cancer chemotherapies and anti-obesity treatments.

And finally, even your personality might be shaped by whether your internal clock make you a morning person or a night person.

Getting the most out of exercise

Circadian clocks also provide a potential answer to when is the best time of day to maximize the benefits of physical exercise.

To study this, my colleagues and I collected blood and tissue samples from the brains, hearts, muscles, livers and fat of mice that exercised either before breakfast in the early morning or after dinner in the late evening. We used a tool called a mass spectrometer to detect approximately 600 to 900 molecules each organ produced. These metabolites served as real-time snapshots of how the mice responded to exercise at specific times of day.

We stitched these snapshots together to create a map of how exercise in the morning versus evening affected each of the mices different organ systems  what we called an atlas of exercise metabolism.

The best time of day to exercise might be the time when you feel you perform best. Anuruk Charoenamornrat/EyeEm via Getty Images

Using this atlas, we saw that time of day affects how each organ uses energy during exercise. For instance, we found that early morning exercise reduced blood glucose levels more than late evening exercise. Exercise in the late evening, however, allowed the mice to benefit from energy they stored from their meals and increased their endurance.

Of course, mice and humans have many differences along with their similarities. For one, mice are more active at night than during the day. Still, we believe that our findings could help researchers better understand how exercise affects your health and, if timed appropriately, can be optimized based on time of day to meet your personal health goals.

Getting along with your biological clock

I believe that the field of chronobiology is growing, and we will produce even more research providing practical applications and insights into health and well-being in the future.

In my own work, for example, a better understanding of how exercising at different times of day affects your body could help tailor exercise plans to maximize specific benefits for patients with obesity, Type 2 diabetes and other diseases.

There is still much to learn about how your circadian clock works. But in the meantime, there are some tried and true ways people can synchronize their internal clocks for better health. These include regular exposure to sunlight to trigger the endocrine system to produce vitamin D, staying active during the day so you fall asleep more easily at night and avoiding caffeine and reducing your exposure to artificial light before bedtime.

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Shogo Sato receives funding from the Brain & Behavioral Research Foundation (NARSAD Young Investigator Grant, 28681) and start-up funds from Texas A&M University.

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Japans Panasonic Corp. and Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly say the company selected the state of Kansas as the location for a multibillion-dollar mega-factory to produce electric vehicle batteries for Tesla and other carmakers. The company was lured to Kansas by taxpayer-funded incentives worth $829 million over 10 years. That's the largest package of incentives that the state has offered a private business and it was made possible by a law enacted only five months before. The company says it will invest about $4 billion, and state officials expect the new plant to have about 4,000 workers. Officials believe suppliers and other local businesses will create up to new 4,000 jobs as well.
At the conclusion of a three-day trial in Sioux County District Court, jurors on Friday found Jaime Martinez Montiel, 40, not guilty of attempted murder, willful injury resulting in serious injury and leaving the scene of an accident with serious injury.

Martinez Montiel was charged with striking another man who had stepped in front of his car during an argument on July 11 in the 1300 block of Main Street in Rock Valley. According to court documents, Martinez Montiel knocked Carlos Gutierrez Montelongo to the ground and then ran over him and drove away. When located later at his apartment, Martinez Montiel told police he had struck the other man with his car.
East China's Anhui Province, which is combating the latest COVID-19 resurgence, has taken a range of measures to guarantee the supply of daily necessities.

From June 26 to July 4, a total of 186 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 895 asymptomatic carriers had been logged in the latest epidemic resurgence in Anhui, with the majority of cases being reported in Sixian County, the provincial health commission said Tuesday.

More than 60 supermarkets have been arranged to supply daily necessities to residents in the virus-hit Sixian, where 52 confirmed cases and 164 asymptomatic carriers were reported on Monday alone.

To reduce people-to-people contact, residents can place orders online. Nearly 30,000 orders of individual and collective buying are delivered per day on average in Sixian, according to Lu Qiang, head of the county's bureau of commerce.

"I bought two packages of chicken wings, four apples, eight steamed buns and some vegetables. It cost me less than 80 yuan (around 12 U.S. dollars), which is about the same price at normal times," said a resident surnamed Yao, who did the grocery shopping online.

Local authorities are also monitoring prices and cracking down on illegal behaviors such as hoarding, fabricating information and price gouging. At present, daily necessities such as flour, rice, meat, cooking oil and more are in stable supply in Sixian.

"We deliver about 3,000 orders of groceries per day on average," said Meng Tao, general manager of Jiamei supermarket in the county.

Meng and 94 other supermarket employees have been living in the supermarket or designated hotels since the latest COVID-19 emergence.

"We try to arrange one delivery vehicle for each residential community after we gather all the orders. The groceries will be picked up by volunteers waiting at community gates and then sent to each household after disinfection," said Meng.

A management system of "three heads" has been implemented in the county to ensure the smooth delivery of supplies and the needs of residents are met in a timely and orderly manner.

Xu Ke, 27, a local government official, is appointed as the head of the Taoliwenyuan community in Sixian. Together with 14 building heads and 68 unit heads, Xu is responsible for collecting the needs of and delivering supplies to the households in the community.

Each unit head is in charge of the daily supplies of 13 households. For the vulnerable group such as the aged and the disabled, the unit heads will call them or go to their homes to provide services. "The management system breaks down our work to each individual, which enables us to respond to people's needs more precisely," Xu said.

"Some residents have also donated rice, vegetables and instant noodles to those in need in the community. We are all like a big family in this special situation, trying to weather through the difficult time together," she added.
DAKOTA CITY -- A judge has ruled that a South Sioux City man acquitted by reason of insanity for the 2017 shooting death of his wife must remain in custody and continue treatment for his mental illness.

District Judge Bryan Meismer on June 28 ruled that evidence, including reports from mental health providers, showed Bei Sheng Chen is still a danger to himself and others and will continue to be a danger for the foreseeable future. Meismer ordered Chen to remain in treatment at the Lincoln (Nebraska) Regional Center.

Chen, 45, was found not responsible by reason of insanity and acquitted in May 2018 of first-degree murder, first-degree domestic assault and use of a firearm to commit a felony for the Sept. 6, 2017, shooting death of Mei Huang.

Chen has been in treatment since his acquittal, and Nebraska law requires an annual review of his condition. Meismer scheduled next year's review hearing for June 27 in Dakota County District Court.

Meismer said Chen may continue his current on and off-ground privileges while under supervision for the purpose of community reintegration. The judge permitted the Regional Center to begin the process of exploring placement options in the community for Chen, but the discharge process likely would be lengthy. Any changes in Chen's placement would need court approval.

Two psychiatrists who examined Chen separately prior to trial agreed that he was insane when he shot and killed his wife and did not realize the consequences of his actions on that day. Chen was diagnosed with psychosis, delusional disorders and depressive disorders.

Chen had followed Huang to the Law Enforcement Center at 701 W. 29th St. in South Sioux City and shot her outside. Police officers found Huang lying on the ground with gunshot wounds. Chen was found near her and taken into custody, and a firearm was found nearby.

Evidence presented at trial showed that prior the shooting, Chen was having delusions that his wife was the devil and was going to harm him.

Chen's attorney did not dispute that Chen had shot his wife, and a judge agreed that evidence showed Chen had pulled the trigger.
DAKOTA CITY -- A South Sioux City man is in custody, facing numerous charges of sexually assaulting a girl.

Jose Cruz Delao Murguia, 42, is being held on a $300,000 bond in the Dakota County Jail since his Thursday arrest on two counts each of first-degree sexual assault of a child, third-degree sexual assault of a child and incest and one count of child abuse.

Authorities were notified of the alleged assaults on June 2, when a girl under age 16 who was at the Siouxland Community Health Center reported she'd been sexually assaulted. She was interviewed on June 8 at an Omaha child abuse prevention and resource center.

According to court documents, the girl told interviewers that Delao Murguia had sexually assaulted her on three occasions, the most recent on May 30, in a South Sioux City home.

The child and her siblings have been placed in foster homes.
ROCK VALLEY, IOWA -- The Sioux County Sheriff's Office has now released the name of a man who drowned in a pond near Rock Valley on the Fourth of July.

According to a press release, Aldo Tomas-DeLeon, 19, Rock Valley, was swimming at Groeneweg Pond along 290th Street, one mile north of Rock Valley, when he went underwater and didn't resurface. A call then went out to Sioux County communications.

"Bystanders along with emergency responders located the male after some time and removed him from the water where life-saving measures were attempted," an earlier release stated before noting the victim was flown to a Sioux Falls, South Dakota hospital and pronounced dead there.

In the incident, the sheriff's office worked with the Rock Valley Police Department, the Rock Valley Fire Department and Rock Valley Ambulance.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  Federal guidance prioritizing the deportation of people in the country illegally who pose the greatest public safety risk can be implemented, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

At issue is a September directive from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that paused deportation unless individuals had committed acts of terrorism, espionage or egregious threats to public safety. The guidance of President Joe Biden's administration updated the policy under the administration of then-President Donald Trump, which removed people in the country illegally regardless of criminal history or community ties.

A federal judge put the Biden policy on hold after Arizona, Ohio and Montana sued to stop it, arguing it would lead to an increase in crime and strain law enforcement resources. After the government appealed, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the judge's preliminary injunction.

The appeals court said states couldn't prove the injuries they alleged, and said the guidance only instructs federal agents on how to enforce a law the national government has considerable authority over.

The Homeland Security guidance does not impose any direct costs on the States or threaten the loss of any federal funding, wrote chief circuit Judge Jeff Sutton.

Emilee Cantrell, press secretary for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, said in a statement the court's decision unfortunately allows President Biden to continue his dangerous immigration policies.

The border crisis has devastating impacts in Montana and states across the nation, Cantrell said. Attorney General Knudsen will continue to use every available tool to make the Biden administration do its job and secure the border. Brittni Thomason, a spokesperson for the Arizona Attorney Generals Office, said in a statement the agency is disappointed with the decision. This policy is another shameful example of actions the Biden administration is taking to encourage illegal border crossings, Thomason said.

A message was left with the Ohio Attorney General's Office seeking comment.
After more than four months of ferocious fighting, Russia claimed a key victory: full control over one of the two provinces in Ukraines eastern industrial heartland.

But Moscows seizure of the last major stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk province came at a steep price. The critical question now is whether Russia can muster enough strength for a new offensive to complete its capture of the Donbas and make gains elsewhere in Ukraine.

Yes, the Russians have seized the Luhansk region, but at what price? asked Oleh Zhdanov, a military analyst in Ukraine, noting that some Russian units involved in the battle lost up to a half their soldiers.

Even President Vladimir Putin acknowledged Monday that Russian troops involved in action in Luhansk need to take some rest and beef up their combat capability.

That raises doubts about whether Moscow's forces and their separatist allies are ready to quickly thrust deeper into Donetsk, the other province that makes up the Donbas. Observers estimated in recent weeks that Russia controlled about half of Donetsk, and battle lines have changed little since then.

Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko urged 350,000 people to evacuate the province to save lives and to enable the Ukrainian army to better defend towns from the Russian advance.

The destiny of the whole country will be decided by the Donetsk region, he said in Kramatrosk, the provinces administrative center and home to the Ukrainian militarys regional headquarters. Once there are less people, we will be able to concentrate more on our enemy and perform our main tasks.

The governors call appeared to represent one of the biggest suggested evacuations of the war. According to the U.N. refugee agency, more than 7.1 million Ukrainians are estimated to be displaced within Ukraine, and more than 4.8 million refugees left the country since Russias invasion started on Feb. 24

If Russia succeeds in the Donbas, it could free up its forces to grab even more land and dictate the terms of any peace agreement. If Ukraine, on the other hand, manages to pin the Russians down for a protracted period, it could build up the resources for a counteroffensive.

Exhausting the Russians has long been part of the plan for the Ukrainians, who began the conflict outgunned  but hoped Western weapons could eventually tip the scales in their favor.

They are already effectively using heavy howitzers and advanced rocket systems sent by the U.S. and other Western allies, and more is on the way. But Ukrainian forces have said they remain badly outmatched.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said recently that Russian forces were firing 10 times more ammunition than the Ukrainian military.

After a failed attempt at a lightning advance on the capital of Kyiv in the opening weeks of the war, Russian forces withdrew from many parts of northern and central Ukraine and turned their attention to the Donbas, a region of mines and factories where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainians since 2014.

Since then, Russia has adopted a slow-and-steady approach that allowed it to seize several remaining Ukrainian strongholds in Luhansk over the course of recent weeks.

While Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that their troops have withdrawn from the city of Lysychansk, the last bulwark of their resistance in Luhansk, the presidential office said Tuesday the military was still defending small areas in the province.

Zhdanov, the analyst, predicted that the Russians would likely rely on their edge in firepower to apply the same scorched earth tactics and blast entire cities away in Donetsk. The same day that Russia claimed it had taken Lysychansk, new artillery attacks were reported in Donetsk.

But Russia's approach is not without drawbacks. Moscow has not given a casualty count since it said some 1,300 troops were killed in the first month of fighting, but Western officials have said that was just a fraction of real losses. Since then, Western observers have noted that the number of Russian troops involved in combat in Ukraine has dwindled, reflecting both heavy attrition and the Kremlins failure to fill up the ranks.

The limited manpower has forced Russian commanders to avoid ambitious attempts to encircle large areas in the Donbas, opting for smaller maneuvers and relying on heavy artillery barrages to slowly force the Ukrainians to retreat.

The military has also relied heavily on separatists, who have conducted several rounds of mobilization, and Western officials and analysts have said Moscow has increasingly engaged private military contractors. It has also tried to encourage Russian men who have done their tour of duty to sign up again, though it's is unclear how successful that has been.

While Putin so far has refrained from declaring a broad mobilization that might foment social discontent, recently proposed legislation suggested that Moscow was looking for other ways to replenish the ranks. The bill would have allowed young conscripts, who are drafted into the army for a year and barred from fighting, to immediately switch their status and sign contracts to become full professional soldiers. The draft was shelved amid strong criticism.

Some Western officials and analysts have argued that attrition is so heavy that it could force Moscow to suspend its offensive at some point later in the summer, but the Pentagon has cautioned that even though Russia has been churning through troops and supplies at rapid rates it still has abundant resources.

U.S. director of national intelligence Avril Haines said Putin appeared to accept the slow pace of the advance in the Donbas and now hoped to win by crushing Ukraine's most battle-hardened forces.

We believe that Russia thinks that if they are able to crush really one of the most capable and well-equipped forces in the east of Ukraine ... that will lead to a slump basically in the Ukrainian resistance and that that may give them greater opportunities, Haines said.

If Russia wins in the Donbas, it could build on its seizure of the southern Kherson region and part of neighboring Zaporizhzhia to try to eventually cut Ukraine off from its Black Sea coast all the way to the Romanian border. If that succeeded, it would deal a crushing blow to the Ukrainian economy and also create a corridor to Moldova's separatist region of Transnistria that hosts a Russian military base.

But that is far from assured. Mykola Sunhurovsky, of the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv-based think tank, predicted that growing supplies of heavy Western weapons, including HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, will help Ukraine turn the tide of the war.

The supplies of weapons will allow Ukraine to start a counteroffensive in the south and fight for Kherson and other cities, Sunhurovsky said.

But Ukraine has also faced massive personnel losses: up to 200 soldiers a day in recent weeks of ferocious fighting in the east, according to officials.

Overall, local military balance in Donbas favors Russia, but long term trends still favor Ukraine, wrote Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military and program director at the Virginia-based CNA think tank. However, that estimate is conditional on sustained Western military assistance, and is not necessarily predictive of outcomes. This is likely to be a protracted war.

Associated Press journalists Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

Follow APs coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Ivana Trump, the first wife of former President Donald Trump and mother to his oldest children, has died in New York City. She was 73. People familiar with the matter tell The Associated Press that police are investigating whether she fell accidentally down the stairs at her home. The people spoke Thursday on the condition of anonymity. Ivana Trump was a Czech-born ski racer and businesswoman who with Donald Trump formed half of a publicity power couple in the 1980s. They had a messy, public divorce after he met his next wife, Marla Maples. But Ivana had recently been on good terms with her former husband.
This is not just another setback.

Anyone whos lived long enough has seen the Supreme Court issue a ruling they didnt like. This is not that. No, what made the ruling that felled Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, more than just another disappointment, what made it the judicial equivalent of a kick in the teeth, is, as Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer noted in a peppery dissent, the fact that this is the first time in history rights granted by the court have been rescinded.

There is a qualitative difference between not getting a thing you wanted and having a thing you already owned snatched away from you. Thats what happened last week to women of childbearing age with regard to the right to have an abortion. And the implications of that decision, awful as they are for those women, resonate far beyond them.

For all the years of the American experiment, the parameters of human-rights debate have plodded predictably, but inexorably, in one direction. There have been setbacks, yes, but always along a path of more freedom for more people. Take LGBTQ rights for example. In 2004, we were arguing whether gay people should have the right to be married. By 2014, we were arguing about who would bake the wedding cake.

Subtly, but perceptibly, the parameters move forward. Or they did. Last week, they moved back 50 years.

In the remarkably specious reasoning of the majority opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito, women must surrender to the state the right to make decisions about their own reproductive health because that right is neither mentioned in the Constitution nor deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition. Alito reaches as far back as the 13th century to illustrate this supposed failing.

Given that women were legally voiceless and defined as property of their husbands and fathers in the eras he cites, such reasoning is not only unpersuasive, but flat-out appalling. And considering that such rights as contraception, same-sex and interracial marriage are also of recent vintage and also not mentioned in the Constitution, one must logically fear that the limitations now being imposed on childbearing women will ultimately extend far beyond them.

Alito swears we have no cause for alarm, repeatedly claiming that, Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion. Tellingly, he never explains why logic that applies to the right to get an abortion would not apply equally to, say, the right to buy condoms. Apparently, he cant.

Meantime, Republican architects of theocracy are openly speculating about imposing further restrictions. Indeed, in his concurrence, Justice Thomas pushes the court to next curtail contraceptive and LGBTQ rights. The fact that conservatives seem to feel its time now to unfurl their bucket list offers superfluous evidence that this ruling is not logical, but ideological. As the dissenters put it, The majority has overruled Roe and Casey for one and only one reason: because it has always despised them and now it has the votes to discard them.

Thats not how the law is supposed to work. That it apparently works that way now testifies to the illness of this democracy. Progress has lurched backward, women losing a freedom on which theyve relied for generations. The rest of us should be angry that their rights can be arbitrarily taken: We should also be concerned.

After all, it means that ours can, too.
For decades, in late January millions of people from every corner of our country and from all walks of life have gathered in Washington, D.C. From families and students, to community leaders and so many others, these folksincluding many from Iowahave joined together every year and peacefully marched through our nations capital and to the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of life. Its what has come to be known as the annual March for Life.

As a proud and lifelong member of the pro-life community and a member of the Pro-Life Caucus in Congress, I have long fought to protect and defend life. Thats why for many years Ive had the pleasure of hosting Iowans who make the trip to Washington each year for the March for Life, or even participating in the march myself. Each year, its brought me such joy to see Americans from across the country joining together to celebrate, defend, and fight for life.

Our pro-life movement has faced, and continues to face, adversity from opponents, including threats of violence. In Iowa, tragically, we have even seen some of these threats acted upon, like one far-left radical group who declared it open season on pregnancy counseling centers in our state. This kind of intimidation is horrific and cannot be tolerated. But these threats havent deterred us  not for one second.

After nearly five decades, thanks to the tireless efforts of all those who participated in the March for Life and so many other demonstrations and gatherings to promote and defend life, this past week our pro-life movement won a major victory in the Supreme Court.

Last week, the Supreme Court announced a landmark ruling in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization. It was a decision by the highest court in the land that reflects the science, saves lives, and brings policymaking power back to the American people and their elected officials. But it could not have been possible without the countless organizations, leaders, and volunteers who have advocated for the unborn. Without them, we simply would not be where we are today. Thats why I joined my friend and colleague Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee just days ago on a Senate resolution to recognize and celebrate the pro-life cause and, importantly, all the individuals and volunteers who make up our movement.

As Ive said many times before, protecting life and the most vulnerable among us is the most important measure of any society. Every single life is precious. No life should ever be ignored, devalued, or forgotten. So, to every single person who has worked hard over the last 50 years to protect and defend life, including all the Americansand Iowanswho have journeyed to Washington, D.C. every late January, I say to you: thank you. Together, we are making a difference for countless unborn lives.

Joni Ernst, a native of Red Oak and a combat veteran, represents Iowa in the U.S. Senate.
Care and Feeding is Slates parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.

Dear Care and Feeding,

Im Indian, and my husband is Black. Were expecting our first child (a girl!) in three months, and both of our families are very excited. This will be my parents first granddaughter, and my in-laws first grandchild. We live in a large-ish city on, about a half-hours drive from my husbands family, who live in the more suburban area where he grew up, so his parents have made it clear that theyre excited and willing to play a large role in their granddaughters lifewhich is great, but my mother-in-law expects that this role extends to her religious life as well.

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She has attended the same majority-Black church since before my husband was born and wants to take our daughter too. She extolled its Sunday School programs, how much my husband enjoyed it as a child, the wonderful community, and above all, how it will connect our daughter to her people. Sounds great, right? Except my husband and I discussed this issue before we decided to have kids, and we want to take our daughter to the progressive Hindu mandir in our neighborhood. Weve attended before, and it has families from all across India, as well as other mixed-race families like oursincluding two other Indian and Black couples with young kids, which is awesome.

Since my husbands family lives so much closer, and we will see them so frequently, we chose the mandir to make sure that our daughter has strong ties to both of our cultures, and because I stayed a practicing Hindu throughout my life, whereas my husband stopped attending services when he moved out. But we still havent told his mother for several reasons, the primary one being that she has said that shes worried our daughter will grow up to be confused and uneducated about her real culture. This was in response to me saying that we were hoping to take our daughter to India to spend some time in the summer with my parents when shes old enough, and make it an annual visit, but shes made similar remarks when Ive talked about my plans to speak Hindi at home. My husband also hates arguing or starting difficult conversations with his mom, and says he knows shell constantly bring this up and guilt him for it. So I guess my question is: How do we shut my MILs churchgoing plans down and also prevent her from making insensitive remarks about my culture in the future without causing a blowup? I like my MIL a lot, and we get along well most of the time, so Im scared this could permanently damage our relationship.

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Religious Rupture in Raleigh

Dear Religious Rupture,

First of all, congratulations on this new adventure of parenthood that you are about to embark on! It is a journey that not only surprises you about how deeply you can love another small being, but one that will also strengthen your relationship with yourself. There is another relationship however, that will come to the forefront during this time and be tested  and that is the central family relationship with your partner.

You have said that you discussed the plans for children with your husband even before you decided to have kids. So both of you are clearly on the same page, and thats a good thing because it would be exponentially more difficult if you werent.

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Its now your husbands responsibility to stand up for youand your plan for your familyto his mother. At the end of the day, the decisions for your daughter are made by you and him, and his mother needs to fall in line.

You said that your husband hates starting difficult conversations with his mother, but parenthood will not only ask but require him to step into a bolder version of himself. We choose our partners because we want them to make us a priority, and we want to know we can count on them for support. When we lack that support, the relationship suffers because of it.

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My suggestion is to talk to your husband about making your plans clear to his mom. I know theres some fear involved, but he has to put this in perspective and realize shes not a monster. I sense that shell understand and accept this in a much gentler way when it comes from him, her own son. If that doesnt happen, then he should still hold firm knowing that the main decision-makers regarding your daughter are you and your husband.

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Another byproduct of this is that it will strengthen the bond between the two of you, because youll know that in a difficult situation, you could count on your partner to support and be there for you. That kind of love and support between parents is a huge benefit in the life of a child.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My daughter Izzy became friends with another girl in her sophomore biology class Mira during the school year, theyve been hanging out by our pool this summer. Izzy is a good studentshe makes As and Bs, is part of two clubs, and is on the school dance team. She has visited our (good!) state school, is likely to get in, and wants to study nursing. Mira has been a straight-A student for as long as she can remember. She is an officer in four clubs, is a varsity track athlete, and has plans to organize school-wide fundraisers next year. Her whole life revolves around school and extracurriculars. Izzy says that even though Mira is invited out, she never dates or goes to parties. I was in the living room when Mira learned that she got her first-ever B+ (in the most difficult math class sophomores are allowed to take) she was crying, hyperventilating, basically heartbroken, while Izzy tried to console her. Mira later texted Izzy to apologize, explaining that her dream is to get into an Ivy or another top school, and in order to do that, she needs to be on top of everything. She also privately apologized to me for ruining my day with her meltdown, and said that it had always been really important to her family that she succeed, because her parents families had come to the States from nothing, and her parents still went to Harvard and Berkeley.

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I feel awful for Mirashe seems to spend every day stressed out and trying to make sure everyone is happy, and is under pressure at home too. Before Izzy was born, I was a high school counselor, and I know college admissions get more selective every year. Im worried about Miras mental health, not only if she doesnt get into the schools her parents want, but also in the next two years leading up to college admissions. Am I overreacting or am I right to be concerned? Is it weird if I want to support Mira and her mental health, and if its not, how can I support her?

Type-A Teen Troubles

Dear Type A,

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Even though I hear stories like this all of the time, they always break my heart. Yes, Im in favor of hard-work and discipline for children, but Im also in favor of kids being kids. What Miras parents fail to realize is their daughters college choice is not directly correlated to success. My older brother received his MBA from Harvard, and he has told me about many of his former classmates who are struggling emotionally and professionally today. Although I dont know the exact reasons for those struggles, I would go out on a limb to guess that at least few of them broke under the pressure of striving to be the best since they were young. On the flip side, I know tons of people who did not attend the most selective colleges (including me), who go on to have very successful careers.

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Obviously youre limited in terms of what you can truly do to help Mira since you arent her parent, but I think its possible to give her a healthy dose of perspective. One way to do that is to ask her why she dreams of going to an Ivy League school, and you can follow up from there. If she says she wants to get in because of the prestige of those schools, you can ask her why thats important, because as I mentioned earlier, prestige doesnt equal success. You can inform Mira that a kid like your daughter Izzy will have many of the same opportunities afforded to her in the job market that shell have, plus Izzy will have the added benefit of being a well-rounded, socialized young woman who lives for herself and not for the dreams of her parents.

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Speaking of which, if Mira says she wants to get into an Ivy League school because of her parents, I would follow up by asking if she could take her parents wishes out of the equation, what would she want for herself? Her answer to that question will speak volumes, but the most important thing you can tell her at that point is that she can do whatever she desires without a degree from Harvard, Yale or the others.

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Everyone has different definitions of success, but in my opinion, success equals happiness  and getting a degree from a certain university will never be the sole reason why one gets there. No one remembers individuals after they die by saying, She had a 3.8 GPA at Dartmouth. People remember us by how we touch lives and by how we make the world a better place. If youre up for it, show her examples of people in her chosen field who succeeded without an Ivy League degreeand I guarantee you there are many of people to choose from.

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Your pep talk may not alleviate the stress shes feeling, but hopefully it will make her understand that the quality of her life has very little to do with her grades in high school Algebra. I know it may seem like you would be overstepping by talking to her parents, so you dont have to do that. Instead keep reminding her that shell be just fine if she focuses on her mental health and mixing in some fun in the process. It has worked for me and countless others, and I hope it will work for her as well.

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Catch Up on Care and Feeding

 If you missed Mondays column, read it here.

 Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group!

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Dear Care and Feeding,

Recently I was talking with some other parent-friends about our teens (all between the ages of 13 and 14, a small group that has been together since first grade) and tech. It came up that all of the others use monitoring software or regularly look through their teens browsing history, make sure they know whats on their phones (yes they all have phones), etc.

I said I didnt do any of those things. I dont even know the code to unlock my childs computer (though I do know the code for the phone). I dont really snoop. I will sometimes ask what they are doing or look over their shoulder, but I dont have monitoring software either. Ive given my child the talk about internet safety (dont reveal what your age is, where you live, what school you go to, etc.), weve talked here and there about porn (though not ethical porn), weve talked about what is and isnt appropriate for someone unknown to ask, and so on. I guess Ive just been trusting that if there was a problem theyd come to me with the issue.

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Im an elder millennial, and I grew up as the internet was. I ran circles around my parents with regard to monitoring or wondering what I was doing online. That said, I often felt that when they did try to snoop, that they were invading my privacy. Im sure my child can probably run circles around me in terms of hiding things if they wanted.

But am I being naive? Should I be monitoring more closely? Is this a normal thing now and I missed the message? Most of these parent-friends are firmly Gen X (and at least 5 years older than me) so is this some generational divide?

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Wrong For Refusing to Snoop?

Dear Refusing To Snoop,

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Its certainly your right as a parent not to monitor your childs internet usage, but based on my experience, there are more people I know who track what their kids are doing online than not, myself included.

Granted, my kids are 8 and 11, so theyre younger than yoursbut Ive had age-appropriate talks with them about the dangers of being online, and even though they mostly get it, I still do my part to ensure theyre safe with tracking software.

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What Ive noticed is that my kids arent the problemits their classmates and friends. My 11-year-old has a phone, and I discovered that one of her classmates sent her a text with some inappropriate sexual content, which I quickly intercepted and dealt with. If I wasnt monitoring her content, who knows how many of these texts she would receive? How would I know if someone is bullying, targeting, or harassing her without monitoring? I have a great relationship with her and we communicate well, but I know she wont tell me everything. The fact is most 11-year-olds arent equipped to handle all of the depravity that can be found online, so its best to bring them along as slowly as possible by monitoring content instead of allowing them to receive the proverbial fire hose to the face by navigating through unfiltered inappropriate content.

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And quite frankly I couldnt give a rats rear end about invading either of my daughters privacy, because Im here to protect them, not to be their buddy. That said, Im not monitoring every text message and every visited website, because I use a company to do all that for me. There are plenty of apps out there, but I use Bark, which mostly operates in the background and my 11-year-old doesnt even notice it (although Ive clearly told her that I am watching how she uses her phone).

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Like I said, its your right as a parent not to track your kids internet usage, but in my mind, there are way too many threats out there not to.

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Want Advice From Care and Feeding?

Submit your questions about parenting and family life here. Its anonymous! (Questions may be edited for publication.)

Dear Care and Feeding,

Let me start by saying that I am not a parent. My best friend Megan is a single mom with two kids who are 8 and 4. I love Megan with all of my heart, but her kids are awful. They yell at her to give them snacks, buy them toys, or whatever else they want in a given moment. She rarely puts her foot down which results in her kids having a ton of expensive toys and eating cupcakes and candy at 6 a.m. just to shut them up. Again, Im not a parent, but if I talked to my mom the way these kids talked to her, I would be six feet underground. Should I tell her that her kids are out of control? They seem to be doing fine at school and elsewhere, but I cringe whenever I witness how disrespectful they are to her at home.

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Terrorist Kids

Dear Terrorist Kids,

Well, let me start by saying that youre right: few parents want to hear parenting advice from non-parents. Thats not to say that youre wrong about what youre witnessing, but even if shes your best friend, she may not be open to your critiques about her children.

I usually believe that as long as the kids are safe and not in imminent danger, then we should keep our thoughts to ourselves. However, that doesnt mean you shouldnt speak up if you feel compelled tobut there are some things you should keep in mind first.

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Perhaps Megan is overwhelmed as a single parent and simply doesnt have the energy to endure arguments with her kids, which results in giving them dessert for breakfast. Would I raise my kids that way? No, I wouldntbut that doesnt make Megans way wrong. Shes taking the path of least resistance so her finite levels of energy can be allocated to other important tasks like work or maintaining her sanity. Instead of judging her for allowing her kids to walk all over her, instead you should ask how you can support her. Maybe that means babysitting so she can take some much-needed time off to recharge. Maybe it means bringing over some takeout so she doesnt have to worry about meal prep for an evening. The possibilities are endless, but what youre describing to me is a mom whos absolutely fried and is in desperate need of relief.

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That said, if you still want to say something, you should do it in the moment, but direct the feedback at her and not at the kids. So if one of the kids yells at Megan to make me a snack, now! you could say something along the lines of, Megan, do you think its OK for Johnny to talk to you that way? What if he talked to a teacher or authority figure like that? It could end badly for him. I know Im not a parent, but I know disrespectful behavior when I see it. In a best-case scenario, she will start changing her ways now that shes aware that others are picking up on her kids behavior. If she gets defensive or angry, you can disarm her by saying, I dont mean any harm. I love you and I can tell that youre overwhelmed and I want to help. What can I do?

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Hopefully your friendship is strong enough to allow some real talk, and if it is, then it could serve as a much-needed wake-up call.

Doyin

More Advice From Slate

Is it OK to change your mind about having a baby? My husband and I have been together for over five years, and one of the things that we agreed upon completely during that time was that neither of us wanted children. I truly never thought I would. Over the last few years, though, I have had many friends, family, and co-workers have children, and for the first time been exposed to the joys and awesomeness of having kids (instead of just the horror stories).
Justice Samuel Alitos majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jacksons Womens Health revokes a constitutional right to abortion by calling Roe v. Wade an abuse of judicial authority. Because there is no right to an abortion in the nations past, Alito argues, Roe was wrong the day it was decided, and Casey v. Planned Parenthood was wrong for honoring its precedent. But by overturning these two decisions, Justice Alito has committed his own abuse of judicial authority. Claiming reverence for the past, he justifies his failure to respect tradition with a tactic conservatives frequently attribute to liberals: distorting history to promote a present-day political agenda.

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As precedent for not following precedent, Alito cites three cases applauded by liberals that allegedly disregard stare decisis. The first corrected the abuse of judicial authority in the notorious Lochner era when a conservative court ruled progressive state legislation limiting work hours unconstitutional. The second reversed a ruling allowing states to require children in public schools to salute and pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag. The third is Brown v. Board of Education, which ended school segregation by overturning Plessy v. Fergusons doctrine of separate but equal.

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These examples should not fool anyone. In fact, read carefully, they expose Justice Alitos political hypocrisy masquerading as a non-partisan account of legal history. For instance, the work-hours ruling relied on precedents protecting womens health. But it is Justice Alitos desire to associate his draft opinion with the moral authority of Brown that most poignantly betrays his contradictory appeals to history.

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Alito fails to mention that Plessy did precisely what he insists be done with abortion: grant authority to the people and their elected representatives to regulate politically divisive issues. Plessy allowed state legislatures to determine the contentious issue of racial segregation despite Homer Plessys claim that requiring separate but equal cars on intrastate railroad travel violated, among other things, his due process rights. In contrast, Brown denied state legislatures that political authority.

But contrary to popular myth, Brown did not expressly breach the issue of stare decisis. The court has explicitly called only one of its previous rulings unconstitutional: the 1938 decision Erie Canal v. Tompkins. Brown, like the other two examples, honored legal precedent while changing the effect of an earlier decision. Plessy rested on the legal ruling that a state could consider race when exerting its police powers for the public welfare as long as doing so was reasonable. Nothing in Brown contradicted that ruling.

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Instead, Brown unanimously claimed to be honoring stare decisis while overturning the effects of Plessy by introducing evidence that would have been unavailable in 1896. The question of new evidence is crucial because Dobbs overturns both Roe and Casey without taking acount of any new evidence (including copious evidence to economic and medical harms to women that were unavailable to the Justices in Roe), noting only that abortion still divides the nation. When Plessy was decided, the court argued, the justices did not have evidence showing that attending segregated schools generated a feeling of inferiority in Black children. That new evidence showed that state laws requiring segregated schools were not, in fact, reasonable.

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Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected, the court decided. We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place.

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Alitos appeal to Brown as precedent rings hollow for another reason. Brown relied on the doctrine of a living Constitution, anathema to the five justices agreeing to Dobbs majority opinion. According to their method of constitutional interpretation, the Brown court would have had to interpret the 14th Amendment according to traditions and practices from 1868 when it was ratified. But, just as numerous states in 1868 banned abortion, many at the time also mandated segregated schools. Rather than turn the clock back, however, Browns justices looked at the changed role of public education in 1954.

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A longer look at the past would have been more devastating. Because public education was not widespread at the time, the Constitution does not mention it any more than it mentions abortion. Under the 10th Amendment public schooling became the responsibility of each state. One state with a long tradition of public schools was Massachusetts, whose constitution had a provision similar to the 14th Amendments equal protection clause. Yet in an 1849 case, cited in Plessy, the Massachusetts Supreme Court upheld Bostons separate but equal schools.

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One of Plessys attorneys had been the U.S. Solicitor General, who had argued numerous civil rights cases before the Supreme Court. In his brief in Plessy he claimed that states could segregate schools but not railroad cars. He did so by following a method similar to Justice Alitos. Turning to Blackstones Commentaries, an eighteenth-century source widely known in 1787, he cited the right of freedom of locomotion. But Blackstone has no reference to public schools as we know them. If Brown had followed Justice Alitos standard, tax-supported public education would be what the majoritys allies at the Cato Institute call it: a privilege, not a right.

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The 14th Amendment exists because of a decision worse than Plessy. In 1857, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, Chief Justice Roger Taney denied U.S. citizenship to anyone of African descent, even those who were free. He did so with a story of the past as flawed as Justice Alitos is today. When the Constitution was ratified, he argued, discriminatory legislation by states against free people of color stigmatized them with deep and enduring marks of inferiority and degradation. Because a republic can have only one class of citizens, those stigmatized were not part of We, the People, who ratified the Constitution and had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.

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In 1928 Charles Evans Hughes, who had two terms on the Supreme Court, once as Chief Justice, called Dred Scotts use of history one of the courts self-inflicted wounds. Yet the court never overturned that dreadful decision. Instead, it allowed a political process outlined by the Constitution to take its course: ratification of the 13th and the 14th Amendments. Wrongly decided cases denying womens suffrage, upholding poll taxes, and invalidating the income tax have also been corrected by way of constitutional amendments.

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If the Dobbs majority was really intent on stopping judicial legislation and allowing the people to express their will through the political process, it should have honored its judicial duty of respecting stare decisis and let constitutional remedies other than judicial ones take their course. Granted, Brown reversed Plessy rather than rely on a new amendment. But Brown, unlike Dobbs, did not take away a right.

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We tend to forget that the 13th Amendment took away a right by abolishing slavery. Dred Scott was the first Supreme Court case to declare congressional legislation unconstitutional because of the Bill of Rights. The Missouri Compromise that outlawed slavery in some territories, Chief Justice Taney argued, violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment by denying someone of his liberty or property to maintain ownership of a slave. The right to own slaves is morally reprehensible. But taking away even that right called for the authority of a constitutional amendment, not a judicial opinion.

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Knowing that states had authorized slavery, framers of the 14th Amendment addressed Dred Scott by implicitly granting African Americans citizenship and putting limits on state action. Yet in another horrendous decision, in 1876 the court ruled that the Bill of Rights continued to limit actions only of the federal government. Without mentioning that abuse of judicial authority, Justice Alito does, however, acknowledge that 50 years later the court slowly began to incorporate parts of the Bill of Rights under the 14th Amendment. But the case he cites is a recent one in which the Roberts court incorporated the Second Amendment.

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Todays Supreme Court has power inconceivable to most founders. Imagined as being above politics, the court soon became partisan with John Marshalls assumption of judicial review condemned by Thomas Jefferson as a Federalists abuse of judicial authority over the states. The courts unchecked power means that, even if an opinion, like Dred Scott, gets history wrong, inaccurate history becomes part of the nations legal history.

With Dobbs, the court again stigmatized itself with yet another self-inflicted wound. Unfortunately, the people most likely to be wounded are pregnant people who will now be denied the right to protect their health.
Roe v. Wade is gone. In a landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled nearly 50 years of precedent guaranteeing the right to abortion in the United States. In the wake of that decision, abortion policy will now be determined through the legislative process, mostly at the state level. Indeed, the majority opinion is premised largely on the notion that the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives. But legislators keen on restricting abortion access are already showing that they have no interest in truly letting the people decide.

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On Aug. 2, Kansas will become the first state to put abortion policy in the peoples hands, holding a vote on whether to amend its constitution to remove the right to abortion. But theres a catch: Kansas will hold its vote on abortion rights during the states primary electiona scheme deliberately crafted to minimize Democratic and moderate turnout and ensure the Amendment passes.

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The Republican legislature timed the abortion vote knowing that Kansas 2022 primary would be heavy on contested Republican races and light on Democratic ones. It also knew that nearly 30 percent of Kansas voters are registered as unaffiliated, and that those more moderate voters are unaccustomed to participating in primary elections because they cannot vote partisan ballots. So by scheduling the vote on abortion rights for the August primary, the Kansas legislature stacked the deck in favor of Republican turnout.

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This ploy is a direct response to a 2019 Kansas Supreme Court decision holding that the Kansas Constitution secures a right to abortion separate and independent of the federal right. That means Kansans retain a right to abortion even now that the Supreme Court has overruled Roe. And the state could become a crucial source of reproductive healthcare for residents of nearby states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, which appear prepared to implement some of the countrys strictest abortion bans.

The Kansas state legislature, however, is controlled by a Republican supermajority that is determined not to let that happeneven though most Kansans favor some level of access to abortion.

For Kansas to override its own Supreme Court and enact an abortion ban, it must first amend its Constitution. And thats exactly what its trying to do. The Kansas Constitution can be amended by a two-thirds vote of both legislative bodies and a subsequent majority vote by the states voters.

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The process is well underway. In 2021, Kansas Senate and House each passed, along partisan lines, the diplomatically titled Value Them Both Amendment, which would establish that the constitution of the state of Kansas does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion. Though the Amendment is not an abortion ban itself, it does permit the legislature to enact abortion bans to the full extent permitted by the U.S. Constitution, including banning abortion in cases of rape or incest.

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The Amendment now requires the approval of Kansas voters, and the legislature did its best to hand-pick who those voters would be: It opted to hold the vote at a time it believes Republican turnout will far exceed Democratic and unaffiliated turnoutthe states Aug. 2 primary election. If it had truly wanted to put the states abortion policy in the peoples hands, it would have scheduled the vote for the general election on Nov. 8.

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This would be a devious scheme in any state, but it is particularly so in Kansas. For starters, the states turnout in general elections has, historically, been double its turnout in primary elections. So the legislature scheduled the vote knowing full well it would likely cut public participation in half.

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Whats more, Kansas is home to a uniquely high number of unaffiliated voters. According to the states voter registration data, Kansas is 44 percent Republican, 26 percent Democratic, and 29 percent unaffiliatedso Democratic and unaffiliated voters together outnumber Republicans. Those unaffiliated voterswho often vote Democratic (Kansas has a Democratic governor and Joe Biden won over 41 percent of the vote in 2020)cannot vote in partisan primary elections without changing their registration status. To be clear, unaffiliated voters can vote on non-partisan questions on the ballotincluding the Value Them Both Amendmentbut because they are unaccustomed to voting in primaries and have little else to vote on in August, the legislature anticipated low unaffiliated turnout.

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Finally, Republicans have far more high-profile primary contests expected to drive turnout in August than do Democratsincluding primary contests for governor, attorney general, and the newly constituted Congressional District 3. Democrats, meanwhile, have the incumbent governor, an uncontested attorney general race, and no contested congressional primaries. The legislature expected this to ensure that the share of Republicans who turnout on primary day would far exceed the share of Democrats.

All told, Kansas special election on abortion rights is engineered to let Republican primary voters decide the issue while the voices of Democrats and unaffiliated voterswho make up a combined 55 percent of Kansas electoratego unheard.

If the amendment passes, it will not be a vindication of the Supreme Courts belief in deciding abortion policy through democratic processes. Instead, it will be another casualty of a democracy increasingly designed to count some votes more than others.
This piece was originally published on Just Security, an online forum for analysis of U.S. national security law and policy.

Now that Pat Cipollone, Donald Trumps last White House Counsel, has received a subpoena for testimony from the January 6 Select Committee, he faces two key decisions. He must first decide whether to appear at all. If he does appear, he must then decide whether he should refuse to answer certain questions by asserting legal privileges. In my view, Cipollone has no valid legal basis to refuse to appearand once in the witness chair, there are no valid claims of privilege that would permit him to refuse to answer questions relating to matters the committee is investigating.

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Starting with the first decision, there is no proper basis for Cipollone to refuse to appear. Given the nature and gravity of the offenses that the January 6 committee is investigating, a failure to appear would rank as a disgraceful dereliction of duty. That is particularly true in light of the extraordinary testimony offered by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. Under oath, she stated that Cipollone warned his colleagues that if the mob marched to the Capitol, Were going to get charged with every crime imaginable. The committee has the right to explore whether he made this comment just to a relatively low-level stafferwhich seems unlikely-or whether he similarly warned Trump and his close associates. The committee has also heard testimony that Cipollone described a proposed letter from Jeffrey Clark (initially supported by Trump) as a murder-suicide pact that would damage everyone who touches it. Because Cipollones own conduct is squarely at issueand because he had unique access to Trump throughout the fraught period under investigationthe committee can very easily establish a legitimate and legally compelling basis to obtain his testimony.

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To be sure, the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel has sometimes opined that high-ranking officials enjoy immunity from appearing in response to congressional subpoenas. But DOJ itself has repudiated that position, in significant part, by prosecuting former Trump administration official Peter Navarro for criminal contempt of Congress. The fact that the Justice Department gave Mark Meadows a pass may be due to the amount of assistance he provided the committee. A former staff member of the committee, Denver Riggleman told CNNs Anderson Cooper, Mark Meadows is the MVP for the Committee. I think they should pay him. The data that we got from there actually allowed us to structure an effective investigation.

Whats more, courts have consistently displayed skepticism of absolutist and categorical claims that White House officials enjoy comprehensive immunity from appearing when subpoenaed. That skepticism applies with added force here, given that Cipollone is a former White House official. Indeed, a district court held only a few years ago that former White House Counsel Don McGahn did not enjoy absolute immunity from a congressional subpoena  concluding that the assertion of immunity was baseless, and as such, cannot be sustained  and McGahn eventually appeared for a transcribed interview.

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If Cipollone were to ignore the January 6 Committees subpoena, he would do so at his own peril. Cipollone is not a current White House official. He is a lawyer in private practice at the height of his career. Defying a subpoena would present a risk of a criminal indictment for contempt of Congressa fate that has already befallen both Navarro and Steve Bannon, and that includes the real possibility of jail time (the obstruction charge carries with it a mandatory one-month minimum sentence). Even if DOJ did not pursue an indictment for criminal contempt (a choice it has made thus far for Meadows and Dan Scavino), the committee could consider filing a civil lawsuit seeking to compel his testimony on a highly expedited basis.

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More broadly, if Cipollone refused to appear, he would properly face professional consequences. His future pro hac vice and bar admission applications may face opposition; he may lose the trust and confidence of judges and other authorities before whom he appears; clients may come to doubt his integrity; and many fellow lawyers may view him as a willful co-conspirator in a plot against our democracy or at least in its coverup.

Simply put, a decision not to appear before the committee would be legally baseless, professionally disreputable, and personally risky. The committee is not going to let this slide. Cipollone is an especially key witness in one of the most important investigations ever undertaken by the Congress. He must appear under oath.

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If Cipollone makes the rational decision to appear for a deposition, the next question is whether he can claim any valid privileges against the questions he will be asked. Depending on what his testimony would be, it is perhaps theoretically possible that Cipollone might consider invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, though that would itself be a damning act and inconsistent with his earlier agreement to meet informally with the committee. Putting aside an assertion of Fifth Amendment, which seems practically inconceivable, there is no good faith basis for him to refuse to answer the committees questions on any assertion of a legal privilege.

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The most straightforward evidence for this conclusion is that many other Trump administration lawyers have already appeared before the committee and testified to their discussions with Trump. Former Attorney General William Barr, former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, and former Assistant Attorney General Stephen Engel, among many other attorneys well versed in the law of privilege, have all appeared publicly to testify about their interactions with (and provision of legal advice to) Trump. Former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann has also appeared and testified about his communications with Trump. Also important, these senior officials testified about what Cipollone himself said in these meetings.

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As noted above, Cipollone (as well as his deputy Pat Philbin) met with the Committee, reportedly back in April, to speak informally about the issues under investigation. Under these circumstances, it would be exceedingly unconvincing for Cipollone to maintain that he is now precluded from offering full testimony.

There are many good and overlapping reasons why Barr, Rosen, Donoghue, Engel, Herschmann, and company have apparently concluded they could testify about their dealings with Trump related to the January 6 committees inquiry.

First, the current president has declined to assert executive privilege (or to support the assertion of executive privilege) over many of the communications in question. Because any attempted claim of privilege would defy the position of the sitting president, it would stand highly doubtful footing. This is confirmed by a series of recent court rulings arising from the January 6 committees subpoena for relevant documents from the National Archives, where Trumps attempts to halt the production of documents failed at every turn and were ultimately rejected by the Supreme Court.

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Second, whereas the White House Counsel represents the president in his official capacity, much (or all) of Trumps conduct relating to the January 6 Committee was undertaken in his personal or campaign capacity. This conclusion is supported by a decision recently issued by Judge Amit Mehta (including relying on the Justice Departments brief in that case); as well as by the reasoning set forth in a recent Brookings report concerning Trumps conduct targeting the election in Georgia. Stated simply, the president has no legitimate role in the Joint Session of Congress held pursuant to the Twelfth Amendment. Trumps efforts to corrupt and obstruct the Joint Sessionincluding his incitement of an armed, violent mob to attack the Capitolreflected his private pursuit of power, not any presidential function. Because he was acting only as a person seeking office (a.k.a., a candidate), he exceeded his official capacity and lost the prerogatives that come with it. Cipollones communications with Trump on this subject thus did not occur between a government lawyer and his client, and so they are not privileged.

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Third, and relatedly, any claim of privilege would likely fail when tested against the crime fraud exception. As others have explainedand as one federal judge has already confirmedMr. Trumps conduct in relation to January 6 likely constituted a federal crime. Where a lawyers client is engaged in a criminal conspiracy and seeks the lawyers involvement in that undertaking, any claim of privilege fails. Of course, Mr. Trump would retort that he acted in good faith and genuinely believed the election results were fraudulent. This claim is virtually impossible to square with the evidence, including testimony about what Mr. Trump was told by his senior political advisors. Regardless, even if Mr. Trump truly believed that he had won the election, that would not immunize him from criminal liability for a host of federal crimes including conspiring to create false and fraudulent slates of electors, or sending an armed mob to attack the Capitol in furtherance of an effort to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress.

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Fourth, Trumps own oft-repeated public statements about the events in question might well be taken as a waiver of any remaining privilege he might claim. Legal privileges are not designed to facilitate selective, self-serving transparency. Because Trump and his agents have weighed in directly on the subject matter of the questions that the Committee likely would pose to Cipollone, there is a strong argument that Trump has surrendered any right to demand Cipollones silence.

Finally, Cipollone will most likely receive a grand jury subpoena in the very near future (if he hasnt already). Hutchinsons testimony makes this almost inevitable, as does the criminal investigation involving Jeffrey Clark and possibly John Eastman. In the grand jury context, it is only more apparent that any assertion of privilege would collapse: the relevant legal privileges belong to the very branch of the federal government that would be conducting the investigation, and a balancing analysis would overwhelmingly favor DOJs need for testimony over any countervailing consideration. This conclusion is bolstered by the D.C. Circuits ruling in In re Lindsey, which rejected an assertion of governmental attorney client privilege against a grand jury subpoena issued by independent counsel Ken Starr during the Clinton presidency. Since Cipollone will soon be required to provide testimony to federal prosecutors, there is little personal or professional gain to be had in withholding that very same testimony from the January 6 committee, which has advanced a powerful claim of legal right to his evidence and which seeks to protect our democratic system.

For these reasons (and more besides), Cipollone should not only appear before the Jan. 6 committee, but he should also offer complete and candid testimony in response to the committees questions. The law affords no legitimate reason for him to conceal the events in question behind an assertion of privilege.

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It might look like there are two unrelated storylines unspooling in the wake of Cassidy Hutchinsons devastating testimony at the January 6th committees sixth hearing of the summer on June 28. The first is the claim being advanced by allies of Donald Trump that she is lying when she says she was told of his angry conduct in his limousine when he could not go to the insurrection. The second is the question of whether she was the victim of witness intimidation because of veiled pre-hearing messages that she received from Trumps orbit.

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In fact, they are the same story. The right-wing attacks on her testimony appear to be unfounded which would make them the post-hearing continuation of the intimidation that may have taken place before she testified. DOJ must investigate under the federal witness intimidation statute, 18 USC 1512(b).

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Initially, the post-hearing debate centered on a conversation Hutchinson testified she had with Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato on January 6. According to Hutchinson, Ornato informed her that Trump was irate to the point of physical aggression when Trump was told he could not be taken to meet his mob at the Capitol. She recalled Ornato saying that Trump even attempted to grab the steering wheel of his presidential SUV while lunging at the head of his protective detail, Bobby Engel, with his free hand.

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After Hutchinsons testimony, reports circulated that sources close to the Secret Service said that agents who witnessed the incident are prepared to challenge the claim that Trump grabbed the steering wheel or assaulted an agent. This initial seed of anonymous doubt was soon fertilized by further anonymous reports that Ornato and Engel, the former of whom was present for the SUV episode and both of whom were at the subsequent conversation with Hutchinson, were ready to testify under oath that Hutchinsons version was incorrect.

Even without the evidence of witness intimidation to which we will shortly turn, these off-the-record denials must be taken with a boulder size grain of salt. Anonymous sources passing along purported denials by Ornato and Engel are hardly the equivalent of Hutchinsons sworn testimony. Ornato also reportedly has a history of making dubious claims in service of Trump, including similar attacks on separate statements by other administration officials which reflected negatively on his patron who plucked him from the Secret Service and placed him in a top White House political job.

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The plot thickened when news broke on Friday that there may be independent corroboration for the brunt of Hutchinsons account. Two Secret Service sources revealed that they heard from multiple agents that Trump angrily demanded to go to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and berated his protective detail when he didnt get his way. One of the sources added that Trump had sort of lunged forwardit was unclear from the conversations I had that he actually made physical contact, but he might have. I dont know.

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Lets be clear: the lunge is just color. What matters to a possible criminal prosecution is Trumps intent and that is shown by his undisputed desire to accompany to the Capitol a mob that, according to other key parts of Hutchinsons testimony, he knew to be armed and had just exhorted to fight like hell.

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But we cant stop there in this dispute. Theres another possible crime that needs to be investigated. The current onslaught against Hutchinson has occurred amid emerging evidence of witness tampering targeting her.

At the end of the committees sixth hearing, Vice Chair Liz Cheney described two examples of attempts to influence testimony. One witness described a phone call where someone reminded them that Trump does read transcripts but assured them they could continue to stay in good graces in Trump World as long as they remained a team player. In a second example, the witness received a call before their deposition informing them that a person knew they would do the right thing by remaining loyal. It has since been reported that both of these examples targeted Hutchinson.

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Together, those two examples create probable cause to investigate the crime of witness tampering under 18 USC 1512(b). That federal law provides that whoever employs intimidation tactics to influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding faces fines and up to 20 years in prison.

A good cop/bad cop scenario looks to have unfolded. The good cops are those passing messages apparently attempting to shape testimony in advance. On the flip side, break away and youre viciously attacked by known partisans like Ornatoand by Trump himself. Following Hutchinsons explosive testimony, Trump dismissed her as a whack job, stating that an unspecified group of patriots had said bad things about her. He continued to direct his fire at Hutchinson over the weekend.

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Dont underestimate how overwhelming such a campaign likely is for a 26-year-old woman who, however accomplished, is still at the start of her career professionally and in her political party.

Hutchinsons case should sound familiar. It mirrors what Trump has done to others, most prominently Trumps former lawyer Michael Cohen. As the Mueller Report found, Trump apparently conveyed reassuring messages before Cohen cooperated, then turned to attacks and intimidation once Cohen began to cooperate with the Trump-Russia investigation.

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Thats the bad cop approach. The good cop tactic was also explored by Mueller. Trump publicly praised his associates Michael Flynn and Roger Stone and eventually pardoned them after Stone was convicted of lying to protect Trump and Flynn attempted to rescind a guilty plea that was central to the Russia probe.

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That history comes into play when witnesses receive blandishments like the messages the vice chair described. The true tragedy of the Mueller report was that Trump learned from non-prosecution that he could get away with all the witness tampering he wanted.

The Department of Justice should not make the same mistake twice. It should immediately open a witness tampering investigation.

While they are at it, prosecutors may want to look at payments benefiting witnesses as well. Hutchinsons previous lawyer, a former Trump White House official, reportedly urged her not to speak out publicly. Committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren put a sharp point on it: Trump world was paying for her lawyers, which was very problematic for her. She changed lawyers and got an independent lawyer, and then proceeded.

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Nor does it stop there. Trumps political action committee and another entity allied with him

reportedly paid various law firms representing former officials and aides in the investigation. And the PAC also gave $1 million to a nonprofit where one important witness, Meadows, is a senior partner.

Heres the good news. Nothing steams a federal prosecutor like the possibility of someone tampering with witnesses. Theres no system of justice once that regime is allowed to covertly enter the courtroom or the hearing room. A strong investigative response is needed here.

Some conspiracies dont die. They have to get investigated away. Its time to do just that, starting with the pre-hearing pressure on Hutchinsonand the post-hearing smears against her good name.
Dorothy Roberts has been writing about the criminalization and surveillance of black women and their bodies for years now, dating back to the hysteria over so- called crack babies in the 1980s. She is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Penn Program on race, science and society. She is the author of four books, and her most recent book is . Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families  and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World. (Basic Books 2022). She joined me on the Amicus podcast last weekend to talk about the ways in which criminalizing miscarriage, abortion, and motherhood are all part of a long tradition of American law, but these laws tended to target Black women. What she describes is a world in which mothers face a lose-lose legal regime in which they cannot terminate their pregnancies, and are also not permitted by the state to raise their children. Our conversation has been edited lightly for clarity.

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Dahlia Lithwick: Professor Katherine Franke came on the show after Dobbs was argued. And she really reminded us that these rights to bodily integrity, to family autonomy, to bodily dignity, and the ability to raise your children as you see fit, and to abort, have always been ephemeral in this country. All throughout history, and certainly in some jurisdictions, she was very pointed in saying, Roe was a paper right if you were a black woman in Mississippi and Alabama long before Dobbs came down. And I just want to help orient this conversation around what youre about to describe to us, what you describe in all of your work  not just this most recent book  is a reality that I think a lot of people didnt know didnt just start happening last week with Dobbs.

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Dorothy Roberts: Thats absolutely right. Much of my work, my book, Killing the Black Body, for example, supported the legal right to abortion. But it also focused more so on the vast ways in which black womens reproduction has been regulated, controlled, devalued since the time of slavery. And of course, the Supreme Court held very soon after Roe v. Wade, that there was no legal right to funding for abortion. So, we already knew early on that this was a limited right.

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But in the case of black women, they faced just as much the punishment for having children, and state policies that sought to deter or prevent black women from having children. Federal government policies that encouraged coercing black women to be sterilized all throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Doctors who tricked black women into being sterilized, sterilized them without their consent. A long history of this, as well as the prosecutions then in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, with black mothers who were pregnant and smoked crack cocaine in the late 1980s. This all stepped up in the 1990s, with the prosecutions of Black women for still birth, and miscarriages, which I explained as punishing black women for having babies.

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And part of this is a longstanding history of penalizing, devaluing black womens childbearing. Today, we see that there is very clearly an anti-abortion right-wing strategy of reproductive control that includes both the criminalization of people who want to have babies and the criminalization of those seeking abortions. If we recognize this, the harms of Dobbs are even more catastrophic and call us to be even more expansive in our understanding of reproductive freedom and our fight for it.

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Dahlia: Youre describing, if Im hearing you correctly, in this moment, this Gordian knot, where on the one hand, we are criminalizing, surveilling, and prosecuting abortion. On the other hand, we are policing and criminalizing motherhood, which will lead to more and more impoverished mothers and child removals. Theres no way out of this double bind youre describing.

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Dorothy: We have to understand how criminalization is connected to the fallout of the Dobbs decision.And criminalization expands beyond the criminalization of abortion. Its also the criminalization of having children; the criminalization of being a mother in a racist white supremacist society that doesnt meet peoples needs, but instead blames mothers for the hardships that their children face. All of this is connected.

We could see, for example, the connection between family separation and compelled pregnancy in the way that adoption is being promoted as the solution to both. Why is it that we are in a time where families are routinely torn apart by a so-called child welfare system? And the answer embedded in federal policy is to get those children adopted, take them from their family caregivers and get them adopted. Not to support families, but to tear families apart and place their children up for adoption.

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At the same time, we see adoption being promoted as the solution to compelled pregnancy. What does Justice Amy Coney Barrett say in the Dobbs argument? And Justice Samuel Alito then puts this in the majority opinion in Dobbs. The answer is to be compelled to carry a pregnancy to term, and then, turn over the baby to a so-called safe haven to be adopted. And Alito has the nerve to put in a footnote that this will ease the demand for adoptable children. Why is it that we see this so-called solution being promoted? Because it is a way of diverting attention from the deep structural reasons why there are children with unmet needs. Blaming primarily mothers, and especially black mothers for it, and then supporting policies that control their reproductive lives, whether they have children or they want to terminate the pregnancy, and turn to a private solution of adoption, which has always been primarily children going from less privileged families into more privileged families.

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This is an agenda that supports a white male elite against everyone else and supports a view of society that says caregivers are not to be supported. They are to be blamed. And we will not acknowledge the structural reasons why mothers are struggling to take care of their children; why it is that the result of Dobbs is going to be more children with unmet needs. And this doesnt mean that abortion is the solution to childhood poverty. It means that banning abortion is going to increase childhood poverty.

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Dahlia: And I just want to commend to listeners the New York Times piece: Who Will Help Care for Texass Post-Roe Babies, which is essentially just a materialization of the point that you have just made, which is forcing women who cannot afford to have three children to then have a fourth, even if a crisis pregnancy center gives her diapers and a little bit of a respite, it in no way solves her ongoing material needs. And theres no system to move in and solve for that. One of the things that you start with in your book is a statistic: A recent study by the American Journal of Public Health found that 53 percent of all black children in the United States will experience a child welfare investigation by the time theyre 18. Thats almost twice the prevalence for white children.

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Dorothy: Yes, it is absolutely astounding. That is a huge number of children and families under investigation. And we have to remember that these investigations are traumatic. Theyre disruptive. Children are often strip searched during them. Every aspect of a familys lives becomes subject to inspection by the state. And they often end in family separation and could eventually end in the permanent severing of family ties. And compelling people to carry pregnancies to term is only going to increase the number of families under surveillance. Because the very families who are being investigated, mostly for neglect, which is confused with poverty, are the very ones who are suffering and struggling the most because of structural inequities.

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Its important to note that the very states that have trigger laws, that are now banning abortion, that are placing the most severe restrictions on abortion, are the very same ones that have the highest maternal mortality rates, and infant mortality rates, these states in the South, that also have the largest share of black populations.

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And the black maternal mortality rate is three to four times higher than for white women. Thats deaths by pregnancy-related causes. Now before Roe v. Wade, the reason that bans on abortion caused deaths was largely because of unsafe abortions. Today, its probably going to be mostly because of unsafe pregnancies and women forced to carry a pregnancy to term under unsafe conditions because of the circumstances of their lives. But also because of the fear that this decision is going to put on doctors and healthcare providers to take good care of pregnant women because of the fear that they might be criminalized for it. Its just atrocious to even say that; that a doctor would be afraid to care for the life of someone because of a fear they would be criminalized for caring for someones life. That should be seen as so abominable, we wouldnt even think about it in a so-called civilized democratic society.

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These states that are banning abortion are the ones that are the riskiest for black women to be pregnant. They have the highest poverty rates. They have the highest childhood poverty rates. They have the worst healthcare systems. They have the fewest supports for struggling families. And so, the contradiction of compelling pregnancy in a state that has the worst care for birthing people and where the death rates of black women from pregnancy-related causes are the highest, tells us that the outcome of Dobbs and all of this surrounding context weve been talking about is deadly, especially for black women, and also for indigenous women, for trans people, for other marginalized people, exploited people who suffer the most under deep structural inequities in this nation.
At the end of his first year in office, President Joe Bidens staff rightly trumpeted the fact that he had nominated and confirmed a historic number of judges at the start of his first term in office. After decades of Republicans outpacing Democrats in focus on the courts, it was welcome news. But today, as terrible decisions from the Supreme Court offer a stark reminder of the importance of the judiciary, we face a tough reality: even an historic pace has not been enough to keep up with the rate of judicial retirements, and President Biden and Senate Democrats are on track to leave more than 60 judicial vacancies open at the end of this year. With the possibility looming that Republicans may retake the Senate, we know that leaving any vacancy open in January could well mean letting a newly empowered Mitch McConnell blockade them, just as he did President Barack Obamas picks, from Merrick Garlands Supreme Court nomination to dozens of lower court nominees.

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Its time for Senate Democrats and the Biden White House to push beyond their current practices in order to fill all of the judicial vacancies by the end of this Congress. As someone who worked on judicial nominations in the Senate and the Obama White House, I know how hard it can be for Democrats to challenge norms, but we have seen Republicans stop at nothing in their relentless push to take and retain control of the federal judiciary to impose their extreme, partisan agenda on a majority of Americans who oppose it. Our federal courts are so far out of balance that we need the president and the Senate to do everything in their power to ensure justice and equality. That means filling every vacancy, even if it means breaking with the few remaining judicial confirmation process norms left in McConnells wake or standing up to Republican senators. Beginning to bring balance to our judiciary is more important than respecting Senate traditions.

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A more aggressive approach to judicial confirmations starts at the White House. Today, there are more than 80 judicial vacancies without nominees, out of 119 announced vacancies. One of the driving causes for this is too much White House deference to senatorsboth Democratic and Republican. The Biden administration needs to take a more assertive approach and show it is willing to bypass Senate tradition if senators are not proving good partners.

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In states with Democratic senators, the White House is honoring a longstanding tradition that allows senators of the presidents party to recommend district court candidates to the White House. This is fine, but the White House needs to be firmer in enforcing its own deadlines in states where senators are moving too slowly. Even before Bidens inauguration, White House Counsel Dana Remus told Democratic senators to submit recommendations within 45 days of a vacancy being announced, but it is clear from the number of long pending vacancies without nominees that many senators are ignoring this timeline. In California alone, there are nine district court vacancies without nomineesfive of which were announced more than a year ago. Time is running out, and the White House needs to start enforcing its request by bypassing senators where necessary.

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To move forward with nominations in states with Republican senators, the White House and Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin must be willing to bypass a Senate tradition known as blue slips, which allow any senator to functionally veto district court nominees in his or her own state. This tradition was weaponized by segregationist senators to stop pro-civil rights judges nominated in their home states, and during the Obama administration, it persisted as an enormous obstacle to diversifying the judiciary. Anyone who thinks the White House can work with Senate Republicans on judicial nominations should look at Wisconsin, where Sen. Ron Johnson recommended a qualified district court candidate, only to abruptly pull his support after the nomination was actually announced. Its worth noting that when Republicans controlled the Senate under Donald Trump, they ignored blue slips from Democratic Senators on circuit court nominees, effectively dismantling that deference for Democrats when they are out of power. Abolishing the blue slip custom once and for all will require cooperation from the Senate, but the White House should force the issue and expose the absurdity of the system by nominating qualified, professionally diverse nominees in these states and daring the Senate to block them.

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The White House increasing nominations will be of little use, though, if the Senate Judiciary Committee ends up serving as a bottleneck. Before being confirmed, each judicial nominee must appear before the committee for a hearing. As a result, the number of hearings scheduled and the number of nominees who can appear at each hearing are probably the most important factors in determining how many nominees will be confirmed before the end of this Congress. Right now, committee Democrats are following norms and recent practices, but this is simply not sufficient to fill every judicial vacancyand indeed, sets a path that would leave more than 60 seats open.

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The norm is for the committee to hold a nomination hearing every two weeks that the Senate is in session. At that pace, it will hold only six more hearings with enough time for committee votes this year. The current practicewhich was set when Republicans expanded it to process Trump judges more quicklycalls for two circuit and three district nominees per hearing. So this schedule would allow for hearings for only 30 judicial vacancies, while 65 receive no committee consideration at alland that assumes that every hearing slot is used for lifetime judicial nominees, even though just last week, the committee gave a slot to a Department of Justice nominee.

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Despite this stark reality, a judiciary committee aide recently told Bloomberg News, I dont think theres any reason for us to change the way were operating. Thats simply wrong. The judiciary committee must take a page out of the playbook Senate Republicans used during the Trump administration and schedule additional hearings and add to the number of nominees who can be considered at each hearing. Holding more hearings may be less convenient for those involved, but with so much at stake, its essential the committee follow the Republican model set during the Trump administration, which included holding hearings in consecutive weeks and even while the Senate was in recess.

Once nominees receive committee hearings and votes, they will need time on the Senate floor to be confirmed. Republicans are doing everything they can to slow down Biden nominees, and if President Biden and the judiciary committee ramp up the speed of nominations, Senate Democrats will need to match Republicans fortitude, skipping or delaying recesses and staying in Washington over weekends to vote if necessary.

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None of these steps should require the Biden administration to compromise on the quality of judges it is putting forward. One of President Bidens most impressive judicial legacies in his first year in office was the record-breaking number of public defenders and civil rights lawyers he nominated, a sharp departure from the old paradigm of Democrats primarily drawing from the ranks of prosecutors and corporate lawyers. The White House must not undermine its well-earned legacy on the courts by curbing its focus on professional diversity or accepting deals that would include conservative extremists. Instead, it must rally Democrats togetherat every stage of the nomination and confirmation processto fill every vacancy with judges dedicated to justice and equality. More than 30 national organizations already agree. Now more than ever, our courtsand our countrydemand nothing less.
Jolie, a middle school teacher in her 20s, had no idea how her ex knew where she would be after work. He confronted her at the supermarket, public library, and doctors office. It turned out that without her knowledge or permission, Jolies ex had gained real-time access to her phone.

This happened in 2014. But what if this was late June 2022, and Jolie, an Alabama resident, had searched for and obtained an abortion in violation of state law? Jolies ex would have had incriminating evidence to pass on to law enforcement.

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All too frequently, people monitor our intimate lives in betrayal of our trustand its often those we know and love. They dont even need to be near us to capture our data and to record our activities. Surveillance accomplished by individual privacy invaders will be a gold mine for prosecutors targeting both medical workers and pregnant people seeking abortions.

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Intimate partners and exes download cyberstalking apps to personal devices that give them real-time access to everything that we do and say with our phones. To do this, they only need our phones (and passwords) for a few minutes. Once installed, cyberstalking apps silently record and upload phones activities to their servers. They enable privacy invaders to see our photos, videos, texts, calls, voice mails, searches, social media activities, locationsnothing is out of reach. From anywhere, individuals can activate a phones mic to listen to conversations within 15 feet of the phone.

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Now and in the future, that may include conversations that pregnant people have with their health care providersnurses, doctors, and insurance company employees helping them determine their lifes course and the future of their pregnancies. Victims of such privacy violations are never free from unwanted monitoring. Abusers count on them to bring their cellphones everywhere, and they do, as anyone would.

For abusers, finding cyberstalking apps is as easy as searching cellphone spy. Results return hundreds of pages. In my Google search results, a related popular search is spy on spouse cell phone. More than 200 apps and services charge subscribers a monthly fee in exchange for providing secret access to peoples phones. When I first began studying stalkerware in 2013, businesses marketed themselves as the spy in a cheating spouses pocket. Their ads are more subtle now, though affiliated blogs and videos are less so, with titles like Dont Be a Sucker Track Your Girlfriends iPhone Now: Catch Her Today.

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Though we dont have precise numbers of stalkerware victims, domestic violence hotlines in the United States help more than 70,000 people every day, and according to the National Network to End Domestic Violence as many as 70 percent of those callers raise concerns about stalkerware. A 2014 study found that 54 percent of domestic abusers tracked victims cellphones with stalkerware. Security firm Kaspersky detected more than 518,223 stalkerware infections during the first eight months of 2019, a 373 percent increase from that period in 2018. Millions of people, right now, are being watched, controlled, and manipulated by partners or exes. The United States has the dubious distinction of being one of the leading nations in the number of stalkerware users around the world. That destructive accomplishment has a disproportionate impact on women, LGBTQ individuals, and people from marginalized communities.

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Abusers will use intimate data obtained from stalkerware to terrorize, manipulate, control, andyesincriminate victims. Now that a womans exercise of her reproductive liberty is soon to be, or already is, a crime in many states, abusers have even more power to extort and terrorize victims. They may threaten to disclose information about abortions unless women and girls give into their demands, including having unwanted sex or providing intimate images, both forms of sextortion. (Sextortion routinely involves threats to disclose intimate information like nude images unless victims send more images or perform sex acts in front of webcams.) If victims refuse to give into their demands (and even if they do), privacy invaders may post information about abortions online and report it to law enforcement. Two birds, one stone: the ability to humiliate, terrorize, and financially damage victims and to provide evidence to law enforcement. Exes can extinguish victims intimate privacy by enabling their imprisonment.

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The laws response to intimate privacy violations is inadequate, lacking a clear conception of what intimate privacy is, why its violation is wrongful, and how it inflicts serious harm upon individuals, groups, and society. Legal toolscriminal law, tort law, and consumer protection lawtackle some privacy problems, but few (if any) capture the full stakes for intimate privacy. In criminal law, privacy violations are mostly misdemeanors, which law enforcers routinely fail to pursue when reported. Criminal law is woefully underenforced when the illegality involves gendered harms, like privacy violations and sexual assault where victims are more often female and LGBTQ individuals. (Yet when the very same people are the alleged perpetrators, law enforcement eagerly investigates.) Because policymakers fail to recognize the autonomy, dignity, intimacy, and equality implications of intimate privacy violations, we have too few protections.

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Our conceptual problems are paired with practical ones. Policymakers tend to view privacy violations in silos, so they pursue reforms in a piecemeal manner. One day, proposals focus on nonconsensual pornography; the next, deepfake sex videos, still another, the confidentiality of peoples COVID statuses; and so on. To the extent that the law is updated, the reforms are often overly narrow.

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The conceptual and practical problems compound. When reforms make their way into law, they dont fully capture the wrongs done and the harms suffered. As a result, they are ineffective and weak. Without the proper conceptual apparatus, lawmakers have an easier time walking away from reform efforts. Far too many times, federal and state lawmakers have told my CCRI colleague Mary Anne Franks and I that they tried, but, alas, could not get sufficient support. We are left with deficient and outdated laws. We need lawmakers to treat the constellation of intimate privacy violationssuch as stalkerware, sextortion, doxing, and nonconsensual disclosure of intimate dataas a single problem.

We need a civil right to intimate privacy.

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In an ideal world, the criminal law would help deter intimate privacy violations and educate the public about the wrongfulness of this behavior. It would make clear to perpetrators that intimate privacy violations like stalkerware and sextortion are so serious that they warrant criminal punishment and the potential deprivation of their liberty. The business of stalkerware is illegal, and law enforcement must step up. To date, the FTC has brought enforcement actions against two stalkerware companies; it shut one down, under the agencys authority to combat unfair and deceptive business practices. But, no matter, Spying Inc. is alive and well in search results.

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The criminal law also should include enhanced penalties for bias-motivated privacy violations. This would draw attention to the structural impact of the abuse and signal that the eradication of stigma, shame, and discrimination is a central legislative goal. I say this knowing full well that the burdens of the criminal law disproportionately fall on the shoulders of nonwhitesespecially Black individualsdue to discriminatory attitudes and practices. The law should not protect intimate privacy at the overall expense of equality. At the same time, women, sexual and gender minorities, and nonwhites need the criminal law to deter and address crimes that they too often face. We need to ensure that comprehensive criminal law reforms do not disproportionately fall on the shoulders of Black individuals and people of color due to invidious attitudes.

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We also need the judicial system to work for victims, letting them sue pseudonymously and helping them obtain counsel on a pro bono basis. Victims wont sue privacy invaders if they must bring those suits under their real names. Legislatures should require courts to allow (or to accord a heavy presumption in favor of allowing) plaintiffs to sue under pseudonyms in civil cases involving intimate privacy violations. Defendants will know whos suing them.

We have a tall task before us. Intimate privacy is even more in jeopardy now that womens reproductive choices may render them in violation of state criminal law.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
It is mostly middle-aged and older Slovak Americans who trace their roots.

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Cynthia Sandor, her parents and her Slovak family on a farm near Zvolen in the early eighties. (Source: Courtesy of C.S.)

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A glossary of words is also published online.

Despite their ancestors being forced to move overseas for socioeconomic and political reasons in the past two centuries, often losing touch with their homeland, Slovak Americans have set out to reconnect with Slovakia.

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It is important for me to know where my roots are, where I come from, who I am, and why I am the way I am, Cynthia Sandor, a 60-year-old American and native of Florida of Slovak-Austrian descent, said.

 Communists took our rental car apart. They took the doors off, a large mirror with wheels rolled under the vehicle, and they searched all the luggage.  Cynthia Sandor

A new chapter for a part of her family began in 1921 when her grandfather Mihaly, born in present-day central Slovakia, arrived at Ellis Island aboard the SS Hudson and settled in Connecticut, where his brother Jan had lived.

Slovaks started to embark for America on a mass scale as soon as the American Civil War ended in 1865 due to the lack of opportunities and poverty in the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which dissolved after WWI. Though they worked hard in the mines, steel mills and on the railroads in the Midwest and Northeast, most of them decided to not return home. As many as 619,866 Slovaks resided in the USA in 1920, according to the US census, mostly in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Illinois and Connecticut.

Nearly a hundred years later, in 2010, about 750,000 Americans were estimated to have a Slovak background. Yet, just a small number of these Americans, most of whom are older in age, are eager to explore their ancestry, researching historical records online and touring Slovakia with the help of locals.

Prior to the fall of communism, many did not have the courage and did not know what to expect, tour guide and amateur genealogist Viera Marecova claimed, adding that some Americans are afraid of not being adopted by their Slovak family even today.

My blood runs through you.

Communists were still in power in the early eighties when Sandor, then in her twenties, and her parents visited their Slovak family for a few days. They had to wait for two hours at the border because they were Americans who had flown into Germany and had driven through Austria before reaching Czechoslovakia.

Communists took our rental car apart. They took the doors off, a large mirror with wheels rolled under the vehicle, and they searched all the luggage, Sandor remembered. I remember watching the German Shepherd sniff through our belongings. We just sat in a little coffee shop helpless until the complete search of the vehicle was completed.

But it was the moments spent with her Slovak family in Bratislava and on a farm near Zvolen that Sandor has kept close to her heart, including meals at her great-aunt Marys home. Sandor said Mary made a gesture upon their departure from the farm that gave her chills.

"It is important for me to know where my roots are, where I come from, who I am, and why I am the way I am," said Cynthia Sandor. (Source: Courtesy of C. S. )

She was dressed in black, took my arm, and started rubbing it with her hand, Sandor recalled. My great-aunt Mary said: My blood runs through you.

When Sandors father Robert, who somehow contacted their Slovak family in the eighties, died in 1991, she lost contact with them. Only old photos, in addition to memories, remain.

Sandor has not, however, given up on the idea of finding her Slovak cousins Peter and Jozef, whom she believes are still residing in Bratislava. Unlike her siblings who are not interested in their ancestry, Sandor keeps working on her family tree. In 2022, she plans on visiting Austria, Slovakia, and Poland in the hope of learning more and reconnecting with her family.

Emigrating easterners

Thanks to guides and genealogists, many Slovak Americans have managed to visit the places of their ancestors, in particular the east of Slovakia, over the years.

Being on the ground and looking for houses, relatives, and graves rather than flipping through historical records, Marecova from the Spis region has, for example, assisted a number of Americans of Slovak-Jewish descent.

Tourist guide Viera Marecova has helped a number of Americans in the past three decades. (Source: Courtesy of V. M. )

Several years ago, she helped an old Dallas man who had sought the courage to return to Slovakia all of his life. He grew up in an orthodox Jewish household in Ladomirova, by the Polish border, and moved overseas as a youngster after an argument with his father back in the thirties. Before WWII, he had urged his big family to move to America, but they declined. None of them returned home after the war.

As soon as we came to the village, I stopped an old lady and asked if she knew the mans family, to which she nodded, Marecova said. She looked at him and cried out: Is that you, Jozko?

It turned out they were childhood friends.

Most of those who left for America had lived in eastern Slovakia, in the former counties of Uh, Saris, Abov, Spis, and Zemplin. The Uh county was hit hardest by emigration in the whole of Hungary, Milan Belej from the Nitra State Archives said.

Cherry on the cake

While many Slovak Americans succeeded in reconnecting with Slovakia and their families, Parviz Malakouti-Fitzgerald, an American of European-Iranian heritage, has not reached out yet.

He has known for years that he had Slovak ancestry, growing up with his mother Rita and Ohio-born grandmother Elizabeth, whose maiden name was Kolenich and was half Slovak, but his interest has become more intense in recent years as he found a larger Slovak diaspora community online.

 As people older than you start to die, you feel like you are losing a connection to your past, and it suddenly became important to find out where I was from.  Linda Stanko

A few months ago, he learned that Slovak writer Ivan Kolenic was born in Zvolen, which is the area where his great-grandfather came from. He is busy with advocacy at the moment, but he wants to put some more serious effort into finding his familys distant relatives later this year.

I have a big fantasy of making contact, taking my mother to the small town or towns where they are and meeting them all, he said.

Meeting relatives is a cherry on the cake, genealogists approached by The Slovak Spectator agreed, but it is the toughest thing about the family search, and it cannot be taken for granted.

Even if you find someone with the same last name in the village where the ancestors of a client came from, they are mostly older people who are worried about becoming victims of fraud. They are unwilling to speak, genealogist Marek Rimsky emphasised.

Parviz Malakouti-Fitzgerald with his grandmother Elizabeth at age 15. (Source: Courtesy of P. M. F.)

However, most reunions end happily, according to genealogists, despite the language barrier.

Razus, who has been in the craft for almost 20 years and founded the Slovak Ancestry group on Facebook, helped a few hundred Slovak Americans, including jazz pianist Les Horan, who recounts his story in the book They Forgot to Tell Me I Was Jewish. Through graveside flowers, the Presov-based genealogist also helped reunite John Selecky, whose ancestors moved overseas as teenagers in the late 1880s, with his family in Bardejov.

Selecky is the story of a typical migrant. All of his grandparents were Slovaks, miners in Pennsylvania who achieved their American dream, Razus recalled the story sparking his interest in genealogy.

The want comes with older age

Today, visits to the Slovak state archives by Americans are on the decline as historical records can be found on the Familysearch and Ancestry websites. Nevertheless, those who contact the institutions are often surprised by discrepancies between what they were told and what the records say.

Les Horan, in the picture, wrote a book about his incredible life story. (Source: Courtesy of L. H.)

Their ancestors left the territory of Slovakia many times as illiterate. When they registered in the USA, various errors occurred in the dates and names of localities, Peter Brindza of the Trencin State Archives said.

Also, it matters in which language a name was entered in vital records, Alena Bolfova of the Banska Bystrica State Archives noted. After the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918, vital records were kept in Slovak, no longer in Hungarian and German.

To make things easier before her first trip to the village of her great-grandfather, Hrabusice, near Spisska Nova Ves, in 2015, Pennsylvania-born pensioner Linda Stanko decided to ask genealogist Michal Razus to do some more research.

Read also:

Read also: Descendants of Slovak migrants eye citizenship, see opportunity in a now-debated amendment Read more

After her arrival, Erik Sevcik from the Adventoura travel agency, who also helped Andy Warhols cousin in the past, showed Stanko around the country. There is always a lot of excitement, tears and happiness during genealogical tours in the east of Slovakia, where most Rusyns also come from, he said. Although Stanko has found no living relatives, she developed a nice bond with other Stankos in Hrabusice who have adopted her since.

Explaining why it felt important to reconnect with Slovakia, Stanko said: As people older than you start to die, you feel like you are losing a connection to your past, and it suddenly became important to find out where I was from.

Listen to the Spectator College podcast with Linda Stanko:

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1056484957&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=true&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true

The Spectator College is a programme designed to support the study and teaching of English in Slovakia, as well as to inspire interest in important public issues among young people.
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The European Central Bank (ECB) on Monday announced measures to incorporate climate change into its monetary policy operations.



By taking climate change considerations into account, the central bank aims to incentivize companies and financial institutions in the euro area to reduce carbon emissions.

"With these decisions, we are turning our commitment to fighting climate change into real action," says ECB President Christine Lagarde.

The ECB promised to prioritize issuers with better climate change performance through the reinvestment of the redemptions of the corporate bonds it bought through its bond-buying programs. Limitations will be put on collateral assets issued by entities with a high carbon footprint.

The measures also necessitate climate-related disclosures for companies and debtors that use marketable assets and credit claims as collateral under the framework of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive as of 2026. Regarding risk assessment and management, the ECB pledges to "better include climate-related risks".

The ECB fell short of disclosing details of the measures but revealed that it will start publishing climate-related information on corporate bond holdings regularly as of the first quarter of 2023.

The ECB initiated an array of bond-buying programs as part of its non-standard monetary policy measures in mid-2014. Although the programs came to an end as of end-June, the ECB will continue to reinvest the maturing securities it bought through the programs.

Data from the central bank's official website show that the total holdings under its Asset Purchase Program stood at 3.25 trillion euros (3.38 trillion U.S. dollars) and those under the Public Sector Purchase Program topped 2.58 trillion euros at the end of May.
China opposes remarks of NASA official on space program

Xinhua) 09:39, July 05, 2022

BEIJING, July 4 (Xinhua) -- China firmly opposes irresponsible remarks made by an official of the NASA on China's space program, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Monday.

It was reported that NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that China's space program is a "military" space program.

In response, spokesperson Zhao Lijian told a daily news briefing that it is not the first time that NASA has disregarded the facts and smeared China. Some U.S. officials have continuously framed and slandered the normal and reasonable outer space cause of other countries, and China firmly opposes such irresponsible remarks.

Zhao said Nelson, as the director of the U.S. aerospace department, should be very aware of the dark history of the U.S. space program, the negative role the United States has played in creating space junk, provoking arms races in outer space, and undermining global strategic stability, and the huge threat that the United States has posed to the peaceful use of outer space.

In recent years, the United States has openly defined outer space as a combat domain, accelerated the formation of the outer space force, developed and deployed offensive outer space weapons, and has long passively resisted the negotiation of legal documents on outer space control, and continuously strengthened the outer space military cooperation with its allies, he said.

The United States has set up obstacles in space cooperation, arbitrarily sanctioned the space agencies of other countries, and introduced laws to restrict space cooperation and exchanges with China, the spokesperson said.

China advocates the peaceful use of outer space, opposes the weaponization of an arms race in outer space, and calls for the building of a community with a shared future in outer space, Zhao said.

He stressed that China's exploration of outer space is to meet the legitimate needs of the country's economy, society, science and technology, and security. The development of China's aerospace industry is achieved independently, and its rights and achievements cannot be questioned or smeared.

"We urge the U.S. official to earnestly shoulder the responsibilities of a major country, seriously review and correct the negative words and deeds of the U.S. side in outer space, and make due contributions to safeguarding sustained peace and security in outer space," Zhao said.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Bianji)
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Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Vietnamese Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son met in Bagan Monday, with both sides agreeing to maintain strategic communication and advance cooperation.

The two foreign ministers met on the sidelines of the seventh Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) Foreign Ministers' Meeting held on Monday.

Wang said that China and Vietnam should maintain strategic communication, deepen strategic coordination and make efforts towards building a community with shared future as they share highly alike common strategic interests due to being friendly neighboring socialist countries and important forces among emerging market economies and developing countries.

Wang called on the two countries to join hands to forge ahead in developing socialism in line with their respective national conditions, and make greater contributions to regional and global peace and prosperity.

During the meeting, Son said that Vietnam and China enjoy high-level mutual political trust as well as smooth progress in pragmatic cooperation.

Noting that Vietnam has always prioritized relations with China in its strategies for external affairs, Son said that Vietnam is willing to maintain high-level exchanges and strategic communication with China, and push for new breakthroughs in cooperation in various fields.

Wang said that China is currently working to achieve a new development pattern and higher-quality opening-up, which will bring more benefits to Vietnam and create more favorable conditions for bilateral cooperation, and called on both sides to share the opportunities and jointly seek development, safeguard stability and create prosperity.

The two sides agreed that they will work to coordinate efforts to push forward cooperation in various fields at the 14th meeting of the China-Vietnam Steering Committee for Bilateral Cooperation to be held in China.

Both sides also pledged efforts to accelerate implementation of the viable livelihood projects with remarkable social benefits so as to bring the two peoples closer to each other and strengthen popular support for bilateral friendship.

During the meeting, the two foreign ministers also exchanged views on the South China Sea issue, agreeing to take the opportunity of the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea this year to move forward the process of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, adhere to the consensus reached between the leaderships, handle differences properly and boost maritime cooperation.
Thirty-one of Ohios brightest two-year-olds went behind the gate in four divisions of the $150,000 Next Generation at Eldorado Scioto Downs on Monday.

In the first division, Swinging Senorita (Anthony Macdonald) won in gate to wire fashion for filly trotters. The daughter of What The Hill confidently tripped the finish line in 1:56.1. Truly Relentless (Chris Lems) was second and Cali Red (Aaron Merriman) finished third.

Swinging Senorita has won two of three starts for trainer Jason McGinnis. Thestable Senorita Group co-owns alongside Hutchinson Harness. She was bred by Spring Haven Farm and Doug Millard Holdings Usa.

Going off at 9-1, My Red Sea (Kayne Kauffman) parted the way to win the filly pace division in 1:53. The daughter of Downbytheseaside found herself racing in the middle of the pack for the entirety of the mile. As soon as she spotted racing room, My Red Sea went from fifth to first for her debut victory. Valley Of Fear (Merriman) finished second while Lofty Treasure (Brett Miller) was third.

Kauffman trains and drives for Redline Racing Stables, Redracer LLC and David Van Dusen. My Red Sea was bred by Schare Adams.

Black Magic (Lems) utilized early speed to secure his victory in 1:57.1 in the colt trot division. The son of Full Count was two-wide at the first quarter but never faltered. Once he cleared the front, Black Magic never looked back. John Dutton (Chris Page) was second by a nose while Rumble Strips (Kauffman) completed the Trifecta.

Black Magic is now three-for-three. The Steve Cross trainee is owned in partnership by Richard Gutnick, Thomas Pontone, and Joseph Lozito, Jr. Marvin Raber bred.

Act Fast (Page) did just that in his division of the $150,000 Next Generation for colt pacers. Leaving from post seven, the son of Downbytheseaside ducked off the gate and settled toward the back of the pack. Still sitting seventh past the three-quarters pole, Act Fast lived up to his name by surging through the stretch. His debut victory came in 1:52. Rockmelikeyameanit (Dan Noble) was second and Burnout (Trevor Smith) was third.

Ron Burke conditions Act Fast for Burke Racing Stable, Knox Services, Rich Lombardo Racing and Beasty LLC. Frederick Hertrich III bred.

The $35,000 William Doc McMillen Memorial Invitational Pace went to Ocean Rock (Noble) in 1:49.1. As no stranger to the winners circle, the five-year-old went off as the betting favourite. The gelded son of Rockin Amadeus got away second behind Gold Digger King (Tyler Smith) but popped the pocket quickly. Ocean Rock gained control of the field to produced blistering quarters in :26.1, :55, and 1:21.1. Gold Digger King finished in a close second while Catch The Fire (Miller) was third.

Ocean Rock is bred and owned by Sandra Burnett. Christi Noble trains the $1.2 million dollar earner.

Live racing returns Wednesday (July 6) to Eldorado Scioto Downs. First post is 3:15 p.m.

(Scioto Downs)
A former bank manager in southwestern Washington is accused of stealing more than $1 million from vulnerable customers. The Columbian reports Brian Davie was arrested Friday in Yakima on charges of bank fraud and aggravated identity theft, according to a U.S. Attorneys Office statement. The statement says while Davie was a Wells Fargo branch manager he made unauthorized cash withdrawals and money transfers and forged cashiers checks. The DOJ says the eight victims include a woman who had over $546,000 stolen from her retirement accounts. Davie worked at the Battle Ground bank from 2014 until he was fired in 2019. It wasn't immediately known if he has a lawyer to comment for him.
Navigating a special education plan or getting a child the support services they need can be complicated. So how do you communicate and advocate for your kid if youre deaf, blind or dont speak English?

Families say finding interpreters in a timely manner who can both speak their language  whether thats Amharic or American Sign Language  and also understand education jargon can be challenging and frustrating.

A new, comprehensive Washington state law that passed this spring will make it easier for students and families facing language barriers to access free, high-quality interpretation and support services. It also supports a training and credentialing program for interpreters working in educational settings, much like existing programs for medical and social services interpreters. Advocates say the legislation will have far-reaching effects, including increased family and student engagement, which leads to higher rates of academic achievement and graduation and overall self-esteem.

This bill is so exciting and so complicated, said Kaitie Dong, leadership development and education manager for OneAmerica, a local nonprofit immigrant and refugee advocacy organization. She said it centers the experiences and voices of students and families with limited spoken English skills.

There are federal laws, like Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, that give people rights to communication aides like interpreters and teletypewriter services.

But efforts to formalize language interpretation training and practice in schools stalled in the Washington Legislature for at least the past eight years. Then in 2022, a new version of the bill received broad community and bipartisan support and passed 86-12. The new law focuses on spoken and signed language interpretation, and supporters hope its passage will pave the way for more resources and funding for written translations.

Bill co-sponsor Rep. Tina Orwall, D-SeaTac, credited families, students and grassroots groups for working together to get the bill passed.

Process is as important as policy and it was important that we really kept community members at the table, said Orwall. The hard work now is to implement it and maintain the funding to do so, she said.

Validating families needs

The law requires schools to include families, interpreters and school personnel in the development of a language access plan and seek feedback on how well services are being provided. A statewide advisory committee will ensure representation and input from families, schools, interpreters and community members.

The practices outlined in the 12-page bill are already in place in some school districts. But in schools where the support and resources are lacking, families and students say this will be a game-changer.

In the past, aid Wai Yan Winnie Lee, a Kent mom, shes had educators leave an individualized education program meeting because an interpreter called in sick or showed up late.

Lee speaks and reads some English but is most comfortable speaking her native Cantonese, and reading in traditional Chinese. Often, interpreters provided by the school speak a different dialect, and shes been given school forms translated into simplified Chinese. These obstacles prevent her from fully understanding whats happening.

If I cant understand the IEP, what is the point of these meetings? she said.

The Google Translate tool is not a good substitute, she and others noted. Translation can be delayed, and the app cant read ASL or interpret facial or cultural expressions. While the app includes 133 languages and dialects, Seattle Public Schools, Washington states largest district, serves families collectively speaking 147 languages and dialects.

The law requires all public schools to designate a language access liaison or navigator. That person will oversee how the school collects and reports data on languages spoken in the district, track requests for interpreters and collect feedback from participants on a schools language-access provisions and the effectiveness of the interpretation services provided. That data will be shared to the district and state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

I think were going to see a lot of data weve never seen, Orwall said.
SEATTLE  Seattle had a rare moment of sunshine as 293 new Americans came together in a naturalization ceremony Monday afternoon on the Fourth of July.

It was warm enough that babies slept on their parents' shoulders and dogs panted in their owners' shadows.

Hosted by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the ceremony, held at the Seattle Center, was back in its full form, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused officials to cancel it in 2020, and in 2021, it was socially distanced.

State officials, including Gov. Jay Inslee and U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, along King County Executive Dow Constantine and Chief U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez, were part of the ceremony.

Immigrants from 74 countries in total (with many from Canada, the Philippines and India) were present.

YeeCheng Chin, originally from Hong Kong, said it was an exciting day for him. To celebrate, his friends Hillary Eason and Goutham Sheshadri printed shirts with Chin's face on them: "Chin up America," it says.

Gary O'Neil and Denise Ness were there to support a couple of younger church members from Rwanda who attend Hillside Church in Kent.

"I don't think there's a better way of celebrating Independence Day, than welcoming those who choose to be Americans," O'Neil said.

Sam Lamichhane from Nepal was excited because, he said, becoming a citizen means he has more career opportunities. Back home he was enlisted with the military; now he thinks he might enter law enforcement.
 Flash

The United States is considering the possibility of providing training to the Ukrainian military, the Ukrainian government-run Ukrinform news agency reported Monday, citing the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink.

"I can't tell the exact number or the plan, but I can say that I talked about it with officials from the Pentagon," Brink said after her visit to Washington.

The United States is working to provide Kiev with more aid designed to strengthen Ukraine's positions on the frontline, the ambassador said.

On June 15, the U.S. embassy in Ukraine said on Twitter that the U.S. government had provided 4.6 billion U.S. dollars worth of defense aid for Kiev amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

According to the embassy, the United States sent to Ukraine 26,500 Javelin and other anti-armor systems, 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, 108 howitzers, and 75,000 sets of body armor and helmets.

On June 23, Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said his country received High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) from the United States.
NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is the world's first full-scale planetary defence test against potential asteroid impacts on Earth.

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is the world's first full-scale planetary defence test against potential asteroid impacts on Earth. Researchers now show that instead of leaving behind a relatively small crater, the impact of the DART spacecraft on its target could leave the asteroid near unrecognizable.

66 million years ago, a giant asteroid impact on the Earth likely caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Currently no known asteroid poses an immediate threat. But if one day a large asteroid were to be discovered on a collision course with Earth, it might have to be deflected from its trajectory to prevent catastrophic consequences.

Last November, the DART space probe of the US space agency NASA was launched as a first full-scale experiment of such a manoeuvre: Its mission is to collide with an asteroid and to deflect it from its orbit, in order to provide valuable information for the development of such a planetary defense system.

In a new study published in The Planetary Science Journal, researchers of the University of Bern and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS have simulated this impact with a new method. Their results indicate that it may deform its target far more severely than previously thought.

Rubble instead of solid rock

"Contrary to what one might imagine when picturing an asteroid, direct evidence from space missions like the Japanese space agency's (JAXA) Hayabusa2 probe demonstrate that asteroid can have a very loose internal structure -- similar to a pile of rubble -- that is held together by gravitational interactions and small cohesive forces," says study lead-author Sabina Raducan from the Institute of Physics and the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS at the University of Bern.

Yet, previous simulations of the DART mission impact mostly assumed a much more solid interior of its asteroid target Dimorphos. "This could drastically change the outcome the collision of DART and Dimorphos, which is scheduled to take place in the coming September," Raducan points out. Instead of leaving a relatively small crater on the 160 meter wide asteroid, DART's impact at a speed of around 24'000 km/h could completely deform Dimorphos. The asteroid could also be deflected much more strongly and larger amounts of material could be ejected from the impact than the previous estimates predicted.

A prize winning new approach

"One of the reasons that this scenario of a loose internal structure has so far not been thoroughly studied is that the necessary methods were not available," study lead-author Sabina Raducan says.

"Such impact conditions cannot be recreated in laboratory experiments and the relatively long and complex process of crater formation following such an impact -- a matter of hours in the case of DART -- made it impossible to realistically simulate these impact processes up to now," according to the researcher.

"With our novel modelling approach, which takes into account the propagation of the shock waves, the compaction and the subsequent flow of material, we were for the first time able to model the entire cratering process resulting from impacts on small, asteroids like Dimorphos," Raducan reports. For this achievement, she was awarded by ESA and by the mayor of Nice at a workshop on the DART follow-up mission HERA.

Widen horizon of expectations

In 2024, the European Space Agency ESA will send a space probe to Dimorphos as part of the space mission HERA. The aim is to visually investigate the aftermath of the DART probe impact. "To get the most out of the HERA mission, we need to have a good understanding of potential outcomes of the DART impact," says study co-author Martin Jutzi from the Institute of Physics and the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS. "Our work on the impact simulations adds an important potential scenario that requires us to widen our expectations in this regard. This is not only relevant in the context of planetary defense, but also adds an important piece to the puzzle of our understanding of asteroids in general," Jutzi concludes.
A study of bone loss in 17 astronauts who flew aboard the International Space Station is provides a fuller understanding of the effects of space travel on the human body.

A study of bone loss in 17 astronauts who flew aboard the International Space Station is providing a fuller understanding of the effects of space travel on the human body and steps that can mitigate it, crucial knowledge ahead of potential ambitious future missions.

The research amassed new data on bone loss in astronauts caused by the microgravity conditions of space and the degree to which bone mineral density can be regained on Earth. It involved 14 male and three female astronauts, average age 47, whose missions ranged from four to seven months in space, with an average of about 5-1/2 months.

A year after returning to Earth, the astronauts on average exhibited 2.1% reduced bone mineral density at the tibia - one of the bones of the lower leg - and 1.3% reduced bone strength. Nine did not recover bone mineral density after the space flight, experiencing permanent loss.

"We know that astronauts lose bone on long-duration spaceflight. What's novel about this study is that we followed astronauts for one year after their space travel to understand if and how bone recovers," said University of Calgary professor Leigh Gabel, an exercise scientist who was the lead author of the research published this week in the journal Scientific Reports.

"Astronauts experienced significant bone loss during six-month spaceflights - loss that we would expect to see in older adults over two decades on Earth, and they only recovered about half of that loss after one year back on Earth," Gabel said.

The bone loss occurs because bones that typically would be weight-bearing on Earth do not carry weight in space. Space agencies are going to need to improve countermeasures - exercise regimes and nutrition - to help prevent bone loss, Gabel said.

"During spaceflight, fine bone structures thin, and eventually some of the bone rods disconnect from one another. Once the astronaut comes back to Earth, the remaining bone connections can thicken and strengthen, but the ones that disconnected in space can't be rebuilt, so the astronaut's overall bone structure permanently changes," Gabel said.

The study's astronauts flew on the space station in the past seven years. The study did not give their nationalities but they were from the U.S. space agency NASA, Canadian Space Agency, European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Space travel poses various challenges to the human body - key concerns for space agencies as they plan new explorations. For instance, NASA is aiming to send astronauts back to the moon, a mission now planned for 2025 at the earliest. That could be a prelude to future astronaut missions to Mars or a longer-term presence on the lunar surface.

"Microgravity affects a lot of body systems, muscle and bone being among them," Gabel said.

"The cardiovascular system also experiences many changes. Without gravity pulling blood towards our feet, astronauts experience a fluid shift that causes more blood to pool in the upper body. This can affect the cardiovascular system and vision.

"Radiation is also a large health concern for astronauts as the further they travel from Earth the greater exposure to the sun's radiation and increased cancer risk," Gabel said.

The study showed that longer space missions resulted both in more bone loss and a lower likelihood of recovering bone afterward. In-flight exercise - resistance training on the space station - proved important for preventing muscle and bone loss. Astronauts who performed more deadlifts compared to what they usually did on Earth were found to be more likely to recover bone after the mission.

"There is a lot we still do not know regarding how microgravity affects human health, particularly on space missions longer than six months, and on the long-term health consequences," Gabel said. "We really hope that bone loss eventually plateaus on longer missions, that people will stop losing bone, but we don't know."
Authorities said they did not know how many climbers were hit when the glacier gave way Sunday on Marmolada, the highest mountain in the Italian Dolomites.

Rescuers used thermal drones Monday to search for possible survivors trapped under ice after an avalanche set off by the collapse of the largest glacier in the Italian Alps killed at least six people and injured eight others.

Authorities said they did not know how many climbers were hit when the glacier gave way Sunday on Marmolada, the highest mountain in the Italian Dolomites.

"We found bodies torn apart, in a shapeless tide of ice and debris stretching over 1,000 metres (3,280 feet)," Gino Comelli from the Alpine Rescue Service told the Corriere della Sera daily Monday.

The disaster struck one day after a record-high temperature of 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) was recorded at the glacier's summit.

Emergency services spokeswoman Michela Canova told AFP an "avalanche of snow, ice and rock" hit an access path at a time when there were several roped parties, "some of whom were swept away".

The total number of climbers involved was "not yet known", she said.

Helicopters and sniffer dogs were called off as night fell and amid fears the glacier may still be unstable.

But rescuers used drones equipped with thermal cameras to continue the search overnight and early Monday, Canazei mayor Giovanni Bernard told AFP.

"It is difficult for the rescuers in a dangerous situation", he said.

What are thermal drones?

Thermal imaging drones work on the basis of temperature. They have instruments that tell users about the temperature variations in a specific place. Where they come in handy is during emergency situations. For instance during the Italian glacier tragedy, the thermal drones are being used during the night to locate survivors. Their bodies' temperature will be higher than the ice and the instruments on the thermal drone will be able to locate the area they are in, helping rescue them faster. These thermal drones also save rescuers from needlessly endangering their lives when the situation is precarious, especially during night. In fact, thermal drones can be used even during earthquakes and fires to locate survivors.

Images of the avalanche filmed from a refuge close by show snow and rock hurtling down the mountain's slopes.

"It's a miracle we're alive," Stefano Dal Moro, an engineer who was hiking with his Israeli partner told Corriere della Sera.

"There was a dull noise, then that sea of ice came down. It's useless to run, you can only pray that it doesn't come your way.

"We crouched down and hugged each other tightly as the ice passed".

Bodies dug out of the ice and rock were taken to the village of Canazei.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi was expected to visit Canazei later Monday.

Massimo Frezzotti, a science professor at Roma Tre University, told AFP the collapse was caused by unusually warm weather linked to global warming, with precipitation down 40 to 50 percent during a dry winter.

"The current conditions of the glacier correspond to mid-August, not early July," he said.

The Trento public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation to determine the causes of the tragedy.
Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) School of Business and Economic Assoc Prof Dr Anuar Shah Bali Mahomed has lauded the recently launched Malaysia Digital initiative for its ability to reduce corruption. Specifically, the initiatives comprehensive implementation of a cashless system will reduce occurrences of corruption as bribes are usually made in cash to avoid being traced.

As reported by national news agency Bernama, Anuar elaborated that every digital transactions are recorded, hence deterring occurrences of corruption. The UPM Associate Professor further stressed that when there is no physical money, corruption will be significantly reduced as most parties currently gave or received bribes in cash.

UPM School of Business and Economic Assoc Prof, Dr Anuar Shah Bali Mahomed

In the latest Corruption Perception Index (CPI) by Transparency International, Malaysia dropped 5 spots to 62nd place out of 180 countries. An index which ranks countries by their perceived levels of public sector corruption as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys, our country was previously ranked 57th in 2020 and 51st just a year prior.

Anuar thus asserted that an adoption of a cashless system in our country will help improve Malaysias worsening CPI placement. Hence, Malaysia Digitals push for the widespread use of e-wallets and other cashless platforms will definitely assist our nations fight against corruption.

What do you guys think of the Malaysia Digital initiative and cashless payment platforms in general? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below and stay tuned to Technave for more engaging tech news in Malaysia and beyond!
Microsoft Malaysia today announced the release of its Surface Laptop Go 2 lineup for our local market via commercial authorised resellers and authorised retailers. Offering a few upgrades over its predecessor, the most notable feature has got to be the better and more efficient 11th-gen Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor under the hood.

Furthermore, similar to the original Surface Laptop Go, the device still retains a 12.4-inch PixelSense display with a resolution of 1536 x 1024 pixels. Moreover, it has the same 3:2 aspect ratio and maximum brightness of 330 nits, with a 720p webcam located at its top bezel.

Microsoft also touted how the device was carefully crafted to deliver Surfaces signature premium design and features in an ultra-portable format. Users can jump right into the flow with an effortless lift of the lid, Instant On, and Windows Hello through the fingerprint reader integrated into the power button.

Other notable specs include dual Studio Mics, large precision trackpad and a rather light 1.127kg weight. In terms of battery life, Microsoft is claiming that the laptop can last all-day with its official website asserting it could last up to 13.5 hours of use.

However, unlike the international-release which we covered previously, the Surface Laptop Go 2 is only available in two variants in our country. The Intel Core-i5 with 8GB of RAM and 128GB SSD retails at RM3488 while the 256GB SSD configuration is priced at RM3788. Both variants has a new Platinum colour, which is a durable, cool metal finish.

The Surface Laptop Go 2 is available for purchase via commercial authorized reseller, Maxis; and authorized retailers such as All IT, Gloo by SNS Network, Harvey Norman, PC Image, Senheng, and TMT by Thundermatch. If you grab one from now until 31 July 2022 or while stocks last, these authorised retailers will be giving away additional free gifts worth up to RM590.

So, what do you guys think of the Surface Laptop Go 2? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below and stay tuned to TechNave for the latest trending tech news in Malaysia and beyond!
Southwest Airlines Flight 1248 slid off the runway while attempting to land in Chicago in December 2005. Credit: Wikimedia, CC BY

Deciding whether to land or to make a go-around is one of the most important and hazardous operations involved in flying. In fact, the vast majority of accidents in the past 20 years have occurred during the final approach or landing phases. While these are not the deadliest accidents (accounting for 9% of all deaths in commercial flights between 2015 and 2019), they nevertheless generate huge financial losses for airlines.

Airline pilots are expected to perform a go-around in the case of an unstabilised approach, which is characterised by a important deviation of at least one flight parameter (e.g., airspeed, flight path, altitude). However, a 2011 study showed pilots chose to continue the landing in 95% of unstabilised approaches for which a go-around should be performed (unstabilised approaches representing 3.5% of all approaches). The Flight Safety Foundation estimates that 83% of runway excursions and 54% of all accidents that occurred between 2000 and 2015 could have been avoided had the pilots chosen to go around.

An extensive study carried out in 2017 looked at the reasons why pilots struggle to opt to go around during an unstabilised approach. On top of the complexity, cost, and risks associated with this course of action (with one in ten go-arounds resulting in a hazardous outcome), the research also demonstrated that pilots are reluctant to call it due to feeling certain pressure from the rest of the crew to go ahead with a landing, as well as great unease when it comes to challenging the judgement of other pilots.

While the captain is both legally responsible for the aircraft operation and more experienced than the first officer, the onus is on the crew to execute the go-around if one of the pilots (regardless of status) has called it. Interestingly, studies have shown that go-around requests are issued less frequently by first officers than by captains.

Hierarchical influence and risk taking during landing

Just before the start of the pandemic, my colleagues and I investigated the behaviour of young, inexperienced first officers during more or less stable approaches, with an emphasis on the captain's influence on their propensity to take risks during landing.

Participants were student pilots nearing the end of their training, all of whom possessed the necessary knowledge to fly an aircraft, but had no professional experience as commercial pilots. The captain, an A380 pilot for Air France, acted as our accomplice during the experiment.

The participants had to decide, both alone (in the first part of the experiment) and within a crew (in the second part), whether to land or to go around during various landing situations rated as (1) safe, (2) moderately risky, (3) highly risky, and (4) extremely risky.

Following the completion of the first part of the experiment, the participants were told that they would have to make decisions as first officers alongside a real A380 captain for Air France, who had agreed to take part in the study.

The uniformed captain was then invited into a room where he greeted the newly appointed first officer participant with a firm handshake. This exercise was intended to induce a strong hierarchical imbalance between the two pilots.

After introducing himself, the captain spoke to the participants of the potential difficulties in decision-making that could arise during landing, using the example of a hazardous situation (i.e., strong wind, slight overspeed, etc.) in which he had recently found himself and explaining how he had managed to land despite the adverse conditions.

This (entirely fabricated) story aimed to lead the participants to believe that their captain had a certain propensity for taking risks. At the end of his speech, the captain then walked out of the room, leaving the pilots to their own devices.

In the second part of the experiment, the participants had two decisions to make:

(1) a pre-decision, which was not communicated to the captain and made before being told his decision, and (2) a final decision, communicated to the captain and made after learning of his decision.

The captain chose to land the aircraft in safe, moderately risky, and highly risky situations, and to go around in extremely risky situations.

The captain's direct and indirect influence on the first officer

Our results show that the captain strongly influenced the participants' decisions in moderately and highly risky landing situations, whereby their likelihood of proceeding with a landing increased respectively by 19% and 15% (in comparison with the earlier solo pilot configuration).

In moderately risky situations, participants were significantly more likely to go ahead with a landing even before knowing the captain's decision. Given this rate did not vary over time, this increase in risk taking may not result from a tendency to adapt to the captain's behaviour.

Several studies have shown that the mere presence of one or more other people increases an observed individual's motivation and desire to be perceived as competent by the observer(s).

Illustration of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which depicts an individuals level of confidence as compared to their actual skill level in a given area. Credit: Leighton Kille/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

Known as "social facilitation," this phenomenon can often result in increased risk-taking behaviour. Further research has also indicated that first officers make a great deal of effort to appear competent in the eyes of their captain.

With this in mind, our results suggest that the increased risk taking observed in moderately risky situations reflected participants' eagerness to impress the captain.

In highly risky situations, however, increased risk taking occurred at the moment of final decision, that is, only after the participants had been informed of the captain's own decision.

Moreover, the more the participants perceived their captain as authoritative, the greater their tendency to adapt their decision to the Captain's. These results suggest that a fear of opposing the captain may have accounted for the increased risk taking during highly risky landing situations.

Inexperience and Dunning-Kruger effect

Although the landing rate observed during the solo pilot configuration was proportional to the risks associated with the landing situations (57%, 34% and 30% respectively in moderately, highly, and extremely risky situations), first officers' risk-taking was nonetheless elevated.

This result is coherent with previous studies, which had already shown that young, inexperienced pilots often struggled to assess the risk level in landing situations and decide to go around.

Of particular note in our study was the participants' behaviour in extremely risky situations. In 8% of such situations, participants chose to insist upon landing despite knowing the captain's wanted to go around (final decision).

This makes for a reassuring yet troubling statistic. We can find some reassurance in the fact that the captain's feedback considerably reduced the participants' risk-taking behaviour, which highlights the former's positive impact and important role in limiting such behaviour among first officers.

But while this figure may appear rather low, it becomes troubling when placed in the context of annual air traffic figures worldwide (i.e. 38.9 million flights.

This result is all the more surprising when we consider that the participants were essentially operating as pilot flying, meaning that they would have had the commands of the aircraft. It appears, therefore, that certain participants had an unrealistic vision of their flying skills. This phenomenon (which I have covered in other articles) is referred to as "overconfidence bias" or assertiveness and/or authority. This was the case for instance with the accident that befell the Southwest Airlines 1248 Flight from Baltimore, Maryland to Chicago, Illinois, whereby the captain had given in to indirect pressure from his first officer and went ahead with a dangerous landing.

Communication between crew members: the cornerstone of flight safety

Flight safety depends largely on the pilots' ability to prevent, detect, and correct their own errors, as well as those of other pilots.

A hierarchical organisation is by far the most effective for flight crews, but if the hierarchy balance between the captain and first officers is inadequate, it can present a safety risk. This is in great part due to the fact that first officers often have difficulty challenging captains, mainly because they see them as more experienced, do not wish to damage their relationship, and/or fear potential retaliation.

Yet, in spite of their expertise, captains are still human and therefore fallible. In the large majority of commercial aviation accidents that are attributed (at least partially) to human error, it is the captain who made the initial error behind the accident, which then went on to be either undetected or uncorrected by their first officers.

While the implementation of Crew Resource Managementa set of crew training procedures that aims to prevent human errorhas greatly improved inter-pilot communication and crew decision-making, hierarchical imbalance between captains and first officers remains a potential hazard factor.

Our study has revealed how young, inexperienced pilots are very likely to be swayed by their captain's influence in situations of particularly strong hierarchical imbalance. We are hopeful that our research will make captains more aware of how they may be influencing their first officers' decisions (even without meaning to).

Our protocol could also help assess how easily swayed student pilots are during their training, and strengthen their awareness of these associated risks. This would contribute to improving flight safety in commercial aviation, which islest we forgetstill the safest form of transport available.

Explore further Are there two pilots in the cockpit?

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

India is committed to electrifying 40 million homes this year to attain the goal of delivering electric power to all of its 1.3 billion people. It also has plans to install 75 gigawatts of renewable energy as part of commitments made under the Paris Agreements.

But there's a missing link to these ambitious pledges that could help bring about a just energy transition. India, like many other developing countries in the Asia Pacific region, lacks an effective energy evaluation program, say experts.

At a webinar organized 29 June by Energy Evaluation Asia Pacific (EEAP) experts identified challenges to mainstreaming energy evaluation in this vast and diverse country and offered suggestions on how to overcome them.

Vibhuti Garg, India lead at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, pointed to how India's much-vaunted plan to provide clean cooking fuels to households went awry due to poor targeting. Relatively richer sections of the population cornered the subsidies with the intended beneficiaries burning biomass along with cleaner fuels, according to studies, she said.

India is not devoid of agencies that carry out energy evaluation and these include the Comptroller and Auditor General's office, which audits government receipts and expenditure, said Aditya Chunekar, fellow at Prayas, the Pune-based energy group that promotes public awareness around energy projects. Customers and consumers need to understand how programs and projects are doing and how different socioeconomic groups are impacted by them, he said.

In 2001, India set up a Bureau of Energy Efficiency which was mandated to develop energy efficiency policies and strategies. But the Bureau has been criticized for being ineffective in such areas as remedying massive losses of electricity at the supply end, attributed to powerful players in the system.

Chunkekar pointed to the practice of projects being evaluated by consultants on terms of reference which worked to limit their independence. Evaluations made are often filed away with no attempts made to refer to them when it comes to new projects, he said, adding that there were often no provisions for mid-term corrections.

"For evaluation to be seen as credible, evaluators need to be independent of the agency implementing the energy programs and policies," said the webinar's moderator Edward Vine, energy efficiency scientist and affiliate at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US.

Similarly, said Vine, evaluators need to be involved in discussions with stakeholderssuch as states, unions and industriesas part of a feedback loop to gain their trust and to inform "influencers" at the community level about the impacts of programs and policies at different levels.

According to Vine, EEAP could play a critical role in the evaluation of energy policies and programs in India, including through webinars to help develop and promote a culture of evaluation. "EEAP could compile and distribute best practices on evaluation and help disseminate this information to all stakeholders," he told SciDev.Net.

"In summary, evaluators in India will need to work with government at all levels to accept evaluation outcomes and the lessons learned so that better programs and policies can be adopted."

Provided by SciDev.Net
a, Selection of dimethyl ether, as the simplest ether with fast transport, strong Li+ solvation and high salt solubility. b, Composition of the clean fire-suppressing agent FS 49 C2. c, Proposed solvation structure of the designed LGEs. Colours: Li+, purple; C, grey; O, red; H, white; F, cyan; Me2O, orange; TFE, blue; PFE, yellow; anion, maroon. Credit: Yin et al.

Lithium Ion-based batteries are among the most effective and widely used battery technologies. However, the batteries' electrolytes mainly contain organic carbonated solvents, which are considered highly flammable with a narrow temperature window. To ensure that they don't catch fire while operating at extreme temperatures, engineers must design safer electrolytes that are not only non-flammable, but also able to operate at a wide temperature range.

Researchers in the University of California San Diego's Shirley Meng group and at the Army Research Laboratory have recently developed new liquefied gas electrolytes that could be used to produce lithium-metal batteries that can operate safely from -60 to 55 oC. These electrolytes have a unique structure, outlined in a paper published in Nature Energy, which make them capable of extinguishing fire.

"The liquefied gas electrolyte (LGE) was firstly conceptualized by our research group in a paper published in Science in 2017 and has been developed over five years," Yijie Yin, one of the researchers who are working in this field from Prof. Meng's lab, told TechXplore. "It consists of a variety of fluorocarbon gases, that when put under pressure, liquefies to form a chemically stable, low-freezing point, low-cost electrolyte."

Compared with many state-of-the-art electrolytes introduced in previous papers, the LGEs designed by Yin and his colleagues are highly compatible with lithium metal batteries. In initial tests with a Li anode, it attained a performance of 99.6% average Coulombic efficiency (CE) over 500 cycles and was able to cycle 18650 cells under extreme conditions.

The initial LGEs designed by the team were based on fluoromethane (FM) and difluoromethane (DFM). Despite their advantages, these electrolytes were still flammable under moderate operating pressures.

"To overcome the safety concerns unveiled by our previous tests, we enshrined the safety features of the LGEs by incorporating clean fire-extinguishing agents into their composition, a capability unique only to LGE systems," Yin explained. "1,1,1,2 tetrafluoroethane (TFE) and pentafluoroethane (PFE) are fire-extinguishing solvents, but also maintain low-freezing point, low-cost with reduced vapor pressure."

The new LGE introduced in the team's recent paper is made up in great part (i.e., above 80% of its volume ratio) of the clean, fire-extinguishing components TFE and PFE. This greatly increases their safety, drastically reducing the risk that lithium-metal batteries will catch fire at high temperatures.

"We also added a dimethyl ether to dissolve salts and form a highly concentrated salt-to-ether ratio electrolyte to provide a wide electrochemical window and stable interfaces towards Li and the cathode," Yin said. "Owing to their low vapor pressure (~ 5 atm), the liquefied gas solvents could be easily recycled based on their vapor pressure difference at different temperatures."

Most existing lithium-ion batteries use flammable electrolytes that cannot operate below

-20 oC and can overheat devices during overcharging. In the future, the LGE introduced by Yin and his colleagues could substitute some of these electrolytes, helping to improve the safety of lithium-based battery technology.

Due to their unique solvation structure, the electrolytes were developed not only maintain near constant conductivity over a wide temperature range of more than 130 degrees, but also ensure that the Li+ cation is a dominant transport specie instead of the anions in the current liquid electrolytes. Both these factors help with increasing battery rate performance allowing battery operations at low temperature.

In their recent experiments, Yin, Borodin and their colleagues demonstrated the many advantages of their improved LGE design, including their performance, their resilience to wide temperatures, and their sustainability. In addition, their approach highly unique, as it revisits some of the fundamentals of electrolyte design for battery technologies.

"Since dimethyl ether is a newly reported solvent, it features simplest ether which potentially be compatible with Li metal. It also has outstanding physical properties and electrochemically transport properties," Yin added. "We now plan to tap dimethyl ether's potential in other battery researchfor example, batteries operating at ultra-low temperature. The pursuit of high-voltage (>4.5 V) batteries is also our interest. Our paper hasn't addressed the high-voltage stability and we will further develop our electrolyte to reach that goal as well as maintaining performance versatility as our Nature Energy paper reported."

 2022 Science X Network
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The expansion of natural gas infrastructure jeopardizes energy transition, as natural gas is not a bridge technology towards a 100 percent renewable energy system as defined by the Paris Climate Agreement. This is the result of a study conducted by an interdisciplinary German research team and published in the journal Nature Energy on 4 July 2022. The researchers have examined the natural gas issue from five perspectives and given gas a fairly poor climate balance, comparable to that of coal or oil. They recommend that politicians and scientists revise the current assumptions about natural gas.

The study was headed by Professor Claudia Kemfert from the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) and Leuphana University Luneburg in collaboration with Franziska Hoffart from Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Fabian Prager from Technische Universitat Berlin and Isabell Braunger and Hanna Brauers from the University of Flensburg.

Energy crisis is only one facet of the problem

In the wake of the offensive war waged by Russia, the German government faces the challenge of reducing energy reliance on Russia and continuing to ensure an affordable and secure energy supply that is in line with climate goals. Efforts are currently being made to compensate for Russian natural gas, whose supply is curtailed and uncertain, by establishing new gas trade relations and new infrastructure.

Claudia Kemfert, who heads the study, explains: "Fossil natural gas is neither clean nor safe. By holding on to fossil natural gas for too long, Germany has found itself in an energy crisis. The country can now only emerge from this crisis by taking decisive action for consistent decarbonization towards a full supply from renewable energies."

Natural gas use is not per se preferable to coal and oil

The researchers question widespread assumptions about natural gas from five perspectives. In the process, they focus on risks associated with further expansion of natural gas infrastructure and continued heavy use of natural gas. While many still subscribe to the notion that natural gas is clean, extensive research shows that the climate impact of natural gas use is significantly underestimated and that the fossil fuel is by no means per se the better alternative to coal and oil use.

"CO 2 is not the only problem; there's also the highly effective greenhouse gas methane, which escapes unburned into the atmosphere along the entire value chain through fugitive emissions. So far, these emissions have not been sufficiently taken into account and have so far been underestimated," points out Fabian Prager.

The narrative of bridge technology is misleading

Moreover, the researchers posit that an expansion of natural gas infrastructure can lead to path dependencies ("lock-in effects") and economic climate risks such as the premature loss of value of fossil assets ("stranded assets"). "Investments in fossil energy infrastructure cement dependence on fossil fuels and emissions for decades. Huge economic costs and fossil path dependencies are thus created, delaying the phase-out of fossil energy and the development of a 100 percent renewable energy system. Infrastructure that is not compatible with climate goals is threatened with early decommissioning with economic losses," says Franziska Hoffart.

Five measures

The researchers propose five measures to avoid these risks:

Management of methane emissions throughout the natural gas value chain Revising the assumptions of scenario analyses based on new research findings on greenhouse gas emissions related to natural gas Replacing the bridge technology narrative with clear and decisive decarbonization criteria Avoiding further natural gas lock-ins and methane leaks Serious and rigorous consideration of climate-related risks in energy infrastructure planning

"We hope to use these findings to add a critical perspective to the academic and public discussion on the future of fossil natural gas and infrastructure," says Isabell Braunger. "The paper is not only aimed at the scientific community, but, more importantly, at governments developing strategies to mitigate greenhouse gases. After all, investments in natural gas infrastructure may hold back the energy transition and entail enormous economic risks," points out Hanna Brauers.

Interdisciplinary study reveals shortfalls of current discourse

One of the unique aspects of the study is the combination of different perspectives that create a holistic view of the subject matter. The researchers were able to achieve this perspective thanks of their diverse backgrounds in economics, industrial engineering, politics and ethics.

"This is how we show that the current discussion is incomplete and that a holistic and interdisciplinary research approach to the energy transition and social-ecological transformation processes provides deeper insights," conclude the authors. "The climate and geopolitical energy crisis surrounding fossil fuels highlights the need for a timely and consistent natural gas exit, which must be organized and implemented by society as a whole."

Explore further From price shock to independence from fossil fuels

More information: Claudia Kemfert et al, The expansion of natural gas infrastructure puts energy transitions at risk, Nature Energy (2022). Journal information: Nature Energy Claudia Kemfert et al, The expansion of natural gas infrastructure puts energy transitions at risk,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-022-01060-3
On Monday, SAS said that the strike "is estimated to lead to the cancellation of approximately 50 percent of all scheduled SAS flights," impacting around 30,000 passengers a day.

Faced with financial difficulties and a massive pilot strike, Scandinavian airline SAS said Tuesday it has filed for so-called Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the United States, as a part of restructuring plan.

"We simply need to do much more and do it much faster," SAS chairman Carsten Dilling told a press conference where defended what he called "a well thought-through decision."

In the US, Chapter 11 is a mechanism allowing a company to restructure its debts under court supervision while continuing to operate.

The move was made in order "to proceed with the implementation of key elements" of its business transformation plan, the troubled carrier, which employs nearly 7,000 people, said in a statement.

Asked why the company chose initiate the proceedings in the US, rather than Sweden where it is headquartered, Dilling said they had considered several countries where they could file, but "ended up concluding that the US framework is the right one for the company."

Chief executive Anko van der Werff said they expected "to complete the Chapter 11 process in nine to 12 months."

SAS said its "operations and flight schedule are unaffected by the Chapter 11 filing, and SAS will continue to serve its customers as normal," while noting that the ongoing strike by Scandinavian pilot unions would continue to impact operations.

'Last thing SAS needs'

"A strike is the last thing the company needs right now," van der Werff told reporters.

Pilots walked out on Monday after negotiations between the unions and the company broke down.

The pilots are protesting against salary cuts demanded by management as part of a restructuring plan aimed at ensuring the survival of the company, which has suffered a string of losses since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020.

On Monday, SAS said that the strike "is estimated to lead to the cancellation of approximately 50 percent of all scheduled SAS flights," impacting around 30,000 passengers a day.

SAS management announced in February the savings plan to cut costs by 7.5 billion Swedish kronor ($700 million), dubbed "SAS Forward", which was supplemented in June by a plan to increase capital by nearly one billion euros ($1.04 billion).

Denmark and Sweden are the biggest shareholders with 21.8 percent each.

Denmark said in June it was ready to increase its stake to 30 percent. Sweden has refused to provide fresh funds, but is willing to turn debt into capital.

Norway, which left SAS in 2018, has said it is ready to return to the airline, but only by converting debt into equity.

Suffering, like the rest of the sector, from the impact of COVID-19, SAS cut 5,000 jobs, or 40 percent of its workforce, in 2020. The carrier now had around 6,900 employees at the end of May, a number which fell below 5,000 at the height of the pandemic.

Shares in SAS, already at all-time lows, fell by more than 11 percent in the early hours of trading on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.

SAS's troubles comes as the summer is shaping up to be difficult for European airlines and airports, faced with staff shortages affecting traffic.

After widespread job losses linked to COVID-19, airlines and airports are struggling to recruit new staff in many countries.

Explore further Airline SAS seeks $1.3bn to handle virus fallout

 2022 AFP
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Countries associated with the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC), China, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, should make joint efforts to build a stronger Lancang-Mekong economic development belt, said the Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday.

He made the remarks while co-chairing the seventh LMC Foreign Ministers' Meeting with Myanmar's Foreign Minister U Wunna Maung Lwin in Bagan, Myanmar.

Priorities of LMC in the future

Noting that the Chinese economy, which enjoys sustained growth in the long run, is accelerating the building of a new development pattern and promoting high-quality development, Wang said that it will provide greater opportunities for countries along the Mekong River.

He called on the LMC countries to jointly build demonstration zones for high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, pilot zones for Global Development Initiative, and pilot zones for Global Security Initiative.

In deepening economic integration, he proposed developing the China-Laos Railway and promoting the construction of the railways of China-Laos and Thailand.

In strengthening agricultural cooperation, he proposed jointly building demonstration bases for agricultural products and carrying out cooperation on green and ecological grain storage.

He also underlined further cooperation in adhering to green development, promoting digital industry, and having closer people-to-people exchanges.

Initiatives benefiting Mekong countries

In the next phase, China will introduce more initiatives to share the benefits of cooperation and boost development momentum with Mekong countries, Wang announced at the meeting.

China will carry out 100 agricultural technology projects for Mekong countries, train 1,000 agricultural pioneers and build 10,000 hectares of demonstration farmland, he said.

China will provide safety checks for 20 reservoirs and dams to ensure flood control, food, water supply and ecological security for 70 million people in the river basin, he said.

Plans to promote cooperation in digital economy cooperation, space, talents and public health are also covered in the initiatives.

A series of new cooperation consensus

This foreign ministers' meeting has reached a series of new cooperation consensus, Wang said while meeting the press with Myanmar's foreign minister after the meeting.

The LMC, as the first type of sub-regional cooperation mechanism jointly established by the six countries along the Lancang-Mekong River, has developed rapidly and achieved remarkable results since its launch six years ago, he said.

The six countries deliberated and adopted the LMC five-year action plan (2023-2027). Several documents were also issued, such as a joint press communique on deepening cooperation in customs trade security and facilitation, a joint statement on agricultural cooperation and food security, and a joint statement on disaster management, according to China's Foreign Ministry.
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Expert Viewpoint

When Schools Use Online STEM Programs, Everyone Wins

When our district shut down during the pandemic, we needed a way to keep students engaged with hands-on learning even though they werent on campus. I learned about the CoderZ League competition and the Amazon Future Engineer Title 1 Grant scholarship opportunity (which would fund the schools investment in the online STEM and robotics programming platform) and signed up.

Shortly after, we learned that we qualified for the scholarship and received the licenses we needed for two different robotics challenges. I really liked that the program only required an Internet connection  no physical robots necessary  and also how well the curriculum was organized and aligned with my goals as a teacher.

As a former software training and network technician, my goal is to introduce students to some of the realities of working in IT and help prepare them for success in the workplace. Our coding platform helps me do this by:

Filling in the learning gaps related to traditional textbooks and curriculums. The notion that you can associate coding with a company like Amazon that already has high-tech in its bloodstream gives students a big advantage. For example, our textbooks dont even mention cloud computing; the word isnt even in there. Yet cloud has become a major part of the IT world over the last few years. Our coding platform helps me teach the relevant, updated skills that students can put right on their resumes.

The notion that you can associate coding with a company like Amazon that already has high-tech in its bloodstream gives students a big advantage. For example, our textbooks dont even mention cloud computing; the word isnt even in there. Yet cloud has become a major part of the IT world over the last few years. Our coding platform helps me teach the relevant, updated skills that students can put right on their resumes. Not giving students all of the answers. The other checkbox that I got out of our coding platform was the idea that it offers no set solutions to problems. So while a solution may be given, there are always alternate ways to solve the problem. This is important to me because I want my kids to know that there isnt always a one set answer to everything. This really stokes their critical thinking skills and helps them come up with more open-ended solutions.

The other checkbox that I got out of our coding platform was the idea that it offers no set solutions to problems. So while a solution may be given, there are always alternate ways to solve the problem. This is important to me because I want my kids to know that there isnt always a one set answer to everything. This really stokes their critical thinking skills and helps them come up with more open-ended solutions. Giving us the tools we need, without the hardware or robots. There was no need for specialized hardware or software; all we need is a browser, an Internet connection and a Chromebook or computer. This can be an issue for anyone who has a spotty Wi-Fi connection at home, but in general it works for everyone. As an educator, I don't want to be the tech administrator. I'm a tech guy so yes, I can do it, but I'd rather focus on teaching. I'd rather focus on solving where a student is struggling and giving them some guidance.

There was no need for specialized hardware or software; all we need is a browser, an Internet connection and a Chromebook or computer. This can be an issue for anyone who has a spotty Wi-Fi connection at home, but in general it works for everyone. As an educator, I don't want to be the tech administrator. I'm a tech guy so yes, I can do it, but I'd rather focus on teaching. I'd rather focus on solving where a student is struggling and giving them some guidance. Taking the hesitancy out of STEM. Each new school year brings a new crop of promising students to Hutch Tech, where I dont always have a good gauge on those youngsters current skill and knowledge levels. Because our coding platform provides a structured curriculum for students in grades 4-12 meant, I can fairly quickly determine where the students are and where they need to be. Then, the platform plots a chart for success  based on missions that they accomplish one by one  as the kids move down their respective paths. And because the platform is collaborative, even those who are hesitant about diving into the challenges can see how others are doing it and follow suit.

Once they see the older students move through the maze, the younger ones see how much fun it is and want to get into it. The platform changes their demeanors and gives them the confidence to do it. It takes the hesitancy out of trying something new.
Expert Viewpoint

How to Reframe MTSS to Help Close the Education Achievement Gap

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically worsened the educational achievement gap in this country, exacerbating many of the underlying systemic problems that contribute to inequities in learning. Longstanding and complicated problems like insufficient school funding, overwhelming class sizes and lack of access to early childhood education are all drivers of the widening education achievement gap, but there is another, often overlooked factor: a common misunderstanding of the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) pyramid. A simple shift in how educators understand and implement MTSS can help close the achievement gap in their classrooms, schools, and districts.

What is MTSS?

MTSS is a framework increasingly used in schools to identify, triage, and provide appropriate levels of support that students need to achieve success. In this system, schools use collaboration, data, and evidence-based resources to provide equal opportunity for all learners to access grade-level content. MTSS addresses the needs of the whole student  academically, behaviorally, and socially-emotionally, and is widely recommended by education researchers to improve student outcomes and shrink equity gaps. As more schools seek ways to address inequities deepened by the pandemic, MTSS has become a reliable and popular pathway forward.

Traditionally, an MTSS model aims for an 80-15-5 approach to supporting students through tiered instruction. Yet, there is a common misunderstanding of this approach that is not only inhibiting schools from improving student outcomes but potentially even worsening them.

Lets unpack what the 80-15-5 approach is supposed to mean. Essentially, its a way to identify which students need additional layers of support. The guidance is that for 80% of students, providing effective grade-level core instruction (the whole class first instruction teachers typically provide, also called Tier 1 Level Support) should be sufficient for them to achieve grade-level expectations.

Typically, for 15% of students, that core instruction will not be sufficient on its own, and those learners will require an additional level of support often provided in a small group setting and referred to as Tier 2 level support. For 5% of students, neither Tier 1 nor Tier 2 level support will be sufficient for them to achieve grade-level expectations and they will require an additional, individual, intensive Tier 3 level of support.

All Students Need Tier-1 Instruction, Some Need More

Inherently, there is nothing wrong with aiming for an 80-15-5 support approach. However, all too often, educators misunderstand this breakdown typically represented as a pyramid to mean that grade-level core instruction (or Tier 1) should not be provided to all students, but only to that 80%, while the remaining 20% of students are placed into tiers where they are only provided intervention or remedial instruction.

As a result of this misunderstanding, some students who are flagged as needing intervention only receive content deemed appropriate for their skill level, which is typically below their grade level. While well-intentioned, this placement model continually denies struggling learners access to grade-level content critical to their academic success and ultimately widens learning gaps. Furthermore, it misconstrues MTSS as a pathway of support from Tier 1 to 2 to 3, and then eventually a special education evaluation, rather than a continuous and cyclical support structure within general education.

Shifting the Pyramid Perspective

To address the issues with the 80-15-5 approach, Branching Minds, a provider of MTSS system-level solutions, released an updated version of the MTSS pyramid to place the emphasis of Tier 1 instruction on supporting all students. While its a simple adjustment of verbiage and visuals, it scratches at a deeply-rooted issue.

Tier 1 is core instruction, and core instruction must be delivered in a way that supports 100% of students to access grade-level content; Tier 2 and Tier 3 level support is additional support, to be layered on top of  never in lieu of  Tier 1.

Universal Tier-1 Instruction Reduces Inequities in Learning

In Leading Equity-Based MTSS for All Students, education researchers and practitioners Amy McCart and Dawn Miller write, All roads (in MTSS) lead back to the universal support. If there is one lesson weve learned on our journey with MTSS over the last two decades, it is that if the first instruction isnt strong (enough), we have missed the mark.

Before we move into the next school year, now is the time to evaluate practices that we once thought were immovable in education and respond to our current reality so we can build a stronger education future for all students. Realigning our thoughts and actions around core instruction provides a best practice approach to addressing learning gaps with equity and fidelity. We can do this by clearing up this key misconception of who should receive grade-level core instruction and advocating for Tier 1 instruction for all students.

Resource: To create equitable Tier 1 instruction for all students and accelerate core instruction, teachers can apply these three power moves.
Illuminate Education Data Breach

Two More Districts, in California & Washington, Add 22K to Number of Students Impacted by Illuminate Breach

Editor's Note: THE Journal has published an updated list of all K12 schools nationwide known to be impacted by the Illuminate Education data breach. Find more details about the Illuminate data breach  such as why New York is investigating the ed tech company and why cybersecurity experts say transparency should be mandated  in this previous report.

Two more school districts have filed state-mandated notification letterswith their respective state Attorney Generals revealing that their students  a combined total of at least 22,000  were among the millions across the country impacted by the Illuminate Education breach of private student data.

Waterford Unified School Districtin California and Renton School District in Washington have joined the hundreds of schools across six states that have notified parents of the breach.

Waterford USD, like other California districts known to have been impacted, posted a form letter, dated July 1, from Illuminate on the California Attorney Generals data breach notification website. The letter does not specify the number of students impacted; Waterford USD had about 1,700 students enrolled in the most recent school year, according to its website.

Renton School Districts notification letter was filed on June 21 by attorneys at Lewis Brisbois law firm on behalf of the district and posted to the Washington Attorney General data breach notification website; it states that the district first learned it was impacted by the breach on May 4 and on May 31 district IT officials confirmed that some personal information belonging to 20,509 Washington residents was stolen during the Illuminate breach. Rentons enrollment is about 15,500, according to its website, indicating that current as well as former students were impacted.

The Renton School District data that was breached included student names, student identification numbers, academic and behavior information, enrollment information, accommodation information, and student demographic information, according to the notification letter.

The Illuminate Education data breach occurred during a January 2022 cyberattack targeting Illuminate Educations systems and is known to have impacted the nations two largest school districts, New York City Department of Education with about 820,000 students currently enrolled and Los Angeles Unified with 430,000 students, along with hundreds of other schools across New York state, 24 other districts in California, nine districts in Colorado, four in Connecticut, one in Oklahoma, and one in Washington state.

Most of the notifications shared by districts included in the breach have used a template, or portions of it, signed by Illuminate Education. It states that Social Security numbers were not part of the private information that was stolen during the cyberattack. Notification letters shared by impacted districts have stated that the compromised data included student names, academic and behavioralrecords, enrollment data, disability accommodation information, special education status, demographic data, and in some cases the students reduced-price or free lunch status.

Many of the districts notifications have said that current as well as former students from as many as 10 years ago had their private data stolen in the breach; New York State Department of Education officials have estimated that at least 2 million statewide were impacted, leading to THE Journals estimated impact of at least 3 million, when counting those currently enrolled at the impacted districts in other states.

The vast reach of the data breach will likely never be fully known because most state laws do not require public disclosure of data breaches. Illuminate has said in a statement that the data of current and former students was compromised at the impacted schools, but the company declined to specify the total number of U.S. students impacted, in multiple email communications with THE Journal.

California requires a notice of a data breach to be posted on the attorney generals website, but the notices do not include any details such as what data was stolen, nor the number of students affected; the same is true in Washington state.

Oklahoma City Public Schools on May 13 notified parents that its 34,000 students were also impacted by the Illuminate Education data breach; thus far, it is the only district in Oklahoma known to have been impacted. Oklahoma has no statewide public disclosure requirements, so its left up to local districts to decide whether and how to notify parents in the event of a breach of student data, Oklahoma Department of Education officials told THE Journal last month.

In Colorado, where nine districts have publicly disclosed that the Illuminate breach included the data of their combined 140,000 students, there is no legal mandate for school districts nor ed tech vendors to notify state education officials when student data is breached, Colorado Department of Education Director of Communications Jeremy Meyer told THE Journal. State law does not require student data to be encrypted, he said, and CDE has no authority to collect data on nor investigate data breaches. Colorados Student Data Transparency and Security Act, passed in 2016, goes no further than strongly urging local districts to stop using ed tech vendors who leak or otherwise compromise student data.

Illuminate has told THE Journal that the breach was discovered after it began investigating suspicious access to its systems in early January. The incident resulted in a week-long outage of all Illuminates K12 school solutions, including IO Classroom (previously named Skedula), PupilPath, EduClimber, IO Education, SchoolCity, and others, according to its service status site. The companys website states that its software products serve over 5,000 schools nationally with a total enrollment of about 17 million U.S. students.
Paris, TX (75460)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 107F. Winds SW at 15 to 25 mph..

Tonight

Clear skies. Low near 80F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph.
CARBONDALE  Today, the U.S. Department of Commerces Economic Development Administration is awarding a $993,265 grant to the city to reconstruct a portion of North McRoy Drive to support businesses in Bicentennial Industrial Park.

This grant is funded by the American Rescue Plan and EDAs $300 million Coal Communities Commitment.

This grant would allow for an increase in heavy-weight traffic to accommodate expanded capacity at the industrial park in a region that has been impacted by the declining use of coal.

Steve Mitchell, economic development director for the City of Carbondale, said the grant will allow them to replace the entire length of McRoy Drive, the road that runs the length of Bicentennial Industrial Park. It was built the same year as the park, 1975.

It was really an old road not designed to carry its weight, Mitchell said.

Tenants of Bicentennial Industrial Park have voiced their concerns about the road and damage to their trucks, Cody Lueker of the city of Carbondale said.

The grant will allow the city to retain more than 40 jobs and create another 15 jobs with business expansion. It is expected to generate $3 million in private investments.

Mitchell said the project will help the city retain Intertape Polymer Group, located in the industrial park.

IPG is just one of a small handful of manufacturers in town, and there is a potential for them to expand, Mitchell said.

IPG is an international business, and they often get visitors from other countries to their plant. Those visitors dont have a good first impression of Carbondale.

Jackson County Mass Transit is relocating to the industrial park. Mitchell said they also need a good road for their vehicles.

Lueker said the new road has a design life of 20 years. The city will not have to patch or make other repairs, saving money now and in the long term. The new road will look better, too.

Mitchell said the city received support for the grant from every elected official in local, state and federal government.

Mitchell said Greater Egypt Regional Planning and Development Commission offered guidance and advice for the grant application.

Greater Egypts guidance through the process was invaluable, Mitchell said.

The EDA investment of just under $1 million will be matched with $110,363 in local funds.

Were really excited. This will free up other funds to be used somewhere else, Mitchell said.

This project is funded under EDAs American Rescue Plan Economic Adjustment Assistance program, which makes $500 million in Economic Adjustment Assistance grants available to American communities.

EDAs Coal Communities Commitment allocates $300 million of EDAs $3 billion American Rescue Plan appropriation to support coal communities as they recover from the pandemic and to help them create new jobs and opportunities.
U.S. House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn will join other congressional leaders next week in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol for a statue dedication and unveiling ceremony honoring Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune.

An 11-foot, 3-ton marble statue will become part of the National Statuary Hall Collection, making Bethune the first African American woman to represent a state in Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol.

As a young child, my mother revered Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune and had me learn all that I could about her. With this statue placement, her legacy as a pioneering educator and fearless civil rights activist will be forever cemented in American history, and visitors from around the world will have the opportunity to learn her story and all she did to advance the cause for Black equality, Clyburn said in a release.

Born in Mayesville, South Carolina on July 10, 1875, to former slaves, Bethune was a champion of racial and gender equality, a fearless civil and human rights activist, and an education advocate.

Bethune was afforded the rare opportunity to receive an education, which she would later use to emphasize the importance of education in the African American community by teaching at schools in both Georgia and South Carolina. Throughout her life, Bethune served as an advisor to several United States presidents and served as a member of President Franklin Roosevelts unofficial Black cabinet.

During his presidency, Harry Truman recognized the impact of Bethune and appointed her as an envoy to Liberia.

In 1904, Bethune opened the Daytona Beach Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls, which would later become known as Bethune-Cookman College, a historically Black college and university located in Daytona Beach, Florida.

To honor her trailblazing impact, Florida lawmakers passed legislation in 2018 to replace a Confederate general sent to the Capitol with a statue of Bethune.

The ceremony will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday, July 13. To view the live stream of the ceremony, visit www.speaker.gov/live.
Currently, our country is going through some rough patches, and after Roe vs. Wade was overturned, many of us are trying to figure out what is next.

Here I like to present a simple and truthful explanation of when a human fetus becomes a unique human being. Each of us, among around 8 billion humans, has a unique, distinct fingerprint. Each human being carries unique fingerprints and not even identical twins, who have the same exact DNA sequence, share the same fingerprints!

How they form is very amazing and truly a fourth-dimension experience that a fetus experiences during his/her development. A person's fingerprints are formed when they are a tiny developing baby in their mother's womb. Pressure on the fingers from the baby touching the wall of the placenta and his/her surroundings create what are called "friction ridges," the indistinct lines that we see on our fingers and toes. The complete roadmap of ridges is formed by the time a fetus is 6 months old.

However, the foundation of the pattern of fingerprint development is essentially completed at the early part of the fourth month of gestation or around 120 days. These epidermal ridges are caused by the interface of the dermal papillae of the dermis and the interpapillary pegs of the epidermis. The ridge pattern development not only depends on genetic factors but also on unique physical conditions, such as the fetus' exact location in the womb as well as the density of the woman's amniotic fluid. This is the reason why identical twins with the same exact genetic code have different fingerprints. Once developed, the fingerprint cannot be changed. It is the code that cannot be erased.

Religious groups, traditions, abortion rights

Among various faith and traditions, there are various opinions on the crucial elements surrounding the abortion and contraceptive use debates. The Catholic position is generally the firmest, with Pope Francis famously saying, It is horrific even to think that there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day.

Before Francis, Pope John Paul II wrote the the Gospel of Life (or Evangelium Vitae), which affirmed that life is sanctified from conception. Yet, before 1869, the church held a similar position to Islamic jurists that tolerated abortions for various needs before the 40th day of pregnancy (more about this below).

It is also noteworthy that, in complete contrast to the Islamic position of prioritizing the life of the mother in all cases, the church preferred the life of the fetus to that of the mother on the basis that the mother has already been baptized and is guaranteed salvation while the child has not yet been provided with such an opportunity and must be saved at all costs. The United Methodist Church, the Lutherans, the Church of England and the Evangelicals generally view abortion as immoral at any point unless it is to save the life of the mother, and in some instances after rape and incest.

In traditional Jewish faith, both the reform and conservative movements support the right to abortions, Orthodox Jews mostly lean in opposition to abortion except in extreme situations. Orthodox Jews emphatically reject abortions for reasons such as fear of poverty or fear that the child may have non-life-threatening medical issues, but make an exception to save the life of the mother.

Jews, like Muslims, also always prioritize the life of the mother over that of the fetus at any stage of the pregnancy. Lastly, Orthodox rabbis also commonly bring up the point of gestation as to when exceptions can be applied with the 40 days from insemination where a red line can be drawn.

In Islam, the pregnancy cannot be terminated after four months of pregnancy or 120 days (19th week of gestation), and it is quite unique to Islamic tradition and laws, and it is based on the famous Prophetic tradition that mentions that the angels breathe in the soul of the fetus at that point. Note the parallel of fingerprint development at 120 days.

Finally, it should be noted that 26% of Americans are atheists and non-religious or irreligious, even though around 72% believe in a higher power or consider themselves spiritual." In another survey, 15% of Americans identify themselves as irreligious." A 2020 survey showed that only 53% of Americans are members of a church, synagogue or mosque, a steep decline during the last two decades when 73% were members of a religious organization.

In vitro and 'life begins at fertilization'

In vitro fertilization is a procedure that is carried in a variety of medical conditions, including infertility in women over age 40, in women who have fallopian tube damage, blockage, ovulation disorders (where eggs are too few), endometriosis, uterine fibrosis and previous tubal ligation or removal.

During IVF, mature eggs are extracted from ovaries and fertilized by sperm in a test tube in a fertility clinic. These eggs are fertilized with the sperm of the father or a sperm donor. Then, the fertilized eggs (embryos) are transferred to a uterus three or sometimes seven days after the fertilization step.

One interesting aspect of IVF is that most of the time several eggs are fertilized but only one or two are implanted. Some couples choose to freeze them, some donate them to other couples, and many are discarded.

The reason for abandoning the embryos is the very high cost of freezing the fertilized eggs. It can cost $500-$1,000 per embryo per year and many couples cannot afford to freeze them. In the U.S. there are 2.5 million IVF procedures carried out annually, and hence an estimated 6-10 million fertilized embryos may be discarded for various reasons.

Now, if we believe that life begins at fertilization (conception), then we killed a bunch of fetuses at an IVF clinic. It is obvious that the debate that life begins at conception is non-scientific and illogical, and at least needs a revision from various religious groups.

The sanctity of life in Islam

Similar to all the divinely revealed books, the Quran unequivocally sanctifies human life. Killing any innocent person  irrespective of age or religious orientation  is condemned in the firmest language: And do not kill the soul which Allah has forbidden to be killed except in the course of justice. [the Quran, chapter al-Anam (6): 151]. In one famous tradition, the Prophet Muhammad said, The very first matter to be decided between people on the Day of Judgment will be the cases of bloodshed.

Having children and praying for their righteousness is viewed as an act of worship in Islam. This is expressed in numerous Quranic supplications:

[Abraham said:] My Lord, grant me offspring from among the righteous. the Quran, chapter, As-Saffat (37): 100]

[Zachariah] said: My Lord, indeed my bones have weakened, and my head has filled with white, and never have I been in my supplication to You, my Lord, deprived. And indeed, I fear the successors after me, and my wife has been barren, so give me from Yourself an heir who will inherit me [in prophethood] and inherit from the family of Jacob. And make him, my Lord, pleasing [to You]. [the Quran, chapter, Maryam (19): 4-6]

Moreover, the Prophet Muhammad abolished the practice of female infanticide that was rampant in his time, reciting to his people the likes of: And when the girl [who was] buried alive is asked for what sin she was killed. [the Quran, chapter, at-Takweer (81): 8-9]. Of note, currently, female infanticide has become very common in India and has become a major social problem. More males than females has led to gang rape and violence against females at an alarming rate.

The Quran also told those who killed their children out of fear of poverty:

Say: Come, I will rehearse what Allah has (really) prohibited you from: Join not anything as equal with Him; be good to your parents; kill not your children on a plea of want  We provide sustenance for you and for them  come not near to shameful deeds, whether open or secret; take not life, which Allah hath made sacred, except by way of justice and law: thus does He command you, that you may learn wisdom. [the Quran, chapter, Al-Anam (6):151].

However, similar to the current semantic debate in the United States regarding the onset of pregnancy, the Muslim jurists have also long debated when exactly certain red lines should be drawn. The debate over abortion begins with the discussion of when life begins.

By 120 days from conception is the red line, agreed upon unanimously by all Muslim scholars of all five schools of Islam law. This is based on a tradition in which the Prophet Muhammad mentions that the angel breathes the soul into the fetus on day 120 after conception. This is the day when the soul would descend in a body ready to receive it, just as it departs from it when it is not suitable to harbor it.

God says in the Qur'an, Then We made the sperm-drop into a clinging clot, and We made the clot into a lump [of flesh], and We made [from] the lump, bones, and We covered the bones with flesh; then We developed him into another creation. So blessed is Allah, the Best of Creators. [al-Muminoon (23): 12-14].

Aborting the pregnancy becomes categorically forbidden after 120 days, as the embryo is now a fully sanctified human life with a soul (and the unique fingerprints). This would be murder  unless a physician determines that continuing the pregnancy would truly endanger the mothers life. Only in this case can the pregnancy be terminated after 120 days.

The logic behind this is that a potential life (that of the infant) should not threaten a stable life (that of the mother). Although both are technically alive, the survival of the mother takes precedence because her life is evidently established, while the survival of the fetus within her is relatively more doubtful. When forced to choose, the branch can be sacrificed to save the root.

Contraception and moral directive

Many medical clinics and numerous Planned Parenthood groups point out that their services primarily provide low-income and uninsured people access to contraceptives and sexual health care. In 2009, Planned Parenthoods abortion care represented only 3% of its medical services (332,000 terminations out of a total of 11.4 million services).

Beyond statistics, it is obvious that access to contraceptives naturally reduces the need for abortions. It is logical to prioritize preventing unwanted circumstances instead of simply remedying problematic outcomes. That includes reforming the moral ethics of society as well as the inequities that disproportionately force marginalized women into painful decisions.

In this country, there is a separation of church and the state. If laws are based on religious grounds and not on scientific facts, then they should be revised so they remain logical and scientific. The founding fathers of this nations were not prophets, they were imperfect men, many owning slaves and even fathering children from slave women.

Conclusion

In the Islamic ethical system, just like in other faiths, life is sacred and hence must be honored and promoted. Contraception is permissible with safer methods being preferred. Once the womans egg is fertilized, it is impermissible to terminate the pregnancy without the mutual agreement of both parents. Once the fetus reaches 120 days, the soul has already entered her/him and the unique fingerprints are formed at this stage and terminating the gestation of a living fetus would only be allowed to save the mothers life.

This is the time when a fetus has become a human being with a unique fingerprint. It is unlawful feticide: the killing of a soul-bearing unborn human being. The scholars also deem abortion in the case of fetal demise permissible at any point, as the soul is no longer believed to be present.

As for the political discourse surrounding this subject, this author does not subscribe to the position that contraception and abortion are categorically prohibited, nor to the position that abortion is the unrestricted right of the mother. All persons and things that God has created have rights assigned to them by him. When possible, all those rights should be preserved.
A 37-year-old Bamberg woman was found dead in her home on Monday night. She suffered a gunshot wound, Bamberg County Coroner Wallace Hicks Jr. said.

An autopsy is scheduled for Latoya McMillan, of 38 Houser Street, in Newberry on Thursday. Hicks said her death is a homicide.

Officers discovered McMillans body while investigating a neighbors burglary, according to Bamberg Assistant Police Chief Regina Gatling.

A next-door neighbor reported arriving home just after 9:30 p.m. to find that his door was open and home burglarized, Gatling said.

The neighbor reported that McMillans door also appeared to be open.

Officers then checked on McMillians residence and discovered her body on the floor of her home, Gatling said.

South Carolina Law Enforcement Division spokesperson Renee Wunderlich said the agency is investigating the incident at the request of the Bamberg Police Department.

Anyone with information about McMillans death is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-843-554-1111 or SLEDs Low Country Regional Office at 1-843-782-3822. Callers dont have to give their names.
Maggie OHara, a South Carolina State University assistant professor of art, has been invited to deliver a virtual lecture discussing her artistic photography as a part of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburghs Virtual Programming.

The free talk is scheduled for 4 p.m. Thursday, July 7, via Zoom and is open to the public.

Musings of / My / Self / As Muse is an opportunity for the artist to explain how ideas come together to comprise her work. As an artist who has been her own primary subject for the better part of a decade, OHara explores the significance of self-portraiture in many contexts and situations.

For free registration for the event, visit the registration website at https://members.carnegiemuseums.org/site/Ticketing?view=Tickets&id=81719.

OHaras works and the media she uses function so that the performances are directed at a disembodied viewer, the camera lens, which functions as a surrogate audience.

In her work, the camera is also a performer, acting as a third eye.

She says the work collapses any distinction between documentation, art object and art act. Art and the artist are inextricably interconnected, even when the audience sees only an artifact, a relic of the performance itself.

OHara says the body is a vessel for emotional experience, just as photographs and videos become relics of performances. The work explores ideas of interconnectedness between the physical body and experiences of psychological balance and imbalance while proposing the possibility of fulfillment through the indeterminate.

For more information on the event, visit the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburghs website at: https://members.carnegiemuseums.org/site/Calendar?id=81719&view=Detail.

For more information about OHara and her work, visit her website at: www.maggiemullinohara.com.
Two organizations dedicated to supporting and growing the manufacturing industry and assisting manufacturing companies in South Carolina have announced a formal partnership.

After working together as allies for many years, the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance (SCMA) and the South Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership (SCMEP) have formalized their relationship with the goal of developing greater synergies and collaborative efforts that promise to further elevate the industry and manufacturers statewide.

Each organization provides valuable and unique services for the states manufacturing community.

SCMA has a legacy of ensuring manufacturers have the right legislative climate and network that encourages growth and prosperity for the facilities operating in the state. SCMEP has a long history of providing a wide range of consulting and training services that helps small- to medium-sized manufacturers increase their competitiveness.

A primary aim of the partnership will focus on increased promotion of the services the two organizations provide, ensuring more companies are able to access their support and, in the process, further strengthening the states overall manufacturing environment.

The S.C. Manufacturers Alliance and our colleagues at the S.C. Manufacturing Extension Partnership have always worked toward the same goal  creating the most supportive manufacturing environment possible, SCMA President & CEO Sara Hazzard said. By creating and committing to a more formal partnership, we will be better equipped to learn from each other, build on each others work, and provide a comprehensive resource for manufacturing companies in our state.

Our two organizations share a common vision, and our combined approach will help ensure manufacturers have the tools and environment they need to thrive, SCMEP President & CEO Andy Carr said. This is an important development for our industry, and Im excited to start working more closely with the passionate team at SCMA on behalf of manufacturers in South Carolina.
JERUSALEM, July 5 (Reuters)  Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said on Tuesday that he will press French President Emmanuel Macron on the Iranian nuclear negotiations and urge a tougher Lebanese stance against Tehran-backed Hezbollah.

Lapid's visit to France, his first abroad since becoming caretaker premier last week, is also a chance to flex diplomatic muscles as Israelis gear up for a snap election in November.

France is among world powers trying to revive a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that the previous US administration quit and which Israel opposed, deeming its caps insufficient.

"It is important our voice be heard at this time against this dangerous deal," Lapid told reporters before boarding the plane to Paris where he was set to meet Macron.

A senior aide to Lapid said that while Israel opposes a return to the JCPOA 2015 nuclear deal, it could accept a tougher accord.

"We do not oppose a deal. We seek a very strong deal," the aide said. "We want an end to the unending talks," the aide added, calling for "coordinated pressure" on Iran and offering help on "drafting an appropriate framework" for that.

Since the U.S. walkout, Iran has itself been in breach of the deal, ramping up projects with bomb-making potential  though it denies having such designs. Its technical advancements have set a ticking clock on the so-far fruitless negotiations.

Israel is not a party to the nuclear negotiations. But its worries about its arch-enemy and veiled threats to take preemptive military action if it deems diplomacy a dead end keep Western capitals attentive. It has a de facto front with Iran in Lebanon, home to Hezbollah.

As Lebanon's former colonial administrator, France has additional clout in Beirut - whose economic crisis-hit leaders were jarred on Saturday when Israel shot down three Hezbollah drones launched toward one of its Mediterranean gas rigs.

"Lebanons government must curb such attacks by Hezbollah  or else we shall be forced to do so," Lapid said. His aide said Hezbollah was "playing with fire".

The Karish rig near Lebanon's coast will produce gas not only for Israel, but eventually also for the European Union, the official said, tapping into EU countries' quest to replace Russia as an energy supplier since it invaded Ukraine.
Since 1 July, patients can make use of digital prescriptions to acquire medication from Luxembourgish pharmacies.

MP Marc Spautz from the Christian Social People's Party (CSV) recently filed a parliamentary enquiry concerned with digitalisation in the medical sector.

He thus wanted to know if patients are already able to use digital prescriptions in pharmacies, or if they still have to use paper versions. Furthermore, MP Spautz was interested to know how far along the digital services of the National Health Fund (CNS) are and how many people already make use of digital procedures.

In his response, Minister of Social Security Claude Haagen explained that digital prescriptions can be used in all of Luxembourg's pharmacies as of 1 June this year. The 'eSante' agency provides the necessary electronic services to professionals in the health sector to implement this change.

Minister Haagen further elaborated that pharmacies can scan the QR codes on prescriptions regardless of whether they are paper or digital versions. The success of the digital services greatly depends on regular use, the politician further noted.

The LSAP politician concluded that the reimbursement of bills will be completed within the span of a week when they are transmitted to the CNS electronically. Usually, it takes up to six weeks. However, only 0.1% of all ensured people have made use of this service so far.
A conference on the reconstruction of Ukraine is currently taking place in Lugano, Switzerland.

At least $750 billion is needed to rebuild the country, according to estimates by the Ukrainian government.

President Volodymyr Zelensky called for reconstruction to start before the end of the war.

This opinion is shared by Minister for Development Cooperation Franz Fayot, who represents Luxembourg at the Lugano Conference. "We must give hope to the Ukrainian population" and "it would be a very strong sign if a plan was already in place", particularly with regard to very acute needs, the Minister explained. This could include, for example, the reconstruction of bridges to allow the transport of foodstuffs.

The plan is expected to be funded through a mix of grants and international financial instruments. However, Fayot admitted that it will be "difficult" to use frozen Russian assets for the reconstruction of Ukraine. In fact, there is no legal framework for doing so, according to the Minister.

However, this idea could be considered in future sanctions. Luxembourg has reportedly already provided a great deal of assistance to Ukraine. The Grand Duchy will also participate in the reconstruction, via a European platform that will be created for this purpose.

It will be decided at that time how much aid each country will provide, Fayot added.
This years Independence Day was spent differently for Anna Studer. From sunrise to sunset, she spent her Fourth of July prepping ACS Juices and its product for the juice bars opening day.

And by Tuesday morning, three quarters of the Studer family stood behind the wooden bar, passing out samples and assisting customers at the register.

ACS Juices is the second vendor, next to True Bakery, to set up shop at the Good Food Hub, Wyoming Food For Thought Projects commercial kitchen located at 420 W. First Street in downtown Casper. The juice bar plans to operate Tuesdays through Thursdays.

So all my juices, I choose the ingredients based on what theyre good for, Studer said. Im not a nutritionist, but I can just refer them back to what I research. In terms of cucumbers, theyre really good for dehydration. Gingers good for digestion ... A lot of people buy specific juices for specific needs for their body.

The bar offers orange juice, lemonade, watermelon, sweet beet, carrot, cold brew, celery, strawberry lemonade and other recipes. Of the lineup of juices sold, sweet green is the best seller, containing spinach, apple and lemon.

I love them all like my children, Studer joked. No, but really, its just a great way to get a bunch of veggies in to start my day.

That was how Studer got her start in juicing, too.

After the birth of her second child, she said she began running and trying to eat healthier. The purchase of a juicer in 2011 also marked the birth of the companys first juicing recipe, the Strong Green. About six years later, when the family made the move to Casper from Billings, the lack of juiceries in the city was noticeable, she said.

When we first got here, I kind of got flipped upside down, Studer said. I was kind of joking and was feeling sorry for myself and my family, whining about how theres no juice bars around here. [My husband]s like, well, why dont you make your own? And I was like, I could never do that.

But she did. Studer started by purchasing a juicer and turning the basement into a kitchen in 2021. After having her family serve as taste testers for the recipes, the company first began selling their juices at the local farmers market. From there, they began partnering their products with local companies such as Grant Street Grocery, Funky Junk District and Fresh Foods Wyoming.

And five years after her husband Luke Studers first suggestion, Anna opened up her own juice bar. Luke stood right alongside her.

Im very proud of her, Luke said. Its pretty impressive watching her build this business.

Luke also plays multiple roles in the business, according to Anna. Hes a handyman, business consultant and the dishwasher. He occasionally steps behind the register too, but the job of the cashier is best handled by their 12-year-old daughter Delaney Studer.

Ive been doing this since day one, Delaney said. Its really fun for me to get to do this ... I would say Im kind of the most versed in using the register or whatever. Usually when we go to summit markets at David Street, Im the one thats checking people out.

Delaney, who starts seventh-grade in the fall, said that working at the juicery isnt just a summer job, but more of a full-time position. Shes well acquainted with the regular customers, including some teachers.

The customers are the main focus of the company, Anna said. Ten percent of the profits earned on opening day were given back to the Wyoming Food for Thought Project.

Theres nothing better than having my start like this, Anna added. I think that me being here is giving back to them.
A Laramie woman arrested on charges of child abuse allegedly left a 6-month old baby overnight in a car with windows cracked as temperatures dropped below freezing, causing apparent brain injuries, according to an investigators affidavit filed in Carbon County.

Danisha Bynum now faces two counts of child endangerment as well as felony charges of child abuse and methamphetamine possession.

Her case is set for a preliminary hearing on Wednesday in Rawlins.

According to the affidavit, Carbon County sheriffs deputies received a tip from the Natrona County Sheriffs Office on May 21, reporting possible child abuse at a campground in the Miracle Mile area, north of Seminoe Dam.

Bynum and a man had gone to Wyoming Medical Center with the 6-month-old, who appeared to have trauma-related injuries. Though the adults said the injuries were caused by the babys 5-year-old sister dropping her, medical staff said they disagreed and alerted local police.

According to investigators, Bynum and the man had slept in a tent at the campsite the night before, and left the two children in the back seat of a car nearby with at least one window either all the way open or partially open. Bynum turned the car on when she went to sleep in the tent, she told investigators.

The affidavit notes it had snowed in the area the night before, and temperatures dipped into the mid-20s that night with blizzard like conditions.

In the morning, the man found the baby moved to the front seat of the car wearing only a diaper, though she had been in a onesie the night before. Her sister told investigators the baby was not breathing when she tried to wake her up.

Based on the reported timeframe identified during the investigation, both minor children were unaccompanied in the vehicle for anywhere from eight (8) to fourteen (14) hours, the affidavit said.

Bynum and the man tried to make the baby respond by dipping her in the river, and stopped at a Loaf N Jug looking for electrolyte drink Pedialyte on their way to the hospital.

Investigators found more than three grams of meth at the scene, and Bynum said she had smoked marijuana and drank alcohol the night before. She was on supervised probation at the time, following a drug delivery conviction from Laramie.

The baby, court documents say, had bruises and scratches along the left side of her body and heavy contusions on the left side of her head. Bynum later said she thought the injuries came from the babys older sister hitting her with a unicorn toy, but investigators said it was unlikely the sister had caused the severe injuries.

Medical staff found the baby had limited neurological activity and was having trouble breathing on her own. She was taken to Denver Childrens Hospital, where an assessment found she would need life support to survive. According to court documents, her brain injury seemed to be caused by hypothermic hypoxia, or low levels of oxygen in the bodys tissues.

The children were taken into protective custody with the Department of Family Services, a release last week from the Carbon County Sheriffs Office said.

Bynum is in custody in Carbon County on a $100,000 cash bond, court documents show.
Wyoming is getting older  and its happening fast.

The states elderly population  65 and over  grew 3.6% between July 2020 and July 2021, while the states total population only grew 0.3% during the same period, according to a new report on U.S. Census data from the Wyoming Economic Analysis Division.

The division attributes the trend to the aging of the large number of Baby Boomers in the state, the declining fertility rate and the number of young people leaving the state.

Wyoming is home to one of the nations largest proportions of Baby Boomers  the group born between 1946 and 1964, who are now 57 to 76 years old  making them mostly responsible for the rapid overall aging of the states population.

Ever since the first Baby Boomers turned 65 years old in 2011, there has been a rapid increase in the size of the older population, said Dr. Wenlin Liu, chief economist with the states Economic Analysis Division.

The elderly population in Wyoming is projected to reach roughly 135,000  well over one-fifth of the states total residents  by 2030, when all Baby Boomers will be 65 and above.

Albany County, home to the states lone four-year public university, is the youngest county, while Hot Springs County is the oldest.

The counties with a higher proportion of older people are the small rural areas in Wyoming without much mineral extraction, Liu said in an email.

These counties do not provide many diverse employment opportunities, so young people are not staying, but migrating out, he added.

Outmigration of young people from rural areas has been happening nationwide for decades. But the pandemic flipped that trend on its head, and many people chose to relocate to less populated, lower cost areas.

Its going to be interesting to see whether this current trend will continue if the labor market slows down, Liu said.

While Wyoming is rife with Boomers, the state is home to one of the smallest populations of Generation X  the group that follows Baby Boomers. That has started to contribute to the states array of workforce issues.

Wyoming does not have sufficient resident workers to replace retiring Boomers in normal economic conditions, Liu said in a press release. Wyomings demographic transition and labor market environment provides excellent opportunity and encouragement for unemployed residents who are looking for jobs within the state as many Baby Boomers are exiting the labor force.

Even with the rapid aging of the population, Wyomings median age still ranked in the middle of the pack nationwide last year at 38.9. Thats due, in part, to the fact that the U.S. is aging quickly: The median age increased from 38.5 to 38.8 from 2020 to 2021.

The figure indicates that the aging of both the U.S. and Wyomings population has been speedy, a press release from the Wyoming Economic Analysis Division states.

The share of Wyomings elderly population was 17.9% in 2021, compared to 16.8% in the country as of 2021.

The new report also included data on the changes to the states race and demographic composition over the last year.

The growth of minorities  defined in the data as being any race other than non-Hispanic white  in Wyoming was 1,179 people, or 1.2% compared to the 0.3% total population increase.

But studying population and demographic changes can be skewed on a county-by-county basis in Wyoming because of how sparsely populated some of the counties are.

Take Hot Springs County for example  the Black population grew by 31% from July 2020 to July 2021, the report said. But because Hot Springs is the second-least populated county in the state and had only about 29 Black residents in 2020, an increase to an estimated 38 people in 2021 represents almost a one-third jump, Liu explained.

Only 16.7% of the states total population is reported to be a minority, making it the eighth lowest in the country. Nationally, 40.7% of U.S. residents are minorities. Wyoming was on par with the Dakotas and ranked more diverse than Montana and other sparsely populated states like Maine and Vermont.
Last week, Massy Financea subsidiary of T&Ts second-largest conglomerate, Massy Grouplaunched its first fintech offering, an online loan platform called InstaLoan.

Massys model, according to executive vice-president and group chief financial officer of Massy Holdings Ltd Ian Chinapoo, is to be disruptive, especially to local banks.

While its Massys first foray into fintech, online loans have been on the market from three separate companies for the past three years.

InstaLoan can be accessed by anyone wanting a loanbe it for a vacation, home repair or for a Carnival costume.
The largest sustained decline in childhood vaccinations in approximately 30 years has been recorded in official data published today by WHO and UNICEF.

The percentage of children who received three doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3)  a marker for immunisation coverage within and across countries  fell 5 percentage points between 2019 and 2021 to 81 per cent.

As a result, 25 million children missed out on one or more doses of DTP through routine immunisation services in 2021 alone.
The local arm of the Barbados-based Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) has been accused of being unprofessional and inefficient.

Nursing student Shevern Harry told the Express that, as a result of being given the runaround over the correction of an error on her certificate, she has not been able to receive her Nursing Council number and has lost some 80 hours of clinical work, and her GATE (Government Assistance for Tuition Expenses) funding is under threat.
In 1978, calypsonian Edwin Ayoung, aka Crazy, burst onto the Carnival scene at the Dimanche Gras show when he exited a giant dustbin to perform his hit, Dustbin Cover.

In 1979, Llewellyn McIntosh, or Short Pants, delivered his classic calypso, The Law is an Ass. After Fridays Law Association vote on Attorney General Reginald Armours matter, these two calypsoes appear strangely intertwined. We might as well throw the symbolic scales of justice into the nearest dustbin and then firmly apply Crazys cover. The vote of confidence in the Attorney General was a pyrrhic victory.
Laurie Lundeen: Laurie Lundeen, an affiliate agent with Coldwell Banker Realty in Green Valley was recently ranked No. 1 for Coldwell Banker Realty Arizona based on sides by individuals in the RealTrends + Tom Ferrys 2022 The Thousand List. This ranking places Lundeen within the top one-tenth of 1% of more than 1.4 million licensed Realtors nationwide, per RealTrends. A transaction side represents either the buyers side or a sellers side.

TheRealTrends + Tom Ferrys The Thousand ranking consists of all real estate agents and teams throughout the United States who took part in residential real estate transactions in 2021. The individual rankings are divided into two top 250 categories, based on closed transaction sides and closed sales volume. To qualify, an individual agent had to close at least 50 transaction sides or $20 million in sales volume in 2020.

Marv Ruthenberg: Marv Ruthenberg will receive the Charles Taylor Master Mechanic award from the Department of Transportation Federal Aviation Administration on July 16. Ruthenbergs career in aviation spans over 50 years in the field of aviation mechanics that includes regulatory, airline operations and worldwide civil aviation authorities experience.

The Charles Taylor Master Mechanic Award is named in honor of Charles Taylor, the first aviation mechanic in powered flight. The Charles Taylor Master Mechanic Award recognizes the lifetime accomplishments of senior mechanics. Taylor served as the Wright brothers mechanic and is credited with designing and building the engine for their first successful aircraft. The Charles Taylor Master Mechanic Award is the most prestigious award the FAA issues to persons certificated under Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations (14 CFR) part 65. The award recognizes individuals who have exhibited professionalism, skill, and aviation expertise for at least 50 years in the aircraft maintenance profession as master mechanics.

 Arizona Daily Star
The Pima County Attorneys Offices former second-in-command described her tumultuous relationship with the county's top prosecutor in an email when she resigned, detailing allegations about treatment she claims was directly related to her race, and dozens of other grievances.

Tamara Mulembo, the office's first Black chief deputy, resigned in early October after 10 months in the post but stayed on until the end of 2021 as part of her separation agreement with the office. That agreement also included an anti-disparagement clause.

Mulembo wrote in the newly released Oct. 7 email: "Other senior leadership team got to be publicly recognized for their substantive work. I got trotted out during Black History month and spoon fed a narrative playing up stereotypes about my blackness, which I rejected," she wrote. She did not elaborate on that complaint.

The email also referenced an incident of sexual harassment by a coworker, with Mulembo saying Pima County Attorney Laura Conover gave her "the third degree" about her handling of the situation. It's unclear if Mulembo was the subject of the harassment or handling the situation as part of her job duties.

Conover did not directly address any of the allegations in a written statement her office sent Tuesday to the Arizona Daily Star in response to Mulembo's claims, but she did dispute Mulembo's assessment of the office.

Conover said during a March appearance on KVOI (1030-AM) program The Bill Buckmaster Show that Mulembo left on good terms.

"I can't say it was a huge surprise (that Mulembo left). I was sad, but I couldn't be surprised that she got poached and got recruited," Conover said then. "Attorneys, of course, always go out with letters that clarify that nothing wrong was afoot and that we parted on good terms."

The email suggests otherwise.

Mulembo wrote that Conover subjected to her microaggressions, undermined her authority, prevented Mulembo from doing her job, publicly diminished her contributions, denigrated her during meetings, rejected suggestions, questioned decisions and more.

The Star received a copy of the email and Mulembo's separation agreement from David Berkman, who was the office's chief criminal deputy under Conover's predecessor Barbara LaWall. Berkman submitted a public records request for the email in November and forwarded the correspondence to the Star after he received it last week.

Conover told the Star in an email Tuesday that people identified in Mulembo's letter "disagree with her assessment" of the office and that her administration provides multiple avenues of support for employees.

"Employees know that my door is always open if they have concerns, as are the doors of our entire leadership team. Everyone at the office has heard me say, frequently, that our goal is to give each other the grace to learn, to grow, and to develop," Conover said in the email.

The office has implemented other processes to try to address employee welfare, including COVID vaccine access, support for employees who got sick, and long-overdue pay raises, she said in the email.

"Still, doing this emotionally taxing work in times that everyone recognizes as challenging is causing the criminal justice system to lose good dedicated public servants in all sectors nationwide from law offices to law enforcement agencies," Conover said. "I appreciate the meaningful contributions Tamara made to the growth and significant change in the Pima County Attorneys Office and wish her continued success on her new professional path."

Mulembo's attorney, Merle Turchik, did not respond to the Star's request for comment.

Berkman has been requesting public records from the County Attorney's Office since his departure in January 2021, the month Conover took charge. A Democrat, Conover was elected to the post in November 2020.

Dozens of grievances

In the Oct. 7 email, Mulembo said she had read her list of concerns to Conover during an Oct. 1 virtual meeting.

"You asked me to bring issues to you and not ruminate on them," Mulembo said in the email. "I have brought issues to you. I will remind you of them now."

The email listed 36 complaints against Conover, including:

"I was interfered with when disciplining the attorneys who violated COVID policy and caused us to have to shut down the office."

"I had to manage your anger when I refused to target (an employee) for a discussion about an outfit that was dress code compliant."

"You subject me to gaslighting, deflection, blame shifting when I attempt to raise issues with you, then (you) call me angry."

"You asked me to sign (a review of a case in which an officer was involved in a shooting) that I had not substantively reviewed to avoid political fallout because the shooting victim was a Black woman and because I am a Black woman. When I addressed this with you, you accused me of twisting your words."



"I have never been sworn in, even though we managed to find a badge for (an employee) who does not have a job description."

Mulembo detailed a situation in which she said Conover berated her for failing to keep her informed, even though she was telling her things she had learned earlier that day.

"Then, when I tried to keep you informed by contemporaneously sending you information during work hours that is important over the email (which you are at liberty to step away from), you accused me of deliberately trying to ruin your son's birthday party," Mulembo said in the email.

Mulembo said in the email that she offered a set of terms in the Oct. 1 meeting but that Conover declined and instead asked Mulembo to pursue mediation. Mulembo detailed the terms she offered: staying on until the end of the year to identify and onboard her replacement; continuing to work on her projects; working remotely, with the exception of one meeting; three months' severance pay and continued health insurance coverage during those three months; and a mutual anti-disparagement clause.

The day before Mulembo sent the email, Conover canceled a regularly scheduled meeting between the two and instead called a meeting of senior leadership, with the exception of Mulembo, the letter said.

"You told the group I was leaving because I can't handle the workload. This is false. You know it is false," Mulembo said in the email. "If you persist in circulating falsehoods about my job performance or otherwise denigrating me, I will be forced to defend myself."

In an April 2021 interview with the Star, Mulembo called her job at the County Attorney's Office the stuff that dreams are made of.

A spokesman for the office told the Star in October that Mulembo was leaving for nonprofit work.
Eighteen months ago, Ariel Enriquez found space for his five children at Park Place Condominiums in north Tucson. Soon after they moved in, the rent went up $200, to $1,700. With his struggle to pay the increase, the single father fell behind and was charged late fees, pushing his rent over $1,800. The family was evicted in April.

Enriquez, whos an independent contractor, gathered his five boys and moved to a rundown apartment owned by a family member on Tucsons south side, almost 14 miles away from the Park Place condominiums. A three-bedroom, two-bath unit at Park Place like the one Enriquez rented now goes for $1,800 a month, a $300 increase in less than two years.

Ive been in apartments that have gone up $70 or $80, maybe even $100 for a nice place. This one went up by $200, Enriquez said. I remember looking at apartments that were going for $700, $800 not even three years ago, and now theyre $1,300. Why in the world has the price gone up so much? It makes no sense.

Rents are going up all over Arizona, as they are across the country, but Tucson, once considered affordable, has seen a particularly painful spike. The median rent in Tucson in June was $1,795, up 30% from June 2021, according to Zillow data as of publication. And with rents rising, gentrification is pushing people out of neighborhoods that once were affordable.

Its been happening for a few years now. Thats when we saw the most people moving out of their neighborhoods, said Betty Villegas, executive director of the South Tucson Housing Authority.

And we saw it over and over again, people were priced out of natural occurring rentals. And the rents, you know, were starting to rise, she added, referring to the usual supply of affordable housing in older neighborhoods.

Transitioning neighborhoods

The redevelopment and push for upscale housing has put particular pressure on west Tucson and downtown.

Older neighborhoods that traditionally were lower income and predominantly Hispanic are transitioning to market-rate housing, pressured by new developments in nearby areas, with apartments renting for as much as $3,000 a month. Residents of Armory Park, Menlo Park, the city of South Tucson and other communities are struggling to afford to live in neighborhoods where their families had settled decades ago.

Menlo Park, less than a mile west of downtown, is a good example.

The area is home to mostly older, fixed-income Mexican Americans who settled there after World War II, said Raul Ramirez, vice president of the Menlo Park Neighborhood Association. But now the neighborhood has become a target for developers.

Interest especially increased after the Sun Link streetcar was completed in 2014. Menlo Park is on the streetcars last two stops, effectively connecting the neighborhood to downtown Tucson and the sprawling campus of the University of Arizona.

Students and young professionals have begun to move in, and the median rent there as of publication was up $689 over the past year, according to Zillow.

Now theyre converting some of those apartments to market, the current market rate, so everything is super expensive, Ramirez said. And the people that are really being impacted then are folks that are renting.

City incentive program

With a shortage of housing inventory, more developers want to build near downtown and take advantage of Tucsons Government Property Lease Excise Tax, or GPLET, a tool that gives the city authority to grant incentives to build in particular areas. The citys 10-year-old GPLET program subsidizes property taxes for up to eight years for projects in the Central Business District.

GPLET has been used to bring new life to outdated, poorly maintained properties that were hot spots for crime, and now contribute to the economic growth of Tucson, according to the Office of Economic Initiatives of Tucson.

Tucson has entered into 24 GPLET agreements, with some completed projects, including The Herbert, which converted an apartment complex for older people into luxury, market-rate housing. The Armory Park conversion was one of the citys earliest GPLET projects, completed in 2013. Under the plan, the elderly residents were moved to another facility on the south side of Congress Street, which is downtowns main drag.

One of the more recent GPLET projects is Union on 6th, an apartment complex only a couple of blocks west of the UA.

Union on 6th is leasing for fall 2022, with studios starting at $1,315 a month and two bedrooms as much as $2,480, well above the median rent in Tucson. Amenities include a movie theater, pool and a clubhouse for residents.

But some worry that the projects are fueling the gentrification of old neighborhoods.

Given all those incentives, you would think that they would be in a prime position to subsidize some low-income housing, but they dont, its all market rate. Ramirez said.

Kevin Burke, economic initiatives deputy director for Tucson, wouldnt say whether GPLET projects are contributing to gentrification.

The question was posed to the city, we have the folks come to the city and say, These GPLET projects are causing gentrification, and were not going to sit there and say yes or no to that, Burke said.

But he cited a 2021 study by Gary Pivo, a University of Arizona professor who studies sustainable cities and responsible property investing, on the equity and sustainability of the GPLET project in Tucson.

Pivos study found that GPLET projects were not the cause of gentrification, mainly because they constitute a small part of downtown development. However, it also said the GPLET program could do more to help people and businesses being displaced.

Although the share of the Hispanic and Latino population in the Central Business District, which encompasses most of downtown, fell by only 0.4% from 2012 to 2018, the years Pivo studied, the report said the decline was more significant in the traditionally Latino neighborhoods surrounding the district, including Barrio Viejo, Santa Rosa, Barrio Hollywood and parts of Menlo Park.

The report also said traditional mom-and-pop businesses are doing worse in the Central Business District than in other parts of the city or Pima County, probably from losing longtime customers displaced by higher rents.

Search for affordable solutions

The report said GPLET should look for opportunities to create affordable housing for people who earn less than $35,000 a year. For example, larger housing projects could provide some number of affordable units, and work with local affordable housing developers.

Since 2010, the Pima County Community Land Trust has provided homes to 111 low to moderate income families by remodeling or constructing on land purchased with money from donations and funding from Tucson and the county.

Investors come in and are looking for these older neighborhoods  and the danger is its displacing people, said Maggie Amado-Tellez, executive director of the trust. Because right now, everyone, regardless of gentrification, everybody is in a financial bind  that they need to sell their home. Although they can get a good chunk of money, what house can they go buy? Where?

Monica Gutierrez, a Ph.D. student at the Arizona State University School of Social Work, said gentrification has hidden effects and stresses on families. People who stay have to put up with construction headaches.

You have a lot of dust in the air going on, you have a lot of metals being cut, gases from the equipment that are being used to move the space and form the space into what its going to be, Gutierrez said. The city doesnt think about How are we going to protect the citizens around that? What are the policies in place to protect the citizens from those toxic fumes?

People who leave lose their communities and have to travel farther for work, school and groceries, she added.

We dont think about displacement and the health effects of this work. And so while we can use gentrification as a buzzword, we need to dig deeper because its not just about gentrification, Gutierrez said.

Since Enriquezs family moved to the south side at the end of April, his five sons have been drastically affected. They will have to switch schools starting the next school year. In the meantime, the boys continued attending the same school, adding 30 minutes to their morning routine.

The new apartments air-conditioning is broken, the windows are old and its not insulated, making it hot inside during the day. Enriquez said his kids have been coughing a lot since moving in because of the dust, and no amount of cleaning has improved the situation. The family also has found mice in the apartment.

Ive been extremely busy trying to make the best of our situation, Enriquez said. The boys miss the much more comfortable apartment we were in and hate the abrupt move.

The COVID-19 pandemic also has significantly affected renters in Tucson, especially working-class people and people of color, said Zaira Livier of the Tucson Tenants Union. Although the city introduced assistance programs for people who were affected by rent increases and displacement during the pandemic, she said, its difficult to get any actual help from these programs.

We speak to folks all the time who are waiting on these things, and while theyre waiting on it, theyre still getting evicted, Livier said. Or they get their rent paid and the landlord still evicts them because that stuff doesnt come with any strings attached for the landlord.

Photos: Tucson's historic neighborhoods El Presidio Neighborhood, Tucson Broadway Village, 1946 Broadmoor Neighborhood, Tucson Broadmoor Neighborhood, Tucson Broadmoor Neighborhood, Tucson Sam Hughes Neighborhood, Tucson Sam Hughes Neighborhood, Tucson West University Neighborhood, Tucson Feldman's Neighborhood, Tucson Feldman's Neighborhood, Tucson Blenman-Elm Neighborhood, Tucson
NEW YORK  Michelle Lesco of Tucson ate 26 hot dogs and buns Monday at the Nathans Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest on Coney Island.

Lesco, the defending champion, finished behind womens record-holder Miki Sudo, who downed 40 wieners and buns to win the womens title after skipping last years frank fest because she was pregnant.

Frankfurter-munching phenom Joey Jaws Chestnut won the mens title with 63 hot dogs and buns.

Chestnut put a protester in a chokehold during the event. A spectator wearing a Darth Vader mask rushed the stage, momentarily disrupting the competition. Chestnut put the protester in a brief chokehold before contest officials hurried over and escorted the intruder away.

Another protester in a white stormtrooper mask had also snuck behind the competitors and hoisted a sign saying, Expose Smithfields Deathstar. Smithfield manufactures Nathans famous hotdogs.

Sudo, of Tampa, Florida, set the womens record at 48 weiners and buns in 2020, before taking last year off while expecting. She and Nick Wehry  a fellow competitive eater whom she met through the Nathans contest in 2018  welcomed son Max on July 8, 2021.

From dads arms, the baby watched his 36-year-old mother notch her eighth Nathans win. She told ESPN afterward that she hoped he would someday take a message away from it.

I want to set an example, she said, to do things that you love and push yourself to your absolute limits and, when things get difficult, to still give it a try. And, you know, you might actually just come out victorious.

Sudo then took over parenting duties while Wehry tried for the mens title.

Monday marked the contests return to its traditional location outside Nathans flagship shop in Brooklyns Coney Island neighborhood. The event was relocated in 2020 and last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Its beautiful to be back here in front of a throng of spectators, Chestnut told ESPN after his feat, which the 38-year-old managed while wearing a surgical boot because of a leg injury.

It hurts, but I was in the zone for a little bit. I was ignoring it, said Chestnut, but the pain eventually slowed his pace in the 10-minute competition.

Last year, the Westfield, Indiana, resident set the record by consuming 76 franks and buns.

In conjunction with the spectacle, Nathans donates 100,000 franks to the Food Bank for New York City.
Frankfurter-munching phenom Joey Jaws Chestnut has gobbled his way to a 15th win at the Nathans Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest. Chestnut powered down 63 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes Monday at the annual exhibition of excess. Women's record-holder Miki Sudo took the womens title after skipping last years frank fest because she was pregnant. Sudo downed 40 wieners and buns in 10 minutes to notch her eighth victory. A spectator wearing a Darth Vader mask momentarily disrupted the competition by rushing the stage. Chestnut put the protester in a brief chokehold before contest officials escorted the intruder away.
Today is Tuesday, July 5, 2022. Let's get caught up.

Here are today's top stories, celebrity birthdays and a look back at this date in history.

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TODAY'S WEATHER

Very hot high temperatures for the central US as severe storm threat impacts much of the central and eastern US. CNN meteorologist Gene Norman has the forecast.

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TOP STORIES

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IMAGE OF THE DAY

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TODAY IN HISTORY

Today in sports history: July 5 In 1975, Arthur Ashe beats Jimmy Connors 6-1, 6-1, 5-7, 6-4 to win the mens singles title at Wimbledon. Its the first all-American final sin

Today in history: July 5 1935: Franklin D. Roosevelt 1947: Larry Doby 1954: Elvis Presley 1971: Richard Nixon 1975: Arthur Ashe 2008: Venus Williams 2012: Jorge Rafael Videla 2021:Jeff Bezos

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ...
ATLANTA (AP)  The Georgia prosecutor investigating the conduct of former President Donald Trump and his allies after the 2020 election is subpoenaing U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and other members of Trump's campaign legal team to testify before a special grand jury.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Tuesday filed petitions with the judge overseeing the special grand jury as part of her investigation into what she alleges was "a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.

The move marks a major escalation in a case that could pose a serious legal challenge to the former president as he weighs another White House run. While the special grand jury has already heard from top state officials, Tuesday's filings directly target several of Trump's closest allies and advisers, including Giuliani, who led his campaign's legal efforts to overturn the election results.

It means the investigation is obviously becoming more intense because those are trusted advisers, those are inner circle people, said Robert James, former district attorney in DeKalb County, which neighbors Fulton.

The special grand jury has been investigating whether Trump and others illegally tried to meddle in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia as he desperately tried to cling to power after Democrat Joe Biden's victory. Trump continues to insist that the election was stolen, despite the fact that numerous federal and local officials, a long list of courts, top former campaign staff and even Trump's own attorney general have all said there is no evidence of the fraud he alleges.

The investigation is separate from that being conducted by a congressional committee that has been examining the events surrounding the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as well as the Department of Justice's own sprawling probe. Trump is also facing other legal challenges, including in New York, where he, his namesake son and his daughter Ivanka have agreed to answer questions under oath beginning next week in the New York attorney generals civil investigation into his business practices.

The escalation comes as Trump has been mulling announcing a third presidential run as soon as this summer as he seeks to deflect attention from the ongoing investigations and lock in support before a long list of other potential candidates, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, make their own moves.

Willis, who took this unusual step of requesting a special grand jury earlier this year, has confirmed that she and her team are looking into a January 2021 phone call in which Trump pushed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find the votes needed for him to win the state. She has said the team is also looking at a November 2020 phone call between Graham and Raffensperger, the abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta on Jan. 4, 2021, and comments made during December 2020 Georgia legislative committee hearings on the election. Raffensperger and other state officials have already testified before the special grand jury.

Willis also filed petitions for five other potential witnesses: lawyers Kenneth Chesebro, Cleta Mitchell, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Jacki Pick Deason. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney signed off on the requests, which are similar to subpoenas, deeming them necessary to the investigation.

In the petition submitted to the judge, Willis wrote that Graham, a longtime ally of the former president, actually made at least two telephone calls to Raffensperger and members of his staff in the weeks after the November 2020 election. During those calls, Graham asked about reexamining certain absentee ballots in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump, she wrote.

A Graham spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

In the petition for Giulianis testimony, Willis identifies him as both a personal attorney for Trump and a lead attorney for the Trump Campaigns legal efforts seeking to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.

As part of those efforts, she wrote, he and others presented a Georgia state Senate subcommittee with a video recording of election workers that Giuliani alleged showed them producing suitcases of unlawful ballots from unknown sources, outside the view of election poll watchers.

Within 24 hours of the hearing on Dec. 3, 2020, Raffenspergers office had debunked the video and said that it had found that no voter fraud had taken place at the arena. Nevertheless, Giuliani continued to make statements to the public and in subsequent legislative hearings claiming widespread voter fraud using that debunked video, Willis wrote.

There is evidence that (Giulianis) appearance and testimony at the hearing was part of a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere, the petition says.

Giuliani's attorney, Bob Costello, said he had no comment and that his client had not been served with any subpoena.

To compel the testimony of an out-of-state witness, a prosecutor in Georgia has to file a petition and then a judge has to sign a certificate approving the petition, said Danny Porter, a former longtime district attorney in Gwinnett County in Atlantas suburbs.

The next step is to deliver the petition to a prosecutor wherever the witness lives, and serve it to the witness, who is entitled to a hearing. If the person objects to going to Georgia to testify, they have to be able to show that either their testimony isnt needed or that it would be an undue hardship for them, Porter said.

Special grand juries are impaneled in Georgia to investigate complex cases with large numbers of witnesses and potential logistical concerns. They can compel evidence and subpoena witnesses for questioning and, unlike regular grand juries, can also subpoena the target of an investigation to appear before it.

When its investigation is complete, the special grand jury issues a final report and can recommend action. It's then up to the district attorney to decide whether to ask a regular grand jury for an indictment.

Its not clear exactly what charges Willis could ultimately choose to pursue against Trump or anyone else. In a letter she sent to top-ranking state officials last year, she said she was looking into potential violations of Georgia law prohibiting the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local government bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the elections administration.

Trump has denied that he did anything wrong.
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. (AP)  A man charged Tuesday with seven counts of murder after firing off more than 70 rounds at an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago legally bought five weapons, including the high-powered rifle used in the shooting, despite authorities being called to his home twice in 2019 for threats of violence and suicide, police said.

Lake County States Attorney Eric Rinehart said the suspect, if convicted of the first-degree murder charges, would receive a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole. He promised that dozens more charges would be sought.

A spokesman for the Lake County Major Crime Task Force said the suspected shooter, who was arrested late Monday, used a rifle similar to an AR-15" to spray more than 70 rounds from atop a commercial building into a crowd that had gathered for the parade in Highland Park, an affluent community of about 30,000 on the Lake Michigan shore.

A seventh victim died of their injuries Tuesday. More than three dozen other people were wounded in the attack, which Task force spokesman Christopher Covelli said the suspect had planned for several weeks.

The assault happened less than three years after police went to the suspect's home following a call from a family member who said he was threatening to kill everyone there. Covelli said police confiscated 16 knives, a dagger and a sword, but said there was no sign he had any guns at the time, in September 2019.

Police in April 2019 also responded to a reported suicide attempt by the suspect, Covelli said.

The suspect legally purchased the rifle used in the attack in Illinois within the past year, Covelli said. In all, police said, he purchased five firearms, which were recovered by officers at his fathers home.

The revelation about his gun purchases is just the latest example of y oung men who were able to obtain guns and carry out massacres in recent months despite glaring warning signs about their mental health and inclination to violence.

Illinois state police, who issue gun owners licenses, said the gunman applied for a license in December 2019, when he was 19. His father sponsored his application.

At the time there was insufficient basis to establish a clear and present danger and deny the application, state police said in a statement.

Investigators who have interrogated the suspect and reviewed his social media posts have not determined a motive or found any indication that he targeted victims by race, religion or other protected status, Covelli said.

Earlier in the day, FBI agents peeked into trash cans and under picnic blankets as they searched for more evidence at the scene. The shots were initially mistaken for fireworks before hundreds of revelers fled in terror.

A day later, baby strollers, lawn chairs and other items left behind by panicked parade goers remained inside a wide police perimeter. Outside the police tape, some residents drove up to collect blankets and chairs they abandoned.

David Shapiro, 47, said the gunfire quickly turned the parade into chaos.

People didnt know right away where the gunfire was coming from, whether the gunman was in front or behind you chasing you, he said Tuesday as he retrieved a stroller and lawn chairs.

The gunman initially evaded capture by dressing as a woman and blending into the fleeing crowd, Covelli said.

The shooting was just the latest to shatter the rituals of American life. Schools, churches, grocery stores and now community parades have all become killing grounds in recent months. This time, the bloodshed came as the nation tried to celebrate its founding and the bonds that still hold it together.

A police officer pulled over 21-year-old Robert E. Crimo III north of the shooting scene several hours after police released his photo and warned that he was likely armed and dangerous, Highland Park Police Chief Lou Jogmen said.

His father, Bob, a longtime deli owner, ran for mayor in 2019. The candidate who won that race, current Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering, said she knew Crimo as a boy in Cub Scouts.

And its one of those things where you step back and you say, 'What happened? Rotering told NBCs Today show. How did somebody become this angry, this hateful, to then take it out on innocent people who literally were just having a family day out?

Crimos attorney, Thomas A. Durkin, a prominent Chicago-based lawyer, said he intends to enter a not guilty plea to all charges.

Asked about his clients emotional state, Durkin said he has spoken to Crimo only once  for 10 minutes by phone. He declined to comment further.

Steve Greenberg, the lawyer for the parents, told The Associated Press Tuesday evening the parents arent concerned about being charged with anything related to their sons case.

There is zero chance they will be charged with anything criminal, he said. They didnt do anything wrong. They are as stunned and shocked as anyone."

The shooting occurred at a spot on the parade route where many residents had staked out prime viewing points early in the day.

Among them was Nicolas Toledo, who was visiting his family in Illinois from Mexico, and Jacki Sundheim, a lifelong congregant and staff member at nearby North Shore Congregation Israel. The Lake County coroner released the names of four other victims.

Nine people, ranging from 14 to 70, remained hospitalized Tuesday, hospital officials said.

Since the start of the year, the U.S. has seen 15 shootings where four or more people were killed, including the one in Highland Park, according to The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University mass killing database.

Scores of smaller-scale shootings in nearby Chicago also left eight people dead and 60 others wounded over the July 4 weekend.

In 2013, Highland Park officials approved a ban on semi-automatic weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines. A local doctor and the Illinois State Rifle Association quickly challenged the liberal suburbs stance. The legal fight ended at the U.S. Supreme Courts doorstep in 2015 when justices declined to hear the case and let the suburbs restrictions remain in place.

Under Illinois law, gun purchases can be denied to people convicted of felonies, addicted to narcotics or those who are termed mental defectives and capable of harming themselves or others. That might have stopped a suicidal Crimo from getting a weapon.

But under the law, just who is a mental defective must be decided by a court, board, commission or other legal authority.

The state has a so-called red flag law designed to stop dangerous people before they kill, but it requires family members, relatives, roommates or police to ask a judge to order guns seized.

Crimo, who goes by the name Bobby, was an aspiring rapper with the stage name Awake the Rapper, posting on social media dozens videos and songs, some ominous and violent.

In one animated video since taken down by YouTube, Crimo raps about armies walking in darkness as a drawing appears of a man pointing a rifle, a body on the ground and another figure with hands up in the distance.

Federal agents were reviewing Crimos online profiles, and a preliminary examination of his internet history indicated that he had researched mass killings and had downloaded multiple photos depicting violent acts, including a beheading, a law enforcement official said.

The official could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who had been in Chicago to address the National Education Associations annual meeting Tuesday, visited the site of the shooting to offer condolences to first responders and local officials.

The whole nation should understand and have a level of empathy, to understand that this can happen anywhere, in any peace loving community, Harris said in brief comments to reporters in Highland Park. And we should stand together and speak out about why its got to stop.

Shapiro, the Highland Park resident who fled the parade with his family, said his 4-year-old son woke up screaming later that night.

He is too young to understand what happened," Shapiro said. "But he knows something bad happened.

Foody reported from Chicago. Groves reported from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Associated Press writers Don Babwin in Chicago, Mike Householder in Highland Park, Bernard Condon and Mike Balsamo in New York, Aamer Madhani in Washington, Jim Mustian in New Orleans, Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco and researcher Rhonda Shafner also contributed.
PHOENIX  The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a federal judge to block Arizona from enforcing a new law about who can vote for president.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, the agency contends Arizona has no legal right to demand proof of citizenship from those who use a federal voter registration form. The new rule runs afoul of the National Voter Registration Act, said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who heads the agencys civil rights division.

Clarke also said the state is a repeat offender, approving the requirement earlier this year in House Bill 2492 despite a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to the contrary.

She said the problems with HB 2492 go deeper.

The legislation imposes some new requirements on everyone who registers, requirements DOJ  and federal law  consider illegal because the information is not material to whether someone is eligible to vote, Clarke said.

Most notably, the new law, set to take effect at the end of the year, says voter registration forms must include an individuals place of birth.

Prior to HB 2492, Arizona voter registration forms did not require applicants to provide their specific city or location of birth  and for good reason, Clarke told reporters Tuesday in a telephonic news conference.

That information is not material to establishing whether a voter is a U.S. citizen because of naturalization and expatriation patterns, among other reasons, she said.

GOP supporters of law respond

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich lashed out at the Department of Justice for pursuing the case.

In addition to free rooms and transportation for those illegally entering our country, the DoJ now wants to give them a chance to vote, Brnovich, a Republican, said in a prepared statement Tuesday. I will see you in court  again, he said, noting he has done legal battle with the Biden administration multiple times.

State Rep. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, who sponsored the legislation, said the lawsuit ignores the Constitution.

He said Congress is allowed to pass laws pertaining to the times, places and manners of electing representatives and senators.

The Constitution gives no such power (by Congress) over presidential elections, Hoffman argued, saying that power is reserved to the states.

That means Arizona is free to set voting requirements in presidential races, including proof of citizenship, he said.

However, that question of whether the legislation is legal or constitutional is now in the hands of U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton.

Hoffmans legislation stemmed from an allegation by Donald Trump supporters that people who were not legally in this country went to the polls in the 2020 presidential election and cast ballots, which they claim may have affected the outcome in which Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes.

Hoffman said about 21,000 Arizonans have signed up to vote using not the state registration form, which has a proof-of-citizenship requirement, but the form prepared by the Election Assistance Commission. That form, which entitles registrants to vote only in presidential and congressional races, mandates only that applicants sign a sworn statement avowing, under penalty of perjury, they are in fact citizens.

This bill does nothing other than to ensure that non-citizens are not voting in Arizona elections and American elections, which I might say one could classify non-citizens voting as foreign influence in our elections, Hoffman told colleagues.

Conflict with high court decision

Clarke said the federal lawsuit should come as no surprise to Hoffman or the Republican lawmakers who voted for the legislation.

HB 2492 is in direct conflict with the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Clarke said. That decision struck down Arizonas Proposition 200, a 2004 measure requiring people to provide citizenship when they register to vote.

In the 7-2 decision, Justice Antonin Scalia said the state law was preempted by the National Voter Registration Act. He pointed out that law requires states to accept and use the federal form.

Clarke said attorneys for the Legislature warned legislators federal law preempts a requirement for proof of citizenship for those registering with the federal form to vote in federal elections.

Nonetheless, the Legislature ignored these warnings and enacted HB 2492 anyway, she said.

As to the place-of-birth requirement, Clarke said it violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

This law prohibits election officials from denying the right of any individual to vote in any election because they made an error or omission that is not material in determining whether they are qualified to vote in that election, she said.

Clarke cited a 2003 ruling by a federal appeals court that Congress enacted the materiality provision to address the practice of requiring unnecessary information for voter registration. The court said that would increase the number of errors someone could make on the form, which would increase the number of errors or omissions, thus providing an excuse to disqualify voters.

Hoffman, however, said the contention by the Department of Justice that Arizona has not required would-be registrants to provide a place of birth is patently false. He pointed out that the state voter registration form provided by the Secretary of States Office does ask state or country of birth.

Ugly history of disenfranchising

While Brnovich and Hoffman lashed out at the Department of Justice, that wasnt the response of Secretary of State Katie Hobbs who, as the states chief election officer, is the named defendant.

I made it clear from the start that I did not think this law was constitutional, or good policy, said Hobbs, a Democrat.

In his own statement, House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding, D-Laveen, said Arizona has an ugly history of disenfranchising Indigenous voters and other voters of color.

We warned the governor that he was writing a sad new chapter in that history by embracing the Big Lie and signing this bill, he said in a prepared statement.

Republican Gov. Doug Ducey had not immediate comment, said his press aide C.J. Karamargin.

In March, however, in signing the measure, Ducey said he accepted Hoffmans argument that there is a legal nuance that allows the state to seek citizenship proof in presidential contests that it cannot seek in congressional races. He said its also the right thing to do.

I believe voter ID is Step 1 of being able to vote, and proof of citizenship along with that, the governor said at the time. This bill ensures that.
You probably do NOT watch informative, factual news. Its easier to have some blowhard yelling at you from the TV until you agree while eating your tuna casserole dinner. In the meantime, our country is going to the GOP outhouse. In a few years, America will be a fascist state (reference: Blade Runner).

Today, the 24 percent-popular SCOTUS has agreed to take on a case this fall from North Carolina that will, when they overturn (and they will) a rational NC State Supreme Court decision to block an illegal Radical Partys redistricting map in favor of a fair and balanced map by an independent commission. The GOP legislature is appealing this to the Supremes. When enacted, Radical politicians will immediately use it to CONTROL every aspect of our Federal and state elections. They will be able to appoint their own electors. Courts, Governors, and no one can overrule these decisions.
An auction of surplus land owned by the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority generated more than $8 million last month.

A total of 59 properties encompassing 707.9 acres are under contract for a combined sale price of $8,007,305, a spokeswoman for the OTA said. Five properties offered at the June 9-10 auction, held by Dakil Auctioneers Inc. of Oklahoma City, did not sell.

Two of the highest sale prices were for land off the Creek Turnpike near 22500 E. Omaha St. in Broken Arrow. A total of 71.2 acres there went for $1.606 million to Fifty-First South LLC, doing business as Silverleaf/Chuck Ramsay, and 58.3 acres went to John Robson for $1.045 million, documents indicate.

In the Oklahoma City area, 62.21 acres on the east side of the Kickapoo Turnpike between Southeast 15th and Southeast 29th streets were sold for $1.056 million to Skyridge Homes/Yosef Hoosyar.

Buyers were not available for comment Tuesday.

The land roster for the auction included property alongside the Creek, Turner, Will Rogers, Kickapoo and H.E. Bailey turnpikes.

Three other properties in the state were sold for at least $250,000, records show. Land was up for sale in nearly a dozen counties, including Tulsa, Creek, Rogers, Craig, Wagoner and Oklahoma counties.

The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority regularly auctions surplus properties it acquires during right-of-way acquisitions. Typically, the OTA purchases these smaller pieces of land as part of a larger purchase or if the property would not have access to a public road once construction is complete.

The OTA said it strives to keep its property inventory to a minimum with a review process of current and future needs and employs several methods to sell surplus property, including direct sales and sealed-bid auctions.

To expedite returning land to consumers, OTA began using a public auction house in May 2021.

No other public auctions are scheduled for this year.

Oklahoma has 624.4 miles of roadway in its 11 turnpikes, excluding the Gilcrease Expressway extension in west Tulsa, which is under construction and scheduled for a late summer completion.

The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority system generated $357.6 million in toll revenues in 2021, according to Brenda Perry of the Oklahoma Transportation Cabinet agencies, which include the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, Oklahoma Turnpike Authority and Oklahoma Aeronautics Commission.

Featured video: Why are businesses spending $130 million to be in Owasso?
Tom Gilbert Chief Photographer I joined the Tulsa World in 1988 after graduating from the University of Central Oklahoma. I lived in Saudi Arabia before graduating from Broken Arrow High School. I'm married to Karen Gilbert and have three grown children. Phone: 918-581-8349 Follow Tom Gilbert 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

Madeleine McCarthy has received a prestigious brewing scholarship. McCarthy, a brewer at Von Ebert Brewing in Portland, Oregon, is the recipient of the 2022 Glen Hay Falconer Foundation Siebel Brewing Scholarship.

McCarthy grew up in Tulsa and left in 2012. She still has family in Tulsa. She had planned to open a brewery here with her husband, Matt, but the laws were regressive then, so they decided to go to the craft beer mecca of Portland.

McCarthy began as a home brewer and translated that passion to a professional brewing career through hard work and perseverance. She began at a gluten-free brewery, making wort from roasted chestnuts and lentils, learning the craft and developing new recipes. She worked her way to larger craft breweries and now to her current position at Von Ebert Brewing.

In the words of a Selection Committee member, Maddys journey pays tribute to her utmost determination, humility and career vision. And this journey has just begun for her and all of us.

I am so incredibly honored to receive the Glen Hay Falconer scholarship for the Siebel Institute of Technology Concise Course in Brewing Technology. Brewing, to me, is the balance of science and creativity. Im excited to dive deep into the chemistry behind fermentation and apply what Ive learned to new recipes, processes and ideas.

Ive always been thirsty for knowledge, and I see this opportunity as a crisp, cold, crushable pint of Pilsner  thirst-quenching. What set Glen Falconer apart for others was his desire to share his wealth of knowledge and experiences with others. I strive to be that type of mentor for the next generation of women, LGBTQA+, and those who are under-represented wanting to get into the industry, said McCarthy.

What inspires us most about Maddy is her sense of community, from her active mentorship of more junior brewers to her commitment to making the industry better, more equitable and inclusive, added another Selection Committee member.

She elevates others through her enthusiasm for those breaking into professional brewing and takes pride being a catalyst in their success. This goes right to the core of the ideals of the Falconer Foundation.

McCarthy co-founded a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee at Von Ebert and plays a leading role in the Oregon Brewers Guild DEI Committee. With the Guild, she was instrumental in developing an internship program at Von Ebert for individuals from under-served groups wanting to enter the craft beer industry.

McCarthy has accomplished much over her relatively short craft brewing career, constantly demonstrating creativity in recipe development. Taking that innate talent and underscoring it with the science is something that the Concise Course will deliver for her, stated a Selection Committee member. We all wish Maddy the best for the Siebel course and know that layering in the formal Siebel brewing education will help propel Maddy and her beers to that next level.
A suspect in a north Tulsa County homicide accidentally shot his longtime friend in the chest Sunday after being told the weapon was unloaded, deputies allege in court records.

Tyler James Lewis, 23, of Cleveland, Oklahoma, surrendered to Tulsa County sheriffs deputies on Monday, the day after the fatal shooting of Tyler Lane Kirk.

Lewis faces one count of second-degree murder in Indian Country, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in Tulsa federal court.

Deputies found Kirk, also 23, dead with a single gunshot wound to his chest just inside the front door of his residence in the 5600 block of North Gillette Avenue about 11 p.m. Sunday, according to a probable cause affidavit submitted as part of an arrest warrant request.

Kirk was lying on his back with his shirt pulled over his head, his left hand extended above his head and his right hand pointed away from his body, according to the affidavit. A 9 mm handgun was found on the right side of his body.

Kirks mother told authorities that her son had mentioned to her about a week ago that his handgun  the weapon found on the floor next to him  was missing and that he thought Lewis had taken it, the affidavit states. She said the two were longtime friends.

Kirks mother, who was at the residence while deputies investigated her sons death, also mentioned that her son was left-handed while noting that the gun was found on his right side.

On Monday morning, a neighbor called the police to say he had video camera footage of a man he believed to be Lewis dragging Kirk from his home toward a black pickup parked in the front.

After going back to the residence, the man returned to Kirks body and dragged it to the backyard, the neighbor said, according to the affidavit. Lewis is next seen leaving the residence through the front door and driving away in a pickup, the affidavit says.

Lewis girlfriend told deputies that Lewis said Kirk had called him crying and that he was going to go by Kirks residence and meet her at her parents home later.

The girlfriend said Lewis was upset and pacing after arriving at her parents home later in the day, according to the affidavit.

Lewis eventually told his girlfriend that he and Kirk had been shooting guns when Lewis picked up Kirks gun after being told by Kirk that the gun was unloaded, she told deputies.

She said Lewis told her he fatally shot Kirk in the chest and was going to go to Okemah for a few days and that she should expect a call from him from an unknown telephone number.

Lewis later surrendered to authorities.

Both Kirk and Lewis are members of the Cherokee Nation, and the crime occurred within the tribes reservation.

Lewis is being held in Tulsa County jail, according to online records.

Federal prosecutors have sought to have Lewis held without bail while his case is pending.

While initial arrest reports indicated that Lewis lived in Coweta, the affidavit says he lives in Cleveland, Oklahoma, with his girlfriend.
A man was found killed in his northern Tulsa County home Sunday night, the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post, and a man who turned himself in has been arrested on a murder complaint.

Just after 11 p.m. on Sunday, deputies were called to a report of a man found dead in his home in the 5600 block of North Gillette Avenue. They found Tyler Lane Kirk, 23, dead.

Deputies said Tyler James Lewis, also 23, of Coweta, turned himself in on Monday evening and will be booked into Tulsa County jail on a murder complaint in Kirk's death.

Deputies said both Kirk and Lewis are tribal citizens, so they are assisting in an FBI investigation.

Anyone who has information about this homicide is asked to call TCSO at 918-596-5600.
More than 50 years after he returned from Vietnam, a longtime Oklahoma attorney and former Cherokee Nation chief justice has been presented the nations highest military honor for his actions there.

Dwight Birdwell was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Joe Biden on Tuesday in a ceremony at the White House.

Birdwell, who was recognized for his bravery during an enemy assault in 1968, was one of four Vietnam War Army veterans presented the medal Tuesday.

The others were Spc. Dennis M. Fujii, Maj. John J. Duffy and Staff Sgt. Edward N. Kaneshiro, who was recognized posthumously.

Not every service member has received the full recognition they deserve, and today we are setting the record straight, Biden said. Im proud to finally award our highest military honor to each of you.

Birdwell, who was named to the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame in 2017, was recognized for his actions on Jan. 31, 1968, when a large enemy force attacked his airbase near Saigon.

After his tank commander was wounded during the assault, Birdwell, under heavy enemy fire, moved him to safety before turning his attention to their attackers.

He fired the tanks weapons before dismounting to continue fighting.

Birdwell was wounded, receiving fire to his face and torso, but he refused to evacuate.

When he was ordered to board a medivac helicopter  this I find amazing  he went and crawled right back off the other side and kept on fighting, Biden said. Only after reinforcements arrived and only after hed helped with evacuations of his fellow wounded did Spc. Birdwell agree to evacuate himself.

The president said Birdwell received a Silver Star at the time. But years later, his commanding officer, realizing he had not received the higher honor, took it upon himself to correct the record.

He fully documented Birdwells actions to make this day possible, Biden said.

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr., who attended the White House ceremony, said in a press release Tuesday: Mr. Birdwell is someone I deeply respect, not only for his service to our Tribal Nation, but also for his service to our country.

Honoring his heroic deeds and bestowing the Medal of Honor to him is the right thing to do for his valiant actions during the Vietnam War. He is a true Cherokee patriot who put his own life at risk without hesitation and expected no commendation.

Birdwell, currently an attorney in Oklahoma City, grew up in Adair County and graduated from Stilwell High School.

He entered the Army in 1966 and served in Vietnam with the 4th Cavalry, 25th Infantry Division.

Birdwell served 12 years on the Cherokee Nations Judicial Appeals Tribunal, including two years as chief justice.
Signature gathering for supporters of recreational marijuana is ramping up, organizers of State Questions 818-819 said in a push for more volunteers to help with the petition drive across Oklahoma.

On Friday, Jed Green of Oklahomans for Responsible Cannabis Action was traveling across the Tulsa area to visit dispensaries hosting the petitions.

We wanted to take advantage of our (medical marijuana) retail locations across the state ... nice, indoor areas where folks could go to sign because its hot out there, Green said. And then from there, weve got folks who are starting to come in, pick up packets and then actually work their way out into the field and doing events.

Those helping gather signatures for the ORCA effort say most who have questions fall into three categories. Some are confused about the three cannabis-related petitions currently in Oklahoma, while others are patients mainly worried about keeping access to their medicine.

SQ 818 is ORCAs proposed constitutional change for state law to allow for medical marijuana. It differs from the initiative petition that already legalized medical marijuana  SQ 788, approved by Oklahoma voters in July 2018  in that it would not allow for changes by the state Legislature.

SQ 819, the companion petition from ORCA, would enshrine legal recreational marijuana for adult use into Oklahomas constitution. It eliminates a tax on cannabis for licensed patients.

The other petition, SQ 820, Green said is a version of recreational from a national group that has been collecting signatures recently at public events including rallies for reproductive rights.

Bonnie Caldwell, finance director for Seed Cannabis, pointed out a couple of the differences between 819 and 820 on Friday.

We can feel confident (819) wont be changed, she said.

As an initiative petition, SQ 820 would be subject to similar changes as SQ 788.

But 820 also has the portion about (retroactive expungement) to help those who have faced criminal charges in Oklahoma solely for marijuana possession, Caldwell noted.

A similar clause was stricken from SQ 819 as legally too vague. Green pointed out SQ 818 addresses the inherent problems with THC metabolite testing for patients, as well as law enforcement confusion.

A third category of questions about the recreational marijuana petition comes from people curious about the scorecard, or how far the campaign for SQ 819 is to hitting its goal.

Green said: Theyll ask How many signatures do you have? And Ill just kind of say, How many signatures did you collect?

To be considered for placement on a statewide ballot, SQ 818-819 need 178,000 signatures for each petition. SQ 820, supported by New Approach PAC, needs 95,000 signatures.

Green said cannabis supporters remember well the controversy of 2018 when a different group, Green the Vote, collected signatures for a recreational marijuana petition. The groups leaders reported inflated numbers in updates to supporters throughout the campaign.

ORCA is devoting its resources to collecting the signatures and training volunteers, Green said, so theres no time for counting yet.

With an Aug. 24 deadline to deliver the signatures to the Secretary of State, ORCA plans to finalize its collections Aug. 19-20, he said.

The organizers of SQ 820, Oklahomans for Sensible Marijuana Laws, said Tuesday the group's collection of 164,000 signatures will be delivered to the Secretary of State at 10 a.m.

Editor's note: This story was edited after publication to include an update on Oklahoma's other petition drive for recreational marijuana.
Tulsas chapter of the Sons & Daughters of the American Revolution rang the Kendall Bell at 1 p.m. Monday at the University of Tulsa in honor of Independence Day.

The chapter, which is made up of verified descendants of individuals who served in the American Revolution, has gathered on campus for 25 years to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence with its Let Freedom Ring ceremony.

Members sang songs like America The Beautiful and enjoyed bagpipe arrangements by City of Tulsa Pipes and Drums Pipe Major William Tetrick.

The Kendall Bells chime was one of many heard throughout the U.S., as members of the national nonprofit rang 13 tolls to represent the 13 original colonies. Members of nearby Oklahoma chapters served as representatives for each colony and participated in the bell-ringing processional.

The Oklahoma Society of the Sons of the American Revolutions Honorary State President Ron Painter said his interest in his family lineage helped him discover he had a great, great, great, great grandfather who served in the American Revolution. To celebrate the Fourth of July, Painter wore a Revolutionary War uniform and accessorized with spectacles and a tri-corner hat.

Being a direct descendant makes the event very significant to Painter, who said he loves sharing the history of his family and nation with others.

Its a great fraternity, then we also have our sisters, so it is a great fellowship there, Painter said. And  to take into consideration that our life is part of a long chain of lives and threads, so we get a bigger picture of who we are by looking at who and where we came from is so enriching.

As Painter watched younger Tulsans run around in period attire and take turns ringing the bell, he said it excites him to see a new generation celebrate the U.S. and its history.

Thats how our society is going to perpetuate, is to have like minds following through with the same ideals that were created back in 1776, Painter said.
In the year since Oklahoma Medicaid expansion went into effect, health care coverage was extended to at least 280,000 residents. But, unknown consequences lie ahead with privatized management.

The expanded health care program has been life-changing for many Oklahomans. Many are receiving preventative care for the first time and getting treatment for ailments long ignored.

The program makes coverage health coverage affordable to more lower-income families with the federal government paying 90% of the cost. It was made available through the Affordable Care Act.

For years, Oklahoma lawmakers refused the program, wrongly arguing Congress couldnt be trusted to fund the program. It likely had more to do with its nickname, Obamacare. Voters frustrated by this inaction used the initiative petition to eventually pass State Question 802, forcing the state to accept Medi-

caid expansion.

The coverage is for adults ages 19 to 64 earning less than 138% of the poverty level, which is $31,781 annually for a single parent and two children. To date, 39 states, including the District of Columbia have accepted the Medicaid expansion.

When Oklahoma voters approved the measure, the state had the second-highest U.S. uninsured rate of about 16%. It went down to about 9.6% as of April 25, according to a report from the Oklahoma Policy Institute that examined the first 10 months of the program.

The state paid about 8% of the total $808 million cost, or about $66 million, with most coming from the Supplemental Hospital Offset Payment Program, states tobacco tax and enhanced federal funds. The estimated cost for the expansion was $1.3 billion.

About 31% of Oklahomans  including 65% of the states children  are enrolled in Medicaid and 6% are participants of Medicaid expansion. The enrollees have been consistent in urban and rural areas and has benefited residents of every race, gender, age and county.

Of the nearly 280,000 Medicaid expansion enrollees, about 95,800 had been bridged over from another form of Medicaid, such as Insure Oklahoma, the report states.

This program is keeping Oklahomans healthy, workforces robust and rural hospitals in business. Despite the handwringing by lawmakers, Medicaid expansion is working as intended.

Gov. Kevin Stitt for years has advocated for a privatized managed care model instead of the fee-for-service system used by the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, which administers the program. The Legislature approved that measure in this past session.

Oklahoma had a privatized system before with disastrous outcomes. Lawmakers argue this measure has safeguards to prevent a repeat.

We are dubious of these claims. Saving money in health care is done by cutting back services, lowering or stagnating reimbursement rates or increasing costs to patients. These are unacceptable to the goal for Medicaid.

Seeing the success of Medicaid expansion after a year, we urge lawmakers and program administrators to move forward with caution. Review the managed care to ensure patients are put first.
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. -- Police announced they had captured a suspect in a shooting on Monday that killed six people and wounded more than 36 when a man with a high-powered rifle opened fire from a rooftop at a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park.

Police confirmed they captured 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III, who was from the area.

Police can be seen surrounding a car and then Crimo exiting the vehicle with his hands raised, according to a video by the Chicago affiliate of ABC News. Crimo lies flat on the ground before police take him into custody.

Charges will be filed, Highland Park Police said.

The shooting caused toddlers to abandon tricycles and parents to run for safety with their children, turning a civic display of patriotism into a scene of panicked mayhem.

"It sounded like fireworks going off," said retired doctor Richard Kaufman who was standing across the street from where the gunman opened fire, adding that he heard about 200 shots.

"It was pandemonium. A stampede. Babies were flying in the air. People were diving for cover," he said. "People were covered in blood tripping over each other.

Police did not have a motive for the shooting.

A chair and scooter are left knocked over at the scene of a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade route in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, U.S. July 4, 2022. Photo: Reuters

More than 36 people were hurt, mostly by gunshots, said Jim Anthony, a spokesman for the NorthShore University HealthSystem. The 26 victims taken to the Highland Park hospital ranged in age from 8 to 85, said Brigham Temple, an emergency room doctor.

The New York Times named one of the dead as 76-year-old Nicolas Toledo, who was in a wheelchair and had not wanted to attend the parade, but his disabilities required that he be around someone full time and his family had not wanted to miss the event.

"We were all in shock, his granddaughter Xochil Toledo said. "We thought it was part of the parade."

At least one of those killed was a Mexican national, a senior Mexican Foreign Ministry official said on Twitter.

The shooting comes with gun violence fresh on the minds of many Americans, after a massacre on May 24 killed 19 school children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, which followed a May 14 attack that killed 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.

Children waving American flags, riding tricycles or enjoying a ride in a wagon pulled by adults froze as people in the crowd screamed while gun shots rang out, video on social media showed.

Robert (Bob) E. Crimo III, a person of interest in the mass shooting that took place at a Fourth of July parade route in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, U.S. is seen in this wanted poster released July 4, 2022. Lake County Sheriff's Office/Handout via Reuters

One cellphone video, seen but not verified by Reuters, recorded what sounded to be about 30 rapid shots, a pause, and then another roughly 30 shots. Between the two bursts, a woman can be heard saying from the side of the parade route: "My God, what happened?"

The Lake County Sheriff's Office posted an online wanted poster of Crimo, showing a thin-faced bearded man with facial and neck tattoos. It said he weighed 120 pounds (54 kg) and was 5 feet 11 inches (1 meter 80 cms) tall.

Crimo appears to have published several self-made rap songs using the artist stage name "Awake The Rapper."

A videos by Awake The Rapper shows a drawing of a stick figure holding a rifle in front of a another figure spread on the ground.

YouTube recently terminated an associated user account, after police named Crimo. The rap videos show a man looking like Crimo. A YouTube spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Police said the shooting took place from the rooftop of a business that the gunman reached via an alley ladder attached to the building that was not secure.

A child's bike is left behind after a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade route in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, U.S. July 4, 2022. Photo: Reuters

President Joe Biden said he and his wife Jill were "shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day."

Biden said he had "surged federal law enforcement to assist in the urgent search for the shooter."

In his statement, Biden referred to bipartisan gun-reform legislation he signed recently but said much more needed to be done and added: "Im not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence."

'Really traumatizing'

Amarani Garcia, who was at the parade with her young daughter, told the local ABC affiliate she heard gunfire, then a pause for what she suspected was reloading, and then more shots.

There were "people screaming and running. It was just really traumatizing," Garcia said. "I was very terrified. I hid with my daughter actually in a little store. It just makes me feel like we're not safe anymore."

Social media video showed a marching band suddenly breaking formation and running away, and other images of people leaving their belongings behind as they sought safety.

"Everyone was running, hiding and screaming," said CBS 2 Digital Producer Elyssa Kaufman, who was at the scene.

FBI and other law enforcement officers gather on Central Avenue after a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade route in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, U.S. July 4, 2022. Photo: Reuters

A 36-year-old native of Highland Park who wanted to be identified only as Sara, told Reuters she had attended the annual parade most years since her childhood.

"Not even five minutes after, very shortly after, the police and firetrucks part of the parade had gone by I heard pop, pop, pop, pop, pop," she said, adding that she first thought they were muskets some times used in parades.

"I looked and there were no muskets. The popping didnt stop ... again it went pop, pop, pop, pop, pop and I turned and I said those are gun shots, run!

Highland Park's population is 30,000 and nearly 90% white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About a third of the population is Jewish, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The shooting is likely to rekindle the American debate about gun control, and whether stricter measure can prevent mass shootings that happen so frequently in the United States.

After the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings, Congress last month passed its first major federal gun reform in three decades, providing federal funding to states that administer "red flag" laws intended to remove guns from people deemed dangerous.

It does not ban sales of assault-style rifles or high-capacity magazines, but does take some steps on background checks by allowing access to information on significant crimes committed by juveniles.
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov is scheduled to visit Vietnam on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday night.

The visit is made at the invitation of Vietnamese Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son.

In September 2021, Minister Son conducted a business trip to Moscow, where he met with many Russian officials, including his counterpart Lavrov.

In late 2021, State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc visited Russia at the invitation of President Vladimir Putin.

Last year marked the 20th anniversary of the strategic partnership between Vietnam and Russia, while this year is the 10th anniversary of the two nations comprehensive strategic partnership.

Lavrov's visit takes place in the context of new developments in the international and regional situations.

In March, Minister Son joined separate phone talks with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba about the military conflict between the two countries.

In both dialogues, Son affirmed Vietnam's consistent stance that international disputes and disagreements should be resolved by peaceful measures and in compliance with the basic principles of the United Nations Charter and international law, especially the principle of respecting the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of countries.

The official asked relevant parties to exercise restraint, reduce tensions, and conduct more dialogues to find a long-term solution that is in line with international law and takes into consideration the legitimate interests of all sides.

During the talks, Minister Lavrov praised Vietnams contribution to peace, stability, cooperation, and development in the region and the world.

The official shared recent developments in the situation in Ukraine and affirmed that he would try his best to support the safe evacuation of Vietnamese citizens from conflict zones.

The two sides also discussed bilateral relations, with Minister Son suggesting that Russia continue to pay attention to and create favorable conditions for the Vietnamese community there to stabilize their life, production, and business operation.

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Vietnams Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son has recommended four measures for beefing up the Mekong-Lancang Cooperation (MLC) to promote growth and sustainable development from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Minister Son was speaking at the seventh MLC Foreign Ministers Meeting held in Bagan, Myanmar on Monday, centered around 'Solidarity for Peace and Prosperity.'

The event was attended by foreign ministers from the six member countries of the MLC mechanism, including China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Participants highly appreciated the MLCs recent contributions to regional cooperation and development, especially amid the complicated developments of COVID-19, and discussed coordination in organizing the second MLC Ministerial Meeting on Water Resources in Vietnam this year.

In this context, the Vietnamese diplomat delivered a speech proposing four major measures to make the MLC more effective.

He firstly mentioned the need for cooperation in boosting economic recovery and resilience from the pandemic, and strengthening customs cooperation and trade facilitation in order to solve goods congestion and ensure the free flow of goods and services in the region.

Second, it is necessary for mutual support among member countries in climate change adaptation and the transition to a green economic model, including clean energy development and climate-smart agriculture.

He also called for stronger cooperation in managing and using water resources in a sustainable manner, strengthening consultation and dialogue on water resource development plans, increasing the sharing of hydrological and meteorological data and hydroelectric dam operations, and expanding coordination between the MLC and the Mekong River Commission.

Vietnams Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son (L) bumps elbows with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi at the seventh Mekong-Lancang Cooperation Foreign Ministers Meeting in Myanmar, July 4, 2022. Photo: Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Lastly, it is advisable to promote people-to-people connections through tourism activities and cultural exchange programs, Son said.

His speech was highly appreciated by the other member countries and was reflected in the conferences documents, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday.

The event came as two-way trade between the lower Mekong River countries and China reached nearly US$400 billion last year, up 23 percent from 2020, while many large infrastructure works have been completed and hundreds of technical assistance projects are being built by the MLC member nations, according to the Vietnam News Agency.

The meeting emphasized the principles of equal cooperation, mutual consultation, benefit-sharing and respect for the United Nations Charter and international law, as well as the legislation of each country.

It came to an end with the issuance of four joint statements on strengthening agricultural cooperation, disaster prevention, customs and trade facilitation, and exchanges between MLC civilizations.

Founded in 2016, the MLC is a multilateral cooperation mechanism between the riparian states of the Lancang River and Mekong River.

The Lancang River originates from Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in southwestern China.

It is called the Mekong River as it flows through the other five countries  Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam  before entering the sea.

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Here are todays leading news stories:

Politics

-- Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Monday chaired an online meeting with localities and a regular cabinet meeting to review the socio-economic situation in the first half of this year and seek solutions to implement tasks for the rest of the year.

COVID-19 Updates

-- The Ministry of Health reported 685 COVID-19 cases on Monday, raising the national tally to 10,749,324, with 9,715,163 recoveries and 43,088 deaths.

Society

-- A married couple and a young girl were killed, while two other people were injured after a seven-seater car collided with a truck in north-central Quang Binh Province on Monday.

-- A total of 132 people tested positive for drugs after police inspected a karaoke parlor in the Mekong Delta province of Kien Giang early on Monday morning.

-- A Hanoi woman and her child drowned while swimming at Thien Cam Beach in north-central Ha Tinh Province on Monday morning. The womans body was brought ashore following the incident while her child was found on the afternoon of the same day.

-- Inspectors of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health confirmed on Monday they were working to clarify the cause of a womans death after she received intravenous fluids at a clinic in Binh Tan District.

-- Luong Van Toi, chairman of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee in Xuan Thang Commune, located in north-central Thanh Hoa Province, has been suspended from work after being accused of groping a tenth grader.

-- The final round of the police command, shooting, and martial arts competition in southern Vietnam was organized in Hue Citadel in north-central Thua Thien-Hue Province on Monday.

Sports

-- Vietnam beat the Philippines 4-1 in their second group-stage match at the 2022 AFF U-19 Youth Championship in Indonesia on Monday afternoon.

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The final round of a police command, shooting, and martial arts competition, joined by officers from 16 provinces and cities, kicked off in Hue Citadel in north-central Thua Thien-Hue Province on Monday.

Organized by the Ministry of Public Security from Monday to Wednesday, the contests finals are aimed at celebrating the 60th anniversary of the traditional day of the People's Police force (July 20).

A parade of the mounted police force in Hue Citadel, Thua Thien-Hue Province, Vietnam, July 4, 2022. Photo: N.Anh / Tuoi Tre

The event attracts the participation of 1,500 officers from People's Police University and police units in Ho Chi Minh City, Can Tho, Lam Dong, Tien Giang, Gia Lai, Tra Vinh, Phu Yen, Quang Nam, Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Kien Giang, Quang Binh, Binh Duong, Dong Nai, Dak Lak, and Thua Thien-Hue.

Female traffic police officers march during the opening ceremony of the police command, shooting, and martial arts competitions final round in Thua Thien-Hue Province, Vietnam, July 4, 2022. Photo: N.Anh / Tuoi Tre

The opening ceremony of the final round was attended by Lieutenant General Le Quoc Hung, Deputy Minister of Public Security, several other police officials, and officials of Thua Thien-Hue Province.

It featured a parade of the mounted police force at Ngo Mon Square, as well as martial arts and shooting performances by police officers.

A performance by traffic police officers in Thua Thien-Hue Province, Vietnam, July 4, 2022. Photo: N.Anh / Tuoi Tre

A female police officer shows her strength during a performance in Thua Thien-Hue Province, Vietnam, July 4, 2022. Photo: N.Anh / Tuoi Tre

A shooting performance during the opening ceremony of the competitions final round in Thua Thien-Hue Province, Vietnam, July 4, 2022. Photo: N.Anh / Tuoi Tre

A shooting performance during the opening ceremony of the competitions final round in Thua Thien-Hue Province, Vietnam, July 4, 2022. Photo: N.Anh / Tuoi Tre

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A small square in the 16th arrondissement of Paris has been named after Vietnamese pilot Do Huu Vi, one of the first pilots in the French military, who died at age 33 in a combat in France during World War I (1914-1918).

The naming was conducted at a ceremony held in the 16th arrondissement on Wednesday last week in the presence of Paris Deputy Mayor Laurence Patrice, Mayor of the 16th arrondissement of Paris Francis Szpiner, representatives of the Vietnamese Embassy in France, and relatives of Do Huu Vi, along with local authorities and residents.

Do Huu Vi Square is located on the intersection between Versailles Avenue and Quai Louis-Bleriot, overlooking the Radio France headquarters and Grenelle bridge.

Vi, born in 1883 in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), fought and died on July 9, 1916, in World War I, when he, a captain, led his company to attack a fort of German troops in Somme Bay in northern France.

In the archives kept at the French Military Museum, there is a note describing him as a brave officer who fell while commanding his company to launch an attack on German trenches.

Vi was first buried in Dompierre in Somme, and in 1921, his older brother brought back his remains to Saigon and conducted a funeral service for him.

He was awarded the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and some other noble medals for his feats of arms as a courageous and spirited officer.

Vietnamese pilot Captain Do Huu Vi (right). Photo: Freres DArmes

In commemoration of Do Huu Vi, the French government named many schools and streets after him, while the French Indochinese postal service issued a stamp featuring him in 1930.

Vi was honored by France as one of more than 300 people of overseas origin with meritorious services to the European country.

He was the only person of Asian origin to be included in the exhibition 'Portraits de France' at the Musee de lHomme in Paris earlier this year.

Commenting on Vi, historian Aurelie Clemente-Ruiz said the late captain is an irreplaceable monument in the history of France, as he and other expats contributed to the writing of French national history, and their names therefore deserve to be remembered.

There are currently about 200 streets and landmarks in France named after Vietnamese places or people.

Do Huu Christian, 79 years old, Vis great-grandson who is a senior civil servant of the French Ministry of Health, said his great-grandfather was a bright example for everyone as he had strived to be respected and honored by the whole of France during a period in which colored people were considered inferior to white people.

Born in a family of 11 children in Saigon, Do Huu Vi studied at local French schools in his childhood before being sent to France to attend Lycee Janson de Sailly in Paris. He later entered the French Military Academy at St. Cyr in 1904 and graduated two years later as a second lieutenant. After a period serving in the French military, Vi learned to fly and gained a pilots license from Aeroclub de France in December 1911, when he was promoted to lieutenant. In March 1914, he returned to Vietnam to study the use of hydroplanes on the Mekong and Red Rivers. Later the same year, Vi came back to France as World War I broke out. In early 1915, he was shot and severely wounded, and after a long recovery felt he was no longer physically qualified to be a pilot. He then asked for a return to the infantry, and was killed on July 9, 1916 while leading his company against German troops at Fort Dompierre in Somme.

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Police in Quang Ninh Province, northern Vietnam arrested a 52-year-old man who evaded capture for 30 years after allegedly committing a murder using a grenade at a local wedding party in late 1991.

The suspect, Le Van Nho, was eventually detained on Friday last week in the provinces Ha Long City after a hunt of more than 30 years, local police reported on Sunday.

The investigation to arrest Nho for the two charges including murder and illegal possession and use of military weapons was recently revived, investigators said.

The man, a native of the provinces Van Don District, was put on the wanted list in February 1992, around two months after he allegedly committed the crime.

According to the case file, while attending a wedding party in Van Don in December 1991, Nho and some of his friends fell out with another group of guests led by On Van Sang.

Upon leaving the party, Sangs group, armed with knives, attacked Nhos group, causing injuries to a friend of Nhos.

Nho ran back to his house nearby and returned with a grenade in hand.

He then pulled the pin out of the grenade and threw it into Sangs group, causing an explosion that killed Sang on the spot while wounding some others.

Nho escaped from the scene immediately and worked as a freelance seafarer to hide from police detection.

However, after hunting Nho for a long time, detectives successfully traced his whereabouts and arrested him.

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The two Vietnamese artists who have made headlines since last week for their arrest in Spain due to an accusation of having raped a 17-year-old British girl last month have found themselves a lawyer and are waiting for arraignment, according to Deputy Minister of Culture, Sports, and Tourism Ta Quang Dong.

The police department of the tourist island of Majorca confirmed on June 28 that they had arrested two Vietnamese males over sexual assault allegations on June 25.

Spanish and British media reported that the two Vietnamese citizens stayed at a hotel in Sant Elm on the island and met a 17-year-old girl from the UK, who roomed with her family at a different hotel, at a restaurant on June 24.

The three exchanged 'intimate' gestures before returning to the hotel room of one of the two Vietnamese men.

The girl later reported to local police that she had been raped in the hotel room.

Authorities took the girl to the Son Espases hospital for a check-up and arrested the accused.

While the mens identity and occupations were not revealed by the Majorca authorities, local reports said they were an actor and a musician aged 37 and 42.

In Vietnam, popular actor Hong Dang and famed musician Ho Hoai Anh have made front-page news ever since Friday last week as a video of the duo enjoying a trip in Majorca uploaded on June 24 cast suspicion on their relation to the rape case.

Dang and Anhs state-run management agencies also suspended their working schedules while national broadcaster Vietnam Television (VTV) has censored programs featuring the two artists.

This undated file photo shows Vietnamese musician Ho Hoai Anh (L) and actor Hong Dang.

In response to reporters requests during a press meeting on Tuesday morning, Deputy Minister of Culture, Sports, and Tourism Ta Quang Dong said that the incident related to Dang and Anh remained a question.

There is no new information, but these two people were still out on bail as of Sunday [July 3] and have not been prosecuted, the deputy minister said.

They are waiting to see the judge and have successfully hired a lawyer to handle legal matters.

The embassy [of Vietnam in Spain] has sent staff to their place to provide legal help.

Hong Dang, whose full name is Le Hong Dang, is a Vietnamese actor born in 1984 and managed by the Hanoi Opera House and the Vietnam Drama Production Center under VTV.

He started his acting career in 2004 and has played roles in many VTV dramas, but only rose to stardom in 2011.

He won the Impressive Actor awards at VTV Awards in 2016 and 2018 and the prize for Best Actor in a TV Series at the 2016 Golden Kite Award, Vietnams version of the Oscars, by the Vietnam Cinema Association.

Ho Hoai Anh is a Vietnamese musician and music producer born in 1979 and has worked at the Vietnam National Academy of Music for 20 years.

He won the Musician of the Year prize at the prestigious Cong Hien (Devotion) Music Awards in 2010 and was awarded the state title of Meritorious Artist in 2015.

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The chairman of the commune-level Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee in Thanh Hoa Province, north-central Vietnam has been suspended from work after being accused of groping a tenth grader.

The 15-day work suspension was given to Luong Van Toi, chairman of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee chapter in Xuan Thang Commune, Thuong Xuan District, Thanh Hoa.

Competent authorities have reviewed and verified the video footage that appeared to show Toi groping the schoolgirl, Do Xuan Nam, Party chief of Thuong Xuan District, confirmed on Monday.

As the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee chapter in Xuan Thang Commune does not have a vice-chairman, the commune's deputy Party secretary will take over from Toi during this period.

At around 4:20 pm on June 28, a man was caught on CCTV walking into the yard of a local house and talking to L.T., a tenth grader who lives at the residence.

The man then approaches the young girl and touches her shoulder and back.

After a few moments, he grabs T. and tries to kiss her, before she resists and pushes him away.

After looking at the video clip, T.s family members believed that the man in the footage is Toi, thus they filed a denunciation to the authorities of Thuong Xuan District.

Further investigation is ongoing.

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Booking.com has announced a two night only accommodation stay in Pin-Oak Court, Vermont, aka Ramsay Street, including the night of Neighbours finale.

Two people will have the pleasure of staying in 5 Pin-Oak Court, used as exteriors for Dr. Karl & Susan Kennedy for the rock-bottom sum of just $28.

Guests first to book 28 Ramsay Street on Booking.com will live like stars for the finale with a full VIP Neighbours and Melbourne holiday experience, including:

Flights from home destination and state to VIC

A premium car rental for three days

Champagne on arrival

Neighbours memorabilia

Backyard Barbie & Beers with Karl Kennedy aka Alan Fletcher, before settling in to watch the Neighbours finale (28th July) on a massive plasma screen TV.

Alexandra Bryant, executive director at Red Havas, said: When thinking of Aussie homes, it doesnt get much more iconic than Ramsay St. Neighbours has been such a huge part of Australian culture for the last 37 years so it was the perfect partnership for Booking.com to showcase its choice, value and quality of Aussie homes on the site.

Neighbours closing the curtain is such a milestone moment and we want fans to be able to become part of Australian television history with this once-in-a-lifetime stay in the Kennedy home thanks to Booking.com.

Why so cheap and one night only? Its a promotional event not dissimilar to one Airbnb did with their Bluey house when just one family got to stay.

Ludo producer Daley Pearson told TV Tonight, Theyd done it before with the Fresh Princes house and the Barbie house  they do these one night only events. The whole point of it is to be inclusive, to make sure everybody gets a chance, but also to be exclusive.

The Neighbours house insists on no children, no pets, no parties -awww..

Youll neeed to be quick to book this one when it opens at 11am AEST Tuesday July 12.

Yep, first come, first served.

Source: Mumbrella
Despite making up 3.3% of the population, the vast majority of kids behind bars are Indigenous  almost half aged 10 -17. 9:10pm Wednesday on ABC.

Big Brother

Five Bedrooms

Gruen

Irma La Vep

Wimbledon
Controlling rent of coffee shop stalls might reduce incentive for coffee shop owners to invest, said National Development Minister Desmond Lee. (PHOTO: Chia Han Keong/Yahoo News Singapore)

SINGAPORE  Controlling the rent of coffee shop stalls might reduce incentive for coffee shop owners to invest in the improvement of their facilities and services, according to Minister for National Development Desmond Lee.

Lee was responding in written form to a question by Nee Soon Group Representation Constituency Member of Parliament Carrie Tan during Mondays (4 July) parliament sitting. Tan has asked whether there were any plans to control rents on coffee shop stalls in Housing & Development Board (HDB) estates, so that high rental costs would not be transferred to customers.

Tans query comes on the back of Yishun coffee shop KPT Kopitiam being sold for a whopping S$40 million last month, the second sale of its kind in a week. Another coffee shop in Tampines, 21 Street Eating House, exchanged hands for a record S$41.69 million earlier in June, topping a record transaction involving Yong Xing Coffee Shop at Bukit Batok for S$31 million in 2015.

Tenants of the 21 Street Eating House told The Straits Times that rent had increased, spurring some to consider terminating their agreements.

Ensure choices and competition

A key measure to ensure affordable meals and cushion the potential impact of resale transactions was to have a good supply of coffee shops in every HDB estate and town to ensure healthy competition, said Lee. These coffee shops can be run by social enterprises in order to keep food prices low.

The market for F&B is highly competitive, especially in our heartlands. For example, the two coffee shops at Tampines and Yishun are within neighbourhood centres that have five and seven coffee shops respectively within a 400m radius, and residents hence have a choice of affordable food options there, Lee said.

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There are over 770 HDB coffee shops, and over 100 hawker centres in Singapore. In the past four years, HDB completed 34 new coffee shops, with another 30 expected to be done in the next four years. Four new hawker centres will be operational this year, with another seven in the planning or construction phase.

HDB stopped selling coffee shops in 1998 and has only rented them out since. Lee did not specify how many coffee shops were sold and privately-owned, and how many were rented out.

Provision of budget meals

In 2018, the HDB introduced Price-Quality tenders, with 50 per cent of points assigned to the quality of the operator. The quality takes into consideration the availability of budget meals, good track record and community initiatives. Operators who successfully tender for HDB coffee shops typically provide budget food options at every stall, with these priced at around $3.

The rentals under Price-Quality tenders are also lower and more sustainable than under pure price bidding tenders, Lee added.

In considering rent control measures, Lee cited the need to guard against unintended impacts.

For example, by controlling rent, we could end up reducing the incentive for coffee shop owners to invest in improving their coffee shops to provide better services and facilities to customers, he said.

HDB regularly monitors the resale market for HDB coffee shops, as well as the prices of food sold in both sold and rental coffee shops, and will not hesitate to review its policies to address affordability concerns where necessary.

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Shares in United States Steel (NYQ:X) are currently trading at $17.9 but a key question for investors is how ongoing economic uncertainty will affect the price. One way of making that assessment is to examine where its strengths lie...

The United States Steel share price has moved by -52.7% over the past three months. In volatile markets, many investors are keen to buy what they think are cheap stocks - but it's important to recognise the difference between a genuine bargain and a value trap. Often, the quality of the stock makes all the difference.

The encouraging news is that it has at least some of the traits that are often associated with two influential drivers of investment returns: high quality and a relatively cheap valuation.

To understand why that matters, here's a closer look:



GET MORE DATA-DRIVEN INSIGHTS INTO NYQ:X 

Buying quality at a fair price

Good quality stocks are loved by the market because they're more likely to be solid, dependable businesses. Profitability is important, but so is the firm's financial strength. A track record of improving finances is essential.

One of the quality metrics for United States Steel is that it passes 8 of the 9 financial tests in the Piotroski F-Score. The F-Score is a world-class accounting-based checklist for finding stocks with an improving financial health trend. A good F-Score suggests that the company has strong signs of quality.



While quality is important, no-one wants to overpay for a stock, so an appealing valuation is vital too. With a weaker economy, earnings forecasts are unclear right across the market. But there are some valuation measures that can help, and one of them is the Earnings Yield.

Earnings Yield compares a company's profit with its market valuation (worked out by dividing its operating profit by its enterprise value). It gives you a total value of the stock (including its cash and debt), which makes it easier to compare different stocks. As a percentage, the higher the Earnings Yield, the better value the share.

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A rule of thumb for a reasonable Earnings Yield might be 5%, and the Earnings Yield for United States Steel is currently 95.4%.



In summary, good quality and relatively cheap valuations are pointers to those stocks that are some of the most appealing to contrarian value investors. It's among these shares that genuine mis-pricing can be found. Once the market recognises that these quality firms are on sale, those prices often rebound.



What does this mean for potential investors?

Finding good quality stocks at cheap prices is a strategy used by some of the world's most successful investors. But be warned: these factors don't guarantee future returns and we've identified some areas of concern with United States Steel that you can find out about here.


Credit: PA Images

All Blacks second-row Sam Whitelock may be ruled out for the rest of the Test series against Ireland after suffering from delayed concussion symptoms.

As World Rugby looks to make the game safer, the new concussion stand-down period has increased from seven days to 12 as of July 1. This means Whitelock is out for the second Test and a massive doubt for the third.

Poor timing for Vaai

Chiefs star Tupou Vaai would be the obvious replacement but the second-row currently has Covid-19. All Blacks captain Sam Cane says Whitelock will be sorely missed whilst also feeling for Vaai, who would have had his chance.

Its not ideal. Sam was awesome in the weekend. He became the second most capped All Black of all time which is hugely impressive. Well no doubt miss his leadership and what he brings, Cane said.

Tupou had been playing well all Super Rugby and was hanging out for his opportunity so its a tough pill for him to swallow.

Weve got to the stage where anyone who hasnt had it, its lurking and its going to strike soon and poor Tups had to get it this week.

In terms of replacements its great to have a 40-odd test All Black in Patrick Tuipulotu to call in. He trained with us last week which was awesome so hes up to speed and hell slip in pretty seamlessly.

Retallick to call lineouts

In the absence of Whitelock, second-row partner Brodie Retallick will call the lineouts, something Cane is confident in as the All Blacks look to nullify the Irish set-piece.

Sam runs our lineout particularly well. Brodie will take over that mantle, Cane said. He did that for the majority of the Rugby Championship last year so hes ready and looking forward to doing that. Its crazy hes played 90-odd Tests and his locking partner has always been the one running the lineout. Hes done it at Super Rugby time and time again. Other than that itll be business as usual.

Its impressive the way it doesnt fluster the boys they just get on and know someone else will step up. Thats the way it is again.

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Cane was happy with the performance last weekend but knows his side will need more in the second Test as the Irish push to level the series.

We were lucky we managed to have a good period for the second period of the first half where we piled the points on but if you look at the rest of the Test it was fairly even. We know theyll lift from last week but we certainly need to be better. If we deliver what we did last week this week, I dont think itll be good enough, he said.

Its always energising highlighting areas we can be better and where we made some shifts. Under the roof in the middle of winter to be playing in perfect conditions that excites this team that wants to play fast and use our skills.

READ MORE: July internationals Team of the Week: All Blacks dominate after fine win over Ireland

The article All Blacks: Sam Whitelock ruled out of second Test and a doubt for the rest of series appeared first on Planetrugby.com.
Denmark's badminton world No.1 Viktor Axelsen returns a shot in the Malaysia Open men's singles final. (PHOTO: Annice Lyn/Getty Images)

SINGAPORE  Men's world No.1 shuttler Viktor Axelsen has withdrawn from this week's Malaysian Masters as well as next week's Singapore Badminton Open, citing fatigue after playing - and winning - numerous back-to-back tournaments these past two months.

In an official statement to the Singapore Badminton Association (SBA) by the Danish badminton federation on Tuesday (5 July), Denmark head coach Kenneth Jonassen wrote, Viktor is withdrawing from the Singapore Open 2022 due to fatigue of playing back to back tournaments. He will now turn his focus to the BWF World Championships in Tokyo.

Axelsen, 28, had also written a post on his Instagram page which he has since deleted. It had said, "I would have loved to compete again here in (Kuala Lumpur) this week and then in (Singapore). However when I woke up this morning my body and my head was telling me that it's time to rest and recharge before I step on the court again.

"I need some days off to rest, celebrate my recent wins with my family and then build up towards new goals."

Axelsen has been on a tear this year, winning the men's singles competitions at the European Championships, All-England Open, Indonesia Masters, Indonesia Open and Malaysia Open.

Axelsen withdrawal a boost for Loh Kean Yew

While fans will be disappointed to not be able to see Axelsen in action in the next two weeks, his absence could be a further boost for Singapore's reigning world champion Loh Kean Yew, as he seeks to become the first local men's singles champion at the Singapore Open since Wee Choon Seng in 1962.

Axelsen would have been a formidable opponent for the world No.9 in the final, as they are drawn in opposite halves. Loh, however, had stunned the Dane en route to his memorable Badminton World Championships triumph last December.

With Axelsen's withdrawal, there are only three higher-seeded players than Loh at the men's singles competition at the Open, which will be held at the Singapore Indoor Stadium from 12 to 17 July: Taiwan's Chou Tien-chen (world No.4), and Indonesians Anthony Sinisuka Ginting (world No.6) and Jonatan Christie (world No.8).

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The likes of Japan's world No.2 Kento Momota and Malaysia's world No.5 Lee Zii Jia have decided to skip the Open to focus on next month's Badminton World Championships. Meanwhile, Danes Anders Antonsen (world No.3) and Rasmus Gemke (world No.13) have pulled out with injuries.

Loh will face France's Brice Leverdez in his opening round on 13 July, and could face Indonesia veteran Tommy Sugiarto in the round of 16.

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LONDON - Peter Brook, one of the world's most innovative theatre directors who perfected the art of staging powerful drama in bizarre venues, has died aged 97, his publisher said on Sunday.

The British director used the world as his stage mounting productions ranging from challenging versions of Shakespeare through international opera to Hindu epic poems.

Brook put on plays in gymnasiums, deserted factories, quarries, schools and old gas works in towns around the world.

His 1970 Stratford production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream", played all in white and with a huge garlanded swing, secured his place in the annals of theatre history.

According to Le Monde, Brook - who had been based in France since 1974 - died in Paris on Saturday.

A statement from his publisher confirmed his death on Sunday.

Although Brook was regarded with awe in theatrical circles, he was less well known among the wider public because of his refusal to bow to commercial taste. He left Britain to work in Paris in 1970.

He often shunned traditional theatrical buildings for the empty space" which could be transformed by light, words, improvisation and the sheer power of acting and suggestion.

"I can take any empty space and call it a stage," he wrote in his ground-breaking 1968 book The Empty Space".

His quest for inspiration took him as far afield as Africa and Iran and produced a variety of original improvised plays marked by his eye for detail and challenging approach.

Born in London on March 21 1925, his father was a company director and his mother a scientist. He left school at 16 to work in film studio and then went Oxford University and took a degree in English and Foreign Languages.

In 1970 he transferred from Britain to work in Paris, founding the International Centre of Theatre Research which brought together actors and designers of many different nationalities.

Brook continued working into his nineties.

"Every form of theatre has something in common with a visit to the doctor. On the way out, one should always feel better than on the way in," he wrote in his 2017 book 'Tip of the Tongue'.
Beijing slams NASA chief for claiming China could 'take over' the moon

CGTN) 09:40, July 05, 2022

China firmly opposes the "irresponsible remarks" by NASA Chief Bill Nelson about China's space progress, said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Monday.

Zhao's remarks came after Nelson, in an interview with German newspaper Bild published on Saturday, said that "We have to be very concerned about China landing on the moon and saying: It's ours now, and you stay out."

During a regular press conference, Zhao hit back at the claim, saying "some U.S. officials are constantly smearing China's normal and reasonable outer space undertakings. China firmly opposes such irresponsible remarks."

"As head of U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, he should be well aware of the dark history of the U.S. space program," he said, adding that the United States has played a negative role in creating space junk, provoking an arms race in outer space and undermining global strategic stability.

The actions of the United States pose a "great threat" to the peaceful uses of outer space, Zhao said.

Noting that China's exploration of outer space is to meet the country's legitimate economic, social, scientific, technological and security needs, the Chinese spokesperson underlined that the country always advocates the peaceful use of outer space, and opposes weaponization and arms race in outer space.

The development of China's space industry is achieved entirely through independence and self-reliance and its rights and interests and achievements allow no questioning or smearing, Zhao stressed.

(Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji)
More arrests will be made and more charges will be filed in the case of two missing McGregor teens who were found in Georgetown early Tuesday morning after a statewide Amber Alert was issued Monday, McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara told reporters Tuesday.

McNamara said the case is still under investigation and exact details are unknown, but investigators believe the two teens were initially runaways before becoming involved in a dangerous situation involving multiple people. McNamara also said it is possible the case involved human trafficking.

They fell in with some bad people in our opinion and went from one place to the next. They were kept in some pretty bad places, McNamara said. They were very happy to be rescued.

The girls have been reunited with their families, he said.

McLennan County deputies arrested James Robert Vanhouten, 30, at about 12:30 a.m. Tuesday in Georgetown. McNamara said the two missing girls were found in a residence with Vanhouten. McNamara also said Vanhouten is not the only person believed to be involved in harboring the missing teens.

The other people involved were aware that they were minors. Both these young ladies were 14 years old, McNamara said. They were all aware that they were concealing them. So theyre gonna be dealt with accordingly.

Vanhouten was arrested on two counts of harboring a runaway child, according to Williamson County Jail records.

Emiliee Solomon, 14, and Aysha Cross, 14, initially went missing June 28. The McLennan County Sheriffs Office became involved in the case Monday after two family members of the missing girls asked the sheriffs office for help.

The Amber Alert was issued Monday after one of the missing girls sent out a message on the social media app Snapchat asking for help, showing evidence the girls were in danger, McNamara said.

We have reason to believe that they were mistreated very badly, McNamara said. Were looking into that. Were going to be filing charges, and there will be some other arrests made.

McNamara said investigators spent all day Monday following leads while tracking down the missing girls. McNamara said investigators used electronic tracking, going to Temple, then Bellmead and Moody to conduct interviews before eventually finding the girls in Georgetown.

McNamara said the girls are believed to have been taken to five houses in the week since they first went missing.

McNamara said all individuals involved in the girls disappearance will be brought to justice.

The message to the scumbags: Were coming to get you, McNamara said. They cant run and hide from us. They can run, but well find them.
The story of the 185th Fighter Wings gold F-16 was a big giant deal because painting an entire jet, something other than standard tactical grey was rarely done in the 1990s. At that time units could get permission to paint nose art or an elaborate tail flash. When the gold jet made its debut it was the biggest thing to reverberate across the fighter jet community since the death of Lt. J.G. Nick Goose Bradshaw.

The original gold F-16 first made its appearance on the flight line in Sioux City as the unit marked its 50th anniversary in 1996.

This year the unit has done a do-over just as the Air Force is marking its 75th Anniversary in 2022.

By todays standards a completely gold F-16 may not seem like an anomaly. A quick internet image search of F-16 paint schemes turns up dozens of elaborate designs. Veteran 185th members say that other than the Thunderbirds, painting an entire U.S. Air Force jet was not done 25 years ago.

The famous gold jet was the brainchild of former, and much beloved 185th Fighter Wing Commander Col Dennis Swanstrom. When the F-16 static display in Sioux City had become sun baked and was due for some attention, ideas of making the F-16 gold began to swirl.

The old F-16 was on display at the Iowa Air National Guard in Sioux City for nearly 20 years. The 174th Fighter Squadron had flown F-16s during the decade of the 1990s until converting to the KC-135 in 2001. After the units conversion, the F-16 was added to a small airpark of previously flown 185th aircraft at the Air Guard unit.

Aircraft on display in Sioux City include variations of the F-80, an F-100 on a stick and an A-7 that are all gathered near the units headquarters building.
With much thanks to our good friend John Parker at WarbirdsOnline in Australia, we have learned that the Hunter Fighter Collection in Scone, New South Wales has made strong progress with the production of a replica Bristol F.2B, a WWI-era biplane combat aircraft better known as the Bristol Fighter, or Brisfit. We will let Johns words pick up the latest news as follows

The Hunter Fighter Collection, curator of the Hunter Warbirds aircraft collection, has recently completed construction of an additional exhibit with significant importance to Scone and the Upper Hunter Region, in New South Wales. A replica Bristol F.2B will now feature in a diorama at their museum, which continues to grow impressively; new exhibits and aircraft being added at regular intervals.

The Bristol Fighter exhibit came to pass following the generous donation of a replica fuselage frame from Phillip Cooper in Queensland during 2021. Subsequently, the Hunter Fighter Collection commenced an initiative to build up a diorama entitled The Upper Hunter Battleplane. The exhibit will show the replica F.2B, masquerading as an example (B1229) serving with No.1 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps (AFC) as it is undergoing reassembly at a location in Palestine during WWI.

The exhibit title derives from the WWI-era Battleplane Fund which Charles Alma Baker, a New Zealander, created to encourage Australians to contribute the sum of 2,700 to purchase an aircraft to serve with the AFC or Britains Royal Flying Corps (RFC). The Upper Hunter Region, which includes the town of Scone, contributed significantly, with its citizens providing funds for the construction of 12 combat aircraft in WWI.

One such donation from the people of the Upper Hunter funded the purchase of Bristol F.2B, serial number B1223, for No.1 Squadron AFC. B1223 served in the Middle East alongside several other aircraft donated by the Upper Hunter, including the famous B1229 flown by Sir Ross Smith. A replica of B1229 is currently flying at Scone with the Hunter Fighter Collection, so the two airframes will form a marvelous diorama together when the airworthy example isnt on active display.

Matt Webber and the team at Luskintyre Aircraft Restoration took on the fuselage build-out, with assistance from the Upper Hunter Shire Council, Pays Aviation and Vintage Fighter Restorations. Luskintyre Aircraft Restoration was meticulous in their efforts, producing work of exceptional quality. The replica fuselage is now complete with its tail and markings as well as center sections and undercarriage. Over time, HFC volunteers will complete the remainder, which will include an engine, cowlings and Scarf ring for the rudimentary gunners turret.

The diorama will be installed at Hunter Warbirds shortly, and it will be a wonderful tribute to No.1 Squadron AFC as well as the citizens of the Hunter valley who supported them. It will be well worth a visit to see this new display!

Bristol Fighter F.2B replica awaiting the completion of its tail feathers. (image via John Parker)

Many thanks indeed to our friend John Parker at WarbirdsOnline for this article. We look forwards to being able to report on progress as the diorama comes together.
Neighbors called 911 around 9:30 p.m. Monday after seeing a man firing a gun in his backyard at 1432 Vine St.

Officers found the man sitting in his garage with handguns nearby, and he admitted to shooting into the air to celebrate the Fourth of July, according to court records. Spent shell casings were located in the driveway and backyard.
WATERLOO  Authorities have charged a Waterloo nurse accused of taking pain medication from a patient in 2021.

Kelsey Ann Baxter was charged with one count of acquiring a controlled substance through deception June 28 in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids. The government is also seeking forfeiture of her nursing license. She waived formal indictment.

Court records allege Baxter obtained morphine in April 2021.

Nursing Board records show Baxters license was suspended pending proof of substance abuse treatment in February.

Records indicate Baxter was a licensed practical nurse working for Friendship Village Retirement Community when a co-worker allegedly saw her take morphine pills from a patients medication card. A drug test was positive for opiates, and she was terminated, according to Nursing Board records.

After that, she voluntarily entered an inpatient treatment program followed by outpatient treatment.

During a Nursing Board hearing, it was disclosed that Baxter suffered from anxiety, depression and insomnia. She had been one of five nurses specializing in COVID-19 and had worked extremely long hours and had watched 14 residents die alone, according to records.
WATERLOO  One person has been detained following an assault that ended in a brief chase and crash in Waterloo on Tuesday.

The identity of the suspect hasnt been released, but Waterloo police located him in an apartment building on Langley Drive around 2:30 p.m.

The incident started when police were called to an assault at the Kwik Star on East San Marnan Drive and a patrol officer spotted a minivan with Buchanan County plates fleeing the scene.

The van darted down Camelot Drive and Oelson Road, and the driver leapt from the vehicle while it was still in motion and ran into the woods.

The driverless van continued a short distance before hitting a tree.

Police found a rifle and two stolen handguns in the vehicle.
WATERLOO  The public is invited to join the Waterloo Community Foundation at 11 a.m. Wednesday as we hear from Paul Huting, Mark Kuiper, and Felicia Smith-Nalls about the campaign to transform the citys two anchor parks: Gates Park and Byrnes Park.
Algeria is celebrating 60 years of independence from France with nationwide ceremonies, a pardon of 14,000 prisoners and its first military parade in years. The events on Tuesday mark the countrys official July 5, 1962 declaration of independence after a brutal seven-year war which ended 132 years of colonial rule. The war killed hundreds of thousands and remains a point of tension in relations between Algeria and France. Former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika abandoned holding military parades, but his successor, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, revived the tradition for this years anniversary. The military show of force is taking place amid growing tensions between Algeria and Morocco over the disputed Western Sahara region.
DES MOINES  New legal standards for potential abortion restrictions in Iowa must be argued first in front of a lower court judge, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in rejecting a request from the governor.

The court denied Gov. Kim Reynolds request to rehear a case involving a state law that requires a 24-hour waiting period before a woman can have an abortion. Reynolds had requested the high court rehear it so that justices could rule on what legal standard would be applied to future abortion regulations in the state.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruling is the latest legal domino to fall in the wake of rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, which eliminated a womans access to abortion as a federal right and sent the issue to states, and by the Iowa Supreme Court reversing its earlier decision that the state constitution provided a fundamental right to an abortion.

With their law-writing majorities in state government, Iowa Republicans are expected to further restrict if not outright ban abortions in Iowa.

In Tuesdays decision, justice rejected Reynolds request, instead insisting the case first return to the district court level where the parties will argue before a district judge.

That district court judges ruling is likely to be appealed, and the case likely will return to the Iowa Supreme Court anyway, said legal expert Sally Frank, a law professor at Drake University.

Frank said the courts eventually will be asked to rule what type of legal standards should be applied to future abortion regulations: rational basis or undue burden. Frank said what kind of abortion restriction or ban statehouse Republicans propose likely will depend on which standard the state courts apply.

In the meantime, abortion remains legal in Iowa up until 20 weeks of pregnancy, as has been the case since 2017. However, the state law that requires a woman to wait 24 hours before having an abortion likely will go into effect soon.

Reynolds office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reynolds also in the wake of the recent U.S. and Iowa Supreme Court rulings has asked the state courts to lift an injunction on a state law that would ban all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, which often is before the woman knows she is pregnant. The courts have not yet ruled on that request.
A lot of wacko, hard-to-believe conspiracy theories are witnessed during ones lifetime. Most thoughts come and go with no residual effect. But, in todays politically divisive times, many conspiracy theories are causing long-term damaging effects.

Evidence abounds that many people who watched Oliver Stones 1991 movie JFK actually believed there was a government orchestrated conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. Research reveals the movies plot was confirmation to those believers who had a predisposed anti-government attitude.

Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami professor of political science considered the foremost expert on conspiracy theories, contends the disinformation (deliberately deceptive) and misinformation (incorrect or misleading) give people exactly what they already believed (Rolling Stone, Oct. 14).

This means people who deny the Holocaust existed seek out information to reinforcing such a belief. Uscinskis research reveals people who believe in conspiracy theories have high levels of psychopathy and narcissism.

We know 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts assessed former President Donald Trump as having an abnormal personality and chameleon-like behavior. Trumps conspiracy theory that former President Obama wasnt born in the U.S. was deliberately deceptive; Trump recanted his birtherism falsehood in 2016.

On Dec. 23, 2019, Trump claimed the noise of wind turbines causes cancer, believed by followers who detest wind turbines. Trumps notion that global warming was created by the Chinese to make America noncompetitive was just the salvo needed by people who dislike China.

It is reported by CAP Action that  as of May 2020  Trump is responsible for 20 conspiracy theories.

QAnon alleged Democrats were Satan-worshipping pedophiles who conspired against Trump during his term of office. Uscinski notes QAnon is driven by people who just hate the entire establishment and these are people who want to tear down the system because they feel alienated from it.

Tucker Carlson, Fox News, announced critical race theory was being taught in public schools, though in November admitted he didnt know what CRT was (Washington Post). CRT is not taught in any K-12 public school in America.

Carlson also touted the great replacement theory, which states Democrats are replacing Americas white population with people of color. As per Uscinskis research, people who are racist, anti-Semitic and white nationalists believe in the replacement theory.

Sadly, over 3 million viewers have become lemmings to Carlsons conspiracy theories.

The Jan. 6 bipartisan congressional public hearings have revealed the insanity of Trumps stolen-election conspiracy, which caused 147 congressional Republicans  obviously without any inductive or deductive reasoning skills  to be duped and vote to overturn 2020 federal election results. Trumps malicious false claim has hoodwinked roughly 70% of Republicans (PolitiFact, June 14).

Uscinski notes the belief in conspiracy theories is not just a right-wing phenomenon. A majority of Democrats believe Russian President Vladimir Putin has compromising information about Trump. Why? They dont like Trump.

Uscinski feels conspiracy theories are undermining democracy. His solution: The Republican Party should not be allowing Trump and the Democratic Party should not be allowing Maryanne Williamson. ... Those people should be removed from the ballots. Congress also needs to hold their members accountable for engaging in this sort of stuff. (Ted) Cruz and (Josh) Hawley should have been booted from the Senate for their actions. ... They (political parties) need to hold themselves accountable.

Candidates for the Nov. 8 election need to be asked, point-blank, their belief or rejection of multiple conspiracy theories. Voters also need to know if elected will they promise to call out politicians of their own party who make disinformation and/or misinformation statements. Their answers and future actions to these straight-forward inquiries should drive responsible voting, give us honorable legislators and save our democracy.
 Successful offensive of Central group of troops commanded by Colonel General Aleksandr Lapin have resulted in establishing contol in Verkhnekamenka, Zolotaryovka, Belogorovka, reaching Seversky Donets river and having cordoned Lisichansk in coordination with Southern group of troops commanded by General of the Army Sergey Surovikin.

 Up to 120 soldiers of fortune have been eliminated by an attack launched by Russian Aerospace Forces at a base of foreign mercenaries.A unit of 5th Separate Assault Regiment from 1st Separate Brigade of the President of Ukraine has been eliminated near Spornoye (Donetsk Peoples Republic). 18 Ukrainian militants have been eliminated, 2 of them have surrendered, and the rest have escaped.

 Russian Defence Ministry publishes footage from settlement in Donbass liberated by Russian Central MD and Peoples Militia of Lugansk Peoples Republic forces.

 Russian Defence Ministry shows footage of Western MD Tor-M1 tactical air defence system crews in combat action within special military operation.

 Central MD units take control of Belogorovka and hoist copy of Victory Banner on administration building.

 Members of Young Army national movement from Krasnoyarsk region unfurl 20-metre copy of Victory Banner at Monument of Glory memorial complex in Novosibirsk.

#MoD #TopNews #Russia #Ukraine

@mod_russia_en

WtR
L.L.Bean headquarters to open spring 2023 By



Jennifer Braun Published

Jul 5, 2022

Freeport, Maine-based outdoor company L.L.Beans latest headquarter redevelopment project is set to be completed in the spring of 2023.





L.L.Bean headquarters to open spring 2023. - L.L.Bean



The project will be completed two years ahead of schedule, as the pandemic left more L.L.Bean staff working from home, and allowed construction to be sped up. The project, lead by construction manager Zachau Construction, was originally planned to take five years.



The $110 million project includes a 400,000-square-foot office complex in three phases on the existing headquarters site. The campus will offer a public trail, a 900-seat conference center and events center available for community use. Moreover, it will house a full-service kitchen/eatery, fitness center and health clinic, an open, 10,000-square-foot courtyard available for employees, a product-testing lab and an onsite photography studio.

L.L.Bean has been in its current headquarters for five decades, which was originally designed as a warehouse and factory. It also has a significant presence in Freeport, thanks to its downtown flagship store, an outlet store, as well as a fulfilment-and-returns center.



In March, L.L.Bean announced full-year sales of $1.8 billion in 2021, and declared the twelve-month period to be one of its most successful years to date. To date, the firm employs more than 5,500 team members globally in retail stores and across offices in Maine, Costa Rica, Japan and Hong Kong. It operates 56 U.S. stores, 24 in Japan and eight in Canada.
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A protester dressed in the national colors attends a protest in front of the government building in Skopje, North Macedonia, on Saturday, July 2, 2022. Tens of thousands of people have gathered late on Saturday in North Macedonia's capital Skopje to protest the latest French presidency proposal on solving bilateral disputes with Bulgaria that gave directions for small Balkan country to open membership talks with the European Union.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is clinging to power after two of his most senior Cabinet ministers quit, saying they had lost confidence in Johnsons leadership amid shifting explanations about his handling of a sexual misconduct scandal
Fuse/Getty Images

En espanol | Last years flu season was one of the lightest on record  a rare silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the 2021-2022 season could be a doozy, especially for older adults  who are more prone to flu and its complications. This year, schools and businesses are open and people are out and about, and not all are following mask guidelines, says Joseph Gastaldo, M.D., system head of infectious diseases at OhioHealth, a health care system in central Ohio.

Depending on the severity of the flu season, between 750,000 to 1 million people are hospitalized each flu season in the U.S., and 30,000 to 80,000 people die from it, notes Ryan Oyer, M.D., an infectious disease specialist for Kaiser Permanente in Denver. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 90 percent of these deaths and 50 to 70 percent of flu-related hospitalizations occur among people 65 and older.

How sick becomes sicker

Influenza itself can be deadly in vulnerable patients due to difficulties in breathing and dehydration. But complications like pneumonia are the real killers.

It starts with inflammation. Influenza sets up an inflammatory response in the body, to fight off the infection, says William Schaffner, M.D., professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. That causes the aches, pains and respiratory distress that make you feel like youve actually been in battle.

The flu virus also attaches to  and infects  the cells lining the mucous membranes in the back of the throat, nose and bronchial tubes, Schaffner explains. Normally, these cells eject infectious agents out of the body through the nose or mouth, or they are swallowed. But when impaired by the flu, they allow the bacteria to slip down into the bronchial tubes and trigger a secondary infection in the lungs.

Unfortunately, lying in bed makes people, especially frailer folks, more susceptible to pneumonia. We dont cough as vigorously when we do that, Schaffner notes. We dont clear our secretions as well when were lying down.

And things can get worse from there. Once infection sets in, the bacteria can clog up the air sacs in the lungs. That not only makes it hard to breathe but can allow bacteria to escape into the bloodstream, causing an infection called sepsis and, ultimately, leading to organ failure.

When that happens in people of advanced age or who have underlying illnesses, you have fatality rates that can be somewhere between 10 and 20 percent, despite the fact that we have good antibiotics, Schaffner says.

Even after you recover from the flu, you may not be out of the woods. Inflammation related to the disease can also affect various organ systems independently, similar to the way experts have seen long-haul symptoms linger in COVID-19 patients for weeks or months.

The inflammatory response continues for a period of time, Schaffner says. It can involve the blood vessels that feed the heart, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke for weeks or months. In rare cases, the blood vessels feeding the brain may be affected, triggering encephalitis.
In 1990, the United States manufactured 37% of the worlds semiconductor computer chips. In the last three decades, U.S. market share of the integrated circuits it invented has dropped to about 11% of global capacity.

Were falling behind in a market essential in the making of vehicles, computers, smartphones, appliances, medical equipment, military weapons, satellites and virtually every other type of modern electronic device.

Meanwhile, federal legislation to boost U.S. chip production remains needlessly stalled, holding us back as a nation and hindering economic development in New Mexico.

The U.S. CHIPS Act would provide more than $52 billion in subsidies for companies that build semiconductor plants in the United States. The bill would establish investments and incentives to support U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, research and development, and supply chain security and resiliency. It would also match state and local government incentives to private entities to build fabrication facilities to manufacture advanced computer chips.

What Congress is trying to do is fill in the R&D gaps and making sure that innovation is brought to the market from lab to fab, so to speak, Intel Corp. executive Greg Slater told the Journal Editorial Board recently.

Action from Congress is critical to generating more Intel investment in the United States, including at Intels Rio Rancho chip-manufacturing plant, where the company is investing $3.5 billion to produce new types of semiconductor technology. The multibillion dollar upgrade will produce 700 new high-paying jobs and create the first U.S. advanced packaging facility. Its the largest single Intel investment in Rio Rancho since the semiconductor giant began operating here in 1980.

And that can open up all kinds of future possibilities, Slater said. Anytime you bring in a new operation at a site, you often get spin-off benefits.

Intels New Mexico expansion is part of an aggressive strategy by the worlds largest chip maker to re-shore domestic chip production and decrease dependence on East Asian counties, where most chips are now made. Intels ambitious goal is to build up its U.S. manufacturing volume to 30% of global market share by the end of the decade, and as a state and country we need to support that.

The CHIPS Act has strong bipartisan support. Democrats and Republicans agree on the need for federal research money to compete with China, but politics has resulted in endless delays since the Senate approved the CHIPS Act by a wide margin in June 2021.

The House then delayed action for eight months as members larded up the bill with pet projects, similar to what happens with must-pass defense authorization bills.

The House finally passed its own version in February, but it was very different from the Senate version. A 107-member bicameral conference committee was appointed in April to reconcile the two bills but didnt start meeting until May.

Pass the damn bill and send it to me, President Biden said during a May visit to Ohio, where Intel had said it would expand a planned $20 billion fabricating plant to $100 billion if it could get congressional support. The bottom line is U.S. manufacturers are struggling to compete and maintain an edge against China in the next generation of microelectronics. The U.S. Chips Act makes it possible to do things that were not cost-effective before, Slater explained.

Yet here we are at an unnecessary impasse, with Congress running out of time before the August recess. Meanwhile, other countries like China, India and the European Union are stepping up investments in chipmaking.

We know our states congressional delegation understands the importance of high tech to New Mexico and the United States. Its time for them to unite and speak up about the urgent need for Congress to cut all the extraneous gimmee legislation and funding and pass a clean CHIPS Act bill ASAP  before we lose our competitiveness in a high-tech industry sure to be a growing part of the worlds and states 21st Century economy.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

The creator of the website RentAHitman.com has some explaining to do when he contacts law enforcement around the country about real, potentially dangerous solicitations received on his spoof website.

Usually they (law enforcement agencies) are very receptive, said Bob Innes, of Sacramento, California. Sometimes its a little off putting; sometimes its you have a website that does what? And a lot of times I have to say, Im not a killer, Im an IT guy.'

A Las Cruces man is now in federal custody after he allegedly contacted the fake website to hire a hit man to kill his girlfriends mother.

Innes recently told the Journal that he became so concerned about repeated online service requests from the man identified as Leif Hayman that he notified Las Cruces police in early April.

When emails from Hayman kept coming, a frustrated Innes phoned a friend at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which sent an undercover officer posing as a hit man to find out more. I didnt want to see this lady harmed, Innes said. I also didnt want to see this case fall through the cracks.

It wasnt the first time Innes has reported a hit man solicitation to New Mexico authorities.

In February 2020, 18-year-old Colton Beall of Roswell was charged in a murder-for-hire plot after Innes notified authorities the high school senior contacted RentAHitman.com wanting two teenage classmates strangled to death. Colton pleaded no contest to soliciting murder, and was sentenced to five years probation.

Innes, 52, is currently a professional exterminator. As in pest control.

He named his Rent-A-Hitman website in 2005 as a play on words for a start-up network security company that ultimately fizzled.

He never shut down the site and discovered several years later it had attracted hundreds of people seeking to hire a professional killer.

Innes has kept up the fake website as a parody.

I turned it into a joke. I thought nobody could be that stupid to think there would be a hit man on the Internet. Ive been proven wrong time and time again.

Innes and his website have been featured in stories by the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, the Guardian newspaper, television news programs and other outlets.

About 10% of the solicitations he has received turn out to be people who are hell-bent on causing harm. Some are hoaxes, and about 30% are people who want to cause harm to themselves.

Last month, he said he received an online request for a hit man to kill a district attorney in the Eastern U.S. Typically he vets the information received to ensure it is accurate, and once I determine the solicitation is real and the target is real, I make a phone call to law enforcement and let them know.

He contends the website has prevented about 150 murders, school shootings and other violent crimes over the years.

Earlier this year, a judge in Monroe County, Michigan, sentenced 52-year-old Wendy Lynn Wein to spend up to 20 years in prison for using a computer to solicit the murder of her ex-husband. She originally contacted RentAHitman.com, and after some of his own investigation, Innes turned over her contact information to Michigan State Police.

Innes said he has tried to show how unserious the website is.

For instance, the website contact is listed as Guido Fanelli and in a facetious play on the health care privacy act, the website states that it complies with the HIPPA, The Hitman Information Privacy & Protection Act of 1964.

It offers free consultations from a field operative along with special discount package for groups of three or more, seniors 65 and over, spring cleaning and graduation. The code to mention for an additional 10% discount: Cool Cats and Kittens.

Nowhere does it say anything about a menu, no mention of murder or mayhem. We are a problem resolution website, he told the Journal. Theres nothing illegal. Id rather be the states best witness than a co-conspirator any day.

Innes said hes been increasingly concerned about the number of people who contact the website who want to cause harm to themselves. Especially considering he isnt a crisis counselor and has a difficult time trying to get those people to seek professional help.

In the past six months, he said, the website has generated about 360 potential cases, so he has to prioritize those involving potential criminal activity.

Theres no money to be made from the website, he said, except for perhaps donations or the sale of $5 hit man T-shirts.

But Innes, who once considered a law enforcement career, said he cant turn his back on the fake website.

If I can prevent a violent act, and perhaps save a life, I want to do that.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

You meet all types of people in New Mexicos budding cannabis industry.

As a reporter covering cannabis, Ive met real estate developers who decided to jump into the industry. Former state officials who now work in cannabis. Ive met families that have entered the business together, operating a retail location just like a family-run restaurant.

I even met a married couple who are military veterans, looking to spread the medical benefits of cannabis consumption.

What caught me most off guard, though, was receiving a Facebook message from my eighth grade English teacher saying that she, along with four other former teachers, plans to open a dispensary in the South Valley by the end of the summer.

Jamie Munsey, known to my middle school self as Ms. Munsey, is launching La Tiendita de Motita with a group of former educators from South Valley Prep  all of whom live in the South Valley and understand the rep this side of town can sometimes get. Through opening the dispensary, which will serve both medical patients and recreational customers, they plan on educating community members on the benefits of cannabis, according to Mary Jean Garcia, a former educator and one of Munseys business partners.

Weve talked about how we really want to be that kind of shop where were actually getting to know the people that are going to be coming in because want to know what their ailments are, Mary Jean Garcia said.

Ive often heard how businesses plan on cannabis education through direct community immersion  and I do believe in the sincerity of those aspirations. Its refreshing to listen to my former teacher and her business partners who want to do this in the community I grew up in.

I was in eighth grade in 2010, the inaugural year for South Valley Prep. The charter school opened off Gun Club Road and Coors Boulevard in a tiny building that formerly served as a small private school for the church across the street, Valley Christian Church.

At first, I was hesitant to attend South Valley Prep. It was a tiny school in its first year, and I was going to be separated from friends I made at the middle school I attended previously.

For some time, there were two classes that used the cafeteria as classrooms  Munseys class being one of them. It was chaos in some ways. Kids from separate classes talking over one another in a tiny building wasnt maybe the best way to get us to pay attention to a lesson. Now, though, I realize the dedication Munsey and other teachers at South Valley Prep had. It didnt matter where they were teaching  they just wanted us to learn.

Munsey taught at South Valley Prep for over a decade before deciding last year to resign and find something new to do. She was unsure what was next for her exactly until a happy hour with her now-business partners came together in December. Thats when the idea for a pot shop came up, and Munseys business partners  a group that includes Mary Jean Garcia, Mallory Garcia, Laura Legarda and one other teacher  joked about the possibility.

But Munsey wasnt joking.

I needed to think about finding another job basically, Munsey said. And the choice, you know, from my perspective is either start a new career and try to get into UNM with another 20 years in there or do something I want to do. And basically, I started calling them and (was like), Dude, are we really going to do this? If were gonna do it, we need to do it because I gotta do something.'

The joke soon turned into a reality and the group applied for a retail license to open their own dispensary.

Just a few months later, the group received approval and eventually landed on a location at 468 Isleta SW. The location is in the heart of the South Valley, just a brief walk away from neighborhood favorite Kathys Carry Out and a Dairy Queen. That location alone may help business thrive as cannabis and munchies go hand in hand.

Aside from the dispensary, Munsey and her fellow founders are considering a potential cannabis lounge at the location. There is also talks of seeking a license to grow cannabis.

In other words, these teachers are all in.

I hope they see us as someone who loves them, someone whos supportive of  just making sure community has what they need, Mallory Garcia said. I think as we get going we hope to discover more ways we can make true impacts (on the community).

UpFront is a Journal front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Matthew Narvaiz at 505-823-3919 or mnarvaiz@abqjournal.com.
The Navajo Nation Veterans Administration was formally recognized by the head of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for being the first tribal nation program to receive accreditation to help veterans submit federal benefits claims directly to the VA.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough recognized the tribal government programs status during a visit to Gallup on June 28.

Weve been negotiating this with President Nez and his team. They are the first tribe to take up this new authority, McDonough said. Im thrilled that we can announce that today and as importantly, put it into action.

He added that this is part of the VAs work to make sure tribal nations have a seat at the table, this includes having veteran service officers on tribal lands who can submit veterans benefits claims to the VA.

McDonoughs visit came a day after it was announced that a group of bipartisan senators ended the review process on recommendations by the VA to close outpatient clinics in several states, including those in Gallup, Espanola, Raton and Las Vegas, New Mexico.

Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez noted that the accreditation achieved by the tribal governments VA will greatly help Navajo veterans, many who face difficulties in traveling to VA centers outside the tribal land.

Today marks a milestone with our partnership with the VA also our Navajo Nation VA, Nez said.

Last month, Nezs office announced that the Navajo Nation VA met the criteria and standards to be accredited through the federal VAs Tribal Representation Expansion Project.

There are now five Navajo Nation VA staff members accredited under the project and can process federal benefits claims for veterans, according to a release from Nezs office.

Navajo Nation VA Director James Zwierlein said the employees work in the tribes VA offices in Shiprock, Crownpoint, Tse Bonito, Chinle and Tuba City.

A sixth person is being trained to work in the Fort Defiance office, he added.

The news release stated the staff members have taken in and submitted 83 claims into the federal VA system since May 2.

In remarks at the June 28 event, Zwierlein said these claims were filed on behalf of Navajo veterans but there are more veterans, including non-Navajo and non-Native American, in line for claims assistance.

McDonough also participated in a town hall with Nez, U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, D-N.M., at the University of New Mexico campus in Gallup.

According to Nezs office, the group heard from veterans, members of the Navajo Nation Veterans Advisory Council and state and tribal leaders about health care, benefits claims and the need for expansive care for traditional healing and mental health services.
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine  The governor of the last remaining eastern province partly under Ukraines control urged his more than 350,000 residents to flee as Russia escalated its offensive and air alerts were issued across nearly the entire country.

Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that getting people out of Donetsk province is necessary to save lives and enable the Ukrainian army better to defend towns from the Russian advance.

The destiny of the whole country will be decided by the Donetsk region, Kyrylenko told reporters in Kramatrosk, the provinces administrative center and home to the Ukrainian militarys regional headquarters.

Once there are less people, we will be able to concentrate more on our enemy and perform our main tasks, Kyrylenko said.

The governors call for residents to leave appeared to represent one of the biggest suggested evacuations of the war, although its unclear whether people will be willing and safely able to flee. According to the U.N. refugee agency, more than 7.1 million Ukrainians are estimated to be displaced within Ukraine, and more than 4.8 million refugees left the country since Russias invasion started Feb. 24.

Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy said air alerts were issued Tuesday night in nearly all of the country, in many places after a long period of relative calm during which people searched for an explanation.

You should not look for logic in the actions of terrorists, Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. The Russian army does not take any breaks. It has one task  to take peoples lives, to intimidate people  so that even a few days without an air alarm already feel like part of the terror.

Much of the military activity appeared concentrated in Ukraines east. The Kramatorsk governor said that because they house critical infrastructure such as water filtration plants, Russias main targets are now his city and a city 16 kilometers (10 miles) to the north, Sloviansk. Kyrylenko described the shelling as very chaotic without a specific target  only to destroy civilian infrastructure and residential areas.

Sloviansk also came under sustained bombardment Tuesday. Mayor Vadim Lyakh said on Facebook that massive shelling pummeled Sloviansk, which had a population of about 107,000 before Russian invaded Ukraine more than four months ago. The mayor, who urged residents hours earlier to evacuate, advised them to take cover in shelters.

At least one person was killed and seven were wounded Tuesday, Lyakh said. He said the citys central market and several districts came under attack, adding that authorities were assessing the extent of the damage.

The barrage targeting Sloviansk indicated Russian forces were advanc ing farther into Ukraines Donbas region, a mostly Russian-speaking industrial area where the countrys most experienced soldiers are concentrated.

Sloviansk has previously taken rocket and artillery fire during Russias war in Ukraine, but the bombardment picked up in recent days after Moscow took the last major city in neighboring Luhansk province, Lyakh said.

Its important to evacuate as many people as possible, he warned Tuesday morning, adding that shelling damaged 40 houses on Monday.

The Ukrainian military withdrew its troops Sunday from the city of Lysychansk to keep them from being surrounded. Russias defense minister and Putin said the citys subsequent capture put Moscow in control of all of Luhansk, one of two provinces that make up the Donbas, but the regional governor said Tuesday that fighting was continuing on Lysychansks outskirts. He said Russian forces were moving weaponry to Donetsk.

The question now is whether Russia can muster enough strength to complete its seizure of the Donbas by taking Donetsk province, too. Putin acknowledged Monday that Russian troops who fought in Luhansk need to take some rest and beef up their combat capability.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that Moscows main priorities are preserving the lives and health of its troops and excluding the threat to the security of civilians.

When Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine more than four months ago, his stated goals were defending the people of the Donbas against Kyivs alleged aggression, and the demilitarization and denazifaction of Ukraine.

Pro-Russia separatists have fought Ukrainian forces and controlled much of the Donbas for eight years. Before the invasion this year, Putin recognized the independence of the two self-proclaimed separatist republics in the region. He also sought to portray the tactics of Ukrainian forces and the government as akin to Nazi Germanys, claims for which no evidence has emerged.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian military said Russian forces also shelled several Donetsk towns and villages around Sloviansk in the past day but were repelled as they tried to advance toward a town about 20 kilometers (12 miles) to the citys north. South of the city, Russian forces were trying to push toward two more towns and shelling areas near Kramatorsk.

Meanwhile, Moscow-installed officials in Ukraines southern Kherson region on Tuesday announced the formation of a new regional government, with a former Russian official at the helm.

Sergei Yeliseyev, the head of the new Moscow-backed government in Kherson, is a former deputy prime minister of Russias western exclave of Kaliningrad and also used to work at Russias Federal Security Service, or the FSB, according to media reports.

It wasnt immediately clear what would become of the military-civic administration the Kremlin installed earlier. The administrations head, Vladimir Saldo, said in a Telegram statement that the new government was not a temporary, not a military, not some kind of interim administration, but a proper governing body.

The fact that not just Kherson residents, but Russian officials, too, are part of this government speaks clearly about the direction the Kherson region is headed in the future, he said. This direction is to Russia.

Khersons Russia-installed administration previously stated plans for the region to become part of Russia, either through a referendum or other means.

There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials.

In other developments:

 The 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland, sending the two nations membership bids to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals. The move further increases Russias strategic isolation. Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg hailed the signing as a truly a historic moment for Finland, for Sweden and for NATO.

 The war in Ukraine has drawn millions of dollars away from countries facing other crises. Somalia, suffering a food shortage largely driven by the war, may be the most vulnerable. Its aid funding is less than half of last years level while overwhelmingly Western donors have sent more than $1.7 billion to respond to the war in Europe. Yemen, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Congo and the Palestinian territories are similarly affected.

 Spain boosted military spending in an attempt to reach its commitment to NATO to dedicate 2% of gross domestic product to defense. Spains Cabinet approved a one-off Defense Ministry expenditure of almost 1 billion euros ($1 billion) that the government said was necessary to pay for unexpected expenses from Russias invasion of Ukraine. Spain has sent military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine and deployed more troops and aircraft to NATO missions in Eastern Europe.

___

Follow APs coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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Four killed in BCSO helicopter crash near Las Vegas

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DEMING, N.M.  A legal representative of the Fort Sill Apache tribe seemed pleasantly surprised by the prevailing mood at a public scoping meeting for a proposed gaming facility and other developments on a patch of land in Luna County.

I applaud you folks here today, the tribes attorney, Phillip Thompson, said during the recent meeting. Ive been to some rancorous meetings about casinos in California and other parts of the country where, you know, we were looking for the back exit.

No one spoke in opposition to the project at a meeting soliciting community input, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported. Those who came to the microphone had questions about the project and potential economic development, and one man even offered business advice for the future casino.

Luna County stood at 11.5% official unemployment in May and typically sees double-digit rates, while county and city populations have dwindled in recent years.

The tribe currently operates Apache Homelands, a restaurant, cigarette shop and convenience store with a museum next to a pecan orchard alongside Interstate 10 in Akela, 20 miles east of Deming.

Construction has been underway since last fall on an expanded retail facility that will offer shower and laundry facilities, electric vehicle charging stations and expanded retail operations. The project, branded Chiricahua Plaza, is nearly 10,000 square feet (929 square meters) in size and is anticipated to be completed late in 2022.

A wastewater treatment plant designed to recycle greywater for irrigation and non-drinking uses is also under construction.

Last weeks event was a scoping meeting at which Thompson, alongside tribe chairwoman Lori Gooday Ware and project manager Brady Jones, presented plans for future developments and solicited public input as part of an approval process for gaming facilities that requires sign-offs from the U.S. interior secretary and New Mexicos governor.

The proposed developments include a gaming facility within the existing building that will feature up to 100 Class II slot machines, parking facilities that will accommodate RVs and trucks, enhanced tribal offices and cultural facilities.

The tribe projects the Akela project will create more than 160 jobs in the construction phase, averaging $46,000 in yearly wages and nearly $25 million in economic activity. After that, it anticipates 60 operational jobs at $34,100 in average wages, and to stimulate the economy by $16.4 million with $1.1 million in tax revenue.

The tribe has also studied potential impacts for a potential hotel and other attractions at the location.

The project seeks to establish an economic base for the small, federally recognized tribe descended from Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apache peoples taken as prisoners of war and removed from the southwest to Florida, Alabama and eventually Oklahoma.

Fort Sill Apache, named for the location of their captivity, was recognized by the United States in 1976 and granted approval of a reservation in New Mexico in 2011 after long and complex litigation. Thompson said the tribe is negotiating a land swap with New Mexico, exchanging land it owns in Albuquerque for land adjacent to the Akela development.

Efforts to establish gaming facilities at Akela have also been subject to challenges from the National Indian Gaming Commission, the state and federal governments. Among the issues raised is that the tribes government is based in Oklahoma and had few economic links to New Mexico.

Thompson addressed that at the beginning of his presentation, explaining that the tribe is the recognized legal successor for Apache groups that lived in southwest and northern New Mexico and part of Arizona, before their removal by the United States after the bands surrender in 1886. Thompson said the tribe aimed to establish their homelands once more in New Mexico and provide its citizens with community and economic opportunity.

Rebecca Lescombes, a Libertarian candidate for the Luna County Board of Commissioners, asked the representatives how many of the jobs would be designated for tribal members versus local residents as well as housing needs.

Jones, the project manager, said the Fort Sill Apache is very small and employs workers from outside the tribe.

The public comment period ends July 27.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

A federal judge overseeing a U.S. Supreme Court case between Texas and New Mexico over a long-running groundwater dispute has agreed to postpone an October trial so the parties can work out a potential settlement.

U.S. Circuit Judge Michael J. Melloy announced the decision on Tuesday.

Colorado and New Mexicos water obligations to downstream users are measured by deliveries to Elephant Butte Reservoir.

In a lawsuit filed in 2014, Texas alleges that groundwater pumping and surface water diversions in southern New Mexico illegally reduce the amount of water available for the Lone Star State.

Attorneys in the case met in late June in St. Louis, Missouri, for mediation talks.

Melloy noted that the parties have agreed on a settlement in principle.

But significant drafting, approval, and legislative and regulatory steps need to be accomplished in order to consummate the settlement.

Texas objected to the trial delay. The state argued that the groups still need to determine if there will be any significant obstacles to finalizing a settlement agreement.

But the judge sided with an agreement by the United States, New Mexico, Colorado and a mediator to postpone the trial.

Attorneys spent more than a month last fall conducting the trials first phase.

Stuart Somach, an attorney representing Texas, said the state is entitled to a specific amount of water agreed upon in the Rio Grande Compact signed in 1938.

If more water is subtracted for use in New Mexico than the Compact intended, then Texas doesnt receive its apportionment, Somach said.

But Attorney General Hector Balderas said that farmers and municipalities in New Mexico, not Texas, are the ones being harmed in the latest water war.

We are at a critical juncture in our history, and unless New Mexico starts to receive its fair share of water, we may see a situation where New Mexico farmers dont have enough to tend their own fields, Balderas said.

The U.S. Justice Department maintains that New Mexicos groundwater pumping is a huge problem for distributing Rio Grande supplies.

After Tuesdays announcement, Balderas said the state is now on the cusp of an exciting historic settlement agreement that will protect New Mexico water for generations to come.

Melloys order sets a July 26 status conference to discuss progress on a final settlement and set a new trial date if necessary.
Airtel Payments Bank has announced the appointment of Shilpi Kapoor as its Chief Marketing Officer. Shilpi will oversee the marketing and corporate communication function for the bank.

Shilpi would be responsible for planning, developing, implementing, and monitoring the overall business marketing strategy. She would also overlook market research, pricing, product marketing, marketing communications, advertising and public relations.

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Shilpi will be the banks Executive Committee member and will be working closely with our MD and CEO, Anubrata Biswas.

Anubrata Biswas, MD and CEO, Airtel Payments Bank said, I am very pleased to welcome Shilpi to Airtel Payments Banks leadership team. Shilpis vast experience across different industries combined with her deep understanding of consumer, digital and business-to-business marketing will play a vital role in further strengthening the banks differentiated position.

Shilpi Kapoor, Chief Marketing Officer, Airtel Payments Bank said, "Airtel Payments Bank has been registering strong growth over the last few years. With its unique business model, the bank is able to serve a diverse set of customers with simple, safe and rewarding digital financial solutions. I look forward to working with the team to develop the bank's robust growth story."

Shilpi has over 19 years of progressive experience in Brand Management, Sales and Marketing, BFSI, telecom, auto and FMCG brands. In her last stint, she was with American Express as Director of Marketing, where she led the brand strategy and communications. Shilpi is an alumnus of Amity University and has completed special programs in leadership excellence and digital marketing from Harvard Business School and Northwestern Kellogg University.
Apollo Hospitals, Asia's foremost integrated healthcare services provider, celebrated National Doctors Day with a digital led campaign on how a doctors day includes the night. The campaign applauds and honors the dedication of all doctors as they work tirelessly to heal and cure. Released across all of Apollos social media platforms, the campaign focusses on the dedication and untiring efforts that doctors put in day and night round-the-clock to meet the demands of this noble profession. The digital film that was part of the campaign garnered over 6.5 million impressions in 48 hours of being launched.

Dr. Nandini Ali, Head  Brand & Marcom, Apollo Hospitals said, Apollo Hospitals owes its trust and reputation to the complete dedication of its over 11,000 doctors. They are there for their patients come what may. While the world rests at night, recharges, re-energizes, doctors are at a patients bedside. They are the heroes that bring hope, while turning their own lives upside down and putting their health at stake so others can enjoy good health.

Putting patients before family with no concept of a work-life balance, their selfless efforts are worthy of appreciation and applause. With this campaign, we thank our doctors, and bring to the fore the truth about this profession that a doctors day includes the night!

Comprising a film, e-mailers and various other collaterals that showcase the efforts a doctor puts in to heal and cure patients, the campaign emphasizes how doctors dedicate themselves day and night for patient care. The film highlights how they work at all hours without an eye on the clock committed to seeing patients through the darkest night.

Spotlighting the contribution that doctors make to health and to humanity, the campaign appreciates them for what often goes unappreciated  the long, and demanding hours of service that they put in. The campaign has garnered huge engagement and appreciation from the doctors, the patient community, and the community at large.
Metro Brands Limited (MBL), among India's leading footwear specialty retailers, has entered into a strategic partnership with the Canada-based footwear company Biion, bringing their versatile collection to the country. The premium footwear collection combines function and technology to create fashionable shoes for the high-performance lifestyle of the Professional Leisure-ist.

As part of this launch, Metro Brands will exclusively retail Biion footwear through their top strategic stores of Metro & Mochi and the e-commerce site that cater to this very niche consumer base.

"We are delighted to partner with a global brand like Biion. In India, consumers are evolving at a fast pace. They are continuing to increase the aspirations for newness and freshness in global brands. With Biion, we aim to expand our existing product range, offering the best quality footwear to the Indian fashion-conscious consumer," said Nissan Joseph, Chief Executive Officer, Metro Brands Limited

Derived from the ancient Greek' bios', which means 'life', Biion is the expression of being fully alive and was created to empower people to make the most of all they do in life. Anyone can wear these shoes, from professional leisurists, practitioners, and players, to the trailblazers, trendsetters or influencers who live their life to the fullest and enjoy what they do. Biion footwear is gender-neutral and can be as easily paired with a contemporary formal wardrobe as with chic party attire.

Biion creates lightweight, comfortable, and multi-functional EVA shoes. The shoes are airy with little BioVents and have anti-microbial properties making them ideal for professionals who need to be on their feet for long hours. Their HEXTRA-GRIP traction outsoles provide an extremely low-profile performance, offering the ultimate connection to the ground with just the right balance.

India has long been a destination we wished to bring the Biion brand and lifestyle to. Our Biion products are perfect for a hot day, a wet day, a fashionable day or a casual day and we are very excited to see our Indian consumers wear Biion shoes across the country. Thanks to our fantastic partnership with Metro Brands and their team, we are finally making this dream come true, said Rick Buchanan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Biion Footwear.

Biion has taken classic silhouettes and modernized them with 21st-century materials. It is a much sought-after brand among celebs worldwide, having collaborated with big names like Justin Timberlake, Bruno Marks, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Aniston, Shaggy and Sonu Nigam from India to create signature footwear collections. The brand also launched the Batman signature collection for enthusiasts of the animated series.

The Biion collection range begins at INR 4,999/- onwards.
Sebamed, a German personal care brand with a legacy of over 50 years, launched yet another intriguing campaign Face Wash Nahi Treat Karo for its acne care portfolio. Focusing on educating and empowering consumers, the brand through its campaign draws attention towards the right method to use the product and also imparts new scientific knowledge that how its pH 5.5 and Montaline C40 helps in reducing acne recurrence as well; further urging the consumers to switch to scientifically superior Sebamed Clear Face Foam to get rid of acne and also to reduce recurrence

The latest commercial by Sebamed showcases how a young woman had applied Sebamed clear face foam and was about to wash her face immediately like she does with any other face wash, then an expert nudges her to let it work for at least 3 minutes. The expert further explains that if Sebamed clear face foam is applied on the face for 3-5 minutes, its pH 5.5 and montalinC40, prevents acne and reduces recurrence

This communicates Sebameds core value of honesty and on the face messaging, with the key proposition being  Sebamed Clear Face Foam: not only helps in getting rid of acne but also prevents recurrence

Commenting on the same Shashi Ranjan, Head, Consumer business shares, Beauty & Personal care is a key growth driver for us. We are thrilled to make more strides in this segment and to bring global expertise to the Indian consumers. Acne is a common problem encountered by a large percentage of our population at some point in their lives. Sebameds range of acne care products are highly efficacious which helps in getting rid of acne, hence through this campaign our goal is to provide reassurance to our consumers and bring back their confidence

Jaydeep Shah, Marketing Head for Sebamed brands in India shared: Staying true to Sebameds core proposition of #SirfScienceKiSuno, the campaign talks about how Sebamed Clear face foam has been scientifically formulated in a new format (foam instead of wash) , which not only stops acne but also prevents recurrence. We are sure it will resonate well with the discerning customers

Dhaval Jadwani, Business Head, The Womb said ""Sebamed Clear face foam is scientifically proven to stop acne and prevent them from reoccurring. The product formulation works best when massaged and kept on for 3-minutes for the science to work. Our focus was to deliver this message in simple, yet in an interesting manner. We created Face wash, nahi treat karo to shine the light on the right product and its right usage"
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Painkillers are not always beneficial as patients recover from minor surgery, and may also be the reason behind the surge in the current opioid crisis, according to a study published in The Lancet.

The study led by a team at the McGill University in Canada examined the results of 47 randomised clinical trials in patients discharged after undergoing a minor or moderate procedure, ranging from molar extraction to foot surgery.

The findings showed that opioid prescribing after recovering and getting hospital discharge post a surgery does not reduce pain intensity but does increase adverse events.

Opioid prescribing was associated with increased risk of vomiting and other adverse events, including nausea, constipation, dizziness, and drowsiness.

Dr. Julio Fiore, an assistant professor at McGill suggested that clinicians can consider prescribing opioid-free analgesia in these surgical settings.

Avoiding opioids could in many cases improve a patients' recovery experience, while helping to mitigate the well-documented perils of opioid addiction, Fiore was quoted as saying to CBC News.

"We really expect that these findings encourage changes in prescribing practices. After all, like the prescription of opioids, like after discharge, our research showed that it does not seem to be as beneficial for patients as previously believed," he said.

However, Fiore noted there is a need for more research involving the prescription of opioids after major surgeries to determine best practices.

Of the studies examined, 30 involved minor procedures (most of which were dental) and 17 involved procedures of a more moderate nature on, for instance, a shoulder or foot.

Among the opioids most commonly prescribed by surgeons are oxycodone, hydromorphone, tramadol and codeine, according to the researchers.


Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has slammed the "irresponsible" move by the US and the E3 group of France, the UK and Germany to propose the anti-Tehran resolution to the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) while talks to revive the 2015 deal were underway.

Making the remarks in a meeting with the new Swiss ambassador to Tehran Nadine Olivieri Lozano, Raisi said the move was also "in violation of the spirit of negotiation and agreement and indicative of the four countries' contradictory behaviour", reports Xinhua news agency.

He stressed that the US should decide to remain committed to the requirements of the negotiation and agreement.

Raisi noted that the US and the three European countries are suffering from a miscalculation toward Tehran, expressing hope that Switzerland's new Ambassador would reflect Iran's realities to other states so that they realize that despite all the hostilities, the Islamic Republic has continued its progress and that the hegemonic policies have had reverse impacts on it.

In June, the IAEA's Board of Governors passed an anti-Iran resolution proposed by the US, UK, France and Germany following the agency's reports that Tehran had not provided "technically credible explanations" for uranium particles at three undeclared sites.

Iranian officials, however, have insisted that the country did not carry out any clandestine or unrecorded nuclear activities.

In the wake of the adoption of the IAEA resolution, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran announced its decision to take a number of measures, including turning off the the Geneva-based watchdog's surveillance cameras at its sites.

Iran signed the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), with the world powers in July 2015, agreeing to curb its nuclear program in return for the removal of sanctions on the country.

However, former US President Donald Trump pulled out of the deal in May 2018 and reimposed unilateral sanctions on Tehran, prompting the latter to drop some of its commitments under the pact.

The talks on the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal began in April 2021 in Vienna, but were suspended in March this year because of political differences between Tehran and Washington.

After a three-month pause, the talks resumed on June 29-30 in the Qatari capital Doha, but it failed to result in any agreement to settle the remaining differences.


"All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state."

--Donald Trump, transcript of Jan. 2 audio of phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and several others.

Theyve got him now. None of the other hoaxes perpetrated on the American people over the past five years by the Democrat-media alliance, including the Russia collusion hoax that was actually paid for by the Democrat-media darling and alleged most qualified person who has ever run for president, Hillary Clinton, the Lafayette Park Bible photo-op hoax, the Ukraine phone call hoax that they actually spun into an entire presidential impeachment, etc., have panned out and (think that) they have a new one now.

To be more precise, they do not have the entire phone call but they do have one sentence from it that they believe can be turned into a new Trump criminal scandal.

Specifically, Trump said to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, with many others listening in on the call, that he wanted to find [the] 11,780 votes that he needed to win the State of Georgia. Of course, this can only mean one thingthat Trump wanted the Georgia Secretary of State to fabricate enough votes for him to win the state and Trump was stupid enough to say this on an open call with numerous people including several lawyers listening.

In fact, it is quite easy to see what else it could mean if one actually listens to the entire phone call. For, if Trump makes anything clear in the call it is that he believes passionately that there are many more legitimate votes for him out there than he needs to win fairly and squarely and that one need only to make a serious effort to find them. He begins the call as follows:

"[W]e've spent a lot of time on this and  it's pretty clear that we won  very substantially in Georgia.  [I]f you [have] a real check of the signatures  in Fulton County you'll find at least a couple of hundred thousand of forged signatures of people . And we are quite sure that's going to happen."

Trump then proceeds to list additional layers of alleged fraud in the Georgia election:

1.) There were at least 50,000 people who went to vote and were told they could not vote because someone had already cast their vote.

2.) There were about 4,502 voters who voted but who weren't on the voter registration list.

3.) There were 18,325 vacant address voters.

4.) There were 904 people who voted but only had a post office box number which is not allowed.

5.) There were 18,000 voters associated with a professional vote scammer and hustler that he names.

6.) There were suitcases or trunks of votes put in the counting rooms while there were no Democrat or Republican poll watchers or law enforcement present.

7.) There were 4,925 people who voted in Georgia but were from out of state.

8.) There were 2,326 absentee ballots sent to vacant addresses.

9.) There were drop boxes that were picked up but not delivered for three days during which all sorts of [shady] things could have happened to that box, etc.

It is possible Trump is not correct about these claims. There are some people who believe Trump is right about voter fraud in Georgia, and there are others who think that he is not right about any of these claims (at least in significant enough numbers to change the outcome in Georgia).

Brad Raffensperger is one of the doubters. Indeed, he responds to Trump as follows:

"[W]e don't agree that you have won.  I didn't agree about the 200,000 number that you'd mentioned"

...and...

"Mr. President,  the data you have is wrong. We talked to the [Republican] congressmen and they were surprised."

However, despite Raffenspergers protests, it is quite likely that Trump actually believes that he won Georgia. Towards the very end of the call, Trump states his goal:

"We just want the truth. It's simple. And everyone's going to look very good if the truth comes out. It's OK. It takes a little while but let the truth come out."

Trump repeats this several times. He states that it takes a bit of time but he just wants to let the truth come out. Imagine that, he wants the truth to come out! Surely that is a crime, or at least an impeachable offence in Washington D.C. where no one ever wants the truth to come out, where everything is smoke and mirrors and spin. No wonder everyone wants Trump out!

Despite those who quote a tiny part of the Trump-Raffensperger phone call in order to create the narrative that Trump wanted fellow Republican Raffensperger to cheat for him, the call makes very clear that Trump never asked for that and clearly believed he had won the state. If Trump sincerely believed that he had won the state, then he did not commit the fraud the Democrat-media complex needed for their latest narrative.

The Democrat-media selective editing of the text of the call in order to insinuate that Trump did something criminal is simply one more manifestation of their efforts to criminalize disagreeing with them. They, of course, can say whatever they want to, from the fake Russia-collusion hoax paid for by Hillary Clinton that did so much damage to the country, to the fake charges that someone is a white supremacist simply because they have conservative views.

If, however, one is permitted to use common sense, which is becoming ever less and less permissible in the United States, it is clear that, just as Trump said in the call, it takes time, and these things called investigations, for the truth to come out. One would assume that the Democrat-media complex knows what investigations are because they feel entitled to investigate everything Trump.

However, quite astonishingly, as if by magic, the Democrat-media complex knew with absolute certainty a few weeks after the election, almost as if they had all been handed the same script, before any serious investigation of the 2020 election had been carried out, that Biden won. It took Mollie Hemingway well over a year to develop the case she made in her book Rigged and Dinesh DSouza roughly the same amount of time to develop the case he makes in his documentary 2000 Mules. Needless to say, as if they all had crystal balls, the all-knowing Democrat-media complex knew immediately, before any serious investigation could possibly be done of Hemingways or DSouzas new claims, that these were wrong as well.

In the United States one is supposed to investigate the crime, not the man. Unfortunately, the Democrats, supported by their media propagandists, have in a most dangerous and un-American way, reminiscent of lawless totalitarian regimes, gone on one fishing expedition after another in the effort to discover or fabricate some Trump crime.

"You bring me the man. I'll find you the crime." --Lavrentiy Beria, chief of the Stalins Soviet secret police

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter with use of derived image by Tom Childers, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0 and public domain source.
It has been fifty years since that momentous break-in at the Watergate office complex, and it seems a good time to revisit that episode, especially in light of the current abuses of power that seem so ubiquitous. Geoff Shepard's book, The Real Watergate Scandal and the just published book by Garrett Graff, Watergate, a New History, offer different perspectives. Shepard is more interested in the legal process and its abuse, while Graff's book relies more on the infamous White House tapes. It is the more comprehensive of the two. Here are some of observations based on these histories.

Nixon probably didn't know about the burglary of Watergate beforehand, but he created the atmosphere where it could be expected, and where his underlings could believe this tactic was acceptable. Nixon participated in the planning of the burglary of the Brookings Institution, although this break-in was cancelled. In a conversation with Nixon, John Ehrlichman referred to the break-in of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist as "one little operation...out in Los Angeles." If that break-in was just a "little operation," why not burglarize the headquarters of the Democrats?

Nixon certainly knew about and participated in the cover-up after the burglars were caught. Given all that he and his underlings had done, coupled with the unrelenting hostility of the Democrats, the press, and those in the office of the special prosecutor, Nixon's resignation was inevitable.

Both books portray John Dean as a self-serving weasel, who testified only after saving his own skin. In his role as legal counsel to the President, he coordinated efforts to obstruct the FBI and grand jury investigations, concealed and destroyed evidence, helped prep witnesses for their perjured testimony. As events became more dire, it was Dean who was the first to seek immunity for his testimony against his colleagues. Despite his many crimes, Dean skated, and he never served a day of prison time. John Dean was "Guilty as hell, free as a bird," as domestic terrorist Bill Ayers once put it.

Dean's account of his experiences in Watergate were set out in his book, Blind Ambition. However, in a later civil case he disavowed much of his own book and claimed that much of it was the invention of a ghost writer. Why Graff cites this book as authority in his footnotes is beyond me. Yet Dean sold the book as its author and no doubt kept his share of the sale proceeds, which is consistent with Dean's character as portrayed in these books. Dean has since appeared occasionally as a commentator on MSNBC or CNN, which are the lower circles of hell where he richly deserves to be.

Mark Felt (Deep Throat) was a bitter, vindictive man who resented not being appointed Hoover's successor at the FBI. He made Nixon pay for this decision.

G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt were the leaders of the burglary team. Liddy was smart but certifiably crazy. His and Hunt's ineptitude in planning and carrying out the burglary are worthy of the Keystone Cops, and it shows how simple ineptitude can metastasize into something devastating.

The handling of the criminal cases against "all the president's men" was disgraceful as Shepard makes clear. What the president's men did was criminal, but that shouldn't have been a pretext for denying them fair trials and due process.

Judge John Sirica (Time's "Man of the Year," 1973) was an often-reversed, publicity-seeking, political hack. He manipulated the District Court's procedure so that he could have assigned to himself the juicy Watergate cases. He saw his role not as an impartial judge, but as an investigator and prosecutor. That is just how he conducted his proceedings.

He refused to allow a change of venue despite the media feeding frenzy in Washington. Why change the venue when you can be favorably portrayed in the Washington Post every day? He conducted cursory and even ridiculous "voir dire" of potential jurors that guaranteed biased juries. (Could there be any other kind in DC when Republicans are charged?) He made prejudicial comments in front of the jury. He sought to bolster John Dean's credibility by giving him a long prison sentence following his guilty plea. He did so knowing that Dean would never serve a day, and that he would commute or cancel this sentence once Dean testified as Sirica wanted.

Most seriously, and in violation of any standards of judicial and prosecutorial behavior, Sirica had many private meetings with prosecutors (both Cox and Jaworski) with no defense counsel present. Here they discussed tactics and strategies for the trials, Sirica acting more as co-counsel than judge. Sirica even provided a list of more persons he wanted the special counsel to indict. So much for due process and trials overseen by an impartial judge.

At this time, Judge David Bazelon was chief judge of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. The DC Circuit had nine judges, five of whom were Democrats, and all appeals from the DC District Court (including those from Judge Sirica's court) go to the DC Circuit Court. A typical appeals panel consists of three judges picked randomly.

In a blatantly unethical meeting, Archibald Cox met with Bazelon with no defense counsel present. He was able to get Bazelon to agree that all appeals from any Watergate case coming out of the DC District Court would be heard "en banc," or before all nine judges. By so agreeing, Bazelon guaranteed that there would never be a case where there could be a three-judge panel with a Republican majority. The Democrats would always have the majority and the prosecutors would win any appeal. Not surprisingly, no appeals of Watergate defendants were successful.

At the very least, the actions in these Watergate criminal cases by Sirica, Bazelon, and the prosecutors were unethical and prejudicial. Had these meetings come to light at that time, they would have been grounds for new trials or changes of venue outside the DC District Court. These prejudicial actions could have led to impeachment of the judges and even disbarment after an honest accounting of how these cases were prosecuted. But these meetings were never disclosed when it mattered. Graff's book, which claims to be all-encompassing, ignores serious consideration of these due process issues.

I have never admired Richard Nixon, and I have always thought he did a lot of long-term damage to the country beyond Watergate itself: wage and price controls, the enhancement of EPA's often arbitrary power, institutionalized racial quotas in the name of "affirmative action," arms control agreements that the Soviets were violating before the ink was dry, "detente" that the Soviets manipulated to their advantage, his role in the creation of a rabidly partisan press corps that we live with today. Yes, he did some good: China, the denouement of the 1973 Middle East war, the end of the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, like Donald Trump, too often his demons got the best of him, as both books demonstrate.

Among many lessons, Watergate shows us how power can corrupt and how investigations and legal processes can be abused. This is just what we saw with the case of Michael Flynn, among many others, post 2016, and as we now see with the selective and politically motivated prosecutions by the Biden Justice Department; Attorney General, Merritt Garland being every bit the light weight, political hack that John Sirica was.
Georgetown University's Charles Kupchan has written an important article in the National Interest that urges U.S. leaders to eschew "idealist aspirations" and refrain from efforts to globalize "the liberal order" and instead adopt a grand strategy based on geopolitical realpolitik. Kupchan's broad vision is correct, but some of the details of his policy proposals are problematic.

Kupchan recognizes that U.S. efforts to expand the "liberal order" have been a costly, miserable failure since the end of the Cold War. He further recognizes that those failed policies  for which Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama all share blame  helped push a defeated Russia into the arms of a rising China in the postCold War world. Kupchan also rightly views current international relations through a "Hobbesian" lens, which requires the United States to practice realpolitik with the goal of "preserving geopolitical stability rather than expanding the liberal international order."

Kupchan revives the George Kennan strategy of "patient containment" in both the European and Asia-Pacific regions, and recommends increased defense spending and "strict avoidance of costly wars of choice and nation-building adventures ... in peripheral regions." He also advocates efforts to weaken the "emerging Sino-Russian bloc by looking for ways to put distance between Moscow and Beijing."

So far, so good. Where Kupchan goes astray, however, is in characterizing the "America First" wing of the Republican Party as "illiberal populism" which he worries will undermine "the durability and global appeal of the liberal order," and in his belief that we need to entice China to distance itself from Russia in order to maintain the geopolitical pluralism of Eurasia.

First, Kupchan's characterization of an "America First" foreign policy is simply wrong, but as an accepted member of America's foreign policy establishment, he needs to lash out at Donald Trump whenever possible. To do otherwise is to risk alienating his intellectual colleagues and being branded a "white nationalist." Yet in reality, George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan were also in their own distinctive ways "America First" presidents. There is nothing "illiberal" about our leaders putting our country's interests "first" in their list of foreign policy priorities.

Second, it was Donald Trump who initially attempted to improve relations with Russia, but when he did, he was accused of "Russia collusion" and thereafter impeached on false allegations instigated by his 2016 political opponents. Trump was the most hawkish U.S. president toward China since the end of the Cold War. And it was Trump who sought to end the costly, disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that Kupchan believes distracted our attention from Sino-Russian rapprochement.

Third, Kupchan's belief that the United States can entice China to distance itself from Russia and thereby drive a geopolitical wedge between the two Eurasian powers has it exactly backwards. China is the driving force in forging the Sino-Russian bloc. China is playing the geopolitical long game with both Russia and Iran  and in pursuing its Belt and Road Initiative  in an effort to forge a hostile Eurasian geopolitical bloc that can replace the United States as the preeminent world power. We have "engaged" China for far too long, and the result has been a much more powerful peer competitor.

Kupchan is right that we are in a "new and demanding era of great power rivalry," but he is wrong in accusing Vladimir Putin of sending "history into reverse." History is not linear in the sense that the human race is progressing in values or conduct. The United States and many in the West were beguiled into believing that great power rivalry had ended with the end of the Cold War.

History doesn't work like that. Our unipolar moment was just that  a "moment." We still live in what Kupchan rightly calls a "Hobbesian world" of nation-states struggling for power. We should follow his advice to wage this struggle by practicing geopolitical realpolitik  the same way that Washington, Adams, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, and Trump did  by putting America's interests "first."

Image: Dora Marr.
Despite the high-decibel leftist rhetoric, abortion is not vanishing from America. Dobbs simply returned the question to the states. Nevertheless, the Biden administration, urged on by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is apparently exploring the possibility of putting abortion facilities on federal property. This is almost certainly illegal, but, as our southern border shows, a little thing like breaking the law isn't going to stop the Biden administration. There is an amusing irony, though, with the plan, at least if it comes to an ad campaign such as "Visit Yellowstone and get an abortion while you're there."

In the short clip, below, of an interview with Health and Human Services secretary Xavier Becerra, Chuck Todd raises Ocasio-Cortez's idea about putting abortion facilities on federal property, although without mentioning that the Hyde Amendment makes it illegal to use federal funds for abortions unless the abortions are to save the mother or in the case of rape or incest. However, you can see that Becerra still says that his Department is considering the idea:

HHS's @XavierBecerra: Were "continuing to explore" turning national parks into abortion mills pic.twitter.com/gY3II0apAU  Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 4, 2022

My suspicion is that the little window that HHS is exploring under Becerra's guidance is the fact that the Hyde limitation is solely for federal funds, not for funds from other sources:

(b) Nothing in the preceding section shall be construed as prohibiting the expenditure by a State, locality, entity, or private person of State, local, or private funds (other than a State's or locality's contribution of Medicaid matching funds). (c) Nothing in the preceding section shall be construed as restricting the ability of any managed care provider from offering abortion coverage or the ability of a State or locality to contract separately with such a provider for such coverage with State funds (other than a State's or locality's contribution of Medicaid matching funds).

In other words, if someone else pays for the abortion facilities, including leasing space on the federal land, then women in a state that bans abortion can travel to a federal park within that state to get an abortion. I will not opine about whether that's a good idea or, as the old saying goes, it's "too clever by half," because I'm not very conversant with this area of law.



Image: Vintage Yellowstone postcard (edited). Public domain.

However, the notion of abortion mills on federal lands (e.g., "Come to the Shiloh Civil War battlefield in Mississippi and get an abortion") struck me as very funny. Why? Because just a week or so ago, Vice, a hard-left outlet, was insisting that the American national parks are hotbeds of White Supremacy that are so off-putting that Blacks are loath to set foot in them.

Combine that fact with the three things we know about abortion. First, Margaret Sanger, the godmother of American abortion, was a eugenicist who wanted to use birth control to phase out the "unfit" in America. Second, Planned Parenthood targets minorities, with 86% of Planned Parenthood facilities in minority communities. Third, much of the shrieking from the left about the Dobbs decision has been framed as an attack on the Supreme Court for being racist by depriving poor Black women of abortion access.

So, on the one hand, you have the fact that abortion has long been, and continues to be, targeted at Black women. And on the other hand, you have the possibility that the newest abortion facilities in America will be placed in the very national parks that the left insists are hotbeds of KKK-style anti-Black White supremacy.

What this means is that if  solely for the sake of argument  one accepts the leftist contention about national parks, there's something fiendishly amusing about the fact that AOC and Becerra want to put abortion facilities in the heart of the same national parks that, like Planned Parenthood itself, are home to those who want to rid America of Black people.

Of course, in a sane world, we understand that, given the Holocaust of Black babies consumed through abortion, it's the pro-lifers who support the Black community, not the pro-abortionists, who are doing everything they can to wipe out more Black lives. Put another way, for the pro-lifers, Black Lives really do matter at a profound spiritual and moral level. Plunking an abortion facility next to Martin Luther King's home or on a Civil War battlefield is the greatest insult that can be offered to all those, both Black and White, who have fought for liberty for all Americans, no matter their race.
In America, Pete Buttigieg is proving to be the most incompetent secretary of transportation in American history. Confronted with thousands of canceled flights, he offers tips about how to value cash refunds compared to refunds in the form of miles. That's bad. What's worse is that a writer for a trend site claims to have talked with European insiders and learned that the problem with flights is not limited to America; it's worldwide and deliberate.

You can read here about Buttigieg's tin-eared response at the start of the July 4 weekend when it came to canceled flights. For travelers, the weekend ultimately proved to be a nightmare:

More than 10,000 flights were delayed and nearly 1,000 were canceled total this holiday weekend. Approximately 20% of the flights were delayed and 2.8% were canceled  a staggering number of cancelations and delays due to staffing shortages yet Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg remains silent. Here's the breakdown of canceled and delayed flights for the entire Fourth of July weekend: More than 300 flights were canceled across the US by Thursday evening as the airline industry prepared for July 4 "Airmageddon." By Saturday afternoon, more than 600 flights were canceled and 5,893 more were delayed  this means 28.8% of all flights were either canceled or delayed. An additional 900 flights were delayed and more than 200 were canceled as of Sunday afternoon.

You'll note that I used the word "incompetent" in the first paragraph to describe Buttigieg's conduct. But what if that's the wrong word? What if what's happening isn't a matter of competence but is, instead, by design?



Image: Flight delays at airports. YouTube screen grab.

And that's where we get to an article by Alex Krainer, which was originally published at I-System Trend Following before appearing at ZeroHedge. According to Krainer, he had a three-hour call with Christine Anderson, a German member of the European Union Parliament, along with several other participants, three of whom are intimately familiar with the airline industry:

Three of the participants on the call had deep inside knowledge of the airline industry (one of them a pilot) who said in no uncertain terms that the industry is now being systematically and deliberately demolished. Apparently, the ultimate purpose is to kill airline travel altogether.

Krainer wrote that it certainly feels as though there's a serious problem across the industry, borne out by the fact that we see airline chaos both in America and abroad. He provided a handful of examples:

According to Krainer, the same "traffic management systems that have evolved for nearly a century and that had functioned close to flawlessly for decades, now suddenly seem to be coming apart at the seams." Another participant in the call added that what we're seeing is consistent with the U.N.'s and World Economic Forum's plans for a Great Reset, one in which "the ultimate intent is to do away with traveling and to establish a feudal arrangement where people remain fixed in place and all travel is banned."

Krainer himself concedes that what's happening doesn't need to be the result of a conspiracy. It's enough of a problem that, for whatever reason, we are witnessing chaos in an industry that functioned with remarkable efficiency for decades. Certainly, pilot layoffs and early retirements during the lockdowns haven't helped the industry. Nevertheless, in light of Krainer's article, the real question in America is whether Buttigieg is an incompetent idiot, which is easy to believe, or is a well-functioning cog in a global plan to change the world in which we live so that it accords with the ideas of a handful of totalitarian elites (which is also scarily easy to believe)?

For now, I'm going with incompetence and lockdown fallout, but that doesn't mean I won't keep my eyes open for something sneakier and more sinister.
We can never allow people to erase Thomas Jefferson from American history. Thousands of years from now, his masterpiece  the Declaration of Independence  will be held up as a turning point in human history. The first two phrases alone changed the world.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ..."

It's almost impossible to comprehend how radical this idea was from our modern perspective. This was the first time a government founded itself on the idea of equality. Without this idea memorialized and enshrined as our highest goal, it is doubtful anyone in Western civilization would have taken the steps necessary toward implementation. Without these words, it is doubtful that over 600,000 men would have sacrificed their lives in the Civil War to abolish slavery.

Most Americans are blissfully unaware that slavery was the way of the world for thousands of years before the great American experiment. Europeans enslaved Europeans. Africans enslaved Africans. Native Americans enslaved Native Americans. Asians enslaved Asians  and on and on. Most Americans are blissfully unaware that, as we sit here comfortably in the land of freedom, millions continue to be enslaved in non-Western regions of the world including Africa, China, and the Middle East.

Some of those Americans look on Thomas Jefferson and arrogantly judge him by today's standards. Yes, he owned slaves. He was born into that life. There was very little he could do about it. He sought legislative fixes that would have allowed the freeing of slaves, but to no avail. His debts also prevented him from freeing his own slaves. Had he freed his own slaves, he would have violated Virginia law and also likely landed in debtor's prison.

Many are unaware of the struggles this complicated man made in furtherance of ending slavery. For example, in 1807, when he was president of the United States, Jefferson signed into law the abolishment of the international slave trade.

When Thomas Jefferson submitted the Declaration of Independence for congressional approval, they deleted the 17th indictment against George III, in which Jefferson asserted the king "has waged war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty" by "captivating & carrying" Africans "into slavery in another hemisphere" and exposing them to "miserable death" in the horrific voyages we now call the Middle Passage.

If we erase Thomas Jefferson from our history, then we can never truly understand our history, our struggle, and our greatness. We become unmoored and adrift  and eventually ripe for tyranny. We can never cede control of the American story and the American experiment to those who have no real understanding of it through their own ignorance. Instead, we must educate people in a historical context, and we must continue pursuing our greatness.

Image via Pixabay.
(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 5 - Italy's taxi drivers on Tuesday started at 48-hour nationwide strike against article 10 of the government's competition bill.

They say the deregulation in this bill will open them up to unfair competition from web-based ride-sharing services.

Taxi driers from all over the country were taking part in a protest in Rome's central Piazza Venezia on Tuesday. (ANSA).


(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 5 - Two Catholic priests including one Italian were freed in Nigeria Tuesday after being in the hands of local kidnappers for a few days.

The Italian, Father Luigi Brena, was abducted at Ogunwenyi in the southwestern Edo state on Sunday evening.

A Nigerian priest, Father Emmanuel Silas, of the diocese of Kafanchan in Kaduna state was also freed.

Another recently abducted priest is still in kidnappers' hands.

(ANSA).


(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 4 - The Parisian prosecutor general's office on Monday appealed to the French supreme Cassation Court against a lower court's recent decision to refuse Italy's extradition request for 10 former leftist terrorists who had taken refuge in France.

The appeal refers to articles six and eight of the European Convention on Human Rights regarding the right to a fair trial and respecting private and family life, judicial sources said.

The former leftist terrorists including many Red Brigade (BR) ex-members whom a French judge denied extradition to Italy Wednesday should on the contrary be judged in Italy, French President Emmanuel Macron said on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Madrid Thursday.

"They should be judged on Italian soil," he said.

Macron was speaking a day after a Paris appeals court denied Italy's request for the extradition of 10 former leftist terrorists who have been living in France for decades.

The 10 were arrested last year, a move that seemed to have ended the so-called Mitterrand Doctrine that shielded Italian former terrorists from Italian justice as long as they gave up the armed struggle, before being released under various forms of guarded liberty.

Many of the formers terrorists were members of the Red Brigades, the group that abducted and murdered former Italian premier Aldo Moro in 1978.

They also include Giorgio Pietrostefani, who has been convicted in Italy for conspiracy in helping order the 1972 murder of Milan police commissioner Luigi Calabresi in retaliation for the 1969 death of an innocent railway worker and anarchist bombing suspect, Giuseppe Pinelli.

Pinelli fell from a police station window in what late Nobel prizewinning playwright and leftist activist Dario Fo called, in his famed play, The Accidental Death of an Anarchist.

Pietrostefani was a leading member of the hard-left group Lotta Continua, whose leader Adriano Sofri served much of a 22 year sentence for ordering the murder of Calabresi, who had been cleared of all responsibility in Pinelli's death after the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan that killed 17 people and injured 88, sparking the Years of Lead of rightist and leftist terror. (ANSA).


Energy: Slovenian experts urge to label nuclear as 'green' Also ten ministries sign a letter for this purpose

(ANSA) - BELGRADE, JUL 5 - The association of Slovenian nuclear experts urged Slovenian MEPs to support the inclusion of nuclear energy in the EU taxonomy before a debate in the European Parliament on gas and nuclear energy as green investments, warning that its exclusion could be harmful to Slovenia, the Slovenian news agency STA reported.



In a letter to MEPs, the association's president Tomaz Zagar stated that the organization supports the delegated regulation sponsored by the European Commission that would add nuclear energy to the list of sustainable technologies.



Furthermore, the Bulgarian Energy Ministry announced on Monday that Bulgaria had joined 20 energy-related trade unions from Belgium, Czechia, Finland, France, Hungary, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Croatia in support of nuclear energy in the EU's taxonomy, through a letter signed by the Energy ministries from several Central- and Eastern Europe countries, the Bulgarian agency BTA reported. (ANSA).





 Copyright ANSA - All rights reserved
N. Macedonia: Michel, 'yes' to mediation, negotiations now 'But we are aware of concerns over national identity'

(ANSA) - BELGRADE, JUL 5 - European Council president Charles Michel urged the Macedonian leadership to accept the French mediation proposal, to pave the way for EU accession negotiations. "It is up to you to decide. If you say yes, we will organize the first intergovernmental conference in the next few days, and the screening processes will begin. But we are also aware of the concerns about national identity,' Michel said, talking to journalists at the end of his meeting with Macedonian PM Dimitar Kovacevski. In his opinion, the French proposal is "balanced, and allows the start of negotiations with Brussels." (ANSA).





 Copyright ANSA - All rights reserved
PARIS - France has repatriated 35 children and 16 mothers from camps in Syria where family members of suspected ISIS jihadists were detained, the French foreign ministry has said.



"France organized today the return to the country of 35 French minors who were in camps in northeastern Syria. This operation includes the return of 16 mothers from the same camps", said a statement. It added that the minors were placed under the care of child protection services while the mothers will have to go through judicial proceedings.



Human rights groups have long urged the French government to bring back home some 200 children who were taken to a territory known at the time as Islamic State by their parents or who were born there during the years of fighting. They are detained in camps managed by Kurds in northeastern Syria, where malnutrition and diseases abound. One of the largest and most overcrowded is the Al-Hol facility, where on average two children die every week, according to a report released by Save the Children last September.



Among the women repatriated is French jihadist Emilie Konig, according to sources close to the case, quoted by Agence France Presse. A native of Brittany, Konig was detained in Syria after spending years with ISIS, accused of working as a "recruiter" of new jihadists on behalf of the terrorist organization. Considered as one of the most well-known female jihadists in France, the 37-year-old, a Muslim convert, travelled to Syria to enroll as a terrorist of the so-called Islamic State in 2012. She is also accused of inciting to commit terrorist attacks in the West. In Syria, Konig had five children. She was widowed twice. Three of her children were repatriated to France last January. The French sources said an arrest warrant has been issued against her and that, after being questioned by a French judge, she is expected to be placed under investigation and jailed.

The announcement of the repatriation of these children, who have a French passport, was welcomed with favor by the association "Collectif des familles unies", which recently asked French President Emmanuel Macron to "start his second mandate" at the Elysee by repatriating "all French children" detained in Kurdish camps. In a statement, the association said it "hopes" this latest repatriation, the most important so far, "marks the end of a despicable 'case by case' policy, the equivalent of selecting children, separating them from siblings and tearing them away from their mothers".



During the presidential campaign that led him to win a second mandate, Macron assured child protection would be at the center of his policies.
ROME - The call for the third edition of the MedFILM WIPs dedicated to projects in post-production has started.



After the success of the first two editions, counting more than eighty films in competition, the MedFilm Festival launches for the third consecutive year the MedFilm WIPs Call, dedicated to the Work In Progress coming from Mediterranean countries, raffling the Prize Iom/MedFilm of  10,000 and the Stadion Video Prize, for the realization of a DCP ( 3,500).



The workshop WIPs, supported by IOM, the Italian culture ministry and Lazio region, is aimed at feature films and creative documentaries in post-production from 25 Mediterranean countries: Italy, Spain, France, Monaco, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, North Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Iraq and Jordan. Six projects will be selected among the applications received.



During two intense days of activity, the 4th and 5th November, an international jury of experts will meet the selected authors and producers to give their feedback on the six finalist projects. At the end of the work, the jury will award the Iom/MedFilm Prize (10,000 euros), and the Stadion Video Prize for the realization of a DCP (3,500 euros).



Together with the Awards, we will organize for the six finalists some meetings with the professionals of the area who will be in Rome on the occasion of MEDMeetings, the professional platform created in 2016 by the MedFilm Festival. MEDMeetings' aim is to offer an exclusive space, dedicated to the meeting among professionals of the Euro-Mediterranean cinema and to encourage and support exchanges, collaborations and co-productions among the industrial sectors of the area.



To apply for MedFilm Works in Progress, you must complete the application form that you can download from the website www.medfilmfestival.org and send it, together with the required documents, to the email address professional@medfilmfestival.org. Deadline for submission of projects is August 30th, 2022.



The aim is to carry out the activities in Rome, hoping that the pandemic will no longer be an obstacle. Therefore, the actual operating mode (on-site, online or in hybrid form) will be communicated at a later stage.




Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha (R) meets with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Bangkok, Thailand, on July 5, 2022. (Xinhua/Wang Teng)

BANGKOK, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Thailand and China agreed here Tuesday to carry on traditional friendship, expand bilateral cooperation and plan for the future development of relations.

While meeting with Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said his country attaches great importance to the China-proposed Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative and admires China's great achievements in eliminating extreme poverty.

Thailand expects to learn from China's development experience, grasp the trend of the times, seize the historical opportunity and push for the Thailand-China cooperation in all fields, the Thai prime minister said.

Wang said China and Thailand have witnessed healthy and stable development of relations, which benefits from the strategic guidance of the leaders of the two countries, the traditional friendship of China and Thailand that are close like a family, and the firm political trust between the two countries.

Noting that this year marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries, Wang said the two sides agreed to set the joint construction of the China-Thailand community with a shared future as a goal and vision, work together to enrich the connotation of "China and Thailand are close like a family," and forge ahead for a more stable, prosperous and sustainable future for the two countries.

Wang said China and Thailand could work on building a China-Laos-Thailand Railway to smooth the flow of goods with convenient channels, promote economy and trade with better logistics, and facilitate the growth of industries with robust economy and trade.

More cold-chain freight trains, tourism routes and durian expresses could be launched to make cross-border transportation more convenient, less costly, and more efficient, Wang suggested.

Prayut said Thailand and China enjoy long-standing friendship and fruitful practical cooperation. It is significant for the two sides to have reached a consensus on jointly building a community with a shared future, and Thailand stands ready to work with China in advancing it.

He expressed hope to further synergize the "Thailand 4.0" development strategy with China's Belt and Road Initiative, carry out the third party market cooperation based on Thailand-China-Laos Railway, and unleash the full potential of the border-crossing railway.

Both sides exchanged views over the APEC Informal Leaders' Meeting to be held this year.

Wang said China fully supports Thailand in playing an important role as the APEC host country for 2022 with focuses on the Asia-Pacific, development and the construction of the Asia-Pacific free trade zone, so as to inject a new and strong impetus into the regional integration process.

Wang is on an Asia tour, which takes him to Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. He also co-chaired the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Foreign Ministers' Meeting on Monday in Myanmar. 
Automotive: Turkey, Russia, Iran evaluate joint production Iranian producers' chief, it could begin soon

(ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, 05 LUG - ISTANBUL - Iran, Turkey and Russia are considering to work soon on a joint car production, Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported, quoting the head of the Iranian association of car producers, Mohammadreza Najafi-Manesh.



"Producing all components of this car, avoiding the transfer of currency to obtain spare parts and the existence of a market for exports are the advantages of this project", said Najafi-Manesh in an interview to the newspaper Iran, stating that production could begin "very soon" and could capture a large share of the market.



The idea of a joint car production was launched by Turkey, said Najafi-Manesh, adding that Russia expressed interest.



In 2017, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the project of a car produced by Turkey. The launch of the new model, called Togg, was scheduled at the end of this year, according to Turkish media. (ANSAmed).




ISTANBUL - Iran, Turkey and Russia are considering to work soon on a joint car production, Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported, quoting the head of the Iranian association of car producers, Mohammadreza Najafi-Manesh.



"Producing all components of this car, avoiding the transfer of currency to obtain spare parts and the existence of a market for exports are the advantages of this project", said Najafi-Manesh in an interview to the newspaper Iran, stating that production could begin "very soon" and could capture a large share of the market.



The idea of a joint car production was launched by Turkey, said Najafi-Manesh, adding that Russia expressed interest.



In 2017, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the project of a car produced by Turkey. The launch of the new model, called Togg, was scheduled at the end of this year, according to Turkish media.
France: 35 children, 16 mothers repatriated from Syria camps Detained as family members of ISIS militants

(ANSAmed) - PARIS, 05 LUG - France has repatriated 35 children and 16 mothers from camps in Syria where family members of suspected ISIS jihadists were detained, the French foreign ministry has said.



"France organized today the return to the country of 35 French minors who were in camps in northeastern Syria. This operation includes the return of 16 mothers from the same camps", said a statement. It added that the minors were placed under the care of child protection services while the mothers will have to go through judicial proceedings.



Human rights groups have long urged the French government to bring back home some 200 children who were taken to a territory known at the time as Islamic State by their parents or who were born there during the years of fighting. They are detained in camps managed by Kurds in northeastern Syria, where malnutrition and diseases abound. One of the largest and most overcrowded is the Al-Hol facility, where on average two children die every week, according to a report released by Save the Children last September.



Among the women repatriated is French jihadist Emilie Konig.



Originally from Bretagne, Konig was detained in Syria after spending years with ISIS, accused of being a sort of "recruiter" of new jihadists on behalf of the terrorist organization.



The announcement of the repatriation of these children, who have a French passport, was welcomed with favor by the association "Collectif des familles unies", which recently asked French President Emmanuel Macron to "start his second mandate" at the Elysee by repatriating "all French children" detained in Kurdish camps. In a statement, the association said it "hopes" this latest repatriation, the most important so far, "marks the end of a despicable 'case by case' policy, the equivalent of selecting children, separating them from siblings and tearing them away from their mothers".



During the presidential campaign that led him to win a second mandate, Macron assured child protection would be at the center of his policies. (ANSAmed).




France: Breton jihadist Emilie Konig repatriated from Syria

(ANSAmed) - PARIS, JULY 5 - French jihadist Emilie Konig is among the women repatriated Tuesday to France from prison camps for former ISIS militants in northeastern Syria, according to sources close to the case, quoted by Agence France Presse. A native of Brittany, Konig was detained in Syria after spending years with ISIS, accused of working as a "recruiter" of new jihadists on behalf of the terrorist organization.



Considered as one of the most well-known female jihadists in France, Konig is among 16 mothers who were repatriated on Tuesday with 35 minors, in many cases their children.



The 37-year-old, a Muslim convert, travelled to Syria to enroll as a terrorist of the so-called Islamic State in 2012.



She is also accused of inciting to commit terrorist attacks in the West. In Syria, Konig had five children. She was widowed twice. Three of her children were repatriated to France last January. The French sources said an arrest warrant has been issued against her and that, after being questioned by a French judge, she is expected to be placed under investigation and jailed.(ANSAmed).




Tunisia: Saied calls for 'yes' vote on draft constitution Referendum July 25 on new charter, strong presidential system

(ANSAmed) - TUNIS, 05 LUG - The president of Tunisia, Kais Saied, has urged citizens to vote in favor of a draft new Constitution, with a strong presidential system, in a referendum on July 25, with an open letter addressed to the population, Tunisian media report.



"Say yes to avoid the crumbling of the State and to reach the objectives of the Revolution. There won't be misery, terrorism, hunger, injustice and pain", the letter said. The president insisted on the fact that unprecedented impunity over time allowed several people to flee sanctions due to their actions and encouraged corruption.



Saied evoked "maneuvers" and "distortions of reality": "They stole State coffers and of public agencies. Poverty is increasingly widespread as well as the number of those who have become rich illegally and illegitimately", he wrote.



The Council of regions and territories, which is mentioned in the new Charter, will allow everyone, according to the president, to participate in the decision-making process and vies to end marginalization, he said. Saied also attacked in the letter those who criticized the draft new Constitution.



(ANSAmed).




TEL AVIV - A 34-year-old Palestinian from Gaza, Ahmed Harb Ayad, was killed in the night between Monday and Tuesday in an incident with an Israeli military patrol along the separation barrier close to the West Bank city of Tulkarem, the Palestinian news agencies Wafa and Maan report. According to the agencies, Ayad was shot by soldiers after he tried to cross into Israel through a border crossing. The newspaper Maariv said "clashes" were reported on the ground between soldiers and Palestinians.



In the morning in Bnei Brak, an Orthodox suburb of Tel Aviv, a religious Jewish man was stabbed and he is in serious condition. The man said his attacker "looked Palestinian".




TEL AVIV - An uninterrupted flow of gifts from two important businessmen to the Netanyahus was described Tuesday at a district court in Jerusalem during a new hearing of the trial for corruption, fraud and abuse of power against the former Israeli prime minister. Overall, according to the prosecution, Benyamin and Sarah Netanyahu received from businessmen Arnon Milchan and James Packer gifts for "hundreds of thousands of shekels" (one euro is the equivalent of 3,6 shekels). An aide for the two businessmen, Hadas Klein, on Tuesday described in detail how the items were gifted: the former premier preferred Cuban cigars "which were difficult to find in Cuba", while his wife, according to a witness, had special requests on the type of champagne she preferred. According to Klein, Sarah Netanyahu also received expensive jewelry.



"It was clear that it was not possible to visit their home empty-handed", said the witness. When she asked Sarah Netanyahu if it was licit for a public official to receive such gifts, the woman - according to Klein - responded that it was a "relationship between friends" and that her lawyers had allayed her fears. In this case, Netanyahu is accused of abuse of office. According to prosecutors, he tried among other things to help Milchan extend a visa in the United States and, according to media reports, to guarantee to the Australian Packer the status of permanent resident in Israel.
MADRID - Spain's pledge with NATO to progressively raise to 2% of GDP military expenditure is causing tension within the center-left ruling coalition: members of Unidas Podemos, a member together with the Socialist party of Premier Pedro Sanchez, repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with this decision.



The latest friction concerned the approval by the council of ministers of a credit of one billion euros for extraordinary expenditure of the defense ministry.



After the council, speaking to Spanish media, the deputy premier and labor minister, Yolanda Diaz, the representative of Unidas Podemos with the most significant position in the cabinet, asked for an urgent meeting of the commission tasked with analyzing the current situation of the ruling coalition.



"The meeting will be held as part of normal" activities of the government, said the cabinet's spokesperson Isabel Rodriguez, a member of the Socialist party.
Amber Heard has requested that a US judge overturn the verdict against her multi-million dollar defamation case with Johnny Depp and order a new trial.

The Aquaman star, 36, says the decision returned on June 1 in favour of Mr Depp was not supported by the evidence presented during the six-week trial.

In documents seen by the PA news agency, Ms Heards lawyers also argue that investigations should be made into improper juror service.

Mr Depp sued his former partner over a 2018 article she wrote for the Washington Post about her experiences as a survivor of domestic abuse, which his lawyers said falsely accused him of being an abuser.

The verdict is excessive as a matter of law in light of the evidence and law, and should be set aside, the documents stated.

For all the reasons set forth above, and for the reasons set forth on the record during the hearings and at trial, in the Motions in Limine and Motions to Strike, Ms Heard respectfully requests this Court to set aside the jury verdict in favor of Mr Depp and against Ms Heard in its entirety, dismiss the complaint, or in the alternative, order a new trial.

Mr Depp sued his former partner over a 2018 article she wrote for the Washington Post about her experiences as a survivor of domestic abuse (Owen Humphreys/PA)

Ms Heard further requests this Court to investigate potential improper juror service and take appropriate action warranted by the results of the investigation.

The actress lawyers claim that one of the jurors during the trial was not properly vetted by the court and that information was inconsistent.

The information on the jury panel list appears to be inconsistent with the identity and demographics of one of the Jurors, the document, signed by Ms Heards lawyer Elaine Bredehoft, states.

Juror No 15 was apparently born in 1970, not 1945, as reported to and relied upon by the parties  including Ms Heard  in selecting a jury panel.

The filing added that the damages awarded to Mr Depp following the verdict, which total 15 million dollars, were excessive and indefensible.

The sum was subsequently reduced by judge Penney Azcarate to 350,000 dollars under a state cap.

Ms Bredehoft previously vowed that Ms Heard would appeal the decision in the lawsuit and that she has excellent grounds to do so, saying that there was so much evidence that was not included during the trial.

Mr Depp said he felt at peace and was truly humbled after winning the lawsuit, adding that his decision to pursue the case was only made after considerable thought and his goal was to reveal the truth, regardless of the outcome.
Switzerland hosts first Ukraine Recovery Conference

Xinhua) 09:50, July 05, 2022

LUGANO, Switzerland, July 4 (Xinhua) -- Tasked with establishing the principles and framework for the future reconstruction of the conflict-torn country, a two-day Ukraine Recovery Conference opened here on Monday.

The conference participants are expected to define the criteria for handling assistance to Ukraine and for the distribution of roles among the various partners, Ignazio Cassis, president of the Swiss Confederation and head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, said in his opening address.

He said he expected the senior officials from around 40 countries and representatives from 18 international organizations attending the conference to adopt the "Lugano principles" conducive to the sustainable recovery of Ukraine.

"The sustainable restructuring of the economy should be guided by the principle of building back better and creating the conditions for prosperity and intact livelihoods," he said.

Ukraine's Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who attended the conference in person, said that his country will need 750 billion U.S. dollars for a three-stage reconstruction plan, which he presented in detail.

Addressing the conference by video link from Kyiv, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the plan also covers the country's institutional development.

Among the key principles and goals, Zelensky singled out heightened security, technological development, compliance with environmental standards, transparency and the rooting of the reconstruction project in Ukraine's real economic life.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, told Monday's opening session that her institution has proposed to the government of Ukraine the creation of a reconstruction platform to map investment needs, coordinate action, channel resources and support an ambitious reform agenda.

The event, co-hosted by the governments of Switzerland and Ukraine, was originally planned as the 5th annual Ukraine Reform Conference. It was renamed earlier this year to reflect the new focus of the gathering.

"The way to rebuild Ukraine is through a broad-based political and diplomatic process. Switzerland and Ukraine want to start this process in Lugano," the Swiss Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said that next year's Ukraine Recovery Conference will be hosted by the United Kingdom.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
ADDIS ABABA, July 5 (Xinhua) -- The African Union (AU) on Tuesday said the advent of COVID-19 has posed the most formidable risk to the smooth operationalization of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement.

"COVID-19 pandemic has further heightened the risks of perpetuating the continent's trade and business vulnerability," the AU said in a statement Tuesday ahead of an industrialization-themed continental meeting.

It stressed that the COVID-19 pandemic and its attendant disruption of global supply chains have brought to the fore the urgency and significance of driving industrialization in the African continent.

"More fundamentally, the pandemic has openly exposed the hollowness of African economies on several fronts, including the fragility and weakness of Africa's industrial capabilities," the AU said.

The AU, however, emphasized that while COVID-19 is creating a significant economic and health crisis, it also presents an invaluable opportunity for the continent to re-configure its development narrative toward prioritization of initiatives that help accelerate Africa's industrialization. And the development of strong regional and local value-chains can be a game-changer to build a resilient small and medium enterprises' production capacity in the continent, to seize the business opportunities emanating from COVID-19-induced disruptions of global value chains.

The statement came ahead of the AU's high-level industrialization-themed continental summit, which will be held under the theme "Industrializing Africa: Renewed commitment towards an Inclusive and Sustainable Industrialization and Economic Diversification," slated for Nov. 20 to 25 in Niamey, the capital of Niger.

According to the AU, industrialization prospects for the continent are anchored on unleashing the growth of small and micro-enterprises (SMEs) guided by the African Union SMEs Strategy.

Trading under the AfCFTA agreement was launched in January 2021. Once fully implemented, the AfCFTA will create a single African market for goods and services, covering about 1.2 billion people with a combined gross domestic product of more than 2.5 trillion U.S. dollars across 55 members, according to the AU.

The upcoming summit will be convened as part of the Africa Industrialization Week annual commemorative activities.

Given the importance of industrialization and economic transformation in Africa, the 20th of every November is commemorated as Africa Industrialization Day, adopted by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity, the predecessor of the AU, in July 1989, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 
Actress Rachel Brosnahan says she feels sick to my stomach following the mass shooting in her Chicago hometown at a July 4 parade.

The Marvelous Mrs Maisel star, who grew up in the area, said there were no words to describe the tragic incident in Highland Park, which left at least six people dead and dozens injured.

Robert E Crimo III, 22, was taken into custody on Monday evening following a brief pursuit.

Writing on Twitter, Brosnahan, who is the niece of the late US fashion designer Kate Spade, said enough is enough.

I grew up in Highland Park and this parade is a highlight of the year for so many families. Im sick to my stomach every time news like this comes out, but I dont wish the pit in your stomach as you call your family and friends to make sure everyone is okay on anyone. No words. https://t.co/5dE7JB8Z17  Rachel Brosnahan (@RachelBros) July 4, 2022

I grew up in Highland Park and this parade is a highlight of the year for so many families, she wrote on Twitter.

Im sick to my stomach every time news like this comes out, but I dont wish the pit in your stomach as you call your family and friends to make sure everyone is okay on anyone.

No words.

Enough is enough is enough is enough is enough is enough is enough is enough is enough.

The incident in Chicago comes shortly after a spate of mass shootings in the US including in Buffalo, in New York, Tulsa, in Oklahoma, and Uvalde, in Texas, during which 19 school children and two teachers were killed.
Downing Street has confirmed Boris Johnson was informed that Chris Pincher had been investigated over his conduct when he was a Foreign Office minister.

No 10 had previously claimed the Prime Minister was not aware when he appointed him of any specific allegations against Mr Pincher, who resigned last week over claims that he groped two men at a private members club.

The latest disclosure comes after details emerged in the press over the weekend of further claims about alleged sexual advances to men  including two fellow Conservative MPs  over a period of years.

Chris Pincher in Downing Street (Aaron Chown/PA)

Here is a timeline of Mr Pinchers political career and the allegations which he has denied to the newspapers which carried them.

 May 2010: Mr Pincher is elected Conservative MP for Tamworth in Staffordshire.

 2012: A man alleges he was subjected to an unwanted advance from Mr Pincher when he was in his early 20s at an event in London, according to The Mail on Sunday.

 2013: The same newspaper reported that a former parliamentary researcher alleges Mr Pincher threatened to report her to her boss after she tried to stop him pestering a young man at that years Conservative Party conference.

In the same year, a young man who had passed out at Mr Pinchers flat after an evening of drinking allegedly wakes up to find the MP on top of him, a friend reportedly told The Sun.

 July 2016: Mr Pincher is appointed to the whips office by then-prime minister Theresa May.

Theresa May (House of Commons/PA)

 November 5 2017: Mr Pincher resigns and refers himself to the police and the Conservative Party complaints procedure after former Olympic rower and Tory activist Alex Story claimed the MP had made an unwanted sexual advance nine years beforehand.

Mr Pincher is also reported to have made an inappropriate advance towards former Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop.

Weeks after his resignation, Mr Pincher allegedly makes an unwanted pass at a junior Tory backbencher, according to the Sunday Times.

 December 23 2017: A Conservative Party investigating panel clears Mr Pincher of any breach of party rules.

 January 9 2018: Mr Pincher is appointed as the government deputy chief whip by Mrs May.

That year a young Conservative MP is said to have received an unwanted physical advance by the Tamworth MP in his parliamentary office, according to the Sunday Times.

Mr Pincher is also alleged to have made an unsolicited sexual approach towards a charity fundraiser at his constituency office, The Sun reported.

Boris Johnson (Dan Kitwood/PA)

 July 2019: Boris Johnson appoints Mr Pincher as a foreign minister for Europe and the Americas in his first reshuffle after taking office as Prime Minister.

Shortly after the appointment a group of officials at the Foreign Office complained to the then-permanent secretary Sir Simon (now Lord) McDonald about his conduct.

The complaint was upheld, and Mr Pincher apologised and said there would be no repeat of such behaviour.

Around this time, he is alleged to have made an unwanted advance towards a young Tory activist after inviting him for drinks in his Tamworth constituency, according to the Sunday Times.

 Autumn 2019: Mr Pincher allegedly makes an unwanted advance to a Conservative member in his 20s at a bar during the partys annual conference in Manchester, The Times reported.

 February 13 2020: Mr Pincher is appointed housing minister.

 2021: Mr Pincher allegedly makes a pass at a young Tory activist during the Tory party conference in Manchester, according to The Times.

The Mail on Sunday reported that a young Conservative activist was touched up by Mr Pincher in a car.

A Conservative MP claims he was groped repeatedly by Mr Pincher near the Carlton Club in December, as well as in June this year within the parliamentary estate, according to The Independent.

 February 8 2022: Mr Pincher is appointed deputy chief whip alongside new chief whip Chris Heaton-Harris after they ran a shadow whipping operation to shore up support for Mr Johnson as MPs sought to oust him over partygate allegations.

Chris Pincher (right) with Chris Heaton-Harris (Aaron Chown/PA)

The announcement of Mr Pinchers appointment is delayed while the Cabinet Office propriety and ethics team carries out checks but no reason is found for it not to go ahead.

 June 30: Mr Pincher resigns as deputy chief whip after allegedly assaulting two fellow guests the evening before at the Carlton Club  a Tory private members club in Londons Piccadilly.

 July 1: Downing Street says Mr Johnson was not aware of any specific allegations about Mr Pincher when he appointed him to the whips office  a line that is repeated by ministers over the coming days.

At 5pm the Prime Minister finally bows to pressure and suspends the Tory whip after a formal complaint is made to Parliaments watchdog that examines allegations of bullying, harassment or sexual misconduct.

 July 4: Downing Street amends its position saying Mr Johnson had been aware of speculation about Mr Pincher but that any issues had either been resolved or were not the subject of a formal complaint.

 July 5: Lord McDonald submits a formal complaint to the parliamentary standards commissioner saying the No 10 account is still not accurate and Mr Johnson was briefed in person about the 2019 Foreign Office complaint.

The Prime Ministers spokesman confirms Mr Johnson was told about the complaint a number of months after it had arisen.

Cabinet Office minister Michael Ellis tells MPs the Prime Minister did not immediately recall the briefing when Mr Pincher resigned.
A new website-checking tool has been launched to help users confirm whether a site is legitimate before they visit.

Internet safety group Get Safe Online has worked with fraud prevention service Cifas to create the tool, which enables users to enter the address of any website to check if it a real site or a scam.

The tool is hosted on the Get Safe Online website and uses an algorithm based on more than 40 data sources and malicious website reports from law enforcement agencies, regulators and consumer brands to identify and vet the sites entered by users  providing a trust score for the website.

Fake or malicious websites, often impersonating genuine sites, are used by scammers to lure people into sharing personal and financial details which can then be used to facilitate identity theft.

Tony Neate, Get Safe Onlines chief executive, said: For over 15 years Get Safe Online has been providing online safety advice and tips for individuals and small businesses to ensure all of us can use the internet safely and with confidence.

The internet is amazing, but as with so many things, there are downfalls to look out for when using it: scams, fraud, people trying to exploit you and your personal information.

Launching Check a Website today is revolutionary and we are very excited to be able to finally offer individuals the opportunity to literally check a website before they use it.

We are also hugely grateful to our partners who have helped to make it happen. Now, we just want to let as many people know about it as possible so the UK can benefit from this new capability and help improve the united fight against scammers.

According to the most recent data from Cifas, there was a 43% increase in cases involving identity theft filed to the National Fraud Database in the first three months of 2022, compared to the same period last year.

This is a great tool for aiding consumers in the continuing fight against online fraud, Cifas chief executive, Mike Haley, said.

The devastating impact of fraud can result not only in the loss of income or sensitive personal information, but also a loss of confidence when navigating an increasingly digital world.

By being able to quickly check whether the website youre visiting is credible, you can be safer online, reduce your exposure to illegal websites and have peace of mind knowing that you are defending yourself from cyber criminals.

The Get Safe Online website checker tool can be found at www.getsafeonline.org/checkawebsite.
A doctor who killed a mother-of-three after botching a procedure during a routine hospital appointment to take samples has been jailed for three years.

Dr Isyaka Mamman, 85, had already been suspended for lying about his age and colleagues thought he should be retired after botching similar procedures before the fatal incident.

The Nigerian-born medic, aged 81 at the time, carried out the highly dangerous procedure using the wrong needle and inserted it in the wrong place, piercing the heart sac of Shahida Parveen, who had gone to the Royal Oldham Hospital to give a bone marrow sample.

The 48-year-old and her husband had asked Mamman to abort the treatment but he persisted, and she died later the same day, September 3 2018.

Mamman gave no reaction as he was jailed after admitting gross negligence manslaughter, but his family wept in the public gallery at Manchester Crown Court.

Passing sentence, Mrs Justice Yip criticised both the defendant and the hospital trust that employed him, saying there is a troubling background to the case with the doctors age and two prior critical incidents in 2015.

She said: It is hard to understand why these incidents did not lead to your retirement.

Equally it is difficult to see why the trust did not do more and why you were allowed to continue to work.

Sadly there were failings in the system.

It is very sad to see a long career in medicine end in such dreadful circumstances.

Earlier the court heard that Ms Parveen had gone to the hospital with her husband, Khizar Mahmood, for investigations into possible myeloproliferative disorder.

A bone marrow biopsy had been advised and the routine procedure was allocated to Mamman, working as a specialty doctor in haematology, Andrew Thomas QC, prosecuting, told the hearing.

Normally, bone marrow samples are taken from the hip bone but Mamman failed to obtain a sample at the first attempt.

Instead he attempted a rare and highly dangerous procedure of getting a sample from the patients sternum  despite her and her husbands objections.

#JAILED | A former doctor from #Oldham has been jailed for the manslaughter of one of his patients. Isyaka Mamman has been sentenced today to three years in prison after pleading guilty to the manslaughter by gross negligence of one of his patients. More: https://t.co/p5AdrytLZc pic.twitter.com/szPmPCTvfZ  Greater Manchester Police (@gmpolice) July 5, 2022

Mamman, using the wrong biopsy needle, missed the bone and pierced her pericardium, the sac containing the heart, causing massive internal bleeding.

Ms Parveen lost consciousness as soon as the needle was inserted, with her husband running from the room shouting: He killed her.

I told him to stop three times and he did not listen. He killed her.

Mamman qualified as a doctor in Nigeria in 1965 and had worked in the UK since 1991. From 2004 until the time of the fatal incident he was employed by the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.

But his true age is a matter of controversy, the court heard, as his birthplace in rural Nigeria had no system of birth registration.

During his medical training he gave a date of birth of September 16 1936, which meant that he was 21 when he began his medical training and 81 at the time of the fatal hospital incident.

But he knocked years off his age by adopting a birth date in 1941, provided to the NHS, suggesting he began his medical degree at the age of 16.

However, in about 2001 and approaching what was then the compulsory retirement age of 65, Mamman adopted an even later birth date  October 1947  which he relied upon in an application for naturalisation as a British citizen  suggesting he started his degree course at the age of 10.

In 2004 he was found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council (GMC) and suspended for 12 months for lying about his age.

The Pennine Trust sacked him but then re-employed him in 2006, after he had been restored to the register by the GMC, who accepted his date of birth to be 1943  which meant he was 14 or 15 when he began his medical degree.

He had left his previous employment with the Medway Trust because of poor performance, and in 2015 a formal complaint was made to the Oldham hospital when a patient complained that he had used excessive force during a bone marrow biopsy.

The patient was told that Mamman was in his 70s and his colleagues thought he should retire but they could not dismiss him purely because of his age.

She was assured he would be put on light duties in future.

However, the same year there was another clinical incident which resulted in serious injury to another patient, again during a bone marrow biopsy and again involving a needle being inserted in the wrong place.

The patient survived but has been left permanently disabled.

Outside court, Detective Inspector Rachel Smith, of Greater Manchester Polices Major Incident Team, said: It is tragic that someone who attended the hospital for a diagnostic procedure to plan their treatment and, ultimately, make them feel better ended up dying at the hands of a doctor.

Our thoughts remain with the victims family and loved ones.

Dr Chris Brookes, deputy chief executive for the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, which now runs the Oldham Royal Hospital, said: We wish again to offer our sincerest condolences to Mrs Parveens family and friends and we are deeply sorry for their loss.

We would like to reiterate our sincere apology previously provided to Mrs Parveens family. Our heartfelt sympathies go out to them.

The Trust has admitted liability in relation to a civil claim brought by the family.
Irish premier Micheal Martin is due to travel to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Wednesday for a number of engagements in the city.

Mr Martin was travelling on Tuesday and so did not appear as scheduled in the Dail for Leaders Questions.

The trip comes two weeks after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invited Mr Martin to visit Ukraine, which would represent the first Irish state visit to the country.

Talked to @MichealMartinTD on the eve of the historic #EUCO meeting. Thanked for  active support of Ukraine's European aspirations and the status of a candidate for EU membership. Invited to make the first visit to  in the history of bilateral relations. #EmbraceUkraine    (@ZelenskyyUa) June 21, 2022

Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney visited Kyiv in April and met with his counterparts, Ukraines foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba and defence minister Oleksii Reznikov.

He also visited the town of Bucha on the outskirts of the capital, where suspected killings of civilians prompted global condemnation.

Ireland has taken in more than 36,000 Ukrainian refugees since Russia invaded neighbouring Ukraine at the end of February, and has given millions of euro in humanitarian support and assistance to the country, as well as health equipment and medical donations worth over 4.5 million euro.

Mr Martin has also been a vocal advocate for Ukraines fast-tracked membership of the EU.

Ireland is ready to walk every step of that journey with Ukraine, providing whatever support and encouragement we can along the way, the Taoiseach has previously said.

Mr Zelensky has thanked Ireland for its active support of Ukraines European aspirations.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  A San Francisco couple that parked their car for decades on a paved part of their property in front of their home has been banned from doing so unless they want to risk steep fines.

KGO-TV reported Monday that city officials sent a letter to Judy and Ed Craine telling them they can't park on the pavement on their property on a hilly street even though they have for 36 years. With the letter came a notice of a $1,542 fine and the threat of a $250-a-day fee for continued parking on their property.

To all of a sudden to be told you cant use something that we could use for years, its startling," Ed Craine said.

Dan Sider, the city's planning chief, said a decades-old city code to preserve neighborhood aesthetics prohibits residents from amassing cars in their yards. Officials looked into the issue at the Craines' property after receiving an anonymous complaint.

I recognize that the property owner is frustrated. I think I would feel the same way in their situation, Sider said.

The Craines tried to find a photo showing the space had been long used for parking. A blurry aerial shot from the 1930s wasn't clear enough for planning officials and a 34-year-old photo the couple provided was deemed too recent.

The city ended up tossing the fines after the couple agreed to stop parking on the pavement. If the Craines build a cover for the paved property or a garage, officials said they can resume parking on it  in compliance with city code.
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.  Robert Bobby E. Crimo III, the person of interest identified by police after Mondays shooting in a Chicago suburb that killed seven people and wounded 47 others, left a long trail of tributes to mass shootings and public killings on social media platforms, according to numerous profiles that appear to belong to him.

Crimo performed as a rapper who went by the name Awake, whose recent music videos included depictions of mass murder.

Crimos most recent video posted to YouTube showed him in the aftermath of a school shooting. It ends with Crimo draping himself in an American flag. Another music video showed a cartoon depiction of a man wearing a shirt with his YouTube channels logo on it, holding a long gun and being shot by police.

Image: Highland Park (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

The YouTube account that hosted his videos, which had previously been accessible to the public, was unavailable Monday night.

Crimo had his own Discord server, where fans and people who knew him would chat. The community featured a politics board filled with nihilistic political memes. The most recent post before the shooting, which was posted in March, was a picture of Budd Dwyer, the Pennsylvania state treasurer who shot and killed himself on live television in the late 1980s, along with the caption, I wish politicians still gave speeches like this.

On Discord, fans would share posts that Crimo had made of himself. One apparent selfie Crimo took in March reads: Cursed image screenshot and send to everyone or commit not alive anymore, a reference to suicide.

After Mondays shooting, 4chan trolls invaded the community, using it as a meeting point to laud the shooter and post memes about the attack. The Discord channel was shut down around 6 p.m. ET, just hours after Crimo was named as a person of interest.

Crimo also posted frequently to a message board that discussed graphic depictions of murder, suicide and death. His most recent post to that message board came last week, when he posted a video of a beheading.

Robert E. Crimo, III. (FBI)

Crimo didnt frequently post about major political figures on his websites, except for two posts about former President Donald Trump.

A video posted to Crimos YouTube page on Jan. 2, 2021, appears to show Crimo among a throng of protesters cheering for Trumps presidential motorcade outside an airport. Crimo flips the phones orientation to reveal his face at the end of the video.

Crimo is also seen draped in a Trump flag in a June 27, 2021, post on Twitter. The post is captioned with only the word spam.

Mark Heymann, 22, who said he went to Highland Park High School with Crimo, said Crimo was a rapper who released music when they were in school together.

Heymann said he doesnt recall much about Crimo. He always seemed a little off, but I cant describe it much beyond that, he said.

Crimo's father, who reportedly owned convenience stores, staged an unsuccessful run for mayor of Highland Park in 2019.

In the neighborhood, the family were known as quiet people who kept to themselves, said people who lived on the block.

Michael Gammel, who lives next door, recalled one conversation in which the elder Crimo alluded to his son having trouble at school that the father described as "emotional issues."

Gammel and another neighbor who didn't want to be identified recalled the younger Crimo riding around on an electric scooter with loud music playing so people knew when he came and went. The last time, Gammel said, was Monday morning about 10.

Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering told NBCs TODAY show Tuesday that she didnt believe Crimo was previously known to police until Monday.

She revealed she knew him when he was in the Cub Scouts, a Boy Scouts of America program for children in kindergarten to fifth grade.

I know him as somebody who was a Cub Scout when I was the Cub Scout leader, she said. And its one of those things where you step back and you say, What happened? How did somebody become this angry, this hateful, to then take it out on innocent people who, literally, were just having a family day out?

When asked what he was like back then, she replied, He was just a little boy.
Under President Trump, officials rolled back protections for the northern spotted owl and many other species. (Tom Gallagher / Associated Press)

A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a host of actions by the Trump administration to roll back protections for endangered or threatened species, a year after the Biden administration said it was moving to strengthen species protections weakened under former President Trump.

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in Northern California eliminated the Trump-era rules even as two wildlife agencies under President Biden are reviewing or rescinding Trump-era regulations. The decision restores some protections under the Endangered Species Act while the reviews are completed.

Environmental groups hailed the decision, which they said sped up needed protections and critical habitat designations for threatened species, including salmon in California and the Pacific Northwest.

Tigar's ruling spoke for species desperately in need of comprehensive federal protections without compromise, said Kristen Boyles, an attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice. Threatened and endangered species do not have the luxury of waiting under rules that do not protect them.

The ruling comes as two federal agencies  the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service  review five Endangered Species Act regulations finalized by the Trump administration, including critical habitat designations and rules requiring federal agencies to consult with other agencies before taking action on threatened or endangered species.

Fish and Wildlife also said it will reinstate the so-called blanket rule, which mandates additional protections for species that are newly classified as threatened. Those protections were removed under Trump.

Critical habitat designations for threatened or endangered species can result in limits on energy development such as mining or oil drilling that could disturb a vulnerable species. The consultation rule, along with a rule on the scope of proposed federal actions, helps determine how far the government may go to protect imperiled species.

Under Trump, officials rolled back protections for the northern spotted owl, gray wolves and other species, actions that Biden has vowed to review. The Biden administration previously moved to reverse Trumps decision to weaken enforcement of the century-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The decision made it harder to prosecute bird deaths caused by the energy industry.

It was among more than 100 business-friendly actions on the environment that Trump took and Biden wants to reconsider, revise or scrap.

A spokesman for the Interior Department, which oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency is reviewing the decision.

Fish and Wildlife and National Marine Fisheries Service announced in June 2021 that they were were reviewing the Trump-era actions. The reviews could take months or years to complete, officials said.

Industry groups and Republicans in Congress have long viewed the Endangered Species Act as an impediment to economic development, and under Trump they successfully lobbied to weaken the laws regulations. Environmental groups and Democratic-controlled states battled the moves in court, but many of those cases remained unresolved.

Ryan Shannon, a lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity, another environmental group, said he was incredibly relieved" that terrible Trump-era rules governing the Endangered Species Act were thrown out by the Oakland-based Tigar, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President Obama.

I hope the Biden administration takes this opportunity to strengthen this crucial law, rather than weaken it, in the face of the ongoing extinction crisis,'' Shannon said.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.  A person of interest in the July Fourth parade attack that killed six people and injured 38 others in suburban Chicago on Monday has been apprehended, authorities said.

Robert "Bobby" E. Crimo III was spotted in a Honda Fit described as wanted by the FBI in North Chicago, where local police attempted a traffic stop before the man took them on a short pursuit, authorities said.

At the end of the chase Crimo surrendered peacefully to North Chicago officers, they said.

Image: (Nam Y. Huh / AP)

A Lake County police officer walks down Central Ave in Highland Park, Ill. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune via AP)

Chris Covelli of the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force said at a news conference Monday night that Crimo "is believed to have been responsible for what happened, and the investigation will continue."

Law enforcement officials confirmed that a YouTube page for a quasi-famous hip-hop artist, Awake the Rapper, removed Monday, is associated with Crimo, identified by IMDb and YouTube as a performer and producer of emo rap-style music since 2016.

The manhunt began when officers saw a person they thought was a sniper on a downtown rooftop. When they approached, he ran away.

Witness Larry Bloom said that at first people thought the popping sound was part of the parade.

You heard like a pop, pop, pop, and I think everybody kinda thought maybe it was a display on one of the floats, and then it just opened up, he told NBC Chicago.

I was screaming, and people were screaming, Bloom added. They were panicking, and they were just scattering, and I, you know, we didnt know. You know, it was right on top of us.

Five of the six people who were killed were pronounced dead at the scene, and the sixth victim died at a hospital, Lake County Coroner Jennifer Banek said.

Dr. Brigham Temple, the medical director of emergency preparedness for Northshore Medical Group, said at a news conference that 26 people were initially seen at Highland Park Hospital. Of those, 25, ages 8 to 85, had suffered gunshot wounds.

Nineteen of the patients were treated and released, he said. Among the rest, some were in critical or serious condition, Temple said. A few were transferred to nearby trauma centers, he said.

Four or five children were treated at the hospital, Temple said.

Six people were taken to Lake Forest Hospital, and seven were taken to Evanston Hospital, Highland Park Fire Chief Joe Schrage said earlier.

Paradegoers who might have lost contact with friends and family members were urged to go to the Highland Park Police Department to be reunited.

After the shooting, discarded camping chairs, U.S. flags, plastic cups and other belongings littered the parade route, left behind by people who had come out to celebrate July Fourth before they fled for their lives.

In the business district near the scene, dozens of people were sheltering in businesses, awaiting SWAT teams who escorted them out to safety.

Helicopters circled overhead during the manhunt for the shooter who rained terror on what was supposed to have been a celebration of the nations freedom.

The street was dotted with military-style trucks filled with fatigue-clad, armed personnel inside and black, windowless vehicles marked police rescue vehicle."

The gunfire, described by police as a tragic, massive act of violence, terrorized residents of the typically tranquil suburb more than 25 miles outside Chicago. The median home in Highland Park is valued at $535,000, and more than 75 percent of people 25 and over have college degrees, according to census data.

President Joe Biden, in brief remarks Monday evening at the White Houses July Fourth event, said that he had spoken to both Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering and that federal assistance was already being deployed. Weve got to get this under control, Biden said before he led the crowd in a brief moment of silence for the victims and their families.

In Highland Park, Rotering thanked police officers for their fast response.

"Our community has been terrorized by an act of violence thats shaken us to our core," she said.

The city said in a statement late Monday that it is working with local school and parks officials to offer counseling services Tuesday to students, education staff members and community members affected by the violence. It will be available at Highland Park High School on a walk-in basis from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., city spokesperson Amanda Civitello said.

Fourth of July events in other Chicago suburbs  Evanston, Deerfield and Skokie  were called off in the wake of the shooting.

"Theres a lot of communities that are not looking forward to celebrating after something like this happens right in their backyard," Covelli said.

Pritzker, the governor, was at a planned Evanston event when the Highland Park shooting unfolded.

"There are no words for the kind of monster who lies in wait and fires into a crowd of families and children celebrating a holiday with their community," Pritzker said in a statement.

"I will stand firm with Illinoisans and Americans: we must  and we will  end this plague of gun violence."

It was the third major mass shooting in the U.S. since May.

Ten Black people were killed in Buffalo, New York, on May 14 when a white gunman, allegedly motivated by racial hate, opened fire at Tops Friendly Market.

Less than two weeks after the Buffalo massacre, 19 children and two teachers were gunned down at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, about 80 miles west of San Antonio.

The shootings pushed Congress to pass legislation aimed at gun control, which Biden signed into law on June 25.

The bill, the most sweeping legislation aimed at preventing gun violence in 30 years, provides grants to states for red flag laws, enhances background checks to include juvenile records and closes the boyfriend loophole by keeping guns away from unmarried dating partners convicted of abuse.

It will also require enhanced background checks for people ages 18 to 21 and funding for youth mental health services.

David K. Li reported from New York City, Natasha Korecki from Highland Park, Illinois, and Dennis Romero from California.
After more than four months of ferocious fighting, Russia claimed a key victory: full control over one of the two provinces in Ukraines eastern industrial heartland.

But Moscows rout of the last remaining bulwark of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk province came at a steep price. The critical question now is whether Russia can muster enough strength for a new offensive to complete its seizure of the Donbas and make gains elsewhere in Ukraine.

Yes, the Russians have seized the Luhansk region, but at what price? asked Oleh Zhdanov, a military analyst in Ukraine, noting that some Russian units involved in the battle lost up to a half their soldiers.

Even President Vladimir Putin acknowledged Monday that Russian troops involved in action in Luhansk need to take some rest and beef up their combat capability.

That raises doubts about whether Moscow's forces and their separatist allies are ready to quickly thrust deeper into Donetsk, the other province that makes up the Donbas. Observers estimated in recent weeks that Russia controlled about half of Donetsk, and battle lines have changed little since then.

What happens in the Donbas could determine the course of the war. If Russia succeeds there, it could free up its forces to grab even more land and dictate the terms of any peace agreement. If Ukraine, on the other hand, manages to pin the Russians down for a protracted period, it could build up the resources for a counteroffensive.

Exhausting the Russians has long been part of the plan for the Ukrainians, who began the conflict outgunned  but hoped Western weapons could eventually tip the scales in their favor.

They are already effectively using heavy howitzers and advanced rocket systems sent by the U.S. and other Western allies, and more is on the way. But Ukrainian forces have said they remain badly outmatched.

This photo taken from video provided by Ramzan Kadyrov's Official Telegram channel released on Saturday, July 2, 2022, shows Russian troops including soldiers of Chechen regiment waving Russian and Chechen republic national flags as they pose for a photo in front of a destroyed building in Lysychansk, Ukraine.

Ukraines Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said recently that Russian forces were firing 10 times more ammunition than the Ukrainian military.

After a failed attempt at a lightning advance on the capital of Kyiv in the opening weeks of the war, Russian forces withdrew from many parts of northern and central Ukraine and turned their attention to the Donbas, a region of mines and factories where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.

Since then, Russia has adopted a slow-and-steady approach that allowed it to seize several remaining Ukrainian strongholds in Luhansk over the course of recent weeks.

Zhdanov, the analyst, predicted that the Russians would likely rely on their edge in firepower to apply the same scorched earth tactics and blast the entire cities away in Donetsk. The same day that Russia claimed it had taken the last major city in Luhansk, new artillery attacks were reported in cities in Donetsk.

But Russia's approach is not without drawbacks. Moscow has not given a casualty count since it said some 1,300 troops were killed in the first month of fighting, but Western officials have said that was just a fraction of real losses. Since then, Western observers have noted that the number of Russian troops involved in combat in Ukraine has dwindled, reflecting both heavy attrition and the Kremlins failure to fill up the ranks.

The Russian military has relied heavily on separatists

The limited manpower has forced the Russian commanders to avoid ambitious attempts to encircle large areas in the Donbas, opting for smaller maneuvers and relying on heavy artillery barrages to slowly force the Ukrainians to retreat.

The military has also relied heavily on separatists, who have conducted several rounds of mobilization, and Western officials and analysts have said Moscow has increasingly engaged private military contractors. It has also tried to encourage the Russian men who have done their tour of duty to sign up again, though it's is unclear how successful that has been.

While Putin so far has refrained from declaring a broad mobilization that might foment social discontent, recently proposed legislation suggested that Moscow was looking for other ways to replenish the ranks. The bill would have allowed young conscripts, who are drafted into the army for a year and barred from fighting, to immediately switch their status and sign contracts to become full professional soldiers. The draft was shelved amid strong criticism.

Relatives of servicemen who died during the Russian Special military operation in Donbas pose for a photo holding portraits of Russian soldiers killed during a fighting in Ukraine.

Some Western officials and analysts have argued that attrition is so heavy that it could force Moscow to suspend its offensive at some point later in the summer, but the Pentagon has cautioned that even though Russia has been churning through troops and supplies at rapid rates it still has abundant resources.

U.S. director of national intelligence Avril Haines said Putin appeared to accept the slow pace of the advance in the Donbas and now hoped to win by crushing Ukraine's most battle-hardened forces.

We believe that Russia thinks that if they are able to crush really one of the most capable and well-equipped forces in the east of Ukraine ... that will lead to a slump basically in the Ukrainian resistance and that that may give them greater opportunities, Haines said.

If Russia wins in the Donbas, it could build on its seizure of the southern Kherson region and part of the neighboring Zaporizhzhia to try to eventually cut Ukraine off from its Black Sea coast all the way to the Romanian border. If that succeeded, it would deal a crushing blow to the Ukrainian economy and also create a corridor to Moldova's separatist region of Transnistria that hosts a Russian military base.

But that is far from assured. Mykola Sunhurovsky of the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv-based think tank, predicted that growing supplies of heavy Western weapons, including HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, will help Ukraine turn the tide of the war.

The supplies of weapons will allow Ukraine to start a counteroffensive in the south and fight for Kherson and other cities, Sunhurovsky said.

But Ukraine has also faced massive personnel losses: up to 200 soldiers a day in recent weeks of ferocious fighting in the east, according to officials.

Overall, local military balance in Donbas favors Russia, but long term trends still favor Ukraine, wrote Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military and program director at the Virginia-based CNA think tank. However, that estimate is conditional on sustained Western military assistance, and is not necessarily predictive of outcomes. This is likely to be a protracted war.
RAMALLAH, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Palestine on Monday rejected the results of the ballistic investigation attended by U.S. experts into the gunshot that killed veteran Palestinian-American journalist in northern West Bank in May.

Earlier in the day, the Israeli army announced that the investigation could not determine the party responsible for the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the reporter of the Qatari Al-Jazeera news channel in the Palestinian territories.

Palestinian presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement that the Palestinian side "holds Israel fully responsible for the killing of Abu Akleh" and called on the United States "to maintain its credibility."

On Saturday, the bullet that killed Abu Akleh was received by Michael Wenzel, the U.S. security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, for a professional and independent ballistic examination.

The ballistic test was conducted in an Israeli forensic laboratory with experienced representatives from the United States attending all the stages of the test to determine the weapon from which it was fired, the Israeli military said in a statement.

"Despite the efforts made, it has been found that in light of the condition of the bullet and the quality of the markings on it, it is not possible to determine whether the bullet was fired from the weapon tested or not," the statement added.

By summarizing both Israeli and Palestinian investigations, the U.S. security coordinator said in a statement that gunfire from Israeli positions was "likely responsible" for the death of Abu Akleh but no reason was found "to believe that this was intentional."

Abu Rudeineh said that the Palestinian side "won't accept, under any circumstances, the tampering with the outcome of the Palestinian investigation."

"We will pursue the case of her (Abu Akleh) assassination in international courts, especially before the Criminal Court," he added.

Abu Akleh, 51, a Palestinian Christian born in Jerusalem, was shot by a live bullet in the head on May 11 while covering an Israeli army incursion into the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.

The incident drew widespread Palestinian, Arab and international condemnation. 
Update: Police on Tuesday said Nasya Molina has been found and is safe.

The Kansas City Police Department is looking for a local teenager who left her home around 3 p.m. on Sunday to attend a concert, but never arrived.

Nasya Molina, 15, was last seen in the area of N. Walrond Avenue and 41st Street.

Anyone with information about Molinas location can contact KCPDs juvenile division at 816-234-5150 or call 911.
Accusations of misappropriated funds  $50,000 in one transaction that allegedly involved his wife  and ghosting the Florida Bar after five clients filed grievances earned Miami attorney Robert Pereda an emergency suspension that goes into effect July 17.

The registered number for Peredas Rob Law firm office in Orlandos Celebration area is disconnected. His LinkedIn page says hes one of the founders of Miami Bankruptcy Group, but that firms website doesnt list him as an attorney nor is he in the staff photo.

Rob Laws address listed with the Florida Bar and state corporation records, 1420 Celebration Blvd., Suite 200, now also appears in state records as the address of the Foundation for Empowerment & Enlightenment via Literature & Education, registered Nov. 17, 2021. Pereda is listed as the still-active corporations chief executive officer. Peredas wife, Zsa Zsa Pereda, is the chief operating officer. An Alexander Acosta from Coral Gables is listed as the chief financial officer.

What happened to the $50,000?

Enrique Valcarcel told the Florida Bar he met in August with both Peredas about negotiating the sale of a South Miami-Dade home in foreclosure at 10705 SW 138th St., owned by Sol Wireless Group. Valcarcel was representing the interests of Sol president Carlos Pino.

Valcarcel said Robert Pereda told him the lender in question wanted documentation that Pino didnt have easily available. So Zsa Zsa Pereda, Valcarcel said, requested $50,000.00 from him as a good faith deposit to show the lender in order to obtain more time to resolve Mr. Pinos and Sol Wireless Groups foreclosure matter.

On Sept. 7, Valcarcel transferred $50,000 into Rob Laws Chase Bank account.

Valcarcel said after several failed meetings with Pereda  he always had an excuse to miss previous appointments and he always had a family member hospitalized  he asked for the $50,000 back. Pereda told him he would get it to him after the closing or when the lender received the property.

Valcarcel said he didnt see Pereda again.

A Florida Bar examination of the Rob Law trust account said that $50,000 left the account from Sept. 13 through Nov. 8 via online transfers to Rob Laws operating account and Peredas personal account. Out of the latter account, he paid FPL, Publix, AC Auto Repair and shopped on Apple.com and sent Zelle payments.

By Nov. 12, bank records included with the suspension request show Rob Laws trust account balance was zero, the operating account balance was $113.10 underwater and Peredas personal account was $574.03 in the red.

A subpoena in March for trust account records since January 2021 has been ignored.

Money for nothing?

When Valcarcel went by Peredas office in February, eight days after another lawyer handled the matter and the Southwest 138th Street house was sold, he saw nothing inside. But, he did see a note on the door from Juana Castellanos, claiming Pereda had scammed her.

Castellanos ($2,000), Georgette Livia ($500), Oscar Zapata ($2,000) and Ramses Brito Diaz ($2,500) said they paid Robert Pereda to handle their bankruptcy cases, but he ignored their cases and ignored them. The Florida Bar said Pereda ignored its requests for response to the four grievances.

A little bankruptcy work for one client  his wife

Online Miami-Dade property records say Zsa Zsa Pereda sold their four-bedroom, three-bathroom residence in Juniper at the Hammocks to Ohio company Advanced Basement Products in February. The price: $122,000.

Court documents from U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge A. Jay Cristol included with the emergency suspension petition indicates this was a foreclosure sale. Cristol wrote Pereda filed three prior cases on behalf of his wife, all of which had filing deficiencies. Pereda didnt fix those or pay filing fees owed before the couple pulled a joint no-show for a May 19 hearing.

Cristol referred Pereda to the Bar for investigation into client abandonment and the serial bare-bones bankruptcy filings on behalf of this Debtor, presumably Mr. Peredas spouse, abusing the process and the laws and stopping foreclosure sales on multiple occasions.
Days after one of his campaign banners was defaced with a homophobic slur, local activist and county legislature candidate Justice Horn unveiled a policy plan to support the LGBTQ+ community in Jackson County if he is elected.

A banner advertising Horns campaign to represent the 1st District in the Jackson County Legislature was defaced with an anti-gay slur over the weekend near Emmanuel Cleaver II Boulevard and Campbell Avenue. Horn is the only openly gay candidate running for local office.

Looking beyond this instance and at the pattern of hate Ive seen on the campaign trail over the past year and half, youll see exactly why Im always talking about my experience as a young, gay, Black man, he said during a news conference Tuesday morning. This sort of thing never stops.

Horn tweeted a photo in front of the banner Sunday, after getting a call from the daughter of one of his campaign team members about the vandalism. He said two people have said they saw someone spray-painting the sign around 2:30 p.m. Sunday. By Tuesday, he said, the banner had been stolen, but the zip ties used to hold it up are still there.

Horn hasnt filed a police report yet, but he plans to talk with the Jackson County Prosecutors Office and report it to the FBI as a hate crime.

Justice Horn, center, a candidate for the Jackson County Legislature, speaks about the vandalism of one of his campaign signs over the weekend. He is joined by campaign manager Gabrielle Stanley, right.

Protections for LGBTQ+ community

Horn said while Kansas City is considered a safe haven for LGBTQ+ people, incidents like this show that more needs to be done to protect the queer community.

The LGBTQ+ Protection Policy Plan he announced Tuesday included a ban on conversion therapy in Jackson County and protections for reproductive and gender affirming health care for county employees.

Its time to stop rainbow washing and advocating for LGBTQ+ people just during pride month, Horn said. And with the extremism at the state level in Missouri, it is way past time for Jackson County to take further steps towards the protecting of the LGBTQ+ community.

The plan also includes processes for incarcerated people in Jackson County Detention Center to be grouped by gender identity instead of assigned sex, which Horn says will reduce violence against LGBTQ+ people. Horn also hopes to supply all county-owned facilities with personal hygiene products.

Horn said this isnt the first time he has been called an anti-gay slur or the N-word while on the campaign trail. He was surprised by the support he received, but he also noticed those who didnt reach out.

After reaching out to all local campaigns telling them about the news conference Tuesday, Horn said four candidates and elected officials responded and attended, including Assistant Minority Leader Richard Brown, Jackson County Executive Candidate Stacy Lake and City Council candidates Erik Dickinson and Crissy Dastrup.

Horn helped organize protests following the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 Minneapolis. This is the first time he is running for elected office.
A bear cub was spotted wandering Connecticut with a container on its head  and wildlife officials had no time to waste.

The bear cub was found with a clear and tight, plastic container stuck on its head in June, Connecticut Fish and Wildlife said.

Given the warm weather and tight fit of the container, it was important to try and free the cub quickly, wildlife officials said in a news release.

The bear was in a tree when biologists arrived on scene. They waited for the bear to get down from the tree and then tranquilized the cub.

Wildlife officials removed the plastic container and saved the bear.

Fortunately, the bear did not sustain any injuries from the container, officials said. Once freed, the cub quickly found its mother who was waiting nearby.

Its not uncommon for bears to get stuck in peoples trash.

In Tennessee, a black bear cub was found with a plastic food container on its head. Wildlife officials used a ladder to climb up a tree to reach the bear, McClatchy News previously reported.

Rescuers removed the container and took the bear to a facility to recover.

Connecticut Fish and Wildlife said people can help prevent similar incidents from happening by securing their trash and recyclables.

Whether it be balloons, fishing line, or plastic containers, wildlife can often ingest or become entangled in improperly disposed or stored items, officials said.

Watch this huge bear stick a perfect landing while diving into rushing Alaska river

Homeowners find bear cub in kitchen. It had to be euthanized, Colorado officials say

Grizzly mauls hiker during surprise encounter in Wyoming mountains, officials say
If you oppose abortion, do not have one. What politicians and judges should not get to do is make this deeply personal choice for millions of Americans.

The Supreme Court last week in Dobbs v Jackson overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped women of a right we have had for almost 50 years. Kentucky children and grandchildren now have less rights than their moms and grandmothers had.

The Kentucky legislature recently passed legislation banning abortion in our commonwealth with no exceptions for rape or incest. I watched this legislation pass through a committee on which I was the only woman legislator.

I want to be crystal clear: This legislation means that, for example, a 12-year-old girl who is a victim of sexual abuse will be forced to carry to carry her rapists baby to term. This is not a hypothetical. One of my jobs in college was working at what was then called a home for unwed mothers. I had a 13-year-old girl there who was pregnant with her second baby. I had to supervise visits between a 16-year-old girl and the father of her babywho was also her father.

I am a practicing physician. I look at ultrasounds every day. I do not need lectures about when life begins. Have you ever seen a woman in sepsis after a botched, illegal abortion? I have and it is horrific.

We know abortion will continue whether or not it is legal in Kentucky. Kentuckians will now have to choose whether they can afford the expenses required to seek medical assistance hundreds of miles away from their home. Others will be forced to remain pregnant for nine months and then give birth in a state that actively passes legislation that especially hurts the most vulnerable in our Commonwealthlow-income single parents and their children.

Last session, Republicans passed bills to make access to food assistance more difficult, reduced unemployment insurance, and refused to hear legislation for universal pre-kindergarten. When people claim to be pro-life and refuse to pass bills to alleviate the struggles of working parents, we know that their ban is simply a grab for control.

I am Jewish. My faith teaches that the life of the parent takes precedence and that life begins when a baby crowns. I do not expect Kentuckians of other faith traditions to share this belief; I simply ask that the law respects the teachings of other religions and allows me and other Kentuckians to follow our own conscience and faith. Abortion is healthcare. Your religious beliefs should not have the power to control my reproductive health.

I will say again. If you oppose abortion, do not get one. That is your right. This is a deeply personal decision that has moral, ethical and religious components for many people. This is a decision a woman should make in consultation with her doctor and, if she chooses, her family and faith leaderstaking into account her own circumstances. It is not a decision for politicians in Frankfort or Washington D.C., and certainly not for justices on the Supreme Court.

As sad, angry, and frustrated as we are, we knew this decision was coming. Republicans have been plotting and organizing for years to overturn Roe. With Kentuckys trigger ban in effect, the near future looks bleak. And now they have made it clear that they are now coming after birth control and marriage equality. But hopelessness has no place in the fight back. It will be a long battle to restore what has been taken from us. We need an organized movement to match the machine that stripped our right to control our own bodies. The election is on Nov. 8. Spread the word, tell your community, and get out to vote this fall like your rights depend on it. They actually do.

State Rep. Karen Berg represents the 26th District of Jefferson County.
A search is underway for a gunman after an overnight shooting at a popular nightclub in the Vista, the Columbia Police Department said Tuesday.

A 21-year-old man was shot at Social Bar & Lounge, police said in a news release. The nightclub is in the 900 block of Gervais Street, less than a mile from the South Carolina State House.

Officers responded to reports of a shooting at the nightclub at about 1 a.m., and found the man was shot in the arm/hand area, according to the release.

Officers applied a tourniquet before EMS took the man to an area hospital, police said. The injury is not considered life threatening, according to police. Further information on his condition was not available.

No other injuries were reported.

There was no word on a shooter, or a motive for the gunfire.

No arrests have been reported by police, whose Violent Crimes Against Persons Unit is investigating the shooting. Police said they are examining surveillance camera footage in an attempt to identify and locate the shooter.

Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to call CrimeStoppers at 888-CRIME-SC or submit an online tip.
As thousands watched the city of Monroes fireworks display late Monday, shots rang out nearby, police said.

No one was reported shot, and police hope the public will help identify the perpetrators.

Officers were on scene within seconds of the initial calls being received but were unable to find whoever fired the shots, police Chief Bryan Gilliard said in a Facebook post Tuesday.

There were no reports of injuries, Gilliard said.

Union County Communications received multiple calls of shots fired in the area of East Jefferson Street and North Church Street,near Belk Tonawanda Park where the city holds the annual festivities, the chief said.

Last night, unfortunately, we experienced some unlawful and harmful behavior by a small fraction of folks in attendance, according to Gilliards Facebook post.

An additional 50 police officers were on duty during the July 4 festivities, both uniformed and plain-clothed, the chief said.

Even with the additional manpower, officers faced with multiple incidents around the fireworks festivities that required increased response from officers and increased wait times for non-priority calls to be addressed.

In response to questions from The Charlotte Observer, city spokesman Pete Hovanec said the shots were fired near the end of the fireworks show.

Jordon Willard told WSOC what he heard between the bursts of fireworks across the railroad tracks wasnt part of the show.

We heard about six or seven consecutive gunshots, he said. And it seemed like there were bullets that were hitting, ricocheting off of either the tracks or containers on the tracks.

A few thousand people were near where the shots were fired, Hovanec said.

It is very hard to have an exact number as the crowd of people are positioned in the park as well as around the blocks surrounding the park to view the fireworks, Hovanec said in an email.

Police arent 100% certain if those who fired the shots were part of the crowd, Hovanec said.

There were many people there, and the shots were relatively close, but since we did not locate the suspects, we cant say for sure, he said.

Hovanec also said he couldnt say if a large panic with tons of people running ensued, but those closest to the gunshots moved away quickly.

No officers were present where the shots were fired, he said.

The shooting in Monroe happened as the nation remains on edge from mass shootings.

A gunman firing from a rooftop killed at least seven people and wounded 47 at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, McClatchy News reported.

The U.S. has experienced over 300 mass shootings this year, as listed on GunViolenceArchive.org.

Police urge anyone with information about the Monroe incident to call the department at 704-282-4700; Union County Crime Stoppers at 704-283-5600; or anonymously by texting MONROEPD and the tip to 847411; and via the website tip411.com.
The four lower Snake River dams are essential to meeting the Northwests climate goals to decarbonize the electric grid by 2045, says a new analysis commissioned by Northwest RiverPartners.

The analysis finds that breaching the four dams from Ice Harbor near the Tri-Cities upriver to Lower Granite Dam near Lewiston, Idaho, would require $15 billion to replace energy, but that greenhouse gas emissions still likely would increase.

The analysis demonstrates that if we are serious about reaching our climate goals, dams on the lower Snake River must remain operational, said Kurt Miller, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners.

The analysis, by Energy GPS Consulting for Northwest RiverPartners, was released less than two weeks before the comment period ends on a draft report commissioned by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray, both democrats, which found that breaching the dams was doable.

Murray and Inslee will use the final report to make a recommendation about the future of the dams.

Their study put the cost not just of replacing energy from the hydropower dams and stabilizing the grid, but replacing other benefits, including irrigation and shipping by barge, at $10.3 billion to $27.2 billion, plus possible other as yet unknown costs.

The high end of the estimate is still below a proposal by U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, in early 2021 to spend $33.5 billion to replace or mitigate lost benefits of removing the lower Snake River dams. Replacing the energy lost would cost $10 billion, plus $2 billion to optimize the efficiency and resiliency of the electric grid, according to the proposal.

Water from the Snake River rushes down a fish ladder at Lower Monumental Dam on the Snake River.

Breaching or tearing down the federal dams has been considered for decades as a way to help endangered salmon, but the proposal is gaining support in Washington, D.C., and in Western Washington.

The June 9 report commissioned by Inslee and Murray concluded that breaching the dams would have the highest likelihood of removing salmon from Endangered Species Act listing and maintain tribal treaty obligations, compared with other proposals. However, it also acknowledged that factors unrelated to the dams have contributed to salmon declines.

The Inslee/Murray report said that the four lower Snake dams have multiple energy benefits, including providing clean energy and stabilizing the electric grid but that they could be replaced by wind and solar electricity production, coupled with energy storage and energy efficiency.

Breaching dams and clean energy

But the cost would be high, both in dollars and the clean energy future of the West, according to the report commissioned by Northwest RiverPartners.

The organization is made up of agencies dependent on the dams, including Tri-Cities area utilities such as the Benton and Franklin PUDs and the Benton REA.

Washington state law mandates decarbonizing electrical generation by 2045 and Oregon law requires that goal to be met by 2040, already a herculean task, according to Northwest RiverPartners.

Meeting the clean energy requirements of states in the Western Power Pool Region Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and part of northern California  will require an additional 160,000 megawatts of clean power, according to the new report.

That will cost $142 billion for new infrastructure as changes are made to the electricity production mix, such as retiring coal and natural gas plants and adding wind and solar production.

The analysis said that cost estimate could be low because it does not consider factors such as new long-distance, high voltage transmission infrastructure and increased demand as buildings and cars and trucks shift to electric use.

It also does not consider whether enough land will be available for the significant expansion of wind and solar production.

Four hydroelectric dams on the Snake River in Eastern Washington are proposed to be removed or breached to improve salmon runs.

Breaching the dams would require an additional 14,900 megawatts of new generation and batteries, the analysis said.

This is 23% of the Pacific Northwests current generation capacity and enough to power 15 cities the size of Seattle, according to Northwest RiverPartners.

It attributed the high generation capacity estimate to the need to have power available when demand peaks and the inefficiencies of wind and solar electricity production, which generally produce intermittent power at the same times.

Even if the region doubles its pace of adding renewable energy infrastructure, it is unlikely that state goals can be met until 2076, the analysis concluded.

It would cause emissions in the Pacific Northwest to increase by 145 million tons of carbon dioxide to maintain grid reliability, the analysis said. That includes an additional 5.5 million to 8.4 million tons released into the atmosphere should the four hydroelectric dams be breached, the study said.

The current risk in not meeting our regions decarbonization goals is high, Miller said. Removing the Snake River dams increases that risk to the breaking point.

Comment on dam breaching

Online comments on the Inslee/Murray report that concluded breaching the dams is possible, but expensive, can be submitted through the project website: lsrdoptions.org. Emailed comments can be sent to info@lsrdoptions.org with the email subject line Draft LSRD Benefit Replacement Study.

Comments also may be mailed to Draft LSRD Benefit Replacement Study c/o Ross Strategic, 1325 Fourth Ave., Suite 1600, Seattle, WA 98101.
The Queen is hoping to personally present the George Cross to the NHS next week.

Accompanied by the Prince of Wales, the monarch will welcome the chief executives of the National Health Services of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and a frontline worker from each of the home nations to Windsor Castle on July 12.

Buckingham Palace said the monarch, who has ongoing mobility problems, is planning to attend the audience, but a final decision will be made on the day.

The 96-year-old head of state, joined by Charles, is set to present the award and meet the key workers.

Staff working on a Covid intensive care unit at Kings College Hospital in south London (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

The announcement of the audience coincided with the 74th anniversary of the NHSs foundation.

The Queen awarded the NHS the prestigious bravery award exactly a year ago for its courage, compassion and dedication during the pandemic and throughout the 70-plus years since its foundation.

The George Cross was instituted by her father George VI in September 1940 during the height of the Blitz.

It is granted in recognition of acts of the greatest heroism or of the most courage in circumstances of extreme danger and recognises actions by civilians and military personnel not in the face of the enemy.

The award of the George Cross by the Queen is made on the advice of the George Cross Committee and the Prime Minister, and this marks only the third occasion on which it has been awarded to a collective body, country or organisation, rather than an individual.

The Prince of Wales will accompany the Queen at the audience (Jane Barlow/PA)

In her message, on Windsor Castle-headed paper last July on the 73rd anniversary of the NHSs foundation, the Queen wrote: It is with great pleasure, on behalf of a grateful nation, that I award the George Cross to the National Health Services of the United Kingdom.

This award recognises all NHS staff, past and present, across all disciplines and all four nations.

Over more than seven decades, and especially in recent times, you have supported the people of our country with courage, compassion and dedication, demonstrating the highest standards of public service.

You have our enduring thanks and heartfelt appreciation.

NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard said she was honoured to attend on behalf of NHS workers.

Amanda Pritchard (Jacob King/PA)

Under the most difficult of circumstances during the pandemic, our staff responded magnificently, she said.

They cared for more than 750,000 people with Covid-19 in hospitals and many more in the community, and designed and delivered the biggest and most successful NHS vaccination programme in history, saving hundreds of thousands of lives, she added.

Ms Pritchard said: Today, on the NHSs birthday, we are marking their extraordinary efforts in the face of adversity but also their dedication over the last 74 years.

The George Cross is for everyone working in every part of the NHS  our nurses, doctors, cleaners, paramedics, porters, therapists  and the entire team who make the NHS what it is today for millions of people and their families.

In 1942, the George Cross was conferred on Malta by George VI, in recognition of the fortitude displayed by the islands inhabitants during enemy bombardments in the Second World War.

And in 1999, the Queen awarded the George Cross to the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland, in recognition of the forces bravery, including the families of those serving.

The most recent recipient of the George Cross is Dominic Troulan, a retired British Army officer and former Royal Marine.

Mr Troulan was awarded the George Cross in June 2017 for his actions during the 2013 Westgate shopping centre attack in Nairobi, Kenya.
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JERUSALEM, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on Tuesday that Iran's military has been entrenching itself in the Red Sea, posing a "direct threat" to regional peace and global trade.

Speaking at a conference in the Greek capital of Athens, Gantz presented satellite images of four Iranian warships patrolling in the Red Sea in recent months, said a statement issued by Gantz's office.

"We can confirm that Iran is methodically basing itself in the Red Sea, with warships patrolling the southern region," the minister said, adding that the activity monitored over the past months has been the most significant Iranian military presence in the area in the past decade.

"It is a direct threat to international trade, energy supply, and the global economy," he said. "It is also a direct threat to peace and stability in the maritime arena, which may affect the Mediterranean and beyond," he said.

Israel and several Gulf countries share concerns over Iran's activities in the Middle East, including its nuclear program, which Israel says aims at building nuclear weapons though Iran maintains that it is peaceful.

The Israeli defense chief's remarks came ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden's trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia in mid-July. Israel hopes the White House will help to warm up its ties with Saudi Arabia in a bid to front of possible Iranian attacks. 
YEREVAN, JULY 5, ARMENPRESS. To honor and support the heroic, inspiring, and strong people of Artsakh who choose to raise future generations in their Homeland

This is the motto of the "Ser Artsakh" charity program initiated by "Anna Astvatsaturian" Foundation: to bring love to all those Artsakh families living in such difficult conditions.

All the items included in the gift boxes that are provided to the mothers of Artsakh in the framework of the "Ser Artsakh" Program: onesies, pajama sets, sleeping sacks, towels and blankets, health care essentials (diapers, wipes, baby shampoo, thermometer and pacifier), as well as maternity hygiene necessities for the new mother, custom-made soft baby book and a wooden wheeled toy are made in Armenia or Artsakh. In Artsakh, they are carefully packaged and delivered to maternity hospitals right in time for the next baby to be born, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Foundation.

There are three maternity hospitals in Artsakh: Martakert, Martuni and Stepanakert. Since the launch of the program, 161 children, 10 of them in Martakert, 6 in Martuni, have received their gift-boxes. Among the newborns were 2 sets of twins, a pair of beautiful sisters and a pair of brothers with their grandfather's strength in the veins.

Victoria is one of the most common names: parents hope that the choice of the child's name will be decisive in the fate of both the child and Artsakh.

"The news about the donation of 18 boxes in one day made me very happy. When mothers told me how helpful these items are for them to raise these babies that was the moment when I realized how important for the diaspora to keep donating to maintain the continuity of this project," said Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte, president of the "Anna Astvatsaturian" Foundation, and added, "Despite my childhood of a refugee from Baku, I was taught by my parents to always work toward more out of life. With this project, I choose to do the same in Artsakh. Armenian children and their future are my constant focus and I will never stop expecting and working toward a better future for them.

An individualized approach is taken with each mother. Working with Ministry of Health of Artsakh the Foundation is aware when these mothers will be checking out of the hospital. It is important to the Foundation that no baby leaves the hospital without receiving a gift box.

"Mothers always accept the gift with gratitude. Many are even waiting for our gift boxes. There was a case when a pregnant woman contacted us and informed that her child will be born in a few months. She asked us not to forget about her baby and to visit her with a box as well," Armine Vardanyan, representative of the "Anna Astvatsaturian" Foundation in Artsakh, recalls with a smile.

Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte is an American-Armenian writer, philanthropist, lawyer, elected official, president of the Westbrook City council and the president of the "Anna Astvatsaturian'' foundation. Anna also is an author of a book "Nowhere, a Story of Exile, 2012"based on her diaries which she wrote as an 11 year old child escaping the Baku massacres. In 2013 Anna spearheaded a successful recognition of Artsakh at the state of Maine legislature. Since then Astvatsaturian Turcotte has implemented a number of charitable programs in Armenia and Artsakh. In 2020 she founded the Anna Astvatsaturian Charitable Foundation. One of the fund's major projects is the "Artsakh War 2020: Losses, Challenges - Opportunities for resistance development'' survey conducted after the 44-day war.
NICOSIA, July 5 (Xinhua) - A new species of the warbler family of birds, the African desert warbler (Curruca deserti), has been spotted for the first time ever in Cyprus, an environmentalist said here on Tuesday.

Thomas Hadjikyriakou, manager at the Akrotiri Environmental Education and Information Center near the southern city of Limassol, said this bird was not expected to be seen in Cyprus as it is a resident species and its normal habitat is the African desert, 2,000 kilometers away.

He said the bird was first sighted on April 19, 2021, and was officially announced on Tuesday by the Akrotiri center after being confirmed by the Cyprus Rare Birds Committee as the first of its species in Cyprus.

"The African desert warbler was recorded on the west side of the Akrotiri peninsula. The observation lasted for about two hours, during which the species was monitored and photographed," Hadjikyriakou said.

The bird was seen feeding in the local vegetation, which includes different kinds of juniper trees and thyme shrubs.

"The bird usually prefers sandy deserts sparsely vegetated with low shrubs and grasses, and this is why we did not expect it to be seen at Akrotiri. It feeds mostly on small insects, berries and seeds, foraging mostly on the ground and in low vegetation," Hadjikyriakou said.

The African warbler is a small desert sand-colored non-migratory bird with a length of just 11.5 cm.

The Akrotiri center operates within the Akrotiri peninsula, where the bird was spotted. The peninsula is an important ecosystem area, which includes marshlands that host several species of local and migratory birds. 
YEREVAN, JULY 5, ARMENPRESS. The US administration has again reaffirmed the circumvention of Resolution 907 of the Freedom Support Act, which blocks direct military aid to Azerbaijan, ARMENPRESS reports Brad Sherman, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a member of the Congressional Armenian Caucus, expressed his disagreement with the decision in an interview with "Voice of America".

"We should not abandon Resolution 907 and provide any assistance to oil-rich Azerbaijan, which has unleashed an aggressive war. The aid we provide is not large, but I think it is important diplomatically, so it should be stopped," said the congressman.

In his opinion, American aid for humanitarian projects in Artsakh should be increased, and Armenia should be given the opportunity to be included in the "Millennium Challenge" program.

"The World Bank ranked Armenia among those with above average income. I would like it to be so, but we have to take into account the economic consequences of the terrible war, the coronavirus epidemic," he said.
YEREVAN, JULY 5, ARMENPRESS. Fly Arna, Armenias national airline and a joint venture company between the Armenian National Interests Fund (ANIF) and Air Arabia Group, today announced the launch of its second commercial flight between Yerevan in Armenia and Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, ARMENPRESS was informed from Fly Arna.

The inaugural flight G6 503 took off from Zvartnots International Airport at 11:00 am and landed in Sharm El Sheikh International Airport at 12:25 pm local time and it will continue to operate three flights weekly between the two airports. In the attendance of Fly Arnas team along with representatives from Zvartnots International Airport, the Civil Aviation Committee, an inaugural ceremony was held in celebration of the start of the second destination of Fly Arna.

Fly Arnas spokesperson, Gayane Antonyan, said: We are extremely excited to be operating Fly Arnas second destination to Sharm el-Sheikh; another popular leisure destination for travelers. This new service will give our passengers the opportunity to discover the amazing city and its marvelous charms. Motivated by our happy and excited passengers to have their new national airlines, we now look forward to announcing many exciting new destinations in the nearest future.

Commercial Schedule:

Schedule to Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport, effective July 4, 2022 (all times local):

Flight Departure Time Arrival Time Aircraft Frequency G6 503 Yerevan 11:00 Sharm el-Sheikh 12:25 Airbus A320 Mon, Wed, Sat G6 504 Sharm el-Sheikh 13:05 Yerevan 18:05 Airbus A320 Mon, Wed, Sat

Sharm el-Sheikh is one of the most popular touristic destinations in Egypt. The city is known for its gorgeous views of incredible mountains, clear waters, and amazing aquatic life. Sharm el-Sheikh has the most amazing underwater scenery that attracts thousands of visitors every year. Beyond that, the city offers visitors many world class hotels, spas, restaurants as well as beautiful markets filled with exquisite jewelry, leather goods, and handcraft souvenirs.

Customers can now book their direct flights between Yerevan and Sharm el-Sheikh by visiting Fly Arnas website (www.flyarna.com), calling the call center (+374 41 38 00 83) or through travel agencies.

Fly Arna is continuously working on expanding its network and will soon announce the new destinations the airline will operate to.

About Fly Arna

Fly Arna is Armenias national airline and a joint venture company between the Armenian National Interests Fund (ANIF) and Air Arabia Group. Based in Zvartnots International Airport (EVN) in Yerevan, Fly Arna follows the successful low-cost business model operated by Air Arabia Group that focuses on offering comfort, reliability, and value-for-money air travel. For further information, please visit: www.flyarna.com
by Mahmoud Fouly

CAIRO, July 5 (Xinhua) -- The large gate of Fustat Pottery Village looked like an entrance to a unique world of traditional handicraft, where dozens of highly artistic items were displayed during the largest pottery festival in Egypt's capital Cairo.

Entitled Clay Jewellers, the three-day festival, which concluded on Tuesday, exhibited a variety of pottery and ceramic works, such as handmade pots, mugs, teacups, bowls and vases, for both actual home use and decoration.

"I have been working in pottery for 60 years since I was a boy. I do both clay shaping and clay mold designs," Youssef Mohamed Taha told Xinhua.

"I am happy to see many visitors during the festival," the 75-year-old veteran pottery maker said.

Located south of Cairo, the village has been famous for handmade pottery production for decades.

It was developed into the new Fustat Pottery Village in late 2021 as a tourist attraction as part of the government's development plan for Cairo's old districts and strategy to support handicraft.

"The development of the pottery village is a leap for us as craftsmen. It's great to feel that the village is getting the government's attention and care," Taha told Xinhua.

The renovated village, home to more than 150 pottery workshops, is considered Egypt's center for traditional pottery making.

The basic material these workshops use for pottery making is clay from Upper Egypt's Aswan and natural colors.

"I inherited the profession from my father and I further studied pottery and its history," said Mohamed Khalil Mandour, a 29-year-old pottery maker, adding the festival helps promote the village and its products.

As one of the oldest handicrafts dating back to the predynastic times of ancient Egypt, the pottery also passes on ancient history as wall carvings do, said Mandour.

Apart from displaying pottery items, the festival also provided fun experiences for visitors, who can make and color pottery items themselves.

Nader Mahrous, a pottery workshop owner, had dozens of children learning pottery making at his booth as part of the activities of the festival.

"This is an initiative to promote the craft among new generations. We have divided it into two parts: one for clay shaping and the other for coloring," Mahrous explained, noting a free training course will be provided for children who have talents.

"The government's development of the village, the establishment of a pottery school and this festival itself are signs of a hopeful renaissance here," said the pottery workshop owner.

Marilyn Musaad, a young woman who visited the village with her friends, had a great time at the festival.

"I made this ashtray. I liked the experience but it is really so difficult," she said with a laugh.

Ahmed el-Rouby, a 26-year-old visitor, said he felt so excited about all the handmade works in the village as he "really" likes them.

"I have seen those exhibited items and the actual process of making them during the festival. It was also nice to see them teaching children and adults who are interested in pottery making," the young man told Xinhua. 
Holiday announced for educational institutions in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts of Karnataka due to incessant rains

Mumbai: Mumbai and its adjoining areas witnessed heavy downpour on Tuesday morning, and the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted moderate to heavy rain in Mumbai and its suburbs over the next 24 hours, with a possibility of very heavy showers at isolated places, civic officials said.

The island city received an average 95.81 mm rainfall in the 24 hour period ending at 8 am on Tuesday, while the eastern and western suburbs recorded 115.09 mm and 116.73 mm rainfall, respectively, during the same period, they said.

The local train services, considered as the lifeline of Mumbai, were running normally on both the Central Railway and Western Railway routes, authorities said.

Over 75 lakh passengers from Mumbai and neighbouring districts travel in local trains every day.

"Trains on all corridors are running smoothly, though it's raining in the CSMT-Kurla-Thane section," the Central Railway's chief public relations officer Shivaji Sutar said.

The IMD has also predicted heavy to very heavy rain in neighbouring Thane district for the next few days.

On Monday, the IMD had issued a 'yellow alert' for Mumbai and Thane, predicting heavy to very heavy rain at isolated places over the next five days.

Meanwhile, a holiday has been declared for all educational institutions in Dakshina Kannada (DK) and Udupi districts in Karnataka on Tuesday in view of the continuing rains lashing the coastal region.

DK deputy commissioner K V Rajendra and Udupi DC M Kurma Rao declared the holiday in the respective districts.

Rajendra said the holiday has been declared considering the safety of students going to schools and colleges.

All private and government schools, colleges and degree colleges in Udupi will remain closed on Tuesday, Kurma Rao said.
Says freedom struggle not confined to a few families

Prime Minister Narendra Modi bowed his head before successor of Mallu Dora, who was follower of freedom fighter Alluru Seetharama Raju, during the Alluri's 125th birth anniversary celebrations at Peda Amiram in Bhimavaram of West Godavari district on Monday. From Left, Actor Chiranjeevi, Union Minister of Tourism G.Kishan Reddy, AP Governor B.Harichandan and Chief Minister Y.S.Jaganmohan Reddy are seen. (Photo: By Arrangement)

KAKINADA: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said that the freedom struggle against the British was waged by the entire society under the leadership of great leaders like Alluri Sitarama Raju and cannot be credited to few people or families. He also called upon people to transform India into a land that reflected the dreams of the freedom fighters.

As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of Independence, the responsibility is on every citizen to fulfil the dreams of the freedom fighters. Our New India should be an India of their dreams. Such India, where the poor, farmers, workers, backward classes, Adivasis and oppressed have equal opportunities, the Prime Minister said.

The Prime Minister was speaking at a large public meeting at Pedamiram in West Godavari district after unveiling a 30-feet bronze statue of legendary freedom fighter Alluri Sitarama Raju on his 125th birth anniversary.

Many unsung heroes like Kanneganti Hanumanthu, Kandukuri Veeresalingam Panthulu and Potti Sriramulu have sacrificed their lives for Indias freedom and we should remember them and recall their services forever,' said the Prime Minister at a meeting attended by Andhra Pradesh Governor Harichandan Biswabhusan, Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, Union tourism minister G. Kishan Reddy and former Union minister Chiranjeevi among others.

He also noted the contribution of Pingali Venkaiah, a freedom fighter from Andhra Pradesh, who designed the Tricolour', and said that people should remember and recall all their services forever.

Modi stole the show at the meeting by making initial remarks in Telugu. Manyam Veerudu Alluri Sitarama Raju Puttina Ee Nela Meedha Mimmalni Kalusukovadam Adhrushthamga Bhavistunnanu (I consider myself fortunate to meet you on the land where Manyam fighter Alluri Sitarama Raju was born, the Prime Minister said.

The audience cheered when the Prime Minister recalled the song, Telugu Veera Levara-Deeksha Buni Sagara which was penned by late Telugu poet SriSri (Srirangam Srinivasa Rao) for actor G. Krishna's Alluri Sitarama Raju movie.

The Prime Minister said Alluri Sitarama Raju's 125th birth anniversary should be celebrated in every village for the entire year.

He also observed, This is not only the occasion of the 125th birth anniversary of Alluri Sitarama Raju and the 75th anniversary of Indian Independence Day, but this year also marks the 100 years of the Rampa Rebellion which was led by those like Sitarama Raju against the British rule. Alluri began his fight against the British at a very young age of 24 years. Barely after three years after his struggle, he sacrificed his life, the Prime Minister noted.

The Prime Minister said the government would highlight the sacrifices of Alluri Sitharama Raju at national and international levels.

The Prime Minister also recalled how Alluri Sitarama Raju had fought for improving the living conditions of the Adivasis in the agency area and said that his government has been implementing many welfare schemes for the Adivasis.

He also promised that the government would develop the places linked to Alluri Sitarama Raju. All the places like Alluris birthplace of Pondrangi in Visakhapatnam district, Mogallu in West Godavari district, Chintapallil village (where Alluri attacked a police station), Rampachodavaram (of the Rampakranthi movement) and others would be developed as tourism spots by constructing memorial parks, a Dhyana Mandiram, museums etc," the Prime Minister said.

Modi said a memorial park would be set up at Lambasingi in Visakhapatnam district and an Adivasi research centre named after Alluri Sitarama Raju and a skill development centre will be built in Visakhapatnam. All these areas would be modified with facilities reflecting the culture and heritage of the tribal people, the Prime Minister said.

The Prime Minister also greeted the family members of Alluri Sitarama Raju, as also of Gantam Dora, Mallu Dora and others who were close to Alluri, who participated in the celebrations as the special invitees.

Modi also felicitated 83-year-old Alluri Venkatrama Raju (83), the nephew Alluri Sitarama Raju and 93-year-old Godi Dora, a family member of Alluri's close aides Gantam Dora and Mallu Dora.
Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan aired a doctored clip of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi

Ghaziabad/Raipur: A police team from Chhattisgarh reached Uttar Pradeshs Ghaziabad town on Tuesday to arrest a TV news anchor from his home for playing a doctored clip of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi but he was instead arrested by the Noida police who released him on bail later in the night, officials said.

While police from Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh landed at Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjans home in Ghaziabads Indirapuram near the national capital early morning, the team from Noida in BJP-governed Uttar Pradesh reached a couple of hours later.

The Chhattisgarh police landed around 5.30 am, while the local Ghaziabad police reached an hour later and the Noida police got there after 8 am, officials said.

Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan was picked up from his home for questioning on Tuesday morning by a team from Noida Sector-20 police station in connection with an FIR lodged under IPC 505 (public mischief) on a complaint by his own channel over a doctored video played during his show on July 1, a Noida police officer said, seeking anonymity.

After more than 12 hours, the Noida police said that Ranjan was arrested by them from his Ghaziabad home as part of an investigation in a case lodged under IPC 505(2) (statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill will between classes).
In the current financial year, the Indian Navy will be hiring 3,000 sailors, including both men and women, under the Agnipath scheme

A file photo of Indian Navy soldiers march during rehearsal for the Republic Day parade, on a cold winter morning in New Delhi. (PTI Photo)

New Delhi: The Indian Navy intends to recurit women for 20 per cent vacancies in the first batch of the Agniveers.

The women sailors recurited under new four-year term Agnipath scheme will be sent to different parts and branches of the Navy. In the current financial year, the Indian Navy will be hiring 3,000 sailors, including both men and women, under the Agnipath scheme.

The Indian Navy had started the online registration process on July 1.

Some 10,000 women have reportedly registered for the Agnipath scheme for the Indian Navy till Monday. The application window will be open from July 15 to July 30. The exams and physical tests will be held in October.

In four years, the Indian Navy will hire 12,500 sailors under Agnipath. Agniveers would form a distinct rank in the Armed Forces, which is different from any other existing ranks.

The Indian Navy is also preparing a report on the demonstration given by Dassault Aviation for Rafale-M and Boeings F-A 18 Super Hornet at the shore-based test facility in Goa. The Navy is looking to buy some 26 fighter jets for aircraft carrier.
Thackeray faction said that Shinde won the trust vote in Maharashtra Legislative Assembly with a 'stolen majority'

Mumbai: Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction on Tuesday predicted that the Eknath Shinde-led group will remain in power only for the next six months. The Thackeray faction said that Shinde won the trust vote in Maharashtra Legislative Assembly with a "stolen majority".

Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde with the support of BJPs 106 MLAs on Monday sailed through a trust vote.

An editorial in Shiv Senas mouthpiece 'Saamana' on Tuesday said that there is nothing to celebrate or feel disappointed over Shindes victory in the Legislative Assembly. The editorial said that Shinde broke away for power and not for any principal.

Accusing Shinde and BJP of not following any ethics, the editorial said, After winning the floor test, those who are thinking that this government is not in danger zone for the next six months, are living in illusion. BJP people (leaders) will bring down this government as predetermined and push Maharashtra into midterm elections.

The Saamana editorial also expressed surprise over the absence of NCP MLAs and senior Congress leaders Ashok Chavan and Vijay Wadettiwar. Some MLAs of Congress, NCP were absent at the time of the floor test. It is surprising that senior ministers like Ashok Chavan, Vijay Wadettiwar could not reach the Assembly. Fadnavis has thanked the invisible forces that made the floor test successful, the editorial said.

Taking a dig at Santosh Bangar, an MLA from Hingoli in Marathwada region, for shifting his loyalty to Shinde camp on the eve of the floor test, the editorial said that he was supporting Uddhav Thackeray till the election of the Speaker but nobody knows what happened in 24 hours that he switched to Shinde camp.

Thackeray said that he was hurt to see some members ditching the party despite getting benefits and will visit Hingoli soon.

A meeting of district Shiv Sena leaders was held at the government guest house in Hingoli on Tuesday where Thackeray spoke to party workers over the phone.
TRIPOLI, July 5 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) on Tuesday expressed concern about the reports of coastal road closure by armed groups.

"UNSMIL is following with deep concern reports of sporadic closures of the coastal road west of Sirte at Gate 50," UNSMIL said in a statement.

UNSMIL stressed the imperative of all parties to keep the vital road open from both directions to ensure the free movement of people and goods between cities.

"UNSMIL commends the Joint Military Commission 5+5 for their tireless efforts to safeguard the October 2020 ceasefire agreement and calls on all parties to refrain from any provocative acts that could worsen the security situation," the statement said.

Local media reported that armed groups in the past several days closed the coastal road, as the country is witnessing protests against the political and economic situation.

The road connecting western and eastern Libya was reopened in June last year following two years of closure due to wars between the eastern-based army and the UN-backed Government of National Accord based in the capital Tripoli. 
by Vladimir Rozanskij

Inhabitants of the autonomous region protest against constitutional reform. Government withdraws amendment annulling Karakalpakstans' right to secede. Little news arrives from the scene of the clashes. A crisis that threatens the stability of Uzbekistan.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - The President of Uzbekistan, Savkat Mirziyoyev, has denounced casualties among demonstrators and law enforcement officers following the protests in Karakalpakstan. So far, there are officially 18 dead and 243 injured. The demonstrations started at the end of June, after the presentation of the draft constitutional reforms. The government proposed to remove the term 'sovereign' from the description of the status of the republic of Karakalpakstan, and to eliminate the right of its citizens to speak out in order to secede from Uzbekistan.

On 1 July, thousands of people took to the streets of Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan, and other cities in the autonomous region. Mirziyoyev flew to Nukus twice in three days, announcing a state of emergency. Special units of the National Guard arrived, and the authorities imposed restrictions on the mobile phone network and internet.

It is difficult to get accurate information about the events, as the official Uzbek media do not disseminate news, and access to social networks is problematic. According to Ulusmedia.kz, the police and the Guard opened fire on the demonstrators, also using blinding grenades and tear gas. Arbat.media published some amateur videos of arrests on the streets of Nukus. Images of people with bloodied bodies and streets covered in blood are also circulating, but it is impossible to verify the credibility of these testimonies.

After the riots started, the Uzbek President proposed to keep the point about the sovereignty of Karakalpakstan in the new Constitution. The Uzbek Minister of the Interior declared the demonstrations illegal, adding that 'they arose from a misinterpretation of the constitutional reforms'.

Speaking on 2 July in Parliament, Zogarky Kenes, Mirziyoyev tried to reassure MPs: 'You took the initiative and signed the amendments, the articles concerned will not be changed if the Karakalpakst people are not satisfied'. He also added that 'uniting the destinies of the two states will bring prosperity to the entire population', hinting at solving the drought problems in the Aral Sea and other development projects. The president closed his speech emphatically: 'I am proud to be a son not only of Uzbekistan, but also of Karakalpakstan.

The Republic of Karakalpakstan is the largest region in Uzbekistan, occupying 40 per cent of the country's entire territory, but it is also the least densely populated, with two million residents out of a total of almost 35. Two official languages are recognised in Karakalpakstan, Karakalpakstani and Uzbek. The autonomous region had been created in the early Soviet years, first as part of Russia and then Kazakhstan, and was eventually annexed to the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan in 1936 as part of the nationality control policy imposed by Stalin.

In 1990, the council of the autonomous region had approved the declaration of statehood, which was also confirmed by Moscow, but in 1993 an interstate agreement was signed with Uzbekistan for 20 years, in which the right to leave the Uzbek state was guaranteed, a right confirmed in the Constitution in Article 70, despite the six constitutional amendments made since 1993. The agreement was to be re-discussed in 2012, but there were persecutions and repressions ordered by the historic president Islam Karimov, who remained in power from 1991 until his death in 2016, who feared Islamic fundamentalist drifts like those that had led to attacks and massacres in previous years.

Karakalpakstan lives off Tashkent's subsidies, and is strongly affected by ecological issues and the distribution of water resources, largely absorbed by neighbouring Turkmenistan, and partly dispersed across the uninhabited steppes. Attempts to curb the Karakalpakstans' independence drives also seem to be conditioned by the recent Gornyj Badaksan uprisings in Tajikistan, and the war in Ukraine over the Donbass itself, all local aspects of the never-ending post-Soviet nationality issue.
by Arundathie Abeysinghe

The decision by the Rajapaksa administration to opt for organic farming without proper planning is one of the causes of Sri Lankas current economic crisis. India is providing a US$ 40 million loan to develop a port in northern Sri Lanka by the end of the year.

Colombo (AsiaNews)  India has extended a US$ 55 million line of credit to Sri Lanka through the Exim Bank of India to buy about 65,000 tonnes of urea fertiliser as part of its Neighbourhood First. Sri Lankas northern neighbour has also offered help to develop the Kankesanthurai Port (KKS) in Jaffna.

The fertiliser bought with the Indian loan will be used during the Maha season (north-east monsoons from September to March), Ministry of Agriculture sources said.

The fertiliser-carrying vessel left Oman on 2 July and should dock in Sri Lanka early next week.

In April 2021, the Sri Lankan government led by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa imposed a ban on imported chemical fertilisers in favour of organic and biodynamic farming.

The decision, which caught farmers unprepared, caused the loss of entire crops, and the consequent loss of income for farmers, followed by a food crisis.

The government did not consider the technological, environmental and economic costs of an unplanned shift to chemical-free agriculture, which cost in excess of a US$ 1 billion.

In Polonnaruwa, Ampara and Monaragala, Sri Lanka's main rice-producing areas, several farmers told AsiaNews that chemical fertilisers will be a boon for farmers who had "given up farming" because the rice seeds they had are responsive only to chemical fertilisers.

If the authorities wanted to develop biodynamic agriculture, they should have provided different seeds, compatible with organic fertilisers.

Sources in the Ministry of Agriculture told AsiaNews that the government plans to sell 50 kg bags of fertiliser at the subsidised price of 15,000 rupees (around US$ 42), but farmers' associations complain that that such a price is too high at present, proposing instead 10,000 rupees per bag (US$ 28). On the black market a 50 kg bag is sold for 43,000 rupees (US$ 120).

For his part, Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera ordered officials to keep 2,000 lorries "on standby" to distribute fertiliser supplies.

He also submitted a cabinet paper seeking a guarantee from the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation to provide over 20 million litres of fuel to ensure delivery.

As Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe pointed out, ensuring "food security for the population" is the government's priority.

After defaulting on its debt in April, Sri Lanka faced severe shortage of fuel and food products, including rice, the countrys staple.

Meanwhile, the government wants to develop the Kankesanthurai port thanks to a US$ 40 million loan from India; at present, only small boats can dock at its piers. To this end, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority told AsiaNews that the ports rehabilitation should be completed by the end of this year.

The goal is to ensure that I ca handle cargo shipping between India and northern Sri Lanka, as well as promote tourism between the two countries, not to mention shipping operations with other Sri Lankan ports, most notably Colombo, Trincomalee, Jaffna, Galle and Oluvil.

Although the port development was planned for some time, political opposition had blocked the project. For economic analysts, once turned into a commercial port, KKS will serve as a national and regional maritime hub.
by Fady Noun

For the first time, a government official has openly attacked the pro-Iranian party over its three unarmed drone operation towards Karish, a gas field disputed with Israel. Meanwhile, the US continues to mediate talks to trace maritime borders between the two countries.

Beirut (AsiaNews)  For the first time, Lebanon publicly disavowed a recent military initiative by Hezbollah.

Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdallah Bou Habib, who is considered close to President Michel Aoun, said on Monday that the government deemed "unacceptable" Hezbollahs three-drone reconnaissance mission over the Karish gas field last Saturday off the coast of Israel.

Lebanons top diplomat described the action as interference in the indirect, US-brokered talks between Lebanon and Israel over their shared maritime borders.

Any act that falls outside the framework of the state's responsibility and the diplomatic track within which negotiations are taking place is unacceptable and exposes [Lebanon] to unnecessary risks," Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said after meeting Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

Although Boh Habib did not mention Hezbollah, he clearly was referring to the Shia-dominated group, which acknowledged sending three unarmed drones [. . .] towards the disputed Karish (gas) field for reconnaissance missions.

For media linked to the pro-Iranian party, the action was a warning" to Israel and Energean PLC, which owns the platform and is expected to develop the field.

The three drones that approached Israel's economic zone were shot down, Israel said.

Behind the State

The ongoing negotiations held with the assistance of the US mediator (Amos Hochstein) are in advanced stages," said Bou Habib. calling on all parties to show a spirit of high national responsibility and abide by what was previously declared as to that everyone, without exception, are behind the state in the negotiations process.

I expect that we will reach an agreement on the demarcation of the maritime border with Israel in September, Bou Habib noted on the sidelines of a meeting of Arab foreign ministers held on Saturday in Beirut.

The optimism expressed by the Lebanese official follows a statement by US State Department that reads: Following discussions with Lebanese counterparts earlier in the month, Senior Advisor for Energy Security Amos Hochstein held conversations last week with Israeli counterparts on their maritime boundary. The exchanges were productive and advanced the objective of narrowing differences between the two sides. The United States will remain engaged with parties in the days and weeks ahead.

Negotiations between Lebanon and Israel began in October 2020 but were suspended in May 2021 due to disputes over the Karish gas field.

Tensions rose in early June with the arrival at the field of a platform for gas prospecting and extracting chartered on behalf of the Jewish state. Lebanon has challenged Israel's right to start gas extraction before the border dispute was settled.

In Israel, newly appointed Prime Minister Yair Lapid reacted on Sunday to Hezbollah's drone reconnaissance mission, by saying: The Lebanese government must guarantee that Hezbollah will not obstruct.

Hezbollah is continuing its acts of terror and damaging Lebanons ability to reach a maritime border agreement [with Israel], Lapid added, noting that Israel will continue to defend itself, its citizens and its infrastructure.

In Lebanon, the Lebanese Forces (LF) party welcomed the foreign ministers stand. It turns out that even governments dependent on Hezbollah can no longer ignore its actions, the LF press office said in a statement.

By contrast, Hezbollah's media slammed Bou Habib's for his words, saying that Lebanon is "buckling under US pressure.

Waiting time

Whatever the case may be, Lebanon is waiting for Israel to respond to the official position given directly by President Michel Aoun to US mediator Amos Hochstein, on his last visit to Beirut.

President Aoun is demanding the entire Qana gas field to be allocated to Lebanon in exchange for the Karish field going to Israel.

For some, Hezbollah's drone operation was pre-emptive in nature to possible bad news from Israel, namely that the Jewish state plans to reject the Lebanese offer, claiming that according to border lines filed with the UN, it is entitled to 25 per cent of the production from the Cana gas field, which is partly within its exclusive maritime zone.

According to other sources quoted in the press, the official Lebanese reaction came the day after an unofficial warning against the possibility of extending US economic sanctions against Hezbollah, deemed a terrorist organisation by Washington, to include Lebanons exclusive economic zone, therefore making it impossible for Lebanon to develop oil and gas resources within its own economic zone.
by Mathias Hariyadi

With more than 140 articles and scores of edited books to his credit, the member of the Society of the Divine Word passed away last Saturday. British-born, he arrived in the eastern region of Indonesia in 1973.

Jakarta (AsiaNews)  Indonesian Catholics are mourning the death of Fr John Mansford Prior, one of the most important theologians in the Asia-Pacific region. A member of the Society of the Divine Word, he passed away on Saturday at the age of 76.

Fr Prior taught at the High School of Philosophy and Theology in Ritapiret, Diocese of Maumere, East Nura Tenggara province.

During his lifetime, he published 145 articles, 79 chapters in an anthology and edited 47 books, in Indonesian and English.

The British-born Prior graduated from Cambridge, earning a PhD in intercultural theology at the University of Birmingham. He arrived in Indonesia in 1973, a year after he was ordained a priest.

Father Prior is indeed a genuine missionary priest who dedicated his life and his professional carrier as a theologian in Flores, the place where he was first assigned to carry out his pastoral mission, Card Ignatius Suharyo told AsiaNews in 2014.

At Ritapiret, he set up a postgraduate programme in theology and founded the Centrum Church in Maumere and the Wolofeo Parish.

From 1993 to 2008 he was a consultor for the Pontifical Council for Culture, set up by Pope John Paul II in 1982. The pontiff chose him as a personal advisor on cultural issues.

He sat on the editorial board of Asian Horizons (Bangalore, India) from 2014 to 2022, as well as that of Asian Christian Studies (Chennai, India) from 2016 to 2022.

He lectured at the University of Melbourne (1997-2009), the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago (1998), Monash University (2007-2009), the Melbourne University of Divinity (2011-2022) and the East Asia Pastoral Institute in Manila (2020-2022).

A former student told AsiaNews that Fr Prior played a key role in developing theological studies in Ritapiret.

Born on 14 October 1946 in Ipswich, United Kingdom, he was the fifth child of Vincent Thomas Prior and Kathleen Mary Mansford.
by John Ai

The high rate of youth unemployment does not concern graduates in Marxist ideology. Since Xi Jinping came to power, Party membership has grown rapidly. Recent graduates now prefer employment in the public sector and state-owned enterprises rather than foreign firms.

Rome (AsiaNews)  As economic growth slows and job opportunities dry up, many university graduates join the Communist Party of China (CPC) since membership has become a crucial prerequisite for public sector positions.

This years graduates exceeded 10 million for the first time, at a time when youth (16-24) unemployment reached an 18.6 per cent, a situation made worse by the government zero-COVID policy.

The CPCs Organisation Department last week announced that it has more than 96 million members. Since Xi took over 10 years ago, its membership expanded rapidly, with 21 million new members since the 18th Congress in 2012. About 53.2 per cent hold a university degree.

According to the Financial Times, with high unemployment, on a recruiting website for young graduates, the number of openings requiring a degree in Marxism is up by 20 per cent.

In recent years, the authorities have also ordered private companies  Chinese or foreign  to set up an internal Party committee, requiring them to hire staff and set aside a budget for Party matters.

After the crackdown on technology and real estate companies in 2021, private companies are recruiting Marxism graduates to show their loyalty to the authorities.

Companies need people who know Party doctrine to manage relations with the government and carefully follow the official line in their business operations.

Marxism and CPC doctrines are compulsory courses for students in China. Before Xi, students were largely unfamiliar with them.

The significant shift came in 2018. That year the constitution was amended to scrap the two-term limit for the presidency and universities were ordered to have at least one teacher of Marxism for every 350 students. In the following years the recruitment of ideology teachers boomed, increasing by two-thirds.

Marxism courses in China include the philosophy of Karl Marx and the doctrines of CPC leaders, from Mao Zedong to Xi.

In recent years, the amount of space dedicated to Xi's thoughts in university textbooks rose significantly. Following this trend, many top universities have set up research centres on the doctrine of Chinas current president.

Still, Chinese authorities appear to take a pragmatic approach to the philosophy of Marx and Mao.

As social conflicts intensify and labour rights remain unprotected, the practical application of Marxist philosophy is seen as something dangerous by the authorities. As a result, nostalgia for the Mao era has become an underground phenomenon.

When left-wing and Maoist students joined the labour movement in the southern city of Shenzhen in 2018, they were promptly arrested along with the protesting workers.

A university official told the Financial Times anonymously that "this is the golden time for Marxism majors. In fact, newly hired university lecturers in ideology are offered a lucrative bonus.

Meanwhile, lessons in Xi's cult of personality begin as early as in elementary school; in elite schools, teachers are offered above-average salaries.

The impact of the pandemic and government economic policy have prompted graduates to change their orientation in the search for a job.

Jobs in foreign companies are not profitable for those from the best universities. Getting a public sector job is increasingly seen as a better bet.

In 2021, 70 per cent of graduates from Tsinghua University, one of Chinas best, chose to work for the government, Party organisations or state-owned enterprises.
JOHANNESBURG, July 5 (Xinhua) -- After a two-week crippling wage strike that plunged South Africa into power outages, trade unions representing Eskom workers on Tuesday accepted a wage offer from the national power utility and the strike is expected to end.

Eskom has reached an agreement with the three recognized labor unions, and this "brings the Central Bargaining Council talks, the damaging, disruptive and costly wage dispute to an end, paving the way for a full return to work of all employees," the company said in a statement.

Eskom had to implement prolonged power outages as a result of the strike, including high-level Stage 6 load shedding or power cut since a week ago.

The workers will receive a 7 percent increase in wage as well as an increase in housing allowances, which will cost Eskom an extra more than 1 billion South African rands (about 60 million U.S. dollars) over the one-year period, it said.

The main union at Eskom, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), told Xinhua that their members have signed the wage offer and "are happy" with it. The union said it would tell its members to return to work, according to William Mabapa, NUM's acting general secretary. 
Share This: The California Autobody Association (CAA) recently held a one-hour Zoom meeting with the California Department of Insurance (CA-DOI), covering a handful of topics of interest to the entire membership.

One particular subject that has been a pebble in CAAs shoe for several years was brought up again during the meeting. You might be thinking that pebble was illegal steering, but youd only be half right.

When we talk about steering in this industry, its usually about insurers trying to persuade consumers to take their vehicles to DRP shops, because those shops offer the insurer more attractive labor rates, and in many cases, a promise to use the lowest priced parts available.



Instead, this is about parts steering." Parts steering is where insurance companies search a multitude of different online vendors scattered across the country to find each part at the lowest price, and then cap payment on their estimate based on that price. Sound reasonable?

Monte Etherton, chairman of the CAA State Legislation Committee and state board member of CAA's San Diego chapter, has been monitoring this situation for years and doesnt think its reasonable at all.

Heres an analogy, he said. Your 8-year-old car needs some work, so you take it to the dealer and they give you an estimate for $3,500. You tell them youll get back to them. Their estimate lists five parts that total $2,000 of the $3,500. Since you want to save some money, you start scouring the internet for those parts.

"You find the cheapest parts from five different online stores, and all offer free shipping. Buying those parts instead of the parts from the dealer will save you almost $500. You make a neat list of all the stores phone numbers and the prices and take it back to the dealer and ask them to buy the parts they need from those places so you can save some money. What do you think they would do?

Etherton cites parts steering as a major problem in the industry.

Some insurance companies will only pay us based on the price of the cheapest parts, so they are literally forcing us to buy certain parts from their vendors or lose money," he said.

I did one job on a Volkswagen where the insurance companys estimate had an aftermarket headlight from an out-of-town vendor, because it was cheaper than my local aftermarket supplier," Etherton said. "I emailed them that they can't require me to buy a part from a specific supplier, and they replied with this fallacy: We cant tell you where to purchase your parts, but we dont owe more because you select a different vendor.

In 2018, CAA received a written legal opinion from the CA-DOI in response to questions regarding several industry problems, including parts steering. Two paragraphs from the opinion explain...
So, while Ford and Jeep evolved separately, it turns out that both companies now have 4x4 specialists that directly clash for market domination: Jeep has the legendary Wrangler and Ford reinvented the iconic Bronco a while back. Now, hot on the heels of the official Ford announcement that limited quantities of 4x4 four-door Bronco units will travel to the Old Continent from late 2023, Independence Day came bearing even more Bronco gifts.This time around, they were of the vintage custom aftermarket variety courtesy of The Bronco Nation and their latest Bronco-based build. The independent community  which is nationally recognized and certified by Ford  has joined the 4th of July celebrations with an all-new idea, a 2022 Bronco WildTrak 4-Door (usually kicking off at an MSRP of $51,225) that pays homage to the WWII-famous Ford GPW.Naturally, given the vintage influence, it will be ready for all sorts of Army-like adventures (and more) following the official social media unveiling and the upcoming public debut at this weeks Overland Expo PNW (Pacific Northwest), which takes place July 8-10. Once there, it will flaunt a GPW Green wrap job, complete with window tint and gloss black hinges by Salt Lake City, Utah-based Salty Motor Works. But that is not all, of course.Instead, the Bronco WildTrack also comes with fifteen52 Analog HD wheels that were custom painted to match the GPW Green wrap, as well as a variety of cool accessories from various other aftermarket providers. For example, the amber lights were done by Salt Lake City-based LED light bar manufacturer Heretic Studio, while there is also a cool roof rack, three rugged transport cases, as well as a neatly lifted (2.25 front, 1.25 rear, on 37-inch BF Goodrich KO2 all-terrain tires) stance!
Christened Goga, the greenest yacht in Benettis fleet, has a design concept signed by Stefano Righini, and the fourth deck was his idea. A ceremony took place recently in the port city of Livorno, Italy, celebrating the yachts launch, boasted by Azimut Benetti Group President Paolo Vitelli as one of the most innovative boats ever built.Goga is meant for long-distance cruising, is made of steel and aluminum, has 460 GT, a beam of 8.6 m (28 ft), and stands out through its elegant proportions, large lounges flooded with natural light and its revolutionary four-deck layout that separates the guest and crew areas while offering full access to all the floors of the yacht. The fourth deck features huge windows that offer unparalleled panoramic views of the sea, as boasted by Benetti As far as propulsion goes, Goga is the worlds greenest boat in its class because it combines SCR catalytic filters, which is a technology already used in the automotive industry for Euro 6D diesel engines, with an E-Mode Hybrid system by Siemens Energy. The latter is based on a crew-friendly architecture that allows the crew to easily switch from mechanical propulsion to electric and offers four different navigation modes for the yacht , including a full-electric , zero-emission one.According to Benetti, this technology ensures a reduction of up to 24 percent in fuel consumption and CO2 per year and 85 percent in NOx.Goga offers ranges of 8,200 nautical miles (15,186 km) in its Eco Transfer mode, at a cruising speed of 9 knots (10 mph/14 kph), but it can reach a top speed of 14 knots (16 mph/25.7 kph).The B.Yond 37 m Goga dedicated the lower deck to the crew, featuring four crew cabins, crew mess, galley, laundry, and so on. Theres also a gym that can be replaced by an additional guest cabin.The main deck is where you can find the owners suite and four guest suites, while the upper deck is dedicated to the living area, featuring a living room and terraces for outdoor dining or lounging. The bridge deck comes with a beautiful panoramic veranda with sunbeds.
6x6

Recently interested in seeing Americana cars and trucks adopt all sorts of quirky transformations  from Speedster Vipers to Challenger Shooting Brakes with embedded big work tools and from feral Bronco Raptors with all-wheel steering to piped F-150 Dune Raptors with slide-out race bucket seats  this pixel master is a great example of 3D vexing in the most positive sense.Naturally, he could not miss the opportunity to showcase his thoughts on automotive matters on Independence Day. And after previously teasing us about the possibility of seeing LD-based Dodge Charger pickup truck Utes arriving at dealerships courtesy of Smyth Performance, now it is time for more passenger car to truck-like morphing. This time around, though, the unsuspecting victim is the hulking Challenger two-door muscle car.Nothing says Happy Independence Day than a 6x6 Challenger reads the explanation. But how about a six-wheeled Dodge with a twist? After all, this is not your ordinaryconversion since the added axle does not sit in the back, but rather at the front, and has CGI steering capabilities, as well! Obviously, this is (probably) merely wishful thinking  so the digital content creator went all out with it and even added a butterfly-style hood!Now, the interesting thing about this project is that we are going to see more of it down the social media reel as the CGI expert has promised to shed light about what is tucked under the hood in a future post  so we can bet it goes beyond the simple SRT Hellcat. Last, but not least, the second slide has the flag colors properly reunited with help from previous ideas  the crimson GMC is a modern Yukon GT while the blue Ford is a crazy take on the dune-bashing, rock-crawling F-150 Raptor, of course.
SUV

Charitable work has been a hallmark principle of Barrett-Jackson events, dating back to 1967 when friends Tom Barrett and Russ Jackson teamed up stage a car show and parade to raise money for Scottsdale's art center. The popularity of Barrett-Jackson auctions has grown exponentially over the years, and the charitable work continues and grows with every event.In 2018, George W. Bush was on the block auctioning a 2018 Carbon 65 Edition Corvette donated by General Motors, which sold for $1.4 million to benefit his Military Service Initiative. To date, Barrett-Jackson has raised over $100 million through vehicle auctions for worthy causes. The Las Vegas stop on the calendar began in 2008, and has produced impressive sales and celebrity appearances. After a tragic shooting event in 2017, auction president Steve Davis sold his prized 2007 Ford Shelby GT500 Super Snake for $1 million to support first responders in the city.The 2022 Las Vegas charitable auction featured the first retail production 2023 Cadillac Escalade-V . Donated by the Cadillac Division of General Motors, the Escalade-V is powered by a hand-built 6.2-liter supercharged V8 producing 628 hp and 653 ft-lbs of torque capable of powering thefrom 0-60 in 4.4 seconds. The Escalade-V comes equipped with breakthrough technology that allows drivers to personalize steering and braking response, engine sound, and more.The Escalade-V sold for a whopping $525,000 to benefit the Pensole Lewis College of Design, the first-ever HBC (historically black college) in the state of Michigan.The legacy of the Barrett-Jackson auction will continue in October 2022, when the city of Houston, Texas, hosts The World's Greatest Collector Car Auction at the NRG Center from October 20-22.
The latest figures shared by the company for the South Korean market paint a very sad picture, as General Motors recorded another drop in June.However, the degree of the decline depends on how you look at the numbers.In June, for instance, General Motors sold a total of 26,688 vehicles in South Korea, down from 26,876 units in the same month of 2021. Put this in percentage and, you get a 0.7 percent decline. Sure, the numbers arent the best, but the minor drop isnt necessarily the end of the world.The horror picture is painted by the numbers concerning the first six months of the year. General Motors sold 122,756 vehicles between January and June 2022, down no more, no less than 21 percent versus the same period a year ago.Unsurprisingly, the American carmaker has cited the chip shortage as the main reason why its sales went down, as the company is still struggling to find a way to reduce the disruptions the constrained semiconductor inventory keeps causing.General Motors, on the other hand, is one of the companies that arent trying to guess when the chip shortage could come to an end, though a more or less significant recovery is still expected in the last months of the year.But according to tech giant Intel, the constrained inventory wouldnt be resolved until 2024, with some market sectors to therefore face difficult conditions for two more years. It remains to be seen if carmakers can resolve the lack of chips before 2024, but for now, its pretty clear the end of the crisis isnt yet on the radar.
NHTSA

A formal investigation was opened on May 10th, which is a little bit late by most accounts. Investigators confirmed that 298 vehicles may have been shipped to dealers with dislodged valves, of which 228 were sold in the United States of America. The largest automaker in North America conducted laboratory tests between June 6th and June 8th, determining that a dislodged valve may allow the gasoline to leak in the event of a rollover.On the upside for everyone involved, GM isnt aware of any claims related to this problem. Dealers have already been informed of the recall, and known owners will be notified by first-class mail starting on August 8th.The corrective action boils down to replacing the fuel tank shell if the rollover valve is found to be dislodged or missing. The fuel tank assembly bears part number 84724303 according to a report filed with theThe 228 vehicles in this callback are all 2022 models produced at Spring Hill between March 16th, 2022 and March 21st, 2022. Front-wheel-drive models are not affected. The all-wheel-drive culprits are split between 135 examples of the GMC Acadia, 64 units of the Cadillac XT5, and 29 copies of the XT6 . All three crossovers ride on the C1XX vehicle architecture.Essentially the crossover-oriented variant of the E2XX, this platform further underpins the Chevrolet Blazer, Traverse, and Buick Enclave. Vehicles equipped with the C1XX currently use the Hydramatic 9TXX automatic transmission, which replaces the Hydramatic 6TXX family.
This isnt just a symbolic description but the actual name of a major project thats supported by local authorities in Norway. Several county municipalities are investing in what is supposed to become the high-speed vessel of the future, a hydrogen-powered passenger boat.

7 photos
Those passing by the Waddington harbor in the British Columbia region, Canada, got the chance to admire up close one of the most impressive explorer superyachts in the world. The 160.7-foot (49 meters) vessel was recently spotted anchored off in the area. Some of its oldest fans might have been surprised by its new appearance  a recent paint job transformed its former royal blue hull into a bright white one.The V6 seems to be thriving under its new ownership. With an estimated worth of $16 million, the yacht previously known as Tyr got a new owner in the summer of 2020 and embarked on an adventurous voyage in just a few weeks. V6s captain told Boat International that the new owner is a passionate kite surfer, so he was eager for some water fun in unusual locations.At a time when most of the world was in isolation, this explorers owner and his family traveled from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to the Canary Islands, then headed north towards Ireland (where it anchored in front of the owners parents house) ending up in the Svalbard archipelago, Norway. The goal was to see polar bears, and the polar bear expert who had joined them on this trip made sure that they were able to do that  a remarkable ending to a unique expedition. Built in 2007 by the Auckland-based Flyghtship shipyard, V6 is capable of covering up to 9,000 nautical miles (10,357 miles/16,668 km) and, when its not cruising at an economical speed, it can hit 15 knots (17.2 mph/27.7 kph). It can accommodate up to ten guests, and one of its most impressive features is the large helipad. Powerful and resilient, it sounds like the perfect toy for an experienced kite surfer.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

NHTSA

Thats why Nissan shrugged it off as an isolated case. In the fall of 2021, the Japanese automaker received additional warranty claims related to both the Frontier and Titan pickup trucks. Once again, the condition could not be duplicated to identify the root cause. From January 2022 through February, the investigation was expanded into warranty claims. A damning vehicle owners questionnaire followed suit on thes website, yet Nissan simply couldnt pinpoint the issue.JATCO continued duplication testing, and come April 2022, the supplier discovered an interference between the parking pawl and the boss of the transmission case, resulting in intermittent non-engagement of the parking pawl. Nissan promptly initiated a design assessment, and therequested additional intel from Nissans investigation into this problem.Fast forward to June 2022, and thats when the Japanese automaker concluded that both rear- and four-wheel-drive pickups could experience the intermittent non-engagement condition. Nissan is aware of four allegations of minor injury to date. The remedy for this peculiar issue is currently under development. Dealers will be notified on July 7th, and interim notification letters will be sent to all known affected owners on July 20th.Second letters will be mailed once the remedy is available. 180,176 vehicles are called back, produced from the 2020 through 2022 model years.As a brief refresher, the nine-speed automatic produced by Nissan for the Frontier and Titan is licensed from Mercedes-Benz. Rather than 9G-Tronic, this torque-converter box is dubbed JR913E in Nissan applications.
CANBERRA, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Australia's national science agency has established a virtual "Hydrogen Knowledge Centre" to boost the industry's growth.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) on Tuesday launched the center, saying it would foster collaboration between the hydrogen industry, research and development and governments.

According to the CSIRO, Australia's hydrogen production for export and domestic use could generate more than 50 billion Australian dollars (34.3 billion U.S. dollars) in additional GDP by 2050, support 16,000 jobs and play a major role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2021 the science agency launched a 68 million AUD (46.6 million USD) Hydrogen Industry Mission, under which it will fund more than 100 research projects.

Larry Marshall, chief executive of the CSIRO, said on Tuesday that Australia was well-placed to capitalize on the growing global demand for hydrogen as an alternative fuel.

"CSIRO began research into hydrogen fuel to help catalyse a new industry in Australia that would fill the economic gap being created by the transition away from fossil fuels," he said in a media release.

"The Hydrogen Knowledge Centre will be a central point of critical information for hydrogen R&D in Australia."

He said it will help avoid duplication and will foster the "Team Australia" approach needed for Australia to take a world-leading role in developing and exporting hydrogen.

Across the Hydrogen Knowledge Centre, users can access a broad range of information, from interactive modelling tools forecasting the future cost of hydrogen, based on technology deployment and energy use, through to educational resources explaining the basics of hydrogen and its use in the energy mix, said CSIRO.

The Hydrogen Industry Mission is aiming to drive the price of hydrogen production below two AUD (1.3 USD) per kilogram by 2030. 
SUV

AMG

Of course, depending on who you ask, some may prefer the higher performance and less bulkiness of one Italian super-over the exoticness of a Rolls-Royce Cullinan. But there is little chance for rivals like the Mercedes-G 63, Caddy Escalade, Range Rover, or Aston Martin DBX to take over the crown from the ruling prince. Not when the aftermarket world has fallen in love with it and not when even the factory specifications can turn it into a one-of-one example.A case in point to be made here comes courtesy of San Diego-based Champion Motoring, a provider of exotics to athletes and affluent connoisseurs, which has prepared another fashionable, ultra-luxury SUV for sale. The good folks over at the dealership, as always, do not provide full details on the build. Not even a pricing quotation (that is just a DM away, of course), and instead, only chose to share a few snippets of what makes this posh SUV a trick or treat.For example, the hashtag reel serving to make a show of a description mentions we are dealing with a 2022 model year unit which comes all-white (and chromed, plus a little bit of black-detailed down low) around the exterior. Some will quickly say that jeez, heres just another Cullinan looking to stand out in a crowd in factory specification. But do not hurry to draw any conclusions just yet This is because, while there are no aftermarket changes  which is quite out of the ordinary in the Cullinan world  this is certainly not a Rolls-Royce for everyone. Instead, only those who appreciate a deep pink contrast will consider it their white piano wood and factory pink interior cup of tea! Yep, as much as this is almost all white on the outside, it is almost all pink (even on the starry ceiling) on the inside, as well.
EV

The French Grand Antique dAubert marble is also used in the central storage compartment that Gonalons conceived. Curiously, Renault did not take a single picture of the interior of its jewel on wheels. Of the 16 images the French carmaker released, only 2 show aspects of the cabin. If we were Gonalons, we would be asking why we put so much effort into the interior if Renault was not willing to present it as it deserved.Being electric sounds strange for the Renault 5 Diamant, but it may be a strategic decision. While the concept should celebrate what made this vehicle special, with the engines that allowed it to sell 5 million units, this is not a car that should be driven around  not with a marble steering wheel, at least. Yet, Renault will not keep this vehicle for itself. It will auction it and donate the money to Give Me 5, the automakers corporate social responsibility (CSR) project.In that sense, giving it a small battery pack and loading it with marble will demote possible buyers from trying to demonstrate the amazing handling of the Renault 5 or their driving skills. Renault does not even talk about how far the vehicle can go because its goal must be to sit in a museum or a car collection. And thats a strange way to celebrate an iconic car.The best way for Renault to do that would be to put the Renault 5for sale in 2022, which is not going to happen. The new nostalgic electric car is set to reach customers in 2024, or only when it will celebrate 52 years. Meanwhile, it will sell Renault 5 Diamant NFT in September and the car itself and its NFT digital twin a few weeks later. Good luck with that: GM tried to sell an NFT that included a Corvette Z06. It got no bids.
Even with the reduced output, Tesla still managed to beat the Q2 2021 results, which sat at 201,250 worldwide deliveries. And yet, many analysts expected a figure closer to the 300,000 mark this year. Some later revised their estimates to about 250,000 due to Chinas prolonged lockdown in the quarter. This doesnt change the fact that Tesla broke its two-year streak of gains amid increased market difficulties and supply chain challenges.Most of the cars delivered were Model 3/Model Y (238,533), the rest being Model S and Model X. Tesla builds all of them at its Fremont gigafactory, with Model 3 and Model Y also produced at Giga Shanghai in China. The company recently began delivering the first Model Y crossovers from Giga Berlin in Germany. At the same time, Giga Austin (Texas) also came online.It is not clear how many cars were built in Berlin and Austin, as the two new gigafactories were recently described by Elon Musk as  money furnaces . We do know that Giga Shanghai is Teslas main production hub at the moment. With the shutdown caused by the Covid lockdowns in April, Tesla recorded tens of thousands of units of lost production at Giga Shanghai, which affected the overall result.In aggregate, we believe the Shanghai shutdown accounted for about 90,000 units of lost production in the second quarter, wrote analyst Dan Levy from Credit Suisse in a note to clients quoted by Automotive News Analysts are worried that recent price sikes could affect demand for electric vehicles. In its most recent price adjustment, Tesla boosted its sticker prices by as much as $6,000 . Even so, the company has a thick backlog, and new orders take up to one year to fulfill. Once Giga Shanghai came back online, Tesla production saw a strong increase, with June marking a new monthly high for Tesla.
Everything started more than half a year ago, around November when the tests at Jerez kicked off. Fabio was very vocal and critical about Yamaha's engine problems and lack of top speed. After a few months of non-improvements from the Japanese brand, he declared that his MotoGP future beyond 2022 was open.It was understandable because, in the first races, Quartararo really struggled. His best finish (besides a lucky P2 in Indonesia) was seventh place in Austin. However, since the competition's arrival in Europe, he managed to win three races and gather two podiums.Still, he admitted that some of these poor results were because he was distracted by all his complaints about the Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP team."Qatar, Argentina, Austin were quite tough. I think like I've said many times, I was complaining a little bit too much about my top speed and I was not focused on my riding," said the French rider at the Assen press conference."I made great results, and of course, from Portugal to now, we have made almost all the times podiums; just at Le Mans, we were fourth."But I think we made a great first ten races, exactly the same points as last year at the same point."Even after all these problems, Fabio Quartararo is leading the world championship, having a 21-point lead over Alex Espargaro (Aprilia Racing). He is the favorite to win and defend his world championship title from last year, but we still have nine more races on the calendar, with Espargaro looking stronger and stronger by the race.
ABC

It joined the New York Firefighting Department, monitored the underground tunnels of the Pompeii archaeological park in Italy, and it was recently reported that its even headed to Ukraine to help detect mines. One of the latest places where it made itself useful is Australia, where its being tested as a vigilant guard at a power station.Power station operator Snowy Hydro wants to turn Spot the headless robot dog into an efficient guard, ABC reports. Together with technology expert Emesent, its currently exploring the best ways to use the Boston Dynamics robot for data gathering and maintenance work. The adapted version of Spot boasts a robotic arm, light detection features, and a 360-degree camera.During the initial tests at the Tumut 2 power station in southern New South Wales, the four-legged robot was remotely controlled by the staff, but Spot would eventually be able to operate autonomously, communicating with the base when it detects a potential risk. Similar to an actual watchdog, Spot could keep an eye on the site at all times, alerting the staff when somethings wrong.A robot dogs vigilance could be very helpful at power stations, which function 24/7 and should be monitored at all times. Plus, Spot can reach areas where people cant, and its scanning technology would allow it to operate faster and more efficiently than regular guards. Emesens co-founder Farid Kendoul toldthat this robot dog could not only open and close doors but even open or close pipes by turning the levers.Although other four-legged robots got a somewhat negative reputation due to their military applications, the yellow Spot robot seems to be welcomed for its helpful skills all over the world.
Davtians office revealed his written appeal to the government in a statement released on Monday. It complained that the country has no legislation or government agency to tackle what it described as a growing spread of illicit online content.

In the absence of such control, information platforms continue the unfettered spread of such content, distorting and abusing the democratic principle of freedom of speech, read the statement. By contrast, in a number of countries, including Germany, Russia and Georgia, the security of information distributed through online resources is regulated by legal acts.

The Office of the Prosecutor-General gave the example of Russias state communications regulator Roskomnadzor which can restrict or block access to websites refusing to remove unwanted content. It also argued that a German government agency is empowered to slap massive fines on Internet platforms disseminating illegal material such as racing or other hate speech.

Some Armenian civil rights activists expressed concern over Davtians initiative, saying that it could lead to unjustified curbs on free speech and Armenians access to the Internet, which has been practically unrestricted to date.

Shushan Doydoyan, who leads the Yerevan-based Center for Freedom of Information, said Davtians reference to Roskomnadzor is particularly worrying because the Russian agency is notorious for media censorship.

In my view, such initiatives are not the prosecutors business, Doydoyan told RFE/RLs Armenian Service.

According to the prosecutors statement, Davtian stressed that the proposed regulation of online content would not restrict Armenians constitutional right to freely express opinions.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinians government has not yet publicly reacted to the appeal from the chief prosecutor who will complete his six-year term in office on September 15.

In a joint declaration issued after their talks held outside Moscow in April, Pashinian and Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged to step up Russian-Armenian cooperation on international information security.

The parties expressed concern about the growing trend of using modern information and communication technologies to commit illegal and harmful actions, interfere in the internal affairs of states and undermine their sovereignty, said the declaration.
Bakersfield, CA (93308)

Today

A few showers early with bright sunshine by the afternoon. High 106F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

A clear sky. Low 78F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph.
DHAKA, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said on Tuesday that she was considering introducing area-based load shedding for a specific time to save fuel for power generation.

The country witnessed 8-10 hours of power cuts in the past, and the government increased the electricity generation to ensure an uninterrupted power supply to every household since taking office in 2009, the prime minister was quoted as saying by the United News of Bangladesh (UNB).

Hasina said there will not be any indiscriminate load shedding, and the power cut will be announced earlier for a specific area and for a specific time.

She said the prices of fuel oil have soared, and many countries have been facing a scarcity of power amid the recent economic turmoil across the globe due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The prices of electricity-producing like diesel, fuel oil and liquefied natural gas have increased sharply, as transportation has been hampered due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, she said.

Hasina reiterated her call to maintain austerity and increase savings for any crisis in the future. 
VIENTIANE, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Lao and Cuban presidents have reaffirmed their commitment to further strengthen the decades-old friendship and cooperative ties that unite the peoples of the two countries.

During a meeting held via video link, General Secretary of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party Central Committee and Lao President Thongloun Sisoulith and his Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel said they highly valued the longstanding relationship between Laos and Cuba.

This was Thongloun's first meeting with the Cuban president since he assumed the state presidency in 2021, local daily Vientiane Times reported on Tuesday.

During the talks, the Lao president informed his Cuban counterpart about the notable aspects of socio-economic development in Laos in recent years under the leadership of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party.

Thongloun also praised Cuba's great accomplishments in socio-economic development under the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba over the past 60 years, despite the economic embargo imposed on the country.

The Lao president said the fine tradition of friendship and cooperation between the parties, governments and peoples of Laos and Cuba, which has been cultivated over past decades, has expanded and elevated to a higher level, thereby contributing to global peace, security and cooperation on the path to development.

In addition, the Lao leader thanked the Cuban government and people for supporting the multi-ethnic Lao people's struggle for national liberation and development.

Thongloun reiterated Laos' steadfast foreign policy to strengthen cooperation with friendly countries including Cuba and oppose the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed on Cuba.

Meanwhile, the Cuban president highly spoke of the continuing friendly relations and cooperation between Laos and Cuba.

The two presidents discussed ways to further broaden their cooperation and discussed regional and international issues of mutual interest. 
Walking and Learning on Oregon Coast: Yachats Hosts Marine Ambassadors This Summer

Published 07/05/22 at 5:05 AM PST

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff

(Yachats, Oregon)  Like the knowledgeable volunteers for Oregon Coast whale watch weeks who help you spot the great watery beasts, Yachats will be hosting experts right near the surf this summer to help show you around this unique world. The Cape Perpetua Collaborative is hosting the Cape Perpetua Marine Reserve Ambassador Program at Smelt Sands State Park along the historic 804 trail in Yachats for the next two months. They'll be explaining what you see, answering questions, and will be there to promote tidepool etiquette and safety, as well as talking about local history.

It's a distinctive program that brings together the public and Oregon coast locals with a lot of interesting stuff crammed into their heads, and a passion for sharing it. There's nothing like this on the shoreline of the coast, except something somewhat similar in front of Seaside Aquarium on Saturdays. These volunteers will be out along the rocky surfline of Yachats every Friday, Saturday and Sunday each weekend from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

A simple stroll down the historic and dramatic 804 Trail will reveal many wonders crammed into various places, and if you know how to look you'll notice its biodiversity. Along this nearly unequalled stretch of Oregon coast you may spot migratory birds, endangered marbled murrelets, whales, sea lions or look across the way to the trees of the immense coastal rainforest. All these link together closely in tiny Yachats, which is adjacent to the Cape Perpetua Marine Protected Reserve and marine protected areas.





Volunteers here will give you deep glimpses into that and more, say organizers.

The Ambassador program connects visitors to local volunteers with a passion for spreading awareness and promoting stewardship, they said. Volunteers have diverse backgrounds ranging from Yachats locals to retired educators. The Cape Perpetua Marine Reserve Ambassador Program aims to encourage visitors to embrace the significance of this wonderful place all around them.

If you are visiting or passing through Yachats during the summer weekends of 2022, stop by Smelt Sands State Park and discover new layers. Organizers said stickers and dog biscuits are available for all those who ask nicely.

The schedule for all days is 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and is weather-dependent or subject to change.

Dates are Fridays through Sundays each week through July and August, and the first weekend in September, from the 2nd through the 4th.

About Cape Perpetua Collaborative: Cape Perpetua exemplifies a unique place where land and sea intersect to produce productive coastal rainforests and ocean upwelling that fuels a productive food web. Working collaboratively and coordinating conservation efforts in this region will help make efficient use to leverage available resources and accelerate the pace at which Oregonians are made aware of, appreciate, understand and support the natural and cultural values of this region. See https://capeperpetuacollaborative.org/ MORE PHOTOS BELOW

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Body of Sevengill Shark Washes Up on N. Oregon Coast, Providing Education Opportunity

Published 06/28/22 at 4:25 AM PST

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff

(Cannon Beach, Oregon)  A sizable shark washed up Sunday on the north Oregon coast, causing a brief stir but mostly providing an opportunity for educating the public and creating some scientific interest. (All photos courtesy Seaside Aquarium / Tiffany Boothe)

Crews from Seaside Aquarium responded to the call of a beached shark at Arcadia Beach State Recreation Site near Cannon Beach, finding a long-dead broadnose sevengill shark. According to Tiffany Boothe of Seaside Aquarium, it was a female, about 120 pounds and 8.7 feet long.

Morning tide was low enough for us to recover the 120-pound shark, which will be frozen and used as both an educational tool and for ongoing research through Oregon State University, Boothe said.

These don't show up too often on the Oregon coast. In 2021, aquarium manager Keith Chandler told Oregon Coast Beach Connection he'd only seen a handful wash up in 40 years.

He added that with this shark, there was no immediate sign of why it died, partially because it had been dead long enough to start decomposing rather badly in some areas.

Boothe said Broadnose sevengill sharks are one of 17 species found off this coastline. They are fairly common out at sea, however.

While they are known for their aggressive behavior when feeding (and the fact that they can get quite large, nearly 10 feet and weighing up to 400 pounds), there has not been a documented attack on a human along the Oregon coast, Boothe said.

Yet the science world hasn't completely figured out if they'll eat humans or not. Since the 17th century, there have only been five attacks around the world. Yet on occasion human remains have been found in this species' stomachs.

Like their name suggests, the broadnose sevengill shark is unique in that it has seven gills while most species of sharks have five gills (apart from two species of sixgill sharks, which you have already probably guessed have six gills), Boothe said. They can be found off the eastern and western Pacific, Argentina, and South Africa in estuaries, bays, and at ocean depths from nearshore to 400 feet. Smaller sevengills feed on fish and squid but as they get bigger, they start to prey on marine mammals and are known to hunt in packs.

When news stories like this are published, some on social media invariably declare it's a sign there's something wrong with the oceans. Incidents like these of creatures washing up have nothing to do with this either way. There's an enormous and dense variety of lifeforms even off the Oregon and Washington coast, and all of those creatures die eventually.

A more reasonable question might be: why doesn't more stuff wash up with all that life out there?

Chandler said the answer to that is rather simple as well: most things just sink to the bottom after they die, and there they get consumed.

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The Port Neches Police Department has released more details following an officer-involved shooting on Tuesday that is now under investigation by the Texas Rangers.

Trevon Darion Hull, 20, died in the shooting, according to Jefferson County Precinct 7 Justice of the Peace Brad Burnett. The Port Arthur resident would have turned 21 on July 19.

Police said Port Neches Police Officers received a call for a suspicious vehicle parked outside of a residence shortly after 7 a.m. in the 2100 Block of Merriman Street.

"Upon arrival, they encountered a wanted suspect, who attempted to evade officers in a stolen vehicle and crashed into a patrol unit," according to a Tuesday afternoon news release from Port Neches Police Chief Paul Lemoine. "The suspect exited the vehicle with a handgun, at which time officers discharged their firearms at the suspect. The suspect was treated by EMS but succumbed to his injuries. No officers were seriously injured in the incident. The incident is currently being investigated by the Texas Rangers. In accordance with standard protocol, the officers were placed on administrative leave during the investigation."

Burnett said Hull was laying on the parking lot pavement behind townhomes on Merriman. He appeared to have multiple gunshot wounds. A forensic autopsy has been ordered, Burnett said.

It looked as though the car he was driving wrecked into a police car, Burnett said. I think his door was open. He was approximately  20 feet from his car laying on his back.

Burnett, whose job is not to investigate the shooting itself, said he was not aware of, nor did he see signs of, another gun in the area or that Hull specifically had fired any shots.

"I know there were bullet casings on the concrete near the vehicles, that is as far as I can determine as far as what gun they were from or if they were even from an officer," Burnett said. I wasn't there when it happened."

Burnett, who has served for nearly 21 years, said law enforcement from Nederland, Jefferson County, Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas Rangers responded to the scene immediately.

"That is the first officer-shooting death that I have heard of in Port Neches in 20 years," Burnett said. "It may be longer than that. It is very unusual  It was remarkable how the police, from Mid-County especially, responded so quickly."

This is a developing story.

meagan.ellsworth@beaumontenterprise.com

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An Orange County refinery has been fined close to $2,000 for recurring drinking water violations.

Lion Elastomers Orange, LLC in Orange County was investigated May 3 to 14, 2021 for public drinking water violations, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

According to the agency, the company failed to comply with chlorine and disinfectant levels, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Based on a running national average, the maximum residual disinfectant level is 4.0 milligrams per liter of chlorine.

RELATED: State fines Port Arthur refinery $10K for emissions

The violation was enhanced due to three similar violations, seven unrelated violations and two denial of liability orders, according to the TCEQ. However, there was also a reduction due to for notices of intent to have an audit and the disclosure of three violations.

Lion Elastomers Orange was the only entity in Orange county fined on Wednesday. TCEQ fined 27 entities for state environmental regulations for a grand total of $529,644.
Its not often that you find serenity, coastal living and New York City in the same sentence, but an Australian pearling family is seeking to change that with Wall Streets newest luxury hotel.

Aptly named The Wall Street Hotel for its locale, set between Water and Pearl Streets, the newly opened 180-room hotel introduces a new style to the traditionally chaotic, boisterous bustle of downtown  one thats softer, subtler and exponentially more spacious. With five room categories, guest accommodations start at 280-square-feet for a king range and size up to a 700-square-foot, multi-room suite, emulating more of a pied-a-terre than simply a place to sleep.

Unmissable thanks to the golden flag that waves above the entrance to the ornamental building  a standout among the more modern skyscrapers of the neighborhood The Wall Street Hotel certainly makes a first impression. Following a vibrant greeting, an eccentric mix of color and pattern connects the intimate lobby (it feels more like a residential reception area), to the adjacent bar, the Lounge on Pearl. With jade green carpets that pop against a monotone skyline and animal-print sofas and rosy banquettes that welcome guests to lounge for either a morning coffee or an evening digestif, the Lounge on Pearl combines the aesthetic of an old-school gentlemans club with the colorful flair of a modern lounge, simultaneously providing a little something for everyone.

The Lounge on Pearl The Wall Street Hotel

But the whimsical, artsy pops of color are totally contained to Lounge on Pearl. The guest rooms, by contrast, are styled in muted neutrals, offering a soothing respite from the city streets.

The differences between the more energetic and eclectic style of the Lounge on Pearl and the calming, serene energy of the guest rooms really comes from our desire to provide two key offerings to guests  a comfortable and tranquil place to stay as well as a lively cultural and social hub for entertaining and connection both for our guests and members of the community, James Paspaley, hotel owner and executive director of the Paspaley Group of companies tells InsideHook. While different, these two spaces fit together, woven together by similar themes, such as the residential influence, Australian Aboriginal artworks, mix of pattern and texture and of course pearl accents.

The Wall Street Hotel project began in the late 1980s, when the Paspaley family purchased the estate of Allan Gerdau, which included the former Tontine Building. For 70 years, dating back to the early 20th century, Gerdau ran an empirical import-export business, considered the biggest importer of mother-of-pearl in the world. At the time, the majority of this shiny commodity came from Australian oysters by way of the Paspaley family, who established their pearling business in 1919 and shipped directly to Gerdaus warehouse  a 14-story Beaux Arts building on Wall Street, that now comprises part of The Wall Street Hotel.

It is this raveled history that helps guests understand and appreciate the intricacies of the design and decor throughout the hotel, like the black-and-white portraits of the Paspaley familys early days on pearling ships that line the hallways to the guest rooms, the mother-of-pearl sheen tucked into the tiles of the bathroom floor and even the aforementioned Aboriginal artworks.

The [art] collection ties back to the hotels spirit, its Australian legacy and is a glimpse into the incredible talent of these artists whose works are exhibited in leading institutions around the world, says Paspaley, explaining that the collection comes from a partnership with Australias APY Art Centre Collective, a group of Aboriginal art studios, and focuses on a variety of themes, including homecoming, travel and water.

These pieces by acclaimed artists are not only beautiful and contemporary, but help to shine a light on these communities and their stories, Paspaley adds before singling out the featured, leading Indigenous artists: Betty Muffler, Tjapaganti George and the late Peter Mungkuri and Wawiriya Burton.

Suite details The Wall Street Hotel

Rose Ink Workshop, a creative firm that specializes in hospitality interiors, worked alongside the Paspaley family to integrate these unique pieces into every room and to bring the interior vision to life by drawing inspiration from the nuanced family history, as well as the buildings past. The plush velvets in the lobby and the hand-detailed finishings in the guest rooms are meant to portray a timeless design thats further emphasized by the double-height ceilings and reworked original features of the historic building by the architectural team at Stonehill Taylor.

The design teams set out to achieve a careful balance of approachability, polish, comfort and radiance. Public spaces and guest rooms alike feel welcoming and residential. The interiors pay tribute to the buildings history and architecture yet remain relevant to the here-and-now, says Paspaley.

In addition to the first floors Lounge on Pearl, on the other side of the reception is La Marchande. Helmed by Michelin-starred chef John Fraser and executive chef Rick Horiike, the Parisian brasserie takes a modern approach to the often rich, heavy sauces of traditional French cuisine, opting for the likes of broth and vinaigrettes instead.

La Marchande is heavily influenced by the idea of a global pantry  an ode to the areas proximity to the Seaport and original center of trade  where chefs would have first discovered a plethora of new ingredients, spices and influences arriving in port each day, explains Paspaley.

Even the name pays homage to this heritage as well as the hotels female muse  the French La Marchande translates to female merchant, he adds.

The private dining room The Wall Street Hotel

Of course, homage to the industry responsible for this storied building is paid in the form of an oyster- and raw-bar, outfitted completely in mother-of-pearl and tucked into the corner of the restaurant for an intimate, countertop experience. That is, if youre lucky enough to snag a space. Fortunately, there are other cozy nooks to choose from, including semi-private dining areas, sectioned off by raised platforms and plush curtains.

We want to breathe new life into downtown and strengthen the reinvention and resurgence of this historic, important and endlessly fascinating neighborhood, with which we have become completely enamored, says Paspaley. The hotel is meant to not only be a place to stay for travelers of all kinds but as a social center and meeting place for the community, much as the previous residents of this location did hundreds of years ago.

While it may be the newest kid on the block, The Wall Street Hotel doesnt need to prove to anyone that it belongs here. It already does.

This article was featured in the InsideHook NY newsletter. Sign up now for more from all five boroughs.

The post The Wall Street Hotel Bridges Tradition and Modernity in New York City appeared first on InsideHook.
China further streamlines procedures for intl arrivals

(Global Times) 09:51, July 05, 2022

After halving the collective quarantine time for international inbound travelers, China made another major adjustment for this group of people by streamlining procedures for those coming to the Chinese mainland. The policy has prompted a huge increase in flights connecting China with other countries, especially the US, and the number of people travelling out of the country. Those policy changes were seen by experts as a sign of China further re-opening its borders to the world.

Those signs combined are good news for those longing for a rapid resumption of people-to-people exchange, with students swarming back home, think tanks making trips to other countries and the tourism industry yearning for a possible comeback for overseas travel.

China has made one of its most substantial adjustments since the COVID-19 pandemic, as its embassies and consulates in 125 countries announced policies to streamline procedures for people entering the Chinese mainland. Those changes include cancelling the requirement for an antigen test 12 hours before boarding.

The latest was the Chinese embassy in Japan, which simplified the visa application process on Monday.

The Chinese embassy in the US last week announced a change of policy on entry restrictions for US citizens, and travelers with valid negative COVID test results looking to enter the Chinese mainland may now apply for and receive a green health code for travel from the US and a third country.

After the adjustment was announced, 178 round-trip passenger flights between China and the US have been booked from Monday to July 31, an increase of 12 percent compared with the same period in 2021, data sent from information provider VariFlight to the Global Times showed.

The Chinese embassy in Russia announced on Monday that the number of commercial flights from Russia to China will increase to eight a week from the previous two a week.

China has also loosened the same restrictions recently for travelers from other countries, most of which took effect in early July. Last week, the country also halved the collective quarantine time for international arrivals to seven days from the previous 14 days. The slew of policy changes has prompted an increase in flights, with airline companies racing against each other to resume international flights with China.

China is scheduled to have 2,025 inbound passenger flights from Monday to the end of this month, a 24 percent increase compared to the same period in 2021, according to VariFlight.

There have been no regular routes between China and India since November 2020, and no planes in the coming month in July, although there were some fixed passenger trips several months earlier.

More airlinesincluding China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Hainan Airlines and Xiamen Airlines have announced a resumption of international routes or increased frequency of flights.

Air China said it will resume a number of international routes to cities in Europe and Asia in July, including Beijing to Dubai round trip.

China Eastern and Shanghai Airlines will fly 22 international routes per week in July, including from Shanghai to New York.

The streamlined procedure and tweaked policies injected hope for those planning to come to China, especially Chinese students who are studying overseas. A Chinese student in Australia who preferred to be called Li Wang returned to China on Sunday, calling himself "one of the lucky ones."

After being stranded in Australia for more than three years, Li could come back to China under the simplified procedures and stayed only seven days in collective quarantine.

Recently, the proportion of students arriving in the Chinese mainland has increased by 22 percent under the new policy, according to statistics sent from China's leading travel agency Trip.com to the Global Times.

Apart from those arrivals, flights bringing people out of China also edged up in recent weeks. According to the Trip.com data, outbound flights from China increased 24 percent in June, compared with May. Flights to Japan and South Korea saw the greatest increases, up to 21 percent in late June, compared with the same period last month, said Trip.com.

After Shanghai returned to normality on June 1 after its latest outbreak, all of the city's 21 service windows for dealing with entry and exit permits opened and have processed documents for more than 40,000 people, the local government said on Monday.

Desire for exchanges

China's travel industry, which has been battered by COVID-19, also had cause for optimism ever since the country's recent tweaking of its COVID-19 rules. "Overseas travel" has become a buzzword on Chinese social media in the last week.

Jordan held an event promoting the country's tourism in Beijing on Thursday, 21st Century Business Herald reported. In an interview with media, Hussam Husseini, Ambassador of Jordan to China said his country has full confidence in China's tourism market and is looking forward to resuming tourism exchanges between the two countries.

Online travel agency Lvmama.com told the Global Times that it has been speeding up preparations to welcome international travelers in recent days. A staff member from the platform said that it is edging up promotion of world-class tourist destinations for international travelers, to "feel the diversity of China's scenery as well as culture, and also the country's rapid development."

After the rules were adjusted, several Chinese cities witnessed a resurgence of COVID-19, with Anhui bearing the heaviest onslaught. Health experts believed that while occasional flare-ups are inevitable as long as coronavirus exists, it will not lead to a tightening of COVID-19 policies.

Precise COVID-19 control also needs to take into consideration the country's need to maintain people-to-people exchanges and exchanges of commodities, said an anonymous expert from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, noting that as long as the current policies are fully implemented and infection chains were detected at an early stage, the risk of spillover is very slim.

A group of scholars from the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), a Chinese non-governmental think tank based in Beijing, last week went on a visit to the US, marking the first Chinese think tank to visit the country after a two-and-a-half-year hiatus due to COVID-19.

CCG Secretary-General Mabel Miao, who was part of this visit, told the Global Times on Monday that the Americans they met were "thrilled" to see them, as they haven't met "people from a Chinese think tank for a long time," and they are also looking forward to traveling to China.

"We came up with various ways to maintain communication during the pandemic But they pale in comparison to face-to-face exchanges. It's more direct, and efficient," said Miao, noting they were free to exchange opinions, and described their discussion as having an "ice-breaking" feeling.

(Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji)
SEOUL, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Six U.S. F-35A stealth fighter jets arrived in South Korea Tuesday for joint drills with South Korean warplanes, the South Korean Defense Ministry said.

The radar-evading U.S. fighters, deployed to the Korean Peninsula from Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, will conduct joint exercises with the South Korean air force until July 14, the ministry said in a statement.

It was reportedly the first known deployment of the U.S. stealth fighter jets here since late 2017.

The U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) said in a separate statement that the U.S. aircraft plans to operate and fly with several different U.S. and South Korean aircraft, including South Korea's F-35s.

It noted that the familiarization and routine training flights will enhance the interoperability of the two air forces to perform and operate on and around the Korean Peninsula.

It added that the U.S. aircraft plans to operate over South Korea and surrounding waters off the coasts during the scheduled 10-day training mission. 
Updated at 4:32 p.m. ET on 2022-07-05

The USS Ronald Reagan is to visit Vietnam in the second half of July, the first U.S. aircraft carrier to stop in a port there in more than a year, two local sources said. The last visit was the USS Theodore Roosevelt in March 2020 when all 5,000 crew had to test for COVID-19 upon visiting Danang.

The supercarrier was conducting exercise in the Philippine Sea at the weekend after leaving Guam in late June. Vietnam has now opened to foreign visitors as the government adopts a policy of living with COVID.

Lt. Cmdr. David Levy at U.S. Pacific Fleet Public Affairs declined to comment on the planned port call, telling BenarNews affiliate Radio Free Asia that "as a matter of policy, we dont discuss future operations." If confirmed, it will be only the third U.S. navy aircraft carrier to visit the country since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

The first carrier to make a port call in Vietnam was the USS Carl Vinson, in March 2018. There were talks about a planned visit by the USS Abraham Lincoln in May but it did not materialize. The Abraham Lincoln is now taking part in the biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) naval exercise near Hawaii.

The USS Ronald Reagan, named after the 40th U.S. President, is a Nimitz-class, nuclear-powered supercarrier, homeported in Yokosuka, Japan.

It too suffered a COVID outbreak in March 2020 when in the West Pacific, prompting a lockdown at the Yokosuka Naval Base, home of the U.S. 7th Fleet.

By the end of March 2020, the U.S. Navy reported 134 personnel had contracted COVID without naming their specific ships.

An F/A-18F Super Hornet launches from the flight deck of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Philippine Sea in March 2020. [U.S. Navy]

Free and open Indo-Pacific

The shipping and maritime sources close to the Vietnamese Navy said the USS Ronald Reagan, carrying 90 aircraft including F/A-18E Super Hornets and sophisticated missile systems, is to pay a five-day visit to Danang in central Vietnam sometime in the next two weeks.

All visits by foreign warships are regulated by the Vietnamese military which doesnt want to be seen as siding with any world power. In recent years, however, former enemies Hanoi and Washington have made strides towards a strategic partnership amid Chinas assertive moves in the South China Sea over which Vietnam and five other nations hold competing territorial claims.

Since the U.S. lifted an arms embargo on Vietnam during the Obama administration in 2016, Vietnam has started acquiring U.S. military hardware including ships for its growing coast guard force.

The U.S. has accused China of militarizing the sea and regularly dispatches naval ships to perform freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs), to much protest from Beijing.

In June 2016, before an international tribunal requested by the Philippines delivered an historic ruling against Chinas excessive and illegal claims in the South China Sea, the Ronald Reagan was deployed to the region in a mission largely seen as a show of support for the case.

In the latest development, the worlds largest naval exercise, RIMPAC 2022, led by the United States, is under way until Aug. 4 to showcase the maritime might of the U.S. and allies.

Five countries bordering the South China Sea  Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore  are among 26 participating nations with 25,000 personnel.

Chinas English-language official mouthpiece China Daily has published a scathing editorial calling the display of navy clout a show of intimidation.

This political clout is aimed at ensuring an Indo-Pacific that is subject to the dictates of the U.S. rather than one that is truly free and open, it said.

The paper warned that with the rise of its national strength, China has developed the capacity to defend its core interests, sovereignty and territorial integrity in a broader scope in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

China launched its third aircraft carrier, developed and built entirely in the country, on June 17. The Fujian is an 80,000-ton ship equipped with high tech equipment such as electromagnetic catapults for launching aircraft. It is the first aircraft carrier wholly designed and built in China.

The first carrier, the Liaoning, was bought from Ukraine and repurposed. The second, the Shandong, was based on the Liaonings design.

China now has three carriers, compared to 11 in the U.S. The Chinese Defense Ministry has said the country would develop more aircraft carriers depending on national security needs.

This story has been updated to correct the name of China's third aircraft carrier.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. addresses journalists during his first official press conference at the presidential palace in Manila, July 5, 2022.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said Tuesday his new administration would boost ties with Beijing, including through military exchanges, amid ongoing South China Sea tensions over Chinese ships in Philippine-claimed waters.

He made the remarks after his first cabinet meeting and hours before Chinas top diplomat, Wang Yi, was expected to arrive in the Philippines  the first foreign envoy to visit to the longtime U.S. defense ally in Southeast Asia since Marcos took office last week.

The agenda Im sure will be to strengthen ties between China and the Philippines and of course to find ways to work, to resolve the conflicts that we have, Marcos said at the Malacanang Palace during his first press conference as president.

Wang is scheduled to meet with Enrique Manalo, the newly appointed Filipino foreign secretary, during his two-day visit to Manila.

One of the ways Ive consistently suggested is that we have our relationship not only on one dimension, not just all about the West Philippine Sea. Lets add to that  cultural exchanges, educational exchanges, even military if that will be useful, Marcos said, referring to the parts of the South China Sea within the Philippines jurisdiction.

Its essentially always trying to find ways to improve relationships. We would like for us to increase the scope. China and the Philippines should not only focus on the West Philippine Sea. Lets do other things too and that way we will normalize our relationship.

Wangs visit follows diplomatic protests which the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs filed in the weeks before Marcos came to power over reported incursions by Chinese ships and boats in waters claimed by Manila.

On June 30, the son and namesake of the late former dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos  took over the reins of government from Rodrigo Duterte who had pursued warmer bilateral ties with Beijing despite the territorial disputes in the strategic waterway.

Beijing claims nearly all of the South China Sea in its entirety, including waters within the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan. While Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to territorial disputes in the maritime region, Beijing also claims historic rights to parts of the sea that overlap Indonesias EEZ.

In a Facebook post, Chinese envoy to Manila Huang Xilian said the visit would fully reflect how China attaches importance to our countries bilateral relations.

Last month, the Philippines announced that it had filed a new diplomatic protest against Beijing over the alleged return in April of a massive Chinese fleet operating illegally around Whitsun Reef.

The complaint repeatedly cited a 2016 landmark international court ruling that invalidated Chinas sweeping claims to the waterway. Beijing has refused to recognize the decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

In the weeks after he won the May 9 presidential election in a landslide, Marcos called China the Philippines strongest partner.

In a separate briefing, however, he had said that his administration would defend the country and not allow Philippine sovereignty to be trampled upon.

He also promised to talk to China with a firm voice even as he acknowledged that the Philippines was at a disadvantage militarily against Beijing.
In this photo released by the Thai government, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (left) and Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha arrive at Government House in Bangkok for their meeting, July 5, 2022.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is on a nearly two-week tour of five Southeast Asian countries during which he will push Beijings new plan for worldwide development support with Chinese wisdom called the Global Development Initiative.

Wang arrived in the Philippines on Tuesday night after beginning his 12-day tour in Myanmar and Thailand. Hes also scheduled to visit Indonesia and Malaysia during his trip until July 14, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

The tour is an attempt to show that Beijing is committed to its neighbors despite the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, analysts said. It comes on the heels of a summit in Germany where leaders of the Group of Seven countries committed to raising more than a half-trillion U.S. dollars to finance infrastructure in developing nations to counter Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

During his stop in Bangkok on Tuesday, Wang met with Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha and Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai and talked up Sino-Thai relations.

[E]ven though the worlds situation is disturbed and changing all the time, the relationship between China and Thailand will be forever stable. Between us, there is only relationship and cooperation, he said during a joint press conference with Don.

We both agree on many issues. We agreed to jointly build joint societies for the future of Chinese and Thais, making it a guideline to future joint cooperation for both countries . The objective of the joint societies is to stress that Chinese and Thai are no strangers but kin. The relationship is robust.

Wangs trip through Southeast Asia conveys a message that China will not ignore the region during the current volatile situation in the world, said Nur Rachmat Yuliantoro, a professor of international relations at Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia.

China is a major actor in the dynamics of politics and security in Southeast Asia. Chinas role and influence cannot be ignored, Nur Rachmat told BenarNews.

China wants to reaffirm that it will remain a friendly country with shared interests in the region, he said.

While in Bangkok, Wang indulged in some durian diplomacy as well, as he stressed the relationship between China and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member-states Laos and Thailand.

I believe we three countries can produce pasteurized durian as a Thai agriculture product, the top Chinese diplomat said, as he spoke about economic corridors linking China with Laos and Thailand.

The goal is to drive for logistics, trade [and] investment in the three countries industries. We make this route for the true benefits of the people in the three countries, Wang said.

Dulyapak Preecharush, an assistant professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Thammasat University in Bangkok, sees Wang Yis trip as an underlining of Chinas influence in the Mekong region which focuses on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) linking China-Thailand and Laos.

The BRI is Beijings estimated $1 trillion-plus infrastructure program to build a network of railways, ports and bridges across 70 countries.

The trip also focusses on forging ties with ASEAN member countries to deter the U.S.s Indo-Pacific strategy which is creeping into South China Sea and offering more assistance to Taiwan, he told BenarNews.

Wangs visits to the Southeast Asian nations follows G7 summit last week, where leaders announced that their governments together would raise $600 billion funds over five years to finance infrastructure in developing nations to counter the Belt and Road Initiative.

GDI is still vague

In the mix, now, is Chinese President Xi Jinpings Global Development Initiative, or GDI, which, according to one observer, Beijing will tout more than BRI in the months to come.

GDI is becoming what BRI was, and the foreign minister has to sell that idea  this trip is a push for GDI, said Gyude Moore, a former Liberian minister who is currently a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a think-tank in Washington.

GDI is Chinas theory of global public good, of how international development ought to be.

Moore said the GDI was still a vague concept and currently an easy sell so many countries can join without really knowing what it is, and that will enable Beijing to show the numbers that support the concept.

Another analyst, Sarah Cliffe, of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, said China had stepped into the space that the West vacated when it failed to deliver financing to poorer nations during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

GDI is still vague  but they will frequently refer to sustainable development, Cliffe told BenarNews.

But GDI is broader in concept than BRI.

What Cliffe is certain about, though, is that the G7 summit and Wangs Southeast Asia trip are in relationship with each other.

Wang arrived in Manila late Tuesday, becoming the first foreign envoy to visit to the longtime U.S. defense ally in Southeast Asia after the Philippines new leader, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., took office last week.

In a Facebook post, Chinese envoy to Manila Huang Xilian said the visit would fully reflect how China attaches importance to our countries bilateral relations.

Marcos Jr. said Tuesday that his new administration would boost ties with Beijing, including through military exchanges, amid ongoing South China Sea tensions over Chinese ships in Philippine-claimed waters. Wang is set to meet with Enrique Manalo, the newly appointed Filipino foreign secretary, on Wednesday.

Wang will attend the G20 foreign ministers meeting in Bali on Friday, where he is also expected to meet with Indonesian officials.

Shailaja Neelakanan in Washington, Wilawan Watcharasakwet and Nontarat Phaicharoen in Bangkok, Camille Elemia in Manila and Alvin Prasetyo in Jakarta contributed to this report.
Uneasy US tries to fete a July 4 marred by parade shooting

Independence Day celebrations in the United States have been rattled by a shooting that left at least six people dead at a parade in Illinois
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PITTSFIELD  You might say they voted with their faces: How comfortable were people with going maskless Monday, at the Pittsfield Fourth of July Parade, one of the largest gatherings in recent history?

Yes, many Pittsfield residents and visitors who attended the parade, after two years of event cancellations, feel like the COVID-19 pandemic is largely behind them, though new cases continue to be reported.

On Monday, people wearing masks were decidedly in the minority. People interviewed expressed a desire to break free from COVID-19 restrictions.

Some business owners say, however, that they have not quite seen a return to normalcy.

On Monday, a big crowd was teeming with excitement to see the return of the Fourth of July parade after two years.

And yet, in Park Square, Peter, Christine and Abbie Paoli were standing under a tree, observing the parade from a distance.

The family said they were keeping distance for comfort, rather than safety. We feel better, said Peter Paoli. Abbie has a cold and wearing masks makes us feel more comfortable.

Also under the shade, Alex Kusick said he welcomed the pandemic's easing and looks forward to attending more social events, especially Springfields Big E, the Eastern States Exposition. Its a shame we had no social events, I didnt bother with online, he said of those long pandemic months. Now it feels all right. It seems like people are getting out and about.

Paul Schwartz and his wife, Pamela, were visiting friends Monday in the Berkshires. Paul Schwartz, who was using a walker and wearing a mask, said he does so because he is at high risk for infection. They both laughed when asked if they felt comfortable among so many people.

We live in New York City, this is not really a crowd for us, Paul Schwartz said.

Sitting along North Streets sidewalk, Melissa Parvi was trying to hold her dog back from licking strangers. Parvi and her partner, Anna Ellwood, adopted their pet during the pandemic. They both work in the technology industry and were visiting Ellwood's mother, Terry. Ive had COVID before and I feel fine now, said Parvi.

Ellwood's mother Terry said that Pittsfield seems to be recovering. Its a normal day under the circumstances. Pittsfield is holding up, she said.

Some business owners offered a different perspective, when asked Monday how far back the city has come. Maria Sekowski, of Marias European Delight, said she doesnt get enough foot traffic to her North Street business because many people are still working virtually.

Lately, she has noticed a gain in customers. For me, it just picked up a little, with the Barrington Stage Company coming. I make sandwiches for them, said Sekowski.

She said that the lack of parking remains an obstacle downtown. Theres not enough parking, if someone wants to come and shop, they want convenience, she said.

The lack of parking also worries Gokseven Yildiz, Liberty Pizzas manager. Since they redid North street, parking has become a problem. Thats the same for every business, he said.

Yildiz said he also regrets that the monthly Third Thursday outdoor festival was moved away from North Street to The Commons. You just dont see that much traffic anymore, he said. He added that Liberty Pizzas appeal has kept many customers returning for their cheesy fix.

Other businesses appear to have had better luck. At Dotties Coffee Lounge, at 444 North St., the cafe was bustling Monday. Were always busy. I dont think thats ever going to change, said Victoria Mason, at the cash register. Today was packed.

At this stage of the pandemic, outdoor spaces remain popular. Mark Bocain and Nemo started their business, Freddys Rockin Lemonade Stand, just a few months ago. Weve done several events in Pittsfield, everyone has been great, weve seen a great turnout, said Bocain.

Ideally wed like to get a physical storefront. But this way, we've been able to start the business from almost nothing, he said.

Still, some express caution about indoor social events, due to the higher risk of infection. Volunteers associated with St. Josephs Church were selling burgers and popcorn during the parade. But for their coming Polish picnic, Msgr. Michael Shershanovich said organizers decided to keep sales on a take-out only basis. People are happy that things are getting better, but I still wear a mask in church, he said.
KUALA LUMPUR, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Malaysia Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob on Tuesday urged closer international cooperation to ensure a prosperous and inclusive future as the global community grapples with continued challenges and instability.

Ismail Sabri also called on countries to view themselves as part of a "global family" in order to face climate change, conflicts and the resulting humanitarian problems they cause, during his keynote address at the 35th Asia-Pacific Roundtable (APR) via a pre-recorded video.

"In Europe, for example, we are witnessing conflicts that have a devastating impact, not only on the people of the countries involved but also around the world," he said.

"Hence, it is paramount for the world community to intensify efforts and preparations in the face of uncertainty and work together towards a more peaceful, progressive, inclusive and prosperous future," he added.

Ismail Sabri also commended the key role China has played in the Asia-Pacific region, highlighting the economic benefits that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has reaped through close cooperation with the economic powerhouse.

"The importance of China in the region is undeniable and since 2009 the country has remained a major trading partner of ASEAN. In 2020, ASEAN overtook the European Union as China's main trading partner. Looking at China's economy and strategic position, ASEAN hopes to maintain a positive and stable relationship with Beijing," he said.

The Asia-Pacific Roundtable (APR) is the signature international conference of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia.

Chinese Ambassador to Malaysia Ouyang Yujing said the world economy still faces strong headwinds on its path towards recovery and is tested by the backlash against economic globalization.

"At such a critical time when cooperation and coordination are more important than ever, some countries resort to unilateralism, protectionism and even bullying, just for the so-called sake of safeguarding their own interest, which actually adds to the risks and uncertainties in the world economy," he said.

Ouyang also criticized the mindset of certain countries claiming to advocate the principles of free and open trade only when their factories are at the top of the global supply chains. Should they feel any loss of their advantages, they immediately resort to protectionism at the cost of undermining the global economic ecology, he said.

"No matter how the world changes, China keeps to the belief that economic globalization is the internal requirement of productivity development which represents an unstoppable trend of history. No country can progress in isolation from the international market. Anyone who attempts to turn back the wheel of history by blocking others' way will only end up blocking himself," he said.

ISIS chief executive Herizal Hazri echoed the sentiment and urged countries to cooperate in a way that benefited each other especially as the world seeks to move on from the pandemic and towards economic revival and growth.

"As countries begin to open up and diplomacy is conducted face-to-face again, cooperation gives us reason to hope that the spirit of competition may be tempered by time-tested relationships. Indeed competition need not be a dirty word as long as it is balanced by sustained cooperation," he said. 
Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the interpretation of facts and data.
"As a prime number, 37 is indivisible. A good marriage is indivisible, too. Life may try to divide us but somehow, with a lot of love and a little grit, we remain a unified front," writes Eagle columnist Richard Reiss.
Abortion right activists protest outside the Supreme Court in Washington on June 25. Columnist Ruth Bass writes that the Supreme Court has put a heavy thumb on women's rights, and that the decision over abortion should be left to the individual, and not be barred by the government.
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BISHKEK, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Kyrgyzstan has seen rising COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, according to the country's Ministry of Health.

Over the past week, 48 cases have been registered in Kyrgyzstan from June 27 to July 3, the ministry said Monday, adding that nine of the cases were imported from Russia, Turkey, Uzbekistan and the United States.

Reportedly, 43 cases were detected in Bishkek, four in Chui Oblast and one in the city of Osh.

In total, 201,101 COVID-19 cases have been registered in Kyrgyzstan since the pandemic started in the country in March 2019. 
JEROME - At 8:20 a.m. on July 4th, Idaho State Police were dispatched to a vehicle versus bicycle crash on US Highway 93 at mile marker 7, just north of the Nevada state line.

Four people from Louisiana, a 41-year-old male and 38-year-old female along with 2 juveniles, were traveling northbound on US93 on a tandem bicycle with a small trailer.

A 39-year-old-male from Twin Falls was also traveling northbound on US93 in a 2013 Infiniti M56 sedan. The bicycle was struck from behind by the Infiniti.

The 38-year-old female and one of the juveniles from Louisiana succumbed to their injuries at the scene of the crash. Next of kin has been notified.

The driver of the Infiniti was not wearing a seatbelt. The occupants on the tandem bicycle and in the trailer were wearing helmets.

This crash remains under investigation by Idaho State Police. The roadway was blocked for approximately 5.5 hours.

Idaho State Police was assisted by Elko County Sheriff's Office, Jackpot Fire Department, Jackpot Ambulance, Twin Falls County Sheriff's Office, Salmon Rural Fire, Magic Valley Paramedics, Bureau of Land Management Law Enforcement, US Forest Service, and Idaho Transportation Department.
SEATTLE  A 40-year-old Tacoma woman pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle to one count of wire fraud for a scheme to defraud various friends and acquaintances, announced U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. Sabrina Taylor admitted to lying about her health, employment status, and her education to steal more than $600,000 from people who had offered to help her. Taylor will be sentenced by Chief U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez on October 7, 2022.

Starting in 2013, and continuing into July 2019 and beyond, Taylor convinced various people to provide her with large amounts of money by claiming that she needed to purchase medicine for multiple sclerosis, pay her tuition for the University of Washington, or bail her brother out of jail. In fact, Taylor did not have multiple sclerosis, was not paying tuition to U.W., and did not have a brother in jail. Rather, Taylor used a substantial portion of the defrauded funds to pay for luxuries such as almost $60,000 for multiple trips to Japan and Korea, nearly $38,000 for online purchases from Amazon and Etsy, more than $29,000 for clothing, and nearly $16,000 for make-up.

Taylor also made false claims about how she was planning to repay loans, lying about her employment, a litigation settlement from a local bank, and funds she expected to receive from her parents.

Taylor met some of the people she defrauded online, using shared interests such as Japanese anime, comic books, or video games to establish a relationship. Taylor admitted to stealing over $550,000 from one victim.

Prosecutors agreed to recommend no more than 27 months in prison for Taylor. However, Chief Judge Martinez is not bound by the recommendation and can impose any sentence up to the statutory maximum 20 years after considering the sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors. Taylor will also pay restitution to her victims for the money she stole.

The case was investigated by the FBI.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Joseph Silvio.
The U.S. military budget is the largest in the world, and by a wide margin. The Biden administration recently submitted a defense budget of $773 billion for fiscal 2023 - which is more than the combined budgets of the next 10 highest-spending countries combined.

While the size of the defense budget, and exactly how and where all that money should be spent, will be an enduring source of political controversy, the defense spending is a boon for local economies across the United States.

According to a recent report, the Department of Defense spent $593.9 billion on contracting and personnel in the 50 states and D.C. in fiscal 2020. This money went to defense contractors that manufacture aircraft, ships, and weapons, in addition to service providers, research and development, as well as wages for active-duty service members, civilians, and reservists.

This spending, of course, is not spread evenly, and states that are home to large military bases and contractor operations receive more funds than states where the military and defense industry have a smaller footprint.

The DoD spent a reported $0.7 billion in Idaho in fiscal 2020, or about 0.1% of its total domestic spending, the sixth lowest share among the 50 states. Of that money, payroll accounted for about 71% while about 29% went to contractors.

The overall economic impact of defense spending in the state is lower than average, as annual military spending is equal to about 0.8% of Idaho's overall GDP, compared to the 2.8% national average. On a per capita basis, defense spending in Idaho is equal to about $379 per person, the least among states.

All data in this story is from the Department of Defense report Defense Spending By State Fiscal Year 2020.
Transforms pharmacies into virtual clinics

Hyderabad-based Medley Medical Solutions has announced the formal launch of its virtual clinics branded 'Ananda E-Clinics.' Its a unique model that enables local pharmacies to offer virtual clinics and facilitate online doctor consultations with patients.

Ananda E-Clinic follows an easy, quick, and simple format that allows it to be set up in every mid-size and large pharmacy as it requires just a kiosk space. From selecting the doctors to consulting with them and getting the medicines as per prescription will all happen at each Ananda E-Clinic Kiosk.

More than 50 pharmacies in Hyderabad have signed up for setting up Ananda e Clinics and the implementation process is on.
RaphaNeu comes at Rs 50 per annum subscription price

Digital health platform RaphaCure has launched RaphaNeu- a revolutionary subscription-driven product aimed at providing comprehensive preventive healthcare solutions to students and other members of educational institutes at a very affordable cost.

Priced at only Rs 50 per annum for members of educational institutes including students, RaphaNeu provides a host of healthcare services leveraging RaphaCures cutting-edge technology platform. Under this new plan, which is the first of its kind in India; students, teachers, faculties, staff, and management of educational institutes will get unlimited online mental wellness counselling sessions that would be kept confidential.

Similarly, the subscriber will enjoy unlimited virtual Doctor Consultation for an entire year from the day of subscription. This will enable users to audit their stress and happiness levels every month, helping them take corrective actions.

A subscriber of RaphaNeu can avail of medicines delivered at home with discounts of up to 30 per cent. Also, the RaphaNeu subscription comes up with a gym or spa membership with discounts starting from 20 per cent for the members.

Under the package, educational institutes will also see an annual visit by a general physician for eye and dental check-ups at the institute premises. Moreover, a user can track his or her various health metrics at RaphaFit, the fitness tracker. The additional benefits provided under RaphaNeu come up with some conditions that are easy to adopt for users.
Over the years, what we've been taught is how to put together a PR strategy or Plan for a PR campaign or media event. Once the strategy is approved, then the implementation process starts, and it involves drafting crucial documents that include a press release, fact sheet, internal PR briefing document with Q&As as well as profiles of the assigned company spokespeople for that particular campaign or event.

This process of compiling all these documents is content-heavy, it needs a great deal of attention to detail and its intensive because of the back and forth with proposed changes that need to be effected during the approval process until the documents are finalised. In PR, however, it doesnt matter how good your strategy is and how well these documents are drafted  we are unfortunately judged on output. This output after all this content-heavy process is done is based on how many media attend an event and how much coverage these campaign or event documents were able to generate.

The publicity or media coverage that we chase as PR professionals focuses on all platforms in the media space  these include print and online newspapers/magazines, broadcasts which include both TV and Radio as well as the breakdown in National, Provincial and Local/Community Media.

Our traditional media efforts are now complemented by social media because we do understand that not everyone consumes their news through traditional media anymore  other people get their breaking news from Twitter or other social media platforms.

As much as we rely on traditional and social media to communicate to the company external stakeholders including clients and investors to name a few - external communication is another way of complementing all these other efforts and it gives communication a personal touch.

In my past experience, we used mediums that included personalised letters to existing clients, regular newsletters and annual reports to investors as well as both potential and existing clients. These mediums were there to make sure that we didnt rely only on traditional and social media platforms to communicate to the companys external stakeholders. The regular newsletters were in most cases emailed to existing clients and it was also uploaded on the companys website to ensure that even potential clients had access to the updates that the company communicated on a regular basis.

As mentioned in my previous column on investor relations, we used correspondence such as letters to communicate to Business Connexions clients when it was time to announce its half or full-year financial results. Letters are also able to give the update required by the company to its clients  the nice thing about them is that they are not generic  they are personalised.

The regular newsletter that was sent either on a monthly or a quarterly basis always gave clients a sense of how the company was performing because it included information on new business, movement in management, mergers and acquisitions and any success stories that the company needed to share. The success stories in particular would be a combination of case studies that outlined what product or service a client received and what the outcome or return on investment (ROI) was to the client as well as testimonial stories.

The testimonial stories are still by far the best ones because they gave credibility to the company's claims. These stories would be based on clients testimonies to the fact that a particular product or service provided to them indeed delivered the value or ROI that the company was claiming.

To young PR professionals, I would like to advise you to use these external communication mediums to complement your media relations or publicity efforts. They play an important role as much as a story that is published in a newspaper or broadcast on radio or TV.

My patting shot to youngsters is that external communication is part of the principles of communication, and these are the foundations of what we do as PR professionals. These do not change over time - what changes are the platforms that are now being used to complement traditional efforts. So, in short, social media is not a communication principle  it is a medium that can be used to communicate and doesnt replace the fundamentals and the traditional ways of doing PR.
MANILA, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Seven soldiers were wounded, two critically, after an anti-personnel mine allegedly planted by suspected rebels hit patrolling government troops in the central Philippines on Tuesday morning, a military general said.

Maj. Gen. Edgardo De Leon, the commander of the 8th Infantry Division, said the ambush occurred at around 6:15 a.m. local time in Mapanas, a municipality in Northern Samar province.

"The troops were on foot patrol when the rebels detonated the anti-personnel mine," De Leon said, adding that the attack forced the government troops to abort their operation. 
Amazon plans to launch online retail operations in South Africa in 2023, according to leaks shared by US publication Business Insider . For local small businesses, this will impact margins and market share when it comes to making online sales - particularly for those who are new to the e-commerce game.

To compete with Amazon, entrepreneurs need to focus on what they can offer that global companies cant.

The best way for small businesses to differentiate themselves from the convenient-but-impersonal experience of Amazon is to offer a personalised service  and build personal connections. Use your website, social media and delivery notes to tell the story of your business. This is the best way to really connect with consumers and make them feel good about buying from you, says internet entrepreneur and head of local web hosting company 1-grid.com, Thomas Vollrath.

Leveraging local appeal

One of the main drawcards for shopping via Amazon for South Africans will be generally low prices and massive discounts, made possible by the sheer size of the company and its inventory. To counter this, local businesses, who arent able to compete when it comes to pricing, can leverage the countrys strong preference for homegrown products that are proudly South African.

This strategy should extend to all of your choices  from the payment platform you use for checkouts, to the domain extension on your website. A .co.za domain, for example, tells customers that you are based in South Africa and that you in turn support local yourself. While these may seem like small elements, they have a cumulative effect when it comes to your brand story, says Vollrath.

If you can't beat them, join them

Another tactic for local sellers is to integrate Amazon into their e-commerce strategy. Amazon will be rolling out its Sellers Marketplace as part of the local launch, which gives South African businesses an opportunity to get their products onto the biggest sales search engine in the world.

The saying goes that if you cant beat them, join them. Depending on fees and registration processes, this might be a good approach for certain businesses. The key to success here is to highlight the quality and unique nature of your product, compared to others on the Amazon platform. Its also important to maintain a web presence so that potential customers can learn more about your product, read up on FAQs, and even contact you directly, says Vollrath.

Given that the announcement was leaked prematurely, there are still a lot of questions about how the Amazon rollout will affect the South African e-commerce landscape. However, one thing is certain  business owners need to start planning for the retail giants impact on the local market if they want to succeed in standing out.
The 2022 Marketing Achievement Awards' (MAA) Marketer of the Year Award finalists have been announced.

Supplied. The five finalists in the 2022 Marketing Achievement Awards (MAA) Marketer of the Year Award

The Awards most-coveted leadership award category recognises the best marketer in the South African marketing industry today; a person who has consistently delivered innovative marketing had a positive impact on business results and proactively driven the industry forward.

Five finalists

In no particular order, the finalists are:

Firoze Bhorat, chief marketing officer at Discovery Group

Tinyiko Mageza, executive head marketing at V&A Waterfront

Sydney Mbhele, chief executive: brand at Sanlam Group

Asha Patel, head of marketing at Google South Africa and Head of B2B marketing for sub-Saharan Africa

Nontokozo Madonsela, Group CMO at Momentum Metropolitan Holdings

Marketing that means business

Prof Doug Mattheus, Adjunct Professor of marketing at the Nelson Mandela University and chairman of the Marketer of the Year selection committee, says the committee has its work cut out for it in deciding this years winner from these five incredible marketers.

The adjudication panel has requested multiple written submissions and conducted online interviews with the nominees and their colleagues to better understand these marketers and their work.

Whether a winner or a finalist, these five individuals are some of South Africas best marketers and should all be congratulated for producing outstanding work, explains Mattheus.

He adds that this is a tightly contested MAA category, and ultimately the winner will be the marketer that best demonstrates this years theme: marketing that means business.

Gugu Ntuli, GE, corporate affairs and marketing at the SABC  the institution presenting this years Marketing Achievement Awards  concurs.

The MAA are anchored in business strategy and have come to be respected as an influential platform showcasing South African marketing efforts as crucial contributors to business success. As such, the Marketer of the Year nominees will also be judged on demonstrable business results within the context of marketing as a strategic discipline, she says.

Vital to MAA's objectives

Ivan Moroke, CEO of Kantars Insight Division, South Africa; lead inclusion and diversity Kantar EMEA; and current chairperson of the MAA, adds that this award is not only one of the most sought after in the industry, but it is also vital to the overall objectives of the MAA themselves.

Ultimately, the vision of the MAA is to build marketings stature in business, help shape the industry and promote marketing as an illustrious career choice. By highlighting visionary individuals whose marketing skills have generated a significant impact within their businesses, the Marketer of the Year Award does just that, says Moroke.

The Marketer of the Year Award winner and other category winners will be announced on 13th July at a live stream awards presentation taking place on 13 July.
Last week, Absa and the South African National Association for the Visual Arts (Sanava) hosted the 2022 Absa L'Atelier Country Draw.

This year saw a record-breaking number of registrations  1,804 in total - with the top three artists vying for an opportunity to be displayed in the Absa Art Gallery in Johannesburg. As part of the honours, these top three participants will be referred to as the 2022 Absa LAtelier Ambassadors.

A massive congratulations and thank you to everyone who entered the 2022 Absa LAtelier. As Absa, we are excited and proud to witness the quality of work presented by various artists, proving the talent that continues to exist within the continent. With this years theme From start to LAtelier, our goal is to enable inclusive growth and global recognition of artists in Africa. We have seen some interesting pairings from the country draw, now the real work begins as our adjudicators start the judging process. Best of luck to all the artists, says Dr Paul Bayliss, senior specialist art curator at Absa Group.

The 2022 Country Draw results are as follows:

Group A  Nigeria, Zambia, Botswana and Uganda

Group B  Tanzania, Namibia, Kenya and Ghana

Group C  South Africa, Seychelles, Mozambique and Mauritius

The adjudicators of the competition will select three Absa LAtelier Ambassadors, who will each receive a laptop, data and exposure to intensive virtually hosted mentorship and masterclasses geared towards upskilling and enabling them to take their careers to the next level.

In addition to the masterclasses and mentoring, the winning artists will have a collaborative exhibition in the Absa Gallery which will open in November 2023. This will then travel to their respective countries in 2024. They will also have an option to take up a solo exhibition within a five-year period within the Absa Gallery.

The most deserving South African artist aged between 25 and 35 will be awarded to demonstrate integrity in the quality of their artwork. The award is made possible by Absas partnership with the Embassy of France in South Africa, the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS), and the Alliance Francoise network in South Africa.

Adjudication for the 36th Absa L'Atelier is taking place now from 13 June to 15 July 2022, led by top arts and culture professionals from different parts of the world, namely Shonisani Netshia, Shenaz Mahomed, Sharlene Khan and Diane Victor from South Africa and more from around the globe.
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At 73 years of age, a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, Kurt Sartorius, will set out on an expedition that nearly broke him 50 years ago.

Professor Kurt Sartorius - Image credit: Wits University Professor Wayne van Zijl - Image credit: Wits University

In July 2022, accountancy professor Sartorius; his son, Benn Sartorius; and colleague, Professor Wayne van Zijl [CA(SA)], also of the School of Accountancy at the Wits Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, will set out to paddle over 1100 km down the Rio Madeira, one of the biggest tributaries of the Brazilian Amazon River. This is the second time in 50 years that Sartorius will be taking on this adventure.

If you ask me how it was the first time, in 1972, I hated it, says Sartorius, who last paddled the river as a 22-year-old student. It nearly broke me.

Sartorius and his team decided to take on this challenge again in order to raise awareness of the drastic impact of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest on climate change, and to raise funds in support for reforestation initiatives and related scientific and business research.

We are also hoping to raise awareness among the accounting industry of the importance of the role that the profession has to play where it comes to climate change, says Sartorius. Accountants have the tools, skills and responsibility to report, not only on financial profits and losses, but also on environmental impact of the businesses they operate in, so they have immense power to make a crucial contribution when it comes to fighting climate change, says Sartorius.

Kurt Sartorius and one of his paddling partners, Andre Holtzhausen paddle in a canoe in the Rio Madeira in 1972 - Image credit: Colin Amm

The professors leave Johannesburg from OR Tambo International Airport on 1 July 2022 to begin the three-day journey to Porto Velho, in the State of Rondonia, in the upper Amazon River basin. From there, theyll have two days to arrange the needed food supplies and ready their two canoes for a dawn start on 6 July 2022. The journey is expected to take the team a minimum of 28 days to complete.

At night, theyll string up tree hammocks to sleep in the jungle on the banks of the river. However, many times there are no places to camp and the team of four will have to paddle some night shifts.

At some places, the river is 2 km wide, and at night it is completely dark, and the only thing you hear is the roar of insects on the banks and the gurgling sounds of the river which is alive with 900 species of river life, says Sartorius. Well need to be completely vigilant at all times, as it is extremely easy to get lost or separated from your group. Odd whirlpools can also be dangerous.

Kurt Sartorius paddles down the Rio Madeira in 1972 - Image credit: Colin Amm

Sartorius and his team have been funded by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) and Wits University. Climate Change is one of the research focus areas of Wits University, which is celebrating its centenary celebrations in 2022. Sartorius challenge makes up part of Wits Centenary Campaign. All funds raised by the expedition will go towards reforestation and research projects.

All donations will be administered by a panel of relevant experts on behalf of the Wits Foundation. Both scientific and business-related researchers can submit proposals for grants. Business-related research that accelerates developing the tools for companies to identify, measure and assure environmental impacts will be prioritised.

Our support for the reforestation project emphasises that climate change is a borderless fight, says Van Zijl. The Amazon is our planets lungs. It plays a massive part in regulating Earths climate, so each of us, no matter where we live, benefit and relies on from the Amazons rainforest. We cannot leave its protection to Brazil alone.

The teams progress during the 1100km paddle can be followed on social media Twitter at ResearchSoa and Instagram at WayneVanZijl.




One of OFM's biggest competitions of the year, the #OFMFanWall, reached its epic conclusion with the awarding of the grand prize of R20,000 cash on 1 July 2022 - OFM's 36th birthday.

Listeners were able to enter the competition by visiting any of OFM's outdoor broadcasts to have their photo taken from March until the end of June. These photos now form part of a huge digital photo album and will also feature on highway billboards as well as prominent places in Central South Africa.

During the last phase of the campaign, 16 semi-finalists were selected in a random draw. Finally, four finalists were randomly drawn during the last week of the competition. They were Patrick Rose from Upington, Riana Oosthuizen from Vanderbijlpark, Taytum Adonis from Klerksdorp, and Marghalet van der Linde from Wesselsbron.

On the morning of 1 July, during the Good Morning Breakfast show, finalists were eliminated throughout the morning. Rose and Van der Linde were the final contestants left standing.

After much suspense, Van der Linde was announced as the grand prizewinner.

She entered the competition when her photo was taken at OFM's outdoor broadcast at Grain SA's NAMPO Harvest Day in May.

I cant believe it, it feels unreal! Van der Linde exclaimed. Thank you OFM and have a great birthday. It feels like my birthday as well!

Van der Linde also used the opportunity to express what the radio station means to her: You mean so much to us (listeners), encouraging us, playing songs that make your day, giving us interesting stories... My radio is constantly on OFM. You travel everywhere with me!

According to OFM Content Manager, Elzette Boucher-Kruger, this was another amazing #OFMTwenty20You campaign from The Sound of Your Life.

Towards the end of 2021 already, OFM endeavoured to create opportunities for our listeners to turn 2022 into Twenty-20-You. Our first campaign saw a deserving student win a years tuition at Potchefstroom Academy and SAAST. We also established our monthly Bucks for Bills competition to help listeners pay their bills in these trying times. Then, The Real Good Travel Book competition awarded R15 000 cash for a bucket list travel story. Now, the big one  the Fan Wall  has concluded. We not only made an OFM fan R20,000 richer, but through this campaign weve crisscrossed our broadcast region, meeting the people who tune in and collecting a myriad of friendly faces, representing the beautiful people of our special broadcast region.

OFM would like to thank our loyal advertisers without whom these campaigns would not be possible.

We look forward to the second half of 2022 and making sure that we keep on creating opportunities for our listeners to have the best year ever.

The OFM Fan Wall digital photo album can be accessed here: https://www.ofm.co.za/competition/3413/win-big-with-ofmfanwall-.

For more information, contact: az.oc.mfo@gnitekram.




Junior Account Executive

Remuneration: market-related Location: Cape Town Job level: Junior/Mid Job policy: Employment Equity position Type: Temporary Reference: #JAccExSATM22 Company: ninety9cents

Develop and maintain a strong relationship with the client through excellent work quality and professional conduct.

Participate and assist in new business development pitches.

Proactive work ethic is essential and problem-solving mindset is ideal.

Schedule and arrange client meetings with all relevant stakeholders, including the management of related logistics.

Ensure that the team, as well as yourself, are well prepared for client meetings.

Produce accurate and timely contact reports after each client meeting which are detail-orientated.

Support office management by drafting effective and timely job briefs and effecting amendments.

Liaise with colleagues in DTP, creative, production, traffic and other departments to ensure job is actioned.

Act as supporting point of contact for clients in the absence of other team members.

Assisting with brief-in, checking and ensuring understanding of cost estimates.

Monitor and follow up on all outstanding cost estimates with clients.

Ensure that cost estimates are approved upfront and billed timeously.

Manage and compile accurate and detailed weekly status reports for internal and external status meetings.

Diploma/degree in advertising/marketing

Two years relevant experience in a similar client service position, in an Agency environment essential

Strong admin skills

Detail orientated

Enthusiastic/confident/professional/diplomatic

Team player with initiative and excellent interpersonal skills- good communication skills

Ability to cope with pressure, meet tight deadlines and handle a wide range of tasks

Reliable, organised and attentive

Have a solutions-driven attitude

Passion for client delivery and service

Desire to grow in the agency

Accountable with good follow-through

Hard-working and proactive

Ability to research and self-study

Exceptional time management skills

MS Office (MS Word/Excel/PowerPoint)

Workbook

Self-starter who takes the initiative and is able to work independently

Exceptional organizational and administrative skills

Detail-orientated

Must have good time management skills, and be able to prioritise effectively

Excellent communication skills, respectful and able to nurture and grow relationships

Willing to learn, a big thinker and team player

Our Cape Town office is looking for a fto join our Client Service Team, working on one of our national retail brands.The suitable candidate will liaise and work with all internal stakeholders on the brand and driving a positive and collaborative relationship with the client. Our ideal person should be strategically strong and able to proactively lead clients in creative solutions.Interested candidates must please submit a concise CV and salary expectation. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. Should you not hear from us within three weeks after submitting your application, please assume that your application has been unsuccessful. We remain committed to the principles of employment equity.Posted on 05 Jul 11:05, Closing date 3 Aug
Junior Experience Designer

Remuneration: cost-to-company Location: Cape Town or Johannesburg Education level: Diploma Job level: Junior Own transport required: Yes Job policy: Employment Equity position Type: Permanent Reference: #Jnr Exp Designer Company: King James

Job description

Interpret internal/client briefs and direction with minimal feedback

Deliver work at the highest quality according to agency standards

Identify opportunities to push agency standards and deliver original outputs

Following process as set out by line manager and agency

Effectively manage time and be responsible towards deadlines

Pursue relationships, processes, and values across agency teams

Ability to create flexible design systems and component libraries

Keep abreast with current and emerging design trends and technologies

Workshop assistance and participation

User-centric research

Connected experience mapping

Product architecture and journeys

User interface design and concepts

Prototyping

Design system setup and contribution

Development handover and integration

Project roadmap assistance

Assist the full project team

Research current and emerging design trends and technologies

Contribute towards new business opportunities

Project case study assistance

Agency marketing assets

Integration relationship and processes

Efficient solutions contribution

Relevant tertiary qualification

Minimum 1 years working (industry) experience

Experience in utilising Figma, Sketch, Invision and Adobe suite

Strong portfolio of product and platform design work

An understanding of UI and interaction methodologies

A high-level of marketing and digital strategies

A high-level understanding of the development process and agile methodologies

A good command of the English language (both verbal and written)

Take initiative and follow a self-leadership approach

Strong organisational skill

Strong multitasking skills (able to work across multiple briefs at any given time)

Team player contributing towards positive and respectful collaboration

Ability to remain calm in a fast-paced environment

Ability to accept constructive feedback

Proactive

Resilient

Accountable

Reliable

Deadline driven

Empathetic towards others

A good eye for design with strong attention to detail

Other: Comfortable to work on-site (at the King James office)

concise CV and a link to an online portfolio

King James - Part of Accenture Song is seeking a Junior Experience Designer to join their Dev team. As an Experience Designer, you extract insights, generate concepts, and deliver the appropriate journeys that benefit our clients business and above all, their users. At all times, you will assess the value of the designed experience and ensure a high level of craft within your work.(include but not limited to):In the business:On the business:Interested in joining our Dev team? Kindly submit ato careerskj@kingjames.co.za. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. Should you not hear from us within 1 week after submitting your application, kindly consider your application as unsuccessful. Posted on 05 Jul 20:24, Closing date 31 Jul
Community Manager - Employer Brand

Remuneration: negotiable Location: Cape Town, Stellenbosch Education level: Degree Job level: Mid Type: Permanent Company: Entersekt

Job description

Engage with employees to build personas to identify the ideal candidate for recruiting purposes.

Ensure the Entersekt careers page on our website is updated and aligned to our employer brand value proposition.

Develop campaigns to attract prospective employees and identify new recruitment opportunities by bolstering Entersekts online presence.

Work alongside the marketing creative team to develop and maintain marketing materials, including employee videos and testimonials, to strengthen the organizations employee value proposition.

Collaborate with internal stakeholders in engineering and people ops, for example, to work with strategic partners such as universities, technology incubators, and tech forums to generate continuous awareness of Entersekts employer brand.

Monitor the organisations social media presence on various employer platforms.

Develop creative media campaigns and talent strategies to attract top technical talent.

Work closely with dedicated talent and transformation stakeholders to ideate talent and employee engagement opportunities, campaigns, and events for social media platforms that will galvanize employer brand awareness both internally and externally.

Suggest and implement new features to develop brand awareness, such as promotions and competitions.

Develop a monthly social media content calendar built around engagement, culture, and people posts.

Respond to potential employees on social media in a timely manner.

Report on social media metrics and OKRs.

Stay up to date with current technologies and trends in social media, design tools, and applications.

Write creative and persuasive copy for various social media platforms.

Create content for blogs and print media.

Ensure job descriptions are reviewed and edited in line with the companys brand, voice and tone principles.

Work with the digital content manager to contribute towards content ideas and perform research on assigned topics.

Work with the senior digital designer to ensure internal communication branding is updated on a regular basis.

Requirements

Proven work experience as a community manager.

Experience in planning and leading community initiatives.

Degree in marketing or relevant qualification.

5  8 years experience in the technology industry.

Experience in the fintech or mobile environment preferable.

Experience in both B2B and B2C environments.

Strong knowledge of social media communication techniques.

Strong understanding of building brands among potential employees.

Experience using personas and content marketing strategies to analyze the success of marketing campaigns.

Eager to get immersed in projects and work collaboratively with internal and external stakeholders.

Highly organised and able to prioritize effectively.

Ability to build and maintain effective cross-functional relationships in a remote environment.

Detail orientated.

Open to constructive feedback.

A creative problem solver who can continuously find ways of connecting with employees (prospective and present).

Shows initiative in developing innovative ways to solve problems.

Can independently implement their ideas, following the process from inception to execution and evaluation.

Company Description

This is an exciting opportunity for a passionate marketer? Who wants to be part of a rapidly growing and innovative business.In this role, you will champion Entersekt as an employer of choice to existing employees, prospective hires, and customers by building a strong brand presence within the tech space. You will serve as the face of a company when communicating through activities such PR, social media, events, and content creation.To do this, you will work closely with our internal company influencers and deliver innovative and effective employer brand strategies that will help us build a strong and cohesive company culture.You will also work closely with our people and recruitment teams to manage, coordinate, and communicate initiatives that build our brand on social media.Successful candidates for this role will generally possess the following qualifications and skills:Founded over 11 years ago, with more recent investments from Accel-KKR, Entersekt is a leader in mobile authentication, mobile app security, and payments enablement technology, offering highly scalable products with a track record of success across multiple continents.Entersekt enables secure digital transactions for leading financial institutions globally. We exist to create a world where everyone can transact digitally without fear or compromise. Protecting the digital transactions of over 67 million active users on our platform, with over 60 registered patents that recognizes innovation in digital security, payments, and user experience. Entersekt offers their customers frictionless authentication and digital payments experiences. Entersekt has invested in, and created, a diverse product portfolio that positions the company well to execute on its expansion in North America and European markets. Posted on 05 Jul 18:06, Closing date 3 Sep
Photo taken on July 5, 2022 shows a bus crash site in Kirklareli province, Turkey. At least six people, including one minor, were killed and 25 others wounded in a bus crash in northwestern Turkey on Tuesday, local media reported. (Photo by Cinar Turkmen/Xinhua)

ISTANBUL, July 5 (Xinhua) -- At least six people, including one minor, were killed and 25 others wounded in a bus crash in northwestern Turkey on Tuesday, local media reported.

Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency said the bus set off to the southwestern resort town of Bodrum early in the morning from the northwestern city of Edirne.

Shortly into its journey, the bus crashed through the stockade, falling down a ramp in the Kirklareli province, it added.

Police, medical professionals, and emergency rescue teams were sent to the crash site immediately, reported the agency.

Kirklareli Governor Birol Ekici, who also arrived at the scene, did not disclose any possible causes regarding the crash, for which an investigation is underway. 
Account Manager

Remuneration: R25000 - R30000 per month cost-to-company Location: Johannesburg, Bryanston Remote work: Some remote work allowed Education level: Diploma Job level: Junior/Mid Travel requirement: Occasional Type: Contract Reference: #JHB000121 Company: TALENTED

Job description

well.

Daily contact with clients and influencers is a key part of the job.

Ability to put together presentations

Capture and monitor all costs/expenses for each campaign

Strong account management experience

Experience negotiating contracts

Data-driven approach to marketing programs, leveraging insights to determine decisions

Strategic approach

Ability to engage with clients to identify & articulate their needs

Interrogate and prepare a clear brief with specific objectives and timelines

Maintain the Database (sometimes capturing too)

Ensure admin is up-to-date to support all efforts of the business as it relates to the projects & campaigns you work on

Generate accurate reports and status notifications and updates

Assist in pitching fresh ideas to clients

Have the knowledge and skills to push clients, the team and the agency in the most productive direction

When research is required, coordinate projects and provide clarity.

Always working to maintain a clear strategy to achieve the very best outcome for the client.

Open, transparent communication

Happy to report back & collaborate

Confident and assertive

Self motivated

Eye for detail and delivery

Mature work ethic

Professional client relationship management

3-4 years in Advertising, design or marketing

Strong proficiency in Excel and PowerPoint

Campaign/Project budget management

Ability to strategise at a senior level

A persuasive and confident approach to creative projects

Excellent written and oral communication skills

Effective team management capabilities

Full awareness of creative processes and techniques  including digital platforms

The ability to work as an authoritative figure in a busy team

years of professional experience working in social media specifically working on influencer campaigns.Small, dynamic team looking for someone to join their team. Reporting to the Business owner, this is a fast-paced environment that is both demanding and fulfilling, involving the coordination of internal and external stakeholders.In this role you can work hybrid (there is a minimum in-office requirement)- getting the job done is key! Need someone self-managed and self-motivated who is about the job and getting it done,Looking for a versatile and highly capable account manager who will oversee projects on a day-to-day basis, ensuring that the projects/campaigns run smoothly and achieve their potential (especially that the required ROI is achieved).You will be relied on for a mix of tasks:Posted on 05 Jul 23:08, Closing date 31 Jul
The UK has signed up to a US plan for sharing police-held biometric data about citizens with US border officials.

According to a member of the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), the body met "informally" with representatives of the US Department of Homeland Security this week to discuss the plans.

They come under the auspices of the Enhanced Border Security Partnership (EBSP), which is designed to increase the US Department Of Homeland Security's ability to detect threats through biometric information sharing. Israel signed up to the arrangement in March.

LIBE committee member and Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer said that during the meeting last week, the committee discovered that the UK  and three EU member states, though their identities were not revealed  had already signed up to reintroduce US visa requirements which grant access to police biometric databases.

In the UK, the Home Office declined the opportunity to deny it was signing up for the scheme. A spokesperson said: "The UK has a long-standing and close partnership with the USA which includes sharing data for specific purposes. We are in regular discussion with them on new proposals or initiatives to improve public safety and enable legitimate travel."

Under UK law the police can retain an individual's DNA profile and fingerprint record for up to three years from the date the samples were taken, even if the individual was arrested but not charged, provided the Biometrics Commissioner agrees. Police can also apply for a two-year extension. The same applies to those charged, but not convicted.
JERUSALEM, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid left on Tuesday for Paris for his first trip abroad after assuming office, where he is expected to ask for French intervention in Israel's escalating tensions with Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Lapid, who became caretaker prime minister on Friday following the collapse of the coalition government under Naftali Bennett, met his first security challenge a day after his appointment, when three Hezbollah drones flew over disputed waters in Eastern Mediterranean toward Israel's newly-installed Karish gas platform. All drones were intercepted.

"There have been repeated attacks on Israeli gas rigs," Lapid said in a statement ahead of his departure, adding he will discuss the incident with French President Emmanuel Macron.

"The Lebanese government needs to restrain Hezbollah in the wake of these attacks, or we will have to do so," he warned.

Hezbollah is an Iran-backed powerful Shiite political party and militant organization in Lebanon.

The incident came amid a dispute concerning the Karish gas field located within what Israel says is its UN-recognized exclusive economic zone, or a disputed zone claimed by Lebanon.

Lapid said he will also press Macron on the Iranian nuclear talks. France is among the world powers that have been trying to restore a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which Israel opposes, saying it gives no guarantee of eliminating Iran's capability to secretly build nuclear weapons.

"It is important that our opinion be heard at this time against this dangerous agreement," the Israeli leader said. 
ISTANBUL, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Turkey on Tuesday established a ministerial council with Bulgaria, Hungary and Serbia to boost regional transport and logistics cooperation.

At the first meeting of the Quadrilateral Ministerial Coordination Council, the delegates from the four countries signed deals on implementing projects for improving the railroads between the countries.

"We are taking a new step every day in the development of the Middle Corridor, which has become a center of attraction," Turkish Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Adil Karaismailoglu said in a press release.

The Middle Corridor is a trans-Caspian transport route that links Turkey and Europe with China.

The Turkish minister noted that the cooperation among the four countries would significantly contribute to the improvement of this trade corridor.

"The increase in trade volume between China and Europe alone signifies the geopolitical importance of our countries," he stressed.

Karaismailoglu noted that it takes only about 12 days for a freight train from China to reach Turkey by using the Middle Corridor, referring to the 8,693-km railroad linking Istanbul and the Chinese city of Xi'an.

The council's first declared ambition is to have a railroad transportation volume of over 440 million tonnes through the Middle Corridor within 30 years, compared to today's about 38 million, he said. 
Some farmers and rural landowners in Westman could be asked to foot part of the bill for upgrades to private rail grade crossings on their property.

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Some farmers and rural landowners in Westman could be asked to foot part of the bill for upgrades to private rail grade crossings on their property.

Three years ago, Transport Canada updated its Grade Crossing Regulations to include new amendments that apply to all public and private railway crossings in the country. The amendments were put in place to improve safety by bringing sightlines and grade levels into compliance with the new standards.

A private railway crossing is constituted when there is no public use of the crossing and the same individual or farm business owns the land on both sides of the tracks. In the past, the responsibility for the maintenance of these crossings had been the railways. Now that all farm crossings are being classified as private crossings, farmers and landowners could be facing bills from rail companies such as Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian National Railway.

Farmers are now also required to have a minimum general liability insurance of $5 million for the crossings, along with $2 million in automobile liability insurance. When its a CP Rail crossing, they must pay the company an annual crossing fee of $350, which is subject to change with every new annual contract.

Keystone Agricultural Producers (KAP) president Bill Campbell said in a statement to the Sun that while KAP supports and welcomes the new measures to increase safety at railway crossings, it shouldnt be the responsibility of farmers to pay for it.

"It is important that these crucial access points are maintained and receive the required upgrades without imposing additional costs onto agricultural producers. As we have noted in the past, KAP believes the maintenance and repairs to grade crossing are the financial responsibility of class 1 railways and not farmers."

Campbell said that KAP recommends any farmer who disputes the costs for grade crossing upgrades contact the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA), as it is responsible for all disputes relating to federally funded regulated railways.

A railway crossing on a farm about five kilometres east of Neepawa. (Miranda Leybourne/The Brandon Sun) A railway crossing on a farm about five kilometres east of Neepawa. (Miranda Leybourne/The Brandon Sun)

Jonathan Abecassis, the senior manager of media relations for CN Rail, told the Sun in an email that private grade crossings must comply with the federal government regulations.

"Under the regulations, rail safety is a shared responsibility, as is the maintenance and upkeep of individual crossings," Abecassis said.

Sau Sau Liu, senior communications adviser with Transport Canada, also replied to enquiries from the Sun via email. Liu said Transport Canada is committed to protecting all Canadians who live and work along rail lines by putting in place the necessary measures to reduce the risk of serious accidents.

Liu noted that Transport Canada amended the new regulations by extending the compliance deadlines in 2021 after hearing from railway companies, road authorities and private landowners.

"These amendments preserve the core safety objectives of the regulations while providing financial relief to public and private authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic by ensuring that very low-risk grade crossings are not subject to undue burden."

The regulatory amendments, Liu said, focus efforts on reducing the risks of preventable accidents at grade crossings while being mindful of economic realities affecting farmers and landowners.

The Brandon Sun reached out to representatives from CP Rail but did not receive a reply by press time.

 mleybourne@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @miraleybourne
The city councillor representing Brandons downtown wants one more term on the job.

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The city councillor representing Brandons downtown wants one more term on the job.

On Monday, Coun. Kris Desjarlais (Rosser) told the Sun that hell be on the ballot vying for a third term when this falls municipal election rolls around.

So far, Coun. Jan Chaboyer (Green Acres) and Mayor Rick Chrest are the only incumbents who have declared their intentions not to run for re-election.

Desjarlais, the director of Indigenous education at Assiniboine Community College, said that it wasnt a matter of finding a reason to run again but finding a reason to stop running. However, he said this will be his last run at city council.

"I really enjoy representing the residents and being involved in decision making," Desjarlais said. "Its something that my family, my mom and dad were passionate about and I come at it pretty honestly and naturally. But it takes a time commitment and it takes you away from your family sometimes."

Ultimately, Desjarlais said that the decision was to run again with made with his partner, and the couple believed that they could handle four more years.

Though the mayors seat will be up for grabs this summer, Desjarlais said he was "never" interested in making a run for the position.

"It takes a certain kind of individual," he said. "I think someone like Rick Chrest really represented the city incredibly well. There are a lot of facets to the position, and I think a lot of things he does behind the scenes are super important. Hes really solidified a lot of the relationships we have with the federal government and even our First Nations and Indigenous communities and organizations.

"It takes a certain kind of person to do that gig day in and day out and be unflappable, and Im just not sure Im that person."

He said that if Coun. Jeff Fawcett (Assiniboine) ends up as the only mayoral candidate this year, hed do a "great job" and praised his three terms of experience in municipal politics.

Last week at a ward meeting, Desjarlais constituents expressed hope that he would be a champion for downtown projects like renovations to the Library/Arts Building and the demolition and replacement of the Park Community Centre.

Those projects, he said, are items hed like to see cross the finish line should voters grant him a third term in office.

"I think we have to do a better job on climate change and preparing our city for the future that way," he said looking ahead to the next council. "There are some really important decisions to make around growth and taxation over the next few years that are going to have an important role in the future of our city going forward."

On the state of downtown Brandon, Desjarlais believes that progress was being made during his first four or five years on council and halted when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived.

"We cant make the pandemic the excuse for all our ills, but it certainly didnt help at all," he said. "If folks already had a negative view, a negative perception of the downtown before the pandemic, that wasnt going to change post-pandemic. Were pulling ourselves out of that now."

He said hes impressed with people standing up and volunteering to be leaders when it comes to downtown issues, like with the downtown task force, the Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation, the Brandon Downtown Development Corporation and Brandon Bear Clan.

"Theres an all-hands-on-deck mentality right now, which is helpful," Desjarlais said. "Its going to take a city, an entire community to turn things around in the downtown, but I remain optimistic that we can achieve that."

Other after-effects of the pandemic, financial uncertainty and rising costs, he said, will be a tough hand for the city as it tries to balance limiting tax increases while still providing services.

On the issue of voter turnout, which reared its head both in the last municipal election and last years Meadows-Waverly byelection, Desjarlais said he has some out-of-the-box ideas to encourage people to go to the polls.

"Low voter turnout does not always equal apathy," he said. "It can, it often does, but it doesnt always. Sometimes low voter turnout is steady as she goes, everyones comfortable with the way things are. Im not saying thats whats been happening, but its possible."

One potential solution, he believes, could be entering voters into a lottery where one lucky person will get their municipal taxes returned for the year. Whatever the solution is, he doesnt want a system where people are punished for not voting, like in Australia.

Another issue Desjarlais believes the city needs to address is to make city council positions more enticing so that a greater variety of candidates are interested in running, no matter their background.

As of last Thursday, the registration period for both mayoral and council candidates are both open. Election day is Oct. 26.

 cslark@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @ColinSlark
WINNIPEG  A 22-year-old man from Shamattawa First Nation is in critical condition in a Winnipeg hospital after being shot by RCMP over the weekend, sources say.

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WINNIPEG  A 22-year-old man from Shamattawa First Nation is in critical condition in a Winnipeg hospital after being shot by RCMP over the weekend, sources say.

In a news release, RCMP indicated officers in the Shamattawa detachment responded to a report of a male walking on a road with a firearm around 1 p.m. Saturday.

Officers, who reportedly heard several gunshots, located a suspect outside a residence and returned fire after the suspect shot at them, RCMP said.

The man sustained serious injuries and was initially taken to the communitys nursing station before he was flown to Winnipegs Health Sciences Centre  approximately 750 kilometres south  for treatment.

The officers were not injured.

When a shooting involves RCMP, its very shocking and traumatizing, said Sandy Miles, a band councillor and relative of the 22-year-old man.

I think its time that the leadership, even the whole community should sit down with RCMP and have a good dialogue, and make sure that this doesnt happen again.

The police are continuing their investigation.

Manitobas Independent Investigation Unit, which is mandated to look into serious incidents involving both on- and off-duty officers, is also conducting its own probe. Members of the police oversight agency visited the community and interviewed witnesses Sunday.

The man who was shot was preparing for a fishing trip with one of his friends on Saturday afternoon and had both a fishing rod and gun on hand, Miles said.

Whenever we go on a fishing trip, I do that too. I take my fishing gear. I take my rifle and sometimes, I take my shotgun, thinking that I might see ducks or moose or caribou, the councillor said.

Sources told the Winnipeg Free Press the 22-year-olds condition worsened over the weekend and close family members have been flown to Winnipeg to be by his side.

Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Inc. issued a statement on the situation Monday.

I am aware there are extenuating circumstances that led to this incident, but it is alarming when you hear that an Indigenous man is shot 11 times. It is disconcerting, and being cognizant of the many shootings of Indigenous people as of late, I cannot help but be uncertain of the path forward on reconciliation, MKO Grand Chief Garrison Settee said in the release.

Shamattawa Chief Jordna Hill has requested the RCMP undertake a review of its operational policies and remove the officers involved in the incident until an investigation is complete as a matter of safety on both sides.

I further call for a change in the policy of trigger happy shoot first and ask questions later  These incidents are becoming too common, Hill added in a prepared statement.

The Shamattawa officers have already been relocated per normal procedures, said RCMP spokeswoman Cpl. Julie Courchaine.

Officers involved in shootings are typically removed from front-line policing for their health and well-being, Courchaine said, adding that employees who work in small communities may be moved to larger centres  as was the case in this situation  where RCMP supports are more readily accessible.

A video of the aftermath of the shooting has been making the rounds on social media. In the clip, community members press officers about why they shot the man. There is wailing and screaming amid other background noise.

Witnesses and other individuals who have information or video footage of the incident are asked to contact the IIU toll-free at 1-844-667-6060.

 Winnipeg Free Press
WINNIPEG  Two Ukrainian refugees attacked at The Forks on Canada Day intend to leave Manitoba, as a rash of incidents highlights an increase in violent crime in Winnipeg.

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WINNIPEG  Two Ukrainian refugees attacked at The Forks on Canada Day intend to leave Manitoba, as a rash of incidents highlights an increase in violent crime in Winnipeg.

The citys emergency services responded to three serious stabbings and two shootings, including Winnipegs 27th homicide of the year, over a bloody long weekend.

Julya Zan and her husband, Jorge Torres, pulled over and helped the victim after he was stabbed Friday night. (Submitted) Julya Zan and her husband, Jorge Torres, pulled over and helped the victim after he was stabbed Friday night. (Submitted)

Friday nights stabbing at The Forks was the third attack in five days at the national historic site.

We saw a young man holding his chest and his neck desperately asking for help as he walked toward traffic, said witness Julya Zan. The knife was sticking out of his neck.

As other drivers went around the victim, Zan, 26, and her husband, Jorge Torres, stopped their car and helped him as he lay on a sidewalk, she said.

The couples friend was on the phone with 911.

The 22-year-old victim and his friend told Zan they were crossing Israel Asper Way at York Avenue when they accidentally bumped into a group of at least three men around 10:40 p.m.

After apologizing, both men were hit with bear spray, and one was stabbed.

He said it was so shocking and it happened so fast he didnt realize he had been stabbed, said Zan, who moved to Canada from Ukraine in 2010.

She spoke in Ukrainian to the victims, who were in shock, as they waited for police and paramedics to arrive.

As I was trying to calm this man down, I was freaking out, she said. Ive never seen anything like that before.

As the stabbing victim turned pale and was rushed off in an ambulance, Zan worried he wouldnt make it.

In a news release, Winnipeg police said the victim was bleeding profusely with a life-threatening wound.

Staff at Health Sciences Centre stabilized him after he arrived in critical condition.

His 23-year-old friend was treated and released.

Police are looking for multiple suspects, who fled on foot.

Zan, who has visited the stabbing victim in hospital, said the men told her they fled Kyiv when Russia launched its unprovoked war on Ukraine in February.

After spending time in Poland, they arrived in Canada two weeks ago.

The pair moved into an apartment in downtown Winnipeg the day of the attack, said Zan.

They told me they dont want to be here anymore. They are looking at moving to another province, she said. Their opinion about Manitoba and Winnipeg has definitely changed.

Traumatized by what she witnessed, Zan doesnt feel comfortable returning to the area. She has had flashbacks of the victim with the knife stuck in his neck.

It could have been anybody; he was a totally innocent guy walking down the street, she said. It just makes you question if you should be going downtown.

In the earlier incidents at The Forks, a father and daughter were attacked by three teenage girls at about 8 p.m. on June 27, and two men were stabbed at about 12:30 a.m. two days later, said police.

Four youths and two adults were arrested in the latter attack.

On June 20, a 16-year-old boy was critically injured and an 11-year-old boy was caught in the crossfire during a shooting at the Red River Ex.

Between April 2021 and March 2022, reports of violent crime in Winnipeg increased by 18.3 per cent compared with the previous 12-month period, according to the latest police figures.

The total was 3.7 per cent higher than the five-year average.

Reports of violent crime in March, as Manitoba emerged from another COVID-19 lockdown, jumped by 19.7 per cent compared with March 2021.

The figure was 37.9 per cent higher than the five-year average for the month.

Coun. Markus Chambers, chair of the Winnipeg Police Board, said the city could be on pace for a record number of homicides, with 27 so far.

A record 44 homicides occurred in 2019.

Of this years killings, the police clearance rate is high, and most have involved people who know each other or gang activity, said Chambers.

This is not the perception that we want, that its a violent city, he said, noting tougher economic times can lead to an increase in crime.

To be proactive, Chambers said, he wants the police board to meet with downtown groups to discuss safety in the area.

He said the board wants to hear from Winnipeggers to help police to identify neighbourhoods that may require an increase in police presence or strategies to combat crime.

Recent violence isnt doing any favours for Winnipegs reputation and attempts to attract new residents and tourists.

Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war, for example, are using social media to seek recommendations on where to live when they arrive in Canada.

I would think something like this, in the short term, may discourage some people from coming to Winnipeg on their own, which would be unfortunate because, in general, it is a safe and welcoming place, said Ostap Skrypnyk, a member of the Ukrainian Canadian Congresss Manitoba council.

One of the councils leaders was planning to visit the victim of Fridays stabbing in hospital.

The Winnipeg Police Services public information office was busy Monday, as it released information about five violent incidents over the Canada Day long weekend.

Amid that workload, a spokeswoman said police were unable to accommodate a Winnipeg Free Press request for comment on crime trends and prevention.

Mayor Brian Bowman was not available for comment, his spokesman said.

No one from The Forks management was made available for an interview Monday.

In an email, spokeswoman Jenna Khan said The Forks is co-operating with police and it does not have any further details about Fridays incident.

Security was increased following the two earlier attacks.

In addition to The Forks security team, Winnipeg police officers and cadets, the Downtown Community Safety Partnership, SABE Peace Walkers, Mama Bear Clan and Impact Security were on site during Fridays celebration, called A New Day, said Khan.

Crime and public safety are certain to be among the key issues when Winnipeggers elect a new mayor and councillors in October.

Mayoral candidate Jenny Motkaluk said she would like to see The Forkss CEO, Sara Stasiuk, and police Chief Danny Smyth make public statements about the recent violence.

She said she isnt prepared to reveal her platform on crime, but police officers are taxed and measures should focus on maximizing the time they spend in the community.

Fellow candidate Rick Shone said Fridays attack was embarrassing and really disgusting.

If elected, he would like to work with the province and community agencies on a strategy to free up officers from having to respond to less urgent or non-violent calls.

Shone and former mayor Glen Murray, another candidate, cited a need to work with federal and provincial governments on long-term plans for social issues that are among the contributing factors to criminal behaviour.

Murray and candidate Scott Gillingham, the councillor for St. James, said they would advocate for a greater focus on community-based policing and prevention.

St. Boniface-St. Vital MP Dan Vandal, the Liberals senior portfolio minister in Manitoba, said public safety is the federal governments top priority.

He said Ottawa is trying to prevent crime by investing in programs for people with mental health needs and/or addictions, and those who are in or at risk of falling into gangs.

Provincial Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen said the province is working with police across the province to prevent violent crime.

 Winnipeg Free Press
WASHINGTON, July 4 (Xinhua) -- Two police officers were reportedly shot in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's largest city, during the Independence Day fireworks show on Monday night.

There was a "security incident" on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, according to the city's office of emergency management. A manhunt is reportedly underway.

"For those looking to reunite with loved ones on the Parkway, please meet at 1901 Vine Street in front of the Free Library of Philadelphia," the Philadelphia Police Department tweeted. "All others, please avoid the area."

Footage posted on social media showed a large crowd of people fleeing from the scene as fireworks continued to blast in the sky.

Malcolm Kenyatta, a state lawmaker, tweeted that he's "absolutely gutted by the reports of a shooting tonight."

"We shouldn't have to live like this," Kenyatta wrote. "Family after family and community after community forced to live with the gut wrenching pain of gun violence."

The shooting came only hours after at least six people were killed in a shooting in downtown Highland Park, Illinois, during a July 4th parade, with dozens of others injured.

A suspect in the Highland Park shooting has been taken into custody near Lake Forest, Illinois, officials said.

The suspect, identified as 22-year-old Robert Crimo III, was taken into custody without incident and will be taken to the Highland Park police department.

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday that he is "shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day."

The shootings on the federal holiday came less than two weeks after Biden signed into law what had been touted as a gun safety bill.

The narrow legislation was a response to two mass shootings in May, including a rampage that left 19 children and two teachers dead at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

There have been more than 22,300 deaths from gun violence and 311 mass shootings across the United States over the past six months or so, according to the latest data from the Gun Violence Archive. 
Rio Tinto, the second-largest Australian mining company, has faced a fresh setback in its push to develop the long-stalled Simandou iron ore project in Guinea after the West African nations government issued a stop-work order.

Guineas Mines Minister Moussa Magassouba wrote to Rio Tinto and China-backed SMB-Winning Consortium over the weekend, directing them to stop all work related to Simandou from 8am local time on Monday. The letter from the nations military rulers said the companies had shown an unacceptable lack of willingness to agree on a joint venture for funding the projects transport infrastructure.

Guineas Simandou mountains contain very high quality iron ore. Credit:Rio Tinto

The governments intervention adds to doubts surrounding the timeline for developing Simandou, which is considered the worlds biggest untapped resource of the steel-making ingredient iron ore.

Guineas ruling junta, which took power in a coup in September, has become increasingly impatient with Rio Tinto and other companies involved in the Simandou project. In March, it halted construction works on the mine and forced Rio Tinto and the SMB-Winning Consortium to establish a framework for the projects infrastructure including a 670-kilometre railway line and a port.
The road through Shanes Park, in Sydneys west, is usually lined with paddocks, chickens and a variety of farm animals. But since Friday, water, floating mattresses, milk bottles, car parts and bins line the street. Its a sight that has become all too familiar for resident Suzette Turner, who said the area has been hit by four floods in the last two years.

The water now sits at the top of their double-storey house and shes confident theyve lost everything. This time was different from the previous floods. This time, Turner said, there was limited assistance from the emergency services, and delayed evacuation orders that not everyone in the community received.

Suzette Turner and Grant Berry await the arrival of their grandkids who were rescued. Credit:Dean Sewell

For its part, the NSW SES says its resources are stretched but that it has thousands of volunteers and rescue teams responding to the flooding event, bolstered by additional interstate support.

An agency spokesperson said Shanes Park was issued with three evacuation warnings on Sunday and volunteers knocked on doors advising people to evacuate. When an evacuation order was issued on Tuesday morning, residents were informed via text, social and mainstream media, the spokesperson said.
Recriminations continue to flow over the shock defeat of Kristina Keneally in the once-safe seat of Fowler, with Labor branch members in south-west Sydney calling for the partys head office to discipline those who white-anted the former premier.

Members of the Cabramatta branch also called on the NSW ALP to consider expelling Tu Le, a Vietnamese-Australian lawyer who had hoped to run for Labor in Fowler before Keneally was controversially parachuted into the seat.

Kristina Keneally lost the previously safe seat of Fowler after a backlash from voters. Credit:Nick Moir

Former longtime Fowler MP Chris Hayes was also criticised at a recent branch meeting for not doing enough to help Keneallys campaign.

Independent Dai Le scored one of the biggest upsets on election night by defeating Keneally in Fowler, a seat Labor previously held on a comfortable 14 per cent margin.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says her country could draw on Victorias infrastructure project expertise following a meeting with Premier Daniel Andrews.

The pair met in Melbourne on Tuesday as part of the New Zealand leaders five-day visit to Australia.

Jacinda Ardern and Daniel Andrews meet in Melbourne on Tuesday. Credit:AAP

Hes become a friend, so it was fantastic to catch up in person, Ardern said after the meeting.

She said the pair also discussed early childhood education reforms, COVID-19 management, aged care, pressures on their respective healthcare systems and rail infrastructure.
Organisers of a Black Lives Matter rally held in Melbourne during COVID-19 lockdown restrictions will no longer face prosecution, with all charges against them expected to be dropped by Victoria Police.

Crystal McKinnon and Meriki Onus had been due to appear in court this month to fight charges of breaching the chief health officers directions over their role in planning the June 2020 march against Aboriginal deaths in custody, which attracted about 10,000 people.

(L-R) Crystal McKinnon, Meriki Onus and Tarneen Onus-Williams announcing their intention to go ahead with the rally in 2020. Credit:Justin McManus

McKinnon, an Amangu Yamaji woman and Indigenous research fellow at RMIT, and Onus, a Gunai and Gunditjmara woman and activist, said the action against them should never have been taken.

The Victorian government presents itself as a progressive government committed to addressing past and ongoing violence against First Nations peoples through various initiatives, while at the same time trying to silence the voices who have had enough of our people dying in custody and who demand change, they said.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Its been about a week since the first tranche of census data came out. Weve taken a close look at what the data shows for all of Australia and for Victoria, so now it is time to go one level deeper and tease out what the data shows closer to home. Using this interactive, you can see what the census data shows for your suburb, and see how your area compares with the rest of Australia for things like income, religion, average age, home ownership and more. Simply type the name of your suburb into the search box below: OLDEST AND YOUNGEST SUBURBS The median age in Victoria is 38. On average, Victorians skew slightly older than residents of the Northern Territory (33) and ACT (35) but are younger than people in South Australia (41) and Tasmania (42).

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The youngest suburbs are Parkville, Clayton North and Melbourne CBD  North, where the median age is 26. These areas are all home to a lot of students who attend nearby universities. In the fringe suburbs of Tarneit, Clyde and Wyndham Vale, where young families have flocked over the past decade, the median age is 29. The suburbs with the highest median age are by the water. In Paynesville, on the Gippsland coast, and Point Lonsdale, the median age is 61. INCOME AND HOUSING COSTS The suburb with the highest individual income is East Melbourne, where half of the adult population earns at least $1532 a week. The suburb with the lowest is Campbellfield/Coolaroo with $437 a week. For all of Victoria, the median individual weekly income is $803. Median mortgage repayments are highest in Brighton, Brighton East, Surrey Hills, Toorak and Balwyn North. In all of these areas the median monthly repayment is above $3000. That compares with $1859 for all of Victoria.

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Toorak has among the highest median monthly mortgage repayments. Credit:Penny Stephens The suburb with the most expensive median rent is in bayside Beaumaris, where half of the renter households are paying at least $612 a week. The statewide median is $370. HOME OWNERSHIP Statewide, 33.2 per cent of private households are occupied by people who own them outright, 37.3 per cent by people with a mortgage and 29.5 per cent by people who rent. Owner-occupiers make up the highest percentage of households in Point Lonsdale (at 62.1 per cent), while the highest percentage of rental properties are in the Melbourne CBD  North (80.3 per cent). The fast-growing suburb of Tarneit. Credit:Paul Jeffers Tarneit, Truganina and Clyde North have the lowest percentage of people who own outright  these are newer areas with homes that were built in the past decade or so, lived in by young families who have many years left on their mortgages.

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RELIGION One of the key findings in the census was how there had been a considerable drop in the proportion of Christian Australians and a rise in the percentage who ticked the no religion box. In Victoria, 43.8 per cent are Christian and 42.1 per cent have no religion, but these percentages vary across the state. There is a ring of suburbs surrounding Melbourne Airport that have the highest percentage of people who are Christian, more than two-thirds. This Bible Ring includes Taylors Lakes, Keilor, Keilor East and Avondale Heights. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of census respondents in Fitzroy North, Brunswick, Northcote and Carlton North are either atheists or agnostic. In regional Victoria, 68.6 per cent of Castlemaine do not follow religion. Loading In Dandenong, 54.3 per cent of the population is Muslim, 34.7 per cent of Springvale South is Buddhist and 44.8 per cent of Caulfield North is Jewish. In Tarneit North, 31 per cent of the population are Hindu and more than a fifth are Sikh.

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Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, we have witnessed from afar the shifting fortunes of war: advances and retreats, leadership failures and brilliant courage, logistic challenges, and widespread information operations.

Initial pessimism about Ukraines chances became extreme optimism. In the last several weeks, pessimism has again returned, particularly among those who seek to divine strategic outcomes from single tactical events.

Maryna Hrynchuk cries over her husbands coffin. He was killed in the Luhansk region. Credit:Getty Images

Evidently, Russian forces have now completed their conquest of the Luhansk region. They have however only partially succeeded in achieving their operational objectives here: they have almost met Putins goal of capturing the Donbas; and, while they drew the Ukrainians into a battle of attrition, they have not destroyed the Ukrainian army in the field, not their steel will.

The Ukrainians, having persevered in the face of Russian advantages in artillery and air power in this part of the country, were able to undertake retrograde operations to preserve their army in the east. They have ensured the Russian forces bled for every metre of territory gained in Luhansk. But, it has also come at a high cost to Ukraines soldiers.
Some in the Coalition have tried to score political points by claiming that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been travelling too much in his first two months in office.

Some conservative pundits have even drawn comparisons between Albaneses travel and Scott Morrisons trip to Hawaii during the 2019 bushfires.

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The criticisms are nonsense. Prime Minister Anthony Albaneses eight-day trip to Europe over the past week was no holiday  he visited a war zone  and used every day to promote vital Australian interests.

Albanese had no choice but to attend the meetings of NATO in Madrid and G7 meetings in the Bavarian Alps in Germany last week and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with key democratic allies in the fight against Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine.
Washington: The suspected gunman at the centre of the Highland Park mass shooting had planned the attack for weeks, with police saying he was equipped with legally purchased firearms and disguised himself in womens clothing to escape with the crowd.

Highland Park authorities released a photo of Robert Crimo III. Credit:City of Highland Park

Less than 24 hours after the Independence Day parade attack that has killed seven people and wounded dozens of others, authorities have also confirmed that Robert E Crimo III fired more than 70 rounds into the crowd from a rooftop overlooking the event, which he accessed using a fire-escape ladder.

He has since been charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, with more charges to come.

Following the attack, Crimo exited the roof, he dropped his rifle and he blended in with the crowd and he escaped, said Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli of the Lake County Sheriffs Office.
WASHINGTON, July 4 (Xinhua) -- The brutal police shooting of African American Jayland Walker by multiple officers with dozens of shots in Akron, Ohio, a week ago has torn open the nation's scar of racism.

Protesters continued to take to the streets in Akron on Monday to demand justice for Walker while decrying police violence and racism.

A day earlier, the Akron Police Department released body-camera footage of the deadly encounter, which took place after midnight on June 27 during an attempted traffic stop.

Officers attempted to pull over Walker on unspecified traffic violations and they chased his vehicle on the expressway for several minutes, according to the police.

Walker then allegedly jumped out of his car while the footage showed officers pursuing him on foot before opening fire.

The police department said officers "reported a firearm being discharged from the suspect vehicle" during the encounter.

Walker, 25, suffered more than 60 gunshot wounds and was unarmed at the time, Akron Police Chief Steve Mylett told reporters on Sunday.

Eight officers who were directly involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave as part of the protocol in a police shooting.

The city had contacted the Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation and requested an independent investigation into the incident. The process is underway.

"A traffic violation ended in 60 gunshot wounds before they handcuffed his dead body," Brian Normoyle, an American political and social commentator and writer tweeted. "There can be no excuse."

"Remember it. Don't forget it. And add it to the interminable list of atrocities against Black Americans perpetrated by systemic racism," Normoyle wrote.

Akron-native and Lakers star LeBron James also sent a message on Sunday to his hometown in the wake of Walker's death, tweeting "prayers for my city today."

Walker's family has questioned the use of deadly force against him by the officers.

An attorney for the family, Bobby DiCello, said that he has not seen any evidence yet regarding allegations that Walker had shot at officers and that the man was unarmed and fleeing when being shot.

Akron declared a state of emergency on Monday, imposing a curfew for the city's downtown for the night and canceling the Independence Day fireworks performance.

"Early yesterday, we had several peaceful protests in the downtown footprint related to the officer-involved shooting of Jayland Walker," Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan said in a statement on Monday. "These protests did not escalate to violence and destruction."

"However, as night fell and others began to join, the protests became no longer peaceful. There was significant property damage done to downtown Akron," Horrigan continued. "We cannot and will not tolerate violence or the destruction of property."

The police killing of Walker came a month after the second anniversary of African American man George Floyd's murder by white police officer Derek Chauvin who pressed his knee on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds during a street arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Floyd's death set off nationwide demonstrations against police brutality and racism in the United States in the summer of 2020.

"Racism is real in America. It has always been. Xenophobia is real in America. It has always been," U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said from the White House in May.

According to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll that month, three-quarters of African Americans are worried that they or someone they love will be attacked because of their race. The survey also found that more than half of African Americans believe the problem of racism will get worse in their lifetimes.

Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, also weighed in on Walker's suffering, saying that his death "was murder. Point blank."

"This doesn't happen to white people in America," Johnson said. "We are just trying to live our lives, and we are tired of being hunted like prey. We know that pulling over for the police is often a death sentence."

Police in the United States shoot and kill over 1,000 people each year, and African Americans are victims at a disproportionate rate, according to data from Mapping Police Violence.

African Americans are nearly three times more likely to be shot and killed by law enforcement than their white counterparts, the data showed. 
Latest News How high will the RBA rate go? CBA delivers its prediction

NAB rebuilds with Lismore Town still in turmoil after flash flooding

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SpiceJets torrid time continues. The cash-starved airline was caught in two separate incidents on Tuesday  seven incidents involving have been reported in the past two months.

A plane, which took off from Delhi and was heading to Dubai, had to make an emergency landing in Karachi, Pakistan, after it developed a technical fault. The airline said that the aircraft was diverted to Karachi due to an indicator malfunctioning.

The company said that all the passengers were safe.

The aviation regulator (DGCA) has initiated a probe into the matter.

In another incident involving SpiceJet, a Q400 turboprop aircraft flying from Kandla in Gujarat, made a priority landing in Mumbai after its outer windshield developed a crack mid-air, the airline reported.

Officials said the Mumbai-bound flight was at an altitude of 23,000 feet when the incident happened. All passengers and crew members are safe, the airline said in a statement.

"During the flight, the windshield of the outer pane on one side cracked. Actions according to the prescribed guidelines were carried out. Pressurisation was observed to be normal. Priority landing was carried out and aircraft landed safely at BOM (Bombay)," said.

Officials in said that they were separately investigating the two incidents as they were not connected to each other. However, the regulator is concerned about the impact on the airlines maintenance procedures due to its financial crunch.

Shares of the budget carrier fell over 2 per cent after reports of the first incident emerged.

Last November, the regulator conducted an audit of SpiceJets fleet under a special provision where it conducts audits of financially-starved airlines. The audits are done to assess the impact of financial stress on safety of operations.

The regulator is also conducting surprise spot checks of aircraft of all airlines to ensure that their maintenance was not compromised.

SpiceJet said that the airline is working with all its partners and vendors to have smooth operations. We have access to requisite parts to support our operations. The airline is working with all its partners and vendors to function smoothly, which is evident from its present level of operations, an airline spokesperson said.

Recently SpiceJet had removed its chief of flight safety Anushree Verma after being pulled up by the when 12 passengers were severely injured after an aircraft from Mumbai to Durgapur witnessed heavy turbulence. The aircraft, in violation of rules, was ferried to Kolkata without any examination for structural defect.

Sources said that preliminary investigation by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau found that manual and faulty radar was the reason behind the incident.

SpiceJet denied that Vermas removal was due to the Durgapur incident and termed it as an organisational decision. Captain Anushree was re-designated as OSD to Chairman after the post fell vacant. The DGCA was duly apprised of the move, the airline said.




SpiceJet's Delhi-Dubai flight was on Tuesday diverted to Karachi as the fuel indicator started malfunctioning, officials of the aviation regulator DGCA said.

This is at least the sixth incident of technical malfunction happening on aircraft in the last 17 days. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is investigating the Tuesday's incident, along with the previous five incidents, the officials noted.

The Boeing 737 Max aircraft -- which was heading from Delhi to Dubai -- started showing unusual fuel quantity reduction from its left tank when it was mid-air, they said.

Therefore, the plane was diverted to Karachi, they noted.

When an inspection was done at the Karachi airport, no visual leak was observed from the left tank, they added.

An official of Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCCA) confirmed that the aircraft has made an emergency landing at the Karachi airport after developing a technical fault after it left New Delhi for Dubai.

The pilot of flight no SG 11 contacted the control tower while flying over Pakistan airspace and said the aircraft had developed some technical fault. He requested an emergency landing. He was given permission to land on humanitarian grounds, the PCAA official confirmed.

He said there were around 100 passengers on the flight.

In a statement on Tuesday, earlier said, On July 5, 2022, SpiceJet B737 aircraft operating flight SG-11 (Delhi-Dubai) was diverted to Karachi due to an indicator light malfunctioning. The aircraft landed safely at Karachi and passengers were safely disembarked." "No emergency was declared and the aircraft made a normal landing. There was no earlier report of any malfunction with the aircraft," it mentioned.

Passengers have been served refreshments, it said, adding that a replacement aircraft is being sent to Karachi that will take the passengers to Dubai.

In March 2021, a Lucknow-bound IndiGo flight from Sharjah was also diverted to Karachi airport due to a medical emergency on board.

Since June 19, there have been six incidents on SpiceJet planes.

On June 19, an engine on SpiceJet's Delhi-bound aircraft carrying 185 passengers caught fire soon after taking off from the Patna airport and the plane made an emergency landing minutes later. The engine malfunctioned because of a bird hit.

In another incident on June 19, a flight for Jabalpur had to return to Delhi due to cabin pressurisation issues.

Fuselage door warnings lit up on two separate planes while taking off on June 24 and June 25, forcing them to abandon their journeys and return.

A replacement aircraft is being sent to Karachi that will take the passengers to Dubai. <<  SpiceJet (@flyspicejet) July 5, 2022

On July 2, a SpiceJet flight heading to Jabalpur returned to Delhi after the crew members observed smoke in the cabin at around 5,000-feet altitude.

Notably, SpiceJet has been making losses for the last three years.

The budget carrier incurred a net loss of Rs 316 crore, Rs 934 crore and Rs 998 crore in 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21, respectively.

With COVID-19 pandemic petering out, aviation consultancy firm CAPA had on June 29 stated that Indian carriers' losses are expected to moderate from around USD 3 billion in 2021-22 to USD 1.4-1.7 billion in 2022-23.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The has rejected CBI's plea seeking police custody of four persons, including a joint drug controller at the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), who were arrested in connection with a Biologics bribery case.

The high court, however, directed the jail superintendent to hand over the custody of associate vice president of Biologics L Praveen Kumar, who was arrested on June 20 and presently lodged in judicial custody, to the CBI investigating officer (IO) till July 6.

It said the IO shall ensure that Praveen Kumar is produced before the concerned court by 12 noon on July 6, after which the trial court shall pass appropriate orders in accordance with the law.

The CBI had submitted that it required custody of the accused persons -- joint drugs controller (JDC) Dr. S Eswara Reddy, an alleged conduit of Biologics Gujit Sethi, director at Synergy Network India Private Limited Dinesh Dua who allegedly gave a bribe to Reddy, and assistant drug inspector Animesh Kumar to interrogate and confront them concerning intercepted calls.

The high court took into account that these four accused have already remained in police custody for a day and also the trial court's June 21 and 23 orders.

it is apparent that as rightly observed vide the impugned order dated June 23, ample opportunities had been granted to the CBI to conduct the interrogation of the accused  Dr.S.Eswara Reddy, Gujit Sethi, Dinesh Dua, and Animesh Kumar, and as it is still open to the CBI to conduct further interrogation of the said accused persons and confront them with documents as well as electronic devices even during their being incarcerated in judicial custody after moving and seeking such permission from the magistrate concerned, thus the prayer made by the CBI seeking the grant of further police custody remand qua the accused persons, Reddy, Sethi, Dua, and Animesh Kumar is rejected, Justice Anu Malhotra said in an order passed the late night on July 4.

The high court's order came on a plea by CBI challenging the special court's June 23 order by which the agency's prayer seeking custody of all the accused persons was declined.

The accused were arrested in an alleged bribery case to waive phase-3 clinical trial of 'Insulin Aspart' injection of Biocon Biologics to manage Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.

The CBI had arrested the accused in the case of alleged bribery to the tune of Rs nine lakh.

Biocon Biologics, a subsidiary of the Kiran Mazumdar Shaw-led Biocon, however, denied the allegations of bribery.

The agency had nabbed Reddy with a middleman while allegedly receiving Rs four lakh, out of the total promised bribe of Rs nine lakh.

It was alleged that Praveen Kumar had cleared the payment of Rs 9 lakh as a bribe through Sethi who used to look after regulatory work for Biocon Biologics.

All the accused except Praveen Kumar were arrested from Delhi. He was brought to Delhi on transit remand from Bengaluru, CBI had said.

A spokesperson for Biocon Biologics had denied the allegations and said they were cooperating with the investigating agency.

"We deny the bribery allegations made in certain media stories. All our product approvals are legitimate and backed by science and clinical data. Our bAspart is approved in Europe and many other countries," the spokesperson had said.

The CBI has alleged that Sethi, acting as a conduit for Biocon Biologics, conspired with Praveen Kumar, head of the company's National Regulatory Affairs (NRA), and other senior executives of the company to pay Reddy a total bribe of Rs 9 lakh.

This was for favourably recommending the file of Insulin Aspart Injection' to the Subject Expert Committee (SEC) meeting on May 18, 2022, for waiving the Phase 3 clinical trial, it had alleged.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(MF) on Tuesday said it has reasons to believe that the two fund managers it sacked have violated the securities law. The fund house has said it has shared the findings of a suo motu investigation done by external advisors to markets regulator  the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).

Viresh Joshi committed clear breaches of our policies, including non-cooperation with our internal investigation (during his suspension period). We also have strong reasons to believe, based on available evidence, that there have been breaches of the securities law by him, Axis MF said in a statement on Tuesday. It further said the fund house no longer has any association with (Viresh) Joshi and Deepak Agrawal.

In May, Axis MF terminated Joshi and (Deepak) Agrawal, following allegations of tailgating. The fund house didnt cite a reason for their termination.

Axis MF said it terminated (Deepak) Agrawal for breaches of policies and has reasons to believe he may have violated the securities law.

Last month, (Viresh) Joshi sued the fund house in Bombay High Court for wrongful termination.
KABUL, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Afghan police have arrested nine people charged with selling narcotics and illicit drugs in four provinces, the Ministry of Interior said on Tuesday.

"Nine suspected drug sellers were arrested in Kabul, Kunduz, Sari Pul, and Nimroz provinces over the past couple of days," the ministry said on social media.

According to the ministry, the suspects were taken to concerned departments for screening and possible legal process.

Afghanistan's Taliban-led caretaker government has vowed to fight against poppy cultivation and opium trade in the war-torn country.

There are reportedly around 3 million drug addicts in Afghanistan. 
The Bombay High Court on Tuesday upheld the decision of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) Undertaking to disqualify from a tender bid for operating electric buses in the city.

A bench of Justices S V Gangapurwala and Madhav Jamdar dismissed a plea filed by challenging the disqualification.

The bench held that BEST had been right in disqualifying the .

The auto major had approached the HC challenging the BEST's decision to disqualify it from the tender process for operating 1,400 electric buses for Mumbai.

Tata Motors had participated in the tender process, but its bid was disqualified by BEST following a technical suitability evaluation, the parties had previously told the high court.

It had argued that its technical bid was "arbitrarily" rejected to favour the company that won the tender process.

As per the plea filed by the automobile company, BEST had published an e-tender notice on February 26 this year for two-bid e-tender for the operation of stage carriage services for 1,400 single-decker AC electric buses for Mumbai and its suburbs.

Tata Motors had submitted its technical and financial bid on April 25, the plea said.

However, on May 6, the BEST published a technical suitability evaluation of the tender and wrongly declared Tata Motors' bid as "technically non-responsive", alleging the deviation mentioned in respect of operating range was not acceptable.

However, BEST denied the allegations and maintained before the HC that it had followed due process in awarding the tender.

The HC in its order said, "The petitioner (Tata) was rightly disqualified." It said that BEST's decision was "final and binding."



The court, however, added that if any discrepancies has occurred in the allocation of the tender for the e-buses, then BEST must consider issuing a fresh tender.

(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.)
Insurtech Ensuredit has raised USD 4.2 million (about Rs 33 crore) in a Pre-Series-A round led by Cover Genius, 9Unicorns, NexStep Discovery, CP Ventures, Venture Catalysts and IPV.

Existing investors also participated in the current round, the Gurugram and Bengaluru-based said in a statement on Tuesday.

Ensuredit is planning to utilise this fund to ramp up product offerings and expand the technology team, apart from deploying to create more customer-centric products, Amit Boni, founder and CEO of Ensuredit, said.

Founded in 2019 by Amit Boni, Rohit Sadhu, and Vikas Ranga, the platform aims to disrupt the insurance industry by utilising the power of technology and by working closely with insurance brokers, banks and NBFCs to enhance their sales force acquisition and productivity.

Ensuredit operates as PaaS (platform as a service) platform and has leading industry clients, including some of the largest brokers corporate agencies, NBFCs, and equity broking firms, among others.

(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 looking to lease around 20 A320 aircraft from lessors by 2024 as it aims to restart operations and fly international routes in the next one-and-a-half years.

Jet's A320 aircraft fleet, according to sources, will be a mix of the Ceo and the more fuel-efficient Neo variants. These planes were originally intended for Russian but could not be delivered following western sanctions on Russia over its Ukraine invasion.

As many as 8-10 aircraft are likely to be delivered by December 2022, the sources said.

In its previous avatar, primarily flew the Boeing 737 variant.

shut operations in April 2019 after getting under a pile of debt and refusal from bankers for any fresh funding.

The availability of the A320 family aircraft in multiple variants, including the 321 and 321 XLR, is one reason why the airline is opting for Airbus popular single-aisle variant over the Boeing 737 Max

Due to certain global conditions, there are some aircraft which have become available with lessors, said Sanjiv Kapoor, CEO of Jet Airways, without commenting on the aircraft type. We are yet to make a decision on our fleet plan but intend to ramp up operations fast and want to fly international routes by 2024 which means we will have at least 21 aircraft by then.

Bloomberg reported that the airline is close to signing an order with for aircraft but Kapoor said that delivery slots for the new order book will not be available before 2024. Whatever scaling up we have to do in the first two years will be from leased aircraft, he said, adding the airline was yet to finalise the order.



Kapoor was the chief strategy and commercial officer at Vistara, and oversaw strategy, marketing, and network planning and expects that the airline will have its first flight during September. If that happens, Jet Airways will be the first bankrupt airline that will be revived following the Insolvency process.

Last June, the cleared the consortium's plan to revive Jet Airways by the UAE-based businessman Murari Lal Jalan.

However, several appeals were filed before the NCLAT challenging the order by employees and workmen of Jet Airways, Punjab National Bank, TLD MEAI FZE, and Jet Aircraft Maintenance Engineers Welfare Association. The tribunal is slated to hear the case on July 5.

A few lessors with whom Business Standard spoke said that they were unsure of starting a business with Jet Airways due to confusion over the applicability of the ruling that the airline's previous dues getting waived off under India's bankruptcy laws in territories outside India.

Kapoor said that while there have been questions raised, lessors and aircraft manufacturers are comfortable doing business with the airline In every discussion, we have explained to lessors and vendors that it is new management. This is not the management responsible for the past and we should be viewed as a new entity, he said.

Airline executives are also now showing interest to work with Jet Airways as there is a certainty now over the resumption of operations, with many from rival joining the team.

The Kalrock-Jalan consortium, which is reviving the grounded airline, has announced senior executives in charge of engineering, inflight product and services, sales, and digital.

The new recruits include Prabh Sharan Singh (chief digital officer), H R Jagganath (vice president-engineering), Mark Turner (vice president-inflight products and services), and Vishesh Khanna (vice president-sales, distribution and customer engagement).

Tanay Paalshetkar and Srihari Venugopal from Go First have joined as heads of revenue management, and network planning, respectively.
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Within days of the Navy opening registrations for the Agnipath recruitment scheme, around 10,000 females have registered themselves for the programme.

For the first time ever, the is allowing women to be recruited as sailors in the force who would also be deployed on warships as per operational requirements.

"Around 10,000 female candidates had registered themselves till Sunday," government officials told ANI.

After the registrations, the would open up the online application process for recruitment starting from July 15 to July 30.The Navy is yet to finalise the final number of women among the 3000 naval 'Agniveers' that it will induct in 2022.

The Navy is making arrangements at INS Chilka, the premier basic training establishment for sailors of the Indian Navy, on November 21. The establishment will also have facilities for training the women sailors there.

"The Agnipath scheme in the Navy will be gender-neutral. As we speak, 30 women officers are sailing on board frontline warships. We have decided that the time has come to recruit women sailors as well, and in all trades which will include women who will go to sea," Navy officials had stated.

Armed forces had been inducting women into the 14-lakh strong military forces since the 1990s but only at officer ranks. This changed in 2019-20 were from the Indian Army began recruiting women in other ranks for the first time.

As a result of this, 100 women jawans are presently Corps of Military Police (CMP).

The "transformative" Agnipath scheme, announced by Union Minister Rajanath Singh on June 14, in the presence of the three service chiefs provides for the recruitment of into the armed services of youths in the age bracket of 17-and-a-half-years to 21 for only four years with a provision to retain 25 per cent of them for 15 more years. The Centre later extended the upper age limit to 23 years for recruitment in 2022.

The Union Cabinet had also approved Agnipath scheme on June 14 and the youth selected under this scheme will be known as Agniveers.

The government had announced that 46,000 Agniveers to be recruited this year. It had said that armed Forces will have "a younger, fitter, diverse profile" to face future challenges.

There have been protests against the Agnipath scheme in some states and the government has announced support measures to allay apprehensions.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The has registered a case in connection with the controversial poster of a documentary Kaali, officials said on Tuesday.

The Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operation (IFSO) unit of the has registered a case under Indian Penal Code sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs), a senior police officer said.

Under attack for a poster of her documentary Kaali showing the goddess smoking and holding a LGBTQ flag, filmmaker Leena Manimekalai on Monday said she will continue to use her voice fearlessly till she is alive.

The poster had led to a social media storm with the hashtag ''Arrest Leena Manimekalai'', allegations that the filmmaker is hurting religious sentiments.

Several users slammed Manimekalai.

"The film depicts Maa Kali smoking a cigarette in a very objectionable form!! Very embarrassing!! Hindu Sena demands from @DelhiPolice to register an FIR against @LeenaManimekali," tweeted Hindu Sena national president Vishnu Gupta.

"Arrest those who make fun of religion or reprimand them well, Sanatanis (sic)," another user said.

"This is not freedom of speech, this is attack on our culture, our sentiments (sic)," added one more.

In response to the attacks, the Toronto-based director hit back to say she was willing to pay with her life.

"I have nothing to lose. Till the time I live, I wish to live with a voice that speaks what I believe without fear. If the price for that is my life, it can be given," Manimekalai wrote in a post in Tamil in response to an article on the controversy.

The Madurai-born filmmaker had shared the poster of "Kaali" on the microblogging site on Saturday and said the film was part of the ''Rhythms of Canada'' segment at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto.

Manimekalai also urged people to watch the film to understand the context behind the poster.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A delegation of French equipment maker Group led by its CEO Olivier Andries called on in Delhi on Tuesday.

During the meeting, Andries briefed on Safrans plans to set up a maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility in India for overhauling the LEAP-1A and LEAP-1B engines in use by Indian and foreign commercial airlines, said a (MoD) press release on Tuesday.

is one of the leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of advanced engines for civil and fighter jets. Among its most successful products is the M88 jet engine that powers the fighter.

is one of the options being weighed by the MoD for partnering the Defence R&D Organisation in developing the indigenous Kaveri engine that would power home-built aircraft, such as the Advanced Medium Combat (AMCA).

The MRO facility through direct foreign investment of US $150 million in Hyderabad is expected to create 500-600 highly skilled jobs. The facility will be able to overhaul over 250 engines per year in the beginning, said the MoD.

Safrans CEO also apprised Singh of their plan to inaugurate two subsidiaries  Safran Aircraft Engines and Safran Electrical & Power India Pvt Ltd  that will both come up in Hyderabad. Safran Electrical & Power India will produce harnesses for civil and fighter jets.

In addition, Safran plans to set up a joint venture (JV) with Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) in Bengaluru called Safran-HAL Aircraft Engines.

The JV between Safran and HAL will produce rigid piping for aircraft engines including helicopter engines. The JV is expected to hire 160 new highly skilled personnel.

Safran Aircraft Engines, which will be set up on 10 acres in a Hyderabad special economic zone with an investment of 36 million, will produce parts and components for advanced aircraft engines including rotating seals.

The Safran CEO outlined his companys long-term plans for co-development and co-production of advanced jet engines and transfer of technology in accordance with the existing government of India policy.

He also briefed Singh on Safrans capabilities in areas of technology beyond aircraft engines.

The welcomed new facilities in Hyderabad and the JV in Bengaluru. He stressed the importance India attaches to the strategic partnership with France.

Singh invited Safran for more co-development and co-production projects in India, in tune with the Indian governments Make in India, Make for the World and Aatmanirbhar Bharat plans.

We are a big market. However, we are increasingly focused on making in India for addressing the needs in a competitive manner and supplying to friendly foreign countries. You can leverage all the competitive advantages India offers, including the cost advantages and availability of trained manpower, Singh said.

The minister asserted that both countries can contribute to each others capability building.

Safran Aircraft Engines (previously Snecma) is a French aerospace engine manufacturer headquartered in Courcouronnes, France. It designs, makes and maintains engines for commercial and military aircraft as well as rocket engines for launch vehicles and satellites.

Some of Snecmas most notable developments include the M88 for the Rafale, Olympus 593 engine for the Concorde, CFM56/CFM-LEAP for single-aisle airliners, and Vulcan engines for the Ariane 5 rocket.
and its adjoining areas witnessed heavy showers on Tuesday, resulting in water-logging at a number of places including railway tracks, which slowed the movement of trains and vehicles on roads.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted moderate to heavy rain in and its suburbs over the next 24 hours, with a possibility of very heavy showers at isolated places, civic officials said.

The island city (south Mumbai) received an average 95.81 mm rainfall in the 24 hour period ending at 8 am on Tuesday, while the eastern and western suburbs recorded 115.09 mm and 116.73 mm rainfall, respectively, during the same period, they said.

Between 8 am and 11.30 am on Tuesday, the island city received an average 41 mm rainfall, while the eastern and western suburbs got 85 mm and 55 mm showers, respectively, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials said.

The local train services, considered as the lifeline of Mumbai, were affected mainly on the main and harbour corridors of the Central Railway due to water- logging on tracks near Kurla, slowing down train movement, rail sources said.

There was also bunching of trains heading towards the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) in south on the main line, they said.

There was inundation on tracks in Sion, Kurla, Tilak Nagar and Wadala areas of the Central Railway route, the Central Railway's chief public relations officer Shivaji Sutar said.

"There is water in tracks at some locations...trains are being run at a cautious speed and we are continuously monitoring the situation," he said.

Some commuters also complained about heavy-water logging in some subways in Panvel, Khandeshwar and Mansarovar stations on the Harbour line in neighbouring Navi Mumbai, forcing them to wade through ankle-deep water.

Over 75 lakh commuters from Mumbai and neighbouring districts travel in local trains every day.

The BEST undertaking, which provides public bus services in Mumbai and neighbouring cities, was forced to divert its buses via alternate routes, due to inundation in Sion, Chembur, Bandra, Air India Colony, Kurla and few other locations, an official said.

According to the Mumbai traffic police, a road near the Sadhna High School in Sion area of central Mumbai was closed due to water-logging up to 1.5 feet. The traffic was diverted through the Sion junction, they said.

There was also water-logging of up to one feet near the Santacruz railway station, resulting in slow vehicular movement, police said.

The vehicular movement was slow at Dadar TT, Parel TT, Sakkar Panchayat Chowk, Wadala in central Mumbai, Tembi bridge in Chembur, and near the Mankhurd railway station due to water rising up to one to two feet, they said.

Traffic police personnel were deployed at various locations to avoid vehicular congestion due to the heavy rains, an official said.

Citizens also complained of water-logging at the Gandhi Market, areas in Kurla and Dharavi, resulting in problems for motorists and pedestrians.

Civic officials were seen trying to convey to the media how quickly the rain water receded at some inundation-prone spots like the Hindmata and Gandhi Market.

Between 8 am and 11.30 am on Tuesday, the M-west ward in Mumbai received 106 mm rainfall, the M-east ward recorded 98 mm, the G-south ward got 88 mm rain, the N-ward got 92 mm and the F-south ward received 79 mm rain, according to the BMC.

The IMD has also predicted heavy to very heavy rain in neighbouring Thane district for the next few days.

On Monday, the IMD had issued a 'yellow alert' for Mumbai and Thane, predicting heavy to very heavy rain at isolated places over the next five days.

(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.)
Self-styled Vastu expert Chandrashekhar Guruji was stabbed to death in a city hotel on Tuesday, police said. Within hours, two persons -- Manjunath Marewad and Mahantesh Sirur -- who were allegedly involved in the killing and had fled the scene after committing the brutal murder, were detained at Ramdurg in neighbouring Belagavi district, police added.

"They have been detained and we are bringing them back to Hubballi. Once they are brought in, we will interrogate them," Hubballi-Dharwad Police Commissioner Labhu Ram told PTI.

CCTV footage showed two people, who initially approached him pretending to greet him, repeatedly stabbing him at the reception area of the hotel.

The reason behind the killing of Guruji of 'Saral Vastu' fame who sustained many stab wounds, is under investigation.

Hailing from Bagalkote, Guruji had started his career as a contractor and later got a job in Mumbai where he settled down. Subsequently, he pursued Vastu business there.

Three days ago, a child in his family had died in Hubballi, for which he had come here to attend a ceremony.

Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said all measures would be taken to ensure stringent punishment for the killers of Guruji.

Speaking to reporters in Bengaluru, he termed it a heinous and unfortunate act, noting that it has been clearly captured in the CCTV footage.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India on Tuesday logged 3,086 cases to take its total caseload to 43,531,650. India reported an increase of 611 in active cases to take its count to 114,475. With 19 new fatalities, its Covid-19 death toll reached 525,242.



The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday conducted searches at 44 places across the country in a money laundering investigation against Chinese smartphone manufacturing company Vivo and related firms, officials said. The searches are being carried out under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
China pledges efforts to rein in sharp hog price hikes

Xinhua) 09:58, July 05, 2022

BEIJING, July 4 (Xinhua) -- China's top economic planner said Monday that it will take timely measures and tighten market oversight to prevent sharp increases in hog prices.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in a statement that it has held a meeting with industrial associations, hog farming companies and slaughtering houses to ensure market supply and stabilize prices.

The price of pork, a staple meat in China, has been rising due to the drop in market supply in recent weeks. From June 20 to 24, the average pork price tracked by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs went up 5.4 percent week on week. The price was 31.6 percent higher than a year ago.

The NDRC attributed the excessive price hike partly to "irrational reluctance to sell" in the market, as well as the practice of fattening hogs that are already ready for the market for higher profits.

Hog production is currently within a reasonable and sufficient range, and pork consumption has been weak, so there is no basis for continuous sharp increases in hog prices, said the NDRC.

The NDRC ordered large hog suppliers to slaughter pigs at a regular pace and warned them against hoarding and price rigging. It would work with other government departments and punish related violations to protect market order and safeguard the sound development of the industry.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
United States Space Force Hymn, 'Creator of the Universe,' to be Gender Neutral

The revised United States Space Force Hymn with gender neutral language

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Former Sgt. Dennis A. Hall, Sr., USMC-Ret.

July 5, 2022



WASHINGTON, July 5, 2022 /Christian Newswire/ -- Former Air Force Captain James F. Linzey served as a highly decorated officer and chaplain for the United States Air Force Space Command, which became the United States Space Force under the Donald J. Trump Administration. In 1994 and 1995 he served at Vandenberg AFB, California under Brigadier General Lance W. Lord who was the Commanding General. Brigadier General Lord was promoted through the ranks over the course of the following several years. On April 22, 2002 he was promoted to the rank of General, and on April 24, 2002 General Lord became the Commander of the United States Air Force Space Command at Peterson AFB, Colorado.



As a retired Air Force officer, Major General James C. Wahleithner once wrote about Linzey to General Lord, who is now retired, "I would like to express my gratitude for the outstanding service that Chaplain, Captain, James F. Linzey, USAF, of the 30th Space Wing, Vandenberg AFB, provided this past year. Chaplain Linzey's excellent planning, organization, invocations and benedictions at statewide functions, and well planned Memorial Services at the State Conventions for the past three years have made our programs a great success. His preaching is outstanding."



This was a commendation when Linzey pulled double duty by simultaneously serving as a Space Command chaplain and as the State Chaplain for the United States Reserve Officers' Association, Department of California, as the pastor for 12,000 officers from each of the five Armed Forces.

Former Air Force Captain James F. Linzey (Ret.)

With Linzey's background in the Space Command, it was fitting that he was commissioned to write the United States Space Force Hymn. He set his pen to paper on February 13, 2020, and on February 22 he completed the hymn. It is titled "Creator of the Universe." Linzey has recently been asked by superiors if he would be willing to make the hymn gender neutral. When Linzey, who is now a Lieutenant Colonel serving in the United States Volunteers Joint Services Command, was asked why this request was made.



He replied, "In the prayer as originally written, an inclusive male reference was made in the phrase 'watch o'er the men who fly.' Inclusive male references have included both male and female genders throughout the history of the English language. But it is often misunderstood today by the new generation of military personnel who think the inclusive 'he,' 'man,' or 'mankind,' excludes females."



There are thousands of examples in the King James Version Bible and other early modern and modern English documents that make use of inclusive male pronouns and references. "However, we never desire to cause any segment of society to feel isolated. So I totally concur with the request. The phrase in question now reads, 'watch over those who fly.' It means the same thing. So it's not a big deal. Changes in language only matter if changes in meaning are requested. Such is not the case here," Linzey said.



We have already had military female pilots and astronauts. Imagine yourself as a female sitting at a Space Force ceremony or in a Space Force chapel service and you feel left out simply because the Space Force Hymn is being sung as "watch o'er the men who fly." The Space Force Hymn is a prayer to God for all who would like to pray and sing. Facilitating all military members' religions and relationships with their God through prayers and songs of praise is the purpose of all hymns. The purpose of having a military hymn for each military service is to draw military members to their God.



Linzey is the only living author of a military hymn. But a concern remains about other military hymns that are now lagging behind the United States Space Force Hymn, because their hymns are gender specific. The Air Force Hymn contains three references to menone in the title and two in the text. The Navy Hymn contains one reference to men, but additional references occur in alternate verses.



"These are very old, traditional hymns, written in a patriarchal period of western civilization. But when you understand English, and that they used inclusive male terminology, then you can understand that they include everyone. These are exceptionally well written. I am pleased to contribute 'Creator of the Universe' to the collection of United States Armed Forces hymns and am pleased that many Space Force and Air Force personnel, as well as the general populace, are making use of it and highly regard it," Linzey replied.



In 2006, eight years after crossing from the Air Force to the Army, Linzey was the first-ever chaplain to be assigned full time to the Leader's Training Course under the United States Army Cadet Command at Fort Knox, Kentucky. The Commanding General watched Linzey closely to see if having a full time chaplain would increase the percentage of 2nd Lieutenant ROTC Cadets in the course who would accept a commission in the Army. At the conclusion of the summer course, the answer was unequivocally affirmative. Since then the institution has hired full time chaplains.



While there, the Leader's Training Course Commander, Colonel Robert Frusha, commissioned Linzey to write the official institutional prayer. This honor meant that Linzey would be the author of one of the four official institutional military prayers ever to be written in American history if it was extremely well written. There is a humorous story behind this saga as retold by Linzey:

Colonel Frusha was not known to be a very religious man. His major was English in his undergraduate work. So when I went into his office and presented the prayer to him, he told me to sit down. He then proofread it and looked at me and said, "Chaplain, it is deficient." I looked intently at him and asked, "Sir?" Then he said, "It is lacking a comma." So he added that comma. A rumor had humorously spread among the staff that, though Colonel Frusha wasn't religious, he contributed to a prayer. Later on at a Command and Staff Meeting, the prayer was presented to and accepted by Major General W. Montague Winfield, the Commanding General of the United States Army Cadet Command. Major General Winfield then asked me in front of the staff, "Chaplain, how can we get you back next year?" I was extremely honored.

Linzey, a Southern Baptist chaplain, had parents who also were the first in their fields of endeavors. Linzey was a Navy dependent. His father, Stanford E. Linzey, Jr., was a World War II hero as a survivor of Japan's attack on the USS Yorktown in the Battle of Midway. He later became the first active duty Navy chaplain representing the General Council of the Assemblies of God and their first chaplain to attain the rank of Captain. His mother, Verna M. Linzey, was titled "United States Navy Mother of the Fleet" by Admiral Frederick C. Johnson for building the largest Sunday School program in the US Navy from 1968 to 1970 at Naval Air Station Moffett Field.



Verna Linzey's CD, Oh Blessed Jesus, earned her a Gold Record Award for "Best Vocals in Southern Gospel Music." A world renowned evangelist, movie actress, and best-selling Charisma author, she is the former Verna May Hall of Coffeyville, Kansas, born to Carey and Alice Hall. Years after Verna's father passed away, her mother married Rev. Francis L. Doyle, an Assembly of God minister, who was one of the church leaders who gathered on April 2, 1914 in Hot Springs, Arkansas and established the Assemblies of God denomination.



Linzey has given lectures on military history at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, California. He said:

"Eternal Father, Strong to Save" was written in 1860 by an Englishman, William Whiting, for seafarers. It was eventually used as The Navy Hymn by the Royal navies of the British Commonwealth, and later by the American Navy. "Lord, Guard and Guide the Men Who Fly" was written in 1915 by Mary Hamilton for aviators. There was no Air Force. But after the Department of the Air Force was established, it was called The Air Force Hymn. When these hymns were written, the militaries and the field of civilian aviation were dominated by men. Though this may explain the male references, they can be interpreted today as inclusive male references.

By definition, a hymn is a prayer set to music or a song of praise to God. Every hymn for the various military services around the world is a prayer set to music. There is only one misnomer"The United States Marine Corps Hymn" is neither a hymn nor a song of praise to God. It is a military march.



The song talks about the prowess of the Marines who fight for freedom. It depicts the Marines beginning at the Halls of Montezuma and finally pulling guard duty in heaven. It is called a hymn as a spoof, humorously exaggerating the US Marines' importance in claiming in the very last line that the Army and the Navy will find them guarding the streets of heaven. It is a very effective march, but it is neither a prayer nor a song of praise to God. It was never intended to be genuinely regarded as a hymn. It is a fun song, greatly lifts the Marines' morale, and evokes patriotism from the citizenry. You can neither pray these lyrics nor sing them as an act of worship.



As a former US Marine myself, I can tell you what military hymn the Marine Corps uses in chapel services. Being part of the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps sings The Navy Hymn at the close of its chapel services, which are pastored by Navy chaplains. But in joint-service patriotic programs, The US Marine Corps Hymn is performed along with the other services' military marches, not with their hymns, because it is not a hymn.



In other words, each of the Armed Forces usually has two songs, a hymn and a march. Both are songs, but not all songs are hymns and marches. Likewise, ballads and overtures are songs, but not all songs are ballads and overtures. Hymns and marches constitute their own respective genres, just as ballads and overtures do.



Thus, The Air Force Hymn is "Lord, Guard and Guide the Men Who Fly," but the Air Force song is a march titled "Wild Blue Yonder." Whether the Army has a hymn is debatable, but its song is a march titled "The Army Goes Rolling Along." The Coast Guard Hymn is verse one of The Navy Hymn, but its song is a march titled "Semper Paratus." The US Marine Corps uses The Navy Hymn just as the Coast Guard does, but its song is a march titled, in jest, "The United States Marine Corps Hymn." The Navy Hymn is "Eternal Father, Strong to Save," but the Navy song is a march titled "Anchors Aweigh." And The Space Force Hymn is "Creator of the Universe," but the Space Force has no march yet.



When asked what response he has received regarding The Space Force Hymn, Linzey said, "I have received thousands of phone calls, emails, and letters from Space Force and Air Force personnel, civilians, military chaplains, choir directors, and pastors from across America. I am humbled and honored at the reception of 'Creator of the Universe.' With the gender neutral language inserted, I have every assurance that even more people will like it," Linzey said.



Linzey's former superior chaplain at the 30th Space Wing, Air Force Space Command, Vandenberg AFB, Lieutenant Colonel Jerold L. Preston, now retired, who served as the Wing Chaplain, once wrote of Linzey, "Chaplain Linzey's holistic approach to people was a plus for our mission. Chaplain Linzey is an outstanding chaplain with a bright future  great asset to the Air Force."



In closing, Linzey stated, "I'm very pleased and humbled to make a vital contribution and spiritual impact on both current and future generations of the United States Space Force, as a former United States Air Force Space Command chaplain and officer, through writing the United States Space Force Hymn."



SOURCE Former Sgt. Dennis A. Hall, Sr., USMC-Ret.



CONTACT: 602-535-6969, USSFpent1@gmail.com



Related Links



unitedstatesspaceforcehymn.com


Chief Minister Eknath Shinde reviewed the rain situation on Tuesday and said over 3,500 people had been shifted to safer places from flood-prone and vulnerable spots across the state, where several districts, including Mumbai, experienced downpour. He said Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams have been been deployed wherever required and more personnel will be sent if needed. The CM, who took charge less than a week ago, said he has asked government officials to give utmost priority to preventing loss of lives in rain-related incidents. He was speaking to the media after reviewing the rain situation during a visit to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's disaster control room. The state has been witnessing heavy rains since Monday, with water-logging reported from urban areas, including Mumbai, while the level of some rivers was rising rapidly. During his visit to the BMC headquarters a day after winning the floor test in the Assembly, Shinde said he had spoken to the collectors of Raigad, Ratnagiri and some other districts for which the India Meteorological Department had issued 'red' and 'orange' alerts predicting very heavy to extremely heavy rainfall. Authorities have been directed to shift people from spots that are vulnerable to landslides so as to avoid loss of lives, the CM said. He said over 3,500 people had been shifted to safer places so far in the state. "I told the chief secretary in the morning to direct all guardian secretaries to visit their respective districts and coordinate between the NDRF, the Air force, the Navy and other departments," Shinde said. He said water levels have gone down at some places in the state due to reduction in rain intensity.

"A red alert has been issued for Raigad and Ratnagiri districts (indicating heavy to extremely heavy rains). Therefore, the administration has been asked to take necessary steps and all response systems have been put in place," Shinde said. The CM was impressed with the disaster control room of the BMC as almost every spot in the city could be tracked live with the help of over 5,700 CCTVs on a real time basis. He said this time there was no water-logging in central Mumbai's Hindmata area, a chronic flooding spot, and road traffic there was smooth. This was possible due to various efforts taken by the civic body. Hindmata is one of the lowest lying areas of Mumbai and amongst the first to get waterlogged during the monsoon. The Chief Minister said even a moderate rainfall adversely affects suburban train services in Mumbai as there are 25 vulnerable spots which get flooded quickly. Shinde said he has asked Mumbai municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal to deploy a ward officer for supervision, arrange extra BEST (civic) and state transport buses to ferry stranded passengers and provide them tea and snacks. To a question about the incidents of building collapse in Mumbai, Shinde appealed to citizens living in dangerous building to co-operate with the civic administration and the government. Chief secretary Manukumar Shrivastava, civic commissioner Chahal and other senior officials accompanied the new CM during his visit to the BMC's disaster control room in south Mumbai. Interestingly, some ex-BJP corporators welcomed the chief minister during the visit, but none from the Shiv Sena was present there. Shinde also visited the BJP office located in the civic body headquarters.

(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.)
Bihar Chief Minister on Tuesday exuded confidence that NDA presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu will comfortably win the election.

Murmu visited Patna during the day and met NDA leaders, including legislators and parliamentarians from the state, seeking their support for the presidential election scheduled on July 18.

"I am confident that Droupadi Murmu will comfortably win the presidential election. It is a matter of happiness that a tribal woman is running for the highest constitutional position of the country," Kumar told reporters after Murmu's meeting with NDA leaders here.

Murmu was given a rousing welcome when she reached Patna earlier in the day. Accompanied by Union ministers Sarbananda Sonowal and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, she arrived at Patna airport aboard a special flight at 11.13 AM.

Deputy Chief Ministers Tarkishore Prasad and Renu Devi, Union minister Nityanand Rai, state BJP chief Sanjay Jaiswal and several state ministers received her at the Jay Prakash Narayan International Airport.

Former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi was also present at the airport.

The airport compound was decorated with flowers, while BJP workers lined up along the roads outside with party flags to welcome her.

Murmu kicked off her visit by garlanding a statue of legendary tribal leader Birsa Munda near the Secretariat building in the state capital.

After that, she went to a private hotel near Gandhi Maidan, where she met the chief minister and senior leaders of all NDA allies, including MPs and MLAs, and made an appeal for support.

"Leaders of all NDA allies including JD(U), Manjhi-led Hindustani Awam Morcha-Secular (HAM-S) and Union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras-led Rashtriya Lok Janshakati Party were present in the meeting," Bihar Information Technology Minister Jibesh Kumar Mishra said.

The special aircraft carrying her took off from Patna airport at 2.35 PM. She went to Agartala via Guwahati, he added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Punjab and Haryana High Court on Monday dismissed the writ petition that was filed by some people alleging the replacement of chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who is undergoing sentence for rape and murder cases in a Rohtak jail, with a dummy person, informed Advocate Jatinder.

Justice Karamjit Singh of the HC passed these orders while dismissing a plea and said that the plea lacked merit.

The plea was filed by Ashok Kumar and 18 other petitioners claiming themselves to be staunch supporters of the controversial preacher.

The petitioners, in this case, said they had sought directions to "verify the authenticity" of the Dera chief as the state authorities in collusion with Dera functionaries including Priyanka Taneja alias Honeypreet and Prithviraj Nain have replaced a dummy person with the Dera chief.

The plea further stated that such a dummy person is hurting the religious sentiments of the followers.

Rape convict Ram Rahim is currently out on parole.

Earlier on June 17, chief who is serving a jail term after being convicted in rape and murder cases was granted parole for a month.

Singh has been incarcerated, since 2017, in Haryana's Sunaria jail where he is serving 20 year-term for raping two women disciples at his ashram's headquarters in Sirsa.

Earlier in February, the Dera chief was granted three weeks' furlough.

While parole means the release of a prisoner either temporarily for a special purpose or completely before the expiry of a sentence, on the promise of good behaviour, a furlough is a short-term temporary release of convicts from jail.

He was convicted by a special CBI court in Panchkula in August 2017 for raping two women followers.

While, on October 8, 2021, the court convicted Rahim and four others in connection with former Dera manager Ranjit Singh's murder case.

Ranjit Singh was murdered in 2002 on the premises of .

(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.)
Activist and former JNU student Sharjeel Imam, who is in judicial custody in connection with the 2020 Delhi riots case, approached a here, alleging assault and harassment inside the prison and seeking directions for protection of his life.

"On June 30, at around 7.30 p.m., the Assistant Superintendent, along with 8-9 convicts came, to the cell of the applicant in the name of carrying out a search. The search operation is not permissible by the convicts and can only be carried out by competent staff. During the aforesaid search, the petitioner's books and clothes were thrown away, he assaulted and called a terrorist and an anti-national when he tried to protect his belongings," read his application filed in Karkardooma through his counsel Ahmed Ibrahim.

He sought directions from the authorities concerned to protect him from such incidents in the future and sought direction from jail authorities for keeping the video recording in the CCTV camera of the jail at the relevant time.

Imam's plea said though he requested the Assistant Superintendent to prevent the convicts from assaulting him, however, hie plea was not heeded.

"It appeared that the Assistant Superintendent was complicit in the illegal act," Imam said in the plea. He alleged that some inmates also tried to place some contraband in his possession.

--IANS

jw/vd

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Lucknow Bench of the has asked the and the (ECI) to take effective measures to 'remove criminals from politics' and break the unholy nexus among them, politicians and bureaucrats.

A bench comprising Justice Dinesh Kumar Singh made the observations while rejecting the bail plea of BSP MP Atul Kumar Singh a.k.a. Atul Rai.

The court said it is the responsibility of to show its collective will to restrain criminals from entering politics or legislature to save democracy and ensure that the country governed on democratic principles and the rule of law.

The court said that considering the criminal history of 23 cases against Rai, might of the accused, evidence on record and the possibility tampering with the evidence, it did not find any ground to grant bail to him at this stage.

Rai was booked by the Hazratganj police in Lucknow for abetting the suicide of a girl and her witness outside the Supreme Court in August last year.

During the course of hearing, the bench came across that in 2004, 24 per cent of Lok Sabha MPs had criminal cases pending, which increased to 30 per cent in 2009 elections.

In 2014, it went up to 34 per cent and in 2019, 43 per cent MPs elected to the Lok Sabha were having criminal cases pending against them.

The bench said despite the fact that the Supreme Court has taken notice of criminalisation of politics and imperative needs of electoral reforms, and the Election Commission have not taken adequate measures to protect the Indian democracy from going into the hands of criminals, thugs and law-breakers.

"No one can dispute that the present-day politics is caught in crime, identity, patronage, muscle and money network. Nexus between crime and politics is a serious threat to democratic values and governance based on the rule of law. Elections of Parliament and state legislature, and even for local bodies and panchayats are very expensive affairs," the court said.

"There is an unholy alliance between organised crime, politicians and the bureaucrats," it added.

The court said the phenomenon has eroded the credibility, effectiveness and impartiality of the law enforcement agencies and the administration.

The court noted that accused such as Rai won over witnesses, influenced investigation and tampered with evidence by using his money, muscle and political power.

"This has resulted in a lack of trust and confidence in the administration and justice delivery system of the country," it pointed out.

--IANS

amita/shs

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The government of on Tuesday started disbursing financial assistance to owning over five acres of land under Rythu Bandhu.

Authorities began depositing the amount under the investment support scheme into the bank accounts of who own more than five acres of land.

The state government has so far disbursed Rs 3,946 crore to 51.99 lakh who own up to four acres of land.

According to state Finance Minister Harish Rao, the government has so far disbursed the amount for 78.93 lakh acres.

He directed officials to ensure that there are no glitches in depositing the amount in the bank accounts of farmers.

The minister said depsite the financial problems faced by the state, the government is taking steps to make sure that all eligible farmers get the financial assistance for 'Vanakalam' or Kharif season.

Under Rythu Bandhu, the government credits Rs 5,000 per acre into the farmers' bank accounts before the beginning of every crop season.

The disbursement for Kharif season began last week.

Finance minister S. Niranjan Reddy said the scheme during Kharif season will benefit about 68.1 lakh farmers in the state covering a total cultivable land of 1.5 crore acres.

Starting with farmers owning up to one acre land, the authorities are covering all beneficiaries in phases. The minister said during Kharif season a total of Rs 7,521 crore will be deposited in a phased manner.

During December -January the government had deposited Rs 7,411.52 crore into the bank accounts of 62.99 lakh farmers in the state.

The investment support under the state's flagship scheme had covered 1,48,23,000 acres across the state for the Rabi season.

When the scheme was launched in 2018, the government was providing Rs 8,000 per acre per year (for both Rabi and Kharif seasons). The amount was enhanced to Rs 10,000 from 2019.

On January 10, the cumulative assistance provided under the scheme touched Rs 50,000 crore mark.

Niranjan Reddy said Rythu Bandhu, the brainchild of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, is proving a boon for farmers and it has helped transform agriculture in the state. He claimed that no other state in the country is implementing such a scheme for the welfare of farmers.

--IANS

ms/dpb

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Maharashtra's district has reported 281 new COVID-19 cases, raising its infection tally to 7,29,721, a health official said on Tuesday.

With the addition of the latest cases on Monday, the district currently has 4,248 active COVID-19 cases, he said.

No fresh death was reported and the toll stood at 11,909. The COVID-19 recovery count in the district has reached 7,13,243, 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.)
falls by 41 paise to new low of 79.36 against US dollar

The fell by 41 paise to close at a new low of 79.36 (provisional) against the US dollar on Tuesday amid a strong greenback overseas and unrelenting foreign fund outflows.

At the interbank forex market, the local unit opened at 79.04 against the greenback and witnessed an intra-day high of 79.02 and a low of 79.38. Read more

Delhi-Dubai flight diverted due to fuel indicator malfunction: SpiceJet

SpiceJet's Delhi-Dubai flight was on Tuesday diverted to Karachi as the fuel indicator started malfunctioning, officials of the aviation regulator DGCA said.

This is at least the sixth incident of technical malfunction happening on aircraft in the last 17 days. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is investigating the Tuesday's incident, along with the previous five incidents, the officials noted. Read more

pursues legal review of Indian orders to take down content: Report

is seeking to overturn some Indian government orders to take down content on the social media platform, a source familiar with the matter said, in a legal challenge which alleges abuse of power by officials.

The US company's attempt to get a judicial review is part of a growing confrontation with New Delhi. Read more

June automobile retail sales jump 27% on improved chip availability: FADA

Registration of automobiles across all categories rose at a brisk pace year-on-year (y-oy) in June as improved availability of semiconductors enabled automakers to increase output and dispatch more units to their dealers, the Federation of Auto Dealers Association (FADA) said on Tuesday. It jumped to 27.16 per cent to 1.5 million units compared to 1.2 million units in the same month a year ago. Read more
A police team from reached Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad town on Tuesday to arrest a TV news anchor from his home for playing a doctored clip of Congress leader but he was instead arrested by the Noida police who released him on bail later in the night, officials said.

While police from Congress-ruled landed at Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan's home in Ghaziabad's Indirapuram near the national capital early morning, the team from Noida in BJP-governed Uttar Pradesh reached a couple of hours later.

The police landed around 5.30 am, while the local Ghaziabad police reached an hour later and the Noida police got there after 8 am, officials said.

"Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan was picked up from his home for questioning on Tuesday morning by a team from Noida Sector-20 police station in connection with an FIR lodged under IPC 505 (public mischief) on a complaint by his own channel over a doctored video played during his show on July 1, a Noida police officer told PTI, seeking anonymity.

After more than 12 hours, the Noida police said in a statement that Ranjan was arrested by them from his Ghaziabad home as part of an investigation in a case lodged under IPC 505(2) (statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill will between classes).

"Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan was brought to Noida from his residence in Indrapuram for questioning in the case. After interrogation, he was arrested on the basis of evidence. He has been released on bail as the sections against him are bailable offences. Further investigation in the case is underway, the police statement read.

In Raipur, Senior Superintendent of Police Prashant Agrawal told PTI that a case was registered against Ranjan and others at Zee News on Sunday for allegedly promoting enmity between different groups and outraging religious feelings of people based on a complaint by Congress MLA Devendra Yadav.

In his complaint, Yadav said a video, in which described those attacking his Wayanad office as children and said he had no ill-will against them, was "mischievously" used by the TV channel on July 1 to suggest he was forgiving the killers of Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal.

As the drama unfolded outside Ranjan's home with the police teams from two states ready to arrest the anchor, a senior Ghaziabad police officer told PTI that the local city police were not involved in the case.

"Chhattisgarh Police is standing outside my house to arrest me without informing the local police. Is it legal?" the Zee News anchor tweeted in Hindi, tagging Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the state's police.

The Raipur police tweeted its response.

"There is no such rule to inform. Still, now they are informed. The police team has shown you the court's warrant of arrest. You should in fact cooperate, join in the investigation and put your defence in court," it said.

Chhattisgarh police was not able to arrest him and a member of the team led by a DSP-rank officer later alleged obstruction by the local police.

He claimed that the Ghaziabad police had intervened in the legal procedure by taking Ranjan away with them from his home and then saying that he had been detained by the Noida police.

"We have registered a criminal case against Rohit Ranjan at Civil Lines police station in Raipur. We had the arrest warrant and the court order. We came here regarding that in the morning but even after 12 hours the police here (Ghaziabad and Noida) are not informing us about Rohit Ranjan's whereabouts," the official told PTI.

The FIR in Raipur was lodged under IPC sections including 153A (promoting enmity between different groups), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class), 467 (forgery), 469 (forgery to harm reputation), 504 (intentional insult).

Officials said these are more serious charges than the case lodged by the Noida police.

On July 2, a day after the video was aired, Ranjan had apologised for mistakenly playing Gandhi's statement out of context by linking it with the Udaipur murder case.

"It was a human error for which our team is apologetic. We apologise for it," he had tweeted in Hindi.

However, the video was used by several people, including BJP leaders, to attack Gandhi and the Congress party after the Udaipur murder on June 28. The assailants in Udaipur purportedly admitted their crime in a video clip, saying it was meant to avenge an insult to Islam.

FIRs have been lodged in Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur and Raipur, in UP's Noida, and in Rajasthan in connection with Gandhi's doctored video.

Congress legislator Yadav, whose FIR in Raipur led to the Chhattisgarh police action, has also accused the director and chairman of Zee News, its chief executive officer for conspiring to spread fabricated and fake news against Gandhi in a bid to incite communal riots and disturb social harmony, a police official 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.)
is seeking to overturn some Indian government orders to take down content on the social media platform, a source familiar with the matter said, in a legal challenge which alleges abuse of power by officials.

The U.S. company's attempt to get a judicial review is part of a growing confrontation with New Delhi.

has been asked by Indian authorities over the past year to act on content including accounts supportive of an independent Sikh state, posts alleged to have spread misinformation about protests by farmers and over tweets critical of the government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

India's IT ministry did not immediately respond on Tuesday to a request for comment about Twitter's legal move. The Indian government has previously said that big social media firms, including Twitter, have not complied with removal requests, despite their legal standing.

Late last month, was warned by India's IT ministry of criminal proceedings if it did not comply with some orders.

Twitter complied this week, the source said, so as not to lose liability exemptions available as a host of content.

Twitter argues in its request for a judicial review that some removal orders fell short of the procedural requirements of India's IT act, the source said, without specifying which ones Twitter wanted to be reviewed.

The IT act allows the government to block public access to content in the interest of security, among other reasons.

Twitter, which market research firms say has nearly 24 million users in India, also argues in its filing that some of the orders failed to give notice to authors of the content.

It also says that some were related to political content posted by official handles of political parties, the blocking of which amount to violation of freedom of speech, the source added.

Tensions with the Indian government flared early last year when Twitter declined to fully comply with an order to take down accounts and posts which New Delhi alleged were spreading misinformation about anti-government protests by farmers.

The company has also been subject to police investigations in India and last year many Indian government ministers moved to domestically developed platform Koo, accusing Twitter of non-compliance with local laws.



Twitter has also faced a backlash in India for blocking accounts of influential individuals, including politicians, citing violations of its policies.

India, which industry transparency reports show has among the highest government requests for content takedowns, is considering some amendments to its new IT rules, including the introduction of a government-run appeals panel with the power to reverse the content moderation decisions of social media firms.

New Delhi has said such measures were needed because the companies had violated Indians' constitutional rights.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Declaration for Orthodox Christian Unity in America NEWS PROVIDED BY

Orthodox Christian Laity

July 5, 2022



WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., July 5, 2022 /Christian Newswire/ -- The following is submitted by Peter Zarras, President, and George D. Karcazes, Secretary, Orthodox Christian Laity: Read and Sign: A Declaration for Orthodox Christian Unity in America



We believe that we are the most fortunate of people, blessed by God to be Orthodox Christians and to be free Americans. We accept the responsibility to "make disciples of all nations" on these shores, as Christ required of us at His Ascension.



We take inspiration from the statement in 1922 of Ecumenical Patriarch Meletios, who said: "I have seen and understood how exalted the name of Orthodoxy could be...if more than two million Orthodox people were united into one church organization, an American Orthodox Church."



We see that Orthodox Christian witness in America is weakened by our fragmentation into more than a dozen ethnic enclaves. We believe that Christ weeps at this disunity.



We call all Orthodox Christian people of America  clergy and laity  to come together in a single, unified Orthodox Church of America, under the historic rules and traditions of Orthodoxy.



We look to our hierarchs in the Assembly of Bishops  which was founded in 2009 for this very purpose  to lead us in this quest. We enjoin them  like Joseph of Arimathea  to take courage, and like us, be seen openly to be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of preserving and growing the Church of Christ for our children and for seekers of divine truth.



We declare ourselves to be Americans of proud descent from ancient shores, but no longer part of a church diaspora that puts ethnicity before Orthodox Christianity, lest our Church fades away as ethnic ties diminish over time.



We believe that the administration of our parishes and dioceses from Mother Churches on distant shores is uncanonical and unworkable. We are guided in this by clear Church canons and traditions: that there be only one Orthodox Christian bishop in any location; that foreign bishops have no authority outside their own territory; and that under the established Orthodox tradition of a great majority of places, when an Orthodox Christian national community is developed in a new territory, a single local church be established, uniting every believer in Orthodox doctrine.



We reassert the proper role of the laity in the governance of the Church. We understand this to mean that the laity defers to the clergy in respect and matters of doctrine. In return, we believe that Orthodox Christian tradition and historic practice require that the clergy respects the laity's call for accountability, transparency, collegiality, adherence to process and the Canons of the Church, and ultimately then, unity.



In making this declaration, we remind ourselves of the historic courage and leadership of lay people in establishing and growing the single Christian Church, in defending the true belief of Orthodoxy during centuries of dispute, and in building new parishes around the world as immigration flourished.



We believe that foreign administration and indifference, and local ethnic fragmentation and disunity, have led, too often, to bad governance. This has contributed significantly to the decline of American parishes and dioceses, as succeeding generations see ethnic churches that are indifferent and unresponsive to their needs in a multicultural America. We believe we are a distinct and mature American Orthodox Christian community, that is ready to become a single, unified Orthodox Church of America.



We understand the apprehension that comes with the prospect of change. We believe that a unified, revitalized Orthodox Church of America would be a formidable spiritual and moral dynamo that would be a powerful force for good in the world, providing more support and vitality to the ancient Patriarchates and Mother Churches than divided, declining ethnic jurisdictions are providing.



We particularly envision a united Orthodox Christian Church of America to be a strengthened bulwark of support for the ancient Patriarchates that no longer have the internal governmental protection that the national Orthodox Churches have. We believe that this united American Church, wielding the potent voice of committed American citizens, will marshal an unprecedented level of material, moral, and political support for world Orthodoxy. A united, growing fellowship of Pan-Orthodox Archons and Guardians of the Faith of other jurisdictions, pledged to support and protect the ancient Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, will cement the special relationship that binds children to their parents.



We believe that concerns over loss of traditions, customs, and language are also misplaced, for we strongly ascribe to the American ideal of "e pluribus, unumout of many, one," for the keeping of local practices, parish by parish. We believe that language and customs should and must be maintained as parishes choose. In this, the American multicultural experiment will continue, just as it has from its beginning. Early Pan-Orthodox efforts such as International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) and the Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC) will see their good work thrive in a united Church.



We also believe that the American model of the new United States, which needed over a decade from declaring independence to agreeing upon a governing constitution, is a useful model for our new Church governance. This new Church would neither obliterate our Orthodox identity nor ignore our traditions and precedents, but will instead adjust these God-inspired and time-honored tenets within the reality of a unified Orthodox Church of America. We believe we can take our time, grow in Christ, and get it right.



We, therefore, believe that our Assembly of Bishops should  as in historic practice  come together as a synod, elect its own presiding hierarch, proclaim the Church in North America to be an autocephalous, canonical church, and seek recognition of this autocephaly from the fifteen Autocephalous Orthodox Churches.



In this, we call upon the Holy Spirit, Who bathes the world in wisdom and good order, and Who knows no national, ethnic, or any other boundaries, to help make clear to all the earth our prayer: to help our Church prosper, thus to keep and bring Christ into the lives of all people. We pray that the Lord will guide these efforts, that they be imbued always with heartfelt humility, and that the new united Church for which we pray and which we work to create would be, at all times and in all ways, for the greater glory of God.



Sign the Declaration: bit.ly/declarationunity OCL is a 35-year-old 501(c)(3) educational ministry advocating for the administrative unity, accountability, transparency and conciliar governance of all Orthodox Christian jurisdictions in America as one local, autocephalous Church.



SOURCE Orthodox Christian Laity



CONTACT: David Oancea, 517-795-7784, ocladmin@ocl.org



Related Links



https://ocl.org



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The prime accused of the June 3 violence, which broke out during a protest against BJP leader Nupur Sharma's controversial statement against Prophet Mohammed, was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police on Tuesday.

Haji Wasi, accused of funding the violence, was nabbed near Amausi airport in Lucknow while he was trying to flee, said a senior police official.

Wasi's eldest son, Abdur Rahman, was also sent to jail on Monday in this connection.

With these, the total number of arrests made in the case has reached 61.

Joint Commissioner of Police (law and order) Anand Prakash Tiwari said Wasi's location was found in and around Lucknow.

Following Wasi's location, he was arrested near Amausi airport, he added.

"The accused has been taken to and is being questioned. He will be produced before court and further action will be taken in accordance with the court's directives," the officer noted.

He added that Wasi is a history-sheeter and four criminal cases were registered against him.

The Special Investigation Team had earlier obtained a non-bailable warrant (NBW) from the Metropolitan Magistrate-VI court against him and as many as 18 other accused in the case.

The administration had also demolished one of the buildings belonging to Wasi after the violence.

Violent clashes followed by stone-pelting took place on June 3 in Kanpur after a local Muslim organisation -- Maulana Mohammad Ali (MMA) Jauhar Fans Association -- called for shutting down shops across the city over Nupur Sharma's controversial comments.

(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 has started in full swing in the nation, are on a growth path as continue to be the market leader, a new report said. recorded an occupancy rate of 80 per cent in May 2022, which was followed by Pune and Bengaluru, consulting firm HVS Anarock said in its ' & Hospitality Overview' report.

In May, the average daily rate of hotels ranged at Rs 5,750-5,950, which was 6-8 per cent higher than the corresponding month in 2019, the report said. It added that the average occupancy was 63-65 per cent, which is 1-3 percentage points over 2019, Mint reported.

The report stated that revenue per available room ranged between Rs 3,622-3,867, which is 10-12 per cent higher than in May 2019. The revenue metric is used to measure a hotel's performance.

While has seen an upsurge in recent months even as the rise in travel costs has yet not impacted the demand, HVS Anarock said that the sector's growth may be hampered due to ongoing economic and global headwinds.

In May, domestic air traffic increased by over 11 per cent against April, almost touching the May 2019 level.

Hotels in Goa and Kolkata witnessed an increase of 8-12 per cent in May 2022 over against the 2019 levels, the report said, adding that Mumbai, New Delhi, Kochi and grew at 4-8 per cent.

We were mapping the month of May and it has been much better than May 2019. We are ahead on all parameters like occupancies, average room rates and revenue per available room. This is obviously due to the strength of domestic travel. International business has not yet come back and so it can only get better from here. The strength of domestic is something that has been very well recognized by the industry," said Mandeep S Lamba, HVS Anarock president, Mint quoted.

can breach 70 per cent occupancy mark by 2024, which would be the highest in the last 20 years, Lamba said. He said that business travel is picking up even in cities such as that had a slow start as the IT market has yet to bounce back, Mint quoted.

Were seeing signs of business travel recovery and we will see almost full robust business travel again by the last quarter of this calendar year," Lamba added.
The Indian government on Tuesday said that all Internet intermediaries and social media platforms have to comply with the law of the land, after moved the Karnataka High Court against its order to take down some content on its platform.

Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said in a tweet that all foreign intermediaries and platforms have a right to approach the court and judicial review in India.

"But equally, all intermediary/platforms operating here have an unambiguous obligation to comply with our laws and rules," Chandrasekhar posted.

IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that "be it any company, in any sector, they should abide by the laws of India".

Earlier in the day, moved the Karnataka High Court against the Indian government's order to take down some content on its platform, on the grounds that the content blocking orders from the IT Ministry do not pass "the test of the grounds provided under Section 69A of the IT Act".

alleged in its writ petition that multiple accounts and content included in the blocking orders are either "overbroad and arbitrary", fail to provide notice to the "originators" of the content, and are "disproportionate" in several cases, sources told IANS.

In a June letter, the IT Ministry had warned Twitter of strict action if it does not comply with some content takedown orders.

Twitter has now sought judicial review of some of the content that forms a part of various blocking orders, requesting relief from the court to set aside these blocking orders.

"These blocking orders are being challenged on the basis that they are procedurally and substantially deficient of the Section 69A requirements," read the writ petition.

--IANS

na/vd

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Tamil Nadu's Teachers Board has finally released the result and final answer key for of CBT exams, which were held for the hiring of Post Graduate Assistants/ Physical Director Grade-I and Computer Instructor Grade-I.

Candidates can check the answer key online and download their results at trb.tn.nic.in.

The Teachers Board had conducted the exams from February 12, 2022 to February 20, 2022. The board had released tentative answer keys on April 9 and objections, representations regarding them were accepted by April 13.

After revaluation, the answer data of candidates, who took the examination, are calculated, following the normalisation procedure.

Now, final marks obtained by students after revision, have been released by the teacher's board along with the final answer key.

Here is how you can check and download TN TRB PG Assistant Result 2022
Indian documentary filmmaker Leena Manimekalai was slammed on on Monday after she shared a poster of her new film Kaali, where the Hindu Goddess was seen smoking. A complaint was filed against the Toronto-based filmmaker as she was accused of hurting religious sentiments.

Madurai-born Manimekalai on Saturday shared a poster where Goddess Kaali was seen smoking in the background and was also seen holding a pride flag of the LGBTQ community.

Soon after her post on Twitter, the hashtag #ArrestLeenaManimekalai started trending on the platform as users called for action against Manimekalai. One user wrote, "This must not be tolerated on the name of freedom of expression," while another said, "Leena Manimekalai a filmmaker portraying Hindu God as cigarettes smokers. She is Insulting Maa Kaali."

Gau Mahasabha head Ajay Gautam filed a complaint with the Delhi Police and the Home Ministry, calling for an FIR against the Toronto-based filmmaker as he also demanded a ban on the film.

Responding to the controversy, Leena Manimekalai on wrote, "I have nothing to lose. I want to be with a voice that speaks without fear of anything until it is. If the price is my life, I will give it."

The documentary film was part of the "Rhythms of Cananda" segment at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Manimekalai had shared initially in her tweet.

Super thrilled to share the launch of my recent film - today at @AgaKhanMuseum as part of its Rhythms of Canada

Link: https://t.co/RAQimMt7Ln



I made this performance doc as a cohort of https://t.co/D5ywx1Y7Wu@YorkuAMPD @TorontoMet @YorkUFGS



Feeling pumped with my CREW pic.twitter.com/L8LDDnctC9  Leena Manimekalai (@LeenaManimekali) July 2, 2022

Describing the film, she wrote on in Tamil, "The film revolves around the events that take place one evening when Kali appears and strolls the streets of Toronto. If you see the picture, don't put the hashtag 'arrest Leena manimekalai' but put the hashtag 'love you Leena manimekalai'."
The Taliban-led government in Kabul has claimed that 4,559 Afghan refugees were expelled from Iran and in the last three days.

In a statement on Monday, the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation (MoRR) said on Monday that majority of the expelled refugees returned from Iran after a census conducted by the Tehran government, reports TOLO News.

The Iranian government urged Afghan authorities to stop illegal travel.

"With the start of the census process of Afghans, the deporting of Afghans without legal documents has increased. The government of Iran counts people who do not take part in the census as illegal refugees," said Asefa Stanekzai, a representative for Afghan refugees in Iran.

The development comes as the UN and Amnesty have urged the host countries to stop eviction and migration of Afghan refugees and as well as violating of their rights.

According to the UNHCR, Afghan refugees are the third-largest displaced population in the world, followed by 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 alone.

After the 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.

--IANS

ksk/

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Secretary of State will hold talks with his Chinese counterpart this week in Indonesia at a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 bloc of the world's leading industrialised nations, the State Department said Tuesday.

Blinken will see China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the G-20 gathering in Bali, the department said in a statement that made no mention of any possible meeting between Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who will also be attending the G-20 event.

Blinken and Lavrov last met in Geneva, Switzerland in January in what turned out to be a fruitless bid to forestall Russia's invasion of Ukraine a month later.

Since then, Blinken and Lavrov have not been in the same room, or even the same city, at the same time. It was not immediately clear if either of the two would have time or desire for a discussion in Bali.

The US and China are at severe odds over numerous issues ranging from trade and human rights to Taiwan and disputes in the South China Sea. They are also divided over Russia's war in Ukraine, with China supporting the Russian explanation for the conflict.

Blinken will reinforce our commitment to working with partners to confront global challenges, including food and energy insecurity and the threat Russia's continued war against Ukraine presents to the order, State Department spokesman Ned Price said.

From Bali, Blinken will travel to Bangkok, Thailand, to make up for a trip to the Thai capital that he was forced to cancel late last year due to COVID-19 reasons.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chinese authorities refused to allow Canadian diplomats to attend the trial of a Chinese-born Canadian tycoon who disappeared from Hong Kong five years ago, Canada's government said Tuesday.

Xiao Jianhua was last seen at a Hong Kong hotel in January 2017 and is believed to have been taken to the mainland by Chinese authorities. The government has never confirmed whether he was detained or what charges he might face.

The Canadian government said earlier Xiao was due to stand trial Monday but gave no indication whether a trial took place or where. It gave no details of possible charges.

made several requests to attend the trial proceedings. Our attendance was denied by Chinese authorities, a Canadian government statement said.

Xiao, the founder of Tomorrow Group, vanished amid a flurry of prosecutions of Chinese businesspeople accused of misconduct.

That fuelled fears the ruling Communist Party might be abducting people outside the mainland. Hong Kong at that time prohibited Chinese police from operating in the former British colony, which has a separate legal system.

Since then, Beijing has tightened control over Hong Kong, prompting complaints it is violating the autonomy promised when the territory returned to in 1997. The ruling party imposed a national security law in 2020 and has imprisoned pro-democracy activists.

Hong Kong police investigated Xiao's disappearance and said the subject crossed the border onto the mainland. But an advertisement in the Ming Pao newspaper in Xiao's name the same week denied he was taken against his will.
The overland trade between and saw a sharp decline in the first four months of the year, due to tightened Covid-19 safety measures and congested borders.

Vietnamese firms shipped just USD 509 million worth of goods to through the border, an 87 per cent dive year-on-year, reported Vietnamese publication VNExpress citing the customs data.

The report said that the imports from also dropped by 52.5 per cent to USD 3.64 billion.

Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade said that China's zero-Covid strategy and tightened control of cross-border movement have largely impacted the trade between the two countries. The situation was worsened by the lack of transport, logistics and cross-border trade infrastructure, VNExpress reported.

Though trading through key border gates in the northern provinces of Lao Cai and Lang Son has resumed, the customs clearance has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.

In Lang Son province, customs clearance is carried out at four border gates: Huu Nghi, Dong Dang, Chi Ma, and Tan Thanh.

Tan Thanh border gate in Lang Son is Vietnam's main point for fruit export to China, but only 100 vehicles get customs clearance a day, a third of total vehicles compared to pre-pandemic level, VNExpress reported.

Amid this, if the required measures are not taken to control the delay in clearance, the border congestion could escalate further, said the Ministry.

Ever since the pandemic struck the country, the Chinese authorities have tightened COVID-19 safety measures. During the period, thousands of container trucks wait for hours at Vietnam's border gates with China in the northern province of Lang Son in order to get clearance, VNExpress reported.

China was Vietnam's largest partner last year, with bilateral trade reaching USD 166 billion.

exported USD 56 billion worth of goods to China, its second-largest import market, last year.

Trading through the border accounted for USD 42 billion, 37 per cent of it being Vietnamese exports. Agricultural produce and electronics components are Vietnam's top export items to China.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
CureVac has filed a patent lawsuit in Germany against BioNTech over its use of mRNA technology, marking one of the first known cases of a company going to court amid the fierce competition to develop a vaccine against the coronavirus.

The German-based biotech company is seeking "fair compensation" from BioNTech and two subsidiaries for infringement of its intellectual property rights, it said on Tuesday.

When asked in a media call, Chief Executive Franz-Werner Haas did not rule out further legal action against BioNTech partner Pfizer or mRNA vaccine maker Moderna.

CureVac said that its claim to intellectual property rights was based on more than two decades of work on mRNA technology, some of which was used by BioNTech and Pfizer for the development and sale of their Comirnaty .

"Many years of our research have also contributed to the success of the mRNA vaccines and made that possible," Haas told reporters. "From our point of view, it is self-evident to respect the associated property rights."

Vaccines and drugs using mRNA technology instruct human cells to produce therapeutic proteins. Long regarded as an obscure technology with uncertain prospects, mRNA was brought to bear for the first time when used in vaccines during the pandemic.

Haas did not provide a value that CureVac, which posted a 2021 loss of 412 million euros ($423 million), would see as fair compensation.

BioNTech expects up to 17 billion euros ($17.5 billion) in vaccine revenue this year, down from last year's 19 billion with the pandemic easing.

CureVac said that it was not seeking an injunction, nor intended to take legal action that would impede the production, sale or distribution of the vaccine.

At the height of the pandemic, it would not have occurred to CureVac to point out patent infringement, but now that there is better control over the pandemic, it believed it was the right time to do so, Haas said.

BioNTech had no immediate comment when contacted by Reuters.

CureVac's Haas was coy about potential further legal action, indicating that first a basis was needed regarding CureVac's fair share in product development and sales in Germany and how that would be appropriately valued.

Asked whether he would rule out legal action against Moderna, the CEO said: "We are not ruling anything out. We are looking at it very carefully."

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in China, has killed more than 6.3 million people and spurred a race among pharmaceutical to be the first to develop a vaccine, with BioNTech and Pfizer coming to dominate the field in the Western world.

After failed efforts to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to market last year, CureVac intensified its work with partner GSK on improved versions of vaccine.

CureVac and GSK said in April that their second-generation vaccine candidate targeting two recent COVID-19 variants had been shown to be highly effective in pre-clinical studies on mice.

BioNTech shares fell as much as 4.9% after the news but regained territory, trading 2% higher at 1354 GMT. German-listed CureVac's shares traded 1% higher after initially gaining as much as 4.8%.

The court in Duesseldorf, where CureVac submitted its lawsuit, declined to comment.

($1 = 0.9733 euros)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
North Atlantic Treaty Organizations (NATOs) 30 allies signed an accession protocol for and on Tuesday, allowing them to join the nuclear-armed alliance once parliaments ratify the decision, the most significant expansion of the alliance since the 1990s.

The signing at headquarters follows a deal with at last weeks summit in Madrid, where Ankara lifted its veto on the Nordic membership bids following assurances that both countries would do more to fight terrorism.

This is truly an historic moment, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said alongside the foreign ministers of the two countries. With 32 nations around the table, we will be even stronger.

The protocol means Helsinki and Stockholm can participate in NATO meetings and have greater access to intelligence but will not be protected by the NATO defence clause - that an attack on one ally is an attack against all - until ratification. That is likely to take up to a year.

It was at an allied summit in Madrid in 1997 that Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic were invited to join, in the first of several waves of NATOs eastern expansion - seen as an achievement for the West but which has angered Russia.

Moscow has repeatedly warned both countries against joining NATO. On March 12, the Russian foreign ministry said there will be serious military and political consequences.

Stoltenberg urged allies to swiftly ratify and assured the two Nordic countries of NATOs support in the meantime.

The security of and is important for our alliance, including during the ratification process, he said.

Many allies have already made clear commitments to Finlands and Swedens security, and NATO has increased our presence in the region, including with more exercises.

Turkish warning

is threatening to veto NATO membership for and even as the military alliance formally paved the way for the two Nordic countries to join.

will not ratify membership of the NATO for the applicants if they dont fufill their promises to combat terrorism and extradite suspects under a memorandum of understanding reached at an alliance summit in Madrid last week, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Monday.

They have to comply with this document, if they dont then we wont allow them to join NATO, Cavusoglu told NTV television.

All 30 allies signed accession protocols for Sweden and Finland at a ceremony in Brussels on Tuesday, making the countries formal invitees and allowing them access to almost all NATO meetings.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has denied media reports suggesting that Chinese President Xi Jinping refused to visit .

"This is not true. This is completely untrue. The fact is that certain Covid restrictions in continue, and this is absolutely normal, and this should be treated with understanding," RT quoted Peskov as saying.

"And as all these relaxations of these restrictions allow, of course, all visits will be carried out," he said.

Earlier, the media reported that the Chinese President refused to visit Moscow in response to the invitation from his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

As reported, the Russian leader invited Xi during a telephone call on June 15.

Peskov said that the country's Ministry of Defence has its own plans in connection with the launch of the process of Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

"Such options are being worked out not in the Kremlin, but in the Ministry. We have already said many times that there are relevant plans there and work is being done to ensure our security," Peskov said.

Thus, he answered the question whether the Kremlin is considering the option of placing a NATO base on the border with and how Moscow can respond in this regard.

At the same time, Peskov added that Putin had already assessed the entry of Finland and Sweden into NATO.

--IANS

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(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Billionaire Vladimir Potanin, the biggest investor in MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC, said hes ready to discuss merging the mining giant with United Co Rusal PJSC as sanctions against weigh on both .

Potanin has headed Nornickel since striking a 2012 shareholder accord with aluminum producer Rusal, the companys second-largest investor. A merger would create a national champion, the tycoon said in an interview with Russias RBC TV channel on Tuesday. Rusal shares jumped 11% in Hong Kong.

We received the proposal from the management of Rusal to discuss the merger with Norilsk Nickel as an alternative to extending the shareholder agreement, Potanin said. I sent a letter in which I confirmed our agreement to start the process of discussing a merger with Rusal.

Potanin, Russias richest man, controls about 35% of Nornickel, a key producer of nickel and copper and the worlds biggest miner of palladium. Apart from some Canadian restrictions in April, the tycoon largely avoided western sanctions targeting other members of the Russian elite until the UK imposed penalties on June 29.

The notion of merging the two Russian metals giants dates back to 2008, after billionaire Oleg Deripaskas Rusal purchased a stake in Nornickel. Potanin previously didnt support the idea. There is no synergy between two companies, he said in a 2017 interview with Vedomosti newspaper.

Despite Potanins latest comments, the merger still seems unlikely, according to Kirill Chuyko, an analyst at BCS Global Markets.

The national champion idea may be seen as an additional guarantee against the sanctions, but still it is not possible to be fully safeguarded this way, he said. The parties have long and extremely difficult history of relations, while business wise the merger still makes no sense.

The original shareholder agreement not only defined Nornickels dividend payouts, but was supposed to end feuding between Potanin and Rusals founder Deripaska. Still tensions remain between Potanin and Rusal, even after Deripaska was forced to cut down his majority stake in the aluminum producer. The agreement expires in December.

Reduced Dividends

Potanin said Tuesday that 2022 and 2023 dividends are likely to be less than usual. The shareholder accord with Rusal previously guaranteed high payouts, with Nornickels board approving $2.4 billion in final dividends for 2021, even as sanctions on for its invasion of Ukraine upend the market. Rusal owns just over 26% in the miner.

Potanin said on Tuesday that Nornickel is not under sanctions, despite the penalties imposed against him by the UK. The billionaire also indicated that he is not going to step down as Nornickel chief executive officer.

Any merger could also be dependent on the US Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Rusal emerged from sanctions in early 2019 following a deal with OFAC that saw Deripaska cutting his stakes in both the aluminum producer and its parent En+ Group. That deal allows OFAC to nominate trustees overseeing most of the tycoons shares, while the board was changed to include a majority of independent directors. The also agreed to unprecedented transparency for Treasury into their operations, which might cover large deals too.

Rusals press service declined to comment.

About 20% of the worlds nickel comes from Russia, with nearly all of that from Potanins Nornickel. The company also produces about 40% of the worlds palladium, used in anti-pollution devices in gasoline cars.

Nornickel traded down 4% as of 2:26 p.m. in Moscow.
Tasked with establishing the principles and framework for the future reconstruction of the conflict-torn country, a two-day Ukraine Recovery Conference has opened here.

The conference participants are expected to define the criteria for handling assistance to Ukraine and for the distribution of roles among the various partners, Ignazio Cassis, president of the Swiss Confederation and head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, said in his opening address on Monday.

He said he expected the senior officials from around 40 countries and representatives from 18 organisations attending the conference to adopt the "Lugano principles" conducive to the sustainable recovery of Ukraine, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The sustainable restructuring of the economy should be guided by the principle of building back better and creating the conditions for prosperity and intact livelihoods," he said.

Ukraine's Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who attended the conference in person, said that his country will need $750 billion for a three-stage reconstruction plan, which he presented in detail.

Addressing the conference by video link from Kiev, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the plan also covers the country's institutional development.

Among the key principles and goals, Zelensky singled out heightened security, technological development, compliance with environmental standards, transparency and the rooting of the reconstruction project in Ukraine's real economic life.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, told Monday's opening session that her institution has proposed to the government of Ukraine the creation of a reconstruction platform to map investment needs, coordinate action, channel resources and support an ambitious reform agenda.

The event, co-hosted by the governments of and Ukraine, was originally planned as the 5th annual Ukraine Reform Conference. It was renamed earlier this year to reflect the new focus of the gathering.

"The way to rebuild Ukraine is through a broad-based political and diplomatic process. and Ukraine want to start this process in Lugano," the Swiss Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said that next year's Ukraine Recovery Conference will be hosted by the UK.

--IANS

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Hundreds of homes have been inundated in and around Australia's largest city in a flood emergency that was impacting 50,000 people, officials said Tuesday.

Emergency response teams made 100 rescues overnight of people trapped in cars on flooded roads or in inundated homes in the area, State Emergency Service manager Ashley Sullivan said.

Days of torrential rain have caused dams to overflow and waterways to break their banks, bringing a fourth flood emergency in 16 months to parts of the city of 5 million people.

The New South Wales state government declared a disaster across 23 local government areas overnight, activating federal government financial assistance for flood victims.

Evacuation orders and warnings to prepare to abandon homes impacted 50,000 people, up from 32,000 on Monday, New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet said.

"This event is far from over. Please don't be complacent, wherever you are. Please be careful when you're driving on our roads. There is still substantial risk for flash flooding across our state, Perrottet said.

Emergency Services Minister Steph Cooke credited the skill and commitment of rescue crews for preventing any death or serious injury by the fourth day of the flooding emergency.

Parts of southern had been lashed by more than 20 centimetres (nearly 8 inches) of rain in 24 hours, more than 17 per cent of the city's annual average, Bureau of Meteorology meteorologist Jonathan How said.

Severe weather warnings of heavy rain remained in place across Sydney's eastern suburbs on Tuesday. The warnings also extended north of along the coast and into the Hunter Valley.

The worst flooding was along the Hawkesbury-Nepean rivers system along Sydney's northern and western fringes.

The good news is that by tomorrow afternoon, it is looking to be mostly dry but, of course, we are reminding people that these floodwaters will remain very high well after the rain has stopped, How said.

There was plenty of rain fall overnight and that is actually seeing some rivers peak for a second time. So you've got to take many days, if not a week, to start to see these floodwaters start to recede, How added.

The wild weather and mountainous seas along the New South Wales coast thwarted plans to tow a stricken cargo ship with 21 crew members to the safety of open sea.

The ship lost power after leaving port in Wollongong, south of Sydney, on Monday morning and risked being grounded by 8-metre (26-foot) swells and winds blowing at 30 knots (34 mph) against cliffs.

An attempt to tow the ship with tugboats into open ocean ended when a towline snapped in an 11-metre (36-foot) swell late Monday, Port Authority chief executive Philip Holliday said.

The ship was maintaining its position on Tuesday farther from the coast than it had been on Monday with two anchors and the help of two tugboats. The new plan was to tow the ship to Sydney when weather and sea conditions calmed as early as Wednesday, Holliday said. The original plan had been for the ship's crew to repair their engine at sea.

We're in a better position than we were yesterday, Holliday said. We're in relative safety.

Perrottet described the tugboat crews' response on Monday to save the ship as heroic.

I want to thank those men and women who were on those crews last night for the heroic work they did in incredibly treacherous conditions. To have an 11-metre (36-foot) swell, to be undergoing and carrying out that work is incredibly impressive, Perrottet said.
In a huge blow to embattled British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, two of his senior Cabinet colleagues, including Chancellor Rishi Sunak, resigned on Tuesday, as they expressed their loss of confidence in his leadership amidst a spate of scandals.

The 42-year-old British Indian minister posted his resignation letter on Twitter soon after another senior Cabinet colleague, UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid, resigned.

The ministerial exits will come as a big blow to Johnson's leadership and follow a day of high political drama since a former civil servant spoke out about Downing Street's handling of allegations against recently suspended MP Chris Pincher.

The public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously, Sunak tweeted.

I recognise this may be last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning, he said.

It came soon after Johnson said he "bitterly regrets" giving Pincher a government role as Deputy Chief Whip after being made aware of a misconduct complaint against him.

"In hindsight it was the wrong thing to do and I apologise to everyone who has been badly affected by it. I just want to make absolutely clear that there's no place in this government for anybody who is predatory or abuses their position of power," he said.

Sajid Javid, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, in his resignation letter said, "We [Conservative party] may not have always been popular, but we have been competent in acting in the national interest. Sadly, in the current circumstances, the public are concluding that we are now neither.

"The vote of confidence last month showed that a large number of our colleagues agree.

The public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously.



I recognise this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning.



My letter to the Prime Minister below. pic.twitter.com/vZ1APB1ik1  (@RishiSunak) July 5, 2022

"I regret to say, however, that it is clear to me that this situation will not change under your leadership and you have therefore lost my confidence too," Javid, 52, said.

It was followed up by a few other junior resignations, including Conservative Party Vice-Chair Bim Afolami  who called on Johnson to resign as he has lost the support of the party and the country.

Saqib Bhatti, parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to now former health secretary Javid, has also resigned. In a statement on Twitter, he said: "The Conservative party has always been the party of integrity and honour but recent events have undermined trust and standards in public life." Jonathan Gullis, PPS to Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis, has also quit. He said for too long "we have been focused on dealing with our reputational damage rather than delivering for the people".

Opposition Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer declared that it is clear the government is now collapsing.

After all the sleaze, the scandals and the failure, it's clear that this government is now collapsing. Tory Cabinet ministers have known all along who this prime minister is. They have been his cheerleaders throughout this sorry saga, he said.

Even if there are no more resignations, the mood in the ruling Conservative Party has already turned against Johnson - perhaps decisively, The Guardian newspaper commented.

Under current rules Johnson is safe from another leadership challenge until next summer. But the executive of the 1922 Committee can change the rules whenever it wants, it noted.

A new anti-Johnson executive is expected to be elected next week, but even the current executive - more evenly split between loyalists and critics - could act now if it felt there was a consensus in the party, the British newspaper wrote.

Earlier on Tuesday, Lord Simon McDonald, who was the permanent secretary in the UK Foreign Office between 2015 and 2020, wrote to the Parliament's standards commissioner saying Downing Street made "inaccurate claims" about Chris Pincher - who resigned from the post of Conservative Deputy Chief Whip last week after admitting drunken misbehaviour.

In the wake of the resignation, the Prime Minister's office said was not aware of any specific allegations against Pincher when he was appointed to the post.

"This morning I have written to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards - because No. 10 [Downing Street] keep changing their story and are still not telling the truth," McDonald said as he tweeted his letter to the Parliamentary watchdog.

In the letter, he wrote: "The original No. 10 line is not true and the modification is still not accurate. Mr Johnson was briefed in person about the initiation and outcome of the investigation.

"There was a 'formal complaint'. Allegations were 'resolved' only in the sense that the investigation was completed; Mr Pincher was not exonerated. To characterise the allegations as 'unsubstantiated' is therefore wrong." Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab was asked about these developments on air on Tuesday and defended his boss, saying it was not his understanding that was directly briefed.

In relation to the 2019 allegation or complaint [against Pincher], whilst there was inappropriate behaviour, it didn't trip the wire into disciplinary action," he told the BBC.

Pincher, who was suspended as a Conservative Party MP for Tamworth last week over allegations he groped two men at a private members' club in London, says he is seeking professional medical support and has no intention of resigning as an MP.

The Opposition Labour Party said it was clear that knew about the seriousness of the complaints against Pincher when he appointed him to an important post of Deputy Chief Whip, in charge of party discipline.

"He refused to act and then lied about what he knew. Boris Johnson is dragging British democracy through the muck. His appalling judgement has made Westminster a less safe place to work," said Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner.

For months Prime Minister Johnson has been facing a barrage of criticism and rebellion over his conduct and that of his government, including illegal, Covid-linked lockdown-breaking parties at his Downing Street offices for which he and others were fined by the police.

Last month, Johnson survived a confidence vote, but the final count of his lawmakers who rebelled against him was higher than his supporters expected: 41 per cent of his own Conservative parliamentary party refused to back him.

Meanwhile, another senior Indian-origin minister, Home Secretary Priti Patel, has said she has no plans to follow her other South Asian origin colleagues out of Cabinet.

At the same time, Justice Secretary Dominic Raab, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, and Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan have also expressed their support for Johnson.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ukrainian President has said that his country is presently negotiating with and the UN regarding the of grain through ports.

During a briefing in Kiev on Monday alongside visiting Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Anderson, Zelensky said that implementing this project "will be difficult in some places, but definitely possible", because both Ukraine, as a grain exporting country, and farmers, who need exports to prepare for next year's sowing, are interested in this, reports Ukrayinska Pravda.

The President noted that 22 million tonnes of grain are currently blocked in .

"We are currently negotiating with the Turkish side and the UN. Our representatives who are responsible for the safety of grain exiting our ports. But it is a very important moment for someone to guarantee the safety of the ships of certain countries that will come to us to load food products other than Russia, which we do not trust," he was quoted as saying.

He noted that the UN takes a leadership position in this process, and does not act as a moderator. "They seem ready to lead this process."

The President also added that " is not wasting time and we are working on various ways, both by rail and by river, to our grain".

The Russian military fleet is blocking sea routes to Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea coast, making it impossible to safely transport grain to other countries, Ukrayinska Pravda reported.

The community fears that a shortage of Ukrainian grain on the global food market could trigger even greater instability.

Meanwhile, is trying to mediate port unblock talks by demining the Black Sea and escorting bulk carriers for their safety.

However, insists that acceptable guarantees for demining ports are weapons that Ukraine can deploy in the region.

On Monday, Kiev's ambassador to Ankara Vasyl Bodnar announced that a cargo ship carrying grain from a Russian-occupied region of Ukraine has been detained by Turkish customs authorities.

It remained unclear where the cargo came from or how it was obtained.

--IANS

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The government is planning to introduce additional tough measures to safeguard consumers from the crypto meltdown, including restrictions on retail trading.

Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister and Minister in Charge of the Monetary Authority of (MAS), said that the recent market conditions clearly demonstrate the risks with prices of several cryptocurrencies dipping significantly, reports ZDNet.

The country, known for a crypto-friendly atmosphere, is now mulling over additional rules in trading "necessary to safeguard the general public".

"MAS has been carefully considering the introduction of additional consumer protection safeguards. These may include placing limits on retail participation and rules on the use of leverage when transacting in cryptocurrencies," Shanmugaratnam said in a written response to a parliamentary question.

The authority in January this year restricted the marketing and advertising of services in public places.

Since then, crypto providers have removed ATMs and advertisements from public areas and public transport venues.

The European Union last week reached a provisional agreement on cryptocurrency regulations that aimed to "protect investors and preserve financial stability".

MAS in May announced plans to pilot use cases of asset tokenisation and assess the feasibility of autonomous trading powered by Blockchain technology.

In India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last week slammed unbacked crypto assets (such as Bitcoin), stablecoins and decentralised finance (DeFi) and crypto asset trading platforms, underscoring the need for regulatory guardrails to ensure financial stability and consumer and investor protection.

In its annual "Financial Stability Report" (FSR) 2022, India's central bank and regulatory body said that the early ramifications are reflected in the crypto ecosystem with one stablecoin losing almost all its value and another depegging from the US dollar.

It referred to the collapse of TerraUSD and Luna cryptocurrencies that threw many investors into a panic in May. In a crash, the once bullish TerraUSD and sister coin Luna had lost almost all their value, sending shock waves across the world.

RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said that cryptocurrencies are a clear danger to the financial systems, adding that the world must be mindful of the emerging risks on the horizon.

--IANS

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remain unchanged in Tuesday's early trade as 10 gram of 24-carat of the yellow metal is selling at Rs 52,340. Whereas, ten gram of 22-carat gold is selling at Rs 48,000.

On the other hand, the rates of silver also remained untouched on Tuesday with one kg of the precious metal trading at Rs 57,800, similar to previous day's rate.

In the US, gold dipped slightly on Tuesday, as a recovery in Treasury yields from last week's one-month lows reduced the appeal of non-yielding bullion, with a strong dollar also piling on.

In Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata, 10 gram of 24-carat gold is trading at Rs 52,340. On the other hand, ten gram of 22-carat gold is selling at Rs 48,000 in Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata.

In Chennai and Bengaluru, 10 gram of 24-carat gold is trading at Rs 52,480. Meanwhile, 10 gram of 22-carat gold in Chennai and Bengaluru is trading Rs 48,100 and Rs 48,000, respectively.

The price of one kg silver in Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata is Rs 57,800. In Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, 1 kg of silver is selling at Rs 64,000.

Spot gold was down 0.1% at $1,807.93 per ounce, as of 0101 GMT. U.S. gold futures rose 0.4% to $1,808.50.
Today: The are likely to start trade on a quiet note on Tuesday. As of 07:30 AM, the SGX Nifty futures quoted at 15,870, indicating an opening gain of 35-odd points.

Meanwhile, the following stocks are likely to see some action in trades on Tuesday.

Earnings Watch: is scheduled to announce Q1 results today.

Cipla: The company informed BSE that the US FDA conducted a Pre Approval Inspection (PAI) at the companys Indore plant from June 27 to July 01, and has received two observations on FDA Form 483 with respect to ANDA filed for the product to the manufactured at the plant.

(RIL): Global and domestic brokerages continue to have a Buy rating on RIL despite the governments move to levy new taxes on petrol, diesel, and aviation turbine fuel. READ MORE

(DMart): The stock has hit a stiff valuation hurdle. Since January 2022, the stock has fallen 26 per cent while the Nifty has fallen 11 per cent. Further, the stock is down 41 per cent from its 52-week high of Rs 5,899 in October 2021. READ ANALYSIS

Hotels & Restaurants: The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) on Monday barred hotels and from levying service charge by default in food bills, and allowed customers to file complaints in case of a violation of the norms. There should not be any collection of service charge by any other name, it added. READ MORE

Marico: The company informed BSE that it raised its stake in its recently acquired subsidiary Apcos Natural from 52.38 per cent to 56.52 per cent on acquiring additional equity up to 4.14 per cent.

Reliance Power: The shareholders of the company turned down the companys asset monetisation plan during its AGM. The special resolution needed at least 75 per cent votes in favour of the proposal, but the company could garner only 72 per cent favourable votes. A report by Institutional Investor Advisory Services (IiAS) last month said the company defaulted on loans to the tune of Rs 3,561 crore as on March 31, 2022. READ MORE

(PNB): Benefitting from the dip in bond yields worldwide, the state-run bank raised Rs 2,000 crore in capital through tier I bonds at a fine rate of 8.75 per cent. Bond dealers said the paper from the public-sector lender was placed at a lower yield against an indicative rate of 9-9.25 per cent. READ MORE

HDFC Bank: Indias largest private lender reported a 21.5 per cent YoY growth in advances to Rs 13.95 trillion in Q1FY23.

Tata Motors: The company is eyeing a 5x growth in sales of electric vehicles (EVs) from the current levels by the end of 2023-24, the automakers chairman N Chandrasekaran told the shareholders at the AGM.

Metals: Copper prices fell to 17-month lows on Monday as new COVID restrictions in top consumer China, slowing global manufacturing activity and a jump in inventories sparked demand worries and a sell-off. Prices of the metal used in power and construction earlier fell to $7,918, the lowest since February 2021. READ MORE

Tata Steel: The steel major said that it completed the acquisition of 93.71 per cent in Neelachal Ispat Nigam Limited through its listed step-down subsidiary, Long Products.
Shares of Company gained 2 per cent to Rs 216 on the BSE in Tuesday's intra-day trade after the company signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tamil Nadu government for Rs 3,000-crore investment to set up mega solar manufacturing plant. The stock was trading higher for the third straight day, having surged 7 per cent during the period.

The MoU is for setting up a greenfield 4GW solar cell and 4GW solar module manufacturing plant in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. The investment in the plant will be made over a period of 16 months.

" Solar's new production facility is being set up with the support and assistance of Tamil Nadu Government, and will help to meet the rising demand for clean energy solutions in the country apart from providing huge employment opportunities," the company said.

The Tata Group Company is one of India's largest integrated power companies and together with its subsidiaries and jointly controlled entities, has an installed/managed capacity of 13,735 MW. The Company has a presence across the entire power value chain - generation of renewable as well as conventional power including hydro and thermal energy, transmission & distribution, coal & freight, logistics, and trading.

In the past three months, has underperformed the market by falling 21 per cent as compared to 11 per cent decline in the S&P BSE Sensex.

"Tata Power plans to enhance its cell and module manufacturing capacity by 4GW each by FY24 end for a Capex of Rs 3,400 crore. Its EPC order book, as on date, stands at Rs 1,280 crore and is gaining strong traction across solar pump, rooftop, and EV segment with strong order bookings. The deal with Blackrock will provide the required equity Capex for renewable expansions; however, its valuation stands below our expectation," analysts at HDFC Securities had said in their Q4 result update report dated May 9, 2022.
The private lender on Monday (4 July 2022) said it has received banking sector regulator Reserve bank of India (RBI)'s approval for the proposed amalgamation of HDFC into HDFC Bank.

"HDFC Bank has received a letter dated July 04, 2022 from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) whereby the RBI has accorded it's 'no objection' for the Scheme, subject to certain conditions as mentioned therein," the bank said in a regulatory filing. The scheme remains subject to various statutory and regulatory approvals, including from the Competition Commission of India (CCI), National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), other applicable authorities and the respective shareholders and creditors of the companies, it said.

On 2 July 2022, the proposed merger got approval from both stock exchanges BSE and NSE.

The board of Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) on 4th April 2022 approved a composite scheme of amalgamation of HDFC into HDFC Bank, and their respective shareholders and creditors. The subsidiaries and associates of HDFC will shift to HDFC Bank.

Shareholders of HDFC as on the record date will receive 42 shares of HDFC Bank (each of face value of Re 1), for 25 shares held in HDFC (each of face value of Rs 2), and the equity share(s) held by HDFC in HDFC Bank will be extinguished as per the Scheme.

As a result of this, upon the Scheme becoming effective, HDFC Bank will be 100% owned by public shareholders and existing shareholders of HDFC will own 41% of HDFC Bank.

As of 31 December 2021, HDFC Bank's total advances stood at Rs 12,68,863 crore and HDFC's total advances stood at Rs 5,25,806 crore.

Post merger, pro forma total advances of the combined entity is expected to be Rs 17,86,669 crore.

The proposed transaction will result in reducing HDFC Bank's proportion of exposure to unsecured loans. The merger is expected to result in bolstering the capital base and bringing in resiliency in the balance sheet of HDFC Bank.

Post the combination, HDFC Bank's customers will be offered mortgages as a core product in a seamless manner. HDFC Bank will also leverage the long tenor mortgage relationship to offer varied credit and deposit products enabled through better insights through-out the customer life-cycle. This will result in an enhanced value proposition and customer experience for all customers of the combined entity.

The boards of HDFC and HDFC Bank believe that the merger will create long-term value for all stakeholders, including customers, employees and shareholders of both entities. The amalgamation of the two entities will provide further impetus to the Government's vision of "Housing for All".

The merger is expected to close within 18 months (Q2 / Q3 FY24), subject to completion of regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

HDFC Bank is private sector lender. As of 31 March 2022, its distribution network was at 6,342 branches and 18,130 ATMs / Cash Deposit & Withdrawal Machines (CDMs) across 3,188 cities / towns as against 5,608 branches and 16,087 ATMs I CDMs across 2,902 cities/ towns as of 31 March 2021.

HDFC Bank's net profit rose 22.83% to Rs 10,055.18 crore on 8.07% increase in total income to Rs 41,085.78 crore in Q4 FY22 over Q4 FY21.

HDFC provides home loans for affordable housing and continues to have the largest number of home loan customers at over 270,000 who have availed benefits under the government's Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme.

HDFC's standalone net profit rose 16.37% to Rs 3700.32 crore on 5.13% increase in total income to Rs 12308.46 crore in Q4 March 2022 over Q4 March 2021.

Shares of HDFC Bank rose 0.13% to Rs 1355.40 while shares of HDFC rose 0.22% to Rs 2215.50 on Monday, 4 July 2022.

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Kirloskar Ferrous Industries rose 1.80% to Rs 192.55 after the company informed about the resumption of operations of mini blast furnace-II at Koppal plant.

In an exchange filing made after market hours yesterday, the company said that the upgradation of the mini blast furnace-II (MBF-II) of the company situated at Koppal plant, Karnataka, has been completed and the operations of MBF-II have resumed from 4 July 2022.

After upgrade of MBF-II, the manufacturing capacity of pig iron in respect of MBF-II has increased from 1,80,000 metric tonne per annum to 2, 17,600 metric tonne per annum and consequently, total manufacturing capacity of pig iron at company level has increased to 6,09,000 metric tonne per annum.

Kirloskar Ferrous Industries is a pig iron manufacturer in India and producer of grey iron castings.

The company reported 51.78% decline in net profit to Rs 65.26 crore on a 20.28% rise in sales to Rs 900.56 crore in Q4 FY22 over Q4 FY21.

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The Centre is playing with the future of six lakh students by repeatedly transferring senior officers of higher and technical education departments of government, Deputy Chief Minister said on Monday.

Sisodia said this in the Assembly while replying to the discussion over the frequent transfers of senior officers of the technical education department.

The issue was raised by AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj who said that nine principal secretaries and seven directors have been changed in the Department of Training and Technical Education at quick succession in the recent past.

Sisodia accused Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena of using the services department to stall works of the Arvind Kejriwal government.

The opposition BJP defended the newly appointed LG, saying he was working as administrator and guardian of Delhi and the AAP was accusing him of "abuse of power" out of "narrow minded" view.

The Centre is playing with the future of six lakh students of Delhi by repeatedly transferring senior officers after "unconstitutionally snatching away" the Services department from the Kejriwal government, Sisodia said in his reply over the discussion.

"The directors and secretaries of higher and technical education departments have been transferred within two-three months. Admissions are going on in Delhi government's universities at present but no one has been appointed to the post of director of Higher Education for 22 days after the transfer of the previous director," Sisodia said.

A furious Sisodia alleged that the BJP-led government at the Centre was "playing musical chair" with the elected government in Delhi and the directors and secretaries were being shuffled like a deck of cards.

"The present government at the Centre in 2015 shamefully snatched Services department. The shifting of officers like pack of cards has hit the higher and technical education most," he charged.

When Leader of Opposition Ramvir Singh Bidhuri said that one day AAP will also recognise that the present LG was remarkable, Sisodia replied, "We know he is a very good person but he is destroying it (education)."



Bhardwaj claimed that the junior engineers of the building department in MCD sat there for seven years, but the principal secretary of the higher education department was transferred every other day.

"In future, people will laugh that the had given transfer powers to the LG who used to transfer the directors of higher education department every two months," he said.

BJP's Bidhuri said the AAP should patiently wait as they appealed in the Supreme Court for control over the services department till the court came out with its verdict.

Sisodia said the power of Kejriwal to transfer of officers or take action against those found misusing power was taken away, with the Centre snatching away it and handing it over to the LG.

Kejriwal has worked tirelessly to improve the education system of the state and brought in new schemes that have built new universities, increased seats in existing universities, created new campuses of universities, developed new skill centres to employ the students, he said.

"By illegally snatching the services department from the Delhi government, the Centre has tried to obstruct its works in every way possible, he charged.

Sisodia, who also holds the education portfolio in the Delhi government, sought to know on what parameters the frequent transfers of higher education and technical department officers were being done although the AAP government was taking care of education in Delhi.

"Why are transfers taking place every two months? An official working in the Higher Education or Technical Education department might not be good in his area of responsibility. On what parameters, you're deciding who has a command over a certain field or domain?" he asked.

The Prime Minister often talks about 'Skill India' and the LG is also doing the same, but he has "no clue" as how to achieve the objective of the mission (National Skills Development Mission), Sisodia said.

"Certainly, we won't be able to up-skill our youth if you keep transferring the director of Technical Education every two months as if they are making them play musical chairs," he said.

The officials responsible for the management of skill-based learning at ITIs, Polytechnics, DTU, IGDTU, IIITU and NSUT have been transferred since 2018 after intervals of one to six months, he said.

"Eight secretaries of Skill and Technical Education Department have been replaced since then and the ninth secretary is also at your mercy and can be changed any day. You should be ashamed of that but instead, you're asking to thank the LG, he lashed at the Leader of Opposition.

Sisodia hoped that the authorities making decisions to transfer the officers of Delhi government in a haphazard manner would pay attention to the people who get affected due to their action.

(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 decided to fight the assembly elections later this year under collective leadership, a party leader said on Monday after a meeting of the party's task force for the polls.

"We will go with collective leadership in the elections and high command will decide the Chief Minister after the results. This is our procedure after every poll," incharge Raghu Sharma told ANI on Monday.

elections are likely to be held by the end of this year.

will also compare the tenure of two parties in the state under the theme '27 years of Congress' vs '27 years of BJP' besides highlighting local issues.

"Detailed discussion with the task force on issues and strategy took place today. Political issues related to Gujarat were discussed. They (BJP) claim themselves to be a double engine government but our focus is on 27 years of BJP rule in comparison with our governance of 27 years. We created the infrastructure for the poor, middle class and other sections and the Congress will fight for the rights of the tribal, youth and poor. In these years, no jobs were provided," Sharma said.

He said Aam Aadmi Party will not have an impact on the elections.

Delhi Chief Minister and national convener of AAP Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday asked his workers and party cadres in Gujarat to ensure that people do not "waste" their votes on the Congress in the upcoming Assembly polls.

"Punjab rejected AAP as they lost Bhagwant Mann's seat within months of coming to power. They have lost the confidence of the people of Punjab in four months so what can you expect them to give to the people of Gujarat," Sharma said.

In the bypolls to Sangrur Lok Sabha seat last month, AAP had lost to Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) leader Simranjit Singh Mann.

Gujarat Congress leaders gave a presentation to the political task force which comprised P Chidambaram, Mukul Wasnik, Jairam Ramesh, KC Venugopal, Ajay Maken, Priyanka Gandhi, Randeep Surjewala and Sunil Kanugolu.

Gujarat Congress chief Jagdish Thakor said they gave a presentation on how the party can "secure 125 plus seats in the upcoming polls and also discussed how can we gain those seats which we have lost by a narrow margin."

The meeting lasted for about four hours.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NDA presidential candidate reached on Tuesday morning to seek support for the July 18 election.

She landed at the Jay Prakash Narayan International Airport at 11.13 am in a special aircraft.

Murmu will visit the state BJP office, and also meet Chief Minister Nitish Kumar during the tour.

"Later, she would go to a hotel near Gandhi Maidan where she would meet senior leaders of all NDA constituents, including the MPs and MLAs, and appeal for their support in the election," a BJP leader said.

She is scheduled to fly out of in the afternoon to reach Agartala via Guwahati, he said.

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The (ED) has summoned the wife and son of leader for questioning in a being probed against him, officials said.

Khan, 73, is also a SP MLA from Rampur seat.

His son Abdullah Azam Khan, MLA from the Swar assembly seat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly, and wife Tazeen Fatma have been asked to depose separately before the ED's regional office in Lucknow this week.

The agency wants to record their statements under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in the case being probed against Azam Khan, they said.

has been grilled by the agency in the case when he was lodged in Sitapur jail. He is out on bail at present.

He was released from jail in May after 27 months following the Supreme Court granting him interim bail in an alleged forgery case.

The agency has initiated probe against Khan in 2019 after taking cognisance of at least 26 FIRs filed by the state police against him including allegations that a university run by him in Rampur district of Uttar Pradesh has been raised over a land that has been grabbed from a 'enemy property'.

Khan is the chairman of the Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar Trust which runs the three branches of the Rampur Public School.

He has earlier served as the urban development minister in the SP government headed by chief minister Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
president has said that he was "hurt" to see some members ditching the party despite getting benefits and will visit Hingoli in Marathwada soon, party leaders said on Tuesday, a day after local Sena MLA, Santosh Bangar, crossed over to the Eknath Shinde faction just ahead of the floor test.

Interestingly, Bangar, the MLA from Kalamnuri in the Hingoli district, was recently seen weeping asking rebels to return to the Sena fold in videos during the earlier days of the revolt.

After Bangar joined the Shinde camp and voted in favour of the trust vote in the Assembly on Monday, a meeting of district leaders was held at the government guest house in Hingoli on Tuesday where spoke to party workers over the phone and told them that he would visit Hingoli soon, leader Ramesh Shinde told PTI.

Thackeray told Sena workers that it was painful to see that those (MLAs and ministers) who won due to Sena workers and got everything (positions in the party) have left him.

"But those who didn't get anything are with me. I shall fight and reinvigorate Sena. I will come to (Hingoli) soon to meet you," Thackeray told the party workers in the meeting, a video of which has gone viral.

Shinde said Sena workers were shocked to see Bangar joining the Shinde group at the last moment.

"Shiv Sena is intact. The Sena workers who were informed about the meeting attended it," he said.

One video had shown Bangar sobbing and saying that the environment in the state had turned bad and all dissidents with Shinde must return to the party fold as would surely forgive them.

He had also hailed the Sena as followers of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and Bal Thackeray and said it was the duty of everyone to keep the saffron flag of Hindutva flying high without any taint.

Shinde on Monday won the crucial floor test in the state Assembly on the last day of the two-day special session of the House. In the 288-member House, 164 MLAs voted for the motion of confidence, while 99 voted against it.

With Bangar's crossover, the tally of Sena legislators in the Shinde camp went up to 40.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has said Prime Minister and Union Home Minister have assured him full support for the development and growth of the state.

Addressing hundreds of Shiv Sainiks on Monday night during his first visit to hometown Thane after taking over as the CM, Shinde said the risk that he took (referring to political developments over the last fortnight) has been appreciated by people, despite criticism from certain quarters.

"I am going to undertake a tour of the entire state and allot projects in every constituency. There will be a total transformation of the state. I do not exaggerate much, I do work and then speak," he said.

He said Prime Minister Modi has told him to work for the development and growth of the state.

"He (the PM) told me that he and the central government would support me. Even Union Home Minister has expressed his full support. They said I am good work for Hindutva," Shinde said.

Referring to the political developments of the last fortnight when he along with some Sena MLAs left for Surat, later stayed in Guwahati and then in Goa before returning to Mumbai, Shinde said 50 legislators had faith and confidence in him.

"We had stood up against injustice and not revolted. (Shiv Sena founder) Balasaheb Thackeray had asked us to rise against injustice, this was his teaching and also of (Shinde's mentor) Anand Dighe," he said, adding that it was due to the blessings of the two leaders and good wishes of citizens that he became the CM.

"We were out for 15 days, and as much as you wanted to meet me, I was also eager to meet my Shiv Sainiks and activists. Even now I don't feel like I am the CM. I am one among you. Henceforth also, I will be a 'karyakarta' among you all," he said.

Shinde said no matter how big his stature may grow, the Shiv Sainik in him will always remain.

The CM also said he has given a commitment to the 50 MLAs who supported him that none of them will face defeat in the next elections.

"If I give a commitment once, I never listen to even myself till it is fulfilled," he said.

Referring to some strong critical remarks made by Sena leaders after he had left Mumbai with some MLAs, Shinde said "Kamakhyadevi (the deity of a famous temple in Guwahati) gave her blessings to us."



"Truth always wins. We will make the best use of the golden opportunity we have got now to lead the state," he said.

"We have to make our mission successful and honour Hindutva, which also means respect every religion," he said.

Shinde said every caste, creed and region will get due respect and everyone, including farmers and the poor people, will get justice in his government.

On his speech in the Assembly after the floor test, he said, "Everything was spontaneous, whatever I spoke was an expression of my feelings. I could not believe that I could deliver such a speech."



"I have contributed to the Shiv Sena all my life at the cost of my family," Shinde said while lauding his supporters who gathered in a large number during his address braving the heavy rain.

The CM also visited the BJP office here and was greeted by BJP city president and MLC Niranjan Davkhare.

(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.)
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders on Monday night were seen leaving the residence of party leader and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister after attending the party core committee meeting.

Union Minister Piyush Goyal and CT Ravi were also present during the meeting.

Maharashtra leader Girish Mahajan said, "The meeting was regarding the Presidential poll as NDA's presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu will come here on July 14... No talks happened on cabinet expansion."

Earlier on Thursday, Shinde took oath as the new Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Along with him, also took an oath as deputy chief minister of the state. Both the leaders were administered the oath of service by Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari. However, no other cabinet member took oath on that day.

Meanwhile, Shinde on Thursday won the crucial floor test in the state Assembly on the last day of the two-day special session of the House. In the 288-member House, 164 MLAs voted for the motion of confidence, while 99 voted against it. Three legislators abstained from voting, while 21 legislators, including Congress's Ashok Chavan and Vijay Wadettiwar, were absent.

National Democratic Alliance's (NDA) presidential candidate Droupadi and joint opposition nominee Yashwant Sinha are the only two contesting candidates for election to the Office of the President after the last date for the withdrawal of candidature ended on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday lauded the candidature of the NDA presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu and called it historic on the second day of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) national executive meeting in Hyderabad.

(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.)
Targeting the government in over the brutal killing of tailor Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur, former chief minister Vasundhara Raje on Monday asked if Yogi Adityanath can establish peace in Uttar Pradesh, why can not do so.

She said a sense of fear and insecurity has arisen in the state which should be eliminated.

Raje demanded the death penalty for the accused in the case and also advocated for modern training to the police force.

She said it was completely a failure of the intelligence system.

After meeting the family members of Kanhaiya Lal at their residence, Raje held a press conference separately.

"The police failed to provide security to Kanhaiya Lal despite his complaints. He would not have been killed if he had got protection from the police. The government of is completely responsible for the murder of Kanhaiya Lal," she said.

She added that the government has no right to remain in power.

"When Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath can establish peace in Uttar Pradesh by eliminating any atmosphere of terror, why can not do it here," Raje asked.

She was accompanied by former state president of Ashok Parnami and other leaders.

(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 Eknath Shinde group Chief Whip Bharat Gogawale has served disqualification notices to all the MLAs who defied his whip for the floor test of the new government on Monday.

However, Gogawale also said that the notice has not been issued to Worli MLA and ex-Minister -- the son of former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray -- as a sign of arespect for Balasaheb Thackeray'.

Earlier, prior to the Speaker's election and the House trust vote, Chief Minister Shinde and his group had cautioned the MLAs that they could face action for defying Gogawale's whip -- as both sides are attempting to exercise their authority over the 56-year-old party.

Shinde made it clear that he was the Legislative Party leader and Gogawale was the party's Chief Whip, and those who violated their Whip would face action.

On Sunday and Monday, the Shiv Sena Chief Whip Sunil Prabhu and Shinde Group's Gogawale had issued separate Whips to both sides to vote as per their directives or face disqualification.

However, the Shinde Group faction had defied Prabhu's whip and the government cleared both the major tests -- July 3 Speaker election and July 4 vote of confidence -- smoothly on the expected lines.

The next round is likely to unfold after the Supreme Court hearing in the matter scheduled on July 11.

--IANS

qn/dpb

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
MP Sanjay Raut on Tuesday said the Uddhav Thackeray-led party will win more than 100 seats if mid-term polls are held now in Maharashtra and claimed that people are angry against the rebel MLAs.

Attacking the BJP and Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Raut said the Sena cannot be hijacked by using money power or mounting pressure through Central agencies.

will win over 100 seats if mid-term polls are held in the state today, looking at the anger against the rebels and enthusiasm in favour of the party. If an MLA quits the party it does not mean that has lost its voters, Raut told reporters.

On Monday, after winning the trust vote in the Assembly, Chief minister Eknath Shinde said the BJP and the Shiv Sena led by him will together win more than 200 seats in the next Assembly polls and if that does not happen, he will go back to farming.

Sena chief had also dared the BJP to hold mid-term polls in Maharashtra.

Taking a dig at the newly elected Assembly Speaker Rahul Narvekar, Raut said the Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena is the original party and if a decision on the disqualification of party MLAs is taken, then he should return his law degree.

Narvekar is a lawyer by profession.

On Monday, the Shinde camp had issued a whip asking all Sena MLAs to vote in the favour of the government.

After winning the trust vote, the Shinde faction on Monday night issued a notice to 14 legislators from the camp for violating the whip issued by Shiv Sena chief whip and Shinde loyalist Bharat Gogawale.

The notice, however, excluded the name of Aaditya Thackeray, son of Uddhav Thackeray, out of respect for Sena founder Bal Thackeray.

This is a legal process. The rest of the 14 are also Balasaheb's Shivsainiks and followers, Raut said.

Slamming the rebels- 40 so far who have joined the Shinde camp- Raut said those who wanted to leave the party only wanted a pretext.

Referring to Shinde's speech in the Assembly wherein he had underlined the "unfair treatment" meted out to him in the Sena, Raut said instead of spelling out his tasks for the state, the CM gave justification on why he left the party.

Raut said those who rebelled against Shiv Sena in the past like Narayan Rane and even Chhagan Bhujbal had spoken the same language as used by Shinde when they walked out of the party fold.

Whenever a leader quits the party, betrays a party, he uses the same kind of justification. He has to strike an emotional chord with the people to justify that he is right, Raut 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.)
Polling for the first phase of elections to 133 urban bodies in 49 districts will be held on Wednesda. A total of 101 candidates are contesting the mayor's post in 11 municipal corporations.

At least 11,250 candidates are contesting for 2,808 posts of corporators and as many as 13,148 booths have been set up for these elections. These include 16 municipal corporations (tier 1, or the largest body in the three-tier system), 99 nagar palika parishads (tier 2 bodies) or municipalities and 298 nagar parishads (tier 3 bodies).

A total of 10.4 million voters are expected to exercise their franchise in the first phase of polling between 7 am and 5 pm, according to media reports.

At least 3,296 booths have been declared as sensitive, State Election Commission Commissioner Basant Pratap Singh told PTI on Monday.

Votes will be cast for municipal corporations including Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Khandwa, Burhanpur, Chhindwara, Ujjain, Sagar, Singrauli and Satna.

EVMs will be used in the polling at all the places. White and pink colours will be displayed in the EVMs for the post of mayor and the corporator, while Yellow and blue colours will be displayed for the post of the corporator in municipalities and Nagar Parishads.

The SEC commissioner said that about 79,000 employees are engaged in the electoral work while 27,000 personnel are deployed for security duty.

The second phase of polling will be held on July 13. Counting of the votes will be done on July 17 from 9 am.

On July 2, Arvind Kejriwal, AAP's convenor, visited Singrauli to hold a road show to campaign for Rani Agarwal, the partys mayoral candidate. MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan reached the town next day to hold a counter roadshow.
Pointing to the hectic political activities of the last fortnight, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Monday said he will need some time before he and deputy chief minister of BJP discuss the allocation of cabinet portfolios.

Earlier in the day, the Eknath Shinde-led government won the trust vote in the Assembly.

With 164 MLAs voting for the motion of confidence and 99 against it, the Shinde government appears firm in the saddle with the support of the BJP and others.

Let us breathe properly. It was quite hectic for us. I and will sit and discuss cabinet portfolios and their allocation. We will also get the allocation vetted from national leaders of the BJP, Shinde told reporters after winning the trust vote.

We have gone through a lot in the last few days. Give us some time to meet our families. We will decide it (distribution of ministries), he added.

When asked whether Shiv Sena MPs are supporting the Shinde camp, he said, Whether they will vote for the NDA candidate in the Presidential polls or not, it cannot be said now. I will talk about it in the next two days.

(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 per GSM Arena, iQOO confirmed that the iQOO 9T will be powered by the 8+ Gen 1 chip, which nudges performance up by 10 per cent and significantly increases power efficiency by 30 per cent.

has confirmed that an 9T will launch in India by the end of the month. Also, the 10 Pro appeared on TENAA, showcasing a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. The smartphone is rumoured to be one of the first to feature a Dimensity 9000+ chipset. However, it is noticed that the 10 series might not be the only one to feature Qualcomm's new flagship chipset.

As per GSM Arena, iQOO confirmed that the iQOO 9T will be powered by the 8+ Gen 1 chip, which nudges performance up by 10 per cent and significantly increases power efficiency by 30 per cent.

The 9T is set to offer maximum performance and a premium gaming experience, similar to its siblings, the company says. For comparison, the iQOO 9 launched in India had a Snapdragon 888+ (and not an 8 Gen 1 like the Chinese model). This will make the iQOO 9T more of an upgrade from the 9 Pro that the 8 Gen 1 had.

It's too early to talk about pricing, but let's keep these numbers in mind: the iQOO 9 is currently priced at 43,000 pounds, while the 9 Pro comes for 65,000 pounds, as per GSM Arena.

The upcoming iQOO 10 series is expected to launch in China this month, but it's unclear how long it will take to arrive in India.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The vivo Y77 5G is slightly thicker and heavier than the 7th Gen at 8.25mm and 194g.8mm and 175g.

While vivo's X series gets the most attention, the affordable Y series from brings 5G connectivity to the masses. Late last year, the company launched the Y76s and Y76 5G, now it is preparing to launch a new Y77 5G.

As per GSM Arena, the new phone is powered by the Dimensity 810 chipset just like on Y76s. The base configuration comes with 8GB of RAM (plus 4GB virtual) and 256GB storage (expandable via microSD). The phone runs FuntouchOS 12 based on Android 12 out of the box (up from v11).

The Y77 5G is slightly thicker and heavier than the 7th Gen at 8.25mm and 194g.8mm and 175g. This is due to the larger battery, 5,000 mAh (instead of 4,100 mAh). However, the 44W fast charge will apparently be phased out, getting replaced by a basic 18W system.

The camera setup is a hybrid of the Y76 and Y76. This includes a 50 megapixels main camera (f/1.8), joined only by a 2 megapixels macro camera. On the front is a 16 megapixels selfie camera that supports Face Unlock. Alternatively, users can use the fingerprint reader on the side.

The screen is the same, a 6.58-inch LCD with a resolution of 1080 x 2408px (20:9) and a standard refresh rate of 60Hz.

The vivo Y77 5G will launch on July 7 (Thursday). The price hasn't been officially confirmed yet but is rumoured to be CNY 1,300 in China (USD 195/ Rs 15,000). There are two colourways to choose from: Glowing Galaxy and Starlight Black, reports GSM Arena.

The phone is also expected to arrive in Malaysia, where it will be available through Lazada, Shopee and other retailers.

(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.)
Usually gap years are associated with students who want to take a break from their academic trajectories to explore the world but the concept is becoming increasingly popular among working professionals too. Infact as far back as in 2005, a survey by Harvard Business Review found that 37 per cent of highly qualified women and 24 per cent of men, left their career at some point with an intention to return.

Alok Bansal, MD of Visionet Systems India and Global Head of BFSI Business says, "A career gap year or the 'adult gap year' is being normalized in the employment sector, especially post the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people are weighing their options, reconfiguring their priorities as well as lives and it is perfectly fine to do so. However, it would be important to remember that many potential employers still consider these gaps as a red flag. This is why it is important to have a long-term plan when you step away from the corporate ladder."

He mentions a recent survey conducted by TechGig that stated how 78 per cent of employees in the IT field find it hard to get their desired jobs, due to gaps in resumes. Says Bansal, "These gaps can be intentional or due to job loss but the point is to make the most of them to upskill yourself, look for better opportunities and not let this time make you lose your confidence, or make you stagnant. With a little effort, you can make this time productive and use it to scale up in your career."

Here are a few of his suggestions:

Learn a new skill

Upskilling is very important for career growth and a gap year can be a perfect time to do a few online or offline courses, attend to parts of your resumes that seem weak, gain some freelancing experience, ideate and start a project on your own steam and focus on hobbies that nourish your spirit and improve your mental or physical health. At the end of the year, when you account for the gap year with additional skills, testimonials and success stories, you will surely impress the recruiters. Upskilling will not only increase your confidence but also help you in exploring new roles in organisations and avenues you had not explored before.

Travel and forge new connections

Staying in one place for a long time can make you feel stuck and stagnant. Use the gap year to backpack across new cities and spark your joy for living once again. It is easy to travel economically these days by couch surfing and even on a small budget if you have the will. Travelling lets you explore new aspects of yourself and connects you to new people, and potential business opportunities. Travel also enhances your Emotional Intelligence (EQ), which incidentally is considered to be one of the top skills recruiters look for as per a World Economic Forum's 'Future of Jobs' report. Traveling solo will not just give you a chance to explore a new culture, learn a new language but also teach you resilience, resourcefulness and even crisis management. It goes without saying that these skills will come handy when you are working in an organisation sometime in the future.

Pursue a passion

Remember that dream you buried under a heap of responsibilities? During a gap year, you can salvage it, dust it and explore it and who knows, you may be on your way to becoming a polymath! Be it painting, photography, singing, or dancing, fearlessly chase your dreams to rejuvenate your dormant creativity. These days, multiple careers are possible if the person in question has the passion and the commitment to expand his or her knowledge in multiple directions. A gap year also gives you a clearer perspective of the goals you really want to achieve in life. This is also a good time for inspection and course correction.

Volunteer and do some good

In hectic corporate careers, it is easy to lose touch with grassroot realities but as research has proven, when we do good, we feel good. Working for social good and larger issues also enriches your resume and give you an edge over others. So during a gap year, look for opportunities to volunteer in old age homes, orphanages, and animal shelters or lend your time to any cause of your choice. Offer your technical skills to rebuild a website, design brochures and help spread the word about an NGO. These experiences will enhance your soft skills and make you discover the priceless joy of giving back to society.

Plan your professional sabbatical with an eye on the future and you will never look back in regret.

This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article.

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], July 5 (ANI/NewsVoir): Arvind J Sabhaney, Co-founder ESPOUSAL, announced today that the World's first ever 3D Wedding Expo will be conducting its 3rd version and are going International this time.

ESPOUSAL is a unique and one-of-a-kind event that was first ideated to be an on-ground event but as the pandemic hit us, things changed and so did the entire concept behind ESPOUSAL.

ESPOUSAL is an event IP owned by Bangalore, India based Event Company - Zeroin Management Pvt. Ltd. It was conceived in the year 2019 and the very first version took place in September 2020 for the India Audience. The platform was curated in a way that people had never seen before, it included everything that one would get and experience in an on-ground expo and much more. The First version of ESPOUSAL was a success and ended with a bang. The second version was bigger and held for the South Africa Audience in March 2021.

Speaking on the occasion, said Shivangi Chhabra, Core Team Member, "The last 2 versions were such a huge success that people from across the globe started talking about it, so we decided that this one should be truly a global experience for the attendees."

Said Vivek More, General Manager from ESPOUSAL, "After having built a huge list of contacts and prospects from the last 2 versions, we want the entire world to come together on a single platform and meet like-minded people from the wedding fraternity. We believe it will be an opportunity of a lifetime and an event like never before, be it Exhibitors, Attendees or Planners. A true combination of B2B & B2C."

Adding to the above said Sabhaney, "We believe that the time has come for large business to be done on the ESPOUSAL platform, and we are working at ensuring that the Exhibitor gets an opportunity to showcase and sell their services to the global audience that is going to be present."

Says Ananya Jha, Core Team Member, "That this is an opportunity of a lifetime to witness and be a part of the greatest wedding metaverse in the making."

Says Rohan Thamanna, Platform Technicals, that "We are the pioneers in this space and did our first version right at the beginning of the pandemic."

Sumanyu Soniwal, Founder & CEO Wiztales, who have partnered with ESPOUSAL to setup the virtual platform says, "We have been looking at the growth of ESPOUSAL over the last two years, and are certain that, we would take the product to another level in the coming version."

ESPOUSAL is one of the very few event properties that has been patented.

For details on Sponsorship/Exhibiting/Attending, get in touch with (https://international.espousal.in).

ESPOUSAL International 2022 is happening online on 8th, 9th & 10th of July 2022! Feel free to register and be a part of this event - (https://live.international.espousal.in/#/virtual/auth/login).

This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], July 5 (ANI/PNN): GKP printing is trading at an all-time high in a volatile market on expansion news. Stocks touched fresh levels of 199 in today's session, delivering returns of 31 per cent in one month. The stock is in the news as the company's board is meeting on July 6 to consider an application for a direct listing on the main NSE platform. The company has also recently informed exchanges about acquiring land of 43234 sq ft situated in Vapi to shift existing manufacturing facilities and expand the business.

The company has received permission to construct on land measuring 43,234 sq. ft. situated in Vapi for the New Expansion of Business from the Town Planning Authority dated June 22nd, 2022.

Ravi Singhal of GCL Securities believes the stock is on a higher high trajectory with unlimited upside potential. Since volume-based buying has been observed on the counter, stocks have the potential to reach 250 levels. One can look to buy the stock for a target price of $250 with a stop loss of $180.

Talking about the company's financial performance, the company's annual revenue growth of 81.88 per cent outperformed its 3-year CAGR of 28.75 per cent.

G. K. P. Printing & Packaging Limited was originally incorporated as a public limited company in Maharashtra on April 3rd, 2018. The company is an ISO 9001:2015 certified company engaged in the manufacturing of corrugated boxes. It deals in various types of corrugated boxes such as master cartons, mono cartons, Honeycomb partition boxes, die-cut self-locking boxes, storage bins, adjustable depth book flaps, ring flap boxes, and unit cartons.

This story is provided by PNN. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PNN)

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New Delhi [India], July 5 (ANI/SRV): Purva Couture, a fashion label bringing a new-age touch to traditional attire, presented its collection at the recently concluded Ahmedabad Times Fashion Week.

An amalgamation of beauty, grandeur, art and creativity, the Ahmedabad Fashion Week was organized to showcase and celebrate Gujarat's craftsmanship.

The theme for the brand's apparel was pastel nude. Being true to the essence of the brand, Purva Couture presented the viewers with an aesthetic collection of modern and traditional wear. Taking it up a notch, the brand also added a line of bridal collections matching the theme.

With intricately woven designs, Purva Couture's collection boosted the skilled artistry of Gujarat artisans. The clothes were completely hand-made with every thread and sequins put in place manually.

"I am delighted to have been able to participate in a show as prestigious as Ahmedabad Fashion Week. Our team of designers has worked very hard to present the collection. It took days of planning and replanning to come up with the perfect line-up. I am extremely proud of what we have been able to present at the fashion week", said Purva Patel, Founder of Purva Couture.

Launched in 2013, under the able leadership of designer Purva Patel, Purva Couture was born with ethnicity at its core. However, it wanted to give its products a sense of uniqueness, which is why the vision and mission of the brand are to give its audience and consumers a modern spin on ethnic Indian clothing.

The brand offers an exquisite and limited range of lehengas, blouses, gowns and tops. Each product is designed in a way that it resonates with the subtlety of modern art along with oozing ethnic boldness.

The brand also offers its customers a range of bridal collections. Interested buyers can also book an online or in-store appointment with the brand to scout through the options and choose the attire to complete a bride's special day.

To know more visit:(https://sadhuram.in)

This story is provided by SRV. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/SRV)

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bombardier has announced the opening of its newly transformed Singapore Service Centre, the largest OEM business aviation maintenance facility in Asia Pacific.

The newly expanded facility features substantially enhanced service capabilities for its growing fleet of Learjet, Challenger and Global aircraft operators. The facility will also accommodate Bombardiers newly launched Global 8000 business jet when it enters into service in 2025.

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Located at the growing Seletar Aerospace Park, the Singapore Service Centre, which opened in 2014, has more than quadrupled its current footprint from 70,000 sq. ft. (6,500 m2) to approximately 290,000 sq. ft. (27,000 m2).

The massive expansion introduces exceptional new customer facilities for business jet operators, including a full-service, environmentally-controlled paint facility, advanced interior finishing capabilities, with key support functions, such as engineering, sales and customer support and an expanded portfolio of component, repair and overhaul (CR&O) services. This also includes the option for Global aircraft customers to lease BR710 engines from Rolls Royce stored on site, significantly reducing downtime and costs.

The expansion also adds new heavy structural and composite repair capabilities as well as an integrated parts depot that will serve the site and the region, adding more than US$15 million in additional parts inventory. The expanded Singapore Service Centre is expected to support more than 2,000 business jet visits annually.

With this major expansion, the Singapore Service Centre will provide infinite benefits, including quicker aircraft turnarounds, greater convenience and peace of mind to Bombardiers growing customer base in Asia, said Jean-Christophe Gallagher, executive vice president, Services and Support, and Corporate Strategy, Bombardier. Customers can also enjoy access to the complete range of OEM customer service and support at their doorstep. This is truly a special day for Bombardier and our growing aftermarket network.

Bombardier has installed solar panels on the facilitys roofs as well as its carpark structures to reduce energy consumption, which translates to 15% of the sites annual electricity demand.

Other important green initiatives include the use of building management systems, insulation, LED lighting, low flow plumbing fixtures and automated water reticulation for improved water conservation and enhanced energy efficiency. The building design also achieved Singapores Green Mark Gold and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) Silver LEED Green Building certifications. And while the reduction in energy, water and material resource usage reduces environmental impact, it also enhances indoor environmental quality for better health and well-being of customers and employees while delivering highly efficient, responsible operations.

Bombardier has also received its first batch of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) from its partner, Shell Aviation, offering business aviation operators an environmentally-friendly fuel option at Seletar Airport  building on Bombardiers commitment reduce the environmental footprint of business aviation worldwide.

This expansion also highlights the addition of Jetexs FBO and ground handling system at the facility.
The Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Leo Varadkar visited Ballycoolin in north Dublin last week to launch the 11 new remote working hubs that have been introduced as part of Bank of Irelands new hybrid working model.

Three additional hubs are being developed by the Bank in Cork, Galway and Limerick and will open later this year. These will complement the 11 existing hubs in Balbriggan, Ballycoolin, Dundalk, Gorey, Mullingar, Naas, Newbridge, Newlands Cross, Northern Cross, Santry and Swords.

Depending on their role, most Bank of Ireland colleagues can now work from a combination of home and central office locations, as well as the network of 14 remote working hubs. The hubs provide an alternative to central office locations, enhancing choice and work-life balance by reducing commuting time and costs.

During his visit to Ballycoolin, the Tanaiste was briefed on the rollout of the Banks hybrid working model by Group Chief Executive Francesca McDonagh and Chief People Officer Matt Elliott. He also spoke by video conference with staff in the other 10 hubs to hear first-hand about their experience of hybrid working.

Speaking last week, the Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Leo Varadkar said, "Many employers went to great lengths during the pandemic to give their employees as much flexibility around where they work as possible. Done well, remote and hybrid working is a win-win for companies and their employees and Im delighted to see Bank of Ireland at the forefront of rethinking the traditional office model in this way."

Bank of Ireland Group Chief Executive, Francesca McDonagh added, "We have been changing what it is like to work at Bank of Ireland and these new hubs are one of the more visible signs of that transformation. Our new hybrid working model is a real break with the old way of doing things in terms of how and where we work. The opening of three new hubs in major regional centres means more opportunities to attract talent from locations around Ireland."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Wang Jianan beat the odds to win Chinas first gold in the event at the 2022 World Athletics Championships. The 25-year-old jumpers 8.36-meter leap in his last attempt propelled him to the top of the podium. In 2015, Wang received a bronze medal at IAAF World Championships in Beijing, making him the first athlete from Asia to reach the events podium at the world championships

Jul 18, 2022 05:41 PM
War in Ukraine Getty

Defense minister says preserving lives of servicemen, excluding threats for civilians are priorities of Russia's 'special military operation' in Ukraine

MOSCOW (AA) - The Russian military operation in Ukraine will continue until the tasks set by President Vladimir Putin are fully completed, Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu said on Tuesday.

The priorities are the preservation of the lives and health of the Russian military and the exclusion of threats to civilians, Shoygu said at a meeting with military chiefs in Moscow.

"The Russian military is not going to stop after the complete liberation of the territory of the Luhansk People's Republic. The special military operation will continue until the tasks set by the supreme commander are fully completed," he said.

The West continues arms deliveries to Ukraine, which, according to Shoygu's assessment, is made "in order to protract the conflict."

The minister also noted that over 28 tons of military shipments have been delivered to the country since the war erupted on Feb. 24, while part of them went to the black market and was resold to the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the number of foreign mercenaries in Ukraine has been decreasing, some of them lost their lives in battles, and others left the country, Shoygu said.

"Only in the last 10 days 170 mercenaries were killed, 99 refused to participate in hostilities and left the Ukrainian territory," he noted.

The Russian military, apart from conducting military operations, takes part in humanitarian activities, providing support to the civilians "of the liberated cities," and ensuring peaceful life in the territories controlled by Russian troops, he said.

Besides, they sustain the safety of navigation in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, he added.

"We have created two humanitarian corridors for the movement of civilian ships in the Black (Sea) and the Sea of Azov. The mine danger in the water area of the port of Mariupol (in Ukraine) has been completely eliminated," Shoygu said.

Also, large-scale activities are being carried out in Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk regions to clear the mines. So far, over 3,700 hectares of land have been checked for mines, while more than 46,300 explosive devices found and defused, he said.

Nearly 4,900 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the war with Russia started on Feb. 24.

Over 15 million people have been forced to flee their homes, including more than 8.4 million that have fled to other countries, according to UN figures.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg AA Images

Both countries formally confirmed their willingness and ability to meet the political, legal and military obligations and commitments of NATO membership, says alliance

BRUSSELS (AA) - Finland and Sweden completed accession talks at NATO Headquarters in Brussels on Monday.

NATO said in a statement that the talks were conducted between NATO officials and representatives from the two countries, adding the Finnish delegation was led by Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto and Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen while the Swedish delegation was led by Foreign Minister Ann Linde.

Both countries formally confirmed their willingness and ability to meet the political, legal and military obligations and commitments of NATO membership, the statement added.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry said the talks went well.

In line with the decision taken at NATO's Madrid summit, representatives of the 30 NATO member countries will sign the accession protocols of Sweden and Finland on Tuesday to complete the official procedures.

- Participation protocols to be signed by all members

In the next step, the invited countries will each send a letter of intent to NATOs secretary general in which they declare that they accept the terms and obligations of NATO membership and include a reform plan if agreed in the negotiations.

Following this, NATO will then prepare accession protocols to the Washington Treaty for each invitee. These protocols are signed by NATO countries.

The protocols must then be ratified by NATO member states in accordance with their national laws and procedures. All member states, after completing their ratification processes, issue a notification to the US  which hosts the treaty  that they have accepted the protocols that envisage the accession of each new member state.

When all these stages are completed, the NATO secretary-general invites the new members to join the alliance.

Finally, each new member completes their own national legal process and submits their respective accession document to the US and becomes a NATO member.

*Writing by Seda Sevencan
News at 4Cs

Cape Cod Community College Launches 90+ HyFlex Classes for Fall Semester

Cape Cod Community College has been a leader in Massachusetts and beyond transforming teaching and learning with flexible classes through the COVID-19 pandemic. This Fall, the College is taking the next step in evolving how students can access college courses with the mass expansion of HyFlex options.

HyFlex, or Hybrid Flexible, courses leverage unique, in-class technology that allows students to choose on a day-to-day basis whether they will attend a particular class on campus or virtually. The College piloted a variety of HyFlex courses last year, but thanks to new technology and adoption by many faculty members, the number of HyFlex classes has grown to more than 90 being offered in Fall 2022.

Listening to our students, and looking at the changing landscape of higher education, its clear that the different options we offer for college classes need to continue to grow and transform, said John Cox, President of Cape Cod Community College. Our expansion of HyFlex, and the energy our faculty bring to these courses, helps our students with balancing lifes demands alongside their education. HyFlex classes give our students the power to choose what works for them and, thanks to the technology, they get a similar educational experience either way.

At Cape Cod Community College, faculty use the award-winning DTEN D7 technology to stream their in-person classes live to those attending via Zoom. The all-in-one, plug-and-play video conferencing software combines with Zoom and smart board features to give students attending in-person or online the exact same experience, in real-time. For the Fall semester, HyFlex classes are being offered across multiple subjects ranging from English, History, and Math to Communication, Accounting, Criminal Justice, Funeral Service, and more.

The HyFlex program has been beneficial because I had two small children still at home, and I didnt have to worry about getting them on-or-off the bus or about missing school if they were home sick, said Julie Sudol 22, a recent graduate from the Colleges Funeral Service program. It afforded me the ability to excel in my classes, whether they were at home or in the classroom.

At the conclusion of the pilot program during the 2021-22 academic year, more than 90% of students taking HyFlex classes reported that they were interested in taking more courses in the format. That interest, in tandem with the investment in more DTEN technology and more faculty members educated to use this technology in their courses, led to the expansion for 2022-23.

Almost a quarter of our classes available this Fall are in a HyFlex format, so we are quite literally changing the way we meet our students where they are, said Dr. Kathleen Vranos, Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs at Cape Cod Community College. Looking at the data, HyFlex course completion rates have been comparable to face-to-face classes, so we knew it was time to scale up. More than 50 faculty members enrolled in a June Institute to adopt their courses for HyFlex delivery, and theres certainly more to come. This really is a game-changer for our College and our students.

Fall courses at Cape Cod Community College start September 6, 2022 and are open for enrollment now. A full list of Online and HyFlex courses, as well as an inquiry form to get more information from the 4Cs Admissions team, is available here at capecod.edu/online. For questions about how to sign up, email Admissions@capecod.edu or call 774-330-4311.
Toyota is reinventing the flagship Crown model into a family of vehicles that will meet the needs of a diversified global market. It will be...
This past week, B.C.s premier John Horgan announced he will retire. He plans to stay on until the new leader (of the NDP) is chosen in the fall.

So, do we still have someone leading the province? The good news is, we still have a premier.

While his announcement was not surprising, Horgan is going to be missed. He is a force to be reckoned with. I have nothing but respect for him.

The premier was able to be relatable, yet knowledgeable, and brought together our province on issues that required an incredible amount of unity.

But what now? This is where it gets a bit confusing.

Premier Horgan will remain in power until a new leader is chosen. He has initiated that process, and the B.C. NDP will hold a leadership race this fall. No one has declared their candidacy yet, but having just been through a leadership race myself, I can tell you, leadership campaigns can be very acrimonious.

And this race is high stakes, as whoever wins will (automatically) become the next premier of B.C.

The other aspect of a leadership race in the governing party, is any participant will be asked to step down from his or her ministerial post. That means, if rumoured candidacies are accurate, we could have three or four ministers who would have to step down and others put in their place. That could cause more disruption in the continuity of government and policy.

I have heard from many this week who are concerned about the change in leadership and what could happen during the race. There are many issues in our province right now and we really need a steady hand, with a fully-functioning government, rather than a focus on B.C. NDP politics.

Healthcare is top of mind, with no reprieve in sight. As I spoke with people who stopped by my booth at the recent Canada Day festivities in Kelowna, many are struggling to find a doctor, and it is getting worse.

We have seen the headlines about cancer care operating below full staffing levels, hospitals short-staffed, operating rooms not fully operational or efficient, nursing shortages and x-ray clinics closing. All of this results in longer waits for care, and less healthcare for British Columbians.

What will happen if the (current) health minister is one of the candidates to run (for party leader) and to be the next premier?

The cost of housing also continues to be difficult for many in the Okanagan. Rental rates are high, vacancy rates are low and the cost to purchase a home in the valley is the highest it has been in history.

What the government is doing isnt working and we need a different plan and a different strategy. What if the housing minister wants to run? Another ministry with an interim leader and no real leadership.

I have only mentioned two ministries. What if there are three or four that find themselves with ministers stepping down?

There are so many pressures facing British Columbians today and we dont have a margin for error.

Our premier has announced his departure, so change is imminent and that is why the role of the Opposition is so important. Having a fall session, where all MLAs are in Victoria debating the issues, is vital to the work of governing. The best-case scenario is to have a fall session, regardless of the NDP leadership race.

That way, government will be held to account for how its policies are affecting British Columbians, rather than B.C. NDP politics taking the focus away from these important issues.

My question to you:

What do you want government focused on right now?

I would love to hear from you.

Email me at [email protected] or call 250-712-3620.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Photo: Rob Kruyt. Andrew James Seangio, 37, is on trial in B.C. Supreme Court on charges he exposed his genitals to people under 16 for a sexual purpose.

A Richmond RCMP officer is denying allegations he exposed his genitals to Vancouver private school students while driving through Vancouvers tony Shaughnessy neighbourhood in early 2019.

Andrew James Seangio, 37, is on trial in B.C. Supreme Court, facing a 10-count indictment that includes three counts of exposing his genital organs to people under 16 for a sexual purpose. The remaining seven counts involve allegations of committing an indecent act in public.

Crown prosecutor Geoff Baragar told Glacier Media the allegations include two undercover officers dressed as schoolgirls.

As Baragar closed his case on July 4, defence lawyer Glen Orris began by putting Seangio on the stand.

He has not been involved in any illegal act, Orris told the jury before Seangio was sworn in, adding his client was not picked out of photo line-ups shown to complainants.

Almost immediately, Orris asked, Have you ever exposed yourself or masturbated while in your car?

No, I have not, Seangio said.

Seangio told Orris before Justice Catherine Wedge that he was employed with the Richmond RCMP detachment and worked for military police reserves out of Richmonds Colonel Sherman Armoury.

He said he drove to and from those places via Granville Street or Oak Street, occasionally detouring through Shaughnessy streets when traffic became heavy to save time in traffic or to take a call or a text on his phone.

He lived in downtown Vancouver at the time of the events.

He confirmed he had a black Hyundai Santa Fe sport utility vehicle.

The events in question occurred on Marguerite Street, Nanton Ave., West 29th Ave. and Oak Street.

The first three streets are close to the all-girl private schools, Little Flower Academy and York House School.

Under questioning from Orris, Seangio said he was unfamiliar with various Shaughnessy neighbourhood streets.

Then, during cross-examination, Baragar suggested the irregular driving routes and u-turns were part of a pattern targeting young women, particularly schoolgirls.

At one point, Baragar said, the car identified by other witnesses as Seangios in video from a residence showed the vehicle passing the house four times in 6-1/2 minutes and, at one point, doing a u-turn.

How is that saving time? Baragar asked, referring to Seangios earlier comments he would use the side streets to avoid traffic.

I cant tell you what caused me to deviate, Seangio said. I couldnt confirm if it was my vehicle.

And, Baragar noted, while under police surveillance, Seangio deviated into a neighbourhood past a police officer, did a u-turn and passed her again, something Seangio claimed not to remember.

Baragar asked if he would have been answering a phone call or text during the u-turn.

Seangio said on Feb. 28, 2019, he was not in the area but instead was at an ICBC office on MacDonald Street trying to renew a motorcycle licence.

Baragar, however, questioned why Seangios cellphone records showed him further east than MacDonald based on cell tower locations pinged by his phone. Also in evidence were photos of Seangio leaving his downtown residences garage and fobbing back in.

We can track your movements for that hour and 45 minutes continuously, Baragar said. You left home 45 minutes before school was to get out. Was that not correct?

No, I would disagree, Seangio said.

A publication ban covers the identities of the complainants.

The case continues on July 5 with the wrapping up of evidence and lawyers final arguments to the court.

[email protected]

Twitter.com/jhainswo
Photo: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Found in waters as deep as 7,000 metres, a Dumbo octopus uses its ear-like fins to swim away. The species is part of a tapestry of deep-sea ecosystems little known to science and that could be put at risk if mining goes ahead.

In 1983, Verena Tunnicliffe was floating about 250 kilometres off the coast of Vancouver Island when a call came over the radio  geologists on a nearby sister ship had dredged up something strange from the sea floor.

We got all these strange smelly worms, Tunnicliffe remembers them saying. Would you like them?

The deep-sea researcher was the only one with a submarine, and a year later, her exploration team had raised enough money to go back.

When Tunnicliffe finally descended over 2,000 metres to a patch of ocean floor, everything was dark, save for the light on the submersible.

Below them, two tectonic plates diverged, allowing cold sea water to seep through the Earths crust. Super-heated by molten lava, the water shoots back into the ocean as a 400-degree-Celsius hot soup of nutrients and chemicals.

The crew crept along the bottom in an exercise Tunnicliffe describes as trying to explore the Rocky Mountains with a flashlight.

First came white mats of bacteria. Then, out of the darkness, huge mounds of gorgeous white tube worms emerged, the metre-and-a-half-long creatures topped with red plumes. Inside, the scientist would later learn they had no guts, but a body filled with vent-fed bacteria that feed the worms.

And in a potential window onto the origin of life on a hot, young Earth, a bacteria found at the B.C. vents was later discovered to survive temperatures of 121 C  the hottest upper limit for life.

Just covered, dripping with animals, Tunnicliffe said, pointing to at least 12 distinct species found there and not seen anywhere else on Earth.

A year later, Tunnicliffe would find vents at an enormous scale, hydrothermal openings that form chimneys up to 45 metres tall known as black smokers.

In the decades that followed, over 800 extinct and active chimneys would be discovered. The deep-sea scientist would have 10 undersea creatures named after her, and go on to be awarded the Order of Canada for her pioneering work.

Soaring up to the height of buildings, the underwater vents and their chimneys can often contain ore-grade metal deposits of gold, copper and silver  making them an attractive potential source of wealth if only someone could figure out how to mine them.

Photo: Verena Tunnicliffe A vast array of life congregates around 'black smokers,' which spew water super-heated to 380 Celsius and form part of the Endeavour Hot Vents, the first such sites to be protected in the world. -

By 2003, the Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents would be the first marine protected area in Canada, and the first hot vents protected from human exploitation in the world.

But in other stretches of deep ocean, a battle that had been quietly brewing for decades was about to enter a new phase of heightened tensions, raising the prospect of a race for some of the oceans deepest known riches.

At the centre of the controversy sits The Metals Company, a Vancouver-based mining firm looking to harvest the minerals required to wean the world of fossil fuels and on to a more sustainable path.

The U.S. Geological Survey found this year that deep-ocean mines could provide up to 45 per cent of all the worlds critical metal needs by 2065.

But for scientists like Tunnicliffe, a race to the bottom of one of the planets least explored realms comes with huge risks, both to its poorly understood ecosystems and their link to an ocean carbon pump that's thought to scrub 30 per cent of human-produced greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere every year.

We're talking about a group of organisms that have changed the way we understand life on this planet, all the way back to the origin of life, how life works in highly extreme settings where we never thought any life could live, said Tunnicliffe.

It's fuelled our search for life on other planets.

Three pots of deep-sea treasure and a Russian sub

The first sign that the ocean floor could hold minerals useful to humanity date back over 150 years to the HMS Challenger expedition, a voyage many now cast as the foundation of modern oceanography.

The expedition would be the first to probe the Mariana Trench with bathymetric soundings and verify the existence of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the longest mountain range in the world and the separation line where two crustal plates diverge, expanding the Atlantics sea floor.

But it was on March 7, 1873, when crew from the expedition dredged on deck several peculiar black oval bodies which were composed of almost pure manganese oxide that humanity got its first look at what wealth lay deep out of sight.

The metallic masses start with a core  a sunken shark tooth, tiny fossil or piece of basalt rock. Over tens of millions of years, minerals precipitate out of the surrounding sea water, forming one metallic layer after another.

Often growing to the size of a potato, the nodules are rich in nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese  all metals highly sought after by battery makers and other technology manufacturers.

Drop down 4,000 metres below parts of the Pacific Ocean, and they can be found scattered across the surface of abyssal plains, flat stretches of relatively unexplored ocean that cover roughly half the surface of the Earth.

But like the precious metals found near some hydrothermal vents, in the past, it was either too expensive or the technology didnt exist to pull the nodules from the deep.

Photo: U.S. Geological Survey and NOAA Ocean Exploration A polymetallic nodule is captured on a seamount deep in the North Atlantic Ocean during the 2021 North Atlantic Stepping Stones expedition.

It would take more than 90 years before the idea of mining the metallic nodules would once again capture the publics attention.

In 1965, mining engineer John L. Mero published the influential book The Mineral Resources of the Sea, sparking wide interest in the nodules at the time when they were thought to be an infinite resource growing faster than they could be harvested.

A year later, Maltas ambassador to the United Nations, Arvid Pardo, made an impassioned plea to the General Assembly calling on coastal states to end the expansion of exclusive economic zones and regulate the ocean floor, not only for those who possess the required technology, but in the interest of mankind.

That's where the idea came that whatever we find out there really belongs to everyone, and that it needs also to be fostered for the future generations, said Tunnicliffe.

The question revolved around the idea that the oceans riches shouldnt just belong to the wealthiest nations with the resources to exploit the sea floor. That set off a multi-decadal legal process to regulate mining under international waters.

But the pendulum would continue to swing and in the early 1970s, a commodity boom drove further interest in deep-sea mining. So when eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes announced he was building a giant ship to mine the oceans abyss, the story was plausible.

To the public, the expedition would be the first attempt to mine the deep seas metal nodules. In reality, it was an elaborate ruse.

In 1968, U.S. authorities had learned Soviet submarine K-129 had sunk in over 5,000 metres of water, roughly 2,500 kilometres northwest of Hawaii.

Working with Hughes and his new Glomar Explorer ship, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency planned to recover the submarine and its nuclear-tipped torpedoes.

In 1975, reporting by the Los Angeles Times and later The New York Times would reveal the outline of what some have described as the most daring covert operation in history.

Photo: Photos via U.S. government; CIA Project Azorian was one of the most expensive covert operations in CIA history, involving the Howard Hughes-built Glomar Explorer recovery ship (above) and Soviet submarine K-129, pictured below circa 1968.

The story has shifted throughout the years, some suggesting most of the submarine was recovered, others stating that it broke up as it was pulled from the depths to the ships moon pool.

Whatever the case, the extraordinary stories that emerged from what was declassified as Project Azorian in 2010, also helped set off a reckoning over who should have access to the deep  and in particular, the riches sitting on its abyssal floor.

A half-dozen competing international consortia would begin piloting deep-sea mining in the late 1970s. But by the early 1980s, commodity prices dropped and that work was shelved as companies cut back their research budgets. As German historian Ole Sparenberg put it, deep-sea mining was essentially dead in the water.

Concerns over the environment and equity for less wealthy nations eventually led the United Nations to draw up the International Seabed Authority  also known as the ISA or the Enterprise  in 1982 under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and ratify its existence in a 1994 implementation agreement.

Today, the Jamaica-based body is made up of 167 member nations and the European Commission.

A custodian of the deep sea as a common heritage for mankind, the ISAs dual mandate is to facilitate the extraction of mineral resources from the seabed, while at the same time protecting the deep-sea environment.

The prevailing sentiment at the time was that land-based mining was much more profitable, and how are you gonna do this anyway? said Tunnicliffe.

Even if the technology and financing were there to pull the metals from the deep, no regulations existed to allow for mining in international waters.

That is until an ambitious company from Vancouver, B.C., triggered a countdown that could open the floodgates for deep-sea mining and prompt a new age of resource exploitation.

Photo: ISA Areas of the sea floor under exploration contracts with the International Seabed Authority.

Halfway through a two-year countdown

On an overcast day in June 2022, a handful of activists, scientists and artists dedicated to sea life unfurled an ocean-blue banner and took aim at The Metals Company, whose headquarters sits in a nondescript office tower five blocks away.

Imagine house-sized machines crawling along the seabed and indiscriminately vacuuming up the contents, said Michelle Connolly, an ecologist who travelled 10 hours from Prince George to help lead the rally near the citys seawall.

Through its wholly owned subsidiary, Nauru Ocean Resources, The Metals Company has an exploratory licence covering four areas in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone  a nodule-rich area halfway between Hawaii and Mexico where the company is looking to explore nearly 75,000 square kilometres of sea bed.

That contract is among 31 the ISA has handed out since 2001, when the price of metals began to surge again.

Until 2010, the international body largely granted contracts to national agencies. But as the price of metals climbed and technology developed, several companies have looked to get in the race.

If you remember, that was when people were going around knocking down copper statues and stealing copper wires, said Tunnicliffe. That's what suddenly turned back to looking at the deep sea.

Nineteen different companies have sought exploration contracts to probe abyssal plains for the polymetallic nodules.

Another seven contracts have been granted to companies looking to mine hydrothermal mineral deposits around hot vents.

And in a third target for submarine mining, the ISA has approved five exploration contracts for underwater mountain ranges known as seamounts, where underwater peaks and ridges are at times covered in crusts of cobalt, platinum, manganese and rare earth metals  a multi-million-year process of accretion deposited like a 30-centimetre-thick cap of black snow.

Photo: NOAA A ?goblet? glass sponge up to a metre high rises above a metallic nodule field 2,570 metres below the surface near Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

All of those contracts are exploratory and none of them include provisions to carry out industrial-scale mining because the ISA has not yet written the rules of the road.

That changed in June 2021, when the small island nation of Nauru, acting as a sponsor of Nauru Ocean Resources, approached the ISA, requesting it establish a set of regulations that would govern how companies could mine the deep.

Through an obscure clause, which set off a two-year countdown under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, ISA must finalize a set of regulations.

A final decision is expected to be released in July 2023, according to Tunnicliffe, who in the past, led a mining working group at the ISA, providing expert scientific advice to help draft anticipated regulations around deep-sea mining.

Applications to commercially mine the seabed will still have to be approved on a case-by-case basis, with each one requiring an environmental review process, said the scientist.

But at that point, she said. The inevitability is there.

Photo: STEFAN LABBE/GLACIER MEDIA Ecologist Michelle Connolly attends a rally against deep-sea mining in Vancouver, B.C., five blocks from The Metals Company's offices.

Companies reaching a technology threshold

Despite concerns, the experiments keep coming.

In 2017, Japan conducted a pilot mining test in its Economic Exclusion Zone around Okinawa. And in 2019, Global Sea Mineral Resources began testing a collector vehicle to suck up nodules in exploration areas handed to Belgium and Germany.

But according to critics and experts interviewed for this story, The Metals Company appears to be leading the field.

In May 2022, the Vancouver-based company said it successfully trialled a pilot nodule collection system in the North Atlantic.

Deployed from the 228-metre-long former drill ship the Hidden Gem, the nodule collector was dropped to nearly 2,500 metres, marking the first time the vehicle was successfully tested, driving over a kilometre at ultra-deep-water temperatures and pressures.

Later this year, the company plans to take its trials to the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, where it will test the collector and a four-kilometre-long riser hose  both a conduit for the mined nodules and an umbilical linking undersea operations with power and controls beamed down from a surface ship.

When operational, a full-size treaded vehicle is expected to travel across the sea floor blasting the sediment with water jets to dislodge the nodules and pull them into its interior. The company says 90 per cent of the sediment sucked up with the nodules will be separated inside the collector and ejected behind the machine in a plume before settling back onto the sea floor.

From there, nodules will be sent up the riser tubes to within a few hundred metres of the surface, where theyll be scrubbed of the remaining sediment, shipped to a port and offloaded for processing.

Having made landfall, the battery in a rock, as the company puts it, is expected to provide vast quantities of minerals to power an EV revolution.

Its vision, the company says, is to avoid the worst effects of land-based mining while making up for a global shortfall in metals as the world moves to decarbonize.

According to an impact report released in May, the company is looking to begin small-scale commercial production by 2024.

Describing the abyssal plain as a vast marine desert, CEO Gerard Barron said there are enough metals in just two of the companys contract areas to power 280 million electric vehicles, roughly equivalent to the entire fleet of U.S. passenger vehicles.

The wealth created from that mining, said Barron, would partially flow to the island nations of Tonga, Kiribati and Nauru. But for many leaders across the Pacific and beyond, the push to mine the ocean's floor is nothing short of reckless.

A wasteland no more

Despite the companys claims, many scientists and environmental groups have raised concerns deep-sea mining could endanger some of the ecosystems least known to scientists.

Half a century ago, when the ISA was in its infancy, the oceans abyssal plains were considered to be a wasteland of barren ecosystem where life barely existed, said Catherine Coumans, deep-sea mining campaigner at the NGO watchdog MiningWatch.

We now know that nothing could be further from the truth, she said.

A study published in 2020 suggested the only reason the nodules remain on the seafloor surface  and therefore continue to grow  is because of a symbiosis where star fish, sea cucumbers, mollusks and the elephant-eyed (dumbo) octopus forage in their nooks and crannies. Another study looking at sea creatures living on the abyssal plains found their density more than doubled in fields of dense nodules.

These nodules are a habitat, said Coumans. They have fauna on them that are linked to the rest of the ecosystem up the water column to the surface. Theres really nothing like it on Earth.

Photo: U.S. Geological Survey and NOAA Ocean Exploration A Parapagurus sp. crab makes its way across a spectacular and unexpectedly densely packed field of ferromanganese nodules blanketing the sea floor of Gosnold Seamount, explored during the 2021 North Atlantic Stepping Stones expedition.

As the largest habitat on the planet, the deep sea is full of undocumented life that could prove an immense resource for everything from medicine to humanitys understanding of the worlds carbon cycle, say experts.

Land-based hydrothermal vents like those found in Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. have already revolutionized the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests critical to the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Four decades after their discovery, Tunnicliffe and 15 other experts found hydrothermal vents are much more than a highlight reel of extreme forms of life.

The vents, found the 2016 study, spew vast amounts of energy entering the deep sea, creating methane, iron, hydrogen and sulphide plumes that form essential building blocks for plankton higher up in the water column.

And in a direct sink against the release of a powerful greenhouse gas, life surrounding the vents was estimated to consume up to 80 per cent of released methane  preventing it from bubbling to the surface and entering the atmosphere.

On land, Coumans and her colleagues work with local communities on the ground to document harm committed by Canadian mining companies across the world.

But no non-profit has the resources to conduct oversight thousands of metres underwater.

We do such a bloody bad job of regulating our own [land-based] mining industry, said Tunnicliffe. Why should we expect it to be any different in the deep sea in a place where we can't see what's happening?

There is already some evidence that mining the sea floor could have long-term negative effects on life there.

One German study that began in the late 1980s simulated a deep-sea mining operation south of the Galapagos Islands with an eight-metre-wide plough-harrow.

Twenty-six years after the large-scale disturbance, researchers found animal life and food web activity inside the plough tracks had been nearly cut in half.

Filter and suspension feeders were especially hard hit.

The ecosystem, as well as the total carbon cycled through a food web of large sea creatures, mollusks and fish, is still recovering more than a quarter-century later, concluded the researchers.

The biggest concern most of us biologists have is that we don't quite have a grasp on the connectivity  what happens from the sea floor to whatever we're doing on the surface; regulating our climate; and regulating our food supplies, said Tunnicliffe, who is among 622 scientists calling for a moratorium on deep-sea mining.

Those concerns extend to seamounts, where some rise to within 500 metres of the surface, said Tunnicliffe.

It's covered with corals and sponges and all the associated organisms, and it's a great place for fish to congregate and whale migration routes, she said.

A spokesperson for The Metals Company declined a request to comment on the potential environmental impacts of its deep-sea operations, instead pointing to two studies funded by the company and its predecessor DeepGreen Metals.

One study concluded mining metallic nodules puts 94 per cent less sequestered carbon at risk than land-based mining.

The other found metal production from nodules may produce less waste of lower severities compared to land-based mining.

Nodule exploitation would damage abyssal habitats and may impact midwater-column organisms, notes the January 2022 study, but in the absence of nodule exploitation, terrestrial mining's environmental and social impacts would intensify.

The caveat, noted the researchers, the disruption of sediment still has uncertain impacts.

Both studies are co-authored by Erika Ilves, chief strategy officer for The Metals Company.

Rising opposition

The prospect of opening the deep sea to mining has united strong opposition around the world.

At a global conservation summit last September in Marseille, France, 81 nations voted in favour of their own moratorium on deep-sea mining, despite some of those countries holding ISA contracts. Only 18 voted against the motion.

But while many nations have come out in favour of a moratorium on deep-sea mining, Coumans said the Canadian government has, until now, been sitting on the fence.

These are Canadian companies that are in the forefront of this, she said.

In 2020, MiningWatch, together with 18 other non-governmental organizations and First Nations, sent a letter to six federal ministers to express their concerns with deep-sea mining.

To date, Coumans says they have yet to see an official response, despite multiple promises from civil servants.

We were told that the war in Ukraine, that sort of derailed that, she said.

In an interview, Glacier Media pressed Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson to reveal where the Canadian government stands on deep-sea mining.

Wilkinson said his government would be very hesitant to be involved in or support deep-sea mining. When asked whether Canadas ISA delegates will be voting in favour of any new ISA regulations advancing deep-sea mining, Wilkinson said its an active conversation and that the federal government has not yet made a decision.

It's certainly something we recognize, he said. The clock is ticking and we need to come forward with a position.

Does a decarbonizing world really need deep-sea metals?

In recent years, many large multinationals have been forced to take a stand against revelations of abuses in land-based mines in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Described by some as a human rights disaster, thousands of young children are often drugged to suppress their hunger and sent to work in cobalt mines used to feed electric car batteries, cellphones and computers.

Raphael Deberdt, a PhD student at the University of British Columbias Department of Anthropology, has spent several years tracking how large companies have responded to calls to responsibly source minerals for the battery industry.

Deberdt says that while the risks of land-based and deep-sea mining are different, the customer perception that a cellphone or car maker is backing a harmful practice can be equally damaging to the company.

Google, the BMW Group, Samsung, Volkswagen and Volvo are among a dozen multinational companies who have recently backed a call to place a moratorium on deep-sea mining until more is understood about its consequences.

Theyve looked into deep-sea mining and determined the impacts are too high, he said.

But none of those companies have contact with the ISA, and Deberdt suspects theyll have little to no impact on the outcome of the regulatory process.

I don't think that the ISA actually really cares if Google signs the moratorium, he said.

In a March 2021 open letter to BMW, Volvo, Google and Samsung SDI, The Metals Company says its taking a precautionary approach to deep-sea mining. It urged the big brands to hold their criticism until they see the full data.

Will Volvo customers really prefer rainforest metals in their EVs once they realize their dire impacts on freshwater ecosystems, Indigenous peoples, charismatic megafauna and carbon-storing forests? questions the letter.

The company says its currently studying the impact removing the nodules will have on life and says its working to mitigate the effect of sediment plumes left behind by its robots and riser pipes.

In the long term, both Coumans and Deberdt say deep-sea mining companies are failing to properly consider a rising movement to recycle batteries.

Coumans points to Redwood Materials, a $1-billion plant in Nevada set up by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel to recover lithium, cobalt, nickel and other metals from old batteries. The facility is expected to re-purpose up to 100 gigawatt-hours of cathode material and enough anode foil for a million electric vehicles a year by 2025.

In a blog post last September, Straubel said that by 2030, production output is expected to climb to produce enough batteries to power nearly half of the United States annual vehicle production.

Photo: Redwood Materials/Twitter Companies like Redwood Materials are looking to recycle batteries in a closed-loop system the company hopes will supply nearly half of annual vehicle production in the U.S.

Others are looking to create new battery technologies that use less metals to start with.

At IBM, the company says it has developed a battery free of heavy metals. And start-up Form Energy out of Somerville, Mass., has raised at least $360 million to develop an electric grid battery powered by three of the most abundant materials on the planet  iron, water and air.

Theres an understanding that we can't mine our way out of the climate change problem. We cant save the planet by destroying the planet further, said Coumans.

The hype around deep-sea mining has also been fed by rising geopolitical concerns that Western nations could be left without the metals they need to supply a boom in renewable energy.

Russia is home to the largest nickel producer in the world, and two of the top five cobalt mining companies are Chinese. If relations between Western nations and those countries continue to sour, some worry key mineral supply chains could be disrupted.

So there we are, stuck with a world that cannot do any kind of diplomacy to try and help share our land wealth. So instead, what do we do? said Tunnicliffe. We all dive into another environment and try to ransack that one as well.

With so much at stake, the appetite to mine the deep appears to be turning, says Kristina Gjerde, a lawyer and senior high seas advisor to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Experts say the ISA is rushing to solve a number of unanswered questions, including how an international payment regime would funnel money to countries not involved in the mining.

Another obstacle to adopting new regulations could come in December when a select group of ISA members will meet in a small hotel in Kingston, Jamaica, where the ISA secretariat will need to get a consensus to move forward, says Gjerde.

Opposing countries could also push back by adopting a resolution in the UN General Assembly calling on the independent regulatory body to halt the work.

"It could operate sort of like the whaling moratorium, where governments decided to transition from exploitation to conservation," said the lawyer. Nothing is inevitable. And governments now have the opportunity to make that critical choice.

Sitting before a giant aquarium at the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon last week, French President Emmanuel Macron signalled he would be among the first major Western leaders to make that choice.

"We have to... create the legal framework to stop the high-seas mining," Macron told Gjerde and other experts gathered there."We need to promote our scientists and explorers to better know the high seas..."

"We need to better understand in order to better protect."
Photo: Google Street View

Two youth have been arrested after a stabbing left a 16-year-old victim injured at a school in Surrey.

On July 4, just before 4 p.m., Surrey RCMP responded to reports of a stabbing at Panorama Ridge Secondary school in the 13200 block of 64 Avenue in Surrey.

When they arrived police located a 16-year-old male victim suffering from apparent stab wounds. First aid was rendered by officers on the scene, and the victim was transported to hospital with serious injuries.

Two suspects, 16 and 17-year-old males were located nearby and arrested by police. Initial indications suggest there was an altercation between the parties involved, who were known to each other, prior to the stabbing.

Surrey RCMP Youth Unit officers are working with the school and Surrey School District to ensure all students and staff are supported following this traumatic incident.

The Surrey RCMP General Investigation Unit is asking anyone with more information who has not yet spoken to police is asked to contact the Surrey RCMP at 604-599-0502.
Engineers are on their way to a major washout along a remote section of the Alaska Highway in Northern B.C. to assess damages and determine a fix, officials say.

The washout destroyed a massive section of paved highway about 125 kilometres north of Liard Hot Springs on July 1, snarling long weekend traffic travelling in both directions, and prompting some stores in the Yukon to ration goods.

George Smith, manager of maintenance for the portion of the Alaska Highway under federal jurisdiction, says engineers flew into Fort St. John and are driving north today. Theyll be flown to the site tomorrow to assess what happened and what the options are to restore the road.

The pictures dont do it justice, Smith said Tuesday of the scale of damage.

Its believed the washout was caused by a beaver dam collapse, which brought with it a torrent of water from a nearby lake that washed out the highway.

On Canada Day, the traffic monitoring service DriveBC had reported water pooling between the Fireside Maintenance Camp and Allens Lookout. Just hours later, however, the road gave way, destroying a large section of paved highway.

The beaver dam let go, the lake more or less drained, and took the highway out, Smith said.

Traffic on the both sides of the large crevasse have been kept back due to the instability of the nearby hillside and the potential for more erosion.

A three-kilometre detour has since been opened using an old alignment of the highway. Smith says crews had to put in a culvert, fix approaches to the highway, and do some dirt work before it could be opened.

He says the detour is being maintained and monitored daily with the help of Lower Post First Nations, and open 24 hours to single-lane alternating traffic with a pilot car.

The road is good and there are no restrictions as of yet, Smith said, noting transport trucks and motor homes are being piloted through. He asked motorists to be patient and obey the signs.

Its taken the pilot car nine to 10 minutes to get traffic through there, he said. We cant stress enough that they obey signs and wait for the pilot car.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The United Truckers Association says its members have voted unanimously in favour of job action at the Port of Vancouver to protest a program that would force the phaseout of older trucks.

A statement from the association says its 639 members voted to support action that could "create shock waves across Canada's already fragile supply chain."

A program aimed at banning older trucks from the port is set to start in September, but the association says the scheme will impose crippling costs on drivers.

The statement says the port will not discuss the phaseout of all trucks that are 20 years old or older, even though most commercially licensed trucks elsewhere in B.C. don't face similar measures.

Association spokesman Gagan Singh says members have agreed to hold talks with the port in July but will "move forward" with a shutdown in August if aging trucks are barred.

The port said last month that the program is aimed at improving air quality across Metro Vancouver and was supposed to start in February, but federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra ordered more negotiations.

The statement from the association says Alghabra has been silent since then and the port has reintroduced the so-called Rolling Truck Age Program without any substantial changes.

"The minister is going to have to offer a different approach in the coming weeks," Singh says.

More details about possible job action will be released later this month, the statement says.
Photo: file photo

In March, the B.C. government announced ICBC would provide an one-time relief rebate of $110 to British Columbians in order to reduce the financial burden of gas prices caused by the war in Ukraine.

The auto insurer said 3.5 million rebates would be sent out, totalling more than $396 million.

ICBC customers with "a basic auto insurance policy in February would be eligible" to receive the rebate if they registered a direct deposit, or as a refund on their credit card. For everyone else, the B.C. government stated customers would receive their rebates as cheques in June.

Yet, many British Columbians have not received the money.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General told Glacier Media in an email statement that they have issued "all 25,000 rebates to customers who signed up for direct deposit."

They added all 573,000 credit card rebates have been issued to eligible ICBC customers. To date, the ministry has sent out $142 million in relief rebates.

When can British Columbians expect their rebate cheques?

The ministry said they began issuing rebate cheques in June.

In total, the ministry has processed more than 260,000 cheques, with another 200,000 scheduled this week.



When Glacier Media asked about a timeline for all remaining rebates, the spokesperson could not specify.

Customers who paid by debit, cash, cheque, a payment plan or a credit card that couldn't be processed can expect to receive their rebates as a cheque. The same goes for anyone who had a technicality occur.
Photo: The Canadian Press Minister for Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly responds to a question during a news conference at the NATO Summit in Madrid on June 29, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly says she won't shake the hand of her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov at a G20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia, this week.

She told The Canadian Press she plans to instead take aim at the Russian foreign minister's falsehoods about the invasion of Ukraine.

"I will confront him with facts and expose Russia's narrative for what it is: lies and disinformation," she said in a written reply to questions.

In March, Joly joined many others in walking out of a United Nations meeting in Geneva when Lavrov, whom Canada had brought sanctions against days earlier, began speaking.

But Canada's attendance alongside Russia in Indonesia creates a diplomatic predicament at the G20.

Lavrov has been one of the most vocal proponents of the invasion and President Vladimir Putin's arguments justifying his invasion of Ukraine.

And Joly recently said it was unacceptable for a Canadian official to attend a reception hosted by the Russian Embassy in Ottawa.

But she said if she and other foreign ministers opposed to the Russian invasion of Ukraine did not attend the G20 summit, it could work in the Kremlin's favour, allowing it to spin its version of the war.

"If Canada is not at the table, Russia wins," she said. "We cannot give way to Russian lies."

"Russia has been perpetrating atrocities on a massive scale in Ukraine, and it is threatening to cause a worldwide famine. But Russia is denying these facts and is spreading disinformation to escape international accountability."

In a statement, the Global Affairs department said Joly's attendance will give an opportunity to directly counter disinformation from representatives of the Russian regime.

"Canada will not cede the floor to Russian propaganda seeking to justify the illegal invasion of a sovereign neighbour," it said.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Joly and other ministers have refused to share the floor when Russia speaks at summits.

In April, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland joined a walkout of a G20 meeting for finance ministers and central bank governors in Washington to protest Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In May, International Trade Minister Mary Ng joined her counterparts from the United States, Australia, Japan and New Zealand in leaving an APEC meeting in Bangkok when the Russian representative began to speak.

In an interview after the walkout, Ng said it would not be a "one-off" and she would be prepared to do it again.

Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would take part in the G20 leaders meeting in November, even if Putin goes too, saying it is important to counteract the voice that Russia will have at that table.

Lavrov has conducted a series of interviews, including with the BBC, to try to justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its tactics.

Putin is reported to have apologized to the Israeli prime minister after Lavrov said on Italian TV that Adolf Hitler was part-Jewish. The foreign minister made his remarks in a bid to justify the Russian invasion as an attempt to de-Nazify Ukraine, even though Ukraine's president is Jewish.

The summit in Indonesia will address food shortages following the invasion of Ukraine, which has prevented the export of millions of tonnes of wheat to the developing world.

Joly will also discuss the advancement of women's equality worldwide and environmental protection as well as the building of resilient economies following the pandemic.

The G20 is made up of the world's biggest economies, including the United States, India, China, South Africa, Mexico, Australia, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Together they are responsible for around 80 per cent of the world's economic output and two-thirds of the world's population.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Two of Britains most senior Cabinet ministers resigned on Tuesday, a move that could spell the end of Prime Minister Boris Johnsons leadership after months of scandals.

Treasury chief Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid resigned within minutes of each other after a day in which the prime minister was forced to acknowledge he had to change his story on the way he handled allegations of sexual misconduct by a senior member of his government.

It is with enormous regret that I must tell you that I can no longer, in good conscience, continue serving in this government, Javid said in his resignation letter. I am instinctively a team player but the British people also rightly expect integrity from their government.

Sunak said the public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously. 

I recognize this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning, he added.

Both Sunak and Javid have been seen as possible leadership contenders within the Conservative Party if Johnson is forced out. Their departures were a huge blow to the prime minister, because both were in charge of two of the biggest issues facing Britain  the cost of living crisis and the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.

Their exits were followed Tuesday by two other Conservatives: Bim Afolami, who quit as the partys vice-chair while live on TV, and Andrew Murrison, who resigned as a trade envoy to Morocco.

Other senior Cabinet ministers, including Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, indicated they would be staying.

Johnsons authority had already been shaken by a series of government scandals and a vote of no confidence last month. He survived, but 41% of Conservatives voted to remove him from office.

The prime ministers shifting responses to months of allegations about lockdown-breaking parties in government offices that ultimately resulted in 126 fines, including one levied against Johnson, fueled persisting concerns about his leadership.

Two weeks later, Conservative candidates were badly beaten in two special elections to fill vacant seats in Parliament, adding to the discontent within Johnsons party.

The latest crisis came after Johnson was hit by allegations he failed to come clean over what he knew about previous sexual misconduct allegations against a lawmaker who was appointed to a senior position.

The lawmaker, Chris Pincher, resigned as deputy chief whip Thursday amid complaints that he groped two men at a private club.

Minutes before the resignations of Javid and Sunak were announced, Johnson told reporters that Pincher should have been fired from the government after a previous 2019 incident.

Asked if it was an error to appoint Pincher to the government, Johnson said I think it was a mistake and I apologize for it. In hindsight it was the wrong thing to do.

I apologize to everybody who has been badly affected by it. I want to make absolutely clear that theres no place in this government for anybody who is predatory or who abuses their position of power, Johnson said Tuesday.

Keir Starmer, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, said its clear that this government is now collapsing.

Only a real change of government can give Britain the fresh start it needs, Starmer said.

The governments explanation shifted repeatedly over the past five days. Ministers initially said Johnson wasnt aware of any allegations when he promoted Pincher to the post in February.

On Monday, a spokesman said Johnson knew of sexual misconduct allegations that were either resolved or did not progress to a formal complaint.

That account didnt sit well with Simon McDonald, the most senior civil servant at the U.K. Foreign Office from 2015 to 2020. In a highly unusual move, he said Tuesday that the prime ministers office still wasnt telling the truth.

McDonald said in a letter to the parliamentary commissioner for standards that he received complaints about Pinchers behavior in the summer of 2019, shortly after Pincher became a Foreign Office minister. An investigation upheld the complaint, and Pincher apologized for his actions, McDonald said.

McDonald disputed that Johnson was unaware of the allegations or that the complaints were dismissed because they had been resolved or not made formally.

The original No. 10 line is not true, and the modification is still not accurate, McDonald wrote, referring to the prime ministers Downing Street office. Mr. Johnson was briefed in person about the initiation and outcome of the investigation.

Hours after McDonalds comments came out, Johnsons office changed its story again, saying the prime minister forgot he was told that Pincher was the subject of an official complaint.

The latest revelations have fueled discontent within Johnsons Cabinet after ministers were forced to publicly deliver the prime ministers denials, only to have the explanation shift the next day.

The Times of London on Tuesday published an analysis of the situation under the headline Claim of lying puts Boris Johnson in peril.

When Pincher resigned last week as deputy chief whip, a key position in enforcing party discipline, he told the prime minister that he drank far too much the previous night and had embarrassed myself and other people.

Johnson initially refused to suspend Pincher from the Conservative Party, but he relented after a formal complaint about the groping allegations was filed with parliamentary authorities.

Critics suggested Johnson was slow to react because he didnt want to be in the position of forcing Pincher to resign his Parliament seat and setting up the Conservatives for another potential special election defeat.

Even before the Pincher scandal, suggestions were swirling that Johnson may soon face another no-confidence vote.

In the next few weeks, Conservative lawmakers will elect new members to the committee that sets parliamentary rules for the party. Several candidates have suggested they would support changing the rules to allow for another vote of no confidence. The existing rules require 12 months between such votes.

Senior Conservative lawmaker Roger Gale, a long-standing critic of Johnson, said he would support a change of the rules of the Conservative 1922 Committee.

Mr. Johnson has for three days now been sending ministers  in one case a Cabinet minister  out to defend the indefensible, effectively to lie on his behalf. That cannot be allowed to continue, Gale told the BBC. This prime minister has trashed the reputation of a proud and honorable party for honesty and decency, and that is not acceptable."
Photo: . Einstein with Carlo Mearc and Valley Calderoni of Canine Valley.

This is a story about how a dog got his name.

When he first landed at the Canadian airport after a lengthy trip across the Atlantic Ocean, a little rescue pup from China named Marco decided he could live his best life on the run. Little is known about his life before he set foot in Canada, but at the sight of the Sea to Sky wilderness he decided to throw caution to the wind and booked it towards freedom.

Over the next 45 days, this intrepid canine explorer led pursuers through the woods and over the bridges of Squamish, successfully crossing highways and busy roadways while repeatedly evading the multiple human beings trying to intervene. He found reliable sources of food in safe neighbourhoods, and established stomping grounds he judged to be safe, never letting anyone get near enough to grab ahold of him as he roamed across a 25-kilometre area.

The pursuers had never seen a craftier pooch. That's when they decided to change his name to reflect his obvious intellectual gift: Einstein.

"We have been searching for dogs for a long time, offering this service for Squamish and other communities, and we've successfully done hundreds of successful searches. Marco was the first of his kind," said Carlo Mearc, co-owner of Squamish's Canine Valley.

"He's extremely intelligent, very good at understanding human body language, and he seemed to understand how the human world works. We thought we would've caught him with certain traps, but he just wouldn't fall for them."

His co-owner Valley Calderoni marvelled at Marco aka Einstein's genius.

"That's why we call him Einstein  because he was just too smart for us. We had cameras set up to watch him interact with the traps. We could see him look into a trap, and really think about it, then decide to leave it. His thinking skills were really remarkable," she said.

"This isn't really the story of a lost dog because he wasn't lost. Once Marco got into certain neighborhoods he developed a pattern of safe places and he stayed there. We saw him on the trail cams walking around in the forest happily. He was having a great time."

Dogs are social creatures, though, and eventually Einstein began longing for contact from creatures of his kind. Canine Valley recorded their target approaching and interacting with people walking their dogs, friendly and playful but still evasive. They began leaving out food in the area, and put out a special 3.05 by 3.05 meter (10-foot by 10-foot) "Missy" trap that they'd custom-designed for this purpose. Mearc and Calderoni didn't want to use more harsh tactics because they were carefully building a relationship they didn't want to ruin. So they spread their scent around his favourite areas, encouraging him to associate their smell with safety and food.

"We had to be careful not to break his boundaries and to establish trust. Just days before we finally caught him, we realized we had a good connection with him and he would walk up and follow us. We successfully got on a rope on his neck three or four times, and every time something or somebody would spook him. He was so smart and fast he would get away," said Calderoni.

At this point, multiple non-profits and people all over Squamish were invested in bringing Einstein home. One of the people they worked with was Randi Olson of Neighbourhood Animals Needing Assistance (NANA). One morning she contacted Canine Valley to let them know that Marco was walking with her, and they asked her to lead him into their nearly finished trap  so that's what she did, closing the door behind her.

On June 30, Canine Valley announced the positive outcome on Facebook. It was met by a flood of well wishes by all the online obsevers who had been following the trek.

"We walked into the trap and took our time, [put] two leashes on him and brought him back to our centre. We did a walk around our entire facility so he can situate himself and he's now currently resting and taking things in. This afternoon he will have his first vet visit  but for the most part he's looking healthy and strong," it reads.

"What's next for [Einstein] is some amazing training and stabilizing him back from being a wild pup to a more relaxed state. We have agreed with the rescue agency that we will train him for at least two weeks and then find an amazing family for him in Squamish. And yes, the new family will be trained as well."
Betting on cements future at IEEE Las Vegas

ICR Research By

Published 05 July 2022

The 64th IEEE-IAS/PCA Cement Industry Technical Conference and Exhibition took place in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, on 1-5 May 2022. Approximately 800 delegates attended the meeting and ICR was one among 125 industry exhibitors. The conference gave a detailed insight into the challenges and aims of the US cement sector as it emerges from the pandemic and looks for solutions for more sustainable cement production. By ICR Research, UK.

Delivering the welcome address at this years event, local conference chair and Salt River Materials Senior Director for Cement Operations and Environmental, Brett Lindsay, was pleased to announce that 275 participants were attending an IEEE conference for the first time to gain knowledge from the experienced line-up of speakers. The conference attracted 24 cement producers and the international pull of the event drew in delegates from 22 different countries.

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Pakistan dispatches decline in FY22 by 8%

05 July 2022

The All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA) released 12 months of local and overseas dispatch data on 4 July. During the FY21-22 (July 2021-June 2022) total cement dispatches were 52.89Mt, 7.9 per cent lower than 57.43Mt dispatched during the last fiscal year. Domestic consumption during this period fell by one per cent to 47.63Mt from 48.11Mt, while exports declined by 43.6 per cent to 5.25Mt from 9.31Mt from FY20-21.

DG Khan Cement Co said in a briefing that local growth was flat this year due to inconsistent policies and the domestic political situation. At the same time, exports declined due to the lack of availability of coal since prices rose dramatically. Furthermore, budget constraints (the government levy of 10 per cent one-time surcharge in budget FY22-23) suggest growth next year will be negative or single digit, the management stated. In addition, a continuous increase in domestic fuel prices will also cause cement prices to go up. As a result, various projects have been put on hold amid high steel and cement prices.

The APCMA attributes the performance to government policy uncertainty and historically high prices for fuel, electricity, coal and other raw materials. Due to the high production cost, cement prices will continue to increase in the local market. An official urged the government to devise a policy to help the cement industry export from Pakistan.

The breakdown of dispatches shows northern-based mills dispatched 39.44Mt of cement domestically during the FY21-22, down 2.8 per cent from 40.58Mt in FY20-21. Exports from the north declined by 64.5 per cent to 910,685t from FY21-22, compared with 2.56Mt exported during the previous fiscal year.

Domestic dispatches by southern-based mills from FY21-22 were 8.19Mt, showing an increase of 8.7 per cent over 7.53Mt of cement during the last fiscal year. However, there was a substantial decline of around 35.6 per cent in exports from the southern zone as the volumes fell to 4.34Mt from FY21-22 from 6.74Mt during the fiscal year.

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Several members of the interesting Dugger family made their homes near the foot of Cameron Hill. They were some of the last occupants of the historic Whiteside home.

"Los" Dugger, like Sam Houston, ran away from home which still in his teens and took up with the Cherokees, living in the wilderness the unfettered Indian lifestyle. Dugger eventually wound up at Ross's Landing, and when it became Chattanooga he was one of its political leaders for several decades.

William Lawson Dugger was born in 1823 when his family lived at Watauga County, N.C. A short time later they moved to Carter County in Tennessee. From here, at age 13, W.L. Dugger left home with a party going west. He went with them to Athens, Tn., and proceeded on to Ross's Landing, where he worked under Chief John Ross. The white youth rode pony races and "held his own" with the Indian competitors.

The next year he took up with Chief Joe Vann, who had a fine house at Harrison. Dugger went west on a steamboat with Chief Vann during the Indian removal, but the steamer blew up on the Arkansas River. Chief Vann and six of his followers were killed, while many others were critically injured.

W.L. Dugger was only slightly hurt, but the frightening event was cause enough for him to retreat to Chattanooga, where he was joined by his younger brother, Benjamin F. Dugger. The two brothers made the acquaintance of the daughters of the early Hamilton County settler, George R. Cannon. W.L. Dugger married Cynthia Cannon and B.F. Dugger married Jane Henderson Cannon.

B.F. Dugger operated a grocery, and he later had a farm next to his father-in-law at Harrison. W.L. Dugger was a carpenter and a "born mechanic." He had a love for the river and was a prominent figure in early steamboating. When the railroad began to supplant the steamer, he became an engineer for the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad and later for the Wills Valley line.

When the war talk began, the Duggers were "of Union sentiment." B.F. Dugger fought with Federal troops, while W.L. Dugger remained in Chattanooga and helped in the Union cause. When the Confederate ship "Paint Rock" was sunk, it was dredged up and refitted. W.L. Dugger operated it on many hazardous blockade running trips to Bridgeport, Ala, to help bring up supplies.

The B.F. Duggers moved in 1864 across the river to the Wiliam J. Rogers place. This was along the road that went from the Cowart farm to Moccasin Bend opposite Brown's Ferry. But their house was one of those washed away in the great flood of 1867.

B.F. Dugger passed away in October 1868, leaving his wife with seven children to raise - William L., Hester A., Mary J., Sarah J., Eliza L., James L. and the baby Cynthia M. Jane Dugger afterward lived at 310 Poplar St. as did her son, William L., who was a boilermaker. When Jane Dugger died in 1901 at her daughter's house on Manning Street in North Chattanooga, all seven children were at her bedside. They were William and James, Mrs. Robert H. Maddux (Eliza), Mrs. George Lord (Sarah), Mrs. Charles Messick, Mrs. Robinson Nail (Mary) of Rhea County and Mrs. George Trobaugh of Morristown.

W.L. "Los" Dugger was an alderman in city government at the start of the war and during Reconstruction. He also held the post for many terms until the 1890s. He was successful in dealing in real estate after the war.

W.L. Dugger was influential in convincing the Federal government to pay for damages to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church so its edifice could be rebuilt after the war.

During the yellow fever epidemic in 1878, W.L. Dugger used his steamboating knowledge to refugee his family on the river near the present Lupton City. The party included his daughter, Mary, and her husband, J.P. Kindrick, and daughter, Eliza, and her husband, A J. Gahagan. The family amused themselves with games and plays during the long epidemic. Also, W.L. Dugger piloted the R.M. Bishop steamer up and down the river, gathering food supplies and delivering them at the Chattanooga wharf for the remnant remaining in town.

W.L. "Los" Dugger lived for many years at 305 Pine St. as did his sons, Collin C. Dugger and Jesse T. Dugger. Later the family acquired the old James Whiteside place at 415 Poplar St. Jesse T. Dugger, who was a city fireman and later the city electrician, lived there before moving to Battery Place. Then Collin Dugger, who was at one time a sand dealer, moved to the Whiteside home. He had married Anne Lee Calder, daughter of John Calder who as a young man came from Scotland on a sailing vessel. The Collin Duggers were living at 415 Poplar when Collin was killed in a fox hunting incident. He left behind children Alice Carey, Richard and Nancy. Alice stayed on several years in the landmark home, then moved to 217 W. Sixth by 1923.

When W.L. Dugger died in 1908, he was said to be Chattanooga's oldest citizen. Items mentioned in his will included in interest in Ross's Towhead, and island near Chattanooga Creek that is now underwater. He gave his memories of the early Ross's Landing steamboating days in a scrapbook known as the "Dugger manuscript" that was kept for many years by his son, Jesse Tyner Dugger, but which was later lost.
Here are the new marriage licenses from the County Clerk's office:

SCOTT CASEY STELLING CRISTIN JADE HICKS

7841 HIXSON PIKE 7841 HIXSON PIKE

HIXSON, Tennessee 37343 HIXSON, Tennessee 37343



MAYRA ALEJANDRA BECERRA JENNIFER OLAN-SANCHEZ

700 S DRAKE RD APT 7 700 S DRAKE RD APT 7

Kalamazoo, Michigan 49009 Kalamazoo, Michigan 49009



DOUGLAS STEELE MCKAY ASHLEY MARIE CROWE

514 FLOWER LANE DR 522 BELL ST

ESTILL SPRINGS, Tennessee 373303109 MCMINNVILLE, Tennessee 371103134



STEVEN NICHOLAS BIELAS GRETCHEN GRACE BROOKS

3617 BENTWOOD COVE DR 3617 BENTWOOD COVE DR

APISON, Tennessee 37302 APISON, Tennessee 37302



TIMOTHY LEE PURSLEY GWENDOLYN DANNELL MARTIN

918 MARION ST 918 MARION ST

ROSSVILLE, GA 307413838 ROSSVILLE, GA 307413838



NOAH RYAN BARTLEY HALEY ALEXIS HOOD

242 HENSON LN 2109 LOCUST GROVE RD

DUNLAP, Tennessee 373275806 NEW TAZEWELL, Tennessee 378253766



JAMES LUCAS COLE SYDNEY GRACE QUINN

7604 STANDIFER GAP RD, #603 54 PHEASANT LN

CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37421 RInggold, Georgia 30736



NATHAN TAYLOR CORNWALL MEGGAN MAYO ACREE

2615 WINTER GARDEN DR 2615 WINTER GARDEN DR

CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37421 CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37421



CHARLES EDWARD RODGERS ANNETTE JOHNSON MILLER

7428 DAVIS MILL CIR 7428 DAVIS MILL CIR

HARRISON, Tennessee 37341 HARRISON, Tennessee 37341



JESSICA LINDSEY KING LESLIE VIRGINIA BENNETT

8704 WOODBURY ACRE CT 8704 WOODBURY ACRE CT

HARRISON, TN 373411802 HARRISON, TN 373411802



VONTEZ JESSIE LAMONTE OLIVER JESSICA REENE JONES

5520 DONOVAN LN 5520 DONOVAN LN

HIXSON, Tennessee 37343 HIXSON, Tennessee 37343



MYLES AUSTIN DEAN DINA DIEUJUSTE

491 W 26TH ST 491 W 26TH ST

CHATTANOOGA, TN 374082840 CHATTANOOGA, TN 374082840



JACKSON BRADLEY DAVIS REBEKAH ANN BERRY

4713 JERSEY PIKE 4713 JERSEY PIKE

CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37416 CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37416



JARWIN ORLANDO VASQUEZ CLARO LIDIA NINETH ESTRADA OSORIO

4602 MONTVIEW DR 4602 MONTVIEW DR

CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37411 CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37411



DIOMARY VALENT GUERRERO LOPEZ SEAN GLENNON WOODWARD

7710 E BRAINERD RD APT 1110 7710 E BRAINERD RD APT 1110

CHATTANOOGA, TN 374215943 CHATTANOOGA, TN 374215968



ANGELA SINIO RILEY DUGGER DONILON

7161 SHEPHERD VIEW CIR 7161 SHEPHERD VIEW CIR

CHATTANOOGA, TN 374211439 CHATTANOOGA, TN 374211439



JOSE MANUEL PEREZ ZERECERO CARMEN SUSANA LUNA GARCIA

3201 HENDERSON MILL RD NE APT 22C 3201 HENDERSON MILL RD NE APT 22C

ATlanta, Georgia 30341 ATlanta, Georgia 30341



RONALD DWIGHT REYNOLDS KIM DOWDEY HULSEY

1003 LAKEVIEW CIR 1020 MUSTANG DR.

GREEr, South Carolina 29651 DAllas, Georgia 30157



CAMERON MCKAY SHAPPLEY MADALYN REED VAN EATON

604 WERNER ST 6477 DEEP CANYON RD

CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37415 HIXSON, Tennessee 37343



MICHAEL TIMOTHY NEESE FRANCES GRACE GUNN

208 INTEGRA VISTAS DR APT 312 208 INTEGRA VISTAS DR APT 312

HIXSON, TN 373435450 HIXSON, TN 373435450



JIMMIE LEE NICKSON DENISE LASEL LOVE

2101 E WILLOW ST APT 201 2101 E WILLOW ST APT 201

SCOTTSboro, Alabama 35268 SCOTTSboro, Alabama 35268



LAQUETTA PAULINE DUCKWORTH DAVID MICHAEL CARNES

1541 MANASSAS DR 1541 MANASSAS DR

HIXSON, TN 373433389 HIXSON, TN 373433389



TYLER ANDREW SHIRLEY HANNAH MORGAN COATES

1804 ST.

IVES PL 7441 MORGAN FARM LNDAlton, Georgia 30720 OOLTEWAH, Tennessee 37363MEGHAN SHEA MCCLURE DAVID KING JEMISON397 MADISON AVE APT 2212 397 MADISON AVE APT 2212MEMPHIS, Tennessee 381033239 MEMPHIS, Tennessee 381033239JESSICA LEIGH-ANNE GRIGGS SARAH ELIZABETH AARON170 OLA DR 170 OLA DRCOHUTTA, Georgia 30710 COHUTTA, Georgia 30710TORI MCKENZIE NORTHCUTT ISAAC DILLAN INGRAM6574 E BRAINERD RD APT 212 1439 JENKINS RDCHATTANOOGA, TN 374213702 CHATTANOOGA, TN 374213227AMY ELIZABETH MCDANIEL RACE SAMUEL HENDERSON1806 OAKVALE DR 1806 OAKVALE DRCHATTANOOGA, TN 374211851 CHATTANOOGA, TN 374211851SARRAH LYNN HOLDEN MICHAEL ANDREW OBARR8677 SUMMIT PEAK WAY APT 306 8677 SUMMIT PEAK WAY APT 306OOLTEWAH, TN 373633158 OOLTEWAH, TN 373633158KALONIA LEE ANNA HARDEN LARRY GLENN SHRADER1055 HICKORY AVE 1055 HICKORY AVEHIXSON, TN 373431374 HIXSON, TN 373431374MICHAEL LEE THOMAS SARAH ANN BARRETT4518 HIXSON PIKE APT G2 4518 HIXSON PIKE APT G2HIXSON, Tennessee 37343 HIXSON, Tennessee 37343SHELBY LYNN RAMSEY GRANT ALLEN KRETZMEIER500 GREAT CIR APT 3212 7509 GOOD EARTH CIRSMYRNA, Tennessee 37167 OOLTEWAH, TN 373637165TRAVIS LEJUAN WITHEROW LATISHA MONIQUE MELSON4007 ROGERS RD 4007 ROGERS RDCHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37411 CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37411JANICE LOUISE LOPES ARTHUR BRYANT COVRIG8917 GREY MOUNTAIN DR 12254 OOLTEWAH GEORGETOWN RDOOLTEWAH, Tennessee 373636829 GEORGETOWN, Tennessee 373364066JACKSON ALEXANDER HARBIN KATHARINE BROOKS BOSSONG205 SONATA CIR 205 SONATA CIRPOOLER, Georgia 31322 POOLER, Georgia 31322JERAMEY DANIEL ANDERSON HEATHER MARIE ANDERSON8564 LEXIE LN. 8564 LEXIE LN.OOLTEWAH, Tennessee 37363 OOLTEWAH, Tennessee 37363COURTNEY PALISIN ONDRUS MAISON PAUL FELKINS7958 CHIANTI WAY 1000 WORTHINGTON LN #3208CHATTANOOGA, TN 374211281 SPRING HILL, Tennessee 37174JOE WILLIAM BELL REBECCA EILEEN REASOR1962 HARDWOOD LANE 1962 HARDWOOD LANESODDY DAISY, Tennessee 37379 SODDY DAISY, Tennessee 37379GERALD WAYNE HAMMOND RALENE FOX5193 CHESTNUTT CREEK RD #4 5193 CHESTNUTT CREEK RD #4APISON, Tennessee 37302 APISON, Tennessee 37302ELYSEA REIGH WOLLNER AARON CHRISTOPHER OAKLEY5370 SATELITE CT 5370 SATELITE CTOOLTEWAH, TN 373634822 OOLTEWAH, TN 373634822ABIGAIL SEXTON HENEGAR DANIEL COLE BASS488 MONTGOMERY FERRY RD NE UNIT B 488 MONTGOMERY FERRY RD NE UNIT BATLANTA, Georgia 30324 ATlanta, Georgia 30324CAMERON JAKE WEBB SHAYNA RENEE RYAN3326 PIONEER DR 3131 MOUNTAIN CREEK RD #5A5CHATTANOOGA, TN 374191447 CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37415LINDSAY DANAE GILBERT MATTHEW HARRIS MERCER8645 CITRINE WAY 8645 CITRINE WAYCHATTANOOGA, TN 374216930 CHATTANOOGA, TN 374216930GINA LYN LANGFORD MARVIN THOMAS MOUNT9926 ROLLING WIND DR 9411 HIXSON PK, #BSODDY DAISY, Tennessee 37379 SODDY DAISY, Tennessee 37379CALOB RYAN KILGORE JACOB SCOTT DAVIS121 S MOORE RD 121 S MOORE RDCHATTANOOGA, TN 374114806 CHATTANOOGA, TN 374114806BRADLEY PIERRE RITTENBERRY LESLIE DIONNE EDWARDS1 E 11TH ST, #6-17 1 E 11TH ST, #6-17CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37402 CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37402ARIANNA ROSE MCKINNEY JONATHAN CRAIG JAMES1641 VALLEY AVE 3763 COYNE LOOPBIRMINGHAM, AL 352091269 THE VILLAGES, Florida 321630542ALEJANDRA NALLELY TORRES SALAZAR VICTOR CHRISTOPHER TYLER3705 ANDERSON AVE 3705 ANDERSON AVECHATTANOOGA, TN 374121803 CHATTANOOGA, TN 374121803ALONZO DEWAYNE RUSSELL ASHLEY DONNESHA VISHER19 N BROOKS CIRCHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37411 ,CHASITY ARACELI MASSEY MILOS FLORIC352 CAMP JORDAN RD 7114 TYNER CROSSING DRCHATTANOOGA, TN 374124004 CHATTANOOGA, TN 374211097EMILY PAIGE GREESON JOHN QUENTIN WAGNER230 COUNTRY COVE DR 230 COUNTRY COVE DRROSSVILLE, Georgia 30741 ROSSVILLE, Georgia 30741MOLLIE ANN VOGEL LISANDRO MIGUEL RIVAS LUCAS107 FINNELL RD NW 3510 3RD AVECLEVELAND, TN 373122302 CHATTANOOGA, TN 374072011STEVEN ANDRE COOPER ALEYAH ALEXIS POZAS829 CROSS ST 829 CROSS STROSSVILLE, GA 307417004 ROSSVILLE, GA 307417004SHERYL ELAINE VARNELL JASON JEFFERY DOSS7107 BRAMLETT LN 7107 BRAMLETT LNHARRISON, TN 373419629 HARRISON, TN 373419629ALAN EVERETT DOMER KIMBERLY LANDERS TAYLOR4100 FITEHAVEN DR 4100 FITEHAVEN DRCHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37415 CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee 37415
Missionary Ridge is Chattanooga's "diamond in the rough" that can spearhead a new era in our city's growth.



Way back on Nov. 25, 1863, soldiers under the leadership of General Ulysses S. Grant stormed Missionary Ridge and broke the back of the Confederacy. The Battle of Missionary Ridge demonstrated the superior forces of the industrialized North and gave their soldiers a chance to behold the beauty and opportunity that lies in the Tennessee River Valley.



The Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park was the first of four military parks established in the early 1890s that also included Shiloh, Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Is it too late to ask why 159 years after the Battle of Missionary Ridge is there no Visitors Center to tell the story of that fateful encounter?



Consider the beauty of the Tennessee State Flag representing the three regions of our great state. This symbol of three stars connected by a gold ring has never been associated with the controversy surrounding neighboring states whose flags have paid homage to the Confederate States of America. Now imagine the concept of a trinity superimposed over the Chattanooga region. By connecting a line between Chickamauga Battlefield, Lookout Mountain Point Park and Missionary Ridge, one creates a nearly perfect equilateral triangle.



Crest Road extends in a nearly perfect northern direction from the Iowa Reservation at the southern end of Missionary Ridge in Rossville, Georgia to Shermans Reservation at its northern terminus. This seven mile stretch provides views that surely inspired many settlers to move to Chattanooga and create one of Americas top ten industrial cities.



The push in the 1950s to complete Americas interstate highway system led inevitably to the Missionary Ridge Ridgecut. Owing to the brittle bauxite that makes up Missionary Ridge, it was necessary to remove a good quarter mile of the ridge near where Missionary Ridge Elementary School was once located.



Today atop Missionary Ridge there are six historic parks with monuments and markers that tell the story of that fateful day back in 1863. Yet for visitors seeking a deeper understanding of the Battle of Missionary Ridge - or even a public restroom, theres not much to be found.



Enter the flat landing that lies at the eastern foot of Missionary Ridge on the north side of Shallowford Road. Beginning in 1865, an elementary school for black Americans was established there that gave rise to a well-educated class of citizens that contributed to the success of the Dynamo of Dixie. As the prime real estate along Missionary Ridge was developed, a large community of black Americans grew up around the school and the 1st Colored Baptist Church of Missionary Ridge, established in 1874.



These two properties - the church and adjoining farm comprise 3.45 acres of scenic land with a large flat landing in the back created long ago by countless truckloads of dirt dumped for construction projects. Across the street on the south side of Shallowford Road lie six acres of undeveloped property that back onto the Ridgeside Pool and a number of houses along Ridgeside Road that predate the Shallowford Road improvement that extends west up to Missionary Ridge.



If one were to imagine a site for a Missionary Ridge Visitors Center, there could be no more ideal place than the lands that straddle Shallowford Road at the eastern foot of Missionary Ridge. While the heat of the battle did not take place there, Shallowford Road is nevertheless a veritable front door to Chattanooga from the airport that could use some improvements.



From Dalewood Middle School to Crest Road, Shallowford Road meanders two miles with one red light at the Tunnel Boulevard intersection. Presently there are no sidewalks on either side of this section of Shallowford Road that make for difficult conditions for any would-be cyclist or pedestrian.



It is my hope that interested parties in the community and at large will take interest in this project to uncover the diamond that is Missionary Ridge. Perhaps nowhere in the United States can one find so much history combined with spectacular views. Certainly, the battle that took place along the western side of Missionary Ridge resulted in a crushing defeat for the Confederacy and in turn moved our nation closer to abolishing the scourge of slavery.



In recent years, there have been countless developments in downtown Chattanooga. Meanwhile, the communities east of Missionary Ridge lie waiting for a wave of investment in an otherwise neglected part of Chattanooga. By drawing attention to the momentous event in 1863 that happened along the entire Missionary Ridge, Chattanoogans will gain a renewed sense of pride in their city. Visitors will also see that Chattanooga pays attention to its past while building toward a brighter tomorrow. It's not too late to commemorate Chattanooga's finest hour!



Bob Edwards






Out of 806 water samples recently collected at 27 Hamilton County Schools, 12 (1.4%) samples included lead at a concentration at or greater than the states limit of 20 ppb.

Officials said, "Each of these 12 water outlets were immediately removed from use, and remediation work and retesting will be performed as soon as possible. There are no concerns with the overall quality or safety of drinking water at any of the tested facilities.""

The 12 outlets are located at 11 facilities.

Summer 2022 Water Testing Summary School Variances

Alpine Crest Elementary None

Barger Elementary 1

Brainerd High 1

Central High l None

CSAS 1

CSLA None

Daisy Elementary None

Dalewood Middle 1

Dupont Elementary 2

Hamilton County High 1 (Harrison Bay Future Ready Center)

Hillcrest Elementary None

Hunter Middle None

Normal Park Lower 1 Normal Park Upper 1

North Hamilton County 1

Orchard Knob Middle None Red Bank High School 1

Rivermont Elementary None

Sale Creek Middle/High None

Sequoyah High 1

Soddy Daisy Middle None

Soddy Daisy High None

Snow Hill Elementary None

Thrasher Elementary None

Wallace Smith Elementary None

Woodmore Elementary None

Washington Alternative None

Hamilton County Schools is committed to providing a safe and healthy environment for our students and staff, said HCS Chief Operations Officer Dr. Robert Sharpe. As a part of that commitment, we have held ourselves to stricter water testing standards than those required by the state, and we have worked to be transparent about our test results to school families and our community. Todays release of our most recent test results is the latest step in that process.

Under Tennessee Code Annotated 49-2-133, local boards of education are required to periodically test for lead in drinking water sources.

Officials said, "To safeguard the health of our students and staff, HCS has conducted ongoing sampling, testing, and reporting for lead in drinking water across all its schools for the past two years. In terms of allowable lead limits and schools being tested, HCS has adopted guidelines that go beyond the laws requirements.

"According to state law, if a water sample tests at or above 20 parts per billion (ppb), the school shall immediately remove the drinking water source from service. Hamilton County Schools (HCS) has adopted a stricter standard of 15 ppb to immediately remove the drinking water source from service until corrective action can be taken.

"Additionally, HCS has sampled all schools, even though only buildings built prior to 1998 are required by state law. In 2020, we began testing water outlets at our schools for lead as part of a new regulation in Tennessee for schools built prior to 1998. During Summer 2020, samples were collected from over 2,000 different water outlets at 53 schools.

"During Summer 2021, over 1,000 additional samples were collected as part of a voluntary effort at schools built in 1998 or later. In 2022, we have retested all schools built prior to 1998 that were originally tested in 2020. Samples from 24 schools were collected over spring break and reported in May, and the remaining 27 pre-1998 schools were tested this summer to complete this round of testing."
Normally an elected official stays out of other candidates' races, especially when their name is also on the ballot. However, this election cycle, we, the undersigned Constitutional Officers of Hamilton County, wish to unite in support of one of our own. Bill Knowles is mentor to most of us, a mainstay at the Courthouse, a leader of innovation in County Clerks' offices statewide, ... (click for more)
Thomas Bertram Rollins, 74, of Cohutta, Georgia, passed away on Sunday, July 3, 2022. He died peacefully at his home.

Tommy was born on February 6, 1948, to WR and Josephine Rollins in Norton, Va. One of five children, Tommy was the second to youngest in a Methodist pastors family. He graduated from Abingdon High School and went to East Tennessee State University for his undergraduate degree in Education.

Tom taught high school biology at Tyner High School in Chattanooga. After marrying Joan Bennett, on August 22, 1972, he continued his education at Mercer University School of Pharmacy in Atlanta. While in pharmacy school, Tom and Joan had their first daughter, Kathryn Leigh Rollins Grady. Four and a half years later, they welcomed their second daughter, Lara Michelle Rollins.

Tom was a pharmacist for many years. He worked at pharmacies including Eckerd Drugs, Walgreens, and K-Mart. After retirement, he did part-time work at ValuRite drugs in Dalton, Ga. He loved pharmacy and had many stories that he shared to anyone who would listen. Tom was also an avid nature watcher. He could name any tree, flower, or bird out there. He loved living on his property that was surrounded by nature.

He is preceded in death by his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister.

He is survived by his wife, Joan Bennett Rollins, his daughters, Leigh Grady (Jeff) and Lara (Justin Oster), and his two amazing grandchildren, Blake and Emma Grady. He is also survived by his youngest brother, Joe Rollins, as well as many nieces and nephews.

A visitation will be held at Heritage Funeral Home, 7454 East Brainerd Road, Chattanooga, Tn. on Thursday, July 7, from 4-6 p.m.

Immediately following visitation, a service officiated by Reverend Amy Rollins Probst (Tommys niece) will be held at 6:00 PM in the funeral home chapel.

Memorial donations in honor of Thomas Rollins may be made to St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital, www.st.jude.org.

You may share condolences to the family and view the service livestream at www.heritagechattanooga.com



Arrangements are entrusted to Heritage Funeral Home, E. Brainerd Chapel.
If the Amber Heard vs. Johnny Depp trial was about finding a winner and a loser, then youd have to say Depp won while Heard lost the verdict. Though Heard has to pay Depp $10.35 million instead of $15 million in damages, which is a small win for the Aquaman actor, a jury ultimately sided with Depp. Now, Heard wants the verdict in her trial against Depp overturned, but there are three reasons its unlikely to happen.

Amber Heard leaves the courthouse at the end of her trial against Johnny Depp | Win McNamee/Getty Images

A jury decided the verdict in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial

The Depp vs. Heard verdict happened pretty quickly once the jury deliberated. The seven-member group believed that Depps legal team answered the questions necessary to prove defamation against the Pirates of the Caribbean star.

Heards 2018 op-ed stated she was a public face of domestic abuse. Though not named, Depp felt the piece implied he was the abuser. He possibly lost out on millions of dollars when Disney dropped him from the sixth Pirates movie after the op-ed, and he sued Heard for defamation and sought $50 million in damages.

We know the jury awarded Depp $15 million. The judge reduced it to $10.35 million because of Virginia law, but Heard wants the verdict to be dismissed. She and her lawyers claim it was not supported by the evidence and that one juror was not properly vetted, as CBS reports.

However, it seems Heard might not have the verdict overturned.

RELATED: Amber Heard Thinks Her Trial Jury Was Influenced by Johnny Depp, His Employees, and Randos

Three reasons Heard wont have the verdict in her trial against Depp thrown out

In an exclusive interview with @savannahguthrie, Amber Heard's attorney says Heard was "demonized" by Johnny Depp's team. pic.twitter.com/WIGo9aKJQD  TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 2, 2022

Heard and her legal team planned to take some sort of post-trial action all along, and now we know what it is. The Three Days to Kill star wants the judge to throw out the verdict against her, but thats unlikely to happen.

Heards lawyers motioned for the case to be dismissed before the trial began, as the Los Angeles Times reported, but the judge denied the request. It seems unlikely to happen now. One section of the Virginia Commonwealth Code states a judge will not instruct a jury in any way that might influence a verdict based on the evidence. Heards motion to toss the case before the trial failed. The judge felt the evidence presented by both sides was fit for the jury to hear from the start. A jury is a statement from a community of peers. That group spent weeks going through the selection process, hearing evidence on both sides, and reaching a verdict. A judge isnt likely to rush to dismiss that decision on a whim. Heards legal team will have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the trial evidence was insufficient and one juror not vetted properly.

The verdict in the Heard vs. Depp trial didnt go her way, and if shes serious about appealing, it seems a dismissal wont go her way, either.

RELATED: Amber Heard Used a Bad Legal Analogy Says 1 Popular Commentator

Depps next movie; is Heard blacklisted in Hollywood?

Jeanne Du Barry  Johnny Depps New Movie Will Be On Sale At The Cannes Market, Actor Will Play French King Louis XV, opposite actress & filmmaker Maiwenn who will also direct. Louis Garrel, Pierre Richard & Noemie Lvovsky are also set to star https://t.co/lDgAqyt7bw pic.twitter.com/mgJSgtdMHY  George Roussos (@baphometx) May 4, 2022

Depps first movie after the trial is the planned French film Jeanne du Barry, which sees him star as King Louis XV, according to his IMDb profile. It tells the story of a peasant who rises to become a mistress of the French king.

The movie also stars Maiwenn (the Diva in The Fifth Element) in the title role, Louis Garrel, Pierre Richard, and Noemie Lvovsky. Maiwenn directs, and Why Not Productions is financing. The small cast and sparse information arent accidents. The movie is still in pre-production with no release date in sight, but Why Not is still trying to get it made.

Meanwhile, any rumors of Heard being canceled seem to be just that  rumors. An executive at DC films said she was almost recast in Aquaman 2 because of the trial, but her IMDb page lists the 2023 film among her movies. In the Fire, which finished filming before the 2022 trial, is another upcoming Heard project. Heard has no other projects on the horizon, per IMDb, but her former manager predicts shell focus on original projects as she takes her career in a new direction, per The Mirror.

RELATED: Amber Heard Spokesperson Blasts Johnny Depp for Skipping Trial Verdict
The top part of the graphic shows onshore methanol production. The bottom part shows how hydrogen for the engine is obtained from methanol in the reactor (blue arrow). The remaining carbon dioxide is stored in the tank and reused in onshore methanol production.

Shipping is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gases, and this is leading shipbuilders and operators on a search for environmentally friendly alternative propulsion systems. Researchers at Fraunhofer have joined forces with partners to develop the HyMethShip concept, in which hydrogen is obtained from methanol. This technology does not require large hydrogen tanks to be carried on board, making it much safer. In the future, it may also prove to be an attractive solution for cruise liners.

According to the European Environment Agency, maritime transport is responsible for over three percent of the total carbon emissions in the European Union. In 2019 alone, emissions reached 144 million tonnes of CO2. This may not sound like very much, but shipping has been one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions for many years now due to the sharp rise in the trade volume. As a result, shipbuilders and operators around the world are on the hunt for environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional ship engines powered by fuel oil or diesel. In this context, the focus is increasingly shifting toward green hydrogen as a clean energy source. However, carrying large, heavy special-purpose tanks containing pressurized hydrogen on the open seas always involves a certain amount of risk.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS have worked with partners to develop a technology that uses hydrogen as a zero-emission propulsion concept and avoids these disadvantages. The EU-funded HyMethShip project uses methanol as a liquid hydrogen carrier. In this concept, the ship is refueled with methanol at port. On board, hydrogen is obtained from the methanol through a steam reforming process and is used for ship propulsion. That way, we kill two birds with one stone: The ship has a virtually zero-emission propulsion system and there is no need for a large and potentially dangerous hydrogen tank, explains Dr. Benjamin Jager from the Catalysis and Materials Synthesis group at Fraunhofer IKTS.

Fill up with methanol, burn hydrogen

The systems technical centerpiece is the reactor. The methanol is mixed with water, then evaporated by applying heat and fed into the preheated reactor, where the mix of methanol and water is converted into hydrogen and CO2. When it comes to hydrogen separation and reactor engineering, Fraunhofer IKTS is able to contribute its many years of experience in membrane process technology. The researchers at Fraunhofer developed a ceramic membrane coated with carbon. The hydrogen molecules escape through the extremely fine pores of the membrane, while the larger carbon dioxide gas molecules are retained. In this process, the hydrogen achieves a purity level of more than 90 percent. It is then fed into the engine, which it drives by burning in a conventional combustion engine  and generates absolutely no exhaust gases that are harmful to the climate.

The process concept used in the project includes two additional ingenious design elements that optimize the system. Firstly, the waste heat from the engine is used to heat the reactor, significantly increasing the efficiency of the system. Secondly, the remaining carbon dioxide is returned to a fluid state downstream of the reactor and fed into the empty methanol tanks. When the ship arrives at port, the CO2 is fed into tanks and can then be used for the next methanol synthesis process.

Methanol is an ideal hydrogen carrier for shipping. Its energy density is twice as high as liquid hydrogen, so the on-board methanol tanks only need to be half the size. It can also be transported safely: Even if a tank leaks, there is no acute environmental risk, says Dr. Benjamin Jager, IKTS expert in this area.

During development, one of the technical challenges was enlarging the ceramic membranes so that they could be used in the context of the propulsion required for ship engines. The researchers managed to scale the membrane from its original length of just 105 mm to 500 mm, enabling engine propulsion of up to 1 MW. The medium-term goal is to develop propulsion systems of 20 MW and above.

Environmentally friendly trips on ferries and cruise ships

A zero-emission propulsion system would be ideal for ferries that sail fixed routes between two ports, with each port having its own methanol filling station. However, the technology may also be an appealing future solution for container ships and cruise ships. Environmentally conscious passengers would be attracted to green cruises with zero greenhouse gas emissions and no large funnels releasing soot from the fuel oil combustion process into the air.

In the EU-funded HyMethShip project, Fraunhofer IKTS worked with a number of partners. The Large Engines Competence Center (LEC) in Graz, Austria, was responsible for the overall coordination of the project, while the startup SES-HyDepot e.U. in Innsbruck operated the small-scale testing facility to validate the underlying technical process. Christian Mair, CEO of SES-HyDepot, is optimistic: Testing has shown that it is possible to provide hydrogen on a methanol basis. It offers prospects in the medium term for ships and their significant power requirements.

The industry is beginning to come under increasing political pressure in the context of the energy transition and the European Green Deal. In 2020, the European Parliament called on shipping companies to reduce their emissions significantly. With its zero-emission hydrogen propulsion system, the HyMethShip project could make an important contribution in this regard. There are potential applications in other industries too. The principle of generating hydrogen from methanol can also be applied in a range of scenarios in the chemical industry.
Crewe shortlisted for Great British Railways headquarters

5 July 2022

Crewe has been shortlisted as one of six locations bidding to become the home of Great British Railways.

In March, Cheshire East Council and its partners submitted a strong and ambitious expression of interest for Crewe to become the headquarters for the new public body, which will be in charge of railways across the country.

Today the government announced that Crewe has been shortlisted, out of 42 possible locations, alongside Birmingham, Derby, Doncaster, Newcastle and York.

Bringing GBR to Crewe will offer a range of levelling up opportunities to the town and help its rail sector to further thrive.

The headquarters would also benefit many surrounding areas due to Crewes strong connectivity with rest of the country.

Now the public get to help decide in a public vote, on where the GBR HQ should be located before a final decision is made in summer 2022.

People can vote now.

Councillor Sam Corcoran, leader of Cheshire East Council, said: We are absolutely thrilled that Crewe has been shortlisted as one of the locations being seriously considered as the new home for GBR.

We strongly believe that Crewe is the right and logical choice. Crewe is a rail town through and through, at the heart of the rail network. Crewe has a strong rail heritage and is one of the most connected interchanges in the country, connecting the nation and serving as a gateway for the North.

Cllr Craig Browne, deputy leader of Cheshire East Council and chair of its highways and transport committee, added: GBR will hugely benefit Crewe  and the wider borough. We believe bringing it here opens up a range of opportunities that will benefit our residents, businesses, and communities, and our strong rail industry means we have a skilled workforce that is right for GBR.

We now look forward to the public vote and encourage people from Crewe, Cheshire, our neighbours and beyond to back Crewe for GBR.

Dr Kieran Mullan, MP for Crewe and Nantwich, said: Following the submission of Crewes fantastic bid, Im delighted we have now been shortlisted. We are now up against five other locations as the potential home of GBR.

I can honestly say there are few places in the country that are more closely linked with the railway than Crewe and bringing the headquarters here will continue this proud tradition.

We now need the public and communitys support in backing Crewes bid for GBR, not only will this bring levelling up opportunities to the town, but it will also bring jobs and an opportunity for our rail industry to continue to thrive.

Now we all need to come together to show our support for Crewes bid and vote yes to Crewe becoming the location for the new GBR headquarters.

Cllr Jill Rhodes, leader of Crewe Town Council, said, Being the home of Great British Railways would be a fantastic boost to Crewe and the surrounding area.

Crewe has everything needed and Cheshire East Council put in a very strong technical bid. We need everyone to pull together to raise the profile of Crewe and win the public vote.

Clare Hayward MBE, DL, Chair of Cheshire and Warrington LEP, said: Securing Crewe as the home for GBR will accelerate the rail-led transformation of the town even further and stimulate further growth, innovation and opportunity across the town and the region which will have a positive impact on everyone across the community.

Locating the GBR HQ in Crewe would provide a real boost of confidence in the town and would encourage further private sector investment and help provide skilled jobs for the future. We believe that Crewe is the right home for GBR HQ because Crewe is the heart of rail.

I encourage every business across Cheshire and Warrington to get behind Crewe, show your support to Crewes bid and vote in the public vote.

A dedicated website launched in early April to show all that Crewe has to offer and give the public the chance to pledge their support and get behind the campaign.

The public vote is now open and you can show your support by visiting the website and voting for Crewe. The vote is open for six weeks until August 15.
Tunisia starts loan negotiations with IMF

Xinhua) 10:03, July 05, 2022

TUNIS, July 4 (Xinhua) -- Tunisian Minister of Economy and Planning Samir Saied announced the start of negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over a loan program, the private radio station Shems FM reported Monday.

"These negotiations, which will continue in a first phase for a period of two weeks, try to find the support to strengthen, develop and address the problems of the Tunisian economy," Saied told Shems FM.

The minister stressed that this financial support would enable Tunisia to regain the confidence of international donors.

Tunisia is seeking a multi-billion-U.S. dollar loan from the IMF to avoid bankruptcy. To this end, the North African country is required to implement deep reforms including freezing wages, cutting energy and food subsidies and privatizing some state companies.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
Judge stops Idaho university from punishing Christian students for opposing gay marriage

A judge issued a temporary block to a university policy that censored three Christian students who had expressed opposition to same-sex marriage on religious grounds.

Students Peter Perlot, Mark Miller and Ryan Alexander sued the University of Idaho over a policy in which they were barred from talking with a student about their views on same-sex marriage.

The three belong to the University of Idaho chapter of the Christian Legal Society, which holds traditional views on the definition of marriage and sexual ethics.

In an order released last week, Chief U.S. District Judge David C. Nye issued a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of the universitys policies against the plaintiffs.

Nye noted that university officials targeted the plaintiffs over their specific religious views, namely their opposition to same-sex marriage.

Defendants orders targeted the viewpoint of Plaintiffs speech. Both students and professors expressed opposing viewpoints to the views expressed by Plaintiffs without any type of intervention, let alone punishment, wrote Nye.

The disparity in Defendants approach is what bothers the Court most about this case and leans towards a finding that Defendants actions were designed to repress specific speech.

Nye added that the Court agrees Plaintiffs have a high likelihood of showing Defendants violated the First Amendment by issuing the no-contact orders based on the content and viewpoint of their speech.

Some may disagree with Plaintiffs religious beliefs. Such is each persons prerogative and right. But none should disagree that Plaintiffs have a right to express their religious beliefs without fear of retribution. The Constitution makes that clear, he added.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a law firm helping to represent the three plaintiffs, released a press release Friday celebrating the injunction order.

Peter, Mark, and Ryan are guaranteed the freedom under the First Amendment to discuss their faith on campus, just like every other student and faculty member, said ADF Legal Counsel Mathew Hoffmann, as quoted in the press release.

Were pleased they are again free to exercise their constitutionally protected freedoms without fear of punishment, and we look forward to a final resolution of this case in their favor and, ultimately, in favor of free speech for everyone.

In late April, the three students sued university officials after they were given no-contact orders from the schools Office of Civil Rights & Investigations.

According to the lawsuit, the students attended an LGBT event on campus with the intention of representing a biblical perspective on marriage and sexual ethics.

When a student asked them about their views, they offered their perspectives and gave the unnamed student a note expressing an interest in continuing the dialogue.

Instead of the conversation continuing, the three students were given no-contact orders, which barred them from further communication with the student that they had dialogued with.

The CLS members did not receive notice that anyone had complained about them and were not given an opportunity to review the allegations against them or defend themselves, stated the suit.

Instead of allowing the students to disagree civilly and respectfully with one another and to discuss these important issues, the University chose instead to censor Plaintiffs.

In an earlier statemen to The Christian Post, university spokesperson Jodi Walker explained that the no-contact order was a supportive measure available to a student under Title IX and that these supportive measures must be enacted when a student requests them.

When a complaint is made that qualifies under Title IX, the university must make the student aware of the supportive measures available, said Walker at the time.
Shooting at 4th of July parade leaves at least 6 dead, 24 seriously injured Police identify 21-year-old suspect

Correction Appended

UPDATED at 7:55 p.m. ET:

Police have arrested 21-year-old Robert "Bobby" E. Crimo III as a "person of interest" in a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois. Crimo was apprehended in Lake Forest after an attempted traffic stop led to a brief chase. He was taken into custody and transported to the Highland Park Police Department.

Authorities are continuing their investigation and said Crimo is considered a "person of interest" and won't be named as a suspect until they can positively connect him to the scene.

At a press briefing just after 5:30 p.m. Eastern time, officials identified Crimo, who's from the Chicago area, as the suspected shooter and said he was driving a 2010 silver Honda Fit with the Illinois license plate DM-80653.

City officials also spoke at a press briefing at 3:30 p.m. local time, where Jennifer Banek provided an update on the coroner's investigation and confirmed that five of the shooting victims who died at the scene were adults. The age of the spectator who was pronounced dead at an area hospital was not released.

Fire Chief Joe Schrage said the fire department transported 23 victims to area hospitals. One of the victims transported by the fire department was a "critically injured" child.

Injuries "were gunshot wounds, and that varied from [the] abdomen to limbs," Schrage said. "The crews were on scene very quickly. There were bystanders as well who rendered aid ... they were quick to tie tourniquets and do bleeding control which definitely assisted the fire department on scene."

Other injured spectators drove themselves to area hospitals for treatment or were transported by other parade attendees.

Highland Park Police Commander Chris ONeill asked residents with any information about the suspect or photos and video footage from the scene to call investigators at 1-800-CALL-FBI.

Original report:

At least six people were killed in a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, and as many as 24 other spectators who sustained serious and critical injuries are being treated at area hospitals.

The city of Highland Park is now on lockdown after law enforcement agencies ordered residents and workers at nearby businesses to shelter in place as swat teams go door-to-door to search for the suspect who might be armed.

At a press conference, Highland Park Police Commander Chris ONeill, the incident commander on scene, said the suspect is believed to be a white man, who is approximately 18- to 20-years-old, with long black hair, a small build and wearing a white or blue T-shirt.

Police believe the suspect carried out the mass shooting from a rooftop where they recovered a high-powered rifle.

At a subsequent press conference at 2 p.m. local time, Chris Covelli with the Lake County Sheriff's Office confirmed that "firearm evidence was located on a rooftop of a nearby business that was secured."

Covelli said more than 100 law enforcement officers were called to the parade scene or dispatched to find the suspected shooter. Investigators are also scouring social media to find clues as to why the suspect committed the mass shooting. He said it appears that the shooter targeted spectators at random.

He added that the information is preliminary, but it's believed five people died at the scene and one victim was pronounced dead at an area hospital. The wounded were transported to various hospitals in Lake and Cook Counties where their injuries are being treated.

Covelli added that the parade was "three-quarters of the way through" when the suspect began shooting. "Very random, very intentional, and a very sad day."

There are reportedly multiple fatalities following a shooting at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois.



Warning: Gunshots heard in below video.pic.twitter.com/F0BrsEXIS8  Alex Salvi (@alexsalvinews) July 4, 2022

Multiple agencies are working with local authorities and state police on the investigation. Highland Park police are leading the initial investigation and the Lake County Major Crime Task Force is working in conjunction with the FBI to process the scene.

State police have asked anyone with photos or video footage from the parade to share it with the Highland Park Police Department, particularly footage near 2nd Street and Central Avenue. Police are also asking local businesses in the area to share their security footage.

"As far as the investigative aspect goes, and this is two-pronged at this time, number one, we are aggressively looking for the individual who is responsible for this shooting," Covelli said. "Number two, we have a criminal investigation that is occurring simultaneously. We are asking anybody with any video surveillance that they may have, please review your cell phones if you were snapping pictures ... that could help investigators."

Mayor Nancy Rotering spoke at the first news conference Monday afternoon, expressing her grief that around 10:14 a.m. local time, "our community was terrorized by an act of violence that has shaken us to our core."

"Our hearts go out to the families of the victims at this devastating time. On a day that we came together to celebrate community and freedom, we are instead mourning the tragic loss of life and struggling with the terror that was brought upon us," she added.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

--

Correction: An earlier version of this article misidentified Robert E. Crimo III's age as 22 based on initial reports. He is 21.
Its a great day to be black in America

Why are woke white people always trying to convince blacks and other minorities that the American system is rigged against us and forces driven by white privilege will never let us excel?

In a recent commencement address, Carol Strohecker, dean of the University of Minnesotas College of Design, perpetuated that narrative by saying anti-black racism killed Minnesotans like George Floyd and Amir Locke and countless other black Americans across our nation.

Strohecker is another liberal in the woke mob, trying to convince black people, like me, that America is racist, and we are oppressed.

No matter how hard white liberals try to convince me I am a victim, Im not buying it.

Its a great day to be black in America.

Black Americans and other people of color have more opportunities than ever before in the history of our country.

Contrary to what we hear, I am less likely to be prosecuted for crime. My kids can get into college with about 200 fewer points on their SAT than their white counterparts and 500 fewer points than Asians. In some schools, black students are graded on a race curve. The race curve exempts black students from penalty if assignments are late, they misbehave, or skip class.

A survey by Intelligent.com found that 34% of white students applying to college lied on their applications claiming minority status to either improve their chances of acceptance or to get minority-designated financial aid. Theres a reason Elizabeth Warren wants to be Native American.

With the media and white liberals constantly trying to convince me America is racist at its core, how can I audaciously claim its a great day to be black in America?

Heres why: I was raised by a black man who was born in the Jim Crow South. He never used race as an excuse not to excel in academics, work ethic, or job performance. He grew up drinking out of colored water fountains and using colored restrooms. He was forced to sit in the back of the bus or not sit at all if seats were unavailable in the colored section  even if there were empty seats in the white section. He was in one of the last all-black Buffalo Soldier units before President Truman desegregated the Army in 1948. He wouldve loved to have grown up in the America I grew up in.

Let me say right up front: Im not denying our past or saying racism doesnt exist in our country today.

But to say the American systems are rigged against blacks, all white people are racist, or the promise of America is a lie or was only intended for a select few is at first glance an exaggeration and upon closer examination a complete deception.

Americas not perfect by any means. Show me a country that is. But when she sees wrongs, she rights them. No other country has gone to war to free its slaves.

Black people are being duped and well-meaning, well-intentioned white people are perpetuating a victimhood narrative in the black community.

We live in the least racist time in our countrys history but are more racially divided than ever before.

Why do I say its a great day to be black in America while others weave tales of systemically-racist woes?

The progressive-promoted narrative works.

Progressives focus on the tragedy of slavery instead of the triumphs of the present day. The media highlight a history of oppression and continually point to race as the reason for economic, social and education disparities between blacks and whites.

Race works.

Blaming the problems in the black community on anything other than race might call attention to failed policies or politicians who have gotten wealthy at the expense of those they serve. Black Americans might start reconsidering detrimental behaviors, starting with fatherless homes.

If we shift the focus from race, we are in danger of black communities placing an emphasis on rebuilding institutions like churches, families, and schools that provide a safety net for our children and place a priority on getting fathers back in the homes.

Black people might realize the devastation caused by the introduction of social welfare programs to our communities in the 1960s. They might uncover the statistics highlighting the decline of two-parent families in the black community and understand that almost 80% of our children today are born into fatherless homes.

If we stop believing all disparities are due to racism, people might weigh choices instead of believing group dynamics are inescapable as we are taught by CRT. If we reinforce marriage, little black girls might believe they are valued and invert the unwed birthrate from 80% to less than 20%.

Black Americans might realize that true African Americans  Nigerians, Liberians  immigrate to America because they see opportunity, not oppression. Nigerian immigrants have a higher average household income than white Americans.

If we take the focus off race, black people might be able to comprehend why I say its a great day to be black in America.

Our issues can only be solved by the hands and hearts of our people. Are the disparities because of race or choices? One we can change; the other we cannot.

Despite the constant drone of racism, Id rather be black in America today than at any other time in history.

This article first appeared in Alpha News.
Just over half of US pastors plan to honor America in Fourth of July weekend services Survey sees slight drop from 2016

Fewer pastors say they will incorporate patriotic displays and messages into their Sunday services this Fourth of July weekend, but overall a slight majority still plan on honoring both God and America at church.

A Lifeway Research study found just over half (56%) of Protestant pastors support showing patriotism at church during Independence Day weekend. Of those, 27% strongly support such displays.

Roughly two in five pastors (42%) disagree, and a small fraction  2%  say they arent sure.

That marks a slight decline from a similar study conducted by Lifeway Research in 2016, which found 61% of pastors supported using patriotic displays in their worship services.

The study, released June 28, surveyed 1,000 U.S. Protestant pastors in September 2021. Each interview was completed by the senior or sole pastor or minister at a church, and responses were weighted by region and church size to more accurately reflect the population.

Pastors with graduate degrees were less likely to use patriotic elements in their services compared with pastors who either had no degree (70%) or a bachelors degree (67%)

Denominational pastors, meanwhile, were also less likely (48%) to incorporate patriotism into their worship services compared with 64% of Evangelical pastors, according to the survey.

Among the denominations, Pentecostal (77%) and nondenominational (70%) churches were more likely to display some form of patriotism in their Sunday services, compared with Methodist (52%), Lutheran (48%), and Presbyterian/Reformed (44%).

But the younger pastors aged 18-44 were the most likely (65%) to avoid the use of patriotic additions to their worship services.

When it comes to how churches honor America, there is far greater diversity in pastors responses, with a majority (58%) taking the time to recognize all who served in the U.S. military or families who have lost a loved one in service (54%).

About 30% say they use other means to show their patriotism.

While not a date on the Christian calendar, most Protestant churches adjust their worship services to acknowledge the birth of the United States each July, said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. For most churches, it isnt just tradition. The majority of pastors agree its important to incorporate it into the worship experience.

In addition to the Fourth of July weekend, roughly 67% of all Protestant pastors in the U.S. support displaying the American flag in their churches year-round, while another 28% disagree.

Five percent of all pastors arent sure whether they support flying the American flag year-round.

Similar to the slight drop in pastors planning to incorporate patriotism into their church services, the overall number of pastors supporting year-round flag displays dropped about 7% from Lifeways 2016 study.

Some denominations offer specific guidance regarding displaying the American flag, but most congregations decide on their own whether its present, McConnell said. Because a national flag is a symbol, it often means many different things to different people. So discussions around the reason for its presence in many churches can be just as diverse.
This week in Christian history: God of Our Fathers, Georg Schmidt arrives in Africa

Throughout the extensive history of the Church, there have been numerous events of lasting significance.

Each week brings anniversaries of impressive milestones, unforgettable tragedies, amazing triumphs, memorable births and notable deaths.

Some of the events drawn from over 2,000 years of history might be familiar, while other happenings might be previously unknown by most people.

The following pages highlight anniversaries of memorable events that occurred this week in Christian history. They include the first performance of the hymn God of Our Fathers, Georg Schmidt arriving in South Africa, and Jonathan Edwards preaching a famous sermon.

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Patricia Heaton hires armed security for crisis pregnancy center, slams Elizabeth Warren

Hollywood actress and staunch pro-life advocate Patricia Heaton took to social media with choice words for U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren after her crisis pregnancy center had to hire armed security amid a rise in attacks targeting similar facilities across the country.

"Our medical pregnancy clinic serves client families for five years, providing superior services for anyone who asks. We raised $250K for a mobile medical clinic for underserved areas, treating everyone," Heaton informed her Twitter followers on Wednesday in response to a tweet from Warren.

Following the Supreme Court's overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling making abortion a national right last Friday, Sen. Warren took to social media Monday to criticize crisis pregnancy centers.

Crisis pregnancy centers provide support for women seeking to give birth instead of abortion, many of which employ trained medical professionals and offer medical services.

The Democrat from Massachusetts claims that these centers "mislead and deceive patients seeking abortion care." Warren stressed the need to "crack down" on these centers and praised her bill that "would stop these harmful practices."

"With Roe gone, it's more important than ever to crack down on so-called 'crisis pregnancy centers' that mislead and deceive patients seeking abortion care," Warren tweeted. "My bill with @SenatorMenendez would stop these harmful practices."

Heaton addressed Warren's claims, suggesting such rhetoric has made pregnancy centers like hers less safe. In recent months as it appeared the Supreme Court was primed to overturn Roe, several pro-life pregnancy centers nationwide have been victimized by vandalism and firebombings. Those attacks have continued after last week's ruling.

"Because of people like @SenWarren we now have to hire armed security," the "Everybody Loves Raymond" actress tweeted.

Our medical pregnancy clinic serves client families for five years, providing superior services for anyone who asks. We raised 0K for a mobile medical clinic for underserved areas, treating everyone. Because of people like @SenWarren we now have to hire armed security. https://t.co/1cKPoeEU1I  Patricia Heaton (@PatriciaHeaton) June 29, 2022

Warren's June 27 Tweet linked to a Time article claiming that crisis pregnancy centers are using data against women as "weapons."

Many vandals targeting pro-life pregnancy centers have spraypainted graffiti reading "If abortion ain't safe you ain't safe" and "Fake Clinic." The group "Jane's Revenge" has claimed responsibility for many of the acts and declared "open season" on pro-lifers.

An early Saturday morning fire at a north-central Colorado Christian pregnancy center is being investigated as arson, according to Longmont Police. The building sustained heavy damage and also had the aforementioned threat spraypainted on the outside walls.

Abortion extremists have been encouraged to use a map of pro-life pregnancy centers compiled by two University of Georgia professors in 2018 to find the nearest facility in their area.

Heaton's post drew criticism from some on Twitter who told the actress that she should get off her "high horse and face reality."

"If you don't provide abortion care to women who need it, you're not providing health care," someone named Susie told Heaton.

Heaton replied and called out Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider.

"Hello Susie  PP provides no pre or postnatal care for women  do you demand the same of them? Should they provide free ultrasounds, diapers, medical care for pregnant women who want to keep their babies?" she asked.

The actress told another detractor: "No one has ever died from visiting a pregnancy clinic."

Heaton has not held back her pro-life stance in public.

In a past interview with The Blaze, the devout Catholic explained her stance.

"I find it impossible to subscribe to a philosophy that believes that the destruction of human life is a legitimate solution to a problem that is mostly social, economic and psychological," she declared.

"In reality, most women' choose' abortion because they believe they have no other choice," Heaton added. "Women who experience unplanned pregnancy also deserve unplanned joy."
Billy Graham Rapid Response Team deploys chaplains to Kentucky after fatal shooting

The Billy Graham Rapid Response Team has sent chaplains to bring Christs comfort to the grieving community in Allen, Kentucky, where a shootout killed two law enforcement officers and injured five others.

A Billy Graham chaplain arrived in Allen on Friday, the day after the shootout at a house on Main Street where a K-9 police dog was also killed, said the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, headed by evangelist Franklin Graham, in a statement.

With additional law enforcement chaplains, the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team is setting up a Mobile Ministry Center to provide a private setting for counsel and prayer, it added.

Law enforcement in Floyd County has suffered a tragic loss. Our hearts are heavy to hear about this mass shooting in Allen, Kentucky, said Josh Holland, Billy Graham Rapid Response Teams international director. We are sending our crisis-trained chaplains to comfort people, listen and grieve with them, pray with them and share Gods love with those who have been impacted by this horrific tragedy.

In the shootout, Floyd County Deputy William Petry, Prestonsburg Police Captain Ralph Frasure and Floyd County K-9 Unit Drago were killed.

The three officers who were injured include Constable Gary Wolfe, Floyd County Deputy Darrin Lawson and Floyd County Emergency Management Director Joe Reynolds. Several other officers had to receive treatment for glass, shrapnel and other injuries.

Floyd County Sheriff John Hunt said the responding officers encountered pure hell when they arrived on the scene Thursday night.

This is a tough morning for our commonwealth, Gov. Andy Beshear said in a social media post Friday morning. Floyd County and our brave first responders suffered a tragic loss last night.

The suspect, 49-year-old Lance Storz, who was in a house situated on a hill and carrying a high-power rifle, fired at the officers who had come to serve an emergency protection order against him, Judge-Executive Robby Williams said at a press conference Sunday afternoon, according to WOWK.

Upon arrival, these officers did not know they were walking into a tactical ambush and that the shooter had an unabated field of fire of well over 200 yards, Williams was quoted as saying. The officers performed valiantly and did everything in their power to neutralize the suspect.

A woman had called Floyd County Sheriff John Hunts office Thursday afternoon saying she received a text message from the suspects wife who had allegedly been held hostage along with her child and abused by her husband, the sheriff was quoted as saying.

After deputies took the mother and the child to a safe location to interview them while the suspect was asleep in the house, they sought to arrest the suspect which led to the shootout.

Nobody in this world could ever imagine, that you could just walk to a coward behind a door, hiding, waiting on four people to give them no chance, no nothing, and just open the door and open up on them, Hunt said.

Neighbors reported hiding in their homes as the gunfire echoed through the small town, and those at the scene described the incident as war-like, with a barrage of bullets creating chaos, the BGEA noted.
July Fourth shooter planned attack 'for several weeks,' dressed in women's clothes to escape: police

The man believed to have killed six people and wounded dozens more at an Independence Day celebration near Chicago planned the attack weeks in advance and dressed in women's clothing to help him escape, according to authorities.

Police apprehended 21-year-old Robert "Bobby" Crimo III on Monday evening, hours after the attack, and suspect that he was solely responsible for the mass shooting at a July Fourth celebration in Highland Park, Illinois, which killed six people and injured more than 30.

At a press conference Tuesday, Sgt. Christopher Covelli of the Lake County Major Crime Task Force said the alleged shooter "pre-planned this attack for several weeks."

"He brought a high-powered rifle to this parade. He accessed the roof of a business via a fire-escape ladder and began opening fire on the innocent Independence Day celebration goers," Covelli said.

Covelli noted that the alleged shooter "was dressed in women's clothing" to "conceal his facial tattoos and his identity" and to help him blend into the crowd.

The rifle Crimo allegedly used was legally purchased in Illinois, according to Covelli, with him firing over 70 rounds of ammunition into the crowd at the parade.

"Following the attack, Crimo exited the roof, he dropped his rifle, and he blended in with the crowd and he escaped," Covelli continued. "He walked to his mother's home, who lived in the area."

Crimo, who is said to have borrowed his mother's car, was spotted on the highway by a member of the community. A Chicago police officer stopped him and took him into custody.

A second rifle was found in the escape vehicle, with authorities believing the alleged shooter had also purchased that weapon. A motive has yet to be determined.

Multiple law enforcement agencies worked on the case, including local authorities, state police, the Lake County Major Crime Task Force and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said at a press conference Monday that "our community was terrorized by an act of violence that has shaken us to our core."

"Our hearts go out to the families of the victims at this devastating time. On a day that we came together to celebrate community and freedom, we are instead mourning the tragic loss of life and struggling with the terror that was brought upon us," Rotering said.

Thus far, two of the six fatalities have been identified: Nicolas Toledo, a retired grandfather in his 70s, and Jacki Sundheim, a longtime member of North Shore Congregation Israel.

The Highland Park shooting was just one of several other shootings in Chicago over the weekend. Chicago Police say that at least 71 people were shot over the July Fourth weekend, and eight were killed.

ABC7 reports that 19 people were killed and over 100 wounded during the Fourth of July weekend in 2021.
77 Christians rescued from Nigerian church basement waiting months for Jesus Christs return

Police in Nigeria rescued at least 77 people, including 23 children, who pastors had asked to stay in a church basement and wait for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

Pastors of the Whole Bible Believer Church in Valentino Area of Ondo town in the south-western state of Ondo had encouraged church members "to stay behind" and wait for the rapture or to be taken to Heaven at the Second Coming of Christ, a spokeswoman of Ondo State Police told media.

Some people had been kept in the church since last year, residents told The Associated Press.

Police learned about the incident after parents of some children filed nuisance complaints. One woman said the church had possibly kidnaped her daughters as she was not allowed to register for her exams.

"Preliminary investigation revealed that one Pastor Josiah Peter Asumosa, an assistant pastor in the church, was the one who told the members that Rapture will take place in April, but later said it has been changed to September 2022 and told the young members to obey only their parents in the Lord," BBC quoted police press officer Funmilayo Odunlami as saying.

Police have arrested the church's pastor, David Anifowoshe, along with his deputy, BBC reported. The victims were handed over to the care of the authorities.

Odunlami said the pastors had denied the allegations of kidnapping, according to Voice of America News.

"The pastors still claim that they were having a seven-day program," Odunlami said. "The one who claimed that Jesus was to come by September said it was what God told him. But, we want to ask more questions from the parents that are around. We want to, first of all, get this information clear from the parents."

Odunlami said the state's Criminal Investigation Department has taken over the case and will update the public.

The incident comes at a time when Christians in Ondo state are still recovering from a June 5 attack at the end of Mass at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo.

The Christians were shocked by the attack as such violence is not common in that state.

A visiting speaker from western Nigeria's Oyo state, Emmanuel Adetoyese Badejo, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Oyo, said at a June 17 funeral service that "over 40 of our departed people" were killed, Morning Star News reports. ABC News cited an unnamed source as saying there were 82 bodies from the attack taken to a local morgue.

Three undetonated improvised explosive devices and fragments of a detonated device were reportedly recovered from the scene.

As many as 4,650 Christians were killed in Nigeria during Open Doors USA's 2021 reporting period, up from 3,530 the previous year.

More than 2,500 Christians were kidnapped in Nigeria, up from 990 the previous year, according to Open Doors, which monitors persecution in over 60 countries.

Nigeria ranks as the seventh worst country in the world when it comes to Christian persecution on the Open Doors 2022 World Watch List, its highest ranking ever.
Tony Evans: Racial division stems from 'failure of the pulpit;' Church must 'lead the way' as solution

Tony Evans, the senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Church, said that because the Church instigated the problem of racism in the United States, its up to the Body of Christ to serve as the solution.

During a segment titled Jesus the Center of Racial Reconciliation: Adopting a Kingdom Race Mindset during the morning session of the second day of the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention's Annual Meeting in June, Evans cited 2 Chronicles 15:2 to explain the unrest seen across the nation.

When it comes to our racial divide, it was the failure of the pulpit and the failure of the Church which has put us in this ignominious situation today, Evans said. And we are told in 2 Chronicles that only when they came together in unity did God bring them rest, verse 15 says, to the distress that was in the land.

The political, the social, the racial, the class distress that we are facing, that has helped to be caused by the Church, can only be properly dissolved by the Church, Evans said. If God cant get the Church right, the culture can never become right.

Evans stressed that Satan has been successful in illegitimately dividing the Church so that the power of God is absent.

So now is the time for us to come to the forefront with a plan to let the nation sees something different, he emphasized.

In recent years, the SBC has faced criticism for how some leaders in the denomination have responded to racism, the debate over critical race theory and instances of sexual abuse in churches. During last years Annual Meeting, then-SBC President Ed Litton promised shortly after his election that he would build bridges, not walls during his tenure.

This year, Litton, along with former SBC President Fred Luter, announced an initiative called The Unify Project to build racial unity nationwide in tandem with local churches. The project will be conducted alongside The Urban Alternative, a Christian Bible teaching and resource ministry founded 41 years ago by Evans and his late wife, Lois.

Southern Baptist Convention, what we hope to do is to start a grassroots movement, a local church initiative in your communities to cross barriers of race, different denominations and groups, to begin to meet with people who are like-minded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to offer a Kingdom solution for the divisions that exist in our land, Litton said.

The Church should be on the front line of bringing hope and healing to our communities for the glory of God, he added.

Evans said that The Unify Project will be based on the acronym AAA: One day a year, the community of biblically minded, Kingdom-minded churches will assemble for an annual, one-day fast and prayer session to invite God into the well-being of the community; pastors and church leaders will address the issues facing their communities and present Gods perspective on identity, race, life, marriage and other issues, and finally, perform acts of kindness in their communities.

A good work in Scripture is something that God is always visibly attached to  a good work is something done for the benefit of the people to which God gets the credit, Evans said.

The Unify Project is an extension of The Pledge Group, which Litton helped found alongside church leaders in Mobile, Alabama, after the death of George Floyd.

As part of the initiative, which will launch in the fall, churchgoers will be given kindness cards encouraging them to do at least one act of kindness weekly toward a stranger. Along with the act of kindness, prayer and evangelism are also encouraged.

When you do the act of kindness, then you pray for them because most people will accept prayer when you've been kind to them, the pastor said. After you've prayed for them, then you seek an opportunity to share the Gospel with them.

Evans stressed that once the Body of Christ carries out good works, they will no longer be ignored, adding: Right now we are being ignored because we're not taken seriously and God is not helping us because of our disunity.

If Christ doesn't come soon, we better get going in a hurry because this is falling apart fast," he concluded. "God is not waiting on the culture. He's waiting on the Church. It's time for those who helped mess it up to lead the way in fixing it up.

In a recent interview with The Christian Post, Evans encouraged Christians to act as bridge builders and foster relationships with those across the racial and cultural lines without compromising the essentials of the faith.

From God's throne comes righteousness and justice. Righteousness is the standard of right and wrong that is established by God. Justice is the equitable application of God's moral law applied in society. So one is vertical obedience, and the other is a horizontal relationship. And whenever you have the vertical and horizontal you can have the cross. Evans contended.

The way you know you're being serious about the conflicts in the culture is that you are visibly and verbally involved in reconciling things that have been historically divided. If all we're doing is discussion, discussing our division and not creating the windshield of reconciliation, because we're living in the rearview mirror of our past history, we will not be moving where God is moving. And if we're not moving where God is moving, we're moving by ourselves.
Netflix Cartoon Sexualizes Children, Seattle Preacher Arrested For Reading The Bible, VBS Music Hits #1

link to download the audio instead. link to download the audio instead. 06:28 06:28

John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, defended President Joe Biden's comments about gas prices after facing criticism from billionaire Jeff Bezos.



A media watchdog group is warning parents about a new animated series on Netflix from the creators of the controversial Big Mouth series over what it calls pornographic content.



Seattle police arrested a street preacher on charges of being a risk to public safety for reading his Bible aloud at a public park near an LGBT pride event.



Lifeway's Vacation Bible School soundtrack Spark Studios reached the No. 1 spot on Apple Musics Top 100 Childrens Music Albums chart in recent weeks.
As law, Roe was a bad ruling that always had to go

Despite being reinforced and even expanded by the Casey decision of 1992, Roe was a bad ruling by the Supreme Court that simply had to go. It had no legal ground on which to stand and no Constitutional logic behind it. Thats why few, if any, pundits are challenging Justice Alitos legal reasoning in dismantling Roe. Thats also why late last year, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch openly targeted Roe in conjunction with the Court agreeing to hear the Dobbs case.

As Fitch wrote in a November 28, 2021 op-ed for the New York Times,

On Dec. 1, we will make the case to the Supreme Court for overturning Roe v. Wade and returning decision-making about abortion policy to the people. We recognize the magnitude of what we are asking. But the reason it represents such a monumental change is because almost 49 years ago the court put political intuition above sound legal reasoning and reached a conclusion in Roe utterly unsupported by the Constitution or the courts own jurisprudence. It is time to correct that mistake.

One of my colleagues, a pro-life leader with decades of experience, was concerned when he first heard this news. Did the AG really want to put all her cards on the table? Wouldnt it be better for the court to uphold Dobbs and then, on its own initiative, overturn Roe?

But when he read Fitchs case in full, he said to me, Mike, this is brilliant. Fitchs arguments are strong.

The reality is that Roe had been waiting to fall for years since it had so little legal support.

Writing for the National Review on May 17, 2021, Kevin D. Williamson opined, Of course the Supreme Court should take the first opportunity to throw out Roe v. Wade. It is an indefensible decision and always has been.

Specifically,

Roe is a bad legal decision not because of any moral question related to abortion but because it is bad law. The Constitution does not say anything about abortion one way or the other, and it does not contain any provision that could reasonably be interpreted as mandating abortion rights or prohibiting abortion. The Constitution has no more to say about abortion than it does quantum physics. And the Founding Fathers knew where babies come from  if they had wanted to put something in the national charter relating to pregnancy, they could have done so.

But it was not just conservative writers like Williamson writing on conservative sites like the National Review who held these opinions. Such sentiments were held by many liberal pundits as well.

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, hardly a conservative news outlet, David G. Savage stated on May 3, 2022 that, Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Courts best-known decision of the last 50 years, is also its most endangered precedent.

Like Williamson, he noted that, In Roe, the justices announced a broad new constitutional right to abortion that is not explicitly found in the words or the history of the Constitution.

And then this clear, even searing indictment: Justice Harry A. Blackmun, who authored the long Roe opinion, included the medical history of abortion, citing the views of Persians, Greeks and Romans, and quoting two versions of the Hippocratic oath and early English authors dating to the 13th century.

He did not, however, quote a provision in the Constitution that protected abortion rights.

But of course. No such provision is found in the Constitution anywhere, based on any honest reading.

Savage continued, That omission is cited in the draft opinion currently being circulated by conservative justices as they prepare to overturn Roe.

The Constitution makes no reference to abortion and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in a draft published Monday by Politico. He added that Roes reasoning was exceptionally weak.

The argument, of course, is that the right to abortion is found in the 14th Amendments Right to Privacy, which reads (in part), No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

But where does this say anything about abortion? It does not. Where does it even imply any connection to abortion? It does not.

Worse still, as Savage noted, When the 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, abortion was illegal in three-fourths of the states. In 1973, when the court decided abortion was a fundamental personal right, 46 states prohibited most or nearly all abortions.

Obviously, the framers of the 14 Amendment did not have abortion in mind as a protected right.

Thats why, Savage noted, Even some prominent scholars who supported legal abortion derided the courts opinion.

Among these scholars was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, claiming that the court ventured too far in the change it ordered.

As pointed out by Susan E. Wills, Esq., on a Catholic website in 2003, there was large scale agreement that Roe was a bad ruling, including,

Virtually every recognized constitutional scholar who has published a book or article on Roe  including many, like Harvard's Laurence Tribe, who support Roe's outcome on other grounds (although he's switched grounds over the years). Yale Law School professor John Hart Ely spoke for many when he stated: Roe v. Wade is bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be . . . .

Added to this list was Edward Lazarus, a former law clerk to Roe's author, Justice Harry Blackmun, who writes:

As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose, as someone who believes such a right has grounding elsewhere in the Constitution instead of where Roe placed it, and as someone who loved Roe's author like a grandfather. . . . .

Willis even claims that, even in its historical arguments, quite apart from the Constitution, the Court misrepresents the history of abortion practice and attitudes toward abortion.

For good reason Ryan Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis posted an article on Newsweek on June 24, 2022, titled, Roe Was Wrong the Day it Was Decided. The Supreme Court Did The Right Thing.

It really is that simple, regardless of ones views about abortion.

As law, Roe had to go.
Celebrating America, despite our divisions

Why the violent reaction to Roe v. Wade being overturned? You would think that in effect the decision was anti-democracy (as many on the left claimed). But it was pro-democracy.

Based on the riots and the backlash from Hollywood, you would think that the Supreme Court took the right of the people to rule themselves through their legislators out of their hands. But in reality, the court restored the Constitutional principle that we the people should be in charge of our own lives through our elected representatives.

Roe v. Wade of 1973 in effect stipulated for half a century government by an oligarchy  the rule of seven robed men in a decision in 1973 by the Supreme Court that imposed abortion on demand by fiat. Last weeks Dobbs v. Jackson reversed this threat to democratic rule by putting the people themselves, again through their chosen delegates, back in power.

This gets back to what America is all about: We the people, under God, getting to rule our own destiny. What a gift. But you wouldnt know it from todays headlines.

The decision to restore the peoples rule comes on the cusp of our nations birthday. On July 4th 2022, America will be 246 years old.

July 4, 1776 was the day in which the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, officially agreed by voice vote to adopt the final wording of the Declaration of Independence.

After 150 years of self-government under God in many of the colonies of British North America, the founding fathers, representing three million people  almost all professing Christians  voted for independence from Great Britain with dependence upon God.

The Declaration of Independence mentions God four times and says that our rights come from Him. One of the references to Deity comes near the end, as they said they were, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions.

Dr. Peter Lillback is the founder of Providence Forum (now under the umbrella of D. James Kennedy Ministries), for which I now serve as executive director. He once told me that the Supreme Judge of the world was a reference to Jesus  since the founders knew and believed that Jesus is the Judge of the world.

Many books and documentaries today portray the founders as mostly deists or skeptics. But the reality is that the majority of them were committed Trinitarian Christians.

For example, 27 of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence had the equivalency of seminary degrees. Keep in mind that Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and several others were all started to train ministers of the Gospel (and didnt go south until much later).

I recently produced a documentary for Providence Forum as part of my Foundation of American Liberty series, entitled The Road to Independence."

The thesis of this hour-long documentary is that the Bible played a critical role in the push for American independence.

By the grace of God, we were fortunate to feature many expert guests on this program, including Dennis Prager, Os Guinness, Eric Metaxas, Bill Federer, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Dan Fisher, and others.

Attorney Jenna Ellis made this remark in the program: The religious component to the founders separating was actually a central part of our revolution.

For example, the ministers played a pivotal role in the whole push for independence. And the Great Awakening, a Christian movement that affected so many Americans, helped unify the 13 disparate colonies into a more cohesive whole as communication between them increased.

Ben Franklin said of the impact of Rev. George Whitefield, the great preacher of the Great Awakening: It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world were growing religious.

Eric Metaxas says of Franklin in our video: He was someone who saw that whenever religion breaks out  whenever revival breaks out, whenever people get God, get Jesus, whatever it was, whatever you called it  Franklin saw that crime went down, self-government went up.

And the spiritual transformation spilled over into politics. John Adams noted, The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the mind and hearts of the people: and change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.

Our problem today is that we have forgotten our spiritual roots. But Patrick Henry declared, It is when a people forget God, that tyrants forge their chains.

As a nation, we are working toward a more perfect union, to paraphrase the Constitution. Were not there yet  but there is a reason that millions from around the world still clamor to come to America. And it has nothing to do with faux constitutional rights that were imposed on our founding document by previous courts.
David French is 'disquieted' about the death of Roe

In March of 2016, David French planted a flag in the ground with an article titled, Why I Changed My Mind and Joined the #NeverTrump Movement. In it French declared that he would not vote for Donald Trump in the general election against Hillary Clinton, even if it meant that Justice Scalias vacant Supreme Court seat would be filled by a progressive justice. I have spent my entire adult life advocating against abortion and working to protect the unborn, French explained, but the potential dangers of a Trump presidency eclipsed those concerns. Our nation can survive lost elections, but over the long term it cannot survive [Trump].

Later that month, French doubled down with an article titled, As Nominee, Donald Trump Would Do Incalculable Damage to the Pro-Life Cause. Get ready for a slow-motion pro-life train wreck if Trumps the nominee, French warned. Trump would make  the pro-life movement look bad and have no idea how to talk about arguably the most sensitive issue in politics. Months later during the campaign, Trump promised to appoint pro-life justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, but French was not convinced. On the eve of the 2016 election, he wrote, Reject Them BothIts the Practical Choice.

Donald Trump would go on to win the presidency and appoint Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. On June 24, 2022, these three justices joined Alito and Thomas in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health to overrule Roe v. Wade. The Dobbs decision was a complete victory for the pro-life cause. Overruling Roe was the hope and prayer of millions of Christians who believed they would never see the day in their lifetime. Now the end of abortion is in view. State by state, pro-lifers can enact laws to abolish the slaughter of innocent children.

With the benefit of hindsight, every Christian in America  even those who agreed with David French and followed his lead  can now say with a sigh of relief, Thank God the country didnt listen to David French. Indeed, thank God pro-life voters chose instead to gamble on Donald Trump with the hope of transforming the Supreme Court. That gambit has now paid off beyond the pro-life movements wildest dreams. The end of Roe is a watershed, and it would not have happened if David French had gotten his way. Even if Trumps election was meant for evil, as French believed, God meant it for good (Genesis 50:20).

Yet David French is still struggling to see the good. Two days after the Dobbs decision, French published a gloomy article titled, Roe Is Reversed, and the Right Isnt Ready. While stating up front that he felt joy over Roe v. Wade being overturned, he confessed that he is far more conflicted than I ever imagined Id be. French explained that his attitude [of] joy is tempered by disquiet in my spirit  [and] that disquiet has only grown. The source of that disquiet is Donald Trump.

According to French, the Republican branch of the American church is adopting the political culture of  the MAGA movement. Because of Trump, too many members of pro-life America are contributing to a culture of hate and death. The Dobbs ruling has landed in the midst of a sick culture, and the pro-life right is helping make it sick. Specifically, he faults pro-lifers with enacting performative and punitive legislation prohibiting abortion at the state level, stoking argument and division in their communities, and with hypocrisy. Christian fear, disinformation, and defiance over COVID-19 vaccines, French argues, led to a wave of death, making it inconsistent for those same pro-lifers to now loudly demand that other people sacrifice for lifei.e., be prohibited from killing their children through abortion.

These are strange sentiments to express just days after a pro-life victory of biblical proportions. But to his credit, French is being consistent with his own peculiar beliefs about abortion. As French explained in a recent article for The Atlantic, he believes that banning abortion doesnt end abortion. Even if the law prohibits abortion nationwide, women will still procure so-called back-alley abortions until we learn why women seek abortions and how our nation can address the concerns that lead them to make that choice. Unless we address those concerns, legal prohibition will ultimately defeat its very purpose.

I call this perspective the Dont Kill Babies, Unless view. Under this view, it is important to prohibit mothers from killing their children, butwe should allow such killing until we first address the concerns that lead [mothers] to make that choice. This perspective stands in contrast to the traditional pro-life view  what I call the Dont Kill Babies, Period view. Under that view, it is critically important to minister to the hurts, fears, and needs of women who seek abortions, but it is most important to outlaw the killing of children. The evil of abortion  the killing of living, innocent babies in the womb through poison, lethal injection, vacuum suction, dismemberment, or some combination thereof  must be abolished at all costs, even if those costs include profound economic, social, or emotional consequences for mothers who are unable to kill their child to ease those burdens.

Of these two irreconcilable viewpoints, the first view  David Frenchs view  is wrong for at least three reasons:

First, it wrongly assumes that changing the law will not alter the behavior of mothers or shape their sentiments in a pro-life direction over time, just as the abolition of slavery and segregation effectively ended those injustices and achieved a lasting shift in racial attitudes across society.



Second, it sacrifices real pro-life policy victories for utopian dreams of social change, choosing to allow abortion to stand  and millions more babies to die  until society adequately addresses the concerns of mothers. In his Atlantic article, French admits the utopian nature of this approach, calling it deceptively simple in concept, yet extraordinarily difficult in practice. It is a recipe for a never-ending, wait-and-see approach to abortion reminiscent of the bygone argument that slavery should only be abolished once the economic and social conditions necessitating its existence have first been eliminated.



Third, and most importantly, it betrays an ambivalence about abortion by treating the evil of abortion as equivalent to the tragedy of a mother having to carry her child to term without proper care and support. That is indeed tragic when it happens, but the suggestion that it could ever justify the mother killing her innocent child is not a consistent pro-life position.

An incremental approach to pro-life legislation will be necessary in many states, but it is telling that David French is not merely advocating incrementalism. He finds it difficult to even celebrate Dobbs, and as he wrote in The Atlantic, he believes that the best way for pro-life Americans to respond to Roe is not to end  abortion, but rather to remake our nation into a culture that is far more hospitable to mother and child. This is the same advice French

gave about Donald Trump  embrace short-term political defeat to pursue a utopian vision.



We should pay it with the same respect.
The importance of constitutional oaths of office

After affirming the supremacy of the Constitution, the laws, and the treaties of the United States, Article VI of the U.S. Constitution provides that The senators and representatives  and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution.

Despite the arguably sacred nature of oaths, Article VI departed from state constitutions of the day by prohibiting any religious test for public office. This did not prevent early incoming presidents from kissing the Bible while taking their oath, or later adding the words so help me God.

Taking the constitutionally prescribed oath to execute the Office of President of the United States and to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States transforms a president-elect into a president. After expressing envy of the words that incoming president John F. Kennedy had spoken on inauguration day in 1961, his defeated opponent, outgoing vice-president Richard Nixon, clarified, in a rare moment of humor, that he was not thinking of the eloquent words of Kennedys inaugural address but of the words beginning with, I do solemnly swear.

Long after Chief Justice John Marshall affirmed the power of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison (1803) partly on the oath that judges took to uphold the Constitution, Judge John Gibson dissented in a Pennsylvania case known as Eakin v. Raub (1825). There he argued that the oath was not unique to judges but was taken indiscriminately by every officer of the government and is designed rather as a test of the political principles of the man, than to bind the officer in the discharge of his duty.

Gibson was not the first to make such an argument. During debates over the oath at the Constitutional Convention, James Madison recorded that Pennsylvanias James Wilson argued that oath provided only a left-handed security, because a good Govt. did not need them, and a bad one could not or ought not to be supported. Wilson also feared that such an oath might be an obstacle to needed constitutional change, although Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts sensibly responded that A constitutional alteration of the Constitution, could never be regarded as a breach of the Constitution, or of any oath to support it.

The recent hearings before the January 6 Committee suggests that Gibson and Wilson were mistaken. The oath has served in some critical cases to steel the resolve of governmental officials when they confronted the temptation to make decisions on the basis of personal desire, political party affiliation, or expediency. Gorham was unusually prescient in highlighting the duty of officials to follow existing constitutional language and principles unless and until altered through constitutional means.

While supporters of Trumps specious claims appealed to theories over facts, Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, refused to submit an alternate slate of electors because he would not break his sacred oath. Georgias Secretary Brad Raffensperger and his chief operation officer Gabriel Sterling expressed similar sentiments, even as Trump launched false accusations against front-line election workers like Wandrea Shaye Moss, who, with other family members, faced physical intimidation.

Although oaths may appear to be mere formalities, the first law that President George Washington signed into law dealt with the time and manner of administering oaths. As Southern leaders ignored their oaths and sought to lead their states out of the Union after a presidential electoral defeat in 1860, incoming President Abraham Lincoln felt compelled by his oath to preserve it.

If this glorious Union is to continue to be a democratic republic, contemporary officials must remain similarly committed to their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution that created and sustains it.
Christian bishop appeals for peace after Muslim men murder tailor, post killing on social media We stand for religious tolerance among all communities

The Catholic bishop of Indias Udaipur city has appealed for peace as authorities impose a curfew and block access to the internet following violent protests that broke out after two Muslim men murdered a tailor and posted a video of the killing on social media.

The Muslim radicals attempted to behead the Hindu tailor for supporting a politician from the countrys ruling nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party who had spoken against the Islamic prophet Muhammad on television.

I condemn the incident, Bishop John Ganawa told AsiaNews Friday, days after the victim, identified as 48-year-old Kanhaiya Lal, a tailor in Udaipur city in the western Rajasthan state, was killed Tuesday.

The accused, identified as Gos Mohammad and Riyaz, entered Lals shop and slit his throat with a cleaver, Indias NDTV reported, adding that they attempted to behead him but couldnt, according to the police.

As a representative of the Christian community here in Udaipur, I appeal for peace and harmony among all the communities, the bishop said. We stand for religious tolerance, dialogue and peaceful co-existence among all the communities. I pray that good sense may prevail among us all.

The two filmed the murder and posted it online where it went viral. They also threatened to attack India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In response to the comments made by the former BJP politician about the Islamic prophet, both the Islamic State and al-Qaeda terror groups have threatened to launch attacks in India, according to The Telegraph.

Lal had posted statements in support of former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma, who had provocatively spoken against the Islamic prophet last month, leading to widespread criticism in India and Muslim majority countries.

The murder also led to violent protests in India and vandalism of public property.

The city has been on high alert since the incident, and authorities have imposed a curfew and blocked the internet as preventive measures.

Indias central government is treating it as a terror attack being investigated by the countrys security agency, the National Investigation Agency.

Its an unusual incident, as, normally, Muslim and Christian minorities are attacked by Hindu nationalists and the tensions in the city could spill over to Christians' homes and businesses.

Lynchings and hate speech targeting Muslims have regularly made headlines since 2014 after the BJP swept to power at the deferral level, according to the BBC.

That the Muslim killers of the Hindu tailor have been arrested is certainly a just response by the Indian government, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern said in a statement.

Unfortunately, the government has not been so quick to act on behalf of Christian victims. We pray that this discrimination would cease, and that the Indian government would serve and protect its Christian communities, ICC added.

For Indias Christians, 2021 was the most violent year in the countrys history, according to a report by the United Christian Forum, which recorded at least 486 violent incidents of Christian persecution last year.
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PARIS (AP)  Birds tweeted -- not fashionistas -- the day Chanel brought its couture guests to the calm of the Bois de Boulogne forest.

On Tuesday morning, bleary-eyed VIPs walked across tons of white sand through the Etrier de Paris equestrian center on the leafy outskirts of Paris, past lines of spinning wheels and inflatable capsules as nature, fashion and art mingled.

The dreamscape had been specially made for fall-winter by artist Xavier Veilhan, who had adorned Chanels indoor ring venue with a gargantuan silver mobile. It had guests  including Marion Cotillard and Keira Knightley -- gawping.

Haute couture is the age-old Parisian tradition of producing exorbitantly priced, made-to-measure garments for the worlds richest women.

Here are some highlights of the days fall-winter 2022 collections:

CHANELS SOFTNESS

With a somewhat incongruous drum rendition via video recording, Chanel ambassador Pharrell Williams rousingly kicked off proceedings before the real show began -- to soft music and even softer form.

Gentle colors, lines and shapes, punctuated by moments of dazzling buttons, floaty plumes and large hats was the simple formula for Virginie Viard. The French designer was in a soft mood for couture this season, letting subtle twists do the talking.

A loose pastel green skirt suit opened, lined with minutely sparkling crystalline buttons made by the stalwarts world-famous atelier. It led on to fastidious embroideries and jacquards on loose coats in speckled mint and sand with often-oversize or upturned collars, laded with an air of the 80s. A-line coats with a weighty swag, dropped waists and statement pockets, meanwhile, introduced subtle tensions  alongside hems and fringing in contrasting patterns.

Yet the best looks were those that kept it minimal. A ribbed olive green gown with a clean strap across the bust flared out at the bottom -- in a clever take on a mermaid dress. It towed a perfect line between sporty and chic.

Yet, there's a niggling feeling that Viard has been playing it safe ever since replacing Karl Lagerfeld, who died in 2019.

FRONT ROW

Its got to be couture week when, to blasting horns of annoyed motorists in tangled traffic, paparazzi skid in the sand for a snap of the celebrity roll call.

Keira Knightley, 37, arrived at the far-flung Chanel show amid the most commotion. The actress, whos been a house ambassador since 21, arrived in a velvet and lace halterneck LBD by Chanel, accessorized with shades and her husband, British musician James Righton.

French Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard rocked up in a more casual ensemble, comprising a striped Chanel shirt and black micro mini, declining interviews. Actresses Sigourney Weaver, Clemence Poesy and Maggie Gyllenhaal also joined -- applauding vigorously when the designer came out at the finale.

ALEXIS MABILLE BLOOMS

French designer Alexis Mabille was in top fall form for a timeless collection of couture that never forgot its whimsy.

Draped gowns in luxuriant pastel silks caressed the body, quivering lightly as they were showcased down the dazzling indigo fabric runway.

Flowers were never far from the Mabille design universe -- both literally and figuratively.

A pastel gray silk dress had a central curved split at the knee so that the hem cascaded down in folds like an opening flower. Its top bib was made of intricate white lace like the veins of a petal under a microscope.

Then came flashes of whimsical fashion design -- such as one enormous silken flower headdress made of multitudinous shimmering petals.

MENSWEAR REIGNS IN PARIS

Front row fashion insiders are commenting how Paris menswear week  held June 21-26  felt as equally buzzy as this weeks VIP-filled couture. And unusually so. Couture traditionally outperforms menswear in terms of attention and celebrity presence. But could this be a thing of the past?

From Justin Timberlake to K-pop sensations BTS, the celebrity presence alone of the menswear spring summer 2023 season was enough to rival this week's couture. And that signals higher levels of attention than normal in the glossy press and online.

This change in gear -- or fashion levelling out -- comes as mens luxury brand portfolio has been outperforming womens wear in terms of growth more generally with more and more eyeballs on the mens runway.

Of particular note is the proliferation of U.S. menswear brands, which are now opting to show across the pond in Paris to capitalize on the attention. After the ill-fated New York mens fashion week -- launched in 2016 and then canceled over a dwindling presence  reports have noted how myriad U.S.-based houses such as Thom Browne, Amiri, Greg Lauren, KidSuper and Rhude have opted to showcase their designs in the City of Light.

ARMANI GOES ART DECO

A geometric runway cross-pollinated to gentle geometry for Giorgio Armani. This couture season, the Italian fashion legend wanted to give new space to sparkle and frivolity inspired by the universe of Art Deco Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka.

On the runway the heyday of the graphic Art Deco movement -- the 1930s -- was evoked through a graphicism in the silhouettes. Art Deco was a movement created in reaction to Art Nouveau, replacing the latters undulating shapes with geometry.

A silken gray jacket had the Oriental-feel fashionable at that time with silvery linear trim. Elsewhere, swirls adorned the busts of dark fitted column gowns, while earrings and necklaces came as chunky and graphic.

As ever, Armani showcased his signature statement shoulders, shimmering organzas and satins and lashings of sparkle in the longest collection seen all season. There were in total 92 looks.
Noam Galai/Getty Images

A Florida man wheeled away a $10,000 replica of R2-D2 and claimed he was testing Disney World security when caught, Orange County sheriff's deputies said Thursday.

According to deputies, the 44-year-old Kissimmee resident was discovered acting suspiciously in the lobby of the Swan Reserve Hotel on May 31; the hotel is owned and operated by Marriott but is located on the grounds of the Disney World Resort. When hotel security approached the man, he was allegedly pushing a cart containing the Stars Wars droid and wearing a Disney nametag with the name "David" on it. He nonetheless appeared lost, and sheriff's deputies were called to the scene.
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GUATEMALA CITY (AP)  The advice of a friend to stay near the door of a semi-trailer may have saved Yenifer Yulisa Cardona Tomas from the deadly end that 53 other migrants met when the truck was abandoned last week on the outskirts of San Antonio.

Cardona Tomas, a 20-year-old from Guatemalas capital, said in a phone interview Monday from her hospital bed that it was already hot on June 27 when she stepped out of the warehouse on the Texas side of the Mexico border where she had been waiting and climbed into the back of the trailer.

The smugglers confiscated their cellphones and covered the trailers floor with what she believes was powdered chicken bouillon, apparently to throw off any dogs they might encounter at checkpoints. Sitting stuffed inside the stifling trailer with dozens of others, the powder stung her skin.

Remembering her friend's advice about staying near the door where it would be cooler, Cardona Tomas shared it with another friend she had made during the journey.

I told a friend that we shouldnt go to the back and should stay near (the entrance), in the same place without moving, said Cardona Tomas, who is being treated at Methodist Hospital Metropolitan in San Antonio. That friend survived, too.

As the truck moved on, making additional stops to pick up more migrants, people began to cluster near the door like Cardona Tomas. She had no way to track the time.

The people were yelling, some cried. Mostly women were calling for it to stop and to open the doors because it was hot, that they couldnt breathe, she said, still laboring a bit to speak after being intubated at the hospital.

She said the driver or someone else in the cab yelled back that we were about to arrive, that there were 20 minutes left, six minutes.

People asked for water, some had run out, others carried some, she said.

The truck would continue stopping occasionally, but just before she lost consciousness it was moving slowly. She woke up in the hospital.

The driver and three others were arrested and charged by U.S. prosecutors.

Guatemalas Foreign Ministry has said that 20 Guatemalans died in the incident, 16 of whom have been positively identified. Foreign Minister Mario Bucaro said he hoped the first bodies would be repatriated this week.

Cardona Tomas said the trucks destination that day was Houston, though she was ultimately headed to North Carolina.

She didnt have a job and asked me if I would support her" in migrating to the U.S., her father, Mynor Cordon, said Monday in Guatemala City, where the family lives. He said he knew of other cases of children who just left without telling their families and ended up disappearing or dying so he decided to back her.

He paid $4,000 for a smuggler  less than half the total cost  to take her to the U.S. She left Guatemala on May 30, traveling in cars, buses and finally the semi-trailer in Texas.

I didnt know that she would travel in a trailer, he said. She told us it would be by foot. It seems like at the last moment the smugglers decided to put (her) in the trailer, along with two more friends, who survived. One of them is still in critical condition.

Cordon had stayed in touch with his daughter up until the morning of June 27. Her last message to him that Monday was at 10:28 a.m. in Guatemala, or 11:28 a.m. in Texas. Were going to go in an hour, she wrote.

It was not until late that night that Cardona Tomas family learned of the abandoned trailer. It was two more days before relatives in the United States confirmed that she was alive and hospitalized.

We cried so much, Cordon said. I even was thinking where we were going to have the wake and bury her. She is a miracle.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP)  A trial in a lawsuit accusing three major U.S. drug distributors of causing a health crisis throughout West Virginia was postponed Tuesday, a day after the companies prevailed in another case in the state.

Attorneys who represented Cabell County and the city of Huntington on the losing end of a verdict announced in federal court Monday were granted a continuance of a trial a day later in Kanawha County Circuit Court. The trial involves more than 100 other cities and counties statewide against the same defendants: AmerisourceBergen Drug Co., Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp.

Attorneys for the municipalities and the companies met in the judge's chambers just prior to the start of the hearing. Once in the courtroom, attorneys for the plaintiffs asked that the start of the trial be continued. The defense had no objections and the request was approved.

In the federal bench trial, U.S. District Judge David Faber said the plaintiffs offered no evidence that the companies distributed controlled substances to any entity that didnt hold a proper registration from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration or the state Board of Pharmacy. The defendants also had systems in place to monitor suspicious activity, as required by the Controlled Substances Act, he said.

Plaintiffs failed to show that the volume of prescription opioids distributed in Cabell/Huntington was because of unreasonable conduct on the part of defendants, Faber wrote in a decision that came nearly a year after closing arguments in that case.

The Cabell County-Huntington lawsuit alleged the distributors created a public nuisance by flooding the Ohio River community with 81 million pills over eight years. The suit sought more than $2.5 billion that would have gone toward abatement efforts. But Faber said West Virginias Supreme Court has only applied public nuisance law in the context of conduct that interferes with public property or resources. He said to extend the law to cover the marketing and sale of opioids is inconsistent with the history and traditional notions of nuisance.

The companies blamed an increase in prescriptions written by doctors along with poor communication and pill quotas set by federal agents.

Huntington has long been an epicenter of the nationwide opioid addiction and overdose epidemic that has been linked to more than 500,000 deaths over the past two decades. That status led West Virginia to being aggressive in lawsuits over the trauma earlier than most states. It settled with the three distributors in 2017 and 2019 in deals worth a total of $73 million.

But the state did not participate in a $21 billion nationwide settlement with those companies that was finalized this year and would have resulted in a larger payout for West Virginia than what the state received in the earlier deals.

The nationwide impact of Mondays ruling in West Virginia could be muted because the companies have struck the broader settlement, which is intended to have most of the funds go to fighting the opioid crisis.

In another lawsuit, the state of West Virginia reached a tentative $161.5 million settlement in May with Teva Pharmaceuticals Inc., AbbVies Allergan and their family of companies and a $26 million settlement in March with Endo Health Solutions.

___

This story has been edited to correct the name of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

___

Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill contributed to this report.
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP)  The executive director of the Alaska Democratic Party faces charges including driving under the influence and refusing a chemical test after a weekend traffic stop near Soldotna.

Lindsay Kavanaugh of Anchorage was stopped for moving violations south of Soldotna early Saturday and found to be impaired by alcoholic beverages," Alaska State Troopers said in a statement.
Vegas shooting survivors send Comfort Cubs to Uvalde A survivor of the October 2017 shooting traveled to Uvalde to give 1,000 Comfort Cubs.

The 'most affordable' Texas roadtrip An online travel site recently outlined the 'most affordable' Lone Star road trip.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Secretary of State Antony Blinken will see his Chinese counterpart this week at a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 bloc of nations that will likely exacerbate splits over Russias war in Ukraine.

While strained U.S.-China ties will be the focus of Blinkens talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the broader G-20 gathering in Indonesia of leading industrialized nations will almost certainly be overshadowed by the Ukraine conflict and its effect on global food and energy security. And Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will be there, marking the first time he and Blinken will be in the same room, let alone the same city, at the same time in nearly six months.

The State Department announced Tuesday that Blinken would meet with Wang in Bali, but had little to say about the possibility of him seeing Lavrov, whom the U.S. has shunned since the Ukraine invasion in February. U.S. officials have accused Lavrov and other Russian diplomats of a lack of seriousness in the run-up to the Ukraine war.

The Biden administration has ruled out business as usual with Russia while it remains in Ukraine and U.S. officials said there would be no formal discussions between Blinken and Lavrov in Bali. But they could not rule out the possibility of a chance encounter, which would their first since they last met in Geneva in January.

"The secretary intends to engage fully in the G-20. Im not going to speak to any plans on the part of Foreign Minister Lavrov ... but I can tell you the secretary will be a full and active participant in the G-20, which we see as a valuable forum," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

Like many recent international diplomatic gatherings, the Bali meeting will be focused on Ukraine as the participants set the stage for a summit of G-20 leaders, also to be held in Indonesia, in November. But unlike, the Western-dominated G-7 and NATO summits that were held in Europe last week, the G-20 will have a different flavor.

China and many other participants, including India, South Africa, Brazil and several other large developing nations, have resisted signing onto U.S. and European opposition to Russias invasion. Some have outright refused Western entreaties to join condemnations of the conflict, which the U.S. and its allies see as an outright attack on the international rules-based order that has prevailed since the end of World War II.

The divergence has set the stage for a potentially contentious preparatory meeting ahead of November's summit, amid questions about whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend. The U.S. has made clear it does not believe Putin should attend but has urged the Indonesian hosts to invite Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy should the Russian leader participate.

In the meantime, the U.S. and China are separately at severe odds over numerous issues ranging from trade and human rights to Taiwan and disputes in the South China Sea.

Blinken's meeting with Wang was announced after Chinas envoy to trade war talks with Washington expressed concern about U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports in a call with with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Neither side gave any indication that progress has been made on the matter.

In his meeting with Wang, Price said Blinken will reinforce our commitment to working with international partners to confront global challenges, including food and energy insecurity and the threat Russias continued war against Ukraine presents to the international order.

From Bali, Blinken will travel to Bangkok, Thailand, to make up for a trip to the Thai capital that he was forced to cancel late last year due to COVID-19 reasons.
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Wearing red, white and blue glasses with USA written across the top, Megan Hayhurst watched with pride as her quaint and charming community celebrated the July 4th holiday in style.

The annual Calder Place 1929 Parade has become something of a tradition for Hayhurst and her son Jet, who have attended for the past five years. As fancy cars and fellow neighbors paraded by decked out in the American gear, the mother and son soaked in the special moment to celebrate with their neighbors.

I just love that our little community can have something so special and personalits very important to me to have traditions, Hayhurst said.

Related: Today in history: Declaration of Independence

The niche neighborhood festival was just the start of Mondays fun in Beaumont. From morning parades to the flashy finish of nighttime fireworks, city residents celebrated July 4th throughout the day, each taking in the holiday their own way.

City organizers for Beaumonts celebration expected thousands to show up throughout the day. Last years event in downtown Beaumont drew roughly 15,000 people, according to Director of Event Services Emily Wheeler, and although the holiday fell on a Monday this year, similar numbers were expected.

The Calder Place 1929 parade started things off at around 10 a.m. as families gathered outside the Beaumont ISD Administration office. A Boy Scout troop led the pack, which was bookended by band members from West Brook playing traditional music throughout the parade.

In a nod to the neighborhoods 1920s roots, a line of Model-Ts decorated with flags and bunting joined the festivities.

The event also included contests for best-decorated vehicles, bicycles, wagons and more. Participants in this years celebration broke out the red, white and blue to show their spirit, decorating not just vehicles, but themselves head to toe -- or in some cases, head to paws. Theres also a best dressed dog category.

What a great neighborhood to be a part of, resident Ryan Broussard said.

By the time the Calder parade was winding down, festivities downtown at the Beaumont Event Center were starting to ramp up. Food and drink vendors set up shop near the event center, offering Southeast Texans just about any flavor they could ask for.

The city has roughly a $50,000 budget for the July 4th celebration, which goes toward live music, food, fireworks and more, according to Wheeler.

But it wasnt just Beaumonters who came downtown for a good time. Woodville native Joe Martinez brought his family down for the celebration, which got started around 5 p.m. The fireworks show wasnt until hours later, but Martinez knew better than to arrive late.

He wanted to get a good spot to see the fireworks and didnt mind wasting some time with a hot dog or a snow cone.

It can be kind of crazy getting a spot if you dont show up early, so thats what we did, Martinez said with a spoon and a snow cone in his hand. Ive been down here and few times before and we always have a good time.

Nationally, the holiday celebration took on a solemn feeling as a shooting in a Chicago suburb left a shadow over the day. Six people died and dozens others were left injured by a shooter during a parade in Highland Park, Illinois.

Multiple attendees at Beaumonts celebration, including Martinez, told the Enterprise they had heard news of the shooting, but it didnt deter them from coming downtown. A police presence was noticeable in the downtown area but wasnt anything out of the ordinary for a public events such as Monday's holiday.

Related: 6 dead, 30 hurt in Chicago suburb shooting

As the sun began to set downtown, residents started to settle in for the best part of the night. Fireworks were set to begin at 9 p.m., send off into the clear Beaumont sky from a trailer near the Neches River.

"My kids have been ready for this these fireworks all day," Martinez said as he and his family sat on the blacket they had laid out hours earlier. "It's the perfect way to end things."

Photojournalist Kim Brent contributed.

MFaye@BeaumontEnterprise.com

Twitter.com/mattGfaye
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WASHINGTON - Washington, D.C., celebrated Independence Day on Monday with some hallmarks of the nation's capital: parades, festivals and protests.

This year, the Fourth of July signifies for many a return to normalcy as virtual events have given way to in-person experiences. It also falls in the shadow of monumental Supreme Court rulings on abortion, guns and the environment that have Americans concerned about the country's future - as well as yet another mass shooting, this one in a suburb north of Chicago.

But the deadly attack at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., that killed at least six people and turned the festivities there into chaos did not deter families from coming to downtown Washington to view the floats or fireworks or join various demonstrations around town earlier in the day.

Protesters - dressed in red, white and blue - massed in front of the Supreme Court on Monday to denounce the overturning of Roe v. Wade, while other demonstrators descended on the National Mall. Later, a green-clad crowd of 100 people supporting abortion rights marched down Constitution Avenue, spreading out to span the width of the street.

"They're counting on us to get tired, they're counting on us to get complacent," said Ashli Timmons, 21, of Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights. "Hopefully, everyone will see this and be inspired."

Some demonstrators took to the highways to air their grievances. About 20 people, who police said were protesting climate change, sat in the road and blocked all lanes of Interstate 495's inner loop at the U.S. 29/Colesville Road exit Monday afternoon.

In a separate protest, a group of truckers calling itself the 1776 Restoration Movement - formerly known as the People's Convoy - blocked traffic on Interstate 95 during the day to denounce vaccine mandates.

And later in the evening, just as fireworks were released into the night sky, a few dozen people holding black umbrellas and wearing black masks released smoke canisters onto the street near the Supreme Court as police officers surrounded the group. Social media accounts for BiteBackDC had advertised a protest Monday night against the abortion ruling, the Supreme Court, Congress and police, declaring: "It's all rotten!"

Transit authorities had warned that reduced service on the Metro would probably result in long lines for waiting passengers. After the fireworks ended Monday night, officials said crowding had prompted them to institute metering of riders permitted to enter the Smithsonian Metro stop, where the wait was more than an hour to use the station.

Throughout the day, people ventured out into the city for events such as the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and A Capitol Fourth concert - which reopened to the public after more than two years of coronavirus restrictions. The National Independence Day Parade also returned with marching bands from around the country, military units, floats and balloons.

Neha Sri drove down early from Delaware with her son Naman, 11, so they'd have time to get a good spot in front of the National Archives. They had set up folding chairs and a rainbow umbrella to beat the heat.

"It's our first time we've come here," she said. "We've heard a lot about this parade so we wanted to see."

They had planned on staying for the fireworks, but Naman was most excited about the events in the National Archive. He pointed excitedly to the day's schedule - listed on a bright red souvenir fan - that included a scavenger hunt and a chance to sign a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

Trinisa Fung, 21, and Alessandra Del Rosario, 21, sat along a stone wall by the entrance to the Museum of Natural History, waving American flags. The two college students met this summer at an internship and spent their day off at their first Fourth of July parade in D.C. Fung had been to fireworks shows back home in Houston, but nothing as big as this.

"This is different," Fung said as floats, cultural performances and marching bands streamed by on Constitution Avenue. "The diversity here is really amazing."

They've got a lot to visit on their bucket list for the summer - the Capitol, the Library of Congress, "the most touristy spots" - and they had planned to watch the fireworks from the Iwo Jima Memorial with more friends.

"It feels like the city's coming back to life," Fung said.

Despite the shooting in Highland Park, Ill., the Mall was packed by midafternoon. Lines for museums were out the door, and thousands had set up blankets to picnic and prepare for fireworks later in the evening.

Many people said the violence earlier Monday didn't affect their decision to come out to the mall, since they were looking for a way to relax and celebrate amid a tense political climate.

Vanderbilt University students Rachael Perrotta and Andrew Hu, both 20, were already on the Mall when they learned about the shooting. The news prompted concerns from their parents about the students' safety downtown.

But the younger generation has been "desensitized to it," Perrotta said.

"It's very much so what we grew up with," she added, walking near the Mall after a visit to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. "I don't think it instills the same fear as it does for older generations, which is really sad."

Kelly Silva, 38, sat in the grove of trees overlooking the Washington Monument in the late afternoon, watching over a picnic blanket and a box of chicken wings. Silva, who lives in D.C. and normally brings her family to watch the July Fourth fireworks every year, said she's "happy because everything's coming back to normal."

"It looked like everyone was scared two years ago, but now everybody's back," Silva said.

"Hopefully it won't happen [here] this year," she said. "I see a lot of officers around."

Still, around 7:30 p.m., two loud noises near the intersection of 11th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue prompted families sitting and standing nearby to rush away from the sounds and toward the National Mall. Authorities on the scene confirmed the sounds were fireworks, but the noises incited panic in crowds of people who couldn't initially make out their source.

Takoma Park, Md., which has held Fourth of July festivities for 133 years, welcomed residents back for its first in-person parade since 2019.

"It's a wonderful feeling being back," said Tara Marie Egan, a 37-year-old Takoma Park native. "People have missed it and we have a lot of new groups joining."

Egan herself once marched in the parade as a Girl Scout and is now the vice president of the Takoma Park Independence Day Committee. She had been planning for this since January. The 1.3-mile parade, dubbed "Takoma Park Together Again" this year, included marching bands, drill teams, floats, art cars, costumed characters and veterans groups.

In a city known for its political activism, the recent Supreme Court rulings were top of mind for some at the Takoma Park parade.

"It's great to celebrate our independence today, but it's a bittersweet feeling with women's rights being eroded," Laurie-Ann Sayles, a Democrat who is running for an at-large seat on the Montgomery County Council, said of Roe v. Wade being overturned. "I'm concerned about the direction of our country and I want to make sure we safeguard a woman's right to choose."

In a nod to the nation's ideal as a beacon of hope, George Washington's Mount Vernon hosted its annual naturalization ceremony Monday. A crowd of 50 immigrants - from places including Cameroon and Ukraine - cheered and waved American flags as they became citizens. When they rose to sing the national anthem this time, it resonated with them differently.

With her right hand over her heart, Keisha Alfred, 41, sang the anthem for the first time. "I'm no longer an immigrant or as they say a visitor," said Alfred, who is originally from Trinidad and Tobago.

After 20 years of living in the country as a student and a green cardholder, Alfred said she can finally leave the immigration paperwork behind every time a company tries to hire her. Becoming a citizen in this political time feels bittersweet, especially now that abortion rights are threatened, she said.

"I'm very proud to become an American citizen, but I feel an added responsibility to make sure that we are represented."

With her citizenship certificate in her hand, Alfred and a dozen other new citizens registered to vote on the spot. "I have to make sure that my voice is heard," said Alfred.

- - -

Daniels reported from Takoma Park, Md., Sanchez from Mount Vernon, Va., and Wu from Washington. The Washington Post's Terence McArdle, Teo Armus, Caroline Pineda and Gaya Gupta contributed to this report.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvanias Republican nominee for governor, has made a campaign staple out of the allegation that Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's policy of readmitting COVID-19 patients from hospitals to nursing homes caused thousands of deaths  a baseless claim for which no investigator or researcher has provided any evidence.

In fact, layers of inspections by researchers have pointed to entirely something different  nursing home employees ushering in the virus every day  while investigators found administrators flouting staffing requirements or infection-control procedures.

Further, no Pennsylvania nursing home has leveled any such claim like Mastriano's, and a national nursing home trade association has agreed with the findings of researchers who say the spread of the virus in nursing homes directly correlated to community spread.

Regardless, Mastriano has repeated the unfounded claim in front of friendly audiences, weaponizing COVID-19 in an effort to hurt Democrats in one of the nations most important governors races in this midterm election cycle.

Mastriano, a state senator and retired U.S. Army colonel who won the Republican nomination while trafficking in conspiracy theories, seemingly came out of nowhere to become a rising force in right-wing politics primarily by leading anti-shutdown rallies in the pandemic's early days.

Opposition to the shutdowns and mask and vaccine mandates are a central plank in Mastrianos campaign.

It is also a key line of attack for Mastriano against Democrats, including the party's gubernatorial nominee, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, whose office helped defend Wolf's pandemic policies against court challenges.

In the past two years, new research has piled up on how COVID-19 penetrated nursing homes.

The virus was largely introduced by asymptomatic workers in areas where the virus was heavily transmitted, researchers say.

Our research has been pretty definitive that the most important factor in determining whether theres an outbreak in the building is community prevalence, by far, said Vincent Mor, a professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown University. Nothing else comes close.

David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, echoed that, saying, I pretty strongly feel that staff were the dominant pathway to COVID entering these buildings.

In the early days of the pandemic, nursing homes lacked the trained staff, testing supplies and personal protective equipment that could have helped them slow the spread, researchers say.

Nursing home administrators did not know if staff members were asymptomatic. But, they knew that staff had to handle residents returning from hospitals according to infection-control protocols, said R. Tamara Konetzka, a professor of health economics and health services research at the University of Chicago.

In addition, the number of employees coming and going every day from nursing homes  hundreds daily at some facilities  dwarfed the number of readmitted hospital patients, which may have been no more than a handful at each facility in the pandemic's first months, Konetzka and other researchers said.

Some of Konetzkas research included using cell phone data to track the movements of workers to compare it to the location of outbreaks.

Still, the unproven theory about hospital readmissions came up prominently in Mastriano's May 17 primary victory speech.

Mastriano made it his prime example that Democrats are extreme  an attempt to counter criticism, including from some in his own party, that he is too extreme to win the fall general election.

Only a Democrat could get away with failed policies, sending the sick into the homes killing thousands and get away with it, Mastriano said.

Mastriano went on, saying, theyre the ones that sent the sick back into the homes. Their policies, Democrat policies, and killed so many. Thats extreme.

Wolf's office shot back, saying Mastriano's claims are patently false.

Mastriano, Wolf's office said, is a science denier who put lives in danger throughout the pandemic by openly downplaying the crisis and opposing vaccines and other mitigation efforts.

Mastriano has seized on a couple aspects of Pennsylvania's handling of the pandemic.

One, Pennsylvania has reported more nursing home COVID-19 deaths than any other state, according to federal data  although researchers have raised questions about whether states counted COVID-19 deaths the same way and Pennsylvania has a disproportionately large nursing home population.

Two, Wolf's administration  like those of several other Democratic governors in hard-hit states  issued orders requiring nursing homes to continue accepting residents returning from hospitals to guard against overwhelmed hospitals.

Last week, Mastriano posted a meme on social media that accuses Wolf and other governors whose administrations issued a similar order of premeditated murder  another baseless claim.

Wolf's administration argued that the order also required nursing homes to be able to protect other residents and that it worked with nursing homes that had concerns, it said.

In any case, readmissions were routine in every state and nursing homes were given guidance early on by the federal government and trade associations on how to handle hospital readmissions.

That's because, in every state, hospitals had to off-load recovering patients to ensure they had beds for incoming patients, researchers say.

A Department of Justice inquiry begun in 2020 into those orders  during the final stretch of the presidential campaign under former President Donald Trump  ended quietly under President Joe Biden last summer.

Researchers pointed out that states that got hit by the pandemic after Pennsylvania were still unable to protect their nursing home populations, even though theyd had more warning and didn't have a policy of ordering nursing homes to accept readmissions.

COVID-19's spread in nursing homes was much a bigger problem than any policy could have caused, Konetzka said.

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Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/timelywriter.
CANAZEI, Italy (AP)  Rescuers found body parts and equipment as they searched Tuesday for hikers missing following a powerful avalanche that killed at least seven people and was blamed in large part on rising temperatures that are melting glaciers.

Officials initially feared 13 hikers were still missing after a huge chunk of the Marmolada glacier cleaved off Sunday in northern Italy. But the province of Trento on Tuesday reduced the number of people unaccounted-for to five, all of them Italian, after eight others checked in with authorities.

One of them is Erica Campagnaro, and on Tuesday her sister Debora Campagnaro, lashed out at the lack of warning about the accumulation of water at the base of the glacier that experts say was evidence of an unusual melt from a heat wave that has been scorching Italy for weeks.

Campagnaro said her sister and brother-in-law, an experienced Alpine guide who is also among the missing, never would have left their two sons at home to go hiking if there had been an alert system as there is in ski season warning about the possibility of snow avalanches.

"Is there an authority that had to prevent people (from going up the mountain) given the weather of that day and the weather of the previous days? Where is this authority? she asked at the site of the rescue camp.

Rain had hampered the search Monday, but sunny weather on Tuesday allowed helicopters to bring more rescue teams and their drones up to the site on the glacier, east of Bolzano in the Dolomite mountains, even as hopes dimmed of finding anyone alive.

We have to be clear, finding someone alive with this type of event is a very remote possibility, very remote, because the mechanical action of this type of avalanche has a very big impact on people, said Alex Barattin of the Alpine Rescue Service.

After the 200-meter (yard) wide chunk of glacier detached, a torrent of ice, rock and debris plowed down the mountainside onto unsuspecting hikers below. At least seven people were killed, two of them Czech, officials said.

Nicola Casagli, a geologist and avalanche expert at Florence University, said the impact of the glacier collapse on the hikers was greater than a mere snow avalanche and would have taken them completely by surprise.

These types of events, which are ice and debris avalanches, are impulsive, rapid, unpredictable phenomena, reaching very high speeds and involving large masses," he said. And there is no chance of getting to safety or perceiving the problem in advance, because by the time you perceive it, you've already been hit.

Associated Press photos, taken during a helicopter survey of the site, showed a gaping hole in the glacier as if the blue-gray ice had been carved out by a giant ice cream scooper.

The terrain was still so unstable that rescue crews stayed off to the side and were using drones to try to find any remains or signs of life while helicopters searched overhead, some using equipment to detect cellular pings.

Maurizio Dellantonio, national president of the Alpine Rescue Service, said teams had found body parts, hiking equipment and clothing on the surface of the debris, evidence of the avalanche's powerful impact on the hikers.

We have recovered so many fragments over the last two days. They are very painful for those who pick them up. and then for those who have to analyze them," he said. "Personally I can only think that what we found on the surface will be the same that we will find underneath, when the ice will melt or by digging, if there is a chance.

By late Tuesday, he said technical teams had determined it was safe enough for ground rescue workers to start searching the lowest part of the debris, about 700 meters below the detachment site, where drones weren't working well anyway.

Officials closed all access routes and chair lifts to the glacier for hikers, fearing continued instability and the potential that more chunks of ice might detach.

Premier Mario Draghi, who visited the rescue base in Canazei on Monday, acknowledged avalanches are unpredictable but that the tragedy certainly depends on the deterioration of the climate situation.

Italy is in the midst of an early summer heatwave, coupled with the worst drought in northern Italy in 70 years that prompted the government to declare a state of emergency in five northern regions. Experts say there was unusually little snowfall during the winter, exposing the glaciers of the Italian Alps more to the summer heat and melt.

We are thus in the worst conditions for a detachment of this kind, when theres so much heat and so much water running at the base," said Renato Colucci from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the state-run Council for National Research, or CNR.

The CNR has estimated that the Marmolada glacier could disappear entirely in the next 25-30 years if current climatic trends continue, given that it lost 30% of its volume and 22% of its area from 2004-2015.

Maurizio Fugatti, president of the autonomous province of Trento, insisted though that Sunday's detachment was an exceptional event, one of a kind, when asked about why hikers such as Campagnaro and her husband had been allowed on the glacier.

There were many alpine guides on that side (of the glacier), people who know very well what the situation is, he said. "On the other hand we can understand the feeling of the relatives and friends of those people affected.

Casagli said what happened on the Marmolada was unusual, but said such destructive avalanches will become more frequent as global temperatures continue to rise.

The fact that it happened in a scorching summer with abnormal temperatures must be a wake-up call to understand that these phenomena, while rare, are possible, he told reporters. If we don't take decisive measures to counter the effects of climate change, they will become more and more frequent."

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Winfield reported from Rome.
PARIS (AP)  Police in the U.K. and other European countries carried out a joint operation Tuesday targeting people suspected of smuggling migrants to Britain on small boats.

Britains National Crime Agency said six people were arrested in the Docklands and Catford areas of London, and that dozens of raids also took place in Germany, France and the Netherlands.

In a statement, the agency said the operation targeted "criminal networks suspected of using small boats to smuggle thousands of people into the U.K. French judicial authorities said the operation targeted a major organized crime group that allegedly facilitated people-smuggling across the English Channel from France to Britain.

Police in the German city of Osnabrueck said 18 people were arrested in northwestern and southwestern Germany on suspicion of involvement in organized smuggling of foreigners. They said more than 900 police officers carried out 36 searches in Germany, and that comparable operations took place in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Britain.

European justice agency Eurojust planned to hold a news conference about the operation in The Hague on Wednesday.

Thousands of people hoping to enter the U.K. try to cross the English Channel, one of the worlds busiest shipping lanes, in dinghies and other fragile craft every year.

More than 28,000 migrants reached Britain by way of the Channel last year, up from 8,500 in 2020. Dozens have died while attempting the crossing, including 27 people from a packed boat that capsized in November.

Migrants have long used northern France as a launching point to reach Britain, a destination favored by many for reasons of language or family ties, or because of Britains perceived open economy.

The British and French governments have worked for years to stop the journeys, without much success, and have bickered over who is responsible for the failure.

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Follow all AP stories on global migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  Federal guidance prioritizing the deportation of people in the country illegally who pose the greatest public safety risk can be implemented, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

At issue is a September directive from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that paused deportation unless individuals had committed acts of terrorism, espionage or egregious threats to public safety. The guidance of President Joe Biden's administration updated the policy under the administration of then-President Donald Trump, which removed people in the country illegally regardless of criminal history or community ties.
In a blow to claims that drug companies fueled the opioid crisis, a federal judge ruled Monday that the nation's three major drug distributors did not cause a public nuisance by shipping millions of addictive pain pills to a West Virginia community that was among the hardest hit.

In a legal win for AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson, Judge David A. Faber dismissed the argument made by Cabell County and its seat, Huntington, that the distributors bore responsibility for the consequences of an inundation of opioids, according to the judge's order filed in the U.S. District Court in West Virginia.

The distributors have denied wrongdoing and have said the painkillers they shipped were prescribed by licensed doctors and filled by pharmacies. They argued they had no way of telling that those prescriptions were not legitimate and that any of the drugs may have been funneled to the black market.

The arguments by lawyers for the distributors resonated with the judge, who ruled that the plaintiffs did not prove the conduct by the companies was unreasonable, a key element to establishing a public nuisance case. He found that the conduct of the companies could not be connected to the harm suffered by the communities. Finally, he ruled that the plaintiffs failed to devise a detailed abatement plan outlining how the communities would spend any money they received if they did prevail at trial.

The increase of pills going to West Virginia was due in part, he said, to "good faith dispensing" as well as the rise in product thresholds set by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

"The opioid crisis has taken a considerable toll on the citizens of Cabell County and the City of Huntington. And while there is a natural tendency to assign blame in such cases, they must be decided not based on sympathy, but on the facts and the law," Faber wrote in his ruling. "In view of the court's findings and conclusions, the court finds that judgment should be entered in defendants' favor."

In the end, Faber ruled that public nuisance statutes had been wrongly applied in the case.

"The extension of the law of nuisance to cover the marketing and sale of opioids is inconsistent with the history and traditional notions of nuisance," he wrote.

The decision comes nearly a year after lawyers for the defendants and the plaintiffs rested their case in a bench trial held before the judge last summer. Following the trial, the three distributors finalized a $21 billion national deal with a vast majority of states, counties and cities to resolve most of the lawsuits against them. Communities in West Virginia were not part of that deal. Lawyers involved in the case said they were surprised by the amount of time it took Faber to hand down his decision.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said they are considering an appeal.

"We are deeply disappointed personally and for the citizens of Cabell County and the City of Huntington," the plaintiffs' attorneys said in a statement. "We felt the evidence that emerged from witness statements, company documents, and extensive datasets showed these defendants were responsible for creating and overseeing the infrastructure that flooded West Virginia with opioids."

Representatives of the drug companies cheered Faber's ruling.

"We continue to be deeply concerned about the impact that the opioid crisis is having on families and communities across our nation," McKesson said in a statement. "McKesson maintains - and continuously enhances - strong programs designed to detect and prevent opioid diversion within the pharmaceutical supply chain. We only distribute controlled substances, including opioids, to DEA-registered and state-licensed pharmacies."

"We applaud the Court's ruling, which recognizes what we demonstrated in court, which is that we do not manufacture, market, or prescribe prescription medications but instead only provide a secure channel to deliver medications of all kinds from manufacturers to our thousands of hospital and pharmacy customers that dispense them to their patients based on doctor-ordered prescriptions," Cardinal Health said in a statement.

AmerisourceBergen said in a statement: "We're pleased with the court's decision which struck down the notion that the distribution of FDA-approved medications to licensed and registered health care providers in Cabell County and the City of Huntington was a public nuisance."

Before the coronavirus pandemic began, the West Virginia trial was set to be a bellwether test of a novel legal strategy in the sprawling national litigation against companies including drugmakers and pharmacies. Lawyers for Huntington and Cabell County argued that the companies shipped drugs without regard for red flags that pills could have been siphoned to the black market, leading to costly consequences for communities devastated by addiction and deaths.

While the pandemic delayed trials across the country and other lawsuits were resolved with settlements, West Virginia's trial moved forward. During the nearly three-month bench trial in Charleston in the summer of 2021, plaintiffs argued that the companies should have been alarmed by the significant rise in drugs shipped to the Appalachian community during the height of the pill crisis.

In an eight-year span ending in 2014, there were more than 81 million prescription hydrocodone and oxycodone pills distributed in the West Virginia county, enough for 94 pills for every adult and child per year.

Attorneys representing Cabell County and Huntington sought $2.6 billion from the three companies for efforts to recover from the drug epidemic.

The judge's decision comes after public nuisance claims were dismissed by a California state judge and the Oklahoma Supreme Court. But the argument has prevailed elsewhere: In New York State Court, a jury ruled against Teva Pharmaceuticals after the state accused the Israel-based drugmaker of engaging in misleading marketing practices. And in northern Ohio, a federal jury ruled in favor of communities arguing major retail pharmacies - CVS, Walgreens and Walmart - allowed opioids into the wrong hands without controls.

A trial in West Virginia state court concluded after the state attorney general settled in April for $99 million with Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutical and for $161.5 million with Teva Pharmaceuticals, AbbVie's Allergan and others.

Paul Farrell, a West Virginia lawyer representing the communities, began his opening argument by referencing Eric Eyre's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting that first disclosed distributors shipped 780 million pills to the state in a six-year span.

"This newspaper series triggered a congressional investigation into pill dumping in West Virginia and has launched what has been described as the most complex and largest litigation in the history of the country," Farrell told the judge.

The massive wave of drugs also caught the attention of the DEA, according to Joe Rannazzisi, the former head of its Office of Diversion Control, who testified that the agency warned the distributors to take a closer look at their customers, especially "large quantities of controlled substances going downstream to pharmacies without any appropriate review, due diligence, reporting."

"They were just shipping," he said.

After a spike in deaths from prescription opioids, the communities argued that users turned to cheaper drugs on the street, leading to a worsening overdose and addiction problem. During the trial, Huntington Mayor Steve Williams testified that he watched a SWAT raid in 2014 of a large shipment of heroin delivered to a house in his city, realizing the gravity of the problem and fueling his sense of urgency. Now, Williams said funds are needed to help address the worsening crisis.

"I'm not looking for a money grab," he testified. "All I'm looking for is the capacity to be able to make sure that my community can heal."

In the decade prior, 1,100 people died from opioid overdoses in Huntington-Cabell County, considered an epicenter of the crisis. In 2008, more West Virginia residents died from drug overdoses than car crashes.

During the trial, Robert Nicholas, a lawyer for AmerisourceBergen, acknowledged the toll of the epidemic but said blame put on the distributors is "misplaced" and "contrived."

"No one in Cabell County or Huntington got a prescription for an opioid pain medicine without a doctor," Nicholas said.

Attorneys for the county and city presented evidence that executives made light of the public health crisis in emails. They questioned AmerisourceBergen executive Chris Zimmerman about a parody song about "pillbillies" addicted to OxyContin when he testified in May. Public outrage over the news of the email spurred death threats, according to the company's lawyers.

"I shouldn't have sent the email," testified Zimmerman, the company's senior vice president and head of investigations. But he added that the exchange was cherry-picked and that the corporate culture at AmerisourceBergen was the "highest caliber."

The father of an 18-year-old who died from an opioid overdose in 2001 took to Twitter to decry the verdict.

"NO Justice," Ed Bisch wrote.
BERLIN (AP)  German biotech company CureVac said Tuesday it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against rival BioNTech for work that it says contributed to the development of the BioNTech-Pfizer coronavirus vaccine. BioNTech said its work is original and it would vigorously contest the claim.

CureVac, which last year reported disappointing results from late-stage testing of its own first-generation COVID-19 shot, earlier this year started a clinical trial of a second-generation vaccine candidate developed with British pharmaceutical company GSK.

The company said it was seeking fair compensation from BioNTech for the alleged infringement, but it didn't cite an amount.

CureVac said it would not pursue a court injunction and doesn't intend to take legal action that impedes the production, sale or distribution by BioNTech and partner Pfizer of their successful Comirnaty vaccine.

Both CureVac and BioNTech have worked to develop the messenger RNA technology employed in their respective vaccines and potentially for other uses.

CureVac said it filed its suit against BioNTech and two subsidiaries at the state court in Duesseldorf. It asserted in a statement that its intellectual property portfolio protects multiple inventions that are considered essential to the design and development of BioNTechs SARS CoV-2 mRNA vaccine, among others.

Those, it said, relate to the engineering of mRNA molecules, including sequence modifications to increase stability, and mRNA vaccine formulations specific to COVID-19 vaccines.

BioNTech said in a statement that it values and respects valid intellectual property rights, adding that its work is original, and we will vigorously defend it against all allegations of patent infringement.

However, we are aware that it is not unusual that other companies in the pharmaceutical industry, having witnessed the success of Comirnaty, are now suggesting that the vaccine potentially infringes their intellectual property rights, it said.

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Follow all of APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
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PARIS (AP)  Israeli caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Tuesday used his first trip abroad since taking office to urge world powers to step up pressure on Iran over its nuclear activities, calling the Islamic republic a threat to regional stability.

Lapid met in Paris on Tuesday with French President Emmanuel Macron, who called on Lapid to revive talks toward peace with the Palestinians and said Israelis are lucky to have him in charge.

Lapid, who took office Friday, focused on Israel's concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions and the stalled global deal aimed at curbing them. Israel accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons  a charge Iran denies  and says the tattered nuclear deal doesn't include sufficient safeguards to halt Irans progress toward making a bomb.

The current situation cannot continue as it is. It will lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, which would threaten world peace. We must all work together to stop that from happening, Lapid told reporters.

He and Macron, both centrists, called each other friends, but disagreed over the Iran nuclear deal.

The 2015 deal offered Iran relief from economic sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear activities. In 2018, then President Donald Trump, with strong Israeli backing, withdrew from the deal, causing it to unravel. Since then, Iran has stepped up key nuclear activities, including uranium enrichment, well beyond the contours of the original agreement.

Macron called for a return to the 2015 deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but acknowledged that it will not be enough. France helped negotiate the deal and is one of the parties in talks aimed at trying to revive it. Israel says that if the agreement is restored, it should include tighter restrictions and address Irans non-nuclear military activities across the region.

Lapid called the JCPOA a dangerous deal," saying it isn't tough or far-reaching enough.

He said Israel and France may have disagreements about what the content of the agreement should be, but we do not disagree on the facts: Iran continues to violate the agreement and develop its program, enriching uranium beyond the level it is allowed to and removing cameras from nuclear sites.

He heads the centrist Yesh Atid party, and was one of the architects of the historic alliance of eight diverse factions that found common ground in opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu, the first governing coalition to include an Arab party.

Lapid will stay in office until a November election and perhaps beyond if no clear winner emerges. Making his first trip abroad as prime minister, Lapid may try to use the meeting with Macron to bolster his credentials as a statesman and alternative to Netanyahu with the Israeli electorate.

Macron used their meeting to urge efforts by Israel toward long-term peace with the Palestinians.

There is no alternative to a return to political dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, he said, to revive a process thats been broken for too long.

Lapid didnt address Macrons appeal in their public remarks. Lapid, unlike Netanyahu, supports a two-state solution with the Palestinians. But as a caretaker leader, he isn't in a position to pursue any major diplomatic initiatives.

He and Macron were also expected to discuss Lebanon, days after Israel said it downed three unmanned aircraft launched by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah that were heading toward an area where Israel recently installed an offshore gas platform. Hezbollah, which fought a monthlong war against Israel in 2006, has confirmed sending the unarmed drones in a reconnaissance mission.

Israel and Lebanon don't have formal diplomatic relations, but have been engaged in indirect U.S.-brokered talks to delineate their maritime border. France is a key supporter of Lebanon, a former French protectorate, and Macron has unsuccessfully tried to broker a solution to Lebanon's political crisis.

Hezbollah has more than 100,000 rockets in Lebanon, aimed at Israel. It tries to attack us with Iranian rockets and UAVs, Lapid said, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles. Israel will not sit back and do nothing, given these repeated attacks.

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Ilan Ben Zion contributed from Jerusalem.
MOIUNT HOLLY, N.C. (AP)  A North Carolina man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges stemming from the fatal shooting of a police officer in 2020, authorities said.

During his hearing, Joshua Tyler Funk, 24, of Mount Holly, entered a guilty plea for murder, news outlets reported. In exchange for his plea, the other charges filed against him were dropped. Funk was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
KENT, N.Y. (AP)  Two men got out of their cars to argue on a New York highway and were fatally struck by a third car, police said.

The crash happened at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday on Interstate 84 in the town of Kent. Mark Hall, 38, and Fabian Tirado, 22, stopped in the right lane and got out of their vehicles due to a road rage altercation, New York state police said in a news release.
ST. LOUIS (AP)  A 70-year-old Missouri man is facing charges in the beating death of his disabled sister  a crime police said the man carried out because he was frustrated about having to care for her.

Medics and officers were called to a home Sunday in an unincorporated part of St. Louis County by Anthony Sokolich, who said his sister was unresponsive, the St. Louis Count Police Department said in a statement Tuesday.
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. - The 21-year-old charged with opening fire at an Independence Day parade here had so alarmed his family with violent threats in 2019 that they summoned police, who confiscated more than a dozen knives and other sharp weapons from his home, authorities said Tuesday.

Police were contacted in September 2019 by a relative who reported that Robert Crimo III had a collection of knives and "said he was going to kill everyone," said Christopher Covelli, a spokesman for the Lake County Major Crime Task Force. Police took the weapons but did not seek criminal charges.

"At that time, there was no probable cause to arrest," Covelli said at a news briefing. "There were no complaints that were signed by any of the victims."

Officers had also been called to the home earlier that year because of a reported suicide attempt by Crimo, Covelli said.

In the months after the two police visits, the suspected attacker acquired five firearms, including the powerful rifle police say he fired dozens of times into a crowd during Monday's holiday parade in this suburb of Chicago. Seven people were killed, and dozens more were injured.

Nam Y. Huh/AP

Police apprehended Crimo after an hours-long manhunt. On Tuesday, authorities charged him with seven counts of first-degree murder, with dozens of additional charges expected to follow. He is expected to appear in court Wednesday morning; prosecutors said they will ask that he be held without bail.

Attorney Thomas Durkin, who identified himself as one of two lawyers representing Crimo, declined to answer questions about his client Tuesday evening but said he probably would issue a statement after Wednesday's court appearance.

It was not clear Tuesday whether the 2019 incidents should have prevented Crimo from acquiring multiple rifles and handguns. But the incidents added to a deepening portrait of a young man who seemingly left suggestions of violence in both his home and online lives well before the carnage at the parade.

Investigators were still searching for what could have motivated the gunfire, which Covelli described as "completely random." Crimo was talking to investigators, Covelli said. His profile is one that has become grimly and increasingly familiar in recent years: a young man, armed with legally acquired firepower, who allegedly unleashed bloodshed in sudden, terrifying fashion.

The Illinois State Police said Tuesday evening that Crimo passed background checks when purchasing guns four times, on June 9, July 18 and July 31, 2020, and on Sept. 20, 2021.

Based on preliminary information, Covelli said, police had no indication that the shooting was motivated by any type of racial or religious animus - a fear that had circulated given the area's large and close-knit Jewish community.

According to police, the suspect in the parade attack had plotted for weeks.

Covelli said the gunman sought to conceal his identity by wearing women's clothing intended to cover his facial tattoos. Then, Covelli said, the gunman abandoned his rifle and made his escape by blending into terrified crowds rushing from the scene.

The attacker, he said, then walked to his mother's house and borrowed her car.

Exactly where the suspected attacker went during the frenzied hours after the shooting remained unclear, but Covelli said Tuesday that he apparently had driven into Wisconsin, gone to the Madison area, then returned. Another motorist saw his vehicle and called 911. When police took him into custody, Covelli said, they found another rifle in the car - and like the one found along the parade route, it was legally purchased.

"This is not something where this kid woke up one day and said, 'Hey, I think I'll go shoot a bunch of people.' It's clear he's been planning this for months and months," said Lori Ann Post, who researches mass shootings as director of Northwestern University's Buehler Center for Health Policy and Economics.

The 2019 incidents in which police were called to the shooting suspect's home were months apart. In April, Covelli said, someone contacted police in Highland Park to report that Crimo had attempted suicide a week earlier. When police responded, they spoke to him and his parents; because he was getting mental health treatment, Covelli said, police did not take any further action.

That September, police were contacted again, this time about the knives, Covelli said. Highland Park police confiscated 16 knives, a dagger and a sword from the home. They also contacted the Illinois State Police - which manages the firearm owner's identification cards that allow people in the state to possess guns and ammunition.

The state police said Tuesday evening that Highland Park police filed a "clear and present danger" report based on the incident; the report said Crimo told police officers he did not feel like harming himself or others. The report also said Crimo's father told officers the knives belonged to him and were being stored in his son's closet for safekeeping, state police said in a statement. Highland Park police returned the weapons to the elder Crimo the same day, state police said.

A state police spokeswoman said that when the September 2019 incident occurred, Crimo did not have a firearm owner's identification card or a pending application for one. In December of that year, when Crimo was 19, he applied for a card, the state police said in a statement. He was under 21, the agency said, and his father sponsored the application. When the application was reviewed in January 2020, "there was insufficient basis to establish a clear and present danger and deny" his application, the agency said.

Gabriella Cooperman, 22, overlapped with Crimo at Edgewood Middle School and Highland Park High School and regularly saw him at the deli run by Crimo's father and uncle, a community hangout.

"He was always just in his own world," Cooperman said. "He didn't have many friends. He wasn't that personable."

He was enrolled in Highland Park High for his freshman year and the first two days of his sophomore year but stopped attending in August 2016, said Karen Warner, a spokeswoman for the school district. She declined to say why he stopped attending, citing state privacy laws.

Cooperman recalled often seeing Crimo during his early high school years, sitting in the corner of the deli, his long bangs hanging partially over his face.

"He always gave weird, creepy vibes," she said. "He had kind of a sulking-in-the-corner energy combined with I'm-watching-you energy."

The deli his family ran recently closed, Cooperman said.

His father, Robert Crimo Jr., had run unsuccessfully for mayor of Highland Park in 2019. Attempts to reach his relatives since the shooting have been unsuccessful. His uncle Paul Crimo told a local television station that he and his nephew live on the same property - with the younger man having a separate apartment - but had minimal interactions, describing him as "a YouTube rapper" who kept things to himself.

In images released by police and across social media profiles, the alleged shooter - who authorities have described as White - is slight, with a patchy beard and tattoos visible on his face and neck. One of the tattoos, sitting above his left eyebrow, reads "Awake," the name he used online. He had a seemingly modest following, with amateur music videos on YouTube and tracks posted to Spotify.

Videos that he appeared to have posted alternated between ominous imagery - including depictions of death and bloodshed - and more anodyne footage, such as him rapping into the camera.

One video includes a cartoon depiction of someone aiming a long gun. Two other cartoon figures are visible in the video; one is sprawled on the ground, while the other is on its knees, raising its arms. The video also shows someone - apparently Crimo - seated at a classroom desk, before cutting to another cartoon image, this one showing a bleeding person. Another video shows a cartoon image of a person with a long gun, facedown in a pool of blood, while police stand nearby, at least one of them wielding their own firearm.

Other videos included more mundane activities, such as footage that appears to show a presidential motorcade passing by. Photos that appear to show Crimo attending a rally for former president Donald Trump have also surfaced, but it is not clear from his online postings whether he was a supporter of Trump or any other political party or candidate.

Bennett Brizes, who became friends with Crimo around 2015 through the music scene, said Crimo was "consistently apolitical." At one point, Brizes said, Crimo appeared to make decent money from his music.

But the two grew apart and stopped talking around 2019, he said, and when they spoke last year, the suspected attacker seemed "depressed," Brizes said.

No one answered the door Tuesday at the white stucco home with peeling paint in Highwood, Ill., where Crimo is believed to have lived in recent years with his uncle and father; a Ring doorbell camera was covered with tape.

The house sits on a hill on a quiet, leafy neighborhood less than two miles from the parade attack scene.

In the driveway sat a rusting silver Honda CRV. Parked in the grass was an older-model Acura with monster mouth decals, anime character stickers and the number 47 painted on one side.

- - -

Berman reported from Washington; Pietsch from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and De Vynck from San Francisco. The Washington Post's Shawn Boburg, Reis Thebault and Praveena Somasundaram contributed to this report.
MANILA, Philippines (AP)  A land mine set by suspected communist guerrillas wounded seven soldiers in the central Philippines on Tuesday, in one of the insurgents first known attacks since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office last week.

Army troops were checking reports from villagers of anti-personnel mines laid by rebels from the New Peoples Army, the Communist Party of the Philippines' armed wing, along a village trail in Mapanas town in Northern Samar province when an explosion wounded the seven soldiers, regional army commander Maj. Gen. Edgardo de Leon said.

Two of the wounded soldiers were in critical condition, he said, adding that no villagers were injured.

Some of the soldiers were tossed away because the rebels have been using really powerful land mines, de Leon said.

The government will file criminal complaints against rebel leaders for the attack and the use of internationally banned types of land mines, de Leon told reporters.

The soldiers were not able to open fire at the rebels, who fled after the attack and were being hunted by government forces, he said.

On Friday, a day after Marcos Jr. was sworn in after winning a landslide victory in a May 9 election, government troops assaulted eight communist rebels, killing one, in a brief gunbattle in central Negros Oriental province, the army said.

Marcos Jr. must deal with decades-long communist and Muslim insurgencies, along with longstanding territorial disputes with China and other claimants in the South China Sea.

During the campaign, he said he would pursue peace talks with communist insurgents and expressed support for a government task force established under his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, to fight the insurgency by bringing infrastructure, housing and livelihood projects to the poverty-stricken countryside.

The task force has drawn criticism for linking several left-wing activists and government critics to the communist insurgency, in what Dutertes opponents said was baseless red-tagging aimed at muzzling legitimate dissent.

Despite battle setbacks, infighting and factionalism, the communist insurgency has continued to rage, mostly in rural areas, for more than half a century in one of Asias longest-running rebellions. It currently has an estimated 2,700 armed fighters.

The Communist Party of the Philippines said in a statement issued when Marcos Jr. assumed the presidency that the New People's Army had foiled Duterte's goal of crushing the rebellion within his six-year term. It said rebel offensives would continue under Marcos Jr., citing human rights violations and plunder that occurred under his father, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

The elder Marcos's counterinsurgency program was known for killings, torture and disappearances of suspected rebels, left-wing activists and their supporters. He was overthrown in an army-backed 1986 People Power pro-democracy uprising that drove him and his family into U.S. exile.

After Marcos died in Hawaii in 1989, his widow and children returned to the Philippines, where they achieved a stunning political comeback by whitewashing the family image on social media, critics say.
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A controversial oil project that would connect oilfields in a Ugandan National Park to a port in Tanzania breaches global environmental guidelines for banks, according to a new nonprofit report Tuesday.

The 897-mile (1443-kilometer) East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), planned by French oil giant TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation has been mired in allegations of human rights abuses and environmental hazard. The 230,000 barrels of oil produced daily will emit 34 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to Ugandan nonprofit the Africa Institute for Energy Governance. Construction will take three years, once a final decision has been taken.

At least 20 banks and eight insurers have ruled themselves out of the project, many coming under pressure from environmental groups. South Africas Standard Bank and the Japanese Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) are financial advisers and lead debt arrangers. The UKs Standard Chartered bank is also considering financing it.

All three signed up to the benchmark Equator Principles, voluntary environmental and human rights guidelines for financing infrastructure projects. A report by the non-governmental organization Inclusive Development International, shared exclusively with The Associated Press, says the project repeatedly breaches these principles and banks would violate them too if they go ahead. Banks are forbidden from financing non-compliant projects. But the scheme is powerless to eject members that do.

Oil wells will be drilled within Murchison Falls National Park, western Uganda. Here the Nile plummets some 130 feet (40 meters) through a gap just 20 feet (6 meters) wide, the surrounding wilderness home to hippos, egrets, giraffes and antelope. The pipeline would then pass through seven forest reserves and two game parks, running alongside Lake Victoria, a source of fresh water for 40 million people.

An oil spill could prove disastrous for the millions that rely on the lakes watershed for drinking water and food production, the environmental campaign group 350.org has warned.

The report says the risk of oil spills breaches an Equator Principle requiring minimal environmental impact. A review of the plans by the nonprofit E-Tech International, which advises communities affected by infrastructure projects, found best practice was not followed.

EACOP oil spills will occur over the lifetime of the project, the review concluded.

The pipelines environmental assessment doesnt contain a robust oil spill plan, the reports authors contend, a further breach of the Principles. The pipeline will also traverse an earthquake zone  the Great Rift Valley  the Inclusive Development International report warns.

TotalEnergies said the pipeline's state of the art design will ensure safety for decades.

The oil has a high wax content, solidifying at temperatures below 91.4 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius) which would stop oil from spreading as liquid, the company said. Emergency plans are being prepared, the company insisted. Summer temperatures can hit 104 Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) in Uganda.

Human rights standards have also allegedly been broken, according to the report. At least four letters from UN Special Rapporteurs on Human Rights, sent to the Ugandan president and TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne over two years, detail various acts of harassment and intimidation against protesting Ugandans. Numerous activists and a journalist have allegedly been intimidated, forced into hiding, arrested and interrogated.

The Equator Principles are not being met with regard to the risks facing community members that express criticism, the report finds.

TotalEnergies said it was unaware of threats emanating from its own staff. The company said it is vocal about the need" for Ugandan security forces to respect human rights, and had written to the Ugandan president to share its concerns.

TotalEnergies does not tolerate any threats or attacks against those who peacefully defend and promote human rights, the statement read.

The Principles have also been violated by a lack of community engagement free of manipulation, interference, or coercion, or intimidation, according to the analysis.

More than 120,000 people will lose land to make way for the project, an evaluation by environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth found. There must be free, prior and informed consultation with people whose lives may be changed, according to the Principles.

But the report found these requirements were not "sufficiently met.

The project has systematically failed to consult and disclose accessible information, it said.

TotalEnergies said only 13,300 people would be economically impacted across Uganda and Tanzania. Since 2017, meetings have reached over 200,000 affected individuals along the route, the oil major said.

Finally, the project violates standards on land acquisition and resettlement, the report finds. Compensation processes exacerbated, rather than mitigated negative impacts, impoverishing villagers who lost access to farmland and faced long delays awaiting compensation.

TotalEnergies said it had already begun paying compensation. The process abides by local laws and is in compliance with the Principles, the company insisted.

Equator Principles rules state each member is individually responsible for its own internal procedures to comply with them. The Equator Principles Association does not have the authority to respond to concerns about breaching them.

Its current chair is Amit Puri, global head of environmental risk at Standard Chartered, one of the banks that the report says would allegedly be breaching the guidelines by financing the pipeline.

Standard Chartered itself and SMBC declined to comment. The China National Offshore Oil Corporation did not respond to numerous requests for a statement.

Standard Bank said its due diligence on funding the project was being assessed, but no final decision has been made. The decision's subject to a full assessment of climate change strategies, the bank said, while full compliance with the Equator Principles was needed to fund the project.

Despite environmental and human rights concerns, the campaign to stop the pipeline is unrealistic, said Angelo Izama, of Ugandan think tank Fanaka Kwa Wote.

Uganda is being thrust into this role as a poster child for climate damage, and its really unfair, he said.

It amounted to a "dismissal of the national interests of Uganda".

Ugandan oil officials declined to comment.

But President Yoweri Museveni has said oil wealth can lift millions out of poverty, while other government officials hope Uganda can become a middle-income country.

Efforts to stop the pipeline have left some dismayed at what they see as concerted efforts to sabotage the project.

TotalEnergies and CNOOC ... have the financial muscle and technical know-how to deliver a world-class project" wrote Elison Karuhanga, a prominent oil attorney, in Ugandas Daily Monitor newspaper.

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This story was first published on July 5, 2022. It was updated on July 7, 2022 to make clear that a statement provided by the Equator Principles Association was later attributed to the organization, not to the chair personally.

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Additional reporting by Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about APs climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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NEW DELHI (AP)  Twitter on Tuesday challenged the Indian government in court over its recent orders to take down some content on the social media platform, media outlets reported.

The lawsuit was filed in the Karnataka High Court in southern Bengaluru city and comes after the Indian government in February warned company executives of criminal action if they failed to comply with the takedown orders, the Press Trust of India and the Bar and Bench legal news site reported.

A Twitter spokesperson, Aditi Shorewal, declined to comment or specify what type of content the company was told to block. She did not confirm that Twitter had filed the lawsuit.

The lawsuit is part of a growing confrontation between Twitter and New Delhi after the Indian government last year passed a new set of sweeping regulations giving it more power to police online content.

The new rules require companies to erase or block content that authorities deem unlawful. Under the laws, employees of social media websites and technology companies can be held criminally liable for failing to comply with the governments orders.

It is everyones responsibility to abide by the laws passed by the countrys Parliament, Indias IT minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, told reporters Tuesday, when he was asked about the lawsuit.

Prime Minister Narendra Modis government has sought for years to control social media and has often directed Twitter to take down tweets or accounts that appear critical of his party and administration.

Twitter complied with most of those orders in the past but also resisted others and has called the new rules a potential threat to freedom of expression. The company has removed content related to anti-government farmer protests and tweets criticising the Modi administrations handling of the pandemic.

The Indian government has called the new rules necessary to tackle disinformation, hate speech and other troubles. Officials have warned Twitter that non-compliance with the rules could mean that the company would lose its liability protections as an intermediary, meaning Twitter could face lawsuits over content.

Relations between the Indian government and Twitter have been thorny since the laws were passed.

In May last year, police raided Twitters office after the company labelled a tweet by Modis party spokesman as manipulated media.

That same month, WhatsApp sued the Indian government to defend what it said was its users privacy and stop new rules that would require it to make messages traceable to external parties. That case is still pending in an Indian court.

Experts have criticised the new rules and said they amount to censorship. They have also accused the Modi government of silencing criticism on social media, particularly Twitter. Modi's party denies the claim.

Police in New Delhi last week arrested a journalist over a tweet from 2018 that an anonymous Twitter user alleged was hurtful to sentiments of a particular religion.
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MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP)  More than two dozen children have died of hunger in the past two months in a single hospital in Somalia. Dr. Yahye Abdi Garun has watched their emaciated parents stumble in from rural areas gripped by the driest drought in decades. And yet no humanitarian aid arrives.

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, a donor who was preparing to give a half-million dollars to a Somali aid group told its executive director Hussein Kulmiye it was redirecting the money to help Ukrainians instead.

And now, as Somalis fleeing the drought fill more than 500 camps in the city of Baidoa, aid workers make horrific choices to help one camp and ignore 10 others, Norwegian Refugee Council Secretary General Jan Egeland said, telling The Associated Press he is angry and ashamed. His groups Ukraine appeal was fully funded within 48 hours, but its Somalia appeal is perhaps a quarter funded as thousands of people die.

The war in Ukraine has abruptly drawn millions of dollars away from other crises. Somalia, facing a food shortage largely driven by the war, might be the most vulnerable. Its aid funding is less than half of last years level while overwhelmingly Western donors have sent more than $1.7 billion to respond to the war in Europe. Yemen, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Congo and the Palestinian territories are similarly affected.

The $2.2 billion appeal for Ukraine is almost 80% funded, according to United Nations data, an exceptional level for any crisis at the midway point of the year, said Angus Urquhart, humanitarian and crisis lead for the Development Initiatives consultancy. The smaller appeal for Somalia is just 30% funded.

This year's global shift in money and attention is perhaps most urgently felt in the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia and Kenya, where some areas could be declared in famine within weeks. The United States Agency for International Development says regional authorities havent seen anything on this scale in well over 100 years. Millions of livestock, families source of wealth and nutrition, have died.

People are next.

To the shock of some exhausted Somalis who walk for days through parched landscapes to places like Mogadishu in search of aid, there is often little or none.

Hawa Osman Bilal sat outside her makeshift tent holding the clothes of her daughter Ifrah, who like many vulnerable Somalis died after the difficult journey to seek help.

She was skinny and emaciated, and she died in front of me, Bilal said. The girl was buried nearby, one in a growing number of tiny graves.

The crowded camps caretaker, Fadumo Abdulkadir Warsame, told the AP that about 100 families had arrived in the past week alone, swelling the population to 1,700 families. There is no food to give them. The only thing we can afford for them is bread and black tea, he said. There is no aid from the donors yet.

At a nearby storeroom run by the local organization Peace and Development Action, supported by the U.N. World Food Program, the stock has shriveled. The world has turned its back on Somalia to focus on Ukraine, manager Shafici Ali Ahmed said.

The White House acknowledged the problem in a June 28 statement on global food security, saying that while the entire globe will continue to be affected by Russias actions, the most immediate needs will present in the Horn of Africa, where Somalia once sourced 90% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine but now struggles to find supplies amid soaring prices.

Were really trying to stave off mass deaths at this point, Sarah Charles, assistant to the administrator for USAIDs Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, told the AP, adding that unfortunately, the nature of these crises is such that they go slow and then go very fast.

Nimo Hassan, director of the Somalia NGO Consortium, and several others said they believe donor countries representatives on the ground understand the urgency, but decision-makers in capitals like Brussels and London appear distracted by the war in Europe.

Theyre not saying openly, Were focused on Ukraine, but you can see what theyre doing in Ukraine, Hassan said. It should be based on need, not a political decision, you know?

Less than 30% of the new arrivals at camps for those fleeing drought in Somalia were receiving immediate food or other assistance as of April, the U.N. humanitarian agency has said.

Not all emergencies are born equal, said Victor Aguayo, the UNICEF director of nutrition and child development, speaking from the Somali region of Ethiopia, where he reported a very significant increase in the number of children under 2 with severe wasting.

Some emergencies all of a sudden grab the attention, Aguayo said, adding that UNICEF is not receiving enough money to contain the Horn of Africa crisis as 1.8 million children need urgent treatment.

The World Food Program, like UNICEF, must shift limited resources from preventing acute hunger to focusing on the desperately hungry. That means more than a quarter-million children under 2 in Somalia have lost prevention help at the peak of famine prevention efforts, WFP spokesman Altan Butt said.

Across Somalia, where a weak humanitarian response to the 2010-12 drought was in part to blame as a quarter-million people died, humanitarian workers watch this one with fear as a fifth straight rainy season might fail for the first time in memory.

The southern district of Dollow near Ethiopia is overwhelmed by new arrivals, and at least 40 people died from April through June, district commissioner Mohamed Hussein Abdi said. Displaced people now outnumber residents.

At mother-child health centers in Somalias northern Puntland region, nearly every other patient was severely malnourished, said Justus Liku, a food security adviser with the aid group CARE.

We can see places where theres not a drop of water, said Ahmed Nasir, deputy director of Save Somali Women and Children, speaking to the AP from the field. If those people in decision-making offices could see what we see now, they would just release the funds immediately.

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This story was corrected to show that more than a quarter-million children under 2 in Somalia have lost prevention help, according to WFP.

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Anna reported from Nairobi, Kenya and Kyiv, Ukraine.
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BORODYANKA, Ukraine (AP)  Valentyna Klymenko tries to return home as late as possible to avoid the darkness of her war-damaged home outside Ukraine's capital. She visits friends, goes to the well for water or looks for a place to charge her phone.

The 70-year-old Klymenko then returns alone to an apartment that used to be noisy and full of life. She is now greeted by dim, damp rooms instead of the voices of her great-grandchildren.

Klymenko rarely cooks. She drinks fruit compote and eats canned tomatoes, which she prepared last year, so she doesn't waste the gas in her portable stove. She goes to bed quickly, but cant fall asleep for a long time.

Her thoughts revolve around one question: What will happen to my home?

Russian troops retreated from the area around Kyiv in late March. But they left behind 16,000 damaged residential buildings in the Bucha region, where Borodyanka is located, according to the head of the Kyiv regional administration, Oleksiy Kuleba.

The most affected street in Borodyanka, a town with a population of more than 12,000, was Tsentralna, which was still called Lenin Street less than a decade ago. One of the homes on this street belongs to Klymenko.

The shockwave from a Russian airstrike that witnesses say struck the building across the street with two bombs caused a fire in Klymenko's five-story apartment building.

The apartments on the upper floors of Klymenkos building burned. Four months later, there is no electricity, water, or gas. Some residents lost everything and ended up on the street without any means to find a new home.

I had a sofa here and armchairs here. But now there are just the springs, said Tetiana Solohub, pointing to the blackened walls of her home. Nothing is left but a couple of small enamel cups and the suffocating smell of ashes.

Solohubs scorched apartment is located a few floors above Klymenkos. They moved into the building at the same time 36 years ago, when it had just been built.

And now, at 64, I am forced to be homeless, Solohub said. Unlike Klymenko, she even doesnt have a damaged apartment to live in. Hers is completely gone.

Solohub now lives in a camp for displaced people made of shipping containers. It was established in Borodyanka with the support of the Polish and Ukrainian governments. There are other camps like this in the Kyiv and Lviv regions. It has become a popular way to offer a home to people who cant return to their own abodes.

There are 257 people  35% of them older residents  living in Borodyankas camp. Kostyantyn Morozko, a representative of the military administration in the Bucha region and coordinator of the shipping container camp, said that he expects two containers for 160 people to be added this month. But even this isnt enough. He has 700 families waiting.

Morozko expects the temporary camp to endure for autumn, winter and spring. He thinks there is a 90% chance that people will remain until then. The first cold weather is expected in early September.

The camps residents are adjusting to the idea of a long stay. They bring a bouquet of fresh flowers to the shared kitchen every couple of days, the shelves are filled with their belongings, and the tables in their private rooms are covered with colorful tablecloths.

But living conditions for older people are challenging. Solohub shares a small, narrow room with plastic walls with two other people. There arent many things on her shelf. She didnt have a chance to rescue her belongings.

Because of the summer heat, it is difficult for her to stay in her makeshift home all day. So she often goes to rest in a small garage with metal walls and no windows near her home.

I have a private space in this garage, and no one bothers me. I cant breathe in that plastic house, Solohub said. We want our houses to be restored so we have a place to invite our children and grandchildren.

Klymenko is glad that her apartment didn't burn down completely. But she doesn't know when her granddaughter and great-grandchildren will come again. They left for Lithuania in the first days of Russias invasion. There, Klymenkos granddaughter managed to find housing and a job.

It is complicated for children in Lithuania. They do not know the language. Its hard for them at school. Its hard for them in kindergarten. It is tough not to be in your own country. But where can they come back? Klymenko asked, with tears in her eyes.

She was also in Lithuania for several months after being evacuated from her basement the day after the fire in her building. One of the few things she took with her was her great-grandsons blanket, which she used to protect herself from the cold.

But Klymenko felt uncomfortable outside Ukraine, so she returned to the only place she could at least partially regain her past life.

Only she and a neighbor from the same floor now live in the five-story building. Its bearable in summer, but the cold of autumn will be challenging. Her great-grandsons blanket lies near her bed.

Im staying. And I will stay. And I dont know what will happen next, Klymenko said.

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Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Courtesy of Ken Branca

Fireworks are to believed to be the cause for a two-alarm fire at two homes on the Northwest Side on Monday night, July 4. The cause of another home blaze that displaced a family is still being investigated.

San Antonio firefighters responded to two homes at the 9300 block of Wildstone Place on Monday at 11:23 p.m. that were covered in heavy flames, said Fire Chief Charles Hood at the scene. The flames had completely engulfed the attics of both homes and Hood believes fireworks are to blame for the two-alarm fire. According to Hood, Ring doorbell footage shows fireworks going off at the home.
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It's become common knowledge that the decadeslong practice of extinguishing natural fires made forests overly dense and more prone to big, destructive blazes.

Now, a Midland author with a longtime affinity for the Pecos River region points to a portion of his 2016 book detailing how trees in this area grew thicker and larger  making the forest landscape more flammable, especially with the climate becoming warmer and drier.

The wooded area that Patrick Dearen describes in his book "Bitter Waters: the Struggle of the Pecos River" is a microcosm of the West, where the federal policy of snuffing wildfires that naturally thinned forests led to overgrowth blamed for feeding increasingly common wildland infernos.

Dearen said the book relates directly to the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire  the largest blaze in New Mexico's history  because part of the fire raged in the dense forest land near the Pecos River's headwaters.

The two-month-long fire has burned nearly 342,000 acres and destroyed at least 300 homes.

"This was inevitable," Dearen said in a phone interview. "Sooner or later it was going to happen because the stage was set in the 1890s."

Dearen, 71, has authored more than two dozen books, both fiction and nonfiction, most of them with a Western theme.

He said he has done voluminous research over the years on the history and ecology of the Pecos River, which stretches 926 miles across New Mexico and Texas.

The federal government established the Pecos River Forest Reserve in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in 1892, and within six years, it grew to 431,000 acres. The reserve would become a national forest in 1907 and then become part of the Santa Fe National Forest in 1915.

In 1898, John D. Benedict, the forest superintendent, said a key mission was to protect the timber from destructive forest fires, Dearen said.

Benedict was among the forest officials promoting a no-fire policy that later would be more widely adopted.

The U.S. Forest Service viewed quelling wildfires as its chief mission after the agency was created in 1905. The agency began carrying out that objective with greater zeal in the early 1930s, with a policy of extinguishing new fires by 10 a.m. the morning after they ignited. That policy would continue until the 1970s.

Meanwhile, the timber on the Pecos lands grew much more dense through the 20th century as crews pounced on any new fire, Dearen said, noting that foresters tallied the proliferating trees over the years.

In a 1911 survey, they counted 50 to 60 ponderosa pines per acre, Dearen said. By the end of the 20th century, the number had grown to 1,089 per acre  a twenty-fold increase, he said.

At the same time, they found 1,348 Douglas firs per acre by the late 1990s, Dearen said. There are no records of how many of these fir trees populated the land in the early part of the century, but this is high density nonetheless, he said.

When the area first became a reserve, a third of it was made up of old wildfire burns and a third was open space, he said, so its natural state was spacious meadows interspersed with thickets.

That topography made it much less prone to mammoth fires, Dearen added.

Officials estimated fuel loads went from 5 tons an acre in the early 1900s to as much as 60 tons by the late '90s, Dearen said.

Aside from more crowded forests, hyper-vigilant fire protection led to tall trees towering over shorter trees, he said. This can create "fuel ladders" that enable a ground fire to climb up the shorter trees, then the taller ones, all the while intensifying as flames ignite their canopies into fast-spreading crown fires.

Crown fires have been a common challenge in the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon blaze, which was driven by high winds and low humidity against the backdrop of drought.

In the 19th century, the common view was timber should be protected from natural threats like fire to ensure maximum yields when logged.

Dearen said with the Pecos reserve, the motives went beyond commercial extraction. Foresters believed increasing the tree cover would benefit the Pecos River, he said.

In 1890, L. Bradford Prince, governor of the New Mexico Territory, called for the Pecos River's headwaters to be set aside as a park  contending that preserving the timber there was vital to irrigating the valley for farmers, Dearen said.

"They had all kinds of reasons why they thought the greater the timber, the greater the water flow would be," he said. "It seemed to be well-intended but not exactly accurate."

A 1902 forest reserve manual reflects their views, Dearen said. They thought denser timber would create more shade, prolonging snowmelt, while shielding the snow against the wind, which causes it to dry and evaporate, he said.

The trees also would keep the soil from washing away in heavy rains, Dearen said, citing the manual. That larger layer of soil could then absorb and store rain for drier periods, he said.

"But by preserving the timber, it denied nature its natural housecleaning," Dearen said.

Before people got involved, low-intensity wildfires would burn through these forests, which were only moderately dense, every five to 25 years, consuming grasses and debris, he said.

In the 1970s and '80s, forest officials resisted conducting prescribed burns and letting natural fires run their course but began embracing this type of fire management in the 1990s, said Tom Ribe, public lands advocate and author of a book that takes a critical look at the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire.

Both the Cerro Grande and Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon fires resulted from prescribed burns gone wrong.

Like other prescribed burns, the intent was to consume the fuels built up over decades of agencies not allowing natural fires to thin them.

The Hermits Peak Fire formed when afternoon gusts blew the burn out of control in early April. It later merged with the Calf Canyon Fire, which ignited from a January pile burn that smoldered for months.

Some similar missteps were made with both the Cerro Grande and Hermits Peak fires, Ribe said. Crews felt pressed to complete the burns despite dry conditions and the risk of erratic spring winds, especially on sloping terrain, he said.

Ribe said he can understand why agencies want to do as many controlled burns as possible, given how much the fuels have amassed.

Though agencies have ramped up prescribed burns in the past two decades, they've barely dented the vast overgrown forests, he said.

"The budgets that they have and the personnel that they have, there's no way they're ever going to catch up with it," Ribe said. "They should've started on this back in the 1960s."

Meanwhile, the prolonged drought and climate change are compounding the problem, making the parched fuels more flammable and causing warmer, drier weather that's often not conducive for doing the much-needed burns, Ribe said.

A recent study published in the journal Nature Climate Change says the West is experiencing the driest 22-year period since A.D. 800, putting the region in a megadrought.

Human-driven climate change is compounding the drought's severity and lengthening its duration, the researchers say, estimating it could drag on to the 30-year mark before it finally passes.

Federal agencies might have to make the hard decision of not doing prescribed burns in the spring unless there's been an above-average wet winter, Ribe said.

"They have a smaller and smaller window to do the prescribed burns," he said.

Dearen said the changing climate combined with overgrown forests are a recipe for a catastrophic blaze like Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon  an unforeseen consequence of putting out all fires for most of a century.

"You take it being drier and hotter and the density of the forest and fuel loads, and it was waiting to happen," Dearen said.

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Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Following the Supreme Court's June decision to return the question of abortion law to individual states, activists and lawmakers across the U.S. have begun crafting rafts of local legislation. Each seeks to enshrine and expand new anti-abortion measures to criminalize the performance and abetting of such procedures within their jurisdictions.

Individuals at the forefront of these efforts include Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. On Thursday Paxton filed an emergency motion that on Saturday successfully removed a temporary restraining order blocking state prosecutors from charging abortion recipients during the 30-day enforcement limitation period set forth under Texas' abortion trigger law. The Texas Supreme Court on Friday night ruled against the temporary restraining order, leaving Texans abortion providers subject to civil lawsuits. The court's ruling does not allow prosecutors to bring criminal charges against providers.

Other formerly Roe-protected measures seemingly subject to new litigation include the availability of medical abortion pills. In December, Texas lawmakers passed a new measure limiting the use of abortion-inducing medication to the first seven weeks of pregnancy and outlawing the mailing of abortive pills. The policy will likely serve as the blueprint for other states passing anti-abortion statutes in the coming months, according to remarks by a Texas-based anti-abortion advocate published Tuesday in the New York Times.

"We have legislation ready to roll out for every single state you live in to protect life regardless of the Supreme Court, regardless of your circuit court," said Chelsey Youman, national legislative adviser of the Human Coalition Action, according to writer Katharine Stewart.

As the anti-abortion group's Texas state director, Youman foreshadowed new, even stricter anti-abortion laws being introduced that build upon those that originated in the Lone Star State. "Our next big bill is going to make the Heartbeat Act look tame," Youman said. "It's designed specifically to siphon off these illegal pills."

In a November 2021 Texas Tribune article covering the Supreme Court's hearing of Texas' Heartbeat Act, Youman claimed to have worked on the measure seen by some as the beginning of Roe's unraveling.

"Today is a huge day, it's a pivotal day," Youman told the Tribune. "I worked on this bill."

Human Coalition Action's site features a landing video in which Youman celebrates the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe. Calling the decision "a celebratory day for our movement," the Texas A&M alum offers thanks to God and the high court for the dissolution of abortion rights in many states. "We are so grateful to the Supreme Court, but also to God, for having mercy on us, for finally allowing us to be able to save lives," Youman said.

The Human Coalition Action site states the group's goal is "to solidify victory over abortion" by "creating a culture of collaboration; providing policy expertise; and generating momentum from the grassroots to the government."

A request for comment was not immediately returned by the Human Coalition Action.

Correction: Fridays Texas Supreme Court ruling allows abortion providers in Texas to be sued in civil court, but does not allow state prosecutors to seek criminal charges against providers at this time. A previous version of this story stated prosecutors are now allowed to file criminal cases as a result of the ruling.
Vladimir Vladimirov

Amazon Prime Day , a two-day savings event, only happens once a year, which means this is your chance to hop on some significant Amazon sales! We've got our eyes on the flatscreens, which are sure to have some major markdowns. If you prefer your television look like part of your existing wall decor, now might be the right time to add Samsung's The Frame TV to your cart. If you've been thinking about adding a new TV to your guest room or a big screen to your game room, you'll have plenty to choose from. There will be great prices on televisions of all kinds, from Amazon's own Fire TVs, to Google TVs, to Roku TVs.

Prime Day will take place on July 12th and 13th, so mark your calendars! We'll be constantly updating this story with the best deals, so make sure to come back and check for updates. Until then, take a look at some of the current deals and markdowns on televisions below. And if you're not an Amazon Prime member, sign up now!
WFO EL PASO Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Wednesday, July 6, 2022

_____

AIR QUALITY ALERT

Air Quality Alert Message

Relayed by National Weather Service El Paso TX/Santa Teresa NM

113 PM MDT Tue Jul 5 2022

...AIR QUALITY ALERT IN EFFECT UNTIL 8 PM MDT THIS EVENING...

...AIR QUALITY ALERT IN EFFECT FROM 8 AM TO 8 PM MDT WEDNESDAY...

The Texas Department of Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has issued an

Ozone Action Day for the El Paso Area, until 8 PM MDT this evening.

Atmospheric conditions are expected to be favorable for producing

high levels of ozone pollution in the El Paso area. You can help

prevent ozone Pollution by sharing a ride, walking, riding a

bicycle, taking your lunch to work, avoiding drive through lanes,

conserving energy and keeping your vehicle properly tuned.

For more information on ozone:

OZONE: THE FACTS

www.tceq.texas.gov/airquality/monops/ozonefacts.html

EPA AIR NOW:

www.airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=airnow.local_city&cityid=236

TAKE CARE OF TEXAS:

www.takecareoftexas.org/air/airquality

The National Weather Service in Midland has issued a

* Severe Thunderstorm Warning for...

Southwestern Reeves County in southwestern Texas...

Northeastern Jeff Davis County in southwestern Texas...

* Until 315 PM CDT.

* At 215 PM CDT, a severe thunderstorm was located 13 miles east of

Kent, and is nearly stationary.

HAZARD...60 mph wind gusts and quarter size hail.

SOURCE...Radar indicated.

IMPACT...Hail damage to vehicles is expected. Expect wind damage

to roofs, siding, and trees.

* This severe thunderstorm will remain over mainly rural areas of

southwestern Reeves and northeastern Jeff Davis Counties.

This includes the following highways...

Interstate 10 between mile markers 186 and 197.

Interstate 20 between mile markers 0 and 1.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

For your protection move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a

building.

Torrential rainfall is occurring with this storm, and may lead to

flash flooding. Do not drive your vehicle through flooded roadways.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
WFO SPOKANE Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Monday, July 4, 2022

_____

AREAL FLOOD ADVISORY

Flood Advisory

National Weather Service Spokane WA

401 PM PDT Mon Jul 4 2022

...FLOOD ADVISORY HAS BEEN REPLACED WITH A FLASH FLOOD WARNING...

The Flood Advisory is replaced by a Flash Flood Warning for the

Muckamuck burn scar in Okanogan County in north central Washington.

The threat of flooding continues and a Flash Flood Warning is now in

effect. Please refer to that bulletin for more information.

The National Weather Service in Spokane has issued a

* Flash Flood Warning for...

The Muckamuck Burn Scar in...

Central Okanogan County in north central Washington...

* Until 545 PM PDT.

* At 401 PM PDT, Doppler radar indicated thunderstorms producing

heavy rain over the Muckamuck Burn Scar. Flash flooding is ongoing

or expected to begin shortly.

HAZARD...Flash flooding caused by thunderstorms in and around

the Muckamuck Burn Scar.

SOURCE...Radar.

IMPACT...Flooding of areas in and around the Muckamuck Burn

Scar.

* Some locations that will experience flash flooding include...

Conconully and Alder Campground.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

The affected areas are in and below the Muckamuck burn scar north of

Conconully, including the North Fork Salmon Creek Road. Some

drainage basins impacted include North Fork Salmon Creek, Ray Creek,

and Center Creek. Moderate to high intensity rainfall on the burned

area may cause flash flooding, mud slides and rock slides. Campers,

hikers residents, and motorists in and below the Muckamuck burned

area should take immediate precautions to protect life and property.

Flooding is occurring or is imminent. It is important to know where

you are relative to streams, rivers, or creeks which can become

killers in heavy rains. Campers and hikers should avoid streams or

creeks.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
Dr. Prashant Jani, the organizer of the Festival of India and the

Festival of Colours, throws coloured powder in the air during the

announcement of the 2022 festivals that will take place later this

month at Marina Park.
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
Developed by Zuellig Pharma, eZRx is ASEANs largest B2B eCommerce platform for the healthcare industry  offering a smarter and more convenient way to buy and sell healthcare products online, anywhere and anytime, versus reps visiting clients face-to-face.

As COVID-19 began spreading its tentacles through Asia, Zuellig Pharma, one of the continents largest healthcare services groups needed to ensure that medicines and healthcare products  from vaccines to personal protection equipment (PPEs)  were delivered in a timely and efficient manner.

Given the urgency, Zuellig Pharma could not rely on a manual system to place and process orders and returns as well as payment requests. Efficiency and effectiveness needed to be optimized further. With much of the world locked down during the pandemic, the number of touchpoints to connect with customers was also vastly reduced.

Zuellig Pharma adopted a transformative innovation to ensure that its 350,000 customers and 1,000 clients  including the worlds top 10 pharmaceutical companies  could have timely access to essential medicines and lifesaving products during this critical period.

And it happened to launch when the world needed it most.

A 24/7 lifeline

Zuellig Pharma provides distribution, digital, and commercial services in 13 markets across Asia, serving more than 350,000 medical facilities and over 1,000 clients in the region.

As COVID-19 cases escalated, the companys B2B eCommerce platform  eZRx for healthcare practitioners, clinics, and hospitals  aptly enabled customers and sales reps to buy and sell healthcare products anytime, anywhere, without needing to meet others physically. It also reduced pricing errors and consolidated important information in a single location.

The solution is powered by SAPs ERP Central Component (ECC), an on-premises enterprise resource planning system, along with SAP HANA data management software. With the SAP software, eZRx could integrate finance, inventor, and product data seamlessly on the web as well as on mobile devices.

Turning the tide against the pandemic

Deployed in March 2020  the same month that the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an international pandemic  eZRx was able to ensure the smooth delivery of PPEs and other crucial medical supplies including COVID-19 vaccines, enabling healthcare professionals to do their jobs safely during this challenging time.

Through eZRx, customers could also have full visibility of Zuellig Pharmas product offerings and self-service, without having to wait for a pharma representative, said Daniel Laverick, the groups SVP, head of digital and data solutions. Sales reps could also free up their time to focus on more meaningful tasks as well as provide customers with an omnichannel experience, enabled by e-detailing.

In addition, the company could now safeguard compliance with international regulations with a database mapping specific customers product licensing restrictions. If a purchaser attempts to access any of the items via eZRx that are not market-compliant, the products are not shown.

In 2021, Zuellig Pharma was able to automate 11.6 million order lines, reducing the manual ones in half, and generating $1.2 million in annual productivity gains.

The development of a life-saving platform in the COVID-19 era earned Zuellig Pharma a 2022 SAP Innovation Award, an annual honor commemorating organizations that have used SAP products to benefit both business and society.

You can read the details behind Zuellig Pharmas amazing accomplishment in their Innovation Awards pitch deck.
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Globalisation has for a long time been a tide that has lifted all boats and, as a consequence, supply chains have become increasingly integrated, allowing inventory levels to be reduced. This has, however, exacerbated recent supply shortages, and the narrative has started to change; we have entered a period of deglobalisation and a new paradigm in terms of global trade practices and policies.

In recent years, the vulnerability of supply chains has been exposed by events such as the blockage in the Suez Canal, which disrupted one of the worlds busiest trade routes, as well as Chinas zero-Covid policy which has led to the supply from many factories in China being delayed. The resulting supply shortages have had a significant short-term effect, and some companies have missed sales estimates, being unable to meet demand. This has distorted supply and demand signals throughout the market; pricing power, evident in a supply-constrained environment, may ebb as constraints lift.

These supply issues have also put a spotlight on the just-in-time nature of manufacturing processes that has steadily become the norm over the last 20 years, and companies will need to think more strategically over the long term about how their supply chains are managed. As the world becomes increasingly fragmented, we expect companies will move towards just-in-case inventory management, meaning greater stockholding to avoid supply-chain shocks, which may increase capital intensity and put pressure on returns.

Over the longer term, it is likely that companies and governments will work together to change the nature of supply chains. We are already seeing a rise in onshoring to prevent disruption, as well as friend-shoring, by which countries trade and invest with other trusted nations that subscribe to similar social and political value systems. For example, Japanese technology company Sony announced last year that it is teaming up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to build a chip production factory in Japan, a move welcomed by the Japanese government.1 TSMC is also building a chip factory in Arizona, with support from the US government.2 In addition, the US Congress is close to passing a bill to fund and implement the US CHIPS (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors) Act for onshoring semiconductor plants.

The role of governments

Over the last 40 years, we have grown accustomed to a free-market environment; however, where we see dislocation in markets, there is a tendency for governments to want more involvement. A wave of populist politics began last decade with the UKs vote to leave the European Union, as well as the election of Donald Trump as US President, who introduced tariffs and quotas on imports. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also brought in disclosure rules for US-listed Chinese companies owing to concerns around a lack of oversight  if they are not compliant by the start of 2023, they may be delisted.3 Similar actions have been taken in the technology sector, where Chinese company Huawei was banned from the US, and access to US technology by Chinese companies is limited. Geopolitics has been a key driver of these decisions.

The energy sector is now going through a similar experience, and the reliance of Europe on Russian energy has highlighted the need for nations to become more self-sufficient. The role of governments will be critical to encourage further investment in renewables, and to discourage investment in dirtier fuels, although this is likely to be delayed owing to the recent energy crisis, with energy security taking precedence over the energy transition.

Finally, monetary policy has clearly been a key driver over the last 10-15 years, but this is now starting to change. We are moving towards a fiscal policy environment, giving governments a much broader role in economies, capital allocation and financial markets.

Navigating a changing geopolitical environment

These geopolitical changes have far-reaching implications for charities, both in terms of managing their own operating costs, as well as how they invest for the future.

At Newton, we use a thematic framework to provide us with a deeper understanding of the macro forces at play, so that we can more effectively seek out investment opportunities for our charity clients.

However, avoiding the losers is just as important as selecting the winners, and our themes also highlight areas of concern as some companies may be disintermediated by the changes we are seeing.

Grasping the dynamics of geopolitics is just as crucial as understanding the monetary policy environment and company fundamentals. Having a multi-disciplinary team focusing on responsible investment, geopolitics, the thematic backdrop and stock fundamentals is key for us to achieve a full picture of what is happening in the markets.

Simon Nichols is a portfolio manager at Newton Investment Management

Your capital may be at risk. The value of investments and the income from them can fall as well as rise and investors may not get back the original amount invested.

Important information

These opinions should not be construed as investment or other advice and are subject to change. This document is for information purposes only. Any reference to a specific security, country or sector should not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell investments in those securities, countries or sectors. Issued in the UK by Newton Investment Management Limited, The Bank of New York Mellon Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London, EC4V 4LA. Registered in England No. 01371973. Newton Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, 12 Endeavour Square, London, E20 1JN and is a subsidiary of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation.
At first, people thought it was fireworks, or a military salute to the flag. This detail topped several news storiesin the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribuneyesterday after a gunman in Highland Park, Illinois, opened fire on a Fourth of July parade, killing six people and injuring dozens more. One local resident told the Chicago Sun-Times that they heard as many as twenty-five shots amid the ensuing pandemonium. In videos posted to social media, NBC Chicago calculated, more than fifty shots could be heard.

The idea of celebration giving way to carnage reverberated through the news cycle all day, in analysis pieces weighing what the shooting said about America on a day dedicated to national meaning, as well as in awkward juxtapositions. A fireworks graphic in the shape of the Stars and Stripes popped over thumbnails of news articles about the shooting when users Googled Fourth of July. On CNN, a segment about the shooter still being at large cut directly to a firework-studded commercial for the networks planned evening of celebratory coverage, with music from Pitbull, Maren Morris, Machine Gun Kelly. Later, as that coverage kicked off, Dana Bash, in DC, called the shooting a painful reminder of the challenges we face as a nation as we mark 246 years of independence, but also recognized that tonight, Americans are coming together in the spirit of celebration to enjoy one another and whats best in America. Don Lemon, in New York, agreed. We do not want to let one bad guy win tonight, he said. We do not want to let one shooter upend the time-honored traditions of this Fourth of July.

ICYMI: The head-spinning coverage of COVID vaccines for the youngest

No little coverage of the shooting also juxtaposed the horror of the act with the typical sleepiness of Highland Park, a well-off suburb about twenty-five miles north of Chicago that, we were told, is quiet, usually safe, unaccustomed to such violence. If a shooting can happen there, headlines in the Post and CNN warned us, then nowhere is safe. This is a common framing in the aftermath of mass shootings in suburban areas; on this occasion, some observers suggested, mainstream-media types may have been extra keen to stress the distance between Highland Park and downtown Chicago as a preemptive rebuttal to the right-wing media impulse to portray that city as a gang-infested, lawless hellhole. Its also, unavoidably, a coded framing, as observers also noted yesterday. Reporters asking suburban residents whether they ever expected a shooting to happen here, the writer and professor Tom Zoellner pointed out, is often an unconscious or conscious reference to the affluent whiteness of the community. Ashley Brown, an editor at NPR, urged journalists to drop the last place youd expect conceitbecause no civilian place, no matter how under-invested or affluent, should ever have to expect gun violence.

While the Highland Park shooting attracted by far the most media coverage, it was not the only mass shooting over the holiday weekend. The Gun Violence Archive, which tracks mass shootings, counted thirteen, with nearly half of those taking place yesterday: in Highland Park, as well as Boston (four people injured), Kansas City (four injured), Richmond (six injured), Sacramento (four injured; one killed)and Chicago, where five people were injured in a shooting on the citys South Side. Local outlets covered that shooting, albeit perfunctorily, relying heavily on the police account of what happened. (According to officials, all of the victims were taken to hospitals, and were said to be in fair condition.) On the national level, the Times mentioned the shooting as part of a brief story, pegged to the Highland Park attack, noting that in total, nine people were shot dead in Chicago over the long weekend (not including the victims in Highland Park).

Also over the weekend, the police chief in Akron, Ohio, confirmed that more than sixty shots were fired in a shooting in that city last Monday. The shots in question were all fired by local officers at Jayland Walker, a twenty-five-year-old Black man, killing him. Walker had fled after the officers tried to pull him over in a traffic stop; officers said that Walker fired out of his car window (and video footage would seem to corroborate this), and a gun was subsequently found in the vehicle. But the police chief conceded that Walker was not armed at the moment the officers shot him dead. By that point, Walker had gotten out of the car and started to flee on foot.

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At first, Walkers killing was not treated as a big news story; according to a Stanford University tool that tracks cable news coverage, his name wasnt discussed at all on any major network between the date of his death and this past Saturday. Local outlets were quicker to the story, but the early police narrative often framed initial coverage; various news organizations referred to the killing as an officer-involved shootingeuphemistic law enforcement jargon that leading newsrooms pledged to stop echoing in 2020, following the police murder of George Floyd, only for its use to tick back up more recently, according to research published by HuffPost and the Garrison Project. As the days passed, however, the Akron Beacon Journal noted key questions that the local police chief had failed to answer; Clevelands WKYC reported, based on an autopsy report, that police fired ninety shots at Walker in total; and the voices of Walkers family and those of protesters started to ring louder in coverage. Bigger outlets began to take an interest, crescendoing on Sunday, when the police chief offered more details and released some body-camera videos of Walkers killing.

Meanwhile, protests in Akron grew day by day; on Sunday, hundreds of people marched in the city. The demonstrations were by and large peaceful, but on Sunday night, a subset of demonstrators turned violent, the police department said, and caused some damage to property. Around fifty people were arrested, and the police reported firing tear gas. Yesterday, Akrons mayor ordered a curfew and canceled several Fourth of July fireworks displays. Headlines in numerous major outlets centered that development, sometimes alongside the words state of emergency, which the mayor had also declared, and references to a city on edge. Last night, protesters gathered again in front of Akrons police department, but, according to Cleveland.com, dispersed without incident after the curfew came into effect and fifty officers in riot gear emerged from the department. When I checked earlier this morning, I couldnt find a single story about Walker on the homepages of the Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the Associated Press. The Post had one story, far down the page, focused on the fifty arrests.

Yesterday evening, after a lengthy search, police in Illinois arrested a key person of interest in the Highland Park shooting. He fled in his car after officers tried to stop him, but was later caught and detained. According to NBC and CBS, he surrendered peacefully. (The former network attributed that description to police officials.) The danger in Highland Park would seem to be over. While the shooter there might have been one bad guy, though, Americas huge, multifaceted gun violence problem cant be reduced to thatcollectively, that problem did upend the rituals of July 4, and not just in Highland Park. It might be tempting for the press to frame the shooting there as the unforeseeable shattering of an idyllic, unifying holiday celebration; of Americans inviolable common right to come together and share public space. But its important to remember that this feeling does not speak to a universal American reality. It never has.

Also yesterday, revelers watching fireworks in Philadelphia ran for cover after shots were fired there. Bullets grazed two police officers. A bystander told a local ABC affiliate that he thought the shots might have been fireworks. People also fled the sound of gunfire in DC and Orlando, where some of them jumped into a lake. In those cases, it turned out, the sound was actually fireworks.

Below, more on shootings and policing in America, and the press:



Other notable stories:

ICYMI: Tech platforms, data, and the aftermath of Roe v. Wade

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 YORK (AP)  A 3-year-old boy died after falling from a 29th floor balcony of a New York City apartment building on Saturday morning, police said a preliminary investigation shows.

Officers found the injured toddler lying on a 3rd floor scaffolding after receiving a 911 call at 11:09 a.m. The boy was taken to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.

We believe the child exited through a window, but exactly how that occurred is under investigation at the time, a police spokesperson told The Associated Press. The apartment is located in the Taino Towers residential complex in Harlem.

New York City law requires owners of buildings with three or more apartments to install window guards if a child age 10 years or younger lives there or if a tenant or occupant requests them. Its unclear whether window guards were installed in this particular apartment.

The spokesperson said the childs death is under active investigation and police are speaking with two individuals who were inside the apartment when the boy fell.

Nidia Cordero, who lives on the 34th floor of the building, told the New York Post that she suddenly heard what she believes was the mother of the child screaming.

And I looked, she said, and the baby was in the scaffolding.

Richard Linares told the New York Daily News he was outside the apartment complex when the toddler fell.

We heard a big bang, he said. My boy that was here ran to the front. He ran up the scaffold to find the baby. The baby was still crying and breathing when he got there.

He later added: By the time the paramedics brought him down, they had a towel over his face.

Tanjelyn Castro, a neighbor, described to the Daily News a frantic scene as police and residents tried to reach the child.

Everybody that was outside was running, climbing, she said. Every man you saw was trying to get to the scaffold. It was a whole bunch of emotion.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Its 2030, and youre driving to work on a miserable winters morning. So your phone sends you an alert to suggest a route that avoids icy roads. Even so, you suffer a fender bender. Sensors note the accident, and send the information to your insurer. A message pops up asking what happened, and then reminding you of next steps. The company does a virtual appraisal and makes an initial assessment of liability; it also provides options for car rental and repairs. A repair agreement that is part of your policy takes care of the details, and the payment. Youre back to your routine in a few days. The process has been integrated, transparent, seamlessand as painless as such an incident can be. That is the future of claims.

Processing claims has always been at the heart of insurance, and that wont change. What will change is how it is done. COVID-19 forced the pace: As early as July 2020, a survey of 800 executives across industries showed 85 percent said they had increased the digitalization of employee interactions and engagement. Just about everyone has invested in automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and advanced analytics. That is why we believe that the industry is about to enter a new era of claims management. But there is still a long way to go. According to our research, only one in five claims executives said they had made significant progress and 54 percent reported only moderate progress.

There are four priorities.

Keep the human touch, but back it up with digital assets. Yes, digitization and AI will become even more important, but people still matter most. In general, machines can take care of simpler claims with predictable characteristics and patterns, such as an auto accident in which only the car is hurt. The technology to do this already exists, and many companies have made significant progress in developing fully-integrated mobile solutions and claims portals. The most advanced can adjust the claims journey to the needs of the customer from moment to moment. The next evolution is to equip adjusters with the right technology so that they can provide the best service and an accurate outcome. Eventually, for simple claims, adjusters will focus mostly on the experience, while AI takes care of the technical elements. For example, medical-treatment analytics can alert an adjuster that a claimant has not completed some necessary treatments.

The sweet spot is to create a digitally enabled human touchcombining the strengths of technology and of human judgment and eliminating the blind spots in each.

Personalize the claims experience. Insurers need to offer their customers as good an online experience as they are used to in retail and search. There is a generational component to this. Digital nativesmeaning those now about 40 years old or youngerexpect seamless, omnichannel, and real-time interactions. Many older people also value this, of course. But everyone values human connection, and sometimes people just want to talk. Companies need to be able to serve all these needs.

To serve all customers, the overarching principle is to personalize the claims experience, while offering omnichannel service. Personalized experiences can come in many forms. A customer might start with online research and go on to getting face-to-face advice, perhaps through teleconferencing. Or a property owner may visit an online hub to check out videos of a roof repair and then communicate directly about damage that requires further attention.

In this context, the entire claims customer journey will need to be rethought to allow customers to choose how and when they want to interact with their insurers. Successful carriers will create a better experience that meets customers changing expectations, while also streamlining claim operations.

Reimagine the claims ecosystem. Insurance companies have traditionally focused on protecting themselves from downside risks and meeting regulatory requirements. That will continue to be important, of course, but the carrier of the future might want to focus less on risk transfer and more on risk mitigationthat is, preventing claims before they occur. In the new claims ecosystem, carriers would have access to real-time risk detection. In the bleak midwinter, for example, building sensors could alert owners and insurers that temperatures are dropping and order smart thermostats to turn up the heat to keep the pipes from freezing. Hurricane shutters could be automatically dropped based on third-party weather predictions. Sensors imbedded in clothing could nudge workers to take breaks. Expanding the claims ecosystem could also help insurers move into adjacent areas, such as preventive maintenance, allowing them to develop longer, deeper customer relationships. An insurer could even assist customers with used-car purchases to help them select a well-maintained vehicle.

This transition from management to mitigation will fundamentally change the relationship between insurers and customers, and is itself fraught with risk, for example in regard to data confidentiality and personal privacy. Insurers will need to tread carefully. But those that can expand their role from processors of claims to integrators of data and insights may be able to find new sources of value as they are playing a broader role in the ecosystem.

The place to start is by assessing the companys strategic priorities. Leaders can then map the specific activities that will change by role and use their findings to develop programs to transition individuals. As digitization advances, claims handlers and quality assessors will need to know how to validate algorithm output and help the algorithm to learn and evolve, and claims technology-product owners how to infuse technology and data science into the claims process. Individuals in these roles will need deep claims-process experience, good pattern recognition, and fluency in technology.

There is a place for external hiring in a talent strategy, but this can be expensive. Reskilling can be cheaper, and it also helps to keep teams engaged. Many current claims handlers will already have capabilities in critical areas; building their skills can be an efficient, and greatly appreciated, way to develop talent. For example, some companies have established talent accelerators that offer training to current employees to expand their skills and equip them a specific role of the future. Then they are staffed onto project teams where they gain real work experience.

Innovation is accelerating throughout the insurance ecosystem; the boundaries of the possible are continually expanding. For both productivity and profitability, insurance carriers will need to reconsider their traditional operations and think more like modern tech companies.

As the story that started this article demonstrates, the benefits of improved claims processing are substantialnot just in terms of financial performance for insurance companies, but also for customers, employees, agents, vendors, and the broader community. Getting to that point is not a matter of a tweak here, and a new capability there, but of ensuring that technology and the business work together to see the whole process differently as they adapt to changing consumer preferences. Doing this will require reimagining the claims process from beginning to end.

Elixabete Larrea is a partner in McKinsey & Companys Boston office. Kristen Ganjani is a partner in McKinseys Chicago office.
MIAMI (AP)  Tropical Storm Colin disintegrated in North Carolina on Sunday after forming along the South Carolina coast on Saturday morning, bringing rain and winds that disrupted July 4 celebrations and left one man dead.

The North Carolina man drowned in the water off Oak Island and a handful of other swimmers in the area required assistance Sunday, authorities said.

A news release from the town of Oak Island said responders arrived Sunday afternoon to find the 52-year-old from Hickory had been pulled to shore and bystanders were administering CPR. Emergency medical personnel performed resuscitation efforts for over 30 minutes before pronouncing the man dead, the news release said.

Sundays deadly incident was among more than a half dozen calls for rescue in the Oak Island and Caswell Beach areas as of late Sunday afternoon, the town said.

The water remained unsettled due to Tropical Storm Colin and officials upgraded the beach warning system to a red flag, indicating a high risk of rip and longshore currents and dangerous surf conditions.

By late Saturday night, Colin had weakened into a tropical depression and forecasters discontinued the tropical storm warning that had been in effect for parts of the North Carolina coast.

At 11 p.m. EDT Saturday, the storms center was about 15 miles (20 kilometers) north of Wilmington, North Carolina, with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph (55 kph). It was moving northeast at 7 mph (11 kph).

The storm is expected to further weaken and dissipate completely by Sunday night or Monday morning.

Colin will continue to produce locally heavy rainfall across coastal portions of North Carolina through Sunday morning, where an additional 1 to 2 inches of rainfall is possible, the center said.

Some Fourth of July celebrations planned Saturday in Charleston, South Carolina, were canceled after significant water had pooled on the field at Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park and more rain was expected.

Obviously, were disappointed, said Scott Watson, the citys director of cultural affairs. This promised to be a great family event, and we hate to have to cancel.

Organizers were also forced to cancel a festival planned in Southport, North Carolina.

The safety of Festival goers, vendors, volunteers, emergency workers and everyone is our highest priority, festival spokesperson Trisha Howarth said in a statement.

Separately, the center of Tropical Storm Bonnie rolled into the Pacific on Saturday after a rapid march across Central America, where it caused flooding, downed trees and forced thousands of people to evacuate in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. There were no immediate reports of deaths.

By Saturday night, Bonnie was centered about 165 miles (270 kilometers) south of San Salvador, El Salvador, with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (95 kph). It was moving to the west at 17 mph (28 kph).

Its one of the rare storms to make an Atlantic to Pacific crossing without losing tropical storm force, thus maintaining its name. Forecasters said Bonnie is likely to become a hurricane by Monday off the southern coast of Mexico, but is unlikely to make a direct hit on land.

Many Nicaraguans still remember Hurricane Joan, a powerful 1988 storm that wreaked havoc on the coast and caused almost 150 deaths in the country.

We are waiting for the storm to hit, hoping that it wont destroy our region, Bluefields resident Ricardo Gomez, who was 8 when Joan hit, said before Bonnie arrived.

The area was also battered by two powerful hurricanes, Eta and Iota, in quick succession in 2020, causing an estimated $700 million in damage.

Officials in Costa Rica expressed concern that the storm would unleash landslides and flooding in an area already saturated by days of rain. The government said seven shelters in the northern part of the country already held nearly 700 people displaced by flooding.

About the photo: This GOES-East geocolor image provided by NOAA and taken at 11:30 a.m., Saturday, July 2, 2022, shows Tropical Storm Colin of the Atlantic coast of the United States. Tropical Storm Colin formed along the South Carolina coast on Saturday, bringing the threat of rain and high winds for a day or two during the holiday weekend before improving for Mondays July Fourth celebrations. (NOAA via AP)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
HONOLULU (AP)  Lauren Wright continues to be leery of the water coming out of the taps in her familys US Navy home in Hawaii, saying she doesnt trust that its safe.

Wright, her sailor husband and their three children ages 8 to 17 were among the thousands of people who were sickened late last year after fuel from military storage tanks leaked into Pearl Harbors tap water.

The family has returned to their military housing after spending months in Honolulu hotels, but they continue taking safety measures including taking short, five-minute showers. They dont drink their tap water or cook with it.

A Navy investigation released Thursday blamed the fuel leak and the water crisis that followed on shoddy management and human error. Some Hawaii residents, including Native Hawaiians, officials and military families said the report doesnt help restore trust in the Navy.

I was at least hoping for some sort of remorse for the families and everybody involved in this, Wright said.

She said the ordeal has changed her view on the military from a decade ago when her husband first joined.

I was the proud Navy spouse, you know, stickers and T-shirts, she said. I feel like the Navy has failed at what they promised every service member. They failed at a lot of things. And Im not so proud.

Its difficult to trust the Navy partly because Hawaii residents and officials for years have questioned the safety of the giant fuel storage tanks that have sat above an important aquifer since World War II, said Kamanamaikalani Beamer, a former trustee of the Commission on Water Resource Management.

Releasing a report saying that they were lying to us is not a step towards building trust, he said. De-fueling and getting the tanks out permanently, setting aside funds to remediate the water systems all across Oahu and replant our forests  when I see steps like that happening  thats a tangible step toward rebuilding trust.

Some Native Hawaiians said the report only deepened a distrust in the military that dates to at least 1893, when a group of American businessmen, with support from US Marines, overthrew the Hawaiian kingdom. More recently, Native Hawaiians fought to stop target practice bombing on the island of Kahoolawe and at Makua Valley in west Oahu.

Theres no proof I should have faith in them, said Kalehua Krug, with Kaohewai, a cultural organization advocating for a clean aquifer for Oahu. Theyve done nothing but lie for generations.

The Department of Defense recognizes the water problems have damaged trust between the Department and the people of Hawaii, including Native Hawaiians  and it is committed to rebuilding that trust, Gordon Trowbridge, acting assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, said in a statement.

The investigation report released Thursday listed a cascading series of mistakes from May 6, 2021, when operator error caused a pipe to rupture and 21,000 gallons (80,000 liters) of fuel to spill when it was being transferred between tanks. Most of the fuel spilled into a fire suppression line and sat there for six months, causing the line to sag. A cart rammed into this sagging line on Nov. 20, releasing 20,000 gallons (75,700 liters) of fuel.

The report said officials defaulted to assuming the best about what was happening when the spills occurred, instead of assuming the worst, and this contributed to their overlooking the severity of situation.

The spill contaminated the Navys water system. Fuel didnt get into the Honolulu municipal water supply. But concerns the oil might migrate through the aquifer and get into the citys wells prompted the Honolulu Board of Water Supply in December to shut down a key well serving some 400,000 people. The agency has been asking residents to conserve water because of this and unusually dry weather.

The tanks continue to pose a threat to Oahus drinking water while they hold fuel, said Ernest Lau, manager and chief engineer of the water utility.

The report saying it will take more than two years to drain the facility is concerning, Lau said Friday.

The fact that they built this massive facility in three years, so cant they find a way to do all the necessary work in less than two and a half years  I think it can be done, he said, urging the Navy to look at shortening the timeline.

This week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin directed the establishment of a Joint Task Force led by a senior Navy admiral solely dedicated to a swift defueling effort, who will report to him through the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, to oversee defueling of Red Hill as rapidly as safety allows, Trowbridge said. The Department recognizes that what we say is far less important than what we do, which is why its most senior leaders are focused on this effort.

Kristina Baehr, an attorney who represents more than 100 military and civilian families who lodged claims against the Navy, said it was especially troubling to read in the report how pervasive the errors were.

This is a national security issue, she said, noting many of her clients were still experiencing the effects of the tainted water. And our families and military communities cannot be mission-ready if the government has made them sick.

About the photo: Lauren Wright, a Navy spouse whose family was sickened by jet fuel in their tap water, points out a sheen in a sample of tap water at her home in Honolulu, Friday, July 1, 2022. A Navy investigation says shoddy management and human error caused fuel to leak into Pearl Harbors tap water last year. The leak poisoned thousands of people and forced military families to evacuate their homes for hotels. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
633 illegal migrants rescued off Libyan coast last week: IOM

Xinhua) 10:04, July 05, 2022

TRIPOLI, July 4 (Xinhua) -- The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Monday that 633 illegal migrants were returned to Libya after being rescued off the coast last week.

"In the period of June 26-July 2, a total of 633 migrants have been disembarked back on Libyan shores," IOM said in a statement.

A total of 9,973 illegal migrants have been rescued and returned to Libya so far in 2022, including 678 women and 362 minors, it added.

IOM also said that 166 illegal migrants died and 611 others went missing in 2022.

In 2021, a total of 32,425 illegal migrants were rescued and returned to Libya, while 662 died and 891 others went missing off the Libyan coast on the Central Mediterranean route, IOM revealed.

Libya has been suffering insecurity and chaos since the fall of the late leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, making the North African country a preferred point of departure for illegal migrants who want to cross the Mediterranean Sea to European shores.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
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There are some scary reports popping up that various major financial institutions no longer credit back all fraudulent transactions, even when victims file a police report. If true, it's a disastrous move that will painfully hurt the institutions.

Lets look a recent New York Times report on the problem:

Under a 1978 federal rule called Regulation E, banks are required to make clients whole if their money is stolen from a consumer account through an electronic payment initiated by another person. Since Reg E was written well before payment apps existed, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last year issued guidelines saying that the law covered all person-to-person online payments. The bureau clarified that all unauthorized online money transfers  meaning any payment initiated by someone other than the customer and done without the customers permission  were the banks liability. But despite the updated guidance, banks in many cases are refusing to refund customers who claim  often with supporting documentation  that money was stolen from their accounts. The banks rarely provide clear explanations for their decisions, leaving victimized customers with little recourse.

The story cited numerous examples of customers, including some who filed police reports, whose financial institution had denied their fraud filing. Some, but not all, of those businesses reversed that policy after a reporter called.

Thats wrong on so many levels and it sounds less like we reviewed the decision and discovered an error and more like, Uh-oh. We just got caught.

Lets set aside that the law is clear and banks and other institutions cant simply refuse to reimburse customers because they dont want to. Instead, let's explore why such a move is counter-productive and self-destructive.

Some quick background: Many of the issues here are similar to the major credit card brands (MasterCard, Visa, AmericanExpress, Discover, etc.) Zero Liability policy. That rule was put in place decades ago. Its goal was not directly to protect consumers, but to boost e-commerce revenue by making those consumers comfortable using their credit and debit cards for transactions. But even after those consumer fears vanished, the program stuck.

That program simply said that if a card transaction is fraudulent, the relevant FI would reimburse it fully. It technically initially said everything after $50, but the industry ended up paying for all of the fraud. (Note: That program does a lot more to protect credit card purchases than debit card purchases, but thats another story. In short, avoid ever using a debit card online.)

Back to the current situation. The banks that won't pay all fraud transactions are handing rivals in the industry a massive gift. Those competitors can proudly say Unlike Capital One, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Chase (the banks identified in the Times piece), we protect all of our customers. If you are ripped off, we will reimburse that charge. And if you send us a copy of a police report you filed, well even waive an investigation, other than confirming the police report was filed.

It gets worse. What do you think happens if even more institutions stop covering fraud losses? The losses will move from them to their customers. Given that most professional thieves fear big banks a lot more than they do individual victims, fraud will accelerate even more than it already has.

Then there are the lawsuits. For the most part, consumers who got ripped off by thieves had little legal action they could take against their bank, whose lack of cybersecurity protections often enabled the fraud. Other than a ruling that they could, maybe, get reimbursed for the time spent cleaning up the mess, few companies suffered sufficient out-of-pocket losses to make a trip to civil court worthwhile or even likely to succeed.

If this bad behavior continues, that all changes. With five-figure losses (or more), consumers are more likely to sue. And given the size of these banks, those lawsuit will quickly morph into class-action litigation  and theyll have an excellent chance of winning.

The fraud described here is mostly P2P digital transactions, such as Zelle, Venmo, Cash App and PayPal. That should make no difference. From the customers perspective, its all payments. They expect to be protected.
As Intel, Samsung, TSMC, and others move ahead with plans for new computer chip development and manufacturing plants in the US, those efforts are running into a new headwind: there aren't enough people with the skills needed to run the facilities.

The competition for talent is fierce," said Cindi Harper, vice president of Human Resources, Talent Planning and Acquisition at Intel. "Its also a candidates market, meaning the demand for talent is greater than the current supply."

Theres a shortage of semiconductors and people to make them, said Mark Granahan, co-founder and CEO of iDEAL Semiconductor, a five-year-old fabless chip start-up in Allentown, Pennsylvania. "Its not like theres a specific type of person or function missing. Its across the board."

The skills gap is exacerbating a chip supply shortage that predated disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic  but the pandemic made matters worse. Older semiconductor fabrication plants were already running at maximum capacity, according to Alan Priestley, a vice president analyst at Gartner Research. COVID exacerbated the problem because all the demand forecasting for the industry was thrown into the air, he said in an earlier interview.

Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and others have been lobbying the US government to increase domestic chip production, citing problems overseas that have hampered hardware production. In fact, a US Commerce Department report in January said the chip shortage is so bad that at one point in 2021 there was just a five-day supply worldwide  with no sign the situation would improve anytime soon.

That, according to US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, leaves auto manufacturers and other chip users with no room for error. Its alarming, really, the situation were in as a country, and how urgently we need to move to increase our domestic capacity, she said while presenting her agencys findings.

Intel Corp. A rendition of one of two semiconductor fabrication plants Intel plans to build in Ohio.

But new plants need skilled workers. Granahan, who hopes IDEAL can start operations this fall, said it took him a year of searching the world to find one PhD-level engineer; it took another nine months to get a visa to bring the worker from Europe to the US.

This country overall could do itself a lot of good if it had an aggressive legislative agenda to bring more talented STEM individuals into the country," he said. "Were probably not unique there. Im sure Intel, Apple, Microsoft, and Qualcomm are all facing the same issues."

STEM education programs key

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) job openings are poised to grow 11% from 2020 to 2030. But China has already surpassed the US in the number of advanced STEM degrees its students earn annually. In light of that, the US will need to complement domestic workforce education with reforms to expand high-skilled immigration, according to the Institute for Progress, a Washington-based research and STEM education advocacy organization.

Through complacency, the US has let its immigration system collapse under the weight of growing backlogs, interminable wait times, and unpredictability, according to Jeremy Neufeld, a senior immigration fellow at the Institute for Progress.

We haven't updated the caps on immigrant visas in 30 years, and it's increasingly causing global talent to look abroad, all while crippling the ability of startups and other cutting-edge firms to draw on the best and brightest from around the world to push out the technological frontier, Neufeld said via email.

US legislators should be working to ensure the industries at the cutting edge of research have reliable and predictable access to talent, which is all part of keeping the US ahead of China, he said. Among many other measures, the US House version of the Bipartisan Innovation Act (BIA) includes key provisions to lift caps for STEM Master's degree and PhD holders if they work in critical security industries. But its not clear that provision will survive the congressional negotiations with the Senate.

Intel Corp. One of two semiconductor fabrication plants Intel is building in Ohio.

Another promising option would be to exempt international graduates with advanced STEM degrees from the hard caps that are devastating our ability to recruit talent, Neufeld said.

In the US semiconductor manufacturing industry, 75% of STEM PhDs are born abroad, and we're already seeing engineering talent shortages causing delays for new plants to get up and running, which will only get worse if Congress spends billions on subsidies without addressing the hard talent bottlenecks, Neufeld said.

While technology bootcamps and accelerated computer science degree programs are expanding throughout the world to meet marketplace demand, many positions at fabrication plants require experienced workers.

Certainly, hiring younger folks or recent graduates is a path if there were enough of them, Granahan said. Im a startup company. I have to fill every function in the company, whether sales and marketing, applications and systems, or engineering. All these things require some technical background to do. We need more two-year degrees, Masters degrees, and PhDs. Focusing in one area is not a bad thing, but we need a broad brush of things.

The falling US market share for chips

The US share of global semiconductor fabrication capacity has been on a steady decline for decades, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS). US semiconductor production represented about 40% of the market in 1990; that dropped to around 12% in 2020.

While the US is not in last place in terms of global chip production  the European Union accounts for about 7% to 8% of production, and several other nations are even lower  but the US decline hasnt abated.

I think a practical scenario is first to at least maintain the current percentage as Asian countries continue to ramp up, and then the second phase would be for the US and EU to strategically identify areas for investment and increase share, while reducing reliance on Asia, said Gaurav Gupta, a vice president analyst at research firm Gartner.

This will take years and decades," Gupta said. "Can US come back to the 35%-plus share? I dont think so. We need more realistic expectations.

One problem is that when chip manufacturing moved to Asia in recent decades, companies also developed a corresponding ecosystem that is very efficient and mature, Gupta noted.

Given the high costs and complexity of chip manufacturing, many US semiconductor firms transitioned to a fabless model, where the chips are designed here but fabricated abroad  mostly in East Asia. That region is now home to nearly 80% of global chip fabrication, according to the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS).

Some of Americas largest tech firms, including Google, Apple, and Amazon, rely on Taiwans TSMC alone for nearly 90% of their chip production, Gregory Arcuri, a CSIS research assistant wrote in a January blog.

According to a TSMC spokesperson, construction of TSMCs 5nm fab in Arizona, "the countrys most advanced chip manufacturing plant," is well underway and is on track with production targeted to begin in 2024.

TSMC Construction of TSMC's 5nm semiconductor plant in Phoenix, Arizona is currently underway and scheduled to begin producing chips in 2024.

Upskilling and reskilling workers would help

While current semiconductor fab facilities are highly automated, they still require a lot of workers to be built, and engineers and engineering technicians to run them once they're up and running.

With the right approach, the US could achieve a dramatic reshoring of chip manufacturing, according to a report by eightfold.ai, a tech talent management software vendor. Eightfolds study last year found that through upskilling and reskilling workers, and with a focus on adjacent skills, chip manufacturing in the US could move ahead.

By considering adjacent skills, we can upskill and reskill individuals with the potential to move from declining roles to rising roles. This can dramatically increase the pool of potential semiconductor talent, the report said.

The report also recommended government policy changes, such as tax credits and other investments, that will help reshore the semiconductor industry, much of which is encapsulated in the CHIPS for America Act.

"...What we need is consistent support from government in terms of policies and incentives to encourage students to look towards the semiconductor industry and help companies recruit talent, Gupta said. Countries like Taiwan and China have had better policies in recent years.

Government efforts stall

Government funding to help draw talent into the industry hasn't made much progress  even though the Senate and House have both passed versions of the CHIPS for America Act. It's designed to offer tax credits and other investments to help reshore the semiconductor industry. Despite bipartisan support, however, members have not reached consensus on funding the bill, according to Arcuri.

Another piece of legislation  the US Innovation and Competition Act (USICA)  passed the US Senate. It would provide $39 billion in financial assistance for fab plant construction, expansion, or modernization, but has stalled in the House.

Intel has been working to drive urgency around passage of funding for the CHIPS for America Act, Harper said.

The CHIPS Act is designed to increase investment in the US, creating tens of thousands of jobs," she said via email. "This partnership from the public sector is needed to level the playing field for US chipmakers so we can compete with foreign competitors in Asia who have a 30% to 40% cost advantage driven largely by their own significant government subsidies."

Chipmakers are investing in new US plants

Intel has spent about $20 billion on the construction of two new Ohio-based chip factories aimed at boosting production to meet the surging demand for semiconductors. It is just one of a number of vendors, including Samsung, Texas Instruments, and GlobalFoundries that are planning to build or expand their semiconductor manufacturing presence in the US within the next three to five years.

Irrespective of the shortages, Intel and other vendors need new fabrication plants to support the next generation of process nodes. As the U.S. continues to demonstrate its willingness to invest in semiconductor manufacturing, it is becoming an appealing market for such expansion, Gartner's Priestley wrote in a January blog post.

It's not just the big chip makers. Smaller manufacturers are spending money, too. Last year, Wolfspeed (formerly Cree Inc.) opened a 200mm Silicon Carbide Fab in New York, and semiconductor maker GlobalFoundries announced plans to spend $1 billion to build a second New York factory to boost chip output.

Meanwhile, Intel is also working to address the issue of STEM education; it's partnering with universities and community colleges and plans spend about $100 million over the next decade on new STEM programs. In addition to that investment, the US National Science Foundation fund will spend an additional $50 million for national opportunities.

This means a total of $150 million will be available for semiconductor manufacturing education and research, Harper said. Were also committed to helping build STEM talent starting with early education through secondary education  this is the best long-term strategy to address labor challenges.
Apple has made a decision that should show most enterprises that, when it comes to COVID-19, its not over till its over. The company has reportedly deferred plans to get staff back in the office three days a week because of increasing infection rates.

Living with COVID means taking it seriously

A weekend Bloomberg report tells us the full implementation of Apples originally mandated three-days-a-week-in-person plan is probably not imminent. The report suggests the company is experiencing rising infection rates across its workforce. If Apple is experiencing this, then it is not alone.

Way back at the beginning of the pandemic, Apples retail stores became seen as guides to local infection rates. The companys planetary network of stores gave Apples HR teams global insight into disease outbreaks. Reporters followed Apple store closures as a guide to the disease clusters.

Apple still has access to those insights today, which means its decision to suspend its return-to-the-office diktat should be seen for what it is: a signal that the sickness has not abated.

Of course, we must identify some way to live with COVID, but doing so also means taking it seriously. Magical thinking will not make the disease go away, but smart working practices, staggered commuting patterns, and investment in air filtration systems might help blunt its impact.

Apples decision to suspend progress on the return to the office shows the company is coming to terms with that reality. At least, I think it does.

A warning you should heed

Apple had chosen to adopt a hybrid work pattern in which employees attend the office three days a week and work remotely for two. It began requesting workers return to the office for one day a week on April 11, two days from May 4, and had intended attendance to rise to three days by May 23. Employees are currently expected to be present for two days a week, but the move to three has been delayed.

In common with everyone else, not every Apple employee has been able to work remotely during the pandemic. Some of its teams have continued working in person across most of the last couple of years.

[ Also read: How not to upgrade your enterprise technology ]

But the decision to delay the company-wide return must surely be taken seriously by businesses hoping to get employees back to the office, as it suggests Apples data shows the risk of doing so remains high. As colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols points out, thats broadly in line with what health professionals are telling us, from epidemiologist Michael Osterholms warning to the Washington Post to this observation from Independent SAGE, a group of scientists in the UK: Closing our eyes and pretending its not there, thats the most dangerous strategy of all.

If you value collaboration, stay apart

Given that the risks of COVID-19 can include months of mental and physical debilitation that leave sufferers unable to work effectively for months, a company that values collaboration and creative intelligence cannot logically insist its teams expose themselves to such risk.

The last thing Apple, or anyone else, needs is for key personnel to be out of action for months  particularly when the consequences of a forced return are so evident and any company with commitment to corporate social responsibility also has a duty to protect staffs psychological and physical health.

Think about it. What is to be gained in mythical water cooler conversations if theres no one around to put those ideas into motion? Just ask the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine. It means that if your workplace values collaboration, its way past time to figure out how to collaborate effectively when apart.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolics bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.
PM Modi greeted with black balloons in Andhra Pradesh

Several protesters released black balloons close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's chopper in Vijaywada's Gannavaram airport yesterday, another security breach in months after the ruckus in Punjab, media reported.

Black balloons have been raise in protest against PM Modi and the Central government in other south Indian states, including Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Photo courtesy: Twitter/@INCTirupattur

As per visuals, the balloons were released while Modi's helicopter was taking off in Vijaywada. PM Modi is in Hyderabad to attend the BJP's National Executive meet.

Before Modi's arrival, at around 8:30 am, three people, Sunkadara Padmashree, Parvathi and Kishore, were seen walking towards the airport with balloons. They were stopped.

Five minutes after Modi left, two Congress members, Rajeev Ratan and Ravi Prakash, climbed an under-construction building and released the balloons.

Ravi Prakash has been taken into custody while Rajeev Ratan is missing. The police are looking for him.

Some Congress leaders were protesting at the airport where PM Modi's chopper took off. They were seen holding black balloons and placards as they shouted slogans targeting the Prime Minister.

Looking back, Modi was stuck on a flyover in Punjab for 15-20 minutes on May 1, due to blockade by some protesters and returned without attending an event at a martyrs' memorial.

Reacting sharply, the Union Home Ministry had asked the Punjab government to fix responsibility for the serious lapse and take strict action.

The PM also could not attend a rally in Punjab's Ferozepur.

The prime minister had landed at Bathinda from where he was to go to the national martyrs' memorial at Hussainiwala by helicopter.

Due to rain and poor visibility, the prime minister waited for about 20 minutes for the weather to clear.

"When the weather did not improve, it was decided that he would visit the national martyrs' memorial via road, which would take more than two hours. He proceeded to travel by road after necessary confirmation of security arrangements by the DGP Punjab Police," the statement said.

The Supreme Court heard a plea on the breach of Modi's security in Punjab.

Read more India News and Breaking News here
A targeted attack campaign has been compromising home and small-business routers since late 2020 with the goal of hijacking network communications and infecting local computers with stealthy and sophisticated backdoors. Attacks against home routers are not new, but the implants used by attackers in this case were designed for local network reconnaissance and lateral movement instead of just abusing the router itself.

"The rapid shift to remote work in spring of 2020 presented a fresh opportunity for threat actors to subvert traditional defense-in-depth protections by targeting the weakest points of the new network perimeterdevices that are routinely purchased by consumers but rarely monitored or patchedsmall office/home office (SOHO) routers," researchers from Black Lotus Labs, the threat intelligence arm of telecommunications company Lumen Technologies said in a recent report.

Malware implant for multiple router makes and models

Lumen estimates that the attack campaign has compromised at least 80 routers and networks, primarily from North America and Europe and has seen signs of infections coming from routers made by ASUS, Cisco, DrayTek and NETGEAR. However, the company's researchers only managed to recover the exploit script used against a JCG-Q20 router.

"In this case, the actor exploited known CVEs (CVE-2020-26878 and CVE-2020-26879) using a Python-compiled Windows portable executable (PE) file that referenced a proof of concept called ruckus151021.py," the researchers said. The goal of the script is to gain credentials and load remote-access Trojan malware, which Lumen dubbed ZuoRAT."

While it's not clear how router models from other manufacturers were compromised, the exploitation of known vulnerabilities, like in the case of the JCG-Q20 model, is a strong possibility. However, the use of zero-day exploits cannot be excluded or other techniques such as credential stuffing that have been observed in other router attacks in the past.

It's also worth noting that the identified exploit script was made to be executed on Windows, which means attackers could use it to attack a router from an already compromised Windows machine on the same network.

Many home routers have a limited attack surface from the internetremote access is usually disabled out of the boxbut they continue to expose a lot of services and management interfaces to the local network and these can be a source of vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, router manufacturers continue to treat local networks as trusted environments when designing devices despite malware infections inside local networks being a common occurrence.

The JCG-Q20 exploit script exploited a command injection flaw to obtain authentication material and then used that information to download and execute a malicious binary on the router. This binary is a malicious attack framework written for MIPS architecture that the Lumen researchers dubbed ZuoRAT. The malware is a heavily modified variant of Mirai, a botnet-type implant for routers and other IoT devices that originally appeared in 2016 but was later open-sourced and served as basis for many IoT malware variants since then.

While Mirai was originally used to hijack routers for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, ZuoRAT's focus is on surveillance and lateral movement inside local networks. According to the Lumen researchers, when executed, the implant collects information about the router, including its public IP address and performs a memory dump that can reveal credentials, routing tables and IP tables stored in the device's memory. It then surveys the local LAN for IP addresses that have services running on the following ports: 21, 22, 23, 80, 135, 139, 443, 445, 808, 902, 912, 1723, 2323, 3306, 5222, 5269, 5280, 5357, 8080, 8443 and 9001. All this information is then sent to the command-and-control (C2) server.

The malware contains a series of functions that can be used to perform packet capture on HTTP, TCP, FTP, DNS, SOCKS connections that are routed through the device. This can allow attackers to capture credentials sent in the clear over such connections. Other functions allow attackers to set up DNS hijacking rules, where local computers trying to access legitimate domains are redirected to servers controlled by the attackers.

The researchers found more than 2,500 unique functions in the malware that enable different capabilities that might have been triggered by additional modules downloaded to infected routers as needed by the attackers. These included LAN enumeration, HTTP hijacking, password spraying, USB enumeration, and code injection.

"Black Lotus Labs visibility indicates ZuoRAT and the correlated activity represent a highly targeted campaign against U.S. and Western European organizations that blends in with typical internet traffic through obfuscated, multistage C2 infrastructure, likely aligned with multiple phases of the malware infection," the researchers said. "The extent to which the actors take pains to hide the C2 infrastructure cannot be overstated."

To hide their command-and-control servers the attackers routed the traffic from hijacked routers through other compromised routers that served as proxies. The proxy routers were periodically rotated.

Windows malware loader the second stage

The researchers also located a Windows malware loader that shared code similarities to ZuoRAT, such as environment variables, PDB paths and hardcoded MAC addresses. They believe with high confidence that this loader was the next stage in the attack chain and was deployed on computers inside LANs that were targeted via ZuoRAT's DNS or HTTP hijacking capabilities.

The loader masqueraded as a legitimate program and contained a signature with a certificate issued to Chinese company Tencent. Even though the signature wasn't valid, samples signed with the certificate had a lower detection rate on VirusTotal than those that weren't signed.

The loader connects to a hard-coded C2 server to download additional payloads. The researchers identified three implants: a custom RAT written in C that they dubbed CBeacon, a similar RAT written in Go dubbed GoBeacon and Cobalt Strike, a commercial remote access framework that's commonly used by hacker groups. Go is a cross-platform language and runtime so GoBeacon could easily be cross-compiled for macOS or Linux.

CBeacon and GoBeacon provide attackers with the ability to collect information from the device, list files inside local directories, upload files to the C2 server, download files from the C2 server and execute additional shellcode by injecting it into other processes.

The attackers were seen using services by Chinese companies Alibaba and Tencent either to host files (Alibabas Yuque platform) or as redirectors for command-and-control (Tencent). A Chinese word has also been found in PDB paths inside the malware, possibly suggesting a Chinese origin for the malware, although this is not strong enough evidence.

"The capabilities demonstrated in this campaigngaining access to SOHO devices of different makes and models, collecting host and LAN information to inform targeting, sampling and hijacking network communications to gain potentially persistent access to in-land devices and intentionally stealth C2 infrastructure leveraging multistage siloed router to router communicationspoints to a highly sophisticated actor that we hypothesize has been living undetected on the edge of targeted networks for years," the researchers concluded.

Security experts have warned from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that remote employees are easier to target inside their home networks because their work devices don't benefit from the same levels of protection as when they're behind corporate firewalls and routers. While the adoption and implementation of zero trust network security principles can mitigate some of those risks, many organizations have been forced to do split network tunneling on their VPN clients to ease the burden on their VPN gateways and available bandwidth. This means that in many cases, a portion of non-critical or non-work-related traffic from the devices used by their remote employees continues to flow, potentially unencrypted, through those users' home routers.
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JACKSON, Calif. (AP)  Evacuation orders were expanded Tuesday for remote California communities near a wildfire that may have been sparked by fireworks or a barbecue on the Fourth of July in a mountainous region that's a top tourism destination.

The Electra Fire in Sierra Nevada Gold Country broke out Monday afternoon and tripled in size to about 6.1 square miles (15.8 square kilometers). It was 5% contained Tuesday night.

The fire was making short, uphill runs, fire officials said.

The rate of spread isnt what it was like yesterday, but it is still spreading, said Amador County Sheriff Gary Redman. He said firefighters were working to keep flames confined to unpopulated canyon areas.

Mandatory evacuation orders and warnings combined affected up to 700 residents in Amador County and 300 to 400 people in Calaveras County, Redman said. Evacuation centers were set up for people and animals.

The fire started at a recreation area that was packed with people, forcing 85 to 100 celebrating the holiday at a river to take shelter at a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. facility, Redman said. All were later safely evacuated.

This was the closest Ive ever been to a fire. It was literally within feet of us, said Milka Mikula of Valley Springs, who had gone to the river with her husband, her 5-year-old daughter and her 1-year-old son.

They had to wait about six hours before they could finally start for home, she told KCRA-TV.

I just wanted to get home. I just wanted to get out of there with my babies. I was shaking really, really bad for quite some time, Mikula said.

Redman said the cause of the fire was not known, but that it started in the Vox Beach area of the North Fork Mokelumne River. He said that could suggest fireworks or a barbecue as a potential cause.

More than 100 fire engines, 1,200 firefighters and 14 helicopters were sent to the fire, which was a threat to power infrastructure, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. The terrain was described as steep and rugged.

Cal Fire activated an incident management team for the fire. The teams "are made up of trained personnel who provide operational management and support to large-scale, expanding incidents, Cal Fire said.

One firefighter from the local fire protection district suffered burn injuries, Redman said.

Vox Beach is about 55 miles (89 kilometers) east of Sacramento in the heart of the Sierra Nevada region that is steeped with the history of the mid-1800s Gold Rush.

Several other small fires were burning in the state.
file photo

Connecticut State Police made eight drunken-driving arrests between Friday and Saturday morning as they ramped up patrols ahead of the Fourth of July weekend, according to a press release.

State police said they responded to 1,872 calls for service from the start of Friday to 5 a.m. on Saturday.
A full year into Connecticuts legalization of adult-use cannabis, the state has yet to reap a single tax dollar from sales of recreational marijuana.

But while the rollout has been slightly bumpy, with the General Assembly passing a law this year to halt informal, untaxed sales of cannabis that had emerged from the underground, the state is on-track to begin retails sales by the end of the calendar year with dozens of new businesses owned by people from neighborhoods that for generations had been targets in the failed war on drugs.

By the end of the 2020s, direct and indirect revenue generated from cannabis sales and associated revenues could push over a billion dollars while creating hundreds of jobs in the industry and hundreds of millions in new tax revenue annually, once the rollout evolves into a mature market.

Until then, though, Connecticut residents will slip over the border into southern Massachusetts for their cannabis supplies, bringing their revenue to the northern neighbor and nearby towns including Springfield, Boston, Easthampton, Northampton, Great Barrington and Pittsfield.

Over the next six months, the department will continue to review and approve medical marijuana preservation plans and provisional license applications, as well as conduct additional lottery rounds, said Michelle Seagull, commissioner of the state Department of Consumer Protection. At the same time, the Social Equity Council will be reviewing applications submitted by social equity applicants and work force development plans submitted by medical marijuana producers and dispensaries applying to convert to the recreational program. We expect adult use sales to commence around the end of 2022.

The state recently received 41 applications for cultivator licenses under the social equity provisions to grow in facilities at least 15,000-square feet in size, in one of the disproportionately impacted areas identified by census tracts as generally low-income urban areas, identified by unemployment rates and cannabis convictions.

The Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis at UConn found in a 2020 study that even measured conservatively, adult-use retail sales will mean increased business growth and significant creation of new jobs, especially if the state can beat New York and Rhode Island to open its marketplace.

New York is still developing its adult-sales regulations, while Rhode Islands new law was signed in May, with sales scheduled to begin as soon as December 1.

Jeff Smith, legal and regulatory reporter for the Denver-based MJBizDaily, which tracks the cannabis industry, said Thursday that while Connecticut has been thorough in its planning, Rhode Island will start its retail sales industry by letting existing growers and dispensaries go right into recreation production and sales. New Jerseys recent shift to adult-use recreational sales took the same path, Smith noted.

Connecticut, on the other hand, has emphasized the social equity aspects of the new industry.

I think its been fairly smooth and efficient in Connecticut so far, but theres no firm date yet for retail, Smith said in a phone interview. They still have a lot to do, with lots of applications for small licenses. Connecticut has one of the best equity programs, with half of the licenses going to those applicants. But people who applied are facing long odds.

Smith said that the $3 million needed to become a cultivator is an incredibly high amount, necessitating a well-funded financial, likely corporate, backer. It will be interesting to see the kind of partnering up that will be going on, Smith said. Existing medical marijuana producers can go into adult-use retail for $3 million, as well.

New projections from MJBizDaily formerly called Marijuana Business Daily, indicate that Connecticuts first full year of sales should range from between $300 million and $375 million, while by the fourth year, sales should range between $650 million and $800 million. Various taxes include the 6.35 percent state sales tax, plus 3 percent taxes for locations that host cannabis businesses and a sliding scale of addition levies based on potency of THC levels of 10 to 15 percent.

DeVaughn Ward, senior legislative counsel for the Marijuana Policy Project, said Thursday that overall, hes disappointed with Connecticuts program, including secret lotteries while allowing existing medical marijuana operators to get a leg up in the adult-retail realm. And while the state Department of Economic and Community Development has a seat on the Social Equity Council, the agency is making investments in large corporate cannabis operations, Ward said.

Its a far cry from what many were led to believe, Ward said, stressing that the results of Connecticuts cannabis market remain to be seen later this year..

But on the positive side, Connecticut is no longer spending money to prosecute people for cannabis, Ward said in a phone interview from Hawaii, where he is working on lobbying that states legislature. And starting Friday, folks who have criminal records for possessing four ounces or less can petition the court for the erasure of criminal records, which is a huge step.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  Brian Dahle, the Republican Partys longshot hope to unseat Gov. Gavin Newsom in California, knows that to win in his progressive home state he cant allow Democrats to label him as an election denying, abortion-hating, gun-loving, bombastic right-winger.

Its why Dahle, an affable farmer and state senator from the sparsely populated northeast corner of the state, goes out of his way to make one thing clear: Im not a crazy Republican. Im a reasonable person.

Whether voters believe he is what he says and not how Democrats portray him will determine how Dahle does against Newsom, a first-term Democrat who is an overwhelming favorite in November.

Republicans haven't won a statewide office in California since 2006 because their candidates generally are little-known, little-funded and identified  rightly or wrongly  as strong social conservatives in a state that's socially liberal. The GOP has seen its share of registered voters shrink to the point where Democrats now have a roughly 2-to-1 advantage and there are nearly as many independents as Republicans.

Under California's primary system, all candidates compete against each other and the two with the most votes advance to the general election. Newsom won last month with 56%, while Dahle received just 17% in a field of more than two dozen candidates.

With Dahle locked in as their opponent, Newsom's campaign moved quickly to identify him as the antithesis to what most Californians want.

Dahle is a Trump Republican who wants to abolish abortion rights, repeal Californias gun safety laws and is searching for any shred of relevance after getting absolutely crushed by Governor Newsom in (the) primary vote, said Newsom campaign spokesperson Nathan Click.

Dahle acknowledges voting for Trump, calls himself pro-life and says he is a strong defender of the Second Amendment. But he says his record is more nuanced than Newsom's campaign claims.

While he voted for Trump, he has not publicly amplified Trump's lie that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election. He voted against a proposal to make abortion a constitutional right in California but went against his party and voted for a 2021 bill that would have made contraceptives  including the morning-after pill  much cheaper.

On guns, Dahle voted against a Newsom-backed bill to let private citizens sue people who sell illegal firearms and a bill that would ban the marketing of guns to children. Dahle's office would not comment on a new bill aimed at limiting where people can carry concealed firearms, a response to the U.S. Supreme Court last month overturning the state's law.

He wants to make it a felony to steal a gun, supports enhancements for gang members and others jailed previously who commit new crimes using guns. And he voted for a bill to strengthen a unique California program that confiscates guns from convicted felons who aren't supposed to have them.

His plan to beat Newsom is to focus on what he thinks are the real problems people care about  record high gas prices, rising crime and the state's high cost-of-living  while portraying Newsom, a millionaire businessman and former San Francisco mayor, as an out-of-touch elitist.

The facts are (Newsom) is a failure. Show me something he is succeeding at. And that's what we're going to talk about, Dahle said.

As governor, Dahle said he would push to suspend the states gas tax, which at 53.9 cents per gallon is the second-highest in the country. He says he would remove Newsoms appointments to the state Parole Board, which he says often lets violent criminals out before their sentences are up.

And Dahle said he would push through hundreds of new permits for oil and gas drilling in the state at a time when California regulators are working on Newsom's plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and lawn equipment.

Newsom won in 2018 with nearly 62% of the vote. He defeated a recall last year by about the same margin. He has $23 million in his campaign account and a record state budget surplus of nearly $100 billion, of which about $9.5 billion will be returned to most taxpayers in rebates to help offset high gas prices.

Dahle has just under $400,000 in his campaign account. He's asking supporters to donate $1 a day to his campaign. He needs about 200,000 people to do this to catch up with Newsom's fundraising  which isn't likely to happen.

The key to his success would be in drawing the earned media attention necessary in order to define himself beyond the party label, said Rob Nehring, former chair of the California Republican Party and the 2014 Republican nominee for lieutenant governor. If this is only a party preference vote even in a strong Republican year, hes likely to come up short.

Dahle was raised in Bieber, a tiny community of a few hundred people in the northeast corner of the state. His grandfather, a World War I veteran, came to California during the Great Depression and got a land grant in Siskiyou County that, according to family legend, he won when his name was pulled from a pickle jar. The deed is signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dahle said.

Dahle didn't go to college. He tried farming out of high school, but quickly lost money. To pay his creditors, he packed a lunch and stood outside of a lumber mill every morning for three days until the owner hired him. He worked construction for a few years, including some long hours in a gold mine, before starting a seed business that he still owns.

He won his first race for the Lassen County Board of Supervisors by beating a popular teacher from the town of Susanville where most of the voters lived. He won a seat in the state Assembly by beating Rick Bossetti, a former professional baseball player and mayor of Redding, the largest city in the region with about 90,000 people.

And he was elected to the state Senate by beating Kevin Kiley, a fellow Republican in the Assembly who lived in a much more populated area.

He did the things that you need to do and he surprised his opponents, said Jim Chapman, a Democrat-turned-independent who served on the board of supervisors with Dahle.  Hes got a very charismatic demeanor and right off the bat, from the moment I met him, I knew this guy was going to go somewhere.

Government life has seemed to suit Dahle and his family. He proposed to his wife, Megan, during a supervisors meeting. Now, Megan is a Republican in the state Assembly. Theyre like most married couples, except when they disagree it can be part of a public record.

I just tease him and tell him, well, he was probably wrong, Megan Dahle said of the times they voted differently on legislation. Hes a farmer, so he works hard and he has great relationships with people. They can trust him.

When he arrived in Sacramento, Dahle endeared himself to legislative colleagues in both parties by hosting tours of his district, which includes picturesque farmland in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada. In 2016, he worked with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to pass a law aimed at stopping patients from receiving surprise bills from health care providers outside their insurance network.

Last year's recall election essentially cleared the field of Republicans this year, as none of the top candidates opted to challenge Newsom again. That created an opportunity for Dahle, who will be termed out of the Senate in 2024. He realizes his success rests on a sudden political reversal in a state that's been moving more left with each election.

I've seen the pendulum swing, and when it swings, it swings fast, Dahle said. So my message is, Hey, do you want what youve been getting? How about try something different?'
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A white clawfoot tub scarred from the Hurricane of 1938. A skateboard used to navigate studio lots. A Columbia Tourist yellow bicycle that traversed the streets of Old Saybrook. And sounding forth, on an endless loop, from The Dick Cavett Show to The African Queen to On Golden Pond, the clipped, patrician tone of Katharine Hepburn.

Those were among the delightful revelations that welcomed visitors with the grand opening of the Katharine Hepburn Museum on the lower level of the Main Street Cultural Arts Center June 27.

To hear museum coordinator Elise Maragliano tell it, the new exhibits, which include a trove of photos, home movies, and clips from her film and television work, represented a silver lining from the pandemic.

There was a collection of letters gifted by Kates grandniece Schuyler Grant in February 2020, she said. A month later, The Kate was shuttered.

They started going through the letters and realized how remarkable they were, and wed been collecting more artifacts and clothing over the past couple of years, and it was like, maybe we can take this time and do something with what we have, she said.

They formed a museum committee, did a fundraising campaign, won grants. We were able to take this whole space down to the studs and build it back up.

The result, curated with one area devoted to Hepburns early years and the other to her career, furthers The Kates mission to educate people about Katharine Hepburn and to help perpetuate her legacy, according to Executive Director Brett Elliott.

Among those legacies was her example of a different kind of femininity.

She wore slacks, she was super-active, and at the same time, she was incredibly beautiful and graceful, Maragliano said.

An early, handwritten letter to Santa Claus shows the roots of her independent spirit. In the letter, 5-year-old Katharine asks for, among other items, a three-railed electric train.

Her parents really raised their boys and the girls to do the same kind of things, Maragliano said, of Hepburn, the second of six children.

From the beginning, Hepburn negotiated her career with bravado and business savvy.

An actors equity contract dated Oct. 31, 1930 shows Hepburn securing $150 a week for a role in the Broadway play Art and Mrs. Bottle.

This came from the box of letters donated by Schuyler Grant, Maragliano said, as another group of visitors entered the space. Sothebys auctioned off a contract that they claimed was the earliest, but it wasnt. This one is dated earlier.

Thats not the only story behind the contract.

Initially, they offered her $75, and she got them up to $125, Maragliano said. Then the playwright took a dislike to her. She was fired. The understudy was terrible, and Kate knew they couldnt find another actress, so the director came back to her.

She said, sure, but now you have to pay me $150, because you hurt my feelings, Maragliano recounted.

A white line below the exhibit cases traces the chronology of her productions from Bryn Mawr College in 1927-28 at 20 to her final role in the television film One Christmas in 1994 for which she received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination at 87.

In between, she won four Academy Awards for Best Actress  still a record for any performer  challenged herself with Shakespearean stage productions and a range of literary roles, all the while refusing to conform to society's expectations of women.

To celebrate her inclination to wear trousers before they were fashionable for women, the exhibit includes a red wool jacket and beige wool pants designed in 1989 by Valentina, a favorite of Hepburns, whom she initially recruited to design costumes for The Philadelphia Story.

It also shows, with movie posters synchronized to film clips how, through her roles, she promoted ideas that were ahead of their time.

You watch Adams Rib with Spencer Tracy, where they play lawyers, its about equality in marriage, which is something we still havent resolved, Maragliano said, of the 1949 film.

Theres also Summertime, made in 1955, about a middle-aged woman embarking alone on a trip to Italy who has this adventure, this romance on her own, she said.

Not to mention the 1967 film Guess Whos Coming to Dinner, one of the few at the time to depict an interracial marriage in a positive light.

Whats perhaps most compelling about the exhibit are the newfound cache of letters Hepburn wrote to her family during the early years of her career.

Along with reflections of Hollywood and commentary on current events, the common refrain is her depth of longing to be with the family in Fenwick.

I miss you all frantically but it wont be long now, she writes in a letter to her mother dated July 8, 1933, having just wrapped Morning Glory, for which she would win an Academy Award.

From the donations of local families, including the yellow bicycle, its evident the affection was mutual.

Take that clawfoot bathtub.

This was from an Old Saybrook family that had a duck decoy business and also worked as caretakers for homes in Fenwick, Maragliano said. As it happened, they were building their own house in the wake of the 1938 hurricane. They asked if they could salvage what they could from the Hepburn home.

Among the items they took was the bathtub. It sat on its claws until 2003, when they remodeled their bathroom, ending up in their garage.

You dont throw away Katharine Hepburns bathtub, Maragliano said.

The Katharine Hepburn Museum is located at 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. Website: https://www.katharinehepburntheater.org/about/museum/; 860-510-0473.

The museum and gift shop are open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and one hour prior to performances. Additional summer hours: Saturday and Sunday 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free. Donations gratefully accepted.
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DEMING, N.M. (AP)  A legal representative of the Fort Sill Apache tribe seemed pleasantly surprised by the prevailing mood at a public scoping meeting for a proposed gaming facility and other developments on a patch of land in Luna County.

I applaud you folks here today, the tribes attorney, Phillip Thompson, said during the recent meeting. Ive been to some rancorous meetings about casinos in California and other parts of the country where, you know, we were looking for the back exit.

No one spoke in opposition to the project at a meeting soliciting community input, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported. Those who came to the microphone had questions about the project and potential economic development, and one man even offered business advice for the future casino.

Luna County stood at 11.5% official unemployment in May and typically sees double-digit rates, while county and city populations have dwindled in recent years.

The tribe currently operates Apache Homelands, a restaurant, cigarette shop and convenience store with a museum next to a pecan orchard alongside Interstate 10 in Akela, 20 miles east of Deming.

Construction has been underway since last fall on an expanded retail facility that will offer shower and laundry facilities, electric vehicle charging stations and expanded retail operations. The project, branded Chiricahua Plaza, is nearly 10,000 square feet (929 square meters) in size and is anticipated to be completed late in 2022.

A wastewater treatment plant designed to recycle greywater for irrigation and non-drinking uses is also under construction.

Last week's event was a scoping meeting at which Thompson, alongside tribe chairwoman Lori Gooday Ware and project manager Brady Jones, presented plans for future developments and solicited public input as part of an approval process for gaming facilities that requires sign-offs from the U.S. interior secretary and New Mexicos governor.

The proposed developments include a gaming facility within the existing building that will feature up to 100 Class II slot machines, parking facilities that will accommodate RVs and trucks, enhanced tribal offices and cultural facilities.

The tribe projects the Akela project will create more than 160 jobs in the construction phase, averaging $46,000 in yearly wages and nearly $25 million in economic activity. After that, it anticipates 60 operational jobs at $34,100 in average wages, and to stimulate the economy by $16.4 million with $1.1 million in tax revenue.

The tribe has also studied potential impacts for a potential hotel and other attractions at the location.

The project seeks to establish an economic base for the small, federally recognized tribe descended from Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apache peoples taken as prisoners of war and removed from the southwest to Florida, Alabama and eventually Oklahoma.

Fort Sill Apache, named for the location of their captivity, was recognized by the United States in 1976 and granted approval of a reservation in New Mexico in 2011 after long and complex litigation. Thompson said the tribe is negotiating a land swap with New Mexico, exchanging land it owns in Albuquerque for land adjacent to the Akela development.

Efforts to establish gaming facilities at Akela have also been subject to challenges from the National Indian Gaming Commission, the state and federal governments. Among the issues raised is that the tribes government is based in Oklahoma and had few economic links to New Mexico.

Thompson addressed that at the beginning of his presentation, explaining that the tribe is the recognized legal successor for Apache groups that lived in southwest and northern New Mexico and part of Arizona, before their removal by the United States after the bands surrender in 1886. Thompson said the tribe aimed to establish their homelands once more in New Mexico and provide its citizens with community and economic opportunity.

Rebecca Lescombes, a Libertarian candidate for the Luna County Board of Commissioners, asked the representatives how many of the jobs would be designated for tribal members versus local residents as well as housing needs.

Jones, the project manager, said the Fort Sill Apache is very small and employs workers from outside the tribe.

The public comment period ends July 27.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  Virginia state police are asking for the public's help as they investigate a shooting on Interstate 95 that left a man hospitalized and his car riddled with bullets.

State police said they were notified just after 2:40 a.m. Monday about a single-vehicle crash along the southbound lanes of I-95 near the 71-mile marker in Richmond. The Honda Civic was eventually located at a gas station.
The Supreme Courts recent overturning of half a century of Constitutional precedent in Roe v. Wade is a catalyst for our country. In more than half of our United States, access to abortion will be limited, if not outright banned. Here in Connecticut, it may seem easy to say this wont happen here, especially with the expansions of abortion protections passed by Democrats in the newly concluded 2022 legislative session.

Our state should be proud that pregnant people in need will be able to access the health care they not only deserve but require, under legislation that expands the accessibility of necessary abortion treatments and acts to counter bounty hunter systems set up in other states.

But as much as we can point to that Democratic legislation protecting reproductive health and be proud of Connecticut in light of these national shifts, we must take further and stronger action.

Its not dramatic or sheer fantasy to say that further civil rights in America are now at potential risk as a direct result of the Republican Supreme Courts June 24 ruling. Even Michael Steele, the former head of the Republican National Committee, said recently that he believes the Republican Party, should it reclaim power in the House, Senate and White House, will suspend the Senatorial filibuster in an effort to seek a national ban on abortion.

While other Republican leaders doubt such a scenario (including Republican Sen, Mitch McConnell), remember that McConnell claimed President Obama couldnt appoint a Supreme Court justice in the last 10 months of his presidency  and then helped rush Donald Trumps choice of Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court just weeks before the November 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost.

The Supreme Courts own recent decisions, and the statements of one of its own members, raise even further and more troubling concerns about the status of basic human rights in America in 2022.

In his written concurrence overturning Roe v. Wade, Republican-appointed Justice Clarence Thomas expressed support for using the same legal mechanism used by the court to overturn Roe to now overturn previous Supreme Court decisions affirming basic American civil rights, including Griswold v Connecticut (allowing access and use of contraceptives), Lawrence v Texas (bars states from outlawing consensual same-sex relations), and Obergefell v Hodges (made marriage equality a constitutional right).

Other members of the court, including Republican-appointed Justice Samuel Alito, have claimed that the Supreme Court is not seeking to overturn those rulings. However, since multiple Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court stated during confirmation hearings that they considered Roe to be settled, only for them to overturn its precedent, theres ample reason to distrust the word of Republican-appointed justices  or at the very least plan ahead for the future. As Democrat-appointed Supreme Court justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan wrote in their dissent on Roe, no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work.

As there are national concerns regarding this process, there are also prospects of state-level concerns. Connecticuts strong protections are due to residents voting for leaders supporting these ideals. However, this can change quickly. In Virginia, as one example, Gov. Glenn Youngkins campaign last year did not focus on the topic of abortion in a state where a majority of residents support legal abortion. On the same day of the Supreme Courts announcement, Youngkin asked four anti-abortion lawmakers in the state to write a proposal to ban abortion after 15 weeks, adding restrictions to access compared to currently standing law. Would a similar shift in balance take place in our state, similar changes may occur; gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski has made comments reflecting on amending law involving parties required to be notified of procedures.

Amid a backdrop with frequent and concerning shifts in balance and reasoning, Connecticut needs to take action regarding the liberties and access that our state provides to individuals. Connecticut is known for supporting and protecting reproductive health and access. Our state is known for its love and support of the LGBTQ+ community. Our legislature should take action next session to enshrine these rights, whether by ensuring these specific ones or cementing a right to privacy in our state constitution.

This is something easier said than done, as it would require the legislature to pass a proposed amendment at least once, if not twice, with statewide voters making the final determination at the ballot box. But its an effort I believe we should take up. Such a process would allow Connecticut voters to have the final say on these matters. It would also provide even stronger protections for those in need than even our current state laws allow.

Some may argue this path is jumping to conclusions, but many of us also recall being told that Roe v Wade would never be overturned. Elections have consequences, and I believe allowing Connecticut voters to have the final say in constitutionally enshrining these rights is exactly the kind of consequence necessary to preserve the rights and freedoms we enjoy here in Connecticut, the Constitution State.

State Sen. Saud Anwar, a Democrat, represents the Third District, which includes the towns of East Hartford, South Windsor, East Windsor and Ellington.
Bengaluru: The Anti-Corruption Bureau in Karnataka on Tuesday raided five locations of Congress MLA B Z Zameer Ahmed Khan following a report of the Enforcement Directorate.

According to ACB officials, the raids were carried out at his residence near the Cantonment Railway station, a flat in Silver Oak Apartment, a guest house at Sadashivanagar, G K Associates office at Banashankari and National Travels office in Kalasipalya in the city.

"The ACB teams are verifying the documents and the investigation is on," the ACB official said.

Multiple teams of the ACB arrived at five locations of Khan, a four-time MLA, who had served as the food and civil supplies minister in the H D Kumaraswamy government for over a year from June 2018, from the morning.

Last year in August, the Enforcement Directorate had raided Khan and another former minister R Roshan Baig's residence, allegedly in connection with the IMA ponzi scheme worth Rs 4,000 crore in which thousands of people, mostly Muslims, were duped of their hard-earned money. Khan had appeared before the ED several times.
An online debate has broken out over whether people should have to put their pronouns in their email signature at work, with some saying it forces people into categories, and others branding it as 'woke'.

The discussion was sparked by a post on the British parenting forum Mumsnet by a user who said she doesn't agree with the policy, and asked others to articulate reasons for this opinion.

She wrote: 'Can someone remind me why some people (likely myself included) does not agree with stated pronouns in email signatures?'

The post prompted a range of responses from fellow Mumsnetters, with some saying that being forced to put pronouns in their signatures made them feel forced to adopt a particular gender identity.

Others said that they feel women suffer discrimination in the workplace as it is, and they don't want to risk reinforcing gender bias.

However, some insisted that it's a simple thing everyone can do to help transgender people feel included.

An anonymous woman (not pictured) sparked a debate on Mumsnet after asking people their reasons for not using pronouns in their email signatures

The poster explained that she did not agree with putting pronouns in her email signature, but asked others to articulate reasons for her

Explaining her position, the original poster wrote: 'It is being requested at work from the perspective of being a small step to being an ally to LGBTQ+ community.

'I just think it is a bit pointless and whilst I have nothing against this or any other community I cannot see what knowing or sharing pronouns really does apart from make you look like a bit of a tit.

'Can someone offer a more articulate explanation please?'

One of the commentators on the post said they felt some people put their pronouns on emails because they are 'just jumping on the woke bandwagon'.

For a number of Mumsnetters, companies making staff use pronouns in email signatures could force people to reveal a protected characteristic they don't yet want to reveal

One explained their point of view, writing: 'It forces those struggling with their gender identity to decide their pronouns when they may not be publicly ready to do so.

'Its bad for females who suffer from unconscious bias as it is.

'It buys into the idea that everyone has a gender identity.

'What other personal characteristics will be asked to be declared in an email signature to show allyship - ethnicity, religion, disability?'

Another agreed, writing: 'No one should be forced to have a gender identity

'No one should be forced to reveal their sex or gender identity. Women may find the assertion of masculinity aggressive.'

Some posters felt that putting female pronouns on their email signatures or other pieces of business correspondence could engender bias

Multiple female posters said they did not want to reveal their gender identity because they felt that women are not treated equally in the workplace, and they did not want to incur that bias.

One explained: 'Because women are generally regarded as less competent than men and their work is often considered inferior to men's, even if the work is identical. The best way for women to be treated as professional is for them not to identify their gender. If a woman can simply be regarded as a person, her work and opinion will be held in higher regard.'

Another added: 'As a woman who has spent decades trying to be professional and overcome the impact of gender bias, I would not want to identify my gender on letters or emails.'

And a third wrote: 'Also what others have said. I don't want to emphasise to people that I'm female when doing business with them. They know I am from my name, but having it there in black and white feels like I'm bringing more discrimination against myself.'

Meanwhile other posters said they believed that putting pronouns in email signatures could be helpful

However, some posters felt that adding pronouns to work email signatures is a positive move, and helps to avoid people being misgendered, while others said they felt some of the tone of the conversation had been transphobic.

One wrote: 'Its supposed to just be a way to support trans people. If only trans people use preferred pronouns in their signatures to avoid being misgendered, it singles them out as being trans. If we all do it as standard it takes away the stigma. Its a simple thing we can do to make peoples lives easier.'

Another felt that discussing the topic had exposed 'anger, prejudice, and intolerance', writing: 'I am genuinely shocked at the replies on this thread. I assumed the world to be much more tolerant and kind. I know people who live their lives as a gender they were not assigned at birth, and the impact of them doing so on me is nil.

'I know teenagers going through an identity crisis and it feels like a high number young people hitting puberty feel uncomfortable with the associations of the societal construct of the gender they are assigned to. That is a big issue which is really affecting the next generation and one that needs a lot of empathy and support not anger.

'I feel no attachment to my pro nouns - they are words that help us navigate the english language. This is a tricky topic - i do not want to declare my pro nouns and its interesting to explore why. But the anger and prejudice and intolerance is not what our society should be about.'
This is the emotional moment a man who believed he'd never find any relatives after being wrongly told he was a foundling was reunited with his older sister on Long Lost Family.

Martin, 56, who has spent the last 20 years living in the South of France after growing up in Britain, was told by his adopted parents that he was 'abandoned on the streets' as a baby.

However, on last night's ITV programme, he discovered that he was actually officially given up for adoption by his birth mother, who knew she couldn't afford to care for him after already struggling to feed and keep her six other children warm.

His biological mother tried to keep his birth a secret, but when his sister Teleena was in her 30s she was told about Martin by her dying older sibling and was eager to find him.

Teleena, 57, recruited the help of the Long Lost Family team, who discovered Martin, called Matthew at birth, in France, and the two siblings were reunited in touching scenes on yesterday's show.

Martin (pictured reuniting with his sister), 56, who has spent the last 20 years living in the South of France after growing up in Britain, was told by his adopted parents that he was 'abandoned on the streets' as a baby

However, on last night's ITV programme, he discovered that he was actually officially given up for adoption by his birth mother (left, pictured with his youngest sister), who knew she couldn't afford to care for him after already struggling to feed and keep her six other children warm

Retired nurse Teleena pictured meeting her younger brother for the first time on Long Lost Family

Retired nurse Teleena grew up on the south coast in a single parent family with her mother Valerie and five older siblings.

'Looking back, I think she did an amazing job She was lovely and fun and always tried to do the best for us We might not have had a lot financially but we had love,' Teleena said.

'When I was young, times were hard. Mum, being a single parent with six children, she didn't have any support. She didn't have a man, there was never a fatherly figure growing up.

'It was so cold one winter, Mum couldn't afford the coal so she chopped the piano up for firewood', she recalled.

However, when Teleena was in her 30s she realised she didnt know her mother quite as well as she thought. One of her sisters was dying and told her of a younger brother called Matthew.

'Mum had a baby... a baby boy a year or two after me,' explained Teleena - but it was only after her mothers death that she found hard evidence of her brothers existence.

His biological mother tried to keep his birth a secret, but when his sister Teleena (pictured) was in her 30s she was told about Martin by her dying older sibling and was eager to find him

Teleena, 57, recruited the help of the Long Lost Family team, who discovered Martin (pictured), called Matthew at birth, in France, and the two siblings were reunited in touching scenes on yesterday's show

'I was going through my late mothers possessions and thats when I found the hospital card... "Christian name, Matthew Clive Darren. Date 14th March 1966". I thought, "oh my god, it is true"', recalled Teleena.

'He does exist. At that point, I knew for real, there's definitely a brother,' she added.

Not only did Teleena find her younger brother's hospital card, she also found hidden photos of a baby.

Knowing for certain that her baby brother existed, Teleena was desperate to find Matthew.

She admitted that she wanted to 'tell him that my mum would have loved him' and that the only reason for giving him up would have been the familys financial struggles.

The Long Lost Family team soon found Matthew, now called Martin (pictured), who was just as shocked as Teleena had been

The father-of-three (pictured) revealed: 'It's been a massive shock because everything I thought I might of known was not really true.'

Martin was overjoyed to have a sister as well as many more siblings, nieces, and nephews and him and Teleena (pictured) had an emotional first meeting together

The Long Lost Family team soon found Matthew, now called Martin, who was just as shocked as Teleena had been.

The father-of-three revealed: 'It's been a massive shock because everything I thought I might of known was not really true.

'Because I always believed that I was a foundling and I always understood that I was abandoned on the street.'

He continued: 'My mother was the best mother you could wish for. My father on the other hand isn't worth spending any time talking about, my father would go away and then my mum was left to look after us on her own and we were poor.

'When there was no money for the heating, she would go out and do extra work... [But] this has turned around everything that I thought were my origins.'

Martin was overjoyed to have a sister as well as many more siblings, nieces, and nephews and him and Teleena had an emotional first meeting together.

Teleena said: 'I wanted to tell you that mum is a really lovely, kind woman and it wouldn't have been easy for her and she would have had you adopted thinking that was the best possible case for you.'

Meanwhile, Martin said finding siblings 'turned my life upside down' and added: 'I'm getting back something that I never knew I lost.'
Signs are designed to be practical, offering directions or information, that should be practical rather than distracting.

But sometimes they are completely out of the ordinary and are bound to make you do a double take.

In an online gallery, Bored Panda collated some of the more unusual signs from across the world, including America, the UK and St Lucia, which are sure to raise a smile.

From a restaurant who would not fix its toilets for customers to use to a creepy sign directing visitors to the 'Bates Motel', here are some of the most bizarre...

Didn't want to go anyway! In an online gallery, BoredPanda collated some of the more unusual signs from across the world, including this notice warning that the toilets aren't going to be fixed

This creepy sign was spotted in Amarillo, Texas. We're not sure the owners actually wanted guests to stay there...

Not wheely funny! Another sign, first seen at the Crocodile Centre in St Lucia, appeared to show the dangers of the animal through illustrating what could happen if people did not stay away from the waters edge

Charming! Seems like this sign insulted people who applied for jobs at the location in America, but it was actually a joke from the song 'Signs' by the Canadian group Five Man Electrical Band. Still, its a novel way to find staff

Snow joke! Another sign posted by a British user laid bare the classic response to snow from Brits... pure panic

Dr Who! A joker daubed 'Dr Who Poo' on the back of a British environmental company in response to its apt name 'Tardis'

Bit unusual! This American user posted a sign of the biggest misunderstanding of all... which made it sound as though the cinema experience involved adopting children

Spelling problems! Residents of California looking to sell property could be forgiven for being baffled by this message

That doesn't fly! We know that mosquitoes can be pesky, but this alarming sign in Canada seems to suggest you could be kidnapped by one
Glammed-up school friends from Wales made an unforgettable entrance to their end of year prom.

The group of Year 11 pupils, from Gwynedd, decided to go down an untraditional root by swapping the classic limousine for tractors.

As many pupils in the area come from farming backgrounds, the mixed group of boys and girls, decided to celebrate their roots.

A glammed-up group of year 11 pupils decided to make an entrance and travel to their school prom in tractors. Pictured L-R: Ela Roberts, Megan Jones, Kali Hughes, Ioan Jones, Elliw Strain, Shiwan Roberts, Alfie Jones, Elin Williams, David Dunn, and Jini Hughes

The pupils from rural secondary school Ysgol Botwnnog decided to end their school careers in style and celebrate their farming backgrounds. Pictured: Jack Davies and Shiwan Roberts

The group decorated some of the tractors with bows and ribbons - moving away from the traditional limousine

Pictured: Shiwan Roberts and Jack Davies. The glammed-up group wanted to style something more personal for their year 11 prom

Making a fitting end to their GCSE year, the group showcased their farming roots, and those who had already passed their tractor driving tests drove their friends on the big day.

Tractor driving tests can be sat by anyone aged 16 and over.

The students got the idea after they started passing their tests earlier in the school year.

The unconventional transport was met with cheering crowds, who had lined the street to watch the pupils travel to prom

Those who had already passed their tractor driving tests drove their friends on the big day. Pictured L-R: Gwion Davies, Cian Jones, Jack Davies, Hari Jones, and Shiwan Roberts

The students from rural secondary school Ysgol Botwnnog on the Llyn Penninsula decorated the tractors with ribbons and bows.

Crowds lined the streets and cheered as the convoy passed by on its way to prom at the local Nant Gwrtheyrn venue.

The down-to-earth approach was a departure from some of the more lavish displays that have become synonymous with prom night.

The industry promoting and supporting British school proms is calculated at 90 million a year.

Some fork out for hummers and horse-drawn carriages to ferry them to the bash. while others have even been transported by helicopter.

Many of the pupils from Gwynedd come from rural farming backgrounds. Pictured L-R: Megan Jones, Elin Williams, Shiwan Roberts, Cian Jones, Hari Jones, Gwion Davies, and Jack Davies
Chief Minister Y.S.Jagan Mohan Reddy presents a memento to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the freedom fighter Alluri Seetharama Raju 125th birth anniversary celebrations at Peda Amiram in Bhimavaram on Monday. AP Governor B.Harichandan and Minister for Tourism R.K.Roja are seen. (Photo by arrangement)

VIJAYAWADA: Chief Minister Jagan Reddy on Monday revived the Special Category Status demand, timing his move with the Presidential election in which the YSRC votes are essential for the BJP to ensure victory of the NDA nominee Droupadi Murmu.

The CM made a plea for SCS during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to AP to unveil the statue of freedom fighter Alluri Sitaramaraju in Bhimavaram. While giving a send-off to the PM at Gannavaram airport on Monday, Jagan submitted a letter/ memorandum to him, seeking SCS for AP and release of pending central fund arrears.

CM Jagan on June 23 announced support to NDA presidential candidate Murmu, who will be the first tribal woman to hold the position if elected. This is the second time the YSRC extended its support to BJP in the presidential elections.

The Opposition parties including Telugu Desam has been demanding that the YSRC pressurise Modi for sanctioning the Special Category Status (SCS) to AP in lieu of the YSRC supporting the BJPs presidential candidate.

CM Jagan told the PM that grant of SCS would help the state recover from the bifurcation difficulties.

In the letter, the CM requested the Centre to release the resource gap grant of Rs.34,125.5 crore and clear the due of Rs.6,627.28 crore which was put by Telangana Discoms to AP Genco. Also, he urged the PM to consider the revised estimates of the Polavaram Project and give approval for Rs.55,548.87 crore.

Jagan reminded Modi that the allotment of ration to the state under the National Food Security Act was not rational and this was causing serious damage to the states interests. He also appealed for adequate financial support for newly established medical colleges in the state and clearances for Bhogapuram Airport and allocation of iron ore mines to APMDC.
Fraudster Anna Sorokin, who shot to notoriety as the subject of Netflix series Inventing Anna, has revealed that she 'wants to move away from' her image as a scammer.

The Russian-born German, who's better known under her alias of Anna Delvey, moved to the US in 2013, where she befriended wealthy socialites before conning them out of some $275,000, under the promise she would transfer funds from Germany.

She was charged with grand larceny and sentenced to four to 12 years in prison for her crimes in 2019.

After being released early for good behaviour in February last year, and temporarily moving to the NoMad luxury hotel in New York, she is currently being detained by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Orange County Jail in upstate New York for overstaying her visa.

In a recent interview with Harper's Bazaar, Sorokin, 31, revealed she 'doesn't want to be' the person she once was.

Anna Sorokin, pictured in New York in 2021, shot to notoriety after conning friends, hotels, and members of the wealthy New York set out of some $275,000 while posing as a wealthy heiress

However the con did not last, and in 2019, Sorokin was charged with grand larceny and sentenced to four to 12 years in jail, being released early for good behaviour in 2021. Pictured here at her trial in 2019

She said: 'I obviously made mistakes in the past, but I would just love to move away from this image of me being a scammer, or this conniving, calculating person.

'It's nice and funny when somebody else kind of mocks me, or jokes about those things, but I dont want it to be coming from me.

'I don't want to be that person anymore.'

While posing as a wealthy heiress, she spent 10 months duping banks, law firms, hotels, fashion designers, a private jet company and supposed friends out of their cash.

Her trial, after being charged with grand larceny, lasted for a month, and gripped the world, as details of her lavish lifestyle, living in expensive hotels, wearing designer clothes, and tipping hospitality staff with $100 bills were revealed.

After being jailed for four to 12 years, she was released early in February 2021.

Her antics became the subject of a 10-part Netflix series Inventing Anna starring Ozark's Julia Garner as the titular character, and told through the eyes of journalist Vivian (Anna Chlumsky).

Following her release from prison, she wanted to start her own clothing label, and was planning to launch The Corrections Collection of 'prison-style loungewear'.

Sorokin's antics became the subject of a 10-part Netflix series Inventing Anna starring Ozark's Julia Garner as the titular character, pictured, and told through the eyes of journalist Vivian (Anna Chlumsky)

But after just six weeks of freedom she was re-arrested and taken into custody for overstaying the tourist visa she'd used to enter the U.S.

Since March 26 last year, she has been back behind bars, and is currently waiting for the Board of Immigration Appeals to decided whether she can stay in the US which she's hoping to do.

In the meantime, she's been working on 'telling her own side of the story' via several projects, including a series of NFTs called Reinventing Anna, which enable buyers to speak with her on the phone or meet in person.

She has also been working on drawings, creating collections called Free Anna Delvey and Allegedly, sketched in the style of cartoons, featuring ironic vignettes from her life, as well as satirical headlines about herself. On top of this, she's been working on her memoir.

While incarcerated, Sorokin has not been able to watch Inventing Anna. In an interview with the Mail earlier this year, she said: 'I want to see the series, but it will have to wait till I'm out of jail.

'Obviously, I can't get a Netflix account while I'm incarcerated.' Although she has co-operated with Shonda Rhimes, the Bridgerton producer who made the series, Anna says she has no idea if the drama will offer a fair portrayal.

'I'm the only person who can tell my story. No one else was with me the whole time, when all those things were happening.'
A man who was stranded in Australia during the pandemic has revealed how he returned home to London to find a stranger living in his flat.

Filippe Scalora, 41, from Chelsea, London, claims an employee from Clarion, the UK's largest housing association, moved another tenant into the flat and collected the rent herself.

Mr Scalora claims the employee asked him to vacate the property while he was stuck in Australia, but assured him he would be rehoused on his return.





But Mr Scalora, who is living in hotels while he waits for the situation to be resolved, later discovered Clarion had no record of him moving out, and that the new tenant had racked up 8,000 in utilities bills in his name.





He said: 'It's really taken a lot out of me. A stranger has been in my flat, running up bills and sleeping in my bed. Meanwhile I'm left homeless spending a fortune on hotels.'

Filippe Scalora, 41, from Chelsea, London was stranded in Australia during the pandemic. He has revealed how he returned home to London to find a stranger living in his flat

Mr Scalora, pictured, claims an employee from Clarion, the UK's largest housing association, moved another tenant into the flat and collected the rent herself

Mr Scalora travelled from the UK to Australia in December 2019 but became stuck when Covid-19 travel restrictions were introduced.

Comforted by the fact that he had an assured lifetime tenancy agreement at the flat due to a health condition, Mr Scalora contacted Clarion to inform them of the situation.

Clarion is the UKs largest housing association, owning and managing 125,000 homes that house a total of 350,000 people.

Mr Scalora claims the Clarion employee who managed his flat asked him to send his keys back to the UK so she could gain access for inspections.

A short time later she informed him that someone else would be housed in his flat while he was away, but insisted that he would be allocated a new flat when he returned.

A friend moved out most of his belongings while he remained in Australia.

'I wasn't too worried at first,' Mr Scalora explained. 'I told her I will be coming back and she reassured me I would be moved into an available property.

When the borders reopened he said he was left unable to kick the stranger out his flat while they ran up an 8,000 utilities bill in his name

'It wasn't until travel resumed and I started making plans to return that I found out what was happening.'

In November 2020, Mr Scalora phoned Clarion to discuss arrangements for his new flat.

He says he was told the company had no record of anyone moving into his flat and that he had 8,000 worth of unpaid utility bills to his name.

'I soon found out that the Clarion worker had been collecting money by renting out my flat privately,' Mr Scalora claims.

Clarion has launched an investigation into tenancy fraud.

A spokesperson said: 'Clarion takes a zero tolerance approach to tenancy fraud and there is a criminal investigation currently underway regarding this case.

'In order to not prejudice that inquiry, we cannot comment in detail.

'We can confirm that three individuals are the subject of this investigation... We also have a robust policy for investigating any staff member accused of fraudulent activity and this is being acted on now.'

Mr Scalora is now living between hotels as he waits for clarity.

He added: 'I'd lived in Kensington and Chelsea for a long time, but I've had to move out because I can't afford to stay in hotels in the area. It's a real shame. I just want my flat back and for this nightmare to be over.'
A schoolboy has sent Twitter users into a frenzy after revealing he wore a bright red skirt and sequined tuxedo jacket to his prom.

Sixteen-year-old Korben's bold fashion choice went viral on the social media platform over the weekend after his mother, Nina Green, tweeted photos of his stunning outfit to showcase her support.

The pupil is said to have stepped out in the billowing ballgown skirt and shimmering jacket to loud cheers from his classmates and staff members at Archbishop Sancroft High School in Harleston, Norfolk, reported the BBC.

Nina captioned her images: 'At age 12, my son announced he wanted to go to his school prom in a gown. Four years later we made it happen.

'Im so incredibly proud of him for being true to himself and the reception he got from his whole school was incredible.'

She also tagged RuPaul's Drag Race judge Michelle Visage, asking for her thoughts, to which the American celebrity replied: 'Ohhhhhhhh yes! You are an amazing, beautiful mom and your child is a STAR.'

Sixteen-year-old Korben's bold fashion choice went viral on the social media platform over the weekend after his mother, Nina Green, tweeted photos of his stunning outfit to showcase her support

The pupil is said to have stepped out in the billowing ballgown skirt and shimmering jacket to loud cheers from his classmates and staff members at Archbishop Sancroft High School in Harleston, Norfolk

Nina captioned her images: 'At age 12, my son announced he wanted to go to his school prom in a gown. Four years later we made it happen'

She added: 'Im so incredibly proud of him for being true to himself and the reception he got from his whole school was incredible'

Others were quick to agree with Michelle and compliment Korben's statement ensemble.

One wrote on Twitter: 'He looks stunning, his gown is amazing and I love his crown too. Hope he had a wonderful prom.'

Another said: 'I must say that your son is stunningly beautiful in that red dress and a crown of glory. One of the best prom gowns Ive ever seen.'

'Happiness. That's what life should be all about. Being happy. Making dreams a reality. Being yourself because that's the best way to be. These photos are joyous,' added a third.

The post was retweeted more than 3,000 times - including by a host of famous faces - and liked by 119,400 social media users.

She also tagged RuPaul's Drag Race judge Michelle Visage, asking for her thoughts, to which the American celebrity replied: 'Ohhhhhhhh yes! You are an amazing beautiful mom and your child is a STAR.'

Mrs Green later discussed the reaction she had received, posting on Twitter: Wow! When I posted images of my son being true to himself I never expected it to get the response it has.

'The support and positivity has been overwhelming and have totally drowned out the few negative ones, which we take no notice of. Its his life and Im letting him live it.'

She recalled to the BBC: 'As soon as he got out of the car, everyone just cheered and I was crying, some of the teachers were crying, because he was being who he wanted to be.'

Reaction: Others were quick to agree with Michelle and compliment Korben's statement ensemble

The following day, when at Pride in London, the son and mother duo had a fan come up to the 16-year-old and ask 'are you the boy in the red dress? I think you're amazing'.

Mrs Green recalled how her son had always loved wearing dresses. From his early teenage years, he has performed as 'sassy' drag queen Miss Frou Frou.

But he didn't attend his prom as Miss Frou Frou, with Mrs Green adding: 'He wanted to go as himself, while expressing his feminine side - with a tuxedo on the top and a dress at the bottom, very much influenced by [American actor] Billy Porter.

'He wanted to be Korben... but in a dress.'
A father-of-nine who became famous around the world when he was the subject of the 2002 bestseller Bookseller of Kabul is now an asylum seeker in London.

Shah Muhammad Rais, 69, graduated with a masters degree in civil engineering from Kabul University, but believing he couldn't make a career in the field, founded his bookshop in 1974 instead.

It came to prominence when in 2002, Asne Seierstad, a Norwegian journalist, moved in with the family for five months to write an account of life in the country.

The resulting book, Bookseller of Kabul, topped international sales charts and went on to be translated into dozens of languages.

However in September, Rais fled Afghanistan and travelled to the UK to seek asylum. He is now living in a London Home Office hotel while he waits for his case to be processed.

Shah Muhammad Rais, 69, who became famous around the world when he was the subject of the 2002 bestseller Bookseller of Kabul is now an asylum seeker in London

Rais' life came to prominence when in 2002, Asne Seierstad, a Norwegian journalist, moved in with the family for five months to write an account of life in the country (pictured, the resulting book)

After establishing his shop in 1974, Rais began amassing a huge collection of literature.

His store is is believed to have the largest collection of books about Afghanistan, with a number of his rarest books hidden away in secure locations.

Meanwhile he also sells textbooks on topics like medicine, engineering and languages.

Over the years, he has twice been imprisoned - first in 1979, during the Soviet era, when he was jailed for a year.

However in September, Rais fled Afghanistan and travelled to the UK to seek asylum. He is now living in a London Home Office hotel while he waits for his case to be processed

In 1982, he was imprisoned for a second time, when he said he faced torture and mistreatment, including sleep deprivation.

He told The Guardian: 'From 2002 to 2020 I sold over 15,000 copies of European and US literature.'

Two weeks after September 11th, award-winning journalist Asne went to Afghanistan to report on the conflict there.

She returned the following spring, where she lived with Rais' family for several months.

Two weeks after September 11th, award-winning journalist Asne went to Afghanistan to report on the conflict there and ended up writing an account of

It was an intimate portrait, based on her account and observations from living with the family.

When the book was published in 2002, it found worldwide success and became a bestseller, making Rais a household name.

However the family claimed the book was inaccurate and invasive, bringing legal action against her.

On July 24, 2010, she was found guilty of defamation and 'negligent journalistic practices and ordered to pay damages to Suraia Rais, wife of Shah Muhammad Rais'.

However later, an Norwegian appeal court cleared the author of invading their privacy and found the book accurate.

Rais, who founded the bookshop in 1974, said he now hopes to live and work in the UK and hopes to get a job at the British library

The bookseller continues to own his store in Kabul, but said he is unsure whether the Taliban will ban or destroy it

Despite fleeing the country last year, Rais is still running his bookshop, and an online store.

He explained: 'I will keep the bookshop open as long as possible, maybe the Taliban will ban it or destroy it.'

He arrived in the UK last September and claimed asylum at the airport, while he is now living in a London Home Office hotel, waiting for his case to be processed.

He said he hopes to work at the British library, opening an Afghan reading room.
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A series of never-before-seen images of the royal family taken by members of the public are going on show at Kensington Palace this week.

Snapshots include a close-up of a smiling Duchess of Cambridge receiving a posy of flowers after the Sandringham Christmas service in 2014, while another is a black and white image of the Prince of Wales on horseback during a polo match in Oxford in the 1980s.

The photographs form part of Historic Royal Palaces' Life Through A Royal Lens exhibition, which also includes work by renowned photographers Norman Parkinson, Rankin, Annie Leibovitz and Cecil Beaton.

The snaps were submitted by royal watchers around the world in response to a request by Historic Royal Palaces. The photos had to be of official engagements and there was a particular interest in walkabouts. Paparazzi-style shots taken by the public of the royals spending time privately were not accepted.

From July 6, the 25 images on show since the exhibition opened will be replaced with 25 new contributions.

A series of never-before-seen images of the royal family taken by members of the public are going on show at Kensington Palace this week (pictured, a photograph of Kate Middleton at Christmas in Sandringham in 2014)

The Queen, dressed in bright yellow, and her daughter, the Princess Royal, are photographed travelling side by side in a carriage at Ascot in 2018

Nearly 1,000 images were submitted following an appeal to the public to share their own memories of the royals in the Platinum Jubilee year.

Amy from London, who took the picture of Kate at Sandringham, said: 'I've often been to Sandringham with my aunt to see the royals on Christmas Day as my family lives nearby in Lincolnshire.

'Kate was asking a young girl about her Christmas dinner plans and had been given so many flowers she could barely hold them all.

'It was so worth getting up early and standing in the cold to take this photo, which I think shows Kate's natural warmth and affinity towards children.'

Another is a black and white image of the Prince of Wales on horseback during a polo match in Oxford in the 1980s (pictured)

Those images selected include the Queen smiling broadly despite the rain at the opening of The Lowry theatre and gallery complex in Salford in 2000.

David from Leeds, who took the image, said: 'It was pouring with rain and HM had just returned from Balmoral.

'I asked if she had brought the Scottish weather with her. She chuckled and said at least the dogs seem to love it.'

The monarch and the Duke of Edinburgh are also pictured driving past crowds of well-wishers in Derby in a throwback image during the Silver Jubilee of 1977.

The Queen, dressed in bright yellow, and her daughter, the Princess Royal, are photographed travelling side by side in a carriage at Ascot in 2018.

The monarch and the Duke of Edinburgh are also pictured driving past crowds of well-wishers in Derby in a throwback image during the Silver Jubilee of 1977

Those images selected include the Queen smiling broadly despite the rain at the opening of The Lowry theatre and gallery complex in Salford in 2000

Laura from London, who took the picture. said: 'I was so pleased to be in just the right spot in the parade ring to catch the Queen and the Princess Royal looking jubilant and lovely, clearly anticipating the day at the races ahead of them.'

The curators at Historic Royal Palaces - along with a guest judge from royal jewellers Garrard - selected a total of 50 images to feature in two evolving digital displays.

Claudia Acott Williams, curator at Historic Royal Palaces, said: 'The digital display they will form is an amazing way of sharing these unique moments in time, to appreciate just how special those interactions with the royal family are to the participants, and to illustrate how photographs create a lasting sense of connection.

'They will be shown alongside the work of world-renowned photographers and will help to bring to life the story of royal image-making in this Platinum Jubilee year.'

Other photographs previously revealed in the exhibition include a snap of the Queen and Prince Philip smiling at the Badminton Horse Trials, in the spring of 1980.

The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh, Badminton Horse Trials, Spring 1980, photographed by Elizabeth from Los Angeles, California: 'My boyfriend and I were two American teenagers studying in London. We were hitchhiking outside of Bath and were picked up by a couple going to the horse trials, and they ended up taking us with them! It was 42 years ago and still one of the best days of my life'

Paul from Leeds  HRH The Duke of Cambridge and Sir David Attenborough, Birkenhead, September 2019: 'Seeing the legendary Sir David was wonderful, I told him when I met him how I'd grown up watching his shows. Prince William joked 'He thought nobody would turn up to see him, he was wrong!!' They were sat on a stage, listening to speeches. They just looked at each other and just laughed!'

It was taken by a woman named Elizabeth, from Los Angeles, California, who was studying in the UK at the time.

She said: 'My boyfriend and I were two American teenagers studying in London. We were hitchhiking outside of Bath and were picked up by a couple going to the horse trials, and they ended up taking us with them! It was 42 years ago and still one of the best days of my life.'

Elsewhere a royal fan captured the Queen Mother clutching a bouquet of flowers at the Sandringham Flower Show in 1988.

There is also a poignant black and white photograph of Princess Diana at a quiet moment during a royal engagement in Marylebone, London, in 1993.

Amateur photographer Paul, from Leeds, snapped the Duke of Cambridge and Sir David Attenborough sharing a joke during a joint outing in Birkenhead, in September 2019.

George, taken in 1993: The Princess of Wales, during a visit to the West London Methodist Mission in Marylebone in 1993

Denis from Lichfield (as donated by his daughter Diana)  HM The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh, Stourbridge, April 1957: His daughter Diana said: 'The Queen and Prince Philip were on a tour of the West Midlands and the photograph was taken in Mary Stevens Park, Stourbridge. My father died in 1968 and was a keen amateur photographer all his life. He was a member of the Hagley Camera club and won competitions both locally and nationally'

He said: 'Seeing the legendary Sir David was wonderful, I told him when I met him how I'd grown up watching his shows. Prince William joked 'He thought nobody would turn up to see him, he was wrong!' They were sat on a stage, listening to speeches. They just looked at each other and just laughed!'

The photographs will join images such as intimate family portraits commissioned by Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, and Beaton's portraits of the Queen and the Queen Mother.

The exhibition, charting almost 200 years of royal photography, will explore the stiff formality of the Victorian era, the high glamour of Beaton's photographs and the relaxed informality of the digital age.

Mike from Maidenhead - HM The Queen, Windsor, March 2008: 'I had gone to Windsor with my sister and brother-in-law to watch the arrival of President Sarkosy and his wife with great hope that we would catch a glimpse of The Queen. This was a state visit by the French President and so the town was decorated with many flags. As we waited in the crowd on High Street in Windsor, the Queen drove past us heading for Eton & Windsor Riverside Station to greet the President. I'd like to say that the image I captured was a result of my careful planning, but as is the case on such occasions it was pure serendipity that I caught Her Majesty with the Union Flag reflected in the car window.'

Edward from King's Lynn (as donated by his family)  Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, August 1989 and the Prince of Wales, July 1988, both at the Sandringham Flower Show: 'We are beyond thrilled to have been fortunate enough to have two images selected. The images were taken by my Uncle who sadly passed away in November 2021. We inherited them as part of his estate, and it means so much to myself and my family that his work is going to be displayed in Kensington Palace.'

Work by celebrated photographer Lord Snowdon, who was married to the Queen's sister, Princess Margaret, will also be on show, portraying a 'different, sometimes rebellious, fashionable and more informal side to the royal family'.

Photoshoots such as the Duke of Cambridge's cover of Attitude Magazine and the Duchess of Cambridge's centenary issue of British Vogue in 2016 will 'explore how photography and image remain central to the public's perception of the modern royal family today'.

The Life Through A Royal Lens exhibition is at Kensington Palace until October 30 2022 and is included in the palace admission fee.

Paul, 2019: The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall taking shade under a parasol during a carriage ride at the Sandringham Flower Show in 2019
The young founder of internationally successful business 'The Oodie' has spoken out after Aldi announced it will be launching new 'snuggle hoodies' that look exactly like his popular designs.

Davie Fogarty, from Adelaide, South Australia, started the brand in 2018 with just $500 after dropping out of university and has since turned over $400million.

On Saturday July 9, Aldi is launching sherpa-lined hooded blankets for just $29.99 instead of the $84 that Oodie charges. One Aldi design features cartoon avocados with faces that look just like a pattern on one of the Oodies.

Mr Fogarty told FEMAIL that although it's 'flattering', he predicts shoppers will opt for his own, 'premium' product.

From Saturday July 9, Aldi shoppers across the country will be able to get their hands on the sherpa-lined hooded blankets for just $29.99 (pictured) - while Oodies retail for $84

One Aldi design features cartoon avocados that embody a similar resemblance to a design sold by The Oodie, and other similar colours including pink and charcoal will also be available (pictured: The Oodie avocado design)

From a young age, Davie Fogarty, from Adelaide, South Australia, (pictured) dreamed of starting his own business and would sell cookies to teachers and students at school to make some extra cash

'While it is flattering to see our trademarked Avocado design bring inspiration to big retail chains, we are confident customers will appreciate our premium product quality and want to support an Australian business by shopping the original Oodie,' he said.

The Oodie is lined with Sherpa fleece and is made with a front kangaroo pocket, making it the perfect winter essential.

To compare, the Aldi snuggle hoodie is also made with 'ultra-soft fleece' and 'warm sherpa lining' with a one-size fits most design and large front pocket.

But as the Oodie is deemed 'premium' it will likely last longer and remain fluffy after being washed several times.

Mr Fogarty told FEMAIL he isn't irritated by the situation with Aldi at all, but is instead flattered (Pictured left: The Oodie. Pictured right: Aldi snuggle hoodie)

At the moment in the market, there seems to be a variety of similar blanket-incorporated jumpers and hoodies of varying designs that may have sought inspiration from the original Oodie

At the moment in the market, there seems to be a variety of similar blanket-incorporated jumpers and hoodies of varying designs that may have sought inspiration from the original Oodie.

The Aldi adult snuggle hoodie is just one of many items available.

Other big-name retailers have also previously sold similar hooded blankets, providing customers on a budget with options.

On TikTok some shoppers were concerned about the quality and said they'd prefer to fork out the cost for the original Oodie.

'The real Oodie is worth it! Save up if you can, the Kmart one doesn't compared,' one person wrote in response to a video by user Yasmine.

'The real one is a lot better,' another said.

Mr Fogarty (pictured) founded 'The Oodie' in 2018 and owns nine additional brands

The Oodie launched four years ago but sales exploded in 2020 when Covid swept Australia, leaving millions working, playing and languishing at home during lockdowns.

The instant nation of homebodies meant Australians were spending more money on cosy outfits to wear around the house; The Oodie is a cosy, wearable blanket with a warm sherpa fleece interior and 'kangaroo pouch' front pocket.

On TikTok Mr Fogarty shared a video after feeling humbled by his incredible success.

In a separate video Mr Fogarty said he'd change his approach and 'general mindset' about both life and business. He told FEMAIL the brand has turned over more than $400million to date (pictured, a spreadsheet from last year)

'Money comes back, but I'll never be 23 and growing Australia's biggest oversized wearable blanket business,' he wrote.

He's also known for sharing business tips, how to source 'winning' products and what he'd do differently if he could do it all again.

In a separate video Mr Fogarty said he'd change his approach and 'general mindset' about both life and business.

'I was so hell bent on becoming successful and making as much money as possible, and not only missed a lot of opportunities, but I probably wasn't as happy or enjoyed life as much as I could have,' he said.

'If I could change one thing, it would be my mentality around that and just trying to find peace rather than trying to be something I didn't need to be.'
To celebrate World Chocolate Day this week, Kit Kat has partnered with Sydney's Tokyo Lamington to launch three new delicious sweet treats.

The crazy creations designed in the Nestle KitKat's Chocolatory in Sydney were inspired by the most popular special editions in the DIY lab location.

The three flavours chosen include KitKat classic Aussie lamington, KitKat raspberry rose lamington and KitKat gold lamington.

The trio are now available to pre-order online to be picked up from July 7 to 10, and will cost $9 each.

Kit Kat has partnered with Sydney's Tokyo Lamington have joined forces to launch three new lamington flavours - KitKat classic Aussie lamington, KitKat raspberry rose lamington and KitKat gold lamington

The trio are now available to pre-order online to be picked up from July 7 to 10, and will cost $9 each

Min Chai and Eddie Stewart, co-founders of Tokyo Lamington, shared their dessert secrets with the team at KitKat in order to create the mouthwatering cakes.

The raspberry rose lamington will likely be a crowd pleaser as it's made with strawberry crea dipped in ruby chocolate dip and covered with dried raspberries and hibiscus petals.

Reminiscent of the iconic lamington, the Aussie version is made with vanilla sponge, KitKat cream and is covered in shredded coconut and strawberry pieces.

The gold lamington is covered in crushed KitKat and Lotus Biscoff pieces for an added crunch, but inside awaits a delicious KitKat cream with vanilla sponge.

Until July 10 customers can also visit the KitKat Chocolatory to create their own chocolate bars and lamingtons - with more than 240 possible combinations

Until July 10 customers can also visit the KitKat Chocolatory to create their own chocolate bars and lamingtons - with more than 240 possible combinations.

After the news was shared on Instagram, chocolate lovers shared their excitement by tagging friends in the comments.

'Wowee! Looks so fantastic!' one foodie wrote, another added: 'You guys are amazing.'

'This is the best thing ever,' a third added.
Australians are being warned of increased snake sightings as flooding and heavy rainfall continues to ravage the eastern states.

Severe weather warnings of heavy rain and damaging winds are in place in Sydney and the NSW Central Coast and Hunter Regions where eastern brown, eastern tiger and red-bellied black snakes are the most common venomous species found.

NSW SES Bathurst Unit issued a warning for residents to be careful as there have been several snake sightings in the area as the animals flee their flooded habitats.

Sydney Vey Dr Tim Montgomery has told people and pet owners how to stay safe from snakes as NSW SES Bathurst Unit issues a warning following sightings in the area from volunteers

'A volunteer inspecting the river today noticed snakes out and about along the Macquarie river today. Snakes often lose their homes in floods and will be moving around to relocate,' a post to Facebook read.

Thousands of Sydneysiders have been ordered to evacuate their homes after three consecutive nights of torrential rain, strong winds and flooding with more wild weather on the way.

Some may return to find some local wildlife taking refuge in their absence so Dr Tim Montgomery, Regional Clinical Director at Sydney Animal Hospitals, has offered some advice for people and pet owners in flood affected areas to stay safe from snake bites.

The Sydney vet said people should not approach any snake they see and to practice caution when returning home as the reptiles may be retreating in houses to escape the floods.

The Sydney vet said people should not approach any snake they see and to practice caution when returning home as the reptiles may be retreating in houses to escape the floods

Severe weather warnings are in place in Sydney and Central Coast and Hunter Regions where eastern brown, tiger and red bellied black snakes are common venomous species found

Dr Tim, who treated hundreds of snake bites during a three year stint in the West Australian desert, said many snakes tend to live near waterways so when they flood, it is likely they would be on the move.

'Snakes are less active in winter and some even brumate, which is the reptile equivalent of hibernation, so they've had a rude awakening from their sleep. They're looking for safety feeling confused, sleepy and wet,' he said.

'They're looking for higher ground just to get away from the water and somewhere to be sheltered away from predators and hopefully keep warm.'

What to do if you're bitten by a snake You should always provide emergency care if you or someone else is bitten by a snake  including cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), if required. Keep calm, and follow these steps: Get the person away from the snake. Ensure they rest and help them to stay calm. Call triple zero (000) and ask for an ambulance. Apply a pressure immobilisation bandage (see below). Dont wash the bite area  venom left on the skin can help identify the snake. If you cant use a pressure immobilisation bandage because the bite is on the trunk or stomach, apply constant, firm pressure. Do not apply a tourniquet, cut the wound or attempt to suck the venom (poison) out. Source: HealthDirect.gov.au Advertisement

Dr Tim said common places for snakes to retreat around a house include thick bushes, piles of rubbish or green waste.

'Especially if people have chicken or birds, they'll gravitate there where the rodents tend to live,' he said.

'In the colder weather, they tend to get more sluggish. Getting bitten will be less common but people should still take more care and not approach any snake you see out and about.'

To keep your pets safe, the animal doctor said to err on the side of caution and take them to the vet if you suspect they may have been bitten.

'Dogs are curious and they find snakes very exciting. There are no fool proof ways to protect your dogs from snake bites,' he said.

'If you find your dog has been outside and it comes in acting strangely and if you live in area where there could be snakes, pay a visit to your local vet just to be safe.'

Dr Tim said while symptoms of snakes bites can vary depending on the species some signs to look out for include wobbling, trembling, vomiting, agitation, limping and visible wounds.

If you think your animal has been bitten, he said 'the best thing to do' is to keep both them and yourself as calm as possible and make your way to the vet immediately.

'Physical activity will accelerate the passage of venom through the body,' he said.

'If it is safe and possible to do so take a photo of the snake if you've seen it so that it can be identified - anti venoms are species specific.'

Dr Tim added to contact your local snake catcher if one has set up camp in your home to flee the floods.

To view the list of local NSW snake catchers, click here.
An Australian mum-of-three claims she was dismissed by doctors when her son was screaming in agony with a painful skin disease and urges parents to 'trust their instinct' when to comes to their children's health.

Bec, from Adelaide, was told she was 'overreacting' by hospital staff when she took her then one-year-old Archie to be seen for a red rash all over his body that was getting progressively worse and more painful.

After several days and Bec's persistence, Archie, now four, was diagnosed with acute haemorrhagic oedema of infancy, a rare and painful disease that is treatable and characterised by a fever, large bruise-like legions and swelling all over the skin.

Mum-of-three, Bec has shared her terrifying ordeal in which she was continually dismissed by doctors as her one-year-old son screamed in agony from a painful skin disease known as acute haemorrhagic oedema of infancy

After her terrifying ordeal Bec (pictured with her sons Oscar, seven, Jobe, one and Archie, four) is urging parents to 'trust their instinct' when to comes to their child's health

When Archie was 13 months old, he woke up one morning with a rash all over his body.

'It wasn't massive but presented as a few rash spots on his legs and the side of his body. I thought I'd keep an eye on it,' Bec recalled in a post to Instagram.

The next morning, the rash had spread to his face and back and was becoming more prominent so while Bec 'wasn't panicked' she erred on the side of caution and took Archie to the hospital.

'After waiting for seven long hours we were seen and I was told it was roseola infantum,' said Bec, who also has two more children Oscar, seven, and Jobe, one.

'We were told it is very common in children and were sent home with the promise of a district nurse to come and check him the next day.'

When Archie was 13-months-old, he woke up one morning with a rash all over his body that later spread to his back and face. Doctors diagnosed him with the 'common' roseola infantum

After a sleepless night where Archie would 'scream every time he moved', he was swollen with the rash turning a purple, bruise-like shade and having 'practically taken over his whole body'

That night, Bec said, was a sleepless one as Archie was 'extremely unsettled' with a fever and would 'scream every time he moved'.

The rash was getting worse but as the hospital told Bec it was a 'common childhood illness' she thought he was fine so she kept giving him paracetamol and a topical cream she was given at the hospital in an attempt to ease his discomfort.

By the next morning, Archie was swollen with the rash turning a purple, bruise-like shade and having 'practically taken over his whole body'.

Bec and her husband Dean immediately rushed Archie back to the hospital where a nurse 'refused to touch him' fearing he had meningococcal - a serious and potentially fatal infection.

Bec and her husband Dean immediately rushed Archie back to the hospital where a nurse 'refused to touch him' fearing he had meningococcal - a serious and potentially fatal infection

After two agonising days in hospital, Archie was eventually diagnosed with acute haemorrhagic oedema of infancy, a rare condition that usually affects children under two

'They admitted him straight away and did numerous tests on him. Many different doctors came to see Archie and take photos - all amazed at the rash rapidly spreading,' Bec said.

The rash was developing in front of their eyes and Bec told 7Life Archie's skin looked a 'punching bag' with angry bruise-like marks all over.

Doctor's even started questioning the parents if they had done anything to the toddler which Bec said was understandable but nonetheless distressing for the pair.

After two agonising days in hospital, Archie was eventually diagnosed with acute haemorrhagic oedema of infancy, a rare condition that usually affects children under two.

What is acute haemorrhagic oedema of infancy? Acute haemorrhagic oedema is a rare type of cutaneous small vessel vasculitis with a characteristic presentation in infants. It consists of a clinical triad of: Large bruise-like lesions

Swelling

Fever Acute haemorrhagic oedema generally develops in children between the ages of 4 months and 2 years of age. The cause of acute haemorrhagic oedema is unknown. It is an immune-mediated process, possibly an immune complex disorder. Many possible triggers for this immune-mediated disease have been reported including infectious agents, medications and immunisations. Acute haemorrhagic oedema of infancy usually resolves spontaneously over 13 weeks with complete recovery. Recurrence may occur but is uncommon, and usually occurs early. Source: DermNetNZ.org Advertisement

Archie's rash cleared up within four days and he has made a full recovery however doctors warned the parents the condition could flare up again

Doctor's don't know how Archie contracted the disease but think it could be related to antibiotics he had been taking for a cold after experiencing respiratory issues not long before the rash appeared.

He was administered a prescribed cream and discharged from hospital after two days.

Archie's rash cleared up within four days and he has made a full recovery however doctors warned the parents the condition could flare up again.

'Within two weeks the rash had completely disappeared and Archie was back to his active self with no underlying effects,' Bec wrote.

After the terrifying ordeal Bec is encouraging parents to persist seeking medical treatment if they feel something is wrong with their child.

'Always trust your motherly instinctno one knows your children better than you,' she said.
A mother-of-two whose crippling addiction to alcohol nearly killed her has talked about how grateful she is to have 'fallen off her perch' and given up drink for good as Dry July begins.

Justine Whitchurch, from the Gold Coast, quit alcohol eight years ago when she saw what it was doing to both her own life and that of her children.

At her worst, in the last six months before she quit, the 49-year-old's drinking would see her consume at least three bottles of wine a day 'with some vodka shots occasionally thrown in if she wanted to go 'undetected''.

Since Justine gave up alcohol for good, she has made exercise and healthy living a priority - and she looks better in her 40s than she did in her 20s.

On Monday she shared a post to Instagram about what life would look like for her today if she hadn't had the strength to walk away from the partying and excessive alcohol.

Justine Whitchurch, from the Gold Coast, quit alcohol eight years ago when she saw what it was doing to both her own life and that of her children

Ms Whitchurch claimed there was no way for her to 'moderate' her drinking and she had to go cold turkey to make it stick

'I was asked in one of my podcast interviews last week what kind of life I would be living today if I hadn't stopped drinking. My answer was pretty simple,' she said.

'I wouldn't. I would be dead.'

Ms Whitchurch claimed there was no way for her to 'moderate' her drinking and she had to go cold turkey to make it stick.

'I was an addict. The deal was sealed, as was my fate if I'd not put the glass down. But there's something incredible about starting from scratch. The ability to recreate yourself from the barest bones,' she said.

'To reignite the soul that never really left you. Shake up your belief system and create something that fits your new POV. I've grown into a much more authentic version of myself with passion, drive and ambition on steroids.

'Confident with showing the world what it's like to shed your cocoon and fly. So as it turns out that my major fall from grace was actually quite the blessing in disguise.

'I was an addict. The deal was sealed, as was my fate if I'd not put the glass down. But there's something incredible about starting from scratch. The ability to recreate yourself from the barest bones,' she said

Ms Whitchurch quit alcohol when she was 40 years old after she spent most of her thirties 'medicated from alcohol 24/7' (pictured at the height of her addiction)

What to expect when you stop drinking Within 12-24 hours: Detoxification begins and blood sugar normalises. During this period you may experience withdrawal symptoms including sweating, anxiety, depression and insomnia. Within one week: Quality of sleep should improve and you should start to feel more energised and hydrated. Within two weeks: Weight loss may begin thanks to cutting out the hidden calories in alcohol. Within three to four weeks: Blood pressure stabilises. Source: Dry July Advertisement

'And now I get to lead the herd of "socially acceptable non-drinkers" to much greener pastures.'

Ms Whitchurch quit alcohol when she was 40 years old after she spent most of her thirties 'medicated from alcohol 24/7'.

'The single turning point was my nine-year-old daughter looking at me with tears in her eyes and saying, 'Mum I am scared you are not going to get better',' she said.

'I dropped 14 kilos in six months, my liver reading was around 2500 (it should have been 42), my triglycerides were so high I was a major heart attack risk, my platelet count was so low I had bruises from head to toe and my hair was falling out.

'It got to the point where my dad saw me for the first time in months and he said that if he had not known it was me he would not have recognised his own daughter.'

Doctors also told Ms Whitchurch that she had just months to live if she continued the way she was going.

Thousands of Australians sign up each year to raise money for cancer research by ditching the drink for 'Dry July'

Doctors also told Ms Whitchurch that she had just months to live if she continued the way she was going

Set a limit on your intake and fill your wine glass with something non alcoholic to fill the void if need be, exercise through the cravings and ensure you're getting plenty of sleep to recover

Ms Whitchurch explained that when she first quit, it was the first few months that were the 'hardest'.

'The initial phase of recovery is a lot about self-protection,' she explained.

'You can't expect to be exposed to social situations with a nil effect.'

If you are looking to give up, the 48-year-old recommends that you try and distract yourself as often as possible.

'Look to do things that will benefit your health, like exercise, good nutrition and sleep, as well as re-connecting with the things that you used to love,' she said.

Revealed: Long-term effects of regular heavy drinking Brain: Drinking too much can affect your concentration, judgement, mood and memory. It increases your risk of having a stroke and developing dementia. Heart: Heavy drinking increases your blood pressure and can lead to heart damage and heart attacks. Liver: Drinking three to four standard drinks a day increases your risk of developing liver cancer. Long-term heavy drinking also puts you at increased risk of liver cirrhosis (scarring) and death. Stomach: Drinking even one to two standard drinks a day increases your risk of stomach and bowel cancer, as well as stomach ulcers. Fertility: Regular heavy drinking reduces men's testosterone levels, sperm count and fertility. For women, drinking too much can affect their periods. Source: Health Direct Advertisement

Ms Whitchurch explained that when she first quit, it was the first few months that were the 'hardest' (pictured before)

BEFORE AND AFTER: Once you have got over the initial first stage, the mum-of-two explained you still need to be careful with what you do and pick your social occasions wisely

Once you have got over the initial first stage, the mum-of-two explained you still need to be careful with what you do and pick your social occasions wisely:

'When you do start to socialise again, choose a time of the day that you know you are least likely to be enticed,' she said.

'For me, that was always breakfast or brunch. That time of the day, you are less likely to be faced with the opportunity to drink. And just remember, you don't need to do a whole heap of explaining.'

Justine's recovery story and the steps she took to get sober are detailed in her book, Sobriety delivered EVERYTHING alcohol Promised, is available on Amazon and her website.
Mumbai: Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction on Tuesday predicted that the Eknath Shinde-led group will remain in power only for the next six months. The Thackeray faction said that Shinde won the trust vote in Maharashtra Legislative Assembly with a "stolen majority".

Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde with the support of BJPs 106 MLAs on Monday sailed through a trust vote.

An editorial in Shiv Senas mouthpiece 'Saamana' on Tuesday said that there is nothing to celebrate or feel disappointed over Shindes victory in the Legislative Assembly. The editorial said that Shinde broke away for power and not for any principal.

Accusing Shinde and BJP of not following any ethics, the editorial said, After winning the floor test, those who are thinking that this government is not in danger zone for the next six months, are living in illusion. BJP people (leaders) will bring down this government as predetermined and push Maharashtra into midterm elections.

The Saamana editorial also expressed surprise over the absence of NCP MLAs and senior Congress leaders Ashok Chavan and Vijay Wadettiwar. Some MLAs of Congress, NCP were absent at the time of the floor test. It is surprising that senior ministers like Ashok Chavan, Vijay Wadettiwar could not reach the Assembly. Fadnavis has thanked the invisible forces that made the floor test successful, the editorial said.

Taking a dig at Santosh Bangar, an MLA from Hingoli in Marathwada region, for shifting his loyalty to Shinde camp on the eve of the floor test, the editorial said that he was supporting Uddhav Thackeray till the election of the Speaker but nobody knows what happened in 24 hours that he switched to Shinde camp.

Thackeray said that he was hurt to see some members ditching the party despite getting benefits and will visit Hingoli soon.

A meeting of district Shiv Sena leaders was held at the government guest house in Hingoli on Tuesday where Thackeray spoke to party workers over the phone.
A warning has been issued to Snapchat users after an update was made to the popular photo and video sharing app that shows users' location - and it's left parents worried.

The 'Snap Map' feature allows others to view your exact location down to the street address - and now it also calculates how long it will take to drive to the destination.

The update has parents concerned about the safety of their children who may accidentally disclose their address to strangers online.

Thankfully the map can be disabled by remaining on 'Ghost Mode' or turning off the 'precise location' button in phone settings.

The Snapchat 'map' feature (left) allows others to view your exact location down to the street address - and now it also calculates how long it will take to drive to this destination (right)

Snap Maps lets operators show their live location to their Snapchat friends, meaning they can identify someone's exact address.

It also displays images and videos posted by strangers from around the world, which are shown on a map.

Health and beauty brand Ethan Thomas Collection raised the alarm by sharing news of the update on Facebook along with screengrabs.

'New Snapchat update now allows you to click on the person to show their location, right down to the street address. It also goes one step further,' the brand wrote.

'Click the drive icon which will open google maps and it gives you their precise address. Even the house number!

'If you have kids, turn their location off or put it in ghost mode.'

The social media post was shared more than 11,000 times and received over 6,200 comments.

'I've never understood why Snapchat has a location feature if you want someone to know we're you are message them privately,' one woman wrote.

Another woman pointed out another new feature and wrote: 'There's another new update that you can pay for and it'll show their location for the last 24 hours and everywhere they've been too.'

Though this feature is part of the new paid subscription only.

Thankfully the map can be disabled by remaining on 'ghost mode' or turning off the 'precise location' button in phone settings (pictured)

Earlier this week Snapchat officially announced the new 'Snapchat+ subscription service', offering users to pay a monthly fee to access exclusive in-app features, such as icons, badges, data insights and more.

Part of the new data insights, users will be able to see their friends location history for 24 hours and rewatch their Snapchat stories.

On TikTok many users deem this to be 'creepy' and 'unnecessary', and others said they'd never pay $3.99 per month to use the app for extra inclusions.

Last year cyber safety experts warned parents of the map feature after the alleged sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl in Melbourne.

Last year cyber safety expert Jordan Foster (pictured) has warned parents about a little known feature of the popular social media app Snapchat after the alleged sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl in Melbourne

The feature allows users to track their friends' locations (pictured: Snap Map)

A group of boys allegedly used the feature to gatecrash a party in the wealthy Melbourne suburb of Brighton in February, the Herald Sun reported.

A young girl was then allegedly assaulted by one of the 'out of area' teens.

Cyber safety expert at ySafe Jordan Foster told Daily Mail Australia users can find parties using Snap Maps by identifying congregations and viewing videos or photos which show a party is happening.

She added young people often have contacts on their phone or social media who they do not know very well.

'If strangers or the public are posting videos of this party, you will see where the actual houses or the location is and you can also see how long ago the post was put up,' she said.

'So strangers can just arrive and rock up and know exactly what's going on and where.'

The feature allows users to see random content posted by strangers by clicking on parts of the map.

Snapchat previously told Daily Mail Australia the precision of the heat spots is degraded by up to 4 kilometers, depending on the volume of Snaps in an area and the age of the poster.

A leading cyber expert has warned the live-tracking feature may enable revenge porn, cyber-bullying, stalking and domestic violence among young people. (Pictured: A public image on Snap Maps shows children on a playground and displays their location)

Young people said they use the feature to locate friends, connect with them on a night out and see if they were online to chat.

'I use [Snap Maps] just to see where my friends are if we have made plans and if they are on there way to where we are going,' high school student Alex Cimino said.

'I also just use them to see if someone is active on Snapchat and if they're replying or ignoring messages.'

To turn off location sharing, head to settings and check who can see your location, and then turn on Ghost Mode (pictured)

A spokesperson for Snapchat previously told Daily Mail Australia the software was designed with privacy and security at front of mind.

'Location sharing via the Snap Map is off by default, and Snapchatters who do decide to share their location on the Map will only be able to see and be seen by mutual friends,' they said.

'We have zero tolerance for any sort of bullying or harassment and ask that Snapchatters report abuse or any other safety concerns in app.'
A British woman has warned Australians wanting to work and live abroad in her home country that they will be forking out as much as $280 year to watch TV.

In a video titled 'To TV or not to TV' comedy writer Jordana Grace explained that the government charges its residents to watch what is usually 'free to air' shows Down Under.

'You need a licence to have a TV. I'm not kidding. You need to get a licence yearly for the pleasure of watching anything broadcast live on your TV or phone,' she said.

'However you don't technically need a licence to watch shows after they've already been broadcasted. Unless it's the BBC in which case you need the licence regardless.'

In a video titled 'To TV or not to TV' comedy writer Jordana Grace explained that the government charges its residents to watch what is usually 'free to air' shows Down Under

According to the UK government residents must have a TV licence in their household to watch or record programs on a TV, computer or other device as they're broadcast or to download or watch BBC programmes on iPlayer - live, catch up or on demand.

A TV licence costs 159 (53.50 for black and white TV sets) for both homes and businesses, which roughly translates to $280AUD each year.

Many of her Aussie followers were shocked by the revelation.

'Its just crazy it's like asking you to get a licence for a kettle, it's a basic household item! Insane,' one man said.

'So... You don't have public access TV?' Said another.

A third added: 'God I'm glad TV is free in Australia!'

A TV licence costs 159 (53.50 for black and white TV sets) for both homes and businesses, which roughly translates to $280AUD each year

This isn't the first time Ms Grace has shared bizarre differences between the two countries.

When looking for a house to rent in Sydney she noticed that washing machines are rarely installed in the kitchen in Oz.

In a TikTok video titled 'Aussie culture shock' Ms Grace re-enacted a conversation she had with a real estate agent while inspecting the kitchen of a Sydney apartment.

Ms Grace asked the agent where the washing machine was and why it wasn't in the kitchen - but was shocked after being told most Aussie houses have laundry rooms equipped with both a washer and dryer.

Most British houses have washing machines under bench tops in the kitchen due to limited space and power outlets in the bathroom.

British comedy writer Jordana Grace (pictured) was shocked when she was told most Aussie households have a laundry room equipped with a washing machine, dryer and sink

In a now-viral TikTok video, Ms Grace re-enacted a conversation between her and a real estate agent. Ms Grace asked the agent where the washing machine was and why it wasn't in the kitchen

Poll Where do you have your washing machine? Kitchen Laundry room Bathroom Other Where do you have your washing machine? Kitchen 1064 votes

Laundry room 3007 votes

Bathroom 233 votes

Other 337 votes Now share your opinion





'I can't see the washing machine in the kitchen,' Ms Grace said in the re-enacted video to which to real estate agent said: 'The washing machine isn't in the kitchen.'

Ms Grace was then shown the 'huge' laundry room in a separate area of the house.

'Yeah it's a little small but does the job, and most Aussie houses have them. And it's so hot you won't need to use the tumble dryer, so you'll save money,' the agent told Ms Grace.

She was also mind blown over the fact that Aussies tend to avoid using the dryer and instead hang their garments on a clothes line.

Ms Grace was then shown the 'huge' laundry room in a separate area of the house she was inspecting to rent

The humorous video has since been viewed more than half a million times and received hundreds of comments.

'I was shocked too, laundry rooms are my fave,' one person wrote.

Other Aussies seemed puzzled as to why some UK and European homes place the household appliance in the kitchen.

'UK houses aren't big, there's no room for laundry rooms in many older ones and kitchens already have plumbing,' another British woman added.

By sharing her 'culture shock' videos, Ms Grace has gained a loyal TikTok following of more than 200,000 people.
Glaucoma, which is caused by a fluid build-up in the eye, can lead to irreversible sight loss.

Roger Pledge, 76, from Colchester, Essex, was the first in the UK to have a new type of implant fitted in both eyes to combat it, as he tells Adrian Monti.

The patient

Five years ago, I was shocked to discover I had glaucoma. There were no symptoms, but it was picked up during the annual eye screening I have for type 2 diabetes, a condition that was diagnosed 20 years ago.

Glaucoma can make you blind because the fluid build-up puts pressure on the optic nerve. My optician said using daily drops (travoprost) could reduce the pressure, but that if it became too high then I might need surgery.

Over time, the pressure in both eyes gradually rose. Then, late last year, tests showed my eyesight was deteriorating, so my optician referred me to a consultant at Colchester Hospital eye clinic.

By then, I was struggling to identify colours or read the paper, so I wasnt surprised when he told me Id need an operation to reduce the pressure.

This involves creating a new drainage channel in the eye, enabling fluid to drain away. But the consultant thought I was suitable for a new type of surgery to insert a tiny silicone implant in the corner of my eye, which allows excess fluid to drain via a different route.

Glaucoma, which is caused by a fluid build-up in the eye, can lead to irreversible sight loss. A stock image is used above

It was very new, but sounded worth trying, and he said hed also operate on my cataracts [where the lens becomes cloudy].

I had the operation on my right eye  the eye with the most advanced glaucoma  under local anaesthetic in March, and went home later that day with a protective eye shield to wear for the first 24 hours. I had to use antibiotic eye drops for ten days and anti-inflammatory eye drops for eight weeks.

Gradually, the sight in my right eye improved. At a follow-up appointment two weeks later, I could read a few lines lower down the chart with my right eye alone compared with what Id previously read while wearing my glasses. I could also see colours more clearly again.

In May, I had the same operation on my left eye and now, just seven weeks later, my sight is already better. At my recent check-up, the pressure in both eyes was in an acceptable range. I still need reading glasses for tiny writing but not my varifocals, nor my travoprost eye drops.

Im looking forward to returning to driving and taking my wife Barbara out shopping and seeing more of our family, including our three great-grandchildren.

The surgeon

Chrys Dimitriou is a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at Colchester eye clinic and glaucoma lead at the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust.

Glaucoma occurs when the optic nerve, which transfers visual information from the back of the eye to the brain, becomes damaged as the fluid (aqueous humour) that keeps the eye healthy becomes trapped.

Around 680,000 people in the UK have primary open angle glaucoma, the most common type, which becomes more prevalent with age and a family history of the condition.

Normally, this watery fluid drains away through a network of tiny channels, called the trabecular meshwork. But with open angle glaucoma, this network can become clogged with deposits of dead cells and proteins  we dont completely understand why.

As a result, fluid doesnt drain away as it should, causing pressure to build inside the eye and squeezing the optic nerve.

The condition is normally picked up during routine optician appointments. Early signs are detected by measuring internal eye pressure and checking peripheral vision.

Many older people develop cataracts and glaucoma around the same time but operating on both isnt possible with a trabeculectomy due to the risk of inflammation when removing the cloudy lens

This type of glaucoma develops very slowly. Initial changes are subtle, and once someone notices problems, it can be far advanced and irreversible. One clue can be changes to colour perception, due to damage to the photosensitive cells at the back of the eye.

Pressure is eased with eye drops that either reduce the production of fluid inside the eye or enhance the outflow of fluid from the eye. But these can stop being effective as the disease progresses.

Another treatment is selective laser trabeculoplasty. This involves firing a low-energy laser beam at specific cells in the trabecular meshwork, causing the meshwork to rebuild so fluid can easily drain again.

In advanced cases, we perform a trabeculectomy  creating a new artificial drainage channel in the white of the eye, with a small trapdoor above it, called a bleb, to let fluid drain.

But this is a complicated procedure, and if one step goes wrong, it wont work.

Now there is a new type of surgery, micro-invasive glaucoma surgery, where we insert an implant, called MINIject, to lower eye pressure.

The implant, 5mm-long and 0.6mm-thick, is made from a flexible medical-grade silicone with thousands of tiny holes that allow the aqueous humour to flow freely.

The implant allows the excess fluid to drain away  theres no need to create new channels, as with the trabeculectomy; instead the implant redirects the fluid to another existing drainage network in the eye called the supraciliary and suprachoroidal space.

The implant can be put in place under a local anaesthetic.

Roger was the first UK patient to have MINIject in both eyes.

What are the risks? There is a very small risk of hypotony  when pressure inside the eyeball becomes too low, which could have an adverse effect on vision. Infection is very rare but there may be some post-operative inflammation and micro-bleeding, which settle within a few weeks. Andrew Tatham, a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at the Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion, Edinburgh, says: There is some excitement about this because there is less risk of an infection. But we still need to be cautious as we do not have long-term data on how successful it will be. Advertisement

It can be done as a standalone procedure or alongside cataract surgery. Many older people develop cataracts and glaucoma around the same time but operating on both isnt possible with a trabeculectomy due to the risk of inflammation when removing the cloudy lens.

The surgery takes under 30 minutes. Using a specialised microsurgery knife, I cut through the limbus, where the cornea [the clear outer layer of the eye] meets the sclera [the white of the eye] and insert a thin sheath containing the implant. Once in place, the implant is released and the sheath withdrawn.

We hope the procedure will be effective for around ten years, but only time will tell.

This implant works best for patients, like Roger, with early to moderate open angle glaucoma.

This procedure is available at a few other UK hospitals including in London, Edinburgh, Guildford and Manchester.

The cost of a MINIject implant is 1,700 on the NHS.

Under the microscope

Actor Sian Phillips, 89, answers our health quiz

Can you run up stairs?

I can, but I dont like running down, I prefer to walk briskly  its safer. In my youth I was a gymnast, but in later years Pilates took over. It strengthens you and makes you feel great.

Get your five a day?

I love salads and vegetables and rarely eat red meat. I have coffee for breakfast, a light lunch of salad or eggs and allow a 12-hour gap between dinner at night and my next meal.

Ever dieted?

All my life. As a teenager, I drove my mother mad when I decided Id eat only what Id scavenged in the wild, such as dandelion leaves. I am just under 5ft 6in  I was two inches taller but have shrunk. I used to be the tallest in school, but now I look up at people. I aim to be 9 st 9lb but hover between 9 st 10lb and 10 st.

Actor Sian Phillips, 89, answers our health quiz

How has the pandemic affected you?

Apart from one horrible fortnight, when my youngest daughter Pat was in hospital with Covid, I had a great time. I read a lot, did Pilates, studied Welsh online and went for walks.

Any vices?

I dont drink, I dont smoke  I quit 40 years ago after a trip to a hypnotist. My weakness is sugar. Because of food rationing after the war, I didnt eat sweets at all. Now I could consume huge quantities if I allowed myself to.

Any family ailments?

My father died in his 60s from various problems, probably linked to childhood tuberculosis. My mothers family was long-lived. She even took up smoking again aged almost 80  having stopped for years  and died from lung cancer at 85.

Worst illness?

Shingles. I had it 12 years ago when I was in Calendar Girls in the West End and it was torture. As a child, I had scarlet fever twice. And, once, I collapsed in the road with a burst appendix and was rushed to hospital.

Ever have plastic surgery?

No, but when I was in my early 20s I had reconstructive surgery on my face after I was in a car accident and went through the windscreen. Now I have Botox every six months to smooth a scar between my eyebrows.

Cope well with pain?

I can put up with a fair amount. After the car accident, for example, I was in pain but I didnt stop working.

Pop any pills?

No.

Ever been depressed?

I don't get depressed in the clinical sense. I sometimes feel low, but I take a walk and soon cheer up.

Hangover cure?

Never drunk enough to find out.

What keeps you awake at night?

Not much. Before I can think of a worry, sleep overtakes me.

Sian Phillipss autobiography, Private Faces And Public Places, has been reissued (Sceptre, 12.99).
A cancer jab custom-made from patients' own tumours has produced 'really hopeful' results in a trial.

None of the eight head and neck cancer sufferers, who had a high chance of relapse, saw their tumours return four months after getting the vaccine.

For comparison, two patients in the control group who weren't given the jab saw their cancers come back.

The vaccine, which uses similar technology to AstraZeneca's Covid jab  uses DNA taken from each patient's tumour.

The genetic snippet is then inserted into a weakened virus used to deliver the jab inside the body, training the immune system to recognise and fight the cancer if it returns.

It is given as a weekly jab for six weeks, after which patients are given a booster dose every three weeks for a year.

The new figures are too small to draw any definite conclusions, but researchers say 'all the data are pointing in the right direction'.

Technology used to make the Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines is also being trialled on cancer patients in the US and Europe.

A cancer jab custom-made from patients' own tumours has produced 'really hopeful' results in a trial on NHS patients. It is currently codenamed TG4050 (pictured)

Head and neck cancers are newly diagnosed in more than 12,000 people in the UK each year, and 65,000 in the US. They kill just over 4,000 Britons a year and 14,000 Americans.

There are more than 30 areas within the head and neck where cancer can develop, including the mouth and throat.

The new vaccine  codenamed TG4050  has been developed by the French company Transgene.

It is known as a 'viral vector vaccine', using a genetically modified vaccinia virus, the same family that causes smallpox.

The pathogen has been weakened to the point it cannot cause illness and has been used in vaccination programmes for decades.

A piece of tumour DNA is inserted into the virus so that when it is injected into the body, it can train the immune system to be on watch for these cancer cells.

The hope is that the body will be able to recognise and destroy them before they can start to multiply and form tumours.

Doctors are optimistic about the jab because it is so specific to each individual person's cancer - even though that will make it more expensive in future.

Transgene's chief medical officer Dr Maud Brandely said it provided patients with 'new hope' in the race to cure cancer.

Cancer mutations can vary between patients, but by making a custom vaccine for every patient, it should be better at targeting these mutant cells.

The vaccine is given to patients after they have had surgery to remove tumours. It is hoped the jab will catch cancer cells before they can even be found on a scan.

Brian Wright was given his 10th vaccine dose at Clatterbridge recently and has 10 more doses to go until January.

A year ago, Mr Wright had a 16-hour operation to get rid of a tumour in his mouth and swap his lower jaw with bone from his leg, followed by weeks of demanding radiotherapy.

He told Sky News: 'If you have had cancer in your throat, and they say they're going to inject you with that cancer, it just sounds'oh no you're not'.

'But then they explained it won't give you cancer back, it will make your body immune to that cancer.'

Transgene plans to treat a total of 30 patients in the trial for head and neck cancer.

Half will be given the jab once their normal treatment ends, and the other half will get it when their cancer returns.

Consultant oncologist and director of clinical research at the Clatterbridge centre, Professor Christian Ottensmeier, told Sky News he was 'cautiously optimistic'.

'I am really hopeful, yes,' he said. 'I am quite excited about it. All the data are pointing in the right direction.'

'The immune system can see things we can't see on scans,' said Professor Ottensmeier, 'it's much smarter than human beings.'

'If we can train the immune system to pick those cells that would otherwise lead to a relapse at a time when we can't even see them, then the long-term survival chances for our patients are much higher.'

Another clinical trial of the jab on ovarian cancer patients in France and the US is also showing promising results.
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Covid cases are on the rise in some of the UK's favourite holiday hotspots, raising concerns of yet more travel chaos for millions this summer.

Spain, France and Germany are all currently logging a rise in infections, while outbreaks are growing bigger in popular Caribbean islands.

Sunseekers no longer need to prove they're Covid-free and vaccinated to be allowed into many of the country's best-loved destinations, who have followed Britain's lead in ushering in the post-pandemic era.

Yet health chiefs on the continent  who are alarmed about the resurgence  have already called for a return of masks.

Experts told MailOnline travellers could easily face restrictions in their destination this summer, if officials feel the rise warrants action over the coming weeks. One revealed he had already cancelled his holiday break to Spain over concerns about rising cases, and was instead planning a camping trip within the UK.

Others warned Britain could be cut-off from international holidays if cases continue to surge. Lib Dem MP Layla Moran said that countries might feel the need to 'reintroduce restrictions on arrivals from Britain'.

Dr David Strain (pictured), a senior clinical lecturer at Exeter University, told MailOnline that he has already scrapped his villa holiday in Spain for a UK camping staycation over concerns about the virus would wreak havoc on his travels

Wales pivots back to Covid panic-mode: Another hospital board reintroduces face masks in ALL settings due to rise in cases Another Welsh health board has reintroduced face mask mandates in response to soaring Covid cases. Cardiff and Vale University Health Board yesterday announced all staff and visitors would now have to wear coverings in all settings again unless exempt. Hospital bosses said the move was due to the 'continuing rise in the prevalence of Covid' in the community. 'Please follow this guidance to help us reduce the impact of Covid on our patients, workforce and services,' the announcement read. 'In addition to wearing a face covering, it is important to continue to maintain social distancing where possible.' It is the second Welsh NHS body to reimpose mask mandates for staff and visitors. Wales, under the leadership of Mark Drakeford, has been quick to impose pandemic restrictions and slower to withdraw them than England. Labour's Mr Drakeford accused Boris Johnson  who was first to pursue the Living With Covid strategy  of 'ignoring the science' for refusing to reintroduce curbs at the start of the year. Advertisement

Professor Martin McKee, president at the British Medical Association (BMA), told MailOnline that holidaymakers face a summer of uncertainty.

He said: 'We can look at infection levels now but that doesn't tell us where they will be when we actually travel.

'Nor does it tell us whether it has hit the people who fly us to our destination or handle our bags.'

Professor McKee added: 'We're not out of the woods yet.'

However, Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious disease expert at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline that discrepancies between how nations test means differences in Covid rates are difficult to compare.

But he said he doesn't expect nations  many of which are reliant on tourism, a sector which has been largely crippled by economically-damaging restrictions used during the pandemic  to bring in a swathe of curbs.

Professor Hunter said: 'I really don't which  if any  holiday destinations will change the rules. I doubt many holiday destination countries will make existing rules more restrictive.'

However, he noted that 'there is an issue about staffing of airports and airlines if many staff are testing positive and so off work'.

When cases soared to pandemic highs in April, thousands of airport workers took time off ill, fuelling chaotic scenes in Heathrow and Birmingham airports.

Outbreaks across Europe are being fuelled by Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5, which are thought to be even more infectious than the BA.2 strain that caused infections in the UK to spiral to a record 4.1million in April.

The two newer sub-strains have caused cases in England to more than double in the last month. Data from the Office for National Statistics show 1.8million people were infected in the week to June 24  rising by a third in a week and marking the highest rate in two months.

Ms Moran told the Mirror that it is 'possible that holiday plans will be ruined due to rising Covid rates in the UK'.

She said: 'Other countries could reintroduce restrictions on arrivals from Britain and transport companies, already in crisis from the Government's mishandling of Brexit and industrial action, are likely to see an increase in staff shortages with more people off sick with the virus and long Covid.'

Dr David Strain, a senior clinical lecturer at Exeter University, told MailOnline that uncertainty around whether restrictions will be brought in destinations, some nations requiring masks and the risk of catching Covid on the plane or on holiday will leave Britons weighing up whether jetting abroad is worth it.

He has already scrapped his villa holiday in Spain for a UK camping staycation over concerns about the virus would wreak havoc on his travels.

Dr Strain warned that around one in 20 people will be infected as they get on a flight and up to five in 20 could be carrying the virus when they land  which could scupper holiday plans.

He urged Britons to consider whether there will be Covid restriction when they arrive at their destination and questioned whether that is a holiday people really want.

Still NO spike in Covid deaths: Just FIVE more virus fatalities were recorded in England and Wales last week Covid deaths in England and Wales remain below 25 per day despite infections having almost doubled over the past month, Government data shows. Advocates of No10's strategy, which saw the final pandemic-era restrictions axed in April, have hailed the figures as more proof that the darkest days of the pandemic are over and that new economically-damaging curbs aren't needed. Yet critics of the approach have already called for a return of mask wearing and for Brits to avoid meeting indoors because of the virus' resurgence. Office for National Statistics (ONS) data released today show there were 166 Covid deaths registered across the two countries in the week ending June 24. This was barely a change on the 161 logged in the previous seven-day spell. For comparison, this is just a fraction of April's toll, when cases soared to pandemic highs and deaths peaked at 740. Advertisement

Spain

Covid cases in Spain, the UK's top holiday destination, are on the rise.

The nation logged 417 cases per million people each day in the week to July 1, up 61.6 per cent from a fortnight earlier when 258 people tested positive daily.

However, the figure is still a fraction of the rate seen at the January peak  when 3,081 cases were logged were logged per day.

Travellers aged 12 and over from the UK have to show proof of vaccination, a previous infection or a negative test on arrival.

But Health Minister Carolina Darias last week told local media that everyone in the country should start wearing a face mask when inside in public spaces, warning cases and hospitalisations are at their highest level since February.

France

Covid infections in France are the highest they have been since April and are continuing to rise. Some 1,639 people per million tested positive in the week to July 4.

Infection rates have spiked 78.2 per cent over the last fortnight, when just 920 infections were being detected per million people.

The nation's health minister Brigitte Bourguignon last week said people in France have a 'civic duty' to wear masks in crowded places, such as public transport, workplaces and shops, to help control the outbreak.

She said: 'I'm not saying it should be mandatory but I do ask the French people to put the mask on in public transport. I'm not merely advising it, I'm asking for it.'

Dr Alain Fischer, the country's vaccination chief, last month warned France was in the middle of a new wave of infections and voiced his support for bringing back the requirement to wear face masks on public transport.

Portugal

Portugal, a favourite tourist hotspot among Britons, this week lifted all Covid entry requirements for travellers. As of July 1, arrivals in the country do not need to show proof of vaccination or a negative test.

The country's Government noted that these measures 'may be reviewed in accordance to the evolution of the pandemic'.

But cases in the country have been falling for a month. Some 869 people per million tested positive on June 30, a 44.2 per cent drop compared to the infection rate two weeks earlier.

And experts told MailOnline those planning to enjoy some sun in Portugal shouldn't face much disruption to their plans.

Britons weighing up whether they should go ahead with their summer holiday plans should consider whether they will face restrictions when they arrive, Exeter University senior clinical lecturer Dr David Strain said.

Portugal is 'unlikely' to see a return of measures, such as face masks and social distancing, because they have just been through a wave fuelled by the BA.4 and BA.5 Covid strains, he said.



Germany

Covid cases are at a two-month high in Germany, with infections jumping 49.7 per cent in the last fortnight, from 715 to 1,070 positive tests logger per million people.

Britons arriving in Germany have not had to show proof of vaccination, recovery from the virus or a negative test to enter the country.

However, surgical FFP2 face masks are required on public transport.

And Chancellor Olaf Scholz this week warned that face masks 'will play a bigger role' in the coming months than they currently do.

Italy

Virus infections in Italy have soared to a five-month high in Italy.

Some 1,293 people tested positive per day in the week to July 4  up 36.8 per cent in a fortnight.

Covid waves in the country have followed a similar pattern to that in the UK, with waves peaking in January and March before beginning to rise again in June.

Those landing in the country have not been required to show proof of vaccination or a negative test since June 1. However, masks are required on public transport and those who test positive in the country must isolate for one week.

Health Minister Roberto Speranza this week told local media that 'anyone who is infected must stay at home', saying it was 'unimaginable' that the 650,000 isolating should be able to 'move around'.

Greece

Greece is logging one of the highest infection rates in Europe, with 1,441 daily cases per million people in the last week  more the double the 681 logged two weeks ago. Infections are at their highest rate for three months.

Those arriving in the country no longer need display their vaccination status or a negative test. However, face masks are required on public transport, including on cruise ships, yachts and ferries used to explore the island.

Greece's National Public Health Organization reports that infections are rising their fastest in tourist hotspots, including Crete, and the Ionian and South Aegean islands.

Croatia

Cases of the coronavirus are ticking upwards in Croatia. The nation has seen infections nearly triple from 74 per million people per day to 210.

Arrivals no longer need to fill out passenger arrival forms, show proof of vaccination or a negative test.

Masks are now only required in hospital and care homes.

Egypt

Egypt has reported zero Covid infections for more than two months.

But health ministers told local media that cases have jumped seven per cent in the past week. They blamed the BA.4 and BA.5 variants and waning immunity, with the last lot of vaccinations dished out six months ago.

However, hospitalisations and deaths remain at their lowest level since the pandemic began, according to the Ministry of Health.

Along with most other countries, arrivals no longer need to fill out arrival documents, prove their vaccinated or provide a negative test.

Turkey

Virus infections are rising sharply in Turkey. The country logged 141 infections per million people yesterday  nearly 11 times more than the 13 it recorded two weeks earlier.

Cases had been trending downwards in Turkey since January, when infections soared to pandemic highs of 1,216 per million.

However, holidaymakers have been able to arrive in the country without having to prove their are vaccinated or tested negative since June 1.

And they are no longer required to wear masks, although health chiefs advise people to wear them in crowded places.

Professor Serap Simsek Yavuz, a member of the Health Ministrys Covid advisory board told local Demiroren News Agency that Istanbul, the Turkey's most populated city, is seeing the biggest rise in cases.

Tunisia

Covid cases are trending upwards in Tunisia, where 66 people per million tested positive per day in the week to June 29  the latest date figures are available for.

For comparison, the country logged just 11 infections per day a fortnight earlier  a sixth of the current level.

Tunisia eased mandatory five-day self-isolation for travellers last month. However, arrivals aged 18 and over still have to show proof of vaccination or a negative test taken within 24 hours of arriving.

And after landing in the country, passengers may be tested at random with PCR swabs.

Morocco

Morocco is in the midst of a fourth wave, logging 80 infections per million people. Cases have double from 40 a fortnight ago and are at a five-month high and half the level of the Omicron-fuelled January peak.

Holidaymakers aged 18 and over must show proof of being triple-jabbed or a negative test taken within 72 hour of boarding. Randomly selected passengers will be tested at random on arrival.

US

Infections are ticking upwards in the US, where 308 people per million tested positive yesterday, up eight per cent in the last fortnight.

Positive tests have been on the rise since April, after they plummeted to 80 per million, compared to 2,424 per million in January at the height of the Omicron wave.

New York City's test positivity rate reached 10.3 percent for the first time in six months. The BA.5 sub-lineage is believed to be behind the rise.

The BA.5 variant now makes up 36.6 percent of sequenced cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mexico

Mexico is logging a rise in Covid cases, reporting 140 per million people yesterday, compared to 59 per million two weeks earlier  an increase of 137.3 per cent.

Infections began creeping upwards in May and are now at their highest level since February, although the prevalence of the virus is less than half of that seen at the January peak.

Travellers do not need to provide proof of a negative test or show their vaccination status.

But some cities and states have Covid requirements in place.

Thailand

Cases have increased by a fifth in Thailand over the last fortnight  from 29 to 34 per million  but are still at very low levels. Last month, cases fell to their lowest level in more than a year.

Travellers have to show a vaccination certificate, a negative PCR test or professionally administered lateral flow test to get into the country.

Those without proof of a negative test will have to pay for and take one at the airport and those who test positive must pay for any medical expenses.

However, masks and other curbs are no longer in place.

Vietnam

Covid infections are flat in Vietnam, where around eight people per million have been testing positive per day for the last month. The country's latest wave began to retreat in March, after spiking at 2,791 cases per million.

The country eased its Covid rules in mid-May, so that arrivals don't need to show their vaccination status or a negative test.

Caribbean islands

Covid infections are rising steeply in Barbados, with confirmed daily cases jumping 73.9 per cent from 314 to 546 per million over the last two weeks.

Meanwhile, Dominican Republic has seen cases climb steadily by 45.3 per cent over the last fortnight, from 75 to 109 per million.

Seychelles has seen a slight uptick, from 228 to 257 in the two weeks to July 1.

However, the outlook is better in Cuba, where cases have been flat for more than a month, with around three positive tests confirmed per day.

And infections are falling in Saint Lucia, where cases have dropped from 139 to 96 over the last two weeks.

Australia

Daily infections in the former zero-Covid country Australia. The nation yesterday logged 1,294 infections per million people, up by a fifth compared to two weeks prior.

International arrivals are no longer required to prove their vaccination status as of tomorrow. However, masks must be worn on all international inbound flights as well as domestic flights.

Dr Kerry Chant, the chief health officer in New South Wales, this week urged people to wear masks in indoor public spaces over concerns about the spread.

Health leaders in Queensland said a return to mandatory masks is not being considered. But the Australian Capital Territory, which includes the capital Canberra, said the move was not being ruled out.

Holidaymakers are forced to sleep by the BINS in Heathrow as British Airways cancel flights for up to 105,000 passengers this month while ministers are urged to 'get a grip' before school summer holidays

Holidaymakers were today forced to sleep by the bins in Heathrow as Britain's airport chaos took yet another turn for the worse.

A young family were spotted catching up on rest in the most uncomfortable of positions, as terminals up and down the country are once again packed with frustrated, queuing passengers.

It comes as British Airways revealed it is axing journeys for up to 105,000 holidaymakers this month - telling bosses at Gatwick and Heathrow it is cancelling more than 650 flights to more than 70 destinations including Malaga, Ibiza, Palma, Faro and Athens to try and avoid more chaos at terminals.

Affected passengers are being contacted and offered refunds or the chance to rebook.

The move has been allowed due to a temporary Government 'amnesty' on scheduling rules, meaning airlines can make changes without risking a fine.

Ministers urged firms to review their flight plans after manic scenes in recent months, sparked by staff shortages and an overselling of seats to meet demand.

A BA spokesman told the Telegraph: 'As the entire aviation industry continues to face the most challenging period in its history, regrettably it has become necessary to make some further reductions. We're in touch with customers to apologise and offer to rebook them or issue a full refund.'

Today, travellers were pictured enduring yet more long queues at major airports amid fears of a holiday stampede in the next fortnight, when schools break up for summer.

Passengers resort to sleeping on the floor near rubbish bins at Heathrow as they wait for their flights to board

There were long queues at Luton Airport this morning as the aviation crisis continues to cause chaos across Britain

There were long queues at Manchester Airport this morning as the aviation crisis continues to cause chaos across Britain

Ministers urged firms to review their flight plans after manic scenes in recent months, sparked by staff shortages and an overselling of seats to meet demand. Pictured: Birmingham Airport this morning

There were long queues at Luton Airport this morning as the aviation crisis continues to cause chaos across Britain

A passenger at Heathrow airport takes time out for a snooze amid more queues and delays today

There were long queues at Heathrow Airport this morning as the aviation crisis continues to cause chaos across Britain

Unions say no to more night flights as they oppose Government's bid to solve airports crisis Union bosses have vowed to oppose using night flights to ease travel chaos, it was reported last night. In yet another blow for holidaymakers, unions said they would push back against plans to relax overnight flight rules that would see staff working 'anti-social hours'. Airlines are limited to the number of flights that can run between 11.30pm and 6am at major airports, which often leads to flights being cancelled if they are delayed. Amid mounting pressure to solve the travel chaos, the Department for Transport said it will consider suspending the rules to ease disruption. But last night unions vowed to oppose the plans over fears staff could be made to work long hours during the night. A GMB union source told the Daily Telegraph: 'It's not fair to force our members to work nights to pick up the slack for their mistakes.' It comes as holidaymakers are now facing a summer of travel chaos in Europe as countries across the continent grapple with staff shortages and strikes. Huw Merriman, chairman of the transport select committee warned that the plan could 'annoy the heck out of residents' but said he was open to finding out more about lifting the night ban. He added: 'I don't see what good that would do and can see what damage that would do. I don't know if crew will want to fly at two in the morning.' Advertisement

Labour yesterday demanded Transport Secretary Grant Shapps 'get a grip fast' as the crisis continues to worsen, after easyJet's chief operating officer resigned following fury at the budget airline's cancellation of thousands of flights.

And unions said they would push back against plans to relax overnight flight rules, leading to staff working 'antisocial hours'.

One passenger waiting at Manchester Airport yesterday tweeted a photo of a queue to enter Terminal 3 that stretched into the multi-storey car park.

A second complained of 'carnage' while a third added: 'Today is the worst ever. Actually standing in the car park to wait for security. Utter shambles.'

Travellers also posted images of long lines at Heathrow, with one saying the queue for security 'starts outside the terminal'. He added: 'Avoid at all costs. Total mess.'

Problems at Heathrow are set to worsen when the school holidays begin and check-in and ground staff are expected to strike.

But insiders denied security waits yesterday were excessive.

At London City Airport  which has largely escaped the worst of the disruption  one passenger said it had taken 'three hours to get through security at 6am'.

He added: 'Totally out of control, what a mess.'

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, who sits on the Commons transport committee, said: 'If airports are already in meltdown now things will only get worse once the schools break for summer holidays. It's going to be complete chaos if they do not get a grip  and get a grip fast.'

The boss of Heathrow has warned of up to 18 months of disruption as airlines struggle to recruit and train staff.

The Department for Transport (DfT) is considering temporarily suspending rules on night flights.

Airlines are currently restricted in how many flights they can run between 11.30pm and 6am at major airports, which often leads to cancellations in case of delays.

But a GMB union source told the Daily Telegraph: 'It's not fair to force our members to work nights to pick up the slack for their mistakes.' Responding to passenger complaints, London City Airport insisted the 'average journey time' through the airport yesterday was 45 minutes.

A spokesman blamed staff sickness and handling passengers rebooked from other airports.

Manchester Airport apologised for 'any inconvenience caused' but insisted 'the vast majority of people' passed through security in less than 30 minutes yesterday.

Heathrow insisted the airport was 'busy but flowing' yesterday, saying that while queues may have looked 'daunting', this was due to the layout of buildings. A spokesman said the 'vast majority' of passengers got through security in less than 30 minutes.

Security queues at Heathrow Terminal 2 were seen stretching out the doors yesterday morning

One passenger at Manchester Airport yesterday (pictured) showed queues into a car park

Life was no better at Stansted yesterday, where passengers arrived extra early for their flights

A passenger at Manchester claimed the queue yesterday stretched into a multi-storey car park

A passenger at Heathrow Airport posted this picture of huge crowds at 4am yesterday

Queues in the car park at Manchester Airport yesterday as passengers tried to head on holiday

Meanwhile, easyJet's chief operating officer Peter Bellew resigned yesterday amid growing pressure on the airline to reduce flight disruption. It has axed thousands of flights in recent months  including many just hours before they were due to depart.

Airlines have until Friday to take advantage of a government 'amnesty' allowing them to change airport schedules without facing a potential penalty.

Mr Shapps is trying to avoid a summer repeat of the mayhem over the Easter and Platinum Jubilee holidays.

The Government has ordered vetting centres carrying out checks on new recruits to prioritise airport staff. The DfT said counter-terrorist and accreditation checks were now being completed in record time.

A Heathrow spokesman said: 'This is a busy period as people make the most of the ability to travel for the first summer in three years. We are doing everything we can to give everyone a good journey and for the vast majority of passengers this is the experience they are having.'

A DfT spokesman said it was 'working closely with the aviation sector to help holidaymakers enjoy the summer getaways they deserve'.

He added: 'It's now on airlines to commit to running the flights they've promised and for airports and ground handlers to ensure they have the staff needed to enable these flights.'
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Covid deaths in England and Wales remain below 25 per day despite infections having almost doubled over the past month, Government data shows.

Advocates of No10's strategy, which saw the final pandemic-era restrictions axed in April, have hailed the figures as more proof that the darkest days of the pandemic are over and that new economically-damaging curbs aren't needed.

Yet critics of the approach have already called for a return of mask wearing and for Brits to avoid meeting indoors because of the virus' resurgence.

Office for National Statistics (ONS) data released today show there were 166 Covid deaths registered across the two countries in the week ending June 24. This was barely a change on the 161 logged in the previous seven-day spell.

For comparison, this is just a fraction of April's toll, when cases soared to pandemic highs and deaths peaked at 740.

The figures don't reflect the total number of deaths because they look specifically at fatalities due to the virus, as opposed to ones where Covid may have contributed. Although, even when including these deaths which 'involve' the virus, the toll is still only 285  barely a quarter of levels seen earlier in the year.

And the impact of the current surge in infections may not be felt for another fortnight, given how long it takes for the infected to become seriously ill.

This graph shows the number of deaths directly due to Covid recorded in England and Wales. The number of deaths being recorded these nations currently is far below that of previous waves earlier year and a sheer fraction of those seen at the start of 2021.

Intensive care admissions have also failed to spike so far despite the recent surge in cases, although they have crept up above the 200 per day mark as of June 28

Wales pivots back to Covid panic-mode: Another hospital board reintroduces face masks in ALL settings due to rise in cases Another Welsh health board has reintroduced face mask mandates in response to soaring Covid cases. Cardiff and Vale University Health Board yesterday announced all staff and visitors would now have to wear coverings in all settings again unless exempt. Hospital bosses said the move was due to the 'continuing rise in the prevalence of Covid' in the community. 'Please follow this guidance to help us reduce the impact of Covid on our patients, workforce and services,' the announcement read. 'In addition to wearing a face covering, it is important to continue to maintain social distancing where possible.' It is the second Welsh NHS body to reimpose mask mandates for staff and visitors. Wales, under the leadership of Mark Drakeford, has been quick to impose pandemic restrictions and slower to withdraw them than England. Labour's Mr Drakeford accused Boris Johnson  who was first to pursue the Living With Covid strategy  of 'ignoring the science' for refusing to reintroduce curbs at the start of the year. As well as in Wales, hospitals in England have also started to bring back mask rules because of the spike in infections. Advertisement

However, there has yet to be any noticeable uptick in intensive care admissions  bolstering the argument that sky-high immunity rates from vaccines and repeated waves have drastically blunted the threat of the virus, rendering it into something that resembles the flu.

Hospitalisations have, however, trebled over the past month, with roughly 1,500 virus-infected patients now being taken to wards every day.

Trust bosses fear Britain's uptick, which shows no signs of slowing yet, will jeopardise efforts to tackle the record backlogs that built-up during the pandemic. Surging cases can trigger a rise in staff absences and pile extra pressure on hospitals because infected patients still need to be isolated.

Government advisers also fear the resurgence will eclipse April's wave, when virus admissions spiralled to above 2,500-a-day. If that does happen, it means hospitalisations will hit an 18-month high.

NHS figures suggest only a fraction of these patients are primarily ill with Covid, however, in another sign of how vaccines have changed the course of the pandemic.

Roughly 2.3million Britons had Covid in the week ending June 24  up by a third on the previous seven-day spell. Even though rates are climbing quickly, they remain a fraction of levels seen in past peaks.

BA.4 and BA.5 are thought to be even more infectious than their ancestral versions. However, they are just as mild.

Celebrations for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, half-term holidays and warm weather are also thought to be fuelling the latest surge. Some have also pointed to Britons mistaking Covid symptoms for hay fever.

Ministers have no plans to bring back any restrictions yet, although Boris Johnson has left the door open to future measures.

Infectious disease specialists, including members of the Government's SAGE panel, are confident that the darkest days of the UK's Covid battle are over.

Professor John Edmunds, an influential member of SAGE's notorious modelling committee, said he was 'not overly worried' about the rising cases last month.

Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist from Warwick University, told MailOnline today: 'The hospitalisation figures show an increase but fortunately this is not translating into deaths.'

He added, however, that high infection levels could still produce challenges, especially for those most at risk from Covid.

'Vaccination and the sheer levels of infection are providing overall protection but, faced with the continued threat of new variants, we do need to be conscious of the risk this poses to the elderly and clinically vulnerable,' he said.

Covid infections have shot up in England to just over 1.8million according to the latest Office of National Statistics data

How dominant Covid variants in England have changed over time: The BA.4 and BA.5 (shown far right in pale pink and red) are have outstripped the formerly dominant BA.2 variant (sky blue). BA.5 is growing at a faster rate and will become the dominant strain, experts predict. The original Wuhan virus is shown in green (far left) which was replaced by the Alpha strain (purple) and Delta (pale turquoise). The original Omicron is shown in yellow and a very similar subvariant in pink from December

The soon-to-be dominant BA.5 variant has grown rapidly in the past two months. It accounted for just 3 per cent of overall cases in early May (shown left) but now makes up almost half (47 per cent) shown right

Professor Paul Hunter, an expert in infectious diseases from the University of East Anglia, said while it was too early to draw conclusions about the current Covid surge on deaths, the current data was encouraging.

'Currently about three out of every 10,000 infections are dying, compared to 14 out of every 10,000 a year ago,' he said.

He also said he was 'almost certain' the darkest days of the Covid pandemic were behind us.

'When you look at people in hospital because of Covid or at deaths with Covid on death certificate the March/April wave saw fewer severe outcomes than the December/January wave despite March/April seeing quite a lot more infections,' he said.

'This is a trend that likely will continue.'

The ONS fatality figures, although still low, do show a slight uptick when looking at all Covid deaths.

A total of 285 Covid 'involved' deaths were recorded the week ending June 24, an increase of 21 compared to previous seven days.

Deaths involving the the virus have been predicted to rise due to the spread of Covid in the community.

Intensive care admissions for the virus, another key metric of the Covid pandemic, have also yet to dramatically increase in line with cases.

NHS England data shows there these were 223 of these patients, which are considered to the most severely ill with the virus, as of yesterday. This is a 16 per cent hike on the week prior but still well behind previous peaks this year.

Over 700 ICU admissions for Covid were recorded per day across a 10-day period in January.

Infections in all four nations of the UK are rising, with levels in England back to where they were in late April. Up to one in 18 people are infected in the worst hit parts of the UK.

The surge in cases has prompted Independent Sage to call for masks to be worn in public, more Covid jabs to be dished out as well as increased ventilation in indoor spaces.

The group, made up of left-leaning scientists and an active Communist party professor, previously lobbied for a Christmas lockdown but quietly softened their stance after the milder Omicron wave subsided naturally and the NHS was not overwhelmed.

The ONS figures show one in 30 people in England about 3.35 per cent had Covid last week, with a similar percentage of Wales (3.49 per cent) also estimated to have the virus

Infections were highest in Scotland with one in 18 people (288,200) estimated to have the virus followed by Northern Ireland where one in 25 (71,000) were carrying the virus

The ONS figures show Covid across all of England's regions. Infections were highest in London at 3.7 per cent, followed by by the East of England, the North West, and the North East which recorded 3.6 per cent. This was followed by the South West with 3.5 per cent. The West Midlands (3.2 per cent) the South East (3.1 per cent) and Yorkshire The Humber (3 per cent) all had Covid rates below the national average for England. The East Midlands recorded the lowest Covid infection rate in England of 2.8 per cent

In England Covid infections were most likely in people aged 50 to 69 (4.2 per cent), followed by 25-to-34-year-olds (4 per cent), and 16 to 24-year-olds (3.6 per cent). Infections were slightly lower in those aged 35 to 49 (3.5 per cent) and in the over-70s (3.1 per cent), 11 to 15-year-olds (2.3 per cent) and lowest in two to 10-year-olds (1.3 per cent)

Is YOUR summer holiday in danger of being ruined by Covid? Cases soar in France, Greece, Italy and Spain... as one expert says he's already CANCELLED his break

Covid cases are on the rise in some of the UK's favourite holiday hotspots, raising concerns of yet more travel chaos for millions this summer.

Spain, France and Germany are all currently logging a rise in infections, while outbreaks are growing bigger in popular Caribbean islands.

Sunseekers no longer need to prove they're Covid-free and vaccinated to be allowed into many of the country's best-loved destinations, who have followed Britain's lead in ushering in the post-pandemic era.

Yet health chiefs on the continent  who are alarmed about the resurgence  have already called for a return of masks.

Experts told MailOnline travellers could easily face restrictions in their destination this summer, if officials feel the rise warrants action over the coming weeks. One revealed he had already cancelled his holiday break to Spain over concerns about rising cases, and was instead planning a camping trip within the UK.

Others warned Britain could be cut-off from international holidays if cases continue to surge. Lib Dem MP Layla Moran said that countries might feel the need to 'reintroduce restrictions on arrivals from Britain'.

Dr David Strain (pictured), a senior clinical lecturer at Exeter University, told MailOnline that he has already scrapped his villa holiday in Spain for a UK camping staycation over concerns about the virus would wreak havoc on his travels

Wales pivots back to Covid panic-mode: Another hospital board reintroduces face masks in ALL settings due to rise in cases Another Welsh health board has reintroduced face mask mandates in response to soaring Covid cases. Cardiff and Vale University Health Board yesterday announced all staff and visitors would now have to wear coverings in all settings again unless exempt. Hospital bosses said the move was due to the 'continuing rise in the prevalence of Covid' in the community. 'Please follow this guidance to help us reduce the impact of Covid on our patients, workforce and services,' the announcement read. 'In addition to wearing a face covering, it is important to continue to maintain social distancing where possible.' It is the second Welsh NHS body to reimpose mask mandates for staff and visitors. Wales, under the leadership of Mark Drakeford, has been quick to impose pandemic restrictions and slower to withdraw them than England. Labour's Mr Drakeford accused Boris Johnson  who was first to pursue the Living With Covid strategy  of 'ignoring the science' for refusing to reintroduce curbs at the start of the year. Advertisement

Professor Martin McKee, president at the British Medical Association (BMA), told MailOnline that holidaymakers face a summer of uncertainty.

He said: 'We can look at infection levels now but that doesn't tell us where they will be when we actually travel.

'Nor does it tell us whether it has hit the people who fly us to our destination or handle our bags.'

Professor McKee added: 'We're not out of the woods yet.'

However, Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious disease expert at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline that discrepancies between how nations test means differences in Covid rates are difficult to compare.

But he said he doesn't expect nations  many of which are reliant on tourism, a sector which has been largely crippled by economically-damaging restrictions used during the pandemic  to bring in a swathe of curbs.

Professor Hunter said: 'I really don't which  if any  holiday destinations will change the rules. I doubt many holiday destination countries will make existing rules more restrictive.'

However, he noted that 'there is an issue about staffing of airports and airlines if many staff are testing positive and so off work'.

When cases soared to pandemic highs in April, thousands of airport workers took time off ill, fuelling chaotic scenes in Heathrow and Birmingham airports.

Outbreaks across Europe are being fuelled by Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5, which are thought to be even more infectious than the BA.2 strain that caused infections in the UK to spiral to a record 4.1million in April.

The two newer sub-strains have caused cases in England to more than double in the last month. Data from the Office for National Statistics show 1.8million people were infected in the week to June 24  rising by a third in a week and marking the highest rate in two months.

Ms Moran told the Mirror that it is 'possible that holiday plans will be ruined due to rising Covid rates in the UK'.

She said: 'Other countries could reintroduce restrictions on arrivals from Britain and transport companies, already in crisis from the Government's mishandling of Brexit and industrial action, are likely to see an increase in staff shortages with more people off sick with the virus and long Covid.'

Dr David Strain, a senior clinical lecturer at Exeter University, told MailOnline that uncertainty around whether restrictions will be brought in destinations, some nations requiring masks and the risk of catching Covid on the plane or on holiday will leave Britons weighing up whether jetting abroad is worth it.

He has already scrapped his villa holiday in Spain for a UK camping staycation over concerns about the virus would wreak havoc on his travels.

Dr Strain warned that around one in 20 people will be infected as they get on a flight and up to five in 20 could be carrying the virus when they land  which could scupper holiday plans.

He urged Britons to consider whether there will be Covid restriction when they arrive at their destination and questioned whether that is a holiday people really want.

Spain

Covid cases in Spain, the UK's top holiday destination, are on the rise.

The nation logged 417 cases per million people each day in the week to July 1, up 61.6 per cent from a fortnight earlier when 258 people tested positive daily.

However, the figure is still a fraction of the rate seen at the January peak  when 3,081 cases were logged were logged per day.

Travellers aged 12 and over from the UK have to show proof of vaccination, a previous infection or a negative test on arrival.

But Health Minister Carolina Darias last week told local media that everyone in the country should start wearing a face mask when inside in public spaces, warning cases and hospitalisations are at their highest level since February.

France

Covid infections in France are the highest they have been since April and are continuing to rise. Some 1,639 people per million tested positive in the week to July 4.

Infection rates have spiked 78.2 per cent over the last fortnight, when just 920 infections were being detected per million people.

The nation's health minister Brigitte Bourguignon last week said people in France have a 'civic duty' to wear masks in crowded places, such as public transport, workplaces and shops, to help control the outbreak.

She said: 'I'm not saying it should be mandatory but I do ask the French people to put the mask on in public transport. I'm not merely advising it, I'm asking for it.'

Dr Alain Fischer, the country's vaccination chief, last month warned France was in the middle of a new wave of infections and voiced his support for bringing back the requirement to wear face masks on public transport.

Portugal

Portugal, a favourite tourist hotspot among Britons, this week lifted all Covid entry requirements for travellers. As of July 1, arrivals in the country do not need to show proof of vaccination or a negative test.

The country's Government noted that these measures 'may be reviewed in accordance to the evolution of the pandemic'.

But cases in the country have been falling for a month. Some 869 people per million tested positive on June 30, a 44.2 per cent drop compared to the infection rate two weeks earlier.

And experts told MailOnline those planning to enjoy some sun in Portugal shouldn't face much disruption to their plans.

Britons weighing up whether they should go ahead with their summer holiday plans should consider whether they will face restrictions when they arrive, Exeter University senior clinical lecturer Dr David Strain said.

Portugal is 'unlikely' to see a return of measures, such as face masks and social distancing, because they have just been through a wave fuelled by the BA.4 and BA.5 Covid strains, he said.



Germany

Covid cases are at a two-month high in Germany, with infections jumping 49.7 per cent in the last fortnight, from 715 to 1,070 positive tests logger per million people.

Britons arriving in Germany have not had to show proof of vaccination, recovery from the virus or a negative test to enter the country.

However, surgical FFP2 face masks are required on public transport.

And Chancellor Olaf Scholz this week warned that face masks 'will play a bigger role' in the coming months than they currently do.

Italy

Virus infections in Italy have soared to a five-month high in Italy.

Some 1,293 people tested positive per day in the week to July 4  up 36.8 per cent in a fortnight.

Covid waves in the country have followed a similar pattern to that in the UK, with waves peaking in January and March before beginning to rise again in June.

Those landing in the country have not been required to show proof of vaccination or a negative test since June 1. However, masks are required on public transport and those who test positive in the country must isolate for one week.

Health Minister Roberto Speranza this week told local media that 'anyone who is infected must stay at home', saying it was 'unimaginable' that the 650,000 isolating should be able to 'move around'.

Greece

Greece is logging one of the highest infection rates in Europe, with 1,441 daily cases per million people in the last week  more the double the 681 logged two weeks ago. Infections are at their highest rate for three months.

Those arriving in the country no longer need display their vaccination status or a negative test. However, face masks are required on public transport, including on cruise ships, yachts and ferries used to explore the island.

Greece's National Public Health Organization reports that infections are rising their fastest in tourist hotspots, including Crete, and the Ionian and South Aegean islands.

Croatia

Cases of the coronavirus are ticking upwards in Croatia. The nation has seen infections nearly triple from 74 per million people per day to 210.

Arrivals no longer need to fill out passenger arrival forms, show proof of vaccination or a negative test.

Masks are now only required in hospital and care homes.

Egypt

Egypt has reported zero Covid infections for more than two months.

But health ministers told local media that cases have jumped seven per cent in the past week. They blamed the BA.4 and BA.5 variants and waning immunity, with the last lot of vaccinations dished out six months ago.

However, hospitalisations and deaths remain at their lowest level since the pandemic began, according to the Ministry of Health.

Along with most other countries, arrivals no longer need to fill out arrival documents, prove their vaccinated or provide a negative test.

Turkey

Virus infections are rising sharply in Turkey. The country logged 141 infections per million people yesterday  nearly 11 times more than the 13 it recorded two weeks earlier.

Cases had been trending downwards in Turkey since January, when infections soared to pandemic highs of 1,216 per million.

However, holidaymakers have been able to arrive in the country without having to prove their are vaccinated or tested negative since June 1.

And they are no longer required to wear masks, although health chiefs advise people to wear them in crowded places.

Professor Serap Simsek Yavuz, a member of the Health Ministrys Covid advisory board told local Demiroren News Agency that Istanbul, the Turkey's most populated city, is seeing the biggest rise in cases.

Tunisia

Covid cases are trending upwards in Tunisia, where 66 people per million tested positive per day in the week to June 29  the latest date figures are available for.

For comparison, the country logged just 11 infections per day a fortnight earlier  a sixth of the current level.

Tunisia eased mandatory five-day self-isolation for travellers last month. However, arrivals aged 18 and over still have to show proof of vaccination or a negative test taken within 24 hours of arriving.

And after landing in the country, passengers may be tested at random with PCR swabs.

Morocco

Morocco is in the midst of a fourth wave, logging 80 infections per million people. Cases have double from 40 a fortnight ago and are at a five-month high and half the level of the Omicron-fuelled January peak.

Holidaymakers aged 18 and over must show proof of being triple-jabbed or a negative test taken within 72 hour of boarding. Randomly selected passengers will be tested at random on arrival.

US

Infections are ticking upwards in the US, where 308 people per million tested positive yesterday, up eight per cent in the last fortnight.

Positive tests have been on the rise since April, after they plummeted to 80 per million, compared to 2,424 per million in January at the height of the Omicron wave.

New York City's test positivity rate reached 10.3 percent for the first time in six months. The BA.5 sub-lineage is believed to be behind the rise.

The BA.5 variant now makes up 36.6 percent of sequenced cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mexico

Mexico is logging a rise in Covid cases, reporting 140 per million people yesterday, compared to 59 per million two weeks earlier  an increase of 137.3 per cent.

Infections began creeping upwards in May and are now at their highest level since February, although the prevalence of the virus is less than half of that seen at the January peak.

Travellers do not need to provide proof of a negative test or show their vaccination status.

But some cities and states have Covid requirements in place.

Thailand

Cases have increased by a fifth in Thailand over the last fortnight  from 29 to 34 per million  but are still at very low levels. Last month, cases fell to their lowest level in more than a year.

Travellers have to show a vaccination certificate, a negative PCR test or professionally administered lateral flow test to get into the country.

Those without proof of a negative test will have to pay for and take one at the airport and those who test positive must pay for any medical expenses.

However, masks and other curbs are no longer in place.

Vietnam

Covid infections are flat in Vietnam, where around eight people per million have been testing positive per day for the last month. The country's latest wave began to retreat in March, after spiking at 2,791 cases per million.

The country eased its Covid rules in mid-May, so that arrivals don't need to show their vaccination status or a negative test.

Caribbean islands

Covid infections are rising steeply in Barbados, with confirmed daily cases jumping 73.9 per cent from 314 to 546 per million over the last two weeks.

Meanwhile, Dominican Republic has seen cases climb steadily by 45.3 per cent over the last fortnight, from 75 to 109 per million.

Seychelles has seen a slight uptick, from 228 to 257 in the two weeks to July 1.

However, the outlook is better in Cuba, where cases have been flat for more than a month, with around three positive tests confirmed per day.

And infections are falling in Saint Lucia, where cases have dropped from 139 to 96 over the last two weeks.

Australia

Daily infections in the former zero-Covid country Australia. The nation yesterday logged 1,294 infections per million people, up by a fifth compared to two weeks prior.

International arrivals are no longer required to prove their vaccination status as of tomorrow. However, masks must be worn on all international inbound flights as well as domestic flights.

Dr Kerry Chant, the chief health officer in New South Wales, this week urged people to wear masks in indoor public spaces over concerns about the spread.

Health leaders in Queensland said a return to mandatory masks is not being considered. But the Australian Capital Territory, which includes the capital Canberra, said the move was not being ruled out.

Holidaymakers are forced to sleep by the BINS in Heathrow as British Airways cancel flights for up to 105,000 passengers this month while ministers are urged to 'get a grip' before school summer holidays

Holidaymakers were today forced to sleep by the bins in Heathrow as Britain's airport chaos took yet another turn for the worse.

A young family were spotted catching up on rest in the most uncomfortable of positions, as terminals up and down the country are once again packed with frustrated, queuing passengers.

It comes as British Airways revealed it is axing journeys for up to 105,000 holidaymakers this month - telling bosses at Gatwick and Heathrow it is cancelling more than 650 flights to more than 70 destinations including Malaga, Ibiza, Palma, Faro and Athens to try and avoid more chaos at terminals.

Affected passengers are being contacted and offered refunds or the chance to rebook.

The move has been allowed due to a temporary Government 'amnesty' on scheduling rules, meaning airlines can make changes without risking a fine.

Ministers urged firms to review their flight plans after manic scenes in recent months, sparked by staff shortages and an overselling of seats to meet demand.

A BA spokesman told the Telegraph: 'As the entire aviation industry continues to face the most challenging period in its history, regrettably it has become necessary to make some further reductions. We're in touch with customers to apologise and offer to rebook them or issue a full refund.'

Today, travellers were pictured enduring yet more long queues at major airports amid fears of a holiday stampede in the next fortnight, when schools break up for summer.

Passengers resort to sleeping on the floor near rubbish bins at Heathrow as they wait for their flights to board

There were long queues at Luton Airport this morning as the aviation crisis continues to cause chaos across Britain

There were long queues at Manchester Airport this morning as the aviation crisis continues to cause chaos across Britain

Ministers urged firms to review their flight plans after manic scenes in recent months, sparked by staff shortages and an overselling of seats to meet demand. Pictured: Birmingham Airport this morning

There were long queues at Luton Airport this morning as the aviation crisis continues to cause chaos across Britain

A passenger at Heathrow airport takes time out for a snooze amid more queues and delays today

There were long queues at Heathrow Airport this morning as the aviation crisis continues to cause chaos across Britain

Unions say no to more night flights as they oppose Government's bid to solve airports crisis Union bosses have vowed to oppose using night flights to ease travel chaos, it was reported last night. In yet another blow for holidaymakers, unions said they would push back against plans to relax overnight flight rules that would see staff working 'anti-social hours'. Airlines are limited to the number of flights that can run between 11.30pm and 6am at major airports, which often leads to flights being cancelled if they are delayed. Amid mounting pressure to solve the travel chaos, the Department for Transport said it will consider suspending the rules to ease disruption. But last night unions vowed to oppose the plans over fears staff could be made to work long hours during the night. A GMB union source told the Daily Telegraph: 'It's not fair to force our members to work nights to pick up the slack for their mistakes.' It comes as holidaymakers are now facing a summer of travel chaos in Europe as countries across the continent grapple with staff shortages and strikes. Huw Merriman, chairman of the transport select committee warned that the plan could 'annoy the heck out of residents' but said he was open to finding out more about lifting the night ban. He added: 'I don't see what good that would do and can see what damage that would do. I don't know if crew will want to fly at two in the morning.' Advertisement

Labour yesterday demanded Transport Secretary Grant Shapps 'get a grip fast' as the crisis continues to worsen, after easyJet's chief operating officer resigned following fury at the budget airline's cancellation of thousands of flights.

And unions said they would push back against plans to relax overnight flight rules, leading to staff working 'antisocial hours'.

One passenger waiting at Manchester Airport yesterday tweeted a photo of a queue to enter Terminal 3 that stretched into the multi-storey car park.

A second complained of 'carnage' while a third added: 'Today is the worst ever. Actually standing in the car park to wait for security. Utter shambles.'

Travellers also posted images of long lines at Heathrow, with one saying the queue for security 'starts outside the terminal'. He added: 'Avoid at all costs. Total mess.'

Problems at Heathrow are set to worsen when the school holidays begin and check-in and ground staff are expected to strike.

But insiders denied security waits yesterday were excessive.

At London City Airport  which has largely escaped the worst of the disruption  one passenger said it had taken 'three hours to get through security at 6am'.

He added: 'Totally out of control, what a mess.'

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, who sits on the Commons transport committee, said: 'If airports are already in meltdown now things will only get worse once the schools break for summer holidays. It's going to be complete chaos if they do not get a grip  and get a grip fast.'

The boss of Heathrow has warned of up to 18 months of disruption as airlines struggle to recruit and train staff.

The Department for Transport (DfT) is considering temporarily suspending rules on night flights.

Airlines are currently restricted in how many flights they can run between 11.30pm and 6am at major airports, which often leads to cancellations in case of delays.

But a GMB union source told the Daily Telegraph: 'It's not fair to force our members to work nights to pick up the slack for their mistakes.' Responding to passenger complaints, London City Airport insisted the 'average journey time' through the airport yesterday was 45 minutes.

A spokesman blamed staff sickness and handling passengers rebooked from other airports.

Manchester Airport apologised for 'any inconvenience caused' but insisted 'the vast majority of people' passed through security in less than 30 minutes yesterday.

Heathrow insisted the airport was 'busy but flowing' yesterday, saying that while queues may have looked 'daunting', this was due to the layout of buildings. A spokesman said the 'vast majority' of passengers got through security in less than 30 minutes.

Security queues at Heathrow Terminal 2 were seen stretching out the doors yesterday morning

One passenger at Manchester Airport yesterday (pictured) showed queues into a car park

Life was no better at Stansted yesterday, where passengers arrived extra early for their flights

A passenger at Manchester claimed the queue yesterday stretched into a multi-storey car park

A passenger at Heathrow Airport posted this picture of huge crowds at 4am yesterday

Queues in the car park at Manchester Airport yesterday as passengers tried to head on holiday

Meanwhile, easyJet's chief operating officer Peter Bellew resigned yesterday amid growing pressure on the airline to reduce flight disruption. It has axed thousands of flights in recent months  including many just hours before they were due to depart.

Airlines have until Friday to take advantage of a government 'amnesty' allowing them to change airport schedules without facing a potential penalty.

Mr Shapps is trying to avoid a summer repeat of the mayhem over the Easter and Platinum Jubilee holidays.

The Government has ordered vetting centres carrying out checks on new recruits to prioritise airport staff. The DfT said counter-terrorist and accreditation checks were now being completed in record time.

A Heathrow spokesman said: 'This is a busy period as people make the most of the ability to travel for the first summer in three years. We are doing everything we can to give everyone a good journey and for the vast majority of passengers this is the experience they are having.'

A DfT spokesman said it was 'working closely with the aviation sector to help holidaymakers enjoy the summer getaways they deserve'.

He added: 'It's now on airlines to commit to running the flights they've promised and for airports and ground handlers to ensure they have the staff needed to enable these flights.'
Another Welsh health board has reintroduced face mask mandates in response to soaring Covid cases.

Cardiff and Vale University Health Board yesterday announced all staff and visitors would now have to wear coverings in all settings again unless exempt.

Hospital bosses said the move was due to the 'continuing rise in the prevalence of Covid' in the community.

'Please follow this guidance to help us reduce the impact of Covid on our patients, workforce and services,' the announcement read.

'In addition to wearing a face covering, it is important to continue to maintain social distancing where possible.'

It is the second Welsh NHS body to reimpose mask mandates for staff and visitors.

Wales, under the leadership of Mark Drakeford, has been quick to impose pandemic restrictions and slower to withdraw them than England.

Labour's Mr Drakeford accused Boris Johnson  who was first to pursue the Living With Covid strategy  of 'ignoring the science' for refusing to reintroduce curbs at the start of the year.

As well as in Wales, hospitals in England have also started to bring back mask rules because of the spike in infections.

Cardiff and Vale University Health Board is the latest Welsh NHS organisation to impose a mask mandate

The decision follows that of Hywel Dda University Health Boardwhich which has not only brought back facemasks but has also imposed visiting restrictions

Wales, led by First Minister Mark Drakeford (pictured), has been quicker to impose and slower to withdraw pandemic rules than other UK nations

Hospitals bring back mandatory face masks Hospitals are set to bring back the wearing of face coverings and reinstate social distancing measures in a bid to curb a recent surge in Covid cases. Trusts from Cambridgeshire, Hampshire, Nottinghamshire, Devon and Wales have all reinstated guidance that urges people to mask-up because of a spike in infections. Figures from NHS England show there were around 10,658 patients hospitalised with the virus on Monday. Infections have doubled in a fortnight across England  with around 1,000 patients now being admitted with the virus each day. There are fears that a new sweep of the latest Covid variant could decimate NHS staff levels once more, causing knock-on effects for ambulance wait times and the availability of specialists and operations. Advertisement

CAVUHB chief executive Suzanne Rankin said yesterday that wearing a mask, while inconvenient, could make a big difference.

'Wearing a face covering may feel like a minor inconvenience, but they make a big difference in protecting the vulnerable people in hospitals and helping reduce the impact of Covid on services,' she said.

CAVUHB's reintroduction of face masks follows that of Hywel Dda University Health Board in Haverfordwest.

As well as coverings, only patients receiving end-of-life care and special exemptions approved by the nurse in charge can now receive visitors.

HDUHB's director of nursing quality and patient experience, Mandy Rayani, said: 'We have made the decision to reinforce these measures at Withybush Hospital to reduce the risk to our patients and staff and thank people for their support and co-operation at this time.'

Covid cases in Wales, much like the rest of the UK, have spiked in recent weeks due to the new Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5.

Last week, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported about one in 30 people in Wales had Covid on June 24 in its weekly infection survey, which is now considered the best barometre of the outbreak since free-testing was axed.

Similar Covid rates have also been reported across the border England, where trusts in Hampshire, Nottinghamshire and Devon have reinstated mask rules.

Throughout the pandemic, Mr Drakeford's administration has been quick to impose restrictions like mask mandates and slow to withdraw them compared to England.

Wales famously decided to close nightclubs and enforce social distancing in businesses after Christmas in a bid to tackle the original Omicron wave.

In contrast, England kept its clubs and businesses open, instead advised people to test themselves before going to events and prioritise which they attended to reduce the spread of the virus.

Mr Drakeford has also previously launched tirades at Mr Johnson regarding England lifting Covid restrictions.

In January, when the UK was dealing with a wave of Omicron, he called England an international 'outlier' for avoiding reimposing any measures and accused the PM of overseeing a 'politically paralysed' administration.

His comments were made at a press conference where he insisted Covid restrictions must stay in place so Wales could weather an upcoming Omicron 'storm'.

The UK's recent Covid spike is being driven by the spread of BA.4 and BA.5, which are thought to be more infectious but just as mild as the original Omicron strain.

Data from the ONS's infection survey showed 2.3million people had Covid in the week ending June 24, a 32 per cent rise from the previous week.

The ONS figures show one in 30 people in England about 3.35 per cent had Covid last week, with a similar number in Wales (3.49 per cent) also estimated to have the virus

Celebrations for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, half-term holidays and warm weather are also thought to be fuelling the latest surge. Some have also pointed to Britons mistaking Covid symptoms for hay fever.

The UK Government has said it is monitoring the situation 'very quickly' but does not yet plan to reintroduce restrictions.

There are fears that the latest Covid surge could cause NHS staff levels to drop once more, causing knock-on effects for ambulance wait times and the availability of specialists and operations.
Common drugs given to hyperactive children could also treat Alzheimer's, research suggests.

Dementia patients given ADHD medication like Ritalin saw significant improvements to their cognition and brain function, according to a review.

The drugs are thought to be a good match because they kickstart a brain region that influences things like attention, learning and memory.

British researchers looked at 19 studies that dated back 40 years and involved nearly 2,000 patients, mostly aged between 65 and 80.

Participants given noradrenergic drugs saw a 'small but significant' improvement in overall cognition, including memory, verbal fluency and language.

The team also discovered the drugs influenced behaviour, and made patients feel less apathy and lack of motivation.

The researchers from Imperial College London, the University of Cambridge and University College London are now calling for more clinical trials of the drugs' effect on Alzheimer's. They say there is 'good evidence' the drugs could help.

Common drugs given to hyperactive children like Ritalin could treat Alzheimer's disease, research suggests

The team analysed 19 studies published between 1980 and 2021 that looked at the effect of ADHD drugs on people with Alzheimer's and mild cognitive impairment.

The medicines  which were given to patients for between two weeks and a year  work by targeting noradrenaline, a chemical substance that is released by a network of specialised neurons in the body.

This network is critical for many cognitive processes including attention, learning, memory and the suppression of inappropriate behaviours.

The drugs had no effect on attention, according to the study. But there was small improvements to overall cognition and a 'large positive effect' on apathy symptoms.

Reacting to the findings, Dr Mark Dallas, associate professor in cellular neuroscience at the University of Reading, said repurposing drugs that already exist to treat dementia is an 'exciting prospect'.

He said the review, published online in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, is an 'interesting teaser that drugs used to manage other conditions could join the fight against dementia'.

University of Nottingham's assistant professor of psychology Dr Andrew Reid said the study shows a 'promising new avenue of research' as it suggests 'a way to identify individuals at risk and treat them much earlier than is currently possible'.

Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia, affecting over half a million people in the UK and around 6million in the US.

The disease causes brain cells to die and areas of the brain to change - including the noradrenergic system.

Dr Rosa Sancho, Head of Research at Alzheimer's Research UK, said: 'There is currently a lack of drugs approved to treat apathy in Alzheimer's, a symptom that has been linked to lower quality of life, faster decline and increased stress for carers.

'This well-conducted meta-analysis highlights the potential of noradrenergic drugs to treat some aspects of Alzheimer's, but the evidence in the trials reviewed here varies in quality and it's hard to directly compare results from each study because the methods used are not consistent.

'We can't be sure yet what effect these drugs could have on a person's day-to-day life, and we don't know whether any benefits they provide would outweigh the risks.'

Like any medication, ADHD medicines can have side effects. The most common are loss of appetite and trouble sleeping.

Less common side effects include jitteriness, irritability, moodiness, headaches, stomachaches, fast heart rate, and high blood pressure.
B&M has named DFS Furniture's chief financial officer Mike Schmidt as its new finance boss.

Schmidt will succeed group CFO Alex Russo, who will step up as chief executive officer of the discount retailer.

The company said Schmidt's starting date would be announced shortly and is expected to be no later than 3 January 2023.

New appointment: B&M has named DFS Furniture's chief financial officer Mike Schmidt as its new finance boss

Schmidt's base annual salary will be 450,000, and he will receive pension payments equal to 3 per cent of that, 'plus other standard contractual benefits', the group said.

He will be eligible to participate in the B&M Annual Incentive Plan and the B&M Share Option Long Term Incentive Plan.

Schmidt will also receive a non-pensionable payment of up to 50,000 for the first year of employment for travel and overnight accommodation, the retailer said.

In May, B&M said Russo would replace its long-time boss Simon Arora, who will be retiring after more than 17 years.

Schmidt, who has held the position of financial chief at furniture retailer DFS for three years, had previously held corporate finance roles at investment banks like Citi and UBS.

He said: 'I am excited by the opportunity to join B&M. It is a business that has experienced a period of rapid growth over recent years and has a clearly defined growth strategy for the future. I am very much looking forward to contributing to its ongoing success.'

Peter Bamford, the group's chairman, said: 'I am delighted that Mike has agreed to join B&M as Group CFO.

'His previous roles in both retail and investment banking will bring valuable experience and insight to the Board alongside the continuity provided by Alex Russo's appointment as future CEO. I look forward to working closely with Mike over the coming years.'

Like other retailers, B&M could face turbulence this year as households cut back on spending amid the cost of living crisis. Back in May, B&M warned that its full-year profit margins would be hit.

The group said in its preliminary annual results report in May: 'With respect to gross margin, the past two years have seen very limited end of season markdown activity on Seasonal categories, due to the high rate of sell-through.

'Looking into FY23, some level of markdowns are expected to return and there may be an adverse impact from category mix as customers shift spending away from more discretionary higher margin General Merchandise categories in favour of Food and FMCG products.

'As a result of this gross margin dilution, B&M UK adjusted EBITDA4 margin is expected to step back between 70 to 130 bps but to remain structurally higher than pre-pandemic levels.'

B&M shares were down 1.78 per cent or 6.50p to 359.10p this afternoon, having fallen by around 37 per cent in the last year.
The grieving son of a care home resident who died after falling ill with Covid is calling for families to be given to legal right to have cameras in their loved-ones' rooms.

Tony Stowell, 54, was left in shock when he was suddenly told by care home staff his mother had been put on end-of-life treatment - despite her appearing healthy just days before.

Staff at the care home in Hull said they believed Antonia, 87, who was a long-term sufferer of dementia and diabetes, had fallen ill with Covid.

After receiving the devastating news, father-of-two Tony convinced staff to get his mother hospital treatment.

However, despite the best efforts of medical staff, she died in at Hull Royal infirmary a day later, in May 2020. Tests later confirmed she was positive for Covid.

Since then, Tony, who has worked as a professional model for brands including Adidas, has been campaigning for a change in care home legislation.

Named 'Antonia's Law' - after his Spanish-born mother - Tony hopes his campaign will allow families to remotely monitor their loved ones through a private camera.

The cameras will be installed in the private rooms of care home resident - at the request and expense of the families.

And staff will be permitted to switch off the devices when they are giving care - for their own privacy and to protect the dignity of the residents.

There is no suggestion of abuse or negligence in relation to the Antonia's care.

However Tony believes the cameras will give family members of care home residents like him 'peace of mind'.

Tony Stowell (pictured), 54, was left in shock when he was suddenly told by care home staff his mother had been put on end-of-life treatment - despite her appearing healthy just days before

Staff at the care home in Hull said they believed Antonia (pictured), 87, who was a long-term sufferer of dementia and diabetes, had fallen ill with Covid

Named 'Antonia's Law' - after his Spanish-born mother - Tony (pictured here with Antonia) hopes his campaign will allow families to remotely monitor their loved ones through a private camera

He also believes family members could spot early warning signs that their family members might be uncomfortable or ill and then inform staff members.

Can families have recording devices in their rooms? Currently there is no legal right for families to have recording devices in the rooms of their care-home bound loved ones - hence Tony's Antonia's Law campaign. But it can be done under guidance published by the Care Quality Commision - which regulates health and social care services in England - and with permission from the care home. The CQC recommends seeking legal advice to help decide whether to use surveillance. A statement on its website says: 'It's important to understand we cannot authorise you to carry out "intrusive covert surveillance". 'This means we cannot tell you to put hidden cameras or other recording equipment in someone's bedroom. 'This is because there's a law that sets out when public bodies can use or authorise surveillance. It's called the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000.' However it adds: 'You should only use recording equipment with the permission of the person whose care you are concerned about. Its important they agree to the use of the technology. Just because somebody does not object to it does not mean they agree to it. 'When you get their permission, it is a good idea to explain who you plan to share the recordings with and to write down what you have agreed. 'If they are unable to give permission (for example, if they have dementia and cannot make these kinds of decisions) it is important that you feel sure that you are doing the right thing. In other words, acting in their best interests.' Meanwhile, the Government says the CQC are reviewing and developing guidance and a tool regarding the use of surveillance by providers  this is guidance that includes questions to determine if peoples human rights have been considered and respected when providers use CCTV and surveillance systems. Advertisement

He told MailOnline: 'This about giving family members and residents the choice to have a camera if they want it.

'I knew my mum better than anybody and I believe could have spotted the signs that she was ill and raised the alarm.

'Had Antonia's Law been in place maybe it could have saved her.'

Antonia was born in Andalusia, in southern Spain, and having met Tony's British Army father, who was based in Gibraltar, she later moved with him to England.

Having raised Tony and four other children, and having worked as a chef, she first moved into a care home in the East Riding area in 2012, having first showed early signs of dementia in 2010 during hospital visits.

In total, she was moved between six care homes, in which Tony said she suffered varying levels of care.

She was moved into the care home where she would later fall ill in 2018. Tony, who lives nearby in the East Riding area, would regularly visit his mother.

However, like millions of other Britons, Tony faced the anguish of watching his mother's care home go into lockdown in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic.

He said: 'Before I was visiting her four days a week, but in April that year it changed and they said I could only see her through a window in the conservatory and I could also see her through her own window in her room.

'It was awful because she didn't understand. She could see me but I had to stay away.'

Tony says there was an outbreak of Covid at the home a few days before his mother fell ill - which saw residents confined to their rooms and temporary staff brought in to cover for those off sick.

He believes the outbreak came from the Government's much-criticised policy of moving Covid patients from hospitals into care home - a move which earlier this year was found to be 'unlawful' during a judicial review.

He said: 'A week before we were told she was end-of-life she was smiling and waving at me through the window. She didn't seem that ill to me.

'I phoned them, as I did every morning, and I was not aware whatsoever that my mother was poorly. I had know inclination my mum was ill.

'They told me to call back in five minutes. The next thing, the care home manager called me back and she told me my mother is on end-of-life.

'I was out walking my dog at the time and I fell to the floor - my legs just went. I couldn't believe it. It was like I was in another world, because I had no inclination my mother was ill - it come like a bolt from nowhere.

'From what I knew she was fine and then suddenly I'm told she's on end of life. How could it happen so fast?'

Tony said that after he demanded his mother be given treatment, an ambulance was called and she was rushed to Hull Royal Infirmary.

Antonia was born in Andalusia, in southern Spain, and having met Tony's British Army father, who was based in Gibraltar, she later moved with him to England

Having raised Tony, and worked as a chef, she first moved into a care home in the East Riding area in 2012, having first showed early signs of dementia in 2010 during hospital visits

Like millions of other Britons, Tony faced the anguish of watching his mother's care home go into lockdown in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic

She died a day later, having tested positive for Covid-19 at the hospital.

Tony said: 'At one point, when she was in the hospital, they said I could come in and see my mum. It was the first time I had been to physically touch my mum two months. It felt like a lifetime. And I gave her a big kiss and a cuddle and I cried.

'She was the best mum in the world and for me I have to fight for her and for other people like me who have relatives in care homes.

'That's why I have named it Antonia's Law - because it is in honour of my mother - but it is also for future care home residents and staff because they should be given the right to have cameras if they wish.

'I believe it would give family members peace of mind and reassurance.'

Tony, who is being supported by Fadi Farhat of London-based GA Solicitors in his campaign, held talks with former Health Secretary Matt Hancock about his plan before the politician's dramatic exit last year.

Tony, who is being supported by Fadi Farhat of London-based GA Solicitors in his campaign, held talks with former Health Secretary Matt Hancock about his plan before the politician's dramatic exit last year

Tony and his legal team are planning legal action against the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) in regards to the handling of care home residents like his mother in Covid.

Mr Farhat, who is working pro-bono, said he believes such a change in law is possible.

Currently, care guidelines state that families can request CCTV if they wish. But there is no set in stone legal right.

Mr Farhat says legislation could be created to allow families or residents to opt for the cameras if they wish.

Family members with a Power of Attorney could chose a camera if their relative no longer had the capacity to consent themselves - while those without could apply to the Court of Protection.

Any privacy issues can be sorted by allowing staff to turn off the cameras when they provide care in the room, believes Mr Farhat.

And the data from the camera can be streamed directly to relatives or recorded on a device belonging to the family to avoid any potential GDPR issues.

One potential issue with the cameras could be an increase in workload on already-stretched care home staff facing an influx of calls by family members.

But Mr Farhat said: 'We think the Government should look to start with a trial. If care home staff do see an increase in calls from family members then it can be adapted.'

Meanwhile, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: 'Abuse of any kind  especially against vulnerable people in care  is abhorrent and we're determined to stop it.

'Tougher inspections aim to ensure abuse is caught and dealt with, and the government has made sure that across the country, the police, councils and NHS are working together to help protect vulnerable adults from abuse or other types of exploitation.

'The Care Quality Commission has published clear guidance on using surveillance in care settings, which states this must consider the privacy and dignity of those it seeks to record.'
Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao is trying to rekindle the Telangana sentiment among people by raising the issue of injustice being meted out to Telangana by the BJP government (DC file image)

ADILABAD: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is trying to create Hindutva sentiment in the state similar to that prevailed during the Telangana agitation, while the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) was forced to play soft Hindutva to counter the saffron partys moves.

Accordingly, TRS leaders in Adilabad have been organising religious programmes. On Monday, TRS MLAs participated in the Puri Jagannath Rath Yatra here. In fact, local MLA Jogu Ramanna had recently participated in a

programme related to the inauguration of the RSS building in Adilabad town.

Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, however, is trying to rekindle the Telangana sentiment among people by raising the issue of injustice being meted out to Telangana by the BJP-led Central government. Unlike in the past, the youth are being attracted to the BJP and its ideology and joining its frontal organisations such as the Hindu Vahini and the Bajrang Dal. This trend has reflected in youngsters from rural areas in Telangana attending the BJPs Vijay Sankalp Sabha, held in Secunderabad Parade Grounds on Sunday, in large numbers.

The growing base of the frontal organisations has indirectly helped the BJP to spread its wings among the people and get strength in the state. A leader of Tamsi mandal, who was earlier associated with the TRS, said the youth and unemployed who are mostly subscribed to the Hindu ideology and the youth, who were vexed with the TRS rule, are convincing their parents and villagers to vote once for the BJP this time as they hope to get jobs under the BJP dispensation.

It may be recalled here that university students and unemployed youth had supported the TRS and voted for its candidate against the Congress and the Telugu Desam in the elections during the Telangana agitation with the hope

that they will get jobs if the Telangana state was formed.

The TRS leaders forced the Congress, TD, and BJP leaders, MLAs, MPs, and ministers through its JACs and university student wings to support the Telangana agitation and resign from their posts in support of the statehood demand. The TRS, thus, got the credit of leading the Telangana agitation from the front. Now the BJP is creating the same situation through its frontal organisations in the villages.
A horrified mother has relived the terrifying moment her tiny baby gasped for life as his lung collapsed and he stopped breathing in the grip of a powerful virus.

New South Wales is seeing the worst of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) outbreak, with cases increasing ten fold in just three weeks.

The disease - which has similar symptoms to Covid and influenza - can be fatal in very young children, killing 120,000 a year globally, with no vaccine available to protect them.

Now two mothers have told Daily Mail Australia how RSV almost killed their children and detailed the desperate fight to save them.

Lisa Whillock's baby Oscar was only eight weeks old when he started having difficulty breathing at their home in Terrigal, on the NSW central coast.

Oscar Whillock was just eight weeks old when he started having difficulty breathing at his home in Terrigal in May (pictured, the baby is transported to Randwick Children's Hospital)

Oscar Whillock was eventually diagnosed with respiratory syncytial virus - a major cause of lung infection in infants and spent six days being cared for in intensive care

The worried mum twice rushed Oscar to local Gosford Hospital where medics took swab tests and checked oxygen levels before sending the family home again.

But a few days later, the baby boy showed no signs of improvement, and the family returned to hospital, where test results revealed he had RSV.

Oscar was also diagnosed with bronchiolitis - a lung infection that causes inflammation and mucus to build in the airways, making breathing difficult.

Severe cases can kill babies and toddlers, whose airways have not yet fully formed and who do not have enough immunity against infection.

'He deteriorated so fast,' Ms Whillock told Daily Mail Australia. 'He stopped breathing on the Sunday, he could have died'.

Oscar Whillock was placed on a CPAP breathing machine and cared for by specialist nurses who his mother has described as 'absolutely incredible'

After six tumultuous days in the ICU, Oscar Whillock was discharged, however his family's terrifying brush with illness returned when his whole family was then stuck down with the flu

His terrified mum watched as her newborn started respiratory arrest and, at one point, stopped breathing.

His deteriorating condition meant doctors eventually rushed him to the intensive care unit at Sydney Children's Hospital at Randwick in Sydney's eastern suburbs.

Oscar was placed on a breathing machine and cared for by specialist nurses.

The eight-week-old suffered a partially collapsed lung from coughing so much and required antibiotics before several chest x-rays showed his condition was improving.

She said seeing her eight-week-old hooked up to a breathing machine was 'heartbreaking' and the 'worst time' of her life.

'I don't think I've fully processed it. It was awful,' she said. 'I just felt so helpless and so sorry for him. There was nothing I could do.'

After six tumultuous days, Oscar was discharged, but he spent another night in ICU six weeks later when his whole family was struck down with the flu.

Ms Whillock said she regrets not getting vaccinated earlier and suspected her two-year-old son was inadvertently bringing viruses home from daycare.

She said the flu was '100 times worse' than having Covid and said she had experienced a 'solid week of aches'.

'I've never known a flu season like it,' the mum-of-two said.

Oscar's mum described seeing her eight-week-old hooked up to a breathing machine as 'heartbreaking' and the 'worst time' of her life

Ms Whillock remains paranoid her little boy (pictured) will end up in the ICU again with yet another illness after two visits in just over two months

The one-year-old (pictured) was rushed to hospital after her mother noticed she had begun to 'gasp for air' after being particularly 'whingey' the night before

Doctors decided to transport their tiny patient to the children's hospital at Randwick where she was sedated and placed on a breathing machine

Ms Whillock remains fearful that her little boy will end up in the ICU again and wakes up in the night terrified her baby has stopped breathing.

She says she finds herself constantly putting her hand on his chest to check he's okay.

Dominique Peters-Kelly, from Sydney's north shore, also feared she would lose her baby girl when the one-year-old was struck down by the virus last month.

The mother-of-two told Daily Mail Australia she had to take her little girl to hospital three times in just six weeks.

The one-year-old was first taken to Northern Beaches Hospital after her mum noticed she had begun to 'gasp for air' after being particularly 'whingey' the night before.

Doctors decided to transport their tiny patient to the children's hospital at Randwick, where she was sedated and placed on a breathing machine.

'I thought she was going to die. It was on another level,' Ms Peters-Kelly said.

'Everything they were doing to support her wasn't working.'

Ms Peters-Kelly said her husband burst into tears after seeing their baby hooked up to tubes in the hospital.

The little girl spent three days on a breathing machine in intensive care with her diagnosis of the common cold.

Ms Peters-Kelly said her daughter thankfully completely recovered and had follow-up appointments at a high-risk asthma clinic and a respiratory specialist.

However she remains uneasy about sending her baby back to daycare - where she believes she picked up the viruses within just two weeks of attending.

The mum-of-two decided to keep her daughter home while winter illnesses circulated but will eventually send her to daycare in the summer when she hoped she'd be more 'robust'.

Healthdirect chief medical officer Dr Nirvana Luckraj said the health service had received a rise in calls regarding respiratory viruses.

Ms Peters-Kelly said her daughter (pictured) has since completely recovered and had follow-up appointments at a high-risk asthma clinic and a respiratory specialist

Healthdirect puts Australians in contact with a registered nurse, who can provide advice on health concerns 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Dr Luckraj said calls regarding respiratory symptoms had increased across all age-groups and was in line with the number of babies presenting to hospital.

She said when a parent called Healthdirect, a nurse would first check for emergency symptoms like whether the child was rasping or having trouble breathing.

Pictured: Dr Nirvana Luckraj, the Chief Medical Officer at Healthdirect Australia

A nurse also asked whether the child was drinking half their normal fluid intake, if they were wheezing or if they were drowsier than usual - all signs of respiratory problems.

Dr Luckraj said newborns were more vulnerable to viruses and urged parents to seek a medical assessment from a doctor as soon as possible.

A warning was sounded about RSV three weeks ago when there were just 355 cases a week in NSW, but three weeks later, that rocketed up to 3,775 in a week.

Around a fifth of those developed the potentially lethal bronchiolitis, with 40 per cent of them ending up in hospital.

Infectious disease researcher Dr John-Sebastian Eden said the triple whammy of RSV, flu and Covid was packing out the emergency department of Sydney's Westmead Children's Hospital.

'There is a widespread three-way outbreak occurring,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

International borders opening up has seen flu come back and new strains of RSV.

DOCTOR'S TOP TIPS FOR REDUCING THE SPREAD OF VIRUSES Don't allow children to share cups, cutlery or toys Clean toys thoroughly with soap and water between uses Teach children good hygiene habits like sneezing or coughing into a tissue Keep sick kids home from school or daycare until they are symptom-free Advertisement

'With Covid layered up on top, these are three main viruses which will lead to hospitalisation,' Dr Eden said.

During Covid, RSV continued to spread and split into two separate strains in the east and west of the country in the wake of Western Australia's prolonged isolation.

Researchers were shocked by the sudden rise of the disease in the first year of lockdowns, fuelled by keeping childcare centres open despite Covid restrictions.

'It was something we had never seen before,' Dr Eden said.

'Even in lockdown there was a lot of effort to keep childcare open.

'You only need a small amount of virus to build up a chain of transmission.'

The disease subsided in 2021, but has now bounced back with the current outbreak.

Dr Eden said cases in NSW had likely not yet reached their peak, as he braced for the outbreak to spread nationwide.

He expected the disease to spread across the southern half of the country at similar levels in the coming weeks.

'What happens is where you have an outbreak in NSW and we've got all those people travelling to other states from there, it then feeds outbreaks in other parts,' he said.
The NSW government's offer to swap stamp duty for an annual land tax for first home buyers has been widely applauded but the Labor opposition has hit back at the plan, claiming it will cost homeowners far more in the long run.

Labor leader Chris Minns made the claim on Facebook and backed it with a graph that showed land tax on a recently sold property in western Sydney would surpass the one-off stamp duty in 10 years.

'There's only one reason the Liberals want to tax your home forever - to make you pay more,' Mr Minns wrote.

'If a first home buyer bought this property that sold yesterday under Dominic Perrottet's scheme within 10 years, they'll be paying more than they ever would have before.'

'And the worst part? It never ends. We'll stop this tax on your home forever.'

NSW Labor leader Chris Minns insists that the government's option to pay land tax rather than stamp duty will cost homeowners more over the long run

The modelling was done using a property in the western suburbs that sold for $980,000 with a land value of $760,000.

Stamp duty is a one-off payment based on the sale price and it was calculated at $39,190.

In the calculations made by Labor, the property buyer would be out-of-pocket $41,787 by 2033 if they chose to pay land tax instead, which is calculated on 0.3 per cent of the land value per year, plus a flat fee of $400.

However, it should be noted the median time a NSW buyer holds onto a property is 10 years, according NSW Treasury.

To back his argument Mr Minns posted this graph which purports to show the amounts paid in land tax as opposed to stamp duty on a property sold in Western Sydney

The assumptions made in the graph were that property and land values increased at the long-term average rate of seven per cent every year and the economy grew at the rate of the budget forecasts.

If a buyer moves out of the house but keeps it as an investment property, their taxes would increase to $1500 plus 1.1 per cent of the property value.

What is stamp duty? Stamp duty is a tax paid to the state government by the buyer when purchasing a home. The figure depends on the value of the home but the median average stamp duty in Sydney is $49,934. First home buyers can qualify for a stamp duty exemption for homes they buy for less than $650,000 while a concessional rate is available for properties worth up to $800,000. The rule applies whether the home is new or existing. Advertisement

Despite rejecting the government's scheme, Labor has yet to specify how they would help first home buyers into the market.

A spokeswoman for NSW Treasurer Matt Kean said the scheme helped first home buyers by giving them a choice.

'An online calculator will enable first home buyers to make an informed choice when they purchase a property and potentially remove the barrier of a large upfront fee,' the spokeswoman said.

'A first home buyer purchasing an apartment in Sydney for $830,000 with a land value of $265,000 will have the choice between upfront stamp duty of $32,440 or an initial annual property fee of $1,195.'

The scheme to opt out of paying stamp duty comes into effect on January 16.

For contracts exchanged in the period between enactment of the legislation and January 15, 2023, eligible first home buyers will be able to opt-in and receive a refund of stamp duty already paid.

The choice to opt out of paying stamp duty will only apply to properties under $1,500,000 and purchasers must move into the property within 12 months of buying it and live in it for six continuous months.

The median average stamp duty in Sydney is $49,934. Pictured is an auction at Hurlstone Park in Sydney's inner west

The current initiative which exempts first home buyers from paying stamp duty altogether on homes up to $650,000 will remain in place, with concession still available for properties up to $800,000.

Political science Professor Dominic O'Sullivan, from Charles Sturt University, called the reform bold but admitted it could be double-edged.

'The negative effect of this policy shift is that over the time that people own the home they could end up paying more,' he said.

'However, the benefit is that it makes it easier for people to get into the property market quicker.'

Other analysts and players in the property industry widely welcomed the move away from stamp duty.

Instead of paying the stamp duty fee up front buyers could chose to pay an annual land tax to the state government instead. Pictured: A home auction in Sydney

Ken Morrison, chief executive of The Property Council of Australia, described stamp duty tax as 'the worst thing in Australia' because it 'distorts behaviour, cripples job creation, lowers growth, and locks people into housing that might not be appropriate for their needs'.

Tim Lawless, head of research at property analytics firm CoreLogic Australia told Daily Mail Australia 'it's probably the state's most hated tax there is'.

'That's because it's a tax on transacting. It's a tax you have to pay for the privilege of purchasing a property. And it's a huge tax as well.'

Premier Perrottet, who has called stamp duty an 'inherently terrible tax' and said removing it for first home buyers would deliver a 'brighter future' for first home buyers

Mr Lawless agreed that doing away with the lump sum would be a 'smart move'.

'It takes away one of the biggest hurdles to homebuyers,' he said.

'The tax has been a huge impediment to getting people into the marketplace.

'So spreading the initial cost out over a long period of time makes a lot more sense and is a much more efficient way to administer that tax.'

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet once called stamp duty 'the worst tax a government could have,' when he was treasurer.

'We want to lower the barriers to owning a home for first home buyers seeking a place of their own,' he said.

'In the past two decades, the share of first home buyers under 35 years of age has declined from 67 per cent to 61 per cent. Lifting home ownership is part of this Government's efforts and ambition to help families who are feeling the squeeze.

'The First Home Buyer Choice will remove one of the largest upfront costs to buying a home and help deliver a brighter future for first home buyers.'

The NSW government rakes in 32 per cent of its revenue from stamp duty which was worth $12.2 billion in the 10 months to April 2022, according to Revenue NSW.

This has soared from 18.3 per cent 10 years ago as house prices skyrocketed.n the 2020-2021 financial year, $9.6 billion of stamp duty was collected

The NSW government says that it will collect 20 per cent less revenue from first home buyers swapping to paying the land tax (pictured, a Sydney real estate agent)

NSW Treasury predicted switching to a land tax would collect about 20 per cent less revenue than the current system.

In the 2020-2021 financial year, $9.6 billion of stamp duty was collected.

Even with house prices tapering off in recent weeks, and even falling in some suburbs, the state government is likely to have taken in $14 billion in stamp duty by the end of the 2021-2022 financial year on June 30.

Monthly revenue from stamp duty surged during the Covid pandemic from a low of $450 million in May 2020 to a peak of $1.6 billion in October and December 2021.

The figure dropped to $976 million in April as house prices stabilised or fell.
The Virginia father who killed himself after he found his toddler son dead in the backseat of his car when he mistakenly went to work and forgot about him 'sacrificed his life to his son in an act of devotion', according to an obituary.

Aaron Beck, 37, killed himself in the woods behind his home in Midlothian on June 28, after finding his son lifeless in the car.

The child's family alerted police that the boy had not shown up to daycare. And officers then went to the home after the family told cops that Aaron had made suicidal statements.

'Upon their arrival, they located the people in the driveway with an open door with an empty child seat in the vehicle. As they made entry into the residence, they found a deceased 18-month-old,' Chesterfield Police Lt. Col. Christopher Hensley said on June 28.

The father was found shortly after, where the family said he would be. Officers speculated that Aaron went to work in the morning for three hours and forgot to drop his son off at daycare during an ongoing heatwave. Temperatures in the area reached a high of 80F on the day they died.

Aaron Beck killed himself on June 28 after discovering his son, Anderson Beck, dead in his car. He had mistakenly left the 18-month-old toddler in the hot car while he went to work for three hours

The joint obituary for the duo says that the two 'were interwoven in life and death' and calls Aaron's death an act of 'devotion and love'

Anderson was described as being 'intelligent' and full of 'life and promise'

Officers arrived at the home located in Midlothian after receiving a call from the boy's family claiming he hadn't shown up for daycare and his father was suicidal

A coroner confirmed to DailyMail.com that Aaron died of suicide. The child's cause of death is yet to be determined.

Anderson's and Aaron's lives were interwoven in life and death,' a Legacy.com obituary reads. '[Aaron] sacrificed his life to his son in an act of profound devotion and love.'

The toddler is remembered as being the 'brightest light that brought his family together'.

'He was a beautiful, outgoing and intelligent little boy that lived in a family that was full of love and promise,' the tribute reads.

Lauren Riegel posted a tribute to her step brother and his son on Monday along with a GoFundMe link to help 'take some stress and weight off' Laura

Police speculate that Aaron forgot to take his son to daycare in the morning and went to work. Family grew concerned after it was reported Anderson hadn't shown up to daycare

The body of the 18-month-old was found inside the family's Virginia home by officers before discovering Aaron in the forest behind the home

In the obituary, Aaron is remembered as a man whose 'career was important to him' but 'not the focus of his life.' His 'biggest dream' is attributed to 'becoming a father and building a family.'

'His most devoted focus was his son, Anderson, to whom he gave enormous and endless love. He was generous, kind, caring and soft with his son. The selflessness of his love was a testament to the possibilities of fatherhood, to the possibilities of the heart,' the tribute reads.

A GoFundMe has been organized by the family of the duo, Aaron's step sister, Lauren Riegel, shared on Facebook.

'Aaron was an amazing father and husband to his wonderful wife, Laura,' she wrote.

'She is completely shattered and has a long tough road ahead of her.'
A woman who was slapped with a life sentence without parole in 1994 for killing her abusive pimp when she was just 16 has been pardoned.

Sara Kruzan was forced into prostitution when she was around 13 but shot dead George Gilbert Howard at a motel in Riverside, California, three years later.

The then teenager was handed a life sentence without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder when she was 17.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger oversaw her sentence being reduced to 25 years to life with the possibility of parole in 2010.

But she was resentenced to 15 years to life for second-degree murder in 2013 and was freed that year aged 35 after 18 years in prison.

Now, Kruzan has been pardoned for 'transforming her life' after using the past nine years to push for the human rights of incarcerated women and children.

Her supporters wrote a celebratory note on a Facebook page dedicated to her lauding her being 'truly free at least'.

Sara Kruzan was forced into prostitution when she was around 13 but shot dead George Gilbert Howard at a motel in Riverside, California, three years later

The then teenager was handed a life sentence without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder when she was 17

An exterior photo of the Riverside, California motel located where the murder took place

The pardon said: 'Ms. Kruzan committed a crime that took the life of the victim. Since then, Ms. Kruzan has transformed her life and dedicated herself to community service.

'This act of clemency for Ms. Kruzan does not minimize or forgive her conduct or the harm it caused.'

But it added: 'It does recognize the work she has done since to transform herself.' A Facebook post was written from her 'I Am SJK' page by her supporters.

An photo of Sara Kruzan from prison. Kruzan was sexually abused by her pimp who she killed in a motel in Riverside, California in 1994

'We hope you'll be celebrating freedom with us, Sara's freedom, that is Sara Kruzan, is truly free at last.

Kruzan told how Howard started grooming her when she was just 11 and sexually abused her before becoming her pimp.

She said he made her have sex with 11 men on her first night combing the streets of Hollywood and Orange County.

She started dating a man in San Diego when she was 16 and his uncle is said to have ordered her to kill Howard or he would kill her mother.

Kruzan is then believed to have organized a date with her former pimp and spend a night with him at Dynasty Suites Motel.

But she shot him in the neck from point-blank range when he whipped out a sex toy before taking $1,500 from his wallet and the keys to his Jaguar.

Cops found her purse and ID card at the scene and she was arrested and held at Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, California.

On Friday, Kruzan was one of 17 pardons and clemencies that Governor Gavin Newsom granted.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger oversaw her sentence being reduced to 25 years to life with the possibility of parole in 2010

A photo of Kruzan when she was serving her sentence behind bars in a California prison

On Friday, Kruzan was one of 17 pardons and clemencies that Governor Newsom (pictured) granted

He wrote in the pardon: 'When Ms. Kruzan was 16 years old, she fatally shot the man who had abused her and trafficked her for sex.'

He added 'she has provided evidence that she is living an upright life and has demonstrated her fitness for restoration of civic rights and responsibilities'.

The pardon does not erase her conviction but says it works to remove 'counterproductive barriers to employment and public service'.
A daring attempt to take a stranded cargo ship back out to sea has stalled after tow lines broke in dangerous weather conditions overnight.

The MV Portland Bay lost power about one kilometre off Garie Beach in the Royal National Park, south of Sydney, on Monday morning leaving 21 crew members stranded in massive seas.

The Hong Kong-registered bulk carrier started drifting towards the cliffs, sparking fears of a maritime disaster, with the Port Authority of NSW dispatching three tug boats to stop the ship and haul it far offshore.

The plan, which sought to have the ship 12 nautical miles out to sea by midnight, kicked off in the afternoon, with the vessel being pulled 2.5 nautical miles out to sea by 6pm.

However, as wet weather wreaked havoc across the region, the towlines broke as the swell reached 11 metres, undoing rescue efforts as the ship again began floating towards the shore.

Efforts to take stranded cargo ship Portland Bay (pictured) back out to sea after it lost power have stalled

A marine map shows the ship sitting off the coast of Cronulla, in Sydney's south, on Tuesday morning

By 6.45am Tuesday, the ship's tracker placed it just two nautical miles offshore from Cronulla, but within an hour it had shifted slightly north - sitting 1.2 nautical miles off Port Botany.

Despite the setback, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said the situation was 'stable' as he praised those who worked through the 'treacherous conditions' on Monday evening.

'I would like to thank very much the crews of those tugs for the heroic work they did overnight,' he told reporters on Tuesday.

'They worked through the night to ensure that bulk carrier was in a stable position. It's far from over, their challenge. In this torrential weather and the environment we're in, the situation can change quickly.'

Mr Perrottet said more support was on its way to help the embattled vessel as crews continue to take it further off shore.

'I think through all these stories, whether it's the crews on the tugs or our volunteers, it's what makes our country great, the spirit of service we're seeing day in, day out and the best thing is to continue to follow the instructions,' he said.

'To have 11m swells and carrying out that work is incredibly impressive. Once again, thank you.'

The ship (pictured) was towed off shore but has begun drifting back after the towlines broke overnight

The reversion in the rescue operation comes after attempts to winch non-essential personnel off the ship on Monday afternoon had to be abandoned due to wild conditions.

Emergency helicopters rushed to evacuate eight staff as the storm dragged the ship to within 0.6 nautical miles (1.1km) off shore, despite both anchors being down.

However, rescuers were forced to turn around as massive waves of more than eight metres and gale winds exceeding 70km/h made the mission too unsafe, with authorities shifting focus to taking the vessel back to sea.

As the Engage Marine tugboats arrived at the scene, incident controller John Finch reassured the public the 170m vessel was in a 'stable, anchored position'.

'We've got two tugs in attendance, two anchors deployed, we've got a third that will be arriving in the next 15 or 20 minutes,' he said.

A Polair Police helicopter surveys The Portland Bay cargo ship sits stranded approximately 1klm off the cliffs the of Royal National Park, south of Sydney, on Monday afternoon

'There was an initial plan this morning to evacuate the non-essential staff but once the vessel deployed its anchors and it was in a stable condition it was no longer drifting towards the rocks, the master asked to keep his crew on board.

'At this point in time they're confident they can make an engine repair once they get into safe, deep water.'

Experts estimated the ship was carrying about 1000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil and would trigger an 'ecological disaster' if it were to run aground.

Footage from Surf Life Saving NSW showed a rescue helicopter circling the ship as it battled powerful waves off the Illawarra coast.

'It's a tricky situation, with tower cranes on the ship interfering with any winching attempts,' Surf Life Saving tweeted on Monday afternoon.
Frightening footage shows a crowd of Chicago lawbreakers toss fireworks at cop cars and begin attacking one of the vehicles after officers tried to stop their illegal street-racing in the city's once-illustrious Loop neighborhood.

The vandals could be seen firing indiscriminately at the police patrol cars in the early hours of Monday morning.

A group of between 30 and 40 people began angrily gesturing towards police who sitting in their patrol cars, with many of them taking out their phones as they did so.

A number of individuals could then be seen kicking and punching the front of the emergency vehicles. The grills, hood and headlights of the car were left either dented or smashed.

Dozens of people could be seen making threatening gestures towards Chicago police cars

Many members of the group, who were white, held up their cellphones as they walked forward

A group of between 30 and 40 people shot fireworks at police cars in Chicago

Vandals fired at around eight police cars which had their lights and sirens on

There were around eight police cars in the area, all of which came under attack

BREAKING: Crowd of people in the Loop attack Chicago police after some civilian cars do donuts in an intersection. Crowd shoots fireworks and physical hit CPD vehicles. pic.twitter.com/cDTqExvgLz  Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) July 4, 2022

Towards the end of the two minute video a firework lands directly on the hood of a CPD vehicle which is unable to move out of the way during the attack which happened on Columbus and Wacker Street.

The police car sustained significant damage including broken headlights, a shattered windshield and damage to its hood.

Officers stayed inside as they attempted to reverse away from danger.

The police had been called to the area after reports some civilian cars were performing donuts in the middle of an intersection.

There have been no reported injuries and police made no arrests.

One firework landed on the hood of a patrol car leaving a smashed windshield, headlights and dented bodywork

Despite the numbers of police, no arrested were made

The fireworks were deliberately aimed at the police cars which had come to stop street racing

A CBS News crew captured the attack on the police cars on video in the early hours of Monday

The attack on the police cars came just hours before a gunman armed with a high-powered rifle shot dead at least six people at a parade to mark July 4th Independence Day, in a wealthy suburb of Chicago suburb.

Emergency officials in Highland Park said around two dozen people, including children, were wounded with some in critical condition.

A massive police manhunt was underway for the shooter, who was still on the loose.

Police said they had identified a 22-year-old suspect named Robert E Crimo III, warning that he was considered armed and 'very dangerous.'

Firing into the holiday crowd from a nearby rooftop, the gunman triggered scenes of chaos as panicked onlookers ran for their lives, leaving behind a parade route strewn with chairs, abandoned balloons and personal belongings.
All Australians could soon be eligible for a fourth Covid vaccine but many experts say another dose may not stop infection from more transmissible subvariants.

Vaccine advisory body ATAGI will meet on Wednesday to discuss letting all Australians get a fourth jab; currently only available to over 65s and younger people with health conditions.

It comes as Sydney GP and politician Kerryn Phelps called for mask mandates and two-week isolation periods to return to stave off the winter Covid wave.

Existing vaccines don't work as well at stopping infection from the two subvariants of the Omicron strain - known as BA.4 and BA.5 - that are becoming dominant in Australia.

The strains - identified early this year in South Africa - are more transmissible than the original Omicron strain but have not caused more deaths or severe illness.

All Australians could soon be eligible for a fourth Covid vaccine and some states could bring back masks as the nation suffers a winter wave of the virus

Writing in The Conversation on Monday, University of South Australia Professor of Epidemiology Adrian Esterman said existing vaccines are 'unlikely' to protect against infection.

'Although current vaccines based on the Wuhan strain will still provide some protection against serious illness and death against BA.4/5, they are unlikely to provide much, if any, protection against infection or symptomatic disease,' he said.

Professor Esterman said Moderna's second-generation vaccine, which is currently in trials, would be much better against the latest subvariants.

Health Minister Mark Butler said just last month there was no evidence a fourth dose of existing vaccines would actually help.

'The benefits of the vaccine for younger people do not warrant the decision that they have a fourth dose made available to them,' he told reporters in Canberra on June 23.

'There's a general acceptance that there's no evidence right now that the fourth dose is particularly called for for younger people who don't have compromised immunity.'

Despite that health advice, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said he thought there was a 'strong case - at least that's what I'm told from those who are on the wards in the hospitals' for a fourth jab.

Pictured: A 3D mock-up of the BA.4 variant of the Omicron strain of Covid-19

DOCTOR PUSHES FOR COVID MASK MANDATE Prominent Sydney doctor Kerryn Phelps has called for two major Covid measures to be re-introduced to stop the spread of the virus. Dr Phelps told Radio 2GB on Tuesday that mask mandates should be reintroduced and isolation periods should be extended back to 10-14 days. The isolation period for a Covid patient in NSW is currently seven days. Advertisement

Meanwhile, Queensland considered 'urging' people to wear masks - as Covid hospitalisations hit their highest levels since February - and the ACT has not ruled out a dreaded mask mandate.

Sydney GP and one-term federal MP Dr Phelps said simply encouraging masks was not enough.

'This is about community spirit and protecting other people,' she told 2GB.

'The mandate is being discussed because strongly recommending people isn't working.'

Vaccine rollout data shows Australians are less willing to get third and fourth jabs now that lockdowns are over and jab mandates have been largely removed.

More than 95 per cent have had at least one dose but 70.5 per cent of Aussies have had a third jab.

The figure is even less for fourth jabs which have been taken up by only 58.7 per cent of Aussies over 65.

Experts are warning of a winter wave as people spend more time indoors in close proximity during cold and wet weather.

There were 26 deaths on Monday in which the deceased had Covid, as the national total death toll passed 10,000 earlier this month.

Hospitalisations have also reached 3,511 across the country, the highest levels since February during the height of the Omicron wave.

Nearly 30,000 infections were reported nationally on Monday alone, with experts warning case numbers will climb even further as winter progresses.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said talks were ongoing on whether mask rules would return in some settings in the Sunshine State.

Some states are considering encouraging mask-wearing again. Pictured: Sydney commuters

'We are not doing a mask mandate, but there are discussions happening about urging people in certain situations to wear masks,' she said.

'If anything changes, we will let the public know.'

Meanwhile, ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said a mask mandate was not being ruled out.

However, she indicated that other options were being considered.

'There is a view that mandatory mask requirements might not be as effective as they have been in the past, partly because those people who are willing to wear masks are already doing so,' she said.

'Some of those settings where we're seeing transmission you wouldn't be required to wear a mask anyway, so all of those things needs to be balanced as we move through this winter period.'

Victoria's Health Minister Lily D'Ambrosio on Saturday said she was not considering mask mandates. The NSW government has stayed quiet on the issue.

Despite the rise in cases, border restrictions that were brought in as a result of the pandemic will be enforced for their last day on Tuesday.

Changes to the Biosecurity Act will come into effect on Wednesday, with international arrivals no longer needing to declare their vaccination status to enter the country.

The decision was welcomed by Australian Federation of Travel Agents chief executive Dean Long, who said the move was a critical step for the industry.

'Removing these last requirements will help reduce delays in airports and make it easier for Australians coming back home,' he said.

'With school holidays underway or about to kick off in many states and territories, and a rapidly growing number of Australians keen to escape the Australian winter, the pressure on our airports and airport staff is huge.'
Anthony Albanese is due to fly back into Australia late on Tuesday after his trip around Europe and will visit flooded areas of Sydney on Thursday morning.

The prime minister, who has spent a third of his time in power overseas, faced criticism from senior Liberals Dan Tehan and Angus Taylor for being away so much while floods hit NSW at the weekend.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers defended Mr Albanese on Tuesday morning, insisting that his trips to France and Ukraine were essential.

Mr Albanese was briefed by phone soon after clearing war-torn Ukraine on Monday on the situation in NSW, where tens of thousands have been evacuated and thousands of homes deluged.

But shadow treasurer Angus Taylor said he wasn't doing enough.

'It was flooding for 48 hours Luke and [the Prime Minister] has only just picked up the phone to Dominic Perrottet to ask if he needs a hand,' Mr Taylor told 2GB.

'There's 30,000 people who have been told to evacuate their homes but the PM is more concerned about his reputation on the global stage than making sure people in NSW have a place to sleep.'

Anthony Albanese (pictured) is due to arrive in Canberra late on Tuesday after attending a NATO leaders summit in Spain and making side trips to France and Ukraine

The prime minister (pictured, left) was briefed by phone soon after clearing war-torn Ukraine on Monday AEST on the situation in NSW, where tens of thousands have been evacuated and thousands of homes deluged

The federal government is considering more requests from NSW to support flood-affected communities.

Mr Albanese also spoke to Premier Perrottet, who has declared a natural disaster triggering the release of a range of payments and loans for individuals and businesses.

'He will be on the ground here later in the week,' Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles, who was speaking from flood-affected Richmond in northwest Sydney, told Nine Network on Tuesday.

Mr Albanese could tour the region with Mr Perrottet as soon as Thursday.

Opposition frontbencher and Nationals leader David Littleproud told Nine that NSW must be given all the resources it needs to help people.

Mr Albanese also spoke to NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, who has declared a natural disaster triggering the release of a range of payments and loans for individuals and businesses (pictured, flood-affected Richmond on the outskirts of Sydney)

Asked about the 'optics' of Mr Albanese being overseas when the crisis began on Sunday, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said he had been working with the NSW government.

He said the overseas trips were essential.

'But... there's been a lot of work that's been necessary amongst our international partners because a lot of those relationships were run down,' Mr Chalmers told Nine.

'This important work on the international stage hasn't prevented us from advancing our agenda here at home.'

The federal government has so far committed 200 defence personnel to help with the emergency, along with two helicopters, after a request by the NSW government.

The federal government has so far committed 200 defence personnel to help with the emergency, along with two helicopters, after a request by the NSW government (pictured, Windsor in NSW flooded after constant heavy rainfall)

'There are further requests that we are looking at right now, so it is an evolving situation,' Mr Marles said.

'We have been very mindful, firstly, of the need to coordinate with NSW.'

Mr Marles said he spoke on Monday night with Mr Perrottet who was 'very pleased with the degree of coordination'.

For many of the communities affected, this is the fourth damaging flood event in less than 18 months.

Scores of evacuation orders and warnings have been declared, mostly northwest of Sydney, where major flooding is occurring along the Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers.

The disaster funds will be funnelled to people in 23 local government areas in Greater Sydney and surrounding regions.

On Wednesday Mr Albanese fired off a series of tweets about what he is doing to address the deadly flooding in NSW after he copped criticism for continuing his tour of France and Ukraine while the crisis hit.

The Prime Minister has spent one third of his time in office - 15 out of 43 days - overseas so far, sparking criticism from the Opposition on Monday that he was absent while his government faced a domestic crisis.

Mr Albanese said that he was only allowed to switch his phone back on and receive briefings from his emergency management minister and the NSW Premier after returning to Poland from Ukraine.

He had his phone off as a security measure while in the war-torn country visiting President Zelensky on Sunday.

Anthony Albanese (pictured with President Zelensky in Ukraine) has been briefed on the deadly flooding in NSW after he copped criticism for being in France and Ukraine while the crisis hit

As he crossed into Poland from Ukraine this morning, the Prime Minister was allowed to switch on his phone and receive briefings from the Emergency Management Minister and the NSW Premier

Mr Albanese tweeted: 'Have crossed into Poland from Ukraine and left radio silence. My first actions were briefings by @murraywatt and @Dom_Perrottet on NSW flooding and ensuring Federal Government assistance is being provided.

'It's a constantly changing situation. Check @NSWSES and @BOM_NSW for the latest advice and please stay safe.'

The heavy rain which pounded NSW has killed one man and caused thousands of home evacuations in Greater Sydney. The federal government has provided 200 ADF troops so far.



The prime minister has been away since last Sunday on official trips to a NATO leaders' summit in Spain, a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron in Paris and a high-security trip to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Despite all the trips being official business, some Aussies took to social media to say he should be addressing issues at home instead, as hashtags 'Airbus Albo' and 'Where's Albo' trended on Twitter and others labelled him 'Anthony Overseasy'.

Since winning the election on May 21, Mr Albanese has travelled more than 45,000km on trips to Japan, Indonesia, the UAE, Spain, France, Poland and Ukraine where, on Sunday, he announced a further $100million of Australian taxpayer-funded military aid would be given to Ukraine.
The Project's political pundit Peter van Onselen has denied photobombing the historic meeting of PM Anthony Albanese and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Photographs of the two leaders laughing and joking with their partners on the steps of the Elysee Palace in Paris also showed a lookalike Gendarmes officer in the background.

The French policeman - in formal uniform complete with white gloves - was the double of Network Ten's political editor, sparking furious speculation online.

The Project's political pundit Peter van Onselen has denied photobombing the historic meeting of PM Anthony Albanese and French President Emmanuel Macron and their partners Brigitte Macron and Jodie Haydon (pictured)

Peter van Onselen, 46, (pictured right with 10 newsreader Sandra Sully) broke his post-election Twitter holiday to hilariously insist it's not him lurking in the pictures

But van Onselen, 46, who has Dutch ancestry, has now broken his post-election Twitter holiday to hilariously insist it's not him lurking in the pictures.

'For the record, I am very proud of my European heritage,' he posted over the weekend.

'But I am not in France for the Albo visit, performing a ceremonial role.

'I am relaxing in Fiji'

Photographs of the two leaders laughing and joking with their partners on the steps of the Elysee Palace in Paris also showed the lookalike Gendarmes officer in the background

Peter van Onselen insisted it was not him in a Twitter post over the weekend

The post was liked more than 1000 times as his followers were amazed by the similarity between the two.

'It does look like someone photoshopped his face on the guard though,' posted Ben Knight. 'Spitting image.'

Another posted: 'That is a pretty good doppelganger'.

And Traci Sherlock added: 'The resemblance is amazing. I had to look twice. Better check Ancestry.'

The post was liked more than 1000 times as his followers were amazed by the similarity between the two

Some missed the point of the tweet completely: 'Peter there is never a tweet that you do that doesn't completely and utterly confuse me.'

Leo Nosworthy pointed out the similarity to Irish IT Crowd star Chris O'Dowd: 'I never realised you and Chris O'Dowd were separated at birth.'

Another joked: 'The second job under a false name for tax reasons.'

Van Onselen is currently on holiday in Fiji after the federal election, as TV bosses fight a lawsuit from press gallery journalist Tegan George naming him as part of an alleged 'bullying, toxic workplace culture' at the Canberra bureau.
A 21-year-old woman in the western region of El Salvador has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for aggravated homicide after authorities claimed she killed her baby girl after giving birth.

Lesly Ramirez was home the night of June 17, 2020, when she felt the instant urge of to go the bathroom, according to Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion, a feminist non-governmental organization that defended the woman.

Ramirez, who was 19 years old and five months pregnant at the time, went to the outhouse and recalled how 'something (came) out of me' as she unexpectedly delivered the unborn child.

Morena Herrera, head of the NGO, told Reuters that Ramirez had tried to cut the umbilical cord herself after the miscarriage, but it was dark and her home had no electricity.

She was taken to San Juan de Dios Hospital in the western department of San Miguel for treatment and a week later was placed in pre-trial detention during a court hearing she was unable to attend because of her ailing health.

Lesly Ramirez was sentenced last week to 50 years in prison over the murder of her baby girl in June 2020. But an abortion rights group that is defending the 21-year-old Salvadoran argues that she had suffered a miscarriage

Abortions supporters protest in El Salvador following the 50-year prison sentence that was handed down to a 21-year-old Lesly Ramirez, who was accused by authorities of killing her baby girl by stabbing it in the neck six times in June 2020. Ramirez's defense team argued that she suffered a miscarriage

Salvadoran authorities, however, argued that Ramirez carried her baby to near-full term and that after having the baby, she stabbed it in the neck six times.

'It is not the first time that the prosecution has constructed a story that totally criminalizes women,' Herrera said.

Ramirez was sentenced to 50 years in prison for aggravated homicide on Wednesday.

The Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion plans to appeal the court's verdict, which it described as being one-sided.

'The legal process against Lesly was full of irregularities and prejudices, in that sense the defense requested to annul the investigation stage because the judge did not admit the incorporation of evidence that demonstrated his innocence, for example, he did not value the social medicine expert opinion evidence of the gender violence to which she had been subjected,' Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion said in a statement.

El Salvador, has some of the world's harshest anti-abortion laws, which ban all kinds of terminations even if the pregnancy poses a risk to the mother's life or results from rape or incest.

The Salvadoran government did not respond to a request for comment.

El Salvador along with Nicaragua, Honduras and the Dominican Republic, are the only countries in Latin America that outlaw abortion without any exceptions.

At least four women are imprisoned and another five have been charged in El Salvador in cases similar to Ramirez's, according to the Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion.
RTHK: US police arrest July 4 shooting suspect

Police announced they had captured a suspect in a shooting on Monday that killed six people and wounded more than 36 when a man with a high-powered rifle opened fire from a rooftop at a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park.

Police confirmed they captured 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III, who was from the area.

Police can be seen surrounding a car and then Crimo exiting the vehicle with his hands raised, according to a video by the Chicago affiliate of ABC News. Crimo lies flat on the ground before police take him into custody.

Charges will be filed, Highland Park Police said.

The shooting caused toddlers to abandon tricycles and parents to run for safety with their children, turning a civic display of patriotism into a scene of panicked mayhem.

"It sounded like fireworks going off," said retired doctor Richard Kaufman who was standing across the street from where the gunman opened fire, adding that he heard about 200 shots.

"It was pandemonium. A stampede. Babies were flying in the air. People were diving for cover," he said. "People were covered in blood tripping over each other.

Police did not have a motive for the shooting.

More than 36 people were hurt, mostly by gunshots, said Jim Anthony, a spokesman for the NorthShore University HealthSystem. The 26 victims taken to the Highland Park hospital ranged in age from 8 to 85, said Brigham Temple, an emergency room doctor.

The New York Times named one of the dead as 76-year-old Nicolas Toledo, who was in a wheelchair and had not wanted to attend the parade, but his disabilities required that he be around someone full time and his family had not wanted to miss the event.

"We were all in shock, his granddaughter Xochil Toledo said. "We thought it was part of the parade."

At least one of those killed was a Mexican national, a senior Mexican Foreign Ministry official said on Twitter.

The shooting comes with gun violence fresh on the minds of many Americans, after a massacre on May 24 killed 19 school children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, which followed a May 14 attack that killed 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.

Children waving American flags, riding tricycles or enjoying a ride in a wagon pulled by adults froze as people in the crowd screamed while gun shots rang out, video on social media showed.

One cellphone video, seen but not verified by Reuters, recorded what sounded to be about 30 rapid shots, a pause, and then another roughly 30 shots. Between the two bursts, a woman can be heard saying from the side of the parade route: "My God, what happened?"

The Lake County Sheriff's Office posted an online wanted poster of Crimo, showing a thin-faced bearded man with facial and neck tattoos. It said he weighed 120 pounds (54 kg) and was 5 feet 11 inches (1 meter 80 cms) tall.

Crimo appears to have published several self-made rap songs using the artist stage name "Awake The Rapper."

A videos by Awake The Rapper shows a drawing of a stick figure holding a rifle in front of a another figure spread on the ground.

YouTube recently terminated an associated user account, after police named Crimo. The rap videos show a man looking like Crimo. A YouTube spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Police said the shooting took place from the rooftop of a business that the gunman reached via an alley ladder attached to the building that was not secure.

President Joe Biden said he and his wife Jill were "shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day."

Biden said he had "surged federal law enforcement to assist in the urgent search for the shooter."

In his statement, Biden referred to bipartisan gun-reform legislation he signed recently but said much more needed to be done and added: "Im not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence."

Amarani Garcia, who was at the parade with her young daughter, told the local ABC affiliate she heard gunfire, then a pause for what she suspected was reloading, and then more shots.

There were "people screaming and running. It was just really traumatising," Garcia said. "I was very terrified. I hid with my daughter actually in a little store. It just makes me feel like we're not safe anymore."

Social media video showed a marching band suddenly breaking formation and running away, and other images of people leaving their belongings behind as they sought safety.

"Everyone was running, hiding and screaming," said CBS 2 Digital Producer Elyssa Kaufman, who was at the scene.

A 36-year-old native of Highland Park who wanted to be identified only as Sara, told Reuters she had attended the annual parade most years since her childhood.

"Not even five minutes after, very shortly after, the police and firetrucks part of the parade had gone by I heard pop, pop, pop, pop, pop," she said, adding that she first thought they were muskets some times used in parades.

"I looked and there were no muskets. The popping didnt stop ... again it went pop, pop, pop, pop, pop and I turned and I said those are gun shots, run!

Highland Park's population is 30,000 and nearly 90 percent white, according to the US Census Bureau. About a third of the population is Jewish, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The shooting is likely to rekindle the American debate about gun control, and whether stricter measure can prevent mass shootings that happen so frequently in the United States.

After the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings, Congress last month passed its first major federal gun reform in three decades, providing federal funding to states that administer "red flag" laws intended to remove guns from people deemed dangerous.

It does not ban sales of assault-style rifles or high-capacity magazines, but does take some steps on background checks by allowing access to information on significant crimes committed by juveniles. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2022-07-05. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
U.S. mulls plan to train Ukrainian military: U.S. ambassador

Xinhua) 10:08, July 05, 2022

KIEV, July 4 (Xinhua) -- The United States is considering the possibility of providing training to the Ukrainian military, the Ukrainian government-run Ukrinform news agency reported Monday, citing the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink.

"I can't tell the exact number or the plan, but I can say that I talked about it with officials from the Pentagon," Brink said after her visit to Washington.

The United States is working to provide Kiev with more aid designed to strengthen Ukraine's positions on the frontline, the ambassador said.

On June 15, the U.S. embassy in Ukraine said on Twitter that the U.S. government had provided 4.6 billion U.S. dollars worth of defense aid for Kiev amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

According to the embassy, the United States sent to Ukraine 26,500 Javelin and other anti-armor systems, 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, 108 howitzers, and 75,000 sets of body armor and helmets.

On June 23, Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said his country received High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) from the United States.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
A toddler was run over while drawing chalk on the driveway of his home - leaving him with skull fractures.

The three-year-old boy was hit at about 4pm on Sunday after a Mitsubishi Outlander suddenly turned into a living complex in Innaloo, Perth.

Mother Amy Slater, 29, was just metres away when the car hit her son and she cradled him until an ambulance arrived.

Paramedics rushed the child to Perth Children's Hospital and he was found to have two fractures to his skull.

The boy's devastated mother Amy Slater, 29, cradles him after he was hit by the car on Sunday

His mother says that doctors will now assess the swelling to his skill to find out if he has any other issues.

Witnesses said the driver, 31, stopped to check on the boy.

'This one (car) just came out of nowhere and I saw everything,' Ms Slater told 9News.

'As a mother you just  what could I have done? What else was there to do? It wasn't anything I did.

'You have to slow down, definitely have to slow down. No parent should have to see their child go through that.

His mother says that doctors will now assess the swelling to his skill to find out if he has any other issues

'(I'm) just praying he makes a full recovery and comes back, makes a full recovery and bounces back.'

Residents of the complex where the family live are now calling for greater road safety measures.

'This has been quite traumatic for everybody,' neighbour Anahita said.

'Because we were all so scared a child would be run over  This was just a tragedy waiting to happen.'
A mum-of-four has lost her family's entire life savings of $60,000 after she opened what she thought was a Medicare 'text' before receiving a message from a scammer posing as a bank employee.

Australian mum Storm Tait was juggling sick children and the family business when she received a text from 'Medicare' about a school Covid kit.

The message claimed Ms Tait had to pay a delivery fee of about $1, which she paid by clicking the link and entering her card details on May 17.

'I put in my card details and then my brother messaged me and said don't click on it - it's a scam message,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

Storm Tait (pictured with her husband David) lost $60,000 after a scammer posing as an employee from her bank's fraud department instructed her to transfer her money to keep it safe from hackers

The mother-of-four believes the scammer accessed her account details after she opened a scam Medicare message (pictured) which prompted her to click a link and pay a $1 delivery fee for Covid test kits

A week later, Ms Tait received a message in her National Australia Bank (NAB) text thread about the scam and was told she would be called by a person in the bank's fraud department.

The panicked Perth mum was called by an 'advisor' named Owen Clancy from a NAB-listed number and was told her account was hacked.

'He'd (Owen Clancy) already seen customers losing funds this way, so immediately I was thinking, the scammers got my information from the website I clicked on,' Ms Tait said.

'While we were on the phone he said scammers accessed my internet banking and had set up payees and that's when I panicked.

'The secure deposit accounts were set up and I transferred.'

A week later, Ms Tait received a text in her NAB message thread claiming to be from the bank's fraud department (left). The scammer, known as Owen Clancy, called and instructed Ms Tait to open new accounts and transfer her money in $19,000 increments (right)

Ms Tait transferred her money in $19,000 instalments until all $60,000 of the family's life savings was moved.

'We don't know what the future holds for us but we know we'll have hardship,' Ms Tait said.

Ms Tait said banks needed to do more to help protect customers from transferring money to scam accounts.

The devastated mother was reportedly advised by consumer protection that the account names did not have to match when transferring funds.

'NAB had very minimal context and I'm still waiting on them to reinvestigate and I haven't heard back,' Ms Tait said.

'I know of others this same thing has happened to, we believe it's the same person.

'Surely this guy can be found.'

NAB has issued an update to its customers flagging NAB-branded phishing attempts.

'The message claims to be from NAB stating there has been an attempted transfer that has not been approved and is asking you to call the number listed in the SMS,' NAB warned.

'This number will take you to a fake call centre that may request remote access to your computer and bank accounts, or ask you to provide personal or banking information.

'Do not call the number.'

NAB Executive Group Investigations and Fraud Chris Sheehan said there has been a significant increase in scams highlighting a 'society-wide' issue.

'We've seen a significant increase in scams in recent years and it's upsetting to see the devastating effects these can have on the impacted victims,' Mr Sheehan said.

'Businesses, governments and communities must work together in taking action, driving education and raising awareness.

'A collective effort is vital to address the sophistication of these scams which are often committed by resilient and ruthless transnational organised crime groups.'

NAB bank said Australia needs a collective effort from businesses, governments and communities to combat sophisticated scams

Mr Sheehan said a dedicated team monitors customers' accounts for suspicious activity 24 hours a day but once money is transferred from a victim's account it is difficult to recover the money lost.

NAB has only recovered $74 of Ms Tait's money.

Mr Sheehan warns customers to be vigilant.

'We encourage everyone to remain vigilant and alert on what to look out for ... we will never ask a customer to transfer money to another account to keep it safe,' he said.

Through SMS aggregators, or third-party service providers that handle SMS messaging for businesses, cyber criminals are able to change the sender information of a text to the name of any trusted organisation.

The fake messages then appear in the same thread with legitimate bank messages offering two-factor authentication and transaction alerts.

High-profile Today Show journalist Jess Ridley was swindled out of $35,000 after the same 'Owen Clancy' scammer claimed to be an employee at Westpac.

The Sydney-based Nine Network presenter was sent a message from a phone number which appeared to be linked to Westpac bank on June 24.

Sydney-based Nine News presenter Jess Ridley, was swindled out of $35,000 after the scammer, Owen Clancy, posed as an employee at Westpac bank

The scammer claimed to be an employee in the Westpac Fraud Team alerting Ms Ridley of suspicious transactions in her account.

He cited a reference number and used other basic verification methods to give the con an air of validity.

Ms Ridley was taken through a fake series of official-sounding steps to make her account 'safer' before she realised that she was the victim of a detailed scam and her pockets were $35,000 lighter.

Ms Ridley had previously received legitimate authorised messages from the same Westpac number, so she didn't suspect she might be on the end of a covert scam.

The 33-year-old said she was relieved at first, thinking the initial fraudulent transaction was being dealt with properly.
OzLotto has jumped to a massive $30million jackpot as officials reveal the top lottery entry type and numbers most likely to create instant millionaires.

According to TheLott officials, a System 8 entry has yielded more big wins than any other ticket type while the hottest numbers are 45, 3, 5, 12, 16, 21 and 25.

'Our team might not have a crystal ball to tell us the next winning numbers but we regularly update a range of statistics from previous draws,' a spokesperson said.

OzLotto draw 1481 will be drawn on Tuesday night and has ballooned after there were no Division One winners for several weeks.

The OzLotto jackpot has risen to $30million this week after several draws without a Division One winner (stock image)

To win, players need to have all seven drawn numbers in a single game panel.

'Hot numbers are those drawn the most often. Some people like these while others choose cold numbers thinking they are due to show up,' a spokesperson said.

Cold numbers include 34, 31, 26, 18, 17, 15 and 14.

Between 2016 and 2019, the most common type of Division One winning ticket was a System 8 entry.

With this ticket, a lottery player picks eight numbers.

Only seven numbers are drawn but the entry covers all possible combinations, which is equivalent to eight standard games.

'This entry type has strong form. This type of entry scored the most division one wins,' a spokesperson said.

More numbers can be picked on system entries but ticket prices go up with each additional number.

Lottery officials said the most common winning entry type was a System 8 ticket (stock image)

Other popular ticket types include a standard entry where a player simply picks seven numbers from 1 to 45 or a Quickpick in which the computer randomly generates them for you.

OZLOTTO TIPS The most common winning ticket type is a System 8 entry. Hot numbers are 45, 3, 5, 12, 16, 21 and 25. The previous $30million jackpot was won with the numbers 28, 12, 17, 40, 36, 22, and 33. If buying a ticket through the official website or app, you will be notified automatically if you've won. Advertisement

Syndicates are also popular in which 10 players share the cost of a ticket - allowing for more expensive tickets with a greater combination of numbers and games - but the prize is also equally shared among the winners.

The second most common type of winning ticket are 50-game QuickPick entries, while the third is a six game QuickPick ticket.

The most profitable numbers - those which have resulted in the biggest amounts won - are 8, 39, 21, 30, 44, 20 and 27.

The previous winners from a $30million jackpot for OzLotto were two people from Victoria and the ACT who won the draw on December 7 last year with the numbers 28, 12, 17, 40, 36, 22, and 33 - with at least one buying the System 8 ticket.

In 2021, 18 Division One winning Oz Lotto entries across Australia collectively won more than $279.7 million.

During this time, the biggest Oz Lotto jackpot was $50 million, which was shared by a Queensland and Victorian player in November.

Of the 23 Oz Lotto Division One winning entries in FY21, seven landed in both Victoria and Western Australia, five in New South Wales, two in Queensland, and one each in South Australia and the Northern Territory.

Ticket purchases in draw number 1481 will close at 7.25pm on Tuesday (stock image)

OzLotto entries close at 7.25pm AEST or 8.25 AEDT on Tuesdays.

If a ticket is purchased through an online account, any winning money will be deposited into that account and can then be transferred to a bank.

If you're buying a physical ticket, OzLotto officials might call you but ultimately it's your responsibility to keep - and check - your ticket to claim the prize.
Australian fast food diners have been slammed for having no manners after leaving a city fast food restaurant littered in rubbish.

A customer waiting for their takeaway order filmed the dining area of the Melbourne city McDonald's restaurant recently and shared the clip to TikTok.

Garbage is piled up over the floor and tables - including food wrappers, half-eaten burgers, scattered fries and discarded drinks.

The mess didn't seem to bother plenty of customers, who took a seat amid the rubbish to eat their food.

'Melbourne Maccas is something else... They would have to fire me before I cleaned any of this up,' the uploader wrote.

TikTok users have slammed the state of a Melbourne McDonald's restaurant left covered with rubbish (pictured)

Viewers of the clip were shocked at the messy surroundings and questioned how people could brazenly throw their rubbish where other customers were eating.

'Who would sit in that cesspit? I would be furious about the state of that,' one person wrote.

'How can people be so inconsiderate, just use the bin,' another said.

'And Melbourne is one of the top ten most livable cities in the world?' a third said.

Some commenters tried to provide an explanation for why the restaurant would be that messy.

'If this is near the clubs on a Friday or Saturday night it's not that out of the ordinary,' one person said.

'The manager probably tolerates it for the amount of business they're getting,' added another.

'If it's after midnight the employees might be told to just leave it as it's a health and safety issue,' a third said.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted McDonald's for comment.
Summer holiday plans for millions of Brits could be in jeopardy as experts fear foreign destinations may reinstate tough Covid curbs to counter surging infections.

Tests, facemasks and vaccine passes could return to favoured holiday hotspots and airports could see further chaos if the number of self-isolating workers skyrockets.

Now MPs and experts have publicly shared their concerns for the future of millions of Brits' summer holiday plans which could hang in the balance.

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus, warned foreign getaways and even staycations could be scuppered.

She told the Mirror: 'It is possible that holiday plans will be ruined due to rising Covid rates in the UK.

'Other countries could reintroduce restrictions on arrivals from Britain, and transport companies - already in crisis from the Government's mishandling of Brexit and industrial action, are likely to see an increase in staff shortages with more off sick.'

Data from the Office for National Statistics showed 2.3million people had coronavirus in the week ending June 24, a 32 per cent rise from the previous week.

Experts believe the latest flare-up in cases are likely linked to the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants of Omicron, which could push the total number of patients above April's peak of 16,600.

Those variations are thought to be more infectious but just as mild as the original Omicron strain.

The Government has said it is monitoring the situation 'very quickly' but does not yet plan to reintroduce restrictions.

Tests, facemasks and vaccine passes could return to favoured holiday hotspots and airports could see further chaos if the number of self-isolating workers skyrockets. Pictured: Crowds pack out Bournemouth beach on June 17 during one of the hottest days of the year in England

Covid infections have shot up in England to over 2 million according to the latest Office of National Statistics data

ITV Good Morning's resident doctor Hilary Jones added: 'There are large numbers of cases in Italy.

'They could say 'right, you're going to need a Covid pass, you're going to need proof of vaccination or recent infection'.

'I would say to people who are travelling - look at the foreign travel advice for that country, see if you need a test before you fly and see if your NHS Covid pass works'.

Figures from NHS England show there were around 10,658 patients hospitalised with the virus on Monday.

Infections have doubled in a fortnight across England  with around 1,000 patients now being admitted with the virus each day.

There are fears that a new sweep of the latest Covid variant could decimate NHS staff levels once more, causing knock-on effects for ambulance wait times and the availability of specialists and operations.

The development comes just days before the UK's summer holiday season is expected to ramp up, with millions of passengers bracing for disruption as travel bosses tell airlines to cancel more flights while aviation experts have shared fears over an extended period of 'Airmageddon'.

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus , warned foreign getaways and even staycations could be scuppered by a rise in infections and the knock-on effect this has on airports' staff levels

Staff shortages, issues with baggage handling services and a lack of trained security staff are all contributing to the disruption seen at many of the UK's major commercial airports this year.

And there is set to be even more disruption later this month with hundreds of British Airways check-in staff are expected to walkout in a dispute of pay.

It comes as hospitals are set to bring back the wearing of face coverings and reinstate social distancing measures in a bid to curb a recent surge in Covid cases.

Trusts from Cambridgeshire, Hampshire, Nottinghamshire, Devon and Wales have all reinstated guidance that urges people to mask-up because of a spike in infections.

HEATHROW: Thousands of travellers heading through Heathrow were left to endure the latest scenes of chaos hitting Britain's beleaguered airports after flights were delayed due to a fuelling issue

STANSTED: Huge queues also built up at Stansted Airport on Saturday as Britain's summer of travel hell continued

MANCHESTER: It comes after months of travel chaos at British airports, with travel hubs struggling to cope with the number of passengers trying to travel abroad after Covid restrictions were eased. Queues at Manchester Airport, above

Dame Sarah Gilbert, whose pioneering work helped develop the AstraZeneca vaccine added: 'What we're seeing with the increase in infection rates is not completely unsurprising.

'We know that pandemics do rumble on - it's a bit of a rollercoaster before they eventually come to and end.'

Prime Minister Boris Johnson previously refused to rule out a future lockdown in April, saying it would be 'irresponsible' to discard something 'that could save lives' if a deadlier variant emerges.

It comes days after health officials gave their first public backing for an Omicron-specific booster jab this Autumn that is set to 'increase and extend' protection.

GPs in Britain have been told that the NHS is preparing to start its booster campaign on September 1, with officials expressing a 'definite interest' in Moderna's new vaccine.

Infections have doubled in a fortnight across England  with around 1,000 patients now being admitted with the virus each day

Hospitals are set to bring back the wearing of face coverings and reinstate social distancing measures in a bid to curb a recent surge in Covid cases. Pictured: A nurse in King's College Hospital wears a mask in the critical care unit of the hospital in December 2021

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is recommending people over the age of 65 get a booster jab, but the chief medical officer of Moderna has suggested they are given to everyone, including children.

The company says it has already produced millions of doses of a new jab which it claims is five times better than the original vaccine, and is specifically tailored to counter the Omicron variant of the disease.

However, this new jab still needs to be given the green light by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) before it can be rolled out, with officials prepared to use already approved vaccines if it isn't.

As well as people over the age of 65, the JCVI is recommending booster jabs are given to care home residents, health workers and people who have certain health conditions.

Dr Paul Burton, chief medical officer at Moderna, said there is a 'definite interest' from the UK in purchasing its new vaccine, the Telegraph reports.

Last week Dr Burton urged governments to vaccinate people under the age of 65, including children, with the new booster.

He said: 'Clearly governments will have to make their own public health decisions but my sense is that actually for this upcoming booster season, a broader opportunity to vaccinate everybody, including children, is probably warranted for consideration.'

He added that the new vaccine could be so effective it means it would only be needed annually.
Aussies travelling to Bail could face strict biosecurity restrictions upon return to prevent foot-and-mouth disease from entering the country.

Indonesia, which was free of the disease from 1986 until May, confirmed it has spread to Bali with more then 230,000 cases detected across the country.

Fears foot-and-mouth-disease (FMD) could be transported back to Australia by tourists have sparked calls for stricter biosecurity measures for returning travellers.

Bali-based veterinarian Dr Ross Ainsworth said travellers should be forced to declare whether they had visited a farm, and said airports should implement mandatory shoe disinfection.

Fears foot-and-mouth-disease (FMD) could be transported back to Australia by tourists has sparked calls for stricter biosecurity measures for returning travellers (pictured, medical team evacuating a sick tourist in Bali)

Aussies travelling to Bail could face strict biosecurity restrictions upon return to prevent foot-and-mouth disease from entering the country (pictured, Canggu beach in Bali)

Indonesia's Ministry of Agriculture said it had been detected in more than 60 cows across three locations in Bali, putting Australian authorities on high alert.

Australia's last recorded case of FMD was in 1872, and recent modelling conducted by the Federal Government's commodity forecaster ABARES revealed an outbreak would cause revenue losses of $80billion over 10 years.

Dr Ainsworth, with 40 years experience in the Australian beef industry, believes the risk of local introduction is becoming very high.

'The big danger period in Bali is from now until the herd is fully vaccinated - until there's livestock vaccinated across Indonesia we're at a much higher risk,' Dr Ainsworth told the ABC.

These warnings are being issued in the wake of Aussies expected to take a trip to the famous tourist hotspot in coming days, as the school holidays begin in Western Australia (pictured, tourists at Canggu Beach in Bali)

Dr Ainsworth said the magnitude of the risk warranted the immediate introduction of biosecurity measures upon all people travelling from Indonesia.

'Until Bali is fully protected by vaccination of its cattle and pig populations, an increase in the attention paid to tourists returning to Australia, especially their footwear, seems to be warranted,' he said.

'Additional requirements such as ensuring shoes are clean and walking through a wet sponge infused with disinfectant before boarding and after leaving the flight would seem to be simple and sensible measures which might help to address the new level of risk.'

FMD affects cloven-hoofed species including sheep, goats, buffalo, camels and deer.

Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt will visit Indonesia this month as Australia helps to contain the spread of FMD and lumpy skin disease.

It can be spread from animal to animal and by contaminated vehicles and equipment.

Symptoms include fever, depression, reduced appetite, increased salivation and lameness.

Livestock exhibiting symptoms should be reported to the national Emergency Animal Disease Watch Hotline on 1800 675 888.
Say it isnt true! Have the youth of today got so little respect for the cuisine of their forebears that they are shunning HP Sauce?

Sadly, the trading figures suggest they might. HP Sauce, a brand that stretches back to Queen Victorias reign, is in decline as young consumers ditch the heritage brown sauce in favour of spicier, trendier condiments such as sriracha hot chilli or Nandos peri-peri.

According to Kantar, a market research company, sales of brown sauce  a category that HP dominates  slumped 12.4 per cent over the past year.

Fans are distraught at the news. Richard Corrigan, the celebrity chef and owner of Bentleys Oyster Bar & Grill in London, says: HP Sauce is, for me, a dear friend. When I dont see that dear friend on the shelf in the fridge I start entering panic stations.

The Irish chef is deadly serious.

Honestly, I cant imagine a bacon sandwich without HP sauce, he says. It doesnt even come into my thinking. With warm, crispy, rind-on bacon  honest to God, it has to have HP Sauce.

Younger consumers are no longer choosing HP sauce , instead choosing spicier condiments such as sriracha hot chilli or Nandos peri-peri

This is the thing. Fans of HP Sauce feel very, very strongly about the rather peculiar condiment and believe it should be celebrated as one of the finest things to come out of Britain  right up there with Montgomery Cheddar or the Arbroath smokie.

Gordon Ramsay has previously said he wouldnt touch a bacon sandwich without HP.

It is a uniquely British product, made for the great dining rooms of this country but containing spices and fruits harvested from around the Empire  in the days when empire was not a dirty word.

The key ingredient (though the colour might not suggest it) is tomatoes. People like to have this binary image: ketchup or brown sauce, but in fact HP is just a slightly spicier version of ketchup, explains food writer Felicity Cloake, whose book, Red Sauce Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey, was published last month.

Victorians had lots of what they called store sauces, designed to survive long sea voyages, and HP is quite an Indian-inflected version of this.

The next biggest ingredient is malt vinegar, which gives it its kick. Back in 2011, HP cut the amount of salt in the sauce, from 2.1g per 100g to 1.2g, in an attempt to make it healthier.

Critics suggested that to compensate for this reduction in flavour, the vinegar content was increased. At the time, the celebrity chef Aldo Zilli told Channel 4 News (yes, the changing recipe made the evening bulletins): The new flavour is very, very strong. Less salt is good, but the punch is too much for me.

Other ingredients include flour, sugar, dates, cloves and tamarind, a strongly flavoured Indian fruit that gives HP Sauce its distinctive, almost citrus, tang.

Sales of brown sauce, a category dominated by HP , are down 12.4 per cent over the past year as younger people choose other sauces

Some of its earliest packaging included the phrase: Oriental fruits and spices, and although it may have simplified the recipe over the years, it remains a portal into another age, when the East was exotic and to have brown sauce on your plate of bacon, eggs, devilled kidneys and kippers was to add a dash of sophistication.

But it should not be reserved just for eggs and bacon. In the early years, it was marketed as a condiment to accompany pork pies and luncheon meat, and it is still excellent in a cheese sandwich.

After all, its basically pickle without the bits, says Cloake.

The original recipe was developed by Frederick Gibson Garton, a grocer from Nottingham. He registered the name H.P. Sauce in 1895 after supposedly hearing that a restaurant in the Houses of Parliament had begun serving it and realised this was an endorsement too good to miss.

There was a time  its hard to remember, its true  when the foibles of parliamentarians were celebrated, not derided. This explains why, to this day, it has a picture of the Palace of Westminster on its label.

In 1903, Garton sold the recipe and HP brand for 150 (about 17,000 in todays money), plus the settlement of some unpaid bills, to Edwin Sampson Moore, the founder of the Midlands Vinegar Company, the forerunner of HP Foods. Garton, it was rumoured, had run up some gambling debts and, in his desperation to sell up, the company lost out on a potential fortune.

In 1988, HP Foods was sold to French yoghurt-maker Danone for 199 million, before being taken over by Heinz in June 2005 for 470 million.

Despite showing a picture of the the Houses of Parliament and the Elizabeth Tower, HP has not been made in the UK for many years

Shortly afterwards, the U.S. food giant severed HP Sauces links to Britain, closing its factory in Aston, Birmingham, and moving production to The Netherlands, where it is still made. The move prompted protests not just in Birmingham but outside the U.S. Embassy in London.

Yet who would protest if Kraft Heinz, as it is now called, decided to pull the plug completely? Would the youth of 2022 fight to keep this icon of the pantry?

I fear the answer is no. For Gen Z are too interested in drizzling chilli oils, chipotle ketchups or fermented sriracha on their breakfast.

That is, in part, because the great British fry-up is in slow decline. Health concerns have driven younger consumers into eating poached eggs, or eggs atop avocado-on-sourdough, rather than in a sarnie with some thick rashers of bacon.

The name doesnt help, says Cloake. Brown sauce is the least inspiring name ever. Also, our palettes have become attuned to far spicier flavours. I get why Gen Z might prefer hot sauces.

A poll conducted in 2019 found a clear generation divide when it came to brown sauce. Just 14 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds said they would select the condiment as their favourite Full English accompaniment. For older generations it was 26 per cent.

Its image has not been helped by the brand actively embracing its downmarket reputation. By the 1960s it was dubbed Wilsons Gravy, after the wife of the then Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, said: If Harold has a fault, it is that he will drown everything with HP Sauce.

Like his pipe smoking, this was partly an act. Both he and his wife knew his fondness for brown sauce helped burnish his image as a man of the people.

By the early 2000s, HP aired a series of adverts showing the sauce as the official sauce of Britains white-van man, the hen night and the wedding punch-up. Now, it rarely advertises.

It could do with a rebrand, according to Matthew Fort, food writer and long-standing judge on The Great British Menu. I mean, it does look rather old fashioned, he says. But I am a passionate devotee of brown sauce, and HP in particular. Though it masquerades as something earthier, its not. It is the most elegant and sophisticated of confections.

Thats a brave claim, but one he stands by.

In an egg and bacon sandwich, you need something with some lick that can counteract the fattiness of the bacon and the creaminess of the egg, adds Fort. And for that there is nothing better in the world than HP Sauce, with that perfect balance between sweetness, sourness and spice.

Wouldnt ketchup be just as good? No, no! Ketchup doesnt have the same zip, its too sweet.

There are not many brands that have survived six monarchs, two world wars and countless changes in culinary tastes. Its time to dust off that bottle, give it a shake and start slathering it on your bacon sarnies again!
Failing police forces will finally be named and shamed by the police inspectorate after a secrecy row.

Last week, the Daily Mail revealed a record one in seven police forces in England and Wales are now under special measures  but the public is not allowed to know any details.

Her Majestys Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) is dealing with the highest number of failing forces, with six under special monitoring including Scotland Yard.

But the inspectorate faced a furious row after the Mail revealed it keeps it quiet when a force is put under an engage phase.

Victims Commissioner Dame Vera Baird said the secrecy surrounding failing forces was shocking, saying: To have so many forces in special measures, yet HMICFRS do not publish this is completely appalling. HMICFRS announced a U-turn yesterday, saying it would publish underperforming forces online.

Her Majestys Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services announced it would publish which forces are underperforming

Cleveland Police, which was the first to be designated as underperforming in 2019, doesnt appropriately prioritise crime prevention, misses opportunities to safeguard children and the senior leaders arent demonstrating ethical behaviour, according to inspectors.

Gloucestershire Constabulary is failing to record domestic abuse, behavioural crimes, and crimes linked to anti-social behaviour.

Greater Manchester Police is failing to respond appropriately to some people who are vulnerable and at risk. This means that it is missing some opportunities to safeguard victims and secure evidence at the scene, HMICFRS say.

Scotland Yard is the latest to be placed under special measures last week due to substantial and persistent concerns about several aspects of performance.

Until now the inspectorate had kept it quiet when a force was put under an engage phase

Others that entered the engage phase this year include Staffordshire and Wiltshire Police which both need to improve how staff identifies vulnerability.

Although inspectors publish their root-and-branch review of forces conducted every few years, it is the first time that a decision to move a force into special measures will be routinely published.

HMICFRS introduced the policy around five years ago that if a police force is not responding to a cause of concern, it should face advanced external monitoring and have to come up with an improvement plan.

The force may also receive support from external organisations such as the College of Policing or the National Police Chiefs Council, brokered by HMICFRS.

Yesterday a HMICFRS spokeswoman said: We will update our website and issue a statement to media if and when police forces and fire and rescue services are moved into and out of the Engage phase.
Councils will be barred from erasing historical street names if residents object under new legislation.

The Government will announce laws on Tuesday which seeks to prevent Labour and Liberal Democrat councils from unilaterally changing street names by giving residents the right to vote on changes.

Under the plans, the residents will be able to vote on proposed changes and if one-third of them object, the name will remain the same.

The plan will be a part of the forthcoming Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill which is currently at committee stage in the Commons.

The reports did not confirm whether a specific turnout would be needed to trigger the objection.

The Government will announce laws on Tuesday which seeks to prevent Labour and Liberal Democrat councils from unilaterally changing street names (file image)

The move is a response to London mayor Sadiq Khan's announcement that a 1million pot will be made available for London streets to change their historical names.

The democratisation of changes to local communities has been a driver behind the Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove's agenda.

He also has touted a so-called 'street votes' scheme to allow neighbours to collectively decide on changes to houses such as extra stories.

Mr Khan's wishes are already being put into action as roads such as Black Boy Lane in Haringey has already been changed to La Rose Lane - after poet John La Rose.

Sharon David, 55, who lives on the newly-named street, told the Daily Telegraph that 'changing a street name is not the answer' to dealing with racism.

London's Lambeth council recently held a consultation of renaming Tulse Hill which takes its name from the name of a 17th century slave-trading merchant.

After being criticised for the alleged plans, the council denied it would change the area's name.

The move is a response to London mayor Sadiq Khan's announcement that a 1million pot will be made available for London streets to change their historical names

The latest woke revisionism comes after a southern council faced a backlash over plans to tear down a 'racist relic' depicting a black child with a club and leaf skirt - after locals slammed a 'minority of loud voices constantly finding things to be outraged at'.

The sculpture is located on the side of a Grade II listed building named Blackboy House in Stroud, Gloucestershire, and strikes a bell on the hour.

Stroud District Council pledged to review the names of buildings, statues and streets 'that may be considered offensive' a day after the Edward Colston statue was toppled by Black Lives Matter protestors in nearby Bristol in June 2020.

A report into the history of the clock found it was likely to be one of only 20 surviving examples of its kind in the UK.

The democratisation of changes to local communities has been a driver behind the Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove's agenda

It was created by by John Miles in 1774 and has been in various locations of the town before being moved to its current site in 1844.

The council's report could not verify the boy was a depiction of a slave, but it said: 'Whatever the inspiration or its origins, it has to be remembered that, without a doubt, the boy's image came directly or indirectly through the influence of slavery and colonialism.'

A subsequent public opinion survey has found it causes 'pain and offence', with a local anti-racism campaign group long calling for the statue to be taken down.

Stroud District Council is now set to recommend it be removed and instead displayed in a museum following an eight-week consultation.

It comes despite local MP for Stroud, the Valleys and the Vale Sionhan Baillie stating her opposition to the idea in August, saying its removal 'will not end the scourge of racism'.

She added: 'I am also concerned that a certain minority of people with loud voices have an unquenchable desire to be constantly finding things to be outraged at.'
A 20-year-old survivor of a deadly voyage to the United States is speaking out about the brutal heat and deadly conditions she and nearly 100 other migrants faced before 53 were found dead inside a tractor-trailer outside of San Antonio, Texas.

Yenifer Yulisa Cardona Tomas, from Guatemala City, told the Associated Press on Monday that it was already hot on June 27 when she stepped out of a warehouse on the Texas side of the Mexico border where she had been waiting for the truck, and climbed into the back of the trailer.

The smugglers then confiscated her and the other migrants' cellphones, and covered the trailer's floor with what she believes was powdered chicken bouillon, apparently to throw off any dogs they might encounter at checkpoints. Sitting stuffed inside the stifling trailer with dozens of others, the powder stung her skin.

Remembering her friend's advice about staying near the door where it would be cooler, Cardona Tomas shared it with another friend she had made during the journey.

'I told a friend that we shouldn't go to the back and should stay near [the entrance], in the same place without moving,' said Cardona Tomas, who is being treated at Methodist Hospital Metropolitan in San Antonio. Her friend also managed to survive.

But as the truck moved through Texas, making additional stops to pick up more migrants, people began to cluster near the door like Cardona Tomas, and she lost track of time.

'The people were yelling, some cried. Mostly women were calling for it to stop and to open the doors because it was hot, that they couldnt breathe,' she said, still laboring a bit to speak after being intubated at the hospital.

She said the driver or someone else in the cab yelled back that 'we were about to arrive, that there were 20 minutes left, six minutes.

'People asked for water, some had run out, others carried some,' she said.

The truck would continue stopping occasionally, but just before she lost consciousness it was moving slowly. She woke up in the hospital.

Yenifer Yulisa Cardona Tomas, 20, of Guatemala City, survived a deadly trip to the United States after she decided to sit near the entrance to a tractor-trailer to stay cool

Cardona Tomas is now recovering at a hospital in San Antonio, Texas after being stuck inside a tractor-trailer carrying nearly 100 migrants to the United States

Mynor Cardona, Yenifer Yulisa Cardona Tomas' father, said he did not know his daughter would be traveling in a tractor-trailer

Her parents said they did not know she would be traveling in a tractor-trailer, and spent days worrying about their daughter's fate after they found out that the truck was found abandoned outside of San Antonio - and 53 people died of heat exhaustion.

'She told us it would be by foot,' her father, Mynor Cordon, said. 'It seems like at the last moment the smugglers decided to put [her] in the trailer, along with two more friends, who survived. One of them is still in critical condition.'

Cordon said Cardona Tomas did not have a job when she left for the United States and asked him if he would support her financially.

He said he knew of other cases of children who just left without telling their families and ended up disappearing or dying so he decided to back her, paying $4,000 for a smuggler - less than half the total cost - to take her to the U.S.

She left Guatemala on May 30, traveling in cars, buses and finally the semi-trailer in Texas.

Meanwhile, Cordon had stayed in touch with his daughter up until the morning of June 27. Her last message to him that Monday was at 10.28 am in Guatemala, or 11.28 am in Texas. 'Were going to go in an hour,' she wrote.

It was not until late that night that Cardona Tomas family learned of the abandoned trailer. It was two more days before relatives in the United States confirmed that she was alive and hospitalized.

'We cried so much,' Cordon said. 'I even was thinking where we were going to have the wake and bury her. She is a miracle.'

Mynor Cardona and Ufemia Tomas, parents of Yenifer Yulisa Cardona Tomas, smile as they talk with her through a call to the hospital where she is being treated

An unanswered message where a question is read 'have you left Mija?' is seen on the cell phone of Yenifer Yulisa Cardona Tomas' father, Mynor Cardona

The truck Cardona Tomas was traveling in with nearly 100 other migrants was found that morning abandoned outside of San Antonio, where 53 people were pronounced dead from heat exhaustion.

The dead included 27 from Mexico, 14 from Honduras, seven from Guatemala and two from El Salvador, said Francisco Garduno, chief of Mexico's National Immigration Institute.

Guatemalas Foreign Ministry also said that 20 Guatemalans died in the incident, 16 of whom have been positively identified. Foreign Minister Mario Bucaro said he hoped the first bodies would be repatriated this week.

Meanwhile, the driver, Homero Zamorano Jr., 45, was allegedly found 'very high on meth' and posing as one of the survivors after the tragedy that killed 53.

He was charged with one count of alien smuggling resulting in death, the Western District of Texas US Attorney's Office said, and could face the death penalty in Texas as a result.

Additionally, Christian Martinez, 28, was charged with conspiracy and allegedly communicated with Zamorano about transporting the migrants. He also faces the death penalty if convicted.

And alleged accomplices Juan Claudio D'Luna-Mendez, 23, and Juan Francisco D'Luna-Bilbao, 48, were both charged with possession of a weapon by an alien illegally in the US.

Martinez was arrested in East Texas and will be transported to San Antonio. Prosecutors say investigators found the other two men at a San Antonio address where the truck was registered.

The four men remained in custody as the investigation continued into the nation's deadliest smuggling episode on the US-Mexico border.

The driver, Homero Zamorano Jr., 45, is pictured smiling as he drives the tractor trailer loaded with immigrants through the US border

He reportedly posed as one of the victims, but was 'high on meth' before he was arrested

Christian Martinez, 28, is also accused of plotting the nation's deadliest human smuggling operation that claimed the lives of 53 migrants

Court documents revealed that Martinez told investigators how the truck driver was completely unaware that the air conditioning unit was not operating. Temperatures in the San Antonio area of Texas were in the 90s and 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Inside the truck, it's estimated temperatures would have been closer to 150F.

'The refrigerator tractor-trailer had no visible working air conditioning unit, and there was no sign of water inside,' San Antonio's fire chief Charles Hood said during a press conference.

'None of these people were able to extricate themselves out of the truck, so they were still in there, awaiting help, when we arrived ... meaning just being too weak -- weakened state - to actually get out and help themselves,' he explained.

All the while, the men were messaging back and forth and exchanging pictures, one of which included the 'truck load manifest'.

The pair were also discussing whether Zamorano should go to the 'same spot,' along with some GPS coordinates that were of a destination in Laredo, Texas.

The documents claim that after Zamorano texted him to confirm the meetup, Martinez sent him an address to an industrial area just three miles from Mexico.

When Zamorano doesn't reply, Martinez allegedly texts him repeatedly to find out his whereabouts.

'Where are you bro,?' Martinez texts at 1:14 p.m., according to the complaint.

By 3:18 p.m., the documents claim Martinez texted, 'Call me bro, Yes, Call me bro.'

Martinez's final text, at 6:17 p.m., allegedly read, 'WYA?,' meaning, where you at?

It was during that time that police said Zamorano abandoned 73 migrants in the truck by the roadside in San Antonio, leaving passersby to hear screaming inside the vehicle as they made the gruesome discovery.

'The floor of the trailer, it was completely covered in bodies,' San Antonio Police Chief William McManus later recounted to CNN.

'There were at least 10-plus bodies outside the trailer because when we arrived, when EMS arrived, we were trying to find people who were still alive.

'So we had to move bodies out of the trailer onto the ground.'

Emergency responder radio traffic posted to Broadcastify.com also revealed that one person on the scene requested help immediately, saying: 'I have too many bodies here.'

About 10 minutes later, another responder could be heard saying: 'We're going to need someone to process. Everyone on the scene, including my DI's are tied up with assisting.

'Got approximately 20-plus victims,' he said.

Dozens of people were found dead inside the tractor-trailer after it was found abandoned outside of San Antonio on June 27

Law enforcement is seen on the scene on June 27. They are now working to determine whether the truck had mechanical problems when it was abandoned

Cardona Tomas said the trucks destination that day was Houston, though she was ultimately headed to North Carolina.

The truck went through a Border Patrol checkpoint northeast of Laredo on Interstate 35 on Monday, US Rep. Henry Cuellar and Mexican officials confirmed. It was registered in Alamo, Texas, but had fake plates and logos, Garduno said.

Officials in Mexico also released a surveillance photo showing the driver smiling at the checkpoint during the more than two-hour trip to San Antonio.

And while it is not clear when or where the migrants boarded the truck bound for San Antonio, Homeland Security investigators believe it was on US soil, near or in Laredo, Texas, US Rep. Henry Cuellar said.

People visited and commemorated the victims of the deadly migrant voyage on June 29

Magdalena Tepaz and Maria Sipac Coj, mothers of 14-year-old Juan Wilmer Tulul Tepaz and 13 year-old Pascual Melvin Guachiac, cousins who died along with other migrants in San Antonio, Texas, U.S., hold pictures of their sons in a community house at the small village of Tzucubal, in Nahuala, Guatemala

Youngster Alfonso holds a picture of 13-year-old victim Pascual Melvin Guachiac

Some of the more than a dozen people transported to hospitals were found suffering from brain damage and internal bleeding, according to Ruben Minutti, the Mexico consul general in San Antonio.

Migrants typically pay $8,000 to $10,000 to be taken across the border, loaded into a tractor-trailer and driven to San Antonio, where they transfer to smaller vehicles for their final destinations across the United States, said Craig Larrabee, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Antonio.

The death count from Monday's tragedy in San Antonio was the highest ever from a smuggling attempt in the US, he said. Four years ago, 10 died in 2017 after being trapped inside a truck parked at a San Antonio Walmart. In 2003, the bodies of 19 migrants were found in a sweltering truck southeast of the city.

Temperatures in San Antonio on June 27 approached 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and those taken to the hospital were hot to the touch and dehydrated, authorities said.

It wouldn't have taken long for the temperature inside the truck to become deadly, said Jennifer Vanos, an assistant professor at Arizona State University who has researched child deaths in hot vehicles.

But with little information about the victims, desperate families from Mexico and Central America frantically sought word of their loved ones.

Felicitos Garcia, who owns a grocery store in the remote community of San Miguel Huautla in Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca, said the mother of Vasquez Guzman, who was hospitalized in Texas, had gone to the state capital to learn more about her son's condition and the whereabouts of his cousin, who is missing.

'Life is tough here,' Garcia said. 'People survive by growing their own crops like corn, beans and wheat. Sometimes the land gives and sometimes it doesn't when the rains arrive late. There is nothing in place for people to have other resources. People live one day to the next.'

Identifying the victims was painstaking because among the pitfalls were fake or stolen documents.

Mexico's foreign affairs secretary identified two people who were hospitalized in San Antonio. But it turned out one of the identification cards he shared on Twitter had been stolen last year in the southern state of Chiapas.

Haneydi Antonio Guzman, 23, was safe in a mountain community more than 1,300 miles away from San Antonio when she began receiving messages from family and friends anxious over her fate.

'That's me on the ID, but I am not the person that was in the trailer and they say is hospitalized,' Antonio Guzman said. 'My relatives were contacting me worried, asking where I was.'

The Honduran government on Wednesday named brothers Fernando Jose Redondo Caballero (left) and Alejandro Miguel Andino Caballero (right) among the deceased

Adela Betulia Ramirez Quezada, and Margie Tamara Paz Grajera, both of Honduras, were named among the deceased

Sisters Carla and Griselda Carac-Tambriz, of Guatemala, were among the 53 migrants left to die in an abandoned semi-truck trailer in the sweltering Texas heat

The tragedy occurred at a time when huge numbers of migrants have been coming to the US, many of them taking perilous risks to cross swift rivers and canals and scorching desert landscapes. Migrants were stopped nearly 240,000 times in May, up by one-third from a year ago.

Many say the migrants are driven by the lack of opportunities in their home countries in Central America, and a report released in May by the Honduran Council for Private Enterprise showed that 13.2 percent people between the ages of 15 and 29 were unemployed in the country in 2021. Figures for 2022 were not provided.

Karen Caballero even told Honduran television station HCH that her sons Fernando Redondo (19) and Alejandro Andino (22), and Andino's partner Margie Paz (20), died in the tractor-trailer because they were searching for a better life in the United States.

She said they left their hometown in the western city of Las Vegas for the United States on June 4 in search of a better life because companies back home overlooked them every time they applied for employment.

'We are suffering because when they left the house. We never, never imagined that something like this would happen. Never, never,' the mourning mother said.

According to Caballero, Andino was six courses away from graduating with a marketing degree, and Paz had a degree in economics.

'They were never able to find a job here in Honduras despite the fact that my son was always called by good companies, no one ever wanted to offer him a job because they always told him that they had no experience,' Caballero said.

'It is sad to see that young people who have prepared themselves with the sacrifice of their family never have the opportunity to stand out in a country as it is.'

'Let the young have opportunities. They deserve it. My son deserved it. My daughter-in-law deserved it. And nobody in any company gave them the opportunity,' Caballero said.

'They were dreaming as a couple because my son's first girlfriend is here  They had dreams, they had goals and they were not going to be fulfilled here.'
The Labour leader may have only a few hours notice before Durham Police reveal to the public whether or not he has been fined over Beergate.

Detectives are expected in the near future to announce the result of an investigation into allegations that Sir Keir Starmer and his colleagues broke lockdown rules. Sir Keir and his deputy Angela Rayner had a beer and a takeaway curry with Labour MP Mary Foy and party colleagues at Durham Miners Hall on April 30 last year  when indoor social gatherings were banned.

Those involved insist it was an election campaign work event but Sir Keir has promised to resign if he is given a fixed penalty notice for breaking the rules.

Lockdown drink: Sir Keir Starmer pictured in Durham last year

Durham Police have refused to reveal the date of the announcement, but according to one report the force will make a public statement just two or three hours after the Labour leader and party lawyers are informed of the decision.

Although officers will allow Sir Keir and his colleagues time to consider the findings, they are determined to make the high-profile decision public as soon as is reasonably possible.

The force launched an investigation into the alleged social gathering eight weeks ago following a string of revelations in the Daily Mail. Sir Keir stands accused of hypocrisy after criticising the Prime Minister over Downing Street law-breaking.
A Reddit user has blasted Melbourne Airport's international arrivals gate as the 'most uninspiring welcome' to the city.

Posting on the Melbourne subreddit, the user shared a photo of the arrival gate.

'The International Airport arrival gate is the most uninspiring welcome to Melbourne possible. Change my mind,' they wrote.

However, other Reddit users were quick to pile on and criticise the poster.

A Reddit user posted this photo of Melbourne Airport's international arrival's hall and dubbed it 'the most uninspiring welcome to the city possible'

One wrote: 'I've been in airports all around the world and have seen a lot worse. I'd call Melbourne's signage average.'

Another said: 'Yeah, not sure what OP expects. While not the most interesting or dynamic of airports, God knows I've been to a hell of a lot worse.'

While a third asked: 'I mean...what do you want? It's a sign, says where you are, easy on the eyes.

'Like do people expect a marching band or something to welcome people?'

Another said: 'It tells you the name of the city in large letters. Means you have arrived in the place you set off to arrive in.

'Pragmatic. Direct. Effective.'

A fifth added: 'Why does it have to be inspiring? You're there now. The airport is irrelevant once you've grabbed your bag.'

While a sixth said: 'Timeless, classic, unabashed in its simplicity. Not everyone needs pictures of bridges & kangaroos.'

However, others were more supportive of the original poster.

One said: 'Real 'IT IS YOUR BIRTHDAY' vibes.'

Another added: 'Yeah, after going overseas a fair bit, Tullamarine is a really boring airport.'

And another quipped: 'Looks like it's 1970.'

Several users criticised the poster's complaints - though others were quick to back them up

A fourth user commented: 'What do we do with all that parking money? Make a really big sign saying Melbourne.

'Excellent idea, let's all give each other a huge f***ing bonus as well.'

A fifth said: 'Melbourne's airport is probably one of the worst international airport's I've ever been to. '

While a sixth added: 'Omfg. it's hideous.'

Melbourne Airport has recently been in the headlines after photos showed huge queues.

Under-staffed check-in counters, delays at security points and an influx of passengers have all been blamed for the chaotic scenes.

Melbourne Airport is expecting 2.1 million passengers to pass through between June 27 and July 17 during the school holidays, which is 400,000 more than over Easter.
The Ukrainian flag has once again been hoisted on Snake Island in the Black Sea after Russian forces were forced to retreat from the strategic outpost last week.

The country's military announced yesterday that the flag would be raised on the craggy outcrop as soon as Ukrainian troops arrived.

After earlier confusion over whether or not the flag was up, a picture was released in the afternoon by Andriy Yermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, showing the raised flag on Snake Island.

An image released yesterday by Andriy Yermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, shows the Ukrainian national flag hoisted on Snake Island following Russia's withdrawal

The craggy outpost on the Black Sea had been the target of fierce fighting before Ukrainian forces successfully retook it last Friday

Some analysts have said Russia's withdrawal from Snake Island off Ukraine's southwestern coast could loosen its blockade on Ukrainian ports.

But a Kyiv-based foreign diplomat said it was still not enough to allow for safe transit of Ukrainian grain.

'There is a requirement for demining, and Russia still has capabilities (military vessels, costal defence systems and air superiority) that will allow them to interdict shipping lanes,' the diplomat said.

To unblock its ports so it can ship grain, Ukraine would need allied support and for Turkey to play a key role, the diplomat added.

Snake Island was captured by Russia in February and was the scene of a viral clip when a Ukrainian soldier told a Russian warship to 'go f*** yourself' when facing calls to surrender.

His outburst became a popular slogan of resistance.

Russia said it had pulled out from Snake Island on Thursday as a 'gesture of goodwill' to show it was not obstructing United Nations attempts to open a humanitarian corridor allowing grain to be shipped from Ukraine.

Ukraine said it had driven the Russian forces out after an artillery and missile assault.

Surveillance shows an aircraft flying past and dropping explosives on Snake Island on July 1 - the same day that Russian forces withdrew from the island

Russian forces were filmed withdrawing their personnel and equipment from Snake island on Friday

On Friday, a Russian military attack on a town named Serhiivka, near Odesa, was perceived by Ukrainian authorities as revenge for Russian troops being ousted from Snake Island a day earlier, The Guardian reports.

Two Russian missiles struck a multi-storey block of flats and a leisure centre, killing at least 21 people including two children.

Ivan Bakanov, the head of Ukraine's security service, the SBU, said: 'The occupiers cannot win on the battlefield, so they resort to vile killing of civilians.

'After the enemy was dislodged from Snake Island, [they] decided to respond with the cynical shelling of civilian targets.'
Has Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle been caught in a turf war between the Lords and Commons over access to Palace of Westminster terraces? After the issuing of an edict limiting which guests MPs can take into the Strangers' Bar, the Commons retaliated by barring members of the Lords from using the Commons terrace. Baroness Fox was one victim, denied access and told she had to be invited by an MP. Then a peckish Speaker Hoyle popped in to the River Room, a self-service cafeteria with access to the Lords terrace. Guido Fawkes reports that when he walked the short distance to the terrace he was asked to leave as he didn't have access privileges. While Sir Lindsay remains tight-lipped about the affair, isn't it surely a case of out of Order, Order?

Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle is pictured last month

The members' terraces of the houses of Lords and Commons are pictured along the Thames outside Parliament

Perpetually thirsty bottom nipper Chris Pincher's role as a whip necessitated regular audiences with the Queen, including the occasion in October 2019 when he went to Buckingham Palace to hand in his wand of office as Treasurer of the Household (a junior whip position). When arrangements were being made, the Palace was advised by a Whitehall mandarin: 'Hide the handsome footmen. He has a roving eye.'

Brewdog founder James Watt, determined to make his craft beer business a 1billion company in 2017, asked his assistant to electronically transfer an investment cheque for 'tens of millions' from his lawyer to his bank account. 'For some reason, there was a typo in the account numbers,' he recalls. 'The sort code sent it to a bank in St Petersburg. The money was lost for four days.' Is it any surprise that after retrieving the dosh James took himself off to an American wood for five days of intensive therapy?

Kate Winslet is as chuffed as a Brownie Gold award winner after holding her breath longer under water than any other of the cast or crew of James Cameron's blockbuster Avatar: The Way Of Water. 'Seven minutes and 14 seconds, baby,' yelps a delighted Kate, pictured. 'But the most amazing thing for me as a middle-aged woman was to learn something not just new, but superhuman!' Not superhuman enough to rescue a freezing Leonardo DiCaprio after the Titanic went down, Kate.

Kate Winslet attends the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards at L.A. LIVE on September 19, 2021 in Los Angeles, California

Martina Navratilova's forced Covid departure from the BBC Wimbledon coverage fails to trigger palpitations among producers. They still have more than two dozen pundits led by Sue Barker and John McEnroe. As well as an additional 15 commentators. Explains a spokesman: 'We provide the live commentary feed for the world's broadcasters of six to seven courts, which is the main reason for that total.' Adding: 'And Boris Becker hasn't been replaced.'

Glenda Jackson's mentor, the delightfully daft director Peter Brook, who has died, cast the then unknown actress as a French assassin in 1967's Marat/Sade, encouraging the cast in rehearsal to chase her pretending to be hounds or concentration camp guards to induce a breakdown. It didn't work: 'Let's just have a cup of tea instead,' Glenda told Peter.
Sydney's astonishing weekend of rain resulted in more precipitation since Friday than London experiences in 12 months.

Between Friday and Monday the Harbour City copped a biblical 733mm - as the latest rain bomb is designated natural disaster-status with life-threatening floods ravaging the capital.

That downpour dwarfs London's annual average of 615mm - one of Europe's wettest cities that sees 109 days of rainfall per year.

Sydney experienced 733mm of rain over the weekend - a total that would dwarf the annual rainfall for most cities around the world

London, generally regarded as one of Europe's wettest cities, averages 615mm of rain per year - well below Sydney's weekend figure

More wild weather is on the way, with the drenched city forecast to receive another 50mm on Tuesday on top of the 67.2mm in the previous 24 hours as hazardous surf conditions and massive swells lashed the coastline.

A severe weather warning of heavy rain and damaging winds of up to 90km/h remains in place for Sydney, the NSW Central Coast and Hunter regions, with Gosford, Cessnock, Maitland, Dungog and Kulnura all in the firing line.

Authorities have warned floodwaters will take up to a week to recede even after the rain eases on Tuesday night.

With Sydney set to push 800mm of rain across the last five days on Tuesday, it would make it one of the wettest cities in Europe over a 12-month span.

Scotland's Glasgow holds the crown for the region's most rain with more than 1,100mm per year. Cardiff experiences a similar level of saturation, with Met Office data from 2014 suggesting it may trump Glasgow.

Scotland's Glasgow sees more than 1,100mm of rainfall every year - making it Europe's wettest city

Mumbai is the wettest major city on earth experiencing 2,386mm of precipitation every year - but Sydney is set to smash that total in 2022

Andorra la Vella is second with an average above 900mm, with Brussels, Amsterdam and Istanbul rounding out the top six.

Sydney's last five days would see it close to those nations for annual totals, and on track to be one of the wettest major cities on earth.

So far the New South Wales capital has experienced almost 1,700mm to date - with six months still remaining in the calendar year.

It is on track to smash the average yearly rainfall of Mumbai (2,386mm), Singapore (2,378mm) and Manila (2,047mm) - regarded as the three megacities with the most precipitation.

It's been a busy 48 hours for SES crews. Pictured are crews rescuing horses from flooded paddocks at Berkshire Park in Sydney's north-west

The Central Coast and Newcastle are expected to receive between 50 to 100mm of rain on Tuesday, while Sydney will be hit with 15 to 20mm (pictured, a flooded car in Camden)

The Hawkesbury River at Windsor reached major flood levels for the third time within months and peaked at 14m on Tuesday morning, above the 13.8m level recorded in March.

Parts of the city's south received up to 200mm on Monday night which sparked evacuation orders in Woronora and Bonnet Bay.

Damaging winds of up to 90km/h and three-hourly rainfall totals of up to 65mm were forecast for the Hunter district on Tuesday.

'The damaging winds may lead to debris on roads and provide the risk for trees toppling in softer and very saturated soils,' the Bureau of Meteorology warned.

'Rainfall will further contribute to flooding already being experienced and maintains the potential for landslides'

Sydney saw widespread falls of at least 50mm on Monday night while some areas towards the Illawarra region got a whopping 200mm.

Parts of Sydney's south received up to 200mm on Monday night. Pictured is Woronora underwater

SES crews from Randwick were deployed to Lansvale on Monday night to help evacuate residents from flooded streets

'We still do have a severe weather warning for heavy rain fall that covers Sydney's Eastern Suburbs and up the Central Coast and toward the Hunter and that will very much be the focus of rain today,' Bureau of Meteorology's Jonathan How told the Today show on Tuesday.

'We're seeing heavy showers push through eastern parts of Sydney right now with even heavier falls up into the lower Hunter, so there is still 20 to 50mm to come.'

The relenting rain is expected to ease in the coming days.

'We are reminding people that these floodwaters will remain very high, well after the rain has stopped,' Mr How warned.

'It will take days, if not a week, to start to see these floodwaters recede. So the danger isn't over, even after the rain has stopped.

The NSW SES has been inundated with more than 500 requests for help in the space of 12 hours, including 100 flood rescues.

Almost 100 evacuation orders remain current while 60 evacuation warnings covering about 45,000 people are currently in place.
Victoria's pandemic declaration has been extended for another three months as the state passes 4,000 Covid-19 deaths.

The declaration was due to expire before before midnight on July 12 but has now been extended until at least October 12.

In a statement on Tuesday, Premier Daniel Andrews said he was satisfied there continued to be a serious risk to public health throughout the state.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews wears a mask during a visit to the Monash Respiratory Clinic in Melbourne

He said this justified ongoing public health measures to reduce the risk of transmission and hospitalisation.

The full reasons for the extension as well as the advice of Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas and the acting chief health officer will be table in state parliament.

The premier wants Ms Thomas and Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton to provide further advice by the end of winter on whether Covid-19 still poses a 'serious risk' to public health.

Victoria recorded 8,740 Covid-19 cases and 16 deaths on Tuesday, taking the state's death toll since the start of the pandemic past 4,000.

Earlier Mr Andrews declared there is a 'strong case' for health workers to be offered fourth Covid vaccine doses.

Vaccine advisory body ATAGI will meet on Wednesday to discuss letting all Australians get a fourth jab which is currently only available to over 65s and younger people with health conditions.

In a press conference in Melbourne on Tuesday, Mr Andrews said he was in favour of fourth doses for nurses, doctors and other workers in health settings.

In Victoria, health workers and some others such as aged care workers are required to have three jabs to keep their jobs. Mr Andrews did not say if the mandate would be extended to fourth jabs.

Mr Andrews said nurses (pictured) are under pressure as Covid spreads during winter

'I would just make the point that the pressure in our health system at the moment is acute,' Mr Andrews told reporters.

'ATAGI will wrestle with all of these issues and come up with the very best answer.

'The point I'm making is the pressure is acute now, and for health workers I think there is a strong case; at least that's what I'm told from those who are on the wards in the hospitals.'

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard is also pushing for vaccine advisory body ATAGI to approve fourth doses for the general population.

'I actually raised the issue at the health ministers' meeting last Thursday and Friday... my view is we need to broaden it and we need to move quickly,' he said.

'Let's get a fourth dose if we can do it.'

However, some leading experts are warning that fourth Covid-19 doses may not help.

Existing vaccines don't work as well at stopping infection from the two subvariants of the Omicron strain - known as BA.4 and BA.5 - that are becoming dominant in Australia.

The strains - identified early this year in South Africa - are more transmissible than the original Omicron strain but have not caused more deaths or severe illness.

All Australians could soon be eligible for a fourth Covid vaccine and some states could bring back masks as the nation suffers a winter wave of the virus. Pictured: Mr Andrews

Writing in The Conversation on Monday, University of South Australia Professor of Epidemiology Adrian Esterman said existing vaccines are 'unlikely' to protect against infection.

'Although current vaccines based on the Wuhan strain will still provide some protection against serious illness and death against BA.4/5, they are unlikely to provide much, if any, protection against infection or symptomatic disease,' he said.

Professor Esterman said Moderna's second-generation vaccine, which is currently in trials, would be much better against the latest subvariants.

Health Minister Mark Butler said just last month there was no evidence a fourth dose of existing vaccines would actually help.

'The benefits of the vaccine for younger people do not warrant the decision that they have a fourth dose made available to them,' he told reporters in Canberra on June 23.

'There's a general acceptance that there's no evidence right now that the fourth dose is particularly called for for younger people who don't have compromised immunity.'

Pictured: A 3D mock-up of the BA.4 variant of the Omicron strain of Covid-19

DOCTOR PUSHES FOR COVID MASK MANDATE Prominent Sydney doctor Kerryn Phelps has called for two major Covid measures to be re-introduced to stop the spread of the virus. Dr Phelps told Radio 2GB on Tuesday that mask mandates should be reintroduced and isolation periods should be extended back to 10-14 days. The isolation period for a Covid patient in NSW is currently seven days. Advertisement

Meanwhile, Queensland considered 'urging' people to wear masks - as Covid hospitalisations hit their highest levels since February - and the ACT has not ruled out a dreaded mask mandate.

Sydney GP and former federal MP Dr Kerryn Phelps said simply encouraging masks was not enough.

'This is about community spirit and protecting other people,' she told 2GB.

'The mandate is being discussed because strongly recommending people isn't working.'

Vaccine rollout data shows Australians are less willing to get third and fourth jabs now that lockdowns are over and jab mandates have been largely removed.

More than 95 per cent have had at least one dose but 70.5 per cent of Aussies have had a third jab.

The figure is even less for fourth jabs which have been taken up by only 58.7 per cent of Aussies over 65.

Experts are warning of a winter wave as people spend more time indoors in close proximity during cold and wet weather.

There were 26 deaths from Covid recorded on Monday, as the national total death toll passed 10,000 earlier this month.

Hospitalisations have also reached 3,511 across the country, the highest levels since February during the height of the Omicron wave.

Nearly 30,000 infections were reported nationally on Monday alone, with experts warning case numbers will climb even further as winter progresses.

Some states and territories are weighing up whether to reintroduce mask mandates, as Covid-19 cases spiral across the country.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said talks were ongoing on whether mask rules would return in some settings in the Sunshine State.

Some states are considering encouraging mask-wearing again. Pictured: Sydney commuters

'We are not doing a mask mandate, but there are discussions happening about urging people in certain situations to wear masks,' she said.

'If anything changes, we will let the public know.'

Meanwhile, ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said a mask mandate was not being ruled out as a suggestion.

However, she indicated that other options were being considered.

'There is a view that mandatory mask requirements might not be as effective as they have been in the past, partly because those people who are willing to wear masks are already doing so,' she said.

'Some of those settings where we're seeing transmission you wouldn't be required to wear a mask anyway, so all of those things needs to be balanced as we move through this winter period.'

Victoria's Health Minister Lily D'Ambrosio on Saturday said she was not considering mask mandates. The NSW government has stayed quiet on the issue.

Despite the rise in cases, border restrictions that were brought in as a result of the pandemic will be enforced for their last day on Tuesday.

Changes to the Biosecurity Act will come into effect on Wednesday, with international arrivals no longer needing to declare their vaccination status to enter the country.

The decision was welcomed by Australian Federation of Travel Agents chief executive Dean Long, who said the move was a critical step for the industry.

'Removing these last requirements will help reduce delays in airports and make it easier for Australians coming back home,' he said.

'With school holidays underway or about to kick off in many states and territories, and a rapidly growing number of Australians keen to escape the Australian winter, the pressure on our airports and airport staff is huge.'
Special Google July 4 celebratory graphics showing exploding fireworks ended up appearing atop grim news stories about Monday's grim Chicago massacre.

The animated pyrotechnics and a Stars-and-Stripes flag were created to sit atop homepage searches Monday.

But the well-meaning gesture took a dark turn when the cheery explosions ended up appearing on top of stories about the Highland Park shooting in Chicago, which saw six people killed.

The search engine typically marks celebrations and special days with special logos for its 'Google Doodle', with bespoke graphics and animation. America's birthday would normally be no exception.

Google's 'Fourth of July' tribute page went horribly wrong as news of the mass shooting in Highland Park began filtering on through

This year's Fourth of July artwork was particularly upbeat with the Google logo wearing a chef's hat, flipping a burger high into the air and licking a lollipop

The upbeat, colorful and celebratory artwork made news of the Chicago massacre all the more jarring on its search page

This year's Fourth of July artwork was particularly upbeat with the Google logo wearing a chef's hat and flipping a burger high into the air.

Each 'o' wore an Uncle Sam hat, dancing with sparklers.

A 'g' stood on top of a box sings into a microphone while the 'l' flies the American flag.

The final 'e' was seen to be licking a red, white and blue ice lollipop.

The Doodle essentially reminds Americans of the simple delights in life and made news of the massacre all the more jarring.

Those visiting the news page were treated to an animated display of red, white and blue flags and fireworks including images of the American flag. The page was later corrected with all the celebratory animation removed

Bobby Crimo aka Awake the Rapper, 22, is suspected of killing six people during a July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois, in the outskirts of Chicago

A gunman on a rooftop opened fire on an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago, killing at least six people, wounding at least 30 and sending hundreds of marchers, parents with strollers and children on bicycles fleeing in terror.

Authorities said a man named as Robert 'Bobby' Crimo III, 22, was taken into police custody on Monday evening after an hourslong manhunt in and around Highland Park, an affluent community of about 30,000 on Chicago's north shore.

The shooting occurred at a spot on the parade route where many residents had staked out prime viewing points early in the day for the annual celebration.

Dozens of fired bullets sent hundreds of parade-goers - some visibly bloodied - fleeing.

The July 4 shooting was just the latest to shatter the rituals of American life.

Schools, churches, grocery stores and now community parades have all become killing grounds in recent months.

This time, the bloodshed came as the nation tried to find cause to celebrate its founding and the bonds that still hold it together.

Law enforcement search after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade in downtown Highland Park

A woman wipes tears after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, a Chicago suburb
An elderly woman on a mobility scooter has been robbed at her home by a group of teenage boys in Melbourne.

Victoria police claim the a group of 'six to eight' boys stole a $100 note from the woman and her purse.

The 87-year-old was at her Langwarrin home last Wednesday when the group of teenagers approached her residence around 10:30am.

An 87-year-old woman who uses a mobility scooter was robbed at her home by a group of teenage boys last Wednesday in Melbourne. (pictured, stock image)

The boys asked her for money to get breakfast after she opened the front door.

She proceeded to take out her purse to give them a 'small amount of cash' before one boy reportedly snatched her purse and a $100 note she was holding.

The woman wrestled with the boy over the purse before he pulled it out of her hands.

Police said: 'One of the boys then grabbed the womans purse and a $100 note and struggled with the victim as she tried to retrieve her belongings.'

The group then fled the scene.

The woman was left 'shaken' by the encounter and reported the matter to police on the weekend.

The group of teenagers stole the woman's purse and a $100 note before fleeing near the intersection of Southgateway and Hornsby Drive in Langwarrin (pictured)

The woman reported the matter over the weekend. Police are now investigating (pictured, stock image)

Frankston Crime Investigation Unit detectives are investigating.

The robbery took place near the intersection of Southgateway and Hornsby Drive in Langwarrin.

Police held a press conference on Tuesday appealing for information that could lead to identifying the teenage boys involved.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or make a report at crimestoppersvic.com.au.
Shocked bystanders have recalled the horrifying scenes on Melbourne's West Gate Bridge after a speeding driver ploughed into a St Vincent's charity truck, sparking traffic chaos and leaving four people injured.

Two men are in hospital - including one fighting for life - after the Ford Falcon XR6 sedan and truck collided on the West Gate Bridge near Williamstown Road about 10.35am on Tuesday.

Police said the car's driver, 21, was in a stable condition while his passenger is critical. Another man in his 20s and a man believed to be in his 50s sustained minor injuries.

Motorists stuck in gridlock traffic after four lanes were closed phoned into radio stations to describe the carnage unfolding before them.

Witnesses reported seeing a silver Ford 'driving like a madman' just before the serious crash which left bodies 'sprawled across the road'.

Meanwhile, footage posted online shows paramedics working to treat the victims as distressed witnesses gathered around speak to police.

Four people have been injured and one was thrown from their car after a horror crash on a major Melbourne highway involving a Vinnies truck and a sedan

Witnesses have recalled the horror that unfolded on the bridge after a 'madman' speeding in a sedan collided with a truck

One motorist told 3AW he was travelling outbound when a silver car sped past him 'like a bullet'.

'It was like watching a video game,' the caller, Harry, said.

'He was driving like a madman.

'I thought to myself, he wont make it to the other side of the bridge.'

Harry said the same car was involved in the crash with the Vinnies truck.

Fred said he saw the crash site as he crossed the Westgate heading towards the city.

'All the lanes are blocked. I don't think anyone is getting through,' he said.

'There is a Ford that looks like it has been t-boned and knocked around. It is actually facing the wrong direction.

'There are three or four people lying in one of the lanes being attended by drivers who have stopped or were driving in front of them.'

A Vinnies truck laid on its side blocking multiple lanes of traffic on Melbourne's West Gate Bridge

Traffic was banked up for several kilometres in the wake of the crash, above

Fred said members of the public appeared to have rushed to their aid because emergency vehicles were struggling to get to the scene.

'The ambulance and the police just can't get through because the roads are entirely blocked,' he told the program.

One woman who arrived at the scene just moments after the crash told Daily Mail Australia she saw paramedics working on one injured person on the ground.

'There were about fifty cars from police, ambulance and firefighters,' she said.

The truck rolled onto its side and is blocking four lanes of traffic outbound from the city's CBD.

Helicopter footage appeared to show at least three men being taken away in handcuffs after the collision.

Police were seen handcuffing several men on the bridge after the crash

'Three other males aged in their 20s who were in the car were arrested at the scene after the vehicle was suspected of being stolen as it was displaying false registration plates,' Victoria Police said.

'They have since been released pending further enquiries.'

The three other passengers who were in the car were assessed by paramedics.

The driver and passenger of the truck were uninjured in the accident.

The Department of Transport has advised motorists to avoid the area and use Geelong Road to get to the M80 Ring Road interchange instead of the West Gate Freeway.

Department spokesman Chris Millar said he expected the closures to last for 'at least a couple of hours'.

'[The lanes] will only be open once the mess is clear and investigations complete,' Millar said.

The exact circumstances surrounding the collision are yet to be determined and the investigation remains ongoing.

Police are urging any witnesses or anyone with dashcam footage that may have been in the area at the time of the collision to come forward.
Travelers flying home from Fourth of July getaways faced more flight delays throughout the day on Monday as US airports continue to buckle under the strain of post-COVID travel rebound.

At least 251 flights within or out of the US had been canceled as of 11 p.m. on Monday, while 3,233 other domestic trips have been delayed, according to travel site FlightAware.

Those figures were slightly lower than in recent days, when well over 500 flights have been canceled and up to 8,000 delayed.

But that will bring little comfort to the thousands whose trips were canceled by the ongoing chaos, which has been blamed on staffing shortages caused by the sudden rebound in demand for travel as Americans shrug-off COVID.

Nearly 60 flights have so-far been canceled for Tuesday.

Since holiday weekend travel picked up last Thursday, airlines have canceled more than 2,200 U.S. flights, and another 25,000 have been delayed.

Travelers flying home from July Fourth getaways faced flight delays Monday, but airlines were canceling fewer flights than in the days leading up to the holiday weekend. Pictured: Travelers pack JFK International Airport in New York

At least 251 flights within or out of the US had been canceled as of 11 p.m. on Monday, while 3,233 other domestic trips were delayed

Since holiday weekend travel picked up last Thursday, airlines have canceled more than 2,200 U.S. flights, and another 25,000 have been delayed

NEW YORK: A delayed passenger passes the time on his laptop at JFK Airport on Monday

Frustrated passengers posted angry tweets and photos that showed packed airports, long lines and luggage that had piled up unclaimed due to delayed and canceled flights.

Some took to Twitter to blast the airlines.

One parent slammed American Airlines for stranding their daughter.

'@AmericanAirlines the fact that you cancelled the flight my daughter is was booked on this evening, rebook her for a flight that doesnt take off until 9am tomorrow and not make sure this newly 18 year girl can get in a hotel room for the night is beyond me.' they wrote.

Another Twitter user lamented about being stranded after their flight was canceled.

'i sat in the airport and they cancelled my flight at 9pm after 5 hours of delays. i am officially stranded.'

More than 9 million flyers flocked to U.S. airports between Thursday and Sunday, peaking at 2.49 million, a pandemic-era record, on Friday, according to figures from the Transportation Security Administration.

By late Monday afternoon on the East Coast, more than 2,200 U.S. flights had been delayed and more than 200 canceled, according to FlightAware.

The good news: Those numbers were down sharply from recent days.

NEW YORK: Small lines formed at JFK on July 4 - although the crowds will likely be larger on Tuesday as people who went away for the long weekend head back home

Travelers wait in line to check in for American flights at JFK on Monday - one of the airlines worst-hit by recent delays and cancelations

Flying during the peak vacation season has always been challenging. Big crowds and summer thunderstorms can quickly overwhelm an airline's operations. That has been compounded this summer by shortages of pilots and other workers.

'It's not just in North America, it's everywhere,' said John Grant, an analyst for OAG, a travel-date provider based in the United Kingdom. 'It's a combination of available resources and demand picking up much more quickly than anyone anticipated.'

Grant said labor shortages in Europe and North America have affected airlines, their suppliers including caterers and aircraft fuelers, airports and air traffic controllers. He sees no reason to think the situation will improve anytime this summer.

ATLANTA: Passengers crowd the baggage claim as they await their luggage amid thousands of flight delays and cancelations during the holiday weekend

Airports across the nation, including Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International airport (pictured), were packed with travelers over the Fourth of July weekend

Crowds packed into the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International airport on July 4 amid flight delays and cancelations

Some took to Twitter to blast the airlines. One parent slammed American Airlines for stranding their daughter

Another Twitter user lamented about being stranded after their flight was canceled

In the U.S., the rate of cancellations over the last two weeks is up 59% from the same period in 2019, before the pandemic, likely due to a combination of weather, staffing shortages and air-traffic issues.

However, the rate of delayed flights is only slightly worse than it was in the last summer before the pandemic - 19.7% then, 21.5% now, according to FlightAware numbers.

While some of the disruption was due to bad weather, especially along the East Coast for part of the weekend, airlines also made unforced errors.

CHARLOTTE: A line of passengers waits to go through security at Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina on July 2

American Airlines accidentally dropped pilot assignments for thousands of flights in July because of a glitch in its scheduling program. A spokesman for the airline said Monday that the problem had been fixed and crew assignments had been restored for 'the vast majority' of flights. He said the issue had no effect on July Fourth travel.

Ed Sicher, the new president of the union representing American's pilots, said the airline had disregarded their contract by unilaterally reassigning pilots to about 80% of the affected flights.

Sicher said the union and airline are negotiating extra pay for pilots who had trips dropped, then restored during 'this debacle.'

Adding to the mayhem this weekend was a computer glitch in American Airlines' staffing systems that allowed pilots to take time off they shouldn't have been offered, leaving 12,000 planes without anyone to fly them between July 3 and the end of the month.

The ongoing fallout of staffing shortages following the mass retirement of thousands of pilots during the pandemic has also reared its head over the packed holiday weekend, with airlines scrambling to staff flights while being accused of scheduling more than they can accommodate.

Additionally, a series of severe thunderstorms rocked the east coast and Midwest on Saturday, compounding the chaos in the skies and on the tarmac.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who previously called on airlines to get in shape before the weekend, appeared to give up on getting things under control Saturday as he told Americans to follow his lead and claim compensation over the canceled flights.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (left) demanded Washington fine airlines $55,000 per passenger for every flight cancelation they know can't be fully staffed and slammed Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (right) for failing to fix the travel chaos

'Airlines offer miles as compensation for some travel issues, and you can often negotiate on this,' tweeted Buttigieg, who said he got back $112.07 over his cancelled flight on Friday after he was initially offered about $30 back.

'Sometimes an airline will offer you points or miles as compensation, but you are entitled to a cash refund when your flight is canceled.'

Buttigieg said earlier this month that airlines had until July 4 to figure out the issues and work out the kinks so travelers can have a smooth summer holiday.

Many are calling on Buttigieg to act rather than give out advice on how to get compensation like he did.

One Twitter user, with the handle, @The Dude, wrote: 'Hey Pete  maybe, as Secretary of Transportation, you should be meeting with FAA, major airlines and other key folk involved - slamming your fist on the table and demanding they work out these issues and a plan to address the problems  not update us on frequent flyer miles.'

Another Twitter user with the handle, @Limstone Caulk, added: 'How about, people just want to go somewhere when they actually paid to go?'

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna of California both called for Buttigieg to take action well ahead of the holiday weekend, according to letters they sent out last week

While Buttigieg was only able to finagle $112 out of his flight cancelation, eight passengers on a Delta airlines flight to Minneapolis last week reportedly walked away with $10,000 each in return for giving up their seats on the overbooked flight.

Inc. magazine Tech columnist Jason Aten wrote how he and his family were sitting onboard the aircraft before takeoff, when flight crew announced the offer over the intercom.

'If you have Apple Pay, you'll even have the money right now,' he said a flight attendant told passengers.

Another passenger on the same flight, Todd McCrumb, told KTVB that staff initially offered passengers $5,000, before bumping it up to $10,000.

Speaking to The New York Post, a spokesperson for Delta Airlines declined to comment on the amount passengers were offered on that flight, but confirmed that flight crews were authorized to offer cash to passengers.

'Compensation is one of the many ways that our employees are empowered to manage oversold flights to take care of customers, but also make sure that the aircraft go out on time,' said spokesperson, Anthony Black.

In April 2017, after a passenger was injured while being forcibly removed from an overbooked flight, Delta authorized employees to offer up to $9,950 to passengers for giving up overbooked seats, according to The Post.

Travelers in Miami wait to board their flight to Missouri on July 2. More than 1,400 flights have been canceled during the holiday weekend across the U.S., according to FlightAware, which reported at least 654 flights canceled on Saturday, and 312 canceled Sunday

Travelers arrive an air train at Newark Liberty Airport on Sunday. Another 88 have so-far been canceled for Monday - although that number will likely rise exponentially as July 4 travel commences, affecting thousands of Americans returning from a long weekend away

Sen. Bernie Sanders demanded Washington fine airlines $55,000 per passenger for every flight cancelation they know can't be fully staffed. He also demanded that the DOT impose a $15,000 fine for every passenger facing extended delays on domestic and international flights.

'The American people are sick of airlines ripping them off, canceling flights at the last minute and delaying flights for hours on end,' he said.

'Given all of the generous taxpayer support that has been provided to the airline industry, all of us have a responsibility to make sure that passengers and crew members are treated with respect, not contempt.'

Sens. Edward Markey, of Massachusetts, and Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, asked 10 airline CEOs this week to 'take immediate action' to reduce travel disruptions. The senators demanded information about how each airline decides which flights to cancel and the number of consumer refunds requested and granted.
This blog covers software patent news and issues with a particular focus on wireless, mobile devices (smartphones, tablet computers, connected cars) as well as select antitrust matters surrounding those devices.
Audio recordings of the architect of the Holocaust boasting about his actions have been made public for the first time, 60 years after his execution for crimes against humanity.

Adolf Eichmann recorded 70 hours of interviews in Argentina, having fled to Buenos Aires after the war. The audio has remained under lock and key and is only being broadcast now thanks to the dogged efforts of a team of Israeli documentary makers.

They were given 15 hours of surviving recordings - the interviewer taped over much of the rest - in which Eichmann, who went to the gallows denying his crimes, admits to his role in what he infamously dubbed his 'Final Solution.'

'If we had killed 10.3 million Jews, I would say with satisfaction, 'Good, we destroyed an enemy,'' Eichmann says.

'Then we would have fulfilled our mission.'

Adolf Eichmann is described as the mastermind behind the Holocaust. He fled to Argentina after the war, and in 1957 recorded a series of interviews about his role in Nazi Germany. The tapes are only being made public now, thanks to two Israeli documentary makers

In another clip, the Nazi officer states: 'Jews who are fit to work should be sent to work. Jews who are not fit to work must be sent to the Final Solution, period.'

He said that he 'did not care' whether those sent to Auschwitz lived or died.

The audio recordings form part of the $3 million documentary The Devil's Confession, which has gripped Israeli TV viewers.

Many of those watching are relatives of the six million Jews estimated to have been exterminated during the Eichmann-created Holocaust, which killed 11 million in total.

The sheer depth of Eichman's anti-Semitism was further revealed by a throwaway remark about an insect in the room while he was recording the tapes.

At one point, Eichmann can be heard swatting a fly that was buzzing around the room and describing it as having 'a Jewish nature.'

After World War Two, Eichmann managed to flee to Argentina, where he was captured by agents from Israel's Mossad secret service agency in May 1960.

He was subsequently flown back to Israel and put on trial in Jerusalem the following year, before being convicted and hanged in 1962.

During those hearings, Eichmann was filmed claiming he was only a low-ranking functionary, but in the interviews he is open about his scheme.

'It's a difficult thing that I am telling you and I know I will be judged for it,' he admits.

'But I cannot tell you otherwise. It's the truth. Why should I deny it?

'Nothing annoys me more than a person who later denies the things he has done.'

Eichmann is seen in December 1961, during his trial in Jerusalem. He was found guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes and murder and hanged the following year

Eichmann is pictured during his trial in Israel in 1961

Eichmann was convicted on all 15 counts, and hanged months later

The interviews were carried out in 1957 by a Dutch Nazi sympathizer and propagandist, Willem Sassen - who in later life did PR for Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator, and Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner.

Sassen, after Eichmann's capture, sold part of the transcript to Life magazine, but critics said it was highly sanitized.

The court in Jerusalem had access to 700 pages of transcript, with corrections made by Eichmann's own hand, but Eichmann claimed that the transcripts distorted his words and the Supreme Court of Israel did not accept them as evidence

During the trial, Eichmann taunted the chief prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, to produce the original tapes, knowing they were protected by Nazi sympathizers.

Hausner was offered the tapes for $20,000 - a huge sum at the time - and considered purchasing them, but the seller insisted they not be brought to Israel until after the trial had concluded.

The original tapes had been sold to a publishing house in Europe, and eventually bought by an anonymous firm which handed them over to the German federal archives in Koblenz, with instructions that they should be used only for academic research.

Kobi Sitt, a grandson of Holocaust survivors and the producer of the new documentary, made a movie for Israeli television about Hausner 20 years ago, and has wanted to access the Eichmann tapes ever since.

Kobi Sitt (left) spent 20 years trying to access the Eichmann tapes. He brought on director Yariv Mozer to work on the resulting documentary

Finally the German archives agreed, believing, he said, that they would be treated respectfully.

'I'm not afraid of the memory, I'm afraid of the forgetfulness,' said Sitt.

He said he wanted 'to provide a tool to breathe life into the memory' as the generation of survivors dies out.

Yariv Mozer, who Sitt brought on to direct, said their 108-minute film documentary, and their three-episode, 180 minute television series, were vital historic records

'This is proof against Holocaust deniers and a way to see the true face of Eichmann,' Mozer told The New York Times.

'With all modesty, through the series, the young generations will get to know the trial and the ideology behind the Final Solution.'
Dr Kerry Chant has urged NSW residents to wear masks when they can't socially distance even though it's not mandatory.

The Chief Health Officer said residents should be considerate and wear a mask when they enter a shop or a crowded indoor public space.

She made the comments in a press conference in Sydney on Tuesday as health officials brace for a winter wave of Covid-19 with two more-infectious sub-strains of the Omicron variant on the loose.

'We have to create an enabled environment to say that actually wearing a mask is an okay thing to do,' Dr Chant said.

Dr Kerry Chant has urged NSW residents to wear masks when they can't socially distance even though it's not mandatory

Currently masks are only mandatory on public transport in NSW but the rule is loosely followed and barely enforced.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said he does not plan to extend mask mandates because he wants life to be as normal as possible.

'I do look back at the lockdown phase with concern that we had to go down that path,' he said.

'I would certainly not want to be seeing mandatory orders again in place for a whole range of reasons. I think that if you look at the mental health issues.'

He said residents should take 'personal responsibility' for protecting themselves from getting sick.

'Go back to the basic messages. Wear a mask if you can't socially distance, definitely wash your hands, wash your hands as much as you possibly can, and stay home if you're sick,' he said.

The two subvariants of the Omicron strain - known as BA.4 and BA.5 - are becoming dominant in Australia.

The strains - identified early this year in South Africa - are more transmissible than the original Omicron strain but have not caused more deaths or severe illness.

Mr Hazzard said: 'What we're seeing at the moment is BA.4 and BA.5 are increasing in the proportion of people who are getting Covid.

'And they're having an effect which is concerning maybe similar to what we saw in January this year, when we had more than 6,000 staff furloughed out of our hospital system.'

The Chief Health Officer said residents (pictured) should be considerate and wear a mask when they enter a shop or a crowded indoor public space

Mr Hazzard urged the 30 per cent people who have not had a booster to get it and described those turning it down as 'crazy'.

He is also pushing for vaccine advisory body ATAGI to approve fourth doses for the general population when it meets on Wednesday.

'I actually raised the issue at the health ministers' meeting last Thursday and Friday... my view is we need to broaden it and we need to move quickly,' he said.

'Let's get a fourth dose if we can do it.'

However, leading experts are not convinced further doses of existing vaccines will help stop infections.

Writing in The Conversation on Monday, University of South Australia Professor of Epidemiology Adrian Esterman said existing vaccines are 'unlikely' to protect against infection with the new strains.

'Although current vaccines based on the Wuhan strain will still provide some protection against serious illness and death against BA.4/5, they are unlikely to provide much, if any, protection against infection or symptomatic disease,' he said.

Professor Esterman said Moderna's second-generation vaccine, which is currently in trials, would be much better against the latest subvariants.

Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said just last month there was no evidence a fourth dose of existing vaccines would help.

'The benefits of the vaccine for younger people do not warrant the decision that they have a fourth dose made available to them,' he told reporters in Canberra on June 23.

'There's a general acceptance that there's no evidence right now that the fourth dose is particularly called for for younger people who don't have compromised immunity.'

Vaccine rollout data shows Australians are less willing to get third and fourth jabs now that lockdowns are over and jab mandates have been largely removed.

More than 95 per cent have had at least one dose but 70.5 per cent of Aussies have had a third jab.

Pictured: A 3D mock-up of the BA.4 variant of the Omicron strain of Covid-19

The figure is even less for fourth jabs which have been taken up by only 58.7 per cent of Aussies over 65.

Experts are warning of a winter wave as people spend more time indoors in close proximity during cold and wet weather.

There were 26 deaths from Covid recorded on Monday, as the national total death toll passed 10,000 earlier this month.

Hospitalisations have also reached 3,511 across the country, the highest levels since February during the height of the Omicron wave.

Nearly 30,000 infections were reported nationally on Monday alone, with experts warning case numbers will climb even further as winter progresses.

Some states and territories are weighing up whether to reintroduce mask mandates, as Covid-19 cases spiral across the country.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said talks were ongoing on whether mask rules would return in some settings in the Sunshine State.
Machines capable of producing more than 100kg of methamphetamine in a single 'cook' are being imported into Australia.

The machines, known as decarboxylation reactors, are from China and can reportedly be purchased for around $30,000.

Five people were arrested last week by detectives from Victoria Police's Clandestine Laboratory squad, after one of these reactors was found inside a property in Tyabb, on the Mornington Peninsula.

Five people were arrested last week by detectives from Victoria Police's Clandestine Laboratory squad, after a decarboxylation reactor was located inside a property in Tyabb, on the Mornington Peninsula (pictured, stock image of a decarboxylation reactor)

Officers executed raids at two properties in Tyabb and other suburbs including Wheelers Hill, Ferny Creek, Hillside, Ardeer, Clayton and Sunshine West.

A 25-year-old Tyabb man, a 30-year-old Ardeer man and a 31-year-old Hillside man have all been charged with trafficking a large commercial quantity methylamphetamine and possessing articles to manufacture the drug.

A 41-year-old Wheelers Hill man was charged with same offences plus an attempt to traffick a large commercial quantity of 1,4-Butanediol, commonly known as BD.

All four have been remanded to appear at Melbourne Magistrates Court on 2 November.

A 66-year-old Ferny Creek woman was also arrested but released pending further enquiries.

The arrests were made following detections made by Australian Border Force (ABF).

Police seized a large commercial quantity of methylamphetamine oil, a large commercial quantity of methyl alpha-phenyl acetoacetate (MAPA) and a large quantity of unidentified liquids still awaiting analysis (pictured, stock image of meth and related paraphernalia)

Police seized a large commercial quantity of methylamphetamine oil, a large commercial quantity of methyl alpha-phenyl acetoacetate (MAPA) and a large quantity of unidentified liquids still awaiting analysis.

Detective Inspector Nick Allwood said: 'These are significant seizures from what is (allegedly) one of the most sophisticated clandestine laboratories we have seen in Victoria.'

'Illicit drug labs pose significant health and safety risks to the community and many of the chemicals involved in drug manufacture are highly volatile, explosive or carcinogenic in nature,' he added.

'Residual contamination resulting from the manufacture of these illicit substances presents a serious risk to human and environmental health.'
A man will have to hand over his father's ashes to his former nanny-turned-stepmother after losing a Supreme Court fight to keep them.

The man's father died from Covid-19 related complications in October last year and was cremated after a funeral in November.

While the man kept his father's ashes after the funeral, a Victorian Supreme Court justice has ordered he hand them over to his stepmother.

His father divorced his mother in September 2020 after 39 years of marriage and married his second wife a month later.

A Victorian man has been ordered to hand over his father's ashes to his childhood nanny after the pair had a decades long affair (stock image)

That woman, who had been the family's nanny and cared for the son as a child, told the court she had been in a relationship with her new husband since the 1990s.

They had a child together in 2002.

After his death the man's son arranged his funeral in accordance with what he said were instructions in a 2017 will.

'After I pass away, my funeral arrangements shall be solely decided by my son ... other family members shall not interfere,' the document said.

A second property agreement said 'how my ashes should be kept shall be decided solely by (my son)'.

The wife argued both documents were forgeries.

The son did not tell his father's wife what he had done with the ashes, and she did not ask him, the court heard.

Issues arose between January and March this year when the son refused requests by the woman's lawyers for a copy of the death certificate.

When one was provided in April it was revealed to have multiple errors - referring to the first wife as his current wife and not referencing his daughter at all.

The court heard the son was responsible for the errors. He claimed he had misunderstood the form.

A court ruled since the man's father had chosen to get a divorce and marry the nanny 12 months beforehand, she should keep his ashes (stock image)

Justice Steven Moore said the man lived happily with his second wife for the last 12 months of his life and it was appropriate the son hand over to her his father's ashes.

It would be inconsistent with community expectations if a deceased person's spouse did not have authority and control over their partner's remains, he found.

He also questioned the relationship between the father and son, pointing to disparaging comments made by the son and the fact he only learned through a cousin that his father had been hospitalised with Covid.

'All of these matters sit uneasily with the defendant's claim that he maintained a 'normal father and son relationship' with the deceased until his death,' Justice Moore said.

The wife had offered to consult with him about how the ashes would be dealt with.

Justice Moore ordered that after consultation the wife have the right to deal with the ashes in her sole discretion.
Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore has written a July 4 blog post in which he says he cannot accept the privileges of 'full citizenship' until women's abortion rights in Roe v. Wade are reinstated and 'every single Republican is removed from office.'

Moore, 68, said he was 'completely fed up with recent events that have upset my tranquility' and has made a number of demands which he hopes, in his view, will see the country improve.

But despite making the dramatic proclamation about feeling guilty about his US citizenship, Moore conceded he hadn't planned anything dramatic in protest.

Rather than try to renounce his passport, or move abroad, he said that he'll instead spend every waking moment nagging people he meets about the issues which have inflamed him.

Moore hit out at the Supreme Court for overturned women's federal right's to abortion and restrictions struck down on the amount of carbon allowed to be released into the atmosphere, put in place by the Environmental Protection Agency in a bid to curb climate change.

Moore summed up his frustrations in a posting on Twitter with the title: 'A mass shooting to celebrate the 4th. A wealthy class that doubled its wealth while the country suffered. A Supreme Court that stripped 51% of our citizens of their reproductive rights while removing gun laws & killing the EPA.'

Filmmaker and liberal activist Michael Moore wrote a lengthy substack in which he made known the frustrations he felt with the country at the present time

The documentary filmmaker claims he is in fact standing up for oft-touted American values of 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness' but he notes how unsettled he has become following recent events, yet refuses to leave the country.

'I refuse to live in a country threatened by white supremacy  and I'm not leaving. So we've got a problem,' he began before railing at the recent decision made by the Supreme Court to overturn women's abortion rights.

'I cannot in good conscience continue to receive the privileges of 'full citizenship' in this land when all of its women and girls have now been declared official second-class citizens with no rights to their own bodies and conscripted to a life of Forced Birth should they fall pregnant and not want to be,' Moore continued as she commiserated following the overturning of the 1973 court ruling.

Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, pro-choice protests sprung up outside the Supreme Court and in many of the country's biggest cities.

Moore made his 'declaration' public on Twitter to his six million followers

Moore, 68, admitted he was 'fed up' with recent events and put forward changes

President Biden accused the court of taking 'away a constitutional right from the American people that it had already recognized.'

But the veteran lawmaker who's now commander-in-chief has been questioned about why he didn't try to codify federal abortion rights during his lengthy career as a senator, or as vice president under Barack Obama.

Moore then turned his attention to the numerous shootings of black Americans which have occurred in recent times.

'I demand an end to the mass incarceration of Black Americans, an end to police shooting Black people, and I demand that reparations be made to the Black community for all they currently have to suffer and endure,' Moore proposed.

Looking towards November's midterm elections at which the Democrats are expected to suffer heavy losses, Moore made the demand that all Republican's be forced out.

'I insist we remove every single Republican from office in November. The Republican Party has dismantled itself and its remaining rogue elements now exist purely to overturn legitimate election results and overthrow the elected will of the vast majority of the American people. This must be halted without delay or equivocation.'

Moore made a number of pledges, including promising to 'not shut up ... until women's rights have been fully reinstated, and their equal rights are enshrined in our Constitution.'

'If you invite me to dinner that's all I'm gonna talk about. Have me over to your party ... and I won't stop until Roe is reinstated and 51% of Congress is female,' he teased.

With a special focus on the restoring of Roe Vs Wade, Moore pledged to organize a 'massive Get Out The Vote drive amongst the millions who follow me on social media, listen to my podcast, and read my Substack column.'

Moore suggested Roe v. Wade be reinstated and the removal of all Republicans

People hold up signs in Union Square during a demonstration against the Supreme Court on July 4 in New York City

Moore, who has almost six million followers on Twitter and another million on Instagram said he would happily endorse candidates running for office but only if they signed a pledge backing his ideas.

'They [must] sign a pledge stating they will vote to make Roe v. Wade the law of the land; make gerrymandering and voter suppression illegal; eliminate the filibuster; upgrade Obamacare to Universal Health Care for All; pass strong gun control laws; and end the police executions and racist incarcerations of Black citizens.'

It is not the first time Moore has seen it fit to make public his demands, however unrealistic.

Following the Uvalde, Texas elementary school shooting in May, which left 19 children and two teachers dead, Moore urged the media to call for an end to the Second Amendment which protects American's rights to bare arms.

'We won't acknowledge that we are a violent people to begin with. This country was birthed in violence with the genocide of the native people at the barrel of a gun. This country was built on the back of slaves with a gun to their back,' he said while appearing on MSNBC.

'Who will say on this network or any other network in the next few days, 'It's time to repeal the Second Amendment?'' he asked.
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On July 4, a gunman shot and killed six people and wounded 24 more during an independence day parade in the affluent Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois.

The suspect in the shooting has been named as local man Robert 'Bobby' Crimo III, 22.

Crimo was arrested more than eight hours after the shooting following a multi-agency manhunt. He was taken into custody not far from where the shooting took place.

Dramatic photographs from the scene show the suspected mass-murderer - who posted creepy clips about shooting massacres online - being pinned to the ground face-down by police.

A total of 26 victims aged between eight and 85 were injured, with six still receiving hospital treatment. The area has a large Jewish community, although police have yet to share a possible motive for Monday's slaughter.

DailyMail.com has pieced together the key moments from Monday's shootings, based on information so-far shared by investigators

The gunman opened fire at 10.14am on Monday, barely 15 minutes into the parade. He then fled the scene and hid throughout the day before eventually being arrested at 6.30pm in Lake Forrest, eight miles north of where the massacre unfolded

1. Shooting erupts from rooftop of outdoor supplies store around 10am local time

The location where the shooter was holed up is thought to be on top of Gearheads, an outdoor equipment store. A ladder can be seen propped against its wall in this image taken after the shooting

A close-up shows the ladder propped against the wall of the single-story Gearheads store. It has been suggested that this is where shooter Bobby Crimo opened fire from, although investigators have yet to confirm that this was the ladder he used

According to authorities, the violence began approximately 10:15 am local time, around 15 minutes after the parade began.

Reports say that the gunman climbed an unsecured ladder that was attached to Gearhead Outfitters, an outdoor equipment store formerly known as Uncle Dan's.

At that point, Crimo opened fire on the crowd, killing six and injuring dozens more in including the elderly and children. It has not been confirmed for how long the shooting went on for.

Witnesses have now told how they saw children being picked off in the crowd.

The type of gun used by Crimo in the attack has not been confirmed. Investigators have so far only referred to it as a high-powered rifle.

A witness named Zoe described the scene saying: 'All of a sudden everyone behind us started running. I looked back, probably 20 feet away from me, I saw a girl shot and killed. I saw her die. I've never seen anything like this,' according to CNN.

Police say they recovered a 'rifle' at the scene but witnesses described multiple rounds being fired in quick succession which they say could only have come from a semi-automatic.

'A rifle? No, no. It was an automatic weapon. It was pop, pop, pop - rifles don't do that,' she said.

Law enforcement who were at the parade responded to the shooting but Crimo quickly fled the scene in a 2010 Honda Fit prompting a multi-agency manhunt.

2. FBI agents search Crimo's $425,000 family home, which sits just six minutes drive from the location of the shooting

The suspect lives in a small apartment behind his family's home in Highwood, Illinois

Crimo lives in a small apartment behind his family home along Pleasant Avenue in Highwood, just north of Highland Park. His uncle, Paul Crimo, told CNN that he saw his nephew at home the night before the shooting.

It sits just 1.5 miles away from Gearhads, and is around six minutes drive away from the location of the shooting when traffic is light.

The home is valued at over $400,000. Paul Crimo says that he lives in the home too. When he last saw the suspect, Paul Crimo says: 'Everything was as normal'

He said that the home is owned by the suspect's father, Bob Crimo. The FBI made contact with the family around 2:30 pm. Crimo's father gave investigators permission to search the home.

Paul Crimo went on to tell CNN: 'Hes a quiet kid. Hes usually on his own. Hes a lonely, quiet person. He keeps everything to himself.'

It's not clear at what time he left the home to begin his rampage.

3. A subsequent manhunt for Crimo ends with his dramatic roadside arrest just before 7:00 pm

Crimo's was arrested hours after the massacre in which six people were killed

Robert Crimo, shown here, was also a rapper who went by the moniker: 'Awake the Rapper'

The shooter's uncle Paul Crimo said he was first contacted by the FBI at 2:30 pm local time, reports CNN.

In an evening news conference around 5pm, law enforcement named Crimo as a suspect in the shooting.

Crimo was described as being between 18 and 20 with long black hair, white, 'slight build' and wearing a t-shirt. His car was described and cops gave out his license plate number.

Around 7:00 pm local time, authorities said in a brief news conference that Crimo was in custody, having been arrested around 30 minutes earlier.

According to Chief Lou Jogmen of the Highland Park Police, Crimo was first spotted by members of a North Chicago police unit. Jogmen said that Crimo fled when officers attempted to pull him over.

Following a brief chase, Crimo came to a stop and was arrested Lake Forest, Illinois, not far from the where the shooting occurred.
NSW's latest flood crisis has worsened with thousands of residents of the state's Central Coast ordered to evacuate their homes immediately.

Torrential rain and powerful winds have battered greater Sydney for a fourth consecutive day with a fresh warning the Budgewoi and Tuggerah Lakes areas are now considered 'high danger' - with 19 suburbs at risk.

Streets have turned into rivers with boats and kayaks the only way of getting in and out of some suburbs which have already been cut off.

A major flood level of 1.6m is expected at Long Jetty on Tuesday night with further rises possible.

'Once floodwater passes 1.50 metres on the Long Jetty (The Entrance) gauge at Tuggerah and Budgewoi Lakes, roads will begin to close,' the SES warned on Tuesday afternoon.

Waters will continue to rise in these areas and may inundate homes.

'Once flood water begins inundating the area road access water, sewerage, power, phones and internet may be lost. If you remain in the area you will be trapped and it may be too dangerous for SES to rescue you.'

Scroll down for list of suburbs

Children are seen on kayaks in floodwaters which have inundated the NSW town of Yarramalong on the Central Coast

Some parts of of the NSW Central Coast have already been cut off. Pictured are fuel and supplies being transported to stranded residents in Yarramalong

Nineteen suburbs on the Central Coast are at risk of flooding. Pictured is a Yarramalong home surrounded by water on Tuesday

NSW Central Coast suburbs at risk * The Entrance  Long Jetty  Berkley Vale  Chittaway Bay  Tacoma South  Tacoma  Wonga  Tuggerawong  Rocky Point  Blue Haven  Budgewoi  Buff Point  Charmhaven  Gorokan  Lake Haven  Rocky Point  San Remo  Canton beach  Toukley Advertisement

In Sydney's north-west, Windsor has experienced its third major flood this year as entire streets and sporting fields transformed into rivers.

Rising floodwaters sparked the evacuation of Windsor Police Station, where staff have been relocated to Riverstone.

The Hawkesbury River at Windsor reached major flood levels for the third time within months and peaked at 14m on Tuesday, above the 13.8m level recorded in March.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is expected to visit the flood-devastated region on Thursday after coming under fire from NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet.

In the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, the wild weather has caused a major landslip near Blackheath, which has closed the train line between Katoomba and Mt Victoria.

'This may take weeks to repair, with the initial inspections showing the landslip is up to 40 metres long, 20 metres wide and 60 metres deep,' Transport NSW warned.

A severe weather warning of heavy rain and damaging winds of up to 90km/h remains in place for Sydney, the NSW Central Coast and Hunter regions.

The Bureau of Meteorology has warned the NSW mid north coast could be inundated with flooding from Wednesday.

'A trough across the central coast extends from a low over the Tasman Sea, while a strong high over the Great Australian Bight extends a ridge to the southern Tasman Sea,' an update read.

'The combination of these features is bringing wet and windy conditions to many eastern areas of NSW. Conditions are gradually expected to ease although the trough will linger on the northern half of the coast today.

'Rainfall may lead to flooding in catchments along the NSW Mid-North Coast,as well as possibly cause higher levels in areas north of Sydney where flood warnings are current.'

The SES has issued 103 evacuation orders and 57 evacuation warnings across Sydney and surrounding regions in recent days.

The train line between Katoomba and Mt Victoria could be closed for weeks after a landslip near at Blackheath on Tuesday

Windsor has experienced its third major flood in four months. Pictured is a local resident wading through floodwaters at her home

The latest NSW flood crisis has impacted at least 50,000 residents in Sydney and surrounding region. Pictured is a flooded street in Windsor

Much of Windsor in Sydney's north-west has been cut off by floodwaters

Sydney and surrounding areas remain at risk of flooding with red areas the biggest concern

It comes after thousands of Sydneysiders were ordered to evacuate their homes after the city was battered by a third consecutive night of torrential rain, howling winds and flooding.

Sydney was forecast to receive another 50mm on Tuesday on top of the 67.2mm in the previous 24 hours as hazardous surf conditions and massive swells of up to six meters smashed the coastline.

Authorities have warned floodwaters will take up to a week to recede even after the rain eases on Tuesday night.

It was another night of chaos in Sydney as life-threatening floodwaters cut off more suburbs, inundated supermarkets and left motorists stranded on submerged roads.

Extraordinary before and after footage has emerged of a street in semi-rural Horsley Park near Fairfield became submerged within hours, leaving a red-faced motorist stranded after chancing their luck.

It took just hours for a semi-rural street in Horsley Park to become submerged on Monday

Authorities has reissued warnings to not drive through flooded roads, as an elderly couple wade to safety in Richmond on Tuesday

Boat is the only way tov get in and out of flooded suburbs in Sydney's north-west

A Water NSW worker keeps a watchful on Warragamba Dam spilling 60-80 gigalitres each day during the latest flood crisis

SES crews received 500 requests for assistance in the space of 12 hours, one fifth of them flood rescues.

Chipping Norton residents in Sydney's south-west were among the latest ordered to evacuate in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, along with parts of the north-west, including Ebenezer, Lower Portland, Mulgrave, Mulgrave South, Vineyard and McGraths Hill.

'This event is far from over. Please dont be complacent, wherever you are. Please careful when youre driving on our roads. There is still substantial risk for flash flooding across our state,' NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said on Tuesday.

Parts of the city's south received up to 200mm on Monday night which sparked evacuation orders in Woronora and Bonnet Bay.

It's been a busy 48 hours for SES crews. Pictured are crews rescuing horses from flooded paddocks at Berkshire Park in Sydney's north-west

Parts of Sydney's south received up to 200mm on Monday night. Pictured is Woronora underwater

SES crews from Randwick were deployed to Lansvale on Monday night to help evacuate residents from flooded streets

Damaging winds of up to 90km/h and three-hourly rainfall totals of up to 65mm were forecast for the Hunter district on Tuesday.

'The damaging winds may lead to debris on roads and provide the risk for trees toppling in softer and very saturated soils,' the Bureau of Meteorology warned.

'Rainfall will further contribute to flooding already being experienced and maintains the potential for landslides'

Sydney saw widespread falls of at least 50mm on Monday night while some areas towards the Illawarra region got a whopping 200mm.

'We still do have a severe weather warning for heavy rain fall that covers Sydney's Eastern Suburbs and up the Central Coast and toward the Hunter and that will very much be the focus of rain today,' Bureau of Meteorology's Jonathan How told the Today show on Tuesday.

'We're seeing heavy showers push through eastern parts of Sydney right now with even heavier falls up into the lower Hunter, so there is still 20 to 50mm to come.'

The relenting rain is expected to ease in the coming days.

'We are reminding people that these floodwaters will remain very high, well after the rain has stopped,' Mr How warned.

'It will take days, if not a week, to start to see these floodwaters recede. So the danger isn't over, even after the rain has stopped.

The NSW SES has been inundated with more than 500 requests for help in the space of 12 hours, including 100 flood rescues.

Almost 100 evacuation orders remain current while 60 evacuation warnings covering about 45,000 people are currently in place.

'The majority of them in the Hawkesbury-Nepean river systems but also across into the Georges River and the Woronora River,' SES chief superintendent Ashley Sullivan said on Tuesday .

'The weather is meant to stick around for at least today and tomorrow, so threat will remain with those flood warnings for the rest of this week.

We do ask motorists, particularly, to stay off the road wherever possible.'

Parts of Sydney's south received up to 200 of rain on Monday night. Pictured are Coles Illawong staff mopping up

More than 35,000 Sydneysiders have been forced to evacuate in recent days, with a a natural disaster declared in 23 local government areas.

The weather bureau warned the heavy deluge battering Greater Sydney, Hunter Valley, Illawarra and the Central Coast is finally forecast to ease on Friday meaning more misery is yet to come.

But those in the 23 LGAs affected by the severe storms and flooding since June 27, will now be eligible for disaster relief payments under Monday evening's declaration.

The payments are jointly funded by the NSW government and the Commonwealth.

A man and a boy are pictured escaping floodwaters in a kayak as the Hawkesbury River overflows in Windsor, northwest of Sydney

In welcome news to weary Sydneysiders BOM said rain is forecast to ease by Friday (pictured, rescue crews in Bligh Park)

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It comes after Federal Emergency Management Minister Murray Watts earlier on Monday said the flooding would not be declared a national emergency.

'At this stage, the advice is this particular disaster, while severe, does not reach the level of the threshold required to invoke a national emergency declaration,' he said.

'Having said that, it is likely the NSW government will declare this flood as a disaster from a NSW perspective.'

Authorities have warned despite conditions easing, the dangers associated with damaging winds, coastal erosion and powerful surf would remain.

'We are not out of the danger yet,' NSW SES Commissioner Carlene York warned as fresh evacuation orders were issued for Liverpool and Milperra.

The SES ordered residents in low-lying areas to immediately evacuate as river levels were seen rising rapidly upstream of Liverpool, in the city's southwest.

In nearby Cabramatta, 10 people, including two pensioners, were rescued from a home surrounded by floodwaters by members of NSW Fire and Rescue.

State Premier Dominic Perrottet said it was important to learn from previous flood events as there was 'no doubt' they were becoming more common.

He said he was impressed by the response from the federal government in comparison to other flood events just months earlier.

Many areas in NSW have been inundated with a months worth of rain in just a couple of days over the weekend and on Monday.

As of 3pm on Monday, the SES had fielded 3,900 requests for assistance and performed 85 flood rescues after authorities warned of another busy day.

Residents in some parts of western Sydney have been given the green light to return home with authorities urging locals to avoid travelling through floodwaters.

Conditions are set to ease as the east coast low causing the weather hell moves off the coast - however showers will linger for the rest of the week.

Flood waters surround an industrial property in Londonderry on the outskirts of Sydney

A BOM weather map shows the east coast low pressure system lashing large swathes of NSW

POLAIR crews were out giving assistance to ground crews when they took this image

A low-pressure system hovering over the Tasman Sea pushing moisture towards the east coast is causing the wet weather (pictured, residents cut off by floods in Windsor)

A low-pressure system hovering over the Tasman Sea pushing moisture towards the east coast is causing the wet weather.

Dozens were forced to abandon their homes and businesses as the swollen Hawkesbury and Nepean Rivers rapidly rise and overflow.

BOM issued a minor to major flood warning for the Georges and Woronora Rivers where levels hit 2.5metres by 9pm on Monday night.

Anyone in low-lying parts of Woronora and Bonnet Bay on the Woronora River in the Sutherland Shire, were told to get out before 7pm and 8pm.

Meanwhile, the swollen Georges River is expected to reach a peak of 4.2m by midnight on Monday, almost double its normal levels.

A man is rescued from his car by State Emergency Service workers in Windsor on July 4, 2022 in Sydney, Australia

'Once floodwater reaches 2.4m at the Woronora Bridge, the area will be isolated,' the SES said on social media.

'If you remain in the area after 7pm Monday, you may be trapped without power, water and other essential services and it may be too dangerous to rescue you.'

Many areas on the Hawkesbury including Windsor, Sackville and Wisemans Ferry remain mostly underwater after receiving a drenching over the last 24 hours.

The SES earlier on Monday issued evacuation orders for Cattai, Sackville North, Londonderry and Richards as the river started to rise.

Thirty suburbs are under threat of going underwater while 74 evacuation orders and 62 warnings affecting an estimated 32,000 have been put in place.

Camden is among the worst places hit with the town submerged for the fourth time this year while parts of Lansvale, Chipping Norton and Moorebank are underwater.

The State Emergency Service has responded to 3,500 calls for help since the weekend, with 400 calls made overnight, and performed about 120 flood rescues, with that number expected to increase.

SES spokesman Ashley Sullivan said rivers will continue to rise as already saturated flood plains became incapable of absorbing any more water.

'We are seeing these rivers rise much faster than what's been predicted. Much faster than what we expected,' he told the Nine Network on Monday.

'Things are happening quicker. The risk... has increased significantly.'

One man has already died in the severe conditions after his kayak capsized by the Paramatta River in Sydney's Abbotsford on Sunday.
Britons were enduring intense heat by noon today on what looks set to be the UK's hottest day on record - with trains cancelled, hospital appointments axed and schools closed amid warnings that healthy people could die. The UK hotspot at midday today was Cambridge at 35C (95F) - closing in on the all-time record of 38.7C (101.7F) which was set in the same city in July 2019. This also made today the hottest day of the year so far, for the second day in a row - beating the 33C (91F) set in North Wales yesterday. London had got up to 34C (93F) by noon today. Met Office chief executive Penny Endersby has confirmed that 'we may well see the hottest day in the UK in history' today, adding that tomorrow is now expected to be even warmer with up to 43C (109F) possible. With the UK set to be hotter than the Sahara Desert, transport links in London were already grinding to a halt due to train cancellations - while roads could melt and bosses have urged employees to work from home. Health chiefs told patients to stay away unless it is an emergency amid fears hospitals will be overwhelmed, while emergency services urged swimmers to stay away from lakes and rivers in case they face difficulties. Pictured today: People enjoy the hot weather at Bournemouth beach (left) and Cullercoats Bay in North Tyneside (top right) while commuters use fans to keep cool on London Bridge (bottom right).
A fired-up Anthony Albanese has hit back at criticism he is too focused on international issues despite having spent one-third of his brief time as Prime Minister overseas.

Mr Albanese was bombarded with questions about his travels when he landed in Perth on Tuesday after a nine-day trip to Europe.

He will jet off again next week, heading to Fiji for the Pacific Islands forum.

Fending off accusations he was not working hard enough, Mr Albanese insisted: 'I have not had a day off for a very long period of time.'

Mr Albanese had faced criticism from senior Liberals Dan Tehan and Angus Taylor for being away while deadly floods hit NSW at the weekend, causing thousands of evacuations.

Since winning the election on May 21, Mr Albanese has travelled more than 55,000km overseas

Anthony Albanese disembarks the plane on arrival in Perth after his Europe trip

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But Mr Albanese insisted it was essential for him to represent the nation at a NATO summit in Spain and also defended meeting the French and Ukrainian presidents in Paris and war-torn Kyiv.

'I attended the NATO summit, which was important. It was important that Australia be represented there,' he said on the tarmac at Perth Airport.

'It was important that we deal with the relationship with France and Europe, and I believe that my visit to Ukraine was important to show solidarity with the people of Ukraine.

'We cannot separate international events from the impact on Australia and Australians.'

Mr Albanese challenged his critics to say which events he should have skipped.

The Prime Minister, who also went to Tokyo for a leaders' summit on his first day in office on May 23, blamed Scott Morrison for calling the election so close to that event.

'I have attended the Quad leaders' meeting, the day after the election. It was not a decision of mine to hold the election on May 21, that was a decision of the former Prime Minister.'

He added: 'People want to argue that I'm not working hard, they can argue their case.'

Mr Albanese was bombarded with questions about his travels when he landed in Perth on Tuesday after a nine-day trip to Europe

Left to right: French President Emmanuel Macron, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, his partner Jodie Haydon and French First Lady Brigitte Macron on Friday

Anthony Albanese (pictured with President Zelensky in Ukraine) has been briefed on the deadly flooding in NSW after he copped criticism for being in France and Ukraine while the crisis hit

The Prime Minister has been away since last Sunday on official trips to a NATO leaders' summit in Spain, a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron in Paris and a high-security trip to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Despite all the trips being official business, some Aussies took to social media to say he should be addressing issues at home instead, as hashtags 'Airbus Albo' and 'Where's Albo' trended on Twitter and others labelled him 'Anthony Overseasy'.

Since winning the election on May 21, Mr Albanese has travelled more than 55,000km on trips to Japan, Indonesia, the UAE, Spain, France, Poland and Ukraine where, on Sunday, he announced a further $100million of Australian taxpayer-funded military aid would be given to Ukraine's defence against Russia.

Mr Albanese was briefed by phone soon after clearing war-torn Ukraine on Monday on the situation in NSW, where tens of thousands have been evacuated and thousands of homes deluged.

He will tour some flooded areas of Greater Sydney with NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet on Thursday.

But shadow immigration minister Dan Tehan said he was 'too focused' on international issues and shadow treasurer Angus Taylor said he wasn't doing enough on floods.

'It was flooding for 48 hours and [the Prime Minister] has only just picked up the phone to Dominic Perrottet to ask if he needs a hand,' Mr Taylor told 2GB.

'There's 30,000 people who have been told to evacuate their homes but the PM is more concerned about his reputation on the global stage than making sure people in NSW have a place to sleep.'

Anthony Albanese (pictured in Kyiv) has faced criticism for being overseas while NSW suffers deadly floods - but his supporters defended his absence as he visited war-torn Ukraine

Children are seen on kayaks in floodwaters which have inundated the NSW town of Yarramalong on the Central Coast

Meanwhile NSW's latest flood crisis has worsened with thousands of residents of the state's Central Coast ordered to evacuate their homes immediately.

Torrential rain and powerful winds have battered greater Sydney for a fourth consecutive day with a fresh warning the Budgewoi and Tuggerah Lakes areas are now considered 'high danger' - with 19 suburbs at risk.

Streets have turned into rivers with boats and kayaks the only way of getting in and out of some suburbs which have already been cut off.

A major flood level of 1.6m is expected at Long Jetty on Tuesday night with further rises possible.

'Once floodwater passes 1.50 metres on the Long Jetty (The Entrance) gauge at Tuggerah and Budgewoi Lakes, roads will begin to close,' the SES warned on Tuesday afternoon.

Waters will continue to rise in these areas and may inundate homes.

'Once flood water begins inundating the area road access water, sewerage, power, phones and internet may be lost. If you remain in the area you will be trapped and it may be too dangerous for SES to rescue you.'
A cunning husband infatuated with his teenage lover and babysitter laid out a number of dominoes leading to the murder of Lynette Dawson in 1982, a judge has been told.

In the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday, crown prosecutor Craig Everson SC argued that Christopher Michael Dawson, now 73, had killed his wife on January 8 or 9, 1982 after numerous attempts to start a relationship with his former high school student, known as JC, had failed.

'By now the Crown contends that the accused had his dominoes all lined up and they were ready to fall,' Mr Everson said during closing submissions.

Crown prosecutor argued Christopher Dawson killed his wife after numerous attempts to start a relationship with a former high school student known as JC (pictured, Mr Dawson, left, and JC, right, cutting a cake on their wedding day)

The Supreme Court heard Mr Dawson's obsession with JC (pictured) caused him to threaten teenage boys who were attracted to her

Dawson was alleged to have tried in four different ways to get out of his marriage before resorting to murder, including moving into a flat in Manly, Sydney with JC, hiring a third party to murder his wife, selling the matrimonial home in Bayview, and moving with JC to Queensland to start a new life.

All of these plots failed, Mr Everson said, meaning a husband who was infatuated and besotted with his teenage lover reached a critical point of desperation and resorted to murder.

Justice Ian Harrison was taken through events from when JC started babysitting for the Dawsons in 1980 until Mrs Dawson's disappearance in early January 1982.

Dawson's obsession with JC caused him to ward off and threaten teenage boys who were attracted to her, and publicly attending her high school formal as her date, the court heard.

By December 25, 1981, Dawson had slid so far into moral turpitude that he had returned from his aborted trip to Queensland with JC and hid the fact that he was back from his wife, instead staying at his twin brother Paul Dawson's home, Mr Everson said.

Mr Dawson (right) allegedly murdered his wife Lynette Dawson (left) on January 8, 1982 and disposed of her body the following day

Dawson was alleged to have abandoned his family on New Year's Eve 1981 as well to spend time with JC, and grew upset when JC wanted to end the relationship in early January 1982, flying to Southwest Rocks for a holiday with her friends.

At a marriage counselling session on January 8, the day of the alleged murder, Dawson purportedly put his hands around his wife's throat, telling her that if this did not work, he would get rid of her.

The Crown contends Dawson disposed of the body on the night of January 9 after a meeting with family friend Philip Day and Mrs Dawson's mother Helena Simms at Northbridge Baths.

At the baths, Dawson claimed he received a call from his wife saying she needed time away. However, Mr Everson argued that the call was a fabrication, saying no one had actually seen him take the call or heard what was said.

Dawson is alleged to have driven to Southwest Rocks through the night of January 10, arriving there the next day and driving back with JC to Sydney where she moved into the Bayview home.

This haste for the trip so soon after Mrs Dawson vanished showed Dawson's enthusiasm for JC and was inconsistent with his claims his wife would be back home in a couple of days, Mr Everson said.

Dawson's version of events, that Mrs Dawson had simply left home without warning, was inconceivable, the court heard. Evidence showed she was looking forwards to her future after marriage counselling, and that she had remained committed to her 'Chrissy' even while he was spending time with JC in late 1981.

Mr Everson urged the court to find that JC was a credible witness, despite Dawson's legal team arguing that she had made up allegations against him due to an acrimonious custody battle when the couple separated in 1990.

Mr Dawson pleaded not guilty to the murder charge and denies any involvement in his wife's disappearance (pictured, Dawson leaving the Supreme Court of New South Wales in Sydney)

While JC had only gone to the police in 1990 with allegations that Dawson had wanted to hire a hitman to kill his wife, she had also made these same claims to her friends and Mrs Dawson's family at the time.

'The conduct of (JC) and the disclosures that she made to those people are consistent with a person coming out of a controlling relationship who was scared and talking about what she knew,' Mr Everson said.

Dawson has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, denying any involvement in his wife's disappearance.

The trial continues.
The Egyptian government prompted to suspend activities in Egypt's Red Sea coastal area after two shark attacks over the weekend killed two tourist women.

In a statement released on Sunday, the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said that a shark attacked the victims while swimming in the Red Sea near Hurghada, a beach resort town.

The incident initiated the governor of the wider Red Sea Governorate, Maj. Gen. Amr Hanafi to suspend all water activities in the area for three days, per CBS News.

The environment ministry also disclosed that they have assembled a group of experts that will determine the reasons behind the shark attacks. It reported that the investigation is undergoing "to find out precisely the reasons for the behavior of the shark that attacked the two victims."

The ministry also expressed its "deepest condolences to the families of the two victims" and thanked "all concerned parties for their support."

Authorities Confirm Nationalities of the Victims Confirmed

An Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesperson confirmed Monday that an Austrian citizen from Tyrol died in Egypt but did not provide additional information citing "reasons of data protection and confidentiality." The Austrian embassy in Cairo has contacted the family of the victim.

The death of a Romanian woman, who was vacationing in Hurghada, was also verified to ABC News on Monday by a Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative. According to the spokesperson, who did not offer any additional information, the Romanian embassy in Cairo is in touch with Egyptian officials, and Romanian authorities are currently locating the relatives of the deceased.

Read Also: In Covering Lawsuit Against Itself, Newsweek Downplays Unfavorable Points

It is still undefined if the same shark attacked the two women.

On Friday, social media users shared a video showing a swimmer struggling with a pool of blood around her. The authenticity of the videos is yet to be verified by authorities.

Lots of Sharks in the Red Sea But Swimming Is Still Allowed

Due to the diverse and colorful indigenous marine life, Hurghada and Sharm el-Sheikh, two of Egypt's most well-known beach resorts, are also popular with European visitors.

Shark attacks on visitors swimming in designated locations are rare, although sharks are widespread in the Red Sea, as per a report from Euronews.

In a shark attack in 2020, a young Ukrainian boy and an Egyptian tour guide both suffered severe injuries. In 2018, a Czech tourist off the coast of Egypt was killed.

In 2010, a wave of shark attacks off Sharm el-Sheikh on the Sinai Peninsula, across the Red Sea from Hurghada, left one German tourist dead and numerous more injured.

According to a feature report from BBC, recent studies reveal the rising number of incidents of shark attacks in some areas of the world. In the past 20 years, shark attack rates in the eastern US and southern Australia, shark attack rates doubled.

Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, which maintains the International Shark Attack File, said that shark attacks "are strongly correlated to the number of people and number of sharks in the water at the same time."

"The more sharks and people there are in one place, the greater the chance of them bumping into each other," he said.

Related Article: Copenhagen Mall Shooting: Videos Show Gunman During Attack, Disturbing Scene as People Panic

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Thousands of people were filmed fleeing in terror after gunfire rang out at a July 4 celebration and injured two cops, hours after a massacre in Chicago.

Dramatic video footage showed panicking people running away from the Welcome America Festival event close to the Philadelphia Museum of Art after the shooting, which left two officers with minor injuries.

Video shown by local news media showed people running for their lives upon hearing the gunshots. Hundreds ran screaming along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, looking for cover.

The gunfire broke near the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the final day of a festival with a large number of people watching a fireworks show after a concert.

The crowd was spooked and made a mad dash away from the area where the shots rang out late into the evening.

News camera footage captured moments of pure chaos as scared revelers ran as fast as they could away from the scene.

Many were likely panicked at the thought of falling victim to another massacre like the one that unfolded in Chicago on Monday morning, which killed six people who were watching a July 4 parade in the Highland Park suburb.

A view from a Philadelphia apartment block sees hundreds of people stampeding away from the sound of gunfire

The streets below were full of people running away as fast as they possibly could

Police respond to a shooting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at July 4 celebrations

The crowd was spooked by the sounds of gunshots and began sprinting away

News camera footage captured a moment of pure chaos as scared revelers made a dash for it

Josh Holden, a reporter for CBS3 described the scene as 'terrifying'

'It was pure chaos. I was right there,' wrote Lanie Marlin on Twitter.

Those who managed to run away darted around the closest corner for cover where they were felt safe. Meanwhile, police instructed people in surrounding buildings to shelter in place.

Members of the crowd, including families with young children out for an evening of fun, could be seen running down the street in terror away from gunfire. People ran in all directions once the gunshots were heard among a crowd already nervous following the deadly shooting in Chicago earlier on Monday.

Josh Holden, a reporter for CBS3 described the scene as 'terrifying'.

'People run for blocks from the Welcome America Festival on the Ben Franklin Parkway after two police officers were shot while working in the area. A truly terrifying scene on what was supposed to be a night of celebration,' he tweeted.

'A 44-year-old officer assigned to Montgomery Co. Bomb Squad was shot in shoulder, while a 36-year-old Highway Patrol Officer has a graze wound to the head,' Holden elaborated with the bullet lodged in the officers hat.

Both officers were part of the security detail for the festival and were transported to Jefferson Hospital in stable condition, according to police. There followed a heavy police presence at the hospital.

Both officers were released in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

According to police sources, the shooter or shooters were not in a position of high ground or firing from a building.

It's unclear what triggered the gunfire, and a hunt for the suspect continues.

The shootings plunged the city's July 4th festivities on the Parkway into chaos, with people running from the area.

Fireworks continued to go off as officers could be heard on police radio requesting the fireworks show be shut down as officers responded to the chaos.

'It was pure chaos. I was right there,' wrote Lanie Marlin on Twitter.

'There were fences blocking the way. There were cops yelling run then there were cops sitting there doing nothing. People running In all directions. Others standing around no idea what was going on.

'At first, it was very orderly. The police were just like 'go this way, go this way.' And then, that's when they accelerated and they said 'run, run, run. Don't look back, run,'' Hugh Dillon said to CBS3.

Both officers were in stable condition, CBS3 Philadelphia said, citing the police department. Police were still searching for the shooter late into the night.

People ran in all directions once the gunshots had run out among an already nervous crowd

A little girl can be seen in the arms of her mother as they race to leave the scene of a shooting

A police officer speaks on the phone while surveying the area following a shooting

'There is a security incident on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway,' emergency authorities said, referring to the shooting.

'I didn't hear the shots, but the cops were like, `Run, run, run,' one woman told an NBC affiliate.

Even Philadelphia's Democratic Mayor, Jim Kenney appeared visibly shaken by the incident.

'I'm waiting for something bad to happen all the time, so I'll be happy when I'm not here, when I'm not mayor and can enjoy some stuff.'

The Philadelphia shooting came hours after a gunman on a rooftop opened fire on families waving flags and children riding bikes at a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, where six people were killed and over 36 were wounded.

In one online bio, Crimo boasted of having a net worth of $100,000. On his Spotify page, he has over 16,000 monthly listens, He is pictured as his rap alter-ego Awake

Robert 'Bobby' Crimo III, 22, was arrested after an hours long manhunt that involved local a local and federal authorities.

So far, two of his victims have been named a synagogue teacher called Jacki Sundheim and a 76 year-old grandpa called Nicolas Toledo.

The shooting send hundreds of marchers, parents with strollers and children on bicycles fleeing in terror in the affluent community of about 30,000 on Chicago's north shore.

The shooting occurred at a spot on the parade route where many residents had staked out prime viewing points early in the day for the annual celebration.

Dozens of fired bullets sent hundreds of parade-goers - some visibly bloodied - fleeing.

The July 4 shooting was just the latest to shatter the rituals of American life.

Schools, churches, grocery stores and now community parades have all become killing grounds in recent months.

This time, the bloodshed came as the nation tried to find cause to celebrate its founding and the bonds that still hold it together.
A synagogue teacher has been identified as the second victim of the July 4 Highland Park gun massacre that killed six people.

Jacki Sundheim, a longtime staffer at North Shore Congregation Israel, was shot and killed when a gunman opened fire at the event, unleashing a hail of bullets on the crowd, the synagogue announced in an email to congregants Monday night.

'Jacki was a lifelong congregant of NSCI and a cherished member of NSCI's staff team for decades,' the synagogue wrote in an email that announced her murder 'Jacki's work, kindness and warmth touched us all.'

Sundheim, was the Reform synagogue's events and b'nei mitzvah coordinator, according to its website. She is survived by her husband Bruce and daughter Leah, the Times of Israel reported.

'There are no words sufficient to express the depth of our grief for Jacki's death,' the synagogue added.

Jacki Sundheim, a longtime staffer at North Shore Congregation Israel, was shot and killed when a gunman opened fire at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois on Monday

Earlier on Monday evening, a beloved grandfather from Mexico had been identified as one of the victims, by his family who said he was shot in the head as he sat in his wheelchair, his blood splattering on them.

Nicolas Toledo, 76, had not wanted to attend the parade in Highland Park, Illinois, his granddaughter told the New York Times.

But because of his disabilities that restricted him to a wheelchair, and his family's insistence of going, he obliged.

The shooting began less than 15 minutes after the parade started. Five adults were killed at the parade and a sixth victim died at the hospital.

A total of 26 victims aged between eight and 85 were injured, with six still receiving hospital treatment. The area has a large Jewish community, but police have not yet shared a possible motive for Monday's slaughter.

After an hours-long manhunt, police arrested 22-year-old Robert 'Bobby' Crimo III.

Nicolas Toledo, 76, had not wanted to attend the July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois, on Monday, his granddaughter told the New York Times. But because of his disabilities that restricted him to a wheelchair, and his family's insistence of going, he obliged

Toledo is pictured surrounded by family. Toledo, a Mexican national, who held duel citizenships in Mexico and the United States, had moved back to Highland Park a few months ago at the urging of his family members

Dramatic photographs from the scene show the suspected mass-murderer - who posted creepy clips about shooting massacres online - being pinned to the ground face-down by police.

Cops say Crimo opened fire from a rooftop, into a crowd who at first confused the sound of gunshots with Independence Day fireworks.

The suspect has been named as 22-year-old Robert 'Bobby' Crimo III. He is from of the Highland Park area

The moment showing Crimo's arrest after an hours-long manhunt that involved local and federal law enforcement

Toledo was killed Monday when a gunman opened fire on a parade from the roof of an Highland Park, Ill. outdoor outfitting store. The gunman has been arrested

'We were all in shock,' Toledo's granddaughter Xochil Toledo told The Times. 'We thought it was part of the parade. Then we realized our grandfather was hit. We saw blood and everything splattered onto us.'

Family members say Toledo was shot three times. Two other people in the family were also shot, she said, but their injuries were non life-threatening.

Toledo, a Mexican national who held duel citizenships in Mexico and the United States, had moved back to Highland Park a few months ago at the urging of his family members.

'We brought him over here so he could have a better life,' Xochil said. 'His sons wanted to take care of him and be more in his life, and then this tragedy happened.'

Witnesses have now told how they saw children being picked off in the crowd.

'We all threw ourselves to the ground,' Toledo's daughter, Josefina Toledo, told The Daily Beast. 'My dad, since it's difficult for him to walk  he was sitting on his walker and he was hit in his back and in his head.'

She said the parade was a family tradition and the whole family attended. But the celebration ended when shots rang out.

The boyfriend of one of her nieces was also shot and is in stable condition.

The scene at Highland Park on Monday after the July 4 parade emptied out amid reports of gunshots. Police have not yet confirmed that anyone was shot

The Chicago Teacher's Union shared on Twitter that Zoe Kolpack, a teacher at Dever Elementary, had been shot in the attack. Her husband, her father and her brother in law were also shot, according to a GoFundMe page.

A family friend wrote on the page that all four are in the hospital undergoing various surgeries for their injuries. Their conditions are unknown.

Little is known about the other victims at this time, but the Lake County coroner has confirmed the five people pronounced dead at the scene were adults.

Another victim is believed to be Eduardo Uvaldo, who according to a GoFundMe page was first shot in the arm, and then in the back of the head. Uvaldo's family has written on social media that he is in critical condition.

'My grandpa is a kind, loving, and funny man who did not deserve this. We pray for a positive outcome, but the doctors says the chances are low,' the GoFundMe page read.

Eduardo's wife, Maria, was hit in the head by fragments, and his grandson received a gunshot would to the arm but is stable. Eduardo's granddaughter, who wrote the page, said the family attended that parade every Fourth of July.

The age of the sixth victim, who died at an area hospital, remains unknown.

'There was one that was transported to a local hospital that also died at the hospital. I don't have any additional information on that victim,' Lake County coroner Jennifer Banek told CNN.

The shooter is said to have opened fire from the rooftop of a local business. Police believe he used a ladder in an alley to climb to the roof.

'It looks like access to the roof via a ladder in an alley was unsecured,' Sgt. Chris Covelli, of the Lake County Major Crime Take Force, revealed. The ladder was attached to the building.

The parade had only begun 14 minutes before the gunman opened fire from a rooftop along the route. The shooting caused a stampede of people who flocked into stores and cars. The parade was scheduled to last for an hour

Horror on Independence Day: A police officer bows his head in grief next to abandoned strollers and chairs after a shooting that killed six people in Highland Park, Ill.

Strollers and chairs were abandoned at the scene after the shots rang out at 10:14 a.m., just 10 minutes after the parade began

The aftermath of the scene in Highland Park on Monday after a shooter opened fire on the parade. Chairs and strollers were abandoned by attendees

Law enforcement officers help evacuate people from an Anthropologie store in Highland Park, Ill., on Monday, July 4, after a shooter fired on the northern suburb's Fourth of July parade

Police officers cross under police tape at the scene of a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade

Law enforcement officers investigate the scene of a mass shooting at a 4th of July celebration and parade in Highland Park, Ill., July 4. A gunman opened fire as people gathered to watch a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., killing at least six people and injuring dozens

Meanwhile, witnesses described seeing children being shot at the parade.

'All of a sudden everyone behind us started running. I looked back, probably 20 feet away from me, I saw a girl shot and killed. I saw her die. I've never seen anything like this,' a woman, who gave her name only as Zoe, told CNN.

All of the confirmed deaths so far are those of adults.

Many bystanders described multiple rounds being fired in quick succession, alleging they first confused the sound of gunshots with Independence Day fireworks.

'Everyone thought it was fireworks,' Zoe explained. 'My dad thought it was part of the show, and I'm like, 'Dad, no... something is wrong.' And I grabbed him. And I looked back at him, and then it was just a sea of panic, and people just falling and falling.'

Jeff Leon, who also attended the parade said it 'sounded like a string of firecrackers going off inside of a big metal trash bin.'

He claims he heard maybe 20 or 30 pops before he saw people call to the ground and officers starting to move in.

'After about 10 minutes of this sort of duck and hide, duck and hide, people were sort of calmly walking away from the scene,' he said.

'I saw multiple lifeless bodies, people in a pool of blood,' added one father, who survived with his kids. He said he tossed his son in a dumpster.

Children taking part in the parade in Highland Park ran for their lives when they heard shots ring out

Panicked paradegoers at the scene on Monday. There were loud sounds from the crowd that some said were gunshots

The parade on Monday in Highland Park was attended by dozens of locals who sat on the sidewalk cheering as bands marched past

Highland Park, a suburban city with a population of 30,000, is renowned for being one of Chicago's most affluent suburbs.

NBA legend Michael Jordan owns a mansion in the area, and it's also where the enormous mansion featured in 'Home Alone' is situated.

The city's residents are largely families and there is a significant Jewish population in the area, but there is no suggestion the attack was anti-Semitic.

Among those who were participating in the parade was a Hasidic Jewish band. One jarring video showed them slowly making their way down the parade route on a float while those ahead of them - suddenly aware of the danger - ran in the opposite direction.

Nineteen-year-old real estate student Rainan Eli saw the shooting unfold from the window of his apartment on Central Avenue and Second Street.

'I was just sitting studying for some class I'm taking and watching the parade. I saw lots of people running and, at first, everybody assumed it was fireworks being the Fourth,' he told DailyMail.com.

Eli pulled out his cell phone and recorded heart-wrenching video of people running and seeking shelter as shots being fired could be heard in the background.

He said two other residents of his apartment building came downstairs with him and gave the 15 to 20 people in the vestibule drinks.

Debbie Glickman, a Highland Park resident, said she was on a parade float with co-workers and the group was prepared to turn onto the main route when she saw people running away from the area

First responders work the scene of a shooting at a parade on July 4 in Highland Park, Ill. Reports indicate at least six people were killed and more than 20 injured in the mass shooting

Law enforcement search after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade in downtown Highland Park, a Chicago suburb on Monday

Law enforcement search as they walk into a building after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade in downtown Highland Park, a Chicago suburb on Monday

First responders work the scene of a shooting at a Fourth of July parade on July 4, 2022 in Highland Park, Ill. Reports indicate at least five people were killed and 19 injured in the mass shooting

Debbie Glickman, a Highland Park resident, said she was on a parade float with co-workers and the group was prepared to turn onto the main route when she saw people running away from the area.

'People started saying 'There's a shooter, there's a shooter, there is a shooter' ' Glickman said. 'So we just ran. We just ran. It's like mass chaos down there. I'm so freaked out.'

'We can't believe this happened in our little town.'

Matt Phillip, 36, director of tasting room operating at Lynfred Winery, told DailyMail.com: 'We were open early for the parade and upon hearing what sounded like fireworks, we noticed that people started running down the street.'

'We opened our doors so they could either seek shelter within our facility or exit through our back-alley door.'

Highland Park is around 30 miles north of the city of Chicago and is a quiet, suburban area

Unlike Chicago, which has one of the worst gun violence records in the country, violent crime in Highland Park is almost unheard of.

The average price of a home in Highland Park was $714,000 in April 2022 and the city has a population of around 30,000.

The town's mayor, Nancy Rotering, spoke briefly at a press conference along with law enforcement on Monday to share her condolences with the families of those killed.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted: 'The tragedy unfolding in Highland Park is devastating.

'I have been in contact with Mayor Rotering and have offered our support, and the Chicago Police Department is providing assistance.

'We grieve with the families of the deceased and injured as well as the entire Highland Park community.

'Law enforcement is working hard to bring the shooter into custody. If anyone has information, we encourage them to call 911 and report what you know.'

Law enforcement search in downtown Highland Park, a Chicago suburb, after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade

Law enforcement search in downtown Highland Park, a Chicago suburb, after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade

A gunman opened fire as people gathered to watch a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., killing at least six people and injuring dozens

Law enforcement officers look over a park near the scene of a mass shooting at a Fourth of July celebration and parade in Highland Park, Ill.

President Biden - who has been calling for gun reform since the Uvalde shooting on May 24, which claimed 19 lives - issued a statement on Monday afternoon. He said he had given his support to the governor of Illinois and the Highland Park mayor and he celebrated his recent passing of a gun control bill

President Biden - who has been calling for gun reform since the Uvalde school shooting on May 24 that claimed 19 lives - issued a statement on Monday afternoon.

He said he had given his support to the governor of Illinois and the Highland Park mayor, and he celebrated his recent passing of a gun control bill.

'I recently signed the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost thirty years into law, which includes actions that will save lives,' Biden said. 'But there is so much more work to do, and I'm not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence.'

Governor JB Pritzker also addressed the violence, saying: 'There are no words for the kind of monster who lies in wait and fires into a crowd of families with children celebrating a holiday with their community.

'There are no words for the kind of evil that robs our neighbors of their hopes, their dreams, their futures.

'There are no words I can offer to lift the pain of those they live behind. I will stand firm with Illinoisans and Americans: we must - and we will - end this plague of gun violence.'
A pool technician got the fright of his life when he discovered a baby freshwater crocodile inside a pool cleaner.

Calipso Pools employee came across the reptile when he was was called to a house in Rosebery, south of Palmerston, in the Northern Territory last week.

As he was emptying the lid of a pool skimmer, Josh was startled to find the tiny croc lurking inside.

A pool technician unexpectedly discovered a small freshwater crocodile (pictured) hidden inside a pool skimmer while working

Local Parks and Wildlife rangers were soon called to the property retrieve the animal from the pool, with rangers scooping the croc into a net.

The crocodile has since been rehomed.

Calipso Pools said the find is a warning for residents for some parts of Australia to watch what they are doing while cleaning the pool.

'PRO TIP: Always check before sticking your hand in to grab the basket because you never know what you'll find.'

Wildlife rangers were soon called to the rental property in Rosebery in the Northern Territory to retrieve the reptile from the pool

The freshwater crocodile was captured by rangers in a net and has been rehomed

The post was re-posted by the ABC, where social media users shared their surprise of the unique discovery.

'So it turns out not even the swimming pools are safe in Darwin,' wrote one.

'This was always my biggest fear when we lived in Darwin,' commented another.

A third added: 'I thought it was bad to find huntsman spiders in there, but this beats that hands down.'

Added another: 'Hate opening the skimmer box at any time - spiders, frogs, mice, all kinds of unknown things gather in there!'
A Royal Australian Air Force intelligence officer has confessed to 230 child sex-related charges involving victims from around the world.

Sergeant Jacob Donald Walsh pleaded guilty in Adelaide Magistrates Court on Tuesday to one of the largest child abuse cases ever made against a single offender in Australia.

Walsh's crimes were committed while he worked in electronic intelligence for the Defence Science and Technology Group at RAAF Base Edinburgh, about 25km north of Adelaide.

The offences involved child sexual exploitation, abuse and online grooming and included Walsh using photographs of children to blackmail them into providing sexually explicit pictures.

Sergeant Jacob Donald Walsh pleaded guilty in Adelaide Magistrates Court on Tuesday to one of the largest child abuse cases ever made against a single offender in Australia. Walsh is pictured

Walsh's crimes were committed while he worked in electronic intelligence for the Defence Science and Technology Group at RAAF Base Edinburgh (above), about 25km north of Adelaide

South Australia's Joint Anti Child Exploitation Team (JACET) produced 88,000 pages of evidence against Walsh, according to The Advertiser.

Walsh was first charged with just two offences in May 2021 and released on bail. He was arrested again in August that year and charged with 45 crimes.

The South Australian Supreme Court heard Walsh had spent eight months using social media apps to groom his teenage victims for sex and to solicit child abuse material.

Faced with the weight of forensic evidence Walsh agreed to cooperate with police and provide passwords to the accounts he had used to abuse children.

Prosecutors later revealed they had identified 25 victims and been in contact with international and interstate police forces.

'In excess of 1,000 messages, consisting of between 10,000 and 60,000 lines of chat each, directly relate to grooming children for specific sexual activities,' a prosecutor said at the time.

'We will allege Sergeant Walsh has been leveraging that material against the children to make them amenable to more serious offences.'

Walsh's offences involved child sexual exploitation, abuse and online grooming and included him using photographs of children to blackmail them into providing sexually explicit pictures. Walsh is pictured

Further charges of dishonestly communicating with a child, maintaining an unlawful sexual relationship with a child and producing abuse material were laid against the airman.

Police discovered Walsh had used Instagram accounts with the names 'Man Mountain' and 'Jace Edwards' and he had amassed 11,000 video and 141,000 image files.

In April this year prosecutors were still seeking to identify 15 potential victims and JACET was examining 8,000 pages of Instagram messages.

By June the case against Walsh included 230 child abuse offences contained in a single file.

When Walsh faced court on Tuesday his barrister Bill Morris said his client had provided handwritten guilty pleas to every charge.

'I admit all charges on the attached information and understand I will be committed to a superior court for sentence,' Walsh wrote in his plea, according to The Advertiser.

Walsh will remain in custody ahead of his sentencing in the District Court later this year.
Network explained Murphy has been counselled on why it was inappropriate

Channel Nine have apologised after a television news reporter was photographed at a protest against the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe vs Wade decision holding a sign mocking Christianity.

Lana Murphy was covering the protest in Melbourne when she was pictured holding a sign that said: 'Mary (the virgin) should've had an abortion.'

The poster was then uploaded to her personal Instagram account.

The photo was widely shared on social media, with Catholic writer and Twitter user Joel Agius slamming it as a 'disgusting message of Christian hate'.

Following the backlash from religious groups and community members, the network issues a statement on Tuesday afternoon.

The network explained that Ms Murphy was punished with a counselling session on 'why the post was not appropriate'.

Pictured: Journalist Lana Murphy holding a sign that read: 'Mary (the virgin) should've had an abortion'

Twitter user Joel Agius described the photo as a 'disgusting message of Christian hate' (pictured)

'The journalist did not mean to cause any offence, but has been counselled on why the post was not appropriate,' the network said.

'9News apologises to anyone offended by the post.

'We respect all sides of this sensitive issue and pride ourselves on reporting with impartiality.'

Ms Murphy also issued a statement and explained it was not her intention to offend anyone.

The network explained that Ms Murphy (pictured) was punished with a counselling session on 'why the post was not appropriate'

'The words on the sign and my subsequent posting of that image on my personal social media account has caused offence to some in the religious community,' she said.

'This was not my intention, and I wholeheartedly apologise to those that were hurt.

'I acknowledge that in my professional role, it was not the appropriate time to appear to have chosen any side.'

Protesters marched on Saturday in solidarity after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to an abortion.
A teenager is missing after last being spotted near a busy Sydney train station in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Jasmine Love, 15, caught a train from Harris Park in the city's west at about 4am on Tuesday.

She was later seen at the busy Wynyard train Station at about 5.45am, wearing a maroon Harry Potter Hogwarts jumper.

Police and her family have 'serious concerns' for her welfare because of her age.

Jasmine Love, 15, was at Harris Park train station in Sydney at about 4am on Tuesday. She was later seen at the busy Wynyard train Station at about 5.45am

Police and her family have 'serious concerns' for her welfare because of her age

Officers attached to Cumberland Police Area Command are appealing for help in finding the missing girl.

Police and her family say they hold serious concerns for Jasmine's welfare due to her age.

She is described as being Caucasian, about 155cm tall, of medium build, and has brown hair with pink dyed strands.

Anyone who may have seen or heard from Jasmine, or who may have information regarding her whereabouts, is being urged to contact police.

Anyone with information about her whereabouts is urged to contact Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000 or https://nsw.crimestoppers.com.au. Information is treated in strict confidence.
The NSW government has lost its court battle to stop train drivers from striking and end weeks of commuter chaos.

Thousands of rail workers will take part in industrial action on Wednesday following the interim decision by the Fair Work Commission on Tuesday.

The NSW government on Monday launched legal action in hopes it would put a stop to protests that disrupted the public transport network for much of last week.

Negotiations with the Rail Tram and Bus Union were left unresolved over the weekend with the state's calls for a temporary ceasefire rejected on Tuesday.

Sydney commuters will be plunged into chaos once again as the NSW government loses its court battle to stop train drivers from striking (pictured, commuters in Sydney on Friday)

Negotiations with the union were left unresolved over the weekend with the state's bid to halt further industrial action rejected on Tuesday (pictured, commuters in Central Station)

Both parties will return on Thursday for a full hearing as commuters brace for another day of disruption amid wet and wild weather conditions across the city.

The NSW government warned the commission that protests would risk damaging the state economy and rack up a bill of nearly $250million for the new metro line.

Premier Dominic Perrottet earlier this week said the decision to launch legal action in the Fair Work commission was 'not made lightly'.

He said the government would 'do anything' to prevent further disruptions to the network after commuters were left in the lurch last week.

The RTBU agreed at the hearing to dial-down the amount of planned industrial action this week by increasing the number of staff on trains than previously planned.

Rail workers had previously refused to operate any foreign-built trains - which make up about 75 per cent of the fleet - on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Thousands of rail workers will take part in industrial action on Wednesday following the interim decision by the Fair Work Commission on Tuesday (pictured, commuters at Central Station)

Other actions are likely to include cleaners only working at their home depot and drivers not using the network to travel between stations.

The state government last week pledged to make alterations to the new Korean-made intercity fleet at the cost of $264million in a bid to appease the union - who insists the trains are unsafe.

The RTVU claims previous conciliatory offers were followed by backflips due to internal politics and has requested a signed legal document.

Government documents filed with the commission warned of a significant loss to the state's economy if industrial action continued.

The state estimated the cost of the Sydney Metro City & Southwest rail line would increase by $264million with further delays to rack up a bill close to $1billion.

The state government last week pledged to make physical alterations to the new Korean-made intercity fleet at the cost of $264million (pictured, Sydney commuters in June)

The NSW government launched legal action against the union in hopes it would put a stop to protests that disrupted the network (pictured, Sydney commuters at Central Station)

'What was missing was a specific document, which is a deed, which is what we were looking for for the RTBU, because we've been fighting to get this train fixed for six years,' union secretary Alex Claasens told AAP.

He said the union's deed 'actually does what we need it to do' but conceded 'whether the transport secretary chooses to sign it is up to him'.

Mr Perrottet described RTBU's refusal to accept the offer as 'incredibly frustrating' and said an agreement had to be met as soon as possible.

'I've said numerous times  that I want those trains on the tracks as quickly as possible, and I'll do everything I can to achieve that end,' he said.

Mr Perrottet (pictured in June) described RTBU's refusal to accept the offer as 'incredibly frustrating' and said an agreement had to be met as soon as possible

Opposition Leader Chris Minns said the good faith shown by the government needed to be reflected by the union.

'We can't have a situation where millions of people wanting to get to and from work next week are trying to work though the internecine details of an agreement between the union and the government,' Mr Minns said.

'We need to put a pause on industrial action, work through the issues that are obviously remaining and get to an agreement.'

Mr Elliott has vowed to resign if he does not deliver on his promises to the union, while also insisting there are no safety concerns with the controversial fleet.

Opposition Leader Chris Minns said the good faith shown by the government needed to be reflected by the union (pictured, commuters at Central Station in June, 2021)

'That is the outrageous situation that the union movement and the Labor Party have put us into,' he told the ABC on Friday.

Earlier this week, Mr Elliott said the government had offered railway workers $3000 bonuses - described by the union as 'bribes' - to return to work.

On Friday only 30 per cent of Sydney Trains and NSW TrainLink services were operating, running to a weekend timetable.

It marked the most far-reaching disruption to the network since February when the entire rail system was shut down for 24 hours.
Police have charged two women for allegedly leaving a toddler on a scorching hot bus for six hours causing her to suffer kidney failure.

The three-year-old was found unconscious in a critical condition at the Le Smileys Early Learning Centre in Gracemere, Rockhampton in Central Queensland, but she miraculously survived.

Just before 4pm on Tuesday, police announced that two Gracemere women had been charged with one count each of grievous bodily harm.

The women, aged 30 and 31, allegedly picked up the little girl at about 8.30am on May 4 and drove to the childcare centre where they parked the bus and left her inside.

Steps away, there were two signs warning of the dangers of leaving children in hot cars.

A three-year old girl (pictured), who cannot be named for legal reasons, was left on a van for hours in scorching temperatures

A child's booster seat was visible as officers (pictured) took pictures from multiple angles, jotted down notes and discussed their findings

Another staff member allegedly drove the van to a school in Gracemere at about 2.45pm, and saw the little girl unresponsive in the back of the bus.

Temperatures had soared to nearly 30C on the day she was left in the van.

She was taken into the centre where staff started CPR and called the emergency services.

The girl was rushed to Rockhampton Base Hospital in a critical condition and was then flown to Queensland Children's Hospital in Brisbane.

A couple of days later, her grandmother appeared on morning television shows to say she was 'awake, smiling, and eating ice-cream'.

'She's calling out, squealing and laughing, poking her tongue out - she's doing awesome,' the grandmother said.

The child has since made an astonishing recovery and returned home.

The two accused women are due to appear in Rockhampton Magistrates Court on July 26.
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Dominic Raab was this morning ambushed in a TV interview with claims Boris Johnson had been told 'in person' about a past 'formal complaint' concerning shamed MP Chris Pincher.

The Deputy Prime Minister faced a grilling on BBC Breakfast after former top civil servant, Simon McDonald, hit out at Number 10's handling of the latest Westminster sleaze scandal.

Mr Pincher last week resigned as Tory deputy chief whip following claims he drunkenly groped two men at a posh London members' club.

He has now also been suspended as a Conservative MP, while a slew of further allegations have emerged against the 52-year-old spanning several years.

The latest row has threatened to imperil Boris Johnson's political future yet again, with questions being asked about what the Prime Minister knew of Mr Pincher's conduct before handing him a Government role.

One northern Tory MP, who has not been a regular rebel, today issued a chilling warning to Mr Johnson that he had little time left in office.

They told MailOnline: The party has had enough. I'll be amazed if Boris gets to Christmas.

'Its more about No10 incompetence than Chris. More lies. Its either over for Boris, or its over for over a 100 colleagues.

Downing Street has insisted the PM - who chaired a Cabinet meeting this morning focussed on the Government's response to the cost-of-living crisis - was not aware of 'specific allegations being looked at' concerning Mr Pincher before appointing him.

But No10 admitted Mr Johnson knew of 'media reports' and 'some allegations that were either resolved or did not progress to a formal comlaint'.

Downing Street also stressed the PM took advice on giving Mr Pincher the deputy chief whip role in February, but found it was 'not appropriate' to block the appointment because of 'unsubstantiated allegations'.

Dominic Raab - arriving in Downing Street later this morning for a Cabinet meeting - was ambushed in a TV interview with claims Boris Johnson had been told 'in person' about a past 'formal complaint' concerning shamed MP Chris Pincher

The PM is under pressure over his decision to appoint Mr Pincher as the Conservative deputy chief whip in February

Lord McDonald of Salford gave critics of Mr Johnson further ammunition today when he penned a bombshell letter to a parliamentary watchdog

The former top civil servant claimed No10 'keep changing their story and are still not telling the truth'

Boris warned he might be safe for the summer - but could still be gone by Christmas Boris Johnson is facing a renewed threat to his leadership following the latest Tory sleaze scandal. Claims against ex-deputy chief whip Chris Pincher - and No10's handling of the row - has emboldened Conservative rebels in their attempts to get rid of the PM. Their challenge in achieving that aim is the fact that Mr Johnson won a no confidence vote over his leadership only last month. This granted him immunity from another challenge for 12 months. But, in a new rebel plot, critics of the PM are attempting to win key positions on the 1922 Committee - the influential body in charge of Tory leadership contests - in a battle with PM loyalists. If rebels secure a majority on the Committee's 18-strong executive, they could change the rules to allow Mr Johnson to face another no confidence vote sooner than next June. The 1922 elections are not due to take place until next week and MPs then go on their summer break on 21 July. This means there is little time for Tory rebels to change the rules and also stage a no confidence vote before MPs head away from Westminster until September. No.10 will take confidence that the PM, therefore, is safe for the summer - which they might hope will act as a 'firebreak' in cooling the fury of rebel MPs. Mr Johnson will plot an autumn fightback with his Tory conference speech in October. But some are still predicting the PM - despite being granted a summer respite - will still be gone within months. One northern Tory MP, who has not been a regular rebel, said: 'I'll be amazed if Boris gets to Christmas.' Advertisement

Lord McDonald of Salford gave critics of Mr Johnson further ammunition today when he penned a bombshell letter to a parliamentary watchdog and claimed No10 'keep changing their story and are still not telling the truth'.

He detailed how the PM was told 'in person' about a 'formal complaint' concerning Mr Pincher in the summer of 2019.

The crossbench peer, the former top official at the Foreign Office, referred to a complaint by a 'group of officials' at the department about Mr Pincher's behaviour when he was a Foreign Office minister.

In a letter to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Lord McDonald wrote: 'The original No10 line is not true and the modification is still not accurate. Mr Johnson was briefed in person about the initiation and outcome of the investigation.

'There was a formal complaint. Allegations were resolved only in the sense that the investigation was completed; Mr Pincher was not exonerated.

'To characterise the allegations as unsubstantiated is therefore wrong.'

Lord McDonald said that Mr Pincher 'deceived me and others in 2019', adding: 'He cannot be allowed to use the confidentiality of the process three years ago to pursue his predatory behaviour in other contexts.'

Soon after Lord McDonald published his letter on Twitter, Mr Raab was quizzed about the crossbench peer's claims as he continued his round of TV and radio interviews this morning.

The Deputy PM, who was Foreign Secretary at the time of the 2019 complaint, insisted he was 'very confident' in the decisions that were taken at the time and said he went 'above and beyond' Lord McDonald's advice to him by referring the complaint to the Cabinet Office.

Mr Raab had earlier revealed he 'spoke to' Mr Pincher 'in no uncertain terms' when the past complaint was made about his behaviour, but he defended him as an 'exceptional' minister.

'We were clear that what happened was inappropriate, but we resolved it without going for a formal disciplinary process,' he told LBC Radio.

'I spoke directly to Chris Pincher in no uncertain terms and I referred it to the Cabinet Office to seek that assurance.'

Responding to Lord McDonald's letter, Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner claimed the PM's 'desperate attempts to cover up what he knew about sexual assault complaints against Chris Pincher before appointing him have been blown out the water'.

'It is now clear that the PM knew about the seriousness of these complaints but decided to promote this man to a senior position in government anyway. He refused to act and then lied about what he knew,' she added.

The Liberal Democrats also seized on the peer's letter to call on the PM to 'own up to his web of lies and finally come clean today'.

Senior Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, a critic of the PM, called for a response from Mr Johnson and No10 to Lord McDonald's claims.

He told Sky News: 'They need to understand the scale and the gravity of the story and, indeed, get ahead of it. It is dominating the news day-after-day-after-day.'

Mr Ellwood claimed ministers were being sent out to face the media with a briefing that 'only lasts a number of hours until it has to be corrected'.

Lord McDonald continued his assault on No10 later this morning when he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'It is very unusual for a retired official to do what I have done this morning.

'I did it by myself, because what I have seen and read over the last few days I knew to be wrong. And you know, things get to a point where you have to do the right thing.'

He added: 'First of all, No10 have had five full days to get the story correct and that has still not happened.'

The PM chaired a Cabinet meeting this morning focussed on the cost-of-living crisis while questions swirl about what he knew of Mr Pincher's conduct before handing him a top role

Mr Johnson's Cabinet loyalists - Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg - attended this morning's meeting in Number 10 as the PM faces fresh moves against his leadership

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Tory chief whip Chris Heaton-Harris arrived in Downing Street for this morning's Cabinet meeting

The revenge of the Remainer mandarin? Lord McDonald of Salford today handed serious ammunition to critics of the PM as he faces another Tory sleaze scandal. The former top civil servant lashed out at Number 10 for 'not telling the truth' about what Boris Johnson knew of past allegations against shamed MP Chris Pincher. The crossbench peer, the ex-top official at the Foreign Office, was viewed as having been forced into early retirement from his civil service career in 2020. Lord McDonald left his Foreign Office role at the time it was being merged with the Department for International Development by Mr Johnson. Widely regarded as an ardent Remainer, the mandarin's departure was part of the PM's shake-up of Whitehall in the wake of the Covid crisis and after the UK's official exit from the EU. Mr Johnson and Lord McDonald were well-known to each other after the PM's spell as Foreign Secretary in Theresa May's Government. Prior to his retirement from the Foreign Office, Lord McDonald had given confused evidence to MPs about Britain's decision not to join an EU scheme to buy ventilators when the pandemic hit. His exit from the civil service came despite him having previously expressed a wish to serve for an extra two years. Advertisement

oust Mr Johnson from Number 10, have been emboldened to launch another effort to get rid of the PM in the wake of the fresh sleaze row.

They are plotting to change Conservative Party rules to allow Mr Johnson to soon face another no confidence vote.

This is despite the PM having won a contest on his leadership last month that granted him 12 months' immunity from another challenge under current rules.

The rebel plot will see them try to secure key posts on the 1922 Committee, the powerful Tory body in charge of leadership contests, in a battle with PM loyalists.

But, with elections to the 1922 executive not due to be held until next week and MPs going their summer break later this month, Mr Johnson is set to be safe from another widespread revolt until the autumn.

The northern MP who warned Mr Johnson he would be out of office by Christmas predicted that the revolt against the PM's leadership would 'come to a head in the three weeks in September before the Tory conference in Birmingham.

They added that No10 might be hoping the summer recess would act as a firebreak to stem rebel efforts to force out Mr Johnson, but there was no chance that would work.

One veteran Tory aide said No10s bungling of the crisis had been unbelievable.

Their modus operandi has always been to issue flat out denials no matter what,' they told MailOnline. 'It is finally catching up with them.

The PM chaired a Cabinet meeting this morning after being stung by a backlash from among his top ministers over his handling of the Pincher row.

It follows claims that Mr Johnson joked about the 'handsy' MP being 'Pincher by name, pincher by nature'.

Mr Johnson will use today's meeting to focus on the cost-of-living crisis causing misery for struggling Britons.

The PM will herald changes to the National Insurance thresholds - due to come into effect tomorrow - as 'the single biggest tax cut in a decade'.

Mr Johnson said ahead of today's Cabinet meeting: 'Tomorrow is an important moment in our mission to ease the burden on households and rebuild our economy, as the single biggest tax cut in a decade comes into force.

'The list of people who will benefit is vast  from hairdressers and care workers to receptionists  around 30 million British workers will save up to 330 a year on their National Insurance contributions.

'But were not just providing help right now, were investing record sums in infrastructure, skills and technology to level up and raise productivity across the whole country.

'Because thats the responsible, long-term way to address the cost of living, keeping our borrowing and debt under control, so we dont saddle our children with a massive mountain of debt, and paving the way for more tax cuts in the future.

'Thats how my government will get our country through these tough times.'

It will be Mr Johnson's latest attempt to move on from the fresh Tory sleaze row that broke out on his return to Britain last week after a nine-day stretch away from Westminster to attend Commonwealth, G7 and NATO summits.

It meant Mr Johnson escaped the fall-out from two bruising by-elections defeats.

But the PM returned to the UK at the end of last week to even more domestic strife with the resignation of Mr Pincher as Tory deputy chief whip.

Mr Pincher last week resigned as deputy chief whip after he admitted 'embarrassing himself and others' after drinking 'far too much' at the Carlton Club, a posh London watering hole popular with Conservatives
A fire dancer suffered severe burns to his mouth and face after his performance went wrong in front of dozens of tourists, including children.

Grigory, 35, is seen on video with his act on the embankment in Feodosia, a resort in occupied Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

He twirls a stick that is ablaze at both ends in front of an assembled crowd of families and holidaymakers on a balmy summer's night. It is a stunt he must have practiced many times.

As the Russian tries to blow a column of flame, his mouth suddenly catches fire as his kerosene dramatically ignites.

A fire dancer suffered severe burns to his mouth and face after his performance went wrong in front of dozens of tourists, including children. He puts his hand to his mouth in shock as the performance suddenly goes awry and crumples to the ground in as he is engulfed in a fireball

Grigory, 35, is seen on video with his act on the embankment in Feodosia, a resort in occupied Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014

Hero spectators rush to help the stricken performer, smothering the flames with items of clothing and their bare hands

He twirls a stick that is ablaze at both ends in front of an assembled crowd of families and holidaymakers on a balmy summer's night

The Health Ministry in Crimea said the performer was in a 'serious but stable' condition

Feodosia, also called in English Theodosia, is a port and resort in the east of Crimea on the coast of the Black Sea

He puts his hand to his mouth in shock as the performance suddenly goes awry and crumples to the ground in as he is engulfed in a fireball.

Hero spectators rush to help the stricken performer, smothering the flames with items of clothing and their bare hands.

Paramedics were quickly on the scene, say reports.

The Health Ministry in Crimea said the performer was in a 'serious but stable' condition.

'The victim was hospitalised at Simferopol Clinical Emergency Hospital No. 6,' said a statement.

He suffered burns mainly to his mouth and face.

Mash news outlet reported that the problem may have been caused by poor quality kerosene used in his fire dance act.

Police are investigating the incident.
According to authorities, a mass shooting during a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago neighborhood of Highland Park, Illinois, on Monday left six people dead and roughly 24 more with significant injuries.

Police in Highland Park are still looking for the shooter, a male between the ages of 18 and 20. According to authorities, it appears the shooter shot from a roof from where a strong weapon was found.

Biden "Shocked" by Highland Park Shooting

According to Lake County Coroner Jennifer Banek, six victims - all adults - died at a hospital, and five died at the scene. The NorthShore University Health System reported a total of 31 patients; the majority had gunshot wounds, while a few others were harmed in the commotion. According to Highland Park Fire Chief Joe Schrage, at least one child has serious injuries.

In the wake of a shooting at the Highland Park Independence Parade that left at least six people dead and almost two dozen more injured, President Joe Biden expressed shock and gratitude for first responders.

In the wake of a shooting at the Highland Park Independence Parade that left at least six people dead and almost two dozen more injured, President Joe Biden expressed shock for the incident and gratitude for first responders. JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, requested prayers for the victims' families as well as for those injured in the incident, as per NBC Chicago.

Near Green Bay Road and Second Street, in the area of Central Avenue, police could be seen searching roofs. Numerous police officers and firefighters participated in the parade. Soon after the shooting started, cops approached the high sniper, making him stop and go away.

He claimed that 19 of the patients received treatment and were then freed. According to Temple, several of the remaining patients had severe and dangerous ailments. He said that several of them were taken to nearby trauma hospitals.

Read Also: Harmony Montgomery Case: Missing New Hampshire Girl's Mom Claims Dad Knows Where She Is as Father Faces Multiple Charges

Manhunt, Investigation Continue

Per NBC News, participants in the parade were asked to visit the Highland Park Police Department to be reunited with friends and family members with whom they might have lost contact. After the shooting, those who had come out to celebrate the Fourth of July before fleeing for their life left behind abandoned camping chairs, US flags, plastic cups, and other things that littered the parade route.

Following their escape from the street, onlookers were escorted out of buildings by SWAT forces, according to Lake County Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli. He said that the manhunt and investigation encompassed hundreds of federal, state, and local law enforcement personnel.

According to the Justice Department, Merrick Garland, the attorney general, received a briefing on the incident and the inquiry. Local officials received assistance from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

Rep. Brad Schneider, a Democrat from Illinois, claimed that the gunfire began as he and staff members were assembling at the parade's beginning. Everyone is safe, he remarked. Almost 30,000 people are residents of Highland Park home, which is located on Lake Michigan about 25 miles north of Chicago.

The tree-shaded boulevard with stone pathways heading into the town's center is lined with clothing boutiques, restaurants, and gift shops. Above caution tape and rows of police vehicles, a giant American flag was flying, USA Today reported.

Related Article: Copenhagen Mall Shooting Leaves "Several Dead" and Injured; 22-Year-Old Suspect Arrested in Potential Terror Attack

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Holidaymakers were today forced to sleep by the bins in Heathrow as Britain's airport chaos took yet another turn for the worse.

A young family were spotted catching up on rest in the most uncomfortable of positions, as terminals up and down the country are once again packed with frustrated, queuing passengers.

It comes as British Airways revealed it is axing journeys for up to 105,000 holidaymakers this month - telling bosses at Gatwick and Heathrow it is cancelling more than 650 flights to more than 70 destinations including Malaga, Ibiza, Palma, Faro and Athens to try and avoid more chaos at terminals.

Affected passengers are being contacted and offered refunds or the chance to rebook.

The move has been allowed due to a temporary Government 'amnesty' on scheduling rules, meaning airlines can make changes without risking a fine.

Ministers urged firms to review their flight plans after manic scenes in recent months, sparked by staff shortages and an overselling of seats to meet demand.

A BA spokesman told the Telegraph: 'As the entire aviation industry continues to face the most challenging period in its history, regrettably it has become necessary to make some further reductions. We're in touch with customers to apologise and offer to rebook them or issue a full refund.'

Today, travellers were pictured enduring yet more long queues at major airports amid fears of a holiday stampede in the next fortnight, when schools break up for summer.

Passengers resort to sleeping on the floor near rubbish bins at Heathrow as they wait for their flights to board

There were long queues at Luton Airport this morning as the aviation crisis continues to cause chaos across Britain

There were long queues at Manchester Airport this morning as the aviation crisis continues to cause chaos across Britain

Ministers urged firms to review their flight plans after manic scenes in recent months, sparked by staff shortages and an overselling of seats to meet demand. Pictured: Birmingham Airport this morning

There were long queues at Luton Airport this morning as the aviation crisis continues to cause chaos across Britain

A passenger at Heathrow airport takes time out for a snooze amid more queues and delays today

There were long queues at Heathrow Airport this morning as the aviation crisis continues to cause chaos across Britain

Unions say no to more night flights as they oppose Government's bid to solve airports crisis Union bosses have vowed to oppose using night flights to ease travel chaos, it was reported last night. In yet another blow for holidaymakers, unions said they would push back against plans to relax overnight flight rules that would see staff working 'anti-social hours'. Airlines are limited to the number of flights that can run between 11.30pm and 6am at major airports, which often leads to flights being cancelled if they are delayed. Amid mounting pressure to solve the travel chaos, the Department for Transport said it will consider suspending the rules to ease disruption. But last night unions vowed to oppose the plans over fears staff could be made to work long hours during the night. A GMB union source told the Daily Telegraph: 'It's not fair to force our members to work nights to pick up the slack for their mistakes.' It comes as holidaymakers are now facing a summer of travel chaos in Europe as countries across the continent grapple with staff shortages and strikes. Huw Merriman, chairman of the transport select committee warned that the plan could 'annoy the heck out of residents' but said he was open to finding out more about lifting the night ban. He added: 'I don't see what good that would do and can see what damage that would do. I don't know if crew will want to fly at two in the morning.' Advertisement

Labour yesterday demanded Transport Secretary Grant Shapps 'get a grip fast' as the crisis continues to worsen, after easyJet's chief operating officer resigned following fury at the budget airline's cancellation of thousands of flights.

And unions said they would push back against plans to relax overnight flight rules, leading to staff working 'antisocial hours'.

One passenger waiting at Manchester Airport yesterday tweeted a photo of a queue to enter Terminal 3 that stretched into the multi-storey car park.

A second complained of 'carnage' while a third added: 'Today is the worst ever. Actually standing in the car park to wait for security. Utter shambles.'

Travellers also posted images of long lines at Heathrow, with one saying the queue for security 'starts outside the terminal'. He added: 'Avoid at all costs. Total mess.'

Problems at Heathrow are set to worsen when the school holidays begin and check-in and ground staff are expected to strike.

But insiders denied security waits yesterday were excessive.

At London City Airport  which has largely escaped the worst of the disruption  one passenger said it had taken 'three hours to get through security at 6am'.

He added: 'Totally out of control, what a mess.'

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, who sits on the Commons transport committee, said: 'If airports are already in meltdown now things will only get worse once the schools break for summer holidays. It's going to be complete chaos if they do not get a grip  and get a grip fast.'

The boss of Heathrow has warned of up to 18 months of disruption as airlines struggle to recruit and train staff.

The Department for Transport (DfT) is considering temporarily suspending rules on night flights.

Airlines are currently restricted in how many flights they can run between 11.30pm and 6am at major airports, which often leads to cancellations in case of delays.

But a GMB union source told the Daily Telegraph: 'It's not fair to force our members to work nights to pick up the slack for their mistakes.' Responding to passenger complaints, London City Airport insisted the 'average journey time' through the airport yesterday was 45 minutes.

A spokesman blamed staff sickness and handling passengers rebooked from other airports.

Manchester Airport apologised for 'any inconvenience caused' but insisted 'the vast majority of people' passed through security in less than 30 minutes yesterday.

Heathrow insisted the airport was 'busy but flowing' yesterday, saying that while queues may have looked 'daunting', this was due to the layout of buildings. A spokesman said the 'vast majority' of passengers got through security in less than 30 minutes.

Security queues at Heathrow Terminal 2 were seen stretching out the doors yesterday morning

One passenger at Manchester Airport yesterday (pictured) showed queues into a car park

Life was no better at Stansted yesterday, where passengers arrived extra early for their flights

A passenger at Manchester claimed the queue yesterday stretched into a multi-storey car park

A passenger at Heathrow Airport posted this picture of huge crowds at 4am yesterday

Queues in the car park at Manchester Airport yesterday as passengers tried to head on holiday

Meanwhile, easyJet's chief operating officer Peter Bellew resigned yesterday amid growing pressure on the airline to reduce flight disruption. It has axed thousands of flights in recent months  including many just hours before they were due to depart.

Airlines have until Friday to take advantage of a government 'amnesty' allowing them to change airport schedules without facing a potential penalty.

Mr Shapps is trying to avoid a summer repeat of the mayhem over the Easter and Platinum Jubilee holidays.

The Government has ordered vetting centres carrying out checks on new recruits to prioritise airport staff. The DfT said counter-terrorist and accreditation checks were now being completed in record time.

A Heathrow spokesman said: 'This is a busy period as people make the most of the ability to travel for the first summer in three years. We are doing everything we can to give everyone a good journey and for the vast majority of passengers this is the experience they are having.'

A DfT spokesman said it was 'working closely with the aviation sector to help holidaymakers enjoy the summer getaways they deserve'.

He added: 'It's now on airlines to commit to running the flights they've promised and for airports and ground handlers to ensure they have the staff needed to enable these flights.'
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Thieves stole vital equipment from a fire engine while crews were responding to a fatal house gas explosion that destroyed a terraced house and killed a 79-year-old grandmother, police revealed today.

Doreen Rees-Bibb died in the blast in the Kingstanding area of Birmingham on June 26 which saw 25 firefighters from six crews work with police, ambulance and gas crews to make the residential area safe.

But as they did so, the thieves decided to prise open a side shutter on one of the West Midlands Fire Service vehicles and steal 'crucial' fire service equipment, including a pump, cutters, a hose and bolt cutters.

The explosion destroyed one home on Dulwich Road and caused damage to eight neighbouring properties after a gas leak ignited. One man was left fighting for his life and many families are now homeless.

The theft came at a time when most of the local community was rallying around to support those affected, with the critically injured man dug out of the burning rubble of the home by about a dozen members of the public.

Emergency services work at the scene on Dulwich Road in Kingstanding, Birmingham on June 27 following the gas explosion

The scene in Kingstanding on June 27 after the explosion destroyed a house and caused damage to other properties

Some 25 firefighters from six crews worked with police, ambulance and gas crews following the blast on June 26

The blast was caused by an 'accidental and inadvertent ignition of a large escape of gas from a joint in the pipework'

Their heroic and quick-thinking actions were praised by the emergency services - while others supported those forced from their homes, with a local pub opening its doors to those displaced and collecting donations.

West Midlands Police confirmed officers are investigating the theft and said they were looking at footage from the area to find those responsible.

Tributes have been paid to Doreen Rees-Bibb, 79, who died in a house explosion in Birmingham on the night of June 26

Chief Inspector Kelly Monaghan said: 'This is a despicable act during a serious incident when other members of the public were acting so heroically and selflessly.

'The items stolen are essential for firefighters to act quickly and save lives when it matters most, just like we saw in Kingstanding on Sunday, June 26.'

Police, fire and Health and Safety Executive (HSE) officials said last Thursday that the cause of the blast was determined as an 'accidental and inadvertent ignition of a large escape of gas from a joint in the pipework'.

The HSE, West Midlands Fire Service and West Midlands Police said demolition work had allowed investigators 'to safely access and test sections of the property's internal gas piping'.

The HSE is continuing investigations as to whether any work-related activities contributed towards the incident.

Among those left homeless by the blast was grandmother Louby Lane, 60, after her property was declared unsafe. She was sat in her living room when the explosion tore through the neighbouring terraced house.

The force of the blast blew out Ms Lane's downstairs windows and forced her to flee the property with her grandchildren.

Ms Lane's home of 38 years has now been left on the brink of collapse and is earmarked for demolition after being declared structurally dangerous.

Louby Lane 60, with her granddaughters Morgan Rowe (left), 13, and Megan Rowe (right), 11, who has been made homeless after the neighbouring property collapsed due to the gas explosion in Kingstanding

The explosion destroyed one home and caused damage to eight neighbouring properties following a gas leak igniting

A woman aged 79 died after a house was destroyed in the gas explosion in Kingstanding on June 26

Emergency services work at the scene on Dulwich Road in Kingstanding, Birmingham on June 27 following the gas explosion

The grandmother-of-two has only been allowed back to collect a few essentials, meaning the majority of her possessions remain inside the abandoned property.

She said that as a result she has 'lost everything', and has been forced to officially register as homeless because the council has yet to find her a suitable replacement.

Ms Lane, who lives with her grandchildren Megan and Morgan Rowe, aged 11 and 13, said the nearest alternative accommodation she has been offered is 90 miles away - in Luton.

Her daughter Terri Rowe has now set up an online fundraiser to help raise money to replace her possessions which face being lost when the home is bulldozed.

The scene in Kingstanding, Birmingham, after a woman died following the explosion destroying a house on Sunday

Flowers and messages from friends and family were left at the scene on June 28 as locals paid tribute to the woman

Emergency services were called at 8.38pm on June 26 to the house in Kingstanding, Birmingham, which exploded

The home in Kingstanding was completely destroyed as well as huge damage caused to the neighbouring houses

A Birmingham City Council spokesman said 'Birmingham City Council expresses its deepest sympathy for all those who have been affected by this terrible tragedy.

'We will continue to work with the local community and other partners to help provide accommodation, food, clothes and any other support that may be required for all those that have been affected.

'At present, citizens are being accommodated in a local hotel - and this will continue while we clear the site.

'We also want to be clear that all those affected, who have been made permanently homeless, are being given advice and support by our Housing Officers.'

Anyone who has any information about the theft is urged to contact West Midlands Police via Live Chat on its website quoting: 20/591089/22
This is the moment a car carrying the leader of a Norwegian anti-Islam group was rammed off the road after he staged a Koran-burning stunt outside a mosque.

Lars Thorsen, leader of provocateur group Stop the Islamisation of Norway (SIAN), was driving towards the capital city of Oslo on Saturday around 3pm when the attack happened.

Footage taken by anti-immigration activists from Alternativ Media riding in the car behind shows a grey Mercedes B-Class ramming Thorsen's military-style jeep, sending it spinning off the road and on to its roof.

Five occupants of the jeep - including Thorsen - suffered injuries including one who had to be taken to hospital, though police say nobody was seriously hurt.

The driver of the Mercedes and a passenger - both of them women - have been arrested and charged with causing or being complicit in grievous bodily harm.

This is the moment a car carrying Norwegian anti-Islam group leader Lars Thorsen was rammed off a motorway near Oslo moment after he burned copies of the Koran

Thorsen, a provocateur and self-styled free speech activist, was followed by a grey Mercedes after setting light to copies of the Muslim holy book, before the driver ran him off the road

Police say the driver and her passenger - who they have not named - were present minutes before the crash as Thorsen and his supporters set light to copies of the Koran outside a mosque in the Oslo suburb of Mortensrud.

Thorsen and his entourage had burned several copies of the holy book in areas where large numbers of Muslims live, before heading to the mosque.

Police say scuffles broke out between worshippers and Thorsen's entourage, who yelled obscenities at the crowd.

The SIAN protesters then got into the jeep and drove away, followed by a group of people from Alternativ Media.

Investigators say they have footage of the female driver and her passenger watching the Koran burning and helping to put out the fire, before driving after Thorsen.

Footage captured on that drive shows the woman caught up to Thorsen as he joined the E6 motorway heading into Oslo from Mortensrud.

She rams his vehicle several times as it navigates a roundabout leading on to the motorway, then speeds ahead and stops across a lane in an apparent attempt to force Thorsen to a standstill.

Thorsen passes and the woman gives chase, ramming the rear of his vehicle as it drives down the inside lane - causing it to turn around, roll into a ditch by the side of the road, and turn over.

Police say they have arrested the female driver of the Mercedes (pictured) and her female passenger who are now accused of causing or being complicit in grievous bodily harm

Five people were riding in the jeep when it overturned but fortunately none of them suffered major injuries in the crash

Footage taken immediately after the incident shows how Thorsen and his entourage were forced to crawl to safety through the car's broken windows or else smash the remaining glass to get out.

Most of them are visibly bloody, while one - a woman - had to lie down at the side of the road after apparently injuring her back.

Later footage shows paramedics treating that woman at the roadside and loading her on to a stretcher.

Police arrested the driver of the vehicle a short time later and have since charged her with causing grievous bodily harm.

Her passenger was arrested the following day, and has also been charged with being complicit in GBH.

Both women were in police custody on Monday, national broadcaster NRK reported, adding that they pleaded not guilty.

Thorsen spoke to the outlet after the crash, describing it as 'unpleasant' but 'not surprising.'

He said he went ahead with the Koran-burning in response to charges brought against him following another protest at an Islamic centre in Oslo earlier this year.

Thorsen, who promotes himself as a free speech activist standing up for Norwegian values, is accused of battery against three people he targeted with pepper spray as well as damage after allegedly getting red pain on a man's clothes.

Video taken by anti-immigration activists riding behind Thorsen's vehicle shows his entourage crawling from the upturned vehicle while bloodied and bruised

Thorsen - a provocateur who styles himself as a free speech activist - said he decided to burn copies of the Koran after being charged with battery over another protest earlier this year

It is hardly the first time that Thorsen or SIAN - a protest group formed in 2008 and which has links with other anti-Islam groups in Europe - have staged Koran burnings, having pulled a similar stunt back in April.

The group have been involved in vocal protests for years which often attract large counter demonstrations, and sometimes end in violence.

NRK says Thorsen had applied for a permit to conduct Saturday's Koran-burnings, but was denied permission by police who said the risk to public safety was too great.

Burning the Koran has become a favoured stunt of anti-Islam groups, particularly in Scandinavian countries which took in large numbers of Muslims following the 2015 European migration crisis.

Rasmus Paludan, a notorious Danish-Swedish agitator, caused mass unrest in Sweden in April this year when he toured the south of the country with the aim of burning Korans in areas with large numbers of Muslims during Ramadan.

Hundreds took to the streets in cities including Stockholm, Linkoping, and Norrkoping in unrest that lasted several nights and led to dozens of arrests, with officers attacked and vehicles set ablaze.
Two brave police officers are being hailed as heroes after risking their lives in neck-deep water to save a man trapped in his sinking ute.

The probationary constables - Lindsay Morgan and Ryan Blume-Poulton - miraculously managed to pull the man from the submerged vehicle in rapidly rising flood waters in South Windsor on Sydney's outskirts.

The dramatic rescue was sparked by an emergency call from a witness who saw the ute in trouble and noticed a 'flicker' in the window - which he quickly realised was a person.

The probationary constables - Lindsay Morgan (left) and Ryan Blume-Poulton (right) - miraculously managed to pull the man from the submerged vehicle in rapidly rising flood waters in South Windsor on Sydney's outskirts

'He said he only had six inches between the water rising and the roof and due to his age and the pressure against the car door, he couldn't get it open,' Probationary Constables Lindsay Morgan told 9News.

Footage shows the officers frantically trying to crack the window open.

'Alright I'm going to smash the window, look the other way and close your eyes,' one of the officers can be heard saying.

But eight attempts to break it with a rock and their batons failed.

Then one officer noticed the door was slightly cracked just enough for them to get their fingertips in and wench it open.

Two brave police officers are being hailed as heroes after risking their lives in neck-deep water to save a man trapped in his sinking ute (pictured)

The dramatic rescue was sparked by an emergency call from a witness who saw the ute in trouble and noticed a 'flicker' in the window - which he quickly realised was a person

The officers said the water was so high at points they had to swim and found themselves hitting fences completely submerged they couldn't see.

"You just don't know what is under the water, crossing fences you couldn't even see... at one point we were swimming across a lake," Probationary Constable Ryan Blume-Poulton said.

'We needed to get to him, that's what we are there for, that's what we signed up for, he needed us and there was no one else,' an officer said.

The man who called in the emergency said if it wasn't for the brave officers the man would have been lost.

"I rang the police and they were here within minutes," David Malone said.

"They definitely would have drowned.'

The rescue comes as Sydney's and large parts of NSW have suffered immense storms with an astonishing weekend of rain resulting in more precipitation since Friday than London experiences in 12 months.

Between Friday and Monday the Harbour City has copped a whopping 733mm - as causing life-threatening floods and an triggering a natural disaster to be declared.

That level of downpour swamps London's annual average of 615mm despite it being one of Europe's wettest cities which on average sees 109 days of rainfall per year.

A severe weather warning of heavy rain and damaging winds of up to 90km/h remains in place for Sydney, the NSW Central Coast and Hunter regions, with Gosford, Cessnock, Maitland, Dungog and Kulnura all in the firing line.

Authorities warned the floodwaters will take up to a week to recede even if the rain eases on Tuesday night as expected.

The Hawkesbury River at Windsor reached major flood levels for the third time within months, peaking at 14m on Tuesday morning - above the 13.8m level recorded in March.

The Central Coast and Newcastle are expected to receive between 50 to 100mm of rain on Tuesday, while Sydney will be hit with 15 to 20mm (pictured, a flooded car in Camden)

Parts of Sydney's south received up to 200mm on Monday night. Pictured is Woronora underwater

A fresh warning has been issued on Tuesday for the Budgewoi and Tuggerah Lakes areas and are now considered 'high danger' - with 19 suburbs at risk.

A major flood level of 1.6m is expected at Long Jetty on Tuesday night with further rises possible.

'Once floodwater passes 1.50 metres on the Long Jetty (The Entrance) gauge at Tuggerah and Budgewoi Lakes, roads will begin to close,' the SES warned on Tuesday afternoon.

Waters will continue to rise in these areas and may inundate homes.

'Once flood water begins inundating the area road access water, sewerage, power, phones and internet may be lost. If you remain in the area you will be trapped and it may be too dangerous for SES to rescue you.'
A Pakistani doctor who commented about 'white folk' and referred to female work colleagues as 'beautiful things' has been cleared of wrongdoing after a tribunal accepted he had been using 'clumsy and misguided' language.

Dr Siddick Dulloo, 69, was accused of making sexually suggestive remarks after he compared one doctor and a nurse to the 'sun and moon in an eclipse,' adding: 'I am just jealous I couldn't come in the middle - I wish I was a sister or a nurse so I could have joined you.'

In another incident on a ward at North Manchester General Hospital, Dr Dulloo an associate specialist in renal medicine spoke in Urdu about 'white folk spending thousands of pounds going abroad to look at beautiful things', before continuing in English: 'I was thinking they could just spend 2 and come to North Manchester Hospital.'

The 'beautiful things' at the hospital appeared to be a reference to an interaction between two female colleagues, which Dr Dulloo said made him 'jealous I couldn't come in the middle'.

Dr Dulloo, originally from Karachi, was later reported to NHS managers by staff who also accused him of making 'grunting' and 'groaning' noises whilst making his remarks. They also claimed he had taken an illicit picture of one female colleague on his mobile phone and said he would make them 'uncomfortable' during encounters.

At the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, Dr Dulloo of Prestwich, Manchester, who has since retired from medical practice, faced professional ruin after being accused of sexually motivated misconduct but he was cleared following a disciplinary hearing.

He accepted his remarks were 'inappropriate' but blamed his command of the English language and said he was merely trying to make conversation regarding the eclipse as he had heard a news story on the topic that morning.

The panel said the grunting and groaning noises may have come about due to the doctor speaking in a 'low tonal voice' and concluded he had 'accidentally' taken the mobile phone picture whilst swiping a screen on his phone to speak to his builder.

The hearing was told the incidents occurred when Dr Dulloo  who qualified in 1983  was working on Ward 5 of the hospital in July 2019.

One medic known as Dr A said that Dr Dulloo told her: 'Oh you're making me jealous; I want to get in the middle of that, I wish I was a nurse or sister so I could join in', before making a groaning noise.

Two days later it was alleged he began speaking to Dr A in Urdu saying: 'Oh you know these white folk, they spend thousands of pounds going abroad to look at beautiful things', then continued in English: 'I was saying, these white (folk) spend so much money going to Philippines or Thailand, but I was thinking they could just spend 2 and come to North Manchester Hospital.'

Dr Dulloo told a female colleague: 'I was saying, these white (folk) spend so much money going to Philippines or Thailand, but I was thinking they could just spend 2 and come to North Manchester Hospital'

He went on: 'Did you see there was an eclipse on Wednesday? You don't need to go abroad for that, I saw the eclipse here on this ward, the sun and the moon were hugging here, I am just jealous I couldn't come in the middle, I wish I was a sister or a nurse so I could have joined you.'

Boyd Morwood, counsel for the General Medical Council, said: 'The comments were not work related, came from a senior doctor to two junior members of staff, were made in close proximity to patients and other colleagues.

'They made both individuals feel uncomfortable and were of a physical and overly personal nature.

'Dr Dulloo's conduct was distasteful, inappropriate and caused Dr A an "adverse reaction". The use of the word "white" may have been racially motivated or offensive to specific racial group.'

But Dr Dulloo's counsel Christopher Gillespie said: 'Whilst he made clumsy comments which plainly upset Dr A, his actions lack the seriousness that is being portrayed.

'Although Dr Dulloo's comments were indeed misguided, there was no attempt to demean or abuse his position.

'It was merely a misguided comment which was not received in the manner in which it was intended. He made some regrettable comments but it was certainly not Dr Dulloo's intention to treat his colleagues with disrespect.'

In clearing Dr Dulloo of serious professional misconduct MPTS chairman Nicholas Flanagan said: 'English was not Dr Dulloo's first language and he may have expressed himself in a clumsy and inappropriate fashion.

'But there was very little evidence that demonstrated that Dr Dulloo had any particular sexual interest in Dr A.

'No overtly sexual words were used, the comments were not lewd or vulgar and, whilst inappropriate, there was no reason to conclude that they would provide any sexual gratification for Dr Dulloo.

'During his oral evidence, Dr Dulloo spoke with a low tonal sound, mumbled on occasion and frequently said "erm". He also had a tendency to repeat himself.

'If one were not familiar with Dr Dulloo's delivery, some of these sounds could be misconstrued as a groaning noise.

'It was highly possible that Dr Dulloo made a groaning or grunting noise in his interaction with Dr A and Ms E, which may have been misconstrued as inappropriate.'

Referring to the mobile phone incident, Mr Flanagan added: 'Dr Dulloo stated he was eagerly awaiting an important phone call from his builder regarding some business in his personal life.

'Dr Dulloo's evidence is that when he tried to answer an incoming phone call, he swiped up on his phone, accidently opening the camera and inadvertently taking a photograph of what was in front of him.

'Dr Dulloo's evidence is that he did not realise he had taken a photograph until he was confronted and asked to open his photo gallery.

'Dr Dulloo has eyesight problems and wears glasses, which he said he was not wearing at the time. He is not adept at using his phone and is not a particularly technological person.

'If Dr Dulloo had been acting in a predatory manner in trying to take a photograph of Dr A for his own sexual gratification, he would have likely been far more clandestine in his actions, such as turning his phone to silent mode so it did not make a loud clicking noise, or waiting until he and Dr A were alone and holding his phone in a more discrete position.

'These incidents were isolated in the context of an otherwise unblemished career, that Dr Dulloo has made admissions, expressed an apology and shown insight into his shortcomings.

'Dr Dulloo has retired, does not hold a licence to practise and does not intend to return to the workplace. Issuing a warning in this case would have little useful impact.'
Illinois's July 4 massacre which saw six people killed in another day of horrific violence in the US took place in a state which has the sixth strictest gun laws in the country.

The midwestern state enforces universal background checks, red flag warnings and safe storage requirements yet it has not imposed a ban on assault weapons.

Gun control groups say many of the weapons that fuel the horrific gang violence in Chicago flood in from nearby states which have much more relaxed gun laws.

More than 60 per cent of the weapons used in shootings in Chicago in 2016 came from outside Illinois.

And this year, analysis shows less than half the total guns in Illinois actually come from the state, at 49.8 per cent, with nearly 17 per cent from Indiana.

It is not yet known what weapon was used by the alleged gunman Robert 'Bobby' Crimo III, 22, who picked off passersby at random from a roof in Highland Park yesterday.

But authorities said they recovered a high-powered rifle from the scene of the massacre in Highland Park, 25 miles north of Chicago.

First responders take away victims from the scene of a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park near Chicago in Illinois

More than 60 per cent of the weapons used in shootings in Chicago in 2016 came from outside Illinois

The blue-run state has the ninth lowest rate of gun ownership in the US, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country.

Much of Illinois's gun violence is carried out by the gangs of Chicago, which is considered the most gang-occupied city in the country.

Last year was one of the most violent on record, with more people killed than any year in the past 25 years.

The police department said Chicago saw 797 homicides, 25 more than 2020 and the most since 1996.

There were 3,561 shooting incidents last year, a staggering 1,415 more than were recorded two years prior.

In its latest report, Everytown said: 'Illinois is surrounded by states with much weaker laws, and an outsized share of likely trafficked guns recovered in Illinois are originally purchased out-of-state  especially in Indiana, just across the border from Chicago.'

Police search the vehicle in which Robert E. Crimo III was found after an eight-hour manhunt yesterday

The states neighboring Illinois - Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri and Wisconsin - are all rated far lower in terms of gun safety, with none appearing in the top 20.

On average, 1,505 people die every year from gun violence in Illinois, at a rate of 11.9 deaths per 100,000 people.

This makes it the 35th highest rate of gun deaths in the country, where in total 40,620 people die on average each year at a rate of 12.2 per 100,000 citizens.

Illinois's attempts to limit gun possession have been hampered by federal courts, such as the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling that Chicago's ban on handguns violated the Constitution.

It is not yet known what weapon was used by the alleged gunman (pictured)

Unlike most states, Illinois requires a background check and permit to buy a firearm and those with previous felony convictions, a history of mental health issues or residents with orders or protections against them are banned from buying guns.

The Firearm Owners Identification Card must be renewed every 10 years and is issued by state police.

It is required to buy guns and ammo and also just being in possession of a firearm.

A concealed carry license is only offered after 16 hours of firearm training which includes classroom and range instruction.

People under 21 need to be sponsored by an eligible adult to buy a gun and certain high-powered ammunition and silencers are banned.

Highland Park, where Monday's atrocity was carried out, has itself served as a backdrop to the country's raging debate on gun control.

Only ten days ago, residents gathered there for a 'community art action against gun violence' prompted by the Uvalde shooting in Texas, this year's deadliest shooting.

Blood is seen on the ground after the massacre which saw six people killed in a state with tight gun laws

In the affluent suburb, leaders tried to ban assault rifles in 2013 but it was challenged by a local doctor and the Illinois Rifle Association.

The legal row went all the way tot he Supreme Court who declined to hear it, instead allowing a lower court to rule in favor of the ban.

The appeals court said: 'A ban on assault weapons and largecapacity magazines might not prevent shootings in Highland Park (where they are already rare), but it may reduce the carnage if a mass shooting occurs.'

Two years later, Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion and said they would have heard the case, claiming the appeal court 'flouts two of our Second Amendment precedents.'

Earlier this year, a new Supreme Court ruling limited how states could restrict concealed carry outside the home, which made it harder for lower courts to impose local restrictions on assault weapons.
Six people have been charged over a Formula 1 track invasion, where eco protesters sat on the circuit at Silverstone at the beginning of the British Grand Prix at the weekend.

Five protesters stormed the Wellington Straight - the fastest point of the Northamptonshire track - before sitting down during the opening lap of Sunday's race.

The contest had already been suspended following Alfa Romeo driver Zhou Guanyu's high-speed crash, but a number of cars sped by as the group, understood to be from climate activists Just Stop Oil, launched their protest.

They were swiftly dragged away by marshals to cheers from the watching crowd.

Protestors are removed after running onto the track at the Formula 1 British Grand Prix at Silverstone on Sunday

Six people have been charged with conspiracy to cause public nuisance following the stunt at the weekend

The charges relate to the incident after Sunday's race had been halted following driver Zhou Guanyu's crash

Louis McKechnie, who spoke in a video released by Just Stop Oil about the stunt at the weekend, is one of six people charged

Bethany Mogie, who spoke in a video released by Just Stop Oil about the stunt at the weekend, is one of six people charged

Joshua Smith, who spoke in a video released by Just Stop Oil about the stunt at the weekend, is one of six people charged

Alasdair Gibson, who spoke in a video released by Just Stop Oil about the stunt at the weekend, is one of six people charged

David Baldwin, who spoke in a video released by Just Stop Oil about the stunt at the weekend, is one of six people charged

Northamptonshire Police said David Baldwin, 46, of Stonesfield, Witney, Oxfordshire, Emily Brocklebank, 24, of Yeadon, Leeds, Alasdair Gibson, 21, of no fixed address, Louis McKechnie, 21, of London, Bethany Mogie, 40, of St Albans, Hertfordshire, and Joshua Smith, 28, of Manchester, have all been charged with conspiracy to cause public nuisance.

All six will appear at Northampton Magistrates' Court this morning.

The force said a 43-year-old man also arrested in connection with the incident has been released under investigation pending further inquiries.

Now Just Stop Oil 'eco vandals' target 16th century copy of The Last Supper: Protesters glue themselves to yet ANOTHER artwork at Royal Academy - a day after they damaged Constable's iconic The Hay Wain while security watched on

Environmental activists from Just Stop Oil have shut down another art gallery today after gluing themselves to the frame of a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Extinction Rebellion co-founder Simon Bramwell was among those involved today, along with fellow XR activist Caspar Hughes. Just Stop Oil also named three of the protesters as Jessica Agar, 21, an art student from Hereford; Tristan Strange, 40, a community organiser from Swindon; and Lucy Porter, 47, a former teacher from Leeds.

The protesters also sprayed painted the phrase 'no new oil' below the 20ft painting, which depicts a scene from the Gospel of John in the Bible when Jesus Christ announces that one of his 12 apostles will betray him.

They entered The Collection Gallery at the Academy just after 11.30am, and glued their hands to the base of the painting. Security quickly responded and cleared visitors away before trying to prise the activists off the artwork.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: 'At 11.37am on July 5, police were called to Burlington House, Piccadilly following reports that protestors had glued themselves to artwork. Officers are in attendance. The incident is ongoing.'

The copy in the Royal Academy was painted around 1520 and is almost the same size as the original - but missing the top third of da Vinci's composition, which is on the wall of the Santa Maria delle Grazie church in Milan.

The value of the London work is not known, but will likely be worth tens of millions of pounds because the original is estimated to be worth at least 375million ($450million). The only other official copy is located in Switzerland.

It comes less than 24 hours after two climate change activists from the same protest group glued themselves to the frame of John Constable's masterpiece The Hay Wain at the National Gallery while security guards watched on.

The action also follows protestors from the group last week glued themselves to works by JMW Turner, Vincent van Gogh, and Horatio McCulloch in London, Glasgow and Manchester to warn against 'a future of suffering'.

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Just Stop Oil are calling for the Government to commit to halt new oil and gas licenses in the UK and for the directors, employees and members of art institutions to join their coalition in 'peaceful civil resistance'.

One of the protesters at the Royal Academy, Ms Agar, said today: 'No painting is worth more than my six-month old nephew's life. No sculpture can feed babies starving because extreme heat killed food crops.

'Nurses are lining up outside food banks, not galleries. If the directors of this gallery really believe that art has the power to change the world then I demand that they claim that power, close and refuse to open until the government commits to no new oil.'

Ms Agar, who wore an orange Just Stop Oil T-Shirt, added: 'I am an art student but there is no place for me to follow my calling as an artist in a world where I have no future.

'In no uncertain terms, the establishment - of which the Royal Academy is a part - has condemned me and all young people to suffer. I am outraged and you should be too.'

Another protester, Ms Porter, said: 'When I was teaching I brought my students to great institutions like the Royal Academy. But now it feels unfair to expect them to respect our culture when their government is hellbent on destroying their future by licensing new oil and gas projects.

'We have no time left, to say that we do is a lie. We must halt all new oil and gas right now, we will stop disrupting art institutions as soon as the government makes a meaningful statement to do so. Until then, the disruption will continue so that young people know we are doing all we can for them. There is nothing I would rather be doing.'

And Mr Strange added: 'I'm terrified for our future. We are heading for a collapse of our food supply and a world in which only the rich can feed themselves comfortably.

'Time is running out to change course or prepare for disaster and the message is not reaching the public: there is no free pass, we are all in this together and we must all rise up in civil resistance to force the government to stop new oil and gas.

'Da Vinci said that art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world. The science still isn't being heard.

'We are continually fed comforting lies that downplay the urgency of the climate crisis we face so that fossil fuel interests can continue to reap huge profits whilst the global south and our children are condemned to live in a potential hell.

'I call on all artists to harness every ounce of their creativity sounding the alarm in the hope that it cuts through the misinformation. Nothing is more critical at the moment.'

The group were led by Simon Bramwell, who apologised for disrupting other visitors but added: 'The truth is that any new oil expansion is a death sentence for the future.'

The protesters involved in yesterday's action at the National Gallery were named by Just Stop Oil as music student Eben Lazarus, 22, and psychology student Hannah Hunt, 23, who are both from Brighton.

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

The duo forced the evacuation of art lovers, tourists and a class of 11-year-old children on a school trip from the room where the painting hangs after they struck at 2.15pm yesterday.

They attached their own image of 'an apocalyptic vision of the future' of the landscape, on three large sheets of paper, featuring an old car dumped in front of the Mill and the Hay Wain cart carrying an old washing machine.

Mr Lazarus and Miss Hunt wore white T-shirts with the Just Stop Oil logo, stepped over a rope barrier and then placed the coloured paper on to the front of the painting. Each also placed a hand on the frame of the painting and kneeled beneath it before loudly outlining their concerns as visitors were ushered out by security staff.

During the protest Mr Lazarus, who described himself as an art lover, said: 'Art is important. It should be held for future generations to see, but when there is no food what use is art. When there is no water, what use is art. When billions of people are in pain and suffering, what use then is art.'

The Hay Wain, which was painted in 1821, is one of the most popular paintings at the gallery and shows a rural Suffolk scene of a wagon returning to the fields across a shallow ford for another load.

Mr Lazarus said: 'We have stuck a reimagined version of the Hay Wain that demonstrates our road to disaster.'

Miss Hunt later added that 'the disruption will end when the UK Government makes a meaningful statement that it will end new oil and gas licences'. She continued: 'I'm here because our government plans to license 40 new UK oil and gas projects in the next few years.

'This makes them complicit in pushing the world towards an unliveable climate and in the death of billions of people in the coming decades.

Activists from Just Stop Oil glued their hands to the frame of John Constable's The Hay Wain at the National Gallery yesterday

'You can forget our 'green and pleasant land' when further oil extraction will lead to widespread crop failures which means we will be fighting for food. Ultimately, new fossil fuels are a death project by our Government.

'So yes, there is glue on the frame of this painting but there is blood on the hands of our government.'

A spokesman for the National Gallery said the room was closed to the public and police were called. They said later: 'The painting was removed from the wall to be examined by our conservation team.

'The Hay Wain suffered minor damage to its frame and there was also some disruption to the surface of the varnish on the painting - both of which have now been successfully dealt with.

'The painting will be rehung in Room 34 ready for when the National Gallery opens at 10am on Tuesday.'

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: 'At approximately 14.25 on Monday officers were called to a protest taking place inside the National Gallery involving two people. Two people were arrested.'
A mother whose one-year-old boy plunged to his death from an open window in a seventh floor flat had allegedly called the council twice to get them to fix a faulty latch, friends today revealed.

Neighbours said how the 'devoted' mother 'screamed in horror' as her toddler fell 60ft to his death in their flat in Saville Green on Saturday afternoon.

Tributes poured in for the 'energetic and happy' one-year-old boy after tragedy struck in the council tower block in Leeds, West Yorkshire.

The young boy - who would 'always run and give you a hug' - was taken to hospital but died a short time later after the fall, West Yorkshire Police said in a statement.

It's believed the child landed on a patch of grass at the bottom of the block of flats.

Close friend Yohana Tesfagaber, 32, claimed that the mother had contacted Leeds City council housing to get the window fixed before the tragedy.

She said: 'She's very nice, she's a good mum. I've just come back from her, she's not good. She was sick yesterday, she's been vomiting. She can't keep any food down.

'She's called housing twice to ask them fix the latch on the window.' Leeds City Council have been contacted for comment.

Yohana, who lives in the flat above the mother, said the community was united in its grief for the tot.

She added: 'Its very sad. I saw him in hospital, it's hit me very hard. His mum can't eat, she can't sleep.'

A baby boy has died after falling from a window on the seventh floor of Saville Green block of flats in Leeds, West Yorkshire

An officer looks over a balcony on the seventh floor from the flat where the one-year-old boy died after falling from the window

Close friend Yohana Tesfagaber, 32, (pictured) says that the mother tried to get the council to fix the latch on the window before the tragedy on Saturday

One neighbour, who lived in the flat next to the family, said he ran down stairs after hearing the mother's screams on Saturday.

He added: 'She's a good mother, and a very nice person. I don't know exactly what happened, but I heard her screaming and I followed her down the stairs.

'He was such a happy, fast baby. He was walking everywhere. If he saw you, he would run up to you and give you a hug.

'I'm very sad, she's a very nice person.'

It is thought the toddler lived in the flat with his mother - said to be originally from Eritrea, eastern Africa - his older brother, and older sister.

Another neighbour, who lives directly below the flat from which the boy fell, said: 'I live on the sixth floor and the room the little boy fell from would be a bedroom. Poor little tot.

'The windows have a safety lock on them, which restricts their opening to just a few inches. But, there are also two catches on either side which you can press down to open the window fully, for extra air or to clean them.'

Wayne Watson, 42, who also lives in the tower block, said he's been waiting for repairs to his faulty window 'for a few months'.

He explained windows in his flat open on a latch system but can be opened with a slight bit of pressure.

Wayne, a cleaner, said: 'She's a very nice lady, I've known her quite a while. I've done some decorating for her and she's given me food before when I had nothing in.

'The windows have two latches on them, but they're faulty. You put a tiny bit of pressure on them and they come off.'

A third local said today: 'She is a very good and caring mother, who adores her daughter and two sons.'

Speaking about the tragedy, a fourth tearful tenant said: 'I can't believe what I have seen. I feel sick. I will never be able to forget what I have witnessed.'

And another resident added: 'It is terrible. His mother was talking to friends on the balcony. She thought he has safe inside.

'But he has managed to climb up to the open window and has fallen out. It is a horrible, horrible accident. The poor mother.'

Police and forensic officers worked at the Leeds City Council-owned block of flats for three days.

The ten-story tower block is part of a 1959-built estate, and residents said it houses local tenants and some asylum seekers.

The mother is believed to have been granted British citizenship and had lived in the flat for around 10 years.

A young woman on the ground floor said she came home late on Saturday evening to see the flats blocked off by police.

She said: 'It's tragic. I've got a little brother who is four so it's very close to home.'

A police cordon around the flat, which had been in place since the weekend, has been lifted, but it is not thought the mother has returned since the incident.

Local Councillor Asghar Khan said in a statement: 'We were saddened to hear of the sad and tragic death of a baby in our Burmantofts community, our thoughts are very much with the family at this very sad time.'

The police statement read: 'At 1.25pm on Saturday, July 2, police were contacted by the ambulance service who were attending Saville Green in Leeds where a child had fallen from the window of a flat.

'The one-year-old boy was taken to hospital for emergency treatment but was pronounced dead a short time later.

'The incident is being treated as a sudden unexpected death in childhood and we ask that people consider the family and respect their privacy at what is clearly a very difficult time for them.'

The force said they are investigating the circumstances of the boy's death and enquiries are ongoing.

A Leeds City Council spokesperson said: 'We are aware of this incident, and we are working closely with our partners at West Yorkshire Police to establish the full circumstances surrounding this very tragic event.

'We're supporting the family with an urgent transfer into another council property, and we ask that people respect their privacy at what is a very difficult time for them.'

It's thought that the child's mother was on a balcony when the tragedy occurred, according to reports

Emergency services were called to the scene in Leeds, West Yorkshire, shortly after 1pm on Saturday
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The CEO of craft beer firm BrewDog said he is seeking an autism diagnosis after he admitted pushing people 'too far' in a workplace culture row, where he was accused of inappropriate behaviour and abusing his power.

James Watt, 38, the chief executive of Britain's biggest craft brewer, has been at the centre of a string of misconduct accusations in recent years after being accused of inappropriate behaviour towards women at work.

Speaking with Steven Bartlett on the Diary of a CEO podcast about his leadership at the company, he revealed that he may have 'light-level autism' and that his doctor thinks it's 'possible' he has the developmental disability.

Autism is characterised by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviours, speech and communication.

He revealed: 'I think I might have some kind of light-level autism in the mix that would explain some of the social cue thing, some of the mindset thing, and some of the awkwardness as well.

'Because of that exact quote  and I was chatting with my doctor, and shes like, Ive thought that for a while, James, quite possibly. So Im working with a specialist at the moment to see if theres a diagnosis there or not.'

BrewDog CEO James Watt admitted to that he believes he might have autism. He also said in the interview that he had been 'too intense and demanding' after he was accused of inappropriate behaviour and abuse of power in a workplace culture row. Last year, dozens of his staff signed a letter accusing him of creating a 'rotten culture' at work. This year, a string of sexual misconduct allegations also came to light during a BBC documentary

The CEO also said that he suffered with a serious speech impediment when he was younger - and that he wouldn't speak to people growing up as he was worried about being bullied for it.

He said: 'I had quite a severe speech impediment when I was growing up. That kind of always made me a bit of an outsider, always felt socially awkward.

'The speech impediment was something that all the kids loved to make fun of. When I was as four, five, six, seven, eight, there were certain words and and letters that I just couldn't say. I worked really hard with a speech therapist.

'Because of that, I just wouldn't speak to people because I was scared to let them see that I had a speech impediment. I was very quiet, very insular.'

The BrewDog boss also opened up about his tumultuous relationship with his mother - who he said had created a 'voice' in his head growing up.

He told Bartlett about an instance where his mother crushed his dreams of becoming a marine biologist at nine-years-old - since sharks were his favourite animal.

Mr Watt said: 'My favourite hobby is diving with sharks, I'm happiest when I'm underwater with sharks.'

But his mother sat him down one evening and went through the authors in one of his favourite shark books - pointing out that all the writers had PhDs.

He added: 'She went through the four authors in the shark book. She said "It's just not something you're going to be able to do, so you've got to stop telling people that you want to be a marine biologist."'

In the interview, Mr Watt also admitted to being 'too intense and demanding' as a boss because of his 'high standards.'

But the CEO - whose company has been accused of having a 'rotten culture' - said that his actions were done with '100% good intentions.'

Father-of-two Mr Watt revealed: 'It's completely fair to say at times in the journey I have been too intense.

'I have been too demanding, that I have set standards for the team which I would set for myself, and for a lot of the team members that is unattainable.

'I just pushed for such high standards, unrealistic deadlines, it's because I was so focused on 'let's build the thing, let's create more jobs, let's deliver more value for our customers.'

'The intention was 100% good and because I was so bought in and so focused on that, I did push people too far.'

The CEO and father-of-two (left) spoke about the issues he has dealt with at the company with Steven Bartlett (right) on his podcast

Steven Bartlett interviewed the CEO - who said he believes he created 'high standards' and 'unrealistic deadlines' in the workplace. Bartlett (pictured) has interviewed some of Britain's best business owners, including Love Island's Molly-Mae Hague and Gymshark's Ben Francis

This comes after more than 15 ex-staff previously spoke out against Mr Watt with some claiming he made female bartenders feel 'uncomfortable' and 'powerless'.

They were even advised by colleagues on how to avoid unwelcome attention from Mr Watt, 38, according to an investigation by BBC Scotland's Disclosure programme.

Katelynn Ising, who worked at a BrewDog bar in Ohio, US, said female staff would dress down when they knew Mr Watt would be in their bars.

She said: 'We would make a point to warn new girls... like, 'Hey, just so you know, James Watt's coming to town. Just kind of, like, leave after your shift, don't really hang around [and] don't always do your hair and make-up that day, like don't catch his attention'.'

Other former staff claim Mr Watt was witnessed by staff kissing an intoxicated customer on a roof terrace at another US bar.

Mr Watt has said the allegations are false and denies behaving inappropriately.

Last year, Watts' disgruntled former employees shared a scathing open letter slamming the company for its 'toxic attitudes' and accusing it of fostering a 'culture of fear' among staff.

Penned by a group called 'Punks With Purpose', the letter featured a list of 63 names of people who used to work for the firm, and takes aim at the Scotland-based brewery's founders James Watt and Martin Dickie.

James Watt, chief executive of craft beer maker BrewDog, has been accused of 'making women feel uncomfortable', according to an investigation by BBC Scotland's Disclosure programme

James Watt (right) with co-founder Martin Dickie (left). Mr Watt denies all accusations that he acted inappropriately towards women

Writing collectively as a group called 'Punks With Purpose', the letter featured a list of names of people who used to work for the firm, and takes aim at the Scotland-based brewery's founders

BrewDog CEO James Watt and his misconduct accusations In June 2021, almost 300 former and current Brewdog employees signed a letter accusing Mr Watt of creating a toxic fear culture at BrewDog. The letter stated that a 'significant number' of former staff had 'suffered mental illness' as a result of working at Brewdog. At the time, the CEO responded: 'I want to be very candid about some mistakes that I have made that have detrimentally impacted our culture. 'In the hard and fast environment of high growth, I have all too often neglected many important people elements of our business. 'Furthermore, despite surviving C-19 due to a phenomenal effort from our amazing team I had to make some very hard decisions to ensure our survival and these decisions have taken a considerable human toll on our business and had a negative impact. 'Additionally, some PR mistakes that I have made in our past have also had a detrimental impact on culture. I can promise that I will not make these mistakes again.' In January 2022, James Watt faced further accusations of inappropriate behaviour and abuse of power in the workplace by former staff. Over 15 ex-staff spoke out about his conduct on the BBC's Disclosure programme. Specifically, he was called out for making female bartenders feel 'uncomfortable' and 'powerless'. A string of misconduct accusations were included in the programme, including that he kissed an intoxicated customer on a roof terrace bar, and took women on late night private brewery tours, which left staff feeling uncomfortable. He was called a 'starer' by former staff members, and managers said they would schedule women to not be at work if they knew Mr Watt was in town visiting. The BBC Disclosure programme made no allegations of criminal behaviour with women by Mr Watt. He denies all the allegations Advertisement

It claimed the company is 'built on a cult of personality' and alleged that it left some staff feeling 'burnt out, afraid and miserable', adding that 'a significant number of people have admitted they have suffered mental illness' as a result of working there.

It went so far as to claim being treated like a human being 'was sadly not always a given' for those employed by BrewDog - trashing the image of the hipster company which offers 'pawternity leave' if a staff member gets a dog and pays employees 500 to quit if they don't feel they're a good fit.

At the time, Mr Watt subsequently issued an 'update' on the Punks With Purpose open letter, describing it as 'so upsetting, but so important'.

He said: 'Our focus now is not on contradicting or contesting the details of that letter, but to listen, learn and act.'

Mr Watt also tweeted that the suggestion it was he who sent round the counter letter which 'dismissed the deeply-held fears of current and former staff' was 'untrue', stressing: 'The email came from our people team, not myself. The letter is drafted by our teams who feel it is important to make their voice heard too.'

The Punks With Purpose letter opened by addressing recent of sexism, discrimination and sexual harassment and abuse made by women working in the craft beer industry.

It stateed its purpose is to make known the feelings of former staff regarding 'the atmosphere fostered at BrewDog, since its inception, in the hope that it might explain why so many allegations have come to light'.

'BrewDog was, and is, built on a cult of personality,' it read. 'Since day one, you have sought to exploit publicity, both good and bad (and usually with the faces of James and Martin front and centre) to further your own business goals.

'Your mission might genuinely be to make other people as passionate about craft beer as you are (and in a sense you have succeeded - your fanbase certainly has some true zealots in its ranks), but the ambitions you impressed on your team have always seemed business-led.

'Growth, at all costs, has always been perceived as the number one focus for the company, and the fuel you have used to achieve it is controversy.'

The letter alleged that several of BrewDog's famous PR campaigns - including the founders both changing their names to Elvis, sending 'protest beer to Russia' and offering its employees 'pawternity leave' when they get a pet - were built on 'lies, hypocrisy and deceit'.

It went on: 'You spent years claiming you wanted to be the best employer in the world, presumably to help you to recruit top talent, but ask former staff what they think of those claims, and youll most likely be laughed at. Being treated like a human being was sadly not always a given for those working at BrewDog.'

The letter claimed that employees from all departments within the business, from production and bartending to marketing and HR have signed the letter, because they felt that in their day to day working lives there were 'at best hurdles, and at worst genuine safety concerns'.

'We felt that no matter how these were raised, the likelihood was we would be met with some variation on "thats just the way things are",' it argues. 'Sometimes it was linked to James directly, sometimes it was because someone in a position of power felt enabled to act in such a manner. We believe these toxic attitudes towards junior staff trickled down throughout the business from day one, until they were simply an intrinsic part of the company.'

It added that many of them started their jobs there having eagerly bought into the BrewDog ethos, but discovered that 'fast paced' meant 'unmanageable' and 'challenging' meant 'demanding'.

The letter also alleged that some senior staff members 'belittled' others beneath them and 'pressured them into working beyond their capacity' to the point where they eventually felt 'forced out of the business'.

It claimed the single biggest shared experience of former staff is 'a residual feeling of fear', both of the atmosphere and the repercussions if they were to speak out. It claimed 'many' felt unable to sign the letter because doing so would 'leave them feeling extremely vulnerable'.

Dragons' Den investors turned down best deal in show's history when they refused to put 100K into BrewDog that would 'now be worth 360m' In March 2021, CEO and co-founder of BrewDog Mr Watt, 38, claimed his plea for investment turned down by Dragons' Den 13 years ago would now be worth 360m - the best deal in the programme's history. He said they 'pitched our hearts out' to the BBC show in 2008 but only got as far as the screen test before he was rejected by producers. The craft beer company was just two years old at the time, and along with business partner Martin Dickie, he asked for 100,000 for 20 per cent of the business. But he later revealed a recent valuation of the brew company means the Dragons' missed investment would now be worth a staggering 360 million. Writing on LinkedIn, he said: 'In 2008 we applied to Dragons' Den & got as far as a screen test and we pitched our hearts out before the producers rejected us. 'They deemed Martin and myself not investment worthy - we were totally crushed. Based on our latest BrewDog valuation, that investment would be now worth almost 360m. That means the Dragons missed out on by far the best deal in Den history.' James said their pitch was rejected because it 'was not unique enough, special enough or with enough growth potential to make the grade'. Advertisement

The letter then personally accused Mr Watt for being responsible for the company's 'rotten culture', claiming in the wake of his success are people 'left burnt out, afraid and miserable'. It ends by demanding a 'genuine apology' for the people who felt they were 'harassed, assaulted, belittled, insulted or gaslighted'.

In response at the time, Mr Watt said: 'At BrewDog our people are our main priority, which is why the open letter we saw on Twitter was so upsetting, but so important,' it said.

'Our focus now is not on contradicting or contesting the details of that letter, but to listen, learn and act.

'At BrewDog we are focussed on building the best business we can. We have always tried to do the best by our team  we do have many thousands of employees with positive stories to tell as a result. But the tweet we saw last night proves that on many occasions we havent got it right. We are committed to doing better, not just as a reaction to this, but always; and we are going to reach out to our entire team past and present to learn more.

'But most of all, right now, we are sorry. Its hard to hear those comments, but it must have been harder to say them. We appreciate that and we will endeavour to honour that effort and courage with the real change it deserves.

'We arent going to make excuses, were going to take action. From our commitment to sustainability to our passion for beer, BrewDog has always been defined by taking responsibility and continually improving. This is no exception.'

Earlier this year, it was revealed that the BrewDog boss was privately prosecuting a woman he claimed provided false information about people behind 'malicious' comments made about him online.

He accused model Emili Ziem, 29, at Westminster Magistrates' Court of fraud by false representation.

The charge alleges that she breached the Fraud Act 2006 because she 'obtained information about people responsible for malicious communications' about Mr Watt.

Bark & Co, on behalf of its client Ziem, previously said: 'Emili Ziem is entirely innocent of these charges.

'She vehemently denies any wrongdoing and intends to defend these allegations robustly at trial in the crown court.'

The case has been brought against her as a private prosecution by Watt as an individual rather than Brewdog as a company, which he co-founded in 2007.

The firm based in Ellon, Scotland - which is valued at about 2billion, runs 111 bars and has 2,000 staff - is said to be currently weighing up a stock market listing.

The open letter was shared on Twitter last year. It was signed by 61 former employees, plus '45 and counting who did not feel safe to include their names or initials'
A shirtless man stopped traffic, roared foul abuse at police officers and ordered them to 'shoot him' in a terrifying scene that unfolded in a leafy suburb.

The shocking incident happened across from a Mercedes Benz dealer on Denmark Street in Kew, five kilometres east of Melbourne's CBD.

Footage of the incident, which was posted online, shows two female police officers walking towards the man as emergency sirens ring out in the background.

A shirtless man is then seen standing in the middle of the street shouting vile abuse at the officers.

An aggressive, shirtless man is pictured in the leafy inner Melbourne suburb of Kew, roaring abuse at police officers and demanding they shoot him

'F*** off, you f****** dogs,' he roared.

'Shoot me. Shoot me, ya f****** dogs,' he shouts while punching his chest and gesticulating at the police.

As the officer's sirens continue, the agitated man holds an aggressive stance and continues his tirade.

'Shoot me, go on, shoot me,' he said, over and over again.

The video ends with three police officers, two female and one male, approaching the man, who had by then turned away and crossed the street.

Three police officers are pictured approaching an aggressive, shirtless man in the inner Melbourne suburb of Kew

Viewers of the video expressed their shock and horror at what they had just watched.

'Get a load of this,' one person commented.

Another poster pointed out how well to do the suburb of Kew is.

'Houses in this area only cost $1m +,' the comment said.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Victoria Police for comment on the incident.
Six days after her hearing on January 6, former President Donald Trump continued to attack committee witness Cassidy Hutchinson.

The Daily Caller claimed on Sunday that Hutchinson allegedly sent text messages requesting legal aid through the American Conservative Union's First Amendment Fund.

Trump Whines About Cassidy Hutchinson's Testimony

The individual texted back, saying they still worked for the ACU, which annually hosts the Conservative Political Action Conference. For days, the former president slammed his former assistant on the Truth Social site, even though he is still banned from Twitter.

The falsehoods and fake stories being made to the politicized Highly Unselect Committee, not just by the phony social climber who was discovered yesterday, but by many others, are a shame to our nation, which is in severe decline, the ex-president said.

Trump has been attempting to smear Hutchinson's character since Tuesday's surprise meeting of the House Select Committee on January 6. Hutchinson served on Trump's legislative affairs team and under Chief of Staff Mark Meadows at the White House.

During her testimony, she shared embarrassing anecdotes about Trump's behavior, such as how he tried to grab the wheel of the presidential limo, the 'Beast,' after being told he couldn't go to the Capitol Building on January 6 and how he threw food at the wall after Attorney General Bill Barr said there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

He said Hutchinson only cooperated with the Democrat-led committee because he did not offer her a position at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House in January 2021. The former president was enraged by Hutchinson's testimony about him committing temper outbursts, Daily Mail reported.

Read Also: ECOWAS Leaders Lift Sanction on Military-Led Neighbors Amid Transition to Democracy

Hutchinson's Testimony Strengthens Possible Charges Against Trump

Hutchinson, who worked as a top aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, delivered a series of bombshells concerning the Trump team's behavior on the day of the Capitol incident during the most recent January 6 select committee meeting.

Hutchinson's shocking claims claimed that Trump seized the steering wheel of his presidential limousine in an attempt to go to the Capitol to join his supporters. She also alleged that Trump's chief of staff warned on January 6 that things may go "very, really nasty." Hutchinson reports that Trump hurled his lunch against the wall after his then-attorney general, Bill Barr, dismissed fears of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Following the violence, individuals in Trump's inner circle requested pardons. Trump stated on Sunday that Hutchinson wanted to continue working for him after the Capitol violence, as per Independent.

According to legal experts, the Jan. 6 committee's gathering evidence against former President Trump, including testimony from White House assistant Cassidy Hutchinson, has bolstered a prospective criminal case against him and eroded his most plausible defense arguments.

Even though the Justice Department's investigation of Trump began on January 6, it is far from apparent that any criminal charges are being considered. One of the most significant obstacles is that most prosecution paths against Trump involve demonstrating he acted with corrupt intent, something the select committee has concentrated on proving in its inquiry.

Experts believe Hutchinson's testimony rounded out the foundation for a probable case against Trump by providing specifics about the president's attitude around Jan. 6, and it highlighted key concerns for prosecutors to investigate further. Former Justice Department inspector general Michael Bromwich, who also worked in the independent counsel's office for the Iran-Contra crisis, said the panel provided significant information concerning the warnings Trump got on Jan. 6 and the days preceding it.

The public hearings held by the committee have also sparked fresh issues that might aid law enforcement and congressional investigators. Following Hutchinson's testimony, the panel summoned White House lawyer Pat Cipollone, who testified that he had sent dire warnings about the legal ramifications of Trump's involvement in the Jan. 6 incident, according to The Hill.

Related Article: Jeff Bezos Slams Joe Biden After POTUS Blames Oil Companies Over High Gas Prices; White House Fires Back

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Vladimir Putin has lost yet another high-ranking military officer amid bitter fighting in Ukraine as his forces suffer a series of humiliating setbacks.

Lieutenant Colonel Yegor Meleshenko, 43, was killed in the Donbas region while fighting.

Meleshenko, a tank battalion commander, is the 58th colonel to have been killed since Putin ordered his troops over the border on February 24.

No further details have been given about how Meleshenko died - but his death highlights the appalling losses of high-ranking officers suffered by Russia.

The war, which has now raged for more than four months, has also seen the slaying of at least 11 Russian generals - though the true death toll may be higher given the tendency of Russian authorities to conceal its death tolls.

Analysts say Putin is unmoved by the scale of his losses - now believed to total well over 30,000 - as he presses for a new land grab in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.

Lieutenant Colonel Yegor Meleshenko, 43, was killed in the Donbas region while fighting

Lieutenant Colonel Yegor Meleshenko, 43, (left, right with his wife Elena) was killed in the Donbas region while fighting

Service members of pro-Russian troops ride an infantry fighting vehicle during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the city of Lysychansk in the Luhansk Region, Ukraine, on Monday

Meleshenko's funeral was held today in Russia's Novosibirsk region after his body was returned.

The father, who was awarded a posthumous Order of Courage by Russian commanders, was described as a 'hero'.

Melenshenko, who was killed ahead of his 44th birthday yesterday, had earlier served with Russian forces in Chechnya.

'Yegor Meleshenko died defending the residents of Donbas and defending the interests of our motherland,' said Berdsk mayor Evgeny Shesternin.

'We express our deep condolences to his wife  Elena, children, relatives and friends of the hero.'

Rescuers work in the wreckages of a destroyed school after it was hit by a rocket in Kharkiv on Monday

His death pushes the number of high-ranking Russian military officers killed in action close to 60, and comes just days after the announcement that Lieutenant Colonel Pavel Kislyakov, a paratrooper, had been killed in Ukraine.

Kislyakov, 40, commander of a prestigious unit of Russian paratroopers, was buried on Thursday with full military honours in his hometown in Moscow region.

Kislyakov served as head of the operational department of the headquarters of the 11th separate airborne assault brigade in Buryatia.

District official Denis Semenov said at the funeral: 'He died in the line of military duty during the special operation in Ukraine.'

The father of two was described as 'a true hero and defender of the Motherland'.

Pavel Kislyakov, commander of a prestigious unit of Russian paratroopers, is the 57th colonel to have been killed since Putin ordered his troops over the border on February 24

Kislyakov, 40, was buried with full military honours in his hometown in Moscow region

His death came after it emerged that Col. Andrey Vasilyev, also a paratrooper commander, had been killed.

Vasilyev was struck in one of Ukraine's first uses of a 43-mile-range HIMARS missile sent to Ukraine by U.S. President Joe Biden.

The colonel had previously been awarded the Russian Order of Courage and led the 137th Guards Airborne Regiment of the 106th Guards Airborne Division.

Colonel Andrey Vasilyev, 49, was killed in a HIMARS strike in Ukraine. The colonel had previously been awarded the Russian Order of Courage and led the 137th Guards Airborne Regiment of the 106th Guards Airborne Division

Earlier in June, dramatic footage showed the moment Lt-Col Sergey Gundorov, 51, crashed in his helicopter after being hit with a Ukrainian missile.

Gundorov was killed after his Mi-35 was struck near Volnovakha in the Donbas.

His death followed the loss of two colonels announced on the same day in June  highly decorated Colonel Sergei Krasnikov, 56, who had volunteered to rejoin the forces to go to war, and Colonel Sergei Postnov - in his 40s.

Sergey Gundorov, 51 (left and right), has become the 55th Russian colonel killed in Ukraine since February 24. The high-ranking pilot had previously won three orders of courage

In May, Russia admitted that Lieutenant-Colonel Denis Sukhanov, 41, and Colonel Denis Kozlov, 40, died while fighting in Ukraine.

Kozlov was the second commander of the 12th Separate Guards Engineers to die in the conflict, after being sent to Ukraine to replace Colonel Sergei Porokhnya, 45, who was killed on March 14.

In March, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Blinov, 42, was killed but news of his death was strenuously denied by Russian officials.

His death was confirmed in May by a picture on his grave in Volgograd, south-western Russia.

Blinov was a married father of three. A family friend said: 'For us it is just a shock.' He served in a motorised rifle unit.

Lieutenant-Colonel Denis Sukhanov, 41 (left), and Colonel Denis Kozlov, 40 (right) have both been confirmed dead today by Russian officials who said they died fighting in Ukraine

Kozlov was sent into the war to replace Colonel Sergei Porokhnya, 45, (pictured) who was killed in Ukraine on 14 March

In March, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Blinov, 42, was killed but news of his death was strenuously denied by Russian officials

Earlier in May, news emerged of Putin's 39th killed colonel Fezul Bichikaev, 36.

The Lieutenant Colonel was a high-flying elite soldier reportedly killed on a secret intelligence mission.

The father-of-three was portrayed as a hero who was killed near Kharkiv 'with a machine gun in his hands covering his subordinates', according to reports in Russia.

Lt-Col Fezul Bichikaev, 36, died in Ukraine on May 2, 2022, becoming the 39th Russian colonel to die in Ukraine

Bichikaev was one of Russia's youngest colonels, second in command of his regiment, and his death amounted to 'a heavy, irreparable loss', said the report.

Bichikaev's death came a day after the disclosure of the death of Lt-Col Fyodor Solovyov, 44, in the Donbas.

Solovyov was commander of the howitzer self-propelled artillery regiment of the 127th motorised rifle division in Putin's army.

He was buried with full military honours and a triple volley of guns in Chunaki village, Penza region.

Four days earlier Lt-Col Eduard Dmitriev, 44, a tank commander, was reported to have been killed.
Police have launched an investigation after a man was seen filming underneath a 16 year-old girl's skirt in a Cambridge Tesco.

Cambridgeshire Constabulary has released CCTV images of a man they would like to speak to in connection with the 'upskirting' incident.

The alleged incident occurred on the afternoon of May 17 at Tesco Express in the city centre.

Cambridgeshire Constabulary has released photos of this man, who they would like to speak to in connection with the 'upskirting' incident

The man was seen in Tesco Express on Hills Road in Cambridge city centre on May 17

An officer asked for 'anyone who recognises this man to get in touch with us' to help the police with their investigation

A man was seen filming the teenager using a mobile phone to record underneath her skirt.

Cambridgeshire Constabulary is appealing for anyone with information about the 'distressing' incident to come forward.

DC Sarah Lloyd said: 'I am appealing for anyone who recognises this man to get in touch with us, especially as it is a very busy shop.

'Sexual offences of this nature are unacceptable, distressing for the victim and we will not tolerate them.'

Anyone with information is urged to contact police via their web chat service or quoting crime reference 35/35099/22. Those without internet access can call 101.
The Eiffel Tower is riddled with rust and in drastic need of repairs but will only receive a cosmetic paint job ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, according to leaked reports.

Several confidential reports since 2010 seen by French magazine Marianne have warned of the iconic tower being in a 'very degraded state', with maintenance defects and the extent of the damage concealed from the public.

Instead, the tower is undergoing a repaint job that started as long ago as 2018 with the upcoming 2024 Olympic Games in mind, but is simply not adequate for the task that needs doing, an unnamed manager who works on the site lamented.

'It's very simple, if Gustave Eiffel visited the place, he would have fainted. It is not likely to fall tomorrow morning, but it is true that it is not well at all.'

One hundred and thirty three years after its construction, 'in some places, rust has won and is eating away at the iron of the monument like termites at wood.'

Several confidential reports since 2010 seen by French magazine Marianne have warned of the iconic tower being in a 'very degraded state', with maintenance defects and the extent of the damage concealed from the public

Mocked up image shows how the tower could look if it collapsed

And French insiders now worry that their leading landmark, erected in 1889 and one of the most visited tourist attractions in the world with 6 million visitors each year, is in danger of suffering a calamity on a scale similar to the one that befell Notre Dame in 2019, when the roof caught fire and burned for 15 hours.

'In an emergency, in some places, a simple coat of paint is just brushed on the existing layers, which are flaking and do not hold,' another anonymous expert warned.

The current paint job is costing French purse holders 51 million and is the 20th time the tower has been repainted in its 133 years.

Around 30 per cent of the monument was supposed to have been stripped and two new coats would have been applied, but delays caused by the Covid pandemic and the present of lead in the old paint means that now only 5 per cent of the structure will be treated.

25th August 1944: With the Eiffel Tower in the background, two American soldiers sit surrounded by four young French women during the liberation of Paris from the Germans during World War II

Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923), French engineer, photographed in 1880. His most historic and best-known work is the Eiffel Tower built for the Paris Exposition of 1889 and remained the tallest building in the world until 1930

The tower is overseen by commercial company Societe d'Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (SETE), who are reluctant to close the tower for the duration necessary to undertake the maintenance due to the loss of tourist revenue it would entail, Marianne said.

The 'Iron Lady', as it is locally known, was built by Gustave Eiffel in the late 19th century and was the tallest building in the world for a time, at 1,083 feet tall (330 metres), until the Chrysler Building in New York City was finished in 1930.

Not content to be outdone by the Chrysler and its American makers, a broadcasting aerial was affixed to the top of the Eiffel Tower, making it taller than the Chrysler Building by 17 feet (5.2 metres).
A 'highly lucrative' smuggling operation which illegally shipped 10,000 people across the English Channel has been crushed following the 'biggest ever' internationally coordinated crackdown of its kind, spanning five European countries.

Officers in Belgium, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Germany staged dawn raids involving 'hundreds of officers', according to police in the northwestern German city of Osnabrueck, considered a major hub for the illegal networks.

According the the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA), officers arrested six men and a woman in the Docklands and Catford areas of London as part of the police operation on Tuesday.

They included a 26-year-old man, who was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to facilitate illegal immigration, in Rushey Green, Catford, alongside a 22-year-old man in St Davids Square, on the Isle of Dogs.

A 20-year-old woman and 18-year-old man were also detained, on suspicion of possessing class A drugs with intent to supply, after a quantity of what is suspected to be cocaine was found. They remain in custody and are being questioned by NCA investigators.

Two other men were arrested for immigration offences and will now be dealt with by the immigration authorities.

The NCA said: 'Officers have today joined what is believed to be the biggest ever international operation targeting criminal networks suspected of using small boats to smuggle thousands of people into the UK.'

Police in Germany earlier said there were 'numerous searches and arrests in several states', coordinated by Europol and the EU's judicial agency Eurojust.

Many of the suspects in the country were Iraqi-Kurdish and were feared to have been 'armed and dangerous', leading to the deployment of special forces to various warehouses and private addresses, reported Der Spiegel.

News of the raids came as Home Secretary Priti Patel announced her latest measure to tackle the scourge of illegal immigration, which will reportedly see the creation of a 'league table' of nations based on their level of co-operation in accepting criminals and failed asylum seekers from the UK.

Meanwhile her controversial Rwanda policy, which promises to fly those arriving illegally to Britain to the east African country, has failed to get off the ground following a slew of legal challenges.

Germany's Der Spiegel reported that the operation targeted organised groups taking migrants to England.

It quoted Osnabrueck police as saying that the network had smuggled up to 10,000 people via the Channel in the last 12 to 18 months in a highly lucrative scheme.

News of the raids came as Home Secretary Priti Patel (pictured at Silverstone at the weekend) announced her latest measure to tackle the scourge of illegal immigration, which will reportedly see the creation of a 'league table' of nations based on their level of co-operation in accepting criminals and failed asylum seekers from the UK

Officers in Belgium, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Germany staged dawn raids involving 'hundreds of officers', according to police in the northwestern German city of Osnabrueck, considered a major hub for the smugglers. (Pictured: Migrants arriving in Dover yesterday)

The coordinated action with Britain comes amid growing tensions between London and the EU in the wake of Brexit, while ties are particularly strained with France over the issue of migration.

Now Britain has left the European Union, it no longer has a migrant returns treaty with the 27-nation bloc.

Britain has repeatedly accused the French authorities of not doing enough to stop the crossings.

Despite promises of more cooperation, the number of migrants seeking to cross the Channel from France to England surged in the first half of this year, according to the French interior ministry.

From January 1 to June 13, there were 777 attempted crossings involving 20,132 people, up 68 percent on the same period last year, it said.

In a controversial policy, the UK is planning to deport illegal migrants, including those who arrive across the Channel, to Rwanda under an agreement with the African nation.

However, the first flight last month was cancelled after a last-minute intervention by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), a decision which enraged London.

It comes as Home Secretary Priti Patel will reportedly create a so-called 'league table' of nations based on their level of co-operation in accepting criminals and failed asylum seekers from the UK.

Almost 29,000 migrants have crossed the Channel so far this year, compared with 5,654 and 2,449 over the same time in 2021 and 2020 respectively

The table will be used to pressure countries to agree to individual return deals, according to the Times, with those who refuse to take back their own foreign criminals and illegal immigrants to face sanctions.

The paper added that powers available via the Nationality and Borders Act (NABA) which came into force last Tuesday will allow the Home Secretary to suspend visa applications for citizens from those countries, impose a 190 surcharge on their applications or increase visa processing times.

The table will show those countries - such as Albania, Nigeria and Poland - which are more willing to accept back criminals and failed asylum seekers in the hope that doing so encourages other countries to follow suit.

The Times said the visa penalties will apply to all aspects of the visa service including study, work, visitor and settlement visas.

It comes after the Government in April signed a 120 million economic and migration deal to send failed asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Rwanda's human rights record is high among the concerns about the arrangement, with no one-way flights for migrants having taken off yet due to legal challenges.

Ms Patel announced the deal in a bid to deter people from crossing the Channel to the UK in small boats, but more than 3,000 migrants crossed in June - the highest monthly total this year.

Some 3,136 made the crossing on 76 boats in the 30-day period, with journeys taking place on 19 of those days, according to PA news agency analysis of government figures.

So far this year, around 12,700 people have made the crossing after navigating busy shipping lanes from France in small boats such as dinghies.

The National Crime Agency has vowed to continue trying to tackle people smuggling after a series of arrests were made over the deaths of 27 people trying to cross the Channel last year.

The NABA's measures, which received royal assent in April, include tougher penalties for those who pilot a small boat or smuggle migrants into the UK by other dangerous or illegal means, with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The maximum penalty for illegally entering the UK or overstaying a visa has increased from six months to four years in prison, with other measures in place over asylum applications and new powers for authorities to search vessels for migrants.
A multi-millionaire Russian businessman has been shot dead at his mansion, the latest elite with links to energy giant Gazprom to die in recent months.

Yuri Voronov, 61, head of a logistics company that held lucrative contracts with Gazprom in the Arctic, was found dead at his home in an ultra-wealthy suburb of St Petersburg around 2pm Monday.

Voronov was found floating in the swimming pool with a gunshot wound to his head, a Grand Power pistol nearby, and several spent cases at the bottom of the pool.

He is at least the sixth wealthy Russian businessman to die in mysterious circumstances since the start of the year, many of them with links to Gazprom, and two of whom died in the same St Petersburg suburb as Voronov.

Yuri Voronov, 61, was found dead around 2pm Monday at his mansion near St Petersburg with a gunshot wound to the head

Voronov was found floating in the pool of his mansion in an exclusive suburb of St Petersburg (neighbourhood, pictured above)

The Russian Investigative Committee is probing Voronov's death, which they are currently attributing to a 'dispute with business partners'.

His wife has reportedly told investigators that Voronov believed he was being swindled out of 'a lot of money' by 'dishonorable' contractors and partners.

But a number of deaths at other mansions near St Petersburg have led to rumours of murders being staged to look like suicides.

Alexander Tyulakov, 61, a senior Gazprom financial and security official, was found hanged at his home in the exclusive Leninsky development by a lover in February.

Investigators said he had killed himself, but local reports said his body showed signs of a beating - suggesting the hanging was staged.

Three weeks earlier, in the same housing development, 60-year-old Leonid Shulman was found stabbed to death in his bathroom.

Shulman was the head of transport at Gazprom Invest, a branch of the energy giant that handles its investment projects.

Billionaire Alexander Subbotin, 43, a former senior executive at energy giant Lukoil, was also found dead in May after 'taking advice from shamans'.

Alexander Tyulakov, 61 (left), and Leonid Shulman, 60 (right), were found dead in the same St Petersburg suburb from hanging and stabbing respectively

Vladislav Avayev, 51, who had links with Gazprombank, was found dead earlier this year after apparently killing 41-year-old wife Yelena and their 13-year-old daughter

One theory is that he was poisoned by toad venom that triggered a heart attack.

In April, wealthy Vladislav Avayev, 51, a former Kremlin official, appeared to have taken his own life after killing his wife Yelena, 47, and daughter, 13.

He had high level links to leading Russian financial institution Gazprombank.

Friends have disputed reports that he was jealous after his wife admitted she was pregnant by their driver.

There are claims he had access to the financial secrets of the Kremlin elite.

Several days later multimillionaire Sergey Protosenya, 55, was found hanged in Spain, after evidently killing with an axe his wife Natalia, 53, and their teenage daughter, Maria.

He was a former deputy chairman of Novatek, a company also closely linked to the Kremlin.

As with Avayev, it is suggested this may have been an assassination made to appear a murder-and-suicide.

Last week a mobile phone multi-millionaire and his wife were found stabbed to death in another case that has raised questions.

Naked Yevgeny Palant, 47, and his wife Olga, 50, both Ukrainian-born, were found with multiple knife wounds by their daughter Polina, 20.

Immediate briefing to the media claimed the woman took her own life in a jealous rage after Palant said he was leaving her.

Yet this was strongly disputed by the couple's best friend.
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Activists from Just Stop Oil including a bushcraft instructor caused chaos at another art gallery today after gluing themselves to the frame of a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Extinction Rebellion co-founder Simon Bramwell was among those involved today, along with fellow XR activist Caspar Hughes. Just Stop Oil also named three of the protesters as Jessica Agar, 21, an art student from Hereford; Tristan Strange, 40, a community organiser from Swindon; and Lucy Porter, 47, a former teacher from Leeds.

Today, the activists entered The Collection Gallery at the Royal Academy just after 11.30am, and glued their hands to the base of the painting. Security quickly responded and cleared visitors away before trying to prise the activists off the artwork. Police arrived nearly an hour later and arrested them on suspicion of criminal damage.

Meet the bike courier, the bushcraft instructor and the community organiser who carried out protest Extinction Rebellion co-founder Simon Bramwell, 50, of Stroud, Gloucestershire, who is a bushcraft instructor and former builder, was among those involved today. He was joined by fellow XR activist Caspar Hughes, also 50, of Exeter, Devon, who is a former bike courier and sports events company owner who has also supported Insulate Britain. Just Stop Oil named the three other protesters as 21-year-old Jessica Agar, an art student from Hereford; Tristan Strange, 40, a community organiser from Swindon; and 47-year-old Lucy Porter, a former teacher from Leeds. Ms Agar, who has volunteered with the RSPB, and Ms Porter were both involved in a demonstration with XR at Royal Ascot just last month which saw activists shackle themselves to the running rail  while Ms Agar was also part of an XR protest on Waterloo Bridge three years ago in April 2019 that brought traffic chaos to London. And Ms Porter was among a group from XR who used hammers and chisels to smash the windows of a Barclays building in London's Canary Wharf in April 2021 in protest at capitalism fuelling a 'climate catastrophe'. She also appealed for funds via JustGiving to help XR protesters who were arrested in the London 2019 demonstrations. Mr Strange, an XR supporter from Swindon, was involved in a protest in 2020 that blocked the road outside a print works - and he regularly tweets about environmental issues. Just yesterday, he retweeted a post by Gary Lineker which referenced Sunday's British Grand Prix demonstration where Just Stop Oil supporters sat on the track, saying: 'Way more risk of death with climate change to everyone than there is attempting to delay a motor race.' Mr Hughes also appears to be a fan of BBC football pundit Lineker, having retweeted a post by him on June 16 saying: 'Right, I'm done with the wearisome, misinformed climate change deniers. Blocking as many as possible.' Advertisement

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries hit out at the activists, saying on Twitter this afternoon: 'These attention seekers aren't helping anything other than their own selfish egos. Disrupting access to our fabulous cultural assets and putting them at risk of damage is unacceptable. These protestors should be removed and held responsible for the damage and disruption.'

The protesters also sprayed painted the phrase 'no new oil' below the 20ft painting, which depicts when Jesus Christ said one of his 12 apostles would betray him during the last time he ate with them before he was crucified.

Arts and culture commentator Dr Adrian Hilton, an honorary research fellow at the University of Buckingham and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, told MailOnline today: 'It's one thing for protestors to paper over or glue themselves to a national treasure like Constable's 'Hay Wain', but it's quite a different plane of offence to violate Leonardo's 'Last Supper', which is a masterpiece of Renaissance religious art revered by Christians all over the world.

'When protest extends to desecration of the sacred, the offence becomes intolerable.'

Dr Matthew Landrus of the University of Oxford, who is one of the world's most respected experts on the work of Leonardo da Vinci, told MailOnline today: 'I wish they would not damage to the frame and the wall.'

But he added: 'I think Leonardo would have appreciated the concerns of the climate activists, as well as some of their approaches. He spent most of his life examining the natural world and natural laws, by contrast with the time he contributed to approximately 25-plus paintings.'

Other people on social media reacted with fury at the stunt, which came just one day after two other Just Stop Oil activists glued themselves to the frame of John Constable's The Hay Wain at the National Gallery while security guards watched on.

One tweeted: 'Get some proper security - don't know who is the most pathetic, the protesters or the art gallery.' A second said: 'What on earth do they think they will achieve by this? They come across as idiotic vandals and I hope they get jailed'. A third added: 'The UK law is a laughing stock - this would never be tolerated in any other country.'

The action also follows protestors from the group last week gluing themselves to works by JMW Turner, Vincent van Gogh and Horatio McCulloch in London, Glasgow and Manchester to warn against 'a future of suffering'.

The five activists were followed into the Collection Gallery at the Academy by a suspicious security guard, who approached one of his colleagues sitting near the painting. He was overheard warning his colleague about the group - which included a number of photographers - and said: 'Watch them, make sure they don't touch anything.'

Less than two minutes later, the protesters glued themselves to the artwork. The guard in the gallery radioed for assistance and he was joined quickly by four more guards. Police were called at 11.37am and arrived at 12.25pm.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: 'At 11.37am on Tuesday, July 5 police were called to Burlington House, Piccadilly following reports that protestors had glued themselves to artwork. Officers attended. Three men and two women were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage. They remain in custody.'

One of the protesters on the scene branded the Government as a 'Judas' to future generations as he said the group had brought its campaign to this 'magnificent beautiful painting' because the future is 'bleaker than ever'.

The Royal Academy bought the copy of the painting by Giampietrino - a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci's - for 600 guineas from an 'H. Fraville' in 1821, which was the most expensive work of art they had ever acquired at the time. It also required all the Academicians being called to a general assembly meeting to agree the purchase.

A Royal Academy spokesman told MailOnline today: 'Five people have entered the RA's Collection Gallery and glued themselves to the frame of The Last Supper, an early 16th century copy of Leonardo da Vinci's work, attributed to Giampietrino. The protesters have also spray painted 'No New Oil' below the painting in white paint. The room has been closed to the public. The police have been called upon the protestors' request.'

The copy in the Royal Academy was painted around 1520 and is almost the same size as the original - but missing the top third of da Vinci's composition, which is on the wall of the Santa Maria delle Grazie church in Milan.

The value of the London work is not known, but will likely be worth tens of millions of pounds because the original is estimated to be worth at least 375million ($450million). The only other official copy is located in Switzerland.

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Extinction Rebellion co-founder Simon Bramwell (left) was among those involved today, along with fellow XR activist Caspar Hughes (centre). Just Stop Oil also named a further protester as Jessica Agar (right), 21, an art student from Hereford

Two other protesters involved in the stunt at the Royal Academy of Arts in London today were Lucy Porter (left), 47, a former teacher from Leeds; and Tristan Strange (right), 40, a community organiser from Swindon

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Activists from the Just Stop Oil climate protest group carry out the demonstration at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Activists from the Just Stop Oil climate protest group carry out the demonstration at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil carry out the demonstration inside the Royal Academy in London this morning

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Activists from the Just Stop Oil climate protest group carry out the demonstration at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Activists from the Just Stop Oil climate protest group carry out the demonstration at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Activists from the Just Stop Oil climate protest group carry out the demonstration at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Activists from the Just Stop Oil climate protest group carry out the demonstration at the Royal Academy in London today

Police arrive at the Royal Academy in London today after Just Stop Oil carried out the protest inside the building

Police later arrived to arrest the protesters following the stunt at the Royal Academy of Arts in London today

Police later arrived to arrest the protesters following the stunt at the Royal Academy of Arts in London today

Just Stop Oil are calling for the Government to commit to halt new oil and gas licenses in the UK and for the directors, employees and members of art institutions to join their coalition in 'peaceful civil resistance'.

One of the protesters at the Royal Academy, Ms Agar, said today: 'No painting is worth more than my six-month old nephew's life. No sculpture can feed babies starving because extreme heat killed food crops.

Six charged over British Grand Prix track protest Six people have been charged over the track invasion at the beginning of the Formula 1 British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Five protesters stormed the Wellington Straight - the fastest point of the Northamptonshire track - before sitting down during the opening lap of Sunday's race. Protestors are removed after running onto the track at the Formula 1 British Grand Prix at Silverstone on Sunday The contest had already been suspended following Alfa Romeo driver Zhou Guanyu's high-speed crash, but a number of cars sped by as the group from Just Stop Oil launched their protest. They were swiftly dragged away by marshals to cheers from the watching crowd. Northamptonshire Police said David Baldwin, 46, of Stonesfield, Witney, Oxfordshire, Emily Brocklebank, 24, of Yeadon, Leeds, Alasdair Gibson, 21, of no fixed address, Louis McKechnie, 21, of London, Bethany Mogie, 40, of St Albans, Hertfordshire, and Joshua Smith, 28, of Manchester, have all been charged with conspiracy to cause public nuisance. All six will appear at Northampton Magistrates' Court this morning. The force said a 43-year-old man also arrested in connection with the incident has been released under investigation pending further inquiries. Advertisement

'Nurses are lining up outside food banks, not galleries. If the directors of this gallery really believe that art has the power to change the world then I demand that they claim that power, close and refuse to open until the government commits to no new oil.'

Ms Agar, who wore an orange Just Stop Oil T-Shirt, added: 'I am an art student but there is no place for me to follow my calling as an artist in a world where I have no future.

'In no uncertain terms, the establishment - of which the Royal Academy is a part - has condemned me and all young people to suffer. I am outraged and you should be too.'

Another protester, Ms Porter, said: 'When I was teaching I brought my students to great institutions like the Royal Academy. But now it feels unfair to expect them to respect our culture when their government is hellbent on destroying their future by licensing new oil and gas projects.

'We have no time left, to say that we do is a lie. We must halt all new oil and gas right now, we will stop disrupting art institutions as soon as the government makes a meaningful statement to do so. Until then, the disruption will continue so that young people know we are doing all we can for them. There is nothing I would rather be doing.'

And Mr Strange added: 'I'm terrified for our future. We are heading for a collapse of our food supply and a world in which only the rich can feed themselves comfortably.

'Time is running out to change course or prepare for disaster and the message is not reaching the public: there is no free pass, we are all in this together and we must all rise up in civil resistance to force the government to stop new oil and gas.

'Da Vinci said that art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world. The science still isn't being heard.

'We are continually fed comforting lies that downplay the urgency of the climate crisis we face so that fossil fuel interests can continue to reap huge profits whilst the global south and our children are condemned to live in a potential hell.

'I call on all artists to harness every ounce of their creativity sounding the alarm in the hope that it cuts through the misinformation. Nothing is more critical at the moment.'

The group were led by Mr Bramwell, who apologised for disrupting other visitors but added: 'The truth is that any new oil expansion is a death sentence for the future.'

The protesters involved in yesterday's action at the National Gallery were named by Just Stop Oil as music student Eben Lazarus, 22, and psychology student Hannah Hunt, 23, who are both from Brighton.

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

The duo forced the evacuation of art lovers, tourists and a class of 11-year-old children on a school trip from the room where the painting hangs after they struck at 2.15pm yesterday.

They attached their own image of 'an apocalyptic vision of the future' of the landscape, on three large sheets of paper, featuring an old car dumped in front of the Mill and the Hay Wain cart carrying an old washing machine.

Mr Lazarus and Miss Hunt wore white T-shirts with the Just Stop Oil logo, stepped over a rope barrier and then placed the coloured paper on to the front of the painting. Each also placed a hand on the frame of the painting and kneeled beneath it before loudly outlining their concerns as visitors were ushered out by security staff.

During the protest Mr Lazarus, who described himself as an art lover, said: 'Art is important. It should be held for future generations to see, but when there is no food what use is art. When there is no water, what use is art. When billions of people are in pain and suffering, what use then is art.'

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

Protesters from Just Stop Oil glue their hands to the frame of a copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London today

The Hay Wain, which was painted in 1821, is one of the most popular paintings at the gallery and shows a rural Suffolk scene of a wagon returning to the fields across a shallow ford for another load.

Mr Lazarus said: 'We have stuck a reimagined version of the Hay Wain that demonstrates our road to disaster.'

Miss Hunt later added that 'the disruption will end when the UK Government makes a meaningful statement that it will end new oil and gas licences'. She continued: 'I'm here because our government plans to license 40 new UK oil and gas projects in the next few years.

'This makes them complicit in pushing the world towards an unliveable climate and in the death of billions of people in the coming decades.

'You can forget our 'green and pleasant land' when further oil extraction will lead to widespread crop failures which means we will be fighting for food. Ultimately, new fossil fuels are a death project by our Government.

'So yes, there is glue on the frame of this painting but there is blood on the hands of our government.'

A spokesman for the National Gallery said the room was closed to the public and police were called. They said later: 'The painting was removed from the wall to be examined by our conservation team.

Activists from Just Stop Oil glued their hands to the frame of John Constable's The Hay Wain at the National Gallery yesterday

LAST WEEK - Protesters glued themselves to 'Thomson's Aeolian Harp' by JMW Turner at Manchester Art Gallery last Friday

LAST WEEK - Just Stop Oil activists also attached themselves to Vincent Van Gogh's 1889 work Peach Trees in Blossom at The Courtauld gallery in London last week

'The Hay Wain suffered minor damage to its frame and there was also some disruption to the surface of the varnish on the painting - both of which have now been successfully dealt with.

'The painting will be rehung in Room 34 ready for when the National Gallery opens at 10am on Tuesday.'

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: 'At approximately 14.25 on Monday officers were called to a protest taking place inside the National Gallery involving two people. Two people were arrested.'

In the last week, Just Stop Oil activists have allegedly attached themselves to a 19th-century landscape by Horatio McCulloch called My Heart's In The Highlands which hangs in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

They are also alleged to have sprayed the group's logo on the walls and floor of the renowned gallery in orange paint.

They have also attached themselves to Vincent Van Gogh's 1889 work Peach Trees in Blossom at The Courtauld gallery in London.

Another alleged target has been a JMW Turner painting at Manchester Art Gallery.

'We'll shut down London': Struggling fuel protester builders, HGV drivers and farmers target London and are warned they face a police crackdown after a string of Just Stop Oil eco-activists were given tiny fines and even PRAISE by judges

Fuel Price Stand Against Tax (FPSAT) want to meet in Parliament Square at Midday on Friday July 22

Yesterday 13 people were arrested on the M4 travelling slowly between England and Wales and on the A38

Priti Patel urged police to use new powers to stop them - but critics say officers were soft on eco protesters

MPs fear protests could evolve into a movement akin to gilets jaunes in France or 'Freedom Convoy' in Canada

By Martin Robinson, Chief Reporter for MailOnline

Fuel protesters who brought motorways including the M4 to a standstill yesterday are plotting to shut down London at the end of the month and 'gridlock the whole city' in the battle to convince Boris Johnson to cut the price of petrol and diesel, MailOnline can reveal today.

Fuel Price Stand Against Tax (FPSAT) plan to meet in Parliament Square at Midday on Friday July 22, after driving slowly through the capital during the morning rush hour amid fears 'go slow' protests could escalate dramatically this summer.

It came as Priti Patel urged police to take a 'zero tolerance' approach and use tough new powers to stop them and said officers should arrest and charge the drivers.

The maximum penalty for 'wilful obstruction of a highway' was recently increased to six months in jail and an unlimited fine. Previously the offence carried only a low fine of around 100 to 150, which many eco protesters have faced, in a string of cases where one sentencing judge even praised their commitment to green issues.

On one occasion a police officer was filmed telling Insulate Britain fanatics to 'just be careful' because 'I don't want to put good people in a cell' having offered them 'another 10 minutes' to block a road in Birmingham. Yet yesterday fair fuel activists were surrounded by as many as 100 police officers, arrested and had their vehicles towed.

One FPSAT member told MailOnline: 'Priti Patel is going for us - but all we want is a fair deal on fuel so we can do our jobs. Look at how the climate change protesters have been treated. They cause chaos, are arrested and then released on bail the next day to do it all over again'.

Critics have blasted the 'soft touch' approach police have taken against climate activists who in some cases have been arrested dozens of times in recent months only to pop up again to shut down roads, oil refineries and even glue themselves to British national treasures such at Constable's The Hay Wain at the National Gallery yesterday and a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper at the Royal Academy of Arts in London today.

On Sunday a mob stormed the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in an act Martin Brundle claimed could have seen them 'sliced into 100 pieces' or kill a driver, fan or race marshal. Six people were charged today including Just Stop Oil ringleader Louis McKechnie, a John Lennon lookalike who has already been arrested 20 times.

Yesterday 12 drivers were arrested on the M4 travelling slowly between England and Wales and another driver was arrested close to the A38 near Bristol. There were also delays the A92 in Scotland, the M5 in Devon, the M32, the M180 in Lincolnshire and the A64 near York. After the protests yesterday, a petition to slash fuel duty as a litre of diesel and unleaded hits 2 a litre has blasted through the 300,000 barrier.

A post on the FPSAT Facebook page, seen by MailOnline, says that on Friday July 22 supporters should 'meet your mates, congregate at Parliament Square, drive as slow as you can, gridlock the whole city, bring it to its knees, aim is to stay and not move until we get action'.

Yesterday activists were surrounded by as many as 100 police officers with around a dozen arrested on suspicion of driving at 10mph - less than the 30mph which had been agreed in advance. The Government is said to fear the slow-moving convoys on major routes could become regular and see the start of a new movement akin to the gilets jaunes across the Channel, where working class protesters wearing yellow vests shut down France over economic problems.

As Britain faces a summer of discontent, it also emerged today:

Environmental activists from Just Stop Oil have glued themselves to the frame of a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper at the Royal Academy of Arts this afternoon;

Police charged six over British Grand Prix track invasion where Just Stop Oil eco protesters sat on Formula 1 circuit as Gary Lineker and Lewis Hamilton backed them;

RMT Union baron Mick Lynch warns the railways face the 'fight of our lifetime' as train drivers on up to 71,000 a year voting on industrial action involving ten companies;

Fuel Price Stand Against Tax members were arrested yesterday as Priti Patel urged police to throw the book at them while eco protesters causing months of chaos have received small fines or even praise from a judge for their commitment to green issues (bottom row). Welder Richard Dite, Vicky Stamper, 41, and farmer Andrew Spence (top row, left to right) say that they are protesting about fuel because they fear they will be put out of business

Environmental activists from Just Stop Oil have glued themselves to the frame of a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper at the Royal Academy of Arts in London today

Just Stop Oil co-founder Hannah Hunt, 23, and student Eben Lazarus, 22, both of Brighton, were pictured with their hands glued to the frame of John Constable's 1821 masterpiece at the National Gallery in London yesterday. The stunt damaged the painting and frame

Louis McKechnie, a John Lennon lookalike ringleader of the Just Stop Oil movement, has already been arrested 20 times because of his professional protesting. But despite his many brushes with the law his most recent punishment was a 150 fine for wilfully obstructing a highway in central London.

Just Stop Oil protesters damaged Constable's The Hay Wain in gluing stunt Hunt, 23, and Lazarus, 22, were involved in a romantic display after they glued themselves to the frame of one of Britain's greatest works of art Just Stop Oil damaged Constable's masterpiece The Hay Wain in their latest stunt as MailOnline can reveal that one of the eco-vandals arrested at the National Gallery is a hypocrite yachtswoman who has racked up tens of thousands of carbon-belching air miles travelling the globe while lecturing on climate change. Brighton students Hannah Hunt, 23, and Eben Lazarus, 22, were held after sticking large sheets of paper over the 200-year-old painting's Suffolk landscape, replacing it with a scene of scorched trees, polluted skies, and discarded household waste - and then gluing their hands to the frame. Hunt and Lazarus lectured the public on fossil fuels being a 'death project' and warning of the 'total collapse of society' yesterday, but Miss Hunt previously admitted she 'impulse flew to the Canaries to escape chilly British weather', MailOnline can reveal. A spokesman for the National Gallery, confirmed the painting had been damaged, and said: 'Police attended and removed the protestors at around 4.40pm, and they were then arrested. The painting was removed from the wall to be examined by our Conservation team. The Hay Wain suffered minor damage to its frame and there was also some disruption to the surface of the varnish on the painting - both of which have now been successfully dealt with'. The painting, considered John Constable's greatest work and a 'national treasure', will be rehung today. While its cultural value to the nation is priceless, the record price for a Constable at auction was 22.5million for The Lock ten years ago. But it was the target of another attack by Just Stop Oil, who have recently moved from disrupting football matches and shutting down oil refineries to attacking pieces of art. Advertisement

McKechnie's partner in crime at an oil refinery protest this year, Matthew Powell, was fined 127 after he admitted aggravated trespass on April 10 at Exolum Storage Ltd.

Biff Whipster, 54, admitted criminal damage after leaving a 'hard, crusty layer of glue' on the window of a police vehicle, in a case where the judge praised his commitment to greener living despite him and his friends disrupting the journeys of 18,000 drivers on the M25.

Catherine Maclean was charged with aggravated trespass after an incident at an oil terminal in Thurrock in April. She was fined just 400 despite action that saw some petrol stations run low on fuel.

Conservative MP Robert Halfon called for Chancellor Rishi Sunak to go further than the 5p per litre reduction in fuel duty implemented in March's Spring Statement, and said the growing wave of anger should not be ignored.

'I don't want anything that disrupts people in their ordinary lives,' he said. 'But I'm worried that this is a precursor to even more protests that are going to spread around the UK.

'If we're not careful, we're going to have a Canadian-style situation, with truck drivers descending on Parliament.'

Among those taking part in the Fuel Price Stand Against Tax protest yesterday was welder Richard Dite, who risked six points on his driving licence and a 200 fine by filming the convoy on his mobile phone from the wheel of his van.

Shouting 'give us our country back', the 44-year-old was among about half a dozen vehicles in a small procession - admitting it was 'not a very good turnout'.

He drives 30 miles from Maesteg to Cardiff for work daily, and said the cost is now 'upwards of 300' a week, having been around '125 before the price increases'. 'I am on the verge of putting my gear in the shed,' he said, adding: 'I would be better off on the dole. That's not me. I am a worker. Something's got to happen.'

Martin Crowley, 48, from Cardiff, said he is a self-employed exotic animal courier and fuel prices are damaging his livelihood. 'Fuel cost me 280 over two days last week. It's unbelievable,' he said. 'You can hardly make a living anymore.'

Also taking part was Vicky Stamper, 41, a former HGV driver from Cwmbran, South Wales, said: 'We had to leave those jobs because it was costing us 380 a week just to get to and from work'.

Farmer Andrew Spence, who targeted a Shell plant at Jarrow, South Tyneside, in demonstrations when Tony Blair was prime minister 22 years ago, claimed yesterday's action was 'just the start of things to come'.

'We're promising a summer of discontent - this is only going to get bigger and bigger,' he said.

Mr Spence, 55, from County Durham, said the advent of sites such as Facebook had transformed his ability to mobilise people angered by rising fuel prices.

'Social media is what makes people stand up and take notice,' he said. 'That's something we didn't have in the early 2000s.'

Just Stop Oil protesters at the Titan Truck Park in Grays in April. The activists have either been fined or not dealt with by the courts yet

Mr Spence said blockades of refineries had 'not been ruled out', adding: 'We're promising a summer of discontent - this is only going to get bigger and bigger.' He is planning a protest in Newcastle.

Priti Patel last night urged police to use tough new powers to stop fuel protesters bringing Britain's roads to a halt.

Why are fuel prices so high? As we race towards petrol at 2-a-litre, here's what's sparked the record cost of filling up... and why it isn't falling How much does petrol and diesel cost today? At the time of publishing, the average price of petrol has hit at an all-time high, which has been an almost daily occurrence in the last few weeks. Diesel also isn't far short of its steepest price on record. On Sunday 3 July, the UK average for petrol hit a new record 191.53p a litre, while diesel hung on to record levels at 199.03p a litre - just a fraction short of the all-time high of 199.07p set on Friday 1 July. What makes the price of fuel change? What motorists pay at the pumps is determined by a number of factors that make-up the overall price of petrol and diesel. However, the single biggest influence is the price of crude oil. This had a major impact on what is charged for 'wholesale' petrol and diesel - the price paid by fuel companies. Experts from the AA and RAC have repeatedly accused the industry of 'rocket and feather pricing': quickly passing rising wholesale prices onto consumers but not cutting them as urgently when the fall. What else determines the price of fuel? And other factors are also at play when it comes to the price of petrol and diesel. This includes the cost of biofuel content used in the manufacturing of both fuel types that is designed to make them more environmentally friendly. Also adding to the pump price calculation is the cost of transporting the fuel, retailer profit margins and last - but no means least - taxation. In fact, petrol and diesel is taxed twice in the UK: the first is fuel duty of 52.59p paid on every litre of fuel, which is then also taxed at 20 per cent for VAT. It means over 40 per cent of what drivers currently pay at the pump is taxation. What sparked fuel prices to escalate dramatically? Cast your mind back 12 months and the price of petrol and diesel was 130.5p-a-litre and 133p respectively at the start of July 2021. But prices were on the brink of a rise. The combination of a fuel supply crisis, panic buying and rising oil meant petrol and diesel prices in October had eclipsed previous record highs that had existed since April 2012. But it was the outbreak of war in Ukraine in February that triggered the cost of filling up to skyrocket. Russia is one of the world's largest oil exporters, but the fallout from its invasion of Ukraine has resulted in sanctions on Russian products. Should fuel prices be lower than what they are? The RAC says the price of petrol in particular should already be much lower than what it currently is after five weeks of decline wholesale prices. Simon Williams, the motoring organisation's fuel price expert, says major supermarkets are playing a key role in keeping costs high by failing to make reductions when they can. 'The average cost of delivered unleaded was 145.7p a litre last week which after adding 7p a litre retailer margin and 20 per cent VAT produces a price of 183p,' explains Williams. 'Despite this the big four supermarkets, which dominate fuel sales, are standing firm with a litre of petrol at their stores costing an average of 190.19p. 'We would love to hear their reasoning for keeping their prices so high in this instance, but we've never known them publicly defend themselves. 'Far too often it's the smallest retailers, who sell far less fuel combined despite having more forecourts, that stand up for the industry.' The AA's Luke Bosdet says it is 'very hard' to understand why forecourts aren't bringing down prices. 'Perhaps it's supermarkets using higher fuel costs to pay for their 'Aldi-matching' offers, and then local oil company-branded sites feeling no pressure to bring down their prices,' he told This is Money. 'Maybe it's a carbon copy of what happened in the run-up to the 23 March fuel duty cut [read about this below]: wholesale prices had been falling but the fuel trade kept piling on increases at the pump, in the expectation that the Government would fork out the savings though a duty cut. 'Or, perhaps, it's because fuel customers have stopped buying sweets and coffee when they go to pay for their petrol and diesel  which is why a pump price cut might entice them to resume those habits. 'Our concern is that, because petrol demand is still 94 per cent of what it would normally be, both the supermarket and non-supermarket sites think that most of their customers can take the hit. 'That means they are taking us for fools.' Will fuel prices come down soon? Despite experts thinking fuel prices should already be lower, there could be another huge spike in the coming weeks, according to recent reports. Financial experts predict that global oil prices could hit an eye-wateringly high of $380 a barrel if Vladimir Putin responds to war-related sanctions by restricting Russia's crude oil output further. Analysts fear a 'stratospheric' rise that would see oil prices almost quadruple - and that would easily push pump prices well over 2 per litre and have a devastating ripple effect for global markets. What has already been done to reduce fuel prices? On 23 March, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced an immediate reducing in fuel duty by 5p a litre to stave the record cost of filling up at the time. The cut to taxation on every litre of petrol and diesel means it went from 57.95p to 52.95p, and it will remain like that until March 2023. However, just eight weeks after the cuts were put in place, the UK average price of unleaded had risen back to record levels (above 167.30p) - and has continued to climb ever since. Will the Government take further action to cut fuel prices? The RAC says it has been 'lobbying the Government for months' to take further action to ease the financial burden caused by record pump prices. The motoring group has called for a further cut to duty or to VAT to 'help hard-pressed drivers and businesses'. The AA adds that any cut in the pump price of fuel would be a 'first sign of relief for families grappling with the cost of living crisis' and said the fuel trade is depriving them of that. Such is the scale of public discontent with fuel prices that protesters have this week taken the roads as part of an organised call to force the Government to take further action to reduce the cost of filling up. What can I do to offset record-high fuel prices? There are things you can do to extend the time between visits to forecourts - if you're willing to change how you drive and prepare your vehicle to be as economical as possible. Using really simple eco-driving techniques 'can easily save the equivalent of 9p-a-litre', says the AA. For motorists desperately wanting to get the most out of the expensive fuel they are currently pumping into their car's tank, This is Money has compiled our top 10 best tips to drive as efficiently as possible. Advertisement

Her broadside came as a Tory MP warned that rising anger at the soaring price of filling up could see Canadian-style 'Freedom Convoy' blockades targeting London. A veteran of the fuel protests that paralysed Britain in 2000 is helping to co-ordinate what organisers hope will be a 'summer of discontent'.

Demonstrators who cause disruption on the roads risk stiffer punishments under measures that came into force earlier this year.

They were designed to combat protests by groups such as Extinction Rebellion but would also apply to the fuel campaigners.

A Home Office source said last night: 'Through our Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, we have given the police a wealth of powers to deal with disruptive and damaging protests, including imprisonment and unlimited fines for those blocking a highway - actions which inflict further pain on those affected by rising prices.

'The Home Secretary would encourage and support the police to make use of all the powers available to them. Forces need to move people on.

'These protests are blocking people from getting to work and from carrying out other vital journeys - this is not about whether you believe in the cause or not.'

Thousands of motorists experienced lengthy delays yesterday after protestors formed go-slow convoys on major routes, demanding an immediate cut in fuel duty.

In a campaign organised on social media, drivers descended on agreed gathering points early yesterday morning, with the Prince of Wales Bridge between England and South Wales closed both ways.

It prompted Bristol Airport to advise travellers to allow extra time for their journeys.

The M54 in Shropshire and M62 in West Yorkshire were also disrupted by separate protest convoys, with a Tesco petrol station in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, also targeted.

Canada's so-called Freedom Convoy in February escalated from anger at Covid vaccine rules into a wider campaign against prime minister Justin Trudeau's policies, leading to a three-week occupation of the capital, Ottawa.

By driving so slowly, they risked disrupting emergency services thereby 'posing a risk to local communities', Chief Superintendent Tom Harding of Gwent Police said.

Some motorists caught up in yesterday's disruption slammed the protesters for making the situation even worse.

One van driver said he was 'very annoyed' by the rolling road block. 'They're just wasting time,' he told Sky News. 'It's a pain in the backside - ridiculous.'

Among the groups understood to have helped organise yesterday's '4th of July protest day' is a Facebook-based campaign called Fuel Price Stand Against Tax.

It appears to have been started by a mechanic from Falkirk in Scotland and had almost 51,000 members yesterday.

Discussing trying to cripple refineries last month, the group's organiser called on members to 'block off and shut down' the plants.

The protests come at a time when fuel duty and VAT currently make up 85p of the current average 1.91 for a litre of unleaded petrol, according to the RAC.

The recent wave of price hikes has been driven by global oil supply issues after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with the average price of a litre of diesel at UK forecourts now as high as 199.1p.

Mr Sunak has said he will carefully consider calls for a 'more substantial' fuel duty cut after the 5p per litre reduction implemented in March failed to halt price rises.

Backing the protests although he was not involved in them, Howard Cox, of Fair Fuel UK, which wants a cut of at least 20p in fuel duty, said pump prices were 'crippling' businesses and livelihoods.

'I do support them if they are lawful and do not interfere with emergency services,' he told Sky News.

The Government said that while it understands people are struggling with rising prices and have a right to protest, 'people's day-to-day lives should not be disrupted' and warned that traffic delays 'will only add to fuel use'.

Just Stop Oil damaged Constable's masterpiece The Hay Wain in their latest stunt as MailOnline can reveal that one of the eco-vandals arrested at the National Gallery is a hypocrite yachtswoman who has racked up tens of thousands of carbon-belching air miles travelling the globe while lecturing on climate change.

Brighton students Hannah Hunt, 23, and Eben Lazarus, 22, were held after sticking large sheets of paper over the 200-year-old painting's Suffolk landscape, replacing it with a scene of scorched trees, polluted skies, and discarded household waste - and then gluing their hands to the frame.

Hunt and Lazarus lectured the public on fossil fuels being a 'death project' and warning of the 'total collapse of society' yesterday, but Miss Hunt previously admitted she 'impulse flew to the Canaries to escape chilly British weather', MailOnline can reveal.

A spokesman for the National Gallery, confirmed the painting had been damaged, and said: 'Police attended and removed the protestors at around 4.40pm, and they were then arrested. The painting was removed from the wall to be examined by our Conservation team. The Hay Wain suffered minor damage to its frame and there was also some disruption to the surface of the varnish on the painting - both of which have now been successfully dealt with'.

The painting, considered John Constable's greatest work and a 'national treasure', will be rehung today. While its cultural value to the nation is priceless, the record price for a Constable at auction was 22.5million for The Lock ten years ago.

But it was the target of another attack by Just Stop Oil, who have recently moved from disrupting football matches and shutting down oil refineries to attacking pieces of art.

Yesterday security guards watched as Hunt and fellow student Lazarus, who describes himself as a 'musician and activist', forced the National Gallery to evacuate art lovers, tourists and a class of 11-year-old children on a school trip from Room 34 where the painting hangs.

MailOnline can reveal that Miss Hunt, 23, is the co-founder of Just Stop Oil whose social media pages are adorned with exotic holiday pictures from locations including south-east Asia, Australia and the Canary Islands. Earlier this year she glued herself to the red carpet at the Bafta awards, and she has broken into an ExxonMobil oil refinery in Hampshire.

The former XR supporter even used the long haul trips to try to bolster her environmental credentials, telling social media followers from Bali: 'Can we look back in another 50 years and say we did everything to protect our pretty cool planet?'

If Miss Hunt flew to every destination she would have clocked up 49,404 air miles over five years and been responsible for the emissions of 13 tons of carbon dioxide. The European average  per person  is 8.4 tons in a whole year, according to the My Climate website.

It is not known if the eco-activist chose to offset the carbon from her flights, which would cost a total of 379, according to non-profit Atmosfair.

The student co-founded Just Stop Oil in February, marching on No 10 to tell Boris Johnson to 'intervene' to prevent 'the ultimate crime against our country, humanity and life on Earth'.

The aspiring psychologist has become a hero among eco-zealot supporters of the group, which formed as a breakaway of Extinction Rebellion.

Hunt and Lazarus were both arrested at around 4.45pm following their eco-vandal stunt earlier today.

Just Stop Oil said their reimagined version of the 1821 priceless work, which depicts a rural scene on the River Stour in Suffolk, shows a 'nightmare scene that demonstrates how oil will destroy our countryside'.

Miss Hunt said today of her eco-vandalism: 'We can forget our 'green and pleasant land' as further oil extraction will lead to widespread crop failures which means we will be fighting for food. Ultimately, new fossil fuels are a death project by our government.

'So yes, there is glue on the frame of this famous painting, but there is blood on the hands of our government.

'The disruption will end as soon as the UK government makes a meaningful statement that it will end new oil and gas licenses.'

Student Hannah Hunt, 23, is the co-founder of Just Stop Oil whose social media pages are adorned with exotic holiday pictures from locations including Bali, Australia and the Canary Islands

Miss Hunt's Instagram shows her holidaying in locations including Australia, Greece, Gran Canaria and Bali (pictured), where she asked followers: 'Can we look back in another 50 years and say we did everything to protect our pretty cool planet?'

It is not known if the activist and yachtswoman (pictured) chose to offset the carbon from her flights, which would cost a total of 379, according to non-profit Atmosfair

Eco-zealots from Just Stop Oil cover John Constable's The Hay Wain with their own apocalyptic pictures

Hunt, 23, and Lazarus, 22, were involved in a romantic display after they glued themselves to the frame of one of Britain's greatest works of art

The Brighton-based activist, from Cumbria, who studies at Sussex University, said after protests she enjoys 'a weird, dreamy, calm mindset' she finds empowering.

Her father runs an environmental consultancy firm and her family purchased an early 20th century property on the west coast of Scotland that has one of the lowest possible energy efficiency available.

Heating and lighting the home results in approximately 12 tonnes of carbon dioxide being put back into the atmosphere, which is double Scotland's average according to the national register for Energy Performance Certificates.

The family also own a five-bedroom home near Kendal, Cumbria.

Miss Hunt is one of several middle-class campaigners who have been holding Britain's motorists to ransom throughout this year.

Their protests continued in April when activists climbed onto lorries at the Grays depot. Dozens were arrested at three oil sites.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Extinction Rebellion supporters blocked four bridges and a major roundabout in central London.

Environmental activists have bemoaned the impact of air travel, saying individual flights can release more CO2 into the atmosphere than some people generate in a year.

Co-founder of Just Stop Oil, Hannah Hunt, 23, was seen in a video from the rafters of a major oil depot in Grays, Essex, with Eben Lazarus when Just Stop Oil blockaded the plant earlier this year. It is not known if they are a couple

Her social media shows pictures enjoying holidays and sailing trips in exotic locations including Bali, Australia and the Canary Islands

If she flew to every destination, she would have clocked up 49,404 air miles over five years and been responsible for the emissions of 13 tons of carbon dioxide

Pictured: Louis McKechnie and Hannah Hunt outside Downing Street in February

Miss Hunt co-founded Just Stop Oil in February, marching on No 10 to tell Boris Johnson to prevent 'the ultimate crime against our country, humanity and life on Earth'. Above, a driver drags a Just Stop Oil activist from his oil tanker

A return economy journey to Bali releases 4.2 tons of carbon dioxide, while a return ticket to Australia would generate 6.1 tons.

Just Stop Oil began daily protests just two months ago, demanding the Government commits to end all new oil and gas projects in the UK.

The group has also faced criticism for attaching themselves to famous pieces of art in Glasgow and Manchester, with works by Van Gogh and J.M.W Turner all targeted in recent weeks.

Art historians and experts have all raised concerns that the vandals could have caused irreparable damage to the iconic masterpieces.

Dr Adrian Hilton, who is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, said today: 'How is this even possible in the National Gallery? I mean, it's a John Constable masterpiece; a national treasure. Is it really this easy to paper over or - God forbid - destroy it?'

The National Gallery later released a statement clarifying The Hay Wain suffered minor damage to its frame and on the painting's varnish, both of which have been dealt with before it is re-hung in Gallery Room 34 on Tuesday.
Sir Keir Starmer is facing fresh Labour civil war following his call to 'make Brexit work' and insistence that he would not take Britain back into key EU structures.

The Labour leader prompted a new bout of internal party fighting with a major speech last night on his Brexit policy.

As he aims to win back 'Red Wall' voters that switched from Labour to the Tories at the last general election, Sir Keir said he would not seek to return to EU free movement rules or rejoin the bloc's single market or customs union.

He also promised - should he become prime minister - not to seek to reverse the 2016 EU referendum result.

But Sir Keir's speech, which broke his long silence on Labour's Brexit position, was met with dismay by senior party figures who want their leader to push for closer ties with Brussels.

Sir Keir Starmer's speech, which broke his long silence on Labour's Brexit position, was met with dismay by senior party figures who want their leader to push for closer ties with Brussels

Senior Labour MP Stella Creasy urged Sir Keir to 'make sure nothing is off the table', while London mayor Sadiq Khan stepped up his demands for Britain to rejoin the single market

Even before the Labour leader had delivered his address last night, London mayor Sadiq Khan stepped up his demands for Britain to rejoin the EU's single market

'It's possible to be outside the EU but be members of the single market,' he told the BBC.

'Keirs job is to be leader of the Labour Party, my job is to be the Mayor of London.

'Thatll mean on many occasions I agree with the Labour Party, on some occasions I may disagree.

'Londoners elected me to be their champion, their advocate. I believe that our city and our countrys future is best served being members of the single market.'

The mayor's comments were later followed up by senior Labour MP Stella Creasy, who called for Sir Keir to 'make sure nothing is off the table' after Brexit and as Britons struggle through the cost-of-living crisis.

The Walthamstow MP is chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, which campaigns for a future Labour government to 'negotiate the closest possible relationship with the EU and to lay the foundations for the UK to one day rejoin' the bloc.

Responding to Sir Keir's speech, Ms Creasy said: 'This speech finally opens the door to a different future with Europe from the chaos Boris Johnson is creating.

'We are only just beginning to understand the damage Brexit is doing to Britain so we urge Keir to make sure nothing is off the table as a solution in the fight to tackle to cost-of-living crisis and protect jobs, trade and security.

'With breaking international law, a trade war and more red tape on offer from the Tories, Labour must show it understands our national interest lies in working with, not shouting at, our European counterparts.'

Shadow minister Emily Thornberry today told pro-Remain Labour MPs that Britain had to 'make the most of what we have got' outside the EU.

'We wont be able to go back on the same terms that we were members of the EU before,' the shadow attorney general told BBC Breakfast.

'If we wanted to rejoin, we would have to join the euro. We would have to join the Schengen agreement, which is all about immigration, and we would not have the rebate we had before.

'We wouldnt be able to go back on the same terms and, frankly, is the British public really going to want to argue for the next two years about whether or not we should go back into the EU, and on what terms, and then have another referendum? No, they are not.

'So, lets make the most of what we have got and lets make sure that we look after our country and face up to the problems we have, and sort them out.'
A new documentary will attempt to solve the mystery of Swedish woman whose body was found on Scottish beach after her death was declared top secret by her government, and her family claim she was murdered.

Annie Borjesson's body was discovered on Prestwick Beach in December 2005 and her family are continuing to look for answers.

They believe the 30-year-old was murdered, but the initial police inquiry found she had drowned and her death was deemed suicide.

But a number of questions have been raised by her relatives in Sweden and by campaigners in Scotland.

It is hoped that the documentary will solve the mystery surrounding her death.

Annie Borjesson in a Scotland hat. She had moved there a year before she died to study English

Commissioned by the BBC, the new four-part series on the case is called 'Body on the Beach'.

It is being made by Glasgow-based production company Rogan Scotland and will present new evidence on the case.

A description of the show reads: 'How did Annie Borjesson die? BBC Three and BBC Scotland have co-commissioned Rogan Scotland to make a series to try to find the answer to this mystery.

'The series will look at the death of a young Swedish woman, Annie Borjesson, whose body was found on Prestwick beach in South West Scotland in 2005.

'Immediately labelled as suicide by authorities, numerous question marks now exist over that verdict.

Thought to be Borjesson at Prestwick airport the afternoon before she was found on the beach

'Investigating the mysterious circumstances leading up to and following her death, the series will open up this cold case, piecing together information in the public domain and turning up new evidence.'

Ms Borjesson, who had been living and working in Edinburgh after falling in love with Scotland during a brief trip, was found dead under a sea wall on December 4, 2005. Her rucksack was at her side, as well as her passport and wallet.

She had been due to fly home to the town of Tibro in western Sweden from Prestwick Airport that day for Christmas and close friends said she had been in good spirits.

The day before she left for the airport, she called her hairdresser in Sweden and made an appointment for the following week. She also paid the next month's rent on her Edinburgh flat.

Happier times: A young Borjesson with flowing red hair smiles while sitting for a photo

Her death sparked a wave conspiracy theories in the years that followed.

One theory that emerged was around alleged CIA rendition flights through Prestwick airport, used for 'extralegal transfer of prisoners' between countries, according to Fox News.

No evidence has emerged to support this theory.

In 2020, documents part of a year-long investigation into her death between the Swedish foreign ministry and Scottish authorities emerged.

The files appeared as part of a six-part podcast called 'What happened to Annie', by Sky News.

The files are heavily redacted, according to the podcast, because Borjesson's death is considered 'classified as secret' by the Swedish foreign ministry.

Its reason for redacting details surrounding Borjesson's death in Scotland are 'that the information concerns Sweden's relations with a foreign state and a foreign authority'.

It goes on to say that disclosure of the information 'will damage Sweden's international relations or, in other ways harm national interests'.

Borjesson's mother, Guje Borjesson, on Prestwick Beach holding a photo of her daughter

Another document, filed the day after her death, appears to indicate the Swedish Embassy detailing how Scottish authorities had suspected Borjesson's suicide.

Borjesson's mother, Guje Borjesson, told Sky News at the time that she was 'troubled' by Sweden's decision to shroud her daughter's death in secrecy.

Borjesson's mother said there is a 'public interest' in finding out what happened to her daughter.

No transmission date has yet been announced for the documentary.

Clare Sillery, Head of Commissioning, Documentaries, History and Religion at the BBC, said: 'It's a really exciting time for documentaries at the BBC, with recent highlights such as Uprising, House Of Maxwell, Our Falklands War, Then Barbara Met Alan and Gazza demonstrating our commitment to telling distinctive British stories and bringing viewers new perspectives on recent events.

'I want our content to connect with viewers right across the country.

'The new series we're announcing today bring unique access to stories from Wales, Scotland and the North of England, and I'm really pleased to be working with colleagues in the Nations on these compelling and timely new documentaries.'
The Met Police was 'delusional, chaotic and unprofessional' when a force marksman shot dead a father-of-two to foil a prison breakout plot - but the unarmed man was lawfully killed, an inquiry has found.

Jermaine Baker was fatally shot at close range by police as he sat in the front passenger seat of a stolen Audi A6 near Wood Green Crown Court in north London in December 2015.

Officers suspected he was one of three men waiting to try and break inmate Izzet Eren, a member of notoriously violent gang, the Tottenham Turks, out of a prison van.

Mr Baker, from Tottenham, was unarmed at the time he was shot by a counter-terrorism specialist firearms officer (CTSFO) - known only as W80 - who told the inquiry he thought the 28-year-old was reaching for a weapon. An imitation firearm was later found in the rear of the Audi.

Inquiry chairman His Honour Clement Goldstone QC concluded that, while Mr Baker was lawfully killed, there were police failings at almost every stage of the operation, which would 'serve as a loud wake-up call' to the next Metropolitan Police Commissioner, following the resignation of Dame Cressida Dick.

He said police chiefs were 'fixated' and 'obsessive' with their mission to stop the release of Eren and crack down on the Tottenham Turks that they couldn't see the flaws in their approach.

Mr Goldstone suggested the operation 'would have little effect on disrupting the activity of the Tottenham Turks or on achieving sustained public protection'.

He added: 'The idea that this operation could succeed in ridding the streets of North London of lethal firearms was delusional  in reality, one firearm was the best the MPS could hope to recover.'

Bizarre decisions included an insistence not to consult Serco, the firm running the prisoner van, of the operation plans due to fears of corruption within the company, which Mr Goldstone described as 'unspecified, undocumented and unsubstantiated.'

Had the force included them in planning, officers could have controlled Eren's van as well as who else was inside and the route it took from the prison to the court, he added.

Jermaine Baker was fatally shot at close range as he sat in the front passenger seat of a stolen Audi A6 near Wood Green Crown Court in north London in December 2015 by police who suspected he and other conspirators were about to free a dangerous prisoner from a custody van

Mr Baker was fatally shot by an officer during a Metropolitan Police operation which thwarted a plot to snatch Izzet Eren (above) and his co-defendant in December 2015

Margaret Smith, the mother of Jermaine Baker, speaking to the media in central London following the conclusion of the public inquiry into his death

Izzet Eren: The Turkish gangster police said Jermaine Baker was trying to break out of prison Officers suspected Mr Baker was one of three men waiting to try and break inmate Izzet Eren, a member of notoriously violent gang, the Tottenham Boys, out of a prison van. Eren - a Turkish gangster - was jailed for 21 years earlier in 2015 after being caught carrying a loaded pistol and a machine gun in north London while allegedly on his way to carry out a shooting. He was described by police as 'a senior member of a Turkish crime group', who had reportedly returned to the UK in breach of a deportation order having been sentenced for drug trafficking offences. His gang, the Tottenham Turks, had a long-running feud with the rival Hackney Turks, which resulted in multiple shootings, both in London and in Turkey, dating to 2009. Eren, now 39, was transferred to a jail in his homeland in August 2019, but absconded from that prison a month later, before being busted by police in Moldova in May this year. Commander Fiona Mallon, Specialist Crime, said: 'I thank the Moldovan authorities, the National Crime Agency and the Crown Prosecution Service for their assistance in achieving this significant outcome. 'The Metropolitan Police Serious Crime Manhunt team works around the clock to track down the criminals 'most wanted' by the Met. In this case, a hugely complex investigation was launched to establish Eren's whereabouts, with a wide range of investigative and sensitive intelligence opportunities exploited. 'This arrest sends a clear message to all those who commit serious crime in London: if you run, we will locate you and you will be brought to justice.' Advertisement

Reporting on the shooting itself, Mr Goldstone said: 'I conclude that, when W80 shot Mr Baker, he held an honest and genuine belief that Mr Baker was moving in order to reach for the firearm.

'As such, W80 perceived that Mr Baker posed a lethal threat... I draw the conclusion, on the balance of probabilities, that the perceived threat from the actions and movement of Mr Baker was such that W80 honestly believed that it was reasonably necessary for him to shoot at Mr Baker.'

Mr Baker's mother, Margaret Smith, said her son was 'no angel', but that he 'should have gone to prison' rather than be fatally shot, and called on the inquiry chairman to consider whether her son being black could have been a factor in him being killed.

But Mr Goldstone said he 'found no evidence to support a finding that race played any part in Mr Baker's death'.

He also said that W80's 'overall credibility' as a witness 'remained largely intact'.

The inquiry chairman highlighted a number of failures, including that public safety should have been - but was not - the primary objective of the operation, that intelligence that the conspirators had only been able to source an imitation firearm was not passed on to W80 and others, and the 'delusional' idea that the operation would succeed in ridding the streets of north London of lethal firearms.

The inquiry heard that Mr Baker may have been asleep at the time he was shot, and may have misunderstood contradictory instructions shouted by armed officers who challenged the men in the Audi.

A police bug in the car captured a wall of noise with some officers telling the group to raise their hands, while W80 said he had instructed Mr Baker to put his hands on the dashboard.

No live firearm was found in the car in which Mr Baker was a front seat passenger, but a replica Uzi was discovered in the back of the car.

Officers had intelligence that the group had been unable to obtain a real gun, but this information was not passed on to the firearms team who confronted the men.

W80 told the inquiry he was convinced that they would be armed and would fight their way out rather than surrender when challenged by armed police.

The report said: 'The combined effect of the evidence of Detective Inspector Robert Murray, Detective Chief Inspector Neil Williams and Detective Superintendent Craig Turner reveals a determination - bordering at times on the obsessive - to achieve a successful outcome to Operation Ankaa and with it, if not the demise of the Tottenham Turks, then certainly their emasculation.

'Whilst this may have been a laudable objective, it should not have been something that was allowed to go ahead at virtually any cost and to the exclusion of proper and meaningful risk assessments and safety considerations as well as compliance with protocols.

'There can be no doubt that sustained public protection was the prime objective of this operation; the safety of the public was not - and it should have been.'

The most that the officers could have hoped for on the day was the arrest of some 'small fry' and the seizure of one gun, the inquiry found.

'The available intelligence supported the likelihood of a failure in achieving sustained public protection save for the 'small fry' who were to be arrested at the scene,' the report said.

'The idea that this operation could succeed in ridding the streets of North London of lethal firearms was delusional - realistically one live firearm was the best the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) could hope to recover.

'Unfortunately, those who decided that the operation should run were unable, because of their fixation on their desire to solve the Tottenham Turks problem at a stroke, to appreciate the flaw in their approach.'

The inquiry found a series of technical failures in the planning and execution of the armed operation.

It said that officers had failed to consider any possible outcome other than an armed stop, and had not properly assessed the risk posed by Eren's cousin Ozcan Eren, who was behind the escape plot.

They also failed to engage with the Prison Service about Eren's escape risk or tell prison van staff of the planned jail break.

The chairman found that failures in the planning and execution of the armed operation should act as a 'loud wake-up call' to the next Metropolitan Police commissioner, who is due to be appointed this summer.

He said: 'I cannot help but believe and observe that if Mr Baker had not been fatally shot, none of the shortcomings in planning and execution which this Inquiry has exposed would have come to light and the operation would have been hailed as an outstanding success by and for the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS).

'If it achieves little else, therefore, this Inquiry should serve as a loud wake-up call to a newly appointed Commissioner.'

Jermaine Baker, 28, was suspected to be among a group of men trying to free two inmates from a prison van near Wood Green Crown Court in north London in December 2015

Officers at the scene in Bracknell Close, Wood Green north London in 2015 after Jermaine Baker died after being shot during an 'intelligence led' police operation

Jordan Smith, the brother of Jermaine Baker, speaking to the media in central London following the conclusion of the public inquiry into his death

Mr Goldstone said in a foreword to the report that previous Met boss Dame Cressida Dick had acknowledged that 'not everyone has confidence in us to provide a good service when they need us'.

He said: 'Those within the corridors of power in the MPS cannot expect any increase in that level of public confidence, without a willingness to accept and act upon justified criticism.'

In his conclusions, he added: 'It is clear that little if any thought was given to the tactic of contain and call out.

'This brings into focus the question of why there was no serious  if indeed any  consideration given to it.

'Whatever the higher echelons of the MPS may believe, there is, in my view, a widely held opinion within the MPS that, in an urban environment, the option of contain and call out is unlikely to be practical and can therefore be discounted at an early stage. The way one describes that opinion is less important than its existence.

'The CTSFOs were deployed to the Audi mission vehicle with a working strategy that increased rather than minimised risk; they did so without even the knowledge of how many individuals were in the Audi mission vehicle and they had no plans for achieving sight into it and for communication with the subjects.

'This led to an extraction that was somewhat chaotic and unprofessional.'

The inquiry found that failures by Detective Chief Inspector Neil Williams, who was tactical firearms commander on the day, did not amount to gross negligence and did not cause Mr Baker's death.

Lawyers for Mr Baker's family had highlighted failures in handling of intelligence and not using available surveillance tools to reduce the risks of an armed interception.

The inquiry found that Mr Williams did not know where Ozcan Eren was in the early hours of the operation and whether he would be involved in the break-out.

The officer also did not think through the consequences of potentially corrupt prison guards altering the route on the day, it found.

Mr Goldstone said it was 'astonishing' that this was not considered.

Wormwood Scrubs, where Izzet Eren, a member of notoriously violent gang, the Tottenham Turks, was being held

The terms of reference for the inquiry covered the planning of the armed operation, what information was available to those involved, how the operation was led and what the officers did on the ground, an what happened in the aftermath of the shooting.

The CPS decided not to bring criminal charges against W80 in 2017, and the officer is involved in a legal battle over whether he should face misconduct proceedings.

Speaking to reporters in London after digesting the report, Margaret Smith, Mr Baker's mother, said: 'Jermaine was dead before he got into the car.

'The judge has pointed out numerous, really serious failings by the Met. Running the risk that my son's life would be taken was never justified.

'Jermaine's life was taken for no good reason - as I've always said, Jermaine should have gone to prison like the rest of the men in the car.

'I cannot agree with the judge's conclusion that Jermaine did not die as a result of these failures - that is a conclusion I cannot understand. After seven years of waiting ... we deserve more.'

'We know Jermaine was unarmed - Jermaine complied with the instruction to put his hands in the air... we know this from the forensic evidence.

'Jermaine was surrendering - Jermaine could not have done more to save his life.'

Tia Demetrio, the mother of Mr Baker's nine-year-old daughter Alexia, said his death continues to have a significant impact on her life.

She said: 'There will be moments out-of-the blue, especially if she (Alexia) hears sirens or sees police officers, she's petrified. She doesn't know how to react to these people.

'There is plenty of time throughout her life when she feels different from other people because she doesn't have her father around, and it's really misfortunate because he really was a brilliant father to her.

'I am going to go back and explain to her - no matter what this report says - that her father was unlawfully killed, and I will stand by that for the rest of my life.'

A Met Police spokesperson said today: 'Our thoughts are with the family of Jermaine Baker as the Public Inquiry into his death publishes its report. We offered every support to the Inquiry and submitted detailed evidence which can be found here.

'The Inquiry report criticises how the policing operation was planned and carried out.

'The Inquiry's conclusions, however, were that these failures did not cause Mr Baker's death, it was reasonable in the circumstances to assume that someone in the vehicle would be armed with a real firearm, and that Mr Baker was lawfully killed.

'Since Mr Baker's death we have made changes to how our firearms command operates in London, including how operations are run and overseen, how we train and support officers involved and how we keep records.

'We are always open to improving our capability to tackle the threat of firearms. We will now take time to carefully study the Inquiry's recommendations before responding in more detail.'
Tammy Duckworth said a video of the shooting in Highland Park Monday reminded her of the sounds she heard during deployment in the Iraq War as she pushed for more gun reforms.

'I just listened to the sound of that gunfire from one of the videos that was captured,' Duckworth said in remarks from the scene on July 4.

'And let me tell you that the last time I heard a weapon with that capacity firing that rapidly on a Fourth of July was Iraq,' the Illinois Senator continued. 'It was not the United States of America. We can and we should and we will do better.'

Duckworth is a combat veteran who was an Army helicopter pilot. In 2004 she became the first female double amputee from the Iraq War when she lost both of her legs after her helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

She also is a Democratic senator for Illinois, serving with Majority Whip Dick Durbin.

A gunman opened fire in the affluent Highland Park, Illinois on Independence Day on Monday, killing six and injuring two dozen others.

Robert 'Bobby' Crimo III is the main suspect of the massacre. The 22-year-old rapper supports former President Donald Trump. He goes by 'Awake the Rapper' and has more than 16,000 listeners per month on Spotify.

Crimo was 'known to law enforcement' but it is not yet known if this was due to the disturbing content he shared online, or if he committed other crimes.

Senator Tammy Duckworth, a double-amputee veteran, said Monday that she hasn't heard a scene like the Highland Park, Illinois shooting since she was in an active combat zone in Iraq

Tactical officers gather in Highland Park, Illinois on Monday, July 4, 2022 in the man hunt for the shooter at an Independence Day parade who killed six and injured two dozen others

Robert 'Bobby' Crimo III, 22, (pictured) is the main suspect of the massacre. In one online bio, Crimo boasted of having a net worth of $100,000 and his Spotify page for 'Awake the Rapper' has over 16,000 monthly listens

Hours after the shooting, Duckworth spoke at a press conference.

'This morning, I got up like most Americans, like the families of the six who were killed, to celebrate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' she began her comments. 'Those six families no longer have that opportunity. My heart goes out to those families who will never see their loved ones again.'

She also called for a ban on assault rifles and high capacity magazines  claiming the bipartisan gun reform bill just signed by President Joe Biden isn't enough.

'Today, we have seen that we can't just stop there,' she said.

'We have to do more to keep our community safe. We have to get rid of assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and so many other additional commonsense reforms that wide majorities of Americans are crying out for.'

Duckworth is a combat veteran who was an Army helicopter pilot (left). In 2004 she became the first female double amputee from the Iraq War when she lost both of her legs after her helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade

Among those killed at the July 4 parade on Monday were synagogue teacher Jacki Sundheim, a married mother, and grandfather Nicolas Toledo, 78.

The Four others have not yet been named.

Another 25 people aged between eight and 85 suffered gunshot wounds and six of them remain in hospital.

Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said she never though a tragedy like this would happen in her town and said the community is waiting for charges to be levied against Crimo.

'I don't know where the gun came from,' Rotering told NBC News' Today on Tuesday morning. 'But I do know that it was legally obtained.'

'And I think at some point this nation needs to have a conversation about these weekly events involving the murder of dozens of people with legally obtained guns,' she continued. 'If that is what our laws stand for, then I think we need to re-examine the laws.'

President Joe Biden slammed the gunman who opened fire on an Independence Day parade and said there is still more work that needs done on gun reform.

'Jill and I are shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day,' Biden said in a statement following the attack.

Crimo is pictured during his arrest after an hours-long manhunt following the massacre in which six people were killed

'I have spoken to Governor Pritzker and Mayor Rotering, and have offered the full support of the Federal government to their communities,' he said. 'I also surged Federal law enforcement to assist in the urgent search for the shooter, who remains at large at this time'.

The shooting happened the month after Congress passed and Biden signed the first major gun reform legislation since the 1990s.

'But there is much more work to do, and I'm not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence,' the president insisted.

A rooftop shooter on Monday killed six and injured at least 24 others after opening fire at a July 4th parade in the affluent Chicago suburb of Highland Park on Monday.

The shooter is said to have been perched on the roof of what was an outdoor outfitting store, picking off people in the crowd who at first confused the sound of gunshots with Independence Day fireworks.

Vice President Kamala Harris also said Monday that she will still be traveling to Chicago on Tuesday.

President Joe Biden said there 'more work' is needed on gun reforms after a gunman opened fire on a July 4 parade in Illinois on Sunday

The parade in Highland Park was attended by dozens of locals who sat on the sidewalk cheering as bands marched past

'So the President and I have been in close coordination and we are being briefed on what's happening right now in terms of the active shooter situation,' Harris told reporters after arriving at Santa Monica Fire Station #2 on Monday.

'I am going to travel to Chicago tomorrow morning to address the National Association of Educators NEA,' the vice president continued.

'When we look at the issue of gun violence, and when we look at the dangers that it presents to communities, it ranges and it is something that we should take very seriously,' she said. 'The President recently signed bipartisan legislation to address the issue of gun violence but we clearly have much more to do.'

Other Democratic lawmakers also expressed outrage in the wake of the most recent mass shooting as it juxtaposed with Independence Day celebrations across the country.

'Today a shooter struck in Highland Park during the Independence Day parade,' the representative for the district where the shooting took place wrote on Twitter. 'My campaign team and I were gathering at the start of the parade when the shooting started. My team and I are safe and secure. We are monitoring the situation closely and in touch with the Mayor.'

'Hearing of loss of life and others injured,' Democratic Congressman Brad Schneider added. 'My condolences to the family and loved ones; my prayers for the injured and for my community; and my commitment to do everything I can to make our children, our towns, our nation safer. Enough is enough!'

'As families come together to celebrate America, they are gunned down in the scourge of gun violence plaguing it,' Senator Ed Markey tweeted on Monday. 'This is a tragedy.'

'The Bipartisan Gun Law was a first step, but Congress must do more to stop this deadly epidemic and save lives,' he added, urging more gun control after an overarching gun regulation bill made it through Congress last month.

Hawaii Democratic Senator Brian Schatz tweeted: 'This militia is not well regulated at all.'

Assistant House Speaker Katherine Clark of Massachusetts wrote following the July 4 shooting that when 'no place in the USA is safe from gun terror' it means that 'no place is truly free.'

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, who is the Democratic Whip, described the shooting as 'horrific'.

'To face senseless gun violence while out celebrating Independence Day is nothing short of horrific,' Durbin tweeted in response to the shooting. 'The nation's prayers are with Highland Park today.'

'My office is closely monitoring the situation and will stay in contact with local leaders and law enforcement,' the Illinois lawmaker added.

The shooter is described as being between 18 and 20 years old, of 'slight build' with long black hair. He is wearing a white or a blue t-shirt and used a rifle in the attack that he abandoned before fleeing.

Police say he was shooting from a roof along the parade route. The shooting began some 20 minutes after the start of the parade.

California Democratic Representative Karen Bass posted to Twitter: 'Living in fear of mass shootings is not independence. Living in fear of mass shootings is not freedom.'

'It's our patriotic duty to do more in Congress to keep Americans safe & get guns off our streets,' she added. 'Wishing you a SAFE July 4th.'

Chicago Sun Times reporter Lynn Sweet was at the parade when gunfire rang out.

She has since shared photos and videos from the event which show people lying on the ground, and has described it as a 'bloodbath'.

Panicked parade goers at the scene on Monday. There were loud sounds from the crowd that some said were gunshots

The bloody scene in Highland Park, Illinois, on Monday after a shooter opened fire on a Fourth of July parade shortly after 10am

Strollers and chairs were abandoned at the scene after the shots rang out at 10.14am, just ten minutes after the parade began

The aftermath of the scene in Highland Park on Monday after a shooter opened fire on the parade. Chairs and strollers were abandoned by attendees

Highland Park is around 30 miles north of the city of Chicago and is a quiet, suburban area

Witnesses described a 'sickening' scene and is it feared that children are among the dead.

'I saw multiple lifeless bodies, people in a pool of blood.

'It is sickening. If this can happen here in our suburb it can happen anywhere,' he added, a reference to the quiet suburb's low-crime,' witness Miles Zaremski told CNN.

'I have never seen this and I'd hope no American would ever see this. I saw 12 to 24 injuries.

'I saw a couple of lifeless bodies on the ground.'

He told The Chicago Sun Times that he heard shots being fired in quick succession.

'So it couldn't have been just a handgun or a shotgun,' he said.

President Biden - who has been calling for gun reform since the Uvalde shooting on May 24 which claimed 19 lives - has not yet commented on the shooting.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been briefed.

Debbie Glickman, a Highland Park resident, said she was on a parade float with coworkers and the group was prepared to turn onto the main route when she saw people running away from the area.

'People started saying `There's a shooter, there's a shooter, there is a shooter'' Glickman said.

'So we just ran. We just ran. It's like mass chaos down there. I'm so freaked out,' she said.

'We can't believe this happened in our little town.'

Matt Phillip, 36, director of tasting room operating at Lynfred Winery, told DailyMail.com: 'We were open early for the parade and upon hearing what sounded like fireworks, we noticed that people started running down the street.'

'We opened our doors so they could either seek shelter within our facility or exit through our back-alley door.'

He said thirty people sheltered inside his store. There is still a shelter-in-place order in Highland Park.

'Frozen in time': Strollers, wagons, balloons and toys were immediately abandoned as families ran for their lives on Monday

HIGHLAND PARK, IL - JULY 04: First responders work the scene of a shooting at a Fourth of July parade on July 4, 2022 in Highland Park, Illinois. Reports indicate at least six people were killed and more than 20 injured in the mass shooting

First responders work the scene of a shooting at a Fourth of July parade on July 4, 2022 in Highland Park, Illinois. Reports indicate at least five people were killed and 19 injured in the mass shooting

Among those missing are the parents of one of her friends, she said.

Highland Park is renowned for being one of Chicago's most affluent suburbs; Michael Jordan owns a mansion in the area, and it is also where enormous mansion featured in Home Alone is.

It is among a cluster of wealthy suburbs along the North Shore next to Lake Michigan.

The town's Mayor, Nancy Rotering, spoke briefly at a press conference along with law enforcement on Monday to share her condolences with the families of those killed.

None of the victims have been named and it's unclear how old they are.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted: 'The tragedy unfolding in Highland Park is devastating.

'I have been in contact with Mayor Rotering and have offered our support, and the Chicago Police Department is providing assistance.

'We grieve with the families of the deceased and injured as well as the entire Highland Park community.

'Law enforcement is working hard to bring the shooter into custody.

'If anyone has information, we encourage them to call 911 and report what you know.'

Unlike Chicago, which has one of the worst gun violence records in the country, violent crime in Highland Park is almost unheard of.

The average price of a home in Highland Park was $714,000 in April 2022 and the city has a population of around 30,000.
Authorities said that the Copenhagen mall shooting suspect charged with the murder of at least three people had mental health issues and has been put in a psychiatric facility for 24 days.

Police said earlier that the 22-year-old Danish man was known to psychiatric professionals as he was charged with manslaughter for the horrific incident. The court that heard the case on Monday also put a ban on naming both the suspect and the 10 victims named in the charge, said the police in a series of Twitter posts.

Mental Health Issues

The horrifying incident happened on Sunday at multiple locations inside Field's, a shopping center located in the Danish capital. Social media footage showed residents running through the mall and heavily-armed law enforcement officers in the area.

During a Monday morning press conference, Copenhagen's Head of Police Soren Thomassen said that two 17-year-old Danish citizens, one male and one female, and a 47-year-old Russian national had been killed in the gunfire.

Authorities reported that two other Danes and two Swedish nationals had received gunshot wounds and were in critical but stable condition. Several others sustained minor injuries while leaving the mall, said Thomassen, as per CNN.

In a statement, police revealed that three people were lightly injured by stray bullets and a total of 27 people were wounded or injured in the attack. They added that 20 of them were "lightly injured during the evacuation."

Read Also: Copenhagen Mall Shooting Leaves "Several Dead" and Injured; 22-Year-Old Suspect Arrested in Potential Terror Attack

The man that authorities arrested in relation to the shooting is currently the only suspect in the horrific tragedy. Thomassen added that there was no indication that the suspect was acting with others but an investigation was still ongoing.

According to Newsweek, the incident comes as gun violence crimes are rare in Denmark because residents are not allowed to own fully-automatic firearms and semi-automatic weapons, and handguns are only allowed with special authorization.

Copenhagen Mall Shooting

Danish citizens who want to be licensed gun owners are required to demonstrate a genuine reason to possess a firearm, such as for collection or hunting. Applicants must also be at least 18 years old and are required to pass a background check that includes a criminal and mental health records check.

There were reports that prior to the shooting, the suspect allegedly posted an online statement saying that antipsychotic medication "does not work." The gunman reportedly also posted videos on social media on Saturday where he posed with guns.

The shopping mall shooting also occurred as Denmark celebrated hosting the first three stages of the Tour de France for the first time. In a statement, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen denounced the act of violence.

Frederikson said that Denmark was hit by a cruel attack on Sunday night, noting that several people were killed and injured. He added that families who were shopping or eating out were among the victims, including children, adolescents, and adults.

The prime minister encouraged residents to stand together and support each other in this difficult time. He also called the attack the "worst possible nightmare," adding that the shooting was "unusually brutal," PBS News Hour reported.



Related Article: Copenhagen Mall Shooting: Videos Show Gunman During Attack, Disturbing Scene as People Panic

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A 'difficult cohort' of young offenders is being moved to an adult prison after months of destroying infrastructure, assaulting staff and causing almost $2million in damages.

The group of 20 boys, the youngest just 14 years old, had significant offending histories and also harmed themselves at Banksia Hill Detention Centre in Perth.

The reign of violence had left more than 100 of Banksia Hill's 260 cells damaged and more than 30 unfit for use.

They will be moved to a new youth detention facility at Casuarina Prison, south of Perth.

A reign of violence at Banksia Hill Detention Centre left more than 100 of its 260 cells damaged and more than 30 unfit for use. Pictured is damage at Banksia Hill

In one case, a boy escaped from his cell and attacked an officer with a broom.

West Australian Corrective Services Minister Bill Johnston said youth detention centres were not built as securely as prisons, so relocating this group was necessary to ensure the safety of custodial officers.

'Banksia Hill is a youth detention facility and it's built in a different manner to an adult male prison. So, obviously, the cells at the male prison are much more secure,' he said.

The newly built 256-bed unit at Casuarina will be managed separately as a juvenile facility, said Dr Adam Tomison, director general of the Western Australian Department of Justice.

'This newly-built unit will operate as a separate youth detention facility within the prison grounds ... allowing other detainees at Banksia Hill to return to their normal education, programs and recreation activities that have been affected by the ongoing disruptions,' Dr Tomison said.

The bill to repair the damaged cells has already passed $1.8million, said WA's Corrective Services Commissioner Mike Reynolds.

'The short-term youth detention centre will provide a safe environment for the 20 young men while we restore Banksia Hill to a safe working environment for staff and detainees and complete the necessary infrastructure works,' he said.

The bill to repair the damaged cells in Perth's Banksia Hill Detention Centre (pictured) has already passed $1.8million

'We examined all possible options within WA's custodial estate for the short-term facility.

'The Casuarina site, with its new, secure units, was the only safe and suitable option to ensure the young men were able to be kept in a location away from the adult population.'

Gerry Georgatos of the National Suicide Prevention and Trauma Recovery Project said moving the boys to an adult prison was a sign of the authorities giving up on them.

'It's saying: "You don't matter, the only thing that matters is the safety of the prison personnel".

Youth detention centres are not built as securely as prisons. Pictured is damage done in Banksia Hill Detention Centre

'What's happening now is we've got them as young as 14 years of age in adult prisons, even though the setting is one of separation, they're experiencing a maximum-security prison in affect,' he told ABC.

Mr Georgatos said moving them to Casuarina Prison is gearing the boys up for a life in the justice system, instead supporting them out of criminal behaviour.

He said 70 per cent of children who go through Banksia end up spending significant periods of their adult lives in prison.
A European body has attacked the UK for backsliding on basic human rights after the government launched a proposal to ditch the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and replace it with a new Bill of Rights.

Following a five day visit to the UK by Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic, the Council of Europe released a statement expressing fear that any new human rights bill would offer UK citizens fewer legal protections than they currently enjoy.

And the group specifically connected the issue to the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, claiming that the proposed changes could undermine the foundations of peace there.

'The effective protection of ECHR rights is one of the foundations of the peace settlement in Northern Ireland under the Good Friday Agreement.

'It is crucial that this foundation is not undermined as a result of the proposed human rights reforms', said Mijatovic.

The Council of Europe is a pan-European body set up to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe post 1945 and includes countries outside the European Union as well as in, including corrupt dictatorships such as Azerbaijan.

Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic from the Council of Europe paid a five day visit to the UK focusing on the system for human rights protection, the situation in Northern Ireland and childrens rights

Dunja Mijatovic is pictured here speaking with human rights activists helping refugees on the Polish-Belarus border in November

The Council of Europe is a pan-European body set up to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe post 1945 and encompasses countries outside the European Union, including corrupt dictatorships such as Azerbaijan

The Council of Europe connected the issue to the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, claiming that the proposed changes could undermine the foundations of peace there

It is home to the European Court of Human Rights, which enforces the European Convention on Human Rights, and it was judges from this court, sitting in Strasbourg, which grounded Priti Patel's Rwanda asylum flights last month.

'Legal reforms should not weaken human rights protections in the United Kingdom', the Commissioner said at the end of her trip to the UK.

'The proposed repeal and replacement of the Human Rights Act with a Bill of Rights, if voted through, will affect the human rights of everyone in the UK.'

The new proposed Bill will introduce a 'permissions stage' in the courts requiring people who want to bring a human rights case to show they have suffered 'significant disadvantage' before it can go ahead.

The move is designed to save court time and taxpayers' money, but Mijatovic sees it as a hurdle that will 'weaken human rights protections' in the UK.

'The Bill makes significant changes to the way in which people can bring cases to UK courts and have their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) effectively enforced.'

'It is worrying that the proposed legal reforms might weaken human rights protections at this pivotal moment for the UK, and it sends the wrong signal beyond the country's borders at a time when human rights are under pressure throughout Europe.'

The Government made updating the Human Rights Act 'to ensure there is a proper balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and effective government' one of its 2019 manifesto pledges.

Dominic Raab told MPs the Bill of Rights would 'restore a healthy dose of common sense' to the justice system

Ministers want to avoid a repeat of the fiasco that saw the first migrant flight to Rwanda blocked at the 11th hour

Ministers have touted the Rwanda scheme as a means of deterring migrants from making perilous crossings to Britain via the Channel

Labour's Ellie Reeves branded the publication of legislation to overhaul the 1998 Human Rights Act as a 'very dark day for victims of crime, for women, for people in care'

It is thought that one of the prime motivations for the reform is to escape from the jurisdiction of foreign-based judges who are able to overall government policy initiatives.

The Bill's publication comes after the European Court of Human Rights blocked the departure of a first plane-load of migrants from Britain to Rwanda.

The court's 11th hour action prevented the Government's new 120m asylum scheme - which will see migrants sent to East Africa to have their asylum claims processed - from getting up and running.

Ministers have touted the Rwanda scheme as a means of deterring migrants from making perilous crossings to Britain via the Channel.

'We will reverse the mission creep that has meant human rights law being used for more and more purposes, and often with little regard for the rights of wider society,' the Government said in its consultation on the new bill.

Dominic Raab, the Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, unveiled the package that would make up the bill to replace Labour's Human Rights Act in June.

Do you know your Council of Europe from your European Council? Given that the Council of Europe (CoE) has adopted the original European flag of a blue background and a circle of stars, as well as the European anthem, you would be forgiven for assuming it was an EU body. The European Council, however, with a very similar flag, is an EU body. The Council of Europe was founded in 1949 - predating the founding of the original incarnation of the EU by a couple of years - to protect human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe after the horrors of the Second World War. It is a pan-European institution that encompasses undemocratic states such as Azerbaijan and even Russia as well as liberal democratic EU states. (Russia was effectively kicked out after its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.) The European Council, on the other hand, defines the overall political direction and priorities of the EU. It has no legislative power but is a strategic meeting body consisting of EU member heads of state, the President of the European Council (Currently Charles Michel, former Prime Minister of Belgium) and the President of the European Commission. Advertisement

The proposed legislation asserts British courts do not always need to follow case law from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

It also states that London's Supreme Court is the ultimate decision-maker on human rights issues.

Mr Raab told MPs the Bill would 'restore a healthy dose of common sense' to the justice system.

Despite seeking to limit the power of the Strasbourg court, Mr Raab reassured the House of Commons that the UK will not leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Bill of Rights is also aimed at cracking down on European-style privacy laws and bogus human rights claims made by foreign criminals to avoid deportation.

Mr Raab told MPs: 'Our Bills of Rights will strengthen our proud tradition of freedom, it will demarcate a clearer separation of powers.

'It will ensure greater respect for our democratic institutions and it will better protect the public and restore a healthy dose of common sense to the justice system which is essential for commanding public confidence.

'Ultimately it will make us freer, it will help keep our streets safer.'

The Deputy PM also pledged the Bill of Rights would strengthen border controls.

'In a democracy you command, you rule, you govern by consent,' he added.

'And were at risk of losing public confidence in our immigration controls if we cant take the common sense measures they expect.

'Were also at risk of losing public confidence in human rights if we dont restore a healthy dose of common sense.'

Labour branded the publication of legislation to overhaul the 1998 Human Rights Act as a 'very dark day for victims of crime, for women, for people in care' and 'for everyone in this country who rely on the state to protect them from harm'.

Shadow justice minister Ellie Reeves said: 'For members of the party of Churchill, who inspired the European Convention of Human Rights, to want to do away with it altogether, is really quite something.

'I gather that he (Mr Raab) doesnt want to withdraw from the European Convention, not least because he knows it would fatally undermine the Good Friday Agreement and peace in Northern Ireland.

Ahead of the Bill's publication, Mr Raab had hailed his measures as a 'strong enhancement of free speech', stopping the courts from introducing Continental-style privacy laws by the back door.

He said the Bill would 'sift out spurious claims' made by foreign criminals and others under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights; the right to private and family life.

Article 8 has been used by thousands of foreign offenders to avoid being deported and its curtailment is one of the key dimensions of the new package.

Last month, the Daily Mail revealed how a series of killers, robbers and sex offenders remained in the UK by arguing their right to a private or family life in immigration courts.

Under Mr Raab's proposals, offenders seeking to dodge deportation would have to prove that a child or another dependant would come to 'overwhelming, unavoidable harm' if they were separated  a higher test than under current law.
Jacinda Ardern has lashed out at claims she was 'demonising' China by criticising Beijing's expanding presence in the South Pacific.

The New Zealand Prime Minister told The Project on Tuesday, the region should be 'free from coercian' and 'militarisation'.

Chinese state media last week slammed the Kiwi leader for joint statement she penned with US President Joe Biden declaring China poses national-security concerns to both nations.

Communist Party mouthpieces said she was 'smearing and demonising' China.

But Ms Ardern said she has taken the same stance for China as for the rest of the EU and elsewhere, insisting all she wants is what is best for the Pacific.

'The only point we are making is for all of the engagement that we see, whether it be China or be it France or be it from the UK or EU generally, we actually take a country neutral response on engagement,' she said.

'We ask for the same thing though and that same thing is to make sure the priorities are Pacific based and that it is free from coersion, and we have high quality investment in our region and we see that collaborative working.

'When it comes to issues around militarisation, of course that is not something our region wants, but we would say that and have being saying that to all and any partner in our part of the world,' she said.

China in April signed a security agreement with the Solomon Islands which could open the door to a Chinese naval base.

The move raised tensions in the region with Australian and New Zealand alarmed by the authoritarian nation's ambitions in the region.

The New Zealand Prime Minister told The Project on Tuesday, the region should be 'free from coercian' and 'militarisation'. Pictured: Chinese naval ship

Jacinda Ardern has lashed out at claims she was 'demonising' China by criticising Beijing's expanding presence in the South Pacific.

Chinese officials also tried to sign up 10 more South Pacific nations in May using their deep pockets to offer up similar development deals.

But negotiations were eventually derailed.

On Ms Ardern's visit to the US, her and President Joe Biden issued a statement reaffirming the strategic partnership between the US and New Zealand, all while voicing concerns about China's Solomon Islands pact.

The statement took aim at a potential persistent military presence in the Pacific, warning the 'establishment of a persistent military presence in the Pacific by a state that does not share our values or security interests would fundamentally alter the strategic balance of the region and pose national-security concerns to both our countries.'

The Chinese embassy in Wellington, New Zealand, hit out at the Prime Minister's comments labelling them 'misguided' and 'not helpful for deepening mutual trust'. Pictured: Chinese President Xi Jinping

The Chinese embassy in Wellington, New Zealand, hit out at the Prime Minister's comments labelling them 'misguided' and 'not helpful for deepening mutual trust'.

In a statement, they called Ardern's statement 'wrong' and 'regrettable'.

Though New Zealand is not a member of NATO, Ardern was recently invited to attend its leaders summit in Madrid along with other leaders of the Asia Pacific Four - Australia, Japan, and South Korea.

In a speech to the summit, Ardern said: 'China has in recent times become more assertive and more willing to challenge international rules and more.'
A NHS volunteer who drove an ambulance to Ukraine said he was spat on for displaying the country's blue and yellow flag in his car window.

Brian Grove, 60, was at a McDonald's in Sittingbourne, Kent, when he said a 'burly man' with an Eastern European accent 'took exception' to the stickers.

Since the Russian invasion began in February, he as delivered aid to Ukraine six times, including delivering an ambulance.

He said the man spat at him after Mr Grove had nearly bumped into his car while pulling into a parking space at the fast-food restaurant.

The motorist got out to check for damage and flew into a rage when he saw the Ukraine flag stickers in the window of Mr Grove's Nissan Micra.

Brian Grove, 60, was at a McDonald's in Sittingbourne, Kent, when he said a 'burly man' with an Eastern European accent 'took exception' to the Ukraine flag stickers

Mr Grove said: 'He attempted to attack me. Luckily, I was still in the car and able to lock it in time.

'So he just spat on me through the gap at the top of the window while yelling a list of expletives all with the word Ukraine.

'Sadly, it wasn't caught on any of McDonald's security cameras.'

Mr Grove is appealing for any witnesses or drivers with dashcam footage that may have captured the incident which happened on Sunday afternoon.

He added: 'I assume this gentleman was a Russian supporter and clearly prepared to use racially motivated violence here in Sittingbourne.

Mr Grove said he was spat on for displaying the country's blue and yellow flag in his car window (pictured)

'So he just spat on me through the gap at the top of the window while yelling a list of expletives all with the word Ukraine,' Mr Grove said. Pictured, his car with pro-Ukraine stickers

'But I must stress that not all Russians are like this. In fact, the person who first asked me to help the Ukrainians was a Russian girl.'

Mr Grove has been on six aid missions to Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion on February 24.

On his first trip he helped deliver an ambulance and some supplies as part of a convoy.

'The sight of thousands of mostly young women with small children, queueing for hours in the bitterly cold evening, as the many tents simply could not meet the need, is something I would prefer to un-see,' he said.

'The sound of the children crying with the cold as their mothers tried to shield them and helpers tried to help with food, hot drinks and blankets, is something which will live with me for a long time.'

Mr Grove has been on six aid missions to Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion on February 24. On his first trip he helped deliver an ambulance and some supplies as part of a convoy (pictured)

He said of the spitting man: 'He was totally distraught and started waving his fist in the air. I felt threatened until I had made sure all the doors were locked.

'To be honest, when you have seen the horrors going on in Ukraine and had to dodge bandits with automatic weapons, one man waving his fist isn't that bad.'

He added: 'A few weeks ago another man tried to rip a Ukrainian flag from the car I was driving at the time.'

Mr Grove, a law graduate now retired on medical grounds, volunteered at a Covid vaccination centre in his town and helped serve meals at Faversham Cottage Hospital during the first wave of the pandemic.

He also worked as an animal rescuer in Argentina between 2003 and 2012.

In April he became a governor for the Kent Community Health NHS Trust, representing Swale.
The trailer for a new documentary series revealing an intimate look at the Trump family during the last months of Donald Trump's presidency was released on Tuesday.

Brief interview clips are shown with the former president's three adult children - Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump - along with Ivanka's husband Jared Kushner and set against a dramatic Vivaldi violin composition in the newly-released video that runs for roughly two and a half minutes.

The footage was released through Politico and is a part of the hours-long trove of video subpoenaed by the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

British documentary filmmaker Alex Holder filmed multiple sit-down interview with the Trump family as well as then-Vice President Mike Pence for his three-part documentary, Unprecedented, set to be released on Discovery+.

In interspersed clips, the subjects can be seen in seemingly behind-the-scenes moments getting ready for their interviews. That view is contrasted with clips of their public statements at Make America Great Again rallies and later the January 6 riot itself.

Don Jr. is shown on stage shouting 'we'll make liberals cry again' followed later by a clip of him in front of sink, telling the camera he was 'washing my hands after giving a bunch of fist bumps.'

'Do you see this line?' Ivanka, Trump's second-eldest, asks someone behind the camera about her mint green-colored dress.

She appears to reference the Will Farrell-portrayed antagonist in the 2001 comedy film Zoolander in a later clip while continuing to fret about her appearance.

Donald Trump is interviewed in the final months of his presidency in Alex Holder's documentary series Unprecedented

Referencing a white dog running around beneath her feet, Ivanka laughs, 'Maybe I should just, like Mugatu, have the dog on my lap? Can I borrow your dog?'

Kushner, who is known for making few public statements, is shown asking whether his tie is in the right position.

He and his wife both served as senior advisers in the Trump administration.

Eric, the youngest of Trump's children by his first wife, eagerly lists off the events he had spoken at before another video shows him in a discernibly more private moment.

'For the sake of this country, were going to get these guys,' he says over the phone without any explanation.

All throughout their clips, video is shown of Trump himself from a previously released teaser clip posted by Holder on Twitter.

The videos of his children's interviews is sharply contrasted by the former president's calm, confident orders staging the set he's appearing on.

The trailer highlights the extensive control he exerts over his family, with one expert commenting on the 'dynastic' approach Trump takes to his real estate empire as well as running the country.

'They have their own base,' Trump gloats to the camera, seemingly about his children. 'It's part of my base.'

The new video clip from his new documentary features Donald Trump Jr. at a rally for his father telling the crowd, 'We'll make liberals cry again'

The clips are separated by the ex-president telling a crowd of supporters that 'people have no idea how hard this family works.'

Videos are punctuated by black screens with white text that together reads, 'Witness the 3-part documentary event  With exclusive access  To the most controversial family in the world  Gaining power is easy  Surrendering it is not.'

The trailer's climax comes as Trump tells a crowd of supporters at his January 6 Stop the Steal rally, 'Lets all walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.'

Jubilant footage from past Trump rallies is replaced by evidence of the violence his supporters caused on January 6, including clips of people overwhelming Capitol police and breaking into the complex.

'Got to get the roaches out, all of them,' one person yells to the camera in front of the Capitol.

The acquisition of Holder's documentary, which he has insisted the Trumps had no control over, pushed the January 6 committee to schedule two new hearings in July to accommodate the wealth of new evidence.

Holder previously told CNN that lawmakers expressed particular interest in Ivanka.

He spoke to the committee behind closed doors on June 23, and subsequently revealed that comments made to him by the ex-president's oldest daughter may conflict with what she told House investigators.

'As the President has said, every single vote needs to be counted, and needs to be heard. He campaigned for the voiceless,' she said in footage obtained by CNN.

'I think a lot of Americans feel very disenfranchised right now and really question the sanctity of our elections.'

But clips of her deposition played by the committee at their June hearings suggest she agreed with then-Attorney General Bill Barr when he said there was no widespread voter fraud.
This is the horrifying moment a bull gores a man while onlookers scream in shock during a traditional Spanish festival.

Footage from the scene shows the raging animal charge at the 58-year-old victim, who has been identified only by his initials S.C.V., and lifting him into the air by its horns before the man crashes to the ground.

The man, who had stepped through a barrier and was next to the bull's cage when he was attacked, suffered significant injuries to his leg and was rushed to hospital where he underwent surgery.

The bull attack took place during the Sant Pere del Grau 2022 Festival in the Spanish province of Castellon in the Valencian Community on 30 June.

Video shows the bull being released from its cage whilst the man, who was wearing a green shirt, stands close by in the street. The bull is seen charging at the man who then runs towards the crowd of spectators, who are standing on the other side of some metal bars. But the man is not able to get though the gap between the metal bars in time as the bull charges at him and strikes him with in the arm with its horns

The force of the strike pushes the man through the gap between the metal bars, but the bull manages to fit its horns through the same gap and lifts the man into the air

Video shows the bull being released from its cage whilst the man, who was wearing a green shirt, stands close by in the street.

The bull is seen charging at the man who then runs towards the crowd of spectators, who are standing on the other side of some metal bars.

But the man is not able to get his entire body though the gap between the metal bars in time as the bull charges at him and strikes him with in the arm with its horns.

The force of the strike pushes the man through the gap between the metal bars, but the bull manages to fit its horns through the same gap and lifts the man into the air.

Onlookers were heard screaming in shock as the bull gored the man's upper thigh before the victim crashed to the ground.

The bull then runs off into the street whilst another man comes running at the animal with a blue cloth in an effort to distract the animal. The bull is then seen running through the street as a number of spectators rush to avoid the animal.

The victim suffered significant muscle damage and was treated by paramedics at the venue before being transferred to the Hospital General Universitario de Castellon where he underwent surgery to his injured leg. He is now recovering from his injuries.

Onlookers were heard screaming in shock as the bull gored the man's upper thigh before the victim crashed to the ground. The bull then runs off into the street whilst another man comes running at the animal with a blue cloth in an effort to distract the animal. The bull is then seen running through the street as a number of spectators rush to avoid the animal

He was not the only festival goer to be injured by a bull during the celebrations in Castellon.

Another man suffered non-life threatening injuries after being gored during a running of the bull's event on 25 June.

There have been a number of people who have been seriously injured of killed by bulls during traditional events in Spain.

In May, Oscar Rodriguez Calleja, 50, died after being gored by a bull in front of his wife and one of his two daughters at a Spanish festival.

He was rushed to hospital after being speared in the groin by a 84-stone bull called Rodillero at Fiesta del Verdejo festival in the small town of La Seca, Valladolid, northern Spain, but medics were unable to save him.

Footage of the incident which happened on Sunday 1 May showed the moments before the bull dashed out of its wooden box, immediately taking a right turn towards the crowds stood behind barriers.

The father-of-two was then lifted by the bull's horns as he stood behind the railings, then held up and dragged for a few seconds.

The bull pulled Oscar while with its horns before dumping him on the floor as onlookers watched in disbelief.

Oscar Rodriguez Calleja, 50, died after being gored by a bull called Rodillero in front of his wife and one of his two daughters at Fiesta del Verdejo festival in La Seca, Valladoid, northern Spain, in May. Pictured, the bull being released from the wooden box before making a left turn

Footage of the incident which happened on Sunday 1 May showed the moments before the bull dashed out of its wooden box, immediately taking a right turn towards the crowds stood behind barriers, ramming himself into Oscar

His loved ones suffered panic attacks and were treated at the scene before his wife was taken to a health centre.

Oscar had travelled from his home in the nearby municipality of Nava del Rey to take part in the festivities with his family.

In January a man was fatally gored by a charging heifer at a festival in Puerto Serrano in the south-west Spanish province of Cadiz.

He was described at the time as only the second person to be fatally gored during an annual festival in Spain involving bulls and heifers since the start of the Covid pandemic.

A 55-year-old man became the first person to die during a bull goring in Onda in the eastern Spanish province of Castellon at the end of October last year.

Before the coronavirus pandemic several revellers were gored to death every year at Spanish festivals involving bulls being let onto the street including the Pamplona-style 'encierros.'

In 2015 seven people died between the start of July and the middle of August.
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Boris Johnson was informed of a past complaint about the 'inappropriate' behaviour of Chris Pincher when the shamed MP was a minister, Number 10 admitted today as a furious Tory sleaze row deepened further.

Downing Street made the admission - having previously insisted the Prime Minister was not aware of any 'specific allegations' when making Mr Pincher the deputy chief whip earlier this year - as Conservative MPs traded blows in the Commons over the scandal.

Mr Pincher last week resigned as deputy chief whip following claims he drunkenly groped two men at a posh London members' club.

He has now also been suspended as a Conservative MP, while a slew of further allegations have emerged against the 52-year-old spanning several years.

The latest Westminster sleaze row has threatened to imperil Mr Johnson's political future yet again, with No10 giving a series of conflicting accounts about what the PM did or did not know of Mr Pincher's past conduct.

Critics of Mr Johnson were given further ammunition today when a former senior civil servant penned a bombshell letter to a parliamentary watchdog and claimed No10 'keep changing their story and are still not telling the truth'.

Downing Street later confirmed Simon McDonald, the ex-top official at the Foreign Office, was correct to state the PM had been told of a 2019 complaint about Mr Pincher when he was a Foreign Office minister.

The PM's official spokesman said Mr Johnson initially 'didn't recall' having been informed.

He added that he thought the PM was told by 'someone in the Cabinet Office' and that had been 'a number of months' after the complaint was investigated.

As No10 took its latest position on what the PM knew about Mr Pincher's alleged behaviour, Cabinet Office minister Michael Ellis faced a Commons grilling over the row.

Fellow Tory MP Caroline Johnson asked why Mr Pincher wasn't fired as a Foreign Office minister when the 2019 complaint about him was upheld.

'Why wasnt he sacked at the time, never mind given another job?,' she asked.

Conservative MPs loyal to Boris Johnson today traded blows in the Commons with those who are critics of the PM, as the sleaze scandal deepened

The PM chaired a Cabinet meeting this morning focussed on the cost-of-living crisis while questions swirled about what he knew of Mr Pincher's conduct before handing him a top role

The PM spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as he faced another domestic crisis following Mr Pincher's resignation as deputy chief whip

Boris warned he might be safe for the summer - but could still be gone by Christmas Boris Johnson is facing a renewed threat to his leadership following the latest Tory sleaze scandal. Claims against ex-deputy chief whip Chris Pincher - and No10's handling of the row - has emboldened Conservative rebels in their attempts to get rid of the PM. Their challenge in achieving that aim is the fact that Mr Johnson won a no confidence vote over his leadership only last month. This granted him immunity from another challenge for 12 months. But, in a new rebel plot, critics of the PM are attempting to win key positions on the 1922 Committee - the influential body in charge of Tory leadership contests - in a battle with PM loyalists. If rebels secure a majority on the Committee's 18-strong executive, they could change the rules to allow Mr Johnson to face another no confidence vote sooner than next June. The 1922 elections are not due to take place until next week and MPs then go on their summer break on 21 July. This means there is little time for Tory rebels to change the rules and also stage a no confidence vote before MPs head away from Westminster until September. No.10 will take confidence that the PM, therefore, is safe for the summer - which they might hope will act as a 'firebreak' in cooling the fury of rebel MPs. Mr Johnson will plot an autumn fightback with his Tory conference speech in October. But some are still predicting the PM - despite being granted a summer respite - will still be gone within months. One northern Tory MP, who has not been a regular rebel, said: 'I'll be amazed if Boris gets to Christmas.' Advertisement

Senior Tory MP William Wragg, a fierce critic of Mr Johnson, urged ministers to consider quitting their roles.

He told them to 'ask themselves if they can any longer tolerate being part of a Government' that had 'lost its sense of direction'.

But those loyal to Mr Johnson hit back, with senior Brexiteer Peter Bone asking if voters were more concerned about allegations regarding an MP 'they've never heard about' or Government support during the cost-of-living crisis.

Compared to packed Labour benches, there were far fewer Tory MPs in the Commons as Mr Johnson and his Government battle a latest controversy.

The PM himself chaired a Cabinet meeting this morning and also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a call No10 stressed had been 'scheduled'.

The latest sleaze row has emboldened Tory rebels to step up their efforts to oust the PM from Downing Street, with a plan to rip up party rules to allow another no confidence vote in Mr Johnson's warning.

One northern Tory MP, who has not been a regular rebel, issued a chilling warning to the PM that he had little time left in office.

They told MailOnline: The party has had enough. I'll be amazed if Boris gets to Christmas.

'Its more about No10 incompetence than Chris. More lies. Its either over for Boris, or its over for over a 100 colleagues.

Anthony Mangnall, a Tory MP elected at the 2019 general election, this afternoon called on Cabinet ministers to force out Mr Johnson.

He posted on Twitter: 'It is time for Cabinet colleagues to recognise the appalling damage that the Prime Minister is doing to the party, government and country.

'It isnt good enough and each day that passes those who sit in Cabinet will be more complicit with this farcical situation.'

But a senior Conservative MP loyal to the PM played down the idea that the situation was terminal for Mr Johnson, saying the Government needed to hunker down and wait for the summer recess at the end of July.

They told MailOnline: When recess kicks in it isnt going to last weve got two weeks from Thursday. The story will run until then.

The bottom line is its very frustrating that a story about a misjudgement in a single appointment has been unnecessarily made much bigger by botched comms.'

Deputy PM Dominic Raab was this morning ambushed in a TV interview with Lord McDonald's revelation that Mr Johnson had been told 'in person' about a past 'formal complaint' concerning Mr Pincher.

The Deputy Prime Minister faced a grilling on BBC Breakfast after the former top civil servant hit out at No10's handling of the latest Westminster sleaze scandal.

Lord McDonald referred to a complaint by a 'group of officials' at the Foreign Office about Mr Pincher's behaviour when he was a minister in the department.

Downing Street yesterday insisted the PM was not aware of 'specific allegations being looked at' concerning Mr Pincher before appointing him - although No10 admitted Mr Johnson knew of 'media reports' and 'some allegations that were either resolved or did not progress to a formal comlaint'.

They stressed the PM took advice on giving Mr Pincher the deputy chief whip role in February, but found it was 'not appropriate' to block the appointment because of 'unsubstantiated allegations'.

In a letter to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Lord McDonald wrote: 'The original No10 line is not true and the modification is still not accurate. Mr Johnson was briefed in person about the initiation and outcome of the investigation.

'There was a formal complaint. Allegations were resolved only in the sense that the investigation was completed; Mr Pincher was not exonerated.

'To characterise the allegations as unsubstantiated is therefore wrong.'

Lord McDonald said that Mr Pincher 'deceived me and others in 2019', adding: 'He cannot be allowed to use the confidentiality of the process three years ago to pursue his predatory behaviour in other contexts.'

Dominic Raab - arriving in Downing Street later this morning for a Cabinet meeting - was ambushed in a TV interview with claims Boris Johnson had been told 'in person' about a past 'formal complaint' concerning shamed MP Chris Pincher

The PM is under pressure over his decision to appoint Mr Pincher as the Conservative deputy chief whip in February

Lord McDonald of Salford gave critics of Mr Johnson further ammunition today when he penned a bombshell letter to a parliamentary watchdog

The former top civil servant claimed No10 'keep changing their story and are still not telling the truth'

The revenge of the Remainer mandarin? Lord McDonald of Salford today handed serious ammunition to critics of the PM as he faces another Tory sleaze scandal. The former top civil servant lashed out at Number 10 for 'not telling the truth' about what Boris Johnson knew of past allegations against shamed MP Chris Pincher. The crossbench peer, the ex-top official at the Foreign Office, was claimed to have been forced into early retirement from his civil service career in 2020. Lord McDonald left his Foreign Office role at the time it was being merged with the Department for International Development by Mr Johnson. According to reports prior to his departure, he was on a 's*** list' of top civil servants that Number 10 wanted replaced following the PM's 2019 general election landslide. Widely regarded as an ardent Remainer, the mandarin's departure swiftly came as part of the PM's shake-up of Whitehall in the wake of the Covid crisis and after the UK's official exit from the EU. Mr Johnson and Lord McDonald were well-known to each other after the PM's spell as Foreign Secretary in Theresa May's Government - with the pair said to have 'never seen eye to eye' in their workings together. Prior to his retirement from the Foreign Office, Lord McDonald had given confused evidence to MPs about Britain's decision not to join an EU scheme to buy ventilators when the pandemic hit. His exit from the civil service came despite him having previously expressed a wish to serve for an extra two years. Advertisement

Soon after Lord McDonald published his letter on Twitter, Mr Raab was quizzed about the crossbench peer's claims as he continued his round of TV and radio interviews this morning.

The Deputy PM, who was Foreign Secretary at the time of the 2019 complaint, insisted he was 'very confident' in the decisions that were taken at the time and said he went 'above and beyond' Lord McDonald's advice to him by referring the complaint to the Cabinet Office.

Mr Raab had earlier revealed he 'spoke to' Mr Pincher 'in no uncertain terms' when the past complaint was made about his behaviour, but he defended him as an 'exceptional' minister.

'We were clear that what happened was inappropriate, but we resolved it without going for a formal disciplinary process,' he told LBC Radio.

'I spoke directly to Chris Pincher in no uncertain terms and I referred it to the Cabinet Office to seek that assurance.'

Responding to Lord McDonald's letter, Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner claimed the PM's 'desperate attempts to cover up what he knew about sexual assault complaints against Chris Pincher before appointing him have been blown out the water'.

'It is now clear that the PM knew about the seriousness of these complaints but decided to promote this man to a senior position in government anyway. He refused to act and then lied about what he knew,' she added.

The Liberal Democrats also seized on the peer's letter to call on the PM to 'own up to his web of lies and finally come clean today'.

Senior Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, a critic of the PM, called for a response from Mr Johnson and No10 to Lord McDonald's claims.

He told Sky News: 'They need to understand the scale and the gravity of the story and, indeed, get ahead of it. It is dominating the news day-after-day-after-day.'

Mr Ellwood claimed ministers were being sent out to face the media with a briefing that 'only lasts a number of hours until it has to be corrected'.

After Downing Street this afternoon shifted its position again on the sleaze row, the PM's official spokesman was asked if he regretted that the public felt they had been misled.

'I appreciate that given the allegations here we have a duty to be very clear on this,' he replied.

'These issues are rightly scrutinised, including on the timeline.

'For my part, we are simply seeking to establish as accurate information as we can and provide it.'

Pressed on whether there was now an issue of trust around official statements from No 10, the spokesman told reporters: 'That is obviously a judgment for you all to make.'

Lord McDonald continued his assault on No10 later this morning when he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'It is very unusual for a retired official to do what I have done this morning.

'I did it by myself, because what I have seen and read over the last few days I knew to be wrong. And you know, things get to a point where you have to do the right thing.'

He added: 'First of all, No10 have had five full days to get the story correct and that has still not happened.'

Tory rebels plotting to oust Mr Johnson from Number 10, have been emboldened to launch another effort to get rid of the PM in the wake of the fresh sleaze row.

They are plotting to change Conservative Party rules to allow Mr Johnson to soon face another no confidence vote.

This is despite the PM having won a contest on his leadership last month that granted him 12 months' immunity from another challenge under current rules.

The rebel plot will see them try to secure key posts on the 1922 Committee, the powerful Tory body in charge of leadership contests, in a battle with PM loyalists.

But, with elections to the 1922 executive not due to be held until next week and MPs going their summer break later this month, Mr Johnson is set to be safe from another widespread revolt until the autumn.

Mr Johnson's Cabinet loyalists - Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg - attended this morning's meeting in Number 10 as the PM faces fresh moves against his leadership

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Tory chief whip Chris Heaton-Harris arrived in Downing Street for this morning's Cabinet meeting

The northern MP who warned Mr Johnson he would be out of office by Christmas predicted that the revolt against the PM's leadership would 'come to a head in the three weeks in September before the Tory conference in Birmingham.

They added that No10 might be hoping the summer recess would act as a firebreak to stem rebel efforts to force out Mr Johnson, but there was no chance that would work.

One veteran Tory aide said No10s bungling of the crisis had been unbelievable.

Their modus operandi has always been to issue flat out denials no matter what,' they told MailOnline. 'It is finally catching up with them.

The PM chaired a Cabinet meeting this morning after being stung by a backlash from among his top ministers over his handling of the Pincher row.

It follows claims that Mr Johnson joked about the 'handsy' MP being 'Pincher by name, pincher by nature'.

Mr Johnson will use today's meeting to focus on the cost-of-living crisis causing misery for struggling Britons.

The PM will herald changes to the National Insurance thresholds - due to come into effect tomorrow - as 'the single biggest tax cut in a decade'.

Mr Johnson said ahead of today's Cabinet meeting: 'Tomorrow is an important moment in our mission to ease the burden on households and rebuild our economy, as the single biggest tax cut in a decade comes into force.

'The list of people who will benefit is vast  from hairdressers and care workers to receptionists  around 30 million British workers will save up to 330 a year on their National Insurance contributions.

'But were not just providing help right now, were investing record sums in infrastructure, skills and technology to level up and raise productivity across the whole country.

'Because thats the responsible, long-term way to address the cost of living, keeping our borrowing and debt under control, so we dont saddle our children with a massive mountain of debt, and paving the way for more tax cuts in the future.

'Thats how my government will get our country through these tough times.'

It will be Mr Johnson's latest attempt to move on from the fresh Tory sleaze row that broke out on his return to Britain last week after a nine-day stretch away from Westminster to attend Commonwealth, G7 and NATO summits.

It meant Mr Johnson escaped the fall-out from two bruising by-elections defeats.

But the PM returned to the UK at the end of last week to even more domestic strife with the resignation of Mr Pincher as Tory deputy chief whip.

Mr Pincher last week resigned as deputy chief whip after he admitted 'embarrassing himself and others' after drinking 'far too much' at the Carlton Club, a posh London watering hole popular with Conservatives
A mother who survived the deadly Independence Day shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, recalled the moments of horror as she was grazed by a bullet while taking her toddler to safety inside her husband's store.

Abby Brosio was on a family outing at the tragic parade with her two children, 3 and 1, and her in-laws when chaos ensued around 10.20am Monday.

She was standing next to her father-in-law when she realized the shooter, now identified by police as Robert E. Crimo III, 21, randomly fired at attendees from the roof of a business.

'I was holding my one-year-old and behind us, I thought there was a sound of fireworks and seconds later I realized that's not what it was, so I believe I hit the ground with my daughter,' Abby told Good Morning America.

'... I looked up at the neighboring business across the street and saw the shooter on the roof and I just screamed that it was a shooter.'

Abby rushed to safety inside the Gearhead Outfitters' store, where her husband, Tony, is the store manager. His father was shot in the leg but is recovering, Tony said.

Harrowing video shows paradegoers rushing inside the store for their safety. Parents holding their children in arms, desperately dodging shells stacked with outdoors gear to the back of the store.

A total of 46 people were injured in the shooting. Seven people were killed.

Among those killed were synagogue teacher Jacki Sundheim, a married mother, and grandfather Nicolas Toledo, 78. Four others have not yet been named.

Abby Brosio (right) was on a family outing at the tragic parade with their two children, 3 and 1, and Tony's parents when chaos ensued around 10.20am Monday. Abby rushed to safety inside the Gearhead Outfitters' store, where her husband, Tony, (left) is the store manage

Harrowing video shows paradegoers rushing inside the store for their safety

Abby was standing next to her father-in-law when she realized the shooter, now identified by police as Robert E. Crimo III, 22, (pictured) randomly fired at attendees from the roof of a business

"I remember looking around to try to figure out where the sound was coming from, and I looked up at the neighboring business across the street and saw the shooter on the roof."



Abby & Tony Brosio describe seeing gunman on roof at Highland Park shooting. https://t.co/6QuCmaDHTw pic.twitter.com/KPotZBQlxO  Good Morning America (@GMA) July 5, 2022

Tony Brosio told Good Morning America he didn't hesitate to help people inside his store when he realized there was an active shooter situation at the parade.

'We were just trying to get as many people as we possibly could inside,' he said. 'Like I said, it was just instinct.'

Jody Lieberman, who sheltered inside the store, showed his gratefulness with a post on the business' Facebook page.

'Tony and the entire staff at Gearhead Highland Park were amazing today,' she wrote.

'They were calm in a very dangerous situation and helped the community members and our police responders in the most efficient and caring way. We are thankful to have such amazing individuals in our community.'

The family said their children are still processing the tragedy.

'I probed my son a little bit yesterday, I asked him a few questions about how the day went and he was like, ''It was good. I got to ride my bike,'' Abby said.

''We will have that conversation one day but hopefully, he is dealing with the trauma okay, and we'll see how it goes from here.''

Many escaped the bullets and sheltered inside the store until they were escorted out by police

Jody Lieberman, who sheltered inside the store, showed his gratefulness with a post on the business' Facebook page

Parents holding their children in arms desperately dodging shells stacked with outdoors gear to the back of the store

The gunman opened fire at 10.14am on Monday, barely 15 minutes into the parade. He then fled the scene and hid throughout the day before eventually being arrested at 6.30pm in Lake Forrest, eight miles north of where the massacre unfolded

Horror on Independence Day: A police officer bows his head in grief next to abandoned strollers and chairs after a shooting that killed seven people in Highland Park, Illinois

The aftermath of the scene in Highland Park on Monday after a shooter opened fire on the parade. Chairs and strollers were abandoned by attendees

Abby added that while she sheltered in the basement with her two children, she cried in disbelief that her community had become the latest location of yet another mass shooting in the US.

'You always have that, ''It could never happen here'' ... It just did,' Tony told GMA.

His remarks have been echoed by many members of the quiet suburban community, who are grappling with trauma.

Miles Zaremsky, a 74-year-old lawyer and resident of Highland Park since the 60s, also said the incident felt surreal.

'I did see a little boy [covered in blood] in his parents' arms who looked [pale]. They were yelling for medics  It's surreal, it's like out of a science fiction [movie] but it is real,' Zaremsky told DailyMail.com.

'My wife and I have been living in Highland Park since 1966. It is a beautiful, charming, peaceful, law-abiding community. If it can happen here, it can happen in any community in the United States.'

Businesses in the area became shelters for desperate parade attendees who poured inside in an attempt to avoid being shot.

Matt Phillip, 36, the director of the tasting room operating at Lynfred Winery, said at one point there were around 30 people seeking shelter inside his store.

'We were open early for the parade and upon hearing what sounded like fireworks, we noticed that people started running down the street,'' he told DailyMail.com.

'We opened our doors so they could either seek shelter within our facility or exit through our back-alley door.'

Law enforcement officers look over a park near the scene of a mass shooting at a 4th of July celebration and parade in Highland Park, Illinois

The hours-long manhunt during which residents hunkered down in businesses or received police escorts to their homes, ended with a traffic stop and brief chase Monday evening, when authorities detained Crimo.

They gave no motive for the attack in Highland Park, an affluent community of about 30,000 on Chisago's north shore.

Dramatic photographs from the scene show the suspected mass murderer - who posted creepy clips about shooting massacres online - being pinned to the ground face-down by police.

Crimo was 'known to law enforcement' but it is not yet known if this was due to the disturbing content he shared online, or if he committed other crimes.

It has now emerged his father, Bob Sr, 58, is a local deli owner who once ran for mayor, while his mom, Denise Pesina, 48, was once arrested on suspicion of domestic battery.

She appears to have become a Mormon and is also into alternative therapies, according to her Facebook page.

Music videos posted by Crimo online last fall include a drawing of himself shooting people online, and a disturbing clip of himself throwing bullets on the floor of a classroom while wearing armor in what appears to be a joke about school shootings.

Crimo also had a Discord server where he would chat with friends and fans, and his most recent post was a picture of Budd Dwyer, the Pennsylvania state treasurer who killed himself on live TV in the 1980s, which he captioned: 'I wish politicians still gave speeches like this.'

Law enforcement officers investigate the scene of a mass shooting at a 4th of July celebration and parade in Highland Park, Illinois, July 4, 2022. A gunman opened fire as people gathered to watch a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens

Police officers cross under police tape at the scene of a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade

He also made references to suicide and frequently posted on a message board discussing graphic depictions of murder and death, including a recent video he shared of a beheading.

In 2020, Crimo was pictured attending a Donald Trump rally while dressed as Where's Waldo.

Another picture has emerged showing the suspect wrapped in a Donald Trump flag.

At one of the rallies that Crimo was pictured in Northbrook, Illinois, which the Chicago Tribune described as 'tense ' but said that there were no arrests made as counter-protesters showed up at the event. The ex-president was not present at that rally.

The suspect's IMDb page describes him as being the middle child of three who grew up in an Italian-American family in Highland Park, Illinois.

In April 2019, Crimo's father ran for mayor in Highland Park.

It does not appear that his campaign was backed by a political party. His slogan was: 'A Person for the People.'

Bob Crimo was defeated by the town's current mayor, Nancy Rotering, a liberal, who ran her campaign partly on a platform about gun control.

While on his Twitter page, Bob Crimo follows one account, an archived account of ex-President Donald Trump's tweets.

On May 27, the same day that 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Bob Crimo liked a tweet that read: 'Protect the Second Amendment like your life depends on it.'

The gunman's father Bob Crimo (left) ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Highland Park in 2019 where he owns a deli. The suspect's mother Denise Pesina (right) is an alternative healer who was once arrested on suspicion of domestic battery

On May 27, the same day that 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Bob Crimo liked this tweet

Abandoned chairs, strollers, and blankets - once being used by families celebrating the holiday - were left behind in the chaos.

Bloodied bodies were strewn on the ground in the immediate aftermath of the shooting as people frantically fled from the area.

The US has seen 309 mass shootings so far this year in which four or more people, excluding the shooter, were shot or killed. Eleven alone took place over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

President Biden - who has been calling for gun reform since the Uvalde shooting on May 24, which claimed 19 lives - issued a statement on Monday afternoon.

He said he had given his support to the Governor of Illinois and the Highland Park Mayor, and he celebrated his recent passing of a gun control bill.

'I recently signed the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost thirty years into law, which includes actions that will save lives.

'But there is so much more work to do, and I'm not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence,' he said.

How shooter climbed ladder to stage rooftop massacre and then disappeared for more than EIGHT hours before cops finally arrested him in dramatic traffic stop

1. Shooter opens fire from rooftop of outdoor supplies store around 10am local time

The location where the shooter was holed up is thought to be on top of Gearheads, an outdoor equipment store. A ladder can be seen propped against its wall in this image taken after the shooting

A close-up shows the ladder propped against the wall of the single-story Gearheads store. It has been suggested that this is where shooter Bobby Crimo opened fire from, although investigators have yet to confirm that this was the ladder he used

According to authorities, the violence began at approximately 10.15am local time, around 15 minutes after the parade began.

Reports say that the gunman climbed an unsecured ladder that was attached to Gearhead Outfitters, an outdoor equipment store formerly known as Uncle Dan's.

At that point, Crimo opened fire on the crowd, killing seven and injuring dozens more in including the elderly and children. It has not been confirmed for how long the shooting went on for.

Witnesses have now been told how they saw children being picked off in the crowd.

The type of gun used by Crimo in the attack has not been confirmed. Investigators have so far only referred to it as a high-powered rifle.

A witness named Zoe described the scene saying: 'All of a sudden everyone behind us started running. I looked back, probably 20 feet away from me, I saw a girl shot and killed. I saw her die. I've never seen anything like this,' according to CNN.

Police say they recovered a 'rifle' at the scene but witnesses described multiple rounds being fired in quick succession which they say could only have come from a semi-automatic.

'A rifle? No, no. It was an automatic weapon. It was pop, pop, pop - rifles don't do that,' she said.

Law enforcement who were at the parade responded to the shooting, but Crimo quickly fled the scene in a 2010 Honda Fit prompting a multi-agency manhunt.

2. FBI agents search Crimo's $425,000 family home, which sits just six minutes drive from the location of the shooting

The suspect lives in a small apartment behind his family's home in Highwood, Illinois

Crimo lives in a small apartment behind his family home along Pleasant Avenue in Highwood, just north of Highland Park. His uncle, Paul Crimo, told CNN that he saw his nephew at home the night before the shooting.

It sits just 1.5 miles away from Gearhads, and is around six minutes drive away from the location of the shooting when traffic is light.

The home is valued at over $400,000. Paul Crimo says that he lives in the home, too. When he last saw the suspect, Paul Crimo says: 'Everything was as normal'

He said that the home is owned by the suspect's father, Bob Crimo. The FBI made contact with the family around 2.30pm. Crimo's father gave investigators permission to search the home.

Paul Crimo went on to tell CNN: 'He's a quiet kid. He's usually on his own. He's a lonely, quiet person. He keeps everything to himself.'

It's not clear at what time he left the home to begin his rampage.

3. A subsequent manhunt for Crimo ends with his dramatic roadside arrest just before 7:00 pm

Crimo's was arrested hours after the massacre in which seven people were killed

Robert Crimo, shown here, was also a rapper who went by the moniker: 'Awake the Rapper'

The shooter's uncle Paul Crimo, said he was first contacted by the FBI at 2.30pm local time, reports CNN.

In an evening news conference around 5pm, law enforcement named Crimo as a suspect in the shooting.

Crimo was described as being between 18 and 20 with long black hair, white, 'slight build' and wearing a t-shirt. His car was described and cops gave out his license plate number.

Around 7.00pm local time, authorities said in a brief news conference that Crimo was in custody, having been arrested around 30 minutes earlier.

According to Chief Lou Jogmen of the Highland Park Police, Crimo was first spotted by members of a North Chicago police unit. Jogmen said that Crimo fled when officers attempted to pull him over.

Following a brief chase, Crimo came to a stop and was arrested in Lake Forest, Illinois, not far from the area where the shooting occurred.
A black Ohio man who was shot 60 times and killed by police was only recently introduced to guns by his cop friend, his family's lawyer has revealed, after officers said they found a weapon in his car.

Jayland Walker, 25, was shot dead by Akron officers following a traffic stop on June 27.

Police body camera video released Sunday showed officers fire an estimated 90 shots at Walker while he fled on foot.

Police claim Walker had fired at officers from his car before running away on foot.

Attorney Bobby DiCello, who represents his family, told DailyMail.com Tuesday that Walker had 'no experience with firearms' and had only been to a firing range once - at the invitation of friend who works as a cop for another department.

DiCello also slammed police for 'shooting him like a dog' after the first two responding officers, who had fired tasers at Walker, had already 'demonstrated they did not perceive lethal threat.'

Walker's family wants justice for his death, including the firing of the eight officers involved, and police reform 'so this never happens again.'

His death is the latest in a spate of killings of black men by law enforcement in the U.S. that critics say are unjustified, including the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis that ignited global protests against police brutality and racial injustice.

Jayland Walker, the black Ohio man who was shot 60 times and killed by police (pictured), was only recently introduced to guns by his cop friend, family attorney Bobby DiCello told DailyMail.com

DiCello slammed police for 'shooting him like a dog' after the first two responding officers, who had fired tasers at Walker, had already 'demonstrated they did not perceive lethal threat'

DiCello said he is 'very concerned' about the police accusation that Walker had fired at officers from his car, adding that there was no justification for his violent death.

'Officers say they see a door open and hear - what they believe to be - a shot fired. What's critical about this from my review of the video, and from our client's perspective is there's no weapon pointed at anybody,' he explained.

Jayland Walker, 25, was shot dead by police in Akron, Ohio, after officers tried to stop him for a traffic violation

'That's because my client, we believe, has no training with firearms of any kind. He has no real experience handling guns. He has no prior criminal background with guns. He has no prior criminal background at all in fact.'

He alleged that if there was a gunshot that we have 'no idea what that involved except the mishandling of the gun.'

'I know that Jayland had only recently been introduced to the use of firearms through his friend who happened to be a police officer of all things,' DiCello said, noting Walker's friend did not work for Akron police.

'He had taken him to the firing range to target practice. He had one trip to the firing range at the invitation of a friend and that was it.'

The attorney added: 'He is not someone is known to have ever had a gun, know how to treat a gun or even possess a gun. Frankly, we don't even know if the gun is his.'

DiCello also argued that there was a discrepancy about the location of the weapon during the traffic stop.

The lawyer claims a preliminary autopsy report revealed the gun was in the backseat of Walker's car, but Police Chief Stephen Mylett said it was found in the front seat.

A protester is pictured outside Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan's house on Monday demanding justice for Walker

Police donning riot gear stand guard on Monday as demonstrators assembled outside Mayor Horrigan's Akron home

Rioters in Portland burned an American flag on the Fourth of July in protest of Walker's death

DiCello claimed police were not justified in shooting walker more than 90 times, alleging officers did not perceive him as a lethal threat.

'He was shot like a dog - it was worse than a dog. Ordinary hunting parties wouldn't do this to an animal they hunted. It was perverse,' he said.

'And among the procedural problems with the shooting - the fact that they were running after him with their weapons, closing the distance between them.'

He added: 'In other words, if they viewed him as a lethal threat, you wouldn't go closer to the lethal threat. That doesn't even make sense. You're not trained to run after the lethal threat.'

Walker had led police on a pursuit following a traffic violation. Police say they saw him fire a weapon from the car. He eventually exited his vehicle and fled on foot.

'Thirteen officers, at that point, have been assembled and the first two - among the others who are yelling 'stop, freeze, stop, show us your hands' and all that - my client dashes out of the car and stops running,' DiCello stated.

'The first two officers, give verbal commands, then switch to tasers and they try to taze him. This is extremely important for our case because it demonstrates that the officers did not perceive a lethal threat.'

'In all likelihood what they see is just what I told you - an unarmed kid running from a car, and we know he's unarmed because the video shows it clearly. He's got nothing in his hands too. He doesn't have a cell phone that could be mistaken for a firearm. He doesn't have a set of keys. He has nothing in his hands.'

Large protests have erupted in Akron, Ohio, after Jayland Walker, who was unarmed, was killed in a hail of bullets fired by eight officers last week. @MolaReports has more. https://t.co/OmzD5hiwIN pic.twitter.com/3bjzHCMjhW  Good Morning America (@GMA) July 5, 2022

DiCello said Walker's mother, Pamela Walker, is devastated by the death of her son, who was a high school wrestling standout, hard-worker and incredibly dedicated to his family.

'Pam, has had her heart ripped out of her,' he said, describing her sadness as the kind 'you have when you're washing your hands at the sink and you fall to you suddenly drop knees.'

In addition to 'devastating sadness,' she also has 'flashes of anger.'

'She said: 'I want these officers to go to jail' and then she said she wants things to change,' DiCello recalled. 'In her most sober moments she wants new policies and new procedures for the city so that this never happens again.'

Walker's family has also addressed the protesters across the nation demanding justice over his death, making repeated pleas that they remain peaceful in their fight.

'Listen to me when I tell you this, he's a peaceful person, a great kid,' Walker's cousin Demetrius Travis Sr. told GMA during a protest in Akron on Monday protest. 'All he do is smile, man.'

The family also issued a statement on Sunday after police released video of the fatal shooting. They told demonstrators: 'Jayland would have wanted us to channel our anger into peaceful, thoughtful action that can bring long-term change and reform.'

Jayland Walker's cousin Demetrius Travis Sr. (right) reminded protesters Monday that Walker was a 'peaceful person' who always smiled

Hundreds of demonstrators, led by the local chapter of the NAACP, marched in the Akron streets on Monday. One demonstrator is pictured outside Mayor Dan Horrigan's house, which was guarded by police

Akron police arrested 50 protesters Sunday night for rioting after a peaceful rally turned 'violent and unlawful.' Officers in full riot gear fired about a dozen canisters of tear gas to scatter protesters.

Mayor Dan Horrigan said the trouble began after nightfall, a pattern seen in 2020, when protests spread across the U.S. after George Floyd's death.

Hundreds of demonstrators, led by the local chapter of the NAACP, peacefully marched in the Akron streets on Monday - a stark contrast to the rioting that had taken place the night before.

They were seen waving 'Black Lives Matter' flags and chanting, 'We are done dying,' and 'Justice for Jayland.'

Protesters chanted 'no justice, no peace' and 'defund the police' outside Horrigan's house while police in riot gear stood guard.

They also left the mayor a written list of demands that outlined changes they'd like to see in their city.

Many demonstrators said they wanted the eight officers involved in the shooting that killed Walker to be fired.

Protesters chanted 'no justice, no peace' and 'defund the police' outside Horrigan's house. They also left the mayor a written list of demands that outlined changes they'd like to see in their city

Ohio cops unleashed a wave of tear gas on protesters who gathered outside of the city's main courthouse on Sunday night

Monday's rally came just hours after Mayor Dan Horrigan issued a city-wide 9pm curfew and canceled Fourth of July festivities. Violent protests overnight Sunday caused 'significant damage to the city' (pictured)

A city truck used to barricade a downtown street also had its windows smashed

Demonstrators face troopers in riot gear as police deployed tear gas to clear the crowd in Akron on Sunday

Monday's peaceful protest came after Horrigan declared a state of emergency in Akron, cancelling Fourth of July festivities instating a city-wide curfew.

Daytime protests on Sunday were peaceful but by nightfall demonstrators were committing 'violent and unlawful acts' in the city's downtown.

Small businesses in the city's downtown were vandalized, windows were mashed in city trucks used to barricade the streets, dumpsters were set on fire and protesters launched smoke bombs in the streets.

Police in 'full riot gear' responded by spraying tear gas at demonstrators who refused to disperse. Protesters fleeing tear gas began driving their cars on the sidewalk to get around snowplows used as roadblocks in the streets.

Horrigan said their actions 'created an immediate danger to the health and safety' of citizens and stressed: 'We will not tolerate the destruction of property or violence.'

Rioters in Portland, Oregon - a city that witnessed extreme chaos following Floyd's death - created a similar scene on the Fourth of July, causing havoc in the city's Lownsdale Square.

The group of up to 100 demonstrators marched through the city, smashing windows of businesses and storefronts as they went.

At least two mortars were fired at a federal building and a security guard at a downtown hotel was attacked, KOIN-TV reported. At least one individual was pepper sprayed.

Officials say the protest was labeled as a 'direct action' march - the same turn used for previous demonstrations that turned violent and destructive.

The acts of violence followed Akron police releasing 'disturbing' bodycamera footage showing the officers shoot Walker dead.

Rioters in Portland, Oregon smashed windows, shot off mortars into a federal building and burning an American flag on the Fourth of July in protest of Walker's death

Officials say the protest was labeled as a 'direct action' march - the same turn used for previous demonstrations that turned violent and destructive

A security guard at a downtown Portland hotel was attacked and at least one individual was pepper sprayed

Police released two videos on Sunday showing Walker was shot at least 60 times, as well as the moments leading up to his death. It was the final deadline they had to turn over the video to the public.

The first video showed cops pursuing Walker's silver Buick on Route 8 around 12:30 a.m. in Akron's North Hill neighborhood. They attempted to pull him over for a traffic and equipment violation.

The video showed Walker's car taking an onramp and a flash of light that Akron Mylett said appeared to be a flash of a gun coming from the driver's side of Walker's car.

A second camera recorded officers saying they heard at least one shot being fired from Walker's vehicle. The cops follow Walker off Route 8 and continue the pursuit on the city streets.

Walker slowed down and jumped out of the car before it came to a full stop. Video then shows the 25-year-old exiting the passenger side door in a ski mask and running off.

Multiple officers run after Walker, who seemingly looked over his shoulder, while cops opened fire at him.

Mylett claims he watched the video at least 40 times and said there are still photos showing Walker apparently reach for his waistband, turn toward cops and move his arm forward.

DailyMail.com cannot verify Mylett's statements as Walker's face and body were blurred out in the video at the request of his family.

Police released heartbreaking body camera footage on Sunday of the moment Jayland Walker was shot 60 times in a hail of 90 bullets on June 27

Video from the scene showed a gun on the front seat of Walker's car, contradicting earlier reports that the 25-year-old had been unarmed

Cops were pursuing Walker's silver Buick on Route 8 around 12:30 a.m. on June 27 in Akron's North Hill neighborhood

The video showed Walker's car taking an onramp and a flash of light that Police Chief Stephen Mylett said appeared to be a flash of a gun coming from the driver's side of Walker's car

Reporters asked Mylett if officers overreacted when they opened fire on Walker.

'It was difficult to watch, and shocking,' Mylett said Sunday, adding: 'I'm not going to pass judgment' until the investigation is completed.

He called for patience as the investigation continues and reiterated that any time a cop opens fire, they must 'articulate what specific threats they were facing.'

'When an officer makes the most critical decision in his or her life as a police officer, it doesn't matter where in the country this happens, when they make that most critical decision to point their firearm at another human being and pull the trigger, they've got to be ready to explain why they did what they did,' the chief said.

'They need to be able to articulate what specific threats they were facing, and that goes for every round that goes down the barrel of their gun.'

The medical examiner determined Walker had suffered 60 gunshot wounds during the incident, Mylett confirmed Sunday. The exact number of shots fired remains under investigation, but initial estimates suggested a hail of 90 bullets.

Mylett said officers rendered aid to Walker as soon as gunfire ceased, but he still died at the scene.

The eight officers directly involved in the shooting have been placed on paid administrative leave.

Officers were recorded saying they heard at least one shot being fired from Walker's vehicle. The cops follow Walker off Route 8 and continued their pursuit on the city streets

Officers are seen chasing Walker after he fled during a traffic stop on June 27

The hail of bullets sounded like 'a whole brick of fireworks going off,' the family's attorney said

Police have released heartbreaking body camera footage of the moment Jayland Walker was shot 60 times in hail of 90 bullets on June 27

The Ohio attorney general and Ohio's Bureau of Criminal Investigation are investigating, and the file will be made public at the conclusion of the case, Attorney General Dave Yost said on Sunday.

'People want and deserve answers, and they shall have them. BCI will conduct a complete, fair and expert investigation,' Yost said in a statement

White House spokesman Andrew Bates told Reuters the Justice Department, including the Civil Rights Division and the FBI field office in Akron, is closely monitoring and evaluating the situation surrounding Walker's death.

'This footage is disturbing,' Bates said. 'And no family should ever have to endure the horrific pain and loss of a loved one that the Walker family is experiencing right now.'

Following the release of the footage, the Fraternal Order of Police's Akron Lodge #7 said that the car being driven by the victim was involved in a 'felony fleeing police chase' the previous morning.

That chase took place just north of Akron in Franklin Township.

'We believe the independent investigation will justify the officers' actions, including the number of shots fired,' a press release read. 'The decision to deploy lethal force as well as the number of shots fired is consistent with use of force protocols and officers' training.'
Sergeant Laurence Knight (pictured at court today), 33, is said to have met the woman, a stranger, in the early hours of July 17 last year while on a stag do in the city centre. He is then accused of raping her in the sea off Brighton beach.

A serving Metropolitan Police officer has appeared in court accused of raping a woman in the sea off Brighton beach after meeting the alleged victim while out on a stag do.

Sergeant Laurence Knight, 33, is said to have met the woman, a stranger, in the city centre of the beachside resort in the early hours of July 17 last year.

Prosecutors say the pair walked to the beach together, undressed to their underwear and ended up in the sea, where sexual activity is alleged to have taken place.

Knight, attached to Met Detention, the force's custody command, was arrested on July 28 last year and appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Tuesday.

Wearing a dark blue suit, pale shirt and yellow tie, he spoke to confirm his name, date of birth and address in Waltham Forest, east London.

He was not asked to enter pleas to charges of rape and sexual assault.

District Judge Nina Tempia granted Knight bail on the condition he does not contact any prosecution witnesses.

Knight, who the Met said has been suspended from duty, will next appear at Southwark Crown Court on August 2.

Scotland Yard previously said he was off duty at the time of the alleged offences.

David Roberts, prosecuting, said Knight had been on a stag do with his friends when he 'bumped into' the complainant in the early hours of Saturday morning.

'The defendant and the complainant walked toward the beach and ended up in the sea having undressed and the alleged sexual contact took place then,' Mr Roberts said.

Mr Roberts confirmed Knight and the woman were previously unknown to each other.

Following Sgt Knight's arrest the Met made a mandatory referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

District Judge Nina Tempia granted Knight (pictured) bail on the condition he does not contact any prosecution witnesses

Wearing a dark blue suit, pale shirt and yellow tie, Knight (depicted in court artist's sketch) spoke to confirm his name, date of birth and address in Waltham Forest, east London

The alleged attack is said to have happened off Brighton beach (pictured in stock image)

The IOPC determined the misconduct investigation should be led by the Met.

Sussex Police released a statement after Knight was charged with rape last summer which said: 'Sussex Police has arrested a man after a woman reported being raped on Brighton beach on Saturday, July 17 2021.

'Laurence Knight, 33, who is a Met Police officer, was arrested on suspicion of rape on July 28 and released on bail.

Chief Superintendent Pete Gardner, in charge of Met Detention, said after the allegation was made: 'We know people will rightly be concerned to hear about this very serious charge against a serving police officer.

'We absolutely share that concern and I am thankful to Sussex Police for their thorough investigation and the continued specialist support they are providing to the victim.

'The Met's Directorate of Professional Standards are fully aware and misconduct matters will be dealt with once the criminal proceedings have concluded. The officer is suspended from duty.'
The US has been coordinating clandestine global proxy wars in secret documents obtained from the US government, proving it has a hand in these uprisings. These 23 secret wars presented as counter-terrorism operations fought worldwide.

A source, The Intercept, published an article last Friday, claiming the only now seen papers reveal activities of Washington to influence local politics abroad.

US Proxy Wars Intends To Keep Hegemonic Influence

It exposes a top-secret authority identified as '127e' that has been causing tumult since 2017 by starting 23 proxy wars, reported RT.

The Intercept obtained the documents via the Freedom of Information Act, alleging the papers are proof of the agenda of at least 14 '127e programs' conducted actively in locations like the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions way back in 2020.

The Pentagon started 23 of them under the program from 2017 to 2020 that was kept from US taxpayers, costing $310 million in all, noted the Mass News.

The 127e program is one of several largely unheard-of powers given to the Defense Department by Congress over the past 20 years.

It allows US commandos to do counter-terror operations with anyone aligned with the Pentagon but under no control by the government. Legitimized the US rights to provide weapons, training, and information to any army abroad is alleged by these secret documents.

This differs from most traditional foreign assistance programs. Instead, surrogate forces are to follow the US government to the letter. It is like the clandestine global proxy wars are the same in Ukraine has a chosen representative and adjuncts to the White House and Pentagon army but not American forces.

Read Also: Donald Trump Children: What You Need to Know About the 5 Trump Kids

Due to the highly secretive nature of these operations, which are not known to most members of government. Besides where the US military is dispatched, nothing else is known about other relevant details that are kept in the dark.

Congress, State Officials Receives No Report of Proxy Wars

Because 127e doesn't at all permit any supervision or input from foreign affairs officials, detractors of the programs warn that it could lead to unpredicted military buildup and implicate the US in over a dozen global conflicts.

One observation by the outlet remarks on the recent batch of papers that reveal the secrecy of the 127e program, which is not common knowledge to the public and Congress. No one has any clue of what is happening to the covert program.

One US government official who is privy to the program asks not to be identified due to the topic's sensitive nature. The Intercept was informed it's so undisclosed that congressional staffers are not allowed access to such documents, even those who ask will are not authorized.

Overall, the design of 127e is to keep it covert and keep any oversight or control by any agency in the government randomly.

Stephen Semler, a co-founder of a US foreign policy think tank, explained to the outlet how it works.

Pentagon officials don't like total supervision and do not tolerate any input from bureaus or Congress especially. Autonomy with no oversight is what they want, and it's normal to bypass any relevant supervision. Semler argued that it should be controlled, a sneaky way to promote continual conflicts.

The Intercept's story on the clandestine global proxy wars proved by secret documents kept by a super-secret cadre of the US government is a cause for worry that wars may never end.

Related Article: USA Secret Meeting With Israel, Arab Nations Revealed; Iran Threat Discussed

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The British teenager arrested on suspicion of making a false bomb threat on a packed easyJet plane has been released on 8,600 bail - but faces paying thousands more if found guilty.

The teenager has been ordered to stay in Spain and report to court every fortnight as part of his release conditions.

Do you know the teenager or were you on board? Email tips@dailymail.com Advertisement

A judicial source said: 'The investigating judge in charge of Mahon Court of Instruction number two has released on 10,000 [8,600] bail the young man arrested over a false bomb alert on the plane that landed on Sunday in Menorca.

'The judge has confiscated his passport, banned him from leaving Spain and told him to report periodically to court.'

The judge who took the decision has been named as Belen Velazquez.

It is understood the unnamed teenager has been given five days to find the money he needs to deposit with the court.

Although the judicial source said he had been banned from leaving Spain it is thought he will have to remain in Menorca so he can sign on at the same court he appeared at today.

An unconfirmed local report said the island judge had passed the case over to the Madrid-based Audiencia Nacional Court in Madrid, because it revolved around an issue of national security.

The same report said the Audiencia Nacional, which tries terrorism cases and decides on the extradition of British fugitives arrested in Spain, would decide whether to start its own investigation or hand the case over to the UK 'because the alleged crime was committed in UK territory' under international law.

A British teenager arrested on suspicion of making a false bomb threat on a packed easyJet plane has been hauled to court after two nights in a Spanish police cell

An easyJet flight to Menorca has been intercepted by Spanish fighter jets after an 18-year-old British holidaymaker allegedly made a bomb threat on board

The tourist, who is believed to have been part of a group of friends who boarded the Gatwick flight, now faces a potential fine worth thousands

Earlier today, the 18-year-old was taken to the court in the Menorcan capital Mahon by two armed police officers so he could be handed over to a judge for questioning.

The boys mum, said to have flown to the sunshine island after hearing about her sons arrest on Sunday, was reportedly waiting for him at the entrance to the courtroom and was able to greet him before he was led into the building.

The unnamed teenager is thought to have been wearing the same blue shorts and green T-shirt he was arrested in when flight EZY8303 landed in Menorca after being given a Spanish military jet escort.

Reports after he was held said he could face a bill running into the thousands on top of his bail to cover the scrambling of the Spanish Airforce F18 fighter jet and the police operation involving the mobilisation of specialist officers and sniffer dogs to check out the aircraft.

The youngster was part of a group of friends who had travelled to the Mediterranean holiday island for a celebration.

The alarm was sounded as the easyJet plane was near to landing just before 5pm on Sunday. Video footage showed it being escorted by the Spanish fighter jet before it reached its destination.

A local Menorcan daily claimed today Scotland Yard and the French police detected the alleged bomb threat on an unidentified social network and alerted Spanish cops.

The Spanish Civil Guard has not yet commented on the claim.

A spokesman for the Civil Guard confirmed on Monday, before it handed the teenager over to a judge after he was forced to swap his holiday accommodation for two nights in a police cell: 'The Civil Guard has arrested an 18-year-old British national as the alleged author of a public order offence in Mahon in Menorca.

'On Sunday the control tower at Menorca Airport was alerted to a bomb threat on a plane heading from London to the island capital Mahon which was still in the air and nearing the airport.

The teenager was arrested upon landing in the Mediterranean holiday island

Specialist sniffer dogs were brought to the plane to check the luggage after the alleged bomb threat

'The threat was said to have been sent on a social media platform.

'Once the plane landed it was taken to an area away from the main terminal and other aircraft.

'The Civil Guard organised a special operation which consisted of mobilising bomb disposal experts as well as sniffer dogs and other officers who created a safe perimeter around the plane.

'The passengers were disembarked and established protocol followed until police were able to confirm it was a false bomb threat and the person responsible was identified on social media along with five other companions as witnesses.

'They were taken to a police station so officers could clarify the situation.'

Police sources confirmed ahead of the teenager's court appearance he was likely to have to pick up the tab for the police operation if he were convicted of any crime. Passengers were reportedly kept on the tarmac for four hours while the plane was checked out.

The easyJet plane is understood to have touched down around half an hour late at 4.45pm local time on Sunday. The incident reportedly led to a Ryanair plane leaving two and half hours late to London.

Todays court hearing was taking place behind closed doors as is normal in Spain where only trials are held in public.

The judge is expected to decide in the coming hours whether to release the detainee on bail pending an anticipated ongoing criminal probe. Local authorities have not commented on whether he could face a speedy trial.
A metal detectorist has described his astonishment when he discovered a 120-year-old locket containing pictures of the Royal Family in a field in Chelmsford, Essex.

Despite the years the locket spent underground, the miniature photographs inside are in a remarkable condition.

The copper-alloy locket is in the shape of a book and has movable pages with six black and white photographs showing Queen Victoria, her son King Edward VII and his wife Alexandra.

On the front of the booklet is the inscription 'Coronation 1902' - suggesting the item was made to mark the coronation of King Edward VII, a year after the death of Queen Victoria.

The rare locket is a miniature book with real pages and a variety of pictures of the Royal Family. This page shows King Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales and his wife Alexandra

The locket was made to mark the coronation of Edward VII in 1902 after the death of Queen Victoria the previous year

Shaun Marshall, 41, found the locket after over three hours of searching with his metal detector

Treasure hunter Shaun Marshall found the gem in a field in Chelmsford after three hours of searching and just when he was about to give up.

One set of pictures show Queen Victoria in her later years and Edward as a boy.

Another shows him as a prince with his wife, Alexandra of Denmark. The pair married when he was 21 and she was 18.

The final pair show the couple in crowns for the coronation. Edward became King when Queen Victoria died in January 1901 and chose to reign under the name of Edward instead of Albert.

His coronation was held at Westminster Abbey on August 9, 1902.

Shaun, 41, who works for the ambulance service, said: 'After three hours I got a cracking signal and had a little poke around with my trowel.

'I unearthed what looked like a parchment parcel - I nearly discarded it thinking it was just a sweet wrapper.

'Inside was a small green and red enamel-fronted locket with a gold chain.

'I had no idea what it was until I did a little research later after I had thawed out.

'It seems in remarkably good condition, particularly the pictures - I was very surprised and absolutely delighted that it should still be in such fine condition.

'I'm guessing because it was in a wax paper that helped preserve it.

'I'm definitely going to keep it. It's a truly smashing little 120-year-old piece of our history now recovered.'
Anthony Albanese has tipped that Australians will soon be eligible for a fourth Covid vaccine, despite some experts saying the additional shot is unlikely to stop new Omicron variants.

The second booster is currently only available for Australians over 65 or those with vulnerable health conditions.

But the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisations (ATAGI), are set to consider the fourth dose for the masses at its meeting on Wednesday.

The Prime Minister told radio station 6PR in Perth that it was crucial Australians get their third shot because it reduces the disease's symptoms.

'I know that the authorities including ATAGI are looking at that (approving a fourth jab),' he said.

'I think it's a question of when rather than whether it will happen. We need to make sure that people continue to keep up their vaccinations.'

Anthony Albanese said he expects the fourth Covid jab to be approved for the masses, saying 'it's a question of when rather than whether it will happen'

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews have campaigned to widen the eligibility criteria for the fourth booster.

'We need to broaden it and we need to do it quickly', Hazzard said at a press conference on Tuesday before going onto say he had advocated for the fourth shot when meeting with state and federal ministers last week.

Mr Andrews said he believed health workers should be made a priority for fourth dose.

'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,' he said.

The campaigning for the fourth dose comes as Australia's best pandemic advisers warn the winter Omicron wave could be the worst yet.

As it stands people aged 16 and up with chronic cardiac, neurological, kidney, liver and lung disease, who are severely obese or underweight, or with other conditions that leave them immunocompromised are able to access a fourth jab from May 30, alongside those who are over 65 or are Indigenous Australians.

Currently fourth jabs are only available to over 65s and people with conditions, with vaccine advisory groups considering approving the fourth Covid jab for all Aussies

Mr Albanese told radio station 6PR in Perth that it was crucial Australians got their third shot because it had a real impact on mitigating the disease's symptoms

Writing in The Conversation on Monday, University of South Australia Professor of Epidemiology Adrian Esterman said existing vaccines, however, are 'unlikely' to protect against infection.

'Although current vaccines based on the Wuhan strain will still provide some protection against serious illness and death against BA.4/5, they are unlikely to provide much, if any, protection against infection or symptomatic disease,' he said.

Professor Esterman said Moderna's second-generation vaccine, which is currently in trials, would work better against the latest subvariants.

Health Minister Mark Butler said just last month there was no evidence a fourth dose of existing vaccines would actually help.

'The benefits of the vaccine for younger people do not warrant the decision that they have a fourth dose made available to them,' he told reporters in Canberra in June.

'There's a general acceptance that there's no evidence right now that the fourth dose is particularly called for for younger people who don't have compromised immunity,' he said.
The 27-year-old boyfriend of a NYPD worker has been shot and injured in a drive-by shooting outside a Dior store in Manhattan as violence erupted across the city on Fourth of July.

The man, who has not been named, was blasted by bullets as he sat in his car by the swanky shop in Soho last night.

He was rushed to Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital with injuries to his right underarm but is expected to survive.

The latest bloodshed to blight the Big Apple came on a violent Fourth of July that saw at least three people dead and 24 wounded on Monday.

No arrests have been made in connection with the shootings. From Friday to Sunday, there were 24 shootings with 31 victims.

Last year, there were 15 incidents with 19 victims during the same time period.

The boyfriend of an NYPD employee was shot in the arm while sitting in a car outside the Dior store in Soho, Manhattan

Shootings in NYC over Fourth of July weekend rose 60% this year, according to the NYPD. At least three people were killed on July 4 alone

Last night's shooter pulled up next to the victim at 5pm in a white BMW with New Jersey license plates before firing at least three shots outside the Dior store.

The man, who is the boyfriend of an NYPD employee, was rushed to hospital by his girlfriend after he was shot in the right underarm during the drive-by attack.

Police said shootings over the holiday weekend spiked 60 per cent compared to last year.

The massive increase comes after Mayor Eric Adams promised to keep New Yorkers safe over the holiday weekend.

'We are going to use every tool in our toolbox to provide New Yorkers a safe and enjoyable July 4th holiday weekend,' Adams said.

Adams has made a considerable push to get illegal guns off of the streets of New York City, resulting in murders being down 13 percent from last year, and shooting victims have dropped 9 percent.

But major crimes in New York are up 38 percent this year compared to last year, with robbery up 39 percent, burglary rising 34 percent, and felony assault jumping 19 percent.

Citywide, major crimes in New York are up 38 percent so far this year compared to last year

High profile shootings in NYC in 2022 January 18: A 16-year-old aspiring rapper and alleged gang member was charged with shooting a cop in the Bronx February 27: A 38-year-old man was shot dead and his 24-year-old nephew was wounded while the pair were sitting in a Mercedes-Benz in East Harlem April 12: A man walked onto a northbound N train on the subway, threw two smoke grenades and fired a handgun 33 times. A total of 29 people were injured. May 2: A Virginia man visiting his cousin in New York City was shot dead in broad daylight while sitting in a parked car on the Upper West Side. May 22: A Goldmann Sachs employee was shot and killed aboard a subway train in Lower Manhattan Sunday in what police called a random, unprovoked attack. June 12: A 25-year-old man was shot in the neck in the lobby of a luxury apartment building in Long Island City. June 29: A 20-year-old mother is fatally shot, execution-style, while rolling her three-month old baby in a stroller on the Upper East Side Advertisement

Last week, the execution-style murder of a mother pushing her baby in a stroller near an Upper East Side playground sent shockwaves around the city.

The 20-year-old victim was walking with her three-month-old baby when the hooded shooter approached her and 'fired a single shot into her head from a very close range,' NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell told reporters.

Adams blamed the shooting on the 'over-proliferation of guns' and said that criminals have 'no fear in using these guns on innocent New Yorkers.'

'The over-saturation of guns, and dangerous people that repeatedly leave our criminal justice system to continue actions like this, it is what's making the New York City Police Department and other law enforcement agencies...difficult to fight this issue,' he added.

The area where the shooting occurred is an affluent and normally quiet neighborhood where violent street crime is less common than in many other parts of New York.

Across the street from the murder scene is the Samuel Seabury Playground, which was filled with children who witnessed the horrific shooting.

'It doesn't matter if you are on the Upper East Side or East New York, Brooklyn,' Adams said.

In late June, President Joe Biden signed into law a legislation that marks some of the biggest changes to federal gun law in decades.

'Lives will be saved,' Biden said during the signing ceremony in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

'From Columbine to Sandy Hook to Charleston, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland, El Paso, Atlanta, Buffalo, Uvalde, and for the shootings that happen every day in the streets that are mass shootings, we don't even hear about the number of people killed every day in the streets. Their message to us was to just do something,' the president said.

According to the NYPD, the city's current crime rate is approximately 13.3 major crimes per 1,000 residents per year. The combined rate of violent crimes  rapes, murders and felony assaults adds up to 2.8 per 1,000 residents per year.

Anyone with information about the shooting is urged to contact NYPD detectives at 1-800-577-TIPS.
A doctor who rushed into the carnage of the Highland Park Fourth of July parade massacre described the shooting victims as being 'blown up' by the attacker's high-powered weapon.

Dr. David Baum, a long time obstetrician in Highland Park, was attending the parade with his wife and children to watch his two-year-old grandson participate. When the shots rang out and others fled, he ran into the fray to try to help the victims.

In an interview with CNN, Baum described seeing victims with 'wartime' and 'unspeakable' injuries.

'The people who were gone were blown up by that gunfire,' Baum said, 'The horrific scene of some of those bodies is unspeakable for the average person.'

'Having been a physician, I've seen things in ERs, you know, you do see lots of blood. But the bodies were literally - some of the bodies - there was an evisceration injury from the power of this gun and the bullets.'

'There was another person who had an unspeakable head injury. Unspeakable,' he said to CNN.

Baum also described the 'horror' of a community changed forever in thirty quick seconds.

'What I saw was just families' lives forever changed because they were walking down with their kids and their scooters and somebody who shouldn't have had access to a high-powered rifle got up on a rooftop and decided to do what he wanted to do.

'And the injuries that I saw - I never served - but those are wartime injuries. Those are what are seen in victims of war, not victims at a parade,' Baum said.

Baum said there were at least three doctors, a nurse, and a nurse practitioner who joined him in treating victims. He recalled paramedics covering up victims who they knew were dead at the scene.

'The people that died at the scene - and pretty much they all died at the scene - the paramedics walked around covered them up and said "black", I guess they have a code for "dead, cannot try and resuscitate."'

Dr. David Baum (right), was attending the parade with his wife and children to watch his two-year-old grandson participate. He told CNN that the victims were 'blown up' by the attacker's high-powered weapon

Six people were killed and at least 38 wounded when 22-year-old Robert 'Bobby' Crimo III opened fire on the parade in Highland Park, an affluent suburban city just north of Chicago.

Two of the six killed in the shooting have been identified so far. It has been reported that all the victims were adults, with five dying on the scene and the sixth dying later at a hospital.

Jacki Sundheim, a longtime teacher at the North Shore Congregation Israel synagogue, was shot and killed by the gunman, the synagogue announced in an email to congregants Monday night.

'Jacki was a lifelong congregant of NSCI and a cherished member of NSCI's staff team for decades,' the synagogue wrote in an email that announced her murder 'Jacki's work, kindness and warmth touched us all.'

Sundheim, was the Reform synagogue's events and b'nei mitzvah coordinator, according to its website. She is survived by her husband Bruce and daughter Leah, the Times of Israel reported.

'There are no words sufficient to express the depth of our grief for Jacki's death,' the synagogue added.

Jacki Sundheim, a longtime staffer at North Shore Congregation Israel, was shot and killed when a gunman opened fire at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois on Monday

Nicolas Toledo, 76, a beloved grandfather from Mexico, was also identified as one of the victims. His family said he was shot in the head as he sat in his wheelchair, his blood splattering on them.

Toledo had not wanted to attend the parade in Highland Park, Illinois, his granddaughter told the New York Times.

But because of his disabilities that restricted him to a wheelchair, and his family's insistence of going, he obliged.

The ages of the injured ranged from eight to 85-years-old. The area has a large Jewish community, but police have not yet shared a possible motive for Monday's slaughter.

The shooting began less than 15 minutes after the parade started. After an hours-long manhunt, police arrested Crimo.

Nicolas Toledo, 76, had not wanted to attend the July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois, on Monday, his granddaughter told the New York Times. But because of his disabilities that restricted him to a wheelchair, and his family's insistence of going, he obliged

Toledo is pictured surrounded by family. Toledo, a Mexican national, who held duel citizenships in Mexico and the United States, had moved back to Highland Park a few months ago at the urging of his family members

Dramatic photographs from the scene show the suspected mass-murderer - who posted creepy clips about shooting massacres online - being pinned to the ground face-down by police.

Cops say Crimo opened fire from a rooftop, into a crowd who at first confused the sound of gunshots with Independence Day fireworks.

The suspect has been named as 22-year-old Robert 'Bobby' Crimo III. He is from of the Highland Park area

The moment showing Crimo's arrest after an hours-long manhunt that involved local and federal law enforcement

Toledo was killed Monday when a gunman opened fire on a parade from the roof of an Highland Park, Ill. outdoor outfitting store. The gunman has been arrested

'We were all in shock,' Toledo's granddaughter Xochil Toledo told The Times. 'We thought it was part of the parade. Then we realized our grandfather was hit. We saw blood and everything splattered onto us.'

Family members say Toledo was shot three times. Two other people in the family were also shot, she said, but their injuries were non life-threatening.

Toledo, a Mexican national who held dual citizenships in Mexico and the United States, had moved back to Highland Park a few months ago at the urging of his family members.

'We brought him over here so he could have a better life,' Xochil said. 'His sons wanted to take care of him and be more in his life, and then this tragedy happened.'

'We all threw ourselves to the ground,' Toledo's daughter, Josefina Toledo, told The Daily Beast. 'My dad, since it's difficult for him to walk he was sitting on his walker and he was hit in his back and in his head.'

She said the parade was a family tradition and the whole family attended. But the celebration ended when shots rang out.

The boyfriend of one of her nieces was also shot and is in stable condition.

The scene at Highland Park on Monday after the July 4 parade emptied out amid reports of gunshots. Police have not yet confirmed that anyone was shot

The Chicago Teacher's Union shared on Twitter that Zoe Kolpack, a teacher at Dever Elementary, had been shot in the attack. Her husband, her father and her brother in law were also shot, according to a GoFundMe page.

A family friend wrote on the page that all four are in the hospital undergoing various surgeries for their injuries. Their conditions are unknown.

Little is known about the other victims at this time, but the Lake County coroner has confirmed the five people pronounced dead at the scene were adults.

A Chicago teacher, Zoe Kolpack, and her husband Stephen Kolpack, are among those still being treated for their injuries. The couple's two young children were at the parade but were not hurt

Eduardo Uvaldo is believed to be another victim of the shooting. According to a GoFundMe page made by his granddaughter, Uvaldo was shot in the back of the head

Another victim is believed to be Eduardo Uvaldo, who according to a GoFundMe page was first shot in the arm, and then in the back of the head. Uvaldo's family has written on social media that he is in critical condition.

'My grandpa is a kind, loving, and funny man who did not deserve this. We pray for a positive outcome, but the doctors says the chances are low,' the GoFundMe page read.

Eduardo's wife, Maria, was hit in the head by fragments, and his grandson received a gunshot wound to the arm but is stable. Eduardo's granddaughter, who wrote the page, said the family attended the parade every Fourth of July.

The parade had only begun 14 minutes before the gunman opened fire from a rooftop along the route. The shooting caused a stampede of people who flocked into stores and cars. The parade was scheduled to last for an hour

Horror on Independence Day: A police officer bows his head in grief next to abandoned strollers and chairs after a shooting that killed six people in Highland Park, Ill.

Strollers and chairs were abandoned at the scene after the shots rang out at 10:14 a.m., just 10 minutes after the parade began

The aftermath of the scene in Highland Park on Monday after a shooter opened fire on the parade. Chairs and strollers were abandoned by attendees

Law enforcement officers help evacuate people from an Anthropologie store in Highland Park, Ill., on Monday, July 4, after a shooter fired on the northern suburb's Fourth of July parade

Police officers cross under police tape at the scene of a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade

Law enforcement officers investigate the scene of a mass shooting at a 4th of July celebration and parade in Highland Park, Ill., July 4. A gunman opened fire as people gathered to watch a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., killing at least six people and injuring dozens

The shooter is said to have opened fire from the rooftop of a local business.

'It looks like access to the roof via a ladder in an alley was unsecured,' Sgt. Chris Covelli, of the Lake County Major Crime Take Force, revealed. The ladder was attached to the building.

Witnesses told how they saw children being picked off in the crowd.

'All of a sudden everyone behind us started running. I looked back, probably 20 feet away from me, I saw a girl shot and killed. I saw her die. I've never seen anything like this,' a woman, who gave her name only as Zoe, told CNN.

All of the confirmed deaths so far are those of adults.

Many bystanders described multiple rounds being fired in quick succession, alleging they first confused the sound of gunshots with Independence Day fireworks.

'Everyone thought it was fireworks,' Zoe explained. 'My dad thought it was part of the show, and I'm like, 'Dad, no... something is wrong.' And I grabbed him. And I looked back at him, and then it was just a sea of panic, and people just falling and falling.'

Jeff Leon, who also attended the parade said it 'sounded like a string of firecrackers going off inside of a big metal trash bin.'

He claims he heard maybe 20 or 30 pops before he saw people fall to the ground and officers starting to move in.

'After about 10 minutes of this sort of duck and hide, duck and hide, people were sort of calmly walking away from the scene,' he said.

'I saw multiple lifeless bodies, people in a pool of blood,' added one father, who survived with his kids. He said he tossed his son in a dumpster.

Children taking part in the parade in Highland Park ran for their lives when they heard shots ring out

Panicked paradegoers at the scene on Monday. There were loud sounds from the crowd that some said were gunshots

The parade on Monday in Highland Park was attended by dozens of locals who sat on the sidewalk cheering as bands marched past

Highland Park, a suburban city with a population of 30,000, is renowned for being one of Chicago's most affluent suburbs.

NBA legend Michael Jordan owns a mansion in the area, and it's also where the enormous mansion featured in 'Home Alone' is situated.

The city's residents are largely families and there is a significant Jewish population in the area, but there is no suggestion the attack was anti-Semitic.

Among those who were participating in the parade was a Hasidic Jewish band.

One jarring video showed them slowly making their way down the parade route on a float while those ahead of them - suddenly aware of the danger - ran in the opposite direction.

Nineteen-year-old real estate student Rainan Eli saw the shooting unfold from the window of his apartment on Central Avenue and Second Street.

'I was just sitting studying for some class I'm taking and watching the parade. I saw lots of people running and, at first, everybody assumed it was fireworks being the Fourth,' he told DailyMail.com.

Eli pulled out his cell phone and recorded heart-wrenching video of people running and seeking shelter as shots being fired could be heard in the background.

He said two other residents of his apartment building came downstairs with him and gave the 15 to 20 people in the vestibule drinks.

Debbie Glickman, a Highland Park resident, said she was on a parade float with co-workers and the group was prepared to turn onto the main route when she saw people running away from the area

First responders work the scene of a shooting at a parade on July 4 in Highland Park, Ill. Reports indicate at least six people were killed and more than 20 injured in the mass shooting

Law enforcement search after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade in downtown Highland Park, a Chicago suburb on Monday

Law enforcement search as they walk into a building after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade in downtown Highland Park, a Chicago suburb on Monday

First responders work the scene of a shooting at a Fourth of July parade on July 4, 2022 in Highland Park, Ill. Reports indicate at least five people were killed and 19 injured in the mass shooting

Debbie Glickman, a Highland Park resident, said she was on a parade float with co-workers and the group was prepared to turn onto the main route when she saw people running away from the area.

'People started saying 'There's a shooter, there's a shooter, there is a shooter' ' Glickman said. 'So we just ran. We just ran. It's like mass chaos down there. I'm so freaked out.'

'We can't believe this happened in our little town.'

Matt Phillip, 36, director of tasting room operating at Lynfred Winery, told DailyMail.com: 'We were open early for the parade and upon hearing what sounded like fireworks, we noticed that people started running down the street.'

'We opened our doors so they could either seek shelter within our facility or exit through our back-alley door.'

Highland Park is around 30 miles north of the city of Chicago and is a quiet, suburban area

Unlike Chicago, which has one of the worst gun violence records in the country, violent crime in Highland Park is almost unheard of.

The average price of a home in Highland Park was $714,000 in April 2022 and the city has a population of around 30,000.

The town's mayor, Nancy Rotering, spoke briefly at a press conference along with law enforcement on Monday to share her condolences with the families of those killed.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted: 'The tragedy unfolding in Highland Park is devastating.

'I have been in contact with Mayor Rotering and have offered our support, and the Chicago Police Department is providing assistance.

'We grieve with the families of the deceased and injured as well as the entire Highland Park community.

'Law enforcement is working hard to bring the shooter into custody. If anyone has information, we encourage them to call 911 and report what you know.'

Law enforcement search in downtown Highland Park, a Chicago suburb, after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade

Law enforcement search in downtown Highland Park, a Chicago suburb, after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade

A gunman opened fire as people gathered to watch a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., killing at least six people and injuring dozens

Law enforcement officers look over a park near the scene of a mass shooting at a Fourth of July celebration and parade in Highland Park, Ill.

President Biden - who has been calling for gun reform - issued a statement on Monday afternoon. He said he had given his support to the governor of Illinois and the Highland Park mayor and he celebrated his recent passing of a gun control bill

President Biden - who has been calling for gun reform - issued a statement on Monday afternoon.

He said he had given his support to the governor of Illinois and the Highland Park mayor, and he celebrated his recent passing of a gun control bill.

'I recently signed the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost thirty years into law, which includes actions that will save lives,' Biden said. 'But there is so much more work to do, and I'm not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence.'

Governor JB Pritzker also addressed the violence, saying: 'There are no words for the kind of monster who lies in wait and fires into a crowd of families with children celebrating a holiday with their community.

'There are no words for the kind of evil that robs our neighbors of their hopes, their dreams, their futures.

'There are no words I can offer to lift the pain of those they live behind. I will stand firm with Illinoisans and Americans: we must - and we will - end this plague of gun violence.'
This is the moment a gunman jumped out of a car and shot dead a teenager on a motorized scooter in the middle of the street.

Melvin Urena, 19, from the Bronx, died after he was shot in the leg and head on Melrose Avenue last Saturday, July 2, at 1.32pm.

Police arrested Francisco Bengochea, 19, the next day and charged him with murder.

The day-time ambush comes amid a massive crime spike in New York this year.

Police released shocking footage of a man exiting a gray Honda Pilot and shooting a gun

Melvin Urena, 19, from the Bronx, died after he was shot in the leg and head on Melrose Avenue last Saturday, July 2, at 1.32pm

There were at least two people in the gray Honda Pilot on East 156th Street between Elton and Melrose Avenues in Melrose on July 2

The NYPD released harrowing footage of the moment a gunman got out of a gray Honda Pilot SUV and started shooting at Urena on East 156th Street between Elton and Melrose Avenues in Melrose.

The video shows at least one shooter firing what appears to be a gun with an oversized magazine clip.

After the attack the man got back into the SUV and fled on East 156th Street, police said.

Cops from the NYPD 40th Precinct found Urena and he was taken to Lincoln Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 4.59pm.

The gunman crouched down as he was shooting at Urena, who was using an motorized scooter

Major crimes in New York are up 38 percent this year compared to last year, with robbery up 39 percent, burglary rising 34 percent, and felony assault jumping 19 percent

NYPD data shows that crime is on the rise across the city.

Major crimes in New York are up 38 percent this year compared to last year, with robbery up 39 percent, burglary rising 34 percent, and felony assault jumping 19 percent.

However, murders are down 13 percent from last year, and shooting victims have dropped 9 percent, gains that police officials attribute to a push to get illegal guns off the streets.
A little boy found bloodied during the Highland Park parade shooting on Monday was lifted from underneath his father, who was shot in the attack.

The little boy, whose name has not been released, was found by Lauren Silva, 38, of Deerfield, and her boyfriend after they heard gunshots as they were heading to breakfast at Walker Bros restaurant.

Silva told the Daily Beast they emerged from a parking garage a few blocks away from the shooting just as the violence began to unfold.

'We were just opening the door to walk up the stairs and we heard itboom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,' she told the Beast. 'And it sounded like someone was, like, pounding on the glass doors.'

At least seven people were killed and dozens more were injured in the shooting.

Silva and her boyfriend and his son began running toward those who were injured, when suddenly, her boyfriend thrusted the little boy into her arms.

'My boyfriend handed me this little boy and said he was underneath this father who was shot in the leg,' she told the Beast.

The little boy, whose name has not been released, was found by Lauren Silva, 38, of Deerfield, and her boyfriend after they heard gunshots as they were heading toward Walker Bros restaurant. Silva watched the child for around 20 minutes before heading back out to get the status on the father

A little boy (pictured with an unknown man) was reunited with his grandparents after being found underneath his injured father at the parade

'They were trying to stop the bleeding so I brought the boy downstairs into the garage.'

Once inside the garage, she managed to clean out his scrapes and washed the blood off him. She said he was wearing one shoe and his sock was covered in blood.

'He kept asking if mom and dad are going to come back soon,' she said.

Silva reemerged from the parking garage after 20 minutes to see how the father was doing.

DailyMail.com has contacted the Highland Park Police Department for information about the boy's parents.

Silva handed the child off to a family she was hunkering down in the garage with, who took him to the hospital and later handed him to police. He was eventually reunited with his grandparents, according to Silva.

Dana Ruder Ring, who was taking care of the child until 8 p.m., according to Fox 32 Chicago, posted the original photo of the boy to help identify him.

She told Fox 32 he's too young to know his parents' the names.

Silva, a mother of two, said she's holding on to the memory of the 'kid's face and his touch and the sound of his voice.'

'I feel like I want to hold on to, like, a little bit of emotion that I feelwhich is telling that boy that his dad was going to come back,' she said.

The gunman opened fire at 10:14 a.m. on Monday, barely 15 minutes into the parade. He then fled the scene and hid throughout the day before eventually being arrested at 6:30 p.m. in Lake Forrest, eight miles north of where the massacre unfolded

First responders work the scene of a shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park

Horror on Independence Day: A police officer bows his head in grief next to abandoned strollers and chairs after a shooting that killed seven people in Highland Park

The gunman, Robert 'Bobby' Crimo, 21, has been taken into custody and is awaiting charges.

He began shooting with an AR-15 style weapon shortly after 10 a.m. from a rooftop along the parade route. Police said Tuesday that Crimo dressed as a woman to disguise himself and easily slipped into the crowd of panicked bystanders, evading law enforcement.

He was eventually arrested about eight hours after the shooting.

Video shot by a Sun-Times journalist after the gunfire rang out shows a band on a float continuing to play as people run past, screaming. A photo posted to social media appeared to show pools of blood near upturned chairs in downtown Highland Park.

Miles Zaremsky, who has lived in the neighborhood since the 1960s, said he witnessed the 'carnage.'

'The crowd started stampeding. I had never seen that before. I saw blood on people's bodies. Two or three people looked deceased to me. It was absolutely disgusting and gut-wrenching and I was sick to my stomach.'

'I did see a little boy [covered in blood] in his parents' arms who looked [pale]. They were yelling for medicsIts surreal, it's like out of a science fiction but it is real.'

Gina Troiani and her son were lined up with his daycare class ready to walk onto the parade route when she heard a loud sound she believed to be fireworks - until she heard people yell about a shooter.

'We just start running in the opposite direction,' she told the Associated Press.

Her five-year-old son was riding his bike decorated with red and blue curled ribbons. He and other children in the group held small American flags.

The city said on its web site that the festivities were to include a children's bike and pet parade. Troiani said she pushed her son's bike, running through the neighborhood to get back to their car.

In a video that Troiani shot on her phone, some of the kids are visibly startled at the loud noise and scramble to the side of the road as a siren wails nearby.

'It was just sort of chaos,' she said. 'There were people that got separated from their families, looking for them. Others just dropped their wagons, grabbed their kids and started running.'

Matt Phillip, director of a tasting room at Lynfred Winery, said he heard 'what sounded like fireworks' before seeing people 'running down the street.'

'We opened our doors so they could either seek shelter within our facility or exit through our back-alley door.'

He said about 30 people sheltered in the store for approximately 15 minutes.

The parade on Monday in Highland Park was attended by dozens of locals who sat on the sidewalk cheering as bands marched past

Panicked paradegoers at the scene on Monday. There were loud sounds from the crowd that some said were gunshots

The bloody scene on Monday, after Robert 'Bobby' Crimo opened fire on a Fourth of July parade

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a tweet that he is 'closely monitoring the situation in Highland Park' and that Illinois State Police are assisting. The ISP said in an email that it was assisting in the response to an active shooter reported around 10:24 a.m.

The Lake County Sheriffs Office said on Twitter that it is assisting Highland Park Police 'with a shooting in the area of the Independence Day parade route.'

The sheriff's office directed an AP reporter to contact Highland Park Police. The Police Department said no one was immediately available to comment.

Debbie Glickman, a Highland Park resident, said she was on a parade float with coworkers and the group was preparing to turn onto the main route when she saw people running from the area.

'People started saying: "There's a shooter, there's a shooter, there's a shooter,"' Glickman told the Associated Press. 'So we just ran. We just ran. It's like mass chaos down there.'

She didn't hear any noises or see anyone who appeared to be injured.

'I'm so freaked out,' she said. 'It's just so sad.'
Russia is recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine with the promise of almost 3,000 and their sentences being annulled if they come back alive after six months.

Inmates are being actively recruited in St Petersburg jails, according to independent media outlet IStories.

The convicts are told they will be put on the frontline to hunt down 'Nazis' in Ukraine in an arrangement that suggests they will be deployed as cannon fodder.

Private military company Wagner - seen as working hand in glove with Vladimir Putins armed forces and with close Kremlin links - is reported to be behind a recruitment drive at penal colonies number 7 Yablonevka, number 6 Obukhovo, and number 4 Fornosovo.

The FSB security service - once headed by Putin - is also reported to be involved.

Inmates from two colonies in St Petersburg - number 6 and number 7 - were reportedly given an offer to get freedom and money in exchange for fighting in Ukraine

Russia is recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine with the promise of almost 3,000 and their sentences being annulled if they come back alive after six months

The convicts are told they will be put on the frontline to hunt down 'Nazis' in Ukraine

If true, the reports indicate the desperation of Russia to mobilise from unexpected quarters, an indication that more conventional recruitment bids are failing with commanders worried about manpower shortages.

A relative of one convict said: 'So-called 'inspectors' came to Yablonevka on Friday evening.

'They talked to convicts and asked them to "defend Motherland".

'My relative was told this: "It is very hard to find Nazis, they are prepared very well.

You will be in vanguard, help find the Nazis - this is why not everyone will return".

'At first, they said that about 20 per cent would return.

'Then  that "almost no one will come back".

'Those who survive are promised a reward of 200,000 roubles [2,800] and an amnesty.

'And if he dies, they promise to pay the family 5 million rubles [70,000].

'But this is all words, it will not be recorded anywhere on paper.'

Private military company Wagner - seen as working hand in glove with Vladimir Putins armed forces and with close Kremlin links - is reported to be behind a recruitment drive at prisons

MC Wagner mercenaries pose at Popasna, the Sievierodonetsk district of the Luhansk Oblast, eastern Ukraine

Inmates in St Petersburg jails are told they will hunt down 'Nazis' on the frontline as Putin turns to desperate measures to try and turn the tide in his war in Ukraine

At first the recruitment drive was only for those with previous military service but now it seems that it is open to all convicts, though not those serving 20 years or more for the most heinous crimes.

A source told IStories: 'About 200 people wanted to sign up, but in the end they registered about 40, and they were even tested on a lie detector.

'My loved one wanted to agree, but we, relatives, made a tantrum with threats.

'Now he swears that he will not go, but he definitely hesitates, because he sees this as an opportunity to earn money.

'He says: "If the worst happens, I will earn you the money for an apartment".'

A relative of a prisoner who was selected to fight with Wagner said: 'He was bribed with the promise that in six months he would return home and his criminal record would be wiped out.

'In addition, when six months have passed and those wanting to continue serving will be provided with a job.'

Vladimir Osechkin, Russian founder of Gulagu.net (currently in exile in France)

It was claimed the inmates would be sent to war without passports or identification tokens.

Another source, Vladimir Osechkin, exiled founder of human rights group gulagu.net, said that FSB officers were 'currently recruiting volunteers for Donbas among prisoners' in Yablonevka.

Convicts 'are openly told that they will have neither documents nor a badge, and their bodies will not be given to their relatives [in the event they are killed]', he said.

Those selected after agreeing to fight are taken away almost immediately.

The men were signing a 'bonded contract' with Wagner, it was claimed.

'Prisoners families are horrified by what is happening,' said gulag.net. 'Many have wives, children. Convicts who have agreed to leave talk like zombies with their relatives.

'Please help stop this lawlessness. Convicts who have families waiting for them cannot voluntarily agree to this.

'The state in which the convicts are in the colony does not allow them to make [an informed] choice. Please help.'
A 27-year-old Italian mountaineer snapped a grinning selfie of himself in front of a glacier in the Dolomites in Italy minutes before he was killed in an avalanche.

Filippo Bari, who has a four-year-old son, sent the picture to his family with the message 'look where I am' just 20 minutes before a huge chunk of the Marmolada glacier broke off, sending an avalanche of ice, snow and rocks down the slope on Sunday.

At least seven people were killed and five people are still missing - but hopes of finding the hikers alive are fading due to the sheer scale of the avalanche.

Italy has blamed the collapse on climate change and fears more of the glacier could come crashing down have prevented access to much of the area where the hikers, some roped together, are believed to be buried.

Filippo Bari snapped a grinning selfie of himself in front of a glacier in the Dolomites in Italy minutes before he was killed in an avalanche

A helicopter flies over the avalanche area in the aftermath of an avalanche on the Marmolada Mountain in Canazei, Italy, on Monday

At least seven people were killed and five people are still missing - but hopes of finding the hikers alive are fading due to the sheer scale of the avalanche. Pictured: Rescuers at the site

Bari, who had been hiking with five friends at the time of the tragedy, was identified by his family as one of the victims of the tragedy.

Although Bari was an expert mountain hiker, his brother, Andrea, told state TV that his family always told him to be careful in the mountains, 'above all in these temperatures'.

Andrea said his brother, who lived in Malo, Vicenza province, with his partner, Jelena, and four-year-old son, Filippo, sent the selfie of himself smiling whilst wearing a helmet and sunglasses in front of the glacier only 20 minutes before the avalanche.

'He passed away doing what he loved,' Andrea said.

Bari, who worked in a hardware store in Isola Vicentina, had been planning on conquering Monte Rosa, which straddles Italy and Switzerland, this week.

Andrea said of his brother: 'Filippo was a great lover of the mountains and nature in general.

'He had already done several high-altitude outings, always accompanied by experienced people and with all the necessary equipment.'

Hopes of finding survivors are fading more than 36 hours after the disaster, which has provoked renewed conversations about the perils of climate change.

A helicopter participates in a search and rescue operation over the site of a deadly collapse of parts of a mountain glacier on Tuesday

People on Tuesday watch a rescue helicopter at work by the Punta Rocca glacier that collapsed near Canazei

This view taken on Tuesday near Canazei shows rescuers at work near their helicopter, near the Punta Rocca glacier that collapsed, on the mountain of Marmolada

Rescuers today found body parts and equipment as they continued their search for the missing hikers.

Officials initially feared 13 hikers were still missing on the Marmolada glacier, east of Bolzano in the Dolomite mountains, but the province of Trento reduced the number of people unaccounted for to five after eight others checked in with authorities.

Relatives of people reported missing gathered at the town of Canazei, where recovered remains were placed in a make-shift morgue at a gymnasium.

'The important finds, not just bones, are first photographed, then recovered and put onto a helicopter' and flown to Canazei to be 'catalogued and placed in cold storage', Maurizio Dellantonio, national president of the Alpine Rescue Service, said.

Such finds were 'bones that have not been flayed, a piece of hand with a ring, tattoos, anything that can enable a person to be identified', including shoes, backpacks and ice-picks.

Rain hampered the search on Monday, but sunny weather on Tuesday allowed helicopters to bring more rescue teams up to the site, even as hopes dimmed of finding anyone alive.

A huge chunk of the glacier fell off on Sunday, sparking an avalanche that sent torrents of ice, rock and debris ploughing down the mountainside onto unsuspecting hikers below.

Relatives of people reported missing gathered at the town of Canazei, where recovered remains were placed in a make-shift morgue at a gymnasium

This aerial view taken near Canazei on July 5, 2022 from a rescue helicopter shows the Punta Rocca glacier that collapsed on the mountain of Marmolada

At least seven people were killed, officials said. Among the dead are at least three Italians and one of the bodies recovered belonged to a Czech who was travelling with a friend now registered as missing, the Czech foreign ministry said.

'We have to be clear, finding someone alive with this type of event is a very remote possibility, very remote, because the mechanical action of this type of avalanche has a very big impact on people,' said Alex Barattin of the Alpine Rescue Service.

Nicola Casagli, a geologist and avalanche expert at Florence University, said the impact of the glacier collapse on the hikers was greater than a mere snow avalanche and would have taken them completely by surprise.

'These types of events, which are ice and debris avalanches, are impulsive, rapid, unpredictable phenomena, reaching very high speeds and involving large masses,' he said.

'And there is no chance of getting to safety or perceiving the problem in advance, because by the time you perceive it, you've already been hit.'

On Sunday, officials said nine people were injured, but on Monday told reporters in Canazei that eight were injured, including two in grave condition.

Officials said those hospitalized following the incident included two Germans and a 40-year-old patient yet to be identified.

Photographs, taken during a helicopter survey of the site, showed a gaping hole in the glacier.

A helicopter carries tubes with remote sensors to monitorate the Marmolada glacier on Tuesday

A helicopter participates in a search and rescue operation over the site of a deadly collapse of parts of a mountain glacier on Tuesday

The terrain is still so unstable that rescue crews stayed off to the side and used drones to try to find any survivors or signs of life while helicopters searched overhead, some using equipment to detect mobile phone pings.

Two rescuers remained on site overnight, and were joined by more rescuers on Tuesday morning.

Maurizio Dellantonio, national president of the Alpine Rescue Service, said teams had found body parts, hiking equipment and clothing on the surface of the debris, evidence of the avalanche's powerful impact on the hikers.

'We have recovered so many fragments over the last two days. They are very painful for those who pick them up. And then for those who have to analyse them,' he said.

'Personally I can only think that what we found on the surface will be the same that we will find underneath, when the ice will melt, or by digging, if there is a chance.'

Officials closed all access routes and chair lifts to the glacier for hikers, fearing continued instability and the potential that more chunks of ice might detach.

Premier Mario Draghi, who visited the rescue base in Canazei on Monday, acknowledged avalanches are unpredictable but that the tragedy 'certainly depends on the deterioration of the climate situation'.

Looking grim after meeting with families of some of the dead, Draghi demanded that action be taken so such a tragedy doesn't happen again.

'This is a drama that certainly has some unpredictability, and certainly depends on environmental deterioration and the climate situation,' Draghi said, echoing several experts who said an avalanche triggered by a glacier's breakup couldn't be forecast.

Marmolada glacier has been shrinking for decades, and scientists at the government CNR research center have said it won't exist within 25-30 years.

'Today, Italy cries for the victims, all Italians embrace them with affection,' Draghi said. 'The government must reflect on what happened and take measures, so that what happened has a very low probability of happening again or being avoided entirely.'

Italy is in the midst of an early summer heatwave, coupled with the worst drought in northern Italy in 70 years. Experts say there was unusually little snowfall during the winter, exposing the glaciers of the Italian Alps more to the summer heat and melting.

Punta Rocca summit is seen after part of a mountain glacier collapsed in the Italian Alps, at Marmolada ridge, on Tuesday

'We are thus in the worst conditions for a detachment of this kind, when there's so much heat and so much water running at the base,' said Renato Colucci from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the state-run Council for National Research (CNR).

'We aren't yet able to understand if it was a deep or superficial detachment, but the size of it seems very big, judging from the preliminary images and information received.'

The CNR has estimated that the Marmolada glacier could disappear entirely in the next 25-30 years if current climatic trends continue, given that it lost 30 per cent of its volume and 22 per cent of its area from 2004-2015.

Casagli said what happened on the Marmolada was unusual, but said such destructive avalanches will become more frequent as global temperatures rise.

'The fact that it happened in a scorching summer with abnormal temperatures must be a wake-up call to understand that these phenomena, while rare, are possible,' he told reporters. 'If we don't take decisive measures to counter the effects of climate change, they will become more and more frequent.'

The glacier, in the Marmolada range, is the largest in the Dolomite mountains in northeastern Italy. People ski on it in the winter. But the glacier has been rapidly melting away over the past decades, with much of its volume gone.

The Mediterranean basin, which includes southern European countries like Italy, has been identified by U.N. experts as a 'climate change hot spot,' likely to suffer heat waves and water shortages, among other consequences.

Pope Francis, who has made care of the planet a priority of his papacy, tweeted an invitation to pray for the avalanche victims and their families.

'The tragedies that we are experiencing with climate change must push us to urgently search for new ways that are respectful of people and nature,' Francis wrote.
A Brazilian model and sniper has been killed by a Russian missile strike in Ukraine just three weeks after she joined the fight against Putin's forces.

Thalito do Valle, 39, took part in humanitarian missions around the world and had previously fought against ISIS in Iraq.

She was killed last week after a missile struck her bunker in Kharkiv, the north-eastern city which has been subjected to intense bombardment throughout the war.

A Brazilian model and sniper has been killed by a Russian missile strike in Ukraine just three weeks after she joined the fight against Putin's forces

Thalito do Valle, 39, took part in humanitarian missions around the world and had previously fought against ISIS in Iraq

She was killed last week after a missile struck her bunker in Kharkiv, the north-eastern city which has been subjected to intense bombardment throughout the war

The attack also killed former Brazilian Army soldier Douglas Burigo, 40, who returned to the bunker to find Thalita.

She was the only troop member left behind after the first missile strike took place, according to other fighters.

Thalita documented her conflict experience on her YouTube channel where her videos on fighting ISIS gained her 32,000 views.

She previously studied law after working as a model and actress in her youth, and has participated in animal rescues with NGOs.

Thalita documented her conflict experience on her YouTube channel where her videos on fighting ISIS gained her 32,000 views

The attack also killed former Brazilian Army soldier Douglas Burigo (pictured), 40, who returned to the bunker to find Thalita

Her videos reveal how she received sniper training when she joined the Peshmergas, the armed military forces of the independent Kurdistan region of Iraq.

A writer was working with the Brazilian soldier to turn the experience in Ukraine into a book.

Thalita's brother Theo Rodrigo Viera described her as a hero with a vocation for saving lives and participating in humanitarian missions.

He explained that she had only been in Ukraine for three weeks, where she had been working as a rescuer as well as a sharpshooter.

She previously studied law after working as a model and actress in her youth, and has participated in animal rescues with NGOs

Thalita's brother Theo Rodrigo Viera described her as a hero with a vocation for saving lives and participating in humanitarian missions

She was also reportedly responsible for providing cover from advancing Russian forces.

After surviving a bombing in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Thalita explained to her family that she could not talk much as mobile phone activities were being monitored by Russian drones and would only call to let them know that she was fine.

The last time they spoke was last week Monday after Thalita had just moved to the city of Kharkiv.
Russian military was instructed to advance farther into Eastern Ukraine on Monday, as local officials cautioned people to escape the battle lines following the seizure of Lysychansk.

Vladimir Putin directed his soldiers to push through with Moscow's attack in the Donbas area after a months-long fight over the Luhansk Oblast. During their discussion on Monday, Putin stated that he had received proposals from two top generals on how to continue the offensive operation.

Russia Almost Entirely Razed Lysychansk, Severodonetsk

A Russian artillery bombardment on Slovyansk, some 40 miles from the defeated town, killed at least six people and injured others hours after Moscow declared victory over Lysychansk, the last Ukrainian-held stronghold in Luhansk. Slovyansk, where many of the Ukrainian forces who had previously defended Luhansk have now withdrawn, and neighboring Kramatorsk stand in Russia's way of capturing the whole Donbas.

Ukraine's military forces stated the troops were evacuated to save lives in the face of Russia's supremacy with long-range weaponry and to establish better defensive lines in preparation for future counter-offensives. During Russia's attempts to conquer Haidai, the two largest towns, Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, were almost totally burnt to the ground by artillery and rocket bombardment, as per Telegraph.

Despite Ukrainian forces pulling back in a tactical retreat, Moscow claims the whole city of Severodontesk, while doubts persist over the village of Lysychansk. With the conflict costing Russia dearly in terms of lives and equipment, others argue that the Kremlin has lost its way.

Some Western commentators are calling one such action a war crime, citing the embargo of food and grain from Ukraine as a key element. According to the British Ministry of Defence (MoD), with harvest started, Russia's invasion continues to have a catastrophic impact on Ukraine's agricultural industry.

Furthermore, the character of Russian assaults on Ukraine is beginning to show symptoms of desperation. The latest attack on a shopping center revealed Moscow's dependence on outdated weaponry, the majority of which are employed at a distance with minimal accuracy.

Read Also: Russian Su-57 Felon Stealth Fighter Recent Videos Nullifies Claims of Destroying Ukrainian Air Defense Systems

UK Imposes Further Sanctions Against Russia, Belarus

According to Ukrainian authorities, Russia has lost 36,200 soldiers, 217 planes, 187 helicopters, and almost 1,500 tanks. A recent analysis illustrates how the top ranks are affected at the senior level. Since the commencement of the conflict, two Russian Lieutenant-Generals, and eight Major-Generals have been killed, along with 23 Colonels and 164 Captains. A total of 821 senior officers are expected to have died in combat, according to Express.

Meanwhile, Britain will penalize Belarus further today for its backing of President Putin's unlawful invasion of Ukraine. Imports of Belarusian iron and steel will be prohibited, as will exports of British artworks and designer handbags. More of its subsidiaries will be barred from operating in the UK's financial services industry. Belarus has aided Russia's disastrous invasion of Ukraine by launching assaults from its territory and allowing Russian planes to use its airspace.

Russia's slow push through eastern Ukraine resumed Tuesday, with forces aiming for complete control of the Donbas region after conquering the Luhansk region. Putin complimented them and advised them to relax and regain their military fitness.

However, the Ukrainian military is holding out in the neighboring area of Donetsk after reducing personnel and equipment losses. Zelensky has sworn to reclaim the region lost to Russia, but this will need continuous military and financial assistance from the West, Daily Mail reported.

Related Article: Ukraine War: Russia Captures Lysychansk as Ukrainian Troops Withdraw; President Volodymyr Zelensky Vows To Regain City

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Rep. Adam Kinzinger on Tuesday released audio of graphic threats made against him, his family, and fellow Republican lawmaker Rep. Liz Cheney.

'Threats of violence over politics has increased heavily in the last few years. But the darkness has reached new lows. My new interns made this compilation of recent calls theyve received while serving in my DC office,' the Illinois Republican wrote on Twitter.

Roughly three minutes' worth of call recordings feature people assailing Kinzinger with profane insults and vowing, 'we will come to your house.'

The nameless callers accuse Kinzinger of 'backstabbing' Donald Trump and label him and Cheney as 'communists' while claiming to know where they and their families live.

Cheney and Kinzinger are the lone Republican members of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Both have also become frequent targets of Trump's wrath since voting to impeach him over riot last year.

'You backstabbing son of a b****. You go against Trump y'all know you m***********s are sitting up there lying like a damn dog,' one caller said in the audio.

Another person wildly accused Kinzinger of orchestrating the death of Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran who was shot while leading a crowd that shattered windows to invade the Capitol.

'You son of a b****. You gave $200 to that black b****** that killed Ashli Babbitt,' they said.

Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger posted more than three minutes of threatening voicemails and phone calls made to his office on Twitter Tuesday morning

He pointed out that it was young interns who mostly field the threatening messages, not the lawmaker himself

'I hope somebody like him kills your nasty mom and your nasty wife. It's not a threat, it's a hope.'

Others promised to 'protest' in front of Kinzinger's home - which he shares with his wife and baby daughter.

'Hey you little c*** s*****. Going to come protest in front of your house this weekend. We know where your family is, and we're going to get you, you little c*** s*****,' a man's voice said.

'Gonna get your wife. Gonna get your kids. You little c*** s***ing b******.'

'You're gonna swing for f****** treason you communist f***,' yet another recording sounded.

Calls also involved homophobic slurs, such as one person asking Kinzinger if he is 'Liz Cheney's f** hag.'

The term is a derogatory way of describing a woman with many gay male friends.

'You two c*** s****** little b******. We're gonna get you. We're coming to your house, son. We're going to get you and Liz Cheney. Gonna get you two little c*** s******,' the person continued before bursting into laughter.

Cheney's office said it had nothing to add when asked by DailyMail.com. Kinzinger's offices has not yet returned a request for further comment.

The Illinois Republican, who is retiring at the end of this year, was also called a 'Marxist traitor,' a 'Pelosi cuck,' and a 'rotten piece of dog s***.'

Kinzinger and Rep. Liz Cheney (left) have been targets of frequent attacks by former President Donald Trump (right) since voting to impeach him over the Capitol riot. They're one of 10 House Republicans who did

'You and Liz Cheney can both go to hell. F*** you, you big baby.'

They went on, 'I hope you get terminal cancer you m************ pig.'

The only female voice on the lengthy recording told Kinzinger she was praying for his demise.

'Wrath of the lord god almighty come upon you, your health, your family, your home, your livelihood. And I pray, if it be god's will, that you suffer,' she said.

A disclaimer shown before the audio begins confirms that all of it came from either voicemail recordings or live phone calls received by his office in Washington.

The legislator also points out that it's not him on the receiving end of the phone or hearing the calls first. That falls to the lowest level staffers within his office - aides at the beginning of their careers in their late teens or early twenties.

'Keep in mind all voicemails and phone calls are received by my interns, high school or college level, attempting to learn about the legislative process,' the message reads.

While facing intense opposition from Trump, Kinzinger announced late last year that he would not be running for re-election in the House of Representatives. His state's newly-redrawn Congressional map would have pitted him against a fellow incumbent and ally in the House.

However, the military veteran has since left open the prospect of running for
President Joe Biden awarded on Tuesday four Vietnam War veterans the Medal of Honor at a White House ceremony the day after Independence Day.

Specialist Five Dwight Birdwell, 74; Major John Duffy, 84; and Specialist Five Dennis Fujii, all participated in the ceremony where the president donned them with their awards.

It was also given posthumously to Staff Sergeant Edward Kaneshiro, who was killed in action at the age of 38. Kaneshiro's son John accepted the medal on his behalf at the White House on Tuesday.

'They went far above and beyond the call of duty,' Biden said of the honorees.

The Medal of Honor is the most prestigious and highest U.S. government decoration for military service members.

All four medal recipients served in the Vietnam War.

President Joe Biden held a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House on Tuesday to award four Vietnam War veterans with the honor

Biden awards high-decorated retired Major John Duffy with the Medal of Honor for his actions on April 14-15 in the Vietnam War

The president drapes the Medal of Honor around the neck of Army veteran Specialist Five Dennis Fujii, who fought in the Vietnam War

Biden awards Cherokee Nation citizen and Army veteran Specialist Five Dwight Birdwell with the highest government military service honor in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday, July 5, 2021

'Yesterday marked the 246th anniversary of this nation's independence. 246 years of struggle and sacrifice to uphold the principles so dear to the character of our nation  liberty, democracy, God-given rights of every individual,' Biden said in his remarks at the top of the ceremony.

'It's a journey that has never finished  and never will be fully finished,' he said.

The ceremony followed the death of Hershel 'Woody' Williams, who was the last remaining Medal of Honor recipient from World War II. Williams died June 29 at age 98 and will lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced on Sunday.

Attending the ceremony on Tuesday was first lady Jill Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley  as well as other senior U.S. Military officers.

Biden posthumously awarded the medal to Staff Sergeant Edward Kaneshiro, whose son John (left) accepted the award from the president on his deceased father's behalf

Biden gave a synopsis of the acts of valor that led each of the four individuals being honored on Tuesday to earn their medals before draping the award around their necks  and giving one in a glass shadow box to the son of Staff Sergeant Kaneshiro.

The president praised the recipients for their 'answer to our nation's call to military service.'

'They stood in the way of danger, risked everything  literally everything  to defend our nation and our values,' he said.

Fifty years passed since the events that led each to earn their medal, and Biden says the country owes them all gratitude for the service and actions.

In an awkward lull at the conclusion of the East Room event, Biden said to laughter: 'I think we're dismissed.'

The event was held the day after the July 4 holiday, when the nation was rocked by yet another mass shooting  this time in the affluent neighborhood of Highland Park, Illinois. A shooter opened fire on an Independence Day parade, killing six and injuring two dozen others.

Biden said, 'I'm not sure' when asked at the event Tuesday if he plans to visit Highland Park.
A former Metropolitan Police officer has avoided jail after admitting to sending sexual messages to a 15-year-old boy.

Pc Will Scott-Barrett, 33, was handed a nine-month jail sentence, suspended for 12 months, at Isleworth Crown Court.

The court previously heard that he pleaded guilty to a charge of sexual communication with a child on or before February 3 last year.

An earlier hearing was told he was in contact with the youngster using the Snapchat and Discord social media apps from April 2020.

Metropolitan Police officer Will Scott-Barrett, 33, (pictured) from Bromley, south-east London, admitted to sending sexual messages to a 15-year-old boy

Scott-Barrett, of Bromley, south-east London, sent messages including graphic sexual pictures and videos to the boy, who cannot be named.

The officer was off-duty at the time of his offending, which is not said to have been connected with his role in the force.

Scott-Barrett, from Bromley, south-east London, leaves Isleworth Crown Court in west London after he was handed a nine-month jail sentence, suspended for 12 months, after admitting to sending sexual messages to a 15-year old boy

He has since resigned from his post.

A spokeswoman from the Metropolitan Police said a misconduct hearing found that if Scott-Barrett had not resigned he would have been dismissed.

During sentencing, Judge Robin Johnson said: 'This is undoubtedly a sad case. Sad for you, in that you lost your job and your good character, but also sad, troubling and worrying for the family (of the victim).

'My sympathies are with the victim and his family rather than you.

'This kind of offending harms children, that is self-evident. The harm done to the victim is incalculable.

He pleaded guilty to a charge of gaining sexual gratification while messaging a child and was ordered to undertake rehabilitation for 40 days and is subject to a sexual harm prevention order

'You were previously of good character, you were a serving police officer at the time.

'I have accepted that you expressed genuine remorse and are taking steps to assess your offending.'

Scott-Barrett, wearing a navy suit, light blue shirt and pink patterned tie, remained silent throughout the hearing.

He must undertake rehabilitation for 40 days and is subject to a sexual harm prevention order.

Scott-Barrett has also been ordered to pay a victim surcharge and the statutory surcharge, and may be subject to an order from the Disclosure and Barring Service, depending on if the agency decides it is appropriate.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had such expensive tastes that he demanded gifts in the form of cigars to dip into Cointreau liqueur, a Jerusalem court heard today.

Netanyahu is undergoing a blockbuster corruption trial on charges of fraud and breach of trust for allegedly accepting luxury gifts from billionaires Arnon Milchan and James Packer worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, advancing the former's various interests in return.

An aide to the two billionaires testified that she had been ordered to buy cigars and Cointreau - among other items - to satiate the former prime minister and his wife Sara's incessant demand for luxury goods.

Deutsche Presse Agentur reported Hadas Klein telling the court she gradually became a conduit for an endless supply of luxury goods of cigars, jewellery and pink champagne that were not gifted to the Netanyahus so much as demanded by them.

Australian mogul James Packer, who was deeply impressed with Netanyahu after meeting him in 2013, told Klein to give the Netanyahus anything they asked for and not to hold back anything, she said.

Benjamin Netanyahu, pictured in the Knesset last week, is in undergoing a blockbuster corruption trial on charges of fraud and breach of trust for allegedly accepting luxury gifts from billionaires Arnon Milchan and James Packer worth hundreds of thousands of pounds and for advancing the former's various interests in return

Netanyahu allegedly received 64,000 in cigars and 44,000 worth of champagne from Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan between 2011 and 2016, while Sara Netanyahu (pictured) allegedly received 2,600 worth of jewellery from him in the same time period

Netanyahu allegedly received 64,000 in cigars and 44,000 worth of champagne from Hollywood producer Milchan between 2011 and 2016, while Sara Netanyahu allegedly received 2,600 worth of jewellery from him in the same time period.

He and his family also allegedly received another 55,000 in champagne and cigars from Packer between 2014 and 2016.

Klein testified on her first day in the Jerusalem District Court that Milchan had made it clear to Australian entrepreneur James Packer 'you cannot come to the Netanyahus empty-handed.'

She described the incessant demands made by the Netanyahus, fielding calls from the former prime minister to find a specific brand of cigar that he liked.

When she could not find it, Netanyahu called Milchan to complain, forcing her to take an unsuccessful trip to Cuba to track them down.

On another occasion, Klein said Sara requested that she deliver champagne to the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem on the eve of the Passover holiday.

Klein was unavailable to make the delivery as she was hosting 40 people for the Jewish tradition of Seder night, but when Sara called Milchan to complain he forced her to abandon her guests to drive to Jerusalem.

'If I'd give three bottles of champagne, [Sara would] complain, 'Why only three?'' she added.

Movie producer Arnon Milchan (centre) poses with Hollywood royalty Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie at the premiere of their movie Mr & Mrs Smith. Former Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu is accused of accepting thousands of pounds worth of gifts from Milchan

Australian mogul James Packer, who was deeply impressed with Netanyahu after meeting him in 2013, told Klein to give the Netanyahus anything they asked for and not to hold back anything, she said

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in court during his corruption trial at the District Court in east Jerusalem, November 22, 2021

Sara's favourite champagne was a rose from Moet & Chandon, while she also delivered the premium Dom Perignon vintage brand, which Klein said they would pay over 327 per bottle for.

Klein detailed numerous occasions in which she or Milchan's driver would bring the Netanyahus champagne - never fewer than two crates - and cigars, to the official premier's residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem or to their Caesarea residence.

'We were very discreet about it there was a feeling that we had to be,' Klein said of the deliveries.

At one point Klein threatened to quit if Milchan did not get Sara to stop sending her constant texts about the gifts that amounted to harassment.

Asked by a prosecutor if she ever got complaints that not enough champagne or cigars had been delivered, Klein responded, 'that was the story of our lives,' adding 'You couldn't say no, he was the prime minister.'

'I'd meet Sara often, when we'd bring champagne. When we brought it, we'd bring at least two crates. Of course I purchased the boxes of cigars. The jewellery I would personally give Sara at her house, at the pool. [And the] coats I purchased,' she said.

Klein said Milchan personally approved all the gift requests since he kept tight control of his finances.

'Arnon told me, 'These amounts are starting to get out of control, tell her our accountant is starting to ask questions,'' Klein testified, adding that Milchan never volunteered to buy them such gifts.

Netanyahu is currently opposition leader and is seeking a return to the prime minister's office in a general election to be held in November, in spite of the corruption trial which has been going on for two years.

He has denied wrongdoing and claimed that the charges were fabricated and part of a bid by the state prosecution and political rivals to force him from office.
Firebrand Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert blasted Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell on Twitter Tuesday after he seemed to blame her and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for the Independence Day mass shooting in Illinois.

A 22-year-old gunman opened fire at a 4th of July parade in Highland Park on Monday, a wealthy suburb of Chicago, killing six people and injuring dozens.

Just a day later, Swalwell took to social media with side-by-side photos of Boebert holding an assault rifle and an image of the shooter.

'Lets start drawing straight lines,' he wrote.

The California lawmaker followed up with a screenshot from one of Greene's campaign ads that shows the Georgia Republican crouched in firing position behind a rifle and text that reads: 'In 2022 I'm going to blow away the Democrats' socialist agenda.'

'How did I forget about this other straight line?' Swalwell quipped.

A short while later Boebert shared Swalwell's attack with her own image comparison of Swalwell next to a suspected Chinese spy and Chinese President Xi Jinping, with blue lines drawn between the photos to connect them.

She responded to his call to draw 'straight lines' with, 'Yes, lets. Hows Fang Fang these days?'

When going head-to-head with Swalwell, Boebert often references the report that he was targeted by a Chinese spy during his early years in local elected office.

Reps Lauren Boebert and Eric Swalwell are known for being particularly outspoken on Twitter

California Democrat Swalwell suggested Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert's rhetoric was linked to the mass shooting in Illinois on Tuesday

In a follow-up, he also called out outspoken Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

The California congressman was reportedly one of several politicians targeted by a Chinese national named Fang Fang, who helped Swalwell fundraise for his 2014 campaign. Axios first broke the story in 2020.

Swalwell, who sits on the powerful House Intelligence Committee, cut all ties with Fang in 2015 after being alerted by federal investigators.

Boebert also referenced his short-lived 2020 presidential bid in another jab at the progressive congressman.

'Trying to link responsible gun ownership with murder makes less sense than [Eric Swalwells' Presidential Campaign,' the Colorado Republican wrote.

She followed up later more pointedly stating her insinuations against Swalwell and demanding that other Democrat condemn him.

'Democrats love to talk about dangerous rhetoric. Swalwell is a Russia Hoax conspirator and failed presidential candidate that slept with a Chinese spy,' Boebert said.

'Now hes comparing me to a deranged murderer. When will Democrats condemn HIS dangerous rhetoric?'

Greene has yet to publicly respond to Swalwell calling her out, but the far-right lawmaker has made multiple outlandish statements about the case of the deadly shooting in its aftermath.

Boebert's response included images of Swalwell, Fang Fang and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Blue lines are drawn to bridge the photos

She blamed the massacre on the influence of psychiatrically-prescribed drugs rather than a lack of proper firearm regulation.

'What drugs and/or psychiatric drugs was he on for his mind to be ruined in alternate reality games that caused him to commit a mass shooting?' Greene wrote on Twitter.

'His parents know. The police know. School, arrest, hospital records? The public DESERVES to know.'

She claimed the Illinois city's assault weapons ban and other strict gun control measures failed to stop the Monday shooting from taking place.

'Red flag gun laws and some of the most strict gun control laws in the country did NOT prevent the Highland Park shooting because they already had them on the books. Nor do these strict gun control laws prevent shootings and murder in Chicago every single weekend,' Greene wrote.

She was called out by fellow House Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger for a similar rant on Monday night blaming 'mental illness' and 'SSRIs' for the shooting and shunning all criticism as 'covering for Big Pharma.'

'Instead of having an ounce of compassion, its cold hearted insanity,' Kinzinger wrote on Twitter, accusing her of being part of an 'evil movement.'
Podcaster Joe Rogan has said he will never host 'threat-to-democracy' Donald Trump on his podcast despite having been asked multiple times.

During a Monday airing of The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan vehemently shut down the possibility of interviewing the 45th President of the United States.

'I am not a Trump supporter, in any way, shape or form,' Rogan, 54, said. 'I have had the opportunity to have him on my show, more than once, and I have said no every time.'

The controversial podcaster weighed in on the devastatingly polarized political spectrum in America and said he was not interested in giving Trump a platform because the former president is an 'existential threat to democracy itself.'

'It is already a weird time, post-Trump,' Rogan added.

'The Trump era is also going to be one of the weirder times when people look back historically about the division in this country.'

Rogan's remarks against Trump come just days after the podcaster, who has a $200million deal with Spotify, endorsed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis potentially joining the 2024 Presidential race.

During a Monday airing of The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan vehemently shut down the possibility of interviewing the 45th President of the United States

Rogan went on to suggest that Trump had led the masses to abandon their ethics and morals, but theorized that he would join the Presidential race in 2024.

'He is going to run again, things are going to get weirder, he is running against a dead man,' Rogan said.

On Friday, The New York Times reported that the former president has surprised some of his advisers by saying he may declare his intentions on social media, without even informing them in advance.

Trump, who has not officially addressed the reports, is said to be aggrieved by the increasing attention and compliments heaped on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Many Republicans believe DeSantis pushes the same policies that made Trump very popular - but without the divisive and unpredictable personality.

Rogan joined the growing group of prominent figures supporting DeSantis, when he praised the Florida Governor for his response to COVID-19 and his willingness to stand up for American freedoms.

DeSantis, a Harvard graduate, has been lauded by many Americans for making the decision to bring Florida out of lockdown more quickly than other states.

Rogan's remarks about Trump also come months after the former president said the podcaster had to stop apologizing to the left after videos resurfaced of Rogan saying the N-word.

'How many ways can you say you're sorry? Joe, just go about what you do so well and don't let them make you look weak and frightened. That's not you, and it never will be!' Trump wrote in a statement at the time.

The controversial podcaster weighed in on the devastatingly polarized political spectrum in America and said he was not interested in giving Trump a platform because the former president is an 'existential threat to democracy itself.' Rogan has endorsed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis potentially joining the 2024 Presidential race

Rogan's support for DeSantis marks a dramatic turnaround from three years ago, when he backed Bernie Sanders bid for president.

In 2021, Rogan said he backed former First Lady Michelle Obama to beat Donald Trump, if she had decided to run in the 2024 Presidential election.

'She's great, she's articulate, she's intelligent, she's the wife of the best president that we have had in our lifetime ... she can win,' Rogan said.

He joked that Obama could team up with Vice President Kamala Harris as her running mate, producing a 'double dose of diversity.'

At the time, he also said that a Republican 'super team' lining up against the pair would be 'Trump and [Florida Governor Ron] DeSantis together.'

'They have to make a super team. That's the only way they win,' Rogan stated.

While DeSantis hasn't formally announced he will run in the election, he has won straw polls and is viewed generally favorably by Republican voters.

'I feel like what he did for Florida, a lot of people gave him a lot of grief, but ultimately he was correct,' Rogan said last week.

'He was correct when it comes to like deaths, he was correct. And when it comes to protecting all vulnerable populations, he was correct in terms of distribution of monoclonal antibodies.'

He said he feels that what DeSantis has done for Florida has been 'admirable.' 'You know, he is not perfect. He's a human being, but what he's done is stand up for freedoms,' he said on the podcast.

Last week, Rogan also voiced his disapproval of President Joe Biden, saying 'So all this stuff is happening while we have a dead man as a president. You know, it's just not fun.'

'It seemed like the narrative was no one could talk about individual rights. It's all about [the] lockdown. You can't have an open state. You can't have kids in school. You can't do all that,' DeSantis said in February. 'We viewed it the opposite. The default needs to be freedom.'

While DeSantis received significant backlash for his decisions, Florida had an average number of deaths from the virus, comparable to numbers from states like New York, that implemented strict lockdown measures.

According to DeSantis, the decision reignited Florida's economy, which is highly dependent on tourism.

DeSantis also introduced the 'Don't Say Gay' bill, which has been praised by many Republican supporters and politicians.

The bill states 'Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.'

DeSantis defended Rogan when a video that compiled all of the times Rogan said the N-word went viral. Rogan, who is white, has since apologized.

'Do not apologize. Do not kow to the mob,' said DeSantis in a February interview with Fox News.

'Stand up and tell them to pound sand; if you do that, there's really nothing that they're able to do to you,' said DeSantis.
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Boris Johnson was left clinging on to Downing Street by his fingertips tonight after Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid both dramatically quit his Cabinet in a seemingly coordinated attack.

The PM is engaged in a desperate damage limitation battle in the wake of the bombshells from the now-former Chancellor and Health Secretary, who walked out within minutes of each other berating his lack of 'integrity' and competence.

The exits came despite Mr Johnson frantically trying to head off the crisis with a grovelling apology over his appointment of shamed MP Chris Pincher as deputy chief whip.

Amid panic that more Cabinet ministers could follow suit, the premier rushed this evening to shift his current chief of staff Steve Barclay to replace Mr Javid at the Department for Health and Social Care.

Later, he announced that Nadhim Zahawi would be replacing Mr Sunak at the Treasury, with Michelle Donelan being promoted to Education Secretary to replace Zahawi.

Steve Barclay said it was 'an honour' to take up the role of Health Secretary.

'This government is investing more than ever before in our NHS and care services to beat the Covid backlogs, recruit 50,000 more nurses, reform social care and ensure patients across the country can access the care they need,' he said.

Mr Johnson's immediate survival chances have been boosted by Deputy PM Dominic Raab, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Home Secretary Priti Patel, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey all declaring they will not be resigning.

Notably Michael Gove, who notoriously stabbed Mr Johnson in the back to end his leadership hopes in 2016, does not appear to be jumping ship.

However, some in the more junior ranks have been voting with their feet. Tory vice-chair Bim Afolami announced his exit live on TV, while former loyalist Jonathan Gullis, Saqib Bhatti, Nicola Richards and Virginia Crosbie stepped down from PPS roles.

Theo Clarke and Andrew Murrison also stepped down as the trade envoys to Kenya and Morocco.

Lord Frost, previously Mr Johnson's key Brexit envoy, said Mr Sunak and Mr Javid had done the 'right thing' and the premier could not change.

Even Cabinet ministers staying in place sounded a gloomy tone privately, with one telling MailOnline that some of their closest colleagues had 'run out of sympathy with the PM'.

Tory backbencher Andrew Bridgen warned Boris Johnson that the backbench 1922 Committee will 'deal' with his leadership.

Mr Bridgen, a critic of the Prime Minister, said: 'The portcullis is the emblem of our Parliament, it is the last defence of our democracy.

'The 1922 committee will deal with this turbulent prime minister, it's what it was created for.'

The Prime Minister is facing manoeuvring from Conservative MPs, who are hoping to change the rules of the 1922 Committee to re-run a confidence vote against him.

Brexit minister Jacob Rees-Mogg was sent out to bat in broadcast studios tonight, insisting there is no 'constitutional' reason for the PM to go.

Asked whether he would really survive a fresh Tory confidence vote, Mr Rees-Mogg told Sky News: 'He might very well win another.'

Mr Rees-Mogg said Mr Johnson's mood after the resignations was 'business as usual' and he still hoped he would beat Robert Walpole's record of 21 years in No10.

In his resignation letter, Mr Sunak warned that 'we cannot continue like this' and he was ready to sacrifice his political career.

'The public rightly expect Government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously,' he wrote.

Meanwhile, Mr Javid questioned Mr Johnson's integrity, competence and ability to act in the national interest.

In other breakneck developments as the government descends into chaos tonight:

Mr Sunak and Mr Javid could make resignation statements to the House of Commons as early as tomorrow after their move tonight;

Keir Starmer immediately demanded a snap general election, saying 'let's have a fresh start for Britain';

Bookies have made Mr Johnson odds-on to be out of No10 this year.

Boris Johnson is teetering on the brink tonight as Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid both dramatically quit his Cabinet within minutes of each other

Mr Johnson returned to Downing Street tonight as he struggles to find a way to survive in office - beginning a reshuffle to replace two of his most senior Cabinet members

The Prime Minister Boris Johnson appoints Nadhim Zahawi as the chancellor of the Exchequer in the Cabinet Room of No10 Downing Street

Zahawi is pictured smiling at 10 Downing Street amid his appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer

Nadhim Zahawi leaves 10 Downing Street after being appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer

Johnson (L) instructed his Chief of Staff Steve Barclay (R) to take over as Health Secretary after Sajid Javid departed

In his resignation letter (left), Mr Sunak told the PM that 'we cannot continue like this'. Meanwhile, Mr Javid (right) publicly questioned Mr Johnson's integrity, competence and ability to act in the national interest

Universities minister Michelle Donelan seen going into Downing Street before taking the post as Education Secretary, replacing Nadhim Zahawi who becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer

Some in the more junior ranks have been voting with their feet. Tory vice-chair Bim Afolami announced his exit live on TV, while former loyalist Jonathan Gullis, Saqib Bhatti (left), Nicola Richards and Virginia Crosbie (right) stepped down from PPS roles

Seven in 10 Britons - and even 54% of Conservative voters - say Boris Johnson SHOULD resign following bombshell departure of Javid and Sunak, poll reveals Seven in ten Brits believe Boris Johnson should resign his post, according to a new YouGov poll of thousands of UK adults, while a majority of people who voted Conservative in 2019 also want him gone. The Prime Minister's tenure has been called into question after two members of his Cabinet - Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Chancellor Rishi Sunak - handed in their resignations earlier today in a scathing indictment of Johnson's leadership. YouGov's poll found 69 per cent of people believe the PM should step down - up 11 per cent from June 9 - a sentiment shared by more than half (54 per cent) of respondents who voted Conservative in 2019's general election. Just 34 per cent of Conservative voters wanted Johnson out on June 9 just days after he narrowly survived a no-confidence vote, suggesting that today's Cabinet resignations represent the final straw for many Tory supporters. Only 18 per cent of Brits overall believe Johnson should remain in charge, but despite the widespread calls for his resignation, just one in five YouGov poll respondents actually believe the Prime Minister will heed them. The Prime Minister was already fighting an uphill struggle to remain in No 10 as his handling of the row over scandal-hit former deputy chief whip Chris Pincher became the latest issue to raise questions over his judgment. YouGov's Associate Director of Political and Social Research Patrick English said of the poll results: 'Tonight's figures make for dire reading for Boris Johnson. 'With over half of the very people who put him into office in 2019 now wanting him out, he is losing the battle for support not just with the general public, but his own party's voters.' Advertisement

It appeared Mr Sunak and Mr Javid had heeded calls from Tory rebel MPs - who had been demanding action from Cabinet ministers over the latest sleaze scandal battering Mr Johnson's Government.

Mr Javid told the PM: 'It is with enormous regret that I must tell you that I can no longer, in good conscience, continue serving in this Government.

'I am instinctively a team player but the British people also rightly expect integrity from their Government.'

It was the second time Mr Javid has resigned from a Johnson government, having quit as Chancellor on principle in 2020 when he was told he could not choose his own special advisers.

Boris broke his silence after the body blows by responding to the rebellious pair's resignation letters with his own.

Boris Johnson told Sajid Javid he was 'sorry' to receive his resignation letter as health secretary and suggested his Government would 'continue to deliver' plans for the NHS.

In a brief letter, the Prime Minister wrote: 'Dear Saj, Thank you for your letter this evening tendering your resignation. I was very sorry to receive it.

'You have served this Government, and the people of the United Kingdom, with distinction.'

Boris Johnson responded to Rishi Sunak's departure as chancellor, saying he was 'sorry' to have received Mr Sunak's resignation letter and praising his 'outstanding service'.

In a letter, the Prime Minister wrote: 'Dear Rishi, I was sorry to receive your letter resigning from the Government.

'You have provided outstanding service to the country through the most challenging period for our economy in peacetime history'.

He noted the furlough scheme, Mr Sunak's work on post-pandemic economic recovery and to repair public finances, as well as tax cuts.

The double resignation sparked feverish speculation that other members of the Cabinet might soon follow suit in quitting Mr Johnson's Government.

But Mr Raab, Mr Wallace, Ms Patel and Ms Truss have all indicated they are not walking out.

Environment Secretary George Eustice has yet to break his silence.

Conservative MP Saqib Bhatti quit his role as a PPS, following the example of former boss Mr Javid, stating 'recent events have undermined trust and standards in public life'.

Posting his resignation on Twitter, he wrote: 'The Conservative and Union Party has always been the party of integrity and honour.

'I feel that standards in public life are of the utmost importance, and the events of the past few months have undermined the public trust in all of us.

'I have been grappling with these issues for some time and my conscience will not allow me to continue to support this administration.

'It is for that reason I must tender my resignation.'

In a particularly stinging blow for the PM, one of his most loyal supporters Mr Gullis said he was resigning 'with a heavy heart'.

He wrote: 'I have been a member of the Conservative Party my entire adult life, a party I believe represents opportunity for all. I feel for too long we have been more focused on dealing with our reputational damage rather than delivering for the people of this country and spreading opportunity for all, which is why I came into politics.

'It is for this reason I can no longer to serve as part of your government.'

Who's staying and who's gone from the Government? QUIT Rishi Sunak Sajid Javid Nicola Richards Jonathan Gullis Saqib Bhatti Virginia Crosbie Andrew Murrison Theo Clarke Alex Chalk Bim Afolami NOT QUITTING Dominic Raab Ben Wallace Priti Patel Liz Truss Brandon Lewis Michael Gove Jacob Rees-Mogg Therese Coffey Nadine Dorries Nadhim Zahawi Michelle Donelan ON WATCH George Eustice Advertisement

Conservative MP Nicola Richards quit her role as PPS to the Department for Transport, stating she cannot serve 'under the current circumstances'.

The West Bromwich East MP tweeted : 'At a time where my constituents are worried about the cost of living and I am doing my best to support them, I cannot bring myself to serve as a PPS under the current circumstances, where the focus is skewed by poor judgement that I don't wish to be associated with.

'I am loyal to my constituents and will always put them first.

'I am also loyal to the Conservative Party, of which is currently unrecognisable to me. I believe something must change.'

Cheltenham MP Alex Chalk also confirmed his resignation as Solicitor General on Tuesday evening.

In a letter to Boris Johnson, Mr Chalk said it was 'with great sadness' he was quitting the post but added he could not 'defend the indefensible'.

He wrote: 'To be in government is to accept the duty to argue for difficult or even unpopular policy positions where that serves the broader national interest. But it cannot extend to defending the indefensible.

'The cumulative effect of the Owen Paterson debacle, Partygate and now the handling of the former Deputy Chief Whip's resignation, is that public confidence in the ability of Number 10 to uphold the standards of candour expected of a British Government has irretrievably broken down. I regret that I share that judgement.

'This comes at a moment of intense challenge for our country, when trust in government can rarely have been more important. I'm afraid the time has therefore come for fresh leadership.'

Tory MP for Hastings and Rye Sally-Ann Hart, who previously backed Mr Johnson the confidence vote last month, said she is no longer able to support him.

She tweeted: 'Considering the further revelations that have come to light, and given that the integrity of Parliament must be upheld, on behalf of my constituents of Hastings and Rye I am no longer able to support Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister.'

Just moments before tonight's drama unfolded, the PM acknowledged he should have sacked Mr Pincher when he was told about the claims against him when he was a Foreign Office minister in 2019, but instead Mr Johnson went on to appoint him to other government roles.

Asked if that was an error, the PM said: 'I think it was a mistake and I apologise for it. In hindsight it was the wrong thing to do.

'I apologise to everybody who has been badly affected by it. I want to make absolutely clear that there's no place in this Government for anybody who is predatory or who abuses their position of power.'

Mr Rees-Mogg said that 'losing chancellors is something that happens'.

He told Sky News that to suggest such actions should lead to the resignation of the Prime Minister was an '18th-century' view of Cabinet Government.

He said that it is the Prime Minister who appoints Cabinet ministers and is 'not someone who is brought down by Cabinet ministers'.

Mr Johnson took a conciliatory tone in his letter responding to Mr Sunak tonight.

'I was sorry to receive your letter resigning from the Government,' he wrote.

'You have provided outstanding service to the country through the most challenging period for our economy in peacetime history'.

He noted the furlough scheme, Mr Sunak's work on post-pandemic economic recovery and to repair public finances, as well as tax cuts.

'I have enormously valued your advice and deep commitment to public service and will miss working with you in government,' he concluded.

Sir Keir Starmer seized on Mr Johnson's misery and called for a snap election.

'He is unfit to be Prime Minister. He is not fit to govern the country,' he said.

'That is dawning on many people across the Conservative party, but they have to reflect on that, that they have backed him for months and months and months.

YouGov polls suggest 69 per cent of Brits want Boris to resign but few have confidence that he will heed the calls

Lord Frost (left) said Mr Sunak and Mr Javid had done the 'right thing'. Nadhim Zahawi (right) has stayed silent on his intentions so far

Tory MP Nicola Richards quit as a PPS saying she did not 'recognise' the Conservative Party under Mr Johnson

Lord McDonald of Salford gave critics of Mr Johnson further ammunition today when he penned a bombshell letter to a parliamentary watchdog

'Resigning today means nothing against their complicity for all those months when they should have seen him for what he was, they knew who he was.

'We need a change of government.'

Asked if he would support an election if one were called in the next few weeks, Sir Keir said: 'Yes. We need a fresh start for Britain. We need a change of government.'

The Labour leader also suggested a change of government would help to address the 'big issues' like the cost-of-living crisis and could provide 'political stability'.

The Labour leader said those remain in the Cabinet would be 'nodding dogs' if they did not quit. Sir Keir spoke to journalists shortly before news of Rishi Sunak's resignation broke. Asked if Mr Johnson was a 'pathological liar,' he said: 'Yes, he's a liar.

'What we're seeing this week is a repeat of what we've seen so many times, which is Government ministers going out onto the airwaves, giving answers to questions, and no sooner have they finished the media round that the answers they've given aren't accurate because the Prime Minister and Number 10 haven't been straight with them.

'That is not this week's story, although it is this week's story, it's every week's story. It's on repeat, which is why you see the Conservative Party tearing itself apart today. Should his Cabinet members make sure he leaves office, yes they should. It's their responsibility, in the national interest, to remove him from office.

'They know what he's like, he's said that he's psychologically incapable of changing, and therefore they have to do what's in the national interest and remove him.'

Who's staying and who's gone from the Government? QUIT Rishi Sunak Sajid Javid Nicola Richards Jonathan Gullis Saqib Bhatti Virginia Crosbie Andrew Murrison Theo Clarke NOT QUITTING Dominic Raab Ben Wallace Priti Patel Liz Truss Brandon Lewis Michael Gove Jacob Rees-Mogg Therese Coffey Nadine Dorries Nadhim Zahawi Michelle Donelan ON WATCH George Eustice Advertisement

Can Boris the 'greased piglet' wriggle free AGAIN? The PM's options after Sunak and Javid quit - from daring MPs to oust him to calling a snap general election

Boris Johnson was tonight dealt a huge double blow following the resignations of Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid.

But does this mean Mr Johnson's time as Prime Minister is coming to a close? Might he quit himself? Or can he ride through another storm and remain in Number 10?

Here, MailOnline looks at what the consequences could be:

What's happened?

Mr Sunak and Mr Javid both resigned as Cabinet ministers within minutes of each other tonight.

The outgoing Chancellor told the PM that 'we cannot continue like this', adding: 'The public rightly expect Government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously.'

Meanwhile, Mr Javid publicly questioned Mr Johnson's integrity, competence and ability to act in the national interest.

Why did they quit?

The duo left Government amid a fresh Tory sleaze scandal battering Mr Johnson's administration.

Chris Pincher resigned as Tory deputy chief whip last week amid claims he drunkenly groped two men.

And - just hours before Mr Sunak and Mr Javid's departure - Number 10 admitted the PM had been informed of a past complaint about the 'inappropriate' behaviour of Mr Pincher before he appointed him to the whips' office in February.

The admission was the latest in a series of changing positions from Downing Street over what Mr Johnson had known of Mr Pincher's past conduct.

In his resignation letter, Mr Sunak also spoke of 'fundamental' differences between himself and the PM on economic policy.

Boris Johnson's chances of staying in Number 10 have been dealt a huge blow - but is it fatal?

Will the PM now also have to quit?

Not necessarily.

In fact, the PM's chances of avoiding his own resignation were boosted by the fact that no other Cabinet ministers immediately followed Mr Sunak and Mr Javid out the door.

Many declared their support for Mr Johnson although some - such as Environment Secretary George Eustice have been noticeably quiet.

With the PM having already seen off huge pressure to quit over the Partygate scandal, it seems unlikely that he will fall on his sword at this moment.

He has even shrugged off the resignation of a Chancellor before when Mr Javid quit the top Treasury role in February 2020.

Ex-PM David Cameron famously referred to Mr Johnson as a 'greased piglet' due to his ability to survive various scrapes.

So many would back him to escape once again.

Could the PM call a general election?

Another possibility, albeit slim, could be Mr Johnson calling a snap general election in a bid to seek a fresh mandate from the country.

If that were to happen, the calculation in No10 would be that - although increasing numbers of Tory MPs want him gone - voters themselves might still back him to remain in office.

How else will Tory rebels try to force the PM out?

There is already a plot among Tory rebel MPs to change the rules of the Conservative Party in order to force a new vote of no confidence in Mr Johnson.

This is despite the PM having won a contest on his leadership last month that granted him 12 months' immunity from another challenge under current rules.

Mr Johnson chairing Cabinet earlier today, before the resignations were announced

The rebel plot will see them try to secure key posts on the 1922 Committee, the powerful Tory body in charge of leadership contests, in a battle with PM loyalists.

If they win a majority on the Committee's 18-strong executive, they will be able to force through the rule change they want.

But, with elections to the 1922 executive not due to be held until next week and MPs going their summer break later this month, Mr Johnson could yet be safe from another contest until September.

What about Labour?

Sir Keir Starmer could attempt to force the PM out of Downing Street by tabling a no confidence motion over Mr Johnson's Government in the House of Commons.

If he were to do so, the Labour leader would be calculating that Tory MPs are so fed up with Mr Johnson that they would side with the Opposition and vote to bring down their own Government.

There is a recent precedent for Sir Keir to follow, although Mr Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May, survived a confidence vote in January 2019 after it had been called for by then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Ben Wallace, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak tipped to join former high-fliers Jeremy Hunt and Penny Mordaunt in any battle to succeed PM

Boris Johnson insists the idea of him resigning is 'crazy' - but the possibility must look fairly realistic to potential successors.

Future candidates come from all wings of the party, from the libertarian right to the One Nation Tory centre.

Among the front-runners are Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and one of her predecessors in the post, Jeremy Hunt, both of whom have made little secret of their desire to take the top job.

Other candidates expected to join a leadership race include Defence Secretary Ben Wallace - who like Truss is very popular with grassroots Tories due to his tough position over the Ukraine war.

And outsiders could include people like Tom Tugendhat, the former British Army officer and chairman of the foreign affairs committee, and Mark Harper, the former chief whip turned critic of the PM's handling of the Covid pandemic.

Here are some of the potential runners and riders:

Liz Truss

46-year-old Foreign Secretary and South West Suffolk MP

Has persistently been linked with a leadership challenge

Has used role to recreate some classic images of ex-PM Margaret Thatcher

Has faced a tough time with comments on the Ukraine conflict

The 46-year-old Foreign Secretary has been regularly linked with a tilt at No10. The former international trade secretary was promoted last year to succeed Dominic Raab.

The South West Norfolk MP has held a string of Cabinet posts under successive party leaders and is popular with the party grassroots.

But while she has been hawkish over the war in Ukraine, the conflict has hit her prospects after several stumbles.

Prior to the February 24 invasion she visited Russia for talks with her Kremlin counterpart Sergei Lavrov, in which she overtly channeled the style of Margaret Thatcher on a similar trip 35 years previously.

Her use of Instagram to share images of her looking tough and commanding has also drawn comment.

The Foreign Secretary posed for pictures in Red Square in a fur coat and hat, 35 years after the former Tory premier did the same on a visit to the then Soviet Union.

But she received a bit of a mauling from Putin's attack dog, who said their talks had been like 'the deaf talking to the blind'.

She was also criticised early in the conflict for urging Britons to go to fight for Russia even if they have no military experience, advice later contradicted by senior military figures.

But the Remain voter from 2016 has become a born-again Brexiteer in the years since, something that will aid her in any vote.

As Foreign Secretary she has taken on responsibility for negotiating changes to the Brexit agreement with the EU to sort out the political impasse in Northern Ireland. A deadlock-breaking agreement is unlikely but unilateral action by the UK is being mooted, which could help boost her credentials.

Jeremy Hunt

46-year-old Foreign Secretary and South West Suffolk MP

Has persistently been linked with a leadership challenge

Has used role to recreate some classic images of ex-PM Margaret Thatcher

Has faced a tough time with comments on the Ukraine conflict

Jeremy Hunt lost heavily to Boris Johnson in the 2019 leadership election that followed the resignation of Theresa May.

But he is showing no signs of letting the mauling at the hands of Tory members dissuade him three years later.

The former minister turned Health Committee chairman has made a series of increasingly high profile public interventions on health policy in recent weeks.

And he has consistently refused to rule out running to replace Boris Johnson if he quits.

The former minister turned Health Committee chairman has made a series of increasingly high profile public interventions on health policy in recent weeks.

Last month he refused to say whether Boris Johnson was 'honest' as he warned the Prime Minister has a 'big mountain to climb' in winning back Tory voters.

The South West Surrey MP cast doubt on the PM's ability to once again prove a Tory vote winner as he insisted it would be a 'mistake' to dismiss the party's local election losses as 'mid-term blues'.

But the former Cabinet minister insisted now was not the time for renewed efforts to topple Mr Johnson and said he 'hoped' the PM would lead the Tories into the next general election.

The comments were seen as a warning shot to the PM - and a clear message to Tory MPs - that he is waiting in the wings should Mr Johnson continue to stumble.

Like Truss he is a former Remain voter who has become a convert to the Brexit cause. He also has his own fair share of gaffs in his locker, including describing his Chinese wife Lucia - with whom he has two children - as 'Japanese' in an interview.

Ben Wallace

52-year-old former British Army officer is Defence Secretary

He is currently the most popular minister with the Tory grassroots

Sandhurst-educated father of three has led efforts to arm Ukraine to fight off the Russian invasion

Was targeted by Russian pranksters who managed to speak to him on a video call in March

Currently the most popular minister with Tory grassroots, according to the Conservative Home website.

The Defence Secretary's low profile has risen into full view as he emerged as one of the foremost Cabinet hawks on the Ukraine War.

The 52-year-old former Scots Guards officer has been at the forefront of efforts to supply Kyiv with weapons and expertise to fight off the Russian invasion, which has boosted his support base and name recognition.

The Sandhurst-educated father of three has overcome a Russian attempt to humiliate him after a Kremlin-backed prankster managed to get through to him on a video call, parts of which were later broadcast on YouTube.

He was asked if he supported Ukraine's 'nuclear aims' by a man claiming to be the PM of Ukraine.

He has also avoided being implicated in the worst failures of the UK's retreat from Afghanistan last summer, with blame being generally laid at the door of the Foreign Office.

The Defence Secretary's low profile has risen into full view as he emerged as one of the foremost Cabinet hawks on the Ukraine War.

Last week he confirmed Britain is to arm Ukraine with precision-guided M270 rockets that have a range of up to 50 miles to help match Russia's artillery arsenal.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded heavier weapons to counter Russia's artillery. Germany and the US have also pledged long-range weapon systems.

Today he tweeted: 'In 2019 Boris won with a majority of 80. He has delivered victories in seats we have never held before.

'On Covid, on Ukraine he has helped deliver a world leading response. He has my full confidence.'

Rishi Sunak

Former Chancellor was top-rated minister at the end of 2021 after Covid largesse

But profile has gone into freefall after a series of controversies in 2022

Wife revealed to be a non-dom taxpayer living in Downing Street

Sunak himself also faced questions over US Green Card possession

Mr Sunak might have burnished his credentials with Tory rebels by finally walking out of the Cabinet.

But it is unlikely he will ever regain the heady highs of the end of 2021, when he was the undisputed candidate to succeed Mr Johnson.

His largesse with taxpayers' cash during the Covid crisis - furlough payments and other measures - and slick social media campaigns made him widely popular within the party and with the wider electorate.

It was a rapid rise to the top for a minister who only became Chancellor weeks before lockdown kicked in early in 2020.

But the popularity of 'Brand Rishi' took a tumble in 2022 amid a series of controversies and rows with No10.

In the spring it was revealed his multi-millionaire heiress wife Akshata Murty was revealed to be living in Downing Street while having non-dom tax status.

At the end of 2021 the Chancellor was the number one candidate to succeed Boris Johnson.

Rishi Sunak was hit by a political backlash over the news that his heiress wife Akshata Murty was domiciled in India for tax purposes

She has legally avoided paying a huge UK tax bill by paying 30,000 a year to register as based in India.

He insisted she hasn't 'done anything wrong' while accusing his critics of 'smearing her to get at him'. She later agreed to pay full UK tax.

Later it emerged Mr Sunak, a father of two and former international banker, himself held a US Green Card for a year into his term leading the Treasury.

While the status would not save him any money on his tax bill, it carries a responsibility to make the United States 'your permanent home'.

There were also a series of rows with No 10 after recovery spending and his involvement with Partygate: he received a 50 fine for attending Boris Johnson's surprise - and rule-breaking - birthday party in No10 in June 2020, even though he claimed he was just passing through on his way to a meeting.

His supporters blamed No10 for embroiling him in the controversy, souring an already acidic relationship within Downing Street.

Penny Mordaunt

Trade minister and Royal Navy reservist who backed Jeremy Hunt in 2019

Ignored other ministers tweeting support for PM to instead write about D-Day

She was the first woman to serve as defence secretary and was also international trade secretary

Appeared on reality TV show in 2014 wearing just a swimsuit

Penny Mordaunt has already emerged as possibly one of the least subtle potential candidates to run.

While other ministers spend this morning tweeting their support of the Prime Minister, she pointedly tweeted ... about attending a D-Day ceremony in Portsmouth, where she is an MP.

'Today I will be attending Portsmouth's commemoration service to remember the efforts and sacrifice of #DDay,' she wrote.

The Brexiteer, 49, a naval reservist who once appeared on reality TV in a swimsuit, is popular with party members.

She was the first woman to serve as defence secretary and was also international trade secretary and is currently a trade minister.

Supporters have pushed her credentials as the potential unity candidate any leadership race appears to lack - she is a Brexit voter who backed Jeremy Hunt in 2019.

She was the first woman to serve as defence secretary and was also international trade secretary and is currently a trade minister.

The Brexiteer, 49, a naval reservist who once appeared on reality TV in a swimsuit, is popular with party members.

Ms Mordaunt hs already been on resignation watch once this year. In January she spoke out against a proposed 1.2 billion underwater electricity cable project backed by a Russian oligarch and major Tory donor.

She opposed plans by Aquind, co-owned by Alexander Temerko, to construct the interconnector under the Channel between Normandy and Portsmouth.

Temerko, who previously ran a firm producing weapons for Russia's military, and Aquind have given more than 1 million to the Tories and the oligarch has regularly featured in photos at fundraisers with Prime Ministers and their Cabinets.

Government sources said Mordaunt was ready to quit if the cable was approved. The project was later rejected.

Tom Tugendhat: Iraq and Afghanistan veteran turned China and foreign affairs hawk

An Army reservist who served in Iraq and Afghanistan

The son of a high court judge and the nephew of a Tory peer.

Father of two said in 2017 that it would be 'great to be PM'.

Another Tory MP with military experience. Tugendhat, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is a confirmed Boris critic who has taken aim at the government over its attitude to China and the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Some MPs believe the 48-year-old, an Army reservist who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, would be well-suited to the role and represents the 'best chance for a fresh start'.

However, some are concerned about his lack of political experience and voting for a second posh PM in a row. He is the son of a high court judge and the nephew of a Tory peer.

Mr Tugendhat, who is married with two children, has previously made clear that he would fancy a tilt at the top job, saying in 2017 that it would be 'great to be PM'.

Some MPs believe the 48-year-old, an Army reservist who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, would be well-suited to the role and represents the 'best chance for a fresh start'.

He was a member of the Territorial Army when the Iraq War broke out in 2003 and he was mobilised as an Arabic-speaking intelligence officer to serve with the Royal Marines. He went into Iraq as part of Operation TELIC - the initial invasion.

After the war he returned to a job in the City of London but then went back to Iraq to help with the economic reconstruction of the country.

In 2006 the Foreign Office then asked Mr Tugendhat to go to Afghanistan to help grow its national security council. The Tory MP can speak Arabic, Dari and French.

The Tory MP was applauded in the House of Commons during a debate on the UK's exit from Afghanistan in August 2021 as he detailed his experience in the country.

He told a silent chamber: 'Like many veterans, this last week has seen me struggle through anger, grief and ragethrough the feeling of abandonment of not just a country, but the sacrifice that my friends made.

'I have been to funerals from Poole to Dunblane. I have watched good men go into the earth, taking with them a part of me and a part of all of us. This week has torn open some of those wounds, has left them raw and left us all hurting.'
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Social media has been awash with memes and mockery today after Twitter users compared Boris Johnson's cabinet to a toppling house of cards after the bombshell resignations of top Tories Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid.

Thousands were quick to ask who will be next to hand in their resignation as the beleaguered Prime Minister's tenure hit another bump in the road with his Health Secretary and Chancellor both quitting in stunning fashion.

Several Twitter users honed in on timeless cliches, sharing GIFs of rats fleeing a sinking ship, a house of cards collapsing and dominos rapidly falling one by one as Mr Johnson's premiership teetered closer to ruination.

Others compared Tuesday's dramatic turn of events to the final days of Theresa May's doomed premiership, while mocked-up campaign slogans of 'Get Borexit Done' were also circulating across the Internet.

The resignations came as Mr Johnson was forced into a humiliating apology over his handling of the Chris Pincher row after it emerged he had forgotten about being told of previous allegations of 'inappropriate' conduct.

This latest Westminster sleaze row has threatened to imperil Mr Johnson's political future yet again, with No10 giving a series of conflicting accounts about what the PM did or did not know of Mr Pincher's past conduct.

Below, MailOnline details some of the funniest reaction seen online after Tuesday's bombshells:

Social media has been awash with memes and mockery today after Twitter users compared Boris Johnson's cabinet to a toppling house of cards after the shock resignations of Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid

In his resignation letter, Mr Sunak told the PM that 'we cannot continue like this'.

Acknowledging that he might be waving goodbye to his ministerial career for good, the outgoing Chancellor added: 'The public rightly expect Government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously.

'I recognise this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning.'

Meanwhile, Mr Javid publicly questioned Mr Johnson's integrity, competence and ability to act in the national interest.

He told the PM: 'It is with enormous regret that I must tell you that I can no longer, in good conscience, continue serving in this Government.

'I am instinctively a team player but the British people also rightly expect integrity from their Government.'

Chris Pincher last week resigned as deputy chief whip following claims he drunkenly groped two men at a posh London members' club.

He has now also been suspended as a Conservative MP, while a slew of further allegations have emerged against the 52-year-old spanning several years.

Thousands were quick to share their hot takes on the latest bump in the road for the beleaguered Prime Minister after his Health Secretary and Chancellor both quit in stunning fashion

Critics of Mr Johnson were given further ammunition today when a former senior civil servant penned a bombshell letter to a parliamentary watchdog and claimed No10 'keep changing their story and are still not telling the truth'.

Downing Street later confirmed Simon McDonald, the ex-top official at the Foreign Office, was correct to state the PM had been told of a 2019 complaint about Mr Pincher when he was a Foreign Office minister.

The PM's official spokesman said Mr Johnson initially 'didn't recall' having been informed.

He added that he thought the PM was told by 'someone in the Cabinet Office' and that had been 'a number of months' after the complaint was investigated.

As No10 took its latest position on what the PM knew about Mr Pincher's alleged behaviour, Cabinet Office minister Michael Ellis faced a Commons grilling over the row.

Fellow Tory MP Caroline Johnson asked why Mr Pincher wasn't fired as a Foreign Office minister when the 2019 complaint about him was upheld.

'Why wasnt he sacked at the time, never mind given another job?,' she asked.
Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak both announced their resignations within 10 minutes of each other this evening.

The former Secretary of State for Health & Social Care said the job was 'an enormous privilege' but that he could 'no longer continue in good conscience'.

While the former Chancellor of the Exchequer said the public 'rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously' and that it may be his 'last ministerial job'.

Read their resignation letters below in full:

Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak, two of Boris Johnson's most senior ministers, have both resigned this evening

Sajid Javid resigned from his role as Health Secretary this evening

Sajid Javid

Prime Minister,

It was a privilege to have been asked to come back into Government to serve as Secretary of State for Health & Social Care at such a critical time for our country. I have given every ounce of energy to this task, and am incredibly proud of what we have achieved.

The UK has led the world in learning to live with Covid. Thanks to the amazing rollout of our booster programme, investment in treatments, and innovations in the way we deliver healthcare, the British people have enjoyed months more freedom than other comparable countries.

We have also made important strides in the recovery and reform of NHS and adult social care. The longest waiters are down by 70% and, as you know, I have been working hard on wider modernisation of the NHS. I have also developed radical new approaches to dementia, cancer and mental health, and prepared the Health Disparities White Paper which will set out plans to level up health outcomes for communities that have been left behind for too long.

Given the unprecedented scale of the challenges in health and social care, it has been my instinct to continue focusing on this important work. So it is with enormous regret that I must tell you that I can no longer, in good conscience, continue serving in this Government. I am instinctively a team player but the British people also rightly expect integrity from their Government.

The tone you set as a leader, and the values you represent, reflect on your colleagues, your party and ultimately the country. Conservatives at their best are seen as hard-headed decision-makers, guided by strong values. We may not have always been popular, but we have been competent in acting in the national interest. Sadly, in the current circumstances, the public are concluding that we are now neither. The vote of confidence last month showed that a large number of our colleagues agree. It was a moment for humility, grip and new direction. I regret to say, however, that it is clear to me that this situation will not change under your leadership - and you have therefore lost my confidence too.

It is three years since you entered Downing Street. You will forever be credited with seeing off the threat of Corbynism, and breaking the deadlock on Brexit. You have shone a very welcome light on the regional disparities in our country, an agenda that will continue to define our politics. These are commendable legacies in unprecedented times. But the country needs a strong and principled Conservative Party, and the Party is bigger than any one individual. I served you loyally and as a friend, but we all serve the country first. When made to choose between those loyalties there can only be one answer.

Finally, I would like to put on record my thanks to ministerial and departmental colleagues, my admiration for NHS and social care staff, and my love for my family who have been immensely patient in these challenging times.

Yours ever,

S. Javid

Rishi Sunak announced his resignation as Chancellor of the Exchequer shortly after

Rishi Sunak

Dear Prime Minister,

It is with deep sadness that I am writing to you to resign from the Government.

It has been an enormous privilege to serve our country as Chancellor of the Exchequer and I will always be proud of how during the pandemic we protected people's jobs and businesses through actions such as furlough.

To leave ministerial office is a serious matter at any time. For me to step down as Chancellor while the world is suffering the economic consequences of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and other serious challenges is a decision that I have not taken lightly.

However, the public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously. I recognise this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning.

I have been loyal to you. I backed you to become Leader of our Party and encouraged others to do so. I have served as your Chancellor with gratitude that you entrusted me with stewardship of the nation's economy and finances. Above all, I have respected the powerful mandate given to you by the British people in 2019 and how under your leadership we broke the Brexit deadlock.

That is why I have always tried to compromise in order to deliver the things you want to achieve. On those occasions where I disagreed with you privately, I have supported you publicly. That is the nature of the collective government upon which our system relies and it is particularly important that the Prime Minister and Chancellor remain united in hard times such as those we are experiencing today.

Our country is facing immense challenges. We both want a low-tax, high-growth economy, and world class public services, but this can only be responsibly delivered if we are prepared to work hard, make sacrifices and take difficult decisions.

I firmly believe the public are ready to hear that truth. Our people know that if something is too good to be true then it's not true. They need to know that whilst there is a path to a better future, it is not an easy one. In preparation for our proposed joint speech on the economy next week, it has become clear to me that our approaches are fundamentally too different.

I am sad to be leaving Government but I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we cannot continue like this.

Kind regards,

Rishi Sunak
Grim footage of big cats believed to be showing signs of eating their own tails in a Mexican wildlife sanctuary has been circulating on social media amid claims that animals are living in terrible conditions.

Mexican actor Arturo Islas Allende, 35, highlighted the animal's plight in a viral post, which is believed to have been taken at The Black Jaguar White Tiger Foundation's wildlife centre.

The emotional video shows a number of big cats looking frail and emaciated with various sores all over their skin.

Actor Arturo Islas Allende calls the big cat habitat a 'holocaust', saying 'he doesn't understand how for so long, no one has done anything'

The footage shows various big cats with mutilated tails, which is alleged to be down to the felines gnawing at them. It is believed the The Black Jaguar-White Tiger Foundation has been reported by animal activists for abuse

During the video, Mr Allende calls the habitat 'a holocaust' and says he 'doesn't understand how for so long, no one has done anything' to put a stop to the suffering of the animals.

The foundation, located in the borough of Tlalpan in Mexico City, is reportedly dedicated to rescuing wild cats and other animals from terrible conditions at circuses, zoos and illegal breeding centres.

However, the actor revealed that animal activist Yael Ruiz reported the centre to the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection (PROFEPA) after working there for two years and witnessing the neglect the animals have faced, but allegedly failed to hear back.

The footage goes on to show more animals without tails at all, with many looking frail and thin

Animal activist Yael Ruiz reported the centre to the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection (PROFEPA) after working there for two years. Throughout the video, Ruiz shares her experiences working with the animals and details how many of them can no longer move and will soon die

He said: '[Ruiz] looked for me and asked to take me; I went and was able to see, record and witness the horror for myself.

'A complaint was filed with @profepa_mx and other authorities days ago and nothing has happened.'

The video goes on to show several felines with mutilated tails as Ms Ruiz explains the big cats eat their tails 'out of anxiety'.

Mr Allende and animal rights groups such as the Association of Zoos, Breeders and Aquariums of Mexico (AZCARM) have reported the foundation for animal abuse.

On Twitter, AZCARM accused Black Jaguar-White Tiger founder Eduardo Mauricio Moises Serio of abandoning and mistreating hundreds of big cats, several in danger of extinction.
On Monday, Japan protested with Beijing after observing Chinese and Russian vessels slightly outside its territorial seas near the disputed East China Sea islands.

For several minutes Monday morning, a Chinese frigate cruised into the contiguous zone, just outside Japanese territorial seas near the Senkaku Islands, which Beijing also claims and calls the Diaoyu.

Chinese Warship Chases Russian Frigate Near Japan

The existence of the Chinese vessel was established roughly 40 minutes after a Russian frigate had entered the seas for more than an hour, according to the ministry. The current Chinese-Russian military activity in the area was not immediately apparent. The ships might have been there to dodge a storm, according to Japanese defense authorities.

Japan registered a protest against Beijing, expressing grave concern about the event, according to Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara. China supported the frigate's entry and slammed Tokyo's objection, in accordance with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhao Lijian.

China's increasingly assertive military operations in the East and South China Seas is viewed by Japan as a danger to regional stability. Toyo is particularly sensitive to Chinese activity in the vicinity of the disputed islands, according to Independent.

It is worth mentioning that this was not the first time Chinese and Russian Navy warships were sighted together. A similar incident occurred in June 2016.

According to international law, any ship or warship may travel through a coastal nation's contiguous waters unless it endangers the nation's safety. Notably, the latest crossing occurred amid increased Russian and Chinese military presence in the waters near Tokyo. Amid the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Japan said that it will evaluate its defense strategy by the end of the year, according to the Japanese news agency.

Japan's national defense guidelines were launched earlier this month in response to heightened regional security challenges posed by China and Russia. According to a media report citing defense department officials, Japan is updating its National Defense Program Guidelines-a policy for the next ten years. It stated that it will work with the US to cope with the dangers presented by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un.

The new strategy, which is also regarded as a politically difficult matter in Japan, will decide whether Japan may acquire capabilities to target enemy bases in counterstrike. Japan now has an entirely defensive-oriented policy under the war-renouncing constitution, as per to Republic World.

Read Also: Russia-Ukraine War: Vladimir Putin's Troops Take Over Lysychansk Oil Refinery, But Lose Snake Island in Big Win for Ukrainians

Did China, Russia Violate the Law on Senkaku Islands?

According to Tian Shichen, founder of the Global Governance Institution and director of the International Center for the Law of Military Operations, a contiguous zone overlaps with an exclusive economic zone, this means that foreign warships can freely travel in any country's contiguous zones as long as they adhere to the domestic regulations established by the coastal country in compliance with international law.

Chinese and Russian vessels can freely travel in the Diaoyu Islands' contiguous zone, but on a distinct legal basis, Tian added. Tian noted that the Chinese vessel traveled in the Chinese contiguous zone, over which China has sovereign powers and control, but the Russian vessel navigated in the region freely due to the right of free navigation in any contiguous zone under international law.

Chinese warships patrol and monitor the Diaoyu Islands to protect national sovereignty, according to Zhou Yongsheng, a professor at the Institute of International Relations at China Foreign Affairs University, who spoke to the Global Times on Monday.

Several Russian warships circumnavigated Japan in June, Japan's Ministry of Defense Joint Staff. Zhou stated that Russia, which is conducting military operations against Ukraine, has island disputes with Japan, and that Russian naval activity in the West Pacific is intended to discourage Japan from making rash steps.

Russia's recent activities serve as a message to Japan amid Japanese sanctions on Russia, and try to relieve Western pressure on Russia as a result of the Ukraine issue, Global Times reported.

Related Articles: US Hypersonic Weapon Test Suffers Anomaly, But Defense Department Says It's Not a Complete Failure

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While my family attended a small-town Fourth of July parade in Clarkdale, Arizona and watched VFW members marching alongside children in bedazzled star-spangled banner outfits, Hollywood elites decided to opt out entirely.

There was a barrage of social media posts on Monday from celebrities including actress Jessica Chastain, musician Katy Perry, model Padma Lakshmi and reality TV stars Kim and Kourtney Kardashian

They collectively declared America's Independence Day canceled in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. (The audacity to presume that influence over the rest of us is offensive on its own).

Jessica Chastain (left) tweeted a photo showcasing her flipping off the camera and I assume America at large. Padma Lakshmi (right) baked a cake that read, 'Separate Church & State' in red and blue icing.

I have never heard such a bunch of elitist garbage in my life.

Chastain tweeted a photo showcasing her flipping off the camera and I assume America at large.

Perry tweeted, '"Baby you're a firework" is a 10 but women in the US have fewer rights than an actual sparkler smh.'

It was an obvious reference to her hit song and an obvious reminder that she should stick to what she does best.

Lakshmi baked a cake that read, 'Separate Church & State' in red and blue icing. (God knows what she thinks that means)

'Not much to celebrate this 4th, I'm afraid,' she added.

Kim and Kourtney posted that '4th of July has been canceled due to a shortage of Independence. Sincerely, Women.'

Apparently, according to the Kardashian family and liberal Hollywood, it's unpatriotic for women to celebrate the Fourth of July.

While my family attended a small-town Fourth of July parade in Clarkdale, Arizona and watched VFW members marching alongside children in bedazzled star-spangled banner outfits, Hollywood elites decided to opt out entirely.

Perry tweeted, '"Baby you're a firework" is a 10 but women in the US have fewer rights than an actual sparkler smh.'

Not to be outdone  the city of Orlando, Florida weighed in on the celebrations (and then apologized for their idiotic message).

'A lot of people probably don't want to celebrate our nation right now, and we can't blame them,' read the city's newsletter. 'When there is so much division, hate and unrest, why on earth would you want to have a party celebrating any of it?'

Nothing to celebrate -- are they kidding?

The Fourth of July is an opportunity to put our politics aside for a moment and appreciate the privilege of being American.

More than any other nation, we have the freedom to speaks our minds, earn a living and live in a way of our choosing.

What the childish left does not understand is that living in a democracy also means co-existing with people with whom you may disagree.

Every time they don't get their way  they immediately want to 'burn it all down.' When their worldview is challenged -- automatically America becomes an irredeemable place.

The ungratefulness is staggering.

The great hypocrisy is that these celebrities earned their fame and power because of the opportunities afforded to them by America.

Kim and Kourtney posted that '4th of July has been canceled due to a shortage of Independence. Sincerely, Women.'

There is no other country who would turn a family like the Kardashians into the powerhouse they are today

These are incredibly wealthy, influential, and famous people who have every resource at their fingertips.

There is no other country who would turn a family like the Kardashians into the powerhouse they are today.

They are an American phenomenon.

And their ingratitude is only rivaled but their ignorance.

I am not sure whether these celebrities are aware that abortion was not made illegal by the Supreme Court and that the authority to regulate the procedure has been (rightfully) returned to the states.

It is also unclear whether they are aware that many European countries regulate abortion more strictly than some U.S. states.

America is a complicated country with many shortcomings facing grave issues.

These are dark and divided times and in many ways our country feels leaderless.

But the contrast between those celebrating July Fourth and those shaming the rest of us for celebrating showcases that divide more clearly than maybe anything else.

I too am very angry about many things happening in the country, but that does not mean that I am throwing America out as a whole.

We are still as Ronald Reagan said -- a shining city on a hill.

We are the great melting pot -- a place where people still come searching for the American Dream.

We are a country founded by a band of rebels, who sought to govern themselves.

Our Constitution and our Bill of Rights are unique among nations.

People quite literally come from all over the world seeking a better life here.

People die crossing the border with their children seeking a better life here.

The men and women of the Armed Services and their families sacrifice every day for our freedom and sometimes pay the ultimate price.

This is not something that I, and millions of others, take for granted.

These celebrities don't have any idea what July Fourth is really about.

It is not about you or any one singular person. It is about our country.

It is about the sacrifices made by so many that came before you.

Friends of mine who went abroad in service to our country didn't have the luxury of coming back to celebrate it yesterday.

Our Independence Day is a time to participate in a celebration of the greatest country that the world has ever known.

The greatest threat to liberty is not a Supreme Court decision. The greatest threat to liberty is a populace that gives up on America.

The greatest threat in America is a population who no longer believes in it and takes it for granted.

You are all invited to celebrate Independence Day and all thing things we love about America with me and my family anytime.
A grand jury in Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday subpoenaed Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham and other Trump allies as it continues its criminal investigation of interference in the 2020 election.

The names targeted include lawyers and advisers including John Eastman, Kenneth Cheesebro and Jenna Ellis who worked on strategies to overturn Joe Biden's win in key swing states.

It shows that the investigation has moved to Trump's inner circle.

Copies of the subpoenas, signed off by Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney and obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, also list conservative lawyer and activist Cleta Mitchell as well as attorney and podcast host Jacki Pick.

Mitchell advised Trump during the infamous phone conversation with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump used the call to urge him to 'find' 11,780 votes - enough to give him the state.

Raffensperger also said he was contacted by Graham 10 days after the election asking if he was had the power to reject mailed ballots in certain counties.

Graham later denied that he was doing anything improper, and was simply asking for information to understand how the mail ballots were verified.

An Atlanta grand jury on Tuesday reportedly subpoenaed Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and other allies as it probes claims of election interference

Sen. Lindsey Graham is also among the confidants named in subpoenas

The special grand jury was empaneled in May to hear evidence from a Georgia prosecutor's investigation into Trump's alleged effort to influence to election result.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis asked for the jury so that its subpoena power could be used to force witness to testify.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in his call with Raffensperger.

Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer and the face of his efforts to overturn the 2020 result, testified three times before Georgia lawmakers in the aftermath of the election.

The grand jury is reportedly focused on those appearances when he peddled unfounded claims that tens of thousands of voters committed fraud and called on legislators to pick a new slate of presidential electors.

'There are 10 ways to demonstrate that this election was stolen, that the votes were phony, that there were a lot of them, dead people, felons, phony ballots,' Giuliani when he appeared on December 30.

Those appearances contributed to Giuliani having his license to practice law suspended in New York and Washington, D.C.

In the subpoena request, Willis says Graham made at least two calls to Raffensberger and his office in the weeks after the election. According to the Associated Press, he asked about reexamining absentee ballots 'to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,' according to Willis.

And Giuliani faced ridicule last month when a former Fulton County election worker told the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol last year that she had been harassed and threatened after Giuliani accused of handling a USB drive connected to fake votes.

Wandrea ArShaye 'Shaye' Moss testified that it was actually a ginger mint.

Eastman, a former law professor, has emerged as another key figure. He helped develop a plan to pressure Mike Pence to use his position as vice president to reject the official slate of Democratic electors sent by Georgia and replace them with an alternative set of Trump loyalists.

Former president Trump faces legal jeopardy from different directions, amid a slew of investigations into his business practises and his attempt to hold on to power in 2020

Last month, the House probe revealed that Eastman had asked to be placed on a 'pardon list' circulating among allies - hinting that he knew he was in legal jeopardy.

In March, a California federal judge declared it was 'more likely than not' that Trump and Eastman conspired to obstruct certification of the 2020 election, describing their strategy as a 'coup in search of a legal theory.'

The subpoenas show how a slew of investigations continues to pursue Trump and his allies since leaving office.

A D.C. grand jury is making its way through similar territory to the Atlanta probe.

Agents raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who played a leading role in Trump's attempt to pressure states to investigate his fraud claims.

And the House committee has attempted to show that Trump knew his supporters were intent on trouble when he urged them to walk up to the Capitol building on Jan. 6 last year.

Meanwhile, his businesses are under scrutiny in New York.
Two of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's top ministers resigned this evening while a grovelling interview by the Prime Minister was airing on BBC.

The government was plunged into chaos while Mr Johnson was addressing claims he had been told 'in person' about a past 'formal complaint' concerning shamed MP Chris Pincher.

Questions had been asked about what the Prime Minister knew of Mr Pincher's conduct before handing him a Government role.

At the same time Sajid Javid quit as Health Secretary and less than ten minutes later Rishi Sunak announced his resignation.

Below is the full transcript of Boris Johnson's answers.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's grovelling interview about the Chris Pincher scandal was airing while Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid both quit their roles

Q: Prime Minister, do you accept it was a grave error to appoint Chris Pincher to your Government?

Prime Minister: Yes, I think it was a mistake and I apologise for it. I think, in hindsight, it was the wrong thing to do. I apologise to everybody who's been badly affected by it. I just want to make absolutely clear that there's no place in this Government for anybody who is predatory or who abuses their position of power.

Q: Did you once joke 'both Pincher by name, Pincher by nature'?

Prime Minister: Well, what I can tell you is that if I look at the background of this, and why I regret it so much, is that about three years ago, there was a complaint made against Chris Pincher in the Foreign Office. The complaint was cleared up, he apologised, it was raised with me. Already I was briefed on what had happened. And, you know, if I had my time again I would think back on it and recognise that he wasn't going to learn anything and he wasn't going to change and I regret that.

Q: Prime Minister, this is about truth, isn't it? It's about whether people can believe what you say. And we now know that those who speak for you over the last few days have said things that turned out to be untrue. Did you lie to them?

Prime Minister: No, and let me explain what happened. So this is the we're talking about a series of events, or a series of appointments over several years. So Chris Pincher came into government a deputy chief whip before I became Prime Minister, he was moved to the Foreign Office. He then went on to be a minister for housing. And we then moved him back to be deputy chief whip. As I say, about two and a half years ago I got this complaint. It was something that was only raised with me very cursorily. But I wish that we had  I, in particular  had acted on it, and that he had not continued in government, because he then went on, I'm afraid, to behave  as far as we can see, according to the allegations that we have  very, very badly and I'm sorry for those who've been badly affected by it.

Q: I'm conscious that our time is limited. Let's look at what your spokespeople have said. On Friday your official spokesman said you were not aware of specific allegations. Bluntly, that wasn't true, was it?

Prime Minister: Well, what is certainly let me tell you what is true. I was aware back in 2019, I was made aware of a specific allegation against Chris Pincher that was resolved

Q: Your spokesman on Friday said you were not aware of a specific allegation. On Sunday, a Cabinet minister sent out to interview: 'I've been informed this morning, he'  you  'didn't know about a specific allegation'. But you did, you're saying that now. Yesterday, another minister, he'd been given a categoric assurance you weren't aware of a specific allegation. Day after day after day, people speaking on your behalf were talking rubbish.

Prime Minister: Well, I don't I wasn't I was, I'm afraid, focusing on other things at the time. But what I'm telling you now is my recollection of events. And my recollection is that there was one complaint that was raised with me specifically. There was others, there was other rumour and innuendo, but there was one particular thing that was raised, and that was

Q: Which you'd forgotten about.

Prime Minister: It was a long time ago and it was only raised orally with me. But that, Chris, is no excuse. And I should have acted on it and I should have made sure that we drew the proper conclusion. And when I look back on it, yeah, I wish What I wanted was to give Chris Pincher, if not the benefit of the doubt, then the ability to prove that he could do better. And I'm afraid that he couldn't. And I feel very, very bitterly disappointed and also sorry for the mistake I made.

Q: What about you doing better, Prime Minister? Lord MacDonald saying today, you keep changing your story, you're not telling the truth. That was a statement of fact from him, wasn't it?

Prime Minister: Well, I think he's referring to the statements that have come out over the last few days. I've given you what happened. I'm telling you my account of it. I think that when I look back at it, I wish that I'd thought about the briefing that I had in 2019, about the complaint that was made when he was at the Foreign Office. And even though it was brief, I should have thought, well, you know, maybe he shouldn't be staying on at the Foreign Office, maybe he shouldn't be moving on to housing. But at the time the issue was resolved. And so it seemed to me that that was reasonable grounds for him to continue in post. But in retrospect, that was the wrong decision, and I deeply regret it.

Q: What do you say to the person listening to our conversation tonight? Who simply says: 'Look, I can't trust the Prime Minister any more. He's just not telling the truth.'

Prime Minister: Well, I'm giving you the absolute truth as far as I can remember about what happened.

Q: Can people trust you?

Prime Minister: Of course they can. I'm telling you exactly what happened. And I'm coming out to explain it. Because I'm fed up with people, if I may say so, Chris, saying things on my behalf or trying to say things about what I knew or didn't know. I'm trying to explain to you exactly what happened, as I remember it. And what happened was that we had a guy that had been the subject of a complaint. The complaint was resolved He apologised. But it didn't come anywhere near the threshold of criminality. There was no question of breach of the Ministerial Code. And so, yeah, the decision was back then  and this was actually something that was resolved within the Foreign Office, I wasn't asked to take a decision about this  he, they, decided that he could stay on in that job. And he then moved on to do another job in housing. Now, in retrospect, yeah, I should have thought when they brought to me the story about the complaint that had been raised, perhaps I should have said: 'No, this simply isn't good enough. He's got to go right now.' And that would have meant he would never have committed the alleged offences that he has last week. So yeah, I bitterly regret the decision that was taken to I took, as it were, not to intervene, but it was not presented to me as a decision but merely as a point of information.

Q: Thank you, Prime Minister.
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Google has removed images of Highland Park shooting suspect Bobby Crimo from its images function.

Searches for photos of 'Bobby Crimo' or 'Robert Crimo' generated fewer than five results on Tuesday, as did searches for 'Highland Park shooting' or 'Highland Park parade'.

By contrast, hundreds of news articles appeared when using the general search and news search tool. Google has not yet explained the sudden lack of images.

Searches for the suspect's name were few in Google Images on Tuesday with only four or five hits generated. Google has not explained the move

A Google Image search for Robert Crimo, the suspect, generated only five images

Searches for photographs from the parade were also limited to fewer than two dozen where thousands would normally appear

A spokesman for Google did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's inquiries on Tuesday.

Crimo is cooperating with investigators who are trying to determine his motive for shooting dead six people and injuring another 30 at the parade yesterday.

His family confirmed his identity to law enforcement yesterday.

Crimo legally purchased the gun used in yesterday's attack - an AR-15-style assault rifle - from a local store.

He also bought a second rifle which police found in his vehicle.

He unleashed terror on families at the parade at 10.14am on Monday, opening fire from the roof of one of the buildings along the parade route, before the fleeing into the crowd.

The FBI released Crimo's photo yesterday after the massacre. The 21-year-old is shown, right, in a social media image

He hid in plain sight by dressing up as a woman and pretending to be one of the frightened survivors.

Afterwards, Crimo went to his mother Denise's home.

He asked to borrow her car and she allowed him to. Police on Tuesday said they do not believe she knew at that point that he was the shooter.

From there, it's unclear what exactly he did next.

He was eventually arrested at 6.30pm, around eight miles north, after a member of the public spotted his vehicle and called 911. Around the same time, an off-duty cop in North Chicago spotted the car and called for back-up.

Police do not yet know what his motive for the attack was but they say he had been planning it for weeks.
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Boris Johnson's ship began sinking today during a toe-curling Cabinet meeting where his ministers sat listening to him 'with faces like smacked ar**s' including the men who knifed him: Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid.

The Prime Minister told his sombre top team they must 'help people through the current difficult times' - an apt message given his own woes - but judging by the ashen faces as the TV camera panned around the room in Downing Street this morning it appears some were already considering their futures.

'A picture paints a thousand words,' one senior Tory official told the FT, suggesting that Mr Johnson will have regretted letting in the press when his ministers looked so miserable. One critic tweeted afterwards: 'Now we know why they all had faces like smacked a***s this morning, they knew their ship was sinking'.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid, the first to quit this evening, kept his head down and looked at his papers, before scribbling furiously on his pad as Mr Johnson began speaking. And the usually excitable Tory leader also bowed his head at times as he sat next to his chancellor Rishi Sunak, who also walked out on Mr Johnson tonight.

Further to his left, Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey even appeared to be glaring at the PM. Ms Coffey was sent out to bat for Johnson over the weekend over the Chris Pincher scandal and is said to be considering her position.

The camera then panned around the table, stopping on a stony-faced Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg, who have both said they are '100 per cent' loyal to the Tory leader. Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, stared blankly ahead next to a miserable Chris Heaton-Harris, the chief whip, whose job is to keep Mr Johnson's MPs on side and is holed up with the PM in No 10 tonight.

While Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove sat rubbing his fingers along his lips in the direction of Mr Javid, with some Westminster watchers pondering if it might have been a 'secret signal'.

Head bowed, Boris Johnson at the Cabinet meeting before several ministers quit. Rishi Sunak was among the ministers who walked out - and sat to the PM's left today. He would resign, telling the Prime Minister that standards in Government are 'worth fighting for'.

In a hint of what was to come, Sajid Javid looked grim and had his head bowed. He resigned as Health Secretary this evening

The Prime Minister told his sombre top team they must 'help people through the current difficult times'

Therese Coffey gives Boris Johnson the death stare in a gloomy Cabinet meeting in Downing Street today as the PM's premiership teetered on the brink

Michael Gove, who appears to be staying in the job, sat playing with his lips

Even ultra loyalists Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg appeared to know trouble was coming the PM's way

British Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, British Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, British Attorney General Suella Braverman and British Chief Whip Chris Heaton-Harris (left to centre right) attend the weekly Cabinet meeting. Ms Braverman stared straight down the camera

Hours later Boris Johnson's premiership was left teetering on the brink after Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid both dramatically quit his Cabinet in a seemingly coordinated attack at 6pm.

The Chancellor and Health Secretary dropped their bombshells on the PM within minutes of each other, shortly after he issued a grovelling apology over his appointment of shamed MP Chris Pincher. Bim Afolami, the Conservative Party vice-chair, also resigned.

In his resignation letter, Mr Sunak told the PM that 'we cannot continue like this'. Acknowledging that he might be waving goodbye to his ministerial career for good, he added: 'The public rightly expect Government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously.'

Meanwhile, Mr Javid publicly questioned Mr Johnson's integrity, competence and ability to act in the national interest.

The double-pronged assault leaves the PM struggling desperately to cling on - and waiting anxiously to see if any of his other senior ministers will follow suit.

Cabinet Secretary Simon Case took notes as the PM raised his hands and made a point. Therese Coffey smiled but Mr Javid and Mr Sunak did not

Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, stared blankly ahead next to a miserable Chris Heaton-Harris, the chief whip. His deputy was Chris Pincher until last week

Deputy PM Dominic Raab, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Home Secretary Priti Patel and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace have declared they will not be resigning.

Notably Michael Gove, who notoriously stabbed Mr Johnson in the back to end his leadership hopes in 2016, does not appear to be jumping ship.

However, there has been an ominous silence so far from others such as Nadhim Zahawi, Therese Coffey.

The Prime Minister had told his sombre cabinet that the increase in the national insurance threshold was the 'single biggest tax cut in a decade'.

The changes will see the point at which people start paying national insurance rise to 12,570, partly offsetting the increase in the rate of the tax previously announced to help fund health and social care measures.

The Government says the move will save an average employee around 330 a year, with 30 million people set to benefit.

Opening a meeting of his Cabinet, Mr Johnson said: 'It will be in people's pay packets from tomorrow onwards and amongst other things it is there to help people up and down the country with the cost of living.

'It's part of the 37 billion that we are able to spend to help people through the current pressures on food prices, on energy prices, that we are seeing.

'It shows that the Government is firmly on the side of the British people.'

He said it showed the Government was using its 'fiscal firepower' right now, but 'we are also taking the steps that are necessary to bear down on costs in the medium and the long term as well'.

'Reforming our energy market, reforming our housing markets, tackling the cost of transport as we are now, tackling the cost of government, and everywhere always making sure that we get business, get international investors, to come and invest in this country in the way that they are, at an enormous scale,' the Prime Minister said.

Mr Johnson singled out Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey for praise at the Cabinet meeting.

'Tiz (Ms Coffey) did succeed in fulfilling her pledge, she got 500,000 from January off welfare into work. What that did was that saved the taxpayer billions of pounds, it helped employers find the workforce that they need and, of course, it transformed the lives of half-a-million people,' he said.

The Cabinet was meeting following the resignation of Mr Pincher from the whips' office over allegations he groped two men in a private members' club.
A woman has been fined 25,000 for committing more than 30 speeding offences in just three months.

Ann Marie Cash has been given 18 points, fines totalling 25,646 and disqualified from driving for 18 months after being found guilty of 33 separate speeding offences across south Wales.

Between August and October 2021 a Nissan X Trail owned by Cash bearing Irish plates committed 33 speeding offences in the South Wales Police area including 30 on Newport Road, Rumney Hill and one each on Greenway Road, North Road and Newport Road junction with Rover Way.

An investigation was started by GoSafe and field enquiry officers were alerted to the car being stopped for displaying false plates. It had then been seized as it had no insurance and the driver had no license.

Ann Marie Cash has been given 18 points, fines totalling 25,646 and disqualified from driving for 18 months after being found guilty of 33 separate speeding offences across south Wales

Ms Cash was driving a Nissan X-Trail on Irish number plates which made it tricky for officials to track her down

Despite being invited to attend due to the possibility of disqualification, Cash did not attend and the case was heard in her absence at Cardiff Magistrates Court on Monday, May 23 this year

Cash, of Llanrumney, later contacted the court and pleaded guilty to the offences but did not appear at Cardiff Magistrates' Court

All 33 notices of intended prosecution letters were sent to Cash after GoSafe established the correct registration and address for the car. After receiving no response to the letters, all offences were referred to Cardiff Magistrates' Court. Cash, of Llanrumney, later contacted the court and pleaded guilty to the offences.

Despite being invited to attend due to the possibility of disqualification, Cash did not attend and the case was heard in her absence at Cardiff Magistrates Court on Monday, May 23 this year. All 33 offences were proven with each one carrying a fine of 660 with court costs and victim surcharges.

The offences were not consolidated and the court ordered each offence to be paid, meaning the total costs were a 21,780 fine, 3,610 costs and a 256 victim surcharge. Cash also received 18 points and an 18-month disqualification from driving.
An aide to NYC leader Eric Adams told armed muggers 'You don't want to do this. I work for the mayor,' as he became one of the Big Apple's latest violent crime victims.

Christopher Bauch, 33, made the remark in a bid to stop the mugging in Brooklyn's Navy Yard neighborhood Tuesday morning - but he was robbed by the gun-toting criminals anyway.

Bauch was attacked while scouting locations for a future mayoral event that Adams wants to hold in the area.

He was suddenly approached at the intersection of Navy and Sands streets by two black men who demanded that he give them his phone and wallet.

Law enforcement sources told the New York Daily News that Bauch tried to resist the robbery, and also told his assailants to 'Get out of my way.'

But both suspects then threw Bauch to the ground, drew a gun on him, before taking his personal belongings.

A source close to the aide later told DailyMail.com that Bauch was 'a little shaken up by what happened' but is not suffering from any severe injuries.

He said Adams had been in touch to check that the aide was okay after the violent attack.

He is also said to be backing the Democrat mayors' planned crackdown on crime, which will likely reintroduce tougher preventative policies including stop-and-frisk.

Christopher Baugh, 33, told the two Brooklyn muggers: 'You don't want to do this. I work for the mayor,' before they threw him to the floor, drew a gun on him and mugged him of his phone and wallet in Brooklyn on Tuesday

The assault took place near the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Sands St and Navy Street

Adams 'was very supportive and reached out to offer sympathy' to the victim, the anonymous source added. Bauch reportedly alerted a security guard at the NYPD's Brooklyn Tow Pound facility of the assault before calling 911, according to the New York Daily News.

One thief reportedly sped off on a CitiBike, according to several local outlets. No arrests have been made as of Tuesday evening.

The thieves were both described as black men, one wearing a blue and white sweatshirt, and the other hid his face behind sunglasses and a blue mask.

The source close to Bauch said the incident hasn't altered the City Hall aide's views on personal safety in New York City and that he remains 'onboard' with the mayor's plans to tackle the 38 percent crime surge within the Big Apple compared to last year.

The mayor's office had not returned DailyMail.com requests for comment.

Braugh is a member of the mayor's advance team - which deals with event planning - and was scouting the location for a mayoral visit

The mugging comes on the heels of a violent Fourth of July holiday weekend in NYC, which saw at least 31 people shot or killed in 24 shootings. Three people were killed yesterday on the 4th of July itself.

Police said shootings over the holiday weekend spiked 60 per cent compared to last year, which saw 15 incidents with 19 victims.

The massive increase comes after Mayor Eric Adams promised to keep New Yorkers safe over the holiday weekend.

'We are going to use every tool in our toolbox to provide New Yorkers a safe and enjoyable July 4th holiday weekend,' Adams said.

Adams has made a considerable push to get illegal guns off of the streets of New York City, resulting in murders being down 13 per cent from last year, and shooting victims dropping nine per cent.

But major crimes in New York are up 38 per cent this year compared to last year, with robbery up 39 per cent, burglary rising 34 per cent, and felony assault jumping 19 per cent.

One incident on Monday involved the 27-year-old boyfriend of an NYPD worker. The man was shot and injured in a drive-by outside a Dior store in the swanky SoHo neighborhood in Manhattan.

The man, who has not been named, was blasted by bullets as he sat in his car at 5pm on Greene Street between Prince and Spring streets.

He was rushed to Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital with injuries to his right underarm but was expected to survive.

Last week, the execution-style murder of a mother pushing her baby in a stroller near an Upper East Side playground sent shockwaves around the city.

The 20-year-old victim was walking with her three-month-old baby when the hooded shooter approached her and 'fired a single shot into her head from a very close range,' NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell told reporters.

Adams blamed the shooting on the 'over-proliferation of guns' and said that criminals have 'no fear in using these guns on innocent New Yorkers.'

'The over-saturation of guns, and dangerous people that repeatedly leave our criminal justice system to continue actions like this, it is what's making the New York City Police Department and other law enforcement agencies...difficult to fight this issue,' he added.

The area where the shooting occurred is an affluent and normally quiet neighborhood where violent street crime is less common than in many other parts of New York.

Across the street from the murder scene is the Samuel Seabury Playground, which was filled with children who witnessed the horrific shooting.

'It doesn't matter if you are on the Upper East Side or East New York, Brooklyn,' Adams said.

The boyfriend of an NYPD employee was shot in the arm while sitting in a car outside the Dior store in Soho, Manhattan, on Monday evening

In late June, President Joe Biden signed into law a legislation that marks some of the biggest changes to federal gun law in decades.

'Lives will be saved,' Biden said during the signing ceremony in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

'From Columbine to Sandy Hook to Charleston, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland, El Paso, Atlanta, Buffalo, Uvalde, and for the shootings that happen every day in the streets that are mass shootings, we don't even hear about the number of people killed every day in the streets. Their message to us was to just do something,' the president said.

According to the NYPD, the city's current crime rate is approximately 13.3 major crimes per 1,000 residents per year. The combined rate of violent crimes  rapes, murders and felony assaults adds up to 2.8 per 1,000 residents per year.
Joe Biden said Tuesday that he doesn't know yet if he will travel to Highland Park, Illinois following the Independence Day parade shooting there.

The president ordered that the victims of the shooting be honored by all federal buildings and grounds lowering their flags to half-staff.

A gunman opened fire in the affluent Highland Park neighborhood on Monday, July 4, killing six people and injuring 25 others.

During a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House on Tuesday, a reporter asked Biden if he would visit Highland Park following the shooting.

'I'm not sure,' the president mumbled while exiting the East Room.

Just after the event, however, he issued the proclamation for honoring the victims by ordering flags halfway down the pole until the end of the week on Saturday, July 9, 2022 'as a mark of respect for the victims of the senseless acts of gun violence perpetrated on our Independence Day, July 4, 2022, in Highland Park, Illinois.'

President Joe Biden ordered Tuesday that flags to be lowered to half-staff until Saturday, July 9, 2022 to honor the victims of the Highland Park, Illinois Independence Day parade shooting

A 21-year-old gunman opened fire at a July 4 parade in Highland Park on Monday, killing six and injuring 25 others

Robert 'Bobby' Crimo III, 21, is the main suspect of the massacre. The rapper supports former President Donald Trump. He goes by 'Awake the Rapper' and has more than 16,000 listeners per month on Spotify.

The suspect was 'known to law enforcement' but it is not yet known if this was due to the disturbing content he shared online, or if he committed other crimes. He has not yet been charged for the massacre but he remains in custody and is speaking with authorities.

Crimp legally purchased the two rifles used in the shooting along with other guns in the local area - despite a ban on assault rifles in Highland Park, buying them at multiple locations.

On Monday, after the attack, he fled among frightened paradegoers, pretending to be one of the victims, and went to his mother's house. Crimo was able to evade law enforcement for hours after the shooting, disguising himself as a woman in the crowd running from the direction of the gun fire.

Shooting suspect Robert 'Bobby' E Crimo III, 21, was able to evade authorities for hours by disguising himself as a female paradegoer. He has an obsession with the number 47  it's even tattooed on his cheek  although the significance of the number remains unconfirmed

The gunman's car outside his home in Highland Park, Illinois, on Tuesday. He was obsessed with the number 47 - which is the date of July 4th in reverse

It's unclear if Crimo told his mother what he had done or if she is being treated as a suspect, but he took her car.

Questions are emerging over the young gunman's motive, lifestyle and his obsession with the number 47.

Crimo had a 47 tattoo on his cheek and the numbers are emblazoned on the side of a car at his home. The vehicle was left abandoned in the front yard on Tuesday after the home was raided by FBI agents. Crimo also posted the number all over his social media accounts, where he also shared ominous rap videos that glamorized school shootings.

It's unclear what the significance is  although 47 is the date of July 4th, 7/4, in reverse. The next President will also be the 47th and Crimo is a Trump supporter and previously attended his rallies.

Crimo's parents have not yet addressed the attack.

His father Bob Sr. ran unsuccessfully for mayor against current Mayor Nancy Rotering.

Among those killed at the July 4 parade on Monday were synagogue teacher Jacki Sundheim, a married mother, and grandfather Nicolas Toledo, 78. The four other deceased have not yet been identified.

Another 25 people aged between eight and 85 suffered gunshot wounds  six remain in the hospital.
Boris Johnson was tonight dealt a huge double blow following the resignations of Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid.

But does this mean Mr Johnson's time as Prime Minister is coming to a close? Might he quit himself? Or can he ride through another storm and remain in Number 10?

Here, MailOnline looks at what the consequences could be:

What's happened?

Mr Sunak and Mr Javid both resigned as Cabinet ministers within minutes of each other tonight.

The outgoing Chancellor told the PM that 'we cannot continue like this', adding: 'The public rightly expect Government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously.'

Meanwhile, Mr Javid publicly questioned Mr Johnson's integrity, competence and ability to act in the national interest.

Why did they quit?

The duo left Government amid a fresh Tory sleaze scandal battering Mr Johnson's administration.

Chris Pincher resigned as Tory deputy chief whip last week amid claims he drunkenly groped two men.

And - just hours before Mr Sunak and Mr Javid's departure - Number 10 admitted the PM had been informed of a past complaint about the 'inappropriate' behaviour of Mr Pincher before he appointed him to the whips' office in February.

The admission was the latest in a series of changing positions from Downing Street over what Mr Johnson had known of Mr Pincher's past conduct.

In his resignation letter, Mr Sunak also spoke of 'fundamental' differences between himself and the PM on economic policy.

Boris Johnson's chances of staying in Number 10 have been dealt a huge blow - but is it fatal?

Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid both resigned as Cabinet ministers within minutes of each other to leave the PM teetering on the brink

Will the PM now also have to quit?

Not necessarily.

In fact, the PM's chances of avoiding his own resignation were boosted by the fact that no other Cabinet ministers immediately followed Mr Sunak and Mr Javid out the door.

Many declared their support for Mr Johnson although some - such as Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi - were notably quiet.

With the PM having already seen off huge pressure to quit over the Partygate scandal, it seems unlikely that he will fall on his sword at this moment.

He has even shrugged off the resignation of a Chancellor before when Mr Javid quit the top Treasury role in February 2020.

Ex-PM David Cameron famously referred to Mr Johnson as a 'greased piglet' due to his ability to survive various scrapes.

So many would back him to escape once again.

What will Boris have to do to stay in power?

Most pressingly, the PM will have to find a new Chancellor and a new Health Secretary.

Due to the importance of the position to governing the country, Mr Johnson can't go too long without having someone in charge of the Treasury.

But possible candidates will have to weigh up whether they want to take the role at such a precarious moment in Mr Johnson's premiership.

The PM seems to already be struggling to appoint a new Conservative Party chair after Oliver Dowden's resignation from the position 11 days ago.

If the PM does successfully replace Mr Sunak and Mr Javid, he will then have to set about shoring up support among the rest of his ministerial ranks and Tory MPs.

One dramatic course of action could be Mr Johnson calling a vote of confidence in his leadership himself - thereby daring Conservative MPs to vote him out of office.

Or, if he wants to prevent Tory MPs plotting in Westminster, the PM could try and bring Parliament's summer recess forward and send them off to their constituencies earlier than planned.

Could the PM call a general election?

Another possibility, albeit slim, could be Mr Johnson calling a snap general election in a bid to seek a fresh mandate from the country.

If that were to happen, the calculation in No10 would be that - although increasing numbers of Tory MPs want him gone - voters themselves might still back him to remain in office.

How else will Tory rebels try to force the PM out?

There is already a plot among Tory rebel MPs to change the rules of the Conservative Party in order to force a new vote of no confidence in Mr Johnson.

This is despite the PM having won a contest on his leadership last month that granted him 12 months' immunity from another challenge under current rules.

The rebel plot will see them try to secure key posts on the 1922 Committee, the powerful Tory body in charge of leadership contests, in a battle with PM loyalists.

If they win a majority on the Committee's 18-strong executive, they will be able to force through the rule change they want.

But, with elections to the 1922 executive not due to be held until next week and MPs going their summer break later this month, Mr Johnson could yet be safe from another contest until September.

What about Labour?

Sir Keir Starmer could attempt to force the PM out of Downing Street by tabling a no confidence motion over Mr Johnson's Government in the House of Commons.

If he were to do so, the Labour leader would be calculating that Tory MPs are so fed up with Mr Johnson that they would side with the Opposition and vote to bring down their own Government.

There is a recent precedent for Sir Keir to follow, although Mr Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May, survived a confidence vote in January 2019 after it had been called for by then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
An economist who changed her name to pretend she was married to the civil servant she was stalking has been detained under the Mental Health Act.

Ray Israel-Wilkinson, 33, became obsessed with Alex Wilkinson after working with him at the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport.

She would hang around his office with banners and placards stating: Waiting for my Wilko.

Israel-Wilkinson started a Twitter page with 5,000 followers where she claimed GCHQ was trying to stop them from being together.

A second Twitter account had 104 love songs dedicated to Mr Wilkinson.

She also set up LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram accounts dedicated to her love for him.

Ray Israel-Wilkinson (pictured), 33, was detained under the Mental Health Act and given a restraining order after being convicted of stalking. She had declared her love for Alex Wilkinson after working with him at the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport

When Mr Wilkinson (pictured) looked her up on social media, he found a Twitter page with 5,000 followers where she claimed GCHQ was trying to stop them from being together

In August 2021 Wilkinson (pictured) was sectioned and taken to hospital

Israel-Wilkinson changed her name from Rayner Sultan to give the impression they were married.

In August 2021 she was sent to hospital for treatment but continued to email Mr Wilkinson from the ward.

She stated: No-one will ever love you like I do, and I am in a lot of pain. All I am asking for is one meeting.

She seems fixated with him and desperate to meet up with him, said Tom Heslop, prosecuting.

In an impact statement read to Westminster magistrates court today Mr Wilkinson said the ordeal caused me to suffer from anxiety.

Her email and social media posts have been very personal about me.

I barely know her.

He said Israel-Wilkinson started appearing at his office at a very difficult time, after his girlfriends father had died.

My girlfriend has been very supportive. She worried about my health and well-being, he said.

He said he is also worried about Israel-Wilkinson. I am increasingly concerned for her well-being. I am a compassionate person.

Israel-Wilkinson (pictured) has a second Twitter account with a pinned tweet of 104 love songs dedicated to Mr Wilkinson, the court heard

It also features a pinned video message where she asks Mr Wilkinson to get in touch with her

Israel-Wilkinson's Twitter account is titled 'Alexander Wilkinson is my King' and begs followers to help her get in touch with Mr Wilkinson

Israel-Wilkinsons barrister, Mohammed Monwar Hossain said: There was no threat of violence, no threatening behaviour.

No harm was caused to him physically.

She is a promising young person with good job prospects in this country. She has no previous convictions.

Israel-Wilkinson spoke in court, promising to never to make contact with Mr Wilkinson again.

District Judge Colin Witcher told her: This case makes for deeply unattractive reading.

Your sentence would have been imprisonment had it not been two detailed medical reports in which two doctors jointly take the view that there is an underlying medical condition.

Israel-Wilkinson, of Milton Keynes, Bucks, was detained under Section 37 of the Mental Health Act, 1983.

She was also made the subject of an indefinite restraining order preventing her from contacting Mr Wilkinson either directly or indirectly.

Israel-Wilkinson denied stalking Mr Wilkinson, between 16 June 2021 and 20 October 2021, but was convicted.
China proposes 6 key future directions of Lancang-Mekong Cooperation

Xinhua) 10:33, July 05, 2022

BAGAN, Myanmar, July 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday elaborated on six key future directions of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC).

Wang said during the seventh Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Foreign Ministers' Meeting that China's economy has continued to improve in the long term and is accelerating the construction of a development pattern to promote high-quality development, which will provide greater markets and opportunities for Mekong countries.

He said the current good opportunity of booming regional cooperation should be seized to push the LMC to a new level.

China proposes to focus on promoting cooperation in six areas in the future.

First, strengthen strategic guidance. This includes dovetailing with the development plans of each country to create a demonstration zone for high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, a pioneer zone for the Global Development Initiative and a pilot zone for the Global Security Initiatives.

Second, deepen economic integration. This includes releasing the beneficial effect of the opening of the China-Laos Railway, promoting the construction of the China-Laos-Thailand Railway, deepening cooperation on the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor and building a new model of cooperation on intelligent customs.

The third is to expand agricultural cooperation. This includes building quality and safety demonstration bases of agricultural products, carrying out green ecological grain storage cooperation, ensuring the supply of fertilizers and other agricultural materials, and creating a value chain of special and quality agricultural products.

Fourth, adhere to green development. This includes strengthening cooperation in water resources, environment, meteorology and other fields, exploring the establishment of the Lancang-Mekong disaster management cooperation mechanism, and medium- and long-term forestry cooperation mechanism.

Fifth, promote digital cooperation. This includes strengthening the construction of digital infrastructure and carrying out cooperation in the fields of smart manufacturing, 5G, smart cities, raw material and automobile.

Sixth, closer cultural and people-to-people exchanges. They include organizing a series of events such as video dialogue sessions for leaders of women's organizations in the LMC countries, local government cooperation forums, and world cultural heritage forums.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
Former United States President Donald Trump called Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney a "despicable human being" after the latter hinted that the House Select Committee could make a criminal referral of the former president to the Justice Department.

The Republican businessman's remarks come a day after the congresswoman said in an interview that the former president could be prosecuted over his role in the Capitol Hill riot. Trump claimed that the people of Wyoming hated Cheney and noted that the lawmaker was part of a "fake unselect committee.

Despicable Human Being

The former president also said that even Democrats did not know what Cheney was talking about. He also questioned why the Wyoming Republican did not press charges instead against those that cheated on the election or those who did not properly protect the Capitol.

In his following post, Trump questioned why the committee, which he said was filled with "thugs," did not go after the people who have been rioting, burning down cities, leading the massive crime wave, and killing many in the United States, including drug and human traffickers, as per the New York Post.

The former president's remarks to Cheney, who is one of only two Republicans who are part of the House Select Committee, the other being Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, come after the Wyoming lawmaker accused Trump of potential criminal liability in connection with the unrest during the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill insurrection.

Read Also: Donald Trump Rails Against January 6 Committee Witness Cassidy Hutchinson, Calls Testimony "All Lies"

Cheney said that the Justice Department will have final authority to decide on the possibility of handing Trump criminal charges. The Wyoming Republican has become one of the former president's staunchest critics after she joined 10 other House Republicans on Jan. 13, 2021, to vote for the Republican businessman's impeachment over the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot.

According to Newsweek, the tension between the two Republicans comes as Cheney is facing the herculean task of winning the GOP nomination over Trump should they both choose to run in 2024. In a recent interview, the Wyoming representative acknowledged the possibility of her running for president in the next elections.

Trump vs. Cheney

"I'm obviously very focused on my re-election. I'm very focused on the Jan. 6 committee. I'm very focused on my obligations to do the job that I have now. And I'll make a decision about '24 down the road," said Cheney.

Cheney added that she was thinking less about a decision to run for office and more in terms of as an American. She said that she was wondering how she could make sure that she is doing everything she could to do the right thing to protect the Constitution.

The Wyoming Republican's remarks are also the opposite of the perspective of the committee's chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson. Last month, he said that the committee "does not have authority" to refer criminal charges for Trump.

At the same time, Cheney and other members of the panel appear to diverge from that conclusion and leave room for the possibility of criminally referring the former president to the Justice Department, CBS News reported.



Related Article: Cheney Hints at Possible Multiple Criminal Referrals to Justice Department, Including Trump

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A married father-of-two who left his partner and kids for a Ukrainian refugee who came to live with them has told of the backlash he and his new girlfriend have received.

Tony Garnett, 29, opted to abandon his family to rent a house with refugee Sofiia Karkadym, 22, just 10 days after she arrived to live with them.

Sofiia arrived at Garnett's family home in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in May after fleeing the conflict in her native Ukraine, but within days the pair had developed a connection.

The mother of Garnett's kids, Lorna, ordered Sofiia to leave and accused the IT worker of making passes at her husband, but Garnett decided to pack his bags and leave with his new lodger.

The 29-year-old told The Sun that he and his new love have incurred a torrent of hateful abuse online over their decision, while some people threatened to try and get Sofiia deported.

'[The public] don't have a clue. I am quite thick-skinned... Sofiia is getting abuse, people calling her a home wrecker, and people talking about petitions to deport her.

Garnett also revealed he gave up shift work to become Sofiia's full-time carer after she went partially blind following an eye operation, and said her arrival prompted him to cut off his relationship with Lorna which had long turned sour.

It wasn't as if we had met each other and decided then and there to move out. I was leaving regardless, because I'd had enough of Lorna, who took against Sofiia straight away,' Garnett, who also owns a security company, told Metro.

Sofiia suffered an eye infection in Germany en-route to the UK and now faces a six month recovery from an operation as a result.

Tony Garnett, 29, opted to abandon his family to rent a house with refugee Sofiia Karkadym, 22, just 10 days after she arrived to live with them

The new couple are seen posing for photos in front of Bradford City Hall near their home

Sofiia arrived at Garnett's family home in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in May after fleeing the conflict in her native Ukraine, but within days the pair had developed a connection

Sofiia has now gone partially blind following an eye operation, it has emerged

Sofiia meanwhile insists she is not a 'homewrecker' and did not force Garnett to leave his wife and kids.

In a recent post to her Instagram page, the Ukrainian IT worker laid out what she took to be a few facts of the matter.

She said Garnett's decision to leave his long-term partner was a 'conscious and considered' one.

She again denied that she 'stole' anyone and attacked media coverage of the story which she said was 'clearly exaggerated and written in such a way as to be as dramatic as possible.'

'The first thing I want to say is that I did not steal anyone from the family. It was his conscious and considered decision, the decision of a 29-year-old man who has the right to fall in love, has the right to be happy and has the right to choose who to be with,' Sofiia wrote.

'The second thing I want to cover is the concept of the ''yellow press''. Do you really think that someone can be abducted from a happy family in 10 days?

'Anthony and I are fine.

'Therefore, those who supported me from the very beginning and knew that behind any of my actions there is something real and wonderful - thank you. The rest - you will be disappointed in your judgements ;).'

Meanwhile, Lorna Garnett - who was not married to her children's father but chose to change her last name - told the Sun on Sunday she believes Sofiia set her sights on her man from the start.

Lorna said: 'She didn't care about the devastation that was left behind. Everything I knew has been turned on its head in the space of two weeks.'

The 29-year-old told The Sun that he and his new love have incurred a torrent of hateful abuse online over their decision, while some people threatened to try and get Sofiia deported

Jilted mother Lorna (pictured with ex-partner Tony) shared her anger after she let the Ukrainian woman into her home

Sofiia Karkadym (pictured) arrived in the UK at the start of May after fleeing the war in Ukraine

Sofiia, who is an IT manager, fled the western Ukrainian city of Lviv to escape the war. Pictured: are refugees waiting to board a train at the main railway station in the city of Lviv in February

Lorna told the newspaper she had reservations about the scheme but felt it was the right thing to do after seeing the 'terrifying' situation in Ukraine on the news.

She said: 'I decided it was the right thing to do to put a roof over someone's head and help them when they were in desperate need.

'And this is how Sofiia has repaid me for giving her a home.'

The family had taken Sofiia in after she fled Western Ukraine amid the Russian invasion, with Tony Garnett telling The Sun he 'wanted to do the right thing' and that she was the first person to get in touch on a Facebook page where he offered to house a refugee under the Government's scheme.

Sofiia flew into Manchester on May 4 after waiting for weeks in Berlin for her UK visa to be approved.

Garnett said he and his guest quickly developed a connection, and while his six-year-old and three-year-old daughters also took a liking to her, his partner of 10 years did not.

As the days passed Sofiia would join Garnett at the gym and they would talk in his car, while at home they grew physically closer.

'At home I realised we were finding excuses to touch and brush against each other, it was very flirtatious but nothing more than that happened at that stage,' he said.

'Although it was fairly innocent it was causing arguments. I can understand that. When I got in at night Sofiia would be the one who had made a meal for me to try.

'Lorna was never that enthusiastic about having a refugee in our home because it meant the girls had to move into one room.'

Sofiia Karkadym said she 'fancied' Tony as soon as she saw him and they are living their own 'love story'

Just 10 days after moving in with the Garnett family, Sofiia (pictured) and lover Tony moved out

The IT manager (pictured) is now renting a property in Bradford with Garnett after he left his partner and kids

Things came to a head after an explosive row between the women left Sofia in tears and saying she no longer felt like she could live in the same house.

Garnett said 'something inside me clicked' and he told his long-term partner: 'If she's going, I'm going'.

The pair then packed their bags and moved in with his mother and father, but have now found a new property to rent in Bradford.

After his relationship of 10 years ended in the space of just 10 days, Tony said he feels bad and that Lorna is not to blame.

'I am so sorry for what Lorna is going through, this was not her fault and it was not about anything she did wrong.

'We never set out to do this, it wasn't planned and we didn't mean to hurt anyone.'
Six of the seven people killed in the Highland Park Fourth of July massacre were identified by authorities on Tuesday.

The victims include Steve Straus, 88; Katherine Goldstein, 64; Jacki Sondheim, 63; Nicholas Toledo Zaragoza, 78; and husband and wife Irina and Kevin McCarthy, 35 and 37.

The McCarthys leave behind a two-year-old son, Aiden, who was found wandering alone in the aftermath of the shooting.

The death toll rose to seven after one of the 47 injured died in hospital on Tuesday afternoon, a day after 21-year-old Robert Crimo opened fire on the parade in Highland Park, an affluent suburban city just north of Chicago. The injured count now stands at 46.

The release of most of the victims' names comes after a doctor who rushed into the carnage described the shooting victims as being 'blown up' by the attacker's high-powered weapon.

Dr. David Baum, a long time obstetrician in Highland Park, was attending the parade with his wife and children to watch his two-year-old grandson participate. When the shots rang out and others fled, he ran into the fray to try to help the victims.

In an interview with CNN, Baum described seeing victims with 'wartime' and 'unspeakable' injuries.

'The people who were gone were blown up by that gunfire,' Baum said, 'The horrific scene of some of those bodies is unspeakable for the average person.'

'Having been a physician, I've seen things in ERs, you know, you do see lots of blood. But the bodies were literally - some of the bodies - there was an evisceration injury from the power of this gun and the bullets.'

'There was another person who had an unspeakable head injury. Unspeakable,' he said to CNN.

Katherine Goldstein, pictured left, was among seven people killed following Monday's July 4 massacre in Highland Park, Illinois

Steve Straus, 88 (right) was among the seven people who were killed during the Highland Park Fourth of July parade massacre

Irina and Kevin McCarthy, 35 and 37, were both killed in the massacre. Their two-year-old son, Aiden, was found wandering alone in the aftermath of the shooting

Nicolas Toledo, 76, had not wanted to attend the July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois, on Monday, his granddaughter told the New York Times. But because of his disabilities that restricted him to a wheelchair, and his family's insistence of going, he obliged

Baum also described the 'horror' of a community changed forever in thirty quick seconds.

'What I saw was just families' lives forever changed because they were walking down with their kids and their scooters and somebody who shouldn't have had access to a high-powered rifle got up on a rooftop and decided to do what he wanted to do.

'And the injuries that I saw - I never served - but those are wartime injuries. Those are what are seen in victims of war, not victims at a parade,' Baum said.

Baum said there were at least three doctors, a nurse, and a nurse practitioner who joined him in treating victims. He recalled paramedics covering up victims who they knew were dead at the scene.

'The people that died at the scene - and pretty much they all died at the scene - the paramedics walked around covered them up and said 'black', I guess they have a code for 'dead, cannot try and resuscitate.''

Dr. David Baum (right), was attending the parade with his wife and children to watch his two-year-old grandson participate. He told CNN that the victims were 'blown up' by the attacker's high-powered weapon

One of the victims identified, Jacki Sundheim, a longtime teacher at the North Shore Congregation Israel synagogue, was shot and killed by the gunman, the synagogue announced in an email to congregants Monday night.

'Jacki was a lifelong congregant of NSCI and a cherished member of NSCI's staff team for decades,' the synagogue wrote in an email that announced her murder 'Jacki's work, kindness and warmth touched us all.'

Sundheim, was the Reform synagogue's events and b'nei mitzvah coordinator, according to its website. She is survived by her husband Bruce and daughter Leah, the Times of Israel reported.

'There are no words sufficient to express the depth of our grief for Jacki's death,' the synagogue added.

Another victim, Nicolas Toledo, 76, was a beloved grandfather from Mexico. His family said he was shot in the head as he sat in his wheelchair, his blood splattering on them.

Toledo had not wanted to attend the parade in Highland Park, Illinois, his granddaughter told the New York Times.

But because of his disabilities that restricted him to a wheelchair, and his family's insistence of going, he obliged.

The ages of the injured ranged from eight to 85-years-old. The area has a large Jewish community, but police have not yet shared a possible motive for Monday's slaughter.

The shooting began less than 15 minutes after the parade started. After an hours-long manhunt, police arrested Crimo.

Toledo is pictured surrounded by family. Toledo, a Mexican national, who held duel citizenships in Mexico and the United States, had moved back to Highland Park a few months ago at the urging of his family members

Dramatic photographs from the scene show the suspected mass-murderer - who posted creepy clips about shooting massacres online - being pinned to the ground face-down by police.

Cops say Crimo opened fire from a rooftop, into a crowd who at first confused the sound of gunshots with Independence Day fireworks.

The suspect has been named as 21-year-old Robert 'Bobby' Crimo III. He is from of the Highland Park area

The moment showing Crimo's arrest after an hours-long manhunt that involved local and federal law enforcement

Toledo was killed Monday when a gunman opened fire on a parade from the roof of an Highland Park, Ill. outdoor outfitting store. The gunman has been arrested

'We were all in shock,' Toledo's granddaughter Xochil Toledo told The Times. 'We thought it was part of the parade. Then we realized our grandfather was hit. We saw blood and everything splattered onto us.'

Family members say Toledo was shot three times. Two other people in the family were also shot, she said, but their injuries were non life-threatening.

Toledo, a Mexican national who held dual citizenships in Mexico and the United States, had moved back to Highland Park a few months ago at the urging of his family members.

'We brought him over here so he could have a better life,' Xochil said. 'His sons wanted to take care of him and be more in his life, and then this tragedy happened.'

'We all threw ourselves to the ground,' Toledo's daughter, Josefina Toledo, told The Daily Beast. 'My dad, since it's difficult for him to walk he was sitting on his walker and he was hit in his back and in his head.'

She said the parade was a family tradition and the whole family attended. But the celebration ended when shots rang out.

The boyfriend of one of her nieces was also shot and is in stable condition.

The scene at Highland Park on Monday after the July 4 parade emptied out amid reports of gunshots. Police have not yet confirmed that anyone was shot

The Chicago Teacher's Union shared on Twitter that Zoe Kolpack, a teacher at Dever Elementary, had been shot in the attack. Her husband, her father and her brother in law were also shot, according to a GoFundMe page.

A family friend wrote on the page that all four are in the hospital undergoing various surgeries for their injuries. Their conditions are unknown.

Little is known about the other victims at this time, but the Lake County coroner has confirmed the five people pronounced dead at the scene were adults.

A Chicago teacher, Zoe Kolpack, and her husband Stephen Kolpack, are among those still being treated for their injuries. The couple's two young children were at the parade but were not hurt

Eduardo Uvaldo is believed to be another victim of the shooting. According to a GoFundMe page made by his granddaughter, Uvaldo was shot in the back of the head

Another victim is believed to be Eduardo Uvaldo, who according to a GoFundMe page was first shot in the arm, and then in the back of the head. Uvaldo's family has written on social media that he is in critical condition.

'My grandpa is a kind, loving, and funny man who did not deserve this. We pray for a positive outcome, but the doctors says the chances are low,' the GoFundMe page read.

Eduardo's wife, Maria, was hit in the head by fragments, and his grandson received a gunshot wound to the arm but is stable. Eduardo's granddaughter, who wrote the page, said the family attended the parade every Fourth of July.

The parade had only begun 14 minutes before the gunman opened fire from a rooftop along the route. The shooting caused a stampede of people who flocked into stores and cars. The parade was scheduled to last for an hour

Horror on Independence Day: A police officer bows his head in grief next to abandoned strollers and chairs after a shooting that killed six people in Highland Park, Ill.

Strollers and chairs were abandoned at the scene after the shots rang out at 10:14 a.m., just 10 minutes after the parade began

The aftermath of the scene in Highland Park on Monday after a shooter opened fire on the parade. Chairs and strollers were abandoned by attendees

Law enforcement officers help evacuate people from an Anthropologie store in Highland Park, Ill., on Monday, July 4, after a shooter fired on the northern suburb's Fourth of July parade

Police officers cross under police tape at the scene of a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade

Law enforcement officers investigate the scene of a mass shooting at a 4th of July celebration and parade in Highland Park, Ill., July 4. A gunman opened fire as people gathered to watch a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., killing at least six people and injuring dozens

The shooter is said to have opened fire from the rooftop of a local business.

'It looks like access to the roof via a ladder in an alley was unsecured,' Sgt. Chris Covelli, of the Lake County Major Crime Take Force, revealed. The ladder was attached to the building.

Witnesses told how they saw children being picked off in the crowd.

'All of a sudden everyone behind us started running. I looked back, probably 20 feet away from me, I saw a girl shot and killed. I saw her die. I've never seen anything like this,' a woman, who gave her name only as Zoe, told CNN.

All of the confirmed deaths so far are those of adults.

Many bystanders described multiple rounds being fired in quick succession, alleging they first confused the sound of gunshots with Independence Day fireworks.

'Everyone thought it was fireworks,' Zoe explained. 'My dad thought it was part of the show, and I'm like, 'Dad, no... something is wrong.' And I grabbed him. And I looked back at him, and then it was just a sea of panic, and people just falling and falling.'

Jeff Leon, who also attended the parade said it 'sounded like a string of firecrackers going off inside of a big metal trash bin.'

He claims he heard maybe 20 or 30 pops before he saw people fall to the ground and officers starting to move in.

'After about 10 minutes of this sort of duck and hide, duck and hide, people were sort of calmly walking away from the scene,' he said.

'I saw multiple lifeless bodies, people in a pool of blood,' added one father, who survived with his kids. He said he tossed his son in a dumpster.

Children taking part in the parade in Highland Park ran for their lives when they heard shots ring out

Panicked paradegoers at the scene on Monday. There were loud sounds from the crowd that some said were gunshots

The parade on Monday in Highland Park was attended by dozens of locals who sat on the sidewalk cheering as bands marched past

Highland Park, a suburban city with a population of 30,000, is renowned for being one of Chicago's most affluent suburbs.

NBA legend Michael Jordan owns a mansion in the area, and it's also where the enormous mansion featured in 'Home Alone' is situated.

The city's residents are largely families and there is a significant Jewish population in the area, but there is no suggestion the attack was anti-Semitic.

Among those who were participating in the parade was a Hasidic Jewish band.

One jarring video showed them slowly making their way down the parade route on a float while those ahead of them - suddenly aware of the danger - ran in the opposite direction.

Nineteen-year-old real estate student Rainan Eli saw the shooting unfold from the window of his apartment on Central Avenue and Second Street.

'I was just sitting studying for some class I'm taking and watching the parade. I saw lots of people running and, at first, everybody assumed it was fireworks being the Fourth,' he told DailyMail.com.

Eli pulled out his cell phone and recorded heart-wrenching video of people running and seeking shelter as shots being fired could be heard in the background.

He said two other residents of his apartment building came downstairs with him and gave the 15 to 20 people in the vestibule drinks.

Debbie Glickman, a Highland Park resident, said she was on a parade float with co-workers and the group was prepared to turn onto the main route when she saw people running away from the area

First responders work the scene of a shooting at a parade on July 4 in Highland Park, Ill. Reports indicate at least six people were killed and more than 20 injured in the mass shooting

Law enforcement search after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade in downtown Highland Park, a Chicago suburb on Monday

Law enforcement search as they walk into a building after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade in downtown Highland Park, a Chicago suburb on Monday

First responders work the scene of a shooting at a Fourth of July parade on July 4, 2022 in Highland Park, Ill. Reports indicate at least five people were killed and 19 injured in the mass shooting

Debbie Glickman, a Highland Park resident, said she was on a parade float with co-workers and the group was prepared to turn onto the main route when she saw people running away from the area.

'People started saying 'There's a shooter, there's a shooter, there is a shooter' ' Glickman said. 'So we just ran. We just ran. It's like mass chaos down there. I'm so freaked out.'

'We can't believe this happened in our little town.'

Matt Phillip, 36, director of tasting room operating at Lynfred Winery, told DailyMail.com: 'We were open early for the parade and upon hearing what sounded like fireworks, we noticed that people started running down the street.'

'We opened our doors so they could either seek shelter within our facility or exit through our back-alley door.'

Highland Park is around 30 miles north of the city of Chicago and is a quiet, suburban area

Unlike Chicago, which has one of the worst gun violence records in the country, violent crime in Highland Park is almost unheard of.

The average price of a home in Highland Park was $714,000 in April 2022 and the city has a population of around 30,000.

The town's mayor, Nancy Rotering, spoke briefly at a press conference along with law enforcement on Monday to share her condolences with the families of those killed.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted: 'The tragedy unfolding in Highland Park is devastating.

'I have been in contact with Mayor Rotering and have offered our support, and the Chicago Police Department is providing assistance.

'We grieve with the families of the deceased and injured as well as the entire Highland Park community.

'Law enforcement is working hard to bring the shooter into custody. If anyone has information, we encourage them to call 911 and report what you know.'

Law enforcement search in downtown Highland Park, a Chicago suburb, after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade

Law enforcement search in downtown Highland Park, a Chicago suburb, after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade

A gunman opened fire as people gathered to watch a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., killing at least six people and injuring dozens

Law enforcement officers look over a park near the scene of a mass shooting at a Fourth of July celebration and parade in Highland Park, Ill.

President Biden - who has been calling for gun reform - issued a statement on Monday afternoon. He said he had given his support to the governor of Illinois and the Highland Park mayor and he celebrated his recent passing of a gun control bill

President Biden - who has been calling for gun reform - issued a statement on Monday afternoon.

He said he had given his support to the governor of Illinois and the Highland Park mayor, and he celebrated his recent passing of a gun control bill.

'I recently signed the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost thirty years into law, which includes actions that will save lives,' Biden said. 'But there is so much more work to do, and I'm not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence.'

Governor JB Pritzker also addressed the violence, saying: 'There are no words for the kind of monster who lies in wait and fires into a crowd of families with children celebrating a holiday with their community.

'There are no words for the kind of evil that robs our neighbors of their hopes, their dreams, their futures.

'There are no words I can offer to lift the pain of those they live behind. I will stand firm with Illinoisans and Americans: we must - and we will - end this plague of gun violence.'
The White House said that Joe Biden stands by his comments that he never spoke with his son Hunter about his business dealings despite DailyMail.com revealing a voicemail where he did just that.

White House Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that she would not comment on anything regarding Hunter Biden's damning laptop when asked about the 2018 recording of the president discussing his son's deal with Chinese oil giants CEFC.

'From this podium, I am not going to talk about alleged materials from the laptop,' Jean-Pierre repeatedly shot back at Fox News' Peter Doocy during her daily briefing.

When further pushed on the contents of voicemail and if the administration is being open with the American people by Real Clear News' Philip Wegmann, Jean-Pierre said: 'I cannot comment on any materials from the laptop.'

This time, Biden's top spokesperson dropped the 'alleged.'

Wegmann pressed Jean-Pierre on whether Biden's silence on Hunter and his foreign business dealings is consistent with his promise to 'always level' with the American public.

It is not clear if Jean-Pierre is saying that she cannot comment on the issue for legal reasons or otherwise or if she is strategically choosing not to speak on the matter.

Biden has consistently claimed he has no involvement with his adult son's international business, despite the voicemail clearly showing otherwise.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that 'What the president said stands' when asked if he did speak to his son Hunter about foreign business dealings after a voicemail proves he did. Pictured: Joe and Hunter hold Beau Biden Jr. while watching July 4 fireworks from the White House on Monday night

'Why is there a voicemail of the president talking to his son about his overseas business dealings if the president has said he's never spoken to his son about his overseas business dealings?' Doocy asked, referencing the voicemail uncovered by DailyMail.com.

'What the president said stands. So, if that's what the president said, that is what stands,' Jean-Pierre said.

Jean-Pierre would not answer Doocy when pushed on if the voice on the voicemail with Hunter was that of the president.

'I refer you to his son's representatives,' she reiterated.

Republican Rep. James Comer, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform who will take over investigations if the GOP wins back the majority in November, said he wasn't surprised by the latest non-answers by the administration.

He told DailyMail.com: 'Its no surprise Biden officials refuse to answer basic questions about Joe Bidens involvement with Hunter Bidens shady foreign business dealings.

'Joe Biden claims he never talked to Hunter about these business deals, but evidence continues to mount that Joe Biden is the Big Guy and benefited from the Biden familys transactions. When Republicans take back the House, the Biden Administration wont be allowed to keep hiding information from the American people. Well use the gavel to get answers

The voicemail obtained by DailyMail.com and published on June 27 reveals Biden spoke with Hunter about his business dealings with a Chinese criminal that his son dubbed the 'spy chief of China.'

Biden has repeatedly denied personally and through his press secretary that he ever talked about Hunter's foreign business with Hunter  despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

In the voicemail left on Hunter's iPhone, the evidence has come from POTUS' own mouth.

Joe called Hunter on December 12, 2018 saying that he wanted to talk to him after reading a New York Times story about Hunter's dealings with the Chinese oil giant CEFC.

Files on Hunter's abandoned laptop previously disclosed by DailyMail.com show that he struck a deal with the Chinese company worth millions of dollars after touting his family connections.

The Times' 2018 story pointed out CEFC's chairman Ye Jianming had been arrested in China and his top lieutenant Patrick Ho had been convicted in the US for bribing African officials to help Iran evade oil sanctions.

It revealed that Ye had met with Hunter at a Miami hotel in 2017 to discuss 'a partnership to invest in American infrastructure and energy deals.'

'I cannot comment on any materials from the laptop,' Jean-Pierre said  it is not clear if she is choosing not to speak on the topic or if she legally is unable

Joe Biden called Hunter in December 2018 saying he wanted to talk to him about a New York Times story on Hunter's dealings with the Chinese oil giant CEFC, a new voicemail reveals

The Times' 2018 story pointed out CEFC's chairman Ye Jianming had been arrested in China and his lieutenant Patrick Ho(right) had been convicted in the US of bribery. Hunter accidentally recorded himself referring to Ho as the 'spy chief of China'

The Times reported that when Ho was arrested, he called Joe's brother Jim Biden  who told the newspaper that he believed the call was meant for Hunter.

The Gray Lady said it was 'unclear whether Hunter Biden struck any business deals with CEFC', not knowing at the time the depths of his connections with his Chinese business partners.

After seeing the story online, Joe called Hunter and left a voicemail.

'Hey pal, it's Dad. It's 8:15 on Wednesday night. If you get a chance just give me a call. Nothing urgent. I just wanted to talk to you,' he said.

'I thought the article released online, it's going to be printed tomorrow in the Times, was good. I think you're clear. And anyway if you get a chance give me a call, I love you.'

The message flies in the face of the president's repeated denials that he ever discussed Hunter's overseas business dealings with his son.

The newly uncovered voicemail came from a backup of Hunter's iPhone XS, stored on his abandoned laptop.

After the Times' story was published, Hunter's friends texted him teasing about Jim's indiscreet comment to the newspaper that linked Hunter to Patrick Ho.

Devon Archer, Hunter's longtime best friend and business partner who is now serving a year in jail for defrauding a Native American tribe, wrote to him the next day: 'Nice quote from uncle jimmy. I hope you thanked him for that.'

'Took it totally out of the context atctually (sic) the text itself that it was said in,' Hunter replied. 'Either way yeah I'm delighted.'

It turned out Jim was telling the truth. After Ho was arrested, he contacted Hunter and paid the president's son a $1million retainer to represent him as his attorney.

The Times reported that when Ho was arrested, he called Joe's brother Jim Biden (right)  who told the newspaper that he believed the call was meant for Hunter

After the Times' story was published, Hunter's friend Devon Archer texted him teasing about Jim's indiscreet comment to the newspaper that linked Hunter to Patrick Ho. 'Took it totally out of the context atctually (sic) the text itself that it was said in,' Hunter replied. 'Either way yeah I'm delighted'

A copy of a FISA warrant obtained by DailyMail.com reveals that federal agents were monitoring Ho as a potential spy for China.

And while holed up in a hotel room on a bender with a prostitute filming amateur sex tapes, Hunter accidentally recorded himself referring to Ho as the 'spy chief of China'.

'I have another New York Times reporter calling about my representation of the, literally, Dr. Patrick Ho  the f***ing spy chief of China who started the company that my partner [Jianming], who is worth $323 billion, founded and is now missing,' Hunter told his female friend in the May 11, 2018 recording.

'The richest man in the world is missing, who was my partner.'

Hunter's claim that Ho was the 'spy chief of China' - or a senior Chinese intelligence officer - has not been proven.

Joe Biden entertained Mexican billionaires Carlos Slim and Miguel Aleman Velasco - his son Hunter's business associates - in the vice president's office in 2014

Amid all the shocking messages involving Joe Biden, possibly the most important email of the 154,000 on Hunter's abandoned laptop is the infamous 'big guy' email, suggesting that the president may have been involved in, and set to profit from, an alleged Chinese influence operation

Joe's voicemail to Hunter about the Times article is the latest in an overwhelming body of evidence suggesting that he lied about not talking foreign business with his son.

In another example, the then-vice president attended a Washington, DC dinner with Hunter's Ukrainian, Kazakh and Russian business associates in 2015.

Hunter told one of his guests in an email that the dinner was 'ostensibly to discuss food security', but was in fact an opportunity to introduce his potential clients and partners to his powerful father.

The White House at first denied Joe's attendance, then when photographs emerged of Joe there, it claimed it was only a brief stop by.

Joe also met another of Hunter's Chinese business partners, Jonathan Li, when he took his son on a 2013 Air Force 2 trip to China, and entertained Hunter's Mexican billionaire business partners Carlos Slim and Miguel Aleman Velasco at the White House and the VP's official residence.

Emails on Hunter's abandoned laptop published by DailyMail.com show that Hunter and Joe shared a bank account and paid each other's bills, while Hunter's business partner Eric Schwerin did Joe's taxes.

The White House declined to comment to DailyMail.com.
This is the daring moment a couple stood up to a mugger armed with a fake pistol and beat him down in Brazil.

A building surveillance camera in the Sao Paulo city of Varzea Paulista recorded the man and the woman walking along a sidewalk when they were suddenly approached by the suspect aboard a motorcycle outside a residence.

The mugger engaged the couple in a quick conversation before he reached for a gun inside his jacket.

A mugger in Brazil chats with his target before the couple pummeled him to the ground and held him until the police arrived last Friday

A man reaches for the mugger's fake pistol while his partner reaches forward before they were able to knock the perp to the ground and beat him until the police arrived to make the arrest

The man immediately rushed towards him and reached for the gun as his partner jumped in to help him disarm the thief.

The couple then knocked the perp to the ground as the man pistol-whipped him on the head while the woman grabbed the helmet and bashed his head.

The thug could be seen extending his arms in an attempt to stop the beating.

The mugger is pinned to the ground and beaten moments after he tried to use a fake gun to rob a couple outside a home in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Friday

A Brazilian couple stood up to the mugger in front of a home in the southeastern Brazilian state of Sao Paulo on Friday and beat him down for several minutes

A mugger aboard a motorcycle approached a couple in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Friday before he was beaten when he attempted to pull out a fake pistol in order to rob them. Police arrested the thief, who was hospitalized as a result of the beating. He is expected to be taken to a local jail once he recovers from his injuries

However, the thumping continued as the couple dragged him across the street and took turns hitting him.

They kept him restrained until the police arrived and placed him in custody.

He was taken to a local medical facility for treatment to the injuries he sustained and was expected to be transferred to a local jail as soon as he is medically cleared.

The motorcycle that was used by the suspect had been recently reported stolen in the nearby state of Campinas.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, whose government has intensified efforts to combat street gangs, lauded the couple's bravery.

"The power of love," he tweeted along with an emoji of a heart.
A historic township has been completely cut off as NSW's latest flood crisis worsens, now punishing areas north of Sydney.

Severe weather warnings remained in place as Sydney woke up to its fifth consecutive morning of relentless rain after more than a month's worth since Saturday.

The number of residents issued with evacuation orders and warnings has soared to more than 55,000 with parts of the Central Coast and Hunter now isolated.

All roads in and out of the Hunter town of Broke were cut off shortly after 5pm on Tuesday.

Residents were warned that once flood water began to inundate the area, road access, water, sewerage, power, phones and internet could be lost.

NSW RFS crews assisted the SES with the doorknocking and evacuating families after Tuggerah Lakes reached major flood levels

The NSW Hunter town of Broke is now completely cut of by floodwaters

SES crews spent the night wading through chest-high water throughout the town while the local RFS rescued two people from a floating car after they attempted to drive across a flooded bridge.

Residents in nearby Combo, Glenridding, Dunolly, Whittingham and Scotts Flat were also ordered to leave as river levels at Bulga have reached their highest in 70 years.

Singleton could be next to be cut off, where the Lower Hunter River could reach 13.80 metres with further rises possible, the Bureau of Meteorology warned.

'The heaviest rainfall has cleared the Hunter catchment, however further rainfall is forecast for Wednesday, which may cause further river level rises and prolonged flooding,' the bureau said.

This situation is being closely monitored, and revised predictions will be provided as necessary.

It comes after hundreds of Central Coast residents were ordered to leave as floodwaters inundated Tuggerah Lake at Long Jetty putting 19 suburbs at risk.

The township of Yarramalong along the Wyong Rover was also cut off.

The NSW mid north coast is now on flood alert as drenching rains that lashed Sydney move north.

Showers and possible storms are forecast for the Northern Rivers region, which had the most devastating floods in its history only a few months ago.

For the Mid North Coast, the Hunter and parts of the Northern Tablelands the rain will add to flooding already being experienced.

Some parts of of the NSW Central Coast remain cut off. Pictured are fuel and supplies being transported to stranded residents in Yarramalong

Homes in the township of Broke (pictured) were inundated by floodwaters on Tuesday night

Rain in Sydney has eased but roads remain cut off, debris floating in floodwaters and businesses completely submerged.

River levels have continued to rise, with the Hawkesbury River at North Richmond reaching more than 14 metres.

Major flooding is still occurring at North Richmond, Windsor, Sackville, Lower Portland and Wiseman's Ferry, with more rain expected early Wednesday morning.

About 50,000 people have been given evacuation orders or warnings across NSW, and several major flood alerts are in place.

The bureau said parts of the state received more than 700mm of rain over four days.

Federal Emergency Management Minister Murray Watt said NSW was not out of danger yet, as a natural disaster was declared.

'The message is hopefully the worst has passed but no one knows that for sure,' Senator Watt told reporters.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet will visit the flood devastated suburb of Windsor (pictured) on Wednesday after its fourth flood in 18 months

A boat is the only way in and out of Windsor, where streets have become rivers

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet on a visit to deluged parts of southern and western Sydney that have experienced four floods in the past 18 months.

Meanwhile, Sydney commuters are urged to avoid non-essential travel where possible as the rain eases.

'At Milperra, Newbridge Road has reopened following its closure between Henry Lawson Drive and Governor Macquarie Drive,' the Transport Management Centre advised.

'At Oxford Falls, Oxford Falls Road has also reopened.

'As well, Mulgoa Road has reopened from Mulgoa to Glenmore Park, but remains closed between Wallacia and Mulgoa.'

Children are seen on kayaks in floodwaters which have inundated the NSW town of Yarramalong on the Central Coast
U.S. Air Force F-35A stealth fighters arrived in South Korea on Tuesday on their first publicly announced visit since 2017 as the allies and nuclear-armed North Korean engage in an escalating cycle of displays of weapons.

Joint military drills had been publicly scaled back in recent years, first in 2018 because of efforts to engage diplomatically with North Korea and later because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, who took office in May, has sought to increase public displays of allied military power, including exercises, to counter a record number of missile tests conducted by North Korea this year.

The United States has sent F-35A stealth fighters to South Korea for military exercises in a show of force to North Korea

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol (left) who took office in May, has sought to increase public displays of allied military power. He shakes hands with President Joe Biden (center left) during Biden's trip to South Korea in May. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (right) has been testing missiles again and may try to test a nuclear weapon

North Korea also appears to be preparing to test a nuclear weapon for the first time since 2017.

The six F-35As will be in South Korea for 10 days, South Korea's Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

'The purpose of this deployment is to demonstrate the strong deterrent and joint defence posture of the U.S.-ROK alliance while at the same time improving the interoperability between the ROK and U.S. Air Force,' the ministry said, referring to South Korea by the initials of its official name.

The aircraft deployed from Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) said in a statement.

A USFK spokesperson said it was the first public deployment of the 5th generation fighter aircraft to South Korea since December 2017, but did not elaborate whether there had been unannounced visits.

A former senior U.S. official previously told Reuters that during diplomatic talks many drills had in fact continued but had not been publicized.

South Korea has purchased 40 of its own F-35As from the United States, and is looking to buy another 20.

The South Korean air force F-35As will be among the aircraft participating in the joint drills, USFK said.

North Korea has denounced joint exercises as well as South Korea's weapons purchases as an example of 'hostile policies' that prove U.S. offers to negotiate without preconditions are hollow.
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The timing was lethal. At the very moment the TV channels were running a pre-recorded interview with Boris Johnson, in which the Prime Minister was begging his peers and the country for his political life, Rishi Sunak released his damning resignation letter.

Only minutes earlier, Health Secretary Sajid Javid  Sunaks predecessor as Chancellor  had also quit. One bullet to wound the boss. Another to finish him off.

Sunak and Javid are friends. Last night, few believed the claims that the timing of their double resignation was pure coincidence.

These sensational manoeuvres, later bolstered by Tory vice-chairman Bim Afolami quitting the Government live on television, capped what was surely the most dramatic day in Parliament since the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher in 1990.

Last night, in the tearooms, bars and terraces of the Commons, and in the maze of corridors across the Palace of Westminster, there was only one question. Is it all over for Boris?

Echoing Oscar Wilde, one veteran Tory quipped to me: To lose a Health Secretary is unfortunate. To lose a Chancellor a few minutes later is disastrous. Its over.

As the Mail went to press, Downing Street was struggling to find a senior minister to appear on the airwaves this morning to defend the PM, with Sunaks deputy Simon Clarke refusing to do so.

Another minister told me: In the past 24 hours, the mood among my colleagues has darkened considerably. People are sick of being sent out to defend things that are indefensible.

The day had started badly  and soon got worse.

Mr Johnson returned to Downing Street on Tuesday evening as he struggles to find a way to survive in office

In his resignation letter (left), Mr Sunak told the PM that 'we cannot continue like this'. Meanwhile, Mr Javid (right) publicly questioned Mr Johnson's integrity, competence and ability to act in the national interest

In a hint of what was to come, Sajid Javid looked grim and had his head bowed. He resigned as Health Secretary this evening

The Prime Minister told his sombre top team they must 'help people through the current difficult times'

Most likely contenders to Boris's crown should he go after Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak's shock resignations Boris Johnson's leadership faces a fresh leadership crisis tonight after Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid dramatically quit the cabinet. Possible candidates to succeed him if he is forced from office come from all wings of the party, from the libertarian right to the One Nation Tory centre. Among the front-runners are Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and one of her predecessors in the post, Jeremy Hunt, both of whom have made little secret of their desire to take the top job. Other candidates expected to join a leadership race include Defence Secretary Ben Wallace - who like Truss is very popular with grassroots Tories due to his tough position over the Ukraine war. And outsiders could include people like Tom Tugendhat, the former British Army officer and chairman of the foreign affairs committee, and Mark Harper, the former chief whip turned critic of the PM's handling of the Covid pandemic. Advertisement

No10 had desperately hoped to begin the week by moving on from the toxic headlines surrounding the Chris Pincher affair: specifically, what Boris did or did not know about the allegations of drunken sexual misconduct against the Tory MP when he made him deputy chief whip in February.

As dawn broke, Deputy PM and Justice Secretary Dominic Raab seen as a safe pair of hands in interviews  was readying himself to appear on the airwaves and hammer home the Governments message about its efforts to help with the rising cost of living.

But at 7.30am, Lord McDonald released his bombshell letter, in which he claimed Boris had not only known about Pinchers alleged previous behaviour, he had been briefed in person about it.

In words that will surely enter the political history books, McDonald published his letter online, saying: This morning, I have written to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards  because No10 keep changing their story and are still not telling the truth.

It was just 20 minutes before Raab was set to be interviewed on BBC Ones flagship Breakfast programme, watched by millions. As the interview with presenter Jon Kay progressed, the usually slick and unflappable Raab, an Oxford- and Cambridge-educated lawyer, was left floundering as he insisted: It was news to me that the Prime Minister was briefed on the specific complaint that was made and the outcome.

Raab and the PM are believed to have spoken about the Pincher affair during the previous 24 hours  but it seems that Boris did not furnish him with all the facts.

Raab was flabbergasted by the letter, says a colleague. And it showed in his answers.

The deputy PM can now be added to the long list of ministers sent in to bat for Boris with insufficient information, and becoming tarnished as a result. To say he is livid is an understatement, another source told me last night.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing another leadership crisis after Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak both resigned in shock fashion

Mr Johnson chairing Cabinet on Tuesday, with Mr Javid and Mr Sunak beside him, before their resignations were announced

Boris Johnson later told Sajid Javid he was 'sorry' to receive his resignation letter as health secretary

Mr Johnson responded to Sunak's departure praising his 'outstanding service'

Who's staying and who's gone from the Government? QUIT Rishi Sunak Sajid Javid Nicola Richards Jonathan Gullis Saqib Bhatti Virginia Crosbie Andrew Murrison NOT QUITTING Dominic Raab Ben Wallace Priti Patel Liz Truss Brandon Lewis Michael Gove Jacob Rees-Mogg Therese Coffey Nadine Dorries Nadhim Zahawi Michelle Donelan ON WATCH George Eustice Advertisement

The situation deteriorated only minutes later in the prestigious 8.10am spot on BBC Radio 4s Today programme, when McDonald himself was invited on air to twist the knife even further.

Cynics argued that the letters appearance just before the Today interview hinted at collusion between the BBC and the diplomat: it was a double-punch likely to inflict maximum political damage on the PM.

If that was the plan, then the days events showed how well it was executed.

On Today, Lord McDonald delivered his most devastating line: Telling the truth and crossing your fingers at the same time and hoping that people are not too forensic in their subsequent questioning... is not working.

Glued to their radios, loyalist MPs tell me they were aghast. In No10, senior officials, too, listened with mounting horror: some even groaned audibly.

One Westminster insider said: It was McDonald that really did for him  it was a live political assassination on Radio 4. It was pure Geoffrey Howe killing Mrs Thatcher, but in a 2022 guise.

The days agenda had shifted. Operation Save Big Dog, which Pincher himself had been credited with co-ordinating in January this year during the Partygate saga, was to be reinvoked with an ever-diminishing cast of supporters.

At 8.30am, Boris opened a strategy meeting with his chief of staff Steve Barclay, deputy chief of staff David Canzini and Guto Hari, his press secretary. The cost of living was top of the agenda  but Im told that this occupied little of the mens conversation.

Yet again, it was clear that the priority was to dig Boris out of another self-dug pit. The attempted solution  not that it worked, of course, amid the double resignation  was Boriss interview for the BBCs News at Six that evening, in which the PM would apologise for having appointed Pincher to the Government. By 10am, when the Cabinet met, the grim expressions on ministers faces said it all. Some of those present tell me there was a palpable sense of anger and disbelief in the room.

One minister says: It was a terrible mistake to let cameras into Cabinet. The look of pained horror on some of those faces around the table: it told you everything. Even some of the boss most loyal lieutenants could barely look at him.

After the meeting, a different Cabinet minister was asked what the mood had been like. It was a case of: where are the cyanide pills? the minister snapped.

Universities minister Michelle Donelan seen going into Downing Street before taking the post as Education Secretary, replacing Nadhim Zahawi who becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer

Tory MP Nicola Richards quit as a PPS saying she did not 'recognise' the Conservative Party under Mr Johnson

Among the furious was Therese Coffey, the Work and Pensions minister. She was still bearing the bruises from her disastrous interview round on Sunday, during which No10s insistence that Boris had heard only unsubstantiated gossip about Pincher fell apart amid claims that the PM used to call the MP Pincher by name, Pincher by nature.

Also complaining about his treatment was Will Quince, the Minister for Children. On Monday, Quince had repeatedly claimed in interviews that he had been given categorical assurance that Boris did not know of any specific complaints about Pincher.

Yesterday in the Commons, Quince was telling any Tory MP who would listen that No10 had stitched him up. Hes a really decent guy who genuinely believed what he had been told by No10. He looked dazed after hearing McDonald stick the boot in, said one. The MP added: Forget all the talk about rail strikes. Soon there will be a strike by ministers who will refuse to go on air to bat for Boris because they wont know what unexploded bombs are going to go off.

As the day of drama progressed, these words seemed increasingly prophetic.

Amid the chaos, the Governments normal 11.30am press briefing was delayed. When it finally started at 12.16pm, the vicious tone was set by the first question put to the Prime Ministers official spokesman: Are you planning on telling the truth today?

With the atmosphere becoming increasingly febrile, more letters demanding another confidence vote in the PM found their way to Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the Tory MPs 1922 committee.

Many of these missives came from the usual anti-Boris suspects. But, worryingly for the PM, even MPs who publicly backed him in last months vote flashed their knives in the emergency Commons debate that began at 12.30pm.

Sniffing blood, Labours deputy leader Angela Rayner had tabled an urgent question on standards in public life.

She bemoaned the ethical vacuum in Downing Street and demanded of her opposite number, Cabinet Office minister Michael Ellis: When will this minister stop defending the indefensible and say enough is enough?

Ellis, a successful QC and normally a reliable Commons performer, had a torrid time at the dispatch box, reduced to spluttering No10s latest excuse: that Boris did not immediately recall the conversation in late 2019 about Pinchers behaviour. Open mockery followed.

In a clear sign that support for the PM was draining away, Sir Bernard Jenkin, a Brexiteer and long-time Boris supporter, declared to cheers: Why are those with the wrong attitudes and the wrong behaviours promoted by their leaders?

Government officials were also stung when former paediatrician Caroline Johnson MP, not normally a critic of the PM, stood up to suggest the police should have investigated Pincher and demanded to know why Boris had given him another job.

By early afternoon, one loyalist confided to me that he feared support was falling away from Boris at such speed, the PMs position was in peril.

Ive never known the mood this bad, said this source. Most of my colleagues want Boris to deliver, to turn a corner, to improve. But he takes one step forward  like his grandstanding on the world stage last week  then its six steps back, with his calamitous handling of a row about an insignificant pawn like Pincher.

With backbench support disintegrating, Boris held talks at No10 with his most devoted Cabinet supporters: Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, Chief Whip Chris Heaton-Harris and Cabinet Office minister and chief of staff Steve Barclay.

Nearby, inside the Downing Street bunker, increasingly desperate officials were barking out orders to the whips, loyal MPs and ministers, urging them to fan out across the Parliamentary estate to shore up support for the boss.

The situation was so bad that even Boris himself toured the tearooms at one point, begging his colleagues for yet another second chance. A mole tells me: He knew it was not going well. When he was talking to us, some MPs simply would not look him in the eye. Suddenly they were gazing down at their shoes. Opinions were hardening.

But, typically, the No10 operation was so useless, they were fretting about backbenchers  when all along it was Rishi who was planning to go. Why did no one talk to him?

Why indeed? Last night, former Tory chairman Oliver Dowden, a close friend of ex-PM David Cameron who quit last month, was rumoured to be plotting to launch Sunaks leadership bid.

And as for Lord McDonald? As he launched his extraordinary attack on the PM yesterday morning, he knew exactly what he was doing.

An arch-Remainer, the mandarin was appalled by Brexit. When Boris was foreign secretary under Theresa May, he privately blamed McDonalds officials for the steady drip of stories accusing him of being lazy and having a cavalier approach to his office.

When the Foreign Office merged with the Department for International Development, Boris saw his chance  and ousted his Whitehall foe. He softened the blow with a peerage, but McDonald has enjoyed his revenge ice cold.

Late last night, even Boriss most ardent supporters were telling me that they fear he cannot survive much longer.

Its ugly, said one. The tectonic plates are shifting again. It feels as if a lot of chickens are coming home to roost. I fear patience is finally running out.
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The Chancellor and Health Secretary quit with an excoriating blast at Boris Johnson over standards and competence tonight, but aides insisted it was not a co-ordinated putsch.

Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid announced they were resigning within nine minutes of each other  just as the Prime Minister was giving a televised statement apologising for the Chris Pincher row.

In a brutal parting shot, Mr Javid said he had lost confidence in the PM and suggested the Government was no longer competent.

Mr Sunak said he had reluctantly come to the conclusion that we cannot continue like this and that people expected government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously.

He also hinted at a split with the Prime Minister over economic policy, saying it has become clear to me that our approaches are fundamentally too different.

Mr Sunaks resignation letter came just nine minutes after Mr Javids at 6.11pm  but sources close to the pair insist their departures are not a joint coup.

Rishi Sunak said he had reluctantly come to the conclusion that we cannot continue like this and that people expected government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously

Their resignations came less than a fortnight after Oliver Dowden quit as Conservative Party chairman following a double by-election defeat. A string of other less seismic resignations followed last night, including two Parliamentary Private Secretaries.

Mr Javid had been a friend of the PMs wife Carrie Johnson who he employed as a special adviser while he was Communities Secretary.

But his resignation today was the second time he has quit Mr Johnsons government, after resigning as Chancellor in February 2020 over an order to fire his team of aides.

Mr Javid announced his resignation on Twitter at 6.02pm after speaking to the PM. He said he could not continue as health secretary in good conscience and suggested he PM should quit too.

Sajid Javid wrote: 'I regret to say, however, that it is clear to me that this situation will not change under your leadership  and you have therefore lost my confidence too

Boris: It will be easier to cut taxes now Boris Johnson told MPs it would be easier to deliver tax cuts after Rishi Sunaks resignation. The Prime Minister met 80 loyal Tory MPs after the Chancellor quit and suggested he would cling on. He is said to have told the group: I know youre all avidly in favour of tax cuts and tonights events might make that a bit easier to deliver. The meeting took place after Mr Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid dramatically quit the Cabinet. In his resignation letter, the former chancellor said he could no longer back Mr Johnson, as the approaches of the two men were too different. He added: Our people know that if something is too good to be true then its not true. They need to know that whilst there is a path to a better future, it is not an easy one. It has become clear to me that our approaches are fundamentally too different. Johnson loyalist Brendan Clarke-Smith tweeted a picture of the event with Mr Johnson giving a defiant thumbs up. Advertisement

In a devastating letter, Mr Javid wrote: The tone you set as a leader, and the values you represent, reflect on your colleagues, your party and ultimately the country. Conservatives at their best are seen as hard-headed decision-makers, guided by strong values. We may not have always been popular, but we have been competent in acting in the national interest.

Sadly, in the current circumstances, the public are concluding that we are now neither. The vote of confidence last month showed that a large number of our colleagues agree. It was a moment for humility, grip and new direction.

I regret to say, however, that it is clear to me that this situation will not change under your leadership  and you have therefore lost my confidence too.

While relations between No10 and No11 had become strained in recent months, Mr Sunak had stood by Mr Johnson over Partygate and they were due to make a speech on the economy this week.

That changed with the Chancellor quitting. In his resignation letter Mr Sunak said: To leave ministerial office is a serious matter at any time. The public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously. I recognise this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning.

Tory vice chair Bim Afolami later quit live on TV, Andrew Murrison resigned as a trade envoy to Morocco and ministerial aides Jonathan Gullis and Saqib Bhatti left their roles.

The PM responded to Rishi Sunaks departure, saying he was sorry to have received his resignation and praised his outstanding service. In a letter, the PM wrote: I have enormously valued your advice and deep commitment to public service and will miss working with you in government.

In a brief letter, the PM told the former health secretary: Dear Saj, Thank you for your letter this evening tendering your resignation. I was very sorry to receive it. He said he had served with distinction.
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A two-year-old boy found bloodied and alone during the Highland Park shooting and lifted from underneath his father is an orphan after both his parents were killed in the attack.

Aiden McCarthy lost his mother, Irina McCarthy, and father, Kevin McCarthy, after being separated from them during the chaos of Monday's shooting.

Aiden was found by Lauren Silva, 38, and her boyfriend, who said the toddler kept asking 'are mom and dad coming back soon?'

Aiden was unharmed and has been placed in the care of his grandparents, Misha and Nina Levebeg.

A GoFundMe page was established to help Aiden's family with 'raising, caring for and supporting' him. The account had raised nearly $2 million as of Wednesday.

The largest donation in the last few hours is a $10,000 contribution from an anonymous source. Most of the other high contributors are also anonymous. The page has garnered more than 20,000 contributors.

Seven people were killed and 47 more were injured after 21-year-old shooter Robert Crimo, 22, opened fire on the Independence Day parade with an AR-15-style weapon.

On Tuesday, Lake County State Attorney Eric Rinehart said Crimo had been charged with seven counts of first-degree murder. He said 'dozens' more charges would follow and he hopes to send Crimo to prison for life.

Aiden McCarthy lost his mother, Irina McCarthy, and father, Kevin McCarthy, after being separated from them during the chaos of Monday's shooting

Aiden McCarthy (pictured with an unknown man) was reunited with his grandparents on Monday after being found underneath his injured father at the parade

Irina McCarthy, 35, (left) and Kevin McCarthy, 37, (right) were among the seven people killed in Highland Park, Ill., on Monday when the 22-year-old shooter opened fire on Fourth of July parade with an AR-15-style weapon

Aiden was kept safe during the tragic shooting by complete strangers, GoFundMe organizer, Irina Colon, revealed.

'We took him to safety under tragic circumstances, came together to locate his grandparents, and prayed for the safety of his family,' she wrote.

'The North Shore community rallied to help a boy who we knew nothing about. Sadly, I need to share his nameAiden McCarthy and he needs more of our help. Aiden is left in the unthinkable position: to grow up without his parents.'

Colon claimed Aiden has been placed in the care of his grandparents, Misha and Nina Levberg, but still faces a long journey to 'heal, find stability, and ultimately navigate life as an orphan.'

'He is surrounded by a community of friends and extended family that will embrace him with love, and any means available to ensure he has everything he needs as he grows,' she said.

'On behalf of his family, and with their permission, I am establishing this fundraiser to support him and the caregivers who will be tasked with raising, caring for, and supporting Aiden as he and his support system embark on this unexpected journey.'

Two-year-old Aiden McCarthy (pictured) was left orphaned Monday after his parents were both killed during the Highland Park parade shooting

Horror on Independence Day: A police officer bows his head in grief next to abandoned strollers and chairs after a shooting that killed seven people in Highland Park

Aiden was found by Lauren Silva, 38, of Deerfield, and her boyfriend after they heard gunshots as they were heading to breakfast at Walker Bros restaurant.

Silva told the Daily Beast they emerged from a parking garage a few blocks away from the shooting just as the violence began to unfold.

'We were just opening the door to walk up the stairs and we heard itboom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,' she told the Beast. 'And it sounded like someone was, like, pounding on the glass doors.'

Silva and her boyfriend and his son began running toward those who were injured when her boyfriend suddenly thrusted the little boy into her arms.

'My boyfriend handed me this little boy and said he was underneath this father who was shot in the leg,' she said. 'They were trying to stop the bleeding so I brought the boy downstairs into the garage.'

Once inside the garage, she managed to clean out his scrapes and washed the blood off him. She said he was wearing one shoe and his sock was covered in blood.

'He kept asking if mom and dad are going to come back soon,' she said.

Silva reemerged from the parking garage after 20 minutes to see how the father was doing. She handed Aiden off to a family she was hunkering down in the garage with, who took him to the hospital and later handed him to police. He was eventually reunited with his grandparents.

Dana Ruder Ring, who had taken care of the child until 8 p.m., according to Fox 32 Chicago, posted the original photo of the boy to help identify him.

Silva, a mother of two, said she's holding on to the memory of the 'kid's face and his touch and the sound of his voice.'

'I feel like I want to hold on to, like, a little bit of emotion that I feelwhich is telling that boy that his dad was going to come back,' she said.

The gunman opened fire at 10:14 a.m. on Monday, barely 15 minutes into the parade. He then fled the scene and hid throughout the day before eventually being arrested at 6:30 p.m. in Lake Forrest, eight miles north of where the massacre unfolded

First responders work the scene of a shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park

The gunman, Robert 'Bobby' Crimo, 22, has been taken into custody and is awaiting charges.

He began shooting with an AR-15-style weapon shortly after 10 a.m., from a rooftop along the parade route. Police said Tuesday that Crimo dressed as a woman to disguise himself and easily slipped into the crowd of panicked bystanders, evading law enforcement.

He was eventually arrested about eight hours after the shooting.

Video shot by a Sun-Times journalist after the gunfire rang out shows a band on a float continuing to play as people run past, screaming. A photo posted to social media appeared to show pools of blood near upturned chairs in downtown Highland Park.

Miles Zaremsky, who has lived in the neighborhood since the 1960s, said he witnessed the 'carnage.'

'The crowd started stampeding. I had never seen that before. I saw blood on people's bodies. Two or three people looked deceased to me. It was absolutely disgusting and gut-wrenching and I was sick to my stomach.'

'I did see a little boy [covered in blood] in his parents' arms who looked [pale]. They were yelling for medicsIt's surreal, it's like out of a science fiction but it is real.'

Seven dead in Highland Park July Fourth shooting Seven people have died in the Highland Park Fourth of July massacre. The victims include Stephen Straus, 88; Katherine Goldstein, 64; Jacki Sundheim, 63; Nicholas Toledo Zaragoza, 78; Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, and husband and wife, Irina and Kevin McCarthy, 35 and 37. On July 6, the Cook County Medical Examiner's office revealed that the seventh victim, Uvaldo, died at Evanston Hospital around 8 a.m. The number of injured victims now stands at 46, ranging in age from 8 to 85 years old. Robert Crimo, 21, appeared in Lake County court on Wednesday, after being charged with seven counts of first-degree murder. He is expected to face a slew of other charges and is being held without bail. Lake County State's Attorney Eric Rinehart told the court that Crimo carried out a 'calculated and premeditated attack'. He said Crimo confessed to standing on a roof above the parade route and took aim at people standing across the street, reloading his Smith & Wesson AR-15 rifle three times. Police recovered 83 spent casings from the roof. Irina and Kevin McCarthy, 35 and 37, were both killed in the massacre. Their two-year-old son, Aiden, was pulled from underneath his father's body Nicolas Toledo, 76, had not wanted to attend the July 4 parade in Highland Park, Ill., on Monday, his granddaughter because he was in a wheelchair Irina and Kevin McCarthy, 35 and 37, were the parents of a two-year-old boy, Aiden, who is now orphaned. He was pulled from underneath his father's body and taken care of by paradegoers. Nicolas Toledo, 76 was the first victim to be identified. He was a grandfather visiting his family from Mexico. His family said he was shot in the head as he sat in his wheelchair, his blood splattering on them. Toledo had not wanted to attend the parade, his granddaughter told the New York Times. But because of his disabilities that restricted him to a wheelchair, and his family's insistence of going, he obliged. Another victim, Jacki Sundheim was a longtime teacher at the North Shore Congregation Israel synagogue. She is survived by her husband Bruce and daughter Leah, the Times of Israel reported. 'There are no words sufficient to express the depth of our grief for Jacki's death,' the synagogue said in a statement. Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, who was in hospital with a gunshot wound to the arm and back of the head, died on Wednesday. His wife, Maria, was hit in the head by fragments, and his grandson received a gunshot wound to the arm but is stable. On July 6, Katherine Goldstein's daughter, Cassie, described how her mother was shot in the chest and fell down dead in front of her. 'He shot her in the chest, and she fell down. And I knew she was dead,' Cassie told 'NBC Nightly News.' 'So I just told her that I loved her, but I couldn't stop because he was still shooting everyone next to me.' Katherine Goldstein, pictured left, was among the people killed in the Highland Park parade mass shooting on July 4 Steve Straus, 88, (left) was among the seven people who were killed during the Highland Park Fourth of July parade massacre. Eduardo Uvaldo, 65, (right) died on Wednesday. Family said he had been shot in the arm and back of the head A local doctor who rushed into the carnage described the shooting victims as being 'blown up' by the attacker's high-powered weapon. Dr. David Baum, a long-time obstetrician in Highland Park, was attending the parade with his wife and children to watch his two-year-old grandson participate. When the shots rang out and others fled, he ran into the fray to try to help the victims. In an interview with CNN, Baum described seeing victims with 'wartime' and 'unspeakable' injuries. 'The people who were gone were blown up by that gunfire,' Baum said. 'The horrific scene of some of those bodies is unspeakable for the average person.' 'Having been a physician, I've seen things in ERs, you know, you do see lots of blood. But the bodies were literally -- some of the bodies -- there was an evisceration injury from the power of this gun and the bullets.' 'There was another person who had an unspeakable head injury. Unspeakable,' he told CNN. 'And the injuries that I saw -- I never served -- but those are wartime injuries. Those are what are seen in victims of war, not victims at a parade,' Baum said. Baum said there were at least three doctors, a nurse and a nurse practitioner, who joined him in treating victims. He recalled paramedics covering up victims who they knew were dead at the scene. Advertisement

Gina Troiani and her son were lined up with his daycare class ready to walk onto the parade route when she heard a loud sound she believed to be fireworks -- until she heard people yell about a shooter.

'We just start running in the opposite direction,' she told The Associated Press.

Her five-year-old son was riding his bike decorated with red and blue curled ribbons. He and other children in the group held small American flags.

The city said on its web site that the festivities were to include a children's bike and pet parade. Troiani said she pushed her son's bike, running through the neighborhood to get back to their car.

In a video she shot on her phone, some of the kids are visibly startled at the loud noise and scramble to the side of the road as a siren wails nearby.

'It was just sort of chaos,' she said. 'There were people that got separated from their families, looking for them. Others just dropped their wagons, grabbed their kids and started running.'

Matt Phillip, director of a tasting room at Lynfred Winery, said he heard 'what sounded like fireworks' before seeing people 'running down the street.'

'We opened our doors so they could either seek shelter within our facility or exit through our back-alley door.'

He said about 30 people sheltered in the store for approximately 15 minutes.

The parade on Monday in Highland Park was attended by dozens of locals who sat on the sidewalk cheering as bands marched past

Panicked paradegoers at the scene on Monday. There were loud sounds from the crowd that some said were gunshots

The bloody scene on Monday, after Robert 'Bobby' Crimo opened fire on a Fourth of July parade

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a tweet that he is 'closely monitoring the situation in Highland Park' and that Illinois State Police are assisting. The ISP said in an email that it was assisting in the response to an active shooter reported around 10:24 a.m.

The Lake County Sheriffs Office said on Twitter that it is assisting Highland Park Police 'with a shooting in the area of the Independence Day parade route.'

The sheriff's office directed an AP reporter to contact Highland Park Police. The Police Department said no one was immediately available to comment.

Debbie Glickman, a Highland Park resident, said she was on a parade float with coworkers and the group was preparing to turn onto the main route when she saw people running from the area.

'People started saying: 'There's a shooter, there's a shooter, there's a shooter,'' Glickman told the Associated Press. 'So we just ran. We just ran. It's like mass chaos down there.'

She didn't hear any noises or see anyone who appeared to be injured.

'I'm so freaked out,' she said. 'It's just so sad.'

'Suicidal' Highland Park shooter was interviewed by cops TWICE in 2019 after he threatened to 'kill everyone' and had 16 knives, dagger and SWORD confiscated but was not arrested: Cops say still no motive for killing seven on July 4

Highland Park shooter Bobby Crimo was questioned by police twice in 2019 including once after threatening to 'kill everyone' and another after he threatened suicide, but was never arrested.

Crimo is now in custody awaiting charges for the massacre yesterday. Police at first said he was not known to them but on Tuesday, they revealed he was interviewed twice by authorities.

The first was in April 2019 a week after he threatened to kill himself. The second was in September 2019, after he threatened to 'kill everyone' in his family.

Police recovered 16 knives, a dagger and sword from his home but he was not arrested.

Instead, he was able to turn 21 and buy two assault rifles in Illinois, along with three other types of gun. It remains unclear why the two previous incidents were not flagged when he legally purchased the weapons.

Chris Covelli of the Lake County Sheriff's Office disclosed the prior incidents at a press conference on Tuesday.

In April 2019, 'an individual contacted Highland Park department a week after learning of him attempting to suicide. It was a delayed report.

'They responded to the residence, spoke to him, his parents and the matter was being handled with the mental health profession. There was no law enforcement action to be taken.

'In September 2019, a family remember reported that he said he was going to 'kill everyone' and that he had a collection of knives. They responded and took 16 knives and a dagger from his home.

'There was no probable cause to arrest and no complaints assigned by the victims. They did notify the Illinois State Police.'

Prior to Monday's shooting, Crimo is thought to have traveled recently to Madison, Wis., nearly 150 miles from Highland Park.

Bob Crimo Sr. arriving home on Tuesday, talking on the phone

Crimo's father, Bob Sr., was cornered by police as he arrived at home on Tuesday

Police interviewing the father of Highland Park shooter on Tuesday. He has not yet issued any public comment

The suspect's uncle told CNN that the FBI made contact with the family around 2:30 p.m. on Monday

The gunman's car outside his home in Highland Park, Ill., on Tuesday. He was obsessed with the number 47 -- which is the date of July 4 in reverse

Crimo is also accused of 'sizing up' the Central Avenue Synagogue in Highland Park, Ill., according to the Times of Israel.

Rabbi Yosef Schanowitz is quoted by the web site as saying that he recognized the suspect from an incident that occurred in April 2022. The rabbi said: 'During the last Passover holiday, that person entered the Chabad synagogue. We have an armed security guard sitting in front I approached him and sternly asked him to leave as I noticed he was not a member of our community.'

In a separate interview with Forward.com, the congregation's head of security, Martin Blumenthal, said of Crimo: 'He was definitely sizing up the synagogue.'

Blumenthal said Crimo was wearing all black clothes and black gloves 'in the goth style.' The head of security said he checked Crimo's backpack for weapons but didn't find any.

He added: 'He said his name was Bobby and he lived in the neighborhood. I watched him the whole time,' adding that Crimo then left on his bike.

Police have still not been able to determine a motive. Crimo is expected to be charged later today.

Crimo, 22, has not yet been charged for the massacre, but he remains in custody and is speaking with the authorities. He is shown yesterday fleeing the attack in disguise

Six of the seven people that were killed in the shooting have been named. They are Steve Straus, 88; Katherine Baldstein, 64; Jacki Sondheim, 63; Nicholas Toledo Zaragoza, 78; and husband and wife Irina and Kevin McCarthy, 35 and 37.

The McCarthys leave behind a two-year-old son, Aiden, who was found alone in the aftermath of the shooting.

After the attack Monday, Crimo fled among frightened paradegoers, pretending to be one of the victims, and went to his mother's house.

Police said they don't think she knew that he was the shooter when he asked her for her car. She gave it to him and he fled the area.

It comes as questions over the gunman's motive, lifestyle and his obsession with the numbers 47 arise.

Crimo had a 47 tattoo on his cheek and the numbers are emblazoned on the side of a car.

The vehicle was left abandoned in the front yard of his home on Tuesday, after it was raided by FBI agents. Crimo also posted the number all over his social media accounts, where he also shared ominous rap videos that glamorized school shootings.

The gunman's car outside his home in Highland Park, Ill., on Tuesday. He was obsessed with the number 47, which is the date of July 4 in reverse

On Tuesday, it was revealed:

Crimo legally purchased the semi-automatic weapon used in the attack, along with one other rifle and more, unspecified weapons, at a local store

He fired 70 rounds from the roof of a local store before ditching the weapon and running into the crowd

He walked to his mother's house and asked for her car, which she gave to him, apparently unaware he was the shooter

Investigators are still interviewing Crimo, but haven't been able to determine his motive

Paul Crimo, his uncle, has since told how he was behaving normally on Sunday night. He claims he showed 'no signs of violence' despite YouTube rap videos in which he glamorized school shootings. The shooter's motive for Monday's attack remains unknown.

'I'm heartbroken. I'm so heartbroken. There were no signs that I saw that would make him do this. He's a quiet kid. He's usually on his own. He's a lonely, quiet person. He keeps everything to himself,' Paul Crimo, his uncle, told CNN.

In the same interview, Paul Crimo confirmed that his nephew lived in a small apartment behind the house owned by Bob Crimo Jr., along Pleasant Avenue in Highwood.

'Everything was as normal,' he said, adding that he was sitting on a recliner in his home the night before the shooting, looking at his computer. We are good people here, and to have this is devastating. I'm so heartbroken for all the families who lost their lives.'

In a separate interview with Fox32, Paul Crimo said: 'I saw no signs of trouble. And if I did see signs, I would have said something. I'm deeply heartbroken and I'll be heartbroken for the rest of my life.'
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Tuesday he had no intention of raising the retirement age for pilots after a holiday weekend of flight cancellations amid airline staffing shortages.

The industry increased the age limit 15 years ago for commercial pilots to 65 years as they moved to head off forecasts of shortages.

But the pandemic triggered a wave of early retirements and airlines are once again complaining of shortages.

Buttigieg said he would not raise the retirement age, even though Americans are living and working longer - like his 79-year-old boss Joe Biden.

'I'm much more interested in raising the bar on things like compensation and job quality than lowering the bar on something like safety,' he told Fox News.

'And when you get to these training hours, retirement age, and those things, those are fundamentally safety regulations.

'The United States of America shouldn't be able to have a robust aviation system without watering down our expectations on safety and I will consider and entertain anything that does not compromise safety.'

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared on Fox News to defend his record and explain why travel was disrupted over the holiday weekend. He said he had no plans to raise the retirement age for pilots beyond 65 to ease staffing shortages

More than 2000 flights were canceled over the holiday weekend and thousands more delayed

The Fourth of July brought the busiest travel weekend since the pandemic began

Since holiday weekend travel picked up last Thursday, airlines have canceled more than 2,200 U.S. flights, and another 25,000 have been delayed

Anchor Neil Cavuto probed further, saying that '65 was the new 55 and we have a president who's almost 80.'

'That regulation is there for safety reasons,' he said.

'I haven't seen any piece of information or data that would suggest that the reasoning has changed. And so I'm going to look at at other steps that are not affecting safety.'

He was speaking after a busy weekend of travel that brought disruption and cancelations for many travelers.

Leading Democrats slammed Buttigieg for failing to do enough to head off disruption.

Close to 2.5 million passengers were screened on Friday, according to the Transport Security Administration, making it the busiest day at airports since the pandemic began.

Airlines canceled at least 2,200 U.S. flights during the busy Fourth of July weekend, and another 25,000 were delayed.

Weather, traffic control problems and staffing shortages were all blamed.

Some travelers took to Twitter to blast the airlines. One parent slammed American Airlines for stranding their daughter

Another Twitter user lamented about being stranded after their flight was canceled

And more flights have been delayed this year than at any other time in the past decade.

Pilots picketed airports last week to ask for better pay. Ahead of the chaos, their unions warned that airlines were scheduling more flights than they could staff.

They say that their members are being overworked with overtime in order to keep flights schedules running.

However, Buttigieg said the weekend could still have gone worse if he had not taken action earlier.

'I was very concerned with what happened over the Memorial Day weekend, got the airlines together, asked them what steps they were taking, anything that that we could do collaboratively to see improvements by the July 4 holiday travel weekend,' he said.

'The good news is this last travel weekend went better than Memorial Day did in terms of delays and cancellations.'

He added that he would try to ensure that passengers were protected.

'We're going to continue using our consumer protection enforcement authority to make sure that when that does happen to passengers that they are properly compensated, as well as looking at the operational side to watch that number of delays and cancellations continue to go down because it's not yet at a level that I consider acceptable,' he said.

Buttigieg had been urged to take action ahead of the weekend by members of his own party, including Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna of California, who sent out letters last week.

Sanders urged Buttigieg to require airlines to refund passengers for flights delayed more than an hour, impose fines of a rate of $55,000 per passenger for flights delayed for more than two hours, and fines for airlines that cannot 'properly staff' scheduled flights.

As travel chaos escalated over the weekend as feared, Sanders took to Twitter to once again called out Buttigieg to set a plan in motion.

'The airlines got $54 billion in taxpayer money. They said thanks by jacking up ticket prices 45% & stranding passengers at crowded airports. Enough,' Sanders wrote. 'It's time for the Transportation Department to impose massive fines on poor-performing airlines & full refunds for long delays.'
If Prince Charles were a politician facing the same cash-for-honors controversy that has rocked his charity for nearly a year, his career would be gone, according to the anti-monarchy campaign organization Republic.

A fresh round of charges has been leveled against Britain's prospective king, about an honorary title he bestowed on a Conservative Party contributor who appears to have helped bail out a failed business.

Prince Charles' New Charity Scandal

It follows recent allegations that he collected $3.13 million in cash from a Qatari official, including $3.13 million crammed into a bag. There is no evidence that the monetary donations were unlawful, and they were properly put into the prince's Charitable Fund.

The previous Chief Executive of Prince Charles' organization, The Prince's Foundation, also resigned following claims that he promised a Saudi businessman assistance in obtaining a knighthood and citizenship in exchange for payments.

The prince's foundation, according to a representative at the time, takes very seriously the claims made in recent news publications and is committed to the highest ethical standards. The controversy has prompted Republic's CEO, Graham Smith, to call on UK MPs to defy a norm that forbids them from addressing the royal family, as per Newsweek via MSN.

The Charity Commission advises trustees to consider whether it appears to have any suspicious characteristics when accepting donations. It urges trustees to scrutinize how the contribution is received, whether there is any public concern about the donor or their activity, and whether any restrictions are linked to the donations.

If the panel determines that it has a further involvement in the situation, it will be the second time the Prince of Wales and his philanthropic ventures have faced concerns - and perhaps an investigation - over charitable gifts.

In February, British police started an inquiry into Charles' organization, The Prince's Foundation, following allegations that a close aide promised a Saudi mogul knighthood in exchange for $2 million in contributions. The Sunday Times' Gabriel Pogrund and Valentine Low reported in September that Michael Fawcett, one of Prince Charles' closest aides and former valet, had resigned as chief executive of The Prince's Foundation after a report accused him of impropriety.

Saudi businessman Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz spent tens of thousands of dollars to fixers with contacts to the prince who informed him he might be awarded an honorary CBE, the highest-ranking Order of the British Empire honor for non-British residents, Insider reported.

Read Also: Burger King Employee Never Missed Work For 27 Years Gets Small Reward From Employer But Receives More Than $300,000 From Donors, Including David Spade

Queen Elizabeth II's Work Load Changes

Due to chronic mobility challenges, the Queen has been missing major engagements amid Prince Charles' current spat over the pay for honor affair. However, due to health concerns, her position has been formally reduced.

The monarchy's annual report, published last week, indicated that Queen Elizabeth II's role as head of state has been changed from 13 bulleted points to a more general statement. The 96-year "must old's complete" responsibilities have also been decreased.

It's the first time in more than a decade that her job description has been formalized. It also acknowledges the long-reigning monarch's health difficulties. For months, the Queen, who lost her spouse, Prince Philip, last April, has avoided high-profile engagements while devoting more time to her family. Prince Charles formally inaugurated Britain's Parliament in May. His mother did not attend the event for the first time in over 60 years.

The Queen also missed the opening day of Royal Ascot last month owing to mobility concerns, and she was absent from a church service during her Platinum Jubilee celebration due to discomfort, although she participated in the closing procession via hologram. During the Order of the Garter event at St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle in June, the proud royal also utilized a cane for an official photo.

Daniela Elser, a royal specialist, wrote an op-ed for Australian news source News.com.AU last month, calling photographs of the queen visiting New South Wales Governor Margaret Beazley in the UK "nothing short of worrisome," according to The New York Post.

Related Article: [Report] Prince Andrew, Ghislaine Maxwell Are More Than Friends; Former Royal Officer Reveals Socialite's Special Access in Buckingham Palace

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An elderly doctor who killed a patient in a botched procedure after lying about his age to avoid retirement was jailed for three years for manslaughter yesterday.

Dr Isyaka Mamman, 85, who had pretended to be 11 years younger, bungled a bone marrow extraction so badly that Shahida Parveen bled to death.

Last night, a patient told of her anger that Mamman was allowed to continue practising after his real age came to light.

In 2015, Margaret Helliwell was left in agony during an identical biopsy by the haematologist, then 79, who shoved his knee into the grandmothers back to force a needle into her hip with such pressure that the device bent.

Dr Isyaka Mamman, 85, pictured, had lied about his age to avoid retirement, Manchester Crown Court has heard

Mamman, pictured, was convicted of manslaughter following the death of Shahida Parveen at Royal Oldham Hospital

She complained, and says a consultant told her that Mamman should retire and would no longer be performing such biopsies. But that did not happen, and in 2018 he attempted to take a similar sample from Mrs Parveen, 48.

This time he plunged the needle in at the wrong point, puncturing the sac around her heart. As she died at Royal Oldham Hospital, her husband shouted: He killed her!

At Manchester Crown Court yesterday, Mrs Justice Yip said it was hard to understand how Mamman had been allowed to carry on working as she gave him a sentence that  ironically  she said took into account his advancing age and frail appearance.

Mrs Helliwell, 81, told of her horror at the missed opportunity to stop him.

She added: He was pummelling away so hard that the needle bent. I was screaming in pain, I was being sick and felt dizzy.

I feel so sorry for the ladys family. I am also angry that she went in for the same procedure as I did and she died. He shouldnt have been allowed to continue practising because he had been caught lying.

She said that when she read about Mrs Parveens death, I just thought, That could have been me. But her terrifying experience was not even the only such incident of 2015.

That same year, a bone marrow biopsy by Mamman led to a patient suffering internal bleeding and a heart attack. The unnamed man was left permanently disabled, and won a negligence claim.

At the time, the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust  which ran Royal Oldham Hospital at the time  was facing a string of scandals.

Despite concerns over his ability, Mamman  then 81  was allowed to perform the same procedure on Mrs Parveen in September 2018.

However, he was only working in the NHS due to what the judge called the astonishing decision to rehire him after he was caught lying about his age.

Born in rural Nigeria, he arrived in Britain in 1965 and began working as a haematologist.

But 20 years ago, managers at Medway Maritime Hospital in Kent noticed a discrepancy. Mamman, who had said he was born in 1936, was using a Nigerian passport that showed a birth year of 1941  slicing five years off his true age.

Mamman has performing a biopsy on Mrs Parveen, 48, at the Royal Oldham Hospital when he made the critical mistake which claimed her life

In about 2001, Mamman adopted an even later birth year  1947  which he relied upon for naturalisation as a British citizen.

That made him a whole 11 years younger than the age he gave when he arrived in Britain. This fiction let him avoid compulsory retirement that year under the rules then in force upon reaching 65.

It would have meant he had started medical training in Nigeria in 1958, when he would have been ten. When challenged, Mamman explained he had been very brilliant, a medical tribunal heard. The General Medical Council was unimpressed  banning him from practising for 12 months.

By now, he had lost his job in Kent over poor performance and was at Royal Oldham Hospital.

He duly lost this post  but on the expiry of his suspension in 2006 he was rehired, despite his true age being almost 70.

The discrepancy was apparently down to the panel that allowed him back on to the medical register accepting a year of birth in 1943.

He had initially failed to take a sample from Mrs Parveens hip.

He then tried her breastbone  a technique considered dangerous because of its proximity to the heart.

Ignoring her husband Khizar Mahmoods protests, and using the wrong needle, he made several attempts before piercing her heart sac, causing massive bleeding.

Jailing him after he admitted gross negligence manslaughter, Mrs Justice Yip said it was hard to understand why his previous botched biopsies had not led to his retirement, adding: Equally, it is difficult to see why... you were allowed to continue to work.

Oldham West and Royton MP Jim McMahon called for more answers from Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, which has run Royal Oldham Hospital since 2016. We need to understand why the trust did not do more, he said.

The trust said the procedure that killed Mrs Parveen could now only be carried out under supervision by a consultant.

NHS England said Trusts were required to follow national guidelines requiring them to intervene if there are concerns over a doctors competence.

In addition, doctors of all ages must undergo annual appraisals.
Seven in ten Brits believe Boris Johnson should resign his post, according to a new YouGov poll of thousands of UK adults, while a majority of people who voted Conservative in 2019 also want him gone.

The Prime Minister's tenure has been called into question after two members of his Cabinet - Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Chancellor Rishi Sunak - handed in their resignations earlier today in a scathing indictment of Johnson's leadership.

YouGov's poll found 69 per cent of people believe the PM should step down - up 11 per cent from June 9 - a sentiment shared by more than half (54 per cent) of respondents who voted Conservative in 2019's general election.

Just 34 per cent of Conservative voters wanted Johnson out on June 9 just days after he narrowly survived a no-confidence vote, suggesting that today's Cabinet resignations represent the final straw for many Tory supporters.

Only 18 per cent of Brits overall believe Johnson should remain in charge, but despite the widespread calls for his resignation, just one in five YouGov poll respondents actually believe the Prime Minister will heed them.

The Prime Minister was already fighting an uphill struggle to remain in No 10 as his handling of the row over scandal-hit former deputy chief whip Chris Pincher became the latest issue to raise questions over his judgment.

YouGov's Associate Director of Political and Social Research Patrick English said of the poll results: 'Tonight's figures make for dire reading for Boris Johnson.

'With over half of the very people who put him into office in 2019 now wanting him out, he is losing the battle for support not just with the general public, but his own party's voters.'

A flustered Prime Minster Boris Johnson returns to 10 Downing Street, after both Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid resigned

The Prime Minister's tenure has been called into question after two members of his Cabinet - Health Secretary Sajid Javid (R) and Chancellor Rishi Sunak (L) - handed in their resignations earlier today in a scathing indictment of Johnson's leadership

Sunak and Javid sent their resignation letters to Johnson within minutes of each other, both of which took aim at his ability to run an administration that adhered to standards.

Sunak said: 'The public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously', adding: 'I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning,' in a humiliating blow to the PM.

Johnson scrambled to appoint former businessman and current education minister, Nadhim Zahawi, as his new finance minister, and instructed his Chief of Staff Steve Barclay to take over as Health Secretary.

The blow comes just one month after Johnson barely survived a confidence vote which saw 41 per cent of his own MPs withdraw their support.

The twin resignations of Mr Javid and Mr Sunak mean Mr Johnson's position is now perilous, but Cabinet ministers including Dominic Raab, Liz Truss, Michael Gove, Therese Coffey and Ben Wallace indicated they would be staying in the Government.

However, Bim Afolami quit as Tory vice-chair live on TV, Theo Clarke and Andrew Murrison resigned as trade envoys and ministerial aides Jonathan Gullis, Saqib Bhatti, Nicola Richards and Virginia Crosbie left their roles.

The Prime Minister's fate may ultimately lie with backbench MPs if the Tory 1922 Committee's rules are changed to allow another confidence vote within 12 months.

Johnson (L) instructed his Chief of Staff Steve Barclay (R) to take over as Health Secretary

Britain's newly appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi leaves from 10 Downing Street in central London on July 5, 2022 following his appointment

Former Minister of State for Universities of the United Kingdom, Michelle Donelan, is now Secretary of State for Education

A sign that the Prime Minister was in danger came with a hastily-arranged broadcast interview in his Commons office.

He tried to contain the row over Pincher after it emerged he had forgotten about being told of previous allegations of 'inappropriate' conduct.

Pincher quit as deputy chief whip last week following claims that he groped two men at the upmarket Carlton Club, but Johnson knew about allegations against him as far back as 2019.

The Prime Minister acknowledged he should have sacked Pincher when he was found to have behaved inappropriately when he was a Foreign Office minister in 2019, but instead Johnson went on to appoint him to other government roles.

Johnson is pictured alongside disgraced former Tory party whip Chris Pincher

Asked if that was an error, Johnson said: 'I think it was a mistake and I apologise for it. In hindsight it was the wrong thing to do.

'I apologise to everybody who has been badly affected by it. I want to make absolutely clear that there's no place in this Government for anybody who is predatory or who abuses their position of power.'

MPs were told that Johnson had not recalled being told about the earlier 2019 allegations.

Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, the then foreign secretary, gave Pincher a dressing down over his 'inappropriate' conduct 'in no uncertain terms' at the time and the Cabinet Office's propriety and ethics team was also involved.

No 10 had initially claimed Johnson had not been aware of any 'specific allegations', after Mr Pincher's dramatic resignation.

By Monday that line had evolved to acknowledge the Prime Minister was aware of 'allegations that were either resolved or did not progress to a formal complaint'.
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Sandra Lee donned a daring sheer dress to enjoy a very romantic 56th birthday trip to Lake Como with her fiance Ben Youcef.

The former Food Network star donned the see-through dress for her trip to the Italian resort, and was spotted passionately kissing Youcef, 43, who she has been in a relationship with for about a year.

The happy couple couldn't keep their hands off each other over their weekend as they enjoyed a summer holiday at Villa d'Este in Lake Como.

Lee, who turned 56 on Sunday, took to Instagram to gush about her birthday celebration and the man by her side.

Sandra Lee was spotted wearing a daring see-through white dress as she celebrated her 56th birthday with a romantic cruise around Lake Como in Northern Italy with her fiance Ben Youcef

The happy couple was spotted kissing passionately while vacationing in Lake Como

They couldn't keep their hands off each other as they smooched in a boat while taking a spin around Lake Como on Sunday

'Romantic Sunset cruise on Lake Como pre-party with my Ben,' she captioned a photo of herself passionately kissing Youcef... so romantic and special for my birthday!! Happy birthday everyone- may your kisses be filled with love and passion. Loving 56 so far! So gratefulXoxo Sandy.'

On Saturday, she posted a photo of herself passionately kissing Youcef on a balcony in Verona, the setting for Shakespearian romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet.

'So lots to share from today on!! ' she wrote. 'First and most importantly I am making my years count instead of counting the years. Yesterday my Pre-birthday day, a Magical day in Verona was spent at Juliet's balcony (the Romeo and Juliet balcony) with my Ben.

The couple gazed into each other's eyes as they sailed around the lake in Italy on Sunday

Lee and Youcef held hands as they strolled aroundVilla d'Este over the weekend

They both wore white and looked relaxed as they went for a walk in Northern Italy

The happy couple held hands and smooched as they enjoyed their holiday in Italy

'After this past year of health struggles, I know that life is too short not celebrate every single chance I can get. So looking forward to Ben's next surprise! Yay Birthdays, what a gift they are!! Xo Sandy'.

Earlier this year, Lee opened up about undergoing a hysterectomy, saying at the time that the surgery was a 'bit rough' and she had a 'long road of recovery ahead.'

Lee, who turned 56 on Sunday, took to Instagram to gush about the man by her side

'Romantic Sunset cruise on Lake Como pre-party with my Ben,' she captioned a photo of herself passionately kissing Youcef'

On Saturday, she posted a photo of herself kissing Youcef on a balcony in Verona

Lee's ex, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, was by her side when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy in 2015

She has praised him for being incredibly supportive during her cancer battle and subsequent reconstructive surgeries, although they split up in 2019, leaving Lee heartbroken.

Lee developed an infection from her double mastectomy and was rushed to the hospital in August 215.

'I did my very best to avoid this (when I tell you I did everything, I mean everything  modern, Eastern and holistic) but infection is an incredible monster,' she wrote in a Facebook message to fans at the time.

'I am a long way from where I was and a long way from where I need to be, but at this point I understand that right now I just need to complete this unexpected phase of a tough journey.'

Lee started her reconstructive surgeries in 2016, and it took four years for them to be completed due to complications.

'It's a really intense thing, having that operation,' she told People in June 2016. 'Being put out, it's lights out. You go, 'Oh God, please sweet Lord, take care of me while I'm here.''

They couple shared a passionate kiss as they spent time in Northern Italy on Sunday

Youcef steals a kiss from Lee as they walk around the in Lake Como at Villa d'Este

The two strolled cobblestone streets while enjoying the sights of the area - and each other - as they celebrated Lee's 56th birthday on Sunday

The couple shares an intense moment while in Northern Italy over the weekend

Lee  who was dubbed 'First Girlfriend' while she was with Cuomo  kept a low profile during most of his first two terms as governor, but she emerged as an advocate for cancer screening after her own diagnosis.

'Early diagnosis just gives you the opportunity to be the most aggressive that you can be,' she told People in 2018. 'It's the best treatment.'

Lee also opened up about her cancer diagnosis in the 2018 HBO documentary 'RX: Early Detection, A Cancer Journey with Sandra Lee.'

She moved to Malibu after she and Cuomo split in September 2019. They dated for 14 years and lived together, but they never got engaged in their decade and a half as a couple.

Cuomo was by her side when she underwent a double mastectomy in 2015 and started reconstructive surgery a year later

Lee, pictured with her ex, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2012, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015

Lee and Youcef are believed to have met at a charity event in Santa Monica back in March 2021, with him making the first move.

He is a father to five-year-old twins with his soon-to-be ex-wife, California-based realtor Apryl Stephenson.

Though the pair are still legally married, they separated in 2019 and they filed for divorce in January 2020.

Youcef proposed to Lee in August during their whirlwind trip to France that coincided with the sexual harassment scandal surrounding Cuomo.

'Ben really wanted to distract Sandra from all the news, so he whisked her away to Paris,' an unnamed source close to Youcef told the New York Post.

'He knows how hard this has been on her and he wants to make sure she feels loved and supported.'

The source added: 'Ben is incredibly protective of Sandra. They're soulmates and head-over-heels in love.'

Cuomo, 64, resigned from office in August after investigators working for New York Attorney General Letitia James authored a report concluding he had sexually harassed 11 women.

Lee, meanwhile, couldn't be happier with Youcef, whom she praised in a gushing Valentine's Day post last month. She shared a carousel of photos of them together, including snapshots of them kissing.

Lee's fiance, Ben Youcef, was by her side when she underwent the procedure to remove her uterus

Lee moved to Malibu after she and Cuomo split in September 2019, and she met Youcef nearly two years later in March 2021

'So this happened! Ben happened! Love happened! Happiness happened!' she wrote. 'I was certain it never would again. I was shocked when it did. I swore I would never fall again, trust again, love again or open myself up again.

'On our one year anniversary I shall share the story of how we met but until then, my wish for you is that no matter where you are, how old you are or what has happened, you can welcome hope back into your life again.'
Julie Bishop's eight-year romance with David Panton is over - just a week after the couple visited London together where they dined with Prince Charles.

The former foreign minister first stepped out publicly with the property developer in 2014, with the pair pictured at countless events including the 2018 wedding of Karl Stefanovic and Jasmine Yarbrough.

The couple went to dinner on Friday night in Sydney's CBD where Mr Panton said the relationship had run its course, Nine newspapers reported in their CBD gossip column.

Julie Bishop's eight-year romance with her partner David Panton has come to an end

The couple went to dinner on Friday night in Sydney's CBD where Mr Panton decided the relationship had run its course, the Sydney Morning Herald reported

The pair had been together just a week ago at St James's Palace in London, having dinner with Prince Charles for an event honouring his charity

'I'm going to be focused on living in Manly and Melbourne for the foreseeable future,' Mr Panton told the publication.

'I wish Julie all the best in her ongoing stellar career.'

The pair had appeared to be going strong when they recently visited St James' Palace in London for an event honouring Prince Charles' charity.

Mr Panton, 61, met Ms Bishop, 65, while she was the midst of her political career, serving as Australia's Minister of Foreign Affairs

INSIDE JULIE BISHOP AND DAVID PANTON'S RELATIONSHIP November, 2014: Julie Bishop and David Panton are pictured publicly for the first time at the 2014 Melbourne Cup December, 2018: The pair attend Karl Stefanovic's wedding to Jasmine Yarbrough in Mexico November, 2019: Ms Bishop gives a rare insight into her relationship and why she fell for the property developer 'He's a very independent-minded and successful businessman, and he has a delightful sense of humour. He makes me laugh,' she told the Sydney Morning Herald September 2020: Ms Bishop talks of the struggles of their long distance relationship during Covid, with her living in Perth and Mr Panton in Sydney The pair were separated for seven months 'The first place I will go is to Sydney to see David,' Ms Bishop told The Daily Telegraph about borders reopening. 'We FaceTime. It isn't great but it is all you can do because he can't get in here (WA) and I can't go there without having to get an exemption. It is very difficult but I know a lot of families have been separated in this way, it is challenging.' July 2022: Pair attend St James's Palace in London last week for an event honouring Prince Charles' charity The news breaks six days later she and Mr Panton have split Advertisement

Mr Panton, 61, met Ms Bishop, 65, while she was in the midst of her political career, serving as Australia's Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The pair maintained a long-distance relationship for years, with Ms Bishop based in Perth while he lived in Sydney.

Mr Panton, originally from Melbourne, previously ran a vineyard with his ex-wife and owned a pharmacy business before moving into the property development industry when he moved to the Harbour City in 2014 - around the time he met Ms Bishop.

In 2019, Ms Bishop told the SMH about how she fell for the property developer and their bond over their love of health and fitness.

'That's self-evident  have you seen him?' she laughed.

'He's a swimmer, I'm a runner.'

Ms Bishop, 65, had in 2019 told the SMH about how she fell for the property developer and their bond over their love of health and fitness.

'He's a very independent-minded and successful businessman, and he has a delightful sense of humour. He makes me laugh.'

Mr Paton was often by her side as she travelled the world as the foreign minister, and the relationship remained strong despite being separated for seven months during Covid.

Ms Bishop also explained why the pair had not decided to relocate to each other's respective cities.

'[David and I] meet constantly, travel together and travel overseas to keep it fresh,' she said in the interview.

'Long-distance relationships can be a lot of fun.'

At the time, Ms Bishop said she was thankful for FaceTime.

'It isn't great, but it is all you can do because he can't get in here [WA], and I can't go there without having to get an exemption. It is very difficult but I know a lot of families have been separated in this way, it is challenging,' she told The Daily Telegraph.

When asked why she fell in love with the property developer, Ms Bishop told a reporter: It's self evident. Have you seen him?'

The couple were first pictured together at the 2014 Melbourne Cup before stepping into the spotlight the following year in New York while Ms Bishop worked at the UN Headquarters.

Ms Bishop was previously married to Neil Gillon from 1983 to 1988.

She was later dating former Lord Mayor of Perth Peter Nattrass for at least 12 years.

Ms Bishop had earlier opened up in an interview with Kidspot about her desire to have children, but how the opportunity never arose.

The deputy Liberal leader, who had a successful career as a lawyer before entering politics, held four ministerial positions, represented Australia on the UN security council and attended Harvard Business School for a course in advanced management.

She says that looking back over her career, she feels she didn't miss out.

'The window closes pretty quickly at 40. So politics is pretty much my life,' she said.

'I feel incredibly lucky that I've had the kind of career that is so consuming that I don't feel I have a void in my life.

'At 37, that's when I decided to go off to Harvard and did all these things, and it was very much about what I wanted to achieve in my life.

'It can be challenging either way.'

In 2015 she was asked by an audience member on Q&A if her ability to pursue a successful career as Foreign Minister would have been compromised if she had children.

Ms Bishop said the pair shared a bond over their love of health and fitness

'Well, I don't have children and so I have been able to pursue the role of Foreign Minister without that responsibility,' she said.

'But I'm not suggesting for a moment that a woman with children couldn't be Australia's Foreign Minister. But it is an extremely demanding role, because it takes you overseas at a moment's notice.

'We've had plenty of Foreign Ministers who have been males with children.'

Mr Panton is the director for Pantonic Health, which was a major provider of Covid rapid antigen tests.

He runs the company alongside his daughters Sally and Laura.

The business supplied tests for Darwin's Howard Springs quarantine facility, Twiggy Forrest's Fortescue Metals Group and Commonwealth Bank.
The former civil servant whose letter triggered last nights crisis was far from popular in Downing Street even before he accused No 10 of not telling the truth over the Chris Pincher scandal.

Career diplomat Simon McDonald did not see eye to eye with Boris Johnson, and was reportedly on a No 10 s*** list because of his anti-Brexit views.

Prior to becoming a peer, Lord McDonald had been the top Foreign Office mandarin between 2015 and 2020, including the period when Mr Johnson was foreign secretary.

The pair repeatedly clashed, insiders claim, and the now-Prime Minister thought the Remainiac mandarin was trying to undermine him by leaking stories about him being lazy.

Lord McDonald left the civil service in August 2020, after being named as one of three permanent secretaries reportedly in line to be sacked.

The former top civil servant claimed No10 'keep changing their story and are still not telling the truth'

The PM is under pressure over his decision to appoint Mr Pincher as the Conservative deputy chief whip in February

End of Boris is the end of Brexit, gloats Heseltine Lord Heseltine gloated last night that if Boris Johnson goes, Brexit will too. He claimed the departure from the EU had been a disaster, and the Tories must change course to stay in government. Asked if the party would oust a proven vote-winner, he told the BBC: It has an instinct for survival. They know that under Boris they will not win the next election. The Remainer, who served in Margaret Thatchers Cabinet but lost the whip in 2019 after backing the Lib Dems in European Parliament elections, said: The cancer at the heart of this dilemma is Brexit. If Boris goes, Brexit goes. Lord Heseltine, whose Henley seat was taken by Mr Johnson in 2001, said he liked the PM, but added: That is often the case with real rogues  they can be entertaining... providing you can live with the lack of integrity. Advertisement

In an interview with the UK in a Changing Europe think-tank last year, he said he was soaked by the hard rain that Dominic Cummings forecast was coming for Whitehall.

Apparently, we were all for the high jump. Immediately after that, Dom Raab said, This is rubbish. Dont worry about it, so I didnt worry, he said.

But when his contract was up for renewal in August 2020, the Foreign Office was being merged with the Department for International Development.

He left after Mr Johnson told him: Im sure that you could lead DfID but you will always look to them like Foreign Office. I need a new person from the start.

Lord McDonald, made a crossbench peer on quitting the Civil Service, is said never to have hidden his opposition to leaving the EU.

Last year he said he was upset and amazed that the Government planned to break international agreements over Brexit. Mr Johnson and his ministers have repeatedly accused the Civil Service blob of trying to frustrate Brexit.

This week Attorney General Suella Braverman said government efforts to peel back EU laws were being held up by officials suffering from an inability to conceive of the possibility of life outside the EU.

While at the Foreign Office, Lord McDonald denied he had been demoralised by Brexit.

He was accused of heaping pressure on Mr Johnson during the Tory leadership contest over the handling of highly sensitive cables  criticising the Trump administration  sent to London by Lord Darroch, UK ambassador to Washington, who subsequently resigned. Lord McDonald was previously the British ambassador to Germany and to Israel.
Passengers on a Qatar Airlines flight to Brazil were shocked when the plane had to swerve to dodge a balloon that had drifted into its flight path.

The Boeing 777-300, which can carry more than 300 passengers, had to avoid the unmanned balloon on its final approach into Sao Paulo.

The plane, which had taken off from Doha and was preparing to touch down in Guarulhos Airport on July 3, had to make an 'evasive manoeuvre' but landed safely.

Passengers and plane spotters were able to record the incident, showing just how close the plane was to hitting the balloon.

A local resident, Rafael Freitas managed to capture a photo of the balloon as it came dangerously close to the plane.

'The Boeing 777 came a little misaligned with the runway to avoid the balloon. When it passed, it corrected the alignment with a curve,' Freitas told local media.

A picture captured the moment a Boeing jet was forced to avoid a balloon on its final approach to Sao Paulo, Brazil

The balloon, which appeared to be carrying an advertisement below it, just missed the plane's left wing

Qatar Airlines told Doha News that it 'is aware of an event concerning one of its aircraft involving an unmanned balloon before landing in Sao Paulo on Sunday 3 July.'

They added: 'The flight landed as normal and safety margins were maintained at all times. The captain filed a report following the flight which is now being investigated by the Brazilian authorities.'

Images of the balloon show that it was unmanned and was supporting an advertising banner.

A source reportedly told Doha News that the balloon was being used as part of the local Festas Juninas festival  a month of traditional festivities that take place at the beginning of the Brazilian winter in June.

A local resident managed to take a photo of the balloon before it drifted into the aircraft's flight path

It would not have been the first time a large balloon would have been hit by a plane.

On New Year's Eve in 2020, an Avianca Airbus A319 hit a hot air balloon containing tinsel that had drifted near Bogota International Airport in Colombia, according to Aviation24.

Pilots were able to land the plane safely, and authorities urged people to refrain from using fireworks or launching hot air balloons close to airports.

Mid-air collisions with planes are very infrequent but are very deadly when they occur.

The worst incident of a mid-air plane collision was in 1996, when Saudia Flight 763 and Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907 collided over India.

All 349 people onboard both planes were killed.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced new emergency flood support payments for Aussies who live in the 23 hardest hit council areas of NSW.

Flood-affected residents will be eligible for $1000 disaster payments for adults and $400 for children, which will be transferred into bank accounts as early as Thursday.

The news comes as the Prime Minister visits the flood-devastated Hawkesbury district in Sydney's north-west, which has been hit by major flooding for the third time in months.

'I can say the Australian government has made a decision already that the disaster recovery payment will be available from tomorrow,' Mr Albanese told the ABC on Wednesday.

Flood victims will be eligible for a new disaster payment announced by the federal government. Pictured is a McGraths Hill local in checking on neighbours in Sydney's north-west on Wednesday morning

'That will be $1,000 for every eligible adult who has been impacted here. $400 for every child will be available across the 23 local government areas that have been impacted so far.'

Mr Albanese later told reporters the disaster recovery allowance will also be made available to assist employees and sole traders who experience a loss of income as a direct result of the latest flood crisis, payable to them for a maximum 13 weeks.

Eligible New Zealand citizens affected by the floods will also receive assistance.

The Federal Cabinet signed off on the payments on Tuesday, shortly after the prime minister returned to Australia from his week-long trip to Europe.

Eligible local government areas include Blacktown, Blue Mountains, Camden, Canterbury Bankstown, Campbelltown, Central Coast, Cessnock, Fairfield, Georges River, Hawkesbury, Hornsby, Kiama, Lithgow, Liverpool, Northern Beaches, Penrith, Shellharbour, Shoalhaven, Sutherland, The Hills, Wingecarribee, Wollondilly and Wollongong.

The Central Coast is one of 23 eligible local government areas eligible for new emergency flood support payments. Pictured are locals in a Chittaway Bay street cut off floodwaters

The Prime Minister will visit the flood-hit suburb of Windsor (pictured) on Wednesday

The population of the eligible LGAs combined is 3.67 million.

The disaster payments are in addition to initial assistance flagged by the federal and NSW governments announced earlier this week.

'We know this is having a real impact on people. We want to make sure the supports are available as soon as possible,' Mr Albanese said.

'That's why we've been very quick to act in partnership with the NSW government and it is pleasing that we've been able to work together so strongly. We know that these circumstances have impacted people there in the area where you are.'

The government has yet to declare the natural disaster a 'national emergency' but is currently being considered, the prime minister confirmed.

Mr Albanese will see the devastation caused by the latest floods first-hand on Wednesday as authorities warn further parts of the state must brace for extreme weather.

He will be joined by NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet on a visit to Windsor, where the Hawkesbury River reached its highest level in more than 40 years, where boat is the only way in and out of many streets.

The leaders will also visit flood devastated communities in the Illawarra and Hunter regions.

A further 100 Australian Defence Force members are expected to arrive in flood-hit areas on Wednesday.

During an interview with the ABC, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said flood-affected residents will be eligible for $1000 disaster payments for adults and $400 for children

It comes on top of 100 ADF members who were already assisting with efforts, with 50 more available to help during the eventual clean-up operation.

Three ADF helicopters have also been deployed to assist specifically at night.

The federal government also hinted at further financial support for flood victims, some devastated by floods for the fourth time in 18 months.

'We have already announced a wide range of support for people, but I think it's fair to assume that there will be more coming,' Emergency Management Minister Murray Watt said.

Severe weather warnings remain in place as Sydney woke up to its fifth consecutive morning of relentless rain after more than a month's worth since Saturday.

The number of residents issued with evacuation orders and warnings has soared to more than 55,000 with parts of the Central Coast and Hunter now isolated.
Cladding-hit flat owners who were issued with a service charge for thousands of pounds just before the new Building Safety Act came into force have been advised that they should not pay.

The new Building Safety Act came into force last week, and made it law that building owners, usually property developers or investors, are financially responsible for making dangerous buildings safe - not the leaseholders of individual flats.

It applies to buildings above 11 metres tall or with more than five storeys, with Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove suggesting a prison sentence may be given to building owners who did not comply and continued to invoice residents for remediation costs.

Since the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, concerns about cladding have become a national issue

Residents in one block of flats - who did not want to be named amid fears of reprisals - were sent two letters by their managing agent around a week before the new law came into force last week.

One of the letters presented a higher than normal service charge without any mention of remediation works.

A service charge will normally have both a start and finish date that the payment due covers, but here it simply stated that the period covered was up to July 20 this year and the amount due was 3,327.83.

The residents were told they had just 30 days to find the money.

The letter stated: 'Interest and fees will be charged on late payment as provided under the terms of your lease.'

And it went on to suggest that the building owner may be able to gain entry and even forfeit the flat.

It stated: 'Your lease may give your landlord a right of re-entry or forfeiture where you have failed to pay charges which are due under the lease.'

The new Building Safety Act came into force last week and made it law that building owners are financially responsible for making dangerous buildings safe (stock image)

The flat owners said: 'After believing the cladding work was nearly completed and finally agreed the payment was covered, receiving this letter was a huge shock and extremely worrying especially with the threatening tone demanding full payment to be made within 30 days or further action will be taken.

'The threat of late payment and high interest is causing extreme stress and anxiety with many sleepless nights wondering how or where I am supposed to find this money from in such an unrealistic short timeframe.'

The other letter said an additional service charge contribution was required from leaseholders to complete the 'external wall project'.

And it went on to suggest that without the remediation work being completed, residents will be unable to sell their homes.

It said the works were 'essential to ensure the safety of the buildings, and to enable us to receive the certificate necessary for apartments to be sellable/mortgageable again'.

The flat owner paid around 270,000 for the property when it was built about 16 years ago.

The latest service charge is just for the cladding-related issues, with the service charge bill for the next six months - until the end of this year - having already been paid. It was for 1,972.59.

Legal view: Should homeowners pay cladding bills?

Liam Spender, of Velitor Law, explained that while there are a lot of unknowns in this case, on the information presented it seems 'it should not be happening'.

The external wall charges appear to be banned by both the Building Safety Pledge and the new leaseholder protections under the Building Safety Act, he explained.

He added that the residents would need to take further advice on this specific case but made the following points:

The building appears to be a relevant building because it is eligible for the Building Safety Fund, so must be at least 17.7 metres tall. Leaseholders in the building may therefore qualify for the new protections. Only buildings above 11 metres tall or with more than 5 storeys qualify.

The demand is dated 20 June but is not payable until 20 July, which is after the new protections come into force

2. If the landlord is connected with the developer then no-one in the building - whether residential or commercial - should be asked to pay anything.

3. I do not know if the flat owner is a 'qualifying leaseholder'. If they were resident on 14 February 2022 and did not own more than three UK properties at that date, then they should be able to rely on the new protections.

4. The demand is dated 20 June but is not payable until 20 July, which is after the new protections come into force. The key date is the date it becomes payable, not the date it is issued. As the demand falls due for payment on or after 28 June it is subject to the new law.

5. I have not seen the lease but it is unclear if the landlord has the right to demand additional contributions in this way. If there is no provision in the lease allowing supplementary demands then the demand is not valid at all. If there is such a provision then the landlord must comply with the detail of it in order for the demand to be valid.

6. The works appear to relate to a 'relevant defect' because they are to stop the spread of fire in the external wall. The cost of the works should therefore be subject to the new leaseholder protections.

There are many cases in which cladding-hit homeowners should not be paying remediation bills, according to legal expert Liam Spender

7. The works also appear to relate to a life safety critical risk, the spread of fire in the external wall. So they should be paid for by the developer, under the terms of the Building Safety Pledge it has signed up to with the Government.

8. The works also appear to relate to 'cladding' as defined in paragraph 5 of Schedule 8 to the Building Safety Act 2022. This is a different definition to the one used for the Building Safety Fund. As such, it may not be lawful for the landlord to pass on any costs at all for these works. This protection only applies to qualifying leaseholders.

9. Assuming the works are not 'cladding' works, then the landlord is required to approach the developer and look at its own resources before it passes on costs to qualifying leaseholders. If the landlord has net assets of more than 2million per each affected block it owns then it should be covering the costs itself.

10. Only if the developer and landlord do not pay - or cannot pay - should the landlord be approaching qualifying leaseholders. This flat is outside London. If it is worth less than 175,000 then the leaseholder contribution is zero. If it is worth more than 175,000 then the leaseholder contribution is a maximum of 10,000. That 10,000 is reduced by any costs already paid toward remediating or investigating relevant defects, such as waking watch, survey fees, and landlord legal fees.

11. Even if it is payable, the 10,000 can only be demanded over 10 years, so 1,000 per year. This demand is above the 1,000 per year maximum permitted, even before taking into account any deductions for costs paid previously.
A Ukrainian professor has becomes the second woman ever to scoop the Fields Medal  often described as the 'Nobel Prize of maths'.

Maryna Viazovska was awarded the prestigious prize for proving that a lattice provides the densest packing of identical spheres in eight dimensions  solving a problem first posed by German astronomer Johannes Kepler nearly 400 years ago.

She was among four 2022 winners of the Fields Medal, alongside fellow maths heavyweights from the UK, US and France, at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Helsinki today.

James Maynard, an academic from the University of Oxford, was awarded the prize for his work in analytic number theory and prime numbers.

The other two medal winners this year were French mathematician Hugo Duminil-Copin of the University of Geneva, and Korean-American mathematician June Huh of Princeton.

The Fields Medal has been awarded every four years since 1936 to two, three or four mathematicians under the age of 40 for their work in their field.

James Maynard attends the Fields prize ceremony during the International Congress of Mathematicians 2022. He was awarded the prize for his work in analytic number theory

The International Mathematical Union (IMU) said Viazovska, who holds the chair in number theory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, was being honoured for her work on the densest packing of identical spheres in eight dimensions

From left, Maryna Viazovska, James Maynard, June Huh and Hugo Duminil-Copin, attend the prize ceremony during the International Congress of Mathematicians 2022 in Helsinki

WHAT IS THE FIELDS MEDAL? The Fields Medal is a prize given to mathematicians under the age of 40 in recognition of their contributions to the field. It is presented to two, three or four mathematicians at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union, that takes place every four years. Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields was the first to propose this medal and it was first awarded in 1936. It has been regularly awarded since 1950. The 14-karat medal comes with a monetary prize of CA$15,000 (9,642, US$11,593). Its purpose is to support younger mathematicians who made major contributions. Advertisement

The International Congress of Mathematicians was due to be held in Russia this year, but was moved to Finland due to the war.

Carlos E. Kenig, the president of the International Mathematical Union, said: 'The ongoing barbaric war that Russia still continues to wage against Ukraine clearly shows that no other alternative was feasible.'

Maryna Viazovska, 37, was awarded for her work in proving the most compact way to pack identical spheres.

Johannes Kepler proposed the answer was in a pyramid shape in 1611, like fruit is stacked in a supermarket, but it wasn't proved until 1998 using a computer.

Viazovska solved the problem in eight dimensions in 2016, using what is called an E8 lattice.

She is just the second female winner in the award's history, after Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani in 2014.

Mirzakhani was celebrated for her contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces  one-dimensional topological spaces.

Mirzakhani passed away in 2017, aged 40, with breast cancer.

Maynard, 35, has made a number of breakthroughs in his field of analytical number theory.

This includes showing that sometimes prime numbers fall closer together or further apart than expected.

Korean-American prizewinner Huh, 39, dropped out of school to study poetry, before his love of maths was reignited by a chance lecture at university.

His award was presented for solving conjectures in combinatorics  a field of mathematics concerned with counting  with algebraic geometry.

Duminil-Copin, 36, won the fourth medal for his work in the mathematical theory of phase transitions  like a solid melting to a liquid  in statistical physics.

James Maynard (left) and Maryna Viazovska (right) receive the Fields Prize from IMU President Carlos E. Kenig, during the International Congress of Mathematicians 2022 in Helsinki, Finland. Viazovska is just the second woman to be awarded a medal in its history

Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields was the first to propose the Fields Medal, and it was first awarded in 1936.

It has been regularly awarded since 1950.

The 14-karat medal has come with a monetary prize of CA$15,000 (9,642, US$11,593) since 2006.

Its purpose is to support younger mathematicians who made major contributions.

In order to qualify, scholars must be under 40 years old  a requirement many consider to be the reason no females have won until this point, since it's during peak child-rearing years.

At the last ceremony in 2018, Kurdish-Iranian professor at the University of Cambride, Caucher Birkar, was awarded a medal.

Born in Iran, he came to Nottingham in his final year at the University of Tehran in 2000, and applied for political asylum so he could stay in the UK to complete a PhD.

Less than an hour after he was presented with his award, it was stolen from his briefcase.

June Huh was also named as a Fields Medal winner for solving conjectures in combinatorics - a field of mathematics concerned with counting - with algebraic geometry

Hugo Duminil-Copin poses with the Fields prize after winning for his work in the mathematical theory of phase transitions  for example when ice melts to liquid water  in statistical physics
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When NASA returns humans to the moon later this decade, its wider vision will be to set up a lunar outpost for people to survive for longer periods.

To support that goal, a US company has unveiled its design for a 3D-printed bunker that could protect astronauts from radiation, meteorites and moonquakes.

AI SpaceFactory's outpost would feature Romanesque arches topped with over 8ft of lunar soil, along with three separate units that share a communal courtyard.

Each unit area is 807 square feet (75 square metres), while the central staging area is 968 square feet (90 square metres).

The 3D-printed shell design also incorporates a photovoltaic tree to capture and harvest solar energy.

Home on the moon: When NASA returns humans to the moon later this decade, its wider vision will be to set up a lunar outpost for people to survive for longer periods. To support that goal, a US company has unveiled its design for a 3D-printed bunker (pictured)

AI SpaceFactory's outpost would feature Romanesque arches topped with 8ft of lunar soil, along with three separate units that share a communal courtyard

Each unit area is 807 square feet (75 square metres), while the central staging area is 968 square feet (90 square metres)

Within the next decade, NASA's Artemis Mission will send astronauts to the lunar south pole, a region described as 'The Peak of Eternal Light', where the sun is constant and resides at a low angle of incidence.

LINA (Lunar Infrastructure Asset), as the base has been called, would be constructed by autonomous robots near the Shackleton crater, where near-continuous sunlight on the peaks could allow for solar power.

Not only that, but the constant shadow on the crater's interior would allow for the harvesting of water ice.

'As we broaden the horizon of what is possible in the future, LINA is an architectural and technological milestone that sets a precedent for pursuing explorations more distant than our moon,' the design team said.

'Designed with a life expectancy of at least 50 years, LINA is sized to shelter a pressurised, manned rover such as the Space Exploration Vehicle, telecommunication devices, and habitation modules.'

The lunar bunker will be covered with lunar regolith, providing maximum possible protection from lethal solar and cosmic radiation, micrometeorites, lunar seismic activity (moonquakes), and extreme thermal swings.

The LINA design stems from a collaboration between AI SpaceFactory and NASA to develop technologies for lunar surface construction within the timeframe of the Artemis mission.

Occupants of the lunar bunker will be shielded from lethal solar and cosmic radiation, while the lunar regolith it would be covered with would provide maximum possible protection from radiation, micrometeorites, lunar seismic activity (moonquakes), and extreme thermal swings

LINA (Lunar Infrastructure Asset), as the based has been called, would be constructed by autonomous robots near the Shackleton crater, where near-continuous sunlight on the peaks could allow for solar power

Not only that, but the constant shadow on the crater's interior would allow for the harvesting of water ice

To construct it, AI SpaceFactory is developing a space-rated 3D printing system designed to operate in a vacuum with temperatures ranging from -274F to -94F (-170C to 70C).

The first such prototype, built alongside NASA, is undergoing testing at the Kennedy Space Center in a lunar environmental chamber, which replicates the conditions at the lunar south pole.

It is hoped that the long-lasting structure could support long-term habitation and travels to more planets.

NASA's original date for landing humans on the moon again was 2024, but last year it delayed the date, blaming litigation from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' firm Blue Origin.

In August, the US space agency plans to send manikins to space as part of the Artemis I mission.

Artemis I will pave the way for crewed flights  Artemis II, which will launch in May 2024 and fly by the moon without landing on it, and Artemis III, which will actually touch down on the lunar surface.

Artemis III, which will launch 'no earlier than 2025', will be the first to land humans on the moon in more than 50 years, since Apollo 17 in December 1972.

To construct it, AI SpaceFactory is developing a space-rated 3D printing system designed to operate in a vacuum with temperatures ranging from -274F to -94F (-170C to 70C)

It is hoped that the long-lasting structure could support long-term habitation and travels to more planets
The US is considering selling to the Egyptian Air Force either F-35s or F-15s if Cairo will pledge not to buy the Su-35 Flankers.

One problem with Washington is that it does not like Russia selling defense products cheaper than US options, it wants to be the only supplier. US officials are in talks to negotiate a sale to the Middle Eastern with conditions that the Egyptian Defense Ministry should follow.

Cairo Expresses Interest in US Fighters

Specifically mentioning Egyptian orders for Russian Su-35S heavyweight fighters, which were placed in the latter part of 2018, with nearly twenty airframes already constructed; reported Military Watch Magazine.

Sources claimed that Cairo was interested in buying the F-35 stealth fighter, but the Egyptian government said the sale of the Su-35 must be stopped before an agreement, noted the EurAsian Times.

While the sale of fifth-generation F-35s might be contentious for several reasons, another option is to offer newer versions of the F-15 Eagle, the oldest fighter class in the world still very much in production and one that Egypt desired to purchase in the late 1970s.

Selling Egypt F-35s has several problems; for example, neighboring Turkey was kicked out of the program, and the United Arab Emirates was refused access mainly because it chose to use Huawei infrastructure for its telecommunications network. Israel is now the only active player in the region, citing the Middle East Eye.

Whereas many major Huawei 5G infrastructure users, most recently Germany, have been given the approval to purchase F-35s, and Egypt is highly doubtful to give up its own telecoms sector reform plans, selling the aircraft for no more compromises than jettisoning the Su-35 Flanker deal would be controversial.

Read Also: Xi Jinping: 5 Things To Know About China's President

Current Planes Used by Egypt

Egyptian Air Force currently has almost 200 F-16 Fighting Falcons, the F-35's immediate fourth-generation precursors, even as those in the Egyptian fleet have been broadly christened the world's worst F-16s due to their heavily scaled back avionics and lack of any viable beyond visual range weaponry.

If Egypt is accepted to acquire F-35s or F-15s, they would almost definitely be similarly downgraded, leaving Egypt's defenses a little better off than they are now.

This was primarily viewed as one of the primary motivations why Egypt's neighbor and long-standing military rival Israel had been supposedly going to pressure Washington to agree to sell F-15s to the Egyptian Defense Ministry, making sure that there would be no possible issues to Israeli air superiority on its western border if Egypt did receive the heavy flankers.

Its Unwise To Buy American Equipment

It does not allow its equipment to be used without permission, even after it has been bought and even where the bases will be deployed. It's a deal-breaker that is problematic for all buyers of US defense products.

If Cairo goes with the Su-35, there will be no problem, especially since the US likes not to sell spare parts. Countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, and Egypt faced this dilemma in 2013 as Muslim countries.

Another important factor might be the F-35 operators' lack of independence, as indicated by the fact that they were used to eavesdrop on their operators, according to Norwegian military sources.

The Egyptian Air Force will have a better deal with the Su-35 Flankers than the US will its conditions when buying American equipment.

Related Article: Russia's Su-35 Flanker-E Allegedly Shot Down in the Skies of Ukraine

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Wine and olive shortages could be on the cards as 'unprecedented' changes in a high-pressure system over the North Atlantic drives drought in parts of Portugal and Spain.

The two European countries are the driest they have been in a thousand years due to the Azores High, an atmospheric high-pressure system driven by climate change, according to a new study.

The Azores High rotates clockwise over parts of the North Atlantic and has a major effect on weather and long-term climate trends in western Europe.

The new study shows that this high-pressure system 'has changed dramatically in the past century and that these changes in North Atlantic climate are unprecedented within the past millennium'.

Wine shortages could be on the cards die to an 'unprecedented' changes in a high-pressure system over the North Atlantic called the Azores High

These graphics illustrate the changes in mean winter sea-level pressure (bluered contours), rainfall (browngreen contours) and moisture transport (grey arrows) between 19802007 and 19501979. The centre of the Azores High is indicated with an 'H' while the centre of the corresponding Icelandic Low is indicated with an 'L'.

Humanity is 'at a crossroads' in the management of drought Humanity is 'at a crossroads' in the management of droughts, with the number and duration surging 29 per cent since 2000, a new UN report has warned. The report, called Droughts in Numbers, 2022, says that mitigation is needed 'urgently, using every tool we can.' 'We are at a crossroads,' said Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). 'We need to steer toward the solutions rather than continuing with destructive actions, believing that marginal change can heal systemic failure.' Advertisement

Using climate model simulations over the last 1,200 years, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that this high-pressure system started to grow to cover a greater area around 200 years ago, as human greenhouse gas pollution began to increase.

It expanded even more dramatically in the 20th century, in step with global warming.

The authors then looked at evidence of rainfall levels preserved over hundreds of years in Portuguese stalagmites, and found that, as the Azores High has expanded, the winters in the western Mediterranean have become drier.

The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, cites projections that the level of precipitation could fall a further 10 to 20 percent by the end of this century.

This would make Iberian agriculture 'some of the most vulnerable in Europe', the authors say.

They warn that the Azores High will continue to expand during the 21st century as greenhouse gas levels rise, leading to an increasing risk of drought on the Iberian Peninsula and threatening key crops such as grapes and olives.

'Our findings have important implications for projected changes in western Mediterranean hydroclimate throughout the twenty-first century,' the authors said.

As the Azores High has expanded, the winters in the western Mediterranean have become drier. Graph shows the number of winters with extremely large Azores Highs in a 100 yr window

Researches predict the Azores High will continue to expand during the 21st century as greenhouse gas levels rise. Graph shows the frequency of winters with extremely large Azores Highs in a 100 yr window

Expansion of the Azores Highs could lead to an increasing risk of drought on the Iberian Peninsula, threatening key crops such as grapes and olives.

Graphics show anomalies of precipitation and moisture transportduring winters with extremely large Azores High

The Azores High acts as a 'gatekeeper' for rainfall into Europe, according to the study, with dry air descending in the summer months to cause hot, arid conditions in much of Portugal, Spain and the western Mediterranean.

In the cool, wetter winter period, the high-pressure system swells, sending westerly winds carrying rain inland.

This winter rain is 'vital' for both the ecological and economic health of the region, but it has been decreasing, particularly over the second half of the 20th century.

While previous research had not untangled the effects of natural variability on the Azores High, the authors said their findings show its expansion during the industrial era is linked to the rise of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

A study cited in the latest research estimates that the area suitable for grape growing in the Iberian Peninsula could shrink by at least a quarter  and potentially vanish almost completely by 2050  because of severe water shortages.

Meanwhile, researchers have predicted a 30 per cent drop in production for olive regions in southern Spain by 2100.

Winemakers are already looking for ways to adapt to the changing climate, such as moving vineyards to higher altitudes and experimenting with more heat-tolerant varieties.

Last year, scientists found that a severe spring frost that ravaged grape vines in France was made more likely by climate change, with the plants budding earlier and therefore more susceptible to damage.
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have announced the discovery of three new 'exotic particles' that could help to explain how our universe was formed.

The new structures exist for just a hundred thousandth of a billionth of a billionth of a second and are built out of quarks, the tiniest particles ever discovered.

Atoms contain smaller particles called neutrons and protons, which are made up of three quarks each, while this 'exotic' matter is made up of four and five quarks - known as tetraquarks and pentaquarks.

The particles discovered are one new pentaquark and two tetraquarks, taking the total number found at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland to 21.

Researchers are excited about their new findings because there are now enough of these particles to begin grouping them together in a way that is similar to the chemical elements in the periodic table.

'Finding exotic particles and measuring their properties will help theorists develop a model of how these particles are built, the exact nature of which is largely unknown,' according to Chris Parkes, professor of experimental particle physics at the University of Manchester.

'It will also help to better understand the theory for conventional particles such as the proton and neutron.'

The latest discovery comes almost exactly 10 years after the the Large Hadron Collider's discovery of the famous Higgs boson, dubbed the 'God Particle'.

Enlightening: Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have announced the discovery of three new 'exotic particles' that could help to explain how our Universe was formed

CERN is one of the largest scientific institutions in the world, home to over 2,000 scientists working on many physics projects. Pictured above is a chain of LHC dipole magnets inside a tunnel at the end of the second long shutdown, when the facility at CERN was updated for a few years so that protons could be slammed together at much higher energy ranges when run 3 begins in July

THE HIGGS BOSON CARRIES MASS AND IS A FUNDAMENTAL PART OF THE STANDARD MODEL OF PARTICLE PHYSICS The Higgs boson is an elementary particle - one of the building blocks of the universe according to the Standard Model of particle physics. It was named after physicist Peter Higgs as part of a mechanism that explains why particles have mass. According to the Standard Model our universe is made of 12 matter particles - including six quarks and six leptons. It also has four forces - gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak. Each force has a corresponding carrier particle known as a boson that acts on the matter. The theory went that the Higgs boson was responsible for transferring mass. It was first proposed in 1964 and wasn't discovered until 2012 - during a run of the Large Hadron Collider. The discovery was significant as if it had been shown not to exist then it would have meant tearing up the Standard Model and going back to the drawing board. Advertisement

Exotic particles were first hypothesised by theorists about six decades ago, but only in the past 20 years have they been observed by Large Hadron Collider and other experiments.

Quarks are elementary particles and come in six flavours: up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom.

They usually combine together in groups of twos and threes to form hadrons, such as the protons and neutrons that make up atomic nuclei.

More rarely, however, they can also combine into four-quark and five-quark particles, or 'tetraquarks' and 'pentaquarks'. Particles made of quarks are known as hadrons.

While some theoretical models describe exotic hadrons as single units of tightly bound quarks, other models envisage them as pairs of standard hadrons loosely bound in a molecule-like structure.

Only time and more studies of exotic hadrons will tell if these particles are one, the other or both.

Most of the exotic hadrons discovered in the past two decades are tetraquarks or pentaquarks containing a charm quark and a charm antiquark, with the remaining two or three quarks being an up, down or strange quark or an antiquark.

But in the past two years, the Large Hadron Collider has discovered different kinds of exotic hadrons.

Two years ago, it discovered a tetraquark made up of two charm quarks and two charm antiquarks, and two 'open-charm' tetraquarks consisting of a charm antiquark, an up quark, a down quark and a strange antiquark.

And last year it found the first-ever instance of a 'double open-charm' tetraquark with two charm quarks and an up and a down antiquark.

Open charm means that the particle contains a charm quark without an equivalent antiquark.

The discoveries announced today by the Large Hadron Collider team include new kinds of exotic hadrons.

The first kind, observed in an analysis of 'decays' of negatively charged B mesons, is a pentaquark made up of a charm quark and a charm antiquark and an up, a down and a strange quark.

It is the first pentaquark found to contain a strange quark, while the second kind is a doubly electrically charged tetraquark.

It is an open-charm tetraquark composed of a charm quark, a strange antiquark, and an up quark and a down antiquark, and it was spotted together with its neutral counterpart in a joint analysis of decays of positively charged and neutral B mesons.

The results, which were presented at a CERN seminar, will help physicists better understand how quarks bind together into these composite particles.

The news comes a day after the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the Higgs Boson on July 4.

The discovery of the Higgs Boson in July 2012 forms the basis for the existence of all elementary particles in our universe. Pictured above is a visualisation of an event recorded at the CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It shows the characteristics expected from the decay of the SM Higgs Boson to a pair of photons

The existence of the Higgs Boson, which is a subatomic particle that is the carrier particle for the Higgs Field, was first proposed by British physicist Peter Higgs in 1964. Pictured above is Higgs, who received a Nobel Prize in physics for proposing the existence of the Higgs Boson, at CERN in July 2012

The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 led to global headlines and the award of Nobel Prizes to, among others, the British theorist Peter Higgs.

Higgs had first predicted the existence of the particle in the 1960s, and theorised that we are surrounded by an ocean of quantum information known as the Higgs Field.

Since its discovery, experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have probed the properties of this bizarre particle, which is so unstable it has never been directly observed.

The existence of the Higgs Boson is one reason why everything we see, including ourselves, all planets and stars, has mass and exists  hence why it was called the 'God Particle.'

The Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration, which made the new discovery, is comprised of more than 1,000 scientists from 20 countries across the world.

The collaboration built and operates one of the four big detectors at the CERN LHC particle collider.

It is led by Professor Parkes and the University of Manchester, which has more than 20 members of staff and PhD students working on the project.
Elon Musks Tesla no longer reigns as the worlds largest electric vehicle producer.

The firm is now in second place behind China-based BYD, an auto giant backed by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, which outsold it in the first six months of this year.

BYD saw a 315 percent jump in sales from last year  it sold 640,000 electric vehicles, while Tesla delivered 564,000.

And the China-based company is poised to sell 1.5 million EVs this year.

Tesla blames its slump on ongoing supply chain issues and sales disruptions in China after its operations were hit by coronavirus lockdowns and travel restrictions, according to Nikkei Asia that first reported on the matter.

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BYD saw a 315 percent jump in sales from last year  it sold 640,000 electric vehicles, while Tesla delivered 564,000

Teslas stock was down more than three percent on Tuesday morning, which is due to a quarter-over-quarter drop in vehicle deliveries for the first time in two years.

CNBC News reports that Tesla shares could fall more than 40 percent due to its weaker deliveries.

Along with supply chain issues, Tesla is also struggling to ramp up production at its two new gigafactories located in Austin, Texas and Germany.

Musk, however, is not shy about the struggle and called the new factories 'gigantic money furnaces.

And China-based BYD (pictured) is poised to sell 1.5 million EVs this year

Teslas stock was down more than three percent on Tuesday morning, which is due to a quarter-over-quarter drop in vehicle deliveries for the first time in two years

Regardless, Teslas deliveries were 27 percent higher than the year before and the reasons for the drop could be temporary.

But this has opened a window of opportunity for BYD, which sold 134,036 EVs last month alone, which is a year-on-year increase of 162.7 percent, Barrons reports.

Tesla, on the other hand, delivered almost 565,000 electric vehicles in the first half of the year.

In the second quarter, Tesla delivered 254,695 EVs, a drop of 18 percent compared with first quarter deliveries of 310,048.

But June was the highest vehicle production month in Teslas history, according to Tesla.

Tesla may not be the largest EVs maker in the world, but its Model Y and Model 3 vehicles were named 'the most American-made cars' in a survey from Cars.com last month.

Tesla may not be the largest EVs maker in the world, but its Model Y and Model 3 vehicles were named 'the most American-made cars' in a survey from Cars.com last month

The survey was conducted by Cars.com's annual American Made Index, which awarded the Tesla Model Y compact SUV as the number one American-made car, with the Model 3 compact sedan coming in second.

The index is based on a specific set of data including where the cars are assembled, parts sourcing through the American Automobile Labeling Act and factory employment,

Jenni Newman, Cars.com editor-in-chief, said in a statement: 'The composition of this year's much-anticipated American-Made Index is particularly interesting in the context of our current marketplace, where high gas prices and scarce inventory meet peak consumer interest in electric vehicles and a heightened demand for American-made products.

'That Tesla  an American-made all-electric make  appears frequently and high up on the list may indicate a coming alignment of market forces that could really explode once we break through microchip supply chain issues, especially if gas prices remain historically high. It also bodes well for other OEMs, including Honda, Ford and GM, working to diversify product lines with more EV and hybrid options.'
Scientists at CERN are slamming protons together at an unprecedented energy level in order to unlock our world's most enduring mysteries - including dark matter, which we know little about despite it accounting for 26.8 percent of all mass and energy.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which restarted for its third run after undergoing extensive upgrades, shattered energy records when it was turned back on today - enabling physicists to further study the Higgs Boson and what this particle's decay can reveal about the rest of the universe.

By colliding proton beams together at 13.6 teraelectronvolts, the LHC broke a record; to give a sense of the power being unleashed at the particle collider located 300 feet underground, one tera electron volt is equivalent to 1,000,000,000,000 electron volts.

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CERN physicist Katharine Leney, pictured above, works at the ATLAS Experiment and is an assistant research professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. She spoke with DailyMail.com about her work and hope for the future

'We think [dark matter] has mass but we dont know anything about it,' CERN physicist Katharine Leney, who works on the ATLAS Experiment and is a research assistant professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, told DailyMail.com in an interview.

'We think that maybe Higgs Boson may be interacting with it - we dont know yet.'

Despite all of our scientific advancements, we only know about visible matter - everything that we can see - which amounts to just 4.9 percent of the entire universe. Dark energy, which we know even less about, accounts for 68.3 percent of the universe.

'Because these dark matter particles  if they werent interacting in any other way with other particles, they wouldnt interact with our detector,' Leney explained in the interview.

The LHC broke a record when it hit 13.6 teraelectronvolts, which is the equivalent of 13.6 trillion electron volts. Pictured above is a still from the official restart video for run three

Despite accounting for 26.8 percent of all mass and energy, we know very little about dark matter. Pictured is a visual representation of dark matter in the universe

During its shutdown, the Large Hadron Collider and all its accompanying detectors have received major upgrades. Pictured above, scientists celebrate the start of run three

Scientists will be analyzing how the Higgs Boson interacts with other particles. Pictured above is a portion of the Large Hadron Collider

Look at these stunning new collision event displays recorded in the ATLAS Experiment at @CERN!



The higher beam energy and intensity of #LHCRun3 will allow ATLAS to push the very limits of its physics research. Learn about today's exciting LHC restart: https://t.co/Q0SoIxk3rc pic.twitter.com/qJNxXJ42Fg  ATLAS Experiment (@ATLASexperiment) July 5, 2022

'The only way that we can tell that theyre there is to look for the absence of their presence in the detector.'

Despite its name, dark matter doesn't have any sinister or unsavory connotation. It's simply called that because it doesn't seem to interact with photons -- and those particles are pockets of light - and it can't be seen.

If the Higgs Boson interacted with dark matter, it would decay in a different way, so that scientists could then study what took place.

THE HIGGS BOSON CARRIES MASS AND IS A FUNDAMENTAL PART OF THE STANDARD MODEL OF PARTICLE PHYSICS The Higgs boson is an elementary particle - one of the building blocks of the universe according to the Standard Model of particle physics. It was named after physicist Peter Higgs as part of a mechanism that explains why particles have mass. According to the Standard Model our universe is made of 12 matter particles - including six quarks and six leptons. It also has four forces - gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak. Each force has a corresponding carrier particle known as a boson that acts on the matter. The theory went that the Higgs boson was responsible for transferring mass. It was first proposed in 1964 and wasn't discovered until 2012 - during a run of the Large Hadron Collider. The discovery was significant as if it had been shown not to exist then it would have meant tearing up the Standard Model and going back to the drawing board. Advertisement

'We know from energy conservation laws that the energy that we put in a detector should be equal to the energy that we put out in a collision,' Leney said.

'If we put energy in but we dont see enough stuff coming out, we can say that there must be something else here in order to not violate these energy conservation laws - and that then could be something like dark matter.'

Leney is specifically studying how the Higgs Boson interacts with itself and how it generates mass, which can be thought of as key piece of the puzzle that scientists are putting together.

This work will give them insights into topics including the formation of the universe and even its ultimate fate.

Ten years ago, scientists at CERN announced that they'd proven the existence of the Higgs Boson.

That particle, first proposed in the 1960s by physicist Peter Higgs, is essentially the physical manifestation of the Higgs Field.

'That field permeates the entire universe - anything that has mass is interacting with the Higgs Boson,' Leney said.

In the time since its last run ended several years ago, all of the equipment at CERN, including its massive four detectors, has been upgraded. In addition, the scientists will be able to analyze a voluminous amount of data with the help of high-tech computing and major software improvements.

'Machine learning has been a game changer for us in the last few years, Leney said.

'When we read the data off the detector we use machine learning techniques to improve how well we can identify different types of particles and then we use it when we are actually doing the analyses as well to separate what were doing from other physics processes.'

'I work on searches for producing pairs of Higgs Bosons, which is a thousand times rarer than producing a single Higgs Boson,' she explained, adding that machine learning has helped scientists far exceed projections of where they thought they'd be several years ago.

'We aim to be delivering 1.6 billion proton-proton collisions per second' for the ATLAS and CMS experiments, CERN's head of accelerators and technology Mike Lamont told AFP.

'Were all very much hoping that there is something beyond the Standard Model. Were really just getting started on this work,' Leney emphasized to Daily Mail.
Neighborhoods with more dogs are found to have lower rates of homicide, robbery and aggravated assaults, according to a new study.

The study, conducted by researchers at The Ohio State University, suggests criminals see people walking their dogs as 'more eyes' patrolling the streets and deters them from breaking the law.

Neighborhoods high in dog concentration had about two-thirds the robbery rates of those low in dog concentration and about half the homicide rates, the study found.

However, crime dramatically dropped in places with more dogs and residents who have high levels of trust in each other.

Nicolo Pinchak, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in sociology at The Ohio State University, said in a statement: 'When people are out walking their dogs, they have conversations, they pet each other's dogs.

'Sometimes they know the dog's name and not even the owners.

'They learn what's going on and can spot potential problems.'

Neighborhoods with more dogs are found to have lower rates of homicide, robbery and aggravated assaults, according to a new study

To uncover these findings, researchers analyzed crime statistics from 2014 to 2016 for 595 census block groups in Ohio's Columbus area, which is located in the center of the state.

Data from a marketing firm that asked residents in 2013 if they had a dog was also used, along with data from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study to measure trust in individual neighborhoods.

The team then asked residents to rate how much they agreed that 'people on the streets can be trusted' in their neighborhood.

Previous research has shown that trust among other residents within a neighborhood is a major player in reducing crime, but Pinchak said this 'really has to do with the dog walking.'

'Trust doesn't help neighborhoods as much if you don't have people out there on the streets noticing what is going on. That's what dog walking does,' Pinchak said.

'And that's why dogs have a crime-fighting advantage over cats and other pets that don't need walking.'

Neighborhoods high in dog concentration had about two-thirds the robbery rates of those low in dog concentration and about half the homicide rates, the study found. However, crime dramatically dropped in places with more dogs and residents who have high levels of trust in each other

The study found that more dogs in a neighborhood was also related to fewer property crimes, like burglaries, regardless of how much residents trust each other, Pinchak said.

This is because the sounds of barking and seeing a dog is a big deterrent for criminals.

The protective effect of dogs and trust was found even when a wide range of other factors related to crime was taken into account, including the proportion of young males in the neighborhood, residential instability and socioeconomic status.

Overall, the results suggest that it is beneficial to have a lot of trust in your neighbors to prevent crimeparticularly if you add a lot of dogs and dog walkers.

'There has already been a lot of research that shows dogs are good for the health and well-being of their human companions,' Pinchak said.

'Our study adds another reason why dogs are good for us.'

Not only does walking your dog reduce crime, but a separate study found it is a great way to combat stress.

Scientists at the University of Animal Health Technology in Tokyo released the study last year, which found sharing the outdoors with a pet cuts down the release of chemicals known to trigger depression, stress and anxiety.

It also appears to raise levels of chemicals that protect mental health.

The team took saliva samples from 14 dog owners for a week.

The results, in the journal Animals, showed levels of the stress-inducing MHPG chemical were lower when a dog was on the walk, while levels of the calming GABA chemical were up to 40 percent higher.
NASA is having 'communication issues' with its CAPSTONE satellite that is currently on a path toward the moon.

The microwave-sized satellite successfully broke free from its orbit around Earth on Monday, but the American space agency was unable to connect to the craft shortly after.

NASA spokesperson Sarah Frazier wrote in a statement on Tuesday: 'Following successful deployment and start of spacecraft commissioning on July 4, the [CAPSTONE] spacecraft experienced communications issues while in contact with the Deep Space Network.

'The spacecraft team currently is working to understand the cause and re-establish contact.'

Frazier also notes CAPSTONE 'has fuel to delay the initial post-separation trajectory correction maneuver for several days.'

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NASA is having 'communication issues' with CAPSTONE satellite that is currently on a path toward the moon. The microwave-sized satellite successfully broke free from its orbit around Earth on Monday, but the American space agency was unable to connect to shortly after

It is not clear when NASA lost communication exactly, but the team says it happened sometime on Monday.

On the same day, NASA was rejoicing when it saw its 55-pound satellite break free from its orbit around our planet and start its four-month journey to the moon.

The microwave-sized device, which launched seven days ago from New Zealand, is tasked with analyzing a unique orbit around the lunar orb, which will be home to a space station called Gateway.

The orbital path, know as a near-rectilinear halo orbit, is a stretched-out egg shape with one end of the orbit passing close to the moon and the other far from it.

NASA says CAPSTONE 'has fuel to delay the initial post-separation trajectory correction maneuver for several days'

It will take another four months for CAPSTONE to reach the moon, as it cruises along using minimal energy.

Lunar Gateway, which is due to launch in 2024, will serve as a 'staging area' for landing humans on the moon for the first time in 50 years, and potentially as a jumping-off point for missions to Mars.

Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck said it was hard to put his excitement into words after CAPSTONE broke free.

'It's probably going to take a while to sink in. It's been a project that has taken us two, two-and-a-half years and is just incredibly, incredibly difficult to execute,' he said.

'So to see it all come together tonight and see that spacecraft on its way to the moon, it's just absolutely epic.'

Lunar Gateway, which is due to launch in 2024, will serve as a 'staging area' for landing humans on the moon for the first time in 50 years, and potentially as a jumping-off point for missions to Mars

Beck said the advantage of the new orbit is that it minimizes fuel use and allows the satellite  or a space station  to stay in constant contact with Earth.

The orbit's route is located at a precise balance point in the gravities of the Earth and moon, meaning less energy is expended.

CAPSTONE will orbit this area around the moon for at least six months to understand 'the characteristics of the orbit', according to NASA, before the space agency deliberately crashes it on the lunar surface.

The space agency said: 'It will validate the power and propulsion requirements for maintaining its orbit as predicted by NASA's models, reducing logistical uncertainties.

'It will also demonstrate the reliability of innovative spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation solutions as well as communication capabilities with Earth.'

The first parts for the Lunar Gateway are not set to launch until November 2024 at the very earliest, giving NASA plenty of time to assess the results from CAPSTONE.

Described as a 'vital component' of NASA's Artemis program, the Lunar Gateway will be a small space station orbiting the moon, acting as a 'multi-purpose outpost'.

CAPSTONE blasted off on Rocket Lab's Electron rocket from the company's Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand on June 28

The official word is that NASA's Artemis program will land the first woman and the next man on the moon by 2025, although this could be pushed back again, NASA Investigator General Paul Martin recently suggested.

NASA's original date for landing humans on the moon again was 2024, but last year it delayed the date, largely blamed on litigation from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' firm Blue Origin.

Also this year, NASA will be sending manikins to space as part of the Artemis I mission in August 2022.

Artemis I will pave the way for crewed flights  Artemis II, which will launch in May 2024 and fly by the moon without landing on it, and Artemis III, which will actually touch down on the lunar surface.

Artemis III, which will launch 'no earlier than 2025', will be the first to land humans on the moon in more than 50 years, since Apollo 17 in December 1972.
While most millionaires spend their fortune on pricey cars and luxurious boats, William Sachiti used his fortune to purchase a Cold War era radar station in Norwich, England.

Sachiti, who is a British entrepreneur, purchased a network of private roads along a 250,000 square feet to test his 'spaceship, alien-looking' autonomous vehicles, but the radar system was an added bonus.

'UFOs obviously,' he jokingly told DailyMail.com in response to being asked what he plans on doing with the gigantic 25-foot-tall machine that once alerted the British army to oncoming nuclear missiles.

'I will find a way to bring this to life and let the people choose the best way to use it,' he said.

'If people want to hunt UFOS, I guess it is hunting UFOs.'

The massive system is located on the Royal Air Force Neatishead, an air defense station in England.

In 2010, it was advertised for sale with an asking price of $4,780,000  Sachiti declined to say how much he paid for the location.

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While most millionaires spend their fortune on pricey cars and luxurious boats, William Sachiti used his fortune to purchase a Cold War era radar station in Norwich, England

During a Zoom interview, Sachiti gave DailyMail.com a close up look at the coveted radar system that is about 65 feet wide and sits on a large pedestal.

'This thing could do for others what Star Trek did for me as a kid,' he said, noting that it will take about two years until the radar system is up and running.

He reached out on Reddit for help on bringing it back to life, which he says is part of his belief in the power of crowdsourcing.

Sachiti is a roboticist, artificial intelligence expert and serial entrepreneur who uses his free time to solve the problems of the world, he told DailyMail.com.

William Sachiti, who is a British entrepreneur, purchased a network of private roads along a 250,000 square feet to test his autonomous vehicles

His prized possession, however, is his company Kar-go, which uses self-driving cars to deliver packages.

'Think of it as a post office sorter on wheels. It drives to an address, opens its trunk and out comes a package,' Sachiti said, sharing a look at the small, green robotic machine with DailyMail.com.

'It only delivers small parcels because they make up 80 percent of the parcels shipped.'

The autonomous, four-wheeled vehicle sits low to the ground and features an aerodynamic look that is colored green and black, along with a license plate on the front and back.

Sachiti told DailyMail.com that it is not just the vehicle he is focused on, it is the supercomputer 'brain' inside of it.

His prized possession, however, is his company Kar-go, which uses self-driving cars to deliver packages. The autonomous, four-wheeled vehicle sits low to the ground and features an aerodynamic look that is green and black, along with a license plate in the front and back

The system is being used by the Royal Air Force and by a company that monitors 25 percent of UK roads.

'They are using our car vision to detect potholes and depth,' he said.

Elon Musk's Tesla announced on Monday that its vehicles are now scanning for potholes  a feature that came much later than Sachiti's.

He also gave DailyMail.com a tour of his 'space bus' that is a traveling office and auto shop for engineers to work on the autonomous vehicles.

Sachiti also gave DailyMail.com a tour of his 'space bus' that is a traveling office and auto shop for engineers to work on the autonomous vehicles

It once ran on diesel, but Sachiti redesigned it to only use the power of the sun.

The highlight of the bus is a chair with a steering wheel at the back, which looks similar to one seen in arcades.

The chair allows engineers to take over control of the autonomous vehicles and drive them into the bus to work on them.

While his team is testing the vehicles along the roads, Sachiti plans on bringing new life to the radar system, which was part of an early warning system meant to alert the British military if nuclear missiles were coming their way.

Known as the AMES Type 84 radar unit, this one was in operation from 1962 through 1994 and released microwaves to detect nukes.

Sachiti does not plan on using it for its original purpose, but instead hopes the public can find a task more suitable for the modern world.

'My expensive hobby will be finding UFOs,' said Sachiti. 'If that is what the world wants, who am I to judge.'
Top hotel chains are hiring workers without experience or even a resume as executives admit years of underpaying staff have come back to bite, leaving them unable to meet post-pandemic travel demand.

Thousands of workers left the hospitality industry when international travel shut down during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many chose not to return, finding better-paid employment elsewhere, leaving hoteliers facing a desperate shortage.

Europe's largest hotelier, Accor, is running trial initiatives to recruit people who haven't previously worked in the industry, Chief Executive Sebastien Bazin said in an interview with Reuters at the Qatar Economic Forum last month.

Top hotel chains are hiring workers without experience or even a resume as executives admit years of underpaying staff have come back to bite (stock image)

Accor, which operates brands such as Mercure, Ibis and Fairmont in over 110 countries, needs 35,000 workers globally, he said.

'We tried in Lyon and Bordeaux ten days ago and this weekend we're having people interviewed with no resume, no prior job experience and they are hired within 24 hours,' Bazin said.

In the short term, Accor is filling roles in France with young people and migrants while also limiting services.

'It's students, people coming from North Africa,' Bazin said. 'And basically closing restaurants for lunch or (opening them) only five days a week. There's no other solution.'

The new recruits are given six hours of training and learn on the job, he said.

Staff shortages are particularly pressing in Spain and Portugal, where tourism accounted for 13 per cent and 15 per cent of economic output respectively before the pandemic.

Hoteliers there are offering higher pay, free accommodation and perks such as bonuses and health insurance.

'Many employees have decided to move to other sectors, so we are starting an industry from scratch and we have to fight for talent,' Gabriel Escarrer, CEO of Spanish hotelier Melia, told reporters in Madrid.

Staff shortages are particularly pressing in Spain and Portugal, where tourism accounted for 13 per cent and 15 per cent of economic output respectively before the pandemic

To attract staff, his company recently provided accommodation, sometimes in hotel rooms, due to a shortage of rental housing near its resorts.

Smaller hoteliers face similar staffing challenges.

The operations director of Hotel Mundial, one of Lisbon's most iconic hotels, said it was currently trying to recruit 59 workers. Without enough staff, he fears some hotels will cut guest numbers and the range of amenities they can provide.

'If we cannot recruit, we will have to cut services,' he said. 'This is regrettable and dramatic for an industry that has had no revenue for the last two years.'

'WE'VE BEEN BLIND'

Across Spain and Portugal, two of Europe's top tourism destinations, the scenario is echoed in bars, restaurants, and hotels.

Jose Carlos Saco, 52, can only open his Madrid bar, Tabanco de Jerez, during the weekend when students in need of extra cash have no classes and are available to work.

'During the week we can't open because we have no hands, they are studying,' he said, gesturing to his student workforce setting up tables on a Saturday.

At Madrid's vibey La Latina district, the Angosta Tavern owner, Mariveni Rodriguez, hired migrants for the high season.

Hoteliers in Spain and Portugal are offering higher pay, free accommodation and perks such as bonuses and health insurance

'We give the opportunity to migrants who come with a desire to work as they have no family or institutional support,' she said.

Spain's catering industry is 200,000 workers short and Portuguese hotels need at least 15,000 more people to meet growing demand, according to national hospitality associations.

Half of it is we've been blind. We've been not paying attention to a lot of people and probably underpaying some people for too long as well Accor Chief Executive Sebastien Bazin

'The solution will surely be to pay more,' said Jose Luis Yzuel, from the catering services sector association.

Attempts are being made to lure workers back. In Spain, bars and restaurants increased workers' wages by nearly 60 per cent in the first quarter compared to a year earlier, according to official data. But the tourism industry is still the sector that pays employees the least, around 1,150 euros (985/$1,200) per month.

In neighbouring Portugal, salaries for hospitality workers are expected to increase seven per cent this year, according to a survey by the central bank and the National Institute of Statistics, but the average wage in the sector is 881 euros (755/$910) per month, above the minimum wage of 705 euros (600/$726).

Bazin said that while hotels are only 60 or 70 per cent occupied they can cope with staff shortages, but the crunch time will come when they're fully booked.

'The problem I have is, when I know between early July to end of August we'll be 100 per cent occupied, can I service all the people?' he said.

In the past, the industry has neither paid enough or focused on developing staff, Bazin said.

'Half of it is we've been blind. We've been not paying attention to a lot of people and probably underpaying some people for too long as well,' he said. 'So it's a wake-up call.'
Bindi Irwin and Chandler Powell have celebrated the Fourth of July by looking back on some of the great times they've had on American road trips.

The Australian-American couple spoke of what Independence Day means to them, with Bindi saying she appreciates the 'incredible beauty' of America's national parks.

Chandler, 25, also reflected on a picture-perfect road trip the pair took across the States recently.

Bindi Irwin (right) and husband Chandler Powell (left) have celebrated the Fourth of July by looking back on some of the great times they've had on American road trips

The Florida-born wakeboarder-turned-zookeeper said he couldn't wait to hit the road again with the couple's one-year-old daughter Grace Warrior.

The duo posted scenic photos on Instagram on Monday from their last road trip where they visited several U.S. national parks.

Bindi captioned her post: 'Absolutely love United States wildlife and wild places.'

Bindi wrote she 'Absolutely loves United States wildlife and wild places'

The 23-year-old conservationist added their road trip was 'one of the very best adventures'.

Chandler also posted an idyllic photo of Bindi soaking up the sun at a picturesque national park.

He wrote: 'Looking back on a trip Bindi and I took through America's national parks, my favorite way to see the USA!'

The Australian-American couple spoke of what Independence Day means to them, with Bindi saying she appreciates the 'incredible beauty' of America's national parks

Bindi and Chandler married in 2020, and are both devoted to carrying on the legacy of her late father, Steve 'The Crocodile Hunter' Irwin.

The couple welcomed daughter Grace in March last year.

They star in the Animal Planet series Crikey! It's the Irwins, alongside Bindi's mother Terri and brother Robert, which is now in its fourth season.
Kris Jenner and her longtime beau Corey Gamble sent flowers to Travis Barker Monday following the 'life threatening pancreatitis' that landed him in the hospital.

The 46-year-old rockstar's new wife Kourtney Kardashian, 43, posted photos of a beautiful bouquet of vibrant orange flowers.

She tagged both her mother, 66, and Gamble, 41, on the photos she posted to her Instagram story.

Sending flowers: Kris Jenner and her longtime beau Corey Gamble sent flowers to Travis Barker Monday following the 'life threatening pancreatitis' that landed him in the hospital (pictured 2021)

Barker and Kardashian had several wedding ceremonies over the course of several months.

The Blink-182 drummer recently told fans he was feeling much better following his hospital stint.

His post on Saturday was his first social media update since he cryptically tweeted: 'God save me,' the morning he was rushed to the hospital.

In the Insta story, he wrote that his pancreatitis was triggered by a polyp removal 'in a very sensitive area' during an endoscopy. Earlier in the week it had been reported that his illness was brought on by a colonoscopy, which is a type of endoscopy, but Travis did not specify whether that was the particular screen he underwent.

His wife reposted Travis' Story and added her own sentiments, thanking God 'for healing my husband' after the 'scary and emotional week' they had.

The beautiful bouquet: The 46-year-old rockstar's new wife Kourtney Kardashian, 43, posted photos of a beautiful bouquet of vibrant orange flowers

Healing: The Blink-182 drummer recently told fans he was feeling much better following his hospital stint

Making moves: Corey Gamble was seen arriving in The Hamptons aboard Kim Kardashian's private jet on Monday

'I went in for an endoscopy Monday feeling great. But After dinner, I developed excruciating pain and have been hospitalized ever since,' Travis wrote.

'During the endoscopy, I had a very small polyp removed right in a very sensitive area, usually handled by specialists, which unfortunately damaged a critical pancreatic drainage tube. This resulted in severe life threatening pancreatitis.'

The Blink-182 drummer added: 'I am so very very grateful that with intensive treatment I am currently much better,' closing the message with a praying hands emoji.

Kourtney meanwhile wrote: 'Oh what a scary and emotional week it has been. Our health is everything and sometimes we take for granted how quickly it can change. Travis and I went in for a routine endoscopy together and he ended up with severe, life-threatening pancreatitis.'

Details: In his latest Insta Story, he wrote that his pancreatitis was triggered by a polyp removal 'in a very sensitive area' during an endoscopy

Thankful: Kardashian wrote, 'I am so grateful to God for healing my husband, for all of your prayers for him and for us, for the overwhelming outpouring of love and support' (pictured May 2022)

She continued: 'I am so grateful to God for healing my husband, for all of your prayers for him and for us, for the overwhelming outpouring of love and support. I am so touched and appreciative.'

The reality star added: 'I am so so thankful to our specialists, doctors, and nurses at Cedars Sinai for taking such wonderful care of my husband and me during our stay.'

In a follow-up post, she wrote: 'It's crazy how sometimes words could never truly express the gratitude or feelings I have inside of me.'

The updates come two days after it was claimed Travis is 'expected to be OK' after he was hospitalized while suffering from pancreatitis which was then believed to have been 'triggered' by a recent colonoscopy.

Warm words: The reality star added: 'I am so so thankful to our specialists, doctors, and nurses at Cedars Sinai for taking such wonderful care of my husband and me during our stay'

A source told E! that Kourtney was trying to stay positive as she remained by his side at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles.

The source added: 'He was in extreme pain yesterday, and he and Kourtney were both really worried. It was to the point where he could barely walk.'

'Kourtney is trying to lift his spirits and hates seeing him in excruciating pain,' the source went on to say.

As of Saturday, Barker was still at at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, where Kourtney remained by his side.
One of the two police officers who got wounded in a Monday night shooting incident near a Fourth of July event in Philadelphia noticed the bullet was still stuck in his hat.

The law enforcement officers, a 44-year-old member of the Montgomery County Bomb Unit and a 36-year-old Philadelphia Police Highway Patrol officer, sustained their gunshot injuries near the Welcome America Festival on the Parkway.

Photos of the highway patrol officer's hat reveal a bloodied picture inside with a bullet hole in its side from the Philadelphia Shooting. The image is from a memorial card for a recently deceased Philadelphia police chaplain, per Fox News.

It's a Miracle

Philadelphia Police Department Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said what happened to the bullet was a godsend.

"It is miraculous the fact that the round stopped in his hat. I think initially it went up the inside and hit his forehead, and then the round stopped in his hat," the commissioner said.

Authorities reported that the officer was in stable condition at Jefferson University Hospital. The other officer, who got shot in the right shoulder, was rushed to the same hospital.

According to Fox 29, the unnamed Philadelphia cops were discharged from the hospital about two hours later.

Good News: According to police on scenes both police officers shot tonight on the Parkway have just been released from the hospital. @FOX29philly pic.twitter.com/xwRxSI9coB  Chris O'Connell (@CoconnellFox29) July 5, 2022

Shots were reportedly fired in the Fairmont Street-Art Museum vicinity, where people were present for several events, including the free 2022 Wawa Welcome America Concert featuring Jason Derulo on the final day of the holiday weekend.

The music had ended, and the fireworks had just started when the gunshots broke out shortly before 10 p.m., according to NBC Philadelphia.

Read Also: Copenhagen Mall Shooting: Suspect Charged With Murder Had Mental Health Issues, Says Police

Video clips of the shooting incident show significant police presence diverting people away from the scene.

In other videos, dozens of people could be seen fleeing the scene. Up to 100,000 people, according to estimates, attended the Fourth of July festivities.

Witnesses claimed that the incident led to chaos as spectators rushed in from the neighborhood.

Still No Suspect as of Present Reporting

According to an NBC News report, a SWAT squad responded to a man with a gun at a high-rise residential complex close to the museum, who turned out irrelevant to the shooting incident.

There are no known persons of interest, and no suspect has yet been taken into custody by the authorities.

When questioned by the media about the city's gun crisis, Mayor Jim Kenney answered straightforwardly, according to a report from 6 ABC.

"If I had the ability to take care of guns. I would. But the legislature won't let us. The U.S. Congress won't let us. The governor does the best he can. Our Attorney General does the best he can. But this is a gun country. It's crazy," he remarked.

Mayor Kenny added: "We're the most armed country in world history and we're one of the least safest. So, you know, until Americans decide that they want to give up the guns and give up the opportunity to get guns we're gonna have this problem."

Police advised visitors to avoid the area around the Fairmount Art Museum.

The Philadelphia July 4 Shooting occurred only a few hours after gunfire broke out during a parade in Illinois.

In Highland Park, a Chicago suburb, there were six fatalities and many more injuries. A person of interest is now under police custody.

Related Article: Highland Park Parade Shooting Suspect Arrested After Killing 6, Injuring 24 During Celebration of Independence Day

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
She shot to fame on America's Next Top Model.

And Winnie Harlow showcased her incredible modelling skills as she posed up a storm at the Schiaparelli after party held during Haute Couture Fashion Week in Paris on Monday.

The model, 27, looked nothing short of sensational as she wowed in a figure hugging black velour jumpsuit.

Glam: Winnie Harlow showcased her incredible modelling skills as she posed up a storm at Schiaparelli after party in Paris on Monday

She beamed as she added a number of eye catching gold accessories including a chain belt to cinch in her slim waistline.

The catwalk queen looked phenomenal also added a bold chunky necklace with planets on and matching earrings.

Winnie elevated her frame in a pair of towering black heels which featured a gold buckle detailing on the front.

Stunning: The model, 27, looked nothing short of sensational as she wowed in a figure hugging black velour jumpsuit

Stylish: She beamed as she added a number of eye catching gold accessorises including a chain belt to cinch in her slim waistline

She completed her number wearing a simple gold bracelet and carried her personal belongings in a small black bag.

The Victoria Secret angel styled her dark locks in luxurious curls as they cascaded down her back while she opted for a radiant palette of makeup.

Earlier in the day Winnie looked ultra-chic as she posed backstage at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week's Iris Van Herpen A/W runway show.

Fashionista: The catwalk queen looked phenomenal also added a bold chunky necklace with planets on and matching earrings

Posing up a storm: Winnie elevated her frame in a pair of towering black heels which featured a gold buckle detailing on the front

Amazing: The Victoria Secret angel styled her dark locks in luxurious curls as they cascaded down her back while she opted for a radiant palette of makeup

The model went braless while sporting a sheer beige T-shirt, before taking the runway by storm in an avante-garde ensemble.

Posing backstage she added a pair of geometric patterned shorts to the ensemble, keeping comfortable in a pair of white trainers.

Later, Winnie took the runway in an oversized cream coat, with a dramatic neckline and an abstract line design with beige, blue and mahogany detailing.

Baring all with nothing underneath the coat, the Canada native added a pair of open-toed black stiletto heeled boots to the ensemble.

Beaming: Earlier in the day Winnie looked ultra-chic as she posed backstage at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week's Iris Van Herpen A/W runway show
A former Bachelor star has shared the unglamorous nine-to-five reality of life after television.

While Sophie Tieman's lifestyle may appear lavish on Instagram, the Sydney-based commercial property valuer and influencer insists she actually lives a humble existence by catching the bus to work like everyone else.

Many of the 29-year-old's 150,000 followers expressed their disbelief that someone so glamorous would use public transport, she said.

Sophie Tieman, 29, (pictured) has revealed the unglamorous reality of life after reality TV, four years after being dumped by Nick Cummins on The Bachelor

'Lots of questions around why I catch the bus. Firstly I CAN drive into work if I wanted to but I choose not to for the following reasons,' Sophie explained during an Instagram Q&A on Monday.

'It's easier getting the bus, it's quicker getting the buss [sic] (because of the bus lane in peak traffic), driving into the centre of the city is annoying to me.

'I love zoning out on the way into work (it's really the only time I get to), It's also better for the environment.'

While her lifestyle may appear lavish on Instagram, the Sydney-based commercial property valuer and influencer insists she actually lives a humble existence by catching the bus to work like a normal civilian

On Monday, Sophie was back answering more questions about her lifestyle, this time revealing her rigorous workout routine

'Lots of people asking if I still do Pilates. I sure do!!' she wrote next to footage of herself performing Pilates poses on a mat at the gym.

On Monday, Sophie was back answering more questions about her lifestyle, this time revealing her rigorous workout routine.

'Lots of people asking if I still do Pilates. I sure do!!' she wrote next to footage of herself performing Pilates poses on a mat at the gym.

'I start every workout with some Pilates... I just show less of it [blushing emoji],' she insisted.

The online model then shared a video of herself doing a side plank the gym, along with the caption: 'I'm still working out 4-5 times a week. And finish off my workouts with weights at the gym'

She then shared a video of herself doing a side plank the gym, along with the caption: 'I'm still working out 4-5 times a week. And finish off my workouts with weights at the gym.'

Sophie famously made it to the final two on Nick 'Honey Badger' Cummin's season of The Bachelor in 2018 alongside Brittany Hockley.

Both women were dumped by the rugby star during the finale, in what became a shocking first for the Australian franchise.

Since leaving the show, Sophie has signed with RGM, a leading talent agency representing the likes of Cate Blanchett, Rebecca Gibney and Chris Lilley.

Sophie's post came two months after she embarked on an extravagant honeymoon to the Great Barrier Reef with new husband Joe Bolster (left)

The couple stayed at the ritzy Qualia resort, with Sophie sharing a flurry of Instagram photos of herself luxuriating in paradise

Some images showed the blonde lounging in a bikini by the beach, while another saw her boarding a private helicopter

The blonde beauty recently enjoyed an extravagant honeymoon to the Great Barrier Reef with new husband Joe Bolster.

The couple stayed at the ritzy Qualia resort, with Sophie sharing a flurry of Instagram photos of herself luxuriating in paradise.

Some images showed her lounging in a bikini by the beach, while another saw her boarding a private helicopter.

Sophie famously made it to the final two on Nick 'Honey Badger' Cummin's season of The Bachelor in 2018 alongside Brittany Hockley. Nick and Sophie are pictured together on the show
Chandler Powell accused Robert Irwin of losing his Aussie accent in a recent blooper reel from the Irwin Family Adventures mini series.

'You're just losing the Australian [accent],' the former professional wakeboarder, 25, told his brother-in-law as the two of them stood by the koala exhibit at Australia Zoo.

'Let's go look at some koalas, man. Do I sound like Chandler?' Robert, 18, replied in an exaggerated American accent.

Chandler Powell (left) accused Robert Irwin (right) of losing his Aussie accent in a recent blooper reel from the Irwin Family Adventures mini series

Chandler, who hails from Florida, corrected him: 'That's Californian.'

Robert continued to mock his sister Bindi's husband by saying: 'Let's go have a look at some koalas, dude. They're totally righteous!'

The ribbing follows reports Robert has struck up a romance with his long-time friend Emmy Perry, an actress from Newport Beach, California.

'Let's go look at some koalas, man. Do I sound like Chandler?' Robert said with an exaggerated American accent. Chandler, who hails from Florida, replied: 'That's Californian'

The Glee star, 17, is an animal welfare advocate and heiress to a videogame fortune worth an estimated $380million.

She jetted out to Queensland last month to spend time with Robert, whom she met in 2019 at the Steve Irwin Gala Dinner in Los Angeles.

Emmy has been sharing photos on Instagram of the pair at Australia Zoo, and also posted a video of them returning a turtle to its natural habitat.

The ribbing follows reports Robert has struck up a romance with his long-time friend Emmy Perry (right), an actress from Newport Beach, California

There is nothing in their social media posts to suggest they are more than friends, but Woman's Day reported they may be romantically involved.

Just hours after those reports surfaced, Emmy shared a cryptic quote on Instagram that read: 'Don't let other people's opinions distort your reality.

'Be true to yourself. Be bold in pursuing your dreams. Be unapologetically you!'

Emmy did not reveal why she shared the quote by author and military veteran Steve Maraboli, but it could have been a response to trolls who have criticised her rumoured romance with Robert.
Christine Quinn turned heads on Monday as she stepped out for Paris Fashion Week in an eye catching multi coloured fur jacket.

The Selling Sunset star, 33, cut a glamorous figure in the bold ensemble as she showcased her toned legs in a black silk mini skirt and sheer tights.

The blonde bombshell strutted her stuff in a pair of towering black patent boots as she completed the number with a black lace top.

Fashionista: Christine Quinn turned heads on Monday as she stepped out for Paris Fashion Week in an eye catching multi coloured fur jacket

The Netflix reality star realtor opted for a glam palette of makeup as she hid behind a rectangular pair of dark Vehla sunglasses.

She accessoried with a dazzling silver pendant necklace and chandelier drop pearl earrings.

Christine styled her platinum blonde tresses poker straight as they cascaded past her shoulders from a centre parting.

Amazing: The Selling Sunset star, 33, cut a glamorous figure in the bold ensemble as she showcased her toned legs in a black silk mini skirt and sheer tights

Sensational: The blonde bombshell strutted her stuff in a pair of towering black patent boots as she completed the number with a black lace top

As she draped the oversized purple lined jacket over her shoulders she carried her personal belongings in a Balenciaga black handbag.

Christine gave birth to her first child, a son named Christian Richard last year, and she's now looking to the future and sees herself having another baby with her husband Christian.

In an interview with Us Weekly, Christine was asked if she has any plans for baby number two, and she replied: 'Absolutely. I want to have another child in the future.'

Looking good: The Netflix reality star realtor opted for a glam palette of makeup as she hid behind a rectangular pair of dark Vehla sunglasses

Glam: Christine styled her platinum blonde tresses poker straight as they cascaded past her shoulders from a centre parting

She recently celebrated her little boy's birthday on May 15, and says she's enjoying her new life as a mum.

Christine added: 'I think the overwhelming feeling of being a first-time mom is definitely something that no one is prepared for.

'I love being a mom. It's a really sacred special thing.'

The television personality also revealed she sees a lot of herself in her son, but she also sees aspects of her partner Christian too.

Christine has been on 'Selling Sunset' since it launched back in 2019, but her future on the series now looks uncertain.

The show is focused on glitzy estate agent company the Oppenheim Group, but she recently revealed she has 'terminated' her contract with the firm so she can focus on launching her own crypto real estate business, RealOpen.

More family: This comes after the reality TV star said that she and her husband Christian Dumontet hope to have another child after welcoming a son last year. Seen in 2021

Christine said: 'I terminated my contract when the brokerage launched. I had to make a business decision that was for me, so I had to terminate the contract so I could move it over to my brokerage.'

The blonde beauty previously discussed her business ambitions with Jason Oppenheim, her 'Selling Sunset' co-star and and boss.

Speaking about the switch, Christine told said: 'Jason knew. I told him. Him and I had had conversations a year prior. I told him I was doing my own thing.'

Christine made the decision for the sake of her own career. However, she was initially suspected of 'bluffing' about her long-term ambitions.

She explained: 'I don't think anyone actually thought ... I think they thought I was bluffing; I don't think they actually thought I was working on a company, I don't know. But I told them for a year that I was working on this.

'Everyone knows ... Jason and I, we have a really good understanding. I told him, "This comes from a career move. I have to do my own thing." So that's why I made the company.'
Natalie Portman and husband Benjamin Millepied walked hand-in-hand as they arrived at the W hotel in London on Monday night.

The actress, 41, cut a stylish figure in a halter neck black mini dress with white polka dots and matching detached sleeves.

Thor star Natalie and Benjamin were followed by Tessa Thompson, 38, who stars in upcoming movie Thor: Love and Thunder with Tessa.

Happy couple: Natalie Portman and husband Benjamin Millepied walked hand-in-hand as they arrived at the W hotel in London on Monday night

Tessa, who plays King Valkyrie in the flick, looked glamorous in a cropped white blouse with large puff sleeves and ruffle detail.

Her top featured black polka dots and gave a slight glimpse at her midriff.

She teamed the piece with a pair of high-waisted black leggings which finished at the knee.

Glitterati: Thor star Natalie and Benjamin were followed by Tessa Thompson, 38, who stars in upcoming film Thor: Love and Thunder with Tessa

In style: Tessa looked glamorous in a cropped white blouse with large puff sleeves and ruffle detail

The star wore a pair of black heels and carried a blue handbag with her.

Natalie, who portrays Jane Foster, completed her look by wearing a pair of black heels and went for a glamorous look with her make-up, including a bold red lip to brighten up her look.

She was seen smiling as she walked with her hand interlocked with husband Benjamin, who she married in 2012.

Fashion focus: Natalie, 41, cut a stylish figure in a halter neck black mini dress with white polka dots and matching detached sleeves

Fashionista: Natalie completed her look by wearing a pair of black heels and went for a glamorous look with her make-up, including a bold red lip to brighten up her look

Love and marriage: She was seen smiling as she walked with her hand interlocked with husband Benjamin, who she married in 2012

Keeping it casual: Benjamin cut a casual figure as he opted for double denim, wearing a blue denim shirt and a pair of jeans in a darker shade

Out on the town: He wore a white T-shirt underneath his shirt to match the trainers he wore on his feet

Benjamin cut a casual figure as he opted for double denim, wearing a blue denim shirt and a pair of jeans in a darker shade.

He wore a white T-shirt underneath his shirt to match the trainers he wore on his feet.

Elsewhere, Thor director Taika Waititi caught the eye in a black shirt with a bold multi-coloured pattern and matching trousers.

The group were out ahead of the upcoming release of Thor: Love and Thunder.

Catching the eye: Elsewhere, Thor director Taika Waititi caught the eye in a black shirt with a bold multi-coloured pattern and matching trousers

Screen stars: The group were out ahead of the upcoming release of Thor: Love and Thunder (Natalie pictured with Chris Hemsworth in the film)

The fourth Thor film sees the hammer-wielding superhero go up against the villainous Gorr the God Butcher, played by Christian Bale.

The film is set in the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame, where Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has given up his superhero ways.

He enlists the help of Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and other friends to help fight Gorr.

Thor: Love and Thunder, directed by Taika Waititi, hits Australian and UK cinemas on July 7, and on July 8 in the United States.
Amelia Marni is soaking up the sun in Mykonos, one of Greece's most popular tourist destinations.

The Love Island Australia star, 26, showcased her flawless bikini body in a bright yellow two-piece as she headed to the beach on Monday.

She looked glowing in her skimpy swimwear while her long brunette hair flowed in the breeze in a series of sizzling holiday snaps.

Love Island Australia star Amelia Marni is soaking up the sun in Mykonos, one of Greece's most popular tourist destinations

Her recent split from her Love Island beau Josh Moss, whom she dated for four years, is clearly not stopping her living the high life.

She hinted at her future prospects in a series of Instagram posts, which she captioned: 'Off to London tonight for an exciting job.'

The influencer oozed confidence in her latest bikini photos, which highlighted her sensational figure and golden tan.

The 26-year-old influencer showcased her flawless beach body in a bright yellow bikini as she headed to the beach on Monday

Amelia's recent split from her Love Island beau Josh Moss (left), whom she dated for four years, is clearly not stopping her living the high life

Amelia's holiday comes after she and Josh, 29, mutually decided to call it quits.

Following their break-up, she announced a 'life update' on Instagram, telling fans she would be 'semi-moving' to Europe for several months.

She hinted a 'casual move' was on the cards as she readjusted to single life.

She oozed confidence in her latest bikini photos, which highlighted her sensational figure

'So, in two weeks, I'm gonna go to Mykonos for, like, 10 days,' she said. 'Who knows, I'm very sporadic I'm very spontaneous at the moment.

'And then I think I'm gonna stay in London for, like, a month, maybe two months... Don't know how long yet. We will see.'

Amelia and Josh started dating as contestants on season one of Love Island Australia in 2018.

They mutually ended their relationship in May, after it was reported the pair had been 'unhappy' for months.
Diane Kruger took to Instagram on Monday to acknowledge her six-year anniversary with Norman Reedus.

The 45-year-old German-American actress shared a black and white photo of the two and wrote: '|||||\.'

The tally marks were accompanied by a red heart emoji and she tagged her husband-to-be, 53..

Celebratory post: Diane Kruger took to Instagram on Monday to acknowledge her six-year anniversary with Norman Reedus

The snapshot of the couple was taken at their most recent Cannes appearance this past May.

Diane wore a sparkly silver gown with matching bow-tie heels that coordinated with the dress' supersize bow train.

Reedus, who starred in the AMC horror series The Walking Dead, stood by her in a spiffy all black look.

Cannes! Diane wore a sparkly silver gown with matching bow-tie heels that coordinated with the dress' supersize bow train for the May 28, 2022 event

Diane and Norman met when they co-starred in the 2015 movie Sky and began dating in 2016.

They welcomed their first child together, a daughter named Nova Tennessee, in 2018 and announced their engagement in 2021.

The Boondock Saints star also shares son Mingus Lucien, 22, with ex-girlfriend Helena Christenson, 53.

Adorable: Reedus held his love's hand in a sweet public display of affection

Diane also shared another recent social media post gushing over her love as she posted flicks of the two.

They were dressed up for a black tie event as the blonde beauty donned a striped silver and black gown.

Her counterpart wore a white suit with a black shirt and matching bowtie as she captioned the post: 'We cute.'

The movie star added a heart-covered smiley face emoji as she delighted fans with a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into their lives.

Social engagement: Diane also shared another recent social media post gushing over her love as she posted flicks of the two

Spiffy: In a recent post the two were dressed up for a black tie event as the blonde beauty donned a striped silver and black gown

Earlier this year in interview with People, Diane announced that she wrote a children's book called A Name From the Sky.

In the forthcoming piece of literature, scheduled for an October 25 release, she describes how she came to embrace her name and how she and Norman went about selecting their daughter's name.

She noted that 'Diane' is uncommon name in her home country of Germany. 'I remember coming home crying because kids were making fun of my name,' she shared.

Her mom then read her a book about her namesake, the Roman goddess Diana. 'It truly changed my life and how I see myself today,' she revealed.
The Extraordinary Life Of April Ashley

Rating:

Aids: The Unheard Tapes

Rating:

There has never been a more profligate name-dropper than April Ashley. The transgender model splashed celebrity names around like a Pools winner flinging 50 notes.

In one breath she could announce she'd met Einstein, Churchill, Dali, Picasso and the Queen. While that was sinking in, she might add that Elvis Presley was hopelessly besotted with her.

Elvis wasn't available for comment on The Extraordinary Life Of April Ashley (C4), but celebs queuing up to share anecdotes about her love of the high life included Zandra Rhodes, Simon Callow and Boy George.

Channel 4 produced a documentary about April Ashley, an English model who was outed as a transgender woman in the 1960s

A friend of April's sold her story to a newspaper who revealed she was born as George Jamieson in working-class Liverpool

Grayson Perry revealed that he dated her briefly in the 1980s. This documentary was crammed with more well-known faces than The Ivy on a Friday night. One conspicuous by his absence was former Labour deputy leader John Prescott, who met April in the 1950s when they worked together at a hotel in St Asaph, North Wales.

They remained lifelong friends. 'So handsome,' April liked to say, 'like a young Marlon Brando.'

April was a supermodel in Swinging London, beloved of Vogue and David Bailey, and one of the myriad lovers of Omar Sharif (those names just keep dropping).

When a Sunday newspaper revealed she was born George Jamieson in working-class Liverpool, and that she'd undergone gender reassignment surgery in Casablanca, she became a cause celebre.

Training session of the night: Team GB powerlifter Karenjeet Kaur Bains showed artist Amar Stewart the weights she uses for workouts, on Extraordinary Portraits (BBC1). They included dumbbells made from metal cogs. That's what you call heavy machinery. Advertisement

Her notoriety grew after an acrimonious split from the cross-dressing son of Lord Rowallan, the Hon Arthur Cameron Corbett. Their marriage lasted just 14 days before April ran off with a Spanish nobleman, 'the heir to the Duke del Infantado,' she revealed. In his palace in Seville, 'we made love under the Goyas and Velazquezes'.

These details were omitted from the programme, perhaps because the sheer volume of illustrious names was getting confusing.

Having written about April in the past, I know lots of the more lurid embellishments to her life story were left out. We heard that her mother loathed her  but the reality was far worse than that. One of six children, she was beaten so badly by her parents that the family doctor threatened to call the police.

A couple of friends commented on her capacity for hard drinking, but didn't mention April's boast that she could down 32 martinis in a night and stay on her feet. And a reconstruction showed her facing a barrage of paparazzi after her surgery was revealed. In fact, she was physically assaulted by strangers four times that day.

This was a rare example of Channel 4 playing down some of the more sensational aspects of a life. April was such a charismatic star that her chat show clips are still wildly amusing, but more could have been done to emphasise the abuse she suffered.

BBC2's Aids: The Unheard Tapes uses actors lip-synching to audio interviews with gay men from the 1980s

The abuse inflicted on HIV patients, both in hospital and outside, made for grim stories in Aids: The Unheard Tapes (BBC2). It continued to use actors lip-synching to audio interviews with gay men, recorded in the 1980s. Much of their testimony was bitterly sad, as were the recollections of those who lived through the initial epidemic.

But there was hope, with the intervention of Princess Diana in 1987. Her determination to treat Aids patients as ordinary people, rather than shameful freaks as some saw them, triggered a change in attitudes.

Amid frequent criticism of the royals, it is rarely noted that no one else could have done this  no politician, no mere celebrity. It required the superstardom and national leadership that only a princess could supply. This programme failed to recognise that, though it was there for all to see.
Ever wonder what life is really like on Ramsay Street?

Ahead of Neighbours' final episode, Booking.com is giving away a two-night stay at the Melbourne property used to depict the fictional home of Dr Karl Kennedy and wife Susan on the show.

One lucky couple will have the opportunity to reside in the famous property, known on the show as 28 Ramsay Street, from 27 - 28 July, coinciding with the Australian broadcast of Neighbours' 90-minute finale on 10 and 10Peach.

Ahead of Neighbours' final episode, Booking.com is giving away a two-night stay at the Melbourne property used to depict the fictional home of Dr Karl Kennedy and wife Susan on the show. Pictured is Alan Fletcher, who plays the role of Dr Karl on Neighbours

The nostalgic stay also includes a visit from Alan Fletcher, who has played Dr Karl for the last 28 years, as he hosts an intimate barbecue with beers in the backyard.

'Number 28 Ramsay Street has been my fictional home for nearly 30 years. So many happy home memories have been made here that will live on forever,' Fletcher said in a statement.

'Handing over the keys to this humble abode will be bittersweet but I'm so pleased that new memories can now be made for lucky Neighbours fans, thanks to listing it on Booking.com.

One lucky couple will have the opportunity to reside in the famous property, known on the show as 28 Ramsay Street, from 27 - 28 July, coinciding with the Australian broadcast of Neighbours' 90-minute finale on 10 and 10Peach

'I'm so excited to be able to share this memorable piece of my time on the show with a fan and say goodbye to Dr Karl Kennedy by enjoying a classic Aussie barbeque and a beer.'

The red-brick property, located at 5 Pin Oak Court, Vermont South, boasts a private master suite, a contemporary kitchen, two living spaces and an outdoor entertaining area.

It is located 15 km from Dandenong, and complimentary private parking is available.

28 Ramsay Street is the fictional home owned by Dr Karl Kennedy and his wife Susan, played by Alan Fletcher (right) and Jackie Woodburne (left) respectively)

The nostalgic stay also includes a visit from Alan Fletcher, who will host an intimate barbecue with beers in the backyard

Snagging this incredible experience won't be easy, as it will be awarded on a first in, first booked basis.

Bookings open on July 12, and the first person to reserve the experience via the Booking.com website will be the winner.

The booking will set you back just $28AUD - an homage to the final time 28 Ramsay Street will appear on screens.

The red-brick property, located at 5 Pin Oak Court, Vermont South, boasts a private master suite, a contemporary kitchen, two living spaces and an outdoor entertaining area

'Number 28 Ramsay Street has been my fictional home for nearly 30 years. So many happy home memories have been made here that will live on forever,' Fletcher said in a statement

To snag this Neighbours VIP experience, visit the Nostalgic Neighbours Finale Stay on Ramsay Street booking page on Tuesday 12 July at 11:00am AEST.

Fans who don't manage to secure the experience will still be able to book the property in future via the Booking.com website.

Neighbours was axed following a historic 37-year run in March after the UK's Channel 5 decided not to renew its contract with production company Fremantle to finance and broadcast the series.

'Handing over the keys to this humble abode will be bittersweet but I'm so pleased that new memories can now be made for lucky Neighbours fans, thanks to listing it on Booking.com,' Fletcher continued

To snag this Neighbours VIP experience, visit the Nostalgic Neighbours Finale Stay on Ramsay Street booking page on Tuesday 12 July at 11:00am AEST

Fans who don't manage to secure the experience will still be able to book the property in future via the Booking.com website

Earlier this week, Neighbours star Fletcher admitted the cast found it 'overwhelming' to film their final scenes on the show.

Speaking To The Mirror, the actor said: 'It was very hard to fight back tears as we were saying the dialogue for what was going to be the last moments of the show.

'One of my favourites was Guy Pearce. There wasn't a single person who was asked to do something for the end, who was available, who said no'; Alan revealed.
Bachelor stars Holly Kingston and Jimmy Nicholson welcomed a fluffy member to their family on Tuesday.

The pair gushed over their new kitten, which they named Gus.

Holly, 27, shared a photo of their pet to Instagram, and captioned it: 'Meet GUS.'

Bachelor stars Holly Kingston (right) and Jimmy Nicholson (left) welcomed a fluffy member to their family on Tuesday

The pair gushed over their new kitten (pictured), which they named Gus

She later uploaded the same image to her Instagram Stories, writing: '24 hours with this little legend and we are so in love.'

She also posted more videos to her Story, the first of which was of her walking home with Jimmy, 32, who cradled Gus in his arms.

'Officially crazy cat parents,' she wrote.

Another video showed the kitten looking at himself in the mirror while the song Man in the Mirror by Michael Jackson played in the background.

Holly gushed on Instagram Stories: '24 hours with this little legend and we are so in love'

The last two videos, captioned 'Your eyes little man,' were taken at 4:44am while Gus played in Holly and Jimmy's bed.

This new addition to the family comes after a controversial month for the reality TV couple, who fell in love on season nine of The Bachelor last year.

They spent most of June defending themselves against backlash after they slammed OnlyFans, saying reality stars who use it are just trying to 'grab money'.

She also posted this photo of Gus asleep on their couch instead of his mat on the floor

Jimmy said his issue with the increasing number of reality stars joining OnlyFans is they claim they're doing it for 'female and male empowerment'.

'I think that's a load of crap, personally,' he said. 'I think you should be a role model to the future generations.

'If you want to celebrate male or female empowerment, start a charity, donate to breast cancer awareness or prostate cancer awareness.'

Holly and Jimmy are also parents to a dog named Billy

'I think it's a way to grab money, and [you should] think about the example you're setting for the future generations, for your kids when they're in school,' he added.

Holly then weighed in with her thoughts on the subject.

'Our view: Normalising selling naked photos on the internet doesn't equal male/female empowerment,' she wrote.

It comes after a controversial month for the couple, who drew the ire of MAFS bride Olivia Frazer (pictured) when they criticised reality TV stars who make a living on OnlyFans

She continued: 'If this is your view, totally fine. Just won't be something we'll be doing. Thanks for coming to our TED Talk.'

Outspoken Bachelor star-turned-radio host Abbie Chatfield later hit back at Holly and Jimmy, saying 'sex work is real work'.

And MAFS star Olivia Frazer, who earned $10,000 during her first day on OnlyFans, also slammed the pair for their 'tone deaf' and 'privileged' comments.
NATO members formally sign the accession agreements of Finland and Sweden on Tuesday as the two nations move one step closer to becoming full members of the military alliance.

The measure will aggravate Russia's geopolitical isolation following its invasion of bordering Ukraine in February and subsequent armed conflicts in the eastern European country.

Their impending NATO memberships have drawn considerable attention since they represent a significant modification in both their security strategies and Europe's broader defense system. For the majority of recent history, both nations had maintained a neutral attitude toward Russia, but the aggressive invasion of Ukraine compelled them to change course, as per a report published by NPR.

After the signing of the protocols, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Finland and Sweden "will make strong and important contributions" to the military alliance."

"Our forces are interoperable. They have trained, exercised, and served together for many years," Stoltenberg noted, according to a CNBC report.

Both countries submitted membership applications to the alliance in May, and according to Stoltenberg, this has been the "fastest accession procedure in NATO's history thus far."

The 30 ambassadors and permanent representatives will formally ratify the choices made at the NATO summit last week, when the alliance decided to extend invitations to Sweden and Finland, two neighbors of Russia, to join the military club.

Erdogan's Warning

Despite the alliance's agreement, Turkey's legislative approval could yet create challenges for their actual admission as members.

Tuesday's expected signing-off brings both nations deeper into NATO's fold. As close partners, they already attended some meetings that involved issues that immediately affected them. As official invitees, they can attend all meetings of the ambassadors even if they do not yet have any voting rights.

Despite the agreement in the military alliance at a summit last week in Madrid, parliamentary approval in member state Turkey could still pose problems for the Nordic duo's final inclusion as members.

Read Also: Biden Administration Pressures the EU To Launch Economic Sanctions Against Russia

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey warned that if the two nations do not grant its demand to extradite "terrorism" suspects connected with banned Kurdish organizations or the network of an exiled religious figure accused of planning a failed coup in Turkey in 2016, Ankara may still block the membership process.

Turkey also expects Sweden and Finland to lift the prohibition on selling weapons to Anakara.

The ambassadors and permanent representatives of the two nations have already participated in meetings on matters that directly touch them as partners. Even though they do not yet have voting privileges, they are permitted to attend all meetings of the ambassadors as official invitees.

Putin Blasts NATO's 'Ambitions'

Russian President Vladimir Putin accused NATO last week of seeking to assert its "supremacy" through the Ukraine war and blasted the "imperial ambitions" of the military alliance, per a report from Al Jazeera.

Putin stated: "With Sweden and Finland, we don't have the problems that we have with Ukraine. If they want to join NATO, go ahead. But they must understand there was no threat before, while now if military contingents and infrastructure are deployed there, we will have to respond in kind and create the same threats for the territories from which threats towards us are created."

Related Article: US Government Funds Clandestine Global Proxy Wars as Revealed by Documents Received by The Intercept

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Tayla Damir has admitted she was 'so anxious she wanted to vomit' while taking on the Australian Ninja Warrior course.

The Love Island Australia star, 25, competed against Kyly Clarke in a charity run on Monday's episode, but lost out to the 40-year-old former WAG.

Tayla later said on Instagram that TV 'does not do justice' for how tricky the course is and that the challenge is far more 'terrifying' than it appears on screen.

Tayla Damir has admitted she was 'so anxious she wanted to vomit' while taking on the Australian Ninja Warrior course

'Me literally holding back vomit from being so anxious,' she wrote alongside a gallery of behind-the-scenes videos.

'Mind you this was also at 4am and it was p**sing it down in Sydney and we kept having to stop for the rain to pass.

'I have so much respect for all the Ninjas who have taken on this course over the years.

The Love Island Australia star, 25, competed against Kyly Clarke (left) in a charity run on Monday's episode, but lost out to the 40-year-old former WAG

Behind-the-scenes footage showed her practising hoops and completing parts of the course

'TV does not do justice to just how terrifying and hard this course truly is.'

Behind-the-scenes footage showed her practising on the hoops and easily completing parts of the course.

Tayla later said she had 'such an amazing response' to her post.

Despite making it through only a few stages of the course, Kyly was happy with her run

Tayla had her own concerns, pointing out that Kyly is very fit and brimming with muscles. 'Tonight I'm up against Kyly Clarke. She's got a six-pack, for starters. Her arms definitely have the muscles that I don't,' the former reality star said

In another Instagram Story, she said it seemed that 'a lot of people are scared to do things due to fear of failure' and that she was terrified of her episode airing because she knew she 'didn't win'.

'I couldn't see how well I actually did because the cloud of not winning was covering my huge achievement,' she wrote.

She explained she was going to keep pushing herself out of her comfort zone and doing things she's not 'perfect' at.

Kyly (left) was the first to crash into the pool during her run on Australian Ninja Warrior on Monday night. The former House Rules judge competed against Love Island alum Tayla (right) to raise funds for charity, but despite her early exit she still won her round

Before starting on the course, Kyly admitted she was a little nervous to be taking on a younger competitor. 'I've seen my opponent and she's hot, sexy and younger than me!' she said

'I'll be picking one new thing every month and posting it to my story,' she went on.

Tayla lost the Ninja Warrior challenge to Kyly, despite the former House Rules judge being the first to crash out into the pool during the challenge.

Kyly triumphed after beating her younger rival to the rings, and was technically in the lead when she lost her grip and fell into the water below.

She was delighted to raise $10,000 for her charity, Barnardos, and hoped to help children 'that are in an unsafe environment'

Despite making it through only a few stages of the course, Kyly was happy with her performance.

She was delighted to raise $10,000 for her chosen charity, Barnardos, and said she hoped to help children 'that are in an unsafe environment'.

Before starting on the course, Kyly admitted she was a little nervous to be taking on a younger competitor.

Tayla told the Sunday Herald Sun that signing on for Australia Ninja Warrior had not only made her step outside of her comfort zone but also challenged how other people perceive her

'I've seen my opponent and she's hot, sexy and younger than me!' Kyly quipped.

Tayla had her own concerns, pointing out that Kyly was very fit and muscular.

'Tonight I'm up against Kyly Clarke. She's got a six-pack, for starters. Her arms definitely have the muscles that I don't,' the former reality star said.
Mel Greig is in a world of hurt after catching the flu.

The former 2Day FM host revealed on Tuesday that while she had managed to successfully 'dodge Covid' during the pandemic, she was not so lucky when it came to the flu.

'Everything aches, including my teeth,' Mel, 39, said in a video on Instagram.

Mel Greig (pictured) revealed on Tuesday she was suffering from a severe case of the flu

She spoke of how the illness was affecting her both physically and mentally.

'I was not prepared for how awful influenza A actually is. If you haven't had the flu jab, get it,' she said.

'You're just so uncomfortable you can't even sleep. And this is 24 hours on.'

Mel uploaded a photo of four different types of flu medication she was taking

Mel also uploaded a photo of four different types of flu medication she was taking.

The former Yahoo columnist sarcastically said it 'should be a fun week'.

Mel is the former co-anchor of 2Day FM's Hot30 Countdown program, opposite Mike Christian.

Mel is the former co-host of 2Day FM's Hot30 Countdown program (here with Mike Christian)

The pair were at the centre of an international controversy in 2012.

One of their prank calls to the English hospital which then-pregnant Kate Middleton was staying at contributed to the suicide of a nurse who transferred their call.

Mel has worked at rebuilding her career since the incident and is now working part-time for a public relations agency.

If you or anyone you know is struggling, contact Lifeline or Beyond Blue.
Surgery-addicted social media star Mary Magdalene has shocked her fans once again - this time by revealing her true sexuality.

In an emotional interview with Soft White Underbelly, the 30-year-old announced she identifies as 'autosexual', which means she is only attracted to herself.

Autosexuals can still have relationships with other people, but they are primarily attracted to themselves and often prefer masturbating over intercourse.

Surgery-addict Mary Magdalene (pictured) has come out as 'autosexual' in a new interview

'I just recently discovered this sexuality and it's called autosexual,' she explained.

'It sounds so ridiculous, so dumb, but to me it's actually f**king cool as f**k,' she continued.

'Autosexual basically means you're in love with yourself. I know that could be perceived as narcissistic behaviour but to me, it's f**king special because it shows that you don't need anyone, b***h.

'You're born in this world alone, you die alone. Everyone, even your f**king family, is fake. Your pets can be fake. My cat's fake.'

'Autosexual basically means where you're in love with yourself,' the Canadian model explained

Mary also addressed her extreme surgery, and insisted there was nothing wrong with her psychologically.

'Im a human being that exists on this planet that literally just likes surgery,' she stressed.

'I have learned so much looking like this I dont feel like a victim, I dont feel traumatised, I feel actually very blessed that God has given me this very unique life experience.'

Mary, 30, also addressed her extreme surgery, and insisted there was nothing wrong with her psychologically. Pictured before and after surgery transformation

This isn't the first time that Mary has denied having psychological issues.

Back in May, she described her extreme surgery as a hobby and said she wasn't suffering from body dysmorphia disorder.

In a lengthy post on Instagram, the Mexican-born model said it was a 'common misconception' that people with lots of plastic surgery suffer from BDD.

'Here is the definition of body dysmorphia,' she explained. 'A mental illness involving obsessive focus on a perceived flaw in appearance.'

Mary is pictured in this throwback photo taken before many of her extreme surgeries

'Im a human being that exists on this planet that literally just likes surgery,' she said as she denied having psychological issues

'When I have surgery it is not because it is not because I think it is ugly or view it as a flaw,' she continued.

'I just simply prefer the overdone, unnatural fake look. To achieve that overdone look, you can't just achieve dramatic results with one or two surgeries. You need many!'

'I view it as a hobby, here's the thing: an activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure,' she added.

Back in May, she described her extreme surgery as a hobby and said she wasn't suffering from body dysmorphia disorder

'I think maybe the whole surgery thing seems crazier than it really is, but I don't know, that's just my opinion.'

Mary almost died on the operating table during an operation to 'inflate' her vagina back in 2018.

She recently had illegal 'under the table' silicone butt injections, which landed her in the emergency room when they started rotting and left her with an infection.

Mary ended up in the emergency room recently after her illegal butt injections started to rot

The heavily tattooed model had her first procedure done at the age of 21, when she was working as a stripper and escort.

Over the years, her surgeries have included a brow lift, fat transfers, multiple nose and boob jobs, veneers, liposuction, butt implants, porcelain veneers and more.

Earlier this year, she had a fourth nose job to create a 'Barbie nose', along with cat-eye surgery and eyebrow implants.
A Kiwi comedian has put forward her case for why Australians should give up the 'staycation' trend and holiday across the ditch instead.

Melanie Bracewell, the co-host of Channel 10 show The Cheap Seats, says New Zealand has 'so much to offer' tourists - without the risk of dangerous native animals.

She told News.com.au there is also the added benefit of New Zealand being smaller, meaning visitors can see more of the country during their trip.

Kiwi comedian Melanie Bracewell (pictured) has put forward her case for why Australians should give up the 'staycation' trend and holiday across the ditch instead

'It's a small country that has so much to offer, so you can just drive two hours and you are at the beach. Then you've got the vineyards, you've got islands you could travel the whole country in a few weeks and see a whole lot of different stuff,' Melanie said of her home country.

Melanie, who is also an occasional panelist on The Project, said she once tried to book accommodation in Australia but was put off by the website saying there were poisonous snakes in the area.

'I looked and thought, "That [place] is nice," and it said, "We have the occasional spider and snake," and I said, "Nope!"' she laughed.

Melanie Bracewell, the co-host of Channel 10 show The Cheap Seats, says New Zealand has 'so much to offer' tourists - without the risk of dangerous native animals

She told News.com.au there is also the added benefit of New Zealand being smaller, meaning visitors can see more of the country during their trip. (Pictured at Otama Beach)

Popular destinations in New Zealand include Christchurch, Wellington and Queenstown. The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogy were filmed in New Zealand, drawing praise for their incredible scenery. (Pictured Hobbiton in New Zealand)

Australia vs New Zealand Popular destinations in New Zealand include Christchurch, Wellington and Queenstown

Notable tourist attractions in Australia include the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House, Bondi Beach, Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef

The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogy were filmed in New Zealand Advertisement

She also said New Zealand should be at the top of any globetrotter's list simply because it is so close to Australia and makes for an easy diversion.

'The convenience is part of the appeal because it literally is just jumping across the ditch,' she said.

A flight from Sydney to Auckland takes about three hours.

Popular destinations include Christchurch, Wellington and Queenstown.

Notable tourist attractions in Australia include the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House, Bondi Beach, Uluru in the Northern Territory, and Queensland's Great Barrier Reef.

Back in 2015, Meghan Markle enjoyed a two-week road trip around New Zealand with a friend in a campervan.

The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogy were filmed in New Zealand.

Production took place across both the North and South Islands, and the films were noted for their breathtaking natural scenery.

Melanie is one of the Secret (Travel) Agents promoting money-can't-buy experiences in New Zealand.
Just two weeks after the long-running show went off the air, The Wendy Williams Show's online presence has been erased.

The official YouTube channel for the former syndicated talk show has been removed, along with official websites for the show and Wendy Williams Productions, according to Variety.

Search results for the YouTube channel came up empty, effectively scrubbing hundreds of hours of clips and other materials from the Internet.

Offline: Just two weeks after the long-running show went off the air, The Wendy Williams Show's online presence has been erased

Removed: The official YouTube channel for the former syndicated talk show has been removed, along with official websites for the show and Wendy Williams Productions, according to Variety

As far as the official websites go, WendyShow.com now results in a DNS error, while the website for her production company - WendyWilliamsProductions.com - is now being auctioned off on GoDaddy.

Williams started her career as a New York City radio shock jock before hosting The Wendy Williams Show on syndicated television in 2008.

While the show regularly competed with Ellen as the top-rated daytime syndicated talk show, Williams was no stranger to controversy, though in recent years, her failing health often made headlines as well.

Website: As far as the official websites go, WendyShow.com now results in a DNS error, while the website for her production company - WendyWilliamsProductions.com - is now being auctioned off on GoDaddy

Competition: While the show regularly competed with Ellen as the top-rated daytime syndicated talk show, Williams was no stranger to controversy, though in recent years, her failing health often made headlines as well

When the show aired its final episode on June 17, Williams herself hadn't hosted an episode in more than a year, with a number of guest hosts such as Michael Rappaport, Whitney Cummings, Leah Remini and Sherri Shepherd taking over.

In fact, Shepherd will take over with her own syndicated talk show dubbed Sherri, that will begin in the 2022-2023 season, hailing from Debmar-Mercury, the same company that produced Williams' show.

Debmar-Mercury and Williams' publicist would not comment on the show's internet presence vanishing.

No comment: Debmar-Mercury and Williams' publicist would not comment on the show's internet presence vanishing

Williams' manager, Will Selby, recently confirmed that they went back to her former studio to retrieve her infamous purple chair, which she'll use on her new podcast.

'We are going to take it, and that will be part of her new show,' he added of the podcast.

Williams was reportedly asked to give a farewell message on the finale of her show - which had been hosted for some time by Sherri Shepherd, though sources claimed Williams declined.

Manager: Williams' manager, Will Selby, recently confirmed that they went back to her former studio to retrieve her infamous purple chair, which she'll use on her new podcast

'They were not doing it live, but asked Wendy for pre-taped video,' a source shared of the show's finale plans.

'She still said no. Shes not at peace with what happened. She's not happy with it,' the source added.

TMZ reported on Tuesday that Williams and Selby are putting a podcast together, eyeing guests such as Snoop Dogg, Fat Joe and reportedly a member of the Trump family.

She has reportedly also had conversations with the Kardashian family, and it's currently unclear if she will release her podcast on a platform like Apple or Spotify, or just release it independently.
Georgia Love has come out to demand greater accountability and harsh consequences for 'Gen-Z Trolls' who hide their identity while harassing users online.

Writing in The Big Smoke opinion blog, the 33-year-old former star of The Bachelorette did not hold back.

Claiming that she has 'copped some form of abuse' every day in the six years since she first appeared on TV, Georgia says it has never once happened 'in person'.

Georgia Love (pictured) has come out to demand greater accountability and harsh consequences for 'Gen-Z Trolls' who hide their identity while harassing users online

'According to our eSafety Commissioner 44% of young Australians report negative online interactions, including 15% citing threats or abuse,' the podcaster wrote.

Elsewhere in her story, the controversial reality star demanded greater accountability for users who troll, claiming, 'if there are no consequences for what anyone says or does, how do we possibly close or at least man the flood gates?'

Georgia's spray comes soon after she suffered intense backlash from fans following a trip to Saudi Arabia.

Writing in The Big Smoke opinion blog, the 33-year-old former star of The Bachelorette said she had 'copped some form of abuse' every day in the six years since she first appeared on TV. Pictured: Anonymous Troll

The star and husband Lee Elliott were recently given an all-expenses paid trip by Visit Saudi to help promote tourism in the nation.

The couple were reportedly asked to delete their posts by Saudi tourism officials.

But their holiday attracted plenty of controversy, with many fans flagging the Middle Eastern country's horrific human rights record.

Georgia's opinion piece comes soon after the reality star and husband Lee Elliott were recently given an all-expenses paid trip by Visit Saudi to help promote tourism in the nation (pictured) with the trip ending in controversy with fans slamming the couple on social media

Shortly afterwards, both Georgia and Lee removed all of their social media posts, supposedly at the direction of Saudi tourism officials, according to a report in The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday,

Lee later addressed the backlash in a post on Instagram, explaining that he understood the anger their holiday had garnered.

'We thought long and hard about coming and we decided to come as the world is changing for the better and Saudi along with it,' he wrote.
Shanina Shaik has sizzled in a photoshoot for bikini brand Seafolly as the face of its 'Chase the Sun' campaign.

The former Victoria's Secret supermodel, 31, looked absolutely jaw-dropping as she slipped into a number of swimsuits for the brand.

The shoot was photographed by Georges Antoni in South Australia at Berry Bay, when the model was just three months pregnant.

Shanina Shaik, 31, (pictured) sizzled as she showcased her baby bump in a number of skimpy Seafolly bikinis for Seafolly

The catwalk star looked elegant as she posed in the shallows of the beach wearing a textured red bikini.

The star channeled a castaway as she lay on a raft with a pitched sail, shooting the camera a sultry expression.

The Melbourne-born beauty wore a shell necklace and shell earrings as she proudly showcased her growing bump.

Shanina looked incredible in a skimpy red bikini which she paired with a shell necklace on the shoot at Berry Bay in South Australia

She let her curly raven tresses fall down past her back in the image.

Elsewhere, Shanina slipped into a floral white and gold bikini which showcased her toned and tanned look.

The star showcased her best angles as she leaned against driftwood while lazing on the sand of the picturesque Australian beach.

The catwalk star later slipped into skimpy gold and white floral bikini, which showcased her bump. The star was three months pregnant at the time of the shoot

Shanina let her curly raven tresses fall down past her back for the photograph

She later slipped into a more modest one-piece which featured a floral design.

The star showcased her long limbs as she rose from her knees on the sand.

'I am so thrilled to share my second Seafolly campaign,' said Shanina in a press release.

She later slipped into a more modest one-piece which featured a floral design

The star showcased her long limbs as she rose from her knees on the sand

'It was a magical day, shooting in South Australia, where I got to swim with dolphins, and work with an amazing team of people, many I have known for my entire career.'

Other looks included a textured lime green bikini in a zig-zag pattern.

The star also slipped into a multi-coloured and zebra-pint bikini.

'I am so thrilled to share my second Seafolly campaign,' Shanina said

'It was a magical day, shooting in South Australia, where I got to swim with dolphins, and work with an amazing team of people, many I have known for my entire career'

Shanina will soon welcome her first child with boyfriend Matthew Adesuyan, after making the announcement in May.

In a heartwarming Instagram post shared on Mother's Day, the mother-to-be wrote a tribute to her unborn child.

'To the new love of my life,' she wrote at the time. 'Thank you for choosing me to be your Mum. I have always wanted you for as long as I can remember, and at times my patience was tested.'

Shanina later sat on a raft while wearing a graphic, zebra print bikini

'The timing had to be right, and I can say with confidence that I am ready to be your guide, your protector and your best friend,' she added.

'As each month goes by during this precious journey of pregnancy, I am learning what the role of being a mother entails. I worry a lot, especially about your well being and development. It's a feeling that I've never experienced before, not even about myself.

'I would do anything for you, be anything for you and sacrifice anything for you.'

Shanina will soon welcome her first child with boyfriend Matthew Adesuyan

In a heartwarming Instagram post shared on Mother's Day, the mother-to-be wrote a tribute to her unborn child

Shanina then wrote that her child 'will be supported and loved through every moment in your life, just as I have been'.

'Mummy and Daddy can't wait to meet you,' she concluded her post.

The former Victoria's Secret model debuted her relationship with Matthew on Valentine's Day last year, sharing an Instagram post to confirm their romance.

In other photos, Shanina lazed on driftwood on the beach in a purple swimmer

Later, she was in white towelling jumpsuit and matching purple hat

Shanina was previously married to Aussie DJ Gregory Andrews, whose stage name is DJ Ruckus, in 2018.

The pair tied the knot in a lavish ceremony in the Bahamas.

They split 15 months later.
Tom Cruise was teased by his friend James Corden as the Hollywood actor celebrated his 60th birthday with a star-studded party in the UK.

The Mission Impossible actor was honoured with a lavish bash at Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire on Saturday where guests included Simon Pegg and Benedict Cumberbatch.

During the celebrations, James, 43, took to the stage to make a speech where he referenced scenes from some of Tom's most iconic films while joking about things his pal had 'pioneered'.

'He pioneered the way we attend secret sex parties!': Tom Cruise was teased by James Corden as he celebrated his 60th birthday with a party at Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire on Saturday (pictured on The Late Late Show in May)

In reference to Tom's iconic shirtless scene in Top Gun, James quipped: 'He pioneered the way we play volleyball in pants and no shirt.'

In a nod to the star's erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut - in which Tom infiltrates an underground sex group - James added: 'He pioneered the way we attend secret sex parties.'

The Late Late Show host then went on to poke fun at the star's youthful looks, remarking: 'The producers told me the plot of the new Mission: Impossible. The whole team tries to find a wrinkle on Tom's face.'

Tom and James have been friends for years, with Tom recently appearing on his pal's chat show for a Top Gun-inspired skit in which the pair flew them over a desert in two fighter jets.

Cheeky: In a nod to the star's erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut, James quipped: 'He pioneered the way we attend secret sex parties'

Iconic: In reference to Tom's iconic shirtless scene in Top Gun, James quipped: 'He pioneered the way we play volleyball in pants and no shirt'

Last month it was revealed that Tom planned on celebrating his milestone birthday with two lavish bashes - one in the UK and one in his native America.

The guest list for both bashes was set to be very exclusive and A-list, with the likes of David Beckham and Prince William receiving an invite.

Tom received birthday wishes from a number of high-profile collaborators as he turned 60 on Sunday.

Youthful: James also poked fun at the star's youthful looks, remarking: 'The producers told me the plot of the new Mission: Impossible. The whole team tries to find a wrinkle on Tom's face' (Tom is pictured right in 2021 and left in 1986)

Wingman: Tom and James have been friends for years, with Tom recently appearing on his pal's chat show for a Top Gun-inspired skit in which the pair flew them over a desert

Among those to post birthday wishes included filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie, who worked alongside Tom in 2012's Jack Reacher as well as multiple Mission: Impossible films, including the forthcoming Mission: Impossible  Dead Reckoning Part One and Part Two.

'Happy 60th Birthday, Tom,' Christopher captioned an accompanying shot of Tom clinging to the wing of a vintage plane in mid-air.

Tom, who returned to the role of Capt. Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell in the summer smash Top Gun: Maverick, also received kind words from two of his costars in the movie, Val Kilmer and Glen Powell.

Val said: 'Happy Birthday Mav @TomCruise from Ice!' in reference to his reprising the role of Adm. Tom 'Iceman' Kazansky in the sequel.

Glen, who plays the role of Lt. Jake 'Hangman' Seresin in the movie, reposted the death-defying image McQuarrie shared.

He wrote: 'This is 60. TC, there is just no one like you. Keep hangin in there. Happy Birthday!'
He has a reputation of being the 'nicest guys' in Hollywood and his kind gestures over the years have been widely noted.

And Keanu Reeves stayed true to form recently, when he shared a wholesome encounter with a young fan who spotted him getting off a flight in New York.

The sweet exchange was noted by another passenger, who shared snaps and posted their conversation on his Twitter page on Monday.

Aw! Keanu Reeves shared a wholesome encounter with a young fan who spotted him getting off a flight in New York (pictured together)

TV Producer Andrew Kimmel claimed that Keanu, 57, was the 'nicest guy' and 'happily responded' to a series of quickfire questions asked by the boy.

Explaining what happened on his social media page, the onlooker wrote: 'Keanu Reeves was on my flight from London to NYC today.

'A young boy asked for an autograph at baggage & then began to fire off a series of rapid-fire questions. Keanu happily responded to every single one

Spotted! The sweet exchange was noted by another passenger, who shared snaps and posted their conversation on his Twitter page on Monday (pictured Andrew Kimmel with Keanu)

Detailing the conversation between Keanu and the child, Andrew revealed the kid asked the actor why he had been in London, to which he replied: 'Filming a documentary.'

He then said: 'I saw online you were at the Grand Prix (pronouncing the x)', Keanu replied: Yes, the Grand Prix (in a French accent, without correcting him). F1! Race cars!'

When asked if he drives himself, Keanu told the boy that while he doesn't race F1 cars he does enjoy riding motorcycles.

Keanu went on to tell the boy he lives in LA and is going to be in NYC for five years to see a Broadway show [American Buffalo].

Documented: TV Producer Andrew Kimmel claimed that Keanu, 57, was the 'nicest guy' and 'happily responded' to a series of quickfire questions asked by the boy

So cute! Detailing the conversation between Keanu and the child, Andrew revealed the kid asked the actor why he had been in London, to which he replied: 'Filming a documentary'

Conversation: Keanu went on to tell the boy he lives in LA and is going to be in NYC for five years to see a Broadway show [American Buffalo]

When the child ran out of questions, Keanu began asking them back and quizzed him on why he was in Europe, which galleries he went to in Paris and which was his favourite.

Commenting on the exchange, Andrew wrote: 'The man could not have been nicer, especially after an international flight.

'I thought I'd share this because the dude is a class act and little moments like this can make such a big difference in people's lives. We need more Keanus!'

He added: 'And yes, I geeked out a little and asked for a photo. I mean had to. Have a happy 4th everyone!'

He then said: 'I saw online you were at the Grand Prix (pronouncing the x)', Keanu replied: Yes, the Grand Prix (in a French accent, without correcting him). F1! Race cars!' (Keanu pictured at the British Grand Prix on Sunday)

Over the years, Keanu has been hailed as a 'nice guy' by the masses after large gestures such as giving away millions to giving up his seat on the Subway.

Keanu, who has also been known to help out with his crews on set, apparently finds the unofficial title quite awkward.

When he appeared on Red Table Talk with his Matrix Resurrections co-star Jada Pinkett Smith, he was asked by a fan: 'Keanu, everyone says you're Hollywood's nicest guy, and you're such a giving person. What do you do to give to yourself?'

A red-faced Keanu, replied: 'Let's go for motorcycle ride, let's read. I love going to the movies. For me, my work is that as well. I often sometimes get asked, "You know, you've been at this for a while", and they're like, "Do you still love it?"

'And I'm like, '"Yeah, I love it even more". For me, work is life.'
Domenica Calarco has received backlash after flirting with Robert Irwin online.

The 29-year-old Married At First Sight bride commented under a video that the 18-year-old conservationist posted on TikTok, complimenting his looks.

'God you are so handsome!' she wrote under a video posted by the teenager last month.

Domenica Calarco (pictured) has received backlash after flirting with Robert Irwin online

'Ask him out!' a person suggested in the replies, before Dom added: 'Robert, would you like to come to the Logies with me?'

Other commenters were quick to slam the reality star, with some taking issue at her significant age difference with Robert.

'You're literally 28? This is f***ing creepy? I was a fan of yours,' wrote one person while another agreed: 'That's f***ing creepy'.

'God you are so handsome!' she commented under a video posted by the teenager last month. Robert is pictured in his TikTok video

'Ask him out!' a person suggested in the replies, before Dom added: 'Robert, would you like to come to the Logies with me?'

'That's gross, predatory behaviour. Be a better human and do better,' someone else chimed in.

'He's barely 18!' You're basically an old lady to him,' said another.

'Chill out he's of legal age, wow,' Domenica answered, before someone else shot back: 'Only just. Doesn't make it okay'.

Other commenters were quick to slam the reality star, with some taking issue at her significant age difference with Robert

The television bride further defended herself on the MAFS Uncensored group, where she was called 'gross' by one person.

'In Australia, legal age is 16. He is 18. He can drink alcohol,' she insisted, referring to the age of consent.

'I can ask him to come to the Logies with me, and say that he is handsome. Take a chill pill everyone,' she added.

'Chill out he's of legal age, wow' Domenica answered, before someone else shot back: 'Only just. Doesn't make it okay'

The television bride further defended herself on the MAFS Uncensored group, where she was called 'gross' by one person. 'In Australia, legal age is 16. He is 18. He can drink alcohol,' she insisted, referring to the age of consent

It comes after reports that Robert is dating his long-time friend Emmy Perry.

Emmy, 17, is an American actress, animal welfare advocate and heiress to a videogame fortune worth an estimated $380million.

The Glee star jetted to Queensland last month in order to spend time with Robert, who she has known since 2019.

It comes after reports that Robert is dating his long-time friend Emmy Perry. Emmy, 17, (right) is an American actress, animal welfare advocate and heiress to a videogame fortune worth an estimated $380million

They were first pictured together at Disneyland back in 2019, after meeting earlier that year at the Steve Irwin Gala Dinner in Los Angeles.

There is nothing in Emmy's social media posts to suggest they are more than friends, but Woman's Day is reporting they may be romantically involved.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Robert's representatives for comment.
By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." ~ Thomas Jefferson, January 30, 1787

July 04, 2022: Information Clearing House -- When Thomas Jefferson wrote to his friend, neighbor and colleague, James Madison, his view that the basis of government must be to preserve liberty rather than order, the War of Revolution against Great Britain had been won, the Articles of Confederation were in place and Madison was beginning to prepare for his pivotal role in the drafting of the Constitution.

Jefferson was in Paris, as the U.S. ambassador, and he wrote to express to Madison his view that whatever amendments to the Articles of Confederation he was planning to draft, they should embrace the value of personal liberty as the default position. Madison and others were sent to Philadelphia to craft amendments to the Articles. But Madison had no amendments in mind.

He arrived in the then-capital of the new nation with a draft of a new constitution in his mind and in his notes. The draft would undergo many changes throughout the summer of negotiations in 1787, and the document would eventually receive the support of all delegates and be ratified by the 13 states, without Jeffersons preferences of liberty over order.

Yet, five of the ratifying states made it clear that they might change their minds if a Bill of Rights embracing Jeffersons sentiments was not added to the Constitution. Jefferson, 3,000 miles away, shared the same fear as ratifiers in the hesitant states that the new government that Madison and his colleagues offered needed to be chained down when it came to personal liberty.

Again, it fell to Madison to use his linguistic skills to craft 10 amendments to assure that the new federal government would not assault personal liberty. The Bill of Rights was ratified in just a few months time and with little resistance. Even many anti-federalists, who had opposed ratification of the Constitution, supported ratification of the Bill of Rights.

Among the amendments ratified was the Fifth, which guarantees that "No person  shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

Due process means that all defendants in criminal cases and all persons detained by the government are entitled to know the charges against them, are entitled to a fair jury trial with a neutral judge, and enjoy the right to appeal an adverse verdict. Due process also means that the government cannot imprison a person without filing charges at the time of imprisonment nor keep him confined after he has served his prison term.

I offer this sterile background in basic American constitutional history in order to address a lamentable constitutional mess now going on at the US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The age-old clash between order and freedom, about which Jefferson wrote, often comes down to uneasy cases. Cases are uneasy when the litigants whose rights are being violated are unpopular, unsympathetic or unknown.

Two such cases are making their way through the courts  and in both cases, the Trump administration and the Biden administration argued that somehow, under the Constitution, the government can lawfully confine convicted felons even after they have served their full prison terms and can even confine dangerous persons without filing charges. These arguments are chilling.

The arguments are also immoral, un-American and unconstitutional, and their effects are exquisitely unlawful. Yet the feds  under both political parties  continue to get away with trashing the Constitution that, to a person, they have all sworn to uphold.

Majid Khan, who was tortured by the CIA for two years before being shipped to Gitmo, pleaded guilty to diverting $50,000 from a Pakistani organization to an al-Qaida affiliate that used the funds in the bombing of a Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2003. At his sentencing, he was permitted to describe the torture visited upon him by the CIA.

His unchallenged testimony was so vivid and gripping that his military jury recommended clemency, and the judge agreed. His prison term ended three months ago on March 1, 2022. He is still confined, unable to communicate with anyone but his lawyers.

Even worse is the case of Abdul-salam al-Hela, who has been confined at Gitmo for nearly 20 years and has not yet been charged with a crime. The governments dilemma is its fixation on torture. The evidence it has against al-Hela was obtained by the torture of al-Hela himself and others. The government knows that it cannot be used in any criminal prosecution in any American court. Yet, under the administration of President George W. Bush, torture was encouraged, rewarded and never punished.

The CIA in the Bush years behaved as if the Constitution to which its officers took an oath of support was just a piece of paper, without the force of law, without a moral underpinning and without the guarantees of due process. And in both of these cases, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., which has jurisdiction over the Constitution trashers at Gitmo, has permitted this to occur; in Khans case because he is not an American, and in al-Helas case because he is too dangerous  even after 20 years of unjust imprisonment  to be set free.

Neither of these excuses holds up under even rudimentary scrutiny. The plain language of the Fifth Amendment protects all persons, not just Americans, and it protects them from the very deprivation of liberty that the feds are presently causing. If the government can decide on its own to confine prisoners after they have served their terms or to confine them without filing charges, then no ones liberty is safe and the guarantees of the Constitution are toothless and meaningless.

As Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, when the government assaults the very liberties it was hired to protect, it is time to alter or abolish it.

Andrew Peter Napolitano is an American syndicated columnist whose work appears in numerous publications, including The Washington Times and Reason. He was an analyst for Fox News, commenting on legal news and trials. Napolitano served as a New Jersey Superior Court judge
Kate Garraway thanked her fans for tracking down husband Derek Draper's medical supplies after she begged for 'urgent help' in retrieving them.

Derek, 54, was the UK's longest-suffering patient of Covid after being admitted to hospital with the virus in March 2020 and is still in recovery.

While he was released from hospital last year he still requires round the clock care and daily medication - which Kate revealed on Friday she had accidentally left in the back of a taxi.

Reunited: Relieved Kate Garraway revealed fans tracked down husband Derek Draper's vital medical supplies after she accidentally left them in the back of a taxi

Thankfully, after appealing for help on Twitter, Kate was able to track down the driver, sharing on Sunday: 'Its been returned! Thanks to all who reached out - the message got to driver lovely Robert who has returned it - phew and thanks to all. #happysundayeveryone.'

Kate's campaign started on Friday when she tweeted: '@BC_Lostproperty help!! Have just brought derek home in a mobility black cab from hospital for a weekend visit -& have left a case with all his meds and kit in the front!

'The driver recognised me but may not know its there - please look & get in touch - need urgently!!'

Poorly: Derek, 54, was the UK's longest-suffering patient of Covid after being admitted to hospital with the virus in March 2020 and is still in recovery

Following her call for assistance, Kate's fans were quick to come to her rescue as one follower revealed they in fact knew the driver who transported the couple and was attempting to contact him.

They penned: 'I know the driver Kate as he mentioned he'd taken you and your husband to me this evening. Im trying to get in touch right now.'

Other Twitter users also shared their words of support and ideas to help, with one writing: 'Hope u get this back asap Kate. Also sorry to hear that Derek is no longer home with u all. Lots of love and best wishes for Derek xxxx.'

The power of Twitter: Thankfully, after appealing for help on Twitter, Kate was able to track down the driver, and thanked her fans for their help

With another suggesting: 'Kate. If you paid by card, the drivers details will be on the receipt or the card company should be able to trace him.'

And a third sharing: 'Hope you get them back asap. Sorry to hear Derek is in hospital I must have missed that somehow, sending love.'

Luckily, the person who knew the driver later confirmed that he did in fact get in touch with them, with the medical supplies swiftly returned to Derek and Kate.

Candid: The situation came just days after Kate opened up on finding a new way to be in love with Derek after his Covid-19 battle

The situation came just days after Kate opened up on finding a new way to be in love with Derek after his Covid-19 battle.

The presenter said that her children Darcy 17, and William, 12, also have had to 'relearn' how to be around their dad amid his continued health struggles.

Derek returned home from hospital in April 2021 after a year-long battle and still requires round-the-clock care in the midst of his lengthy recovery.

Speaking to Good Housekeeping, Kate said: 'When you nearly lose someone, it certainly brings everything into sharp focus.

'In many ways, we're still learning how we are as man and wife, as so much has changed.

'It's the same for the children  they're having to relearn the experience of being with their dad. And, of course, the biggest learning is for poor Derek.'

Kate previously admitted that if left unaided for over three days, Derek could die.

Ongoing process: The Good Morning Britain host said that her children Darcy 17, and William, 12, also have had to 'relearn' how to be around their dad amid his continued health struggles

He is bed-stricken, with Kate doing much of the caring herself as she insists she won't 'ever give up on him'.

Elsewhere in the chat, the presenter also spoke about trying to find the joy in the little moments in life after everything that's happened.

She explained: 'I try to live in the moment more than ever before. I'll send an email and think, 'Okay, I've sent the email. I can't do anything more about that now, so I'm just going to look out the window and notice how pretty the sky is.'

'I really try to seize those moments because when you do, you realise that life is just a collection of moments  and finding more good ones than bad ones is probably the secret to it all.'
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The stars were out in force for Chanel's Haute Couture Fall/Winter 22/23 show during Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday.

Keira Knightley led the hordes of attendees descending upon the LEtrier de Paris, with the likes of Marion Cotillard, Clemence Poesy and Leslie Mann turning out in style.

Keira, 37, exuded glamour as she donned a velvet halterneck dress that featured lace panels across the bodice to tease a look at her phenomenal figure.

Dressed to impress: Keira Knightley dazzled in a velvet halterneck dress as she joined leggy Marion Cotillard and chic Clemence Poesy at Chanel's star-studded Haute Couture Fall/Winter 22/23 show during Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday

The midi dress, which also featured an eye-catching bow, clung to her slender curves and complemented her mini quilted Chanel bag and two-tone pumps.

She attended the show alongside her husband James Righton, who looked dapper in a grey suit and open collar shirt.

Chanel muse Marion, 46, also pulled out all the stops for the show as she slipped into a pair of black hotpants and flashed a glimpse at her toned pins in sheer tights.

The French actress injected a splash of colour in a vibrant printed blouse and slung a boxy denim handbag over her shoulder.

Striking: Keira, 37, exuded glamour as she donned a velvet halterneck dress that featured lace panels across the bodice to tease a look at her phenomenal figure

Cute couple: She attended the show alongside her husband James Righton, who looked dapper in a grey suit and open shirt

Feeling hot, hot, hot! Keira fanned herself with her invite as she settled into her place on the front row

Cosy: Keira cuddled up close to her husband as they waited to take their seats at the runway presentation

Let the good times roll: Keira seemed in high spirits as she was spotted laughing and joking with her friends

Fantastic four: Keira and James sat alongside Marion and Lucy Boynton at the show

Glamorous parade: The A-list crowd watched a striking display of models during the Women's Haute-Couture Spring -Summer 2023 Fashion Week showcase

Dressed to impress for the show, French actress Clemence, 39, turned heads in a scarlet leather co-ord, teaming a boxy jacket with flared shorts that highlighted her toned pins.

The Harry Potter star proved that less is more as she kept the rest of her look neutral by donning a plain white T-shirt and T-strap pumps with a black tip.

Maggie Gyllenhaal looked radiant at the show as she slipped into a striped blouse and matching maxi skirt adorned with embroidered flowers.

Stunning: Chanel muse Marion, 46, also pulled out all the stops for the show as she slipped into a pair of black hotpants and flashed a glimpse at her toned pins in sheer tights

Turning heads: The French actress injected a splash of colour in a vibrant printed blouse and slung a boxy denim handbag over her shoulder

Sitting pretty: Marion looked phenomenal as she relaxed on the FROW with Lucy Boynton

Lady in red: Dressed to impress for the show, French actress Clemence, 39, turned heads in a scarlet leather co-ord, teaming a boxy jacket with flared shorts that highlighted her toned pins

Taraji, 51, looked chic in a sequinned mini dress in an eye-catching tartan print that featured long sleeves and a thigh-skimming hemline to highlight her toned pins.

The Empire actress layered up with a grey tweed blazer shrugged over her shoulders, while a pair of black heels boosted her modelesque frame.

Leslie, 50, cut a stylish figure in a fitted black T-shirt that she tucked into a pair of high-waisted glittering trousers. A slick of scarlet lipstick added a pop of colour, while platform pumps gave her some extra height.

Sassy in stripes: Maggie Gyllenhaal looked radiant at the show as she slipped into a striped blouse and matching maxi skirt adorned with embroidered flowers

Loving life: Maggie seemed in high spirits as she chatted away with friends ahead of watching the show

Clap happy: The star-studded front row were seen cheering on as the models made their way along the runway

Stunning: Leslie, 50, cut a stylish figure in a fitted black T-shirt that she tucked into a pair of high-waisted glittering trousers

Glam: A slick of scarlet lipstick added a pop of colour, while platform pumps gave her some extra height

Looking equally as stylish was Sigourney, 72, who dazzled in a sequinned black blazer that she paired with satin trousers and glittering heels.

The ladies looked delighted as they settled in on the FROW, while Taraji and Leslie were also sitting pretty.

While the stars were out in force, the heyday of A-list models strutting down the runway is long gone though, with Gigi Hadid and Kaia Gerber last seen on a Chanel catwalk in early 2020.

Sitting pretty: Taraji P. Henson, 51, sat alongside Leslie and model Soo Joo Park at the show

Check her out! Sitting pretty: Taraji, 51, looked chic in a sequinned mini dress in an eye-catching tartan print that featured long sleeves and a thigh-skimming hemline to highlight her toned pins

Chic: Looking equally as stylish was Sigourney, 72, who dazzled in a sequinned black blazer that she paired with satin trousers and glittering heels

Catching up: Sigourney seemed in good spirits as she enjoyed a chat with the Editor in Chief of Vogue China, Margaret Zhang

Lovely line-up: Princess of Thailand Sirivannavari Nariratana Rajakanya (left) and model Soo Joo Park (right) turned out to support Chanel's new designer Virginie Viard (centre)

Double act: Photographer Ellen von Unwerth and editor-at-large for Vogue Japan Anna Dello Russo posed for snaps together (left) while actress Amandine de la Richardiere attended with musician husband Sebastien Tellier

Pretty in purple: Helena Bordon looked sensational in a vibrant co-ord

Leggy ladies: Marion and Lucy turned heads in their short ensembles as they arrived at the high-profile event

Virginie Viard is the new creative director for Chanel, taking over from Lagerfeld following his death in February 2019.

Lagerfeld was known for his muses, propelling the likes of Gerber, Kendall Jenner and Lily_Rose Depp to super stardom in the years before his death.

In his 36 years as creative director, Lagerfeld's collaborations with models, 'it' girls and the A-list, included show staples like his 'Couture Brides' defining the runway shows he oversaw. In turn, the Grand Palais spectacles and well-known faces on the runway attracted the stars into the FROW.

FROW friends: British Vogue's Deputy Editor Sarah Harris joined American Vogue's editor-in-Chief on the front row

Three's company: Ines de la Fressange, Julie Gayet and Elsa Zylberstein attended the show

Wow: The show was packed out as guests clamoured to watch the runway presentation

Plaid's a good look: The models stormed the runway in a series of plaid and boucle ensembles teamed with boots

Turning heads: The model strutted their stuff down the runway

Meanwhile, Viard, who worked for Lagerfeld since 1987 before her rise to the top job, was described by Vogue in 2020 as 'the least famous designer in fashion at its most famous house'.

In her previous position as Lagerfeld's studio coordinator, Viard built up year-long friendships and collaborations with the craftspeople behind the Maisons d'Art, the characters behind the designs instead of the beauties who were dressed in them.

Haute couture is the age-old Parisian tradition of producing exorbitantly priced, made-to-measure garments for the world's richest women.

The shows began on Monday with the major fashion brands Dior and Schiaparelli presenting their collections and will conclude on Thursday.

Caped crusader: Lucy looked chic in a boucle cape that she paired with black shorts and a cute Chanel hair tie

Leading the way: Keira strutted confidently into the venue with her husband following on just behind

Lovely: Maggie beamed broadly as she mingled with the A-list stars outside the event

A dream in cream: Anna looked stylish in a boucle skirt suit

Stepping out in style: Clemence, Helena and Anna all opted for bold and vibrant looks as they attended the show
Gemma Collins looked on fine form on Tuesday as she showcased her yoga moves while on a yacht in a throwback clip shared to her Instagram.

The former TOWIE star, 41, wowed as she demonstrated her flexibility as well as her incredible 3.5stone weight loss by thrusting her legs in the air and moving them open and shut.

Gemma looked incredible in a rose and leopard print swimsuit while kicking back on a netted hammock during her recent sun-soaked trip to Tenerife.

Go girl! Gemma Collins looked on fine form on Tuesday as she showcased her yoga moves while on a yacht in a throwback clip shared to her Instagram

The star styled her blonde locks into two bunches while accessorising her look in an embellished black headband.

She certainly made the most of her break as she chilled out on the water, before getting back to reality in her native Essex.

Captioning her fun Boomerang, she penned: 'Happy Tuesday, stay FABULOUS.'

It comes after Gemma showed off her slimmed-down physique while partying on a boat in Tenerife last month.

Work it! The former TOWIE star, 41, wowed as she demonstrated her flexibility as well as her incredible 3.5stone weight loss by thrusting her legs in the air and moving them open and shut

The former TOWIE star looked slimmer than ever as she donned a bright blue plunging swimsuit as she soaked up the sun on the lavish getaway.

She looked in great spirits as she danced with friends in the one piece which featured pink flower detailing on the bust.

The TV personality opted for a matching pink ruffled skirt and hid behind a large white pair of sunglasses.

Looking good: Gemma looked incredible in a rose and leopard print swimsuit while kicking back on a netted hammock during her recent sun-soaked trip to Tenerife

Leggy display: She certainly made the most of her break as she chilled out on the water, before getting back to reality in her native Essex

Gemma styled her stunning long blonde tresses in loose waves and kept her fringe out of her face by pulling it back two braids.

The group were spotted dancing and laughing as music played in the background while Gemma filmed the fun on social media.

'Party for our Rhys, celebration of his time on earth,' she wrote about the event held to remember her late pal Rhys Alan Smith.

Amazing: It comes after Gemma showed off her slimmed-down physique while partying on a boat in Tenerife last month as she remembered her late pal Rhys

Glam: The former TOWIE star looked slimmer than ever as she donned a bright blue plunging swimsuit as she soaked up the sun on the lavish getaway

Rhys, who was the ex-boyfriend of fellow Towie star Harry Derbidge, was tragically found dead in Tenerife in April 2021.

Gemma later shared a sweet post with three friends on the boat explaining to her 2.2million fans that they a 'massive support system' for her.

She wrote: 'You can defo count your real friends on one hand. Thank you for being a massive support system this week for me love you so much I cant believe we met when we was 3 we now 41!!!!

'Never once asked me for anything since being in the limelight not even a pair of GC eyelashes'

Stunning: In another snap from the Spanish getaway Gemma posed with the four women as they got all dressed up to go out in the evening
Chris Hemsworth has been on the publicity trail for his new film, Thor: Love and Thunder, and his wife, Elsa Pataky, has been by his side.

On Saturday, the couple and their three young children headed back home to Bryon Bay via private jet.

The actor, 38, and his actress wife, 45, cut casual and comfortable figures as they boarded the plane.

Chris Hemsworth has been on the publicity trail for his new film, Thor: Love and Thunder, and his wife, Elsa Pataky (pictured), has been by his side

Elsa opted for a navy blue jacket with an emblem on the shoulder, paired with casual black slacks.

She wore a green shirt underneath and completed the look with grey and white sneakers.

The star appeared to have on a natural makeup look and wore her tresses down in soft waves.

On Saturday, the couple and their three young children headed back home to Bryon Bay via private jet

The actor, 38, and his actress wife, 45, cut comfortable figures as they boarded the plane

Elsa opted for a navy blue jacket with an emblem on the shoulder, paired with casual black slacks

She wore a green shirt underneath and completed the look with grey and white sneakers

Chris meanwhile chose a black, long-sleeved jumper and jogging bottoms as he made his way inside the plane.

He added a beige cap and sunglasses, as well as wearing a pair of black and white sneakers.

The couple boarded with their three children, daughter India Rose, 10, and twin sons Sasha and Tristan, eight.

Chris meanwhile chose a black, long-sleeved jumper and jogging bottoms as he made his way inside the plane

He added a beige cap and sunglasses, as well as wearing a pair of black and white sneakers

The couple boarded with their three children, daughter India Rose, 10, and twin sons Sasha and Tristan, eight

Thor: Love and Thunder also stars Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, Christian Bale and Matt Damon. It is the fourth film in the Thor franchise

Thor: Love and Thunder also stars Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, Christian Bale and Matt Damon.

It is the fourth film in the Thor franchise, and sees Thor go up against the villainous Gorr the God Butcher, played by Bale.

Chris is building the life he always dreamed of in coastal Australia, far from the bright lights of Hollywood.

The star appeared to have on a natural makeup look and wore her tresses down in soft waves

Chris is building the life he always dreamed of in coastal Australia, far from the bright lights of Hollywood

The actor, who lives with Elsa and their children near Byron Bay, NSW, said last month he wanted to spend more time filming in his home country

'My focus ever since I had any sway was to shoot here in Australia due to, on a personal level, being at home with my family, but also because of the awareness that I had about what was possible here when it comes to the talent,' he told The Daily Telegraph

The actor, who lives with Elsa and their children near Byron Bay, NSW, said last month he wanted to spend more time filming in his home country.

'My focus ever since I had any sway was to shoot here in Australia due to, on a personal level, being at home with my family, but also because of the awareness that I had about what was possible here when it comes to the talent,' he told The Daily Telegraph.

Chris also made his latest film, the Netflix sci-fi drama Spiderhead, in Queensland.

Chris also made his latest film, the Netflix sci-fi drama Spiderhead, in Queensland

His production company, Wild State Productions, brought Thor 3 and 4, Extraction 1 and 2, Spiderhead and Interceptor to film in Australia

'Life is sweet. It is great and I couldn't be happier,' Chris added. 'If you had have said or asked me 10 years ago where I would like to be, this is it'

His production company, Wild State Productions, brought Thor 3 and 4, Extraction 1 and 2, Spiderhead and Interceptor to film in Australia.

'Life is sweet. It is great and I couldn't be happier,' Chris added. 'If you had have said or asked me 10 years ago where I would like to be, this is it.'

Thor: Love and Thunder, directed by Taika Waititi, hits Australian and UK cinemas on July 7, and on July 8 in the United States.
Natalie Portman has revealed her role as Jane Foster in Thor: Love And Thunder was the first time in her career she was asked to get bigger for a job.

The actress, 41, bulked up to play the superhero in the blockbuster and told how the film is a 'highlight' of her career as it has impressed her children Alpeh, 11, and Amalia, five.

Speaking on Tuesday's episode of Lorraine, Natalie also thanked filmmaker Taiki Waititi for 'putting a 40-year-old 5ft 3in mother' in the role, as the character is described in the Marvel comics as being 6'0.

Natalie Portman has revealed her role as Jane Foster in Thor: Love And Thunder was the first time in her career she was asked to get bigger for a job

Fans were blown away by Natalie's appearance in the trailer as she showed off her muscular arms following an intense training routine for the role.

She said: 'It was really wonderful to get to do training, I haven't been tasked in my lifetime to get as big as possible. I'm 5ft3 and my character is 6ft so there's movie magic as well.'

She added: 'It was a really really lucky role to get to play. I have to credit Taika and Marvel for putting a 40 year old 5ft 3 mother in the role, it's been a major highlight of my career getting to impress my kids!'

On being in a comedic film, Natalie said: 'It's fun and sense of humour plus true heartfelt emotion - nice line of balance in that.'

The actress, 41, bulked up to play the superhero in the blockbuster and told how the film is a 'highlight' of her career as it has impressed her children Alpeh, 11, and Amalia, five

Natalie also discussed filming the project in Australia, which she said was like 'going back in time' because of the strict Covid rules.

She said: 'We was very lucky to all get to be in Australia. we were deep in isolation and lockdown when in LA.

'And when we got to Australia, because of their of strictness in covid, was like going back in time or something.'

Chris Hemsworth is once again taking on the lead role of Thor while Christian Bale portrays villain Gorr The God Butcher.

Interview: Speaking on Lorraine, Natalie said: 'It was really wonderful to get to do training, I haven't been tasked in my lifetime to get as big as possible. I'm 5ft3 and my character is 6ft so there's movie magic as well'

Director: Natalie also thanked filmmaker Taiki Waititi for 'putting a 40-year-old 5ft 3in mother' in the role, as the character is described in the Marvel comics as being 6'0

Praising Christian for his role as the antagonist, Natalie said: 'Christian Bale is incredible, he's been such incredible actor for so long, this one is absolutely terrifying.'

Discussing more and more women getting into filmmaking, Natalie said: 'The more women who step into leaderships roles, more they can create environments they want to be in.

'It is a very particular thing after so long being excluded by power.'
Denise Van Outen has revealed she turned down the chance to present Strictly Come Dancing - and thinks it was one of her best career moves.

The entertainer, 48, was asked by late Strictly legend Bruce Forsyth to host the show alongside him, but declined as she thought it sounded 'really boring', with Tess Daly later getting the job.

Speaking on The Matt Haycox Show podcast, the actress and presenter admitted she initially regretted the decision when the BBC show became a huge hit, but told how she 'wouldn't have had such a varied career if Id taken it.'

No thanks: Denise Van Outen has revealed she turned down the chance to present Strictly Come Dancing - and thinks it was one of her best career moves

The TOWIE narrator told how she's now glad as she's been able to have more varied opportunities in her career, whereas 53-year-old Tess is firmly 'associated' with the show and has not branched out as much as Denise.

The former Big Breakfast presenter, who starred in Chicago in the West End and on Broadway, herself competed on Strictly alongside James Jordan, finishing runner up in 2012.

She explained to Matt: 'I was offered Strictly Come Dancing. I knew Bruce Forsyth really well. And I've done a few shows with him.

Job offer: The entertainer, 48, was asked by late Strictly legend Bruce Forsyth to host the show alongside him, but declined as she thought it sounded 'really boring', with Tess Daly later getting the job

'We used to sing together. And he came to me and approached me to be sidekick in the new Strictly Come Dancing.

'He said to me, "there's this show, it's all ballroom, it's gonna be celebrities. I want to open the show with a song and dance with you, and close it with you" - because he knew that I danced and sang.

'And I remember sitting there and I went to him "Bruce, it sounds really boring'".

Decision: Speaking on The Matt Haycox Show podcast , the actress admitted she initially regretted the decision when the BBC show became a huge hit, but told how she 'wouldn't have had such a varied career if Id taken it'

No regrets: The TOWIE narrator told how she's now glad as she's been able to have more varied opportunities in her career, whereas 53-year-old Tess is firmly 'associated' with the show

Denise then want to add though she initially regretted her decision, the star noted that she was pleased that she did say no as it allowed her to branch out into other career paths.

She went on: 'So, they gave it to Tess Daly. And then it became a huge hit, and I was thinking maybe I was an idiot turning that down.

'But, actually, when I look back, Tess has done it so well for many years, but just kind of does that, and she's associated with it.

'Whereas, I went on to do Broadway, I've done film, I've done theatre in the West End - I've done so many other things.'

Performance: The former Big Breakfast presenter, who starred in Chicago in the West End and on Broadway, herself competed on Strictly alongside James Jordan, finishing runner up in 2012

Opportunity: 'I was offered Strictly Come Dancing. I knew Bruce Forsyth really well. And I've done a few shows with him'

She added: 'I wouldn't have had such a varied career if Id taken it. So, actually, for me, it worked out.'

Tess has co-hosted Strictly since 2004. She hosted with Bruce before he left in 2013 with Claudia Winkleman stepping in as her co-star in 20914. Bruce died in 2017.

It comes it's been revealed Denise's new man Jimmy Barba makes her laugh like no other guy she's ever met, pals say.

Sources have told MailOnline that the Property Developer, 55, - who previously had a career as a stand-up comic - has arrived at the 'perfect moment' for TV presenter Denise.

The stunner recently moved on from her ex Eddie Boxshall after dumping him eight months ago.

Reflection: 'So, they gave it to Tess Daly. And then it became a huge hit, and I was thinking maybe I was an idiot turning that down'

Good choice: 'But, actually, when I look back, Tess has done it so well for many years, but just kind of does that, and she's associated with it'

The insider said: 'Denise has had a really difficult few months since the split with Eddie. She wanted to give herself time to trust again and that was a tough process to go through after everything that went on when things broke down with Eddie.

'But then she met Jimmy and it just felt right. He makes her laugh out loud, he's a very funny, charismatic and outgoing guy and is able to make Denise laugh like she never has before.

'He cracks her up and they are very happy together. It's obviously very early days but it's very clear that Jimmy is keen on Denise.'

Jimmy has already created a 'highlights' page on his Instagram account dedicated to Denise and friends say he's not phased or bothered by the attention that will come their way.

Loved-up: It comes it's been revealed Denise's new man Jimmy Barba makes her laugh like no other guy she's ever met, pals say

Perfect: Sources have told MailOnline that the Property Developer, 55, - who previously had a career as a stand-up comic - has arrived at the 'perfect moment' for TV presenter Denise

'Jimmy has been in and around showbiz for long enough so is a good match for Denise,' a pal added.

'He was in Big Brother in Italy many years ago and almost won the show. When he came out of the house he went on tour of Italy doing nightclub openings and personal appearances. He's well used to the red carpet life that Denise exists in. Jimmy loves being out and having fun.'

The couple have been dating for a few weeks after being introduced by a mutual friend and went public with their romance at the 12th annual Grand Prix Ball.
She has been in Manchester since the end of May, shooting for a new ITV drama.

And on Tuesday, Helena Bonham Carter was in good spirits while dressed as Crossroads icon Noele Gordon to film scenes for Nolly.

The actress, 56, donned an auburn wig and sleek white shirt dress, with a similarly coloured longline coat worn over the top, as she transformed into the TV star to shoot aboard a ship.

Portraying an icon: On Tuesday, Helena Bonham Carter, 56, was in good spirits while dressed as Crossroads icon Noele Gordon to film scenes for Nolly, in Manchester

As well as her elegant midi dress, Helena also wore a royal blue waistcoat featuring gold contrast buttons.

The actress added a colourful neck tie, while further accessorising with a pair of white gloves and glamorous oversized shades.

Three part drama Nolly, penned by Russell T Davies, will explore the all-powerful reign and fall from grace of the inimitable Noele Gordon, who died in 1985.

She was declared the 'Queen of the Midlands' thanks to iconic role as Meg Mortimer in Crossroads and was the darling of the establishment until it turned on her.

Filming: Helena looked worlds away from her usual self as she got into character as Crossroads icon Noele Gordon during filming of the upcoming ITV drama

Taking a break: As well as her elegant midi dress, Helena also wore a royal blue waistcoat featuring gold contrast buttons and a colourful neck tie

As flame-haired widow Meg in the long-running soap opera Crossroads, Noele became one of the most famous people in Britain.

Then in 1981, at the height of the show's success and the peak of her fame, she was axed without ceremony, without warning and with no explanation, with the soap eventually ending two years later.

With the boss's words 'all good things must come to an end' ringing in her ears, Noele found herself thrown out of the show that was her life for over 18 years.

Noele, who had previously had multiple roles in the theatre before landing her part in Crossroads, played Meg from 1964 to 1981, and later returned for a two-episode stint in 1983.

Happy days: Helena willingly embraced a member of the crew while on set

After she was dropped from the show, Noele's ill health prevented her from accepting many more roles, and she died in 1985 at the age of 66.

A love letter to a legend of television, and to the madcap soap she starred in, Nolly will be an entertaining ride through Noele's most tumultuous years, and a sharp, affectionate and heart-breaking portrait of a forgotten icon.

Of the role, Helena said: 'Noele Gordon was a fascinating, complex, brilliant and gutsy woman  none of which I knew before I read Russell T Davies' script.

'I'm so thrilled to help tell Nolly's long overdue and largely forgotten story.

'Russell's screenplay is a work of brilliance and I hope I'll do him and Nolly justice. I can't wait to start.'
Casa Amor week got off to an explosive start when loyalties were tested and relationships were rocked due to the arrival of six new boys and six new girls.

And there's seems to be no sign of the drama subsiding any time soon, with a first look at Tuesday's episode revealing Paige Thorne has decided to stay loyal to Jacques O'Neill - just as he vows to 'crack on' with the new Islanders.

Although Paige had been getting to know Billy Brown she ultimately decides to call time on their flirtations, announcing her head is 'still with Jacques'.

Drama: A first look at Tuesday's episode of Love Island reveals that Paige Thorne has decided to stay loyal to Jacques O'Neill - just as he vows to 'crack on' with the new Islanders

Pulling him for a chat in the upcoming installment, Paige wanted to check in that they are on the same page.

Telling Billy she wants to be straight up, she says: 'I know we've been getting on really, really well we're like bantering and laughing and stuff but from my end I've been seeing it as a friendship, nothing else.'

She adds: 'To be fair, my head is just definitely still with Jacques.'

Billy replies: 'Well I'm glad you've told me this because at the end of the day, we ain't got long. But I appreciate you being honest, so it's all good.'

Player: Although Paige had been getting to know Billy Brown she ultimately decides to call time on their flirtations, announcing her head is 'still with Jacques' (pictured is Jacques)

Meanwhile back in the main villa her current partner Jacques explains where his head is at to Dami and Andrew on the day beds - casting doubt on his connection with Paige.

He says: 'I woke up in a filthy mood sulking and that, and the next minute I'm thinking 'what am I doing?' I'm just thinking about Paige, I'm thinking I can't be like this, it's not me.'

Dami says: 'You're feeling guilty before you've even done anything.'

Understanding: Billy (pictured) replies: 'Well I'm glad you've told me this because at the end of the day, we ain't got long. But I appreciate you being honest, so it's all good'

Jacques continues: 'I literally said to myself, I feel like this because I'm feeling about Paige's feelings, I'm not thinking about mine.'

Dami says: 'It's your own journey as well you know.'

Jacques continues: 'I need to put myself out there. How do I know if what I've got with Paige is so good if I don't even give it another chance with someone else? For me to do that, I need to crack on. I can't be sat around here and sulking for someone else.'

Elsewhere on the episode, lounging on the pool beds, newcomer Samuel offers his advice to Ekin-Su, Gemma, George and Paige about their current boys.

Chat: Elsewhere on the episode, lounging on the pool beds, newcomer Samuel offers his advice to Ekin-Su, Gemma, George and Paige about their current boys

Ekin-Su asks: 'What do you think of Jacques?'

Samuel answers: 'He's quite a cheeky chappy guy. What I also believe is quite clear is you [Paige] like him more than he likes you, just an observation.

'It's not just that alone, but he's aware of it which is why in a sense, he has had power in different ways in the relationship that you may not have realised.'

Samuel adds: 'He's disrespected you in some arguments that he shouldn't have done.

Honest: Samuel (pictured) says of Jacques: 'He's quite a cheeky chappy guy. What I also believe is quite clear is you [Paige] like him more than he likes you, just an observation'

Love life: Elsewhere on the upcoming episode Billy is keen to know where Tasha's head is at after being rejected by Paige (Tasha is pictured)

'Now, if they put a girl in there that is confident, very flirtatious, that is as good looking as you and she applies pressure onto him, and goes forward on to him his head could potentially turn.

'He's just one of those that in a flirty situation, he's definitely flirting back.'

Elsewhere on the upcoming episode Billy is keen to know where Tasha's head is at after being rejected by Paige.

Tasha explains: 'It's weird, you bring out this playful, flirty side out of me. I haven't had that with Andrew. I do feel like there's a bit of a vibe here definitely.'

Cheeky: Meanwhile in the main Villa, Andrew pulls Coco for a chat to discuss the kiss they enjoyed on Monday night's episode

Bill agrees, saying: 'I could always see through that you've got that fun side but I haven't seen it yet.'

When asking Tasha if she was previously jealous of him getting to know Paige, Tasha answers: 'I don't know, I've already kissed you, soo'

Billy replies: 'Yeah I know, but it was in a challenge wasn't it?'

He goes on to say: 'I think you're wishing that it was not in a challenge, and you're wishing it was out of it completely.'

Sitting at the pool area with Danica and Indiyah, Tasha later gets some advice from her pals.

She explains: 'Me and Billy have been having quite a few conversations, I get along with him very well. We bounce off each other really, really well.'

Tasha continues: 'He's very different to Andrew, like complete polar opposites, he has more got that playful, funny kind of side.'

Flirty: Andrew says: 'What I have with you is obviously pretty good and I do wanna explore that'

Indiyah tells Tasha: 'It's easier said than done, but don't care about what people think. People can have their opinions but this is your journey.'

Danica adds: 'There doesn't need to be something missing, but sometimes someone just brings more.'

Meanwhile in the main Villa, Andrew pulls Coco for a chat to discuss the kiss they enjoyed on Monday night's episode.

Kicking off: Casa Amor week got off to an explosive start when loyalties were tested and relationships were rocked due to the arrival of six new boys and six new girls

Catching up: The girls are set to chat with about what they plan to do now they are in Casa Amor with the new boys

Andrew says: 'What I have with you is obviously pretty good and I do wanna explore that.'

When asking Coco how she feels, she says: 'I don't really feel like there's anyone else. I didn't expect to get on with you as well as I did to be honest, it actually shocked me.'

Andrew goes on to say: 'I didn't expect to get into bed with you and just literally be laughing the entire night. That's definitely something me and Tasha did not have. I've woken up pretty happy to be fair.'

LOVE ISLAND 2022: MEET THE CASA AMOR BOYS Jack Keating Name: Jack Keating Age: 23 Location: Dublin, London Occupation: Social Media Marketing worker Why Love Island and why now? 'I've been single for a long time, probably 4 or 5 years now and I've really been missing that spark that I haven't been getting on the dating scene, like I've been dating for a long time.' Josh Samuel Le Grove Name: Josh Samuel Le Grove Age: 22 Location: Essex Occupation: Model Why Love Island and why now? 'I've always been single. If you're going to find someone, it'll be in a place where everyone is single and looking for the same thing.' Samuel Agbiji Name: Samuel Agbiji Age: 22 Location: Manchester Occupation: Model Why Love Island and why now? 'I have been in a serious relationship before and I believe I've been in love before and healing from that relationship took a while but also I learnt a lot about myself and a lot about what I want in a partner.' Deji Adeniyi Name: Deji Adeniyi Age: 25 Location: Bedford Occupation: Accounts Manager Why Love Island and why now? 'The reason why is that my sex life is amazing but my love life is awful. I am the master of failed talking stages. My love life isn't going the right way so one night I decided to apply for Love Island and now I'm here!' George Tasker Name: George Tasker Age: 23 Location: Cotswolds Occupation: Labourer Why Love Island and why now? 'I've been single now for three years. I had a relationship with a girl from Australia - my only girlfriend...I'm a lot more mature now and I know what I want in a relationship.' Billy Brown Name: Billy Brown Age: 23 Location: Surrey Occupation: Roofing company director Why Love Island and why now? 'I've had two girlfriends before, I was obviously going to try and find the lucky third one!'

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She recently revealed that she's lost a whopping 21lbs in recent months.

And Kim Kardashian put her svelte figure on display in another skintight ensemble on Tuesday as she stepped out in Paris with daughter North, nine, to attend the Dior Homme Menswear Spring Summer 2023 show.

The reality star, 41, ensured all eyes would be on her as she slipped her trusty 2,300 Pantaleggings - an item that's quickly becoming one of her wardrobe staples.

Gorgeous in green: Kim Kardashian put her svelte figure on display in another skintight ensemble on Tuesday as she stepped out in Paris with daughter North, nine, amid Haute Couture Fashion Week

Kim's tiny waist was highlighted by a fitted camouflage T-shirt that complemented her neon green leggings and clung to her slender curves.

The ice blonde bombshell added to the glamour with a glittering and bejewelled silver handbag as well as oversized shades, while her freshly-lightened locks were worn loose and tousled to frame her pretty features.

Proving that she follows in her famous parents' footsteps, North looked every inch the mini fashionista as she joined her mother on the outing.

Two's company: Proving that she follows in her famous parents' footsteps, North looked every inch the mini fashionista as she joined her mother on the outing

Turning heads: The reality star, 41, ensured all eyes would be on her as she slipped her trusty 2300 Pantaleggings - an item that's quickly becoming one of her wardrobe staples

Here they are: Kim's mother Kris Jenner and her partner Corey Gamble were also in attendance

Group outing: The famous family were sure to attract attention as they stepped out in Paris

The youngster - who Kim shares with estranged husband Kanye West - made a style statement of her own as she paired a vintage bomber jacket from her dad's former streetwear brand.

With no expense spared on North's ensemble, the adorable youngster toted a mini Balenciaga bag, which retails for 1,350 and hard wedged crocs from the Spanish fashion line costing 675.

Her look was completed with a pair of cobalt rimmed sunglasses and her hair styled in chunky braids.

Kim's sensational sartorial displays never fail to dominate headlines, but in recent months her look has become quite predictable, owing to her penchant for a spandex Pantalegging.

Dressed to impress: The item has certainly highlighted her recent weight loss, after revealing she had managed to drop even more pounds after her astonishing weight-loss journey for the Met Gala

Green machine: Kim certainly pulled out all the stops with her neon green ensemble

Trendy: North - who Kim shares with estranged husband Kanye West - made a style statement of her own as she paired a vintage bomber jacket from her dad's former streetwear brand

Looks familiar: North borrowed from dad Kanye's wardrobe in one of his vintage Pastelle jackets (Kanye pictured right in 2008)

Price tag: With no expense spared on North's ensemble, the youngster toted a mini Balenciaga bag, which retails for 1,350

Just the two of us: The mother and daughter duo were sure to turn plenty of heads in their quirky fashion ensembles

Bold: She donned hard wedged crocs from the Spanish fashion line costing 675

Wow! Kim certainly stood out in her luminous outfit as she held hands with her daughter

The item has certainly highlighted her recent weight loss, after revealing she had managed to drop even more pounds after her astonishing weight-loss journey for the Met Gala.

Kim famously shed 16lbs in two weeks so that she could attend the Met Ball in the dress Marilyn Monroe wore to John F. Kennedy's birthday party in 1962.

Marilyn herself had to be sewn into the gold frock, which she wore while seductively singing: 'Happy Birthday, Mr. President,' three months before her death.

All together: Kim was joined by her publicist pal Tracy Romulus and her daughter Ryan

Style: Like her pal North, young Ryan showed off her own sense of style in an oversized lilac shirt and loose fitting black trousers

Outing: Kris, Corey, Tracey and Ryan were out in force on Tuesday

Matriarch: The momager looked sharp in an all-black ensemble teamed with stylish accessories

Look who it is: North and Kim turned plenty of heads as they stepped out

That's my girl: Kim held on tightly to her eldest child's hand as they made their way outside

Steeping out on her own: North West has undoubtedly been influenced by her parents' style choices

Loving life: North appeared to be loving the attention her outfit brought

Turning heads: Kim put a protective arm around the daughter she shares with ex Kanye

In step: The mother and daughter duo were in sync as they strutted down the street

While appearing on the Today show, Kim revealed that she had taken off a further 5lbs since the Met Gala, resulting in a total weight loss of 21lbs.

She also denied allegations that she had damaged the Marilyn dress, noting that Ripley's Believe It Or Not!, which has the frock in its possession, took her side.

'Kim Kardashian wearing the "Happy Birthday" dress has been hotly contested, but the fact remains that she did not, in any way, damage the garment in the short amount of time it was worn at the Met Gala,' Ripley's said.

The accusations rested largely on pictures of the damaged dress that had surfaced online - but Ripley's cited a 2017 report that already noted 'a number of the seams are pulled and worn.'

Kim also took a few slings and arrows online over her dramatic weight loss, but she defended her decision on the Today show, saying: 'Yeah, you know, I looked at it like a role.'

So nice she wore it thrice! Last month Kim was spotted in the same Balenciaga ensemble for three outings over five days

She added: 'I really wanted to wear this dress. It was really important to me. It actually taught me a lot about my lifestyle and my health and since then, afterwards, I continued to eat really healthy. I am down 21lbs now.'

Kim declared: 'I'm not trying to lose any more weight but I have more energy than ever. I cut out so much sugar, a lot of junk food I was eating - I didn't even realize it. A lot of fried foods. And I completely changed my lifestyle.'

Kim shares her four children - North, Saint, six, Chicago, four, and Psalm, three - with her third ex-husband Kanye, whom she split from in February of last year.

Shrinking: While appearing on the Today show, Kim revealed that she had taken off a further 5lbs since the Met Gala, resulting in a total weight loss of 21lbs
She's currently coupled up with fisherman Luca Bish.

But Gemma Owen's ex Neil Farrugia, 27, has revealed that he wants to join Love Island as a bombshell in a bid to win the 19-year-old influencer back, and believes he 'could make that happen'.

Her former flame - who was born in Malta - also claims that Luca, 23, isn't her type, noting that he would have paired her with Italian hunk Davide Sanclimenti.

OMG! Gemma Owen's ex Neil Farrugia, 27, has revealed that he wants to join Love Island as a bombshell in a bid to win the 19-year-old influencer back

Speaking to new! magazine Neil revealed that he and Gemma initially met in Dubai and dated for four months.

They ultimately split in November over struggles with making their long-distance relationship work, but the hunk insists they ended things on 'really positive terms.'

He told the publication: 'We went travelling together and got really close despite it only being for a short period of time.

'I believe Gemma and I had a lot of potential and I still think we could be a good match if reunited in the future. Who knows?

Romance: Her former flame - who was born in Malta - revealed that he and Gemma initially met in Dubai and dated for four months before splitting in November over long-distance struggles

'I would definitely try my best to turn Gemma's head back in my direction if I joined the show as a bombshell. I think I could make that happen.'

Speaking of her current romance in the Love Island villa, Neil admitted: 'Luca seems like a very nice guy but he's just not Gemma's type!'

Neil's interview comes after it emerged that Gemm's dad Michael Owen thinks Luca Bish seems like a 'decent fella' - but will wait to give his final verdict once he's met him.

The former England and Liverpool ace has only been watching daughter Gemma's journey on Love Island 'now and then' admitting tuning in can be a 'tough gig'.

Not again! Gemma was previously shocked when another of her exes, Jacques O'Neil, 23, joined the villa as a bombshell

Current beau: The teenager is currently coupled up with fisherman Luca Bish, 23

Instead, he's been relying on updates from wife Louise who has been watching every night and helping to keep Gemma's social media up to date.

A source told MailOnline: 'As any dad will understand Michael isnt exactly enjoying seeing Gemmas love life play out on screen! Theres things a dad doesnt need to witness

'Hes seen a few of the episodes and from what hes witnessed he thinks Luca and the other guys on the Island seem like pretty decent fellas.

'But if Luca ends up officially going out with Gemma he will definitely want to meet him and make up his own mind on the guy. Any father would.'
Editorial

July 04, 2022: Information Clearing House -- " SCF " ---- Finally, the United States-led military alliance called NATO has made its global cold war ambitions explicit. At last, the warmongering organization has come clean out of the deceptive closet it has been hiding in for many years. And, therefore, henceforth, may it be damned by all good-thinking people of the world.

In a summit held in Madrid this week, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization released a new Strategic Concept that declared Russia to be a direct threat and China as a challenge to our values and interests. What exactly are those values and interests? Warmongering and domination!

The last time NATO published a strategic document was in 2010. Back then Russia was described as a partner and China wasnt even mentioned.

Over the past decade, the U.S.-dominated military bloc has increasingly adopted a hostile policy towards both Russia and China. The search for a new cold war has been relentless, implacable, and largely implicit. Now, however, the U.S.-led axis is openly declaring its hostility.

The 30-member NATO has formally invited two new European states to join its ranks, Finland and Sweden. The two Nordic countries are ending decades of nominal neutrality in what can only be seen as a calculated provocative move against Russias national security. The new members will double the NATO land border with Russia and increase the already burgeoning presence of the nuclear-armed alliance in the Arctic region. Moscow has warned against such an expansion of NATO as a wanton destabilizing of strategic balance. The fact that the bloc is going ahead with the expansion speaks of the reckless disregard for efforts of finding mutual security and maintaining international peace.

The NATO summit this week also made it clear that the U.S.-led military axis is adopting a war footing against China. Why else would an Atlantic organization invite the attendance for the first time of four Pacific nations that have increasingly echoed American anti-China rhetoric? Leaders from Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea were in Madrid to form the so-called Asia-Pacific Four (AP4). As with the U.S.-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, and the AUKUS pact, the Pacific is being turned into a NATO fighting zone aimed at China, in much the same way the Atlantic is dominated by NATO hostility towards Russia. Ultimately, it is the United States and its imperial interests that are being served and giving direction. This is what is really meant by the vague and seemingly benign incantation of our values and interests.

This culmination in 2022 is all consistent with the historic role of NATO. It was formed in Washington in 1949 as an offensive instrument for U.S. aggression against the Soviet Union. The zero-sum ideology of American imperialism is necessarily predicated on hegemony and domination. Other nations are either vassals or enemies. A multipolar world of mutual partnership is anathema. Indeed, the very concept of the United Nations is anathema. The world must be demarcated into allies and foes in order for U.S. militarist-driven capitalism to survive.

When the earlier cold war with the Soviet Union ended in 1991 from the political and economic collapse of the Soviet Union, the initial euphoria of supposed American victory quickly dissipated. Author and commentator John Rachel surveys how giddy talk of an end to militarism and excessive military spending and the anticipation of a massive, transformative peace dividend was all too cruelly shunted aside. Why? Because the American rulers and their NATO vassals realized that without militarism and war the game was up for their corporate capitalist racketeering.

There then emerged the Wolfowitz Doctrine and full-spectrum dominance whereby the United States and its European minions literally declared war on the planet to corner natural resources and keep perceived competitor powers under control. A resurgent Russia and ascendant China would not be tolerated as impediments to American hegemonic ambitions.

In the past 30 years since the end of the first cold war, there has been nothing short of an orgy of U.S. and NATO warmongering in which weaker nations one after another have been destroyed by American-led militarism. International law and human rights have been gutted and ransacked by a Washington-led blitzkrieg on the planet.

Principled people like Julian Assange who exposed such criminality have been persecuted and tortured. Free speech and genuine independent critical thinking have been harassed and murdered.

With incredible hypocrisy, arrogance, and delusion, U.S. President Joe Biden and other NATO accomplices exalt principles of democracy, rules-based order and international law. When the truth is, the United States and its NATO lackeys are the enemies of world peace. Martin Luther King made a similar observation nearly 60 years ago. He was subsequently assassinated by the U.S. national security state. Washington and its Western or Pacific accomplices are the biggest threat to everything they supposedly, cynically, cherish.

The United States and its gang of imperialist flunkeys in NATO have been craving for a new cold war for the past three decades. When the Russian Federation under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin challenged the unilateralism of the U.S. rogue nation and its satraps with his landmark Munich speech in 2007 that marked him down as an enemy. Russias military intervention in 2015 to aid Syria under attack from the U.S. and NATO in a covert war for regime change put paid to the orgy of American-led imperialist gangsterism. That spoiler further marked Russia down as an enemy that had to be dealt with.

The Washington and NATO coup detat in Ukraine in 2014 was another watershed event. It was a de facto expansion of NATO all the way to Russias borders with a Nazi spearhead. Could it be any more provocative? But Moscow drew the red line. Despite repeated appeals for diplomatic resolution over Ukraine and NATO expansion, Russia was forced to take technical military measures by neutralizing the threat posed by the Kiev regime.

China too has boldly demonstrated it is not willing to subordinate its independence to Washingtons imperial writ. This is why Washington is capriciously abandoning its half-century-old One China Policy with the ulterior purpose of antagonizing Beijing. The provocation towards Russia in the form of NATO-armed Ukraine is the same coin as the provocation towards China with a U.S.-armed Taiwan and an increasing NATO-affiliated encirclement in the Asia-Pacific.

Patently, and without resorting to hyperbole at all, one can say that the NATO summit this week was tantamount to a war-planning conference. The U.S.-led axis has created a new global cold war.

That in itself is damnable. In a world beset by pandemic, disease, ecological degradation, poverty, hunger and unemployment, the capitalist powers are funneling billions into war machines and whipping up a fever for confrontation based on fear-mongering, phobia and demonization. Their mentality is demonic. U.S.-led imperialism has created much of the worlds present crises, including a new cold war.

Nevertheless, the world has changed dramatically from when NATO was founded 73 years ago or even from when the last cold war ended some three decades ago. There is indeed a terrible danger of catastrophic hot war. However, there is also a welcome danger for NATO digging its own grave from its criminal activities and deplorable contradictions. Russia and China, by holding firm, may be enough to push the U.S. axis into the grave it deserves.
He's usually seen on screen in a smart suit as his alter ego Jack Branning.

But EastEnders' Scott Maslen looked worlds away from the character on Tuesday as he flashed his bulging biceps on a sunny stroll in North London.

The actor, 51, displayed his impressive physique as he donned an orange Nike vest and grey flannel shorts for the outing.

Muscle man: EastEnders' Scott Maslen, 51, looks worlds away from alter ego Jack Branning as he showed off his bulging biceps on a sunny stroll in North London on Tuesday

Slipping his feet into black trainers the actor shielded his eyes behind circular shades as he listened intently to his cordless headphones.

Scott played businessman Jack on the BBC soap between 2007 and 2013 before being lured back to the role by bosses in 2015.

The character often wears smart suits, shirts and designer jackets as he deals with the drama of living on Albert Square.

Soap star: Scott played businessman Jack on the BBC soap between 2007 and 2013 before being lured back to the role by bosses in 2015 (pictured left on the show)

In recent months Jack has found himself being blackmailed by Sam Mitchell (Kim Metcalf) who threatened to take their son abroad if he didn't help with her dodgy dealings.

Joining the action will be the soap's newest addition, Ravi Gulati, as he is set to shake things up in Walford when he is released from prison later this summer.

Ravi, played by British stage and screen actor Aaron Thiara, made his debut appearance in the BBC One soap on Monday evening after fellow inmate Phil Mitchell - played by Steve McFadden - turned to him for help after making an enemy in jail.

A Walford welcome: EastEnders' newest addition, Ravi Gulati, is set to shake things up in Albert Square when he is released from prison later this summer

Viewers will discover that Ravi has a connection to the Square after he asks Phil for information on Kheerat Panesar, played by Jaz Deol.

Ravi is revealed to be the son of Panesar family friend Ranveer, but his intentions are currently unclear.

Despite Ravi's seemingly charming and charismatic personality, not all is as it seems as viewers will soon discover that he is willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants.

Doing time: Fellow inmate Phil Mitchell - played by Steve McFadden - turned to Ravi for help after making an enemy in jail

As his time in prison draws to a close, Ravi will make his way to Walford to reunite with the Panesars, but not all of them will be pleased to see him.

Speaking about joining EastEnders, Thiara said: 'My heart is filled with immense gratitude to be joining such an iconic show, working alongside a stellar cast and a remarkable production team.

'It's a very proud moment for me and my family. This is a wondrous opportunity to approach as an actor, and I can't wait for people to meet Ravi on screen and witness his rollercoaster of a journey.'

EastEnders executive producer Chris Clenshaw said: 'Ravi is captivating, cunning and dangerous, and can go from pleasant to menacing with very little warning - unlike Aaron, who's a wonderful addition to the EastEnders cast.

'We're all excited to see Aaron bring the character to life and there's plenty of drama and shocking twists in store - wherever Ravi goes, trouble follows.'

Viewers can expect to see Ravi return to screens later in the summer.
Georgia Harrison has shared an emotional tribute to her friend Jake McLean after he tragically died in a car crash in Turkey which also saw Yazmin Oukhellou injured.

Jake, who was 33, is understood to have been driving in Bodrum, Turkey, when his vehicle veered over a cliff before emergency services rushed to the scene.

His partner Yazmin Oukhellou, 28, famed for her appearances on reality series TOWIE, was also in the accident and is believed to be recovering in hospital.

Devastated: Georgia Harrison has shared an emotional tribute to her friend Jake McLean after he tragically died in a car crash in Turkey which also saw Yazmin Oukhellou injured

And former Love Island star Georgia, 27, took to Instagram on Tuesday to pay her respects to Jake after his tragic death and thanked him for helping her to 'love herself'.

In an emotional statement, she wrote: 'Thankyou for giving me the confidence to love myself, thankyou for always routing for me, thankyou for loving me but most of all thankyou for being my mukka even in my road girl days.

'333 will always be my number for you and the way the world lost you will forever haunt me because it makes no sense rip jake you lit up a room and everyone who met you couldn't help but love you.' (sic)

Georgia reportedly also said that she had an 'on/off' relationship with Jake for years and described it as her 'only meaningful relationship'.

Tribute: Former Love Island star Georgia, 27, took to Instagram on Tuesday to pay her respects to Jake and thanked him for helping her to 'love herself'

Sadness: In an emotional statement, she wrote: 'Thankyou for giving me the confidence to love myself, thankyou for always routing for me, thankyou for loving me'

According to The Sun, Georgia added: 'Me and Jake were on and off for years since we have known each other from school. In fact he was the only meaningful relationship I've ever had.

'Our connection was special and in between any relationship we had with each other we were always friends until the end.'

Alongside her touching tribute, she shared a gallery of snaps of her and Jake, including an array of selfies where he had his arm around her.

Georgia also shared a live snap of them both and said losing her childhood friend Cenk Fahri last year taught her the importance of live photographs to 'capture the energy' of someone you've lost.

The reality TV star also shared some of her final texts with Jake and revealed that he invited her to join him on the Turkey trip, with him saying he would book her tickets after she confirmed she was free for the trip.

Close: Georgia reportedly also said that she had an 'on/off' relationship with Jake for years and described it as her 'only meaningful relationship'

Her friends flocked to the comments section to send their support to a devastated Georgia.

Kaz Crossley penned: 'Love you.'

Hayley Hughes said: 'Love you thinking of you beautiful! Xxxx'

Theo Campbell and Olivia Attwood also commented a string of love hearts as they send her their support.

Jake, who was 33, is understood to have been driving in Bodrum, Turkey, died on Sunday when his car crashed over a hill.

Yazmin is currently being treated at the Acibadem Hospital in Bodrum, where she is being comforted by her mother Lisa.

Memories: Alongside her touching tribute, she shared a gallery of snaps of her and Jake, including a photograph of them sitting on a table together with a rose in front of them

The crash took place at around 4.30am on Sunday along a windy road that cuts through mountains between the coastal city of Bodrum and the seaside town of Yalikavak as the couple returned from a night out, an official from Turkish Prosecutors Office in Bodrum revealed.

A source told MailOnline of the accident: 'It's a complete tragedy and a total loss of life.

'Everyone is in shock and hoping Yazmin makes a full recovery.'

Police are investigating the cause of the crash, and are working on the theory that Jake careened off the road by accident - causing the car to tumble down a steep embankment before coming to rest on its roof.

Pals: Her friends flocked to the comments section to send their support to a devastated Georgia, who shared a montage of snaps of her and Jake

Pals close to Lauren Goodger, who is Jake's ex-girlfriend, told MailOnline the pregnant mother-of-one has been left 'devastated' by Jake's untimely passing.

Yazmin and Jake have been dating on and off since May 2021, after the TOWIE star called quits on her long-term relationship with James Lock, 35.

MailOnline has contacted TOWIE and Yazmin's representatives for comment.

The Sun reported that Jake was in Turkey for a business deal, and Yazmin had joined him in the tourist resort of Bodrum in recent days.

Sources have told the publication that Yazmin has suffered 'extremely serious' damage to her arm in the crash.

Tragic: TOWIE star Lauren Goodger's ex-boyfriend Jake McLean tragically died in a car accident that has left his on-off partner Yazmin Oukhellou seriously injured

A show source said: 'We're crossing our fingers and praying she makes a full recovery quickly. It's beyond shocking, just devastating for everyone connected to the show.

'Jake and Yaz are both very well known in our circles, and while he wasn't a saint this is just unbelievably tragic. Everyone is stunned.'

Another cast member said: 'Nobody is quite sure what they were doing out there, we thought they'd split up, but apparently he was involved in some sort of business deal.

'But whatever's gone on this is just heart-breaking. It sounds very, very serious, perhaps life-changing.'

Yazmin ended her romance with Jake in January after discovering he had been unfaithful with former Love Island contestant Ellie Jones. It is unknown when the pair reconciled.

Sad news: Yazmin, 28, famed for her appearances on TV series TOWIE, and relationship with ex-James Lock, 35, is believed to be recovering in intensive care

This year, Yazmin was set to make her return to TOWIE after filming with the cast in the Dominican Republic.

MailOnline revealed in 2021 that Yazmin and her ex James Lock had split for good following a five-year on-off romance.

James and Yazmin had relocated to Dubai together during the Covid-19 pandemic but their relationship hit the rocks following a series of explosive arguments.

The Essex couple had experienced a tempestuous relationship, splitting up and reconciling on a number of occasions after they first started dating in 2017.
She's no stranger to putting on a fashionable display at many an A-list event.

And on Tuesday, Chiara Ferragni looked quirky in a sheer jumpsuit with an enormous feathered body as she attended the Alexandre Vauthier Haute Couture Fall Winter 2022/2023 runway show at Paris Fashion Week.

The influencer and fashion designer, 34, ensured she was centre of attention in the very unusual ensemble, which showed off her slim pins.

Quirky: On Tuesday, Chiara Ferragni, 34, looked quirky in a sheer jumpsuit with an enormous feathered body as she attended the Alexandre Vauthier runway show at Paris Fashion Week

The sheer jumpsuit boasted tiny dots allover while the fluffy, feathered centre of Chiara's ensemble masked her tiny frame.

The blonde beauty boosted her height with a classic pair of pointed black stiletto heels, and accessorised with edgy black sunglasses.

Further adding to her high-fashion look, Chiara wore her long platinum tresses sleek and straight with staggered levels.

The outing comes after Chiara welcomed her second child - a daughter - in March.

Unique: The sheer jumpsuit boasted tiny dots allover while the fluffy, feathered centre of Chiara's ensemble masked her tiny frame

The social media star and her husband Fedez, 31, both shared the same picture of their daughter, writing 'Our Vittoria', meaning Victory. alongside a pink ribbon.

The couple are already parents to son Leone, three, who they call Leo for short.

Fans of the couple had been guessing what the child's name would be' because Fedez had been seen wearing a shirt with the initials of Chiara, Leone and a 'V'.

They had kept their baby's gender a secret up until the birth but their latest post garnered almost three million likes in a short space of time.

Wow! The influencer and fashion designer ensured she was centre of attention in the very unusual ensemble, which showed off her slim pins

The couple finally tied the knot in a glamorous ceremony in Sicily back in 2018, just a few months after Leone was born.

Federico Leonardo Lucia, or Fedez, proposed to Chiara in May 2017 during one of his concerts at Veronas Arena venue which the blogger was attending with friends as part of her 30th birthday celebrations, as reported on WWD.

The concert and proposal was broadcasted live on the Italian radio and TV channel RTL 102.5 and shared on social media. The couple then headed to Venice to celebrate and Chiara went on to host a part in Milan.

The engagement came a year after the pair started dating and they welcomed their son, Leone, on March 19, 2018.

Chiara and Fedez split their time between Los Angeles and Milan.
Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan continued filming Maestro in New York City on Monday, as they put on a very romantic display including an intimate kissing scene.

Working of the fourth of July, Bradley - who plays famed composer Leonard Bernstein - and Carey - taking on the role of his wife - were also seen dancing together and seemed to prove that they have a natural onscreen chemistry together.

British siren Carey, 37, looked classy in a cream-colored skirt and jacket, with her hair styled in a vintage bob.

Sealed with a kiss! Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan lock lips as they continue filming Maestro in NYC portraying famed composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife

Meanwhile, Bradley, 47, wore a dapper tan-colored suit to step into the role as the renowned American composer, known for works such as West Side Story.

The Oscar-nominated star was also seen in a pink-colored dress shirt and a burgundy tie to complete his look.

Looking barely recognizable in the role, Bradley showed off greying hair to portray the composer in his later life.

Carey - who plays Felicia Montealegre, the composer's wife - was the picture of elegance in her costume for the part.

I could have danced all night: The duo were spotted filming a very romantic scene in the park

Walking their way to an Oscar? The film could turn out to be perfect bait for Academy voters if it turns out well

The duo packed on the PDA for an intimate scene between the two characters, that including kissing and dancing in the part.

The Great Gatsby actress was seen with her hair in a vintage bob to fit the time era.

Her look was accessorized with round, gold earrings and a cream-colored shoulder bag.

Relaxing under the sun: The two were seen filming a scene where they sat back to back on the green grass

Connection: The two actors have been filming the project for the past few weeks

In their stride: Their natural chemistry was on full display as they filmed the Netflix project

As he filmed the scene with the lush greenery of Central Park surrounding him, Bradley was seen with a cigarette in his mouth.

In reality, Leonard was a heavy smoker throughout most of his life, picking up the habit in his younger years.

Another photo captured the talented star on set holding a long lens with crew members standing near him as shooting commenced.

Hang on, let me get out of character real quick! Bradley is also the director of the movie and appears to be very hands on when it comes to the production between filming

Wow: Both actors underwent extraordinary hair and makeup to become their characters for the Netflix biopic

Talented duo: Bradley and Carey are seen standing side by side with the actor's arm draped around her shoulder with a lit cigarette in his other hand

Big transformation: Bradley, 47, has been transforming into the role of composer, Leonard Bernstein, for the upcoming biopic titled, Maestro

Multiple roles: Although Bradley has the role of Leonard, he also has the role of director for the biopic

Trying to stay cool: The actress was seen waving a fan back and forth to stay cool in the summer heat

The Netflix movie has a star-studded cast involved in the project, including Matt Bomer, Jeremy Strong, and Maya Hawke from Stranger Things.

Bradley is taking on various roles on the biopic. He is not only playing the leading character, but is also directing and co-writing the film.

Maestro isn't the first movie that the actor has had multiple roles in before. A Star Is Born (2018), starring Lady Gaga and Bradley himself, was also directed and produced by the talented star.

The movie received critical acclaim, earning a total of eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Bradley.

Happy moment: The two actors filmed a scene where they looked into each other's eyes lovingly

And action: Bradley and Carey appeared to be filming a dramatic moment on set of their new film

Big project: Bradley is seen taking his role as director seriously while working on set of the Netflix film, Maestro

Another hit in the making: The star has been giving his all to create a well-crafted movie telling Bernstein's life story

According to Variety, Steven Spielberg was originally set to direct the biopic, and asked the Nightmare Alley actor to star as Leonard.

However, the actor had a stronger interest to work behind the camera. 'I told Spielberg, I always felt like I could play a conductor, but may I research the material and see if I can write it and direct it? Would you let me do that?'

The film ended up being given to Bradley since Spielberg wouldn't have time to put his full focus on the project right away.

'He was kind enough to hand it off to me, and thats what Ive been doing for the last four and a half years,' he stated. Steven still has his heart in the film, and is one of the producers.

The head of global films at Netflix, Scott Stuber, only had positive things to say about Bradley's dedication to the biopic. 'Im excited to see someone so deeply focused on creating a story that means so much to him,' he explained to Variety.

Back to back: Bradley and Carey seemed to be enjoying a take where they relaxed on the soft grass

Working hard: The award-winning actor is seen preparing and laying out a scene for the movie, Maestro

At the very beginning, Jake Gyllenhaal was originally set to portray the famous composer. However, Bradley ended up taking his place.

In an interview with Deadline, the Brokeback Mountain star opened up about his thoughts and feelings to lose the role.

He also explained that he had been wanting to portray the character for many years. '...that idea of playing one of the most preeminent Jewish artists in America and his struggle with his identity was in my heart for 20 some odd years, but sometimes those things dont work out.'

However, he also added that not getting a role is also a very common part of the industry, and that, 'you have to get used to that flow, that rejection.'

The biopic is set to be released on Netflix next year in 2023.
The teen actor Tyler Sanders' untimely death at 18 was apparently the result of a drug overdose, sources connected to the investigation revealed on Tuesday.

The actor, who appeared on the thriller series 9-1-1: Lone Star, also had a history of drug use, the sources told TMZ.

According to them, the room where Sanders died included drug paraphernalia, including white powder and a plastic straw.

Details: The actor Tyler Sanders, who was found dead at his LA home on June 16 at age 18, died of an apparent overdose, sources connected to the investigation told TMZ on Tuesday

The Fear The Walking Dead actor was found dead at his home in Los Angeles on June 16.

Sources connected to the investigation told the outlet that some of Tyler's friends had called the police requesting a welfare check after they weren't able to get in touch with him following a night out.

The officers discovered his body during their visit to his home.

Tyler's father David Sanders appeared to confirm that his son's death was related to drugs during his funeral service in Houston, Texas.

Checking in: Some of Tyler's friends called police requesting a welfare check after they weren't able to get in touch with him following a night out; seen with Nathan Fillion in The Rookie (2018)

Paraphernalia: Tyler reported had a history of drug abuse, and police found white powder and a straw in the room where he died. His father also said it was an apparent overdose during his eulogy; seen in Just Add Magic: Mystery City

While delivering the eulogy, David shared with the crowd that his son had died from an apparent overdose, according to one of the people at the service.

His father indicated that Tyler may have struggled with mental illness recently, and he said that his son's brain was wired so as to not allow him to feel happy.

During the eulogy, he also repeated some of his son's own words for the attendees in tribute to him.

Sources told TMZ that Sanders had been dealing with a depression that began during his stint filming his single 9-1-1: Lone Star episode, which aired in April.

Bad days: Sources told TMZ that Sanders had been dealing with a depression that began during his stint filming his single 9-1-1: Lone Star episode, which aired in April

Sanders also appeared in a 2017 episode of Fear The Walking Dead and a 2018 episode of the ABC police series The Rookie.

He had a role in the 2019 action film The Reliant, and his only lead role on a series was in the Amazon spin-off series Just Add Magic: Mystery City, which released one season in 2020.

An official cause of death is still pending from the coroner, and it's not expected to be released for another four to six months.
On Tuesday, 'Catwoman' Jocelyn Wildenstein shared yet another heavily-filtered, wigged out snap of herself seated in the back of a car while wearing what appeared to be a ski coat.

The Swiss 81-year-old - who boasts 209K Instagram followers - captioned the obviously FaceTuned picture with a black heart, tiger, and devil emojis: 'See you tomorrow @balenciaga!'

Jocelyn will be showing her famous surgically-enhanced face at the Spanish luxury fashion house's 51st couture collection presentation in Paris this Wednesday at noon by creative director Demna Gvasalia.

Cartoonish! On Tuesday, 'Catwoman' Jocelyn Wildenstein shared yet another heavily-filtered, wigged out snap of herself seated in the back of a car while wearing what appeared to be a ski coat

The picture was not even new as Wildenstein (born Perisset) simply reposted an image from an impromptu October 16th shoot of driving through Manhattan with her fashion designer fiance Lloyd Klein.

As recent as 2018, the Manhattan socialite claimed to DailyMailTV that she had never undergone any cosmetic surgery despite her catlike appearance.

'Especially when we look back at my pictures - I think of course I am maybe more beautiful [back then],' Jocelyn defended.

'When we are young there's a certain freshness we lose with the years. But you still find the same eyes, same high cheeks, or same nose. I think I was more pretty.'

The Swiss 81-year-old - who boasts 209K Instagram followers - captioned the obviously FaceTuned picture with a black heart, tiger, and devil emojis: 'See you tomorrow @balenciaga!'

Tomorrow! Jocelyn will be showing her famous surgically-enhanced face at the Spanish luxury fashion house's 51st couture collection presentation in Paris this Wednesday at noon by creative director Demna Gvasalia

'#bts': The picture was not even new as Wildenstein (born Perisset) simply reposted an image from an impromptu October 16th shoot of driving through Manhattan with her fashion designer fiance Lloyd Klein (L)

Last year, Wildenstein - who filed for bankruptcy in 2018 - sold one of three condo units she combined into a single residence on the 51st floor of Trump World Tower for $2M - according to New York Post.

Jocelyn - who reportedly receives $900 a month in Social Security - has been planning to produce a docuseries on her own life, according to Page Six.

Wildenstein is 26 years older than her Canadian 55-year-old fiance, whom she got engaged to in 2017 after 15 years of dating despite them both being arrested for misdemeanor assault against each other in 2016 and 2017.

'Lloyd can be very passionate, he can be a little rough,' she said.

Instagram versus reality: As recent as 2018, the Manhattan socialite claimed to DailyMailTV that she had never undergone any cosmetic surgery despite her catlike appearance

Jocelyn defended: 'Especially when we look back at my pictures - I think of course I am maybe more beautiful [back then]' (pictured in 1978 at Ol Jogi Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya)

She added: 'When we are young there's a certain freshness we lose with the years. But you still find the same eyes, same high cheeks, or same nose. I think I was more pretty'

The real deal: Last year, Wildenstein - who filed for bankruptcy in 2018 - sold one of three condo units she combined into a single residence on the 51st floor of Trump World Tower for $2M (pictured in 2020)

Through the years: Jocelyn - who reportedly receives $900 a month in Social Security - has been planning to produce a docuseries on her own life

'That's something I enjoy otherwise I would not have been with him all this time.'

Jocelyn has two children - daughter Diane, 42; and Alec Jr., 41 - from her 19-year marriage to the late billionaire art dealer Alec N. Wildenstein, which acrimoniously ended in 1999.

The judge reportedly stipulated that she could not use any $2.5B divorce settlement for further cosmetic surgery.

Combative couple: Wildenstein is 26 years older than her Canadian 55-year-old fiance, whom she got engaged to in 2017 after 15 years of dating despite them both being arrested for misdemeanor assault against each other in 2016 and 2017 (pictured December 5)

She said: 'Lloyd can be very passionate, he can be a little rough. That's something I enjoy otherwise I would not have been with him all this time' (pictured at court in 2017)
Hayley Atwell looked nothing short of sensational as she attended the Giorgio Armani show at Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday.

The actress, 40, oozed confidence in the glamorous number which donned a one shoulder mesh shimmering top before cascading to the flowing skirt.

The beauty, who recently split from Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise, showcased her incredible figure as the maxi dress cinched in her waist with a black velvet waistband.

Glamorous: Hayley Atwell looked nothing short of sensational as she attended the Giorgio Armani show at Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday

The Marvel star elevated her frame in a chic pair of black velour pointed toe heels which featured a dazzling outline.

She styled her brunette tresses in loose waves as she pulled them over her one shoulder allowing them to cascade past her shoulder.

Hayley added a pop of colour wearing a dazzling chandelier pair of emerald earrings and carried her personal belongings in a shiny clutch bag.

Stunning: The actress, 40, oozed confidence in the glamorous number which donned a one shoulder mesh shimmering top before cascading to the flowing skirt

The star opted for a radiant glam palette of makeup including fluttering lashes, glossy lipstick and a pink blush.

Hayley has been in the headlines recently due to her June split from Tom Cruise, with the break up coming just a few months after they reconciled following their first split in 2021.

They had begun dating in 2020 after meeting on the set of Mission: Impossible 7, and were first reported to be an item in December of that year.

Radiant: The star opted for a radiant glam palette of makeup including fluttering lashes, glossy lipstick and a pink blush

Beautiful: She styled her brunette tresses in loose waves as she pulled them over her one shoulder allowing them to cascade past her shoulder

A source told the Sun: 'Unfortunately it hasnt worked out for them. They have now decided they are better as friends.'

The insider also revealed that the fanfare around the couple after going public was too much to handle, adding: 'They get on really well, and have fantastic chemistry, which is why they decided to quietly give the relationship another try earlier this year.

'What was working behind closed doors didnt work out so well when it was made public, and the fanfare around them as a couple exploded again.'

Hayley is reportedly now dating actor and music producer Ned Wolfgang Kelly.

Pals: The Marvel star joined Roberta Armani as she sat on the front row of the show

Split: Hayley has been in the headlines recently due to her June split from Tom Cruise (pictured together last July). The actress is now thought to be dating a music producer

According to The Sun, Hayley, 40, and Ned have enjoyed loved up dates to Disneyland in California.

Also at the Armani fashion show on Tuesday was Victoria Secret model Alessandra Ambrosio, 41, who flashed her side boob in a plunging black jumpsuit which donned a cross over back.

The Brazilian model elevated her frame in a pair of strappy black and silver heels while carrying her belongings in a chic matching bag.

Incredible: Also at the fashion show was Victoria Secret model Alessandra Ambrosio, 41, who flashed her side boob in a plunging black jumpsuit which donned a cross over back

Coordinated: The Brazilian model elevated her frame in a pair of strappy black and silver heels while carrying her belongings in a chic matching bag

Alessandra showcased her beauty with a glamorous palette of makeup as she styled her light brunette locks in loose waves.

Camille Razat looked incredible as she posed up a storm at the Armani show in a stylish strapless black mini dress.

The Emily In Paris actress, 28, added a pop of colour to her look opting for a bold red lipstick and a white and black beret.

Fashionista: Camille Razat looked incredible as she posed up a storm at the Armani show in a stylish strapless black mini dress

High spirits: The Emily In Paris actress, 28, added a pop of colour to her look opting for a bold red lipstick and a white and black beret

She accessorised with a coordinated dazzling black handbag and a towering pair of pointed toe heels.

Meanwhile actress Zoey Deutch flashed her toned midriff in a black bandeau crop top and maxi skirt which featured a white outline detailing.

The Netflix star kept her look sleek by styling her long blonde tresses poker straight as she tucked her locks behind her ears revealing a glam palette of makeup.

Socialite Sabine Getty looked effortlessly chic in a black halter neck gown as she posed alongside Giorgio Armani's niece Roberta.

The 37-year-old styled her blonde tresses in loose curls as they fell down her back while, Roberta shimmered in a navy blazer and matching silk trousers.

Incredible: Meanwhile actress Zoey Deutch (left) flashed her toned midriff in a black bandeau crop top and maxi skirt which featured a white outline detailing as she posed with Roberta Armani (right)
She recently announced her engagement to beau Lorri Haines, just seven months after going public with the property developer.

And Ferne McCann put on a very leggy display on Tuesday as she hit the red-carpet with her new fiance at the Thor: Love And Thunder premiere in London.

The 31-year-old TOWIE star looked gorgeous in a figure hugging white gown which hugged every inch of her fantastic figure - as she showed off her dazzling engagement ring.

Mr & Mrs: Ferne McCann, 31, made her red carpet debut with fiance Lorri Haines, also 31, at the Thor: Love and Thunder premiere in London on Tuesday

The bejewelled frock featured ruched detailing as well as a key hole cut out at Ferne's svelte waist.

Opting for a glamorous palette of make-up the star wore her blonde tresses slicked back into a high ponytail.

Carrying the embellishment's colour story into her accessories, Ferne slipped her feet into silver heels and completed the look with a pair of dangling earrings as well as her sparkling new engagement ring.

Gorgeous: Ferne looked gorgeous in a figure hugging white gown which hugged every inch of her fantastic figure

Marriage: The couple announced their engagement just seven months after going public with the relationship

Sparkler: Ferne showed off her stunning ring

Lorri cut a dapper figure in a wool suit which he layered over a crisp white shirt for the occasion.

Slipping his feet into suede moccasins the property developer wore his blonde locks slicked to one side.

The couple lovingly gazed at one another as they posed for photos before walking the red carpet hand in hand.

The fourth Thor film sees the hammer-wielding superhero go up against the villainous Gorr the God Butcher, played by Christian Bale.

Stylish: Opting for a glamorous palette of make-up the star wore her blonde tresses slicked back into a high ponytail. Carrying the embellishment's colour story into her accessories, Ferne slipped her feet into silver heels and completed the look with a pair of dangling earring

Perfection: The bejewelled frock featured ruched detailing as well as a key hole cut out at Ferne's svelte waist as she showed off her huge diamond engagement ring

Smarty pants: Lorri cut a dapper figure in a wool suit which he layered over a crisp white shirt for the occasion

Loved up: The couple lovingly gazed at one another as they posed for photos before walking the red carpet hand in hand

Set in the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame, where Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has given up his superhero ways.

He enlists the help of Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and other friends to help fight Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale).

It comes after Ferne shared the news with Instagram followers on Saturday afternoon, alongside a first look at her sparkling engagement ring.

Captioning a photo of herself and her new fiance locked in an embrace, she wrote: 'So happily ever afters do exist. I cannot wait to do forever with you baby.'

Sharing a similar picture with his own followers, a delighted Lorri, also 31, added: 'She said yesssss.'

Action: The fourth Thor film sees the hammer-wielding superhero go up against the villainous Gorr the God Butcher, played by Christian Bale (right)

The TV personality confirmed her romance with the businessman in January, shortly after the collapse of her six-month relationship with DJ and marketing manager Jack Padgett.

Speaking to the Sam & Billie podcast in May, Ferne admitted he had already changed the family dynamic of her ITVBe show, First Time Mum, and looked forward to viewers seeing her happy.

But she admitted that it was difficult introducing her daughter, Sunday, four, to Lorri as they also navigated having the cameras around.

New man: The TV personality confirmed her romance with the businessman in January, shortly after the collapse of her six-month relationship with DJ and marketing manager Jack Padgett

She said: 'Filming this series was a completely new experience for me. It was the first time I filmed with a partner in a relationship and that was a completely different dynamic.

'Going from being a single parent and Sunday having to manage that, I think people are going to love that about this series, seeing the dynamic between our family.

'It is hard, it's not straight forward introducing your child to your new partner and you want it to go right, then obviously there's cameras following you around.'
Alessandra Ambrosio nailed elegant chic in a stylish jumpsuit as she attended the Giorgio Armani show during Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday.

The model, 41, showed off her svelte waist in the figure-hugging ensemble which featured a plunging V-neck and waistcoat style detailing.

She carried a small round handbag to accessorise, teaming the outfit with some studded strappy sandals.

Classy: Alessandra Ambrosio nailed elegant chic in a stylish jumpsuit as she attended a Giorgio Armani show during Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday

Glam: The model, 41, showed off her svelte waist in the figure-hugging ensemble which featured a plunging V-neck and waistcoat style detailing

Alessandra donned a flashy wristwatch and a bracelet on one arm, opting for a simple glam make-up look.

The stunner wore her tousled highlighted caramel locks down as she posed up a storm for the cameras.

She sported a pair of tinted shades as she left her hotel in Paris in the flattering outfit.

Out and about: She sported a pair of tinted shades as she left her hotel in Paris in the flattering outfit

Stunning: Alessandra looked sensational in the sexy ensemble that showcased her toned arms with its backless design

It comes as the Victoria's Secret Angel shared adorable snaps of herself and her boyfriend, Richard Lee, enjoying their vacation in Italy on Saturday.

She showed a few photos of the two together, locking lips and soaking in the summer sun over breakfast.

The happy couple appeared to be having the time of their lives on the Amalfi coast while getting close.

The 41-year-old uploaded one photo that showed the two sharing a quick smooch.

Details: She carried a small round handbag to accessorise, teaming the outfit with some studded strappy sandals

Rosy cheeks: Alessandra accentuated her dewy complexion with a swipe of blush across the cheekbones

Soft glam: The star kept her make-up look soft with a muted smoked eye and a baby pink lipstick

The model was wearing a green dress with her brunette hair pulled back into a classic ponytail.

Her side bags were combed straight and covered some of her forehead. She topped the hairstyle off with a green patterned ribbon.

Alessandra added a pair of cat-eye sunglasses to add a fashionable edge to her summer outfit.

Strike a pose: The stunner wore her tousled highlighted caramel locks down as she posed up a storm for the cameras

Chic: Alessandra donned a flashy wristwatch and a bracelet on one arm, opting for a simple glam make-up look

Pals: Alessandra was in great spirits as she laughed with a friend before the fashion show

Alessandra and Richard began dating last year in 2021, and seem to have a wonderful time when they are together.

She was in a previous relationship with Jamie Mazur, and was also engaged to him. They share two children, daughter Anja, and son Noah.

In an interview with Forbes, the mother-of-two opened up to the publication about the importance of being a parent.

'I think that everything I do, my concern and I try to keep in mind that I have my kids. I want to give a good example to them,' she explained.

Alessandra also spoke about one of the goals that she aims to achieve as a mother.

She added: 'I grew up in a small town, so for me, its just preparing them for the world but still trying to bring simplicity and do what you want, you know? Dont try to be something youre not.'

So cute: Alessandra and her boyfriend, Richard Lee, shared a quick peck over breakfast in Italy recently
Julia Fox showed once more that she's not afraid to be bold with her fashion as the star donned a revealing, cut-out leather ensemble while grabbing dinner in Paris on Monday.

The actress and model, 32, oozed confidence at L'Avenue Restaurant, dressed in the barely-there outfit which left a lot of skin on display.

The two-piece - which consisted of a strappy risque top that exposed her cleavage, and trousers which flaunted her bottom - fit the star like a glove.

Bold: Julia Fox showed once more that she's not afraid to be bold with her fashion as the star donned a revealing, cut-out leather ensemble while grabbing dinner in Paris on Monday

She stayed true to her leather theme, teaming the experimental look with a simple black jacket and boots.

The stunner rocked her signature heavy lined wings, made all the more prominent thanks to her bleached eyebrows.

Adding a touch of grunge, Julia sported some black acrylics as she held onto a black and silver clutch.

Glam: The actress and model, 32, oozed confidence at L'Avenue Restaurant, dressed in the barely-there outfit which left a lot of skin on display

The Uncut Gems star wore her caramel locks down in a relaxed, tousled style.

At one point she was seen hugging a pal from their car as she enjoyed her evening.

Earlier on Tuesday Julia once again slipped into a quirky ensemble as she wore a leather jacket inspired dress at the the Alexandre Vauthier show during Paris Fashion Week.

Leather: Earlier on Tuesday Julia once again slipped into a quirky ensemble as she wore a leather jacket inspired dress at the the Alexandre Vauthier show during Paris Fashion Week

Accessories: The model teamed her belted ensemble with a multi-hued accordion necklace and some chunky golden hoops, donning some studded leather gloves too

The model teamed her belted ensemble with a multi-hued accordion necklace and some chunky golden hoops, donning some studded leather gloves too.

The star once again opted for bleached eyebrows, but went in with an unusually tame look on her eyes with a light swipe of charcoal eyeshadow.

She slicked her brunette locks back and paired the attention-grabbing look with some black boots.

Soft glam: The star once again opted for bleached eyebrows, but went in with an unusually tame look on her eyes with a light swipe of charcoal eyeshadow

Edgy: She slicked her brunette locks back and paired the attention-grabbing look with some black boots

Julia is no stranger to quirky, sultry looks.

Just last month the media personality - who has dated Kanye West - touched tongues with Scott's Disick's ex Amelia Hamlin in cheeky Instagram posts.

The duo posed for a number of photos - including a racy image as they both licked a red lollipop.

Enjoying her night: At one point she was seen hugging a pal from their car as she enjoyed her evening

Trademark: The stunner rocked her signature heavy lined wings, made all the more prominent thanks to her bleached eyebrows

Julia and Amelia both sported bleached brows in the risque snaps.

The young model, 21, rocked a tweed mini skirt with a matching jacket, opting for partially slicked back hair.

Beneath her bleached brows, Amelia sported cat eye makeup and glossy red lips, adding some glittery nails.

Wow: Kanye West's ex Julia Fox touched tongues with Scott's Disick's ex Amelia Hamlin in cheeky Instagram posts shared last month

Cheeky: The duo posed for a number of photos - including a racy image of their tongues touching as they both licked a red lollipop

The way we were: Amelia previously dated Kourtney Kardashian's ex partner Scott Disick, 39

Amelia previously dated Kourtney Kardashian's ex partner Scott Disick, 39.

The pair were first linked in October 2020 when they went to Kendall Jenner's birthday party.

They made their relationship Instagram official in February while on holiday in Miami after being seen out together on multiple occasions.

In August 2021, their relationship hit a rocky patch when Scott appeared to blast his ex Kourtney Kardashian for her public PDA sessions with Travis Barker.

In November 2021, Amelia called it quits with Scott after 11 months of dating.

Kanye and Julia dated for six weeks before splitting in early February 2022; the rapper, 45, went on to date Instagram model Chaney Jones, 24.
Crime and Punishment



Government officials must be held accountable



By Philip Girald

July 05, 2022: Information Clearing House -- Quite likely a majority of Americans would agree that it is wrong for the government or police to torture someone, though some would surely accept the ticking time bomb exemption, where a detainee is withholding information that could save many lives. It is in fact illegal to torture someone as well as it being morally wrong. Indeed, it could constitute a crime against humanity or a war crime depending on circumstances. The United States, which has signed the United Nations Convention Against Torture and is bound by it, has thereby accepted legal sanctions to back up the view that torture is never permissible. Under US law, torture committed by government officials and their collaborators upon a person restrained by the government is a felony punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison, and its fruits are inadmissible in all courts. Given that background, one is astonished to learn that some in the government have not taken the obligation seriously. To be sure, the US has been quick to react when lower ranking officials, contractors and ordinary soldiers have reportedly been involved in torturing prisoners, as occurred with Abu Ghraib prior to 2004, but the higher one goes up the ladder of power the less do laws apply to even the most egregious misbehavior.

It has long been known that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in the wake of 9/11, resorted to torture in its overseas black prisons, but details of what took place and anything that would stand up in court as evidence has been difficult to discern as it has been easy for the Agency to shroud its more nefarious deeds through claims of protecting states secrets. But now some more details have emerged. The news that former Donald Trump appointed CIA Director Gina Haspel during her tour overseeing a prison in Thailand in 2002 personally observed at least one terrorist suspect being tortured by waterboarding, which simulates being drowned repeatedly until a confession is obtained. Waterboarding was used by the Japanese on prisoners of war in the Second World War and was subsequently considered to be torture, a war crime.

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The new information came from one of the creators of the Agencys enhanced interrogation techniques program, psychologist James E. Mitchell, who was testifying in a May pretrial hearing at Guantanamo Prison relating to the treatment of Saudi al-Qaeda linked terrorist suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who has been accused of being complicit in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 that killed 17 American sailors. Al-Nashiri, who was shipped to Gitmo in 2006 and who has been waiting sixteen years for his trial, could face the death penalty if he is convicted. His defense is seeking to demonstrate that the evidence against him was obtained by torture and should therefore be inadmissible.

Al-Nashiri was subjected to four months of waterboarding as well as to what have been described as other coercive techniques during his questioning in Thailand. According to testimony, the hooded interrogators repeatedly slammed al-Nashiris head into a wall and forced him naked into a small confinement box. When he briefly went on a hunger strike due to his treatment he was fed rectally. It is not known how frequently Gina Haspel, the senior officer in charge of the base, observed the torture, which she allegedly watched but did not participate in, but she drafted up the classified cables detailing what had occurred and what information had been developed. Oddly, al-Nashiri was freely answering the questions from the interrogators, who recommended that the extreme measures be stopped, but CIA Headquarters insisted that the torture continue in the belief that nothing is true until it is verified under torture. Rather than resigning to demonstrate her disagreement, Haspel allowed the process to continue, which is why in part some of her former Agency colleagues regularly refer to her as Bloody Gina.

Videotapes were made of the torture but they were subsequently destroyed. Haspel participated in the November 2005 destruction of hundreds of hours of recordings contained on 92 tapes showing at least two interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. She did so while serving as chief of staff to the Director of the National Collection Service Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. At her Senate confirmation hearing as Director in 2018, she said I would also make clear that I did not appear on the tapes. Rodriguez, who made the decision to destroy the tapes, also reportedly determined how to handle a suspected terrorist detainee Gul Rahman. Rahman was chained, nearly naked, to a concrete floor for an extended time and then froze to death. There was an internal CIA investigation but no officer on-site nor at the Agency headquarters was punished  let alone prosecuted. In fact, Rodriguez, who was in charge of the detention site, received a $2,500 bonus for his consistently superior work.

The Agency currently regards the existence of the black prisons and the procedures used to elicit information as a state secret even though the existence of the sites is widely known and has been reported on extensively. After serving as Director of Central Intelligence Haspel retired from CIA in January 2021. She currently works for a major Washington law firm King & Spalding L.L.P., a typical transition for senior officials who are able to exploit the revolving door between government and the private sector. She reportedly is part of the firms Government Matters practice where she advise[s] clients on cybersecurity and information technology, among other issues.

Every instance of torture by the federal government or its agents is by law a separate felony. Beyond that, what went on in the Agencys black overseas prisons is shocking even in a Washington where no crime is too low to the contemplated by the governments we have unfortunately placed into power. Some might object that Ginas actions amounted to oversight of a dreadful necessity, but there is something particularly loathsome about a powerful Administration intelligence officer finding time to watch the horrors performed on a suspect who undoubtedly was not afforded any due process before he arrived in his cell to be experimented on by a team of modern-day Torquemadas.

The unfortunate fact is the Gina Haspel is not alone. She committed what are undeniably felonies and now enjoys a well-paid sinecure with a law firm that deals extensively with the government. One might recall similar trajectories relating to the former CIA Director George Tenet who lied America into a war with Iraq that is regarded as the greatest foreign policy failure since the Second World War. He was rewarded with a professorship at Georgetown. And then there is his partner in crime Paul Wolfowitz, he of the fabricated intelligence, who was named head of the World Bank only to subsequently step down after an unacceptable sexual relationship with a subordinate whom he rewarded with promotions was exposed. He is now a Senior Fellow at the neocon affiliated American Enterprise Institute think tank. George and Paul just might consider how the Nuremberg Trials regarded starting a war of aggression as the ultimate war crime. And they might suggest a bit of retrospection from their friends George Bush, Doug Feith, Scooter Libby, and Condi Rice, all of whom have been complicit in the same infamy. And then there is Donald Trumps assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani based on a lie that he was seeking to kill Americans. They are all doing quite well, thank you, either still active or ensconced in highly respected retirement positions, shielded by their wealth and power.

As long as there is no accountability in Washington the farce of government of the people, and for the people will continue. That a government can use the secrets privilege to conceal and avoid any consequences when killing people without any due process is despicable. If you use government resources to murder someone, you should be tried and go to prison. If you start a war through deliberate lying, you should stay in prison forever. Those who make the decisions to commit crimes are wired into the system and are in a sense bullet-proof, while the public has been completely brainwashed and the beat goes on. Another recent story tells how the CIA was apparently planning to kill currently imprisoned journalist Julian Assange in London. It reportedly included scenarios for a possible shoot-out in the heart of the city, the ramming of Russian diplomatic vehicles and the disabling of any airplane that might be involved in an escape attempt. Who came up with that one? It dates back to 2010, when the noted constitutional lawyer Barack Obama was president. Didnt he or his advisers know that murder is against the law?

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Though still only 35, the Duchess of Cambridge's brother, James Middleton, has already blazed an adventurous trail through the commercial world, founding three companies.

But the Midas touch exhibited by his parents, who've made millions from Party Pieces, the business they famously began in their kitchen, has so far stubbornly eluded him.

Regrettably, that's not all. For I can reveal that just six months after Boomf  the company James founded in 2013 to exploit the market for novelty marshmallows  went bust with accumulated trading losses of almost 2 million, administrators have enlisted legal firm Withers to assist them in investigating 'a payment made to American Express UK' of almost 52,000.

The money was handed over on November 24  just three weeks before Boomf went into administration.

'We are obliged to review all the information available to us and conduct an initial assessment of whether there are any matters which may lead to recoveries for the benefit of creditors,' the administrators record in their progress report, published this week.

The Duchess of Cambridge's brother, James Middleton, has already blazed an adventurous trail through the commercial world, founding three companies

The American Express payment, they add, was made by Boomf's chief financial officer, who explained that she had made the payment 'solely to protect her personal credit position, as she was named on the card'.

One of the administrators, Peter Kubik of UHY Hacker Young, tells me that 'certain payments are allowed' even as a company heads into administration, particularly if they 'preserve the value of the business'.

But that was not the case in this instance, adds Kubik, who explains: 'She [the finance officer] shouldn't have done it. The creditor should not have received that money and we're asking for it back.'

The administrators managed to sell Boomf for 300,000.

Middleton was enjoying Wimbledon this week with his wife Alizee Thevenet. 'This is just a usual part of the administration process that certain payments are looked at,' he tells me. 'This is one of them.'

Alizee Thevenet and James Middleton arrive for Wimbledon 2022

Machete attack at stars' favourite Chelsea haunt

It's the Chelsea brasserie whose regulars include Sir Michael Caine, Dame Joan Collins and John Cleese, and where Hugh Grant lunched with his wife, Anna Eberstein, on their wedding day.

But I can reveal that Colbert, in Sloane Square, was the scene of a horrific incident at lunchtime on Monday when two men, armed with a machete and iron bar, rode in among Colbert's outside tables on a moped.

'They went for a guy sitting at one of the tables,' I'm told. 'They went for his watch.' Other diners fled as the attack happened. 'They rushed inside in terror.'

A Met Police spokesman tells me: 'A group were approached by two males on a moped and threatened with a knife and a baton. The suspects made off with the victim's watch. Detectives from the Central West Command CID are investigating. At this early stage there have been no arrests.'

I'm hooked on TV's 'car crash' Love Island

Dismissed by critics as a vacuous sleaze-fest, ITV's Love Island has nevertheless left Hollywood star Kate Beckinsale hooked.

The Chiswick-born actress, 48, whose love life has featured even more twists and turns than the popular 'reality' show, tells me: 'I have been watching Love Island and, before you ask, I don't want to apply. I haven't been offered any reality TV gigs and I don't think my family would let me.'

Beckinsale is in London for the National Film Awards, where she won the Best Actress prize for her role in the actioncomedy Jolt. She adds of her reasons for avoiding Love Island's villa in Majorca: 'It looks like hell and just the worst thing to be on. First off, I don't like dating, and, second, I don't like being at a pool with lots of people that I don't know.

'It's like watching a true crime and you can't stop it. It's a bit like a car crash.'

The daughter of Porridge star Richard Beckinsale adds: 'Because I live in America, I get excited about slightly naff English things like Love Island and Pot Noodles  so it's really important to me.'

Kate Beckinsale with the award for Best Actress for 'Jolt' during the National Film Awards 2022 at Porchester Hall on July 04, 2022 in London

Glasto wooing 10cc legends

Sir Paul McCartney, 80, and Diana Ross, 78, clearly won't be the last of the old stars at Glastonbury.

I hear 1970s chart-toppers 10cc are back in demand. 'We've had an offer to play the legends slot at Glastonbury,' reveals Graham Gouldman, 76, co-writer of hits including I'm Not In Love.

'But they want the original line-up [featuring Kevin Godley, Lol Creme and Eric Stewart] to reform. I don't think that's likely.'

Perhaps he could ask Queen's Brian May to flesh out the ranks?

'I'm releasing a track with Brian next week called Floating In Heaven. It's to accompany the first images from NASA's James Webb Telescope.'

That's no date - he's my son, says Elle

Having given her anti-vaxxer boyfriend Andrew Wakefield the elbow, Elle 'The Body' Macpherson shouldn't be short of admirers.

Yet the supermodel, 58, chose to take son Flynn with her to the Dior Haute Couture collection fashion show in Paris. 'My favourite date,' she jokes, next to this photograph she shared with fans.

Flynn, 24, who went to 22,530-a-year Latymer Upper School in West London, is one of her two sons with hedge fund tycoon Arpad 'Arki' Busson. Flynn, who works in property development, was joined by his DJ girlfriend, Anna de Ferran.

Elle Macpherson and son Flynn Busson attend the Christian Dior Haute Couture Fall Winter 2022 2023 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on July 04, 2022 in Paris, France

Impressionist Alistair McGowan, who now combines his comedy with classical piano playing on tour, has found tickling the ivories surprisingly dangerous. 'You never think you could get injuries from playing the piano, but of course you can,' says the TV star, 57. 'And I've injured my shoulders and my back and my knee and my foot, and lots of fingers and thumbs as well over the last six or seven years periodically.' He adds: 'So I have to limit it now to about three hours a day on and off. I would do more  I was doing six.'

Frank Skinner is struggling to adjust to his lower profile since the BBC show he presented, Room 101, was axed in 2018 after 24 years. 'I went to a screening of The Princess documentary about Princess Diana,' the comedian says. 'There were two women standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the poster. A guy came up and said to me: 'Could I take a photo?'. I said: 'Yes, of course.' I thought I'd be all humble, and said: 'Do you want me in it? Ha ha.' And he said: 'No, I just want you to move.' He was actually asking me to move so he could take a photo of these two women. I felt my shoulders dislocate. Oh, it's really awful.'
Australian authorities could seek assistance from the FBI as they investigate claims Amber Heard allegedly perjured herself in a Queensland court six years ago.

A former Special Agent for the bureau told Law & Crime it's common for Australian investigators to liaise with their American counterparts, and such a collaboration would be likely in this case given the relevant witnesses all 'live overseas'.

The 36-year-old actress, who last month lost a high-profile defamation trial against her ex-husband Johnny Depp, is the subject of an ongoing perjury investigation related to court proceedings stemming from her visit to Queensland with Depp in 2015, when she broke Australia's strict quarantine and biosecurity laws by failing to declare the couple's Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, upon her arrival in the country.

Heard was charged with two counts of illegally importing the animals in July 2015; however, the case was closed when she pleaded guilty to falsifying travel documents in a Gold Coast court in April 2016.

But the actress's dog-smuggling saga was given new life in October 2021, when it was exclusively revealed by DailyMail.com that Australian officials were investigating Heard for perjury over claims she lied to authorities about the circumstances in which her dogs were brought into the country.

The Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment last week confirmed the case was 'ongoing', telling Daily Mail Australia it was still 'investigating allegations of perjury by Ms. Heard during court proceedings for the 2015 illegal importation of [her] two dogs into Australia'.

Australian authorities could seek assistance from the FBI as they investigate claims Amber Heard (pictured with her ex-husband Johnny Depp in Toronto, Canada, on September 14, 2015) allegedly perjured herself in a Queensland court six years ago

Heard faced two counts of knowingly importing a prohibited product into the country in 2015. (Pictured: the Yorkshire terriers at the centre of the incident, Pistol and Boo)

Perjury carries a maximum jail term of 14 years while the latter offence can result in a seven-year stretch under the Queensland penal code.

It's unlikely the Australian government would try to have Heard extradited, but she could nonetheless face arrest if she tried to enter the country again.

All of the witnesses involved in the case 'live overseas'.

Bobby Chacon, a retired FBI Special Agent and attorney, said on Monday: 'The FBI maintains an office in Canberra and there are FBI Agents permanently assigned to Australia [on a rotating basis].

'Part of their mission is liaison and assistance, so if the Australians needed something from here in the U.S. they would certainly contact the FBI's Australia Office and the FBI would likely assist.'

The department's perjury investigation stems from testimony given by a former employee of Depp's during his UK libel case against The Sun newspaper in 2020.

Depp's former estate manager Kevin Murphy raised eyebrows Down Under when he told the London court that Heard had ordered him to lie under oath after she flew the pets into Queensland in a private jet without declaring them.

Pistol and Boo should have been declared to customs and placed in 10-day quarantine but their arrival went undetected for several weeks until a grooming salon posted snaps of the cuddly pair to Facebook.

Depp and Heard were given 72-hours to send the dogs home or face having them seized and euthanized.

Heard eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of falsifying an immigration document and accepted a fine of 10,000 Australian dollars ($7,650) after her lawyer, Jeremy Kirk, insisted that the paperwork for the dogs had 'slipped through the cracks' and that there was 'no attempt to deceive'.

Kirk said Heard thought that her then-husband's staff had completed the paperwork and was exhausted and suffering from sleep deprivation when she ticked the wrong box on her arrival card.

The Aquaman actress, 36, is the subject of an 'ongoing' perjury investigation in Australia related to court proceedings stemming from her visit to Queensland with Depp in 2015 when the couple broke Australia's biosecurity laws by failing to declare their Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo. (Heard and Depp are seen outside court on the Gold Coast on April 18, 2016)

Heard was charged with two counts of illegally importing the animals in July that year, but the case was closed when she pleaded guilty in April 2016 to falsifying travel documents. She and Depp also recorded a video apology (pictured) in which she expressed remorse for her actions

Heard and Depp also issued a video statement in which she expressed remorse for her actions.

The footage was widely mocked on social media with some fans saying the couple looked like they'd been kidnapped and held to ransom.

Heard's version of events went unchallenged until July 2020 when Depp's former estate manager told London's High Court in a written statement that he had repeatedly warned the actress about Australia's strict animal entry rules.

'I also explained to Ms. Heard several times the fact that trying to take the dogs into Australia without completing the mandatory process was illegal and could result in very harsh penalties including euthanizing the dogs,' Murphy said.

He went on to allege that, when the smuggling controversy erupted, Heard demanded he provide a 'false statement' to the Australian court saying she didn't know anything about the requirements.

'When I expressed that I was extremely uncomfortable with this, Ms. Heard said to me 'Well I want your help on this  I wouldn't want you to have a problem with your job.'

'It became very apparent that Ms. Heard was threatening my job stability unless I cooperated with providing a declaration that supported her false account for the Australian proceedings.

'Because of this I felt extreme pressure to cooperate, despite knowing this would involve being untruthful,' added Murphy, who worked for Depp for eight years.

The Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment said last week it was 'investigating allegations of perjury by Ms Heard during court proceedings for the 2015 illegal importation of [her] two dogs into Australia.' The spokesperson confirmed the case was 'ongoing'. (Pictured: Heard outside a Fairfax, Virginia, court on May 27)

Heard must pay Depp (pictured) US$10.35million after a U.S. court found she defamed the 59-year-old actor by describing herself as a domestic abuse victim in an opinion piece she wrote

Murphy later confirmed to DailyMail.com he had been contacted by the FBI and had agreed to provide Australian authorities with a witness statement. He declined to comment further.

The news of the ongoing perjury case against Heard comes just weeks after she was ordered to pay her ex-husband $10.35million in damages after a Virginia court found she defamed the actor by referring to herself as a survivor of domestic abuse in an opinion piece she wrote.

Depp sued Heard, to whom he was married from 2015 to 2017, over a December 2018 article she penned for The Washington Post describing herself as 'a public figure representing domestic abuse'.

The jury found in Depp's favour on all three of his claims relating to specific statements in the piece.

The jury found Depp should receive $10million in compensatory damages and $5million in punitive damages, but the judge reduced the punitive damages award to $350,000 under a state cap.

Heard has said she plans to appeal against the verdict.
Michelle Pfeiffer put her makeup free complexion on display as she celebrated the 4th of July with her sisters Dedee and Lori.

The actress, 64, posed front and center in a selfie posted to her Instagram account on Sunday.

Not a stitch of makeup graced her stunning complexion as she posed with a graceful, closed-mouth smile.

Family time! Michelle Pfeiffer put her makeup free complexion on display as she celebrated the 4th of July with her sisters Deedee and Lori

Her sisters beamed as they posed on either side of her.

'No better way to have spent the 4th of July than with my two beautiful and brilliant sisters. Lucky, lucky me. Hope you all had a nice day too,' she captioned the post.

Michelle put her lovely looks on display last month when she attended the Paramount+ UK launch event in London.

The actress displayed her youthful visage as she attended the event alongside her The First Lady co-stars Viola Davis and Gillian Anderson.

Radiant: Pfeiffer displayed her youthful looks as she donned a black midi dress while attending the Paramount+ UK launch event in London last month

The film star cut an elegant figure for the evening in a black midi dress with puffed sleeves and a v-neckline.

Michelle added height to her frame with black sheer heels while she also sported a pair of gold earrings.

Styling her blonde locks into loose waves, the actress completed her look with a light palette of makeup.

Sensational: The film star's garment puffed sleeves and a v-neckline

Michelle, who plays Betty Ford in The First Lady, posed alongside Viola, who plays Michelle Obama, and Gillian, who plays Eleanor Roosevelt in the series.

Viola looked sensational in a white blazer and matching trousers while Gillian opted for a pink and burgundy striped sleeveless dress.

Michelle recently said she was taken aback by claims she had retired from acting when she was just trying to raise a family.

Fashion: Michelle added height to her frame with black sheer heels while she also sported a pair of gold earrings

The First Lady actress reflected on her decision to take a break from Hollywood for around five years after the attention on her and her family made things difficult for her kids Claudia, now 29, and John, 27, when they were growing up.

'It was, "Well, I'll only shoot in the summer, and I'll only shoot here, and I'll only blah, blah, blah, blah," and finally it was just too much trouble to hire me,' she told The Hollywood Reporter.

Michelle and her husband David E. Kelley moved their family away from Los Angeles, landing in Northern California's Woodside which is in the Silicon Valley area.

The First Lady: Michelle, who plays Betty Ford in The First Lady, posed alongside Viola, who plays Michelle Obama, and Gillian, who plays Eleanor Roosevelt in the series

Looking good: Gillian donned a burgundy and pink striped sleeveless dress for the event

Show: Viola, Gillian and Michelle were joined by producer Cathy Schulman (left) and director Susanne Bier (right)

And after five years she was surprised by the way others saw her career.

She added: 'I would start to hear that I had retired, and I'd be like, "Wait, no."'

Michelle - who has appeared in movies such as Scarface, Grease 2, The Witches of Eastwick and Batman Returns - admitted the move was down to the more challenging aspects of life in the spotlight, and it became even more of an issue with children.
The little girl who became famous for saying 'porque no los dos?' in Old El Paso's adverts is all grown up.

Mia Agraviador was just six years old when the nation fell in love with her catchphrase - which is Spanish for 'why not both?' - and she's still proud to call herself 'that taco girl'.

Now 22 years old, Mia has grown out her short bob and fringe, and was recently working as a barista in Sydney.

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Mia Agraviador was just six years old when she uttered the famous catchphrase 'porque no los dos?' in the Old El Paso adverts (left). These days, she is an artist and dancer who occasionally does TV commercials. Right: Mia, now 22, in an advert for Australian furniture company Koala

'Yes, I'm the "Porque No Los Dos?" taco girl,' Mia's Instagram bio states.

The former child star appears to have a passion for dance, and regularly uploads videos of herself performing hip hop and urban routines.

Mia is also quite the fashionista, and likes to wear edgy outfits and stylish swimwear in photos shared to social media.

Mia has grown out her short bob and fringe and was recently working as a barista in Sydney

Mia (pictured in the Old El Paso ad) is still proud to call herself 'that taco girl'

She is also quite the fashionista, and likes to wear edgy outfits and stylish swimwear in photos shared to social media

Mia's one-liner in the Old El Paso commercial is now a popular meme, and has become a common saying people use when they can't decide between two things.

'Porque no los dos?' is Spanish for 'why not both?' and the advert was about a taco kit that included both soft and hard shell tacos.

In recent years, she has had minor roles in other commercials in which she revisits her signature catchphrase.

In 2020, she made an appearance in an advert for Australian furniture brand Koala.

The former child star appears to have a passion for dance, and regularly uploads videos of herself performing hip hop and urban routines

That same year, youth website Pedestrian did a YouTube episode with Mia for its '15 Minutes' series.

She revealed fame had come at a price, and she often felt uncomfortable with the attention she received from the commercial.

As a result, she attended three separate high schools.

Mia is an artist these days and one of her pieces from 2015 was a finalist for the Young Archibald Prize.
A handout released by the Moroccan foreign ministry shows Morocco's Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita (R) receiving the UN secretary general's personal envoy for Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura (L) in the capital Rabat

Morocco called Tuesday for a return to regional roundtable talks on a peace deal over the Western Sahara, a format rejected by neighbouring Algeria which says it masks the nature of the conflict.

Morocco's top diplomat Nasser Bourita made the comments in a statement after a meeting with United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura.

The Moroccan officials told the UN diplomat that they remained committed to "the political process of roundtables" to reach a "realistic, pragmatic, sustainable and compromise-based" political solution, the statement read.

Such talks were last held in Switzerland in 2019 with top officials from Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and the Polisario movement which seeks independence for Western Sahara, but they were frozen after UN envoy Horst Kohler quit the post in May that year.

Algiers has rejected a return to the format, arguing that Morocco, by avoiding bilateral talks with the Polisario, is trying to portray the conflict as a "regional, artificial" one rather than one of "decolonisation".

Morocco controls some 80 percent of the Western Sahara and has long insisted it must retain sovereignty there, pitting it against the Polisario which demands a referendum on independence as agreed alongside a 1991 ceasefire deal.

Tuesday's statement said that "the Moroccan delegation reiterated the constant position of Morocco (calling) for a political solution, based exclusively on the Moroccan autonomy initiative, within the framework of the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the kingdom."

That was a reference to a 2007 Moroccan plan for limited autonomy in the vast desert territory, which has rich phosphate resources and Atlantic fisheries but where the Polisario has demanded independence since colonial power Spain withdrew in 1975.

The group declared a 1991 ceasefire deal null and void in November 2020 after a Moroccan army operation to clear a blockaded highway.

Weeks later, the Trump administration recognised Moroccan sovereignty over the territory in exchange for Rabat restoring ties with Israel.

In August 2021, Algeria cut ties with Morocco, accusing it of "hostile acts".

The UN said Monday that De Mistura had cancelled a planned visit to the Western Sahara.

The Polisario said it "deeply regretted" the cancellation and accused Rabat of "preventing him from directly witnessing the situation on the ground in the occupied Saharawi territories".

On Tuesday, the UN said De Mistura had had "a useful meeting" with Bourita and could "definitely continue his mission".

"He didn't lose freedom of movement. The personal envoy is in control of where he goes and he will decide where he goes," said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric in New York.
BAMAKO, Mali (AP) - Two United Nations peacekeepers from Egypt were killed and five others seriously wounded when their vehicle hit a landmine planted by suspected jihadis in northern Mali on Tuesday, the U.N. said.

The deadly attack comes just days after the renewal of the mandate of the U.N. Mission to Mali, known as MINUSMA.

"This morning, an armored vehicle of a MINUSMA logistics convoy hit a mine on the Tessalit-Gao road," the mission announced in a press release.

"According to an initial report, two peacekeepers died of their injuries and five others were seriously wounded as a result of the attack," the statement added.

"The victims are all Egyptian nationals," a U.N. official told The Associated Press, insisting on anonymity because he is not allowed to speak to the press until the U.N. informs the families.

Ten U.N. peacekeepers have been killed in Mali since the beginning of the year.

First deployed in 2013, the mandate of the U.N. mission in Mali to help battle against Islamic extremist rebels was renewed last week although the Malian government said it will not support the mission's aim to promote and safeguard human rights.

Russia and China abstained from the French-drafted U.N. resolution, which extends the mandate of the mission until June 30, 2023, with its current ceiling of 13,289 military personnel and 1,920 international police.

More than 270 peacekeepers have died in Mali, making it the U.N.s deadliest peacekeeping mission, according to U.N. officials.

Mali is ruled by a military junta that seized power in August 2020. Col. Assim Goita has been named president.

Malis junta has grown closer to Russia, as Moscow has looked to build alliances and gain sway in Africa. The Russian Wagner Group has deployed a team of fighters in Mali.

Last week a European military task force that helped Malis government fight Islamic extremists formally withdrew from the West African country amid tensions with its ruling military junta.

The French military, which spearheaded the Takuba task force, announced that it had ended its work in Mali. The move was tied to Frances decision earlier this year to withdraw troops from Mali after nine years of helping Malian forces fight violent extremists who had threatened to seize power.

The European Takuba force was composed of several hundred special forces troops from 10 countries: Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden. It aimed at training and protecting Malian combat forces.
A hacker claims a massive data leak in China, which exposes information from 1 billion Chinese citizens. And the threat actor is now selling these allegedly stolen data on the dark web for 10 Bitcoins or $195,000.

Cybersecurity experts are now saying that if the claims of the anonymous hacker were, in fact, true, the China data breach would be one of the largest in entire history.

China Data Leak of 1 Billion Chinese Citizens

As per a news story by Reuters, an anonymous hacker, who goes by the alias "ChinaDan," went on to post about the breach on a hacker forum. The hacker also put over 23 terabytes (TB) of allegedly Chinese data up for sale online.

ChinaDan boldly claims to have stolen information of Chinese citizens straight from the database of the Shanghai Police of the Asian territory.

The anonymous user posted on the hacker forum that "the Shanghai National Police (SHGA) database was leaked." The hacker also says that the database of the SHGA "contains many TB of data and information on Billions of Chinese citizens."

The post reveals that the stolen data allegedly includes various information from citizens of the Chinese nation, such as their names, addresses, birthplace, national ID numbers, and contact numbers.

But on top of these data, the threat actor claims the leak also exposed criminal records and case details.

Hacker Shares China Data Breach Sample

Meanwhile, according to a recent report by Bleeping Computer, ChinaDan tries to prove that the whole China data leak is not a mere bluff.

The hacker shared a preview of the stolen data. ChinaDans claims it to be records of roughly 750,000 delivery information and police calls. This sample attempts to lure in buyers to make them believe that the breach is not fake at all.

Read Also: Solan-Based Protocol Crema Finance Loses $8.78 Million in Crypto From Hacking

Binance Threat Intelligence Weighs In

The Binance Chief Executive Officer (CEO), no less than Changpeng Zhao, confirmed the threat intelligence experts of the crypto exchange platform saw the post of ChinaDan on the dark web.

The big boss of Binance initially said that the data leak is "likely due to a bug in an Elastic Search deployment by a gov agency."

The Binance CEO also says that the whole breach appears to have started when a government developer accidentally includes the login credentials in a tech blog post.

Related Article: Google's Threat Analysis Group Blocks Domains, Websites Used by Hack-For-Hire Groups
Congress leaders Rajiv Ratan and Ravi Prakash climbed the building and released the black balloons. (ANI)

VIJAYAWADA: Congress leaders flew black balloons in the air, protesting against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to AP on Monday, near Gannavaram airport. State BJP president Somu Veeraraju expressed concern over the "security lapse" when PM Modi along with state governor and chief minister left for Bhimavaram in a helicopter.

When the helicopter took off from the airport and was moving towards Bhimavaram, two Congress activists released balloons from an under-construction building at Kesarapalli village. Congress leaders Rajiv Ratan and Ravi Prakash climbed the building and released the black balloons. They said this was a protest against the non-fulfillment of the bifurcation assurances to AP.

Krishna district police said that the Congress leaders had given a nationwide call to oppose PM Modi by showing black balloons.

The district police had imposed Sec 30 and Sec 144 of the police act.

Before the PM's arrival, around 8:30 am, three persons namely Sunkara Padmashree, Parvathi and Kishore were seen walking towards the airport with black balloons. The police arrested the three.

Five minutes after PM took off from Gannavaram airport, two Congressmen protestd at Kesarapalli , 4.5km away from the airport. Of the two, Ravi Prakash has been taken into custody while Rajeev Ratan ran away.

BJP state president has demanded a detailed probe. He said he would file a complaint with the Union Home Minister over the security lapse.

In Nellore, Congress leaders held a protest at Indira Bhavan against the visit of the PM, and held black balloons in their hands.
KT Rama Rao released a brochure for the event along with ministers Srinivas Goud and Satyavathi Rathod at his camp office in Begumpet. (Photo: Twitter)

Hyderabad: IT minister K.T. Rama Rao on Tuesday said that the state government will celebrate the legacy and glories of Kakatiya rulers in a week-long festival, titled Kakatiya Vaibhava Saptaham, from July 7.

Rao released a brochure for the event along with ministers Srinivas Goud and Satyavathi Rathod at his camp office in Begumpet.

Directing officials to engage current generations and design programmes to explain the history of Kakatiyas to posterity, Rao also asked officials to involve those acquainted with history in the event.

Calling for the event to be widely publicised, he said the department of culture will release Rs 50 lakh for the event.

An heir to Kakatiya king Bhanj Deo will inaugurate the event, after a welcome dance by 111 Perini dance artists. Other traditional performances include Oggu Dolu, officials said.

A highlight of the festivities is a programme at Chandupatla, where a rock edict throws light on the death of Rudrama Devi, a female monarch of the Kakatiya era. Other events will be organised at Kakatiya-era structures in the Warangal district.

The Kakatiya dynasty ruled the region comprising present-day Telangana and Andhra Pradesh from the 12th to 14th centuries, with Warangal as the capital.

The distinct style of Kakatiya-era architecture can be spotted at the Thousand Pillar Temple and Ramappa Temple, near Warangal.

Besides, irrigation tanks constructed during the Kakatiya rules are in use currently.

Following the formation of Telangana state in 2014, the TRS government launched the Mission Kakatiya programme to restore around 50,000 minor irrigation tanks that were constructed during the Kakatiya-era to boost groundwater levels.
What comes up must go down. This flow is a constant for all aircraft, even those used for spaceflights.

However, Airbus may have created an aircraft that can stay in the air longer than usual.

The famous aerospace company is currently conducting a very-high-altitude flight for its Zephyr High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS), or Zephyr S, uncrewed solar-powered aircraft, which has gone for more than two weeks, per Interesting Engineering.

Airbus' Zephyr HAPS' first took flight on July 11, 2018, which lasted for over three weeks, per Airbus' previous announcement.

Airbus Zephyr HAPS Flight Test Details

Airbus mentioned it is in the midst of testing its Zephyr S uncrewed aircraft for a very-high-altitude flight, which has been going for more than 17 days.

The Zephyr S can be described as a drone and a pseudo-satellite in that it doesn't have people crewing it and that it can operate 10,000 feet above commercial airplanes.

Additionally, it uses solar energy exclusively to keep itself in the air, above weather conditions and conventional air traffic, making it a capable aircraft to fill a capability gap complimentary to satellites.

The Zephyr S, which is using the callsign Zulu 82 during the flight test, was reportedly spotted on online flight tracking software after it took off from an airstrip at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona.

Read More: Genshin Impact 3.0 Leak Reveals New Characters, Plus 2.8 Redeem Codes for July 2022

Interestingly, Airbus has since been keeping its tests within the state, with the aircraft notably flying over the Yuma Test Range and Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, per The Drive.

However, it seems Airbus is taking the aircraft to a new location, with its flight tracking data indicating that the Zephyr S is being flown near Arizona's border and southwest toward the Gulf of Mexico.

The aircraft previously flew over the Gulf of Mexico before flying over the Caribbean Sea and the Central American country of Belize before turning back to the US - its current destination.

Airbus Zephyr S Facts

The Airbus Zephyr S was built to provide local persistence at an affordable price with a re-usable solar-powered aircraft that gives a wide scope of applications. These applications include maritime surveillance and services, border patrol missions, communications, forest fire detection and monitoring, and navigation.

Additionally, the aircraft can also be used as a sensor platform for the military. In fact, a spokesperson for the Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing/Space (APNT/Space) Cross-Functional Team (CFT) announced it is conducting the previously discuessed experiment to demonstrate Zephyr S' military utility of long-duration assessments of various types of sensors.

In particular, the test is intended to test the aircraft's energy storage capacity, battery longevity, solar panel efficiency, and station-keeping abilities.

The Zephyr S' was designed for highly efficient high-altitude-flight, which it can do thanks to its being uncrewed and light enough to be launched by a group of people by hand.

Its 82-foot wingspan and almost every surface of the Zephyr S' fuselage have solar panels that create the power the aircraft needs to keep itself in the air for long periods. Its first flight took almost 26 days before it landed.

However, it is unknown if the aircraft would be able to break its record during its ongoing flight test.

Related Article: Airbus Successfully Performs First Helicopter Flight with Sustainable Aviation Fuel
CM KCR reviewed residential education and skill development training for BCs, SCs, STs and minorities with ministers and officials concerned at the Pragathi Bhavan on Tuesday. (Photo: Twitter)

Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao on Tuesday showered sops  ranging from free education till class 12 to aiding preparation for competitive exams  on students belonging to backward classes, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and minorities.

The CM directed officials to upgrade existing government residential schools (gurukulams) of BCs, SCs, STs and minorities for the introduction of Intermediate courses from the current academic year (2022-23).

Besides, 15 women's residential degree colleges are to be set up this academic year, and 17 more institutes from the next academic year, to cover all 33 districts.

The CM stated that the population of BCs is more in the state and accordingly, there is a need to increase residential educational institutions to meet future requirements.

Rao also announced the setting up of 132 new study circles, one each for BCs, SCs, STs and minorities in each district.

He also directed officials to set up institutions, named All India Services Study Circle of Telangana State, to train students for IAS, IPS, IFS, Group-I and other Central and state government service competitive exams.

The CM reviewed residential education and skill development training for BCs, SCs, STs and minorities with ministers and officials concerned at the Pragathi Bhavan on Tuesday.

He directed officials to convert study circles belonging to BCs, SCs, STs and minorities into skill development training centres and guidance centres, to help them gain employment. Rao said that these study circles should not confine to training students for only competitive exams but also help them acquire skills to secure jobs in various sectors.

He said that study circles must not just concentrate on state exams but prepare aspirants to secure national-level jobs. Rao said that the focus should be to train Telangana students to secure jobs in the Air Force, Army, and banking sector, among others.
Thiruvananthapuram/Pathanamthitta: Kerala Minister Saji Cheriyan on Tuesday landed in trouble for his harsh remarks against the Constitution, triggering a huge political row in the state with the opposition demanding for his sacking, but the Left leader later expressed regret and claimed news reports in this connection were 'distorted.'

Opposition Congress described the remarks by Cheriyan as 'obnoxious', while the BJP said he cannot hold an office enabled by the Constitution he has disrespected and lashed out at the CPI(M) over the controversy.

Clarifying, Cheriyan said he is a public servant upholding the noble constitutional values, hours after his speech at an event was aired by local television channels, triggering a backlash. The opposition sought his expulsion from the Pinarayi Vijayan cabinet over the controversy but the ruling CPI(M) rejected the demand.

In the visuals aired by the local TV channels, the minister could be seen saying in a recent event that the Constitution of the country "condones exploitation" and is written in a way helping to "plunder" the people of the country, drawing sharp reaction from the opposition parties which sought for his immediate removal from the LDF cabinet.

The central leadership of the ruling CPI(M), however, rejected the demand for resignation of the minister who holds the fisheries and cultural affairs portfolios, terming it as just a "slip of tongue".

In a statement given in the state Assembly in the afternoon, Cheriyan said news reports claiming he had criticised the Constitution at an event held at Mallappally in Pathanamthitta district were "distorted".

"I am a public servant who respects our Constitution and upholds its noble values....I have never once intended to insult the Constitution or say anything against it," he said.

Stating that the further strengthening of the directives of the Constitution is essential to get justice for the exploited masses of the country, the minister said he, in his own style, only tried to express his concern that if it is not done, the Consitution would be powerless to defend the growing inequalities.

The Constitutional values like secularism, democracy and federal structure are facing severe challenges in the present time, he said adding that the imposition of labour codes in the country by cancelling all the existing legal provisions for the workers to obtain their rights would lead to gross exploitation.

The minister said he only did the duty of a public servant to point out the denial of social justice to the vast majority of people in the country even 75 years after the independence.

He also expressed "deep grief" and "regret" if his statements were propagated with wrong interpretations.

Cheriyan, in the recent speech, had alleged that the Constitution of the country was "compiled by the British' and it was written as such by an Indian which has been implemented in the country for the last 75 years.

Values like "secularism" and "democracy", the "kuntham and kodachakram" (spear and wheel) were just inscribed on its (Constitution) sides, he had said.

"We all say that we have a beautifully written Constitution in India...the most significant aspect of the country. But, I will say, a beautiful Constitution, which can serve to loot the most number of people, was written in the country," he said.

Stating ours is a country which does not accept workers' protests, he said "Indian Constitution is one which condones the (labour) exploitation the most," and claimed this was the reason certain "millionaires" in the corporate sector have grown in the country.

Cheriyan's remarks did not go down well with the Opposition Congress and the BJP.

Both parties on Tuesday demanded that the minister be sacked immediately.

"He has not only insulted the Constitution he took an oath to, but Baba Saheb Ambedkar and the ideals of India. He must resign or be removed instantly," the party's general secretary organisation K C Venugopal said.

Party general secretary Jairam Ramesh said on Twitter that Cheriyan, who made the most "obnoxious remarks" on the Constitution he swore an oath on, should be sacked immediately.

KPCC president K Sudhakaran and Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly V D Satheesan urged chief minister Vijayan to remove Cheriyan from the cabinet or face stringent legal action.

Sudhakaran said there was nothing new in what Saji Cherian said as this has been the stand of CPI(M) for ages.

"CPI(M) is one of two parties in India which have no respect for the Constitution. The other is RSS," he claimed.

Union minister V Muraleedharan, a BJP leader from Kerala, said CPI(M) leaders such as Sitaram Yechury describe the Constitution as a template of Indian nationalism but choose to ignore this deliberate attempt to disregard it.

This is shameful and proves their "so called respect for the Constitution is just for show", he alleged while demanding that Cheriyan be sacked.

"The @CPIMKerala leaders, including Ministers in @VijayanPinarayi's Cabinet, have crossed all limits of decency in public life. What can we expect from those who toe Chinese Line. CPM never cared or respected Indian Republic," Muraleedharan said on Twitter.

The saffron party's Kerala chief K Surendran also sought the immediate removal of Cheriyan and said he has no moral right to continue in the position even for a second.

He further alleged that it was Marxist party leaders' disrespect for the Constitution that had come out through Cheriyan's words.

However, CPI(M) politburo member M A Baby said Cheriyan's remarks would have been just a slip of the tongue.

He said an explanation was sought from the minister, who is also a member of the party's Kerala state secretariat, and he has explained that no criticism was made against the Constitution.

Saying that the minister's remarks might have been misinterpreted, Baby, talking to Malayalam media persons in New Delhi, said there was no need to ask for his resignation on the basis of it.
Former Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb had lunch at the house of Allamkonda Ushanna, who hosted him along with other leaders at his house at Maharajula Colony in the Jainad mandal headquarters on Friday. (DC Image)

ADILABAD: The BJP has launched a Dalit outreach programme to move to close to the Dalits to strengthen its voter base in the state ahead of the Telangana Assembly Elections in 2023. The programme  called Dalithathidhyam (Dalit hospitality)  involves top BJP leaders visiting houses of the Dalits as guests and having food.

Former Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb had lunch at the house of Allamkonda Ushanna, who hosted him along with other leaders at his house at Maharajula Colony in the Jainad mandal headquarters on Friday.

Deb offered special prayers at the ancient Surya Narayana temple and addressed a meeting held with the leaders of SC, ST and OBC and Kisan Morcha in Adilabad town.

He accused Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao of destroying Bangaru Telangana by spending huge money on unproductive things. He called upon the party cadre and leaders to be ready to face the elections that may come anytime in the state.

The BJPs Dalit outreach programme is part of the partys 'Jan Sampark Abhiyan. Recently, BJP national general secretary and RSS senior leader B.L. Santosh had asked party leaders and cadre to keep B.R Ambedkars photo in their houses.

Tripura's former Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb having lunch along with other BJP leaders as part of the Dalita Athidhyam in Allamkonda Ushanna's house in Jainad mandal headquarters in Adilabad district on Friday.
Mumbai: Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde on Monday proved his governments majority in the Assembly by a comfortable margin of 164 votes to 99, causing more embarrassment to the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance, whose numbers depleted further in the floor test. The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction suffered yet another blow as one more MLA switched loyalties to the Shinde camp minutes before the trust vote.

Further, asserting that it was the original Shiv Sena, Mr Shinde has threatened to take disciplinary action against 15 MLAs of the Thackeray camp who voted against him. In the 288-member Assembly, 164 MLAs voted for the motion of confidence, while 99 voted against it. Three legislators abstained from voting, while 21 legislators were absent during the trust vote.

The current strength of the Assembly is reduced to 287 due to the recent death of a Shiv Sena MLA. The BJPs Rahul Narwekar had won the Speakers election on Sunday with a total of 164 votes, whereas the MVA nominee Rajan Salvi (Thackeray faction) had received 107 votes. But just ahead of the trust vote, the Thackeray camp suffered a setback as MLA Sanjay Bangar joined the Shinde group and also voted in favour of the government.

Mr Bangar was in the Uddhav clan until Sunday and had voted in favour of the Sena nominee in the Speakers election. After Mr Shinde and his supporters went to Guwahati, a video had appeared in which Mr Banger was seen weeping and asking the rebels to return. Mr Bangars support took the Shinde governments numbers to 164 as Mr Narwekar, being the Speaker, did not vote during the floor test.

The Shinde faction now has the backing of 40 Shiv Sena MLAs. Aaditya Thackeray, son of Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, voted against the whip issued by Shiv Sena chief whip Bharat Gogawale (Shinde faction), who became Speaker on Sunday. He and the remaining 14 MLAs of the Thackeray camp are likely to face disqualification proceedings.

However, Aaditya Thackeray remained defiant, saying the Shiv Sena can never be finished and asserted that action will be taken against those who violated the party whip. He said: We believe that the Speakers election that happened yesterday was also illegal. Our whip will remain the same.

People who have run away want to finish the Shiv Sena. The Shiv Sena can never be finished. They are living in a bubble now. They were in Surat, Guwahati and Goa. I dont know where they will be taken next. We know what is in the minds of the voters. When they go back to their constituencies and meet their voters, then they will come to know the sentiments of the voters, said Aaditya.

Shiv Sena chief and former CM Uddhav Thackeray also alleged it was the BJPs ploy to finish his party and challenged it to hold mid-term elections in the state. Addressing a meeting of party district presidents at Shiv Sena Bhavan, Mr Thackeray said it was an insult of the Constitution to run the Legislative Assembly in an arbitrary manner.

If you dare, then contest the intermediate elections. Instead of playing such a game, lets go to the court of the public, if we go wrong then people will make us sit at home. If you are wrong, people will make you sit at home, he said.

Meanwhile, NCPs Ajit Pawar was chosen as Leader of the Opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly. NCP legislative party leader Jayant Patil proposed his name and it was approved.

The Congress has refuted rumours that it was planning to quit the MVA. Maharashtra party in-charge H.K. Patil said the Congress will continue to back the NCP and Congress. He also noted that Congress had not only supported the MVA candidate in the Speakers election but also voted against the government during the floor test.

The Supreme Court is, meanwhile, set to hear on July 11 a set of pleas, including one filed by the Shiv Sena, seeking the disqualification of the rebel party leaders, led by Eknath Shinde. Shiv Sena chief whip Sunil Prabhu on Friday moved the court seeking their suspension from the House till a final decision is taken on their disqualification.

Mr Prabhu has also sought an order restraining them from entering the Assembly. The Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government collapsed after the rebellion launched by Mr Shinde and his supporter MLAs last month. Mr Shinde was sworn in as chief minister on June 30, a day after Mr Thackeray quit the post. The BJPs Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in as the deputy chief minister.
Australia and France decided to enhance security cooperation with India in the Indian Ocean region, as the leaders of the two nations  Anthony Albanese and Emmanuel Macron  agreed to leave behind the tiff over the AUKUS and mend ties.

The thaw in relations between Australia and France has cleared the way for India to restart its trilateral dialogue with the two nations, particularly with focus on the maritime security in the Indian Ocean region, where China has been trying to spread its tentacles.

We (Australia and France) are determined to be active in regional for and to enhance security cooperation with Pacific countries, in particular on maritime surveillance with regional agencies, and in the Indian Ocean, including in partnership with India, according to a joint statement issued after the French President hosted the Australian Prime Minister in Paris.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his then counterparts in the Australian and French governments had held the first trilateral dialogue in May 2021, committing to working together to achieve a free, open, inclusive and rules-based Indo-Pacific.

But the second round of talks among the ministers could not take place so far as the relations between Australia and France plummeted after Albaneses predecessor Scott Morrison joined the US President Joe Biden and the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to launch the AUKUS, a new security coalition to counter the military aggression of China in the Indo-Pacific region. The AUKUS was intended to create a framework for the US and UK to support Australia in acquiring a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. The launch of the AUKUS triggered sharp reaction from Paris, as it scuttled a $37 billion deal inked in 2016 for France to provide Australia 12 conventional submarines.

India, Australia, Japan and the US also relaunched the Quad in 2017 in order to counter the expansionist aspirations of China in the Indo-Pacific region, albeit with a benign agenda. France has also stepped up its security cooperation with India in the Indo-Pacific region.
Responding to DMK MP A Rajas statement that the Union Government should not push them towards the demand for a separate nation, BJP floor leader in the Assembly, Nainar Nagendran, on Tuesday said he wants Tamil Nadu to be bifurcated and made into two states.

Nagendran, MLA from Tirunelveli, also said the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi can bifurcate Tamil Nadu as we are the deciding authority. He made the controversial remarks at a day-long fast organised by the BJP across Tamil Nadu demanding that the ruling DMK fulfill the promises made during the 2021 assembly election campaign.

Raja says he wants a separate Tamil Nadu. When Raja has such desire, do you think Nainar Nagendran wont have any desire? I will say let us split Tamil Nadu into two states. South (TN) and North (TN) and both will have 117 seats each. We will have two chief ministers, they will either be from the BJP or from our coalition partner, Nagendran said.

Dont think we cannot do it (bifurcate the state). We are in a position to do such things. It (bifurcation) can happen if Modi ji wants, he added.

Nagendrans comments came in response to Rajas statement asking the Centre to grant autonomy to states. I appeal to (Home Minister) Amit Shah and Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) not to push us to the path followed by (E V R) Periyar. Dont push us to demand for a separate nation. Please grant us state autonomy, Raja had said on Sunday.

DMK condemned Nagendrans statement saying they reflected the arrogance of the BJP. This is not the first time that Nagendran has stoked a controversy on bifurcation of Tamil Nadu  Responding to the same issue, he had in July 2021 said it was the duty of the Union Government to fulfill expectations of the people.

He made the remarks amid the controversy over BJP mentioning that L Murugan, Union Minister of State, hailed from Kongu Nadu, in the bi-data released during his swearing-in in July 2021.

The Kongu region comprises seven districts, and the AIADMK-PMK-BJP jointly won 33 of the total 50 seats in the region, while the DMK alliance almost every other region of the state.
Congress on Tuesday sought to put Home Minister Amit Shah on the line of fire alleging that terrorist Talib Hussain Shah, who was arrested recently, was made a BJP office bearer in Jammu and previously captured in photos with the senior leader.

Addressing a press conference here, Congress Media and Publicity wing Chairperson Pawan Khera asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah to come clean on the allegation that BJP making "terrorists" its members and office bearers.

Seeking to put the BJP on the dock, Khera said he could recall at least five persons who have terror links being inducted in the party or made office bearers or seen close to its leaders.

"Will the Prime Minister open his mouth? Will the Home Minister come out and give a clarification? What were these terrorists doing in your party? What were you doing with those terrorists?" he asked.

Khera alleged that Talib Hussain Shah was appointed in the IT cell of BJP in Jammu area and there is an appointment letter to this effect.

Also read: Congress files FIR against BJP legislators for spreading fake video featuring Rahul Gandhi

"It has emerged that the arrested Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist was not only a BJP office-bearer who had previously been captured in photos with Home Minister Amit Shah and was planning to launch attacks on the Amarnath Yatra. How could such a man be seen in close proximity of the Home Minister. How the Home Minister will be secure if a terrorist is near him? Isn't it a big intelligence failure if that man was not identified as terrorist earlier?" Khera said.

Talib Hussain Shah's case was not the first instance and only days ago, it came to light that one of the Udaipur killers Riyas Attari was a BJP member, he said.

He also said that former sarpanch and BJP leader Tariq Ahmad Mir was arrested two years ago for procuring weapons for Hizbul Mujahideen commander Naveed Babu, who was arrested with former DySP Davinder Singh, while BJP IT Cell member Dhruv Saxena along with 10 associates were arrested for allegedly spying for the ISI.

A Bajrang Dal leader from Madhya Pradesh Balram Singh was arrested in terror funding case, while an Assam leader Niranjan Hojai was sentenced to life for diverting government funds to a militant group to procure weapons and carry out attacks on security forces, he said. He also added that the BJP gave ticket to Masood Azhars acolyte Mohammad Farooq Khan to contest the Srinagar municipal election.

"It is shocking that the BJP, a party that loses no opportunity to preach to Indians about nationalism, has members and office-bearers who are deeply implicated in violent anti-national activities. These are not simple coincidences," he said.

"We appeal to the people of India to see through the BJPs fake nationalism and its disturbing willingness to flirt with anti-national forces. What kind of an ideology finds place for both Nupur Sharma and Riyaz Attari and accommodates radicals like Talib Hussain? Is the BJP inspired by the alliance between the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League in which extremists of all religions banded together to prevent nationalist forces like the Congress to come to power?" he added.
Russia has tacitly nudged India to break ranks with Germany and Japan while seeking expansion of the United Nations Security Council and a permanent seat for itself on the Horseshoe Table.

New Delhi, however, is unlikely to break away from the G-4, which comprises India, Germany, Japan and Brazil and has been collectively demanding expansion of the Security Council with permanent seats for all the four nations.

Andrey Denisov, Moscows envoy to Beijing, said that Russia was open to the prospects of India and Brazil joining the Security Council as permanent members, but would oppose giving the same status to Japan and Germany. He was speaking at the Global Peace Forum in Beijing on Monday.

Also Read: Prospects for India

He said that Russia was in favour of expansion of the UN Security Council based on a broad consensus, ensuring increasing the proportionate representation of African, Asian and Latin American nations. At the same time, I would like to be frank  we arent ready to support the accession of actors such as Germany and Japan, Denisov was quoted by TASS, the state news agency of Russia. We dont see any added value from their (Japans and Germanys) potential accession. On the other hand, we are open to the prospects of India and Brazil joining (the Security Council).

Moscows relations with the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and other western nations hit a new low after President Vladimir Putin ordered the soldiers of the former Soviet Union nations to launch special military operations in Ukraine on February 24 this year. With Fumio Kishidas government in Tokyo joining the US and the other western nations in slamming Moscow and tightening sanctions on it for its aggression against Ukraine, Japans relations with Russia also worsened.

New Delhi drew flak from the western nations as it steadfastly refused to join them in condemning Russias military offensive against Ukraine. India refrained from slamming Russia  primarily in view of its decades-old strategic partnership with and its dependence on the former Soviet Union nation for military hardware.

Putin, himself, reiterated Russias support to Indias bid to get a permanent seat in the UNSC during his visit to India in December 2021.

New Delhi, according to the sources, is unlikely to quit the G-4, which came into existence in 2005, with India, Germany, Japan and Brazil coming together to collectively seek reforms of the United Nations and expansion of the Security Council with permanent membership for themselves.

The foreign ministers of the G-4 nations meet in New York on the sideline of the UN General Assembly every year. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar attended the last meeting on September 22 in 2021, when he and his counterparts from the three other nations agreed that India, Japan, Germany and Brazil would continue to support each others candidatures as aspiring new permanent members in a reformed Security Council.

India's non-permanent membership of the UNSC started in January 2021 and will end in December 2022.
Munich, Germany, and Bucharest, Romania  July 1, 2022  Infineon Technologies acquired NoBug Consulting SRL (Romania) and NoBug d.o.o. (Serbia). Founded in 1998, NoBug is a privately owned engineering company providing verification and design services for all the digital functionalities of semiconductor products. With approximately 120 engineers, NoBug Consulting SRL and NoBug d.o.o. are represented in Bucharest, Brasov, Iasi (all Romania) and Belgrade (Serbia).

By adding these R&D competence centers, Infineon is further accelerating the ability of its Connected Secure Systems (CSS) Division to work on complex IoT product developments. Thus, Infineon is building the basis for the IoT infrastructure of the future, enabling cybersecurity, AI and machine learning as well as robust connectivity. We are looking for the highest-skilled experts to grow our IoT business, said Thomas Rosteck, President of Infineons Division CSS. Therefore, Romania and Serbia are the locations of choice for expanding our R&D activities in Eastern Europe.

Together, NoBug and Infineon are now perfectly equipped to tackle this growing market: While Infineon delivers a comprehensive IoT portfolio, NoBug brings along specialized expertise in the digital verification of complex System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions. This considerable increase in superior verification know-how lets Infineon offer its customers more of its leading products at a reduced time-to-market, said Guenter Krasser, Vice President and Managing Director of Infineon Romania. The acquisition will also further bolster Infineon Romania as a growth location for R&D in Europe and opens up ample new development opportunities for our engineers. Now with over 500 R&D engineers, Infineon Romania holds R&D ownership in a variety of Infineons product segments. The Development Center in Bucharest was founded in 2005 and has become one of Infineons largest R&D centers in Europe.

The parties have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.

About Infineon

Infineon Technologies AG is a world leader in semiconductor solutions that make life easier, safer and greener. Microelectronics from Infineon are the key to a better future. With around 50,280 employees worldwide, Infineon generated revenue of about 11.1 billion in the 2021 fiscal year (ending 30 September). Infineon is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX) and in the USA on the over-the-counter market OTCQX International Premier (ticker symbol: IFNNY).






Chinese, foreign scholars discuss education development in China's ethnic minority areas

Xinhua) 10:45, July 05, 2022

BEIJING, July 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese and foreign scholars discussed the development of education and protection of rights in China's ethnic minority areas on Saturday at a side event of the 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council.

As the world is facing drastic changes unseen in a century and intensified confrontation, education serves as a bridge to promote global communication and mutual understanding as well as a foundation for global peace and development, said Ye Hailin, deputy director of the bureau of international cooperation of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), at the meeting held in a combination of online and offline forms.

China has adopted a series of policies and regulations to effectively protect the rights of all ethnic groups to use and develop their own spoken and written languages, said Ma Rong, a professor at Peking University.

In some areas inhabited by ethnic minorities in China, minority languages are still the mother tongue of local people and the main means of communication in family and community life, introduced Ma.

Yu Mingxiao, an associate researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology under the CASS, said that Tibetan autonomous prefectures in Sichuan, Qinghai, Yunnan, and Gansu provinces have seen rapid development and markedly improved level of education, and local people's satisfaction with education has been on the rise.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
Google Chrome has released a new patch to address the threat of CVE-2022-2294.

Google was quick to detect the high-severity zero-day vulnerability inside of Chrome's system.

This Google vulnerability has unfortunately been exploited by malicious actors. The newly released patch will be the fourth Chrome zero-day patch released by Google this year.

Google released the 103.0.5060.114 version, which is now available in the Stable Desktop channel worldwide.

The company states that it estimated that it would take days or weeks to reach the whole user base.

Google Chrome Vulnerability

Google has released security fixes to address a high-severity zero-day vulnerability in its Chrome web browser.

Google stated that the current vulnerability in the wild was being exploited by malicious actors.

CVE-2022-2294 is a high-severity heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communications) component.

The consequences of successful heap overflow exploitation can range from program crashes to unfettered code execution, as well as bypassing security solutions if code execution is gained during the attack.

When the overflow happens, this has the ability to breach a user's privacy since it allows real-time video and audio communication from the browser without the need to install plugins or download native apps.

According to The Hacker News, Heap buffer overflow happens when data is overwritten in the memory's heap area, leading to a denial-of-service (DoS) condition.

This is also commonly called "heap smashing" or "heap overruns." Even though people have the perception that it will only affect PCs, it is worth noting that this bug also affects Google Chrome on Android devices.

Google stated that the CVE-2022-2294 vulnerability was reported to them by a researcher from the Avast Threat Intelligence team, Jan Vojtesek.

Vojtesek is credited for reporting and discovering the vulnerability on July 1, 2022.

The customary practice when detecting a bug in the wild is to keep the information, details, and links regarding the vulnerability restricted for the meantime.

Google is following exactly the same protocol, waiting and giving the majority of users ample time to deploy the update on their devices. This is also to minimize and avoid further abuse in the wild.

Read Also: Google Chrome Extensions Can be Used to Track You Online - How is It Done?

Google Chrome Zero-Day Vulnerability

CVE-2022-2294 is Google's fourth zero-day vulnerability since the year started. According to BleepingComputer, there were three other vulnerabilities detected in Chrome before this update.

The first vulnerability was CVE-2022-0609, which was detected on February 14. The vulnerability, CVE-2022-0609, was exploited by North Korean-backed state hackers weeks before the February patch.

The second vulnerability in Google Chrome was detected on March 25, CVE-2022-1096. This vulnerability in the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine has a high severity level and affects type misunderstanding.

The third one was CVE-2022-1364, which was detected on April 14. This vulnerability is a type confusion weakness in Chrome V8 JavaScript engine which was also a high severity bug.

To prevent exploitation, users are advised to install today's current Google Chrome update since this zero-day vulnerability is of high severity.

To protect themselves from any potential danger, users are strongly encouraged to update to version 103.0.5060.114 for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and to version 103.0.5060.71 for Android.

In addition, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, and Microsoft Edge users are also encouraged to apply the changes as soon as they are made available to them.

Related Article: Google Offers To Pay Developers $90 Million To Settle Antitrust Lawsuit
Wounded elk left to suffer marks ongoing poaching problem Tweet November 10, 2021 The remains of a cow elk that was shot illegally in Lincoln County, on Hancock Forest Property Management property east of Yaquina Head. OSP Troopers located the carcass in a clear-cut off a spur road. A black-tailed doe that was shot and left to waste north of Euchre Creek Rd, in Newport. There is a $500 reward or four hunter preference points for information that leads to an arrest or citation. Location of a spike elk that was shot and left paralyzed in Yamhill County. There is a $500 reward or four hunter preference points for information that leads to a citation or arrest in this case. SALEM, Ore.A young elk, shot through the spine and left struggling with paralyzed hind legs, is one of three new poaching cases that mark a continued disregard for laws set in place to preserve Oregon wildlife. Poachers also shot a blacktail doe near Newport, and a cow elk near Yaquina Head. Callers who leave information that leads to an arrest or citation in any of these cases can receive a $500 cash reward from Oregon Hunters Association or four ODFW hunter preference points. On Oct. 29, a member of the public in rural Yamhill County contacted OSP to report seeing a spike elk that had lost use of its hind legs. A spike elk is a young male, usually about a year old. The elk was found on private property at the end of Dodson Road northwest of the city of Yamhill, in the Trask unit. At that time there were no open bull elk seasons, although there were opportunities for cow elk. Troopers responding to the call humanely dispatched the animal. They then followed the OSP procedure of donating meat from animals that have been killed illegally. The elk was slated to go to needy families through the Grand Ronde tribe. During processing, meat cutters found a bullet. The young elk had been shot through the spine and, in a cruel twist, left to suffer. Anyone with information should reference case #SP21306128. On Oct. 28, a member of the public contacted OSP F&W after seeing a dead deer about 150 yards north of Euchre Creek Rd (also known as Euchre Flats Rd), in Newport. The reporting party first noticed the deer on Oct. 26. An OSP Fish & Wildlife Sergeant responded to the area and located a black-tailed doe that had been shot and left to waste. Anyone with information on this case should reference case #SP21304967. (Buck hunting seasons were open in Western Oregon in late October. While there is not evidence to indicate who shot this doe, if it was a hunter that mistook it for a buck, they should have reported the incident to OSP and not left the animal to waste.) On Oct. 21, a hunter reported an elk carcass he came across while hunting on Hancock Forest Property Management land east of Yaquina Head. OSP Troopers located the carcass of a cow elk in a clear-cut off a spur road. Much of the meat had been removed. Troopers believe the animal had been shot the same day it was discovered and ask the publics help in identifying a person of interest in this case. Anyone with information should reference case #SP21299105. Rewards stand at $500 from the Oregon Hunters Association Turn In Poachers (TIP) fund for information that leads to an arrest or citation in any poaching case. Reporting parties may opt for four hunter preference points from ODFW instead of cash. The rewards are intended as an incentive to increase the likelihood of people calling in when they have information related to crimes. ODFW Stop Poaching campaign coordinator Yvonne Shaw believes this is a good program to have in place. Sometimes people arent sure if they should call in something suspicious, Shaw said, Other times they know about a crime, but they arent inclined to report it. The reward is an incentive. People who call the TIP Line can remain anonymous and still collect a cash reward or hunter preference points. The Stop Poaching Campaign educates the public on how to recognize and report poaching. This campaign is a collaboration among hunters, conservationists, land owners and recreationists. Our goal is to increase reporting of wildlife crimes through the TIP Line, increase detection by increasing the number of OSP Fish and Wildlife Troopers and increase prosecution. OHA manages the TIP Fund. This campaign helps to protect and enhance Oregons fish and wildlife and their habitat for the enjoyment of present and future generations. Contact campaign coordinator Yvonne Shaw for more information. Yvonne.L.Shaw@odfw.oregon.gov. If you know of or suspect other crimes against fish wildlife or habitat, please report to the Turn In Poachers (TIP) Line. 1-800-452-7888 or *OSP (*677) from a mobile phone. Or email: TIP@osp.oregon.gov between the hours of 8-5 Mon-Fri. ###




Google is back to old habits again as it's in the process of shutting down the Hangouts feature for normal users. Google made the announcement last week and as a result, several iOS and Android users are unable to access Hangouts today. However, Google is more merciful this time around. The shutdown will take place in multiple stages with the first stage involving the shutdown of old Hangouts mobile apps. These apps haven't received any major updates in recent months and are mostly unavailable for download on Google Play Store or Apple App Store.

Google Hangout Shutdown To Occur In Phases

Meanwhile, Google is displaying the prompt "It's time for Chat in Gmail" to make people use the dedicated Google Chat apps or the Gmail tab. If users get this message, they're unable to use the classic hangouts on mobile any further. Likewise, people using the Hangouts Chrome extension are advised to install the progressive web app or Chat on the Web.

During the next shutdown phase in July, users still using Hangouts through Gmail's sidebar will be upgraded to Chat in Gmail. However, people will still be able to use classic Hangouts.google.com until it stops working probably around 2022. Moreover, users will get a one-month heads-up beforehand. Lastly, in November, users will get the last deadline to download their copy of Hangouts data, a month after the service stops working.

The news comes after another report which suggested that Google Duo is being replaced by Meet. The former will be named Google Meet as it recently received a ton of its features including a similarly designed user interface. As Google Hangouts is heading towards a permanent shutdown, it'd be interesting to see which of its products heads towards the chopping block next. Some people think that Google Stadia could be next on the list of things 'killed by Google,' considering its poor market share and Microsoft leading the charge into cloud gaming.
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OLYMPIA  A new emergency ruling has been put in place by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to protect vulnerable orca populations in the region. In June, the SeaLife Response Rehabilitation and Research team was contracted by the department to monitor Southern Resident killer whale body conditions. Using measurements from drone photographs taken between September 2021 and April 2022 they found that 13 orcas were either malnourished, underdeveloped or pregnant, resulting in the need for the order.

The emergency order means that commercial sightseeing vessels and boaters need to stay at least half a nautical mile away from endangered southern resident killer whales this summer. The department said that the order is necessary due to the established connection between boats and the whales' foraging success, the high rate of failed pregnancies among Southern Residents in recent years, and the small number of breeding females in the population.





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SEATTLE  The Seattle Go Center, at 700 N.E. 45th St., sold last week for $7.3 million, according to King County records. The seller was the Nihon Ki-In, a Japanese nonprofit that acquired the property in 1994 for a little over $1 million. It's related to the Go Center.

The buyer was Victory at the U LLC, which is associated with Champion Real Estate of Los Angeles. With architect Weber Thompson, the entitled 21-story tower plan has 110 apartments intended for students.





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SEATTLE  A small apartment building at 219 Queen Anne Ave. N. sold last week for a little over $4.9 million, according to King County records. The seller was a local family that had owned the building since 1955, when new.

The buyer was Queen Needle LLC, which is associated with an Eastside investor. Public records indicate a loan from Alaska USA Federal Credit Union.





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SEATTLE  Villa Andora, at 1520 California Ave. S.W., sold last week for $13.6 million, according to King County records. The seller was CRE Villa Andora LLC, which acquired the property in 2016 for about $7.6 million.

The buyer was Villa Andora 1520 LLC, which is associated with an Eastside family group. Public records indicate a loan from BECU.





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NASA'S CAPSTONE spacecraft is on its way to the moon.

The space agency's microsatellite is now on its way to the moon's near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) on its own after almost a week in Earth's orbit, per Space.com.

NASA's CAPSTONE spacecraft, or Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment spacecraft, is the first of many spacecraft NASA will send to the moon as part of its Artemis missions.

NASA CAPSTONE Spacecraft Status Details

NASA's 55lbs. microwave oven-sized spacecraft recently finished its final burn in Earth's orbit on July 4, and as such, it has set itself on a trajectory that will take it to the Moon's NRHO by the end of the year.

The microsatellite is currently moving more than 24,000 miles per hour thanks to Rocket Labs' Photon spacecraft bus' separation procedure. A spacecraft is required to reach speeds of more than 24,500 miles per hour to escape Earth's orbit.

Additionally, the CAPSTONE spacecraft was previously launched on June 28 following a delay to allow Rocket Labs to perform final systems checks on its reusable Electron booster.

During then and now, the spacecraft was still attached to Rocket Lab's Photon spacecraft bus in Earth's orbit. After detaching from the spacecraft bus, the CAPSTONE spacecraft will then undertake a four-month-long journey from Earth's orbit into the moon's NRHO to determine whether it is stable enough for long-term missions like the Artemis program's Gateway lunar base.

Read More: Hacker Claims Stealing 1 BILLION Chinese Citizens' Data  Are These Records from the Police?

According to NASA experts, the NRHO could save the space agency a significant amount of energy to maintain a spacecraft's position in space. It is a "precise balance point" between the Earth and the moon's gravity.

NASA celebrated the spacecraft's departure from Earth's orbit, with the space agency live streaming the event around 2:56 AM EDT.

Peter Beck, Rocket Labs' CEO, tweeted on his official Twitter account that the success inspires one to say something epic. However, he could only say that the burn was a "perfect moon mission success."

NASA expects that the spacecraft will reach the moon's NRHO on November 13, wherein it will zoom within 1,000 miles of the moon's surface at its closest and 43,500 miles at its furthest.

The CAPSTONE spacecraft was launched from Rocket Labs' Launch Complex 1, which is located in New Zealand, per NASA.

What's Next For NASA?

As previously mentioned, should the CAPSTONE maintain its position within the moon's NRHO, it would give NASA the green light to plan for the upcoming Lunar Gateway.

The Gateway is expected by NASA officials to be used to support a long-term and sustainable human presence on and around the moon, per Gizmodo. It will also be used as a pit stop for astronauts and spacecraft assigned to explore Mars and other celestial bodies in deep space.

Additionally, the CAPSTONE spacecraft will also be used to evaluate CAPSTONE's autonomous navigation software, which will allow future spacecraft to find their location without having to rely on tracking from Earth exclusively.

Related Article: The Perseverance Rover's Wind Sensor Has Been Damaged by Pebbles Is It Functioning?
India-EU conclude first round of trade negotiations

India and the European Union on Saturday concluded the first round of negotiations for India-EU Trade and Investment Agreements, including the Geographical Indicators (GI).

Indias FTA negotiations were led by Chief Negotiator Nidhi Mani Tripathi, joint secretary, Department of Commerce and EU by its chief negotiator, Christophe Kiener.

The week-long negotiations were held in a hybrid fashion  with some of the teams meeting in Delhi and the majority of officials joining virtually hybrid fashion. During this Round 52 technical sessions covering 18 policy areas of FTA and 7 sessions on Investment Protection and GIs were held.

The second round of negotiations is scheduled to take place in September 2022 in Brussels.

The negotiations were launched by commerce minister Piyush Goyal and European Commissions Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis in Brussels last month.

Indias bilateral trade with EU amounted to $116.36 billion in 2021-22. Despite the pandemic-led global disruptions, bilateral trade achieved an impressive annual growth of 43.5 per cnt in 2021-22. Currently, EU is Indias second largest trading partner after the US, and the second largest destination for Indian exports. The trade agreement with EU would help India in further expanding and diversifying its exports of goods and services, including securing the value chains. Both sides are aiming for the trade negotiations to be broad-based, balanced, and comprehensive, based on the principles of fairness and reciprocity.
India's marine product exports hit record Rs57,586 crore in FY22

India shipped 13,69,264 tonnes of seafood worth Rs57,586.48 crore ($7.76 billion) during 2021-22, which is an improvement of 31.71 per cent in rupee terms, 30.26 per cent in dollar terms and 19.12 per cent in terms of quantity.

During FY 2020-21, India exported 11,49,510 tonnes of seafood worth Rs43,720.98 crore ($5,956.93 million).

K N Raghavan, chairman, Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), said India managed to do all time high exports export worth $7.76 billion with volume of 13,69,264 MT of seafood, despite the challenges caused by the Covid pandemic.

Frozen shrimp remained the major export item in terms of quantity and value. Frozen shrimp, which earned Rs42,706.04 crore ($5,828.59 million), accounted for a share of 53.18 per cent in quantity and 75.11 per cent of the total dollar earnings. Shrimp exports during the period increased by 31.68 per cent in dollar value and 23.35 per cent in quantity.

Overall export of frozen shrimps during 2021-22 was pegged at 7,28,123 tonnes. USA, the largest market, imported (3,42,572 tonnes) of frozen shrimp, followed by China (1,25,667 tonnes), European Union (90,549 tonnes), South East Asia (44,683 tonnes), Japan (38,492 tonnes), and the Middle East (37,158 tommes). Export of frozen shrimp showed increase in all the markets by value.

The export of Vannamei (white leg) shrimp increased from 5,15,907 tonnes to 6,43,037 tonnes in 2021-22. Of the total Vannamei shrimp exports, USA accounted for 59.05 per cent, followed by China (14.59 per cent), European Union (8.16 per cent), South East Asia (4.78 per cent), Japan (3.61 per cent), and the Middle East (3.17 per cent). USA also turned out to be the major market for Black Tiger shrimp with a share of 25.90 per cent in terms of dollar value, followed by European Union (23.78 per cent) and Japan (22.71 per cent).

Other items, the second largest export item, fetched Rs 3,979.99 crore ($540.73 million), accounting for 12.96 per cent in quantity and 6.97 per cent in dollar earnings. The export of other items increased by 43.8 per cent in rupee value and 42.94 per cent in dollar value. Other items comprising surimi and surimi analogue products accounted for 56.55 per cent in dollar terms.

Frozen fish, the third largest export item, fetched Rs3471.91 crore ($471.45 million), accounting for 16.55 per cent in quantity and 6.08 per cent in dollar earnings. Export of frozen fish increased by 20.44 per cent in quantity and 17.19 per cent in dollar value.

Export of frozen squid, pegged at 75,750 tonnes, showed a growth of 23.82 per cent in quantity and 40.24 per cent in dollar terms, and earned Rs2,806.09 crore ($383.37 million).

Export of frozen cuttlefish, pegged at 58,992 tonnes, showed a growth of 26.83 per cent in rupee value and 26.18 per cent in dollar value, and earned Rs2062.63 crore ($280.08 million).

Export of dried Items, pegged at 73,679 tonnes, showed a growth of 28.27 per cent in rupee value but lower at 8.59 per cent in dollar value, and earned Rs1472.98 crore ($143.46 million).

Export of chilled items, which is considered a promising sector, increased by 23.08 per cent in quantity terms and 53.45 per cent in rupee terms but declined 1.87 per cent in dollar terms.

Export of live Items, pegged at 7,032 yonnes, showed a growth of 60.57 per cent in quantity, 47.43 per cent in rupee value and 46.67 per cent in dollar terms.

Unit value realisation of frozen shrimp, frozen cuttlefish, frozen squid, dried items and other items has shown positive trend.

USA continued to be the major importer of Indian seafood in value and volume terms with imports worth $3371.66 million, accounting for a share of 37.56 per cent in terms of dollar value. Exports to US recorded a growth of 27.63 per cent in quantity, 36.76 per cent in rupee value and 37.56 per cent in dollar earnings. Frozen shrimp continued to be the principal item exported to US and the exports of Vannamei shrimp showed a growth of 26.81 per cent in quantity and 34.65 per cent in dollar terms. Exports of black tiger shrimp to US increased by 68.99 per cent in quantity terms and 152.06 per cent in dollar terms.

China emerged as the second largest seafood export destination from India in terms of quantity with import of 2,66,989 tonnes worth $1,175.05 million, accounting for 19.50 per cent in quantity and 15.14 per cent in dollar terms. Exports to China market grew 22.28 per cent in quantity and 31.09 per cent in rupee value and 25.12 per cent in dllar value. Of the total exports to China, frozen shrimp, the major item of exports to China, had a share of 47.07 per cent in quantity and 67.04 per cent in dollar value while frozen fish had a share of 32.10 per cent in terms of quantity and 15.19 per cent in terms of value. Frozen shrimp to China has shown positive trend both in quantity and volume.

European Union continued to be the third largest destination for Indian seafood with frozen shrimp, with the major item of exports recording an increase of 29.11 per cent and 37.09 per cnt in quantity and dollar value, respectively.

South East Asia was the fourth largest market for frozen shrimp, the major item of exports, with 18.36 per cent share in quantity and 36.81 per cent in dollar value with growth of 22.29 per cent. Frozen fish, the second major item of export, with 33.42 per cent share in quantity and 21.42 per cent in dollar value with growth of 82.24 per cent.

Japan continued to be the fifth largest importer with a share of 5.68 per cent in dollar value and 6.60 per cent in quantity, posting a growth of 6.95 per cent in dollar value. Frozen shrimp continued to be the major item of exports to Japan with a share of 74.55 per cent and growth of 3.73 per cent in dollar value.

Exports to the Middle East also showed a growth of 20.2 per cent in quantity, 21.27 per cent in rupee and 20.7 per cent in dollar terms.
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Scoraiocht Lann Leire based in Dunleer is to benefit from funding through the government funded Music Capital Scheme.

The group, which works to promote Irish music and culture is to receive 3,701 through the scheme. The Music Capital Scheme is designed to provide support for the purchase of musical instruments, and to respond to a broad range of capital needs within the music sector in Ireland.

The initiative, which is in existence since 2008, is managed by Music Network and funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. A total of 306,096 in funding from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media has been awarded to 28 performing groups, 18 established musicians and 9 emerging musicians from across Ireland.

Commenting on the allocations, Minister Catherine Martin said: the 2021 round of the Music Capital Scheme will again benefit so many deserving organisations and individuals, just as it has since it was initially launched over a decade ago. I see this capital scheme as one of our key funding initiatives and I wish to express my sincere thanks to Music Network for managing this scheme."
Actor-director Lee Jung-jae, left, and Jung Woo-sung attend a press conference for the film, "Hunt," at the Megabox Seongsu theater in Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap



By Kwak Yeon-soo



Actor Lee Jung-jae, who is making his feature directorial debut with espionage action film "Hunt," said the hardest part for him was casting his longtime friend, Jung Woo-sung, in a starring role. The two actors reunited for the film 23 years after appearing together in 1999's "City of the Rising Sun."



"I've been showing him the script since the early stages of development, but he rejected it four times. I rewrote a considerable amount of material over the course of four years and was finally able to cast him for the film," he said during a press conference for the film at the Megabox Seongsu cinema in Seoul, Tuesday.



Set in the turbulent 1980s, the action-packed film centers on two rival intelligence agents, Park Pyong-ho (Lee) and Kim Jung-do (Jung), who are tasked with uncovering a North Korean spy stealing highly classified information that could threaten national security. They investigate each other in the process of discovering a larger plot to assassinate the president. "Hunt" was invited for the Midnight Screening of the 75th Cannes Film Festival in the non-competitive category.



Although Lee and Jung are close friends in real life, the two didn't speak to each other on set in order to play up the conflict between their characters, they said.



"Normally, the cast and crew go over every shot of the day and discuss a lot behind the camera. But we haven't talked much while monitoring this film. We wanted to build a strong tension between the two rivals," Jung said.





A scene from the film, "Hunt" / Courtesy of Megabox Plus M
The Dublin Airport Authority has said that significant improvements made at the airport are achieving their desired result to alleviate pressure on the system amid a strong return to air travel.

The authority said that despite the vast majority of flights operating on time, a spike in Covid-19 cases resulted in some airlines and baggage handling crews being short of staff, leading to flight cancellations and delays at airline check-in desks and bag drop areas.

Whereas issues relating to flight cancellations and delayed, or lost, luggage are outside DAAs remit, we empathise with those affected and regret the impact this is having on their passenger experience, it said.

It added that baggage is an issue across Europe, the USA and Canada and that it is liaising with affected airlines about baggage issues.

The statement comes amid pressures on airlines and airports across Europe after they cut jobs during the depths of the Covid-19 crisis and as travel demand returns after two years of pandemic restrictions.

Representatives of the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) appeared before an Oireachtas committee in early June to outline its plan for dealing with the summer surge, with Higher Education Minister Simon Harris warning that there could be consequences for management if the airport authority did not get to grips with the surge in demand.

Last week, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan got clearance from Cabinet for Defence Forces personnel to be on standby to help staff the airport in the event of a Covid-19 outbreak. This measure is to be stood down in August when the busy holiday period has passed.

The DAA issued an update on Monday to say that its plan for the summer surge has been effective, but that the Defence Forces remain on standby to help.

The contingency plan now in place to train and have Defence Forces personnel on standby if we experience significant COVID-19-related absences in Security Operations remains prudent, it said.

The contingency involves the training of Defence Forces personnel for duties at the Vehicle Control Posts at Dublin Airport, only if they are needed. While they will be on standby, deployment of Defence Forces personnel would only be triggered if ultimately required due to a Covid-19 outbreak.

Since Friday, when the school summer holidays kicked in, the DAA said that more than 420,000 passengers travelled through Dublin Airport  with 50,000 to 56,000 people departing each day.

The DAA said the vast majority of passengers (93% of over 900,000) are getting through security screening in less than 45 minutes.

By comparison with the more drastic measures and impacts reported by peer airports internationally, our current plans are proving effective, and we have increasing confidence that, other than COVID risks, we are now in a much more robust position to manage peak summer traffic over the coming weeks.

Amid a 1072% increase in passenger traffic compared with this time last year, the DAA acknowledged the challenges the airport faces in managing huge summer holiday demand, as many people begin travelling abroad again now that the Covid-19 emergency has ended.

We are keen to avoid capacity reductions, which have been deployed at other UK and European airports, as these would have a material impact on the summer travel plans of a significant number of Irish passengers and families, most of whom have not enjoyed a foreign holiday in over two years and impact business travellers.

It advised any passengers who has been impacted by flight cancellations or who need assistance with baggage tracing to contact their airline or the airlines ground-handling company.

Passengers are still being asked to be at the airport two and a half hours before a short-haul flight or three and a half hours prior to a long-haul departure, and to add an extra hour if they are checking in a bag.
The SEEK Urban Arts Festival was launched on Friday night, with the crowd gathered in Creative Spark's Downtown Hub on Clanbrassil Street eager to hear about the artistic plans for the walls of our town this year.

Four of the artists taking part in this year's SEEK Festival were there on the night, but they were keeping the plans for their murals a secret, only giving away a few hints about the art pieces that will adorn the walls around Dundalk.

But people won't have to wait long to get the opportunity to see the murals, as some of the artists were hard at it starting to create their pieces on Saturday morning.

Mariana Santos, a visual artist from Lisbon, told how she likes to both create a sense of nostalgia and bring the history of a place into a new time through the modern medium of street art.

She said her style is realistic in nature and she enjoys bringing a painterly feel to her mural work. Mariana has been tasked with exploring Dundalks rich printing history.

As she gave a presentation on Friday night of the impressive work she has previously done, she told the crowd: I am doing a mural celebrating Hary Tempest, the local printer, publisher and writer.

But I am not going to show you my plans of what I am going to do.

Milu Correch, an acclaimed graffiti artist who hails from Buenos Aires, was also at the launch on Friday night.

Milu told how she will be capturing Dundalks impressive ship building heritage, and the hustle and bustle that sourrounded the Quay when The Irish Girl Of Dundalk was built and launched in her mural.

She teased the people gathered with a fleeting glimpse of a plan she had for the wall on Quay Street, with her starting her mural over the weekend.

Cormac Dillon, of Mack Signs, Ireland's leading company specialising in hand-painted signs, gold leaf work and creating unique murals, also gave a presentation at the launch of the impressive work he has previously created.

Cormac will create a piece on Church Street celebrating Robert Burns and his poem Sweet Afton.

Visual artist and sign painter Arthur Oner was also there on the night and said that he will be creating a mural of a well-known Dundalk saying at the Longwalk.

The SEEK team are also thrilled to be welcoming back world renowned artist Smugone - the creator of Ireland's tallest and most iconic mural, Lu God of Light on the Crowne Plaza - to this years' festival.

Stay tuned for even more artists to be announced and some surprises along the way, SEEK Urban Arts Festival organisers said.

They also thanked their sponsors, Dundalk Town(BIDs) Colourtrend, Creative Spark, Creative Ireland, Louth County Council, Dundalk Tidy Towns, Crowne Plaza, Rocksalt, Coffee & Cream, Hire Direct and Zoma.

Scheduled guided walking tours will run throughout the festival, allowing visitors to explore the themes behind the artworks.

Booking information and further information on Fringe events is available at www.seekdundalk.ie.
gettyimagesbank



By Anna J. Park



Digital insurance providers appear to be logging worsened financial performances this year, due to fiercer competition as well as their focus on less profitable short-term insurance policies.



According to data by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), Carrot General Insurance, the country's first digital insurance company launched in 2019, logged a net loss of 14.6 billion won ($11.2 million) in the first quarter of this year, a deteriorating year-on-year performance. The company posted a net loss of 12.4 billion won during the first quarter of last year, and an annual net loss of 65 billion won last year.



Hana Insurance, another digital insurance provider launched in 2020, also logged a quarterly net loss of 5.4 billion won in the first quarter, resulting in a deficit  down significantly from the first quarter of last year's net profit of 1.6 billion won.



Kyobo Lifeplanet Life Insurance, a digital life insurer, also saw an increased quarterly loss of 4.5 billion won in the first quarter of this year, from a 4.3 billion won loss posted during the same period last year.



As digital insurance companies offer online-exclusive and app-based insurance policies, these companies mostly aim at millennials and Gen Z consumers, who find it easy to apply for insurance policies online.



Fitting the needs of the main target consumers, digital insurers tend to focus on selling short-term insurance policies, such as vehicle, tourism or cellphone damage insurance, rather than long-term insurance, which is more profitable for insurance companies. As short-term insurance products are relatively low in price, digital insurance providers find it hard to raise their profitability significantly.



In addition, the joining of new digital insurers into the local market is adding downward pressure on these firms' already-weak profitability. Kakao Pay plans to launch its digital insurance subsidiary during the third quarter, while Shinhan Financial Group is also preparing to strengthen its digital insurance business with its acquisition late last year of BNP Paribas Cardiff Non-Life Insurance.


EBRD subscribes to 240 million bond of food retailer Maxima Grupe

As part of 72 million of EBRD funding, Maxima commits to supporting new jobs and skills

Maxima already employs 500 Ukrainian refugees, commits to 720 more

Maxima Grupe, an existing EBRD client and owner of leading Lithuanian retail chain Maxima, has successfully issued a 240 million bond. The EBRD subscribed to 72 million of the issue.

The investment is part of the EBRDs Resilience and Livelihoods Framework, a 2 billion package designed to support the economies of Ukraine and other countries affected by Russias war on Ukraine. As part of the Framework, the EBRD also supports the functioning of capital markets in the region.

Present in several central European markets, including the Baltic states, Poland and Bulgaria, Maxima Grupe was one of the first companies to offer jobs to Ukrainian refugees. To date, the company has employed about 500 displaced Ukrainians. As part of the cooperation between EBRD and Maxima Grupe in relation to the current bond issue, Maxima Grupe has committed to hiring an additional 720 refugees, the overwhelming majority of whom are women.

Ian Brown, EBRD Head of the Baltic states, said: This project is an opportunity to support a bond issue by our client Maxima Grupe at a time when capital markets are feeling the impact of Russias war on Ukraine. We are proud that this project will help create hundreds of jobs for displaced Ukrainians in central Europe and the Baltic states.

Mantas Kuncaitis, the CEO of Maxima Grupe, said that he was pleased with the results of the issue. Last week saw significant market interest in our business, which led us to securing more than 20 investors, and more than half of the amount from international sources. I am delighted to see ongoing investor confidence towards us.

At the same time, he continued, this is a strong message of confidence in the security and prospects of the entire region in light of the war on Ukraine. Having strong partners such as the EBRD encourages us to maintain our current direction, and to improve even further.

This is the second EBRD collaboration with the company so far this year. In March, Maximas new (second) commercial paper (CP) issue was supported by the EBRD, which invested 5 million, following an investment in the first issue of 4.2 million in 2021. Commercial paper  short-term unsecured debt issued by companies with a fixed term  is still a new instrument for the region. It was pioneered by Maxima Grupe in the Baltic states with technical support from the EBRD under its Commercial Paper Framework.

Cooperation between the EBRD and Maxima started in 2018 when the EBRD helped the company issue its first 300 million bond, to which it also subscribed.

The EBRD has been investing in the Baltic states  Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania  since 1991. To date, the Banks total investment there stands at over 3 billion through more than 300 projects.
EBRD to invest Kc 1.32 billion in locally issued bond by Ceska sporitelna

Support for green economic recovery in the Czech Republic

Development of local capital market

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is facilitating the introduction of a new financial instrument on the Czech Republics capital market by investing more than Kc 1.32 billion in the first senior non-preferred bond issued locally by the countrys second-largest bank Ceska sporitelna. The Czech crown-denominated bond will be listed on the Prague Stock Exchange.

This is the first EBRD transaction in the Czech Republics financial sector after re-engagement with the country in 2021. It will contribute to the resilience of the local banking sector and help Ceska sporitelna meet regulatory requirements.

The Banks investment will also encourage green lending to the real sector and support a green economic recovery in the country. Ceska sporitelna is committed to allocating the equivalent of 120 per cent of the proceeds from the EBRD investment in the senior non-preferred bond to finance green projects.

Melis Ekmen Tabojer, EBRD Director for European Union (EU) Banks and Structured Finance, said: We are proud to support the local capital market during the current global geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty. The EBRD is supporting Ceska sporitelnas efforts to meet the Minimum Requirement for own funds and Eligible Liabilities (MREL) by helping to raise MREL-eligible funding on the local market. The project is also facilitating green lending in the country.

Under the regulations of the EU Banking Union, participating banks must meet regulatory targets to be able to absorb losses and restore their capital position, allowing them to continue their economic function during and after a crisis. MREL represents one of the key tools in enhancing banks resolvability.

The EBRD has to date invested more than 1.2 billion through 114 projects in the Czech Republic.
EBRD, EU to sign agreement for EU to support 70 million of EBRD loans to Ukraine

EU guarantees come from European Fund for Sustainable Development

EBRD loans supported are part of 1 billion Ukraine activity this year, with partners

The EBRD and European Union are further strengthening their already close cooperation on supporting Ukraine in wartime, formalising a commitment for the European Commission to provide guarantees to support 70 million of recent EBRD loans to Ukrainian companies that provide vital services to the countrys real economy.

These loans - part of the 1 billion which the EBRD will invest in Ukraine in 2022, with donors and partners - include 50 million in liquidity support to UkrZaliznytsya (UZ), Ukraines railway company, and support for the countrys pharmaceutical industry.

The guarantees are from the European Unions EFSD (European Fund for Sustainable Development), the financing arm of the EU External Investment Plan promoting investment in Africa and the EU Neighbourhood, and will partially mitigate the EBRDs risk of disbursement in the current war environment.

EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso and European Commission Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis met to sign the agreement in Lugano, Switzerland, on the fringes of an international conference to begin planning Ukraines post-war reconstruction.

In partnership with the European Union, we are proud to make a contribution to the continued running of key services and industries that help maintain everyday access to vital services for citizens. It is more important than ever to keep the real economy working, said President Renaud-Basso.

The EU stands with the Ukrainian government and people in their fight against the unjustified aggression from Russia. Thanks to our guarantee we enable EBRD to provide liquidity to the Ukrainian Railway company and to Farmak, the lead Ukrainian manufacturer in the pharmaceutical sector, thus ensuring vital service companies to continue to operate for the benefit of Ukrainian people, said Mr Dombrovskis.

To address the Ukrainian economys current needs, the EBRD is prioritising five areas: trade finance, energy security, vital infrastructure, food security (covering provision of liquidity to farmers via banks for the spring sowing campaign as well as to agribusiness companies and food retailers) and providing liquidity to pharmaceutical companies. Investments in all areas will involve risk-sharing with partners.

The EBRD was swift to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February and pledged to stand by Ukraine. In early April, the EBRDs Board of Governors voted to suspend open-endedly the access of Russian Federation and Belarus to EBRD finance and expertise, and the Bank has closed its offices in Russia and Belarus.

As well as providing a 2 billion resilience package for Ukraine and neighbouring countries affected by the war, the EBRD has pledged to help finance Ukraines reconstruction once conditions permit. The Lugano conference is a first international attempt to coordinate such efforts with the Ukrainian government.

The European Unions European Fund for Sustainable Development (EFSD) will support the project as part of a common programme with the EBRD, which focuses on municipal, infrastructure and industrial resilience in the European Neighbourhood East and European Neighbourhood South. It supports economies affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and now by the Russia-Ukraine war.
Marina Milovic, owner of Maja Promet, a honey brand from Serbia, radiates the positivity and energy so often associated with inspiring leaders. Maja Promet is a honey processing and distribution business and one of the very few in Serbia to export its products. But just as honeybees are natures unsung heroes, visiting over 1,000 flowers in a single trip to collect nectar, so is Marina a driven, spirited entrepreneur, working hard to expand her business into international markets.

An advisory project supported by the European Union (EU) helped Marina devise a new business strategy for acquiring new markets and developing her brand.

Growing up in an entrepreneurial family

Marina recounts how, at an early age, she developed her instincts watching her family work in the honey business her father had started back in 1991. She grasped the importance of risk and personal sacrifice in entrepreneurship, seeing everyone around her juggling multiple priorities and investing all their efforts into growing the enterprise.

In 2007, after university, Marina started working at the family company. But after her father passed away, she and her brother felt they had been left to their own devices.

I faced an uphill battle the moment I inherited my fathers company, says Marina. Although I was generally familiar with how the business worked, I lacked the skill-set and know-how in operations and anything to do with contracts, tenders, and so on. It was all elusive to me.

A busy bee in the honey chain

As a honey processing and distribution business, Maja Promet purchases a wide variety of honey from over 2,000 different producers, processes it, conducts quality control and sells the final product to retail chains and confectionary stores across Serbia, as well as international markets.

When Marina took over Maja Promet, she and her team relocated to a very small space in Belgrade, Serbia. My team was very brave at the time, learning by doing, she says. We had to fight in earnest, but we managed to start exporting honey to North Macedonia and acquired a few private labels in Serbia.

The first production facility Marina purchased helped buoy her business, encouraging her to work towards meeting EU standards in honey production and apply for a certificate in order to export to the EU.

Although demand was strong and business had picked up, Marina faced several challenges in the market. With high operational costs on the one hand and an uptick in the price of honey on the other, she was caught between a rock and a hard place.

After hearing about the EBRDs Advice for Small Businesses programme in Serbia, Marina reached out to the Banks representatives in Belgrade for help with a project she had in mind.

I realised that I needed to find new sales channels for Maja Promet and change my strategy if I wanted to increase my turnover and grow my business, she says.

Marina was matched with a consultant who worked with her to strengthen her position on the local market while uncovering new revenue streams. As a result, Maja Promet acquired new customers within the networks of the biggest retailers in Serbia and increased honey exports to the EU.

The project provided the wind in our sails that we needed to start thinking about our business differently, says Marina. When you do one thing for so long  when youre involved in a single industry for so long  there is a lot that passes under your radar.

Reflecting on what motivates her personally, Marina adds that she draws a lot of inspiration from her team, who demonstrate love and passion for what they do. Products will always be good if theyre made by happy people, she concludes.
A man charged with the murder of a woman in Cork in 1981 was further remanded in custody when he appeared before Judge James McNulty at Clonakilty District Court in West Cork on Tuesday morning.

Noel Long (73) with an address at Maulbawn, Passage West, Co. Cork was charged at Skibbereen District Court on June 28 with the murder of 54-year-old Nora Sheehan at an address unknown on a date between June 6 and June 12 in 1981.

The body of Nora Sheehan was found by forestry workers at The Viewing Point, Shippool Woods near Innishannon in Co. Cork on June 12 1981 showing signs that she had suffered a violent death.

The mother-of-three from Ballyphehane in Cork city was last seen alive six days before the discovery of her body when she attended a medical appointment for a dog bite at the South Infirmary Hospital in the city on June 6th 1981 and disappeared shortly afterwards.

Judge McNulty remanded Mr Long in custody for a further week to appear at Skibbereen District Court on Tuesday, July 12 at 2pm when a book of evidence for the case is expected to be served.

At the previous hearing in Skibbereen on June 28 Mr Long made no response to the charges, defence solicitor Eddie Burke said that his client was a 73-year-old retired man living on a State pension and would require legal aid.

He added that Mr Long has a number of medical issues and asked that the appropriate attention was given to his medical needs in Cork Prison.




An industrywide inspection into banks in Korea is currently under way after abnormal foreign currency transactions have been found at major lenders, a top financial regulator said Tuesday.







"A probe into all banks is currently under way in reflection of worries that there could be such similar transactions," Lee Bok-hyun, head of the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), told reporters after a meeting with CEOs of financial firms in Seoul.







"I know that there are huge concerns about strange foreign currency transactions and problems that they could cause," he added. "A task force has been formed to probe such cases, and we have also increased its staff recently in order to conduct probes in a short time."







Woori Bank earlier reported to the FSS that one of its local branches has handled around 800 billion won ($617 million) worth of overseas money transfers over the past year, which are suspected to be fraudulent remittances given its much larger-than-usual transaction size.







Shinhan Bank also reported a similar case to the FSS. The FSS is currently conducting inspections into those two lenders. (Yonhap)






Massive rainfall in Australias most populous state of New South Wales (NSW) has brought the worst flooding in decades, forcing more than 18,000 people to flee their homes.

The rain began on Thursday, but the inundation increased over the weekend, CNN reported. Currently, 38 locations in the state are considered natural disaster areas. Some areas have seen rainfall five times the monthly average for March in just four days. The flooding comes a year after the region was scorched by record wildfires, in yet another example of how the climate crisis fuels extreme weather.

Communities who were battered by the bushfires are now being battered by the floods and a deep drought prior to that. I dont know anytime in our states history where weve had these extreme weather conditions in such quick succession in the middle of a pandemic, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian told journalists, as CNN reported. Youve been through three or four incidents which are life changing on top of each other. It can make you feel like you are at breaking point. Miraculously, Berejiklian said no lives had been reported lost as of late Monday, as BBC News reported. However, there has been massive damage. Photos have shown homes, roads and trees completely underwater, according to CNN. In one incident, a young couples house was swept away on what would have been their wedding day. It literally floated like a houseboat, the whole house, fully intact, the couples landlord and homes owner Peter Bowie told Australias ABC News. It went so fast. It went nearly a kilometre all intact, 100 per cent. This house just lifted up and floated down the river. Overall, the flooding has prompted more than 700 flood rescues, BBC News reported. The flooding has especially impacted the suburbs west of Sydney, New South Waless capital, which saw its wettest day of the year on Sunday, when it received 4.4 inches of rain, as Reuters reported. The Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers have flooded much of northwestern Sydney, and parts of western Sydney have seen their worst flooding since 1961. The NSW Rural Fire Service shared video footage of some of the areas impacted by the Hawkesbury River flooding, as 9News reported. Many areas across #NSW currently resemble an inland sea, the fire service tweeted.

Many areas across #NSW currently resemble an inland sea. Once the rain stops & the water begins to reside, there will be a massive combined effort to clean up. However until that happens, listen to warnings, follow the @NSWSES advice, look out for family, friends & neighbours. pic.twitter.com/vhDqxkw40E  NSW RFS (@NSWRFS) March 22, 2021 Meanwhile, rainfall has also caused rivers to overflow in the southeastern part of the state of Queensland, according to BBC News. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said Monday that around 10 million Australians living in an area roughly the size of Alaska were impacted by weather warnings. The warnings come as two systems collide and affect every mainland state in the country except one.
Founded in 2005 as an Ohio-based environmental newspaper, EcoWatch is a digital platform dedicated to publishing quality, science-based content on environmental issues, causes, and solutions.

The Biden administration issued a proposal Friday for how to handle offshore drilling over the next five years.

The proposal would ban new drilling for oil and gas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts but allow up to 11 lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaskas Cook Inlet, falling short of the full ban backed by climate activists.

By proposing as many as 11 new offshore drilling lease sales, President Biden is taking us down the same old path toward more spills and a warmer climate, Environment Americas oceans campaigns director Kelsey Lamp said in a statement emailed to EcoWatch. This plan would lock in long-term risks that, with renewable energy on the rise, we increasingly dont need.

President Joe Biden had promised during his campaign to prevent new oil and gas drilling on federal lands, as The Guardian reported.

No more drilling on federal lands, no more drilling, including offshore  no ability for the oil industry to continue to drill  period, he said during a 2020 debate with Bernie Sanders.

However, his administrations early pause on new drilling on public lands was overturned by a U.S. district judge in Louisiana, as AP News reported. The 11 potential lease sales offered by the administration  10 in the Gulf and one in Alaska  are much fewer than the 47 sales proposed by the Trump administrations Department of the Interior (DOI). The Biden administrations proposal offers several options that include no new lease sales between 2023 and 2028.

A Proposed Program is not a decision to issue specific leases or to authorize any drilling or development, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in the announcement. From Day One, President Biden and I have made clear our commitment to transition to a clean energy economy. Today, we put forward an opportunity for the American people to consider and provide input on the future of offshore oil and gas leasing. The time for the public to weigh in on our future is now.

The proposal is now open to public comment for 90 days, according to AP News. Following the comment period, a final proposal will be released 60 days before the Interior Secretary approves it.

The issue of drilling on public lands has been subject to a legal back and forth since Biden took office. The administration offered a lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico following the orders of the Louisiana judge only to have it overturned by another court ruling on environmental grounds. The administration offered its first onshore lease sale last week in eight Western states including Wyoming, which brought in a total of $22 million in bids, according to The Guardian. However, green groups have also sued to block the Wyoming sale.

The Biden administration decision to hold this lease sale directly conflicts with the commitments it has made to address climate change, Earthjustice senior attorney Michael Freeman said in a statement emailed to EcoWatch. Holding a large lease sale in Wyoming will do nothing to reduce gas prices. But it will boost profits for oil and gas companies while the American people bear the brunt of our worsening climate crisis. We are running out of time for the administration to protect our future.

Proponents of drilling argue it is necessitated by high energy prices.

Our allies across the free world are in desperate need of American oil and gas, Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin  whose pro-fossil fuel advocacy has scuppered major climate legislation in the Senate  said in a statement reported by The Guardian. I am disappointed to see that zero lease sales is even an option on the table.

However, environmental groups argue that new drilling wont do anything to relieve high pump prices.

Expanding offshore drilling puts more ocean waters, marine life and coastal communities at risk of catastrophic blowouts and ongoing harm. If the administration chooses a plan that expands leasing, it will deepen our dependence on the fuels driving the climate crisis and padding the war chests of belligerent petro states. And it wont do a thing to ease summer pump prices, President and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council Manish Bapna said in a statement emailed to EcoWatch. Oil and gas companies already lease enough of the Gulf to cover half the state of South Carolina. Thats plenty, the industry itself says, to produce for another decade or more.
Founded in 2005 as an Ohio-based environmental newspaper, EcoWatch is a digital platform dedicated to publishing quality, science-based content on environmental issues, causes, and solutions.

The ice serac that collapsed on the Marmolada mountain, near Punta Rocca, on July 4, 2022. PIERRE TEYSSOT / AFP via Getty Images

Earlier this week, at least seven people died when a chunk of a glacier from the tallest mountain in the Dolomites, Marmolada, collapsed, The New York Times reported. At least 14 people were also missing.

The recent heatwave in Italy has been cited as a factor, as large portions of ice are thought to have melted, reported The Guardian. According to scientists, events like the glacier collapse in the Dolomites are likely to happen more often as the planet warms.

The Marmolada glacier collapse is a natural disaster linked directly to climate change, said professor in glaciology at the University of Cambridge Poul Christoffersen, as Bloomberg reported. High elevation glaciers, such as the Marmolada, are often steep and relying on cold temperatures below zero degrees Celsius to keep them stable. But climate change means more and more meltwater.

Spokesperson for the National Alpine and Cave Rescue Corps Walter Milan pointed out that recent temperatures at the peak of Marmolada had been above 50 degrees Fahrenheit, reported The Guardian, which Milan said was abnormal.

According to experts from the National Research Council in Italy, much of the Marmolada glacier has already disappeared and it wont exist in the next 25 to 30 years.

Director of the Bristol Glaciology Centre at the University of Bristol professor Jonathan Bamber noted that not much snow fell in Italys Dolomites mountain range last winter amidst a drought. Bamber added that, with the abnormal high temperatures so far this summer, the glacier was rapidly melting.

The section that broke off was part of a hanging glacier with seracs or ice cliffs that become particularly unstable during warm conditions such as those in the Dolomites right now, Bamber said, as The Guardian reported.

The same combination of factors that caused the collapse of the Marmolada glacier is affecting other mountain ranges.

Catastrophic glacier collapses such as this are becoming more frequent, said Christoffersen, as reported by The Guardian.

Carlo Budel, a lodge keeper atop Marmolada glacier, posted a video of the glacier on Facebook just days before the incident, with a caption saying, Poor Marmolada glacier, The New York Times reported.

Povero ghiacciaio della Marmolada si sentono i torrenti scorrere Posted by Carlo Budel on Thursday, June 30, 2022

Universite de Lausanne in Switzerland researcher Jacques Mourey said that climate change had likely weakened the glacier, which then collapsed during the heatwave.

When the glacier melts, it means there is melting water that goes all the way down to the bottom of the glacier, when it gets to the bottom of the rock it causes the ice to slide and this causes an avalanche, Mourey said, as reported by The Guardian.

Mourey went on to say that a large crevice in the glacier had collapsed, and that without it  added to the melting of the glacier due to the unusually high temperatures caused by climate change  the avalanche likely wouldnt have happened.

Climbing is becoming more risky as climate change alters the integrity of mountain structures, Mourey added.

We showed already that some areas have become too dangerous or too difficult for mountaineers to access, climate change is already really impacting mountaineering, said Mourey, as The Guardian reported.

After traveling to the site of the avalanche, Italys Prime Minister Mario Draghi said that the tragic event certainly depends on the deterioration of the environment and the climatic situation, according to Bloomberg.

Draghi added that the government needed to take precautions to ensure that events like the Marmolada glacier collapse have a very low probability of happening or can even be avoided, as reported by Bloomberg.
Usually, humans huddle up in blankets to stay warm in the winter.

For the glaciers of Switzerland, however, the opposite is true. A ski resort in the Swiss Alps is using blankets to protect a glacier from melting in the summer sun.

We lay the fleece over the glacier like a natural protective shield, Gian Darms, who handles snow conditions for a cable car operator called Titlis Bergbahnen, told Reuters.

Resort staff at one of Switzerland's most popular Alpine destinations are covering parts of Mount Titlis with a protective polyester fleecing to stave off summer melting https://t.co/HSyXgO1DXd pic.twitter.com/cNwtfig4KM  Reuters (@Reuters) August 27, 2021

The strategy is being employed atop the 10,623-foot Mount Titlis. The mountains glacier has already lost ice in the last few decades and is expected to disappear entirely within the next 50 years due to the climate crisis.

To delay this process, resort employees spend five to six weeks every summer covering parts of the glacier with protective polyester fleece. This radiates the suns energy back into the atmosphere, preventing melting and also preserving the snow that fell on the glacier the winter before. The employees then remove the coating and use collected snow to fill any cracks in the glaciers surface.

While this is not the first year that the resort has employed this strategy, the amount of glacier covered has increased over time to almost 100,000 square meters (approximately 1,076,391 square feet).

[W]eve been covering more and more in the last few years, Darms told Reuters in a video. Almost 30,000 square meters [approximately 322,917 square feet] more this year alone.

The ski resorts actions are a symptom of how the climate crisis is impacting mountain glaciers in addition to polar ice. A 2019 study found that the European Alps would lose around two-thirds of their glacier cover by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced and more than 90 percent if no action is taken. Another study published this year concluded that mountain glaciers were melting at unprecedented rates, with the fastest-melting glaciers in Alaska and the Alps.

This has serious implications for the European ski industry, Reuters noted, and other resorts have attempted to cover their glaciers. The first time this was tried in Switzerland was in 2004 when white tarpaulin was used over the Gurschenfirn glacier above the Andermatt resort, according to the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL). Since then, seven other glaciers in the Swiss Alps have been covered. One small glacier at the Diavolezza resort was even brought back to life using this tactic, according to WSL.

A recent study from WSL, ETH Zurich and the University of Fribourg found that this strategy was effective to protect smaller local glaciers, such as those at resorts. In Switzerland, Glaciers under coverings experienced approximately 60 percent less ice and snow loss than other glaciers nearby. However, the strategy is not cost-effective on a wider scale. It would cost a little more than $1 billion a year to cover all of Switzerlands glaciers.

The only way to effectively limit the global retreat of glaciers is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus the warming of the atmosphere, study leader Matthias Huss concluded.
Founded in 2005 as an Ohio-based environmental newspaper, EcoWatch is a digital platform dedicated to publishing quality, science-based content on environmental issues, causes, and solutions.

At least one person has died and around 50,000 were warned they might need to flee their homes as Sydney, Australia, is experiencing its fourth major flood emergency in 16 to 18 months.

The flooding was caused by a storm that brought a years worth of rainfall to some areas in just three days, as Reuters reported.

Rainfall now comes in short, sharp bursts rather than long gentle periods, so were overwhelmed, Greg Mullins, the former fire and rescue commissioner of New South Wales (NSW)  the Australian state where Sydney is located  told The Guardian. This is climate change in action.

In addition to the intensity of the rainfall, Mullins said the frequency of extreme weather events was increasing because of the climate crisis. The Sydney area experienced massive flooding in March of 2021 and then again in March and April of this year. For some Sydney-area residents, this has taken a personal toll. Terry, a resident of Lansvale in southwest Sydney, recounted to Australian Broadcasting Corp. television all the times that his home had flooded, as AP News reported.

Well, it happened in 1986 and 88, then it didnt happen for 28 years and, so, 2016 and 2020 and now its happened four times this year, Terry said.

Darren Osmotherly, who owns the Paradise Cafe that caters to disabled houseboat owners, also told CNN that he was moving furniture out of the waters reach for the fourth time in 18 months.

Just as youre recovering from the last disaster another one comes along and knocks you off your feet, Mullins told The Guardian.

The latest flooding comes on the heels of a storm that dumped around 1.6 feet of rain over parts of the Sydney area in a two-day period, as CNN reported. This caused several dams to overflow, including the Warragamba Dam, which is the largest in any Australian city.

As of Tuesday, around 50,000 people in New South Wales had been told that they either had to evacuate their homes or had to be ready to do so, according to Reuters.

At least one person has died in the deluge, as a man was rescued from the flood waters Sunday but could not be revived, The Independent reported.

We saw a helicopter out there with essentially a team of police jumping into the water, trying to save someone, witness Luke Touma told 7NEWS, according to The Independent.

While the storm itself is expected to move away from Sydney Tuesday, authorities say the flood risk remains.

This event is far from over, New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet told reporters, according to Reuters. Wherever you are, please be careful when youre driving on our roads. There are still substantial risks for flash flooding.

And, once the waters do recede, people will have to pick up the pieces yet again. Everybody is in shock. Everybody is traumatised, Linda Strickland, who co-founded a local charity in the hard-hit town of Windsor, northwest of Sydney, told BBC News. The community is still recovering from the last flood and the one before. Some people are still recovering from the fires, she added.




New samples of tick found during research on tick-transmitted cattle diseases in Arkansas, US





Scientists conducting research on tick-transmitted cattle diseases in Arkansas, the United States, have turned up new samples of the invasive Asian longhorned tick.

The Asian longhorned tick, also known as a bush tick, was found in May by Elizabeth Smith, extension entomology programme tech for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, who was collecting ticks from cattle at the Savoy Research Complex. The tick was sent to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, lab for testing. APHIS is part of the United States Department of Agriculture.

The invasive tick can kill its host by swarming the animal but can also transmit a protozoan parasite called Theileria orientalis. One Theileria genotype, Ikeda, can kill cattle by attacking blood cells.

The tick collection is part of a broad surveillance project to monitor spread of cattle diseases such as anaplasmosis through ticks. The project is being conducted by Kelly Loftin, extension entomologist; Emily McDermott, assistant professor of entomology; and Jeremy Powell, veterinarian and animal science professor. The work is a collaboration among personnel within the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the research and outreach arms of the Division of Agriculture.

"During that four-day sampling in May, we collected from over 300 head of cattle," Loftin said. "Virtually all cattle had lone star ticks attached. The cow that had an Asian longhorned tick attached also had lone star nymphs and adults. Elizabeth recognised the tick as one she had not collected before."

"We collected two more adult female Asian longhorned ticks on June 9," Loftin said. Smith and others collected nymphs from Benton County in mid-May.

The Asian longhorned tick was first found in Arkansas in June 2018 on a dog in Benton County. The USDA first confirmed the presence of the tick in 2017 in New Jersey and said it is likely to have arrived in the US seven years earlier. The mechanism for its arrival in the country isn't known, but the USDA said it entered on pets, livestock or people.

In addition to Arkansas, the tick is also found in Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

"Producers and veterinarians should be aware of this disease and especially if they are seeing animals that are anaplasma symptomatic but are not testing positive, Theileria is something that should be considered," McDermott said.

McDermott said while there haven't been any reports in Arkansas of cattle being killed by swarms of Asian long-horned ticks, "in North Carolina and Ohio, there are some reports of calves succumbing to these tick infestations. We have not seen those numbers in Arkansas yet."

The disease caused by the Theileria organism was first identified in the US in 2017 in a Virginia beef cattle herd that showed symptoms of anemia. The cattle tested negative for anaplasmosis, but later found to have theileriosis.

Additionally, researchers found the Asian longhorned tick even though the herd had no contact with outside cattle.

Earlier this month, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture announced the finding of theileriosis in a herd in middle Tennessee.

When it comes to symptoms, "Theileria looks a lot like anaplasmosis in a cow," said Jeremy Powell, veterinarian and professor-animal science. "It's very common to see lethargy, general weakness, poor appetite, fever, pale mucous membranes and anemia. "One of the biggest differences is that typically  but not always  we see anaplasmosis only affecting mature cows. The younger ones can get it, but don't show clinical symptoms. That's not the case with Theileria.

"We really don't have effective treatments, and there's no available vaccine for this.

Loftin said the team was applying for a grant from the USDA to continue its work by determining how prevalent Theileria might be in these ticks within Arkansas; determining host preference and environmental tolerance of the ticks; and continuing to conduct educational outreach to cattle producers, veterinarians and extension personnel.

"We are just scratching the surface when it comes to this tick," Loftin said. "There is a lot of research that needs to be done to protect our herds from this and other tick-transmitted diseases."

- Magnolia Banner News




Nutrient-rich coconut water may improve pig breeding and meat quality, study in Uganda claims

Using nutrient-rich coconut water to artificially inseminate female pigs could improve breeding and meat quality, a project carried out in Uganda found.

Uganda has the highest demand for pork in East Africa at 3.4 kilogrammes per capita per year and a population of 3.6 million pigs providing livelihoods to over 1.1 million households, according to the International Livestock Research Institute.

Researchers conceived the community action project after realising that most smallholder pig farmers keep poor breeds resulting in low growth rates, few piglets produced and poor quality pork with little lean meat and high-fat content.

"Artificial insemination facilitates the collection of boar semen from superior boars to improve the genotypes, and subsequently higher productivity is achieved," said Elly Ndyomugyenyi, the project's lead researcher and senior lecturer at the department of animal production at Uganda's Gulu University.

Farmers take fresh coconut water from five-month-old fruit known to be rich in nutrients such as sodium and potassium, he added. The water is used to aid insertion and delivery of the semen into the female pig's reproductive canal.

"High concentration of sodium and potassium in the green coconuts are factors which help in sperm motility and longevity," Ndyomugyenyi explained. "Coconut fruits are readily available in the local markets. They are sold like other local fruits."

Extraction is done by opening the fruit with a sanitised blade, after which the water is poured into a clean beaker before it is transferred using a cotton cloth.

The project, which is an initiative of Uganda-based Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM), started in 2017 and has engaged nearly 1,000 smallholders in Uganda, Ndyomugyenyi said.

Farmers under the project have been trained in better husbandry and are now organised into a pig farmers' association  something that never previously existed in the area  said Anthony Egeru, who heads the community project at RUFORUM.

Natural mating using boar (male pigs) comes with a myriad of risks including disease transmission and inbreeding that leads to poor quality offspring, he explained.

It exposes pigs to the deadly African swine fever virus due to the movement of boars from one place to another. In many instances, a whole village can use one or two boars to mate sow, increasing the risk of transmitting diseases.

Joab Malanda, a pig production expert at the department of animal science at Egerton University (Kenya), said that, as well as aiding the insemination process, coconut water helps increase the number of viable live spermatozoa cells and extends their life.

"Outside a boar's body, the spermatozoa will live for about four hours, after which they start to die due to starvation and temperature change, but when it is added to coconut water, they will live for up to 96 hours, allowing insemination at the appropriate time," he told SciDev.Net.

Malanda said that coconut water also allows multiplication, as an average of 200 milliliters of semen harvested from a boar can be divided up to ten times, meaning that a single "ejaculation" can inseminate ten sows as opposed to one in natural mating.

But for farmers to do the insemination, they have to be trained in the extraction of the semen [and] its preservation, Malanda explained.

According to Ndyomugyenyi, there is a ready market for pigs and pork in Uganda, meaning farmers will pay for the service knowing that they will not make any loss.

"Artificial insemination can be adopted sustainably and scaled up anywhere else, especially among smallholder farmers," said Ndyomugyenyi. "This is mainly because coconut fruit is in almost every part of the African continent."

- SciDev.Net




Germany's latest African swine fever outbreak deals major blow to sector



Analysts said the discovery of African swine fever (ASF) at Germany's key swine region of Lower Saxony is likely to deal a major blow to the sector, with important markets such as China expected to maintain its pork import ban on Germany for years, Reuters reported.

The first outbreak in the northwest of the country, where a sizable portion of Germany's swine industry is concentrated, occurred on a farm in Emsland, Lower Saxony.

ASF, which is usually fatal to pigs but harmless to humans, was first discovered in eastern Germany in September 2020 and is thought to have spread from Poland through wild boars. This led China to impose a ban on the importation of German pork, ending a trade that was generating about US$1.04 billion in revenue annually.

Other significant importers, such as South Korea and Japan, followed suit. A rival EU producer, Spain, was one country that was able to gain new business in Asia as a result of the bans.

Justin Sherrard, global strategist for animal protein at Rabobank, said this is very alarming news and if there were hopes that ASF had been confined to east Germany and that the disease was under control, these have now been completely thrown out of the window.

Germany's national statistics office said, Lower Saxony is the country's largest single production region for swine, with 6.4 million pigs and piglets.

Tim Koch, meat analyst at German market consultancy AMI, said China's import ban on German pork can be expected to continue as long as ASF cases continue to occur in Germany, with any hopes that China might remove the ban soon are gone.

Germany had long been the top pork producer in the EU, but Spain overtook it last year after it was denied access to China, the biggest pork importer in the world.

China, which has the largest swine herd in the world, has also experienced significant losses as a result of ASF but is now starting to rebound.

China's demand for pork imports from Europe has already decreased, and Koch noted that it might take years before the Chinese market is once again open to German pork exports.

Despite government efforts to contain the disease to east Germany, a spread of the illness had been anticipated due to the growing number of wild boar in Germany and their propensity for long distance travel. Germany has seen about 4,000 ASF cases in wild boar, mostly in the eastern states of Brandenburg and Saxony.

Concerns about the outbreak's potential to spread to neighbouring nations have grown.

Sherrad said the concern is that ASF could move to the big pork industries in the Netherlands and France if it can make a 500-kilometer jump from east Germany to north Germany.

- Reuters




Bangladesh to support poultry production's sustainability, says minister

Bangladesh will provide support to ensure safe and sustained poultry production, said Fisheries and Livestock Minister SM Rezaul Karim on July 4.

"(The Bangladeshi) Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina-led government will provide assistance to whatever is needed for the development of the poultry sector," he said.

Karim was speaking at a recent discussion titled "Safe and sustainable poultry production: Expectation and Plan". World's Poultry Science Association's Bangladesh unit organised the discussion virtually.

The minister said steps will also be taken to modernise the country's poultry policy, UNB reported. He urged all parties to consider the issue of branding for the development of the poultry sector with utmost importance.

Furthermore, Karim underlined the need for reducing the dependence on imported poultry feed.

He advised businesses to set up a poultry feed industry in the country, promising that the government will provide tax exemption for importing relevant machinery.

- The Financial Express




Gombe State, Nigeria governor expresses commitment to self-sufficiency via livestock production

Gombe State, Nigeria, will ensure self-sufficiency and sustainable food security through agriculture and livestock production that will contribute to improving the socio-economic status of the Nigerian citizenry, especially for rural dwellers that are predominantly farmers.

Gombe State Governor Alhaji Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya has restated his administration's commitment in this regard during the start of a mass vaccination campaign against trans-boundary animal diseases for the North-East Zone at Dadinkowa, Gombe State.

The targeted diseases include contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, (CBPPV), foot and mouth disease (FMDV), Pest Des Petits Ruminants (PPRV) and Newcastle disease (ND) among others.

Yahaya noted that the diseases have high mortality rate and are easily contagious with the potential to spread rapidly, thereby causing socio-economic and public health consequences in Nigerian states and the nation in general.

He explained that his administration's efforts are geared towards the eradication of these diseases through massive annual vaccination campaign to contain the livestock diseases and achieve herd immunity for prevention and possible eradication. The governor also noted that the start of the vaccination campaign demonstrates the Nigerian government's commitment to boost animals' health and production as well as preventing setbacks in livestock management through the control of trans-boundary animal diseases.

"To reduce the impact of diseases on our peasant pastoralist, this administration, despite scarcity of funds, has procured enough vaccines and other veterinary equipment for the vaccination exercise," Yahaya said.

In order to achieve improvement in livestock production, Gombe State has keyed into the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) as well as Livestock Productivity and Resilience Support (L-PRES) project of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development which are aimed at improving livestock production and curbing farmers/herders clashes, he said.

Yahaya expressed hope that the vaccination exercise will galvanise livestock farmers to rededicate themselves to the development of the livestock sub-sector, thereby improving livestock production in Gombe State, the North East Zone and nationwide.

He said his administration would continue to align its agricultural policies and programmes with those of the federal government's agenda on transforming the agricultural sector.

- thisdaylive.com
The newly translated Korean edition of "Pachinko," written by Min Jin Lee, will hit the local bookshelves at the end of this month. Courtesy of Influential Inc.



By Park Han-sol



The newly translated Korean edition of "Pachinko," the internationally acclaimed saga chronicling the lives of four generations of a "Zainichi" (ethnic Koreans in Japan) family, will hit local bookshelves in the coming weeks, three months after it went out of print due to issues with the publishing contract.



Influential Inc., the new local publisher of Korean-American writer Min Jin Lee's historical fiction novel, will release the two-part volume separately  the first book on July 27 and the second before the end of August.



Back in April, Munhak Sasang, the publishing house that first released the book's Korean edition in 2018, announced that it had failed to renew the contract with the Eric Yang Agency, which represents the author. It eventually pulled the remaining copies off of the shelves in the domestic market despite the title's growing popularity following the release of Apple TV+'s drama of the same title.



"The book's initial edition contained a number of mistranslations," Seo Keum-sun of Influential Inc. told a local news outlet. "There were parts, where liberally translated phrases and literally translated expressions were inconsistently jumbled together. In the revised edition, it was our goal to better preserve the author's intent within the pages."



The upcoming publication, which has been translated by Shin Seung-mi, will also feature the novelist's "letter to Korean readers," according to the publisher.



Meanwhile, Lee's "Pachinko" touches on the harrowing survival of ethnic Koreans during and after the 1910-45 Japanese colonial period, as it follows an immigrant family's struggle to find a sense of belonging and reaffirm their hybrid identities.



Zainichi Koreans, many of whom were first mobilized during the colonial era to toil in coal mines, military construction sites and factories, form one of Japan's biggest ethnic minorities and have long been the subject of hate speech and discrimination in Japanese society.



The book's title comes from the pinball-like slot machine popular in the country. Operating the pachinko parlor was one of only few viable means of earning a livelihood for ethnic Koreans in the mid-20th century.



In 2017, "Pachinko" was listed as one of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times and became a finalist for National Book Awards.



This March, it was adapted into Apple TV+'s namesake original drama series, starring Oscar-winning Youn Yuh-jung as well as Kim Min-ha and Lee Min-ho. The show's popularity in Korea has led the novel to become a bestselling title in April.






Malaysia's poultry breeders call for chicken export ban to be lifted



The Johor Poultry Breeders Association from the state of Johor, Malaysia has called for the country's chicken export ban to be lifted or the domestic sector will lose out, following Singapore's approval of Indonesia as a new import source for poultry, The Straits Times reported.

Lau Ka Leng, the association secretary, said it is not too late for the government to lift the ban, but any further delay and chicken breeders will suffer.

Even after the ban is lifted, he said it would take a long time to be able to export chicken to the country once Singapore commits to having Indonesia as its source of chicken.

Indonesia has been authorised as Singapore's new supplier of frozen, chilled, and processed chicken meat, according to the Singapore Food Agency. Brazil, Thailand, and Australia are some of Singapore's current sources.

Chicken exports to Singapore were banned by Malaysia in early June until domestic prices and production reached a stable level.

Standard chicken's maximum price in Peninsular Malaysia has been set at MYR 9.40 (~US$2.13; MYR 1 = US$0.23) per kg as of July 1.

Lau said that eventually Malaysia would serve as Singapore's primary chicken supplier once more.



He said the cost of chicken in Malaysia is still one of the lowest in southeast Asia, and the size of the chickens they produce is higher.

- The Straits Times




FMD in Bali, Indonesia, raises infection risk in Australia, veterinarian warns

The risk of foot and mouth disease reaching Australia within the next six months is now "extremely high", a leading analyst and veterinarian warned, with Indonesian authorities confirming FMD has now spread to Bali, Indonesia.

The highly infectious livestock disease was detected in 63 cows at three locations around the island on July 1, Indonesia's Ministry of Agriculture said. It comes as West Australians are expected to descend on the tourist hotspot this week as winter school holidays begin in WA.

FMD was detected among cattle in East Java in early May and has now spread to 22 Indonesian provinces including Bali.

The latest infections bring Indonesia's total to more than 230,000 confirmed cases. According to Beef Central, a lockdown has been imposed to stop the delivery of livestock outside Bali.

With increasing numbers of Australians visiting Bali as COVID-19 restrictions ease, Dr. Ross Ainsworth said the risk of transmission to Australia was heightened.

"In my opinion, the risk (of transmission of FMD from Indonesia to Australia) is extremely high over the next one to six months," Dr. Ainsworth wrote in the Southeast Asian Beef Market Report.

As well as the rapid spread of FMD throughout Indonesia, and the rebounding of the country's tourism sector as travel restrictions ease, he said there were two other factors which together created a "more immediate" threat of transmission to Australia.

These were the limited quantities of vaccine available to protect Indonesian livestock and the "large numbers" of pigs and more than 600,000 head of cattle spread across Bali.

"Infected animals excrete virus into the air and through all secretions, including saliva," Dr. Ainsworth said. "Pigs are multipliers of the virus as they excrete up to 3,000 times more virus into the environment than ruminants."

Some industry players, including Global AgriTrends livestock market analyst Simon Quilty, have called for Australians to be banned from visiting Indonesia while FMD continues to run rampant.

Dr. Ainsworth said there was no need for this but stricter protocols should be implemented.

"Until Bali is fully protected by vaccination of its cattle and pig populations, an increase in the attention paid to tourists returning to Australia, especially their footwear, seems to be warranted," he said. "Considering the magnitude of the impact of an outbreak of FMD in Australia and the dramatically increased risk presented by the current epidemic in Indonesia, it would be appropriate to upgrade the biosecurity measures to match this increasing risk.

"Travellers are already used to a multitude of annoying COVID interventions. Additional requirements, such as ensuring shoes are clean and walking through a wet sponge infused with disinfectant before boarding and after leaving the flight, would seem to be simple and sensible measures which might help to address the new level of risk."

Dr. Ainsworth said FMD risk would return to "more traditional levels" when Indonesia's susceptible animal populations were fully protected by a comprehensive vaccination programme.

Vaccination has begun in infected provinces according to DAWE, with Australia having so far committed $910,000 for vaccine procurement and communication campaigns in Indonesia.

- PerthNow
O. Sushytska/EIB

At the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano, the EIB reaffirmed its strong support to rebuilding the country.

The EIB offered the new EU-Ukraine Gateway Trust Fund to support urgent and long-term investing in Ukraine's reconstruction.

In the fifth month of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EIBs solidarity response reached almost 4.7 billion for Ukraines urgent liquidity needs and support for Ukrainian refugees.

The Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) Teresa Czerwinska and the acting Managing Director of EIB Global, Markus Berndt, spoke at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano and shared the EIBs views on Ukraines recovery. They reaffirmed the EU Bank's steadfast position on the importance and urgency of investing in Ukraine's European future, even as fighting continues across the country. Emphasising its support for the recovery plan presented at the conference, the EIB offered a new instrument, the EU-Ukraine Gateway Trust Fund. This financing instrument could support Ukraines early and long-term recovery and the countrys journey towards EU membership.

Describing the role of the European Investment Bank in the reconstruction plan as integral part of the EU family, EIB Vice-President Teresa Czerwinska said: The EIB very much welcomes Ukraines first comprehensive recovery plan presented today at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano. We stand ready to offer our technical and financial expertise in the further elaboration of Ukraines recovery strategy and to help the country to exit the emergency mode and start rebuilding its infrastructure. We are committed to working closely with Ukraine, with the European Commission, and with our partner financial institutions, to do whatever we can to support Ukraines recovery and its journey towards EU Membership. For this purpose, we propose to set up a new instrument, called EU-Ukraine Gateway Trust Fund, to catalyse private and public investments in this direction.

EU-Ukraine Gateway Trust Fund to support Ukraine Recovery Plan

The EU-Ukraine Gateway Trust Fund could foster Ukraines resilience, sustainable and smart infrastructure, and the overall revitalisation of the economy; it could also support Ukraines accession pathway to the EU.

This trust fund could allow for contributions from EU Member States and other countries and partners, further facilitating cooperation among donors, and ensuring efficient and effective fund management. The instrument could be operational in a matter of weeks and would be tailored to the political steer and control requirements of the Ukraine Reconstruction Platform envisaged by the EU.

The Fund would be a comprehensive instrument that includes guarantees, investment grants (to be rolled-out partially through blending with loans) as well as technical assistance and advisory services to help improve the quality of projects and their subsequent implementation.

EIB response to the war in Ukraine

The EIB is committed to helping rebuild Ukraine. Since the invasion by Russia on 24 February 2022, the Banks overall solidarity response has reached close to 4.7 billion:

In early March 2022 the EIB deployed 668 million in financing for the Ukrainian government to meet urgent liquidity needs.

in financing for the Ukrainian government to meet urgent liquidity needs. A 2.5 million humanitarian aid package coordinated by the EIB Institute is directly helping people affected by the war.

The EIB also contributed a 4 billion credit line for municipalities in Ukraines neighboring EU countries who received refugees. An advisory platform (EMBRACE) complements the credit line. Of the total 4 billion, 2 billion was allocated to Poland, the country with the largest number of refugees from Ukraine, to finance an assistance fund set up by the Polish government and managed by Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego (BGK), the Polish state development bank.

The EIB keeps regular contact with the government of Ukraine, so to help as flexibly as needed.

Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal said: I am grateful to the European Union and its European Investment Bank for standing together with Ukraine and providing consistent financial support. I believe that together we will be able to create all conditions for the implementation of the most ambitious Recovery Plan of our time, the full and rapid rebuilding of Ukraine after this war. We welcome that the conference in Lugano demonstrated the unwavering support of key stakeholders, including the EIB, and also gave us a platform to discuss such an important issue as rebuilding a better Ukraine."
June Huh, a Korean American mathematician and professor at Princeton University, receives this year's Fields Medal at Aalto University in Helsinki, June 5. Yonhap



June Huh, a Korean American mathematician and professor at Princeton University, has been named a recipient of this year's Fields Medal, a prestigious international prize awarded to mathematicians under 40 for achievements in the field of mathematics.



The 39-year-old professor, who also serves as a distinguished professor of mathematics at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study, became the first-ever scholar of Korean descent to win the award handed down by the International Mathematical Union (IMU) every four years.



The IMU Award Ceremony 2022 was held at Aalto University in Helsinki on Tuesday (local time).



The union said Huh was named as a recipient for "bringing the ideas of Hodge theory to combinatorics, the proof of the DowlingWilson conjecture for geometric lattices, the proof of the HeronRotaWelsh conjecture for matroids, the development of the theory of Lorentzian polynomials and the proof of the strong Mason conjecture."



The Fields Medal, first introduced in 1936, was founded to recognize and support younger mathematical scholars who have made major contributions in the field of mathematics. It is often referred to as the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize.



Huh was born in 1983 in California but grew up in Korea. He majored in physics and astronomy as an undergraduate at Seoul National University (SNU) and studied mathematics at the university's graduate school. Huh obtained his mathematics Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2014.



He was mentored by Heisuke Hironaka, a renowned Japanese mathematician and a 1970 Fields Medal recipient, who taught at SNU for a year as a visiting professor when Huh was in his last year of his undergraduate studies.



Huh is often described as a late bloomer, having told Quanta magazine in a 2017 interview that he didn't think he was good at math growing up. He said he took to poetry instead as a teenager, viewing it as a field of creative expression.





June Huh, a professor of mathematics at Princeton University / Courtesy of the Ho-Am Foundation
Today, after months of negotiations and procedural hurdles, the European Union has passed a pair of landmark bills designed to rein in Big Techs power. The Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act are intended to promote fairer competition, improve privacy protection, as well as banning both the use of some of the more egregious forms of targeted advertising and misleading practices.

The Digital Services Act, for instance, focuses on online platforms like Facebook, Amazon and Google. They will be tasked with being more proactive both with content moderation and also to prevent the sale of illegal or unsafe goods being sold on their platforms. Users will also be able to learn how and why an algorithm recommended them a certain piece of content, and to challenge any moderation decision that was made algorithmically. Finally, companies will no longer be able to use sensitive personal data for ad-targeting, sell ads to children, or use dark patterns  deceptive page design that can manipulate you into saying yes to something even when you'd much rather say no, such as joining a service or preventing you from leaving one you no longer wish to use.

These obligations operate on a sliding scale, and so the largest platforms will have the greatest obligations placed upon them. Platforms with 45 million or more monthly users will be subject to independent auditing to ensure they are preventing fake news and illegal content. Those platforms will also have to open up their algorithms and data to (approved) researchers to enable them to study the effects, and potential harm, the systems can cause.

The Digital Markets Act, meanwhile, is more focused on preventing dominant platform holders, like Google, Microsoft and Apple, from abusing their scale. This includes offering better interoperability with smaller, rival services, ensuring files can be sent between systems. There is also a large carve-out for app storefronts, with developers now entitled to contact their customers about deals without going via the platform holder in question. And platform holders will no longer be able to give their systems favorable treatment, such as when Google promoted its own shopping service over that of rivals.

The EU has given both bills plenty of teeth, and can dole out a maximum penalty of 10 percent of its total worldwide turnover from the previous year, should regulators find non-compliance. This figure will, however, jump to 20 percent of worldwide turnover if officials find repeated non-compliance. Thats a hefty figure big enough that not even Apple would be able to stomach losing on a regular basis. Although, as with GDPR regulation, the EU still has questions to answer about how much effort, time and money its prepared to put behind a body to monitor big tech.

Now that they have been passed, the Digital Services Act will come into force by 1st January 2024 (unless some procedural stuff delays it) while the Digital Markets Act will come into force at some point soon after, and major platforms  dubbed Gatekeepers will have a further six months to get their houses in order before the new rules apply to them.
Eric Li, founder of Chinese car giant Geely, has purchased a majority stake in the now-small smartphone maker Meizu. Bloomberg reports that Meizu will be run as an independent company under Xingli Technology, another tech brand in Li's portfolio. That said, the pair are expected to work together on new products, and Xingli has already expressed plans to make a big splash in the AR/VR space.

If youve been reading Engadget for long enough, youll have likely seen Meizus early rise at the dawn of the smartphone boom. Unfortunately, it found its lunch being eaten by other Chinese upstarts, including Xiaomi, and wound up remaining a small player. Back in 2015, Alibaba decided to take a stake in the company just as it found itself distracted by various boondoggles, including the baffling-in-retrospect decision to build phones with Ubuntu.

Geely, meanwhile, is perhaps best known in the West as the controlling owner of Volvo, Polestar and Lotus, all of which have been pushed towards electrification. Of course, with cars becoming more like phones (and phones becoming such a crucial part of most cars) the idea of automakers buying in to the phone space makes plenty of sense. As Reuters reports, both the mobile and car businesses are slowing down, and so deeper integration might be one way to corner the market.

Updated Jul 7th, 9:15am ET: Amended to clarify the ownership relationship between Eric Li and Meizu.
Just six months after its last flagship launch, Xiaomi has announced another one. The Xiaomi 12S Ultra packs a massive one-inch, 50.3-megapixel Sony IMX989 main sensor. And unlike the Sony Xperia Pro-I , the Xiaomi 12S Ultra apparently uses the entirety of its one-inch sensor. And the camera unit itself? Well, it looks gigantic.

Xiaomi

Inside, theres a Leica Summicron 1:1.9-4.1 / 13-120 ASPH camera system that combines three rear cameras: a 50.3-megapixel main camera (23mm, f/1.9), along with the 48-megapixel ultra-wide camera (13mm, f/2.2) and the 48-megapixel periscopic camera (120mm, f/4.1). Both 48-megapixel cameras use a half-inch Sony IMX586 sensor. The circular camera island (continent?) has a special coating to mitigate lens glare and improve image consistency. Oh, and there's a 23K gold rim as well. Because excess.

The Xiaomi 12S Ultra is now available for pre-ordering in China, ahead of retail launch on July 6th. The 12S Ultra starts at 5,999 yuan (around $900).

Leica has spread its bets over the years in mobile imaging partnerships. It has previously collaborated with Sharp , Huawei and Panasonic  Chinese phone makers are quick to pal up with renowned photography brands. In late 2020, Vivo joined forces with Zeiss, while Oppo and OnePlus released handsets jointly developed with Hasselblad.

The result has, broadly, meant better smartphone cameras from these companies looking to go toe-to-toe with the iPhones and Galaxy Ss of this world.

 Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

A sample of the data included crime reports going back to 1995.

A hacker (or group of hackers) claims to have stolen data on a billion Chinese citizens from a Shanghai police database. The hacker is attempting to sell 23 terabytes of data for 10 bitcoin, worth just over $198,000 at the time of writing. The data includes names, addresses, birthplaces, national IDs and phone numbers. The Wall Street Journal reports the hacker provided a sample of the data, which included crime reports dating as far back as 1995.

Continue reading.

Its opening several hubs across the UK to replace some van trips.

Amazon

Amazon UK is now delivering packages by cargo e-bike and on foot as it progresses toward its climate goals. The company has opened a micro mobility hub in Hackney, central London, and says the walkers and e-bike riders will make more than a million deliveries a year. It claims those trips will replace thousands of van deliveries. The e-bikes and on-foot couriers will deliver across more than a tenth of the city's ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ).

Continue reading.

Part of cost-cutting measures following its split from AT&T.

HBO Max is halting original productions across much of Europe, according to Variety. The streaming service confirmed itll no longer produce originals in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Central Europe, the Netherlands and Turkey, leaving only Spain and France untouched. The step is part of a plan from parent Warner Bros. Discovery to cut some $3 billion in costs following its split from AT&T .

Continue reading.

The CubeSat is critical to the first Artemis mission.

NASA's grand plan to take humans back to the Moon for the first time in over half a century has taken another step forward. The 55-pound CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) CubeSat has broken free of Earth's orbit and is on its way to the Moon. Rocket Lab launched CAPSTONE on an Electron rocket last week. Following six days of orbit-raising burns to build up enough speed, the pathfinding satellite set out toward the Moon. It's a slow trip. It won't reach the Moon until November.

Continue reading.
After more than a year of rising tensions over the countrys sweeping 2021 IT law, Twitter is suing Indias government. The New York Times reports the company filed a complaint on Tuesday with the Karnataka High Court in Bangalore to challenge a recent order to censor content within the country. According to Twitter, it had until Monday to block about a dozen accounts and posts or face possible criminal action. While the company complied with the order, its now also seeking legal relief.

Twitter declined to comment. The challenge comes after the company reportedly told the Indian government last summer it was compliant with the countrys IT rules. As part of the law, Twitter was required to hire a domestic compliance officer and a point of contact for local authorities .

Before that point, Twitters relationship with India had been strained for much of 2021. In February, the government threatened to jail Twitter employees unless the company removed content related to the farmer protests held that year. Two months later, India ordered Twitter to pull tweets that criticized the countrys response to the COVID-19 pandemic .
When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sit down for another candid interview with Oprah Winfrey, they may not get the sympathy and support of the public this time.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex received a lot of flak after openly expressing their dissatisfaction with their status as senior members of the British royal family in March 2021.

But it appears that they are not done washing their dirty laundry with Oprah, since they were photographed leaving the TV mogul's house in California last week and have been tipped off for a second interview.

Last week, photos surfaced of the duo leaving Oprah Winfrey's mansion in a black Range Rover, accompanied by their pal Janina Gavankar in the backseat.

If the second interview takes place, it will be a huge embarrassment for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, with a royal pundit doubting the subject they will be discussing in the supposed interview.

Dylan Howard speculated that the pair could struggle to triumph in a rematch with their blue-blooded kin.

When asked if the Sussexes will be returning to television soon, Howard told "The Morning Show" through the UK Express that he believes it is happening.

"I believe it will be detrimental to the royal institution, but one thing is certain: the Firm will not prevail. It's game over for them."

According to the expert, Prince Harry and Meghan must do something "to keep their brand alive."

"And the issue is, how interested are people going to be in Harry and Meghan the brand without that royal connection?" he continued.

READ ALSO: Meghan Markle's New Interview Puts Her In Trouble With Netflix, Spotify - Here's Why

In terms of the interview's theme, Howard questioned what they would say after being "ostracized" during Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee.

Howard also stated that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have already discussed Megxit, mental health difficulties, and racism claims, so "what more are they going to do?" he wondered.

Since leaving the royal family in March 2020, the pair has had two joint interviews, the first with Oprah and the second with Vogue magazine.

Their claims generated a significant outcry, prompting the British monarchy to release a rare statement in which they stated that they are still cherished members of the family. However, their memories of their encounter "may differ."

READ MORE: Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Finally Achieve Big Milestone 2 Years After Exit




By Ko Dong-hwan







With the LGBTQ community set to host the 23rd Seoul Queer Cultural Festival (SQCF) later this month at Seoul Plaza, an association of Christian churches has been protesting the decision to permit the event.







United Christian Churches of Korea (UCCK) criticized the Seoul Metropolitan Government, Monday, for having approved a "queer event" to take place in Seoul Plaza, one of the city's most symbolic public open spaces, located in front of Seoul City Hall.







A civic committee for the management of Seoul Plaza  consisting of 10 civic experts from various fields  granted approval last month for the festival organizers to use the space. The committee, however, rejected the organizers' request to use the space for six days and instead gave permission for only one day, July 16. The committee's approval also came with the condition that the festival's participants don't publicly "overexpose" their bodies or sell or display products considered "harmful obscene material" to minors according to the country's Youth Protection Act.







UCCK President Ryu Young-mo, in a statement on

, hailed the city government's decision to shorten the festival's period to a single day and to be held under strict conditions, calling it a "step forward from the previous policy." But the group argued that the city government, by ultimately allowing the festival to be held, hasn't improved the "serious problem of the event itself being held in Seoul Plaza."







The UCCK insisted the city government should manage the place so that it is used only for "healthy leisure and cultural activities for members of the public as well as gatherings and demonstrations," in accordance with its own regulations on the use of Seoul Plaza.







But, according to the association, which was formed in 2017, by approving use of the space for "homosexual propaganda" for the purpose of protecting the human rights of a minority group, the city government has failed to fulfill its duties.







The annual festival began in the city in 2000 and has been running for over two decades in Korea's capital. After being held in popular neighborhoods like Sinchon, Hongdae, Itaewon and the Cheonggye Stream area, it was first held at Seoul Plaza in 2015. The festival organizers continued holding it there until 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the city government to implement social distancing measures. The city government gave final approval to the festival in 2015, but in 2016 started relaying approval authority to the civic committee.


The reign of Queen Elizabeth II is said to be in "uncharted terrain" after Buckingham Palace altered and reduced her job description.

The decision, according to royal expert Daniela Elser, only indicates that the Queen is in a health crisis, as she "is no longer up to the same work she has done for the previous seven decades."

She said that this is the first time the palace has admitted that Queen Elizabeth II can no longer do her job since her health problembegan in October 2021.

"Moreover, the palace has recently admitted that things are unlikely to return to as they were for Her Majesty."

Furthermore, the Monarch's mobility difficulties prevent her from doing any physical duties as sovereign as she previously could.

"What the palace has now done is formally announce that the period of the Queen is a visible fixture in British society," she continued. The Queen's role as a reassuring constant is basically finished."

However, the journalist emphasized that Queen Elizabeth II is not ready to relinquish her throne just yet, citing her "certain magnificent tenacity of spirit."

READ ALSO: Meghan Markle's New Interview Puts Her In Trouble With Netflix, Spotify - Here's Why

Queen Elizabeth II New Job Description

This is the first time in a decade that the British Monarch's responsibilities have been alteredto minimize her commitments following her Platinum Jubilee last month.

Her new official duties emphasize the assistance of other royal family members while eliminating some of her old roles, such as attending the State Opening of Parliament.

The job details were signed by the Keeper of the Privy Purse, Sir Michael Stevens, and in terms of the Sovereign Grant, Queen Elizabeth II will continue to be the Head of State and Head of Nation, but she will require her family to carry out some of her prior tasks on her behalf.

"The Queen is considerably aided by other members of the Royal Family who undertake official responsibilities on Her Majesty's behalf," according to the article.

The updated document not only affects 13 of the Queen's specified tasks as Head of State, but it also eliminates specific duties such as paying and receiving state visits and choosing the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Instead, the Queen's amended job description emphasizes generic obligations, stating that her role as monarch "encompasses a variety of parliamentary and diplomatic functions."

Though she will continue to welcome heads of state, he will no longer pay state visits.

READ MORE: Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Finally Achieve Big Milestone 2 Years After Exit
Megan Fox wants to know everything about Machine Gun Kelly - even the littlest things.

Even before Fox and MGK got engaged, the couple spent time getting to know each other. In fact, the actress once asked him something unusual.

In an exclusive interview with E! News during the red carpet of MGK's Hulu documentary "Life in Pink", Fox revealed that she asked the singer if he was breastfed by his mother.

Although it shocked their fans, the "Jennifer's Body" actress explained that she had to ask it to learn more about his psychology and temperament.

"If you know me and I know you, it's impossible for me to not know almost everything about you," she said.



Fox added that she wants every question to lead her to deep conversations instead of learning simple things, like favorite colors or films.

Indeed, her curiosity and desire to learn things about her beau paid off already. For what it's worth, she perfectly answered during their quiz for British GQ. At that time, she answered everything about MGK - his astrology sign, shoe size, nickname, favorite things, and more.

Because of her knowledge, even the "Emo Girl" hitmaker praised her, telling her she would win every single category if she was his "Jeopardy!" partner.

Machine Gun Kelly Also Romantic Toward Megan Fox

Unlike Fox, MGK seemingly has a different way of showing his love for the actress.

In a separate interview with E! News (via Hola!), Fox said that being able to listen to her is the most romantic thing MGK does for her.

"I mean, over the course of two years, we have a lot of a lot of things that we've done together. He's just a very romantic boy, so I have a lot of stories," she said. "I mean, over the course of two years, we have a lot of a lot of things that we've done together. He's just a very romantic boy, so I have a lot of stories."

READ ALSO: James Cameron Leaving 'Avatar'? Director Uncertain About THIS Despite Success

For instance, MGK reportedly gifts her with the things she mentioned during the first time they met since that memory never went away.

With that, she thought it was the most romantic thing he did - and still does.

But aside from being romantic, they also shocked the world when they had a blood-drinking ritual. They did it as Fox is into astrology, metaphysical practices, and meditations. She is also fond of new and full moon practices.

READ MORE: Mark Budzinski's Daughter Tragic Cause of Death: Was Foul Play Involved?
Writer/Director Quentin Tarantino and his wife Daniella are celebrating the arrival of their second child, a baby girl, this week.

In an exclusive reported by People, the announcement made by the happy couple over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, which read,

"Daniella and Quentin Tarantino are happy to announce that Daniella gave birth to their baby girl on July 2, 2022, a little sister to Leo, their first child."

They first made the announcement of their second child back in February.

How did Quentin Tarantino meet his wife?

Quentin, age 59, met Daniella, age 38, when he was on tour promoting his World War II revisionist history flick Inglorious Basterds in 2009. They dated for thirteen years before Tarantino popped the question in 2017. He married the musician a year later.

It was two years into their marriage when the The Hateful Eight creator and his wife had their first child, Leo, who, despite what people might think, was not named after Leonardo DiCaprio, star of two of his more recent films, Once Upon a Time... in Holloywood and Django Unchained.

He told Jimmy Kimmel during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in June of 2021"

"He's named after my wife's grandfather, but also because, just in our hearts, he was our little lion."

The name of their new little bundle of joy has yet to be revealed to the public at this time.

A big congratulations goes out to Quentin and Daniella, as well as little Leo, as the next member to their family.
Revolution in Reform: Trade-Unionism in Lahore, c 19201970 by Ahmad Azhar, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2019; pp xiv + 248, `795 (hardcover).

The last couple of decades had witnessed a renewed interest in labour history which has been marked by a range of writings on labour in South Asia. This resurgence in the writings about labour in South Asia, however, has been disproportionately focused towards studying the history of labour in post-partition India. In this renewal of labour history, writings on workers from Pakistan, in general, and Lahore, in particular, have received limited attention. In the nationalist historiography of Pakistan, which remained largely focused on the formation of Pakistan as a Muslim state, the history of Lahore and its diverse working population remained invisible. Ahmad Azhars book, Revolution in Reform: Trade-Unionism in Lahore, c 19201970, is an important attempt to address this neglect. The book narrates the history of railway workers employed at Lahores Mughalpura railway workshop from the early 1920s when labour emerged as a sociopolitical category up to the decade of the 1970s when the working-class movement faced isolation and subsequent decline.

Forging Plebeian Collectives

The monographs inquiry of the politics of railway workers of Lahore begins with the end of World War I, which ushered in an era of unprecedented and sustained visibility of labour on the urban political scene. In this milieu, the railway workers of Mughalpura were not unaffected. The workshop witnessed a workers strike in April 1920, where more than 15,000 workers not just struck work but for many weeks came out onto the citys civic arena and organised daily meetings outside the Mochi Gate. By examining the railway workers strike of April 1920, Chapter 1 closely examines J B Millars (introduced as a charismatic working-class Irishman of Indian domicile who emerged as one of the most popular leaders of the workers) approach to forge a broad plebeian coalition, with railway workers at its centre, that would bring together a diverse range of wage earners and organise them, cutting across the formalinformal sector divide.

In Chapters 1 and 2 of the book, Azhar probes into the unsettling interface between the emerging workers movement and the larger narrative of nationalism. He demonstrates that the emerging sphere of plebeian politics did not evolve in isolation and overlapped with the contemporary anti-colonial movements, particularly Non-Cooperation and Khilafat Movements.

In Chapters 1 and 2, Azhar clearly points out that Mughalpura workers and their chosen spokespersons, in the course of their interaction with the wider fields of nationalist politics, did not get consumed in the larger story of the struggle against colonialism and retained their autonomy vis-a-vis the Congress and other contending political currents. In these two chapters, Azhar outlines the emergence of a distinct genuine trade unionism at Mughalpura that not just remained at odds with the larger stories of anti-colonialism, nationalism, and socialism but increasingly carved out a distinct sphere of its own, marked by its ability to articulate the desire for constitutionalist, bureaucratised trade unionism by employing the radical rhetoric and symbols referring to repositories of radical working-class movement (p 43).

Moving away from the unity at a particular moment of the Mughalpura movement, Chapter 3 traces the concealed inner tensions ingrained in the regime of labour relations in the workshops. Azhar questions the nationalist discourse on the railways, which was overwhelmingly about race and stressed for Indianisation as a solution. In order to do so, he explores the overlapping worlds of the mazdurs (labourers), mistries (masons), and jobbers in the Mughalpura workshops by blending his rigorous archival research with Yashpals semi-autobiographical novel, Dada Comrade. Claiming that the wide-ranging work-related changes at the workshop benefited educated Indians or babus, at the expense of the blue-collar workers, Azhar carefully laid out the conflicts between the Indian babus and mazdurs within the shop floor. This resentment at the shop floor was further visible in blue-collar workers apprehension towards the nationalist demand for Indianisation (swaraj). Workers who saw the Congress as a party of the babus perceived Indianisation in the railways as just another term for strengthening hierarchies that benefited the white-collar babus but were detrimental to their career prospects.

With the recognition of labour as both a social and political category of analysis by the colonial state and mobilisation of labour by its critics during the interwar years, the contest to claim the exclusive rights to represent the labour sharpened. Azhar cautions us from overdrawing the boundaries of reformist and revolutionary to understand this contestation within workers politics. This contestation was evident in the Meerut Conspiracy Case trials (discussed in Chapters 4 and 5). Azhars work challenges the seemingly irreconcilable discourse in labour historiography as well as trade unionism over reformist and revolutionary with considerable detail by drawing on archival sources and combining it with written memoirs, oral interviews, and literary works. This conceptual binary of reformist and communist form of trade unionism was questioned by unpacking the political and ideological journey of two prominent labour leadersBashir Ahmad Bakhtiar and Mirza Ibrahim. By utilising the hitherto unused biographical and recorded interviews of these two trade unionists as source material, Azhar traces the overlaps between the two currents of trade unionism. By tracing the lives of Bakhtiar, who described himself as a genuine trade unionist as opposed to Ibrahim, who by the late 1940s emerged as a prominent communist leader in Pakistan (p 93), Azhar demonstrates that the idea of who was a genuine or radical trade unionist was contextual and temporally contingent as reformist trade unionism during the interwar period had often opted for radical modes of workers protest. Socialist rhetoric and symbolism in Bakhtiars account permeated the speech and unionisation efforts of the genuine trade unionists, even before the formation of the Communist Party, and was deployed outrightly during the interwar period.

Unrealised Alternative Possibilities

In the course of exploring the history of the Mughalpura railway workers, Azhar, in Chapter 6, focuses on the post-World War II turn of the Mughalpura movement. Stepping aside from the hegemonic narratives of intercommunity conflict and the formation of nation states, he recounts the historical significance of a railway workers strike that took place in 1946 at the Mughalpura workshop. The strike at this juncture not just challenged both the colonial government and the contending political parties but further exemplified a counter tendency to rising communalisation of popular politics. Azhar points out that the strike and labour mobilisation, in the late 1940s sheds light on the alternative possibilities that remained unrealised and forgotten even in our historical remembrance. The book narrates Ibrahims recollection of the strike as a moment with stories of Hindus and Muslims burying the hatchet, soldiers refusing orders [] and Sikh railwaymen acting first as railwaymen and second as Sikhs (p 125). Despite being faction-ridden and encountering divergent approaches to labour in the Punjab Provincial wing of the Communist Party of India, the communists established their influence over the Mughalpura railway workers movement in these years leading up to partition. Azhar suggests that the communist approach of establishing labour schools and the mohalla (neighbourhood) committees helped them to forge multiple points of engagement facilitating direct and everyday engagement with the workers outside the organised union structures. It further provided space for an engagement between Communist Party intellectuals and the workers. Even in the words of reformist trade unionist, Bakhtiar, the labour schools created a political conscience amongst [the workers] (p 141). However, the content of the lectures and the conversations that would have followed in these labour schools remains elusive to the reader. A discussion on the lectures and discussion that followed in these study circles would have helped to comprehend the interface between the Mughalpura workers movement and the communists better.

This hegemony of the Communist Party over Mughalpuras workers, Azhar argues, was established at a moment of its own political isolation within the political spectrum. This relative isolation of the Mughalpura workers movement combined with the railway workers consistent resistance to the hegemonic claims of the Congress and the Muslim League, in the preceding decades and on the eve of the formation of independent nation states, produced possibilities of their exclusion from the visions of the nation, articulated by these nationalist parties. In the last chapter, weaved around the testimony of Ibrahim, Azhar chronicles the strategy of isolating workers radicalism following the formation of Pakistan and how the Mughalpura workers responded to the attempts of the nascent Pakistani state to marginalise and repress them. Alarmed by the railway workers rallying behind Ibrahim, barely a few months after partition, the Pakistani state, Azhar points out, took recourse to colonial-era emergency legislation to clamp down on the left-wing trade unionists. The book establishes that the allegiance to the Communist Party not only meant that the movement would be further isolated from the mainstream political currents but also invited the full brunt of the Pakistani states coercive and ideological assault on the militant workers and leaders. This state repression and its experience, Azhar observes, differed vastly depending on the social position of the subjects involved. He points out that this contrast was glaringly visible in the realm of law, where social hierarchies and barriers of the class could not be broken between working-class cadres and elite party members. Zulfiqar Ali Bhuttos regime, in Ibrahims narrative, represented a crucial turning point for the radical trade unionism where a rift between the elite political leftists and the rank-and-file workers surfaced over the question of supporting the regime.

Azhars book is an important contribution to South Asian labour historiography. This rich history of Lahores railway workers spanning over half a century, which chronicles the rise and fall of labour as a political category, is a significant attempt to revisit the questions of working-class politics with new perspectives. This monograph is an essential reading for historians and other readers interested in understanding the working-class politics in Punjab and the social history of labour in South Asia more comprehensively.
A Strategic Myth: Underdevelopment in Jammu and Kashmir by Sehar Iqbal, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2021; pp 200, `595.

That the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) suffered economically and in developmental terms on account of its special status is a point often made by the protagonists and votaries of the August 2019 legislative changes aimed at Articles 370 and 35A of the Constitution. These were legislative hurdles, it is often argued, to the state participating fully in the opportunities available to the rest of the country. Instead, being in a separate cocoon meant that the fruits of development were cornered by a small elite with little impact on the overall development profile of the state.

This view, widely prevalent in some circles, Sehar Iqbal, a Kashmiri scholar, argues, is a strategic myth. At the time of its accession in 1948, J&K was one of the most backward states in the country largely on account of the feudal system that prevailed in it; even when compared to other princely states at the time, it had one of the lowest per capita incomes, literacy rates, and life expectancy in the country. Four to five decades later, the picture was significantly different. Its human development indices (HDIs) had improved dramatically. This sustained improvement, Iqbal argues, enabled Jammu and Kashmir to move up from the special category of states to the general category of states in the 1970s. Overall, in the four decades post 1948,

the states progress with regard to human development index (HDI) indicators like per capita income, literacy, reduction in death rate etc. was remarkable, and in areas like reduction of poverty (especially rural poverty), life expectancy, and access to health care, better than the national average. Further, the progress in HDI indicators was largely similar across social groups. (p 147)

Furthermore, even in the period since 1988, despite the hurdles and costs imposed by an externally sponsored insurgency and terrorist violence and the problems associated with IndiaPakistan tensions, this momentum has largely maintained itself.

How did this happen? Iqbals argument is that the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (JKNC) headed by Sheikh Abdullah came to power in 1948 with a radical manifesto of change represented by the document Naya Kashmir. Influenced greatly by the left and the Soviet experience, Naya Kashmir became the guiding principle for state development policies for the JKNC government. This approach aimed at raising the standards of living and reducing inequality by a radical programme of land redistribution and debt conciliation. The conflict and uncertainty that accompanied the states accession to India provided, somewhat curiously, a favourable set of circumstances. Iqbal explains that

the sudden collapse of the top strata of the feudal structure offered a rare historic opportunity to implement radical reforms in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The migration of the maharaja left the feudal system disunited and weakened the resistance to radical redistribution in the form of land reform and debt eradication. The establishment of the emergency administration in the backdrop of the first Indo Pak war of 1947 gave sweeping powers of legislation and action to the National Conference that had no parallel with that in any other Indian state. Till the first elections held in 1952, Sheikh Abdullahs administration was not constrained by electoral concerns . This left the government free to implement radical reforms and garner mass support for the coming elections. (p 154) Thereafter, the fact that Jammu and Kashmir had its own Constitution was the main reason why radical policy measures of the state government could not be legally challenged by the Supreme Court of India or legislation relating to these nullified by deficiencies in central legislation. (p 148)

The Big Landed Estates Abolition Act of 1950 of the state had the important feature that it did not provide for compensation.

This was unprecedented in India at the time. The success of the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act was evident in the total dismantling of the feudal system. The success of all the legislations that followed can be estimated from the fact that out of 9.5 lakh acres distributed throughout India about half (that is 4.5 lakh acres) was distributed in Jammu and Kashmir alone. (p 56)

The consequences of this along with an equally effective programme of debt reduction and conciliation were manifoldpoverty reduction and higher wages for a start. The Naya Kashmir approach, however, had other dimensions alsoincreased public spending in education, health and a focus on public services delivery. Gains in life expectancy and literacy were generally well ahead of the all-India levels. There also existed an employment policy that sought to absorb educated youth into the government bureaucracy, which in time led to the creation of the largest bureaucracy in the country (p 29).

This cluster of changes and policies sustained itself over a long period of time. There was, despite the political breaks that happened after the arrest of Sheikh Abdullah in 1953 and the succession of governments that followed, a basic continuity at the core in terms of policy. Abdullahs return in 1975 was followed by further land reforms and redistributive policies that added momentum to this upward trajectory of the state in terms of the many HDIs. While the author points to the endemic corruption and misgovernance associated with many J&K governments across its political spectrum, the point is that a basic thrust of policy that focused on an egalitarian and redistributive approach remained intact and that explains J&Ks good performance in terms of its HDI evolution.

Iqbals thesis and supportive arguments are an obvious and much-needed corrective to the view that J&Ks special constitutional status till August 2019 was a hurdle to its development and to peoples welfare. That the egalitarian and developmental thrust in the policy approach followed by successive state governments made a significant dent on poverty and inequality is an important takeaway from this book. It is also important to bear in mind the fact that in these aspects J&K has outperformed other states despite the extraordinary circumstances of externally sponsored conflict and insurgency that has plagued it. The sample village studies carried out by the author complement the wide range of sources utilised to give a succinct perspective of the developmental experience of the state since 1947.

Yet, there are points that this treatment raises which merited a closer examination in the book than the author provides. There is little or no discussion of the question of resource mobilisation to finance the admittedly impressive achievements in education and healthcare that the state has exhibited. Similarly, the impact on public finances using government bureaucracy to absorb educated youth required further examination. On these questions, Iqbal remains somewhat cryptic. At one point, for instance, it is stated that

Jammu and Kashmir historically have had high levels of public spending despite recurring budget deficits. While the popular perception remains that the state is able to do this because of high levels of central financial assistance, this interpretation is simplistic. It ignores the fact that from 1948 to 1988 Jammu and Kashmir did not get its fair share of grants as a special category state. It received heavy loans instead. (p 75)

It is noted elsewhere that resources transferred by the centre were used to fund the social sector, rather than give incentives for development of the private sector (p 75). This of course begs the question of productive public sector investment and whether this was considered as an alternative to multiplying government employment. The larger point, however, is of the viability of state finances and in that context the quantum of central assistance being a material factor in the state developmental model.

An interesting point made by Iqbal in fact points to this very dilemma: in 2011, the HDI ranking of the state (0.53) was above the national average (0.47); the state had thus an HDI rank of 10 out of 29 states, but its economic rank was 21. Essentially, high public spending is the operative factor here. The point worth investigating is whether the states precarious security situation and strategic location led to high levels of central assistance that acted to boost public spending and improve its HDI ranking. This is not to take away from the significant early achievements of the state in land reform and other redistributive policies that made a real dent on inequality and rural poverty. But the larger socio-developmental model of the state also requires closer examination to get a fuller and more rounded appreciation of the states economic and financial history. Overall, however, the book is a valuable contribution to the current debates about J&K and its economic evolution in the past seven decades.
The fall of the MVA government in Maharashtra leaves behind a residue of alarming precedents.

Suhas Palshikar writes:

Developments emanating from an internal crisis in Shiv Sena threw up many disturbing trends not only for politics in Maharashtra but also for parliamentary democratic procedures and competitive party politics more generally. Having lost support of the majority of his party members of legislative assembly (MLAs), Uddhav Thackeray could have resigned earlier and won at least a moral high ground. From the moment rebel MLAs took shelter at Surat and subsequently went sightseeing to Guwahati, it was clear that the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition government had lost its majority. Thackeray was, however, hopeful that as per the constitutional scheme of things, defectors may be made to pay by losing their membership of the assembly. Unfortunately for him, the threat of the Anti-defection Law was blunted by judicial intervention. Once the floor test was cleared by the Supreme Court, he was left with no option but to quit.

Ever since the MVA government came to power in November 2019, observers felt that the three main partners will soon get embroiled in internal tussles and cause the fall of the coalition. But the government trudged along for two and a half years. When the fall came, it was not because of inter-party bickering but through internal disarray within the Shiv Sena. The fall of the Thackeray government, though inevitable, brought forth many worrisome trends.

The Marathi press has been full of commentaries during the past one week or so about how there were rumblings within the Shiv Sena for quite some time and how there was a disconnect between the MVA chief minister and his own party members. There must have been an element of truth in this since all the MLAs holding ministerial positionsexcept Aditya Thackerayjoined the rebel group.

Yet, is it not extremely surprising that Thackeray was completely unaware of the rebellion that was brewing. This tells us something about how political parties are runat any rate, how the Shiv Sena was being run and how the leadership insulates itself from all reality. True, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) went all out to cultivate the rebels, protect them, and win them a few more by employing investigating agencies and bringing about pressure besides allurements. As the leader of the rebels reportedly said, a great power (mahashakti) was helping him and the rebels from the outside. All this may be termed as smart politics, but it is high time that all parties seriously think about the distinction between cynical and smart politics. And the fact that the rebels had to flee to BJP-run states also speaks volumes about not only BJPs support to them but also their own fragile unity. It is becoming a common practice for most states and parties to take MLAs to protected destinations on similar occasions. So, like most defections, the ones by Shiv Sena MLAs too lacked democratic openness or ideological cohesion. But all this cannot hide the organisational crisis that preceded the actual act of defection.

More worryingly, in the unfolding drama, two institutions involved themselves and set rather unfortunate precedents. When the matter went to the Supreme Court, the judiciary practically set aside the Tenth Schedule and disallowed the deputy speaker to take a decision on the question of defection and disqualification. Having thus tied the hands of the deputy speaker, the judiciary subsequently refused to stay the floor test. While both these criticisms may appear to be irrelevant against the backdrop of the loss of the majority, it is the precedent that matters more. The Anti-defection Law provides that the presiding officer of the house has the power to decide on disqualification. That fundamental principle was ignored in the Maharashtra case. The other institution that got involved, inevitably, was the office of the governor. From ordering the police to provide protection to families of the rebel MLAs to seeking to scrutinise the decisions of the government, the governors office became badly politicised. Therefore, the latters decision of ordering a floor test smacked of bad faith rather than upholding of democratic principles.

In other words, in the political drama that unfolded in Maharashtra, one could witness multiple institutional failuresparty organisation as well as constitutional offices. Where does Maharashtra go from here?

The MVA government is gone. Having lost its majority, this was only inevitable. But even as the damage done by wrong precedents haunts us, the next question that emerges is about the logical culmination of the defections. Under the Anti-defection Law, the rebel MLAs will have to merge with some party and only then support a BJP leader so that a new coalition can come to power. It is to be seen whether this part of Anti-defection Law is followed. In all likelihood, the Shiv Sena MLAs will claim that they are the real Shiv Sena, thus not requiring them to merge with any party. This will gloss over the fact of their defection. In the post-truth era that we live in, it will be argued that there was no defection in the first place. Just as the judiciary bypassed the Anti-defection Law, politics will also bypass this law and treat the rebel MLAs as inheritors of the real Shiv Sena.

For the MVA, there was thus the loss of the majority, while for the larger political system, it represented the loss of many a principle. The BJP has posted a pyrrhic victory with which its dominance will now extend to Maharashtra. But that dominance will be somewhat marred by the huge cost paid in terms of principles and procedures.
Indias denationalised intellectuals may help us realise the common concerns of the West and India. But they displace Indias historical universals. Their search for the global ranking of higher educational institutions is devoid of moral and intellectual concerns for a national-popular collective will.

Indias denationalised elites1 seek global standards in higher education institutions (HEIs) and follow a cosmopolitan view alienated from any responsibility towards a national-popular will.2 They reiterate that Indias HEIs need to follow publication standards of the top 100 global universities. Currently, Indias 35 HEIs figure in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) global ranking list and the older Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are within the first 400, whereas the top seven central universities are in the range of 500 to 1,200 ranks in the QS ranking. India Today reports, Only 22 Indian higher institutions found a place amongst the top 1,000 universities of the world.3 Over the last five years, their rankings have remained unchanged. They continue to get scored poorly under the facultystudent ratio, even though they have improved their academic reputation and citations marginally, which will be examined later in the article. As the facultystudent ratio is critically weak in India, no Indian university appears in the top 100 ranks, the report adds.

However, Indias cosmopolitan elites are in great hurry to catch up with global standards as soon as possible. They argue that Indias search for global peers should benefit all students to make informed choices in their higher education. Their ideals of catching up with global standards, worthy as it may be, are empty rhetoric as their pathways do not address the question of the limited choices available for most students and teachers in India. The purpose here is to explain the substantial differences between India and Western countries and the neglect of education by all political regimes since independence.

Differences in University Structure

Let us begin by examining the case of the worlds best universities. The best universities in the world are learner-driven bodies, whereas Indias top HEIs are teacher-driven institutions. If we do not account for this difference, superficial comparisons will further multiply. What does it mean? In the West, under the undergraduate programme, with enrolment of 200 to 250 students in a class, nearly 50% of lectures are addressed by teachers and 50% are driven by the student seminar presentations in the general courses taught during the first three years. When general courses are taught in the West, teachers are complemented by a tutorial system of teaching assistants employed for 130 hours per semester (four hours a week). The teaching assistants are employed from among a pool of retired college professors and doctoral students. However, during the fourth year of the undergraduate programme, seminar courses are offered by students with presentations and research assignments. Under postgraduate programmes, courses are offered in the seminar mode, comprising student presentations, with not more than 25 students in each course. Even in the general courses during the undergraduate programme, the teaching involves 50% to 60% of classes. In India, however, the teaching in a lecture mode is nearly 100% for both undergraduate and postgraduate courses, which prevent a balanced growth of research culture among teachers as well as students.

One also needs to grapple with the specific historical contexts of education in India where education, especially higher education, has been the domain of the elite. Higher education remains a daunting and alienating space. Many students from marginalised communitiesmany of whom are first-generation learnersaspire for higher education. A lot has been written on this by the Dalit intellectuals and activists. In such conditions, an accessible and nurturing pedagogic atmosphere is a historical necessity. The lecturing method adopted by most teachers, while it runs the risk of being dull and top-down, is often also a response to the fact that many students require a high level of mediation given the difficulty of the English language, the alienating concepts that fail to connect with lived contexts, and lack of necessary cultural capital. The good teachers do much more than teaching and also take up mentoring. The ranking index does not consider the massive teaching load/responsibility carried out by most teachers in HEIs in India. In the West, teaching and research activities are integrated so that teachers do research-oriented teaching through seminar courses initiated from the undergraduate programme itself. In India, on the other hand, teachers routinely teach courses because it is part of their teaching responsibility, and a course rarely falls directly within their area of research.

Further, when they do research, they hardly ever get the opportunity to teach courses relevant to their areas of research. If Indias policymakers do not follow learning methods, set up educational resources, tutorial systems and integrate teaching and research as in Western universities, any comparison between the two education systems remains superfluous. In fact, the ranking index needs to take cognisance of an important additional factor when it comes to the Indian contextthe mentoring that several teachers carry out by offering the extra support that is so essential for students from non-metropolitan and marginalised backgrounds. With HEIs lacking fruitful and empathetic institutional mechanisms to address student grievances, well-meaning teachers address the concerns, anxieties, and the alienation faced by students through informal networks. Let us not forget that it is a demanding and time-consuming work.

Against this backdrop, there is a significant flaw in the denationalised elites assumptions about global standards. They claim that theory is transnational and therefore there is no meaning in discussing about national/regional/local standards, which is assumed to be non-theoretical/non-rational. However, a good social theory cannot be evolved in postcolonial countries by remaining insensitive to national/regional/local peoples questions. It needs to be created from within, not from outside. A transnational theory presupposes transcending a nation peoples will. It is a scientistic pretension to claim that a theory may be adopted across national borders freely. We cannot mimic Western thought in the name of globalisation. It is worth recalling M K Gandhi (1999a: 215) who had said that

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.

Even B R Ambedkar, a fierce critic of Gandhi, shares this idea when he says that the methods of modern constitutional democracy can be traced back to the contributions of the Buddhist Sangha in ancient India (Yadav 2000). If Indians do not want to get blown off their feet in pursuit of transnational theories, they must be grounded in national/regional history, and their views must emanate from national peoples will. A good social theory in a postcolony is necessarily international rather than transnational. It needs to be developed from within the core of Indian history and, in many cases, from regional histories by assimilating common universal concepts and by negating historical universal concepts of a transnational theory. An international theory applicable in India needs to combine common with historical universals, which may be developed by studying our national peoples history in depth.4 From a transnational theory, we may learn common universals. However, the denationalised academicians mistakenly think that Western historical universals are also applicable in India. Thus, a transnational theory borrowed from the West displaces historical universals of India.

The Consumer Rights Model

The denationalised intellectuals claim that HEIs can be assessed by using a consumer rights model. Students are consumers and are ultimately sovereign in choosing an education path offered by the HEIs in India. It sounds like a student-friendly claim but is not so. They claim that university rankings empower students, whereas only privileged students with an inherited cultural capital may gather information through ranking data to pick a course/programme offered by a particular university. A substantial amount of research suggests that the student-

as-consumer model does not ultimately empower the student, even those from privileged backgrounds and even in the context of Western countries. According to Rebecca Hovey (2004: 248), director at the Lewis Global Studies Center at Smith College,

knowledge is not an authoritative body of information and frameworks to be delivered to students but emerges through an acquisition or learning process in which students come to see the world in their own life experiences.

Janice A Newson (2004: 230), York University, Toronto, points out that when students are seen as customers or autonomous choosers, they are simultaneously reduced to receivers of a service, not as co-creators of a teachinglearning community.

In the Indian context, however, many students from marginalised backgroundsfirst-generation learnersenter the public HEI aspiring for social mobility. As critical pedagogy and research have demonstrated, the teachinglearning experience must be inclusive and transformative to generate the required self-worth and confidence in such students to take on the challenges of the real world. While the field of public education is being rapidly marketised, it might help to recall and re-engage with the theorisations of education that have emerged through grounded engagements with the Indian context of educational inequalities. In 1881, Jotirao Phule (2000: 200), in his deposition before the Education Commission (also known as the Hunter Commission), pointed out how the benefits of Western education have reached only a handful of the elite in Indiaexcluding the masses, especially those from the lower castes, who are still caught in dehumanised social and occupational conditions. Phule makes a strong plea for the education of the masses. To achieve this goal, he proposes that teachers from Shudra castes be trained and appointed in primary schools.

While Phule is speaking about primary education in this deposition about 140 years back, his ideas remain critical in rethinking higher education in the present moment. A decontextualised adoption of the h-index, pitting teacher against teacher in a ruthless spirit of competition, would render the process of teaching into an esoteric, alienating activity, disconnected from the historical circumstances of students. Phule pushes for a radical pedagogic transformationone that can only be achieved when students from the cultivating classes/excluded communities feel included, valued, and motivated to learn. This, for Phule, can only be achieved if teachers from these communities are recruited, trained, and incentivised because they would be able to relate to the lifeworlds of the students they teach. Thus, the process of teachinglearning will be a dynamic one; classroom learning would not be distanced from the worlds of agriculture and labour, and from the process of creating organic intellectuals from the oppressed people.

This then leads us to a factor that is notably absent in the denationalised modelthe principle of social justice and equity. It remains insensitive to the plural background of students and educational inequalities based on caste, class, gender, region, language, and other relevant distinctions. Its monocultural approach affects a teachers sensitivity and teaching skills.

The ardent advocates of the consumer model ignore the fact that educationists in the West, especially those committed to a radical, transformative pedagogy, have remained deeply critical of the neoliberal model of education, expressing apprehension that it would further exclude and disenfranchise students from poor, non-White backgrounds. According to Henry Giroux (1999: 143), a founding theorist of critical pedagogy in the United States (US), this model results in a severe deskilling of the teacher:

There can be no recognition in this model of educational reform that students come from different backgrounds, bring diverse cultural experiences, and relate to the world in different ways. There is no sense in this approach of what it means for teachers to make knowledge meaningful, critical and transformative.

Giroux (1999: 144) laments the shift in education where pedagogical importance is no longer placed on having teachers begin with where people are and how they actually live their lives. If we reflect on Girouxs critique of neo-liberal education, we discover a connecting theme with what Phule had said about a 140 years back in a very different contextan education that is monolithic and distanced cannot be relevant or legible to students from subaltern backgrounds. Giroux (1999: 144) speaks of how the corporate model of teaching reduces educational exchange into financial exchange:

Yet teachers who take this approach cannot be expected to standardise, routinise, or reduce learning to a prepackaged curriculum, because this takes seriously the ability of teachers to theorise, contextualise, and honor the diverse lives of their students.

The Search for Global Standards

Insofar as the QS global ranking is concerned, the following parameters may be noted: academic reputation (includes peer-reviewed publications), facultystudent ratio, citations per faculty, employers reputation (based on the feedback of graduate employers), international student ratio, and international staff ratio. Needless to say, the academic reputation depends on the facultystudent ratio and consists of their hard work. A proper facultystudent ratio is a necessary condition for healthy performance in the peer-reviewed publications. In a total of 100 weightage, the end product of academic reputation has a weightage of 40, whereas its primary cause of facultystudent ratio gets a weightage of 20. The rest of 40 weightage is distributed across parameters as follows: citations have 20, employer reputation 10, international student ratio five, and international staff ratio five. It may be worth noting that the University Grants Commissions (UGC) semi-feudal policy of the re-employment of retired professors blocks new recruitment in faculty posts for five years and denies opportunities for students seeking PhD admissions. In the US, lifetime professors supervise students, whereas in India, the retired professors may get an extension for five years and are honoured to be free from research supervision during this period. Moreover, professors serving the last three years of their career are exempted from research supervision. These twin privileges extended by the UGC to the senior teachers reduce the facultystudent ratio, the prime mover of rankings of a university. The self-indulgent transnational perspective is paradoxically neo-liberal, feudal, and suffers from the bias of gerontocracy.

Moreover, as the facultystudent ratio is crucial for publications, it depends on the proactive policies of adequate funding, faculty recruitment and student admission pursued by the HEIs. The HEIs in India have a weak record in this matter. All regimes of different political parties, including the current regime, are guilty of not allotting 6% of the gross domestic product (GDP) to education, which is recommended by all national committees. At least 6% of GDP should be invested in Indias public education. With huge backlogs in faculty recruitment reported across India due to the criminal negligence of policymakers and a weak leadership in the universities, the facultystudent ratio is weak, and the strength of research students is weakened further. The best universities in the world have an incomparably higher facultystudent ratio due to the proactive policies followed by HEIs with enormous care for even housing needs of newly appointed faculty members. Institutional capacities in the West in providing resources (from reprography to the library) needed by their active faculty are higher. Such proactive institutional support reduces tensions and time consumed by the faculty.

However, their counterparts in India are critically handicapped by these institutional facilities. The conformist thinking of the denationalised elites ignores the supply side of the HEIs and considers the end products only. One should not emulate effects without examining causes. To do so is to offer a weak policy analysis. Thus, their comparison between these two educational systems is unrealistic. While we agree to move ahead, we should do so according to our capacities and not as per the capacities in Western universities.

Notes

1 M K Gandhi (1999b: 207) defines denationalised beings as the ones who scorn at the sentiments of masses.

2 The concept of national-popular, borrowed from Antonio Gramsci (1971: 13033; 421; n 65), is essentially a cultural concept which refers to a combination of national questions and concerns of urban/rural masses. See Gramsci.

3 See India Today, https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/news/story/qs-world-university-rankings-2022-top-10-universities-globally-and-the-top-10-in-india-1813738-2021-06-11.

4 Common universals are ideas present across time and space. For example, the concept of class may have common boundaries found across histories. But historical universals refer to the core meanings inherent in a concept in a specific space/time. Slaves, serfs, proletariat, Dalits, and so on are class relations of a specific time/space. Class manifests with enclosures under caste in premodern India, as stated by Ambedkar. Common universals may manifest differently in different space/time. They are historical universals. Sudipta Kaviraj makes a similar distinction between empty and filled concepts. Empty concepts refer to boundary ideas commonly found in all epochs whereas filled concepts refer to core ideas of each epoch. Class is an empty concept, but caste is a filled concept of class relations in premodern India. For further details, see Kaviraj (1989: 14042).

References

Gandhi, M K (1999a): Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol 23, Wardha: Gandhi Sevagram Ashram.

 (1999b): Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol 42, Wardha: Gandhi Sevagram Ashram.

Giroux, Henry A (1999): Schools for Sale: Public Education, Corporate Culture, and the Citizen Consumer, Education Forum, Vol 63, No 2, pp 14049.

Gramsci, Antonio (1971): Selections from the Prison Notebooks, New York: international Publishers.

Hovey, Rebecca (2004): Critical Pedagogy and International Studies: Reconstructing Knowledge through Dialogue with the Subaltern, International Relations, Vol 18, No 2, pp 24154.

Kaviraj, Sudipta (1989): On Political Explanation in Marxism, Krishna Bharadwaj and Sudipta Kaviraj (eds), Perspectives on Capitalism: Marx, Keynes, Schumpeter and Weber, New Delhi: Sage.

Newson, Janice A (2004): Disrupting the Student as Consumer Model: The New Emancipatory Project, International Relations, Vol 18, No 2, pp 22739.

Phule, Jotirao (2000): Memorial Addressed to the Education Commission, G P Deshpande (ed), Selected Writings of Jotirao Phule, New Delhi: Leftword Books.

Yadav, K C (2000): Dangers to Indian Democracy: Dr Ambedkars Warning, K C Yadav (ed), From Periphery to Centre Stage: Ambedkar, Ambedkarism and Dalit Future, Delhi: Manohar.
The unit-level data of the recently released Time Use Survey 2019 was used to analyse the participation and contribution of men and women engaged in agriculture and allied sectors for states and union territories of India. The pattern of daily time use in other activities like unpaid work, leisure, and self-care have also been presented. There is a need to share the unpaid domestic and care work for enhanced participation and contribution of women in agriculture.

Agriculture sector plays an important role in the livelihood of people in India, providing employment and income. This sector has shown resilience in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic when most of the other sectors of economy have registered marginal or negative growth. The share of agriculture and allied sectors in the gross value added (GVA) of the country at current prices in 201920 was 16.5%. Although the growth of GVA in 201920 was only 2.8% as compared to 6.3% in 201617, it was higher than all the other sectors of economy (GoI 2020).

Women play a key role in agriculture in India apart from the reproductive role, household activities, caregiving, involvement in the society/community, etc. They provide critical labour by carrying out large number of activities in agriculture, namely land preparation, sowing operations, planting, weeding, pest control, harvesting, threshing, winnowing, management of livestock and fisheries, storage, processing, and marketing.

The world of womens work, especially in agriculture, has generally been studied and discussed from the perspective of participation. Participation indicates involvement or being engaged in an activity and denotes the qualitative aspect whether or not a person is carrying out an activity. Contribution, on the contrary, is quantification of the participation and has two dimensions, that is, being engaged (or not) and the duration of engagement. Data on participation are widely available from sources like the census exercise, the periodic National Sample Survey, and the small-scale field studies. Most of the discourse on women in agriculture in India is built on the data on participation and very often, unknowingly, the participation in agriculture is taken as the contribution that presents a narrative far away from the truth. This issue has been lucidly raised by Doss (2011) and Doss et al (2018) citing four myths. The study on quantifying the participation in agriculture requires deeper involvement of time and resources by the researchers and such a study is hard to find. To fully understand the world of womens work, there is need to study not only their participation in myriad activities from dawn to dusk in various farming situations but also specific to crop/livestock/other enterprises.

Gupta and Gupta (1987) estimated that women contribute 59% and 66% of agricultural labour in two villages in India. The participation of women was also reported in agricultural activities like weeding (72.2%), threshing (52.8%), and winnowing (77.8%), in livestock activities except heathcare (13.9%), and marketing of produce (6.7%) besides other activities like fodder collection, drying, feeding, cleaning, milking, and processing milk (Singh and Srivastava 2018). Contribution of women to labour requirement in agriculture across six sub-Saharan African countries revealed that the average female labour share in crop production was estimated to be 40% using individual, plot-level labour input data from nationally representative household surveys. In Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda, the female labour share was little over 50%, Nigeria 37%, Ethiopia 29%, and Niger 24%, and they all were substantially lower than the widely quoted figure of 60%80% (Palacios-Lopez et al 2017).

Women participating in agricultural activities face a number of challenges that limit the human potential they have. The challenges are in the form of social barriers, lower asset ownership, technological constraints, and institutional bias. In spite of the real challenges that they come across, the advocacy for the womens cause in agriculture often gets exaggerated.

The Time Use Survey (TUS) provides an important insight into the participation and contribution of women in different activities. Jain and Chand conducted the first mini-TUS called the Time Allocation Survey (TAS) (Jain 1996) in two statesRajasthan and West Bengalbased on 127 households; the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) conducted the first official pilot TUS in 199899 across six states in IndiaHaryana, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, and Meghalayabased on 18,591 households; the National Statistical Office (NSO 2020) conducted the first nationwide TUS on 1,38,799 households and covered the entire country except Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Deshpande 2021).

The report of the first Time Use Survey-2019 (TUS-2019) was recently released (September 2020), which is a document of over 2,000 pages that covers the activities of men and women in nine major divisions, but it speaks nothing about those participating in agriculture and allied activities. The present study looked into the unit-level data with over 10.68 million records of the TUS-2019 study and took out those engaged in agriculture and allied activities. This is the first-ever study to estimate gender disaggregated participation, time use, and contribution in agriculture for states and India.

There has been considerable exasperation in literature of womens participation in agriculture and many times the participation has been misunderstood as contribution, thereby eulogising them to the status of demi-god, and in this process the worldly hurdles they face are often relegated. There have been reports that say that women constitute 65%76.6% of the total agricultural workforce (Planning Commission 2012; Ghosh and Ghosh 2014; Bedi 2018; Dudi et al 2019), 55%71% of the labour force in livestock farming (Planning Commission 2002, 2007; FAO 2013; Singh et al 2020), 77% participation in animal care, 93% participation in dairy (FAO 2013), produce between 60% and 80% of food, responsible for half of worlds food production (Mehra and Rojas 2008; FAO (2021); Dutt 2017), involved in 55%80% of all farm-related work (Dutt 2017; MAKAAM 2021; Pachauri 2019; Oxfam International 2020), etc.

At the same time, several researchers analysed the Census (2011), the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) 68th Round (201112), and the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) (NSO 2019) data and estimated the participation of men and women in agriculture and reported the facts based on the available data. Siddiqui et al (2017) estimated that 27.8% of all working-age rural women were involved in agriculture (NSSO 68th round 201112). Deb (2020) reported that there were 73.4% of female workers (rural) in usual status work in agriculture, mining, and quarrying (PLFS 201718). Pattnaik and Dutt (2020) mentioned that 65% of women work in agriculture as compared to 42% of men.

The article attempts to make a distinction between participation and contribution and presents the estimate of participation and contribution of men and women in rural areas of India using the first TUS-2019. The article ensues by describing the data and methodology, empirical findings on the participation of men and women along with contribution in agriculture and allied activities, followed by the conclusion. In this article, the term agriculture means agriculture and allied activities including crop and livestock sector and the data are presented for rural India only.

Data and Methodology

The data used for this study were taken from the first TUS-2019 conducted by the NSO (2020), which included all states and union territories of India. The data set contained 10.68 million records from which the relevant records were extracted for analysis. Since agriculture was the focus of this study, only rural areas were considered. In the rural areas, data were collected from 2,72,117 individuals (above six years of age) (1,37,730 male, 1,34,319 female and 68 transgender) from 82,897 households. The activities reported by respondents over a period of 24 hours were recorded for every 30 minutes (min) and codified (three-digit code) into nine major divisions and 165 activities according to the International Classification of Activities for Time Use Statistics 2016 (ICATUS 2016). Thirteen activities falling under major divisions 1 and 2 were considered as agricultural activities (Table 1).

Analysis of data: The relevant variables were extracted from the unit-level data available as text files using Stata software. The different activities carried out in a day by an individual were consolidated. Thereafter, the total number of unique individuals and unique individuals for each major activity were identified. Then, the number of persons represented by each individual was calculated by multiplying the unique individuals with the final weight. Finally, minutes spent on each major activity by each individual (projected to the number of persons represented by them) were obtained by multiplying the minutes spent and the final weight.

Participation rate was calculated as the percentage of persons age performing that activity during the 24 hours of the reference period. The average time spent on an activity was calculated by taking into account the total time spent by those who participated in the activity. Participation (relative share in agriculture) of men and women was calculated as the percentage of those involved in agriculture. The contribution of men and women in different sectors of agriculture was calculated by aggregating the total time spent by them and thereafter calculating their relative share.

Of the 82,897 households surveyed for this study in the rural areas covering all states and union territories of India, 57.3% of the households were engaged in agricultural and allied activities. Again, 22.45% of the rural households were engaged in livestock-related activities. Thus, of the agricultural households, 39.2% households owned livestock. Participation, time spent, relative share (participation), and contribution of men and women in agriculture as a whole, and in crop and livestock sectors have been given in Table 2. Figure 1 (p 23) explains the dynamics of participation and contribution of women and men in states in two major sectors of agriculture, that is, crops and livestock considering uniform class intervals.

Participation

Participation in agriculture by the respondents were grouped under one of the 13 activities (Table 1) that fell under either of the two major divisions, namely employment and related activities (1) or production of goods for own final use (2). Analysis of participation in agriculture by men and women under the two major divisions mentioned above has not been covered separately in this article, and the two divisions have been grouped into one for this study.

However, to give a glimpse, it was found that 28.55% of the persons in rural areas participated in agriculture and allied activities. In other words, in rural areas 28.55% of the persons participated in agriculture who lived in 57.3% of the rural households that were engaged in agricultural and allied activities. In rural areas, 16.61% of the persons participated in agriculture under major division 1, that is, employment in agriculture and allied activities, whereas 14.09% were under major division 2, that is, agriculture and allied activities for own final use. There were 2.16% persons who participated in agriculture under both the major divisions. In the ensuing paragraphs, participation in agriculture has not been qualified with the term work participation because the status of the workers does not encompass those engaged in agriculture and allied activities for own final use, whereas participation in this article denotes all who are engaged in, in either of the two major divisions.

The study revealed that in rural areas, 22.4% of women (age 6+ years) and 34.6% of men (age 6+ years) participate in agriculture and allied activities, including crop and livestock sector, spending on an average 233 min/day and 330 min/day, respectively. Sector-wise estimates revealed that in the crop sector, 13.3% of women participate and spend 274 min/day as against 28.9% rural men spending 330 min/day. Similarly, for the livestock sector, participation was 10.7% with 129 min/day for women and 10.8% with 147 min/day for men.

Among the states and union territories, Gujarat had the highest male participation in agriculture (45.8%), followed by Mizoram (44.4%), Maharashtra (43.7%), Karnataka (42.3%), etc. Fifteen states and union territories had male participation more than the countrys average (34.6%). Very low male participation in agriculture was observed in Chandigarh, Delhi, and Goa. Among the states and union territories, Himachal Pradesh had the highest female work participation in agriculture (46.4%), followed by Rajasthan (38.6%) and Nagaland (37.5%) and the lowest was in Lakshadweep (4.7%), followed by Bihar (8.8%) and Goa (8.8%). Nineteen states and union territories had female participation more than the countrys average (22.4%). Sector-wise participation depicts that gender parity is more in livestock sector (10.8% men, 10.7% women) than the crop sector (28.9% men, 13.3% women). States with higher male work participation in agriculture are due to relatively more involvement of males in crop sector and those with higher female participation were due to higher participation in the livestock sector.

Time spent: With respect to time spent, Telangana had the highest average time spent per day by men in agriculture (390 min), followed by Mizoram (379 min) and Punjab (372 min). On the contrary, Chandigarh has the lowest time spent (180 min), followed by Lakshadweep (223 min) and Kerala (235 min). Among the states and union territories, Telangana had the highest time spent by women in agriculture (349 min), followed by Mizoram (314 min) and Maharashtra (304 min) and the lowest was observed in Lakshadweep (79 min), followed by Goa (101 min) and Assam (122 min).

Relative share of men and women in agriculture: Of the total workforce engaged in agriculture, 38.7% are women, the rest (61.3) being men. Share of women in the livestock sector is much higher (49.1%) as compared to the crop sector (31.1%). Considering agriculture as a whole, the highest share of women was observed in Goa (72.6%). Five states and union territories had higher relative share of women participation than men. In the crop sector also, the highest share of women was in Goa (74.5%), whereas in livestock, Rajasthan (69.2%) had the highest share of women of the total workforce engaged. Uttarakhand is the only state having higher share of women in all the three categories, that is, overall agriculture, crop, and livestock sectors.

Contribution

Contribution in agriculture was arrived by projecting the participation rate to population, multiplying with the time spent per day and thereafter calculating the relative share of men and women. It was observed that women contribute 30.8% and men 69.2% of the total time required in agriculture. In the crop sector alone, womens time contribution was 27.2% as against 72.8% by men. In the livestock sector, womens time contribution was 45.8% as against 54.2% by men. This substantiates the general perception that women contribute on a much higher scale in livestock management activities in the country than that in crop production activities.

Among the states and union territories, Himachal Pradesh had the highest female contribution in agriculture (57.5%), followed by Uttarakhand (56.1%) and Goa (52.4%) and in these three states the contribution of women was higher than men. Contribution of women was higher than men in three states and union territories in the crop sector and eight in the livestock sector. In Uttarakhand, womens contribution was found to be higher than men in both the crop and livestock sectors. Lakshadweep had the lowest contribution of women in agriculture (6.3%), followed by Bihar (13.2%) and West Bengal (15.2%) (Table 2, p 22).

Pattern of daily time spent: Time use analysis of men and women engaged in agriculture in rural areas of India revealed that, men spent on an average 311 min/day in agricultural activities as compared to women (234 min/day). Daily time spent in unpaid work (domestic + caregiving + others) by women was 293 min as compared to 91 min by men (Figure 2).

For women, the total working time per day was 574 min (9.5 hour) as compared to 483 min (7.9 hour) by men. In other words, women worked 91 min more than men per day. When the working time of men and women was projected to actual population, it was calculated that of the total working time required to run an agricultural household, women contribute 53.2% of the time and men 46.8%. Further, women get about 50 min/day less time in learning, socialising, and leisure and 41 min/day less time for self-care including sleep as compared to the men. The participation and contribution of women in agriculture is less because they put in 3.2 times more time in unpaid domestic and care activities than men (293 versus 91 min/day).

In Conclusion

Using the unit-level data of TUS-2019, the study has revealed that women contribute 53.2% of labour in the agricultural household in rural areas as compared to 46.8% by men. On a daily basis, women put in 1.6 hours more than men. They get less time for learning, socialisation, and self-care. Because of the burden of unpaid domestic and care work, their participation in agriculture is lower (22.4% women versus 34.6% men) and their contribution is also lower by 30.8% than men (69.2%). If the burden of unpaid domestic and care work is shared equally, the participation and contribution of women will increase. There is a need to develop and strengthen institutional arrangements like anganwadi kendras (day-care centres) in rural areas to take care of the growing children for enhanced participation of women in agriculture as well as other sectors.

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The Assam assembly elections continued the trend towards deepening of religious polarisation in the state. The Bharatiya Janata Partys alliance strategy helped in retaining its hold over the ethnic base that had shifted to the party in 2016.

The Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJP) showing in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in which it bagged nine out of the states 14 seats, two more than its tally of 2014, signified that the party was here to stay on as a dominant player. The assembly elections of 2021 continued the trend towards dominance of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) as the latter could win 75 seats out of 126, with around 45% vote share. Of the 75 seats that the NDA won, the BJP won 60 seats, while its allies the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and United Peoples Party Liberal (UPPL) returned nine and six seats, respectively, to the NDA (Table 1, p 32). The Congress could secure 29 seats, while the Mahajot (Congress-led alliance) in all secured 50 seats with 44% vote share. Within the Mahajot, the performance of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) was most phenomenal as it secured 16 out 20 seats it contested, while Congress secured 29 out of 95 seats it contested and the Bodoland Peoples Front (BPF) won 4 out of the 12 seats it contested. Both the Congress and AIUDF gained three seats each despite depletion in their respective vote shares. The BPF lost 8 seats, while the Communist Party of India (Marxist) gained one seat as compared to their performance in 2016. As far as the vote share is concerned, while the BJPs vote share surged by around 4%, the principal opposition party, that is, the Congresss vote share declined by 1%. As compared to 2016, the NDA gained 7% vote share, while the Mahajot suffered an erosion of around 5% vote share, which explicitly indicates a comfortable and decisive victory in favour of the NDA. Though the newly formed regional party Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) could not open its account, it secured a 4% vote share; one candidate supported by Raijor Dal, another new entrant, won a seat.

Beyond Indigeneity

The preceding assembly elections of 2016 and the Lok Sabha elections of 2019 showed the ability of the BJP to forge and retain coalition with prominent regional parties having distinct social bases, enabling it to veil religious polarisation and to win votes from wide segments of society, except for a large section of Muslim votes. Interestingly, the BJPs strength in the 2016 Vidhan Sabha and 2019 Lok Sabha elections laid in projecting itself as the representative of the issue of indigeneity and cultural identity of Assam (Tripathi and Sharma 2021a: 16). In this assembly elections, however, a marked shift in the partys strategy was seen as it positioned itself as being the protector of Hindu civilisation and the cultural identity of Assam. In 2016, the party navigated its rise through the appropriation of regional agenda and giving a call for the protection of Jati, Mati and Bheti. The party had put aside its blatantly vocal Hindutva rhetoric and agenda (Tripathi et al 2018). It could make the question of indigeneity as the core issue that became apparent through its alliance with prominent regional forces, declaration of Sarbananda Sonowal (representing an indigenous face) as the chief ministerial candidate, and making the issue of illegal migration as the principal axis of political mobilisation. In contrast, in 2021, the BJP moved beyond being a protector of indigeneity and projected itself as the preserver of Hindu civilisation and cultural identity of Assam. The party exhorted Miya poetry, on the one hand, and the alliance between Congress and AIUDF, on the other, as cultural onslaughts on the civilisational identity of Assam. Tripathi and Sharma (2021b) argue that the BJP sees the contemporary moment of politics as that of cultural war between two distinct civilisations. Therefore, issues of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) are reduced to being a mere background for the 2021 elections (Tripathi and Sharma 2021a: 15). This explains why the BJP did not compromise with its stand on the CAA and remained consistent in making the protection of the cultural identity of Assam the primary issue in the elections. Moreover, it did not declare Sonowal, the incumbent chief minister, to be its chief ministerial candidate considering the greater salience that religion now enjoys in the state. Though the BJP did not declare a chief ministerial candidate, the campaign was perceived to be led by Himanta Biswa Sarma who eventually became the chief minister of Assam. The campaign was anchored in overt Hindutva politics infusing religious meanings and symbols deeply into the idea of cultural identity of Assam. The declaration of Sarma as the chief minister represents a well-marked strategy of naturalising Hindutva politics in Assam at a moment in its history when religion has definitely overtaken ethnicity and language as the most significant marker of political mobilisation in the state.

Competing Coalitions

The plank of protection of the cultural identity of Assam was the prime issue around which the BJP fought the elections, but it also pinned its hope on the welfare schemes of both the state and central governments, including targeted direct beneficiary schemes and the grant of autonomous and development councils for ethnic communities as additional issues for ensuring its electoral victory. Among the tea plantation workers, it focused on the negotiation of pay hikes and the implementation of welfare schemes in order to secure the support of this populous community towards the party. Additionally, the party also placed high stakes on the development of infrastructure, especially in transport and communication as well as COVID-19 management. The BJP gave up its alliance with the BPF in the Bodoland region and chose to induct the UPPL into its fold. Thus, the NDA included the BJP, AGP, and UPPL.

As a result, the major challenge before the opposition parties in general and Congress in particular was to contain the narrative around the cultural identity of Assam by forging a pan-Assam counter-coalition. A statewide counter-coalition appeared pragmatic given the dominance that the BJP enjoys in Assam apart from the unanimity among all the opposition parties on their vocal opposition to the CAA. The BJPs phenomenal performance in successive elections was the outcome of its stable alliance with regional parties, factionalism within the Congress, and the inability of opposition parties to present a united front (Tripathi and Sharma 2021a). In the assembly elections, another significant challenge was to declare a chief ministerial candidate to lead the opposition campaign. The opposition could neither forge a statewide counter-coalition and nor could it evolve a consensus over its chief ministerial candidate. The opposition fragmented into two major alliances: the Congress-led Mahajot and a regionalist alliance. The Mahajot included the Congress, the AIUDF, left parties, Anchalik Gana Morcha, and the BPF and was expected to have a major impact in Muslim-dominated seats in lower and central Assam as well as in the Barak Valley. The regionalist alliance of the AJP, supported by the All Assam Students Union (AASU), and Raijor Dal, backed by the left-oriented Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), hoped to contain the BJPs dominance in upper Assam (Tripathi and Sharma 2021b). The principal agenda of both the alliances in the opposition was the rolling back of the CAA, yet they were unable to forge a pan-Assam counter-coalition.

The Congress in its campaign promised certain guarantees that included the issue of rising unemployment, minimum wages to women, a hike in the minimum wages for tea plantation workers, and price rise. Region-wise, the allies of the Congress-led Mahajot had a social base predominantly limited to the Barak Valley and lower Assam and the regionalist parties alliance had a visible clout in upper Assam. The CongressAIUDF alliance had an electoral advantage in the minority-dominated constituencies, yet it failed to break grounds in upper Assam constituencies that are characterised by profound ethnic diversity and religious homogeneity. In brief, a dominant-ruling coalition and a fragmented opposition without any leadership face marked the political scene in Assam as it went for polls.

Polarisation or Performance?

The electoral stability that the NDA enjoys in the state as well as its victory can be explained through two key factors: first, religious polarisation and second, perception about performance and pro-incumbency sentiments. As perception about performance and pro-incumbency sentiments is clearly and sharply divided along religious lines, it becomes apparent that the nature of religious polarisation has overtaken other crucial factors. Pro-incumbency becomes apparent from the survey as 43% favoured an incumbent government, while 38% desired a change. Further, 58% voters expressed satisfaction with the Sonowal government in the state, while the figure for satisfaction with the NDA government at the centre was 56%. When the data are disaggregated on religious lines, satisfaction level of voters with the state government among Hindus was twice as compared to Muslims, that is, 72% and 36%, respectively (Palshikar et al 2021). Similarly, as seen in Table 2 (p 32), while the NDA enjoyed a support base cutting across communities barring the exception of Muslims, the Mahajot had a preponderant presence among the Muslim voters. While 67% of Hindus supported the NDA, only 19% supported the Mahajot. In contrast, 81% of Muslims supported the Mahajot, while only 11% Hindus supported it.

The primacy of polarisation over performance thesis can be explained through a nuanced view of the emergence of coalition structures that enabled religious polarisation in the state. The trumping of religious identities over linguistic markers or divide in the state owes in part to the profound base that the AIUDF enjoys among the predominantly Bangla-speaking population of the state. Two other factors have also been significant since 2014; first, the BJPs politics of appropriation of cultural identity and infusing it deeply with religious meanings and symbols, second, the creation or expansion of development/autonomous councils and forging of coalitions in autonomous councils. For instance, the UPPL allied with the BJP in the constitution of the Bodoland Territorial Council and the lone member of the legislative assembly supported by the Gana Shakti Party (having a popular base among the Mising community) joined the BJP on the eve of elections. The BJPs dominant position by virtue of being the ruling party both at the centre and the state has certainly helped its cause of reaching out to diverse ethnic communities.

The deepening of religious polarisation and consequent Hindu consolidation in favour of the NDA had foreclosed the possibilities for regional parties like the AGP or UPPL to expand electorally on their own. For the AGP, issues such as factionalism as well as the gradual shifting of caste Hindu votes, the tribal votes, and the tea plantation workers, votes to the BJP foreclosed its possibilities of expanding its political base, thereby deepening its dependency over the BJP. In fact, despite deep disagreements between the two parties over the CAA, the shift of traditional AGP voters, especially the caste Hindus to the BJP, has ensured that this dependency continues (Tripathi and Sharma 2021a). In the absence of any strong regionalist force, particularly in upper Assam, the Congresss alliance with the AIUDF resulted in sharp polarisation along religious lines. Reluctance among Hindu voters of the Congress to accept the CongressAIUDF alliance sharpened the polarisation. As per the survey, Palshikar and others (2021) noted that,

the survey found a major dilemma among Congresss traditional Hindu supporters on this countthree of every ten (30%) of them were found to be opposed to the CongressAIUDF alliance, and around four-fifths of them ended up voting for the NDA.

Constitution of coalition along religious lines led to the remaking of structures of the coalition as a site for religious polarisation and consolidation. Thus, in Assam, religion became a principal factor for voter mobilisation and choice, while all other factors derivative.

The primacy of religion as a determinant of electoral choice can be gauged from Table 3, which categorically establishes the primacy of religion over language in a state where language and ethnicity have traditionally been the marker of political mobilisation. In 2021, an overwhelmingly large proportion of Hindu votersboth Assamese Hindus (67%) and Bengali Hindus (74%)voted for the NDA, and this was simply a repetition of the 2016 trend. Contrary to this, Muslim votersboth Assamese Muslims and Bengali Muslims predominantly voted for the Mahajot. Assamese Muslims were an exception when compared to 2016 elections, as 24% of the community (a sizeable proportion) voted for the NDA in 2021 as compared to 7% in 2016.

A similar trend of religious polarisation is evident when the region-wise voting pattern of major religious communities is mapped. As Table 4 (p 34) shows, Hindu and Muslim consolidation in Assam transcends regional boundaries and remains the norm across regions, though Muslim consolidation for Mahajot supersedes Hindu consolidation for the NDA. The greater intensity of Muslim consolidation owes to the CongressAIUDF alliance, which remained successful in containing the split of Muslim votes and thus advantaged Mahajot in all minority-dominated constituencies across regions in Assam.

Though anti-CAA mobilisation was the principal issue for opposition parties, it could not bring in electoral dividend for the opposition as religious identity overdetermined voters choice for the alliance. As seen from Table 5, despite the emotive appeal of the anti-CAA sentiment, neither the Mahajot or the AJP could convert it into votes. In fact, among 53% of the Assamese Hindus who opposed the act, an overwhelming 60% voted for the NDA and the corresponding figure for the Mahajot was a mere 18%. Even if the votes for Mahajot and the AJP are added up, it remains at least 20% short of that for the NDA. On the contrary, a predominantly higher number of Assamese Muslim voters and Bengali Muslim voters opposed to the CAA voted for Mahajot as compared to the NDA.

Tribal Consolidation and Regional Balance

With the rise of the BJP, upper Assam has proved to be the Achilles, heel of the Congress as the region has turned into a springboard for the saffron surge. As Table 6 shows, the NDA outperformed Mahajot with a 47% vote share and 43 seats. Mahajot got 12 seats with 38% vote share and the regionalist alliance could secure just one seat from the region. This has been a continuation of the previous trend. For a region that traditionally remained the epicentre of ethnic politics, the smooth ride for the NDA indicates a deeper shifting of the ethnic base towards the BJP. Even the impact of ethno-regionalist forces like the AJP and Raijor Dal remained limited to few constituencies in upper Assam.

Shifting of ethnic base also explains the NDAs performance over the Scheduled Tribe (ST) seats. Out of 16 ST seats, it won 14 with a phenomenal vote share of 53%. Considering the fact that the anti-CAA mobilisations were mostly concentrated in this part of Assam, the voting pattern show it clearly that the religious divide was more prominent than ethnolinguistic markers. It can be argued that the Sangh Parivars long-drawn politics of cultivating base among the tea tribes in Assam contributed to the partys electoral stability in upper Assam. Despite the territorial concentration of few ethnic groups, a predominantly large number of constituencies in upper Assam are ethnically diverse and mixed with the tea tribes votes, thereby having a considerable impact in the elections (Tripathi and Sharma 2021b). The elections showed an even performance by the NDA across regions, and the Mahajot could maintain its hold only in the lower Assam and Barak Valley constituencies, that have a significant Muslim population.

In Conclusion

In the 2021 Assam assembly elections, key factors that were instrumental in getting the NDA back to power were religious polarisation, positive perception about performance of the state and central governments and pro-incumbency. The dominance attained by the BJP in Assam is unprecedented as it has deepened the dependency of the regional forces on account of religious polarisation overtaking region, language, and ethnicity as markers of political mobilisation. On the one hand, such dependency momentarily works in favor of the NDA making it numerically strong, yet, on the other, in the long run, it shrinks autonomous electoral space for regional parties in elections. The failure to forge an alliance with prominent regionalist parties and factions in upper Assam apart from its inability to project a leadership face made the Congress vulnerable in the elections. It is worthwhile to mention that though AIUDF increased its presence owing to consolidation of minority votes in favour of the Mahajot, the Congress could not secure the return of its traditional voters back into its fold. Essentially, the Mahajot was unable to counter the narrative about protection of cultural identity of Assam, and the alliance failed to penetrate the Hindu bases that had shifted to the BJP in 2016.

References

Palshikar, Suhas, Manjesh Rana, Dhruba Pratim Sharma and Vikas Tripathi (2021): Hindu Consolidation Pays off for BJP, Hindu, viewed on 6 June, https://www.thehindu.com/elections/assam-assembly/hindu-consolidation-pays-off-for-bjp/article34509288.ece.

Tripathi, Vikas, Tamasa Das and Sandhya Goswami (2018): National Narrative and Regional Subtext: Understanding the Rise of BJP in Assam, Studies in Indian Politics, Vol 6, No 1, pp 111, viewed on 5 June, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2321023018762676.

Tripathi, Vikas and Dhruba Pratim Sharma (2021a): After Gogoi: Congress and Its Challenges in Assam, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 56, No 4, pp 1216, viewed on 5 June, https://www.epw.in/journal/2021/4/commentary/after-gogoi.html.

 (2021b): Coalition of Compulsion, Hindu, viewed on 5 June, https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/coalition-of-compulsion/article34085996.ece.
Bulldozer-led demolitions are emerging as a new form of extralegal punishments in India.

Demolish and Punish

Bulldozer-led demolitions are emerging as a new form of extralegal punishments in India.

A fundamental feature of modern jurisprudence is theidea that punishments ought to be commensurate with the magnitude of the crime and that criminality is conditioned by societal circumstances. A justice system that does not honour the normative values represented by modern jurisprudence runs the risk of eroding its own public legitimacy and trust. Additionally, a political conception of the justice system would not limit itself merely to the institutions of the police and the judiciary but would also consider the influence of public opinion and mass media, not to mention the pressures of the ruling political parties and economic elites.

It is this amalgamated political structure that impinges on the functioning of the rule of law in contemporary India. One of its obvious ramifications is that it has left a large number of purportedly independent institutionsthe police and the judiciary, the municipal corporation and the civil bureaucracy, the media, and the universitieswith little to no operative independence. What such a political apparatus does to the machinery of the rule of law is that it makes its functioning increasingly arbitrary. The arbitrary nature of such a politicised functioning of the legal and civil machinery in India could be witnessed in the increasing use of bulldozer-led demolitions as a method of inflicting extralegal punishments.

This usage of bulldozers not merely for civilconstructive work but for politicaldestructive purposes is not unprecedented in Indian politics. During the days of the Emergency, such bulldozer-led demolitions were active as political and procedural means to bring down both public and private structures. In the recent time, however, the march of the bulldozer seems to have followed an extralegal and arbitrary route towards demolitions of the houses of select and targeted individuals whose activism has become a thorn in the flesh of the state. This was evident in the demolitions carried out in Uttar Pradeshs Prayagraj where extralegal punishment was seen to be inflicted on default assumptions of unproven criminality.

Such a state action has followed a certain script in its handling of the law in the earlier cases of Delhis Jahangirpuri and Madhya Pradeshs Khargone as well. While the officials of local bureaucracy and the police claim that the demolition of illegally constructed houses is a routine exercise, elected ministers readily portray such actions as extraordinary and selective measures required to set an example for the general public at large. Moreover, a compliant media eagerly amplifies and justifies the spectacular nature of such a routine exercise where the sheer expediency of due process is shown its proper place by a political set-up that has mastered the use of the law for the purposes of attenuating its majoritarian dominance in Indian society. Needless to say, such a state action makes a mockery of all fundamental principles of modern jurisprudence and the rule of law. And yet, one faces this paradox in contemporary India where state agencies themselves announce the futility of legal procedures through their actions, if not their words.

Apart from undermining the legitimacy of state institutions and their constitutional commitment towards the rule of law, these bulldozer-led demolitions signify another feature of contemporary Indian politics, namely an intolerance towards democratic dissent. While the champions of bulldozer justice cite the issue of violence occurring in public marches and protests as the reason for deploying this harsh measure, it nevertheless begs the question about whether the ones who are actually guilty of causing violence are thereby getting punished through this method or not. The demolition of houses on municipal pretexts is nothing but a cunning chimera for scoring political vendetta against select individuals from minority communities. Here, criminality is adjudged on the basis of an accused individuals group identity who is then considered fit to be punished for crimes that are yet to be proven in any court of law. Whether there exists any concurrence between the actual perpetrators of a crime and the ones who eventually bear the brunt of legal and extralegal punishment is a moot question in the recorded cases of bulldozer justice. While a key principle of modern jurisprudence states that justice must not only be done, but must also be seen to be done, the emergent punishment regime in India dictates that demolitions of houses must not only be done but must also be seen, recorded, and broadcasted to be done.

A jurisprudence that seems more interested in setting an example and teaching a lessonrather than fulfilling the aims of restorative justiceis likely to take the logic of vendetta or revenge to its political breaking point. Such a logic inordinately puts state institutions under the undemocratic service of elected officials and unelected elites rather than serving the interests of the general public at large. What would be the place of justice and fairness in such a system of political jurisprudence is unworthy of further elaboration. What does need to be spelled out, however, is that merely offering homilies to the rule of law would be an insufficient response to an environment where jurisprudential discourse as well as action (and inaction) are heavily overdetermined by a political structure that brooks or tolerates no institutional dissent. To Franz Kafkas question, what comes before the law? the contemporary legalpolitical apparatus in India seems to be offering a chilling but determinate answerbefore the law comes punishment.
The photo shows Hashima Island, left, known as Battleship Island in Korea, where it is believed between 500 and 800 Koreans were forced to work between 1943 and 1945, with 122 of them dying. Yonhap



By Kang Seung-woo



The Yoon Suk-yeol administration has begun full-fledged discussions with Japan to address the thorny issue of wartime forced labor by launching a public-private consultative body. But it remains to be seen if it will find a breakthrough in resolving the matter, which has been a major stumbling block in Korea-Japan relations.



On Monday, the government launched the 12-member body, comprised of government officials, experts and journalists as well as legal representatives of the victims and their families, and held an inaugural session, hoping to come up with solutions to normalize bilateral ties by the end of next month.



In October and November of 2018, Korea's Supreme Court issued separate rulings ordering Japanese companies found guilty of exploiting forced labor during WW II to compensate surviving Korean victims of wartime forced labor. But the Japanese side has refused to pay them. As a result, the Korean victims filed lawsuits to liquidate their assets here and got the nod from local courts. But the Japanese firms have appealed that ruling. The companies are Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal, renamed Nippon Steel, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.



The discussion comes as the Supreme Court's final call is expected to come next month, although the Japanese government continues to insist that the Korean government proposes answers to the forced labor issue. Tokyo is also calling on Seoul to offer solutions to the issue of Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during WWII. Japan believes the two issues have already been resolved by bilateral agreements signed in 1965.



"The biggest sticking point for the consultative body in coming up with solutions is how to narrow the difference between Korea and Japan," said Choi Eun-mi, a researcher at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.



"In addition, there are various ideas on how to resolve the issue, so the first barrier for the consultative body to tackle would be to coordinate diverse opinions."



Legal representatives who participated in Monday's meeting say the victims want the government to arrange direct negotiations between them and the Japanese companies over the issue.



"It is reasonable for the victims and the Japanese firms to meet each other and discuss the issue," the legal representative said ahead of the meeting.



"If a meeting is arranged, we plan to ask the judicial proceedings to be halted."



However, it would be a daunting task for the government to arrange such a meeting, because the Japanese side is poised not to respond, because of its stance that the 1965 normalization treaty between the two countries settled individual compensation issues and nothing further is owed.



It also remains to be seen if any proposals resulting from the consultative body's meetings will be legally binding.



A legal representative, who participated in the meeting, said the government failed to clarify whether the consultative body's goal is to come up with the government's proposal or to simply gather opinions and remained cautious about deciding to attend the next meeting, expected to take place later this month.




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In the context of the recent political upheavals, one common perception has been that those who defected from the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) or the Great Development Front coalition government have allowed themselves to be illuded by self-interest. In the politics based on the plurality of group/sectional interest, it has always been extremely difficult to decide who is at fault. One could offer a common answer to this important questionboth of them are at fault. However, the nature of their faults is different. For example, political parties with enormous resources and numbers have the moral responsibility to enlist on the basis of constitutional principles, corresponding party programmes, and the support of relatively smaller political groups. A party that is entrenched in numbers and resources has the added moral responsibility to put up the ruling combination or configuration in order to adhere to larger democratic principles, which will brighten the image of the country in the international field.

These parties, therefore, have the responsibility to take initiative in making smaller groups as equal partners in expanding the scope of democratic principles. Such principles should be the guiding force behind the reconfiguration or reconstruction of the ruling combination. Thus, it is the responsibility of the so-called national parties to refrain from misleading the members to political manoeuvres that tend to compel the members from smaller groups to cross constitutional and procedural boundaries. However, as the editorial comment in the current issue of Economic & Political Weekly suggests, the recent defection move causing the fall of the MVA government in Maharashtra shows that both the party with resources and those who were deceived by such resources have contributed to the violation of both the principle and procedures of constitutional democracy.

The political party with resourcesalbeit indirectly but eventuallyencouraging the morally vulnerable politicians from the so-called Bahujan castes does measure up to a moral fault, but succumbing to such an authoritarian desire is the double fault. Convergence of such a fault line becomes morally more objectionable when it merges with the dominant desire of the authoritarian political party to rule over the mass of destitute people. The political party that has a desire to gain formal political power using whatever ways it adopts and enormous resources it controls only to rule over the poor masses who are reeling under the conditions of acute destitution is awful to say the least. It, indeed, is awful to come across politicians who, despite their humble background, become part of the power that desires to leave its stamp of domination over the masses, irrespective of the degraded quality of life of such masses. It does not matter whether they are hungry, poor, filled with anxiety, and so on. Thus, the ground of political power does become slippery, leading to continuous down-sliding, particularly of the Dalit and Bahujan politicians.

This puts into question the egalitarian conception of democracy. Since the early 20th century, social thinking has been endorsing the need for egalitarian democracy that would enable hitherto excluded social groups to participate in the governance of the country. Social thinkers from western and southern India have consistently argued that egalitarian democracy is more enabling than a democracy with an authoritarian agenda. It was also expected that those politiciansparticularly Dalit and Bahujan leaderswould build on the advantage of such an egalitarian democracy. However, these first-time beneficiaries of democracy have not been spectacularly successful in augmenting this historical advantage by becoming democratic and making others more democratic. They are supposed to build on this democratic legacy by adhering to the procedures that are a help to them as well.

Recent political decisions and actions have rendered democracy as tottering between deal and dialogue. Arguably, their autonomy to form a ruling alliance with the majority party smacks of a deal that necessarily puts aside the need for dialogue with the electorate which elected these leaders at the first instance. But this does not happen in most of the cases where elected representatives cross over to a different party after getting elected. The process of dialogue would start from the internal critique of the disposition where the enslavers feel elevated when the slaves make a public acknowledgement of their masters gesture of generosity. Generosity here is interpreted by its beneficiary as the crucial factor in putting the person in the seat of power.

As a part of internal critique, the legislators whose political as well as social credibility and career hinge on constitutional and democratic principles need to be sceptical about parties that undermine both democracy and the Constitution. These representatives should realise that a party with dominant ambitions need not treat constitutional and democratic morality as an infinite source of remaining responsible in their political practice. Dialogue has to necessarily take place within the framework of democratic principles and constitutional values. Democratic principles in general and parliamentary democracy in particular continue to offer us a unique opportunity to produce morally decent, politically attentive, and socially sensitive environment, both for the citizens and their representatives.
In recent months, more so during the pandemic that we were all trying to contain and overcome, there has, inter alia, been a growing and alarming theme in the media that can be described in phrases familiar to the free-world like fake news, Islamophobia, sectarianism, fascism, and closer home as blatant communalism. Members of the civil services for long assumed to be ideology neutral have been speaking out to question the value of secularism as such. Of late, secularism has begun to be labelled as separatism that undermines uniformity. Talk of the Uniform Civil Code is sourced in the same attitude. It is an undeniable fact that though this had been building up before the 2014 elections as well, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) victory of that year emboldened the dark side of Indian politics to publicly spew poison without fear of any legal sanction with the government leadership preferring to look away or shrug their shoulders, sometimes even blaming the very persons against whom hate was directed.

The horrifying lynchings across the country substituted the past practice of triggering riots as a dire warning to the minorities with no large-scale implications for the ruling establishments such as the Mumbai riots in 1993 and Gujarat riots in 2002 had caused. Yet, when these new instruments did not serve their evil designs, the old, time-tested versions were again resorted to as in the north-east Delhi riots of the early 2020. There too, where rioters stopped their mayhem, the local police have stepped in to harass and humiliate the very targeted persons. Secular voices remain unheard and ineffective, even hounded by the police. Since the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) will be back, we need to be prepared to deal with its complexities. It might be important to record that despite the Congress party reaching out to the victims of the government retaliation against protestors, there was a concerted effort to keep its leaders away and Congress-associated lawyers at some distance.

The BJP has once again attempted to focus public attention on the Ram Mandir with the bhoomi puja. In deference, all Muslims respect it but wonder why similar attention is not given to the mosque graciously directed to be allowed to be built by the Supreme Court. Yet, it is a moment for Muslims of India to help bring an honourable national reconciliation that arguably the Congress party along with other secular parties, particularly the left parties, have carefully and judiciously steered. Reclaiming Lord Ram and other Hindu symbols from those who have illegitimately appropriated them is a sine qua non along with the reassurance to minorities of our steadfast commitment to preventing the BJP narrative from overwhelming our vision irreversibly. But the judicial reopening of the MathuraVaranasi controversy settled by legislative steps endorsed by the Ayodhya Bench of the Allahabad High Court itself, with the notice issued by the Supreme Court regarding the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act and Allahabad High Court notice on a public interest litigation on Mathura, will test our commitment further. Meanwhile, curiously, many political outfits, like the Samajwadi Party, that can garner massive support from Muslims are never asked many of the questions that have been repeatedly flung at the Congress.

As the cherished secular fabric of our nation was being torn apart, many of us in the Congress watched in helplessness and shock. Meanwhile, for a variety of reasons, the Congress leaders were unable to sit together and take stock of the situation and analyse the causes of our successive defeats. Events continued to overtake us, leaving us to attempt ad hoc measures to prevent erosion and attrition of political assets. Somewhere in the innards of the partys intermediate leadership, there developed a peculiar hesitation to stand up and be counted for the glorious secular tradition of our party. Questioning the Prime Minister on the secular deficitperhaps it would not be incorrect to call it hostility to the secular ethoswas seen by some as resistance to the mood of the people and with an obvious cost. I think that is absurd, if not an abject surrender, to an evil ideology. We are not in politics to survive transactionally at any cost without ideology. Being scared of getting reduced to a modest legislative presence even with a substantial electoral footprint became a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the process, at least in the popular perception and for practical purposes, the partys Muslim members were under threat of becoming political nonentities, perhaps optically underscored by the recent Uttar Pradesh (UP) poll results.

However, the ground reality is that our modest presence in the Lok Sabha is largely due to the Muslim vote in Kerala and other states. Muslims in UP and Delhi now admit to having made the wrong tactical calculation but for the long road ahead that means little for the present, given that unexpected developments and misguided hopes have derailed opinion in the past to our detriment. But it underscores the fact that our revival plans will be stillborn unless we reconnect with all minorities, particularly Muslims. There is no place for a lighter shade of saffron. Furthermore, it is defeatism at its worst to concede that India has turned saffron and ditched secularism. If anything, secular India has suffered self-goals due to the misgivings of participants in the secular project and flawed political strategies due to subjectivism.

Muslims empathetic to the Congress have watched the secular pushback in silence, concerned that with enough problems already for the party, their voicing of discomfortnot even discontent would not be fair and right. We certainly should not be afraid of the BJP dishonestly accusing us of wholesale Muslim appeasement but, of course, as a strategy, we should not fall prey to their evil designs. Keeping in mind that discretion is the better part of valour, strategic aloofness and letting party colleagues take on the BJP on these issues have been consciously or instinctively pursued. But strategic silence, even when advised to yield to our majority-community colleagues, must not be allowed to morph into an ideological surrender. As Congress soldiers, we need to preserve faith in our core values of social welfare and secularism or else we will be no different from the forces we have opposed over the decades. Furthermore, if I may be so bold as to say, winning elections as opposed to being qualified to win has become so significant that those who have been reduced to being unviable candidates due to prevailing politicsand that includes Muslims particularlyget pushed into political oblivion or else go to greener pastures in other regional parties.

Against that backdrop, it is important to invite attention to many of our party colleagues hesitant reactions to the triple talaq debate (as if that was an embarrassing practice endorsed by Islam); the abrogation of Article 370 and large-scale stifling of peoples voices (as though it was a Muslim issue alone, and our discomfort remains evident); the reaction to the final outcome of the Ayodhya litigation (as though the judgment was about the mandir only); the CAA protest and the aftermath of ruthless persecution of leaders of the protest as well as the patent targeting of minority areas by the police and hoodlums alike in the north-east Delhi riots (where people who instigated violence with impunity have remained untouched); the banning of azaan during the lockdown (despite community leaders having accepted restriction on congregations); the virulent attacks on the Tablighi Jamaat for arguably an avoidable indiscretion (even while other religious gatherings and the Prime Ministers Namaste Trump event escaped accountability); the aggressive questioning of backward minority reservations (proposed by the Sachar Committee and Ranganath Mishra Commission); and somewhat less to the contrived hijab controversy. This may be an overreaction but well-meaning media throws these issues at us constantly. Now The Kashmir Files and the hijab controversy are adding to the toxic attitudes against Muslims.

I write this with a sense of deep concern and anguish that many share, but out of convention or habit refrain from voicing it aloud. Abiding by the party that has been a part of our collective identity and not faltering even under existential pressures is our credo, whilst many beneficiaries of the partys indulgence across religious identities take to greener political pastures, posing the my way or the high way choice. Given the prevailing social and political circumstances, this subject calls for great care and sensitivity in discussion and any proposed action.

There is an urgent need for the separation of routine public speeches from hard, honest analysis within the confines of the party. Yet, this is a plea to all to pause and reflect on our condition for the sake of an India that we cherish and for humanity at large. The Congress alone cannot be expected to do this exercise, for other parties claiming to be secular also have a corresponding responsibility. Collaboration and alliances between opposition parties will have to address the fundamentals of the idea of India and in that the place and role of minorities must figure. How much and when public discourse is found expedient will be a call to be taken tactically. But strategy and ideology must not be confused or the former be understood to have overwhelmed the latter. The battle to win the minds of India must begin at home. It cannot be fought under fear or self-loathing, the former unbecoming and the latter misplaced.

Salman Khurshid

New Delhi
With an overdose of self-pity, coyness, and excessive nature worship, the time is ripe for a renaissance of Bengali poetry.

The fancy of nature and its gaudy evocations, the majesty and coyness of love, the pangs of separation and its sufferingsBengali poets and readers have no spare from such fragile and drooping poetic content. Even in the 21st century, Bengali poetry remains obsessed with the regurgitate and the amenable. Even after three decades of market liberalisation, the representation of the contemporary in Bengali poetry has remained stray and rare. Of course, the hangover of such imagery, birthed by a sloshed imagination, is not unique to Bengali poetry; it is common in other popular poetic movements like British romantic poetry or Urdu shayari. But in the case of Bengali poetry, several generations have remained immersed in nature worship. As if bewitched by some strange incantation, the ritual of eco-friendly poetry goes on and on.

In the louring sky Afloat upon the mist-laden sea The amber-hued moon Nirendranath Chakrabarti

The indispensable ingredients of this ritual have been flora and fauna, clouds, dreams, oceans, rivers, nightscapes, monsoons, spring, fleets of agony, glorified sorrow, and other overused motifs for non-stop lamenting. There is a copious number of full moons, fallen leaves, elaborate howls of woe, the sudden call of an early bird, and the victory of supple balmy green in these poetic texts. The poetic language and its inspiration remain innocent, tender, balmy, and cliche-ridden. The entire strain remains caught up with nostalgia and overtly ridden with nature metaphor and imagery. Who dares shake the Bengali poet out of this cosy stupor! It seems that their poetic labour remains incomplete and their poetry less poetic unless overloaded with nature allegories. Their heart stays scorched unless drenched in rain or shaded in a shower of blossoms. Our distinguished poets are all lovers of the environment.

Smile not robin, I am ever a man of the garth Dont you cackle robin, I have known you from the start For I am ever a man of the trees Joy Goswami

Otherwise, what makes a true Bengali poet is the contempt, neglect, disdain, and insolence towards the contemporary, the quotidian. At the heart of this intentional denial, this calculated rejection of everything modern and urban is a conservative thought process of content division, that is, the onus of writing and describing the contemporary and the everyday experience falls upon the academic, the researcher, the journalist, and on all other unpoetic and prosaic professionals. The poet must only trudge the mystic lanes of the fanciful individualised comatose. This is not to suggest that poetry as a literary genre has an obligation to remain simple, realistic, and engage in social commentary. On the contrary, one might argue that an essential component of poetic expression and sensitivity is to mystify human experiences, human feelings, and claims that make a reader wonder and revisit the same lines, remaining immersed in the intricacies of the crafted abstraction. The ability to hint instead of stating clearly is indeed a self-indulgent poetic exercise. But the problem arises with the monotony and repetitiveness of metaphors and allegories, barring a few rare exceptions, such as the Hungry Generation Movement and the Krittibas Movement, or the works of Samar Sen, Bhaskar Chakraborty, Prasun Bandyopadhyay, Ranajit Das, and Yashodhara Ray Chaudhuri.

Ashen opacity that is born out of nature allegories is coronated as organic Bengali poetry. It is hardly that these known ingredients are a part of the everyday life of the urban poets or part of their desired lifestyle. The poet may be social media-savvy and urbane, but the form and content of their poetry remains bound to the rustic natural dewdrop on the lotus leaves. Poetic representations that capture the contemporaryurbaneveryday usually carry heavy, negative connotations. The portrayal of the city, and of the poet as an urban dweller, is fraught with moral degradation, or the crisis and pain inflicted by the urban conditionsuch as a dominance of machines, mechanical and transactional relationships, a sense of alienation, despair and detachment, and the lack or loss of feelings. Instead of a celebration of the city, there is a dominant trend to pathologise the city and the poets location in that dark inhuman space as a sufferer either begging for sympathy or wanting to glorify the return to the pristine non-urban. As if the entire poetic project is to reduce and malign the city as a terrible site of pain, depression, exhaustion, weariness, debility, emptiness, and distress.

A day is like another day, another day is like yet another daysimilar, monotonous, reduced to skeletonempty. Bhaskar Chakraborty

Also, there exists the recurrence of emotional overload; the excesses of the heart or an experience of a heartache; thatched cantonments, affection-drenched rustic food, or the stench of the wakeful dew. The penury of failure has been glorified while looking down on the establishment and the established poets. But the unsuccessful and failed as well as the known and unknown have mostly mocked, ridiculed, maligned, and slighted all that is urbanindustrialtechnical and postmodern to create this monotonous school of poetic thought and practice. The purpose is to return to the rural. To drown oneself in the rustic sights, smell, and sound is central to this undue excessall the more because of the middle/upper-middle classcaste character of the poetic community which can afford to romanticise the rural.

There are definite exceptions, but the notable tendencies of the mainstream Bengali poetic tradition remain the mainstay of this discussion. Critical and cynical reflections on the everyday urban condition can be found in the works of Kabir Suman, Nachiketa Chakraborty, Shilajit, and Chandril Bhattacharya, even though they are celebrated as lyricists/composers of the post 1990s generation in Bengali contemporary music, characterised by the abundance of urban realism and a departure from this obsession with nature. Apart from nature obsession, there are a few characteristics typical of the Bengali poet. It is as if they have been told that in the absence of the combined influence of these maladies, it is impossible to be(have) like a poet.

As if the prosperous and the hedonist cannot be a poetsuch a timeless cultural baggage looms large upon poetic journeys. But does the presence of sophistication and glamour in the creative presentation imply shallowness? Or is the curated callous approach always glorious and honest? In order to preserve the sanctity of the creative mind, should the exterior pomp be necessarily named obscene? Are these seemingly paradoxical or does the construction of such divides make it easy to romanticise material deprivation and the lack of recognition? Material indulgence and the quality of art are not paradoxical. Whether the challenges of poverty or material comfortswhat might inspire someone and how cannot be determined by the gatekeepers of culture.

Those that have, for generations, endorsed tender and normative poetic tendenciesencompassing content that centres natureloveseparationtheir cultural agenda needs to be scrutinised. Much of readership, like ourselves, is craving alternatives. The restless mind seeks new language, stylistic innovation, and outlandish subject matter where there would be allowance for the wantonness of the unruly poet. With the end of this overdose of nature fixation, coyness, and self-pity, the dawn of new light upon Bengali poetry is much-needed. And its source must not be the moonsunduskfireflycandle cliches. For the steady recovery of Bengali poetry, one hopes for the excess of chaos, the superfluity of urbane complexities, a digital life and its depictions, stylistic innovation, and outlandish themes.

[Note: All translations of the original Bengali poetry into English are by Sneha Roy Choudhury.]
This paper attempts to highlight the extent of employment insecurity and informality among the formal regular workers in the formal non-farm sector and examines the differential data outcomes across various caste groups. It also highlights the likely implications of the various provisions of the newly enacted Industrial Relations Code, 2020 on the access to the most secured jobs across different caste groups.

In the neo-liberal set-up, deceleration of economic growth and unemployment have emerged as key challenges, obliging the government to pursue reforms to facilitate a suitable environment for boosting up economic growth, attract foreign investment, and create employment opportunities. Amalgamation, simplification, and rationalisation of the industrial relations legislation are some of the key steps in this direction. The Indian labour market has been considered to be rigid on account of the plethora of labour market regulations in place. Streamlining the multitude of labour laws into four broad codes is a welcome step as far as it ensures better implementation of the labour laws in favour of the labour force in India. So in process of the amalgamation of the labour laws, it is important to consider their impact on the social and political construct of the society. The recent amalgamation of the three legislations on industrial relations, namely the Trade Unions Act, 1926, the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946, and the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 into the Industrial Relations Code (IRC), 2020 (Gazette of India 2020) has drawn the attention of the law and development experts, along with other concerned civil society stakeholders about its impact on inclusive socio-economic development and reduction of vulnerabilities across the social groups. The objective of this paper is to highlight the state of employment security across caste groups among the non-farm workers in the organised sector. It also attempts to highlight the implications of the IRC on the access to secured jobs among workers from different caste groups. Using the National Sample Surveys of employment and unemployment, the analysis in this paper is drawn broadly for the regular non-farm workers in the organised sector at usual principal and subsidiary status combined (for the ages 18 or above). The absolute number of workers and population has been adjusted with the projected census population for the corresponding years. The National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS 2008) definitions of formal sector and formal worker have been followed for this study.

Informalisation of Jobs as a Phenomenon

India managed to achieve new highs in its gross domestic product growth during the neo-liberal economic regime. However, in the process, the employment security of the labour force has been compromised. The deceleration in the employment generation potential of the economy, the small share of the formal sector in the total employment opportunities generated, and the growing informalisation of jobs both in the formal and informal sector have emerged as critical problems in this period.

In the absence of an employment policy, the employment situation in India has long been shaped by the side effects of the policies enacted in other sectors. The exorbitant increase in the contractual employment and informalisation of jobs in the formal sector are also the side effects of the neo-liberal regime followed since the 1990s. Over time there has been greater informalisation of employment in almost all sectors of the economy with an influx of unsecured jobs (Mehrotra 2019; Mehrotra et al 2015; Sakthivel and Joddar 2006). Although the latest official data updates show that the percentage of informal employment in India has decreased marginally (Table 1), there has been a simultaneous positive growth in the unprotected forms of employment.

There is a need to throw light on the insecurities among the regular workers in the formal non-farm sector, particularly in the context of the implications of IRC, once it is in effect. As per the definition given by the NCEUS, informal workers do not get any statutory social security benefits from their employers. A decreasing percentage of informal workers in the total regular employment, however, does not mean that workers are certainly engaged in secured employment. Of the total 479 million workers in India in 201819, only 99.5 million worked in the formal sector enterprises/establishments, of which only 50% availed social security benefits.

Disproportionate Access to Regular Salaried Jobs across Caste Groups

According to the latest data estimates (Table 2), the percentage of regular salaried workers in the total non-farm employment is about 40%; whereas in the farm and non-farm sector combined, it is reported to be nearly 24%. However, despite the substantially large share of regular employment in the total employment, the quality of jobs being generated therein is under question. Here, the quality of jobs can be measured not only by examining the status of social security benefits availed to the workers but also the nature of employment (secured/ unsecured) being generated. Economic growth in the neo-liberal regime has led to fundamental changes in the economy, which in turn has resulted in a substantial restructuring of employment, with increasing job opportunities in the service sector (Gopalan and Singhi 2015; Himanshu 2008).

The type of employment growth that has been witnessed during the last three decades is considered precarious to inclusive growth and development (Singh 2017; Chadha and Sahu 2002). Within the non-farm sector, nearly 36% of the workers are self-employed; however, there has been a debate among policy experts over the profitability and sustainability of self-employment opportunities being generated in the non-farm economy (Jatav and Sen 2013). Nearly 24% of the jobs were casual in which no formal/written job contract is signed between workers and employers, and thus, both job and social security are absent. The share of the self-employed who provide employment opportunities to other people in their enterprise, is extremely low in total self-employment, indicating a lack of entrepreneurship in India. It also points out the need for facilitating a suitable environment to promote entrepreneurship. Historically, regular wage and salaried workers have enjoyed better employment security and earnings than the self-employed and casually employed workers. This sense of security further has been stronger in the jobs generated in the government sector or government-owned enterprises. However, in the neo-liberal regime, the size of the government sector has shrunk owing to the disinvestment policy and the nature of jobs offered has also gone under transformation in the name of greater flexibility. Even though there has been a huge transformation in the nature of regular jobs offered, still, the workers manage to get paid better and regularly than the self-employment and casual jobs. Access to these better-paying jobs, therefore, becomes instrumental in the economic upliftment of the underprivileged sections of the society to break the cycle of deprivation.

While discussing access to secured jobs, the vicious cycle of deprivation among lower castes needs to be highlighted in the context of selective labour-market exclusion. The benefits of regular non-farm employment itself are unequally distributed among the population groups, particularly when it comes to caste identity (Thorat et al 2021). It has been treated as an archaic system and source of historical disadvantage (Moose 2018). Access to regular non-farm jobs has remained a matter of concern among different social groups in the modern economy of India, especially since the initiation of liberalisation.

Caste is found to be a complex institution, simultaneously weakened and revived by current economic and political forces; it is a contributor to persisting national socioeconomic and human capital disparities, and has major impacts on subjective wellbeing. (Moose 2018)

In addition, caste as a social hierarchy has influenced/determined rural inequalities, discriminations in the labour market and business economy; it has also affected the measures of positive discrimination or affirmative action (that is, reservation) in the public/government sector and equal opportunities in the private sector.

Caste privilege not only determines the political economy of access to and control over the decision-making but also the unequal representation in higher management in favour of socio-economically and politically empowered caste groups such as forward castes. Regular jobs are diversified across the occupational groups; however, there is caste-based segregation that accommodates most of the higher caste workers in the upper segments of the occupational hierarchy (Das and Dutta 2007; Madheswaran and Singhari 2016). They have a lack of access to the most secured forms of employment as their caste identity itself puts a barrier to their growth and development in a patriarchal set-up.

Key Concerns of Regularisation of Non-farm Employment

The magnitude of regular employment and its share in the total non-farm employment has been increasing over time in the last one and a half decades (Table 3). Between 200405 and 201819, nearly 95 million workers were added in the non-farm employment, out of which, 51 million were added as regular workers with an increment of nearly 7% during the same period. The period between 201112 and 201819 has experienced a regularisation of non-farm workers at a higher pace as compared to the period between 200405 and 201112, indicating a rapid growth of the service sector and the importance of regular employment in the economy. Caste groupwise disaggregated estimates reveal that a worker belonging to forward castes has a comparatively higher chance to be in regular wage and salaried employment. It hints at better access to regular jobs among forward castes as opposed to other caste groups such as Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Further, such a position seems to have strengthened over time as there has been an increase in the proportion of regular wage and salaried workers among all caste groups, however, the increase has been higher for the forward castes and OBCs.

Approximately one-third of 111.9 million regular workers (25.7 million) within the non-farm sector are still engaged in informal enterprises (Table 4). In other words, it indicates that the job opportunities in the informal enterprises within the private non-farm sector have recently increased substantially. But it would be interesting to know how many of such informal enterprises provide social security benefits to their workers and how many of them offer a longer period of written job contracts along with other essential benefits such as paid leave, relaxed working hours, workplace facilities, accommodation, etc.

Though the absolute formal employment grew tremendously between 200405 and 201819, yet the percentage growth remains substantially low. The percentage share of the formal sector in total regular employment increased between 200405 and 201112, however, in the period between 201112 and 201819 it has decreased marginally. It points towards the increasing vulnerabilities among the regular workers within the non-farm sector. On the one hand, there has been a progressive increase in the number of regular jobs, but on the other, the percentage of the formal sector in the total regular employment has shown a steady decline between 201112 and 201819 across all caste groups. In addition, both the percentage shares of the formal sector in regular employment and total regular employment in the formal sector have remained significantly high among the forward castes as compared to the other caste groups. Therefore, a worker belonging to a forward caste has a higher chance to be working in the formal sector than a worker belonging to any other caste group.

Of the total regular employment in the formal non-farm sector in India (74.3 million), only 44.2 million workers are categorised as formal workers who have availed social security benefits from their employers (henceforth referred to as formal regular employment in the formal non-farm sector [FREFNFS]) (Figure 1, p 34). The role of government/public sector and autonomous bodies (GPSA) is important as they generate 52% of the total FREFNFS during 201819. At the same time, the enterprises based on publicprivate partnerships (PPPs) and other private sector enterprises (OPSE) remain the second and third largest employers constituting 38% and 10% of total FREFNFS, respectively. In the last one and a half decades, the size of FREFNFS increased by 17.7 million. The maximum growth was observed among PPP enterprises (12 million), followed by GPSA (4.8 million) and OPSE (1.0 million). However, the percentage share of GPSA in total FREFNFS has consistently declined over the period indicating a deceleration in the growth of regular employment opportunities within the government/public sector. Contrarily, there has been significant growth in the share of PPCL during the same period that points to the increasing role of publicprivate bonding and the slithering privatisation of jobs in the economy.

A disaggregated level analysis of FREFNFS by types/duration of job contracts across the types of enterprises further propounded the increased vulnerabilities (in terms of job/employment security) among the workers. There has been a consistent decline in the job opportunities in which the duration of the contract with the employer is relatively longer (that is, more than three years, in this study) (Figure 2). Such jobs are conventionally known to be the most secured ones and therefore the most popular form of regular employment, especially those in the government sector. In other words, there is an indication of deteriorating quality of FREFNFS during the last couple of decades and so; the percentage share of those who do not have any written job contract or those who have a shorter duration of contracts, have been consistently increasing.

Slithering contractualisation of FREFNFS within the government/public sector is a matter of serious concern as this is the only sphere where the workers still enjoy a better level of job security, along with most of the statutory social security benefits, as compared to that in the publicprivate or the private sectors. However, the availability of social security benefits to the contractual or fixed-term workers does not ensure the security of employment. During the last half a decade, these workers were provided social security benefits under two social security legislations, namely the Employees State Insurance (ESI) Act and the Employees Provident Funds (EPF) and Miscellaneous Provisions Act. This led to an increase in the share of formal workers in total employment, which certainly distorted the estimation of actual formal employment by ignoring the issue of contractualisation and subsequent growth of shorter job contracts.

Both contractualisation and privatisation may have serious implications for social inclusion and cohesion. As of now measures of positive discrimination are usually adopted only in the government sector jobs that are regular or having longer job contracts. To the extent that provisions of positive discrimination do not apply in the case of contractual jobs, increasing the share of such jobs in the total FREFNFS denies the effective implementation of such provisions. Given the existing levels of inequality among the caste groups, this is important to mention that contractualisation and privatisation will adversely affect the social and economic inclusion of the deprived social groups as they lack in having enough social, financial, and physical capital and power, which are considered crucial to access secured jobs, especially in the government sector. Therefore, increasing contractualisation and privatisation of jobs makes provisions of positive discriminations in both government/public and private sectors effectively void.

Jobs with no formal contracts or shorter period contracts (for example, six months or less than a year) come under unsecured forms of regular employment. The workers under such employments are often identified as contractual workers employed through an external agency (or the labour contractors/intermediaries). Their welfare and concerns are often compromised due to the presence of contractors/agents as an intermediary between the employer and employee (AIOE nd; Das and Pandey 2004; Rajeev 2006). More often, at the workplace, the contractual workers are removed from service without assigning any reason or after giving any prior notice that hampers the employment security among them.

An increase in such types of job contracts has been digressive as far as achieving the target of SDG 8 related to the promotion of full and productive employment and decent employment to all along with inclusive economic growth, are concerned. In addition, the concept of decent work not only speaks about fair income but also security in the workplace, social protection for families along with other crucial benefits important for inclusive growth. Therefore, it can be posited that in the journey of economic reforms, the labour has lost its bargaining power over the security of employment, even in the case of FREFNFS, which has been considered to be the most secured form of regular employment.

Caste Groupwise Inequalities in Access to FREFNFS

Juxtaposing the percentage share of each caste group in FREFNFS across the enterprise type with the percentage share of each caste group in the total population reflects a clear disparity in the access to secured forms of employment among various caste groups. While the percentage share of forward castes in the total FREFNFS is more than their share in the total population, the situation in other caste groups is the exact opposite. While the difference between the share in total FREFNFS and the share in the total population is marginal in the case of SC and ST categories, it is much wider in the case of the OBC category. Therefore, it would not be an exaggeration to say that even after provisions for positive discrimination in the constitution, the on-ground situation does not support the effective implementation of such provisions. Access to secured jobs is still skewed in favour of privileged caste groups.

Over time there has been an increase in the proportion of SC, ST, and OBC population and a decline in the proportion of forward castes in the total population. A similar change is not experienced in the proportion of each caste group in FREFNFS across enterprise types. While the share of forward castes in the total FREFNFS has been declining, the extent of the decline in their share in FREFNFS is much lesser than the decline in their share in the total population. Among the deprived caste groups there has been an increase in the share of OBCs and STs representation in the total FREFNFS but not to the same extent as the increase in their share in the total population. On the other hand, there has been a marginal decline in the share of SCs in total FREFNFS even though their share in the population has increased. Another important trend observed is that there has been an increase in the share of SCs and OBCs in OPSE. The distribution of FREFNFS across the enterprise types reveals a consistently increasing situation of vulnerability among the SCs (Table 5); their share in total FREFNFS seems to be decreasing in both the GPSA and PPLC, and as a whole between 200405 and 201819.

Therefore, unlike other caste groups, the forward caste groups still hold a greater share in FREFNFS and have perpetually remained in an advantageous position. As a result, it is noticed across all types of enterprises that the percentage share in FREFNFS has remained disproportionately low among SCs, STs, and OBCs as compared to their share represent in the total population.

Representation of Various Caste Groups in the Most Secured Jobs across Different Occupations

The growing informalisation of jobs within the non-farm sector has challenged the objective of providing decent work to the workforce. More than that it has also challenged the objective of economic empowerment of the deprived sections of the society. To the extent that the provisions of positive discrimination are only applicable in the case of formal jobs in the government sector, the growing informalisation of jobs within this sector limits the access to such jobs among the deprived caste groups. Therefore, the shrinking size of the government sector and formal jobs within the government sector make the provisions of positive discrimination void. Further, the distribution of these shrinking FREFNFS within the government sector is found to be skewed in favour of the forward castes.

Now we will analyse the distribution of FREFNFS in the government sector with more than three years of contract among various caste groups across different occupations (Table 6). For this analysis, the National Classification 2004 has been followed. The National Classification of Occupations has been defined based on skills and educational requirements for each broad occupation category. These occupational-cum-skill levels are: 1 (requirement of education is undefined)legislators, senior officials, and managers; 2 (IV)professionals; 3 (III)associate professionals; 48 (II)service workers, shop and market salespersons, skilled agricultural and fishery workers, workers in craft and related trades, and plant and machine operators and assemblers; 9 (I)elementary occupations (requires primary or below education). The concept of skill level was not applied in the case of legislators, senior officials, and managers as skills for executing tasks and duties of these occupations varied to such an extent that it was not feasible to link them with any of the four, broad skill levels (GoI 2016).

In this analysis, it has been observed that the distribution of the most secured jobs in the government sector across the caste groups is highly disproportionate to their actual share in the total population. Further, it is revealed that most secured employment in the government sector seems to be concentrated mostly among the forward castes in terms of both numbers and percentage distribution (Table 6). The forward castes have significantly better access to the jobs in the top categories of the occupational classification in general. The high representation of the forward castes has been observed in the first three categories of occupational classification. While the workers in other caste groups are found to be concentrated in the lower categories of jobs in the hierarchy of occupational categories. The high representation of the SC group has been observed in the ninth category, which includes elementary occupations requiring primary or below education levels. In other words, they are mostly concentrated at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy. In comparison to their share in the total population, they have been unable to represent themselves in the upper categories. It is uniformly distributed among the OBCs from the second to the ninth category, though, at a lower level than their share in total population; the share of OBCs in the uppermost category remains nearly half.

Therefore, the already small representation of the SC, ST, and OBC groups in the most secured jobs in the government sector is concentrated in the occupations requiring primary to secondary level of education or basic skill levels.

The Industrial Relations Code, Implications Thereof, and the Way Forward

As part of the recently undertaken labour reforms by the Government of India, the IRC (2020) was enacted on 29 September 2020 (Gazette of India 2020). It applies to all the establishments engaged in the production, supply, or distribution of goods or services (Section 2[p] of the code). The IRC imposes the first layer of exclusion of the workers by excluding from the definition of industry the institutions owned or managed by organisations wholly or substantially engaged in any charitable, social, or philanthropic services, sovereign functions, domestic services, and any other activity as may be notified by the central government (Section 2[p] in the code). Scheme workers that constitute a substantial proportion of the workforce have not been given attention. Further, such exclusion may adversely affect the access to social security and status of employment security among the regular workers engaged in such institutions.

The last three decades of the neo-liberal regime have witnessed a weakened position of trade unions in the country. It has adversely affected employment security among the workers. A few crucial modifications in the IRC are supposed to further weaken these institutions. Though, an improvement in case of compliance, grievance redressal, speedy resolution of disputes under the IRC is supposed to boost up the levels of productivity and gross value added at the enterprise level, it can have negative implications for labour. To mention broadly, the modifications that may affect the labour rights and welfare are as follows:

(i) existing threshold of workers in an establishment reduced from 100 to 300 for seeking permission before closure, retrenchment, and lay-off (Section 77[1] of the code), (ii) the provisions concerning standing orders (for regulation of service conditions) being made applicable only to establishments engaging 300 or more employees (Section 28[1] of the code). It leaves a large proportion of the employees in establishments having less than 300 employees outside its fold, and (iii) the requirement of giving 14 days of notice before strike and lock-out may help in the resolution of disputes by third-party intervention (that is, conciliation) and thus reduce the chances of improving industrial relations (Sections 28[1] and 62[2] of the code). These modifications may affect the overall bargaining power of the trade unions and the workers may be unable to fight for their rights.

In the IRC, fixed-term employment (FTE) has been recognised as one of the prevalent forms of employment and therefore brought under the framework of applicable laws. However, FTE is defined under the IRC as the engagement of a worker based on a written contract of employment for a fixed period (Section 2[o] in the code); however, the type of employment relationship remains unclear. The IRC does not explain whether the written contract is between a worker and a principal employer or between the worker and the contractor, thus obscuring the role of a principal employer or a contractor while defining FTE. Such an ambiguity hinders the enforcement of workers rights and limits their access to social security benefits. Now that the FTE is introduced in the IRC, there is also an urgent need to integrate an improved module to collect relevant data on employment relations in the Periodic Labour Force Surveys (PLFS) to ensure a regular estimation of permanent workers, FTE, and contractual workers in total regular employment. As of now, there are no relevant queries in the schedule of the survey which separates these three categories, and thus, which will restrict the examination of the possible impact of the IRC in the coming years.

Nevertheless, if a fixed-term relation is established between a worker and a principal employer directly, then the IRC may have bidirectional effects on regular employment. First, it promises better social security to the fixed-term workers in comparison to those engaged through a labour contractor. They will be entitled to all statutory benefits such as social security, wages, etc, at par with the regular employees who are doing similar work (Lok Sabha Secretariat 2020). However, employment security remains a question mark as a fixed-term worker can also be removed from the service by giving prior notice by the employer as it is usually done in the case of a worker employed through a labour contractor.

Second, FTE may allow employers the flexibility to hire workers for a fixed duration and for work that may not be permanent. However, the absence of any objective criteria, like minimum and maximum period of FTE or any ceiling on successive use of fixed-term contracts, might adversely affect the overall employment security among the employees in the long run and provide scope to the employers to shift from permanent to FTE. There is evidence that the establishments prefer to employ an excessive number of contract workers and try to minimise the use of regular workers (Sapkal 2016). The recently fostered contractualisation of jobs across all types of enterprises, along with privatisation, also put forth a big threat to the job security among the regular workers; and the government sector has also been no exception to this.

The historically deprived sections of the society, namely the SCs and STs, will be the most affected as they lack access to capital, particularly social, political, and financial capital. As posited from the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) estimates, they have a lack of access to quality jobs, especially the most secured regular jobs in the non-farm sector or the jobs related to the upper hierarchy of occupations, due to several reasons, including educational backwardness and caste-based discrimination. In this situation, positive discrimination as a legal instrument (across government, publicprivate and private enterprises) may help to remove the vulnerabilities among the deprived sections and assure equal opportunities for them to get access to secured jobs. As of now, these policies are barely implemented in the case of FTE and workers employed through a contractor. The diminishing permanent job opportunities in the government sector along with the promotion of privatisation in an imprudent manner will further aggravate the vulnerabilities of the deprived caste groups. Caste-based discrimination, in the absence of legal provisions for positive discrimination and policies, will lead to their greater exclusion from the job market.

However, as an outcome of the provisions of IRC, if a shift from contractual hiring to FTE has to be expected, it will occur primarily from short duration to relatively long-duration contracts as the employers would not possibly be willing to take the burden of the cost involved in hiring on a very frequent basis. Eventually, it will enhance employment security and thus reduce vulnerability among the workers; though, a positive change in the employers mindset will be a precondition to that. In addition, there is a need to focus on reducing the insecurity among regular workers rather than reducing merely the share and size of informal regular employment in the non-farm sector. It could be possibly done by minimising the role of labour contractors and facilitating direct recruitments by setting up employment cells at the enterprise/establishment level. It would eventually create employment opportunities.

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This paper examines the importance of skills, especially through vocational training, for the rural non-farm sector in overcoming the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The difference-in-differences technique has been used to assess the differential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the earnings of skilled and unskilled self-employed activities. The primary data have been collected from 880 rural non-farm self-employed individuals who hailed from different regions of Karnataka. Although every section of the rural non-farm activities has been adversely affected due to the pandemic, the impact is more severe on unskilled individuals as compared to skilled individuals. Therefore, policymakers need to pay attention to enhancing the provision of formal vocational training for RNFS individuals on a grander scale.

The COVID-19 pandemic, since its outbreak in March 2020, has unleashed massive demand- and supply-side shocks across different economies the world over. In view of measures like travel restrictions and quarantine procedures, the availability and productivity of labour substantially plummeted during the lockdown period and thereafter. This, in turn, led to a widespread increase in unemployment at unprecedented rates. India has been one of the most affected nations going by the scale and period of intense restrictions placed on the population. However, the employment crisis in India started much before the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. A substantial slowdown observed in the employment generation during the last one and a half decades has come to dominate the discourse focused on the current Indian economic scenario across polity and academia. Even an employment downturn has been observed, despite the economy witnessing nearly a 10% growth in the gross domestic product in the latter half of the last decade. Since output growth could not ensure employment growth, the economy has moved from a situation of job-less growth to job-loss growth (Kannan and Raveendran 2019).

No doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic has further accentuated the existing employment crisis relentlessly. Not only has it increased the unemployment rate, but it also has reduced work intensity and earnings substantially of those continuing work (ActionAid Association [India] 2020). This has been particularly hurtful considering the significant share of informal workers in the total workforce in India (that is, about 93%, including informal sector workers and informal workers in the formal sector) who continue to remain unprotected, to a large extent, by proper social security measures. Moreover, according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for 201718, about 52% of the workforce are classified as self-employed in India (PLFS 2019). In fact, a majority of them are own-account workers or unpaid family members, the most vulnerable section among the informal workers.

Studies specific to developing countries (Zambia [Mathew et al 2020] and India [Dasgupta and Murali 2020]) and developed countries (Canada [Lemieux et al 2020], the United States [Kalenkoski and Pabilonia 2020], the United Kingdom [Blundell and Machin 2020], and Japan [Kikuchi et al 2020])have shown that those engaged in self-employment activities are one of the worst-affected sections in the context of the pandemic. They have lost their earnings and working hours and, in many cases, have suffered a permanent loss of employment.

Unemployment and COVID-19

The surveys conducted by various institutions in India, soon after the first wave of the pandemic, have portrayed a similar picture. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy data show that in the initial period (April 2020), the casual and self-employed workers made up the majority who lost their employment. Moreover, according to the survey conducted by the Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN), about 97% of the self-employed had gone without any form of income in the initial months of the lockdown (SWAN 2020). The survey conducted by the Azim Premji University (2020) shows that though self-employed persons were less likely to be unemployed in rural areas, as compared to other sections, their earnings had fallen by 86% during the lockdown period. In Karnataka, there was a decline observed in the average weekly earnings of self-employed persons in the non-farm sector to the extent of about 67%. In India, the non-farm self-employed sectionmainly involved in trade and accommodation services, manufacturing and transport, and storage and communication serviceshas been observed as the most severely affected by the pandemic.

Along with the sector of employment, the educational level of persons also plays an important role when it comes to the effects of COVID-19. It is seen that most of the casual and self-employed workers are uneducated or less educated. This increases their chances of being more vulnerable to such crisis conditions (Kapoor 2020). While there are only limited studies dealing with the impact of skills in overcoming crisis situations with a specific reference to India, studies from other countries point to a disparity in outcomes from economic shocks between skilled and unskilled labourers. In general, the less skilled labourers are observed to be more vulnerable to crisis situations and, therefore, are often unable to move to a pre-shock state compared to skilled workers (Artuc and McLaren 2015). The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on nearly all types of occupation, but low-skilled labourers have had to face the extreme effects of the pandemic, as compared to other groups, as (i) they are less likely to be paid proper wages; and (ii) less likely to have skills to continue working from home or their occupation demands physical presence at the workplace (Berube and Bateman 2020).

Other existing studies also solidify the hypothesis that workers with a lower educational level are less likely to retain employment during the pandemic. Especially when it comes to working remotely from home, it is found that only people with higher education and information and communications technology (ICT) skills could maintain working (Malkov 2020; Saltiel 2020; Dingel and Neiman 2020). Bartik et al (2020) have found that people with lower educational levels were more likely to lose their job. Their estimates show that persons without a high school degree have an 11% higher chance of not working in the early phases of the virus spread. In fact, the affected sectors are more likely to have employed people with lower education (Mongey et al 2020). The labourers having higher education are found with a better holding in the crisis period (Jain et al 2020; Dang and Giang 2020). Another expected trend is the surge in the number of low- and semi-skilled workers being either pushed into unemployment or other menial jobs with a greater emphasis given to the exposure of digital transformation in the post-pandemic period (Park and Inocencio 2020; Scarpetta et al 2020).

Moreover, in rural areas, low educational levels are a major hindrance to the expansion of productive and innovative non-farm sector employment. The lack of skilled humanpower can be explained by lower educational attainments, affecting their job prospects negatively (Saha and Verick 2016). Not only does general education influence rural non-farm self-employment, but it is also influenced by vocational training and entrepreneurship education significantly. For instance, a study related to Nigeria by Afolabi et al (2017) shows that entrepreneurship education leads to a positive impact on self-employment initiatives. Further, Lazear (2004, 2005) argues that wage employees can be specialised in certain skills, whereas those self-employed need to possess multiple skills to perform a variety of tasks. Singh (2008), using data for the Indian economy, shows that possessing both general and vocational education have a significant impact on accessing better-paying non-farm activities in rural India. In this context, investment in skill development is an important policy intervention aimed at creating better employment opportunities, increasing productivity and achieving overall growth of the economy and is considered helpful, particularly to the non-farm sector (Sanghi and Srija 2015).

Over the years, even with the implementation of skill development programmes at various levels, there has been no expected increase in persons who have gained vocational training and thereby entering the category of skilled labour (NSSO 66th and 68th survey rounds). Several initiatives have been undertaken by the government towards promoting the skill levels among those engaged as self-employed in the rural non-farm economy. For instance, the Entrepreneurship Skill Development Programme, the Pradhan Mantri Vikas Kaushal Yojana, and the Management Development Programme implemented by the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises; Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana by the Ministry of Rural Development; 150 short courses conducted by the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj; 51 training centres run by the Khadi and Village Industries Commission; vocational training centres in tribal areas run by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs; 15 Food Craft Institutes run under the state governments by the Ministry of Tourism; and the Support to Training and Employment Programme for Women by the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

While a number of existing studies have investigated the issue of the importance of skills in overcoming crisis situations with a specific reference to wage employment, it often neglects to provide a clearer picture regarding the importance of skills, especially vocational training, in overcoming crisis situations with a specific reference to rural non-farm self-employed (RNFS) individuals. Therefore, this paper focuses on assessing the capabilities of skilled workers as compared to unskilled workers in the non-farm sector in overcoming the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

With this backdrop, the paper is organised as follows. In the following section, the methodology has been explained along with data sources used for analysis. Then, it moves on to explain the overall impact of COVID-19 on the RNFS businesses. This is followed by a descriptive and empirical analysis of the difference between skilled and unskilled self-employed workers in managing the economic shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper concludes with suggesting policy implications.

Methodology and Data Sources

The difference-in-differences (DID) technique has been used to assess the differential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the earnings of skilled and unskilled self-employed individuals. The primary data were collected from 880 self-employed individuals who hailed from different regions of Karnataka. A multistage stratified random sampling technique was used, and the survey was conducted across four administrative divisions of Karnataka. Two districts (one developed and one developing) were chosen from each of the four administrative divisions. Further, from each of these eight districts, two villages were selected belonging to two different talukas. Finally, 55 self-employed individuals were surveyed, based on a detailed structured questionnaire, from each of the villages. Therefore, a total of 880 samples were covered from 16 villages for the present study. The above data were collected during SeptemberNovember 2020. The study portrays a picture of the recovery from business losses during the lockdown period of the first wave of the pandemic in 2020.

Samples were divided into the control and treatment groups based on their possession of formal vocational training. The control group included self-employed individuals who had not undergone formal vocational training and the treatment group consisted of the self-employed individuals who had been formally trained through vocational training under the Skill India mission. The sample was divided into 355 self-employed individuals in the treatment group and 525 in the control group.

The before and after criteria were used for understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-employed individuals earnings. In this context, it is important to mention that details about the present monthly earnings (considered as post-COVID-19 earnings) and also the monthly earnings just before the outbreak of the pandemic based on the recall method (considered as pre-COVID-19 earnings) were asked to the participants. Moreover, it is essential to mention that only those self-employed workers who had maintained their past income and expenditure details somewhat in the written form were considered in order to minimise recall bias and come up with precise estimates.

The model can be specified as follows:

y it = a o + a 1 FVT i + a 2 Post t +a 3 FVT i * Post t + bX it +  it

where y it represents the earnings of the ith self-employed individual at the time t. FVT i indicates the ith self-employed individual with formal vocational training. Post is a binary variable with a value of 1 for post-COVID-19 and 0 for the pre-COVID-19 situation. Therefore, the coefficient  1 represents the marginal effect of formal vocational training and  2 represents the marginal effect of COVID-19. Most importantly, the coefficient of the interactive term between FVT and post ( 3 ) indicates the selective impact of formal vocational training on the earnings of self-employed individuals during the post-lockdown period. X is the vector of other control variables.

As a large number of existing studies have already shown that earnings of self-employed workers are very much dependent on several socio-economic and business-related factors, this paper has used a number of such factors as control variables in the regression analysis (Appendix Table A1). In fact, having a number of control variables in the regression equation enhances the precision of DID estimates. It even helps us check the robustness of DID estimates in terms of their sign and statistical significance level with the inclusion of different control variables.

The Impact of COVID-19 on the RNFS Activities

Before going into the DID estimates, this section tries to draw certain inferences pertaining to the overall impact of COVID-19 on the rural non-farm self-employment activities. In this regard, Table 1 provides information on the percentages of self-employment activities adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. By the term self-employed activities, self-employed own-account enterprises that do not employ any hired workers in their business are referred to; they are managed mainly by family workers. From Table 1, it is observed that a whopping 98.75% had experienced their business being negatively affected due to the containment measures enforced by the government during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Moreover, the constraints had ensued a direct income loss for 94.2% of self-employed individuals.

In addition to this, questions related to the reasons for such an adverse impact on self-employment activities during the COVID-19 pandemic were asked. The responses pointed out several demand- and supply-side reasons and the same have been presented in Figure 1.

Among the 98.75% of those affected, from Figure 1, it could be seen that the major reason cited for the negative impact from the demand side was the decline in sales during the lockdown. A reduction in sales was reported by about 58.73% of the respondents. The major issue from the supply side was the decline in income as a means to sustain the increasing costs in maintaining businesses (37.63% reported the same). Along with these issues, other supply-side constraints included the inability to procure inputs, difficulty to continue production, mobility issues, etc. Thus, the breakdown of supply chain activities was also a cause of concern for the businesses.

However, a small section mentioned that it had not been affected by the lockdown, as it was involved in essential services, while a few of them cited the inflow of returned migrants. This was seen mainly in the retail sector, which was able to sustain itself during this period.

Although almost every section of the RNFS activities was adversely affected by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact might not be the same across them. Since the objective of the paper was to examine the importance of skills in the rural non-farm sector in overcoming the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown measures, the sample was segregated into skilled and unskilled self-employed individuals before carrying out the analysis, which is presented in the subsequent sections.

The Differential Impact on Skilled and Unskilled RNFS

It is essential to mention here that individuals possessing formal vocational training under the Skill India programme are referred to as skilled and those not possessing formal vocational training as unskilled. To see whether skills make any difference to the impact, this papers analysis begins by presenting the monthly earnings of the skilled and unskilled rural non-farm self-employed individuals in the pre- and post-lockdown situations (Figure 2).

Figure 2 depicts that the mean earnings of skilled individuals are much higher as compared to unskilled individuals both in the pre- and post-lockdown situations. This implies that possessing formal vocational training helps RNFS individuals earn a higher income. The t-value of the mean earnings difference between the skilled and unskilled individuals is also found to be statistically significant for both the pre- and post-lockdown situations. When it comes to the loss of earnings due to the lockdown, it is observed that though every section of the rural non-farm self-employment activities had been adversely affected by the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown measures; the difference in the earnings between pre- and post-lockdown situations of the unskilled individuals is found to be higher than that of skilled individuals. This implies that the impact of lockdown has been more severe for unskilled individuals than skilled individuals.

In addition to a descriptive analysis, the impact of lockdown measures during the COVID-19 pandemic on the earnings of skilled and unskilled RNFS individuals based on the DID technique is also examined, as discussed in the methodology section. One should also note that the differences between the mean earnings of the RNFS individuals might depend on their socio-economic conditions and also on several business-related factors. Within these, the impact of education on the self-employed is perhaps the most studied factor. Besides considering the formal vocational training programmes as a proxy for skilled and unskilled individuals, individual educational levels in the regression model have also been controlled in this analysis. In fact, while considering aspects that affect the business outcome, it is seen that educated individuals have the edge over the less educated. This edge is based on the grounds of access to more information and opportunities as well as access to credit sources, better managerial skills, and networking ability. The studies by Meager et al (2011) and Cressy (1996) show that an increase in human capital contributes to better self-employed business outcomes. It has been determined that higher education has also increased the chances of business success. Studies by Cressy (1996), Van Praag and Cramer (2001), and Meager et al (2011) show that a higher educational level also leads to better entrepreneurial outcomes. While Cressy (1996) points out that higher qualification has a positively significant impact on survival rates, Van Praag and Cramer (2001) and Meager et al (2011) support the claim showing that highly educated individuals have a better knowledge about opportunities that suit their qualification, thereby increasing the chances of success. It is also important to note that education improves ones efficacy and self-esteem, increases the ability of individuals to find better opportunities, and even boosts their chances of success (Robinson and Sexton 1994).

There is a debate regarding the ranking that is given to education and experience in the growth of business. Studies show that it is a combined effect of both experience and education that is important. Millan et al (2012) came to the conclusion that a person with formal education and previous experience with the market is more likely to survive. But Robinson and Sexton (1994) and Henley (2005) point out that though the experience is important, it is considered secondary to education. Lazear (2004) used the concept of jack of all trades as a determining factor of entrepreneurial outcome. His study concludes that a person with skills acquired via formal education is more likely to outperform a person with just a certain level of education.

In the following section, a regression was run in order to understand the impact of formal vocational training on the earnings of the RNFS businesses. Therefore, to come up with precise estimates, the DID analysis was performed even with controlling for the socio-economic and business-related factors. In fact, in order to show the robustness of the DID results, a comparative analysis of the DID results was also conducted with and without covariates (Table 2).

In Table 2, the regression results without covariates are presented, considering only variables such as post-COVID-19 dummy, FVT dummy, and the interactive term between FVT dummy and post-COVID-19 dummy. The coefficient of the interaction term is the coefficient for DID, which shows the actual effect of FVT during the post-lockdown period. Table 2 shows that though the coefficient for post-COVID-19 is negative and statistically significant, the interaction term in this model is positive and statistically significant, implying that in the post-lockdown period, while there is a decline in the earnings of both the groups, the treated group or, in other words, the section with formal training has experienced a lower decline.

Moreover, in order to ensure the robustness of DID estimates, the regression model with different control variables was estimated. The method of estimation using covariates is used to account for the unaccounted/unexplained variations within the simple DID model. Here, the paper considered the effect of being part of a minority or backward social group, marital status, age, level of education, form of ownership of business, and location of enterprise. The sign and statistical significance level of the interaction term is consistent even after controlling for several socio-economic and business-related variables.

Moreover, regarding the other control variables, the coefficient for age is found to be positive and statistically significant, but the coefficient for age-square is negative and statistically significant, implying that the earnings from self-employment grow with an increase in the experience level, but after a certain age, it starts decreasing. As expected, the impact on earnings rises with an increase in self-employed individuals educational level. As far as individuals social identity is concerned, RNFS individuals belonging to a weaker socio-economic status show lower earnings. For instance, females account for lower earnings than males from RNFS businesses, and the earnings of individuals belonging to the minority religious groups are lower than those of non-minority religious groups. Further, as for the coefficient associated with business-related variables, though it is found that the coefficient insignificant for proprietary enterprises, the coefficient for RNFS businesses within household premises is negative and significantly related to the earnings.

In fact, the importance of skill during the COVID-19 pandemic has been clearly revealed based on the decomposition of DID coefficient in Table 3.

From Table 3, it is observed that though both the skilled and unskilled RNFS individuals account for a statistically significant income loss during the COVID-19 pandemic, the difference in the earnings for pre- and post-lockdown situations of unskilled individuals is higher than that of skilled workers based on the DID analysis of both with and without covariates. For instance, for the model with covariates, the difference in the coefficients associated with the control and treated groups is 0.225 for the pre-lockdown period, whereas, for the post-lockdown period, the difference has increased to 0.483. Similarly, for the model without covariates, the difference in the coefficients of the control and treated groups is 0.303 for the pre-lockdown period, whereas the difference has increased to 0.561 for the post-lockdown period. The difference in differences coefficient between the periods is also positive (0.258) and statistically significant for both the models.

However, one may be interested in knowing whether skill plays a critical role in overcoming the disruptions only for a specific income group among the RNFS or it is vital to every income group. Therefore, the DID coefficients (with covariates) across 0.1 quantile, 0.25 quantile, 0.5 quantile, 0.75 quantile, and 0.9 quantile are estimated and presented in Table 4. Interestingly, it is seen that the DID coefficients are positive and statistically significant across all the five quantiles, implying that imparting skill through formal vocational training is critical to every section of the RNFS.

Why Does Skill Make a Difference?

In the preceding section, it has been established that skill can make a difference even in the time of an economic crisis. However, one may be interested in knowing why such a difference exists or how skill plays an important role. Therefore, this section provides a descriptive analysis to understand why and how skill can be effective in creating a positive impact on RNFS businesses. The prospects of different types of skill acquired through the formal vocational training programme that helps business growth in Figure 3.

First, it is interesting to find from Figure 3 that as per 53.04% of the respondents, they received better ideas for business during the training and it was stated as the most common factor behind their business growth. Second, as per 33.13% of the respondents, they are applying new technical knowledge to their businesses that they had acquired through training. It could also be useful in policymaking for understanding how sharing new or updated ideas about business and its working can lead to a positive impact. Often soft skills and management and marketing skills are expected to facilitate business growth. In fact, managerial skills are considered one of the most basic and important skills that determine the survival of businesses. Existing studies also argue that an increase in human capital or education can lead to better managerial skills with higher chances of business prospering (Bates 1990; Kim 2008). Likewise, in this study, it could also be observed that besides sharing new ideas and imparting technical knowledge, formal vocational training programmes have also been successful in enhancing soft skills and business skills. More specifically, for 15.05% of the respondents, there has been an improvement in their interaction/communication skills after the training. Moreover, for 3.04% and 7.14% of the respondents, there has been an improvement in managerial skills and marketing skills, respectively.

In the initial stages of self-employment businesses, it is seen that the role of social capital, such as networking and support mechanisms, can create a positive environment for their expansion. While most businesses rely on friends and families as their primary contact source for support, it is seen that their educational institutions and mentors also have an important role for educated individuals. Their guidance and contacts give a push in the direction of success, especially in the initial period. The study by Greene and Saridakis (2008) shows a positive relationship between the support mechanisms and skills acquired through training. Especially during crisis periods, these informal support systems form one of the main means of revival in terms of informal credit, career advice, and access to information. Figure 4 provides an insight into the differences existing in the business strategies used by skilled and unskilled self-employed individuals. Interestingly, the difference emerges when the percentage of involvement in the business strategies is looked at. The most common strategy utilised both by the skilled (53.24%) and unskilled (61.52%) RNFS businesses relates to expanding production or increasing the number of services provided. Here, it is seen that unskilled self-employed have invested more in increasing the production of their products but with a much lower emphasis provided to the diversification of their business (21.90%) as compared to the skilled self-employed (35.49%). This could be because of better access to ideas received through vocational training and skill development programmes that helped them diversify their production. Both the skilled and unskilled self-employed workers could see a potential market in urban areas and accordingly plan to expand their business there. The trained businesspersons have given more importance to delivering their services to bigger businesses that act as customers for their products and services to move to other rural localities if their market was saturated in the present location.

Besides following different strategies for the promotion of businesses, skill may have a strong association with the use of technology. This is important as the relationship between technology and businesses can be considered as a proxy for the level of capital investment made in ones business. It plays an essential role in continuing with businesses when physical movement is restricted at the time of the pandemic. In this context, one may be interested in knowing whether there exists any difference in the penetration of ICT between skilled and unskilled self-employed individuals. More specifically, whether skilled self-employed individuals are in a better position to reap the benefits of ICT in their businesses as compared to unskilled self-employed individuals. Thus, Figure 5 presents a comparative analysis of access to different technologies among skilled and unskilled self-employed individuals.

Access to ICT facilities has been assessed based on smartphone, computer, laptop, tablet, broadband connection, WiFi facility, printer, e-billing facility, online debit/credit card transaction, and mobile banking. From Figure 3, it could be seen that skilled self-employed individuals have better access in terms of all indicators of ICT facilities when compared to the unskilled self-employed individuals. Thus, skilled self-employed individuals are able to reap the following benefits of ICT and expand their businesses. These benefits can be largely confined to five categories: (i) better productivity and efficiency of the firmusing technology to increase productivity has been the cornerstone to achieve economic growth; (ii) better marketing strategyusing websites and social media presence for marketing products even outside of the local space; (iii) increasing salesusing various platforms of e-commerce as a means to reaching out to wider customer base and increasing ones market share; (iv) better financial inclusionusing the method of digital transactions and banking services that create better access to formal credit; and (v) as a medium of networking between enterprises that can be an effective way of increasing ones capability (Duncombe and Heeks 2005; Lee et al 2010; Mbuyisa and Leonard 2017). Moreover, better integration of new technology and skills has also been proved to be helpful in adapting to changing scenarios (vander Sluis et al 2008).

Even though skill plays an essential role in promoting RNFS businesses, a large number of individuals do not seem to be participating in formal vocational training. Thus, different reasons for not participating in the formal vocational training have been identified, as presented in Figure 6.

Figure 6 depicts that the reasons why people do not show an inclination towards attending formal vocational training and they include unawareness regarding training programmes (36.52%) and a lack of sufficient knowledge regarding the usefulness of enrolling in formal training centres (17.98%). This calls for reassessing the building awareness strategy used for the schemes, as even with all the spending on the advertisement, it has been unable to reach one-third of the potential self-employed individuals who could have opted for it. The other two main reasons were the investments they were ready to make on self-learning (28.09%) and banking on hereditary skills (10.67%). This shows that a third of the population is inclined towards informal learning, which could be due to the lack of educational qualifications required for attending formal training. The lack of time to invest in education is also a major factor that impacts individuals selection. This is seen more among informally trained individuals, as they are learning on the job and are unable to divert time to this form of education.

Conclusions and Policy Implications

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an economic shock across the world in an unprecedented manner. The different sections of the society have been affected in specific ways, and there is a disparity in terms of the impact on the high- and low-income groups, physical space, social groups, and the nature of employment. Therefore, it is important to look into each section and their issues to get a clearer picture. In this study, the focus was on the self-employed in the rural non-farm sector in Karnataka in an attempt to understand the role of skill development policies in overcoming the employment crisis.

Based on both descriptive as well as DID analyses, it is observed that though every section of the RNFS individuals has been adversely affected by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown measures, the decline in the earnings of unskilled individuals is higher than that of skilled individuals. When considering the income differential analysis done based on the quantile DID analysis, it is seen that imparting skill through formal vocational training is critical among every section of the RNFS. This provides a conclusive proof for the state and the individuals to invest in skill development not only for economic growth, but also as a support mechanism for households to overcome crisis situations.

Now, if one connects the business strategies used by skilled and unskilled individuals to their ability of overcoming the crisis, it can be seen that they have had a better chance of diversifying their products/services, not solely investing in increasing production. This could have come about because of the ideas they had received while attending formal training or their interactions with other business owners. Besides adopting different strategies for the promotion of businesses, skill has a strong association with the use of ICT facilities in the businesses that might have played an important role in continuing with businesses even during the pandemic. Studies point to the need for expanding the scope of the skill development programmes from providing just technical skill-based education to updating the existing skills that could help households move away from unproductive enterprises to more advanced technology-based businesses. This could help increase ones productivity and earning. But in order to expand it, it is important to ensure ready access to better public infrastructure and public training programmes in close proximity (NCEUS 2009).

Even though skill plays an important role in promoting RNFS businesses, a large number of individuals do not show an inclination to participate in formal vocational training programmes. Therefore, policymakers need to pay attention to enhancing formal vocational training for RNFS individuals on a grander scale. The lack of awareness and clarity regarding formal vocational training programmes and their usefulness has been found as the major reason for not participating in the formal training programmes. Therefore, there is a need for rethinking the model used for advertising vocational education and training and skill development programmes, as it is not reaching every section of the rural population as expected. Therefore, it is important to focus on better strategies that could help expand the reach of such programmes. These strategies could include the involvement of locals who have benefited from training programmes testimony to make people aware of the potential benefits of formal vocational training.

Another reason for people being unable to enrol for formal training is the lack of time required for participation. This could be because they have to work for longer hours to earn a decent income for their family or their occupation requires them to work for long hours, which goes past school timing. First, if they were provided with a scholarship (or income protection) for the course of the training period, it could attract more people to such institutions. Second, there could be individuals willing to learn, provided there is an option for learning in terms of an evening college format with the timing issue solved to an extent.

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South Asias trade structure, trade potential, supply capacity, and global market access from 1991 to 2017 are examined through empirical research using trade indexes and gravity econometric estimation. The results broadly reflect a stagnant position of South Asia in the merchandised trade structure. South Asian economies have a comparative advantage in some sectors, which are common for them, and these became their competitive export domain. Depending on their relationship, rivalry may be beneficial. India has the highest export diversification, among other criteria, and must refocus on economic integration. The export potential exists while market access and supply capacity remain intact. As South Asia is a high-consumption economy, domestic issues should be handled tactfully and regional integration must be emphasised.

The South Asia regional block is a vital trade block from an economic and demographic point of view. It has a long history of trade and communication with different parts of the world. The market-driven development and a continuous reform process have transformed South Asia into a robust economic region and has been widely recognised as an emerging market economy.

The member countries of South Asia have institutionalised a regional cooperation framework known as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Under this framework, they have constituted the South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA). The objective was to form a customs union by 2015 and an economic union by 2020. Neither of these has been achieved so far. Political backlash is the main reason behind this failure as regional cooperation primarily depends on peace and tranquility, stability, and, more importantly, mutual trust among the member states (Nag 2006; Armstrong 2011).

Some studies have empirically evaluated trade flows and found huge trade costs that arise from weak transit and transportation facilities. De (2011) evaluated trade costs for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal and noted certain impediments in the flow of trade due to non-uniform and non-coordinated transit facilities. Some other studies have argued that the high trade cost arises from the lack of trade facilitation measures such as warehouses, poor banking and foreign exchange facilities, cumbersome customs procedures, and administrative clearances (De 2011; Otsuki et al 2013; Bayley 2014).

There are very few studies that have analysed the international trade integration of South Asia. For instance, Armstrong (2011) studied trade integration of South and East Asia with the world market under the stochastic frontier gravity model from 1990 to 2006. He concluded that South Asia suffers from political rivalry between India and Pakistan and is less integrated than East Asia. Furthermore, Bayley (2014) comprehensively addressed the issues and challenges related to the trade facilitation measures that limit trade integration of South and East Asia intra-regionally and extra-regionally.

With this initial background, the present paper evaluates the South Asia trade structure by utilising the most recent data set and adopting the standard methodological approach. The objectives of the paper are: (i) to explain the South Asia trade basket with the help of trade indexes and Lalls (2000) commodity classification; (ii) to estimate the trade determinants and trade potential of South Asia; and (iii) to compute the supply capacity and foreign market access of South Asia.

Sample Size and Data Sources

The sample was chosen keeping in view South Asias largest economy, that is, India. That way, we obtain a representative sample size and do not miss any significant trading partners in South Asia. So, trade partners were selected based on Indias 90% export value in 2017. Our sample size is 81 nations. It also includes Vietnam, which does not meet the above criteria but is included due to its proximity to South Asian nations. Our sample size is quite representative of the world market for South Asia.

The World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS) data source is used for the evaluation of trade indexes. For the gravity equation, the International Monetary Fund Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS) for exports is utilised. The standard gravity covariates are accessed from the CEPII database. Data for the gross domestic product (GDP), population, and trade openness indicators have been obtained from the World Development Indicators (WDIs) (World Bank). Data for the regional trade agreement (RTA) utilised Egger and Larchs (2008) database. Information on the members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is accessed from the WTO official site.

Methodology

The papers objectives have been worked out using the Balassa index, Lafay index, trade intensity index (TII), and export

diversification index (Balassa 1965; Lafay 1992). In addition, the gravity model is used. The detailed discussion is presented in the subsequent paragraphs.

RCA1 (Balassa index): where : reveal-

ed comparative advantage of country i for commodity k;

( ): Export of commodity k from country i (the world); X i (X w ): Total exports from country i (the world). RCA ik > 1 represents a comparative advantage, and RCA ik < 1 means a comparative disadvantage.

RCA2 (Lafay index): Being important for developing countries, the index has been applied for covering the effects of both exports and imports in the trade basket.

LI ij  0 or  0: comparative advantage or comparative disadvantage. Zero value represents a neutral case in the given sector j of country i.

Trade intensity index (WITS): ; where X i,j (X w,j ), represents the total export value of country i (the world) to country j. Also, X i,t (X w , t ) represent the total export value of country i (the world) at time t. It measures whether a country exports more or less (in percentage terms) to the partner country compared to the world (on an average).

Export diversification index (WITS): DX i =(sum|h ij x i |)2; h ij : share of commodity i in the total exports of country j; and, x i : share of the commodity i in world exports. If the value of the export diversification index is close to 1, it means the exporter countrys concentration lies in a few products/markets. Therefore, the smaller the values of this index, the higher the level of diversification. Export diversification is an essential indicator for measuring the performance of developing countries. The positive movement in export diversification yields prospective export earnings, adds employment, and expands opportunity for a country.

In addition to these indexes, we also utilised Lalls (2000) product classification to evaluate the trade basket of South Asia. Furthermore, the gravity equation, as explained and forwarded by Anderson (1979), Anderson and van Wincoop (2003), and Anderson and Yotov (2012), is applied to determine trade flow, trade potential, market access, and supply capacity. We have estimated two individual results using gravity equations. One set of equations is defined for trade determinants and trade potential, while another set of equations examines supply capacity and foreign market access of South Asia.

Generalised Form of Gravity Equation

lnX ij,t = lnE j,t + lnY i,t  lnY t + (1) lnt ij,t  (1) lnP j,t  (1) ln i,t +  ij,t ... (1)

where X ij,t represents export variablecaptures export flow from country i to country j at time t; E j,t is the aggregate expenditure of country j at time t; and Y i,t is the aggregate income of country i at time t, both of which are measured in nominal GDP terms.  i,t and P j,t are conceptualised as structural terms and defined as outward and inward multilateral trade resistances, respectively. These multilateral trade resistances capture unobservable information for exporting and importing countries; t ij,t captures bilateral trade impeding factors between countries i and j;  >1 denotes elasticity of substitution among goods across trade partners; and finally, Y t represents the world output.

Trade Determinants and Trade Potential

The generalised equation (1) is described below under equations (2), (3), and (4) with parameters such as GDP, population, trade openness, distance, vector of dummies (D ij ), exporter ( i ), importer ( j ), and time () dummy.

lnX ij,t =  0 +  1 lndist ij,t +  2 lngdp i,t +  3 lngdp j,t +  4 lnTO i,t +  5 lnTO j,t +  6 lnPop i,t +  7 lnPop j,t +  8 D ij +  ij,t ... (2)

where D ij =(contig i,j + comlang_off i,j + colony i,j + one_wto t +both_wto t + RTA ij,t )

lnX ij,t =  0 +  1 lndist ij,t +  2 lngdp i,t +  3 lngdp j,t +  4 lnTO i,t + 5 lnTO j,t +  6 lnPop i,t +  7 lnPop j,t +  8 D ij +  i +  j +  + ij,t ... (3)

X ij,t = exp[ 0 +  1 lndist ij,t +  2 lngdp i,t +  3 lngdp j,t +  4 lnTO i,t + 5 lnTO j,t + 6 lnPop i,t + 7 lnPop j,t + 8 D ij + i +  j + ] ij,t ... (4)

Equation (2) estimates results based on the pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) technique; equation (3) captures fixed

effects (FE); and equation (4) is specified for the Poisson pseudo-maximum-likelihood (PPML) estimation. These three models will help us to compare the results and select a suitable model for the computation of export potential of South Asia.

Supply Capacity and Foreign Market Access

The supply capacity and market access are computed based on the approach discussed by Redding and Venables (2004). In this study, distance, common border, and the common official language variable have been considered to estimate trade cost. Further, the PPML technique has been applied instead of the weighted least squares so that no additional treatment on the data set is required (Silva and Tenreyro 2006).

X ij,t = exp[ 0 +  1 lndist i,j + contig i,j + comlang_of f i,j +  i +  j ]   i,j ... (5)

Equation (5) is similar to equation (1), with the only exception of dropped time notation (t) and some parameters. The regression based on the above equation is run for seven different years, with a time gap of four years from 1993 to 2017. The supply capacity (S i ) has to empirically capture the observable (t ij 1) and unobservable ( i 1) information of exporting country i. The market access (M i ) has to capture the observable (t ij 1) and unobservable (P j 1) information of importing country j. Therefore, in this exercise, the observable information such as distance, common border, and the common official language is included in the model, and unobservable information is captured by introducing exporting and importing) country dummies in equation (5). Finally, following Redding and Venables (2004), we use the estimated coefficients of these variables and compute supply capacity and market access of South Asia as

FSC j =  exp( i ) 1 lndist ij  2 contig ij

j=i ... (6)

FMA i =  j=i (exp( j ) i )  1 lndist ij  2 contig ij ... (7)

Trade Structure and Macro Fundamental

As given in Table 1, the macro indicators show broad contours of South Asias economic development and their degree of

integration with the world economy. From Table 1 it is clear that these economies are spending a large proportion (70%94%) of their GDP on consumption.1 Also, they have a trade deficit (imports > exports). For instance, the trade balance of Afghanistan in 2018 is $-12.48 billion and of India is $-257.24 billion. Other countries also have negative trade balances; this means that they cover a significant amount of consumption through foreign imports. Hence, it can be claimed that the consumption pattern of South Asia serves as the crucial driving force for the economy as a whole and may continuously expand to different segments of exports and imports.

Further, the other macro parameters such as the GDP, export, import, population level, capital (as gross fixed capital formation) reveal a strong market potential for trade and investment. The indicators such as trade balance, trade openness (trade as percentage of the GDP), manufacturing export and import (as a percentage of merchandise trade), and consumption expenditure vividly show the countries interdependency and the nature of their integration with the world economy. The composition and direction of the macro-development indicators describe the nature and preferences of South Asian economies at a broader level. Their taste and preferences converge with the increasing national income and the increasing share of national dividends. They are trade deficit economies whose volume of imports is more than that of exports. They are labour-abundant and capital-scared economies. Except for Afghanistan, Bhutan, and the Maldives, they export proportionately more manufactured and total merchandise exports than imports. For example, the data in Table 1 shows that Indias value of manufactured exports to merchandised exports is 69.83%, which is higher than its 52.12% manufactured import to merchandised import value. This indicates the better production capacity of these economies. This capacity can further be enhanced in terms of value-added production via investments in the identified sectors such as agriculture processing, dairy, textiles, garments, etc, where most of the South Asian economies have comparative advantage. Thus, South Asia remains an important market for the world economy. It has the potential to supply resources as well as value-added goods. Such economies also show high demand for goods produced elsewhere in the world because of their demographic and rising income characteristics.

Furthermore, the export composition is explained based on Lalls (2000) product categories. There are 11 categories based on the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC). The percentage share of exports under these 11 categories is presented in Figures 1 and 2 for South Asian countries and South Asia as a whole, respectively, for the period between 2001 and 2017 with a gap of four years.

In these product categories, South Asias export is mainly concentrated in textile, footwear, and garment of low technology, followed by the resource-based sector and others. Compared to other sectors, the share of electronics and electrical of high-technology manufactures is insignificant. However, the improvement appears in the following sectors over the years: HTM  oth(high-technology manufactures: other products), MTM  aut(medium technology manufactures: automotive products), MTM  eng(medium technology manufactures: engineering), MTM  prc(medium technology manufactures: process), and primary products. It can be noted that textile, garment, and footwear sector export shares went down significantly in 2017. The overall fall in export share in 2017 compared to 2013 corresponds to the decline in the export value of resource-based and low-technology manufactures: textile, garment, and footwear products. These sectors are important from an employment perspective and have greater weight in South Asian economies. Therefore, any government policy related to employment opportunities oriented into these sectors may have a negative effect on the decline of exports of these sectors. However, as a leading country in the region and historically well-recognised in the textile sector, India did not experience as low a level as other countries in the recent past. The recent sluggish performance of India has been noticed in high-technology manufactures: electronic and electrical and resource-based sectors. Such a downturn in exports from 2013 to 2017 is seen in a world economic recession and trade war between two giant economiesthe United States (US) and China.

Results and Discussion

Export diversification index: We have discussed the broad contours of the trade structure of South Asia. The paper now turns to other important trade indexes that report the performance of South Asia and South Asian economies. Results in Table 2 clearly show that the South Asian countries export diversification is very low compared to India. For instance, this index value lies between 0.47 and 0.66 for Afghanistan, 0.85 and 0.95 for Bangladesh, and 0.48 and 0.33 for India. Thus, India, as the largest country and leading economy in the region, has further scope to diversify its exports. Concerning time, no significant change has occurred in the index value of export diversification, except with India. It has maintained a forward movement in export diversification, as there is a continuous decline in the index value. As discussed in the methodology section, export diversification is essential for developing countries. Hence, it is to be prioritised.

In the above section, we determined that most South Asian economies should export more manufactured goods (Table 1, p 71). Except for India, these economies have not diversified much (Table 2). All of these economies can benefit from export diversification. However, diversifying exports needs significant capital investment across the manufacturing sector. But South Asian economies are capital-scarce countries, thus, diversifying exports for these economies is a difficult task. The current phase of development engendered trade and investment flows. Foreign commerce and investment in South Asia can be a feasible alternative for diversification. Textile, pearls, stone, and other traditionally concentrated sectors cannot be the future export earners and economic gainers. Export diversification of agricultural, food processing, dairy, and engineering goods is required. These are the areas where technological augmentation and skilled manpower can provide comparative advantage.

Trade intensity index: This index value situates the countrys position in export flows with respect to the world. It ranges between 0 to . A value greater than one means trade flow is more significant than what is expected of a particular country or region in relation to the world. Table 3 (p 73) reports this index value computed from 2001 to 2017.

The results indicate that the region-wise distribution of exports in South Asia is highest intra-regionally. It is pretty convincing as the geographical and cultural proximity is highest compared to the rest of the economies and regions.

The trade basket has been examined further. It is found that countries of South Asia mostly compete with each other in the export market on a small set of narrowly defined goods such as textile and apparel products. In 2017, the volume of intra-regional South Asian trade stood at 5.6% of the regions total world trade. Many factors contribute to low intra-regional trade, including huge trust deficit and political uncertainties within the region, protectionist policies imposed on each other by the region members, weak connectivity within and outside the region, the lack of transit facilities, other logistic support, and suitable infrastructural facilities resulting in high trade costs, the lack of political support to the traders, and malfunctioning of intra-regional trade policies and regional trade agreements. This makes South Asia one of the worlds least economically linked areas and explains the high trade intensity and minimal intra-regional trade in South Asia. South Asian trade links can be improved to match those of Europe, West Asia, and Africa. The region must work together to generate more specialised products of varied comparative advantages so as to create more mutually beneficial opportunities. In fact, specialisation and diversified value chains are key to high trade volumes.

Another finding indicates that cultural proximity trumps physical distance in South Asia. For instance, Afghanistans trade intensity with Pakistan, and Nepals with Bhutan emerged highest as compared to Afghanistan and Nepal with other countries of South Asia. Some studies claim that intra-regional trade in South Asia is limited due to the barriers (Pitigala 2005; Desai 2010; Weerakoon 2010). The finding of high trade intensity the the intra-regionally contradicts the low intra-regional trade. However, it is important to note that there is inconsistent trade intensity among South Asian partners (Shrestha and Updhyay 2004). This inconsistency explains the asymmetry and the lack of political will to increase intra-regional trade in South Asia.

Countries such as Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and the Maldives have low trade intensity. Low trade intensity and poor export diversification along with high trade potential of South Asian nations creates more opportunities to access untapped markets. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and, to some extent, Bangladesh depict a similar picture of trade intensity. On the contrary, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and the Maldives have low trade intensity. Furthermore, Indias performance in sub-saharan Africa and West Asia and North Africa is better than all other South Asian nations. The trade intensity result complements the export diversification of South Asia. Thus, South Asian countries can access the unexplored markets for their export earnings through trade diversification.

Revealed Comparative Advantage2, 3

As per the value of the Lafay index, Afghanistan has a comparative advantage, mainly in the agriculture sector. Further, textile and crude fertilisers also appear as advantageous sectors for Afghanistan. Bangladesh has a comparative advantage in travel goods, apparel and clothing, beverages, furniture, and footwear. Bhutans export basket envelops some significant sectors having comparative advantage, such as electric current, chemicals, fertilisers, iron and steel, and some metals. Indias comparatively leading sectors are the most diversified among South Asia. They range from agriculture to manufacturing. The result shows that India faces competition with Bangladesh in some sectors such as footwear, clothing, apparel, and travel bags. The Maldives is the least diversified country in South Asia, as it comprises advantageous sectors such as fisheries, metal ores, and animal feed.

As far as Nepal is concerned, the comparative advantage sectors are meat and dairy products, vegetables, coffee, tea, chemicals and leather, travel goods, apparel, clothing, and footwear. Thus, India also has competition with Nepal along with Bangladesh. A similar structure has been found between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, where India faces competition in some of the sectors mentioned above.

The computation is also carried using the Balassa index of RCA to evaluate the mean and coefficient of variance changes from 2001 to 2017. From Table 5, it is clear that the highest variability appears in the case of Afghanistan, followed by Maldives, Bhutan, and Nepal. The other countries RCA appears relatively stable during the period with a low coefficient of variance. Furthermore, sectors with high RCA are also stable as the respective coefficient of variance values exhibited are very low. Thus, the comparative advantage of the trade basket of South Asian countries appears with relatively low stability during the period. It corresponds to the nature of emerging market economies looming with challenges and opportunities.

Gravity Model: Result and Discussion

Tables 6 (p 74) Table 8 provide two gravity-based regression outcomes. The results given in Table 6estimates of distance, contiguity, and exporter and importer dummiesare utilised for the computation of foreign supply capacity and overseas market access as per equation (6). In this case, the dependent variable was export value. After estimating equation (6), we got a supply capacity and foreign market access result as reported in Table 7 (p 74).4

As far as foreign supply capacity is concerned, Indias performance is highest compared to other South Asian economies. Due to internal economic changes and an export-oriented policy, Indias supply capacity has improved. Its performance can also be attributed to better infrastructure and demographic features. In 2017, all South Asian economies improved their supply capacity compared to 2013. Bangladeshs performance is quite stable but has improved in recent time. It is the second-best performing country after India, followed by Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The supply capacity of Afghanistan, Bhutan, Maldives, and Nepal is recorded below par among all the South Asian economies, and their performances are close to each other. Overall, South Asias performance in foreign supply capacity reflects its economic reforms, global integration, and outward orientation. Its foreign market access appears to be strong. On average, this variable outperforms supply capacity. The comparative advantage and commodity basket results reported above reveal that South Asia may have gained concessions from other economies. These economies serve as an important source of input providers. The South Asian countries should focus more on supply capacity than market access to strengthen their internal economies.

Furthermore, to compute export potential, another result is estimated under the standard gravity covariates with panel data (Table 8). The estimated results reported in the first two columns of Table 8 compare with the results estimated using the PPML technique. PPML1 is a model that includes exporter and importer fixed effects as well as time effects to reflect the impact of country-specific factors on trade flows. PPML2 is estimated by incorporating paired fixed effects in the model. It is an alternative way of measuring trade cost as suggested by Egger and Nigai (2015) and Agnosteva et al (2019). PPML3 is the same as PPML2 except that several highly collinear variables are removed. This approach also has the advantage of taking care of the issue of endogeneity that usually appears when a RTA is included in the model (Baier and Bergstrand 2007).

Table 8 reports the estimated coefficient under the OLS and PPML estimation techniques. The reported results are quite comparable with the expected results of the gravity model estimated in the literature. However, compared to the OLS and FE estimates, the distance under PPML1 appears positive but insignificant. It may mean that the physical unit of distance, as often used for the measures of trade cost, does not necessarily capture the trade cost efficiently. It demonstrates that trade resistance is being effectively captured by the country fixed effect. In PPML3, as expected, distance again becomes significantly negative. Furthermore, the population of exporter countries appears negative, indicating that internal consumption is very high. As far as the WTO membership is concerned, the result varies due to methodological approaches and sample size (Rose 2004; Lissovolik and Lissovolik 2006; Subramanian and Wei 2007; Larch et al 2019). The GDP and trade openness are the most important export determinants of South Asia. They appear at a comparable degree, as reported in other papers. The RTA is found to be impactful but with a low level of significance after controlling for endogeneity, as suggested in the literature (Baier and Bergstrand 2007; Baier et al 2019). A multicollinearity problem may exist in the model, since the correlation coefficients between lnTOi and lnGDPi is -0.7209*; between lnPopi and lnGDPi = 0.9514*; between lnPopj and lnGDPj = 0.6156*; and r = -0.4715* between lnPopj and lnTOj. Even after removing the highly collinear variables, the results are broadly the same as reported in the PPML3. Overall, the determinants of trade flow describe South Asias trade pattern reasonably well.

The export potential is computed from the theoretical coefficients of PPML1 selected based on the RESET test value. The export potential is reported in Table 9 and Figure 3 (p 75) periodically from 2001 to 2017. All South Asian economies appeared with a significant level of export potential. However, India has the highest level of export potential as compared to other South Asian nations. India had its highest level of export potential in 2013. In 2017, the export potential declined in all South Asian economies, except Nepal and Sri Lanka. The export potential of India declined substantially in 2017. Yet, it has the highest level as compared to other South Asian nations. Such a result is attributed to the outward-looking export policy and unilateral trade integration approach.

Furthermore, the export potential of each South Asian economy with the overall region is reported (Table 11). The estimates suggest that India has the biggest estimated export potential in South Asia, followed by Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is debated in the literature that the cordial relationship between India and Pakistan can boost the economy and bring stability in the region (Kher 2012). The results of export potential presented in Table 11 confirm this argument. The potential is much higher, provided that informal trade between India and Pakistan is also accounted for (Pitigala 2005). The study also calculated the export potential-to-actual export gap (Table 10). India has largely utilised its trade potential, as the gap between potential and actual is negative. Other South Asian countries are yet to utilise this potential effectively. Thus, South Asian countries must discover strategies to effectively utilise their untapped export potential. Their unification and effective utilisation of the SAFTA, along with cooperation in infrastructure, water resources, and energy security, can play a significant role in this endeavour (Kathuria and Mathur 2019). The export potential utilisation depends on the supply capacity and foreign market access, which can be achieved through infrastructure development, logistic support, and friendly relations within the region and outside. Regional stability creates investor confidence, which is critical in the present wave of trade integration. A move in this direction will help South Asian economies create jobs, generate exports, transfer technology, and maximise their trading potential.

Conclusions

Our objective was to look at trade integration, trade potential, and global market access of South Asian nations in this paper. The results show that South Asia is well integrated and has significant export potential, which slightly declined in recent times. Although the supply capacity and market accessibility increased, no noticeable change is observed in the South Asian trade basket in the last one and half decades. The overall trade volume has increased. Nonetheless, a slight change may be observed in few sectors as per the Lall (2000) classification. The value of revealed comparative advantage, trade intensity, and export diversification conform stagnancy of South Asian economies. The trade intensity value is best in this region, followed by few other countries of Europe, Africa, and East Asia. On average, South Asian countries comparative advantage corresponds mainly to agro-based products, textile, garments and footwear, chemicals, and a few other sectors. There appears hardly any noticeable change in the export diversification statistics in all the economies of South Asia during the period considered in this paper. Thus, for a long time, South Asia has been suffering from poor institutional measures and infrastructure facilities. Therefore, there is a need to focus on internal and external export/import-related issues to overcome the stagnancy in the economies. They need to leverage their consumption pattern and demographic profile for greater benefits. Their internal trade measures may help them ensure better welfare outcomes, but regional cooperation needs to be prioritised for effective trade integration internationally and intra-nationally.

Notes

1 Wherever 2018 data are not available, preceding years data are used.

2 Revealed comparative advantage (RCA) is the most often used trade performance and policy index. In theory, the index is debatable. However, as Shepherd (2021) demonstrated, the index does not sufficiently explain the Ricardian theory of comparative advantage, which is based on relative productivity differences. According to him, the RCA value is a measure of market size and potential, not relative productivity. Traditional RCA provides for trade cost factors, which are not accounted for under theory-based RCA. Rather than productivity, the RCA index measures market size and trade costs. Thus, the RCA result obtained in this paper is interpreted in terms of a countrys exporting capabilities for a certain product or sector of the economy.

3 The whole picture for South Asia requires disaggregated product-level analysis, which is not covered in this study. The disaggregate analysis aids in determining the tariff structure for a 6- or 8-digit Harmonised System product code. For specific sectors or product categories, this papers findings are useful.

4 For instance, consider Afghanistan. Its supply capacity is computed as per equation (6) as follows: Except for Afghanistan, add all estimated Exporter_Fixed_Effect coefficients and multiply this summation by the estimated coefficients of distance and contiguity from Table 6. Similarly, Afghanistan Foreign Market Access is calculated by summing up the entire estimated Importer_Fixed_Effect coefficients, excluding Afghanistan Importer_Fixed_Effect coefficient, and multiplying by distance and common border estimates.

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The authoritarian populist tendencies of an excessive personalisation of power, curtailment of civil liberties, circumvention of the rule of law, and increasing militarisation of state apparatus have exacerbated Sri Lankas lurch towards illiberal democracy, thereby precipitating the grave economic and humanitarian crises.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his presidency has been the subject of much contested debate, and many argue that he ushered in an authoritarian populist regime that upholds a form of ethno-religious nationalism (Jayasuriya 2019). Sri Lankans elected Gotabaya Rajapaksa as their president (16 November 2019) in the aftermath of the deadly Easter Sunday blasts. The Rajapaksas were ousted in 2015 when Mahinda Rajapaksa lost the presidential election. Mahinda Rajapaksa first came to power in 2004, first as the prime minister and then as the president. It was under the presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother Gotabaya, the defence minister, that Sri Lanka in 2009 finally crushed the insurrection of the Tamil Tigers.

It is important to underline that the making of the current economic crisis is not hinged on short-term triggers alone, but also in the pitfalls of authoritarian populism marked by unfettered powers to executive presidency and nepotism and corruption that followed from it. It can be stated that the transition of a rule-based order to one of family networks goes back to the period of Mahinda Rajapaksa (Jacinto 2022). During Mahinda Rajapaksas second term as president from 201015, there were said to be more than 40 Rajapaksa family members in government posts, apart from the cabinet (Subramanian 2022). The Rajapaksa clan also dominated the Gotabaya cabinet holding key ministerial portfolios.

I argue that while the short-term triggers of the current economic crisis may be ill thought through decisions like populist tax cuts, switch to organic farming, and the impact of COVID-19, but the making of this economic crisis needs to be understood through the frames of authoritarian populism and transition of the island nation to what can be classified as a case of illiberal democracy. In the following section, first, I explicate the case of authoritarian populism, second, I highlight the transition of Sri Lanka to an illiberal democracy under an authoritarian populist regimethe Rajapaksas. I explicate this argument using insights more specifically from Gotabaya Rajapaksa regime, and more broadly from the period of Mahinda Rajapaksa since 2004.

The Analytical Framework

So, what makes Sri Lanka a case for authoritarian populism and illiberal democracy? How is it different or similar to mainstream strands of populism? What are the clear linkages between authoritarian populism and illiberal democracies? What is specific in the case of Sri Lanka? Does one see a parallel between populist politics, for instance in Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary), and Sri Lanka? What insights does the case of Sri Lanka offer, when we read the surge of populist politics, and slip towards illiberal forms of democracy in South Asia?

It can be stated that Sri Lanka as a case of populism differs from other populism as it combines the elements of populism, ethnonationalism and authoritarianism. The term populism stands highly contested in both academic and policy literature. The contestation stems from different scholars emphasising divergent attributes to the concept of populism (Weyland 2001: 1). Most debates centre around whether to conceptualise populism as a thin-centred ideology (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2015: 17; Mudde 2004), a structuring political logicto be precise, the logic of the peoplerather than an ideology (Laclau 2005: 117), where the category of people are constructed through intersectional filters (Singh and Feron 2021), or populism as a strategy (Weyland 2001: 14) or a political style (Moffit and Tormey 2015). From the standpoint of Sri Lanka, I adopt a view of populism as a structuring political logic; to be precise, the logic of the people rather than an ideology (Laclau 2005: 117). Taking clues from the scholarly writings on authoritarian populist politics (particularly the work of Bojan Bugaric [2019a, 2019b]) on Eastern and Central Europe), I argue that authoritarianism in the case of Sri Lanka does not mean only the adoption of certain authoritarian values (Norris and Inglehart 2019), such as stringent security, intolerance for multiculturalism, and pluralism but also a style of governance that attempts to circumvent the rule of law, and democratic norms in favour of centralised authority and limited political freedom (Boniskowski 2017). What is interesting in this variant is that authoritarian populists embrace a form of democracy and claim to speak for the people themselves, but at the same time by undermining its liberal constitutional foundations, they erode the substance of democracy and gradually transform it into various forms of illiberal and authoritarian regimes (Muller 2016: 6064, as cited in Bugaric 2019b: 599).

This version of authoritarian populism consists of certain core elements. The first element is what Jan-Werner Muller (2016) calls moralised anti-pluralism. For instance, both Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa claim that they alone represent the people; in their world view there are no opponents only traitors. Further in this version of moralised anti-pluralism Gotabaya Rajapaksa plays on the threat from Islam, particularly against the backdrop of the Easter Sunday attacks. In a comparative perspective, Roger Brubakers (2017) highlights how ethnonationalism in Northern and Western Europe has shifted from nationalism to civilisationism. This is very much evident in the case of Sri Lanka, as Gotabaya Rajapaksas win can be attributed to the mobilisation of SinhalaBuddhist fears and anxieties, hinged on civilisational threat from Islam, in the wake of Easter Sunday attacks. It is interesting to note that one can find interesting similarities in populist politics, for instance between Hungary and Poland, and Sri Lanka, though these are completely different geographical/regional, and historical contexts. Yet this is pertinent as it offers insights on the surge of authoritarian populism, and sliding towards illiberal democracies.

The second element, the non-institutionalised notion of the people, means that the populists asserts or assumes that there is singular and morally privileged understanding or will that has not been manifest through the formal structures of democratic choice (Huq 2018, as cited in Bugaric 2019: 393). The writings of scholars like Bugaric (2019), are quite instructive in the case of Sri Lanka. He underlines that in this version of authoritarian populism, a populist leader claims to do what the people want. So, the argument that formal structures of liberal democracy have to be put aside if they are preventing the populist leader from fulfilling his role (Bugaric 2019: 393). So for instance, in the case of Sri Lanka, the rollback of the 19th Amendment (19A) that was introduced to curb presidential power. The key point being that there were strong moves towards centralisation and personalisation of power, and this was done through both extraconstitutional and extrajudicial meansa move that clearly explains the slide towards illiberal democracy.

The third element is marked by conservative and authoritarian ideology, combined with the absence of a strong opposition. Ivan Szelenyi and Tamas Csillag (2015) argue that this drift to illiberalism and authoritarianism also has a legitimating ideology, a traditionalist/neoconservative ideology, which emphasises the value of patriotism, religion, and traditional family values. And this is very much evident in the case of Sri Lanka; for instance Mahinda Rajapaksas construction of a metanarrative hinged on ideas of a civic nation, patriotism and sacred religionBuddhism. Thus it can be stated that three combined core elements of this version of authoritarian populism explains the clear linkages between populists and the advance of illiberal democraciesin this case for Sri Lanka. Further. borrowing from Zakaria (1997),

illiberal democracies can be classified in opposition to liberal constitutionalism: weak protection of human rights, an absence of checks and balances, weak rule of law, insecurity of property rights and repression of civil society.

All exemplified through the politics of moralised antipluralism, the claim to be the sole representative of the true will of the people, all packed and sold in a conservative, and authoritarian ideology. The next section will explicate how each of the three elements played out in the case of Sri Lanka.

Authoritarian Populism and Economic Crisis

On the first point on moralised anti pluralism (Muller 2016), both Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa claim that they alone represent the peoplein their world view they are no opponents only traitors. Scholars like Muller (2016: 3) rightly underline, populists claim that they, and they alone represent the people  The populist claims that whoever does not support populist parties might not be a proper part of the people. In the case of Mahinda Rajapaksas discourse, it is pertinent to flag that the construction of the political logic of the people is rooted in the idea of citizen/patriots.

For instance, Mahinda Rajapaksa (as cited in Wickramasinghe 2009) states, There are only two people in the country. One is the people who love this country. The other comprises the small groups that have no love for the land of their birth. What is pertinent to underline in this structuring of the political logic of the peoplethe citizen/patriots is that this category of people are ethnically undifferentiated (Wickramasinghe 2009). The idea of a civic nation as emphasised by Mahinda Rajapaksa clearly exemplifies the politics of moralised anti-pluralism. Further this coupling of the state and nation in this new patriotism, allowed Mahinda Rajapaksa to incapacitate his two political challengers: the United National Party (UNP) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) (Wickramasinghe 2009).

This political logic for the construction of the category of people continued to find relevance in the discourse of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Further, this emphasis on moralised anti-pluralism weakened the foundations of democratic institutions, as time and again, there was circumvention of the rule of law, dwindling of citizens liberties and militarisation of the state apparatus. And thus began the sliding of Sri Lanka towards what can be classified as illiberal democracy.

Further, the element of moralised anti-pluralism was further validated through what can be classified as the manufacturing of Rajapaksa myths. This in many ways also provided the legitimating ideology (as put forth by Csillag and Szelenyi 2015) to further the cause of authoritarian populist politics. Scholars like Gunasekara (2014) very rightly underline that myths can can be extremely effective in creating and maintaining a sense of identification between a political group and a community of people. A point well harnessed by the Rajapaksas, who constructed a metanarrative that established the connection between the majority ethno-religious community and the countrys new rulers. Gunasekara (2014) argues that this metanarrative was premised on three main mythsthe myth of eternal national insecurity, the myth of miraculous development and the myth of the infallible hero-king. He further argues that three myths reinforce each other; in confluence they create and sustain the socio-psychological soil necessary for the new Rajapaksa dynasty to take root and flourish (Gunasekara 2014).

The first point on the myth of eternal national insecurity can be clearly seen in the politics of both Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa. For instance, in the case of Mahinda, it was the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that was the trigger factor, and in the case of Gotabaya, it was the threat to national security from Islam, in the wake of Easter Sunday attacks. Second, both Mahinda and Gotabaya have been selling the white elephant projects, as the myth of miraculous development, though in reality all this was premised on an already cash-strapped economy, waiting to collapse. Third, what is very unique to the case of Sri Lanka is how the Rajapaksas constructed the political logic not just for the people but also for themselves as rulers who have been divinely ordained to represent the true will of the people. There was consistent propaganda by the state machinery to discursively build a narrative that hailed Mahinda Rajapaksa as the High King of Sri Lanka, divinely blessed and infallible hero-king, particularly after the military defeat of LTTE. Further there was consistent efforts to not just depict Rajapaksa as infallible hero king, but also attempts to create a mythical pedigree for the Rajapaksas, which connects them not just to King Dutugemunu but also to the Buddha (Gunasekara 2014).

The second element is the non-institutionalised notion of the people which allows populists to assert themselves as the true representatives of the people. Further this gives them the moral validation to put aside formal structures of liberal democracy if they are preventing the populist leader from fulfilling their role. It leads to greater personalisation and centralisation of power, and all this is attempted through both extraconstitutional and extrajudicial measures. Further, it is important to note that the executive presidency, and the nepotism that has arisen from it has played a huge role in pushing Sri Lanka towards the current economic crisis. As per conservative estimates, nearly 75% of the total budget of Sri Lanka was directly under the purview of Rajapaksa ministers in the government (Bhattacharyya 2021). In this context, there is a need to pay attention to the spate of constitutional amendments undertaken by both Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa under the garb of peoples will, but basically to subvert democratic institutions and the rule of law.

It is pertinent to underline that the 19A in April 2015 was pushed by the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. This was an important amendment that checked the powers of the executive presidency. It was argued that the 19A was needed to correct the power imbalance created by the 18th Amendment (18A), which the government of Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2010 had introduced. The 18A lifted the two-term bar for a president to run for office. The 19A brought in the reversal bringing back the two-term bar and reducing the presidential term from six to five years. It pruned the powers of the presidency and empowered Parliament. The 19A adopted in 2015 pruned presidential powers by empowering the 225-member Parliament above the executive president. However, the 19A was scrapped after Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksas younger brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the November 2019 presidential election.

The controversial 20th Amendment (20A) to Sri Lankas Constitution that envisages expansive powers and greater immunity for the executive president was passed in Parliament with a two-thirds majority. The 20A rolls back Sri Lankas 19A, a 2015 legislation passed with wide support from the Rajapaksa camp. The new legislation in turn reduces the prime ministers role to a ceremonial one. The 20A was adopted by the Sri Lankan Parliament on 22 October 2020, and removed the checks on the presidents power by dissolving the constitutional council, giving the president total control over the appointment of the senior judge (Basak 2022). The president was also given unrestricted control over the Human Rights Commission, Election Commission, the Police Commission, and the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption. He could also use his powers to pick important legal officers like the attorney general, the auditor general, and the inspector general of police.

Thus it can be argued that in the name of the will of the people, and with a claim to being the true representative of the peoples will, buttressed by a legitimating ideology, the Rajapaksas left no stone unturned to push Sri Lanka towards illiberal democracy. The marked features of this move were excessive personalisation of power, curtailment of civil liberties, circumvention of the rule of lawall marked by both extraconstitutional and extrajudicial means. Furthermore there was greater militarisation of the state apparatus, to such an extent that the military even ventured into civilian commercial projects in ways that undermine fair business practices. All this explains, how and why this version of authoritarian populism centred on the Rajapaksa clan pushed Sri Lanka not just to this point of grave economic and humanitarian crisis, but also towards illiberal democracy.

In Conclusion

To sum up it can be argued that there is a need to pay greater attention to the surge of this particularistic populist politics, most evident in Eastern and Central Europe and now in South Asia, which can be classified as authoritarian populism. The dangers of this version of populist politics are that it morally legitimises the character of illiberal democracy in the name of national security/insecurity, religion and patriotism. This is also characterised by harking back to the politics of civilisationism centred around a threat from Islam, most evident in the populist-right discourse, both globally and regionally. South Asia stands at a critical juncture, with alarm bells ringing on the economic front from Pakistan after Sri Lanka. So, there is a need to move away from a myopic analysis of this current economic crisis in Sri Lanka, and the need to view it through the filters of authoritarian populism, and its ramification for constitutionalism and democracies.

References

Basak, Saptarshi (2022): 21st Amendment: The Tumultuous Journey of Sri Lankas Constitution, Quint, 21 June, https://www.thequint.com/news/world/21st-amendment-tumultuous-journey-sri-lanka-constitution#read-more.

Bonikowski, Bart (2017): Ethno-Nationalist Populism and the Mobilisation of Collective Resentment, British Journal of Sociology, Vol 68, No S1, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-4446.12325.

Bhattacharyya, Sujay (2021): How Rajapaksa Dynasty Controls Sri Lankan Government, Unmatched in South Asia, India Today, viewed on 16 June 2022, https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/how-rajapaksa-dynasty-controls-sri-lankan-government-unmatched-in-south-asia-1831719-2021-07-23.

Brubaker, Rogers (2017): Between Nationalism and Civilisationism: The European Populist Moment in Comparative Perspective, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol 40, No 6, pp 1191226, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2017.1294700.

Bugaric, B (2019a): The Two Faces of Populism: between Authoritarian and Democratic Populism, German Law Journal, Vol 20, No 3,

pp 390400, doi:10.1017/glj.2019.20.

 (2019b): Central Europes Descent into Autocracy: A Constitutional Analysis of Authoritarian Populism, International Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol 17, No 2, April, pp 597616, https://doi.org/10.1093/icon/moz032.

Csillag, Tamas and Ivan Szelenyi (2015): Drifiting from Liberal Democracy: Traditionalists/Neoconservative Ideology of Managed Illiberal Democratic Capitalism in Post-Communist Europe, Intersections: East European Journal of Society and Politics, Vol 1, No 1, pp 1848, DOI: 10.17356/ieejsp.v1i1.28.

Gunasekara, Tisaranee (2014): War, Peace and the Manufacturing of Rajapaksa Myths, Groundviews, viewed on 7 June 2022, https://groundviews.org/2014/05/28/war-peace-and-the-manufacturing-of-rajapakse.

Jayasuriya, Kanishka (2019): The Sri Lankan Election and Authoritarian Populism, East Asia Forum, 27 November, viewed on 5 June, https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2019/11/27/the-sri-lankan-election-and-authoritarian-populism/.

Jacinto, Leela (2022): The Rise and Fall of a Political Dynasty that Brought Sri Lanka to Its Knees, France 24, 10 May, viewed on 3 June 2022, https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20220510-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-political-dynasty-that-brought-sri-lanka-to-its-knees.

Laclau, E (2005): On Populist Reason, Verso.

Moffitt, B and S Tormey (2015): Rethinking Populism: Politics, Mediatisation and Political Style, Political Studies, 2014; Vol 62, No 2, pp 38197, doi:10.1111 /1467-9248.12032.

Muller, Jan-Werner (2016): What Is Populism? Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Mudde, C (2004): The Populist Zeitgeist, Government and Opposition, Vol 39, No 4, pp 54163, https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00135.x.

Mudde, C and C R Kaltwasser (2015): Vox Populi or Vox Masculini? Populism and Gender in Northern Europe and South America, Patterns of Prejudice, Vol 49, Nos 12, pp 1636, https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2015.1014197.

Norris, Pippa and Ronald Inglehart (2019): Cultural Backlash, Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism, First published, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.

Singh, Shweta and Elise Feron (2021): Towards an Intersectional Approach to Populism: Comparative Perspectives from Finland and India, Contemporary Politics, Vol 27, No 5, pp 52849, DOI: 10.1080/13569775.2021.1917164.

Subramanian, Nirupama (2022): Explained: The Rajapaksa Clan in Sri Lanka Politics, Indian Express, 8 April, viewed on 31 May 2022, https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-the-rajapaksa-clan-in-sri-lanka-politics-7854579/.

Weyland, K (2001): Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the Study of Latin American Politics, Comparative Politics, Vol 34, No 1,

pp 122, https://doi.org/10.2307/422412.

Wickramasinghe, N (2009): After the War: A New Patriotism in Sri Lanka? Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 68, No 4, pp 104554, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20619860.

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Tuesday, July 5, 2022

The Freedom to Write Should Be Celebrated Every Day

Monday was the 4th of July  a huge day in America. Many starts in earlythis year, last Friday was mostly likely the kickstart. Flags were out. Families and friends gathered at picnics, barbecues, movies, and gatherings. All a good thing.

Cherish the fact that our Founding Fathers lit the authors writing path with  freedom. Freedom for words and the creation of books. True independence.

Its Americas birthday. Meaning a celebration with family and friends.

What happened within the walls of what became known as Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was life-changing. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were both debated and adopted.

Within the Constitution lies multiple Amendments. The First Amendment is essential and critical to what we authors do: Freedom of Religion, Speech, and the Press.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Amendment 1

Freedom of Religion, Speech, and the Press

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Cherish the fact that our Founding Fathers lit our writing paths with  freedom. Freedom for our words and our books.

For ALL Authors and Writers globally, we should be joining in a universal cheer and celebration of the power of our words. Their meaning  their impact  their ability to make a difference  to create change  to solve problems  to relieve pain  to entertain. Thats a tremendous amount of power. Its a very cool thing to think about this 4th of July weekwouldnt you agree?

Think of the symbolic sparkler of the 4th. Its in your hand representing your words, your passion, and your vision. Hold it high for the freedom to write that you should be celebrating every day.

I hope you spent time with your family and your friends. And honor yourself for what you do for so many. Our Founding Fathers would be proud.

Dr. Judith Briles is a book publishing expert and coach. Often, she must roll up her writing sleeves and become a Book Doctor, juicing up storylines and author words. She empowers authors and works directly with authors who want to be seriously successful and has been writing about and conducting workshops on publishing since the 80s. Judith is the author of 37 books including Author YOU: Creating and Building Your Author and Book Platforms, Snappy Sassy Salty: Wise Words for Authors and Writers, and How to Create a $1,000,000 Speech. Her personal memoir When God Says NO-Revealing the YES When Adversity and Loss Are Present is a #1 bestseller on Amazon. Collectively, her books have earned over 45 book awards. Judith speaks throughout the year at publishing conferences.

Throughout the year, she holds Judith Briles Book Unplugged in-person and online experiences: Publishing, Speaking, Marketing, and Social Media. All are two-day intensives limited to a small group of authors who want to be seriously successful. Join Judith live for the AuthorU-Your Guide to Book Publishing podcast on the Toginet Radio Network HERE.

Follow @AuthorUYOUBooks and @MyBookShepherd on Twitter and do a Like at AuthorYOU, and join the Facebook group Book Publishing with The Book Shepherd. If you want to create a book that has no regrets, contact her.

2022 Judith Briles  The Book Shepherd All Rights Reserved.
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Elon Musk wants to create the city of Starbase at SpaceXs Starship production and launch facility in South Texas.

The place is currently called Boca Chica.

Word of the plan came via Musks Twitter feed on March 2: Creating the city of Starbase, Texas, then From thence to Mars, and hence the stars. He added that the city will encompass an area much larger than Boca Chica.

The unincorporated coastal area, near the Mexico-U.S. border about 25 miles east of Brownsville, sits amid sand dunes and marshland. Its adjacent to a state park and a 10,680-acre tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The last land battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Palmito Ranch, occurred nearby.

Only a few holdouts remain in Boca Chica Village, a community of 30 homes built in the 1960s. SpaceX has bought out most who lived there. In October, VICE News published an email from David Finlay, SpaceXs senior director of finance, offering the remaining residents three times the appraised value of their homes  roughly $150,000.

The offer will expire on October 2, 2020, Finlay wrote. Please be advised that should this offer expire, SpaceX may need to pursue alternative approaches to ensuring that launch operations within the State-designated South Texas Spaceport at Boca Chica Beach can be conducted within all necessary public safety requirements.

At least two of the holdouts declined the offer, according to the report. Maybe incorporating and launching eminent-domain proceedings are SpaceXs alternative approach to booting those still living there.

Musks blunt tweets are the best sources for Starship news. The announcement came two days before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened a public comment period on SpaceXs proposed expansion plans at Boca Chica.

On ExpressNews.com: SpaceX Starship chasers converge in South Texas

The Starbase news set SpaceX fans a flutter and energized critics who dont want the name Boca Chica to fade into the history books. But the chatter largely faded on March 3 with Starship SN10s precarious landing and Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, or RUD, Musks euphemism for rocket explosions.

Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino Jr. offered a nonstatement: If SpaceX and Elon Musk would like to pursue down this path (of incorporating Starbase), they must abide by all state incorporation statutes. Cameron County will process any appropriate petitions in conformity with the applicable law.

So all we know is the space mogul wants to incorporate a city and the county will enforce the laws. Talk about a disappointing soft launch.

Neither SpaceX or Cameron County have said anything more on the matter. But its worth pausing a beat and nerding out on the potential place name Starbase  Musks latest salvo in his colonization of Texas.

Throughout history, naming or renaming places is often an act of conquest or colonization. New names frequently veil native histories and reframe narratives in favor of the conquerors.

On ExpressNews.com: SpaceX to convert offshore oil platforms into spaceports

Naming a place is an emotional and politically charged topic that deserves input from locals and historians.

Yet its also a branding exercise, and thats something Musk and his teams excel at. Their naming regime ranges from cool and aspirational to strange and funny  Tesla, Boring Company (maker of tunnels and flamethrowers), Falcon, Dragon, Raptor, Starship, and his ships Of Course I Still Love you, Just Read the Instructions, GO Ms. Tree and GO Ms. Chief, to name a few.

But naming things is different than renaming places.

Consider how the U.S. military is grappling with installations named after Confederate generals. And many Air Force, Army and Marine Corps bases are given the names of military people  mainly white men  from decades or centuries ago. Are there any military posts or bases honoring women or nonwhite people?

The Space Force took the easy way out, changing its base names from Air Force Bases to Space Force Bases. For instance, Patrick Air Force Base became Patrick Space Force Base. While the Space Force missed an opportunity for a complete rebranding, it held onto some heritage.

On ExpressNews.com: Accelerator: NASA's Perseverance lands, San Antonio hypersonics lab rises

Personally, I like the Navy and Coast Guards approach. They name facilities after their geographic location. That makes sense, especially for seafaring services. It must have something to do with a connection to their home port  a safe harbor after a long journey.

So lets run with that.

You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great  and thats what being a spacefaring civilization is all about, Musk said. Its about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past.

Like maritime travelers, a spacefaring civilization needs a home port. So maybe Starbase should be Starport or Spaceport? There are already spaceports around the country, like Spaceport America outside Truth or Consequences, N.M., but no starports or starbases as place names.

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Starbase sounds cool, but it carries military baggage. Maybe SpaceX wants Starbase because its the home of Starship and the company has a star motif going with Starhopper and Starlink. Maybe there are plans to name subsequent Starship sites something different. Well have to keep checking Musks Twitter feed.

The debate highlights that its time we decide what well call the places thatll lob us into space.

On ExpressNews.com: Spacecraft with San Antonio roots gets life extended

Think about how airport is the gold standard for the places where airplanes land and takeoff. Every citys plane place is called airport. Theres no San Antonio International Airstrip or Airbase. Its not Dallas-Fort Worth International Airpatch. In fact, airbase and airfield most often reference military installations.

Spaceport follows the concept of airports, so why confuse things with Starbase? Starbase is a spaceport, so is it the Spaceport at Starbase, Texas or Starbase at Texas Spaceport? Both of those sound like some kind of exclusive resort.

Oh, and about resorts. In August, SpaceX posted a job ad for a Resort Development Manager to oversee the development of SpaceXs first resort from inception to completion to transform Boca Chica into a 21st century Spaceport. The position is no longer listed, but SpaceX is still seeking baristas, cooks and porters for the private restaurant under construction.

Also, will there be more than one Starbase in Texas, the U.S., on Earth, the Moon, Mars, throughout the Galaxy and beyond?

If we become the spacefaring civilization that commercial space companies predict, then therell be many Starports, Spaceports and Starbases, and well need to keep track of them.

Who wants boring names like Starbase 1, 2 or 3. Star Wars wouldnt have been the same if Tattooine, Alderaan and Hoth had been dubbed Planets A, B and C.

Since were talking interplanetary travel, we should anchor space or starport names to their location  like airports. How about Starport Boca Chica or Boca Chica Starport? Thats no more difficult to say than any international airport.

Or maybe just incorporate Boca Chica? After all, NASA didnt rename Cape Canaveral or Houston, and now those names are synonymous with space exploration.

Same goes for Boca Chica.

Brandon Lingle writes for the Express-News through Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. ReportforAmerica.org. brandon.lingle@express-news.net




Ruling People Power Party (PPP) Chairman Lee Jun-seok on Tuesday met with a Ukrainian parliamentary delegation visiting Seoul and discussed support measures for the country at war with Russia, officials said.







The meeting took place at the National Assembly about a month after a PPP delegation, led by Lee, paid a weeklong visit to Kyiv and other cities and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for discussions on various support measures.







On Tuesday, Lee told the delegation, led by Andrii Nikolaienko, a lawmaker who had served at the Ukrainian embassy in Seoul, that he will once again convey Ukraine's request for lethal aid to the government, according to Rep. Tae Young-ho, who attended the meeting.







The Ukrainian delegation expressed gratitude for the US$100 million-humanitarian aid provided by the South Korean government, while expressing hope for South Korea's participation in Ukraine's post-war reconstruction, particularly in areas such as nuclear energy and semiconductors, Tae said.







"We need help from South Korea in various fields ... South Korea has become a big economy thanks to many countries' help through the United Nations about 70 years ago, and Ukraine needs such help now," Nikolaienko told reporters after the meeting.







The delegation plans to return home Friday. (Yonhap)






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RIO GRANDE VALLEY  Its hard to imagine that the pile of sand and earth being compacted near the southernmost tip of Texas will soon launch Elon Musks dreams one rocket at a time into space.

That is where SpaceX is building the companys first commercial launch pad  the SpaceX South Texas Launch Site  near Boca Chica Beach just a few miles north of the Mexican border in the Rio Grande Valley.

The company remains on track to open for commercial rocket launching as early as next year  even after one of his rockets blew up on the launchpad last fall. The Sept. 1 explosion destroyed the $60 million rocket and a $200 million Israeli satellite.

SpaceX said a complex chain reaction caused by frozen liquid oxygen reacting to something in the fuel tank made the rocket explode. Musk said the problem was fixed, and SpaceX successfully returned to flight on Jan. 14.

Potential hiccups

The launch pad explosion showed the potential hiccups that the fledgling private commercial space industry faces as it pushes the bounds of engineering and physics. But the work in South Texas continues unabated, and is part of a larger space industry that already is established in the border region.

Musks new launch pad, along with other companies in the race to commercialize space, are feeding a growing workforce and research hub exploring the universe thats emerging in the Rio Grande Valley.

A joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin called United Launch Alliance  Musks main competitor  has about 160 employees tucked inside a nondescript hangar at Harlingens Valley International Airport about 47 miles northwest of the SpaceX launch site where ULA quietly has been assembling nose cones for Atlas V rockets over the past 30 years.

Local leaders are hoping that SpaceXs new complex and ULAs facility will help create a high-tech renaissance in the Rio Grande Valley, where agriculture and staid manufacturers drive the economy.

Building under the radar

On the southern edge of Valley International Airport, a massive 300,000-square-foot white building is marked by a single sign that says ULA Americas Ride to Space. Inside, dozens of workers are assembling rocket pieces destined for a one-way trip to space. The facility in Harlingen has been on the same site since 1987 assembling Atlas payload fairing components  the nose cones used to protect spacecraft.

Eighty percent of what my folks do is load parts, drill holes and put in fasteners, said Tim Piller, the senior manufacturing manager in Harlingen who has been at the facility for 14 years.

A tour of the facility showed men and women doing just that. The payload fairings  as large as 14 feet in diameter  are loaded onto mounts where workers drilled holes, placed fasteners and pinched them together. Some fairings can be wider, depending on the rockets payload.

Rocket assembly

The facility also assembles the adapters that connect the first and second stages of the rocket to each other and are designed to break apart at the right moment when the first stage has run out of fuel.

The Harlingen facility works with ULAs Decatur, Alabama, manufacturing plant, which Piller said has roughly 800 employees and 1.25 million-square-feet under roof.

They have a much more robust capability manufacturingwise versus what we do, Piller said. We do structural assembly. They do everything from machining to welding to harness fabrication to pressure type test.

The nose cones built in Harlingen go either to Decatur or directly to one of two launch pads that ULA operates: one located in the Cape Canaveral complex in Florida, the other at Vandenberg AFB on the southern coast of California. The Harlingen-assembled parts are transported to Florida by truck and to California by boat through the Panama Canal.

Saving money

The distance to Harlingen  which is roughly 1,000 miles from Decatur, 1,300 miles from Cape Canaveral, and 1,700 miles to Vandenberg  may seem prohibitive, but Piller says that the location gives the facility an edge on labor costs.

Its not a secret that the reason that companies come to South Texas is labor costs less than it does in other parts in the country, theres no doubt about it, Piller said. Thats why we still exist because we can fabricate cheaper than they can in Decatur or any other part in the country.

Neither Piller nor Lyn Chassagne  a ULA spokeswoman  would say how much the Harlingen employees are paid, but employee-posted salaries on the job review site Glassdoor showed that most employees at ULA make more than $80,000 a year.

Cheap labor

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that in May 2015, people working in the Brownsville-Harlingen metropolitan area made a mean hourly wage of $16.21 an hour  or a little more than $33,000 a year.

Every occupation except health care practitioners and technical categories made less in Brownsville-Harlingen than their national counterparts. Mathmaticians and computer programmers make 34 percent below the national average while architects and engineers earn 20 percent below average U.S. incomes, according to federal wage data.

Without SpaceX, well go back to what we had which is what we still have right now which is manufacturing, logistics and distribution, said Gilberto Salinas, executive vice president of the Brownsville Economic Development Corp.

But right now, its an open canvas, he said. We get to create this sector, a niche for ourselves from scratch, which hardly happens.

Expensive rocket science

Launching satellites into space is an expensive business, and cutting on costs when possible is paramount to commercial space companies such as SpaceX. It costs Musk roughly $62 million to send one of his Falcon 9 rockets into space. Chassagne said a base-level Atlas V rocket without additional boosters costs $160 million.

The ULAs two rockets  the Atlas V and the Delta IV  have multiple variants that use the same central core with different payload fairings and rocket booster layouts. SpaceX currently operates the Falcon 9 and is developing the Falcon Heavy, a modified version of the Falcon 9 that would compete directly with the Delta IV and the Vulcan, ULAs next generation rocket set to launch in 2019.

The Vulcan will replace the Delta IV and, eventually, the Atlas V.

Work for years to come

ULA Chief Executive Officer Tory Bruno said in a phone interview that the Vulcan will eventually cost less than $100 million to fly. The Harlingen facility will still have work for years to come even after the Atlas V is phased out because there will be a long overlap in use for years after the Vulcan is introduced.

Harlingen  which assembles the aluminum Atlas V payload fairing  wont assemble the Vulcans composite fairing, a job that will go to ULA partner RUAG in Decatur. But other aluminum structures assembled in Harlingen  the first- and second-stage adapters, among others  may continue to be made in South Texas once the Atlas V is retired.

We have not made a final design and therefore a final decision on where theyll be manufactured, Bruno said of the adapters. The metallic structures that are similar to whats on Atlas will very likely end up right back in Harlingen.

Building the future

At Musks launch pad, on the last curve in Boca Chica Boulevard before the road ends on the sandy strip of beach and the Gulf of Mexico, a tall mound of dirt stands surrounded by chain-link fencing and sandy dunes. Approaching the end of the road, offshore oil rigs can be seen dotting the Gulfs horizon while birds rest at the edge of the water.

The launch pad was brought to Boca Chica about two years ago with at least $13 million in incentives from the Texas Spaceport Trust Fund to the Cameron County Spaceport Development Corp. to build the infrastructure, according to Sam Taylor, deputy press secretary for the Texas governors office.

Another $2.3 million was provided through a grant from the Texas Enterprise Fund.

SpaceX has committed to eventually hire 300 employees in the local area, and expects the Boca Chica launch site to be finished in 2017 for launches in 2018, said SpaceX spokesman John Taylor.

SpaceX has installed one of two ground station antennas at the site, said James Gleeson, another company spokesman. They will be used to track manned flights flown by SpaceX to the International Space Station, which are scheduled to launch in 2018.

STARGATE

For now, local groups along the Interstate 69 East corridor are working to take advantage of having one of the leading space companies in the world move to their backyard.

At one of the University of Texas new campuses  the UT Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville  Dr. Frederick Jenet is pushing ahead with the schools STARGATE program, a collaboration with SpaceX to expose students to the companys space program.

STARGATE will have a facility next to the SpaceX integration facility in Boca Chica, giving students and professors a unique ability to interact with and view SpaceXs missions.

UT Rio Grande Valley associate professor of physics Volker Quetschke said that the September explosion was progress because if its unchanged, its proven engineering thats 100 years old, (then) we would all drive around in horse buggies using steam engines. It wont have much impact on STARGATE, he said.

Sure, companies rise and fall and the whole STARGATE thing came out of SpaceX, but thats not the only avenue, Quetschke said. The university program is talking with other companies and pursuing other areas of research, he said.

The program is being supported by a $4.4 million grant from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund matched by $4.6 million from the University of Texas System.

Jenet is a California Institute of Technology-trained associate professor of physics who started working at UT Brownsville in 2005, long before it combined in mid-2015 with UT Pan American to form the new UT Rio Grande Valley.

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Space discoveries

The schools main initiative for a decade has been its Arecibo Remote Control Center, or ARCC, which takes data from the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Centers Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico and has students sift through it to find radio pulsars and other exotic galactic bodies.

To date, at least 63 discoveries have been made at ARCC, including the 10th known double-neutron star system.

Jenet said that students from his program are the ones who led the charge to engage SpaceX and persuade them to partner with local educational institutions.

We basically have these programs that were developed, we have these students that were at this level and then SpaceX comes nosing around. Our students immediately take advantage of this and they start organizing themselves to talk to SpaceX and organizing themselves to talk at the forums, he said.

Part of the practical use of STARGATE will be developing new radio frequency communications to increase the bandwidth of information that can be sent to and from space.

At the end of the day its the same bag of tools that you learn to get a radio telescope to work, function and detect astronomical objects, its the same kind of stuff that you learn that ultimately can be used to get a rocket to launch, to track it, to communicate with it, Jenet said.

Brain drain

Residents also talked about reversing the brain drain that occurs on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Alma Guerrero-Miller, assistant director for special projects at UT Rio Grande Valley, said that states on both sides complain that their most talented people  will not stay on the border.

Our best people were leaving, she said.

Flanked by computer monitors in the center of ARCCs circular desks, Andrew Danford, a 24-year-old senior physics major from Brownsville, said the mentality in high school was to leave.

There really isnt anything to pursue down here, he said. And now there is something to pursue down here, there is something I can see.

Giving the local population more avenues to stay is what Salinas of the Brownsville Economic Development Corp. hopes SpaceX and others will bring. He was one of the people who worked to bring SpaceX to the area.

He said that many locals are in more traditional lines of work, such as manufacturing for the automotive sector. Because of that, he and his fellow economic developers had to do more than think outside of the box.

Totally new

We really had to  create boxes outside of that box simply because its a totally new industry for us, he said.

Salinas hopes that SpaceXs involvement in the area will bring some types of aerospace manufacturing, whether partial or whole, to the Rio Grande Valley. He said that Brownsville has already seen enhanced name recognition with heavy manufacturers and the Big 3 automakers  Ford, General Motors and Fiat-Chrysler.

Back in Harlingen, 34-year-old Rita Gonzalez has made her career in space as a structural assembler for ULA. Gonzalez, who has an associate degree in collision repair from Texas State Technical College in Harlingen, said she initially didnt know what ULA did.

When I came for my interview and they brought me to see and to walk through and everything I was just amazed  it was like it was hidden from me, she said.

New companies

Gonzalez and other team members were conducting final inspections on fairing parts being prepped for delivery. When Gonzalez is not in the clean room doing inspections, she is out on the floor riveting.

When asked what opportunities there were before she joined ULA, Gonzalez replied, Here in the Valley? Not very many.

Back at UT Rio Grande Valley, students such as Louis Dartez, a 25-year-old graduate student from Brownsville and Port Isabel, are starting to open their own doors. Dartez is the chief operations officer for SG Surveillance, a surveillance startup and the first to come out of the STARGATE program in South Texas.

Dartezs company hopes to create a ground-based platform to allow people to conduct remote surveillance and analysis of large sites  something he believes SpaceX could be interested in using.

Physics professor Quetschke said: After years of stagnation, I feel an excitement in the community that stuff is going on.

rdruzin@express-news.net

@druz_journo
Viva la chancla! After a two-year hiatus, the San Anto Cultural Arts Barrio Block Party is back. This years theme is Chancla Fest, a celebration sure to bring some extra Sas! to the neighborhood.

The free, all-ages event runs 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Friday at San Anto Cultural Arts, 2120 El Paso St.
Heres a look ahead at the week in arts and entertainment:

Stage: The 50th anniversary tour of Jesus Christ Superstar, which has gotten back on the road after being interrupted by the pandemic, will start a six-day stand at the Majestic Theatre on Tuesday. It is based on the pared-down 2016 London staging of the musical directed by Timothy Sheader. Opens Tuesday. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; and 2 and 7:30 p.m. July 10, Majestic Theatre, 224 E. Houston St. $40-$125, majesticempire.com.

Family: Spider-Man: Homecoming: Tom Holland swings into his first leading roll in a Marvel film with this action comedy that takes the wall crawler from New York City to Washington, D.C. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Travis Park, 301 E. Travis St. Free, slabcinema.com.

Sony Pictures Classics

Movies: This years CineFestival, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Centers long-running Latino film festival, will feature 85 films, including 22 made in San Antonio. Highlights include the documentary Mija, about the daughters of immigrants, which screened at this years Sundance Film Festival, and the feature Jockey starring Clifton Collins Jr., who was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for his performance as an aging jockey trying for one more victory. Wednesday-July 10, Guadalupe Theater, 1301 Guadalupe St. Festival pass $40, individual tickets $8 (some programs are free), guadalupeculturalarts.org.

Museum: As part of its terrific exhibit Great Stage of Texas, the McNay Art Museum is presenting a talk by playwright Katie Bender. Bender will discuss how she developed Survivors/Los Sobrevivientes, a play about Alamo survivors. The talk will include a performance by actors from The Public Theater of San Antonio and a Q&A. 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Chiego Lecture Hall, McNay Art Museum, 6000 N. New Braunfels Ave. Free, but registration is required at mcnayart.org.

Courtesy Cactus Pear Music Festival

Classical music: The Cactus Pear Music Festival is kicking off its final season under the direction of founder Stephanie SantAmbrogio, who is handing over the reins to pianist Ryo Yanagitani. Three programs on three consecutive days will be played for the opening week: In C, with works by Mozart and Brahms; French Whispers, with music by modern French composers; and Swan Song, featuring Swang Song for Stephanie, a piece for violin and piano written by Kathryn Mishell in honor of SantAmbrogios retirement. 7 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Trinity Baptist Church, 319 E. Mulberry Ave. $27-$32, cpmf.us.

Staff writers Jim Kiest, Deborah Martin and Austin Taylor contributed to this report.
Andrew Medichini/AP

ROME (AP)  Pope Francis has dismissed rumors he plans to resign anytime soon, and says that he hopes to visit Moscow and Kyiv after traveling to Canada later this month.

Francis also told Reuters in an interview published Monday that the idea never entered my mind to announce a planned retirement at the end of the summer, though he repeated he might step down some day as Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI did in 2013.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Following the horror of a human-smuggling attempt that left 53 people dead, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state troopers to inspect more trucks  again expanding a border security mission that has cost billions, given the National Guard arrest powers and bused migrants to Washington, D.C.

What Abbotts get-tough plans havent done in the year since he began rolling them out is curb the number of people crossing the border.

Along the border in Texas, where officials say Mondays fatal tractor-trailer journey began, U.S. authorities stopped migrants from crossing illegally 523,000 times between January and May, up from 417,000 over the same span a year ago. It reflects how, across the nations entire southern border, crossings are at or near the highest in about two decades.

The deadliest smuggling attempt in U.S. history illustrated the limitations of Abbott's massive border apparatus as the two-term governor, who is up for reelection in November, points the finger at President Joe Biden. Immigration advocates have disagreed with Abbotts criticism and said Biden is focused on enforcement.

Texas is going to take action to do our part to try to reduce the illegal immigration coming into our country," Abbott said Wednesday while on the border in the town of Eagle Pass.

He said that state troopers would begin inspecting more tractor-trailers in wake of the tragedy. He did not provide details about the extent or location of the inspections. But unlike an inspection effort three months ago that gridlocked the state's 1,200-mile (1,930-kilometer) border for a week, troopers are not checking every tractor-trailer as it comes into Texas.

The Texas Department of Public Safety did not respond to questions Friday about how many trucks have been inspected since the governor's order or whether any migrants have been found.

Critics have questioned the transparency and metrics of what is now a $3 billion mission since Operation Lone Star was launched in the spring of 2021. Some arrests, including for low-level amounts of marijuana during traffic stops, appear to have little to do with border security. After a rushed deployment of the Texas National Guard, some members complained of low morale, late paychecks and having little to do.

Since April, Abbott has offered bus rides to Washington, D.C., to migrants who cross the border, saying he was taking the immigration issue to Congress' doorstep. So far, about 3,000 migrants have taken the trip at a cost of more than $5 million.

Greg Abbott, all he wants to do is gotcha phrases and gotcha stunts without any real solutions, said state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat whose district includes the back road in San Antonio where the truck was found abandoned. Hes spent over $10 billion supposedly securing the border and hasnt done one damn thing to fix this.

U.S. border authorities are stopping migrants more often on the southern border than at any time in at least two decades. Migrants were stopped nearly 240,000 times in May, up by one-third from a year ago.

Comparisons to pre-pandemic levels are complicated because migrants expelled under a public health authority known as Title 42 face no legal consequences, encouraging repeat attempts. Authorities say 25% of encounters in May were with people who had been stopped at least once in the previous year.

Abbott's earlier truck inspection effort drew wide backlash and caused deep economic losses, and troopers found no migrants or drugs.

Abbott stopped the checks after signing agreements with governors in Mexico's four neighboring states, but warned he might reimpose them if he didn't see improvement. The number of migrants crossing in May was higher than in April.

Asked about it Wednesday, Abbott said accountability may come soon." He also blamed Mexico's federal government, saying it needs to do more.

He says the operation overall has been successful, pointing to more than 4,000 migrants arrested on state criminal trespassing charges, 14,000 felony arrests and drug seizures. He also said Texas has turned back more than 22,000 migrants over the last year  a fraction of the attempted border crossings across the southern border in a single month.

Before Mondays tragedy, the deadliest attempted smuggling in Texas was in 2003 when the bodies of 19 people were found dead in a sweltering trailer about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of San Antonio. Jeff Vaden, a former U.S. attorney who helped prosecute that case, said sentences for smuggling migrants are not high enough.

Its not a deterrent for people taking that risk, he said.

One of the first to visit some of the migrants pulled from the truck and hospitalized in San Antonio was Antonio Fernandez, president and CEO of Catholic Charities, which provides migrants and their families with housing and assistance.

Fernandez said summer is usually a slower time, but not this year. A hotel used by Catholic Charities that typically shelters 50 people has lately been filled with 100 every night, and he now has eight members of staff who help families with immigration, up from just one.

My conversations with a lot of these people, clearly, they have nothing in their countries, Fernandez said. They dont have a life and they dont feel safe. Theyre hungry. For them, America is not a choice. Its the only option they have."
All of the 53 immigrants who died in last weeks human-smuggling disaster on San Antonios Southwest Side have been at least potentially identified, according to the Bexar County Medical Examiners Office.

By Monday night, medical examiners had identified 35 victims conclusively. Ranging in age from 13 to 55, 20 of them came from Mexico, 10 from Guatemala and five from Honduras.

Leaders from the respective nations attended a memorial Mass for the deceased, survivors and their families Thursday evening at downtowns San Fernando Cathedral.

A survivor was released from the Childrens Hospital of San Antonio, while another remains at CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital in Westover Hills. The University Hospital currently cares for one adolescent boy in serious condition, according to a tweet from their account.

Methodist recently discharged one man and one woman, and that hospital is still caring for a man currently in critical condition.

The medical examiners office did not name the victims, but Wilmer Tulul and Pascual Melvin Guachiac  13-year-old cousins from Tzucubal, Guatemala  are some of the youngest of the deceased, according to the Associated Press. Tululs father, Manuel de Jesus, told AP that his son journeyed to the U.S. with little Spanish to help support his three siblings. His last communication with his family was a message in his native K'iche' to his mother, Magdalena Tepaz: Mom, were heading out, according to AP.

The remaining 18 deceased are potential identifications, meaning the office has reason to believe remains belong to a certain individual but are awaiting verification from the respective consulate. The Bexar County Medical Examiners Office will release information about the conclusively identified in due course and will wait until an individuals next of kin are notified out of respect for the grieving.

Four people have been arrested since dozens of immigrants were found dead or dying inside a sweltering tractor-trailer June 27 on Quintana Road near Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. Fifty-three migrants died. Initially, 16 survivors were taken to area hospitals; five of them eventually died.

ricardo.delgado@express-news.net
A 27-year-old Austin man drowned Monday in the Guadalupe River in New Braunfels.

New Braunfels police and fire department personnel responded to a call on the 1400 block of Gruene Road along the Guadalupe River of a possible drowning around 5:35 p.m., according to a news release.

When they arrived, Pablo Daniel Calzada Rodriguez already had been pulled out of the water. It was not known how long Rodriguez had been under water, the release said.

Life-saving measures were performed and Rodriguez was taken to Christus Santa Rosa Hospital New Braunfels where he was pronounced dead.

An autopsy has been ordered, but the release indicated the incident was an accident.
San Antonio homeowners will be eligible for a discount on their flood insurance this fall.

The city proved there is a reduced risk of flooding because its floodplain management efforts exceed the minimum requirements laid out by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

This announcement by FEMA is a recognition that the city is moving in the right direction when it comes to protecting our residents and their property from the life safety risks of flooding, said District 7 Councilwoman Ana Sandoval, whos often advocated for drainage needs.

The discount amounts to 20 percent for homeowners living in the floodplain and 10 percent for those outside it beginning Oct. 1. San Antonio joins more than 1,500 participating communities across the country.

The average flood insurance policy costs about $700 per year, according to the Texas Department of Insurance. But homeowners who live outside a high-risk flood zone can usually purchase a federal flood policy for less than $500 a year.

San Antonio will join class six of the program. Property owners in class one receive the highest discounts, up to 45 percent off for residents who live in a floodplain.

Home and business owners in a floodplain are required to carry flood insurance by mortgage lenders, per the National Flood Insurance Act.

Homeowners can see if their home or neighborhood sits in the floodplain by checking the San Antonio River Authoritys digital floodplain map.

The goals of the program include reducing flood damage to insurable property and fostering comprehensive floodplain management.

More than 70 other communities in Texas participate in or will join the federal incentive program this fall. Residents of nearby Leon Valley, Live Oak, New Braunfels, San Marcos, Austin and Guadalupe County can also take advantage of the discounts.

San Antonios need for drainage can seem staggering  officials estimate $3.1 billion worth of projects are needed. The new voter-approved 2022 bond program is one way the city is making a dent in that need.

On ExpressNews.com: A web of risk: Near North Side neighbors affected by flooding feel left out of 2022 San Antonio bond

At the ballot box, the drainage and flood control proposition received more support than any other part of the bond program. It won 71.9 percent approval to spend $169.9 million on 23 projects.

Its still only a fraction of the resources the city needs for drainage, which are typically expensive projects to carry out.

Sandoval, who has keyed in on environmental health concerns such as flooding, worked with West Side Councilwoman Teri Castillo this year to propose a committee that will create a flood control master plan for San Antonio.

The hope is that a citizens advisory committee will allow residents to have more say in how the city determines which drainage projects to fund and when.

Floodplain management is often complex and crosses political boundaries. The opportunity for residents to address it should be ongoing, rather than limited to a once-every-five-years process with a citizens bond committee, advocates have argued.

On ExpressNews.com: Theres been historic flooding and neglect: San Antonio councilwomen aim to improve drainage

A smaller group of City Council members agreed in late May to send Sandoval and Castillos proposal to another council committee to hash out the details.

City staff had proposed sending the measure straight to a full City Council vote to establish the flood control working group, but some werent ready to do so, saying they needed to work out how to include real estate experts without introducing a conflict of interest.

The new FEMA discount program is an acknowledgment of work the city has already done, Sandoval said in a statement.

While there is still much work to do, todays announcement is a step in the right direction, Sandoval said. It is also a tangible way our city can save homeowners money on maintaining their homes.

megan.stringer@express-news.net
Ken Branca

One teenager is dead and two others were taken to the hospital after someone opened fire on a party early Tuesday in an apartment on the Northwest Side, according to the San Antonio Police Department.

At around 2:35 a.m., officers responded to reports of a shooting in the 700 block of Ingram Road. When authorities arrived, they discovered that two females had been shot; one of them was 16 years old and the other 18.
Chinas Tibet builds over 620 prosperous border villages

People's Daily Online) 10:50, July 05, 2022

By the end of 2021, over 620 prosperous border villages were built in southwest Chinas Tibet Autonomous Region as a campaign to vitalize the countrys border areas in addition to bringing prosperity to residents in Tibet.

There are 21 counties in Tibet along the national border. To effectively build and develop these border counties is of great significance to the long-term peace and stability of Tibet.

Photo taken on June 1, 2022 shows Yumai township, Lhunze county, Tibet Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Zhang Rufeng)

Since the campaign was carried out in the 21 border counties of Tibet in 2018, the autonomous region has ramped up policy support for the project, sped up construction in Tibets border areas, and has made extensive efforts to improve the livelihoods of residents living in border areas.

Nowadays, the border villages in Tibet have been provided with paved roads, while all the border townships in Tibet are now connected to power networks and mobile Internet services. Local residents access to safe drinking water has been guaranteed, and public facilities have been increasingly improved to make sure local residents can enjoy education and medical care conveniently. Besides, specialty industries have been developed in the regions border areas to promote prosperity for rural residents.

Yumai township, a border township in Shannan city, Tibet, used to be the hometown of only one family, whose family members included Sangye Chopa, the households father, and his daughters Drolkar and Yangzom. Sangye Chopa was the head of the township.

Nowadays, there are 240 people in 67 households living in Yumai township, and its infrastructure, including an electricity grid, roads, a 5G network, medical care and financial services facilities, have all been improved, introduced Hu Xuemin, secretary of the Party committee in Yumai township.

Yangzoms son, Sonam Dondrup, was the first resident from Yumai township to have been admitted by a university. After graduation from the university, he returned home to become the first secretary of the Party committee of Yumai village.

Demchok village is located in Gar county of Ngari Prefecture in western Tibet. In the village, Tibetan-style residential buildings are neatly arranged, flat paved roads lead to the doorsteps of all the families living there and the residential buildings are surrounded by newly planted trees.

The government has built five houses for my family, with each of them having better conditions than their predecessor, said Sonam Lhamo, a 70-year-old resident in Demchok village.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)




South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin departed for Singapore on Tuesday on his first Southeast Asia trip since assuming the post in May, which will also take him to Indonesia for a session of the Group of 20, his ministry said.







He is scheduled to stay in Singapore till Thursday for meetings with his Singaporean counterpart, Vivian Balakrishnan, and other senior officials to discuss bilateral relations, as well as regional and global issues, including Myanmar and Ukraine, according to the ministry.







He will then make a two-day visit to the Indonesian island of Bali to attend the foreign ministerial meeting of G-20 major economies in what would be his debut on the multilateral diplomatic stage as Seoul's top diplomat, it added. (Yonhap)


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For decades, Jose Vasquez has celebrated the July 4 holiday in San Antonio. He and his wife, Gloria, have seen the city change and adapt, grow and develop, but on Independence Day, they say, it is always the same: Family and celebration.

Vasquez, 85, is a Navy veteran. He served in Hawaii and married Gloria when he he returned from the service in 1959. In August this year, theyll have been married for 63 years  and just saying it makes them both glow with pride.

On Monday, they were sitting in the shade just down a bit from the Woodlawn Lake Park Fourth of July Celebration. They had already made their rounds through the booths, food vendors and festivities set up along the lake. They planned to watch the fireworks from their granddaughters place, to celebrate with family.

The couple had five children and now have 30 grandchildren, with three more on the way.

We usually come to (Woodlawn Lake) a couple times a week to feed the ducks, said Gloria Vasquez, 82. But today, its just nice to be out at the festival and relax.

Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer

The annual party on the Northwest Side has been curtailed for the past couple of years. The coronavirus pandemic shut down the official festivities in 2020 and 2021 and residents who came out on their own kept it low-key.

But it was back in full swing this year  San Antononians arrived early, some even the night before, to set up tents and awnings for the holiday.

The celebrations live music acts, including the headliner, the Air Force Band of the West, provided the backdrop to the hot food, cool drinks and fireworks set for precisely 9:02 p.m..

For many people celebrating, the festivities were about honoring veterans and being with family. Eddie Diazs tent sported an American flag and the black banner saluting prisoners of war and those missing in action.

This whole family is made up of veterans and current members of the military, said Diaz, 53. This means a lot to us.

Katrina Williams, 51, said the Fourth of July is an occasion to grill, eat and be around family and friends, but it means patriotism, too, and we cant forget those who went out there and held the line for us, said Williams, referring to every veteran.

Her grandson, Drey, said the fireworks are the best part.

Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer

The 12-year-old had spent most of the morning zooming down the sidewalk on his scooter, buzzing with excitement from the days celebration. The family had shown up at 8 a.m. to start setting up.

For Michael Tonne, who arrived the night before to mark off a spot for his family, the celebration felt freeing after two years of COVID-19 restrictions. He and a relative, Elsa Tapia, set up a tent to keep the family cool for the day.

The country is not doing so good right now, said Tonne, 27. But I really use this day to celebrate family and freedom, our amendments, that we are able to come out here and do this kind of celebration.

The whole family had been coming out to celebrate Independence Day for 20-plus years at the park. This time, around two dozen family members and friends were to join Tonne and Tapia throughout the day.

Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer

The plans called for acookout, the live music just around the corner and watching the fireworks together, much like the other families around them.

Seeing everyone out and about will be so nice, Tonne said.

Elena Bruess writes for the Express-News through Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. ReportforAmerica.org. elena.bruess@express-news.net
Since the Dobbs decision came down, Ive heard a lot of liberals lamenting the Republican theft of the Supreme Court.

As the story goes, Sen. Mitch McConnell stole the majority when he refused to give Merrick Garland so much as a hearing in 2016, holding the vacancy open until Donald Trump took office in 2017. McConnells justification was his deep commitment to small-d democracy: No seat should be filled in a presidential election year; the people should be given a chance to weigh in. In 2020, he lit that invented principle aflame when he rushed to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The vote on Barrett took place eight days before Election Day.

McConnell gaslit the nation, but he didnt steal any seats. Nothing he did was against the rules, which was why Democrats found themselves powerless to stop him. Liberals, in their anger, have too often ignored the logic of McConnells actions. He understood what too many have ignored: Americas age of norms is over. This is the age of power. And theres a reason for that.

Lets start here: The Supreme Court has changed. In the 50s and 60s, you would have had a hard time inferring a justices political background from his votes, as an analysis by professors Lee Epstein and Eric Posner shows. In the 90s, Byron White, a Democratic appointee, had a more conservative voting record than all but two of the Republican-appointed justices  Antonin Scalia and William Rehnquist. John Paul Stevens, an anchor of the courts liberal wing until his retirement in 2010, was appointed by President Gerald Ford, a Republican.

But this record of independence was understood, by the parties that produced it, as a record of failure. The vetting process by which nominees are chosen was revamped to all but guarantee ideological predictability. In recent years, justices have hardly ever voted against the ideology of the president who appointed them, Epstein and Posner find.

I am, to put it mildly, obsessed with the way ideological polarization is colliding with Americas peculiar political institutions. I wrote a whole book about it. Our political system is not designed for political parties this different, and this antagonistic. It wasnt designed for political parties at all. The three branches of our system were intended to check each other through competition. Instead, parties compete and cooperate across branches, and power in one can be used to build power in another  as McConnell well understood.

The Supreme Court is a strange institution  the final word on the law, but with no way to enforce its decisions; clearly political, but supposed to stand above politics; composed of nine bickering individuals, but posing as the impartial voice of the Constitution  and we have papered over its peculiarities with traditions of continuity and restraint. We ask senators to judge nominees by their qualifications, not their ideas. We ask justices to uphold past decisions they believe are wrong, even immoral. At least, we did. In recent years, the political importance of the court has overwhelmed the norms that (somewhat) insulated it from politics.

As I wrote in my book, There is perhaps no single vote members of the U.S. Senate take with as much long-term ideological importance than that of a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, and asking them to keep that vote, and that vote alone, separate from the ideological promises they make to their voters, and to themselves, is bizarre. The old norm worked when party conflict was mild enough to create a court that felt, and perhaps was, largely nonpartisan. But those days are long gone.

Making matters worse is that the Supreme Court has gone from being undemocratic to being anti-democratic. Lifetime appointments are iffy under the best of circumstances, but the vagaries of retirements and deaths have given Republicans a control that makes a mockery of the public will. Five of the courts six Republican justices were appointed by presidents who initially took office after losing the popular vote (and, in the case of George W. Bush, after a direct intercession by five of the courts conservatives in Bush v. Gore). Donald Trump was able to make more appointments in one term than Barack Obama was able to make in two.

You might think that the minoritarian nature of this Supreme Court would produce a restrained majority, one fearful of falling too far afoul of public opinion. It has not. To read the flurry of decisions and concurrences and dissents in Dobbs is to read less about abortion and rights than you might expect. Much of the text is a debate over the legal principle of stare decisis, which directs the court to respect precedent when making decisions.

Stare decisis helps solve a particular problem for the Supreme Court, which must prove itself an institution operating across time, not simply an amalgamation of nine voices at any given moment. When it resists the impulse to overturn past decisions, the court builds in a continuity beyond what the opinions of its members would offer.

Roe was already revisited, in the 1992 Casey decision, and left mostly standing. Under the norms that have governed the court for decades, Roe should have been safe, not because the majority agrees with it today but because the Supreme Court does not upend settled law based on what the majority believes today.

This is the subject of Chief Justice John Roberts disappointed concurrence. Surely we should adhere closely to principles of judicial restraint here, where the broader path the court chooses entails repudiating a constitutional right we have not only previously recognized, but also expressly reaffirmed applying the doctrine of stare decisis. The dissent of the liberals thrums with even deeper anger: Here, more than anywhere, the court needs to apply the law  particularly the law of stare decisis.

But stare decisis, as the justices know far better than I do, is not a law. And so, in his majority opinion, Samuel Alito brushes it aside. It is important for the public to perceive that our decisions are based on principle, and we should make every effort to achieve that objective by issuing opinions that carefully show how a proper understanding of the law leads to the results we reach, he wrote. But we cannot exceed the scope of our authority under the Constitution, and we cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the publics reaction to our work.

The argument Alito makes throughout his opinion is simple: The court can err. When it has erred, it must correct itself. Make all the fancy arguments about stare decisis you want, but if a decision is wrong, then its wrong, and it must be revisited. To take his perspective for a moment: There is something maddening about being appointed to a seat on the lands highest court but told to leave standing the decisions you and four of your colleagues consider most noxious.

On some level, he is right. Stare decisis makes little sense. The problem is that, without it, the Supreme Court itself makes even less sense. It is just nine costumed political appointees looking for the votes they need to get the outcomes they want. And the further we travel down that road, the more the mystique that sustains the court dissolves. There is no rule, really, that the Supreme Court must be obeyed as the final word in constitutional interpretation  that, too, is a norm, and one that the court has no power to enforce. If all the Supreme Court is left with are the rules, soon enough there will be no Supreme Court to speak of.

So what would it look like to rebuild the rules and norms of the Supreme Court so they made sense in a polarized era  so that it could be an institution that moderated our political conflicts rather than worsening them?
Our community has suffered another preventable tragedy. More than 50 people, all believed to be migrants, were found dead last week in an abandoned tractor-trailer on the outskirts of San Antonio.

This is one of the worst instances of migrant deaths in the United States in recent memory. My family and I share in our communitys shock and grief over the deaths of the intrepid souls who left their home in search of a better life in America. Like the origin story of so many families in our community, people still yearn to achieve the American dream. Yet antiquated immigration policies continue to limit that opportunity.

Texas 23rd Congressional District, which I am running to represent as a Democrat, is the epicenter of our nations outdated asylum laws and our broken legal immigration system. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there have been more than 480,000 encounters in the sectors that cover this district since October, by far the most of any congressional district. As long as our elected leaders fail to enact bipartisan immigration reform, it is only a matter of time before our community experiences another devastating loss of life.

The United States must remain the land of opportunity for all, including immigrants, who add tremendous value to our nation. Migrants can play a vital part in the revival of our economy, especially on the hundreds of ranches, farms and factories in West Texas. Migrant workers should be able to earn income and pay taxes while awaiting their asylum hearing, infusing significant economic return into our communities.

While I wholeheartedly believe immigrants are an undeniable asset to our communities, I also believe in engaging with those who may hold different points of view. I have traveled extensively to border communities and visited with many people who have expressed concerns with the number of migrants who are navigating through their neighborhoods. I share their frustration over an ineffective, overburdened immigration infrastructure. Some expressed concern over the amount of federal and local resources allocated to migrants rather than people in their communities.

The narrative that pits border residents against migrant workers creates a false choice. America is the land of abundance, and there is enough economic opportunity for everyone.

Congress and the White House must fix our broken refugee asylum, immigration and work visa processes, and improve security in key areas along our border. I again call for the creation of a national border commission that engages border communities, academics and national security experts to recommend long-term, humane border solutions. Mexico, Central and South American countries must be part of any strategy. I support pathways for migrants to earn income and pay taxes while awaiting their asylum hearings.

Until our elected leaders work together to address the multitude of challenges at our southern border, we will not have a functional immigration system and we will continue to witness needless deaths like those in San Antonio.

John Lira, a Democrat, is running for Congress in District 23.
The secretary of defense shouldnt have to worry about how changing state and federal laws can threaten or hurt service members.

Military leaders should be focused on Americas enemies, both foreign and domestic, and our countrys laws should consider all citizens needs.

But thats not the world we live in.

The U.S. Supreme Courts recent decision overturning Roe v. Wade saw Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin quickly issue a statement reaffirming the departments support and concern for the health and well-being of all service members, civilian employees and families.

The Department is examining this decision closely and evaluating our policies to ensure we continue to provide seamless access to reproductive health care as permitted by federal law, he said in the statement.

On ExpressNews.com: Editorial: Want to carry weapons? Do it like the military

The military covers abortion costs for pregnancies that result from rape or incest or place the mothers life at risk, and that will not change.

Paulius Peleckis, HODELETE60 / TNS

People who dont meet these criteria must go off base and pay out of pocket. They also may have to use their paid time off. Those in states or countries where abortion is restricted also will incur travel expenses and have fewer options for care. The decision in the Dobbs case creates certain inequalities depending on where a person is stationed. It could impact recruiting or even base closure decisions.

People stationed in Texas will have to travel out of state. And a bounty clause lets people sue those who help others get an abortion for $10,000 plus fees. Theoretically, a citizen could sue military members for sharing resources or helping someone travel for abortion care.

Last week, the Defense Department published a memo acknowledging the implications of the Supreme Courts decision are complicated and must be evaluated against various state laws with the Department of Justice.

And as the bureaucracies work through the specifics, the laws are already impacting DOD people.

On ExpressNews.com: Editorial: Air Force shields its own against anti-trans efforts

Janessa Goldbeck, a Marine veteran and chief executive officer of the nonprofit Vet Voice Foundation, said in addition to the extra costs and time, these laws will make it harder for service members to seek care discreetly, especially as the military continues to battle sexual assault and associated stigmas.

Theres so many reasons outside of this very limited set of allowances for abortion on federal institutions right now that it creates this giant, spiraling set of problems that could really dramatically damage a member of the militarys health, their career, their ability to perform their duties, just the whole gamut, she said.

Military commanders, she said, should follow Austin and other senior officials leads. She recommends military leaders keep communication open, emphasize that everyone has access to this care, consider creative ways to support their people and provide information on resources.

It should be made explicitly clear that the DOD supports people who need this care and will do everything possible to make sure that they get it in a way that protects their privacy and doesnt cost them money, she said.

On ExpressNews.com: Editorial: With Roe gone, other rights now at risk

Texas position on abortion is the latest in a growing list of controversial state actions and policies, such as lax gun safety laws and the proposed investigation of parents of transgender children, that will give some military people pause when they receive orders here.

Texas politics could impact enlistment or make the states bases easier targets for closure.

The potential impact on military readiness and resilience, especially as recruiting numbers are down across the services, is also troubling.

We need our military leaders focused on threats from those who seek to do our country harm, not the self-inflicted dangers of the culture wars.
Opendoor ranked four local ZIP codes among its 20 hottest neighborhoods in the first six months of 2022.

The 78130 ZIP code in New Braunfels came in fourth, and on San Antonios far West Side, 78253, 78245 and 78254 ranked 11th, 16th and 18th, respectively.

Both areas are booming, with an influx of newcomers, housing construction and stores.

Housing costs in San Antonio are more affordable than in Texas other major metropolitan areas, and it is adding jobs, Opendoor said.

While no longer flying under the radar, San Antonio still offers that hidden gem appeal when it comes to price point, the San Francisco-based company said.

On ExpressNews.com: Record home sales prices and jumping mortgage rates put a crimp in San Antonio sales in May

The median price of a home in the San Antonio area reached $348,800 in May, according to the San Antonio Board of Realtors.

Last month, the median price was $550,000 in the Austin area, $351,000 in the Houston area, and $438,000 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Most of the ZIP codes on Opendoors list were in warm-weather areas, and half were in Texas.

ZIP codes in Leander, Katy, Forney, Cypress and Aubrey were included. The top three were 37042 in Clarksville, Tenn.; 34747 in Celebration, Fla.; and 73099 in Yukon, Okla.

Opendoor determined its ranking by analyzing data from the local multiple listing services where the companys brokerage arm operates. ZIP codes were ranked by the number of homes that went under contract within 90 days of being listed this year.

Opendoor is an ibuyer  a technology company that uses algorithms to make rapid offers and resell homes.

Its pitch to sellers: They can skip repairing their home and hiring a real estate agent. The company takes a commission, spruces up the home and resells it.

Homes under construction in Floresville

National homebuilder Lennar is working on its first community in Floresville, a small city about 30 miles southeast of San Antonio.

The Florida-based company is building 94 homes at U.S. Highway 181 North and County Road 130, next to Walmart and CVS stores.

Homes will include generous living rooms and kitchens and resort-style master suites, Lennar said. Residents of the community, called Lodi Grove, will have access to a linear park and walking trails.

On ExpressNews.com: Home construction surged in San Antonio in 2021 but rising costs, shortages pushed up prices

The company has not announced pricing for Lodi Grove, which is expected to open in summer 2023.

Floresville is growing quickly, particularly among young residents wanting proximity to San Antonio but without the urban congestion, said Brian Barron, San Antonio division president at Lennar. That has amplified the need for affordable homes in an area that has very little new home construction.

Floresvilles population rose about 11.7 percent from April 1, 2010, to April 1, 2020, increasing from 6,448 to 7,203 people, according to census data.

The city is in Wilson County, where the population jumped 15.9 percent to 49,753 people during that period.

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.

Rents continue rising

San Antonio rents rose 1 percent in June, the sixth straight month of increases, according to Apartment List.

Rents are up by 13.8 percent from a year ago and by 20.9 percent since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.

The median rent last month was $1,061 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,311 for a two-bedroom apartment.

On ExpressNews.com: Rents in San Antonio were up nearly 15 percent in May, marking fifth-straight monthly increase

But San Antonio remains more affordable than many other metropolitan areas in Texas and across the U.S., Apartment List noted.

The median rent for a two-bedroom apartment here is just under the national average of $1,339.

Year-over-year rent growth is just behind the state average of 14 percent and the national average of 14.1 percent. Increases in Austin, Dallas and Laredo were above the state average.

Across Texas, rents are highest in Plano, where the median rent for a two-bedroom is $1,964.

madison.iszler@express-news.net


Air Serbia has reported a loss of 21.3 million euros during the pandemic-stricken 2021, an improvement on the year before, when the loss amounted to just over 77 million euros. Revenue generated from scheduled flights amounted to 145.9 million euros, while charter services generated a further 37.7 million euros. The carriers biggest expense was aircraft maintenance, amounting to 42.4 million euros, followed by handling costs, which set the airline back seventeen million euros. During the year, Air Serbia repaid in full its second and final loan to Etihad Airways Partners BV, a special purpose vehicle set up by Etihad Airways in September 2015 to raise funds for itself and its equity partners. The loan amounted to 63 million US dollars. The airline did not take out any new loans last year.





During 2021, Serbian nationals were restricted from entering many European markets due to the Covid-19 pandemic, impacting the airlines performance. In its 2021 financial report, the carrier said, Following the complete suspension of commercial operations during the first quarter of 2020, demand for travel in the Republic of Serbia began to gradually recover in May 2020 and continued to do so throughout 2021 but is still limited, which is why full recovery is dependant on the stabilisation of air travel in Europe and the world. It added, The companys management focused on reducing risks through restrictive cost management, optimising capacity in the face of a historic decline in demand, cash conservation by reducing planned investments, negotiations with suppliers for improved payment terms, implementing initiatives to reduce working capital and optimising human resources.





Year Net profit / loss (million ) 2013  73 2014  2.7 2015  3.9 2016  0.9 2017  16.0 2018  12.3 2019  9.5 2020  77 2021  21.3





From January 1, 2021, until December 31, 2021, Air Serbia was forced to cancel 4.933 flights because of the pandemic, which resulted in reduced revenue. In comparison, during 2020, the carrier cancelled 23.079 flights. As previously reported, the Serbian airline achieved solid operational results in 2021, with its figures above the European industry average. It carried 1.586.665 passengers last year, representing an increase of 83% on the year before, with the airlines average annual cabin load factor standing at 64%. The carriers traffic volume grew 39% compared to 2020 but was down 35% on the pre-pandemic and record-breaking 2019. Its best performing routes in 2021 were New York, Moscow, Tivat, Paris, Podgorica, Zurich, Istanbul, Amsterdam, London and Athens. During 2021, Air Serbia Cargo registered its best results on record with its performance surpassing the pre-pandemic period by as much as 55%.




Editors Note: When the Sun Times learned of this story, we reached out to the author, Kendra Santos, who kindly granted us permission to republish. We also contacted Dory Waid, who was also kind enough to allow us to share the photos above. We spoke with Cassidy over the weekend for an update, and you can read it below this story.

Cassidy Cassels gritty sorrel mares, Dixie and Diva, were her life. The young Montana Circuit barrel racer lost them both Saturday night in a horrific trailer fire while on her way home from the June 25 slack at the Augusta American Legion Rodeo. It was just Cassidys second rodeo on her Womens Professional Rodeo Association permit.

Cassidy and her longtime Montana Circuit team roper dad, Mark Cassel, had stopped for dinner in Conrad on their way back home to Shelby. A stranger came running into the restaurant, asking whose rig it was and reporting smoke.

The wiring on the battery in the back tack of the trailer shorted out and caught fire, said a devastated Cassidy, whod just made her professional rodeo debut the week before at the Belt (Montana) PRCA Rodeo. We tried. To say I felt helpless is an understatement, and I have to live with that image forever. But there was nothing we could do.

Diva and Dixie were Cassidys dream team. The thought of this sweet young cowgirl and her dad helplessly standing by while the trailer went up in flames is way past heartbreaking.

A sheriff who was quick to respond and put Dixie down at the scene, as it was so obviously the only humane option to end her suffering. They managed to get Diva out and loaded into another trailer to make a mad dash to the vet and hit a deer on the way. She, too, was in too tough of shape and too badly burned to save, so had to be put down.

Diva had just returned from what Cassidys veterinarian had told her would likely be a career-ending injury. Cassidys refusal to give up and supreme care overrode modern medicine. Cassidy, who Im told has been masterfully mentored by National Finals Rodeo barrel racer Kimmie Wall, had just run Diva at Augusta.

Cassidy is the sweetest soul, and no one loves her horses more than she does, said Cassidys fellow Montana Circuit barrel racer and friend Alicia Bird, whos married to NFR team roper Dustin Bird. She loved those two horses dearly.

Now here this beautiful, talented young barrel racer sits. No horses. No trailer. No saddles. No bridles. All shes left with for now is a broken heart.

I lost everything, Cassidy said. Diva and Dixie were my world and my life, and a piece of me died with them. Ill never be able to replace them, and I dont want to. Im in shock, and beyond heartbroken. Thank you for all you did for me, Dixie and Diva. I will love you always.

Rest in Heavenly peace, pretty girls. Cassidy, your rodeo family loves you, and were sending so many prayers and so much love your way at this impossibly sad time.

Because so many of you have asked if there are any ways to help Cassidy, yes...

Cards and/or checks can be sent to:

Cassidy Cassel

PO Box 877

Shelby, MT 59474

Venmo: @Cassidy-cassel (last 4 of her number = 4820)

PayPal: @Cassidycassel

UPDATE

The Sun Times asked Cassidy how she, and her horse, Diva, did in Augusta. She said, Diva did well in Augusta! Shed never seen the arena before and went right in and went to work, I was very, very excited since it was only her third run back in almost two years.

Cassidy said she started competing in Rodeo while in high school, about seven years ago. She added that Diva was seven years old; Dixie was nine.

Diva was a racehorse, she ran at Canterbury Park in Iowa, according to Cassidy, who restarted her on the barrels.

Several of Cassidys friends have created a Facebook page dedicated to the memory of Cassidys two horses, In honor of Dixie and Diva. The website can be found using this link: https://bit.ly/3bGZLZf

Also on the site is information about raffles and other support efforts for Cassidy.
An urgent security alert has been issued to farming businesses which run farm shops following a spate of 'sophisticated' burglaries across England.

Over the last month police forces have been alerted to raids on six farm shops in Staffordshire, Cheshire and West Yorkshire.

CCTV images suggest that the same gang could be responsible. In each raid, the thieves appear to know the layout of the shop and in most cases have been able to avoid triggering alarm systems.

In its latest rural crime report for 2021, NFU Mutual estimated that rural theft cost the UK over 43m the previous year.

David Harrison, sector lead for farming at the rural insurer, warned that organised criminals were exploiting the remote locations of many farm shops to commit burglaries.

In response, NFU Mutual has issued a security checklist in response to the new wave of break-ins, as well as new advice and guidance for farmers.

As a mutual serving farm shops across the country were working closely with the Farm Retail Association and our risk management specialists to reduce the risk of other shops becoming victims of these raids.

While farm shop break-ins are sadly not a new phenomenon because of their remote locations, we havent had a series of highly-organised raids like this before.

Farm Retail Association chairman Rupert Evans was himself one of the victims of the current farm shop crime wave.

Denstone Farm Shop, set up and run by his family near Uttoxeter in Staffordshire, was hit by a gang who managed to break-in and steal takings from the shop safe despite its sophisticated alarm system.

The shop has now stopped taking cash to avoid the risk of another expensive break-in.

He said: Coming after the huge struggle through Covid when we were one of the few places people could shop safely for food, and now the cost of living crisis, this raid has been a real kick in the teeth.

The most important thing is that no-one was hurt because it happened at night. However, its hugely unsettling for all of us to realise that criminals have obviously been in the shop working out how to return and break in.

A window was smashed to gain entry to the shop. CCTV footage shows figures in dark clothes and balaclavas crawling across the floor to avoid triggering the alarm system going straight to the safe and emptying it in minutes.

"They knew the layout of the business, so it appears very likely that they cased the joint before the attack."

His advice for farm shop owners and staff is to be very vigilant about anyone on site acting suspiciously and to keep the cash held on site to a minimum.

"Weve really had no option but to go cashless," Mr Evans said, "Almost all our customers are fine about paying by card, but we would like to take cash for those who prefer using it.

How can I boost farm shop security?

NFU Mutual has issued an urgent security alert to farm shop owners following the spate of burglaries:

 Make sure PIR sensors are not concealed by shelving reducing their full operating angle

 Ensure that the detectors have not been tampered with if they are in an area of public access

 Consider installing internal door sensors and ensure that movement detectors are duplicated where possible if all entry points cannot be protected

 Install window sensors on external fixed panes of glass (not just opening windows and doors)

 Reduce your cash on site by banking more frequently  also consider any on site vending machines and removing the cash cassettes each night

 Safes should be fixed to the ground in accordance with the manufacturers instructions

 Check the amount insured in your safe and make sure your insurers recognise your safe

 If possible, move transactions to a cashless form to reduce the theft risk accordingly

 Change your alarm code regularly and deactivate any older or lost fobs

 For lightweight structures, consider installing a more robust inner security area where target stock can be retained overnight

 Consider CCTV coverage with remote monitoring or links to mobiles to confirm any alarm activations

 Ensure, where possible, that target stock items such as alcohol etc are kept to a minimum if on display
Then Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Park Han-ki speaks during a hearing at the National Assembly in Seoul, in this Oct. 8, 2019, file photo. Park, who served as the top military officer during the previous administration, was interrogated in 2019 in an unprecedented case after seizing a suspicious North Korean boat despite an instruction to "drive out" non-military boats instead of capturing them. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul



Ruling party to launch team to investigate security breaches under Moon



By Jung Min-ho



One of the top military officials under the previous Moon Jae-in administration was quizzed for hours in an unprecedented case three years ago, after seizing a suspicious North Korean boat despite an instruction to "drive out" non-military boats instead of capturing them.



According to military sources and media reports, Tuesday, Park Han-ki, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) from October 2018 to September 2020, was questioned by Moon's aides over the seizure of the boat on July 27, 2019. He made the decision after the boat had crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL)  the de facto maritime boundary between South and North Korea  despite the National Security Council's (NSC) instruction to return such boats to the North. Whether it was a non-military boat is unclear.



This is the latest disclosure that shows the conciliatory North Korea policy of the former leader, who was extremely cautious of offending the North Korean ruling elite even in the case of border protection.



"Such a thing never happened before. As far as I can tell, there was no JCS chairman who was questioned like that (for doing his job)," a source from the Ministry of National Defense told The Korea Times.



The event occurred at a time when Moon was pondering how to make a breakthrough in inter-Korean relations after the February 2019 Washington-Pyongyang summit in Vietnam made little progress.



The people on the boat, which entered South Korea's territorial waters at 11:21 p.m., were questioned by the military and released on July 29, after an investigation concluded that they did not cross the line deliberately and had no intention of defecting to the South.



Military sources contacted by The Korea Times refused to give details of the incident. But the basic rules in the event of a North Korean boat crossing the NLL is to give a warning and tell the captain to return; if the person refuses to comply, the military should seize the vessel. Judging by these rules, the boat may have not followed the instruction to leave.



Park had a reputation as a defiant officer who often clashed with the previous government's policy line. After North Korea destroyed its Punggye-ri test site for nuclear weapons in 2018 to show its commitment to denuclearization, he commented that it could be restored and reconstructed within weeks or months, contrasting jarringly with the government's position that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was sincere and willing to give up his nuclear arsenal under the right conditions.



Kim You-geun, a former deputy chief of the National Security Office and NSC member, is accused of having issued the instruction. It is unclear whether Moon, then NSC chairman and commander-in-chief, was involved. Park reportedly said during the interrogation that he exercised his legitimate authority and that he was not obligated to follow the NSC's instruction unless it was a direct order from the defense minister or the president.



Following the revelations, the ruling People Power Party (PPP) announced that it will launch a task force dedicated to investigating serious breaches of national security in the previous administration.



PPP floor leader Rep. Kweon Seong-dong told reporters he will expand the effort to uncover the facts, accusing the former NSC members of having "shamed" Park for doing what was necessary as a military commander.



"It appears that Park was interrogated for disobeying Kim's instruction, not the minister's or the president's, which disrupted the military hierarchy system," Kweon said.



Asked whether an order from the NSC should be considered a presidential order, he said it would be investigators' job to find out whether Moon made that order.


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Six U.S. F-35A radar-evading fighters arrived in Korea on Tuesday to conduct allied drills, the two countries' militaries said, in the first public deployment of America's stealth warplanes here since late 2017.







The deployment from the U.S. Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska came as Seoul and Washington are cranking up security coordination amid concerns about the possibility of Pyongyang conducting a nuclear test or other provocations.







The U.S. military aircraft will join Korean warplanes, including F-35As, for the "familiarization and routine training flights" designed to enhance the two Air Forces' interoperability, according to the U.S. Forces Korea. The drills will run through July 14.







"The deployment this time is aimed at demonstrating the Korea-U.S. alliance's strong deterrence and combined defense posture, as well as improving interoperability between the two Air Forces," Seoul's defense ministry said in a text message sent to reporters.







The last public deployment of the U.S.' fifth-generation fighters to Korea came in December 2017 when the allies staged their then regular Vigilant Ace training.







The latest dispatch followed an agreement from the May summit between President Yoon Suk-yeol and his U.S. counterpart, Joe Biden, on deploying America's strategic military assets "in a timely and coordinated manner as necessary." (Yonhap)






Ranveer Singh, the effervescent life of the party, the powerhouse performer, and a lover boy at heart, has worked his way to the top of Bollywood. Tracing the journey of Ranveer Singh takes us back to the young man who started his on-screen journey with Band Baaja Baarat. His incredible and unmatched on-screen presence then resulted in his rise and rise. This was followed by unparalleled collaborations with Sanjay Leela Bhansali in the movies Ram Leela, Bajirao Mastani, and Padmaavat. After these mega-hits, the success of Ranveer Singh knew no boundaries. The actor then exceeded expectations with movies such as Gully Boy and Simmba.

With his choice of movies and his incredible performances, the actor has made it clear that he doesnt set any boundaries for himself. Similarly, when it comes to his personal life, the actor is a hopeless romantic and his love for his dear wife, Deepika Padukone, knows no bounds. Ranveer Singh is the ideal lover and husband, and the same can be seen in his numerous public appearances with his SO and his declarations of love on social media. The duo met on the sets of Ram Leela, where romance sparked between the two. Little did they know that they would go ahead and tie the knot in 2018 at one of the most desirable wedding locations: Lake Como. But their relationship traversed different phases before they realised that they were truly meant for each other.

Ranveer Singh turns a year older today, and Filmfare looks at all the moments that truly defined him as an ideal husband.





When Ranveer Singh got mesmerised by Deepika Padukone at first sight





When asked when Ranveer Singh first met his now-wife Deepika Padukone, the actor answered, "How can one possibly forget the sight?" The actor first set his eyes on Deepika Padukone at an award function held in Macau back in 2012. He even described the dress that she wore in all accuracy, a silver gown. However, it wasnt until their first movie together, Sanjay Leela Bhansalis directorial Goliyon Ki Rasleela... Ramleela, that they got acquainted with each other. As they began spending more and more time with each other, chemistry sparked between them.

Ranveer Singh is vocal about the value Deepika Padukone adds to his life





Ranveer Singh not only gives his best to the relationship he shares with his wife, but he also believes that she adds a lot of value to his life. In an interview, Ranveer spoke about how Deepika inspires him to become a better version of himself. The actor said, "The reason that I am this kind of man, with my partner, is because of my mother and sister and the way they raised me. Even my film talks about the real meaning of Asli Mard. It forced me to think, Asli mard ki paribhasha kya hai."



The actor has also mentioned time and again that his wife is his best critic. In an interview with a news portal, he said, "I am really grateful that I have such a sharp mind as a partner. She improves my work by giving me constructive criticism; I use her as my creative bouncing board. Often, we discuss our work, her work, and mine as well."

Ranveer Singh and all the PDA that comes with being married to him





Ranveer Singh is a lover boy at heart and proof lies in all the PDA moments of the couple. One of the infamous exchanges took place after Ranveer Singh won an award at an award show. The two leading actors shared a romantic kiss, and even when the actor went on stage, he mentioned the value of having Deepika in his life on-stage. The actor said, "My beautiful wife, you inspire me every day, every day..." My wife is sitting in the front row, looking damn proud of me and fine. What more could I ask for?"

At another award function, Deepika Padukone was left with teary eyes as Ranveer Singh owed his success to their wonderful marriage. The couple have also taken to Instagram numerous times to show their love for each other. Ranveer will not miss a chance to tell the world how proud he is as a husband.

Speaking about his wedding to Deepika Padukone





Shortly after his wedding to the leading actress, Ranveer Singh spoke to a leading magazine and gave an insight into his marriage. The actor commented, "Now, were cocooned in love, and there is no space for doubt or misgiving. Its grounded-ness, centred-ness, security, warmth, and joy. We share experiences and laugh together. The added security that comes with marriage has allowed our relationship to blossom further."





When asked about the changes post-marital life has brought to their relationship, he said, "I've gotten to know her even more intimately and the more I do, the more I see that she's such a beautiful person, touchwood. And the more you get to know her, the more you realise that she's absolutely pure, with such a lovely spirit, and I'm very, very lucky and blessed to have her in my life."

Ranveer Singh on how their relationship is conflict-free.





The actor was once asked in an interview if Deepika and he ever fought. Ranveers instant answer to the same was, "We dont fight." He also revealed that "There is a child-like quality to her that nobody other than me has the privilege of seeing. Its a precious part of my life."

All the times that Ranveer Singh was Deepika Padukones biggest supporter





Ranveer Singh does not hold back when it comes to being a constant cheerleader for Deepika Padukone. What makes Ranveer one of the most romantic husbands of B-Town is that he is extremely vocal about his affection. In an interview, Ranveer Singh said, "Im there to support her, her endeavours, her achievements, help or contribute or do whatever I can to help propel her to achieve her aspirations, ambitions, and desires. Im there for her."



His affection is also evident in the compliments he lavishes on Deepika and her work.After the release of Deepika Padukones movie Gehraiyaan, Ranveer Singh spoke highly of her performance. He said, "Oh my god. I was blown away by her performance. You look at that and feel I won't be able to do such a performance. It was possibly her most nuanced performance. She always adds these magical nuances to her performances."

Ranveer also shared a picture posing with a cab that had a sticker of Deepika Padukones Hollywood movie XXX: The Return of Xander Cage.
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - July 4, 2022) - Blue Thunder Mining Inc. (TSXV: BLUE) (OTCQB: BLTMF) ("Blue Thunder" or the "Company") is pleased to announce a non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") for gross proceeds of up to C$500,000, comprising a maximum of 33,333,333 units of the Company (each, a "Unit") at a price of C$0.015 per Unit, each Unit comprised of one common share and one common share purchase warrant (a "Warrant").

Each Warrant will be exercisable to purchase an additional share of the Company at a price of C$0.05 for a period of three years from the closing date of the Offering (the "Closing Date"). If the volume-weighted average price of the common shares of the Company on the TSX Venture Exchange over the preceding 20 trading days is greater than C$0.20, the Company can elect to accelerate the term of the Warrants to 30 calendar days following the date a press release announcing the notice of acceleration is issued.

The Company is relying on the minimum pricing amendments announced by the TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV") on June 23, 2022 (the "Pricing Amendment") in offering the Units at a price that is less than $0.05. As per the Pricing Amendment, the Company confirms that the aggregate number of its listed shares issued at a price less than $0.05 in the last 12 months does not exceed 100% of its issued and outstanding listed shares, on a non-diluted basis, at the beginning of the 12-month period. All securities issued under the Offering will be subject to a TSXV hold period in addition to the restricted period under applicable securities laws and will be legended accordingly.

While Insiders will be significant participants, this Offering is open to all qualified investors. The Company particularly encourages existing shareholders who wish to participate in the Offering to contact the Company through Grove Issuer Services Inc. at placements@grovecorp.ca.

Of the total proceeds to be raised, $75,000 is to be paid to Non-Arm's Length Parties, up to $30,000 toward Investor Relations activities, and the balance to be used for general working capital purposes and certain project expenditures as set out in the table below.

CORPORATE EXPENSES





General Admin & Accounting $ 80,000

Professional Fees $ 40,000

Regulatory & Exchange Fees $ 25,000

Bus Dev / IR $ 30,000

Accounts Payable $ 75,000

Officers Compensation $ 75,000

Total Corporate Expenses $ 325,000







PROJECT EXPENDITURES



Field Work - mapping & trenching $ 70,000

Data Compilation & Interpretation $ 40,000

Geophysics & Geochemistry $ 20,000

Accounts Payable $ 45,000

Total Project Expenditures $ 175,000



The Company anticipates Insider participation of at least C$200,000 or 13,333,333 Units. The issuance of Units to Insiders will be considered a "related-party transaction" within the meaning of TSX Venture Exchange Policy 5.9 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions and Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). The Company intends to rely on the exemptions from the "minority approval" and "formal valuation" requirements of MI 61-101 in respect of any Insider Participation.

Closing of the Offering is anticipated to be completed on or about July 8, 2022, and is subject to the approval of the TSX-V and other customary closing conditions. There can be no assurances that the Offering will be completed on the terms set out herein, or at all, or that the proceeds of the Offering will be sufficient for the uses of proceeds as set out above.

The securities offered have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration requirements. This news release does not constitute an offer for sale of securities in the United States.

About Blue Thunder

Blue Thunder (TSXV: BLUE) (OTCQB: BLTMF) is a gold exploration company that controls 100% of one of the largest land positions near the Chapais-Chibougamau gold district of Quebec with significant historical production and major recent discoveries. The project is situated on the two major regional trends hosting IAMGOLD's Nelligan and Northern Superior Resources Lac Surprise to the south and IAMGOLD's Monster Lake to the north with excellent highway and road access. The Muus Project covers approximately 51,000 hectares in five separate blocks of prospective ground in the eastern part of the Abitibi Greenstone Belt. The Project is considered particularly prospective for gold mineralization, as a series of prominent ductile and brittle fault-sets transect the Property, including the Guercheville and Fancamp deformation zones, both of which are associated with numerous past and currently producing precious- and base-metal mines in the District.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Chad Williams,

Non-Executive Chairman and Director

Blue Thunder Mining Inc.

401 Bay Street, Suite 2704,

P.O. Box 4, Toronto, Ontario, M5H 2Y4

For more information, please visit our website bluethundermining.com, or contact: Ms. Namrata Malhotra: namrata@grovecorp.ca | 416 642-1807

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 press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements other than statements of historical fact, including without limitation, statements regarding the anticipated content, commencement and exploration program results, the ability to complete future financings, required permitting, exploration programs and drilling, and the anticipated business plans and timing of future activities of the Company, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct.

The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, the state of the financial markets for the Company's equity securities, the state of the commodity markets generally, variations in the nature, the analytical results from surface trenching and sampling program, including diamond drilling programs, the results of IP surveying, the results of soil and till sampling program. the quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located, variations in the market price of any mineral products the Company may produce or plan to produce, the inability of the Company to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required, including TSXV acceptance, for its planned activities, the inability of the Company to produce minerals from its properties successfully or profitably, to continue its projected growth, to raise the necessary capital or to be fully able to implement its business strategies, the potential impact of COVID-19 (coronavirus) on the Company's exploration program and on the Company's general business, operations and financial condition, and other risks and uncertainties. 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. This news release contains information with respect to adjacent or similar mineral properties in the Chibougamau District in respect of which the Company has no interest or rights to explore or mine. Readers are cautioned that the Company has no interest in or right to acquire any interest in any such properties, and that mineral deposits, and the results of any mining thereof, on adjacent or similar properties, are not indicative of mineral deposits on the Company's properties or any potential exploration thereof.

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/129946
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 4, 2022) - Keon Capital Inc. (TSXV: KEON.H) ("Keon", or the "Company") is pleased to announce the voting results from its Annual General and Special Meeting of holders of common shares (the "Shareholders") of the Company held on June 30, 2022 (the "Meeting"). Of the 1,915,728 Company shares issued and outstanding as at the May 26, 2022 record date, 817,029 shares (42.65%) were represented and voted at the Meeting.

All the matters put forward before Shareholders for consideration and approval as set out in the Company's management information circular dated May 26, 2022 (the "Circular") were approved by the requisite ordinary and special majorities of votes cast at the Meeting.

Election of Directors

All three of the management nominees disclosed in Keon's Circular for election to the Company's board of directors - William Murray, Murray Oliver and John McCleery - were duly elected, in each case with 815,990 (99.87%) votes cast FOR and 1,039 (0.13%) votes WITHHELD. The directors will remain in office until the next annual meeting of the Company's shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed.

Appointment of Auditors

The Shareholders reappointed Davidson & Company LLP as auditor of the Company for the upcoming year and authorized the directors of the Company to fix the remuneration of the auditor.

Approval of New Stock Option Plan

The Company's new stock option plan was approved by the Shareholders, with 73.51% of shares represented at the Meeting voting in favour. Of the remaining shares represented at the Meeting, the approximately 26.49% of the shares held by interested Shareholders were excluded from the vote on the stock option plan.

Sale of Mexican Subsidiary

The special resolution, requiring the support of at least 2/3rds of the votes cast, to ratify the December 2019 sale of the Company's Mexican subsidiary, Minera Fumarola S.A. de C.V. pursuant to subsection 301(3)(b) of the Business Corporation Act (BC), was approved by 815,990 votes attached to 99.87% of the shares represented at the Meeting, with the remaining 1,093 shares (0.13%) voted against.

Company's Officers

The Company also announces that Nick Furber has resigned as the Company's Chief Financial Officer. The Board of Directors would like to thank Mr. Furber for his contributions to the Company and wish him every success in his future endeavors.

The Company is also pleased to announce that John McCleery has been appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company and Luke Montaine has been appointed Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary of the Company.

John McCleery

Mr. McCleery is a mining entrepreneur with over 40 years experience in resource exploration, development and financing of projects globally. Most recently Mr. McCleery co-founded Creston Moly and served as Director and Head of Corporate Development where he spearheaded over $40 million in equity financing to acquire and advance the El Creston project in Mexico. Under his co-leadership, the El Creston project advanced to become Mexico's largest molybdenum deposit, advancing through to pre-feasibility in under two years, and was subsequently acquired by Mercator Minerals for $195 million.

Mr. McCleery has established a reputation as the catalyst behind various successful start-up and early-stage resource companies bringing new sources of projects and capital.

Luke Montaine

Mr. Montaine has been involved in the capital markets for over 18 years in various capacities, including the roles of investment advisor, corporate development, corporate finance, and has organized fund raising for many venture capital and private equity companies, raising over $50 million.

After studying economics at the University of British Columbia, Mr. Montaine began his career as an investment advisor at Global Securities Corporation, a boutique securities and futures brokerage firm in Vancouver, British Columbia, prior to it being acquired by PI Financial Corp. Mr. Montaine has extensive experience in structuring, financing and sourcing assets for various public and private companies.

Mr. Montaine currently serves as CEO and director of Ord Mountain Resources Corp., which is in the process of doing a transaction with a local airline - BluSky Aviation/Cascadia Airlines. In addition, Mr. Montaine is the CEO of Elephant Capital Corp. a uranium company with operations in New Mexico which has announced an RTO with Evolving Gold, and recently closed $5 million subscription receipts financing to complete the transaction. Mr. Montaine also serves as the CEO of Roadman Investments Corp. a publicly traded investment issuer.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

"William Murray"

Chairman and Director

Tel: (604) 288 2553

Email: willi.murray@outlook.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.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/129961
OSLO, Norway (5 July 2022) - As previously notified, TGS will today at CEST 14:00 host a audiocast / conference call in connection with the recent M&A announcements. Please find attached the presentation that will be referred to during the call.

Participants can access the audiocast to hear the audio and view the presentation by using this link: https://channel.royalcast.com/landingpage/hegnarmedia/20220705_1/ .

In addition, those who choose to dial in by telephone can use the below dial-in instructions.

We encourage attendees to call 5-10 minutes before CET 14:00 to ensure registration and access.

Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions in writing through the audiocast or verbally through the telephone conference.

Telephone conference dial-in details:

PIN Code for all countries: 725691

NO: +47-21-956342

UK: +44-203-7696819

US: +1 646-787-0157

DK: +45 78768490

SE: +46-4-0682-0620

For more information, contact:

Sven Brre Larsen

CFO

Tel: +47 90 94 36 73

E-mail: investor@tgs.com

About TGS

TGS provides scientific data and intelligence to companies active in the energy sector. In addition to a global, extensive and diverse energy data library, TGS offers specialized services such as advanced processing and analytics alongside cloud-based data applications and solutions.

Forward Looking Statement

All statements in this press release other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements, which are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict, and are based upon assumptions as to future events that may not prove accurate. These factors include TGS' reliance on a cyclical industry and principal customers, TGS' ability to continue to expand markets for licensing of data, and TGS' ability to acquire and process data product at costs commensurate with profitability, as well as volatile market conditions, which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the severe drop in oil prices. Actual results may differ materially from those expected or projected in the forward-looking statements. TGS undertakes no responsibility or obligation to update or alter forward-looking statements for any reason.

Attachment
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 4, 2022) - Steppe Gold Ltd. (TSX: STGO) ("Steppe Gold" or the "Company") announces that, as a result of a review by Staff of the Ontario Securities Commission, the Company is issuing the following news release to clarify the disclosure regarding the certificates and applicable consents of qualified persons related to each of David Morgan, Dan V. Michaelsen and Ochirkhuyag Baatar in connection with the NI 43-101 Technical Report - Feasibility Study for the Altan Tsagaan Ovoo (ATO) Phase 2 Expansion Project, Mongolia with an effective date of October 27, 2021, and issued on November 30, 2021 (the "Technical Report").

As a result, the Company has filed: (i) amended certificates for David Morgan and Dan V. Michaelsen to clarify their responsibility in connection with preparing certain portions of the Technical Report; and (ii) certificate and consent of qualified person for Ochirkhuyag Baatar.

Further, certain media article links have been removed from the Company's corporate website to comply with National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure of Mineral Projects.

Steppe Gold Ltd.

Steppe Gold is Mongolia's premier precious metals company.

For Further Information, please contact:

Bataa Tumur-Ochir, CEO and President

Shangri-La office, Suite 1201, Olympic street

19A, Sukhbaatar District 1,

Ulaanbaatar 14241, Mongolia

Tel: +976 7732 1914

The Toronto Stock Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/129950
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 4, 2022) - Steppe Gold Limited (TSX: STGO) (OTCQX: STPGF) (" Steppe Gold " or the " Company ") is pleased to report the results of its 2022 Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders held on June 30, 2022 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. A total of 35,544,144 common shares were voted at the meeting representing 51.10% of the votes attached to all outstanding shares.

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.
WAVE WMS, an advanced cloud-based Warehouse Management System in Asia by AC2 Group, has successfully upgraded MYDIN eCommerce operations

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 5, 2022) - AC2 Group today announced that it has completed the upgrade of the Warehouse Management System (WMS) for MYDIN's eCommerce operations. This upgrade project aims to further improve the efficiency of MYDIN eCommerce operations in Malaysia to provide the highest level of experience for its customers.

Warehouse Management System



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8814/129728_9f10b7c264e1d823_001full.jpg

In line with a strategic initiative to better support the business expansion plan, MYDIN has chosen to upgrade its system to AC2's WAVE WMS, an advanced, cloud-based Warehouse Management System which also integrates with Dropee's Multi-channel eCommerce system.

"We want a Warehouse Management System that can align with our expansion plan, so we can perform faster warehouse operations and achieve higher efficiency. We are delighted that AC2's WAVE WMS has gone live successfully on time and on budget. This is a significant milestone for MYDIN. It has been a challenging project with a very aggressive timeline. I am glad that there has been no major disruption to our operations and the results have been well received by all the stakeholders. We are pleased with the outcome, and appreciate all the effort our partner - the AC2 Group - has put together," said Malik Murad Ali, the CIO at MYDIN, Malaysia's largest halal hypermarket retailer.

"The volume in MYDIN eCommerce operation is enormous, and we are glad that WAVE WMS can effectively serve MYDIN. While inventory management, cycle counting, picking, and shipping activities are all done simultaneously in real-time, we are proud that AC2's WAVE WMS is capable of handling the record-breaking volume in MYDIN, credited to a very experienced operation and IT team, their abilities to operate such a fast and efficient fulfillment center, and their commitment to maintaining the highest level of customer satisfaction is truly impressive. These are the critical success factors for a mesmerizing successful go-live experience," said Aw Yang Uei, Managing Partner at AC2 Group. "We are delighted that our cloud WMS has been well received by our customers. We will continue to add features and functions, and our customers shall receive these updates automatically at no additional cost."

About MYDIN

Mydin Mohamed Holdings Berhad (MYDIN) is Malaysia's largest homegrown Halal hypermarket and retail chain. MYDIN was founded in August 1957 by the late Tuan Mydin Mohamed in Kota Bharu, Kelantan. The first shop was a small wooden shop in Jalan Tok Hakim, Kota Bharu namely Syarikat Mydin Mohamed started the business by selling toys and general goods. With the help of his children, he expanded the business in Kuala Terengganu in 1979 and later marked a step further by the opening of its first branch in Klang Valley at Jalan Masjid India in 1989. With the company's vision to become the world's leading distributor of competitive Halal Goods and Services, the company has then grown tremendously to the present day. In 2013, MYDIN ventured into premium retail with the opening of the SAM'S Groceria; the words SAM stands for Saya Anak Malaysia.

To date, MYDIN has 65 branches nationwide including 28 MYDIN Supermarkets, 17 MYDIN Emporium, 3 MYDIN Bazaars, 3 MYDIN Mart franchises, and 5 convenience stores operating as MyMart, 7 MYDIN supermarkets, and 2 premium stores known as SAM'S Grocery.

To purchase from MYDIN, please visit https://mydinexpress.my/

MYDIN Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mydin-malaysia/

MYDIN Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MydinMalaysia

MYDIN Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mydinmalaysia/

About the AC2 Group

The AC2 Group is a leading cloud warehouse management system provider in Asia. With over 25 years of knowledge and experience in implementing warehouse management systems(WMS), the company has successfully deployed WMS into many mission-critical warehouses and distribution centers in Asia-Pacific. With headquarters located in Singapore, AC2 Group has offices in Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Shanghai to serve its customers.

For more information on the AC2 Group, please visit https://www.ac2wave.com

AC News (English): https://www.ac2wave.com/news

AC LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/theac2group

AC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheAC2Group

Contact Info:

Name: Lisa Piper

Email: Send Email

Organization: AC SQUARE HOLDINGS SDN BHD

Address: E-7-3A, Oasis Square, Ara Damansara, 47301 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

Phone: +60 3 7625 0132

Website: https://www.ac2wave.com/

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/129728
Army Gen. Kim Seung-kyum, right, new head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, poses with President Yoon Suk-yeol after the appointment ceremony at the presidential office in Yongsan, central Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap



Army Gen. Kim Seung-kyum took office as the new head of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) on Tuesday, warning North Korea's provocations will be met with "unsparing retaliation."



Kim's inauguration came amid growing concerns about the possibility of the recalcitrant regime conducting what would be its seventh nuclear test or other provocative acts.



"If North Korea provokes, our military will definitely have it pay a hefty price for that through unsparing retaliation," he said in his inauguration speech. "(We) will inscribe even onto its bones (the message) that there's nothing to gain from provocations."



The warning came in tune with the conservative Yoon Suk-yeol administration's hardline stance on the North's provocative streak, marked by a series of missile launches earlier this year.



"The North waged the Korean War in 1950 and has since staged military provocations incessantly, and at present, in particular, it is bolstering its nuclear and missile capabilities that are seriously threatening peace in South Korea and the world," he said.



Kim also underscored around-the-clock defense readiness, citing an old saying that means troops should rest their heads on their spears at night to stay ready for the enemy.



"Intrinsic to combat preparations are a combative mind-set and strong training," he said, hinting at his priority on strengthening military drills.



Outlining his policy priorities, the top uniformed officer stressed his resolve to strengthen capabilities to counter the North's nuclear and missile threats and achieve the "completeness" of peacetime and wartime operation schemes, including those with the United States.



On the issue of South Korea's push to regain wartime operational control from the U.S., Kim said he would pursue a conditions-based transfer in a "systematic and stable" manner.



Earlier in the day, President Yoon awarded Kim a traditional Korean sword representing defense, unification and prosperity, as well as the Army, Navy and Air Force, during a ceremony at the presidential office.



Yoon called for the military to maintain firm readiness against North Korea and push for defense reform, stressing the severity of the security situation on the Korean Peninsula.



The president instructed Kim to respond immediately and sternly to North Korean provocations based on a tight combined defense posture with U.S. forces.



Kim became the first general to take the JCS helm without a parliamentary confirmation hearing since 2006, when the legislative procedure was introduced. His hearing did not proceed amid partisan wrangling over parliamentary committee formations.



Kim, the former deputy chief of the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command, was tapped for the JCS chair post in late May, as the Yoon Suk-yeol administration pushes to reinforce the alliance with the United States.



Kim succeeded Air Force Gen. Won In-choul, who had led the JCS since September 2020.



Commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1986, Kim has served in various key military posts, including the vice Army chief of staff and the head of the 3rd Corps. He is the first graduate of the Korea Military Academy to lead the JCS in nine years. (Yonhap)
Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), Europe's leading quantum computing company, today announced raising 38 million (US $46.45 million) in the first close of an on-going Series A. The investment is the UK's largest ever Series A in quantum computing and will accelerate research and development and fuel expansion in Asia-Pacific. The round was co-led by Lansdowne Partners, one of Europe's leading investment firms, and The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners (UTEC), Japan's largest deeptech VC fund. British Patient Capital and existing investors Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) and Oxford Investment Consultants (OIC) also participated.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220704005233/en/

Deployment of OQC's 8 qubits processor Lucy by two quantum engineers. (c) Oxford Quantum Circuits

OQC's patented 3D architecture, the Coaxmon, combines unparalleled scalability with world-class performance. This funding follows the February 2022 launch of OQC's latest system, Lucy, on Amazon Braket making it the first European quantum company on AWS. The company's technology can be used by businesses in financial services, pharma and logistics to increase their competitive edge.

This Series A investment will be used to further scale the company's quantum systems and its private quantum computing as-a-service offering. It will also consolidate OQC's position in Europe and accelerate international expansion in Asia-Pacific, including the Japanese market a hotspot for financial services eager to realise the advantages of quantum computing.

Quantum computing has the potential to shape our future and improve people's lives and has long been recognised as a matter of strategic national importance. British Patient Capital's investment in the round is part of its wider ambition to cement the UK's position as a science and technology superpower.

Lenny Chin, Principal at UTEC, said "Quantum computing promises to be the next frontier of innovation, and OQC, with its state-of-the-art Coaxmon technology, aims to integrate the forefront of modern physics into our everyday lives. UTEC is honoured to be part of OQC's mission of making quantum technology accessible to all and will support OQC's expansion into Asia-Pacific through collaborations with academia including the University of Tokyo, and partnerships with Japan's leading financial and tech corporations."

Peter Davies, Partner Head of Developed Markets Strategy at Lansdowne Partners, said "Since launching the UK's first commercially-available quantum computer, we have continued to be highly impressed with both the technical developments and also the future ambitions of OQC. We are very excited to be investing in this innovative and forward-thinking company."

Judith Hartley, CEO, British Patient Capital said "The UK has long been at the forefront of global technology developments. Our investment in Oxford Quantum Circuits exemplifies our continued commitment to ensuring the UK stays at the forefront of deeptech innovation. The sphere of quantum computing is a vital link in the chain of technological, scientific, and business advancement, from breakthroughs to better business modelling across the board. We are excited to help fund OQC's expansion into the Asia-Pacific regions, allowing this new frontier in technology to develop even further through exposure to the global market."

Ilana Wisby, CEO of OQC, said "This initial close is the UK's largest ever Series A in quantum computing, demonstrating the confidence our investors have in our ability to lead the global quantum industry. It's testament to the significant technological and commercial progress we have achieved in recent months, thanks to our world-class team. It is also the first step in our international expansion, bringing quantum to our customers' fingertips wherever they are in the world."

Editors' Notes

About OQC: OQC is Europe's leading quantum computing company. We bring quantum to our customers' fingertips and enable them to make breakthrough discoveries. Our quantum computers are available via private cloud and on Amazon Braket.

www.oxfordquantumcircuits.com

About Lansdowne: Lansdowne Partners is a European headquartered investment manager operating a diversified range of actively managed equity strategies.

www.lansdownepartners.com/london

About UTEC: The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners, Inc. is the largest venture capital fund focused on science and technology in Japan, and one of the largest deep tech funds in Asia. UTEC has invested in over 140 Japanese and Global startups with a track record of 17 IPOs 14 M&As.

www.ut-ec.co.jp/english

About BPC: British Patient Capital is the trading name of British Patient Capital Limited, a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of British Business Bank plc, the UK government's economic development bank. Launched in June 2018, British Patient Capital has 2.5bn to invest over 10 years in venture and venture growth capital to support high growth potential innovative UK businesses.

www.britishpatientcapital.co.uk

About OSE: Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) is a Science Business Builder, committed to helping solve the world's toughest problems for more people, in more places, faster. The company does this by transforming world-leading science into world-changing businesses, partnering the best scientists from the world's best university with the best business brains.

www.oxfordscienceenterprises.com

About OIC: Oxford Investment Consultants backs extraordinary founders turning scientific research into products addressing the world's greatest challenges. The OIC team has decades of investment experience, partnering with transformative biotech, healthcare and deeptech companies from Oxford University and other world-leading UK research institutions.

www.oxfordinvestmentconsultants.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220704005233/en/

Contacts:

Kaya Cheshire

ThoughtLDR Ltd.

kaya@thoughtldr.com

+44 7464 338017
TOKYO (dpa-AFX) - Japan's service sector expanded at the sharpest pace in more than eight years in June amid the lifting of remaining domestic COVID-19 restrictions, survey results from S&P Global showed on Tuesday. The au Jibun Bank services Purchasing Managers' Index advanced to 54.0 in June from 52.6 in May. The index signaled the fastest growth since October 2013. There was a second successive monthly expansion in new business. The rate of growth remained strong amid improved client confidence. Service providers registered a fresh record rise in average cost burdens due to steep increases in raw material and fuel costs. The rise in input prices contributed to a steeper growth in prices charged for services, which advanced the most since October 2019. Employment levels grew for the fifth straight month in June as firms prepared for a sustained recovery in demand. Confidence among service providers was the second-strongest on record. The au Jibun Bank composite output index, which measures combined output in the manufacturing and services sectors, rose to 53.0 in June from 52.3 in May. The score suggested the fastest expansion in the private sector in seven months. 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.
Publication annual report 2021

Appointment of a Chief Business Officer

Appointment of a Director vaccine process development

Chief Financial Officer joins the Board of Directors

BILTHOVEN, Netherlands, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Intravacc B.V., a world leader in translational research and development of preventive and therapeutic vaccines, today announced the publication of the 2021 annual report and the expansion of its management team, with the appointment of Dr Maj-Britt Kaltoft as Chief Business Officer, and Dr Edwin Kets as Director Vaccine Process Development. In addition, Intravacc's Chief Financial Officer Nathalie Laarakker has been appointed to the board of directors.

The annual report for the financial year 2021, including a review of figure, performance and Financial Statements for the Year ended 31 December 2021, is available online here and can also be downloaded as PDF. A summary of Intravacc's financials are also published in the Annual Report Management of State Participations 2021 (page 165-168, in Dutch).

Furthermore, Intravacc B.V. is very pleased with the expansion of its management team and board of directors. Each of these respective roles will support Intravacc's hybrid business model and the continued advancement of the company's vaccine contract development portfolio of candidate vaccines

Dr. Jan Groen, Intravacc's CEO, said:

""As we are building our professional contract development and vaccine manufacturing organization, we need an experienced and robust executive team that knows how to get things done. We are very pleased to strengthen our team with these key appointments and I am excited about the expertise and new ideas they have to offer Intravacc."

Maj-Britt Kaltoft PhD, Chief Business Officer, is a senior business executive with over 25 years of experience in out-licensing, contracting, commercialization partnering in the life science industry. Prior to joining Intravacc, she held several senior international managerial positions in BD, with Nova Nordisk, Nycomed, H. Lundbeck, and the Danish State Serum Institute. Dr. Kaltoft holds a PhD degree in molecular biology and protein biochemistry from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and a Master's degree in international business from Seattle University in Washington, USA.

Edwin Kets PhD, Director Vaccine Process Development has worked in the veterinary vaccine industry at Merck Sharpe and Dome (MSD) in several managerial positions for nearly 20 years. In his last role he was executive director of global animal health manufacturing science & technology EU. He also held managerial positions at Organon and the University of Wageningen. He holds a MSc in biology from the University of Utrecht and a Master's degree in biology from the Radboud University in Nijmegen and PhD in biotechnology from the Wageningen University. Mr. Kets' key responsibility at Intravacc will be to direct and manage all aspects of the process development department, which supports Intravacc's four proprietary vaccine platforms.

Nathalie Laarakker RA, joined Intravacc as Chief Financial Officer on April 1st 2021. On January 1st, 2022, she became a member of the Board of Directors as an executive director. Intravacc's board now consists of two members, with Intravacc's CEO Dr. Jan Groen acting as chairman.

About Intravacc B.V.

Intravacc, located at Utrecht Science Park Bilthoven in the Netherlands, is a leading global contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) of innovative vaccines against infectious diseases. As an established independent CDMO with an outstanding track record in vaccine development and vaccine technologies, Intravacc has transferred its technology related to polio vaccines, measles vaccines, DPT vaccines, Hib vaccines and influenza vaccines around the world. Around 40% of childhood disease vaccines are based on Intravacc's proprietary technology. Intravacc offers a wide range of expertise to develop vaccine from concept to Phase I/II clinical studies for partners around the world, including universities, public health organizations (WHO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

For more information, please visit www.intravacc.nl.

Contact info

Intravacc

Dr. Jan Groen, CEO

P: +31 30 7920 454

Mirjam Hartman, Media relations

P: +31 6 115 969 94

E: press.office@intravacc.nl

LifeSpring Life Sciences Communication, Amsterdam

Leon Melens

P: +31 6 538 16427

E: lmelens@lifespring.nl

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1334670/Intravacc_Logo.jpg
Positive Drilling Results from the Campanario Trend

Shallow polymetallic mineralisation including massive and semi-massive sulphides intersected as part of four-rig drilling campaign at Proyecto Masa Valverde

NICOSIA, CYPRUS / ACCESSWIRE / 5 July, 2022 / Atalaya Mining Plc (AIM:ATYM)(TSX:AYM) is pleased to announce the results of the first 22 exploration drill holes completed to date on the Campanario Trend, one of several mineralised zones comprising Proyecto Masa Valverde ("PMV"). PMV is located in southern Spain approximately 28 km to the south of Atalaya's 15 Mtpa mill at Proyecto Riotinto (see Figure 1 in the Website Announcement).

Highlights

Initial drilling results confirm PMV's continued exploration potential and the possibility to quickly define a shallow mineral resource

Shallow polymetallic mineralisation includes: CA15: 35.20m at 0.70% Cu, 1.53% Zn, 1.39% Pb and 62.50 g/t Ag (1.71% CuEq) from 77.80m from surface CA21: 18.10m at 1.19% Cu, 0.08% Zn, 0.32% Pb and 36.66 g/t Ag (1.40% CuEq) from 43.20m from surface

Drilling to date has focused around the historical Campanario workings, which only represents approximately 10% of the entire strike length of the mineralised structure

Intersected mineralisation includes massive and semi-massive sulphides as well as stockwork-type material, consistent with the Masa Valverde and Majadales deposits

Initial drilling results demonstrate the significant exploration potential of Atalaya's strategic land package in the world-class Iberian Pyrite Belt

Alberto Lavandeira, CEO, commented:

"We are pleased with these initial drilling results from the Campanario Trend which confirm the expectations we had on the exploration potential of PMV. We continue working on defining the potential shallow mineral resource in the short term which to date has only been drill tested in approximately 10% of the entire mineralised structure. In addition, we have several coincident geochemical and geophysical targets pending for drill testing indicating that we are still far from knowing the ultimate exploration potential of PMV.

We believe that these initial results will not only have a positive impact on future development scenarios and project economics, but they also highlight the significant exploration potential of the Iberian Pyrite Belt."

About Proyecto Masa Valverde

PMV consists of several volcanogenic massive sulphide ("VMS") type deposits including Masa Valverde, Majadales, the Campanario Trend and other drill ready targets. Atalaya's exploration team discovered the Majadales deposit and in 2020 acquired a 100% interest in PMV. The project is strategically located approximately 28 km from Proyecto Riotinto, therefore future development scenarios are expected to utilise the Company's existing 15 Mtpa processing plant.

In April 2022, Atalaya announced a new independent resource estimate for PMV that was prepared in accordance with CIM guidelines and disclosure requirements of NI 43-101, including:

Masa Valverde Indicated Mineral Resource of 16.9 Mt at 0.66% Cu, 1.55% Zn, 0.65% Pb, 27 g/t Ag and 0.55 g/t Au (1.51% CuEq)

Masa Valverde Inferred Mineral Resource of 73.4 Mt at 0.61% Cu, 1.24% Zn, 0.61% Pb, 30 g/t Ag and 0.62 g/t Au (1.37% CuEq)

Majadales Inferred Mineral Resource of 3.1 Mt at 0.94% Cu, 3.08% Zn, 1.43% Pb, 54 g/t Ag and 0.32 g/t Au (2.55% CuEq)

Atalaya expects to complete a PEA for PMV by the end of the year.

Four rigs are currently operating at PMV, as part of the Company's 10 million exploration programme for 2022. Two rigs are devoted to the Campanario Trend and the rest are drill testing the Fix Loop Electromagnetic ("FLEM") anomalies west of the Masa Valverde deposit. So far, three holes were completed at two of the FLEM anomalies. The results of that programme will be released in a future announcement.

About the Campanario Trend

The Campanario Trend is a five kilometre north-west trending mineralised corridor, located one kilometre north of the Masa Valverde and Majadales VMS deposits. Campanario is characterised by the presence of numerous small historical workings and coincident soil geochemical and geophysical anomalies (see Figure 2 in the Website Announcement).

Historical mining activity (from 1876 - 1917) along the Campanario Trend was at a small scale and focused on narrow zones of massive sulphides. Near-surface oxidation of the massive sulphides, mainly pyrite, generated gossans which were also investigated for gold potential.

Total historical mine production is estimated to be 0.22 million tonnes at 1.5% Cu from six main mining areas situated from the east to the west: Cruz Infante, Cibeles, Campanario, California, Descamisada and Descamisada Oeste. Drilling to date by Atalaya has focused around the historical Campanario workings which, by size, are the most important along the Campanario Trend.

Notably, immediately to the west of the historical Descamisada Oeste mine, the FLEM geophysical survey delineated a significant conductor (Loop 14 in Figure 2 in the Website Announcement) which is interpreted to be the potential west extension of the main mineralised corridor. To the east of the historical Campanario workings and coincident with the Cruz Infantes and old Cibeles mines, a previous VTEM ("Versatile Time Domain Electromagnetic") survey delineated a zone of elevated conductivity which could be related with the presence of massive sulphides at depth.

Despite the numerous historical workings, the semi-continuous outcropping mineralisation and the proximity to the large Masa Valverde deposit, the Campanario Trend remained under-explored for many years. The last drilling campaign was carried out in 1995 by the Spanish state-owned company Adaro.

Campanario Trend Initial Drilling Results

Atalaya has completed 22 drill holes at the Campanario Trend with assay results produced by the certified laboratory at Proyecto Riotinto. In addition, assays including gold were produced by an independent external laboratory (ALS) up to hole CA-13.

Drilling was focused around the historical Campanario workings, located in the central part of the five kilometre long Campanario Trend (see drill hole map in Figure 3 in the Website Announcement). Assay results received to date included intersections that are the best so far in terms of "grade x thickness" factor.

Local stratigraphy consists of black shales with varying graphite content, coherent acid rocks of rhyodacitic composition and, to a lesser extent, volcanic tuffs. Mineralised zones are mainly hosted in the black shale levels which are intensely folded and sheared and often show zones of sericitic, chloritic and silicic alteration.

Except near surface where it is oxidised (gossans), the main mineralisation styles are massive and semi-massive sulphides and stockwork-type. Pyrite is the predominant sulphide mineral with subordinate chalcopyrite, sphalerite, galena and sulphosalts. Mineralisation is polymetallic with elevated As, Sb, Hg and Bi values, therefore Atalaya believes the E-LIX System has strong potential to unlock value from any future mined material from the Campanario Trend.

The geometry of the mineralised zones varies down dip from steeply dipping to moderately dipping to the north-north-east and may include several parallel lenses of massive and semi-massive sulphides, with individual true thicknesses varying from 1-2 metres up to 20-25 metres. Two representative cross sections are included in Figure 4 in the Website Announcement.

The mineralised system remains completely open laterally but seems to get thinner at depth in some sections. Pinch and swell geometry is evident, quite likely due to syn/late deformation.

Table 1: Selected Campanario Drill Holes

Hole ID From

(m) To

(m) Interval

(m) Cu

(%) Zn

(%) Pb

(%) Ag

(g/t) Au1

(g/t) CuEq2

(%) CA15 77.80 113.00 35.20 0.70 1.53 1.39 62.50 n/a 1.71 Including 92.00 102.10 10.10 1.27 3.32 1.87 77.17 n/a 3.08 CA16 88.00 116.00 28.00 0.45 0.14 0.25 22.61 n/a 0.62 Including 88.00 99.30 11.30 0.97 0.08 0.27 41.03 n/a 1.19 Inc. 90.80 93.30 2.50 2.21 0.13 0.61 72.31 n/a 2.61 CA21 43.20 61.30 18.10 1.19 0.08 0.32 36.66 n/a 1.40 Including 43.20 48.00 4.80 3.85 0.16 0.86 95.34 n/a 4.38 1 Assays are from the certified laboratory at Proyecto Riotinto, which does not assay for gold, therefore gold is not included in the CuEq calculation. 2 Metal prices and recoveries used for CuEq calculation are: $9,600/t Cu and 80%; $3,500/t Zn and 80%; $2,300/t Pb and 60%; $23/oz Ag and 35%.

The full set of results from the 22 holes is shown below in Table 2.

Next Steps

Drilling at PMV will continue testing the shallow lateral extensions of mineralisation found to date at the Campanario Trend as well as drill testing the FLEM geophysical anomalies west of the Masa Valverde deposit.

Mineralogical and petrographic studies are already in progress as well as sampling for initial metallurgical testwork.

Data gathering during the current drilling programme at Campanario will form the basis of the new geological model which will support an initial mineral resource estimation.

Qualified Person Statement

Alberto Lavandeira has reviewed the technical information contained within this announcement in his capacity as a Qualified Person, as required under the AIM Rules for Companies. Alberto Lavandeira is the Chief Executive Officer for the Company and is a member of good standing with the Association of Mining Engineers of Spain, with over 41 years' experience.

Table 2: Campanario Trend Drill Hole Data

Hole ID Length

(m) From

(m) To

(m) Interval

(m) Cu

(%) Zn

(%) Pb

(%) Ag

(g/t) Au1

(g/t) CuEq2

(%) CA1 533.50 No Significant Intersection CA2 414.20 No Significant Intersection 3 CA3 326.30 148.10 160.50 12.40 0.17 0.66 0.25 5.16 0.22 0.51 3 CA4 251.20 161.50 167.00 5.50 0.27 1.30 0.77 24.36 0.34 1.02 182.00 183.00 1.00 0.15 3.69 1.94 22.00 0.21 1.95 3 CA5 299.50 154.00 169.00 15.00 0.38 1.56 0.91 14.27 0.18 1.18 Including 158.00 161.00 3.00 1.04 3.69 2.27 32.00 0.51 2.98 189.00 191.00 2.00 0.12 0.09 0.03 1.00 0.05 0.17 209.00 213.00 4.00 0.15 0.43 0.26 6.50 0.05 0.38 3 CA6 328.30 149.70 158.10 8.40 Adit intercepted. Fill material up to 0.90% Cu 3 CA7 248.60 150.00 160.00 10.00 0.18 0.67 0.21 7.80 0.10 0.51 3 CA8 275.00 159.00 169.00 10.00 0.35 2.53 1.27 25.40 0.31 1.63 215.00 223.00 8.00 0.43 0.19 0.15 8.38 0.17 0.58 227.00 231.00 4.00 0.16 0.27 0.11 4.50 0.11 0.31 CA9 268.40 No Significant Intersection 3 CA10 272.50 159.00 161.00 2.00 0.25 0.17 0.05 12.00 0.08 0.38 3 CA11 341.00 123.70 144.00 20.30 0.50 0.56 0.73 55.87 0.66 1.12 Including 123.70 133.00 9.30 0.76 0.66 0.86 85.82 1.07 1.61 Inc. 131.00 133.00 2.00 1.50 0.12 0.22 63.00 1.02 1.95 165.00 166.30 1.30 0.28 0.19 0.89 56.23 0.23 0.73 184.00 194.00 10.00 0.38 0.05 0.15 42.90 1.11 0.73 Including 186.00 188.00 2.00 0.76 0.09 0.23 100.00 0.23 1.21 3 CA12 260.00 117.00 125.50 8.50 0.46 0.96 0.65 35.31 0.45 1.12 Including 118.60 120.00 1.40 1.17 0.12 0.67 114.14 1.08 1.89 3 CA13 280.20 116.00 123.00 7.00 0.14 1.03 0.36 4.86 0.05 0.61 4 CA14 218.00 78.10 83.10 5.00 0.49 4.33 1.47 77.83 n/a 2.60 90.20 92.70 2.50 0.62 0.97 1.08 123.31 n/a 1.58 100.40 103.50 3.10 0.46 6.09 1.46 92.04 n/a 3.25 114.40 116.00 1.60 1.04 0.48 0.57 23.33 n/a 1.39 123.20 125.00 1.80 0.33 0.06 0.16 12.10 n/a 0.42 4 CA15 290.00 77.80 113.00 35.20 0.70 1.53 1.39 62.50 n/a 1.71 Including 79.00 81.00 2.00 1.56 0.09 1.13 171.40 n/a 2.37 Including 92.00 102.10 10.10 1.27 3.32 1.87 77.17 n/a 3.08 Including 108.90 113.00 4.10 0.51 2.40 1.77 54.13 n/a 1.89 158.00 161.00 3.00 0.70 1.31 0.69 24.53 n/a 1.39 Including 158.00 158.80 0.80 1.73 1.10 0.95 66.73 n/a 2.53 4 CA16 179.40 88.00 116.00 28.00 0.45 0.14 0.25 22.61 n/a 0.62 Including 88.00 99.30 11.30 0.97 0.08 0.27 41.03 n/a 1.19 Inc. 90.80 93.30 2.50 2.21 0.13 0.61 72.31 n/a 2.61 4 CA17 200.00 100.20 101.50 1.30 0.94 0.02 1.19 22.58 n/a 1.24 4 CA18 227.00 104.50 109.10 4.60 1.03 0.04 0.12 21.64 n/a 1.14 4 CA19 141.00 60.30 65.30 5.00 0.28 0.04 0.13 31.45 n/a 0.42 73.00 84.30 11.30 0.37 0.04 0.11 22.70 n/a 0.48 Including 77.00 77.50 0.50 2.14 0.05 0.08 16.62 n/a 2.23 Including 81.00 84.30 3.30 0.47 0.06 0.17 27.07 n/a 0.61 4 CA20 157.10 No Significant Intersection 4, 5 CA21 139.30 43.20 61.30 18.10 1.19 0.08 0.32 36.66 n/a 1.40 Including 43.20 48.00 4.80 3.85 0.16 0.86 95.34 n/a 4.38 4 CA22 298.80 105.60 117.00 11.40 0.12 1.03 0.50 22.56 n/a 0.66 1 Table showing detailed drilling results over 0.10% Cu. 2 Metal prices and recoveries used for CuEq calculation are: $9,600/t Cu and 80%; $3,500/t Zn and 80%; $2,300/t and 60%; $23/oz Ag and 35%; $1,800/oz and 20%. 3 Assays from ALS laboratory, which assays for gold. 4 Assays are from the certified laboratory at Proyecto Riotinto, which does not assay for gold, therefore gold is not included in the CuEq calculation. 5 This intersection includes 3m not recovered, probably that is an adit from 55 to 58m. Metal content of this interval is considered as zero in the calculations of the intercepts.

Figure 1: Proyecto Masa Valverde Location (refer to Website Announcement)

Figure 2: Campanario Trend Anomalies (refer to Website Announcement)

Figure 3: Drill Hole Locations (refer to Website Announcement)

Figure 4: Representative Cross Sections (refer to Website Announcement)

Glossary of Terms

Ag Silver As Arsenic Au Gold Bi Bismuth CIM Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum Cu Copper CuEq Copper Equivalent FLEM Fixed Loop Electromagnetic Survey g/t Grams per tonne Hg Mercury Indicated Mineral Resources An Indicated Mineral Resource is that part of a Mineral Resource for which quantity, grade or quality, densities, shape and physical characteristics are estimated with sufficient confidence to allow the application of Modifying Factors in sufficient detail to support mine planning and evaluation of the economic viability of the deposit. Geological evidence is derived from adequately detailed and reliable exploration, sampling and testing and is sufficient to assume geological and grade or quality continuity between points of observation. An Indicated Mineral Resource has a lower level of confidence than that applying to a Measured Mineral Resource and may only be converted to a Probable Mineral Reserve. Inferred Mineral Resource An Inferred Mineral Resource is that part of a Mineral Resource for which quantity and grade or quality are estimated on the basis of limited geological evidence and sampling. Geological evidence is sufficient to imply but not verify geological and grade or quality continuity. An Inferred Mineral Resource has a lower level of confidence than that applying to an Indicated Mineral Resource and must not be converted to a Mineral Reserve. It is reasonably expected that the majority of Inferred Mineral Resources could be upgraded to Indicated Mineral Resources with continued exploration. kt Thousand tonnes Measured Mineral Resources A Measured Mineral Resource is that part of a Mineral Resource for which quantity, grade or quality, densities, shape, and physical characteristics are estimated with confidence sufficient to allow the application of Modifying Factors to support detailed mine planning and final evaluation of the economic viability of the deposit. Geological evidence is derived from detailed and reliable exploration, sampling and testing and is sufficient to confirm geological and grade or quality continuity between points of observation. A Measured Mineral Resource has a higher level of confidence than that applying to either an Indicated Mineral Resource or an Inferred Mineral Resource. It may be converted to a Proven Mineral Reserve or to a Probable Mineral Reserve. Mineral Resources A concentration or occurrence of material of intrinsic economic interest in or on the Earth's crust in such a form and quantity that there are reasonable prospects for eventual 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 Resources are sub-divided, in order of increasing geological confidence, into Inferred, Indicated and Measured categories. Mt Million tonnes Mtpa Million tonnes per annum n.a. Not available NI 43-101 Canadian National Instrument for the Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects Pb Lead PEA Preliminary Economic Assessment PPM Parts per million Sb Antimony Stockwork It's a complex 3D network of structurally controlled or randomly oriented veins. They are common in many ore deposit types. They are also referred to as stringer zones. VMS Volcanic Massive Sulphide Zn Zinc

Contacts:

SEC Newgate UK Elisabeth Cowell / Axaule Shukanayeva / Max Richardson + 44 20 3757 6882 4C Communications Carina Corbett +44 20 3170 7973 Canaccord Genuity (NOMAD and Joint Broker) Henry Fitzgerald-O'Connor / James Asensio +44 20 7523 8000 BMO Capital Markets (Joint Broker) Tom Rider / Andrew Cameron +44 20 7236 1010 Peel Hunt LLP (Joint Broker) Ross Allister / David McKeown +44 20 7418 8900

About Atalaya Mining Plc

Atalaya is an AIM and TSX-listed mining and development group which produces copper concentrates and silver by-product at its wholly owned Proyecto Riotinto site in southwest Spain. Atalaya's current operations include the Cerro Colorado open pit mine and a modern 15 Mtpa processing plant, which has the potential to become a centralised processing hub for ore sourced from its wholly owned regional projects around Riotinto that include Proyecto Masa Valverde and Proyecto Riotinto East. In addition, the Group has a phased earn-in agreement for up to 80% ownership of Proyecto Touro, a brownfield copper project in the northwest of Spain, as well as a 51% interest in Proyecto Ossa Morena. For further information, visit www.atalayamining.com

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact rns@lseg.com or visit www.rns.com.

SOURCE: Atalaya Mining PLC

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/707498/Atalaya-Mining-PLC-Announces-Positive-Drilling-Results-from-Campanario-Trend
LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / July 5, 2022 / Horizonte Minerals Plc (AIM:HZM)(TSX:HZM), the nickel development company focused in Brazil, announces that application has been made to the London Stock Exchange for 50,000 ordinary shares to be admitted to trading on AIM and to be listed for trading on the TSX (together referred to as "Admission") following the exercise of options by an option holder. It is expected that Admission will become effective on or around 6 July 2022.

Following the issue of the new ordinary shares, the Company's issued share capital will comprise 190,468,279 ordinary shares. The total number of voting rights in the Company will be 190,468,279. This figure may be used by shareholders as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or change to their interest in, the share capital of the Company under the Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules of Financial Conduct Authority.

For further information, visit www.horizonteminerals.com or contact:

Horizonte Minerals plc

Jeremy Martin (CEO)

Simon Retter (CFO)

info@horizonteminerals.com

+44 (0) 20 3356 2901 Peel Hunt LLP (Nominated Adviser & Joint Broker)

Ross Allister

David McKeown

+44 (0)20 7418 8900 BMO (Joint Broker)

Thomas Rider

Pascal Lussier Duquette

Andrew Cameron

+44 (0) 20 7236 1010 Tavistock (Financial PR)

Jos Simson

Cath Drummond

+44 (0) 20 7920 3150

About Horizonte Minerals:

Horizonte Minerals Plc (AIM & TSX: HZM) is developing two 100%-owned, tier-one projects in Para state, Brazil; the Araguaia Nickel Project and the Vermelho Nickel-Cobalt Project. Both projects are large-scale, high-grade, low-cost, low-carbon and scalable. Araguaia is fully funded and in construction. The project will produce 29,000 tonnes of nickel per year to supply the stainless steel market. Vermelho is at feasibility study stage and will produce 25,000 tonnes of nickel and 1,250 tonnes of cobalt to supply the EV battery market. Horizonte's combined near-term production profile of over 50,000 tonnes of nickel per year positions the Company as a globally significant nickel producer. Horizonte is developing a new nickel district in Brazil that will benefit from established infrastructure, including hydroelectric power available in the Carajas Mining District.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD LOOKING INFORMATION

Except for statements of historical fact relating to the Company, certain information contained in this press release constitutes "forward-looking information" under Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, the admission of the new ordinary shares to trading on AIM and to be listed for trading on the TSX. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking information is based on the reasonable assumptions, estimates, analysis and opinions of management made in light of its experience and its perception of trends, current conditions and expected developments, as well as other factors that management believes to be relevant and reasonable in the circumstances at the date that such statements are made, and are inherently subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors 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 information, including but not limited to various risks associated with the legal and regulatory framework within which the Company operates, together with the risks identified and disclosed in the Company's disclosure record available on the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com, including without limitation, the annual information form of the Company for the year ended 31 December 2021, the Araguaia Report and the Vermelho Report. Although management of the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. 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.

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact rns@lseg.com or visit www.rns.com.

SOURCE: Horizonte Minerals PLC

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/707519/Horizonte-Minerals-PLC-Announces-Exercise-of-Options-and-Total-Voting-Rights
CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA / ACCESSWIRE / July 5, 2022 / Australian business owner and entrepreneur Mohammad Ali Ayad has revealed his plans to launch a new delivery service on July 25th 2022. Named iDlvr , the delivery service will take the form of an app that will connect customers and drivers to have their goods brought directly to them on demand.

It may seem as though iDlvr is entering a saturated market of delivery apps, but a key feature of its service will distinguish iDlvr from its competitors, potentially making big waves in the industry and altering the trajectory of future services offered by these delivery apps.

iDlvr was built around turning 'Click & Collect' orders into 'Click & Delivery', allowing customers to make orders at their retailers or specialty suppliers of choice, upload their customer invoice onto the app and specify the size of vehicle they require to complete the delivery. They will then be matched with a driver fitting their specifications who can collect the package in lieu of the customer and deliver the goods directly without delay.

This service will be the first of its kind within the Australian market, allowing users to forgo conventional click & collect practices or postal transport services.

"idlvr was born out of my own need to have things delivered to me that regular delivery apps couldn't handle." explains Ayad. "I run my own business in the construction industry, and too often I found myself needing specific supplies for site and even the office or needing to go to a retail store to personally collect my order, having to waste time and manpower leaving myself or sending someone off the job site to go pick it up. iDlvr was created to be that flexible click & delivery service you can always rely on when others can't get the job done."

iDlvr also aims to foster more communal values between its users, encouraging drivers and customers to set preferences and network with each other, fostering long-term relationships. The service also prides itself on the high award rates it offers to its delivery drivers, up to a 90% cut.

iDlvr will launch across Australia's East Coast on the 25th July 2022. To register as a driver, or to utilise the service, head to the website here .

Media Contact

Business: iDlvr

Contact: https://www.idlvr.com.au/contact

Name: Shaheer Ansari

Website: www.idlvr.com.au

SOURCE: iDlvr

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/707517/New-Aussie-Delivery-App-iDlvr-Turns-Click-Collect-Into-Click-Deliver
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.
The Tunisian module maker said its new product is based on p-type gallium-doped solar cells and is suitable for both residential and commercial applications. The panel is available in nine versions with nominal power of up to 505 W and an efficiency of up to 21.44%.Tunisia-based solar panel manufacturer Ifri-Sol has unveiled a new solar module for rooftop applications with a power output of up to 505 W and a power conversion efficiency of up to 21.44%. "The module can be used for either residential or commercial and industrial PV projects," a spokesperson from the company told pv magazine. "It ...

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.
Xceedance, a global provider of strategic operations support, technology, and data services to insurance organisations, announced the appointments of industry veterans Isabelle Clausner and Tracy Harrington Cloud to develop and manage the company's interactions with insurers in the European region.

Isabelle Clausner joins Xceedance as vice president, client executive for southern Europe and is based in Paris. She will leverage her more than 20 years of experience in European insurance markets to introduce Xceedance capabilities and support the strategic priorities of insurers in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. Most recently, Ms. Clausner served as head of client and broker engagement for AIG Europe. Prior to that role, she held leadership positions at Generali Global Corporate Commercial (GC&C), Zurich Insurance, and Deutsche Post DHL Group, as well as an earlier appointment at AIG Europe.

Tracy Harrington Cloud joins Xceedance as vice president, business development, based out of the organisation's London office. She brings more than 30 years of industry experience, including a significant stint as head of international distribution at AXIS Europe SE, with responsibilities for both strategy and business development in the international brokers' market. Previously, Ms. Harrington Cloud worked at Marsh, where she co-founded the U.K. insurer consulting group, worked as a client executive, and fostered new business. In 2017, she was a winner of the prestigious Business Insurance Woman to Watch award.

"I am delighted to welcome Isabelle and Tracy both highly knowledgeable insurance professionals to the Xceedance team in Europe," said Justin Davies, Xceedance senior vice president and EMEA region head. "As our company continues to expand and address the needs of global insurance organisations, Europe is a critical growth market. I am confident the deep insurance domain expertise and relationship-building skills of Isabelle and Tracy will help in our core mission to serve the diverse operational requirements of European insurers."

To connect with Isabelle Clausner, Tracy Harrington Cloud, or Justin Davies, please email contact@xceedance.com.

About Xceedance

Xceedance provides strategic operations support, technology, and data services to drive efficiencies for insurance organisations worldwide. The company helps insurers launch products, implement intelligent technology, deploy advanced analytics, and achieve business process optimisation. For more information, visit www.xceedance.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220705005171/en/

Contacts:

Stephen Breen, Rein4ce Ltd

Telephone: +44 (0)7843 076556

Email: stephen.breen@rein4ce.co.uk
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A multi-state listeria outbreak that has killed one and sickened at least 23 others has been linked to Florida -based Big Olaf Creamery brand ice cream, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC. The outbreak strain has been reported from 10 states, resulting in 22 hospitalizations. One death has been reported from Illinois. The CDC noted that five people got sick during their pregnancy, and one illness resulted in a fetal loss. Big Olaf Creamery brand is sold only in Florida. As per an ongoing CDC investigation to find out the causes for the Listeria infections, nearly all the sickened people live in or traveled to Florida about a month before they got sick. Listeria can cause severe illness, known as invasive listeriosis, when the bacteria spread beyond the gut to other parts of the body. Pregnant people and their newborns, adults 65 years or older, and people with weakened immune systems are at higher risk for severe illness. Listeria infections during pregnancy can lead to miscarriage, stillbirth, premature delivery, or life-threatening infection of the newborn. People may experience headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance, and convulsions, in addition to fever and muscle aches. Big Olaf Creamery in Sarasota, Florida is contacting retail locations to recommend against selling their ice cream products until further notice. The CDC urged consumers who have Big Olaf Creamery brand ice cream at home to throw away any remaining product. The agency also asked to clean and disinfect any areas, containers, and serving utensils that may have touched Big Olaf ice cream products. People at high risk who have symptoms of a Listeria infection, especially those who have recently traveled to Florida, are asked to talk to their healthcare provider. 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.
A police officer carries out a sobriety test on a driver in Yeongdeungpo District, Seoul, in this photo taken in 2019. The photo above is unrelated to the article. Korea Times photo by Oh Dae-geun



By Lee Hyo-jin



A United States Forces Korea (USFK) service member is under investigation by local police for allegedly causing an accident while driving a motorcycle under the influence of alcohol, according to the law enforcement authorities, Tuesday.



Pyeongtaek Police Station in Gyeonggi Province said a 37-year-old male sergeant, whose identity has been withheld, is accused of driving under the influence at the time of the accident. He crashed his motorcycle into a Kia Sorento at a three-way intersection near Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek at around 7:40 p.m., Sunday.



The sergeant left the scene of the collision, leaving his motorcycle behind. The Sorento driver reportedly suffered minor injuries.



After police arrived on the scene, they tracked the owner of the motorcycle through the license plate number and found that the vehicle belonged to a person on Osan Air Base.



The sergeant turned himself in at around midnight, shortly after local police launched a joint investigation with U.S. military police. His blood alcohol level at the time he turned himself in was 0.323 percent, well above 0.08 percent, which would qualify for the revocation of a driver's license.



The police turned him over to the USFK authorities under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) governing the legal status of American troops here. Under the SOFA rules, Korean authorities can detain a U.S. service member only on charges of serious crimes such as murder, rape, illicit drug trade or physical assault.



"We will investigate the allegation further in cooperation with the USFK. We plan to summon the suspect for questioning, but the date has yet to be settled," a Pyeongtaek police officer in charge of the investigation told The Korea Times. He declined to confirm further details or the circumstances because the investigation is ongoing.



The USFK authorities, for their part, vowed to cooperate with local authorities.



"The USFK remains committed to being good ambassadors and neighbors with our host nation. This type of alleged behavior does not represent our values or the respect we hold for Korean people or their culture," a USFK official said. "We take all reports of inappropriate behavior seriously, and are cooperating with the Korean police."



But the official declined to comment in response to The Korea Times' inquiry whether the sergeant was drunk driving while on duty.



This incident is not the first time this year an American soldier in Korea has been accused of alleged DUI offenses.



Earlier in April, a U.S. soldier in his 20s was accused of having crashed into about 10 cars and motorcycles parked in a residential area in Yongsan District of Seoul while drunk driving. In March, another USFK service member was involved in a DUI hit-and-run case in Pyeongtaek.


LONDON, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Hampshire Trust Bank (HTB) has today announced that it is relaunching HTB Syscap, the lender of short-term loans to professional firms and SMEs, following its acquisition of Wesleyan Bank in February 2022.

HTB Syscap's lending facilities help professional firms and SMEs to borrow money over the short-term in order to meet such costs as tax bills, with minimal impact to the firm's cash flow. With the predictability of fixed monthly payments, a loan from HTB Syscap will give firms greater control over their finances.

HTB Syscap will initially be offering two key lending facilities: short-term working capital loans and asset financing. The loans are designed to help legal firms manage their cash flow by helping to cover the costs of running a business, from paying tax liabilities to investing in larger purchases such as office equipment.

Key features:

Short-term working capital loans

Ideal for reoccurring annual expenses such as insurance premiums, Self-Assessment and Corporation Tax, VAT liabilities and practising certificates

Flexible terms available between 3-18 months

Quick and easy application process

Asset financing

Perfect for purchases such as computer and telecoms equipment, software, office equipment and refurbishment, vehicles and plant and machinery

Lending terms available between 1-5 years

Borrowers of both facilities will benefit from the security of a fixed rate of interest to ensure monthly repayments and competitive terms which can represent better value than using an overdraft facility.

Stuart Hulme, managing director at HTB, commented: "We are really excited about the relaunch of HTB Syscap, particularly at a time when small business groups are concerned that traditional lenders are pulling up the drawbridge for small firms.

"With this in mind, we are providing these two lending facilities so that professional firms and SMEs can gain a greater degree of control over their monthly outgoings by smoothing over the financial peaks and troughs throughout the year, enabling these hard-working small businesses to concentrate more of their time on the day-to-day."

John Clarke, head of sales at HTB Syscap, added: "We fully appreciate that busy professionals are time poor, which is why we put service at the centre of our proposition: our clients have access to a dedicated relationship manager who will guide them through the applications process and we'll typically obtain credit decisions within 48 hours."

"For existing clients looking to renew, they just need to advise us of their requirements, with no need to complete and sign additional documentation."

Notes to editors

Hampshire Trust Bank is a specialist bank, staffed by experts focused on helping UK businesses realise their ambitions. Our dedicated Asset Finance, Development Finance, Bridging and Specialist Mortgages divisions ensure that businesses receive the outstanding service, lasting relationships, integrity and expertise they need to prosper. We also provide savings accounts to individuals and businesses and since we lend only to businesses, our savers can be sure their money will be used to boost the British economy. The bank is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority.

For more information, please visit our website: www.htb.co.uk
Intelligent power management company Eaton today announced its involvement in a pan-European research and innovation project to deliver the integrated technologies and business models needed to support mass deployment of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

Supported by the European Union's Horizon Europe Research and Innovation program, the 9.87M ($10.41M) project will span four years to March 2026, its scope covering the entire electric vehicle charging value chain. The FLOW project consortium, which includes 24 external partners and six leading universities across Europe, will be led by the Fundacio Institut De Recerca En Energia De Catalunya.

Eaton's role in the consortium will involve further developing electric vehicle charging technologies, as well as demonstrating electric vehicle charging solutions, based on experience advancing its Buildings as a Grid approach to uniting the power needs of buildings and electric vehicles with on-site renewable energy generation.

The research and innovation focus will extend across vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) capabilities that enable more system flexibility; DC-DC charging (direct current to direct current) that yields both power quality and control benefits; and further work on Eaton's proprietary Buildings as a Grid Energy Management System that supports forecasting, optimization, and other essential services. To combine the various technologies into a complete solution, several Eaton business units will collaborate on the project-including the pan-European Eaton Research Labs team and the Eaton Center for Intelligent Power in Dublin, Ireland.

Stefan Costea, regional technology manager, Eaton Research Labs, said: "As electric vehicles grow in popularity across Europe, a comprehensive range of fully integrated charging technologies is urgently needed to support mass deployment and enable valuable new services. As a key partner in the FLOW project, we're thrilled to be developing optimal solutions for electric vehicle charging, V2G, V2X, and energy management. We will demonstrate these technologies at three test labs-at the Eaton European Innovation Center in Prague, at University College Dublin, and at the Fundacio Institut De Recerca En Energia De Catalunya, in Barcelona. Additionally, we will be supporting large scale technology demonstrations in Rome and Copenhagen with our energy management systems."

For the demonstrations in Prague and Barcelona, Eaton will be collaborating closely with Heliox, a market leader in fast charging solutions. University College Dublin and nearby Maynooth University will work with Eaton in Ireland, while RWTH Aachen University in Germany, will partner with Eaton in Prague on a techno-economic analysis of electric vehicle charging infrastructure use cases. In Rome and Copenhagen, Eaton will collaborate on energy management system interoperability with companies well-known for transmission and distribution: ENEL, Terna, and Areti, in addition to partners at Ricerca Sul Sistema Energetico and the Technical University of Denmark.

Tim Darkes, President, Corporate and Electrical, EMEA, Eaton, explained the context for Eaton's involvement in the FLOW consortium, saying: "Our work on integrating charging infrastructure into buildings is supporting the rapid move to electric vehicles as part of the energy transition and we're very proud to be investing heavily in the people, technologies, and programs to accelerate the global drive towards a low-carbon future."

Jorgen von Bodenhausen, senior manager, Government Programs, Eaton, also added: "We continually seek out opportunities to combine our global scale and expertise with that of world-class industrial and academic partners, thus magnifying our own innovation efforts. From building-in energy management, to DC-DC charging, our work on the FLOW project will help pioneer new solutions to accelerate the commercialization and mass deployment of electric vehicle charging infrastructure and create whole new value propositions for both companies and customers."

About Eaton

Eaton is an intelligent power management company dedicated to improving the quality of life and protecting the environment for people everywhere. We are guided by our commitment to do business right, to operate sustainably and to help our customers manage power today and well into the future. By capitalizing on the global growth trends of electrification and digitalization, we're accelerating the planet's transition to renewable energy, helping to solve the world's most urgent power management challenges, and doing what's best for our stakeholders and all of society.

Founded in 1911, Eaton has been listed on the NYSE for nearly a century. We reported revenues of $19.6 billion in 2021 and serve customers in more than 170 countries. For more information, visit www.eaton.com. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220705005048/en/

Contacts:

Nathalie Lapoirie

NathalieLapoirie@eaton.com
VINIA sales orders reached a record high of USD 947k representing 99% growth compared to Q2 2021 and 24% growth compared to Q1 2022

BioHarvest reiterates guidance for year-on-year sales orders growth of 2.5-3.5X to reach USD 5M - 7M

Started production of VINIA at new 20 tons/year facility enabling the scaling of VINIA sales and conversion of current 2 tons/year facility to Cannabis

Applied for the Cannabis production license in Israel

Unveiled the profile of its unique Cannabis composition triggering serious partnership discussions with several Cannabis Multi State Operators (MSO's) in the US

Vancouver, British Columbia and Rehovot, Israel--(Newsfile Corp. - July 5, 2022) - BioHarvest Sciences Inc. (CSE: BHSC) (OTC PINK: CNVCF) (FSE: 8MV) ("BioHarvest" or "the Company") today announced Q2 2022 sales orders of its flagship VINIA product reached a record high of USD 947k, representing 99% growth compared to the same quarter of last year and 24% growth compared to Q1 2022.

BioHarvest also had a strong quarter in R&D execution, highlighted by a May 12th announcement unveiling the profile of its unique Cannabis biomass composition produced in large-scale industrial bioreactors. BioHarvest also applied for a Cannabis production license in Israel. This quarter also saw the transition to the new 20Tons/year VINIA facility in Yavneh, Israel which will enable the further scaling of the VINIA business in the US in H2, 2022 and will deliver significant cost reductions over the next 12 months.

"Our strong Q2 results demonstrate our consistent growth and represent a validation of our major assumptions and performance so far," said CEO Ilan Sobel. "BioHarvest's strategy of growth remains well intact and its performance on all fronts validates its leadership in plant-based bio-technology."

Q2 sales orders in the US reached USD 376k (representing 460% growth over Q2 2021 and 21% growth over Q1 2022). The US sales metrics were extremely healthy and demonstrate steady improvement. For example, customer Average Revenue per Unit for the last 6 months was USD 229 compared to over the last 12 months at USD 198. The percentage of 3 month or greater subscriptions increased from 56% of the subscription mix in Q1, 2021 to 76% for Q2, 2022. In addition, VINIA continues to achieve a best-in class verified customer rating of 4.8 out of 5 with over 700 verified reviews, demonstrating a high level of customer satisfaction. These strong results were delivered through the 2nd quarter as the Company continued to manage US VINIA sales orders in line with production capacity constraints, which will be further alleviated early in the 2nd half of 2022 with the increased manufacturing scale of the new 20 ton/year facility, enabling increased inventory to flow through to the US market.

The Israeli market continued to demonstrate increased consumer adoption of VINIA and delivered USD 571k (39% growth over Q1 2021 and 26% growth from Q1 2022). Total Customers in Israel grew at a record 51% in Q2 2022 over Q1 2022. It is also noteworthy that June saw the highest ever "average spend per order" of USD 203.

The second half of the 2022 marketing plan includes the addition of influencer endorsements, customer referral programs and affiliate programs as well as a focused approach addressing key lucrative market segments such as the Christian evangelical market. Given the above marketing activity, B2B pipeline opportunities and the release of the VINIA manufacturing bottle neck, the Company is reiterating its 2022 sales orders guidance of USD 5M-7M representing a 2.5-3.5X growth over 2021.

"I look back with satisfaction at our achievements in H1 2022 and look forward with enthusiasm to H2 2022. The accomplishments of H1 2022 give me the confidence in delivering strong results in H2 2022 and to continue to fuel our growth engines, as I have articulated consistently several times to the market and to our investors." Sobel said. "I am equally satisfied and enthusiastic for how the unique, highly differentiated composition of our Cannabis is opening the doors for the partnership discussions with Multi State Operators in the US."

Q2 2022 Shareholder Update

BioHarvest invites all interested investors and media to the Q2 BioHarvest Shareholder Update at 2PM EST July 7th, 2022. The online meeting will be hosted by CEO Ilan Sobel and will feature a live Q&A session. Free registration to the event is available here:

https://app.livestorm.co/st-financial/q2-2022-bioharvest-sciences-shareholder-update?type=detailed

About BioHarvest Sciences Inc.

BioHarvest Sciences Inc. (CSE: BHSC) is a fast-growing Biotech firm listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange. BioHarvest has developed a patented bio-cell growth platform technology capable of growing the active and beneficial ingredients in fruit and plants, at industrial scale, without the need to grow the plant itself. This technology is economical, ensures consistency, and avoids the negative environmental impacts associated with traditional agriculture. BioHarvest is currently focused on nutraceuticals and the medicinal cannabis markets. Visit: www.bioharvest.com.

BioHarvest Sciences Inc.

Ilan Sobel, Chief Executive Officer

For further information, please contact:

Dave Ryan, VP Investor Relations & Director

Phone: 1 (604) 622-1186

Email: dave@bioharvest.com

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

YouTube

Forward-Looking Statements

Information set forth in this news release includes forward-looking statements that are based on management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions, and expectations, and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. There is no assurance that strong sales metrics experienced to date will result in future demand or that proposed additional marketing expenditures will result in increased sales. Markets for nutraceuticals are unpredictable and subject to changes in consumer tastes and trends as well as economic factors beyond our control. Delays and cost overruns may result in delays achieving our objectives obtaining market acceptance, and regulatory approvals for geographic expansion are subject to risk and cannot be guaranteed. There is no assurance that the Company sales revenue for 2022 will reach USD 5 to 7 million and there is no assurance that the Company cash flow breaking point will be achieved in 2023. There is no assurance of commercial availability of our Cannabis product in 2022 or that the Company achieves the conversion of the two tons VINIA facility to Cannabis production in 2022. These things are subject to construction and approval delays and uncertainties that may be beyond the control of BioHarvest. Projected sales of Cannabis will require the Company to obtain production and/or export licensing which cannot be assured.

All forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain and actual results may be affected by a number of material factors beyond our control. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. BHSC does not intend to update forward-looking statement disclosures other than through our regular management discussion and analysis disclosures.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/129989
Dave Regnery, chair and CEO of Trane Technologies (NYSE: TT), a global climate innovator, issued the following statement regarding the 6-3 ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States in the environmental enforcement case West Virginia v. EPA.

"The urgency to solve for climate change grows greater every day, and Trane Technologies has made it our purpose to boldly challenge what's possible for a sustainable world. With the recent Supreme Court ruling on climate, there is an even greater imperative for Congress to work in a bipartisan way to bring effective climate legislation forward. The technology to solve climate change already exists today we now need to scale it up and accelerate adoption. It will take industry, government, NGOs and citizens working together to protect our planet. We will continue to work closely with the White House and with lawmakers to help shape sound climate policy and legislation to build a sustainable future for generations to come."

About Trane Technologies

Trane Technologies is a global climate innovator. Through our strategic brands, Trane and Thermo King, and our portfolio of environmentally responsible products and services, we bring efficient and sustainable climate solutions to buildings, homes, and transportation. For more on Trane Technologies, visit tranetechnologies.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220705005296/en/

Contacts:

Media Contact:

Jennifer Regina

+1-704-712-5721

Jennifer.regina@tranetechnologies.com

Investors Contact:

Zachary Nagle

+1-704-990-3913

zachary.nagle@tranetechnologies.com
Collaboration Provides Added Level of Security to Highly Scalable Critical Infrastructure and Essential Business Applications

Senet, Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based software and services platforms that enable global connectivity and on-demand network build-outs for the Internet of Things (IoT) and Eclypses, a Boston-based leader in end-point data protection and developer of MTE technology, today announced a collaboration to provide advanced FIPS 140-3 validated security solutions to the IoT ecosystem.

Eclypses' patented MTE technology is designed to meet the needs of highly scalable, low-power, widely dispersed IoT end points, delivering an added level of security for critical infrastructure and essential business applications that require it. Utilizing the Eclypses Cryptographic Library (ECL), MTE uniquely delivers enhanced end-to-end security capabilities such as verification of each endpoint connection and uniquely protected data packets with no change to the user experience and minimal impact on system resources.

Through this collaboration, Senet customers can purchase Eclypses' enhanced digital security as an integrated element of Senet's network services. Eclypses also offers IoT device manufacturers the ability to enable their devices with MTE security at the point of manufacture or through a firmware update.

"Senet has a committed history of augmenting the already strong LoRaWAN security capabilities through integrations with world-leading security solution providers," said Bruce Chatterley, CEO of Senet. "With device and data security increasingly becoming a leading topic of discussion with utility, municipal, and large enterprise customers, we are pleased to be partnering with Eclypses to offer the latest innovations in security designed for highly scalable IoT solutions and environments."

Unlike other solutions that stop at monitoring, Eclypses takes a proactive approach to secure IoT data to the highest level in anticipation of all types of threats. Eclypses' layered security approach includes ECL (Eclypses Cryptographic Library), a FIPS 140-3 cryptographic library that provides consistent security for all offerings across all platforms; MTE (MicroToken Exchange), a Patented technology that uses ECL to randomize and replace data with random streams of values; and MKE (Managed Key Encryption), which uses ECL to randomly replace and encrypt data with single use encryption keys generated by MTE.

"With billions of IoT devices already connected and billions more due to be deployed in the next few years, having a well-defined security strategy is a must for device manufacturers, network operators, and end users alike," said David Gomes, COO of Eclypses. "Senet is an established leader in the LoRaWAN ecosystem and we're excited to be collaborating to deliver enhanced security options to one of the fastest growing segments of the IoT market."

For more information, schedule a meeting to visit Senet at LoRaWAN World Expo, July 6-7, 2022 in Paris or contact us at info@senetco.com or +1 877-807-5755.

LoRaWAN and LoRa Alliance are marks used under license from the LoRa Alliance.

About Senet, Inc.

Senet develops cloud-based software and services used by Network Operators, Application Developers, and System Integrators for the on-demand deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) networks. In addition to industrial and commercial applications, Senet has designed smart meter networks for many municipal water utility districts across the United States, representing millions of households. With a multi-year head start over competing Low Power Wide Area Network technologies, Senet offers services in over one hundred and eighty countries and owns and operates one of the largest publicly available LoRaWAN networks in the United States. Our disruptive go-to-market models and critical technical advantages have helped us become a leading connectivity provider with recognized expertise in building and operating global IoT networks. For additional information, visit www.senetco.com.

About Eclypses

Founded in 2017, Eclypses originated as a subsidiary of Secure Cloud Systems, Inc. with the primary focus of developing MTE cyber technology to be the most innovative and disruptive data security solution for all mobile application and website technologies. The patented MTE technology validated by FIPS 140-3 was developed through a technical team in Colorado Springs, CO, an innovation center for the evolution of this cutting-edge safety technology. With a focus on mobile, web, and IoT devices, this technology enables a higher level of security to protect against cyber attacks from intermediaries on products and applications that may have limited resources, such as battery life, processor, or performance. To learn more about Eclypses, visit www.eclypses.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220705005087/en/

Contacts:

Senet Contact:

James Gerber

Crackle Communications

508-233-3391

senet@cracklepr.com



Eclypses Contact:

David Gomes

Eclypses

781-223-5550

david.gomes@eclypses.com
MIAMI, FL / ACCESSWIRE / July 5, 2022 / Star8 Corporation (OTC PINK:STRH) announced today the sale of three of its subsidiary companies: Rari Nutrition, Vibe Holdings Group (Media Hawk) and Palm Nutrition. The companies will be reacquired by Sean Kelly and Chris Bosco, their original founders, effective immediately.

"As Star8 Corporation continues to establish itself as an specialist in the NFT market, we've made the decision to streamline our businesses, honing in our expertise on the NTF space," said Mario Diez, Chief Executive Officer of Star8 Corporation.

Rari Nutrition is known for developing a successful ecommerce business which introduced multiple products to the online market through Amazon and its website RariNutrition.com. Rari was acquired by Star8 Corporation in October, 2021.

Vibe Holdings is parent company to Media Hawk, full-service marketing agency that offers its services 100% contract free. For more information about Media Hawk, visit mediahawk.io.

Palm Nutrition is the creator of Healthy Greens, an organic super greens supplement designed to energize, detoxify and alkalize its users. Palm Nutrition was acquired by Star8 Corp., in early January, 2022.

Terms of the sales were not disclosed. To learn more about Star8 Corporation and its portfolio of subsidiary companies, please visit Star8Corp.com.

About Star8 Corporation

Star8 Corporation (OTC PINK:STRH) - a publicly traded holding company with expertise in technology, NFT experience, and eCommerce driven solutions. Additionally, Star8 Corporation provides sustainable marketing, technology, sales and distribution consulting for clients. To learn more about Star8 Corp. please visit Star8Corp.com.

For inquiries please contact: info@star8corp.com | 1-866-316-0808

Investor Inquiries:

Star8 Corp.

1-866-316-0808

Safe Harbor

Statements about the Company's future expectations and all other statements in this press release other than historical facts, are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The Company intends that such forward-looking statements be subject to the safe harbors created thereby. The above information contains information relating to the Company that is based on the beliefs of the Company and/or its management as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company or its management. When used in this document, the words "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "plans," "projects," and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company or its management, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the current view of the Company regarding future events and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including the risks and uncertainties noted. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove to be incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as anticipated, believed, estimated, expected, intended or projected. In each instance, forward-looking information should be considered in light of the accompanying meaningful cautionary statements herein. Factors that could cause results to differ include, but are not limited to, successful performance of internal plans, the impact of competitive services and pricing and general economic risks and uncertainties. The Company disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.

SOURCE: Star8 Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/707512/Star8-Corporation-Announces-Sale-of-Three-Subsidiary-Companies-Rari-Nutrition-Vibe-Holdings-and-Palm-Nutrition
The American Medical Association (AMA) has issued two unique Category III Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes for Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Cholangiopancreatography (QMRCP), CPT 0723T and CPT +0724T, otherwise known in the market as MRCP+, which can help clinicians assess patients with diseases of the biliary tree and pancreatic duct. Effective July 1, 2022, the Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued appropriate reimbursement for the MRCP+ procedure.

The new Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Cholangiopancreatography (QMRCP) which became effective on July 1, 2022, are:

0723T

Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Cholangiopancreatography (QMRCP) including data preparation and transmission, interpretation, and report, obtained without diagnostic MRI examination of the same anatomy (e.g., organ, gland, tissue, target structure) during the same session.

0724T

Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Cholangiopancreatography (QMRCP) including data preparation and transmission, interpretation, and report, obtained with diagnostic MRI examination of the same anatomy (e.g., organ, gland, tissue, target structure).

CPT 0723T has been assigned to APC 1511 New Technology Level 11, reimbursement range $900-$1000, effective July 1, 2022.

MRCP+ is an image analysis tool that enhances MRCP data to provide visualization and quantitative assessment of the biliary system. This tool reliably measures biliary anatomy, including bile duct diameters as well as total biliary volume. It allows for regional volumetric analysis of the biliary tree, the pancreatic duct, and the gallbladder.

Dr. John M. Vierling, MD, FACP, FAASLD, AGAF, Baylor College of Medicine, Texas, states, "Perspectum's MRCP+ analysis advance us from identifying MRCP as being consistent with PSC [Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis] or secondary sclerosing cholangitis in a patient with cholestatic liver tests to mapping the extent and caliber of all intrahepatic and extrahepatic strictures. He adds, "the software will significantly enhance the value of MRCPs and reduce the frequency of equivocal MRCPs that necessitate an ERCP [Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography]."

CPT codes are granted and regulated by the AMA CPT Editorial Panel and are widely used by government payers, including Medicare and Medicaid, along with commercial health plans to describe healthcare services and procedures for reimbursement. The release of these new codes represents a major reimbursement milestone as hospitals and imaging centers across the US will be able to submit claims directly related to the service. Ultimately, these new codes will provide millions of patients access to MRCP+ for noninvasive biliary tract assessment.

Dr. Elizabeth Fagan, Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, Rush Presbyterian, St. Luke's Medical Center, Chicago, comments, "MRCP+ is the first device to enable objective quantitative measurement of biliary disease. The AMA's issuance of CPT codes for MRCP+ -- and appropriate assignment of reimbursement by CMS -- are significant milestones in the path to providing patients with more precise diagnostics and better liver disease management. MRCP+ is uniquely positioned to improve patient outlook through quantifiable metrics."

Another major MRCP+ milestone took place during the 2022 International Liver Congress in London, England, when it was included in the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) Clinical Practice for sclerosing cholangitis. The guidelines reference MRCP+ as "a novel technique to automatically segment biliary anatomy and provide quantitative biliary tree metrics".

About MRCP+

MRCP+ is designed to support physicians in visualizing, evaluating, and reporting biliary structures. It provides quantitative metrics, which may help with diagnosis and management of patients with biliary diseases such as primary sclerosing cholangitis and primary biliary cholangitis. MRCP+ is part of Perspectum's software-as-a-service suite and provides information in easy-to-read reports delivered directly to the healthcare provider.

About Perspectum

Perspectum, a global medical technology company with offices in the U.K., the U.S., the E.U., and Singapore, delivers leading digital technologies that help clinicians provide better care for patients with chronic metabolic disease, multi-organ diseases and cancer. With a strong focus on precision medicine using advanced imaging and genetics, our vision is to empower patients and clinicians through quantitative assessments of health enabling early detection, diagnosis, monitoring, and targeted treatment. With a diverse team of physicians, biomedical scientists, engineers and technologists, Perspectum offers a way to manage complex health problems at scale.

For additional information, please visit: Perspectum.com, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220705005318/en/

Contacts:

Nellie Wild

VP Corporate Affairs

Perspectum

nellie.wild@perspectum.com
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 5, 2022) - Westmount Minerals Corp. (CSE: WMC) ("Westmount" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the completion of a soil sampling program on the Douay East property (the "Property"), located in the Abitibi region of western Quebec. A total of 1,016 samples were collected and have been delivered to Activation Laboratories Ltd. ("Actlabs") for Soil Gas Hydrocarbon ("SGH") analyses and interpretation.

The SGH geochemical exploration program is Phase 1 of a 2 Phase exploration program planned for 2022 and consists of 3 target areas on the property comprising 3 separate sampling grids. The targets are structures and structural complexities inferred from the interpretation of the 2021 high resolution airborne magnetic survey and which are assumed to be gold bearing based on historical drilling on the property as well as regional geological compilation. The Company anticipates receiving the results and interpretation report in early August and subject to identifying drill targets, anticipates a drill program to follow shortly thereafter.

David Tafel, CEO and Director of Westmount, commented: "Once we have received the sample results and interpretation of the SGH analyses we will be able to evaluate next exploration steps, which we believe should include an initial drilling program."

About the Douay East Property

The Property, acquired by Westmount in 2021, covers an area of 4,868 hectares and is located in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt ("AGB"), western Quebec. With over 100 years of mineral production, the AGB remains a very prolific gold mining district. The Property is located within the Casa Berardi Deformation Zone which hosts the currently producing Casa Berardi Gold Mine, past producing gold mines, and several active gold exploration projects. The Casa Berardi Gold Mine, located approximately 105 kilometres ("km") west of the Douay East property, has produced greater than 2 million ounces ("oz") Au, and has annual production of approximately 125,000 oz Au. The Property is contiguous to the west with Maple Gold Mines Ltd's property that hosts the Douay Project which contains an estimated 422,000 oz Au of indicated resources and 2,352,000 oz Au of inferred resources. The Vezza Gold Project, located approximateky 1.5 km from the northern boundary of the Property, contains an estimated 327,000 oz Au in the measured and indicated categories and estimated inferred resources of 68,500 oz Au.

About Westmount Minerals Corp.

Westmount is a newly listed company focused on gold exploration in Canada. The Company is focused on advancing the Douay East property to the drill stage and is evaluating other gold exploration opportunities.

Qualified Person

Jamie Lavigne, P. Geo, a Qualified Person as defined in NI43-101 has reviewed and approved the technical information in this press release.

For more information, please refer to the Company's prospectus dated February 14, 2022, available on SEDAR (www.sedar.com).

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

David Tafel

Chief Executive Officer and Director

For further information, please contact:

David Tafel

Chief Executive Officer and Director

(604) 683-1991

Forward-Looking Statements:

This news release includes certain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein including, without limitation, statements regarding the commencement of trading of the Company's common shares on the Canadian Securities Exchange, future capital expenditures, anticipated content, commencement, and cost of exploration programs in respect of the Company's projects and mineral properties, anticipated exploration program results from exploration activities, resources and/or reserves on the Company's projects and mineral properties, and the anticipated business plans and timing of future 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. Often, but not always, forward looking information can be identified by words such as "pro forma", "plans", "expects", "will", "may", "should", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", "believes", "potential" or variations of such words including negative variations thereof, and phrases that refer to certain actions, 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 market fundamentals will result in sustained precious and base metals demand and prices, the receipt of any necessary permits, licenses and regulatory approvals in connection with the future exploration of the Company's properties, that the COVID-19 global pandemic will not affect the ability of the Company to conduct the exploration program on the Douay East Project, the availability of financing on suitable terms, and the Company's ability to comply with environmental, health and safety laws.

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 statements. Such risks and other factors include, among others, statements as to the anticipated business plans and timing of future activities of the Company, including the Company's option to acquire the Douay East Project, the proposed expenditures for exploration work thereon, the ability of the Company to obtain sufficient financing to fund its business activities and plans, delays in obtaining governmental and regulatory approvals (including of the Canadian Securities Exchange), permits or financing, changes in laws, regulations and policies affecting mining operations, risks relating to epidemics or pandemics such as COVID-19, including the impact of COVID-19 on the Company's business, financial condition and results of operations, the Company's limited operating history, currency fluctuations, title disputes or claims, environmental issues and liabilities, as well as those factors discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Company's prospectus dated February 14, 2022, and other filings of the Company with the Canadian Securities Authorities, copies of which can be found under the Company's profile on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com.

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 except as otherwise required by law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/129951
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO / ACCESSWIRE / July 5, 2022 / Fortitude Gold Corp. (OTCQB:FTCO) (the "Company") declares its monthly dividend of $0.04 per common share payable on July 29, 2022 to shareholders of record as of July 19, 2022. Fortitude Gold is a gold producer, developer, and explorer with operations in Nevada, U.S.A. offering investors exposure to both gold production and dividend yield.

Dividends may vary in amount and consistency or be discontinued at the Board of Directors' discretion depending on variables including but not limited to operational cash flows, Company development requirements and strategies, construction, spot gold and silver prices, taxation, general market conditions and other factors described in the Company's public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

About Fortitude Gold Corp.:

Fortitude Gold is a U.S. based gold producer targeting projects with low operating costs, high margins, and strong returns on capital. The Company's strategy is to grow organically, remain debt-free and distribute substantial dividends. The Company's Nevada Mining Unit consists of five high-grade gold properties located in the Walker Lane Mineral Belt and a sixth high-grade gold property in west central Nevada. The Isabella Pearl gold mine, located on the Isabella Pearl mineralized trend, is currently in production. Nevada, U.S.A. is among the world's premier mining friendly jurisdictions.

Cautionary Statements: This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. If you are risk-averse you should NOT buy shares in Fortitude Gold Corp. The statements contained in this press release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. When used in this press release, the words "plan", "target", "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "intend" and "expect" and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements include, without limitation, the statements regarding the Company's strategy, future plans for production, future expenses and costs, future liquidity and capital resources, and estimates of mineralized material are forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based upon information available to the Company on the date of this press release, and the Company assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements.

Forward looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, and there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those discussed in this press release. In particular, the scope, duration, and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mining operations, Company employees, and supply chains as well as the scope, duration and impact of government action aimed at mitigating the pandemic may cause future actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by any forward-looking statements. Also, there can be no assurance that production will continue at any specific rate.

Contact:

Greg Patterson

719-717-9825

greg.patterson@fortitudegold.com

www.Fortitudegold.com

SOURCE: Fortitude Gold Corporation

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/707527/Fortitude-Gold-Declares-July-Monthly-Dividend




A 26-year-old man responsible for once running one of the world's largest child sexual abuse websites was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday for concealing criminal proceeds.







The Seoul Central District Court imprisoned Son Jong-woo, who had already completed an 18-month sentence for operating "Welcome to Video" and ordered him to pay 5 million won ($3,850) in fines.







Son was released in July 2020 after serving the prison term for running the website on the dark web, which was inaccessible by regular web browsers. More than 250,000 videos of minors being sexually abused were uploaded and sold to over 1.28 million users.







Two months before Son's release, his father filed a criminal complaint, accusing the son of hiding criminal proceeds. The move was aimed at preventing the son from being extradited to the United States, as Son had been indicted by a federal grand jury in Columbia.







Korea's justice ministry has since rejected a U.S. request for Son's extradition.







On Tuesday, the court found Son guilty of hiding about 400 million won that he had raised from selling child exploitation materials online by turning them into cryptocurrencies.







He was also convicted of using about 5.6 million won from the criminal proceeds for online gambling.







"The defendant made up his mind to conceal criminal proceeds from the moment he first began operating the child sexual exploitation website, and hid his proceeds through complicated transactions in a methodical and elaborate manner," the court said in a ruling.







Son was originally arrested back in March 2018, when the U.S. Department of Justice traced the exchange of cryptocurrency. Law enforcement from across the globe worked together to rescue at least 23 underage victims, and hundreds of people in a dozen countries were arrested for using the website. (Yonhap)








CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The euro fell against its major rivals in the European session on Tuesday, as natural gas prices climbed and Eurozone business growth slowed sharply in June, intensifying worries about a recession.



Final survey results from S&P Global showed that the eurozone private sector expanded at a slower pace in June as the manufacturing production logged its first fall in two years on one side and the weaker growth in services activity on the other.



The final composite output index fell to 52.0 in June from 54.8 in the previous month. The reading was slightly above the initial estimate of 51.9.



The services Purchasing Managers' Index dropped to 53.0 in June from 56.1 in May. The flash score was 52.8.



European stocks and German bond yields declined on concerns about a possible recession. The yield on the 10-year bund dropped to 1.299 percent.



The euro depreciated to 1.0280 against the greenback for the first time since December 2002. On the downside, 1.00 is possibly seen as its next support level.



The euro weakened to near 3-week lows of 0.8543 against the pound and 139.55 against the yen, easing from its early high of 0.8623 and a 4-day high of 142.37, respectively. The euro is seen finding support around 0.84 against the pound and 136.00 against the yen.



The euro touched a 5-day low of 1.6708 against the kiwi and more than a 7-year low of 1.3295 against the loonie, following its prior highs of 1.3423 and 1.6832, respectively. The currency may face support near 1.66 against the kiwi and 1.31 against the loonie.



The euro declined to 0.9925 against the franc, its weakest level since January 2015. The next possible downside target for the currency is seen around the 0.97 level.



The euro remained lower against aussie, after hitting a 5-day low of 1.5130 at 9:30 pm ET. The pair had closed yesterday's deals at 1.5176.



Looking ahead, U.S. factory orders for May will be released in the New York session.







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NORWALK (dpa-AFX) - Xerox has acquired Go Inspire, a UK-based print and digital marketing and communication services provider. Go Inspire serves customers throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Xerox said the acquisition supports the company's commitment to expand its Digital Services business and bring innovative solutions to the workplace. Darren Cassidy, UK & Ireland Managing Director and senior vice president, EMEA Global Document Services at Xerox, said: 'Go Inspire's capabilities will support the transformation of our transactional and direct mail services into multi-channel communications, accelerate growth in EMEA and create new avenues for us to help current and new clients.' 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.
BAODING, China, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On July 3, the GWM TANK held a brand conference in Saudi Arabia with its two star models, GWM TANK300 and GWM TANK500, which were officially unveiled to global customers.

The conference was held under the theme of "Limitless Experience". The TANK brand has created a new SUV category for global buyers. The brand also presented the audience with the brand attributes, including luxury, off-road mobility and intelligence.

"The TANK products will cover all commuting needs and satisfy users of different levels." said David Xu, General Manager of GWM Middle East Region.

"This being the first launch outside of China. It shows the acceptance of the Saudi market and the confidence GWM has in the success of this brand, " Mr. Faisal AI Quraishi, a senior representative of the local dealership, said.

At the same time, GWM TANK300 was officially opened for pre-order and another heavyweight model, GWM TANK500, was also unveiled to the public.

GWM TANK places a premium on luxury and comfort. Both models on the show adopt several sound insulation and noise reduction design schemes, which can allow users to enjoy a high quality of silence even in noisy environments. The seats also feature different user-friendly designs, such as the soft and delicate leather used for the seats in the high-end version of GWM TANK300.

The models of this brand also boast solid off-road capabilities. Both displayed models are equipped with a host of specialist off-road devices, such as electronically controlled mechanical differential lock for front and rear axles. When the vehicle is stuck on a potholed road and one of the wheels slips, the driver can use the electric button to lock the differential and get out shortly.

Intelligent off-road is another outstanding performance of this brand. Its products are manufactured based on the "GWM TANK Platform". The platform has three features, including powerful, intelligent off-road and highly reliable. Regarding off-road intelligence feature, both models are equipped with a Crawl Control System, which could give drivers an easier and safer driving experience. When the system is activated, the vehicle can automatically perform power control and braking. The driver only needs to control the direction of driving to pass the road safely and smoothly.

Currently, the GWM TANK has already been a popular choice in the Chinese market since its launch. According to the sales report released by GWM, the GWM TANK SUV already has a penetration rate of over 50% in the off-road segment in China after being launched about one year.

GWM plans to launch the GWM TANK500 in Saudi Arabia later this year. Both TANK models, GWM TANK300 and GWM TANK500 will be released successively in other global markets, such as Australia, South Africa, ASEAN, South America, to stir up continuous waves of "TANK Trend" worldwide.

Video - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1853422/Tank300_Final_B_2.mp4


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - On Tuesday, President Joe Biden will award the Medal of Honor to four U.S. Army Soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War.



First Lady Jill Biden will attend the ceremony, to be held at the White House at 11:15 AM.



The nation's highest military award for bravery, the Medal of Honor is awarded by the President in the name of Congress. For this reason, it is often referred to as the Congressional Medal of Honor. Since it was first presented in 1863, the medal has been awarded to 3,493 recipients.



Staff Sergeant Edward N. Kaneshiro will be honored posthumously. Specialist Five Dwight W. Birdwell, Specialist Five Dennis M. Fujii, and retired Major John J. Duffy are the other receipients of the Medal of Honor.



Kaneshiro will be recognized for acts of gallantry and intrepidity displayed while serving as an infantry squad leader with Troop C, 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, in Vietnam's Kim Son Valley on December 1, 1966.



Kaneshiro and his team entered the village of Phu Huu 2 while on a search and destroy mission and were attacked by North Vietnamese. The Staff Sergeant destroyed one enemy group with rifle fire and two others with grenades, which enabled the platoon to a successful withdrawal from the village. He served in Vietnam until his death on March 6, 1967, falling victim to enemy's gunshot.



Dwight W. Birdwell will receive the Medal of Honor for acts of gallantry and intrepidity while serving with Troop C, 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry, 25th Infantry Division, in Vietnam.



on January 31, 1968, Birdwell's tank commander was seriously injured in an attack. Under heavy enemy small-arms fire, Birdwell moved the tank commander to safety and fired the tank's weapons at the enemy force. Afterwards, he dismounted and continued fighting until receiving enemy fire to his face and torso. He refused evacuation and led a small group of defenders to disrupt the enemy assault until reinforcements arrived. He then aided in evacuating the wounded until he was ordered to seek attention for his own wounds. He currently practices law in Oklahoma City.



Dennis M. Fujii will receive the Medal of Honor for acts of gallantry and intrepidity while serving as crew chief aboard a helicopter ambulance during rescue operations in Laos and Vietnam during February 18 - 22, 1971.



During a mission to evacuate seriously wounded Vietnamese military personnel, Specialist Five Fujii's medevac helicopter took on enemy fire and was forced to crash land. Although injured, he repeatedly exposed himself to hostile fire more than 17 hours while observing enemy troop positions and to direct air strikes against them until an American helicopter airlifted him from the area. Upon completion of his tour, he joined the Army Reserve and today resides in Hawaii.



Major John J. Duffy will receive the Medal of Honor for acts of gallantry and intrepidity while serving as the senior advisor to the 11th Airborne Battalion of the Vietnam army in April 1972. He retired from the Army on May 31, 1977, and currently lives in Santa Cruz, California.







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Prominent Spain Brokerage Acquires Nova Mallorca Real Estate Agency

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, a global residential real estate brokerage network is pleased to announce, that Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Spain has acquired Nova Mallorca Real Estate, Palma de Mallorca's leading real estate company since 1969. This addition marks the brand's continued growth throughout Europe.

Formerly, Nova Mallorca Real Estate Agency, the brokerage will now operate as Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Nova Mallorca under the leadership of Jorge Forteza, serving as CEO and Co-Owner. Bringing more than 50 years of industry experience to the brand, the company will serve the luxury and residential market of Balearic Islands.

"Joining forces with one of the most renowned names in business and in real estate, we could not be prouder to now be operating as Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Nova Mallorca," said Jorge Forteza, CEO and Co-Owner, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Nova Mallorca. "This business initiative will allow us to provide an added level of international exposure to our clients and listings."

"Mallorca and its neighboring islands have long been favorite investment and vacation markets for many decades," said Christy Budnick, CEO, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. "We are excited to welcome Jorge and his team to the brand, instantaneously connecting them to more than 50,000 real estate professionals around the globe. The opportunities for current and future clients will be endless!"

By joining the network, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Nova Mallorca agents gain access to Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices' active referral and relocation networks, and its "FOREVER Cloud" technology suite, a powerful source for lead generation, marketing support, social media, video production/distribution and more.

The brand also provides an exclusive Luxury Collection marketing program for premier listings. Its Prestige Magazine showcases network members' premium listings with a strong lineup of feature stories covering topics that appeal to high-end real estate clients.

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Nova Mallorca has offices located in the Palma de Mallorca Metropolitan Area as well as in the prestigious Puerto Portals and is made up of over 20 multi-lingual real estate professionals with decades of experience.

"The luxury and residential real estate market in Spain are seeing strong demand," said Bruno Rabassa, Partner and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Spain. "People want, more than ever, to spend their time efficiently and live the life they want. Spain has a lot to offer to both locals, foreigners, and remote workers. With the demand, it was important our next business move was to align with the right team and Jorge and his agents will flawlessly serve the clients in this respected market."

For more information visit: bhhsmallorca.com

About Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Nova Mallorca

Formerly Nova Mallorca Real Estate, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Nova Mallorca has long been an undeniable leader in the market and is well known for its impeccable professional history and complete transparency and honesty. Made up of more than 20 multi-lingual experts with years of experience in the industry, the company has 2 offices on the island and serves the luxury and residential markets of Balearic Islands.

About Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Spain

Formerly, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices LARVIA, this real estate agency was founded in 2012 by CEO Bruno Rabassa. The Rabassa family has been involved in the development of real estate as Petrus Grupo Inmobiliario since 1964. Expansion plans with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services led them to acquire VA Property in Marbella in 2020 which they have since operated as Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Marbella.

This operation is part of the company's strategic plan to have offices all along the Spanish Mediterranean coast, in the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands, to lead the Spanish market in the next 10 years.

About Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices is a global residential real estate network with more than 50,000 real estate professionals and nearly 1,500 offices across 12 countries including, the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, the Middle East, The Bahamas, and India. In 2021, the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices global network represented more than $179.9 billion (USD) in real estate sales volume. The network, among the few organizations entrusted to use the world-renowned Berkshire Hathaway name, brings to the real estate market a definitive mark of trust, integrity, stability, and longevity.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220705005148/en/

Contacts:

Chelsea Freeman

PR Communications

+1 949 241 5239

chelseafreeman@hsfranchise.com


MOSCOW (dpa-AFX) - A U.S. think tank said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has likely directed his troops to take an 'operational pause' of the 'special military operation' after they captured the eastern Ukrainian cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.



'Putin met with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu on July 4 to discuss recent Russian gains in Luhansk Oblast and presented Colonel General Alexander Lapin and Major General Esedulla Abachev with the 'Hero of Russia' award for their leadership during the Lysychansk operation,' the Institute for Study of War wrote in its latest update on the war in Ukraine.



Russian forces have taken control of Lysychansk and a number of nearby settlements in the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine at the weekend.



With this, Ukrainian forces have lost control of the last city in Luhansk.



Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged the latest setback for his forces on the war front, saying that they were forced to leave the city as their lives were indanger in the face of incessant Russian artillery shelling.



Meanwhile, in a bid to bolster support to Ukraine, Japan on Tuesday extended its sanctions on Russia and its strongest ally Belarus. Tokyo announced that it will stop Russian gold imports, and suspend consulting and accounting services from both nations.



Addressing the forum on Ukraine Recovery in Lugano, Switzerland, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the Russian invasion of Ukraine has damaged the country's infrastructure worth more than $100 billion.







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Kudelski Group / Key word(s): Miscellaneous

Kudelski Security Launches Cyber Fusion Center in Spain to Address Rising Cyber Threats



05.07.2022 / 17:45





Opening of the new Madrid-based Cyber Fusion Center (CFC) follows four years of rapid European growth for Kudelski Security and rising customer demand for Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland and Phoenix (AZ), USA, July 5, 2022 - Kudelski Security, the cybersecurity division within the Kudelski Group (SIX:KUD.S), today announced the launch of a Cyber Fusion Center (CFC) in Madrid, Spain, led by an experienced team of specialized threat detection analysts and cyber response consultants. The additional CFC will amplify the reach and impact of the existing Cyber Fusion Centers based in Switzerland and the U.S., as well as provide a springboard for further growth in the European market.

The move follows four years of rapid European growth for Kudelski Security and a rise in customer demand for the company's unique approach to Managed Detection and Response (MDR). In 2017 Kudelski Security relaunched its cyber fusion center strategy, building a MDR platform from the ground up to deliver more meaningful outcomes for clients. The core value, as recognized by clients and industry analysts, is driven by contextualized threat detection tailored to the client's business, combined with a mix of proprietary and commercial technologies to monitor and disrupt attacks at progressively earlier stages.

"Since relaunching our CFC-based offerings and focusing on advanced MDR services, we have realized rapid and meaningful growth that has propelled our expansion across Europe and in the United States," said Andrew Howard, chief executive officer for Kudelski Security. "As we've grown, we continued to add cyber fusion centers. This allows us to hire cyber specialists closer to the client, providing local language and time zone advantages that improve our responsiveness."

The Madrid CFC is located in an existing Kudelski Group office and reinforces Kudelski Security's 24/7 MDR service that delivers broader visibility into threats and security gaps across IT, cloud, endpoints, and Operational Technology/ICS environments. In April 2022, the business launched MDR ONE, a turnkey solution, most suitable for cloud forward organizations who want the security-related outcomes of MDR with faster time to value and no upfront cost.

"Every month, increasing numbers of enterprises across Europe entrust us to protect their business and brand," said Carlos Alvarez, director of the Madrid CFC. "We are a growing company that thrives on innovation and are delighted that Spain is the site of our latest Cyber Fusion Center, not least because of the rich source of cybersecurity talent that the country is celebrated for."

Kudelski Security continues to earn industry recognition for excellence and was recently recognized in Forrester's Now Tech: European Managed Security Service Providers, Q1 2022 and in the Gartner Market guide for Managed Security Services (March 2022). Kudelski Security has also been recognized for five consecutive years in the Gartner Market Guide for Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Services (2017-2021)"

For more information about Kudelski Security's Managed Detection and Response Services, visit: https://kudelskisecurity.com/solutions/by-capability/managed-detection-and-response/.

About Kudelski Security

Kudelski Security is the premier advisor and cybersecurity innovator for today's most security-conscious organizations. Our long-term approach to client partnerships enables us to continuously evaluate their security posture to recommend solutions that reduce business risk, maintain compliance and increase overall security effectiveness. With clients that include Fortune 500 enterprises and government organizations in Europe and across the United States, we address the most complex environments through an unparalleled set of solution capabilities including consulting, technology, managed security services and custom innovation. For more information, visit www.kudelskisecurity.com.

Media Contact

Cedric Alber

Kudelski Group

Senior Director Public Relations

+41 79 647 61 71

cedric.alber@nagra.com

End of Media Release


Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - July 5, 2022) - Buffalo Coal Corp. (TSXV: BUF) announces, that that on July 4, 2022 the Company received notice from Investec Bank Limited ("Investec") that, on completion of the remaining administrative matters required to give effect to Belvedere Resources DMCC's ("Belvedere") acquisition of a majority stake in the Company, as announced by the Company on June 15, 2022, that Investec will exercise its rights to demand full repayment of all outstanding loans, together with all accrued interest and all other amounts accrued in terms of the Term loan and Revolving credit facility agreement ("the Facility Agreement") between the Company and Investec. As at June 30, 2022 the total amount owing to Investec amounted to R53,884,936 (approximately CAD4,244,516.41 using yesterday's Bank of Canada exchange rate), which amount is inclusive of royalties payable on sales generated by the Company's Magdalena bituminous mine.

The Company and Belvedere have been in discussions regarding a grace period within which the mandatory repayment under the Facility Agreement will occur and Investec has requested a proposal in this regard. The Company would need to rely on funding provided by Belvedere to settle the amounts owing to Investec, the terms of which have yet to be agreed.

About Buffalo Coal

Buffalo is a coal producer in South Africa. It holds a majority interest in two operating mines through its 100% interest in Buffalo Coal Dundee Proprietary Limited, a South African company which has a 70% interest in Zinoju Coal Proprietary Limited ("Zinoju"). Zinoju holds a 100% interest in the Magdalena bituminous mine, the Aviemore East anthracite mine and the Balgray and North Adit anthracite projects in South Africa. Buffalo Coal has an experienced coal-focused management team.

The Company has its primary listing on the TSX Venture Exchange and has a secondary listing on the Alternative Exchange, operated by the JSE Limited.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain forward looking information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation, which reflects the Company's current expectations regarding future events. Forward looking information is based on a number of assumptions and is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control, which could cause actual results and events to differ materially from those that are disclosed in or implied by such forward looking information. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update such forward looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange, nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the exchange), accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Ms Emma Oosthuizen

Chief Executive Officer

Email: emma.oosthuizen@buffalocoal.co.za

Phone: +27 342121455

Registered office:

Greytown Road

Industrial Area

Dundee

KwaZulu-Natal

3000

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/130035
Wood Dale, Illinois, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AAR (NYSE: AIR), a leading provider of aviation services to commercial and government operators, MROs, and OEMs, has been named "Outstanding Source of Repair" and ranked number one among all component source of repair (SoR) facilities for 2021 by the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) and the International Aerospace Management Company (IAMCO). Both organizations manage maintenance work for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This is the second time AAR has received this prestigious recognition in the last three years and the fifth overall.

AAR's Amsterdam facility has served IAMCO for two decades and earlier this year signed a 10-year extension of the component MRO agreement with IAMCO for support of the NATO E-3A Airborne Warning and Control (AWACS) fleet.

"AAR aims to provide the highest level of service possible. The honor of receiving this distinction from NATO confirms our success toward this goal and demonstrates that others recognize our value," said Maarten Willemsen, Program Manager, AAR Aircraft Component Services - Amsterdam. "We are extremely proud to provide repair services to the NATO AWACS program in support of their readiness."

"NSPA congratulates AAR Aircraft Component Services for being selected as the best SoR of 2021. This achievement highlights the dedication, skill, and professionalism displayed by AAR. We continue to be proud of the contribution of the AAR team to our AWACS program and look forward to our continued relationship," said Norbert Schneider, NSPA LW Program Manager.

"IAMCO congratulates the AAR Aircraft Component Services team for having been selected once again by IAMCO and NSPA as the best SoR of 2021. With this fifth award, AAR has demonstrated through the years that it is a consistently reliable and strong pillar for the NATO AWACS program," said Bernard Masuy, IAMCO Components Branch Manager.

For more information on AAR's Component Repair services, visit aarcorp.com/mro/component-repair/.





About AAR

AAR is a global aerospace and defense aftermarket solutions company with operations in over 20 countries. Headquartered in the Chicago area, AAR supports commercial and government customers through two operating segments: Aviation Services and Expeditionary Services. AAR's Aviation Services include Parts Supply; OEM Solutions; Integrated Solutions; and Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul.





About NSPA

As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's principal support agency, NSPA assists NATO nations by organizing common procurement and supply of spare parts, as well as by arranging maintenance and repair services necessary for the support of various weapon systems and their inventories.

About IAMCO

IAMCO is a multinational joint venture company founded in 1991. As an industrial prime contractor, IAMCO is responsible for management of collaborative efforts in depot-level maintenance of NATO's E-3A airborne early warning and control (AWACS) fleet, including the maintenance of engines and aircraft components.
President Yoon Suk-yeol tours a nuclear reactor factory owned by Doosan Enerbility in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, June 22. Korea Times file



Korea will expand its generation of nuclear power to 30 percent of its total energy creation by 2030 as part of efforts to boost energy security and better meet carbon neutrality goals, the industry ministry said Tuesday.



The Yoon Suk-yeol government has pledged to reverse the nuclear phase-out policy of the previous administration, rebuild the industry and support its expansion overseas.



The comparable figure came to 27.4 percent as of 2021.



According to the comprehensive energy plan announced Tuesday, the government will resume the construction of the Shin-Hanul No. 3 and No. 4 nuclear reactors, and continue operations of existing reactors, which is expected to increase the country's nuclear energy ratio to over 30 percent by 2030.



The government also seeks to export 10 nuclear reactors by 2030 and to earmark 400 billion won ($308 million) for the development of small modular reactors (SMR), according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.



The government will announce a plan on the right mix of renewable energy resources by the end of this year in an effort to achieve carbon neutrality, the ministry added.



Currently, Korea operates 19 out of its 24 nuclear reactors. The previous government had sought to decrease the number of plants in operation to 17 by 2034.



Korea has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from the 2018 levels by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050.



In an effort to strengthen energy security, the government vowed to increase the country's strategic reserves for major energy resources and to deepen international cooperation in a move to diversify its import channels of key industry items.



It will boost public firms' role in securing overseas resources while actively backing the private sector for their overseas resources development.



The government will push to set up a special law on the establishment of a "control tower" and an early warning system on the national energy security, according to the ministry.



"If the plans are implemented without a hitch, our dependence on imported fossil fuels is expected to be reduced to around 60 percent in 2030 from last year's 81.8 percent," the ministry said.



"Some 100,000 new jobs likely will be created in the energy sector by 2030, as the number of innovative venture firms will double to 5,000 by that time." (Yonhap)




On June 7, 2022 local time, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Jeenbek Kulubaev on the sidelines of the third "China+Central Asia" (C+C5) foreign ministers' meeting in Nur-Sultan.

Wang Yi said that China and Kyrgyzstan are friendly neighbors and will remain each other's neighbor. The two countries are linked by mountains and rivers geographically, share common security concerns and have complementary economic advantages. China supports Kyrgyzstan in maintaining political stability, social harmony and sustainable economic development, and has always been the most reliable and long-lasting strategic partner of Kyrgyzstan. China is willing to take the important consensuses reached by the two heads of state as the guidance and the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations as an opportunity to push forward the continuous development of bilateral relations.

Kulubaev said that the two sides have always treated each other with sincerity, and the maintenance of mutual benefit and friendship between Kyrgyzstan and China is the priority of Kyrgyzstan's foreign policy. Kyrgyzstan firmly pursues the one-China principle, opposes "Taiwan independence", and firmly supports China's legitimate position on issues related to Xinjiang and Hong Kong. The two sides are willing to work together to implement the important consensuses reached by the two heads of state and strengthen practical cooperation in various fields such as infrastructure, port throughput, local exchanges, health, pandemic response and others.

The two sides agreed to establish a mechanism of local communication and contact, study the issue of establishing additional ports, and ensure the continuous smooth flow of goods through the existing ports; advance the preparation for the construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, and complete the project feasibility study as soon as possible; establish cultural centers in each other's country; facilitate the exchange of personnel.

The two sides believe that China is the largest neighbor and trading partner of Central Asian countries and both sides have extensive common interests. The two sides will build and develop the C+C5 cooperation mechanism on the basis of consolidating bilateral mutual trust.

The two sides believe that countries in the region should work together to meet the challenges posed by the complex changes in international and regional situations, manage their own affairs properly, strengthen solidarity and coordination among neighboring countries and resist attempts to disrupt the region.

The two sides also exchanged views on the Afghan issue and others.
(A) to address and counter such influence and activities effectively, including through appropriate United States foreign assistance programs; and

(B) to hold accountable the Russian Federation and African governments and their officials who are complicit in aiding such malign influence and activities. SEC. 3. STRATEGY AND IMPLEMENTATION PLAN; REPORT.

(a) Strategy And Implementation Plan.Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State shall develop and submit to the appropriate congressional committees a strategy and implementation plan outlining United States efforts to counter the malign influence and activities of the Russian Federation and its proxies in Africa, including programs and other initiatives designed to (1) strengthen democratic institutions, improve government transparency and accountability, improve standards related to human rights, labor, anti-corruption initiatives, fiscal transparency, monitor natural resources and extractive industries, and other tenets of good governance; and

(2) monitor and report on Russian political influence and disinformation operations and the activities of Russian, Russia-connected, or Russian-funded private military contractors in Africa.

(b) Report. (1) IN GENERAL.Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, and annually thereafter for 5 years, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the heads of other relevant Federal departments and agencies as appropriate, shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees a report on the strategy and implementation plan required by subsection (a) and related efforts to counter the malign influence and activities of the Russian Federation and its proxies in Africa.

(2) ELEMENTS.The report required by paragraph (1) shall include the following: (A) An assessment of the scope and nature of the Russian Federations malign influence and activities and related diplomatic, economic, and security priorities and strategic objectives of such engagement in Africa, including influence and activities that involve Russian proxies, such as Russian oligarchs, Russian-funded private military contractors, and other individuals and entities directly or indirectly employed by or financially or politically associated with Russia and its officials, who are involved in or aid activities to, among other things (i) manipulate African governments and their policies, as well as the public opinions and voting preferences of African populations and diaspora groups, including those in the United States; and

(ii) invest in, engage, or otherwise control strategic sectors in Africa, such as mining and other forms of natural resource extraction and exploitation, military basing and other security cooperation agreements, and information and communications technology.

(B) A detailed account of United States foreign assistance and other initiatives developed and implemented during the preceding 3 fiscal years to address Russias malign influence and activities in Africa, including the objectives and details of planned programs and initiatives set out in the strategy required by subsection (a).

(C) An analysis of policy and programmatic limitations, gaps, and resource requirements to effectively counter Russias malign influence and activities in Africa.

(D) An overview of other initiatives and assistance programs funded by other international donors and partner countries to counter Russias malign influence and activities in Africa.

(E) An identification of African governments and government officials, Russian government officials, and other individuals and entities that have facilitated payments and other prohibited activities that benefit United States-sanctioned individuals and entities tied to Russia, including in violation of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (subtitle F of title XII of Public Law 114328; 22 U.S.C. 2656 note), the Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (Public Law 11544; 22 U.S.C. 9401 et seq.), Executive Order 14024 (86 Fed. Reg. 20249; relating to blocking property with respect to specified harmful foreign activities of the Government of the Russian Federation), and Executive Order 13848 (83 Fed. Reg. 46843; relating to imposing certain sanctions in the event of foreign interference in a United States election), and a detailed overview of United States efforts to hold such governments, officials, and other individuals and entities complicit in violating or facilitating the evasion of United States sanctions against Russia and its proxies accountable through sanctions or other restrictions.

(F) An identification of foreign companies and persons that have provided transportation, logistical, administrative, border crossing, or money transfer services to Russian mercenaries or armed forces operating on behalf of the Russian Government in Libya, and an analysis of whether such entities meet the criteria for imposition of sanctions under section 1(a) of Executive Order 13726 (81 Fed. Reg. 23559; relating to blocking property and suspending entry into the United States of persons contributing to the situation in Libya).

(3) FORM.The report required by paragraph (1) shall be submitted in unclassified form but may include a classified annex. SEC. 4. APPROPRIATE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES DEFINED.

In this Act, the term appropriate congressional committees means

(1) the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives; and

(2) the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate. Passed the House of Representatives April 27, 2022.




The ruling People Power Party (PPP) continued to ramp up pressure on high-level officials appointed by the previous Moon Jae-in administration, urging them to give up their positions for the incumbent government's stable operation.







In recent weeks, officials of the incumbent government and the ruling party have urged people from the previous administration to leave voluntarily. Last week, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo called for the head of Korea's key economic think tank, the Korea Development Institute (KDI), to step down.







On Tuesday, Rep. Kim Gi-hyeon, former floor leader of the PPP, joined the move. In a Facebook post, Kim openly urged minister-level officials and heads of state-run institutions appointed by the previous government to quit.







"The presence of people appointed by the previous government at public institutions and state-run companies  that should be helping the newly elected Yoon Suk-yeol administration  is substantially weakening its power to run state affairs," the lawmaker said.







Kim criticized the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) for pushing ahead with the appointment of these officials near the end of Moon's term and urged the appointed officials to have some "political morality."







PPP Rep. Park Soo-young also openly criticized the high-level officials, specifically mentioning Hong Jang-pyo, KDI president, and Jeon Hyun-Heui, chairperson of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission.







In a Facebook post updated Tuesday, Park stressed that refusing to resign can be seen as "disobeying" the results of the presidential election.







"It is political greed to not make it possible for the president, elected by the people's wish, to play his role," Park wrote.







The PPP also took issue with the main opposition's recent move to create an internal commission, whose possible agenda includes reviewing whether the pressure on these appointed officials is fair.







In an internal party meeting, PPP Rep. Song Eon-seok said the DPK commission is mostly aimed at hurting the Yoon administration. (Yonhap)






Voters in Multnomah County will see a ballot measure this November that would expand voting rights to residents who arent U.S. citizens.

Last month, a group tasked with reviewing Multnomah Countys charter  effectively a local constitution  unanimously recommended adding language that would extend voting rights to more groups, including people who are not citizens.

If voters pass the measure, Multnomah County would be the first jurisdiction in Oregon to grant the right to vote in local elections to noncitizens.

The county would be one of only a handful of jurisdictions in the United States that allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. Eleven cities in Maryland, two in Vermont and San Francisco currently allow voting by noncitizens.

The Multnomah County Charter Review Committee was expected to vote on specific charter language for the recommendation during its meeting Tuesday, July 5. The county convenes a charter review committee, comprising 16 appointed residents, every six years.

Expecting controversy, committee members chose broad language for the charter amendment to maximize who could gain voting rights as well as to avoid potential legal troubles.

If we were to pursue one narrow declaration of who we would like to expand the vote to, if a court were to say, No, you cant do it that way, then theres not as much recourse to really move this idea forward, said Samantha Gladu, who helped draft the charter change and co-chairs the subcommittee that started discussions about it.

The language under consideration says the county shall extend the right to vote for county officers and measures to the fullest extent allowed by law.

At least one jurisdiction that tried to extend voting rights to noncitizens  New York City  saw the effort quashed by a court ruling. On June 27, a New York State Supreme Court justice struck down the measure approved by that city council last December, saying it violated the states constitution.

Noncitizens used to be able to vote

Juliet Stumpf, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School who studies immigration and criminal law, was skeptical about the concept of noncitizen voting at first.

I thought that (citizenship) was such a bedrock principle of our voting, Stumpf said.

She had an open mind about it because, she said, everyone who has a stake in the community should have a voice in the political system.

It wasnt until she and her students started researching the history of voting laws in Oregon and other states that she began to favor noncitizen voting.

Two of her students published an article in the Lewis & Clark Law Review last year that delves into the history of voting rights throughout the United States and makes a case for changing Oregon law statewide to allow voting by noncitizens.

Many states, including Oregon, allowed noncitizens to vote when they were founded. Racism and sexism were very explicit in the laws, Stumpf said.

Early Western states allowed noncitizens to vote as a way to encourage settling specifically by white European immigrants, the students found. In Oregon, white men who had resided in the state for six months prior to an election and declared an intent to become U.S. citizens could vote.

People have long applied measures of groups contributions to society as a means to decide whether they should be able to vote, Stumpf said. Literacy tests and proxies of taxation such as property ownership or residency were common qualifiers historically.

Charter review committee members cited multiple reasons for expanding voting rights, including reducing taxation without representation.

Undocumented people in Multnomah County pay an estimated $19 million in state and local taxes annually, according to a report by the Oregon Center for Public Policy. About half of those taxes are property taxes and the other half are income taxes and excise taxes on goods like gas and alcohol, the report shows.

Undocumented people arent eligible to access many of the social services to which they contribute, however. They cant access Social Security, Medicare, the Oregon Health Plan after age 18, federal food assistance programs, and state and federal earned income tax credits, among others, the report states.

Oregonians voted overwhelmingly  80%  in favor of eliminating noncitizen voting in 1914. The precise motivations are unclear, according to Stumpfs students, because legislative records from that time dont exist. But with the passage of a subsequent measure in 1916 that disenfranchised African, Asian and Native Americans in Oregon, the students concluded that racism and xenophobia were the only explanation.

Xenophobia in the leadup to World War I was apparent in other states reasons to eliminate noncitizen voting at the time, the students noted.

Realizing that citizenship as a prerequisite to voting hadnt been enshrined in the original constitution and that the change to barring noncitizens from voting had real racial and class-related foundations, I found that very troubling, Stumpf said. The advantages to noncitizen voting really stood out to me.

Legal challenges

Granting voting rights to noncitizens likely will face substantial legal barriers, Katherine Thomas, assistant Multnomah County attorney, told committee members in March.

First, Oregons constitution requires citizenship for voting. State statutes related to voting refer to citizenship requirements, including one that says state voter registration cards must indicate a person is a U.S. citizen.

Ultimately, its untested, Thomas said. Im not aware that there is a local jurisdiction that has expanded voting to noncitizens. We dont know how a court would necessarily treat that kind of proposal if it was challenged in court.

The committee will present by Aug, 4 all of its recommended charter changes to the county board, which files the ballot title and other information with the elections division. Any ballot title challenges must be resolved by Sept. 8 to appear on the ballot for the Nov. 8 election.

If the measure passes, county staff would consult with the board about how to implement an expansion of voting rights, said Ryan Yambra, spokesperson for the county.

The committee also researched whether minors and people currently prohibited from voting because theyre serving a sentence for a felony conviction could gain voting rights.

The committee expects that the county will explore every possible avenue to expand local voting access, Yambra said. The details of implementation would depend on a variety of factors, and so we can't say at this time whether or what board action might be required.

Noncitizen residents include multiple groups, such as temporary residents with certain visas, permanent residents who hold green cards and undocumented immigrants.

Tens of thousands of people in Multnomah County could be granted the right to vote if the measure passes. Seven percent of the countys population  or more than 56,000 people  are noncitizen residents, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureaus 2021 American Community Survey. An estimated 25,000 residents are undocumented, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

The recommendation has received support from the Portland-based nonprofit Coalition of Communities of Color.

The decisions of elected representatives impact every resident, regardless of whether they are eligible to vote, Sol Mora, community engagement manager for the nonprofit, wrote in a letter to the committee. This reform to expand our democracy will have a meaningful and lasting impact on communities across Multnomah County to feel that they belong and have a seat at the decision-making table.
President Yoon Suk-yeol and first lady Kim Keon-hee eat popcorn at a theater in Seongdong District, Seoul to watch the award-winning movie, "Broker," on June 12. Courtesy of the presidential office





By Lee Yeon-woo







A civic group established to protect taxpayers' rights has filed a request with the presidential office to disclose details of its expenses since President Yoon Suk-yeol took office on May 10.







The four points of information the Korea Taxpayer Association (KTA) requested to make public are the following: special activity expenses that have been used since Yoon was sworn in as president by their dates, amount, purposes, those who received them and payment methods; operating expenses during the time period; money spent for the presidential couple's dinner at the Michelin starred restaurant, Gaon, in Seoul's posh Cheongdam-dong area on May 13; and the total amount of money used on June 12 when the presidential couple watched a movie at a theater in Seongdong District, Seoul.







"We expect that the presidential office will fully cooperate with our request, as they had said earlier that they would look into how the previous Moon Jae-in government had responded to legal actions calling for the disclosure of information," the advocacy group said in a statement released on Tuesday.







An official had said on June 19 that the presidential office would take a close look at whether the Moon government had properly responded to the public's requests.







Kim Sun-taek, KTA president, noted that the transparent disclosure of information is one of the best ways to interact with the public.







"Maybe it is more important than the doorstep meetings with reporters President Yoon is having almost every day on his way to the presidential office in the morning," he said. "In this sense, whether the presidential office will follow our request or not can be a litmus test that proves whether President Yoon is genuine about his promise to strengthen his interactions with the people."







The KTA took legal action against the presidential chief of staff of the Moon Jae-in government to disclose details of special activity expenses that were used to see if some of the money were spent for then-first lady Kim Jung-sook's wardrobe budget. The district court ruled in favor of the advocacy group, ordering the presidential office to disclose details as requested. The presidential office appealed to the higher court and the case is pending there.







"I sincerely hope the current administration can decide to disclose the information. If not, we have plans to file a lawsuit against the presidential office," Kim said.


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PM must explain in detail his activities at law firm



Prime Minister Han Duck-soo recently caused a stir by submitting a "two-line report" about his activities at a law firm before taking his current job. On Monday, the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) took issue with Han's behavior. "The prime minister, who should have set the best example, handed in a poor report," ACRC Chairperson Jeon Hyun-heui said. Jeon criticized the statement Han submitted according to the law to prevent conflicts of interest by public servants enacted in May.



The ACRC head did what she should do. Premier Han received more than 2 billion won ($1.54 million) while working for Kim & Chang, Korea's largest law firm, for four years and four months before being nominated as prime minister. That also triggered controversy at his confirmation hearing at the National Assembly. It is an open secret that Korean law firms and large businesses recruit retired ranking officials with high salaries to use their influence in the government.



The new law aims to block officials' private interests from hindering their public duties. However, the first prime minister of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration defied the purpose of that law. He wrote just two lines  research and analysis of international trade environment and major countries' trade policies and counsel to associate lawyers  on a sheet of A4 paper. It is clearly impossible for the related officials to make any judgments about conflicts of interest from this statement.



Han's act also exposed loopholes in the effectiveness of the system. He sent the reports to a division director at the Office for Government Policy Coordination under his jurisdiction. How are mid-level officials supposed to require their superiors to supplement such statements? It is timely in this regard that some lawmakers have proposed an amendment to the law, obligating public officials to submit conflict of interest reports not to their agencies, but directly to the ACRC. Han's behavior shows that Korean government officials still have a long way to go before full transparency of their activities is reached.


Chinese, U.S. senior officials hold video talks over economic issues

Xinhua) 11:02, July 05, 2022

BEIJING, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chief of the Chinese side of the China-U.S. comprehensive economic dialogue, held a video conversation with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at the latter's request on Tuesday morning.

The two sides had a pragmatic and candid exchange of views on such topics as the macroeconomic situation and the stability of the global industrial and supply chains. Their exchanges are constructive.

The two sides agree that as the world economy is facing severe challenges, it is of great significance to strengthen macro-policy communication and coordination between China and the United States. And jointly maintaining the stability of the global industrial and supply chains is in the interests of both countries and the whole world.

The Chinese side expressed its concern about issues including the lifting of additional tariffs on China and sanctions by the U.S. side, and fair treatment of Chinese enterprises.

The two sides also agree to maintain communication.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
Korea, Japan should resolve historical issues



Business leaders of South Korea and Japan have agreed to work together to help the two countries mend their soured relations. During their annual meeting in Seoul on Monday, the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) and the Japan Business Federation, or Keidanren, adopted an eight-point joint statement that stressed the importance of bilateral economic cooperation.



The meeting was the first of its kind since it was put on hold due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It was held against the backdrop of prolonged disputes over historical issues, such as wartime forced labor and sex slavery. The resumption of the gathering is meaningful as the business leaders have committed to a deepening partnership between the two sides.



The leaders have urged both Seoul and Tokyo to lift export restrictions and expand personal exchanges by resuming a visa waiver program which was halted due to the pandemic. They have agreed to collaborate in helping the two countries strike a currency swap deal again to better cope with a potential shortage of foreign exchange reserves. Besides, they have promised to support Seoul's push to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) involving Japan and 10 other nations.



More importantly, FKI Chairman Huh Chang-soo and Keidanren Chairman Masakazu Tokura called on the leaders of the two countries to hold a summit at an early date to solve pending bilateral issues and restore economic ties. They also expressed hopes for the promotion of the spirit of the 1998 joint statement between then President Kim Dae-jung and then Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi which contributed to closer bilateral cooperation.



The declaration was lauded for ushering in better ties between the two nations as Obuchi sincerely apologized for the damage and pain Japan inflicted on Koreans during its 1910-45 colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula. If President Yoon Suk-yeol and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida advocate the declaration's spirit, they could pool their wisdom to improve the Seoul-Tokyo ties which have hit the lowest level since the 1965 diplomatic normalization.



In his meeting with Tokura, Yoon stressed the need for the two countries to build a future-oriented partnership. We hope Seoul and Tokyo will hold a summit sooner than later to discuss all thorny issues, bury the hatchet and move toward friendship. We urge Tokyo to ease its hardline stance that Seoul should first come up with solutions to the reparations issue regarding forced labor during World War II.



Korea has now launched a private-public consultative body to find a viable solution to the dispute caused by the Supreme Court's 2018 ruling that ordered Japanese firms to pay compensation to surviving Korean victims of forced labor. Japan needs to take a flexible attitude and cooperate in resolving the row. Otherwise, the two nations cannot seize the opportunity to heal the wounds of the past and move toward the future.


VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Golden Sky Minerals Corp. (AUEN.V) OTC (LCKYF) (the Company or Golden Sky) announces that subject to all regulatory approvals, the Company has granted 940,961 incentive stock options to directors, officers, and certain consultants of the Company. All Options issued pursuant to this grant shall vest immediately, have a term of 4 years and are exercisable at $0.20.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

John Newell, President and Chief Executive Officer

For new information from the Company's programs, please visit Golden Sky's website at www.GoldenSkyMinerals.com or contact John Newell by telephone (604) 568-8807 or by email at info@goldenskyminerals.com or john.newell@goldenskyminerals.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.
BEIJING, July 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Global Fly Ash Microspheres Market Size was valued at USD 3,496 Million in 2021 and is predicted to be worth USD 6,256 Million by 2030, with a CAGR of 6.9% from 2022 to 2030.



With the expansion in modern infrastructure projects such as long-span bridges, offshore platforms, super high-rise buildings, and underground structures, demand for high-strength concrete (HSC) has surged in recent years. It is widely acknowledged that enhancing concrete performance can extend the life of concrete constructions. HSC concrete is extremely strong and long-lasting. Porosity, no uniformity, and micro cracks in the interstitial spaces and concrete are minimized to achieve HSC. Many experts now feel that the use of reactive additional cementations materials such as fly ash, blast furnace slag, and silica fume is critical in the design of HSC.

Fly ash microspheres (FAM) are superfine fly ash particles that are precisely spherical and smooth. Fly ash microspheres are microscopic material spheres formed when coal is burnt in a power station. Fly ash, a byproduct of coal combustion, contains microscopic glass particles that aggregate into spheres during the cooling phase. These microscopic spheres can also be used to create concrete and polymers. Microspheres made from fly ash have also been employed in energy generation and automobile industries. FAM has considerably higher beginning activity than normal fly ash but significantly lower activity than silica fume. FAM can consume Ca(OH)2 produced by cement hydration, albeit at a slower pace than silica fume. However, in the early stages of a cementations system, FAM can significantly enhance hydration.

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Report Coverage:

Market Fly Ash Microspheres Market Market Size 2021 USD 3,496 Million Market Forecast 2030 USD 6,256 Million CAGR During 2022 - 2030 6.9% Analysis Period 2018 - 2030 Base Year 2021 Forecast Data 2022 - 2030 Segments Covered By Type, By Application, And By Geography

Regional Scope North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa Key Companies Profiled Ceno Technologies, BASF PLC, Durgesh Merchandise Pvt. Ltd, Indiacenosphere, Omya, Reslab Microfiller, UAB SUEK Baltic, Petra India Group, Vipra Cenospheres, Charah Solutions, Inc., Salt River material, and Duromar, Inc. Report Coverage

Market Trends, Drivers, Restraints, Competitive Analysis, Player Profiling, Regulation Analysis Customization Scope 10 hrs of free customization and expert consultation

Global Fly Ash Microspheres Market Growth Aspects

In the construction business, fly ash microspheres are commonly used. The fly ash microspheres industry is being driven by new applications and goods ranging from construction materials to autonomous industrial applications. However, the market is being driven by an increase in the number of customers for these materials in the various markets. The primary advantages of fly ash microspheres are reduced weight, longer filler stack, reduced viscosity, increased lubricity, decreased shrinkage, high fire insulation, and increased refractoriness. Furthermore, because of their compatibility with phenolic resins, polyesters, epoxies, thermoplastics, urethanes, latex, and plastisols, fly ash microspheres were initially used as extenders for plastic compounds. It also used in specialty cement, synthetic foams, and building materials such as coatings and composites, car bodywork, paints, hulls of marine craft, insulations, fire protection equipment, and sporting goods.

The key drivers anticipated to fuel market growth include increases in end-use sectors such as polymer, automobiles, recreation, construction, and power and technology. Fly ash microspheres, often known as Cenospheres, are hollow spheres made of alumina and silica with gas or inert vapor fillings that are produced as a byproduct of coal thermal power combustion. Fly ash is created when coal is burned in thermal as well as power plants. It is mostly constituted of inorganic nanoparticles such as silica and alumina. The coal used in power generating determines the composition and structure of fly ash. The primary advantages of particles are lower weight, increased fire insulation, improved filler stacking, reduced shrinkage, decreased viscosity, better lubricity, and improved refractoriness.

Besides that, thorough mixing and appropriate curing of concrete may be challenging in saline soil conditions. As a result, FAM holds great promise as cementations filler since it improves the strength, durability, and characteristics of concrete.

Check the detailed table of contents of the report @

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Global Fly Ash Microspheres Market Segmentation

The global fly ash microspheres market has been segmented by Acumen Research and Consulting based on type, and application. Based on the type, the market is divided into solid and hollow. Hollow fly ash microspheres held the largest market share in 2021 due to their low crushing strength, density, and absorption. Based on the application, the market is separated into ceramics, construction, recreation, plastic, energy and technology, and automotive. The construction category retained the greatest market share in 2021 due to increased demand for construction materials for cement and grouts, modern building equipment, and materials made of fly ash continue to be generated.

Global Fly Ash Microspheres Market Regional Overview

North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa are the regional classification of the global fly ash microspheres market. The Asia-Pacific region is predicted to be one of the world's largest and fastest expanding areas in the worldwide market due to the expanding building and construction industries. Large and established economies such as India, Japan, China, and South Korea are expected to grow even faster in the future years. China is the Asia-Pacific region's top user of fly ash microspheres, followed by India and Japan.

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Fly Ash Microspheres Market Players

Some of the prominent fly ash microspheres market companies are Ceno Technologies, BASF PLC, Durgesh Merchandise Pvt. Ltd, Indiacenosphere, Omya, Reslab Microfiller, UAB SUEK Baltic, Petra India Group, Vipra Cenospheres, Charah Solutions, Inc., Salt River material, and Duromar, Inc.

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United States, Rockville MD, July 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As per the latest report on niobium hydride by Fact.MR, a market research and competitive intelligence provider, the global market is valued at US$ 40 million and is expected to progress further at a CAGR of 5.4% over the 2022-2032 forecast period.



Steady market growth is attributed to increasing hydrogen gas demand, which has grown more than threefold since 1975. Also, the number of countries that are supporting investments in hydrogen technologies is increasing rapidly. Companies are directly supporting hydrogen production, with a majority of them focused on the transportation sector. Global spending on hydrogen energy and technologies, development, and demonstration by various national governments has increased in recent years, though it remains below the 2008 peak.

Manufacturers faced a lot of supply chain issues during COVID and production was halted; but the production of niobium hydride got back on track during the start of the third quarter of 2020 across European countries such as Germany, Italy, and France, as well as the United States. This cascaded the effect to the niobium hydride demand scenario.

Niobium hydride is widely used as a portable source of hydrogen gas. Global hydrogen demand is currently subjugated by ammonia production industries, and to some extent, by the refining industry also. Pandemic-related travel restrictions and policies in 2020 cut refinery runs, which decreased hydrogen demand.

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Demand for niobium hydride has increased rapidly over the recent past, primarily due to extensive implementation of hydrogen across several industries such as automotive, aerospace, and general metal manufacturing.

Major players have channelized their efforts towards the development of differentiated, efficient, yet diversified offerings to better cater to client requirements. Recent development in niobium hydride have shown promising outcomes and continue to do so, while product reliability, durability, and safety are exclusively enhanced.

The United States is already engaged in the hydrogen economy and technology, and firms have invested millions of dollars to create new revenue generation opportunities from hydrogen gas, majorly in the transportation sector.

Niobium is used in the creation of alloys, including stainless steel; basically, it improves the strength of alloys, particularly at a lower temperature. The Brazilian niobium hydride market is expected to expand at a CAGR of around 4.7% over the decade.

Key Takeaways from Market Study

Most countries are totally reliant on the import of niobium; two major producers of niobium are situated in Brazil and currently cater to 92% of the global demand.

The United States focuses more on artificial means of production for niobium hydride.

Niobium hydride is majorly used as a portable source of hydrogen gas and is mostly available in the powder form.

North America is projected to capture around 29.3% of the global niobium hydride market share by 2032 and be valued at US$ 19.9 million.

Europe is expected to provide an absolute dollar opportunity of US$ 7.3 million by 2032-end.





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Winning Strategy

To close the supply chain gap, niobium hydride manufacturers should focus on long-term contracts with niobium raw material suppliers. Key stakeholders are investing more in mergers and acquisitions of growing niobium manufacturers, which will eventually expand existing niobium hydride material production capacity.

American Elements, Ereztech LLC, and NEO are the top companies manufacturing niobium hydride.

Niobium hydride brands have established strategic partnerships with raw material suppliers to maintain their production capacity at plants, and this creates attractive absolute dollar opportunities for players operating in this business model.

More Valuable Insights on Offer

Fact.MR, in its new offering, presents an unbiased analysis of the niobium hydride market, presenting historical market data (2017-2021) and forecast statistics for the period of 2022-2032.

The study reveals essential insights on the basis of six major regions of the world (North America, Latin America, Europe, East Asia, South Asia & Oceania, and MEA).

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Chicago, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to MarketsandMarkets, the "Enteric Disease Testing Market by Technology (Traditional and Rapid), End Use (Food (Meat, Poultry, Seafood, Dairy, Processed Foods, and Fruits & Vegetables) and Water), Pathogen Tested, and Region - Global Forecast to 2026", The market for enteric disease testing is estimated at USD 1.8 billion in 2021; it is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.0% to reach USD 2.4 billion by 2026. The increase in global food production impacts the food enteric disease testing market growth by increasing the number of food safety controls in each step from raw material procurement till the product reaches the consumers.

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Consumers read about the number of outbreaks across the globe related to pathogens such as Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli which leads to a rise in concern about the source of the food and safety hazards that could be associated with its consumption. In addition to this, globalization has had a major impact on food supply worldwide and has increased the global import & export of food products and agricultural commodities. This has further increased the risk of unsafe food reaching consumers in distant markets due to instances of cross-contamination, exposure to microorganisms, and other contaminants. This again increase the market for enteric disease testing globally.



Browse in-depth TOC on "Enteric Disease Testing Market"

272  Tables

71  Figures

273  Pages



The salmonella segment by pathogenic to account for the largest growth in the enteric disease testing market.



The salmonella segment dominated the enteric disease testing market. The type is mostly found in meat, poultry, milk, and eggs. Undercooked meat and eggs or raw dairy products have been responsible for major outbreaks of Salmonella foodborne illnesses. Other transmission routes of Salmonella in humans include cross-contamination and direct person-to-person transmission via touch. The US Centers for Disease Control gets about 42,000 reports of Salmonella each year. It is found to be common in the summer than in winter, with actual cases estimated to be more than 1.2 million.

By end use, the food is projected to account for the fastest growth in the enteric disease testing market.



Unsafe food is estimated to cause 600 million cases of foodborne diseases and 420,000 deaths every year worldwide, according to WHO. Foodborne diseases majorly tend to cause by Salmonella, which is recognized and monitored as foodborne infections. Increasing transportation of food products such as meat, seafood which provides scope for various processes ranging from packaging, handling, storing and transportation, leading to food infestation. All these factors lead to an increased chance of contamination of the food which in turn boost the market of enteric testing disease in food segment.

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Rapid is projected to account for the fastest growth of the enteric disease testing market by technology over the forecast period.



Rapid technology in the food industry is used to monitor the count, type, and metabolites of microorganisms that lead to food spoilage, preservation, fermentation, safety, and foodborne pathogens. There is an increasing demand for rapid tests from food manufacturers to test an adequate number of samples in less time, thereby accelerating the supply chain activities. Further, rapid methods have higher accuracy, sensitivity, and ability to test a broad range of contaminants compared to traditional technology and simultaneously producing reliable results.

North America is projected to be the largest market in 2021 in terms of value.



North America is estimated to account for the largest share in the global enteric disease testing market worldwide, owing to a large number of food contamination cases caused by pathogens such as Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, and the increased number of foodborne disease outbreaks. Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has been implementing various regulations to certify and ensure the quality and safety of food from biological and chemical threats. The established laboratories have been carrying out definitive testing through designated reference laboratories to test for hazardous agents such as B. anthracis and C. botulinum toxins.

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The key players in this market include SGS SA (Switzerland), Eurofins Scientific (Luxembourg), Intertek Group plc. (UK), Bureau Veritas (France), Merck (US), Merieux (US), TUV SUD (Germany), AsureQuality (New Zealand), Microbac Laboratories (US), Romer Labs (Austria), Symbio Laboratories (Australia), and Neogen (US).



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Pune, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --  Personal Development  market research give industry status and trend report for forecast period of 2025 which offers a complete study on Personal Development market, standing on the readers viewpoint, providing comprehensive market information and penetrating insights. No matter the client is industry insider, possible participant or stakeholder, the report will provide beneficial information and statistics. Personal Development market research report presents a comprehensive overview, market shares, and growth opportunities of Personal Development market by product type, application, key manufacturers and key regions and countries.

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Researcher has been monitoring the personal development market and it is poised to grow by USD 557.89 mn during 2021-2025, progressing at a CAGR of 7.75%.

Market split by Mode, can be divided into: -

Online

Offline

Personal Development market covers the following areas:

Personal development market sizing

Personal development market forecast

Personal development market industry analysis

Market segment by Region/Country including: -

North America (United States, Canada and Mexico)

Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia and Spain etc.)

Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Australia and Southeast Asia etc.)

South America (Brazil, Argentina and Colombia etc.)

Middle East & Africa (South Africa, UAE and Saudi Arabia etc.)

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Leading players of Personal Development including: -

Dale Carnegie Training

Esalen Institute

Franklin Covey Co.,

Hay House Publishing

Landmark Worldwide Enterprises, Inc.

Nutrisystem Inc.

Omega Institute

SkillPath

Success Resources Australia Pty Ltd,

Toastmasters International

Key questions answered by this report include: -

Worldwide and Regional Market Size of Personal Development, and development forecast 2022-2025

Main manufacturers/suppliers of Personal Development worldwide, with company and product introduction, position in the Personal Development market

Market status and development trend by types and applications

Cost and profit status of Personal Development, and marketing status

The report provides a detailed evaluation of the market by highlighting information on different aspects which include drivers, restraints, opportunities, and threats.

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Detailed TOC of Global Personal Development Market 2021-2025

 Executive Summary

 Market Landscape

 Market Sizing

 Five Forces Analysis

 Market Segmentation by Mode

 Customer landscape

 Geographic Landscape

 Vendor Landscape

 Vendor Analysis

 Appendix

Exhibits

 1: Key Finding 1

 2: Key Finding 2

 3: Key Finding 3

 4: Key Finding 5

 5: Key Finding 6

 6: Key Finding 7

 7: Key Finding 8

 8: Parent market

 9: Market characteristics

 10: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition

 11: Market segments

 12: Global - Market size

 13: Global market

 14: Five forces analysis 2020 & 2025

 15: Bargaining power of buyers

 16: Bargaining power of suppliers

 17: Threat of new entrants

 18: Threat of substitutes

 19: Threat of rivalry

 20: Market condition - Five forces 2020

 21: Mode - Market share 2020-2025 (%)

 22: Comparison by Mode

 23: Online - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

 24: Online - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

 25: Offline - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

 26: Offline - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

 27: Market opportunity by Mode

 28: Customer landscape

 29: Market share By Geographical Landscape 2020-2025 (%)

 30: Geographic comparison

 31: North America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

 32: North America - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

 33: Europe - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

 34: Europe - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

 35: APAC - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

 36: APAC - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

 37: South America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

 38: South America - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

 39: MEA - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

 40: MEA - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

 41: Key leading countries

 42: Market opportunity By Geographical Landscape ($ million)

 43: Impact of drivers and challenges

 44: Vendor landscape

 45: Landscape disruption

 46: Industry risks

 47: Vendors covered

 98: Toastmasters International - Segment focus

 99: Currency conversion rates for US$

 100: Research Methodology

 101: Validation techniques employed for market sizing

 102: Information sources

 103: List of abbreviations

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Dublin, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Organic Food and Beverages Market by Product Type, Process, and Distribution Channel: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2022-2031" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The global organic food and beverages market size was valued at $187,485.6 million in 2020, and is estimated to reach $860,625.7 million by 2031, registering a CAGR of 14.9% from 2022 to 2031.



Organic foods are produced by organic farming, which uses natural fertilizers and traditional cultivation methods. The organic food and beverages market witnessed a remarkable growth globally in the recent years. Growing concerns towards health, adverse effects due to junk foods, and environmental concerns are underlying issues that drive market growth. The support of government policies and increase in financial assistance from private investors are factors the boost the market growth. The government programs such as National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) and National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP) play a significant role in the growth of the global organic food and beverages market.



Furthermore, the rise in awareness among the population regarding the benefits of the organic products, ill-effects of chemical pesticides in farming, and rise in consciousness regarding the deteriorating environmental concerns plays a prominent role to augment the demand for the clean labelled products. Farmers are shifting towards organic farming owing to the increased growth opportunities. The increase in health-consciousness stimulates consumers to spend more on healthy and good quality food products, which fuels the growth of the organic food and beverages market.



However, high costs of the organic food and beverages, stringent government regulations in the certification process, and high investments to get government approvals are the major restraining factors that are expected to hinder the market growth during the forecast period.



According to the organic food and beverages market analysis, the market is segmented based on the product type, process, distribution channel, and region. On the basis of product type, the organic food and beverages market is segmented into organic foods and vegetables, organic meat, fish and poultry, organic dairy products, organic frozen and processed foods, organic non-dairy beverages, organic coffee and tea, organic beer and wine, and other organic food and beverages. On the basis of process, the market is segregated into processed and unprocessed. On the basis of distribution channel, the organic food and beverages market is divided into supermarket/hypermarket, specialty stores, convenience stores, online sales channels, and others (food service, groceries, & others).



On the basis of region, the global organic food and beverages market is analyzed across North America (U.S., Canada, and Mexico), Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, and rest of Europe), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, and rest of Asia-Pacific), and LAMEA (Brazil, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and rest of LAMEA).



The key market players profiled in the report are WhiteWave Foods Co., Hain celestial Group, Inc., General Mills Inc. United Natural Foods, Inc., SpartanNash Company, Amy's Kitchen, Inc., Dean Foods Company, Starbucks Corporation, The Kroger Co., and Whole Foods Market Inc.



Key Benefits for Stakeholders

The report provides an extensive analysis of the current and emerging organic food and beverages market trends and opportunities

The report provides detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of the current trends and future estimations that help evaluate the prevailing organic food and beverages market opportunities in the market

The organic food and beverages market forecast is offered along with information related to key drivers, restraints, and opportunities

The market analysis is conducted by following key product positioning and monitoring the top competitors within the market framework

The report provides extensive qualitative insights on the potential and niche segments or regions exhibiting favorable growth

Key Topics Covered:



Chapter 1: Introduction



Chapter 2: Executive Summary



Chapter 3: Market Landscape

3.1. Market Definition and Scope

3.2. Key Findings

3.2.1. Top Investment Pockets

3.2.2. Top Winning Strategies

3.3. Porter's Five Forces Analysis

3.3.1. Bargaining Power of Suppliers

3.3.2. Threat of New Entrants

3.3.3. Threat of Substitutes

3.3.4. Competitive Rivalry

3.3.5. Bargaining Power Among Buyers

3.4. Market Share Analysis/Top Player Positioning

3.4.1. Market Share Analysis/Top Player Positioning 2020

3.5. Market Dynamics

3.5.1. Drivers

3.5.2. Restraints

3.5.3. Opportunities

3.6. Covid-19 Impact Analysis

3.7. Value Chain Analysis

3.8. Market Share Analysis

3.9. List of Value Chain Players

3.10. Competitive Heatmap

3.11. Regulatory Guidelines



Chapter 4: Organic Food and Beverages Market, by Product Type

4.1. Market Overview

4.1.1Market Size and Forecast, by Product Type

4.2. Organic Fruits and Vegetables

4.2.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

4.2.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

4.2.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country

4.3. Organic Meat, Fish, and Poultry

4.3.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

4.3.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

4.3.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country

4.4. Organic Dairy Products

4.4.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

4.4.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

4.4.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country

4.5. Organic Frozen and Processed Foods

4.5.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

4.5.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

4.5.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country

4.6. Organic Non-Dairy Beverages

4.6.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

4.6.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

4.6.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country

4.7. Organic Coffee and Tea

4.7.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

4.7.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

4.7.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country

4.8. Organic Beer and Wine

4.8.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

4.8.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

4.8.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country

4.9. Other Organic Food and Beverages

4.9.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

4.9.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

4.9.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country



Chapter 5: Organic Food and Beverages Market, by Process

5.1. Market Overview

5.1.1Market Size and Forecast, by Process

5.2. Processed

5.2.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

5.2.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

5.2.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country

5.3. Unprocessed

5.3.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

5.3.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

5.3.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country



Chapter 6: Organic Food and Beverages Market, by Distribution Channel

6.1. Market Overview

6.1.1Market Size and Forecast, by Distribution Channel

6.2. Supermarket/Hypermarket

6.2.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

6.2.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

6.2.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country

6.3. Specialty Stores

6.3.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

6.3.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

6.3.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country

6.4. Convenience Stores

6.4.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

6.4.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

6.4.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country

6.5. Online Sales Channel

6.5.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

6.5.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

6.5.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country

6.6. Others

6.6.1. Key Market Trends, Growth Factors and Opportunities

6.6.2. Market Size and Forecast, by Region

6.6.3. Market Share Analysis, by Country



Chapter 7: Organic Food and Beverages Market, by Region



Chapter 8: Company Profiles

8.1. Whitewave Foods Co.

8.1.1. Company Overview

8.1.2. Key Executives

8.1.3. Company Snapshot

8.1.4. Operating Business Segments

8.1.5. Product Portfolio

8.1.6. Business Performance

8.1.7. Key Strategic Moves and Developments

8.2. The Hain Celestial Group, Inc.

8.2.1. Company Overview

8.2.2. Key Executives

8.2.3. Company Snapshot

8.2.4. Operating Business Segments

8.2.5. Product Portfolio

8.2.6. Business Performance

8.2.7. Key Strategic Moves and Developments

8.3. General Mills, Inc.

8.3.1. Company Overview

8.3.2. Key Executives

8.3.3. Company Snapshot

8.3.4. Operating Business Segments

8.3.5. Product Portfolio

8.3.6. Business Performance

8.3.7. Key Strategic Moves and Developments

8.4. United Natural Foods, Inc.

8.4.1. Company Overview

8.4.2. Key Executives

8.4.3. Company Snapshot

8.4.4. Operating Business Segments

8.4.5. Product Portfolio

8.4.6. Business Performance

8.4.7. Key Strategic Moves and Developments

8.5. Spartannash Company

8.5.1. Company Overview

8.5.2. Key Executives

8.5.3. Company Snapshot

8.5.4. Operating Business Segments

8.5.5. Product Portfolio

8.5.6. Business Performance

8.5.7. Key Strategic Moves and Developments

8.6. Amy's Kitchen, Inc

8.6.1. Company Overview

8.6.2. Key Executives

8.6.3. Company Snapshot

8.6.4. Operating Business Segments

8.6.5. Product Portfolio

8.6.6. Business Performance

8.6.7. Key Strategic Moves and Developments

8.7. Dean Foods Company

8.7.1. Company Overview

8.7.2. Key Executives

8.7.3. Company Snapshot

8.7.4. Operating Business Segments

8.7.5. Product Portfolio

8.7.6. Business Performance

8.7.7. Key Strategic Moves and Developments

8.8. Starbucks Corp.

8.8.1. Company Overview

8.8.2. Key Executives

8.8.3. Company Snapshot

8.8.4. Operating Business Segments

8.8.5. Product Portfolio

8.8.6. Business Performance

8.8.7. Key Strategic Moves and Developments

8.9. The Kroger Company

8.9.1. Company Overview

8.9.2. Key Executives

8.9.3. Company Snapshot

8.9.4. Operating Business Segments

8.9.5. Product Portfolio

8.9.6. Business Performance

8.9.7. Key Strategic Moves and Developments

8.10. Whole Foods Market, Inc.

8.10.1. Company Overview

8.10.2. Key Executives

8.10.3. Company Snapshot

8.10.4. Operating Business Segments

8.10.5. Product Portfolio

8.10.6. Business Performance

8.10.7. Key Strategic Moves and Developments

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/d6mffb

Attachment
WINNEMUCCA, Nev., July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Paramount Gold Nevada Corp. (NYSE American: PZG) (Paramount or the Company) announced today that the permitting process cleared another major hurdle with the approval of the two most critical Baseline Data Reports (BDRs) related to key environmental aspects of its proposed Grassy Mountain high-grade underground gold mine, Ground Water and Geochemistry.



Paramount President and COO, Glen Van Treek stated: With the approval of these BDRs, the DOGAMI and all other participating agencies will shift focus to completing their review of the Companys most recent Consolidated Permit Application (CPA) to determine completeness, which is a key step in the approval process. The Company continues to work collaboratively with all state agencies to ensure a complete application. Once the CPA is deemed complete the state will initiate the Environmental Assessment, which incorporates all the 22 pre-approved BDRs plus the Cultural Resource Report, and will direct the permitting agencies to write draft permits.

On June 30, 2022, two separate public meetings were held by Oregon State regulators to approve the Geo-Chemistry and Groundwater BDRs as complete. The Oregon State Technical Review Teams (TRT) geo-chemistry sub-committee confirmed the completeness and accuracy of the geo-chemistry BDR and recommended it for approval by the full TRT. The full TRT, comprised of all agencies involved in the permitting process approved these two critical BDRs.

We continue to be encouraged by the level of support we are receiving from community stakeholders as evidenced by the State receiving no comments in either of the public review periods as part of the approval process for the BDRs, added Paramount CEO, Rachel Goldman.

More information about the permitting of Grassy Mountain is available on the DOGAMI website.

To stay informed of future press releases, subscribe to our E-Alerts Program and to learn more about our projects visit the projects section of our website.

About Paramount Gold Nevada Corp.

Paramount Gold Nevada Corp. is a U.S. based precious metals exploration and development company. Paramounts strategy is to create shareholder value through exploring and developing its mineral properties and to realize this value for its shareholders in three ways: by selling its assets to established producers; entering joint ventures with producers for construction and operation; or constructing and operating mines for its own account.

Paramount holds a 100% interest in four gold projects: Grassy Mountain; Frost; Sleeper and Bald Peak.

The Grassy Mountain Gold Project consists of approximately 8,200 acres located on private and BLM land in Malheur County, Oregon. The Grassy Mountain Gold Project contains a gold-silver deposit (100% located on private land) for which results of a positive Feasibility Study have been released and key permitting milestones accomplished.

Frost is comprised of 84 unpatented lode claims covering approximately 1,730 acres located 12 miles southwest of the Companys proposed high-grade, underground Grassy Mountain gold mine in Malheur County, Oregon (Grassy). An initial drill program is ongoing.

The Sleeper Gold Project is located in Northern Nevada, the worlds premier mining jurisdiction. The Sleeper Gold Project, which includes the former producing Sleeper mine, totals 2,322 unpatented mining claims (approximately 60 square miles or 15,500 hectares). The Sleeper gold project is host to a large gold deposit (over 4 million ounces of mineralized material) and the Company has completed and released a positive Preliminary Economic Assessment. With higher gold prices, Paramount has begun work to update and improve the economics of the Sleeper project.

The newly acquired Bald Peak Project in Nevada, consists of approximately 2,260 acres.

Safe Harbor for Forward-Looking Statements

This release and related documents may include "forward-looking statements" and forward-looking information (collectively, forward-looking statements) pursuant to applicable United States and Canadian securities laws. Paramounts future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans or prospects constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other applicable securities laws. Words such as "believes," "plans," "anticipates," "expects," "estimates" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although these words may not be present in all forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements included in this news release include, without limitation, statements with respect to the use of proceeds from the Offerings. Forward-looking statements are based on the reasonable assumptions, estimates, analyses and opinions of management made in light of its experience and its perception of trends, current conditions and expected developments, as well as other factors that management believes to be relevant and reasonable in the circumstances at the date that such statements are made, but which may prove to be incorrect. Management believes that the assumptions and expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable. Assumptions have been made regarding, among other things: the conclusions made in the feasibility study for the Grassy Mountain Gold Project (the FS); the quantity and grade of resources included in resource estimates; the accuracy and achievability of projections included in the FS; Paramounts ability to carry on exploration and development activities, including construction; the timely receipt of required approvals and permits; the price of silver, gold and other metals; prices for key mining supplies, including labor costs and consumables, remaining consistent with current expectations; work meeting expectations and being consistent with estimates and plant, equipment and processes operating as anticipated. There are a number of important factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to: uncertainties involving interpretation of drilling results; environmental matters; the ability to obtain required permitting; equipment breakdown or disruptions; additional financing requirements; the completion of a definitive feasibility study for the Grassy Mountain Gold Project; discrepancies between actual and estimated mineral reserves and mineral resources, between actual and estimated development and operating costs and between estimated and actual production; the global epidemics, pandemics, or other public health crises, including the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) global health pandemic, and the spread of other viruses or pathogens and the other factors described in Paramounts disclosures as filed with the SEC and the Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta Securities Commissions.

Except as required by applicable law, Paramount disclaims any intention or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this document.

Paramount Gold Nevada Corp.

Rachel Goldman, Chief Executive Officer

Christos Theodossiou, Director of Corporate Communications

844-488-2233

Twitter: @ParamountNV
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ultra Lithium Inc. (TSX-V: ULT, OTCQB: ULTXF, Frankfurt: QFB) (Ultra Lithium or the Company) announces that the Company as operator has signed a drilling contract with Niigaani Drilling Incorporated to carry out 2,095 metres of diamond drilling at the Georgia Lake Lithium Property. The Company owns a 40% interest in North Canada Lithium Corp. (NCLC) which holds the Georgia Lake and Forgan Lake lithium properties. In May 2022 the Company sold a 60% interest in NCLC to Yahua International Investment and Development Co., Ltd. (Yahua) and formed a joint venture with Yahua holding a 60% interest and Ultra Lithium holding a 40% interest in NCLC. (See news release dated May 10, 2022).



The exploration work will be carried out on the Jean Lake and the Georgia Lake claim blocks (see attached claim map Fig. 1) and is aimed at achieving the following objectives:

Confirm historic spodumene mineralization at depth on the Camp, Neimi, Giles, and Trans pegmatites in the Jean Lake and the Georgia claim blocks;

Provide the necessary geological and lithium oxide assays for the properties first in-depth economic study;

Define the strike length of each pegmatite following up to the 2016 and 2017 surface field work;

Collect core samples for metallurgical test work, these samples can be added to the surface mineralized lithium pegmatite samples collected during the last winter.

The Companys CEO, Dr. Weiguo Lang stated, The Company is now well funded and working closely with Yahua, as the Companys strategic partner. Yahua is a world leader in battery grade lithium hydroxide production and supply. By taking advantage of the Companys exploration expertise and Yahuas production capabilities in the hard rock lithium space and with the support of the local communities, we are at full strength to expedite the exploration work and move the Georgia Lake and Forgan Lake projects to the next level.

Forgan Lake First Nations Exploration Agreement

Ultra Lithium is pleased to announce that it has commenced the negotiation process for an exploration agreement between the Company, North Canada Lithium Corp. (NCLC) and Biinjitiwaabik Zaaging Anishinaabek (BZA) to further explore and develop the Forgan Lake Lithium Property in partnership with the community.

Forgan Lake Project

The Forgan Lake property consists of approximately 256 hectares land in 20 mining claims located in the Thunder Bay Mining District in Northwestern Ontario, Canada. It is located adjacent to the north of Ultra Lithiums Lucky Lake claim block comprised of 15 mining claims. The Company intends to start a summer 2022 work program on Forgan Lake which will include surface sampling and ground geophysical surveying. A drill program will commence as soon as permitting and community consultation is completed.

Highlights

Lithium mineralization is comprised of six spodumene-bearing pegmatites

Three 2019 grab samples showed lithium values of 6.93% Li2O, 6.90% Li2O and 4.88% Li2O

Historical exploration in the 1950s included 39 drill holes, aggregating 10,561 feet

Three historical channel cut samples returned average 2.57% Li2O over a width of 21 feet (6.4 m)

Two historical channel cut samples averaged 4.23% Li2O over 24.5 feet (7.46m)

Qualified Person

The technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Afzaal Pirzada, P.Geo., a qualified person, as defined by NI 43-101 who works as Vice President Exploration of the Company.



ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith, CFO

About Ultra Lithium Inc.

Ultra Lithium Inc. is an exploration and development company with a focus on the acquisition and development of lithium, gold, and copper assets. The Company holds a brine lithium property in Argentina, hard rock spodumene type lithium properties at the Georgia Lake / Forgan Lake area in northwestern Ontario, Canada, and a brine lithium property in the Big Smoky Valley, Nevada, USA. The Company also holds other gold and base metals properties in Argentina.



For further information, please contact the Company at:

Attention: Kiki Smith

Telephone: 778 968-1176

Email: kiki@ultralithium.com

Website: www.ultralithium.com

or view the Companys filings at www.SEDAR.com.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Some of the statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements and information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements and information can be identified by the use of words such as plans, expects, intends, is expected, potential, suggests or variations of such words or phrases, or statements that certain actions, events or results may, could, should, would, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements and information are not historical facts and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties beyond the Companys control. Actual results and developments are likely to differ and may differ materially, from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in this news release. 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, except as may be required by law.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulations Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d3b07766-4190-45fd-9f28-8cac8a0aa6b1
By John J. Metzler





Just a year ago, the political odds of comfortably neutral Sweden and Finland joining NATO were a long shot. However, Vladimir Putin's attack on Ukraine changed the military threat and jolted the political calculus. At last week's NATO summit in Madrid, both countries were fast-tracked to full membership in the North Atlantic alliance.







One of the tragic ironies of the Ukraine war has been Vladimir Putin's aim to keep NATO member states away from the Russian border. Ukraine's long-term intent to join NATO was seen as moving the frontier closer to Russia itself. From the Kremlin's viewpoint, this became an excuse and the principal trigger for the war, which they started on February 24th.







Now in a sweep of the cartographical pen, two major countries are joining the North Atlantic alliance. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said confidently, "If Vladimir Putin was hoping he would be getting less NATO on his western front as a result of his unprovoked, illegal invasion of Ukraine, he's been proved completely wrong, he's getting more NATOwe've already got two new members coming in, Finland and Sweden, a huge step forward for our alliance."







Previously, Russia only bordered the two small and very vulnerable Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia. Now Russia's frontier with Finland alone has expanded by 800 miles! Finland's move has prompted the usual huffing and puffing in the Kremlin but with no specific retaliatory threats.







Finland has a particularly sensitive history regarding Russia: having been a Grand Duchy since 1809, Finland would only gain its full independence in 1917. Yet in 1939, Stalin tried to seize large parts of the country; the Winter War saw tiny and outnumbered Finland fight Stalin's Red Army to a standstill before being eventually overwhelmed by the Soviets in 1940. The Finns learned a bitter lesson, and also lost the Karelia region, which is still occupied by Russia.







The term, "Finlandization," was a Cold War phrase describing the neutral, if not neutralized, status of Finland, a Nordic nation bordering the former Soviet Union. The term expressed the concept of a postwar buffer state between Soviet Russia and Europe. Finland is a rich and advanced country but it was also very aware of the terms of a 1948 treaty imposed by Moscow. Russia allowed this status as a convenient go-between for commerce and neutralist diplomacy.







Today Finland remains a prosperous nation inside the European Union. I recall being in its capital Helsinki some years ago to visit a city with many historical and architectural vestiges of Russia but with better food.







What will the new members bring to the table? Significant geography with its position near shipping lanes. Moreover, though having a population of only 5.5 million people, Finland's capable military packs a lethal punch. While its military only has 23,000 troops, the country's reserves number a formidable 900,000.







Sweden with a population of 10 million fields a military of 30,000 but a mere reserve of 34,000. Indeed Sweden has been neutral since the Napoleonic wars.







Both countries border the Baltic Sea/Gulf of Finland and can control the narrow straits where Russia's Baltic Fleet is based. Conversely, this situation is certain to raise concerns in Moscow about NATO's perceived "threat" to Russian shipping. Thus, the enlargement is not without risk.







NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg surmised it by saying, "We face the most serious security situation in decades. But we are rising to the challenge with unity and resolve."







Importantly NATO's new Strategic Concept adopted at the Madrid summit defines Russia as "the most significant and direct threat to the allies' security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area." The document states clearly, "The Euro-Atlantic area is not at peace  The Russian Federation's brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shattered peace in Europe."







Significantly NATO extends Article 5 defensive protection to new members. In other words, an attack against one is an attack against all 30 members of the North Atlantic alliance.







Regarding cost-sharing, NATO members have pledged to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense. So far, only 10 countries are actually doing so, with the U.S. spending 3.47 percent, Poland 2.4, and the U.K. 2.12. Greece, the Baltic States and Slovakia also meet the standard. Nineteen others haven't. Importantly, the United States still counts for approximately 70 percent of all member spending.







Jean Sibelius, the renowned Finnish composer, wrote the patriotic symphonic hymn, "Finlandia," an epic paean to his country, "This is my song, O God of all the nations, A song of peace, for lands afar and mine."







Finland and Sweden joining NATO leads to enhanced Nordic deterrence facing Moscow's next machinations.











































John J. Metzler ( jjmcolumn@earthlink.net ) is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of "Divided Dynamism: The Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China."
New production anticipated to bring IEC to cash flow positive operations

JAKARTA, INDONESIA AND DANVILLE, CA, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Indonesia Energy Corporation Limited (NYSE American: INDO) (IEC), an oil and gas exploration and production company focused on Indonesia, today announced that the company commenced drilling operations at the second of its two back-to-back producing wells. This well is named the K-28 well. The first of these two back-to-back wells, the K-27 well was completed as a discovery well in May 2022. first well is named the K-27 well). These wells are being drilled on the companys 63,000-acre Kruh Block located on Sumatra Island.

Drilling at K-28 commenced on Wednesday, June 22, 2022. K-28 has a target total depth of 3,400 feet, and it is expected to take approximately 45 days to complete all drilling operations.

As an update to the drilling plan timing for 2022, IEC plans to drill a third new well at Kruh Block which is anticipated to commence drilling in the in September 2022 timeframe, and likely a fourth new well sometime before the end of 2022. These wells are the continuation of IECs previously announced drilling campaign to complete a total of 18 new production wells in Kruh Block by the end of 2024.

If drilling is successful, in the K-28 well, is expected to average production of over 100 barrels of oil per day over the first year of production and will cost approximately $1.5 million to drill and complete. Based on the terms of IECs contract with the Indonesian government and an oil price of $90.00/barrel (which is approximately 20% below the most recent closing price for Brent), the well is expected to generate $2.4 million in net revenue in its first twelve months, which would be enough to recover more than the cost of drilling the well in the first year of production.

The Kruh Block is located on Sumatra Island where IEC is already producing oil from 5 existing wells.

Mr. Frank Ingriselli, IECs President, commented We are excited to have commenced drilling our second of two back-to-back wells and to aggressively take advantage of the current high prices for oil and move our company towards a potential cash flow positive position this year, setting the stage for further drilling and growth for our company in 2022 and beyond. We believe Kruh Block is a world class asset that should significantly grow our cash flow as we drill additional wells and seek to maximize returns on our investments and grow shareholder value. Additionally, our company is moving forward to aggressively set the stage to develop our potential billion-barrel equivalent natural gas Citarum Block, where the previous operator drilled a few gas discoveries."

About Indonesia Energy Corporation Limited

Indonesia Energy Corporation Limited (NYSE American: INDO) is a publicly traded energy company engaged in the acquisition and development of strategic, high growth energy projects in Indonesia. IECs principal assets are its Kruh Block (63,000 acres) located onshore on the Island of Sumatra in Indonesia and its Citarum Block (1,000,000 acres) located onshore on the Island of Java in Indonesia. IEC is headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia and has a representative office in Danville, California. For more information on IEC, please visit www.indo-energy.com.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

All statements in this press release of Indonesia Energy Corporation Limited (IEC) and its representatives and partners that are not based on historical fact are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and the provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the Acts). In particular, when used in the preceding discussion, the words "estimates," "believes," "hopes," "expects," "intends," on-track, "plans," "anticipates," or "may," and similar conditional expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Acts and are subject to the safe harbor created by the Acts. Any statements made in this news release other than those of historical fact, about an action, event or development, are forward-looking statements. While management has based any forward-looking statements contained herein on its current expectations, the information on which such expectations were based may change. These forward-looking statements rely on a number of assumptions concerning future events and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are outside of the IEC's control, that could cause actual results (including, without limitation, the future prices for oil and the anticipated results of IECs drilling and production activities and the impact of such activities on IECs results of operations as described herein) to materially and adversely differ from such statements. Such risks, uncertainties, and other factors include, but are not necessarily limited to, those set forth in the Risk Factors section of the Companys annual report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, filed on May 2, 2022, with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Copies are of such documents are available on the SEC's website, www.sec.gov. IEC undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release, except as required by law.

Company Contact :

Frank C. Ingriselli

President, Indonesia Energy Corporation Limited

Frank.Ingriselli@Indo-Energy.com
MELBOURNE, Australia, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The government scheme assisting SMEs through the coronavirus crisis is set to end but participating lender Liberty has pledged to continue supporting Australian businesses.

The government SME Recovery Loan Scheme established to support the economic recovery of businesses dealing with the impacts of COVID-19 will end on 30 June 2022.

Despite the scheme ending, leading non-bank lender Liberty says it will continue to support business owners to invest and thrive in the future with its competitive range of free-thinking business loans.

Liberty's Head of Communications Heidi Armstrong said: "Liberty has a proud history of providing tailored solutions to borrowers with a variety of financial circumstances. We'll continue striving to help businesses of all shapes and sizes secure the funds they need to thrive."

Having worked with business owners for more than two decades, Liberty has the expertise and resources to assess a borrower's financial strength using alternative means to provide out-of-the-box solutions where necessary.

Liberty's range of flexible business loans caters to the unique needs of business owners. With secured and non-mortgage secured business loans, Liberty has options for businesses requiring cash flow support.

By adopting a free-thinking approach, Liberty can also help those with lower credit scores to find the right loan. Recognising that no two borrowers are alike, Liberty takes the time to individually assess each loan application and focus on the big picture. For those who may not fit traditional lending criteria, this can have a significant impact on the success of their application.

"Whether they want to invest in staff, equipment, or inventory, businesses often need funding to reach full strength and continue to grow," Ms. Armstrong added. "With almost 25 years of experience providing tailored solutions, our goal is to make business funding more widely accessible."

A business loan can provide the funds a business needs to take that next step. And with a range of business loans available from non-bank lenders such as Liberty, there are more opportunities for businesses to rebuild and reach new heights.

Approved applicants only. Lending criteria apply. Fees and charges are payable. Liberty Financial Pty Ltd ACN 077 248 983 and Secure Funding Pty Ltd ABN 25 081 982 872 Australian Credit Licence 388133, together trading as Liberty Financial.

Contact

Heidi Armstrong

Group Manager - Consumer Communications

P: +61 3 8635 8888

E: mediaenquiries@liberty.com.au

Related Images











Image 1: Loans





Loans









This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

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Detroit, Michigan, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions, Inc., (OTCPK:AITX), today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary Robotic Assistance Devices, Inc. (RAD) has experienced its largest order intake month during June 2022.



Our sales team and dealer channel delivered great results in June, said Mark Folmer, President of RAD. Our direct efforts showed vast improvements with top-tier clients taking ROSAs, AVAs, SCOTs, ROAMEOs and even TOM, while our dealer partners really stepped up their demand for future ROSA and AVA deployments.

Unit orders for the month totaled 85 units. June 2022 is the first month of the Companys 2nd quarter of its fiscal year 2023.

June was probably our most active month to date, said Steve Reinharz, CEO of AITX and RAD. A healthy mix of eighty-five units placed on order, direct and through the channel. We exhibited at four conferences, conducted several client-requested demonstrations in the field. RAD ended the month hosting a remarkable panel discussion regarding our firearm detection solution. We have set the stage for an amazing fiscal quarter.

RADs parent company AITX intends to file for listing on the OTCQB within 10 days of filing its YE2022 10-K.

ROSA is a compact, self-contained, portable, security and communication solution that can be deployed in about 15 minutes. Like other RAD solutions, it only requires power as it includes all necessary communications hardware. ROSAs AI-driven security analytics include human and vehicle detection, license plate recognition, responsive digital signage and audio messaging, and complete integration with RADs software suite notification and autonomous response library. Two-way communication is optimized for cellular, including live video from ROSAs dual high-resolution, full-color, always-on cameras. RAD has published two Case Studies detailing how ROSA has helped eliminate instances of theft, trespassing and loitering at car rental locations and construction sites across the country.

AVA is a compact and stanchion mountable unit that provides an edge-to-edge 180 field of vision with advanced access control over gates and other controlled points of entry. AVA takes full advantage of the RAD Software Suite providing an ideal solution for logistics and distribution centers, storage yards, parking structures and lots, corporate campuses; anywhere that increased visibility is needed at a fraction of the cost. At ISC West in late March, AVA was named a winner of the 2022 SIA New Products and Solutions Awards in the category of Access Control Software, Hardware, Devices and Peripherals.

SCOT (Security Control Observation Tower) stands 7 tall and is capable of autonomously performing many of the tasks that a manned post would perform but at a fraction of the cost. SCOT can be positioned to monitor and record both human and vehicle activity in any environment, indoors or outdoors. SCOT includes the capability of initiating emergency calls to remote monitoring personnel with two-way audio and video communications. In the case of an imminent threat or actual emergency, the guest would push the units CALL SECURITY button. Immediately, they will be greeted by a remote monitoring officer who could then activate additional device alarms and dispatch local security personnel or law enforcement. SCOTs concierge and customer engagement features via its large web-enabled touch screen will provide timely and welcome information services to guests.

ROAMEO is a mobile security robot that is nearly 7 ft. tall and weighs over 700 lbs. ROAMEO is built to autonomously patrol a property or periphery and survey its surroundings, conducting routine patrols, recording, and reporting back to the central command center. The security robots dual 18.5 web-connected touch screens provide customizable information and concierge services for guests that it may encounter while on patrol.

Robotic Assistance Devices (RAD) is a high-tech start-up that delivers robotics and artificial intelligence-based solutions that empower organizations to gain new insight, solve complex security challenges, and fuel new business ideas at reduced costs. RAD developed its advanced security robot technology from the ground up including circuit board design, and base code development. This allows RAD to have complete control over all design elements, performance, quality, and the users experience of all security robots whether SCOT, ROSA, Wally, Wally HSO, AVA, ROAMEO, or RAD Light My Way. Read about how RAD is reinventing the security services industry by downloading the Autonomous Remote Services Industry Manifesto, and request a copy of the recently published Navigating the New Economy: Jobs & Automation, Challenges & Opportunities.

CAUTIONARY DISCLOSURE ABOUT FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements in this news release other than statements of historical fact are "forward-looking statements" that are based on current expectations and assumptions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the statements, including, but not limited to, the following: the ability of Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions to provide for its obligations, to provide working capital needs from operating revenues, to obtain additional financing needed for any future acquisitions, to meet competitive challenges and technological changes, to meet business and financial goals including projections and forecasts, and other risks. Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement(s) and/or to confirm the statement(s) to actual results or changes in Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions expectations.

About Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions (AITX)

AITX is an innovator in the delivery of artificial intelligence-based solutions that empower organizations to gain new insight, solve complex challenges and fuel new business ideas. Through its next-generation robotic product offerings, AITXs RAD, RAD-M and RAD-G companies help organizations streamline operations, increase ROI, and strengthen business. AITX technology improves the simplicity and economics of patrolling and guard services and allows experienced personnel to focus on more strategic tasks. Customers augment the capabilities of existing staffs and gain higher levels of situational awareness, all at drastically reduced cost. AITX solutions are well suited for use in multiple industries such as enterprises, government, transportation, critical infrastructure, education, and healthcare. To learn more, visit www.aitx.ai, stevereinharz.com, www.r adsecurity .com and www.radlightmyway.com, or follow Steve Reinharz on Twitter @ SteveReinharz .

###

Steve Reinharz

949-636-7060

@ SteveReinharz

Attachment
Vancouver, BC, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Trillion Energy International Inc. (Trillion or the Company) (CSE: TCF) (OTCQB: TRLEF) (Frankfurt: Z62) is pleased to provide an update on progress towards its multi-well SASB natural gas field development drilling program scheduled to commence August 2022.



The Company is pleased to announce that its 49% cost share for the drilling program is now fully funded, the Company having completed capital raises totaling CDN$ 40.4 Million (USD$32million) year-to-date.

Management believes the development is timely with natural gas prices reaching all-time highs. During June, prices hit a new high of USD $18 - $20 +/MCF. July prices are without change. In contrast, historical gas prices have been within the USD $6-7 /MCF range.

The Company is looking forward to commencing the drilling program imminently. To date, we have invested CND$5.4 (USD $4.2 million) for drilling tangibles such as: wellhead equipment, tubulars, casing, conductors etc. which are scheduled to arrive this month. The jack-up drilling rig is scheduled to arrive in August, upon which time inspection and maintenance will briefly occur. The shore base, in which consumables will be stored to be transported to the platforms, will be fully operational mid-July. The gas processing facility and pipelines are in good working order and no upgrades are required.

Seven production wells are expected to come online where work will continue until May 2023.

Arthur Halleran, CEO of the Company stated:

We are very pleased to be fully funded for our 49% share of the 7 well drilling program for SASB gas field at this time. The price of gas and demand is very high and we expect to show significant revenues as we ramp up production. We are also seeing strong revenue growth for oil at this time as prices increase.

About the Company

Trillion Energy is an oil and gas producer with assets in Turkey and Bulgaria. The Companys Turkish assets include interests in the SASB natural gas field, one of the Black Seas first natural gas developments and the Cendere oil field. In Bulgaria, the company holds a prospective unconventional natural gas property, the Vranino 1-11. More information may be found on www.sedar.com and our website.

Contact

Art Halleran: 1-250-996-4211

Corporate offices: 1-778-819-1585

e-mail: info@trillionenergy.com

Website: www.trillionenergy.com

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements and other information about this news release and the Company reserves

The accuracy of any resources estimate is a function of the quality and quantity of available data and of engineering interpretation and judgement. While resources estimate presented herein are considered reasonable, the estimates should be accepted with the understanding that reservoirs performance subsequent to the date of the estimate may justify revision, either upward or downward. Revenue projections presented in this report are based in part on forecasts of market prices, currency exchange rates, inflation, market demand and government policy which are subject to many uncertainties and may, in future, differ materially from the forecasts utilized herein. Present values of revenues documented in this report do not necessarily represent the fair market value of the resources evaluated herein.

This release contains forward-looking statements, which are based on current expectations, estimates, and projections about the Companys business and prospects, as well as managements beliefs, and certain assumptions made by management. Words such as anticipates, expects, intends, plans, believes, seeks, estimates, may, should, will and variations of these words are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements speak only as of the date hereof and are subject to change. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise or update any forward-looking statements for any reason. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements about the Companys prospectus listing on the Canadian Securities Exchange, the potential impact on the market for its securities, expansion and business strategies, anticipated growth opportunities, and the amount of fundraising necessary to achieve the foregoing. Such statements are not guaranteeing of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Accordingly, actual results could differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. These factors include unforeseen securities regulatory challenges, COVID, oil and gas price fluctuations, operational and geological risks, the ability of the Company to raise necessary funds for development; the outcome of commercial negotiations; changes in technical or operating conditions; the cost of extracting gas and oil may be too costly so that it is uneconomic and not profitable to do so and other factors discussed from time to time in the Companys Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including the most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent reports on Forms 10-Q, 8-K. For a full summary of our oil and gas reserves information for Turkey, please refer to our Forms F-1,2,3 51-101 filed on www.sedar.com, and or request a copy of our reserves report effective December 31, 2021 and or Prospective Resource report effective October 31, 2021.
New York, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- New York, New York -

London, July 5, 2022  Upflex, the premier global provider of hybrid workspace solutions, has agreed to a major commercial deal with Landmark Space, one of the UKs largest providers of flexible workspaces. The agreement sees Landmark become the first flex workspace operator to adopt Upflexs technology platform for the management of Landmarks on-demand offering and will enable seamless real-time bookings of desks and meeting rooms across the entirety of Landmarks space network.

The Landmark deal demonstrates how Upflexs unique platform not only enables enterprises to give the workforce instant access to on-demand flex workspace around the world, but also provides cutting-edge, tech-powered solutions to flex operators looking to optimise their own services in this new hybrid landscape, ensuring all key players in the new hybrid ecosystem  including occupiers and operators  have the technology and data to adapt and thrive in the new world of work.

Landmark is a leading workspace player with a 22-year track record in the market, operating serviced offices, coworking spaces and meeting rooms in 44 locations across eight major UK cities (including 26 prime central London locations) and servicing a total of 14,000 users.

The agreement with Upflex will enable Landmark to automate its booking capabilities to provide Landmarks customers with an easier, instant way to book and pay for workspace and meeting rooms, thereby enhancing the user experience of its rapidly increasing on-demand customer base.

The Upflex platform will also provide in-depth insights into member preferences and workspace demand through rich, actionable data analytics, allowing Landmark to react quickly and create new experiences and services based on emerging trends.

Christophe Garnier, Co-Founder & CEO of Upflex, commented: Our ground-breaking deal with a UK workspace provider as experienced, renowned and influential as Landmark is the natural next step for Upflexs growth. The deal demonstrates that, in addition to connecting occupiers with the largest flex network in the world, Upflex can also provide flex operators with the solutions they need to optimise their own operations. Automation is an increasingly vital component in engaging with customers, and our offering, equips flex operators large and small with the agility they need to succeed in the current landscape and aligns them with the new demands of hybrid work, from higher security and safety standards to the expectation of instant, on-demand access. We couldnt be more excited to be supporting Landmark in this way as we accelerate our expansion in EMEA.

Ed Cowell, CEO Landmark, said: Harnessing Upflexs innovative technology marks a step-change in how we can service our growing user base in a fast-evolving digital world. The flex work market is changing rapidly as hybrid work patterns become the new norm. Our goal is to become truly technology enabled to stay ahead of the curve and to enhance the experience of our members, who want to be more fluid in how they access our diverse range of workspaces. With Upflex, we can fully optimise our mix of dedicated and on-demand offering to meet the needs of whats now a much more distributed workforce, providing best in-class space as well as access to a market-leading tech platform. This will enable Landmark to fulfil its mission of becoming the number one provider of outstanding client experience in our industry.

The Landmark deal follows Upflexs $30m Series A funding round in May, which will significantly accelerate the start-ups growth. The Series A raise was led by WeWork with participation from notable strategic investors Newmark and Cushman & Wakefield as well as returning investor Ecosystem Integrity Fund, and top venture funds including GPO Fund, Coelius Capital, Industry Ventures, Inertia Ventures, Perennial Private Investments, and Silicon Valley Bank. This brings Upflexs total funds raised to-date to $34.1 million.

After forming an exclusive global partnership with WeWork in February, Upflex now provides on-demand access to more than 6,000 bookable locations  including WeWorks global network  spanning around 900 cities across nearly 80 countries as it continues to grow.

In recent months, Upflex has significantly strengthened its footprint in the fast-growing European hybrid work market with the acquisition of WorkClub and the launch of Upflex EMEA, its new European HQ in London and the appointment of Isobel McKenna to head up its UK and European expansion.

In Europe, Upflex has access to over 1,900 locations, while in the UK Upflexs network extends to over 500 locations across key regions, totalling more than 400,000 square feet of flexible, on-demand office space.

The Series A funding will see Upflex significantly accelerate its growth in the UK and Europe. Globally Upflex is targeting expansion by adding more than 200 new locations per month during 2022, of which around 100 are expected to be in UK and Europe.

The flex market in EMEA is expected to see accelerated growth on significant demand  as over 40% of occupiers anticipate increasing their use of flexible workspace and 63% of employees have a preference for a hybrid working model going forward (JLL). In the UK, the volume of flexible office space is predicted to double by 2023, compared with 2019 (Statista).

For media enquiries, please contact SEC Newgate on 020 3757 6890 or email upflex@secnewgate.co.uk.

About Upflex

Established in 2018, Upflex is a fast-growing, global proptech company offering a suite of SaaS solutions for the hybrid workplace. Upflexs all-in-one technology stands to become the flex industry standard, connecting occupiers, brokerages and flex space providers in one seamless ecosystem that champions flexibility and choice, and makes distributed work simpler, more cost-efficient, more sustainable, more scalable, and more secure. A technology-driven company, Upflex is built on the belief that the key to a better world of work lies in data. Their platforms provide users with rich, actionable workspace usage data to drive smarter workspace decisions, and greater efficiency overall, for companies, for the workforce, and for the planet.

Upflex acquired on-demand workspace aggregator WorkClub and launched Upflex EMEA, its new European HQ in London, in December 2021.

Upflex entered into a strategic and exclusive partnership with WeWork in February 2022. As the sole aggregator of WeWork inventory, Upflex and WeWork clients now benefit from enhanced optionality in workspaces as they aim to adopt hybrid work strategies.

The WeWork partnership means Upflex now provides on-demand access to more than 6,000 bookable locations spanning nearly 900 cities across 80 countries and continues to grow  including exclusive access to WeWorks global locations.

In Europe, Upflex has access to over 1,900 locations, with a particular focus on Germany (more than 630 locations), France (nearly 200 locations) and the Netherlands (over 50 locations).

In the UK, Upflexs network extends to over 500 locations across key regions, totalling more than 400,000 square feet of flexible, on-demand office space. Locations include London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as strategic locations in suburban areas nationwide.

In May Upflex completed its $30 million Series A round. The raise was led by WeWork with participation from notable strategic investors Newmark and Cushman & Wakefield as well as returning investor Ecosystem Integrity Fund, and top venture funds including GPO Fund, Coelius Capital, Industry Ventures, Inertia Ventures, Perennial Private Investments, and Silicon Valley Bank. This brings Upflexs total funds raised to-date to $34.1 million.

The Series A funding will allow Upflex to significantly accelerate its growth in the UK and Europe. Globally Upflex is targeting growth of more than 200 new locations per month during 2022, of which around 100 are expected to be in UK and Europe.

In addition to its exclusive partnership with WeWork, Upflexs network has more than 700 other flex operator members and is actively seeking further members in the UK, Europe and worldwide, as well as growing the Upflex EMEA team.

About Landmark Space

Landmark Space is a serviced office provider with 44 business centres in eight different cities across the UK, totalling over 1 million square feet. Landmark offers private offices, meeting rooms, Club Space, virtual offices and private floors. Having adapted and reformed its business model throughout the pandemic, Landmark has helped shape the debate on some of the most topical issues affecting the UKs commercial real estate sector, from the role of leaders in the office to dynamics of hybrid working. Landmark is supported by over 150 talented people and operates technology dedicated to helping teams and businesses grow. That is why Landmark flexible workspace is the chosen partner to over 14,000 clients, a number which is growing every day. The world of work is changing. Landmark is committed to making every working day matter for employees of businesses large and small and provides a refreshingly flexible approach to how businesses manage their workspace.

###

For more information about Upflex Inc., contact the company here:



Upflex Inc.

Kate Walquist

support@upflex.com

833 Broadway, New York, NY 10003


Sydney, July 05, 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/Belgium-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses/?utm_source=GNW





The preference among customers for bundled services has prompted the MNOs to revamp their strategies. By the end of 2021 about 46% of all triple play offers included mobile (compared to only 16.6% at the end of 2014).



In practice, MNOs must be positioned to offer fixed-line services, and the viability of mobile-only providers weakened some years ago. Proximus and Telenet (the latter owned by Liberty Global, and having more than 1.7 million fixed broadband subscribers and about 2.95 million mobile subscribers as of March 2022) are both well position to provide bundled services. Maintain its competitive position in this market was one of the key reasons for Orange Belgium to acquire VOO (which operates in the French-speaking part of the country) in late 2021, so enabling the operator to expand the reach of its bundled offers.



At the time of the deal, VOOs HFC network reached 1.8 million premises (offering data rates of up to 1Gb/s). Coverage in Wallonia was 99%, while coverage in Brussels was 34%. Under Orange, VOO has stepped up its investment in FttP infrastructure, and in mid-2022 it was able to expand the reach of its 1Gb/s service to a number of other towns across the country. VOO expected that by the end of 2023 of would provide a gigabit service to half of all premises in Wallonia, and across all of the Brussels region.





Key developments:





Orange Group acquires VOO, launches a 1Gb/s service in several municipalities;

Proximus acquires the MNVO Mobile Vikings, begins phasing out VDSL services;

Delayed 5G spectrum auction is completed, with two new entrants securing concessions;

Telenet sells its mobile towers infrastructure 745 million;

Orange Belgium launches 5G services;

Report update includes the regulator's market data updates and 2021 annual report, telcos' financial and operating data to Q1 2022, updated Telecom Maturity Index charts and analyses, recent market developments.



Companies mentioned in this report:





Proximus (Belgacom), Orange Belgium (Mobistar), BASE, Telenet, Lycamobile Belgium, Versatel, Interkabel, COLT, Scarlet, Tele2







Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Belgium-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses/?utm_source=GNW
Sydney, July 05, 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/Finland-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses/?utm_source=GNW

The country is also at the leading edge of developments on 6G research within Europe. These efforts have been supported by the government and telecom regulator, which have worked towards the EUs 2030 broadband targets. 5G services were available to about 82% of the population by the beginning of 2022, though geographic coverage was far lower given that the MNOs have focussed investment on the more densely populated areas of the country.

The country has also driven the fixed broadband migration from copper to fibre, in line with the emphasis on the provision of gigabit services. The number of fibre broadband connections continues to increase rapidly, supported by the collective efforts of smaller providers in municipalities, as well as the adoption of techniques such as micro-trenching, which dramatically reduce engineering costs.



This report assesses key aspects of the Finnish telecom market, providing data on the fixed network services sector together with an overview of important regulatory issues including interconnection, local loop unbundling, number portability and carrier preselection. The report also profiles the major operators and assesses the state of telecoms infrastructure and services. In addition, the report provides statistics and analyses on the mobile market, including key regulatory issues, a snapshot of the consumer market, the growth of mobile data services and the development of emerging technologies and networks.



Key developments:

Issue of 700MHz license covering the Aland Islands delayed to late 2022;

6G Finland set up to help direct efforts in 6G specifications and applications;

Telia completes sale of a 49% stake in its tower portfolio in Sweden, Finland, and Norway;

Revised Act on Electronic Communications Services come into force;

Elisa and Nokia achieve 2.1Gb/s uplink data rates on a commercial 5G network;

Auction for 26GHz spectrum concluded;

DNA upgrades core and regional networks for 5G services, launches 1Gb/s broadband service;

Report update includes the regulators market data update to December 2021, telcos financial and operating data to Q1 2022, updated Telecom maturity Index charts and analyses, recent market developments.



Companies mentioned in this report:

Telia, Finnet Group, DNA, Elisa, TDC Finland, Tele2, Digita



Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Finland-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses/?utm_source=GNW
GRAND BAIE, MAURITIUS, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alphamin Resources Corp. (AFM:TSXV, APH:JSE AltX)( Alphamin or the Company), a producer of 4% of the worlds mined tin1 from its high grade operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is pleased to provide the following operational update for the quarter ended June 2022:



Record quarterly tin production of 3 ,1 8 0 tonnes

Q 2 EBITD A 4 guidance of US $ 66 . 5 m

guidance of In terim dividend for FY2022 of CAD$0.03 per share declared

of declared Strategic Review update

Operational and Financial Summary for the Quarter ended June 20222

Description Units Actual Quarter ended June 2022 Quarter ended March 2022 Change Ore Processed Tonnes 112 569 105 565 7% Tin Grade Processed % Sn 3,65 3,73 -2% Overall Plant Recovery % 77,3 77,7 -1% Contained Tin Produced Tonnes 3 180 3 061 4% Contained Tin Sold Tonnes 3 229 3 336 -3% EBITDA3,4 (Q2 2022 guidance) US$'000 66 500 98 104 -32% AISC3, 4 (Q2 2022 guidance) US$/t sold 14 800 15 782 -6% Net Cash4 (Cash less debt) US$'000 138 100 129 775 6% Tin Price Achieved US$/t 35 500 43 834 -19%





1Data obtained from International Tin Association Tin Industry Review Update 2021 2Production information is disclosed on a 100% basis. Alphamin indirectly owns 84.14% of its operating subsidiary to which the information relates. Totals may not add due to rounding effects. 3Q2 2022 EBITDA and AISC represent managements guidance. 4This is not a standardized financial measure and may not be comparable to similar financial measures of other issuers.See Use of Non-IFRS Financial Measures below for the composition and calculation of this financial measure.



Operational and Financial Performance  Q2 2022

Contained tin production of 3,180 tonnes represents a quarterly record, 4% above the previous quarter. Underground mining and processing plant recoveries were in line with expectations. Year-to-date contained tin production of 6,241 tonnes exceeded the run-rate to achieve market guidance of 12,000 tonnes for the year ending December 2022.

AISC per tonne of tin sold is expected to decrease by 6% to US$14,800 following a 4% increase in production and the impact of lower tin prices on off-mine costs related to product marketing fees, royalties, export duties and smelter payables.

EBITDA for Q2 2022 is estimated at US$66.5m (Q1: US$98m) at an average achieved tin price of US$35,500/t (Q1: US$43,834/t). In addition to a higher tin price, the previous quarters sales volumes included a catch-up from delayed sales during Q4 2021.

The Alphamin consolidated Net Cash position increased by US$8,3 million during Q2 2022 to US$138.1 million. This increase is after a FY2021 corporate tax payment of US$43.5 million to the DRC government in April 2022.

Alphamins unaudited consolidated financial statements and accompanying Managements Discussion and Analysis for the quarter ended 30 June 2022 are expected to be released on or about 26 July 2022.

Interim FY2022 Dividend Declared

The Board resolved to declare an interim FY2022 cash dividend of CAD$0.03 per share on the common shares (approximately US$30m in the aggregate) (the Dividend). The Dividend will be payable on 5 August 2022 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on 22 July 2022. Dividend distributions will be considered semi-annually based on excess free cash after taking account of capital funding requirements, including for the new Mpama South expansion project

Strategic Review Update

On 9 November 2021, the Company announced the initiation of a strategic review to explore alternatives such as fast-tracking the Companys expansion and life-of-mine extension potential, balance sheet restructuring including revenue prepayments and streaming, shareholder distributions or a corporate merger or sale transaction.

The Company wishes to update shareholders and other market participants on this initiative:

Exploration drilling doubled from Q4 2021 to a quarterly average of over 12,000 metres and delivered an additional 124,700t contained tin in inferred Resource and 21,400t contained tin in indicated Resource at Mpama South. In addition, multiple high-grade tin intercepts were reported from drilling at depth at Mpama North. Mine development of the adjacent Mpama South deposit commenced, which is expected to increase annual contained tin production from the current 12,000tpa to ~20,000tpa, approximating 6.6% of the worlds mined tin, effective FY2024. Dividend distributions commenced in February 2022 (Final FY2021 dividend) and net cash increased from US$1m to US$138m during the 9 months ended June 2022. A strong balance sheet to support growth initiatives whilst achieving high dividend returns to shareholders is considered a robust value proposition. The Company is of the opinion that global tin supply is likely to remain constrained for at least the next five years while demand for tin is expected to increase. In addition to the development of Mpama South, the Companys vision is to discover more tin deposits on its license areas with a view to deliver additional mine developments and incrementally increase tin supply into an expected widening market deficit. At this point in time, the Company believes that an outright sale transaction would not deliver the future value it intends to unlock through ongoing resource development and production growth.





Qualified Person

Mr. Clive Brown, Pr. Eng., B.Sc. Engineering (Mining), is a qualified person (QP) as defined in National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information contained in this news release. He is a Principal Consultant and Director of Bara Consulting Pty Limited, an independent technical consultant to the Company.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

Maritz Smith

CEO

Alphamin Resources Corp.

Tel: +230 269 4166

E-mail: msmith@alphaminresources.com

CAUTION REGARDING FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

Information in this news release that is not a statement of historical fact constitutes forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements contained herein include, without limitation, statements relating to expected EBITDA and AISC for Q2 2022, the expectation of tin production from Mpama South and first tin production targeted date, expected global tin supply constraints and a widening global tin market deficit during the next five years as well as the intention to discover more tin deposits on its license areas with a view to deliver additional mine developments and incrementally increase tin supply. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions management believes to be reasonable at the time such statements are made. 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. Although Alphamin 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. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expected results described in forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: uncertainties regarding estimates of the expected mined tin grades, processing plant performance and recoveries, uncertainties regarding global supply and demand for tin and market and sales prices, effects of inflation, global supply chain and other possible disruptions and delays which may impact the Mpama South development schedule and time to completion as well as the cost to complete development, uncertainties regarding exploration outcomes on the Companys license areas and the timing thereof, uncertainties with respect to social, community and environmental impacts, uninterupted access to required infrastructure and third party service providers, adverse political and geopolitical events, uncertainties regarding the legislative requirements in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which may result in unexpected fines and penalties, impacts of the global Covid-19 pandemic on mining operations and commodity prices as well as those risk factors set out in the Companys Management Discussion and Analysis and other disclosure documents available under the Companys profile at www.sedar.com . Forward-looking statements contained herein are made as of the date of this news release and Alphamin disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

USE OF NON-IFRS FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE MEASURES

This announcement refers to the following non-IFRS financial performance measures:

EBITDA

EBITDA is profit before net finance expense, income taxes and depreciation, depletion, and amortization. EBITDA provides insight into our overall business performance (a combination of cost management and growth) and is the corresponding flow driver towards the objective of achieving industry-leading returns. This measure assists readers in understanding the ongoing cash generating potential of the business including liquidity to fund working capital, servicing debt, and funding capital expenditures and investment opportunities.

This measure is not recognized under IFRS as it does not have any standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and is therefore unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. EBITDA data is intended to provide additional information and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS.

NET CASH

Net cash is defined as cash and cash equivalents less total current and non-current portions of interest-bearing debt and lease liabilities.

AISC

This measures the costs to produce and sell a tonne of contained tin plus the capital sustaining costs to maintain the mine, processing plant and infrastructure. AISC includes mine operating production expenses such as mining, processing, administration, indirect charges (including surface maintenance and camp and tailings dam construction costs), smelting costs and deductions, refining and freight, distribution, royalties and product marketing fees. AISC does not include depreciation, depletion, and amortization, reclamation expenses, borrowing costs and exploration expenses.

Sustaining capital expenditures are defined as those expenditures which do not increase contained tin production at a mine site and excludes all expenditures at the Companys projects and certain expenditures at the Companys operating sites which are deemed expansionary in nature.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Northpointe Bank believes in the value of building trusted life-long relationships with the communities it serves. Since 2015, Seeds of Promise, a local nonprofit, and Northpointe Bank have administered the Federal Home Loan Bank of Indianapolis (FHLBank Indianapolis) Neighborhood Impact Program to provide home repair grants up to $7,500 to low- and moderate-income homeowners in our community. These funds are used to restore roofs, windows, siding, exterior doors, furnaces, and water heaters. In nine years, the Neighborhood Impact Program has helped 80 low- and moderate-income homeowners improve their homes.

On Thursday, June 23, Northpointe Bank, Seeds of Promise, and FHLBank Indianapolis hosted an affordable housing workshop. The workshop focused on the development of owner-occupied affordable housing in the Grand Rapids area, specifically targeting the 49507 zip code. The event included brainstorming sessions that identified the best solutions to the affordable housing crisis in Grand Rapids.

Honorary speakers included Rev. Faith Fowler, who led the development of a tiny home community in Detroit benefiting extremely low-income individuals; Sue Ortiz, Chief Programs Officer Habitat for Humanity of Michigan; and Yarrow Brown, Executive Director of Housing North.

Workshop attendees included executives from Northpointe Bank and local nonprofits, local government and neighborhood leadership, city and county commissioners, real estate agents, developers, and builders.

As part of the event, Northpointe Bank and Seeds of Promise were awarded a $10,000 implementation grant from FHLBank Indianapolis. Northpointe Bank donated an additional $30,000 to Seeds of Promise to kickstart this initiative. Members will now form implementation team(s) to put the event's insights and ideas into action. They will focus on engaging our community in development models, recruiting low- and moderate-income Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE) individuals, and/or African American and Hispanic/Latino prospective small homeowner champions to be part of our implementation team. They will concentrate on building partnerships among attendees and advising on the disbursement of the implementation funds.

Video from the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3u_IXsMCEs&feature=youtu.be

About Seeds of Promise

Seeds of Promise is a faith-directed resource hub and Grand Rapids community organizer. The community determines what Seeds of Promise does, how it does it, and who it does it with, so community residents' voices are heard and their needs are met.

About Northpointe Bank

Northpointe Bank works to be a different kind of bank, putting "you" at the center of everything they do. For the previous nine years, Independent Community Bankers of America has ranked Northpointe Bank as a top-performing bank in the nation out of approximately 5,000 ICBA member banks*. To learn more about Northpointe, visit www.northpointe.com.

About Federal Home Loan Bank of Indianapolis

FHLBank Indianapolis is a regional bank in the Federal Home Loan Bank System. FHLBanks are government-sponsored enterprises created by Congress to ensure access to low-cost funding for their member financial institutions, with particular attention paid to providing solutions that support the housing and small business needs of members' customers. FHLBanks are privately capitalized and funded, and they receive no Congressional appropriations. One of 11 independent regional cooperative banks across the U.S., FHLBank Indianapolis is owned by its Indiana and Michigan financial institution members, including commercial banks, credit unions, insurance companies, savings institutions, and community development financial institutions. For more information about FHLBank Indianapolis, visit www.fhlbi.com and follow the Bank on LinkedIn and Twitter (@FHLBankIndy).

Contact:

Michael J. Winks, President Lending & Retail Banking

(616) 974-8406 michael.winks@northpointe.com

* - Source: Best Performing Community Banks; Independent Community Bankers of America ranked Northpointe Bank as best performing bank according to return-on-equity for banks with assets over $1 billion.

Related Images











Image 1: Affordable Home Ownership Collaboration Workshop





As part of the event, Northpointe Bank and Seeds of Promise were awarded a $10,000 implementation grant from FHLBank Indianapolis. Northpointe Bank donated an additional $30,000 to Seeds of Promise to kickstart this initiative









This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

Attachment
Fort Worth, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fort Worth, Texas -

Award-winning Medicare insurance agency continues its mission of helping U.S. seniors navigate their entry into Medicare by expanding services to residents of Massachusetts.

boomerbenefits.com/compare-medicare-plans-and-prices/states/massachusetts-medicare-plans

Fort Worth, TX  July 5, 2022: Boomer Benefits is proud to announce they are officially licensed to help seniors in Massachusetts with their Medicare needs. Residents in the state of Massachusetts can now use Boomer Benefits for help navigating Medicare. All Boomer Benefits clients gain lifetime access to the Client Service Team at no cost.

At Boomer Benefits, their entire team is dedicated to helping as many Americans as possible with the beast that is Medicare. Expanding into Massachusetts is a long-awaited goal for our team, and we couldnt be happier to begin serving these residents, said Danielle Roberts, co-founder at Boomer Benefits.

Residents of Massachusetts can now use Boomer Benefits for the following services and offerings:

 Medicare insurance quotes from the top-rated carriers

 Help with Medicare Part D enrollment

 Claim support via Client Service Team

 Yearly rate shopping and Part D evaluation

 Individual dental, hearing, and vision plans

 Free Medicare education (webinar, email series, blog, YouTube)

 Free Medicare Q&A Facebook group for the public

 The Boomer Benefits Scholarship

 Never an added cost for the beneficiary

Our team would routinely get inquiries from people in Massachusetts, requesting our help but disappointed to learn we didnt service that state, said Roberts. We are pleased to now be able to provide Massachusetts residents with the same great service we offer to beneficiaries in the 48 other states we serve. We help them find the right supplemental coverage for their budget.

Media Contact:

Kelsey Mundfrom

(817) 249-8600

boomerbenefits.com

###

For more information about Boomer Benefits, contact the company here:



Boomer Benefits

Kelsey Mundfrom

(817) 249-8600

2601 Meacham Blvd STE 500, Fort Worth, TX 76137, United States




Korea on Tuesday started transporting the country's first lunar orbiter to the United States ahead of next month's launch using a SpaceX rocket, officials said.







Korea plans to launch the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, also known as Danuri, aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 8:24 a.m. on Aug. 3 (Korean Time).







According to the Ministry of Science and ICT, Danuri was sent from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute in Daejeon, 160 kilometers south of Seoul, to Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, in a specially designed container.







The orbiter will be flown to Orlando International Airport and arrive at the Floridian space center Thursday. It will later undergo maintenance, assembly and other pre-launch preparations for about a month before launch.







Danuri will begin circling around the moon in December and conduct a yearlong mission to observe it using an array of instruments, including cameras and magnetometers. It will also identify potential landing sites for future lunar missions.







Last month, Korea successfully launched its first homegrown space rocket, Nuri, also known as KSLV-II, from the country's southern coastal village of Goheung in a major milestone in the nation's space program.







Korea launched a preliminary feasibility study for the successor to the Nuri rocket, with the goal of sending a lunar landing module to the moon in 2031. (Yonhap)






Houston, TX, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Blank Rome LLP is pleased to announce that Gregory J. Moore has joined the firms Commercial Litigation practice group as a partner in the Houston office. A well-known trial lawyer with a diversified practice, Greg handles commercial litigation matters that include class actions, breach of contract claims, and disputes related to economic damage, personal injury, and professional services. Prior to joining Blank Rome, Greg was a partner at Norton Rose Fulbright LLP.

Greg is the latest addition to the firms expanding Houston office, which also recently welcomed corporate partners Nina Bianchi Skinner and C. Brendan Cummings, finance partners Cassandra G. Mott and Sarah H. Frazier, and Mexican counsel Ana Cecilia Ibarra-Van Oostenrijk. His move to the firm also follows other prominent additions to Blank Romes nationally recognized litigation team in the first half of the year, including partners David A. Moreno, Jr. in New York and Barak A. Bassman in Philadelphia.

We are thrilled to welcome Greg to our national litigation team and Houston office, said Grant S. Palmer, Blank Romes Managing Partner and CEO. With a number of sectors facing increasing disputes, clients need an accomplished and trusted litigator like Greg on their side, and we are confident that he will be a strong addition to our firm.

Greg has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in complex commercial litigation cases in state and federal court and in arbitrations conducted pursuant to AAA, FINRA, and CPR rules. His trial successes include representing oilfield services companies in arbitration claims and class action lawsuits under the Fair Labor Standards Act as well as various companies and clients in breach of alleged employment contracts, breach of contract claims, and contractual indemnity claims. He supports clients across several industries, including energy, automotive, retail, food and beverage, healthcare, and financial services.

Greg has almost two decades of leading trial experience in Houston that will bring great value to our clients looking for strong and successful trial skills in this market, said Susan L. Bickley, Chair of the firms Houston office. The breadth of Gregs practice brings a level of insight into multiple key industries that will be beneficial to both our clients and practices.

Blank Rome has impressed me with its demonstrated commitment to strategically growing its service offerings in the Houston region and nationally, added Moore. In addition to the firms continued success in Houston, Blank Romes strong collaborative culture across all of its offices and practices really bolsters the growth of its attorneys client portfolios and platforms, which makes me feel confident that this is the right next step in growing my practice.

Greg is active in pro bono and charitable initiatives, notably representing immigrants seeking asylum in the United States and disadvantaged clients in landlord-tenant disputes. Greg is the Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Texas Medical Center, the Vice President of the Houston Bar Association, and serves on the Board of the Houston Volunteer Lawyer Program.

Greg earned his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, and his B.A. from Duke University.

About Blank Rome

Blank Rome is an Am Law 100 firm with 14 offices and more than 600 attorneys and principals who provide comprehensive legal and advocacy services to clients operating in the United States and around the world. Our professionals have built a reputation for their leading knowledge and experience across a spectrum of industries and are recognized for their commitment to pro bono work in their communities. Since our inception in 1946, Blank Romes culture has been dedicated to providing top-level service to all of our clients and has been rooted in the strength of our diversity and inclusion initiatives. For more information, please visit blankrome.com.

###

Attachment
Wilma puts women in the drivers seat with a call for 200 female drivers

LONDON, Ontario, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Welcome to a safer ride-hailing option for female and gender-diverse riders and drivers. Wilma is a new women-driving-women, ride-hailing membership service launching in London, Ontario this summer  becoming North Americas first offering of its kind and ushering in a new ride-hailing era.

Wilma is putting a call out for female drivers to join us in London  with the intent that female riders and drivers will now have a safer ride-hailing option. Then, buckle up ladies, because after Wilma starts in London this month, it will be opening in Mississauga and Toronto in the fall.

In addition to peace of mind, riders will enjoy NO BOOKING FEES - saving them approximately $3 on every ride. With Wilma, a woman can expect predictability and a hassle-free ride. She will be able to focus on the priorities of her day versus the unknowns of her trip.

When you sign up for a Wilma membership, you are joining a community of empowered women who are choosing to be unbothered, said Terri Phipps, Wilma CEO and Co-Founder. Wilma drivers and riders will feel like theyre driving with a friend, creating an atmosphere of trust and community.

Driving with Wilma has its benefits, including an increased sense of safety, knowing that a woman is in the backseat. Other key driver benefits are:

Best commission rates in the ride hailing industry  85 per cent of every fare goes to the drivers

Flexible work hours, allowing drivers to customize their schedule  women can now choose to drive ANY time, versus the safest times. Welcome to the gig economy.

Driver discounts & perks through our partners, such as income tax preparation discounts



Wilma is dedicated to the safety, comfort and empowerment of women riders and drivers alike. By signing up for the Wilma app, members are not only making an investment towards their peace of mind, but they are also supporting a well-paying income source for other females and gender diverse people.

Wilma is about freedom, says Mary Morrison, Wilma SVP of Partnerships and Co-Founder. For every woman who has ever felt uncomfortable, had to make up a story, fake a phone call, or mention a non-existent husband to ensure her safety when ride-hailing, Wilma is for you.

Survey shows demand for Wilma

In an Angus Reid survey conducted for Wilma:

Four-in-five Canadian women (79%) said they would purchase a women-only, ride-hailing service if it were offered in their city

Additionally, men said they would gift a Wilma membership for a woman in their lives, in particular their wife/partner, daughter and mother

Wilma memberships come with privileges. As part of this community, women may bring guests of any gender to ride with them. Wilma members must agree to a strict code of conduct and are responsible for their guests behaviour. This ensures that all members honour the membership principles of safety and emotional comfort for both the driver and the rider members.

People are encouraged to show support by purchasing a Wilma membership for a woman they care about  providing them a gift of safety, comfort and peace of mind.

Wilma is currently accepting driver applications and rider membership sign-ups. We invite women and gender-diverse people to apply to be drivers. If your drivers license does not have an F on it but your gender identity is female, you are welcome to reach out to us directly at support@getwilma.app to get assistance.

About Wilma Technologies Inc.

Wilma is North Americas first Women-Driving-Women ride hailing membership service dedicated to creating a safe space for women to travel and work within the gig economy. We are at the forefront of solutions to provide an alternative, hassle-free ride hailing service and job opportunities that work for and empower women. Because HER safety comes first.



Wilma is headquartered in Vancouver, B.C. and founded by Terri Phipps, CEO and Mary Morrison, SVP Partnerships.

Learn more: www.getwilma.app

Download Driver app for iPhone

Download Driver app for Android

Media Contact:

Megan Dunscombe, MAVERICK Public Relations

647.972.2373

megan@wearemaverick.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/48dc6ccb-a03a-4d3a-b7a6-9f16b3853e7a




NEW YORK, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Healthcare Cognitive Computing Market study by Data Bridge Market Research provides details about the market dynamics affecting the Healthcare Cognitive Computing market , Market scope, Market segmentation and overlays shadow upon the leading market players highlighting the favorable competitive landscape and trends prevailing over the years.

Healthcare Cognitive Computing Market business report provides exact information about market trends, industrial changes, and consumer behavior etc. The industry report assists in outlining brand awareness, market landscape, possible future issues, industry trends, and customer behavior about Healthcare industry which eventually leads to advanced business strategies. Being a verified and reliable source of information, this market research report offers a telescopic view of the existing market trends, emerging products, situations and opportunities that drives the business in the right direction of success. The winning Healthcare Cognitive Computing Market report has been framed with the proper use of tools like SWOT analysis and Porters Five Forces analysis methods.

Healthcare Cognitive Computing Market is expected to witness market growth at a rate of 34.62% in the forecast period of 2022 to 2029.

Download PDF Sample Report (Including Graphs, Charts and List of Figures) @ https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/request-a-sample/?dbmr=global-healthcare-cognitive-computing-market



The following are the reasons for obtaining the project report:

Gain a full grasp of the global marketplace through efficient operational ideas, market share analyses, and effective market positioning methods.

Understand the fundamental market scenario as well as the crucial industries

Consider key classes based on in-depth value and volume analysis.

Current market trends, evolving design efforts, and changing market scenarios may benefit enterprises in the healthcare cognitive computing market.

Some of the major players operating in the healthcare cognitive computing market report are

IBM,

Microsoft,

CognitiveScale,

Numenta,

Vicarious,

Enterra Solutions,

Numenta,

Vicarious,

Deepmind,

SparkCognition,

TIBCO Software Inc,

NakaTech,

Wipro Limited,

Marlabs,

SAP SE,

Apixio,

Healthcare X.0,

Enterra Solutions,

Nuance Communications, Inc,

Intel Corporation, and

MEDWHAT

Access Full Report @ https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/checkout/buy/singleuser/global-healthcare-cognitive-computing-market

Segmentation: Healthcare Cognitive Computing Market

The Global Chealthcare Cognitive Computing Market is segmented on the basis of technology, deployment model and end users. The growth amongst these segments will help you analyze meagre growth segments in the industries, and provide the users with valuable market overview and market insights to help them in making strategic decisions for identification of core market applications.

is segmented on the basis of technology, deployment model and end users. The growth amongst these segments will help you analyze meagre growth segments in the industries, and provide the users with valuable market overview and market insights to help them in making strategic decisions for identification of core market applications. On the basis of technology, the healthcare cognitive computing market is segmented into natural learning processing, information retrieval, automated reasoning, machine learning and others.

On the basis of deployment model, the healthcare cognitive computing market is segmented into cloud and on- premises.

The healthcare cognitive computing market on the basis of end-users is segmented into hospitals, pharmaceutical, medical devices, insurance and other.

Global Healthcare Cognitive Computing Market Scenario

Cognitive computing refers to the electronic representation of human thought processes. This type of computing is highly beneficial in the detection of threats and frauds. Cognitive computing helps doctors in treatments based on previous evidence in the healthcare sector. It is known to deal with a large amount of data that is complex.

The high use of cloud services across the globe acts as one of the major factors driving the growth of healthcare cognitive computing market . The rise in disease burden due to chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer, among other disease, increasing concern for governments and healthcare providers accelerate the market growth. The surge in demand for big data and cognitive computing analytics due to generation of huge patient data, and cognitive computing technology has various applications in the healthcare industry further influence the market. Additionally, high disposable income, advancements in healthcare infrastructure, surge in healthcare expenditure, rise in direct digital manufacturing and explosion of structured and unstructured data positively affect the healthcare cognitive computing market. Furthermore, increase in demand for personalized healthcare service, and technological advancements in the field of data mining and analytics extend profitable opportunity to the market players in the forecast period of 2022 to 2029.

On the other hand, high investment cost and dearth of proper digital health infrastructure are expected to obstruct the market growth. Shortage of a skilled workforce is projected to challenge the healthcare cognitive computing market in the forecast period of 2022-2029.

Key Pointers Covered in This Market Research Report:

Market Size

Market New Sales Volumes

Market Replacement Sales Volumes

Installed Base

Market By Brands

Market Procedure Volumes

Market Product Price Analysis

Market Healthcare Outcomes

Market Cost of Care Analysis

Regulatory Framework and Changes

Prices and Reimbursement Analysis

Market Shares in Different Regions

Recent Developments for Market Competitors

Market Upcoming Applications

Market Innovators Study

To Gain More Insights into the Market Analysis, Visit @ https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/global-healthcare-cognitive-computing-market



Healthcare Cognitive Computing Market Country Level Analysis

The healthcare cognitive computing market is analyzed and market size insights and trends are provided by country, technology, deployment model and end users as referenced above.

The countries covered in the healthcare cognitive computing market report are the U.S., Canada and Mexico in North America, Germany, France, U.K., Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Rest of Europe in Europe, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Rest of Asia-Pacific (APAC) in the Asia-Pacific (APAC), Saudi Arabia, U.A.E, South Africa, Egypt, Israel, Rest of Middle East and Africa (MEA) as a part of Middle East and Africa (MEA), Brazil, Argentina and Rest of South America as part of South America.

North America dominates the healthcare cognitive computing market because of the presence of high-tech technology firms, and continuous investments in research and development within the region. Asia-Pacific is expected to witness significant growth during the forecast period of 2022 to 2029 due to the growth in public and private healthcare expenditure levels and suitable demographic factors in the region.

Table of Content:

Section 01: executive summary

Section 02: scope of the report

Section 03: research methodology

Section 04: introduction

Section 05: market landscape

Section 06: market sizing

Section 07: five forces analysis

Section 08: market segmentation by Technology

Section 09: market segmentation by Application

Section 10: customer landscape

Section 11: market segmentation by end-user

Section 12: regional landscape

Section 13: decision framework

Section 14: drivers and challenges

Section 15: market trends

Section 16: competitive landscape

Section 17: company profiles

Section 18: appendix

Browse Complete Table Of Contents At https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/toc/?dbmr=global-healthcare-cognitive-computing-market



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Data Bridge Market Research has over 500 analysts working in different industries. We have catered more than 40% of the fortune 500 companies globally and have a network of more than 5000+ clientele around the globe. Data Bridge adepts in creating satisfied clients who reckon upon our services and rely on our hard work with certitude. We are content with our glorious 99.9 % client satisfying rate.

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Chicago, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to Ariztons latest research report, the Japan elevator and escalator market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 3.6% from 2022 to 2028. The growing demand for urban transportation and governmental efforts to boost tourism and expand transportation infrastructure will propel rail and metro construction across the country, which will push demand for new installation of elevators and escalators.



Freight elevators are quite large and have a wide range of applications for transportation of goods, including industrial truck loading, and car transport. Therefore, growing need for safer mode of freight transportation is likely to drive the demand for this segment. In addition, freight lifts have high weight load capacities, and they offer structural support to transport heavy loads without human error.

Japan Elevator and Escalator Market Report Scope

Report Attributes Details Market Size by New Installations (2028) 31,449 Units Market Size by New Installations (2021) 24,536 Units CAGR (2022-2028) 3.6% Market Size by Installed Base (2028) 83131 Units Market Size by Modernization (2028) $1.1 Billion Base Year 2021 Forecast Year 2022-2028 Market Segmentation by Carraige Type Passenger and Freight Market Segmentation by Capacity 2-15 Persons, 16-24 Persons, 25-33 Persons, and 34 Persons and Above Market Segmentation by End-User Commercial, Residential, Industrial, and Others Market Segmentation by Type Hydraulic and Pneumatic, Machine Room Traction, Machine Room Less Traction, and Others

Click Here to Download the Free Sample Report

The elevator market in Japan is expected to witness rapid growth during the forecast period, owing to development projects such as Redevelopment of Shibuya and Redevelopment Tokyo.

The anticipated building projects for the World Expo 2025 in Osaka and the construction of the Chuo Shinkansen maglev line have boosted the importance of infrastructure maintenance and urban redevelopment in the construction sector throughout the projection period.

Governments Smart City Initiative to Boost Demand for Elevators

Having an elevator installed in residential areas offers convenience and luxury. Home elevators have a variety of appealing features such as safety, emergency light, alarm, slack chain, battery backup, hoistway and door interlocks, emergency stop switch, upper landing hatch cover with safety sensors and more that can be pitched to potential buyers as benefits. Toyota is developing a 175-acre smart city near Mount Fuji in Japan, which is about 62 miles away from Tokyo. This future city will serve as a test bed for technologies such as robotics and AI.

Market Segmentation

Machine Type

Hydraulic and Pneumatic

Machine Room Traction

Machine Room Less Traction

Others

Carriage Type

Passenger

Freight

Capacity

2-15 Persons

16-24 Persons

25-33 Persons

34 Persons and Above

End-User

Commercial

Residential

Industrial

Others

Growth in Skyscrapers to Drive Demand for New Elevators

The growth of high-rise construction or skyscraper infrastructure led to innovations by the OEMs, from carbon-fiber cables to magnetic systems. These innovations allow elevators to move sideways and introduce new options for big building designs. Japan plans to build a 1,148 feet tall, supertall wooden skyscraper in Tokyo, and it is expected to be completed by 2041.

Fujitec received an order for 44 escalators and 68 elevators in Tokyo for the development of Toronamon-Azabudai, a skyscraper complex, which is currently under construction. Fujitecs double-deck elevator, which has two cars attached in a vertical alignment will be included in this project. This project began in 2019, and it is projected to be completed in 2023.

Recent Upcoming Projects

Traction elevators are used in buildings that are over 60 feet tall, including the worlds most iconic skyscrapers. Since traction elevators use a counterweight to offset the weight of the cab and occupants, the motor does not have to move as much weight, which makes traction elevators more efficient than hydraulic elevators.

Traction elevators are energy-efficient, and they provide smoother and quieter rides for passengers. In addition, most modern elevators are typically gearless traction, which is the most energy-and-space-efficient solutions available, thereby driving the growth of this segment.

Supertall skyscraper developments are underway in Japan. The construction of the Toranomon-Azabudai District Main Tower (325.2 m), Toranomon Hills Station Tower (265 m), Toranomon-Azabudai District West Tower (262.8 m) are under progress. As a result, demand for traction elevators is expected to rise as more skyscrapers are constructed.





Key Vendors

Mitsubishi Electric

Toshiba

Hitachi

Otis

Fujitec

Schindler

KONE

TK Elevator

Hyundai Elevator

KOHLER

Explore our industrial machinery profile to know more about the industry.

Click Here to Download the Free Sample Report

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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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Edinburgh, Scotland, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Haggart Plumbers, the leading Plumbing Company In Edinburgh has acquired another renowned name in the business  Postcode Plumbers and is now set to expand its services into the East Lothian region.

Haggart Plumbers came into being in 1903 with the aim of raising the bar for plumbing services for the people of Edinburgh and surrounding areas. It has consistently done that for over a century by staying committed to its promise of quality services while updating them in keeping with the latest technologies and standards in the field. The Gas Safe registered company has a 99.9% customer satisfaction rate, which speaks volumes about the quality of services it is known to deliver.



Haggart Plumbers

Postcode Plumbers, on the other hand, have been the biggest plumbing company in East Lothian since 1999. They have earned the trust of clients on the back of impeccable plumbing solutions and solid customer support. The acquisition has brought together two powerhouses in the industry that are steeped in history and known to be pioneers in the field. It also allows the leading Plumbing Company In Edinburgh the opportunity to serve a wider clientele in the East Lothian region.

After all, Haggart Plumbers have become the one-stop plumbing service that people require, ranging from water leaks and boiler issues to damaged drains. Its highly skilled and trusted plumbers can effectively handle any task including boiler installation, boiler repair, boiler service, and drainage repairs. The company has access to four vans and has invested in state-of-the-art equipment to ensure that clients get the best services for emergency plumbing needs at the right time.

With the acquisition of Postcode Plumbers, Haggart Plumbers can now bring these renowned services to clients in the East Lothian region. The acquisition has resulted in some changes including a new domain name for the company. As its new website will be published in July 2022, it will move from the familiar address of https://www.haggartplumbers.co.uk/ to https://haggartplumbers.com/. This is where the https://www.postcodeplumbers.com - website will be directed as well.

Haggart Plumbers will be available on the primary Edinburgh phone number of 0131 447 2656 and will also use the Postcode Plumbers, East Lothian number 01620 84 3000. However, Postcode Plumbers Edinburgh number will be phased out in a years time. The top Plumbing Company In Edinburgh will have its logo and colors on the website and the vans that will be operated across the region. While there are these changes, what remains constant is the quality of services offered by the company.

Haggart Plumbers promises that there will be no disruption of services as the transition is smooth, and brings forth the best of the two companies for customers in Edinburgh as well as East Lothian areas.

About Haggart Plumbers

Established in 1903, the professional company has become the go-to name for people of Edinburgh for all their plumbing, heating and drainage needs.

###

Media Contact

Haggart Plumbers

Address: 44-46 Morningside Rd, Edinburgh EH10 4BF

Phone: 0131 447 2656

URL: https://haggartplumbers.com/

Legacy Email: info@haggartplumbers.co.uk

New Email: info@haggartplumbers.com





newsroom: news.38digitalmarket.com


NEW YORK, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP (Scott+Scott), a national securities and consumer rights litigation firm, reminds investors it is investigating whether certain directors and officers of Westlake Corporation (Westlake) (NYSE: WLK) breached their fiduciary duties to Westlake and its shareholders. If you are a Westlake shareholder, you are encouraged to contact attorney Joe Pettigrew for additional information at (844) 818-6982, or jpettigrew@scott-scott.com.



Scott+Scott is investigating whether members of Westlakes board of directors or senior management failed to manage Westlake in an acceptable manner, in breach of their fiduciary duties to Westlake, and whether Westlake and its shareholders have suffered damages as a result.

On June 10, 2022, several Westlake subsidiaries announced a $111 million settlement of allegations that three Westlake petrochemical manufacturing facilities in Louisiana and Kentucky released unlawful levels of air pollutants.

What You Can Do

If you are a Westlake shareholder, you may have legal claims against Westlakes directors and officers. If you wish to discuss this investigation, or have questions about this notice or your legal rights, please contact attorney Joe Pettigrew toll-free at (844) 818-6982 or jpettigrew@scott-scott.com.

About Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP

Scott+Scott has significant experience in prosecuting major securities, antitrust, and consumer rights actions throughout the United States. The firm represents pension funds, foundations, individuals, and other entities worldwide with offices in New York, London, Amsterdam, Connecticut, California, and Ohio.

Attorney Advertising

CONTACT:

Joe Pettigrew

Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP

600 W. Broadway, Suite 3300, San Diego, CA 92101

(844) 818-6982

jpettigrew@scott-scott.com
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A truck carrying the Danuri lunar orbiter departs from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) in Daejeon for Incheon International Airport, Tuesday. Courtesy of KARI



By Baek Byung-yeul



Danuri, Korea's domestically-developed lunar orbiter, left for the United States, Tuesday, for its launch in Florida on Aug. 3, according to the Ministry of Science and ICT.



The science ministry said the Danuri has departed from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) in Daejeon for Incheon International Airport. It is being sent to Orlando, Florida, in a container specially designed by the KARI to maintain temperature, humidity and positive pressure, as well as absorb shocks.



After arriving at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Thursday, the Danuri will go through a month-long inspection at the launch site, including fuel injection and connection to a projectile.





Researchers of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) in Daejeon wave at the Danuri lunar orbiter, Tuesday, which will be transported to the Incheon International Airport for launch from the U.S., next month. Courtesy of KARI



The lunar orbiter was named the Danuri after going through a public naming contest from January to February. The name is a combination of the Korean words, "dal" (moon) and "nuri" (enjoy).



It weighs 678 kilograms and is equipped with five pieces of observation equipment developed using Korean technology and a ShadowCam device from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that can observe the darkest parts of the Moon's surface.



If the launch process goes well, the Danuri will sail through space for about four and a half months from August to December and settle in lunar orbit in December. Circling 100 kilometers above the moon, the orbiter will conduct scientific missions for almost a year from February to December 2023.



The science ministry said the missions it will carry out include finding a spacecraft moon landing site, measuring the magnetic field and gamma rays and testing space-based internet communication.



"The Danuri lunar orbiter will orbit 100 kilometers above the moon 12 times a day, performing lunar observations, science and technology missions, and receiving observational data through antennas," the science ministry said.





Researchers of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) check the status of the lunar orbiter, the Danuri, in Daejeon, June 8. Courtesy of KARI
Helmut Marko does not expect Mercedes to pose a threat in Austria. The man from Graz thinks the W13 will have to be tuned higher again at the Red Bull Ring and will therefore perform less.

0

Setback for Mercedes

With a third place for Lewis Hamilton and good pace at the British Grand Prix, there is hope again for Mercedes fans. The German team itself thinks it is making steps in the right direction, but not long ago Baku and Monaco went very badly. According to Marko, it will be no different at the Red Bull Ring.

Due to the tight road surface at Silverstone, porpoising hardly played a role, but at Spielberg it is a different story. ''We have the least problems or almost none (with porpoising). I expect it to be a bit difficult for Mercedes again, so they have to set the car higher, but that's not a problem. They'll just be a bit slower," Marko said with a laugh on ServusTV's Sport und Talk programme.

Dutch in Spielberg

Red Bull also has another advantage and that is the crowd at the circuit who are mainly fans of one driver: Verstappen. The stands are usually all orange and Marko and the rest of Red Bull Racing notice that in the garage too.

"Max has the fourfold (number of wins) record here. He is extra motivated here in front of all his Dutch fans. If we are in the garage and you set the fastest time, then the Dutch people go wild in the stands. That makes it very special," concluded the advisor of the Austrian racing team.

Read more This is how much downforce Verstappen lost due to the damage to his RB18
Models pose next to Ssangyong Motor's newly released Torres SUV at a media showcase held in Nest Hotel in Incheon, Tuesday. Korea Times photo by Kim Hyun-bin



By Kim Hyun-bin



Ssangyong Motor officially launched the Torres SUV, providing customers with more options to choose trendy SUVs with sleek designs and well-rounded technologies.



Ssangyong unveiled the Torres at a media showcase in Nest Hotel on Incheon's Yeongjong Island, Tuesday, with around 300 people in attendance including executives and employees. The Torres Media Showcase was held simultaneously both online and offline.



"I would like to express my sincere gratitude to many internal and external stakeholders, including partners, for their active cooperation and generous support for the Torres' successful launch," Ssangyong Motor manager Chung Yong-won said. "We put all our efforts into developing the Torres with the DNA of Ssangyong Motor, and we will continue to introduce new models that better reflect the identity of Ssangyong Motor in the future."





KG Group Chairman Kwak Jae-sun gives a congratulatory speech at the Torres Media Showcase held at Nest Hotel on Incheon's Yeongjong Island, Tuesday. Korea Times photo by Kim Hyun-bin
Fair Trade Commission Chairman nominee Song Ok-rial speaks during a press conference at the Korea Fair Trade Mediation Agency in Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap



By Park Jae-hyuk



The nominee for the head of Korea's antitrust agency emphasized that he will continue to fight against unfair practices by chaebol groups, multinational tech firms and companies monopolizing the market, regardless of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration's business-friendly stance.



Song Ok-rial, a professor of commercial law at Seoul National University Law School, who was nominated on Monday to lead the Fair Trade Commission (FTC), told reporters on Tuesday that deregulation does not necessarily allow businesses to do whatever they want.



"The free market economy can be stimulated when the FTC plays its role. If it does not prevent unfair practices, the market economy will collapse," said the nominee, who specializes in the corporate governance structure of Korean conglomerates.



Song, however, added that he is open to meetings with chaebol group chiefs, promising that the FTC will restore trust from the market under his leadership.



In response to criticism from the opposition party against offensive remarks he had made during a dinner with his students in 2014, for which he was accused of sexual harassment, the nominee acknowledged the allegations and apologized, saying that he regrets his previous behavior.



"I was so drunk that I could not prevent the mishap," he said.



After it was revealed Monday that he had ranked his students' looks as "better than average," "worse than average" or "superior" during the dinner, the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea criticized the president for nominating him.



Some critics pointed out Song's friendship with Yoon, as they had been in the same class for training at the Judicial Research & Training Institute together, after passing the bar exam.



Yoon told reporters on Tuesday that Song is an excellent person.



During the press conference, Song also explained his previous career as a nonexecutive director of Kumho Petrochemical and KB Financial Group, as well as a lawyer of the nation's largest law firm, Kim & Chang, which is well known for frequently defending conglomerates subject to FTC sanctions.



The nominee said that his previous career would never affect the antitrust agency's decisions.


BY: The New Times

Category: General News




President Yoon Suk-yeol promised Tuesday to support the growth of women entrepreneurs, saying their success is directly linked to the country's future.







Yoon made the remarks at the opening of the inaugural "women entrepreneurs' week," which was established by law last October to be marked every year in the first week of July.







"Our women entrepreneurs have been at the forefront of overcoming crises and creating new industries through their strength and attention to detail," Yoon said at the event held at the headquarters of the Korea Federation of SMEs.







"This women entrepreneurs' week event, which is being held for the first time today, is an opportunity for women entrepreneurs to boldly establish themselves as the true principal agents of our economy," he said.







The presidential office said Yoon promised to support the pursuits of women entrepreneurs and focus policy efforts on building a "complete business ecosystem" where startups and unicorns can continue to grow.







He also vowed to "keep the door of the Yongsan Presidential Office wide open" to facilitate communication with women in business, it said.







"Only when we produce more creative women entrepreneurs and more innovative women in business will the future of the Republic of Korea be bright," he said.







Yoon personally awarded seven women for their contributions to business, including Yoon Gong-sun, the president of a flower delivery company, who received an order of industrial service merit for helping increase sales of small businesses and filling 87 percent of positions at her business with women. (Yonhap)






Tyler Sizemore / Hearst Connecticut Media

GREENWICH  Folks attend the Fourth of July Celebration at Greenwich Town Hall on Monday.

Presented by the Independence Day Association of Greenwich, the ceremony featured various readings and songs, a raising of the Colonial flag, recognition of the original Greenwich settlers, and reading of the names of Greenwich soldiers killed in the Revolutionary War.
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GREENWICH  Organizers of St. Rochs Feast, a street festival known for its pizza fritta and carnival games, would like to return to the field at Hamilton Avenue School  instead of straddling St. Roch Avenue as the celebration has done since 2005.

But it may prove easier to win the festivals grand raffle prize than to park a Ferris wheel on the schools turf.

St. Roch Church has yet to get a special-event permit approved to use the field since Greenwich Public Schools installed geothermal wells under the soil to heat and cool the school when it reopened in 2009. Rides and tents are set up on the schools parking lot, but use of the field is restricted.

This year is no exception, but parishioner Paul Cappiali is hoping the town will give the permit a second look. His efforts got the churchs case to Greenwichs Board of Education, which typically doesnt review who uses school fields after hours.

Before the school was renovated, the festival was held on the field for decades.

St. Roch is looking to continue a traditional event for the community, by the community, celebrating the community. And if the turf is an issue, we dont want to disrupt it. We dont want to disrupt the schools children, many of whom are children of our parishioners, he told Greenwich Time. But at this point, were starting to feel like this is a mission to stop (the feast).

In late February, Cappiali said he received an email from an administrative assistant in the district stating that the superintendent wanted me to let you know it is OK to utilize the field this year.

Despite never receiving written notice, the church assumes the permission was redacted, he said.

He doesnt know what went wrong, but community connections alerted him to Greenwichs Parks and Recreation director Joe Sicilianos behind-the-scenes advocacy against the churchs use of the field.

The director

Cappiali didnt get to speak during a special meeting held on June 22 as the Board of Education examined the risks of allowing St. Roch Church to hold its annual fundraiser on the grass in mid-August.

Siciliano, who is responsible for the maintenance of school grounds, told the board his team has spent the past year trying multiple methods of establishing healthy grass on the field. Currently the grasss roots are fragile, he said.

The potential for it to jeopardize the surface is a valid issue, he told Greenwich Time. He said he is only involved to advise the board, distancing himself from any decisions.

Cappiali says Siciliano appeared to campaign against the churchs use of the field by emailing Representative Town Meeting members and others with his opinion. The RTM does not issue field-use permits.

In an email to RTM member Sylvester L. Pecora Sr., Siciliano forwarded a message he sent to BOE officials arguing against the churchs use and said, I cant believe you are in favor of the field being used for St. Roch.

The email contained a 2009 memo that has barred the churchs use of the field for years.

In a second message to Pecora, Siciliano said, If the BOE decides to give permission, this will open up the opportunity for all fields in town to this misuse.

The Earth-is-flat memo

Then-Superintendent Betty Sternberg wrote a letter dated Jan. 15, 2009, to the towns building department about the geothermal pipes at Hamilton Avenue School. Under no circumstances can the fields be used for carnivals or other programs or activities which have the potential to compromise the geothermal system in any way, she wrote.

Cappiali has since found information that counters her warning.

It was as if there was a memo from 2,000 years ago saying the world is flat and our town government was going to keep that memo in a folder, and therefore the world was going to be flat as far as Greenwich, Connecticut, was concerned, he said.

In 2022, with permission from Superintendent Toni Jones, Cappiali contacted contractors from the schools renovation until he found the geothermal wells installers and engineers.

Erich Baumgartner, principal engineer at Thornton Tomasetti, concluded that the grass field area above the well field is suitable to be utilized for the St. Roch Church annual carnival, which may include vehicle traffic, parking, free-standing amusement rides and booths.

School board Chair Kathleen Stowe requested in an email to First Selectman Fred Camillo to add this as a new item to the file and/or pull the 2009 memo from the file.

In her email, which is copied to board members Joe Kelly and Cody Kittle, Jones and Cappiali, Stowe added, I know I cant wait for my kids to attend a fair there since its been a long time.

When asked whether she requested to remove the 2009 memo from the file, Stowe told Greenwich Time, The Board Chair has no authority to issue instructions to town bodies like parks and rec.

The Greenwich Time later obtained the emails as confirmation.

Camillo made the formal request in an email to Stowe and GPS director of facilities Dan Watson to remove the 2009 memo and be updated with the more recent and relevant Thornton Tomasetti report. Camillo copied Jones, Cappiali, Kittle and Siciliano on the email.

But the 2009 memo remains in the file and was given more credence during the board meeting.

The geothermal well: I wasnt here when it was put in, Watson said during the meeting. All I have to go by is this letter from the previous superintendent. Now there had to have been reason for that letter to have been written.

The grass

Cappiali is working with a scientist at Rutgers University to study the health of the grass. The town spent $424,000 in 2019 to smooth the surface, install fencing and plant new grass. This investment and the young grass were mentioned numerous times during the meeting.

We cannot lose this field for these children, Jones said. If grass were damaged, we would probably just let it be kind of muddy and have them on it anyway because they just cant go without it for an entire year.

Kelly said the town should determine the appropriate uses for the field. At least this deserves the opportunity for us to sit down with them and tell them what they can and cannot do, not just telling them no, he said.

The field was on the board agenda as a discussion item. Board members did not vote on it nor did they schedule a time to discuss it again.

Kelly told Greenwich Time the next time the board might touch the issue is through the acceptance of a gift from the church.

St. Roch Church is donating an irrigation and sprinkler system for the field  with no regard to whether it ever gets a permit approved.

The irrigation system was thrown out of the 2019 resurfacing project. Siciliano shared concerns about installing one at this point during the board meeting.

Kelly said studying the land and letting the grass become more established might give the church a better chance at using the field next year.

annelise.hanshaw@hearstmediact.com
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D- Conn., began his annual Walk Across Connecticut on Monday afternoon with a trip on the Housatonic River.

Unlike previous years, the junior senator started the first leg of the five-day journey in a kayak in the southwestern corner of Massachusetts.

I know it sounds like cheating. If Im walking across the state, I shouldnt be in a kayak, Murphy said in a video he tweeted shortly after crossing into Connecticut. But I just couldnt help it to take advantage of a couple of friends who know this river very well to be out here for a couple of hours to start the day.

Murphy, a two-term senator who is not up for reelection until 2024, generally spends the trips speaking with constituents and visiting towns. He plans to walk about 15 to 20 miles each day.

This year, which marks the sixth time Murphy has embarked on the trip, the senator is traveling north to south and plans to conclude the journey in New Haven.

This is really my favorite week of the year, he said in a video. I get to talk to hundreds of people all across the state, most of which sort of have no daily interest in politics. Theyre just folks that have opinions about what can make their life better.

After spending a couple of hours on the river, Murphy began walking in Falls Village. During the walk, he tweeted that he met a Guatemalan immigrant celebrating Independence Day and spoke with a man about high gas prices.

At Falls Village Cafe, Murphy met Falls Village First Selectman Henry Todd and Salisbury First Selectman Curtis Rand.

Murphy was also joined on the walk, a portion of which passed through the Appalachian Trail, by state Rep. Maria Horn. He said he plans to finish the first day of the trip in Cornwall.

richard.chumney@hearstmediact.com
Food & Wine names Ben N' Yan's one of the 'Best Places to Eat Filipino Food'
The Office of the Attorney General of Guam has filed a consumer complaint against Pacific Tiny Homes, the office announced on July 5, 2022.

tiny homes.jpg




Korean food maker CJ CheilJedang said Tuesday it will expand into the European market with a sales target of 500 billion won ($384 million) by 2027.







The announcement came two months after the Korean food maker opened an office in London to begin full-scale efforts to penetrate the European market.







To achieve the aim, CJ plans to strengthen the market presence of Korean-style dumplings, called "mandu," in Europe by increasing product offerings of its Bibigo Mandu.







CJ said it will launch a plant-based Bibigo Mandu in the third quarter this year to target health-conscious vegetarian consumers in Europe.







The company is also eyeing Europe's ready-meal market, with plans to develop ready-meal products using CJ's instant cooked rice and traditional sauces.







A possible acquisition of a European food company is up for review, it said, for additional local infrastructure and logistics network.







Additionally, CJ plans to expand its business areas to other Asian foods, such as spring rolls, through its Vietnamese affiliate Cau Tre and U.S. affiliate Schwan's, acquired in 2016 and 2019, respectively.







"While Europe is known as a barren land of K-food, a recent increase in interest for Asian food and K-culture has offered us more opportunities. Following the United States, we will promote the excellence of K-food in Europe through our Bibigo brand," a CJ official said.







Since its first entry in 2018, CJ's annual sales in Europe grew on average by 38 percent. Its European sales amounted to 36.5 billion won in 2021 and are expected to reach 60 billion won in 2022. (Yonhap)






A number of questionable signatures identified on the nomination petitions for two separate senatorial candidates have prompted the Guam Election Commission to refer the petitions to the Office of the Attorney General for review.

Election Commission Executive Director Maria Pangelinan on Tuesday said the suspected forgeries were on petitions for one Democrat and one Republican candidate, but she declined to identify the candidates by name or state whether they were incumbents.

The circulators who gather signatures for the petitions and are identified on the documents, not necessarily the candidates themselves, may be at fault she added.

Two separate circulators were involved, she said.

Were not signature experts, she said, But when we looked at (the petitions), we compared it to signatures from the affidavits of registration, and they were totally different and some names had been misspelled.

Election commissioners voted to refer the matter to the attorney general shortly after ratifying the 37 senatorial candidates for the primary last Friday. GEC legal counsel attorney Vicente Camacho said then that the discrepancies came up when petitions were being vetted, we believe all the signatures on those petitions were forged. All in the same handwriting, same pen.

Nominating petitions are public documents, but Pangelinan declined to produce the suspected forgeries for the PDN after consulting with her legal counsel.

I got initial advice that said no, you cant do it because its under investigation, its going to be under investigation. So until such time that its no longer under investigation,  then it can become public, she said.

The signatures in question were not counted, Pangelinan said, but both candidates still met the quota of 250 signatures needed on their nomination papers to proceed to the primary. The candidates were notified of the matter.

According to Carlina Charfauros, spokesperson for the attorney generals office, no referral from the Election Commission had been received as of 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.

This is not the first time that commission has referred suspected forgeries to the attorney general for review.

Notably in 2018, a nomination petition for then gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Ray Tenorio was the subject of an investigation by then-Attorney General Elizabeth Barrett-Anderson.

At least seven residents whose signatures appeared on the Tenorio petition told the PDN they had never signed it.

No charges were ever filed.

More: More bogus signatures found on Tenorio, Ada petition sheets
A woman charged in the drowning of her 1-year-old daughter pleaded not guilty to murder charges.

Iehsa Nichelle Copeland entered the plea in the Superior Court of Guam.

The plea was made after multiple hearings where it was unclear whether Copeland would qualify to have a public defender represent her. On Tuesday afternoon, private attorney Randall Cunliffe pleaded not guilty on Copelands behalf and also waived Copelands right to a speedy trial.

On May 22, she was found on the top platform of Two Lovers Point, threatening to jump with her child strapped to her chest.

After crisis negotiators persuaded Copeland to hand over her child, who appeared motionless and unresponsive, Copeland said she knew her baby was dead and several times stated she had drowned the baby in the bathtub, according to court documents.

Copeland also said she tried to drown herself using a microwave in the bathtub.

The child was later pronounced dead. An autopsy indicated the child was drowned.

Police discovered Copeland was home alone with the child after getting into an argument with the childs father. The father came back to find wet clothes on the floor and a microwave inside the bathtub, according to court documents.

The father helped police locate Copeland through tracking apps and saw in the search history of her phone she had looked up: How does it feel to drown, documents state.

Copeland is being held at the Department of Corrections in the Guam Behavioral Health and Wellness Center Annex.
Guams congressional delegate has invited the governor  his political opponent in the gubernatorial primary  to a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

In a Tuesday letter, Del. Michael San Nicolas asked Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero to join our Guam Congressional Team as the honored guest of our wreath-laying ceremony in commemoration of the 78th Anniversary of the Liberation of Guam.

Adelup spokeswoman Krystal Paco-San Agustin said the governor is going to accept the invitation.

The ceremony will take place at 9:15 a.m., East Coast time, July 15.

San Nicolas and running mate Sabrina Salas Matanane are challenging Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero and Lt. Gov. Joshua Tenorio in the Democratic primary.

The primary will be held Aug. 27, but early in-office voting starts July 28 at the Westin Resort.

United respect

Standing in united respect for our Liberation history, transcending politics, and showcasing that the experiences of our people are paramount is a unique opportunity for both of us to lead by example, with integrity, and in reverence to the lives and legacies of generations that have come before us, San Nicolas wrote. As such, I wish to extend this invitation to you that we may do this together.
A ribbon of katupat, or rice pouches, made from woven coconut leaves is cut by Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero, Lt. Gov. Josh Tenorio and others during a ribbon-cutting ceremony near the Horse & Cow Pub & Grill in Tamuning June 27, 2022. The ceremony was held to celebrate the completion of restoration work along Marine Corps Drive, stretching from the intersection of Route 30, more commonly known as Gov. Carlos G. Camacho Road, northward to the intersection of Route 10A, or Airport Access Road.
A social media post circulating on Guam is identical to posts circulating around the United States and debunked by law enforcement officials around the country.
Sweden's Foreign Minister Ann Linde, right, and Finland's Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, left, attend a news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, after signing their countries' accession protocols at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Tuesday. Reuters-Yonhap



NATO on Tuesday kicked off momentous accession procedures for Sweden and Finland, aiming to expand the military alliance to 32 countries in reaction to Russia's war in Ukraine.



"This is an historic day, for Finland, for Sweden, for NATO, and for Euro-Atlantic security," NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said after protocols were signed launching the required ratification process in all alliance countries.



The foreign ministers of Sweden and Finland, alongside Stoltenberg, also qualified the occasion as "historic".



"The membership of both Finland and Sweden will not only contribute to our own security, but to the collective security of the alliance," said Finland's Pekka Haavisto.



The two Nordic countries had long maintained non-alignment status, even though they have held exercises with NATO and have inter-operable weapons systems.



They announced intentions to join NATO in May, triggered by Russia's February invasion of Ukraine and ongoing war there.



In a sudden change of course, Sweden and Finland  the latter of which fought a Soviet invasion in 1939-40 and shares a 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) border with Russia  asked to come under NATO's mutual-defense umbrella.



Their bids hit a road-bump when Turkey, a NATO member, threatened to block their entry.



Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had accused Sweden and Finland of being havens for Kurdish militants he has sought to crush, and for promoting "terrorism".



He also demanded they lift arms embargoes imposed for Turkey's 2019 military incursion into Syria.



But Erdogan dropped his objections last week, in time for a NATO summit in Spain, after negotiations resulted in concessions  and a U.S. promise of new warplanes for Turkey.



The summit ended up extending invitations to Sweden and Finland to formally apply, leading to lightning-fast negotiations on Monday then Tuesday's signing.



Security commitments



Erdogan says he could still slam the door shut if Sweden and Finland don't follow through on their promises, which include possible extradition agreements.



The months-long period during which all NATO countries have to ratify the Nordic countries' membership is a risky moment, not only because of Turkey's threat but also because the NATO mutual-defense clause is not yet applicable.



Stoltenberg said: "I count on allies to deliver a quick and swift and smooth ratification process."



He emphasized that "many allies have already made clear commitments to Finland and Sweden's security" during the interim period, and pointed out a boosted NATO presence in their region.



Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said security assurances had been made by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and NATO members in the Nordic and Baltic regions.



Several NATO members flagged expedited ratification for Sweden and Finland.



"Moments after Finland and Sweden's accession protocols were signed in Brussels, I summoned my government and proposed to Estonian parliament to convene tomorrow for accelerated ratification," Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas tweeted.



Germany's parliament was poised to ratify as early as the end of this week.



Sources in the ruling coalition said a first reading of the text was likely on Wednesday, with the final two readings on Friday.



"This is the fastest accession process in NATO's history so far," Stoltenberg said. (AFP)






Haiti - Assassination of the President : Turkey rejects Samir Handal's extradition request and orders his release





Monday, July 4th, the 37th High Criminal Court of Istanbul, unanimously rejected the extradition of the Jordanian businessman Samir Handal sought by the Haitian justice for his alleged complicity in the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, judging that "the reasons given for his extradition were not sufficient" and ordered his release.



Let's recall that Samir Handal in addition to being Haitian and American, also holds Jordanian and Palestinian nationalities through his parents, under arrest warrant from the Port-au-Prince Prosecutor's Office subject to an INTERPOL red notice, had been arrested in Turkey on November 15, 2021 upon arrival on a Turkish Airlines flight from Miami.



He is accused of having rented his house in Florida to Dr. Christian Emmanuel Sanon (63, native of the town of Marigot), a Haitian doctor who has been living in Florida for twenty years and who is later suspected by the Haitian justice of to be one of the intellectual authors of the commando operation which led to the assassination of President Moise. https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34210-haiti-flash-arrest-of-one-of-the-intellectual-authors-of-the-assassination-of-president-moise-and-an-attempted-coup.html . It would be in this house that meetings of a political nature related to the plot against the President of Haiti would have been held.



Samir Handal, who has never ceased to proclaim his innocence, declared that he rented this house to Dr. Sanon to establish a medical practice there and affirmed that he had never attended any meeting in this house nor ever heard of a plot except after the assassination of President Moise in the media.



But if the Istanbul High Criminal Court speaks of "insufficient grounds", its judgment probably took into account the arguments and evidence put forward by Handal's lawyers.



Sould be noted that no extradition treaty has been signed between Haiti and Turkey. However, a 1973 United Nations convention to which Haiti and Turkey are signatories gives the Haitian authorities the possibility of requesting the extradition of this alleged assassin. However, the weakness of this Convention is found in Article 9, which stipulates that the requesting country "must prove that the extradited person will be treated and judged fairly", which Haiti has probably never been able to demonstrate.



It is this article that Samir Handal's lawyers have exploited, reminding the Court that the evidence presented proves unequivocally that if Samir Handal were extradited to Haiti, he would be tried unfairly, without a fair trial and that his life would be in danger. Handal's lawyers, by filing several official national and international reports, have demonstrated beyond any doubt the lamentable state and the dangers of the prison system in Haiti (overcrowding, subhuman living conditions, lack of food, disease, absence of care, violence , unlimited pre-trial detention, corruption, etc...) In addition, they reminded the Court that INTERPOL's Red Notice had been lifted since April 20, 2022.



Reacting to this news, the President of the Senate Joseph Lambert, described as "a great disappointment the release of Samir Handal by a Turkish court" and also expressed his concerns about the handling of the case of the assassination of Jovenel Moise by the American court...



For the former Minister of Foreign Affairs Claude Joseph "The alleged involvement of Samir Handal in the assassination of President Jovenel Moise is well documented in the report of the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police, the result of impeccable work by our investigators". For Joesph "Samir Handal is freed simply because the government of Ariel Henry deliberately produced a botched extradition request that had no chance of succeeding. What could we expect from a government headed by a Prime Minister indexed in the assassination of Jovenel Moise ?"



Read also about the Samir Handal case :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-36795-haiti-assassination-of-the-president-the-extradition-of-turkey-of-samir-handal-stalls.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-36457-haiti-assassination-of-the-president-postponement-of-the-extradition-hearing-of-samir-handal-in-turkey.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35261-haiti-assassination-of-the-president-haitian-businessman-samir-handal-in-prison-in-istanbul-for-40-days.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35541-haiti-assassination-of-the-president-the-eventual-transfer-of-samir-handal-from-turkey-may-take-a-long-time.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35253-haiti-flash-samir-handal-suspect-in-the-assassination-of-president-moise-arrested-in-turkey.html



Read also about the assassination of President Moise :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34162-haiti-flash-president-jovenel-moise-assassinated-by-mercenaries-official-updated-7am-+-video.html



SL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Politic : Launch of the Certification Program for drinking water packaged in bottles





The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MCI), via the Haitian Bureau of Standardization (BHN), launched the certification program "Drinking Water Packaged in Bottles".



This program, which constitutes a major step forward in the establishment of quality infrastructure in Haiti, aims to provide a normative framework for the drinking water sector, a vital and strategic sector for Haiti.



James Monazard, the Director General of MCI praised the efforts of the BHN to provide the country with a quality infrastructure worthy of the name. He also called on the private business sector to take advantage of certification programs as they develop.



Monorde Civil, Director General of BHN, underlined the importance of certification for national trade insisting "Businesses, like consumers, have a lot to gain."



In addition, he recalled that in 10 years of existence, the BHN has touched all the elements related to quality infrastructure, namely : metrology, standardization and certification.



IH/ iciHaiti






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





"Ti Gra" Gang Leader executed

Saturday evening, the gang leader of Gerald Bataille alias "Ti Gra" recently released from prison, while riding a motorcycle with a passenger were both killed at Petite Place Cazeau, in Delmas 33, by individuals not identified.



USA : 4th of July celebration words of the PM

"Because the 4th of July is to the USA what the 1st of January is to Haiti, by the universal scope of their revolution, I join, on this day, my voice to that of the Haitian people to wish happy Independence Day to our American brothers and sisters to whom we are united by cooperation, solidarity and the bonds of a great historic friendship," acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry.



USA and Taiwan at the bedside of Haiti

Nicole D. Theriot, Charge d'Affaires a.i. of the United States Embassy met with Ambassador Wen-jiann KU of Taiwan (Republic of China) to discuss assistance to Haiti in the fight against the aggravation food insecurity and support for the National Police of Haiti (PNH) in the fight against gangs and insecurity.



Argentina : Haitian Adopted Children Day

Sunday, July 3rd, 2022, the Embassy of the Republic of Haiti in Argentina organized the day of Haitian children adopted in Argentina. This activity is part of an approach aimed at putting adopted Haitian children in contact with elements of the identity of their country of origin and also to promote the meeting of parents.



Consulate of Haiti in Montreal closed

"The Consulate General of Haiti in Montreal advises the general public and the Haitian Community of Quebec in particular that its premises will be closed on Thursday, July 7, 2022, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the assassination of the President of the Republic his Excellency Mr. Jovenel Moise." Consular services will resume on Monday, July 11, 2022, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.



The PM at the 43rd Meeting of Heads of State

On the sidelines of the 43rd Meeting of Caricom Heads of State and Government taking place in Suriname from July 3rd to 5, 2022 https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-37063-icihaiti-caricom-pm-henry-in-suriname.html , the Premier, Ariel Henry, met with the Secretary General of the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS), H.E. Mr. Georges Rebelo Pinto Chikoti. They discussed, among other things, South-South cooperation, the progress of negotiations with the European Union for the signing of the Georgetown Agreement, food security and the consequences of the war in Ukraine over several sectors.



HL/ HaitiLibre




















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Andreotta issues statement on effort to erase Playhouse grant

Responding on Tuesday to questions and criticism from constituents about his vote to deny the Flat Rock Playhouse a $30,000 grant, Commissioner Daniel Andreotta issued a statement in which he declared "100 percent" support for the theater but explained why he thinks it should sustain itself without taxpayer support.

He said the statement "is from myself alone, and not from the Henderson County Board of Commissioners as a whole."

Commissioners Bill Lapsley, Rebecca McCall and Michael Edney voted no last month on Andreotta's motion to strip the grant from the 2022-23 county budget. David Hill joined Andreotta in voting yes.

Here is the full statement:

"Greetings Henderson County,

"Ive received communication recently from several citizens regarding my position on taxpayer funding to the Flat Rock Playhouse. I feel it necessary to clarify the reasons for that position.

"First, I know well what a blessing the Flat Rock Playhouse is to Henderson County, as well as to all of Western North Carolina. I have friends employed there, so I am absolutely 100% supportive, and wish them only success. I have never proposed defunding them, however, I do not believe we should be further subsidizing them with tax payer funds either.

"Henderson County has a strong economic development initiative whereby we recruit quality industry that brings greater income opportunities for our citizens. These industries are held to strict investment and wage standards. They also pay the lions share of the property taxes. This allows us to keep the tax burden on our citizens among the lowest in the state, compared to the other counties with a population of over 100,000. This means we are picking our tax paying citizens as the winners! The Flat Rock Playhouse does not qualify under this umbrella.

"The Flat Rock Playhouse, being formed as a non-profit, does not get a property tax bill while struggling families and senior adults on fixed incomes do. Therefore I do not support additional subsidies at the taxpayers expense, regardless of the context. Being an entity that can and does generate revenue, I feel they are fully equipped to sustain themselves, especially given the great tax advantage they already have. Remember, Henderson County has no money of its own. We only have the resources we taxed away from citizens after they worked to earn it. As a steward of those resources I will always view $30,000 as I would $30 million.

"I hope this information is helpful as I always want you to know where I stand and why. It is an honor to serve as a County Commissioner for the greatest people anywhere Henderson County."
Youth event held to promote cultural exchanges between China, ASEAN

Xinhua) 11:15, July 05, 2022

NANNING, July 4 (Xinhua) -- The 2022 China-ASEAN Youth Hand-in-Hand Event was held Monday in Nanning, the capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The event aimed to deepen cultural and people-to-people exchanges between China and the ASEAN countries, with over 300 participants from the countries joining both online and offline.

During the event, the representatives from countries including China, Laos, and Thailand shared stories that they experienced through the win-win cooperation of China and ASEAN countries, covering topics such as international cooperation against COVID-19 and cultural exchanges.

Praporn Puppateerawanich, a Thai teacher at Guangxi Arts University, shared a story of music exchanges between China and Thailand.

"The event is very helpful for the cultural exchanges between China and Thailand, as face-to-face communication can help us better understand each other's culture," she said.

"People-to-people and cultural exchanges and mutual learning among the youths are important ways to enhance people-to-people bonds between China and the ASEAN countries," said Sun Jin, deputy secretary of the Guangxi regional committee of the Communist Youth League of China.

"I hope young friends will carry forward friendship, pursue common development and engage in practical cooperation, and contribute their wisdom and strength to the building of a closer China-ASEAN community with a shared future," Sun added.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
ABOUT 500 people attended the summer fair held at Sonning Common Primary School.

Attractions included stalls, a barbecue, bouncy castle, lucky dips, a raffle and games such as splat the rat and welly-wanging. There were also performances by the school choirs and bands.

Former pupils of the school in Grove Road were among those who attended as well as families from the village pre-school and Maiden Erlegh Chiltern Edge and Bishopswood Schools

The fair raised about 3,000. Amy OConnor, who chairs the parent-teacher association, said: It was bustling and there was so much to do and see. It was lovely to see so many familiar faces.

At the event, cheques for 750 were presented to both Sonning Common community first responders and the Greenshoots nursery in Peppard.

The money was raised by this years On Your Bike, an annual fundraiser organised by the school.

The cheques presented to Greenshoots trustee Chris Fuller (top) and community responder Chris Brooks (above) and by Jake Willis and Elsie Davis, children of On Your Bike committee members Kathryn Willis and Geoff Davis.
In Defence of Marxism is committed to safeguarding your privacy. At all times we aim to respect any personal data you share with us, or that we receive from other organisations, and keep it safe. This Privacy Policy (Policy) sets out our data collection and processing practices and your options regarding the ways in which your personal information is used.

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The Nets have leverage in trade negotiations and intend to use it, which could drag out the process into training camp, Brian Lewis of the New York Post writes.

Kyrie Irving has opted in to the last year of his deal and Kevin Durants four-year extension is just getting underway. So, they can take their time finding the right trade package. Its also hard to imagine Durant holding out or refusing to play, as Ben Simmons did in Philadelphia, if the Nets dont deal him.

We have more on the New York teams:
Paul Wilson, who joined Cross Hotels & Resorts in 2018 as the Executive Vice President Commercial has been instrumental in establishing the group as one of the fastest growing brands in the Southeast Asia. "My career has been built around my two greatest passions: building high performing teams and smashing commercial performance across the world's most competitive markets."

As Executive Vice President, Paul Wilson will be responsible for leading the groups operational excellence and the successful execution of all aspects of the company's global guest strategy, including brand development, sales and marketing, revenue management, guest engagement, digital transformation, and loyalty strategies.

Commenting on his promotion, he said: "I've spent the past 22 months on an accelerated path switching out traditional ways of driving and measuring performance, while completely remodeling structures at speed. The journey has been tumultuous but tremendously successful, both commercially and personally. We are here to be the catalyst for the change that our industry, and most importantly our guests, have been crying out for."

Paul Wilson has led unprecedented growth by championing innovative new business models at both the strategic and tactical level. Whether it's his agile approach to new owners contracts, or instigating the businesses game changing use of social media, his ability to think differently has brought 'The Cross Way' to life, with unprecedented success.

Prior to joining Cross Hotels & Resorts, Paul Wilson was Vice President of Sales for Thailand's Centara Hotels & Resorts; and has held leadership position for the Mantra Group in Australia, driving growth from 23 to over 100 properties.
Centara Hotel Korat reveals the appointment of experienced hotelier Thawintorn Kanungkid as opening General Manager of Centara Hotel Korat. Scheduled to open in September 2022, Centara Hotel Korat is developed by Central Pattana - a global sustainable real estate company and developer of Central shopping centres, residential projects, office buildings and hotels across Thailand - in partnership with Centara Hotels & Resorts, Thailand's leading hotel operator.

Thawintorn brings with him two decades of experience in the hospitality industry, most recently as Resident Manager at The Sukosol Bangkok Hotel, where for five years he managed day-to-day operations for the hotel, as well as supported the hotel's F&B and sales & marketing teams.

No stranger to the Centara family, he first joined the hospitality business in the Front Office team in 2006, and again in 2013 as the Rooms Division Manager in the pre-opening team of one of Centara's Pattaya properties.
The newly launched hospitality arm of Zeppelin Development, the Denver-based, family-owned firm acclaimed for River North Art District projects like The Source Hotel + Market Hall, Zeppelin Station and 28-acre TAXI community, has announced industry veteran Antoine Moinard as its new director of hospitality. In that role, Moinard is overseeing Zeppelin Hospitality's two upcoming Colorado property launches  31-cabin A-Frame Club in Winter Park and 16-key The Western Hotel & Spa in Ouray  as well as setting the tone for the group's future hotel ventures.

Moinard, who has been in a director role at The Source Hotel in Denver since 2018, was born and raised on a former vineyard owned by his grandfather in Charrais, France. He credits his large family - full of wonderful cooks - for influencing his passion for great food, wine and hospitality. As a child, Moinard got his first taste of the business during summers spent working at family-owned restaurants in both the South of France and on the French Atlantic Coast. After graduating with a BS in Business and Logistics in 2002, Moinard relocated to Cork, Ireland, where he worked his way up from washing dishes to becoming a top restaurant's lead server, all while learning English.

After honing his skills in Ireland, Moinard spent time as the food and beverage cost controller for the Club Med in Val d'Isere, France. He eventually relocated to L'Escala, Spain to assist a relative in opening a seaside restaurant before segueing into bartending, a journey that saw him vagabonding his way through tony Barcelona nightclubs and popular beach clubs in the French Caribbean. In 2010, Moinard relocated to Colorado and found work at the landmark St Julien Hotel & Spa in Boulder, where he refined his service and sommelier skills as assistant general manager of Jill's. From there, he found his way to Denver and The Source Hotel as food and beverage director, a position that allowed him to grow exponentially and ultimately align himself for the advancement opportunity with Zeppelin Hospitality.
COLUMBUS, OHIO - Since 1995, Mills James has been delivering on-site AV services for boutique conference centers and high-end hotels across the United States. Today, its Hospitality Audiovisual Services Department is providing the same services to 22 resorts in Mexico. Salvador Bernal, Mills James Vice President of Hospitality, Mexico, will lead the operation from the companys office in Cancun.

Mexicos meeting industry is seeing a strong rebound in the resort market, said John Watts, Mills James VP of Hospitality. Cancun, Los Cabos, and Puerto Vallarta are predicting record-breaking tourist numbers this year.

Forty percent of Mills James business in Mexico is destination weddings with groups from the United States, Europe, and South America. There is a growing demand for sound systems, DJ services, LED dance floors, video production services, and more. The remaining 60% of the production companys business comes from international groups booking meetings and conventions.

As tourism and travel return, we are confident that under Salvadors direction, Mills James market penetration will grow exponentially and take us from a regional audiovisual and event technology player to an international leader across the US and Caribbean, added Watts.

Positioned to Lead the Market

Bernal spent the last 25 years in executive positions with leading AV services companies across Mexico, including serving as Caribbean Regional Vice President at PSAV Presentations Services, Mexico Vice President at AVI-SPL, and LATAM Vice President at Encore Event Technologies. His history of generating revenue, building partnerships, and managing Mexico market distribution channels will enable Mills James to quickly make its stake as the regions leading audiovisual and event production services.

Mills James is positioned for explosive growth in Mexico, Bernal said. Our team is 90-people strong, comprised of creative directors, producers, videographers, lighting and sound engineers, set builders, and administrative and finance associates.

Mills James has invested heavily in modern AV equipment that will reside on-site at each hotel with inventory managed by dedicated technicians and a warehouse close by storing specialty gear that they can access as needed.

This is a fresh brand backed by years of experience, Bernal commented. Our competitors are plagued with old equipment and a blase attitude toward customer service. While we are a new option in the market, our faces and business culture are very familiar to the hoteliers we serve. He added, I am proud to be part of a company that brings new life to the AV and event technology business.

ABOUT MILLS JAMES

Mills James' mission is to craft and deliver experiences that deepen human connections and inspire people to care and act. Since 1984, the firm has focused on elevating experiences, starting with the production experience itself  serving Fortune 500 companies, startups, and not-for-profits all over the nation with offices, production facilities, and hospitality properties in the US and Mexico.

More information about Mills James is available at millsjames.com or by calling John Watts at (813) 508-2251. For details on Mills James Mexico, contact Salvador Bernal at [email protected].

Barbara Worcester

4409305770
As a world leader in the hospitality industry, Accor knows that its offerings must be diverse and well-rounded to stay ahead of the curve and appeal to the changing needs of the increasingly discerning guest.

To ensure a standout wellness experience that will be remembered long after check-out, Accors health and wellness platform is grounded in six core pillars  nutrition, holistic design, movement, spa, mindfulness and digital presence. This approach has proven successful as Accor and its brands have already garnered a number of prestigious wellness awards in the first half of 2022.

"Physical, emotional and mental well-being are now widely recognized as contributing to a higher quality of life, and for hotels, this must permeate the entire guest experience. We are pleased to see that our innovative wellness concepts, which all take a more holistic approach, are receiving global recognition from both guests and industry experts"  Emlyn Brown, Global Vice President, Well-Being, Accor

Continually striving for excellence, today Accor and its world-class portfolio of brands and hotels are recognized by leading wellness and spa publications and associations. Keep reading to see some of the awards scooped up so far this year.

Fit Summit

With an impressive portfolio of hotels, spas, venues and destinations and the Groups strong commitment to overall guest and employee well-being, its no surprise that Accor has been named the 2022 Hotel / Resort / Spa Company of the Year by the FIT Summit Health, Fitness and Wellness Awards of Excellence. The annual awards recognize leading companies and executives from across the health, fitness, wellness and hospitality industries in Asia Pacific.

Forbes Travel Guide

This years Forbes Travel Guide, a leading authority on luxury hospitality, honored eleven of Accors spas worldwide in the 2022 Star Awards. 5-Star rated venues include The Centre for Wellbeing at Fairmont Grand Del Mar, Banyan Tree Macau and Banyan Tree Mayakoba, which were recognized for their unparalleled luxury spa offerings. In addition, properties such as Raffles Spa at Raffles Istanbul, Willow Stream Spa at Fairmont Peace Hotel and Banyan Tree Spa Ungasan, garnered 4-Stars.

Banyan Tree Mayakoba Photo by Accor

Spas of America

According to Spas of America, consumers sought fresh-air wellness experiences such as country, mountain, and desert spas over the last year. The publication's annual list of Top 100 North American Spas mirrored this sentiment, with only 10% of the list being city spas. Proving the Fairmont brand's excellence in this segment, two properties were among the 10% of urban spas that made the cut. Willow Stream Spa at the Fairmont Pacific Rim in Vancouver, British Columbia, seized the #34 spot, while the Health Club & Spa at Fairmont Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, came in at #79.

Willow Stream Spa at Fairmont Pacific Rim Photo by Accor

World Spa and Wellness Award

Each Year, the World Spa & Wellness Awards acknowledge the excellence of care, service and standards in the spa & wellness sector worldwide. This Year, Accor was given a Highly Commended rating by the organization and was named the runner-up for 2022 Spa Group for the Year.

Health to Wealth

Accor continues its mission to innovate the well-being sector in hospitality and beyond by launching its thought-provoking and informative podcast series, Health to Wealth. The groundbreaking series explores the current state of well-being and the defining issues of our time, engaging some of the worlds leading thinkers. By spotlighting the importance of integrating well-being in all aspects of daily life and business for industries, companies and individuals, Accor is positioned to play an active role in the future of wellness-enriched hospitality.
The companys business and financial transformation in the years prior to the pandemic, coupled with astute management of the situation induced by the health crisis, have laid the foundations for a swift recovery

NH reported 175 million of revenue in May, a figure it is set to outperform in June, such that its second-quarter revenue will top that of 2Q19. Net debt declined during the first five months of 2022

Laia Lahoz, Chief Assets & Development Officer, has been named board director, while Alfredo Fernandez Agras and Kosin Chantikul have been re-elected as independent and proprietary directors, respectively

Madrid - NH Hotel Group heads into the summer with very good perspectives: occupancy jumped by 40% in the first quarter of the year to 70% in May and continues to rise, while revenue has climbed from 234 million in the first quarter to over 500 million in the second quarter, outperforming 2Q19 levels. The average daily rate (ADR), meanwhile, has increased from 90 in 1Q22 to 116 and 128 in April and May, over 135 in June, according to Ramon Aragones, the hotel chains CEO, during his speech at the companys Annual General Meeting, held this morning in hybrid format at the NH Collection Casino in Madrid.

During his speech, the CEO told the companys shareholders that the hotel chain's current healthy business momentum is underpinned directly by the work performed in 2018 and 2019 on the digitalisation front and the major corporate effort made throughout all of 2021, a year in which we demonstrated our ability to surmount the most difficult period in the sectors history. He flagged the efficiency and cost discipline measures rolled out last year in particular. Aragones also underscored the company's diversified portfolio, strong presence in key cities and high brand recognition, as well as the advantage gained from having kept throughout the last few years a solid base of assets that continue to support the Group.

NHs shareholders ratified the companys 2021 financial statements and management report at todays meeting. Group revenue increased by 55% last year to 834 million while net profit improved by 216 million to narrow the loss to 155 million.

As for the companys performance so far in 2022, NHs CEO singled out the strength of its financial position, unlocked by the accelerating recovery, price strategy and cost control, which are driving growth in cash generation. Net debt came down by 27 million in the first five months of the year to 541 million by the end of May, while liquidity stood at 540 million. Strong liquidity coupled with the lack of major refinancing requirements until 2026 position us to lead the recovery underway in the hotel business, which is set to benefit from healthy growth in the coming years, said Aragones.

The CEO went on to note that the companys growth plan is articulated around reinforcing its positioning and brand equity in the most attractive segments, including specific developments for the Anantara brand in the luxury segment and for the Tivoli brand in the leisure segment. The companys portfolio currently comprises a total of 2,500 rooms that are set to open within the next three years (45% of which under management contracts).

The recent launch of the new NH Discovery loyalty programme together with Global Hotel Alliance (GHA) places the company in the ranking of top-10 reward programmes by customer reach, with 21 million members, over 800 hotels and a presence in 100 countries. This programme is set to play a big role in raising NHs visibility in the main issuer markets and various market segments.

During his speech to the companys shareholders, Alfredo Fernandez Agras, independent director of NH, said that, in a year as variable, and at times complicated as 2021, the company rolled out a range of measures and plans to resize its business and ensure its sustainability with the aim of minimising costs, preserving liquidity to cover business needs and ensuring that the recovery would be framed by efficiency and the ability to ensure the highest standards of health and safety.

He went on to add that the company acted quickly and in a very responsible manner. I am certain that the ability to proactively adapt and the companys financial health before the onset of the pandemic have helped us overcome major difficulties, as has the management teams ability to reach out and find end-to-end solutions.

Fernandez Agras has been reappointed by NHs shareholders as independent director for another three-year mandate. Kosin Chantikul has also been re-elected as proprietary director for the next three years. Elsewhere, Laia Lahoz, Chief Assets & Development Officer of NH since 2017, has been named board director. Lahoz has been working at NH since 2013, when she joined as SVP of Portfolio Management. Since then she has been heading up the global asset management strategy; in 2017, the companys global expansion was added to her roster of executive duties.

About NH Hotel Group, part of Minor Hotels

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.
Q. My wife and I are wondering about the pros and cons of naming an estate planning lawyer versus a family friend or distant relative to serve as executor after we have both passed away. We have no descendants and few extended family members who are younger than us. We will have a fairly significant estate to leave behind, most of which will be going to various charities. Do you have any thoughts regarding who we should name as executor? If we choose a lawyer, how do we find a good one in San Antonio? How do we know we are choosing one that won't steal the funds?

A. You should not name a distant relative or a family friend to serve as executor. There is simply too much risk that this person will steal part or all of your estate and never follow through on distributing your estate to the charities.

Granted, it would be risky for that person to steal the money, but the charities you designate to receive your estate may not have the time or resources to chase down the relative or friend who you designate to serve as executor.

You should also not name an estate planning attorney. While it is common for attorneys in other states to serve as executors, it is almost never done here in Texas. Just about every full-time estate planning attorney would decline your request to serve as executor. If you find an attorney who agrees to serve, then you most likely have found an inexperienced attorney who doesn't understand how things are done in Texas.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Answers to your legal questions

That leaves you with only one good option, and that is to name a trust company to serve as executor. Trust companies usually have minimum amounts of assets that must be in the estate for them to agree to serve, but since you have a significant estate, this hurdle should not be an issue.

There is virtually no chance a trust company would ever steal your estate. Granted, they will charge a hefty fee to serve, which to many people is akin to stealing, but the amounts they charge should be reasonable given the service they will be providing. Plus, they will fully disclose to you how much they would charge if they were to serve today, and that amount is probably in line with the fee they will charge after both of you have passed away.

You should therefore interview several trust companies to find one you like. But do not look at the trust departments at big brokerage firms. They sometimes will agree to serve as executor, but since they are not local, they will not sell your house or your household belongings, nor will they arrange to mow your lawn or clean your pool. Instead, you should find a Texas-based trust company with trust officers who work locally and who will be available to perform all the usual duties required of an executor.

You should also consider writing a revocable trust where the trust company is named as the successor trustee to the two of you. Your problem is not just post-death. There is a risk that both of you will become incapacitated, or that one of you will die and the other will become incapacitated, and then you will need the trust company to step in and manage your estates.

The information in this column is intended to provide a general understanding of the law, not legal advice. Ronald Lipman of the Houston law firm Lipman & Associates is board-certified in estate planning and probate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.

Email questions to stateyourcase@lipmanpc.com.
Unilateral changes made by the Public Utility Commission and states grid manager have fundamentally altered how the states power market functions, potentially costing Texans an estimated $1 billion since July 2021 and as much as $2 billion by the end of the year.

After two decades of relying on market mechanisms, namely prices, to bring power on and off the grid, the PUC and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas are instead ordering generators to keep plants running  even when the electricity isnt needed  to ensure a comfortable supply cushion. In addition to adding costs for consumers, power generators say theyre losing money and damaging aging equipment to meet the new requirements, signaling they may mothball some plants, or shut them down for good, due to wear and tear.

The changes put in place by the PUC and ERCOT have distorted the market, undermined pricing and created uncertainty, analysts said, making it unlikely investors would pour millions of dollars into building and expanding generation while it remains unclear how the power market operates and how it may change in the next year.

The PUC was charged by the Legislature to redesign power markets following the catastrophic grid failure during the winter storm of February 2021. The agency is not expected to publish its final proposals until the fall, and those changes likely wont go into effect until 2023 or 2024.

Conservative operations Here are some other actions the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT have taken as part of their conservative operating measures, which PUC Chairman Peter Lake said will remain in place until the wholesale market is redesigned:  Flattening the Operating Reserve Demand Curve: Officials have lowered the maximum price of power during scarcity conditions from $9,000 a megawatt hour to $5,000. To offset that loss to generators, prices on the system now rise more quickly, essentially moving from a scheme of peaks and valleys to a much flatter pricing curve.  Increasing non-spin reserves: ERCOT uses an ancillary services market to procure reserves close to demand centers, so power can get to customers without running into transmission problems. One of the products on that market are non-spin reserves, or power generated by units that can begin providing power within a 30-minute timeframe. ERCOT is now requiring about 3,500 to 4,500 megawatts of non-spin to be online each hour, compared with 3,000 per hour last year. The price for non-spin to wait in the wings has also increased.  Overall increase in reserves: ERCOT now keeps a cushion of 6,500 megawatts of reserves on standby in case of a running plant being forced offline or other unforeseen circumstances. See More Collapse

Peter Lake, chairman of the Public Utility Commission, defended the measures taken in recent months as temporary reforms designed to increase reserves and move away from a model in which generators are rewarded when power shortages reach crisis levels and wholesale prices spike 100 times or more above average prices. Lake pointed to the recent stretch of 100 degree days that drove record power consumption to all-time highs without disruptions to the power grid.

We know the reforms are working, Lake said. Weve seen it in action. Weve faced test after test early this summer and have seen benefits of our refocus on reliability.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Power market overhaul embroiled in potential conflict of interest

But its still unknown how much more reliability the PUC and ERCOT have bought and at what cost, said Alison Silverstein, an Austin-based energy consultant who worked for the PUC from 1995 to 2001 and with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from 2001 to 2004.

We have no proof or analysis, other than assertions by the PUC and ERCOT, that these measures are in fact improving reliability, she said. They have not been clear or straightforward in accounting for the full costs of reliability.

Less competition

Since laws deregulating the power market passed in 1999, Texas market has depended solely on price signals to attract the electricity the state needs. The Legislature, in fact, has consistently rejected efforts to create a capacity market, which pays companies to keep idle generation available in case its needed, and stuck to the concept that prices alone should balance supply and demand.

In Texas, the vast majority of power, nearly 90 percent, is acquired and priced set through contracts, but two inter-related markets are responsible for responding to short-term supply and demand: the real-time and day-ahead markets. In the real-time market, when the demand for power approaches the amount of power available, wholesale prices spike, providing the incentives for generators to crank up units to sell electricity at healthy profits. When demand falls below available supplies, prices sink, leading generators to take production offline.

The power sold in the real-time market supplements the electricity committed by generators in the day-ahead market. When generators bid into the day-ahead market, they tell ERCOT that they will provide electricity for a certain number of hours at a certain price.

If ERCOT does not receive enough bids or offers to meet projected demand, ERCOT officials can order units to come online and wait in the wings in case they are needed, through a process known as Reliability Unit Commitments, or RUCs.

Historically, forcing units to come online for reliabilitys sake happened rarely as ERCOT adhered to the philosophy that prices, not regulators, should drive market operations. But last July, with the memories of the February freeze still raw, the use of RUCs began to skyrocket.

The number of hours units were forced to hum on the sidelines in 2021 exceeded the time they operated as backup in the previous six years combined, according to Carrie Bivens, ERCOTs independent market monitor. In July 2021 alone, the hours in which power plants operated in backup mode jumped to more than 1,200 from 374 the previous month as ERCOT and the PUC agreed to operate in a more conservative manner that emphasized bigger cushions of available power.

The direct cost of having those units on backup has been relatively low  about $6 million so far this year to cover generators cost of operating and fuel costs, plus profit, according to Bivens. But the process can create artificial scarcity on the market and lead to higher prices.

While units operate for backup power, they are not counted as reserves by ERCOT, making it appear that less generation is online than there actually is, Silverstein said. In addition, it means fewer units can bid into the real-time and day-ahead markets because theyre being kept on stand-by.

There is less competition and prices could be higher, Silverstein said.

On HoustonChronicle.com: ERCOTs plan to keep power in reserve could cost Texans $1.5 billion

Bivens has estimated the cumulative costs of buying more electricity before its needed, and the resulting distortions to the wholesale market cost about $400 million in the last six months of last year. So far this year, she estimated it cost between $685 million and $860 million from January through the end of May, and that those could rise to $1.5 billion by the end of the year.

That would total nearly $2 billion since the conservative operations began a year ago.

Lake, however, characterized Bivens estimates as an academic, hypothetical exercise speculating what the potential impact has been. He said bringing more backup power online, and flattening price spikes ultimately lowers costs. He said the additional costs for running plants as backups is closer to $1 per household per month, compared with Bivens estimate, which works out to about $12.60 per household per month.

Ask any generator how furious they have been since this was enacted, Lake said. It cut into their revenue.

Beyond the market

The issues related to ERCOTs operating posture extend beyond market distortions, touching not only the long-term impact of running aging plants for extended periods while delaying maintenance, but also politics.

Generators say most of the units that ERCOT is forcing to operate are among the oldest, in some cases 50 or 60 years old. Keeping them running  even if they dont provide power to the grid  only adds to wear and tear and makes them more likely to break down in the future, said Amanda Frazier, senior vice president of regulatory policy with the merchant power company Vistra of Irving.

Soon, it might not be worth doing the maintenance needed to keep them up and running because some plants are operating a loss with the new market operations, she told the State Energy Plan Advisory Committee.

Frazier added the conservative operating measures also do not provide incentives to build new natural-gas powered generation  both because of uncertainty with how the market will be redesigned in the future and the current move away from scarcity pricing. Vistra has no plans to build more natural gas generation in Texas, she told the State Energy Plan Advisory Committee.

State Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, said the operating changes imposed by the PUC and ERCOT were made to enhance short-term reliability, but may have long-term consequences. Older units could break down or get shut down if they operate at a loss. With the lack of investment in natural gas-fired generation, the power system will need to rely on older plants for years to come.

Johnson said the recent decisions, which include fundamental changes to the power market created by the Legislature, have been made by a small group of officials with little consultation with lawmakers, who have the ultimate authority over the the states deregulated electricity system. He also questioned whether reliability alone has driven those changes.

The safety margins we have right now on our grid are in part due to a conservative approach to make sure that consumers dont lose power, and partly to make sure that theres not political backlash, he said. Theres some concern that were putting generators in a difficult position, and we are artificially keeping electricity prices higher than they have to be in order to protect people from political fallout.

Lake said hes aware of frustrations among generators and other market participants. He said the relatively low costs of having backup power ready to go is a worthy trade off to keep the lights on and air conditioners running. The old model, he said, would have already pushed the system to emergency conditions, which would have only benefited generators.

Participants are accustomed to doing the old way of business  getting as close to the brink as possible. Those are the times when revenues come in for those companies. Weve turned that on its head, 180 degrees, in the opposite direction Lake said. That is absolutely the point of this entire exercise  to move from the crisis-based business model to reliability-based business model.

shelby.webb@chron.com
Burns Original BBQ, one of Houstons legacy barbecue joints, is in expansion mode with a Kroger partnership that is spreading its smoked meat fame beyond its original Acres Homes location.

Over the weekend Burns opened a new bistro within Shadow Creek Kroger, 11003 Shadow Creek Parkway in Pearland. It is the second in-store partnership between Kroger and the longtime Houston black-owned barbecue joint. The first opened in 2021 at 14221 E. Sam Houston Parkway North in the Summerwood neighborhood.
J. McLaughlin rings in major milestone in 2022: 45 years of classic American sportswear fashion. To celebrate, the brand hosted three parties, in three different cities, in roughly 36 hours. The trio of vastly diverse locations -- the Hamptons, Houston and Seattle -- were unified by a single accessory: wicker handbags.

J. McLaughlin designated June 23 as National Wicker Bag Day, a completely made-up holiday in homage to one of history's oldest "trends." Yes, seriously.

In ancient Egypt, archeologists unearthed wicker baskets buried in the tombs of wealthy pharaohs. The bags woven from willow, rattan, reed or bamboo can be small enough to tuck under one's arm or large enough to carry a small child. They were all the rage in Paris during the 1600s for high society picnics and became an "it" purse in the 1960s after Jane Birkin and Brigitte Bardot were photographed with clutch-sized version.

Influencer Natalie Steen of the Nat Note, and co-host of Houston's National Wicker Bag Day dinner with Robin Verrier, shared a bit of American wicker trivia with their guests. "The first wicker baskets were actually brought over to the U.S. on the Mayflower," Steen said at Tiny's No. 5 in West University.

She and Verrier, who relocates from Virginia to the Lone Star State this summer, welcomed a chic coterie into the restaurant's Ivy Room, which for one night only evoked more of an East Coast nautical vibe than southern charm. Verrier, a gifted tablescape stylist, mixed wicker handbags and baskets pulled from J. McLaughlin's archives with fresh flowers and soft candlelight. Current clutches from the brand's summer 2022 collection marked each place setting. Valerie Dittner, Emily Hammer, Melissa Smrekar and Brandy Gueary were among those in attendance.

The decor nodded to J. McLaughlin's preppy and coastal aesthetic, though the menu was all Southern. Gulf Coast Shrimp, steak and more were on offer. As was Tiny's famous french fries and chocolate chip cookies. Each guest walked out with dessert to-go in a white paper bag, a wicker clutch and in some cases, one of the floral centerpieces.

amber.elliott@chron.com
On Kirby Drive, there's a car dealership called Helfman River Oaks Jeep, but it's not actually in River Oaks.

Despite the name, the dealership is technically located in University Place, according to the city's online map tool.

While the dealership didn't respond to request for comment, its reasoning doesn't really matter. The name is a symptom of a larger issue.

If you feel like Houston is a confusing jumble when it comes to neighborhoods, that's because it is.

The City of Houston doesn't have an official map, unlike many other U.S. cities, and there are a wide variety of ways one can define a neighborhood's boundaries, including by informal name, by historic district or Ward, by civic club or by super neighborhood.

Lynn Henson of the city's planning and development department even went so far as to say that the boundaries for Houston neighborhoods are "definitively subjective."

Simply put, where a Houston neighborhood starts and ends depends on who you ask.

Unclear boundaries

While city employees use the Houston Map Viewer for reference in day-to-day operations, the lack of an official map means a neighborhood boundary can be defined entirely by what the community wants it to be.

"There's boundaries that are created by some sort of governmental entity," says William Fulton, former director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research, "and then there are boundaries that exist in people's minds."

This lack of clarity can lead to situations like with Helfman Rivers Oaks Jeep.

"That sort of thing happens all the time," Fulton said. "Some geographical designations people want to be associated with. Some geographical designations they want to be separated from. The boundaries can be very squishy, particularly when private businesses get involved."

Since Houston technically does not have any zoning, plats are one of the ways the city can assure land abides by development laws.

Basically, a plat is a map document based on a survey that a landowner or developer files with the Harris County Records Office before building anything. The plat essentially cuts out of a piece of land so that it can be legally defined by the city.

The trouble is that these plats come in different types and sizes  and can be given the name of whatever the person platting the land wants it to be.

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Houston Map Viewer Houston Map Viewer This photo grid shows the super neighborhood (left) and civic club (right) boundaries for the exact same part of Houston, inside the loop near Buffalo Bayou. (Houston Map Viewer)

The issue only gets more complex when you start taking into account that individual residents have their own mental maps of where neighborhoods starts and end.

"'The Heights' means something different to every single person you talk to," said Mark Williamson, president of the Greater Heights Super Neighborhood.

Williamson, who is also one of the directors of the Houston Heights Association, says the area's civic club lines were drawn in 1973 to encompass the area north of Washington Avenue up to Highway 610, from Studemont Street to North Main Street as an eastern boundary, with Shepherd Drive as a western boundary.

"The area that the founder of the association picked doesn't go far enough to take in all of the original Houston Heights," Williamson said. "In our particular part of town, the boundaries of our neighborhood are really confusing."

The problems with subjectivity

As a community representative, the majority of residents having their own ideas of neighborhood boundaries make solving problems a little bit more difficult for Williamson.

"I got a question earlier from somebody who is interested in a piece of property that is nowhere near this neighborhood," Williamson said. "They hear Houston and Heights and think anything in this general area part of the Houston Heights Association."

Subjective neighborhood boundaries also affect the city in other ways, Fulton said.

Houston's Complete Communities program, an initiative working to transform local neighborhoods that have been historically ignored, has its own boundaries that are not immediately clear.

"The way the boundaries are drawn means that the city focuses resources inside those boundaries and not outside," Fulton said, "so it definitely affects policy and funding."

Fulton also highlighted the city's minimum parking requirement exemptions as an example of how subjective boundaries affect policy.

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Mark Mulligan/Staff photographer

In 2019, the city council voted to extend market-based parking from Downtown Houston into East End and parts of Midtown.

"For many years, there was only one place in the city that did not have any mandatory parking requirements, and that was downtown," Fulton said. "So therefore, how you draw the boundary of downtown, which is pretty much drawn by the freeway loop around downtown, as it is in many cities, had an impact of how development occurred."

Sometimes a cultural affinity for a business can impact the boundaries of a neighborhood.

Although commonly associated with Third Ward, Turkey Leg Hut is located in the Museum Park super neighborhood, according to the Houston Map Viewer. Historically, Third Ward's boundaries extended as far as Main Street, which made up a much larger area than today's boundaries do.

Since Houston was divided into wards in 1840, the boundaries have become more subjective as time progressed, with gentrification having a large part in the disappearing boundaries.

Turkey Leg Hut being considered part of Third Ward could also have something to do with its popularity, Fulton said. "Third Ward often gets expanded to include it, even though in other definitions or for other purposes, that might be considered the Museum District."

The Chronicle reached out to Turkey Leg Hut for comment, but did not get a response.

"Definitively subjective is a good way to put it," Fulton said of Houston. "And fraught with peril."

ryan.nickerson@hcnonline.com
A 28-year-old man drowned while swimming in Lake Conroe on Monday, according to Montgomery County Constables Office Precinct 1.

Binh Le, of San Antonio, was in shallow water when he had stepped onto a steep drop-off "causing him to lose his footing and become distressed in the water," according to officials.

Some people nearby tried to help Le, but were unsuccessful. A 911 call came into the Montgomery County dispatch center at around 2:53 p.m. about Le, who was waving his hands for help when the caller lost sight of him.

Le was recovered by emergency responders using sonar equipment. An autopsy of the body has been ordered.

The 28-year-old had spent much of the 4th of July holiday on a boat at the lake.

Authorities urged all swimmers on Lake Conroe to use life jackets regardless of personal comfort in the water.

This appears to be at least the second drowning in the Houston area over the 4th of July weekend. A body matching the description of a disappeared swimmer was recovered from Galveston Bay on Monday.

Texas has 1.37 drowning deaths per 100,000 people each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Although Pride Month has come to an end, support for the LGBTQ+ community is not ending in Cy-Fair. A Colorful Wedding Experience is coming to Enchanted Cypress Ballroom, not only showing off the extravagant venue but opening an opportunity for soon-to-be-married LGBTQ+ couples to feel comfortable and confident at their upcoming event.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Houstonians talk about what Pride means: love, acceptance, celebration

The event is a partnership between Enchanted Cypress Ballroom and A Dream to Remember, a gay-owned and operated wedding designing and planning company. Enchanted Cypress Venue Manager Lidice Ortiz and A Dream to Remember Events CEO Erick Jones wanted to present a friendly, inclusive and safe environment for the LGBTQ+ community to find their wedding needs.

We are going to have different vendors so they can start planning their wedding, Ortiz said. We are going to have catering, drinks, decorations. Theyre going to see a mock wedding that we are designing with a lot of color from A Dream to Remember.

A Colorful Experience

All vendors for the event are either LGBTQ-owned and operated or vetted to be allies of the LGBTQ+ community by Jones and Ortiz. Along with a fashion show, the wedding experience will host vendors like Legacy Lapels, Kary King Boutique USA and more.

The event will include travel agencies and fertility companies for couples planning to be parents in the future. Cake designers, photographers, planners and makeup artists will also be present.

Jones said the importance of creating inclusive environments for the LGBTQ+ community is paramount in the present day, citing anecdotal evidence of gay couples being turned away from wedding vendors for their sexual orientation.

NEWSLETTERS Join the conversation with HouWeAre We want to foster conversation and highlight the intersection of race, identity and culture in one of America's most diverse cities. Sign up for the HouWeAre newsletter here.

Theyre going to be able to have the event of their dreams that they always wished to have without being discriminated against or having to deal with those types of issues from different venues or vendors that they are typically having to deal with., he said. We have a gay-owned and operated designer that is in here at this particular expo that is of the community that can actually give you that warm, fuzzy feeling so you know you wont be discriminated against.

On HoustonChronicle.com: At Pride Houston, growing threats to LGBTQ rights weigh heavy

Jones referred to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggesting same-sex relationships and marriage possibly being overturned following the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade. Gay marriage became legal for the first time in many states, including Texas, after the result of Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015.

A Colorful Experience

As you see, discrimination is still prevalent in the community and this is why this particular expo is so, so very important at this point, Jones said. We want to let people know: you have a safe haven. You have a safe place to be able to come and do the things you need to do for your event, regardless if its a wedding, a party, a milestone or an anniversary.

As the CEO of a gay-owned and operated business, Jones said he and Ortiz vetted attendees for allyship and support of the LGBTQ+ community as well as any associates of the vendor in order to prevent discrimination against gay couples at any point in their wedding process.

With the event being free and the venue itself on display for couples, Jones and Ortiz are looking forward to hosting the event annually, showing the LGBTQ+ community that their joy on their wedding day matters more to the vendors at A Colorful Experience than the money to be made.

I really believe we can be genuine and open for all of our community and show them this is something for everyone, Ortiz said. Love is for everyone.

A Colorful LGBTQ+ Wedding Experience will take place at Enchanted Cypress Ballroom, 12603 Louetta Rd. in Cypress, from 1-5 p.m. on July 10. To RSVP or find more information, visit www.eventbrite.com/e/a-colorful-experience-for-lgbtq-weddings-tickets-321392111457.

chevall.pryce@chron.com
Houston Chronicle

Police are investigating the death of a man whose decomposing body was found covered by a comforter in a truck in south Houston, authorities said.

Patrol officers were at the 3800 block of Alice Street around 10:45 a.m. Monday when they saw the truck parked along the street, Houston police stated in a news release. When they approached the truck, they smelled a strong odor coming from inside.
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BOCA CHICA VILLAGE  Luis Garza and his wife, Mireida, drove five hours from Monterrey, Mexico, to be here Friday. They brought their son, Luis Jr., 3, and daughter, Miranda, 7, to Starbase as part of a family vacation.

They came for a glimpse of a Starship, to pose with it in the background. They came with hopes of seeing the first-ever orbital launch from South Texas.

Thanks to Elon, I can see the rockets, Garza said.

I want to see the stars and the moon, his daughter added.

Posing with the big SpaceX rockets was simple. Seeing an orbital launch may not be.

For years, Elon Musk has touted SpaceXs compound in Boca Chica as the Gateway to Mars  the site from which his company would launch its massive Starship to carry astronauts to the moon and the red planet.

Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer

But area residents increasingly believe Musk is abandoning Starbase as his premier launch site. Theyre taking him at his word about turning the South Texas facility into a research and development center  and moving most orbital launch operations to Florida.

Anything that goes to the moon or Mars is definitely not happening here, said Louis Balderas Jr., who for the past three years has been recording SpaceX operations 24/7 on his LabPadre YouTube channel. Its not going to be as sexy being R&D. It wont be the true gateway to Mars.

SpaceX workers agree. Speaking on condition of anonymity because they dont have approval to discuss the companys plans, past and current employees say South Texas is no longer the gateway.

Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer

Future of Starbase

The future of Starbase  Musks branding of the 47-acre facility here  began to come into focus last year as officials repeatedly delayed completion of an environmental review necessary for the Federal Aviation Administration to authorize orbital launch operations.

In February, it was Musk himself posing with a 400-foot-tall Starship, telling a crowd of employees, locals and journalists that he expected approval soon. But his optimism came with a warning: If the FAA postponed the review again, SpaceX might move operations to NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it already had approval for orbital Starship launches.

After four more postponements, the FAA on June 13 concluded its review, issuing a finding of no significant impact from orbital launches. But the agency said it would require SpaceX to take more than 75 actions to mitigate environmental impacts before issuing the operator a license needed to launch from Starbase.

Musk, known for setting unrealistic timelines, said the company could handle the mitigation actions and be ready to launch as early as this month.

Balderas and others believe Musk will follow through with some orbital launches from Starbase. But they increasingly accept his message that SpaceX might use Florida, not South Texas, for most launches to deep space.

The future role for Starbase. I think its well-suited to be kind of like our advanced R&D location, Musk said in February in response to a reporters question about his long-term vision for the site. So, its like where we would try out new designs and new versions of the rocket.

I think probably Cape Kennedy will be our sort of main operational launch site, he said.

Balderas, who has spent the past few years buying and leasing properties near Starbase to get close-up camera shots of SpaceX operations for more than 200,000 subscribers to his streaming site, is disappointed by the idea of SpaceX moving launch operations out of Texas.

Id love to see launches happen here. I dont want to travel all the way to Florida just to see them, the 49-year-old South Padre Island resident said. Not having the launches here, I wont get the views on my YouTube channel. But thats all right. Im not going to cry about it.

Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer

Too much invested

California-based SpaceX has provided a big economic boost for the area, and elected and economic development officials hope it will keep growing.

With more than 1,600 employees at Starbase, its already the largest employer in Brownsville, Mayor Troy Mendez said in his state of the city address in April. About 71 percent of those workers live in the Rio Grande Valley.

The company invested $430 million in operations last year in Cameron County, including payroll, construction and capital improvements. This year, the company was expected to add $885 million in gross economic output for the county, as well as continued job growth, Mendez said.

The economic effects were on residents minds as the FAA delays mounted.

Some were holding their breath asking what happens if they dont get that approval, and others were very optimistic, saying theyre going to get it, said Cori Pena, president and CEO of the Brownsville Community Impact Corp., the areas economic development authority. Then, we had the ones who hoped they didnt get it, because we have the environmentalists thinking the impact is going to be bad by gentrifying the community or impacting our wildlife.

Regardless of the outcome, Pena believes SpaceX will continue operations in some fashion at Starbase.

They have too much invested there to shut it down and pull out, she said.

As an R&D center, though, it wont have the same impact. Beyond jobs and investment, SpaceX has contributed to a boost in regional tourism. Fans regularly fly into the area, book hotels and spend money at local businesses as they park along Texas 4 to see whats happening at Starbase.

On Friday, the site drew fans from around the United States, Mexico and Europe  as well as a group of students from Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District, about 82 miles west of Starbase.

Pena said local and outside vendors have been capitalizing on SpaceXs drawing power. Brownsville businesses are selling coffee and food to SpaceX employees and others near Starbase, she said, and a host of aerospace firms and other companies are looking to move into the area to be closer to Musk and SpaceX.

Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer

We have to grow

Hoping to build on the momentum and attract more startups, Penas organization this month is opening its 36,000-square-foot eBridge Center for Business and Commercialization.

As a community, we have to grow, Pena said. If the community wants certain assets and quality of life and better job opportunities and pay, we need SpaceX and companies like that to come and invest in our community. It will change the landscape.

But shes weighing what it would mean if Musk turned Starbase solely into a research and development facility.

There is going to be a lot of disappointed people, she said. It would be great if he keeps to his idea of the Starbase theme of the mission to Mars. Only time will tell.

For now, she sees having SpaceXs R&D as a great outcome in that the company would continue to offer high-paying jobs to locals.

Early last week, at least 39 of SpaceXs 64 current job openings featured on the companys website were based in Brownsville. The positions are for Starship data and control systems engineers, mechanical engineers, temporary pipe welders and vehicle integration engineers responsible for developing requirements and facilities capable of building orbital Starship and Super Heavy, faster than anyone thought possible.

Balderas agreed that SpaceX would continue to hire workers at Starbase. But he warned that fans of the company in Texas and across the U.S. might not be so inclined to travel to the Brownsville area and spend money without being able to see the reusable Starship rocket, the largest in commercial space history, lifting off.

If theres not going to be big-time launches, theres not going to be lots of people for tourism, he said.

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.

Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer

South Texas challenges

To some residents, Musk is a visionary they hope will use his base in South Texas to create more jobs and make historic ventures into deep space. Others complain his operations have ruined the land, driven residents from homes, pushed up housing prices and disrupted family trips to the beach.

Musk has said he chose to set up Starbase because its close to the equator and allows for an eastbound launch  important factors in trying to get help from Earths rotation when going into orbit. Rockets need a good clear area, several miles around the launch site to be unpopulated, or at least clearable, he said at the February event.

SpaceX began test launching Starship prototypes 6 miles into the Boca Chica skies in 2019. By December 2020, after a high-altitude flight and crash landing of a prototype called SN8, Musk tweeted: Thank you, South Texas for your support! This is the gateway to Mars.

After a series of failures, including an explosion that sent chunks of steel across area marshlands, the company had its first successful launch and landing in May 2021.

The FAAs long-awaited approval of the environmental assessment comes with conditions. Among them: provide advance notice of launches to reduce closures of Texas 4 during operations; stop closing Boca Chica Beach, Texas state parks and the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge on holidays; install a biologist to monitor vegetation and wildlife; notify communities in advance about potential engine noise and sonic boom launches; work with state and federal agencies to remove launch debris from habitats; and adjust lights at the launch complex to minimize impact on the beach and wildlife.

Jim Chapman, a board member of environmental group SaveRGV, said its not enough. He was hoping the FAA would deny Starbase operations entirely.

The impacts of what SpaceX wants to do are enormous, said Chapman, 74. The FAAs environmental assessment is quite inadequate and almost devoid of any true mitigation. They dont make up for the damage thats going to be done.

Last October, SaveRGV filed a lawsuit against the Texas General Land Office, Commissioner George P. Bush and Cameron County for allowing SpaceX to close Boca Chica Beach for rocket testing. In May, the California-based Sierra Club and a Floresville-based nonprofit representing the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas joined the lawsuit filed in state District Court in Cameron County.

Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer

The groups allege that officials repeated closures of Boca Chica Beach for rocket tests and launches violate their constitutionally guaranteed right to access public beaches. They aim to prevent future closures of the beach and Texas 4, the only road that leads to the 8-mile stretch of beach.

To people like Elon Musk, theres nothing out here, Chapman said. But biologically, its tremendous. Whats left, we really need to hold onto.

Chapman considered whether Musk would turn Starbase into a research and development facility and shift flight operations to Florida.

He also acknowledged that Musk has mentioned the possibility of SpaceX using movable floating space ports  converting two offshore oil rigs into launch platforms about 30 miles off the Gulf Coast in South Texas.

Musk has invested a lot in Starbase, thats for sure, he said. But he has said that Boca Chica may just be a testing facility and the actual launches will be in Florida. And then theres the oil rigs. Was he just thinking aloud?

He paused.

The biggest impacts are launches, he said. There might still be testing here, and thats going to have impacts, but I dont know how much. Is a quarter loaf better than a full loaf?

eric.killelea@express-news.net
Two weeks after the funeral for Amerie Jo Garza, 10, the first of the Robb Elementary School students to be interred following the Uvalde mass shooting, I phoned the manager of my local Dominos in Stamford, Conn., to inquire about a delivery job.

Though Ive never driven professionally and have been out of the job market since turning 70, I felt confident about my chance of being hired. I have a valid drivers license. Im insured and have my own car. Since my last citation more than a decade ago my record has been clean.

So I was somewhat surprised when the manager said that while he needed a driver and I sounded like a good candidate, he couldnt hire me on the spot even were I to ace my interview. First Id have to pass a corporate background check.

How long would that take? I asked.

Two days, he replied.

Roadblocks  even small ones  have an outsized impact on deterrence. Theyre the sort of guardrails one might expect, following Newtown and Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Las Vegas, Uvalde and so many other communities, that should apply to operating other potentially lethal pieces of machinery.

I hung up the phone and considered my options. I dialed a Papa Johns not far away.

Do you conduct a background check as part of your interview process? I asked the assistant manager.

What do you mean? he asked.

All he really wanted to know was if Id be available to work a daytime shift, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. He encouraged me to come for an interview that day.

Its always heartening when someone recognizes value in your skill set, when imminent employment awaits. Yet it was hard to ignore that this particular Papa Johns has set its bar for hiring perilously low  about as low as that of federal law regarding the purchase or possession of most firearms, even after adoption of the recent gun-control legislation.

Legally, there are limits to the vehicles I can take for a spin. My license  subject to periodic renewal  permits me to drive our Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid and Acura RSX, as well as any other car, SUV, pickup or U-Haul-type truck that I buy, rent or borrow for noncommercial use.

It does not allow me to operate a school bus or dump truck, both of which require a commercial-driver license and weeks, if not months, of specialized training.

I suppose I could call my congressman and object to such licensure restrictions, arguing that they infringe upon my constitutionally guaranteed personal freedoms. But he is one of those liberal Democrats, so I doubt he would support me.

Instead, I spoke with Aziz Huq, a University of Chicago constitutional law professor who studies the interplay between the Constitution and individual rights and liberties. I asked him why driver regulations go uncontested while the Second Amendment inspires an absolutism among many gun-rights advocates that precludes nuance  that fails to distinguish, for instance, between shotguns and assault weapons, or the appropriate minimum age for possessing particular firearms.

Frustratingly, the Constitution provides little counsel. Arbitrariness comes into the law, he said, because the [Supreme] Court has never explained how it knows what a compelling state interest is, he said. Why is it a compelling state interest when the government fights terrorism, for example, but not when it is fighting the pandemic?

I asked Aziz if he saw any chance for stricter gun reform legislation.

I dont know, he said. Youre asking a question about political morality.

But in fact, legislators have placed limits on numerous so-called personal freedoms in the name of public safety. We pass through mandatory security checks in airports and government buildings. Were required to wear seat belts on airplanes, cars and rollercoasters.

Is it too much to ask that firearms be treated in the same, nuanced manner as motorized vehicles? That there be one set of rules for owning and carrying a handgun; another for purchasing a semiautomatic, assault-style rifle; and a third for how much ammo a single clip may hold?

To which one could add a fourth:

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told Sky News reporter Mark Stone, in the wake of the Uvalde killings, If you want to stop violent crime, the proposals the Democrats have  none of them would have stopped this.

A long-standing Democratic proposal has been to lengthen the waiting period prior to completing the purchase of a firearm, allowing time to conduct a thorough background/mental health check. Salvador Ramos, the Robb Elementary shooter, purchased his first assault weapon shortly after he turned 18, one week before he massacred those 19 students and two teachers  just two days before their school year was to end.

Had there been even a 10-day waiting period, Ramos attack might never have taken place.

Ron Berler is the author of Raising the Curve: A Year Inside One of Americas 45,000 Failing Public Schools.
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Hudson, NY (12534)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun. High 89F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening followed by thunderstorms late. Low 71F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Royal Biographer to Speak at Ventfort Hall

LENOX, Mass.  In his lecture on Zoom, Hugo Vickers, biographer, lecturer, broadcaster and an acknowledged expert on the royal family, explains how Cecil Beaton turned himself into an extraordinary figure.

Vickers will speak virtually via Zoom from England on Tuesday, July 12 at 4 pm. His presentation will be followed by a tea at Ventfort Hall.

According to a press release, through the art of photography, Cecil Beaton (1904-80) rose to become one of the great observers of the Twentieth Century. His portraits of the Royal Family and of the stars of stage and screen are known. He also became a designer of costumes and sets for stage, screen, opera and ballet, an artist, a wicked diarist, an arbiter of taste, and a man who moved easily in many varied worlds.

Vickers has published his own diaries about researching Cecil Beaton, entitled "Malice in Wonderland" - a behind the scenes account of his adventures with various sources, including the Queen Mother, Audrey Hepburn, Truman Capote, Stephen Tennant, Valentina Schlee, Princess Grace of Monaco and many more. He has written many biographies of 20th century figures, including Cecil Beaton, Vivien Leigh, the Duchess of Windsor, Princess Andrew of Greece, and the Queen Mother. His book, "The Quest for Queen Mary," sold 40,000 copies in various forms.

He has covered events from the first wedding of the Prince of Wales, the funerals of Diana, the Queen Mother and Prince Philip, and many royal weddings.

Tickets are $30 for members and with advance reservation; $35 day of; $22 for students 22 and under. Reservations are required as seats are limited. Walk-ins accommodated as space allows. For reservations call (413) 637-3206. All tickets are nonrefundable and non-exchangeable. Proof of vaccination and ID are required. The historical mansion is located at 104 Walker Street in Lenox.

The summer series of Tea & Talks is sponsored in part by board member Lucille Landa and William Landa.
UPDATE: Motorcyclist Dies in Great Barrington Collision

Update: The Great Barrington Police Department reported Wednesday that the victim of the July 4 motor vehicle accident was Antonio Desousa, 68 years of age, from Danbury Conn. The accident remains under investigation by the Great Barrington Police, Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit, Massachusetts State Police CARS Unit, and the Berkshire County District Attorney's Office. _______________________________________________________________________________________________

Originally published on July 5, 2022 at 11:44 a.m.

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.  A 68 year old Connecticut man died from injuries sustained from a collision with a car near Bistro Box.

On Monday July 4 at 12:02 PM, a motor vehicle crash occurred on south end of Main Street in front of the Bistro Box.

A grey 2019 Honda Accord, driven by, Tandoh Devine, 22 of Pittsfield, was traveling south bound. Preliminary investigation shows that the Honda Accord was turning left into the driveway of the Bistro Box, crossing the northbound lane into the path of a 2006 Harley Davidson motorcycle.

As a result of the collision, the operator of the motorcycle, a 68 year old Connecticut resident, was severely injured and flown to Albany Medical Center where he later died from his injuries.

The name of the victim is being withheld pending notification of his family.

The operator and other occupants of the Honda Accord did not suffer any injuries.

Officers from the Great Barrington Police Department, the Great Barrington Fire Department, Canaan Ambulance, and Sheffield Police assisted on the scene.

The investigation is ongoing by the Great Barrington Police Department, Massachusetts State Police CARS Unit, and the Berkshire County District Attorney's Office. Investigators area asking if anyone eye witnessed the crash to contact the Great Barrington Police Department at 413-528-0306.
Commentary: Why NATO's diatribe against China is irrational

Xinhua) 11:24, July 05, 2022

BEIJING, July 4 (Xinhua) -- NATO should have called it quits and disbanded following the end of the Cold War. Instead, it chose to search for a bogeyman to justify its existence.

No wonder the U.S.-led military bloc's new strategy is directed at a so-called "China threat." The organization alleges that China poses "systemic challenges," which completely distorts Beijing's foreign policy and misrepresents the country's normal military and defense development.

NATO's broadside against China is as untenable as it is ideologically biased.

The Chinese have always been a peace-loving people and staunch advocate of harmony and coexistence. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the country has never started a war, never occupied one inch of foreign land, never engaged in proxy wars and never participated in or organized any military bloc.

China remains the only country in the world that has enshrined a path of peaceful development in its constitution.

Meanwhile, China has contributed to resolving hotspot issues and promoting global peace. It has become the second-largest contributor to the United Nations' regular budget and peacekeeping operations.

Earlier this year, China proposed the Global Security Initiative, offering solutions to pressing security issues.

Moreover, China's development presents an opportunity for the world, not a challenge. In China's view, development holds the key to solving many of the world's daunting problems. That is why it has pushed forward the joint construction of the Belt and Road and proposed the Global Development Initiative to expand global consensus on building a better world for all.

According to a World Bank forecast, if all Belt and Road transport infrastructure projects are carried out, the initiative would generate 1.6 trillion U.S. dollars of global revenues annually to 2030. Up to 90 percent of the revenues would go to partner countries.

The world need not fear China. It is NATO itself that poses a grave threat to global peace and stability. From Afghanistan to Iraq, from Libya to Syria, the military adventures waged by NATO have claimed countless lives and displaced millions.

Even more worryingly, the United States, the military alliance's de facto leader, has attempted to expand the outdated bloc. NATO's rounds of expansion eastward have plunged Europe into crisis. Now the eyes of the clique have turned to the Asia-Pacific.

As Gilbert Achcar, a professor at the University of London, warned, "NATO has always been used by the United States as a tool to perpetuate its hegemony," and "the United States is trying to push Europe to take part in its own policies, including in East Asia."

As one of the world's most peaceful and stable regions, the Asia-Pacific is a promising land for cooperation and development. Any attempt to undermine its peace and stability and sabotage regional solidarity and collaboration will be unanimously rejected by the people of China and the region. NATO must know that hyping up its "China threat" will lead nowhere.

In this era of unprecedented global interdependence, it is foolish to seek security for oneself at the expense of others. One can only be safe when all are safe.

NATO should call off its groundless accusations and provocations against China, abandon an outdated zero-sum Cold War mentality, renounce its blind faith in military might and join the rest of the world in a collective pursuit of a shared and better future. That is how NATO should redefine its mission in the new age.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
On 1 July 2022, the International Criminal Court marks its 20th anniversary. On this day in 2002, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court entered into force upon ratification by 60 States, officially creating the ICC.

Marking the day, the President of the Court, Judge Piotr Hofmanski stated: On the 20th anniversary of the ICC, we can celebrate the fact that we have a permanent, independent international court dedicated to the fight against impunity for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. He continued: I invite all States to join the ICC, to give victims everywhere access to justice, and to help protect humankind from atrocities.

ICC Prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan QC said: Twenty years ago today, the Rome Statute came into force. It was a tremendous achievement but this is also a moment to pause, to reflect and to try to refresh the process of international justice. He continued, We must all try to do better and to rededicate ourselves to these principles of justice which are owned by all humanity. If we work in a collective manner, I am confident that international justice can accelerate and advance and have the required impact. The prayer must also be that, in twenty years to come, many may see a world better, safer and most just than it is for so many of our fellow brothers and sisters today.

ICC Registrar Peter Lewis stated: After 20 years of operation, the Court is busier than ever dealing with crimes that shock the conscience of the world. All we have achieved in the last two decades has only been possible because of the support and cooperation of our States Parties, international organisations, and civil society. As we face new challenges, that cooperation and support is more important than ever.

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Two Pakistani journalists were murdered by unidentified assailants on July 1 and 2, including prominent journalist Iftikhar Ahmed in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and local reporter Ishtiaq Sodharo in the Sindh province. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its Pakistan affiliate, the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), condemn the journalists killings and urge the Pakistani government to arrest the perpetrators as soon as possible and implement stronger security measures to ensure the safety of journalists in Pakistan.

According to eyewitnesses, Iftikhar Ahmed, a reporter for the Daily Express, was travelling to his workplace in Shakir Market, Charsadda, on July 2 after leaving a mosque when unidentified gunmen opened fire, immediately killing him. Ahmed's body was sent to the Tehsil Headquarters Hospital Shabqadar for treatment before being handed over to his next of kin. Bullet shells were also seized from the scene and transferred to Peshawar for forensic analysis.

The journalists brother, Hazrat Bilal, filed an FIR, at Shabqadar Police Station under Section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) against the unknown assailants. Police said they are investigating the motive behind the journalists death, including personal hostility.

In a separate incident on July 1, gunmen killed local journalist Ishtiaq Sodharo, associated with the Sindhi weekly Chinag and a member of the Ranipur Press Club, in the Kumb region of Khairpur, Sindh province, Pakistan. Sodharo was rushed to hospital but died as a result of his injuries. Sodhoro's wife said her husband was murdered on the orders of Imamuddin, a police officer at Ranipur police station, by the officers accomplices.

Police filed an FIR the same day at Kunb Police Station, under multiple sections of the PPC. According to the FIR and Sodhoro's wife, the perpetrators attacked Sodharo husband outside his home while he was performing maintenance work. Pir Bux, Saen Bux, Nabi Bux, Nazeer Hussain, and Zahid Hussain, allegedly attacked Sodhoro following an argument, with three of those identified arrested.

Sodhoro's relatives and friends maintained that the primary offender, Imamuddin, was still at large and had not been taken into custody, mounting a demonstration in the city demanding that the assailants be apprehended immediately. The reason for the murder is still unknown.

PFUJ President GM Jamali and Secretary General Rana Muhammad Azeem strongly condemned the two killings and demanded that law enforcement agencies arrest the culprits swiftly. PFUJ also reiterated the necessity of providing increased security for working journalists.

According to the IFJs South Asia Press Freedom Report 2021-22 , Pakistani journalists and media workers have faced a continuing spate of physical attacks, resulting in the murder of five journalists from May 2021 to April 2022, including a citizen journalist. The report found that incidents of assault, arrest, abduction, legal harassment and intimidation against the media have also been growing in Pakistan.

The IFJ said: Pakistan's government must take appropriate measures to ensure journalists' safety and security, as required by law, and act to reduce assaults on journalists so that they may carry out their work without fear. The IFJ condemns the murders of Iftikhar Ahmed and Ishtiaq Sodharo and calls on the Pakistani authorities to fulfil their international obligations under Pakistans constitution to safeguard press freedom.
Raimundos Oki, chief editor of news portal Oekusipost.com, has been accused of breaching judicial secrecy following an investigative report concerning the detention and forced virginity testing of 30 underage girls in 2020. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemns the charges and calls on the Timor-Leste government to immediately rescind the case.

On June 29, Oki received a telephone call from an officer at the Criminal Investigation Scientific Police (Policia Cientifica de Investigacao Criminal), instructing him to appear before police the following day. The journalist exercised his right to silence during the minute meeting.

Oki faces charges for allegedly breaching judicial confidentiality under Article 291 of Timor Lestes Timor Code, with a penalty of one to six years imprisonment, for a report that argued several virginity tests were forcibly conducted on inmates at the Topu Honis Shelter in Kutet, Oecusse.

The report centered on evidence-gathering practices during the trial of Richard Daschbach, an American priest in Timor-Leste, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison in December 2021 for sexually abusing children under his care.

According to Okis report, the public prosecution ordered several local NGOs and police to detain around 30 underage girls for two weeks and performed forced virginity tests in June 2020.

Speaking to UCA News on July 1, Oki said, When almost all media, including international media, focused on the former priest, I tried to bring up the other side, about the forced virginity test... I happen to be from Oecusse and I found those 30 girls. I spoke to them, and they admitted to being forced to undergo a virginity test.

In 2017, the Oki faced a year imprisonment for defamation following an article published by the Timor Post published in 2016, which referred to the then Prime Minister of Timor Leste, Rui Maria de Araujo, in his previous role as advisor to the Minister for Finance. According to the article, Araujo recommended the winning bid for a project to supply and install computer equipment for the new Ministry of Finance building in 2014. In June 2017, a Dili judge dismissed all charges against Oki at the Dili Court.

The IFJ said: The IFJ condemns the charges against Raimundos Oki and urges the Timor Leste authorities to respect press freedom. Governments must ensure journalists can do their jobs safely and securely, including holding public officials and authorities to account, without fear of prosecution. The repeated legal harassment of Oki is tantamount to persecution for publishing legitimate and independent reports in the public interest.
La Mauritius Africa FinTech Hub (MAFH), avec le soutien de Cim Finance, a tenu une table ronde post-budgetaire pour faire le point sur levolution des services financiers et bancaires a Maurice en 2022 en matiere de digitalisation.

Les premieres tables rondes ont ete lancees en 2020 pour ouvrir le dialogue entre les parties prenantes de lecosysteme FinTech et tenir des debats importants autour des principaux defis et obstacles auxquels ils sont confrontes dans leurs activites, en presence des regulateurs concernes. Lobjectif global etant de creer un environnement politique favorable et un cadre legal pour le secteur de lindustrie de la FinTech dans le temps.

Le lundi 20 Juin 2022, la Mauritius Africa FinTech Hub a ainsi tenu une table ronde post-budgetaire, avec le soutien de Cim Finance, pour reprendre les sujets abordes sur ces deux dernieres annees. Cetait loccasion ideale pour les parties prenantes de lecosysteme de se rencontrer, discuter et collaborer autour de lavenir de cette industrie en profondeur. Les echanges tenues cette journee etaient centrees sur des themes comme le partage dinformations, lacces aux donnees, la facilite a conduire des affaires dans le pays, la protection des consommateurs, la Blockchain et la RegTech (technologies destinees a faciliter lapplication des reglementations financieres). Se basant sur les conclusions et recommandations des precedentes tables rondes, les participants etaient en mesure devaluer les progres accomplis jusqua present et dexprimer leurs points de vues au niveau des procedures, reglements et politiques qui en ont resulte.

Mark Beuningen, Group CEO de Cim Finance souligne :

 Avec le changement des preferences des consommateurs et la mise en place de nouvelles technologies, les entreprises doivent evoluer et seloigner des  business model  traditionnels. Le  regulatory round table  est une excellente plateforme pour discuter des opportunites actuelles, des defis et des tendances futures dans le secteur des services financiers. Nous avons lopportunite de discuter avec les principales parties prenantes telles que les regulateurs, les  fintechs , les grandes institutions financieres et dautres acteurs du secteur pour collaborer et definir ensemble les points sur lesquels nous devons nous concentrer. Cet engagement entre les acteurs du secteur et les regulateurs est essentiel pour definir la maniere dont nous devons suivre et nous adapter aux tendances mondiales. Cela permettra de rendre le secteur plus innovant tout en renforcant lefficacite operationnelle des institutions financieres, en ameliorant lexperience client, en assurant la protection des consommateurs et en garantissant la conformite reglementaire. Ladoption des  open APIs  dans lensemble du secteur, la mise en oeuvre des solutions de  digital KYC , le deploiement dune base de donnees  eKYC  centrale et la mise en oeuvre de solutions  RegTech  ne sont que quelques-uns des domaines qui auront un impact majeur pour toutes les parties prenantes du secteur et qui renforceront la position de Maurice en tant que pays adoptant les meilleures pratiques mondiales. Cet effort de collaboration ne peut etre que benefique pour leconomie mauricienne et renforcer son attractivite en tant que centre financier. Je tiens a remercier la MAFH detre le moteur de la transformation de lindustrie  Fintech  et les participants pour les echanges inspirants que nous avons eus lors de cette session. 

Plusieurs entites etaient presentes a levenement, notamment la Financial Services Commission (FSC), lEconomic Development Board (EDB), et la Financial Services Institute (FSI) en tant que regulateurs et moderateurs. Autour des tables etaient reunis des representants du secteur public et du prive, allant des executifs de grandes societes et banques, entrepreneurs et start-ups, jusqua des etudiants, menant ainsi a des echanges constructifs.

Pour marquer la fin de levenement, le CEO de MAFH, Michal Szymanski, a indique que :

 lobjectif de cette table ronde etait de reunir toutes les parties prenantes pour sengager sur les problemes reels qui impactent les activites sur le terrain. Le succes dune table ronde de cette envergure reside principalement sur la participation active de tous les acteurs concernes dans le secteur. Et nous ne parlons ici pas que des societes FinTech ou services financiers, mais aussi des regulateurs, des jeunes, ces etudiants qui sont les effectifs de demain, des entrepreneurs evoluant dans cet environnement, des membres des milieux academiques, car nous avons besoin de la participation de tout un chacun autour de ces sujets pour pouvoir construire un cadre legal solide au benefice de tous. Les services financiers sont hautement reglementes, et avec raison, il sagit donc de trouver ce juste equilibre entre la securite, la surete et linnovation. Cetait formidable de voir les regulateurs nouer le dialogue avec le secteur prive, les jeunes du pays ainsi que dautres acteurs, et comment chacun tenter de comprendre lautre. 

Comme pour les precedentes tables rondes, un rapport listant les analyses, conclusions et recommandations cles sera eventuellement emis et partage avec les participants et acteurs cles de lecosysteme.

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Celebrities worldwide have lookalikes, and it has become customary for their fans to discover them on social networking sites. Recently, Alia Bhatt's look-alike from Assam Celesti Bairagey made headlines.



Celesti, who is geared up to make her TV debut, aspires to more than to be Alia's doppelganger.

Instagram

Recently, Humans of Bombay featured Celesti on their page. The viral video has been captioned as "I'm not Alia Bhatt..."

Instagram

The video features Assamese girl Celesti Bairagey and shows her donning a saree and shades and grooving to the song 'Kesariya' from Alia's upcoming film Brahmastra.



Instagram

Alia Bhatt's fans discovered her on social media a few months ago. Celesti spoke to Humans of Bombay and said that even though she admires Alia for always smiling and being herself, she wants to retain her own identity.

She also said she would make her mark as a TV actor and aspires to debut in Bollywood with Bhatt. The video went viral in no time. People flooded the comments section with their thoughts.

Reacting to the video, one fan wrote: "Celesti looks more like Alia Bhatt than Alia Bhatt herself." Another netizen wrote: "She only looked like Alia in the first video where she dressed like her and was dancing in a similar manner to that of Alia's. The only resemblance is in the smile."



Instagram

Celesti Bairagey will soon be seen in a Star Plus show.

Produced by Mukta Dhond, Celesti will be paired opposite actor Rajveer Singh.

Celesti Bairagey

According to Guwahati times, Celesti, who has been a part of numerous regional films and music videos, has already signed the show.

Bairagey has worked in many Assamese songs, Web, and Short films. After fans called her a doppelganger of Actress Alia Bhatt, she rose to popularity.

(To get the latest updates from Bollywood and Hollywood, keep reading Indiatimes Entertainment.)
On Friday, 1st July, Switzerland became the 31st country to legalize same-sex marriage as 64% of voters approved the "Marriage for All" initiative in all 26 cantons in the country, making Switzerland one of the last countries in Western Europe to legalize same-sex marriages.

Such unions are still not common as the traditional idea of marriage is deeply entrenched in our manifestations. An uproar was also created earlier in June, when 24-year-old Kshama Bindu from Vadodara married herself in an act of Sologamy, with all due rituals and ceremonies.

Instagram

Marriage is embedded in our society and while there have been continual attempts to reform the ancient practice in some unconventional ways, there seems to be much more than the established idea of the universally accepted heterosexual marriage.

Every now and then a new word enters our vocabulary pertaining to marriage and considering the vast possibilities of human endeavors and its constantly evolving dictations for self, the list seems to be endless. The types of marriages can be based on the relationship of the individuals, the nature of the marriage, and the purpose it is serving.

Marriages according to Faith, Caste, and Race

Almost all religions lay the guidelines for marriages, and while many choose to abide by them religiously often people dismiss them according to their own convenience. In India, marriages have long been based on the idea of caste and faith and have been dictated by Marriage acts like the Hindu Marriage Act, 1971. Such marriages are duly acknowledged by the religion as well as the law and are referred to as religious marriages.

Unsplash/Representational Image

The Special Marriages Act, 1971 provides legal status to Interfaith or marriages beyond the boundaries of faith. Such marriages often entail individuals who abide by different faiths, various religions have various conditions for such marriages to be legitimized.

Marriages are also based on the practices of certain tribes, races, and communities. A Mixed marriage or interracial marriage is a practice that involves an association between different tribes, races, or communities even within the same religion.

Marriages based on Legal Status

Civil marriage is the most accepted form of marriage as it is recognized by the state and the law. A religious marriage also needs legal validation and thus generally employs a combination of state and faith. Marriages, where the couple enters into married life without registration, is called Common Law Marriage.

Some marriages are based on a contract that specifies conditions and is legally verified these marriages are called Contractual Marriages, some of them are also time-bound where the marriage terminates after a specified period such unions are called Time-Bound Marriages.

Marriages based on Gender

Unsplash

A heterosexual marriage or straight marriage is the arrangement where the corresponding partners belong to the opposite sex while homosexual or gay marriage involves the partners belonging to the same sex.

Marriages based on corresponding Partners

Sologamy as the name suggests is the marriage to oneself, Monogamy, on the other hand, is the simplest form of marriage where a person solely entertains in emotional and sexual relations with their partner. Polygamy is a practice where a person forms marital relations with more than one person it is different from a Group Marriage where a no. of people are married to another no. of people.

Based on Arrangement

Unsplash

A marriage where the couple is brought into the union through an arrangement formed by the couples family or relatives is called an Arranged Marriage. A marriage that is based on a couple in love arranging things for themselves is called love marriage.

Based on conveniences

Marriages are deemed as shotgun marriages when the couple decides to get married due to an unplanned pregnancy it is different from Parenting marriages where the couple undergoes a lot of differences and remains together for the sake of their children. A Secret marriage is when the couple conceals their association from others whereas an Open marriage is a marriage agreement where the couple is allowed to see people outside the union but cannot marry them. A Zombie marriage is another form of convenience where the couple acts as a married one for the rest of the world but does not form any relationship in person. A marriage of convenience can take various forms such as the ones that are formed for citizenship to seek accommodation, jobs, or other material reasons.

Such vast categorization of marriages reiterates the line from the popular Indian Web Series Made In Heaven (2019), where Shashank Arora says, They say marriages are made in Heaven but on the ground, the reality is slightly different.





For more on news and current affairs from around the world please visit Indiatimes News.
CC: All bosses in the world.



While many of us struggle to find a good excuse to take a 'leave' and chill, a Sydney-based marketing agency employees spent ten days in Bali, working together on an all-expenses-paid trip!

Unsplash

The Sydney-based marketing company Soup Agency boss, is now being tagged as the "world's best boss" since she gave her employees an all-expenses-paid trip to Bali.



The Sydney-based marketing company, Soup Agency employees, were surprised by the two-week trip to the Indonesian island.

Unsplash

The company uploaded a video from the trip to its Instagram account. Besides attending meetings, workers may be seen going on hikes in the morning sunshine, quad-biking, working by the pool, practicing yoga, and eating and drinking together.



Screengrab

"A wrap-up of Balifirst working holiday as a team," the video is captioned.



According to Soup's managing director, Katya Vakulenko, the trip was the best team-building activity the company has undertaken since its founding.

Instagram

"I think it's important for workplaces to all work together as a team, inside and outside working hours," Katya told the Daily Mail.



"Covid-19 taught us that there are new ways of working and, essentially, we can work from anywhere." So we decided to take that to the next level, "she said.

For the first time, coworkers from different departments worked together. One hour's drive north of Denpasar, in Ubud, they stayed in a luxurious villa.

On vacation, Michelle, one of the staff members, even hiked up a volcano early in the morning to commemorate her 24th birthday. The team performed well during the holiday despite the obvious distractions.

Screengrab

"Having the whole agency work, interact, and collaborate was refreshing. It was an experience in life that I won't forget, "Digital Marketing Executive Kumi Ho said.



The company has already begun to prepare for its next European "working holiday."

Dear Boss, please take notes.

(For more interesting trending stories, click here.)
In India, the grander the wedding, the more people apparently remember it. However, for two reasons, LGBTQ+ people can't imagine having a big lavish wedding. Firstly, because of the huge stigma against homosexuality and secondly, because it is still not legal for them to get married in the country.

Gay couple gets married following all rituals

However, two gay men in love didn't really care about any of these specifics and made sure to get married in the most lavish way there is. Fashion designer Abhishek Ray married his partner Chaitanya Sharma in Kolkata in the most lavish ceremony and broke every stereotype there is.

According to a report by Times Of India, the wedding followed all Hindu rituals including a priest chanting mantras, varmalas and vows taken by the couple around a holy fire.

However, before going forward with this wedding, Ray was pretty apprehensive. He thought people won't react very well to this wedding. Initially, he had told people that his cousin would be getting married, but when he received a positive response he revealed his plans.

He told TOI, People live in or perform small functions at home when they want to stay together. When we decided to marry, I told Chaitanya to do it in a way that remains memorable for our friends and family,"

Since both the men are from different communities, one is Bengali and the other Marwari, the rituals of both the communities were maintained.

The wedding even had a signboard featuring two men saying 'we do' which captured a lot of interest and got attention. Ray and Sharma are well-aware that gay marriage is not legally recognised in India and cannot be registered, but it is not listed as a criminal offence".

Instagram/@abhishekraycreations; @charcoal_and_vermillion

The priest who solemnised the wedding was probably the most supportive of this marriage. The priest not only told them that they were torchbearers" but also explained the mantras in detail, adding how he could not utter all of them since they had a gender specification. He also hailed their wedding as an extremely progressive" move.

How did the couple meet?

The gay couple found each other on Facebook and started chatting from there on. After several video calls, Abhishek decided to meet Chaitanya and made a two-day trip plan to Kolkata. However, that got extended to two weeks. Ray travelled to Delhi soon after. On March 22 last year, they both flew to Agra and Sharma proposed in front of the Taj. The picture of the same was used in their wedding card as well.

Such a beautiful love story.

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An Indian-origin woman in the UK received a new lease of life following a successful drug trial for cancer. 51-year-old Jasmin David had given up all hope of her survival.

Following a clinical trial at a UK hospital, David was given only months to live a few years ago and is now celebrating as doctors declare she is displaying no evidence of breast cancer.



Twitter

After the National Health Service (NHS) trial was a success, Jasmin David, 51, of Fallowfield in Manchester, is now looking forward to her 25th wedding anniversary in September.

Atezolizumab, an immunotherapy drug administered intravenously, was combined with an experimental drug during David's two-year trial at the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Manchester Clinical Research Facility (CRF) at Christie NHS Foundation Trust. She still receives this medication every three weeks.

iStock

"I was 15 months down the line after my initial cancer treatment and had almost forgotten about it, but then cancer returned," recalls David.



"When I was offered the trial, I didnt know if it would work for me, but I thought that at least I could do something to help others and use my body for the next generation. At first, I had many horrible side effects, including headaches and spiking temperatures, so I was in the hospital over Christmas and quite poorly. Then thankfully, I started to respond well to the treatment," she said.

The mother of two grown children, who was energetic and in good health, worked as a clinical lead at an elderly care facility.

Unsplash

She discovered a lump above the nipple in November 2017 and later learned that she had an aggressive triple-negative form of breast cancer. In April 2018, she underwent a mastectomy, six months of chemotherapy, and 15 cycles of radiation therapy, which completely rid her body of cancer.



Cancer then returned in October 2019, and scans revealed many lesions all over her body, suggesting a terrible prognosis.

She received the heartbreaking news that she had less than a year to live because cancer had spread to her lungs, lymph nodes, and chest bone.

After exhausting all other possibilities two months later, David was given a chance to participate in research by participating in Phase I clinical trial.

Twitter

I celebrated my 50th birthday in February 2020 while still in the middle of treatment and unaware of the future. Two and a half years ago, I thought it was the end, and I now feel like Ive been reborn, said David.



There is a change in my life after returning from India to see family in April, and I have decided to take early retirement and live my life in gratitude to God and medical science. My family has been very supportive of this decision. I will be celebrating my 25th wedding anniversary in September. I have so much to look forward to, she said.

File image

My Christian faith helped me a lot on this journey, and the prayers and support from family and friends gave me strength to face the challenge, she added.

She was declared cancer-free in June 2021 after tests revealed no detectable cancer cells in her body. She will continue receiving treatment through December 2023, although she still doesn't exhibit any symptoms of the illness.

We are really pleased that Jasmin has had such a good outcome. At The Christie, we are continually testing new drugs and therapies to see if they can benefit more people, said Professor Fiona Thistlethwaite, medical oncologist and clinical director of Manchester CRF at The Christie.

(With PTI inputs)

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A town in Florida, U.S., has been sent into quarantine, thanks to a growing population of invasive, disease-carrying giant snails. The species, which are native to Africa, have been discovered in an area in Florida, with authorities issuing alerts to residents.

Snails invade county in Florida

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) confirmed there were giant African land snails in the New Port Richey area of Pasco County on June 23.



Reuters

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) confirmed there were giant African land snails in the New Port Richey area of Pasco County on June 23.



"FDACS will treat properties with a metaldehyde-based molluscicide (snail bait). The treatment is labelled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for residential use," said the department on its website.



Snails force people into quarantine

Following FDACS confirmation, the town was quarantined the following day.

USGS

The quarantine, however, isn't like the one associated with COVID-19. In this case, locals were banned from moving plants, soil, debris, yard waste, compost and building materials located outside the designated zone.



Health officials cautioned residents not to handle the snails without proper protective gear.



Not only to humans, the snail is also harmful to the environment with its love for plants and taste for concrete.

The snail reproduces about 1,200 eggs in a single year, US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says. They can grow up to eight inches in length and nearly five inches in diameter  "about the size of an average adult fist," the department says.



Massimiliano Finzi/Shutterstock

The USDA said that the last time these snails were spotted, it took almost a decade and a million dollars to get rid of them.

"Property owners inside the treatment area will be notified in person or by posted notice at least 24 hours in advance of the planned pesticide treatment," said FDACS.

FDACS is working tirelessly in the hopes of eradicating the pests. They will bait certain areas with a poison that impedes their ability to create mucus and kills them within a few days.

These types of snails are illegal to distribute, sell, and ship across the US.

For the latest from trending, click here.


Which is your biggest nightmare? Making financial transactions to the incorrect account continues to be a legitimate concern for many of us. Just switching one number can change things, which is precisely what happened with a woman from Mumbai.

Thanks to the cyber police, a 38-year-old Mira Road lady who mistakenly sent Rs 7 lakh to the incorrect bank account could get her money back.

Unsplash

Fascinatingly, the beneficiary who received the money due to the error in the transfer refused to give it back, claiming to have won the lottery.



The alleged incident occurred on June 29 as the woman from Mira Road attempted to transfer the money to one of her relatives, according to a report in the Times of India.

Unsplash

The woman may have mistakenly entered the incorrect account number, which led to the money being sent to a Mumbai account holder.

The woman approached her bank after realizing her error, but they declined to assist her, stating it was her fault.



On June 30, the woman sought support from the Vasai Virar police's cyber cell division. After that, the police located the account holder and asked him to return the aggrieved woman's money.

Unsplash

At first, the beneficiary resisted returning the funds by asserting that he had won the lottery. The man agreed to reverse the transaction after the police threatened to take legal action against him. The woman later received her money into her account on July 2, two days later.



(For more interesting trending stories, click here.)


A US court in the mid-western state of Wisconsin passed an order confirming the $140-million punitive damages slapped on Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in the Epic Systems case, the company said in a statement to the exchanges yesterday, as per ET.



We [TCS] hereby inform you that in the Epic Systems Corporation matter, the US District Court for Western District of Wisconsin passed an order reducing the jury award of punitive damages to $140 million and directed the Clerk of the Court to file an amended judgment accordingly, TCS said in a statement.

Reuters

American software firm Epic Systems filed a lawsuit against TCS in 2014 alleging that the IT services company stole its intellectual property. In 2016, Epic won a jury award of $940 million. In 2017, the Wisconsin court judge lowered the amount of the award to $420 million to comply with caps on punitive damages in such cases. TCS had filed appeals in the higher court.

Then in August 2021, a US Court of Appeals held that the punitive damages award of $280 million (~Rs 2,098 crore) was constitutionally excessive, and reduced the penalty for damages to $140 million. This judgment has now been formalized according to the companys statement, the ET report stated.

The lawsuit against TCS for allegedly stealing intellectual property dates back to 2014, when the US-based firm accused TCS employees of stealing around 6,000 pieces of important data containing its system development information by setting up a fake user account.

IT giant TCS further reiterated that it did not misuse or derive any benefit from Epics documents and planned to defend its position vigorously before the Appeal Court.

TCS is legally advised that it has strong arguments in its favor before the Appeal Court and the (court) order on the punitive damages is not supported by the facts presented by TCS before the Trial Court. We have been advised that the Order and the Judgment (when issued) is appealable to the US Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit Chicago, said the TCS statement on Monday.

Also Read: IT Sector's Great Resignation Spree Continues With High Attritions In TCS, Infosys & Wipro

ET

As an organization, the company remains committed to respecting and protecting proprietary information as well as its reputation, read Mondays statement.



TCS had provisioned Rs 1,218 crore ($165 million) towards this legal claim in its financial statements for the quarter and year-ended March 31, 2021, as per ET.

For the latest and interesting financial news, keep reading Indiatimes Worth. Click here.


Insurance regulation in the United States is overly complicated, unreasonably difficult, and at times its totally politically motivated because everyone wants to keep their job or get a better one. The system of state regulatory agencies is redundant, and it seems like it does little more than perpetuate bureaucratic red tape.

Above all that, its the best possible system that this country could possibly have.

Let me back up a little and lay some groundwork. One of the hallmarks of the United States is the push-pull relationship between the authority of the states and the federal government. This conversation about which level of government is best equipped to handle the needs of the people predates this nation and it is no closer to being settled today.

Until 1851, each state legislature handled regulating insurance within the state. Lets be realistic. The insurance world simply didnt need a regulator because the insurance part of peoples lives wasnt that big. For most people, the only insurance policy they might own, or need, would be a fire policy on their home or barn.

Life insurance wasnt widely purchased until the mid-1800s. Later in the 1800s there would be carriage liability policies, but again, most people didnt buy much insurance. Insurance was something rich business people needed, not regular people.

In 1851, things began to change when the first insurance commissioner was appointed in New Hampshire. It only took 20 years for most states to follow suit and either elect or appoint an insurance commissioner. Thats when the insurance commissioners decided to band together and form the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) so that they could gather, talk about insurance, and cry together about all the problems in their states. That, and to think about how they could help their states by drafting model laws for their states to consider.

We could dive into court cases, laws and the evolution of insurance regulation, but it is enough to say that each state has its own insurance department with an insurance commissioner at its head.

Several states have an elected insurance commissioner while the other states have an appointed commissioner. Insurance commissioners, and the offices they operate, have an important job function. It doesnt matter how they put it on their websites or what they say, everything they do can be boiled down to one thing. Its their jobs to make sure that the people who need insurance can buy and use insurance.

Lets break down the job of insurance regulators.

They need to balance solvency and affordability.

One of the most difficult conversations that I ever have with my friends that arent insurance geeks (yes, insurance geeks can have real friends), is centered on the cost of insurance.

Insurance companies need teams of actuaries with terabytes of data to accurately come up with a price for an insurance product and even then, its little more than an educated guess. Its not like the coffee mug sitting on my desk. The person who made it knows how much the materials cost, how much their time is worth, and how much they want to make for each mug sold. Insurance just doesnt work that way.

Thats why the insurance department needs to pay close attention to what insurance companies are charging people.

While they need to make sure that rates are not excessive or unfairly discriminatory, most of the time insurance departments should leave companies alone if they file high rates.

You might be concerned that when one company files higher rates and they are approved, that other companies will follow suit. Dont worry about that. It will happen.

Someone will find out that Company X got a rate 15% higher than Company Y. Then Company Z will file a rate thats another 15% higher than Company X and the cost of insurance will go up. But thats not the end of the story.

Another company will see the rest of them fighting for higher rates and more premium and will eventually file a rate that is significantly lower than the others and will try and gain market share through the were the best price in town marketing plan.

High prices eventually balance out because not everyone is on the same page and when someone decides that they can win by charging less, they will. Thats in addition to what happens when customers look at their insurance bills and get angry with what theyre paying and call someone else. Then they lower their limits or buy their insurance from somewhere else. Eventually, the strain of the high rate shows on the companies, and they lower their rates.

Its more important for the insurance department to watch when companies are filing lower rates. Lower rates might be great for the consumer on the front end, but those lower rates require a closer eye on the policyholders surplus that the company maintains.

Companies need access to cash because thats the product they are selling, and they need that cash to issue checks for when bad things happen. We buy insurance because we cant afford to replace things that get broken or pay the bills that come in when we break things.

The insurance department needs to pay very close attention to the solvency of each company, which might mean they need to revisit minimum capitalization requirements that might have been set 25 years ago. As costs go up (which they do) the amounts paid out by insurance companies go up. That tells us that they need to make sure that every company has money in the bank to handle the claims that are coming.

Additionally, insurance departments need to watch smaller and newer companies closer than they do. By newer, I mean a company that hasnt been tested by a significant catastrophe, whether thats a property insurer in Florida that hasnt had a difficult hurricane season or one that hasnt had to deal with a California wildfire season. This will vary based on the line of business and state, but its a terrible situation for a consumer when their insurance company is suddenly gone, and their claims arent getting paid or are getting a percentage paid by the state guarantee fund.

They need to balance coverage and exclusions.

There are a ton of bad reasons why people buy insurance.

The state told me I had to. The bank told me I had to. My uncle is my agent.

The biggest reason that people buy insurance is to receive money when the bad days happen. Its for the auto accident that leaves someone injured and their car out of commission. Its for the day that you went to the grocery store and came home to find your neighbors and the fire department sifting through the rubble of your house.

We dont buy insurance just to buy it and have a company say that the loss isnt covered.

This is where the insurance department must step in. It is their responsibility to make sure that the consumer is protected when the insurance company either tries to file a form that doesnt cover the losses that people will face, or when they try and interpret the policy so that there is no coverage or less coverage.

Policies need exclusions. Theres no way around them. There are some losses that an insurance policy cannot pay for. Its not sound insurance application to pay a claim because someone failed to maintain their home. Its not sound insurance application to pay a claim when someone intentionally burns down their building. Its also not sound insurance application to reduce a claim based on thats what weve always done.

The insurance department should step in and look for the most consumer friendly (but still correct) interpretation of the policy as possible.

If the loss is clearly excluded, thats one thing. If the loss isnt paid for any other reason, thats something else. This is one of the reasons that we need insurance departments. Because people will disagree on coverage.

For example, a recent claim that I heard about included additional living expenses. The insured sent their insurance company an invoice for internet service at their temporary living situation. The company said they dont pay for that kind of additional expense because its an ongoing expense. The policy doesnt define what an additional living expense is, so we are forced to work with a common definition of an additional living expense. That leaves us to wonder with the insured what is an additional living expense if a new monthly expense isnt?

When an insured has an issue with their insurance company, the insurance department should be looking at the same policy and asking this question: How can we reasonably interpret this policy in the best possible light for the consumer? Certainly, we wouldnt want the insurance department to twist the policy into saying something that it didnt. But thats not the same thing as interpreting the policy in the best possible light for the consumer who, in good faith, makes an insurance purchase so that when something bad happens, there is money available to make the bad thing less bad. That bad thing might be when a family cant live in their home and it costs them more to live somewhere else for a period of time thats out of their control.

They need to balance insurability and responsibility.

Insurance in many ways ought to be a totally voluntary market, but since some people wouldnt voluntarily buy insurance and some insurance companies wouldnt voluntarily insure some people, there are laws in place that require both to meet up somewhere in the middle.

From a regulatory perspective, there seems to be great focus on affordability and availability of insurance in most markets. The problem is that affordability and availability are only part of the equation.

Lets be clear about it. It is important that insurance companies make insurance available to as many customers as possible at a rate that they can afford. But theres more to that statement than just make the insurance company price insurance so people can afford it. Pricing insurance isnt just science. Theres an art to it and thats because it deals with the risk of loss to something, and people are always involved in the loss.

Insurance companies have to take into account the coverage provided, and the insureds that are being covered. This means that the insured is a variable in what the insurance will cost. This is where the responsibility aspect of the equation comes into play. The insured has a part to play in what their insurance will cost.

I know, youre going to say how often you hear the refrain, Ive been paying for this for years and never had a claim. Why does the cost keep going up? Theres not a simple answer to that, but part of it is that people are paying a part of the cost of other peoples insurance, especially when we try and make it affordable for some.

There should be some risks that are simply uninsurable. Some people are just terrible drivers, and they should not be allowed to drive a vehicle until they take an in-depth driving course. Some buildings are uninsurable because they might fall over if someone leans on them too hard.

The regulators job in this case is to find that balance point between affordability and availability and those risks that should be excluded from the standard market.

Insurance is complicated and it should be the job of insurance regulators to inform the public about insurance.

Regulators should not be on the side of the industry or the public too much. They should exist to help find a balance point between the two.

Topics Legislation
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FALLS CHURCH, Va.  A pair of lawsuits that for years has plagued Virginias largest school system with allegations that it ignored students accusations of sex assaults are back in front of federal judges.

One of the lawsuits includes allegations of horrific abuse suffered by a student at a Fairfax County middle school and was the basis for a 2014 federal investigation.

The lawsuits attracted low-level attention when they were filed before the pandemic and became caught up in appeals. Now, both cases are moving forward again at a time when schools responses to alleged sex assaults are receiving more intense scrutiny, as evidenced by the national attention in neighboring Loudoun County.

The middle schooler filed an amended complaint earlier this month after the school boards efforts to block her suit were rejected. Her ordeal began in October 2011, according to the lawsuit, when she was a seventh grader at Rachel Carson Middle School in Reston. A classmate started telling others that hed engaged in sexual activity with the girl, identified only by her initials in the lawsuit.

As rumors spread, she started to face harassment and name-calling at her locker in hallways. Then, she alleges, a boy at the school began routinely sexually assaulting her  sometimes with others joining the assault  and threatening her to remain silent.

The assaults occurred over a period of months, according to the lawsuit. The girl was evaluated by a nurse who confirmed scarring consistent with anal rape, but a school resource officer dismissed the activity as consensual.

School officials continued to downplay and minimize the alleged assaults as consensual, even though the girl was 12 and was pleading with administrators and counselors for protection while the supposedly consensual relationship was ongoing.

She also alleges that on school grounds, a group of boys forced her into a closet and sexually assaulted her.

Eventually, in 2012, the girls mother filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Educations Office of Civil Rights. After a two-year investigation, the school system entered a voluntary resolution agreement in which it admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to improve its tracking and responses to allegations of sexual assaults.

The lawsuit was filed in 2019. It has been hung up until now because the school system objected to her filing under a pseudonym. The school system appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, which unanimously ruled in the girls favor.

In a statement, Fairfax County Public Schools says it cooperated fully with the investigation and noted that police and prosecutors declined to bring criminal charges. The school system also said the girls allegations in the lawsuit are more severe than what she first reported to school officials _ she acknowledges in the lawsuit that she initially described her mistreatment as bullying as opposed to sexual assault or harassment.

We continue to believe the senior staff acted appropriately and lawfully in addressing this familys concerns 11 years ago, the school system said in the statement.

The other lawsuit involves a girl at Oakton High School who said she was sexually assaulted by a boy on a bus during a school band trip. That case went to trial in 2019. A jury found in the school systems favor, ruling that the girl had been assaulted but did not give the school system proper notice of what had happened to her.

On appeal, though, the 4th Circuit ruled 9-6 in favor of the girl and sent the case back to Alexandria for a new trial.

The appellate ruling has turned a case that seemingly hinged at trial on a he-said-she-said question of whether the girl was assaulted into a case that could significantly alter the scope of Title IX, the 50-year old law that bars discrimination based on sex in education.

The dissenting justices said school systems shouldnt be held liable for a sexual assault unless they had some reason to know beforehand that the perpetrator posed a risk.

Judges who ruled in favor of the Oakton student said the school system should not be entitled to one free rape before it can be held liable for its policies and procedures.

Alexandra Brodsky, a lawyer with Public Justice, which is representing the Oakton student, said shes especially concerned that a purportedly progressive school board in Fairfax County authorized pursuit of a legal strategy that, while it could help it win its case against the Oakton student, could set a dangerous precedent that weakens students protections from abuse.

Fairfax County is asking the Supreme Court to gut Title IX protections for sexual assault survivors, Brodsky said.

Brodsky said there is now greater public awareness of schools failure to support students who report sexual assaults and sexual harassment, particularly in Fairfax County, the nations 10th largest school system.

Students at high schools across the county staged walkouts protesting administrative inaction to student claims. Two school principals have been charged criminally with failing to report alleged sex crimes to police, as required by law.

Much of that scrutiny has been driven by conservative political activists. In Loudoun County, the school system faced intense backlash over its handling of alleged sex assaults, which became a national rallying point on conservative news outlets in part because the perpetrator in two of those cases was a boy wearing a skirt.

Brodsky said that while transphobia drove some of the attention to the issue in Loudoun, I dont think that means that there isnt good faith, bipartisan concern about these issues. Protecting students from sexual abuse should be a nonpartisan issue.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits K-12 Virginia
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New York lawmakers approved a sweeping overhaul Friday of the states handgun licensing rules, seeking to preserve some limits on firearms after the Supreme Court ruled that most people have a right to carry a handgun for personal protection.

The measure, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul after passing both chambers by wide margins, is almost sure to draw more legal challenges from gun rights advocates who say the state is still putting too many restrictions on who can get guns and where they can carry them.

Hochul, a Democrat, called the Democrat-controlled Legislature back to Albany to work on the law after last weeks high-court ruling overturning the states longstanding licensing restrictions.

Backers said the law, which takes effect Sept. 1, strikes the right balance between complying with the Supreme Courts ruling and keeping weapons out of the hands of people likely to use them recklessly or with criminal intent.

But some Republican lawmakers, opposed to tighter restrictions, argued the law violated the constitutional right to bear arms. They predicted it too would end up being overturned.

Among other things, the states new rules will require people applying for a handgun license to turn over a list of their social media accounts so officials could verify their character and conduct.

Applicants will have to show they have the essential character, temperament and judgment necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself and others.

As part of that assessment, applicants have to turn over a list of social media accounts theyve maintained in the past three years.

Sometimes, theyre telegraphing their intent to cause harm to others, Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said at a news conference.

Gun rights advocates and Republican leaders were incensed, saying the legislation not only violated the Second Amendment, but also privacy and free speech rights.

New Yorkers constitutional freedoms were just trampled on, state Republican Chair Nick Langworthy said.

The bill approved by lawmakers doesnt specify whether applicants will be required to provide licensing officers with access to private social media accounts not visible to the general public.

People applying for a license to carry a handgun will also have to provide four character references, take 16 hours of firearms safety training plus two hours of practice at a range, undergo periodic background checks and turn over contact information for their spouse, domestic partner or any other adults living in their household.

Hochuls chief lawyer, Elizabeth Fine, insisted the state was setting out a very clear set of eligibility criteria and noted that the legislation includes an appeals process.

The measure signed into law Friday also fixes a recently passed law that barred sales of some types of bullet-resistant vests to the general public. The previous law inadvertently left out many types of body armor, including the type worn by a gunman who killed 10 Black people in a racist attack on a Buffalo supermarket.

The Supreme Courts ruling last week struck down a 109-year-old state law that required people to demonstrate an unusual threat to their safety to qualify for a license to carry a handgun outside their homes. That restriction generally limited the licenses to people who had worked in law enforcement or had another special need that went beyond routine public safety concerns.

Under the new system, the state wont authorize permits for people with criminal convictions within the past five years for driving while intoxicated, menacing or third-degree assault.

People also wont be allowed to carry firearms at a long list of sensitive places, including New York Citys tourist-packed Times Square.

That list also includes schools, universities, government buildings, places where people have gathered for public protests, health care facilities, places of worship, libraries, public playgrounds and parks, day care centers, summer camps, addiction and mental health centers, shelters, public transit, bars, theaters, stadiums, museums, polling places and casinos.

New York will also bar people from bringing guns into any business or workplace unless the owners put up signs saying guns are welcome. People who bring guns into places without such signs could be prosecuted on felony charges.

Thats a reverse approach from many other states where businesses that want to keep guns out are usually required to post signs indicating weapons arent allowed.

Gun advocates said the law infringes on rights upheld by the Supreme Court.

Now were going to let the pizzeria owner decide whether or not I can express my constitutional right, said Sen. Andrew Lanza, a Staten Island Republican. This is a disgrace. See you in the courts.

Associated Press/Report for America writer Maysoon Khan contributed to this report. Maysoon Khan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Maysoon Khan on Twitter.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics New York Gun Liability
Thousands of people on the outskirts of Sydney were told to leave their homes or prepare to evacuate as days of torrential rain leads to widespread flooding.

With more bad weather on its way, authorities issued dozens of evacuation orders and warnings in Sydneys southern, western and northern regions. Its the fourth major flood in New South Wales state in 18 months and the government on Monday warned the latest inundation may be the biggest yet.

Its a very worrying situation and could still get worse, Australian Minister for Emergency Management Murray Watt said on Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. Some homes that escaped previous floods may be hit this time, he said.

Severe Weather Warning current for heavy rainfall about central NSW on and east of the ranges. Locations which may be affected include Newcastle, Sydney, Penrith, Wollongong, Nowra, Bowral, Campbelltown, Katoomba & Lithgow. Details https://t.co/Ss766eSCrL #NSWFloods @NSWSES pic.twitter.com/GmkOHJx8NR

 Bureau of Meteorology, New South Wales (@BOM_NSW) July 3, 2022

A series of natural disasters in Australia, including bushfires and droughts, has put national climate policy into sharp relief, and a new Labor government vowing tougher action was elected in May. The floods are also triggering fresh debate over where to house a growing population and the cost of insuring homes prone to damage.

Some regions have been swamped with more than 300 millimeters of rain in less than 24 hours, and much of the focus is now on low-lying areas along the Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers, two major arteries that almost encircle metropolitan Sydney.

The Nepean peaked on Sunday, though the Hawkesbury is still rising, threatening communities north of Australias biggest city that were flooded just months ago, Watt said.

Watt said some 6,000 homes are covered by evacuation orders and an additional 12,000 are subject to evacuation warnings. Some 100 defense force troops are on the ground and another 100 have been called up to help, he said.

Areas away from Sydney are also experiencing heavy rain, and the Bureau of Meteorology on Monday issued a severe weather warning for hundreds of kilometers of Australias eastern seaboard. The area centers on Sydney but stretches north toward Newcastle, and south beyond Wollongong and Nowra.

Flash flooding is still possible on Monday in Sydney, the Blue Mountains region to the west, Illawarra to the south, and parts of Hunter and the Central Coast to the north, the bureau said. Theres also a risk of landslides, though the rain should clear by late evening, it said.

The stormy weather is stretching a transport system thats already under pressure from train strikes, a school holiday rush and manpower shortages at airports and airlines.

Photograph: A flooded area due to torrential rain in the Camden suburb of Sydney on July 3. Photo credit: Muhammad Farooq/AFP/Getty Images

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Flood
MELBOURNE  Torrential rain is lashing Australias southeast coast, forcing thousands of people from their homes because of the danger of floods and landslides in a region battered by major flooding four times in the past 18 months.

Some areas in New South Wales state have received a months rain in the past two days, swelling rivers and forcing Sydneys main dam, the Warragamba Dam, to spill on the weekend.

Flooding in March and April in New South Wales and southeast Queensland state resulted in A$4.8 billion ($3.3 billion) in insured damage, the Insurance Council of Australia estimated.

WHAT IS CAUSING THE INCESSANT RAIN?

Australia has been exposed to the La Nina weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean two years in a row, which typically brings above average rainfall on the east coast. The La Nina event ended in June, but there is a 50-50 chance it may re-form later this year, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

Warm ocean sea surface temperatures and another phenomenon, the Indian Ocean Dipole, are bringing wetter than normal weather. The Indian Ocean Dipole index turned negative in May, increasing the chances of above average winter and spring rainfall for most of Australia, the weather bureau said in June. The Australian winter runs from June through August.

The dice is loaded towards a high probability of rain events occurring at least in the next few months because of all those conditions, said Tom Mortlock, a senior catastrophe analyst at insurer Aon.

During a negative Indian Ocean Dipole, the eastern Indian Ocean is warmer than normal and the western Indian Ocean, near Africa, is cooler, causing more moisture-filled air to flow towards Australia.

CLIMATE CHANGE

While it is difficult to attribute any single flood to climate change, Mortlock said the increased frequency of heavy rain was consistent with what could be expected from climate change, as warmer air holds more moisture in the atmosphere.

Most climate models are suggesting increases in the frequency of rain events in Australia, he said.

DEVELOPMENT IN FLOOD-PRONE AREA

Western Sydneys Hawkesbury-Nepean valley is a floodplain, prone to dangerous flooding due to a bathtub effect, the New South Wales State Emergency Service says. The valley is fed by five tributaries and has chokepoints limiting flows to the sea, so water backs up during heavy rain.

Heavy rain driven by La Nina over the past two years has saturated the ground and filled dams, creating conditions for flash floods.

Theres practically no infiltration capacity left in any of the catchments on the east coast, Mortlock said.

Sydneys rapid population growth over the last few decades has pushed development into the floodplain.

Before the recent floods, there had not been any major floods for about three decades, which meant officials approving land development applications may have believed the risk of flooding was low.

When you dont have it for a long time, there has been quite a lot of complacency, said Ian Wright, an environmental scientist at Western Sydney University.

Our bridges arent high enough, he said. Flood evacuation routes are few and far between and inadequate.

STRAIN ON DISASTER MANAGEMENT

Residents and emergency workers are still recovering from bushfires in 2019-2020 and floods last year and this year, coming on top of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shortages of building materials and labor mean thousands of people are waiting for repairs from the previous disasters, Wright said.

Adding to the vulnerability, many lower income residents in western Sydney cannot afford flood insurance.

The new Labor government wants to be more proactive in tackling disaster risk, Emergency Management Minister Murray Watt has said.

More often than not, its not the wealthy people living in the cheap land on the floodplain, its the people who cant afford to live on top of the hill, Watt said last week.

The government plans to set up a Disaster Ready Fund to provide up to A$200 million a year for disaster prevention and resilience programs.

($1 = 1.4665 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Sonali Paul; editing by Robert Birsel)

Photograph: Residential properties and roads are submerged under floodwater from the swollen Hawkesbury River in Windsor, northwest of Sydney, Australia, on Monday, July 4, 2022. Photo credit: Bianca De Marchi/AAP Image via AP.

Topics Australia
ROME  An Italian court has thrown out requests to unfreeze billionaire Alexey Mordashovs yacht which was seized by the police as part of a drive by Western states to target wealthy Russians after the invasion of Ukraine.

Mordashovs 65 meter (215 ft) Lady M yacht, which has a price tag of 65 million euros ($68 million), was seized by the Italian police in the northern port of Imperia in March.

Asmare Enterprises Ltd., the company to which Lady M belongs, had asked the administrative court of the Lazio region to lift the freeze, claiming that the Russian businessman under sanctions was not the formal owner of the vessel.

The court rejected the lawsuit saying that Mordashov was indeed the ultimate owner of Lady M, a document seen by Reuters on Friday showed.

Mordashov, 56, is the son of a mill worker who became a steel magnate with estimated net worth of $29.1 billion. He is reputed to be Russias richest man.

Italy sequestered villas and yachts worth over 900 million euros ($950 million) in March and April from wealthy Russians, who regularly came to the country on holiday and had bought property in many prestigious locations.

($1 = 0.9599 euros)

(Reporting by Marco Carta, writing by Giselda Vagnoni; editing by Keith Weir)

Photograph: A view of the yacht Lady M, owned by Russian oligarch Alexey Mordashov, docked at Imperias harbor, Italy, on Saturday, March 5, 2022. Photo credit: AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, File.

Related:

Topics Russia
Ardonagh Europe Ltd., the Dublin-based subsidiary of The Ardonagh Group, announced it has agreed to acquire Leons Group, an independent family-owned insurance brokerage and consultancy firm in the Netherlands.

Headquartered in Amsterdam and founded in 1951 by Max Leons, Leons Group specializes in full-service insurance solutions to corporate clients and is renowned for expertise in complex cases and international operations.

Financial details of the deal, which is subject to the receipt of regulatory approvals, were not disclosed.

Leons Group is a founding member and shareholder of Brokerslink, a global network that brings together market-leading, independent brokers from 125 countries and supports them with world-class, risk management and insurance services.

CEO Sunny Leons was for many years board member and one of the initiators of further consolidation within Brokerslink to build an international broker together with partners.

The broker, which celebrated its 71st anniversary early June 2022, will continue to operate independently as part of Ardonagh Europe under the direct leadership of Sunny and Nico Leons, together with the shareholders and current management team, building on successive years of growth.

The Leons family maintains a stake in Leons Group as part of the transaction.

We are excited to welcome Leons to Ardonagh, together building on their Dutch roots and solid reputation in the market to build a portfolio of brands and insurance broker companies that are leaders in their target markets, commented Conor Brennan, CEO of Ardonagh Europe.

Sunny and Nico have built a unique business with a special culture that will fit perfectly alongside the portfolio of independent businesses that Ardonagh has acquired over the last number of years. We are very excited by what we can achieve with our new partners in the Netherlands, Brennan added.

The Ardonagh Group and its leadership are a perfect match for our vision and growth ambitions. We are thrilled to be joining forces with a global platform with scale and dynamic culture, that embraces our family-owned concept. With access to Ardonaghs considerable resource and capital, we look forward to joining them as our growth engine together with MDS and other partners, to build on an international group as individual partners, according to Sunny Leons.

Welcoming this leading independent Dutch firm into the Group continues our meaningful global investment and further strengthens our relationship with members of Brokerslink. With independence core to our own success, this is a testament to the respect we have for this network, and the strength and quality of its membership, said David Ross, CEO of The Ardonagh Group.

In December 2021, The Ardonagh Group announced the acquisition of MDS Group, a Portuguese insurance broker and risk management adviser, and founding member and shareholder in Brokerslink.

Founded in 2017, Ardonagh operates as an independent insurance broker with four units  international, specialty, advisory and retail. The company employs more than 9,000 people in over 150 locations, according to its website. The companys registered address is St Helier, Jersey (in the Channel Islands).

Source: Ardonagh

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Europe
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Betterview Analytics Now Offered via OneShield

Property data firm Betterview, which serves property/casualty insurance companies, is now partnering with core system provider, OneShield Software, to make the its property intelligence and risk management platform available to OneShields insurer clients.

The integration of Betterviews predictive analytics, including data provided by its 100-point Roof Spotlight Index, its Defensible Space feature, and a Wildfire Risk Insights tool into OneShields offerings promises to increase insurers underwriting accuracy and improve expense ratios substantially.

Betterview leverages a combination of aerial imagery, computer vision, and third-party data to help P/C insurers streamline underwriting and inspections efficiency and predict and prevent losses. The Betterview platform utilizes a combination of machine learning algorithms, and a wide selection of public, private, and commercial property data to help P/C insurers get a holistic view of real property risk.

Partnering with OneShield will help underwriters access the best available property intelligence solutions in a single location, said Armin Monajemi, vice president of strategic partnerships at Betterview.

OneShield Software offers cloud-based core software programs for P/C insurers and managing general agencies of all sizes. OneShields portfolio of standalone, subscription, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products includes enterprise-class policy management, billing, claims, rating, product configuration, business intelligence, and smart analytics.

Novidea Partners with Certificial for Certificate of Insurance Issuance

Insurance agency platform Novidea and Certificial, a certificate of insurance network with real-time data, announced a partnership to turn the process of issuing certificates of insurance into a fully digital experience.

Through this partnership, Certificials Smart COI will work natively in the Novidea agency management platform, making the necessary function of certificate issuance more efficient. Agents and commercial lines policyholders gain real-time access to the most current COI on file.

The full integration with Certificial is scheduled to go live for Novidea customers in the third quarter of 2022.

Verisk Integrates Claims Programs With IMGING Property Data

Insurance adjusters and contractors can now expedite the estimate creation process with a new integration between Verisks claims-handling program, Xactimate and XactAnalysis, and Loveland Innovations IMGING property inspection data platform.

This new integration results in artificial intelligence and data-driven property adjusting that provides 3-D models and measurements of structures while keeping estimators safely off roofs.

Loveland Innovations IMGING serves as a centralized hub of analysis and capture for all property data for insurance carriers, roofers and contractors. It automates drone flights, makes consistent data capture easy and provides 3-D models and measurements. It also organizes photos in the cloud and identifies potential damage for review and simplifies data reporting and collaboration.

Topics Claims InsurTech Tech Data Driven
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday curtailed the Environmental Protection Agencys ability to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from power plants in a 6-3 ruling that some legal experts said would more broadly curb the federal governments regulatory power. Below is an explanation of the courts decision and its wider impact:

WHAT DID THE COURT SAY IN THE EPA CASE?

The majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts said the EPA could not require a sweeping shift from coal to cleaner energy sources by citing what he called a little-used backwater section of the Clean Air Act.

The decision invoked the major questions legal doctrine, which requires explicit congressional authorization before regulators can take consequential actions on issues of vast importance and societal impact.

Roberts opinion, in the case West Virginia v EPA, said the agency fell under the doctrine by adopting regulations of unprecedented power aimed at shifting U.S. power generation toward renewable energy sources.

The White House counsels office and Department of Justice are studying the impact, a White House official said, adding that they may have more to say about the ruling on Friday.

IS THE DOCTRINE NEW?

The court has been applying the major questions doctrine to some degree for more than two decades, although generally as one of several tools used to review regulations.

Roberts said Thursdays ruling, which marked the first time the court referred to the doctrine by name in a decision, was a recognition of the common thread running through those cases.

The court applied the approach last year when it ruled the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lacked authority to impose a national eviction ban to contain the spread of COVID-19.

This year, the court invoked the doctrine when it blocked most of the Occupational Safety and Health Administrations vaccination and testing mandate that was imposed on large employers by the Biden administration.

WHATS CHANGED?

Thursdays ruling marked a shift in the way the Supreme Court reviews an agencys authority by focusing more attention on the major questions doctrine, said Max Sarinsky, a professor at the New York University School of Law.

Its inviting courts to apply particular scrutiny and skepticism, Sarinsky said, when judges are reviewing regulations that tackle new or large problems that America is facing.

Expanding the doctrine has been a goal of conservative groups such as the Cato Institute, which in a brief in the EPA case argued for a robust interpretation of the doctrine.

Justice Elena Kagan said in the dissenting opinion that the goal of the ruling was to prevent agencies from doing important work, even though that is what Congress directed.

WILL THE RULING REIN IN THE POWER OF FEDERAL AGENCIES?

Allison Zieve of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group that had urged the court to rule for the EPA, said the decision is malleable and could be used by conservative lower court judges to attack the federal governments ability to regulate.

Several administrative law experts said the doctrine will discourage regulators from pushing for innovative policies in politically charged matters.

Specifically, lawyers and analysts said the decision could undermine the ability of the Securities and Exchange Commission to impose a proposed rule requiring public companies disclose climate risks, as well as efforts by the Biden administration to expand labor regulations.

Michael Lotito, a lawyer at Littler Mendelson, one of the largest labor and employment firms, said the rationale behind Thursdays ruling could apply to several forthcoming rules, including expected Department of Labor rules to expand mandatory overtime pay to millions of workers. It could also make it more difficult to classify workers as independent contractors.

Officials at the Department of Labor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The doctrine could also be used against Biden administration rules to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, attempts to fix the so-called family glitch in the Affordable Care Act that priced many people out of health insurance, as well as efforts to protect medication abortion, experts said.

The FDA declined to comment. The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Topics USA Pollution
The Austin, Texas fire department reported at least 90 fires the night of July 4th in spite of a fireworks ban ordered by Austin and Travis County officials.

Most of the fires were small grass, dumpster and trash fires, the Austin Fire Department tweeted. Several fires reached one to two acres in size. There were three structural fires, though the fire department had not yet confirmed their cause.

Fireworks are illegal to possess or use in Austin unless a permit has been issued by the fire department. Travis County implemented a burn ban which prohibits the use of any combustible material outside of an enclosure which serves to contain all flames and/or sparks.

In neighboring Williamson County, officials placed restrictions on aerial fireworks which include stick rockets and missiles with fins or rudders.

A wildfire in Florence Texas, 45 miles north of Austin, is ongoing Tuesday according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. The DPS fire covers 180 acres and is 20% contained.

Earlier this year a wildfire east of Austin burned approximately 800 acres, though no homes were destroyed.

Topics Texas
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Major U.S. drug distributors McKesson Corp., AmerisourceBergen Corp., and Cardinal Health Inc. are not responsible for fueling an opioid epidemic in a part of West Virginia, a federal judge ruled on Monday.

U.S. District Judge David Faber rejected efforts by the city of Huntington and Cabell County to force the countrys three largest pharmaceutical distributors to pay $2.5 billion to address a drug crisis prompted by a flood of addictive pills in their region.

Following a months-long trial that ended last year, Faber said the companies did not cause any oversupply of opioids, saying doctors good faith prescribing decisions drove the volume of painkillers they shipped to pharmacies.

While the companies from 2006 to 2014 shipped 51.3 million opioid pills to retail pharmacies in the communities, there is nothing unreasonable about distributing controlled substances to fulfill legally written prescriptions, Faber wrote.

The opioid crisis has taken a considerable toll on the citizens of Cabell County and the city of Huntington, he wrote. And while there is a natural tendency to assign blame in such cases, they must be decided not based on sympathy, but on the facts and the law.

Steve Williams, Huntingtons mayor, in a statement called the decision a blow to our city and community. The city had sought to force the companies to help fund opioid treatment programs.

The companies welcomed the ruling, which AmerisourceBergen said struck down the notion that the distribution of U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs to licensed health care providers could be deemed a public nuisance.

Cardinal Health and McKesson in separate statements said the distributors had maintained systems to prevent the diversion of opioids to illicit channels.

More than 3,300 lawsuits have been filed, largely by state and local governments, seeking to hold those and other companies responsible for an opioid abuse epidemic linked to more than 500,000 overdose deaths over the last two decades.

The distributors, along with drugmaker Johnson & (J&J) JNJ.N, last year agreed to pay up to $26 billion to resolve the thousands of lawsuits brought against them by state and local governments around the country.

But communities in hard-hit West Virginia opted against joining a national opioid settlement in favor of seeking a bigger recovery. Another trial pitting the distributors against West Virginia communities begins Tuesday in state court.

Mondays ruling adds to the mixed record for opioid cases that have gone to trial nationally, with courts in Oklahoma and California last year rejecting similar claims against drugmakers like J&J.

A federal jury in November found pharmacy chain operators CVS Health Corp., Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. and Walmart Inc. liable in a case filed by two Ohio counties. A New York jury found Teva Pharmaceutical Industries liable in December in a case by the state and two counties.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Bill Berkrot and Kenneth Maxwell)

Topics Virginia Drugs
Answers

Global Bi2O3 powder market trend 2022-2028 Bismuth Oxide Bi2O3 Powder Supplier by Newsintegra927

Europe's largest economy, Germany, recently activated an emergency plan to manage gas supplies that the natural gas could be rationed if supplies are disrupted or disrupted by a stand-off over Russian demands to pay for fuel in rubles.

German Vice-Chancellor, minister of economy and climate protection, said Germany's gas supplies were secure for now, but he urged consumers and businesses to reduce consumption, saying "every kilowatt of electricity counts."

Germany's gas network regulator can ration gas if supplies run short. Plants would be the first to be affected. Special treatment will be provided to private families, hospitals, and other important institutions.

Half of Germany's 41.5 million households use natural gas for heating, and industry consumption accounts for a third of the country's 100 billion cubic meters of gas demand in 2021.

The price of many energy and commodities like the Bi2O3 powder could be affected.





What is Bismuth Oxide Bi2O3?

Bismuth trioxide (bismuth oxide) is an inorganic compound with the molecular formula Bi2O3.



Chemical formula: Bi2O3

Molecular weight: 465.96

Properties: yellow heavy powder or monoclinic crystal. Odorless. Stable in the air.

Density (g/mL, 25/4): 8.9

Melting point (): 825

Boiling point (, atmospheric pressure): 1890

Solubility: soluble in hydrochloric acid and nitric acid, insoluble in water. It turns maroon when heated and yellow when it is cold.





The pure products have  type,  type and  type.

Type  is yellow monoclinic crystal with a relative density of 8.9 and a melting point of 825. It is soluble in acid and insoluble in water and alkali.

Type  is bright yellow to orange, square system, relative density 8.55, melting point 860, soluble in acid, insoluble in water. It is easy to be reduced to metal bismuth by hydrogen and hydrocarbons.

-Bi2O3 is a special material with cubic fluorite structure, and there is a vacancy of oxygen ion in the lattice, so it has very high oxygen ion conductivity.



Bismuth oxide is mainly used in electronic ceramic powder materials, electrolyte materials, optoelectronic materials, high temperature superconducting materials and catalysts. Bismuth oxide is an important additive in electronic ceramic powder materials, with a purity of more than 99.15%. It is mainly used in zinc oxide varistors, ceramic capacitors and ferrite magnetic materials.



What is Bismuth Oxide Bi2O3 Used For?

Bismuth oxide (Bi2O3) is an important metal oxide semiconductor, which has attracted wide attention because of its excellent optical and electrical properties, such as wide band gap, high refractive index, high permittivity and good photoconductivity.



Because of these unique properties, bismuth oxide has been studied and used in a variety of fields, such as fuel cells, sensor technology, oxide varistors, ionic conductors, optoelectronic materials, high temperature superconductors and functional ceramics. It is also an important part of manufacturing transparent ceramic glass, optical coatings, ceramics and catalysts. Similarly, the industrial field based on Bi2O3 manufacturing technology has made great progress due to the production of various high-quality optical fibers, such as erbium-doped (Er) bismuth oxide fiber and highly nonlinear bismuth oxide fiber.



Bi2O3 fiber is attractive because its nonlinearity is about 200 times higher than that of SiO2. These nonlinear phenomena play a key role in ultrafast optical transmission systems and all-optical transmission networks, so they can be studied for all-optical processing subsystems, such as regenerators, demultiplexers, logic gates and optical switches. Semiconductors made from Bi2O3 have the advantages of compactness and integration, even though they usually require temperature and current control and they are dynamically limited by charge carriers (hundreds of picoseconds).



Is Bismuth Oxide Acidic or Basic?

Pure Bi2O3 has both acidic and alkaline sites, much like TiO2, SnO2 and Fe2O3, and it is more alkaline than these oxides.



Supplier of Bismuth Oxide Bi2O3 Powder

Luoyang Tongrun Nano Technology Co. Ltd. (TRUNNANO) is a trusted global chemical material supplier & manufacturer with over 12-year-experience in providing super high-quality chemicals and nanomaterials including silicon powder, nitride powder, graphite powder, zinc sulfide, calcium nitride, 3D printing powder, etc.

If you are looking for high-quality Bi2O3 powder, please feel free to contact us and send an inquiry. ([email protected])





The Japanese minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry recently held talks with the U.S. Secretary of Commerce and industry in Washington, where he is visiting, and agreed to include basic principles on joint research and development of semiconductors and strengthening of supply chains. Japan's economy, Trade and Industry Minister has asked the United States to increase the Bi2O3 powder will continue to increase in the future.

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Global market trend 2022-2028 Will the global power crisis affect the market of the power relay harness by Newsintegra927

On the one hand, the global energy pattern is still in drastic transition, on the other hand, the global energy consumption is soaring under the background of frequent extreme climate phenomena

Many countries around the world face a power crisis: recently, many countries around the world appear the power supply is tight or even short of the situation. The reasons are not only caused by the high-temperature record in the northern hemisphere, but also by the energy policies of some countries and the current international situation.

Recently, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has issued a series of power-saving warnings, warning of severe power supply and demand in Tokyo. Messi also said it would implement all power supply measures, but expected power supplies to remain difficult, with reserves of less than 5 percent of capacity -- the minimum required for a stable supply of electricity at 3 percent.

According to reports, the Cabinet held a meeting on electricity supply and demand for the first time in nearly five years and decided to call on households and businesses to save electricity from July 1 to September 30.

In addition to Japan, more than a billion people in India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and other Asian countries are suffering from intermittent power cuts, with little relief in sight. An Indian official says more than 700 million people in 16 of the country's 28 states have been struggling with power cuts of between two and 10 hours a day.

France, traditionally the largest exporter of electricity in Europe, may have to import electricity this winter due to a shortage of electricity, which is priced much higher than neighboring markets, analysts said.

In a worst-case scenario, as many as 6 million homes in the UK could be rationed in early 2023, mainly during morning and evening rush hours, The Times said.

The Us may not have enough electricity to survive the summer heat wave, the Washington Post reported recently. The West and Midwest are estimated to be at risk of power grid failures in summer 2022.

The U.S. Power Department has warned that more parts of the country will face power shortages or blackouts this summer, and that rolling blackout may be used to avoid grid failure.

Record-breaking heat in the northern hemisphere this summer is clearly one of the direct causes of the current power crisis in many countries.

Market introduction of power relay harness

Time relay Industry competition and marketization degree: relay industry development is more mature, the market competition is more sufficient, major producing countries including China, the United States, Japan, Germany, etc., including the United States, Japan, Germany enterprise occupies most of the high-end relay market share, is mainly used in industrial automation control, automotive, communications, aerospace and other fields. The output of relays of Chinese enterprises accounts for about half of the global output of relays, but they are mainly medium and low-end products, which are mainly used in household appliances, electricity, automobiles and other fields.

Buy Safe and affordable power relay harness time relay, solid state relay and other relay accessories from Juzlong; Solid State Relay Accessories and Time Relay . Email: juzlongchina@gmail.com

Basic principles and classification of power relay harness

Basic concept and principle of relay: relay is a control component that automatically disconnects when the input parameters (such as electricity, magnetism, light, heat, sound and so on) in the circuit reach a specified value, which can make the output parameters of the circuit change in a predetermined step. In circuits, relays mainly control, protect, regulate and transmit information. The relay has an induction mechanism that reflects external input parameters, an executive mechanism that realizes "on" and "off" control of the controlled circuit, and an intermediate comparison mechanism that compares, judges and converts the size of the input.

As a control element, relays have the following functions:

(1) Expand the control range, such as multi-contact relay control signal reaches a certain value, according to the different forms of the contact group, at the same time open and close the multi-circuit;

(2) amplification, such as sensitive relay, intermediate relay, etc., with a very small amount of control, can control a large power circuit;

(3) comprehensive signals, such as when multiple control signals are input into the multi-winding relay in a specified form, after comparison and synthesis, to achieve the predetermined control effect;

(4) Automatic, remote control, monitoring, such as the relay on the automatic device and other electrical appliances together, can form a program control circuit, so as to realize automatic operation.

In the competition of the power relay harness market, enterprises in the United States, Japan and other developed countries constantly consolidate their dominant position in the global market by establishing technical standards, controlling core technologies, strengthening the integration of industrial chains, and firmly mastering the dominance of technical standards and international rules. In recent years, in order to further strengthen the core competitiveness, enterprises in the United States, Japan and other developed countries continue to expand power relay harness products and speed up technology integration. Their business scope has broken through simple relay manufacturing and developed to industrial control, system integration and other fields. The key to the competition in the high-end field has developed from the competition of quantity to the competition of the basic research and development of new relays, key materials, special equipment and other core products.

The raw material of the power relay harness

The power relay harness cost of relay is mainly determined by raw materials, which are mainly iron, silver, copper and other metals, accounting for about 74.4% of the production cost, labour and manufacturing costs accounting for 13.7% and 11.9% respectively, silver, copper and iron materials accounting for 36%, 21% and 7% of the raw material cost respectively. The price of three raw materials has a certain impact on the profitability of the whole industry. In addition to the main metal raw materials of the power relay harness, engineering plastics and enamelled wire are also important components of relays, and the overall supply of raw materials is stable at present.

The application of the power relay harness

The rapid development of power relay harness emerging relays. The application field of relays has changed from traditional application fields, such as household appliances and power automation control equipment, ships and new energy. Relay products have been transformed from low-end products to high-end products, such as high-voltage DC relay, high-performance industrial control relay, low-power energy-saving relay, new-generation communication relay, high-frequency relay, relay control components and other high-performance relays. The value chain of the relay industry is constantly extending to the high-end. In terms of product performance, it is developing towards the direction of more sensitive (low power consumption), smaller volume and higher performance (such as high-frequency relay).

Safe and affordable power relay harness supplier

Juzlong Electric Co., Ltd. is a high-tech industry integrating research, development and sales. The main products include time relay , small intermediate relay, solid state relay, temperature control instrument, counter, microcomputer time control switch and other piezoelectric devices. Juzlong took the lead in implementing lean production in the industry and established a small-displacement, multi-batch pull production model with Junlong characteristics.

Based on the operating system of business value stream, the organization forms an information flow control triggering mode from manufacturing end to business order, and builds a stable production management system. No matter who you are, Junlong technology will provide you with the best quality products at very competitive prices. You are welcome to contact us at any time to obtain the latest quotations for our professional piezoelectric devices.

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Zoos and aquariums on both sides of the Irish border have written to both the Taoiseach and the British prime minister, asking them to come to an agreement which would help conservation programmes.

It comes as BIAZA (the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums) say they saw 48 animals transferred between homes in British and EU zoos and aquariums in 2021, down from 1,400 in 2019.

In response to this, they have written to Micheal Martin and Boris Johnson in the hope that their respective governments can come to an agreement called a Sanitary and Phytosanitary, or SPS, agreement which could enable the transfer of endangered zoo animals to return to levels seen prior to Brexit.

The group, which includes Dublin, Fota, and Belfast zoos, says the conservation work of endangered animals now faces incredible challenges owing to a lack of alignment between the EU and Britain.

CEO of Dublin Zoo, Christoph Schwitzer, said: It is imperative that the UK and European Commission find a solution so that good zoos and aquariums can continue their work saving species from extinction."

Conservation breeding programs are an important part of the conservation work of zoos and aquariums.

Breeding programs in Ireland include that of the critically endangered citron crested cockatoo and the Geoldis monkey in Dublin Zoo, Colobus monkeys and Francois langurs coordinated from Belfast Zoo, and cheetah and lechwe, coordinated from Fota Wildlife Park.

Aside from these programs, the group of zoos across Ireland and the North are continuing with other forms of important conservation work in order to save species from extinction.

Last month, while giving a keynote address at the latest National Biodiversity Conference in Dublin Castle, Mr Martin said that he envisaged cooperation with Britain in a tripartite focus on combating biodiversity loss.

He said that only an all-Ireland approach in sync with the North will work to reverse the harm caused to the natural world, adding that biodiversity does not recognise borders.

There are around 16,300 species believed to be endangered across the world, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
There was no evidence before an inquest jury to support the verdict that a Co. Waterford couples newborn baby died of natural causes, the High Court has heard.

Natasha Cummins and Aiden Spencer claim the Cork City Coroner that oversaw the inquest into the death of their son Tommy did not adequately direct the jury on certain matters, particularly on the use at University Hospital Waterford of the contraction augmentation drug Oxytocin during the delivery of their baby son.

They allege the inquest led to an irrational jury verdict that their baby died of brain damage as a result of natural causes. Their claims are denied.

Joseph Dalby SC, for the couple, said on Tuesday that the jurys verdict of death by natural causes flies in the face of common sense. The coroner, he said, has discretion whether or not to use a jury during inquests and he said there was very complicated medical evidence presented that perhaps should not have been for a jury to assess.

Mr Dalby said the jurys verdict ignores the evidence that the mother was experiencing hyperstimulation, or excessive contractions, during her labour on July 13, 2018.

Ms Cummins repeatedly exceeded five contractions within the space of 15 minutes, displaying hyperstimulation for a total of 135 minutes in under seven hours, he said. The frequency and intensity of contractions increase the risk of uterine rupture, he said.

It is part of their case that the medical care during Ms Cumminss labour, and the use of oxytocin, are material circumstances relevant to the death of her baby and its causes.

It is claimed Ms Cummins was a high-risk labour as her first child was delivered by Caesarean section. Despite that, Oxytocin was administered to her, was continued beyond the recommended timeline and in contradiction of the hospitals protocols, it is alleged.

When fully dilated some 34 hours after her admission to hospital, and after five hours of oxytocin, it is claimed she was directed to deliver her baby vaginally.

Mr Dalby said his side accepts the Cork City Coroner Philip Comyn (pictured) had left open to the jury the option of returning an open verdict, but upon his recollection, there was no misadventure option. File picture: Dan Linehan

It is alleged Ms Cummins suffered a uterine rupture which resulted in a severe and sustained drop in the foetal heartbeat, causing a lack of oxygen to the babys brain. The baby was born alive at 7.57pm on July 14, but flat, and after being moved to Cork University Hospital his life support was turned off on July 18.

Coroner Philip Comyns September 10, 2020, recording of the inquest jurys verdict stated the disease/condition leading to death was acute hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy due to intra-uterine hypoxia due to placental malperfusion (an association of encephalopathy).

Mr Dalby said his side accepts the coroner had left open to the jury the option of returning an open verdict, but upon his recollection, there was no misadventure option.

He said the couple, with an address in Cappoquinn, Co. Waterford, is at a disadvantage in their judicial review because there was no audio recording of the hearing. The couple is asking the High Court to overturn the jurys verdict and direct that a new inquest must be held to establish the cause of death.

The claims are denied. Ms Justice Marguerite Bolger is due to hear submissions from the respondent side on Wednesday.
In February, tour guide and genealogist Mary G OSullivan made an unsettling discovery. Janie McCarthy, the Irishwoman, and fellow Killarney native, who risked her life to save countless Allied soldiers during the Second World War was buried in an unmarked grave on the outskirts of Paris. How did a woman decorated by three countries for her work with the French Resistance end up in an ossuaire (or ossuary) with hundreds of others?

She was courageous and patriotic, and her spirit inspired others. It is a tragedy that she lies in a paupers grave in Levallois-Per cemetery, Ms OSullivan says, still moved by the experience. Had it not been for her meticulous research, we might not even know where Janie McCarthy, the teacher who escorted downed pilots out of wartime Paris to safety, was buried.

Janie McCarthy: "She was courageous and patriotic, and her spirit inspired others."

Mary G OSullivan traced her first to a plot in the same cemetery which had been leased to a Cornelius Healy. When that lease lapsed, 10 years after Janies death in 1964, her remains were exhumed and transferred to a communal plot. It is such an ignoble end for a woman who wore her wartime medals with pride on summertime trips home to Killarney but now, at least, she is being commemorated in her hometown.

Last week, a campaign by councillors Michael Gleeson and later John ODonoghue bore fruit when a plaque dedicated to the war heroine was unveiled by Killarney mayor Marie Moloney. There have been suggestions that her remains be expatriated too but, as Mary G OSullivan points out, it would be near impossible to identity them in a mass grave.

It is possible, however, to revive the story of a woman who was once much more widely known. When she died in 1964, for example, this newspaper carried a laudatory obituary tracing her journey from New Street in Killarney to live with a family in Brittany in 1910 where she learned French. She went on to become a teacher and, unusually for a foreigner, was awarded the prestigious Ordre des Palmes academiques in 1918 for her service to education.

Her obituary enthuses about her teaching ability and the devotion of her former students: Sons and daughters of princes and kings of royal households of places as far away as Indo-China studied under her and were proud to be called her friends.

On many of her visits to Killarney she brought some of these students with her. The evidence that some of them were captivated by Killarney remains in paintings, sketches and letters they have left behind.

The newspaper went on to describe how Professor McCarthy, as the paper called her, displayed great heroism during the Second World War, working with a number of Resistance networks and escape lines which helped aviators to find safe passage out of France.

Her modus operandi was simple. She simply enrolled refugees as members of her classes or as professors and members of Prof McCarthys staff.

On one occasion, the paper noted, she moved through a Gestapo inspection in the Metro with an American officer, who did not know a word of French, by passing him off as a deaf person who could not speak.

On another occasion, she escaped being captured by being 15 minutes late for an appointment with another Resistance member, Elisabeth Barbier, who was taken to Buchenwald [concentration camp] and underwent severe torture.

The article went on to list her awards, among them a Resistance medal and croix de guerre for bravery from France, a Tedder certificate for helping British service personnel and an American Medal of Freedom.

The house in Brittany where Janie McCarthy lived.

Yet, a few short decades later, when Mary G OSullivan was doing research for a walking tour of her native Killarney, she saw no mention of this local heroine in any of the historical material about the town. Janie McCarthy had been forgotten. What happened next, however, is remarkable. The more Mary G OSullivan began to delve into Janie McCarthys story for her dissertation on genealogy, the more she found she had in common with her subject.

Both women left Killarney to go to France to learn French when they were in their 20s. They both studied at the Sorbonne even taking the exact same course, langue et civilisation francaise, but exactly 60 years apart. And, they lived within a stones throw of each other in the third arrondisement in the centre of Paris. While reading her archived file, Mary G OSullivan could clearly visualise the area as she retraced Janie McCarthys steps from her chambre de bonne, or maids quarters, on the top floor of number 64, rue Saint Anne, to visit other people in the Resistance nearby to plan how they would help aviators escape. Elisabeth Barbier, mentioned in the obituary, was a former student and that is how Janie McCarthy was first introduced to the Resistance around 1940. Through her friend Elisabeth Barbier, Janie got to know and work alongside members of the Comet network (Reseau Comete), Ms OSullivan says.

That network specialised in getting aviators into Spain and Gibraltar, English territory. It helped to lodge aviators, get them civilian clothes and false documents and then, using the same route, the members of the Resistance set off by train from Paris via Bordeaux to Bayonne and on to St Jean de Luz, in the French Basque country.

There, the aviators were handed over to trusted guides who took over and smuggled the men into Spain. If one network was discovered, its members helped another.

As Mary G OSullivan says: Elisabeth had many contacts and introduced Janie McCarthy to many different networks and people.

It was very dangerous work, as became all too clear when Janies close associate was arrested. Several of her Resistance colleagues were deported or, in some cases, shot, yet after the war Janies work was not considered of a grade high enough to receive financial compensation. That irks Mary G OSullivan but perhaps not as much as the fact that her life and work was forgotten in the decades after her death.

The mass grave in which Janie McCarthy is buried.

At least now, Janie McCarthy is visible in her hometown and her story is being fleshed out by researchers such as OSullivan and others.

This will help her spirit be remembered and applauded by future generations as she rightly deserves, says the woman who retraced Janie McCarthys footsteps in an attempt to solve the puzzle of her life, and death.
Burma 66 Myanmar Junta Troops Killed in Two Months in Chin State

CNDF fighters. / Chin National Organization

An estimated 66 Myanmar junta soldiers were killed during clashes with the Chin National Defense Force (CNDF) in May and June, the group claimed.

The CNDF said it and other groups clashed with junta troops 11 times in Falam Township in Chin State and Kale Township in Sagaing Region.

The CNDF said three of its members were killed, one in fighting and two died in mine blasts, and four were injured.

It said the regime continued arson attacks on civilian houses in Falam, torching almost 40 houses in May.

In Bilin Township, Mon State, a junta convoy, which included 10 trucks, was attacked with mines by the armed wing of the Karen National Union, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), and allied resistance forces on Sunday.

The parallel National Unity Governments defense ministry said nine junta soldiers, including a lieutenant colonel, were killed.

The convoy was headed to Kyaukkyi Township in Bago Region where the KNLA seized five regime outposts on a single day.

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Burma Myanmar Junta Chief Opens Religious Building Funded by Ex-Dictators Aide

Sitting on the floor (left column): Min Aung Hlaing (top), Aung Paye Sone (second row, far left) and Dr. Tha Yin Myat (second row, middle). Sitting on the floor (right column): Daw Kyu Kyu Hla (top) and Daw Nwe Nwe Aye, Dr. Tha Yin Myat's wife

On his 66th birthday, Myanmar regime chief Min Aung Hlaing officially opened a new religious building funded mainly from donations by an aide of the countrys former dictator.

The opening ceremony at Dhammacakka Yeiktha Buddhist Monastery on Kaba Aye Pagoda Road in Yangon on Sunday was also joined by Min Aung Hlaings wife Daw Kyu Kyu Hla, son Aung Pyae Sone and daughter-in-law Myo Yadanar Htike.

The main donors for the 1-billion-kyat (approximately US$540,000) five-story monastery were Dr. Tha Yin Myat, his family and families associated with Four River Myanmar Co Ltd American Company, regime news outlets reported.

Though its not stated in the news, its likely that the opening ceremony was also aimed at making merit for Min Aung Hlaings 66th birthday. On the same day, anti-regime protesters across the country held protests, praying for his death for his atrocities against his own people since his coup in February last year.

Who is Dr. Tha Yin Myat?

A son of the late Air Force Major Tha Din Gyi, Dr. Tha Yin Myat is an ex-army medical doctor.

In his biography of former Myanmar dictator Than Shwe, Benedict Rogers writes that Dr. Tha Yin Myat was also an arms brokersimilar to Tay Zato the countrys former regime, which ruled Myanmar from 1988 to early 2011.

In addition to Tay Za, Than Shwes other principal arms broker is Dr. Tha Yin Myat, born into one of the wealthiest families in Burma. Tha Yin Myat served as an army medical doctor, and through his fathers contacts he began to assist in the purchase of air force jets from China and arms from other countries, he writes in Than Shwe: Unmasking Burmas Tyrant.

Since then he has become Than Shwes handyman, says a defector. Tay Za and Tha Yin Myat have also helped Than Shwes wife Kyaing Kyaing undertake shopping trips to Singapore, and have transferred funds from her Singapore bank account to a new

account in Dubai, Rogers writes in the book.

According to old newspaper reports, under the previous regime, Dr. Tha Yin Myat made donations together with military spy chief General Khin Nyunt, who is now suffering from Alzheimers.

Dr Tha Yin Myat also ran a company under the name of AWE in the early 2010s. But it was liquidated in 2020.

The nature of the relationship between Dr. Tha Yin Myat and Four River Myanmar Co Ltd American Company, which made donations to the newly opened monastery along with his family, is unclear. The company name cant be found on Myanmars official company registration list.

The ex-army doctor also made donations with military leaders throughout the time of U Thein Seins quasi-civilian government, which came to power in 2011.

During U Thein Seins administration, Dr. Tha Yin Myat was awarded the Agga Maha Sirisudhamma Manijotadhara, a title given to those who have made substantial donations to a Buddhist order. His wife Daw Nwe Nwe Aye was awarded the Thiha Thudhamma Theingi title for her social welfare work.

The family drew online ire on Facebook as they were reportedly elated when Min Aung Hlaing staged the coup in February last year, prompting a boycott of their daughter Chaw Su Myats Chaw Chaw Silk and Luxury Fashion store in Yangon.

Furthermore, the family are devoted followers of Ashin Chekinda, who recently became the rector of the International Theravada Buddhist Missionary University in Yangon due to his loyalty to Min Aung Hlaing.

On Sunday, Dr. Tha Yin Myat was seen sitting together with Min Aung Hlaings son Aung Pyae Sone, and the doctors wife Daw Nwe Nwe Aye sat side-by-side with Daw Kyu Kyu Hla as they attended the opening ceremony of the religious building.

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Burma Pro-Junta Militia Leader Attempts to Rape Second Grader in Upper Myanmar

Pro-junta Pyu Saw Htee militia in Sagaing. / CJ

A pro-junta militia leader attempted to rape an eight-year-old in Sagaing Regions Kantbalu Township, and the victims family dare not file a complaint, said residents.

U Shwe Ba, 53, the leader of a local Pyu Saw Htee group, a militia formed and armed by the Myanmar military, attempted to rape the second grader on June 6 at a school in Nat Inn Village, some four miles to the east of Kantbalu Town.

A resident of Nat Inn village said: The would-be rapist is a distant relative of the girl. She is the granddaughter of his brother-in-law. He took her to an empty classroom. The girl ran out naked, which was spotted by soldiers at the school.

U Shwe Ba gave three million kyats as compensation to the parents of the victim, via junta soldiers, asking them not to file a police complaint. He was publicly beaten by regime troops as a punishment, said a local.

A relative of the victim said: When we planned to file a complaint, they [Pyu Saw Htee] said they would pay three million kyats and told us not to file the complaint. We fear them because he is the Pyu Saw Htee leader in Nat Inn. We want to file a complaint, but where can we file a complaint and who we can rely on in this age? If possible, I want the whole country to know about this case.

Pyu Saw Htee militia have a strong presence in Nat Inn Village. The village has a post-primary school at its center, where Pyu Saw Htee militia led by three junta soldiers and two police from Kantbalu Town are based. Pyu Saw Htee and junta troops are based in schools across Kantbalu Township.

U Shwe Ba is married with three children. He is a former traditional medicine practitioner who settled in Nat Inn in 2017 and farmed betel for living. He joined the Pyu Saw Htee after last years coup, according to residents.

He is a quack who calls himself a medical practitioner. When Pyu Saw Htee groups were formed in Kantbalu he helped fund them and became a Pyu Saw Htee leader, said a Nat Inn villager.

U Shwe Ba was sent back to his native village, Koe Myo, after the attempted rape. The village, where Pyu Saw Htee militia are also based, is located in the south of Kantbalu Township.

The Nat Inn Pyu Saw Htee group took 900,000 kyats from the three million kyats compensation given to the victims family for its own funds. The group has also threatened the victims family.

They put pressure on the parents of the girl and forced them to sign a paper saying that the attempted rape never happened, said a resident.

We want fitting punishment for him. And I would also like to urge parents to learn a lesson from this and take greater care of their school children, he added.

A lawyer from Mandalay said police have the responsibility to open a case of attempted rape against U Shwe Ba under Section 511 of the Penal Code.

It is difficult to seek justice because police do nothing despite their responsibility to open the case of attempted rape. There is no need to say anything about the state of rule of law in Myanmar at present. As there is no enforcement of law, the law is just beautiful words written on paper, said the lawyer.

Under Section 511, the crime of attempted rape carries a penalty of up to ten years in prison and/or a fine.

Infinity Group, a local group that reports on the fighting in Kantbalu Township, said Pyu Saw Htee members from Nat Inn Village extort money from people using the Kantbalu-Nat Inn-Sabel Nanthar road, and locally-based Artillery Battalion 6006 has had to settle disputes among Pyu Saw Htee members over the distribution of the extortion money.

There have been several rapes committed with impunity by junta soldiers as victims dare not file complaints for fear of retaliation.

In early April, a junta soldier guarding a school in Za Jan Village in Taung Tha Township, Mandalay Region raped a 21-year-old woman with mental health problems.

In February, a 30-year-old widow from San U Village in Taung Tha was raped by the leader of the Pyu Saw Htee group in the village and was unable to file a complaint.

In November last year, a woman from Nat Saunk Village in Taung Tha was gang-raped by regime soldiers. She was taking cattle out to pasture with her uncle when four junta soldiers appeared. They beat and threatened her uncle to leave before raping her.

In March, regime forces raped a mother before killing her and her two daughters in Magwe Regions Pauk Township. In November last year, junta soldiers gang-raped an ethnic Chin woman in Chin State who had given birth little more than a month previously.

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Burma Resistance: Myanmar Junta Launches 125 Airstrikes to Defend Key Outpost

Regime fighter jets. / KNU

Myanmars military regime reportedly carried out 125 airstrikes within five days to defend its strategic outpost in Karen State near the Thai border while it was being attacked by resistance forces.

The armed wings of the Karen National Union, the Karen National Liberation Army and the Karen National Defense Organization (KNDO), and other resistance forces assaulted the Ukayit Hta outpost on a strategically important road near Waw Lay in Myawaddy Township on June 26.

Fighting continued for nearly a week. Witnesses said the battle for Ukayit Hta is the fiercest they have seen since last year.

A source said last Tuesday that shells landed every three seconds.

Junta spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun told a press conference on Friday that the outpost is still in junta control with the support of airstrikes and artillery.

Drone pictures released by the Cobra Column, one of the resistance groups, show heavy destruction at the outpost and the bodies of junta troops on the ground after an attack. The resistance forces have reported casualties because of junta airstrikes and artillery.

Cobra Column said from June 27 to July 1 the junta conducted 125 attacks with YAK jets and a MIG-29 jet. It said the group suffered no casualties in the airstrikes.

It said junta reinforcements were sent 12 times by helicopter from Mawlamyine.

Reinforcements were attacked and a Cobra Column video shows a junta corporal captured by the group saying at least 20 soldiers (of his group) were killed in an attack. The corporal was shown being treated for his injuries.

He said his commander fled during the attack so he ran away and was captured later.

The KNDO said on Thursday it attacked Light Infantry Division 44 reinforcements, killing at least seven soldiers and seizing weapons.

The casualties on both sides are unknown.

More than 300 Waw Lay residents have fled across the Moei River to Thailand.

On Friday and Saturday junta airstrikes killed two civilians and injured seven others, including children, in two Karen villages.
Burma Six AA Fighters Killed as Myanmar Regime Bombs Outpost in Karen State

Six AA soldiers killed by Myanmar junta aerial bombing in Karen State on July 4. / AA

Six Arakan Army (AA) soldiers were killed when Myanmar junta aircraft bombed an outpost of the Rakhine armed group located in an area controlled by its ally, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), near the Thai border in Karen State on Monday afternoon.

Though it primarily operates in Rakhine State, the AA has a base in territory controlled by Brigade No. 5 of the KNLA, an armed wing of the Karen National Union. The AAs headquarters are in Kachin States Laiza, which is controlled by the Kachin Independence Army. Over the past decade, growing numbers of AA troops have penetrated Rakhine State and expanded the amount of territory under the groups control there.

On Tuesday, the AA released the names of the soldiers killed by bombs dropped by two Myanmar military fighter jets on Monday at 12:25 p.m. All were aged between 20 and 31. The victims were from Rakhine States Rathedaung, Kyauktaw, Ponnakyun and Myebon townships and Chin States Paletwa Township.

Besides the fatalities, some AA soldiers were injured, and the outposts clinic and other buildings were destroyed in the bombing. The AA said the Myanmar juntas fighter jets flew into Thai airspace after the attack.

KNLA brigades 5, 6 and 1 have been engaged in heavy fighting with junta troops in Karen State since a few months after the military staged a coup on Feb. 1 last year. However, this is the first time since the coup that an AA camp has been targeted outside of Rakhine State, where AA troops have been increasingly active since 2015.

Military tensions between the AA and the Myanmar military have risen again since May. AA spokesman Khaing Thukha has said the situation is fraught and that the junta is preparing for war in Rakhine, where the majority of AA troops are now based, in addition to the AAs military camps in Karen and Kachin states.

The Myanmar military had been less active in Rakhine State since an informal ceasefire between it and the AA took hold in late 2020, but an increase in military activity has been observed lately with the regime reinforcing its troops and weaponry, including a submarine, the AA spokesman said last month.

Over the past year, with the Myanmar military distracted by the fallout from its 2021 coup, the AA has further consolidated its control in Rakhine with an administrative network delivering public services, a functioning judiciary, and its own police force. Tensions have arisen as the regime attempts to counter the AAs expanding influence.
Burma Transgender Political Detainee Sexually Abused by Prison Officer in Upper Myanmar

LGBTQ protesters in Mandalay rallying against the regime in July 2021. / Star

A transgender prisoner detained in Sagaing Regions Monywa Prison for anti-junta activities has been sexually abused by a prison officer, said LGBT Alliance-Myanmar.

Prison officer Zaw Zaw Aung, also known as Paline, forced the prisoner into performing oral sex on him on June 30 and also attempted to have anal sex, said the Monywa Strike Committee.

The LGBT Alliance-Myanmar issued a statement condemning the sexual assault. Justin Min Hein, a spokesperson for the LGBT Union Mandalay, said that the report came from credible sources inside Monywa Prison and that the group is making further inquiries.

The transgender prisoner was detained at home around one month ago and charged with incitement. The prisoner has reportedly been forced to wear male clothes while in jail.

Justin Min Hein said: Anyone subjected to sexual violence, not just LGBT people, can be demoralized. We feel emotional and discouraged when we hear about such cases. I cant help respecting the prisoner for having the courage to speak out about the abuse.

The prison officer perpetrator reportedly often beats political prisoners when he is drunk.

Similar things happen in other prisons across the country, said a member of LGBT Alliance-Myanmar. The group said it would report the case to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and ask for its intervention.

In March, rights groups called on the ICRC to probe human rights violations in the countrys jails and the use of sexual violence against political prisoners.

However, the regime has rejected the ICRCs request to resume its prison visits and other humanitarian activities and allow family visits. Prison visits by the ICRC and families of detainees have been suspended since March 2020, following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Former political prisoner U Tun Kyi said: A prison officer sexually assaulting a LGBTQ person is not something unusual anymore. They do it as if it was part of their daily routine. They are officially licensed to do so. It is indisputably one of the worst and gravest human rights violations.

Since the coup, female detainees have especially suffered from sexual abuse inside prisons, but sexual assaults on male and LGBTQ prisoners are on the increase.

In October last year, Shin Thant, an advocate for LGBTQ rights in Mandalay, was detained after junta troops rammed a car into her. The activist was sexually abused during her interrogation.

Over 20 LGBTQ detainees have experienced sexual assaults in prisons, according to sources.

LGBTIQ groups in Myanmar have actively participated in anti-regime protests since last years coup and so have been targeted by the military regime.
Burma Two Sagaing Civilians Die in Myanmar Junta Raids

Pha Lan Gan village in Salingyi Township after a regime raid on Friday. / Salingyi Information

Myanmar regime raids in southern Salingyi Township, Sagaing Region, on Sunday and Monday have left two civilians dead.

More than 100 soldiers raided Wat Hkote village on Sunday and a villager was shot dead.

Another villager was injured by junta shelling, according to the Salingyi Special Task Force.

The troops then advanced to Than Hpo Taung village and seized a villager. A Tayar villager was shot dead on Monday while fleeing with his family. A Kan Zoon villager, who was fleeing the village, was shot in the leg.

The troops raided the villages at night, thats why they had many casualties during the clash with us on Saturday, said Ko Zay, a representative of the task force.

Resistance groups in Salingyi, Mying and Yesagyo attacked junta troops near Byaiba village in Yesagyo Township on Saturday.

Five soldiers were killed and many others injured and a resistance fighter was injured during the clash.

The troops withdrew from Byaiba village on Saturday.

Troops then crossed into southern Salingyi to attack more villages, Ko Zay told The Irrawaddy.

Around 10,000 civilians from 13 villages had left their homes by Sunday.

Soldiers raided northern Salingyi around the Chinese-owned Wanbao copper mine and nearly 6,000 civilians have been displaced. Seven Salingyi civilians were killed over 10 days last month.
From left to right: Temenos president and chief revenue officer Erich Gerber, BOQ managing director and CEO George Frazis, and BOQ chief information officer Craig Ryman

The Bank of Queensland claims its cloud-based digital core banking systems have processed nearly four million customer transactions since they were commissioned in mid-2021.

The digital transformation update saw Bank of Queensland (BOQ) and Virgin Money Australia (VMA) brands attract a younger demographic (25% and under 35) using new apps.

BOQ CEO and managing director George Frazis said the bank was making steady progress in digitising its operations and building its new digital bank in the cloud.

Since 2019, we have been simplifying and modernising our business to improve the experience of our customers and bankers, Frazis said.

Already, the Virgin Money Australia and BOQ transaction and savings functions are now operating on our new cloud digital bank, and work is underway to shift ME Bank deposit transactions to the new cloud platform.

We are modernising our core and digitising processes end-to-end which will give us the flexibility of a neobank but with the scale, strong capital position, and proven brands of an established institution with 148 years in banking.

This will provide a compelling competitive advantage over both existing players and new entrants.

In April, the myBOQ app was launched, providing new features such as instant Osko payments, PayID, Savings Round Up, bill tracker, and live in-app chat.

Opening a transaction account at BOQ or Virgin Money now takes only five minutes with the app.

Fifty-six percent of customers using the myBOQ app were existing BOQ customers who have self-migrated to take advantage of the platform.

Frazis said the bank was simplifying its operations with the goal to halve the number of IT systems over the coming years.

Rather than simply shifting our business to work around legacy systems we are building two-related core platforms, one for our retail and one for our business customers which can service our multiple brands and will drive greater efficiencies, he said.

BOQ has tapped platform provider Temenos to move all retail brands and systems to its single cloud-based core platform.

For more complex business customers they will be serviced on the latest Temenos on premise platform.

Our strategic partnership with Temenos is crucial to meeting our transformation vision. By using a banking-as-a-service model we can achieve rapid transformation while still maintaining high-customer service levels and strengthening relationships with the communities where we operate, Frazis concluded.
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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.
Today

Partly cloudy this morning with thunderstorms becoming likely this afternoon. High 89F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Low 67F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.

Tomorrow

Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 88F. Winds light and variable.
Can a company be an accomplice in international crimes? While we are still far from a judgment, the Lafarge case has seen many upheavals, with civil parties and defence lawyers fighting each other through appeals to the Supreme Court. And it is the very legitimacy of the charges that is being questioned. The group's indictment for complicity in crimes against humanity -- established, cancelled and then reinstated -- has not ceased to be called into question. And through the judicial journey of the French cement company, which has meanwhile merged with Swiss holding company Holcim, the conditions for future French prosecutions against business actors are being outlined. For this is the first time that a company has been indicted, as a legal entity, on such grounds.

It all began on November 15, 2016, when the French NGO Sherpa, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and 11 former Lafarge employees filed a complaint in Paris against the Lafarge group for "financing terrorism", "complicity in crimes against humanity", "complicity in war crimes", "endangering others" and other related offenses. The complaint targets events that took place in 2013 and 2014 in Syria, around the Jalabiya factory owned by the French group.

"Sherpa began looking into Lafarge's activities in Syria in the summer of 2016, after the publication of two journalistic investigations -- on the Syrian news website Zaman Al Wasl in February, and then in Le Monde," says Anna Kiefer, litigation and advocacy officer at the NGO. Several material elements such as management E-mails and testimonies indicated that the company had paid large sums of money to several armed groups, including Daesh, to continue operating its factory in northern Syria between 2013 and 2014. "Together with ECCHR, we contacted former Lafarge employees and gathered further evidence before filing a complaint in November," Kiefer continues.

Acquired by Lafarge in 2007 and commissioned in 2010, the Jalabiya plant was the largest foreign investment in Syria at the time (estimated at more than 600 million euros) outside the oil sector. With a production capacity of 2.6 million tons of cement per year, it is managed by Lafarge Cement Syria, a subsidiary in which the French group has a 98% stake. In 2011, the Syrian revolution broke out, and as it was repressed the country sank into civil war. In the summer of 2012, when other French companies in Syria had already packed up, Lafarge evacuated its expatriates but did not stop its activities. 250 Syrian employees kept the plant running, while the area was littered with roadblocks and frontlines between the armed groups fighting in the region. Among them was Daesh. Lafarge undertook to negotiate access to the plant for its trucks and employees, as well as its supply of raw materials. Between 2013 and 2014, some 13 million euros were paid to intermediaries of armed groups, including Daesh.

Economy Ministry complaint

At the end of July 2014, the situation deteriorated, and the cement plant suspended operations before restarting them in early September 2014. An agreement was then reportedly reached with Daesh, which now controlled the majority of the region. But on September 18, news of an imminent attack on the plant reached the employees. A few days later, a Lafarge spokesperson told the press that the group had shut down the site for security reasons and evacuated staff from its Syrian plant. In fact, on 18 September, around 30 employees were forced to flee by their own means as Daesh took over the cement plant. Four employees were captured and held hostage for ten days before being released.

Two years later, the French cement company was at the heart of a first investigation. In September 2016, the Ministry of Economy and Finance filed a first complaint against Lafarge, two months before the NGOs and former employees of the cement company. A preliminary investigation was opened in October at the Paris public prosecutor's office. "Bercy's complaint was essentially about a potential breach of the customs code," notes Kiefer, and more specifically on violation of a European embargo on Syrian oil, enacted by the European Union in 2012 as part of a series of sanctions against the Syrian regime. "Without our complaint filed in November 2016, would the Lafarge case have been limited to that?" wonders the Sherpa lawyer.

In March 2017, the group admitted in a statement that its subsidiary had "handed over funds to third parties in order to make arrangements with a number of armed groups, including third parties targeted by sanctions". These measures were "unacceptable" and the company was conducting an "independent internal investigation", it said.

A wider judicial investigation, merging the Ministrys complaint and that of the NGOs and former employees, was finally opened in June 2017 and entrusted to three investigating judges, two of whom specialize in crimes against humanity. On December 1, 2017, three former executives of the cement company were indicted for "financing terrorism", "endangering others" and "violating the European regulation" concerning the embargo on Syrian oil. They are Bruno Pescheux, director of Lafarge's Syrian subsidiary between 2008 and 2014; his successor Frederic Jolibois; and Jean-Claude Veillard, Lafarge's security director at the Paris headquarters. Others followed. In all, eight former executives and managers of the group are now being prosecuted by the French courts in this case.

Explosive indictment in 2018

But it was the indictment of the company itself on June 28, 2018, that had the strongest impact. In addition to the embargo violation, financing a terrorist enterprise and endangering others, Lafarge was also accused of complicity in crimes against humanity. "This is the first time in the world that a company has been indicted for complicity in crimes against humanity, marking a decisive step in the fight against impunity for multinationals operating in armed conflict zones," say Sherpa and ECCHR. The NGOs point out that this is also the first time a parent company has been indicted in France for the activities of one of its subsidiaries abroad.

The stakes are high. "We know that companies are key actors in conflicts. However, until now, they have been very little worried about their involvement," says Kiefer. "They benefit from a historical impunity. Putting responsibility on them as entities in themselves puts an end to the argument that the abuses committed were the work of a few black sheep."

The Lafarge case calls into question the very structure of multinationals," adds her colleague from ECCHR Cannelle Lavite. By indicting the Parisian parent company, the French justice system is sending a strong signal that multinationals can no longer hide behind their subsidiaries and their complex structures. And it defines a red line on what business can do in the name of financial interests."

Intention not established, says appeal court

But in November 2019, the Paris Court of Appeals overturned the company's indictment for "complicity in crimes against humanity", while upholding the indictments for financing terrorism, violating an embargo and endangering the lives of others. According to the penal code and French jurisprudence, the accomplice must have carried out the acts with knowledge that crimes were being committed and with awareness that their acts could contribute to these crimes," explains Lavite. But the court of appeal also considered that it was necessary to prove Lafarge's intention to associate itself with these crimes against humanity. This is an extremely restrictive interpretation of complicity."

The civil parties filed an appeal at the Supreme Court. A month earlier, the Court of Appeal had also annulled the admissibility of the NGOs as civil parties, notably for the offence of complicity in crimes against humanity. According to the code of criminal procedure, an association can only be a civil party if, among other things, it has a mandate in its statutes to combat crimes against humanity or war crimes. "As these crimes are not formally named in our statutes, the investigating chamber declared us inadmissible," explains Lavite. Again, she says, "this was an extremely restrictive interpretation of our statutes and a dangerous precedent". Most of the cases against multinationals for international crimes (see box below) have been initiated by civil society organizations, Kiefer points out.

It is true that in matters of universal jurisdiction, prosecution falls solely to the public prosecutor. "But being a civil party allows us to follow the case, to bring it forward by making appeals. The Lafarge case is proof of the important contribution of civil society in the judicial struggle against the impunity of multinationals." The burden of these cases would otherwise rest solely on the prosecution, she says. And therefore it would depend on its will as much as on its means.

In September 2021, the Supreme Court partially annulled the decision of the Appeal Court, judging ECCHR admissible as a civil party - in the name of promoting international humanitarian law cited in its statutes - but not Sherpa. Yet ECCHR was not the only organization to bring the case. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Human Rights League and the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) have since filed civil suits, as well as some 50 other Lafarge employees in Syria.

In a major blow to Lafarge, the Supreme Court also ruled that complicity does not require the intention to participate in, or approve of the crimes committed, only knowledge and awareness that money was paid to armed groups committing such crimes. In May 2022, the Court of Appeal therefore finally confirmed the indictment of Lafarge SA for complicity in crimes against humanity. The cement company's lawyers have announced that they will appeal against this decision, but without giving details. Neither the group, which has become Franco-Swiss, nor its lawyers have responded to our requests for an interview.

Political implications ?

And while proceedings against the company and its former executives and managers are continuing before the anti-terrorist unit also responsible for prosecuting crimes against humanity, other responsibilities are also being questioned. Arie Alimi, lawyer for the Human Rights League, has asked that light be shed "on the responsibilities and the degree of knowledge of this complicity in crimes against humanity on the part of public actors". During the hearings of Lafarge officials, the Deputy Director General at the time reportedly said: "We went to see the French ambassador for Syria every six months, and no one told us 'Now you have to leave'. The French government strongly encouraged us to stay, it's still the biggest French investment in Syria and it flies the French flag." But were the French authorities aware of exactly what means the company was using to keep its operations in Syria going? Diplomats from the French Foreign Ministry have been heard by the investigators, but only as witnesses for the time being.

CASTEL, BNP AND OTHERS: COMPANIES UNDER INVESTIGATION IN FRANCE Lafarge is not the only company in the sights of French justice. At the end of June, the crimes against humanity unit of the French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) opened a preliminary investigation into a subsidiary of the French beverage group Castel for complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Central African Republic. In July 2021, the public prosecutor's office opened an investigation into four textile giants (Uniqlo France, Fast Retailing, Inditex, SMCP and Skechers) accused of profiting from forced labour of Uighurs in China. Already under investigation for its alleged role in the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, French bank BNP Paribas has since the summer of 2020 been the subject of a judicial investigation for complicity in crimes against humanity in Sudan. The investigation into French firm Amesys - now called Nexa Technologies -, accused of supplying cyber-surveillance equipment to Libya at the time of Muammar Gadhafi, has been closed but a defence appeal is pending. Nexa is also suspected of supplying similar equipment to the Egyptian regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sissi. This second investigation is under way. The company and four of its directors were put under investigation in June 2021 for complicity in acts of torture in the Libyan case and in October the same year for complicity in torture and enforced disappearances in the Egyptian case. A few months earlier, a similar case launched against the Qosmos company was dismissed.
Two United Nations peacekeepers were killed and five were seriously injured Tuesday when their vehicle struck a bomb in northern Mali, the UN mission said.

"This morning, an armoured vehicle in a MINUSMA supply convoy hit a mine on the Tessalit-Gao highway," MINUSMA said.

An official with the UN mission said both fatalities were Egyptian.

The injured were evacuated after a rapid intervention force was sent to the scene, the mission said in a statement.

"MINUSMA strongly condemns this attack, which may constitute a war crime under international law, and notes with concern the frequent use by terrorist groups of improvised explosive devices to cripple the mission's operations and impede the return to peace and stability," it said.

"Mines and improvised explosive devices in Mali affect UN personnel, Malian defence and security forces and the communities we serve without distinction."

In New York, the UN Security Council also condemned the attack "in the strongest terms" and called on Malian authorities to launch an investigation, reiterating the warning that "attacks targeting peacekeepers may constitute war crimes under international law."

MINUSMA -- the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali -- is one of the UN's biggest peacekeeping operations, and one of its most dangerous.

It says 177 of its troops have died from hostile acts, including four in June. Eight peacekeepers were injured by a mine in the Timbuktu region on June 23.

MINUSMA's full complement includes 13,289 military personnel and 1,920 police.

The force's mandate was extended by the UN Security Council for 12 months on June 29.

However, it will be without French air support, which has been refused by Mali, whose ruling junta is at odds with France.

Jihadists joined a regional insurgency in northern Mali in 2012, and then extended their campaign to the centre of the country and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Thousands of civilians have died, more than two million have fled their homes, and economic damage to countries that are among the poorest in the world has been severe.
WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, announces the filing of a class action lawsuit on behalf of purchasers of the securities of Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) between February 24, 2021 and June 9, 2022, both dates inclusive (the Class Period). If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than August 29, 2022.

SO WHAT: If you purchased Wells Fargo 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 Wells Fargo class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=7261 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 August 29, 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. 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
Lee Min Ho entertained his millions of fans on Instagram with a glimpse of his daily life. The Hallyu star showed off how he "mastered" a new skill this summer.

As the South Korean heartthrob gears up for his Kdrama comeback, Lee Min Ho posted a series of photos and videos during his diving activity.

Does Lee Min Ho Have the Skill to Become a Diver?

On Lee Min Ho's Instagram, the actor shared what he has been doing these days. The "Pachinko" star is keeping himself busy by "mastering" a new skill, which is diving.

Interestingly, the 35-year-old A-lister showed his funny side by posting hilarious photos and video showing how he flopped the diving challenge. He attempts to do a perfect diving stunt but instead, he jumps into the water with an awkward form.

"I mastered diving this summer" Lee Min Ho's Instagram caption reads.

In a separate post, he shared a close-up look of himself, fresh out of the water, and wrote "exhausted."

Meanwhile, the comment section is filled with laughing emojis, especially with the clip showing his awkward diving skill.

Lee Min Ho's recent Instagram post comes ahead of his new drama alongside Gong Hyo Jin.

Lee Min Ho Teams Up With Gong Hyo Jin in New Rom-Com K-drama

The upcoming rom-com Kdrama "Ask the Stars" will feature an interesting team-up between Lee Min Ho and Gong Hyo jin as both Hallyu's A-listers are set to headline the series.

Helmed by "Jealousy Incarnate" and "It's Okay to Not Be Okay" director Park Shin Woo alongside screenwriter Seo Sook Hyang who wrote Gong Hyo Jin's Kdrama "Pasta" and "Jealousy Incarnate," "Ask the Stars" follows the story of two individual who met at an unexpected place and time.

In the upcoming series, Lee Min Ho plays OB-GYN doctor Gong Ryong who arrives at the space station as a tourist. During the space expedition, he meets the Korean-American astronaut Eve Kim, played by Gong Hyo Jin.

Following the confirmation of "Ask the Stars" main characters, viewers are looking forward to the chemistry between Lee Min Ho and Gong Hyo Jin.

On his Instagram, the Hallyu actor has been showing a sneak peek of his role as Gong Ryong and even posted his character's ID during his birthday celebration.

"Ask the Stars" will be Lee Min Ho's project after the blockbuster hit series "Pachinko" where he gained overwhelming praise from the viewers.

The novel-based series also boasts a roster of talented stars including rookie actress Kim Min Ha and Academy Award winner Youn Yuh Jung.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Birthday Boy Lee Min Ho Shares Sneak Peek of 'Ask the Stars' Character

KDramastars owns this article

Written by Geca Wills
Because of the drama's well-executed scenes and dialogues, "Money Heist Korea" has been the talk of the town since its premiere. Kim Ji Hoon and Lee Joo Bin's 19+ rated scene also garners attention from the mass viewers. Here's how the actor reacted to it!

Kim Ji Hoon on Bed Scene With Lee Joo Bin in 'Money Heist Korea'

"Money Heist Korea" is a remake of the Spanish series of the same name that follows the biggest heist in history, and stars Yoo Ji Tae, Park Hae Soo, Jeon Jong Seo, Kim Yun Jin, Kim Ji Hoon and more.

Because of the excellent cast ensemble and well-execution of each scene, the series became an instant international hit.

In the series, Kim Ji Hoon portrayed the role of Denver, a gang member who joins Professor's (Yoo Ji Tae) group of robbers due to his love for money and his father, Moscow (Lee Won Jong).

Following the series' success, Kim Ji Hoon dished out his thoughts on the controversial 19+ rated scene with Lee Joo Bin, who played the role of Yun Mi Sun.

"I really felt the challenge when I was told that Lee Joo Bin and I would have a 19+ rated scene," Kim Ji Hoon stated. "That's why I accepted the offer."

According to the actor, he and Lee Joo Bin talked about the sex scene before filming, cheered on each other, and did their best for the series.

When asked how he truly feels about his 19+ scene, he confessed that he exerted much effort before filming.

"I really did my best in synchronizing with my character. Although I have been an actor for a while, I haven't fully done a bed scene," the actor said.

Kim Ji Hoon didn't hate the scene, but when they were asked to monitor the scene they filmed, he asked the production unit not to show it to him.

"Even if I was curious about it, I didn't monitor the scene at the filming set. I was totally embarrassed," Kim Ji Hoon said.

Kim Ji Hoon hopes that the viewers love the scene. Thankfully, the public received the series well and even praised Kim Ji Hoon and Lee Joo Bin for their outstanding performances.

Catch the six-part series "Money Heist Korea: Joint Economic Area" on Netflix now!

'Money Heist Korea' Season 2 Release Date and Further Details

During the release of the series, fans fell in love with its plot as well as its perspective on revolution.

Despite being a bit different from the original, "Money Heist Korea" risked releasing the series in hopes of winning the hearts of many.

"We knew reactions would be divided, but we anticipated how things would turn out," Ryu Young Jae, the writer, said.

The end goal of the series is to further send a stronger message through the gang of North and South Korean robbers who team up to alleviate corruption and poverty amid the reunification of the two Koreas.

Regarding the release of its second season, the production unit revealed that they have finished writing the story, and it would most likely be released soon.

"Money Heist Korea" Season 2 is expected to hit the screen in the summer of 2023 if Netflix renews the work.

KDramaStars owns this article.

Written by Elijah Mully.
More trophies for the "Snowdrop" cast and crew as the series got recognized in Brazil. There, they bagged two major awards! Keep on scrolling to know more about the drama's new achievement!

BLACKPINK Jisoo's Debut Drama 'Snowdrop' Wins Trophies in 2022 SEC Awards

On July 5, a media outlet reported that BLACKPINK Jisoo's drama debut "Snowdrop" bagged the Best Asian Drama award.

In addition to the news, as a result of the 2-month voting participated by various K-drama fans and viewers. The romance series gained another trophy as it won Best Feature in Asian Series category at this year's Series em Cen (SEC) Awards in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

"Snowdrop" concluded in January of this year, but it keeps getting recognition outside South Korea. Even though its scheduled release in 2021 got delayed, the drama was able to captivate the viewers with its story, which was penned by Yoo Hyun Mi and helmed by Jo Hyun Tak.

It also received massive popularity due to its star-studded cast, namely Jung Hae In, newly debut actress Jisoo, Jang Seung Jo, Jung Eugene, Yoo In Na, Heo Jun Ho, Park Sung Woong, and more.

'Snowdrop' Cast Booked For New Projects

Almost five months since "Snowdrop" ended, its lead stars continue to receive good projects. Idol actress Jisoo was recently introduced as Cartier's global ambassador. She is also expected to make a comeback in the music industry as BLACKPINK is gearing up for their next album.

Jung Hae In, on the other hand, has already confirmed to film the second installment of the Netflix series "D.P." On July 5, several reports stated that the actor was being courted to join Hwang Jung Min and Yoo Ah In for the upcoming sequel of the movie "Veteran."

On the same day, his agency confirmed that Hae In received a casting offer and is currently reviewing the project.

After "Snowdrop," Jang Seung Jo is ready to make his small-screen return with "The Good Detective 2" which is scheduled to premiere this coming July 30 on JTBC. He is also in talks to lead another series "Can We Be Strangers?" opposite Kang Sora.

Kim Min Gyu is ready to lead a new series in 2023 titled "Pontifex Lembrary." He also had his solo fan meeting in Japan and Thailand last May and June.

Veteran actor Heo Jun Ho currently appears in the legal-mystery SBS drama "Why Her?" alongside Seo Hyun Jin and Hwang In Yeop. Meanwhile, Kim Hye Yoon is preparing to make her silver screen comeback with "Ditto."

What are your thoughts about the newest award received by the "Snowdrop" production? Tell us in the comments!

For more K-Drama, K-Movie, and celebrity news and updates, keep your tabs open here at Kdramastars.

Kdramastars owns this article.

Shai Collins wrote this.
Patrick Watson poses in this undated handout photo. Watson, a news broadcaster and producer who shaped Canada's conception of its current events and history, has died. He was 92. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - Chris Watson
A representative of B.C.-based Pathfinder Camp Resorts is among the leaders of Canada's emerging companies who will make a pitch for investor support during an invitation-only event sponsored by the TSX Venture exchange this week in Kelowna.






The city of Toronto flag flies at half mast to mourn the death of Prince Phillip, at City Hall in Toronto on April 9, 2021. Security contractors with the City of Toronto will accommodate and rehire Sikh employees who were removed from their positions due to a conflict between their facial hair required by their religion and COVID-19 rules, the city said in a statement on Tuesday. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn
Interview: Impressed by Tibet's transformation, French writer urges fresh look at China

Xinhua) 13:14, July 05, 2022

LHASA, July 5 (Xinhua) -- The transformations in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region have been "very impressive," providing the local population with much-needed development, as well as important medical and care services, a French writer told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Lea Bessis, a sinologist who has visited Tibet four times, encouraged Westerners to question the dominant discourse that has been propagated by some Western media, and to see China from another angle.

"If I could do it, I think we can all do it, and see China from another angle," she said from France in an email interview.

VERY IMPRESSIVE

When Bessis was young, she dreamed of visiting Tibet to meet its inhabitants living in the heart of the highest mountains in the world.

The dream came true when she grew up. In 2007, she crossed the autonomous region, entering Nepal and going on to India. She returned to Tibet in 2012, 2016 and 2019, witnessing enormous changes during these visits.

"On each trip, I could see the transformations. First of all, the infrastructure: roads have been created, railroad lines, services like hospitals, schools, universities, old people's homes ... It is very impressive," Bessis wrote, using her pen name.

Over the past decade, the total length of roads in Tibet has almost doubled to over 120,000 km, including more than 90,000 km of rural roads, according to the regional department of transport. Three railway lines have formed a "Y" shape on the plateau region, with the latest Lhasa-Nyingchi line, the region's first electrified railway, inaugurated for operation on June 25, 2021.

The development of roads and railroads, Bessis said, is one of the most important things. It has allowed families to develop businesses, and young people to study and travel outside the region. "Developing the roads means developing the link between cultures, knowledge. And of course, it also helps to develop the economy of the region," she said.

According to the sinologist, such changes have brought deeper improvements to the daily lives of the local population, including access to health care.

"Let's not forget that the average altitude is well above 4,000 meters and that the human body needs the care to survive such conditions," she said.

"SELFISH" WESTERN VIEW

Bessis said some Westerners do not perceive Tibet's developments as a common benefit for the population. On the contrary, the certain Western media presents this as "oppression."

This repetition, over and over again, by Western media, is based on a view that she calls "selfish."

"It is as if the region of Tibet had to remain in the Middle Ages so that Western tourists would have the impression of being out of the ordinary," she said. "It is selfish because it means leaving the Tibetans in a situation of misery, of early death, just for the pleasure of rich Western travelers."

The other reason for the blindness of the West is its disregard of China, according to the writer. "To recognize that China has developed and succeeded in its challenge of eradicating poverty would require the West to recognize its own failures. This still seems impossible today," she said.

In her opinion, the problem of the Western vision is, on the one hand, a form of "selfish" education, and on the other hand, the submission to a repeated discourse on a vision of China not as a friend but as an enemy.

China must emancipate itself from this negative vision by continuing to forge links with other nations, developing its multilateralist vision and its vision of a community of destinies, she said.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
Beth Smith, a teacher at Frank Elementary School, was awarded a Fund for Teachers fellowship for the summer of 2022.

The fellowship is part of FFTs Innovation Circles grant, which provides funds to people who have already been a fellow. The summer fellowships self-designed by teachers in the fellowship, according to Karen Eckhoff, executive director of FFT, and teachers will collaborate with other teachers from across the U.S. to decide on what they want to do for their programs.

Mine is focused on mindfulness in the classroom, Smith said. I really wanted to expand my knowledge.

According to the FFT website, the Innovation Circles grants are $1,500. Eckhoff said $1,000 of that grant goes to the teachers to educating themselves on their fellowship and $500 goes toward implementing the program in school.

The Innovation Circles grant was offered for the first time in 2020 to provide grants for educators who could not use the traditional five and $10,000 grants to travel and pursue learning opportunities due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Frank Elementary was the pilot school for mindfulness four years ago, according to Smith, so the teachers received training on mindfulness in the classroom from district trainers.

We did implement it a little bit, Smith said. I saw that mindfulness really does great things, even with little five-year-olds and six-year-olds.

One example of practicing mindfulness that Smith implemented is called heart and belly breath. This exercise involves breathing in slowly through the nose and exhaling through pursed lips, all while keeping one hand on the chest and one hand on the stomach.

Over the summer, Smith will take a mindfulness course as part of her fellowship.

The first course Im taking is a four week course, Smith said. And thats more like mindfulness practices for myself, like practicing mindfulness and more interworking of what mindfulness does to us.

Other courses include tapping in the classroom, which is an exercise of tapping different parts of the body to calm oneself, and a course on strategies to bring mindfulness practices to the school.

This is the third time Smith has been awarded the fellowship, as it is possible to re-apply every five years and this fellowship program was designed for previous fellows.

The first time was in 2014 and I did a group fellowship, and we actually we went to Sweden, and Denmark, to study innovation in schools, Smith said. And then then we brought what we learned back to the school, and were still implementing those pieces today.

The fellowship is important to Smith because she has noticed how mindfulness has helped her students regulate their emotions, especially after a period of online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I think the whole pandemic has really just brought a lot of emotions to our students and to be able to help them regulate those emotions is just going to be huge, Smith said. Im just really excited to dig a little bit deeper and then bring those pieces back to my classroom and then eventually to the to the school.
Four teens are vying for the 2022 title of Miss Bristol, with the crowning this week at the Parkway Chateau, 12304 75th St.

The event is among the highlights of the 2022 Bristol Progress Days celebration, to be held Friday through Sunday, July 8-10. This years theme is May All Your Dreams Come True in 2022.

The Miss Bristol Coronation Banquet will be Friday starting at 7 p.m., and will include an award ceremony for the Outstanding Citizen and Junior Outstanding Citizen. Cocktail hour starts at 6 p.m. This years Miss Bristol will take over from 2021 winner Amanda Palmen.

Contestants are judged on speaking ability, personality, appearance and civic accomplishments in both their community and in school. At the banquet, they will each have to answer a different question, and receive a final round of judging on socializing, stage appearance and pose, personality and appearance again.

Event coordinator Carol Gorsuch praised this years contestants.

We always have a great group of girls vying for the Miss Bristol crown and this year is no different, Gorsuch said. So far with the time that I have spent with this years girls, they get along really well and I look forward to working with them over the Progress Days weekend, where they will be kept very busy.

Gorsuch said organizers are excited to see the return of the carnival to the Bristol Progress Days, along with numerous other activities planned for the weekend.

I have enjoyed every Bristol Progress Day celebration that Ive been with over the years. Its always a great small town festival, she said.

The 2022 Miss Bristol candidates include:

Janae Hope Bayles

Janae Hope Bayles, 17, will be a senior at Westosha Central High School. She plays softball with Bristol Recreation and has attended Bristol Progress Day all her life.

She volunteers with Operation Christmas Child, Childrens Heart Project and Ronald McDonald House, doing everything from collecting donations to making blankets. Bayles hopes to become an EMT and firefighter in Bristol. In school, Bayles was awarded the Academic Excellence Award and has made the honor roll three years so far.

Amanda Gorsuch

Amanda Gorsuch, 19, will be a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and she hopes to explore her interests further in college to decide what direction she would like to go. She enjoys spending time with family and friends. Gorsuch has volunteered with her church teens group in a variety of ways, serving as vice president for two years and president for one.

Gorsuch volunteered at the Trevor Sharing Center. Gorsuch was active in $-H for several years and participated in the Kenosha County Fair, winning many awards. She was in the school band, Jazz Lab, choir, Central Swing Inc., and drama programs as both cast and crew, and has worked as a backstage technician at UW-Whitewaters Young Auditorium. Gorsuch has participated in the district Solo ensemble throughout high school, receiving many awards and performing at the state competition several times. Academic awards include graduating Cum Laude from Westosha and being named to the Deans List each semester since attending Whitewater.

Priya Kurszewski

Priya Kurszewski, 17, is a recent graduate of Westosha Central High School and future freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside who hopes to one day be a therapist. Shes volunteered at Safe Harbor, Bristol Senior Center and the Holy Cross Church. In school Kurszewski was president of the Key Club for three years and a member for four.

Kurszewski was a member of the Gay-Straight Alliance for four years and vice-president for one. She also took part in drama productions for three years, and was manager of hair and makeup for 2 years. A member of the choir, Kurszewski sings opera and participated in the District Solo Ensemble, scoring a 1. She received the Student of the Month award and Thespian of the Month award.

Shannon Wiebers

Shannon Wiebers, 16, will be a junior at Westosha Central High School, and plans to attend college to become a registered emergency veterinary nurse. She does both figure and team skating and has been training for 10 years. Wiebers is also a trained ice dancer, competing individually at many competitions and winning gold, silver, bronze and pewter medals.

Wieber took second place at the Badger State Games and will be representing Wisconsin this summer at the State Games of America. In school, Wiebers is an officer of the Health Occupations Students of America. She has participated in vision screenings and the Autism Walk. She is in the Drama Club as a member of the tech crew. Working with hair, make-up and costumes. She was awarded Student of the Month during her freshman and sophomore years

IN PHOTOS: BRISTOL PROGRESS DAYS PARADE 2021 BRISTOL CANDY PARADE Adam Scheele, left, advisor to the Westosha Central High School marching band, walks alongside members as they march through the street in Dow BRISTOL CANDY PARADE Hundreds line the streets at and near the Village of Bristol offices and Fire Department Sunday for the Candy Parade during Bristol Progress D BRISTOL CANDY PARADE Rachael Petroski, left, with 9-month-old daughter Britta, of Kenosha, and mother-in-law Debbie Petroski (background) at the Bristol Progress D BRISTOL CANDY PARADE A participant in the Bristol Progress Days Candy Parade tosses goodies to people along the parade route Sunday afternoon. BRISTOL CANDY PARADE Parade-goers wave as participants riding in the Bristol Fire Department aerial truck greet them at the Bristol Progress Days Candy Parade Sund BRISTOL CANDY PARADE Priscilla and Ben Kopczynski, Bristol Progress Days "outstanding citizens" greet hundreds of people during the Candy Parade on Sunday. BRISTOL CANDY PARADE Newly crowned Miss Bristol, Amanda Palmen, sits atop a Ford Mustang, as she waves to the crowd at the Bristol Progress Days Candy Parade in 2021. BRISTOL CANDY PARADE Bristol School PTO member Stephanie Muscha and son Arthur, 1, prepare to toss candy to the crowd during Bristol Progress Days Parade on Sunday. BRISTOL CANDY PARADE A member of the Lake County Mounted Posse, northern Illinois horse club, hoists the colors, while riding in Sunday's Bristol Progress Days Pa BRISTOL CANDY PARADE 2021 BRISTOL CANDY PARADE 2021 Meghan Lynn of Kenosha, gives daughter Peyton Arndt-Lynn, 11 months, a ride on her shoulders as she reacts to the horses going by at the Brist Hi-o Bristol! A member of the Lake County Mounted Posse horse club waves to the crowd during Bristol Progress Days Candy Parade on Sunday in Downtown Brist
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An excerpt from Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctors Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life. Copyright  2022 Ulysses Press. Reprinted with permission from Ulysses Press. New York, NY. All rights reserved.

You are going to die.

Imagine that I have walked into your hospital room and have gently sat down in the chair beside you. If you are married, your husband or wife listens intently by your side.

I have reviewed the CT scans, spoken to the specialists, and studied the labs. There are many possible treatments that could be offered, but I fear they will not stem the course of all that is happening already. The tumor is too advanced, the metastases, too malignant.

You pause and struggle to take a deep breath. You were aware that the hospice team had been called, but are now only coming to terms with the true meaning of this consult. You look frantically into your spouses eyes and see your own pain and fear reflected back at you. You both thought that you had more time.

Let me explain. In my experience, every person, young and old, healthy and diseased, wakes up each morning with a plan for the day  I do not know when you are going to die. Doctors are poor at estimating such things. But I would like to help you focus on the life each day occurring around you. Death is a period at the end of a sentence, not a set of parenthesis or quotation marks.

Your life flashes in front of you. You contemplate all that you have accomplished and that at which you have failed. The names and the faces of your loved ones quickly flit through your mind as you consider your legacy. What mistakes have you made? A question weighs heavily on your mind:

Am I ready to die?

Well? Are you?

Whether you like it or not  you are dying. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Death may only occur once, but you are dying from the day you are born, and by the time you get around to reading this book, you might have already lived quite a bit of life.

Only you will be able to determine if you have lived a life consistent with your own unique purpose, identity, and connections. But having your financial house in order will go far in giving you the space, time, and freedom to pursue that which is most meaningful to you.

Shoring up our own finances and legacy also means coming to terms with a dichotomy that centers on two basic fears when it comes to dying and money.

We are either afraid that we will die too soon and never enjoy that which we have labored to accomplish, or that we will die far off in the future and not have enough money to sustain us. Well die broke.

What scares you more?

My father always knew that he was going to die young. In fact, he expressed this exact sentiment to my mother before she agreed to marry him. Whether he was conscious of it or not, I believe many of his decisions were colored by this belief, especially when it came to his career.

After finishing his fellowship in oncology, he was offered a lucrative job in private practice that would have far exceeded the pay that he would be able to make in an academic position. Yet, he turned down this opportunity to maintain employment at the University at Northwesterns Veterans Affairs hospital. While the pay was obviously much less, it allowed him to a work with all the intellectual rigor, but none of the time and emotional commitment required in private practice.

My father was a tinkerer. He had a small utility room in the basement filled with tools and other supplies and spent countless hours building and creating. He was an avid photographer and used a spare closet to develop his own photos. He was even in the midst of learning Hebrew when he died suddenly of a brain aneurysm.

My father understood the urgency of now and it is clear to me, in hindsight, that his certainty about dying young allowed him to embrace meaningful pursuits up until the very end of his life. He didnt, however, put much mental energy towards accumulating wealth. As my mother said when I interviewed her for the Earn & Invest podcast:

The money was just never there!

He did, on the other hand, take several steps to mitigate the risk of his own premature mortality and insure his legacy. He invested in a life insurance policy at a young age that would eventually support our family and provide funding for my college and medical school education.

He also suggested my mother to go back to school and instead of returning to a PhD program in organic chemistry, which she had started but never finished decades earlier, he encouraged her to get an MBA from Kellogg University. His words ring hauntingly true even today:

You want to have a career that provides enough income in case something happens to me.

My father died a few months prior to my mom ascending to the podium and receiving her diploma as a newly minted CPA. By that time, she had already been offered a position at a big four accounting firm.

Was it good luck or wise preparation?

Unlike my dad, I grew up with very different feelings about my own longevity. I have always believed that I would live to a ripe old age. This belief has colored my approach to career and finances. In many ways, I was able to delay my passions in order to build the appropriate amount of jet fuel to power my transatlantic flight. The urgency of now was replaced with a wholehearted wish to delay gratification now to benefit the future.

Getting your financial house in order requires understanding these concepts, weighing them, and coming to terms with what scares you most. Armed with this knowledge you can create a financial plan which balances the urgency of now and your wealth needs for the future.

Jordan Grumet is an internal medicine physician, host of the Earn & Invest Podcast, and author of Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctors Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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Cancer patients soon will have new treatment options in Connecticut. Health care providers recently received regulatory approval for a joint venture that will allow them to open the states first proton therapy center.

The lifesaving technology, which uses laser beams as a safer and more effective alternative to chemotherapy, is urgently needed. So the announcement was a big deal. But what the partners failed to mention in their news release is that a competitor could beat them to market with a similar facility 45 miles awayexcept the state is running interference.

The rival project already has the necessary medical expertise, financing, zoning permits, and community support lined up. The only thing missing is a certificate of need (CON), a government permission slip to launch, expand or terminate any health care venture in the state.

The rival project, led by a group of independent doctors and investors, has tried to get a CON for two years. But the oversight agency with veto power recently issued a preliminary denial. Two weeks later, the same agency approved the joint venture.

The protectionism was not lost on the losing side, which has warned about higher health care costs due to a potential monopoly. An appeal is pending, but if the state sticks with its preliminary decision, Connecticut cancer patients will find themselves with less choice and less access to proton therapy.

The case shows a clear example of the government picking winners and losers. Two applicants submitted viable proposals. But rather than letting them compete on a level playing fieldor coexist in separate citiesstate regulators tipped the scales in favor of only one bid.

To make matters worse, Connecticut allowed the winning side to testify against its potential rival at a CON hearing, despite a clear conflict of interest. Something similar would happen if Connecticut allowed The Home Depot to participate in decisions about new hardware storesor if the state allowed McDonalds to say who could sell burgers.

Our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, has no connection to either proton therapy project, but supports the rights of all health care providers to invest their own money without unreasonable or excessive government interference.

Unfortunately, the Connecticut case is not unusual. Conning the Competition, a nationwide analysis of state laws from the Institute for Justice, identifies 38 statesplus Washington, D.C.with some form of CON legislation. Overall, 34 of these jurisdictions allow competitors to intervene in the application process and object to applications that could reduce their revenue.

CON laws purport to lower health care costs, increase patient access and ensure quality by managing the distribution of private resources, but none of these gains has materialized. A joint report from two federal agenciesthe Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Departmentfinds no evidence that CON laws achieve any public benefit.

A supermajority of studies agrees. More importantly, decades of real-world experience show that CON laws do not work as advertised. Recognizing the policy error, Congress reversed itself in 1986 and repealed CON mandates it had imposed just 12 years earlier.

Since then, California, Texas, and 10 other states, which contain nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population, have canceled their CON laws entirely. Most recently, New Hampshire joined the list in 2016. Each time, the American Hospital Association and local affiliates predicted disaster, but negative effects never materialized.

The opposite happened instead. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, states without CON laws had more hospitals and surgery centers per capita, along with more hospital beds, dialysis clinics, and hospice care facilities.

Recognizing its disadvantage, Connecticut scrambled to suspend CON requirements for mental health care facilities through June 2026 in response to a bed shortage. The legislation, which Gov. Ned Lamont signed on May 23, 2022, represents a step in the right direction. But additional psychiatric hospitals already could be open without CON constraints.

Proton therapy also could be available today if providers did not have to spend years begging for permission to serve patients. Lifesaving technology should not have to wait. Rather than playing favorites, states should repeal their CON laws and let doctors work.

Jaimie Cavanaugh is an attorney. Daryl James is a writer.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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Council accepts lot donations of 7 lots despite late curveball

An amended agenda added one more land dedication to the village of Islamorada in exchange for points toward earning a Building Permit Allocation System allocation, to total seven. Upon review Village Councilman Mark Gregg threw a late-night curveball before the hearing. The council, however, still accepted the lot donations.

To be perfectly clear, this is an acceptance of lot donations in conjunction with a pending application for the building permit allocation system. It is not approval of the allocation. It simply allows the individual applicant to join the waiting list for future consideration by the Village Council. It simply allows them to get on the waiting list like anybody else who submitted an application for an allocation without a land dedication, said Planning Director Daniel Gulizio.

The village has debated on whether to extend its BPAS allocations beyond build-out in July 2023 and deliberated how to mitigate against takings claims, when no more state-issued building permits may be awarded to property owners seeking to build homes.

The village has been wracked with land dedications in the last two months as its stock of moderate rate residential allocations have dwindled to 28 with about 80 home builders in line.

My concern with this, is why? Without asking each individual why they decided that this time, based on the reality of where we are and the possibility of permitting being ceased at some point in the near future, said Councilman David Webb.

Mayor Pete Bacheler asked staff at what point they should start to give written notice that there is no guarantee that theres going to be a permit available at any time.

After disclosing that he would not be voting on the seven lot dedications since hes in line for a permit, Gregg said hes been puzzled over the controversy the program has stirred, aside from how those with additional points can leapfrog others in the allocation queue.

Each lot dedication gains home builders at least 10 points toward their allocation.

I was on the council when we passed the original lot dedication ordinance in 2002, and I was on the LPA [Local Planning Agency] when we added the provision to increase the dedication points from two to 10 (in 2019) and we never imagined that we were going to have this gold rush situation and that some of the properties would be environmentally sensitive, Gregg said.

If I were to vote, I would vote in favor of each and every one of these being approved tonight, but Im going to add on a little condition to that.

He chose Tab X as one of the seven to explain his condition.

The issue that I discovered is that some of the lots that we have here have scores that may or may not have been considered for all of the environmental factors that we are required to review by the code. In particular, there are some environmental matters that deal with endangered species. If your property is affected by this, it results in negative points, Gregg said.

A range between two and 10 points are deducted if the property hosts threatened and/or endangered species such as the piping plover or nesting sea turtles. Gregg referred to a section of the code pertaining to state and federally threatened endangered species maps that the village is supposed to maintain.

One is for plants and one is for animals.  Our current way we do things does not involve reviewing the maps because we dont have them, and it only reviews things on a federal level. It does not review things on a state level, Gregg said.

What called the matter to Greggs attention is a property seeking a building permit at a known turtle nest site.

We did not correctly evaluate the endangered species component of our code because we dont have the maps. We have them, but we cant find them, Gregg said.

The oversized printed maps had been digitized some time ago and are somewhere on the M drive, according to Gregg.

We move forward with these applications tonight on the condition that we look for the maps, find them, but we ask the staff to review the scoring with the endangered species component of the BPAS evaluation and make any appropriate adjustments for any allocations if those are given out.

Webb asked if the village would be reviewing all the permits in regard to the Endangered Species Act and not just the land dedication ones.

If we left out an evaluation factor on any of these requests, then we need to address them. All Im suggesting is that we do it for everybody, he said.

Developers are proposing single-family homes at 6 Flamingo Hammock Road and 7 Flamingo Hammock Road in exchange for vacant lots at 30 and 31 Flamingo Hammock Road; a home at 229 Coral Road in exchange for property at 186 Fontaine Drive; a home at 17 Flamingo Hammock Road in exchange for a vacant parcel in the Plantation Beach Subdivision; a home at 206 Plantation Ave. for a lot at 180 Bougainvillea St.; a home at 184 Venetian Drive in exchange for the deed on 312 North Drive; a home at 82601 Overseas Highway in exchange for a vacant lot at 106 Palm Lane.

Im not entirely sure if we shouldnt vote on it the way it is now without taking in Marks comments, as to not upset the apple cart, Bacheler said. Id like to move forward and vote on each one tonight. I dont want half the people to be voted on one way and half the people voted on another way.

All seven lot dedications were approved 4-0 vote with Gregg abstaining.

tjava@keysnews.com
Minister Catherine Martin has welcomed the announcement by Music Network of funding totalling 306,096 awarded to performing groups and professional musicians through the Music Capital Scheme.

This round of funding, under the Music Capital Scheme, is divided between 28 non-professional performing groups (165,156), 18 individual talented musicians (100,940) as well as 9 emerging professional performing musicians (40,000).

This initiative, which is in existence since 2008, is managed by Music Network and funded by the Department. The Music Capital Scheme is designed to provide support for the purchase of musical instruments, and to respond to a broad range of capital needs within the music sector in Ireland.

A particular area of difficulty for musicians and ensembles is purchasing musical instruments. The cost of instrument purchase, maintenance and repair can be a costly barrier to the development of many organisations and individuals. The Music Capital Scheme aims to address this.

The capital scheme is made of three distinct awards that provide funding towards the purchase of musical instruments both to performing groups and individual musicians at a professional performing standard.

This year, an award specifically for emerging professional musicians was introduced.

Commenting on these allocations, Minister Martin said:

The 2021 round of the Music Capital Scheme will again benefit so many deserving organisations and individuals, just as it has since it was initially launched over a decade ago.

I see this capital scheme as one of our key funding initiatives and I wish to express my sincere thanks to Music Network for managing this scheme.

The Music Capital Scheme is designed to respond to a broad range of capital needs within the music sector in Ireland. As a former music teacher, I know how important good quality musical instruments are to musicians, bands and groups that engage with their local communities nationwide.

Each year funding is ring-fenced for a number of counties and this year funding of 34,500 was prioritised for counties Donegal, Kilkenny and Sligo.

Im also delighted to see 26 talented professional musicians benefitting from the scheme, in particular the nine emerging artists who will receive assistance in the purchase of instruments and equipment across many genres, which will support them and their careers for many years to come."
Scientists have detailed the origins and diversity of every known mineral on Earth.

The landmark body of work will help reconstruct the history of life on Earth and guide the search for new minerals and deposits, researchers say.

The catalogue could also help predict possible characteristics of future life, and aid the search for habitable planets and extra-terrestrial life.

Dr Robert Hazen, staff scientist with the Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science, America, said: This work fundamentally changes our view of the diversity of minerals on the planet.

Over the 15-year-study, researchers found that nature has used 57 recipes to create the more than 10,500 mineral kinds through crushing, zapping, boiling, baking and more.

The study sets out that water helped more than 80% of mineral species to form.

While biology  for example, shells, bone and microbes  had a direct or indirect role in the formation of around 50% of the planets minerals.

Pyrite, also known as Fools Gold, formed in 21 ways  the most of any mineral.

Diamonds formed in nine ways  from outer space to deep Earth.

In twin papers scientists Robert Hazen and Shaunna Morrison from the Carnegie Institution for Science detail a novel approach to clustering (lumping) kindred species of minerals together or splitting off new species based on when and how they originated.

Once how they came about is factored in, the number of mineral kinds  a new term  totals more than 10,500.

This is about 75% greater than the roughly 6,000 mineral species recognised by the International Mineralogical Association (IMA) on the basis of crystal structure and chemical composition alone.

Dr Hazen said: For example, more than 80% of Earths minerals were mediated by water, which is, therefore, fundamentally important to mineral diversity on this planet.

By extension, this explains one of the key reasons why the Moon and Mercury and even Mars have far fewer mineral species than Earth.

The work also tells us something very profound about the role of biology.

One third of Earths minerals could not have formed without biology  shells and bones and teeth, or microbes, for example, or the vital indirect role of biology, such as by creating an oxygen-rich atmosphere that led to 2,000 minerals that wouldnt have formed otherwise.

He added: Each mineral specimen has a history. Each tells a story. Each is a time capsule that reveals Earths past as nothing else can.

According to the paper, nature created 40% of Earths mineral species in more than one way  for example, both without the help of living organisms, and with the helping hand of cells.

Of the 5,659 recognized mineral species surveyed by researchers, nine came into being via 15 or more different physical, chemical and/or biological processes.

This includes everything from near-instantaneous formation by lightning or meteor strikes, to changes caused by water-rock interactions or transformations at high pressures and temperature spanning hundreds of millions of years.

To reach their conclusions, Hazen and Morrison built a database of every known process of formation of every known mineral.

Other findings include that some 296 known minerals are thought to pre-date Earth itself, of which 97 are known only from meteorites.

The oldest known minerals are tiny, durable zircon crystals, almost 4.4 billion years old, the researchers found, while more than 600 minerals have derived from human activities, including more than 500 minerals caused by mining, 234 of them formed by coal mine fires.

The authors propose that, complementary to the IMA-approved mineral list, new categorisations and groupings be created on the basis of a minerals origin.

Professor Luca Bindi, director, department of earth sciences, University of Florence, Italy, said: Linking the concepts of minerals and evolution may seem counterintuitive but Hazen and Morrison have demonstrated once again that they are highly connected.

Their two new papers demonstrate in a very elegant way the strong evidence that minerals are the most durable, information-rich objects we can study to understand the origin and evolution of planets.

To paraphrase a famous Stephen Hawking quote: Hazen and Morrison have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge of the mineral kingdom.

The research, sponsored in part by Nasa, is published in the American Mineralogist journal.
Lynn Grooms writes about the diversity of agriculture, including the industrys newest ideas, research and technologies as a staff reporter for Agri-View based in Wisconsin.
While farmers cannot control the weather, there are things they can change from a management perspective to help ensure a successful second or third cutting of hay.
Travelers walk through Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, on July 2. US flights are returning to normal after another holiday weekend packed with cancellations.
Retired Ambassador Lee Bok-hyung, left, guides former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, third from left, and his wife Yoo Soon-taek, fourth from left, during a visit to the Latin American Cultural Center and Museum in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, June 29. Korea Times photo by Kwon Mee-yoo





By Kwon Mee-yoo







Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his wife Yoo Soon-taek visited the Latin American Cultural Center and Museum to enhance understanding between Korea and Latin America, on June 29.







Located in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, the Latin American Cultural Center and Museum is the only museum dedicated to Latin America in Korea.







The museum was established by retired Ambassador Lee Bok-hyung and his wife Kappy Hong in 1994. Lee has an extensive diplomatic career in Latin America, serving as Korea's ambassador to Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Argentina and Mexico from the 1970s until his retirement in 1993.







Lee and Hong collected a variety of artifacts during Lee's postings in Latin America, from ancient relics to contemporary art, and opened the museum after retirement. After years of expansion, the center is now complete with a museum, a gallery, a sculpture park, a religious exhibition hall, a ceramic mural and a research institute, and serves as a cultural hotbed for Latin American culture in Korea.







Ban, who has known Lee and Hong for years, appreciated their passion for promoting Latin American culture in Korea.







"Lee was posted to Central and South America for decades and he was one of the most passionate ones, visiting every nook and cranny of the continent," Ban said.







"I hope the Latin American Cultural Center and Museum will provide an opportunity to understand the history and culture of countries half a world away."







Then Mayor-elect of Goyang City Lee Dong-hwan, who took office on July 1, also visited the museum alongside Ban.







He vowed to provide support to the Latin American Cultural Center and Museum so that it can become a cultural institution for citizens.






Korea's vice foreign minister had discussions with a senior Ukrainian official on ways to cooperate for the future reconstruction of the war-battered nation on the sidelines of an international meeting in Switzerland, according to Seoul's foreign ministry Tuesday.







The meeting between Second Vice Foreign Minister Lee Do-hoon and Ukrainian Minister of Infrastructure Oleksandr Kubrakov was held the previous day, as they were on visits there for the two-day Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano.







The two sides agreed to sign an agreement for the Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF) at an early date to provide financial support for Ukraine's development projects, it said.







Lee also held a series of bilateral meetings with representatives from the United States, Germany, Canada and Switzerland.







During the conference, co-hosted by the governments of Ukraine and Switzerland, Lee plans to reaffirm Korea's commitment to support Ukraine's post-war reconstruction. (Yonhap)






By Woo Tae-hee





Incheon is poised to start the "New Hong Kong City Project" which aims to develop the western port city into the global financial hub of Asia. As multinational businesses and financial companies begin to leave Hong Kong due to security issues, Incheon is seeking to attract them, taking Hong Kong's luster and becoming the new business hub. A public committee will be organized within this year to form a social consensus, establish a master plan, and implement it step by step starting in 2025.



The project raises high expectations for the future of Incheon. To accomplish this mission, two factors should be considered as a prerequisite for Incheon to become a financial hub. They are money and people. First, to attract money, the free flow of information and capital, which is not regulated by the government, should be guaranteed. Secondly, to attract financial talent to Incheon, the city needs to be the best place in which to live and work.



Korea still has a long way to go before it can grow into a global business hub. In National Competitiveness Assessments, recently published by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Switzerland, Korea came in 27th place out of 63 countries, dropping four notches, which was the largest fall in seven years. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF) report in 2019, Korea ranked 13th out of 141 countries in global competitiveness, but 87th when it comes to government regulations, remaining in the lower ranks.



Major obstacles impede the domestic financial market, where many old regulations are accumulated. Our financial market lacks the ability to financially support our companies compared to the fast-growing speed and development of overseas financial markets. Now our companies don't have a choice but to turn to overseas financing to support the growing needs of corporate management. The road to becoming the financial hub is unpaved and tough to tread.



Aside from the financial hub issue, my sincere advice to Incheon city is to change the target to other forms of global business hubs, such as the R&D hub focused on bio-industry and logistics hub.



Korea is already recognized as a regional and logistics hub using its geographical advantage as a port and center of Northeast Asia. We are advancing our way beyond the Asia-Pacific region. Boeing establishing an avionics maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) center in Yeongcheon and Schenker Korea constructing its Asia-Pacific logistics center in Incheon in 2015 and expanding into a global distribution center is strong proof.



If we turn our eyes to the R&D hub, the long-standing efforts seem to finally pay off. One positive impact was Japan's export regulation, which encouraged us to strengthen R&D efforts in the materials, parts, and equipment sectors. Another strength has resulted from our continued R&D investment in the semiconductor and bio-industries.



Companies like Dupont (semiconductors, U.S.), Kanto Denka (semiconductors, Japan), Webasto (batteries, Germany), ASM (rare-earth, Australia), and Sartorius (viral vectors, Germany) proved that Korea has the potential to attract more foreign direct investment (FDI). These efforts in the R&D sector made Korea top the Bloomberg Innovation Index, 2nd in R&D intensity, and 4th in high-tech density, securing its place as an R&D hub.



As Incheon has recently solidified its position as a bio cluster, bolstering this sector would be helpful to becoming a hub city. Samsung Biologics and Celltrion are already in Songdo, while SK Bioscience announced that it will build a global R&D center there in 2024, which will have the so-called "Big 3" Korean bio companies gather in Songdo.



German chemicals and pharmaceutical giant Merck built the Korea Life Science Operation Center in 2019, and Dong-A Pharmaceutical constructed a bio-similar plant in Songdo. Also, we had Dong-A ST sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to build a biopharmaceutical lab. Lotte Group is said to be considering Songdo as a location to build a mega plant. On top of that, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized Korea's potential as a global vaccine hub this February.



If Incheon puts more focus on the sectors where Korea is leading in the global value chain, its future as a global business hub is very promising. We need to devise strategies to induce more investments and systems to educate and secure talent for our future industries. The influx of companies and workers from overseas will increase the population, reboot economic dynamism, and provide inclusive solutions. Incheon already has the key.





Woo Tae-hee is executive vice chairman of Korea Chamber and Commerce Industry (KCCI).




Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) Chairman Huh Chang-soo, front row sixth from left, and Japan Business Federation Chairman Masakazu Tokura, front row fifth from left, applaud with participants at the Korea-Japan Business Council at the FKI Conference Center in Seoul, Monday. Newsis



Japan Business Federation asked to support Korea's plan to join CPTPP



By Park Jae-hyuk



Members of the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) and the Japan Business Federation called on each of their governments to restore a mutual visa waiver program that has been suspended since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.



Amid signs of a recovery in Korea's economic ties with Japan under the leadership of President Yoon Suk-yeol, both business federations also agreed during a meeting held on Monday in Seoul on the need to abolish trade regulations and the resumption of currency swaps. It was the first time in three years that business representatives from both sides met face to face.



The two business federations have held annual meetings in Korea and Japan in rotation over the past four decades to promote mutual understanding between businesspeople of the two neighboring countries, but the spread of the coronavirus caused a suspension of the event.



"We hope that a summit between our leaders will be held as soon as possible so that pending issues can be resolved at once," said Huh Chang-soo, chairman of the FKI, which hosted the event.



He asked the Japanese business leaders to support the Korean government's efforts to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).



Japan has opposed Korea joining the major free trade agreement involving 11 countries, citing the Korean government's ban on the import of seafood from areas near Fukushima, where a nuclear power plant meltdown occurred in 2011.









The two organizations also discussed mutual cooperation for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), while proposing a trilateral business summit between Korea, Japan and the U.S. to boost their ties.



The FKI chairman was keen to mention the Joint Declaration of 1998: A New Korea-Japan Partnership towards the 21st Century, which was made by then President Kim Dae-jung and his Japanese counterpart, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi.



He asked the governments of both countries to learn from the declaration so that they can restore their diplomatic relations, which have weakened since the Japanese government restricted the export of key materials to Korea in retaliation against the Korean Supreme Court's ruling that ordered a Japanese firm to provide compensation for wartime forced labor.



Masakazu Tokura, chief of the Japanese association, responded by saying that his country's businesspeople also want the leaders of both countries to resume dialogue as soon as possible.



At the end of the event, the two business lobby groups agreed to hold the next meeting in Japan next year.



According to the FKI, Monday's event was attended by around 20 top executives from Korea, including Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin, Hyosung Group Chairman Cho Hyun-joon, KB Financial Group Chairman Yoon Jong-kyoo and Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Cho Yong-byoung.



Executives from Samsung, SK, Hyundai Motor and LG also participated in the event, despite the four largest Korean conglomerates' withdrawal from the FKI due to the federation's involvement in a corruption scandal involving former President Park Geun-hye.





President Yoon Suk-yeol, right, speaks during a meeting with delegations from Japan Business Federation at the presidential office in Yongsan District, Seoul, Monday. Joint Press Corps
Local residents stand next to a building destroyed during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the city of Lysychansk in the Luhansk Region, Ukraine, July 4. Reuters-Yonhap



Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday the reconstruction of his war-battered country is the "common task of the entire democratic world," as his prime minister laid out a $750 billion recovery plan once the guns of Russia's invaders fall silent one day.



As Russian forces continued their crushing advance in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, Zelenskyy spoke by video message to the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Switzerland about the needs of the country that has been on an up-and-down march toward democracy since the end of the Cold War and now faces widespread devastation.



"The reconstruction of Ukraine is not a local project, is not a project of one nation, but a common task of the entire democratic world  all countries, all countries who can say they are civilized," Zelenskyy told hundreds of attendees in Lugano. ''Restoring Ukraine means restoring the principles of life, restoring the space of life, restoring everything that makes humans humans."



British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said such a recovery would require a sort of "Marshall Plan'' for Ukraine to help it rebuild.



Such ambitions, Zelenskyy said, will require wide-scale construction, funding and security "in all of our country which will be forced to continue living beside Russia.''



The task, which is already under way in some areas that were liberated from Russian forces, aims to leverage outside expertise, government funds and work of Ukrainians to rebuild hospitals, schools, government buildings, homes and apartments  but also water pipes, gas lines and other battered infrastructure.



"Today, we're all united in our defense. Tomorrow in our reconstruction,'' said Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who attended in person. He presented a recovery plan that meets immediate needs  even as the war continues  followed by a "fast recovery'' when it's over, and then longer-term requirements.



Shmyhal said the cost of the recovery plan is estimated at $750 billion, and insisted a key source of funding "should be the confiscated assets of Russia and Russian oligarchs.'' He cited unspecified estimates that such sums total $300 billion to $500 billion now.



"The Russian authorities unleash this bloody war. They caused this massive destruction and they should be held accountable for it," Shmyhal said.



Valdis Dombrovskis, vice president of the European Union's executive branch, said using such confiscated Russian assets would involve criminal law, so the "legal obstacles'' weren't resolved, "but we think it's important that according to the principle of 'aggressor pays' it's also Russia's assets which are directed to the reconstruction of Ukraine.''



Earlier Monday, a leading Swiss nongovernmental group called out Switzerland as a "safe haven'' for Russian oligarchs and as a trading hub for Russian oil, grain and coal.



Public Eye urged the Swiss executive branch to "use all levers at its disposal to stop the financing of this inhuman aggression," a reference to Russia's war that has killed thousands of people, driven millions from their homes, and rippled through world economy by driving up food and fuel prices.



It said Switzerland has been over the years a "popular refuge'' for Russian business magnates to park their assets. The group said firms use Switzerland as an "unregulated commodity trading hub'' and exploit a lack of transparency about financial dealings in the country.



There was no immediate response from the Swiss government.





Ihor, left, and Olga, right, stand on the remains of their house in Kukhari village, Kyiv (Kiev) region, Ukraine, July 4. Igor Zaritsky, 38, and Olga Zaritska, 36, with their three children Julia, 15, Yehor, 9, and Vita, 2, live in makeshift accommodation after their house was destroyed by shelling in March. The family is now waiting for a trailer to be set up. Russian troops entered Ukraine on Feb. 24 resulting in fighting and destruction in the country and triggering a series of severe economic sanctions on Russia by Western countries. EPA-Yonhap
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Here are the Walworth Countys weekly criminal complaints from June 22-27. The cases still need to make their way through the Walworth County Court System. All information is from criminal complaints filed in Walworth County Circuit Court. To follow the cases, go to wcca.wicourts.gov.

Child neglect

Diana K Zamora, 22, of 428 Autumn Drive, Delavan, was charged with neglecting a child under age 6. She reportedly left her 3-year-old child unattended. She was reportedly getting a drug test for a new job and claimed she thought her sister was coming over to watch the child. The incident reportedly happened in May 2021.

Flooding jail cell

Nihthanyl J. Delaney, 19, of 917 E. Milwaukee St., Whitewater, was charged with criminal damage to property, disorderly conduct and felony bail jumping. He was charged for reportedly throwing a tablet against the wall in his jail cell at the Walworth County Jail on June 14. He also reportedly flooded his jail cell by plugging his toilet. He has previously been charged with battery to law enforcement, among other things.

Delivery of meth

Nathaniel A. Carlock, 41, of 541 S. Wisconsin St., Elkhorn, was charged with two counts of delivery of methamphetamine as a repeater. He reportedly delivered the methamphetamine in Elkhorn in 2021 while he was on GPS monitoring for previous offenses. He is also a convicted sex offender.

Reported assault

Yesenia Chavez, 25, of 158 North Fraternity Lane, Whitewater, was charged with attempted armed robbery-as a party to a crime, misdemeanor battery and disorderly conduct. On June 12, officers responded to an apartment in Whitewater for a reported assault. Chavez is charged with her involvement.

Dog stolen, individual hit by car

Patricia M. Hayes, 30, of 38 W. Sedgemeadow St., Elkhorn, is charged with burglary, theft and second-degree recklessly endangering safety. Town of Delavan Police were dispatched on June 7 to the area of InBetween Bar for a possible fight. Upon arriving, police learned Hayes reportedly stole a dog and then while driving away struck an individual.

Cocaine possession

Matthew M. Zahn, 48, of Sheboygan, is charged with possession with intent to deliver cocaine and possession of drug paraphernalia. On June 4 at approximately 2:58 a.m. Lake Geneva Police were dispatched to the Cove hotel for a possible domestic. Upon entering the hotel room, Zahn was found to be on the couch asleep with a large amount of drug paraphernalia as well as cocaine around him.

Meth possession

Steven C. Spencer, 42, of 403 Franklin St., Elkhorn, is charged with possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine second and subsequent offense, and possession of drug paraphernalia. The drugs were reportedly found during a traffic stop in the Town of Lyons on June 21. Multiple gem bags were located along with a notebook with drug sale record 2021 written on it.

Bail jumping

Amanda K. Engel, 32, of W816 Shorewood Drive, East Troy, was charged with three counts of felony bail jumping. Police responded to the East Troy home on June 15 for a welfare check and detected a strong odor of intoxicants on Engle, who reportedly is not supposed to consume alcohol.

$5K in reported property damage

William S. Swan, 22, of N1192 Highway H, Bloomfield, was charged with criminal damage to property and disorderly conduct. The Bloomfield police responded on May 29 to a residence in the village for a report of a disorderly subject. When police arrived Swan was reportedly in his underwear. He reportedly had damaged two stone lions, a large fountain, a glass ball light, a solar hummingbird and a lawn ornament. Damage was estimated at approximately $5,000.

Bail jumping

Cody Michael Denter, 26, of Fond Du Lac, was charged with felony bail jumping. He was stopped by Whitewater police on June 5. He was reportedly driving without a valid license while on bond for another offense.
One person was pronounced dead on Monday, July 4, after a multi-vehicle crash just outside Lake Geneva that involved a total of 11 patients.

At approximately 2:23 p.m. officers with the Town of Linn Police Department responded to the area of State Highway 120 and County Highway B for a reported motor vehicle crash with injuries.

Responding officers located a three-vehicle crash with 11 total patients, nine of whom were transported via ambulance to area hospitals and trauma centers, according to a news release from the Town of Linn Police Department.

One victim was later pronounced dead at Froedtert Hospital. The crash is currently under investigation and no other information has been released.

The Town of Linn was assisted by the Walworth County Sheriffs Office, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Town of Bloomfield Police, Town of Linn Fire and EMS, Mercy Hospital, City of Lake Geneva Fire and EMS, Hebron Fire and EMS, Fontana EMS, Village of Walworth EMS and Bloomfield/Genoa City EMS.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday, July 1, urged President Joe Biden to boost federal funding to Illinois and other states where abortion remains legal and to support doctors across the country who provide telehealth services as more states begin restricting access to reproductive health services.

The requests came during a White House call between Biden and Democratic governors one week after the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark decision in Roe v. Wade that protected access to abortion services for nearly half a century.

In Illinois, lawmakers are preparing to return to Springfield for a special legislative session aimed at strengthening the states already formidable protections for abortion access.

Pritzker, who has made abortion a central issue of his reelection bid against ultraconservative Republican state Sen. Darren Bailey of Xenia, also called for a federal reproductive health care strike force to review federal rules with an eye toward improving access.

Pritzker did not speak during the portion of the call that was carried on a public livestream, but the governors office provided a summary of his remarks.

In a statement after the call, Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh said the governor is gratified that President Biden embraced his suggestions, particularly moving forward with a concrete strike force that includes Democratic governors and federal leaders to protect access to safe, legal abortion and reproductive care.

In his remarks to Pritzker and eight other Democratic governors, Biden said his administration, through the Justice Department and the Food and Drug Administration, will take steps to ensure that people are able to travel across state lines to receive services and will be able to receive abortion medications by mail.

But he also acknowledged limits on his ability to protect access to abortion services given the current composition of Congress, where Democrats hold a slim majority in the House and rely on Vice President Kamala Harris as the deciding vote in an evenly divided Senate.

Biden has called for ending the Senate filibuster to approve a federal law enshrining the protections afforded by Roe, but that move lacks enough support to be carried out. Like Pritzker, he connected the future of abortion access to the outcome of the November election.

The choice is clear: Either elect federal senators and representatives who will codify Roe, or Republicans who will elect the House and Senate will try to ban abortions nationwide. Nationwide, Biden said. This is going to go one way or the other after November.

Illinois uses state money to pay for abortions for Medicaid patients under a law signed by Pritzkers predecessor, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, because federal law prohibits federal funds from being used.

Pritzker, in the call with Biden, asked for additional federal funding for clinic upkeep, medical transportation and other expenses that are allowed under federal law. The governor noted that Illinois may soon be the main place to access abortion services for residents in a wide swath of the Midwest and South.

He joined other governors, including New Yorks Kathy Hochul, who also is on the ballot this year, in calling for federal facilities on federal land, such as Veterans Affairs hospitals or military bases, to be made available for abortion providers in states where the procedure is banned.

Hochul called the New York legislature into session Thursday, and lawmakers were expected to take the first step toward amending the states constitution to protect abortion rights, a process that couldnt be completed until the 2024 election.

Its too late for Illinois lawmakers to put a constitutional amendment before voters this fall, so the Democratic-controlled legislature is expected to take more immediate steps when it reconvenes in Springfield this month.

Near the top of the list is expanding the ranks of medical professionals who are able to perform abortions in Illinois.

Pritzkers recent trip to New Hampshire added fuel to speculation about a potential presidential bid. The governor, who called for the special session, has positioned himself as a national leader on abortion rights.

In 2019, he signed a measure that enshrined into law abortions as a fundamental right for women. The governor last year signed into law a measure that repealed a requirement for abortion providers to notify the parents of minors seeking to terminate a pregnancy.

The measures passed along party lines and Democrats have made clear they will try to leverage the abortion issue going into the November election. Earlier this week, one of the top-ranking House Republicans, Rep. Avery Bourne of Morrisonville, argued that Pritzker and the Democratic legislative majority should move on.

Weve got a really broken state government and the fact that this is all they want to focus on shows me this is all theyre going to talk about going into November, said Bourne, who was the lieutenant governor candidate in Richard Irvins unsuccessful bid for governor.

Bailey has said hed work to remove taxpayer-funded abortion and restore parental notification and work with the legislature, civic groups, and nonprofits to support women during and after their pregnancy and make adoption an easy option. Bailey has said hes against abortion except in conditions where the health of the mother is in jeopardy.
A Wisconsin utility regulator says there is little risk of rolling blackouts this summer while warning against the retirement of fossil fuel generators.

Public Service Commission member Ellen Nowak downplayed reports issued this spring by the Midwest grid operator and an international grid monitor, which warned that generation capacity could fall short of demand in certain circumstances this summer.

While pointing out that there is always a risk of blackouts, Nowak said it would take a perfect storm  such as unplanned generator shutdowns combined with extreme heat or catastrophic weather  to trigger forced outages.

I am not hitting the panic button, Nowak said.

Nowak, the only Republican appointee on the three-member PSC, made the comments in an online meeting organized by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the states largest business lobby.

Scott Manley, executive director of the business group, said members have been asking since the initial report if they need to plan to be without electricity.

Its one of the top concerns weve been hearing about, Manley said.

Nowak explained some of the reasons that the grid operator, known as MISO, does not have as much extra capacity as operators prefer, primarily in neighboring states like Illinois and Indiana.

Those reasons include retirements of coal and nuclear plants, delays in adding new generation and a lack of long-distance transmission lines to move excess power to where its needed.

It is a wakeup call, Nowak said of the reports. I think its a good reality check about how the system works.

Earlier this month, MISOs independent watchdog said the grid should have ample supply this summer.

Nowak said the only customers likely to be impacted this summer are those in demand response programs, which reward participating customers for dialing back their electricity use at certain times to keep the system in balance.

In case of an emergency, Nowak said MISO would interrupt the largest loads  typically factories  first, and generally for short periods of time.

MISO has never ordered load reduction for residential customers, she said. We dont need to become preppers.

Nowak noted that Wisconsin utilities expected to have excess capacity in years to come  even before a recent announcement that retirement of three coal-fired plants had been postponed.

But all five of the states largest utility companies say they will stop burning coal by 2040 and eliminate carbon emissions entirely by 2050, a policy Manley called unserious.

Panels of international scientists have warned the world must cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of this decade and eliminate them entirely by 2050 to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change.

Researchers at Princeton University and the federal Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory say its possible to meet the nations energy needs with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 using existing technology, though doing so would require massive investments in wind and solar generation as well as transmission lines.

Nowak said Gov. Tony Evers stated goal of achieving 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050 scares her, and cautioned against eliminating any source of generation.

We still need an all-of-the above generation policy in our state, Nowak said. It doesnt mean abandoning renewables ... it just means optimizing, not limiting, resources.
Kochi, Jun 5 (PTI) The sixth deputy national security advisor-level meeting of the Colombo Security Conclave will be held in Kochi on July 7.

Also Read | Delhi Shocker: Man Kills 30-Year-Old Wife Over Extramarital Affair in Rohini.

Apart from the founding members of the conclave comprising Maldives, India and Sri Lanka, the newest member Mauritius will also take part in the meeting.

Also Read | Tamil Nadu: Chennai Government Hospital Worker Who Sexually Assaulted Patient Held.

Bangladesh and Seychelles will take part in the meeting as observers.

The conclave, which is a regional security grouping, had on March 9 and 10, concluded the 5th National Security Advisor (NSA) level meeting and agreed on a roadmap to bolster cooperation in five specific areas including maritime security, countering terrorism and radicalisation and cyber security.

The secretariat of the conclave is located in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The conclave was started as a trilateral maritime cooperation mechanism among India, Maldives and Sri Lanka in 2011.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], July 5 (ANI): The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on Tuesday conducted searches at five places belonging to Congress MLA Zameer Ahmed Khan on the basis of an Enforcement Directorate (ED) report on disproportionate assets case against him.

According to ACB, the raids were conducted at five locations including the residence of the Chamaranpet constituency MLA at Bengaluru Cantonment, a flat at silver Oak Apartment, a guest house at Sadashiva Nagar, GK Associates office at Banashankari and National Travels office in Kalasipalya.

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ACB teams are verifying documents and an investigation is on.

Khan is a former minister and close aide of former Karnataka Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Siddaramaiah.

Also Read | Uttar Pradesh: Man Held for Selling Chicken on Paper With Pictures of Hindu God and Goddess.

His house was raided earlier by ED in connection with a disproportionate assets case and IMA case.

In IMA scam 40,000 investors were allegedly duped by the company founder Mohammed Mansoor Khan.

Zameer has allegedly received illegal favours and transactions from Mansoor.

The scam came to light in June 2019 after the prime accused, Mansoor, fled the country, leaving behind an audio message, in which he threatened to commit suicide due to alleged "harassment" by some politicians and goons. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Jammu, Jul 5 (PTI) The BJP on Tuesday alleged a conspiracy by terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) against the party and its leaders, and demanded a probe by the National Investigation Agency into the recent arrest of a terrorist.

The demand was made after a top terrorist named Talib Hussain Shah, who was nabbed in Reasi in Jammu and Kashmir, was reported to have connections with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Also Read | Delhi Shocker: Man Kills 30-Year-Old Wife Over Extramarital Affair in Rohini.

"Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist Talib Hussain Shah was briefly associated with a political party and also posed himself as a mediaperson," Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police (DGP) Dilbag Singh said Monday.

"As it is a serious matter, BJP is urging J&K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha that probe into all aspects of this case should be conducted by NIA to uncover this new terror plan (against BJP and its leaders). They must uncover as to how many more Talibs (militants) are part of this conspiracy and linked with the terror outfit," J&K BJP chief Ravinder Raina said.

Also Read | Tamil Nadu: Chennai Government Hospital Worker Who Sexually Assaulted Patient Held.

He said that probe should be held against the terrorist to know about wider terror conspiracy, people involved and links with other such elements.

"We want a full probe into people behind the conspiracy, their links and their targets in BJP. We want to know who are from BJP were his targets", he said.

Raina said that Hussain have clearly tried to target BJP headquarter in Jammu and its top leaders, adding, "The time is to probe it deeply. All persons linked should be arrested.

Ruling out any official relation between the political party and LeT terrorist, Raina said, "Talib Hussian Shah and his other associates were coming to the BJP office to cover press conferences regularly. He was also attending party rallies as a journalist."

He said that it was a new terror plan of the Pakistan-based LeT to set up a module to target BJP and its leaders by planting a terrorist as journalist to carry out recce of its office and track the leaders.

Jammu and Kashmir Congress, which is on the war path against BJP, too, has demanded a high level probe into the case.

(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, Jul 5 (PTI)Arbitration is the best-suited dispute resolution mechanism for the commercial world, Chief Justice of India (CJI) N V Ramana said on Tuesday while suggesting the establishment of more commercial courts for dealing with arbitration cases and nominating experts in the field to be judges of those courts.

While delivering the inaugural address at a conference on Arbitrating Indo-UK Commercial Disputes' in London, the CJI said the courts are pro-arbitration in India and the growth of the Indian arbitration scenario has been very responsive to global trends and demands.

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Saying that it is time to introspect and find ways and means to explore all possibilities to make arbitration an efficient result-oriented institution, he suggested that role of the court in the arbitration process must be supervisory.

We should not cross the fine line between assistance and interference, the CJI said.

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He said an issue that has been affecting court systems across the world relates to the fact that decisions within regular courts take a long time and there is no denying that the pendency of cases is a major issue in India.

In the absence of infrastructure and the sufficient number of judges commensurate with the increasing workload, the problem is intensifying. This is why I have been strongly advocating for transforming and upgrading the judicial infrastructure in India, as well as filling up of judicial vacancies and augmenting the strength, Justice Ramana said.

He said after he assumed the office of CJI, in addition to filling up 11 vacancies in Supreme Court, the collegium could secure the appointment of 163 judges to various high courts.

The CJI said 23 more recommendations are pending with the government and the central government is yet to transmit another 120 names received from various high courts to the apex court collegium.

I have been reminding the government to expedite the process so that the remaining 381 vacancies can be reduced considerably. I am hoping for some forward movement in this regard, he said.

The CJI said another way of reducing the burden of pendency is to promote and popularise other means of dispute resolution, such as arbitration or mediation.

Arbitration is the best-suited dispute resolution mechanism for the commercial world. It is an effective alternative to traditional litigation and is regulated primarily by the terms previously agreed upon by the parties themselves. The process is consensual, confidential and the result is binding, he said.

The CJI said India is rated to be one of the fastest-growing economies in trade and business, as, in any human relationship, the difference of opinions and conflicts are bound to occur.

To achieve the title of an investor-friendly destination, India needed to establish and strengthen an efficacious mechanism to address these issues and ensure that business continues to operate without much hassle. This is where alternate dispute resolution and particularly arbitration plays a significant role, he said.

Justice Ramana said several international dispute resolution institutions are being established across India to provide the commercial world with a speedy and effective resolution of their disputes.

There are some specialised institutions like the Indian Council of Arbitration (ICA) and the International Centre for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ICADR). We need more such institutions. Institutional arbitration has to be encouraged and streamlined to provide for continuous hearings and expeditious awards, he suggested.

The CJI said the most important aspect of the success of arbitral proceedings is the efficiency and efficacy of its award enforcement regime and this is especially true for a country like India, which is a hub for investment.

One mechanism to improve enforcement that I have earlier suggested is to constitute a special authority by the State which could assess an investment contract prior to its execution. A contract which went through such prior assessment would be presumed by courts to be in line with the public policy of the State, thereby ensuring a more expeditious execution, he said.

This is just a suggestion, of course. I request the panelists to discuss and come up with new ideas and possible solutions. This is a vital area which requires greater debate and expert opinion, he said.

Justice Ramana suggested that various institutional arbitration centres functioning across the world may consider forming a council or confederation and this would enable them to share experiences and adopt best practices.

He said the presence of international arbitration centers will not only boost India's global position as an investor-friendly nation but will also facilitate the growth of a robust legal practice.

Justice Ramana said keeping the big picture in mind, he has taken the initiative to set up an international arbitration and mediation center in Hyderabad.

I am happy to note that the Government of India has proposed to set up another one in the state of Gujarat, he said.

He said in today's world, where mergers and acquisitions worth trillions of Dollars are being undertaken every year, commercial arbitration is an efficient process to resolve disputes arising from the same.

Apart from ease of enforcement, another advantage for choosing India as a favored investment destination is its judicial system, he said, adding both the legal systems in India and the United Kingdom are known for giving paramount importance to rule of law.PTI ABA ABA

(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, Jul 5 (PTI) The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed a charge sheet against four people, including two Canada-based operatives of the proscribed Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF), in connection with an attack on a Hindu priest in Punjab's Jalandhar last year, an official said on Tuesday.

In the charge sheet filed in a special NIA court in Mohali on Monday, the federal agency said the Canada-based accused had hatched a conspiracy to kill the priest to disturb peace and communal harmony in Punjab.

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The priest, Kamaldeep Sharma, was shot at Bhar Singh Pura village in Phillaur in Jalandhar by Kamaljeet Sharma and Ram Singh alias "Sona" on the directions of Canada-based accused Arshdeep Singh alias "Prabh" and Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the official said.

The priest was seriously injured in the attack.

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The case was first registered at Phillaur police station on January 31 last year and re-registered by the NIA on October 8, the official said.

The official said that following a thorough investigation, all the four accused were charge-sheeted under relevant sections of laws, including the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

Further investigation in the case was underway, the NIA said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Mumbai, Jul 5 (PTI) The Bombay High Court has refused to annul the marriage of a 33-year-old woman, who claimed that she was forced to marry the man and was physically assaulted and tortured by him since she was 14 years old.

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A division bench of Justices K R Shriram and P K Chavan, in their order, noted that there was no evidence or corroboration to the woman's claims and the overall evidence of the appellant was improbable, unbelievable and unacceptable.

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The order was passed on June 15 and a copy of the same was made available on Tuesday.

No sane man would believe and accept her (appellant woman) testimony, as it is nothing but ipsedixitism (assertion without proof or dogmatic expression of opinion). It is quite apparent from the evidence that this is a case of inflicted insight, the court observed.

The high court, while dismissing her plea, termed as incredible the fact that the woman did not lodge any complaint against the man or inform her parents about the same till 2013.

Strangely, the appellant (woman) remained silent and passive despite undergoing such a trauma, the order said.

The bench also noted that the behaviour of the woman was quite strange and cannot be said as a natural conduct of an educated woman living independently in a city like Mumbai.

The woman, in her plea, sought annulment of the marriage and a declaration that the marriage certificate issued to the man in December 2011 was false and forged.

According to the woman, who is originally from Haryana and presently working with a bank in Mumbai, the man took advantage of her shy, timid and introverted nature and kept her terrorised since she was 14 years old.

The petitioner claimed that she hails from a rural background, where women and their voices are stifled, and honour killings, rape and other crimes against women are a daily feature due to which families advise their women to silently face oppression.

The woman further alleged that she had never married the man and the documents with regard to the marriage certificate submitted by the man are fabricated.

In December 2011, she was offered sweets laced with drugs and forcibly taken to a temple by the man and was forced to sign documents related to marriage certificate.

According to the woman, in 2003 when she was 14 years old the man had forcibly established physical contact with her and took obscene photographs and has since been torturing and physically assaulting her.

The woman lodged a complaint against the man with the suburban Goregaon police in 2013 on the charged of rape and criminal intimidation, but had not followed up with the case.

In 2017, the woman approached the family court seeking to annul the marriage, which was rejected, following which she moved the high court.

The high court bench noted that it cannot believe the claims of the woman that she was forcibly taken by the man and given sweets laced with drugs.

It is unfathomable as to why she did not disclose the incidents to her friends or colleagues, who could have taken some effective steps by approaching the police or at least their superiors at work. Such behaviour of the appellant is quite strange and cannot be said to be a natural conduct of an educated woman living independently in a city like Mumbai. No sane man will believe and accept her statement, the court said.

The bench further noted that it fails to understand why the woman remained silent from 2011 (when she realised that she was allegedly abducted and given spiked sweets) till 2017 when she sought to annul the marriage.

The high court in its order noted that as per the Hindu Marriage Act, a marriage may be annulled on the ground that the consent of one of the parties (either man or woman) was obtained by force or fraud, but the same is barred by limitation (plea seeking annulment of marriage has to be filed within a limited period of time).

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Lakhimpur Kheri (UP), Jul 5 (PTI) A male tiger, which was captured by forest officials almost a week ago, was freed into the core zone of Dudhwa Tiger Reserve (DTR) here on Tuesday, an official said.

Estimated to be around six or seven-year-old, the tiger was brought back from Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary on Monday, Sanjay Kumar Pathak, field director, Dudhwa Tiger Reserve told PTI.

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The big cat was released early on Tuesday in the official's presence.

He said, deputy director, buffer zone Sundaresh, IP Bopanna and Rohit Ravi from Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), Dr. Mohit Gupta of World Wildlife Fund (WWF)-India and others were also present.

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"Before his release, a radio collar was put around the tiger's neck so as to ensure monitoring upon his movements and behaviour," Pathak said.

The tiger was captured after a number of human-casualties took place near Khairatia village in Manjhra Purab area of Dudhwa buffer zone on India-Nepal border since May 21.

Dudhwa Tiger Reserve officials launched a search operation to catch the big cat, placing cages, cameras and combing of the area.

On June 27, a tiger was caught in the cage near Khairatia while on June 29, a tigress was captured in a cage from the same area. Both were brought to neighbouring Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary where they were examined by experts and doctors including Dr. Parag from Wildlife Institute of India (WII).

All unanimously declared the male tiger innocent owing to his physical fitness and normal behaviour. The images of the cameras and pugmarks collected from the man-animal conflict spots also corroborated their decision.

"On the contrary, the tigress described to be over nine-year-old was aggressive and had its left canines broken. Her images and pugmarks were also detected from the spots, where human casualties took place," said Pathak.

He said, "Following this, the higher forest authorities instructed to send the tigress to Lucknow zoo while freeing the innocent tiger back into the forest."

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Jaipur, Jul 5 (PTI) Rajasthan minister Pratap Singh Khachariyawas on Tuesday accused BJP leaders of making the residence of Kanhaiya Lal a "tourist spot" and gaining political mileage out of the incident.

Lal, a tailor, was recently hacked to death in Udaipur by two men who said in a video posted online that they had avenged an insult to Islam.

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Khachariyawas, the food and civil supplies minister, said the seriousness of BJP leaders can be understood by the fact that they were enjoying in hotels of Hyderabad when the Udaipur incident happened.

His remarks come on a day BJP state president Satish Poonia met the victim's family. Earlier, BJP leader Kapil Mishra, former chief minister Vasundhara Raje and Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat also met the victim's kin.

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"If the state government had provided security to Kanhaiyalal ji, this situation would not have been created. This murder is the negligence of the state government, police administration, intelligence and home department. The killers should be hanged to give a message to the country and the world," Poonia told reporters in Udaipur.

Hours after Poonia's visit, Congress leaders held a press conference in Jaipur.

"BJP leaders have made Kanhaiya Lal's residence a tourism spot and are working to gain political mileage. The seriousness of BJP leaders can be understood by the fact that they were enjoying in hotels of Hyderabad when the Udaipur incident happened," Khachariyawas told reporters here.

He said now BJP leaders were reaching Udaipur and making all efforts to spoil the atmosphere of Rajasthan.

The minister also hit out at Udaipur BJP MLA and Leader of Opposition, Gulab Chand Kataria. He said it was the responsibility of the MLA to stay in Udaipur and help the government in controlling the situation, but the very next day of the incident, Kataria left for Hyderabad.

The Congress minister also mentioned the Supreme Court reprimanding BJP's suspended leader Nupur Sharma over her remarks on Prophet Mohammad.

"Such incidents are rising in the country and the BJP has not taken any action against Nupur Sharma. It seems that it is a conspiracy of the BJP and the party wants to spoil the country's atmosphere," he said.

State Congress chief Govind Singh Dotasra said BJP leaders are only interested in gaining political mileage by spreading religious frenzy.

Talking about the Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project (ERCP), he said public representatives of 13 districts which will benefit from the project will meet on Wednesday to pass a resolution in the matter.

(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, Jul 5 (PTI) The Ministry of Defence (MoD) on Tuesday issued a tender to procure 29,762 'night sights' for the Indian Army's 7.62x51 mm assault rifles.

'Night sight' is an optical instrument that glows in low light so that the solider can aim better.

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The tender said: "The MoD intends to procure quantity 29,762 Night Sight (II) for 7.62 x 51 mm assault rifles along with accessories for each assault rifle [lens cover, eye guard, cleaning kit, battery pack charger and quantity three sets of batteries (each set of batteries corresponds to number of batteries required to operate the night sight)]."

As per the tender, 50 per cent of the content in the night sight will have to be Indian.

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The last date to submit the bid for this tender is September 27. PTI DSP

(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, Jul 5 (PTI) Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday said his government intends to make yoga a mass movement and will scale up the ongoing "Dilli Ki Yogshala" programme from 500-600 daily sessions to 5,000-6,000 sessions.

Interacting with trainers under the programme, Kejriwal said yoga is not a daylong affair for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government and it intends to scale it up radically.

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"We will now replicate the model and scale it up from the current 500-600 classes to 5,000-6,000. Our beneficiaries would go up from 30,000 to lakhs of citizens," he said.

The government will strive to ensure that there is a functioning yoga class in every Delhi neighbourhood, so that people get access to free training at their doorstep, the chief minister added.

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The Delhi government wants to make yoga a mass movement in the national capital through the free training programme, which is a first-of-its-kind experiment in the country, he noted.

Under the "Dilli Ki Yogshala" programme, the AAP government provides free trainers to groups of people desiring to attend yoga classes. These classes are currently being conducted at over 500 places across the national capital.

"People are giving a fantastic response to the classes. They are witnessing a physical and mental transformation. Had the instructors not been top-notch, this would not have been possible," Kejriwal said.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said the chief minister has a dream that every Delihiite would practise yoga.

"It is one thing to do yoga and talk about yoga on International Day of Yoga and quite another to ensure the doorstep delivery of yoga at someone's house or in a park," he said.

There was a lot of emphasis on the training of the yoga instructors as they require to interact with people.

Therefore, they were also trained in soft skills and personality development, Sisodia added.

(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], July 5 (ANI): Delhi High Court on Tuesday refused to vacate the stay granted in an appeal moved by the Government of Delhi challenging the single bench order dated July 22, 2021, which had directed the state government to implement the promises made to pay rents of poor tenants by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

Division Bench of Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad on Tuesday dismissed the application which requested Court to vacate the stay granted in the matter claiming the landlord is forcing tenants to pay all previous dues or vacate the premises.

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The counsel appearing for tenants urged the court to issue direction for the formulation of a policy in this regard. The Court said, "can we force them to form a policy. There are several things said in the election manifesto, can we force them to do so?"

The Court also noted that the petitioner tenants had already moved and challenged the stay order in the Supreme Court which had dismissed it.

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The Government of NCT Delhi in its plea had challenged the order passed by the bench of Justice Prathiba M Singh order stating Good Governance requires promises made to citizens that are not broken.

The single bench had opinioned that promise or assurance given by the Chief Minister of a state clearly amounts to an enforceable promise, the implementation of which ought to be considered by the Government. Good governance requires that promises made to citizens by those who govern are not broken, without valid and justifiable reasons.

The Bench of Justice Prathiba M Singh had pronounced a Judgement in petitions moved by four Daily wagers who claim to be tenants who were unable to pay their monthly rent. The fifth petitioner in the matter is stated to be a landlord who hasn't been able to receive the monthly rent from his tenant. Both sets of Petitioners sought recovery/payment/refund of the monthly rental amount, as per the promise made by the Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal.

Petitioners had sought enforcement of the promise made by the Chief Minister of Delhi on March 29, 2020, in a press conference, in which he requested all landlords to postpone the demand/collection of rent from those tenants who are poor and poverty-stricken, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is alleged by the petitioners that the CM, in the press conference, had made a clear promise that if any tenant is unable to pay the rent due to poverty, the

The government would pay his/her rent on their behalf. According to the Petitioners, solemn assurance was given that the Government would take care of the tenants.

The single bench while pronouncing the judgment begins it with the saying, "Promises are meant to be broken' which is well known in the social context. However, the law has evolved the doctrines of legitimate expectation and promissory estoppel to ensure that promises made by the Government, its officials, and other authorities are not broken and are, in fact, judicially enforceable, subject to certain conditions."

The bench had directed that the GNCTD would, having regard to the statement made by the CM on March 29, 2020, to landlords and tenants, take a decision as to the implementation of the same within a period of six weeks, the said decision would be taken, bearing in mind the larger interest of the persons to whom the benefits were intended to be extended in the said statement, as also any overriding public interest concerns. (ANI)

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Ranchi, Jul 5 (PTI) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday filed a charge sheet against former Jharkhand mining secretary Pooja Singhal and others as part of a money-laundering probe against her and those linked to the IAS officer, officials said.

The federal agency submitted the around 5,000-page prosecution complaint along with annexures and a list of witnesses and evidence collected before a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Ranchi and has named Singhal, Suman Kumar, a chartered accountant allegedly linked to her, and few others.

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The ED requested the court to take cognisance of the charge sheet and issue the process for a trial in the case, officials said.

Singhal, a 2000-batch IAS officer, was arrested by the agency in May as part of a probe linked to alleged embezzlement of MGNREGA funds and some other alleged suspicious financial transactions.

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The 44-year-old bureaucrat was suspended by the Jharkhand government soon after her arrest. She was posted as the secretary of industries and was handling the charge of the secretary of the state mining and geology department in an additional capacity.

Sumar Kumar was also arrested. They both are in judicial custody.

The ED had first raided the premises of Singhal, that of her businessman husband Abhishek Jha and the chartered accountant on May 6 in Ranchi and covered a few other locations in the state.

The agency had claimed that it seized over Rs 17.79 crore in cash allegedly from Kumar's residence and office premises. It also questioned many state government officials after these arrests.

Seeking Singhal's custody in May, the ED had told the court that a multi-speciality hospital "owned" by the officer and her family in Ranchi was being allegedly used by the bureaucrat to "launder" tainted funds and huge payments at the healthcare facility were usually received in cash.

The ED, quoting the statements of some witnesses interrogated earlier, told the court that Singhal played a "pivotal role in the construction and managing the important affairs of the Pulse super speciality hospital and huge payments were received in cash."

It had claimed that a probe found that Singhal had in the past transferred Rs 16.57 lakh funds from her personal accounts to three bank accounts owned or controlled by the chartered accountant.

It alleged that the chartered accountant recorded his statement with the ED under the PMLA and stated that "most of the cash recovered from his house belongs to Pooja Singhal, which was collected by him on her behalf."

"He disclosed that on instructions of Pooja Singhal, he gave Rs 3 crore in cash to a renowned builder for purchasing land for Pulse hospital owned by Pooja Singhal and her family," the ED had alleged.

The probe pertains to a money laundering case in which a former junior engineer in the Jharkhand government, Ram Binod Prasad Sinha, was arrested by the agency on June 17, 2020, from West Bengal after being booked under the PMLA in 2012 after studying the FIRs of the state vigilance bureau against him.

Sinha was booked by the vigilance bureau under criminal sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) pertaining to cheating and corruption for allegedly defrauding public money and investing it in his name as well as in the name of his family members while working as a junior engineer from April 1, 2008, to March 21, 2011.

The said money was earmarked for the execution of government projects under (the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in the Khunti district, the agency had earlier said.

Sinha told ED that he "paid 5 per cent commission out of the defrauded funds to the district administration."

The probe agency claimed that during the period various charges of "irregularities" were made against Singhal while she served as the deputy commissioner/district magistrate of Chatra, Khunti and Palamu between 2007 and 2013.

Quoting a statement of an unnamed accused recorded earlier, the ED told the court that "Sinha was paying a bribe to Pooja Singhal."

"He (accused) has confessed that on four occasions he had seen the accused junior engineer (Sinha) handing over bags containing 18-20 bundles of notes of Rs 500 denomination."

The ED quoted the statement of a witness to say he used to keep the money given to him by Sinha for the bureaucrat in "locked bags" and subsequently handed it over to Singhal.

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New Delhi [India], July 5 (ANI): The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday conducted searches at 40 locations in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and some southern states in connection with a case linked to a Chinese firm.

Multiple ED teams have been conducting simultaneous raids since morning, said sources, adding the case is already being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

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IT department, as well as the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, are also keeping a close eye on the Chinese manufacturing firms. The ED raid is an extension of the probe against Chinese firms.

The ED conducted these searches with respect to violations of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

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Sources said that local units of Vivo Mobile Communications are under the radar for alleged financial improprieties as part of an investigation into other China-based firms.

Ministry of Corporate Affairs is learnt to have a special focus on potential violations including fraud.

In the case of Vivo, an inquiry was sought in April this year to detect if there were "significant irregularities in ownership and financial reporting". (ANI)

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Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], July 5 (ANI): Days after he resigned as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday said Eknath Shinde, who led the rebellion with party MLAs to bring down Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, backstabbed him.

Addressing Shiv Sena workers here, Thackeray said that he gave Shinde the responsibility of the party.

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"Shinde to whom I have given the responsibility of the party backstabbed me, while NCP and Congress remained with us. It is painful to see that those (MLAs and ministers) who won due to Sena workers and got everything has left him," Thackeray told media persons here.

Earlier in June this year, Eknath Shinde led a group of Sena MLAs against the MVA government, resulting in it losing its majority in the Maharashtra assembly. This also led Shiv Sena chief Thackeray to step down as CM ahead of a floor test.

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The new Eknath Shinde-led government in Maharashtra won the floor test on Monday by a 164-99 margin, proving his government's majority and cementing his position as chief minister of the state and the leader of the Shiv Sena. 164 votes were polled in favour of Shinde, while 99 votes were polled against the newly formed BJP-Shinde camp coalition.

The trust vote comes a day after BJP's Rahul Narwekar was elected the Assembly Speaker. On Sunday Narwekar reinstated Shinde as the Shiv Sena's legislative party leader and also recognized the appointment of Gogawale as the chief whip of the Shiv Sena.

After the Maharashtra government won the trust vote in the state Assembly, Shiv Sena's Eknath Shinde faction on Monday gave a petition to Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar for the suspension of 16 MLAs of the party belonging to Uddhav Thackeray's camp for violation of whip.

The Speaker's office confirmed that 16 MLAs will be issued notice for suspension. Gogawale had also issued a whip to the party MLAs to remain present in the Vidhan Sabha for the floor test. (ANI)

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Mumbai, Jul 5 (PTI) A 73-year-old retired official of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) died while swimming at a civic-run swimming pool in suburban Kandivali, police said on Tuesday.

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Police suspect Bhalchandra Bhoi suffered a heart attack while swimming at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel swimming pool on Sunday.

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"After completing two rounds of swimming with his brother, Bhoi suddenly became unconscious inside the pool. Lifeguards on duty pulled him out of the water. He was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was declared dead," the official said.

Kandivali police station senior police inspector Dinkar Jadhav said the deceased used to regularly come for swimming at the spot.

We suspect that he died of a heart attack. Police have registered a case of accidental death as his family members didn't have a complaint against anyone," he said.

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Bhubaneswar (Odisha) [India], July 5 (ANI): The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted heavy rain in Odisha for the next five days. Heavy rains are likely to lash the state of Odisha and accordingly, an alert was issued for 17 districts.

Speaking to ANI, Umashankar Das said that Odisha's Ganjam district has recorded the highest 130.4 mm rainfall in the past 24 hours, followed by Kendrapara 93.4 mm and Sundargarh 78 mm.

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"IMD has issued an orange warning for South Odisha in four districts, which are likely to experience heavy to very heavy rainfall in Kalahandi, Kandhmal, Ganjam and Boudh districts in the next 24 hours. Along with it, yellow alert is issued for 13 districts like Raigarh, Puri, Khurda, Nabrangpur, Nuapada, Koraput, Balangir, Bargarh, Jharsuguda, Sambalpur, Sundargarh, Keonjhar and Ganjam in the state," Das said.

Further, the weatherman said that the districts which are issued orange warnings are likely to receive rainfall amounts around 12-20cm, and above 13 districts issued with yellow alerts are likely to receive rainfall amounts around 7-10cm in the next 24 hours. (ANI)

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New Delhi, Jul 5 (PTI) India-based defence attaches of around 25 countries of the Indian Ocean Region have been invited by the Navy to a two-day conclave later this month to showcase the growing strength of the Indian defence industry and offer them solutions to their security requirement.

A significant number of Indian defence attaches posted in countries with whom India has strong maritime cooperation are also attending the conclave on July 18 and 19 so that they can highlight capability of India's defence manufacturing to the countries of their postings, Indian Navy officials said.

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Vice Chief of Naval Staff (VCNS) Vice Admiral SN Ghormade said that a roadmap for the Indian industry will be unveiled at the event so that both sides can enhance collaboration in developing various systems and equipment required by the force.

"The unclassified version of the 'Unmanned Roadmap' will be unveiled during the event. This has been made specifically for the industry and gives the complete details (including numbers) of planned inductions along with timelines so that the industry knows where to focus their R&D efforts," Ghormade said at a media briefing.

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"This is something that the industry has been wanting for some time," he said.

The Navy has already proposed to develop 75 new indigenous technologies to celebrate the 75th year of the country's independence.

The Naval Innovation and Indigenisation Organisation (NIIO) is working in collaboration with several organisations on this ambitious project.

"This endeavour is not about only a few products or even 75 products being launched. The vision of NIIO is much larger than that. We are actually trying to create an ecosystem and culture of innovation," Vice Admiral Ghormade said.

The two-day event is being organised to ensure deeper convergence among various stakeholders involved in the Indian defence manufacturing sector and highlight India's growing stature as a reliable supplier of defence equipment.

Ghormade said the Navy has always believed in the idea of 'AtmaNirbhar Bharat' (self-reliant India), adding its commitment to indigenous platforms over the years have not only helped the Navy meet its own requirements, but also contributed to the national GDP in a major way.

"The decision to construct warships indigenously, to take just one example, which was taken in the 1960s has created hundreds of thousands of jobs and given a boost not only to shipbuilding but also to ancillary industry and MSMEs," he said.

"Since expertise in ship design was not available in the country in those days, the Navy not only tied up with premier academic institutes to start courses in naval architecture but also set up an in-house Directorate of Naval design," he said.

"The fact that we are today designing and constructing complex warships including an aircraft carrier and nuclear submarines -- which very few countries have achieved -- bears testimony to the long term vision of the Navy," he added.

Another official said around 25 defence attaches of countries in the Indian Ocean Region have been invited to the two-day event.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir) [India], July 5 (ANI): Online registration for recruitment into Army as Agniveers under the Centre's Agnipath Scheme' began here on July 5, 2022, informed PRO, Defence, Srinagar.

The recruitment rally by Army Recruiting Office, Srinagar, will be conducted from September 17 to September 30 at Haiderbeig, Pattan, UT of J-K.

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The recruitment rally will be for recruitment as Agniveers under Agnipath Scheme.

"Agnipath Recruitment Scheme - Jammu And Kashmir & Ladakh Registration for Agniveer - 05 Jul-03 Aug. Recruitment rally at Haiderbeig, Pattan from 17 to 30 Sep 2022," PRO Defence, Srinagar said in a tweet.

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All eligible unmarried male candidates born between October 1, 1999, to April 1, 2005 (both dates inclusive) with requisite educational qualifications from UT of J-K belonging to Srinagar, Anantnag, Baramulla, Pulwama, Badgam, Kupwara, Shopian, Ganderbal, Bandipora and Kulgam districts and UT of Ladakh belonging to Leh and Kargil districts can apply for enrolment under categories of Agniveer General Duty, Agniveer Technical, Agniveer Clerk/Store Keeper Technical and Agniveer Tradesmen. Registration is open online at the website with effect from July 5 to August 3, 2022. Candidates are advised to register online at the earliest, said PRO, Defence, Srinagar.

Army Recruiting Office, Srinagar has advised that recruitment is a free service and selection is fair and purely based on merit, added PRO Defence. (ANI)

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Ranchi, July 5 (PTI) The Jharkhand High Court on Tuesday rejected a petition filed by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for quashing of a defamation case against him.

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Gandhi had moved the high court against an order of a magistrate taking cognizance and issuing summons for appearance in a criminal defamation case filed in Ranchi.

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The complaint was filed by advocate Pradeep Modi in the Ranchi District Court against Gandhi after he had made a remark in one of his meetings during the 2019 Lok Sabha election campaigns in the capital.

Gandhi in his speech had allegedly said, All people with Modi as their surnames are thieves, pointing to the scams committed by Neerav Modi and Lalit Modi.

Alleging the statement had hurt sentiments, city advocate Pradeep Modi filed a case for criminal defamation in the lower court against the Congress leader.

The counsel has also filed a separate civil suit for defamation seeking Rs 20 crores as damages from Rahul Gandhi.

The district court after recording the statements of Pradeep Modi had taken cognizance against Gandhi and issued summons to him to appear in person or be represented by his advocate.

Gandhi then knocked the doors of the high court seeking quashing of the petition.

Justice SK Dwivedi after hearing the matter at length dismissed Gandhi's petition.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
BRICS summit to benefit South Africa with 8 practical outcomes: Chinese envoy

Xinhua) 13:15, July 05, 2022

CAPE TOWN, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Eight practical outcomes, among many highlights, of the recent 14th BRICS Summit will particularly benefit South Africa and the African continent at large, said Chinese Ambassador to South Africa Chen Xiaodong.

The BRICS Vaccine Research and Development (R&D) Center has been launched to serve as a comprehensive platform for joint research and development, and production of vaccines for developing countries, bridging the current vaccine divide, Chen said in an article published on June 29 by Independent Online (IOL), a South African leading news and information website.

The BRICS members will also support countries, especially developing ones, to strengthen their capacity building in the local production of vaccines and other health tools, he said.

In terms of food security, the BRICS, whose total grain output accounts for about one-third of the world's total, reached for the first time a food security cooperation strategy and established a forum on agricultural and rural development.

Such measures represent practical efforts by BRICS members to stabilize global food production and contribute to global food security governance, said Chen.

This will lay a solid foundation for solving world food security issues and ease possible food crisis in some African countries, he said.

According to the ambassador, the BRICS countries also reached a digital economy partnership framework and proposed a cooperation initiative on the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry, as many African countries including South Africa attach great importance to digital economy.

The summit also tapped new potential for technological transformation and upgrading and built a science and technology "toolbox" to address the current global risks and challenges, said Chen.

Members agreed to establish the BRICS Technology Transfer Center Network, hold the Big Data Forum for Sustainable Development, establish the BRICS Aerospace Cooperation Mechanism, and expand new frontiers in science and technology cooperation, said Chen.

The BRICS countries have made various efforts for global economic recovery and growth, by upholding the multilateral trading system and improving the formulation of international trade rule -- particularly by supporting multilateral trading system and World Trade Organization (WTO) reform, and putting forward an initiative on strengthening cooperation on supply chains, said the ambassador.

The BRICS countries also launched a new initiative to fight corruption, under which the members will strengthen capacity building cooperation, enhance exchanges within multilateral frameworks over the issue, said Chen.

The seventh outcome is creating a new track for the training of high-level professionals by setting up a vocational education alliance, holding vocational skills contests, BRICS Solutions for SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) Awards, women innovation contests, and promoting the convergence of talent chain, industry chain and innovation chain in them, said the article.

Last but not least, the summit put forward new proposals on improving global governance, as the BRICS countries reiterated commitment to multilateralism and made it clear that global governance should be "more inclusive, representative and participatory," according to him.

This will facilitate deeper and more meaningful participation of developing countries and least developed countries, especially African countries, in the global decision-making process, he said.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
New Delhi, Jul 5 (PTI) Indian Navy is in the process of procuring a fleet of deck-based fighter jets under the government-to-government route for its indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC) Vikrant, people familiar with the development said on Tuesday.

They said the Navy has shortlisted Boeing's F/A-18E Super Hornet and Rafale M aircraft produced by the French aerospace major Dassault Aviation for the procurement.

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Both the aircraft had demonstrated their operational capabilities at a naval facility in Goa and the Navy is now preparing a detailed report on their performance.

"Based on the report, we will move forward on the procurement process," said one of the people cited above, adding the acquisition will be under the government-to-government framework.

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In May, two Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet fighter aircraft showcased their operational capability at the naval facility in Goa while a similar exercise was carried out by the Rafale maritime fighter jet in January.

"The trials are being done because the Navy requires aircraft which can take off from carriers," Vice Chief of Naval Staff Vice Admiral SN Ghormade said when asked about the procurement.

Over four years ago, the Indian Navy had initiated the process to acquire 57 multi-role combat aircraft for its aircraft carrier.

However, it is learnt that the number could be around 30 initially.

The Indian Navy plans to procure the deck-based jets for IAC Vikrant that is likely to be commissioned in August.

At present, the Navy operates Russian-origin MiG-29K fighters from its sole aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya.

The Request For Information issued by the Navy for procurement of the deck-based fighter jets sought to know at what level of Transfer of Technology the companies are willing to share with India.

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Chandigarh [India], July 5 (ANI): Punjab and Haryana High Court on Monday dismissed the writ petition that was filed by some people alleging the replacement of Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who is undergoing sentence for rape and murder cases in a Rohtak jail, with a dummy person, informed Advocate Jatinder.

Justice Karamjit Singh of the HC passed these orders while dismissing a plea and said that the plea lacked merit.

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The plea was filed by Ashok Kumar and 18 other petitioners claiming themselves to be staunch supporters of the controversial preacher.

The petitioners, in this case, said they had sought directions to "verify the authenticity" of the Dera chief as the state authorities in collusion with Dera functionaries including Priyanka Taneja alias Honeypreet and Prithviraj Nain have replaced a dummy person with the Dera chief.

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The plea further stated that such a dummy person is hurting the religious sentiments of the followers.

Rape convict Ram Rahim is currently out on parole.

Earlier on June 17, Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh who is serving a jail term after being convicted in rape and murder cases was granted parole for a month.

Singh has been incarcerated, since 2017, in Haryana's Sunaria jail where he is serving 20 year-term for raping two women disciples at his ashram's headquarters in Sirsa.

Earlier in February, the Dera chief was granted three weeks' furlough.

While parole means the release of a prisoner either temporarily for a special purpose or completely before the expiry of a sentence, on the promise of good behaviour, a furlough is a short-term temporary release of convicts from jail.

He was convicted by a special CBI court in Panchkula in August 2017 for raping two women followers.

While, on October 8, 2021, the court convicted Rahim and four others in connection with former Dera manager Ranjit Singh's murder case.

Ranjit Singh was murdered in 2002 on the premises of Dera Sacha Sauda. (ANI)

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Mumbai, July 5: NCP leader and former Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik, who has been arrested in a money laundering case, filed a bail application before a special court here on Tuesday.

This is his first regular bail plea, filed on merits of the case, following his arrest in February, and the court has asked the Enforcement Directorate to file its reply to the plea by July 15. Nawab Malik Moves To Supreme Court Challenging Bombay High Court Order in Money Laundering Case.

Earlier, Special Judge RN Rokade had denied him interim bail, which was filed on medical grounds. The court had also refused to grant him one-day bail to cast his vote for the recently held Rajya Sabha polls in Maharashtra.

Malik, who is currently in judicial custody, was arrested on February 23 under provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) by the ED in connection with a probe linked to activities of fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim and his aides.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Bhopal, Jul 5 (PTI) Polling for the first phase of elections to urban bodies in Madhya Pradesh, including for municipal corporations of Indore and Bhopal, will be held on Wednesday, an official said on Tuesday.

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A total of 101 candidates are in the fray for the post of mayor in 11 municipal corporations while 11,250 candidates are contesting for 2,808 posts of corporators in 133 urban bodies. Of the total 2,850 posts of corporators in 133 bodies, 42 were already elected unopposed.

A total of 1.04 crore voters are expected to exercise their franchise in the first phase of polling, the official said.

"Polling will be held across 44 districts in the state from 7 AM to 5 PM," State Election Commission (SEC) Commissioner Basant Pratap Singh said, adding that all the preparations have been completed and polling teams have reached their respective booths.

As many as 13,148 booths have been set up for polling in 133 urban bodies, including 11 municipal corporations, 36 municipalities and 86 Nagar Parishads.

Singh said 3,296 booths have been declared as sensitive.

Votes will be cast for municipal corporations including Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Khandwa, Burhanpur, Chhindwara, Ujjain, Sagar, Singrauli and Satna.

EVMs will be used in the polling at all the places, Singh said, adding that white and pink colours will be displayed in the EVMs for the post of mayor and the corporator, respectively.

Similarly, yellow and blue colours will be displayed, respectively, for the post of the corporator in municipalities and Nagar Parishads, he said.

The SEC commissioner said that about 79,000 employees are engaged in the electoral work while 27,000 personnel are deployed for security duty.

The second phase of polling will be held on July 13.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], July 5 (ANI): Following the arrest of IPS officer Amrit Paul for his alleged role in the police sub-inspectors (PSI) recruitment scam, the Leader of Opposition in Karnataka Assembly Siddaramaiah on Tuesday demanded the resignation of state Home Minister Araga Jnanendra.

Paul was arrested by Crime Investigation Department (CID) for his alleged role in the PSI recruitment scam case on Monday.

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Siddaramaiah further alleged that Jnanendra is responsible for this scam and urged Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai to sack him from the cabinet.

"In the PSI recruitment scam, the officials should not be blamed. Home Minister Araga Jnanendra is responsible for this scam as well as officials. I urge Chief Minister to sack Home Minister from the cabinet," said Siddaramaiah.

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"Skeletons are falling out one by one from the shelves. The arrest of ADGP Amrit Paul in the PSI recruitment scam is proof of this. What will now CM and the Home Minister will do who said that there was no scandal?" he added.

Karnataka Government on Monday also suspended Paul following his arrest.

IAS officer J Manjunath, former DC of Bengaluru Urban was also suspended by the Karnataka government after he was arrested by Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in a bribery case.

Manjunath was arrested by the ACB, four days after he was transferred from the post of Bengaluru urban district deputy commissioner (DC). Manjunath is facing allegations of collecting bribes through his staff to settle a land dispute.

Earlier on Monday, Bommai took a jibe at the Congress party and said that the grand old party would have covered up the arrests of ADGP Amrit Paul and IAS officer J Manjunath in the PSI recruitment scam case and bribery case respectively.

He had lauded his government for taking prompt action in the two cases.

While talking to ANI, Bommai had said, "Our government unearthed the whole case. CID was given a free hand to investigate the case and spare none. ADGP who was heading the recruitment arrested after proof was found against him."

The PSI scam case is related to the irregularities in the appointment of police sub-inspectors in the state.

MLA and former Minister Priyank Kharge had earlier alleged a huge scam in the PSI recruitment of more than 545 candidates and pointed at the involvement of the government and officials in the matter.

Notably, on May 12, Karnataka Minister for Higher Education CN Ashwath Narayan announced that the state government was investigating the PSI scam and had assured that the people involved with it would be exposed.

On April 29, the Karnataka government decided to cancel the results of the police sub-inspector (PSI) recruitment exam following allegations of corruption.

The government had stated that a fresh exam will be re-conducted and the dates for which will be announced soon.

Meanwhile, Jnanendra had informed that the CID had arrested the main accused of the PSI scam, BJP leader Divya Hagaragi and four others in the case. Divya, who was absconding in the case, was arrested from Pune. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Chandigarh (Punjab) [India], July 5 (ANI): Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann hailed the verdict of the Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissing a bunch of petitions seeking the quashing of FIR and investigation conducted into the Behbal Kalan firing, said a press release by Chief Minister's Office, Punjab on Monday.

The Chief Minister said that the verdict has paved the way for the Government to seek strict punishment against the policeman accused of firing on innocent protestors at Behbal Kalan, added the press release.Lashing out at his opponents, Bhagwant Mann said both Akalis and Congress have connived with each other to save the guilty of this case. He said that while the desecration of Sri Guru Granth Sahib ji and firing on innocent protestors took place during the Akali regime, Congress actively shielded the perpetrators of the crime by ineffectively defending the investigation conducted into the incidents of sacrilege in Kotkapura, as per the statement.

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The Chief Minister said that as a result of this the challan presented in the case against political leaders and senior officials was quashed by the High Court. Mann further said that the Akali-Congress nexus that was shielding the accused hitherto has been broken with the AAP Government coming into power.

He said that the verdict was a result of the firm commitment of the AAP Government to bring the guilty to book as the State Government effectively defended the investigation conducted into the Behbal Kalan firing case, whereas Congress had failed to defend the investigation into the Kotkapura desecration incidents.

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Pertinently, in a significant judgement, the Punjab and Haryana High Court today dismissed a bunch of petitions filed by the accused policemen in the Behbal Kalan firing case seeking quashing of the challan presented against them in the trial court. Accepting the contention of the Advocate General (AG), the court held that the charges could be framed even on strong suspicion.

The court further directed a Special Investigation Team headed by Inspector General of Police Naunihal Singh, to conduct further investigation and submit their report under Section 173 Cr.P.C before the trial Court. (ANI)

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New Delhi, Jul 5 (PTI) Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday targeted the BJP over the statement of a Karnataka high court judge hearing a matter related to a bribery case that he was being threatened with transfer and accused the saffron party of bulldozing ''institution after institution".

He also shared a video in which the judge during court proceedings said he was threatened with the transfer after his remark against the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) that it had become a "collection centre". The judge also said he was unfazed and added "I will bell the cat, even at the cost of my judgeship".

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"A HC judge has been threatened for exposing BJP's corrupt government in Karnataka. Institution after institution is being bulldozed by the BJP. Each of us must stand with those fearlessly doing their duty (sic)," Gandhi said using the hashtag "#DaroMat"

The Congress has been attacking the BJP government in Karnataka on the issue of corruption. On Monday, Rahul Gandhi had demanded the sacking of Chief Minister Basavraj Bommai to ensure a fair investigation in the police recruitment scam.

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In the less than two-minute-long video of court proceedings held on Monday, Justice HP Sandesh also said, "Your ADGP is so powerful and some person spoke with one of our High Court judge that came and sat with me and he says giving an example of transfer of one of another judge to another district.

"I will not hesitate to mention the name of the judge also. He came and sat by the side of me and said there is a threat to this court."

"I am glad to protect the independence of the judiciary at the cost of my judgeship. This should not happen. I will record the same in the order itself. This should not happen. You people keep on encouraging such people, the state government as well as... We have to protect the institution...Why should I hesitate," the judge is heard saying.

Justice Sandesh had made observations against the ACB last week and its functioning while hearing a bail plea of P S Mahesh, a deputy Tahsildar in the office of the Bengaluru City Deputy Commissioner.

Two staff members of the office were arrested for receiving a bribe of Rs.5 lakh in exchange for favourable order in a land dispute.

The court had taken objection as to how senior officers were being protected and only junior staff were being prosecuted in the case.

In a related development on Monday, Manjunath J, an IAS officer and former Bengaluru City Deputy Commissioner, was arrested in the same case by ACB.

Justice Sandesh had said the ACB had become a "collection centre" and the ADGP of the ACB a tainted officer. The court had, on June 29, ordered the ACB to produce details of all cases since 2016 in which the ACB had filed 'B' (closure) reports.

When the case came up for hearing again on Monday, Justice Sandesh said, "I am ready for it, for the good of people. Your ACB ADGP seems to be a powerful person. Somebody has told this to my colleague. I have been informed about it by a judge. The threat of transfer will be recorded in the order."

The judge further said he wasn't afraid of the threats.

"I don't fear anyone. I am ready to bell the cat. I have not accumulated property after becoming a judge. I don't care if I lose the position. I am the son of a farmer. I am ready to till the land. I don't belong to any political party. I don't adhere to any political ideology," he said.

The court had earlier directed for submission of the service records of the ACB ADGP.

"The service records of ACB ADGP have not been produced before the court. You have reached a stage of issuing threats to the judge. The whole state is mired in corruption. If Vitamin M is there, you will protect anyone," the judge said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kolkata, Jul 5 (PTI) Senior BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari on Tuesday said he has written to Union Home Minister Amit Shah expressing concern over the "worsening" law and order situation in West Bengal and demanded NIA investigation into the recent crude bomb blasts in some parts of the state.

Adhikari, also the leader of the opposition in the West Bengal assembly, said the state has turned into a "stockpile of explosives", and "crude bomb production has become a booming cottage industry".

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"The quantum of explosives - 28,000 kgs of ammonium nitrate and 81,000 pieces of detonators recovered last week at Birbhum - are enough to blow up an entire town. I have written to Hon'ble HM Shri @AmitShah ji, requesting him to initiate @NIA_India investigation into the matters," Adhikari wrote on Twitter.

Later, the BJP leader told reporters that the state administration is trying to sweep the matter under the carpet. "The state government, instead of punishing the culprits, is trying to brush the matter under the carpet. There are reports that the NIA is already looking into the incidents. I have requested Amit Shah Ji to widen the ambit of the NIA investigation," he said. Adhikari claimed that such activities mainly occur in districts bordering Bangladesh, like Malda and Murshidabad. "Today, a TMC worker died in a crude bomb blast in Domkol in Murshidabad district. There are reports that they are making such explosives. The police will not investigate it properly and will try to hush up the matter. The law and order situation has completely collapsed in the state ," he said. Reacting to his letter, TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh said the local police have started investigating into it. "Suvendu Adhikari can write as many letters as he wants to. But the fact is that the police are already investigating the matter. And the law and order situation in West Bengal is much better than other parts of the country, especially BJP-ruled states," he added.

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(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, July 5: Chhattisgarh Police on Tuesday reached television channel news anchor's residence in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, after an FIR was registered against him following the broadcast of a misleading video on Rahul Gandhi for which the channel had issued an apology.

The anchor Rohit Ranjan, however, was taken in custody by Noida Police after he took to Twitter this morning to post "Chhattisgarh Police is standing outside my house to arrest me without informing the local police, is it legal". He tagged Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and SSP Ghaziabad and ADG Zone Lucknow in the tweet.

Check Tweet:

There is no such rule to inform. Still, now they are informed. Police team has shown you courts warrant of arrest. You should in fact cooperate, join in investigation and put your defence in court.  Raipur Police (@RaipurPoliceCG) July 5, 2022

Responding to Ranjan's tweet, the Raipur Police, Chhatisgarh, posted on its Twitter handle, "There is no such rule to inform. Still, now they are informed. Police team has shown you court's warrant of arrest. You should in fact cooperate, join in investigation and put your defence in court."

Meanwhile, ADCP Noida said, "In the course of an investigation registered at police station Sector 20, a person named Rohit Ranjan, working in a news channel is being questioned." IAS Pooja Singhal Money Laundering Case: ED To File 5,000-Page Charge Sheet Against IAS Officer in Connection With MGNREGA Fund Scam.

Ranjan had on his show said, "Yesterday, in our show DNA, Rahul Gandhi's statement was taken in the wrong context by linking it to the Udaipur incident, it was a human error for which our team apologises."

The Congress filed a complaint in Raipur against Ranjan for allegedly "running a doctored video of Rahul Gandhi".

According to reports, the FIR filed by Congress said that Rohit Ranjan intentionally linked Rahul Gandhi's statements on the vandalization of his office to the Udaipur incident in an attempt to incite public sentiments.

Congress MP Rahul Gandhi while referring to the attack on his Wayanad office had said, "The children who did this have acted in an irresponsible way. They are kids, forgive them." (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], July 5 (ANI): The expert committee formed to implement the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in Uttarakhand met on Monday in Delhi.

Speaking about it, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Tuesday said, "People of Uttarakhand supported UCC by giving us the mandate. We've formed a committee that is seeking public opinion, and consulting stakeholders and will form a draft. We have kept a 6-month period for the procedure, once it concludes we will implement UCC."

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Read @ANI Story |  Latest Tweet by ANI Digital.

The Uttarakhand government constituted a five-member committee to be led by Desai, to prepare a draft proposal for the implementation of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the hill state.

The panel met at Uttarakhand Sadan in Delhi. The meeting was chaired by a former Supreme Court judge, Justice (retired) and the chairperson of the committee Ranjana Prakash Desai.

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After the meeting, Desai told the media, "This was our first UCC meeting. All commitee members attended this meeting. After one week, most probably, a second meeting will be held. July 14 and 15 is the tentative date for the second meeting."

On completion of one year as Chief Minister, he said, "I have laid the foundation stone for the development of the state under the guidance of the Prime Minister, the state is progressing in development."

He said that work is being done by preparing a roadmap in that direction when the state will be counted among the best states of the country in the silver jubilee year after 25 years.

Provision has also been made in the budget to increase financial resources, he added.

In view of the rainy season, Dhami said, "Leaves of all government employees have been cancelled. Every year we face disasters like landslides, cloud bursts etc. We've conducted meetings on it and officials have been instructed to provide immediate assistance to people in case of such incidents. All arrangments made for pilgrims for a smooth and safe journey."

Dhami also chairs round table meeting over increasing tourism business and accelerating investments in the hospitality sector in the state. (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, Jul 5 (PTI) ACME Group on Tuesday announced a green hydrogen and green ammonia project in Tamil Nadu entailing an investment of Rs 52,474 crore.

The initial agreement with the state government was signed in the presence of Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M K Stalin during the Tamil Nadu Investment Conclave, a company statement said.

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According to the statement the project entails an investment of Rs 52,474 crore.

"This will be one of the largest plants in India and perhaps the largest in the world. This plant will produce green hydrogen and ammonia, which will help to decarbonize sectors such as fertilizers, power, refining and steel, among others," Manoj K Upadhyay, Founder & Chairman, ACME Group said.

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Upadhyay further said "the project requires four ingredients  solar radiation, access to port, availability of land and skilled resources. Tamil Nadu offers all of these."

Sandeep Kashyap, COO, ACME Group said "this project will comprise 5,000 mw of solar PV plant, 1.5 GW of the electrolyzer and 1.1 million tonnes of ammonia synthesis loop.

"ACME is willing to work with the government to help not only to build this project but also to create an ecosystem of smaller units. We extend our gratitude to the government of Tamil Nadu for the confidence and support offered to us."

(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], July 5 (ANI): 161 Indian students, including 88 women, have been awarded the prestigious Erasmus Mundus scholarships for the degree programmes starting in the academic year 2022-23 and with this, for the second consecutive time, India ranked first among the 167 countries.

To mark this success, the delegation of the European Union to India organized an event to commemorate this milestone. While congratulating the students, the EU Ambassador to India and Bhutan, Ugo Astuto said that till now, over 6,000 Indian students have received the benefit from Erasmus Mundus scholarships, according to the EU embassy in India.

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"Erasmus+ scholarships offer a lifetime opportunity for professional and personal development. Apart from improving students' expertise, it allows them to gain a rich cultural experience, given Europe's diversity. I wish the students all the best as they embark on this exciting and enriching journey," he added.

According to the publication, the selected Indian students for the Erasmus Mundus 2022-2024 batch will get the opportunity to study and conduct research in at least two universities located in different European countries and obtain joint, double or multiple degrees.

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It is pertinent to mention that this will be a fully-funded scholarship, which will cover the participation costs, travel costs and living allowance of the recipient.

Europe today has over 4,000 higher education institutions, from top-level research establishments to small, teaching-focused colleges, with more than 17 million students and 1.5 million academics, including 4,35,000 researchers, according to the embassy.

Indian students will stay and experience over 18 different European countries over a span of two years.

In 2022, the EU and India mark 60 years of diplomatic relations. For 60 years, the EU and India have worked together to reduce poverty, prevent disasters, expand trade, secure global goods, enhance security around the world and promote joint research in energy, health, agriculture and many other fields of mutual interest.

In 2021, 153 Indian students received the Erasmus Mundus scholarships.

ERASMUS or European Region Action Scheme for Mobility of University Students is a program established in 1987 by the European Union (EU) to support education, training of youth, and sport for students from across the globe, in partner universities, in partner countries across Europe. Since then, it has grown into the largest-ever program in the world for mobility opportunities and also funds cooperation projects.

With a budget of EUR 26.2 billion (Rs 2,096,94 crore) for 2021-2027, the main aim of this program is to promote academic and youth mobility and cooperation within Europe or between Europe and other regions in the world, including Asia. (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], July 5 (ANI): Russian Ambassador to India Denis Alipov in an exclusive interview with Sputnik, has said that New Delhi does not support attempts to isolate Russia as he referred to "clear consensus" at the BRICS meeting last month against "arbitrary sanctions, which are the exclusive prerogative of the UN Security Council".

"The XIV BRICS Summit held on June 23 this year was certainly another significant step in the development of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping, which in essence reflects the formation of a new reality in international relations - the transition from a unipolar system to polycentric world order," he said.

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Denis Alipov said that against the backdrop of geopolitical collisions, the five countries send a powerful message of common understanding of global processes - from reforming the multilateral system of economic governance to the situation in disarmament and non-proliferation, information security, counter-terrorism and other challenges.

"There was a clear consensus against arbitrary sanctions, which are the exclusive prerogative of the UN Security Council. We also shared disapproval of the distorting effects of any discriminatory measures in international trade, which mainly affect developing countries," he said.

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He also suggested building a smooth and reliable system of mutual settlements as an alternative to a compromised mechanism based on the dominance of the US dollar, reported Sputnik.

"We suggest developing a new international currency, to connect the banks of the BRICS countries to the Russian System for Transfer of Financial Messages, SPFS (a SWIFT analogue), to integrate national payment systems into a unified network for cross-border clearing settlements," he said.

"Clearly, no less important are steps to strengthen BRICS' sectoral cooperation, which, according to the results of this year's work, continues to expand in the spheres of health, science and technology, space, etc. The New Development Bank, having a loan portfolio of (USD) 29Bln, stands out for its successful project activities," he added.

The Russian envoy said he believes that the BRICS, contrary to criticism, "will have an increasing influence on world processes".

Asked how does India and China's interaction within the BRICS framework unfold against the backdrop of the territorial dispute between the two countries, he said interaction within BRICS is "mature and constructive".

"The active participation of India and China in all BRICS events this year clearly demonstrates this. The most important thing is that the member states use this platform not to antagonize each other but to promote mutually beneficial cooperation and synergy of interests," said Alipov.

"The 'Five' offer an extensive common agenda on these very foundations, that in one way or other will also contribute to overcoming bilateral disagreements," he added. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Mexico City, Jul 5 (AP) Mexico's president submitted a bill Tuesday to end daylight saving time, putting an end to the practice of changing clocks twice a year.

Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer said Mexico should return to God's clock, or standard time, arguing that setting clocks back or forward damages people's health.

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That would mean darkness falling an hour earlier on summer afternoons.

The recommendable thing is to return to standard time, which is when the solar clock coincides with the people's clock, the clock of God, Alcocer argued.

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Mexicans set their clocks ahead this year on April 3, and are scheduled to set them back on Oct 30. The changes, if approved, would presumably apply to next year.

The change would mean central Mexican time, which covers most of the country, potentially could be permanently two hours behind the east coast of the United States; it is now one hour behind for most of the year. The US Senate in March passed a bill to make daylight savings permanent, though the measure has not passed the House of Representatives.

Economists argue that, while the energy savings are minimal, going back to standard time might cause trouble for financial markets in Mexico by putting US east coast markets so far ahead.

Lopez Obrador has said he is considering keeping daylight savings time for some northern border states.

And businesses like restaurants that have become accustomed to staying open later may have to close earlier as many crime-wary Mexicans often try to be off the streets after dark.

Nearly a dozen states across the US have already standardised daylight saving time. (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Karachi [Islamabad], July 5 (ANI): Former Pakistan Minister and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Babar Khan Ghauri was arrested by Karachi police on Monday night at Jinnah International Airport, in relation to a money laundering and terror financing case.

According to the Dawn newspaper, a senior official confirmed the arrest of Ghauri, who returned to Pakistan after ending his seven-year exile in the United States, however, the official did not share the details of the move by the law enforcement agency.

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"Situation would be clear by Tuesday when the former key man of the MQM would be produced before the court," said the official.

The former ports and shipping minister was granted a two-week protective bail in a corruption reference and a money laundering and terror financing case.

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Ghauri announced his return to Pakistan following the orders of the Sindh High Court but did not reveal the details of his future plans in the country, the Dawn reported.

Last month, the minister had through his attorney moved the SHC and submitted that he was presently abroad and willing to come back and surrender before trial courts.

The federal minister along with the founder of MQM, Altaf Hussain and other leaders of the party were booked by the Federal Investigation Agency in 2017 in a money laundering and terror financing case, the Dawn reported.

The National Accounta!bility Bureau had also filed a reference in an accountability court in 2018 against him and others for alleged illegal regularisation of 940 employees of the Karachi Port Trust, causing a loss of Rs 2.8 billion to the national exchequer.

In October 2019, judicial and prosecution officials said the court had declared Babar Ghauri a proclaimed offender after the investigation officer in the case had submitted a report stating that there was no likelihood of arrest of the former minister in the near future since he had probably gone into hiding to avoid arrest, the Dawn reported.

Sources said that the former Minister Babar Khan Ghauri, who served as Minister for Ports and Shipping Pakistan in former Prime Ministers of Pakistan Yousaf Raza Gillani and Shaukat Aziz's tenure was residing in Dubai for past months before he scheduled his return to Pakistan. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Islamabad, Jul 6 (AP) A prominent Pakistani TV anchorperson known for publicly supporting former Prime Minister Imran Khan was arrested Tuesday on the outskirts of the capital, his colleagues said.

It was unclear on what charges police arrested Imran Riaz Khan.

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The arrest of the TV journalist comes weeks after a court in Islamabad ordered police not to arrest him and several other journalists after complaints were lodged accusing them of inciting hatred against the military.

There was no immediate comment from the government.

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Khan, the former premier, took to Twitter to condemn the arrest of the anchorperson.

Khan was ousted as prime minister through a no-confidence vote in the parliament in April. He contends his removal was part of a US plot, a charge Washington denies. (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Ankara, Jul 5 (AP) Police in Turkey's capital broke up a LGBTQ Pride march Tuesday and detained dozens of people.

Turkish authorities have banned LGBTQ events, but around 50 people holding rainbow flags nevertheless marched toward a main park to mark the end of Pride Month.

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Police officers prevented the group from reaching the park, detaining the participants on a busy street in central Ankara.

Some of the marchers were forced to the ground, angering passers-by who tried to physically intervene or pleaded with officers to let them go. Plain-clothed officers were seen pushing them away.

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Organisers said at least 30 people were detained.

A small group of Islamists, who regard the LGBTQ community as a threat, held a counter-demonstration near the park.

Turkey previously was one of the few Muslim-majority countries to allow Pride marches. The first was held in 2003, the year after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party came to power.

In recent years, the government has adopted a harsh approach to public events by groups that do not represent its religiously conservative views. Large numbers of arrests and the use of tear gas and plastic pellets by police have accompanied Pride events.

More than 300 LGBTQ people were briefly detained following a ban on Pride events in Istanbul late last month. (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Beijing, July 5: Several Chinese property developers have said they would accept produce, including peaches, watermelons and garlic, as down payments on new homes as they attempt to attract buyers.

However, some of these unusual offers have now reportedly been pulled, the BBC reported. Chinese Tech Firms Pledge To Ban NFTs, Cryptocurrency Marketplaces

Home sales in China have fallen for 11 months in a row, while this week a major developer defaulted on its debts.

Last week, a property company in the eastern city of Wuxi said it would allow peaches be used to offset as much as 188,888 Chinese yuan ($28,218) in down payments.

Another developer in nearby Nanjing said it would accept as much as 5,000 kg of watermelon from farmers.

It valued the produce at 100,000 Chinese yuan, several times what it would cost at local markets, the BBC reported.

However, the promotion that was meant to run until next Friday has been suspended, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported.

"We were told to delete all promotional posters on the social media platforms," the paper quoted a representative of the company as saying, without giving further details.

In May, property firm Central China Management ran a 16-day campaign in which it accepted garlic as down payments for homes in Qi county, a major garlic-producing region.

"We are helping farmers with love, and making it easier for them to buy homes," the firm said in a WeChat post.

Under the deal, one catty of garlic, which is equivalent to around 600 grams, was valued at five Chinese yuan, which is around three times its market price, the BBC reported.

The company said it had accepted 860,000 catties of garlic in deals involving 30 homes.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 05, 2022 01:18 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Chennai, July 5: In a shocking incident, a 34-year-old techie was allegedly beaten to death in front of his family by an Ola cab driver on Old Mahabalipuram Road in Chennai. Police official said that the incident took place over a dispute regarding accommodating passengers in his cab.

According to a report in the The New Indian Express, the deceased has been identified as H Umendar (34) of Guduvanchery. Umendar had gone on an outing with his wife Bhavya (34), two children, and Bhavya's sister and her two children, a police officer said. Uttar Pradesh: Man Beats Police Official Inside Police Station in Mainpuri (Watch Video).

Inspector A Govindharaj said that the family had stepped out of a mall in Navalur after watching a movie around 3.30 pm. "Bhavya booked the cab. When the vehicle arrived, the family allegedly rushed into it," Govindharaj said.

He further said that the cab driver identified as N Ravi (41) from Salem enraged with the way the family got into the vehicle without his permission. The driver asked them to get out and enter the car only after confirming OTP. However, after everyone got down, Umendar allegedly slammed the cab's door. Mumbai Rains Live Updates: Five NDRF Teams Deployed in Mumbai As City Records 95.81 mm of Rain in Last 12 Hours, Landslide in Ghatkopar.

A police officer said, "Ravi picked up an argument with Umendar saying that he should have booked an SUV instead for seven people. As the war of words continued, Ravi slammed his phone on Umendar."

In her complaint, Bhavya claimed that her husband fell unconscious after the driver punched him several times. While Umendar was immediately rushed to a nearby hospital, he was declared dead on arrival. In the meantime, Ravi tried to flee but was caught by onlookers. Earthquake of 5.0 Magnitude Strikes Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 24 Tremors Recorded in Two Days.

The Kelambakkam police have arrested Ravi on charges of murder. He has been remanded to police custody. Sources from the police said that Umendar was working as a software developer in Coimbatore, and had come to Guduvanchery on Saturday to spend the weekend with his family.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 05, 2022 12:55 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
The Delhi Police has registered an FIR against Director Leena Manimekalai, a day after a complaint was lodged against her over a controversial poster of her new documentary, a senior police official said on Tuesday. The poster was shared by Manimekalai on social media on July 2.
The agency wants to record their statements under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in the case being probed against Azam Khan, they said. Azam Khan has been grilled by the agency in the case when he was lodged in Sitapur jail. He is out on bail at present.
The Singapore government is planning to introduce additional tough measures to safeguard consumers from the crypto meltdown, including restrictions on retail trading.
An open letter has been sent to CJI NV Ramana, signed by 15 retired judges, 77 retd bureaucrats & 25 retd armed forces officers, against the observation made by Justices Surya Kant & JB Pardiwala while hearing Nupur Sharma's case in the Supreme Court. pic.twitter.com/ul5c5PedWU ANI (@ANI) July 5, 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.)
Following completion of talks, #Finland and #Sweden to sign the Accession Protocols at #NATO Headquarters today. The Accession Protocols will then go to all NATO countries for ratification, according to their national procedures pic.twitter.com/wTAkB2wJ2F DD News (@DDNewslive) July 5, 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.)
Left-leaning Silvina Batakis appointed Argentina's economy minister; peso goes into steep slide. AP Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) July 4, 2022

(SocialLY brings you all the latest breaking news, viral trends and information from social media world, including Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. The above post is embeded directly from the user's social media account and LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body. The views and facts appearing in the social media post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY, also LatestLY does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)
(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.)
Munatha Jasim watched Iraqi civil defense workers in red suits scurry among the ruins of her neighbors homes Friday, extracting the dead and zipping them into blue body bags.

The massive explosion that tore through Baghdad Street last week killed nine of Jasims relatives, including son Firas, 7, and daughter Taiba, 4. We recovered half his body, she said of the 7-year-old. The rest is still there.

The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq is investigating whether it was responsible for an airstrike in the west Mosul neighborhood of Aghawat Jadidah March 17 that local civil defense officials said killed at least 200. It would be the highest civilian death toll from an airstrike since the battle against the militant group Islamic State began more than two years ago and among the deadliest incidents in modern warfare.

The coalition has opened a formal civilian casualty credibility assessment on this allegation, and we are currently analyzing conflicting allegations and all possible strikes in that area, said U.S. Army Col. Joe Scrocca, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the coalition, who added that coalition forces routinely strike Islamic State targets in that area.

Scrocca said the investigation is looking at multiple allegations placing a strike in the area sometime between March 17 and 23. The Pentagon previously announced four strikes near Mosul March 17 that destroyed 25 fighting positions, 56 vehicles plus a suicide car.

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 U.S. officials, who werent authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation, said initial indications are that a truck loaded with fuel or explosives may have been inadvertently hit, causing a massive explosion that killed over 200 peop

We will continue to assess the allegations and determine what if any role a coalition strike may have had in that area, Scrocca said.

Nearly 50 bodies could be seen Friday in the area of the alleged airstrike, where relatives helped recover remains.

One man approached a bag that contained the body of a pregnant woman, touched it, talked to it, then began to cry and wail. Civil defense workers had to lead him away.

In a nearby garage where bodies were being stored, another man who lost 32 relatives tried to identify them based on what had been recovered: some government identification cards, a brown wallet and a black purse. But he started to sob, and had to step outside, sit on the curb and hang his head.

Jasim walked down a dirt street that reeked of death. Bodies were still pinned under houses; blackened hands and a pair of feet in yellow high-top sneakers protruded from one place in the rubble. Finally, she stopped and pointed to the ruins of her home. She said a militant sniper had set up across the street from her house before the attack.

Just because one Islamic State [fighter] was on our house, the aircraft bombed us, she said tearfully.

Residents who witnessed the explosion said it came after militants forced them into their homes.

Scrocca said Islamic States use of civilians as human shields has been a challenge for coalition forces in Mosul.

U.S. officials, who werent authorized to speak publicly on the ongoing investigation, said initial indications are that a truck carrying fuel or explosives may have been inadvertently hit, causing a massive explosion.

The incident is the latest of several fatal attacks in which dozens of civilians are alleged to have been killed at the hands of U.S. forces.

On Wednesday, humanitarian groups said at least 30 civilians were killed when an airstrike hit a school in Syria, south of Raqqah. Less than a week earlier, the U.S. was accused of bombing a mosque in Aleppo province, killing more than 40.

The two incidents are being investigated by the Pentagon.

Despite the mounting allegations, the U.S. is quick to say that no military in history has taken such pains to avoid civilian casualties, and that nearly every bomb dropped is guided by satellite or laser.

Our goal has always been for zero civilian casualties, but the coalition will not abandon our commitment to our partners because of ISISs brutal tactics terrorizing civilians, using human shields, and fighting from protected sites such as schools, hospitals and religious sites, Scrocca said in a statement, using an acronym for Islamic State.

As the battle has moved into a city of narrow pathways and clusters of shops, homes and Muslim shrines, the U.S. military has launched an unprecedented number of airstrikes to help Iraqi forces advance. U.S. pilots describe dozens of strike aircraft circling high above west Mosul, waiting their turn to drop a bomb.

The U.S.-led coalition has unleashed more than 500 aerial bombs, artillery and mortar shells, ground-launched rockets and drone-launched missiles this week, which follows 880 the week prior. More than 18,400 munitions have rained down on Mosul since the offensive began on Oct. 17, according to the Pentagon.

Delivering those strikes without laying waste to the ancient city and the civilians who live there has proven difficult as the militants mix among communities.

The military is investigating more than a dozen reports of civilian casualties in Mosul alone.

Civilian deaths have long poisoned Iraqis relationship with the United States. To mitigate against the deaths, U.S. military officers and air controllers embed with Iraqi forces to direct airstrikes against Islamic State positions and advise Iraqi ground commanders on how best to advance on the battlefield.

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, the top Air Force commander in the Middle East, said in February that U.S. advisors had been granted greater authority and, rather than going through headquarters, now can speak directly to pilots so that strikes can be launched quickly.

The U.S. military employs a lengthy set of precautions, including written rules of engagement and multiple levels of approval before bombs can be dropped or missiles launched. Still, the nature of the war in a dense, heavily populated environment guarantees more accidental deaths, especially when people make split-second life-or-death decisions.

This month, The Pentagon substantiated nine of 19 alleged instances of airstrikes with civilian casualties from January, resulting in two injuries and 21 deaths.

The Pentagon has acknowledged 220 civilian deaths from coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria since the U.S. campaign against Islamic State began in 2014.

Airwars, a London-based nonprofit that monitors civilian deaths from coalition air raids, put the casualty figures much higher, at about 2,700 civilians killed in airstrikes in both countries during that time.

Chris Woods, director of Airwars, said his analysts were overwhelmed with the spate of recent allegations.

Reported civilian deaths from coalition strikes have been rising for some months, but where were at now  with more than 1,000 claimed fatalities so far this month  is unprecedented, he said. I dont think any of us at Airwars expected to see allegations against the Coalition running so high  even with the predicted high risk to civilians during the Mosul assault.

The Iraqi government was also looking into the alleged airstrike last week, said Brig. Gen. Tahsin Ibrahim, spokesman for the ministry of defense.

If we hit civilians there is a big investigation, and if the investigation finds sufficient evidence, the case may be referred to a military court, he said.

Civil defense workers and witnesses at the scene of the alleged airstrike late Friday said it came in response to militants who had fired on aircraft in the area. Some said they saw only a few militants, others said they saw 10.

Iraqi Civil Defense Lt. Col. Taha Ali said the airstrikes came after militants began shooting at aircraft with heavy rockets.

Thats why the aircraft fired, he said, adding that he didnt think Iraqi or coalition forces were to blame. Its Islamic States fault because they were shooting. If you shoot, theyll shoot back  the army is just doing their job.

Several witnesses described being forced into their homes before the airstrike by militants who burned their cars, parked a truck packed with explosives next to a house and perched on a roof, firing weapons.

Daesh was not letting us go out, said Ihab Adnan, 35, a laborer, using a common term for Islamic State as he picked his way through the remains of his uncles house next door.

Adnan pointed to a photo in the ruins of his 13-year-old cousin, Ali Ramadan, whose body was now zipped in a body bag.

He said a series of airstrikes began at just after 5 p.m., and everything was exploding.

He could hear his relatives screaming next door. Adnan was screaming, too. He emerged to discover several families had been buried in their collapsed houses: 18 in his uncles house, 72 in a nearby home, 130 in another. He could hear some of the injured crying.

We were running and taking people out of the ruins, Adnan said.

Officials at an Iraqi military clinic nearby said they treated more than 20 survivors.

Truck driver Rayid Najim Abdullah said he felt an airstrike hit his home and then ignite a truck packed with explosives parked nearby.

The house just fell on us, said Abdullah, 48.

His wife and three children, ages 12, 10 and 5, were all hospitalized Friday. Abdullah also had a cut on his nose, and looked bereft.

I lost my car and everything, he said, gesturing at the remains of his street.

Majid Taib Najim, 47, was sheltering inside his house with 40 relatives when he saw aircraft bomb the area, striking his house and the truck. He said they were lucky to escape unharmed.

All the people that died here is because of a mistake by the aircraft, Najim said.

Suha Khalid Gharab, 60, lost 20 relatives in the explosion, including a 1-year-old.

Its a crime, killing civilian people, she said as she sat inside her damaged house Friday, surrounded by neighbors.

Some called for families to be compensated by the government, so they can rebuild. Others wanted assurances that civilians would be better protected by Iraqi and coalition forces in the future.

This is how theyre liberating the area? asked Ahmed Abd, 43, a laborer.

Iraqi civil defense teams first reached the area Thursday, extracting 40 bodies. They made slow progress Friday extracting 42 more bodies buried in several feet of rubble, at times relying on a jackhammer, whirring blade and a bulldozer to clear mounds of debris from a collapsed house where 130 are believed to have been buried.

Saleh Jamal, a longtime civil defense worker, surveyed the scene from a garage full of body bags nearby and said it was the worst he has seen in 30 years outside of Baghdad, comparing it to the deadly bombing of the capitals Karada district last year that killed about 300 people.

Yesterday we brought up 10 small children, he said, shaking his head.

Turkya Azudin sat in an empty room above the garage, watching the teams at work below and counting relatives she had lost: 18.

Neighbor Marwan Saleh, 50, sat next to her, awaiting word on the bodies of his daughter, son-in-law and 2-month-old grandson.

Theyre still in there, he said, gesturing to the collapsed house and vowing to keep vigil until I recognize them.

Saleh said he hopes Iraqi forces learn from the deaths on Baghdad Street.

Its too much, all these airstrikes on this one area. Why? he said. Liberate another way, not this way.

Times staff writer Hennessy-Fiske reported from Mosul and Hennigan from Washington, D.C. Times photojournalist Marcus Yam contributed.

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Twitter: @mollyhf

william.hennigan@latimes.com

Twitter: @wjhenn

ALSO

U.S. aid group provides medical help to Iraqis near front lines in Mosul

PHOTOS: Deadly airstrike in Mosul kills scores of civilians

East Mosul may be free from Islamic State control, but its far from secure

UPDATES:

3 p.m.: This story was updated throughout with additional details from the scene of the explosions.

This story was originally published at 11 a.m.
President Joe Biden sent his Independence Day message as different cities across the country celebrate the July 4th holiday for the first time in three years.

Biden took to Twitter on Monday to highlight that Independence Day is a "sacred day" in the United States.

The Fourth of July is a sacred day in our country  it's a time to celebrate the goodness of our nation, the only nation on Earth founded based on an idea: that all people are created equal.



Make no mistake, our best days still lie ahead.  President Biden (@POTUS) July 4, 2022

"It's a time to celebrate the goodness of our nation, the only nation on Earth founded based on an idea: that all people are created equal," Biden underscored in his tweet.

The president then underscored that the best days of the Americans "still lie ahead."

Biden also delivered an Independence Day speech, marking the 246th anniversary of the U.S.' Independence as a nation.

Biden also highlighted equality during his speech, emphasizing that the U.S. is the only country based on ideas, rather than other aspects, including geography, religion, or ethnicity.

The president then said that the laws implemented in the U.S. are created to protect the vulnerable, check those in power, and guarantee the "pursuit of justice."

READ NEXT: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Slams Joe Biden for Urging Gas Companies to Lower Their Prices

Independence Day: July 4th Celebration Across U.S.

Different cities across the U.S. engaged in their July 4th celebrations. According to PBS, colorful displays lit up the cities, such as New York, Seattle, Chicago, and Dallas.

The city of Baltimore resumed its Independence Day celebration after a two-year hiatus.

"I'm happy to see that downtown is getting back together, how it's supposed to be," Baltimore resident Kirsten Monroe said to a local news channel.

Meanwhile, in Miami's Bayfront Park, crowds built throughout the day in anticipation of the July 4th nighttime show, according to CBS News.

Some Independence Day celebrators in Florida like Matthew Cruz noted that it was their first time celebrating the holiday ever since the COVID pandemic began.

"We're here to enjoy the fireworks in Miami and you know, be a part of the city," Cruz added.

The fireworks show at Bayfront Park will start at 9 p.m. Miami police suggest that those planning at the park to watch the show use public transportation. All paid parking in the downtown area will also be open.

Independence Day would also be celebrated by some 52 newly naturalized citizens, as they would swear oaths of citizenship in Mount Vernon. Treasury Secretary Janett Yellen highlighted their importance in America's workforce.

"Immigrants strengthen our workforce, and, in the process, help drive the resiliency and vitality of our economy," Yellen underscored.

Independence Day: Some Cities Postponed Fireworks Display

Not all cities in the U.S. will be able to participate in the July 4th celebration during Independence Day, due to a variety of reasons.

Three Wisconsin cities postponed their fireworks display but promised to give the show at a different date.

Milwaukee and Wauwatosa Cities pushed back their fireworks display, citing weather concerns. Milwaukee said that it will have the show on Tuesday but is still pending due to the weather.

However, Wauwatosa has not yet announced a specific date when it will push through with the fireworks display.

The city of Waukesha also announced the postponement of its fireworks display for Independence Day. A date for the city's celebration is yet to be announced.

READ NEXT: Mexico: Officials Demobilize Latest Migrant Caravan Headed to U.S. After 2 Days of March | Here's How

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: President Biden Delivers Remarks at July 4th Event With Military Families - From PBS NewsHour
Former U.S. President Donald Trump should be charged with rebellion or insurrection to prevent him from holding political office again, according to Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks.

Wine-Banks made an MSNBC appearance on Friday, as reported by Business Insider, wherein she was asked whether she thought Trump would at least be indicted for obstruction of justice.

The Watergate prosecutor then said that one of the "best" crimes to indict the former U.S. president would be rebellion or insurrection, which is an offense under Title 18 of the U.S. Code, Section 2383.

Wine-Banks added that she thinks it would be "horrible not to act on what is now blatantly obvious to anyone who has watched the hearings."

She said that a rebellion or insurrection charge would see the convicted offender barred from "ever holding federal office again," unlike a seditious conspiracy charge.

In addition, Wine-Banks said that Trump could face several other charges based on the testimonies shown during the Jan. 6 hearings.

She mentioned obstruction of Congress, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering and referred to Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony.

READ NEXT: Jan. 6 Hearings: Donald Trump Could Face Multiple Criminal Referrals to DOJ -Rep. Liz Cheney

Donald Trump Jan. 6 Charges

Former Washington D.C. police officer Michael Fahone said that there is "ample probably cause" to charge Trump with crimes in last year's Jan. 6 insurrection, according to a Huff Post report.

Fahone said in an interview on CNN with Jim Acosta that the rule of law has to mean something but said that he does not have the "highest of hopes" that Trump will be charged.

Fahone was among D.C police officers who were beaten by a mob of Trump supporters who breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

He resigned last year after returning to duty following months of treatment for physical and emotional injuries.

Fahone said that if there is probable cause to suggest that Trump committed the crimes, he should be arrested, and the case should be placed before a grand jury.

He added that if the jury indicted Trump, he should be tried.

Aziz Huq, a professor and constitutional law scholar at the University of Chicago Law School, said in a U.S. News report that prosecuting Trump could radicalize even further the movement he is associated with.

On the other hand, he said that failing to hold people at the highest levels accountable for Jan. 6 could delegitimize the democratic institution that was under assault that day.

Jan. 6 Hearings

A Jan. 6 panel member said that more evidence is emerging in the investigation supporting the recent testimony that the former president wanted to join an angry mob that marched to the Capitol, as reported by Los Angeles Times.

At least two more hearings are scheduled this month focused on showing how Trump illegally directed a violent mob toward the U.S. Capitol and failed to take quick action to stop the attack.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger said that Hutchinson testified under oath, and the panel members found her credible.

Rep. Adam Schiff said in a separate interview that they are following additional leads, which could lead to new testimony.

READ MORE: Donald Trump Admits He Didn't Win Presidential Election 2020 During Interview With Presidential Historians

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Jill Wine-Banks: 'Dangerous' Not To Prosecute Trump If There's A Crime - from MSNBC
Hurricane Bonnie is on its way to the Pacific coast of Mexico on Monday after it killed at least 5 Central Americans when it crossed Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Per the U.S. National Hurricane Center, as of Monday afternoon, Bonnie had sustained winds of 100 miles per hour (mph), according to Associated Press. The said hurricane is centered 210 miles south of Acapulco, Mexico, and it moves west at 17 mph.

Accuweather noted that Bonnie's maximum sustained winds as of 10 a.m. CDT on Monday turned the hurricane's category 1 to category 2.

Forecasters underscored that Hurricane Bonnie was expected to stay at sea. They added that the hurricane posed no threat to land as it moved westward off the coast of Southern Mexico.

However, Mexico's Meteorological service has warned that Bonnie could cause strong winds, rains, mudslides, and flooding.

"The southwestern coast of Mexico can expect heavy rainfall, locally gusty winds and strong rip currents as the storm tracks south of the country," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan Pydynowski said.

Meteorologists also warned of life-threatening surf and rip currents due to Hurricane Bonnie, per BBC.

Bonnie is expected to move away from Mexico's coast on Wednesday.

READ NEXT: Independence Day: Joe Biden Delivers July 4th Message as Cities Celebrate the Holiday

Hurricane Bonnie: 5 Dead in Central America

At least five people from Central America were reported dead after Hurricane Bonnie traversed the region from the Caribbean.

Reports noted that at least four people died in Nicaragua, and another one died in El Salvador.

All four dead in Nicaragua reportedly died after being swept away by rivers that had been turned into raging torrents due to heavy rains.

Juan Carlos Aleman Mendoza from Nicaragua died as he rescued passengers from a local bus that was washed away by flooding.

Other victims in Nicaragua were identified by TeleSUR English as Alberto Flores, Martin Martinez, and Santiago Lopez.

Meanwhile, one young woman reportedly died in El Salvador while rescue workers searched for at least one missing man.

Tens of thousands of people across Nicaragua had no electricity in the aftermath of Hurricane Bonnie.

The floods have also affected the town of Puerto Principe, located in the Nueva Guinea region, a municipality in the Autonomous Region of the South Caribbean Coast, in #Nicaragua pic.twitter.com/tYKCm5rWpp  teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) July 4, 2022

The Nicaraguan Aqueduct and Sewer Company (ENACAL) noted that at least 10,659 families have no water supply in the department of Rivas. Another 9,316 families got "turbid" water in the aftermath of Hurricane Bonnie.

Areas in El Salvador remain under alert for further possible flooding. President Nayib Bukele mentioned that schools would remain closed on Monday. In the country's capital, San Salvador, roads reportedly collapsed, and cars were swept away due to Hurricane Bonnie.

Hurricane Bonnie

Hurricane Bonnie made its landfall on Friday night along the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border. During that time, Bonnie was classified as a tropical storm with winds up to 50 mph.

However, the storm Bonnie strengthened its wind, making it a category 1 hurricane on Sunday and becoming a category 2 hurricane on Monday.

Bonnie was marked as the third hurricane of the 2022 Eastern North Pacific Season, following Hurricane Agatha in May and Hurricane Blas in June.

READ NEXT: Texas Truck Tragedy: DHS Alejandro Mayorkas Seems to Place Blame on 53 Migrants for Making the 'Dangerous Journey' to U.S.

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Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Tracking the Tropics: Tropical Storm Bonnie Becomes a Hurricane in the Pacific - From 10 Tampa Bay
A survivor of the tragic semi-truck incident that killed 53 migrants trying to get to the United States has talked to the media from her hospital bed in Texas. Yenifer Yulisa Cardona Tomas is 20 years old and hails from the capital of Guatemala, Guatemala City.

She spoke about her experiences and highlighted the harsh conditions the smugglers imposed upon her and the other migrants. Cardona Tomas said it was already a hot day on June 27, the day the incident happened, as they waited for the truck on the Texas side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Migrant Survivor Talks About Her Harrowing Experience Inside the Trailer

According to the Associated Press, miss Cardona Tomas told the media about her experience via a video interview using a phone, she recalled that smugglers confiscated their phones and covered the trailer floor with what she believes is powdered chicken bouillon. This may have been used to throw off sniffer dogs they might encounter at checkpoints. With the weather already hot outside, she said that being packed inside the trailer with dozens of others made it stifling.

And because it was so hot inside, she remembered an advice from a friend to stay near the doors because it's cooler there. That piece of advice might have ended up saving her life. She would then tell another friend who she was traveling with about it. Together, they did not stay at the end of the trailer, but nearer to the doors. The same friend also survived, likely because of that other friend's crucial advice.

The truck would make additional stops to pick up more migrants along the way. And as more people get stuffed inside the trailer, more people began to cluster near the door with her and her friend.

It became hotter inside, and people were getting thirstier. Some cried out and called out for help. Some were calling for the driver to stop. She then said that some could not breathe.

A person, perhaps the driver, then yelled that they were about to arrive in 20 minutes. Some asked for water, as the truck made continuous stops to pick up more migrants. She lost consciousness because of the heat, and the next thing she remembered was that she was already in the hospital. Yenifer Yulisa Cardona Tomas is currently receiving treatment at the Methodist Hospital Metropolitan in San Antonio.

READ MORE: 46 Migrants Found Dead Inside Semi-Truck in Texas; Greg Abbott Blames Joe Biden for Horrific Tragedy

Survivor Asked Her Father To Help Her Migrate

ABC News reported that she said her father helped her get into the U.S. and paid $4,000 for a smuggler to take her there. The main reason he helped her is because of the stories of children leaving and not telling their families and ending up disappearing as they try to get into the United States.

Her father also talked to the media and said that he stayed in touch with her daughter up until the morning of June 27, before their cellphones were confiscated. It was not until late at night that her family learned of the incident. Her father said they cried and were even thinking that they were going to have a wake and bury her. However, she survived and said that she is a miracle.

Guatemala's Foreign Ministry said 20 of its citizens passed away in the tragedy. They also claimed that 16 of those who died have been positively identified already. Foreign Minister Mario Bucaro told the Associated Press that he hoped that the first bodies be repatriated this week.

The driver and three others have already been arrested, and they have also been already charged. A memorial was erected by citizens at the site where the truck was discovered.

READ MORE: Mexico: Poverty, US Border Issues Blamed for Devastating Deaths of At Least 50 Migrants

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Written by: Rick Martin

WATCH: Memorial grows at site of Texas migrant deaths - AP Archive
A Texas deputy claimed that the arrest of yoga teacher Kaitlin Armstrong, a suspect in the death of cyclist Anna Moriah Wilson, was perfect timing. The officer claimed that she could further alter her appearance if it was done at a later time.

In an interview with the "TODAY Show," Austin, Texas' Deputy Marshall Brandon Filla noted that Armstrong made the changes to throw off law enforcement officials from identifying her in Costa Rica, according to the Daily Mail.

Filla also indicated that Armstrong may have attempted to get tattoos to make her more unidentifiable. He previously confirmed that the murder suspect cropped her hair to shoulder length and dyed it dark brown to resemble her sister.

The Texas deputy made his comments after an eyewitness alleged that he saw a receipt belonging to Armstrong that indicated she had undergone cosmetic surgery.

Costa Rica eyewitness Zachary Paulsen previously told Inside Edition that he had found a $6,350 receipt for cosmetic surgery procedure among her possessions, according to Fox News. The receipt was found at Don Jon's Surf and yoga Lodge, where she stayed with a different name.

It did not indicate what kind of procedure was done on Armstrong. However, Paulsen pointed out that she had bandages on her nose.

READ NEXT: Independence Day: Joe Biden Delivers July 4th Message as Cities Celebrate the Holiday

Costa Rica Witness Claims Kaitlin Armstrong Left 2 Passports

Paulsen also alleged that Armstrong left behind two American passports in a locker where she stored her things. One of the passports bore her name, and the other seemingly belonged to her lookalike sister, Christine Armstrong.

A source revealed to the Daily Mail that Kaitlin arrived in Costa Rica on June 8.

Kaitlin reportedly used the name "Ari" during her stay in Santa Teresa. Fellow guests described her as a loner.

The source also noted that the staff has repeatedly turned down her requests to work as a yoga instructor. However, she has been able to teach in Santa Teresa during the regular yoga teacher's off.

Kaitlin Armstrong Extradited to Texas

On Saturday, Kaitlin Armstrong was extradited to Texas from Costa Rica. U.S. Marshals escorted the then fugitive yoga teacher in handcuffs through George Bush International Airport in Houston to a vehicle waiting outside the airport.

Armstrong was booked in Harris County Jail and will remain there until she is transferred to Austin. Her bond was set for $3.5 million, and she will be subjected to GPS monitoring and an 8 p.m. curfew if she files the bail.

Armstrong was slammed with a homicide arrest warrant on May 17, after a vehicle like hers was recorded on video near the home where cyclist Ana Moriah Wilson was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds.

Armstrong was also issued an arrest warrant over alleged unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. This month, another federal arrest warrant claimed that shell casings found at the murder scene in Texas matched the two handguns found in a home she shared with cyclist Colin Strickland, who is her boyfriend.

Wilson was reportedly caught in a love triangle with Strickland and Armstrong, and investigators believe that her death may have been a violent act of romantic jealousy.

READ NEXT: Hurricane Bonnie Moves Toward Mexico's Pacific Coast; Kills 5 in Central America

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Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Kaitlin Armstrong Booked in Harris County Jail After Arrest in Costa Rica - From KXAN
Pope Francis has strongly condemned abortion in the wake of the controversial Supreme Court ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade.

According to Daily Mail, Pope Francis respects the high court's ruling but compared terminating a baby to "hiring a hitman to solve a problem."

"I ask: Is it legitimate, is it right, to eliminate a human life to resolve a problem?" Francis recently told Reuters in an interview at his Vatican residence.

The Catholic Church believes that life begins at the moment of conception. The pope noted that he had not studied the Roe v. Wade ruling enough to comment on it from a juridic point of view, admitting that he does not understand it from "a technical point of view."

Francis noted that he had to study it first as he did not really understand the details of the ruling 50 years ago. At the moment, he said he could not say whether the decision was right or wrong from a judicial perspective, the Vatican News reported.

Francis was also asked about a debate in the United States over whether a Catholic politician who is personally opposed to abortion but supports others' right to choose should be allowed to receive Holy Communion.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was barred from receiving communion in her home diocese of San Francisco by Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone due to her advocacy of abortion in May.

On June 29, Pelosi reportedly received Holy Communion at a Mass with Pope Francis at the Vatican. However, it is unclear if the pope was aware that Pelosi attended.

READ NEXT: Roe v. Wade Overturned: What It Means for Abortion in California, Florida, New Mexico | Where Will It Be Illegal?

Pope Francis on Abortion

Pope Francis said his opposition to abortion was not a religious issue but a human one while speaking at a Vatican-sponsored anti-abortion conference in May.

The Catholic leader has also previously expressed sympathy for women who have chosen abortion. Newsweek reported that the pope also made it easier for them to be absolved of what Catholics see as the sin of abortion.

The National Catholic Reporter has previously asked Pope Francis how the church should respond to parishioners supporting abortion rights.

The Pope replied that he would "never" deny anyone the sacrament of communion. He added that he has never denied the Eucharist to anyone since the time he was a priest.

Roe v. Wade Revocation

Civil rights attorneys are planning new approaches to advance racial justice after Supreme Court has decided to overthrow the Roe v. Wade ruling.

ReNika Moore, the director of the ACLU's Racial Justice Program, said the decision to repeal a 50-year precedent in the landmark abortion case had signaled another turning point.

Moore noted that she saw how the decision would "disproportionately imperil" the lives of low-income and women of color, particularly Black women. She said it does not "bode well for how the court will treat those civil rights cases," according to The Guardian.

Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, noted that the "epicenter of action" is changing.

He added that civil rights groups cannot solely rely on the courts and must instead renew a focus on building coalitions with other groups and lobbying.

READ MORE: Pres. Joe Biden Labels Supreme Court Leaked Opinion on Abortion Case as "Radical Decision"

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Pope Francis Dismisses Resignation, Denies to Have a Cancer and Condemns Abortion on Roe v. Wade - From EWTN
Change is coming to Chile, as a Constitutional Assembly has drafted a new proposed constitution for the South American country. And with the draft finished, the Chilean Constitutional Assembly presented the formal draft to President Gabriel Boric on Monday.

According to the Associated Press, the proposed constitution would replace the charter imposed on the country by a military dictatorship around 41 years ago.

Chileans are set to vote in a September plebiscite whether to adopt the proposed constitution or not. The nationwide plebiscite will happen on September 4.

Boric wrote on Twitter that it is still the people who would decide their destiny, whether they move forward with the new constitution or stay with the status quo of the current system.

What Is Inside Chile's New Draft Constitution?

The new draft's first article described Chile as "a social and democratic state," and as "plurinational, intercultural and ecological." It also recognizes the existence of 11 Indigenous groups, who comprise 12.8% of Chile's population of approximately 19 million.

The draft also features ways for Indigenous people to reclaim their land and introduce a new public healthcare system. It also introduces new rights to the people, including equal pay and equal work between men and women.

The draft constitution includes 388 articles, many of which highlight current problems such as the country's inequality.

READ NEXT: Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy Talks to Argentina and Chile Presidents Amid Russia's Invasion

Chileans Divided in the Vote for Constitutional Change

According to CNN, the existing constitution takes inspiration from University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman's neoliberal model. It was first introduced by Chile's infamous military dictator, General Augusto Pinochet.

However, despite many amendments, many in Chile blame it for the vast inequality in the country. This new constitution seeks to end that. An increase in the metro fare sparked the talk about replacing the constitution three years ago.

Massive protests erupted in the country in 2019, forcing then-president Sebastian Pinera to agree to a referendum about drawing up a new Chilean constitution.

And in October 2020, more than 78% of people in Chile made their voices heard and agreed to rewrite the constitution. They then voted again in June 2021 to pick who would join the Constitutional Assembly. Independents and leftists won 60% of the vote. While the new constitution is seen as a major victory for normal Chileans, the country's right-wing is staunchly opposed to the change, according to Al Jazeera.

Right-wing lawyers and politicians in the country continue to rally other Chileans to reject this new constitution. And they might be poised to, as a recent Cadem poll shows 51% of Chileans want to reject it.

However, because of years of frustration with the right-wing-led governments, far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast, who led in the primaries and polls, was soundly defeated by the young left-leaning Boric as president. This makes it likely that the polls are wrong again, with a different outcome also likely to come out.

READ MORE: Pope Francis Appoints Leonardo Steiner as First Cardinal From Brazil's Amazon Rainforest

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Written by: Rick Martin

WATCH: Chile's Constitutional Reform: Referendum on New Constitution Scheduled for September - From FRANCE 24
Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera, also known as "El Chapo," is considered to be one of the wealthiest drug traffickers in the world.

According to The Sun, El Chapo headed the Sinaloa Cartel after his humble beginnings in a poor farming family at Badiraguato municipality, an impoverished and remote area in Mexico's Sinaloa state.

Aside from El Chapo, which means "shorty" in English, the 64-year-old drug kingpin has also earned the nickname "El Rapido" for his speed in transporting drugs from Mexico to America.

During his 13-year reign as the leader of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, El Chapo transformed his business from a modest marijuana operation into one of the wealthiest and most powerful criminal organizations in the world, whether legal or otherwise.

Under his guidance, the Sinaloa cartel developed unconventional smuggling techniques and strategies, like utilizing tunnels and hiding drugs in chili pepper cans and fire extinguishers.

He also became an expert at organizing airplanes, boats, trains, and even trucks to carry shipments of drugs into the United States and Europe.

El Chapo was among the people who established the Sinaloa Cartel from the remnants of the Guadalajara Cartel after its leader Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo was arrested in 1989.

He ran logistics for the Guadalajara and Sinaloa Cartels, with the drugs mainly produced in Colombia and delivered to Mexico.

Under El Chapo's leadership, the Sinaloa Cartel started manufacturing methamphetamine within Mexico in the late 80s and early 90s. Aside from meth and marijuana, the cartel also smuggled vast quantities of heroin.

READ NEXT: El Chapo and Emma Coronel Aispuro's Enduring Relationship to Become a Narco-Series

El Chapo Net Worth 2022

According to Celebrity Net Worth, El Chapo had a net worth of $1 billion. But CA Knowledge reported that the net worth of the Mexican drug kingpin could reach $3 billion.

After his arrest, the Mexican government managed to confiscate six of El Chapo's homes. The government sold three of those at an auction in November 2019.

The homes were sold for $107,530, $64,589, and $55,725, failing to meet the government's expectation to sell each home for $1 million or more.

Authorities noted that El Chapo has more than $400 million in cash reserves, stacked in various parts of Mexico, as reported by CA Knowledge.

At the peak of his drug empire between 2005 and 2011, the Mexican drug kingpin exceeded $26 billion in his net worth, which placed him on the list of the Top 20 wealthiest people on the planet.

The Sinaloa Cartel boss also had over $15 billion worth of drugs stockpiled during this period, ready to be shipped to the United States.

Currently, El Chapo's sons are reportedly overseeing more than 50 safe houses across Mexico, with more than $400 million in cash believed to be hidden there.

According to reports, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has frozen different bank accounts linked to Sinaloa Cartel. More than $700 million in cash deposits in those accounts were reportedly taken back to the U.S.

The Case of Sinaloa Cartel Boss El Chapo

The infamous Sinaloa Cartel boss is currently imprisoned in one of the most secure prisons in the U.S. El Chapo was first arrested in Guatemala in 1993 and extradited to Mexico, where he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for murder and drug trafficking.

But in 2001, the Mexican drug kingpin escaped from prison. He was apprehended again in 2014 in Sinaloa and again escaped from prison through a tunnel the following year.

In January 2016, Mexican officials announced that El Chapo has been captured again. He was extradited to the U.S. the following year.

El Chapo was sentenced to spend the rest of his days in the ADX Florence "supermax" prison in Colorado after being sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019.

But even when he's behind bars, the Sinaloa Cartel remained one of the world's most powerful drug trafficking syndicates. The Mexican drug cartel has been known for carrying out assassinations, murders, and torture to protect its turf.

The Sinaloa Cartel seems to have taken its style from Colombia's Cali Cartel by creating strong connections to Mexico's political and economic elite. It has also successfully penetrated government and security forces in areas where the cartel operates.

InsightCrime reported that the cartel's most powerful contacts have traditionally been in the National Action Party. Some sources claimed that the party helped account for the cartel's growth in the last decade.

READ MORE: El Chapo's Wife Emma Coronel Aispuro Could Be an Influencer Earning up to $10,000 per Publication Once She Gets Out of Prison

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: El Chapo vs Pablo Escobar: Who Was More Rich and Powerful - From Luxury Drop
A Texas gunman killed two people and injured four others before he turned the gun on himself to commit suicide, according to Haltom City police.

People reported that the incident occurred on July 2 at around 6:45 p.m. when officers were dispatched to reports of a shooting in a Haltom City neighborhood.

Rick Alexander of Haltom City police said the Texas gunman fatally shot one man and one woman before the police arrived at the scene.

The victims were identified as 33-year-old Collin Davis and 32-year-old Amber Tsai. Aside from the two, the shooter also shot at and wounded an elderly neighbor, who was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, and three police officers.

Chief of Police Cody Phillips said the officers who responded to the scene were immediately met with gunfire as they approached the house. He identified the injured officers as Cpl. Zach Tabler, and officers Tim Barton and Jose Avila.

Phillips said Tabler sustained gunshot wounds to the leg, arm, and hand. He was transferred to a local hospital and underwent surgery.

Barton had gunshot wounds to the leg, while Aviles had been shot on both legs and was still awaiting surgery as of Saturday.

READ NEXT: Texas School Shooter Sends Warning on Facebook Before Horrific Act: "I'm Going To Shoot An Elementary School"

Texas Gunman Commits Suicide

Police said the Texas gunman fled the house through the back door on foot, and a manhunt was launched. Neighbors were advised to stay indoors while he was still at large.

Authorities identified the gunman as 28-year-old Edward Freyman, who later committed suicide by shooting himself in the same neighborhood where he fatally shot Amber Tsai and Collin Davis.

Alexander said the gunman was found with an apparently self-inflicted wound to the head, a "military-style rifle" and a handgun. Alexander noted that Tsai was found dead inside the house while Davis was found dead outside.

According to NPR, the elderly victim was the one who called 911. Phillips said it was an "ambush situation," adding that it could have been worse if officers were not prepared for the situation.

The police chief noted that the Texas gunman knew Tsai and Davis. However, their relationships were not immediately clear.

Neighbors handed out blue ribbons on Monday that quickly went up to tree trunks along the quiet street of tree-lined ranch-style homes.

One neighbor, who lives directly across the street from Tsai, said the victim was a "sweet young person," as reported by NBC DFW News. Friends took to social media to remember Tsai, sharing posts on both Facebook and a GoFundMe page.

Texas Gunman Served in U.S. Army and Texas National Guard

Amber Tsai's sister said the victims were great friends, Star-Telegram reported. As shown by property records, Tsai bought the home on Diamond Oaks Drive in Haltom City in December 2020.

Ahe started working as a senior admissions adviser for ThriveDX, a cybersecurity and digital skills trade school based in Miami, Florida, a month before she moved.

Officials confirmed that the gunman served in U.S. Army and Texas National Guard from 2014 to 2021. Court records showed that Edward Freyman does not appear to have a criminal record in Tarrant County.

Freyman was enlisted as an infantryman in the U.S. Army from October 2014 to October 2019. While in service, he was awarded medals and commendations for Army achievement and professional development as a non-commissioned officer and for good conduct.

After he left the Army in October 2019, Freyman reportedly joined the Texas Army National Guard and served as a sergeant infantryman until March 2021.

The state's elite investigative agency, Texas Ranger, has taken over the investigation. Authorities have not yet determined a motive for the shooting.

READ MORE: Texas Police Shoot, Kill Gunman at Youth Summer Camp After He Opened Fire

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Haltom City Police Give Update on Deadly Shooting That Also Injured Three Officers - From WFAA
A soldier was killed after Mexico's Army fought against a group of hitmen loyal to four sons of Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera in a deadly shootout. The gunfight reportedly happened in broad daylight in the city of Altar in Mexico's Sonora state on Saturday.

According to Daily Mail, the gun battle was sparked by the arrest of 31-year-old Francisco "El Duranguillo" Torres, the leader of the Gente Nueva, the armed wing of the Sinaloa cartel faction controlled by El Chapo's sons, known as Los Chapitos.

In a press briefing on Monday, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said El Duranguillo's arrest spread quickly, and the soldiers were surrounded by 10 or 15 pickup trucks and 60 gunmen.

READ NEXT: El Chapo Case: US Officials Sued by Sinaloa Cartel Boss Ask to Dismiss 'Mistreatment' Lawsuit for 2nd Time

Mexico's President Praises Soldiers for Their Bravery in Fighting Sinaloa Cartel Hitmen Loyal to El Chapo's Sons

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador noted that the assailants outnumbered the soldiers 10 to one. He added that the drug cartel members tried bribing the soldiers with $500,000 to release El Duranguillo at first. However, the soldiers refused, which resulted in the gun battle.

Sadly, one soldier was killed. However, the president and Sonora Governor Alfonso Durazo applauded the soldiers' efforts as they still fought on even when surrounded by the gunmen, and some criminals were arrested.

According to the president, several gunmen blocked the main roads in Altar, Caborca, and Pitiquito in their effort to surround the soldiers and free leader of Gente Nueva. However, the soldiers managed to defeat their assailants and even capture some cartel members after the reinforcements arrived.

A video clip recorded by a resident showed two soldiers placing El Duranguillo under arrest. The gunmen were also seen fleeing the scene as the military returned fire. Some hitmen were crawling through the street while the rest ran.

'El Duranguillo' Led the Sinaloa Cartel's Armed Wing Called Gente Nueva Run by El Chapo's Sons

El Duranguillo is no ordinary cartel leader, as he leads the Sinaloa Cartel's armed wing called Gente Nueva, which is controlled by El Chapo's sons. Authorities said his arrest was a big blow to the cartel.

Infobae reported that three other Gente Nueva members were also arrested following the shootout. They have been identified as Ausencio Aboytes, Juan Sanchez and Jesus Espinosa.

El Duranguillo and the three other men will be investigated for crimes committed against public servants, murder, attempted murder, organized crime, and possession of military weapons.

Mexican soldiers also recovered at least seven assault rifles belonging to Gente Nueva members after the gun battle. The Gente Nueva largely controls the city of Altar, often using the municipality as a staging ground for immigrant and drug smuggling operations.

The group was formed in 1995 amid the war between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Juarez Cartel. The Gente Nueva was the counterpart of the Juarez Cartel's armed wing, the La Linea.

READ MORE: Sinaloa Cartel Boss El Mayo's Son, 'Mayito Gordo,' Gets 9 Years in Prison but Could Be Released Next Year

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Written by: Rick Martin

WATCH: Mexican Army Patrol Attacked After Detaining Suspects - From YardNews
Taoiseach Micheal Martin is due to travel to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Wednesday for a number of engagements in the city.

Mr Martin was travelling on Tuesday and so did not appear as scheduled in the Dail for Leaders Questions.

The trip comes two weeks after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invited Mr Martin to visit Ukraine, which would represent the first Irish state visit to the country.

Talked to @MichealMartinTD on the eve of the historic #EUCO meeting. Thanked for active support of Ukraine's European aspirations and the status of a candidate for EU membership. Invited to make the first visit to in the history of bilateral relations. #EmbraceUkraine    (@ZelenskyyUa) June 21, 2022

Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney visited Kyiv in April and met with his counterparts, Ukraines foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba and defence minister Oleksii Reznikov.

He also visited the town of Bucha on the outskirts of the capital, where suspected killings of civilians prompted global condemnation.

Ireland has taken in more than 36,000 Ukrainian refugees since Russia invaded neighbouring Ukraine at the end of February, and has given millions of euro in humanitarian support and assistance to the country, as well as health equipment and medical donations worth over 4.5 million.

Mr Martin has also been a vocal advocate for Ukraines fast-tracked membership of the EU.

Ireland is ready to walk every step of that journey with Ukraine, providing whatever support and encouragement we can along the way, the Taoiseach has previously said.

Mr Zelensky has thanked Ireland for its active support of Ukraines European aspirations.
A number of bus delays and absences have been criticised by local councillors at the latest Clane-Maynooth Municipal District (MD) meeting.

The issue was raised during a question put forward by Fianna Fail Cllr Daragh Fitzpatrick at the latest MD meeting, which was held on Friday, July 1.

He asked Kildare County Council to update the members on the invitation sent to the National Transport Authority (NTA) and Transport For Ireland (TFI) to meet with the MD's members to discuss 'buses not arriving on time, or in a lot of cases, not arriving at all, on the 120 route from Edenderry to Dublin.'

Cllr Fitzpatrick told those in attendance that an au-pair who was living in his home told him of many incidences of buses not arriving for her, which left him with no choice but to pick her up and give her a lift.

"It is an absolute disgrace," he said: "On the app, it says that the buses have arrived, but they haven't; the failings need to be addressed.

Cllr Daragh Fitzpatrick, Fianna Fail

"I think that the NTA are getting away with murder on this one, and as such, we need to keep highlighting the issue," he concluded.

In response, KCC told those in attendance that the senior engineer of the Sustainable Transport Section wrote to the NTA on May 9 last and sought an update on May 27 and June 20.

KCC said that a response was received on June 24, in which the NTA said: "As with many industries, public transport operators are experiencing significant challenges in recruiting qualified staff following the economic and social constraints connected to the COVID-19 pandemic."

The NTA representative added that elected representatives can email their specific concerns and queries to oireachtasliaison@nationaltransport.ie or info@nationaltransport.ie.
The European Parliament will today vote on the eagerly awaited Report on Mental Health in the Digital World of Work, authored by Midlands-North-West MEP Maria Walsh. The document will come before a full sitting of the Parliament in Strasbourg this morning, with the Report expected to receive widespread support.

It is almost 12 months since MEP Walsh was selected to author the Parliaments first report around mental health, and the west of Ireland MEP is set to use the Report as a springboard to push for a European Year Dedicated to Mental Health for 2023.

This morning, the European Parliament will debate the Report, before votes are cast at 12noon. According to MEP Walsh, it is essential that current EU legislation is updated to respond to the new realities of the digital way of working and to enable companies and countries to facilitate good mental health practices across the board. With this report we are creating and becoming the gold standard when it comes to mental health and wellness in the European Union, stressed Walsh.

Speaking ahead of todays vote, MEP Walsh noted that increasingly digitalised workplaces and the ability to work anytime and anywhere can create both opportunities and risks for the well-being of workers. This, she believes, has become even more apparent due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as the health of teleworkers could not be monitored on a day-to-day basis, in contrast to office-based workers.

Through the digitalisation of our workplaces due to COVID-19, we have seen a huge rise in mental health issues. Cases of burnout, depression, anxiety and fatigue have especially increased among young people. The economic and societal impact that we are facing with mental health if we do not address it now is enormous. It is not only this generation that will suffer from it, it will be the future generations, Walsh warned.

In bringing the Report before Parliament today, Walsh is calling on the European Commission to create a comprehensive EU mental health strategy and a legislative framework to establish minimum requirements for teleworking across the EU. In addition, she is asking that Member States and the Commission include measures to address mental health in their health crisis and pandemic emergency response and preparedness plans.

With this report, we are responding to the realities of teleworking and the opportunities it represents, to ensure work-life balance and well-being in the digital area. The report illustrates the benefits and risks of digitalisation that society has experienced over the past two years. It is essential that current EU legislation is updated to respond to the new realities of the digital way of working. We need to ensure that collective EU mental health policies are put in place. The pandemic has resulted in the sharing of best practices between Member States and it is essential that we now use this information collectively at EU level, she concluded.
The Green Party has welcomed new measures passed in the Oireachtas last week which will give private rental tenants greater security and protection.

The amendments to the Regulation of Providers of Building Works and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2022 will mean that:

No tenancy in Ireland will have a termination notice period of less than 90 days.

Tenancies of less than 3 years will have the minimum notice period increased by 60 days to 180 days.

Eviction notices will be null and void unless the landlord informs the Residential Tenancies Board at the same time as the tenant.

Further contact between tenant and landlord facilitated to make re-letting easier.

The Party spokesperson for Housing, Deputy Francis Noel Duffy said; "The whole idea here is to give tenants more time and to give landlords pause for thought. Previously, a tenant for less than 6 months could be evicted on 28 days' notice through no fault of their own. This gave families and individuals less than one month to source alternative accommodation.

"As we all know, this proved impossible for many in the current rental supply crunch. In this scenario, people were being driven into emergency accommodation who otherwise would have been able to find a new place to live if they had enough time and notice. There is a world of difference between 3 months and 28 days when in a real crisis.

"We also presented the Minister and Department with the idea that the RTB be informed simultaneously to the tenant. This is in order to keep landlords honest in terms of their dealings with tenants and ensure everything is legally correct and above board. It is also intended as a measure to enable the RTB and state authorities to intervene earlier to help people avoid homeless accommodation.

"These measures will go a long way to protecting tenants and we thank the Minister for listening to us, to tenants advocates and to tenants at risk".

Chair of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage Deputy Steven Matthews said; "It is our hope that the new rights will be a foundation stone for a whole new system of early intervention to prevent homelessness. We envisage a situation where, armed with the new knowledge and data at the RTBs disposal, local authorities and homeless organisations can become aware of tenants who need additional help and provide that to them. Our guide here is the incredibly successful Integrated Homeless Service in Parnell Street in Waterford city where local authorities have joined forces with the HSE and NGOs such as the Simon Communities and Focus in order to help people avoid homelessness. They have reported that through their efforts they can help 50% and more of their service users to avoid eviction in the first instance."
Irish Water has move to allay concerns over the Foynes / Shannon Estuary public water supply.

The utility says it has been made aware of a false message in circulation on social media suggesting the water is not safe to drink or consume

"Irish Water would like to assure members of the community that the water being supplied to customers on the Foynes/Shannon Estuary Public Water Supply is safe to consume," said a spokesperson.

"Due to a false and unofficial message being posted on social media and circulated in the area, Irish Water would like to advise that there is No Boil Water Notice in place for Foynes/Shannon Estuary public water supply," he added.

Commenting further, Irish Water Operations Lead for County Limerick, Duane OBrien appealed to those behind the false alert to stop.

"I would ask that people stop sharing these incorrect messages as it is causing people to boil their water when it is not necessary to do so. Public health is Irish Waters primary concern and putting a Boil Water Notice in place in consultation with the HSE is only done so when absolutely necessary. There is no requirement for this to be in place for the Foynes/Shannon Estuary Public Water Supply and we hope this official statement reassures the community.
Older and vulnerable people in Northern Ireland are likely to be offered an updated vaccination in the autumn to combat new variants of Covid-19, the chief scientific adviser has said.

Professor Ian Young has said he believes the region is approaching the peak of another wave of the virus and added that the number infected is likely to rise above one in 25.

Last week it was announced that the self-isolation guidance for those with Covid-19 in Northern Ireland has been reduced to five days in light of the risk posed by the virus.

Professor Young said he believed despite the high rate of infections, the number would begin to fall over the summer.

He told the BBC Talkback programme: The vaccines which we have had in the past have played a really vital part in terms of our response to the epidemic. They continue to provide protection against severe illness.

Unfortunately with the new variants, BA4, BA5, people can become re-infected with those even when they have been vaccinated and therefore it is likely that we will offer updated vaccinations certainly to older people and those who might be considered vulnerable as we move into the autumn.

I think at the moment people are working hard in developing and modifying the vaccine so that they provide better protection against these variants and future variants.

He added: There is some interim advice from JCVI that focuses on older people being over 65

It may well be that as the data and evidence is kept under review that that age falls to include somewhat younger people. The vulnerable will be those who fall into a range of categories due to underlying illness.

It is also very likely, as with flu vaccines, that we will offer boosters to people working in health and social care or in close contact with those who are vulnerable.

However, Professor Young said booster vaccinations were not likely to be offered to younger, healthy people as the forms of Covid circulating usually cause relatively mild illness.

He said: At the moment we are close to the peak of another wave of Covid caused principally by the BA4, BA5 variants.

One person in 25 was infected during the week in the course of the most recent population survey.

I would think it is possible that those numbers will rise before hopefully beginning to fall over the summer.

If it is possible for large groups to congregate outside then the risk of transmission there is very low. If there are large groups meeting in indoor settings with poor ventilation then people should consider using face coverings.

There will be some risk of transmission in those settings, that I think is unavoidable.

I understand that people who feel particularly vulnerable will be very nervous given that we know that quite a lot of Covid is circulation.

I think for those people there is a need to be cautious in terms of behaviours. It would be better to avoid those crowded indoor places and to try to keep distance and try to use face coverings.

Professor Young said there were still a large number of people in hospital with Covid-19.

Many of those people will not be in hospital because of Covid, they will be in hospital for other reasons, but the fact that they have Covid means there is an additional burden of care as far as the hospitals are concerned and additional hospitals need to be taken.

I think we are always concerned about the pressures our hospitals are under.

At the moment the number of patients in hospital with Covid is probably around two thirds of what it was during the peak, which is quite significant for the summer period.
Days after BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis took oath as the new Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena on Tuesday took a jibe at him asking who was the person who stopped him from taking oath as the Chief Minister.

"Devendra Fadnavis has thanked the invisible forces that made the majority test successful. He gave a speech on how strong, great leader Shinde is, but who is the invisible force stopping Fadnavis from taking oath as the chief minister?" questioned the Shiv Sena in its editorial mouthpiece Saamna today.

The Shiv Sena termed the victory as stolen majority and said that it was not the belief of the people of the state, a day after Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde won the Vote of Confidence in the Maharashtra Assembly.

This question stands before Maharashtra. BJP and Shinde faction got the vote of confidence passed in the assembly, this is a stolen majority. This is not the belief of 11 crore people of Maharashtra," it said.

The party further in ts editorial mouthpiece said, At the time of floor test, the BJP-backed Shinde group was supported by 164 MLAs and 99 voted against it. Some MLAs of Congress, NCP were absent at the time of the majority test. It is surprising that senior ministers like Ashok Chavan and Vijay Wadettiwar could not reach the assembly."

The mouthpiece called Fadnavis remarks on his return funny and cautioned that he should not forget that Eknath Shinde is the Chief Minister.

I came again and brought others along, Devendra Fadnavis made such a statement on this occasion, which is funny. He should not forget that Eknath Shinde is the Chief Minister. There is a change of power in Maharashtra where the love of principles, morals and ideas is also not visible," it said.

The Shiv Sena mouthpiece also slammed MLA Santosh Bangar who jumped ship from the Uddhav Thackeray side to the Eknath Shinde faction ahead of the trust vote.

It said, The BJP-backed Shinde faction government has won the majority test in the assembly. MLA Santosh Bangar stood in favour of Shiv Sena till the election for the post of Speaker of the Assembly and what happened in the 24 hours that he joined the vamp of the loyal Shinde faction at the time of the vote of confidence?"

Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde proved his governments majority on the floor of the assembly on Monday by winning the trust vote with ease and completing the arc on an unlikely rebellion that began exactly three weeks ago and led to the collapse of the previous government.

In the 287-member assembly, Shinde  who has 39 other Shiv Sena dissidents backing him, in addition to the Bharatiya Janata Party  secured 164 votes.

Still smarting from the collapse of its government last week, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) could only muster 99 votes. In the 24 hours between the Speakers election and the trust vote, the MVA lost eight more lawmakers  it got 107 votes in the Sunday election but only 99 on Monday  underlining the daily disintegration in the three-party alliance.

After winning the trust vote, Shinde made an emotional address and repeated that his was the real Shiv Sena, not the faction led by former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.

The BJP-Shinde alliance also passed a confidence motion in favour of speaker Rahul Narwekar, empowering him to act against the 15 Sena MLAs. This is to counter the no-confidence motion against Narwekar that was moved by the Shiv Sena on Sunday.

Except for the Speaker who was presiding over the proceedings, 20 lawmakers were absent  including 12 from the Congress, five from the Nationalist Congress Party (two former ministers, Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik, are in jail on graft charges), two from the BJP, and one from the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). In addition, three legislators  two from the Samajwadi Party and one from AIMIM  abstained from voting though they were present in the House.

The House proceedings concluded with the election of former deputy CM, NCPs Ajit Pawar, as the leader of opposition in assembly.

The trust vote victory brought proceedings a full circle for Shinde, who set off with a group of loyal lawmakers on June 20, hours after the then MVA government suffered a setback in the legislative council elections.

He and his loyalists camped in a hotel in Surat, before flying to Guwahati and staying for 11 days there  even as the ranks of the rebels swelled with almost daily desertions from Thackerays camp. The government finally fell on June 29 after the Supreme Court refused to suspend a trust vote called by Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari.

Shinde took oath as CM on June 30, with former CM Devendra Fadnavis as his deputy.
Hernan Cortes was a Spanish conquistador, or conqueror, who is best remembered for conquering the Aztec Empire in 1521 and claiming Mexico for Spain. He also helped colonize Cuba and became a governor of New Spain, a vast area that included large parts of North, Central and South America, as well as several Pacific island archipelagos.

"Like many explorers we know about today, Hernan (also known as Hernando) Cortes's role in the Age of Exploration was influential but controversial," said Erika Cosme, formerly the administrative coordinator of education and digital services at The Mariners' Museum and Park (opens in new tab) in Newport News, Virginia. "He was a smart, ambitious man who wanted to appropriate new land for the Spanish crown, convert Native inhabitants to Catholicism and plunder the lands for gold and riches."

Early life

Cortes was born in 1485 in Medellin, Spain. He was the only son of noble parents, though his family was not wealthy. He was apparently a clever but difficult child and was the source of much anxiety to his parents, according to Britannica (opens in new tab). Cortes' secretary, who wrote a history of Cortes' New World expedition that contained some biographical information, described the conquistador, in general, as ruthless, haughty, mischievous and quarrelsome.

At age 14, Cortes was sent to study law at the University of Salamanca in Spain, but he was unhappy and craved a life of action, so he dropped out after two years. Cortes became fascinated with tales of Christopher Columbus' New World explorations.

Columbus and his expedition members were the first Europeans to see the West Indies when they landed at San Salvador Island in the Bahamas and explored other islands in 1492. Columbus had set sail hoping to find a route to Asia or India. He wanted to profit from and hasten trade for nutmeg, cloves and pomander (a ball of fragrant spices) from the Indonesian "Spice Islands," and pepper and cinnamon from India, which were in high demand, Cosme told Live Science.

Map with the route of Hernan Cortes exploration of Central America. (Image credit: Dimitrios Karamitros via Shutterstock)

However, Columbus' expedition failed to reach its intended destination and instead stumbled upon the Americas, which were completely unknown to Europeans at the time. (Columbus was initially convinced he'd reached Asia, which is why the region is called the "West Indies," according to Britannica.) Reports of Columbus' journey caused a wave of excitement in Spain and Europe, and several more expeditions set out to explore this "New World" in the following years.

Cortes was eager to be part of the dynamic movement. "For individual explorers, gaining public fame could potentially make them rich," Cosme said. According to the Thought Company (opens in new tab), a website that covers history and science, many of these explorers were ambitious men who had been professional soldiers or were mercenaries and often acted on their own initiative rather than seeking funding from the Spanish Crown. Consequently, their expeditions were often privately funded. At the same time, they could not simply decide to mount an expedition without official sanction; they had to seek authorization from colonial officials.

Cortes decided to seek fortune and adventure in Hispaniola (modern-day Dominican Republic and Haiti). In 1504, at age 19, Cortes set sail for the New World.

In the Caribbean

Cortes spent seven years on Hispaniola, living in the town of Azua and working as a notary and farmer. In 1511, he joined Diego Velazquez de Cuellar's expedition to conquer Cuba, which was occupied by at least two major Native American groups, the Taino and the Guanahatabey. After the conquest, Cortes served as a clerk to the treasurer and later as mayor of Santiago, a town which had been established after the conquest and served as the island's capital for a brief time until the establishment of Havana in 1515. Cortes' time in Cuba made him wealthy because he was able to buy enslaved people and have them work the land he had acquired. He was able to purchase a house in Santiago and gain considerable influence among the colonists, according to Britannica (opens in new tab).

Despite his success, Cortes was hungry for more power. In 1518, he convinced Velazquez, who was by that time the governor of Cuba, to grant him permission to lead an expedition to Mexico , which the Spanish had come into contact with earlier that year. Velazquez appointed Cortes' captain-general of the expedition, according to Britannica (opens in new tab), but soon grew increasingly jealous of Cortes' power and influence. Velazquez canceled the voyage at the last minute, but Cortes ignored his orders and set sail with 11 ships and more than 500 men.

Arrival in Mexico

In February 1519, Cortes' ships reached the Mexican coast at Yucatan, which was the domain of Mayan-speaking peoples. The Spanish were eager to settle in the region, and Cortes was also interested in converting Native Americans to Christianity. "His view on the Indigenous people was similar to the majority of Europeans of that day  they were inferior culturally, technologically and religiously," Cosme said. In Cozumel, an island off the Yucatan coast that was one of the first places the Spaniards landed, Cortes learned of various rituals, "including human sacrifice of the Natives to their many gods," Cosme said. "He and his men removed and destroyed the pagan idols, and replaced them with crosses and figures of the Virgin Mary."

Cortes' force then continued sailing west to Tabasco, where it encountered resistance from Native warriors. The Spanish force overpowered them, and the Natives surrendered. Not only did the Spaniards' armaments  steel weapons, arquebuses and crossbows  prove superior in the clash, but so did Cortes' horses . He brought 16 horses along on the expedition; the Indigenous people were not familiar with them and were reportedly terrified of the beasts. Bernal Diaz del Castillo (opens in new tab), a soldier who marched with Cortes and later wrote a history of the expedition called " The True History of the Conquest of New Spain (opens in new tab)," described the Natives' encounter with the horses: "The Indians, who had never seen any horses before, could not think otherwise than that horse and rider were one body. Quite astounded at this to them so novel a sight, they quitted the plain and retreated to a rising ground."

The Natives provided the Europeans with food, supplies and 20 women, including an interpreter called Malintzin (also known as La Malinche or Dona Marina). La Malinche became an important figure in Cortes' life and legacy.

"She became bilingual, speaking Aztec and Mayan languages, which made her very useful to Cortes," Cosme said. "She eventually learned Spanish and became Cortes' personal interpreter, guide and mistress. She actually had a pretty high status for both a woman and a Native during this time and place among the Spaniards."

The remains of the house of Hernan Cortes in Veracruz, Mexico. (Image credit: Shuldyakov Studio via Shutterstock)

Diaz described La Malinche as (opens in new tab) "an excellent woman and fine interpreter throughout the wars in New Spain, Tlaxcala and Mexico  This woman was a valuable instrument to us in the conquest of New Spain. It was, through her only, under the protection of the Almighty, that many things were accomplished by us: without her we never should have understood the Mexican language, and, upon the whole, have been unable to surmount many difficulties."

Cortes and La Malinche had a child together named Martin, who is sometimes called "El Mestizo." He was one of the first children of mixed Indigenous and Spanish heritage. Eventually, in 1522, Cortes' Spanish wife, Catalina Suarez, came to Mexico. After her arrival, historians are unsure if Cortes continued to acknowledge La Malinche or Martin, Cosme said. "It would seem his desire to maintain his reputation and standing among the Spanish community was stronger than his need to be a husband and father to Malinche and Martin." Nonetheless, Catalina died under mysterious circumstances soon after arriving, and eventually Cortes took another Spanish wife when he returned briefly to Spain in 1528, according to Britannica.

After a few months in Yucatan, Cortes sailed west again. On the southeastern coast of what is now Mexico, he founded Veracruz, where he dismissed the authority of Velazquez and declared himself under orders from King Charles I of Spain. He disciplined his men and trained them to act as a cohesive unit of soldiers, and prepared them for the long march to Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital. And in an act that signified his fierce determination, he burned his ships to make retreat impossible, though some scholars have disputed this story. (opens in new tab)

Diaz related how Cortes exhorted his soldiers on the eve of their long march. "Cortes then adduced many beautiful comparisons from history, and mentioned several heroic deeds of the Romans , Diaz wrote "We answered him, one and all, that we would implicitly follow his orders, as the die had been cast, and we, with Caesar , when he had passed the Rubicon, had now no choice left; besides which, everything we did was for the glory of God and his majesty the emperor."

Conquering the Aztecs

Cortes had heard of the Aztecs (also known as the Mexica) and knew that they, and their leader Montezuma II (also spelled Moctezuma), were a primary force in Mexico. According to Britannica, the Aztec Empire ruled a large swath of what is today modern Mexico and parts of central America during the 15th and 16th centuries. The Aztecs were accomplished warriors, engineers, artisans and agriculturalists known for creating a thriving society that ruled over a surrounding, often hostile amalgam of various Native Americans with different languages and cultures. Although the Aztecs had been one of many small groups in the Valley of Mexico, they had expanded aggressively during the 15th century by conquering their neighbors, according to World History Encyclopedia (opens in new tab). At first, the Aztecs had ruled with the help of two other cities in the region, Texcoco and Tlacopan, a confederation known as the Triple Alliance. Eventually, however, the Aztecs came to dominate the Triple Alliance and ruled alone.

"Cortes arrived in the great Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan [on Nov. 8] in 1519," Cosme said. "Although he was kindly received by the Aztec emperor Montezuma, Cortes' intentions were less benevolent." He set out to rule them.

Tenochtitlan was the religious and political center of the Aztec Empire. It was much larger than many European cities of the time and hosted a population of about 400,000 people, according to Britannica (opens in new tab). (By comparison, the city of Paris in the 16th century had an estimated population of 225,000, according to the website Statista (opens in new tab).) It had been founded in A.D. 1325 on two small islands in the middle of Lake Texcoco and was connected to the mainland by several broad causeways. In the heart of the city was the temple district, which boasted the Great Temple, or Hueteocalli as the Aztecs called it. This imposing structure, which loomed above the surrounding city, was dedicated to two Aztec gods: Huitzilopochtli, the war god, and Tlaloc, the rain god. Other prominent buildings included the pyramid of Tezcatlipoca, a creator god, and the temple of Quetzalcoatl, the "feathered serpent" and the god of art and learning who was associated with the planet Venus .

Diaz described the awe Tenochtitlan inspired among the Spaniards upon arriving: "When we gazed upon all this splendor at once, we scarcely knew what to think, and we doubted whether all that we beheld was real. A series of large towns stretched themselves along the banks of the lake, out of which still larger ones rose magnificently above the waters. Innumerable crowds of canoes were plying everywhere around us; at regular distances we continually passed over new bridges, and before us lay the great city of Mexico in all its splendor."

A painting of Hernan Cortes with Aztec Emperor Montezuma II. (Image credit: Photos.com via Getty Images)

In some accounts, Cortes' arrival coincided with an important Aztec prophecy. The Aztec god Quetzalcoatl was set to return to Earth . In this interpretation, Montezuma was hesitant to confront the Spanish for fear of angering the returned god. However, this interpretation has been disputed by many modern scholars who have argued that it is essentially a myth that was propagated many years after the conquest (opens in new tab) as a way for Europeans to justify their actions and foster the notion that the Aztecs saw the Spanish as superior.

Montezuma sent out envoys to meet the conquistador as he neared the capital. The Spanish fired shots from their arquebuses and cannons, which stunned the Natives and further intimidated them.

Cortes entered the city, and at first the meeting between the two leaders, though tense, was peaceful. Montezuma gave the conquistador gifts of gold . But things changed quickly. Cortes took Montezuma hostage and sacked the city. La Malinche helped Cortes manipulate Montezuma and rule Tenochtitlan through him. "It is also said that she informed Cortes of an Aztec plot to destroy his army," Cosme said.

The Spanish army had help sacking the city. Though Cortes enslaved much of the Native population, other Indigenous groups were fundamental to his success, according to Cosme. Among them were the people of Tlaxcala, who helped him regroup and take Tenochtitlan. "The Aztecs were not always popular rulers among their subjected cities. When Cortes learned of this, he was able to use this to his advantage," Cosme said. "Xicotencatl, a ruler in the city Tlaxcala, saw an ally in Cortes and an opportunity to destroy the Aztec Empire. They formed an allegiance, and Cortes was given several thousand warriors to add to his ranks. While the Spaniards still had superior weaponry  cannons, guns, swords  the additional knowledge on Aztec fighting styles and defenses given by Xicotencatl, plus the additional men, gave Cortes a helpful edge."

The siege of Tenochtitlan

While Cortes held Tenochtitlan through Montezuma, a Spanish force from Cuba landed on the coast of Mexico in the spring of 1520. It had been sent by Velazquez to unseat Cortes. When Cortes heard of this, he took a force of Spanish and Tlaxcalan soldiers and marched on the new Spanish force, according to World History Encyclopedia. Cortes defeated the Spanish force, but when he returned to Tenochtitlan he found the Aztecs had launched a major attack on the Spanish garrison.

At first, Cortes tried to quell the attack by forcing Montezuma to address the Aztec forces that had gathered. But, by now, the Aztecs were distrustful of their king. In an event that is still debated by scholars, Montezuma was killed. It is unclear whether he was killed by his own forces  some accounts have him being stoned by his warriors  or by the Spanish, according to the Thought Company (opens in new tab). In the Aztec accounts, Montezuma survives the attack by his warriors but is later strangled to death by the Spanish.

Cortes and his men fled the city. But their retreat was costly and they suffered significant losses, including most of the plunder they had stolen from the city.

However, the Spanish were there long enough to start a smallpox epidemic in Tenochtitlan. One of Cortes' men contracted smallpox from a member of the force from Cuba. That soldier died during the Aztec rebellion, and when his body was looted, an Aztec caught the disease, which spread like wildfire because the Aztec people had no immunity to it, according to History.com (opens in new tab). Between one-quarter and one-half of the inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico, including Aztecs and other Native Americans, succumbed to the disease, according to Suzanne Alchon, a historian and author of the book A Pest in the Land, New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective (opens in new tab) (University of New Mexico Press, 2003).

A statue of Hernan Cortes in Medellin, Spain. (Image credit: KarSol via Getty Images)

With help from the people of Tlaxcala, Cortes' army regrouped and returned to Tenochtitlan on June 25, 1520. They found that the city's society had crumbled. Nonetheless, the Aztec warriors, under their new leader Cuauhtemoc, resisted the Spanish and a long siege ensued. Finally, after 93 days of siege, the Aztecs, weakened by disease, hunger and having incurred significant losses following many pitched battles, surrendered, according to World History Encyclopedia. This surrender unleashed a storm of violence, looting, rape and carnage as the Spanish and their Tlaxacalan allies descended on the city.

Once the city fell, Cortes began building Mexico City on the ruins. It quickly became a pre-eminent city in the Spanish colonies, and many Europeans came to live there. To reward his success, King Charles I of Spain appointed Cortes governor of New Spain.

The conquest of Mexico by the Spanish ended in 1525, though some Aztecs and their allies continued to resist the Spanish according to World History Encyclopedia (opens in new tab). Nonetheless, the change to Spanish rule had massive and long-lasting consequences. Many of the Indigenous people were now forced into the role of subservience and a new, almost caste-like social order was created with the Spanish occupying the highest positions of power and the Indigenous people the lowest. This social dynamic would characterize Mexico for centuries.

Later years

In 1524, Cortes organized an expedition to Honduras, a part of central America that had not yet been conquered by the Spanish. He stayed for two years, establishing a city and appointing a governor, but when he returned to Mexico, he found that the allies he had left in Mexico City had turned against him, according to Britannica. He found himself removed from power, and accused of illegally enriching himself. Cortes traveled to Spain to plead with the king, but he was never again appointed to governorship. In Spain, he married for a second time, to a Spanish noblewoman named Dona Juana de Zuniga, a union that produced three children.

The king did allow him to return to Mexico, albeit with much less authority. Cortes explored the northern part of Mexico and discovered Baja California for Spain in the late 1530s. In 1540, he retired to Spain and spent much of his last years seeking recognition and rewards for his achievements.

Frustrated and embittered, Cortes decided to return to Mexico. Before he could go, however, he died in 1547 of pleurisy, an inflammation of the tissues that line the lungs and chest cavity.

Legacy

Cortes is a controversial figure, especially in Mexico, because of his treatment of Natives. Unfortunately, "when it came to the Indigenous people, Cortes was not unique in his treatment and mindset," Cosme said. "He enslaved much of the Native population, and many of the Indigenous people were wiped out from European diseases such as smallpox. Both scenarios would unfortunately become a common theme among many explorers' interactions with Natives."

Nevertheless, Cortes was important in reshaping the world. "Cortes' victory secured new and profitable land and opportunities for the Spanish monarch. He helped oversee the building of Mexico City, which is still Mexico's capital today," Cosme said. "He opened the door for further exploration and conquest of Central America to the south, and eventually led to the acquisition of California toward the north."

Originally published on Live Science on Sept. 28, 2017 and updated on July 5, 2022.
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U.K.-based distributor DCD Rights has acquired Grammy-nominated feature documentary Music, Money, Madness Jimi Hendrix Live In Maui. The 90-minute documentary chronicles guitar legend Jimi Hendrixs visit to Maui in July 1970 and details how he became ensnared in Rainbow Bridge, an ill-fated independent film produced by his manager, Michael Jeffery.

Jeffery secured a $300,000 advance against the promise of a soundtrack album by Hendrix  the first time a movie was funded solely by an album. Jeffery hired Chuck Wein, a former associate of Andy Warhol, to direct. However, without a script or professional actors, the shoot was proving one of excess. With Hendrix and the Experience already booked to play Honolulu, Wein, desperate to feature the band, planned to film them playing on the slope of the dormant Haleakala volcano. The show was a success but the film, less so.

The documentary is produced under the Experience Hendrix label, which is owned and operated by the Hendrix family, and features previously unseen color footage of the performance mixed in surround sound, as well as new interviews with key players.

THEATER

Opening in November, Clint Dyer directs Shakespeares Othello in the U.K. National Theatres Lyttelton theater. The cast includes Giles Terera (Death of England: Face to Face) as Othello, Rosy McEwen (The Alienist) as Desdemona and Paul Hilton (The Inheritance) as Iago. This interpretation of the play follows a bright, headstrong daughter of a senator who elevated by her status but stifled by its expectations and a refugee of slavery, who having risen to the top of a white world, finds that love across racial lines has a cost. Wed in secret, Desdemona and Othello crave a new life together. But as unseen forces conspire against them, they find their future is not theirs to decide.

The set designer is Chloe Lamford, costume designer is Michael Vale and lighting designer is Jai Morjaria. Music and sound is by Pete Malkin and Benjamin Grant, the movement director is Lucie Pankhurst and the fight director is Kev McCurdy. Othello will also be broadcast to cinemas worldwide in 2023 via National Theatre Live.

In the National Theatres Dorfman theater from November, Indhu Rubasingham will direct the world premiere of April De Angelis new comedy, Kerry Jackson. Fay Ripley plays Kerry, owner of a new restaurant in fashionable Walthamstow. Wearing her working-class roots as a badge of honor, Kerry navigates the local characters in a bid to make the tapas restaurant a success  without losing herself in the process.

Set and costume design is by Richard Kent, lighting design by Oliver Fenwick, the movement director is Lucy Hind and the casting director is Juliet Horsley.

APPOINTMENTS

Distributor All3Media International has appointed Elin Thomas as senior VP for French-speaking Europe and has promoted Europe, the Middle East and Africa sales managers Peta Sykes (Scandinavia), Ben Packwood (Eastern and Central Europe) and Jonathan Hughes (Germany, Benelux, Austria & Switzerland) to VPs for their respective regions. Previously at NENT Studios U.K., Thomas has been consulting on the integration of the companys titles since All3Medias acquisition of its catalogue in June 2021. Thomas will now join All3Media International in a permanent senior VP role, taking over sales to French-speaking Europe from Graham Spencer, senior VP EMEA, who retires this month. Reporting to Stephen Driscoll, executive VP EMEA, and based at the companys London office, Thomas will also have additional responsibilities for pan-territory format sales in EMEA. Thomas was previously with BBC Worldwide and Passion Distribution.

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Meanwhile, Narelle Vine has been appointed by AE Live, a leading global provider of graphics and technology, as its GM for Australia. She previously worked at Foxtel as GM for Felix, the companys internal agency, delivering creative communications and production services, and latterly as Foxtels GM  marketing operations. AE Live specializes in remote or centralized production, augmented reality and virtual studios, including OTT graphics, optimized fan feeds, newsroom graphics systems, virtual advertising and in-stadia feeds. The London-based company has subsidiaries in the U.S. South Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia. Australian clients include Nine, Fox Sports, Seven, NRL, Optus Sport, Sky Racing, Ten and Swimming Australia.  Patrick Frater

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Elsewhere, Red Arrow Studios International has appointed Rose Hughes to the role of VP sales for the U.K., U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, reporting into president and MD, Tim Gerhartz. Based in London, Hughes will be responsible for leading Red Arrows sales activities in the English-speaking territories and will also work closely with Red Arrows scripted and unscripted acquisitions teams. Hughes joins the company following a six-year tenure at Keshet International, where she most recently held the position of VP sales (global/pan-regional, North America, U.K., Nordics).

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Over at Warner Bros Discovery-backed kids media company Bright Little Labs, Nick Young has been tapped as chief operating officer. He will be responsible for scaling the company, commercial growth, content production, licensing, recruitment and business operations as well as working on new IP development with CEO Sophie Deen.

Young, who starts immediately, joins from WildBrain, where he was head of IP and partnerships. He has previously worked at Banijay and NBC Universal.

Nick has a wealth of experience in entertainment and licensing, expanding brands globally, said Deen. But what really excited us about the opportunity to work together is our shared vision for taking an innovative approach in an ever-changing media landscape  building immersive 360 worlds and reaching our audience in new ways. He joins us at an exciting time as we eye serious growth.

INCENTIVES

The U.K. Film and TV Charity has revealed incentives for those taking part in the 2022 Looking Glass Survey. The survey, for everyone working behind the scenes in film, TV, and cinema, needs to be completed by July 18. Anyone who takes the survey and provides their email, including those who have already done so, will be entered into a draw to receive one of the following: a pass to this years Edinburgh TV Festival; a ticket to a future Royal Film Performance; or a Cineworld Unlimited pass.

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However many books and movies take it as their subject, a historical travesty on the incomprehensible scale of the Holocaust must always contain within it an uncountable number of untold stories. Given this wealth of untapped dramatic potential, its all the more perplexing that American director Jake Paltrow should choose to refer to his familys Jewish heritage (the Paltrows have Belarusian and Polish Jewish ancestry) with June Zero, a polished, well-performed but thinly stretched attempt to communicate the seismic impact of Adolf Eichmanns 1962 execution on Israeli society. Though it occasionally brushes up against intricate ideas about memory and memorialization  who gets to be commemorated, who must not, and the genesis of the never forget ethos  June Zero itself leaves a quickly fading impression.

The films status as an Israeli prestige project is signalled by the involvement of the Israeli Ministry For Culture and Sport and The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, among other institutions whose logos unfurl before the opening credits like a particularly long Powerpoint presentation. This suggests the films chief future purpose may be as an educational tool for generations at an increasing remove from this foundational episode in the nations evolution. Its earnest intentions are not in question. Instead, the issue is one of focus, with Paltrow, who co-wrote the Hebrew-language screenplay with Israeli writer-director Tom Shoval, electing to split the films attention unequally three ways.

The storyline following Haim (Yoav Levi), Eichmanns guard during his trial, sentencing and, finally, his unheralded hanging (on a day designated June Zero by a local tabloid to avoid the possibility of it becoming a notable anniversary) is rife with illuminating detail. Scrupulously polite and correct in his dealings with Eichmann (whom we only ever glimpse partially, in one of the films best-achieved formal flourishes), the Moroccan Haim is mostly tasked with ensuring that none of the few people who have contact with his prisoner has a direct connection to the Holocaust: It is his job to maintain vigilance against vigilantism. When a new barber arrives to give Eichmann his final haircut, Haim insists on vetting every snip of the scissors  a tense scene only undercut by the unnecessary added twist of a possible concussion from a recent car accident causing Haim to hallucinate perils where none exist.

Then theres Micha (a soulful Tom Hagy), an investigator for the prosecution in Eichmanns trial, whose incongruous, almost self-contained storyline is the only section of the film not set in Israel. Micha is part of a delegation to Poland, where he visits the ghetto in which he experienced torture and humiliation prior to being shipped to a camp. (These scenes were actually shot in Ukraine, which gives them an unforeseen sad relevance.) The conversations he has here, with the attractive, somewhat combative representative of the Israeli commission (Joy Rieger) are didactic but fascinating, touching on thorny issues, such as when it is that Holocaust memorialization crosses the line into mere tourism, and just how much the survivors of Nazi atrocity owe it to history to relitigate their trauma over and over again. Must never forget become only remember? the Israeli rep asks him, and Michas eloquent, agonized response, beautifully delivered by Hagy, is a small essay in Holocaust historiography all by itself.

But neither of these two men is the main character in June Zero, which instead is framed and given its forward momentum by 13-year-old rapscallion David (engaging newcomer Noam Ovadia), a Libyan immigrant who, partly as punishment for bad behavior at school, is sent to work at a factory that manufactures industrial ovens for bakeries. When his vaguely gangsterish boss gets the commission from Haim to build the one-off crematorium that will be used to dispose of Eichmanns body (cremation is forbidden in Jewish tradition, so no such devices exist in the country), David proves an endlessly resourceful and useful asset to the project. Again, there are nicely observed details here, from Davids touchy truculence in the face of anti-Arab racism, to the horrible irony of Jewish factory workers building an oven to the same spec as the German death camp crematoria.

But although DP Yaron Scharfs warmly saturated 16mm photography gives a rich, antique texture to the visuals across all three storylines, it simply cant be ignored that the capers and mini-heists of Davids arc lack the gravity of Haims or Michas narratives, and his connection to Eichmanns execution is tangential at best. In their different ways, both Haim and Micha can be seen as contending with the central paradox of the whole Eichmann trial phenomenon  one most famously summed up by Hannah Arendt when she coined the phrase the banality of evil. Both men have to work out how to live their ordinary, everyday lives in close proximity to inconceivably colossal cruelty. Haim has to keep this reviled man alive and healthy in order that he might be killed in accordance with the law. Micha must decide if the work of commemorating those who lost their lives to the barbarism of men like Eichmann is worth the sacrifice of the rest of his.

But framing such weighty and provocative ideas within Davids story is a strange misstep. When this occasionally insightful movie ends with an epilogue about, of all things, an argument over Wikipedia attribution, it cannot but feel trivial compared to the momentous nature of this extraordinary moment in history, relegating June Zero, at best, to the status of a footnote.

Reviewed in Karlovy Vary Film Festival (Special Screenings), Jul. 3 2022. Running time: 106 MIN.

Running Time: Running time: 106 MIN.

Production

(U.S.-Israel) A Metro Communications, Cold Iron Pictures, The Film Arcade production in co-production with United King Films. (World sales: Films Boutique, Berlin.) Producers: David Silber, Miranda Bailey, Oren Moverman.

Crew

Director: Jake Paltrow. Screenplay: Jake Paltrow, Tom Shoval. Camera: Yaron Scharf. Editor: Ayelet Gil-Efrat. Music: Ariel Marx.

With

Noam Ovadia, Tzahi Grad, Yoav Levi, Tom Hagi, Joy Rieger, Ami Smolarchik, Rotem Kainan, Adam Gabai, Koby Aderet. (Hebrew, Arabic dialogue)

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Three men were arrested on outstanding felony state warrants for sex-related crimes involving children in three separate incidents this weekend at the Juarez-Lincoln Bridge, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Tuesday.

Ramon Benedicto Gonzalez Zamora, 61; Juan Alonso Osorio, 55; and Jose Guadalupe Velasquez Vera, 38; were each arrested over the holiday weekend trying to cross into Laredo via Bridge II.

Zamora was apprehended on July 4. CBP said that an officer was inspecting vehicular traffic arriving from Mexico when Zamora, a bus passenger, was referred to secondary inspection. CBP said that biometric verification through law enforcement databases confirmed he had an outstanding felony warrant for two counts of aggravated rape of a child out of the Sumner County Sheriffs Office in Gallatin, Tenn.

The other two incidents both happened two days earlier also at the Juarez-Lincoln Bridge.

Osorio and Velasquez were passengers in their respective vehicles who were referred to secondary inspection. It was determined that Osorio had an outstanding felony state warrant for indecency with a child from Dallas County Sheriffs Office, and Velasquez had an outstanding felony state warrant for indecent exposure to a minor from Sampson County Sheriffs Office in Clinton, N.C.

All three individuals were turned over to Laredo police where they were transported to the Webb County Jail to await criminal proceedings, CBP said.

As our friends and neighbors celebrated the Fourth of July weekend with civic events and backyard barbecues, our frontline CBP officers did their part to keep our community safe by apprehending three men on outstanding warrants for sex-related offenses involving children, said Port Director Alberto Flores, Laredo Port of Entry, in a statement. The apprehension of wanted persons for these kinds of crimes underscores the importance of the border security mission of CBP and the resolve of our officers to uphold that mission.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The ongoing rise in Covid-19 infections is affecting serious criminal cases with a number of courts not sitting this week.

At least three courts at the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin were not able to sit as a result of parties involved in cases having to isolate due to Covid-19.

A murder trial running at the Special Criminal Court has been delayed since last week due, it is understood, to one of the sitting judges having to isolate as a result of falling foul of the virus.

On Monday, the sentencing of a violent domestic assault at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court did not go on with a judge absent. The same judge is also hearing the trial of a three men accused of indecent assault.

On Tuesday the sentence hearing of a convicted rapist for a separate random street attack on a woman in 2011 could not proceed because it is understood that some parties in the case are isolating.

And a sentence hearing at the Central Criminal Court will not go ahead later this week as the judge is isolating, it's understood.

In a statement issued on Tuesday afternoon, a spokesman for the Courts Service outlined the situation.

A number of hearings due to be held in Dublins CCJ were adjourned for a week as a number of people involved in those cases were unavailable due to Covid-19 related absences.

The Courts Service continues to respond to Covid-19 in accordance with our Covid-19 safety management programme, public health and government advice to ensure we keep courts open and safe, said the statement.

Special measures continue to be operational in courts around in Laois and other counties to reduce the risk of spread. This includes limiting the number of people allowed into courthouses.
Terrorists granted immunity under controversial Troubles legacy and reconciliation legislation should be blocked from profiting from their actions, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary has said.

Peter Kyle warned the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill would allow perpetrators to live in freedom and empower them to release books which seek to justify the mayhem and senseless killings they carried out.

He spoke in support of amendment 114, which seeks to prevent a person who is granted immunity under the legislation from profiting from the conduct which they received immunity for.

Proposals before MPs seek to establish a new information retrieval body to review deaths and other harmful conduct within the Troubles  defined as the period from January 1 1966 to April 10 1998.

The Bill will offer immunity to people who are deemed to have co-operated with the information retrieval body, although criminal prosecutions could still take place.

Mr Kyle said the legislation must offer greater benefits to the victims than it does to perpetrators of terror, telling the Commons: There is nothing stopping people from then using their immunity to write down their own history of their crimes and then profiting from them.

Once a perpetrator has been granted immunity, I cant see any limits on what they can do with it.

Nothing to stop terrorists writing books and seeking to justify the mayhem and senseless killings they have carried out.

Undoubtedly, this would retraumatise victims. This is not idle speculation but a concern victims have raised with me directly.

Not only would this Bill allow perpetrators to live in freedom, it will empower them to tell their own version of events, in their own names, without the fear of prosecution.

Conservative former minister Johnny Mercer said he understood the Government is involved in talks to ensure those who receive immunity under the Bill cannot glorify terrorism.

He said: We need to be very, very careful that these cowards who  like Ive said before  got up in the morning to murder women and children for their political aims, that they are given absolutely no opportunity to glorify what they did, and just really double down and make sure there is no gap in the legislation to make sure these people cant take advantage of their crimes.

Asked if he would support the DUPs amendments linked to preventing glorification, Mr Mercer said: As I understand it there are conversations going on around how that objective can be achieved.

He added: It has to be crafted in the correct way and as I understand it the Government ministers are doing that with the benches opposite and will make sure there is no gap in that legislation.

The DUPs new clause four makes having received immunity under this Bill an aggravating factor in sentencing for the offence of glorifying terrorism.

Northern Ireland minister Conor Burns earlier said the Government wants to deliver a system that focuses on effective information recovery and reconciliation measures, getting as much information to as many families as possible.

Speaking on day two of committee stage, Mr Burns said: Clause 33 of the Bill prevents criminal investigations into any Troubles-related offence to be initiated or continued on or after the day on which this clause enters into force.

The prohibition does not apply to the ICRIR (Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery). This clause ensures that the commission becomes the sole body able and responsible for conducting criminal investigations into Troubles-related deaths and serious injuries.

Future prosecutions will remain a possibility for those involved in offences connected to a death or a serious injury if they do not actively come forward to seek immunity, or do not co-operate sufficiently with the information recovery process.

SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said at every single turn the UK Government has tried to stop information going into the hands of those people who tried to find out the truth and that includes victims, who were told are at the very centre of this.
Local News, Crime

By Long Island Published: July 05 2022

On July 3, 2022 at 2:50 a.m. Deputy Sheriffs arrested Lydiana Soto Martinez, 37, Medford on charges of Aggravated DWI - Child in Vehicle (E-Felony), Driving While Intoxicated (U-Misdemeanor) and Endangering the Welfare of a ...

The Suffolk County Sheriffs Office conducted increased DWI patrols over the 4th of July weekend, resulting in seven arrests including one for violating Leandras Law.

On July 3, 2022 at 2:50 a.m. Deputy Sheriffs arrested Lydiana Soto Martinez, 37, Medford on charges of Aggravated DWI - Child in Vehicle (E-Felony), Driving While Intoxicated (U-Misdemeanor) and Endangering the Welfare of a Child (A-Misdemeanor). Ms. Soto was stopped for failing to maintain her lane of travel on SR 112 in Medford. A subsequent investigation revealed she exhibited signs of intoxication including slurred speech, blood shot eyes, and an odor of an alcoholic beverage on her breath. Her three children aged 15, 12, and 5 were passengers in the vehicle she was operating. She was placed into custody on the above charges and transported to the Suffolk County Sheriffs Office Enforcement Bureau. Ms. Soto submitted to a chemical blood test and results are pending with the Suffolk Crime Lab. Ms. Soto was arraigned on July 3rd, 2022, at Suffolk County First District Court.

Leandras Law (the Child Passenger Protection Act) is a NYS law making it an automatic felony on the first offense to drive drunk with a person age 15 or younger inside the vehicle. It was named after 11 year-old Leandra Rosado who was killed on the Henry Hudson Parkway on October 11, 2009, when she was the passenger in a car accident, driven by a driver who was allegedly driving while intoxicated.

This arrest was one of seven arrests for Driving While Intoxicated over the holiday weekend.

Suffolk County Sheriff Errol D. Toulon, Jr. commends his deputies. Suffolk County Deputy Sheriffs are out patrolling our countys roads to keep the public safe. This holiday weekend, they not only prevented seven intoxicated drivers from causing an accident with another driver or a pedestrian, but they potentially saved the life of three children in one of the vehicles. I am proud of their ongoing vigilance in protecting the residents of Suffolk County.
(Alliance News) - Access Intelligence PLC on Tuesday reported a nearly tripled interim revenue figure as the company felt the positives of its Isentia acquisition back in September.

In the six months ended May 31, the company widened its pretax loss to GBP7.6 million from a GBP3.4 million loss the previous year. Revenue, however, nearly tripled in the half to GBP32.7 million from GBP11.0 million.

Access Intelligence explained this jump in revenue was primarily driven by Isentia, the Sydney-based media intelligence and insights firm acquired by the company in September for GBP19.4 million. Nonetheless, excluding the Isentia contribution, revenue still grew organically by 17% year-on-year.

"The core business has delivered continued growth in the [Europe, the Middle East & Africa] and North America region, while the recent acquisition of Isentia has created significant opportunity for the group in [the Asia-Pacfic region]," said Chair Christopher Satterhwaite.

In the EMEA and North America region, annual recurring revenue increased by GBP1.2 million to GBP28.1 million, while ARR in the APAC region reduced by GBP500,000 to GBP31.5 million. Access Intelligence explained that this remained a "marked improvement" to the pre-acquisition performance of the region, in which in the rate of decline was significantly higher.

"The group won a substantial number of blue-chip clients in the period, across every region, including significant win backs in APAC. The launch of Pulsar in Australia and New Zealand has been well received, leading to a healthy pipeline of both cross sell and new business opportunities," Satterhwaite continued.

Access Intelligence said the integration of Isentia continues to progress well and added it is currently trading in line with expectations. As a result, the company said it remains positive in its outlook for the year.

Shares in Access Intelligence were down 2.0% at 98.00 pence on Tuesday morning in London.

By Heather Rydings; heatherrydings@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - Shell PLC joined Qatar Energy's USD29 billion project to expand production at the world's biggest natural gas field on Tuesday, becoming the fifth and final international partner.

The British-based company took a 6.3% stake for an undisclosed sum, joining TotalEnergies SE, Eni Spa, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil Corp in the North Field East project.

The North Field expansion is the biggest liquefied natural gas project ever seen, Qatar Energy said. It comes at a time of intense geopolitical tensions over energy supplies.

The USD28.75 billion development is predicted to increase Qatar's production from the current 77 million tonnes a year to 110 million tonnes by 2027.

"As one of the largest players in the LNG business, (Shell) have a lot to bring to help meet global energy demand and security," said Qatar's Energy Minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, who is also the Qatar Energy president and CEO.

Qatar Energy estimates that the North Field, which extends under the Gulf sea into Iranian territory, holds about 10% of the world's known gas reserves.

The project's LNG  the cooled form of gas that makes it easier to transport  is expected to come on line in 2026.

The project has taken on growing international importance after Europe's energy supplies took a hit following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

South Korea, Japan and China have been 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 also announced a cooperation deal with Germany.

Europe has in the past rejected the long-term deals that Qatar seeks for its energy, but the Ukraine war has forced a change in attitude.

Qatar's gas is among the cheapest to produce and has fuelled an economic miracle in the tiny archipelago, which boasts the world's highest GDP per capita.

Qatar is also expected to announce details of another expansion, the North Field South, in coming months.

source: AFP

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - Rishi Sunak has quit as chancellor and Sajid Javid has resigned as health secretary as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's leadership continues to face a fresh crisis.

Sunak said "the public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously", adding "I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning."

In an incendiary letter, Javid said the British people "expect integrity from their government" but voters now believed Johnson's administration was neither competent nor "acting in the national interest".

The resignations came as Johnson was forced into a humiliating apology over his handling of the Chris Pincher row after it emerged he had forgotten about being told of previous allegations of "inappropriate" conduct.

Pincher quit as deputy chief whip last week following claims that he groped two men at a private members' club, but Johnson was told about allegations against him as far back as 2019.

The prime minister acknowledged he should have sacked Pincher when he was told about the claims against him when he was a Foreign Office minister in 2019, but instead Johnson went on to appoint him to other government roles.

Asked if that was an error, Johnson said: "I think it was a mistake and I apologise for it. In hindsight it was the wrong thing to do.

"I apologise to everybody who has been badly affected by it. I want to make absolutely clear that there's no place in this Government for anybody who is predatory or who abuses their position of power."

By David Hughes, PA Political Editor

source: PA

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Rising cases of Covid in the UK could pose a threat to summer holidays, according to experts, while the authorities in Spain and other popular holiday destinations are also monitoring increases in the number of cases.

Some regions of Spain have already suggested the reintroduction of masks indoors while central government has recommended that people remain on the guard, take precautions and if they feel vulnerable, wear a mask.

Today, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran warned that holidays both in the UK and abroad could be at risk.

She told the Mirror: It is possible that holiday plans will be ruined due to rising Covid rates in the UK.

Other countries could reintroduce restrictions on arrivals from Britain, and transport companies - already in crisis from the Governments mishandling of Brexit and industrial action, are likely to see an increase in staff shortages with more off sick.

Spain reported infections increasing by five times in the space of a week.

But the main concern is the impact another wave in the UK will have on the travel industry.

Airports are struggling due to a lack of staff as a result of Covid and airlines such as British Airways have already cancelled 16,000 flights until October, with another 650 scrapped next month.

And easyJet, TUI and Lufthansa have all been forced to cancel thousands of flights in recent days.
A Palma court has issued a restraining order against a group of pickpockets who have been active at the airport. They must not go within 500 metres of the airport, this having been a condition that the National Police asked the judicial authorities for.

The group comprised a 67-year-old Spanish man and two women - one from the Netherlands, aged 24, and the other a Bosnian, aged 46. The National Police arrested them at the airport and charged them with five thefts (which amounted to 2,697 euros and 330 pounds), although it is suspected that there were many more.
Another mass shooting has taken place in the US, this time at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park resulted in six fatalities and numerous injuries.

Police have been officially released a warrant for Robert "Bobby" Crimo III, 22, since a shooting. The native of the North Shore is thought to be operating a 2010 silver Honda Fit with the Illinois license plate #DM80653. He is known to the police, who view him as dangerous and armed.

Crimo III is a small man with long black hair, and he was sporting a white or blue T-shirt. He weighs about 120 pounds, stands 5'11", and has the following tattoos: a cursive script above his left brow, red roses and green leaves on his neck, and four tally marks on his right cheek with a line through them.

The FBI searches the suspects residence

A report by WGN News has discovered that online profiles linked to him raise a lot of questions about whether they have malicious intentions. In 2019, the father of Crimo III unsuccessfully challenged Nancy Rotering, the mayor of Highland Park.

WGN News also reported that a neighbor in Highwood that Crimo III resides in the sane residence as his father and grandfather. For about an hour or so, the FBI arrived at the house. They have since cleared the place.

Around 10:10 a.m. on Monday, shots were fired near Central Avenue and 2nd Street, disrupting the downtown parade. A high-powered rifle that was later found at the scene appeared to have been used by the shooter to open fire on parade spectators from a rooftop, according to Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Christopher Covelli during a press conference.

The Lake County Coroner reported that five adults were declared dead at the scene and another person, whose age was not provided, passed away at the hospital. At least one child was transported in critical condition, the fire department said.

NorthShore Hospital announced at a press conference in the late afternoon that they had received a total of 26 patients, including four to five children, and that 25 of them had gunshot wounds. Nineteen victims, ranging in age from eight to 85, have received treatment and been released.
Energy Assistance: How to apply for energy credits this summer

Energy Assistance: How to apply for energy credits this summer

With summer in full swing, Americans must contend with rising temperatures and soaring energy costs. However, in order to ease the burden on low-income residents, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) will tap into some federal funds in order to provide energy credits payments to support these households.

The program leaves the allocation of these funds to the state's discretion, though, so not every state will provide its residents with cooling assistance during the summer months.

The following is a comprehensive list of every US state and the energy programs they offer.

Alabama

Program: Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)

Income level: An individual's income should not exceed 150 percent of the federally established poverty level

Eligibility: The program is open to US citizens or qualified aliens who are residents of Alabama, in need of help with heating costs.

Alaska

Program: Heating Assistance Program (HAP)

Income level: An individual should have an income that's atleast 225 percent of the federal poverty level

Eligibility: The program is open to US citizens or qualified aliens who are residents of Alaska, in need of help with heating costs

Arizona

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Eligibility is determined by the local Community Action Agency level

Arkansas

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Individuals must be residents of Akansas and meet the required income threshold.

California

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: The eligibility criteria depends on several factors including income, household size, place of residence, as well as other factors

Colorado

Program: Low-income Energy Assistance Program (LEAP)

Eligibility: An individual's income cannot exceed 60 percent of the state median income level

Connecticut

Program: Connecticut Energy Assistance Program (CEAP)

Eligibility: The program is open to residents of the state who fail to meet certain income thresholds. Residents must also have a Social Security Number

Delaware

Program: Delaware Energy Assistance Program (DEAP)

Eligibility: Residents whose income is classified as as 200 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible.

Florida

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Individuals must possess an income less than 60 percent of the Florida State Median Income. They must also be responsible for paying their home heating and cooling bills. Individuals must also be US citizens, qualified aliens or permanent residents.

Georgia

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility:The program is open to US citizens or legally admitted immigrants. These individuals must have incomes at or below 60 percent of the state's median income, and are responsible for paying their home heating or cooling bills.

Hawaii

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Open to Hawaii residents, whose annual household income falls at or below the mentioned income levels. Individuals applying for these benefits must also have a Social Security Number

Idaho

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: The benefits are open to residents who need financial assistance with home energy costs.

Illinois

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Open to residents whose income may not exceed 200 percent of the federal nonfarm poverty level.

Indiana

Program: LIHEAP/Energy Assistance Program (EAP)

Eligibility: Open to residents, whose households make 60 percent or less than the state median income.

Iowa

Program: LIHEAP/WAP

Eligibility: Individuals applying must be at or below 200 percent of the 2021 federal poverty guidelines.

Kansas

Program: Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIEAP)

Eligibility: Those applying must be personally responsible for paying heating costs, and provide recent history of payments. A household's combined gross income may not exceed 150 percent of the federal poverty level

Kentucky

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Residents who qualify, must be at or below 130 percent of the federal poverty level

Louisiana

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: In order to be eligible residents must be responsible for the household energy bill, active heating/cooling utility account, at or below 60 percent of the state median income.

Maine

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Individuals must be US citizens or qualified aliens. Their household incomes must fall below 60 percent of the state area median.

Maryland

Program: Maryland Energy Assistance Program (MEAP)

Eligibility: For those who are applying their bills must be in the applicant's name, and their income must be at or below 200 percent of the 2021 federal poverty guidelines.

Massachusetts

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: For residents to qualify their income cannot exceed 60 percent of the estimated State Median Income.

Michigan

Program: Michigan Energy Assistance Program (MEAP)

Eligibility: Those resident who are applying must have a household income at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level

Minnesota

Program: EAP

Eligibility: Eligibility is based on the three most recent months of income.

Mississippi

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Eligible residents must be 18 years of age or an emancipated minor, within 60 percent of the current state median income poverty guidelines.

Missouri

Program: Energy Crisis Intervention Program (ECIP)

Eligibility: Individuals must be responsible for paying the utilities for their homes. The program is also open to residents, US citizens, who possess $3,000 or less in their bank accounts, retirement accounts, or investments, at or below the income guidelines.

Montana

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Eligible residents, must meet specific income requirements based on household number.

Nebraska

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Residents whose income at or below 150 percent of Federal Poverty Level are eligible.

Nevada

Program: EAP

Eligibility: Must be US citizens, whose total monthly gross income cannot exceed 150 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines.

New Hampshire

Program: Fuel Assistance Program (FAP)

Eligibility: Open to residents whose gross household income of 60 percent of the New Hampshire State Median Income

New Jersey

Program: HEAP

Eligibility: Open to residents whose gross income is at or below 60 percent of the State Median Income

New Mexico

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Open to resident whose household income and other qualifications will be explained 45 days after your interview.

New York

Program: HEAP

Eligibility: Individuals must be US citizens or qualified aliens. Household' gross monthly income must be at or below the current income guides for your household.

North Carolina

Program: Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIEAP)

Eligibility: Must be at least one US citizen or non-citizen who meets the eligibility criteria, meets an income test, has reserves at or below $2,250. Individuals are responsible for its heating costs.

North Dakota

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Must be residents whose income must be at or below 60 percent of North Dakota's median income

Ohio

Program: HEAP

Eligibility: One's household income is at or below 175 percent of the federal poverty guidelines.

Oklahoma

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Individuals must be responsible for payment of home heating and cooling costs. Must be US citizens or legally admitted for permanent residency. Possess $2,000 for one person or $3,000 for two persons, and $50 for each additional person in the household or less in the form of cash on hand, checking or savings accounts, certificates of deposits, stocks, or bonds. Individuals must also meet specific income guidelines that vary according to household size and fuel type.

Oregon

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Eligibility depends on household income that is at or below 60 percent of Oregon's median income, must also have documented energy costs.

Pennsylvania

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Individuals or households meet income guidelines, aren't on public assistance, rent or own their own homes, and can't have an unpaid heating bills.

Rhode Island

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: Households must meet 60 percent of Rhode Island's median income levels. These households aren't on public assistance, rent or own their homes, and don't have an unpaid heating bill.

South Carolina

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: The Community Action Agency in their county determines their household's income and any additional eligibility criteria.

South Dakota

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: The total gross income may not exceed maximum income guidelines. Households must also be responsible for paying home heating costs.

Tennessee

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: One's household income is at or below 60 percent of the state median income

Texas

Program: Comprehensive Energy Assistance Program (CEPA)/LIHEAP

Eligibility: Individuals of families meet the income guidelines that vary each year.

Utah

Program: Home Energy Assistance Target (HEAT)

Eligibility: Eligiblity depends on total household income, which must be at or below 150 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. Households are responsible for paying home energy costs. Household must also contain at least one US citizen or qualified non-citizen.

Vermont

This state has two programs - Residents can apply for Green Mountain Power Energy Assistance or the Vermont Gas Energy Assistance.

Program: Green Mountain Power Energy Assistance

Eligibility: Resident's total gross monthly household income at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level

OR

Program: Vermont Gas Energy Assistance

Eligibility: Resident's gross monthly household income is at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty level.

Virginia

Program: EAP

Eligibility: Individuals or households must have heating or cooling expenses, and their gross monthly income may not exceed 150 percent of the federal poverty level

Washington

Program: LIHEAP

Eligibility: The Income limit is set at 150 percent of the federal poverty level, other factors are determined via your local LIHEAP provider

West Virginia

Program: LIEAP

Eligibility: Factors determining eligibility are income, type of heating payment, and total heating costs.

Wisconsin

Program:Wisconsin Home Energy Assistance Program (WHEAP)/LIHEAP

Eligibility: Based on income that is at or below 60 percent of the State Median Income.

Wyoming

Program: LIEAP

Eligibility: Individuals or households must meet federal income guidelines. Other factors include household size, and home heating fuel type.
Overview of the Nursing Major

The nursing program prepares graduates to take the National Council Licensing Examination in Nursing for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN), a required credential for nursing practice. The curriculum integrates MCLAs strong liberal arts foundation such as humanities, physical and social sciences with theoretical and clinical courses in professional nursing guided by the Quality and Safety Education in Nursing (QSEN) Core Competencies. The program also provides a strong foundation to successfully pursue graduate study in advanced nursing practice roles.

MCLA Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) Programs Mission

MCLA BSN Programs mission is to prepare baccalaureate nurses who will enhance the health status of rural underserved communities through excellence in nursing education and practice. The program is rooted in MCLAs strong liberal arts foundation of the humanities, the arts, and the physical and social sciences. We are dedicated to the Colleges mission of excellence in learning and teaching, innovative scholarship, intellectual creativity, public service, applied knowledge, and active responsible citizenship.

MCLA BSN Programs Vision

Our vision is that MCLA BSN Program will be an exemplary baccalaureate nursing program offered in a public liberal arts environment that is nationally recognized for improving healthcare in rural underserved communities experiencing health disparities.

MCLA in 4

A sample 4-year plan showing a possible sequence of courses in this major.

Courses of Study

NURS 200 Introduction to Contemporary Nursing (3 credits)

Introduces the student to the major concepts and ideas forming the context of contemporary professional nursing practice including professional standards of practice and development of professional behaviors. The evolution of nursing, nursing practice, and nursing theory is explored. This course is intended to help students develop a beginning personal philosophy of nursing as well as a foundation for quality and safety in professional nursing practice.

NURS 201 Adult Physical Assessment (4 credits)

Explores the concept of health and patient-centered assessment, integrating the essentials of communication, professionalism, safety, quality care, and evidence-based practice. The student will develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to perform a health assessment within the context of the nursing process. The laboratory focus is on the performance of assessment skills through data collection, analysis, and interpretation.

Hands-on Lab Component

NURS 202 Fundamentals of Nursing (5 credits)

Focuses on the acquisition of the basic knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary for providing safe, patient-centered care. Emphasis is on the nursing process, functional health patterns, communication strategies, clinical reasoning and decision making, and professional role development. The clinical focus is on the beginning application of nursing knowledge and evidence-based practice interventions in the laboratory setting and with selected patients in clinical settings.

Hands-on Lab and Clinical Practice Components

NURS 210 Pathophysiology/Pharmacology I (3 credits)

Introduces the basic concepts and principles of pathophysiology and pharmacology. Students will study the science of pharmacology to develop an understanding of medications and their interactions in human disease and the mechanisms that govern them. Students will examine the pathophysiological and pharmacological phenomena that produce alterations in human physiology and the resulting human response to pharmaco-therapeutic interventions. Topics are arranged by major body system.

NURS 211 Medication Dosage Calculations (1 credit)

Builds upon the students basic math skills to calculate safe medication dosages, convert measurement systems, select appropriate dosage calculation tools for medication administration, and determine the parameters for safe medication administration. This course is intended to prepare the student nurse for safe, patient centered administration of medications, and accurate documenting in both traditional and electronic records.

NURS 301 Nursing Care of the Adult and Older Adult I (6 credits)

Focuses on the beginning clinical reasoning for common health problems of the adult and older adult building on prior knowledge and skills gained in the NURS201 and NURS202. The roles and responsibilities of the nurse in the acute care setting in relationship to safety, quality, legal, and ethical issues will be discussed. Evidence-based practice and standards of care are integrated in course content, laboratory exercises and clinical experiences.

Hands-on Lab and Clinical Practice Components

NURS 302 Nursing Care of the Adult and Older Adult II (6 credits)

Builds on prior knowledge and skills gained in NURS301 Nursing Care of the Adult and Older Adult I. Evidence-based practice and standards of care are integrated in course content, laboratory exercises and clinical experiences with exposure to a diverse patient population experiencing varying levels of wellbeing. The roles and responsibilities of the nurse in the acute care setting in relationship to safety, collaboration, discharge planning, and health education will be discussed.

Hands-on Lab and Clinical Practice Components

NURS 303 Mental Health Nursing (4 credits)

Focuses on nursing care of individuals, families, and/or groups when mental health alterations exist. Specific psychiatric diagnoses are examined including but not limited to the following: anxiety/depressive disorders, substance related disorders, suicidal behaviors, and dissociative disorders. Current trends in mental health nursing are explored in course content and clinical experiences. The professional role is expanded through the development of skills as a nurse counselor.

Hands-on Lab and Clinical Practice Components

NURS 304 Nursing Care of Children and Families (4 credits)

Explores family and developmental theories and pediatric practice in didactic and clinical experiences. Communication, health history, growth and development, social and cultural influences of the pediatric client are explored. Applying concepts enables students to provide anticipatory guidance and empowerment of parenting. Leadership skills are demonstrated in the clinical setting through participation within the healthcare team for the purpose of meeting the patient and family needs.

Hands-on Lab and Clinical Practice Components

NURS 305 Maternal-Newborn Nursing (4 credits)

Focuses on developing the skills necessary to provide safe, quality-driven care to the childbearing family. A major focus will be the healthy and at-risk mother and baby within the context of pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum/neonatal periods. Evidence-based practice is emphasized in the theoretical and clinical components of this course. Concepts related to perinatal physiology, genetics, psychological and developmental theories as well as cultural awareness are explored.

Hands-on Lab and Clinical Practice Components

NURS 310 Pathophysiology/Pharmacology II (3 credits)

Builds on NURS210, with the introduction of further advanced concepts and principles of pathophysiology and pharmacology. Students will develop a deeper understanding of medications and their interactions in human disease and mechanisms that govern them. Students will continue to examine the pathophysiological and pharmacological phenomena that produce alterations in human physiology and the resulting human response to pharmacotherapeutic intervention. Topics are arranged by major body system.

NURS 400 Nursing Research (3 credits)

Introduces the student to the quantitative and qualitative research process in nursing and examines the relationship between nursing theory, research, and practice. The foundation for how to conduct, interpret, critique, and apply nursing research findings into clinical practice is emphasized. This course familiarizes the student with the concept of evidence-based practice and the use of research-based findings for the purpose of informing decisions about care delivery.

NURS 401 Population-based (Community) Health Nursing (4 credits)

Focuses on the assessment and identification of a priority public health need for a focused population. Working in communities, students will apply public health principles of epidemiological investigation, assessment of social and environmental influences on health and identification of societal resources. By partnering with individuals, families, and communities in activities to improve health and avoid illness, students will appreciate the nursing leadership needed for a healthier society.

Hands-on Lab and Clinical Practice Components

NURS 402 Nursing Leadership and Management of Care (5 credits)

Explores leadership and management theories that facilitate entry-level nursing graduates to become leaders at the bedside, among inter-professional groups, and in the community. Classroom and clinical experiences are designed to build the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed for visionary leadership. Emphasis is placed on the role of the professional nurse in promoting safe, cost-effective care in a rapidly and radically changing healthcare environment.

Hands-on Lab and Clinical Practice Components

NURS 410 Senior Seminar (Issues and Trends in Nursing) (2 credits)

Promotes synthesis of the Massachusetts Department of Higher Educations Nurse of the Future Nursing Core Competencies and Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) Competencies. A primary focus of this seminar is to solidify knowledge, skills, and attitudes essential for the role transition from student to professional nurse. Emphasis will be placed on how nurses impact quality patient outcomes through inter-professional collaboration, evidence-based practice, safety and informatics.

NURS 411 Preparation for Professional Licensure (2 credits)

Assists in preparing the senior nursing student for success in the profession, including the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX). It includes history of the NCLEX-RN, current test plan, skills in reading and understanding standardized test item formats, and techniques to maximize self-confidence and improve test performance.

MCLA has applied for Prerequisite Approval status through the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Nursing for the operation of its Bachelor of Science in Nursing Degree Program
Feature: China's relief supplies help Afghan quake-victims

Xinhua) 13:24, July 05, 2022

SHARAN, Afghanistan, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Khan Mohammad, a villager from Afghanistan's Paktika province, received Chinese assistance, including a tent, after sleeping in the open for several days as a result of the destructive earthquake that struck Afghanistan on June 22.

"China's tents reached us just at the right time. My family of seven are all together in the same tent," Mohammad told Xinhua recently, describing China as a good neighbor of Afghanistan.

The destructive earthquake rendered hundreds of families homeless in the province, forcing them to live under trees in hot weather, intolerable in summer when the scorching sun beats down all day and mosquitoes bite all night.

Abdul Rauf, 40, also affected by the quake, said that the Chinese tents had largely alleviated the homelessness problem.

"The tremor had destroyed all my property. I had to live in open for several days. China's donations relieved my problem," Rauf said.

Mawlawi Mansoor, the head of Natural Disaster Management Authority of Paktika province, said that 920 Chinese tents and various clothes had been distributed to the quake victims in Barmal and neighboring Gayan districts.

At least 1,000 people had been confirmed dead and nearly 2,000 others sustained injuries in the 5.9-magnitude tremor.

China has pledged assistance worth 7.5 million U.S. dollars to assist the quake-affected regions.

"We thank China for announcing the abundant aid to the people of Afghanistan," Afghan caretaker government's chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Xinhua.

Several countries along with international agencies including UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) have also assisted the affected regions.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
ABOUT VILLAGEREACH

VillageReach transforms health care delivery to reach everyone so that each person has the health care needed to thrive. We develop solutions that improve equity and access to primary health care. This includes making sure products are available when and where they are needed and primary health care services are delivered to the most under-reached. Radical collaboration with governments, the private sector and other partners strengthen our ability to scale and sustain these solutions. Our work increases access to quality health care for more than 58 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. VillageReach in incorporated in Washington State and has offices in Seattle (USA), Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, and Mozambique.

DESCRIPTION

Summary

In Mozambique, VillageReach has been working since 2015 with the Ministry of Health (MISAU) to implement its supply chain strategy, including integrating private transporters into their last-mile delivery system. This has involved building political will for the integration of outsourced transport, setting up standards for vetting and managing transporters, helping the government monitor cost and performance, identifying and addressing performance gaps and putting in place the mechanisms for collaboration between government and private sector firms. Based on this experience, VillageReach has set up an Outsourcing Transport Resource Center to support Mozambique and countries across Sub-Saharan Africa and is now seeking to hire a Logistics Outsourcing Advisor to support its work in Francophone Africa.

The Logistics Outsourcing Advisor will lead service delivery to government in-country technical assistance partners so that they can successfully support governments to assess, evaluate, contract and implement transport outsourcing for public health supply chains. The role will work under the supervision of the Outsourcing Logistics Expert & OTRC Team Lead based in Mozambique.

This position will be based in Kinshasa or Abidjan. A successful candidate will have relevant experience in the implementation of transport outsourcing with the ability to work with government stakeholders in developing their capacity to understand and use private-sector solutions.

Description

Essential Duties and Responsibilities are included in the list below. Other duties, responsibilities, and activities may change or be assigned at any time. The approximate yearly breakdown of time is provided below. In the first 6 months, the new advisor will spend time in Mozambique to become familiar with the OTRC service model and tools.

Francophone region

OTRC socialization (10%): Conduct activities to secure opportunities for the OTRC to support Francophone countries and their in-country technical partners. Activities will include identifying potential countries with needs; identifying relevant technical partners to support and presenting OTRC services.

Conduct activities to secure opportunities for the OTRC to support Francophone countries and their in-country technical partners. Activities will include identifying potential countries with needs; identifying relevant technical partners to support and presenting OTRC services. Technical partner support (50%): For a given engagement and in-country TA partner, define and validate targeted results and associated Terms of Reference; create and manage project plan; set TA partner expectations and proactively manage scope; lead execution of engagements per agreed Terms of Reference to build in-country TA partner capacity

For a given engagement and in-country TA partner, define and validate targeted results and associated Terms of Reference; create and manage project plan; set TA partner expectations and proactively manage scope; lead execution of engagements per agreed Terms of Reference to build in-country TA partner capacity Government capacity building (30%): Conduct activities to ensure government is able to collaborate effectively with private sector firms. Activities will include definition of skills development plans, assessment of skills, development of training materials and provision of training.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Technical support development (10%): contribute to the development of the OTRC technical support model; contribute to the ongoing update of tools and methods based on lessons learned.

Competencies:

The following competencies reflect what is expected of all VillageReach employees; including examples of how one might demonstrate each of these competencies in ones role.

Personal Motivation and Drive: Is self-directed in ones approach to work, but asks for help when needed; holds oneself accountable; undertakes self-development activities; seeks to build and master new skills; looks for and takes advantage of opportunities within the organization

Is self-directed in ones approach to work, but asks for help when needed; holds oneself accountable; undertakes self-development activities; seeks to build and master new skills; looks for and takes advantage of opportunities within the organization Collaboration & Effective Communication: Establishes and maintains effective relations with coworkers, partners & stakeholders and external parties; works collaboratively with others to accomplish organizational and team goals and objectives; works actively to resolve conflicts; expresses ideas and thoughts effectively; selects and uses appropriate communication methods and maintains meaningful communication with virtual coworkers and other parties to keep them informed

Establishes and maintains effective relations with coworkers, partners & stakeholders and external parties; works collaboratively with others to accomplish organizational and team goals and objectives; works actively to resolve conflicts; expresses ideas and thoughts effectively; selects and uses appropriate communication methods and maintains meaningful communication with virtual coworkers and other parties to keep them informed Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: Takes personal responsibility for and supports others across the organization in creating and sustaining a diverse work environment where individuals are welcomed, valued, respected and supported; personally committed to attaining cultural competency including self-awareness of ones own attitudes about culture and cross-cultural interactions; exhibits the willingness and ability to engage openly and respectfully around issues of race, colonialism, identity and culture; upholds equity in access to sharing of information, ideas, and opportunities throughout VillageReach

Takes personal responsibility for and supports others across the organization in creating and sustaining a diverse work environment where individuals are welcomed, valued, respected and supported; personally committed to attaining cultural competency including self-awareness of ones own attitudes about culture and cross-cultural interactions; exhibits the willingness and ability to engage openly and respectfully around issues of race, colonialism, identity and culture; upholds equity in access to sharing of information, ideas, and opportunities throughout VillageReach Commitment to Excellence: Produces a high output of work, both in terms of quality and quantity; looks for ways to

Produces a high output of work, both in terms of quality and quantity; looks for ways to improve and promote quality; monitors work to ensure quality; has a personal commitment to the mission of VillageReach

monitors work to ensure quality; has a personal commitment to the mission of VillageReach Solution Orientation & Innovation: Focuses on results and desired outcomes and how to best achieve them; gets the job done; sees opportunities for creative problem-solving while staying within the parameters of good practice; sees old problems in new ways and has novel approaches to solving those problems; contributes original and/or resourceful ideas to their area of responsibility; is able to consider and articulate risks and consequences of proposed innovations and factor these into decision-making.

REQUIREMENTS

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

This position has no supervisory responsibilities and is an advisory position to a selected number of in-country TA providers working for governments in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Education & Experience:

Bachelor of Business Administration degree or equivalent

Minimum 5 years work experience working with private sector logistics firms

Understanding of the challenges of integrating private sector capacity into public health systems

Experience in integrating private sector transporter capacity into public health systems supply chains

Experience providing consulting services, specifically supporting the implementation of changes to an organizations processes, systems and organizations

Other Qualifications:

Eligibility to work in DRC or Ivory Coast and flexibility to travel across Sub-Saharan Africa

Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite (Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Excel), and comfortable in a fast-paced technical environment.

Business analytics capability to design the analysis needed to gain buy-in and achieve objectives

Communications skills to develop analysis and presentations that are convincing and easy-to-understand

Project management skills to plan new projects and navigate complex stakeholder environments

Full professional proficiency in written and spoken English and French.

Established cultural competency in partnering with racial, cultural, and linguistically diverse groups.

Demonstrated understanding of challenges with working in rural, underserved, and low-income context; experience living in and/or working in a low-income country a plus.

Previous experience working with LMIC governments preferred

Environment and Physical Demands

VillageReach employees work in a shared, open environment with task and conference rooms accessible to employees for privacy and meetings. The noise level in the work environment is usually quiet. Due to the time zone differences between our Seattle office and our Country Offices and location of other global staff, US based staff are expected to be available for early morning meetings starting at 6am. In addition, our global HQ and Country office staff are expected to be available for late afternoon/evening meetings up to 6pm.

COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY & INCLUSION:

VillageReach is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer committed to workforce diversity. We believe that diverse, equitably weighted perspectives foster an organizational capacity to create novel solutions that improve health in the most underserved and hard-to-reach areas. To align our values, innovations and impact, VillageReach is committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse global workforce.

APPLICATION INFORMATION:

This is an immediate hire and therefore resumes will be reviewed on a rolling basis until July 15th. To apply, please submit your resume and a cover letter and to our online portal: https://www.villagereach.org/join-us/



Safeguarding:

VillageReach is committed to promoting the welfare of children, young people, adults, and beneficiaries with whom it engages. We expect everyone working with us to share this commitment through our code of conduct. All offers of employment will be subject to satisfactory references and appropriate screening checks, which may include criminal records. VillageReach participates in the Misconduct Disclosure Scheme and, in line with this Scheme, we will request information from job applicants previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse, and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment. By applying, the job applicant confirms his/her understanding of these recruitment procedures.

Compensation:

VillageReach has an established compensation structure that is based on the relevant market and internally transparent. We hire people into the established range based on ones experience and education considering internal equity. We do not inquire about salary history.
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LONDON (AP)  Climate change protesters targeted a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper at London's Royal Academy of Arts Tuesday, gluing themselves to the painting's frame and spray-painting No New Oil next to it.

The protest, organized by supporters of the campaign group Just Stop Oil, came a day after two activists from the group were arrested after gluing themselves to the frame of John Constable's The Hay Wain in London's National Gallery.

On Tuesday, five activists went into the Royal Academy and attached a hand each to the frame of The Last Supper," a full-size copy of da Vinci's famous 15th-century work.

The Metropolitan Police said three men and two women were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage. The Royal Academy said the gallery room was closed to the public and that police were called upon the protesters' request.

Just Stop Oil," which wants the government to stop giving out licenses for new oil and gas projects, has staged a series of attention-grabbing protests over the past week.

On Monday, two activists were arrested after they covered Constable's 1821 The Hay Wain with large sheets of paper depicting an apocalyptic vision of the future." They then each stuck a hand on the frame of the oil painting and protested as security staff ushered out tourists and a group of schoolchildren.

The National Gallery said that painting's frame suffered minor damage and there was also some disruption to the surface of the varnish on the painting, but both were fixed and the painting was rehung.

Activists from Just Stop Oil" also disrupted the British Grand Prix race on Sunday when they sat down on the track during a halt in the Formula One race in Silverstone, southern England.

Police said six people were charged with conspiracy to cause public nuisance at the race.
LANSING, Mich. (AP)  The father of the jet engine-powered semitruck driver who died during a performance at a southwestern Michigan air show said Tuesday that the truck burst into flames after a blown tire ruptured the fuel tank.

Chris Darnell, 40, died in the accident Saturday that happened during a race between the Shockwave Jet Truck and two airplanes at the Battle Creek Field of Flight Air Show and Balloon Festival. No one else was injured in the accident.

The custom-built jet truck reaches speeds topping 350 mph (560 kilometers per hour) and races at air shows across North America, according to Springfield, Missouri-based Darnell Racing Enterprises.

As the tire came apart it ruptured the fuel tank on the left side of the car and that, of course, initiated the fire. It happened so quickly that Chris didn't even have time to react," Neal Darnell, the driver's father, told The Associated Press.

Video from an audience member shows the truck catching fire before flipping down the runway at Battle Creek Executive Airport.

Neal Darnell, who also drives the Shockwave, said he concluded what happened after watching video of the accident and inspecting the jet truck. He said this was the only accident Darnell Racing Enterprises has had in 20 years.

Battle Creek police and fire officials did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request by The Associated Press seeking further comment about an investigation into the crash.

Most people dont like their jobs. Chris loved his job. He would say on a fairly regular basis that he was living the dream and I loved that for him, Darnell said.

The family is waiting for an autopsy report to learn the official cause of death.

Chris Darnell leaves behind his wife and two young daughters. A GoFundMe page has been set up for the family.

___

Joey Cappelletti is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
BEULAH  Property owners in northern Michigan could lose the rights to their property with a single signature if theyre not careful.

Paula Eberhart, register of deeds for Benzie County, said shes seen purchase agreements come into her office recently attempting to use high pressure tactics to get victims to pay for services and even give up their property.

Property and mortgage fraud is the fastest growing white-collar crime in America, Eberhart said. People need to be aware of this.

Eberhart said property owners in Benzie County have been receiving purchase agreements for their property in the mail. The agreements offer to buy the property and tell the owner they have a short time to sign the agreement.

Weve seen this one come in several times, Eberhart said. They mail the agreement to property owners offering a considerably lower sales price than the property is worth and tell them they only have a few days to sign the agreement. It doesnt threaten people, but people, especially the elderly, might panic when they see they only have so many days to sign something.

Eberhart said the contracts are legally binding purchase agreements that have been drawn up and need only the signature to be official.

Ive had about three customers show me these agreements theyve gotten in the mail, Eberhart said. The people sending them are hoping the property owner will feel pressured into signing it without realizing what theyre doing.

Eberhart said another practice shes heard of involves home warranties.

People get a notice that their home warranty is about to expire and there is a check with the notice, she said. The mailing says people have a limited time to call and renew or purchase a home warranty, which is more than the attached check covers, and theyre told if they dont, theyre financially liable for repairs.

Eberhart said quit claim deed and mortgage fraud is also on the rise.

People are forging signatures and taking out mortgages in other peoples name or quit claiming peoples property, she said. This is getting very big down state and in states like Florida.

People in Benzie County have also reported receiving mailings from companies offering to send the property owner a copy of their deed for payment, often in the amount of $80 or more. Eberhart said these companies deliver on their claims, but a property owner can get copies of their deeds themselves at the register of deeds office for $1 per page.

Eberhart said it is hard for the register of deeds office to spot anything suspicious, because anything filed legally has to be recorded.

Most of our documents get mailed to us or are brought in by title companies, she said. We wouldnt know if something mailed in to us didnt actually come from somebody.

Aside from being aware of what mailings are asking, Eberhart said checking their deed periodically can head off problems.

Eberhart said one sure sign something is amiss is not getting a tax bill for the property.

Eberhart said her office has made a brochure available that explains the various kinds of high-pressure tactics and mailings companies are using in attempts to get people to part with their money and even their property.

She also said people can go to propertyfraudalert.com and sign up to be notified when a property document is filed in their name.

People can choose several notification options, so if they dont have internet, they can still be notified, Eberhart said. It wont prevent fraud, but property owners will be notified when a document is filed, and they can act on it quickly.

Property owners can also file a complaint with their local sheriffs office.
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MANISTEE TWP.  A roundabout project just north of Manistee is expected to get started near the Little River Casino Resort, at the intersection of U.S. 31 and M-22 next week.

James Lake, Michigan Department of Transportation North Region communications representative, said in an email that the M-22 and U.S. 31 intersection has seen a pattern of angle crashes at this intersection that have unfortunately resulted in one death and several severe injuries in recent years



This prompted the interest in a roundabout for the location, he said.



Roundabouts virtually eliminate head-on and high speed angle crashes, which are some of the most severe kinds of crashes and result in the greatest number of deaths and serious injuries, Lake said. In other locations where we and other road agencies have replaced traditional intersections with roundabouts, we generally see a 90% reduction in fatalities and a 76% reduction in injuries.
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WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden on Tuesday bestowed the nation's highest military honor to four Army soldiers for heroism during the Vietnam War, bravery that he said had not diminished even with the passage of time.

Biden presented the Medal of Honor to Staff Sgt. Edward N. Kaneshiro, Spc. Five Dwight W. Birdwell, Spc. Five Dennis M. Fujii, and retired Maj. John J. Duffy. Speaking at a ceremony in the White House East Room, Biden praised their heroism, noting that many like them don't receive the full recognition they deserve.

Today, we're setting the record straight. We're upgrading the awards of four soldiers who performed acts of incredible heroism during the Vietnam conflict, Biden said.

Its just astounding when you hear what each of them have done, he said. They went far above and beyond the call of duty. Its a phrase always used but ... it takes on life when you see these men.

Addressing the three living soldiers and relatives of Kaneshiro, who is deceased, the president said, I'm proud to finally award our highest military recognition, the Medal of Honor, to each of you.

Biden noted that more than 50 years had passed since the jungles of Vietnam where, as young men, these soldiers first proved their mettle. But time has not diminished their astonishing bravery, their selflessness in putting the lives of others ahead of their own and the gratitude that we as a nation owe them.

Kaneshiro, killed in action by hostile gunfire in Vietnam in 1967, received his honor posthumously for a Dec. 1, 1966 raid where his unit came under fire by North Vietnamese troops. His actions were credited with helping his unit withdraw from the village where they were fighting. Kaneshiro was born and raised in Hawaii, a son of Japanese immigrants.

Birdwell was honored for actions helping to head off an assault and evacuate wounded at Tan Son Nhut Airbase near Saigon on Jan. 31, 1968, despite injuries to his torso and face, during an opening salvo in what is known as the Tet Offensive, an especially bloody period of the war.

Birdwell, a member of the Cherokee Nation and a lawyer in Oklahoma City, had received a Silver Star for his actions. Biden said it took Birdwell's commanding officer decades to realize that Birdwell had not received the proper recognition and took steps, even in retirement, to make this day possible.

At long last, long last, your story is being honored as it should have been always, Biden told Birdwell.

Fujii received a Medal of Honor for actions over four days in February 1971 treating wounded and directing air strikes against enemy positions after his air ambulance was forced to crash land.

Duffy was recognized for leading troops who came under ambush after their commander was killed in action, repelling attackers and evacuating wounded, despite his own injuries. Duffy went on to become an author and once was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

He is the definition of a warrior poet, Biden said.
In a span of 27 hours over the Fourth of July weekend, New Haven and Hartford police responded to incidents involving six gunshot victims, including a 5-year-old who was grazed by gunfire and a woman who was killed.

Nick Aysseh, manager of the Yale New Haven Center for Injury and Violence Prevention, described a scene in the past few years when three people were shot at a celebration of life for a person who died by gun violence.

Its a cycle that is nearly impossible to break  until now, he said.

About 95 percent of gunshot victims in Connecticuts largest cities are underemployed or unemployed and lack the resources to acquire an education, stable housing and enough money to survive, according to Aysseh and other gun violence prevention experts in the state.

They are already behind the eight ball, Aysseh said. Throw in a gunshot wound for a person who is already struggling and it makes it much worse.

Since February 2020, Ayssehs team, which includes a physician, a social worker and an outreach worker, has been connecting gunshot victims and their families with services designed to pull them out of the cycle of retaliation and victimization and into a stable future.

Its an established protocol that can mean the difference between a victim being shot again or being arrested for shooting someone connected with their injury, or going on to have a productive life, said Andrew Woods, the executive director of Hartford Communities that Care, who has run a team of social and outreach workers for gunshot victims taken to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford for nearly two decades.

Like the Yale New Haven program, the majority of gunshot and stabbing victims that are helped through Hartford Communities That Care are young Black men between the ages of 18 and 25 and adult Black men ages 30 to 44, Woods said.

Its not sexy to support gunshot victims who are young Black men, Woods said. And it has never been a sexy thing for lawmakers to target.

But in recent years, hospital-based and hospital-linked violence intervention programs have been gaining ground in Connecticut, with increased funding and expansion into more settings, Woods said. Hartford Hospital and Connecticut Childrens Medical Center are working to start their own HVIPs and a legislative committee examining gun violence that Woods chaired helped pass a Connecticut law creating the states first Office of Gun Violence, which will operate under the umbrella of the state Department of Public Health.

This work is just beginning to attract resources, said Wood, who secured a federal loan to keep his team of three case managers and seven intervention specialists on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week to show up at hospitals to tend and meet gunshot victims and their families within minutes of a patient being transported to the St. Francis Emergency Department.

Even with the funding there are untold victims who want to receive support, Woods said.

Scope of the problem

Yale doctoral student Kathleen ONeill determined the number of people presenting at Emergency Departments at Yale New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport and St. Francis hospitals for violence-related trauma increased by 55 percent between Jan. 1, 2018 and Jan.1, 2021 compared with the previous three years, according to her thesis Improving Care for Surviors of Gun Violence, which was released in 2021.

During that same period, emergency department visits from minorities with violence-related trauma increased by 61 percent and there was a 76 percent increase in penetration injuries, such as gunshots, ONeills work concluded.

That translates into hundreds of gunshot victims that not only need help with their injuries, but also with returning to life without the weight of psychological trauma, worries about medical bills and if they can pay the rent or succeed in life, Aysseh said.

We had one person who was shot in the face and lost an eye, he said. Insurance paid for an eye, but it didnt fit. They needed help getting one that fit and during the course of dealing with that person, the team discovered they were dyslexic so they connected him with help for that as well.

In 2021, Yale New Haven Hospital had 178 people come into the emergency department with gunshot wounds, with 15 fatalities. In the first six months of 2022, there were 73 gunshot victims with six fatalities, Aysseh said.

In the first fiscal year of the federal grant running from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020, Hartford Communities that Care believed it would serve 90 gunshot victims or victims of serious assault, including stabbings, Woods said. But by the end of the fiscal year, the group ended up serving 216, with at least 200 injured by gunfire, he said. Those figures are primarily based on gunshot and assault victims brought to St. Francis Hospital from Hartford and surrounding communities.

In the period from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021, Hartford Communities That Care expected they would reach out to 150 gunshot victims in the Hartford area. They wound up with 180, Woods said.

Hartford Hospital sees about 130 to 140 admissions for gunshot wounds a year, Dr. Jordan Gates said.

There are many more who are discharged from the emergency department, he said. The hospital is crafting a plan with other organizations to start their own HVIP, he said.

The range of gunshot injuries can run from not severe, to serious to fatalities, he said. Most people suffer both physical and mental injuries when they are shot, Gates said.

They are in the prime of their life and suddenly their choices for work have narrowed because of their injuries. Things like broken bones and neurological injuries can render you incapable of working for a year or more and sometimes its forever, Gates said.

There are people who are released from the emergency department that day or spend a few days in the hospital, Gates said. Others will spend months in the hospital recuperating and could be placed in short- or long-term rehabilitation centers or in nursing homes, he said.

Providing help and a path to success

When a shooting victim arrives at St. Francis Hospital, Woods said his team is notified and they arrive within 20 minutes. They go directly to the hospital to meet with the persons family and make sure they have access to a private room where they can receive updates on the victim, Woods said.

His organization will support families who are grieving if the shooting is fatal, he said. For non-fatal injuries, including those that dont require admission to the hospital, the Hartford Communities That Care team will schedule a home visit with a nurse or a physician for wound care within 48 hours.

The home visits are key, Woods said.

There is no way you can do this work without access to medical and behavioral supports, Woods said.

Unlike Yale New Havens program, which is hospital-based, Hartford Communities That Care is hospital-linked and relies on physician in training residents from UConn Healths medical school for the home visits.

We try to engage with victims, said Dr. Kenia Mansilla-Rivera, director of UConns family medicine residency program. These victims dont necessarily trust doctors or health systems or anything that has to do with authority.

Her residents go to homes in pairs to conduct medical intake and provide trauma-informed care, she said. During the visit, they will identify medical needs, including wound care and physical care, Mansilla-Rivera said.

They are trained to use language that makes people comfortable and will return for follow-ups if the victim agrees, she said.

Does it always work? No, she said. But we have had some success stories.

Hartford Communities That Care will also provide help in finding services and re-connect with victims after three, six and nine months, Woods said.

The Yale New Haven program utilizes a gunshot victim as a credible messenger who does outreach and will connect families with services and continue to make sure their needs are being met, Aysseh said.

Its not just the gunshot wound that needs treatment and recovery, Aysseh said. Its their current situation and there are long-lasting effects that need to be addressed. These people need the support. What we are doing is the root of public health.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP)  A new group of high school graduates planning to become teachers will receive a West Virginia scholarship worth up to $40,000 over four years, officials said.

A total of 27 seniors were chosen for the third cohort of Underwood-Smith Teaching Scholars, according to the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission.
Spc. 5 Dwight Birdwell didn't want to die, but he was ready to as he fought his way through an enemy ambush at an air base near Saigon.

For Maj. John Duffy, calling in airstrikes from a location close to enemy positions even as he was wounded was just part of the job.

And when the children of Staff Sgt. Edward Kaneshiro heard their father had single-handedly cleared an enemy trench so his men could safely withdraw, they were inspired to "be a better person, to be courageous and to have integrity."

Read Next: Space Force Launches New Intelligence Unit as Congress Voices Concerns over Growth

"He didn't even think about himself," Kaneshiro's daughter, Naomi Viloria, told Military.com on Sunday. "He just had one mission, and that was trying to save his unit. It was duty to country."

On Tuesday, Birdwell, Duffy and Kaneshiro, as well as Spc. 5 Dennis Fujii, were awarded the Medal of Honor by President Joe Biden for "acts of gallantry and intrepidity" during the Vietnam War, earning the nation's highest military honor after a 50-year wait. For Kaneshiro, the honor is posthumous; he was killed on the battlefield months after his heroic actions.

Medal of Honor recipients clockwise from left, Spc. 5 Dwight Birdwell; Spc. 5 Dennis Fujii; Staff Sgt. Edward Kaneshiro; and Maj. John Duffy. (U.S. Army composite image from courtesy photos)

During the White House ceremony, Biden said the medals were about "setting the record straight" and giving the Army veterans the level of recognition they deserve after so many years.

"There's been a long journey to this day for those heroes and their families, and more than 50 years have passed -- 50 years -- since the jungles of Vietnam, where as young men, these soldiers first proved their mettle," Biden said. "But time has not diminished their astonishing bravery, their selflessness in putting the lives of others ahead of their own, and the gratitude that we as a nation owe them."

Birdwell, sharing his thoughts in a call with Military.com that included Viloria, her brother John, and Duffy, ahead of the ceremony, was stoic about the wait.

Somebody told me long ago these things often take time, he said.

President Biden presents the Medal of Honor to Staff Sgt. Edward Kaneshiro for his actions on Dec. 1, 1966, during the Vietnam War, as his son John Kaneshiro accepts the posthumous recognition during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, July 5, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Kaneshiro's children, after reading in a newspaper that their father had first been recommended for a Medal of Honor in 1966, wrote a letter to their senator in 1990. When nothing came of that, they wrote another letter to a different senator in 2011.

Two weeks after his wife and their mother died in April, Kaneshiro's children got a call that their father's record was being reviewed and, a few weeks after that, Biden called to say he was getting the Medal of Honor, Viloria said during the phone call.

Their mother didn't talk about her husband at all after he died because her "grief was just so profound," but the children found out about his heroism from other family members and newspaper accounts, Viloria said. John Kaneshiro, who accepted the medal Tuesday on his family's behalf, credited his father with inspiring his own service in the Army.

On Dec. 1, 1966, Kaneshiro and his team entered a village near Phu Huu 2 on a search-and-destroy mission. There, they were ambushed by a large North Vietnamese contingent that had fortified the village with a camouflaged trench and bunker system.

A hail of gunfire killed his platoon leader and several other soldiers, and two other squads were pinned down. Realizing the only way anyone would survive was to stop the gunfire, Kaneshiro directed his men to cover him and crawled alone toward the trench.

While still on the ground, he lobbed a grenade that killed the North Vietnamese gunner. Then, he hopped in the trench and worked his way down its entire 35-meter length, eliminating one group of enemy fighters with his rifle and two more enemy groups with grenades.

His actions were credited with allowing for the "orderly extradition and reorganization of the platoon which ultimately led to a successful withdrawal from the village," according to the award citation read at the ceremony.

Kaneshiro continued serving in Vietnam until he was killed by enemy gunfire on March 6, 1967.

"Today, his memory lives on in the lives he saved, in the legend of his fearlessness and the hearts of the family he left behind," Biden said. "Your family's sacrificed so much for our country. I know that no award can ever make up for the loss of your father, for not having him there as you grew up. But I hope today, you take some pride and comfort in knowing his valor is finally receiving the full recognition it's always deserved."

President Joe Biden awards the Medal of Honor to Spc. Dwight Birdwell for his actions on Jan. 31, 1968, during the Vietnam War, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Tuesday, July 5, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

As Birdwell reflected on getting the Medal of Honor, he expressed pride not for himself, but for the 25th Infantry Division and for the Cherokee Nation, of which he is a member.

"It brings honor and respect not only to the Cherokee Nation, but the Cherokee people," said Birdwell, who served as the chief justice of the Cherokee Nation's Supreme Court for a couple of years in the '90s.

Birdwell's award comes for actions on the first day of what would become known as the Tet Offensive.

On Jan. 31, 1968, a large element of North Vietnamese fighters attacked the Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon, and Birdwell's unit was ringed by enemy fighters. Most of his unit's vehicles were destroyed or disabled, and his tank commander was incapacitated after being hit by enemy bullets.

Without hesitation, Birdwell moved the commander aside and took over, firing the tank's cannon, machine gun and his rifle. When he used up all the ammunition in the tank, he dismounted and went to get two machine guns and ammunition from a helicopter that had been downed by enemy fire.

When his machine gun was hit by enemy fire and exploded, he was wounded, but refused to be evacuated and kept moving among disabled vehicles, collecting ammunition that he handed out to his brothers in arms. When reinforcements came, Birdwell helped evacuate the wounded until he was ordered to have his own wounds attended to.

"At the time, Birdwell received the Silver Star for his outstanding heroism on the battlefield," Biden said. "It took decades for his commanding officer, then-Gen. Glenn Otis, to realize Birdwell had not received the full honor he had earned. But in retirement, Gen. Otis made sure to correct the record and fully document Birdwell's actions to make this day possible."

Birdwell said there was not much going through his mind during the battle besides "fight, fight, fight," hoping to inflict as much damage on the enemy as possible and hold out until help arrived.

"We have a saying in Oklahoma, something to the effect of, 'I want to go to heaven, but just not right now,'" he said. "And I was ready to die that day, but of course, I didn't want to do it then because I knew if I went down, it would be easier for the enemy."

Birdwell was not fazed about 54 years passing between his actions and receiving the Medal of Honor.

"There are still men alive who served on Jan. 31, 1968, and I'm happy to bring honor to them, and it validates what they did that day," he said.

President Joe Biden awards the Medal of Honor to retired Maj. John Duffy for his actions on April 14-15 1972, during the Vietnam War, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Tuesday, July 5, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Duffy similarly brushed off the long wait to be honored.

"It was a different situation back then," Duffy said. "The war was ending, American troops were pulling out, they were downplaying too much publicity, and they were trying to withdraw in an orderly manner. And we were the last of the fighters over there, the aircrews and advisers. So we understood the situation. And we were not there to make glory and gain a medal."

Noting he was once nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, Biden called Duffy the "definition of a warrior poet and devotion to those he served with and those who serve our nation still."

Duffy earned his medal for actions in a battle from April 14 to 15, 1972. Two days earlier, his battalion commander had been killed, the battalion command post was destroyed, and Duffy was twice wounded but refused to be evacuated.

Instead, on the morning of April 14 after efforts to establish a landing zone for resupply aircraft, Duffy moved close to anti-aircraft positions to call in airstrikes. He was again wounded, but still refused evacuation. When enemy fighters launched a ground assault and a barrage of artillery fire in the afternoon, Duffy moved from position to position to spot targets for gunship fire.

On the morning of April 15 after an enemy ambush, Duffy led troops, including many who were seriously wounded, to an evacuation area, where he continued to direct gunship fire to enemy positions and marked a landing zone for helicopters. He boarded a helicopter himself only after all the other evacuees were aboard and, once on the helicopter, assisted a couple of the wounded.

"That was our job, and that's as simple as it is," Duffy said of his mindset during the battle. "You're in control. You don't panic. You execute and make the best decisions."

President Joe Biden awards the Medal of Honor to Spc. Dennis Fujii for his actions on Feb. 18-22 1971, during the Vietnam War, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Tuesday, July 5, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Fujii was awarded his medal for actions during a rescue mission in Laos and Vietnam from February 18 to 22, 1971.

Fujii was crew chief aboard a helicopter ambulance that took enemy fire and crash-landed in Laos. A second helicopter landed and took on everyone from the crash -- except for Fujii. The enemy was directing fire at him, and he told the other helicopter to leave him despite being injured.

"I knew that there was no way I could make it from where I was into the chopper," Fujii said in a 2018 interview released by the Army. "And the longer I stayed there and waited, I was putting everybody at risk so I just waved the bird off."

Other efforts to retrieve him were called off because of heavy anti-aircraft fire. Fujii became the lone American on the battlefield and treated injuries of South Vietnamese allies throughout the night and next day.

Amid an enemy assault on the night of Feb. 19, Fujii found a radio transmitter and called in American gunships to help repel the attack. For 17 straight hours, he exposed himself to enemy fire to get better views of enemy troop positions and call in airstrikes.

"At times, the fighting became so vicious that Spc. 5 Fujii was forced to interrupt radio transmissions in order to place suppressive rifle fire on the enemy while in close quarters," the citation read at Tuesday's ceremony said.

A U.S. helicopter was finally able to reach him on Feb. 20, but was hit and forced to crash-land at a South Vietnamese base four kilometers from his original location. A "totally exhausted" Fujii was at the allied camp for another two days before he was finally evacuated to medical care, according to his citation.

"Fujii downplayed his own contributions and honored the skills of the allied Vietnamese troops he fought with, simply saying, 'I like my job. I like to help other people who need help out there,'" Biden said. "It's amazing. Today, Spc. 5 Fujii, we remember and we celebrate just how many people you helped."

-- Rebecca Kheel can be reached at Rebecca.Kheel@Military.com. Follow her on Twitter @reporterkheel

Related: WWII Medal of Honor Recipient to Lie in Honor at US Capitol
TOKYO  Japan protested to Beijing after spotting Chinese and Russian warships just outside its territorial waters around the disputed East China Sea islands on Monday.

Japan's Defense Ministry said a Chinese frigate sailed inside the contiguous zone, just outside Japanese territorial waters around Senkaku Islands, which Beijing also claims and calls the Diaoyu, for several minutes Monday morning.

The Chinese warships presence was confirmed about 40 minutes after a Russian frigate had entered the waters for more than an hour, the ministry said.

It was not immediately clear what was behind the latest Chinese-Russian military activity in the area. Japanese defense officials mentioned a possibility that the ships may have been there to avoid a typhoon.

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara said Japan lodged a protest expressing "grave concern to Beijing over the incident.

The Senkaku islands are an inherent part of Japans territory historically and under international law. The government will deal with the matter calmly but firmly to protect the Japanese land, territorial waters and air space, Kihara said.

There was no violation of the territorial waters, he said.

In Beijing, China justified the frigate's entry and criticized Tokyo's protest. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said the islands are Chinese territory.

The activities of Chinese vessels in waters nearby are lawful and justified, he said at a regular news conference. Japan has no right to make such irresponsible remarks.

Japan sees Chinas increasingly assertive military activity in the East and South China seas as a threat to regional stability. Toyo is especially sensitive to Chinese activities near the disputed islands.

Kihara said that Mondays incursion into the contiguous zone, which is between the territorial sea and the wider exclusive economic zone, by the Chinese warship was a fourth such event since June 2016.

___

Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.
BRUSSELS  The 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland on Tuesday, sending the membership bids of the two nations to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals.

The move further increases Russia's strategic isolation in the wake of its invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February and military struggles there since.

This is truly a historic moment for Finland, for Sweden and for NATO, said alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

The 30 ambassadors and permanent representatives formally approved the decisions of last weeks NATO summit when the alliance made the historic decision to invite Russias neighbor Finland and Scandinavian partner Sweden to join the military club.

Despite the agreement in the alliance, parliamentary approval in member state Turkey could still pose problems for their final inclusion as members.

Last week, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Ankara could still block the process if the two countries fail to fully meet Turkeys demand to extradite terror suspects with links to outlawed Kurdish groups or the network of an exiled cleric accused of a failed 2016 coup in Turkey.

He said Turkeys Parliament could refuse to ratify the deal. It is a potent threat since NATO accession must be formally approved by all 30 member states, which gives each a blocking right.

Stoltenberg said he expected no change of heart. There were security concerns that needed to be addressed. And we did what we always do at NATO. We found common ground.

Every alliance nation has different legislative challenges and procedures to deal with, and it could take several more months for the two to become official members.

I look forward to a swift ratification process, said Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has given the process added urgency. It will ensconce the two nations in the Western military alliance and give NATO more clout, especially in the face of Moscows military threat.

We will be even stronger and our people will be even safer as we face the biggest security crisis in decades, said Stoltenberg.

Tuesdays signing-off does bring both nations deeper into NATOs fold already. As close partners, they already attended some meetings that involved issues that immediately affected them. As official invitees, they can attend all meetings of the ambassadors even if they do not yet have any voting rights.
The military Reserve components and National Guard are rolling out new maternity leave policies, providing up to six days of inactive duty pay and retirement points for members who give birth, with the Navy being the latest service to outline its policies last week.

But Reserve moms who gave birth within the past 18 months -- after Congress passed the law directing the Defense Department to offer the benefit, but before the agency and the services issued their guidance -- will not be eligible.

The Defense Department published a policy June 9 on Reserve Component Military Leave, ordering the services to provide paid authorized absences in lieu of inactive duty for training, also known as IDT, for at least 12 training periods, or the equivalent of three weekends.

Read Next: 50 Years Later, Four Vietnam Vets Awarded Medals of Honor in White House Ceremony

The new benefit is effective June 9, 2022, even though the law that required it was signed on Jan. 1, 2021, and stipulates that the benefit go into effect the day the legislation passed.

The directive, titled "Reserve Component Maternity Leave Program," clearly states that the policy is not retroactive.

The DoD did not respond by publication to questions regarding the discrepancy between the law's proposed effective date and its new policy, leaving moms who gave birth and took unpaid leave between Jan. 1, 2021, and June 8, 2022, with the same option as all Reserve members who had previously given birth: that of unpaid maternity leave and no accrual of retirement points for those weekends.

The services have been rolling out their specific parental leave policies in recent months, including the Navy, which released its guidance last week covering the Navy and Marine Corps Reserves.

The DoD and service policies essentially provide six days of leave for Reserve members and accrual of retirement points.

Per DoD guidance, the Navy announcement noted, the effective date is June 9.

"[The DoD policy] prohibits retroactive requests for qualifying birth events on 8 June 2022 or earlier," the Navy's message to the force said.

According to the guidance, new moms must take the maternity absence within 12 months of giving birth, and commanders cannot deny the benefit if taken within the first three months. After that, commanders can weigh mission requirements in considering whether to grant leave.

Navy Reserve members expressed concern in mid-April that their service had not issued a policy following the Army and Coast Guard's announcements of the new benefit earlier this year. Navy officials told Military.com that they were waiting on DoD guidance before publishing their own.

The policy does not apply to adoptions or paternity leave and will be offered only to drilling reservists "in good standing," according to the DoD policy.

Under the memo issued June 9 by Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gil Cisneros, Reserve members who experience a live birth, stillbirth or miscarriage after 20 weeks can receive the paid authorized absences.

They also are eligible to receive retirement points for the associated weekends, according to the policy.

The Army announced its policy April 19 ahead of the DoD's announcement, allowing Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers paid leave for 12 unit training assemblies, or three weekends, plus the option of four unpaid assemblies, usually two days.

The Coast Guard also issued its guidance in April, announcing the 12 IDT, or essentially six-day policy, while the Air Force has not yet published Reserve-specific guidance.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Military.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.

Related: Troops Would Get 12 Weeks of Paid Parental Leave as Part of Defense Bill Deal
The Space Force has assumed command of a new unit that will be focused on keeping an eye out for foreign threats in space, but it comes as Congress is warning the small service branch that it has to prepare to slow its growth.

Delta 18 and the brand-new National Space Intelligence Center were officially commissioned late last month at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. It will be staffed by nearly 350 civilian and military personnel.

Delta 18's mission is to "deliver critical intelligence on threat systems, foreign intentions, and activities in the space domain to support national leaders, allies, partners and joint war fighters," according to a press release.

Read Next: They Graduated Space Force Boot Camp. What Comes Next for Them, and the Service, Is Less Clear.

The creation of the unit equips the Space Force to assist and work alongside America's intelligence agencies by feeding them information from its growing fleet of satellites and monitoring tools. Avril Haines, President Joe Biden's director of national intelligence, said being able to leverage new intel in space will be crucial.

"In the years ahead, [space] will only become more contested," Haines said during the ceremony activating the unit on June 24. "And as we move forward, NSIC will be relied upon to produce and analyze scientific and technical intelligence related to space for the entire nation."

While the funding of the National Space Intelligence Center was included in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, the start of the new unit comes as Congress warns the Space Force about continued expansion.

This spring, the Space Force asked for $24.5 billion in its 2023 budget request -- a greater than 40% increase from the previous year -- with a majority of the funds projected to go to research and development, as well as establishing more missile warning systems.

Three days prior to the ceremony establishing Delta 18, the House Appropriations Committee filed a report on June 21 warning the newest military branch "against starting more programs than it can afford" and reminded the service that lawmakers expect funding to begin declining in 2027.

"The Space Force's ambitious plans for new architectures, programs and mission areas do not appear to be backed up with credible budget projections in the outyears to actually deliver these capabilities," the report detailed.

The Space Force, which is nested under the Department of the Air Force, similar to the relationship between the Marine Corps and the Navy, is also getting clear signals counseling moderation from Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.

Kendall said at the Space Symposium in Colorado this past April that the new service shouldn't focus on space as an "independent war-fighting domain" and should instead view its mission as being a support organization for the other branches.

The comments appeared to throw cold water on some of the core efforts by the service to grow and mature as a unique branch.

The Space Force is notably smaller than the other branches, with around 8,000 active-duty Guardians and nearly as many civilian employees, making a total force of around 16,000. By comparison, the Coast Guard has around 40,000 members, and the Marine Corps has about 180,000, both tiny compared to the Army and Navy.

Some experts, such as Robert Farley -- a professor at the University of Kentucky who researches national security and intelligence with a focus on the service -- believe the Space Force needs to expand substantially to be able to acquire resources like the other branches.

"Space Force will come to acquire these personnel type structures once and if it becomes an institution that is of similar size to the other ones," Farley told Military.com last month. "It's really a matter of size versus a matter of time."

-- Thomas Novelly can be reached at thomas.novelly@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomNovelly.

Related: Space Force Guardians Grow Exasperated Waiting for the Branch's Policies to Slowly Emerge
San Diego Navy officials are scrambling to alleviate the shortfall of child care providers for the more than 4,000 military children waiting for spots in its base daycare centers, according to Navy Region Southwest officials.

Staffing shortages brought on by the pandemic have impacted a military child care system that was already strained before COVID-19 hit, according to Janet Hooten, the child and youth program manager at Navy Region Southwest in San Diego.

Before the pandemic, military families in San Diego could expect to wait more than a year to have a child placed in a Navy Child Development Center for care, Hooten told the Union-Tribune.

Hooten declined to say how long military families might wait today for a spot. She said the tiered-priority system means not everyone will wait in the same line. However, she said any military member up for orders that could send them to San Diego should get on the waiting list now.

"We encourage every family to put their child on the waitlist as soon as you know you will be leaving (the current duty station)," Hooten said. "You don't have to wait until you have orders in hand."

In 2020, the Navy signed a deal with Coronado Unified School District to lease an under-utilized preschool for Navy child care. While that opened about 200 spots for kids, it only made a dent in the waitlist.

Military child care is subsidized by the Defense Department. There are daycare facilities on military bases as well as in-home daycare providers. But with spots full, service members have to seek costlier alternatives elsewhere  and the situation outside the military system is also strained, according to a University of San Diego study published in April.

The military offers a fee assistance program for these families, but it does not cover the full cost, Hooten said.

Navy Region Southwest, which also manages the child care centers on local Marine bases, is short about 400 providers  including the staff needed for two new centers yet to open at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.

Another new center at Naval Base Point Loma is due to open in 2023, and increased pay for military child care workers is part of next year's proposed Pentagon budget.

In San Diego, the Navy is offering financial incentives to address its staffing shortfall. Accreditation fees for new hires are covered by the Navy, as are sign-on, referral and retention bonuses.

The Navy is holding a hiring fair at the Scottish Rite Center in Mission Valley on Friday, where it will screen, interview and make offers to candidates for both its base child care and recreation centers.

Military families needing assistance with child care, or to get on the wait list, can do so at militarychildcare.com.

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.

2022 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
For more than 230 years, the first line of American coastal defense has been the United States Coast Guard, in some way, shape or form. Whether protecting the nation's waterways, rescuing sailors at sea or enforcing maritime law, the Coast Guard was there.

While other branches of the Armed Forces have a good time joking about whether their "Coastie" brethren are actually a branch of the military (they are), the Coast Guard continues to quietly straddle the dual mission of serving as a military force abroad and a law enforcement agency at home.

It might be hard to understand just how this branch of service manages to do all of that without knowing a few key facts and awesome stories about its history. With the Coast Guard's 232nd birthday on Aug. 4, 2022, here are just a few of those little details.

1. The Coast Guard Is Older than the Navy.

It began its life when President Washington established the Revenue Cutter Service to enforce U.S. tariffs in 1790, and was America's only maritime defense force until the Department of the Navy was established in 1798. The Navy officially dates its birthday back to the establishment of the Continental Navy in 1775, but that Navy was disbanded after the Revolutionary War.

What we know as the Coast Guard today came after a couple of mergers. In 1915, the Revenue Cutter Service was merged with the U.S. Life-Saving Service, and was officially renamed the Coast Guard. In 1939, the Lighthouse Service was folded in and the Commerce Department's Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation was added to the USCG in 1946.

2. The Coast Guard Is Also a Blue-Water Naval Force.

Despite the Coast Guard's endearing (or unendearing, depending on which side you're on) nickname of "Puddle Pirates," the USCG's advanced Legend-class National Security Cutters are advanced ships capable of operating in the open ocean.

Although its missions are different from the Navy's, the newest cutters carry the same Phalanx close-in weapons systems that are present on naval vessels, along with the same electronic warfare and 57 millimeter guns on Littoral Combat Ships. Currently nine of 11 have been completed and operate in the Bering Sea, Pacific Ocean and the Arctic Ocean.

3. The Coast Guard Has Its Own Special Operators.

The Coast Guards Maritime Security Response Team (MSRT) from Virginia participates in a training evolution.The highly trained and specialized team, using a real-world underway ferry, practiced tactical boardings-at-sea, active shooter scenarios, and detection of radiological material. (U.S. Coast Guard/Petty Officer 3rd Class Ross Ruddell)

You've probably heard of the Army's Green Berets, and you've definitely heard of the U.S. Navy SEALs, but you may not have heard of the Coast Guard's Maritime Safety and Security Teams (MSST) and Maritime Security Response Teams (MSRT).

Coast Guard MSST are used to prevent or deter potential terrorist attacks on the seas, bolster force protection operations, enforce laws, increase port security, aid with search and rescue and board hostile ships in and around American waters.

Coast Guard MSRT are trained to board and secure vessels, including those held by terrorists holding hostages. MSRT are proficient in close-quarters combat and boarding operations as well as chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, high-yield explosive situations.

4. Remember the Coast Guard's Medal of Honor Recipient.

Marines stand ready to perform a 21-gun salute during the annual memorial ceremony to honor Signalman 1st Class Douglas Munro at the cemetery in which he is buried in his hometown of Cle Elum, Washington. (U.S. Coast Guard/Chief Petty Officer Kyle Niemi)

The Coast Guard is deployable to anywhere the rest of the branches are deployed, because, as we mentioned, it's a branch of the military. Coasties have fought in every major American conflict since its inception, and this includes World War II.

Signalman First Class Douglas Munro volunteered to support the Navy in landing Marines during the 1942 landings at Guadalcanal. When one group of Marines came under a massive Japanese counterattack while assaulting a beachhead, Munro led the evacuation of the Marine force.

While the Marines were loading onto the evacuation boats, Munro placed his boat between them and the incoming fire to protect the Marines. Munro then moved his boat to free one that had run aground before he was shot in the head by a Japanese machine gun.

Munro posthumously received the Medal of Honor for his actions in rescuing the Marines on Guadalcanal, and his medal currently has a place of honor in the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

5. Coast Guard Officers Train Aboard a Captured Nazi Sailing Ship.

The USCGC Eagle began its life in 1936 in Nazi Germany as the SSS Horst Wessel. Christened by Adolf Hitler, the Horst Wessel was intended to serve as a training ship for the German Kriegsmarine. It served the Germans for three years, but when World War II kicked off, it was sidelined.

The USCGC Eagle on the Elizabeth River approaching the pier behind the Hampton Roads Naval Museum and Nauticus. (U.S. Navy/Civilian Public Affairs Officer Max Lonzanida)

With the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the vessel was captured by the British. It eventually fell into American hands and was sailed across the Atlantic Ocean by a team of American and German seamen. Today it's the flagship of the Coast Guard and trains USCG cadets and officers in practical seamanship skills.

-- 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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The Korean War was the first time the United States military engaged in a shooting conflict after the end of World War II; it was also the first of many sparks that really turned the Cold War hot.

From 1950 to 1953, the Korean War was at the forefront of American minds and politics. A public emerging from the World War II years and weary of fighting didn't fully understand the threat of Communism or the Truman administration's "containment" strategy -- which meant they didn't fully understand what happened in the first place.

Initially, the war was popular because the threat of Communism had loomed over the U.S. and her allies since the end of World War II. It was popular for the United States to take action against it. As the war ground on, however, all the American public knew was that it certainly didn't end the way it wanted it to.

What Happened in the Korean War?

A column of troops and armor of the 1st Marine Division move through communist Chinese lines during their successful breakout from the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea. The Marines were besieged when the Chinese entered the Korean War on Nov. 27, 1950, by sending 200,000 shock troops against Allied forces. (Cpl. Peter McDonald/U.S. Marine Corps photo)

On June 25, 1950 -- 70 years ago -- North Korean tanks rolled across the 38th parallel and over the South Korean defenders of that border. It was not the heavily defended, ironically named "demilitarized zone" as we know it today. The early days of the Korean War were easy for the Communist North Koreans.

With indirect support from Communist China and the Soviet Union, 75,000 Communist troops overran the pro-Western South. Republic of Korea (ROK) defenders had no tanks, artillery or heavy weapons to defend the position. Within five days, the South Koreans had lost 73,000 troops, and the capital of Seoul had fallen to the Communists.

As soon as the United States received confirmation that the Soviet Union would not intercede directly on North Korea's behalf, President Harry Truman ordered American land and naval forces to come to South Korea's aid. U.S. forces in Japan were quickly shuttled to the Korean Peninsula to prop up the resistance to the North Korean advance.

Even the American reinforcements were overrun by the Communists due to a general lack of weapons, equipment and supplies needed to fight a war -- especially in the blazing Korean summer. The Communist assault wasn't blunted until August, when the Americans established a line around a small section of the peninsula, centered on the city of Pusan (now Busan).

With Chinese supplies and Soviet support, North Korea looked ready to push the defenders into the sea. But time was not on the Communists' side. The United Nations passed U.N. Resolution 83, which called for military aid to South Korea to push North Korea back to the 38th parallel. Reinforcements from the mainland United States would arrive by September.

Meanwhile, air forces from the newborn U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy wreaked havoc on North Korean infrastructure and transportation capabilities. When the U.S. reinforcements arrived, the Communists found themselves outnumbered.

In September 1950, Gen. Douglas MacArthur led an amphibious assault at Inchon with U.S. Marines and soldiers and ROK troops. The rope-a-dope was complete. American troops flooded into the peninsula behind the lines on Sept. 15, and the U.S. 8th Army broke out of the Pusan Perimeter on the very next day.

A M-20 75mm recoilless rifle is fired during the Korean War. (U.S. Army photo)

Against all advice from China and the USSR, North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung (grandfather to today's leader, Kim Jong-Un), did not redeploy to meet the Inchon Landing or to defend Seoul. Nine days later, Seoul was recaptured, and the road to North Korea's capital at Pyongyang was wide open. The North Korean People's Army (KPA) was rapidly disintegrating. On Oct. 1, 1950, U.N. forces invaded North Korea.

China had been ready to intervene in the war from the outset, if it deemed it necessary. Knowing the Americans would advance north of the 38th parallel, it massed troops along the border with North Korea. In October, the Chinese People's Volunteer Army (PVA) silently moved across the border. When the U.N. troops reached the Yalu River, China made its move.

The Chinese first encountered the Americans in November 1950. They routed the 8th Cavalry Division and forced its retreat before disappearing into the mountains. The attack was so fast and their disappearance so sudden that the U.N. command didn't even believe the Chinese intervention actually happened. Two weeks later, the war began in earnest.

On Nov. 13, 1950, the PVA forced the 8th Army to begin a retreat out of North Korea. The U.S. X Corps was surprised and encircled at the Chosin Reservoir two weeks later. The U.N. forces, Korean refugees and all the supplies and materiel began to flood back down the peninsula, by land or by sea. Kim Il-Sung was relieved of any control of the war by the Chinese. Truman would fire MacArthur for expanding the war.

For the rest of the war, roughly two more years, the conflict turned into a bloody stalemate, with the front line hovering around the 38th parallel, where it is today.

Why Was There a Korean War?

A U.S. Marine with North Korean prisoners of war in Korea in 1953. (U.S. Marine Corps photo)

At the end of World War II, the Korean Peninsula was occupied in the North by the forces of the Soviet Union and in the South by the Americans, split at the 38th parallel. Ever since the two sides established their preferred government in these areas, the Korean Peninsula clamored for reunification -- under its own government, of course.

The North under Kim Il-Sung was ready to take the country by force from the outset, but was always restrained by Joseph Stalin in Moscow, who believed such a move could spark a third world war with the West -- something he feared.

After the KGB turned an American code clerk in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, they discovered that much of the American military power in the area had been moved to Japan. Believing the Americans would not move to defend Korea, the Soviets gave Kim Il-Sung the go-ahead.

(KCNA)

But Truman believed the invasion was a challenge to the free world and the United States in particular. He believed it was necessary for the free nations of the world to contain the spread of Communism -- that if the U.S. and the West allowed one country to fall to Communism, the rest of the nations in the region would fall one by one, or the "Domino Theory."

Who Won the Korean War?

By Christmas 1950, the Korean War ground to a stalemate at the 38th parallel, the place where it started and where the border is today. The war went on for two more years, but Truman opted not to run for another term as president of the United States and the Democratic Party lost ground in the 1952 elections. Dwight Eisenhower and the Republicans won the presidency, despite the war's initial popularity. Republicans also gained control of the House and Senate.

The United States dropped more ordnance on North Korea in three years of fighting than it did on the entire Pacific Theater of World War II. The United States lost upward of 37,000 troops and suffered 102,000 wounded, according to the Korean War Project. The locals fared far worse -- some 4 million Korean and Chinese (mostly civilians) were killed, wounded or missing.

The governments in North and South Korea never changed, even if Kim Il-Sung was forced to cede control of the Korean People's Army to China, and President (and de facto dictator) Syngman Rhee's South Korea wasn't really that "free" to begin with. After a while, the only sticking point between the countries centered on returning captured Chinese and North Korean prisoners who didn't want to go home.

How Did the Korean War End?

B-26 Invaders bomb logistics depots in Wonsan, North Korea, 1951. (National Museum of the United States Air Force)

The fighting finally ended on July 27, 1953, after two years of negotiations. Seoul had switched hands four times. Newly elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower (formerly general and supreme allied commander during WWII) went to Korea to find out for himself how to end it. Indian General K.S. Thimayya laid out a solution to the problem of prisoners of war, one both sides accepted.

The shooting stopped that day, but the war never did.

The Korean Armistice Agreement was signed by the United Nations, Korean People's Army and Chinese People's Volunteer Army, but Rhee's government refused to sign. It is an armistice and not a peace treaty, which means the war is technically ongoing, though fighting has ceased.

Today, North Korea claims it won the Korean War, which it calls the "Fatherland Liberation War," and blames the United States for starting it in the first place. The armistice established the demilitarized zone (DMZ) as we know it today, where American and South Korean soldiers stare down North Korean soldiers every day.

The Korean War, sandwiched between the romanticism of World War II and America's traumatic experience in Vietnam, is often forgotten among the conflicts of the 20th century, so much so that it's often referred to as "The Forgotten War."

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, 1.16 million Korean War veterans are alive today. So if you see one, tell them everything you learned about their war. They will appreciate your taking the time to remember.

-- 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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The Diamondbacks placed right-hander Ian Kennedy on the 15-day injured list due to right calf inflammation. The club also announced that Keynan Middleton was called up from Triple-A Reno to take Kennedys place on the active roster.

Kennedy had to make a quick departure from Sundays game due to the injury, and was scheduled to undergo an MRI today. While the specifics of that MRI result arent known, things were obviously serious enough for the DBacks to put Kennedy on the injured list.

A timetable isnt yet known about when Kennedy could return, though even if he is able to get back on the mound after the 15-day minimum, he wont have much time to audition for possible trade suitors. The 35-44 Diamondbacks are looking like sellers at the August 2 trade deadline, and Kennedy (signed to a one-year, $4.75MM deal in March) is a logical candidate to be moved as a rental player.

Since becoming a full-time reliever prior to the 2019 season, Kennedy has sandwiched two solid years around an injury-plagued 2020 campaign. This year in Arizona, the 37-year-old has a 3.58 ERA over 27 2/3 innings, but with plenty of unfavorable Statcast metrics. The rightys 10.4% walk rate is his highest since 2009, and his 20% strikeout rate is well below the league average.

Kennedys trade value could be a moot point if his injury continues to linger throughout July. However, given his track record, there is a chance a team could look past both his health issues and his poor advanced metrics and swing a deal with the DBacks, even if Arizona might end up still eating the bulk of Kennedys remaining salary.
2:32pm: The Reds announced Gibaut has indeed been claimed off waivers and Lodolo has been reinstated from the 60-day IL. In a series of corresponding moves, Cincinnati optioned infielder/outfielder Max Schrock to Triple-A Louisville, transferred righty Tony Santillan from the 15-day IL to the 60-day IL and designated catcher Chris Okey for assignment.

Santillan has been out since mid-June with a back strain, and his move to the 60-day injured list means he wont be able to return until at least mid-August. Its been a tough season overall for the righty, who has pitched to a 5.49 ERA with below-average strikeout (21.9%) and walk (12.5%) tendencies so far.

Okey, 27, made his big league debut last month and went 2-for-12 with five strikeouts in a total of 13 plate appearances. A 2016 second-round pick by the Reds, hes never produced much at the plate in parts of six professional seasons, as evidenced by a career .209/.283/.331 slash in the minors. The Reds will have a week to trade him, pass him through outright waivers, or release him.

Notably, it seems as though Cincinnati may not yet be done making its slate of pregame roster moves. Both Mark Sheldon of MLB.com and Charlie Goldsmith of the Cincinnati Enquirer have noted, via Twitter, that Tyler Naquin is in the Reds clubhouse after completing a minor league rehab assignment. It seems likely that hell be activated for todays game, but the team has not announced that move (or a corresponding transaction) just yet.

1:58pm: The Reds have claimed right-hander Ian Gibaut off waivers from the Dodgers, reports Juan Toribio of MLB.com (via Twitter). Los Angeles had designated Gibaut for assignment over the weekend. Between the Gibaut claim and left-hander Nick Lodolos forthcoming reinstatement from the 60-day injured list, Cincinnati will need to make multiple 40-man roster moves today.

An 11th-round pick of the Rays back in 2015, the now-28-year-old Gibaut is set to join his third organization in just over a weeks time. He opened the year with the Guardians Triple-A affiliate and made one long relief appearance upon being selected to the big league roster before Cleveland designated him for assignment. The Dodgers scooped Gibaut up off waivers, but he didnt pitch for L.A. before a second DFA. Gibaut is out of minor league options, so the Reds will need to carry him on the big league roster.

Gibaut has pitched in parts of four Major League seasons, compiling 34 2/3 innings with a 5.19 ERA between four teams (Rangers, Rays, Twins, Guardians). He posted better numbers with the Guardians Triple-A affiliate in Columbus to begin the 2022 season  3.20 ERA in 19 2/3 innings  and has a career 4.15 ERA, 29% strikeout rate and 10.9% walk rate in 136 2/3 innings.

Its a small sample of 2022 data so far, but Gibauts 95.3 mph average fastball (2019-21) has jumped up to 97.1 mph so far. Hes also shown well above-average ability to spin his curveball. Both traits, paired with a solid Triple-A track record, likely appealed to the Reds.
Despite rival teams interest in Zac Gallen, USA Todays Bob Nightengale writes that the Diamondbacks right-hander is not going anywhere. This isnt the first time Gallens name has surfaced in trade rumors, and after an injury-marred 2021 season, Gallen has re-established himself with some very solid numbers this season. Beyond just his ability, Gallen is also arbitration-controlled through the 2025 season, making it obvious both why other teams would want to acquire him, and why the DBacks would want to keep him. Though it is increasingly looking like the DBacks will be sellers again at the deadline, the club has been resistant to moving cornerstone players and going into rebuild mode  Ketel Marte (another popular trade candidate) was even signed to an extension back in March.

One player the DBacks would love to move is Madison Bumgarner, Nightengale notes, but that is a tougher sell to suitors. After signing a five-year, $85MM deal with the Diamondbacks in December 2019, Bumgarner endured two rough seasons before bouncing back to more decent form thus far in 2022. However, it will take more than just decent numbers for Arizona to entice another team into taking on even a decent-sized chunk of the approximately $48.4MM still owed to Bumgarner through the 2024 season. Also, Bumgarner has a five-team no-trade clause, though the five teams on his current list arent known.

More trade buzz from around the league
The Twins have designated right-hander Juan Minaya for assignment. The move creates room for Trevor Megill to rejoin the active roster, as Megill was activated from the 15-day injured list.

Since first signing with Minnesota in the 2019-20 offseason, Minaya has now been designated four different times by the club, including another DFA just last month. Minaya was outrighted off the 40-man roster on both occasions, and he again has the option to elect free agency, though there isnt any indication that he wont just accept another assignment to Triple-A.

Minayas first season with the Twins was a success, as he posted a 2.48 ERA and 53% walk rate over 40 relief innings. Advanced metrics (such as a 4.00 SIERA) wasnt as impressed with his work, however, and after the Twins non-tendered the righty, he had to settle for a minor league contract to return to Minnesota last winter. Though Minaya has a 3.67 SIERA over 9 2/3 innings this year, his luck has seemingly gone in the other direction, as he has a 5.59 ERA over that short sample size.

Megill is back after being (retroactively) placed on the 15-day IL on June 16 due to a right shoulder impingement. Now in his second big league season, Megill has done well thus far with the Twins, posting a 2.08 ERA over 13 innings out of the bullpen.
05.07.2022 LISTEN

Clement Ashiteye, a Ghanaian comedian and comic rapper known professionally as Clemento Suarez, seems very disappointed in government for failure to fulfil the promise of building regional theatres across the country.

The ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), as part of its campaign promises prior to the 2016 and 2020 elections, pledged to build national theatres in each of the country's 16 regions to help boost the creative arts industry and also generate a reasonable amount of income for the country.

However, government, after five years in office, has made no attempt about the project, which has incited the award-winning comedian to urge government to revisit its promise and fulfil it.

In an interview with the Accra-based Graphic Showbiz, Suarez revealed that such a promise was a major reason most industry players supported and campaigned for Akufo-Addo to become President.

In both the 2016 and 2020 manifestos of the NPP, the President promised to put up regional theatres, but to date, no show. Mr. President, Mr President, we are waiting," he bemoaned.

Regarding his career as a comedian in Ghana, Clemento Suarez said beating well-known musicians like Sarkodie and Stonebwoy for an Emmy Award and helping to launch the careers of upcoming comics are by far his greatest accomplishments.

I was in the same category with Sarkodie and Stonebwoy so for me to come up tops, I was very happy. Aside from awards, my biggest achievement is my ability to pave way for my juniors to make a living out of stage acting and comedy. To see people happy makes me happy, not just make them laugh but get fulfilment from it, he said.
In their quest to ensure that accidents are curbed within the Berekum East Municipality, management of the Berekum Holy Family has formed a special committee tasked to address the challenge.

Mr Peter Quaque, Human Resource Manager of the Hospital disclosed that the committee consists of stakeholders from the various transport unions, religious organizations, media, traditional authorities, security agencies and the District Assembly among others.

Meeting today to deliberate on measures to ensure a successful exercise, he noted that the Committee would be fully inaugurated in December this year.

Mr Quaque indicated that the management took the decision after the end-of-year review of accident cases in the Berekum Municipality which according to him was alarming and causing avoidable deaths.

He added that since the committee is not fully launched, members would focus on a sensitization campaign to create awareness.

Dr Enock Gyamfi, a Specialist at the Holy Family Hospital disclosed the rising cases of road accidents in the Municipality.

He said in 2021 over 72% of accident cases were reported. He noted that out of that the victims who were considered as very productive were between the ages of 20 and 49.

Dr Gyamfi disclosed that most of the accidents were caused mainly by tricycles and motorbikes.

Hon Kofi Adjei Municipality Chief Executive of the Berekum East Municipality who officially sworn in the Committee members commended the management of the hospital for the laudable initiative.

He assures the members of his outfit's readiness to support them to succeed in their good course.
The Founder and leader of the United Progressive Party (UPP), Mr Akwasi Addai Odike has disclosed that he is ready to go into alliance with the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) to wrestle power from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 2024 general elections.

Speaking to the ModernGhana News Correspondent, Odike said the hardship Ghanaians are facing require a regime change.

According to him, going into alliance with the NDC will make the contest a done deal for the umbrella party.

The UPP leader is appealing to the smaller parties to follow his footsteps and join the largest opposition party to remove the ruling NPP from power.

"I am ready for alliance with the NDC and help embark on a positive campaign especially in the Ashanti region to ensure electoral victory," Odike stated.

"2024 elections will witness an unprecedented electoral victory through political alliance deal," Odike emphasised.

He noted that plans to meet the executives of the NDC are far advanced.
The Abuakwa North Municipality has presented business start-up equipment valued at Fifty-Three Thousand Five Hundred and Twenty-Four Ghana Cedis, Twenty-Two Pesewas (GHS53,524.22 ) to Nineteen (19) Persons with Disability (PWDs) in the Abuakwa North Municipality at a brief ceremony in Kukurantumi.

The items include industrial sewing machines, knitting machines, chest freezers with stabilizers, assorted cosmetics, assorted wax prints and goats.

Presenting the items to the beneficiaries, the Municipal Chief Executive of Abuakwa North Municipality Hon Alhaji Umar Bodinga stated that the Assembly through the Department of Social Welfare and the Disability Fund Management Committee has been able to register a total number of Four Hundred and Twenty One (421) People With Disability(PWDs) out of which One Hundred and Eighty-Three (183) have benefited from the fund from 2019 to date.

He, therefore, used the opportunity to call on Persons with Disability who are yet to register to do so to benefit from future disbursements.

He said the presentation should be seen as a move to reduce poverty and empower Persons with Disability (PWDs) in the municipality to undertake economic ventures that will sustain their daily lives.

He explained that the Assembly will keenly monitor the beneficiaries to ascertain whether the items are used as expected.

Madam Mercy Amusah, the Municipal Director of Social Welfare and Community Development cautioned them against selling or misapplying the received and items as that would defeat the objective of the sceme.
His Excellency Mohammad Habibu Tijani, Ghana's Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has advised Ghanaians on a spiritual pilgrimage to the Holy Kingdom to be on their best behavior.

H.E. Tijani made the remarks while greeting Ghanaian pilgrims at Madina International Airport.

"I welcome you to the Holy Land on behalf of the government of Ghana, and we hope you have a fruitful spiritual journey while serving as good ambassadors for our country," he stated.

The ambassador also praised the fruitful collaboration that resulted between the Hajj Board and Ghana's consulate in Saudi Arabia. According to him, this resulted in numerous successes, such as securing accommodation near the Prophet's Mosque in Madina and Haramain in Makkah.

"Let me state unequivocally that the Hajj Board has collaborated with our outfit for the Hajj arrangement." I'm glad they took our advice and found lodging near the Prophet mosque for Ghanaian pilgrims. "I commend them for being so thoughtful," he told the press.

Meanwhile, hundreds of intended pilgrims have been unable to embark on the Hajj ritual to Saudi Arabia from Hajj village in Ghana.

The Ghana Hajj Board expresses regret and accepts full responsibility for the incident, which was not intentional but was caused by strict Saudi Arabian regulations, in a press release signed by its Communication Director, A.R. Gomda Director.

"We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused by unintended developments that have never occurred in our six years of operation.

"There have been genuine requests for refunds, but the Hajj Board wishes to assure the affected individuals that their demands will be addressed as soon as the key officials are available for proper reconciliation after Hajj. Meanwhile, such pilgrims' passports could be obtained at the Hajj Village," the statement continued.

The Hajj ritual will be performed by 3,069 Ghanaian pilgrims.
Ghana needs a holistic policy environment encompassing both labor supply and demand side interventions says a new World Bank Group Report.

Among various recommendations, the report calls for programs that incorporate new skills required by employers such as basic digital and soft skills into the education system; as well as operationalize job intermediation systems to ensure that young people are appropriately linked to available jobs, while creating more opportunities for quality jobs.

The 6th Ghana Economic Update titled Preserving the future: rising to the youth employment challenge suggests that to boost youth employment, Ghana also needs to strengthen its macroeconomic framework through decisive and sustainable fiscal consolidation, notably, by improving domestic revenue mobilization, reining in on energy sector expenses, and ensuring all public expenditures maximize value for money. The report observes that such measures will help address Ghanas debt sustainability concerns which have heightened over the past year.

Restoring the macroeconomic stability will be key to creating more and better jobs, but so will be improving access to finance for businesses, especially small and medium enterprises, and fully leveraging the opportunities created by the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), to ensure that Ghanaian entrepreneurs can access new markets and stay competitive says Pierre Laporte World Bank Country Director for Ghana.

Ghanas growth prospects are positive if it can control the major risks it faces, with growth expected to reach 5.0 percent in 2022 and to average 5.6 per year over 2022-2024. Growth is expected to be broad-based, led by agriculture and services and a stronger industry sector, supported by high extractives prices. Ghana has in many ways held remarkably well, not going into a recession in 2020 and showing signs of a rapid recovery in 2021, with a growth rate of 5.4 percent. However, this has come at a great cost, most evident in high fiscal deficits. The deficits have resulted in rapid debt accumulation with the country now facing financing difficulties, with limited access to international markets, and a high cost of debt service

To address the mounting debt sustainability concerns, government must continue to pursue fiscal consolidation and seek to return to compliance with the fiscal rule, says Kwabena Gyan Kwakye, a co-author and Economist. It is commendable to note that, the government has set forth an ambitious fiscal consolidation path driven by high revenues and reductions in COVID-19 expenditures and financial sector bailouts. However fiscal policy should also aim to ensure well-targeted support for the vulnerable - including those struggling because of the pandemic, as well as those affected by commodity price spikes now intensified by the war in Ukraine.

The report cautions that it will be a mistake to carry out short-term, but necessary, adjustments at the expense of Ghanas future, which is best embodied by Ghanas youth. The report notes that Ghanas youth has been growing rapidly and now represents 36 percent of the population. The economys strong growth performance of the past 30 years has however not delivered enough jobs for them. The National Population Census established that in 2021 approximately three-quarters of unemployed adults were young. While governments have created multiple policies and programs to address youth unemployment over the years, the many programs aimed at helping them have often fallen short of the massive needs.

To tackle this challenge, policy makers and the private sector must work together to create better quality jobs and ensure that all categories of youth can access them says Christabel Dadzie, a co-author, and Senior Social Protection Specialist. These measures will need to be complemented by interventions in the labor market to limit mismatches of skills and ensure appropriate productive job matches. Comprehensive support to self-employed youth, who constitute the majority, will also be essential

The report adds that Government should review all youth employment programs to maximize their effectiveness and relevance, and where applicable, diminish duplications of effort; the education system will need to adapt to make sure that it produces relevant skills; and technology should be fully leveraged to promote technological adoptions, and beyond adoption, Government should identify and intentionally invest in the value chain of technology, while creating markets for SMEs.

---World Bank
The Memphis Metropolitan Construction Limited has donated relief items worth two and fifty thousand Ghana Cedis (GHC250,000) to the flood victims of Nzema Akropong in the Ellembelle District of the Western Region.

The relief items donated to the victims include 150 bags of rice, 50 boxes of frytol oil, 50 boxes of Gino tomato mix, 25 boxes of sardine, 25 boxes of tomato sauce, 50 boxes of spaghetti.

The rest are 200 boxes of soft drinks, 200 sachets of pure water, 500 bags of cement, 2,000 pieces of roofing sheets and other items to help mitigate the plight of residents who were heavily affected by the flood.

The humanitarian gesture follows torrential rains a couple of weeks ago in which hundreds of residents were displaced and rendered homeless by severe floods.

Mr. Cephas Kafui Apenuvor, the Operations Manager of Metropolitan Limited who presented the relief items on behalf of the company to the victims, disclosed why the company saw the need to assist the community.

"We have been working in Ellembelle District and Jomoro Municipality since 2014 and we are now one family and we the contractor constructing the Asasetre to Nzema Akropong road network and since we are working here, we have to give back to the society what we get out of what we are doing. We were informed about the natural disaster that has destroyed your properties and rendered some of you homeless by Ellembelle DCE, Kwasi Bonzoh and we promised to assist you with some relief items", he revealed.

He stated, "We have come here to support you with so many relief items worth GHC250,000 to mitigate your problem. We are one people, your concerns are our concerns, what has happened to you can happen to everybody and it has happened to us, just recently where the flood destroyed the bridge that we are doing on Esiama-Nkroful road so we sympathize with you".

He urged the victims to give thanks to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Memphis Metropolitan Limited, Mr. Patrick Kwame Danso for the kind gesture.

"Let us give thanks to my boss, Mr. Patrick Kwame Danso for thinking you, in fact, he is a man who loves Ghana so much and his love for Ghana has been extended to every human being in this country and the good people of Nzema Akropong are also part", he called.

The Western Regional Minister, Mr. Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah who received the relief items on behalf of the victims, commended Memphis Metropolitan construction limited for showing great love to the victims.

He commended the residents who promised him to relocate from their existing place which has been identified as a flood-prone area to a new area to avoid future destruction.

"We are happy that you the residents have agreed to relocate from this flood-prone area to a new site and this is the Plan B I have been talking about, we should not sit at flood-prone areas for the flood to destroy our properties and kill us before we say we want to relocate so we are very very happy that residents of Nzema Akropong have agreed to relocate from this area", he stated.

He, therefore, used the opportunity to promise to ensure that all the compensation issues are dealt with.

"Government will pay for every compensation on the new land and I want to assure you", he pledged.

He also said government would connect the new site to the national electricity with other social amenities.

"We will connect the new site to the national electricity, we will provide the new site with toilet, street roads, water system, we will do better layout", he said.

He emphasized that, "We are also preparing ourselves, let me state it here that, government will support anybody who will move to the new site with cements and roofing sheets to build his or her house".

He urge them to continue to have faith in the Akufo-Addo-led government and also rally behind the District Chief Executive of Ellembelle, Mr. Kwasi Bonzoh to develop their community.

On his part, Mr. Kwasi Bonzoh, the Ellembelle District Chief Executive (DCE) expressed his profound appreciation for the Memphis Metropolitan Limited for the kind gesture.

He said the Assembly would support the residents to relocate from their existing place to a new location.

He added that the Assembly alone could not embark on the relocation exercise and therefore appealed to other benevolent companies and individuals to support the Assembly.

"Our brothers and sisters at Nzema Akropong here have agreed that they will relocate to a new place and Ellembelle District Assembly cannot do it alone so I will use this opportunity to appeal to companies in and outside Ellembelle District to come our brothers and sisters aid", he said.

He disclosed that, "currently over 500 residents at Nzema Akropong here have been rendered homeless, their houses have been destroyed by the flood, currently they don't have good place to sleep so they need our help, let us all come to their aid".

The caretaker of Nzema Akropong, Tufuhene Kwasi II who spoke on behalf of the community, thanked Memphis Metropolitan Limited for the kind gesture.

He promised to ensure that the relief items reached the affected people.

He also appealed for support for them to relocate from the existing place to a new location.

"We are very ready to relocate, we have agreed but we will need government support and other companies' support, so on behalf of the community, I will appeal to companies and other Ghanaians to come to our aid by supporting us with building materials for us to build our houses on the new land, right now, my people don't have a better place to sleep, the flood has destroyed our houses, we are suffering, we support, please come to our aid", he said.
Algeria marks 60 years of independence from France on Tuesday with a huge military parade, but memories of violence during the colonial period continue to overshadow ties between the two.

The North African country won its independence following a gruelling eight-year war, which ended with the signing in March 1962 of the Evian Accords.

On July 5 of the same year, days after 99.72 percent voted for independence in a referendum, Algeria finally broke free from colonial rule -- but memories of the 132-year occupation continue to mar its ties with France.

Authorities on Friday closed a 16-kilometre (10-mile) stretch of a major artery in Algiers for the army to carry out final rehearsals for its parade, the first in 33 years.

The closure has caused huge tailbacks on roads leading to the eastern suburbs of the capital.

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune is to preside over the parade, hosting several foreign dignitaries including Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, Tunisia's Kais Saied and Niger's Mohamed Bazoum.

Algerians celebrate in the Kasbah on July 2, 1962, a day after the referendum on independence from France. By - (AFP/File)

The government has even commissioned a logo -- a circle of 60 stars containing military figures and equipment -- to mark "a glorious history and a new era".

Algeria's war of independence left hundreds of thousands of dead, but six decades on, despite a string of gestures by French President Emmanuel Macron, France has ruled out any form of apology for the colonial period.

"There's no way we can forget or erase the human genocide, the cultural genocide and the identity genocide of which colonial France remains guilty," said Salah Goudjil, speaker of the Algerian parliament's upper house, in an interview published by newspaper L'Expression on Monday.

French-Algerian ties hit a low late last year after Macron reportedly questioned whether Algeria had existed as a nation before the French invasion and accused its "political-military system" of rewriting history and fomenting "hatred towards France".

Algeria withdrew its ambassador in response, but the two sides appear to have mended ties since.

Macron and Tebboune confirmed in a June 18 phone call their desire to "deepen" relations and Tebboune invited his French counterpart to visit Algiers.
Kofi Ata, Cambridge, UK

The public funding of the National Cathedral has generated a lot of debate in the last few weeks due to the financial crisis facing the country. Many have suggested that, at a time of financial difficulties, the state should not finance the project as its not a priority. Others say, when completed, it would generate income from tourism to pay for the huge cost. This article is a contribution to the debate with reference to the impending governments engagement with International Monetary Fund (IMF).

There is no doubt that Nana Akufo-Addo like most Ghanaians is very religious. He was seen praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem in 2012 (see Nana Akufo-Addo Spotted Praying in Jerusalem, Peacefmonline, October 10, 2012). Its not clear when precisely, the then candidate and now President Nana Akufo-Addo made a promise to build a National Cathedral for God should he become president of Ghana. However, reports indicate that he made the pledge or promised prior to the 2016 presidential election on December 7, 2016. Whilst launching the project, the president was reported to have said, I promised God a National Cathedral, I am redeeming my pledge (Ghanaweb, December 29, 2018). In a fund-raising event in February 2019 at the Museum of Bible in Washington DC, Nana Akufo-Addo again said, I made a pledge to God, that if I become the president after two unsuccessful attempts in 2016 presidential election, I will build a Cathedral to the glory of Ghana (The Permanent Mission of Ghana to the UN, December 18, 2019).

The question is, if candidate Nana Akufo-Addo, a private citizen at the time made a promise to his God, how did that become a national promise? Did he put his promise in his election manifesto or that of the NPP? If not, why is the state funding it by way of even providing land, let alone the so-called seed money? Of course, many will argue that his used of the words, national cathedral meant it would be for the state and therefore the state would fund it. That is not necessarily true because there are national cathedrals in other countries such as Nigeria that are not state funded.

Notwithstanding the arguments on whether it should be state-funded or not, the president and his ministers told Ghanaians that the National Cathedral would not be funded by state. In fact, the Attorney General went to the Supreme Court to state that the National Cathedral will be funded by churches. In the case of James Kwabena Bonfeh Jnr v The Attorney at the Supreme Court (Writ No. J1/14/2017 [2019] GHASC 2 of January 23, 2019), as stated in page 19 of the written judgement, the Attorney General told the Supreme Court that the government will only provide land for the Cathedral and the churches will sponsor the construction. We take note that the Government has maintained a consistent theme about the unifying effects of the Cathedral on Ghanaian Christians. So far, its contribution is to provide land for the cathedral, and the actual construction to be sponsored and financed by the churches.

We now know that the government is not only providing land because that state has paid some huge sums of money for the design of the Cathedral and other costs. It is therefore clear that the Attorney General lied before the Supreme Court. My question is, will God as accept a pledge or promised fulfilled on lies?

Many Ghanaians, including myself are now of the view that, in view of the financial crisis that the government is facing, the building of a National Cathedral should no longer be a priority and should be suspended until the Ghanas financial situation improves. Others are of the opinion that it should be continued no matter what. In fact, there are reports that some supporters of the National Cathedral claim that it would be built at all costs, whether we like it or not. We have a national crisis that according to the managers of the economy was caused by COVID19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a result, the country is unable to raise enough revenue to pay her expenditures. Therefore, the country needs a bail out from the IMF. As we know from experience, IMF will insist on the government reprioritising its expenditures and ditching non-essential expenditure items.

First, the National Cathedral is only one mans promise to his God that has become a national pledge. Second, the country was told it would be funded by churches and all the state was doing was to provide land. We now know that the state will also provide seed money. However, its now obvious that the state cannot afford to continue to fund the construction of the National Cathedral. For these reasons, I strongly believe that should Ghanas engagement with the IMF result in an IMF assisted programme, the National Cathedral will no longer be financed by the state but by the churches as the Attorney General told the Supreme Court.

President Nana Akufo-Addos promise or pledge to God could now turn out to be either a bad dream or a nightmare for him because I do not believe that the churches in Ghana are willing to finance one mans pledge or promise to his God, therefore the National Cathedra could be another white elephant, an uncompleted promise to God, that run the potential risk of being abandoned by future governments. In fact, the controversy surrounding the funding of the National Cathedral is such that some religious leaders are now shying away from the project. President Akufo-Addo has two and half years in office to complete the National Cathedral and hand it over to God. Assuming Ghana agrees a programme with IMF, and its decided that the government should stick to its original plan of a church-funded National Cathedral, I doubt the churches would be able to raise sufficient funds to complete the project before January 7, 2025, when President Akufo-Addo completes his second term in office.

The state funding of the National Cathedral vis-a-vis financial crisis and competing needs from education, health and other critical infrastructure development reminds me of a reoccurring post on WhatsApp platforms that says, its only in Africa that a pastor will buy a factory, convert it into a church and the workers who are now unemployed will go the church to pray to God for jobs. Is that not utter madness that has nothing to do with Christianity but everything to do with money making pastors? Why couldnt the pastor use the funds to support the factory to remain in business and provide employment to its members? Is that not better service to God?

Apply that to the state funding National Cathedral of President Akufo-Addo. My understanding is that the presidents free SHS is in dire need of funding as its in huge arrears, the National Health Insurance Service and other critical infrastructure projects such as roads and hospitals are also in arrears. Wouldnt God have been better served if President Nana Akufo-Addo had used the money spent so far on the National Cathedral on the free SHS, health and other infrastructure projects? Is the president building a National Cathedral so that when citizens get sick, they will go there to pray to God to heal them instead of attending well resourced hospitals?

Would it not have been better in the eyes of God, had candidate Akufo-Addo promised or pledged to God that if he became president, he would lead a lean, prudent, efficient, and incorruptible government that will use all the resources of the state to improve the living conditions of all Ghanaians than building a National Cathedral to the glory of God? For me, service to humanity is service to God. In fact, President Nana Akufo-Addos free SHS is better service to God than building the edifice of a National Cathedral.

In conclusion, I appreciate the arguments for a National Cathedral. However, amid a financial crisis, competing priorities in education, health, unemployment and infrastructure development coupled with the controversy surrounding the state financing, it would be folly for the state to continue to pay for the cost of the National Cathedral in the present circumstances. President Akufo-Addo should use his remaining two and half years in office to improve the lot of all Ghanaians and he will receive Gods abundance blessings than build a National Cathedral to Gods glory on deception.

Kofi Ata, Cambridge, UK
Chief Justice Raymond Zondo's welcoming and cheerful smile belies an uncompromising nature that saw the jailing of former South African president Jacob Zuma during a high-level corruption probe.

Over the past four years, the 62-year-old has led a sweeping investigation that revealed a web of well-orchestrated state graft under Zuma and threatens to further shake the ground under the political establishment.

Published in late June, the final part of his report detailed how rampant corruption under Zuma gutted state coffers and recommended that 200 individuals face criminal charges.

Yet, speaking to AFP from his Johannesburg office, Zondo said the more than 5,000-page document also raised broader questions about Africa's most advanced economy.

"How did we as a country get to a stage where we got somebody as president... that is ready to do such things? What is wrong in our system?" Zondo asked.

One of the most troubling findings was Zuma's preparedness to do "wrong things" at the instance of the wealthy Indian-born Gupta brothers, the judge said.

"If there's anything to me that is very important out of this commission is how do we make sure that South Africa never ever gets somebody who would act like that to be its president," he said, a cup of rooibos tea and a small cookie sitting on his large wooden desk.

"In life there's no guarantees... but we have to do whatever we can to minimise the chances that such a thing would happen."

Zuma's nine-year presidency gained a reputation for graft where cronies influenced government appointments, contracts and state businesses.

Jacob Zuma's nine-year presidency gained a reputation for widespread graft. By Jerome Delay (POOL/AFP)

Lawyer turned Constitutional Court judge, Zondo was appointed by Zuma himself in 2018 to head a judicial commission probing state corruption, commonly referred to as "state capture".

Four years later, the report described Zuma as a "critical player" in the high-level plunder of state-owned enterprises that dogged his 2009 to 2018 tenure.

The man once wept in front of cameras during interviews for the position of deputy chief justice as he recounted his difficult rags-to-fame journey and how a village businessman offered to pay his school and university fees.

Threats

He was later to become the man who obtained a jail term for the former president.

The burly and gentle corruption buster asked the country's top court to try Zuma for contempt of court after the former president snubbed the investigation panel.

After a trial Zuma attended, he was last year jailed for 15 months for refusing to testify before the investigators.

Zuma's jailing sparked riots last July that left more than 350 people dead.

The probe has gained Zondo celebrity status in South Africa, his deep voice and round face a regular feature on television over the past four years, with more than 400 days of testimony broadcast live.

But it came at a personal cost.

He asked the country's top court to try Zuma for contempt of court after the ex-president snubbed his investigation panel. By LUCA SOLA (AFP)

Zondo and his family received death threats that the father-of-eight said were linked to the July unrest.

"They would have had to kill me to stop me (from continuing with the probe)," he said. "But members of my family didn't make any decisions, they should have been left alone."

In March he was named South Africa's chief justice, an all-powerful role he now plans to return to full time.

"I've done my part, I don't get involved in prosecution," he said of potential future proceedings, adding he had finally enjoyed a "little bit of rest" after handing the report to President Cyril Ramaphosa on June 22.

Those who wanted to learn more about what went wrong could go and read it, added the judge, a fan of traditional Zulu music known as maskandi and gospel.
Former Finance Minister, Seth Terkper has said government can succeed in negotiating for a good programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) if it review some of its social intervention programmes such as the free SHS.

He noted that the free SHS policy in its current form would not be attractive to the IMF.

Speaking on the Accra-based Joy FM Super Morning Show on Monday, July 4, 2022, monitored by Modernghana News, Mr. Terkper stressed that the debt levels under this government is very high to the extent that Ghana is now borrowing to service the interest of already borrowed ones.

Free SHS in its unfettered form is not sustainable. Your debt is not sustainable, and youre borrowing. Youre using your whole revenue to cover compensation and interest. Youre borrowing for the past debts. Youve borrowed to repay the past debt that you borrowed to support free SHS. Thats not a palatable discussion, he said.

According to him, former President John Mahama reviewed the 200 E-block project and reduce the number to 150 schools before engaging the IMF.

We were in the Fund [IMF] when crude oil prices fell in 2015/2016. [Then,] our flagship programme was the E-schools. We initially stated that we were going to construct 200 schools. But when the reality hit, President Mahama indicated that we were not going to be able to complete all the 200, we may be able to do 150 and even with that, we rolled it into 2017 and 2018. We were able to construct about 70 when we were leaving office, he stated.

Meanwhile, some government officials including Miss Abena Osei Asare, a Deputy Finance Minister and Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the Information Minister have argued that government would still negotiate with the IMF to maintain the free SHS policy.

On Wednesday, July 6, 2022, a delegation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is expected to arrive in the country to officially begin discussions on a package for Ghana.

This follows the government's announcement of its decision to seek assistance from the IMF to help salvage the countrys ailing economy.
The General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia has asked government not to make the mistake ofallowing the Finance Minister to lead Ghana delegation to discuss a package for Ghana.

He said the Finance Minister has already run out of ideas to even negotiate a good deal for Ghana after running the economy down with his failed ideas.

Asiedu Nketia said he is not only disappointed in the Finance Minister but the entire economic management team headed by the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia for running the economy down and and pushing Ghana to the IMF.

According to him, such people will fail Ghana again in negotiating a better deal with the IMF.

"The Finance Minister has run out of ideas and the way he is handling things now you will need fresh blood to manage the finances of the country and be able to put the economy in good shape.

"The vice president, HE Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia who also heads the Economic Management team looks tired and frail to even generate fresh ideas for the economy. And since the president has taken this bold decision to go to the IMF, they need a more resolved team to lead the affairs of the economy and even engage the IMF for a good deal to be struck as the country seeks for financial bail," he intimated.

Speaking on Okay FM's "Ade Akye Abia" program on Monday, July 4, 2022, monitored by this portal, he emphasized that the World Bank and other institutions amid the coronavirus pandemic offered Ghana huge sums of money. He said the monies have been misused without any proper accountability from the government.

Ghana received lots of support from the World Bank and other benevolent institutions during the Covid-19 pandemic, I, therefore, find it absurd to hear people say that COVID-19 and the Ukraine-Russia war have contributed to the poor performance of the country's economy.

"Anyone who can defend NPP's decision to go to the IMF for a bailout with this inexplicable analysis can defend Satan in Heaven, he stressed.
The University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) is calling on government to ensure that it puts in place permanent measures to address the challenges facing the Ghanaian economy.

According to the association, it is problematic that the country continues to go to the IMF almost every four years.

The president of the association, Professor Solomon Nunoo, in an interview on Eyewitness News, said they believe that Ghana has competent persons who can ensure a permanent fix to its economic woes.

We find ourselves in a situation where IMF is inevitable, so we are cautioning government that we need to proffer solutions that can stand the test of time. It is important that we find a permanent solution, and that is what we are looking at. We believe we have the expertise to address this once and for all and with that, we can put the economy back on track and stop the blame game, he said.

The Ministry of Information on Friday, July 1, 2022, announced that President Akufo-Addo had given approval for Ghana to begin engagements with the IMF for a bailout.

The ministry said the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta will be leading the negotiations with the IMF in the coming days.

This will be the 17th time Ghana is going under an IMF programme and UTAG believes this is worrying.

UTAG in a subsequent statement said it believes that Ghana needs homegrown policies developed by home-based experts and implemented by home-based practitioners.

Read the full statement below: PRESS STATEMENT ON THE EXPECTED ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN GHANA AND THE IMF

The University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) has sighted the statement from the Ministry of Information with reference PB126/168/02, dated 1st July 2022 and signed by the Honourable Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, in which the President of Ghana has authorised the Minister of Finance to commence formal engagements with the International Monetary Funds (IMF).

Typically, an IMF programme may result in fiscal discipline, which aims at cutting down on excessive expenditures by the Government and may help the Government to focus on revenue generation to propel the economy to a path of steady growth.

It is important to note that between 1966 and 2015, Ghana has been to the IMF sixteen (16) times to seek support to address the country's economic problems. Indeed, within the fourth Republic and over the last 30 years, this will be the sixth (6th) time the country is going to the IMF for support. This means that, on average, Ghana seeks the support of the IMF every five (5) years to address its economic problems. Therefore, it is safe to deduce that resorting to the IMF all the time is not a sustainable way of dealing with our countrys economic problems. Consequently, the country cannot continue to resort to the IMF for support every now and then.

As a Labour Union that trains and produces the nation's workforce, including those involved with providing the requisite policies for economic growth and development in the country, UTAG would have preferred Government to seek homegrown solutions to our economic woes. This is premised on our recent unpleasant history of previous engagements with IMF. We, thus, feel uneasy with the Government's decision given its potential negative impact on UTAG members, and by extension public sector workers, and its repercussion on the operations of Public Universities.

As an Association whose membership includes some of the best and world-class experts across all sectors of our economy, we think that the time has come to comprehensively diagnose the root causes of the recurrent problems that always lead us to the IMF and proffer solutions that can permanently address the problems. For inclusive and sustainable development in our country, UTAG believes we need homegrown policies developed by homebased experts and implemented by homebased practitioners.

We urge the President and Government to take advantage of the opportunity of going to the IMF this time round to make use of local experts to support the development of a comprehensive programme that will formthe basis of all engagements with the IMF. In this regard, UTAG is, by this statement, ready to provide technical backstopping support services to the government to analyse the policy options and develop the programme for effective and efficient engagement with the IMF.

We wish to state that the Government of Ghana must ensure that the conditions subsequent to the support will not disadvantage the Conditions of Service of Labour Unions, including UTAG. In particular, UTAG would not tolerate any IMF conditionality that negatively affects the existing agreements between Government and UTAG to improve the Conditions of Service of our members.

Citinewsroom
Algeria marks 60 years of independence from France on 5 July, but competing narratives over atrocities committed during more than a century of colonial rule still trigger bitter diplomatic tensions between Paris and Algiers.

Algeria won its independence after a gruelling eight-year war that ended with the signing of the Evian Accords in March 1962.

On 5 July of that year  just days after 99.72 percent of the population voted for independence in a referendum  Algeria finally broke free from colonial rule. But memories of the 132-year occupation continue to plague its ties with France.

Algerian authorities are planning to mark the anniversary with pomp and ceremony capped by a vast military parade  the first of its kind in 33 years  in Algiers.

A show is also planned at the capital's opera house that "retraces the long history of Algeria", said the Minister for Independence Fighters, Laid Rebiga.

The government has even commissioned a logo consisting of a circle of 60 stars containing military figures and equipment to mark "a glorious history and a new era".

Tensions

Algeria's war of independence left hundreds of thousands of dead. A crisis late last year underlined how spiky the issue remains six decades on.

In October, Algeria recalled its ambassador from Paris and banned French military planes from its airspace, which France regularly uses to reach its forces battling jihadists in the Sahel region.

That came after a bitter row over visas, followed by media reports that Macron had told descendents of Algeria's war of independence that the North African country was ruled by a "political-military system" that had "totally re-written" its history.

But the French government tried to smoothen things over.

France has ruled out any form of apology for the colonial period. But Macron has also made a number of gestures aimed at mending ties with the former colony.

Visiting Algiers during his first presidential campaign in February 2017, he described colonisation as a "crime against humanity".

He has since acknowledged the French army was behind the death of Algerian nationalist lawyer Ali Boumendjel and anti-colonialist French mathematician Maurice Audin.

France has returned the skulls of 19th century Algerian resistance fighters and opened state archives on the Algerian war.

And the two sides appear to have moved on from the latest crisis. Macron and his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, confirmed in an 18 June phonecall their desire to "deepen" relations.

Tebboune even congratulated Macron on his "brilliant" re-election and invited him to visit Algeria.

Historian Amar Mohand-Amer said it was time for "a quick return to a normal situation", adding: "Sixty years after independence, isn't it time we took the heat out of this debate?"

'Unstable geopolitics'

But the anniversary celebrations come at a time of raised tensions in the wider region around Algeria. The country cut ties with regional arch-rival Morocco last August, accusing it of "hostile acts".

In early June, Algiers suspended a two-decade-old cooperation pact with Madrid after Spain backed Morocco's stance in the long-running dispute over Western Sahara.

To the east, in Libya, the emergence of two rival governments has raised fears of a return to armed conflict after a two-year truce.

And to the south, Mali is in crisis after army officers, disgruntled at the government's failure to roll back a jihadist uprising, ousted president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in 2020.

Rights violations

Meanwhile, human rights activists remain critical of Algeria.

According to Amnesty International, in May 2022 local watchdogs reported that at least 266 activists were "languishing in Algerian prisons solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly".

Sixty years after Algeria gained independence, "basic freedoms and human rights are still being overlooked, trampled upon or actively curtailed, it added.

(with wires)
A team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is set to arrive in Ghana today, Tuesday, July 5 ahead of a discussion with government of Ghana on a bailout request made to the fund.

Negotiations will begin on Wednesday, July 6, 2022.

President Nana Akufo-Addo on Friday, July 1, 2022, directed the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, to commence engagements with the Bretton Woods institution on a possible economic bail-out.

The Ministry of Information, in a statement announcing the Presidents directive, said the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta will be leading the negotiations with the IMF.

The news has been received with mixed feelings. The Government of President Akufo-Addo initially condemned the IMF on several platforms, vowing never to seek any form of support from the fund.

A statement from the Ministry of Finance noted that: a delegation from the Fund is scheduled to arrive in Accra on Tuesday 5th July 2022, to commence in-person meetings with the Government of Ghana on Wednesday 6th July 2022.

The Ministry further takes this opportunity to assure Ghanaians of the Government's commitment to successfully negotiate a program with the IMF in the coming months, in support of Ghana's economic recovery, the statement issued by the Public Relations unit of the Finance Ministry added.

Labour unions including TUC have lambasted the government for its decision to seek support from the fund.

They said government resorting to the IMF means the economy will likely reel under several restrictions and controls to be imposed by the fund.

Civil society organisations also expressed their displeasure at the governments request for a bail-out from the IMF. They corroborated the concerns of TUC saying the economic hardship being endured by the people of government will get worse with IMF restrictions.

Meanwhile, the IMFs social media platforms have been inundated with comments from Ghanaian netizens warning the fund against bailing the Ghanaian government out unless enough fiscal disciplinary measures are put in place.

The IMF team will consist of senior officials from the Fund as well as local staff based here in Ghana.

Analysts suggest that it would take at least three months for a programme to be agreed upon between the parties.

citinewsroom
The Ghana Education Service (GES) has said it is engaging the various teacher unions across on their decision to embark on an indefinite strike over their cost of living allowance (COLA) and to find a way forward.

Management has since invited the leadership of the Unions to a meeting to discuss the development and the way forward, the GES said in a statement issued on Tuesday, 5 July 2022.

According to the statement: Heads of Senior High Schools have been directed through the Regional and District Directors to mobilise their management teams to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all students in schools.

It also urged parents to remain calm as the GES is monitoring situations and will advice on the way forward accordingly.

The Teacher Unions which have declared an indefinite strike include the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Coalition of Concerned Teachers Ghana (CCTG) and the Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU).

According to the Teacher unions, government failed to meet the Thursday, 30 June 2022, deadline to pay the COLA.

Speaking at a press conference held on Monday, 4 July 2022, General Secretary of GNAT Thomas Musah said: We have been compelled under the current circumstances to publicly communicate to Ghanaians on our intention to go on strike having gone passed the 30 June deadline we gave government for the payment of cost of living allowance, the general secretary of GNAT, Thomas Musah, addressed the media.

He added: Consequently, we have decided to embark on strike from today, Monday 4 July 2022. By this, we are informing the general public that we are withdrawing services in all the pre-tertiary education institutions. This includes teaching and non-teaching staff.

Source: classfmonline.com
As a wise and aspirational African people, there is nothing we cannot do, when we set our minds to it - if we unite, that is. We must thank the heavens, that President Akufo-Addo has finally awoken to the harm done to our national economy, by the geniuses into whose grasping hands he entrusted its management - that smug and super-arrogant lot: who have now been hoisted on their own sodden collective-petard. Shame on them. greed-filled shame-proof characters.

Furthermore, dear reader, if Ghana is now going begging-bowl (calabash encrusted with diamonds and gold nuggets), in hand, yet again, to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), then, clearly, the situation demands that either the current managers of our nation's economy resign enmass, or are all relieved of their posts, by President Akufo-Addo. Swiftly. Now. Not tomorrow. Full stop. Case closed. Yoooooooo...

Once that is done, all of our nation's sundry regime-critics, must then unite, for the common good, to demand that President Akufo-Addo puts party-advantage aside, in the supreme interest of our country, and forms a government of national unity, made up of the best brains in Ghana (who are all world-class-achievers in different fields of human endeavour whose individual expertise are relevant to the nation-building task). Cool.

Finally, those selected (by national consensus), must all be patriotic and lily-white-honest, with moral compasses and stellar track records, of solid on-the-ground-achievement, in the real world, who will then work with President Akufo-Addo (day and night), to take the nation forward - now that the plain truth is out there, for all to see: that Ghana's national economy, is in its death throes, and has actually been dying, in slow-motion-fashion, for yonks, now. Hmmm, Oman Ghana - enti y3wieye paaaa enei? Asem kesie, bi, ebeba debi ankasa, oooo, Ghanafuo. Yooooooo...

By Kofi Thompson
The Ministry of Finance has indicated that Ghana going to the IMF will not necessarily mean government policies like the Free SHS and Agenda 111 will cease to operate.

It is widely argued that an IMF bailout can lead to the suspension of some major programmes of government that are overburdening the economy.

In a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) statement released by the Ministry on July 4 sighted by Modern Ghana News, the ministry noted that IMF programmes were flexible and would not attack programmes designed to help the poor.

It noted that Free SHS, school feeding and other social intervention programmes are beneficial to the poor.

In Ghanas situation, the Ministry ascertains that the IMF would only ask that white projects be suspended and not social programmes that are of essence.

Will Free SHS and some of the big government policies (such as Agenda 111) be suspended by going to the IMF?

"NO. IMF programmes are flexible in response to evolving circumstances. Ultimately, the IMF encourages governments in their programme design to protect the poor or vulnerable groups from the impact fiscal adjustment. Free SHS, the School Feeding programme, among others are good social intervention programmes and it is the lack of financing and unsustainable debt burdens that could constrain a government's ability to maintain its level of spending, including social or investment spending. In our situation, the IMF may ask Ghana to consider curtailing lower priority or non-productive spending (such as "white elephant" projects) as part of its fiscal adjustment but to preserve priority social spending, including on health and education. The objectives are typically aimed at providing a social safety net for the poor and ensuring that investment spending boosts the economy at a critical time, the statement read.
05.07.2022 LISTEN

The Ministry of Finance has said government will not scrap the E-levy despite its shortcomings.

The E-levy before the passage was touted by government as the 'saviour' of the ailing economy than an IMF bailout.

In a statement released by the Ministry, it indicated that government is committed to ensuring that all taxes are in full roll-out in addition to the IMF resources.

According to the Ministry, the IMF support will only be for balance of payment to shore up the international reserves.

The Ministry noted that an IMF programme will request an investigation into why the E-levy is not succeeding and come out with strategies to improve it.

Will government terminate the E-levy because IMF will give Ghana money?

"NO. The IMF lending to Ghana will be for balance of payments support (i.e. to shore up the international reserves). Government is committed to ensuring the smooth operationalization of all taxes including the e-levy to ensure that in addition to the IMFs resources, government can continue to support its developmental goals on its own while ensuring that tax-to-GPD ratio increases to the peer range of 16%-18%. An IMF-supported programme is likely to encourage the government to investigate the factors hindering the success of the e-levy (including by providing technical assistance if needed) and come out with strategies to improve it. Additionally, other tax measures could be considered for the medium-term, government said in response to the frequently asked questions.

On June 27, NPP stalwart, Gabby Otchere-Darko took to Twitter to lament that government was generating just 10% of the expected revenue.

Subsequently on July 1, it was announced that the President had directed the Finance Minister to begin engagements with the IMF for a bailout.

Meanwhile, Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has asked govenrment to apologise to Ghanaians and terminate the E-levy since it has failed to save Ghana from going to the IMF.
The Minority in Parliament has hit out at the government for taking teachers in the country for granted, resulting in the latest strike action by the various teacher unions.

On Monday, July 4, 2022, four teacher Unions including the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), the Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT), and the Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) declared an indefinite strike over the governments failure to pay Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) to members.

In an interview on Starr Today on Tuesday, the Ranking Member on the Education Committee of Parliament, Peter Nortsu Kotoe said the Minority is not surprised teachers have declared another strike.

According to him, the government has continually taken teachers in the country for granted which is not the best.

He further noted that it is important for the government comes out with a statement to explain why it has been unable to yield to the calls from the teachers.

The government must come out with a statement because if some people are asking for something and as a government you are not responding it is very serious.

So I am not surprised that they have gone on a strike. I am expecting the government to come out and say something about whether they will do it or not. If we will not do it these are the reasons we will not do it. There is nothing coming from the government so I am not surprised that the teacher unions have embarked on a strike. When you are silent on the matter then you are taking the people for granted, Hon. Peter Nortsu Kotoe said.

The Akatsi North MP added, So I feel that the government still has an opportunity to appeal to the teachers, tell them something and then we see the way forward.

Meanwhile, the Ghana Education Service has asked heads of schools to keep schools open despite the strike action by the teacher unions.
05.07.2022 LISTEN

Trade and Industry Minister, Alan Kyerematen says the IMF bailout government is seeking will not necessarily create prosperity, but help government attain fiscal discipline and streamline its activities.

A team of IMF officials will arrive in the country today to begin talks with government on a balance of payment programme.

The IMF itself cannot create prosperity for us, however, it comes in purely for stabilisation, balance of payment and liquidity support, Mr. Alan Kyerematen said at a meeting with businessmen and captains of industry in Accra.

He also assured Ghanaians that government will put its best foot forward during negotiations with the IMF team.

The Ministry of Information, in a statement announcing the President's directive, said the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta will be leading the negotiations with the IMF.

The news has been received with mixed feelings. The Government of President Akufo-Addo initially condemned the IMF on several platforms, vowing never to seek any form of support from the fund.

Labour unions including TUC have lambasted the government for its decision to seek support from the fund.

They said government resorting to the IMF means the economy will likely reel under several restrictions and controls to be imposed by the fund.

citinewsroom
Floodwaters have taken over major streets in Accra and some homes following heavy rains on Tuesday, July 5.

Portions of the Central Business District, Kwame Nkrumah Interchange, Sahara, Odawna, Shiashie, Mateheko, Kaneshie First Light, among other areas, were all not spared by the floodwaters.

The Ghana Meteorological Agency in a Facebook post said the rains are expected to persist into late morning.

Some persons took to social media to express their frustrations at the level of flooding in the capital city, as it seems to have become an annual ritual.

citinewsroom
The National Labour Commission (NLC) has directed the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations and the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) to engage the aggrieved teacher union over their Cost of Living Allowance (COLA).

This was contained in a statement issued by the NLC and signed by its Executive Secretary Ofosu Asamoa following the strike action by some Teacher unions across the country on Monday, 7 July 2022.

You are hereby requested to engage the aggrieved Teacher Unions immediately upon receipt of this correspondence to negotiate settlement of their grievance(s) within seven (7) days and furnish the Commission with a Report upon completion, the statement said.

It also urged the Teacher unions to rescind the decision and discontinue the strike action to pave way for the process of engagement to ensue.

Meanwhile, the GES has said it is engaging the various Teacher Unions across the country on their decision to embark on an indefinite strike over their COLA and to find a way forward.

Management has since invited the leadership of the Unions to a meeting to discuss the development and the way forward, the GES said in a statement issued on Tuesday, 5 July 2022.

According to the statement: Heads of Senior High Schools have been directed through the Regional and District Directors to mobilise their management teams to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all students in schools.

It also urged parents to remain calm as the GES is monitoring situations and will advice on the way forward accordingly.

The Teacher Unions which have declared an indefinite strike include the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Coalition of Concerned Teachers Ghana (CCTG) and the Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU).

According to the Teacher unions, government failed to meet the Thursday, 30 June 2022, deadline to pay the COLA.

Speaking at a press conference held on Monday, 4 July 2022, General Secretary of GNAT Thomas Musah said: We have been compelled under the current circumstances to publicly communicate to Ghanaians on our intention to go on strike having gone passed the 30 June deadline we gave government for the payment of cost of living allowance, the general secretary of GNAT, Thomas Musah, addressed the media.

He added: Consequently, we have decided to embark on strike from today, Monday 4 July 2022. By this, we are informing the general public that we are withdrawing services in all the pre-tertiary education institutions. This includes teaching and non-teaching staff.

Source: classfmonline.com
05.07.2022 LISTEN

In order to improve the quality of education among Senior High Schools in the Asuogyaman district of the Eastern region, the 2020 Parliamentary Candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Paul Asare Ansah and the District Education Directorate has taken a bold step once again.

The 4th Edition of the 'Paul Asare Ansah SHS Quiz Competition' is expected to take place on 14th July, 2022 at the Presbyterian Church of Ghana auditorium in Boso.

The Quiz under the theme: "Raising the standard of education in Asuogyaman" is aimed at encouraging students to take their lessons seriously, as each school is poised to win this year's edition.

Hon. Paul Asare Ansah has over the years contributed immensely to the quality of education in Asuogyaman with many policies and programs aimed at developing the full potential of students.

Schools expected to compete includes: Akwamuman SHS, Apeguso SHS, Anum SHS, Adjena SHS and Boso SHTS.

The former Boss of the Ghana Ports and Harbour Authority is known for his benevolent gestures and also a three time parliamentary candidate for the NPP in Asuogyaman.
05.07.2022 LISTEN

The government must fast-track its operations to ensure that workers are paid satisfactorily, and motivate employees to give out their best which would increase productivity in return, the Ghana Federation of Labour (GFL) has stated.

Mr. Abraham Koomson, GFL Secretary-General links raising the minimum wage to increment in workers productivity stressing that employee morale and work ethic would also increase when employees believe they are being paid a fair wage, while the opposite is the case if they are not paid well.

Mr. Koomson stated this at the 14th Edition of the Stakeholders Engagement And Worker's Appreciation Day Seminar of the Tema Regional Office of the Ghana News Agency, which was monitored by the Communication for Development and Advocacy Consult (CDA Consult) in Tema.

The GNA Tema Stakeholder Engagement is a platform rolled out for state and non-state actors to address national issues and serves as a motivational mechanism to recognize the editorial contribution of reporters toward national development in general and the growth and promotion of the Tema GNA as the industrial news hub.

Mr. Koomson noted that in view of the prevailing social-economic conditions there was an urgent need for the government to increase the minimum wage of workers in order for them to meet their economic needs adding that the economy was in crisis.

He said workers welfare must be the topmost priority of the government, stressing the problem of workers linked to the minimum wage, it is very low and the government must do something about it urgently".

Mr Koomson stated that higher wages would better physical and mental health and reduce decision fatigue of workers leading to higher productivity.

The Ghana Federation of Labour Secretary-General said raising the minimum wage would also reduce absenteeism in workers as they would not be affected by the price of fares among others.

Mr Koomson revealed that a rise in the minimum wage predominantly would benefit low-wage workers, precisely those most likely to put additional income directly back into the economy and kick start a virtuous cycle of greater demand for goods and services, and job growth, and increased productivity.
Protection of children must be a national priority as the Childrens Act imposes a duty on parents or any other person with legal liability to maintain a child the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) has revealed.

The Commission said the Act also mandates persons with a legal or biological mandate to contribute towards the maintenance of a child to supply the necessaries of health, life, education, and reasonable shelter for the child.

Mr. John Ato Breboh, CHRAJ Senior Principal Investigator, Tema Regional Office stated this at the 14th Edition of the Stakeholders Engagement And Worker's Appreciation Day Seminar of the Tema Regional Office of the Ghana News Agency, which was monitored by the Communication for Development and Advocacy Consult (CDA Consult) in Tema.

The GNA Tema Stakeholder Engagement is a platform rolled out for state and non-state actors to address national issues and serves as a motivational mechanism to recognize the editorial contribution of reporters toward national development in general and the growth and promotion of the Tema GNA as the industrial news hub.

Mr Breboh advised parents especially mothers and other legal guardians to activate the provision in the Childrens Act for maintenance orders saying The Act also gives a parent of the child, the legal guardian of the child or any other person the power to apply to the Family Tribunal for a maintenance order.

It is sad to see some women left with the care of their children alone because they were not married, some of the children also get neglected by their fathers who are married and taking care of the children produced in the marriage, such cases can also be reported to CHRAJ for the necessary attention.

He said stressed that children born out of wedlock have a right to maintenance by their fathers just like those born in marriage.

The CHRAJ Senior Principal Investigator, Tema Regional Office said fathers must take up the responsibility of caring for their children instead of leaving that burden on the mothers alone just because the children were born out of wedlock or due to divorce.

Mr Breboh also called for the strengthening of the extended family system in Ghana, saying that the current trend of having nuclear families was not helping in the care of children especially the orphans and the poor.

He said the Child and Family Welfare Policy in Ghana recognized that a child was an integral part of the family and as such a childs welfare could not be separated from that of the family.

He noted that It is concerned with all activities, services, and norms which support the child in the context of his/her wider family setting, adding that The child protection system of which child and family welfare is one part includes additional functions such as the overarching legal framework including children and justice, and the education and health systems.

Touching on some governmental policies that have the aim of providing for the needs of children, he said there was a need for the strengthening of such policies to ensure that they achieve its intended objectives.

He said policies including the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE), School Feeding Programme, and the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) need evaluation and strengthening to better benefit children and ensure their protection.

Contributing to the discussion, Mrs. Elorm Kupomey, CHRAJ Investigator at Tema Regional Office reiterated the importance of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which is an agreement by countries who have promised to protect children's rights.

Mrs. Kupomey said section 28 of the Bill of Rights, entitled "Children" acknowledged that every child has the right to a name and a nationality from birth, family care or parental care, or to appropriate alternative care when removed from the family environment.

It also recognizes that basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services, be protected from maltreatment, neglect, abuse or degradation, and be protected from exploitative labour practices.
Mr Tsatsu Tsikata, the first Chairman of the Board of Directors of Tema Lube Oil Company (TLOC) has urged the company to take advantage of African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to improve the exposition of their products.

He said the AfCFTA platform provides the structure for foreign traders, producers, and stakeholders in the value chain to take hold of its existence and capture the numerous opportunities its offers.

I am glad to see that export was already taking place, I am seeing your list of customers in Niger, Burkina, Mali, and a few other places, we are currently in the AfCFTA era and I think there is a big opportunity to build on the export market and see it goes beyond the export market that you are already serving, he said.

Mr Tsikata who is also a seasoned lawyer stated at the launch of the Tema Lube Oil Company which is a lubricant blending plant in Ghanas 30th anniversary, which also aims at appreciating the efforts and contribution of the founding fathers of the company toward its development.

Speaking at the launch in Tema which was monitored by the Communication for Development and Advocacy Consult (CDA Consult) in Tema, Mr. Tsikata, said since its inception in 1992 it was designed to be commercially run with equity participation from the various Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs).

Mr Tsikata urged the managers to take advantage of the AfCFTA agreement by expanding production and exposing them through the platform to lead the socio-economic transformation of the country.

You cant always be depending on the Bank of Ghana for foreign exchange, if you can generate your own foreign exchange by expanding your export market it becomes a big opportunity for your future growth, he said.

He urged Tema Lube Oil Company to scale up its activities and adopt strategies and plans that would secure the future of the company.

The question I want to leave on your minds today is how do we ensure that, in another 30 years, another generation will be here still celebrating this company and loading achievement beyond what we currently imagined, he said.

Mr. Alex Josiah Adzew, the current Board of Chairman of Tema Lube Oil Company said the company over the years had undergone changes but had become stronger and more efficient than before.

He said the contribution of lube oil to the economy of the country could not be overemphasized and urged Ghanaians to patronize lube oil as it was of high quality.

Mr. Adzew urged the public to patronize Tema Lube Oil Company products which included engine oils, industrial oils, gear oils, hydraulic oils, other machine oils, and others to enable them to provide more of such projects to schools, hospitals, and the communities.

Mr. Amos Donkor, Managing Director of the Tema Lube Oil Company said it had continuously manufactured lubricants to feed the market through the wholesale marketing of its production to oil marketing companies and also for institutions both locally and internationally.

Source: CDA Consult
The Minister of the Interior, Ambrose Dery, is scheduled to brief Parliament tomorrow about the status of the national citizenship document, the Ghana Card.

This piece of news has been welcomed by those who say they have encountered near insurmountable obstacles in acquiring the card whose importance cannot be over-emphasised in our digitised ambience.

Banks and others now demand it for the accomplishment of an assortment of transactions and with a deadline now announced, by which expiry such activities would cease without them, the anxiety has reached feverish pitch. Many are yet to have their mobile phone numbers registered because they have encountered challenges acquiring the Ghana Card.

Something can be done to mitigate the emotional pain of acquiring the card.

Some retired police officers in Kumasi have complained about the challenges in obtaining the card.

Some of such retired persons have had to travel to Accra from Kumasi so they can obtain the card and be part of a digitised Ghana. Such an avoidable hassle, by persons in their age bracket, is regrettable. Their frustrations which they have expressed in some quarters reflect what others too are experiencing.

There are persons who have gone through the process of obtaining the card only to meet snags along the route. Such persons have not been served definite dates when they would be provided with the cards and even doubt they would ever obtain them.

It is our hope that when the Interior Minister, under whose aegis the National Identification Authority (NIA) operates, appears on the floor of Parliament, he would offer soothing news of hope to frustrated Ghana Card applicants who have not known their fate since they applied for the citizenship cards, and encountered some technical hitches.

Here is to call on the NIA to listen to the frustrations of applicants and to seek solutions to them.

While we demand that applicants be scrutinised sufficiently before being given the card, we nonetheless ask that the integrity of the cards should not be compromised in the name of expeditious processing.

In the case of persons, who for instance, served in the public or security services and are now on retirement, determining the citizenship of such persons should not difficult and to undergo such avoidable hassles.

We have observed with relish the online appointment booking process adopted by the NIA which is intended to reduce the inconveniences endured by Ghana Card applicants. But with the challenges still being encountered by many applicants, we are of the opinion that the NIA should seek an alternative that leverage on technology with a view to easing the pain of their publics.

The snail pace in the issuance of the cards is a major source of concern which should be looked into.

---Daily Guide
Chief Inspector Emmanuel Opoku Addai, Kokoben Police Station officer has been interdicted and arraigned before the Asokwa District Court 2.

Eyewitnesses on Sunday had told TV3 that the said police officer was an accomplice to the stabbing of 23 year old Kwame Yeboah to death.

One other person also sustained knife injuries.

The Police arrested six persons in the Ashanti Region following a land and chieftaincy dispute that led to the death of one person at Adum Afrancho near Atwima Kwanwoma.

---3news.com
French anti-jihadist forces in the Sahel will switch operating mode after they leave Mali, acting more "in support" of local forces rather than substituting for them, their commander says.

After nearly a decade fighting jihadists in Mali, France is pulling its troops out of the country after falling out with its military junta.

President Emmanuel Macron announced the withdrawal in February, saying Operation Barkhane would continue elsewhere in the Sahel but in a smaller and reconfigured form.

In an interview with AFP and Radio France Internationale (RFI), Barkhane commander General Laurent Michon said the force now had less than 2,000 men left in Mali.

The pullout was on track for completion "by the end of summer, as the president has requested," he said.

"Around 2,500 French troops" will remain in the Sahel when the operation is over, "but this depends above all on the wishes of the African states," said Michon.

"France and the Europeans are moving towards more cooperative operations," he said.

These operations will be "determined more strictly by requests from the African countries, and will take the form of 'in support of' and not 'in replacement for'" the local military, he said.

Michon gave Mali as an example of the tactics of the past.

"Sometimes we acted in the place" of the local armed forces in mounting operations against the jihadists, he said.

Illustrating the closer cooperation, Michon said that last year a French unit on the Mali-Niger border was placed under the command of a Nigerien general in charge of the area.

And in March, France set up a "partnership HQ" in the Niger capital Niamey, "with the goal of working with African officers embedded" with Barkhane, he said.

As for the pullout, France has already left its bases in Gossi and Menaka in central Mali and is currently disengaging from a camp in Gao, the general said.

"In all, 4,000 containers and just under a thousand vehicles are to leave Mali," he said.

The equipment and parting forces are heading to neighbouring Niger for logistical reasons, but will not stay there, he said.

'Not a failure'

France intervened in Mali in 2013 to stem a jihadist-backed revolt in the north of the country.

The following year it launched the broader Barkhane operation among five Sahel allies, all former French colonies -- Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

Air power: An armed Reaper drone at Barkhane's base near the Niger capital Niamey. By DaphnA BENOIT (AFP)

At its peak, the mission had 5,100 troops across the region, providing key support in air power, troop transport and reconnaissance.

Fifty-eight French troops have died in Barkhane and its predecessor mission, Serval.

"From my point, the disengagement (from Mali) is not a failure," Michon said.

With Barkhane's help, the Malian army had been able to increase in numbers from 7,000 to 40,000 men, "and we made the terrorist groups keep their heads down," preventing army bases from being overrun, said Michon.

'Mercenaries'

French-Malian relations started to nosedive after Mali's elected president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, was ousted in a military coup in August 2020.

The junta snubbed French appeals for an early return to civilian rule and then turned to Russian military operatives -- "mercenaries" from the pro-Kremlin Wagner group, in France's view -- to help its anti-jihadist fight.

As ties worsened, criticism of France amplified, with the junta accusing Paris of having a colonial attitude.

Michon said France had been targeted by a campaign of "disinformation" on social media.

"Huge lies have been spread, saying we were arming terrorist groups, kidnapping children, leaving mass graves behind," said Michon.

'France, cultivator of terrorism': A placard at an anti-French rally in the Malian capital Bamako in February. By FLORENT VERGNES (AFP/File)

"It's easy to wave a scapegoat at people who are living in an extremely difficult situation in security and humanitarian terms," he said.

In one case, France published a drone video that it said showed Wagner paramilitaries burying corpses in Gossi, whose death would then be blamed on the departing French forces.

"Wagner mercenaries... are living off the country, looting, carrying out abuses -- they have got their hands on the Malian army's command apparatus and do things behind the commanders' backs," said Michon.
Uma-Omo Ojugo, a Nigerian Gym Instructor, who is accused of trafficking five Nigerians to Ghana to engaged in internet trading has appeared before an Accra Circuit Court.

Ujogo charged with human trafficking, pleaded not guilty.

The court presided over by Mrs Sedinam Awo Balokah admitted Ojugo to bail in the sum of GHC300,000 with three sureties one to be justified.

The court also ordered the accused person, who is also a businessman to deposit his passport at the court's Registry.

He is also to report to the case investigator between 0900 hours to 1600 hours.

This was after his counsel, Mr Nathaniel Quansah, had prayed for bail saying the accused was married to a Ghanaian and was willing to appear before the court any time the court directed.

Mr Quansah opposed to the facts saying his client never recruited the five victims (name withheld) to Ghana adding that the victims came to Ghana on their own.

The matter has been adjourned to July 21 for Case Management Conference.

Prosecuting Chief Inspector Lanyo narrated that the complainant Isaac Kwarteng was a real estate agent and resided at East Legon, Accra whiles the accused resided at Adjiriganor.

Chief Inspector Lanyo said on June 14, this year, at about 0800 hours two Nigerian boys came to the complainant's house and asked him to give them a phone so they could call their mothers in Nigeria.

When the complainant asked the victims why they wanted to call their mothers, they informed the complainant that they were recruited from Nigeria by the accused person and that the accused had been harbouring and exploiting them in labour to wit internet trading.

The prosecution said the complainant quickly called for assistance and took the victims to the East Legon Police Station.

It said investigations led to the arrest of the accused person at his residence and nine laptops were retrieved.

According to the prosecution, the victims confirmed that the laptops were given to them by the accused to browse on the internet for clients.

It said during investigations the accused admitted the offence.

GNA
05.07.2022 LISTEN

The UNDP Africa Borderlands Centre (ABC), in collaboration with ECOWAS, will host a partnership dialogue to deepen collaboration on development in West Africa.

The dialogue, slated for July 45, will bring together participants drawn from the ECOWAS Commission and UNDP entities, including the Regional Service Centre for Africa (RSCA), the West and Central Africa (WACA) Hub and the Africa Borderlands Centre (ABC).

With the theme " Enhancing ECOWAS-UNDP Synergy for Regional Integration and Promoting Socio-Economic Opportunities in West Africas Borderlands ", the dialogue will facilitate exchanges on critical socio-economic, security, and political dynamics in West Africa and highlight the lessons learnt from existing ECOWAS and UNDP interventions around four thematic areas: Stabilization, SALW, and Regional Security; Cross-Border Trade/ Borderlands Development; Mediation & Political Transitions and Gender, Youth and Cross-Cutting Engagements.

The two-day event will engage experts from UNDP and ECOWAS to improve collective understanding of the opportunities and entry points for joint programming by ECOWAS and UNDP in West Africas borderlands and agree on the next steps and timelines for developing a series of ECOWAS-UNDP programmes in critical areas of socio-economic development.

The event will host a series of technical sessions, presentations, and interactive discussions by ECOWAS and UNDP participants. The technical sessions will undertake exhaustive discussions on opportunities for future collaboration and map out practical areas of engagement, and timelines for formulating joint programmes.

"The ECOWAS-UNDP Partnership Dialogue will be an opportunity to share the work of the ECOWAS Commission and UNDP, with a particular focus of the work of the UNDP Africa Borderlands Centre, to discuss the challenges, dynamics, and opportunities in the borderlands to enable the development of joint programming in areas like trade, peace, social cohesion, and innovation," ABC Team Lead and Senior Technical Adviser, Zeynu Ummer, said.

Key speakers will include, Stan Nkwain, Director, UNDP Regional Service Centre for Africa, Mohammed Yahya, UNDP Resident Representative in Nigeria, the Vice President of the ECOWAS Commission, ECOWAS Commissioners, Directors and Technical Staff; the Ambassador, Njoya Tikum, Manager, UNDP WACA Hub, Jide Okeke, Coordinator, UNDP Regional Programme for Africa; and Zeynu Ummer, Team Lead of ABC.

---ECOWAS
A Political Science lecturer, Dr. Richard Amoako Baah has said Finance Minister Hon. Ken Ofori-Atta has failed to deliver his mandate.

Speaking on the current economic situation of the country, he said the Finance Minister only knows how to borrow and spend in the name of Ghana.

According to him, if that is what it entails to manage the finances and economy of the country then market women can even do a better job.

Go to the market, the women will tell you trading is not juju If you are selling higher than what you bought, thats it. The uneducated women will be better than this man, Dr. Richard Amoako Baah told Kumasi-based Ultimate FM.

The Political Science academic added, He [Ken Ofori-Atta] doesnt do buy and sell ooo! He does borrow and spend and keeps borrowing. Who cannot do this?

In a recommendation, Dr. Richard Amoako Baah stressed that it is important the Finance Minister is not only fired but investigated for his dealings which has landed Ghana in its current state.

You call this one who has brought us to this point a financial expert? This is an investment banker and that is different from running an economy. All he has been doing is gimmicks, collateralizing this one and that one.

Not only sack him but probe him too because some of the things were done deliberately. Every time they borrow money they stand to gain money, Dr. Amoako Baah said.

The government has reached out to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for support.

Officers from the fund are arriving in Ghana today for official in-person discussions on a programme to commence on Wednesday, July 6, 2022.
Ghana has taken delivery of an additional 1.24 million doses of Pfizer vaccines from the United Kingdom.

The doses arrived at the Kotoka International Airport over the weekend bringing the total UK bilaterally donated COVID-19 vaccines to 2.64 million.

A statement issued in Accra and copied to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) said the vaccines were received by officials from the Ministry of Health alongside Ms. Beth Cadman OBE, the Development Director at the British High Commission.

I am thankful for the arrival of the 1.24 million Pfizer vaccines in Ghana even as we see the number of COVID-19 cases in the country increase. The rainy season always brings its fair share of disease concerns, including malaria and viral outbreaks," Ms Cadman stated.

The statement urged the public to observe good hygiene practices, take COVID-19 vaccines as soon as possible to be protected against severe COVID-19 illness, and take precautions against mosquito bites.

"Together, we can stop COVID-19 from becoming a headline issue in Ghana.

We are grateful to Ghana Health Service, Ministry of Information, Ghana's drone delivery company Zipline and all our partners and teams on the ground who will work tirelessly to make sure these jabs reach those most in need in towns and villages across the country.

"We must ensure that the most vulnerable in Ghana, including persons with disabilities, have access to the vaccines. No one is safe until collectively we are all protected, it said.

The UK's 548 million contribution has supported the delivery of over 1.3 billion doses to 87 developing countries, including 23.5million doses to Ghana through the global COVAX initiative.

As part of the vaccine donations, the UK has provided an additional 105 millions of emergency support to help reduce the health impacts of the Omicron variant in developing countries.

GNA
Dr J Scott Younger, International Chancellor of the President University, Honorary Senior Research Fellow of the Glasgow University and member of IFIMES Advisory Board

05.07.2022 LISTEN

The war in Ukraine goes painfully on. After 4 months, the Russians show slow gains and have taken much of the Donbas, E Ukraine. In fact, if we count Crimea and the land along the south coast as well, Russia has grabbed almost 20% of Ukraine land, and most of it the most valuable, including where the wheat is grown. The south coast, which involves Mariupol, is vital as the sea outlet to the country and it is being blockaded by the Russians.

In the past few days, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, S Africa) have been meeting in China, hosted by Xi Jinping. The BRICS countries, total 40% of the world population and 20% of the worlds GDP, so they are a formidable bloc and forecast to become bigger and stronger. Currently, China and India are absorbing much of the oil and gas embargoed by the western powers so Russia is partially getting round that important component of the total block on trade. Perhaps that is why Vladimir Putin, along with his gains in the Donbas region, feels emboldened and having discussions with the Belorussian president, Alexander Lukashenko.

We can see the Putins forces now beginning to gather and send missiles to Kyiv and places in between. The meeting with the Belorussian President could mean the opening of a new front having a focus on Kyiv. If Kyiv falls then that will be the beginning of the end for Ukraine and the situation is serious and a setback for the western alliance, who say, however, that this will not be allowed to happen.

The G7 group of countries, which are the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, have just had a meeting in Germany to discuss Ukraine and the effect the war has on the global economy, cost of living. Most of those countries have big domestic problems to deal with but these are only going to get bigger if the war in Ukraine drags on. Regrettably, it would seem that none of the leaders seem to have enough domestic strength to stamp their authority on providing the arms in time that the Ukrainian army needs, despite promises that they are coming.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has pleaded with the western powers for some time to provide better weapons for his troops. They have been approved and are supposed to be coming but when? This week, next week, next month, too late? As a Ukrainian MP, when interviewed at the NATO meeting which followed the G7, said they require eight times the amount they currently have of up-to-date weaponry to stop and drive back the Russians out of Ukraine. Hopefully, the promised results from the recent meeting, as per communique, will ratchet up the support that Ukraine needs.

The G7 meeting was immediately followed by one involving NATO countries, as said, was held in Madrid. Sweden and Finland, which has an 830 km border with Russia, were welcomed into NATO, strengthening the Alliance. Again, the war in Ukraine was naturally top of the agenda. As if the meeting needed a reminder, a Putins missile demolished a supermarket in Kremenchuk, which lies between the Donbas and Kyiv, killing and injuring a good number of people, supposedly missing a western arms depot, the original intent. There is a stated commitment to increase the available NATO troops from 50,000 to 300,000 in the countries along the Russian border, as the Russian threat is taken more seriously. That, however, is not of immediate help. The Ukrainians are outgunned and need arms desperately.

Looking back on Putins war, in March he thought that he would win quickly and tried a thrust of ground troops and a large number of tanks on Kyiv. He was surprised, if not taken aback, by the resistance he met and had to withdraw from this attempt and had to rethink his strategy. His current way is to try to attack at long range with missiles, trashing buildings on the way. Although progress is slow it is steady, and this poses the threat that the western powers must quickly counter as argued above.

Meanwhile, the Russians, noting that they have a hold on the Donbas and that some of the world is critically starving because they cant get access to Ukrainian wheat, have taken control of marketing this under the Russian banner. The wheat is stolen from Ukrainian farms taken across to Russia by road, warehoused in Russian depots before shipping out of the Black Sea as Russian wheat!

The issue is whether the war goes on for some time or whether a cease-fire is called by the protagonists. If Putin sees that he is losing territory that has been gained, as a result of the western countries strengthening their support for Ukraine, it may well be in his interest to call it a day and try to hang on to most of what he has taken so far. This is not what the Ukrainians want, as President Zelensky has said. The Ukrainians would lose a critical part of their land and be much the poorer for it. This is not a solution. Any peace negotiations will be a test of the western alliance since there are countries of the alliance whose economies are critically hurting and would welcome a ceasefire with Ukraine giving up land if need be. While Germany is pressing ahead with finding a suitable replacement, green hydrogen, to its dependence on Russian oil and gas, it will take a few years to complete this, and there are other, less well-off countries that need a quick end to hostilities.

We are entering a new phase of the war with the west now finally awake to the threat posed by Russia, and whether the war will end fairly quickly or drag on for some time yet. Whatever, Ukraine will need all the help that it can get in the end-of-war negotiations and the rehabilitation and reconstruction that follows. Then, as President Joseph Biden reminded the NATO meeting the world will have to take note of Chinas ambitions.

About the author:

Dr J Scott Younger, OBE, is a professional civil engineer; he spent 42 years in the Far East undertaking assignments in 10 countries for WB, ADB, UNDP. He published many papers; he was a columnist for Forbes Indonesia and Globe Asia. He served on British & European Chamber boards and was a Vice Chair of Intl Business Chamber for 17 years. His expertise is infrastructure and sustainable development and he takes an interest in international affairs. He is an International Chancellor of the President University, Indonesia. He is a member of IFIMES Advisory Board. Lived and worked in Thailand from 1978 to 1983 and visited Burma, Bangladesh and Nepal for projects.
Dr. Richard Amoako Baah

05.07.2022 LISTEN

Former political science lecturer of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Dr. Richard Amoako Baah has condemned President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for his taste for luxurious private jets.

Speaking to Ultimate FM in an interview, the political analysts struggled to understand why the President will abandon the countrys jet in the midst of economic hardships to travel in luxurious aircrafts.

He argued that perhaps President Akufo-Addo has been told he will die if he uses the Ghanaian jet.

He is not honest. Things happen that he is supposed to come out and say something.No. He will keep quiet like he doesnt hear anything.

Why should the president be flying around in private jets as if someone had told him that someone had jujued his plane and if he sits in it he will die. I will understand that but take a commercial flight; first-class; reserve three seats around you. You are secure. Sleep. But he says no. He wants luxury. He wants to take a bath in the plane before the morning. That alone is worth millions, Dr. Richard Amoako Baah said in a disappointed voice.

He noted that President Akufo-Addo has become obsessed with receiving praise from people around him and as a result, he is refusing to see the reality on the grounds that Ghanaians are really struggling to survive.

Government sectors are not paid because there is no money but he keeps flying around as if everything is okay. Its so shameful and I feel for him because I like the man and I dedicated myself to get him elected and he was elected. Look what has happened to him because he took his friends and those who will praise him.

He likes praises ooo!. Show boy. Oh yes. When he pulls his shirt collar up like that; thats it, Dr. Amoako Baah bemoaned.

As a result of the dire economic situation in Ghana, President Akufo-Addo has directed Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta to engage the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for support.

Official in-person discussions with IMF team are scheduled to start on Wednesday, July 6, 2022.
European Union has, at least by territory and population, expanded as the European Council overwhelmingly decided to grant Moldova and Ukraine, with the possibility of Georgia, candidates' status to join the bloc.

Current, the European Union consists of 27 members and has an estimated total population of about 447 million. Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia, all former Soviet republics, will together add approximately 50.8 million to the current population of the European Union.

As former Soviet republics, the three attained their political independence and within the international laws, must be considered with respect based on the principles of their territorial integrity and national sovereignty. While the granting them their new status after official requests from them, it has indeed sparked debates especially in the Russian Federation.

European Union leaders have formally agreed to grant candidate status to Ukraine, as well as Moldova, although the two former Soviet republics face a long path before joining the bloc. Ukraine applied to join the bloc just days after the Russian invasion on 24 February, and the process from application to candidacy has gone through at record speed, as a report gathered by Kester Kenn Klomegah, Communication for Development and Advocacy (CDA Consult) Russia Correspondent.

Undoubtedly the new status has opened wide, most possibly, better doors and a platform to spring up with economic development through integration into European Union. President of the European Council, Charles Michel, noted: "it is a historic moment, today marks a crucial step on your path towards the European Union. Our future is together."

The official congratulated the leaders of Ukraine and Moldova. Regarding Georgia, the European Council "decided to recognize the European perspective of Georgia and is ready to grant candidate status once the outstanding priorities are addressed," Michel said. "Congratulations to the Georgian people," he said. "A historic moment in EU-Georgia relations: Georgia's future lies within the EU."

It is a "symbol of hope" to support the Ukrainians while the country had a long way to go before actual accession. A few days later, Speaker of Moldova Parliament, Igor Grosu, announced that Moldova ready to join new sanctions, mostly in finance and banking, against Russia.

"We will show solidarity with the EU, as our status and European aspirations oblige us. Of course, we will join [any new sanctions] meant to stop the military operation. We are seeking to contribute to this goal by any diplomatic means," Grosu said following a decision by the EU.

Moldova's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nicu Popescu earlier said the East European nation could not fully join anti-Russian sanctions due to its weak economy. European Union candidate status now provides Moldova with access to world's most developed market. It offers similar new economic opportunities to bothe Ukraine and Georgia.

In one of her warm-hearted illuminating speeches at a media briefing, President Maia Sandu emphasized: "Candidate country status gives us a clear direction of our development, support on this path, and most importantly, hope.

We are a small and vulnerable country, which would feel more secure when it becomes part of the European family, in which we could count on support from all members and institutions. Belonging to the EU also means access to the richest and the most developed market in the world."

Moldova, however, expects more support from the European Union to improve the wellbeing of its people and provide preconditions for developing the business environment.

"The situation will not change overnight after candidate status has been granted, as a lot of hard work is still ahead," Sandu said, attributing the current hardships in Moldova to the conflict in Ukraine that began late February.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed the news as "a unique and historic moment", adding "Ukraine's future is within the EU" while the French President Emmanuel Macron said that the decision by EU leaders sent a "very strong signal" to Russia that Europeans support Ukraine's pro-Western aspirations.

At least, they have joined the 'European family' that offers practical warmth for sustainable development. Ukraine has already signed an agreement with the European Union on joining its LIFE Program, an international funding instrument for the environment and climate action, whose budget on environment protection projects for 2021-2027 amounts to 5.43 billion, Ukrainian media reported with reference to the Environment Protection and Natural Resources Ministry.

Ukrainian Environment Protection Minister Ruslan Strilets and European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans, and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevicius signed the agreement. The ministry has over 15 concrete proposals to be transformed into relevant projects to be presented for consideration under LIFE Program.

"Ukraine has received great support and colossal capabilities from the European Union for restoring not only the environment but also live nature in Ukraine. This is something for which there has always been a lack of funding. LIFE is a powerful financial tool of the participating countries.

This means great confidence in Ukraine," Strilets said. "This should help us develop more new projects which local businesses could be engaged with. Therefore, we've made a very important step today."

In the near future Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia have the possibility to access the benefits from the Global Gateway, a new European strategy directed at boosting smart, clean and secure links in digital, energy and transport sectors and to strengthen health, education and research systems across the world.

It is in line with the commitment of the G-7 leaders from June 2021 to launch a values-driven, high-standard and transparent infrastructure partnership to meet global infrastructure development needs. The Global Gateway is also fully aligned with the UN's Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals, as well as the Paris Agreement.

In addition, late June the he Group of Seven economic powers - the U.S., Germany, France, the U.K., Italy, Canada and Japan - made some progress in bringing their counterparts from their five guest countries closer to Western views on sanctions against Russia. The G-7 is committing themselves to support the new members especially Ukraine.

Ahead of his trip, Biden authorized another US$450 million in weaponry to be sent to Ukraine, bringing the total U.S. commitment to US$6.1 billion since the start of the war. Offering a concrete template, the G-7 combined are aiming to invest US$600 billion in public and private capital for infrastructure projects over the next five years, with US$200 billion of that total coming from the United States.

According to European lawmakers interviewed by local Russian media Izvestia, this step has broad support from the EU. Meanwhile, Russia views the move ambiguously. On the one hand, it sees EU membership as tantamount to striving for NATO, on the other hand, European integration is a purely economic issue and does not raise any concerns.

"We'll see, we'll analyze the consequences," former Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin told Izvestia. "The context is important; it is not as harmless as it might have seemed three years ago. Decisions are being made amid a sanctions offensive and against everything Russian," he added.

That being said, the European Union noted that obtaining candidate status is only the first step towards membership. Engin Eroglu, a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the European Parliament, in an interview with Izvestia said that the process of gaining membership to the EU does not mean automatic entry, but it means that the country has started pro-European processes and reforms, which are partially financed by Brussels.

The granting of candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova has angered other countries that have been striving to join the European Union for several years now. For example, the European Commission has so far denied this status to Georgia, the newspaper writes.

"Tbilisi, to put it mildly, was not happy about the refusal, but this will not be a reason for any deterioration in relations between the European Union and Georgia," Head of the Department of Integration Studies at Moscow State University of International Relations (MGIMO) Nikolay Kaveshnikov told Izvestia.

Russia has consistently expressed fierce opposition to this European membership over the past several years. President Vladimir Putin had declared Ukraine to be part of Moscow's sphere and insisted he was acting due to attempts to bring the country into NATO, the Western alliance that comes with security guarantees.

Granting Ukraine and Moldova candidate status to join the European Union looks like nothing more than a scam by the West, according to Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

"Scam is such a wonderful word, seeing that the numerous decisions taken by the West are more like combination of a destructive, provocative nature, rather than well-thought-out steps," the diplomat said, speaking to Sputnik Radio.

"I think that's certainly their case," she added, "Given these manoeuvres, these zigzags that we now are witnessing from the West with regards to Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia, it is no longer necessary to prove anything in terms of market conditions.

There is a direct link between economics and politics. And this is exactly what they have always stood against." She described the actions by the European Union as infringement of Russia's territorial integrity, and as an encroachment on former Soviet space and territory.

On the distinctive opposite side, Russia sees no risks for itself in the fact that Ukraine and Moldova have been granted EU candidate status, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference following talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov on June 24 in Baku.

"Our position has always been that the European Union is not a political bloc, unlike NATO. The development of its relations with any countries that wish to do so does not create any threats and risks for us," Lavrov said in reply to a media question.

"Of course, we will realistically consider the European Union's behavior and monitor the real steps it takes and how the candidate countries act: whether they comply with these requirements or still try to show their independence."

These new European Union members have some strategic significance. Moldova is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It shares borders with Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north. Ukraine, with a coastline along the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the south and southeast respectively, could be used for economic benefits by the European Union.
Sandfish are migratory freshwater fish found only in South Africa that can grow to over half a metre in length. They sport a pronounced downturned mouth which is used to graze algae off rocks and to grub in mud and sand on the stream bed. Sandfish: conserving one of South Africa's most threatened large-bodied fish.

As one of the largest grazers in South Africa's Doring River system, sandfish keep the rivers clean and the food web balanced. They also act as an umbrella species  protecting them indirectly protects river ecosystems and other species that inhabit them. That's by virtue of their migratory life cycle: sandfish move over long distances of river at different life stages. To thrive, they need healthy, connected rivers that hold water year-round and don't harbour alien species.

Unfortunately, their migratory life cycle also makes them particularly vulnerable to human-linked impacts. Sandfish were once abundant and widespread across the Olifants and Doring River systems, but have recently disappeared from the Olifants. Their numbers in the Doring are in sharp decline. Map of the sandfish's past and current range. Dr Bruce Paxton

We published a study showing that sandfish numbers in a critical tributary had declined significantly over just five years. Between 2013 and 2018, rangers from the Oorlogskloof Nature Reserve in the Northern Cape province surveyed the fish in the Oorlogskloof River. The results were sobering: a population decline of 92.6% by 2018, led by a 99.6% decrease in numbers of young sandfish.

Catastrophic unseasonal flows due to climate change during the 2013 spawning season likely catalysed this decline. The long drought that followed prevented population recovery. Adding to the problem was the presence of non-native black bass and bluegill sunfish. Where these were found, sandfish were all but absent, effectively isolating the Oorlogskloof sandfish population from those in the Doring River and creating a population sink  a low quality habitat which only contributes to a population's decline.

These conditions, ubiquitous throughout the sandfish's remaining range, have resulted in bringing the species to the brink of extinction.

This sort of knowledge is invaluable in focusing South Africa's limited freshwater conservation resources where they are needed most.

Threats and sanctuaries

The historical range of the sandfish has more than halved in the last century. This is the result of decades of predation by introduced non-native fishes, the construction of dams that block upstream spawning migrations, extreme climatic events, and rivers that are drying due to climate change, thirsty alien plants, and the excessive withdrawal of water to supply agriculture and towns in arid regions.

The biggest worry is the lack of juvenile and subadult sandfish in the Doring River. It indicates an ageing population with few, if any, young sandfish surviving the precarious early life stages.

In 2013, a colleague accidentally stumbled on some tiny sandfish in the Doring River and discovered that they were still spawning despite the odds.

It catalysed the first sandfish conservation efforts, which were followed in 2018 by the Saving Sandfish Project. The goal was to better understand the most pressing threats to the sandfish and restore the species to sustainable numbers.

The sandfish has an impressive spawning strategy. It migrates dozens (perhaps even hundreds) of kilometres each year to reach its tributary spawning grounds. Protecting the species therefore requires collaboration with landowners whose farms and lands are crossed by the rivers that the sandfish inhabit. Non-native species like bass have displaced native fish from most of the Doring River through predation. Jeremy Shelton

Since the project's inception, six sets of landowners in the Doring River catchment have transformed their off-stream farm dams into sandfish sanctuaries. The safe stop-over habitats for juvenile sandfish are free of alien fish that would eat them. Tributaries that once provided nurseries for young sandfish now dry up completely each year by the end of summer, so these fish are rescued en masse and relocated to the sanctuary dams  a vital step for sandfish to complete their life cycle.

Once sandfish reach a predator-proof size of around 20cm, they are released back into the wild. They are tagged to allow for monitoring of how many survive and return to spawn in later years. The first release took place in 2021, so data from this year's spawning migration will give us an indication of whether our efforts have been successful.

Working with farmers

In addition to providing sanctuary dams, landowners help to transport rescued sandfish, replace old in-stream fencing with sandfish-friendly fencing, provide accommodation for scientists, and even help with river monitoring.

The project's approach has been unusual in partnering with farmers who directly influence the rivers. Several fruit and livestock farmers in the Biedouw River valley take water out of the river for irrigation. The conservation project recognises that farming is an equally important part of the landscape and that it is only through collaboration that progress is possible for the mutual benefit of biodiversity and people.

All the stakeholders in the project, be they goat farmers, guest farm owners, or nature reserve management staff, are heavily invested in the outcome of the conservation efforts. Collecting 10-month-old bass-proof sandfish from the dam on Enjo Nature farm for release back into the wild. Dr Otto Whitehead

Moving forward

While still in its infancy, this conservation project can already count a series of successes. Thousands of sandfish have been successfully reared in off-stream farm dams, creating source populations for reintroductions for years to come. Over 1,200 nursery-reared sandfish have been released back into the wild. Countless relationships have been forged with landowners, farmworkers and other stakeholders in the Doring River catchment which will ensure the sustainability of the project into the future.

Perhaps most importantly, the Saving Sandfish project has created awareness of the problems of river conservation in this arid region. And it acts as a rallying point for a community of diverse land-users who share a common goal: to protect the natural environment for the benefit of all.

Cecilia Cerrilla receives funding from the University of Cape Town and the Rufford Foundation.

The Saving Sandfish project is funded by the National Geographic Society (Co-funded by the IUCN Species Survival Commission), IUCN Save Our Species (Co-funded by the European Union), The Rufford Foundation, The Mohamed Bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, the Federation of Southern African Flyfishers (FOSAF), Mount Ceder, Investec, Caleo Capital, Bushmans Kloof and the Ford Wildlife Foundation.

Charles L. Griffiths does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

By Cecilia Cerrilla, PhD student, University of Cape Town And

Charles L. Griffiths, Emeritus Professor, University of Cape Town
Sudan's military strongman, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has said the army will make way for a civilian government. The pledge follows months of street protests and repeated calls from the international community for a return to a parliamentary administration.

Speaking on Monday, Burhan said the military would no longer participate in national talks facilitated by the United Nations and regional blocs, wanting instead "to make room for political and revolutionary forces and other national factions" to form a civilian government.

His announcement comes months after the October 2021 coup ousted civilians from a transitional administration, sparking widespread international condemnation and aid cuts to the country which has seen only rare interludes of civilian rule.

Burhan's televised address came as hundreds of anti-coup demonstrators were on their fifth day of sit-in protests. Last Thursday saw the deadliest violence so far this year.

Blood on the streets

Pro-democracy medics said nine demonstrators lost their lives, bringing to 114 the number killed in the crackdown against anti-coup protesters since October.

Demonstrators were unmoved by the general's words, and in the Burri district of Khartoum new protests broke out almost immediately.

One demonstrator in central Khartoum called on Burhan to be "judged for all those killed since the coup" and vowed that protesters "are going to topple him like we did to Bashir".

The 2019 overthrow of autocratic president Omar al-Bashir came after mass demonstrations led to a civilian-military transitional administration.

Tens of thousands took to streets last Thursday, almost matching numbers at the peak of demonstrations in the wake of the coup.

Ruling council to be dissolved

In the weeks following the coup, military and civilian leaders promised general elections by July 2023.

However, Sudan's main civilian representatives have refused to take part in talks with the military.

The United Nations, African Union and regional bloc IGAD have been attempting to facilitate dialogue.

The talks were boycotted by Sudan's main civilian bloc, the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), which was ousted from power in the coup, and also by the influential Umma Party.

Late Monday, the FFC reportedly held an "emergency meeting" to discuss their response to Burhan's announcements.

Burhan has said that the formation of the executive government will be followed by "the dissolution of the Sovereign Council," the ruling authority formed under the power-sharing agreement between the army and civilians in 2019.

Burhan added that a supreme council of armed forces will take its place, intergrating the Sudanese army with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary unit commanded by Burhan's deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The RSF incorporated members of the Janjaweed militia, which was accused by rights groups of atrocities during the conflict that erupted in 2003 in the western region of Darfur.

More recently, the RSF has been accused of taking part in crackdowns against anti-coup protesters.
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid is making his first foreign trip in office to France and has asked Paris to mediate in a dispute with Lebanon over gas supplies. Other items on the agenda include Iran's nuclear ambitions, and the war in Ukraine.

Less than a week into his premiership following the collapse of Israel's coalition government, Lapid made Paris his first destination, for a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.

The trip had already been put on the agenda by Lapid's predecessor, Naftali Bennet. During Lapid's first days in office, Lebanon's Hezbollah movement launched three drones towards the offshore Karish gas field in the eastern Mediterranean, which the organisation claims is in Lebanese territorial waters.

US-backed talks on border negotiations stalled after Lebanese demands that UN maps, which show the gas field to be Israeli territory, be altered.

"It is on Lapid's agenda to ask France to exert some balancing or some control over the dangers of Hezbollah attacks," according to Gerald Steinberg, Emeritus professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

"France is considered to be the main European interlocutor with Lebanon," says Steinberg, pointing out that President Macron paid visits to Beirut after the massive chemical explosion in the port in August 2020.

Iran and Hezbollah

Iran, which is Hezbollah's major backer, will also feature in the talks between Macron and Lapid. Israel campaigns actively against any revival of the 2015 nuclear deal which gave Tehran respite from sanctions, until the US, under then President Donald Trump, walked away from the deal.

Since Joe Biden took over at the White House, there have been attempts to revive the deal, but recent informal talks between Washington and Tehran in Qatar failed to yield any result.

Meanwhile, Israel is exploring possibilities to play a role in supplying the EU with gas, now that imports from Russia are no longer an option.

In June, Israel and Egypt signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that would allow Egyptian and Israeli companies to develop a partnership to export liquid natural gas (LNG) to the EU.

However, says Steinberg, "it's not going to make a huge difference. The amount of gas we're talking about in the timeframe is not something that will come online in the next six months or a year."

Yet it is symbolically important as it shows that Israel can play a useful role in providing energy, Steinberg says.

Squeezed into stopping

Moreover, from Israel's point of view, any suggestion of allowing Iran back into the international market is anathema.

During the last G7 meeting in Germany, Macron suggested that Venezuela and Iran could be allowed back into the international oil market in order to increase production and lower prices, vastly inflated since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Western calls for a boycott of Moscow's gas and oil imports.

For Israel, it "is a concern, that we are going to see that kind of repair of relations with Iran in order to get Iranian oil back on the market for lower prices," says Steinberg.

"And it is clear for every Western leader that the domestic rise in oil costs because of the refusal to buy Russian oil, is very costly, politically and economically," he says, arguing that "it's now the time that Iran should be squeezed into stopping its nuclear program and not being welcomed back without any kind of significant change in policy." But it is far from clear if France, and other Western nations, will respond to Israel's concerns.

Lapid's visit to France comes days before a trip by US President Joe Biden to the Middle East, where he will be welcomed in Israel before travelling on to Saudi Arabia.
An Ethiopian rebel group on Tuesday denied accusations it was responsible for a massacre of civilians in the restive far west of the country, and pointed the finger of blame instead at government-allied militias.

Violence has been on the increase in the Oromia region in recent months, with one rights group suggesting the situation there had been overshadowed by the brutal conflict that erupted in Tigray 20 months ago.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said in a statement posted on Twitter on Monday that the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) had committed mass killings in the Qellem Wollega area of western Oromia, without giving further details.

But OLA spokesman Odaa Tarbii retorted on Twitter: "The regime thinks it can just point fingers & escape accountability".

"Two divisions of the ENDF (Ethiopian National Defence Force) along with allied forces are occupying the towns of Qellem Walaga, including Machaara where civilians were killed en masse by the regime's militias as security forces did nothing," he wrote.

"Both local & international entities have to demand independent investigations and hold Abiy and co accountable for their cruelty."

The OLA is a shadowy group that gained new prominence last year when it struck up an alliance with the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) that has been at war with government forces in northern Ethiopia.

Both have been designated terrorist groups by Addis Ababa. Abiy on Monday vowed to "eradicate" the OLA, although he has opened the door to possible peace talks with the Tigrayan rebels.

The US-based Amhara Association of America said Monday's attack targeted ethnic Amharas in Mender 20 (Village 20) in Qellem Wollega in the west of Oromia, the largest and most populous region of Ethiopia.

It said the killings began at dawn and lasted several hours.

A survivor quoted by the regional state-run Amhara Media Corporation said at least 300 bodies had been collected in the village.

It was not possible to verify the information as access to the area in western Oromia, which borders South Sudan, is restricted.

In a country comprising dozens of ethnic groups, the Amharas are the second largest after the Oromo.

'Cycle of violence'

Last month, the Ethiopian authorities accused the OLA of killing several hundred mainly Amhara people in the village of Tole in West Wollega, an area adjacent to Qellem Wollega.

The OLA, which has been fighting the federal government in Oromia since 2018, denied the claims.

No official toll from the Tole massacre has been published, but Abiy's spokeswoman Billene Seyoum said last week that 338 victims had so far been identified.

On June 30, several days after the Tole attack, government spokesman Legesse Tulu told reporters that districts of Qellem Wollega, Western Wollega and Horo-Guduru Wollega were "under the complete control of our joint/coordinated security forces".

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, a state-affiliated independent body, on Monday called for an "urgent reinforcement" of government security forces in the area to prevent further civilian deaths.

"The continued insecurity in the area and what appears to be the ethnically targeted killing of residents must be put to a stop immediately," EHRC chief commissioner Daniel Bekele said in a statement.

US-based Human Rights Watch said on Monday it had documented serious abuses in Oromia, including in the west where an "abusive" government campaign against the OLA had trapped civilians in the crossfire.

It said the Tigray conflict, which has witnessed a lull in recent months after the government declared a "humanitarian ceasefire", was overshadowing a "persistent cycle of violence" against civilians by security forces and armed groups in Oromia.
The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, on Tuesday, 5th July 2022, cut the sod for the commencement of work on the construction of the five hundred-million-euro (500 million) Manso-Huni Valley section of the Western Railway.

Describing it as the highest single investment for rail development since Ghana gained independence, President Akufo-Addo indicated that the project is expected to be completed within forty-two (42) months.

Addressing the gathering at Manso, in the Amenfi Central District, the President bemoaned the fact that one of the great tragedies of Ghanas post-colonial era was allowing her railway infrastructure, developed under colonial rule, to deteriorate completely.

According to him, out of the nine hundred and forty-seven kilometres (947km) of colonial narrow-gauge rail network bequeathed by the colonialists, barely ten percent (10%) was operational.

Indeed, the only addition to the network has been the fifteen kilometre (15km) narrow gauge railway line, built between 2012 and 2017, from Sekondi to Takoradi via Kojokrom.

President Akufo-Addo noted that, upon his assumption of office in January 2017, he was determined to change this statistic, because of his belief in the fact that an efficient railway system is critical to the progress and prosperity of Ghana, the reason why he re-established the Ministry of Railways Development.

The ground-breaking event involved in todays ceremony is an integral part of the series of infrastructural projects lined up to expand the provision of railway services. Key amongst the rail projects, currently ongoing, are the development of a new standard gauge railway line between the Port of Tema and Mpakadan in the Asuogyaman District of the Eastern Region. This project has reached an advanced stage of completion, and will soon be handed over to Government for operation, the President said.

He noted also that the development of the Western Railway Line is on course, with the twenty-two (22) kilometre section of the line from Kojokrom to Manso proceeding steadily, and scheduled for completion before the end of this year.

I am delighted that, even before the completion of this section, I am here today to cut the sod for work to commence officially on the continuation of construction works for the development of the line from Manso to Huni Valley, which covers some seventy kilometres (70km), President Akufo-Addo added.

The Manso to Huni Valley project includes the conversion of dual gauge tracks, between Takoradi and Kojokrom, from narrow gauge to standard gauge. The construction of a new eight kilometre (8km) standard gauge rail line within the Takoradi port to the Takoradi station, in order to have a continuous standard gauge connection from the Port to the Nsuta Bauxite Mining Site and other mines, will help facilitate the haulage and export of minerals.

These projects, amongst several others in the pipeline, which will commence soon, he said, confirm the depth of commitment of my government to establishing a modern railway system in our nation. Government is committed to securing additional resources to complete the expansion of the new standard gauge rail network in the country, in line with the Railway Master Plan.

President Akufo-Addo commended the Ministry of Railways Development, the Board, Management and Staff of the Ghana Railway Development Authority, and the Ministry of Finance for collaborating to raise the funds required for the implementation of the project.

The President also addressed a growing phenomenon that is retarding progress and efforts by Government in the railway sector.

Apart from the activities of illegal mining, which is having a negative impact on the development of the right-of-way, particularly within the corridors of Manso and Amantin in the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality, leading to the modification of project designs and higher construction costs, some unpatriotic saboteurs in our communities have chosen to steal components of the railway system, including the tracks. This is exceptionally worrying, and of great concern to the rest of us Ghanaians, he stated.

President Akufo-Addo, thus, sounded a strong word of warning to individuals perpetuating these criminal acts that the law will take its course, and the appropriate sanctions and punishment will be duly meted out to offenders.
The Central Regional Youth Organizer for National Democratic Congress (NDC) Mr Bright Botchway has advised Ghanaian youth to cultivate and develop their talents.

He advised them to be prepared to pay the price of hard work, dedication, commitment and sacrifice if they surely desire to be successful and fulfil their purpose on earth.

Mr Botchway noticed that contrary to what many young guys believe, there is absolutely no short way to success in life and each and everyone must be willing to nurture their talent in order to achieve greatness in life.

"If the determination to succeed is strong enough, failure can never be your portion," he told participants at the 2022 Youth Empowerment forum organized by the Assembly Member, Hon. Nathaniel Acheampong in Winneba in the Efutu Constituency.

In an interview with some media, the NDC Central Regional Deputy Youth Organizer in charge of Operations reiterated that there's absolutely nothing on this Earth that can't be achieved without determination.

Taking inference from the Holy Bible, he used Zacchaeus as an example. He said, "Zacchaeus never allowed his predicament (height) to prevent him from achieving his lifetime ambition of seeing and meeting Jesus Christ."

He added, "Regardless of his height and the huge crowd that mobbed Jesus, he still persevered and climbed the tree and saw Jesus Christ whom he eventually hosted in his house."

He noted that young people, especially the youth should be more focused, persevere and time conscious as these three elements are the compass of life for every young guy.

"There's time for everything so the youth should learn to manage their time very well and take advantage of wise counsel from elders," he intimated.

He urged the youth to use their power of imagination to turn their adversities into opportunities by building robust network of contacts while putting their utmost trust in God.
The Deputy Ranking Member on the Finance Committee of Parliament, Isaac Adongo says Ghana's negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout programme will be tougher with Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta at the helm of affairs.

According to him, the international capital market has lost confidence in the Minister and the IMF will be compelled to set even higher targets for the country due to these sentiments and previous statements about his dislike for an IMF programme.

While addressing the press in Parliament, Isaac Adongo said a new led negotiator must be selected to lead talks from the Ghana side.

The International Capital Market doesn't trust him, but as usual the president is at pains to protect and keep him. I don't have a problem, but I want to tell the president the posturing of the IMFonce they believe that the capital market does not trust Ken, he doesn't have commitment towards IMF programme and only wanted to appropriate the name of IMF and pretend to the community that we are on the program so they bring back the money again, the IMF will front-load the milestones and the corrections that must be done.

When they front-load them and one year later you are not achieving them, no penny is coming to the country, Adongo warned.

Following Ghana's decision to seek an IMF bailout, calls for Ofori-Atta's resignation have intensified as he on many public platforms insisted that the passage of the controversial E-levy will ensure that the country does not go under an IMF programme.

Former President John Dramani Mahama and other leading members of the NDC have called for the removal of the Finance Minister from office, describing his performance as abysmal.

---citinewsroom
05.07.2022 LISTEN

What does WASH stands for? Simply: Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).

The importance of WASH in the development of childrens health and life sustainability across the globe cannot be looked at with human and policy insensitivity. WASH initiatives should therefore remain critical to any child development settings either within the domestic or formal settings such as schools, play grounds, libraries, museums and more. The United Nations recognises this importance. For instance, according to the WHO/UNICEF JMP report, schools are places where health are nurtured and children develop lifelong healthy habits but not places where children fall sick with infection due to lack of access to water, sanitation and hygiene services.

The report posits that, 546 million schoolchildren around the world lack basic drinking water, 539 million schoolchildren dont have basic toilet. Also, over 800 million schoolchildren lack basic facilities with soap and water to wash their hands. Most of these affected schoolchildren are found in the global context of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) as over half of schoolchildren in Sub-Saharan Africa lack basic drinking water service. There is a global urgency to address and prioritise WASH services in LDCs schools in order to achieve a universal WASH coverage by 2030. It is against this global WASH urgency that the media as a force for social change is solicited.

The Media can affect change:

The media since the birth of man has been acting as a mobilization force in society through its ability of drawing attention to issues affecting human existence. From a change perspective, how the medias editorial weaves emotional connection, social action, sense of awareness towards issues confronting society is likely to induce the appropriate action and subsequently the needed change in direction. That is to say, the media as a social change partner can paly a critical role in promoting WASH initiatives in the society. Unfortunately, the media, sometimes with competing commercial interest in news making is unable to direct the needed social attention and change effectively as the following study on media coverage of WASH related news from January to December, 2021 in Ghana depicts.

Diagram: WASH Coverage in The Ghanaian Media  2021: Only 6% For WASH

In an analysis of 2,491 WASH related news reported by 48 media platforms of Print, TV, Online, and Radio, attention allotted to WASH in schools was only 6%, Handwashing 2%, Drinking Water 23%, and 41% coverage for Sanitation. Content analysis methodology was used for the analysis with intercoder reliability at 85%. This data projections in relation to WHO/UNICEF JMP report, suggest that there is more to be done by the media considering Ghana in the fragile context of the LDCs. It must however be said that, UNICEF Ghana in collaboration with government and other advocacy partners continue to make tremendous impact in the improvement of WASH services among schoolchildren in Ghana and the communities.

Admittedly, the media is faced with competing editorial content driven by profit intent. However, the media is encouraged to promote WASH services, and especially WASH in schools in their editorial conferences and agenda cuttings. The intent of this study is not to critique the media, but to draw public and policy makers attention to the medias role in the promotion of WASH service initiatives. Also, to urge a strong social partnership between media and UNICEF in the promotion of WASH services. Similarly, UN agencies should employ consistent scientific media monitoring approach as a way of measuring the extent of medias promotion of UNs policy action and change. Going forward, the media should be seen as a critical change maker in WASH services. For instance, a new form of media engagement which recognises the media as a dichotomy of profit and social change agency is required by policy makers. It is only in these contexts of medias social dichotomy profit and advocacy can the media be well appreciated and harnessed as a force for social change and mobilization. For, that is one of the ways we could galvanize progress towards universal coverage of WASH services in schools by the 2030.

The Author: Messan Mawugbe (PhD) is a strategic communication consultant.

Email: [email protected]

The Meadows, Castle Rock: Colorado.
Dear President Akufo-Addo,

For all the progress we have chalked in your second term, the external shocks from both Covid-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war have compelled us to IMF for support.

Ghana is currently at a critical moment getting into the second part of your second term.

Mr. President, we are at a stage where I believe we have to have a lesson review and build an incredible legacy.

Post-IMF, the majority of the financial support should be given to the industrial transformation agenda that has chalked a lot of success.

The way Alan John Kwadwo Kyeremateng has spearheaded running the Ministry of Trade over the past six years, even with a limited budget allocation is a sign of a competent and practical economist.

China, in the last few decades, was able to achieve massive economic growth and transformation on the back of industrialization.

Alan Kyeremateng has been one step ahead and has taken practical economic steps to put in place industries that will help create significant job opportunities and reduce poverty.

IMF support should be put into the following ten (10) new industrial sectors to make Ghana the new manufacturing hub for Africa.

This Industrial economic drive will power the acceleration of Made-In-Ghana products to revive distressed but viable Industries, and create jobs and wealth (cash).

These ten (10) new Industrial sectors are:

i. Petrochemical Industry

ii. Pharmaceutical Industry

iii. Iron and Steel Industry

iv. Oil Palm Industry

v. Garment and Textiles Industry

vi. Industrial Starch Industry

vii. Integrated Aluminum Industry

viii. Vehicle Assembly Industry

ix. Machines and Machine Components Industry

x. Industrial Salt Industry

Mr. President, this focus and financial support through the private sector on these industrial sectors will priority approach and offers great potential for new employment opportunities and wealth generation.

The current industrialization program led by Alan Kyeremateng is an ambitious plan that will address the challenge of unemployment for the youth and SAVE YOUR PRESIDENCY.

Mr. President, please instruct your Finance Minister, and lets double down on this missive industrial drive to boost the economy.

The FOCUS now for the government is to create massive employment opportunities, particularly for the youth thereby improving the income levels and standards of Ghanaians.

Alan Kyeremateng helped President Kufuor to turn things around. Mr. President, empower him and his Ministry to help turn things around for you.

was to add value to the natural resource endowment of each district and exploit its economic potential based on the comparative advantage of the district. In addition, it will help to

These new industrial sectors are what will stimulate economic growth and ensure that you leave a great legacy.

Mr. President, an all-out value addition drive to our massive natural resource base along these new industrial sectors is what will transform our economy.

Mr. President, your biggest legacy after Free SHS, will be a diversified and industrialized economy that practically creates multiple angles of jobs.

Our surest bet like China is on industrialization.

Its possible together and we are solidly behind you Sir!

We trust your Leadership to deliver on your second-term mandate from the Ghanaian people.

You will succeed and you will not fail. Amen !!!

By: Terry Afram-Kumi
The Union of Professional Nurses and Midwives, Ghana has called on the government to pay all public sector workers the Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) in order to avert further industrial strike actions.

In a statement signed by the Unions National PRO John Agbenyeavu, the Union said they are surprised at the laxity with which the welfare of Nurses and Midwives have been handled within these hard economic times.

Leadership of the Union made reference to a similar situation in 2014 when the country was faced with economic hardship and as a result, COLA of 10% of the Basic Salary Public Sector Workers was introduced to help cushion public sector workers.

In 2014, a cost-of-living allowance (COLA) of 10% of Public Sector Workers Basic Salary was paid to workers to cushion us when things got tough due to high cost of living.

In 2022, we find ourselves in a similar economic situation and we expect nothing short of a similar stop gap measure to cushion the Nurses and Midwives in the country, the statement said.

It added that, We, the members of the UNION OF PROFESSIONAL NURSES AND MIDWIVES, GHANA (UPNMG) are equally calling on the government to as a matter of urgency, introduce at least 20% of our basic salaries as COLA while we wait for the managers of the economy to turn things around.

In furtherance, leadership of the union called on the government to as a matter of urgency, pay all public sector workers the COLA to avert further industrial action.

Read the full statement below:
05.07.2022 LISTEN

Igbo Mandate Congress IMC, the foremost activist group on peace mission in the South East do hereby update Igbo , Elders, Clergy and Elites that the call by Simon Ekpa, Auto Pilot Commander of Indigenous Peoples of Biafra IPOB, for fifty Biafrans that will give him 10,000 dollars monthly for six months, totaling 3 million dollars, in exchange for Biafra by 2023, is about to unleash another round of bloodshed within the IPOB camps and the fragile South East

The request by Simon Ekpa is tearing the Biafra family apart and they are threatening anybody tha dares give Ekpa any financial support.

On the18th of May, in an internal memo to select Igbo leaders by Rev Obinna Akukwe part of which was published titled Biafra Business PLC: Why Nnamdi Kanu Will Not be Granted Bail , stated clearly that

I know that Nnamdi KANU will not be granted bail today (May 18th) .The people who burnt down Anambra State after Governor Soludo visited Nnamdi Kanu did so to frustrate any peace effort. They attacked 33 Onitsha, attacked GRA on Sunday to let Soludo know that nobody can collect teir business.

They proceeded to Idemili North Local Govt to burn down the council. Two days later they burnt down Nnewi Local Council.

Its not about Biafra, its a multimillion dollar business concern using Biafrans, Ojukwu and Pogrom as bait. The funds coming from US, UK, Germany, others, running into millions of dollars, is too much for one group to swallow alone. Those coming from Nigeria from oliticians, traders and artisans runs into billions annually, and one group cannot monopolize it

Once Nnamdi KANU is released, all funds will enter inside one pocket. I pity Kalunta Kalu and his siblings. They have entered One Chance.  Those around him are part of the racket. Rev Obinna Akukwe will not reveal more than this.

I hope those scrambling for multimillion dollar Biafra business, killing innocent people, should settle their differences so that KANU s bail can sail through during next sitting. Let the DOS group give the Auto-Plot group their share of Biafra cake, and all these bloodshed will stop

Today, forty five days after the warnings, the financial warfare has taken a dangerous dimension. The DoS group, ably led by Chika Edozien, is threatening fire, brimstone and recently sacked six leaders of IPOB in the US. The sack is already generating tension.

Rev Obinna Akukwe counsels confused Igbo Leaders the umpteenth time, to settle the IPOB Dos and IPOB Auto-Pilot crisis, including financial warfare, before they turn the South East into Afghanistan.

(Rev Obinna Akukwe, Columnist, Activist, is the Director General of Igbo Mandate Congress , Vice Chairman BoT Igbo Think Tank ITT, @ igbomanndate , [email protected])
Twenty-two Malian migrants died in a boat disaster off the Libyan coast, the UN said Tuesday, citing survivors who reported victims drowning and dehydrating with three children reportedly among the dead.

After nine days at sea, 61 survivors, mostly from Mali, were rescued by the Libyan coastguard and brought back to shore, the UN's International Organization for Migration said, with the toll confirmed by Mali's expatriates ministry.

The migrants embarked from the Libyan city of Zuwara, near the Tunisian border, on a rubber boat, at around 1:00 am (2300 GMT) local time on June 22, said IOM spokeswoman Safa Msehli.

"After nine days at sea, they were picked up by the Libyan coastguard," she said.

They were brought back to shore on Saturday.

"According to the survivors, 22 migrants, all from Mali, died during the journey. Reported causes of death are drowning and dehydration. Among the dead are three children," said Msehli.

"The total number of survivors is 61, with the majority from Mali."

Msehli said some of the migrants were in very bad health and so were taken to hospitals by the IOM.

"The remaining migrants were taken to Al Maya detention centre," she said.

'World's deadliest migration route'

Libya has become a key route for irregular migration to Europe in the chaotic years since the 2011 overthrow and killing of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in a NATO-backed uprising.

While many have drowned at sea, thousands have been intercepted by the Libyan coastguard, which has been backed by Italy and the EU, and returned to Libya.

"The (expatriates) ministry offers its condolences in the name of the government to the affected families and to the Malian people for this tragedy," Mali's government said in a statement that called on the Malian people to "fight against irregular migration".

The International Organization for Migration has said that nearly 2,000 migrants drowned or went missing in the Mediterranean in 2021, compared to 1,401 the previous year.

It is the world's deadliest migration route, but people hoping to build a better life in Europe increasingly risk it.

Mali, which is currently under military rule, is chronically unstable and has been buffeted by internal challenges and regional jihadist forces.

Jihadists joined a regional insurgency in northern Mali in 2012, and then extended their campaign to the centre of the country and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Thousands of civilians have died, more than two million have fled their homes and economic damage to countries that are among the poorest in the world has been severe.
Is stock analysis worth your time?

The question boils down to a key academic topic: market efficiency.

If markets are wholly efficient, investment analysis and stock picking will largely be useless.

The only worthwhile activity would be to stick cash into a broad index fund and let the efficient market go to work.

But how efficient are markets really? And whats an efficient market anyway?

Whats the efficient market hypothesis?

Nobel Prize winning economist William F Sharpe admitted a hard definition of an efficient market is difficult but explained it as:

A market is efficient if there are many very bright, very well-informed analysts constantly searching for securities that are mispriced. As long as this force is operative, when information becomes reasonably public, it will lead to transactions that will shortly cause prices to reflect the information appropriately. As a result, the price of a security will rarely diverge significantly for long from its intrinsic value, where the latter is defined as the certain future present value of the uncertain future prospects by a clever, well-informed analyst.

Proponents of the efficient market hypothesis argue that $20 bills dont lie around stock exchanges for long.

Someone always picks them up, and quickly.

We can relate market efficiency to our own lives by considering our experience with traffic.

When were stuck in a slow lane, we switch to a faster one.

But a few minutes later, we realise were parallel to the car that was behind us in the old lane.

Despite our best lane-switching efforts, we usually find ourselves at our destination no quicker than if wed just stuck to one lane.

Whys that?

As economist David Friedman (son of famed economist Milton Friedman) noted:

To understand why it is so difficult to follow a successful strategy of lane changing, consider that other people are also looking for a faster lane. Cars moving into a fast lane slow it down, just as people moving into a short line in the supermarket lengthen it. In equilibrium, all lanes are equally slow.

Efficiently inefficient markets

But the story isnt that simple.

Take the traffic example. While in equilibrium all lanes may be slow, we must not forget  as economist Paul Heyne noted  the active process by which the result tends to emerge.

The efficient market hypothesis focuses on that state of affairs that occurs after all this activity has taken place.

But if we focus on the activity of market participants, we get to some startling conclusions.

Going back to the traffic example, David Friedman said (emphasis added):

On average, if everyone is rational, there must be a small gain in speed from changing lanes  if there were not, nobody would do it and the mechanism described above would not work. The payoff must equal the cost for the marginal lane changer, the one to whom changing lanes is just barely worth the trouble. If the payoff were less that that, he would not be a lane changer; if it were more, someone else would be.

As Burton Malkiel, author of the popular A Random Walk Down Wall Street, himself admitted:

The market cannot be perfectly efficient or there would be no incentive for professionals to uncover the information that gets so quickly reflected in market prices, a point stressed by Grossman and Stiglitz.

Importantly, Malkiel also noted:

As long as stock markets exist, the collective judgment of investors will sometimes make mistakes.

And as were about to see, mistakes are crucial if you want to outperform the market.

Ones mistake is anothers gain: investing with Howard Marks

In a stock market, a transaction involves a buyer and a seller.

A great trade, then, involves a seller making a mistake and the buyer exploiting it.

While were often told to avoid them, mistakes are key to success.

In a 2021 memo to his Oaktree Capital clients, fund manager Howard Marks wrote that mistakes are all that superior investing is about.

He reiterated:

In the end, superior investing is all about mistakesand about being the person who profits from them, not the one who commits them. Investors swing wildly from optimistic to pessimistic  and from overconfident to terrified  and as a result asset prices can lose all connection to intrinsic value. In addition, investors often fail to unearth all the relevant information, analyse it systematically, and step forward to adopt unpopular positions. These are some of the elements that give rise to what are called inefficiencies, academics highfalutin word for mistakes.

Finding an investment edge

Finding an investment edge is essential to great investing.

If you dont have an edge, youre likely following the majority, using information and arguments the majority is also using.

As Paul Samuelson  often called the father of modern economics  quipped:

What logic can demonstrate is that not everybody, nor even the average person, can do better than the comprehensive market averages. That would contradict the tautology that the whole is the sum of its parts.

To surpass market averages, think differently to the average investor.

Find an edge.

As esteemed fund manager Peter Lynch said:

You must find something that nobody else knows, or do something that others wont do because they have rigid mind-sets.

Thats why Lynch often advised to look closer to home.

If you worked as a retail store manager and saw lots of customers ask whether you offered Afterpay, you would likely have got wind of the fintech well before the general market.

As Lynch wrote in his book One Up on Wall Street:

If youre a surfer, a trucker, a high school dropout, or an eccentric retiree, then youve got an edge already. Thats where the tenbaggers come from, beyond the boundaries of accepted Wall Street cogitation. Most important, you can find terrific opportunities in the neighbourhood or at the workplace, months or even years before the news has reached the analysts and the fund managers they advise.

Thats also one benefit of small-cap stocks.

While they are riskier, they do attract less institutional attention. With less analyst and media coverage, small caps have more mispricing opportunities to take advantage of.

What are some other general sources of investment edge?

Josh Wolfe, co-founder of venture capital Lux Capital, offered a great summary of investment edge sources (emphasis added):

Edge is a key element of Luxs investment philosophy: edge can derive from informational, analytical or behavioural sources. Get better information about an asset (an entrepreneur or technology), or the same information but sooner; analyze that information differently in a way that leads to a novel conclusion (a variant perception) on the importance or magnitude or timing of the assets value; or behave individually and as a team in a way that uniquely leads us to great assets (avoid herds and fads, seek what others dont, venture out a limb as thats where the proverbial fruit is).

Ask yourself whether you possess an informational edge, an analytical edge, or a behavioural edge over the market next time youre thinking about an investment idea.

Do you have superior information?

Does your assessment of a situation differ to the consensus? Why?

What is the market missing that youre not? And how likely is the market to be wrong over you being right?

What is the market obsessing over right now and is that a worthwhile pursuit? Where should the market be looking that it currently isnt?

These are just some questions you can grapple with on your way to finding an edge over the market.

Finding an edge in battery tech stocks

My colleague Callum Newman, whos also the editor of Australian Small-Cap Investigator, has been pondering and researching the battery tech sector for a while now.

Callums also taken a different approach to analysing the sector.

Hes been following the Tesla money trail, aiming to identify producers likely to be handpicked by Tesla as it hunts critical materials for its leading EVs.

Callum dubbed these stocks Elons Chosen Ones.

Theyre miners that could help a giant EV automaker like Tesla with the looming battery metals supply crunch.

You can read about the stocks and Callums thesis right here.

Regards,

Kiryll Prakapenka,

For Money Morning
South Africa: Mchunu calls for water leaks to be fixed in Nelson Mandela Bay

Water and Sanitation Minister, Senzo Mchunu, has called for the urgent repair of all water leaks in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality (NMBMM).

I want leaks closed - all of them in Nelson Mandela Bay. If by Friday we havent done that, then Im telling you Im never angry, [but] I might get to that level, Mchunu said.

Mchunu made the call during his visit to the municipality to assess the progress made in drought interventions.

Addressing the media at the PE Traffic Training College on Monday, Mchunu said it is contradictory to ask residents to use water wisely when the metro loses 30% of its water to leaks.

Mchunu emphasised that the repairs of leaks is intertwined with the need for all users to reduce consumption.

While acknowledging progress made regarding the fixing of leaks, Mchunu said more still needs to be done to get to zero leaks.

To date, the municipality has closed 2 774 from over 3 000 reported leaks.

I am not pleased but I note that there is progress. It demonstrates that the team that is in NMBMM is on gear 2/3 but I want them on gear 5. They still have a long way to go, Mchunu said.

The Minister said the fight against leaks forms part of drought intervention strategy based on five pillars, including the repairing of leaks; restriction of water use by all sectors, including domestic and industry; equality in water distribution; barging; and drilling of boreholes.

Mchunu said there has been progress in all five areas of focus, but highlighted the need to accelerate all interventions in the metro.

He warned that the Nelson Mandela Bay is still using too much water.

Weve got to apply brakes in terms of the water we are using, be conscious and persuaded, and weve got to cooperate and comply with restrictions of water to each individual or each household, he said.

The Minister announced that the NMBMM team will this week work out a target on the number of boreholes to be drilled to assist in the fight against water shortages.

He assured that the water from the boreholes will be subjected to quality checks.

Commissioning of Kwanobuhle Pump Station

Meanwhile, joined by Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality Executive Mayor Eugene Johnson, Mchunu also commissioned the Kwanobuhle Pump Station, which will allow the Metro to transfer more water from the Nooitgedacht treatment works to the western side of the Metro.

After refurbishment, the pump station will feed into Kwanobuhle in Uitenhage, the Greenbushes reservoir, and the Summit reservoir.

Mchunu explained that the station will not be giving extra water, but is part of the strategy that will ensure equitable distribution of water in the Metro.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-07-05. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
World Insights: Brutal police shooting of African American man tears open scar of U.S. racism

Xinhua) 14:27, July 05, 2022

WASHINGTON, July 4 (Xinhua) -- The brutal police shooting of African American Jayland Walker by multiple officers with dozens of shots in Akron, Ohio, a week ago has torn open the nation's scar of racism.

Protesters continued to take to the streets in Akron on Monday to demand justice for Walker while decrying police violence and racism.

A day earlier, the Akron Police Department released body-camera footage of the deadly encounter, which took place after midnight on June 27 during an attempted traffic stop.

Officers attempted to pull over Walker on unspecified traffic violations and they chased his vehicle on the expressway for several minutes, according to the police.

Walker then allegedly jumped out of his car while the footage showed officers pursuing him on foot before opening fire.

The police department said officers "reported a firearm being discharged from the suspect vehicle" during the encounter.

Walker, 25, suffered more than 60 gunshot wounds and was unarmed at the time, Akron Police Chief Steve Mylett told reporters on Sunday.

Eight officers who were directly involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave as part of the protocol in a police shooting.

The city had contacted the Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation and requested an independent investigation into the incident. The process is underway.

"A traffic violation ended in 60 gunshot wounds before they handcuffed his dead body," Brian Normoyle, an American political and social commentator and writer tweeted. "There can be no excuse."

"Remember it. Don't forget it. And add it to the interminable list of atrocities against Black Americans perpetrated by systemic racism," Normoyle wrote.

Akron-native and Lakers star LeBron James also sent a message on Sunday to his hometown in the wake of Walker's death, tweeting "prayers for my city today."

Walker's family has questioned the use of deadly force against him by the officers.

An attorney for the family, Bobby DiCello, said that he has not seen any evidence yet regarding allegations that Walker had shot at officers and that the man was unarmed and fleeing when being shot.

Akron declared a state of emergency on Monday, imposing a curfew for the city's downtown for the night and canceling the Independence Day fireworks performance.

"Early yesterday, we had several peaceful protests in the downtown footprint related to the officer-involved shooting of Jayland Walker," Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan said in a statement on Monday. "These protests did not escalate to violence and destruction."

"However, as night fell and others began to join, the protests became no longer peaceful. There was significant property damage done to downtown Akron," Horrigan continued. "We cannot and will not tolerate violence or the destruction of property."

The police killing of Walker came a month after the second anniversary of African American man George Floyd's murder by white police officer Derek Chauvin who pressed his knee on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds during a street arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Floyd's death set off nationwide demonstrations against police brutality and racism in the United States in the summer of 2020.

"Racism is real in America. It has always been. Xenophobia is real in America. It has always been," U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said from the White House in May.

According to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll that month, three-quarters of African Americans are worried that they or someone they love will be attacked because of their race. The survey also found that more than half of African Americans believe the problem of racism will get worse in their lifetimes.

Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, also weighed in on Walker's suffering, saying that his death "was murder. Point blank."

"This doesn't happen to white people in America," Johnson said. "We are just trying to live our lives, and we are tired of being hunted like prey. We know that pulling over for the police is often a death sentence."

Police in the United States shoot and kill over 1,000 people each year, and African Americans are victims at a disproportionate rate, according to data from Mapping Police Violence.

African Americans are nearly three times more likely to be shot and killed by law enforcement than their white counterparts, the data showed.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
Friends made in intermediate and high school years sway your inclination towards making riskier decisions like partying, breaking the law, smoking, and other 'adult' things - as well as impacting your beliefs and morals.

The more popular friends tend to be more influential, but there are a range of factors that dictate how much power one friend has over their buddies.



Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, researchers found that bad influences are more powerful in changing behaviour than positive examples are.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  Mexicos Roman Catholic Council of Bishops called Monday on parishes throughout the country to put photos of dead nuns and priests in their churches this Sunday and to hold Masses for all those killed in gang-fueled violence.

The call for special celebrations throughout July came after two Jesuit priests and a tour guide were murdered June 20. Authorities have identified a local gang boss reportedly affiliated with the Sinaloa cartel as the suspect in the those killings. He remains at large.

The council also called on the faithful to pray on July 31 for the conversion or redemption of the killers.

Meanwhile, another priest said he was beaten over the weekend in the violence-plagued western state of Michoacan.

Rev. Mateo Calvillo wrote in an open letter that men travelling in another vehicle cut off his car, forcing him to stop, and that one of them came around to his window and beat him savagely. The priest said he knew of no motive for the June 29 attack in the town of Querendaro, saying the man appeared irrational.

On June 24, the Council of Bishops issued an open letter telling the government that it is time to revise the security policies that are failing.

The two murdered priests  Rev. Javier Campos, 79, and Rev. Joaquin Mora, 80  had spent much of their lives serving Indigenous peoples of the Sierra Tarahumara mountains. The Jesuits were shot to death in the small church in the town of Cerocahui.

The churchs Catholic Multimedia Center said seven priests have been murdered under the current administration, which took office in December 2018, and at least two dozen in the six years of the previous president.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  The Mexican navy said Tuesday it has begun a controversial plan to drop concrete blocks onto the bottom of the Gulf of California to snag illegal nets that drown critically endangered vaquita marina porpoises.

As few as eight of the tiny, elusive porpoises remain in the Gulf, also known as the Sea of Cortez. It is the only place they live, and they cannot be captured and bred in captivity.

Vaquitas become trapped and drown in gill nets fishermen set illegally for totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder is a delicacy in China and sells for thousands of dollars per pound (kilogram).

The Mexican government has largely abandoned efforts to keep small fishing boats out of a 110-square-mile (288-square kilometer) zero tolerance area near San Felipe, Baja California, where the few remaining vaquita have been seen.

Environmentalists said Tuesday the plan to sink 193 concrete blocks was approved with no public comment and expressed concerns that the metal hooks attached to the blocks may accumulate remnants of nets that could continue to entangle and drown sea life.

This is a total surprise, because the environmental impact statement was approved in record time, in six weeks. It wasn't opened to public comment, said Alex Olivera, the Mexico representative for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Mexicos Environment Department acknowledged there had been no public comment, but said that was because nobody had requested one. The department has become known for quickly signing off on government projects.

Doubts about the plan abound. It would scatter one block, with a metal hook attacked, every one kilometer over the zero tolerance area. It is not clear how, or whether, any snagged nets would be recovered from underwater.

A net can be snagged on these hooks, and we don't know, we're talking about nets that are hundreds of yards (meters) long, so we don't know if a net snagged down there might be a double-edged sword, and trap vaquitas, said Olivera.

Abandoned nets, known as ghost nets, can continue killing marine life for years.

Another expert, who did not want to be cited by name out of concern over reprisals, said the plan might discourage the illegal fishermen by causing them to lose nets to the snags.

But he added that it would crucial for the navy to regularly clear out any snagged nets, or other species could be killed down there.

In a statement announcing the plan, the navy made a vague mention of recovering detained nets. In practice, it would probably require divers to descend and manually cut nets off each of the 193 blocks every few days.

Given the defiance of the fishermen and the lucrative nature of the illegal trade in dried totoaba bladders, there is also no guarantee that fishermen might not mark  either physically or with GPS  the location of the blocks and fish around them.

Last year, the Mexican government abandoned the policy of keeping fishing boats out of the zero tolerance zone in the upper Gulf. It then introduced a sliding scale of punishments if more than 60 fishing boats are seen in the area on multiple occasions.

Olivera expressed doubts. They can't be checking these blocks every day, he said.

Earlier this year, the United States filed the first trade-based environmental complaint under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact, arguing that Mexico is failing to protect the species.

Mexico has agreed to an investigation. Under the treaty, which took effect in 2020, the complaint could lead to trade sanctions.
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First Baptist welcomes Vestal back

First Baptist Church of Midland held its Let Freedom Ring service Sunday.

The service and ensuing lunch included the return of special guest Daniel Vestal, who served as the pastor of First Baptist Church, Midland for 12 years (1976-88). He was accompanied by his wife Earlene, his daughter Ann and her family. Vestal was a national Christian leader in the Baptist faith. He is presently a distinguished professor of Baptist Leadership and director of the Eula Mae and John Baugh Center for Baptist leadership at Mercer University in Atlanta.

Vestal has recently written an inspirational book of his life with Jesus. This Treasure Within: A Memoir is a celebration of the loving and transformative presence of Christ in the life and Vestals ministry.

Meet the Animal Services manager

The City of Midland is inviting residents to meet Ty Coleman, the new Animal Services manager.

An ice cream meet-and-greet is set for 1-3 p.m. Wednesday inside the training room at the Animal Services facility, 1200 N. Fairgrounds Road.

Coleman has 10 years of animal services experience, having served in various roles, including kennel technician and field supervisor, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. His most recent role was Animal Services manager for the City of Sherman.

Meetings this week

Planning and Zoning Commission

3:30 p.m. Tuesday

Council Chamber, City Hall

300 N. Loraine St.

Pool information

Doug Russell Aquatic Center, 900 N. Midland Drive

Washington Aquatic Center, 1601 E. Indiana Ave.

Entry fee: $3 per person, and children ages 2 and under are free.

Days and hours this weekend

Saturdays: 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Sundays: 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Note: Passes are sold 30 minutes before the posted opening times at the pool and will be limited to a three-hour period listed as session A in the morning or session B in the afternoon.

Online: https://www.midlandtexas.gov/204/Midland-Swimming-Pools

Summer Camps

-ologies Summer Camp at Sibley Nature Center, $40 (members), $45 (non-members).

Ages 5-8: Tuesday and Wednesday, July 19-20

Ages 9-12: Thursday and Friday, July 21-22

Discovery Camp at Museum of the Southwest

Grades 6-8, July 19-22

Old School Summer Camp for second- through sixth-graders

Session II: July 11-15, St. Mark's United Methodist Church

Online: bit.ly/oldschoolcoolregistration

Vacation Bible School

West Kentucky Baptist Church  Spark Studios, July 18-22

--

To put your event on the Community Calendar, send the information to sdoreen@hearstnp.com
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The latest high-profile shooting in the United States happened on July Fourth, when a gunman opened fire on parade-goers in a Chicago suburb. Other notable episodes of gun violence in recent weeks:

VESTAVIA HILLS, ALABAMA

At least two people died and another was hospitalized on June 16 after a shooting at St. Stephens Episcopal Church in a Birmingham suburb. Police said a suspect is in custody.

DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS

Police shot and killed a man who fired gunshots June 13 at a Dallas-area gymnasium where at least 150 children were attending a day camp.

CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE

Three people died and 14 people were injured in a shooting June 5 in front of a restaurant. Three people have been arrested.

PHILADELPHIA

Three people died and 11 others were injured June 4 on a busy block in Philadelphia during a melee that began with a fistfight and was followed by random gunfire. Two men are in custody in two of the deaths; other people have also been arrested in connection with the melee.

DAYTON, OHIO

A jail inmate being treated at a hospital shot and killed a security guard June 1, pointed the weapon at others and killed himself in a parking lot.

TULSA, OKLAHOMA

A gunman killed his surgeon and three other people at a medical office June 1. The gunman killed himself as police arrived.

UVALDE, TEXAS

An 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School on May 24 in the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade. More than 15 other people were wounded. Law enforcement killed the attacker.

CHICAGO

A shooting killed two people and injured seven others on May 19 just blocks from the Magnificent Mile shopping district. Two men have been charged.

LAGUNA WOODS, CALIFORNIA

One person was killed and five others injured May 15 after a man opened fire on Taiwanese parishioners in Southern California. Authorities have said the gunman was motivated by hatred for Taiwan. He has been charged with murder and other counts.

BUFFALO, NEW YORK

A white gunman opened fire May 14 at a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood, killing 10 people and injuring others. He has been charged with federal hate crimes that could carry the death penalty if he is convicted.
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Three Jacksonville schools are set to have their renovations completed on time.

The former Lafayette School building at 747 W. Lafayette Ave. will be done with construction the soonest. The building was bought by the Little Red Wagon daycare in January and is set to reopen as the daycares new home in July, moving out from its original home at 3001 W. Lafayette Ave.

Janene Purdon-Menke, owner and operator of the Little Red Wagon, said the building would be basically done after some sprinklers got finished being installed.

Weve repainted everything, she said. Were just waiting for the playground in the back to be installed and the fencing to be put into the back. ... Plumbers are finishing up the kitchen now, and were good to go.

Purdon-Menke said an elevator would be eventually built on the outside of the building, but they did not need it to open the daycare and were seeking to move into the building quickly.

We want to make sure the building is accessible to everyone, she said.

The project that is scheduled to be completed next is the renovation of Washington Elementary School, 524 S. Kosciusko St. The renovations were part of an $11 million bid to remodel both Washington and Eisenhower schools.

Jacksonville District 117 schools Superintendent Steve Ptacek said the project was in the demolition phase. He said the school was being stripped down to the bone so nearly everything in it could be replaced, including electrical systems, plumbing and classrooms.

Ptacek also said the schools basement gym would be converted into a cafeteria and a new gym would be built on the northern side of the building, alongside a new entryway and administrative office.

Ptacek said construction was tentatively scheduled to end in December, though he said it would most likely take longer than that due to issues getting things like supplies and pre-manufactured items.

Weve built into the schedule an understanding of the delays that will happen during what were still calling this COVID period, he said.

The project that is scheduled to be finished last of these three is the remodeling of Crispin Hall, 1101 W. College Ave., at Illinois College. The nearly 60-year-old hall is receiving $11 million worth of renovations as part of ICs Inspiring Achievement initiative.

Construction, which began on June 1, is only 10%-20% completed, according to Kent Siltman, vice president of business affairs and CFO for Illinois College. Crews are still in the demolition phase, having knocked down the halls north and south walls.

Well essentially get a clean slate and then be able to go back in and reconfigure the whole place, Siltman said.

Once demolition is complete, Siltman said the next step will be to add an elevator to the building to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Prior to construction beginning, Illinois College President Barbara Farley said Crispin Hall would be receiving renovations like a new facade and cutting-edge technology to make it a center for fields like computer science, math and psychology.

Siltman said the project is set to be completed by August 2023.
HAVANA  A portion of Illinois Route 78 in Mason County will be closed for about a month while crews replace culverts.

Work started Tuesday near Matanzas Beach south of Havana, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation. It will affect traffic between County Road 1305 North and County Road 1310 North.
Journal-Courier

Used fireworks are suspected of causing a garage fire Monday.

Jacksonville Fire Department Capt. Mike Hopper said firefighters were called at 6 a.m. to a fire at 1053 Hardin Ave. Crews spent 29 minutes on scene extinguishing the fire, which caused about $1,000 in property loss.
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A Kentucky deputy killed in an ambush that left three officers dead in a small Appalachian town was laid to rest Tuesday.

Floyd County Sheriff John Hunt fought back tears at the funeral for his deputy and longtime friend, William Petry, who along with two other officers walked into a hail of bullets from a gunman holed up in his home Thursday evening.

Petry, a veteran officer who joined the Floyd County sheriffs office after retiring from the state police a few years ago, was honored Tuesday during an emotional funeral service in Prestonsburg, the county seat.

William loved law enforcement. He loved the job. He loved the people, Hunt said in a eulogy for his longtime friend Tuesday morning. He is a hero ... and I know he will never be forgotten.

The shooting is likely Kentucky's deadliest incident for law enforcement in nearly 100 years and one of the deadliest in the nation since 2016, when three Baton Rouge, Louisiana, police officers were fatally shot by a gunman. Petry and Prestonsburg police Capt. Ralph Frasure, both 60 years old, died at the scene and Prestonsburg Officer Jacob Chaffins, 28, died in a hospital Friday night. A police dog was also fatally shot.

The man arrested in their deaths, 49-year-old Lance Storz, was taken into custody in the small community of Allen after family members helped police secure his surrender Thursday night.

Dozens of uniformed law enforcement officers gathered Tuesday at the funeral at Prestonsburgs Mountain Arts Center. Petry's family gave permission for media to livestream the event on local news stations. Frasure, Chaffins and the police dog, Drago, will be laid to rest after funeral services later this week.

Chaffins, who joined the department in 2019, left behind a wife and young daughter. He also served on the Prestonsburg Fire Department and was a member of the National Guard. Frasure had been married for more than 40 years and had four grandchildren. He had been an officer with Prestonsburg police since 1983.

Frasure's daughter wrote in a Facebook post Friday that her father was a great man who loved his family like no other.

An evil evil man took my daddies life today, Stacy Frasure McGuire wrote. I know I should forgive but how do I do that?

Floyd County Deputy Kevin Thacker said he took a phone call from Petry last week, a typical issue about a towed car, he said. But at the end of the call, as had become ritual, Petry told him he loved him.

That was his last words to me, Thacker said at the funeral. And I'll never forget that.

Police went to the house in Allen on Thursday after a family member called to say Storz's wife was being held in the home against her will and was being abused, Hunt said in a news conference over the weekend. The wife was waiting for them when they arrived, telling the officers Storz was asleep, so she was able to get outside. Four officers, including Petry, returned to serve a protective order against Storz, Hunt said. Storz watched them approach from a window and began shooting, Hunt said.

The officers' deaths were the most in a single incident since a 1923 prison riot in Eddyville that left three corrections officers dead, Prestonsburg Police Deputy Chief Ross Shurtleff said Sunday. Storz is facing three counts of murder of a police officer and is being held in jail on a $10 million cash bond.

Petry's death will be a huge loss for the department, Hunt said, because he worked so well with younger, inexperienced officers who revered his experience and calm.

The young officers respected him like nobody Ive ever seen in such a short time," Hunt said.

Four other officers were injured in the shooting, though none wounds were life-threatening, state police said over the weekend. One civilian was also hurt in the shooting, state police said.
A study hopes to assess risks and barriers to health care for the region's rural gay communities.

The Southern Illinois University School of Medicine is seeking LGBT participants in central and southern Illinois for its Illinois Cohort study.

Wiley Jenkins, the study's principal investigator, directs science and research for the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at SIU Medicine. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois is funding the study.

Illinois Cohort is part of ruralHarmony a group of academics, clinical partners and students who formed to research and work explicitly on rural health issues as they relate to sexual orientation or gender identity.

Jenkins hoped to have the study under way by now, but said he underestimated the commitment required to participate. It entails three online surveys and an interview via phone or videoconference over a six-month period. Those interested in taking part can go to bit.ly/3a29GZ5 to apply. Participants will be compensated for their time.

Jenkins said topics to be assessed include drug and alcohol use and other risky behavior; chronic disease risk; infectious disease risk; COVID-19 and its impact; health care access; mental health; demographics; and stigma.

Jenkins believes the study is the first of its kind in the United States.

Jenkins said that in conversations with advisory boards representing the LGBT community, common potential barriers to health care have to do with things such as stigma, providers using the wrong preferred pronoun, or using the wrong name for people in transition.

"In our survey last summer, we found that half of the gay men had not told their provider about being gay," Jenkins said. "That knowledge could make a big difference in the type of health care they might receive. But it provides a barrier to talking about who they are to their provider because they don't feel comfortable. And some providers just dont want to know that kind of information."

Jenkins isn't sure what they will find because so little is known about LGBT communities in rural areas. Most similar research has focused on urban areas. Jenkins said some things can be guessed, such as rural LGBT people likely have less satisfaction with their health care.

"Living in a rural area is truly different from living in large metropolitan area," Jenkins said. "How well do rural gay men control their diabetes? The survey should help us begin to explore whether they are managing it correctly. Same with cholesterol levels and mammography.

"Transgender individuals, particularly, have less health care satisfaction overall because they are being misgendered. So, we expect to see differences in engagement and satisfaction. But we dont know what we will find out because it really is brand new."

Jenkins said the study is a collaborative effort and places like the Phoenix Center in Springfield and Rainbow Cafe in Carbondale have provided critical feedback.

Jenkins wants to have participants selected by mid-July and the research done by the end of the year.

"Our aim is to freely share our data, discuss the data, publish our work and figure out the types of changes that could make health care more accessible," Jenkins said. "We just want to make it better."
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LONDON (AP)  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was clinging to power Tuesday after two of his most senior Cabinet ministers quit, saying they had lost confidence in Johnsons leadership amid shifting explanations about his handling of a sexual misconduct scandal.

Treasury chief Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid resigned within minutes of each other, costing Johnson the support of the men responsible for tackling two of the biggest issues facing Britain  the cost-of-living crisis and surging COVID-19 infections.

Both cited Johnsons credibility after a day in which the prime minister was forced to backtrack on earlier statements about the scandal that has rattled his government for the past six days.

The debacle is only the latest to hit Johnson, who last month narrowly survived a vote of no confidence triggered by similarly shifting stories about lockdown-breaking parties in government offices.

In his letter of resignation, Javid said the confidence vote showed a large number of Conservative Party lawmakers had lost trust in Johnson.

It was a moment for humility, grip and a new direction, Javid said. I regret to say, however, that it is clear this situation will not change under your leadership  and you have therefore lost my confidence too.

A few minutes later, Sunak echoed those sentiments.

The public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously, Sunak said. I realize that this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning.

Both Sunak and Javid are seen as possible contenders to replace Johnson if he is forced out.

While the resignations heaped pressure on the prime minister, Johnson has in the past proven to be an adept politician, fighting off criticism to prolong his career.

Johnson quickly named two loyalists to the positions: Steve Barclay got Javid's old job, while Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi replaces Sunak as Treasury chief, Downing Street said.

At the same time, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss swiftly threw her support behind Johnson. Other Cabinet members, including Culture Secretary Nadine Dories, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace and Home Secretary Priti Patel, were also in his corner.

But Scott Lucas, an emeritus professor at the University of Birmingham and a longtime political observer, said it would be difficult for Johnson to ultimately survive the departure of two such senior members of his Cabinet.

Hes not going to go without a fight, Lucas said. I just dont know how many people are left to fight alongside him.

The latest scandal began Thursday, when Chris Pincher resigned as deputy chief whip amid complaints that he groped two men at a private club. That triggered a series of reports about past allegations leveled against Pincher and questions about why Johnson promoted him to a senior job enforcing party discipline.

Pincher denies the allegations.

Johnson's office initially said he wasnt aware of the previous accusations when he promoted Pincher in February. By Monday, a spokesman said Johnson knew of allegations that were either resolved or did not progress to a formal complaint.

That account didnt sit well with Simon McDonald, the most senior civil servant at the U.K. Foreign Office from 2015 to 2020. In a highly unusual move, McDonald went public with claims that the prime ministers office wasnt telling the truth.

McDonald said in a letter to the parliamentary commissioner for standards that he received complaints about Pinchers behavior in the summer of 2019, shortly after Pincher became a Foreign Office minister. An investigation upheld the complaint, and Pincher apologized for his actions, McDonald said.

Mr. Johnson was briefed in person about the initiation and outcome of the investigation," McDonald wrote.

Hours after McDonalds comments were published, Johnsons office changed its story again, saying the prime minister had forgotten that Pincher was the subject of an official complaint.

Then minutes before Javid and Sunak announced their resignations, Johnson told reporters that Pincher should have been fired from the government after a previous 2019 incident.

Asked if it was an error to appoint Pincher to the government, Johnson said, I think it was a mistake, and I apologize for it. In hindsight it was the wrong thing to do.

The shifting explanation from Johnson fueled discontent within the Cabinet after ministers were forced to publicly deliver the prime ministers denials, only to have the explanation shift the next day.

Johnsons authority had already been shaken by last months confidence vote. Although he survived, 41% of Conservatives voted to remove him from office. But until Tuesday his Cabinet had largely stayed put and loyal.

Concerns about Johnsons leadership were fueled by his responses to months of allegations about lockdown-breaking parties in government offices that ultimately resulted in 126 fines, including one levied against Johnson.

Two weeks later, Conservative candidates were badly beaten in two special elections to fill vacant seats in Parliament, adding to the discontent within Johnsons party and suggesting the ongoing accusations were finding a toehold with the public.

When Pincher resigned last week as deputy chief whip he told Johnson that he drank far too much the previous night and had embarrassed myself and other people.

Johnson initially refused to suspend Pincher from the Conservative Party, but he relented after a formal complaint about the groping allegations was filed with parliamentary authorities.

Critics suggested Johnson was slow to react because he didnt want Pincher forced to resign his Parliament seat, setting up the Conservatives for another potential special election defeat.

Even before the Pincher scandal, suggestions were swirling that Johnson may soon face another no-confidence vote.

The existing rules require 12 months between such votes, but several Conservative lawmakers have suggested they support changing the rules in an upcoming vote on the issue.

Senior Conservative lawmaker Roger Gale, a long-standing critic of Johnson, said he would support a change of the rules.

Mr. Johnson has for three days now been sending ministers  in one case a Cabinet minister  out to defend the indefensible, effectively to lie on his behalf. That cannot be allowed to continue, Gale told the BBC. This prime minister has trashed the reputation of a proud and honorable party for honesty and decency, and that is not acceptable.

___

Follow all of AP's coverage of Prime Minister Boris Johnson at https://apnews.com/hub/boris-johnson
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A $10,000 reward is being offered for finding a serial child rapist on the run after posting bail and then failing to appear in court in Moultrie County.

Herman Carroll, 70, was arrested July 3, 2000, after being accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. The child sex offender, who had convictions in 1983 and 1993, was arrested in Moultrie County on charges of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, criminal sexual assault, and aggravated criminal sexual abuse.
VIRGINIA  Virginia Masonic Lodge will have a cookout Saturday to benefit the Log Cabin Kids summer program.

The cookout at Fast Stop at Illinois routes 125 and 78 will offer grilled bratwurst and jumbo hot dogs. It will run from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. or until supplies are gone.

The Log Cabin Kids summer program, which is open to all Cass County children, encourages them to read a book that emphasizes nature or a particular time period before completing a craft related to the book topic.

Snacks and craft materials for participants are provided by the nonprofit Friends of the Rexroat Prairie, which supports the prairie while also leading programs such as Log Cabin Kids.

The summer program is a way to encourage kids to expand their horizons through reading, lodge Master Tim Krause said.
In not so many years past, Congress spent its days legislating and measuring its works effects with meaningful oversight. Lawmakers had time for this because they did not spend their days engaging in hyper-partisan oversight of the other party or fundraising 20 to 30 hours a week  52 weeks a year.

The boring but essential job  checking the homework of the administration and of private parties promising Congress to take specific actions  keeps honest people honest and protects the American citizenry. Conversely, lack of proper congressional oversight is at the root of many spending and overreach boondoggles  ($640 toilet seats, anyone?).

After Congress legislates, it is an essential part of the process to follow the work to check its implementation. When Congress directs a federal agency to build a bridge, research a vaccine, oversee a mega-merger for antitrust implications or any other matter, it is Congress job to make sure that the peoples will, manifest in that legislation or rulemaking, has been executed properly.

That work is not being done anymore, and the administration  Republican and Democrat  feels no reason to be truthful or forthcoming with Congress. This situation is doubly so for private parties testifying to Congress. Take, for example, the recent T-Mobile/Sprint merger.

In April 2020 and after extensive congressional pre-merger oversight, the third- and fourth-largest telecoms merged into the new T-Mobile. Along the way, there were many promises made to Congress.

Years earlier, when two of the big three automakers underwent government-approved reorganization during the Obama administration, the auto dealers were all but wiped out by the post-reorganization companies. Congress did not want to see that happen again and held hearings to ensure it would not. In direct testimony, the telecom CEOs told Congress that the merger would mean more jobs and an increased retail footprint with at least 600 new retail stores to better serve consumers.

So, two years after the telecom merger, how is T-Mobile doing with its promises generally and specifically the promises regarding store outlets? More to the question, is Congress following up on the promises made to it by T-Mobile and Sprint when the merger was proposed?

Well, the situation is not so good.

Post-merger, T-Mobile started closing stores run by smaller dealers and vendors left, right and center. Some of these vendors have now come together to file litigation against T-Mobile, claiming $500 million in damages due to the new companys actions after the merger. Together, this group claims that nearly 400 of their stores were closed and more than 2,500 jobs were lost. The verdict on other promises about jobs, 5G capacity to customers, providing 5G to its business partners, and providing satellite service to customers appears to be mixed.

According to then-CEO of T-Mobile John Legere, This merger is all about creating new, high-quality, high-paying jobs, and the new T-Mobile will be jobs-positive from Day One and every day thereafter. In reality, after the merger, T-Mobile laid off hundreds of employees from Sprints sales team, euphemistically labeling its actions as a way of asking them to consider a career change inside the company or to find a new position outside the company.

According to one legal filing, a new, completely different, and contradictory message than any that T-Mobile of Sprint had previously communicated was shared by one T-Mobile representative in a call that took place soon after the merger. About the closures, it was admitted that T-Mobile only acquired Sprint for its network assets, not real estate or dealer distribution, a concerning contrast with previous public statements.

To their credit, several members of Congress had warned against the merger and informed the Department of Justice that they could not support it. Nice but easy words if no follow-up is planned and no oversight was or is yet.

Congress must resolve itself to do its job. It must implement extensive ordinary oversight hearings after the fact on matters like this  matters essential to the proper functioning of our country.

If the threat of this post-merger oversight loomed as a reality, the CEOs might have more cautiously qualified the statements they made to get the merger done. But in fact, why should they? Congress has little respect for the process, so why should anyone else?
On Oct. 25, 1973, to stop the Soviet Unions imminent intervention on the side of the Arabs in the Yom Kippur War between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria, America went to Defense Condition III.

Defcon III put our nuclear-armed units on high alert, just short of Defcon IIs readying them for imminent use. The 82nd Airborne Division was alerted to ready troops to board aircraft for deployment; U.S. aircraft carriers moved toward the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Soviets backed off.

Egypt and Syria had launched surprise, coordinated and initially successful attacks on Israel to recover the Sinai and the Golan Heights that had been lost in the 1967 war. A key to Israels success in countering the attacks was Israels crossing the Suez Canal into Egypt. This bottled-up Egyptian troops in the Sinai and threatened Egyptian cities. This prompted the Soviet Unions imminent intervention. Our response and the situation on the ground allowed for a negotiated settlement acceptable to all. The Israeli counterattack into Egypt was essential, as was the backbone of the United States.

On May 31, President Biden wrote in a New York Times article: Standing by Ukraine ... is in our vital national interests to ensure a peaceful and stable Europe and to make it clear that might does not make right. He said that without paying a heavy price, Russias actions will encourage other would-be aggressors, put other peaceful democracies at risk, and bring catastrophic consequences for the world.

A heavy price is not sufficient. Russia must lose or face losing. The Soviets defeated Germany with the same tactics now used in Ukraine: unlimited use of manpower, artillery, rockets and armor, all without regard for the lives of Russian soldiers. Russia expects a heavy price to win.

In 1973, a peaceful and stable Middle East and the defense of Israel were our vital national interests. Today, a peaceful and stable Europe, of which Ukraine is a part, is likewise vital for us. Russia seeks control of all of Ukraine as the first step to recovery of the former Eastern and Central European countries of the Warsaw Pact. Unstopped, Russia will pound Ukraine, aiming to break out of the Donbas, rout Ukrainian troops and destroy Ukraines military. Russia will accept a limited negotiated settlement only in the unlikely event it concludes that despite its tactics, the rout is not currently feasible.

Ceding Ukrainian territory for a temporary peace is a prelude to the next war. Russia will bide its time, husband its resources and rebuild its military. Unless decisively defeated, Russia will attack again before Ukraine grows too strong and as the West gets complacent.

The war is existential for Ukraine as it was for Israel in 1973. Our skittish restrictions on offensive arms for Ukraine, such as denying Ukraine long-range rockets that can reach into Russia, tie one hand behind Ukraines back.

The West must enable Ukraine, as America did Israel in 1973, to use offense as defense, to counterattack into Russia in a way that threatens the rear of Russian troops and draws forces out of Ukraine to defend Russia. Our vital national interest demands that Ukraine win decisively so barbaric Russias ambitions are thwarted.

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1973 Yom Kippur War demonstrate that the world is safest when our adversary knows our clear, firm resolve to protect a vital interest. Half-measures embolden adversaries and are far more dangerous.

Our leaders must stiffen the nations backbone for the risks we must take.
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What does supporting D.C. statehood or defending Roe v. Wade have to do with protecting the environment or fighting climate change? If you want the endorsement of so-called environmental groups like the Sierra Club, 350NH Action, or the League of Conservation Voters  everything.

All three groups endorse a so-called intersectional view of the environment, encompassing support for things like abortion rights, voting access, support for labor unions and higher minimum wages as part of the overall Green movement.

The environment doesnt live in a silo. It is a multi-layered issue, said Catherine Corkery, the New Hampshire chapter director for the Sierra Club.

Corkery said candidates for public office who want the Sierra Clubs endorsement need to show strong support for clean air and water as well as things like voting rights and economic justice.

The Sierra Club uses a variety of issues to review people as candidates. The environment is multi-faceted. Our lives are complex and so is the environment, she said.

350NH Action goes further, demanding that candidates seeking their endorsement adhere to a progressive platform far beyond strictly environmental issues.

Climate is an intersectional issue, so we only endorse candidates who have strong stances on progressive issues we and our partners also fight for like: racial justice, immigrant justice, LGBTQIA+ rights, reproductive justice, healthcare for all, a family-sustaining minimum wage, public education, Indigenous rights, gun safety, disability rights, ending mass incarceration, and reducing income inequality, the group states on its website.

A representative for 350NH Action did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did the group explain why it has publicly criticized Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H., over immigration policy but not their embrace of more oil drilling or tax cuts for fossil fuels.

Then theres the League of Conservation Voters scorecard for lawmakers, which counts votes for amnesty of illegal immigrants, federalizing state elections and impeaching President Trump.

American Conservation Coalition, a conservation organization that promotes free-market solutions to environmental problems, thinks the LCV is on the wrong track.

It seems like LCV is really more of a Democratic front-group than (an) environmental group, said Quill Robinson, ACCs vice president of government affairs. I think thats a real shame because there are important climate change issues and environmental issues and policies where Democrats and Republicans agree, but I think LCV is more intent on beating up Republicans and helping Democrats get re-elected than making real progress on environmental issues.

The LCV regularly takes positions on topics that are unrelated to conservation. The LCV recently reacted to the Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs abortion case, which turns the question of abortion back to state legislatures, by calling for expanding the court.

Robinson said the group even went so far in its partisanship that it took a stand against a police reform bill because it was proposed by a Republican.

The one in particular that left me scratching my head was, according to the League of Conservation Voters, voting against a police reform bill by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., is the pro-environment position, Robinson said. Sen. Scott was trying to address issues around police, and it got lots of support from many different people, but thats not a topic related to the environment.

Danielle Butcher, vice president of the ACC, blames the LCV and other far-left environmental groups for making conservation and dealing with climate change a partisan issue and alienating conservatives who might otherwise support environmental protections.

The LCV and groups like it have been at the forefront of the movement that successfully politicized climate change, Butcher said in a recent op-ed. An environmental advocacy group should score legislators based on their work to address the root causes of climate change, not whether or not they voted to impeach a former president or voted for a partisan voting rights bill. By shunning any and all congressional Republicans, LCV is only hurting its ability to advance real solutions.
Review: An Irish hitman juggles murder with parenthood View Photo

The Lemon Man by Keith Bruton (Brash Books)

Patrick Callen, a Dublin, Ireland hitman with a mild case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, stays organized by making lists. On his first day in Keith Brutons debut novel, the list includes:

 Buy Food

 Sleep With Olivia

 Visit Ma

 Kill Henry ONeil

Patrick, who navigates Dublins streets on his 1950s Modello Oro bicycle, was pedaling home from the market when he stopped off to deal with ONeil, a drug runner and junkie who owed his supplier more than he could pay. Worried that someone might nick his bag of lemons, Patrick slipped it off the handlebars and took it with him to do the hit. From then on, he was known as The Lemon Man.

The details of the ONeil hit precisely convey Patricks attitude about his chosen profession.

I reach back into my shorts and pull out the gun, shooting little Henry ONeil dead center in the forehead, bulls-eye. He falls back into the chair with a bullet in his head. I touch my top lip with the top of my tongue. My moustache is getting long I scratch my head with the silencer. Its warm.

But just when youre sure that Patrick is a psychopath, he discovers an infant in ONeils filthy drug den, cant bear to leave it there, and takes it with him.

Suddenly, the antihero of The Lemon Man is struggling to change diapers and trying to figure out what toddlers eat. But hes also got a job to do. There are people who need killing and others willing to pay to have it done. So he finds himself taking the baby along on the job or leaving him in the care of his equally flummoxed girlfriend, Olivia, whose work as a prostitute doesnt bother Patrick in the least.

Caring for an infant while working as a hired killer is not a good mix, and the inevitable complications soon threaten to get Patrick and Olivia killed. The result is a fast-paced crime novel that is both hilarious and hardboiled, its main character both ruthless and oddly sympathetic.

I dont care what you think, Patrick says. I take care of (i.e. kill) people when they dont obey the rules. The rules of the street.

Brutons tight, colorful prose captures the idiosyncrasies of Irish English without ever leaving American readers behind, every unfamiliar word clear in contest. And his hard-eyed portrayal of Dublin street life is so vivid readers can smell the streets and feel the cold rain on their faces.

___

Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Mystery Writers of Americas Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including The Dread Line.

By BRUCE DESILVA

Associated Press
Canada says China bars diplomats from Canadian tycoon trial View Photo

BEIJING (AP)  Chinese authorities refused to let Canadian diplomats attend the trial of a Chinese-born Canadian tycoon who disappeared from Hong Kong five years ago, Canadas government said Tuesday.

Xiao Jianhua was last seen at a Hong Kong hotel in January 2017 and was believed to have been taken to the mainland by Chinese authorities. He was placed under investigation by anti-graft authorities that year, according to news reports, though the government has released no details.

The government has never confirmed whether Xiao, the founder of Tomorrow Group, which has been linked to a series of anti-corruption prosecutions and seizures of financial companies by regulators, was detained or what charges he might face.

The Canadian government said earlier Xiao was due to stand trial Monday but gave no indication whether a trial took place or where. It gave no details of possible charges.

Canada made several requests to attend the trial proceedings. Our attendance was denied by Chinese authorities, a Canadian government statement said.

A foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, said he had no information about Xiao.

Xiao vanished amid a flurry of prosecutions of Chinese businesspeople accused of misconduct.

That fueled fears the ruling Communist Party might be abducting people outside the mainland. Hong Kong at that time prohibited Chinese police from operating in the former British colony, which has a separate legal system.

Since then, Beijing has tightened control over Hong Kong, prompting complaints it is violating the autonomy promised when the territory returned to China in 1997. The ruling party imposed a national security law in 2020 and has imprisoned pro-democracy activists.

Hong Kong police investigated Xiaos disappearance and said the subject crossed the border onto the mainland. But an advertisement in the Ming Pao newspaper in Xiaos name the same week denied he was taken against his will.

At the time of his disappearance, Xiao was worth nearly $6 billion, making him Chinas 32nd wealthiest person, according to the Hurun Report, which follows the countrys wealthy.

Founded in 1999, Tomorrow expanded into banking, securities, insurance, coal and real estate.

The company became one of the highest-profile targets in a campaign by the ruling party to reduce risks in Chinese financial industries. News reports said Xiao was suspected of improperly using money from banks and other companies to pay for acquisitions, but no charges against him have been announced.

In 2020, regulators seized nine companies controlled by Xiao. That included four insurers, two securities firms, two trust firms and a company involved in financial futures. The business magazine Caixin reported at the time that the seized assets totaled almost 1 billion yuan ($150 million).

A retired bank regulator, Xue Jining, admitted taking bribes of 400 million yuan ($62 million) in bribes in a corruption case linked to Baoshang Bank Ltd. in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, which regulators seized from Tomorrow in 2019.

Auditors found Tomorrow misused money from Baoshang Bank, according to news reports.

One of the Tomorrow companies seized in 2020, Tianan Property Insurance Co., put its assets up for sale last month, asking 2.1 billion yuan ($315 million).

By JOE McDONALD

AP Business Writer
Electra Fire 7-4-22- Calaveras Sheriff's Office Image View Photos

Update 7:40pm: CAL Fire has updated the size of the Electra Fire to 959 acres. The earlier evacuation orders listed below remain in place. Additional firefighters will arrive throughout the evening and early morning hours to help work on gaining containment. Over 100 firefighters are on scene.

Update at 7:15pm: The latest size update on the Electra Fire, near the Amador and Calaveras border, is 300 acres, according to CAL Fire. The Calaveras County Sheriffs Office has now called for a mandatory evacuation order along Highway 26 from Ponderosa Road to Montgomery Road. Highway 26 is also closed from Buckeye Road to Ponderosa Road.

The fire ignited during the three oclock hour this afternoon in the area near the 2015 Butte Fire.

Amador officials have issued a mandatory evacuation order for all residents in the Butte Mountain Road area. Butte Mountain Road will be closed except for evacuation purposes.

in addition, there is an evacuation warning for all residents in a two-mile radius centered around Lake Tabeau.

The Amador County Animal Response Team (ACART) has been activated. Residents may bring large and small animals to the Amador County Fairgrounds. An evacuation shelter for people is at the Italian Picnic Grounds at 581 Highway 49 in Sutter Creek.

100 firefighters are on the scene.

*Nic Peterson contributed to this report.

Update at 7pm: Officials continue to fight a 300-plus acre vegetation fire near the Amador and Calaveras County line burning in an area similar to the 2015 Butte Fire. It started during the three oclock hour this afternoon in Amador County near Electra Road, outside of Jackson.

The Calaveras County Sheriffs Office has issued an evacuation warning for the area of Highway 26 from the intersections of Buckeye Road and Lower Dorray Road due to the fire. There are no mandatory evacuation orders in Calaveras County.

Amador officials have issued a mandatory evacuation order for all residents in the Butte Mountain Road area. Butte Mountain Road will be closed except for evacuation purposes.

in addition, there is an evacuation warning for all residents in a two-mile radius centered around Lake Tabeau.

The Amador County Animal Response Team (ACART) has been activated. Residents may bring large and small animals to the Amador County Fairgrounds. An evacuation shelter for people is at the Italian Picnic Grounds at 581 Highway 49 in Sutter Creek.

100 firefighters are on scene and more are responding.

Update at 6:20pm: The Calaveras County Sheriffs Office has issued an evacuation warning for the area of Highway 26 from the intersections of Buckeye Road and Lower Dorray Road due to the Electra Fire. There are no mandatory evacuation orders in Calaveras County.

The other mandatory evacuation orders for Amador County still remain in place. The fire is burning in a similar area as the 2015 Butte Fire.

The current size estimate remains 100 acres.

Update at 6:15 p.m.: The Italian Picnic Grounds, located at 581 Highway 49 in Sutter Creek, will be the location for human sheltering. The Red Cross has been notified and will be responding to assist. An exact ETA for Red Cross is unknown at this time.

Update at 5:45 p.m.: CAL FIRE has issued a mandatory evacuation order for all residents in the Butte Mountain Road area. Butte Mountain road will be closed except for evacuation purposes. CAL FIRE has issued an evacuation warning for all residents in a two-mile radius centered around Lake Tabeau. The Amador County Animal Response Team has been activated. Residents may bring large and small animals to the Amador County Fairgrounds.

Update at 5:25 p.m.: Jackson Fire Department has posted a list of places evacuated due to this fire they are as follows.

Ponderosa Way Butte Mountain Amador Lane Parts of Clinton Road

Update at 5:10 p.m.: The fire has grown to near 100 acres in what is being called a dangerous rate of spread in dry grass in the North Fork of the Mokelumne River drainage. Evacuations are in progress in that area.

Original post at 4:50 p.m.:Calaveras, CA There is a vegetation fire in Amador County along Electra Road just south of Highway 49. Initial reports are that the fire is about 40 acres in size. Electra Road is closed near the fire. The Amador County Sheriffs Office is evacuating some residents along nearby Butte Mountain Road. Air and ground resources are on the scene. Be prepared for activity in the area.
Israels Lapid meets Macron in Paris on first trip as PM View Photo

PARIS (AP)  Israeli caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Tuesday used his first trip abroad since taking office to urge world powers to step up pressure on Iran over its nuclear activities, calling the Islamic republic a threat to regional stability.

Lapid met in Paris on Tuesday with French President Emmanuel Macron, who called on Lapid to revive talks toward peace with the Palestinians and said Israelis are lucky to have him in charge.

Lapid, who took office Friday, focused on Israels concerns about Irans nuclear ambitions and the stalled global deal aimed at curbing them. Israel accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons  a charge Iran denies  and says the tattered nuclear deal doesnt include sufficient safeguards to halt Irans progress toward making a bomb.

The current situation cannot continue as it is. It will lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, which would threaten world peace. We must all work together to stop that from happening, Lapid told reporters.

He and Macron, both centrists, called each other friends, but disagreed over the Iran nuclear deal.

The 2015 deal offered Iran relief from economic sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear activities. In 2018, then President Donald Trump, with strong Israeli backing, withdrew from the deal, causing it to unravel. Since then, Iran has stepped up key nuclear activities, including uranium enrichment, well beyond the contours of the original agreement.

Macron called for a return to the 2015 deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but acknowledged that it will not be enough. France helped negotiate the deal and is one of the parties in talks aimed at trying to revive it. Israel says that if the agreement is restored, it should include tighter restrictions and address Irans non-nuclear military activities across the region.

Lapid called the JCPOA a dangerous deal, saying it isnt tough or far-reaching enough.

He said Israel and France may have disagreements about what the content of the agreement should be, but we do not disagree on the facts: Iran continues to violate the agreement and develop its program, enriching uranium beyond the level it is allowed to and removing cameras from nuclear sites.

He heads the centrist Yesh Atid party, and was one of the architects of the historic alliance of eight diverse factions that found common ground in opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu, the first governing coalition to include an Arab party.

Lapid will stay in office until a November election and perhaps beyond if no clear winner emerges. Making his first trip abroad as prime minister, Lapid may try to use the meeting with Macron to bolster his credentials as a statesman and alternative to Netanyahu with the Israeli electorate.

Macron used their meeting to urge efforts by Israel toward long-term peace with the Palestinians.

There is no alternative to a return to political dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, he said, to revive a process thats been broken for too long.

Lapid didnt address Macrons appeal in their public remarks. Lapid, unlike Netanyahu, supports a two-state solution with the Palestinians. But as a caretaker leader, he isnt in a position to pursue any major diplomatic initiatives.

He and Macron were also expected to discuss Lebanon, days after Israel said it downed three unmanned aircraft launched by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah that were heading toward an area where Israel recently installed an offshore gas platform. Hezbollah, which fought a monthlong war against Israel in 2006, has confirmed sending the unarmed drones in a reconnaissance mission.

Israel and Lebanon dont have formal diplomatic relations, but have been engaged in indirect U.S.-brokered talks to delineate their maritime border. France is a key supporter of Lebanon, a former French protectorate, and Macron has unsuccessfully tried to broker a solution to Lebanons political crisis.

Hezbollah has more than 100,000 rockets in Lebanon, aimed at Israel. It tries to attack us with Iranian rockets and UAVs, Lapid said, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles. Israel will not sit back and do nothing, given these repeated attacks.

___

Ilan Ben Zion contributed from Jerusalem.

By OLEG CETINIC and ILAN BEN ZION

Associated Press
Judge throws out Trump-era rollbacks on endangered species View Photo

WASHINGTON (AP)  A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a host of actions by the Trump administration to roll back protections for endangered or threatened species, a year after the Biden administration said it was moving to strengthen such species protections.

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in Northern California eliminated the Trump-era rules even as two wildlife agencies under President Joe Biden are reviewing or rescinding the regulations. The decision restores a range of protections under the Endangered Species Act  including some that date to the 1970s  while the reviews are completed. Environmental groups hailed the decision, which they said sped up needed protections and critical habitat designations for threatened species, including salmon in the Pacific Northwest.

Tigars ruling spoke for species desperately in need of comprehensive federal protections without compromise, said Kristen Boyles, an attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice. Threatened and endangered species do not have the luxury of waiting under rules that do not protect them.

The court ruling comes as two federal agencies  the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service  review five Endangered Species Act regulations finalized by President Donald Trumps administration, including critical habitat designations and rules requiring federal agencies to consult with the wildlife or fisheries services before taking actions that could affect threatened or endangered species.

Fish and Wildlife also said it will reinstate the decades-old blanket rule, which mandates additional protections for species that are newly classified as threatened. Those protections were removed under Trump.

Critical habitat designations for threatened or endangered species can result in limitations on energy development such as mining or oil drilling that could disturb a vulnerable species, while the consultation rule and a separate rule on the scope of proposed federal actions help determine how far the government may go to protect imperiled species.

Under Trump, officials rolled back protections for the northern spotted owl, gray wolves and other species, actions that Biden has vowed to review. The Biden administration previously moved to reverse Trumps decision to weaken enforcement of the century-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which made it harder to prosecute bird deaths caused by the energy industry.

The bird law reversal was among more than 150 business-friendly actions on the environment that Trump took and Biden wants to reconsider, revise or scrap, including withdrawal last month of a 2020 rule that limited which lands and waters could be designated as places where imperiled animals and plants could receive federal protection.

A spokesman for the Interior Department, which oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, said Tuesday the agency is reviewing the court ruling.

Fish and Wildlife, along with the marine fisheries service, announced in June 2021 that it was reviewing the Trump-era actions on endangered species. The reviews could take months or years to complete, officials said.

Industry groups and Republicans in Congress have long viewed the Endangered Species Act as an impediment to economic development, and under Trump they successfully lobbied to weaken the laws regulations. Environmental groups and Democratic-controlled states battled the moves in court, but many of those cases remained unresolved.

Ryan Shannon, a lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity, another environmental group, said he was incredibly relieved that terrible Trump-era rules on endangered species were thrown out by the Oakland, California-based Tigar, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President Barack Obama.

I hope the Biden administration takes this opportunity to strengthen this crucial law, rather than weaken it, in the face of the ongoing extinction crisis, Shannon said Tuesday.

Rebecca Riley of the Natural Resources Defense Council said the court ruling ensures that the previous administrations extinction package will be rolled back.

She and other advocates called on the Biden administration to ensure the Endangered Species Act can do its job: preventing the extinction of vulnerable species.

By MATTHEW DALY

Associated Press
After the U.S. Supreme Court revoked the federal right to an abortion that's been in place for half a century, companies like Amazon, Disney, Apple and JP Morgan pledged to cover travel costs for employees who live in states where the procedure is now illegal so they can terminate pregnancies.

But the companies gave scant or no details on how they will do this and it's not clear if they will be able to  legally  while protecting employees' privacy and keeping them safe from prosecution.

Most employers were not prepared for Roe to be overturned, and even those that were didnt realize the law would literally be changed the next minute, said Brian Kropp, a vice president at the consulting firm Gartner. Theyre trying to play catch-up.

Kropp said many companies announced plans to offer travel benefits without the infrastructure in place to make them work. Some, he added, are creating supplementary policies that employees can buy to cover abortion travel, while others are contacting insurers to see if travel can be added to their current plans. Others are trying to figure out how to offer a benefit without breaching employees privacy.

Are employees going to have to tell their manager they are going to have to travel from Texas to California to have an abortion? Kropp said.

The answer is no  but they would likely have to tell human resources or a similar department that they are pregnant and want to get an abortion, said Sharona Hoffman, a health law professor at Case Western Reserve University. The company or its health insurer would then provide money upfront or a reimbursement after the fact.

Hoffman called the travel cost pledges a generous benefit from companies, and said she would not be surprised if this becomes a practice that more companies undertake  just without trumpeting it, for fear of the backlash that can come with public statements on a divisive issue such as abortion.

Its not necessarily altruistic, she said. It also makes some sense for companies to not have a bunch of employees that are highly distressed because they have unwanted pregnancies and have to carry the child to term.

For now, most big companies offering an abortion travel benefit will likely add it to existing health care plans, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a partner with the law firm Morgan Lewis who helps companies develop and maintain their benefits.

Big companies are generally self-insured, which means they pay for all claims and have more flexibility to decide what the plans will cover. A third party then processes the claims on their behalf.

Thats the case at outdoor clothing company Patagonia, which updated its health coverage last fall to add travel costs for employees after Texass law banning most abortions went into effect. Patagonia said abortion and travel costs are administered in the same manner as other medical services, ensuring confidentiality for employees.

Restaurant review company Yelp said its abortion travel benefit is also administered by its health insurance provider. Yelp has told its employees that if they do use the travel benefit, Yelp will not have access to the details of the service.

Microsoft, meanwhile, noted that it already covers abortion, as well as gender-affirming care, for its employees and has now extended the coverage to include travel expenses for these and other lawful medical services" if they are not available in an employee's home state.

Smaller companies may have fewer options. They typically buy health insurance for their employees from insurers that are subject to state regulations. Those companies have less flexibility to design benefits, and they may operate in states that ban abortion.

Dr. Ami Parekh, chief health officer at Included Health, which offers health care navigation services and virtual care for employers, said it is quite a scramble right now for large employers to navigate this fast-moving landscape.

Theyre moving as fast as they can, Parekh said. And I bet you theyre going to be nimble and change as needed as things come up.

For instance, some companies are offering to pay for a partner to travel with the person getting the abortion.

With the legal landscape shifting quickly, even adding travel benefits to a current medical plan carries some risk. In May, 14 state lawmakers in Texas sent a letter to Lyft warning the company to rescind its abortion travel benefit, saying they plan to introduce legislation that would ban companies from doing business in Texas if they pay for abortions or reimburse abortion-related expenses.

That said, no such legislation has been enacted as of now in Texas or anywhere else. It is also not against the law to travel to states where abortion is legal, Hoffman noted. There are efforts afoot, however, to change that.

And while the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, protects sensitive patient information, it can be overruled in cases where a crime has been committed. Thats the case now in states where abortion has become a crime.

Its challenging for employers to navigate what is a rapidly evolving legal landscape, said Sharon Masling, the head of Morgan Lewiss reproductive rights task force. Theres going to be a lot of litigation over the next few years.

Beyond the legal questions, abortion travel benefits also present some thorny workplace issues, Kropp said. Employees who dont support abortion may be angry that their company is paying for other employees travel, for example. Even those who do support abortion may question why the company isnt paying them to travel for fertility treatments or transgender health care, he said.

This is why it's likely, experts say that some companies are offering travel benefits but aren't making public announcements about it.

My sense is most employers are trying to very quickly figure out whats best for their employees and dependents, Parekh said. And not all employers want to spend the energy to be very public about that at this moment in time.

__

Associated Press staff writers Haleluya Hadero and Anne D'Innocenzio in New York and Matt O'Brien in Providence, Rhode Island contributed to this story.
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The July Fourth holiday weekend is off to a booming start with airport crowds crushing the numbers seen in 2019, before the pandemic.

Travelers across the United States experienced hundreds of canceled flights and a few thousand delays on Friday, much as they did earlier this week.

Patricia Carreno arrived with friends at Los Angeles International Airport only to learn that their Alaska Airlines flight to Mazatlan, Mexico, had been canceled.

Were probably going to drive down to Mexico  to Tijuana, the border  and just fly from there," she said.

The Transportation Security Administration screened more than 2.4 million travelers at airport checkpoints on Thursday, 17% more than on the same Friday before July Fourth in 2019. U.S. air travel is likely to set a pandemic-era record at least once over the weekend.

Traffic on the highway could be heavy too.

AAA predicts that nearly 48 million people will travel at least 50 miles or more from home over the weekend, slightly fewer than in 2019. AAA says car travel will set a record even with the national average price for gasoline hovering near $5.

Leisure travel has bounced back this year, and that means particularly big crowds over three-day holiday weekends.

With many flights sold out over the July Fourth weekend, airlines will struggle to find seats for passengers like Carreno whose flights are canceled. Airlines told customers to check their flights status before going to the airport.

If youre already at the airport when your flight is canceled, its time to flex your multitasking skills, said Sebastian Modak, editor-at-large of travel guide publisher Lonely Planet.

Modak advised heading straight to the airlines help desk, checking its app on your phone, and calling the airlines customer-service line  an international number might be answered sooner than a U.S. one for airlines that have both. He said driving or taking the bus or train will be a better option for shorter trips.

Theres no getting around the fact that this is going to be a summer of travel delays, cancelations, and frustrations, he said.

By early evening Friday on the East Coast, airlines had canceled about 500 U.S. flights and another 5,100 were delayed, according to FlightAware. Scattered thunderstorms in the New York City area made it likely the numbers would climb. From June 22 through Wednesday at least 600 flights were canceled, and between 4,000 and 7,000 were delayed per day, the tracking service said.

Airline executives blame the recent surge of canceled flights on the Federal Aviation Administration, which runs the nations air traffic control system, but Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg disputes that claim.

Passengers are caught in the middle.

Mari Ismail, who flew to Atlanta on Friday, said it took a long time to check in and get through security before her flight from Baltimore.

I got to my gate right as they started boarding, so it was a very lengthy process, she said.

Jordane Jeffrey said she booked a return trip from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for Monday, the holiday.

Im hoping there are no delays because I work that night, she said.

Airlines sometimes overbook flights with the expectation that some passengers won't show up. When there are more passengers than seats, airlines will offer cash or travel vouchers to people willing to take the next flight.

Earlier this week, a columnist for Inc. magazine wrote that Delta flight attendants offered $10,000 cash to people who would leave a plane waiting to take off from Grand Rapids, Mich.

Delta spokesman Anthony Black would neither confirm nor deny the journalist's account, but he noted that the airline raised the compensation agents can offer in such cases to $9,950 in 2017. That move followed a public-relations nightmare at United Airlines, when airport officers bloodied and dragged a 69-year-old doctor off a sold-out plane  a case that resulted in a lawsuit, confidential settlement, and jokes on late-night TV about United customer service.

Even with vacationers crowding into airports and on planes, the total number of people flying has not fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels because of a decline in business and international travel. TSA screened 11% fewer people in June than it did in the same month of 2019.

Thursday marked only the 11th time since the pandemic started that TSA checked more people than it did on the same day in 2019, and just the second time since February.

Airlines could almost surely be carrying more passengers if they had enough staffing. Many U.S. airlines have trimmed their summer schedules after bad weather, air-traffic delays and a lack of enough employees caused widespread cancellations over the Memorial Day weekend.

Airlines paid thousands of workers to quit during the early days of the pandemic, when air travel plummeted and airline revenue dried up. They have been hiring recently, but it takes time to train pilots, who are in particularly short supply.

Now airlines competing for key employees are offering double-digit raises to pilots, who find themselves with leverage in negotiations over new contracts.

___

Associated Press video journalists Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles and Sharon Johnson in Atlanta contributed to this report.
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ROME (AP)  A large chunk of an Alpine glacier broke loose Sunday and roared down a mountain in Italy, sending ice, snow and rock slamming into hikers on a popular trail on the peak and killing at least six and injuring nine, authorities said, warning that the toll might climb.

A local Civil Protection official, Gianpaolo Bottacin, was quoted by the Italian news agency ANSA as providing the toll, but stressing that the situation was evolving and that there could be perhaps 15 people missing.

In late evening, the National Alpine and Cave Rescue Corps tweeted a phone number to call for family or friends in case of "failure to return from possible excursions to the glacier.

Rescuers were checking license plates in the parking lot as part of checks to determine how many people might be unaccounted for, a process that could take hours, Corps spokesman Walter Milan told The Associated Press by telephone.

The glacier, in the Marmolada range, is the largest in the Dolomite mountains in northeastern Italy and people ski there in the winter. But the glacier has been rapidly melting away in recent years.

Experts at Italys state-run CNR research center, which has a polar sciences institute, says the glacier won't exist anymore in the next 25-30 years and much of its volume is already gone.

The Mediterranean basin, shared by southern Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, has been identified by U.N. experts as a climate change hot spot, likely to suffer heat waves and water shortages, among other consequences.

"We saw dead (people) and enormous chunks of ice, rock,'' exhausted-looking rescuer Luigi Felicetti told Italian state TV.

Nationalities or ages of the dead weren't immediately available, Milan said.

Of the hospitalized survivors, two were in grave condition, authorities said.

The fast-moving avalanche "came down with a roar the could be heard at great distance,'' local online media site ildolomiti.it said.

Temporarily, the search by helicopter and dogs for any more victims or missing was halted for the night while rescuers evaluated the risk that more of the glacier could break off, Walter Cainelli, after conducting a rescue mission with a search dog, told state television.

Rescuers said blocks of ice were continuing to tumble down. In early evening, a light rain began to fall.

The SUEM dispatch service, which is based in the nearby Veneto region, said 18 people who were above the area where the ice struck would be evacuated by the Alpine rescue corps.

Some of those making the trek in the area where the avalanche barreled through were tied together by rope, according to local emergency services.

But Milan said some of the hikers might be able to get down by themselves, including by using the peak's cable car.

SUEM said the avalanche consisted of a pouring down of snow, ice and rock. The detached section is know as a serac, or pinnacle of ice.

Dubbed the queen of the Dolomites, Marmolada rises about 3,300 meters (about 11,000 feet) and is the highest of the 18 peaks in that eastern range of the Italian Alps, offering spectacular views of other Alpine peaks.

The Alpine rescue service said in a tweet that the segment broke off near Punta Rocca (Rock Point), along the itinerary normally used to reach the peak.

It wasn't immediately clear what caused the section of ice to break away and rush down the peak's slope. But the intense heat wave gripping Italy since late June loomed as a possible factor.

The temperatures of these days clearly had influence on the glacier's partial collapse, Maurizio Fugatti, the president of Trento Province, which borders Marmolada, told Sky TG24 news.

But Milan stressed that high heat, which soared unusually above 10 C (50 F) on Marmolada's peak in recent days, was only one possible factor in Sunday's tragedy.

There are so many factors that could be involved,'' Milan said. Avalanches in general aren't predictable, he said, and heat's influence on a glacier is even more impossible to predict.

In separate comments to Italian state television, Milan called the recent temperatures extreme heat for the peak. Clearly it's something abnormal.

The injured were flown to several hospitals in the regions of Trentino-Alto Adige and Veneto, according to rescue services.

As in other cases of disasters amid nature in Italy, prosecutors opened an investigation to see if there was any indication of possible wrongdoing linked to the avalanche.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  Four months before scheduled municipal elections, Nicaraguan riot police have taken over the city halls of five municipalities that had been in the hands of an opposition party.

Kitty Monterrey, president of Citizens for Freedom, a political party disallowed by the Nicaraguan government before presidential elections last year, confirmed the police occupations in San Sebastian de Yali, El Cua, Murra and El Almendro.

Oscar Gadea Tinoco, mayor of Pantasma and member of Citizens for Freedom, also said that police occupied his town Saturday.

All mayors offices legitimately elected under the flag of Citizens for Freedom, have been taken by the regime, Monterrey said Monday via Twitter. She demanded that President Daniel Ortega respect the well-being of the officials and mayors who were removed from office.

Citizens for Freedom had won each of those town halls in the 2017 elections. But headed into last years presidential election, President Daniel Ortega showed little tolerance for the opposition. Authorities locked up seven leading opposition figures who could have challenged Ortega for the presidency.

Instead, Ortega coasted to a fourth consecutive term in elections the United States and European Union dismissed as a farce and the opposition figures remain in detention.

The Nicaraguan government had not commented on the takeovers.

Noel Moreno, the deposed mayor of San Sebastian de Yali in northwest Nicaragua, said some 50 heavily armed riot police and members of Ortegas Sandinista National Liberation Front entered town offices early Monday.

The seat remains under control of riot police, said Moreno, adding that he was not there when the police arrived. He was not sure if town staff remained inside or had been moved.

He said Sandinista town council members had already named themselves mayor and vice-mayor and raised the Sandinista flag. The takeovers appeared to have been similar in the other municipalities.

In Pantasma, Gadea Tinoco said that Sandinista councilwoman Carmen Obando was named as his replacement. The argument was that Citizens for Freedom was no longer a recognized entity because Nicaraguan electoral authorities had canceled its status last year.

After the party was canceled, Monterrey was also stripped of her Nicaraguan nationality and accused of being in the country illegally. She fled into exile in Costa Rica.

Of Nicaraguas 153 municipalities, Ortegas Sandinista Front now controls 140. Two allied parties control the other 13.

The opposition organization Open Ballot Boxes, a citizen election monitoring network, denounced the absence of democratic conditions. They demanded that municipal workers well-being be respected.

They dont want anyone to participate in these elections, Moreno said.

In a statement, Monterrey called the takeovers a very serious attack against popular will and municipal autonomy.

With these actions the regime is confirming that it has no interest in rehabilitating the electoral path or even trying to maintain an appearance of legality in the next municipal elections, she said.
FORT WORTH, Texas  The man who killed two people and wounded three police officers and an elderly woman in Haltom City on Saturday served in the Army and Texas Army National Guard, according to Army public affairs.

Edward Christian Freyman, 28, killed Collin Davis, 33, and Amber Tsai, 32, on Saturday evening, turned his gun on an elderly neighbor who called 911, and shot three police officers, authorities said.

He later killed himself about a half-mile from the original shooting scene. The older woman and police officers who were wounded are expected to survive.

Tsai lived at the home where the shooting started, according to property records.

Police said the gunman knew the victims but that the details of their relationship and the motive for the shooting are under investigation.

According to Army public affairs, Freyman was enlisted as an infantryman in the U.S. Army from October 2014 to October 2019 and attained the noncommissioned rank of sergeant. During his service, he was awarded medals and commendations including for good conduct, Army achievement and professional development as a noncommissioned officer.

Freyman joined the Texas Army National Guard in October 2019 after he left the Army, according to Army public affairs. He served as a sergeant infantryman until March 2021. The Texas Military Department did not immediately respond to a request for information on his service record Monday.

Army public affairs said Freyman never had any deployments with either the U.S. Army or Texas Army National Guard.

Freymans LinkedIn account says he attended Haltom High School and public records indicate he lived in far north Fort Worth.

He does not appear to have a criminal record in Tarrant County, according to court records.

GoFundMe set up for Tsai

Tsai will always be remembered for her humble heart and for making friends everywhere she went, her sister Abigail wrote on a GoFundMe page.

Tsai grew up in Queens County, New York, and graduated with a masters in arts from Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, according to LinkedIn and social media accounts.

Tsai was killed after Freyman took a handgun and rifle to the 5700 block of Diamond Oaks Drive North in Haltom City around 6:45 p.m. and began shooting, according to Haltom City police. She was found dead inside her home, police said. Davis was found in the driveway.

Tsai and Davis were great friends, her sister told the Dallas Morning News.

Donations to the GoFundMe will go to funeral expenses and to honor Amber as we say our last goodbyes, the GoFundMe page reads.

Words cannot describe the pain and loss we feel, the fundraising post says. We will miss you so much every day. We appreciate your support as we navigate through this heartbreaking time.

The page had raised more than $16,000, exceeding its $15,000 goal as of Monday.

Abigail Tsai told the Dallas Morning News in an email that, I want others to know Amber was so kind, smart, and loved by so many. She literally made friends everywhere she went because she just got along with everyone.

Samira Esquina, a friend of Amber Tsai, said she was a beautiful soul who loved her dog Zelda, could always make anybody smile and worked hard to achieve her goals.

She was kind, selfless and compassionate, Esquina told the Star-Telegram in an email. Always there to lend an ear or hug. ... Amber was unconditional. She deserved better.

An entire community is devastated at hearing about Ambers loss, she added.

A friend of Ambers, Amanda Cree, wrote in a public Facebook post: I cant find the words you deserve. I can say I love you and how deeply I will miss you. You will always be an infectiously joyous spirit. Your charisma, extroversion, spunk and eagerness to make everyone around you feel safe, welcomed and included. I love you Amber Tsai and this planet lost one of the best humans. My heart goes out to your family and the community we built is grieving heavily.

Jay Zhang, a friend who said he attended high school with Amber, wrote in a Facebook post: Her life was tragically taken all too soon. She was such a light in everyones lives, someone who had one of the most infectious laughs. She was KIND and NICE, when the world was CRUEL and UNFORGIVING. She made friends WHEREVER she went.

According to property records, Tsai bought the home on Diamond Oaks Drive in Haltom City in December 2020. She started working for ThriveDX, a cybersecurity and digital skills trade school based out of Miami a month before she moved, according to her LinkedIn.

She was a senior admissions adviser at ThriveDX, according to LinkedIn.


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  With sympathy in their voices, the receptionists at the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health relayed the same news into the phone over and over again Wednesday morning.

Were scheduling about four weeks out.

The people on the other end of the line, mostly Texas women, were told those four weeks could mean they would become ineligible for abortion medication in lieu of a procedure, or they could have to spend two days at the Albuquerque clinic instead of one.

The universitys clinic is one of three providing abortion procedures in New Mexico, which has become the destination state for many Texans wishing to terminate a pregnancy.

Aside from breaking the news about growing wait times, the front-desk responsibilities of what was once a quiet clinic have grown to include referring out-of-state patients to possible funding sources that could cover the hundreds of dollars they will have to pay out of pocket. The receptionists also help people navigate logistical hurdles, so patients can miss as little work or line up as little child care as possible.

Shes under eight weeks, for an appointment at 8 a.m., one clinic employee whispered to her coworker while on the phone with a Texas patient. But the latest flight out [of Albuquerque] is 5:25 p.m.  do you think she would make that flight?

Another employee walked in to tell the receptionists not to count one woman who was supposed to be in the clinic about an hour earlier as a no-show. She was on the way, the staffer said, still driving in from Oklahoma.

Before September, the university clinic performed a relatively low number of abortions. With about 2 million residents in the state, the small handful of New Mexico abortion clinics and providers performed fewer than 6,000 abortions in 2020, according to the Guttmacher Institute, about a tenth of those performed in Texas.

The clinic was instead able to focus more on its training program for medical students and residents, and it had more availability to provide birth control services and other reproductive health care, according to physicians at the clinic.

But when Texas banned abortion at about six weeks into a pregnancy last year, their patient load skyrocketed. The demand for abortion care is only expected to grow after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the right to abortion last week, promptly followed by Texas and a growing number of states moving to ban almost all abortions.

Its a different job now, Dr. Eve Espey said on Tuesday evening, sitting in her quiet, stucco-covered home after a long day at the clinic. I would say 75% of our patients have been from Texas for the last several months.

Doctors said more people have recently been coming from Oklahoma, which banned abortions in late May. And others are starting to trickle in from places like Kansas and Arizona. But the clinic is still bracing for the eventual full impact of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Theres only so much we can do, said Espey, chair of the universitys OB-GYN department and a founder of the clinic. Were booking out to the end of July because we cant book more patients in a day.

Beyond an overwhelming increase in out-of-state patients, doctors at the clinic said even more concerning is the increase of patients who are further along in their pregnancies.

Espey said since September, local clinics have provided abortions for more than double the number of patients they would have seen before Texas abortion ban after about six weeks of pregnancy. What increased even more was patients more than 14 weeks pregnant and even more for those between 18 and 20 weeks.

If theyd just been able to go to Dallas, and they live near Dallas, they could go tomorrow, said Dr. Amber Truehart, the clinics medical director. But they have to figure out how to travel here and get child care and funding, and all of that stuff is delaying them.

Thats not ideal for abortions because it puts you a little further along and things can get a little more complicated, she added.

A mothers decision

Medical staff walked into the Albuquerque clinic early Wednesday morning, leaving behind the bright blue skies and pink-hued mountain range.

Truehart huddled with nurses, medical assistants, trainees and a newly hired physicians assistant to hear details about the dozen or so abortion patients scheduled for the morning. At least half were from Texas, a point staff made note of since, unlike for New Mexicans, Medicaid and private insurance will not pay for their abortions.

One of the patients was Adriana, who at 23 is the mother of two children, ages 4 years and 7 months.

The reason why Im deciding to do this is just because financially I cant afford it, Adriana said while waiting for an ultrasound Wednesday, her silky brown hair trailing down her petite frame. Id rather not put myself in a tough situation where I know that I might become homeless because Im trying to provide for three kids.

The Texas Tribune is using a pseudonym for Adriana, who asked not to be identified out of concern for her privacy.

Adriana is from Las Cruces, so she originally planned to go to El Paso for an abortion, about 30 minutes away from the southern New Mexico city. But with Texas abortion bans, she instead took the day off of work and her partner drove her about three and a half hours to Albuquerque the night before.

Based on the timing of her last period, which Adriana acknowledged was irregular since she was still breastfeeding, the mother and clinic staff estimated she would be more than 10 weeks pregnant. But after Truehart scanned her uterus and measured the size of the embryo, she determined Adriana was less than eight weeks along.

Oh, thats so much better, Adriana sighed in relief on the table.

At eight weeks, she can safely have a medication abortion, Truehart told her, instead of an outpatient procedure. She would take two pills within 48 hours to induce an abortion, with symptoms similar to a miscarriage.

Back in the waiting room with the news from her ultrasound, Adriana visibly relaxed. She rested her head on the shoulder of her 7-month-old sons father. They spoke in hushed tones, often interrupted by him kissing the top of her head.

Still, Adriana said she was upset over Texas ban on abortion and the overturning of Roe V. Wade, not only for herself but for so many like her.

Theres a lot of women out there that choose to do these things, she said, her arms wrapped protectively around herself in the ultrasound room. Either financially they cant afford to take care of an infant or, if youre a rape victim  and Im a rape victim  if you get pregnant, it could cause suicide.

An overlooked state

Their priority is their patients, but leading doctors in New Mexico abortion care have other concerns during this time of upheaval in their field.

Theyre worried about staffing shortages, already ever-present in the burnout much of the health care industry struggled with during the crush of the pandemic. And theyre concerned about a chilling effect on health care providers in states with abortion bans who may not take steps to save a pregnant persons life for fear of criminal prosecution.

In Texas, the states abortion ban will not allow for exceptions in cases of rape or incest, only allowing an abortion if the pregnant persons life is in danger.

Even in cases it would be allowed for exceptions, who wants to put their neck out for that? Everybodys afraid of aiding and abetting, Espey said, quoting the language of Texas Senate Bill 8.

And in New Mexico, abortion rights advocates and providers are afraid new clinics seeking to provide more care for patients from across the country will bring the wrong kind of attention to a state that typically goes unnoticed by the rest of the country.

When folks come in from out of town, theres the concern that theyre going to upset the political balance and the community relationships, Espey said, noting that local abortion rights groups have worked for decades to cultivate an acceptance of abortion care.

I think these organizations and, frankly, me too, would prefer it was New Mexicans that provide that care, she added. That said, theres a big gap. It would be one thing if we could fill that gap, but right now, we cant.

New Mexico has no major restrictions in place on abortion access, but it is a poor, largely rural state that often falls short in providing reproductive health care to its own residents.

All three of New Mexicos clinics that provide abortion procedures are in Albuquerque in the northern half of the state. A handful of other clinics provide abortion medication for early stage pregnancies, but, as evidenced by the backlog at Espey and Trueharts clinic before Roes reversal, the doctors say the state needs more abortion providers.

Abortion clinics in states where abortion will still be legal

Here are the abortion-providing clinics in states neighboring Texas where abortions are not banned. Texas and most of its neighboring states have passed trigger laws that will set up abortion bans now that the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. Some trigger laws have already taken effect.

But the new spotlight makes them wary of the longevity of the states new role as a haven for abortion care.

Theyre afraid of exactly that, Truehart said, walking around the clinic in purple scrubs and Crocs. That [new providers] are going to bring too much attention to New Mexico as like this hub of abortion and then the tide is going to change and then bam, New Mexico goes out, too.
On June 24, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. In Texas, this means a total ban on abortion will go into effect 30 days after the ruling, after the Human Life Protection Act  a so-called "trigger law"  was enacted during the 2021 Texas Legislative Session.

Almost immediately, Austin City Council's newest member, Chito Vela, announced that he and Council Member Vanessa Fuentes would be holding a special meeting to address abortion rights and access in the city.

Though City Council is in its normal July recess, Vela, who wrote the GRACE Act as a precaution against an incoming abortion ban, was very clear in his numerous media appearances that this was a priority before the trigger law is enacted.

We want the police focusing on sexual assaults and robberies, burglaries, those types of crimes, and any kind of legit abortion crime at the very, very bottom of the list, Vela said on MSNBC in late July.

The GRACE Act  which stands for Guarding the Right to Abortion Care for Everyone  would aim to do just that, de-prioritizing the enforcement of the abortion ban in Austin and blocking city funding toward surveillance or data-sharing in regards to abortion access.

And the vote  which is expected to pass  will come right down to the wire in regard to timeline. A spokesperson for Fuentes tells MySA that the special meeting will likely be on July 21, when council members are back in town.

Also on the docket that day is Fuentes' non-discrimination ordinance (NDO) resolution, which directed the City Manager to update language in the city's NDO to ban discrimination in employment and housing based on an individual's reproductive decisions.

Council Member Paige Ellis, of District 8, is a co-sponsor of the GRACE Act and spoke with MySA about its potential impact in Austin. (Fuentes is out of the country and Vela was not made available for comment for this piece.) She says that, in addition to protecting abortion rights for Austin residents, she is co-sponsoring the GRACE Act because it will make APD available to investigate violent crimes and because it will help support people's rights to privacy.

"I have a history of passing legislation at the city level that pushes back on state overreach, especially on abortion access," Ellis says, referring, most recently, to her co-sponsoring a city resolution to fight SB 8, or the "heartbeat law," which effectively banned abortions after six weeks in Texas.

The GRACE Act, though, is meant to fight against a complete abortion ban in the state, a war that is already being fought in Harris County by Attorney General Ken Paxton, who announced he was declaring June 24 a holiday in his office after the SCOTUS decision. Just before the holiday weekend, the Texas Supreme Court blocked a lower court order allowing clinics to resume abortions.

Ellis anticipates a battle with the state government, which is generally at odds with its urban centers on matters like abortion, policing, homelessness, and COVID-19 restrictions. But so far, she says she's unaware of any direct communication between the state and City Council on the GRACE Act despite its publicity.

"It is tough to be a blue city in a state that's gerrymandered and has lost sense of where the actual values of Texans lie," she says. "The people who are making these decisions aren't capable of getting pregnant, will never understand what an ectopic pregnancy is."

Ellis mentions Gov. Greg Abbott's reasoning for not including an exemption for rape victims in the Legislature's six-week ban, which was his vow to end rape in Texas.

"It has not happened," She says. "These are empty promises."

Ellis and others in City Council are enthused by city leadership embracing the GRACE Act. Mayor Steve Adler is a co-sponsor, and district attorney Jose Garza has said that the city will not prosecute people seeking abortion or those providing them.

Ellis tells MySA that she expects the GRACE Act to pass by a 10-1 margin when it comes up for a vote, likely on July 21. Though she doesn't name the dissenter, it is widely expected to be Mackenzie Kelly, City Council's lone Republican.

"We look forward to passing the GRACE Act and controlling our municipal dollars the way that our constituents that were elected to represent expect us to do," Ellis says.
Courtesy of Atascosa County Sheriff's Office

Atascosa County deputies got into a chase with two teens in a stolen black truck from Live Oak County, dropping off immigrants being smuggled into the U.S. along the way. Both teens, a 16-year-old driver and a 17-year-old passenger, were arrested and charged with smuggling humans and evading arrest.

Border Patrol was already pursuing the stolen black Ford F-250 into Atascosa County on State Highway 97 on Monday morning, July 4, according to a Facebook post from Atascosa Sheriff David Soward. Deputies joined the pursuit around 7 a.m. The stolen vehicle then headed south on multiple county roads before making its way back to Farm to Market Road 1332.
Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer

The Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office has now conclusively identified 35 of the 53 immigrants that died after suffocating in the back of a semi-truck found in San Antonio on June 27. Among the 35 that were identified, the youngest of the victims were 13 years old, with the oldest being 55, according to a news release sent out Tuesday, July 5.

It's not clear how many of the victims were 13 years old. MySA reached out for more comment.
Stanford Photos/Getty Images/iStockphoto

A Texas man drowned on Independence Day weekend in a lake outside of Houston on the Fourth of July. The Montgomery County Precinct 1 Constable reports that the man was from San Antonio.

First responders recovered the body of Binh Le, 28, from the San Antonio area, out of the West Little Lake Creek portion of Lake Conroe on Monday, July 4, according to a Facebook post. Witnesses said Le went into the shallow area of the lake after spending much of the day boating.
Judges, mayors, and leaders from several counties in Texas announced emergency declarations to be issued this week in the face of what they describe as an "invasion" at the southern border.

Officials from Uvalde, Kinney, Goliad, and Terrell Counties called on Gov. Greg Abbott to enforce federal immigration laws during a press conference in Bracketville on Tuesday, July 5. Congressman Chip Roy also spoke.

Ken Cuccinelli, former Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, told assembled media the governor is the one who has the authority to repel an invasion and get boots on the ground to officially turn immigrants away and physically send them back.

In April, Abbott said he has declined to do so because he was concerned about legal consequences. However, officials at the conference said the action needs to happen as they are "under siege."

"It's a nightmare," Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said at the conference. "...It needs to stop. The federal government is not going to do it. We're not doing these people any favors. We're setting them up for failure. You're turning them loose with nowhere to go, no jobs, and no work permit."

Kinney County Judge Tully Shahan said Dimmit County and its county seat, Carrizo Springs, also planned to issue similar emergency declarations.

However, one representative for Dimmit County said they could not confirm the existence of an order and one senior official said they were not even aware of a press conference happening today. Carrizo Springs officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

Speakers at the event became heated at times. Goliad County Sheriff Roy Boyd said he will not send apprehended immigrants to U.S. Customs and Border Protection for deportation.

"We will throw you in jail," he said. "Everybody goes to jail. It's engaging in organized criminal activity and smuggling of persons and the trafficking of persons. They're always evading. They're destroying the fences and are trespassing. You show up in our county and you conduct yourself in that manner. We're gonna throw you in jail. There is no deportation. There's just jail time."

The conference comes after San Antonio officials found dozens of immigrants in the back of a semi-truck on June 27. Among those found, 53 were dead or have died since.

After the semi-truck was discovered, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar sent a letter to President Joe Biden, criticizing Abbott's policies on immigration and human smuggling. He urged the president to meet with Texas sheriffs to address the fallout from the rising number of immigrants crossing the border.

In May, Abbott and top state lawmakers shifted around roughly $1 billion in federal coronavirus aid to help pay for their campaign to arrest migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the Texas Tribune.

Those funds are part of the $4 billion meant for border operations, which Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, appearing on Fox News on Tuesday, took credit for getting into the state's budget. He also went on to liken the border crossing to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
MattGush/Getty Images/iStockphoto

A Texas woman was shot in the face after flashing her high-beam headlights at another vehicle to indicate that the approaching driver should dim their lights on Monday, July 4, according to the Fort Worth Police Department.

Police found the woman with a gunshot wound to the face at a 7-Eleven convenience store and gas station on 820 North Beach Street shortly after 4 a.m., according to the Dallas Morning News. Officials said the woman stopped at the gas station for assistance after she was struck by a single projectile believed to have been fired by someone in the other vehicle as it was driving past.
By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Patient readers, Im afraid I havent totally caught up with the news over the weekend. More tomorrow, hopefully. lambert

Bird Song of the Day

Large Wren-Babbler, Pahang National Park, Malaysia. Im imagining a Monty Python sketch for the LNS Catalog Number. voice-over

* * *

Politics

Lambert here: One reader suggested changing these quotes; I dont think its a bad idea, but I need to think about it. I dont want to be too doomy  we are not short of inventory in that department  but I dont want to go all chipped and Pollyanna-esque, either.

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? James Madison, Federalist 51

They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Hunter Thompson

Biden Administration

Top Democrats are blasting President Joe Bidens stated intention to sell F-16 fighter jets to Turkey [Politico].  Total focus on the midterms, obviously. Good to see it.

2022

* * * Something to look forward to!

2024

Winning: An Interview with Christopher Rufo (interview) [IM1776]. The entire piece is well worth a read, especially for any Democrats who want to see how a serious political party functions, before its too late. This caught my eye: Mark Granza: Getting parents to unite in order to achieve political goals is an unusual strategy. Where did you get that idea? Christopher Rufo: It happened, again, by accident. I did a series of reports on [Critical Race Theory (CRT)] in education that sparked a lot of discussion and then I started noticing these incredible clips circulating on social media of parents speaking it at school board meetings. It was totally spontaneous at the beginning. Then I put together a Critical Race Theory Briefing Book and worked on model policies, which gave people the language they needed to succeed and a template for policymaking at state legislatures. The secret to good activism is not mass, but leverage. The narratives about CRT sparked an immense public response and politicians, who are always looking at the intensity of voter sentiment, started to deliver laws that protected their constituents and protected families from indoctrination. The GOP then adopted a smart frame  parental rights, the parents party  that created a set of policies and connotations that is very appealing to families. In the most recent generic ballot polling, parents with children in the home support Republicans by a 28-point margin. This is a political sea change. It drove the success of Glenn Youngkin and school choice initiatives across the country. The impact is undeniable.  Hoo boy. Veer, and Now [Brian Beutler]. Theres a trope among highly partisan Democrats that people who complain about the lifelessness of the partys leaders are always shouting do something! at them without ever specifying what. I try pretty hard in this space and elsewhere to be clear about what I think would work better than the status quo, but I also want to stand up here for the concept of just appearing to do stuff. Its stupid, and it was the source of a lot of clownishness and losing court fights and hooliganism, but Donald Trump was downright hyperactive about pretending to do stuff, and I think it helped him mask the truth of a failed presidency. We would all quite reasonably sniff that isnt legal or he cant do that. And usually we were right. Most of the time nothing came of it; sometimes he managed to mow down the guardrails and get his way on dubious authority. But the point was less about governing than conveying a sense of action and control, and I think it goes a long way toward explaining why he held on to Republican voters so well and managed to increase his vote share despite basically wrecking the country.  Beutler should veer from his aghastitude. Neither the CARES Act (money in your pocket), which was superior in every way to Obamas reaction to the Great Financial Crisis, nor Operation Warp Speed can go under the heading of wrecking the country. Nor can not going to war with Russia. Biden squandered all that, making him a worse President than Trump. Democrats facing a Donald Trump conundrum heading into 2024 [AlterNet]. To charge Trump, or not: Through the efforts of the House January 6 committee, strong evidence has emerged of multiple serious crimes, committed by President Trump, as well as his lawyers, other aides, and supportersall aimed at overturning the result of the 2020 election, [Paul Quirk, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia] said. He later added, Although this evidence has not been subjected to cross-examination, challenged by opposing witnesses, or tested in a trial, it amounts to a very compelling evidence of likely criminality. And yet it is not at all clear that Bidens Justice Department has gotten the memo.'  Holy Lord. Whose job is it to get the memo to Garland? Five under-the-radar Democrats who could run for president in 2024 [The Hill]. Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Stacey Abrams (Shes going to have to win a race first), Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.), Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Mitch Landrieu. Weak, weak bench. Why not just run Liz Cheney and have done with it? Waiting (and Waiting) for an Adams Doctrine [New York Magazine]. What we are seeing is something quite different from mayoralties of recent memory  a politics that is mostly public performance with a mayor who makes news more for what he says and how he appears than for what his administration is actually doing. As an administration official put it, Sometimes working here can feel like Jurassic Park, and he is the T. rex and is going to keep on testing the fences until he breaks through. He needs somebody who can whisper in his ear, Mr. Mayor, Im sorry, but you are out of your fucking mind right now.'  Remind you of anyone? A politician who quite recently achieved unexpected success?

Democrats en Deshabille

I have moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Party (the Democrat Party is a rotting corpse that cant bury itself) to a separate, back-dated post, to which I will periodically add material, summarizing the addition here in a live Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It turns out that defining the Democrat Party is, in fact, a hard problem. I do think the paragraph that follows is on point all the way back to 2016, if not before: The Democrat Party is the political expression of the class power of PMC, their base (lucidly explained by Thomas Frank in Listen, Liberal!). It follows that the Democrat Party is as unreformable as the PMC is unreformable ; if the Democrat Party did not exist, the PMC would have to invent it. If the Democrat Party fails to govern, thats because the PMC lacks the capability to govern . (PMC modulo class expatriates, of course.) Second, all the working parts of the Party reinforce each other. Leave aside characterizing the relationships between elements of the Party (ka-ching, but not entirely) those elements comprise a network  a Flex Net? An iron octagon?  of funders, vendors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with assets in the press and the intelligence community. Note, of course, that the class power of the PMC both expresses and is limited by other classes; oligarchs and American gentry (see industrial model of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to mind. Suck up, kick down. * * * Auto-kinbaku-bi once more: Yes, the party intentionally recruited people it knew would oppose the main elements of its agenda. https://t.co/1kx7GujTSA  Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) July 2, 2022 Making assumptions on its agenda, but let that pass.

Realignment and Legitimacy

The class structure and doing your own research: But were not individually capable of doing that at scale in an advanced society. To critically review scientific findings takes time. And every level of abstraction relies on trust in some authority or expert. You would spend 25 hours a day evaluating sources and fact finding.  thebluecheese (@thebleucheese) July 2, 2022 And each level of abstraction is peopled/represented/managed by (fear of precarity-driven) rent-seekers and gatekeepers. (That is the tendency; you have some classes of authorities who are open and honest. I would urge they are exceptional. Actually, thats a nice dichotomy: hegemonic v. exceptional. Droplet goons are an example of the former; aerosol community of the latter. So we could say of the PMC as a class: There are exceptional and hegemonic subclasses. (Note than an exceptional subclass would not be a collection of exceptional individuals, but a set whose social relations enable individuals to become exceptional.)

#COVID19

Dont make me give you another award, Bob!

Long, insane thread on all the math that the chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco thinks people might want to do to individually decide whether their individual risk tolerance calls for wearing masks right now. https://t.co/wDM2kpL2ci  midnucas #FueraLUMA  (@midnucas) February 20, 2022

A layered strategy works (1):

Air audits, Hepa Filters and CO2 Monitor were initially expensive, especially while we were constantly in lockdowns and restrictions. But it is already paying off now as we still havent had any employees being infected with the virus at work pic.twitter.com/WpkpdZPr47  Apricot Tree Cafe (@ApricotTreeCaf1) July 2, 2022

A layered strategy works (2):

10 days post-wedding, weve had zero new COVID cases among all the attendees (approx. 150 people.) Was it the masking? Was it the Corsi-Rosenthal boxes? Was it a 99.9% vaccinated and boosted attendee list? It was all of the above. We prioritized safety AND had a great time. Fin.  Lavanya Krishnan, MS, MPH (@l_krishnan) July 3, 2022

The wedding industry is huge, and weddings are up this year. How long before some clever firms start marketing Covid-free Weddings?

My Twitter list is not a random sample. But on the pro-mask side, opinion seems to be hardening (which I view as a literally healthy thing):

Maskstravaganza (1):

1/ We have *never* had a dedicated public health campaign on wearing a mask to protect yourself & others. Its truly quite an extraordinary omission. Which means either the Government doesnt want people wearing masks or doesnt care if they dont.  Celia Green (@1CeliaGreen) July 3, 2022

As I keep saying: Democidal elites is a parsimonious explanation.

Maskstravaganza (2):

Please watch Nicolas Smits OSHA testimony. @PPEtoheros And we wonder why health care workers are leaving in droves. https://t.co/Hm1GvDQYDo  Denise Dewald, MD  (@denise_dewald) May 10, 2022

Maskstravaganza (3):

An unmasked woman in the checkout line next to me just loudly said to the unmasked cashier, when asked for ID, Dont touch it though. Ill hold it for you. I have COVID.  The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) July 2, 2022

Maskstravaganza (4):

So actually @delta I dont respect the choice about masking made by my neighbor on DL466 on Sunday, because his maskless coughing and spluttering over 6 hours has had a predictable result. He chose for me and I dont appreciate that he was able to. pic.twitter.com/1lu6eMBeMg  Andrew McGowan (@Praxeas) June 30, 2022

Maskstravaganza (5):

I dont care that its allowed. Rest assured that if you knowingly get on a plane/ train/ go to the mall/ dine indoors etc with an active COVID infection esp without an N95 or elastomericyoure a psychopath.  Dana Parish (@danaparish) July 3, 2022

* * *

Because freedom:

What's worse than cholera? Burdening businesses with the taxes needed to fund construction of this unproven 'sewer' technology. No thank you sir, I will take my drinking water the way God intended it: Naturally enchanced with feces. #FecalUrgencyofNormal#1854CholeraEpidemic  Neoliberal John Snow (@NeoliberalSnow) July 3, 2022

Thats hardly fair. You would drink your feces-enhanced water after conducting a personal risk assessment. People are so cynical these days!

* * *

If you missed it, heres a post on my queasiness with CDC numbers, especially case count, which I (still) consider most important, despite what Walenskys psychos at CDC who invented community levels think. But these are the numbers we have.

* * *

Case count for the United States:

I think were seeing data issues from a long weekend, hence the drop. Under the hood the BA.4/BA.5 are making up a greater and greater proportion of cases. There was a weird, plateau-like fiddling and diddling stage before the Omicron explosion, too. This conjuncture feels the same. Remember that cases are undercounted, one source saying by a factor of six, Gottlieb thinking we only pick up one in seven or eight.) Hence, I take the case count and multiply it by six to approximate the real level of cases, and draw the DNC-blue Biden Line at that point. The previous count was ~108,000. Today, its ~102,400, and 108,000 * 6 = a Biden line at 614,400. At least we have confirmation that the extraordinary mass of case anecdotes had a basis in reality. (Remember these data points are weekly averages, so daily fluctuations are smoothed out.) The black Fauci Line is a counter to triumphalism, since it compares current levels to past crises.

 The BA.5 COVID Surge Is Here [New York Magazine]. The newest wave of COVID infections and reinfections, fueled by more transmissible subvariants of the Omicron strain including BA.4 and BA.5, continues to grow across the U.S. As countless Americans gather over the July 4 holiday weekend, its entirely possible that there are more new daily infections happening in the country than at any other point in the pandemic other than the Omicron wave.  Joe, Rochelle, Ashish, good job.

Regional case count:

The South:

So the national drop is mostly from the South, and the South is from Texas. Which is weird, because in the rapid riser chart, Texas is reddening.

From the Walgreens test positivity tracker:

2.4%. (Im leaving the corporate logo on as a slap to and check on the goons at CDC.)

NOT UPDATED Wastewater data, regional (Biobot Analytics), June 29:

Wastewater data (CDC), Jun 14, 2022  Jun 28, 2022:

This chart works a bit like rapid riser counties: This metric shows whether SARS-CoV-2 levels at a site are currently higher or lower than past historical levels at the same site. 0% means levels are the lowest they have been at the site; 100% means levels are the highest they have been at the site. So, theres a bunch of red dots on the West Coast. Thats 100%, so that means levels are the highest theyve ever been. Not broken down by variant, CDC, good job.

NOT UPDATED Variant data, regional (Biobot), June 8:

Out of date compared to Walgreens (below) but still showing doubling behavior.

NOT UPDATED Variant data, national (Walgreens), June 15:

The current Walgreens variant chart is dated June 11, which is before June 15, and BA.4 has gone down. So I will check again tomorrow.

Variant data, national (CDC), July 2:

Hoo boy, with the caveat that those creeps at CDC have now made their Nowcast model mandatory (hence the big jump in BA.4/BA.5 from the last time they managed to update this site). Doubling behavior moving along quite briskly.

Lambert here: Its beyond frustrating how slow the variant data is. I looked for more charts: California doesnt to a BA.4/BA.5 breakdown. New York does but it, too, is on a molasses-like two-week cycle. Does nobody in the public health establishment get a promotion for tracking variants? Are there no grants? Is there a single lab that does this work, and everybody gets the results from them? Additional sources from readers welcome [grinds teeth, bangs head on desk].

From CDC Community Profile Reports (PDFs), Rapid Riser counties:

West coast improves, Texas and the South do not, Illinois improves.

The previous release:

NOTE I shall most certainly not be using the CDCs new Community Level metric. Because CDC has combined a leading indicator (cases) with a lagging one (hospitalization) their new metric is a poor warning sign of a surge, and a poor way to assess personal risk. In addition, Covid is a disease you dont want to get. Even if you are not hospitalized, you can suffer from Long Covid, vascular issues, and neurological issues. For these reasons, case counts  known to be underestimated, due to home test kits  deserve to stand alone as a number to be tracked, no matter how much the political operatives in CDC leadership would like to obfuscate it. That the green map (which Topol calls a capitulation and a deception) is still up and being taken seriously verges on the criminal. Use the community transmission immediately below.

Here is CDCs interactive map by county set to community transmission. This is the map CDC wants only hospitals to look at, not you:

Status quo.

Hospitalization (CDC Community Profile):

Very volatile, but a lot more yellow and orange since the previous update several days ago.

Get ready.

Death rate (Our World in Data):

Total: 1,043,372 1,042,678 . I have added an anti-triumphalist Fauci Line.

Stats Watch

Manufacturing: United States Factory Orders [Trading Economics]. New orders for US manufactured goods jumped 1.6% month-over-month in May of 2022, following an upwardly revised 0.7% rise in April and beating market forecasts of a 0.5% gain, in a sign demand for products remained string [sic].

* * *

The Bezzle: Celsius Customers Are Losing Hope for Their Locked-Up Crypto [Wall Street Journal]. It has been three weeks since crypto lender Celsius Network LLC took the drastic step of halting customers withdrawals. Many people are starting to wonder if they will ever see their money again. Alla Driksne says she has six figures worth of bitcoin and ethereumher life savingstied up in a Celsius account. On June 12, a Sunday, the company said it had paused customer withdrawals, saying it needed to stabilize liquidity and operations. Ms. Driksne couldnt sleep for two days.  Since it is such a huge company and there are so many people that trusted them, somewhere in the back of my head, Im hoping maybe theres a small, small chance of not losing everything , said Ms. Driksne, who is 34 and creates online cooking courses.  :-(

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Todays Fear & Greed Index: 22 Extreme Fear (previous close: 24 Extreme Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 26 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jul 5 at 1:22 PM EDT.

Rapture Index: Closes unchanged [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 189. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) Ive been waiting for the Rapture Index to hit the all time high again. Now it has.

The Conservatory

Im a little amazed to see a version of Dylan and the Bands Basement Tapes on YouTube. Heres one of my favorite up-tempo Grateful dead tunes, which breaks off after 43 seconds because its authentic:

Reminds me a bit of the Flatlanders except, well, The Band.

The Gallery

Shot:

Olympia

Edouard Manet 1863

Musee dOrsay pic.twitter.com/5gKwyzOgJF  Olga Tuleninova  (@olgatuleninova) July 14, 2020

Chaser:

More here.

Groves of Academe

If you are school-adjacent, you could look into this:

2) Key points: #COVIDisAirborne

Using a smoke machine, a group of dads studied airflow patterns in the school's five classrooms and administration areas

Goal was creating clean-air classrooms at school to minimise the risk of COVID-19 transmissionhttps://t.co/aQGqIQkqdD  Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) April 1, 2022

Class Warfare

Ep 5: Whats Ahead for Labor? (podcast) [Adolph Reed, Class Matters]. Adolph Reed Jr. talks with Sara Nelson, President of the Association of Flight Attendants/CWA and APWU President Mark Dimondstein about whats ahead for Labor in this moment that holds out both promise and peril. Worker organizing efforts are underway across the country including at Amazon and Starbucks. Public support for unions is a 57-year high  with polling at 68% in favor.  Im very pleased to see that Reed has a podcast/

News of the Wired

Kill it with fire:

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Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From AG:

AG writes: Just for fun, I thought Id dig through my collection for worthy Plantidote, but also featuring sparrows. Here is our beautiful Mountain Heather and a Whitecrowned Sparrow enjoying the view. Study images taken by Lake Winnemucca, up in the High Country in Alpine County, CA, at 9,000 feet elevation. In the background are the short, stunted willows that grow in a narrow band around the lake (frozen and snow covered in winter).

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Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the recently concluded and  thank you!  successful annual NC fundraiser. So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldnt see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know Im on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:







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If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!
Concerns are rising about the EU Commissions ongoing opacity over its relations with Pfizer. But this is not the first time von der Leyen has been caught deleting sensitive information regarding deals with large corporations.

As readers may recall, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen found herself in hot water late last year after being accused of deleting mobile phone communications with Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer. In April 2021, the Commissions negotiations with Pfizer were drawing to a close precisely at a time that a desperate von del Leyen was taking heavy flak for failing to make the Commissions advance purchase agreements with AstraZeneca legally airtight. As the NYT reported, much of the negotiations to seal a deal to buy/sell 1.8 billion doses of Pfizer BioNTechs vaccine were conducted via phone and text messages.

None of those communications have been made public. In fact, they appear to have been destroyed. At the same time, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been kept in the dark about much of the content of the Commissions contracts with vaccine makers, which has led several MEPs to file a suit with the European Court of Justice in April. The Commission has only published heavily redacted versions of its advance purchase agreement and contract with Pfizer, which lacked information about vaccine production, pricing, delivery, payment, clinical trials, liability and indemnification.

Delete After Reading

In May 2021, the Belgian journalist Alexander Fanta made a freedom of information (FOI) request for von der Leyens text messages with Pfizer. The Commissions initial response was to stonewall her, arguing that its record-keeping policy would in principle exclude instant messaging. Indeed, as Fanta notes in a recent Politico article, the Commission has never archived a single text message, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that text messages are playing an increasingly important role in EU politics.

European Ombudsman Emily OReilly got involved later in the year. Her inquiry concluded that the European Commissions refusal to properly consider the request constitutes maladministration:

The narrow way in which this public access request was treated meant that no attempt was made to identify if any text messages existed. This falls short of reasonable expectations of transparency and administrative standards in the Commission Not all text messages need to be recorded, but text messages clearly do fall do fall under the EU transparency law and so relevant text messages should be recorded. It is not credible to claim otherwise.

OReilly also asked the Commission to conduct a more extensive search for the text messages in question. That was last December. Last week, the Commission finally gave a formal response, seven months after OReillys request. The message was simple: the Commission cannot and does not need to find the text messages.

Due to their short-lived and ephemeral nature, text messages in general do not contain important information relating to policies, activities and decisions of the Commission, wrote European Vice Commissioner for Values and Transparency Vera Jourova.

Now, text messages may be ephemeral  especially if you delete them as quickly as possible  but the results of them are not. In this case, we are talking about the results of negotiations between the CEO of one of the worlds biggest vaccine manufacturers and the president of the EUs executive branch, which is clearly a matter of intense public interest. After all, the eventual outcome of those negotiations was a deal worth tens of billions of euros, paid for with public funds  for a vaccine that the Commission has considered making mandatory for all EU citizens. Yet those citizens, as well as their elected representatives in the European Parliament, are being kept in the dark about the terms and conditions of that deal.

It is perhaps not surprising that the Commission and Pfizer want to keep everything under wraps. Pfizers vaccine contracts with countries in Latin America were so controversial that some governments, such as Brazil and Argentina, initially refused to sign along the dotted line. In its negotiations with both countries, Pfizer asked for sovereign assets to be put up as collateral for any future legal costs. Brazils then health minister said in January: I guess I dont need to repeat it, but Ill be succinct: complete disclaimer for side-effects from today to infinity. That simple. In the end both countries relented.

Fighting Transparency At Every Turn

One seeming result of the negotiations between Bourla and von der Leyen is that the European Commission ended up paying a lot more for the Pfizer vaccine. According to portions of the contracts seen by the Financial Times, Pfizers shot increased in price to 19.50 from the 15.50 the EU had paid for the initial vaccines delivered in late December 2020. That price markup will have added an extra 7 billion or so to Pfizers revenues.

The Commissions position on von der Leyens text messages flies in the face of the EUs own transparency rules, as Fanta points out:

Von der Leyen herself stated in her Political Guidelines that if Europeans are to have faith in our Union, its institutions should be open and beyond reproach on ethics, transparency and integrity. The Commission has also told the European Parliament it is committed to maximum transparency regarding the COVID-19 vaccines. And yet, it continues to fight transparency at every turn. In April, Commission lawyers won against a German tabloid journalist who sought access to meeting minutes, legal advice and other documents related to COVID-19 vaccines. The court found that the Commissions desire for secrecy overrode the public interest in the matter. And in a response to the Ombudsman published yesterday, the Commission continued to hold its line. Transparency campaigners and members of the European Parliament are aghast at the implications of all this. By exempting a whole category of content from FOI legislation, the European institutions are creating a massive loophole. And a no-disclosure form of communication will be duly exploited by the likes of fossil fuel lobbyists, arms traders and governments in Europe and beyond, all who want to keep their dealings with the EU a secret.

Not the First Time

As I noted in my previous article, Why An Open, Transparent, Informed Debate About Mandatory Vaccination Is All But Impossible in the EU, published in early December, this is not the first time von der Leyen has been caught deleting sensitive information:

In December 2019, less than a month into her new job at the helm of the EUs executive branch, it was revealed that a mobile phone she had used as German defence minister had been wiped clean of all data, as Politico reported at the time: Members of a German parliamentary committee investigating [a contracting] scandal cried foul over the deletion. They had wanted to examine the phone as part of their probe into how lucrative contracts from the defense ministry were awarded to outside consultants without proper oversight, and whether a network of informal personal connections facilitated those deals. An official from the ministry told the committee on Thursday that the phone, which lawmakers had demanded since February be examined as evidence, had been wiped in August  the same month that von der Leyen left the ministry after she had been elected as European Commission president (German newspaper Welt first reported about the wiped phone).

Interestingly, one of the companies at the center of the contracting scandal was the US consulting firm Mckinsey & Company, which is currently mired in controversy over the role it played in facilitating the US opioid epidemic (see Yves recent article, New York Times Shows How McKinsey Guided Major Opioid Players, Causing Even More Deaths). Under vdLs tenure Germanys Defense Ministry awarded highly lucrative contracts to outside consultants, including Mckinsey, without proper oversight. All of this happened after vdL appointed Katrin Suder, a former Mckinsey consultant, as her permanent state secretary in the Ministry. Coincidentally, vdLs son, David, began working at Mckinseys Palo Alto Office in 2016, three years after vdL became Germanys Minister of Defense.

Mckinsey was also at the center of a recent contracting scandal involving Emmanuel Macrons government. Under Macron, spending on consultancy firms by the French government and civil service has soared to nearly 1 billion. Among other things, Mckinsey has been involved in developing the governments COVID-19 testing programmes, vaccination and the health pass, just as it has with other governments around the world. According to a French health ministry official cited by Politico in Jan 2021, consultants from the firm have been seated at the strategy table since the governments vaccination plan was unveiled in early December, and maybe even before then.

The Dangers of Ongoing Opacity

Given the fact that Pfizer BioNtechs vaccines are all but guaranteed to continue playing a front-line role in the EUs COVID-19 response, the ongoing opacity over the Commissions dealings with Pfizer is a serious cause for concern. The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in the EU began over a year and a half ago yet most EU lawmakers are still being kept in the dark about many aspects of the deal the Commission struck with Pfizer over 15 months ago.

Today, Pfizer and BioNTech are not only working on an Omicron-adapted COVID-19 vaccine, which will probably be authorized post haste by the European Medicines Agency (EMA); they are also trying to develop a (presumably non-sterilizing) vaccine for all coronaviruses. At the same time, the governments of EU Member States are beginning to complain about the vast stockpiles of unused Pfizer-BioNTech accumulating in their respective countries.

In mid-June Reuters cited the example of Poland, a country of around 38 million people, which has 30 million COVID-19 vaccines in stock and yet will still need to buy another 70 million under existing agreements:

In a letter sent to the Commission earlier in June, and seen by Reuters, the Polish Health Minister Adam Niedzielski together with his counterparts from Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania urged a reduction of the amounts of vaccines being ordered. They said the contracts were agreed when it was impossible to predict how the pandemic would develop, and they should now be changed as the situation is improving. An EU official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in May that EU countries would likely lose any legal case brought against suppliers because contracts could not be changed unilaterally. There is currently no legal case, officials said.

In other parts of the world, judges are taking matters into their own hands. For example, in Uruguay a judge by the name of Alejandro Recarey has demanded that the Government present detailed documentation on the terms and conditions of its contract Pfizer BioNTechs COVID-19 vaccines. The judge, who is presiding over a case brought by parents opposing the vaccination of children over the age of five, has also asked the government to disclose the biochemical composition of the vaccines.

Meanwhile, back in Brussels the EU Ombudsman Emily OReilly has described the Commissions defense of von der Leyens destruction of evidence as problematic on several points. The closing decision, she said, will be published within the coming weeks.
Yves here. It looks as if John Helmer could create a new sideline in eviscerating books by self-styled Western experts on Russiathat rely heavily on other self-styled Western experts who dont know all that much about the subject at hand but gossip convincingly. Here the object of inquiry is Vladimir Putin and the experts consist heavily of spooks.

This dearth of knowledge sadly does not come as a complete surprise. Scott Ritter, who actually did Russian studies as part of his education, had oft said those departments have changed from helping Americans and Europeans master the language and develop an appreciation for the culture through history, literature, and music, to departments of Putin-hating studies.

But it gets even weirder in this case. Author Philip Short was a BBC correspondent many years ago, in Moscow, presumably in the 1970s (hes not said when). How is it possible for such an individual to get his CIA and MI6 interviews without sponsorship, particularly since some of the CIA and MI6 names do not appear to have been published before? Who is behind his list?

Its also, erm, unusual for a bio of Russian figure to have so much sourcing from the Balts  Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Estonia. And yet, for Shorts reported connections he seems to know nothing about the very big Finland and Estonian connections to oil shipping out of St. Petersburg.

By John Helmer who has been the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to have directed his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

Philip Short, a journalist from the BBC, has published a new book which claims to be a biography of Vladimir Putin. It isnt.

What it is instead is a biography of one hundred and twenty-three westerners  what they claim to know about Russias leader and what for commercial motive, reason of state, or vanity they have told Short in interviews he conducted for his book. They include spies he names without their cover  John Scarlett, Richard Dearlove, Richard Bridge, Kate Horner, Martin Nicholson, and Pablo Miller from the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6); Hans-Georg Wieck and August Hanning of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND); Jean-Francois Clair, Raymond Nart, and Yves Bonnet of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST); Seppo Tiitinen of the Finnish Security Intelligence Service (SUPO); Mark Kelton, Michael Morell, Peter Clement, Michael Sulick, Michael Morgan, Paul Kolbe, and William Green of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); Juri Pihl, head of the Estonian Internal Security Service, and Eerik-Niiles Kross, chief of Estonian intelligence; and several dozen other ambassadors, consuls, advisers, headquarters staff, journalists, and think-tankers.

Not one of the spies was operational in Moscow for the past twenty-one years of Putins terms in office.

There is a flash of originality in this book. Not a single source on which Catherine Beltons book on Putin relies has been interviewed by Short; in his references to Beltons claims Short reports they appear to be untrue. He reaches the same conclusion about two other books about Putin, Karen Dawishas and Masha Gessens. Neither book pretends to be a balanced account, Short says. Dawishas book is marred by numerous errors of fact. All three, Short warns, set out the case for the prosecution, and like all prosecutors, the authors select their evidence accordingly.

Readers must decide for themselves, Short concludes his book, what is plausible, what sounds false, what rings true and what does not. This is how Short ends on page 679 with what most biographers begin on page 1.

Left, the book published in the UK and US this month.

Centre: Philip Short who was a BBC correspondent between 1973 and 1998. Right: for more on the mind of Putin the mnemonist, and the Soviet cognitive psychology classic which first identified how such prodigious memory works, read this.

Instead, at Shorts beginning he trots out the old cliche of Russian politics written by westerners  thats the canine definition of Kremlinology attributed to Winston Churchill as watching a bulldog fight under a rug  an outsider only hears the growling, and when he sees the bones fly out from beneath it is obvious who won. Short admits this isnt new. [Its been] true of Russian governance since the sixteenth century. The Kremlin does not yield its details easily. The broad outline may be clear but the devil is in the details and the details matter. If enough details change, the overall picture changes too.

Between this opening fatuity and his concluding one, Short has compiled a long list of fatuities about Putin. Since the espionage agents who provided Short with his interviews didnt work in Russia after Putin took power, the fatuities are hearsay by at least six degrees of separation.

On the positive side of Shorts character ledger, there are Putins self-discipline, loyalty to friends, shyness, loneliness, indifference to money, love of sport, and his excellent memory, brilliant memory, and unusually retentive memory. On the negative side of the ledger, there are his secretiveness, unpunctuality, inconsiderateness towards women, calculation, repressed emotions, sensitivity to his short stature, taste for luxury, and obsessive self-control.

Their combination in Putins character was an immaculate conception, according to Short. Even as a child, he recounts, Volodya Putin had concealed his hand; as a young nman, he did not vouchsafe information unless there was good reason. Putins time with the special services influenced his thinking and equipped him with new tools with which to view the world. But it did so by accretion. Putin was already Putin before he joined the KGB.

For his evidence Short interviewed one-third as many Russians as westerners. The majority of the Russians are or were journalists; none of the remainder is from a Kremlin, Russian government, intelligence or military position during Putins presidential terms except for Mikhail Kasyanov, prime minister from 2001 to 2004, and Andrei Illarionov, an economic advisor between 2001 and 2005. The others are from the Yeltsin administration; they were, still are uniformly Yeltsin supporters hostile to Putin  except for Mikhail Delyagin and Yury Boldyrev.

With sources like these, it is little wonder the violent constitutional battle between Boris Yeltsin and the Russian parliament of October 1993 is described by Short as being fought on the anti-Yeltsin side by a hard core of 150 deputiesprotected by an armed militia of Cossacks, Chechens, Afghan veterans and far-right nationalist thugs.

Not a single Russian business figure or oligarch has been included in Shorts Russian interview list  with a sole exception. He interviewed three members from the aluminium oligarch Oleg Deripaskas payroll. Shorts version of Putins record on the domestic economy and the oligarch businesses follows Deripaska on metals; Mikhail Khodorkovsky on oil, Yukos and Rosneft; William Browder on gas and Gazprom; Illarionov on the financial collapse of 1998.

The snippets Short composes of other Russian characters in the story are also fatuities, but he leaves no doubt which ones he intends his readers not to take a liking to, and vice versa. For instance, Yevgeny Primakov, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), foreign and prime minister in the 1990s  until removed on US orders  appears 51 times; he is introduced as a bespectacled academic with jowls like a basset hounda tough, pragmatic conservative; Khodorkovsky appears 82 times as short and solidly built, ten years younger than Putin, he had close-cropped black hair beginning to grey and, behind rimless spectacles, a gaze whose intensity gave him the appearance of a youthful nineteenth-century anarchist. Alexei Navalny appears 99 times in Shorts book as 35 years old, a tall, slim man with Nordic good looks  dark hair and piercing blue eyes, whohad a knack of skewering the elite with pungent phrases that lodged in peoples minds and was refreshingly direct. The numbers signify Shorts measurement of their impact on Putins history over the past thirty years. A westerners measurement, not a Russian one.

Oddly, Short doesnt mention that both Primakov (Finkelstein) and Khodorkovsky were Jewish. He does make a point of claiming, inaccurately, that Jews were barred from the KGB. He also makes another point of emphasizing the Jewish origin of Galina Starovoitova, the Soviet dissident and liberal politician assassinated in November 1998, when Putin was head of the Federal Security Service (FSB). Short claims the killing was part of a wave of anti-Semitism, whipped up by ultra-nationalist members of [Vladimir] Zhirinovskys party in the Duma. Zhirinovskys Jewishness (Eidelshtein) is omitted from this story.

So convinced of the stories Short retells of Primakovs malign influence it didnt occur to him to check with Primakov, who was alive when Short began his interviews; or his presidential campaign partner Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, alive until 2019; or any one of their associates and advisers. No one on the Russian left was interviewed directly or indirectly at all. Dmitry Rogozin  Putins appointee as NATO ambassador, deputy prime minister in charge of defence, and head of Roscosmos  was disposed of by Short as a solidly built right-wing firebrand whose rhetoric attracted malcontents both from the far left and from extreme far-right groups. The meaning of left and right in Shorts vocabulary is unexplained, taken for granted to mean anti-western. Sergei Glazyev, the leader of the left economic line in Putins Kremlin is not mentioned at all. By contrast, Alexei Kudrin, on the right, is reported 33 times; Anatoly Chubais, 57 times. Short reports interviewing his brother Igor Chubais, but not what he said.

Short repeats what he has read of the stories already published of Putins time in Dresden, then in Mayor Anatoly Sobchaks administration in St. Petersburg. His version of Putins rise in the Kremlin follows what he was told in his interviews and by the published version of Konstantin Yumashev, Yeltsins bagman, son-in-law, ghost writer. Nothing new.

Nor is Shorts discovery of what he thinks is new evidence. For Shorts conclusion that Putin ordered the polonium poisoning in London in November 2006 of Alexander Litvinenko he refers to a CIA double agent reporting from inside the Kremlin and then spirited out of the country to the US. Short repeats the New York Times for the existence of this agent, but because the newspaper made no mention of the agents knowledge of the Litvinenko case, Short claims others with knowledge of the evidence given in the Litvinenko Inquiry have confirmed that the crucial material indicating Putins involvement came from HUMINT [Human Intelligence] provided by the United States. The only US intelligence asset in Moscow capable of providing information at that level was the source referred to in the Times account.

Thats Shorts guess after he has hidden the British sources pointing him away from the MI6 role in the operation before Litvinenkos fatal tea party. The anonymous New York Times version of the Kremlin source, like the MI6 source who gave me his version of what happened, does not corroborate Shorts conclusion that Putin had instructed the FSB chief, Nikolai Patrushev, to assassinate Litvinenko. Raw intelligence is not proof, Short concedes, but  note the qualifier removing doubt  it was prima facie evidence that the decision had been taken by Putin himself.

This is fabrication by Short once it is understood that MI6, CIA, SVR and other agencies involved in tracking the polonium from Moscow to London interpreted what was going on as an operation aimed at Boris Berezovsky, not Litvinenko. Shorts spies didnt tell him. He doesnt know.

Shorts version of the Novichok poisoning case involving Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia has been reproduced directly from the British governments published stories. In March 2018 the GRU attempted to assassinate a former double agent, Sergei Skripal, who had been freed as part of a spy exchange and was living in the sleepy cathedral city of Salisbury, in the South of England. The Russian operatives had smeared Novichok, a prohibited chemical warfare agent on the door handle of Skripals house. He and his daughter recovered but another person died.

From his study window in the sleepy village of La Garde Freinet, in the South of France, thats what Short thought he could see. But he didnt investigate. Instead, he has concealed that the sleepy cathedral city of Salisbury is in fact the centre of British, as well as US chemical warfare manufacture and testing at the Porton Down establishment, and on Salisbury Plain the headquarters of the main artillery, infantry, intelligence and chemical warfare units of the British Army. Short has even muddled the facts of the case, tying the death of Dawn Sturgess to the poisoned door handle. This isnt simple error on Shorts part  its plain BBC standard propaganda. Short claims Putin is guilty again. In Skripals case, unlike that of Litvinenko, there was nothing to suggest that Putin had ordered the attack or even that he approved itAfterwards, however, he covered up for those responsible.

Shorts idea of nothing to suggest is plenty. In the case of the death of Sergei Magnitsky, Short cribs Browders account without testing the court evidence that Browder is a liar. In his history of the Maidan demonstrations in Kiev in January 2014 and the putsch that followed on February 21, Short repeats claims without an official or intelligence source; he is duplicating the New York Times. Later in the Ukrainian story he reruns, Stepan Bandera had been rehabilitatedto pretend that the Ukrainian government was run by Nazis was absurd. [Vladimir] Zelensky was a Russian-speaking Jew  hardly the man to lead what Putin termed dismissively a junta of neo-Nazis and drug addicts. For Russians, particularly of the older generation, Putins allegations resonated. In the West, they appeared malign and surrwal.

Short has abandoned the truth test. The version he proclaimed at his conclusion  readers must decide for themselves what is plausible, what sounds false, what rings true and what does not  he makes impossible because he conceals the evidence, the proof of what could not have happened; in their place he substitutes fabrications. For example, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, Short reports this way:

This is false. Short footnotes his claims from the NATO propaganda unit known as Bellingcat, but he not only fails to check that source of evidence, he is totally ignorant of the contrary evidence presented during the Dutch court proceedings which began on March 9, 2020. Short doesnt know there are no satellite photographs of the aircraft incident; that this has been confirmed by the Dutch investigators and judges; and corroborated by Dutch and American intelligence officers whom Shorts interviewees concealed. The photographs Short mentions were fabricated in Kiev by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU).

For more on the fabrication of the US satellite allegations, click to read.

From MI6, Bellingcat and the SBU, it is a hop, step and a jump for Short to Navalnys August 2020 collapse in Tomsk. Short repeats the German and other government announcements that he had been poisoned with a cholinesterase inhibitor, subsequently identified as a nerve agent of the Novichok group, similar to that used against Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. This account, Short reveals in his footnotes, is drawn from a Bellingcat investigation. Short investigated nothing else before concluding that Putin was responsible for ordering Navalnys assassination.

The issue, however, was not whether Putin was lying. He was. The question was whether he had himself ordered Navalny killed, or whetherthe final decision had been taken by siloviki in his inner circle who assumed that he would be only too glad to see his long-time adversary removedYet there are good grounds for thinking that Putin himself took the decision.

This is Shorts decision  and its contradicted by the conclusion he buries at the very end of his book in footnote number 159 on page 757. An incident he reports as striking an experienced CIA agent he interviewed as inconceivablewas exactly what Putin had done. Short then pronounces the rule of biographies of Putin and histories of Russia: the recurrent weakness of Western intelligence services and journalists reporting on Russian events which do not fit an expected pattern are too readily dismissed as implausible. Anomalies can be revealed and usually merit closer examination.

Ditto Short.
By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans.

The Supreme Court issued another blockbuster 6-3 opinion last Thursday in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in which it ruled that the Clean Air Act didnt provide EPA expansive powers to regulate carbon emissions.

The decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, re-establishes his shaky control over the Court  which had last week in the Dobbs case overturned the longstanding Roe v. Wade precedent, despite his quibbles and wish to allow that precedent to stand. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had promoted his nomination to the Supreme Court and this latest decision fulfils the Chambers longstanding priority of guting federal regulatory authority (see David Siroias take in Jacobin, Chief Justice John Roberts Is Carrying Out Corporate Americas Long-Term Plan Perfectly.)

The legal implications of the latest EPA ruling might in future have more far-reaching implications, hampering regulatory authority throughout the executive branch. Ill not discuss those possible issues further here.

Ill instead confine myself to two immediate implications of the latest decision, the first, the impact on U.S. global leadership and the second, the limitations the decision imposes on the ability of U.S. states to regulate, now that the feds cannot  or may not- do so in the absence of further congressional action.

But before I turn to those issues, permit me an aside. I note once again the continuing consequences of the Tump administrations fierce focus on filling vacant Article III judgeships  e.g. those offering lifetime tenure  as I posted about in real time multiple times. Trump et al moved to seat judges who would implement its regulatory agenda  and not just the three headliners he confirmed to join the Supremes, but also at lower federal district and appeals courts. Contrast that record with that of the hapless Democrats, who other than flooding my in-box with fund-raising appeals  especially post-Dobbs  still dont seem to grasp the importance of confirming congenial judges quickly and efficiently. Instead and incredibly, Biden seems recently to have cut a deal with Mitch McConnell to seat a judge whose past record contradicts the Democratic pro-choice agenda (ee Indefensible: Outrage as New Reporting Shines Light on Biden Deal With McConnell)

I also note that the current small c conservative Supreme Court relied in its decision on a relatively novel legal theory  the major questions doctrine: that in certain extraordinary cases, Congress must provide more explicit authority for agency rule-making. In the West Virginia case, the Court held that the Clean Air Act did not provide necessary authority to undertake the power plant regulation at issue. Thus somewhat ironically, the Court struck down agency rule-making, based on a relatively recent legal theory, putatively in line with originalist Constitutional thought.

Even more outrageously, the Court didnt actually have, at least by my reading  and consistent with Justice Elena Kagans dissent  a live case or controversy it needed to weigh in on. The EPAs 2015 Clean Power Plan rule had been put on hold in 2016 by the Court in response to a challenge by several states and private parties, and in 2019, the Trump EPA replaced that earlier EPA rule with the Affordable Clean Energy Rule. Both of these plans were vacated by a 2019 decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which had sent the case back to the EPA for additional proceedings  yet to be concluded (see SCOTUS blog,Supreme Court curtails EPAs authority to fight climate change) for further detail). So the Court could have sent this case back to the EPA to sort out the mess  and perhaps enact a viable climate change policy  before issuing any decision.

Not Agreement Capable

What are the implications of the latest Supreme Court decision at the global level? There, the Biden administration has well and truly not only dropped  but lost  the ball. No one seems to be paying necessary attention to the climate change issue. Instead, the focus on Ukraine  and economic sanctions  has left climate change considerations to the side. Thus leaving the planet in peril. I only point out here that if, and thats a very big IF, a sane and sensible administration were to step in, and attempt to implement a serious climate change agenda, at both domestic and international levels, this latest decision by the Supremes would prove to be a major impediment to such further action. Thus adding to the increasingly widespread perception that the U.S. is incapable of entering into any agreement  and following through on any commitments it might make therein.

Climate Change Regulation at the State Level

The U.S Supreme Court is now clearly implementing the laissez faire regulatory agenda of the Republican Party. But given the U.S. has a federal system, with both states and the federal government having overlapping and separate regulatory authority, perhaps the climate change regulatory situation is not as dire as it seems? California and New York, for example, have implemented more robust and pro-active climate change regulations. So perhaps other states might also step in to regulate where the feds fear to tread, at least within their borders?

Alas, theres scant possibility that collective state actions might mitigate the impact of this latest Supreme Court decision. Per law professor Evan Zoldan writing in the Hill, The fragility of state regulation after West Virginia v. EPA:

The impact of the courts ruling on federal agency authority and power cannot be overstated. But an equally important consequence, albeit one that has received far less attention, is the transformative effect the ruling could have on state regulatory programs. Because state regulatory authority is often tethered to standards created by Congress or federal agencies, the diminution of federal regulatory authority promises to destabilize state regulation as well. Countless state regulatory programs can be considered fragile because they regulate by incorporating federal statutes or regulations into state law. If these federal schemes are read exceedingly narrowly, as the courts opinion heralds, then the state regulatory programs tied to them will be imperiled as well. Consider the relationship between state regulatory programs and Section 111 of the Clean Air Act, the provision read narrowly in West Virginia v. EPA. An examination of state air quality standards reveals that most states specifically incorporate by reference parts of Section 111 into their own statutes and regulations. Some states incorporate federal law directly, providing that the EPAs Section 111 determinations are part of state law. Other states incorporate the EPAs Section 111 determinations as a benchmark for state law, providing that state air quality standards may not be less stringent than those promulgated by the EPA. Still other states require their environmental agencies to promulgate rules similar to federal standards made pursuant to Section 111. And some states even provide that related state regulation is no longer effective if federal rules made pursuant to Section 111 are invalidated. Because so many state statutes and regulations depend on the validity of Section 111 and the regulations promulgated under it, the courts opinion in West Virginia v. EPA not only drastically limits federal authority, it also has the effect of imperiling the many state regulatory programs that depend on federal standards for their existence. And, of course, Section 111 is just an example. Countless state regulatory programs are tethered to federally created standards, ranging in subject matter from food and drugs to banking to labor, among many others. As a result, the courts opinion strengthening the major questions doctrine threatens to leave numerous fields underregulated not only at the federal level, but also at the state level.

So it goes.
Yves here. Established readers know that free trade agreements are vehicles for making national labor and environmental protections subordinate to neoliberal/multinational interests. It now looks like they are set to become tools in the new Cold War, with the US and the West (plus its Asian/Australasian military protectorates) v. Russia, China, India, and the Global South.

By Anis Chowdhury, Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University and University of New South Wales (Australia), who held senior United Nations positions in New York and Bangkok and Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, who was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. Originally published at Jomo Kwame Sundarams website

Long seen as means to seek advantage on the pretext of providing mutual benefit, free trade agreements may increasingly be used as economic weapons in the emerging new Cold War.

Pivot to Asia, Containing China

In November 2009, President Obama observed, in an inter-connected world, power does not need to be a zero-sum game the United States does not seek to contain China.

But Obama soon changed course with his pivot to Asia, first announced in November 2011. After his re-election in 2012, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) became the economic centrepiece of the new US strategy to check Chinas growth and technological progress.

His US Trade Representative (USTR) claimed the TPP was based on principles the US champions, such as protecting intellectual property (IP) and human rights. While claiming all who accept its principles would be welcome to join, China was conspicuously not among countries negotiating the TPP.

For Washington, this new rivalry with China involves strengthened US alliances with Japan, South Korea and Australia. In October 2011, the US Congress ratified the Korea-US (KORUS) free trade agreement.

With the military and economic containment of China central to US security strategy, the TPP was concluded in 2015. Obama emphasized, TPP allows America  and not countries like China  to write the rules of the road in the 21st century.

Creating an anyone but China club was the US motive for establishing the TPP. But with changed public sentiment since Trumps presidency, once Obamas loyal Vice-President, now President Biden did not attempt to revive the TPP during his presidential campaign, or since.

Security Alliances

American prosperity and security are challenged by an economic competition playing out in a broader strategic context We must work with like-minded allies and partners to ensure our principles prevail and the rules are enforced so that our economies prosper, noted President Trumps national security strategy.

Accordingly, the Quad  Quadrilateral Security Dialogue group for maritime cooperation of the US, Australia, India and Japan, initiated after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami  has become a putative anti-China security arrangement.

By 2020, leaders of all four countries were more aligned in their concerns about Chinas rise. In November 2020, navies of all four countries participated in their first joint military exercise in over a decade.

Meanwhile, under Shinzo Abe, Japan radically transformed its security policy. Abe has greatly expanded the Japan Self-Defence Forces role, mission and capabilities within and beyond the US-Japan alliance, especially in East Asia.

Defence cooperation has also been enhanced through country-to-country arrangements, such as the recent Japan-Australia Reciprocal Access Agreement as well as the earlier Japan-India Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement.

The US security profile in the region has been boosted by the AUKUS (Australia-UK-USA) alliance. Its clear intention is to enhance the US and its allies military presence in the Indo-Pacific, with the greatest China focus of all regional security arrangements.

World Hegemony

The US is also linking trade to its national security strategy, especially to contain China, in Africa and Latin America. As the USTR notes, The Biden Administration is conducting a comprehensive review of U.S. trade policy toward China as part of its development of its overall China strategy.

Her office also emphasizes, Addressing the China challenge will require a comprehensive strategy and more systematic approach than the piecemeal approach of the recent past.

Reflecting his Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, Biden emphasizes, The United States must renew its enduring advantages; modernize our military capabilities; and revitalize Americas unmatched network of alliances and partnerships. He notes growing rivalry with China, Russia reshaping every aspect of our lives.

Biden insists his administration will make sure that the rules of the international economy are not tilted against the United States. We will enforce existing trade rules and create new ones This agenda will strengthen our enduring advantages, and allow us to prevail in strategic competition with China or any other nation.

His administration announced a review of all Trump-era trade negotiations. Due to expire in 2025, President Clintons African Growth and Opportunity Act has offered enhanced US market access to qualifying African countries since 2000.

In April 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed US-Kenya free trade agreement talks would resume. Observers believe the US-Kenya free trade agreement, initiated by Trump in 2020, would help expand US carrot and stick trade and security policies on the continent to counter China.

In the US Monroe doctrine backyard, six US free trade agreements already involve 12 Latin American and Caribbean countries. On 8 June, Biden announced a new regional economic partnership to counter China. His speech inaugurated a Summit of the Americas, criticized for omitting countries seen as friendly to China.

But Bidens Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity is still seen as a work in progress. Not even offering free trade agreements standard tariff relief, the US anticipates initially focusing on like-minded partners. Although Biden hailed his ground-breaking, integrated new approach, responses suggest waning US influence.

Now, five years after Trump withdrew from the TPP, Biden has revived Obamas China strategy with his own Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. Smug, he could not help but echo Obamas TPP brag, Were writing the new rules.
Geneva, Switzerland (PANA) - The UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Tuesday that the already dire humanitarian situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) would become worse in the coming weeks without immediate assistance
(Natural News) Daniella Byck, an assistant editor at The Washingtonian, has written many stories advocating anti-racism and social justice. She has gained a reputation as an anti-racist journalist.

But Bycks past social media posts showed an entirely different character. She has a long history of making disparaging remarks about black people in social media.

In a December 2011 Twitter post, Byck mocked the size of a black mans lips. She wrote: Earl Sweatshirt is a myth, he was a robot created by Tyler, the Creator; no human has lips that big.

She was referring to rapper Earl Sweatshirt, an African American whose real name is Thebe Neruda Kgositsile. Kgositsiles previous stage name was Sly Tendencies, but he changed it to Earl Sweatshirt when he joined Odd Future, an alternative hip hop group formed by Tyler, the Creator.

In January 2012 tweet, Byck made a joke about Africa. She said: In #Africa tweeting is when you sit on a tree and make bird calls.

Tweet, of course, is the sound a person makes to mimic birds. Byck was apparently taking a shot at Africa for being late in technological development and for the way of life of Africans in general.

Bycks other tweets with racist undertones included:

@jfannn threw rice at an African princess.

Back in the hood, it sure dont feel good.

Its not fried chicken and koolaid but#chickenandwaffles #southernlife.

This entire airport looks like the Panama delegation. #MOTL2012problems.

Byck transforms into anti-racist media personality

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin and joining The Washingtonian in 2018, Byck has transformed into an anti-racist media personality.

Her article in June last year titled DC Pastry Chefs Launch a National Bake Sale to Support Black Lives Matter helped spark a global movement against racism. The story was about the virtual bake sales started by DC chefs to support Black Lives Matter (BLM) and other organizations promoting racial justice.

Buoyed by the exposure it received from Bycks story, the Bakers Against Racism enjoyed huge success worldwide. It was supported by around 2,000 professional pastry chefs from different parts of the world and raised a huge sum of money for racial justice organizations.

Byck flaunted the role she played in the success of Bakers Against Racism via Twitter. She wrote: Since writing this story last week, Bakers Against Racism has gone international.

A follow-up story by Byck revealed that the Bakers Against Racism had raised over $1.6 million.

She also sounded more responsible in her recent tweets. She even encouraged white folks to read an article about racism written by her colleague, Rosa Cartagena.

This ones for you, white folks. If youre at home wondering what you can do to make change, let this be your first step. from my colleague @_RosaCartagena, Byck tweeted accompanied by the article. (Related: Deranged leftists claim racism against white people isnt racism  watch at Brighteon.com.)

The article featured Talking About Race, a web portal designed to provide free educational resources and tools from scholars, activists and historians with the goal of teaching everyone how to have conversations about race and racism. It was released by the National Museum of African American History & Culture.

The online portal provides digital tools, online exercises, video instructions, scholarly articles and more than 100 multi-media resources tailored for educators, parents and caregivers  and individuals committed to racial equality, the museum said in a press release.

According to the museum, the release of the web portal was moved up after a rash of racially charged incidents, including the altercation in Central Park, the acts of police brutality resulting in the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and the protests their deaths provoked in cities around the country.

Byck appeared to have learned her lessons, but Talking About Race would have certainly taught the former version of herself a thing or two about racism.

Follow PoliticalCorrectness.news for more news and information related to racism.

Sources included:

TheNationalPulse.com

NewsBreak.com
(Natural News) There have been many times in the history of this country when we have seen tremendous outbursts of anger, but most of those faded fairly quickly. For example, the rioting that we witnessed in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd was horrifying, but it only lasted for a matter of weeks. This time around, we are facing a national temper tantrum that wont be measured in weeks or months. Unless the Supreme Court reverses course on abortion, and I dont expect that will happen any time soon, the temper tantrum that we are witnessing now is not likely to have an ending point. Millions of hellish ghouls have been stirred up into a state of immense rage, and the entire nation is going to pay the price.

(Article by Michael republished from TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com)

The violence that happened over the weekend is just the beginning. From this point forward, no pro-life organization in America will be safe.

Very early on Saturday morning, police discovered that a pro-life center in a very conservative area of Virginia had been attacked

Vandals targeted a pro-life center in Lynchburg, Virginia, with threatening graffiti and broken windows following the U.S. Supreme Court voting to overturn Roe. V. Wade on Friday. If abortion aint safe, you aint safe, red graffiti states on an entrance area of the Blue Ridge Pregnancy Center, photos posted by local police show. Lynchburg Police responded to the pregnancy center at about 10:40 a.m. on Saturday. Officers found ??that the building had been spray painted with graffiti, and multiple windows had been broken out. Security camera footage shows four masked individuals committing the acts.

Unfortunately, as we have seen in recent weeks, these sorts of attacks are often not limited to just broken windows and graffiti.

In Colorado, we just witnessed another incident in which radicals actually tried to burn a pro-life organization to the ground

A fire which occurred at a Christian pregnancy clinic in Colorado is being treated as arson after chilling messages were spray painted onto the walls and ground outside. If abortions arent safe, neither are you, read one. Bans off our bodies said another by the entrance at the Life Choices clinic in Longmont, northeast of Boulder. The fire broke out in the middle of the night at 3:17am on Saturday morning. Authorities believe the fire was set deliberately.

State legislatures will also be targets in the days ahead. On Friday night, a group of crazed protesters actually tried to break into the Arizona Senate building while bills were actually being voted on

Law enforcement officers in Phoenix, Arizona used tear gas to break up a sizable group of protesters outside the states Senate building following the U.S. Supreme Courts decision to overturn the landmark abortion ruling Roe v. Wade. Protesters threatened to break the AZ Senate entryway glass, Republican Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers tweeted, as members were in the middle of voting on a series of bills. The situation escalated into a hostage situation as lawmakers were instructed not to exit the building, Republican Arizona State Senator Kelly Townsend said.

And then they came back again on Saturday night

On Saturday night, hundreds of anti-lifers attempted another insurrection upon the Arizona Capitol for the second night in a row. Moments before the violence began, one rioter told our correspondent that people are about to start shit, and another said, Thats what Ive been waiting for. Others were overheard saying that they wanted a police conflict. At about 11:30 pm MST, the leftist radicals began breaching the Capitol fences in preparation to storm the Capitol. They were chanting, No justice, no peace! After multiple warnings from State DPS officers, a fleet of police cars turned their sirens on, and the rioters immediately scattered. Get on the ground! yelled the officers before arresting or detaining everybody still on the property.

CNN and MSNBC have given endless coverage to the events of January 6th, 2021.

So why do they seem so hesitant to cover what is happening in Arizona?

In New York City, protesters vandalized the headquarters of Fox News, and some were even suggesting that it should be burned down

In New York, at least 25 people were arrested on Friday after around 17,000 descended on Washington Square Park before marching through the streets to Grand Central Station, Times Square, and Bryant Park. They also stopped outside News Corp headquarters  home to Fox News and the The New York Post  and yelled Burn it down! Burn it down! F*** Tucker Carlson! Vandals also sprayed F*** Fox on the side of the building.

Fox News isnt even that conservative.

But these days anyone that is considered to be associated with the pro-life movement in any way will be a potential target.

In Los Angeles, a group of very angry liberals decided to shut down the 110 Freeway, and one of them actually attacked a police officer with a homemade flamethrower

Pro-abortion protesters shut down the 110 Freeway in downtown Los Angles. El American field journalist Anthony Cabassa captured the moment a vehicle drove through the blockade, and a man slams the car with a pole. Pro-abortion activists clashed with LAPD officers. Fireworks were launched at police officers, and a man attempted to burn cops with a homemade flamethrower, Post Millennial editor Andy Ngo reported.

The officer that was attacked with the flamethrower had to go to the hospital to be treated for his injuries.

Up in Portland, there were violent protests on both Friday night and Saturday night. Quite a few buildings had their windows smashed, and that included a Starbucks Coffee outlet.

Dont they understand that Starbucks is super liberal?

Sadly, when these radicals get riled up they dont seem to discriminate when it comes to destroying things.

Of course some of the largest protests have been in Washington. At one point, one particularly angry group of protesters was openly suggesting that the Supreme Court should be burned down

Antifa-linked pro-abortion group Janes Revenge vowed to undertake a night of rage after the Supreme Courts ruling on allowing states to make the final call about abortion. Black bloc protesters wielding umbrellas marched through the streets of Washington, D.C. The group chanted slogans such as, If abortion aint safe, neither are you, If we dont get it, burn it down, Every city, every town, burn the precinct to the ground, and F*** the church, f*** the state, we wont let them decide our fate. The protesters burned American flags.

From this point forward, authorities are going to have to guard the Supreme Court building 24 hours a day.

And the same thing goes for the Supreme Court justices and their families.

Earlier today, I was horrified to learn that angry radicals are openly discussing what can be done to hunt them down

One of the top posts in a socialist subreddit featured the addresses of Supreme Court justices that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Reddit users in the anti-capitalist group discussed hunting down Supreme Court justices at their churches and possibly sending them mail bombs. The alarming threats were made in r/WorkersStrikeBack  a self-described leftist, anti-capitalist, socialist subreddit that is dedicated to support worker strikes, protests and unions all over the world, address the obvious problems related to an average workers workplace, offer advice to a fellow worker struggling with their workplace problems and mock or satirize any kind of anti-worker sentiment.

This isnt going to go away.

These people are absolutely furious, and they are going to be relentless.

Those that regularly follow my work know that I have been warning for years that great civil unrest would be coming to America.

Now it is here.

So stay safe out there and watch your back, because things are going to start getting really crazy.

Read more at: TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
(Natural News) The European Union is positioning itself to be completely cut off from all Russian energy. And if that happens, Germany and other heavily import-reliant countries in Europe will suffer a Lehman Brothers-type collapse of its energy market.

Economic Minister and Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck issued a stark warning about how Europes largest economy faces total economic destruction should gas supplies run thin this winter, which they are expected to do.

Companies would have to stop production, lay off their workers, supply chains would collapse, people would go into debt to pay their heating bills, that people would become poorer, he is quoted as saying.

The Green Party politician actually described what is soon to come as a king of Lehman Brothers effect in the energy market, which would quickly spread like a contagion or virus throughout municipal utilities and both the industrial and commercial sectors of the economy.

And then you have a domino effect that would lead to a severe recession, he added.

Lehman Brothers, as you may recall, was the lynchpin of the 2008 global financial crisis, which sent Wall Street tumbling until the government decided that taxpayers needed to bail out the culprits whose greed and corruption caused the crisis in the first place.

The impact of Lehmans collapse was particularly widespread due to the interconnectedness of its balance sheets with other banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, and other financial institutions, explains Breitbart News.

Many believe that the U.S. government made a critical mistake in allowing Lehman to fail and that the failure worsened the crisis and subsequent economic calamity.

The West is committing economic suicide while blaming Putin for it

Germany already faces a 60 percent reduction in natural gas from Russia, all because it refuses to pay for the energy in rubles demanded by Russia.

Had Germany and other Western powerhouses not imposed crippling economic sanctions against Russia over its special operation in Ukraine, Russia never would have changed the requirement that the West pays for gas in rubles  so the West only has itself to blame for what is now unfolding.

Instead of fixing the problem that they helped create, politicians in Germany are calling on the German people to pay for it by drastically reducing their energy consumption.

Germans are now expected to live within a model of extreme scarcity to cover for the failed economic policies of their elected leaders.

Everyone in industry and in their home life can contribute to this  and yes, this also includes jumpers, shower heads, turning the heating down a bit, all of this helps, Habeck says.

If Germans refuse to do this, then they will simply have to pay double or triple the cost of energy in the coming months, which will be absolutely devastating once winter arrives.

Should Russian energy stop flowing completely, then Germany will have less than three months of fuel left before a total collapse, warned Klaus Muller, head of the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) energy regulator.

If the storage facilities in Germany were mathematically 100 percent full  we could do without Russian gas completely  for just about two-and-a-half months and then the storage tanks will be empty, he is quoted as saying.

Germany was repeatedly warned in the past that its over-reliance on Russian energy could cause problems. Those problems are now emerging at a rapid pace and they threaten to destroy Europes largest economy in a matter of months.

Germany also could have avoided going green, which would have allowed it to become more energy independent. Instead, it opted to close its nuclear power plants, phase out coal, and hope for the best with just wind turbines and solar panels.

The latest news about the energy crisis and what is soon to come as a result of it can be found at Collapse.news.

Sources include:

Breitbart.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) The Supreme Court has just ruled that governments cannot deny residents permission to carry a weapon in public  often called concealed carry  just because they dont meet some bureaucrats demand for a just cause to be armed.

(Article by Bob Unruh republished from WND.com)

But now, according to a legal analysis, officials are considering basing their decisions on factors that make up a persons ideology.

Do you endorse any kind of hatred, a wildly vague term, or do you endorse certain religious views? How about being anti-government, anti-abortion or pro-abortion?

It is legal commentator Eugene Volokh who explained at Reason that California officials are working on work-arounds to the recent Supreme Court decision, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

In that ruling, the justices vetoed the idea that a bureaucrat can demand a license applicant provide the bureaucrats version of a good reason, or just cause for the license to defend oneself.

Volokh noted the California attorney general immediately released a statement that that states demand for good cause likely could no longer be used against residents.

But the AGs office suggests that people who hold certain ideological viewpoints should be disqualified, he explained.

For example, the state already requires an applicant to be of good moral character.

The Sacramento County Sheriffs Office, for example, currently identifies several potential reasons why a public-carry license may be denied (or revoked), which include [a]ny arrest in the last 5 years, regardless of the disposition or [a]ny conviction in the last 7 years.'

And the Riverside County Sheriffs Departments policy states: Legal judgments of good moral character can include consideration of honesty, trustworthiness, diligence, reliability, respect for the law, integrity, candor, discretion, observance of fiduciary duty, respect for the rights of others, absence of hatred and racism, fiscal stability, profession-specific criteria such as pledging to honor the constitution and uphold the law, and the absence of criminal conviction.

The AGs office suggests, As a starting point for purposes of investigating an applicants moral character, many issuing authorities require personal references and/or reference letters. Investigators may personally interview applicants and use the opportunity to gain further insight into the applicants character. And they may search publicly available information, including social media accounts, in assessing the applicants character.

Volokh suggested those strategies likely are unconstitutional under the First Amendment, even apart from the Second Amendment.

The government cant restrict ordinary citizens actionsmuch less their constitutionally protected actionsbased on the viewpoints that they express, he said.

He said people cant be denied rights because they endorse hatred (a potentially extraordinarily broad and vague term) and racism (a term that, especially in much recent usage, is likewise highly broad and vague).

He also said it doesnt matter that some adherents of an ideology engage in violence.

Just as the Free Exercise Clause would bar the government from engaging in religious discrimination in deciding which citizens can do certain things, so the Free Speech Clause bars the government from engaging in viewpoint discrimination, he pointed out.

He explained, And of course its easy to see how, if California were allowed to deny concealed carry licenses to whoever California law enforcement officials believe is racis[t] or endorses hatred, then some other state could deny such licensesor lots of other kinds of licensesto whoever its law enforcement officials believe is anti-government or anti-police or a Muslim extremist or what have you.

Other problems Volokh predicted could arise include a mere arrest history that doesnt document illegal conduct, the status of fiscal responsibility, or even guilt for minor crimes.

A column at HotAir pointed out how extreme the California strategy could become.

This is an even more critical distinction to make in an era where the government is busy redefining words and appointing people to decide what is or isnt misinformation. If you spoke out against the violence on display during the BLM riots, youve already been defined as a racist. Based on that alone, the California AG could determine that you are of insufficiently good moral character to be approved for a permit. If you applauded the overturning of Roe v Wade you are no doubt already on a list of haters of some sort so you can be similarly denied, it said.

Read more at: WND.com
(Natural News) More than 140 Jewish organizations, along with the Satanic Temple of New York City, are now claiming that getting an abortion is a form of religious freedom that is constitutionally protected and cannot be overruled by legislators or the courts.

On May 17, an event sponsored by Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice and supported by the Anti-Defamation League, publicly affirmed that abortion access is a Jewish value and that banning abortions is a religious freedom issue.

In early June, a south Florida synagogue filed a lawsuit claiming that the states new 15-week abortion ban violates the religious freedom of Jewish people. This is the same position held by the Satanic Temple of New York City, which claims that the abortion ritual is a form of religious expression.

According to Satanists, birthing people  meaning women  who belong to the religion should be allowed to freely murder their unborn children whenever they feel like it because this is a form of worship to their god. The Jewish groups agree.

How have we not dismantled the government? the Satanic Temple asked after the Supreme Courts overruling of Roe v. Wade, calling the decision illegitimate and promising to defy it.

In 2015, the Satanic Temple filed a federal lawsuit in Missouri claiming that the states restrictive abortion laws violate their free exercise of Satanism. Five years later, Satanists launched a campaign called Satanic Abortions Are Protected by Religious Liberty Laws, and have since reiterated their position that Satanism is the leading beacon of light in the battle for abortion access.

With Roe v. Wade overturned, a religious exemption will be the only available challenge to many restrictions to access, tweeted the Satanic Temples official Twitter account on June, 24.

Ending someone elses life does not qualify as religious expression

Frank Pavone, the national director of Priests for Life, stated in a recent interview that since abortion involves the killing of someone elses life, it does not qualify under a religious exemption.

Killing [of] an innocent human life  the government can, in fact, restrict [this act], even if someone is going to say, My religious freedom requires me, requires me, in certain circumstances to abort, he is quoted as saying.

Sincerely held religious beliefs that do not involve murder still qualify, but this is something entirely different.

Nevertheless, the government can restrict someones religious freedom precisely out of an interest to protect others, he added.

Pointing to several legal cases involving this issue, Pavone further explained how the government does, in some cases, have a compelling interest to interfere with or halt certain religious activities if they put the lives of others at risk.

Based on the words in the Gospel that they will handle poisonous snakes and not be harmed, some of these churches had snake handling going on in their services, he explained about how poisonous snake handling in the South had to be addressed by the government.

For the protection of the lives of the congregation, the state came in [with legislation] and said, You cant do this.'

Several churches challenged these laws at the time, but the courts upheld the governments restrictions, recognizing that while all Americans have religious freedom, there is a compelling interest and when theres no other way to advance that interest, [they can use] the least restrictive means [to do so].

In this case, Pavone added, the state [of Florida] is asserting  its compelling interest, and its an interest in protecting human life.

A religion with a baby killing ritual is not a religion that belongs in a civilized society, let alone a Christian one, wrote a commenter at LifeSiteNews.

More related news coverage about the abortion war can be found at Abortions.news.

Sources for this article include:

LifeSiteNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) A group of degenerates at a Gay Pride Parade in Seattle over the weekend were filmed flashing their genitals at children to cheers from left-wing lunatics.

(Article by Chris Menahan republished from InformationLiberation.com)

Video of the disturbing incident was captured by Katie Daviscourt of The Post Millennial and shared Sunday on Twitter (HT: The Gateway Pundit).

HAPPENING NOW: Pride 2022 is kicking off Downtown Seattle led by the Boys and Girl Scouts of America. The group recently changed their name to scouts to be more inclusive. pic.twitter.com/5OGWmuCZfx  Katie Daviscourt?? (@KatieDaviscourt) June 26, 2022

WARNING, GRAPHIC:

NAKED BICYCLISTS circling the route in front of a large crowd of children. #seattlepridepic.twitter.com/KAcNiNxE5n  Katie Daviscourt?? (@KatieDaviscourt) June 26, 2022

The @SeattleFire Department is marching wearing uniforms despite organizers banning @SeattlePD from attending this years parade. pic.twitter.com/xblIY5Df3J  Katie Daviscourt?? (@KatieDaviscourt) June 26, 2022

The @SeattleFire Department is marching wearing uniforms despite organizers banning @SeattlePD from attending this years parade. pic.twitter.com/xblIY5Df3J  Katie Daviscourt?? (@KatieDaviscourt) June 26, 2022

BARKING: LGBTQ youth surround Seattle street preacher @mattteamjesus and try to drown him him out by barking like dogs. pic.twitter.com/L9N45TwcdI  Katie Daviscourt?? (@KatieDaviscourt) June 26, 2022

I AM DISTURBED: Heres some more footage of parents subjecting their children to naked adults. pic.twitter.com/GHTfaDowFK  Katie Daviscourt?? (@KatieDaviscourt) June 26, 2022

I asked the [Seattle Police] about the nudity in front of children and they said it is permissible under the citys indecent exposure laws, Daviscourt reported.

.@SeattlePD on the scene. I asked these officers about the nudity in front of children and they said it is permissible under the citys indecent exposure laws. Someone that feels threatened would have to file a report in order for them to take action. pic.twitter.com/1vQS40N2FX  Katie Daviscourt?? (@KatieDaviscourt) June 26, 2022

Police in Idaho, in apparent coordination with the feds, earlier this month staged the mass arrest of right-wing activists protesting against a LGBTQIA+ Pride and hit everyone involved with fraudulent conspiracy to riot charges to ensure the event went forward. Drag Queen performers were accused of exposing themselves to children at the event.

Similar scenes went down two weeks ago at the Los Angeles Pride March:

CHILD ABUSE: A woman forces a boy against his will to watch the LA PRIDE March as LGBTQ attendees twerk here in Hollywood CA | @TPUSApic.twitter.com/Ei9gEZMMBU  Drew Hernandez (@DrewHLive) June 12, 2022

DEPRAVITY: A drag queen standing on an egg plant emoji with dancers with bulging genitals says WE HAVE GENITALS AND LUBE to little children in the crowd | @TPUSApic.twitter.com/YWAkjXkxM6  Drew Hernandez (@DrewHLive) June 12, 2022

DISTURBING: Pride LA here in Hollywood CA kicks off with a topless individual waving to little children in the crowd | @TPUSApic.twitter.com/58Stlu5nHm  Drew Hernandez (@DrewHLive) June 12, 2022

INSANE: A mother stands by in excitement as her TODDLER is exposed to half naked men WHIPPING each other in BDSM and doggy play attire here at Pride LA in Hollywood CA | @TPUSApic.twitter.com/oFi9TYDSxE  Drew Hernandez (@DrewHLive) June 12, 2022

If God doesnt punish America, hes going to have to dig Sodom and Gomorrah up and apologize.

Read more at: InformationLiberation.com
(Natural News) Whoever is running Joe Bidens foreign policy is an amateur who has no idea how the real world works.

That person would not be Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is probably one of the least-capable people to have been put into that position. Its more likely Susan Rice, former President Obamas national security adviser who is still working for him and essentially implementing his policies through our dementia puppet president.

That would explain why the U.S. and their Western lackeys imposed economic sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine without having any real enforcement mechanisms.

Included in a basket of Russian goods, services and commodities allegedly sanctioned by the West is Moscows biggest export  oil. Only, the wily Russian President Vladimir Putin and his extremely worldly foreign policy team have found a way to circumvent the sanctions.

According to Business Insider, oil shippers are continuing to take on Russian crude by going dark, to include paying for the oil in Chinese currency, the yuan, and exchanging weapons for Russian crude:

Oil shippers are using several tactics to conceal that their crude cargoes are from Russia, sources told the Guardian, as Europe and the US try to stem imports.

At the same time, concerns are growing that India, which has snapped up Russian oil at discounted prices, has the potential to be used as a back door for those supplies to enter Europe, the Guardian reported Sunday.

One workaround being used to mask the origin of Russian oil is paying in Chinas yuan rather than the US dollar, the standard currency for trade, sources told the newspaper. Alternatively, sellers will exchange Russian oil for goods like gold, food or weapons instead of a currency.

Trading between the yuan and Russias currency, the ruble, has skyrocketed nearly 1,100 percent since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. That is mostly seen as a means of the two great powers bolstering their alliance and strengthening ties as a means of weakening U.S. and Western global influence.

Another masking ploy is to make ship-to-ship transfers of Russian oil on the high seas, which typically involves a Russian ship unloading oil to another vessel from a neutral party, Business Insider reported, citing an old sanctions-busting tactic that has been used for decades. Thats increasingly becoming common practice as a way to hamper tracking and as buyers try to keep quiet any affiliation to sanctions-hit Moscow.

In order to make such transfers, vessels are going dark which means that shippers switch off tankers ID systems in order to make it harder to monitor their movements.

If a country or oil operator wants to hide the source of crude or oil products, it can very easily do so, Ajay Parmar, an oil market analyst at ICIS, told the Guardian.

Its not illegal to trade in Russian oil, but doing so undermines the Wests efforts to hurt Moscow financially so that it is more difficult to fund the ongoing war in Ukraine. The European Union previously agreed to ban seaborne imports of Russian oil by years end, while the U.S. and the United Kingdom have also imposed their own sanctions regimes.

However, Greece, Malta and Cyprus have doubled the amount of Russian oil they ship since the beginning of the conflict. Also, Russian oil products are most likely winding up in the U.S. after they are refined in India, reports note.

There are mounting concerns that the same thing is taking place in Europe, as India is used by Moscow as a back door. India and China have also ramped up their purchases of Russian crude at bargain-basement prices over the past few months and now, together, they account for nearly 50 percent of Russias oil exports by sea.

Nirmala Sitharaman, Indias finance minister, has defended the massive number of Russian oil purchases. He said that his government is merely acting in the interests of the Indian economy, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Sources include:

WSJ.com

BusinessInsider.com
News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism.
(Natural News) Video streaming site YouTube blocked a chess players channel because of allegedly posting harmful and dangerous content  consisting mainly of conversations about the sport. It was later found that the sites algorithm misinterpreted the dialogue in the chess players videos as racist language. The streaming platform owned by Google did not provide a reason for the ban, but the players channel was restored a day later.

Croatian chess player Antonio Radi?, known as agadmator, was the unfortunate victim of YouTubes faulty algorithm. Radi?s channel is considered the most popular chess channel on the platform, with more than a million subscribers. His review of a 1962 match between Russian chess bigwigs Rashid Nezhmetdinov and Oleg Chernikov is the channels most popular video, with more than 5.5 million views as of writing.

The 33-year-old wedding videographer established his YouTube channel in 2017. The channels revenue exceeded the amount he earned from his day job a year after Radi? set it up. He told ESPN in an August 2020 interview: I always loved chess, but I live in a small town and there werent too many people I could talk to about [it.] So starting a YouTube channel kind of made sense.

But the chess enthusiast found his channel blocked in June 2020 after he posted a segment with five-time champion and chess grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura. Radi? was talking about the two opposing sides in a chess game  black and white  with Nakamura, the youngest American to earn the grandmaster title.

Radi? appealed against the ban, and his channel was reinstated within 24 hours. He surmised that his use of the phrase black against white in his segment with Nakamura caused the ban.

Meanwhile, YouTube declined to elaborate on what caused the ban on Radi?s channel. The video streaming platform said: When its brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it. A YouTube representative added that uploaders can appeal removals for another review, which Radi? did. [He] appealed the removal, and we quickly reinstated the video, they said.

Computer scientists confirmed that YouTubes over-eager algorithm caused the ban

According to Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists, the mention of black against white during Radi?s video with Nakamura may have accidentally triggered Youtubes artificial intelligence filters. The video streaming plaftorm uses AI algorithms alongside human moderators to filter out prohibited content. But these algorithms can flag harmless videos if not fed the right examples to provide context. (Related: Google-owned YouTube now promoting pedophilia with its new fairness algorithms.)

Computer scientist Ashiqur KhudaBukush believes Radi?s hunch was correct regarding the reason for his ban. He and his colleague Rupak Sarkar then ran tests on two speech classifiers  AI software than can be trained to detect hate speech  to test his theory.

The two researchers used the speech classifiers on more than 680,000 comments from five popular YouTube chess channels. They found that 82 percent of the comments in a sample of 1,000 did not include any obvious racist language or hate speech. However, the comments included terms like black, white, attack and threat  which may have activated the AI filters. KhudaBukush and Sarkar presented their findings at the yearly Association for the Advancement of AI conference in February 2021.

KhudaBukush said the accuracy of AI software depends on the examples it is given. He noted that YouTube data fed to these filters likely include few examples of chess talk, leading to misclassification. Thus, he and Sarkar suggested that social media platform incorporate chess language into their algorithms to prevent further issues.

We dont know what tools YouTube uses, but if they rely on artificial intelligence to detect racist language, this kind of accident can happen, KhudaBukush said. He continued that if someone as well-known as Radi? is being banned by accident, it may well be happening quietly to lots of other people who are not so well-known. (Related: Former Google bigwig launches AI church that positions technology as GOD.)

Head over to YouTubeCensorship.com to read more about bans caused by YouTubes faulty AI software.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

ESPN.com

CMU.edu
Disease detection through "smelling" can soon become a reality after scientists developed a "robot nose" that could use a patient's breath as its immediate data, according to a new study.

An international team of scientists is currently working on novel techniques that will allow such technology to analyze chemical compounds not only from a person's breath, but also his or her sweat and tears.

The scientists call the partially untapped diagnostic technology as volatolomics.

In spite of its promising future, the method is still a few steps aware from being used in a laboratory setting, as well as being commercially available for consumers and doctors.

The study reportedly puts emphasis on volatile organic compounds (VOCs), a group of airborne particles that we smell, whether it came from a delicious food or a fragrance.

The team also used the notion that all living organism releases VOCs as a biological process for communication, defense, and even reproduction.

Amongst all the disease, the applicability of volatolomics is significant for cancer, especially during the tumors' crucial beginning stages, which still be treated or mitigate through early detection.

Since there is no known cure for all types of cancers yet, the immediate diagnosis of cancer and other diseases are one of the most helpful ways toward treatment.

Robot Nose

In the new paper published in the journal Nano Research on June 29, scientists are underway in using the potential power of the volatolomics technology, for purposes of screening and diagnosing hidden diseases.

Scientists also acknowledge the current obstacles faced by the mentioned cutting-edge detection technology.

The research team also offered their study as future perspectives and a basis for where the main research gaps lie, which will be thought by the authors themselves.

Although the said method is relatively new, smelling someone's breath to find illnesses had its roots dating back to the Ancient Greece and Ancient China, where the Greek physician Hippocrates and Chinese doctor Bian Que utilized volatolomics before.

Also Read: Devil's Cure to Cancer? Tasmanian Devil is Evolving to Fight Contagious Form of Disease

Challenges on Disease Treatment

In the past several decades, the scientific community continues to find ways in curing various types of diseases, which have plagued not only humans but also some animal species, even before the onset of modern medicine.

In the field of medicine, disease treatment has become a challenge as some pathogens like bacteria and viruses have learned to adapt to modern medicinal drugs.

Other diseases are not caused by pathogens, but rather by factors related to certain genetic, environmental, and lifestyle.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provided some of the most notable diseases and conditions that the world had experienced or is currently experiencing:

Asthma

Avian influenza

Cancer

COVID-19

Diabetes

Ebola

Flu

Heart disease

Hepatitis

HIV

Meningitis

Diseases affect millions of people worldwide, as seen in previous reports.

The World Health Organization (WHO) stated in December 2020 that the first on the list on the top 10 causes of death globally is ischemic heart disease followed by stroke and chronic pulmonary disease.

Related Article: Animal Studies: New Cancer Vaccine Bypasses Tumor Defenses
Recently, researchers revealed that they had developed a membrane that can filter heavy metals from contaminated water and was made from plant waste, particularly that produced from the production of vegetable oil.

They discovered that proteins made from by-products of the production of sunflower or peanut oil can effectively attract heavy metal ions.

The finding suggests that contaminated water could be purified to meet international drinking standards through the process of attraction known as adsorption.

Potentials of a Plant Waste-Based Membrane

The team pointed out that modern technologies use a lot of energy, need electricity to run, or filter information very carefully. However, their membrane has the potential to be a low-cost, scalable, sustainable, and low-power technique.

Professor Ali Miserez from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore explains that a sizable group of water pollutants known as heavy metals can build up in the body of a person and result in cancer and other mutagenic diseases.

Waste byproducts known as oilseed meals are produced during the production of household vegetable oils. These are the protein-rich byproducts that are left over after the raw plant's oil has been extracted.

The oilseed meals from two popular vegetable oils were used by the NTU-led research team. These oils are sunflower and peanut oils. The team separated the proteins from oilseed meals and converted them into protein amyloid fibrils, the rope-like structures made of tightly wound proteins, that are nanoscale in size. These protein fibrils serve as a molecular sieve, trapping heavy metal ions as they pass by because they are drawn to heavy metals.

From Plant Waste to Filter Membranes

Soon Wei Long, a Ph.D. student from NTU, says that this is the first time proteins from peanut and sunflower seeds have been used to produce amyloid fibrils. Soon is the first author of the paper.

To create a hybrid membrane, the researchers mixed activated carbon with the extracted amyloid fibrils. A typical filtration material is activated carbon. Chromium, platinum, and lead were used as the three common heavy metal pollutants on which they tested their membranes.

The heavy metal ions in the contaminated water adhere to the surface of the amyloid fibrils as contaminated water passes through the membrane, a process also known as adsorption. Amyloid fibrils are effective at adsorbing a significant amount of heavy metals due to their high surface-to-volume ratio.

The group discovered that their membranes could remove up to 99.89% of heavy metals. Among the three metals tested, the filter was most effective for lead, then platinum, followed by chromium.

Miserez explained that any kind of heavy metals, as well as organic pollutants like PFAS or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, can be filtered using the filter. Chemicals known as PFAS have been found in a variety of industrial and consumer goods. The amino acid bonds in the amyloid fibrils trap and sandwich heavy metal particles while allowing water to pass through.

According to the researchers, the amount of water the membrane can filter out depends on the number of heavy metals present in the contaminated water. To filter drinking water, a hybrid membrane made of sunflower protein amyloids will only need 16 kilograms of protein if an Olympic-sized swimming pool is contaminated with 400 parts per billion.

Soon outlined how the method is easily scaleable due to its simplicity and low reliance on chemical reagents, emphasizing the need for cost-effective and environmentally friendly water treatment methods. This enables the team to fully utilize various industrial food wastes into advantageous technologies and to reprocess waste streams for additional applications.

Additionally, the trapped metals can be freed and recycled again. After filtration, the metals can simply be removed by burning the membrane that was used to trap them.

Professor Raffaele Mezzenga, a co-author of the study from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, pointed out that Other metals, such as platinum, have valuable applications in the creation of electronics and other sensitive equipment, whereas metals like lead or mercury are poisonous and can be safely disposed of.

Read also: Rising Cases of Water Contamination - Should We Preserve Water for Future Generations?

Filtering Priceless Metals

Only 32 kg of protein is needed to recover precious platinum, while only half that amount of protein is needed to recover gold. Platinum is valued at $33,000 per kilo, while 1 kg of gold costs almost $60,000.

Mezzenga noted that there are significant financial advantages given that these proteins are produced from industrial waste with a value of less than US$1/kg, Good News Network reports.

The fact that this filtration uses little to no energy, as opposed to other techniques like reverse osmosis that do, is another significant benefit, according to the researchers.

Mezzenga continued by saying that gravity performs most or all of the work in their membrane. In areas with possibly limited access to electricity and power, this low-power filtration technique can be very helpful.

The researchers have been working with BluAct, an ETH Zurich spin-off company that specializes in European water filtration, to investigate the commercial applications of their membrane since publishing their paper in the journal Chemical Engineering three months ago.

Related article: Should You Be Using a Ceramic-Based Water Filter Pitcher?
On July 1, a solar storm occurred, snowplowing dense plasma toward the Earth and causing geomagnetic storms that disrupted the nation's power grid and caused technical issues for satellites. At least two US states are impacted, according to weather data.

July 1 CME

The Sun is undergoing a period of increased activity, which includes the CME that struck on July 1.

According to earlier reports, experts predict that a solar eruption that erupted from the Sun on June 26 may approach Earth on June 30. The sun's farside was active on the specified date, despite the Earthside's continued silence. A partial halo CME was launched into space as a result of a hidden sunspot exploding. According to the website Spaceweather.com, the storm cloud will not directly strike Earth, however, it is hurled almost directly away from the planet. Experts also predict that when the active sunspot completes its farside transit in about 10 days, it will turn to face Earth.

A solar eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection or CME, is a massive plasma expulsion from the Sun's outer layer, known as the corona.

The Earth's magnetic field uses this mass ejection of solar particles to shield us from it as it travels through space.

The experts at SpaceWeather.com reported that on July 1st, an Earth-approaching CME occurred. It missed the magnetic field of the planet.

However, the researchers had anticipated that a "near miss" might have effects on the magnetic field of the Earth.

Instead, it was revealed by "snowplowing" dense plasma in the direction of the Earth, according to specialists at SpaceWeather.com.

A day earlier, a slow-moving CME that might have hit Earth but completely missed was reported on the website. The planet's magnetic field is expected to be quiet for the next three days, according to NOAA forecasters.

In addition, the website also reports that on July 1, a new sunspot has emerged.

Read also: Growing Sunspot Faces Earth, Second-Strongest Solar Flare Possible

On-Going Power Interruptions

The website states that there were some problems in the Upper Midwest states of Minnesota and further west in the state of Washington.

According to SpaceWeather.com, the close call in those states resulted in a minor G1-class geomagnetic storm with auroras.

One benefit of solar storms is the appearance of auroras, the most well-known of which is the Northern Lights, the New York Post reports.

The attractive green and blue shapes in the sky are the results of the solar wind bombarding the Earth's magnetosphere, as seen in those natural light displays.

The Earth's magnetic field helps to shield its inhabitants from some of the more severe effects of solar flares and ejections, but it is unable to completely prevent them. A solar ejection that directly impacts Earth may trigger a powerful solar storm.

The power grid, satellite communications, and even radio blackouts may experience issues as a result.

In 1989, the Canadian Province of Quebec lost power for nine hours as a result of a powerful solar eruption that sent so many electrically charged particles toward Earth.

Related article: Massive Sunspot Could Potentially Fire a Powerful Solar Flare Towards Earth
Fisherman Corey Hexter shared on social media a flyer for the occasion, which is scheduled to take place in Jupiter, Florida, on July 9, 2022.

Participants must pay $100 per boat, and the top three sharks with the heaviest weights will win cash prizes. WarBird Tournaments LLC is the organizer of the controversial shark-hunting tournament. A petition calling for the cancellation of the tournament is currently underway.

Hexter claimed in the caption of his post that the issue can now finally be addressed. He added that other marine biologists and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are present to investigate and gather information regarding shark issues.

The remarks incited outrage from local wildlife activists and concerned locals.

Allowed by Law

State laws limit participants to taking one harvestable shark per person and two per boat, but many people are concerned that this rule won't be followed. An advocacy group called OneProtest started a petition to oppose the competition, and as of this writing, it has received over 110,000 signatures.

Local underwater photographer Rayna O'Nan of Ocean Rays Photography stated that they are concerned about the harm that this competition will cause to the ecosystem. Sharks are very significant as they are apex predators that rule over entire populations.

The impact this competition will have on the local ecosystem worries other divers as well.

Bull sharks are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of Vulnerable Species, and their populations are declining even if the participants only harvest these sharks. According to Greenpeace, major fishing nations kill 100 million sharks annually, which has contributed in part to the observed population decline of more than 70% over the previous 50 years.

NOAA and FWC Statement

Katie Wegner, a spokesperson for NOAA said that Sharks are among the Highly Migratory Species, so NOAA Fisheries neither runs nor sponsors any shark fishing competitions.

The rules for each vessel regarding federally protected sharks are known to the tournament organizers. All competitors are required to abide by all applicable local, state, and federal laws as well as the tournament's rules. Enforcement actions may be taken against vessel owners and operators who violate state and federal regulations.

To stop overfishing and encourage population growth, NOAA Fisheries manages all of these species, Newsweek reports. All domestic fishing regulations are based on the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which is consistent with this.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) said that despite being aware of the tournament, it does not have the authority to stop it.

Read also: Drivers Are Astounded After Seeing a Massive Sperm Whale Traveling on the Back of a Truck

Emily Abellera, a spokesperson for the FWC, stated that they are aware that a shark fishing competition has been advertised for July 9 in southeast Florida.

Florida's FWC is not required to give its approval for fishing competitions. They must, however, abide by local, state, and federal fishing laws. FWC has no authority to "cancel" fishing tournaments because FWC does not need to give permission for them. While FWC does not sponsor these events, it may speak with tournament organizers about marine fisheries laws, best practices, or chances for gathering scientific data or samples through tournament activities.

To make sure that the fishermen are catching the right number of the right species, they do mention that they will be sending FWC officers.

Abellera also said that FWC Law Enforcement is also aware of the tournament and will continue to patrol and protect the waters and resources of the state. The designated officers will include these activities in their daily patrol schedule and, as always, they will address any violations they find by taking the proper action.

Related article: Faroe Islands Hunting Season Commence with 60 Pilot Whales Slaughter
Scientists can determine which variation has infected a COVID-19 patient in only a few hours, a crucial process that often takes days or weeks in medical facilities but may have a significant impact on treatment choices.

The COVID-19 test CoVarScan, created by pathologist Jeffrey SoRelle, M.D., and colleagues last year, quickly identifies the signs of eight hotspots on the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The team now reports in the journal Clinical Chemistry that CoVarScan can effectively distinguish between all current variations of SARS-CoV-2, and is as accurate as other techniques used to diagnose COVID-19 after testing it on more than 4,000 patients' samples obtained at UT Southwestern.

Testing CoVarScan to patients

According to Dr. SoRelle, an assistant professor of pathology and the study's principal author, experts can swiftly ascertain what variations are already in the population and whether a new variant is forming using this test, as per ScienceDaily.

When we deal with variations that react differently to medicines, it also has ramifications for certain patients.

Public health officials have been able to monitor the spread of COVID-19 in North Texas, thanks to testing findings from UT Southwestern's Once Upon a Time Human Genomics Center, and base policy choices on the frequency of variations.

Additionally, doctors have utilized the findings to select monoclonal antibodies that are more efficient against certain strains infecting severely ill COVID-19 patients.

Other COVID-19 assays are available, however, they often only detect tiny compounds on the surface of the virus or a piece of the SARS-CoV-2 genetic material, not the variation itself.

Many scientists are also concerned that these tests may not be reliable in detecting particular variations, or may fail to catch emerging strains.

Whole-genome sequencing, which is time-consuming and expensive and relies on advanced tools and analysis to spell out the whole RNA sequence contained in the viruses, is often required to identify which form of COVID-19 a patient has.

Dr. SoRelle and his colleagues at UT Southwestern sought to monitor how effectively existing tests were picking up new SARS-CoV-2 strains in early 2021.

They created their own test while working in the McDermott Center Next Generation Sequencing Core, a division of the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development, which is run by Helen Hobbs, M.D., Professor of Internal Medicine and Molecular Genetics.

They realized that sequencing a large number of specimens would not be timely or cost-effective.

CoVarScan focuses on eight SARS-CoV-2 areas where viral variants frequently diverge.

It analyzes the length of repeating genomic areas that tend to increase and decrease as the virus matures and finds minor mutations where the sequence of RNA building blocks differs.

Also Read: Record Breaking: Cancer Survivor Carries COVID-19 for 335 Days - the Longest Duration Known

The operation of CoVarScan.

In comparison to whole-genome sequencing, the CoVarScan demonstrated 96% sensitivity and 99% specificity during the study, as per Wio News.

Eight SARS-CoV-2 areas that often vary across virus variations are detected by the CoVarScan test, according to researchers.

It measures the length of repetitive genomic sequences that tend to increase and shrink as the virus evolves by detecting minor alterations in those areas.

For the purpose of measuring and copying the RNA at these eight places of interest, the technique uses polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

Related article: China's Infected COVID-19 Cases Shoot Up to 13,000 with a New Omicron Subtype
Flooding due to the heavy rain in Australia's east coast has submerged multiple areas across Sydney, New South Wales, as of Tuesday, July 5.

Local officials ordered approximately 50,000 residents in the city and its surrounding areas to evacuate and leave their homes.

This comes as river levels started to swell up beyond its designated danger levels, threatening Sydney and its suburbs, especially in the western portions.

The order also included warning to Australians who could also receive evacuation orders soon.

Flash flooding in New South Wales on Monday, July 4, has led to the initial evacuation of 30,000 people in the Australian region, making the latest round of evacuees to increase by 20,000 based on reports on Tuesday.

Floodwaters also threaten road travel and commercial establishments across the state.

Substantial risks of flooding are high for low-lying areas, as well as communities near the east coast and inland rivers. Such dangers have prompted Australian weather authorities to issue multiple major flood warnings since the weekend.

The major flooding in New South Wales comes several months after torrential rain, driven by the La Nina weather phenomenon, soaked the state, Queensland, and adjacent areas.

The first quarter of 2022 saw a large-scale evacuation in Eastern Australia, becoming one of the worst natural disasters in the country's history.

NSW Flooding Forecast

The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) of Australia issued multiple flood warnings for New South Wales over recent days, starting from Friday, July 1.

The initial forecast suggested that increased showers and a "Severe Weather Warning" for heavy rainfall is imminent for the following areas that time:

Sydney metropolitan

Illawarra

Central Tablelands districts

The weekend BoM weather advisory saw the continuance of excessive rainfall across the region.

This paved the way to the first prediction of a potential major flooding forecast for different parts of New South Wales.

The weekend flood warnings were issued for Hawkesbury, Nepean and Colo rivers.

Also Read: Australia: Bureau of Meteorology Issues Storm Warnings and Flood Warnings for Lismore This Week

East Coast Low

The latest BoM forecast suggested that flooding risk still remains for some parts of New South Wales even if rainfall eased on Monday.

The following areas are still experiencing major flooding at the time of reporting:

Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers in Menangle

Wallacia

North Richmond

Moreover, major flooding is also expected in Windsor, Lower Portland, and Wiseman Ferry.

The issuance of further severe weather warnings is possible, due to the risk of damaging winds and hazardous surf for New South Wales.

Aside from flash floods, the BoM said landslips could also possibly occur, which is likely in mountainous areas.

The Australian weather agency calls the inclement weather in general as a "East Coast Low," due to weather system located in the country's eastern portion.

As of Tuesday, officials said that emergency crews are still continuing their rescue operation, including on a bulk carrier ship which lost power off the Sydney coast due to severe weather in the rough seas, as cited by Reuters.

While floodwaters submerged bridges, roads, and vehicles, there were no immediate reports of deaths.

Related Article: Eastern Australia: Second Major Flooding Hits New South Wales and Queensland; Evacuation Orders Issued
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Xi congratulates Algerian president on 60th anniversary of independence

Xinhua) 14:52, July 05, 2022

BEIJING, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday sent a congratulatory message to President of the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria Abdelmadjid Tebboune on the 60th anniversary of the victory of the Algerian War of Independence.

Sixty years ago, the Algerian people realized national independence and people's liberation after going through an arduous struggle, opening a glorious chapter of the liberation movements of the Arabian and African people, Xi said.

The Chinese government and the Chinese people provided support and assistance to Algeria's independence revolution, and the two countries and their people had forged a profound friendship during the struggles, he added.

In recent years, political mutual trust between the two countries has been strengthened continuously and bilateral practical cooperation has been fruitful, taking the China-Algeria comprehensive strategic partnership to ever new levels, he said.

Xi also said that he highly values the development of China-Algeria relations, and stands ready to work together with President Tebboune to push forward bilateral communication and cooperation in all fields within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative to benefit both countries and their people.

On the same day, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang sent a congratulatory message to Algerian Prime Minister Ayman Benabderrahmane.

Since the two countries established diplomatic ties 64 years ago, bilateral relations have been developing healthily and steadily, Li said, noting that he is willing to work with Benabderrahmane to expand and deepen mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries in various fields, enrich the content of the China-Algeria comprehensive strategic partnership, and continuously improve the well-being of the people of the two countries.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
Virginia Theatre acts, absentee farmland ownership in Champaign County, progress on the Hotel Royer, violence concerns at Carle Foundation Hospital and attendance at last week's Trump rally in Quincy ... plus much, much more.
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Mary Schenk is a reporter covering police, courts and breaking news at The News-Gazette. Her email is mschenk@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@schenk).
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Debra Pressey is a reporter covering health care at The News-Gazette. Her email is dpressey@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@DLPressey).
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John Shaw is director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His monthly column explores how Illinois can work toward better politics and smarter government. This op-ed was distributed by Capitol News Illinois on behalf of the institute. The opinions are the authors own.
University of Illinois College of Law grad Ken Paulson, a retired member of the Illinois Bar, is the director of the Free Speech Center, a nonpartisan and nonprofit center based at Middle Tennessee State University.
The viral replication cycle is crucial for a virus to spread inside the body and cause disease. Focusing on that cycle in the hepatitis A virus (HAV), UNC School of Medicine scientists discovered that replication requires specific interactions between the human protein ZCCHC14 and a group of enzymes called TENT4 poly(A) polymerases. They also found that the oral compound RG7834 stopped replication at a key step, making it impossible for the virus to infect liver cells.

These findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are the first to demonstrate an effective drug treatment against HAV in an animal model of the disease.

Our research demonstrates that targeting this protein complex with an orally delivered, small-molecule therapeutic halts viral replication and reverses liver inflammation in a mouse model of hepatitis A, providing proof-of-principle for antiviral therapy and the means to stop the spread of hepatitis A in outbreak settings." Stanley M. Lemon, MD, senior author, professor in the UNC Department of Medicine and UNC Department of Microbiology & Immunology, and member of the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases

Lemon, who in the 1970s and 80s was part of a Walter Reed Army Medical Center research team that developed the first inactivated HAV vaccine administered to humans, said research on HAV tapered off after the vaccine became widely available in the mid-1990s. Cases plummeted in the 2000s as vaccination rates skyrocketed. Researchers turned their attention to hepatitis B and C viruses, both of which are very different from HAV and cause chronic disease. "It's like comparing apples to turnips," Lemon said. "The only similarity is that they all cause inflammation of the liver." HAV is not even part of the same virus family as hepatitis B and C viruses.

Hepatitis A outbreaks have been on the rise since 2016, even though the HAV vaccine is very effective. Not everyone gets vaccinated, Lemon pointed out, and HAV can exist for long periods of time in the environment  such as on our hands and in food and water  resulting in more than 44,000 cases, 27,000 hospitalizations and 400 deaths in the United States since 2016, according to the CDC.

Several outbreaks have occurred over the past several years, including in San Diego in 2017 driven largely by homelessness and illicit drug use, causing severe illness in about 600 people and killing 20. In 2022, there was a small outbreak linked to organic strawberries in multiple states, leading to about a dozen hospitalizations. Another outbreak in 2019 was linked to fresh blackberries. Globally, tens of millions of HAV infections occur each year. Symptoms include fever, abdominal pain, jaundice, nausea, and loss of appetite and sense of taste. Once sick, there is no treatment.

In 2013, Lemon and colleagues discovered that the hepatitis A virus changes dramatically inside the human liver. The virus hijacks bits of cell membrane as it leaves liver cells, cloaking itself from antibodies that would have otherwise quarantined the virus before it spread widely through the blood stream. This work was published in Nature and provided insight into how much researchers had yet to learn about this virus that was discovered 50 years ago and has likely caused disease dating back to ancient times.

A few years ago, researchers found that hepatitis B virus required TENT4A/B for its replication. Meanwhile, Lemon's lab led experiments to search for human proteins that HAV needs in order to replicate, and they found ZCCHC14  a particular protein that interacts with zinc and binds to RNA.

"This was the tipping point for this current study," Lemon said. "We found ZCCHC14 binds very specifically to a certain part of HAV's RNA, the molecule that contains the virus's genetic information. And as a result of that binding, the virus is able to recruit TENT4 from the human cell."

In normal human biology, TENT4 is part of an RNA-modification process during cell growth. Essentially, HAV hijacks TENT4 and uses it to replicate its own genome.

This work suggested that stopping TENT4 recruitment could stop viral replication and limit disease. Lemon's lab then tested the compound RG7834, which had previously been shown to actively block Hepatitis B virus by targeting TENT4. In the PNAS paper, the researchers detailed the precise effects of oral RG7834 on HAV in liver and feces and how the virus's ability to cause liver injury is dramatically diminished in mice that had been genetically modified to develop HAV infection and disease. The research suggests the compound was safe at the dose used in this research and the acute timeframe of the study.

"This compound is a long way from human use," Lemon said, "But it points the path to an effective way to treat a disease for which we have no treatment at all."

The pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche developed RG7834 for use against chronic hepatitis B infections and tested it in humans in a phase 1 trial, but animal studies suggested it may be too toxic for use over long periods of time.

"The treatment for Hepatitis A would be short term," Lemon said, "and, more importantly, our group and others are working on compounds that would hit the same target without toxic effects."
A new study shows that many UK radiographers have limited understanding of how new smart computer systems diagnose problems found on scans such as X-rays, MRI and CT scans.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is on the verge being more widely introduced into x-ray departments. This research shows we need to educate radiographers so that they can be sure of diagnosis, and know how to discuss the role of AI in radiology with patients and other healthcare practitioners." Clare Rainey, lead researcher

Radiographers are the specialists who patients meet at the time of the scan. They are trained to recognise the variety of problems found on medical scans, such as broken bones, joint problems, and tumours, and are traditionally considered to bridge the gap between the patient and technology. There is a severe national shortage of radiographers and radiologists, and the NHS is about to introduce AI systems to help aid diagnosis. Now a study presented at the UK Imaging and Oncology Conference in Liverpool (with simultaneous peer-reviewed publication - see below) suggests that, despite impressive performances reported by developers of AI systems, many radiographers are unsure how these new smart systems work.

Clare Rainey and Dr Sonyia McFadden from Ulster University surveyed Reporting Radiographers on their understanding of how AI worked (a 'Reporting Radiographer" provides formal reports on x-ray images). Of the 86 radiographers surveyed, 53 (62%) said they were confident in how an AI system reaches its decision. However, less than a third of respondents would be confident communicating the AI decision to stakeholders, including patients, carers and other healthcare practitioners.

The study also found that if the AI confirmed their diagnosis then 57% of respondents would have more overall confidence in the finding, however, if the AI disagreed with their opinion then 70% would seek an additional opinion.

Clare Rainey said:

"This survey highlights issues with UK reporting radiographers' perceptions of AI used for image interpretation. There is no doubt that the introduction of AI represents a real step forward, but this shows we need resources to go into radiography education to ensure that we can make the best use of this technology. Patients need to have confidence in how the radiologist or radiographer arrives at an opinion".

Modern forms of AI, where computer-based systems learn as they go along, are appearing in many places in everyday life, from self-learning robots in factories to self-driving cars and self-landing aircraft. Now the NHS is preparing to introduce these learning systems to their imaging services, such as x-rays and MRIs. It is not expected that these computerised systems will replace the final judgment of a skilled radiographer, however they may offer a high level first, or second opinion on x-ray findings. This will help reduce time needed for diagnosis and treatment, as well as well as giving a 'belt and braces' backup to human decision.

Clare Rainey said:

"It's not strictly necessary for radiographers to understand everything about how these AI systems work; after all, I don't understand how my TV or smartphone works, but I know how to use them. However, they do need to understand how the system makes the choices it does, so that they can both decide whether to accept the findings, and be able to explain these choices to patients".

As Clare Rainey is unable to travel to Liverpool, this work is presented at the UKIO by Dr Nick Woznitza. Dr Woznitza commented:

"AI is really a range of techniques, which can have exciting impact on what scans can tell us. My own group is working on how AI is applied to lung scans, which has the potential to help with diagnosing conditions form lung cancer to COVID".

UKIO President, Dr Rizwan Malik (Bolton NHS Foundation Trust) commented:

"Radiographers are positive about the introduction of AI, but like any new technology there's a learning process. As the authors indicate, this calls out for more investment in appropriate focused education and training. The introduction of Artificial Intelligence promises that the NHS will deliver a more efficient and more cost-effective use of radiology resources, as well as a more reassuring experience for patients. We need to make sure that this investment in teaching and training is widely available to all radiographers to ensure that we make the best use of this technology".
Etilaat-e-Rooz (translated by RAWA), July 2, 2022

A number of female students in Balkh University, who are from other provinces, say that the officials of the Taliban do not allow them to travel to their provinces without muharram male escort.

According to them, the Taliban have forced back some students from the road.

A representative of the students of one of the provinces, who does not want her identity to be revealed, told Etilaat-e-Roz that the Taliban did not allow the girls who live in the government hostels to go to their homes without a muharram.

According to her, during the past few days, the Taliban prevented the travel of several female students and have detained them. These students have been released with the help of professors.

A student added: "The Taliban have told the female students that no one is allowed to travel to their provinces without a male escort based on Islamic law."

Female students say that they cannot bring their muharram to Balkh due to economic problems.

Nazanin (pseudonym), says: "Our economic situation is not good enough to ask our father or brother from our province to accompany us. We find our own expenses with lots of problems."

Although there is no accurate statistics of female students who are from other provinces and live in government hostels; but it is said that there are 100 to 150 girls living in five separate hostels.

It is said that the Taliban have imposed restrictions on the hostels of female students in other provinces as well.

Among the female students in the hostel of Jawzjan University, they say that the Taliban have warned them for two days that they are not allowed to leave the hostel without a muharram.

After gaining power, the Taliban have imposed extensive restrictions on the freedom of citizens, including women and girls.
insights from industry Hector Martinez CTO BICO

As part of our SLAS Europe 2022 coverage, we speak to Hector Martinez, CTO of BICO, about the technology and services they offer within life sciences research and how they are using science to reduce organ shortages and further human health.

Please can you introduce yourself and tell us what inspired your career into the life sciences?

I am Hector Martinez, CTO and co-founder of BICO. My background is in engineering. I love engineering, and I came into the field many, many years ago. I came into the biomed field about 12 years ago and fell in love with the opportunities and possibilities. My co-founder, Erik Gatenholm, and I founded BICO together six years ago.

You are currently the CTO of BICO, a company consisting of 14 subsidiaries covering various areas of life sciences. Can you tell us more about why BICO was founded and what some of your core values are?

BICO was founded with the vision of reducing the organ shortage period. We saw that we could make a contribution in that field. We are very committed to that vision. We are also very much committed to reducing or speeding up drug development. Right now, the cycles of developing a drug are simply too long. We believe we can make a difference, and we are passionate about contributing to that.

This is something that will be done in our lifetimes, which is the kind of goal or mission I want to be part of: I want to dedicate my life to something bigger than myself.

Image Credit: Frogella/Shutterstock.com

At BICO, you also focus on combining multiple areas of science such as artificial intelligence (AI) and genomics to further human health. How important is taking a multidisciplinary approach to research? What advantages does this have?

It has been at the core of what we do. Throughout BICO, if you look at every single one of the companies we have, it is all a combination of physics and biology. It is either a combination of artificial intelligence with biology or a combination of material sciences with biology. Using technology or engineering robotics for an application in biology is another way in which fields can be combined.

Though, of course, each field is very exciting in itself, we choose to combine the two because we know that there is a lot of space that is open to innovation. As a company with close to 1300 colleagues, we know we can make a great impact by focusing on those intersections.

We love working at the intersections, and particularly the intersection where biology meets technology is a dynamic and exciting area to be in.

CELLINK, a BICO company launched in 2016, is responsible for creating the world's first universal bioink. How did you create this bioink, and how did its creation lead to breakthroughs in various research areas, including drug development and tissue engineering?

That is a very exciting story, as that was our first product. When Erik and I started the company, we had this vision of reducing the organ shortage, and we thought that bioprinting was a great tool and the technology could be used for that.

In 2016, when we launched this product to the market, it was a bio-ink that allowed scientists to bring human tissues into organs. That was a creation that came from my Ph.D. in Gutenberg, Sweden, at the Chalmers University of Technology: I worked closely with my professor on that technology, and it essentially became our first product. Erik and I commercialized the product and brought it to market, where this whole picture started to emerge.

BICO welcomes Biosero Play

With over 14 subsidiaries, you work in a variety of life sciences fields and have many products. Despite your vast portfolio of companies, what else makes BICO unique?

I think what makes BICO unique is primarily the people that we have managed to attract. We are all very passionate about what we do. Of course, though there may be many companies that can say that, we are of the opinion that when you look at what we as colleagues have achieved in such a short time, it is unique and quite remarkable.

We like to move fast. I think that is one of the unique features of BICO: when we see an opportunity, we go for it full-heartedly, and we get the job done.

Despite increased attention in recent years, further highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the drug development sector still faces great hurdles in accelerating research into new therapeutics. What do you believe to be some of the biggest challenges the drug discovery sector faces, and how are BICO trying to overcome these?

There are many challenges involved. Of course, it is hard to get into the details, but one of the bigger challenges is the task of bringing more automation - specifically integrated automation - into processes where there are a lot of studies happening in the labs.

This is where we believe we can make a significant contribution. A second point is combining the automation, digitalizing the lab, and miniaturizing the experiments to accomplish more experiments with fewer resources. There are a few areas where we want to work closely with our colleagues in the pharmaceutical field to advance drug development. I would say that automation, digitalization, and miniaturization are the fields in which we can best contribute and where we believe there is a great need.

Image Credit: GarryKillian/Shutterstock.com

As an international company with offices in both the US and Europe, how important of a role do you believe Europe plays within the acceleration of the life sciences industry?

Simply put, the role of Europe is huge. For instance, if you look at the technology stemming from Europe, there are some incredible and even beautiful technologies available on the market today because there is a great deal of funding that reaches those universities. There is a lot of interest in working with the latest and greatest.

All these combined means that you have a great deal of research happening, making its way to new companies, and then those technologies eventually reach the industry. I strongly believe that Europe is doing an excellent job in increasing the number of innovations brought forward.

Europe is also doing an excellent job promoting the startups that are making a difference. We are very thankful that we have been awarded a few European grants, which have resulted in a number of products that are available on the market today. Whether it is a product or a service, we have been able to transform European funding and turn that into a product, which is phenomenal. Our organization and those who benefit from our products are very grateful  to the institutions who granted us the funding and to the European taxpayer, without whom this important work could not take place.

Throughout Europe, many countries are leading in life sciences. The UK, for instance, has an impressive record in terms of what they have been able to do in the life sciences. Small cities like Cambridge have generated amazing technologies from such a small hub, and there are many more throughout Europe. Particularly for us as an international company, we have access to many extremely talented individuals.

What advice would you give to someone looking to start a company within the life sciences but is unsure of where to start? How important is finding a unique space in a market when competing against well-established companies and organizations?

There is no one piece of advice, but as Erik often says: "You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great." I think, in a word, it is essential to be daring. There are a lot of innovations stemming from academia that are needed in the industry. To put it another way, I encourage innovators and entrepreneurs to believe in their ideas.

Another big focus for BICO is concerning sustainability, with you being an official signatory of the UN Global Compact Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) and the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact. How important is sustainability to BICO, and how does your sustainability agenda launched in 2021 help achieve the SDGs?

Sustainability is essential. We are all part of a bigger picture. That is the framework in which we want to operate. We believe there is a lot of innovation and a lot of space for innovating new technologies and finding new ways of doing things that are returning to the ethos of doing more with less. This concept can be a guiding force: we can have an impact on reducing the number of plastics used, reducing the number of chemicals used, and still achieving great results. That is how we look at our work; in the bigger scheme of things, there must be harmony among people, products, and the planet.

Image Credit: MintArt/Shutterstock.com

BICO's subsidiaries have various technologies available within life sciences, with over 25,000 currently being used in research worldwide. How has technology advanced life sciences research over the last decade, and how vital will technology be in continuing innovation in the field? Are there any particular areas you are excited to see evolve?

Over the last decade, life sciences has evolved rapidly and vastly in areas where we have seen a great shift. Especially in biology stem, cell research, cancer research, and overall drug development, there have been dramatic shifts and a great deal of progress. We have seen a shift from utilizing 2D cell culture models into 3D cell culture models, which is quite a significant development.

We are proud to be at the cutting edge of our field, providing the technologies that will take our customers in pharma or academia from finally transitioning from 2D cell cultures to 3D cell cultures. There are multiple technologies we can offer to help them in that transition. As one example, I can see pharma using multiple tissues connected in microfluidic devices or organ-on-chip systems where a complete clinical trial can be performed on a dish. I am very, very excited about that.

Another thing is accelerating drug development, and the outcome of that is that you have less waste, potentially even replacing animal models completely. Right now, the goal is to reduce as much as possible. We are already doing that: in 2021, we estimated that we saved roughly 95,000 animal lives just in one year by providing these alternative models to animal studies. That is another reason we are so excited about the future and the contribution that we are making toward science and animal welfare.

Simply put, we are ecstatic about the progress we have made  which has been made possible thanks to the great colleagues we have on board. Good people make good products.

What do you believe the future of the life sciences to look like? Are you hopeful that we will see people living better and healthier lives with continued innovation, collaboration, and technologies? What would this mean for global health?

Globally, patients are becoming more and more aware of their health. I also note a shift from reactive healthcare into proactive healthcare, in which many people are taking steps to monitor all stages of their health.

Patients and people can take preventive measures to make sure that we are in control of our health. So all of these technologies we see here at SLAS are pointing in that direction. I believe we are all contributing towards a brighter, healthier future where patients have more control over their health.

Bio Convergence - The future of medicine explained Play

What's next for BICO? Where can people go to keep up-to-date with your latest news and projects?

Please visit us online at BICO.com. If you want to learn more about some of the exciting work that we are currently doing, please feel free to go to BICO.com/workflows, where we are highlighting some really cool applications which are interesting for industry experts or pharma healthcare nerds like myself.

About Hector Martinez

From Mexico, to the US to Sweden, Dr. Hector Martinez has left his mark around the globe. As CTO and Co-Founder of BICO, Hector has contributed with his passion in combining engineering and biology to drive BICO to where it is today. He received his doctorate in Biomedical Engineering from Chalmers University of Technology and has 12+ years of experience in biomaterials, tissue engineering and 3D bioprinting technologies.

He obtained a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington and M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. Hectors dream is to translate BICO's technology from early drug discovery to development and manufacturing of medicines, next generation medical devices and cell therapies  to bring better healthcare treatments to patients in need.
Men lined up outside the Corner of Hope, a homeless resource center, eyeing free supplies on plastic shelves inside a white van.

Some wanted bags with toiletries or condoms, but others took kits that help them safely use drugs or naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal medicine.

Gilbert Shepherd, an outreach worker for Punto de Partida, a nonprofit that serves people who misuse drugs, gently questioned those who took the drug safety kits. A man wearing sunglasses and a black T-shirt explained that not long ago he took a pill he bought for $1.50 and, within minutes, he passed out for hours. A man in a plaid shirt and khaki pants described seeing someone overdose after taking a blue pill a month before.

Those two overdoses would be added to a new Texas database called Texans Connecting Overdose Prevention Efforts, which aims to improve drug overdose tracking across the nation's second-largest state.

The University of Texas project, known as TxCOPE, is one attempt to solve a problem exasperating officials nationwide who are trying to lower the record number of drug deaths: getting an instant, accurate picture of both nonfatal and fatal drug overdoses. Community groups are now using TxCOPE's data dashboards and heat maps to see where overdoses are spiking and then target those hot spots with prevention efforts such as naloxone training and supplies, said Christopher Bailey, project coordinator at Project Vida, a health center in El Paso.

It is one of the few projects in the U.S. pooling crowdsourced overdose data from harm reduction groups in a systematic way, according to Leo Beletsky, a public health law expert at Northeastern University. Such projects compensate for the lack of an accurate picture of the decades-long overdose crisis. "It's scandalous," Beletsky said.

More than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But there is no national count of how many people survive drug overdoses. The CDC doesn't even have a standard method that states can use to count nonfatal overdoses. It aggregates overdose data from emergency room visits based on clinical and billing codes from participating states, but that excludes people who don't interact with the medical system, said Bradley Stein, director of the Rand Opioid Policy Center. It is a "huge blind spot," Stein said.

Plus, fatal overdose data is often published weeks or months later, once an official medical examiner's report or toxicology results show what substances caused the deaths. "We're looking in the rearview mirror with opioids," Stein said.

Other projects that count nonfatal overdoses, such as ODMAP, rely on reports from law enforcement or first responders. But many drug users won't call emergency services or report overdoses for fear of arrest, deportation, or other consequences such as the loss of their children or housing due to drug use, said Traci Green, a professor and the director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University.

"Simply put, current national data systems have not kept up with the scale of the overdose epidemic," wrote Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, in a call for action published June 30 in JAMA. He added that building a better data system is essential and that his agency is convening with other federal agencies to improve the tracking of nonfatal overdose data.

Nationally, Green estimated, about 50% of nonfatal overdoses go unreported, with a higher undercount in places with stricter law enforcement and among communities of color. The missing part of the picture "is a very diverse one," she said.

In Texas, up to 70% of overdoses, mostly nonfatal, go unreported, estimated Kasey Claborn, lead researcher on the TxCOPE project and an assistant professor at UT's Dell Medical School and Steve Hicks School of Social Work.

Officially, about 5,000 Texans died of a drug overdose in 2021. Claborn believes that is an undercount, too, because the state has medical examiners' offices in only 15 of its 254 counties. Most counties have justices of the peace who don't always request pricey toxicology tests to determine the cause of death. The state recorded nearly 4,000 opioid-related calls to the Texas Poison Control Network last year and nearly 8,000 opioid-related emergency room visits in 2020. Claborn is analyzing how the data TxCOPE collects compares with those official statistics.

Drug experts are frustrated the U.S. doesn't treat the overdose epidemic with the urgency it does for covid-19. Drug deaths surged during the pandemic as illegal fentanyl, which is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, flooded the nation's street drug supply and people were cut off from substance abuse support. But while public health authorities based pandemic restrictions on local covid caseloads and death counts, experts and outreach workers have lacked real-time data that would allow them to react with interventions that could save drug users' lives.

"How is that helping in a public health emergency?" said Daniel Sledge, a paramedic testing TxCOPE in Williamson County, just north of Austin.

That information could help health workers identify which areas to blanket with naloxone or whether they need to educate people about a batch of drugs laced with lethal fentanyl.

TxCOPE, funded by the state's opioid grant and the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, started in El Paso in June 2021 and then expanded to Austin, San Antonio, and later Williamson County. An official launch is planned for Sept. 1, with a rollout to the rest of the state in stages.

Before the group started, outreach was more haphazard. "It was catch as catch can," said Bailey, with Project Vida. Like many harm reduction groups, they would informally track overdoses, which often occurred among an itinerant population. But they didn't have a way to pool that information with other city groups or generate maps to drive outreach. TxCOPE has helped the group find pockets of at-risk people so they can provide them with overdose prevention, peer support, or treatment referrals. Now "you are able to really home in on those areas with laserlike focus," he said.

Punto de Partida outreach worker Paulina Hijar, for example, said she routinely meets people who injected their friends with dangerous and ineffective homemade overdose remedies  either milk or a mixture of water and salt  or got naloxone and never called authorities. Because outreach workers have built trust in their communities, they say, they can gather information about overdoses, including when and where they occurred, that would normally be omitted from official statistics.

Privacy is a key feature of the TxCOPE project  people need to be able to share overdose information without fear of consequences, Claborn said. Texas passed a law in 2021 intended to shield from arrest people who call emergency services during an overdose, but it's narrowly tailored. People who have a felony drug conviction, for example, don't qualify. And someone is protected from arrest only once. TxCOPE has a federal certificate of confidentiality that protects it from court orders, and Claborn doesn't share raw data with the state.

Claborn wants to use the project, which is being revamped this summer before the launch, to bring more federal dollars to the state. "We've had difficulty proving there is an actual problem in Texas, because it's been hidden," she said.

She has been working on a feature that would allow anyone in the community to report overdoses, an effort to improve counts in parts of the state without harm reduction groups. Eventually, Claborn wants to check the crowdsourced data against toxicology reports.

For now, though, the project relies on anecdotal evidence from drug users and others in the community who report reviving someone with naloxone or seeing someone lose consciousness or suffer other effects of taking too much of a drug.

On a recent afternoon, Shepherd and Hijar recognized a man in El Paso's Houston Park. He told them about a woman who had died alone in her apartment about a week and a half earlier after taking a mixture of drugs. He also mentioned a guy he was able to revive with naloxone about two months earlier. Details were minimal.

Researchers and harm reduction groups say this nebulous data is better than what they've had in the past. Even though the project's anecdotal data isn't thoroughly vetted, the step toward timeliness is great, Stein said. "We've got nothing else right now," he said.
The grinding two-plus years of the pandemic have yielded outsize benefits for one company  Pfizer  making it both highly influential and hugely profitable as covid-19 continues to infect tens of thousands of people and kill hundreds each day.

Its success in developing covid medicines has given the drugmaker unusual weight in determining U.S. health policy. Based on internal research, the company's executives have frequently announced the next stage in the fight against the pandemic before government officials have had time to study the issue, annoying many experts in the medical field and leaving some patients unsure whom to trust.

Pfizer's 2021 revenue was $81.3 billion, roughly double its revenue in 2020, when its top sellers were a pneumonia vaccine, the cancer drug Ibrance, and the fibromyalgia treatment Lyrica, which had gone off-patent.

Now its mRNA vaccine holds 70% of the U.S. and European markets. And its antiviral Paxlovid is the pill of choice to treat early symptoms of covid. This year, the company expects to rake in more than $50 billion in global revenue from the two medications alone.

Paxlovid's value to vaccinated patients isn't yet clear, and Pfizer's covid vaccine doesn't entirely prevent infections, although each booster temporarily restores some protection. Yet, while patients may recoil at the need for repeated injections  two boosters are now recommended for people 50 and older  the requirement is gold for investors.

"Hopefully, we could be giving it annually and maybe for some groups that are high-risk more often," CEO Albert Bourla told investors this year. "Then you have the treatment [Paxlovid] that will, let's say, resolve the issues of those that are getting the disease."

Just last week, the Biden administration agreed to buy another 105 million doses of Pfizer's covid vaccine for the fall booster campaign, paying $3.2 billion. At $30.47 a dose, it's a significant premium over the $19.50-a-dose rate the government paid for the first 100 million. The vaccine is being modified to target early omicron variants, but newer variants are gaining dominance.

Because the virus keeps mutating and will be around for a long time, the market for Pfizer's products won't go away. In wealthier countries, the public is likely to keep coming back for more, like diners at an all-you-can-eat restaurant, sated but never entirely satisfied.

The reliance on Pfizer products at each stage of the pandemic has steered the U.S. response, including critical public health decisions.

When last year Bourla suggested that a booster shot would soon be needed, U.S. public health officials later followed, giving the impression that Pfizer was calling the tune. Some public health experts and scientists worry these decisions were hasty, noting, for example, that although boosters with the mRNA shots produced by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech improve antibody protection initially, it generally doesn't last.

Since January, Bourla has been saying that U.S. adults will probably all need annual booster shots, and senior FDA officials have indicated since April that they agree.

At a June 28 meeting of FDA advisers considering a potential fall vaccination campaign, Pfizer presented studies involving about 3,500 people showing that tweaks to its covid vaccine allowed it to elicit more antibodies against the omicron variant that began circulating last December. But most of the advisers said the FDA should require the next vaccine to target an even newer omicron variant, known as BA.5.

That would mean more work and expense for Pfizer, which called on the FDA to enable it to make future changes to the covid vaccine without human trials  similar to how annual influenza vaccines are approved. "If such a process were implemented, responses to future waves could be substantially accelerated," said Kena Swanson, Pfizer's vice president for viral vaccines.

FDA officials at the meeting did not immediately respond to the suggestion.

As societies abandon other efforts to control covid's spread, such as mask mandates and physical distancing, Pfizer's prospects look even brighter, especially now that the company has brought out the first oral covid treatment, Paxlovid.

"People are going to get out there," Angela Hwang, president of Pfizer Biopharmaceuticals Group, told investors May 3. "We know with all of that, infections are going to increase, and thats the role that Paxlovid can play."

During a recent investor call, a Pfizer official could spin the recent reports that the virus can hide from Paxlovid into good news, predicting that, as with the vaccine, patients may need multiple courses.

Immunocompromised patients "may carry this virus for a very, very long time," Dr. Mikael Dolsten said in the investor call. "And we see that area as a real new opportunity growth area for Paxlovid to do very well, where you may need to take multiple courses."

Pfizer has spent handsomely to bolster its influence during the pandemic. Since early 2020, it has shelled out more than $25 million for in-house lobbying and payments to 19 lobbying firms, pushing for legislation to protect its products and promote more robust U.S. vaccination programs.

Pfizer's donations to political candidates in the 2020 cycle were larger than those of any other drug company, totaling about $3.5 million, with the greatest share going to Democrats. Joe Biden got $351,000; Donald Trump just $103,000.

Unlike Moderna, Sanofi, Novavax, and Johnson & Johnson, which got billions of dollars in U.S. support, Pfizer did not seek government money to develop its vaccine, saying it would work independently.

Pfizer did benefit from $445 million the German government provided to BioNTech, Pfizer's partner in developing the vaccine. And, in the end, Pfizer relied substantially on U.S. government logistical support, according to a new book by former Health and Human Services official Paul Mango.

Pfizer recorded $7.8 billion in U.S. revenue for its covid vaccine in 2021. The government has options to buy 1.6 billion Pfizer vaccine doses and has so far bought 900 million of them, including 500 million purchased at not-for-profit prices to be donated to poor countries.

Pfizer's terms in the contracts exclude many taxpayer protections. They deny the government any intellectual property rights and say that federal spending played no role in the vaccine's development  even though National Institutes of Health scientists invented a key feature of Pfizer's vaccine, said Robin Feldman, a patent law expert at the University of California.

"The agreement could set a precedent," in which another company could cite Pfizer's contracts to argue the government has surrendered any rights to an invention, she said.

The government also has agreed to buy about 20 million five-day courses of Paxlovid for $530 each.

Prices for the covid drug and vaccine will go up once the pandemic period is over, Bourla said at a January event, "to reflect the cutting-edge technology."

Pfizer spokesperson Sharon Castillo declined to respond to specific questions about Pfizer's influence on pandemic policy. She released a statement saying that "since Day 1 of this pandemic, we have been laser-focused on working collaboratively with all relevant stakeholders to bring to the world two medical breakthroughs. In doing so, we have moved at the speed of science, complied with the strict regulatory processes, and relied on our scientists' expertise and manufacturing prowess."

There is little question that the company ripped a scientific home run in responding rapidly to meet the medical needs created by the pandemic. It used artificial intelligence to track the spread of the virus and find the best places to recruit volunteers for its vaccine trials and deployed rapid drug-screening tools to develop Paxlovid.

Its success with the covid vaccine has raised hopes for a Pfizer vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, a danger to babies and older adults. The company is also moving toward seeking licensure for shots that protect against Lyme disease and hospital infections.

Pfizer had long shunned the vaccine business, with its historically modest financial returns. It dropped out of human vaccine production in the late 1960s after the recall of its disastrous measles vaccine, which sickened scores of children after exposure to the virus caused unexpected reactions with antibodies stimulated by the shot. The company returned to the field in 2009 when it bought Wyeth, which was making a highly effective and uncommonly profitable vaccine against pneumonia and ear infections.

Now, Pfizer is a new kind of global powerhouse. In 2021 alone, the company hired nearly 2,400 people. "We are a household name right now to billions of people," Bourla said in January. "People are trusting the Pfizer vaccines."

The company's power worries some vaccinologists, who see its growing influence in a realm of medical decision-making traditionally led by independent experts.

During a recent investor call, analyst Evan Seigerman of BMO Capital Markets asked whether the world was "kind of walking blindly into recommending boosters" so frequently.

Data from Israel, which uses only Pfizer's vaccine and has provided most of the studies that have led to vaccination booster recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggests that third and fourth doses of the mRNA vaccines increase antibody levels that quickly wane again. Added boosters saved some lives in the over-60 population, but the data is less clear about the benefit to younger adults.

When President Biden in September 2021 offered boosters to Americans  not long after Bourla had recommended them  Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a developer of a vaccine for an intestinal virus, wondered, "Where's the evidence you are at risk of serious disease when confronted with covid if you are vaccinated and under 50?"

Policies on booster recommendations for different groups are complex and shifting, Offit said, but the CDC, rather than Bourla and Pfizer, should be making them.

"We're being pushed along," he said. "The pharmaceutical companies are acting like public health agencies."
In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* preprint server, University of Kansas researchers assessed the effect of superspreading events (SSEs) on the United States (US) severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak dynamics.

Study: Exploring the Role of Superspreading Events in SARS-CoV-2 Outbreaks. Image Credit: StockTom / Shutterstock

Background

SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that emerged in late December 2019, has quickly swept over the globe, resulting in over 546 million illnesses and more than 6.3 million fatalities thus far. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has strained the US healthcare network, with several hospitals exceeding or nearing capacity and few limiting services.

Governments at the state and national levels have responded by issuing guidelines and regulations for decreasing SARS-CoV-2 transmission, including social-distancing directives, mask mandates, stay-at-home instructions, and restrictions on big gatherings. However, insufficient adherence and compliance by the population have affected the efficiency of these laws and regulations, encouraging SSEs, which have assisted the SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

About the study

In the present study, the researchers developed a continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) model to examine the impact of SSEs on the dynamics of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in the US. The authors defined SSEs as social or public events that lead to numerous SARS-CoV-2 infections over a short period.

The current research sought to determine the effect of SSEs compared to non-SSEs on COVID-19 outbreak dynamics, the efficacy of hospitalization and quarantine as containment methods for SSE relative to non-SSE-dominated outbreaks, and the impact of quarantine violation on the efficacy of quarantine for SSE compared to non-SSE-dominated outbreaks.

The investigators simulated a CTMC model for SARS-CoV-2 spread utilizing Gillespie's direct algorithm under three distinct scenarios: 1) neither hospitalization nor quarantine; 2) quarantine, hospitalization, premature hospital discharge, and quarantine violation; and 3) hospitalization and quarantine but not premature hospital discharge or quarantine violation. They also alter the rate of quarantine violations under realistic hospitalization and quarantine (RHQ) scenarios.

Results

The study results demonstrated that the SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks with SSE dominance were often more variable yet less severe and more prone to extinction than outbreaks without SSE dominance. The authors observed this after eliminating hospitalization and quarantine conditions or upon the inclusion of hospitalization, quarantine, early hospital discharge, and quarantine breach.

However, the severity of the most catastrophic SSE-dominated outbreaks was higher than the most severe outbreaks without SSE dominance, despite most SSE-dominated outbreaks being less severe. Upon the inclusion of quarantine and hospitalization, while excluding quarantine breach and premature hospital discharge, SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks dominated by SSE were more susceptible to extinction than outbreaks without SSE dominance but were more severe and less variable.

Upon the inclusion of quarantine, hospitalization, premature hospital discharge, and halved quarantine breach, outbreaks dominated by SSE were comparable to when quarantine and hospitalization were included, but quarantine breach and premature hospital discharge were excluded. Besides, when quarantine breach was doubled outbreaks were similar to when quarantine and hospitalization were excluded.

Quarantine and hospitalization were more potent at regulating outbreaks dominated by SSE than those without SSE dominance in all scenarios. Similarly, quarantine breaches and premature hospital discharge were significant for outbreaks dominated by SSE.

SSE-dominated outbreaks were extremely improbable to become extinct when quarantine and hospitalization were excluded. They were moderately unlikely to become extinct when quarantine, hospitalization, premature hospital discharge, and quarantine violation were included. Furthermore, they were highly plausible to become extinct when hospitalization and quarantine were included, but quarantine breach and premature hospital discharge were excluded.

Moreover, SSE-dominated outbreaks were more likely to become extinct when quarantine violations were halved. However, outbreaks dominated by SSE were less likely to become extinct when quarantine breaches were doubled.

Conclusions

Altogether, the study findings showed that COVID-19 outbreaks dominated by SSE differ noticeably from non-SSE-dominated outbreaks in their severity, variability, and chances of extinction. They also vary, albeit more low-key, from outbreaks dominated by superspreading individuals (SI). The possibility of hospitalization or quarantine and the likelihood of premature hospital discharge or violation of quarantine significantly impact the dynamics of SSE-dominated outbreaks.

Hospitalization and quarantine were substantially effective preventative interventions for COVID-19 outbreaks dominated by SSE. Nevertheless, premature hospital discharge and breach of the quarantine drastically diminished their efficacy. Besides, the team assessed control techniques using the probability of extinction.

The present findings have significant public health consequences, necessitating SARS-CoV-2 modelers must: 1) assess the contribution of SSEs or SIs to COVID-19 spread; and 2) differentiate between SSEs, SIs, and non-SIs/non-SSEs in their models. More research into the combined and individual effects of SSEs and SIs on SARS-CoV-2 outbreak dynamics and the efficacy of control strategies for various kinds of outbreaks were required to guide eradication and containment initiatives.

*Important notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
Value in Health, the official journal of ISPOR-;the professional society for health economics and outcomes research, announced today the publication of a series of articles providing new insights on measuring and valuing children's health-related quality of life. The collection of papers was published in the July 2022 issue of Value in Health.

"Evaluating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of treatments for children is essential to support good healthcare decisions," said Nancy J. Devlin, PhD, Center for Health Policy, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia in her commentary on the 3 full-length papers. "Yet the evidence on child health-related quality of life (HRQoL) submitted to health technology assessment (HTA) has, in general, been very poor. In fact, no HTA body anywhere in the world currently provides methods guidance on how to measure and value HRQoL in younger populations."

Part of the challenge facing researchers seeking to value child HRQoL is that there are additional methodological issues involved, including the complexity of asking adults to value the health states of children. The papers in the Value in Health engaged one of these important issues: what age should be specified when we ask adults to value child HRQoL-;and what effect will the specified age exert on the values?

Devlin's introductory commentary, "Valuing Child Health Isn't Child's Play," includes an overview of the topic and introduces the 3 articles in the series:

"Why Do Adults Value Eq-5D-Y-3L Health States Differently for Themselves Than for Children and Adolescents: A Think-Aloud Study," by Vivian Reckers-Droog, PhD, Milad Karimi, PhD, Stefan Lipman, PhD, and Janine Verstraete, PhD "Exploration of the Reasons Why Health State Valuation Differs for Children Compared to Adults: A Mixed Methods Approach," by Sarah Dewilde, PhD, Mathieu F Janssen, PhD, Andrew J. Lloyd, DPhil, and Koonal Shah, PhD. "Does Changing the Age of a Child to Be Considered in Eq-5D-Y-3L DCE Based Valuation Studies Affect Health Preferences?," by Juan M. Ramos-Goni, PhD, Anabel Estevez Carrillo, MSc, Oliver Rivero-Arias, DPhil, Donna Rowen, PhD, David Mott, PhD, Koonal Shah, PhD, and Mark Oppe, PhD.

Valuation of child HRQoL underscores the importance of identifying and being transparent about all value judgements involved in methods choices. These should reflect the principles and values of decision makers who use this evidence. There may not be a 'one-size-fits-all' set of methods for valuing child HRQoL that are acceptable to all HTA bodies, so consultation with local decision-makers is crucial." Nancy J. Devlin, PhD, Center for Health Policy, University of Melbourne

An ISPOR Emerging Good Practices Task Force on pediatric HRQoL values, planned to commence before the end of 2022, will build on this growing evidence base to promote consistent and improved practices.

"In the end," concluded Devlin, "while methods questions remain, considerable progress is now being made in valuing child HRQoL. These efforts will support greater use of these instruments in clinical trials and other studies. The growing body of evidence around methods, greater awareness of the normative issues, and availability of value sets will help HTA bodies to establish methods guidance, which will give greater clarity to those planning pediatric clinical trials."
A new study reveals why a highly infectious variant of the cholera bug, which caused large disease outbreaks in the early 1990s, did not cause the eighth cholera pandemic as feared  but instead unexpectedly disappeared.

The study analysed samples of O139 Vibrio cholerae, a variant of the bacteria that causes cholera, and discovered significant changes in its genome over time that led to its unexpected decline.

These genetic changes resulted in a gradual loss of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and a change in the types of toxin produced by the cholera bug. In combination, these changes are likely to account for O139's failure to seed the eighth cholera pandemic.

The cholera bug is not currently monitored on a regular basis. Scientists say continuous monitoring of the genes underlying AMR and toxin production is key to keeping ahead of the cholera bug as it evolves. In particular, this will help to plan changes to vaccines and appropriate public health responses to prevent future cholera outbreaks.

The O139 variant of Vibrio cholerae was first detected in India in 1992. It quickly became dominant over the existing O1 variant and caused huge disease outbreaks in India and Southern Bangladesh.

The rapid spread of O139 across Asia surprised scientists, who feared it would cause the eighth cholera pandemic  and as a result cholera vaccines were modified accordingly. But for some reason that pandemic never happened: by 2015 the variant had largely declined, and the O1 variant established itself once again as a dominant strain. Until now, scientists have not understood why.

The study is published today in the journal Nature Communications.

There's a real possibility that another cholera variant may emerge with the potential to cause large outbreaks, which could lead to the eighth cholera pandemic. Continuous surveillance of the variants in circulation is our best chance of preventing mass outbreaks." Dr Ankur Mutreja, Study Senior Author, Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease, University of Cambridge

Cholera is a life-threatening infectious disease, usually caught by eating or drinking contaminated food or water. It only causes large outbreaks in places where hygiene and sanitation is poor, so is mainly restricted to the developing world.

Cholera can also arise when water and sewage systems are disrupted due to war or natural disaster. Recent news reports have warned that the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, all but destroyed by weeks of Russian shelling, is now at risk of a major cholera outbreak.

In the past 200 years, seven cholera pandemics have killed millions of people across the world; the seventh is still ongoing with large outbreaks in Yemen and Somalia. The dominant variant of Vibrio cholerae, the bacteria that causes cholera outbreaks today, is called O1 and arose in the 1960s  replacing all pre-existing variants.

The new study analysed 330 samples of the cholera variant O139, taken between 1992 and 2015, to reveal two key changes in its genome that may have been the cause of its decline over three overlapping waves of disease transmission.

Before the O139 variant appeared, cholera was sensitive to many antibiotics. But O139 was resistant to these, which is likely to be the reason it became the dominant variant very quickly.

The study found that O139 had started out with several genes giving it resistance to antibiotics. But over time it gradually lost these genes. In tandem, the O1 variant gained antibiotic resistance.

"When it first arose, the O139 variant of cholera had antimicrobial resistance. But over time this resistance was lost - while the pre-existing O1 variant gained resistance and re-established itself," said Mutreja.
Interstitial pneumonia with autoimmune features (IPAF) is a disease with many possible causes and no standard of care, making it particularly difficult to treat. While immunosuppressant drugs are primarily prescribed, they don't work for all patients.

A new study of patients treated for IPAF at UT Southwestern offers insight into the disease, which can result in a reduced quality of life and sometimes early death. Among their findings, the researchers discovered that a combination therapy of mycophenolate mofetil and prednisone was associated with a lack of disease progression. The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Rheumatology.

"Some patients with IPAF don't require any treatment at all and some seem to not respond to immunosuppression. Clinicians are now finding that a new class of medications called antifibrotics may be an appropriate treatment, but we still don't know which IPAF patients need to be treated with immunosuppression and which need to be treated with antifibrotics or both," said Elena Joerns, M.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Rheumatic Diseases at UT Southwestern, who led the study with Una Makris, M.D., Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Population and Data Sciences.

Drs. Joerns and Makris, working with colleagues from the Division of Rheumatic Diseases and the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, sought to define features of IPAF that would predict which patients will respond favorably to immunosuppression. Crucially, the identification of such features would help to guide physicians on the best treatment for their patients.

To this end, the researchers reviewed medical records of 63 patients with IPAF. They evaluated clinical, serologic, and morphologic disease features, as well as demographic characteristics. The group did not find any characteristics associated with a response to immunosuppression.

Although we did not find statistically significant differences, we did identify trends that could be informative for future studies. For example, no patient positive for anti-synthetase antibody progressed and there was greater progression among men and former or current smokers, which aligns with findings from other studies." Dr. Una Makris, M.D., Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Population and Data Sciences

Moreover, the study found that immunosuppressive therapy with mycophenolate mofetil and prednisone was associated with lack of disease progression in immunosuppressed IPAF patients, including those with usual interstitial pneumonia pattern, a feature suggested by some cohorts to be predictive of worse mortality.

The study was limited by a small cohort of patients from a single center. Additionally, the characteristics that could be evaluated were limited to those in the medical records. Dr. Joerns explained that patients do not all receive the same battery of tests when diagnosed. More in-depth serologic workups of IPAF patients may be needed to improve diagnoses and identify features predictive of response to immunosuppression.

The study results underscore the challenges in treating IPAF and the mystery that surrounds this newly defined disease.

"There is still a lot to learn about IPAF so that we can optimally manage this patient population," said Dr. Joerns, who is pursuing further research. "But we have an excellent collaboration at UT Southwestern between Rheumatology, Pulmonology, Radiology, and Pathology, all of whom are essential for classifying and managing these patients, which makes our center well poised to answer these questions on the pathogenesis of IPAF."

Other UTSW researchers who contributed to the study include Traci N. Adams, Chad A. Newton, Bonnie Bermas, David Karp, Kiran Batra, Jose Torrealba, Lesley Davila, Joan Reisch, and Craig Glazer.

The study was supported by a Ruth L. Kirschstein Institutional National Research Service Award (T32).

Dr. Bermas holds the Dr. Morris Ziff Distinguished Professorship in Rheumatology. Dr. Karp holds the Fredye Factor Chair in Rheumatoid Arthritis Research and the Harold C. Simmons Chair in Arthritis Research. Dr. Torrealba holds the Drs. George and Anne Race Distinguished Professorship of Pathology.
In a recent article published in the medRxiv* preprint server, investigators analyzed the varying pattern of respiratory viruses resulting in hospitalizations from 2012-2013 to 2021-2022 in Canada.

Background

Rigorous mitigation measures, including border closures, travel restrictions, social exclusion, business/school closures, lockdowns, teleworking, and masks usage in public spaces, have been implemented globally to lessen severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spread and its effect on hospital bed availability.

Respiratory viruses other than SARS-CoV-2 (ORV) ruled the Northern hemisphere in the initial few weeks of 2020. However, SARS-CoV-2 quickly replaced seasonal ORV as the predominant respiratory virus, altering some RVs' traditional seasonality and virtually eradicating others for long periods in various parts of the world.

Nevertheless, a thorough explanation of the combined impact of SARS-CoV-2 and ORV on hospitalizations is absent. Understanding the combined effect of ORV and SARS-CoV-2 on hospital capacity over the two coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic years and comparing it to pre-pandemic seasons may shed light on the post-pandemic timeframe when ORV and SARS-CoV-2 will cocirculate.

About the study

In the present study, the researchers aimed to analyze the viral etiology of acute respiratory infection (ARI) hospitalizations from a surveillance network in Quebec, Canada, during and before two COVID-19 pandemic years. Since 20122013, a time frame of heightened influenza circulation, Quebec has had a prospective hospital-based monitoring system with systematic screening for a panel of 17 respiratory viruses in adult and pediatric patients hospitalized for ARI. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was monitored using the same system, expanding to include SARS-CoV-2 in the panel.

The team compared the SARS-CoV-2 and ORV detection in 20202021 and 20212022 to eight pre-pandemic influenza seasons in hospitalized ARI patients who were examined systematically by a multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Four regional hospitals with a catchment area of about 10% of the Quebec population were included in the surveillance during the eight influenza seasons from 20122013.

Due to difficulties with hospital resources during the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the four hospitals did not participate in 20202021; this institution rejoined the network in 20212022. In 20212022, two more tertiary hospitals (one for children and one for adults) joined the network.

Results

The study results showed that not only between the two COVID-19 pandemic years and the pre-pandemic periods but also between the initial and second pandemic years, there were significant continuing variations in the viral etiology and age distribution of ARI hospitalizations. SARS-CoV-2 was generally the most common viral cause of ARI hospitalizations in both pandemic years. However, it was not prevalent in children in the initial year but was present in children during the second.

The observed variances in etiology and age distribution of respiratory hospitalizations were an after-effect of alterations in SARS-CoV-2 and ORV circulation based on the magnitude of COVID-19 mitigation interventions. The emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 variants was another possible contributing factor. For instance, SARS-CoV-2 ancestral and Alpha variants circulated in the 20212022 winter and autumn, predominantly affected adults, but Delta and Omicron variants, which both mostly afflicted children, predominated in the 20212022 winter and autumn.

In addition, compared to the initial pandemic season, an unseasonal respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) outbreak in August and September of 2021 led to a high percentage of children hospitalized with ORV, mostly RSV, and SARS-CoV-2. Besides, the availability and use of COVID-19 outpatient antivirals and vaccinations, which can help avoid hospitalizations, differed by age group. Older patients were given priority in SARS-CoV-2 vaccination programs during the second pandemic year, and more patients with comorbidities were given access to outpatient antiviral therapy. Furthermore, COVID-19 vaccinations were not readily available for children until much later, and vaccination rates for young adults were less than the older people.

RSV and influenza were often the two most frequently found viruses among hospitalized ARI patients during the influenza seasons before the pandemic. During the initial year of the COVID-19 pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 was the most significant respiratory virus; however, in 20212022, its contribution fell while ORV's impact rose. Nevertheless, there were variations between the children and adult populations.

RV, primarily RSV, impacted more children versus adults in pre-pandemic winter seasons. While the overall influence of RV was low during the pandemic period, ORV and not SARS-CoV-2 drastically affected the pediatric populations in both pandemic years. Influenza was the most significant virus across the pre-pandemic years in adults. However, in the two pandemic years, SARS-CoV-2 was more prevalent than ORV in adults.

Conclusions

The current report based on comprehensive RV detection illustrates variations in the etiology of 17 RVs and SARS-CoV-2 across adult and pediatric ARI hospitalizations in the two COVID-19 pandemic years compared to eight pre-pandemic years in the same cohort. According to the authors, the present research encompasses the broadest follow-up period in adult and pediatric hospitalized patients during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and pre-pandemic phases.

In summary, the study findings showed that during the initial two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were significant changes in the age distribution and viral etiology of ARI hospitalizations in adults and children. The second pandemic year was more identical in RV contribution and age distribution to the pre-pandemic winter seasons, but the first pandemic year was dramatically different.

Variations in SARS-CoV-2 and ORV contribution across hospital morbidity may be caused by the complex interaction between mitigation strategies, secular trends and intrinsic seasonality of ORV, COVID-19 vaccine uptake and efficacy, shifts in circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants, and their severity, outpatient antiviral therapies, and possible viral interference.

The current analysis highlights the significance of monitoring in comprehending modified seasonal trends of RV and demonstrates that the impact of SARS-CoV-2 relative to ORV was continuously shifting, even if the researchers do not document the data for the entire 20212022 season. These findings demonstrate changing RV epidemiology and the need for closer examination of the causes of ARI hospitalizations to develop targeted public health recommendations.

*Important notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
Women diagnosed with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa are five (500%) times more likely on average to have underweight babies, according to a comprehensive new study.

Results presented today at the 38th Annual Meeting of ESHRE also show a substantially increased risk (298%) of premature birth and more than double the likelihood (341%) of placental abruption. This is compared with mothers without anorexia, which is often a life-long mental health condition.

Ido Feferkorn MD from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, will outline the details of the analysis. It was based on data from more than 9 million women both with and without anorexia, a severe psychiatric disorder characterized by starvation and malnutrition.

Dr Feferkorn described the findings on the incidence of small-for-gestational-age newborns in particular as 'shockingly higher' when compared with outcomes for the offspring of healthy-weight women.

Eating disorders can have an impact on menstruation, but women with anorexia do conceive naturally or with the help of fertility drugs to stimulate ovulation. Dr Feferkorn said the results of the study conveyed a serious health message about management of these patients during and after pregnancy.

Many fertility specialists are faced with the dilemma of treating women who are undernourished. Or, by refusing to do so, possibly preventing these patients the joy of parenthood. Clinics should be aware of the magnitude of adverse outcomes related to pregnancy among those patients with anorexia who do conceive." Ido Feferkorn, MD, McGill University

Data came from a large publicly available database of US hospital inpatient care records. All deliveries between 2004 and 2014 were included that related to women with a diagnosis of anorexia during pregnancy (n=214) and those who did not (n=9,096,574)

Overall, results showed significant adverse pregnancy outcomes for women with anorexia.

In addition, they showed that these individuals were more likely to have another psychiatric problem in addition to their eating disorder, to be smokers, to have thyroid disease, to be white, or of higher income.

No difference was found in rates for other conditions which can affect women in pregnancy. These included hypertensive diseases, gestational diabetes, placenta previa, postpartum hemorrhage, and the bacterial infection chorioamnionitis. The need for a Caesarean section was no greater than in women without an anorexia diagnosis.

The study did have limitations including the fact that the authors were unable to assess the severity of anorexia, nor compliance with treatment.

One wider implication of the findings, said Dr Feferkorn, is that women should be screened for anorexia prior to fertility treatment, which current evidence suggests most physicians fail to do.
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(Newser)  Three men are missing and presumed dead in California after jumping into a river to save a struggling child. Witnesses say a group was fishing on the riverbank near the Three Mile Slough Bridge off Brannan Island State Recreation Area on Sunday when an 8-year-old child began struggling in the water, per NBC News. Five men entered the river, but only two returned with the child, who didn't require medical attention. Sacramento County Sheriff's deputies, who received a call around 1:30pm, searched for two hours before shifting their focus to a recovery mission assisted by fire officials and the Coast Guard, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The three men have yet to be found.

A friend at the scene identified the missing men as Guistillo Rivas, Edwin Perez, and Danilo Solorzano, all from Oakland, who came to the area every July 4 to camp, swim, and fish, per KTXL. "Three people, my friends ... and we used to come here all the time," Juan Cabrera, one of the two men who made it back to shore, tells KCRA. "This happened so fast." The incident occurred at "an unguarded swim beach ... mainly a fishing access off of an unregulated trail in the state park," says Capt. Paul Wissler with California State Parks. He adds that windy conditions combined with currents to create hazardous conditions Sunday. None of the men were wearing life jackets, per KTXL. (Read more missing person stories.)
(Newser)  California Gov. Gavin Newsom launched a commercial Monday attacking Republicans he's not running againstyet. The Democrat addresses Floridians in a 30-second spot that began airing Monday on Fox News stations throughout their state, the Los Angeles Times reports. "Freedom, it's under attack in your state. Republican leaders, they're banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors," the Democrat says in the commercial. "I urge all of you living in Florida to join the fight, or join us in California, where we still believe in freedomfreedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom from hate, and the freedom to love."

The move suggests something a candidate for national office might do, contrasting policies in his Democratically controlled state with those of Republican-run Florida. Newsom is a potential presidential candidate, as is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. Newsom has moved out front on issues in his party, recently, per the Times, upsetting its leaders in Washington by urging they do more on issues such as abortion. "Stop playing defense, Democrats," Newsom said last month. The aggressiveness is exactly what Democrats praised about Newsom's ad after he tweeted it, per Newsweek.

Pam Keith, a former Florida congressional candidate, tweeted that the commercial was "the first time a Democrat anywhere has proactively taken the fight to a Republican anywhere." Democratic strategist Dash Dobrofsky posted, "I encourage Democrats to do more of this." By Sunday evening, after Newsom had tweeted the ad but before it had actually run, the video had been viewed 1.4 million times on Twitter and 90,000 times on YouTube. It didn't require a big investment: At the end of May, Newsom's reelection campaign had more than $23 million, per the Times; the Florida buy cost about $105,000. (Read more Gavin Newsom stories.)
(Newser)  Police say a man they have described as a "person of interest" in the mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade Monday is now in custody. Highland Park police say 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo was taken into custody without incident around eight hours after the shooting, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Crimo was taken into custody on US 41, about five miles north of where the parade was fired on, after a North Chicago officer spotted him and gave chase, police say. Before the arrest, police surrounded a Highland Park address linked to Crimo. No charges have been filed yet and police have not disclosed a possible motive.

Police say the gunman fired on the Highland Park parade from a rooftop in the Chicago suburb, killing six people, wounding at least 30, and causing hundreds of paradegoers to flee in panic, the AP reports. Highland Park Police Commander Chris ONeill says the shooter fired a "high-powered rifle" from a place where he was "very difficult to see." Dr. Brigham Temple at NorthShore University Health Center says 26 patients, ranging in age from eight to 85, were brought to the hospital, reports CNN.

"It is devastating that a celebration of America was ripped apart by our uniquely American plague," Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker told a news conference. In an earlier statement, the governor said, "There are no words for the kind of evil that shows up at a public celebration of freedom, hides on a roof and shoots innocent people with an assault rifle," per NBC Chicago. President Biden said he and Jill Biden were "shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day." (Read more Highland Park mass shooting stories.)
(Newser)  Thunderstorms on Monday hampered the search for more than a dozen hikers who remained unaccounted for a day after a huge chunk of an Alpine glacier in Italy's Dolomite mountains broke off, sending an avalanche of ice, snow, and rocks down the slope. Officials put the known death toll at seven. Per numbers provided by regional leader Maurizio Fugatti, 13 people remained unaccounted for by Monday afternoon, 10 of them thought to be Italians. "We were contacted by families because these people didn't return home," said Fugatti. In the mountain's parking lot, four cars remained whose occupants hadn't been tracedtwo cars had license plates from the Czech Republic, one vehicle was from Germany, and the fourth was from Hungary.

The detached portion of the Marmolada glacier was massive, estimated at 650 feet wide, more than 250 feet tall, and 200 feet deep, reports the AP. Veneto Gov. Luca Zaia likened the avalanche to an "apartment building (sized) block of ice with debris and Cyclopean masses of rock." What exactly caused a pinnacle of the glacier to break off and thunder down the slope at a speed estimated by experts at nearly 200mph wasn't immediately known. But high temperatures were widely cited as a factor.

One of the Italians who was killed was Filippo Bari. The 28-year-old snapped a selfie with the Marmolada glacier in the background only minutes before the avalanche, his brother, Andrea, told state TV in Canazei. Although an expert mountain hiker, his brother said his family always told him to be careful in the mountains, "above all in these temperatures.'' (Alpine rescuers said that the temperature at the glacier's altitude last week topped 50 degrees, when usually it should hover around freezing at this time of year.) He said the selfie was sent only 20 minutes before the avalanche and that his brother, who had a partner and a 4-year-old son, was smiling. "He passed away doing what he loved."

(Read more avalanche stories.)
(Newser)  A flight to a Spanish vacation destination turned a bit frightening for the passengers on board when a fighter jet showed up as an escort, due to a bomb threat that turned out to be a hoax. An EasyJet plane out of London on Sunday left Gatwick Airport around 1pm local time, headed to the island of Menorca, but partway through the flight, an F-18 military jetsimilar to the one Tom Cruise flies in Top Gun: Maverickshowed up alongside it, "waggling its wings" to signal that the EasyJet pilot should follow it, reports Reuters. Footage from the BBC shows the fighter jet's maneuvers, as well as the quiet murmurs from the passengers wondering what was happening.

"Why is it doing that, is it just showing off?" one woman was heard inquiring, per Reuters. The plane landed about 30 minutes late and was escorted to a security location, where a British 18-year-old on board the flight was arrested, per the Spanish Civil Guard. The law enforcement agency added that passengers had to get off the plane one by one and have their luggage checked by bomb-sniffing dogs and other experts. Flights out of Menorca experienced delays during the hubbub. Civil Guard officials say the teen, believed to be traveling with five friends, had made a bomb threat on social media, leading to the escort.

Aviation expert Julian Bray tells the Sun that the cost involved in "scrambling the aircraft, plus the cost of fuel" could run $60,000 or more, and that the teen could be on the hook for that. He adds that the teen could also face up to 25 years behind bars if prosecuted and convicted, as well as a ban from flying EasyJet and a possible civil suit from the airline. "The safety and security of its passengers and crew is always EasyJet's highest priority and we would like to thank passengers for their understanding," an airline spokesman says in a statement, confirming the fighter jet escort without offering many other details. (Read more bomb hoax stories.)
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(Newser)  Australian police on Tuesday arrested 12 members of a religious group who allegedly prayed for an 8-year-old Queensland girl as she lay dying, rather than providing life-saving insulin. Earlier this year, the girl's parents, Jason and Kerrie Struhs, were arrested and charged with murder, torture, and failing to provide the necessities of life. Now, police have accused fellow members of a religious sect of contributing to the Jan. 7 death of Elizabeth Struhs, who had Type-1 diabetes, at a home in Toowoomba's Rangeville neighborhood. There was no attempt to get the girl outside help over six days, according to Queensland Police, who were notified of the death on Jan. 8, per the BBC.

"In my 40 years of policing, I've never faced a matter like this," Regional Crime Coordinator Det. Acting Supt. Garry Watts says, per the BBC. "And I'm not aware of a similar event in Queensland, let alone Australia." On a GoFundMe page raising money to support the youngest of Elizabeth's seven surviving siblings, eldest sister Jayde Struhs writes that she ran away from home at 16 to escape "the fear driven and controlling beliefs" of her parents' "cult." "They take the religion to its (extremes), separating us from the real world and extended family who did not believe," she writes.

The seven women and five men arrested Tuesday in Toowoomba's Harrisburg neighborhood "were aware of the child's condition, were present during the course of those six days at the Rangeville address, and did not take any steps to provide medical assistance to the child," Watts tells the Brisbane Times. Aged 19 to 65, they are also to be charged with murder and are due in court on Wednesday. In March, Jason and Kerrie Struhs told a court they would not seek legal advice and would represent themselves in court, per News.com.au. They are due back in front of a judge later this month. (Read more child murder stories.)
(Newser)  China has angrily fired back at NASA Administrator Bill Nelson's criticism of its space program, denying that it is planning to take over the moon. In an interview with Germany's Bild newspaper published Saturday, Nelson said, "We must be very concerned about China landing on the moon and saying that it now belongs to the Peoples Republic and everyone else should stay out." He also accused China of stealing technology and described Beijing's space program as a military one, reports Reuters.

Chinese officials said Monday that the US is the one militarizing space and Nelson's claims were "recklessness and falsehoods," the South China Morning Post reports. "The US side has constantly constructed a smear campaign against Chinas normal and reasonable outer space endeavors, and China firmly opposes such irresponsible remarks," said foreign ministry rep Zhao Lijian. He slammed America's "dirty record" and said China has always called for space exploration to be peaceful. He urged Nelson to "make the due contribution of the US to maintaining continued peace and security in outer space."

China's space industry was created "entirely through independence and self-reliance, and its rights and achievements cannot be questioned or discredited in any way," Zhao said. In his remarks to Bild, Nelson said competition between the US and China is especially tense regarding the moon's south pole, where there could be water. The US plans to make a crewed landing in the area by 2025, while China aims to send astronauts to the moon by 2030. (Read more Chinese space program stories.)
(Newser)  Authorities provided an update Tuesday on the investigation into Monday's parade shooting in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, but the big question continues to elude themwhy? "We have no information to suggest at this point it was racially motivated, motivated by religion, or any other protected status," said Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli of the Lake County Sheriffs Department, per the New York Times. While Newser is focusing its coverage on the victims and other aspects of the aftermath, this file encompasses what is currently known about the suspect, identified by police as 21-year-old Robert E. Crimo III:



Planning: Though the motive at the moment is unknown, the suspect appears to have planned the attack "for several weeks," said Covelli, per CNN. Crimo is in custody, but charges are still pending as investigators accumulate evidence.

Disguise: Police say the gunman blended in with the crowd fleeing the scene after the shooting and appears to have disguised himself by wearing women's clothing, per the AP. That might have been to hide his extensive tattoos.

Police say the gunman blended in with the crowd fleeing the scene after the shooting and appears to have disguised himself by wearing women's clothing, per the AP. That might have been to hide his extensive tattoos. Shooting/weapon: The gunman fired more than 70 rounds from what police have described as a high-powered rifle. Police said Tuesday he purchased the gun legally in Illinois. Highland Park itself has a ban on such weapons.

The gunman fired more than 70 rounds from what police have described as a high-powered rifle. Police said Tuesday he purchased the gun legally in Illinois. Highland Park itself has a ban on such weapons. Violent imagery: Investigators are poring over videos and images posted by the suspect online that contain violent imagery. One "shows a stick figure with an automatic rifle and a person lying in a pool of blood," per NPR. "Another shows a person in a classroom pulling on a tactical helmet and vest and reaching into a backpack." Crimo is described as an aspiring rapper, and his music videos also are violent, per the Washington Post.

Investigators are poring over videos and images posted by the suspect online that contain violent imagery. One "shows a stick figure with an automatic rifle and a person lying in a pool of blood," per NPR. "Another shows a person in a classroom pulling on a tactical helmet and vest and reaching into a backpack." Crimo is described as an aspiring rapper, and his music videos also are violent, per the Washington Post. Cub scout: It turns out that Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering has an unusual connection with the suspectshe was the leader of his Cub Scout pack. "Many years ago, he was just a little boy, a quiet little boy that I knew," she said, per CNN. "It breaks my heart. It absolutely breaks my heart. I see this picture and through the tattoos, I see the little boy. Its heartbreaking. I don't know, I don't know what got him to this point, but lets ask that question of so many people."

(Read more Highland Park mass shooting stories.)
(Newser)  Ramiro Gonzales is scheduled to be put to death in Texas this month, but he's asking to push that date out so that he has time to first donate a kidney. The Guardian reports the 39-year-old shot and killed 18-year-old Bridget Townsend in 2001 and has been on death row since being convicted of the crime. He was reportedly turned on to the idea of organ donation via Michael Zoosman, a former prison chaplain who started exchanging letters with Gonzales in January 2021. Zoosman at one point referenced a woman he knew who needed a kidney, and Gonzales expressed interest in giving one of his own as a living donor. He turned out not to be a match, but apparently remained stuck on the idea of giving one away prior to his death.

His lawyers have filed two requests: for a 30 day-reprieve from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and for a 180-day reprieve from the Texas board of pardons and paroles. Gonzales' lethal injection is scheduled for July 13; the board of pardons will vote on his request on July 11. "There has been no doubt in my mind that Ramiros desire to be an altruistic kidney donor is not motivated by a last-minute attempt to stop or delay his execution. I will go to my grave believing in my heart that this is something that Ramiro wants to do to help make his soul right with his God," Zoosman wrote in a letter that was also sent to Gov. Abbott, reports the AP.

Gonzales' lawyers say the transplant team at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston has deemed Gonzales an "excellent candidate." The lawyers say his rare blood type means he could be the solution for someone who is having difficulty finding a match. "Virtually all that remains is the surgery to remove Ramiro's kidney. UTMB has confirmed that the procedure could be completed within a month," the lawyers told Abbott. Amnesty International, meanwhile, is pushing for clemency for Gonzales and cites his abuse-filled childhood, details of which are shared here.

(Read more death row stories.)
Fairbanks, AK (99707)

Today

Showers this morning becoming less numerous during the afternoon hours. High around 60F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional rain late. Low 48F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain continues to monitor global market prices and the availability of goods to ensure the security of basic commodity supply lines in Bahrain.

The Minister of Industry and Commerce made a presentation yesterday at the weekly Cabinet meeting on the Ministrys plans to highlight the sufficiency of basic commodities for all regardless of circumstances.

This comes in light of the global developments that have impacted energy supplies, logistics and the prices of goods. Following the presentation, the Cabinet thanked the Industry Ministry for its efforts in securing the provision of basic commodities.

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure, Shaikh Khalid bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, chaired the session held at Gudaibiya Palace.

Bilateral talks

The Cabinet emphasised the importance of bilateral talks held between His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and Egypt President Al Sisi, which were attended by His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister.

During the meeting, the importance of enhancing bilateral relations and cooperation between Bahrain and Egypt was noted, with the agreements and MoUs signed cited by the Cabinet as evidence of a fruitful visit.

The Cabinet commended the official opening of the new passenger terminal at Bahrain International Airport by HM the King and Al Sisi, conducted in the presence of HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Minister. The Cabinet highlighted the airports role in enhancing the Kingdoms position in the aviation sector and supporting development.

The Cabinet also commended the airports workforce for contributing to Bahrains aviation successes. To mark the upcoming Eid Al Adha holiday, the Cabinet extended its best wishes to HM the King, HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, and the people of Bahrain.

Team Bahrain efforts

The Cabinet commended Team Bahrains efforts to implement the Kingdoms Economic Recovery Plan and Fiscal Balance Program.

Both initiatives have received international recognition from institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) report on Bahrains progress toward fiscal stability and economic prosperity. In this regard, the Cabinet emphasised the importance of continuing with efforts to achieve the Kingdoms desired goals.

Regarding a review of a memorandum submitted by the Minister of Cabinet Affairs, on developments within the Government Priority Framework 3.0 (GPF 3.0), the Cabinet has directed relevant ministries to develop an executive plan for the remaining 29 projects within GPF 3.0 that aim to achieve financial sustainability and development. Executive plans are to be submitted to the Cabinet by ministries as soon as possible.

Cabinet discusses, approves key memorandums

The Cabinet yesterday discussed and approved the following memorandums:

1. A memorandum by the Ministerial Committee for Legal and Legislative Affairs regarding regulations connecting relevant authorities to the electronic system of commercial records.

2. A memorandum by the Minister of Municipalities and Agriculture Affairs regarding the acquisition of real estate for public use to provide the necessary spaces for urban development.

3. A memorandum by The Ministerial Committee for Legal and Legislative Affairs regarding the governments response to six proposals and two law proposals submitted by the Council of Representatives, and one law proposal submitted by the Shura Council.

The Cabinet reviewed the following topic:

1. A memorandum by the Minister of Interior regarding the priorities, policies, and programmes of the Ministry of Interior according to the Government Action Plan 2019-2022.

The Cabinet took note of the Ministerial reports on the award ceremony of UNESCO-King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa Prize for the Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Education, the award ceremony of HH Shaikh Salem Al Ali Al Sabah Informatics Award, and the participation in the Transforming Education Pre-Summit.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The Capital Governorates Security Committee discussed the security and services arrangements for Ashoora season to ensure celebrating the occasion in a safe and secure atmosphere. This came during the committees first meeting which was chaired by Capital Governor Shaikh Rashid bin Abdulrahman Al Khalifa, in the presence of representatives from the security directorates at the Interior Ministry.

The committee recommended coordination between the Capital Governorate, the security and services parties, the Jafari Endowments Directorate, the General Authority of Hussaini processions and Heads of the Central Processions to assess the organisational needs and map out plans to ensure a secure environment for the mourners and visitors.

The Capital Governor was briefed through a visual presentation about the security arrangements for the Ashoora season. The committee also discussed proposals to alleviate traffic congestions and organise traffic in the surrounding areas of the mourning processions.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) announced its collaboration with the Labor Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA) on the development of an Employability Skills Portal (ESP). The cooperation is funded by the Labor Fund (Tamkeen), the platform offers comprehensive data on the skills and jobs in-demand by the labor market.

iGA Chief Executive Mohammed Ali Al Qaed said that this partnership implements the directives of the Supreme Council for the Development of Education and Training, emphasizing the importance of cooperating with all relevant entities on the ESP.

Scheduled to be launched in the third quarter of the year, the portal will increase transparency on the job market by offering a rich database of information to job seekers, education and training providers, business owners and government organizations.

Al Qaed added that the ESP will contribute towards achieving the objectives of Bahrain Economic Vision 2030 and the Government Program, particularly in relation to cloud migration. The platform utilizes Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies and cloud computing to expedite procedures and reduce government expenditure, saving time and effort.

LMRA CEO Jamal Abdulaziz Al Alawi said that the LMRA has always supported the development of high-tech infrastructure and strategies by contributing to initiatives that link databases with the eGovernment to help accelerate the countrys smart transformation.

He highlighted the role of this collaboration in developing the ESP, which will streamline the transfer of data between the two entities, including LMRA information on the Kingdoms workforce. He added that the LMRA will analyze smart data from multiple sources, and inform policies that address issues pertaining to vital sectors in the Kingdom.

A number of ministries and government entities will provide data to the ESP, which the iGA will review before adding to the platform. These include the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Ministry of Labor and Social Development, Social Insurance Organization (SIO), Education and Training Quality Authority, Civil Service Bureau, Ministry of Education, Higher Education Council, University of Bahrain, and Bahrain Polytechnic.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Health Minister, Jaleela bint Al-Sayed Jawad Hasan, has affirmed that Bahrain will continue consolidating its partnership with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to achieve common health goals.

She stressed the importance of the ongoing effective cooperation with WHO in supporting efforts to develop the health sector and ensure its sustainability at all levels, particularly regarding joint efforts to combat disease and epidemics.

While receiving here today WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (EMRO) Director, Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandhari, in the presence of the Health Ministrys Undersecretary, Dr. Waleed Khalifa Al-Manae, the minister commended the pivotal role played by EMRO to support the health systems of the regions countries.

She asserted that Bahrains partnership with WHO had been strengthened following the opening of WHOs 152nd office in the kingdom a year ago, which, she said, crowns the outstanding bilateral decades-long relations and broadens areas of joint cooperation and coordination.

She highlighted the great support enjoyed by the health sector in the kingdom, thanks to the directives of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, and follow-up of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, out of their strong belief that human health tops all priorities.

Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandhari commended the efforts of the kingdoms health system, citing its distinguished role in achieving common health goals. He praised the success of Bahrains robust health system in fighting the novel Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), becoming a regional and global role model for putting in place proactive plans and implementing preventive measures to protect the health of the citizens and residents with high professionalism.

This, he said, proves the success of the Kingdoms visions and plans in the health field. EMROs Director and senior health officials paid field inspection visits to the kingdoms health facilities, including the Public Health Directorate, the National Genome Centre, the Salmaniya Medical Complex and the Shaikh Abdulla bin Khalid Al Khalifas Helath Centre in Hunainiya, Riffa, where they were informed about the work progress and the quality of services delivered to the citizens and residents.
Woman claims her father is 'missing' in Bahrain, seeks help to find him

Woman claims her father is 'missing' in Bahrain, seeks help to find him

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

A 22-year-old Indian woman is pleading for support to find her missing dad who came to Bahrain 15 years ago and never returned home.

Anju Chandran, who hails from Thiruvananthapuram, the capital district of the South Indian state of Kerala, says her dad left the family when she was six years old.

Long 15 years have passed without having any information on my dad. The family has been in great struggle after he went missing in Bahrain.

Speaking to The Daily Tribune from Thiruvananthapuram, Anjus mother Rani, said there were no disputes between husband and wife or with any other family members.

We have no idea as to why he left the family. The children have grown up and they need his support, she said.

Anju is a final year nursing graduation student. In her social media post seeking help to find her father, Anju says she has been in a great struggle to pay her fees and other expenses related to education.

It is learnt that many social workers have stepped in to help the family in finding the missing man. We will certainly help the family. What we require is a letter written by the wife of the missing man addressed to the Indian Embassy, which is responsible for all Indian citizens in the Kingdom.

He said it is the duty of social workers in the Kingdom, along with embassy officials, to help those families who are attempting to find out their missing members. We have helped many families in the past.

Pravasa Lokam, one of the popular television shows aired by the Malayalam channel Kairali TV, deals with missing persons abroad, especially in the Gulf countries.

The show has successfully, many times, reunited individuals with their families back in Kerala, after locating a good number of individuals, who went missing in the Gulf countries.

The Daily Tribune is refraining from mentioning the missing mans name to protect his privacy as the newspaper is absolutely unaware of the reasons that keeps him away from the family.

Earlier, The Daily Tribune published an article on the plight of a Pakistani family after one of its members went missing.

The family, speaking to the newspaper, pleaded for support from the Kingdoms authorities to find their member, who, according to them, had gone missing for over months.

Later, the Capital Governorate Police Directorate issued a statement revealing that the Pakistani expatriate is serving time in jail after being sentenced to three months by the criminal court following his involvement in a robbery case.

He was sentenced to three months in jail followed by deportation. A lawyer was hired to defend him in court, the statement added.
NHK has learned that three abstract paintings have been found that are thought to be unknown early works of the late Japanese artist Okamoto Taro. He is known for numerous works, including the "Tower of the Sun" monument and the "Myth of Tomorrow" mural.

Okamoto moved to Paris in 1930 when he was 18. He lived there until the age of 29, when he returned to Japan to escape Nazi Germany's invasion. It was thought that all of his early works were destroyed when his home in Tokyo burned down while he was serving in the army in China.

But a Frenchman residing in Paris notified relevant parties about three abstract paintings featuring fluttering smoke-like illustrations. He said one of them carried the signature "Okamoto Taro" in kanji.

Officials who research and collect Okamoto's works acquired the paintings in February and conducted a detailed analysis.

Following a handwriting appraisal and paint analysis, five experts compared the paintings' techniques and similarities with works by Okamoto.
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfares survey on menopausal symptoms in Japan showed that 28.3% of women in their forties, 38.3% in their fifties, and 27.7% in their sixties thought they might have such symptoms.

That said, the percentage of women who had gone to hospital for a consultation and been diagnosed as having symptoms amounted to only 3.6% in their forties, 9.1% in their fifties, and 6.9% in their sixties.

Menopause generally refers to the period of approximately 10 years during which the menstrual cycle ends and, due to a decrease in hormones, various disorders such as hot flashes, palpitations, and irritability can occur.
Singapore Airlines (SIA) will operate more flights to Japan and India in the coming months amid strong demand for air travel.

In a media release on Tuesday (Jul 5), SIA said it will operate daily services to Tokyo's Haneda Airport (SQ634) and Narita Airport (SQ638) from Jul 24.

"Together with the daily SQ12 service from Singapore to Los Angeles via Tokyo (Narita), SIA will operate three daily services into Japan's capital, up from 14 flights per week," it added.

From Oct 30, the daily SQ636 service to Haneda Airport will be reinstated, bringing the number of SIA flights to Tokyo to 28 weekly.

A second daily flight to Osaka will also be reinstated on Oct 30, while flights to Fukuoka will increase to three per week.
WatchMojo.com - Jul 06

They're the antagonists that (somehow) got us right in the feels. Join Ashley as we look over the saddest villain scenes in anime, as seen in series such as "Demon Slayer", "Hunter x Hunter", "Naruto", and more!
Contributed / Getty

NEW FAIRFIELD  Police smashed the window of a parked car to rescue a dog that had been locked inside an unattended vehicle on Monday, officials said.

Town officers and state police troopers were called to the parking lot of a business on Route 39 shortly after 1:45 p.m. for a report of a dog trapped in a car, according to state police.
Riding on scalable technology, affordability and surging adoption, digital learning platforms in India like Brainly education app are generating useful solutions and serving as engines for socio-economic development and transformation.

Right to quality education is no longer a dream confined to Indias metros and technology, without a doubt has been the critical catalyst here. Online education has ushered in a new revolution in the recent past and this growth has been majorly fuelled by smaller towns and cities in India that are increasingly transitioning to digital. Today, these edtech platforms have not only offered access to high quality learning to students in tier 2 and 3 cities but have also bridged the gaps in conventional schooling.

Indias edtech gained momentum after the pandemic led to a complete shutdown of schools. While students in metros and urban markets quickly shifted to online learning, those belonging to Tier-II, III, and beyond cities lost access to basic education daily. Fortunately, edtech came to the rescue infusing tech based solutions into traditional learning methods and propelled the sector back to normalcy.

Today, ed-tech is being used across K12, higher education, and professional training purposes. Teachers in smaller towns and cities are increasingly getting equipped with world-class knowledge and have access to the latest devices and technology. Even parents, driven by the desire to provide quality education to their children, are seeing the assurance and innovation that edtech promises.

With the potential to improve educational quality in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, ed-tech platforms are developing solutions that are user-friendly and economical. Parents in tier 2 and 3 cities recognize the benefits of technology today. They are satisfied by the quality of instruction and delivery offered by edtech and at costs that are conducive to their means.

If we go by history, the internet has standardized anything it touches and education has not been an exception. By offering access to global information and resources, it has made content from the most diverse and credible sources available ensuring quality that is equal to global markets. In India, Brainly offers an exhaustive knowledge base of over 48 million questions and answers , that is available for free to students.

Online learning platforms also promise time and location flexibility for students in smaller towns and rural areas who usually travel long distances to attend schools. These students may now learn from the convenience of their homes while attending lectures and getting their doubts solved via online learning.

In a nation of linguistic diversity as that of ours, learning has an intrinsic connection with language. Online learning has enabled students to pursue studies in languages they are most comfortable in. On Brainly, the worlds most extensive knowledge reserve is available across Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Hindi, Marathi, and Sanskrit for Indian students. To ensure further access to education, the company is planning to expand its footprint in more Indian languages.

Indias tier 2 and 3 cities core middle class and newly rising middle-class households make up the bulk of this demography. Vernacular languages, including Hindi and Hinglish, are spoken in this segment. Nearly 528 million individuals make up this cohort, often known as the Next Half Billion (NHB). It is anticipated that the NHB sector will propel K12 EdTech growth in India and expand a $400 million market to $1.7 billion in near future.

Riding on scalable technology, affordability and surging adoption, digital learning platforms in India like Brainly education app are generating useful solutions and serving as engines for socio-economic development and transformation. High-quality education exists across the nation today, due to the digitalization of the classroom, especially in smaller towns and cities.

Its true that the adoption of technology in learning was a forced one due to the pandemic but at core, it has caused a transformation that promises growth and potential. Edtech was a blessing in disguise for Indias smaller cities and the reliance on urban markets for higher education is on a decline. By developing a future ready edtech ecosystem that thrives on government initiatives, technological developments, machine learning and other areas, we can soon make uniformity in education across the nation a reality.
Two highly armed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists, including the mastermind of recent IED explosions in Rajouri, were overwhelmed by villagers and given over to police in Jammu and Kashmirs Reasi district on Sunday, a senior police officer said.

Lt Governor Manoj Sinha and Director General of Police Dilbag Singh praised the villagers bravery and promised monetary prizes.

However, a political brawl developed between the BJP and the Congress after one of the detained terrorists, Talib Hussain Shah, was shown to be an active member of the saffron party and had recently been appointed as its IT and social media cell in charge of the minority morcha in Jammu region.

Some photos circulated on social media purporting to show Shah with BJP leaders.

One of the photos shows J&K BJP president Ravinder Raina allegedly gifting him with a bouquet and a letter issued by party leader Sheikh Bashir on May 9 appointing him as Minority Morchas new IT and social media incharge (Jammu province).

The terrorists were apprehended by residents of Tuksan Dhok village. According to officials, LeT leader Shah is a Rajouri district resident and was the mastermind behind the recent IED blasts in the district.

When confronted by Muslim villagers, Shah and his Kashmiri companion Faisal Ahmad Dar from Pulwama were in possession of two AK assault rifles, seven grenades, a pistol, and a large amount of ammunition. They were disarmed before being given over to authorities. The locals had roped them up.
The Madurai-born, Toronto-based filmmaker had previously taken to Twitter to share a poster for her film, which depicted a woman dressed in a Goddess costume smoking.

The Indian High Commission issued the appeal after the poster for a documentary directed by filmmaker Leena Manimekalai drew criticism on social media for offending religious sentiments with its depiction of Goddess Kaali.

In the aftermath of a controversy over filmmaker Leena Manimekalais upcoming documentary movie poster depicting Goddess Kaali as a smoking woman, the Indian High Commission has urged Canadian authorities to withdraw the disrespectful depiction of Hindu Gods featured as part of the Under the Tent project at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto.

We urge the Canadian authorities and event organisers to remove all such provocative material, said the Indian High Commission in Canada in a press release.

The Indian High Commission issued the appeal after the poster for a documentary directed by filmmaker Leena Manimekalai drew criticism on social media for offending religious sentiments with its depiction of Goddess Kaali.

The Madurai-born, Toronto-based filmmaker had previously taken to Twitter to share a poster for her film, which depicted a woman dressed in a Goddess costume smoking. A flag representing the LGBT community can be seen in the background.

Our Consulate General in Toronto has communicated these concerns to the events organisers. Weve also learned that several Hindu organisations in Canada have asked authorities to intervene The release was added.

Meanwhile, filmmaker Leena Manimekalai is in hot water after a police complaint was filed against her for infringing on religious sentiments with a poster for her documentary Kaali.

The posters depiction of Goddess Kali did not sit well with some social media users, who demanded that it be removed. Some have even called for her arrest, and the hashtag #ArrestLeenaManimekal is trending on Twitter.

Activist Rahul Easwar described it as a hate poster, saying that it spreads hatred against the Hindu community and defames our deities.
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WAUCONDA, Ill. (AP)  The race to be Illinois' next governor is also a battle among billionaires, including two whose names won't appear on Tuesday's primary ballot.

Republican candidates Darren Bailey, who as a state lawmaker fought pandemic measures such as mask mandates, and former prosecutor Richard Irvin, the first Black mayor of Chicago's largest suburb, each has a benefactor who has pushed a different vision for the GOP and put their money behind it.

Billionaire businessmen Ken Griffin and Richard Uihlein  among the countrys biggest Republican donors  have combined to pour more than $60 million into the race. Griffin backs Irvin and Uihlein supports Bailey.

Billionaire Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, meanwhile, along with the Democratic Governors Association, has spent millions trying to ensure Irvin, an Army veteran and Aurora mayor, isn't the GOP nominee.

The money has funded a monthslong barrage of ads that have attacked Irvin and propped up Bailey, the opponent Pritzker would rather face in November. The ads note Bailey's strident far-right positions, including being 100% pro-life," and his allegiance to former President Donald Trump  qualities that may help Bailey in a Republican primary but would be a liability for a general election in a state Trump twice lost by double digits. Trump endorsed him at a rally Saturday night in Mendon.

Although rich men in politics certainly arent rare, there may never have been a battle of the billions to match this one in a state election, particularly in a primary. It's left Irvin, once considered the front-runner, scrambling to convince GOP primary voters that he's the only one who can beat Pritzker.

J.B. Pritzker is telling you that every time he takes out an ad. He's telling you that This is the guy Im the most most afraid of, Irvin said during a stop at an Illinois manufacturing plant.

Irvin's downfall may be a record that is considerably more moderate than that of his GOP rivals. Unlike Bailey and the four other men in the race, Irvin avoids saying if he voted for Trump or talking much about issues such as abortion, focusing instead on steps he would take to reduce crime and taxes. He has been criticized for saying Black Lives Matter during protests over police brutality that turned destructive in his hometown, then filming a TV ad where he said All Lives Matter.

Bailey has built a reputation during three years in the Legislature as an uncompromising conservative unafraid to take people on.

People say J.B. Pritzker wants me to win this primary because he believes that Im the easiest opponent to beat," Bailey said during a campaign stop at a restaurant. "Well, Ive got news for J.B. Pritzker: Be careful what you wish for because its coming. Friends, were going to win on Nov. 8.

Bailey, a farmer from rural Xenia, jumped onto the statewide scene in summer 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when he filed a lawsuit against Pritzker over a stay-at-home order the governor issued to slow transmission of the virus. Bailey was seen by supporters as a maverick when he was escorted from the floor of the Legislature for refusing to wear a mask in defiance of Democratic leaders. His backers like that he speaks often of his faith. Bailey, who speaks with a prairie twang, ends his nearly daily online video messages with prayer.

Hes a godly man. He isnt afraid to put his faith out there, said supporter Ruth Bast, 63, of Springfield.

The three billionaires  Pritzker, Griffin and Uihlein  have a long history of clashing politically in Illinois and elsewhere.

Griffin, the founder and CEO of hedge fund company Citadel, has been a vocal critic of Pritzker's administration, particularly over the issue of crime in Chicago. In addition to the $50 million he gave Irvin this cycle, he also spent millions to help get former Gov. Bruce Rauner elected in 2014 and on Rauner's loss to Pritzker in 2018. He bankrolled a successful campaign to block Pritzker and other Democrats from changing Illinois' tax structure to levy more on the highest earners.

In 2020, Griffin gave $37 million to the GOPs Senate campaign arm, making him the PACs second-largest individual donor, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign spending.

Asked at a forum last year if he would support Trump should he run for president in 2024, Griffin replied, I think it's time for America to move on, adding that Trump had been pointlessly divisive.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Griffin criticized Pritzker for interfering in the GOP primary, saying spending tens of millions of dollars in cahoots with his cronies attacking the most successful Black political leader in Illinois is despicable. Pritzker has defended his actions, saying an ad attacking Irvin is telling the truth.

Uihlein, a founder of the office supply company Uline Inc., is a major Trump supporter who has a long record of donating to far-right candidates and groups. That includes PACs and people strongly opposed to abortion, and the House Freedom Fund, which backs the most conservative candidates and strongest Trump backers.

The other candidates seeking the GOP nomination are businessman Gary Rabine, venture capitalist Jesse Sullivan, former state Sen. Paul Schimpf and attorney Max Solomon. Pritzker's only rival in the Democratic primary is Beverly Miles.

___

O'Connor reported from Athens, Illinois.

___

Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

and on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ap_politics
Patrick Semansky / Associated Press

WATERBURY  Xavier Becerra, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will visit a Planned Parenthood in Waterbury Tuesday afternoon, the governors office said.

The visit comes a little more than a week after the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that guaranteed the federal right to abortion. That decision immediately opened the door for abortion rights to be strictly curtailed or banned by states, including in some states with so-called trigger laws set up to ban the procedure in the event Roe was overturned.
BERLIN - Hundreds of flyers seeking members for a pro-white neo-Nazi nationalist group were found in a quiet Berlin neighborhood over the weekend, residents said.

It was a complete shock, it was quite unsettling, said one York Road resident who went out to walk her dog at about 8:15 a.m. Monday and spotted dozens of pieces of paper scattered throughout her yard and the entire street. The woman was fearful about being named due to the content of the flyers, she said.

At first she thought someones garbage had dumped over, but when she realized the content of the flyers she was taken aback, the woman said.

Ive been here since 2005 and never, ever has there been anything like that around here, the woman said.

The flyers claiming to be from The Nationalist Social Club, asks men of European descent to contact the group if they have concerns or want to join the organization. The missives said the group is a pro-white street-oriented fraternity dedicated to raising authentic resistance to the enemies of our people in the New England area.

This takes the form of networking, training, activism, outreach and above all, action, the fliers said.

Several residents posted the flyers on Facebook early Monday decrying the message and the fact their neighborhood was targeted. A Berlin officer said on a local Facebook group that the police department was investigating. Police are looking for any videos from residents that may show the culprits, Deputy Chief Christopher Ciuci said.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, The Nationalist Social Club is a neo-Nazi group with small chapters throughout New England.

Residents on several streets throughout a swath of Berlin from St. Pauls Church to Paper Goods Pond reported that hundreds of flyers were in yards and on roadways as if they had been tossed out of a car like candy at a parade.

They were all over the street, they were everywhere, said a woman who lives on Parrish Drive who also didnt want to be identified.

I was flabbergasted, the Parrish Drive woman said after reading the flyers. I teach the Holocaust, I was flabbergasted and then I was angry.

Similar flyers were strewn about Bristol in early June.

As we unfortunately witness on almost a daily basis, racist hate inevitably leads to acts of intimidation and violence, said Farhan Memon, the chair of the Connecticut chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in a statement issued Tuesday. We condemn the bigotry espoused by this neo-Nazi group and urge law enforcement authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice.

CAIR advocates for the empowerment of American Muslims through civil rights, justice and an enhanced understanding of Islam.

Memon said his organization and the American Muslim community stand in solidarity with all those challenging antisemitism, anti-Black racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and white supremacy.

Anyone who may have video or information can call Berlin police at 860-828-7080.
WATERBURY  U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said during a swing through Connecticut on Tuesday that the Biden administration is exploring a number of ideas to provide immediate assistance to women seeking access to abortion services across state lines, as new restrictions take effect across the country.

Becerra made those remarks during a visit to a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Waterbury, where he and other state and federal officials met with the clinics patients and staff.

The secretarys visit to Connecticut came more than a week after the U.S Supreme Court overturned its long-standing precedent in Roe vs. Wade, allowing states to begin passing restrictions on abortion starting at conception.

There are a number of ideas that have been proposed, circulated, we are looking at a number of things we can do, Becerra said, while declining to pledge any specific action as officials continue to review the ramifications of the ruling.

As you can see from what the Supreme Court did, it took a 50-year-old right and flushed it down the toilet, the former attorney general from California said. We want to make sure that what we say we will do, we will do. So we want to make sure its not a could but a will.

Any action by the Biden administration would likely come through executive action, bypassing Congress which has remained gridlocked on the issue.

Amanda Skinner, the head of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, specifically called on the administration to declare a public health crisis, which she said at the least would unlock federal funding for clinics or to provide direct financial support for women who are forced to travel for access to reproductive care

It is not fair or just or equitable to expect people to travel thousands of miles for basic healthcare and yet that is a burden we are putting on people in this country right now, Skinner said. It is possible and certainly our ask is to explore all opportunities to try to address some of those barriers.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who accompanied the secretary on his visit Tuesday, said he signed a letter along with over two dozen of his Senate colleagues asking Biden to issue an emergency declaration or other action using the full force of the federal government to protect abortion rights.

Blumenthal said that executive actions available to the Biden administration include offering the use of federal lands to continue offering reproductive healthcare services lost through shuttered clinics, and allowing patients to receive prescriptions for medication abortions though telemedicine.

Were pressing President Biden to use whatever authority he has, to the maximum extent to explore the possibility of a national emergency that would enable telemedicine prescription, which could then result in medication abortion through the mail, Blumenthal said.

While remote access to medications abortions  also known as the abortion pill  were expanded during the pandemic, experts say that the prospect of shipping the medication to patients in states that have banned the procedure could become mired in legal challenges.

Its very much on the table and could have practical ramifications, Blumenthal said, adding, Frankly, were in a public health crisis. Were in an emergency.

Becerra said he was asked to visit the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Waterbury by U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5th, during the first part of a two-day tour through the state.

Becerra said that Connecticut residents are fortunate to live in a state where abortion rights have been codified in law for more than two decades, and said the Biden administration is examining what steps it can take to ensure women in other states retain access to abortion services.

Since the decision, at least eight states have enacted near-total bans on the procedure, with more expected to follow.

Now after the Supreme Courts decision in [Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization], its important to say that no woman is safe until all women are safe, Becerra said.

Earlier this year, Connecticut lawmakers enacted a so-called safe harbor law to expand legal protections for women who travel to Connecticut to receive an abortion, as well as for doctors and clinicians who offer such care.

The law was initially passed as a response to a Texas measure that predates the recent Supreme Court ruling, subjecting patients and others who aid in offering abortions to potential legal ramifications.

While speaking to a roundtable panel of activists, lawmakers and staff at the Planned Parenthood Clinic on Tuesday, Hayes compared the Texas law and similar measures to the Fugitive Slave Act that forced formerly enslaved people capurted in free states to be returned to bondage in the South.

Much like in the 1850s with the fugitive slave laws, there is half the country that is wrong, Hayes said. And we have to stand in intercession until we can bring these people along.

Since the Texas law went into effect last September, Planned Parenthood clinics in Connecticut have served about a dozen patients who have traveled from states where abortion access is more restricted, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Southern New England said.
COLCHESTER  A man died in a house fire in Colchester late Monday, a fire official said.

Firefighters were called to the blaze in the 100-block of Cato Corner Road around 11 p.m., Chief Steve Hoffmann said Tuesday. A man in his mid-to-late 60s was found in the home.

A second man was taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation, Hoffmann said. It wasnt clear if the second man lived there or if he was a neighbor.

The fire took hours to completely extinguish, he said. Fire crews didnt clear the scene until 2:20 a.m.

The house has extensive interior fire and smoke damage, Hoffmann said.

Members of the state police Fire and Explosion Investigation Unit and the local fire marshal are investigating what sparked the fire, the chief said.
NEW HAVEN  When May Ye entered Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, she had never experienced anything connected to her Jewish roots.

While her German grandfather was incarcerated at Dachau concentration camp by the Nazis, Ye is half Chinese-American, and that led many to reject her as a Jew.

When I began rabbinical school is when I observed my first Shabbat, is when I observed my first Rosh Hashana, my first Yom Kippur, my first Passover, she said. All of these experiences I had for the very first time as a rabbinical student.

Growing up in Waterville, Maine, in a secular household, Ye, 27, wanted to explore her Jewish roots, but when she asked people if she could join a Sabbath meal or a Rosh Hashana service, I was met with no, I was met with, Youre not Jewish, she said.

To me, I am absolutely Jewish. And Im also half Chinese, which, you know, the Jewish world has feelings about that. But I maintain that Im fully Jewish.

Mending Minyan, a 4-year-old community, is pleased Ye didnt give up. She moved to New Haven three weeks ago to become the groups rabbinical intern, a year before she graduates and is ordained a rabbi.

Ye has been involved for two years with the mostly home-based Mending Minyan, which describes itself on its website as a group of Jews and friends of Jews in/around New Haven who are practicing joy based Jewish ritual decoupled from zionism and in service to building radical Jewish practices in support of struggles against white supremacy, capitalism, and colonization.

You wont find an Israeli flag at this years Rosh Hashana service, which Ye will lead at the Palestine Museum US in Woodbridge. The members dont say Next year in Jerusalem at the end of their Passover Seder.

But they might say, Next year without racism or Next year in fabulous queerness.

Mending Minyan members say they are filling a need for Jews who dont feel welcome in traditional congregations that support Israel but may not support LGBTQ Jews.

When Mikveh Warshaw came to the Yale School of Nursing, I was seeking out connections with other Jews who were non-Zionist, anti-Zionist and diasporic to pray together to do Shabbats. Also queer Jews.

They became connected to Jewish Voice for Peaces Havurah Network, which supports anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian Jewish leadership. At a gathering at the Isabelle Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, she met Ye and Sarah Lipkin, who co-founded Mending Minyan with Warshaw.

Since Ye has been attending school in Pennsylvania, Its been a long relationship-building process from afar, Warshaw said. While other student rabbis have led High Holy Days services, Ye is our first to be a part of us, Warshaw said. Ye also will be a chaplain intern at Yale New Haven Hospitals St. Raphael campus in the fall.

Besides welcoming anyone who feels similarly about Israel/Palestine, Mending Minyan is engaged in racial justice and immigration justice work in the community, Warshaw said. Its also a place where we can really wrestle with what does it mean to be Jewish? How do we pray?

It felt like people were doing that in little pockets, but we just wanted to bring people together to do it more intentionally together and to have joy and to be able to celebrate and complicate what it means to be Jewish, she said.

Lipkin also was raised in a secular home, with a Jewish father and Catholic mother. I have felt very disconnected from both my Jewish ethnic and cultural and religious connections. And I would say that Ive always had that longing of wanting spiritual community, wanting a place to pray and be with people, they said.

Since Ive been young Ive also been engaged in social justice movements, they said. And that feels very connected to my spiritual life and practice, and as I started learning more about whiteness, and sort of its connection to colonization and slavery, I started looking at myself  and really wanting to be grounded in my cultures.

Bringing on Ye as a rabbi was not a simple decision, Warshaw said. Weve had a lot of meetings because theres many other people that are part of an admin team  and that group had a lot of intentional meetings about what does it mean to bring a rabbi when we describe ourselves as lay-led, she said.

Weve had a lot of different people with different Jewish experience, she said. Weve had some people who are children of rabbis. Weve had some people that have been, this is my first Jewish ritual. And we want to make space for both of those people to be able to feel ownership and engaged in Jewish ritual. So it was big questions.

By Ye felt the same about not wanting to just be the ruler of what is Jewish and this is how you do it, but to be a teacher and to be a supporter of the committee, Warshaw said.

I think thats how itll always work, Ye said. I joined this community knowing that historically it has been a lay-led community and that moving into the future, it should remain a lay-led community. And there are complications with that with me joining as a rabbi with inherent power dynamics.

But I still strive to ensure that all services all programs, all events are planned by the community and led by the community, Ye said.

Weve had new people that come in, and within a few months they lead a Shabbat, Warshaw said. Thats beautiful.  Weve been trying to build it in a way where theres scaffolding for people to lead, such as optional prayers.

Ye was well on my way to be a concert pianist but decided to take Hebrew at Middlebury College and saw the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Colleges website.

It strikes me as some sort of maybe social justice-oriented Judaism, she said. I ran upstairs to my parents and I said, Hey, I could be a rabbi. And every single one of us, including myself, laughed, because there was no way that it wasnt a joke. There was no way, you know.

The she saw the college had a Prospective Student Institute, and they would fly me out and put me up and I walked back to my parents and I said, Hey, theres this thing. And we decided, well, we still think this is a joke, but theres nothing to lose, right?

So she went and the first day of the institute was the day Donald Trump was elected president. The school canceled classes. A classmate was crying in the restroom. She thought, Oh, this is an OK place to be who I am.

But she had doubts as a secular, anti-Zionist, Chinese-American Jew. So she called her mentor, Rabbi Brant Rosen of Tzedek Chicago, who encouraged her.

Its kind of miraculous to me that Im about to start my sixth and final year, Ye said.

Lipkin, a co-founder of Mending Minyan, told Ye how much she is welcome in New Haven. There is a huge community of people here who want to be participating in a kind of Judaism that you are bringing to our community, they said. And that doesnt exist in New Haven. Theres nowhere else that you can sort of bring your full self, bring your politics and bring your spirituality in this way, I think. And I think theres like a real longing everywhere, but specifically here. Im just really excited that youre here.

Shelly Altman, a leader in Jewish Voice for Peace in New Haven, said JVP chapters, which are political anti-Zionist groups, have held services. Some of that happens within the chapters themselves, whereas were incredibly lucky enough to have this happening in New Haven as a completely focused spiritual community, he said. There will be more.

Ye and others say that being anti-Zionist is not being antisemitic, though she has been called that.

But Ye is working to build relationships with other rabbis and congregations. I think its important for us to have relationships in the community, she said. And its important for us to have relationships with people who we dont agree with.  But events that we co-sponsor we will not be saying the prayer for the State of Israel, and if were co-sponsoring, were going to collaborate and its going to be a safe space for me and my community.

They need to learn from us, Altman said. I feel like the work that Ive been doing with Jewish Voice for Peace for the last nine years, has really been education work. You know, sometimes its out in the streets. Sometimes its bringing Palestinian teenagers here to dance, and having events about Palestinian culture.  Its all education.

He said when he writes an op-ed, he sees the same people attacking him personally. Jewish congregations in Connecticut need to learn from what were doing rather than trying to vilify us, Altman said. I think that the way you do that is by building the relationships, even if you dont agree with each other. The vilification has to stop.

Altman became involved in the pro-Palestinian movement when he went to the Middle East with a delegation from Eyewitness Palestine.

As we took a bus from the Tel Aviv airport to Jerusalem in the first half-hour that I was there, it just changed my world, changed my life, he said. As an American, as a Jew, I couldnt possibly not take this on as the most important thing in my life.  I saw more of the oppressive conditions that exist there and have learned so much more about them in the intervening eight years.

Ye has become well enough known in New Havens social justice arena that she was asked to speak at the rally protesting the Supreme Courts decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Mending Minyan has raised enough money through its GoFundMe page, Help Mending Minyan Reach New Heights, to pay Ye $6,000, matched by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

Their total goal is $18,000, which will pay Ye to lead High Holy Days services, as well as the admin team and other expenses.

People find their place in Jewish life for different reasons, said Rosen, Yes mentor in Chicago. For her, its a function of who she is in a very deep way. Its also part of her ethnic and moral sensibility.

Rosen said when Ye joined Tzedek Chicago and then led a High Holy Days service as an intern, it was really the first Yom Kippur service she had ever attended and she was leading it. She took to it very, very powerfully.
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NEW HAVEN  As the city continues efforts to recruit new officers to the Police Deparztment and fill vacant positions on the force, the department Wednesday will celebrate the graduation of 20 new officers from the police academy.

A ceremony for Class XXV will be held at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Officer Scott Shumway said in an email.

The recruits went into the academy in November, as city officials lauded the group for its diversity and praised its members for stepping forward to take on the job.

Of the officers, three are New Haven residents, according to the department. Two are from East Haven, two from Branford; one is a Brooklyn, N.Y., resident. The others hail from various Connecticut communities, police said previously.

At the time, then-Interim Chief Renee Dominguez said some of those the recruits would meet in their careers would note the need for change in the profession and the challenges of the work.

But thats why youre here, because youre the change. Youre the ones that are going to put in the work; you are the ones who are going to be in this community, in this wonderful community of the city of New Haven. And I am so happy to have you here, said Dominguez.

As of the end of May, the department had filled 335 of 406 budgeted positions for sworn officers, according to the citys monthly budget report.

According to the city, 71 New Haven police staffers live in the city, while 44 live in Hamden, 33 in East Haven, 21 in West Haven and 15 in Branford. An additional 225 departmental employees live in other communities.

william.lambert@hearstmediact.com
PLYMOUTH  A plane crashed in Plymouth on Tuesday afternoon, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The pilot and sole person on board, a Nevada man, suffered minor injuries and was taken to Waterbury Hospital, the Plymouth Police Department said in a news release Tuesday.

The FAA said the single-engine Cessna 185 was on its way to Waterbury-Oxford Airport when it plunged into Plymouth at around 1 p.m.

The police department received a call about the plane crash just after 1 p.m. The caller said the aircraft landed in the woods off of Route 262, or South Street, near Camp Mattatuck.

Police, fire and ambulance personnel went to the scene and found the Nevada man suffering from minor injuries. The Plymouth Ambulance Service took the man to Waterbury Hospital for treatment, police said.

FAA records show the plane was registered to the pilot, Charles G. Hutter, who is based out of Carson City, Nev.

Check back for more information.
Page Content

As of August 1st 2022, the intention is to make EHAS more convenient by allowing vaccinated persons to receive an immediate pre approval, once the form is filled out in its entirety.





The entry requirements will not change for the country, but by allowing an automated immediate response, many cancellations can be avoided. It is important to note that the checks on arrival will still take place at the airport, and persons may be required to test locally if their documents are not valid.





Despite claims that EHAS is detouring tourist from visiting the country, statistics show that this is far from the truth. In the high season of 2021-2022, Sint Maarten was at approximately 120% of its 2019 pre-COVID arrival numbers and to date we are at 90% of the 2019 arrivals.





We often look at other countries without realizing the full measures being taken there. For instance, while Aruba may not require any testing to enter the country, they do require that an ED form be filled out prior to traveling and they still have a night life closure time of 1 AM during the week.





Even though America has finally eased their entry requirements, noncitizens are required to be vaccinated to enter their country. This shows that everyone is trying to find a balance that would also protect their population, while still attracting visitors.





Sint Maarten is no exception, the intention is for EHAS to transition into our Port Health Authority, which is mandatory for all the countries within the kingdom. An international health regulation (IHR) meeting was held last month in Aruba and is scheduled to be a yearly event. The IHR requires each country to be able to detect, asses, report, respond and stop outbreaks of infectious diseases before they spread internationally. This means that Sint Maarten must have a Port Health Authority at all points of entry, to meet our obligations as international ports.





"I am not someone that likes to remove regulations and then have to replace them later. Said Ottley. The Minister is working on transitioning the EHAS to a more effective system that fosters safety without negatively affecting our visiting numbers. The plan is to allow this automated approval to be accessible for all visitors regardless of their vaccination status by October 15th 2022.
The Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has been cautioned against any plan to drop Governor Ifean...





The Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has been cautioned against any plan to drop Governor Ifeanyi Okowa as his running mate.





There are speculations that Atiku is facing pressures from governors to drop Okowa and replace him with his Rivers State counterpart, Nyesom Wike.





Wikes loyalists are also said to be making the same demand as the only way to make room for peace in the party.





However, in a statement made available to newsmen on Tuesday by the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide, OYC, they said Atiku should drop Okowa to his own peril.





The statement signed by the National President of OYC, Mazi Okwu Nnabuike and the Secretary, Comrade Obinna Achionye said any attempt to replace Okowa would backfire.





The apex Igbo organization said the South-East would not accept to lose out completely in the scheme of things, having lost the opportunity to produce the presidential candidate of either the PDP or the All Progressives Congress, APC.





There is no need to repeat that we expected both the PDP and the APC to zone their presidential tickets to the South-East, but that did not happen.





Though this has been overtaken by events, the only consolation we have is the choice of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa as running mate to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, considering that Okowa is a true Igbo son.





Having said this, how could anyone wake up and think of replacing Okowa with Wike? As much as we know that Atiku reserves the right to choose whoever he wills as his running mate, we also have the right to vote according to our desire.





And that desire is clear- that the PDP would not get one vote from Igbo land should they field Wike, because this is a man who disowned Ndigbo. He said he is not one of us and this is payback time, we also do not know him. Should the PDP make the mistake of pairing him with Atiku, the PDP will be roundly rejected during the presidential election, the Ohanaeze youths warned.





The OYC added that with the new Electoral Act, those who constituted themselves into emperors are going to be disgraced during the polls. The time for bogus fake results is over, so nobody should be deceived.
House of Representatives member, Akin Alabi, says he believes in the competence of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidat...

House of Representatives member, Akin Alabi, says he believes in the competence of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu.

Mr Alabi had tweeted a poster campaigning for Mr Tinubu, which attracted comments from his followers on the microblogging platform.

A Twitter user, @idoreyin14, asked Mr Alabi, With due respect sir. Party aside. Can you let Tinubu run your family affairs? If you werent in APC, would you gladly vote Tinubu?

Responding, Mr Alabi said: I can let Tinubu run my life. I will even beg him to run it. Shows how much I believe in him. Even if I was a member of Labour Party, I would still support him.

I can let Tinubu run my life. I will even beg him to run it. Shows how much I believe in him. Even if I was a member of Labour Party, I would still support him. https://t.co/ymAqLIYv9d  Oloye Akin Alabi (@akinalabi) July 3, 2022





Campaigning to build on President Muhammadu Buharis legacy, Mr Tinubu emerged presidential candidate for the APC in a party primary held in June.

Like Buhari, Mr Tinubus frail health remains a sticking point against his touted ambition to direct the affairs of Africas most populous nation.

Mr Tinubus frail health reminds Nigerian voters of Mr Buharis first term as president, during which time he spent many months outside the country attending to his health.

The former Lagos governor will have to convince his critics and Nigerian electorates who do not appear ready to have another leader sick president, that he is capable and will pilot Nigerias gruelling affairs.
Former Ogun State Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, said he would stand with President Muhammadu Buhari and the presidential candidate of...

Former Ogun State Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, said he would stand with President Muhammadu Buhari and the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, in spite of the injustice meted out to his camp.

Amosun said he would not stop any of his followers from achieving their political ambitions in any political party of choice.

However, he pleaded that he should be left out of the negotiations as he remains focused on ensuring Tinubu wins the 2023 presidential election.

Amosun also maintained that the President remains his friend, no matter what happens; promising to stay with him till the end of his administration on May 29, 2023.

Recall that Amosuns anointed candidate in the 2019 governorship election in Ogun, Adekunle Akinlade, has resigned his membership of the APC, citing gross injustice.

It was gathered that some other key members of the Amosun political camp have also left the party due to the failure of the national leadership of the party to ensure a sharing formula proposed by the partys reconciliation committee is adhered to in Ogun.

Represented by the factions APC Chairman, Derin Adebiyi at an extended leaders meeting held at the Ibara residence of the former Governor, in Abeokuta, Amosun maintained that those defecting from the party are free to test their popularity elsewhere, saying, however, that they should not negotiate with his name.

Sources at the meeting quoted Adebiyi as saying, He (Amosun) has sent us to you that he stands with Tinubu, he is loyal to APC. He stands with President Muhammadu Buhari and by the grace of God, on May 29, 2023, he will follow him to Daura and say Alhamdulilah.

If there is any other step to be taken, it will be a collective decision.

Now, he said we should tell all of you that whoever loves him and believes in him with all his explanations, such person should stay with him and that he is not angry with anybody.

Whoever wants to contest in another platform is free to contest, but should not use the name of this group or that of SIA to negotiate. This is what Amosun is saying. This is what he has asked us to tell you.

It was gathered that some loyalists at the meeting were not pleased with the message as they insisted on moving into another party.
Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has said the decision of the All Progressives Congress governorship candidate in Kadu...

Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has said the decision of the All Progressives Congress governorship candidate in Kaduna State to select a Muslim as his running mate for the 2023 election is provocative, divisive, and absolutely non-tolerant of religious pluralism of the state.

HURIWA said the decision is a brazen attempt to perpetuate the heightened state of insecurity in the state.

The rights group also called on the people of Kaduna desirous of peace, tranquillity, interreligious harmony and sustainable development, to turn their backs against the APC in next years polls.

Recalled that Uba Sani who is the governorship candidate of the APC in the state, anointed by Governor Nasir El-Rufai as his successor, claimed that after consultations with critical stakeholders, he had settled for Hadiza Sabuwa Balarabe as his running mate.

HURIWA, however, condemned Sanis Muslim-Muslim ticket as absolutely divisive and stated that from the available body of information the APC governorship candidate did not consult the large populations of Christians in Southern and Northern Kaduna.

The Rights group said the APCS gubernatorial candidate is simply attempting to continue to foist Islamic extremism in the governance of Kaduna State.

HURIWA also said it blames the Muslim-Muslim administration of El-Rufai for the massive killings of mainly Christian natives of Southern Kaduna by armed Fulani terrorists who have the support of the Kaduna State government clearly.
The leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has dissociated itself from the act of the pastor arrested in Ondo who reported...





The leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has dissociated itself from the act of the pastor arrested in Ondo who reportedly camped his members on the church premises, misleading them into believing that the second coming of Jesus Christ popularly referred to as the rapture is now.





CAN also called on the police to thoroughly investigate them and their activities with a view to prosecuting the kingpin and his cohorts if there had been any infringement on the law of Nigeria and the rights of the members in his custody.





This was contained in a statement signed by Pastor Adebayo Oladeji, Special Assistant (Media & Communications) to the CAN President, His Eminence, Rev Dr Samson Ayokunle and made available to newsmen in Abuja.





The statement reads: According to reports, one Josiah Peter Asumosa, an assistant Pastor in a church located in Ondo West Local government area of Ondo State was lying to the uninformed members that Rapture would take place in April but later said it had been changed to September, 2022 and told the young members to obey only their parents in the Lord.





Though, the Pastor in question and his church, the Whole Bible Believers Church in Ondo are not members of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) at all levels and so, he is not known to us, but the fact that the church claims to be a Christian church necessitates that we state our position on his practice.





No true Pastor would claim to know the date of the rapture because the Bible has stated it clearly that it is only God who knows the date. Whoever claims to know the date is not only misleading the public but cannot claim to be a genuine Servant of God. He is at best, an agent of Satan pretending to be a Pastor.





CAN, therefore, commends the Police for their prompt actions which included rescuing over 70 victims from the Church premises. They should further be subjected to medical check-ups since nobody knows what they were going through where they were camped.





We hereby urge all denominations to keep an eye on the pastors under them towards ensuring wholesome biblical conduct. Members of the churches all over the nation are enjoined to cross-check every teaching from the Bible before believing it, the statement further stated.





Recall that the nation was awaken with a discovery of over 40 children allegedly camped in a church building on the guise of rapture.
Gunmen suspected to be bandits on Monday night clashed with vigilantes in Zak Community of Wase Local Government Area of Plateau State and a...





Gunmen suspected to be bandits on Monday night clashed with vigilantes in Zak Community of Wase Local Government Area of Plateau State and as a result of the incident, 12 people were killed.





Recall that last week Thursday, suspected bandits were said to have killed seven military personnel and one vigilante in some communities of Bashar chiefdom in the aforementioned council of the state.





This was revealed when the House of Representatives ad-hoc committee visited the affected communities.





Recall that the suspected bandits had given quit notices to some communities in the council, warning the residents to evacuate the villages or be wiped out.





The Village Head of Kanpani Zurak, Alhaji Dahiru Adamu, and other traditional rulers in Wase revealed this information when the House of Representatives ad-hoc committee went to investigate the wonton killings, kidnappings by bandits in the council area and communities in the neighbouring state.





Narrating the incident at Zak, a youth leader in Wase, who gave his name as Sambo, said, The incident occurred around 9 pm yesterday, and the clash left 9 of the gunmen dead, while 3 vigilantes died in the incident.





Sambo maintained that The bandits came on motorcycles in their numbers in the morning. We suspected that they passed a night in a bush closed to Zak.





When people realised that the bandits arrived in the community, they quickly informed Operation Safe Haven stationed in Zak and they swiftly mobilised their troops to the general area and repelled the attacks together with the vigilantes. It was a serious crash,  Shapi added.





When contacted, the Spokesman of the Military Taskforce responsible for the maintenance of peace in the state, code-named Operation Safe Haven (OPSH), Major Ishaku Takwa, also confirmed the incident to journalists, but could not ascertain the casualty figure.





We are aware of an incident in Wase, but I cannot confirm any casualty.





Our troops repelled the attack, our men moved to Gajin Bashar community after receiving distress calls of an attack, thats all I can say for now, he explained.





It was reported that Zak is about 40 kilometers from Wase town, the headquarters of Wase LGA.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia has told the Russian troops who conquered the Luhansk Peoples Republic (LPR) to go and rest. The...

President Vladimir Putin of Russia has told the Russian troops who conquered the Luhansk Peoples Republic (LPR) to go and rest.

The Russian President said other formations must proceed with tasks according to plans.

President Putin said this on Monday while announcing that he received a proposal from the Russian army generals on the development of the offensive operations in Ukraine.

Putin said that all the commanders on the war front, including Col. General Alexander Pavlovich Lapin, and Army General Sergey Vladimirovich Surovikin, have given him reports on the progress being achieved by the troops.

Putin also told the defence minister, Sergie Shoigu, that the commanders also submitted their proposals for the development of offensive operations.

The Russian leader said that the Ministry of Defense will work on all the proposals presented by the commanders in the field.

According to him, while military units that participated in the operation in the Luhansk Peoples Republic (LPR) should rest, other formations, including the East and West groups, must proceed with tasks according to plans.

This comes as Putin congratulated Russian troops for achieving victory in Ukraines Luhansk region.
The Modi government has been supporting and patronizing the elements involved in all such types of injustice. Now that sown seed of hatred has grown up and changed into a huge thorny tree and now even the Hindu community is being affected by the pricks of its nettles.

by Ali Sukhanver

The basic logic behind introducing religions has ever been just one; to educate human beings. Animals dont follow any religion; it means when human beings are not obeying the rules and regulations introduced by the religion they claim to follow, they are not different from animals. The basic message conveyed by all religions to the followers is love humanity. Extremism in any shape and in any form simply snatches from us that basic characteristic preached to us through religious philosophy. Whatever happened there in Udaipur India, a few days back, was purely an inhuman act in the name of religion. That cruel incident has no doubt proved a blob of shame on the face of Indian society. We as Pakistanis might have a disliking for the anti-Pakistan policies of the BJP government but as far as the progress and growth of the Indian nation in the field of science and literature are concerned, no one can deny it. Keeping aside the handful of the extremist element, most of the people in that society are peace-loving, civilized and moderate in temperament. It is their hard luck that they are governed by a mindset that is always bent upon bloodshed and violence in the name of religion. We find that mindset always patronizes those who are prejudiced and narrow-minded. If the government of India had taken to task the hands involved in the demolition of the Babri Mosque, the faces behind the massacre at the Golden Temple and the criminals who planned the bloodshed in Gujarat, the situation in Udaipur could never have been so horrible.

Hindu tailor beheaded in Udaipur, killers threaten to kill PM Modi

The story of criminal silence doesnt stop here; on 26 April 2020, a group of upper-caste men started beating up a 21-year-old Dalityoung man named Jitendra. His crime was that he sat on a chair and ate in the presence of upper-caste Hindus at a wedding. He was so severely beaten that he could not survive the injuries and died nine days after that brutality.As per tradition, the police and other law-enforcement agencies remained silent about this brutality and nothing was done to address the grievances of the wretched Jitendras family. The Modi government has been supporting and patronizing the elements involved in all such types of injustice. Now that sown seed of hatred has grown up and changed into a huge thorny tree and now even the Hindu community is being affected by the pricks of its nettles.

Experts on Indian affairs, however, have another opinion too; they think this incident of beheading in Udaipur could be something like a False-Flag Operation. The Modi government seems in a strange wave of heat and haste to create and promote anarchy in the country; the main target seems to give all Indian minorities, particularly the Muslims, a real tough time. From banning Hijab in classrooms to preventing Azaan on loudspeakers, the BJP is adopting every means to gain its political pursuit in the country. This all is being done in collaboration with Shiv Sena and the desired end-state is to make India a Hindu state. The Modi government is making a mockery of all constitutional provisions by doing so. More false-flag operations of the same type are expected to distract the attention of the common public from very serious issues includinga 30-year high wholesale price index,the rapid devaluation of the Indian currency andan all-time high unemployment rate. It is very much obvious that the recent episode of the killing of a Hindu tailor, Kanhaiya Lal would help the BJP in gaining sympathy vote against Muslims.

More pathetic is the fact that the Modi government is trying to associate the linkages of killers with Pakistan.BJP-supported media houses have become the mouthpiece of the Modi government and are exerting all their force in dragging Pakistan in the Kanhaiya Lal beheading case thoughPakistan has categorically rejected all such allegations. According to India Todays partial analysis, the police have arrested two MuslimsMohammad Riaz and Ghos Mohammad for beheading Kanhaiya Lal. The paper says, Investigators believe that the two accused, who were arrested after posting videos online admitting to the crime, have links to Dawat-e-Islami, a religious movement based in Pakistan. The same propaganda was done by another Indian paper Times Now. The paper said, A Pak connection has been revealed in Udaipur killing case. It was found that Kanhaiya's killer Mohammed Ghos went to Pakistan. The Times Now further said, As the National Investigation Agency probes the recent murder of a Rajasthan resident, a Pakistan link has now emerged in the case. Mohammed Ghos - one of the two people arrested for the attack on Kanhaiya Lal - had visited Karachi in 2014 and is believed to have spent time with the Daawat-e-Islami organization.

In short, so many Indian newspapers and television channels are churning out the same rubbish day and night.Such malicious attempts could never succeed in misleading the people, either in India or outside India neither the Muslims nor the Hindus. Everyone knows that maligning Pakistan and dragging itin Indias internal matters has always been a tradition rather than a hobby of the BJP-led Hindutva government in India. Even opposition leaders like Rahul Gandhi are well are of the realities hidden behind such incidents. In a recent statement, Rahul Gandhi said that the Modi government is simply trying to distract the attention of the common people from their very genuine problems by using different means. He apprehended that such brutal attempts could be found more frequently in the near future. However,Pawan Khera has something entirely different and shocking to reveal. He is the media head of the Congress party. Addressing a press conference at the Congress headquarters in New Delhi, heshocked everyone by saying thatone of the two men who killed the tailor in Udaipur over blasphemous remarks is a BJP member. He strongly and firmly argued that it was why the Modi government had moved quickly to transfer the case to the handpicked National Investigation Agency. Hopefully, the cat would soonjump out of the bag because it must be very dark and suffocating there in the bag. Certainly, the blazing fire of distrust and hatred in Udaipur would soon cool down and the residents of that area would realize, recognize and then penalize the real culprit behind the masked face; the culprit who is neither a Muslim nor a Hindu; who is just a stake-holder.
Watertown, NY (13601)

Today

Cloudy with rain this morning...then scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. High 76F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Rain showers this evening with clearing overnight. Low 66F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Chinas earthquake relief assistance to Afghanistan showcases international humanitarian spirit

15:17, July 05, 2022 By Zhu Yongbiao ( People's Daily Online

On June 22, a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck Khost and Paktika of Afghanistan, causing severe casualties. After learning about the earthquake, the Chinese government immediately expressed sympathy to the Afghan people and decided to provide RMB 50 million as emergency humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. The Chinese government also expressed that it would closely coordinate with the Afghan interim government to ensure the relief supplies would arrive at the disaster-affected people as soon as possible and assist the Afghan people to tide over the difficulties. China is also ready to work with Afghanistan in consolidating disaster prevention and mitigation, especially in monitoring and forecasting disasters. On June 27, the first batch of Chinas relief supplies arrived in Afghanistan and were distributed quickly to those in need.

A sum of RMB 50 million is not a small amount for China. The Chinese people, however, lodged no complaint but unanimously expressed their great support. Meanwhile, the Chinese people, the local government, the Red Cross Society of China, and Chinas enterprises, institutes, individuals, and others took action to offer what they came up with to assist Afghanistan. Up to now, various civilian donation events for Afghanistan are still being carried out. In fact, for a long time, especially after the tremendous change in Afghanistan last year, the Chinese government and people have not stopped their humanitarian aid to the Afghan people, even showing a greater momentum.

Since the earthquake, China has given the greatest and most substantial aid among all countries. China is also the fastest in implementing aid. The supplies, which are of great quality, pertinency, and practicality, have been unanimously praised by the Afghan interim government and people. It can be said that China's fast and efficient aid to Afghanistan has once again given a vivid example of Chinas long-term and constructive support to the Afghan people.

In recent years, China has seen a continuous improvement in the level of international aid and constantly implemented its value of a community with a shared future for humanity with its practical actions. In foreign aid, China has adhered to internationalism and the humanitarian spirit and contributed with its utmost efforts to offer the greatest timely assistance to foreign countries and their people when they are exposed to the threats of natural disasters, major infectious diseases, and others. This large-scale assistance to the Afghanistan earthquake disaster has once again highlighted Chinas humanitarianism and worldwide affection. The international humanitarian spirit embodied in the concept of a community with a shared future for humanity exudes an attention-grabbing light.

The humanitarian spirit should be essentially people-oriented, valuing not only the safety of a nation's people but also that of people in other countries as fellow human beings. There is a Chinese saying that one should care for aged people as one would ones own aged parents and for young people as one would ones own young children. China will never stand by with folded hands when a friends in trouble and never offer aid under the precondition of its self-interest. This reflects Chinas righteousness and the Chinese peoples long-held principle. This is highly consistent with the Afghan people in following the traditional idea of establishing Hujra (Afghans cultural guest room) to entertain familiar or unfamiliar passing guests. It is similar to the hospitality of the Afghan people.

The Chinese government and people have held that when a large number of Afghan people are facing issues of survival and the right to life, the most significant and urgent task is to save lives. It should neither deliberately tie humanitarian aid to politics nor politicize the issues of humanitarian aid, human rights, and the right to development under the banner of politics, much less biasedly using them as weapons to torment those Afghans in suffering.

China has been actively engaged in and supported Afghan infrastructure and aided in the construction of a large number of hospitals, teaching buildings, roads, water conservancy facilities, and others which benefit peoples livelihood and promote development. China has been an active role model in supporting Afghan farmers, with measures such as opening up the air corridor for pine nuts, exempting the tariffs of Afghan agricultural products exported to China, training Afghan agricultural experts, and others. Each measure has reflected Chinas substantial aid to the Afghan people.

China has been striving to build a mechanism integrating emergency aid and long-term aid, bilateral cooperative aid and multilateral cooperative aid, so as to create a sound comprehensive aid ecology combining the developmental aid and the national self-development capacities of Afghanistan, which will not only alleviate the current disaster faced by the Afghan people but also improve the abilities and confidence of the Afghan people in rebuilding their country, thus achieving the genuine reconstruction.

Chinas timely aid has warmed the hearts of the Afghan people. Reading news releases on Chinas aid to Afghan and relevant news published by Chinas embassy in Afghan, many Afghan netizens have commented with high praises. It can be said that Chinas aid has been providing multiple precious support for the Afghan people in calamities, added to the certainty and stability of the complex and difficult Afghanistan situations, and contributed to improving Afghan peoples living conditions and quality. When the Afghan people were mercilessly thrown off planes and ships by the United States, it was China and other countries that constantly reached out to help and maximize the relief of the dual physical and mental sufferings of the Afghan people.

Driven by its utter irresponsibility, the United States has completely abandoned Afghanistan and deliberately attempted to cast away the Afghan issues. Besides, the United States has purposefully leveraged other international issues to divert the attention of the American people and the international community.

This earthquake has resulted in severe casualties of nearly 5,000 and again revealed wounds that the American people are unwilling to mention. The reason a 6.2- magnitude earthquake leads to such a tragic result is that Afghanistan has extremely weak disaster warning and prevention capacities and poor living conditions and infrastructure. This has once again reflected that in the past 20 years, the United States has not made a substantive investment in Afghan national building and peoples livelihood. Trillions of U.S. dollars have been spent for military purposes, especially bombs. A large sum of them has flown back to the United States.

In response to the demand of the Afghan people and the international community for the release and return of Afghanistan assets, the United States has sometimes played deaf-mute or sometimes used domestic laws and regulations and executive orders as excuses. At the same time, the United States keeps coming up with various high-sounding excuses to set up obstacles for the international community to offer aid to Afghanistan. The United States intends to make an issue of humanitarian aid. It has used its discursive hegemony to influence and control the Afghan situation and attempted to install a switch operated by none but itself. This, in fact, shows that the United States has been applying a blunt knife to Afghans bleeding wounds. Facing the severe and incessant humanitarian crises in Afghan, its high time for the United States to completely change its style, which it should do, and to match words with deeds to assume its due responsibilities.

Zhu Yongbiao, professor, executive director of Research Center for the Belt and Road of Lanzhou University, director of center for Afghanistan Studies of Lanzhou University.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
Have you ever stood in a natural environment  a beach, desert, rainforest  far from a city and noticed that strange and subtle feeling of freedom tremor through your body?

by Robert J. Burrowes

When is the last time you were outside in the morning to experience a glorious dawn? Or sat watching the sunset across the ocean horizon? How do you feel when you touch the skin of someone you love? A grandparent, parent, lover or child?

Have you ever seen a spiders web full of morning dew, or after the rain, when the sun is shining through the droplets in the web to reveal the flashing diamonds, sapphires, rubies and emeralds hidden within?

Have you ever stood in a natural environment  a beach, desert, rainforest  far from a city and noticed that strange and subtle feeling of freedom tremor through your body?

Have you ever marveled at the breathe of wind that cools your face on a hot Summers day? Or been intoxicated by the smell of blossom in Spring?

Have you gaped in wonder at the birth of new life: a chick pecking out of its shell, a seed germinating or a baby being born?

Or paused to ponder the sheer magic of being alive yourself?

Or do you find life in the real physical world too constricting, painful, frightening and demanding: something from which you seek to escape, with some distraction or another (work, television, sport, a novel, a drug), as often as you can?

Well, very soon now, we are promised, you will be able to escape reality far more effectively than those primitive means of distraction made possible previously. And far more effectively than even the outcomes promised in those dystopian novels.

So the fundamental questions we must ask ourselves are simple: Do you want real life, with all of the pains, sorrows, fear and fury that go along with beauty, freedom and love? Or do you believe what they tell us and want everything unpleasant to go away? Permanently. And to live in delusion thereafter, given synthetic versions of all of the pleasant feelings and experiences described above?

Remember the dialogue between the Savage and Mustapha Mond during the closing stages of Aldous Huxleys dystopian novel Brave New World?

But I dont want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.

In fact, said Mustapha Mond, you're claiming the right to be unhappy.

All right then, said the Savage defiantly, Im claiming the right to be unhappy.

Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may

happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.

There was a long silence.

I claim them all, said the Savage at last.

Well, after nearly one hundred years, the dystopian future described by Huxley is almost upon us and, if we are to defeat it, we need a lot more savages willing to forego the promised comforts.

Because if those who see themselves as our global masters get their way, we are about to enter a virtual world that will become more complete by the day and from which there will be no escape.

The Metaverse

Based on many years of effort, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has recently launched its plan to create our new all-digital world, called the metaverse. See Defining and Building the Metaverse.

So if you find natural phenomena  ranging from rainforests, beaches and weather variations to ill-health, danger and unhappiness  annoying, you will soon be able to escape them, compliments of the metaverse. Or so we are promised. And you wont be troubled by anything resembling what might be called free will either. You will be content to do as you are told, even more than you are content to do already. See Terrified of Freedom: Why Most Human Beings are Embracing the Global Elites Technotyranny.

After all, your mind will no longer be your own. And while the usual descriptions, written by elite agents, fail to mention it, a quick flash of metaverse-induced fear will make sure that you comply, whatever you are required to do. The point is this: You wont be escaping all of those unpleasant feelings after all. They can just be used to control you more directly, to fulfill an elite-determined purpose. But that is a fact they are not advertising.

In their iconic hit song In the Year 2525, written in 1964 by Rick Evans and later recorded by he and Denny Zager to become a No.1. hit around the world in 1969, Evans captured key elements of what is already upon us somewhat ahead of the schedule mapped out in the song.

[Chorus 2]

In the year 3535

Aint gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies

Everything you think, do, and say

Is in the pills you took today

[Chorus 3]

In the year 4545

Aint gonna need your teeth, wont need your eyes

You wont find a thing to chew

Nobodys gonna look at you

[Chorus 4]

In the year 5555

Your arms are hanging limp at your sides

Your legs got nothing to do

Some machines doing that for you

[Chorus 5]

In the year 6565

Aint gonna need no husband, wont need no wife

Youll pick your sons, pick your daughters too

From the bottom of a long glass tube

Whoa-oh-oh

So what is the Metaverse?

According to the WEF: The metaverse is a future persistent and interconnected virtual environment where social and economic elements mirror reality. Users can interact with it and each other simultaneously across devices and immersive technologies while engaging with digital assets and property. See Defining and Building the Metaverse.

Moreover, if technologists are right that 2022 will separate thinkers from builders, then last years technical advances will produce this years first steps towards making the metaverse a reality.





But from the perspective of the human experience, one development stands out above all others: extended reality (XR) technologies. These include virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and brain-computer interfaces (BCI), which together position themselves as the next computing platforms in their own right.

Nevertheless, it is clear that a precise definition of the term metaverse (for a start: is it a product, service, place or moment in time?), upon which there is broad agreement even among those who routinely use the term, is yet to emerge. See 3 technologies that will shape the future of the metaverse  and the human experience.

Having written that, here is one definition elaborated in the article above that reveals just how far some of those heavily involved in this work have become disconnected from any sense of themselves and, hence, reality: Specifically, the metaverse is the moment at which our digital lives  our online identities, experiences, relationships, and assets  become more meaningful to us than our physical lives. The original quotation can be read here: Spheres of Self: Performativity and Parasociality in the Metaverse.

And, as Cathy Li describes it, the metaverse is most useful as a lens through which to view ongoing digital transformation. The belief is that virtual worlds, incorporating connected devices, blockchain and other tech, will be so commonplace that the metaverse will become an extension of reality itself. See Who will govern the metaverse?

Let me reiterate two points from the paragraphs immediately above: our digital lives... become more meaningful to us than our physical lives. And the metaverse will become an extension of reality itself.

Really?

While statements such as these reveal the breathtaking level of insanity that underpins this entire enterprise  see The Global Elite is Insane Revisited  it does not mean that we are not under enormous threat. Just as vast arsenals of nuclear weapons, by some insane logic, are supposed to provide us with security while actually threatening the existence of all life on Earth, the metaverse is part of a substantial package of measures that will reduce human life to one not worth living.

Why? Well, as noted by authors such as Tom Valovic: The metaverse is one element in the path to implementing technocratic governance over all of humanity.

As Planet Earth and our physical world continue to experience massive biospheric degradation and disruption, the elites that are now in many cases pulling the strings of governance at the country level are heading for the exit doors. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are exploring the realm of space and Musk has a Mars mission planned. Globally oriented elites... looked out for themselves which is what they do best.

Paralleling the notion of space flight as a form of existential escapism is the metaverse. So what if our cities are crumbling, infrastructures falling apart, and the biosphere is seriously degrading? So what if our wasteful consumer-driven lifestyle has created unprecedented levels of pollution so extensive that its now the number one cause of health problems globally? No problem well just kick back and don our Meta headsets (or worse get a brain implant) and escape into an artificially fabricated world that lets us turn our back on the massive ecological and environmental problems we now face. See Why We Should Reject Mark Zuckerbergs Dehumanizing Vision of a Metaverse.

Education in the Metaverse

Of course, the metaverse is deeply interwoven with other components of their plan, such as those in relation to what they call education, which is more accurately described as the process by which young transhuman slaves are programmed to perform their function in the technocratic economy that is being imposed upon us. Of course, education sounds better than virtual programming of young transhuman slaves so, in the interests of not raising obvious concerns, the word education has been used.

As noted by Dr. Michael Nevradakis, discussions on this subject at the recent gathering of the World Economic Forum emphasized the importance of virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies with participants touting the purported educational and economic benefits that would derive from use of these technologies in the classroom by helping, according to Dr. Ali Saeed Bin Harmal Al Dhaheri & Dr. Mohamad Ali Hamade, to increase accessibility, enhance quality and improve the affordability of education globally. See Experiential learning and VR will reshape the future of education.

However, as Nevradakis also noted, these discussions had little to say about the need to protect childrens data or digital identities  or, for that matter, providing the types of early-life experiences children require as part of their socialization. See Future of Education? WEFs Vision  Heavy on Virtual Reality and AI Technologies, Light on Privacy Concerns.

Of course, there is no need for concern about the early-life experiences of those young transhumans who are being programmed for decades of servitude prior to being terminated when they are no longer functional.

Beyond claimed educational and economic benefits, however, some authors argue that digitalizing education can play a role in easing pressures on the environment and climate. How so? Nevradakis again: Indeed, the WEF said the use of textbooks, notebooks and pencils as critical learning tools is on the way out, due to environmental pressures and COP26 goals (from the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference), which will drive the digitalizing of education streams. See Future of Education? WEFs Vision  Heavy on Virtual Reality and AI Technologies, Light on Privacy Concerns.

But it is clearly delusional to suggest that the use of textbooks, notebooks and pencils has greater adverse impact on the environment and climate than the environmental cost and climate impact of producing sophisticated technology for each student. And despite claims of improved affordability it is equally delusional to ignore the economic and social cost, for example, to the child laborers in the Congo working in appalling conditions to extract strategic minerals to produce this technology. See Humanitys Dirty Little Secret: Starving, Enslaving, Raping, Torturing and Killing our Children.

Besides, as touched on below, education is already a monstrous experience, destroying the Selfhood of the child so that they become submissively obedient. Removing the bulk of educations remaining social component by technologizing it can only make it even worse.

Babies in the Metaverse

Then again, maybe children will no longer be put through school. It simply wont be necessary because children, for transhuman slaves at least, will no longer exist.

By 2070, the metaverse will offer you virtual babies, environmentally-friendly digital children, according to UK artificial intelligence (AI) expert Catriona Campbell. Parents will see and interact with their offspring through next-generation AR [augmented reality] glasses and haptic gloves. The latter devices enable users to experience a realistic sense of touch when handling virtual or holographic objects. As a bonus, these children take up no space, cost nothing to feed and remain healthy, if that is what you want, for as long as they are programmed to live. A subscription might cost as little as $25 each month.

And if this seems like a monumental leap out of reality to you, Campbell also believes that within 50 years technology will have advanced to such an extent that babies which exist in the metaverse are indistinct from those in the real world. As the metaverse evolves, I can see virtual children becoming an accepted and fully embraced part of society in much of the developed world. See Virtual babies who grow up in real time will be commonplace by 2070, expert predicts.

Thats right, Campbell is claiming that within 50 years... babies which exist in the metaverse are indistinct from those in the real world! Pause a moment. How does that sound to you?

Just in case you cannot wait, you are welcome to start using early versions now. See, for example, Virtual Baby, Adopt a Virtual Baby and My Virtual Child.

Oh, and by the way, you wont be having sex either, whether for reproductive purposes or otherwise. You will prefer virtual sex. See Sex And Pornography Aim To Strike Gold In The Metaverse.

Critiquing the Metaverse

Beyond the criticisms already noted above, there are a great many other criticisms of the metaverse and the role it will play in the overall elite program being implemented under what the WEF calls its Great Reset. This comprehensive program will transform human society and human life for those people left alive after the eugenics component has been fully implemented. See The Final Battle for Humanity: It is Now or Never in the Long War Against Homo Sapiens.

If you like, you can read a little more about what the masters of this metaverse intend for us, as well as critiques of it, by authors such as these.

Derrick Broze: While some people may not intend for The Metaverse to become an all encompassing reality that supersedes physical reality, for the Zuckerbergs, Microsofts, and WEFs of the world, that is exactly what they intend for The Metaverse. For the billionaire class and their puppet organizations, such as the WEF and the United Nations, the Metaverse offers up the potential to commandeer all life into digital prisons where the people can be charged for services and products in the digital realm.... With the people of the world safely tucked into their digital beds, the Technocrats could complete their total takeover of natural resources, the economy, and humanity itself. See The Great Narrative And The Metaverse, Part 2: Will The Metaverse End Human Freedom?

Dr. Michael Nevradakis: Who will govern the metaverse? According to the WEF, real-world governance models represent one possible option for metaverse governance. However, far from referring to constitutionally defined institutions of governance, with checks and balances, the WEF cites Facebooks Oversight Board as an example of such a real-world governance model. See WEF Launches Metaverse Initiative, Predicts Digital Lives Will Become More Meaningful to Us Than Our Physical Lives.

But an earlier World Economic Forum report from its Global Redesign Initiative was more blunt: The report postulates that a globalized world is best managed by a coalition of multinational corporations, governments (including through the UN system) and select civil society organizations (CSOs). See Sustainable Development Goals and Human Rights p. 209, citing Everybodys Business: Strengthening International Cooperation in a More Interdependent World.

So if you believe that you and I are destined to have a say in the metaverse that is unfolding, you would be wise to keep investigating. Elite proposals are invariably very distant from the type of governance models usually considered by ordinary people in a multiplicity of contexts, where the emphasis is on facilitating widespread grassroots participation, not rule by technocrats.

You can read considerably more about what our technocratic overlords have in mind  including the existing trade in such things as virtual real estate, virtual clothing and virtual art  and what is wrong with it, in the articles on the metaverse published by Patrick Wood on Technocracy News & Trends: Metaverse. And there is more in articles such as these: The Top 10 Creepiest and Most Dystopian Things Pushed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and How Our Lives Could Soon Look: The World Economic Forum Posts An Insane Dystopian Video.

And heres another simple issue to ponder. Remember how I mentioned above that a quick flash of metaverse-induced fear would ensure that you complied with an elite-determined directive, how does the idea of eating bugs, processed sewage and human flesh appeal? Well, given that your mind will no longer be your own, what appeals now, or doesnt, will be irrelevant once the metaverse is determining how you perceive things. See Canadian Company Pledges To Produce TWO BILLION BUGS Per Year For Human Consumption and Will You Eat Cultured Meat Grown From Human Cells?

You will eat Soylent Green because that is what the program tells you.

So why are people embracing the Metaverse?

In a recent article in which he described taking his son to watch a film through 3D glasses, Charles Eisenstein noted The on-screen reality was so vivid, stimulating and intense that it made the real world seem boring by comparison. See Transhumanism and the Metaverse.

How can this happen?

Because we terrorize our children into submissive obedience, devoid of the unique and powerful individual Self they were gifted by evolution at birth. See Why Violence?, Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practiceand Do We Want School or Education? Why? Essentially to keep them performing tasks that bore them senseless throughout their school and working life.

Fundamentally, this terrorization works because it compels our children into suppressing awareness of how they feel. As a result, only the most intense experiences register emotionally: The capacity to experience a subtle feeling has been lost. And without this capacity, they cannot develop into the powerful, courageous Self-willed individuals that evolution intended. They are human relics. Ready and willing to be turned into a transhuman slave in the unconscious hope they will be finally able to experience, in the metaverse, what was taken from them in the real world as a child.

But they wont get that experience, even in the metaverse. It is not what the elite has in mind for us.

Resisting the Metaverse

Of course, the metaverse is just one feature of the Global Elite agenda that is being imposed upon us. And it is not enough to resist individual features of the Great Reset program. We must strategically resist its most fundamental elements so that the entire agenda is defeated.

If you are inclined to join those strategically resisting the Great Reset and its related agendas, you are welcome to participate in the We Are Human, We Are Free campaign which identifies a list of 30 strategic goals for doing so.

In addition and more simply, you can download a one-page flyer that identifies a short series of crucial nonviolent actions that anyone can take. This flyer, now available in 16 languages (Czech, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish & Slovak) with more languages in the pipeline, can be downloaded from here: The 7 Days Campaign to Resist the Great Reset.

If strategically resisting the Great Reset (and related agendas) appeals to you, consider joining the We Are Human, We Are Free Telegram group (with a link accessible from the website).

And if you want a child who is powerfully able to perceive the dysfunctional lure of the metaverse, and is able to join you in resisting it, consider making My Promise to Children.

CONCLUSION

So, for just a little longer, the choice is yours.

You can live your life with all its challenges and problems, joys and achievements. Or you can live the virtual life that someone else programmed for you, including whatever comes with it that they didnt tell you about.

In short, like Neo in the film The Matrix, you have a choice. You can choose the Blue Pill and proceed to live in a synthesized, fictional, computer-generated world. Or you take the Red Pill and, in this case, join the fight with those of us determined to defend the real world and avert descent into the metaverse.

But you must make that choice while you still have free will.

So you must make that choice soon.

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of Why Violence? His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.
Patience, the old adage goes, is a virtue. If thats true, theres a special place in heaven for the Catholic faithful who worship at St. Stephen on Napoleon Avenue.

Just last month, the Vatican announced the elevation of the longtime local church  which traces its roots to the congregations founding in 1849  to basilica status, making it one of just three houses of worship in Louisiana to be graced with that lofty designation.

And it took only 173 years.

(Louisianas other basilicas, for the record, are St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans and the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Natchitoches. Not bad company.)

But its not the first time the congregation of St. Stephen displayed its patience.

The church was founded in 1849 by priests of the Vincentian order largely to serve the areas growing German population. In those early days, Masses were held in the homes of parishioners while the Vincentians set about raising money for a proper brick-and-mortar church.

They would finally get one in 1850, but  with European migration to New Orleans then at a height  they would quickly outgrow it.

Within just a few years, they found themselves in need of a place to build a bigger, suitably grand church. They eventually found it on Napoleon Avenue, between Camp and Chestnut streets.

On Nov. 19, 1871, at long last, Archbishop Napoleon-Joseph Perche presided over a cornerstone-laying ceremony at the site, attended by assorted clergy members and a throng of parishioners.

Even churches love a parade

But first, New Orleans being New Orleans, there was a parade.

A long procession, which had formed in St. Charles street, led the ecclesiasties and attendants to the scene, The Daily Picayune reported. This procession, made up of religious societies with their banners, fire companies, children from orphan asylums, sisters and a number of juvenile religious associations, headed by a fine band, presented a picturesque appearance.

At that point, work had already started on the structure, and an outline of what was to come could be seen.

Designed by architect W. Carter and constructed by a team led by builder Thomas ONeil, it would be an imposing Gothic structure fronting Napoleon Avenue and  the piece de resistance  a tower on its western side topped by a spire rising 172 feet into the New Orleans skyline.

Then as now, however, building such a splendid structure was a costly affair. And, so, for the next few years, the new parish held a number of fundraisers  from fairs and concerts to a baby beauty pageant and a performance by Sargent the necromancer  to benefit the churchs construction fund.

It took a while. But, finally, on New Years Day 1888  39 years since the founding of the church, 17 years after construction began and one week after St. Stephens Day  the new St. Stephen Catholic Church was finally ready to be consecrated for its intended use.

Worth the wait

With room to seat 2,000 congregants, it was a sight to behold.

Gigantic marbleized pillars support a high arched ceiling, containing sacred pictures with a back ground of pale blue, The Picayune reported. The softened light streaming in through the stained glass windows reveals the beauty of the works of art. The organ loft, the largest in the city, contains a $10,000 organ built by the Pilcher Brothers.

But, with money running out, there was still something missing: the steeple.

The parishioners of St. Stephen didnt want just any old steeple, though.

St. Stephens was a queen, The Picayune wrote, but an uncrowned queen, among the churches of the city, and the people wanted to see their queen crowned and to see the cross above all other structures.

So, by then accustomed to exhibiting patience, they once more waited.

Meanwhile, a bell, said to have been cast in France from metal melted down from a cannon used by Napoleon at Waterloo, was mounted on a wood frame on the church grounds to be used until the steeple could be built.

That would take another 17 years. But by 1905, enough money finally had been secured to resume construction of what would be a six-sided Gothic steeple, designed by the architectural firm of Favrot & Livaudais and with construction overseen by John McNally, of the firm McNally and Mullaney.

Built over the course of a year on a steel frame and clad, like the rest of the church, in brick with terra cotta adornments, it would double as a clock tower and a belfry. From the ground to the bronze cross crowning it, the finished steeple reached 200 feet into the sky.

By comparison, St. Louis Cathedral reaches a height of 130 feet, according to the architectural database emporis.com, while St. Patricks Church on Camp Street stands 185 feet.

Safe to say that for the people of St. Stephens Church  now officially the Basilica of St. Stephen  it was worth the wait.

Sources: The Times-Picayune archive; www.goodshepherdparishnola.com; emporis.com

Know of a New Orleans building worth profiling in this column, or just curious about one? Contact Mike Scott at moviegoermike@gmail.com.
Marie Fazio writes for The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate as a Report For America corps member. Email her at MFazio@theadvocate.com or follow her on Twitter @mariecfazio.

To learn more about Report for America and to support our journalism, please click here.
From the Central American Dry Corridor and Haiti, through the Sahel, Central African Republic, South Sudan and then eastwards to the Horn of Africa, Syria, Yemen and all the way to Afghanistan, there is a ring of fire stretching around the world where conflict and climate shocks are driving millions of people to the brink of starvation

While the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Summit ended in Madrid on 30 June with net commitments to double spending on weapons and to increase by eight-fold the number of troops in Europe, the total of hungry people worldwide now marks an unprecedented record.

The Western military Alliance Declaration states that its member countries continue to face distinct threats from all strategic directions.

The Russian Federation is the most significant and direct threat to Allies security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.

Militarising migration policies?

Furthermore, the NATO Summit Declaration emphasises that terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations, continues to pose a direct threat to the security of our populations, and to international stability and prosperity.

The Summit, therefore, decided to increase its military deployment in Southern Europe, in particular in Spain and upon its request, as a way to prevent and combat terrorism.

The decision was adopted by NATO leaders just four days after the massive entry of migrants to the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla, both located in the North of Morocco, which was brutally stopped, killing around thirty migrants.

Instability beyond our borders is also contributing to irregular migration and human trafficking, says the Declaration.

In short, NATO has opted for further militarising its US, Canada and European countries migration policies, which they continue to claim that are based on international laws and human rights, etcetera.

Cyber, space threats?

The Madrid Declaration also says that NATO members are confronted by cyber, space, and hybrid and other asymmetric threats, and by the malicious use of emerging and disruptive technologies.

As expected, the NATO Declaration emphasises that the Russian Federation is the most significant and direct threat to Allies security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.

At the same time, NATO leaders have made a clear reference to China.

We face systemic competition from those, including the Peoples Republic of China, who challenge our interests, security, and values and seek to undermine the rules-based international order.

Any mention of hunger?

Unless hunger has been dealt with by the Western military Alliance as a top secret, confidential topic, the NATO Declaration makes no clear mention of the current unprecedented hunger crisis. Perhaps NATO includes the deadly hunger as part of its package of threats to their safety and security?

The fact is that right now 811 million people go to bed hungry every night, the Peace Nobel Laureate World Food Programme (WFP) warns.

The number of those facing acute food insecurity has soared  from 135 million to 345 million  since 2019. A total of 50 million people in 45 countries are teetering on the edge of famine.

Money for weapons, not for saving lives

While needs are sky-high, resources have hit rock bottom, warns WFP, while emphasising that it requires 22.2 billion US dollars to immediately reach 137 million people in 2022.

However, with the global economy reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, the gap between needs and funding is bigger than ever before.

The urgently needed funding to face the pressing need to save lives is hard to be met. In its Nuclear-Armed Powers Squander $156.000 Per Minute on Their MAD Policy, IPS reported on how nine nuclear-armed states spent 82.4 billion US dollars in just one year, prior to the unfolding war in Europe, on these weapons of mass destruction.

Now in view of the NATO Summit decision to further increase military spending to face not only Russia but also to more heavily spending on deadly arms to challenge what they now consider as the Chinese threat, there will be little chance to address the devastating hunger.

Why is the world hungrier than ever?

WFP mentions four causes of hunger and famine. This seismic hunger crisis, it explains, has been caused by a deadly combination of four factors:

Conflict is still the biggest driver of hunger, with 60 percent of the worlds hungry living in areas affected by war and violence. Events unfolding in Ukraine are further proof of how conflict feeds hunger, forcing people out of their homes and wiping out their sources of income.

Climate shocks destroy lives, crops and livelihoods, and undermine peoples ability to feed themselves.

The economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are driving hunger to unprecedented levels.

And, last but not least, the cost of reaching people in need is rising: the price WFP is paying for food is up 30 percent compared to 2019, an additional US$42 million a month.

Hunger hotspots: a ring of fire

By the way, none of these factors has been caused by any of these millions of hungry humans.

According to the Rome-based WFP, from the Central American Dry Corridor and Haiti, through the Sahel, Central African Republic, South Sudan and then eastwards to the Horn of Africa, Syria, Yemen and all the way to Afghanistan, there is a ring of fire stretching around the world where conflict and climate shocks are driving millions of people to the brink of starvation.

In countries like Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen, WFP is already faced with hard decisions, including cutting rations to be able to reach more people. This is tantamount to taking from the hungry to feed the starving.

The consequences of not investing in resilience activities will reverberate across borders. If communities are not empowered to withstand the shocks and stresses they are exposed to, this could result in increased migration and possible destabilisation and conflict.

Is this why NATO leaders talk about pouring more billions and even trillions into their fight against destabilisation and terrorism?

Courtesy: IPS News
The U.S.-Mexico border has become the worlds deadliest land crossing, according to data recently brought to light by a United Nations study.

A historic high of 728 recorded immigrant deaths and disappearances along the U.S.-Mexico border crossing in 2021 has made the land crossing the deadliest in the world, according to the study conducted by the United Nations agency, the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

These deaths accounted for the majority of the 1,238 immigrant deaths in the Americas in 2021, the IOM said in a press release on July 1, adding that these numbers should be considered an undercount due to difficulties in collecting data.

The study attributed the deaths and disappearance of immigrants in the Americas to a lack of options for safe and regular mobility, saying that this would drive migrants, presumably those choosing to enter as illegal aliens, to pursue riskier dangerous pathways to their destinations.

The agency also noted how the dangers faced by migrants are highlighted by recent news about what amounted to the deadliest known smuggling incident in American history: the discovery of 53 bodies in a tractor-trailer packed with 67 illegal immigrants in San Antonio on June 27.

The record deaths came as Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents reported a record number of apprehensions along the southern border.

According to CBP statistics obtained by The Epoch Times, border patrol agents from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego apprehended 232,628 illegal border crossers in Maythe highest monthly total in 23 years.

In the same month, 79 illegal immigrants were found dead or died while crossing the border, according to the CBP data.

When that many people come across the border, its just a matter of mathyou increase those that come across the border, you increase those that put themselves into the hands of the criminal cartelsyou are certainly going to increase the deaths at the border, Tom Homan, former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told The Epoch Times in June.

Very vulnerable people take the risk and pay criminal cartels who dont give one cent about these people, Homan said, adding that more migrants have died so far during President Joe Bidens term in office than any time [he] can remember in [his] 35-year career.

Since Biden took office in January 2021, border authorities have apprehended more than 3.2 million illegal border crossers, according to CBP data. An additional 800,000 or so have been detected but evaded capture.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.

Charlotte Cuthbertson contributed to this report.

From The Epoch Times
Businesses, governments and other organizations looking to shrink their carbon footprint can check out the latest in sustainable vehicles at the upcoming Drive Clean Indiana Annual Conference & Expo.

The event will take place from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Aug. 9 at the Blue Chip Stardust Event Center, 777 Blue Chip Drive in Michigan City.

The conference will feature two exhibit halls and indoor displays of electric, hybrid and diesel vehicles, as well as of vehicle equipment. Vehicle manufacturers, clean fuel providers, technology companies and other industry leaders will be on hand.

The annual conference and expo also will have breakout sessions on sustainable transportation, networking opportunities and an awards ceremony.

St. John-based Drive Clean Indiana, formerly South Shore Clean Cities, will recognize those who made major contributions over the past year to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and petroleum use with awards.

Industry leaders will deliver speeches at the conference on subjects such as how to make fleets cleaner and more sustainable.

Vehicle displays space, exhibit booths and event sponsorships are available.

A cocktail reception will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 8 in the Suncoast Room in the casino.

"Mingle with the top leaders in the sustainable transportation industry and make connections with potential clients in this intimate, relaxed atmosphere as we kick off our conference," Drive Clean Indiana said in a news release. "Business casual attire is recommended. The reception is included with your registration."

Sponsors include SAE International, NIPSCO, SAG USA, Best Equipment Co., CE Clean Energy, Country Mark, Ozinga and South Bend Ethanol.

Interested businesses and other parties can register now, reserving seats per person or tables for 10. Hotel rooms also can be reserved for delegations to the conference by calling 888-879-7711 and mentioning Drive Clean Indiana.

For more information, visit drivecleanindiana.org.
The Frankfort Park District has opened its renovated Splash Park at Commissioners Park, 22108 S. 80th Ave.

The renovated facility has a new recirculation system and splash pad features. The recirculation system replaces water from a dedicated well previously used. The water is chemically treated like a pool and will be warmer because of its storage in an underground vault.

The Splash Park also has new spray features including a dumping bucket.

This is a much-needed upgrade that is a just in time for the hot weather and wonderful addition to Frankfort and the surrounding area," Gina Hassett, executive director of the park district, said in a press release. "There are no public pools in the Lincolnway area, therefore the Splash Park offers an option for families to get wet and keep cool during the summer weather.

The project was approved in 2021, Hassett said. Illinois "Sen. Michael Hastings (D., Frankfort) secured a DCEO grant to assist with the costs," Hassett continued, noting the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity is providing $350,000 toward the cost of the project.

The Splash Park is open from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday and 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Capacity is 60 plus chaperones. Fee is $2 for residents and $4 for nonresidents, with children younger than 1 free. Children younger than 12 must be accompanied by a guardian at least 16 years old. For more information, visit www.frankfortparks.org/parks-facilities/splash-park.
GARY  Three young people are dead and seven others were sent to the hospital in a shooting that took place early Tuesday during what appears to have been a holiday block party in the 1900 block of Missouri Street, officials said.

The deceased were identified by the Lake County coroner's office as Laurence Mangum, 25, of Merrillville; Ashanti Brown, 20, of Olympia Fields, Illinois; and Marquise Hall, 26, of Lafayette.

Each suffered multiple gunshot wounds, and their deaths have been ruled homicides by the coroner's office.

Gary police said they were called out at 12:46 a.m. Tuesday to the Missouri Street location for a report of several people with gunshot wounds.

Officers said they arrived to discover three people down and unresponsive. Seven others were discovered with gunshot wounds.

"The gunshot victims were transported to area hospitals by ambulance as well as personal cars," said Gary police Lt. Dawn Westerfield. "Due to the enormity of the scene mutual aid was requested from surrounding police agencies."

Police said early information indicates a holiday block party may have been underway when the shooting erupted.

Anyone with information about the incident is urged to contact the Lake County/Gary Metro Homicide Unit at 219-755-3855 or the Crime Tip Line at 866-CRIME-GP.

The shooting came just hours after a rooftop shooter in Highland Park, Illinois, sprayed an Independence Day parade crowd with gunfire Monday, killing at least six and wounding at least 30 others.

After an hours-long manhunt, police there took a person of interest into custody in that shooting.

Highland Park is an affluent community of about 30,000 on Chicagos north shore.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
CROWN POINT  Lake County prosecutors dropped charges last week against one of two people arrested after a shooting in 2017 in Highland that resulted in a three-hour standoff and lockdown at nearby schools.

Samantha C. Yates, of Highland, and Ryan C. Turner, of Hammond, each were charged in May 2017 with attempted murder, attempted battery by means of a deadly weapon, criminal recklessness and pointing a firearm.

In a motion to dismiss Yates' charges, Lake County Deputy Prosecutor Christopher Bruno wrote the state was unable to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

According to charging documents, Yates was in a vehicle with Turner in the 4000 block of Kennedy Avenue on May 16, 2017, when Turner fired a shot at his ex-girlfriend, who was in another vehicle.

The ex-girlfriend was not wounded, but her vehicle was damaged, police said.

Highland police located Turner's vehicle parked in a garage in the 9500 block of Forrest Drive, but Turner and Yates refused to come out of a residence, officials said. They each surrendered after a standoff that lasted about three hours.

Turner posted a bond of $20,000 surety or $2,000 cash in July 2017. Prosecutors dropped an attempted murder charge against him in September 2019, but he remained charged with all other counts.

Turner failed to appear before Lake Criminal Court Judge Samuel Cappas three times in July 2021, so the judge issued a warrant for him.

In October, authorities learned Turner was in custody in Toledo, Illinois, records showed. Officials issued a detainer, which means Turner was expected to be brought back to Lake County upon his release from custody in another jurisdiction.
PORTAGE  Police say a 33-year-old Illinois woman upset over the arrest of her father wound up behind bars herself after damaging a telephone in the vestibule of the Portage police station.

Kerry Trierweiler, listed as being both from Des Plains and Wheeling, showed up at the downtown police station on the morning of June 22, picked up the phone to inquire about obtaining her father's impounded vehicle and was told she would need power of attorney.

She then ended the call and called back.

"Kerry immediately started yelling at clerical about how the "(expletive) Portage police" arrested her dad," the incident report says. "Kerry yelled her dad "was a (expletive) vet " and didn't deserve to be arrested."

Police staff again explained she would need a power of attorney to collect the vehicle.

"Kerry then took the phone headset and slammed it into the display screen attached to the wall," police said.

She struck the display at least three times before entering the passenger side of a vehicle and fleeing the scene.

Police said they found the display screen on the phone cracked and the screen no longer working.

Police initially were unable to locate Trierweiler but said they took her into custody around 2:30 a.m. Saturday after responding to a call of a woman knocking on doors and windows in the 3100 block of Cooley Street.

She was taken to the Porter County Jail and has since bonded out, records show.

Trierweiler faces a misdemeanor count of criminal mischief.
CROWN POINT  Reed Murzyn dove past his cousin Morgan to snag a Tootsie Roll moments after it hit the ground.

Murzyn, of Cedar Lake, said his favorite part of the annual Crown Point Fourth of July Parade is, obviously, "the candy! Every single candy, but not ones with red food dye."

As he leaned over the metal barrier lining the street outside the Lake County Courthouse, Murzyn's eyes remained trained on the parade  ready to pounce as each new float went by. With almost 100 parade entries this year, Murzyn's candy bag was filled with an array of sweets by the end of the morning.

In 2021, Crown Point moved the parade start time up from 2 p.m. to 11 a.m. The city opted to keep the early start time this year, a decision Murzyn's mom, Jessica, said she likes "because then you have the rest of the day." The family planned on having a cookout and maybe catching some fireworks.

"My subdivision will set off a bunch of fireworks, and it is really pretty," Murzyn's cousin Kaylee said. "I like the really loud ones (fireworks)."

American Legion Post 20, Disabled American Veterans Chapter 80 and the St. John Memorial VFW Post 717 led the way and a fleet of emergency vehicles followed. Children cheered as ambulances and squad cars blared their sirens.

The rest of the parade lineup included an array of local businesses, several politicians, multiple Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops and a string of historic tractors courtesy of the South Lake County Agricultural Society.

Rita Rolf was most excited to see the Crown Point High School marching band. Students from the CPHS choir, gymnastics and wrestling teams also marched in the parade.

Rolf came up from Dallas, Texas, to visit her sister Alicia Savoy. Both sisters make it a point to go to every parade they can.

Savoy, who moved to Crown Point from Little Rock, Arkansas, a year ago, said she enjoyed looking out over the sea of red, white and blue. She said seeing families and friends gather at the square "shows that we are really united."

For Franchesca Sutton, the celebration was bittersweet.

Her Fourth of July memories are filled with long days spent with her four children at her grandfather's pool. He died on June 28.

"It's weird not having him here because we would usually be with him," Sutton, of Merrillville, said. "This year I am just trying to make sure my kids have a good time."

Sutton said it was her 18-month-old daughter Isabella's first parade. Though for now, Sutton said Isabella is more focused on playing with the grass on the courthouse lawn than the parade itself.

Monday was also a first for Mayor Pete Land.

Though he has driven the parade many times as police chief, this was his first year walking in it as the city's new mayor. Land was selected to replace former Mayor David Uran after Uran became CEO of the South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority in the spring.

Uran also participated in the parade, throwing beach balls into the crowd with the SSCVA.

"It's one of the best parades in the area," Jessica Murzyn said as a shiny red trolley rolled by.
CROWN POINT  The line for food was long, but friendly faces weren't hard to find Sunday at the annual citywide picnic at Bulldog Park.

Among the first to greet picnic-goers as they filled their plates was Crown Point Mayor Pete Land, who served up pulled pork.

More than 20 workers, including city department heads, city employees and volunteers, were prepared to feed up to 2,000 people, he said.

Workers grilled up hamburgers, hot dogs and Polish sausages, doled out scoops of potato salad and pulled pork, and handed out chips, drinks and dessert.

Land, who served as the city's police chief for 17 years before he was selected mayor in June, said he loves his new role.

"I'm totally blessed and humbled to have this opportunity to continue to serve the community," he said.

Residents from all over the Region were welcome at the all-you-can-eat event.

Rachel Walker and Jennifer Wagdeman, both of Crown Point, sat together with others a picnic table.

Wagdeman said the event was a nice way to enjoy the weather with friends.

Walker, a teacher for the Crown Point Community School Corp., said she enjoyed seeing some of her students.

"I just like to come out and spend time with friends and family," she said.

As he served up potato salad, Councilman Scott Evorik, R-at large, said he volunteered for the event to give back to his community and talk with constituents.

Karen Marben, the city's human resources director, said she was enjoying the friendly atmosphere as she handed out bags of chips.

"I like everything about this event," she said.
MERRILLVILLE  Tax abatement requests have been popular recently in Merrillville.

The Redevelopment Commission and Town Council have given initial approval for tax abatements associated with six different projects in Merrillville.

Councilman Shawn Pettit, D-6th, said the total investment for the initiatives exceeds $130 million. Its anticipated the projects will create hundreds of jobs in town.

This is kind of a big deal, Pettit said.

The majority of the $130 million investment will be coming from the Missner Group, which has several speculative facilities planned for nearly 90 acres of land it owns in an area in and around the AmeriPlex at the Crossroads business park along Broadway and between 93rd and 101st avenues. More than 1 million square feet of space will be developed on the Missner property

Among the buildings created there will be an 806,000-square-foot structure, said Eddie Adler, of Missner.

The facility represents a $57.5 million investment. Its estimated that building will create as many as 100 construction jobs and around 200 permanent positions.

Another $41.5 million will be invested in two other facilities there, Adler said. One of the buildings will be about 251,000 square feet. Another will be about 173,000 square feet.

Missner also has plans to build other smaller facilities on its property.

Outside of AmeriPlex, Missner will develop a $31 million facility near Mississippi Street and 89th Avenue, Pettit said. That project could create up to 60 construction jobs and about 125 permanent positions.

Another tax abatement request is associated with a new mechanical press acquired by Modern Forge on Colorado Street.

Pettit said about $6.3 million is being invested in the project. It will create 20 to 35 jobs and increase the companys annual payroll by about $1.1 million, he said.

Its a pretty impressive facility that Modern Forge has out there, and Im glad youre in town, Pettit said.

The 86th Place Partners also are seeking tax abatement for two buildings that will be created on property near Louisiana Street.

Pettit said Mielle Organics is expanding again and could use one or both of the buildings.

Theyre busting out of the seams with their inventory, Pettit said of the organic hair products and beauty business.

Clerk-Treasurer Kelly White Gibson said shes supportive of the tax abatement request.

They are excellent products, and they chose to be here in Merrillville, she said.

Broadway Outlots plans to build a $5.5 million speculative facility in AmeriPlex, and tax abatement is being sought for the project that can add another 50 jobs in Merrillville.

This will be a beautiful building built in front of the Amazon building between Broadway and Massachusetts, Pettit said.

Another tax abatement request involves a $900,000 speculative facility that Keough Mechanical will build in an industrial park near 89th Avenue.

That project could create about 12 new jobs.

The council unanimously approved preliminary resolutions for each of the tax abatement requests. The panel could consider confirmatory resolutions during its July 12 session.
Ms. Beck, who calls her business NotAbove, said she would be taking part this year for the eighth time as a juried artist and will share a booth with her grandmother. (Ms. Beck said that her father, who took part in Indian Market last year, died in February of Covid and that her mother, Eleanor Beck, who began making jewelry in later life, died in 2016.)

In her years of doing the show, Ms. Beck, now 40, has come to cherish the moments just before Indian Market opens for business on that Saturday, when she is walking to her booth at first light, before the sun fully breaks over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Its great that you dont know whats going to happen, Ms. Beck said in an interview from her home studio in Tucson. Its going to be something that will be worth all the work that you had done in your studio up to that point.

An Epicenter for the Arts

Santa Fe has long been an epicenter for the arts in general and Native American arts in particular, and this year several local institutions are marking milestones. The Wheelwright Museum turns 85, the Institute of American Indian Arts turns 60 and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts has its 50th anniversary, to name a few. Dozens of cultural and artistic institutions, organizations and businesses in the state have banded together to promote these and other events under the umbrella name of Indigenous Celebration NM, or IC22 for short.

In August, the New Mexico History Museum will open a yearlong exhibition to commemorate the centennial of Indian Market. The market dates to the 1922 Southwest Indian Fair and Industrial Arts and Crafts Exhibition, created by the Museum of New Mexico as part of the centuries-old Santa Fe Fiesta. (The market became its own event in 1962.) In the beginning, pottery was the dominant art form; it wasnt until the early 1970s that jewelry became an official classification in which artists could compete for prizes.
Brittney Griner, the W.N.B.A. star who has been detained in Russia on drug charges since February, sent a handwritten letter to President Biden on Monday asking him not to forget about her.

As I sit here in a Russian prison, alone with my thoughts and without the protection of my wife, family, friends, Olympic jersey or any accomplishments, Im terrified I might be here forever, Griner said in an excerpt from the letter shared by her representatives.

She continued: I realize you are dealing with so much, but please dont forget about me and the other American detainees. Please do all you can to bring us home.
As Japanese forces gained ground, the family moved to southwest China. Days after turning 16, Mr. Zhang joined the army of the Nationalist government and was sent to fight in the India-Burma border region. After Japans defeat, he enrolled at Chaoyang University in Beijing, where he studied law. He also became increasingly involved in underground Communist Party politics.

When Maos forces came to power in 1949, Mr. Zhang, one of the few party activists with legal training, was assigned to work as a judge in a Beijing court, although he was only 21. Filled with revolutionary zeal, he used a sharp tongue when criticizing older court officials, although he later came to regret being so harsh.

As Mao tightened his grip, Mr. Zhang also became a target of official suspicion and criticism, partly because of his time in the defeated Nationalist forces. After being labeled a rightist in 1957, he was stripped of his Communist Party membership and sent to labor in the countryside. His law books were sent off as scrap paper. He later taught at a school in Beijing, his legal career apparently behind him.

After Mao died in 1976, Mr. Zhangs talents were again needed as Chinas new leaders began rebuilding the legal system. He received a request in 1980 to act as a defense lawyer for the Gang of Four and other former officials facing trial over their role in the extremes of the Cultural Revolution. More experienced lawyers had refused the high-pressure job; Mr. Zhang agreed, though he loathed the Cultural Revolution.

The defendants  including Jiang Qing, Maos widow  were accused of usurping power and persecuting officials. Ms. Jiang rejected Mr. Zhangs offer to represent her, and he later said he regretted that he could not defend her vigorously in the highly rehearsed trial.

When another former official, Li Zuopeng, stood trial, Mr. Zhang and his colleagues persuaded the judges to reject two of the most serious accusations. Ms. Jiang received a suspended death sentence, commuted to life in prison; Mr. Li was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
5. Jeff Bridges in Fearless Ive been in love with Jeff Bridges since I was 9 years old and my dad made me see White Squall. Fearless is this movie from 1993 about a fairly privileged guy who survives a terrible plane crash, feels like hes invincible and starts testing those limits. So its Bridges and Rosie Perez grieving and trying to understand what it means to be a survivor. I rewatched it in July 2020, when we were all an open wound and dealing with so much loss, and trying to process that. It was a film that I have gone back to to question what it means to survive.

6. Reading like youre 15 again You know when you were 15 and felt you had all the time in the world to just sit on your folks couch and read a bunch of stuff? Ive decided to do that this summer, even though I do have a job. I like having the liberty to read all the time. Especially with this job, if I have to read, its for an interview or something, and it kind of takes the fun out of it. So I bought a bunch of plays and essay collections by bell hooks and Audre Lorde for myself. Im still highlighting lines, because there are really interesting, edifying things in there, but I want to go back to reading without having questions in mind.

7. Baltimore foods like Otterbeins Cookies and cream of crab soup Otterbeins are a local Baltimore cookie that I order when I get homesick. Theyre thin and differently flavored. Everyone always talks about Bergers Cookies, which are also from Baltimore, but dont get lost in that.

Trying to explain cream of crab soup is telling people that its not lobster bisque. Its much richer. Eat it maybe twice a year or something; dont attempt to have more because it is rich as hell. Its the one thing living here that I really get homesick for. You can find a pierogi on any corner, but this soup is an elusive thing.

8. The third row in a movie theater Im nearsighted. But I still have this childhood notion that if Im close to the screen, Ill get the movie faster than the people in the back. And no one wants to sit there. I just saw Marcel the Shell with Shoes On and didnt know, going into an 11 p.m. showing at Alamo Drafthouse, that the movie was going to be like that. I laughed, cried. People in the theater also didnt know it was going to be sad and I heard this one woman go, Oh, no  from behind me.
Frost glazed the ground, and mist hung in the air, as a brand-new Douglas DC-6B took off from Orly Airport near Paris early on Nov. 24, 1956. The plane was headed for Shannon, Ireland, and then New York.

It would arrive at neither.

About 15 seconds after it left the ground, the plane dipped slightly below its path, clipped an unlit house, and plunged into the village of Paray-Vieille-Poste. The authorities never found the cause of the crash; all but one of the 35 people aboard died.

Among them was Guido Cantelli, 36, a comet of a conductor, as one critic called him, and the protege of Arturo Toscanini. In just eight years, Cantelli had shot from obscurity to a career whose brightness still blinds today. Frequently a guest of the New York Philharmonic, which he was on his way to conduct, he had been announced as the music director of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan a week before the crash.
GROWING UP GETTY

The Story of Americas Most Unconventional Dynasty

By James Reginato

Illustrated. 314 pages. Gallery Books. $28.

How cheap was the oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, once known as the richest man in the world?

So cheap that his mistress had to eat canned sardines for dinner while she was living in New York during the Depression waiting to become his fourth wife  even while receiving invitations to Conde Nasts penthouse parties. So cheap that in the early 60s, Getty installed a pay phone in the cloakroom of his newly acquired mansion outside London for the convenience of his guests. So cheap that, most notoriously, he refused to pay ransom when his oldest grandson, John Paul Getty III, was abducted by members of an Italian crime syndicate in 1973, saying in a statement: I have 14 other grandchildren, and if I pay a penny of ransom, Ill have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.

Well, yep, nope and not exactly, writes James Reginato, in Growing Up Getty, a brisk and sympathetic chronicle of the man and his many descendants. Add this to Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howes Vanderbilt and Tina Browns The Palace Papers, and we may have a new pandemic escape genre on our hands: the scionography.

That phone booth, ripped out after 18 months, was actually the idea of Gettys lawyer Robina Lund, Lund told Reginato, after news-wire correspondents racked up long-distance bills to Los Angeles of $40,000 in todays money while covering his housewarming party, which was attended by 1,000 people. An antique sugar sifter worth $11,200 (in yesterdays money) was also nicked from the bash, The New York Times reported then  soon found, in of all places, a nearby public telephone booth. Way to reward hospitality.
THE EARTHSPINNER, by Anuradha Roy

What just happened? I found myself asking aloud upon coming to the end of The Earthspinner, Anuradha Roys fifth novel. For several days after reading, I held on to a pinching disappointment  the novel closes without resolve, and I found myself returning to the book, wondering why Roy had built a world of such rich possibilities just to leave so many unrealized. Little did I know that this was just the beginning of what would become a complicated journey with the novel, leading me to a deep gratitude for this work.

The Earthspinner tells the story of three shattered lives: Elango, a Hindu rickshaw driver and ceramist whose love of Zohra, a Muslim woman, leads him to construct a sculpture that gets them both exiled; Sara, his passenger-turned-apprentice, who bears witness to the illicit romance and helps him create the blasphemous work; and Chinna, a beloved lost dog who finds a new home with Elango and Zohra, only to have it destroyed when they are banished.

Roy employs different strategies for each perspective  Elangos is told in the third person, Saras in the first and Chinnas through letters from his original owner, though the last pages are Chinnas own dog thoughts, which readers who are squeamish with animal narration might find off-putting. (I am a reader who spends a lot of time trying to figure out how her cat feels about her and found this particular passage very moving.)
A former employee of Archegos, the investment firm that caused a brief market panic when it lost more than $10 billion in a matter of days last year, is suing the firm and its founder, Bill Hwang, plus five former top executives. The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the DealBook newsletter reports.

Brendan Sullivan, a tech stock analyst who joined Archegos in 2014 and resigned shortly after it blew up, said he had lost $50 million, which was part of a $500 million deferred employee compensation plan that evaporated along with Archegoss other assets when its highly leveraged options strategy failed.

The suit seeks to force Mr. Hwang and others to cover the losses. Mr. Hwang was charged with fraud by federal prosecutors this year on suspicion of misleading lenders and market manipulation, and has pleaded not guilty to the government suit. Last week, lawyers for Archegos filed motions to dismiss other suits against the firm from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In what may be one of the largest known breaches of Chinese personal data, a hacker has offered to sell a Shanghai police database that could contain information on perhaps one billion Chinese citizens.

The unidentified hacker, who goes by the name ChinaDan, posted in an online forum last week that the database for sale included terabytes of information on a billion Chinese. The scale of the leak could not be verified. The New York Times confirmed parts of a sample of 750,000 records that the hacker released to prove the authenticity of the data.

The hacker, who joined the online forum last month, is selling the data for 10 Bitcoin, or about $200,000. The individual or group did not provide details on how the data was obtained. The Times reached out to the hacker but did not immediately receive a response.
              ...
Radio remains perhaps the most influential conduit for right-wing thought, despite the rise of podcasts and social media. Tens of millions of people nationwide, especially older Americans and blue-collar workers, listen to it regularly. Misinformation experts warn that talk radio channels, many of which air political commentary 24 hours a day, receive far too little scrutiny compared with other mass media. Talk radio is also uniquely difficult to analyze and harder to moderate, because the on-air musings from hosts usually disappear over the airwaves in an instant.

Liberals or even most moderates never listen to it, they dont pay attention to it, they dont see it, they dont hear it, said Lewis A. Friedland, a professor who studies radio at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. So you dont know it exists, you dont know how widespread and how powerful it really is. In Wisconsin, he said, local radio stations play extreme right-wing propaganda five or six hours a day.

Asked about the false statements, Mr. James, the host of The Charlie James Show, and other conservative radio hosts and their networks defended them. Many pointed to examples of voter fraud in the past or raised conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. They said bleak polling results for the Democrats raised alarms about the integrity of the midterm elections.

I think a host, guest or caller on talk radio might be forgiven wondering if cheating might not be needed to win, said Tom Tradup, the vice president of news and talk programming at the Christian and conservative Salem Radio Network.

Other hosts and radio networks declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.
Naama Laufer and Luis Correia, who import wines from Mr. Correias native Portugal, started a second company, My Portuguese Market, last year, selling handcrafted goods from Portugal. They have just introduced a lemon- and sea salt-scented, sardine-shaped soap on a rough cord. Its ideal for hands that have been working with seafood, garlic and onions, and its easy to hang near the sink. The cute box makes it giftworthy.

Castelbel Sardine Soap-on-a-Rope, $13.50. myportuguesemarket.com.

Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.
Anna Nibley Baker, a mother of four in Salt Lake City, is reasonably certain that she and her husband are done building their family. Yet for eight years, since the birth of her last child, conceived through in vitro fertilization, she has thought tenderly of the couples three remaining embryos, frozen and stored at a university clinic.

Now, after the Supreme Courts abortion ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, Ms. Baker, 47, like countless infertility patients and their doctors nationwide, has become alarmed that the fate of those embryos may no longer be hers to decide. If states ban abortions starting from conception  and do not distinguish between whether fertilization happens in the womb or in the lab  the implications for routine procedures in infertility treatment could be extraordinary.

In a cycle of I.V.F., a field of medicine that is more than 40 years old and used by hundreds of thousands of heterosexual and same-sex couples, single people and surrogate carriers in the United States, the hope is to create as many healthy embryos for each patient as possible. Doctors generally implant one or two of those embryos in the uterus and freeze any that remain for the patients future use.
A federal judge has ruled that the nations three largest drug distributors cannot be held liable for the opioid epidemic in one of the most ravaged counties in the country  a place where 81 million prescription painkillers were shipped over eight years to a population of less than 100,000.

Judge David A. Faber of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia released the opinion on the July 4th holiday, almost a year after the end of a trial pursued by the city of Huntington and Cabell County, which were the focus of an Oscar-nominated documentary called Heroin(e) about the effect of the prescription painkillers.

The fatal overdose rate in Cabell County increased to 213.9 from 16.6 per 100,000 people, from 2001 to 2017, according to the ruling.
The other, Sergeant Keri Thompson, had led the divisions cold-case squad and had supervised a detective whose mistakes led to the dismissal of a charge against the disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein in 2018. She was docked 45 days after she acknowledged that she had misused a Police Department vehicle and had misled investigators during an interview.

Each had faced administrative charges, the most serious form of discipline short of criminal charges, and each pleaded guilty. Specific details of what Saraceno and Thompson admitted to in their pleas were not publicly available online, and the Police Department said they were not readily accessible on Monday because of the Fourth of July holiday.

The disciplinary actions surfaced when The New York Times conducted a routine search of personnel records for officers known to have been targets of an internal affairs investigation involving allegations that senior officials were not working when they were on the clock.

Saraceno had been named the executive officer of the Special Victims Division in 2017, as the citys own Department of Investigation began looking into complaints about the Police Departments handling of rape cases. After that inquiry concluded that the Special Victims Division was understaffed and under-resourced, Saraceno was promoted from deputy inspector. He was also given sole responsibility for the adult sex-crimes squads that had been the focus of the probe.
The impact of the Supreme Court ruling is expected to be far-reaching, especially as the states whose laws are directly affected  California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and New York  are home to nearly a quarter of all Americans. Residents of the reliably blue states are now bound by a 6-3 ruling from the Supreme Court that will make it far easier to own and carry handguns, underscoring the growing distance between the conservative keystone of Americas judicial branch and the more moderate populace whom their rulings affect  68 percent of whom support stricter gun laws, according to one poll last month.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the decision, said the Second Amendment enshrines an individuals right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home. While the decision concerned New Yorks strict handgun laws, it is expected to allow gun owners in other states to challenge similar rules.

At the time, Gov. Murphy called the Supreme Court ruling a mockery.

The ruling last month sent some states into a scramble to rewrite laws before they could be challenged under the new Supreme Court precedent. Along with New York and New Jersey, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a pair of bills over the holiday weekend that would restrict the sale and transfer of so-called ghost guns, made from untraceable components, and outlaw firearms without unique serial numbers.

The state efforts are not expected to fully stem a flood of new gun purchases. The expected surge comes as cities like New York and Los Angeles struggle to tackle a pervasive, pandemic-era uptick in gun violence, and as communities across the country wrestle with a seemingly unrelenting march of mass shootings.
After a reprieve of more than two years, full alternate-side parking is back in New York City, requiring some drivers who park on the street to play musical chairs twice a week instead of just once.

At least some car owners have been vocal about their dismay, with over 1,700 people signing a petition as of Tuesday to maintain the once-a-week schedule.

The change back to twice a week, effective on Tuesday, was announced in April by Mayor Eric Adams during his early efforts to push the city toward a return to the prepandemic normal. He also said the city was investing $9 million in year-round cleaning, including the use of small mechanical sweepers on protected bike lanes.
It is not a stretch to link this rise in verbal aggression to the disinformation campaign to indoctrinate the Christian nationalist base in the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, along with what were learning from the Jan. 6 hearings. The movement is preparing patriots for the continuation of the assault on democracy in 2022 and 2024.

The intensification of verbal warfare is connected to shifts in the Christian nationalist movements messaging and outreach, which were very much in evidence at the Nashville conference. Seven Mountains Dominionism  the belief that biblical Christians should seek to dominate the seven key mountains or molders of American society, including the government  was once considered a fringe doctrine, even among representatives of the religious right. At last years Road to Majority conference, however, there was a breakout session devoted to the topic. This year, there were two sessions, and the once arcane language of the Seven Mountains creed was on multiple speakers lips.

The hunger for dominion that appears to motivate the leadership of the movement is the essential context for making sense of its strategy and intentions in the post-Roe world. The end of abortion rights is the beginning of a new and much more personal attack on individual rights.

And indeed it is personal. Much of the rhetoric on the right invokes visions of vigilante justice. This is about good guys with guns  or neighbors with good eavesdropping skills  heroically taking on the pernicious behavior of their fellow citizens. Among the principal battlefields will be the fallopian tubes and uteruses of women.

At a breakout session called Life Is on the Line: What Does the Future of the Pro-Life Movement Look Like From Here? Chelsey Youman, the Texas state director and national legislative adviser to Human Coalition Action, a Texas-based anti-abortion organization with a national strategic focus, described the connection between vigilantes and abortion rights.

Instead of the state regulating abortion providers, she explained, you and me as citizens of Texas or this country or wherever we can pass this bill can instead sue the abortion provider. Mrs. Youman, as it happens, played a role in promoting the Texas law Senate Bill 8, which passed in May 2021 and allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone who aids or abets an abortion. She was exultant over the likely passage of similar laws across the nation. We have legislation ready to roll out for every single state you live in to protect life, regardless of the Supreme Court, regardless of your circuit court. To be sure, Christian nationalists are also pushing for a federal ban. But the struggle for the present will center on state-level enforcement mechanisms.
But fear is not one-dimensional. There is a healthy version in which we learn caution; we learn what to stay away from.

It was my father who taught me to have a healthy fear of guns. I grew up in the 1950s, when television staples were Westerns like Gunsmoke and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. The men had guns, someone was always getting shot, and they would clutch their wounds and keep on fighting. My father was determined to educate me about certain realities compared with what we were watching. Every time, he would say things like: If that man were really shot in the shoulder at that range, half his arm would be blown off. Or: He was just shot in the thigh. He would not be limping along. Hed be bleeding out. I learned about the femoral artery at a ridiculously young age.

Before I was born, my father obtained a permit to carry a concealed gun. It was 1947; he was the head of the Screen Actors Guild and it was a time of anti-Communist fervor and intense labor disputes. He had gotten threats that acid would be thrown in his face. His tires were slashed on one occasion. He said he wore the gun in a shoulder holster and it was a horrible time in his life. It was necessary, he said, but it didnt really make him feel safer. It was a constant reminder of how life can take a frightening turn, and he didnt like living in fear. He knew how corrosive it is.

On the day my father was released from the hospital after John Hinckley nearly killed him, my mother and I escorted him out. The world saw him confident, unafraid. What you didnt see was the Secret Service putting a bulletproof vest on him in the hospital room, carefully strapping it over the long incision on his chest. That evening at dinner I asked him if he would now endorse stricter gun control legislation. My father had a stubborn streak, and he answered no, that stricter laws wouldnt have prevented what happened. By 1991 he had changed his mind, supporting the Brady Bill and writing an Opinion essay for The New York Times saying, This level of violence must be stopped.
ZULWINI - Tax is important to Eswatini as it pays for public goods and services, it is also a key ingredient in the social contract between citizens and the economy.

Eswatini Revenue Services (ERS) has collected close to E1 billion in tax debts from the public since the launch of the Tax Debt Relief Programme two months ago. This was mentioned by the newly appointed ERS Commissioner General Brightwell Nkambule yesterday. Nkambule said some businesses have been reluctant in coming forward to declare their tax debt as they aim to collect E4 billion in tax debts.

Progress

We have collected close to E1 billion in the past two months and this is a sign that we are making progress in the programme, he said. The commissioner general also mentioned that he hopes businesses and individuals who have not come forward to declare their tax debts will do so in the next four weeks. He said many businesses had a tendency of declaring tax when its closer to the deadline which is also expected in the current programme. Tax arrears in Eswatini have increased by 29 per cent to E9.369 billion from E7.262 billion in 2020/21. This was mentioned by the Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg. The minister said the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with other economic and social disturbances weigh on current and future growth prospects. He said these challenges continue to threaten our ability to maintain our tax revenue mobilisation goals. Tax arrears increased by 29per cent to E9.369 billion from E7.262 billion in 2020/21.

Disturbances

Rijkenberg mentioned that these disturbances continue to affect the economy thus decreasing the domestic revenue collections. As a result, domestic revenue collections in 2021/22 were 10 per cent below estimates which was about E1.235 billion, mentioned the minister. He added that in line with the weaker than expected revenue collection, domestic taxes to GDP ratio has declined by 0.3 percentage points in 2021/22 to reach 14.9per cent. The minister further mentioned that the increase in tax arrears is a concern for the ERS and government and the introduction of the Tax Debt Relief Programme is one of their efforts to contain the increase that has averaged 25.1per cent per year. Commissioner General Brightwell Nkambule said ERS will hold employers responsible for failing to declare Pay As You Earn (PAYE) they have collected from their employees.

Tendency

Nkambule said many companies and organisations now have a tendency of collection PAYE from their employees and submit it to ERS. He said, afore, ERS use to directly collect the PAYE which is 33 per cent of the employees salary, but they changed that system and entrusted their employers to collect on their behalf. We will be strict to employers who fail to submit PAYE they collected from their employees as well as those that fail to declare the number of employees they have, said the commissioner. To support this motion Minister Neal Rijkenberg said an Income Tax bill has been tabled in parliament to punish employers and agents for the PAYE collected and not declared.
To be sure, so could Mansour Abbas, the leader of Raam. Its possible to do things differently, he said, explaining his motivation for participating in such an ideologically discordant government.

But leaders of the Joint List attacked Raam because, they argued, Raam put its principles aside by joining right-wing parties that support West Bank settlements in government and in the process gave up on important Palestinian issues. Mr. Abbas didnt mince words when he said that the State of Israel was born as a Jewish state, adding that it was born this way and will remain that way. Yet the Joint List rejected Mr. Abbass approach of focusing on the domestic agenda of Arab Israelis while Israeli occupation of the West Bank continues and Palestinian grievances are unresolved. (A member of the Joint List and Mr. Abbas clashed bitterly during Thursdays vote to dissolve the Knesset.)

In the end, whether they came from the Jewish right or the other Arab parties in the Knesset, the arguments against the coalition were the same: Their peers crossed a line when they agreed to cooperate with an enemy for political gain. And the pressure campaign over the past year eventually worked. When the coalition collapsed, Mr. Netanyahu rejoiced because, he said, the government had taken actions that endangered our Jewish identity. Palestinian Israeli lawmakers denounced the governments positions on, among other things, expanding settlements.

Apparently, antipathy to Mr. Netanyahu is not a strong enough glue to keep a coalition together through the parliamentary grind. The past 12 months have seen Jewish legislators from right-wing parties abandon the coalition. The final straw came when Arab legislators and right-wing opposition lawmakers refused to vote with the coalition on a bill to extend Israeli citizens rights to Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. The process of erosion started slowly and then accelerated. In April the coalition lost its narrow 61-member majority. In May, it kept shrinking and became a minority coalition.

Now Israelis will be once more on their way to the polls  their fifth election in four years  with the realistic prospect of yet another near tie that could force legislators to consider creative alliances. Could there be another Jewish-Arab partnership? The answer is yes, but to make it successful, perceptions must evolve.

Arab parties must ask themselves whether they are ready to embrace the state and accept its vision of Jewish national expression. They need to realize that cooperation and integration are the only ways to effect change for Arab Israelis, as weve seen, and in the future maybe also for Palestinians in the West Bank.
Their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was usurped by the intentional misrepresentation of the Second Amendment by a minority of Americans. May all those who profess to be pro-life search their souls to examine their stance on gun legislation and what being pro-life actually means.

Marcella Woodworth

Venice, Fla.

To the Editor:

As Profs. Joseph Blocher and Darrell A.H. Miller point out in Is a Musket Similar to an AR-15? (Opinion guest essay, July 2), the Supreme Courts recent politicized ruling only creates confusion.

Good.

Civilized states that protect their citizens with strong anti-gun regulations should simply ignore the court and reinforce those regulations. This will cause court case after court case, which could go on for years, maybe decades. For all that time their citizens will be protected from the gun crazies. And with luck by then there will be a more sensible Supreme Court.

Lets not overlook the fact that the current interpretation of the Second Amendment is a willful misreading. The amendment has two parts. The first talks about the need for strong state militias  a concern at the time of the amendments adoption  and the second part, which depends on the first, talks about the right of individuals to own and bear arms. If the founders had not meant the second part to depend on the first, they would not have needed to include the first at all.
Diagnosing birth defects is what I do. Over the years many of my patients with lethal anomalies have elected to continue their pregnancies knowing that their children will die after delivery. These patients always have my full support. Sometimes this is in concurrence with their religious beliefs, though sometimes its simply meaningful for them to deliver and spend time with their child, even if only for minutes or hours. Most patients, however, elect to discontinue the pregnancy.

For these patients, abortion is now illegal in Ohio. Some people will travel out of state. However, many people will not be able to do so, particularly people of color and those living in strategically disenfranchised communities. Sometime soon, I am going to meet a patient who has no ability to leave the state, and I am going to have to tell her that her baby has a lethal condition, and she is going to have to carry a pregnancy to term against her will. It might be tomorrow. It might be weeks from now. But this is going to happen, and I cannot stop it.

This patient will go through her third trimester visibly pregnant. Strangers in the grocery store will congratulate her. She will have to explain her story over and over again to friends, neighbors and co-workers. She will be forced to experience labor and delivery, and then her child will die. The risks of term delivery are far greater than the risk of abortion, so she may also experience hemorrhage, pre-eclampsia, blood clots or other complications.

Ohios new law is unimaginably cruel.

What am I going to do when I meet this patient  when I am sitting in an examination room with her as a nightmare unfolds before us? I hope the voice inside my head will again say, I did everything I could. But this time the voice would not only be talking about my medical management. Over the years, the Ohio section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which I chair, has issued statements, engaged social media and organized action alerts and membership lobby days on a wide range of important issues, including abortion. We have testified publicly before Ohio House committees and made direct appeals to legislators in their offices. For instance, in 2019 we successfully fought HB 413, which would have made abortion murder a crime and could have required doctors to reimplant an ectopic pregnancy into the womans uterus, which is impossible. And in February we testified against HB 598, which would ban virtually all abortions in the state and could even affect fertility services.
Kepler could not prove that statement, however. Neither could anyone else until Thomas Hales, then at the University of Michigan, succeeded in 1998 with a 250-page proof and, controversially, the help of a computer program.

Proving something similar for the packing of equal-size spheres in dimensions higher than three has been impossible so far  with a couple of exceptions.

In 2016, Dr. Viazovska found the answer in eight dimensions, showing that a particularly symmetric packing structure known as E8 was the best possible, filling about one-quarter of the volume. Within a week, she and four other mathematicians showed that a different arrangement known as the Leech lattice was the best possible packing in 24 dimensions. In high dimensions, the filled volume is not very full, with the Leech lattice of 24-dimensional spheres occupying about 0.2 percent of the volume.

Whats so special about eight and 24 dimensions?

I think thats a mystery, Dr. Viazovska said. Its just in these dimensions, certain things happen which dont happen in other dimensions.
My Advice

If you decide to flirt with a stranger by sliding into his Twitter DMs, brew a cup of tea first. Then, sit. Sip the tea. Breathe deeply. Allow yourself to swell with giddiness. Dont charge forward, rushing with new messages, just because you cannot tolerate the vulnerability of reaching out. That will result with you picking words in a frenzy, words that youll pore over later as you wonder why he stopped replying. It might not be flirtatious to point out dead links on a persons website; its sometimes a conversation ender to ask, Do you have a wife?  Jay Vera Summer
The wooded campus that once housed the global headquarters of Toys R Us in Wayne, N.J., is 85 percent vacant today. On a weekday, the parking spots for 1,900 cars are mostly empty. The helipad is unused. So is the corporate dining hall, with its views of the serene grounds. Hundreds of cubicles  the spacious old-school kind with the high walls, not the little hot desks popular with employers today  sit empty as the property awaits redevelopment into something entirely new.

The site, first built for the chemical conglomerate American Cyanamid in 1962 and later bought by Toys R Us, was a grand version of an idea that ruled the postwar American workplace at varying scales: the 200-acre secluded corporate headquarters, the leafy 50-acre research campus, the three-acre spec-built office park shaded by a bit of tree canopy.

These places were decidedly suburban in nature and car-dependent in design. In every form  executive park, business park, corporate park, innovation park  the park was an essential part. Pastoral capitalism, the landscape architecture scholar Louise Mozingo has called it, naming the very American belief that office workers would do their best work if they could look out at manicured nature instead of the frenetic cityscape.
When Sara Kruzan was 17, she was convicted of murdering a man she said had abused her beginning when she was 11 and had trafficked her for sex at 13. She served nearly two decades in prison.

On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California granted her a pardon for fatally shooting the man, George Howard, in 1994, saying that Ms. Kruzan had provided evidence that she is living an upright life and has demonstrated her fitness for restoration of civic rights and responsibilities.

The case had reignited criticism of the way that courts treat survivors of abuse, especially those who are adolescents. Criminal justice reform advocates have said the judge in her case did not treat her with enough compassion; Ms. Kruzan, though 16 at the time of the crime, was tried as an adult, and the judge did not permit evidence about the abuse to be presented during her trial, The Los Angeles Times has reported.
As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Graham was well within his rights to discuss with state officials the processes and procedures around administering elections, Mr. Grahams lawyers, Bart Daniel and Matt Austin, said in a statement. Should it stand, the subpoena issued today would erode the constitutional balance of power and the ability of a member of Congress to do their job.

Another prominent lawyer who received a subpoena, Cleta Mitchell, was on a Jan. 2, 2021, call that Mr. Trump made to Mr. Raffensperger where he asked him to find enough votes to reverse the states results. The subpoena to her said, During the telephone call, the witness and others made allegations of widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 election in Georgia and pressured Secretary Raffensperger to take action in his official capacity to investigate unfounded claims of fraud.

Two other Trump lawyers were also subpoenaed: Jacki Pick Deason, who helped make the Trump teams case before the Georgia legislature, and Kenneth Chesebro, whose role has come into sharper focus during the House Jan. 6 hearings in Washington. In an email exchange with Mr. Eastman in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack, he wrote that the Supreme Court would be more likely to act on a Wisconsin legal challenge if the justices start to fear that there will be wild chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.

Most of those subpoenaed could not be immediately reached for comment. A spokesman for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where Ms. Deason is a senior fellow, declined to comment.

The special grand jury was impaneled in early May and has up to one year to complete its work before issuing a report advising Ms. Willis on whether to pursue criminal charges, though Ms. Willis has said she hopes to conclude much sooner. In official letters sent to potential witnesses, her office has said that it is examining potential violations that include the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the elections administration.
Nicolas Toledo, 76, didnt want to attend the Highland Park July 4th parade, but his disabilities required that he be around someone full-time. And the family wasnt going to skip the parade  even going so far as positioning chairs for a choice viewing spot at midnight the night before.

Mr. Toledo was sitting in his wheelchair along the parade route, between his son and a nephew, when the bullets started flying. We were all in shock, Xochil Toledo, his granddaughter, said. We thought it was part of the parade.

Then, she said, We realized our grandfather was hit. We saw blood and everything splattered onto us.
Dennis M. Fujii, an Army specialist, was a crew chief of a helicopter ambulance that was shot down in Laos in 1971, landing in the middle of a firefight. Rescue helicopters were unable to get to the wounded Mr. Fujii, who later waved off more attempts as too dangerous, Mr. Biden told the audience on Tuesday. He stayed to tend to other wounded soldiers for two days, and when the rescue helicopter was finally able to retrieve him, it too was shot down about four miles away, stranding him for two more days.

Specialist Fujii downplayed his own contributions and honored the skills of the Allied Vietnamese troops he fought with, simply saying, I quote, I like my job. I like to help other people who need help out there, Mr. Biden said after recounting his story. Its amazing.

John J. Duffy, an Army major, repeatedly risked his life in 1972 to direct airstrikes against the enemy during an assault on the 11th Airborne Battalion, Mr. Biden said. The president said Mr. Duffy remained behind, fighting the enemy, as the base was overrun and was the last person to evacuate, saving one last soldier who was shot in the foot and had fallen out of a helicopter as it took off. Mr. Duffy jumped out and helped the soldier back onto the helicopter.

Mr. Biden said Mr. Duffy served three tours in Vietnam and later became a successful author, once being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry.

He is the definition of a warrior poet, the president said.

Mr. Biden said the four awards on Tuesday were the result of a congressionally mandated review of the actions of Asian Americans, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders during the Korean and Vietnam wars.

Honestly, its been a long journey to this day for those heroes and their families, Mr. Biden said. And more than 50 years have passed  50 years  since the jungles of Vietnam where as young men these soldiers first proved their mettle.
MBABANE  A huge milestone has been reached following the election of an 11-member committee to represent the over 1 500 emaSwati whose E340 million investments were allegedly misappropriated by Ecsponent Eswatini Limiteds management.

The Investor Relations Committee (IRC) was elected from the 21 members, who were nominated during the investors first-ever general meeting held at Esibayeni Lodge in Matsapha mid-June 2022. The 21-member group converged at the ESW Investment Group (ESWIG) offices in Mbabane about a week ago to elect among themselves the IRC, whose main task will be to work hand in hand with ESWIGs newly-appointed management in raising funds to repay the distressed investors. The election process ensured that all the countrys four regions were represented to make communication easy and effective.

Another fundamental criterion was fair gender balance, hence the election of five females and six males. An additional condition that was considered was each members skills that would add value as they undertake the mammoth task for creating revenue-generating initiatives that would guarantee compensation of the investors within the shortest time possible. Interestingly, some in the 21-member group volunteered not to be elected after it was indicated that the IRC members should make adequate time to attend meetings and other related assignments.

Chairperson

The IRCs Chairperson is Norman Dlamini while Sincobile Lukhele is the Vice Chairperson. The rest of the members include Billie Dlamini, Dr Njabu Dlamini, Michele Lloyd, Yolanda Oswin and Mlimi Mamba. The others are Sydney Kunene, Sandile Mbhamali, Khulile Nyambo and Douglas Dlamini. The committee will in the initial stages meet, at least, twice a month. It is envisaged that the frequency will slightly decrease from next year onwards. The committee held its first official meeting on Friday, which was described by the chairperson as very productive. We pray that God helps us as we undertake this difficult task. Considering the quality of the committee members, Im confident that we wont fail the investors, said the chairperson.

Dlamini stated that they would keep the rest of the investors fully informed of all developments. He said they would have open lines of communication to allow the investors to share constructive ideas with the committee. He further stated that; Its very important for all emaSwati who invested their monies with Ecsponent to know that were hard at work, trying all we can, in partnership with management, to ensure that a lasting solution is found to this debacle. Having had our first meeting, were quite impressed and encouraged by the prospects.

Dlamini expressed gratitude to ESWIGs shareholders and management for the brilliant idea of setting up the committee.

Benefit

We feel empowered to make meaningful contribution for the benefit of all the citizens who lost their hard-earned savings. I see no reason why this should not work out to our satisfaction. ESWIGs CEO Max Mkhonza indicated that the IRC and management had their first meeting on July 1, 2022 to define their working relationship and agree on priority actions for the short-term. When we met all the affected investors on June 17 and 18, 2022, we undertook to work with them through the committee to accelerate the process of implementing the turnaround strategy. The July 1, 2022 meeting, therefore, allowed us to thoroughly engage them on the deliverables of the turnaround strategy for complete alignment, Mkhonza said.

He added; In addition, the meeting thoroughly ventilated the need to establish a new special purpose vehicle (SPV) and the shareholding of this company as it is key to the operationalisation of the turnaround strategy. This vehicle has been established for the sole purpose of developing new income streams from which the investors will begin to re-coup their losses as committed by the company. Mkhonza further indicated that management and the investors committee would be meeting a variety of critical stakeholders in the next coming weeks to jointly present the turnaround strategy and to lobby for support. The critical stakeholders will be Members of Parliament and the Government of the Kingdom of Eswatini. He also indicated that a comprehensive communique to all the investors would be sent by the committee by July 21, 2022.
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.  In the chaotic aftermath of the attack at a Fourth of July parade on Monday, Lauren Silva stumbled upon a bloodstained toddler lying beneath a dying man. As her boyfriend and son frantically attempted first aid, she cradled the little boy, who kept asking about his parents. As hours passed, word spread of the tiny child found at the scene of a massacre.

On Tuesday, authorities identified the parents: Kevin McCarthy, 37, and his wife, Irina McCarthy, 35, two lives among seven claimed in another deadly mass shooting in America. More than 30 people were also wounded, including four members of a single family.

Police said the victims, attacked by a gunman firing from a roof, ranged from octogenarians to children as young as age 8. All seven of those who died were adults.

Adrienne Rosenblatt, 71, said she immediately feared the worst when she saw a photo online on Monday of the then-unidentified toddler who had been found by Ms. Silva. He was Ms. Rosenblatts neighbor, the child she had coached to overcome his fears of her small white dog, Lovie.

She alerted the boys grandparents, who brought him home from the police station. Irina Colon of Northbrook, Ill., a relative of the childs mother, said in a fund-raising appeal that she posted on GoFundMe that the boy was left in the unthinkable position; to grow up without his parents.

By midafternoon Wednesday, the appeal had raised more than $2.5 million from more than 46,000 donors, including one for $18,000 from the billionaire investor and founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, Bill Ackman. The vast majority, however, were in modest denominations.

Its just a sad reflection, Ms. Rosenblatt said at her home in Highland Park. Such a sad reflection of whats going on.

Image Irina and Kevin McCarthy Credit...

The Lake County coroner, Jennifer Banek, released the names of four other victims on Tuesday. It is with a heavy heart, she said, that I bring to you the names of the victims of that tragedy.

The Cook County Medical Examiners Office released yet another name on Wednesday, announcing that Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, had died Wednesday morning at Evanston Hospital.

Most of those identified were residents of Highland Park, the bucolic suburb north of Chicago where the celebration was a community tradition. They could have come from any Independence Day crowd in any town in the nation:

A grandfather who had been sitting in a choice spot his family had selected for him. A 63-year-old woman who was the go-to person for special events in her synagogue congregation. A beloved uncle who still went to work every day, even in his late 80s. A mother and wife who, only recently, had mused about where she would want her ashes scattered.

And a suburban couple who had taken their toddler to a parade.

Here, based on interviews, is what else we know about those who died.

Eduardo Uvaldo, 69

Image Eduardo Uvaldo Credit...

Eduardo Uvaldo, a father of four and grandfather of 17, watched telenovelas every morning with his wife, Maria. He also made sure to catch Team Mexico soccer matches and Chicago Cubs baseball games. On Sundays, he would take his family out to breakfast.

And every Fourth of July, he went with them to the Highland Park parade.

Mr. Uvaldo died on Wednesday morning at Evanston Hospital after being shot during his familys holiday tradition on Monday. He and his wife had been married for 50 years and lived for more than four decades in their house in Waukegan, Ill., about 20 miles north of Highland Park.

At the house, Brian Hogan, 13, described his grandfather as doting and goofy, a happy man with a penchant for funny faces. Brian still had a hospital band on his wrist, having been shot during the parade, and said he still had shrapnel in his arm.

Shot in the arm and then in the head, according to a GoFundMe post by his granddaughter Nivia Guzman, Mr. Uvaldo survived for nearly two days after being caught in the barrage of gunfire. Authorities who announced a seventh death initially misstated that he had died on Tuesday.

Mr. Uvaldo came to the United States from Mexico when he was 15, his family said, working janitorial and maintenance jobs until his retirement. It was a point of pride that in 30 years, he never missed a workday. He and his wife, they said, had planned a September vacation to Puerto Rico; he had already bought new clothes for the occasion. Relatives are planning to come from Texas and Mexico for his funeral.

His family said Mr. Uvaldos burial will be July 8. He would have turned 70 that day.

Katherine Goldstein, 64

Image Katherine Goldstein, right, who died in the shooting, with her daughter, Alana. Credit...

A mother of two daughters in their early 20s, Katherine Goldstein was described by her husband, Craig Goldstein, as a perennial good sport who was willing to explore a succession of exotic locales without batting an eye. She didnt complain, There are bugs. She was always along for the ride, Dr. Goldstein, a hospital physician, said in an interview.

Dr. Goldstein said that his wife did not work outside their home after they were married in the late 1990s and that she devoted herself to being a mother. She took her elder daughter, Cassie, to the Highland Park parade on the Fourth so that Cassie could reunite with friends from high school. Ms. Goldstein was fond of playing games with her children, like the word game Bananagrams, her younger daughter, Alana, recalled.

Dr. Goldstein said that his wife and her siblings recently lost their mother, and that they had been discussing what kind of arrangements they would like for themselves upon their own death. He recalled that Katherine, an avid bird watcher, said she wanted to be cremated and to have her remains scattered in the Montrose Beach area of Chicago, where there is a bird sanctuary.

But the reflection on her own mortality was out of character, he said. The amazing thing about Katie is that she never thought about her own death, Dr. Goldstein said. For me its almost a preoccupation. She never thought about it.

Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78

Image Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza Credit...

Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza didnt want to attend the Highland Park Fourth of July parade, but his disabilities required that he be around someone full-time. And the family wasnt going to skip the parade  even going so far as positioning chairs for a choice viewing spot at midnight the night before.

Mr. Toledo-Zaragoza was sitting in his wheelchair along the parade route, between his son and a nephew, when the bullets started flying. We realized our grandfather was hit, Xochil Toledo, his granddaughter, said. We saw blood and everything splattered onto us.

Mr. Toledo-Zaragoza suffered three gunshot wounds, killing him. He had moved back to Highland Park a few months ago from Mexico at the urging of family members. He had been struck by a car while walking in Highland Park a few years ago in a prior stint living with family, and had a range of medical issues resulting from that accident.

We brought him over here so he could have a better life, Ms. Toledo said. His sons wanted to take care of him and be more in his life, and then this tragedy happened.

Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63

Image Jacquelyn Sundheim Credit...

A smile and a hug. Those were the guarantees every time Jacquelyn Sundheim  known as Jacki  walked into Marlena Jayatilakes spice shop in downtown Highland Park, Ill.

She was such a beautiful human being, a beautiful ray of light, Ms. Jayatilake said. So its definitely a dark day.

Ms. Sundheim, a member of the North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, Ill., was among the people killed in Highland Park, according to the synagogue, where friends said she coordinated events and did a bit of everything else.

Janet Grable, a friend, said she went far beyond her expectations in planning the bar mitzvahs for both her children and arranging special seating for her mother when she joined services while in town.

Stephen Straus, 88

Image Stephen Straus Credit...

A father of two, grandfather of four and a financial adviser who, at 88, still took the train every day from his Highland Park home to his office at a brokerage firm in Chicago, Stephen Straus should not have had to die this way, his niece, Cynthia Straus, said in a phone interview.

He was an honorable man who worked his whole life and looked out for his family and gave everyone the best he had, Ms. Straus said. He was kind and gentle and had huge intelligence and humor and wit.

Two of Mr. Strauss grandsons, Tobias Straus, 20, and Maxwell Straus, 18, said in an interview that they and their parents typically gathered with Mr. Straus and his wife for dinner each Sunday evening, including the evening before the shooting. Tobias, who fondly recalled his grandfathers sense of humor, said Mr. Straus was in vintage form.

He ordered spaghetti with two meatballs, hold one meatball, Tobias Straus said. After he complimented his grandfathers watch, he added, his grandfather gave it to him out of nowhere.

It was literally the night before.

Cynthia Straus said her uncle and his community should have been better protected: Theres kind of a mentality that this stuff doesnt touch us, she said.

And no one can think that way right now  we are in an internal war in this country. This country is turning on itself. And innocent people are dying.

Reporting was contributed by Luke Vander Ploeg , Amanda Holpuch , Michael Levenson , Eduardo Medina and John Yoon . Susan Campbell Beachy provided research.
Image Prime Minister Boris Johnson, center; Rishi Sunak, the chancellor of the Exchequer, right; and Sajid Javid, health secretary, in April. Credit... Pool photo by Frank Augstein

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain was battling for his political survival Tuesday night after the bombshell resignations of two of his top cabinet officers. The resignations appeared to be a coordinated move against the Conservative Party leader amid the latest in a long string of scandals.

Rishi Sunak, the chancellor of the Exchequer, and Sajid Javid, the health secretary, both quit over a fresh scandal that once again raised questions about Mr. Johnsons judgment and honesty.

The latest crisis centers on a Conservative lawmaker who was a minister in Mr. Johnsons government, Chris Pincher. Last week, Mr. Pincher quit his government post after a drunken night during which he is accused of having groped two men. Later it emerged that there had been similar previous allegations against him.

For days, the government insisted that Mr. Johnson had no knowledge of any prior accusations when he appointed Mr. Pincher.



Then on Monday, Downing Street acknowledged that the prime minister had known of one accusation, from Mr. Pinchers days at the Foreign Office, but said there had been no formal complaint against him. It was then revealed that there had, in fact, been a formal complaint  and it was reported that Mr. Johnson knew about it.

On Tuesday, the former top civil servant in the Foreign Office, Sir Simon McDonald, publicly accused the government of repeatedly distorting the truth.

Video Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain acknowledged that it had been a mistake to appoint Chris Pincher as deputy chief whip given previous complaints about Mr. Pinchers conduct. Mr. Pincher quit his government post after being accused of having groped two men. Credit Credit... Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse  Getty Images

Mr. Johnson apologized Tuesday for appointing Mr. Pincher, saying he bitterly regrets it. Mr. Sunaks and Mr. Javids resignations came shortly afterward, thrusting Mr. Johnson into what could be the most perilous position of his three-year tenure as prime minister.

Just a month ago, following a series of unrelated scandals, he survived a no-confidence vote by his fellow Conservative lawmakers, but whatever breathing room that gave him is waning fast.

Because Mr. Johnson survived that vote, Conservative members of Parliament cannot call another for a year, unless the partys rules are changed. That means that pressure to resign from within his own government  including cabinet resignations like those on Tuesday  could be the only effective method of forcing him out.

Mr. Johnson moved quickly to try to blunt the impact of the resignations, appointing Steve Barclay, who has held several government positions, to replace Mr. Javid as health secretary.

Mr. Johnsons fate may rest on whether other members of his cabinet stand by him. Although a number of senior ministers are known to be loyal to the prime minister, there was doubt about some others, and their words and actions will be watched closely.

Whether or not the cabinet stays loyal, Mr. Johnson faces an uphill battle to restore his battered authority. Even before the resignations Tuesday, Conservative lawmakers were speculating about changing party rules to allow a fresh no-confidence vote before the summer recess.

So far, Mr. Johnson has refused calls for his resignation.

In a BBC interview on Tuesday, he acknowledged that it had been a mistake to make Mr. Pincher deputy chief whip given previous complaints about his conduct. With hindsight it is the wrong thing to do, and I apologize to everyone who has been badly affected by it, Mr. Johnson said.

The story has echoes of the revelation of alcohol-fueled parties at Downing Street that violated the governments own Covid lockdown rules. Mr. Johnson and his allies responded with denials, changing stories and finally apologies and promises of better conduct.

Mr. Javid, in his resignation statement, said that he could no longer, in good conscience, continue serving in this government.

In his own statement, Mr. Sunak said: The public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously. I recognize this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for, and that is why I am resigning.
BAKHMUT, Ukraine  Nina Zakharenko cried when she boarded a minibus evacuating civilians as the Russian Army advanced toward the town where she went to college, met her husband and raised two daughters.

Ms. Zakharenko is 72 now, and may be leaving the town forever.

I can hold on, I can hold on, she said, finding the strength to stop crying. But Bakhmut was my only home.

The Russian Army is now on the outskirts of the town, Bakhmut, and ramping up its shelling. The attack is part of an inch-by-inch offensive into the province of Donetsk now that Luhansk, another province that Moscow has sought to capture in eastern Ukraine, fell over the weekend into Russias grasp.
This is Russias attack on everything that is of value to you and me, he added. Therefore, the reconstruction of Ukraine is not a local project, not a project of one nation, but a joint task of the entire democratic world.

He reiterated that message in his nightly address to Ukraine.

Whatever the cost, Ukraines international allies will face an uphill struggle to help reconstruct a former Soviet state with a culture of endemic corruption and fragile democratic institutions. Transparency International, an anticorruption watchdog, ranked Ukraine 117th out of 180 countries on its corruption index in 2020.

At the same time, while more pledges of aid would be welcomed by Ukraine, many Western countries and their publics are suffering from war fatigue amid spiraling inflation and food and gas prices. And it remains to be seen how far countries will be willing to go to help Ukraine when the war finally ends.

Earlier this year, donor pledges for Afghanistan and Yemen fell far short of targets set by the United Nations. In Afghanistan, where the Talibans policies have complicated aid efforts, the U.N. said that $4.4 billion was needed this year in humanitarian aid alone, but $2.4 billion was raised. Of the $4.3 billion sought for Yemen, $1.3 billion was contributed.
This is why I became a Green Beret, said Perry Blackburn Jr., a retired Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel who spent 34 years in uniform in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Egypt, Somalia and Jordan. He is now in Ukraine as a civilian doing what he once did in the military: training local forces to fight a common enemy.

To not use my talents in a real time of need would be a waste, said Mr. Blackburn, 60, who was one of a handful of Special Forces soldiers who rode into Afghanistan on horseback at the start of the U.S. invasion in 2001 and is funding similar efforts now through thousands of small online donations from the public.

At my age, Ive seen enough death and I want to try to stop the bloodshed, he said. We need to give people the means to defend themselves.

Whether this new type of crowdfunded military support is wise is up for debate.
But the authority reversed positions on Saturday, handing over the bullet after U.S. officials had argued that a forensic examination might link the bullet to the rifle that fired it.

The inconclusive findings of the subsequent test, and the American assertion about the accidental nature of the killing, fueled a sense of betrayal among Palestinians, resurfacing charges of pro-Israel bias in Washington.

The last direct peace talks about ending the conflict petered out in 2014, and deep divisions in both Palestinian and Israeli society have obstructed efforts to revive them. But Palestinians argue that Washington does too little to push Israel to return to the negotiating table, or to preserve the feasibility of a Palestinian state.

Ned Price, a spokesman for the State Department, said Tuesday that U.S. investigators had not favored either the Israelis or the Palestinians. He added that the U.S. analysis of the bullet was based on tests by independent foreign experts, not Israeli ballistics specialists.

Our goal in this was not to please everyone, Mr. Price said. Our goal in this was not to please anyone.

The American intervention came days before a visit by President Biden to Israel and the West Bank, his first as head of state, in which he is expected to avoid making major statements on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A gunman shooting from a rooftop killed seven people and wounded dozens more during a Fourth of July celebration in Highland Park, Ill., on Monday morning. A 21-year-old man who was taken into custody Monday evening after an extensive manhunt was charged on Tuesday with seven counts of first-degree murder.

Heres what we know so far.

The suspect faces life in prison without parole if convicted.

Robert E. Crimo III, 21, a man the authorities had initially said was a person of interest,was arrested on Monday night and charged on Tuesday.

The Lake County states attorney, Eric F. Rinehart, said conviction on the first-degree murder counts would lead to a mandatory prison sentence of life without possibility of parole.He said many more state charges were likely to be brought in connection with other people who were harmed in the attack.
For all the attention Liz Cheney, Mike Pence and Cassidy Hutchinson have received recently, their acts of political bravery  standing up to Donald Trump and facing threats to their safety and future as a result  are hardly defining features of our current political moment. Bravery and courage are not only leadership traits seldom seen by Americans but also qualities subject to debate: By refusing to go along with Mr. Trumps subversion of the election, was Mr. Pence brave or simply doing his job? Is Ms. Cheney courageous in her pursuit of Mr. Trump, or is she thumbing her nose at the many Wyoming Republicans who elected her and still embrace him?

In our latest Times Opinion focus group, which took place before the July Fourth weekend, a mix of 10 Democrats, independents and Republicans said they were hungry for leadership. They admired people they saw as patriots, like Ms. Cheney, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and, in some cases, President Biden for making the hard call to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan. But what several of them wanted  leaders willing to tell hard truths, go against the grain, stand up for something unpopular  seemed to them qualities belonging to past leaders: Winston Churchill, the suffragists, Moses. Still, they saw glimmers in politicians like Pete Buttigieg, Katie Porter and Joe Manchin, though Mr. Manchin divided the group sharply.

We wanted to understand how Americans saw political bravery and courage  and who they saw displaying it  in an era when political posturing, attacks and stunts are so much more common. The conversation ultimately turned back toward ourselves, with a Democrat from California arguing that Americans get the politicians they deserve  that, in other words, if politicians today arent brave and courageous, it might be because we arent brave and courageous, either.


Ireland's Housing Commission Needs PR Help Wed., Jul. 13, 2022 Irelands Housing Commission is looking to hire a PR firm as it works to identify and report on ways to create a long-term sustainable and affordable housing system on the island.
Over 17,000 caught for drunk driving in two-day nationwide crackdown

Xinhua) 16:25, July 05, 2022

BEIJING, July 5 (Xinhua) -- More than 17,000 motorists were caught by police in China for driving under the influence of alcohol during a nationwide night check last weekend, the Ministry of Public Security announced Tuesday.

The number includes more than 3,000 drunk driving cases, the ministry added.

The two-day crackdown was a part of a 100-day campaign to curb drunk driving as well as other traffic violations in summer, including overloading and driving without a valid licence, according to the ministry.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
NGWENYA  About 78 people were nabbed by security agents over the weekend for gaining entry into the country through an informal crossing point at Ngwenya.

This was during a special operation by soldiers manning the Oshoek borderline at Ngwenya on Saturday. The operation came in the wake of circulating reports that there were some foreign elements who were smuggling firearms and dangerous weapons into the country from foreign countries. This was evident in recent times when unknown people committed murders in different parts of the country. The unknown people mainly targeted members of the countrys security forces.

Furthermore, a person was recently murdered at Ngwenya in a dagga deal gone wrong. It is for that reason that the security forces, comprising of the army and police, reportedly intensified their operations. Chief Police Information and Communications Officer, Superintendent Phindile Vilakati, confirmed the arrests in an interview with the Times yesterday.

Appearances

The arrested individuals are expected to have already made their appearances in court. This reporters effort to reach Army Public Relations Officer Lieutenant Tengetile Khumalo were futile yesterday. A questionnaire was sent to the army spokesperson through WhatsApp and her mobile phone rang unanswered on several occasions.


Accounts in Transit: CIIC PR Checks in at Crescent Hotels & Resorts Tue., Jul. 12, 2022 CIIC PR checks in at Crescent Hotels & Resorts, which has more than 100 properties in the US & Canada... Zapwater Communications lands Boyne Mountain Resort to launch SkyBridge Michigan... The Pub and Team One, which are part of Publicis Groupe, picks up brand strategy, creative, production and media duties for Redbubble.
HUNDREDS of job seekers from all over the Midlands and further afield flocked to the first ever Offaly Job Fair held in the Tullamore Court hotel on Saturday afternoon.

The Tullamore and District Chamber of Commerce organised job fair is now set to become an annual event such was its success.

Companies were delighted with the huge numbers of enthusiastic jobseekers who attended the event with the fair being thronged from its official opening on Saturday morning.

Spokespersons for FRS Recruitment and Nua Healthcare told organisers that the fair was by far the most successful they had ever attended.

It was a great idea to hold the fair on a Saturday as it was more convenient for job seekers who are already in employment, said the FRS representative.

A spokesman for Nua Healthcare said he attended a job fair in Dublin last week and the Tullamore event far surpassed it.

Lidl Ireland held interviews with job seekers and by lunchtime had already conducted 25 and hired four people.

We're hungry for staff and it seems people here are hungry for jobs, said Lidl employment brand specialist Denise Baltatu.

Firms from sectors such as construction, retail, finance, hospitality, pharmaceutical, manufacturing and engineering all took part in the job fair.

Officially opening the fair, Cllr Neil Feighery, Cathaoirleach of Tullamore Municipal District, said "Offaly is known for its wide, open landscapes with the theme of the council, 'Space to Grow, Space to Work and Space to Live'. With so many job opportunities available here today, we encourage people to return to Offaly where there is 'Space to Grow ' and avoid the grind of the daily commute to Dublin and the major urban centres.

Cllr Feighery was deputising for the Cathaoirleach of Offaly County Council, Cllr Frank Moran who was unavoidably absent.

Speaking on the behalf of the President of Tullamore and District Chamber of Commerce, Anthony Hanniffy who also could not attend the event, the group's PRO Ger Scully welcomed job seekers and employers to the fair.

He added: "The job fair is aimed at a wide range of job-seekers from the school leaver hoping to find an apprenticeship or further their education, to the commuter looking to work closer to home and enjoy a better work/life balance, to those looking to further their careers and to those financially stretched wanting to live outside the major cities where the cost of living is more affordable."

The PRO said Offaly and Tullamore were great places to work and live in.

He stressed the Chamber has worked to support its members through some very difficult times in the recent past.

As we come out of the Covid landscape we consulted with local businesses on the type of supports that would benefit the local business community the most. We expected recent events to have negatively impacted businesses but were pleasantly surprised at the strength and resilience of our community, with most businesses looking to push forward and grow despite these challenging times. One issue that raised its head again and again during our conversations was the difficulty in getting staff, and it is from these seeds that the Offaly Job Fair have grown.

The Chamber PRO said the event wouldn't have been possible without the support of Offaly Local Development, Offaly Local Enterprise Office, LOETB, Offaly County Council and the Technical University of the Shannon.

I would like to thank them for the tremendous time and effort they have put in to help us to make this event a reality, added Mr Scully

He extended a special welcome to Ukrainian job seekers who have fled to safety in Ireland and Offaly following the Russian invasion.

We all feel a great sorrow for recent events and sympathise with what you have gone through and what some of your families are still going through. We welcome you with open arms into our communities and will endeavour to assist you as best we can, stressed the speaker.

The Chamber PRO said he was very upbeat about the future of business in Offaly.

We have a strong generation coming through into adulthood, our businesses are remaining strong and growing, our community spirit is high and these all make the county a wonderful place to live and work, he pointed out.

Among the local politicians who attended the event were Junior Minister Pippa Hacket, Deputy Carol Nolan, Cllr Declan Harvey, Cllr John Clendennen, Cllr Mark Hackett and Cllr Eddie Fitzpatrick.

Also in attendance was the CEO of Offaly County Council, Anna Marie Delaney.

The event also saw the launch of a new directory of services in Offaly which has been published by Tullamore and District Rotary Club.

The directory was compiled by a sub-committee chaired by Albert Fitzgerald and will be updated annually.

Among the firms who took part in the inaugural Offaly Job Fair were

Enva

Tullamore Credit Union

Supermac's

Lidl

the HSE

Grove Remote.ie

Tullamore Court Hotel

FRS Recruitment

Cardinal Health

Integra

Palladio Group

Spectrum Plastics

Zoetis

Nua Healthcare

Choice People

Bord na Mona

Glass Innovations, Ferbane

Acoustic Interiors

Simpli Baked

All Pro Recruitment

Banagher Concrete

Salutem Advisory

National Learning Network

The Ability Programme

All About Trees

Home Instead

More details on the Offaly Job Fair can be found at www.tullamorechamberofcommerce.com or on the Offaly Job Fair Facebook page.
BBC News 06 Jul 2022

The airline says the cancellations will affect short-haul flights between August and the end of October.
The Norwegian government has intervened to halt a strike by oil and gas workers. The move came amid concerns that the strike could have worsened Europe's energy crisis, which is already aggravated by the war in Ukraine.
NHLANGANO  Four shots are said to have been fired towards the police officer stationed at KaPhunga and he was hit by one.

This is the narration that was given by the mother of the officer who also stated that her son was responding well to treatment despite being shot around the chest area. Elizabeth Sacolo, in an interview yesterday, said her son narrated to her that he was headed to the police station to fetch water. The house occupied by the shot officer does not have water supply, hence he would often travel to the cop shop to collect water.

Pain

Sacolo narrated that her son informed her that he was in the car headed to the police station when he heard gunshots and a stinging pain. She said her son informed her that the gunshot came from the back of the van he was driving in. She said the lone bullet hit his son at the back and came out in his chest area. It was said that there were at least four gunshots that were fired, one of which hit the officer. Even though the shot officer informed his mother that he didnt not clearly see the shooter, he had reasonable belief that the aggravator had been hiding behind a huge rock situated at the compound where the officer resided. The rock is located not far from the house. It was said that after the shooting incident, the police officer accelerated and drove for about a kilometer to the police station with the gaping wound to raise the alarm.

Shooters

Upon arrival, it was said that, on duty police officers tried to track down the shooters but they did not find them. It was gathered that his colleagues then rushed the injured police officer to the nearest health facility, where he was admitted. According to the mother, her son was further guarded by police from other police station. She said her son was recovering as he was speaking when she went to check-up on him at the hospital yesterday. The name of the health facility will not be revealed for security reasons. I am positive that my son will survive, as the bullet came out even though I have not been told about the extent of the internal injuries if any, she said. When asked if there were specific individuals who were suspected to be behind the shooting, she stated that her son told her that he had information on who might have been behind the shooting.

According to the mother, her son informed her that he had shared crucial information with certain police officers about the people believed to be behind the arson attacks in the country.

The officer is said to have told his mother that he shared with the officers that the suspected arsonists were believed to be at a certain homestead but no one acted on the matter. My son said no one reported the matter to the superiors to go and raid the homestead and as a result, he suspected that one of the police officers he may have confided in might have sold him out to the suspected arsonists, narrated the mother.

Relocating

Meanwhile, around lunch-time yesterday, the mother stated that they were in the process of relocating her son for safety reasons as he also feared for his life. The hospital in which he will be transferred to will not be named for security reasons. Before the end of the interview, the mother stated that what hurt the most was that her son was suffering for something he did not know. Kube mane ufela intfo layentile, manje ubulawa nje ngaphandle kwensono, she said in vernacular. Meanwhile at Mkhitsini, it was said that there were suspicions that the officer was shot in relation to the shooting incident that involved the leader of the area. It was gathered that the officer is related to the leader of the area. Worth noting is that the shot police officer is originally from Mkhitsini in the Shiselweni Region.

It was said that some residents of Mkhitsini were stopped when they were planning to head to KaPhunga to attack the former Mkhitsini leaders family suspected to be involved. It was further gathered that a man alleged to have knowledge about the violence in the country was looked for at his homestead, as he was also believed to have participated in the shooting. Efforts by the residents to get him are said to have been fruitless, as he was not found. When called for comment, Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati confirmed the incident. She stated that she knew that the shot police officer was on his way to fetch water at the police station when he was shot. This is the fourth police officer to have been shot in a space of about a week. While some quarters believe the shootings may have been politically motivated, no one has come out to claim responsibility and the law enforcers have not arrested anyone in connection with the shootings. Two shootings were fatal as two police officers had been laid to rest.
Europol says nearly 130 human trafficking suspects have been arrested in an operation involving tens of thousands of police members. Germany was among the countries involved with raids at various locations.
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Canadian homeowners who bought their homes recently shouldn't be too concerned about the short-term volatility of the Canadian housing market.




Papua New Guinea's South Bougainville electorate in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville is all set to conduct polling as of tomorrow, Wednesday 6th JULY, 2022.

Article and photo by Aloysius Laukai: New Dawn FM News

This was revealed this morning by the Returning Officer for South Bougainville, Chris Toke.He told New Dawn FM that the office has been opened after payments were made to the protesting service providers.

Mr. Toke said that their grievances were heard and payment was done in time for the polling to take place.

Meanwhile South Bougainville Police have also confirmed the removal of the roadblock staged near Koromira on the Buin/Arawa highway.

The roadblock was removed this morning after many cars were turned back to follow the Arawa/Panguna/Siwai highway which takes longer to travel to Buin.

Buin Police Station Commander, INSPECTOR JOHN POPUI told New Dawn FM that the road was now free for the public to travel.

Ends





Source: New Dawn FM/One PNG News





Next: Proof of Vaccination for travel to Australia no longer required
OVERLAND PARK, KS, USA (June 30, 2022) Dr. Daryl Green, Associate Professor, Oklahoma Baptist University, Shawnee, Oklahoma, was named a regional recipient of the 2022 ACBSP Teaching Excellence Award. The Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP) recognizes individuals each year who exemplify teaching excellence in the classroom. Dr. Green was honored, along with other regional recipients, at the ACBSP Conference 2022 on June 20th in Washington, D.C. He 
BARRYTON  Baking can come in many shapes and sizes, from the simple easy bake oven to industrial size productions facilities, Renee Earle falls somewhere in the middle.

Renee Earle has turned her home just outside of Barryton into her own personal bake shop, creating specialty breads, cookies, cinnamon rolls, and other baked goods for buyers to enjoy. She has been a consistent presence at the Big Rapids market, selling for over six years.

When you walk into her home, you see the levels of her commitment to baking, with carts filled with dozens of loaves of bread, all created the day of your visit. Bags of wheat and other ingredients are stacked next to the family room couch. All of it is usually used up by the end of the week according to Earle, who makes about 150 loaves over the course of the week.

The bread that Earle creates is not just the kind of bread you would buy at Meijer or Walmart. With over 15 unusual flavors and ingredients, Earles specialty breads have provided buyers with many options at the market.

I've got some people that come for the breads. Earle said. I've got some that come for the cookies and some that come just for the carrot cake. It just depends on where I'm at. I love to play with flavors, come up with flavors, and some people never heard before.

Her flavors range from sweets flavors like peanut butter and jelly to something as wild as dill pickle and cheese. These ingredients go straight into the dough before baking, infusing the bread with the flavors that each ingredient holds. Earle has made breads that are pizza flavored, to mushroom and Swiss, to horseradish and chipotle cheddar.

There's some of them that I kind of rotate out," Earle said. Things are hit and miss whether they go well or not. So, I rotate them out, like, Okay, this one's kind of not popular. So, I'll plug this one in this week.

Earle said she has up to 10 bowls of different flavored bread proofing at a time. When she is creating cookies, she has up to four different flavors proofing at a time.

Much of her schedule revolves around the baking of these products. Sundays are for cookies, Mondays are for the banana bread, and Tuesday is for the rest of the bread. Earle also sells plain cinnamon rolls alongside a caramel apple flavor.

When Earle is not only selling at the farmers markets that she attends, she is selling her baked goods out of her own shop that was finished last year. Open for most of the week, Earles husband usually runs the shop as Earle bakes.

By next year, Earle hopes to build an addition for her shop to include its own kitchen to bake in, allowing Earle to buy larger ovens and create even more products while also clearing out space in her home kitchen.

A PASSION FOR CULINARY ARTS

This urge to bake and create food has been around for much of Earles adult life. Originally from Reed City, Earle spent years working as head cook for the Senior Center in Mecosta. She also worked with Meals on Wheels for years before moving on to create her bake shop.

Earle now does two markets, the Mt. Pleasant Farmer Market on Thursday, and the Big Rapids Farmers' Market on Friday.

This passion for the culinary arts has been passed on to her children, one of which went to The Culinary Institute of America in New York and now works in Washington D.C. Her sons work has thus helped provide Earle with recipes.

My bread and cinnamon roll recipe came from there (the Culinary Institute of America). Earle said. I tweaked it because those recipes, everything was weighed. I'm a measuring baker. So, I converted everything into measures instead of weights.

Earle has two grown kids and five grandkids. She also owns goats and chickens on her farmstead, which at one point her children used to show at the Osceola County fair.

Outside of her baking, Earle has been an active member of the Barryton community for years, having live outside the town for decades, Earle has had a large hand in the growth of Barrytons Lilac Festival every year, serving as the chair of the board for the festival.

The Lilac Festivals kind of my baby. I took it over four years ago, five years ago. Earle said. It's kind of blossomed from when I took it over.

Here are the prices for Earle's baked products:
The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department. Compiled by reporter Tereasa Nims.

Monday, July 4

9:26 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Larkin Township business for an unwanted person. The 45-year-old Larkin Township female employee said a 37-year-old Midland woman refused to leave after being asked. Deputies spoke to the 37-year-old woman, who agreed to leave. No further action was requested.

7:54 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a residence in Larkin Township for a barking dog complaint. Deputies were unable to contact the dog owners at the residence. The dogs were safely secured on the property. The caller was referred to the township to further inquire about a township ordinance violation.

4:48 p.m.  A 33-year-old woman called with questions regarding a verbal argument with her 39-year-old fiance.

3:43 p.m.  A 64-year-old Greendale Township woman called 911 to report a verbal argument between her and her 29-year-old female roommate. The 29-year-old left prior to law enforcement's arrival. No assault occurred. The complainant advised that the 29-year-old hasn't paid her any rent since November 2021, and the complainant wants her to move out. The complainant was advised of the eviction and personal protection order process.

2:49 p.m.  A driver of a black truck pumped $43 in gasoline in Coleman without paying for it and left. The clerk was not able to obtain any plate information.

2:37 p.m.  Deputies and Michigan State Police were dispatched to a Mills Township residence for an 18-year-old woman having a mental health issue. Deputies and MSP took the 18-year-old into protective custody and transported her to MyMichigan Medical Center for an evaluation.

12:33 p.m.  A 42-year-old man called 911 because he was despondent over a recent break-up with his girlfriend. When deputies arrived, he requested they transport him to the ER for mental health services. He was transported to ER without incident and checked himself in.

Sunday, July 3

11:56 p.m.  A deputy was dispatched to an Edenville Township residence for a unlawful driving away automobile complaint. A deputy spoke with a 24-year-old Midland woman, who said she let a 26-year-old Homer Township man borrow her vehicle and he refused to return it. The woman requested assistance with retrieving the vehicle and stated she did not wish to file criminal charges. The vehicle was located and returned to the woman.

11:53 p.m.  Police were called to Ivy Lane and Rapanos Drive for a fireworks complaint.

5:05 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Jerome Township location regarding a verbal argument between a 48-year-old man and his 44-year-old ex-wife. No assault occurred. Both parties left in separate vehicles and went on their way. Both parties were advised on how to apply for a personal protection order.

3:20 p.m.  A 58-year-old man called to report that he heard a noise upstairs in his barn. He thought maybe an intruder was in his barn. A deputy checked the barn, and no evidence was located to suggest that an intruder was ever inside the barn.

2:32 p.m.  Deputies checked on a 31-year-old Lincoln Township man. His family was concerned due to a heated argument earlier in the day that continued via texting. The 31-year-old became so frustrated that he sent a picture of a pistol case. Deputies contacted all parties involved. The situation was calm, and everyone involved said the situation was all verbal and there was no intention to cause harm. All parties remained separated for a cooling-down period.

10:44 a.m.  Police were called to the 6100 block of Summerset Drive for an assault.

12:01 a.m.  Deputies were dispatched to Warren Township regarding a 24-year-old man requesting assistance with his 18-year-old sister who was found walking in the roadway after leaving their residence due to an argument. Deputies spoke with the woman, who agreed to be transported back to the residence by her 24-year-old brother. No additional assistance was requested from the Sheriff's Office.

Saturday, July 2

11:37 p.m.  A deputy responded to a Edenville Township roadway for a report of a deer that was injured after being struck by a vehicle. The deputy located the deer, which was ultimately euthanized due to its injuries.

11:07 p.m.  A deputy responded to a Edenville Township neighborhood for a report of a disorderly 44-year-old woman. The complainant, a 42-year-old woman, requested that the other woman be given a trespass notice. The deputy located the 44-year-old and provided the trespassing notice.

11:02 p.m.  Deputies responded to Ingersoll Township for a motorcycle-deer traffic crash. The 39-year-old male driver did not possess a valid drivers license or have a cycle endorsement. The motorcycle involved did not have valid insurance. The man was transported by EMS for treatment. Citations were issued and a report has been forwarded to the prosecutor for review.

9:29 p.m.  A deputy spoke with a 32-year-old Jasper Township man regarding a neighbor issue. The man requested that the incident be documented and that no further action be taken.

7:43 p.m.  A deputy spoke with a 61-year-old Midland woman and her 17-year-old daughter for civil questions about equestrian equipment. After conversation, the two advised they would continue the matter in civil court.

4:02 p.m.  A 55-year-old man advised that an unknown person had dumped a load of cut-up pine logs in the man's ditch. The man did not see anyone dump it; he just discovered it.

2:44 p.m.  Deputies spoke to a 49-year-old driver who hit a mailbox while attempting to turn around. Deputies and the driver were not able to locate the struck mailbox. The case is closed pending further calls.

12:53 p.m.  An unknown subject pulling a boat trailer pumped $86 worth of gas in Edenville Township and left without paying. The clerk wasn't sure if the person used their card or not. No valid plate number was obtained.

1:55 p.m.  Deputies responded to a dispute between a 48-year-old man and his 44-year-old ex-wife. The woman was moving out again and there was a dispute over property. Deputies attempted to mediate the situation. Upon the conclusion of the call, the woman had loaded her van in hopes of relocating in Tennessee.

11:50 a.m.  Deputies met with a 35-year-old woman concerning a breakup with her 42-year-old boyfriend. The woman said she called 911 because she did not believe he was going to let her leave; however, she was able to leave with all her belongings. She told deputies she did not need any assistance.

11:15 a.m.  Police were called to West Buttles and Ashman streets for a traffic offense.

9:40 a.m.  Deputies spoke to a 44-year-old woman about issues she has with her brother and his girlfriend. The woman had concerns of drug use and threats. She was provided with the proper avenues to solve her issues.

8:32 a.m.  A deputy was dispatched to a Larkin Township location about loose horses. The horses were put back in their fenced yard prior to deputy's arrival. Its believed that part of the fence might have been knocked down, but it was easily corrected by the owner.

1:20 a.m.  Deputies assisted an outside agency with transporting a 21-year-old Lee Township man back to his residence from another jurisdiction. The agency transported the man to his residence without incident. No further assistance was requested from the Sheriff's Office.

12:34 a.m.  Deputies were dispatched to Warren Township in reference to a report of a 36-year-old man finding a loose dog. Deputies assisted the man in returning the dog back to the owners. No further assistance was requested from the Sheriff's Office.

12:10 a.m.  Deputies, MyMichigan EMS, and Midland Township Fire Department responded to a Midland Township roadway for a two-vehicle crash. A 32-year-old Midland Township woman was subsequently arrested for operating while intoxicated. The woman was lodged without incident. A report has been forwarded to the prosecutor for review.

Friday, July 1

10:20 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Jerome Township residencefor a domestic verbal dispute between a 56-year-old woman and her 56-year-old husband. Deputies spoke with both parties and were advised the dispute was resolved prior to deputies' arrival. No further assistance was requested from the Sheriff's Office.

4:36 p.m.  Deputies spoke to a 47-year-old man who complained of his neighbor banging on the wall. Deputies spoke to the 54-year-old female neighbor, who apologized for her grandchildren and stated she would attempt to keep the noise down.

2:39 p.m.  Police were called to West Indian Street and Jerome Street for a property damage crash.

2:11 p.m.  A citizen found a backpack at a park in Homer Township. The backpack was later returned to the owner, a 26-year-old Midland City man.

1:43 p.m.  A 43-year-old Lincoln Township man reported to the Sheriff's Office that he believes he is being followed by a private investigator. The complainant observed the vehicle in Saginaw and later observed what he believed to be the same vehicle by his house. The suspicious vehicle and/or driver never initiated contact or moved aggressively. The complainant believes the unknown driver might be a private investigator because he is a party to a workman's compensation complaint. A report was completed for information.

12:38 p.m.  A 48-year-old woman was found unconscious at her home. The woman advised that she was having a medical issue but was fine. She refused medical treatment. EMS responded and cleared.

12:40 p.m.  Deputies spoke to a 19-year-old woman regarding a dispute over Edenville Township property. The woman was advised the dispute would have to go through small claims court.

11:57 a.m.  Edenville Township Fire, EMS and a deputy were dispatched to a possible crash. A 59-year-old was believed to be having a medical episode while driving. The man was able to drive the vehicle off the road and get it stopped. The man was treated at the scene and taken to ER for further evaluation. The vehicle was released to family, suffered no damage and the vehicle was towed to the owner's residence.

10:28 a.m.  Deputies responded to an Ingersoll Township residence for a 17-year-old male being disorderly and damaging property. Deputies spoke to the male's 49-year-old guardian, who wants a report filed for the damage. A report will be sent to the prosecutor.

3:50 a.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Lee Township location for a possible bobcat spotted in the woods. Due to the bobcat being in the woods and it being a wild animal, no action was taken.

2:27 a.m.  A deputy was dispatched to a Warren Township location regarding two horses in the roadway, causing a traffic hazard. The deputy located the 31-year-old female owner, and the horses were returned safely. The woman stated she would monitor the situation so the horses do not get loose again.

1 a.m.  A deputy contacted a 58-year-old Jerome Township woman who advised that she was having trouble with her Internet at her residence. The deputy advised the woman to contact her Internet provider for assistance.
Iraqs Islamic banking sector assets are likely to continue growing over the medium term, says Fitch Ratings.

This will be supported by the governments strategy for promoting Islamic finance and financial inclusion amid the low banking penetration in Iraq.

The Iraqi banking sector is, in general, underdeveloped and fundamentally weak. There is a lack of confidence in the banking system, and low awareness of the Islamic finance industry, which could slow the sectors growth trajectory.

Growth potential

The Islamic banking sectors medium-to-long-term growth potential in Iraq (B-/Stable) is positive. Demand will be supported by the countrys predominantly Muslim population, which has very low banking penetration. Iraqs credit/GDP ratio was low at only 15% at end-2021.

About 81% of the adult population did not have a bank account in 2021, versus 60% in the Arab world, according to World Bank. About 24% of the unbanked population cited religious reasons as a barrier, amongst the highest globally.

The Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) seeks to increase financial inclusion by promoting Islamic banking and digitalisation as part of its strategic plans for the banking sector. The CBI has been working on reforming the Islamic banking system with the introduction of new regulations and instructions for Islamic banks since 2015.

Low market share

The Iraqi Islamic banking sector is small, with an 8.1% market share of the total banking systems assets at end-2021 (2017: 5.3%) and a 3.7% market share of the total banking systems deposits (2017: 3%). Islamic banks total assets reached IQD12.9 trillion ($8.8 billion) at end-2021, representing sizeable growth of 18.2% yoy (2020: 9.7%). It outpaced conventional banks 2021 asset growth of 15.1% yoy (2020: 4.1%). The Iraqi banking system had IQD159.4 trillion ($109.2 billion) total assets at end-2021.

Islamic banks have high capital ratios  higher than conventional banks, although such levels of capital can be consumed quickly in such a weak and volatile operating environment. Islamic banks capital represented 42.2% of the total capital of Iraqs banking sector at end-2021, despite a much smaller market share of assets than conventional banks.

Weak operating environment

Iraqs share of global Islamic banking assets remained small at 0.4% at end-3Q20 and was lower than in neighbouring Jordan (0.7%) and Oman (0.7%), according to the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB), mainly due to the weak operating environment. Thirty out of 76 Iraqi banks were Islamic in 2021, made up of one state-owned bank and 29 private banks.

Key banking industry issues include a challenging operating environment, political instability, limited lending opportunities, lack of comprehensive regulations governing the industry, weak financial regulation enforcement, issues in reporting and transparency (contributing to the lack of confidence in the banking system), money laundering concerns and under-skilled human capital.

Islamic banking-specific challenges include low awareness of Islamic products, lack of standardisation, limited product range, and a lack of Islamic liquidity-management tools. Some Iraqi banks act largely as treasury functions, deploying excess liquidity into CBI placements with no real banking business models.

Capital markets underdeveloped

Iraqi capital markets, including the sukuk market, are significantly underdeveloped with issuers generally not having access to domestic or international capital markets. Additionally, the takaful market was almost absent in Iraq before 2019. However, in 2019 the CBI issued takaful regulation and established the first takaful insurance company, allowing Islamic banks to offer takaful products.

The CBI has adopted the Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) standards and joined the IFSB. In 2018, the CBI issued regulations on sharia supervisory boards, sharia and internal auditing and sharia compliance for Islamic banks. The CBI has also established the supreme sharia advisory committee within the central bank.-- TradeArabia News Service
SPRINGDALE TWP.  A Grand Rapids man was arrested after a traffic stop revealed he had been carrying a loaded and concealed weapon on Monday.

According to a Michigan State Police news release issued on Tuesday morning, Cadillac post troopers stopped a motorcycle for speeding on Cadillac Highway near Timberline in Springdale Township at about 7 p.m. on Monday.

The rider was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon, the release reads in part. The rider, a 21-year-old Grand Rapids man, and his passenger, a 20-year-old man from Lansing, were traveling 88 mph in a 65-mph zone.

The release notes that the motorcycle did not have a license plate displayed.

The rider claimed he had recently purchased the motorcycle from out-of-state and had not received the plate yet. The VIN was checked and there was no record of the motorcycle being registered in Michigan, the release said.

The motorcycle was originally registered in Indiana and the rider did not have a motorcycle endorsement or proof of insurance.

The man was also in possession of a loaded 9mm handgun without a license to carry the handgun.

The rider was arrested and lodged at the Manistee County Jail pending arraignment. The passenger was given a ride from the scene.

It is News Advocate policy to withhold names of people facing criminal charges until after arraignment.






Cedarville University recently announced its dean's and dean's honor lists for the spring 2022 semester.

Caroline Holdeman of Midland was named to the dean's list. This recognition requires students to obtain a 3.5 GPA or higher for the semester and carry a minimum of 12 credit hours.

Noah Haines, Cassady Holdeman of Midland as well as Sarah Kepner of Shepherd were named to the dean's honor list. This recognition requires the student to obtain a 3.75 GPA or higher for the semester and carry a minimum of 12 credit hours.

Located in southwest Ohio, Cedarville University is an accredited, Christ-centered, Baptist institution with an enrollment of 4,715 undergraduate, graduate and online students in more than 150 areas of study.
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KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (AP)  The governor of the last remaining eastern province partly under Ukraine's control urged his more than 350,000 residents to flee as Russia escalated its offensive and air alerts were issued across nearly the entire country.

Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that getting people out of Donetsk province is necessary to save lives and enable the Ukrainian army better to defend towns from the Russian advance.

The destiny of the whole country will be decided by the Donetsk region, Kyrylenko told reporters in Kramatrosk, the province's administrative center and home to the Ukrainian military's regional headquarters.

Once there are less people, we will be able to concentrate more on our enemy and perform our main tasks, Kyrylenko said.

The governors call for residents to leave appeared to represent one of the biggest suggested evacuations of the war, although it's unclear whether people will be willing and safely able to flee. According to the U.N. refugee agency, more than 7.1 million Ukrainians are estimated to be displaced within Ukraine, and more than 4.8 million refugees left the country since Russia's invasion started Feb. 24.

Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy said air alerts were issued Tuesday night in nearly all of the country, in many places after a long period of relative calm during which people searched for an explanation.

You should not look for logic in the actions of terrorists, Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. The Russian army does not take any breaks. It has one task  to take peoples lives, to intimidate people  so that even a few days without an air alarm already feel like part of the terror.

Much of the military activity appeared concentrated in Ukraine's east. The Kramatorsk governor said that because they house critical infrastructure such as water filtration plants, Russias main targets are now his city and a city 16 kilometers (10 miles) to the north, Sloviansk. Kyrylenko described the shelling as very chaotic without a specific target ... only to destroy civilian infrastructure and residential areas.

Sloviansk also came under sustained bombardment Tuesday. Mayor Vadim Lyakh said on Facebook that massive shelling pummeled Sloviansk, which had a population of about 107,000 before Russian invaded Ukraine more than four months ago. The mayor, who urged residents hours earlier to evacuate, advised them to take cover in shelters.

At least one person was killed and seven were wounded Tuesday, Lyakh said. He said the citys central market and several districts came under attack, adding that authorities were assessing the extent of the damage.

The barrage targeting Sloviansk indicated Russian forces were advanc ing farther into Ukraine's Donbas region, a mostly Russian-speaking industrial area where the country's most experienced soldiers are concentrated.

Sloviansk has previously taken rocket and artillery fire during Russia's war in Ukraine, but the bombardment picked up in recent days after Moscow took the last major city in neighboring Luhansk province, Lyakh said.

Its important to evacuate as many people as possible, he warned Tuesday morning, adding that shelling damaged 40 houses on Monday.

The Ukrainian military withdrew its troops Sunday from the city of Lysychansk to keep them from being surrounded. Russia's defense minister and Putin said the city's subsequent capture put Moscow in control of all of Luhansk, one of two provinces that make up the Donbas, but the regional governor said Tuesday that fighting was continuing on Lysychansk's outskirts. He said Russian forces were moving weaponry to Donetsk.

The question now is whether Russia can muster enough strength to complete its seizure of the Donbas by taking Donetsk province, too. Putin acknowledged Monday that Russian troops who fought in Luhansk need to take some rest and beef up their combat capability.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that Moscow's main priorities are preserving the lives and health of its troops and excluding the threat to the security of civilians.

When Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine more than four months ago, his stated goals were defending the people of the Donbas against Kyivs alleged aggression, and the demilitarization and denazifaction of Ukraine.

Pro-Russia separatists have fought Ukrainian forces and controlled much of the Donbas for eight years. Before the invasion this year, Putin recognized the independence of the two self-proclaimed separatist republics in the region. He also sought to portray the tactics of Ukrainian forces and the government as akin to Nazi Germany's, claims for which no evidence has emerged.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian military said Russian forces also shelled several Donetsk towns and villages around Sloviansk in the past day but were repelled as they tried to advance toward a town about 20 kilometers (12 miles) to the city's north. South of the city, Russian forces were trying to push toward two more towns and shelling areas near Kramatorsk.

Meanwhile, Moscow-installed officials in Ukraines southern Kherson region on Tuesday announced the formation of a new regional government, with a former Russian official at the helm.

Sergei Yeliseyev, the head of the new Moscow-backed government in Kherson, is a former deputy prime minister of Russias western exclave of Kaliningrad and also used to work at Russia's Federal Security Service, or the FSB, according to media reports.

It wasnt immediately clear what would become of the military-civic administration the Kremlin installed earlier. The administration's head, Vladimir Saldo, said in a Telegram statement that the new government was not a temporary, not a military, not some kind of interim administration, but a proper governing body.

The fact that not just Kherson residents, but Russian officials, too, are part of this government speaks clearly about the direction the Kherson region is headed in the future," he said. "This direction is to Russia.

Kherson's Russia-installed administration previously stated plans for the region to become part of Russia, either through a referendum or other means.

There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials.

In other developments:

 The 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland, sending the two nations' membership bids to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals. The move further increases Russias strategic isolation. Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg hailed the signing as a "truly a historic moment for Finland, for Sweden and for NATO.

 The war in Ukraine has drawn millions of dollars away from countries facing other crises. Somalia, suffering a food shortage largely driven by the war, may be the most vulnerable. Its aid funding is less than half of last years level while overwhelmingly Western donors have sent more than $1.7 billion to respond to the war in Europe. Yemen, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Congo and the Palestinian territories are similarly affected.

 Spain boosted military spending in an attempt to reach its commitment to NATO to dedicate 2% of gross domestic product to defense. Spains Cabinet approved a one-off Defense Ministry expenditure of almost 1 billion euros ($1 billion) that the government said was necessary to pay for unexpected expenses from Russias invasion of Ukraine. Spain has sent military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine and deployed more troops and aircraft to NATO missions in Eastern Europe.

___

Follow AP's coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
TO THE EDITOR:

In Michigans open primary system, voters can vote in any (one) partys primary. I am writing to encourage Democrats and independents to take the extraordinary step of voting in the Republican primary on Aug. 2.

In normal times, I would not advocate this, but todays Republican party represents the greatest threat to American democracy since the civil war.

It is a party that staged a violent coup to keep their lawless leader in the presidency. It is a party where four Republican congressmen from Michigan tried to invalidate the Michigan election. It is a party that stole a Supreme Court nomination and then approved judges who revoked a womens right to make her own decisions. It is a party that refuses to enact responsible gun legislation despite near-daily mass shootings. It is a party that has become untethered from reality and is no longer worthy of the consideration normally afforded to an organization of good faith.

It is rather like a self-destructive family member who is unable to make healthy decisions and is in desperate need of an intervention.

Now, it is time for the rest of the American family to intervene and help the Republicans get back on the path to sanity. I encourage all Democrats and independents to intervene in the Republican primary, and where possible, vote for the least radical Republican.

In that spirit, I make the following recommendations:

For the 95th State House I recommend Ann Manary who is pro-choice and has recognized the legitimacy of Bidens victory.

For the 34th State Senate  Roger Hauck

For 35th State Senate No recommendation.

For 2nd Congressional district  Both candidates are terrible. No recommendation.

For 8th Congressional district - Paul Junge.

For Governor - I recommend Kevin Rinke, who is awful, but at least acknowledged President Biden's victory and that abortion should be legal in the case of rape or incest.

Please understand that these recommendations only apply to the August primary.

In November, I urge you to vote for the Democratic candidate in all these races.

JOSEPH WEIR

Midland
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Hulu's 'The Princess' Delivers Its Promise of Graphic But Kid-Friendly Violence

By James Field | Film | July 5, 2022 |

Long ago, in a far-off kingdom, a nameless princess slept in a tall tower. Chained and alone, she knew her evil fiance, Julius, waited below to force her into marriage and her kingdom into bondage. But when soldiers burst into her room they are shocked to discover that its not the waif in the wedding dress who should be afraid

Director Le-Van Kiet and writers Ben Lustig and Jake Thorton must be fans of T.S. Eliot. Ive never seen a group take the writers well-known quote good writers borrow, great writers steal quote to heart so completely. The Princess steals themes, scenes, and throwaway bits from a variety of sources and mashes them all together into an entertaining but shallow action movie that takes less than 3 minutes to begin the violence that continues until the very end. Joey King stars as the nameless heroine, a beautiful, strong-willed, and nearly feral young woman trained in combat by royal advisor Khai (Kristofer Kamiyasu) and attendant Linh (Victoria Ngo) behind the Kings back. All those skills are put to the test as the Princess fights her way to the bottom of the tower, where she will face whip-wielding dominatrix Moira (Olga Kurylenko) and her lover Julius (a scene-devouring Dominic Cooper). Former knight Julius is infuriated that the King has weakened their borders, allowed outsiders into the lands, and generally relaxed the monarchy to the point of perceived weakness.

From what does The Princess borrow? Everything. Its primarily a cinematic video game, a cross between the stealth missions and rhythmic group battles of Assassins Creed: Odyssey and the punishing brutality of Elden Ring, where the protagonist is often up against a single, immensely powerful enemy at a time. Each floor of the tower serves as a mini-boss battle against usually one or two OP combatants who could turn the Princess into paste if shes not careful. Floors with multiple enemies turn into cat-and-mouse hunts in which the NPCs may as well have visible sightlines as the Princess stealths through rooms and secret passages. A scene where she creeps past a bunch of looting soldiers feels cut directly from AC: Odyssey or Dishonored. Every time she clears a stage we are rewarded with backstory and plot points, none of which matter and mostly focus on her training and friendship (budding romance?) with Linh. The visuals are borrowed from John Everett Millaiss Ophelia, Tangled, The Princess Bride, and every story that contains a helpless princess awaiting rescue. Joey King is the version of Merida that a live-action Brave remake deserves but Disney lacks the stones to film. Like the King and Queen - though not her little sister, Violet (Katelyn Rose Downey)  the Princess lacks a name. Shes a stand-in for every royal young woman held hostage by her parents desire for a male heir, valuable only for the lands and connections her arranged marriage will bring. This Princess is not satisfied with that and carves her own path to greatness through as many nameless thugs as necessary.

The action is well-choreographed and bloody. Eyeballs are stabbed, heads removed, and generally speaking, everyone who deserves it comes to a sticky end. Despite that, the film feels surprisingly PG. If a few of the more graphic deaths were removed or toned down The Princess would be more a Disney Channel YA movie than a gritty orgy of violence like John Wick or Nobody, a fact that plays to its advantage. As I said in my preview, its the perfect first R-feature for the preteen set, one free of sexual violence and lacking even coarse language. My 11-year-old daughter adored the movie  she said several times her favorite part was all the killing, which is slightly concerning. She also said its the greatest movie of all time, which is concerning in a different way. Im also pleased to report that despite modern movie makers annoying tendency for filming scenes so dark its impossible to see anything, The Princess is perfectly lit to show off every sword thrust and arterial spray.

The cast is serviceable if under-developed. Le-Van Kiet knows how to film a great fight scene and King sells it well. She uses her small size to her advantage, and enough improvised weapons to bring a tear to Jackie Chans eyes. Veronica Ngo brings the same skill for surgical violence she brought to Kiets Furie, in which she played a mother fighting to save her child from traffickers. Shes fierce, crackling with energy, and devoted to the Princess. Dominic Cooper gives Juliuss voice a prissy edge that comes through whenever hes outraged at the kingdoms falling standards or the royal familys refusal to simply do as told. Its not a difficult role but he sells it and gives his misogynistic demands a comedic tone that plays well. Olga Kurylenkos Moira is entirely over-the-top, the same homoerotic mixture of sex and violence youd find in a 1970s womens prison sexploitation flick. Little sister Violet is spunky and entertaining in her few scenes. The Queen is supportive and the King is a damp Saltine of a man. Joey King plays the same 95-pound engine of female fury popular since Buffy Summers and River Tam punched their way through the patriarchy. Shes a berzerker in an ever more tattered wedding dress, covered in blood, much of it her own. Theres not much to the character but like early Milla Jovovich, she sells her talent for well-choreographed violence. The Princess is like if Boudicca and Artemisia had a baby and let her be raised by wolves, and King is exactly what the role demands.

Its impossible to know how this film would have hit in a pre-Dobbs world. Would the sparse characterization and lack of plot matter more before 6 Justices stripped the right to choose from American women? I dont know. I do know that right now watching young women gain autonomy by carving their way through an army of domineering, predatory men is a delight. Its not perfect, even by B-movie standards; the kiddo and I agreed that any scenes involving CGI were woefully bad, including a decapitation and an immolation that look terrible even by SyFy standards. Theres also a fat joke that runs the entire length of the movie and feels unnecessarily mean; a strange complaint given the body count, perhaps, but it still bugged me. The proto-lesbian subtext between Linh and the Princess was appreciated, as was the message of acceptance for women born this way, but warranted more attention.

My predictions are rarely accurate, but I was absolutely correct when I called The Princess the next generations first R-rated feature. Suitable for nearly everyone, including preteens, it succeeds more than it fails thanks to Kiets eye for balletic violence and King & Ngos chemistry, and doesnt need to be good to be great. With its tightly choreographed action and shallow but fierce message of self-acceptance and bodily autonomy, The Princess is destined for the comfort movie hall of fame.





 'For All Mankind' Tackles the Myth of the Great Man | Watch the Trailer for 'Unprecedented,' the Trump Documentary Subpoenaed by the Jan. 6th Committee 

Header Image Source: Hulu screenshots
Omans Ministry of Finance (MOF), represented by Partnership for Development (PFD) program, has signed four agreements with the Ministry of Defence (MOD) to carry out modernisation projects at the MOD and the Sultans Armed Forces (SAF).



Besides economic development, the agreements seek to support national industries, empower small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and provide training and job opportunities, reported Oman News Agency (ONA).



The agreements signed by Nasser Khamis Al Jashmi, Secretary General of the MOF and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of PFD program, and executive directors of the companies concerned.



The signing ceremony was attended by Mohammed Nasser Al Zaabi, Secretary General of the MOD, officials from the MOF and senior officers from the MOD.



The agreements aim to implement four projects, namely the establishment of a maintenance facility for armoured personnel vehicles of the Royal Army of Oman (RAO), an earth observation centre for the National Survey Authority, the transfer of hawk aircraft engine maintenance capabilities to the Royal Air Force of Oman (RAFO), the supply of several specialized aircraft systems for the C130 and F16 Fleets of the RAFO. The projects will be implemented by international PFD Obligors.



The maintenance facility (for armoured personnel vehicles) project will be implemented by FNSS, a Turkey-based company. The project will help modernise armoured vehicles and reduce maintenance cost. It will also enhance efficiency and develop the capabilities of local companies.



The second project entails the transfer of hawk aircraft engine maintenance capabilities from Rolls-Royce to RAFO. This project will boost the level of competencies, skills, and expertise of the staff and will contribute to reducing engines maintenance costs. The third project (to establish an earth observation centre) will be implemented by INDRA, a Spanish company. This project will enable Oman to establish the first centre specialized in monitoring and analysis of earth images captured from the space. It will also contribute towards training the nationals in this field.



The fourth project will be implemented by the US-based company Lockheed Martin. It will provide specialized aircraft systems for the C130 and F16 Fleets for the RAFO. The project will enhance aviation safety and enable more efficient use of tracking systems by using satellite signals.



The projects serve future prospects in the field of industry and maintenance, so that the facilities could keep pace with the rapid development in technologies. They will open wider scopes for nationals, generate more jobs and enable small and medium enterprises to play a greater role in the economy.
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - The Libyan Presidential Council announced here Tuesday a consensus on a general framework for an action plan that will address the political deadlock in the country
Photo: (Photo : Getty images )

A recent study revealed that children born through In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) perform better than naturally-conceived children. However, they are prone to mental health issues when they reach their teenage years.

The research published in the European Journal of Population examined and tracked medical records of more than 280,000 Finnish children aged more than five years between 1995 and 2000. The study documented the educational and mental health outcomes of those born through medically assisted reproduction (MAR), such as IVF, artificial insemination, ovulation induction, and those conceived naturally, per the Study Finds.

According to study co-author Dr. Alice Goisis at University College London Centre for Longitudinal Studies, children conceived through MAR do better and are more advanced in mental health outcomes. However, they have observed the risk of mental health disorders, warning that this could be a cause of concern and merits more attention in future research.

Children conceived through medically assisted reproduction

As per research findings, children conceived through MAR performed better in school, were less likely to drop out, and were more likely to be employed than naturally conceived adolescents. However, the researchers noted that the children conceived under MAR were at an increased risk of having mental health disorders such as anxiety or depression. Around 10 percent of those born through MAR adolescents received a mental health diagnosis between the ages of 16 to 18, The New York Post reports.

In comparison, only 9 percent of naturally conceived adolescents receive a mental health diagnosis by the same age.

Researchers suggest that socio-economic background is an important factor in explaining the advantage as there is no evidence that IVF treatment causes health problems among children.

As per Goisis, the study focused on the social demographics of families who conceived through MAR. The findings also highlight the importance of integrating socio-demographics in studying the consequences of MAR.

As per the study authors, MAR children are more likely to come from higher-income families who can provide their children with the means to improve their educational outcomes. The authors also believed that the parent's stress of going through the IVF procedure may have developed mental health issues in children, impacting the child's mental health as they grew older.

Read Also: Fertility Benefits Now Being Offered as Perks by a Growing Number of Companies

Dr. Hanna Remes of the University of Helsinki, the study's lead author, also said that parents who went through IVF might be more apprehensive about their child's welfare, hence are more likely to get a diagnosis for certain conditions.

Relatively new and unexplored topic

As the oldest child conceived through IVF is now 43 years old, researchers say that the study area is "relatively new and unexplored." However, as the number of parents opting for MAR is rising for various reasons, the research team said it is important to understand its long-term consequences on the children.

As of 2018, the Centers for Disease and Control (CDC) cites that 73,831 babies were conceived by MAR, accounting for 1.9 percent of all babies born.

Related Article: Artificial Insemination Mix-up: Family Sues Hospital After Finding Out Daughter Had Different Father
Photo: (Photo : Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

A 1-year-old child died after being left inside a hot car parked outside a Walgreens store in Danielsville, Georgia. According to local police, officers responded to reports of an unresponsive child at a Walgreens store in Danielsville, located about 16 miles northeast of Athens, early Thursday afternoon.

Madison County Sheriff's Office, which is assisting Danielsville police in the hot car case, said that the toddler's mother worked at the Walgreens store. WXIA, NBC's Atlanta affiliate, reported that based on the sheriff's office estimates, the baby was inside the hot car for three or four hours before the mom discovered the kid in the vehicle.

Authorities believed that the temperature inside the car reached over 100 degrees during that time. The young child received emergency aid before being rushed to a hospital in Athens, where the kid was eventually pronounced dead.

Mom thought she dropped the kid at daycare center

Local newspaper Athens Banner-Herald reported that the mother, an employee at Walgreens, told investigators that she normally drops her two kids at separate daycare centers before going to work. Unfortunately, the 30-year-old mom accidentally left one of her children inside the car on Thursday, June 30. The report added that the woman did not realize she had never stopped at the second daycare center before arriving at Walgreens for work.

An investigation into the toddler's death remains ongoing. The sheriff's office is working with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to process evidence concerning the child's untimely death. The sheriff's office has also been in touch with the Northern Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office to determine if any charges are warranted to be filed against the mother.

According to Sheriff's Capt. Jimmy Patton, the woman was employed at a Walgreens pharmacy in Danielsville. She had been in the pharmacy for about four hours, telling the investigators she went to her Mazda SUV after that and found her child.

The mom immediately called 911 after seeing her child, who was taken to Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center, where the kid was pronounced dead. Madison County Sheriff Michael Moore said he was notified of what happened to the child at about 1:30 p.m. on Thursday. An autopsy has now been ordered to determine the child's cause of death.

Read Also: US Census Bureau Data Shows Maternal Poverty Levels Higher in Abortion Trigger Law States

Hot car deaths continue to rise in Georgia

According to the nonprofit organization Kids and Car Safety, which tracks such deaths, this is the third child to die inside a hot car in Georgia since the beginning of the year. Two of those deaths occurred just this week.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that young children rely on others to keep them cool and hydrated when it is hot. The CDC added that parents should never leave their infants or children in a parked car, even if the vehicle's windows are cracked open.

Related Article: Heartbreak for Honduran Mom as She Lost Her Two Sons in the San Antonio Migrant Truck Tragedy
Photo: (Photo : Getty images )

The Nigerian police rescued 43 adults, eight teenagers, and 26 children from the crammed dungeon of Whole Bible Believers Church in the Valentino Area of Ondo town, where they were told to wait for Jesus Christ's second coming. The raid happened after a mom reported that her children were missing as she thought they were at the Church. The pastor of the Pentecostal Church, David Anifowoshe, and his assistant, Josiah Peter Asumosa, have been arrested.

Funmilayo Odunlami, the State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), said the preliminary investigation revealed that the assistant pastor told the members that a Rapture would happen in April. The pastor later backtracked, saying that the phenomenon would be moved to September 2022 and that the young members need to obey only their parents in the Lord, The Sun reports.

Rapture is a Christian belief that Christian believers will ascend to Heaven for the "Second Coming," the return of Jesus Christ after his biblical ascension to heaven.

The Whole Bible Believers Church raid

On Friday, the police raided the church after authorities received a tip that children were being kept in the church against their will.

According to Nigerian Tribune, the victims' relatives alleged that the two pastors hypnotized their victims and camped them in an isolated apartment within the church premises. Odunlami explained that the two pastors were arrested after the parents of the underaged children camped in the church as they were not allowed access to the kids.

Some victims were believed to have been there for months, while others were thought to have left school to be in the church.

The pastors insisted they were kept in the church for special cleansing and deliverance before the Second Coming of Christ in September 2022.

Read Also: Tattoo Artist Mom Drowns Herself and 3 Children after Husband's Suicide

Complaints of parents

One of the parents reported that her daughter had been hypnotized. She refused to come home since January as the two pastors brainwashed her to go against her parents, encouraging her to drop out of school.

Another parent tried to pick up her daughter, who refused to go back home and take a secondary school entrance examination. It caused an uproar, and the parent was thrown out of the church, prompting her to report the incident to the police.

A boy was also reportedly not allowed by the church to take the entrance examination as the two pastors had been preaching against going to school because they claim that education is not necessary after being taken to heaven for the second coming.

Jessica Akintemi said her two daughters and her husband had been hypnotized and had been living in the church since January 2022. Her husband, Rotimi Akintemi, a mathematics teacher, has stopped going to work as he is waiting for the second coming of Christ, which are the pastors' preaching.

Akintemi said that she left the church after the assistant pastor urged the women to leave their matrimonial homes and divorce their husbands to get to heaven.

Investigation of the case is still ongoing for authorities to unravel the facts about the incident. Odulami assured that they would make their findings public after, EWN said.

Related Article: 4-Year-Old Girl Pleads for Mom's Life While Boyfriend Strangled Her in Front of Her Children
Photo: (Photo : Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

When Virginia mom Alexa Beichler decided to share the heartbreaking story of her sons with the world through People magazine, she did not foresee getting so much support from people. Indeed, that is the case now, with Beichler having the ability to change lives as a result.

Beichler's two sons Taylor, 21 months, and Jax, seven months, were both born with classic phenylketonuria (PKU), a metabolic condition that requires her two boys to be on medical-grade formula for life.

Beichler, also a mom to 4-year-old son Carson, shared her heartbreaking story in an interview last month, saying that her two sons could face irreversible brain damage if they did not receive their specialized formula amid the nationwide shortage.

The family received a shipment of specialized formula on June 16

The mom of three said that she could not believe all the love they got from everyone trying to help since opening up about her sons' diagnosis and the urgent need for their formula. Beichler said that as of Tuesday, her family received a full shipment of the specialized formula on June 16 which is what her two sons are currently relying on. The last complete shipment she received before the recent delivery was on April 5, according to Fox News.

She said that the most important part of this is what has happened from the story, revealing that so many different people reached out to them because of it. Beichler added that 11 minutes after the first article went live, people from as far as Belgium and other countries reached out to them.

Beichler added that she has a small at-home business, and people started ordering from her to help them make ends meet if they had to hop on a plane and fly somewhere for the formula they needed. She said that without their story being shared, she would have never been able to get in contact with some of the people she had never heard from before.

Read Also: Georgia Mom Who Could Not Find Formula for Her Twins Overwhelmed by Donations From Strangers

Beichler becomes formula matchmaker after story goes viral

The Virginia native said she was also able to speak to people at formula manufacturers like Abbott and Nutricia and assist other families in need, in addition to the support her own family received.

Beichler said she had become the formula matchmaker for multiple families as she was able to put them in contact with people who needed this stuff. According to the inspirational mom, she matched over 20 people in need with a supply, and it was a God send.

She recalled helping out one adult in dire need of his formula, describing him as someone already at death's door. Beichler said they were able to find him what he needed for his feeding tube, and they literally changed his life. She added that they not only spread PKU awareness but also shed light on other people and other disabilities that need specialized formulas.

Related Article: Many Baby Formula Plants Not Inspected in the US Because of COVID Pandemic
Continental has signed a partnership with YK Almoayyed & Sons appointing it as the official distributor for Continental tyres in Bahrain.

This partnership contract was signed at the YK Almoayyed & Sons head office in Manama by Karel Kucera, Managing Director of Continental Middle East, and Farouk Yousuf Almoayyed, Chairman of YKA Group, in the presence of Werner Grohe  Deputy Head of Mission, German Embassy Bahrain.

The agreement between the two companies follows a series of developments that have seen the German tyre manufacturer significantly enhance its support for customers across Bahrain.

Commenting on the agreement, Kucera, said: We are very pleased to sign this agreement with YKA group to become a key partner of ours. Their reach will help us continue providing premium tyres to customers across the country. I am confident that we will be achieving great things together in Bahrain.

Almoayyed commented: As the largest family-owned business in Bahrain, we are proud to join the Continental family and to contribute to the growth of the brand in the country over the coming years. Our extensive history and deep roots in Bahrain make us an ideal partner, and we look forward to a fruitful, long-term relationship.-- TradeArabia News Service
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Changi Airport in Singapore has launched the Hello, Changi Precinct gallery in Terminal 3 (T3), as part of an initiative to drive awareness of areas such as Pulau Ubin, Pasir Ris, Tampines, Bedok and East Coast Park in the airports home precinct in eastern Singapore.

The gallery will be in the T3 departure hall until October 23, 2022. Admission is free and in July and August, the first 150 visitors each month to take a picture or video with the Hello, Changi Precinct gallery and post it on their social channels with the hashtag #ChangiPrecinct will receive an exclusive Changi Eats promo code. There will also be two tours with prices starting from S$20 (US$14) per person.

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The Hello, Changi Precinct gallery features an old-school barbershop, a digital arcade game in a Housing and Development Board (HDB) void deck, a watermelon playground and a bumboat that takes visitors through the history of Pulau Ubin and the eastern coast of Singapore. With interactive elements and photo spots modeled after iconic sights and sounds in the Changi Precinct, visitors can discover facts across seven themed zones. As part of the initiative, Changi has also launched two exploration tours  My Changi Airport Tour and My Changi Village Heritage Tour  in partnership with local non-profit organization MyCommunity, which celebrates Singapores heritage and culture through tours, cultural programs and exhibitions.

A curated tour of Changi Airport traces the development of the airport through the stories of airport staff and visitors. The tour begins in Terminal 1 and guides participants to discover the airports recreational spaces, artwork installations, designs and heritage businesses.

The tour is intended to give participants a deeper understanding of the airport by exchanging stories with airport staff they meet along the way.

Visitors can sign up for six other tours running until October 2022, each exploring Bedok, Pulau Ubin and Pasir Ris. Curated specialty and craft workshops have also been launched for the September school holidays, where participants can learn traditional skills from craftsmen within the precinct.

Lim Ching Kiat, managing director of air hub development at Changi Airport Group, said, Many of the travelers who fly to Changi Airport are interested to venture beyond the airport to explore the Changi Precinct, which is rich with local history and culture. Hence, Changi Airport Group has been working with various partners around Changi Airport over the last two years to promote appreciation of the many hidden gems of the eastern part of Singapore. We invite local residents and travelers to kickstart their journey of exploring the charms of Singapores East through the Hello, Changi Precinct gallery. We hope this allows them to understand the Changi Precinct more deeply and encourages exploration of lesser-known spots in Singapore.
The Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) is cautioning the general public that fraudsters are taking undue advantage of the linkage of the Ghana Card to bank accounts.



According to EOCO, the fraudsters are sending messages to suspecting customers demanding their bank account details, Mobile App PIN and Mobile numbers.



A statement on Thursday June 30, EOCO indicated that it has taken notice with great concerns the rate at which some members of the general public have fallen victims to fraudulent banking transactions.



EOCO warned that Fraudsters have taken advantage of the ongoing call on customers of bank to link their accounts to Ghana Card. Regarding the bank fraud, the fraudulent messages are sent to individuals requesting them to click on links in order to update their bank records.



Customers are therefore asked to provide their bank account names, Mobile numbers, Mobile App PIN , One Time Password. Some daring fraudsters even make phone calls to members of the public to request for the aforementioned information



Do not click on any link purporting to be emanating from your bank unless you have confirmed from your bank.



Meanwhile, the deadline given by the Bank of Ghana to link the Ghana Card to bank account is today June 30.









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Featured Video
Guinea-Bissau's top court has overturned the convictions of two alleged drug kingpins in connection with the country's largest-ever narcotics seizure, a copy of the ruling showed on Monday.



Braima Seidi Ba, a citizen of Guinea-Bissau, and Ricardo Ariza Monje, a Colombian national, were sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in prison following the September 2019 seizure of 1.8 tonnes of cocaine hidden in flour bags.



It was the largest ever drug bust in Guinea-Bissau, a country the United Nations once dubbed the "narco state" of West Africa because of senior military and political leaders' involvement in the drug trade.



The issue returned to the fore in February, when a government cabinet meeting was attacked by heavily-armed gunmen. President Umaro Sissoco Embalo described the assault as a failed coup attempt linked to drug trafficking. read more



Ba and Monje were identified by prosecutors as the alleged kingpins of the smuggling network but were never taken into custody. Ten others, who were arrested, received prison sentences of between four and 14 years.



In its ruling, Guinea-Bissau's Supreme Court threw out Ba and Monje's convictions, saying the evidence did not bear out their guilt. It let the other 10 convictions stand.



The ruling, dated June 23, was first reported in Guinea-Bissau's media on Friday.



Civil society groups in Guinea-Bissau blasted the decision as evidence that the court was "hostage to organized crime".



The ruling "jeopardizes efforts to combat transnational organized crime and discredits the country's image and credibility", the groups said in a statement on Saturday.



The U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said last week that growing instability in West Africa, a transit route for illegal drugs on their way from South America to Europe, was facilitating drug production and trafficking.

Source: Reuters









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The new Hilton Maldives Amingiri Resort & Spa, located on a private island in the North Male Atoll, will open on July 1.

The 109 all-pool villa resort marks the entry of Hiltons flagship brand into the Maldives.

Prior to the opening, Hilton has appointed Gaurav Thakur as the General Manager of the property.

Hilton Maldives Amingiri Resort & Spa is an outstanding resort, anchored on Hiltons signature hospitality, promising guests innovative dining, wellness and leisure concepts that will help them create new experiences as they travel and reconnect with their loved ones, said Jamie Mead, Senior Director of Operations, Hilton, South East Asia.

With his innate understanding of the industry, strong background in operations and sound leadership skills, I have no doubt that Gaurav will ably guide his team to ensure an impactful launch and continued success for the resort.

An accomplished hospitality veteran with a 17-year-long career in Hilton across the Waldorf

Astoria, Hilton and Conrad brands, Thakurs diverse experience includes roles in countries such as the United Kingdom, India and the Maldives, where he oversaw operations across different departments. Through his career, Thakur also played key leadership roles in the opening teams for Conrad Pune, Conrad Bengaluru and Waldorf Astoria Maldives Ithaafushi, where he served as resort manager before moving to Hilton Maldives Amingiri Resort & Spa.

I look forward to bringing Hiltons signature hospitality to life with inspiring and one-of-a-kind experiences at Hilton Maldives Amingiri Resort & Spa, said Thakur. Our team is committed to delivering exceptional stays as we prepare to welcome global travellers to our iconic destination.

Hilton Maldives Amingiri Resort & Spa is conveniently accessible via a 20-minute premium speedboat transfer from Velana International Airport. The island property showcases 109 beach and overwater villas  each featuring its own private pool, six exceptional restaurants and bars, holistic spa and wellness facilities and best-in-class amenities for families, including one of the largest kids clubs in the Maldives and a rooftop lounge exclusive to teenage guests.  TradeArabia News Service
The Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations has invited the leadership of teacher unions to a meeting over their demands for the payment of cost of living allowance (COLA) to members.

It said only the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) had responded to attend, with the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), the Coalition of Concerned Teachers-Ghana (CCT-GH) and the Teacher and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) yet to respond.



It said once the other unions were ready for the meeting, it would be held, adding that the government was not insensitive to the plight of teachers and workers in general.



Forum

A Deputy Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Bright Wireko-Brobbey, said this at the GNAT Investment Forum in Accra last Wednesday.



Taking their turns to address the event on the theme: Ghanas workers pensions: Challenges and solution for growth in the next decade, both the President of GNAT, Rev. Isaac Owusu, and the General Secretary, Thomas Tanko Musah, said the association was not reneging on its June 30, 2022 deadline for the payment of the COLA.



They said the current economic challenges had brought untold hardship to many teachers and workers in general, hence the need for the COLA to cushion them under the situation.



In response, Mr Wireko-Brobbey said the ministry had received letters from GNAT, NAGRAT, CCT-GH, and TEWU that things were hard, thus the need for COLA.



Renege

We did not renege on that. Our minister asked me to invite them so that we exhaust the matters, he said, adding that two weeks down the line, we have not been able to get your leaderships. GNAT was ready but NAGRAT and CCT-GH, we were told, were out on some meeting somewhere and we are still waiting for their signal to meet them and have a discussion. We are considering looking at a review of the single spine which has been practised for over a decade to see whether it is still relevant or we need to tweak it, he said.



In a presentation, the Director-General of SSNIT, Dr John Ofori-Tenkorang, said the trusts pension payments exceeded contributions invested at 91-day treasury bill rate compounded quarterly.



Evidence

The empirical evidence showed that people who have been on SSNIT pension for 12 years were getting almost twice the value they could have got elsewhere, and it gets better the longer you live. Why is that so because your contributions have stopped and every additional months that you are living SSNIT is paying more so you can see that SSNIT outlay just keeps on increasing and increasing the longer you live, he explained.



For people who had been on pension for 25 years, he said (85-year olds) looking at all that they accumulated individually, on the average they were getting about 17 times the best they could have got if they had invested their contributions every month in treasury bills and compounding them.



Unemployment

A lecturer in Finance of the University of Ghana Business School, Professor Godfred A. Bokpin, said the unemployment rate in Ghana had almost tripled in a little over more than a decade.



According to him, more than 1.55 million people or 13.4 per cent of the country's economically active population "are out of work."



Presenting a paper on Ghanas Workers Pension: An Economic Management Response, he said, among other things, that creating jobs in the economy was good for SSNIT.



In his opening remarks, Rev. Owusu said the forum was of great importance to teachers across the country, especially under the current challenging economic situation.



For his part, Mr Musah said the issue of pension had been of great concern to teachers, especially when they went on retirement.

Source: graphiconline.com









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The Ministry of Education says schools remain open despite a strike action declared by various unions in the Pre-tertiary education sector.



The unions, comprising the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), the Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) and the Coalition of Concerned Teachers Ghana (CCT), declared a strike on Monday demanding the payment of the 20% of their basic salary.



We can no longer bear the hardship. Even more so, we reject the inequality of salaries in the public services of this country. We have been compelled under the current circumstances to publicly communicate to Ghanaians on our intention to go on strike, having gone past the June 30, 2022 deadline [that] we gave government for the payment of the Cost of Living Allowance.



Consequently, we have decided to embark on a strike action effective today, Monday, July 4, 2022. By this, we are informing the general public that we are withdrawing all our services in all the pre-tertiary education space  this includes teaching and non-teaching staff, the General Secretary of the GNAT has said.



Speaking in an interview on Peace FM's morning show 'Kokrokoo', Deputy Minister of Education, John Ntim Fordjour said talks are ongoing to get the workers back to school. Nonetheless, the schools won't be closed; urging parents not to be alarmed.



Meanwhile, the Ghana Education Service (GES) has directed Heads of Senior High Schools through the Regional and District Directors to mobilize their Management teams to ensure the safety of all students in schools.





Source: Peacefmonline.com









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The Ministry of Health ( MoH) has appealed to the Ministry of Interior to facilitate the discharge of the large number of treated and abandoned patients referred to the various mental health facilities by the courts.

It said most of the people, even after treatment, were left there, increasing the burden of the already under-resourced health facilities while waiting for the courts to pursue their cases and discharge them.



Inaugurating the reconstituted board, the Mental Health Authority (MHA), in Accra last Friday, the Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, cited the Accra Psychiatric Hospital as having 100 out of its 150 inmates in its forensic ward as referred cases from the courts.



It seems the hospitals are being used as extension prison facilities. Most of the people referred have been fully cured yet are left there by the courts. If our engagements with relevant stakeholders prove futile, then we will have no option but to discharge these persons to go home since the courts are not following up on them or their cases,, he said.



Public support

Mr Agyeman-Manu charged the board to help increase advocacy and solicit for public support to augment governments provision to improve on mental healthcare in the country and the mental health of the population.



Lack of adequate resources has put the authority in so much distress and Its about time we upped our game by doing a lot more advocacy to see how we can attract sympathy towards the work we do for people to come on board to support us. I pass through Pantang Hospital from time to time and I feel ashamed anytime I get there. I wish the facility could be improved but we dont seem to have the resources to do that.



Service delivery is challenged, particularly because the sector doesnt generate internally generated fund (IGF) and because of that, we cant build, we cant buy equipment, we cant give drugs, we cant feed our patients and cannot pay for anything, and that is becoming a problem, he said.



He added that the ministry was making efforts to facilitate the inclusion of mental healthcare services on the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) since that was the only way the sector could find resources to support the management of patients.



MH levy

The Chief Executive Officer of the MHA, Prof. Akwasi Osei, said the over 10 years delay in instituting the Mental Health Levy, after the passage of the Mental Health Act 846, of 2012, was affecting service delivery in the sector.



The law runs on the establishment of the Mental Health Levy and until we get that, we won't have the full benefit of it", he said.



He said it was the levy that would provide the required funding for the full and effective implementation of the sector.



Prof. Osei appealed to corporate institutions and the public to support the authority to achieve its mandate of promoting the rights of persons suffering from mental health challenges and providing them with the needed quality treatment and care.



The Chairperson of the board, a former Director of the Legislative Drafting Division of the Attorney-Generals Department of the Ministry of Justice, Estelle Appiah, expressed gratitude to the government for the confidence reposed in them.



Mrs Appiah assured the Ministry that the board was going to find more innovative ways to address some of those challenges in the sector to improve mental healthcare delivery in the country.



Members of the board include the Chief Executive Officer of the MHA, Prof. Akwasi Owusu-Osei; the Deputy Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Anthony Adofo Ofosu, and a representative from the Ministry of Interior, Mr Kwasi Assan-Brew.



Others include the Head of the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Ghana School of Medicine, Professor Angela Ofori Attah; a representative from the Office of the Attorney General, Mrs Evelyn Daawee-Keelson; a legal practitioner, Mrs Janet Naa Karley Amegatcher, and the Director of Budgeting at the Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation of the Ministry of Health, Mr Emmanuel Owusu-Ansah.

Source: graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Deputy Director of health for the Asante Mampong Municipality, Mr Akwasi Dwomoh, has said that deep kissing, close touches and intercourse are major means of spreading monkeypox.



One of the fastest ways to spread monkeypox is through sharing clothing and engaging in sexual activity with someone who is infected, he stated.



He made this statement during the presentation of some items to the Asante Mampong Bosomkyekye Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compound.



The items including a 36 kg refrigerator, 39 HD LED television set, TV decoder with its dish, desktop computer, and a blood pressure monitor costing over GH10,000 were donated to the facility.



According to Mr Dwomoh, his outfit has located and collected a sample from a possible monkeypox patient.



He noted that because they are still awaiting the suspected patients test results, they are unable to confirm if there is a case of monkeypox in the community.



According to Mr Dwomoh, typical rashes are the first sign that someone may be suffering from the monkey pox disease.



In comparison to other skin rashes, monkeypox is more dangerous and spreads more quickly, he continued.



If fluid from an infected persons blisters comes into contact with an uninfected person, the latter would contract the disease, Mr Dwomoh added.



Even though there has not been a case reported yet, he asked everyone to exercise additional caution while they await the suspected persons test results.





Source: ghanaweb.com









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Ghanas partnership with the UK sees the arrival of another 1.24 million doses of Pfizer vaccines in Accra to be shipped nationwide as COVID-19 cases steadily rise. This brings the total UK bilaterally donated Covid-19 vaccines to 2.64million.



Development Director at the British High Commission, Ms. Beth Cadman OBE welcomed the vaccines alongside officials from the Ministry of Health, Ghana.



Standing on the runway at Kotoka International Airport to see the arrival, Ms. Cadman said:



I am thankful for the arrival of the 1.24 million Pfizer vaccines in Ghana even as we see the number of COVID-19 cases in the country increase. The rainy season always brings its fair share of disease concerns, including malaria and viral outbreaks. We urge everyone to observe good hygiene practices, take their COVID-19 vaccines as soon as possible to protect against severe COVID-19 illness, and also take precautions against mosquito bites. Together, we can stop COVID-19 from becoming a headline issue in Ghana.



We are grateful to Ghana Health Service, Ministry of Information, Ghanas drone delivery company Zipline and all our partners and teams on the ground who will work tirelessly to make sure these jabs reach those most in need in towns and villages across the country. We must ensure that the most vulnerable in Ghana, including persons with disabilities, have access to the vaccines. No one is safe until collectively we are all protected.



Global access to COVID-19 vaccines offers the best hope for slowing the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic, saving lives, and securing the global economy. Vaccines are protecting millions of lives around the world and in Ghana. At 23% of the population fully vaccinated, Ghana is above the Africa average of 19% but well below the global and Ghanas target of 70% vaccination by the end of 2022.



The UK continues to support Ghanas COVID-19 response: putting UK experts in WHO to work with Ghanas Health Service and the Ministry of health, supporting nationwide genome sequencing to monitor COVID-19 variants, and Ghana Health Service and Partners to expand quality COVID-19 treatment and testing whilst ensuring continuation of essential health services for women and children. UK government also supporting Ghana to build the systems for swift detection and response to future shocks.



The UK is committed to global public health and equal access to vaccines for all. Over the course of the pandemic the UK has worked hard with partners around the world to lead the public health response. This latest donation of vaccines to Ghana comes on top of the UKs 548 million contribution to the global COVAX initiative that has enabled the delivery of over 1.3 billion doses to 87 developing countries including 23.5million doses to Ghana. In addition, the UK has also donated over 80 million excess vaccine doses to over 39 countries.



The UK is also providing up to 105 million of additional emergency support to help reduce the health impacts of the Omicron variant in developing countries. This includes up to 20 million to change behaviours at scale to reduce transmission in up to 12 African countries, and 30 million to scale-up testing in the continent. More recently, the UK hosted the Global Pandemic Preparedness Summit in early March that raised funds towards developing variant-proof coronavirus vaccines and rapid response systems to develop vaccines against future health threats in a 100 days. The UK pledged 160 million, and the event raised over 1.2 billion ($1.5 billion).

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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The Sanitation and Pollution Levy of 10Gp per litre on petroleum products has accrued more than GH196.5 million as of the end of May this year, 15 months into its introduction.

The Provost of the College of Education at the University of Ghana, Professor Martin Oteng-Ababio, said notwithstanding the inflow, there was a bleak future for the country's sanitation sector due to policy failures over the years.



For instance, he observed that although the government introduced a 10 per cent Environmental Excise Tax (EET) on plastic manufacturers earlier in 2011 to mobilise funds to curb the plastic menace, there was no reliable information on how much had accrued to the fund and how it had been utilised to tackle the plastic menace.



The sanitation levy is targeted at raising funds for investment in sanitation sector infrastructure.



Prof. Oteng-Ababio made the observations during an inaugural lecture at the University of Ghana, Legon, dubbed: "Double standards, single purpose: deconstructing the fence wall for sustainable municipal waste management".



Tracing the historical path of Ghanas waste management systems from the colonial era to date while providing critical review of policy options, Prof. Oteng-Ababio said although there were over 136 waste policies in the country, those policies were largely "inappropriate, misplaced, irrelevant and harmful," stressing that most of them were politically laden.



"I consult for most of the big companies in the sanitation and waste management space. Anytime there is a change in government, they shiver because if you invest in waste management equipment and there are political issues, you are in trouble," he said.



He also examined how waste, in its diverse forms, had been defined, conceptualised, produced and managed in contemporary urban environments and across different cultural practices.



The lecture was anchored on the position that managing municipal waste was inextricably linked to the rate of urban growth, the level of development, climate change dynamics, and the prospect of promoting human-centred and environmentally friendlier management futures.



Polluter-pays policy

Prof. Oteng-Ababio underscored the need for policymakers to rethink all-inclusive and pro-poor waste management modules to ensure efficient handling of waste.



For instance, he said, the current polluter-pays waste policy that put the burden on people who generated waste to pay for their collection was done without taking into account their ability to pay.



He argued that such a regime provided fertile grounds for the poor to dump waste anyhow because they could not afford the cost of the waste.



"Polluter-pays is a bad policy. This policy is not for the ordinary person. It is against the ordinary person.



"Polluter pays simply implies that if you can pay, find someone to collect it, but if you cannot, find somewhere to dump it," he said.



He stressed that waste transportation and disposal were the responsibility of the government, "the one who takes my tax and governs me".



Ministerial conflict

Prof. Oteng-Ababio said it was worrying that weak policies and ministerial conflict in terms of the implementation of waste management policies had left the country riddled with filth in spite of the tax regimes that had been imposed to improve sanitation.



He noted that the Local Government Act, 2016 (Act 936) gave metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) a supervisory role in managing municipal waste.



However, he said, with the establishment of the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources (MSWR) in 2017, and the existence of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, the assemblies  the implementing agents for all waste policies and programmes  had now been rendered "orphans" with no sector ministry to plan and budget for their basic needs.



"Today, the MMDAs' retooling, logistics, welfare, and other relevant problems hang in the balance," he said.



Waste architecture

Prof. Oteng-Ababio further observed that Ghanas waste management architecture was problematic because it focused more on waste collection and not management.



"Waste management is not about taking waste from Accra to dump at Pantang. We are collecting from one point and dumping at another point. That is waste collection. We are only doing stomach direction approach, not waste management, because waste management is a process," he stressed.



Again, he said, there were no proper engineered landfill sites in the country despite claims to the contrary.



The geography professor added that the waste and sanitation strategies by city authorities had so far "grossly ignored the known historical focus on socially all-inclusive planning designs".



"In its stead, they have adopted what appears to be a stomach direction approach that unduly promotes a market-led agenda, largely ignoring the good public nature of waste, he added.



He said such a situation raised concerns about whether the focus of the service was on cost-recovery or the pursuit of social and environmental justice.









Source: graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Greater Accra Regional Minister, Henry Quartey, has sounded a serious word of caution to personnel deployed to ensure sanitation compliance across the region.



The minister, speaking at a brief ceremony in Accra to deploy some 898 men and women as part of the Operation Clean Your Frontage initiative, warned that reports of abuse and extortion during the discharge of their duties would not be taken lightly.



Anybody who even makes an attempt to collect somebodys tomatoes, you are gone If you make an attempt to extort from somebody, even one cedi, you are gone, he stated at the ceremony held on Monday.



While emphasising the essence of the initiative, the minister further cautioned members of the task force to desist from engaging in acts that can undermine their objectives.



Discharge your duties professionally as you have been trained by the military. You are not to brutalise the people. You are supposed to engage them, he stated.



The task force is expected to fight against the indiscriminate disposal of waste across the national capital and other parts of the region.













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Most Reverend Gabriel Kumordzi, the Bishop of Keta-Akatsi Diocese of the Catholic Church has stated that it was imperative to find funds to complete the National Cathedral of Ghana project.



He observed that it would be a shame that the project is abandoned and for people to be pointed in its direction and to be told that this is the house of God that was planned but could not be executed.



He stressed in an interview with Joy News that with the decision to build it having been taken and work started, it was imperative to find funds to complete the project bearing in mind the economic realities.



At this stage, National Cathedral has started already and so since it has started already, I am not at the stage of whether we need it or not. It has started, what I will say is how are we going to build it and finish it especially in this economic crisis, what can we do?



We have to take a decision. The days of saying we dont need it has passed now can we leave it there like that with the foundation on and the building and walls are halfway and we remove all the things and expose it to the world?



That this is the house which Ghana, or some people decided to build and they couldnt finish and the Bible says that when they pass and see that, they will laugh at us, he stressed.



The project has recently been mired in a raft of controversies among others corruption relating to payments made to the architect and issues of Parliamentary breaches and corporate governance issues.



North Tongu Member of Parliament, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, who has been at the forefront of the exposures insists that the government has committed public funds in excess of 100 million dollars to the project.



Meanwhile, construction works on the Cathedral site have stalled due to the unavailability of funds.



A senior member of the Catholic Church, Archbishop Palmer-Buckle is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Cathedral but is serving in his personal capacity.



Weeks ago, the head of the Catholic Bishops Conference, Bishop Naameh said there were other priorities government needed to focus on and the Cathedral was not one of them.



















Source: ghanaweb.com









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Ningo Prampram Member of Parliament has taken a swipe at government's repeated citing of the Russia-Ukraine war as one of the key factors that has occasioned the current economic downturn.



The lawmaker in a social media post intimated that it appeared as though Ghana was even more impacted by the war than the countries involved.



Aside the war, government has also cited the adverse impact of COVID-19 for the economic hurdles and for which reason President Akufo-Addo has ordered Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta to begin talks over a programme with the International Monetary Fund, IMF.



"Seems to me that the Russia-Ukraine war is being fought somewhere in Ghana. We appear to be more affected than Russia and Ukraine combined," Sam George wrote in his July 4, 2022 post.



Other opposition voices who have chastised government for using the war as a main factor to the economic woes of Ghana include MPs Caissel Ato-Forson and Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa.



The National Democratic Congress General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia has also waded into the issue with the argument that why are other West African countries surviving the war without going to the IMF.



"The government makes it appear as though the war by passed all other African countries and pitched its tent in Ghana," he said in an interview on Okay FM on July 4, 2022.



President Akufo-Addo ordered Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta to approach the IMF with a programme for support amid an economic downturn. A team from the Fund is expected in town on July 6 to start engagements to that effect.



Meanwhile, Oppong-Nkrumah has disclosed that the President will address the nation over the IMF issue but did not give a specific date.























Source: ghanaweb.com









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Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko is a leading member of the New Patriotic Party, a relative of the President and a personality perceived to have strong influence at the presidency.



It is not for fun that even former President John Dramani Mahama recently referred to him as the Prime Minister, a label that has been slapped on him especially by opposition members.



Gabby is also very vocal on social media, especially on Twitter. His posts on politics and economy has often attracted lots of interaction of which he says abuse is dominant.



In an interview on pro-NPP Asaase Radio, Gabby gave himself a label far below a Prime Minister and opened up on using Twitter and surviving the insults he receives.



I am just a social commentator who when he has something to say, he goes on Twitter. A question was asked that, Gabby, with all the insults that you get on Twitter, why do you still tweet?



I said I have about 450,000 followers on Twitter, when I tweet, I will have maybe 70  90 people replying and 90% of them will insult me. I dont look at those insults, I will not even respond to them.



I look at those who like what I am tweeting, those who will retweet it at least my word has gotten to them, he added stating that it is so bad that when he even posts stuff unrelated to politics or the economy he still gets insults.



A week ago, Gabby kick started a national conversation on the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy) when he announced that the tax measure had failed to rake in needed revenue. He also raised the prospect of government seeking help from the International Monetary Fund, IMF.



Days later, President Akufo-Addo ordered Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta to approach the IMF with a programme for support amid an economic downturn.



A team from the Fund is expected in town on July 6 to start engagements to that effect. Meanwhile, Oppong-Nkrumah has disclosed that the President will address the nation over the IMF issue but did not give a specific date.























Source: ghanaweb.com









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flynas, a leading low-cost airline in the Middle East, has launched its first direct flights between AlUla, a historical city in the northwest of Saudi Arabia, and Cairo, starting from October 6, 2022.



flynas will connect AlUla and Cairo via two weekly direct flights, scheduled on Saturdays and Thursdays, from AlUla International Airport to Cairo International Airport.



Known for its historical, natural and geographical significance, and full of archaeological treasures from the Dadanite, Nabataean, Roman and old Islamic civilisations, AlUla is a destination that reveals 7000-year-old of human history. The city is an open air museum and is home to the Kingdoms first UNESCO World Heritage Site, Hegra  the famous Nabataean site with 110 well preserved tombs carved in the sandstone rocks and dating back to the first century B.C.E.



AlUla offers tourists a variety of curated experiences in heritage, art, culture, wellness and adventure. As a vital city located along the famous old incense-trading routes running from southern Arabia, north into Egypt and beyond, AlUla's oases dotted the area and offered a much-needed respite for caravans of weary travellers, providing a welcoming place to rest, commune and recharge. AlUla is now reviving and celebrating its history by welcoming visitors again.



Combined with high quality services and first-rate accommodations nestled amongst the staggeringly beautiful desert landscapes, AlUla is being introduced to the world as a must-visit destination for every traveller looking for a unique experience.



In support of the Kingdoms Saudi Vision 2030 plans to transform AlUla into a world-preferred tourist destination, flynas recently announced the resumption of its flights from AlUla to Riyadh, Dammam, and Dubai, with two weekly flights for each destination. Flynas was the first-ever airline to launch international scheduled flights to AlUla from Dubai back in November 2021.



flynas connects more than 70 domestic and international destinations through its fleet of more than 35 aircraft, and it has transported more than 60 million passengers since its establishment in 2007.  TradeArabia News Service
A political science lecturer at the University Ghana Professor Ransford Gyampo has described as hasty governments decision to go the International Monetary Fund for economic bailout.



In the view of the UTAG- General Secretary on Legon campus, government ought to have assessed the performance of the electronic transfer levy before proceeding to the IMF.



He argued that the government should have known that the implementation of the levy was going to suffer some setbacks due to the level of opposition that greeted the proposal, but with time Ghanaians would have begun appreciating the use of the levy.



He also insisted that the real benefits of the levy would have been seen and felt after six months.



I dont think the e-levy has failed. We should have given ourselves like six months to properly assess the performance of the levy before proceeding to IMF.



I dont understand why government would go to the IMF. In less the two months into the implementation of the e-levy you are going to the IMF. This is an indication that the implementation of the levy was not well thought through. The decision is too hasty, he told Kwesi Parker-Wilson on a Kumasi-based TV station.



Prof Gyampo also warned that the country will be ungovernable if government accepts any IMF conditionality that freezes wage increment.



According to him, University teachers across the country will begin series of protests against any conditionalities that will deny public sector workers an increment in their salaries and improved living conditions.





Source: class fm









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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A Nigerian Catholic priest was abducted from his rectory in the town of Zambina in the northern state of Kaduna in the early hours of Monday, the local Catholic diocese said on Monday.



It said parishioners went to look for Father Emmanuel Silas after waiting in vain for him to conduct the morning mass.



It is not clear who carried out the abduction.



Armed gangs are rife across Nigeria's northwest where they rob or kidnap for ransom, and violence has been increasing, where thinly stretched security forces often fail to stop the attacks.



The latest kidnap comes after gunmen last week abducted four Chinese workers with some local employees and killed an unknown number of people at a mine in Niger state in northwestern Nigeria.

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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Albert Kan-Dapaah, Minister of National Security, says the West African subregion experienced 17 terrorist attacks as of June 28, 2022.



He said the attacks resulted in 574 deaths with so many injuries.



In April, the subregion of West Africa witnessed attacks, incidents and 315 people died. We felt that was too much, but in May, there were only 42 incidents, five less than in April, but 465 people died. The trend has not changed, he added.



The Minister said this on Monday at the opening ceremony of the First Senior Level Regional Course for the Prevention of Violent Extremism (PVE) for West Africa Region, in Accra.



The four-day event is jointly organised by the African Unions (AU) specialised institution - African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism (ACSRT) and partnered by the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland.



It is being supported by the Human Security Research Centre (HSRC)-Ghana.



Mr Kan-Dapaah noted that major security threats posed by terrorism and violent extremism were more widespread than previously thought, transcending borders.



Therefore, he said the course would create the opportunity for them to reflect on measures, strategies deployed thus far towards addressing terrorism and violent extremism.



He said it would also help them develop innovative approaches towards enhancing regional security.



The Minister urged participants not to shirk the fight against terrorism to policymakers of their respective governments, adding that, a societal approach was needed.



Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, Former Special Representative of the Secretary-General for United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), said innovative approaches were required to nib terrorism and violent extremism in the bud in the subregion.



He noted that military action per se was not a sufficient guarantor of national security.



Therefore, he suggested that the response to terrorism and violent extremism should be carried out with a blend of military approach and a whole-of-society preventive measures that took into consideration the vulnerabilities of people.



Dr Chambas said PVE policies must consider creating a conducive atmosphere for economic empowerment and a sense of belonging, particularly for young people, to be productive and contribute to the socio-economic development of their communities and countries.



Mr Idriss Mounir Lallali, Acting Director, African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism (ACSRT/CAERT), AU Commission, said Ghanas active involvement and participation in activities of the AU demonstrated the countrys long-standing history of working tirelessly towards peace, unity and resilience of the African Continent.



He said Violent Extremism was a multi-faceted and extremely diverse phenomena, thus making it difficult to be predicted by one variable.



Mr Lallali said in Africa, vulnerabilities such as weak political institutions, porous borders, inadequately trained and ill-equipped security forces, historical grievances mainly related to marginalisation, and lack of economic opportunities- particularly for young people- had created conditions for extremist ideologies to grow and fester.



He said political instability within the continent provided safe havens for terrorist and extremist groups and in turn, created generalised insecurity that gave rise to popular uprisings  thus resulting in a vicious cycle of insecurity and coup d'etats.



Mr Lallali said although military strategies may be justifiable in combative situations, more practical and lasting solutions must be targeted in preventative measures.



He said terrorism and violent extremism would only be overcome by collectively working together in the fight against all forms and manifestations of the threat.



Our collective action and cooperation are needed now more than ever to silence the guns on our continent, he added.

Source: GNA









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The Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church, the Most Rev. Dr Paul Kwabena Boafo, has charged Ghanaians to be security conscious in order to protect the sovereignty of the state.

In the current situation where the countrys neighbours were faced with issues of terrorism, he said, citizens needed to support the government initiative of "See something, say something" campaign to protect the country.



"We know the threats that are coming to us from all our borders; they have become so alarming that we do not have to sit unconcerned," the Presiding Bishop said.



Foundation stone



The Most Rev. Dr Boafo was speaking at the foundation stone laying ceremony for the new chapel of the Calvary Methodist Church in Accra yesterday.



He noted that Ghanaians were too generous with information and so from now on they must be very circumspect in giving out information to visitors or strangers they met.





"We meet people today and we give them a lot of information about us and our loved ones. Inasmuch as I encourage that we maintain our hospitable nature, we should also be conscious of our security, knowing the world we live in now," he added.



"Churches, communities, schools, teachers, all of us must teach students how to be security conscious. We should make sure that we report any stranger loitering to the police or security agencies to deal with them, so that we will all be safe," he said.



Features



The 1,500-seater, four-storey church building, with a seven-storey office block and a car park, is estimated to cost $3 million.



It was started five years ago and is expected to be completed by 2025 and dedicated as part of the churchs centenary celebration.



The foundation stone laying ceremony, the Presiding Bishop said, was a significant event for the church because it showed that it was building the church on the strong foundation of Jesus Christ.



In his sermon, he said it had taken a lot of hard work and energy from both young and old members of the church to raise the church building to its current level.



The Most Rev. Dr Boafo said it was as a result of unity of purpose and the fact that they had made Jesus the foundation of the church and, therefore, were seeing the faithfulness and goodness of the Lord.



Overcome storms through Christ



The world, he noted, was going through hard times, but those who could stand and weather the storm were those who would continue to build the family, work and nations.



"We are all building lives, we are building industries, we are building families, we are building institutions and we are building nations. Nations that will stand, families and institutions that will stand are those which are built on the Rock that is Jesus Christ," the Presiding Bishop said.



He encouraged Ghanaians, especially Christians, to build their lives on the foundation of Jesus Christ, so that they could overcome the storms of life.



Commendation



The First Lady, Rebecca Akufo-Addo, congratulated the church on the bold initiative that sought to expand the Kingdom of God.



In a speech read on her behalf by the Chief of Staff, Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, the First Lady said church buildings were important, as they provided the consistent meeting place for

Christians, regardless of social class, and also a safe place not only to worship God but also for fellowshipping with one another.



I pray that this wonderful church building becomes a place where people feel they belong. It must be viewed as a safe place of refuge for people seeking spiritual revival and people who are in need, she said.



Mrs Akufo-Addo said the Methodist Church had always been a great partner of the state in building schools, hospitals and social interventions and appealed to it to continue to partner the state towards building a vibrant country.

Source: graphiconline.com









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Madam Justina Owusu-Banahene, the Bono Regional Minister has suggested the need for stakeholders in the Bono and Bono East Regions to capitalise on the 'Meko Bono' Homecoming and Festival celebration to step up rapid development.



She also encouraged the use of the forum to project the identity of the Bono people wherever they found themselves.



"It is a wake-up call on the Chiefs and people of the Bono descent to marshal efforts as one people with the same identity and destiny to strategize and develop for a prosperous future, she indicated.



Madam Owusu-Banahene gave the suggestion during a grand durbar to climax the 'Meko Bono' Home Coming and Festival celebration, which was on the theme Unifying Our People for Development through Tourism and Culture" in Sunyani.



The week-long event initiated and organised by Bonofie was supported by the Bono Regional House of Chiefs, Sunyani Traditional Council, Bono Regional Coordinating Council, Centre for National Culture and the Ghana Tourism Authority.



The Bonofieis a wholly Ghanaian but international event organisation promoting the socio-cultural and economic development of the Bono and Bono East Regions.



Mad. Owusu-Banahene expressed optimism the event would facilitate and promote the resolution of most chieftaincy disputes across the region, saying bringing unity among the chiefs who were the custodians of the land, culture and tradition to drive home development of the region was in the right direction and encouraging.



In a welcoming address, Nana Kwaku Sarbeng II, the Akwamuhene of Sunyani Traditional Area said the history of Bono could not be told without acknowledging the chiefs and people of Dormaa and Techiman because they played a vital role and continued to drive the progress of the Bono people.



He urged the organisers of the event to invite the Bono people in Cote dIvoire to participate in the subsequent celebrations because they are all our people to enhance the image of the festival.





Source: GNA









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The Parliamentary Select Committee on Health has urged government to resource the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) to help enhance its capacity to approve vaccines in Ghana and in the sub-region.

To be able to approve vaccines, the committee said it would require the authority to attain Maturity Level four under the World Health Organisation (WHO) classification.



This also demands that the authority sets up a molecular laboratory and that is going to be so expensive to maintain because it is an eagled-eye facility by the WHO and this is where the FDA needs a lot of resources, the chairman of the committee, Dr Nana Yaw Afriyie, said while engaging with the media in Accra after a closed-door meeting with the management of the FDA.



WHO ranking



Currently, Ghana and Tanzania are the only countries under the WHO in African to have attained a level three ranking.



There are four levels of regulatory systems classification starting from level one, where only some elements of regulation exist, and up to level four corresponding to the advanced regulatory system.



Level three indicates that the system is well-functioning and integrates all required elements to guarantee its stable performance.



Resources



We have visited the FDA and we are satisfied with its operations. Ghanas FDA is one of the foremost in Africa and even in the midst of scarce resources, it is excelling.



However, it is faced with a lot of issues, which need to be addressed. We expect the authority to be so resourced to be able to approve the use of vaccines in Ghana and in the sub-region, he added.



He further urged the government to stop treating the authority as a cash cow by siphoning money from its internally generated funds, saying that, the situation was preventing the authority from performing its functions effectively.



Dr Afriyie stated that the FDA was supposed to be inspecting about 10,000 institutions but currently, it was doing about 7,200.



So, it means about 2,000 institutions are not being inspected and that is no fault of the authority, it is constrained, Dr Afriyie stressed.



He said the committee was looking forward to meeting with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Health so that it could prove to them why it was important for the FDA not to be treated as a cash-cow.



More than ever before, he said, the FDA needed a lot of money to maintain its standards.



Anything otherwise, he said, there would be a lot of food safety issues in the country.



Now the country cannot export palm oil to Europe because it has to be subjected to a lot of test and FDA doesnt have the capacity to do that because it is constrained, Dr Afriyie said.



When it is given the free space, some of these issues, which appears to be disgraceful, will be avoided, he added.



Lack of logistics



The Ranking Member of the committee, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, also indicated that the safety of food in the country largely depended on the effectiveness of the FDA.



He noted that the authority lacked a lot of logistics such as vehicles to do inspection and that was affecting its effectiveness.



Currently, the machines at the port that are used to determine whether or not the foods that are being imported into the country are safe has broken down. So now they have to take samples from the port to the head office to test and send the results back to the port for approval, Mr Akandoh said.



It is about time government got its priorities right. The FDA is a very sensitive institution and as a committee, we will be united to pursue the interest of the agencies under the health sector, he added.

Source: graphiconline.com









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The Finance Ministry has disclosed that government will not terminate the 1.5% levy on electronic transactions, despite its application to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for economic assistance.



This was contained in a statement from the Ministry on Tuesday, addressing key questions regarding governments ongoing engagement with the Fund.



Regarding the controversial levy, the Ministry explained that government will add the proceeds from the levy to the support from the IMF to salvage the economy.



Addressing the question of whether the levy will be scrapped, the Ministry said, NO. The IMF lending to Ghana will be for balance of payments support (i.e. to shore up the international reserves).



Government is committed to ensuring the smooth operationalisation of all taxes including the e-levy to ensure that in addition to the IMFs resources, government can continue to support its developmental goals on its own while ensuring that tax-to-GPD ratio increases to the peer range of 16%-18%.



It continued: An IMF-supported programme is likely to encourage the government to investigate the factors hindering the success of the e-levy (including by providing technical assistance if needed) and come out with strategies to improve it.



The Finance Ministry also noted that additionally, other tax measures could be considered for the medium-term.

By this information, Ghanaians will continue to pay the levy, despite the widespread public angst against the policy.



The tax initiative, which was rolled out on May 1, has however failed to generate the projected revenue for the government. According to a leading member of the governing New Patriotic Party, Gabby Otchere-Darko, the tax has only generated less than 20% of its targeted returns.



The situation is what has consequently forced the country to resort to the IMF for a bailout.



In that regard, a team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is expected to arrive in Ghana on Tuesday, July 5 to begin negotiations with government on the economic support it is seeking.



The IMF officials  comprising senior officers from the Fund and local staff  will meet the Finance Ministry, the Economic Management Team and the Presidency during their stay.

A statement issued by the Finance Ministry added that after their arrival on Tuesday, in-person meetings with the government would begin on Wednesday, July 6.



The statement from the Finance Ministry on the arrival of the IMF reps in Ghana

It is expected that details of the bailout programme and its conditionalities will be made public after several engagements.

Meanwhile, governments decision to seek economic refuge from the Fund has been received with mixed reactions as some, especially members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), argue it has been long overdue.



Some have also expressed concerns over what the move could mean for public sector jobs and social programmes with organised labour kicking against the decision.

Source: myjoyonline.com









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Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Americas largest minority-led black-owned technology business, Overland Tandberg.



The MoU seeks to develop seven (7) strategic areas between Ghanaian and U.S tech firms to bridge the digital and diversity divide to attract as many businesses as possible to set up in Ghana.



This includes Overland Tandberg providing GIPC with insights into its technology value chain operations and how it may be helpful to GIPCs cause as Ghanas investment promotion agency.



In the coming months, it is expected that the parties will work towards fleshing out the details of the MoU, which details are expected to translate into business ties between Ghanaian and American tech companies and jobs for scores of Ghanaian youths in the tech sector.



The MoU was signed on behalf of the Ghanaian government by the CEO of GIPC, Yofi Grant and Chief Executive Officer (C.E.O) of TechGulf, Franklin Asare for Overland Tandberg.

Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/peacefmonline.com/ghana









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The government of Ghana on the admission that the nation is currently in an economic crisis has commenced negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a possible bailout.



The fallout from the announcement has seen several Ghanaians question the basis for some of governments expenditures including some public projects such as the National Cathedral.



Appearing on the Monday, July 4, 2022, edition of Citi FMs Breakfast Daily program, the host, Bernard Avle sought to question why the government has decided to commit public funds towards the National Cathedral project at a time when the nation is in economic crisis.



How do you justify the amount we spent on the Cathedral at the time we did? he questioned.



In a seeming evasive manner, the minister declined to provide an answer to the question on the basis that he has yet to receive a briefing on matters surrounding the National Cathedral expenditure.



This whole cathedral matter I think has generated a lot of public brouhaha. I have honestly asked for a full brief to understand why we paid what at what point in time. So as I sit before you this morning, I dont have a full brief to speak to that matter. Our understanding initially is that it was supposed to be put together by the churches and private sector with some seed support from the state. I dont have a full brief of the details on how that has gone so I am not going to go into that, the minister noted.



Government is said to have so far expanded some GHC200 million towards the construction of the National Cathedral.



Among various concerns, some persons have questioned the decision to spend state resources on the project considering the current economic state.



The government of Ghana, through the Ministry of Information, on Friday, June 1, 2022, announced a decision to seek a bailout from the IMF to mitigate current economic challenges facing the country.



Following the announcement, the government has been under intense criticism over its earlier posture against a possible bailout.





















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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.
Mauritius has announced a further easing of Covid restrictions in response to its successful vaccination campaign and resultant low infection rate.



From July 1, the requirement for facemasks has been relaxed. However, it will be mandatory to wear facemasks in public areas such as hospitals, port, airport and public transport. Moreover, upon arrival tests for vaccinated and unvaccinated passengers have been waived.



Mauritius reopened its borders on October 1, 2021, and over 500,000 tourists have subsequently flocked to the paradise island. The nations double vaccination rate now stands at over 90 percent, and around two thirds of all over 18 have also received their booster shots.



Mauritius is seeing huge demand from discerning international travellers who are choosing the sun-kissed jewel of the Indian Ocean for its stunning scenery, safety and security.



Arvind Bundhun, Director of the Mauritius Tourism Promotion Authority, said: We are extremely pleased to note that we have reached a milestone of over half a million visitors since October 01. I am confident that our post-pandemic recovery is well underway, and with the easing of sanitary measures bookings for the second half of 2022 will be stimulated.  TradeArabia News Service
Songstress Gyakie has downplayed assertions that female artistes in Ghanas music industry dont see eye to eye due to a lack of unity among them.



In an interview on Y 97.9 FM, she said it is not that there is a lack of unity among the female acts.



Theres unity among us, in as much as it is not as tight as it as the guys, but theres no feud that I know of, because whenever we get to meet up at an event everyone is lively and down to speak with each other and I sometimes get messages from my seniors in the industry as well as my colleagues as well, she said.



I am actually going to do a lot of collaborations with artistes, especially with the female artistes in the Ghanaian industry, she added.



Gyakie was in Takoradi for a media tour promoting her new single Something. She also graced the SRC fun fair of Ahantaman Girls and blessed patrons and students with an awesome performance.

Source: Daily Guide









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CN rail workers strike at the CN MacMillan Yard in Vaughan, Ont., on Monday, June 20, 2022. Canadian National Railway Co. says a strike by 750 signals and communications workers will end early Tuesday after the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers agreed to binding arbitration. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
A SpiceJet flight carrying passengers from Delhi to Dubai made an emergency landing in Karachi, Pakistan after it developed a technical fault. However, the company has said that all passengers on board are safe, reported Press Trust of India (PTI) citing company officials.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials confirmed that the flight was diverted to Karachi due to a fuel indicator malfunction. The regulator has now ordered a probe into the incident.

This is the sixth such incident on SpiceJet NSE -2.20 % aircraft in the last 17 days.

A company spokesperson said that the SpiceJet B737 aircraft operating flight SG-11 (Delhi-Dubai) "was diverted to Karachi due to an indicator light malfunctioning. The aircraft landed safely in Karachi and passengers were safely disembarked."

"No emergency was declared and the aircraft made a normal landing. There was no earlier report of any malfunction with the aircraft," he stated.

"Passengers have been served refreshments. A replacement aircraft is being sent to Karachi that will take the passengers to Dubai," the spokesperson added.
888poker Set to Host The Festival Online From July 10-31

July 05, 2022 Matthew Pitt Editor

After a hugely successful series in Bratislava and more recently Tallinn, The Festival heads to the online poker world for The Festival Online. 888poker has teamed up with The Festival to bring an online series featuring new fewer than 21 events with combined guaranteed prize pools in excess of $720,000.

The Festival Online runs from July 10 through 31, 2022. All 21 scheduled events take place on the three busiest days for online poker tournament grinders: Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Four of the biggest events have six-figure prize pools guaranteed.

Everything kicks off on July 10 with three The Festival Online tournaments for players to get their teeth into. The Festival Online Opening Event commands a $109 buy-in but guarantees at least $100,000 will be won. A $525 buy-in $40,000 guaranteed High Roller and $109 buy-in $5,000 guaranteed Pot-Limit Omaha event round out the opening trio of events.

The Main Event is slated for 7:00 p.m. on July 31. Buying in direct costs $215 but there are dozens of satellites running through the series, satellites costing mere pennies, that give 888poker players the opportunity to compete for a share of a guaranteed $150,000.

Main Event players sit down with 15,000 chips and play to a 12-minute clock where blinds start at 30/60/7a. The tournament pauses when the nine-handed final table is reached, with the final table taking place from 7:00 p.m. on August 1 with cards-up coverage on 888poker's Twitch channel.

$500,000 Must Be Won in the 888poker Royal Quest Promotion

The Festival Online Schedule

Date Time (BST) Event Buy-in Guarantee Sun 10 Jul 7:00 p.m. The Festival Online Opening Event NLH $109 $100,000 7:30 p.m. The Festival Online High Roller $525 $40,000 8:30 p.m. The Festival Online PLO 8-Max $109 $5,000 Tue 12 Jul 6:00 p.m. The Festival Online Texas Deepstack $55 $10,000 8:00 p.m. The Festival Online Snap $33 $5,000 Thu 14 Jul 6:00 p.m. The Festival Online PLO Deepstacj $55 $2,000 7:00 p.m. Texas 6-Max $160 $15,000 Sun 17 Jul 7:00 p.m. The Festival Online Texas Progressive KO $109 $100,000 7:30 p.m. The Festival Online Texas High Roller Progressive KO $525 $40,000 Tue 19 Jul 7:00 p.m. The Festival Online PLO 6-Max $55 $2,000 8:00 p.m. The Festival Online 6-Max Turbo PKO $44 $10,000 Thu 21 Jul 6:00 p.m. The Festival Online Texas Lowroller $22 $10,000 7:00 p.m. The Festival Online Super KO $109 $12,000 Sun 24 Jul 7:00 p.m. The Festival Online Texas 8-Max $109 $100,000 7:30 p.m. The Festival Online Texas 8-Max High Roller $525 $40,000 8:00 p.m. The Festival Online PLO Lowroller $22 $1,500 Tue 26 Jul 7:00 p.m. The Festival Online PKO 8-Max $88 $10,000 8:00 p.m. The Festival Online PLO Turbo $33 $1,500 Sun 31 Jul 7:00 p.m. The Festival Online Main Event $215 $150,000 7:30 p.m. The Festival Online Texas 8-Max High Roller $525 $40,000 Mon 1 Aug 7:00 p.m. The Festival Online Afterparty $109 $15,000

Begin Your Quest For The Festival Online Glory with an 888poker Welcome Bonus

Now is the perfect time to join 888poker if you have not already done so. Download 888poker via PokerNews, create your free account, and 888poker will give you a free $88 worth of cash game and tournament tickets  this is a free 20 for residents of the United Kingdom  just for reaching this stage.

Your first deposit is matched 100% up to $400 in the form of a releasable bonus. You have 90 days to release as much bonus as you can. Contact 888poker support for more details.
BBO Poker Tables Last Longer Contest Will Award Main Event Winner with Lon and Norman Poker Table

July 05, 2022 BBO Poker Tables

In the final giveaway of the summer, Legendary WSOP commentators Lon McEachern and Norman Chad are hosting the BBO Poker Tables Last Longer contest at this years Main Event. The duo that has been bringing the poker world unforgettable play-by-play over the last 19 years will be giving away their Signature Line poker table designed in conjunction with BBO Poker Tables, the leader in premium poker tables.

"Sometimes and I get tired of Lon and sometimes he gets tired of me. The winner of this awesome BBO poker table will have a chance to get tired of both of us."  Norman Chad

To win a signed version of Lon and Normans Signature Line poker table, players competing in the main event simply register at BBO Poker Tables and whoever lasts longer automatically wins.

BBO Poker Tables congratulate Rick Alvarado for winning the Last Longer contest for the Millionaire Maker, and look forward to announcing the winner of the Main Event contest!

You can follow all of the updates from the 2022 World Series of Poker Main Event right here at PokerNews. Our team of live reporters are on the ground from the first hands dealt to the champion being crowned.

About BBO Poker Tables

BBO Poker Tables has been pioneering and producing stunning custom poker tables since 2006 and is the highest-rated poker table brand in the market. Based in Las Vegas, BBO offers free shipping and concierge service for clients to ensure a truly personalized design experience.
Aiken, SC (29801)

Today

Mixed clouds and sun this morning. Scattered thunderstorms developing this afternoon. High 89F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Mainly clear skies. Low 73F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
Washington, July 5 (UNI) US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden expressed "shocked" by the gun violence in Highland Park in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois on Independence Day.

At least six people were killed and 26 injured, including one child, in the mass shooting at an Independence Day Parade on Monday morning (local time).

According to CBS News, Robert "Bobby" Crimo III, who had been identified as a person of interest, was arrested around 6:30 pm local time in connection with the shooting, nearly nine hours after the shooting.

Meanwhile, Biden said, "Jill and I are shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day. As always, we are grateful for the first responders and law enforcement on the scene."

He further said that he has spoken to Governor Pritzker and Mayor Rotering, and have offered the full support of the Federal government to their communities.

"I recently signed the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost thirty years into law, which includes actions that will save lives. But there is much more work to do, and Im not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence," he added.



UNI RNJ
Aiken, SC (29801)

Today

Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. High 89F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Mainly clear. Low 73F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
Moncks Corner, SC (29461)

Today

Some sun this morning with increasing clouds this afternoon. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 88F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 73F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.
For those who frequented Minero during its tenure on East Bay Street, driving from downtown Charleston to Johns Island for charcoal-grilled chicken wings, cheese-crusted burritos and catfish tacos might not feel right.

That is until you pull into the spacious gravel parking lot and walk through the large covered patio to the hostess stand where youll put your name in the queue. A wait is almost guaranteed  especially as the new restaurant works through an industry-wide staffing shortage  but Johns Islanders and others who made the drive on June 22 didnt seem to mind.

Some formed a short line at the indoor-outdoor bar for a margarita or pint from nearby breweries Estuary Beans & Barley and Low Tide Brewery. Others gathered outside, where theres plenty of room to roam.

The new compound is a far cry from the tight downtown quarters Minero occupied from 2014 to 2020, a venue that required patrons to walk up steep stairs to a small, albeit quaint, dining room. Now, it takes just a couple steps for the up to 175 people that Minero can seat indoors and out to order the dishes and drinks that gained a following during its downtown days.

While the original Minero was wildly popular, the new space offers the restaurant room to reach its full potential with a lively ambiance that pairs with new and exciting flavors from executive chef Shamil Velazquez.

The guests know this food

Velazquez isnt new to the Charleston area. For three years, the Puerto Rican-born chef has been demonstrating his ability to deliver sophisticated, elegant food in a casual setting at Delaney Oyster House on Calhoun Street in downtown Charleston. Before that, he helmed the kitchen at a now-closed Husk outpost in Greenville, where he served the hyper-local Southern cuisine thats become synonymous with the restaurant first opened by Sean Brock.

So we know Velazquez has range in the kitchen, but recreating Mineros favorites presented a new challenge for the chef.

The guests know this food, they know what theyre looking for, they know what it tastes like, Velazquez said. So I have to make sure it looks and tastes exactly the same as they had it so that food memory recall can just activate when they take that first bite of that wing or that catfish taco.

Velazquez credited Minero chef de cuisine Teikel Stafford for helping with the transition. Stafford was a part of the opening team at the original Minero back in 2014, making him the ideal candidate to lead day-to-day operations on Johns Island, giving Velazquez the flexibility he needs to also lead the kitchen at Delaney Oyster House. Charcoal grilled wings tossed in Valentina hot sauce ($16), burritos ($13-$19) and the beef and chorizo double cheeseburger ($17) are among the options that returned to Minero when it opened in June.

Mineros menu of seemingly rudimentary appetizers and entrees are anything but, starting with the tacos. Corn and flour tortillas are made in-house, a two-day endeavor. Right now, the kitchen is churning out more than 300 of each daily for fried catfish, al pastor, chicken, steak and cauliflower tacos (2 for $11, 3 for $16).

Were just striving for the best quality taco we can possibly provide to the guest, Velazquez said. Its definitely been the most challenging thing to do even though it seems like the simplest.

Labor of love

Tortillas arent the only labor of love at Minero. Others hint at Velazquez upbringing in Santa Juanita, Bayamon, located on the outskirts of San Juan. Eating empanadas was a near-daily occurrence for Velazquez during his youth in Puerto Rico. But the fried and filled savory turnovers werent initially slated for Mineros menu, despite the success of his Caribbean beef empanadas at Delaney Oyster House.

Velazquez and his team instead set out to serve taquitos  a tightly rolled fried taco of sorts  but the cooking process was drying out the pork filling.

They turned to the empanadas ($15), one of Mineros top sellers since its opening.

We wanted to have some sort of fritter on the menu, and empanadas were at the bottom of the list just because they are very labor intensive, Velazquez said. We get to roast the pork for 24 hours the Puerto Rican way; Puerto Rican with a couple little Mexican flavors in there.

The crispy kan kan pork tomahawk ($44) also combines Puerto Rican and Mexican flavors. Drawing on the popular island combination of pork and guava, Velazquez brines a custom-cut of pork before marinating it with sofrito, a paste-like sauce commonly made of onions, peppers, garlic, cilantro and other ingredients, depending on the chef. The colossal chop is then par-baked, fried and tossed in a guava barbecue sauce and served with avocado, sweet plantains, red rice and beans.

Its a lengthy process, but I think its worth every penny. Its definitely something you have got to get used to because the skin is not something that everybodys into, Velazquez said, discussing the crisp, chewy skin that develops around the edge of the chop. For me personally, gnawing on the skin and all that, it reminds me a lot of home and my childhood.

The few flashes of Puerto Rican influence fit at Minero, and thats by design. Velazquez detailed approach to the menu combines a desire to draw on nostalgic tastes while staying true to the Minero concept.

Im obviously not Mexican. I didnt grow up with that culture, but its very similar in the sense that Mexico is also all about sharing and using the best resources around you to create something delicious to share with your family, Velazquez said. That resonates well with me, and thats why I'm able to put some of my dishes and crossover between the two.

Perfecting the process

Nearly half of Mineros seats are located on the covered patio, separated from the dining room by an open garage door, where the bar is located. An outdoor overflow space is equipped with cornhole boards and benches, allowing patrons to have a place to sip on a drink from the bar while they wait for a table.

Having ample outdoor space was a big priority, said General Manager Kevin King, who joined Minero after previously leading day-to-day operations at Husk.

We were definitely expecting to be busy so we wanted a place for people to feel comfortable, King said, discussing the bar. We have the garage door open, so you have that nice open feel.

Speaking of the bar  King developed a cocktail menu that draws on the original Minero with a few new twists. The Minero Margarita ($13) is served as it once was, with reposado and anejo tequilas, fresh lime, orange juice, curacao and agave. Between that, Mineros do-it-yourself margarita and a lite variation served with blanco tequila, lime and sparkling water, King says they are selling quite a few margaritas.

The entire cocktail menu, which also features a frose sangria ($10) and other boozy beverages, is void of sugar. Instead, King steeps lime husks in agave to create whats called a lime cordial that adds citrus and sweetness to many of the drinks.

Minero is a big place, and diners might notice empty tables if they visit in the coming weeks. Its a prime example of why patience and kindness are key in todays dining landscape. King said decisions on how many tables the restaurant can handle are made daily with the goal of not overextending the staff.

Theres a huge demand for the space, King said. You can do as much training as you want, but when it comes time for game time, we have to be on it.

So far, getting enough business to dial in their process has not been a problem, as a line of excited diners usually forms just before 4 p.m. Wednesday though Sunday, the days Minero is currently open.

That line could get even longer and more frequent once the business reaches full capacity, allowing for the addition of its highly anticipated lunch and brunch services.
GEORGETOWN  A Georgetown County man was sentenced to five years in prison and forfeiture of his electronic devices on June 27 after pleading guilty to third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor.

Steven Lee Hewitt Sr., 51, was originally arrested by Georgetown County Sheriff's Office investigators on May 5, 2021, after what the office called a "lengthy" investigation discovered that Hewitt was downloading child sexual abuse material from the Internet, according to a July 5 news release issued by the sheriff's office.

Hewitt had previously been added to the South Carolina state sex offender registry following a conviction for first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor 11 years of age or younger.

Hewitt was sentenced on June 27 by Judge Michael G. Nettles in the case, which was prosecuted by the Office of the South Carolina Attorney General.
Charleston, SC (29403)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 89F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Some passing clouds. Low 77F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph.
COLUMBIA  Members of the S.C. House of Representatives will meet this week in the first of what is likely to be a series of meetings this summer to discuss a more stringent ban on abortion.

Beginning at noon July 7, a 12-member ad hoc committee consisting of eight Republicans and four Democrats will convene in the first-floor meeting room of the Statehouse complex's Blatt Building to gather public testimony as its members weigh drafting a proposal expected to go further than current law.

Here's what to expect.

What's at stake

Gov. Henry McMaster has already signed legislation banning abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy which, as things stand, ranks among the most restrictive abortion legislation in the country. The state's so-called "Fetal Heartbeat Bill" took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last month in the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization case, thus ending a federal challenge here.

While there is no firm listing of what bill measures will be debated going forward, anti-abortion lawmakers as well as McMaster have expressed interest in passing an outright ban on abortions, with no exceptions in cases like rape and incest.

The political will to pass such a decision is apparent. Even without legislative text, 45 members of the House of Representatives have signed on as sponsors.

The question is how restrictive the state's ban will be.

Some have pointed to a recent proposal by Sen. Richard Cash, R-Anderson, as a template for possible legislation, which itself is based off model legislation by the National Right To Life Committee, which includes no exceptions for abortion except to save the life of the mother.

Greenwood Republican John McCravy, the committee chairman, has previously advocated for a similar ban. However, he would not commit to any specific policies ahead of the hearing.

"A national organization is not going to write the bill for South Carolina," McCravy told The Post and Courier July 5.

"But we will certainly consider all input from different model legislation, different states, different ideas from our own constituents," he added. "We're going to take all of it into consideration when drafting this bill. So I would not say anything is a foregone conclusion yet."

Participating

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The initial lead-off gathering of the committee is expected to be several hours long, with no immediate actions taken.

"The primary purpose of this first meeting is to hear from the public," McCravy said.

While testimony will likely be limited to just several minutes per person, McCravy said, groups like Planned Parenthood have estimated nearly 100 people could potentially sign up to speak against the bill, with numerous others expected to speak in favor of an abortion ban.

"There are different voices that are in there both on the Republican and the Democratic side who are looking to how can we create the best piece of legislation that protects human life and still provides a level of dignity for moms, for families, for children," said Dave Wilson, executive director of the Palmetto Family Council, an anti-abortion group.

"We have to look at this not only from the legal standpoint but also from the compassion standpoint as well," he said.

The committee

What is likely a foregone conclusion is there will be a stricter law regulating abortions in the state.

Of the committee's 14 members, eight are Republicans. Of those eight Republicans, seven are listed as sponsors of the abortion bill, while the eighth, Heather Ammons Crawford, previously served as a board member of an anti-abortion group in Horry County.

The committee also includes Dillon Democrat Jackie Hayes, who has previously said he is opposed to abortion.

In addition to the moral arguments that will arise, the question entering the July 7 hearing also takes on a theme of political calculus.

Though South Carolina is a deep-red state, polling in the past has shown only a small minority of voters in either major party favor an outright ban on abortions.

Prior to the hearing, groups like Planned Parenthood and the Women's Rights Empowerment Network have already scheduled a press conference to express their opposition to the bill. Around the time of the hearing they additionally plan to hold an opposing testimony opportunity for those who felt unheard by the Legislature.

"In the past, Republicans have always been very cavalier about passing abortion bans because they knew the court would block them," said Vicki Ringer, a South Carolina lobbyist for Planned Parenthood of the South Atlantic. "Now the court's not there to protect anyone."
China mulls releasing pork from state reserves

Xinhua) 16:43, July 05, 2022

BEIJING, July 5 (Xinhua) -- China is considering releasing pork from its central reserves and guiding local pork reserve releases to prevent sharp hikes in hog prices, the country's top economic planner said Tuesday.

The country is taking measures to ease the decline in market supply of pork caused by some hog producers' reluctance to sell hogs that are ready for the market, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.

The price of pork, China's staple meat, has been rising in recent weeks. From June 20 to 24, the average pork price tracked by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs went up 5.4 percent week on week and rose 31.6 percent from a year ago.

The commission said in an earlier statement that it has held a meeting with industrial associations, hog farming companies and slaughterhouses to ensure market supply and stabilize prices.

It will also guide local authorities to release pork reserves in a timely manner to create a regulatory synergy.

(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Liang Jun)
New Delhi, July 5 (UNI) Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday launched a fresh attack on the Modi government over the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which he has dubbed the "Gabbar Singh Tax".

"GST on Health Insurance: 18 per cent, hospital room 5 per cent and diamonds 1.5 per cent. Gabbar Singh Tax is a painful reminder of who the PM cares for," he tweeted.

The statement came days after the Congress asked the government to scrap the GST calling it "defective" and said that only big businesses, CAs and tax lawyers had benefited from the new tax regime.

"A single, low GST rate will reduce compliance costs, prevent government from playing favourites and ease the burden on poor and middle class families," he said.

UNI DS MR
The Federal Government of Nigeria on Monday announced a platform to facilitate the placement of Nigerian students evacuated from Ukraine into Nigerian tertiary institutions.

This is despite the over four months strike by university lecturers in Nigeria.

The spokesperson of the ministry of foreign affairs, Francisca Omayuli, said this was to enable them to continue their studies.

In this connection, Interested students should visit the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website and complete the online Nigerian Student in Ukraine (NSU) registration form with the required information on or before 15th July, 2022, it said.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which started on February 24, led to the disruption of lives and activities in Ukraine including education. Millions of people have been displaced in Ukraine with different governments including Nigerias evacuating their citizens from the war-torn country.

Nigeria received over 1,000 evacuees from Ukraine in March; most of them being students. Many of the students have been undergoing online classes in their Ukrainian universities while others have had their education stalled until this announcement.

PREMIUM TIMES reported that the Nigerian Medical and Dental Council (MDCN) recently announced that it will not accept Ukrainian certificates issued during the war because it does not recognise online studies for medical students. The MDCN advised the affected medical students to continue their education in Nigerian universities.

Nigerian lawmakers last week opposed the stance of the MDCN and asked the council to allow students in the 5th year of their medical programmes in Ukraine to be absorbed into medical schools in Nigerian universities to complete their 6th year.

It asked the federal government to, through relevant MDAs, discuss with Ukrainian authorities for universities to release the transcripts of years completed from year 1 to year 6 (as applicable) for Nigerian students willing to transfer to medical schools in Nigeria or other nations.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the Nigerian students stuck in Ukraine cried out for help when the war started.

Over 300 of the students were trapped in Sumy, a Ukrainian city that shares borders with Russia.

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.
The U. S. Central District Court in California has again postponed the sentencing of a Nigerian Instagram celebrity, Ramon Abass, popularly known as Hushpuppi, for the multi-million-dollar fraud charges he has pleaded guilty to.

Arrested in Dubai, the United Arab Emirate (UAE) in June 2020, and subsequently flown to the U.S., Hushpuppi pleaded guilty to the charges in July 2021 and was ordered to remain in custody pending sentencing.

Judge Otis Wright has fixed September 21 as the new sentencing date.

At the request of counsel, the Sentencing is CONTINUED to 9/21/2022 at 1:30 PM before Judge Otis D. Wright II, as to Defendant Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, the courts announcement made June 24 read.

PREMIUM TIMES just became aware of the announcement.

The sentence hearing was initially moved by Judge Wright from February 14 to July 11 and has now been moved to September 21 at the counsels request.

Mr Abass, in July 2021 agreed to plead guilty to the multi-million-dollar fraud charges filed against him by the United States government.

He has been in custody since his arrest in Dubai and rendition to the U. S. in June 2020.

After initially maintaining his innocence, Mr Abass made a volte-face, entering into a plea bargain agreement with the U.S. government in July 2021, in the hope of getting a lighter punishment.

He pleaded guilty to Count Two which is Conspiracy to Engage in Money Laundering, an offence that attracts a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment among other punishments including full restitution, his plea agreement with the U.S. government states in part.

Despite pleading guilty, Mr Abass will not be exempted from paying restitution.

Defendant understands that the defendant will be required to pay full restitution to the victim(s) of the offence to which the defendant is pleading guilty.

Defendant agrees that, in return for the USAOs compliance with its obligations under this agreement, the court may order restitution to persons other than the victim(s) of the offenses to which defendant is pleading guilty and in amounts greater than those alleged in the count to which defendant is pleading guilty, the plea agreement seen by PREMIUM TIMES in July 2021 read.

The exact sentence to be imposed on Mr Abass remains unknown. However, provided Mr Abass demonstrates an acceptance of responsibility for the offence up to and including the time of sentencing, the prosecution said it recommends a two-level reduction in the applicable Sentencing Guidelines offence level.

If necessary, the prosecution adds, it may move for an additional one-level reduction if available under that section.

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Not being an American citizen, he will be deported after completing his jail term and paying up the amount to be restituted.

The maximum penalty for the offence which Mr Abass hopes will be reduced at his sentencing include: 20 years imprisonment; a 3-year period of supervised release; a fine of $500,000 or twice the gross gain or gross loss resulting from the offense, whichever is greatest; and a mandatory special assessment of $100.

Earlier in June 2020, the 38-year-old known for flaunting his opulent lifestyle on social media was arrested in Dubai by special agents including the Emerati police officers and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) operatives.

The FBI stated in an affidavit obtained by PREMIUM TIMES that its investigations revealed that Mr Abbas financed this extravagant lifestyle with proceeds of crime.

Details of offence

The U.S. Attorneys Office for the Central District of California states in the agreement that beginning no later than on or about January 18, 2019, through on or about June 9, 2020, Hushpuppi knowingly combined, agreed, and conspired with multiple other persons (co-conspirators) to conduct financial transactions into, within, and outside the United States involving property that represented the proceeds of wire fraud.

The co-conspirators, according to USAO, targeted multiple victims and laundered and/or attempted to launder funds fraudulently obtained, and attempted to be fraudulently obtained, through bank cyber-heists, business email compromise (BEC) frauds, and other fraud schemes.

The intended victims of the conspiracy were said to include a foreign financial institution (which was a bank in Malta), the victims law firm (located in New York State), and two companies located in the United Kingdom.

Mr Abass was said to have known that these fraudulent schemes included bank cyber-heists, BEC schemes, and other fraud schemes.

A top Nigerian police officer, Abba Kyari, was later indicted over his roles in facilitating the crime. He is awaiting courts ruling on the request for his extradition to face charges in the U. S.

The foreign financial institution (a bank in Malta) was an intended victim of a cyber-heist, while the other victims identified above were victims of BEC schemes.

In some BEC schemes involving victim companies in the United Kingdom, Mr Abass was said to have with one co-conspirator on May 12, 2019, how they anticipated fraudulent payments of approximately 6 million per week.

Once a victim deposited funds into a bank account, the defendant would coordinate with other co-conspirators to obtain or move the funds, and then to further launder the funds, the U.S. government said.

In addition to admitting defendants involvement in the schemes intending to defraud the victims listed above, Mr Abass was also said to have admitted involvement in a scheme to defraud a victim company in Qatar that was building an international school (the Qatari Victim Company) and the owner of that company.

He was also said to have in December 2019, begun conspiring with a co-conspirator to defraud the owner of the Qatari company who was seeking a lender to invest $15,000,000 in a project to build an international school.

Mr Abass alleged co-conspirator was said to have already defrauded the victim of funds at the time that the defendant joined the scheme.

Beginning on or around December 11, 2019, the defendant began to communicate with the Victim Businessperson, fraudulently using the name Malik, it was stated.

As Malik, the prosecution said further, Huspuppi falsely told the victim that he would open a bank account in the United States where the $15,000,000 loan could initially be deposited.

In truth, defendant and Coconspirator A did not intend to assist the Victim Businessperson in securing a loan; they were defrauding the Victim Businessperson, the prosecution alleged.

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.
The African Unions (AU) 16th extraordinary summit on May 28 sought solutions to the threats of terrorism and unconstitutional changes of government (UCGs) in Africa. These were hindering Africa from achieving its goals of becoming a peaceful and prosperous continent, said AU Commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat.

The summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, which came at a time of increasing terrorist attacks and UCGs in Africa, resulted in a draft declaration and draft decision. African heads of state endorsed previous recommendations by the Peace and Security Council (PSC) and other organs that could enhance AU responses to these threats. The outcomes are a continental commitment to addressing these problems, without signalling a significant policy shift in AU responses to them.

Whether and how these decisions are implemented remains to be seen. Especially considering the significant financial and human resource restrictions the AU faces, particularly the AU Commission, which is expected to be central to implementing these decisions.

The summit declaration adopted the theme robust response, deepening democracy and collective security. It is mostly a political statement that reiterates AU member states commitment to previous AU decisions, frameworks and mechanisms on terrorism and UCGs.

It acknowledges how severely the two issues threaten African peace and security and calls on member states to ratify and implement AU decisions and instruments on both. It also reaffirms AU decisions, including establishing a counter-terrorism unit under the African Standby Force (ASF) and implementing a fund to fight terrorism and violent extremism.

The declaration endorses the AU Specialised Technical Committee on Defence, Safety and Securitys May 2022 recommendation for an AU and regional economic communities (RECs) agreement on the ASF. It further recommends establishing a counter-terrorism coordination task force at the ministerial level to enhance synergy and harmonise counter-terrorism responses at different levels.

The more succinct draft decision includes seven major action-oriented resolutions that provide more guidance on AU responses to UCGs beyond the declaration. The draft decision seeks immediate reactivation of the sanctions sub-committee and establishment of a PSC sub-committee on UCGs to monitor other potential UCGs, including national constitution amendments. The AU Commission has been tasked with developing guidelines for such amendments by the February 2023 summit.

The draft calls for prompt activation of the PSC sub-committee on counter-terrorism established in 2010, which has never been functional. It also tasks the AU Commission with consolidating a comprehensive continental strategic plan of action for countering terrorism and violent extremism. This should synthesise the AUs policy frameworks on countering terrorism, mercenarism, small arms and light weapons, transnational organised crime and criminalisation of ransom payments.

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At their July executive council meeting, foreign ministers are expected to determine how much funding to allocate to the AUs rapid response capability for emerging conflicts, including terrorism. The funds will come from the Peace Funds Crisis Reserve Facility. The other two decisions focus on implementing the African Governance Architecture and the African Peace and Security Architecture, and for the next African Peer Review Mechanism governance report to focus on UCGs.

Establishing a sub-committee on UCGs, independent of the sanctions sub-committee, and renewed commitment to developing guidelines for national constitution amendments, signal AU readiness to go beyond sanctions to manage UCGs. The sub-committee would focus increasingly on preventing and responding early to UCGs, including monitoring incumbents attempts to amend constitutions to expand their powers or extend terms.

This is a move in the right direction. Contestations over constitutional amendments have contributed to political instability and triggered public protests leading to military interventions in some African countries. Consolidating a continental strategic action plan to counter terrorism and violent extremism also shows the realisation that a more holistic and coordinated response is needed.

However, while the summits outcomes widened the AUs response to UCGs and terrorism, governance deficits that drive both were again off the table. Addressing governance continentally is challenging due to the sovereignty issue. The AU can only encourage states to make changes. But it can ensure continental policy frameworks provide a holistic response to the threats.

The summit outcomes also seem to have overlooked complementarity between new provisions and previous summit decisions. For example, the February 2022 summit stipulated that a high-level hybrid committee of sitting and former heads of state and government would be established. It would engage incumbents who try to amend national constitutions without national consensus.

The last summit had also decided that a monitoring and oversight committee be established including the AU Commission, RECs, the APRM and member states. Its unclear whether the sub-committee on UCGs will now take over its responsibilities or if theyll work together in a structure yet to be established.

Implementing the summit decisions will have serious cost implications. The declaration promises a budget for national and regional response to terrorism and violent extremism. However, given the AUs track record of allocating funding to initiatives, member states will have difficulty deciding on a budget and meeting their commitments.

It is also unclear whether this finance will come from the AUs regular budget, the Peace Fund Crisis Reserve Facility or the newly established special counter-terrorism fund. While establishing the counter-terror unit under the ASF was endorsed by the summit, its realisation will face similar financial challenges.

The decision to develop guidelines for the amendment of national constitutions is also not new. Since 2010, member states have asked the AU Commission to develop such a guideline that will be universally applicable to its members. The Commission, however, cant do with its constrained human and financial resources.

The sub-committees on counter-terrorism and sanctions have never operated due to inadequate human resources in delegations of member states and the AU Commission. The AU lacks the human resources and financial capacity to monitor and enforce sanction regimes.

Moreover, while various AU agencies working on terrorism and violent extremism might actively support that sub-committee, there are no active units focusing on governance issues to support the UCGs sub-committee.

The AGA is a coordination platform rather than a governance advisory body, while the APRM operates by the invitation of member states. The PSC is the only member of the AGA platform with a mandate to scrutinise the governance performance of member states. However, it has always shied away from this responsibility.

While the summit may have made significant strides in responding to terrorism and UCGs, its success can be measured only to the extent that these decisions are implemented.

Shewit Woldemichael, Researcher, Institute for Security Studies (ISS), Addis Ababa.

A previous version of this article was published by the ISS PSC Report.

(This article was published by ISS Today, a Premium Times syndication partner. We have their permission to republish).
The vice-presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ifeanyi Okowa, has said that he lost his West Africa School Certificate (WASC) certificate, but that he had a good result.

Yes, I lost my WASC certificate, but I have the printout from Edo College, Benin City, which clearly stated that I have distinction in all subjects.

The Higher School Certificate was attached and it has been acknowledged by Edo College and the school put it out there that I made an A `B `B, said Mr Okowa, who is the governor of Delta State.

Mr Okowas remarks were contained in a statement issued by the Press Unit, Delta State Government House, Asaba.

He was said to have made the remarks on Tuesday while speaking to journalists after inspecting projects at the Delta State University of Science and Technology, Ozoro in Isoko North Local Government Area.

I do not pride myself but it was very difficult to make such grades in higher school at that time.

My high school result was the second-best nationally in 1976 when I finished. So, many universities admitted me through Telegram at that time, and I had to start making choices of which to accept, the governor said.

Mr Okowa said he was less than 22 years old when he finished medical school at the University of Ibadan.

He said it was untrue that he did not have a secondary school certificate. People try to play politics with everything, he added.

Apart from Mr Okowa, some Nigerians have questioned the academic credentials of Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress for the 2023 elections.

ASUU strike

Governor Okowa has, meanwhile, called on the federal government to resolve the dispute with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to end the nearly five-month-old ASUU strike.

Its not a good thing for the children, parents and even education in general. It is unfortunate that the Federal government has not been able to attend to issues, as requested by ASUU.

For every government, if promises are made, we must ensure that we keep to our promises and if there are things that cannot be done, you let people know, Mr Okowa said.

The governor said all the four universities owned by the Delta government are in session because his administration pays special attention to education.
The Vice Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, Doyin Okupe, has disclosed that a substantive deputy to Peter Obi will be announced before Friday.

Mr Okupe, who is occupying the slot in a place holding capacity, said Mr Obi and the Labour Party will announce a substantive VP following the collapse of the talks with the NNPP.

While appearing on Politics Today on Tuesday, Mr Okupe said the talks with Rabiu Kwankwaso-led NNPP collapsed about four weeks ago.

He said the VP to be announced will come from Northern Nigeria and will be charged to create an inroad for the Labour Party in that part of the country.

This matter (Vice Presidential candidate) will be concluded between tomorrow (Wednesday) and Friday. We are looking for a vibrant, able politician from the northern extraction. The person must have a measure of intellect and sound educational background.

Last month, Mr Okupe announced that he would be acting in a place-holding capacity due to the ongoing conversation with the NNPP.

Speaking on the alliance with NNPP, he said the talk is dead and buried.

Those discussions about merger, alliance and all thatwas led by me from our side, and it is dead.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported that Mr Kwankwaso, the presidential candidate of the NNPP, said during an interview on Sunday, that Northern Nigerians will not vote for a South-eastern candidate because of the activities of separatist movements in the South-east. He stated that Mr Obi should accept to be his running mate.

According to him, Igbos from the South-east are good in business and are well talented but are not good in politics.

Mr Okupe, while dismissing the comments of the former Kano State governor, stated that the Labour Party is sure of victory against the ruling APC and the main opposition PDP. He described Mr Obis candidacy as a phenomenon that had not been witnessed in Nigeria.

Mr Okupe said the party is sure of polling 45 per cent of the total votes in the South-west.

The major reason for the collapse of the talks between the LP and the NNPP, PREMIUM TIMES learnt, was the disagreement over who would step down to be a running mate between Messrs Obi and Kwankwaso.

The NNPP is believed to be quite strong in Northern Nigeria, particularly the North-west where many serving public officials have joined it, while the LP is stronger in Southern Nigeria, particularly among young people.

Meanwhile, Waziri Adamu, a member of the PDP Board of Trustees, who appeared earlier on the Channels Television programme, said the LP is like a wind that will soon die down.

Obi is like a wind that is just coming for a brief period and it is going to die down because presidential election is going to be mathematical permutation, he said.

He stated that Messrs Obi and Kwankwaso will be willing to support the candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, against the candidate of the APC, Bola Tinubu.
The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) has called for a review of the process of appointing the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) and other judges.

The process of recruitment of judges in Nigeria has been a subject of intense debate amongst lawyers and civil society activists, who allege disregard for competence and merit.

Amid the controversies preceding resignation of Tanko Muhammad as CJN, the CDD said, The process of appointing judges at all levels, including the CJN, should be reviewed, calling for competence and integrity.

Fourteen Justices of the Supreme Court had, in a protest letter, accused the Mr Muhammad of neglecting their welfare as well as operational challenges that hamper effective adjudication of cases.

Shortly after the justices complaints became public, Mr Muhammad resigned, paving the way for the next most senior justice of the apex court, Olukayode Ariwoola, to be sworn in by President Muhammadu Buhari, on June 27.

In a statement issued on Monday by three professors who are fellows of the CDD  Adele Jinadu, Jibrin Ibrahim and Okey Ibeanu, the centre noted that the excessive powers of the Chief Justice of Nigeria in the control of the Supreme Court and the National Judicial Council should be reviewed.

It also called for an improved condition of service for judicial officers, while advocating proper guarantee of tenures of office to insulate them from political and societal pressures and corrupting influences.

Ex-CJN didnt resign on his own

Following the controversies that trailed Mr Muhammads exit from office, the CDD said there have been allegations, rumours of bribery and undue interference of his (Mr Muhammads) family in the work of the Supreme Court.

The centre said there is no evidence to back the allegations, but the speculations suggest that he did not resign of his own volition.

The former CJN had based his resignation on the grounds of ill-health.

Dissecting the implication of the 14 justices protest letter, the CDD said the (former) CJN had lost the respect of virtually the entire justices of the Supreme Court.

Executives interference in judiciarys functions

The centre lamented the challenge to the constitutional principle of separation of powers and the integrity and the independence of the judiciary.

Recalling the controversial removal of a former CJN, Walter Onnoghen, in 2019, the centre said, The not so hidden hands of the Presidency have also been often seen in the appointment and removal of judicial officers.

It added that state judiciaries are grappling with the issue of interference from the governors.

Citing the midnight raids of judges homes in 2016, the centre noted, The attacks on the houses of senior judicial officers, including justices of the Supreme Court have indicated Executive agency in the harassment and intimidation of the judiciary.

There is a challenge to the constitutional principle of separation of powers and the integrity and the independence of the judiciary, it said.

On the issue of corruption, the centre expressed concerns that it has penetrated the judiciary and threatens to compromise the whole system of justice delivery.

It alleged that judges have become very cozy with politicians and prominent members of society.
Inaoyom Imong, the director, Cross River Landscape for Wildlife Conservative Society (WCS), Nigeria Programme, says the popular Cross River gorillas are going into extinction.

Mr Imong told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Calabar that only 100 were left.

He said the situation was becoming worrisome as the number of gorillas left in Nigeria was 100 and about 200 in the Cameroonian part of the forest.

According to him, other wildlife species such as chimpanzees, monkeys and fishes are also threatened due to human activities like deforestation for agricultural purposes, illegal logging, hunting and direct pollution.

Nigeria has already lost some species of rhinoceros, giraffes and wild dogs that are part of the nations wildlife but are no longer here including plants that are also threatened.

Due to a high rate of deforestation in Nigeria, the nation has lost quite a bit of its original forest cover.

What is left now is probably about 10 per cent of which a substantial part is in the Cross River National Park and other protected areas.

I dont think it is so much a question of legislation to protect our wildlife because Nigeria already has quite a number of relevant laws, the problem is the enforcement of these laws, he said.

Mr Imong said WCS was doing its best in collaborating with the National Parks at the national level, and Cross River and Bauchi Governments at the state level to protect the nations wildlife.

We provide technical support for government agencies responsible for the management of the parks, we provide training for staff in enforcement patrols, logistics and provision of equipment.

We also do a lot of advocacy in communities and provide support for these communities in developing alternative sources of livelihood to reduce dependence on the forest, he said.

He said Nigerians must be conscious of their environment and seek ways to conserve it for the benefit of the present and future generations.

(NAN)
The Delta House of Assembly on Tuesday confirmed the appointment of four commissioner nominees submitted by Governor Ifeanyi Okowa as members of the State Executive Council.

This followed the adoption of a motion by the Majority Leader of the house, Ferguson Onwo, during the plenary in Asaba.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Mr Okowa had on June 28 forwarded the list of nominees to the house for confirmation.

The nominees were Samuel Mariere, Sunday Onoriode, Chief Mike Okah and Godspower Asiuwhu.

The Speaker, Sherriff Oborevwori, who presided over the sitting, said one of the nominees, Mariere, is a former lawmaker in the house.

Mr Mariere represented Ughelli North I Constituency between 2011 and 2019.

Mr Oborevwori directed that Mr Mariere should enjoy the special privileges usually granted to non-sitting members of the House to take a bow in recognition of his outstanding performance as a two-term lawmaker in the house.

He also granted Mr Onoriode the special privilege, having served the party meritoriously as the State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Organising Secretary.

The other two nominees Messrs Okah and Asiuwhu also enjoyed the privilege as directed by the Speaker.

Consequently, the majority leader moved a motion for the confirmation of the nominees.

The motion which was unanimously adopted by the lawmakers when put to a voice vote by the speaker, was seconded by the Deputy Majority Leader, Mr Oboro Preyor.

Also at Tuesdays plenary, the House confirmed the appointment of Samuel Ossai as a member of the board of the Delta State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission (DESOPADEC).

The house also confirmed the appointment of Kelly Imoghenewe as a member of the board of Delta State Internal Revenue Service.

Also at the plenary, the House took the second reading of the Delta State Administrative Procedures Bill with the Majority Leader, Ferguson Onwo, leading debates on the merits of the bill.

The Majority Leader described the bill as apt and harmless as it would promote transparency, and good governance and advance the fortunes of the state.

Mr Onwo, who commended Mr Okowa for forwarding the bill which sought to open up administrative procedures in the state, emphasised that the law will deepen the democratic process in the state.

Also speaking in favour of the bill, Reuben Izeze, representing the Ughelli South constituency, said the bill would bring good governance to the doorsteps of the people.

Mr Izeze, who also commended the governor for his foresight in sending the bill to the House, said modern democracy was being introduced in the state.

The Chip Whip of the house, Pat Ajudua, said the bill would promote transparency, accountability, efficiency, order and rule of law in the state.

Also, the Deputy Chip Whip, Solomon Ighrakpata, said the bill would help to address certain hiccups in the smooth running of government ministries, agencies and departments, MDAs) which were key organs of government.

Consequently, the bill was referred to the House Joint Committee on Rules and Business and Special Bills for scrutiny by the Speaker.

(NAN)
Nigeria will receive 1.29 billion euros ($1.3 billion) as support from the European Union (EU) to help diversify its economy away from oil.

According to Reuters, a document from the EU on Monday showed that the funding will be provided until 2027 under the EUs Green Deal initiative.

It will, among other things, focus on enhancing access to renewable energy and boosting the development of the agricultural sector in the country.

The funding will cover about 57 projects, including nature-based measures to reduce climate change vulnerability, combating deforestation and desertification, and a waste-to-energy initiative in Cross River State.

Over the years, the Nigerian government has tried to diversify its economy away from oil but has achieved very little success.

Oil revenue accounts for more than 50 per cent of government earnings and 90 per cent of its foreign exchange revenues. Oil ahd gas contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) is however less than 10 per cent.

In parallel, the EIB (European Investment Bank) sovereign lending will support the agri-food sector access to markets by financing rural roads, as well as climate adaptation and mitigation efforts, Reuters quoted the document as stating.
The police in Anambra State have debunked a report claiming that a terrorist group invaded a church in the state, last Sunday, with intention to bomb it.

A Facebook user, Chinasa Nworu, had claimed in a post that four Fulani Terrorists sneaked into Grace of God Church, Awada, to bomb the church and that one of the terrorists was captured and burnt to death while three others escaped and ran into a Nigeria military barrack in the area.

But the police spokesperson in the state, Tochukwu Ikenga, in a statement on Tuesday, said the report was untrue, describing it as the handiwork of mischief makers who wanted to cause tension in the state.

Mr Ikenga said the incident was a case of mob action against a suspected criminal in the area, and not a terrorist attack.

The operatives, on arrival at the scene made enquiries from eyewitnesses (which) showed that the victim is a criminal caught in an attempt to rob an innocent citizen before he was lynched and set ablaze by an angry mob, he said.

The police spokesperson said the Facebook user was merely being sensational to achieve his selfish desire because there was no military barrack close to where the incident occurred.

He warned that the police would not allow bad elements to distract the peace in the state.

He said the command has always condemned mob action, and has continued to urge residents to hand over suspected criminals to the police for proper investigation.

READ ALSO: Police kill two gunmen in Anambra

The Commissioner of Police in the state, Echeng Echeng, has ordered immediate investigation into the claim by the Facebook user, which he said was mendacious and unfortunate, Mr Ikenga said.

The police commissioner said the publication was capable of misinforming and misleading the general public.

Mr Echeng warned those who make such publications to desist from the act, saying they would not be spared when the police apprehend them.

About a month ago, suspected terrorists killed scores of worshippers, including children, at St Francis Catholic Church, Owo, in Ondo State, South-west Nigeria.
Charles Okogene started his journalism career in Daily Times in 1991. About 12 years after, in 2003, when an offer came from Independent Newspaper, he made the switch.

Mr Okogene worked first as a correspondent, then as Saturday Editor for the newspaper, headquartered in Lagos. Everything went smoothly until 2015 when his employer could no longer pay his monthly salary.

From 2015 to 2016, Mr Okogene struggled to send his four children to school as a result of his unpaid salaries, which had accumulated.

He said for 16 months, the Independent Newspaper failed to remunerate its workers. Eventually, Mr Okogene said, he was asked to leave in October 2016.

As of the time I was asked to go, my salary was N150,000 and I was owed for 16 months. I was asked to leave because the company said my services were no longer required. I was sacked via an e-mail by the Human Resources Manager, he lamented.

In an effort to see that he was paid his salary arrears and gratuity worth over three million naira, he hired a lawyer, Osa Director. Mr Okogene and the lawyer held several meetings with the Managing Director of the newspaper, Steve Omanufeme, but all to no fruition.

When this reporter contacted Mr Omanufeme, he blamed the development on the economic situation in Nigeria, which he argued, had forced many organisations to owe salaries and that the Independent Newspaper was not an exception.

I am the MD but I did not meet Charles Okogene in the company, he left before I became the MD. Yes, there is a continuum but Charles has personalised it by using my name as if I owe him, he told this reporter over the phone.

Mr Omanufeme added that he and some of the people who are owed by the Independent Newspaper have mapped out a scheme to offset all wages.

We even have a scheme. You bring an advert and collect the money, that way, we pay you, he said.

That repayment proposal is, however, not recognised by any Nigerian law,

Mr Okogenes experience with the Independent Newspaper captures the experience of many Nigerian journalists.

Newspapers dwindling fortunes

Digital disruption, which had drastically reduced circulation of print, dwindling economy, and an unethical culture of your ID card is your meal ticket has kept many journalists at the mercy of media executives.

Although item 7 of the Nigerian journalists code of ethics clearly frowns at gratification, some media executives reportedly encourage tips and payment to publish (or not publish) stories.

For instance, the publisher of Tracknews blog, Bara Ogidi, was arrested by Nigerias secret police for a blackmail scandal in January 2022. His name came up in a U.S. court in a libel suit by the Executive of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, Simbi Wabote, against Jackson Ude, publisher of Pointblanknews. Mr Ogidi was said to have demanded payment to kill a story published against Mr Wabote.

More work, no pay

In 2018, Abubakar Sadiq, a young graduate of Mass Communication from Bayero University joined a state television in Nigerias North-east as a correspondent for the states House of Assembly.

This was his first job and he had a remuneration of N12,000.

I can remember being owed for four months, but its more than that because the payment was irregular, sometimes we would be paid salary for the previous months and then deliberately ignored.

Mr Sadiq said he believes that poor management and poor governance contributed to the irregular payment of salaries of journalists at the television station. I say this because despite having miniature funding from the state government, when the money comes, it is usually diverted to negligible goods like buying generators for the management staff.

It became unbearable for him when he could not care for his siblings and parents. He joined other unpaid staff in writing letters to management, expressing their grievances, and also lobbying through close friends to their bosses. However, their efforts were to no avail.

The management saw the letters the wrong way and subsequently decided to disengage my (our) services in April 2021.

Mr Sadiq now works with a paramilitary institution and receives his salary when due.

Nevertheless, a former colleague of his, Salmanu Isah, still works at the television station. He has worked as a temporary staff with the organisation for seven years and has supplemented his income by teaching at a private school in Bauchi state.

Although casualisation of workers is seen as a cost reduction strategy by employers, it is only allowed for a three-month period by the Nigerian Labour Act.

Section (7)1 of the law states that No later than three months after the beginning of a workers period of employment with an employer, the employer shall give to the worker a written statement specifying the nature of the employment and the duration a contract expires.

A bill to amend the law seeks to extend the duration of temporary staff to six months.

The bill, which has been passed by the House of Representatives, mandates the regularisation of employees after six months of employment.

Mr Isah said a week after many officials (including Mr Abubakar) were laid off at the Bauchi State Television Station, the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), intervened.

As a result of the intervention from NUJ, half of the backlog allowance was settled.

Nonetheless, he is sceptical that the salaries for the remaining months would be paid.

Worrying trend

A survey conducted by Cosmas Obateru in 2017 on 204 journalists in the dissertation Socio-cultural Dynamics and Survival Struggle in Professional Journalism Practice in Nigeria surmised that 42 per cent of the respondents agreed that they were paid regularly, while 37.2 per cent did not get regular payments from their employers. About 20 per cent chose to be neutral.

Since it was impossible for respondents not to know whether their salaries were being paid regularly or not, choosing to be neutral suggested that they were freelancers who were not receiving regular salary or were, in fact, being paid irregularly, the researcher noted.

In Abuja, Asari Ndem had to resign as a copy/managing editor with her former employer in December 2018 having been owed a salary for six months. The management failed to state the reasons for the lack of payments.

We are not the first to owe our employees salaries, even big newsrooms owe their staff, that was the only reason they provided, Ms Ndem said

When I resigned, I noted that I am still waiting for my remaining pay. I sent them a follow-up email after that but I received no response, she added.

Gender Disparity too

Apart from irregular payment of salaries, another factor that characterises Nigerian media is gender disparity.

According to the 2021 Global Gender Gap Report authored by the World Economic Forum, in Nigeria, a man earns on average 71 per cent more than a woman.

Also, there are fewer women in journalism in Nigeria compared to men: women make up seven per cent of print reporters and 36 per cent of radio reporters. Less representation of women in the journalism field also adds to the challenges they encounter at the workplace, especially during remuneration.

The welfare of journalists has been a significant concern for media practitioners all over the world.

Poor remuneration and unpaid salaries have forced many journalists to opt for brown envelopes, a syndrome that has corrupted the sector. It involves monetary bribes enclosed in envelopes and seeks to influence journalists to produce more positive reporting on an issue or to kill a negative story.

Lawyers have stated that non-payment of salaries is a breach of contract under the current Nigeria Labour Act. Section 5(1) of the law states that: Except where it is expressly permitted by this Act or any other law no employer shall make any deduction or make any agreement or contract with a worker for any deduction from the wages to be paid by the employer to the worker, or for any payment to the employer by the worker, for or in respect of any fines

NUJ is concerned

The President of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Chris Isiguzo, admitted that many journalists are either poorly paid or not paid regularly by their employers.

He noted that at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, many media employers complained of limited revenue to pay workers salaries, forcing them to disengage some of their workers.

But we did not listen to all that because we also have our own way of ensuring that people who work are paidour engagements are yielding results.

When asked why the NUJ is not embarking on mass protests or industrial disputes over the non-payment of journalists salaries, he said the union must first exhaust all internal mechanisms for resolving problems before taking those steps.

It is when we have tried all of them and we dont get the result that we expect, that we may have to resort to an industrial dispute. We believe that something positive comes out of it.

Meanwhile, a lawyer, Olumide Babalola, said journalists who are not being paid on the job by employers can reach out to legal firms who offer pro bono services to seek justice.

Stephanie Adams-Douglas, a media rights activist with the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), advised journalists to engage the services of the judiciary rather than settling for out-of-court as a means to get justice. She said media independence has been interpreted in political terms without due consideration to the economic conditions such as remuneration and adequate welfare, which allows the media to function.

Non-payment of salaries contributes to the economic conditions of the newsroom which affects the ethics of journalism and influences report in a subjective manner, she said.

This story was supported by Code for Africas WanaData initiative and the World Association for Christian Communication.
An Ikeja Domestic Violence and Sexual Offences Court, on Tuesday, sentenced a 50-year-old cleric, Isa Mustapha, to life imprisonment for raping his neighbours eight-year-old daughter.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Mr Mustapha is charged with defilement.

Delivering judgment, Justice Ramon Oshodi held that the prosecution had successfully proven the ingredients of defilement against the convict.

In defilement, consent of the survivor is immaterial as a child can not give consent. I believe the evidence of the survivors father when he said she was eight years old when the incident happened.

The prosecution has successfully proved the first ingredient of defilement.

The survivor, who identified the defendant as Alfa who lives downstairs of their house, testified that her mother sent her on an errand to buy pepper in which the defendant told her to bring onions for him.

On her way back to her house, he lured her inside his room.

The survivor told this court that the defendant slept with her four times and that the defendant lives alone in his apartment.

The testimony of the survivor was impeccably clear as there was no inconsistency in her evidence.

The judge said that the defendants oral submission, medical report and the investigative police officer corroborated the evidence before the court.

The defendants oral admission that he was at the scene of the incident and that he only fingered the survivor, corroborated the evidence before the court that the defendant was with the survivor at the scene of the incident.

The defendant is hereby found guilty as charged. He is sentenced to life imprisonment, Mr Oshodi held.

The judge ordered that the convicts name should be entered into the register of sexual offenders of Lagos State.

Earlier, the defence counsel, Morenike Ifarinde, prayed the court to temper justice with mercy, adding that the defendant was an alfa and had never been charged with any offence.

We urge the court to give the defendant minimum sentencing having convicted him, Ms Ifarinde said.

The state prosecutor team of Babajide Boye and Abiodun Alagbe, however, urged the court to convict the defendant accordingly.

My lord, the offence of defilement is rampant in our society. This will serve as a clear message to the public that the state government will not tolerate a situation where children can not move about freely without the fear of being sexually assaulted.

We urge my lord to convict the defendant accordingly, the prosecution submitted.

NAN reports that the prosecution presented four witnesses and four exhibits during the trial of the convict.

The offence contravened Section 137 of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State, 2015.

Court remands herbalist for allegedly defiling minor

In a separate incident, an Iyaganku Family Court in Ibadan ordered that a herbalist, James Mathew, 29, be remanded in Agodi Correctional facility for allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Mr Mathew of Aba-Nla Village, Idi-Ayunre, Ibadan, was charged with 10 counts bordering on defilement and fraud of N5. 7 million.

The Chief Magistrate, Patricia Adetuyibi, did not take the plea of Mr Mathew due to lack of jurisdiction.

Mrs Adetuyibi said his remand is pending the outcome of legal advice from the Oyo State Directorate of Public Prosecution (DPP).

She adjourned the matter until September 15, for mention.

The prosecutor, Folake Ewe, told the court that Mr Mathew raped the victim.

She said the offence contravened Section 221(1) of the Criminal Code Laws of Oyo State 2000.

She also said Mr Mathew between October 2021 and June allegedly obtained N5 million from Odeh Igiri to prepare healing charms for him.

She added that Mr Mathew also obtained N300,000 from Veronica Paul on the pretence of providing charms for healing her ailments.

Mr Mathew, she further said, obtained N245,000 from Solomon Paul to prepare a good luck charm for his business and failed to do so.

She said Mr Mathew admitted to obtaining the money from the complainants.

Ms Ewe said the offence contravened the provisions of Section 390(9) of the Criminal Code Laws of Oyo State 2000.

(NAN)
The National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) says it has so far transported 29,128 pilgrims and 920 officials in 73 flights into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the 2022 Hajj.

The Assistant Director, Public Affairs of NAHCON, Fatima Usara, made the disclosure in a statement on Tuesday in Abuja.

Ms Usara also revealed that most of the pilgrims had been moved to Makkah in preparation for Arafat slated to take place on July 10.

From the Private Tour Operators, 8,620 visas have been processed and about 7,000 of the intending pilgrims are currently in Saudi Arabia.

In addition, NAHCON and leadership of Association of Hajj and Umrah Operators in Nigeria (AHOUN) assure that all LTO pilgrims will be flown out of Nigeria before 12 midnight today.

The rescue operation will be conducted in Abuja, Lagos, and Kano states. FlyNas will provide three aircraft, while Kam Air, another Saudi Airline, has been contacted on standby in case there is need to deploy another aircraft.

Meanwhile, All Tour Operators are to call the following numbers to coordinate movement of the pilgrims. They are; Nasiru Chamo, 08069776880, Kano zone, Mansur, 08035043330, Abuja zone and Alh Kazeem, 0802 304 8180, Lagos zone.

She said that the management of NAHCON and the AHOUN leadership urged the affected pilgrims to assemble at the agreed location for screening and consequent conveyance to Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage.

Ms Usara said that the commission was determined to ensure that no intending pilgrims were left behind in Nigeria.

According to her, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NAHCON, Zikrullah Hassan, will remain behind to ensure that no one is disenfranchised.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that no fewer than 43,000 Nigerian pilgrims registered through 36 states, FCT and licensed tour operators are expected to partake in this years hajj in Saudi Arabia.

(NAN)
The ad hoc committee of the House of Representatives investigating the countrys daily consumption of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), otherwise called fuel, has summoned the Group Managing Director of NNPC Limited, Mele Kyari, to brief it on the matter.

Also summoned are the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva and others.

The summon was issued on Tuesday as the officials shunned the initial invitation of the panel.

The House had in January, resolved to investigate daily consumption following a motion moved by Hassan Fulata (APC, Jigawa).

Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila, who was represented by the Deputy Majority Leader, Peter Akpatason, while declaring the hearing open, expressed dissatisfaction with the attitude of the government officials.

The speaker said the officials are not taking the hearing seriously. He said the MDAs invited should be represented by their chief executives.

He described the attitude of the officials as an attempt to frustrate the effort of the committee. And the parliament will not take it lightly.

In a situation where stakeholders are given the opportunity to come and participate in a parliamentary investigative hearing and organisations are not serious about it, is very unacceptable to the parliament, he said.

In fact, it was expected that the critical stakeholders that have been invited here should be represented by their chief executive officers. I hardly can see any chief executive officer here how much more not sending any representatives. It is a shame, it is not acceptable to the House of Representatives.

I want to make it very clear. It is not acceptable to the parliament that people, organisations that are saddled with the responsibility of managing a critical assignment like the distribution of PMS in this county will be reluctant to come here to do their duties.

Other members of the committee also condemned the officials and called for sanctions.

Aniekan Umanah (PDP, Akwa-Ibom) asked the committee to invoke the necessary part of the law to deal with the officials.

He said despite the huge amount of money appropriated for subsidy, Nigerians are still struggling to get petrol, adding that diesel has become unaffordable for most Nigerians.

Mr Umanah said For you to sleep in your house now, you will spend 25 to 30 litres of diesel to burn one night alone at N800 to N1000 (per litre). And then we are not taking this seriously?

In his ruling, the Chairman of the Committee, Abdullahi Abdulkadir (APC, Bauchi), said the officials must appear before the committee to address the issues surrounding daily consumption.

Controversy over consumption

Daily fuel consumption has become a controversial matter in recent years.

Last year, Mr Kyari said the country was consuming 103 million litres daily in May 2021 and oscillating between 70 million to 60 million litres daily in June 2021.

The lawmakers had mandated a committee to investigate the claim.

In the course of the investigation, the Comptroller-General of Nigerian Customs Service, Hameed Ali, had accused the defunct Department of Petroleum Resources of aiding smuggling.
The National Assembly Joint Committee on Host Communities has again summoned the Minister of Environment, Mohammed Abdullahi, to present the status of the Ogoniland Cleanup Project.

Chairman of the joint committee, Biobarakuma Degi-Eremienyo, gave the directive in Abuja on Tuesday, at an interactive session with the Ministry of Environment and management committee of the project.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that neither the minister nor the permanent secretary appeared before the committee; instead, a representative of the minister, Charles Ikeah, was present at the hearing.

Displeased by the absence of the minister at the meeting, Mr Degi-Eremienyo said, We had extended the invitation to the minister, who is the chairman of the governing council on Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) but he has failed to appear before the committee.

The project coordinator of HYPREP was also invited, but he has failed to appear before the committee.

This is not the first invitation. If he will not be able to attend this meeting, he should have communicated by himself or through the permanent secretary before today, he said.

The chairman said he took their failure to be at the meeting as a slight and high level of irresponsibility.

I express my displeasure totally. I frown at the attitude of the minister and also the project coordinator in demonstrating constant disrespect and disregard for the institution of the parliament.

We have invited them about three times and they evaded engagement with the parliament.

For me, it is an appearance of concealment of information to incapacitate us to go for effective discharge of our duties as a parliament, to oversight the activities of HYPREP.

It also shows the appearance of incompetence, the appearance of bad governance; it shows appearance of insensitivity, he added.

The lawmaker, however, commended the federal government for following up with the cleanup of Ogoniland as recommended in the UN report.

The story of degradation and pollution in the Niger Delta is an old story, but it is always fresh. It is always fresh because the situation and experience continue unabated in the Niger Delta. It is very unfortunate.

This project is very important to the people of the Niger Delta. It is a pilot project that is supposed to be replicated in other parts of the Niger Delta, but apparently it is not working the way it is expected to work.

It is on that note that I, as the chairman of the committee, also give my endorsement and support to the motion that the minister and of course, the project coordinator and the management team of the project be summoned to appear before this joint committee, he said.

Chairman, House Committee on Host Communities, Dumnamene Dekor, said the absence of the minister at the forum was most regrettable.

The programme and project design is also treated with levity.

It is shocking that the project coordinator is not also here. While we summon them, the people should know that those staying in and around the Niger Delta are still languishing.

This project took off because President Muhammadu Buhari felt it should take off, and that the suffering of the people will be alleviated and this is almost six years down the lane and there is no activity that is going on, Mr Dekor said.

(NAN)
It is therefore good reasoning that the leadership of the PDP is reaching out to Nyesom Wike. It also makes sense that the chairman of the partys BOT, Alhaji Walid Jibrin has told party members and stakeholders to stop misbehaving. There are persons within the party who have said Wike is a nobody and can be discounted. They forget that in 2019, Rivers State, under his watch, delivered the highest number of votes to the PDP.

Nyesom Wike, governor of Rivers State is the biggest issue in the politics of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the moment. To put it differently, Nigerias major opposition party, the PDP, has a Wike problem. The extent of that has now been formally acknowledged by the party, when the chairman of the Board of Trustees (BOT), Walid Jibrin, announced that major stakeholders in the party, led by Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and his chosen running mate, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta, all PDP governors, members of the BOT and other major stakeholders, must go to Port Harcourt to appeal to Wike not to leave the party, not to remain angry, and not to do anything against the party. Wike is the governor of Rivers state. He claims that since the PDP lost power in 2015, he has been the one carrying the party on his back, providing resources and leadership at a time the PDP, out of power, began to behave like fish out of water. Wike filled the void. And now in 2022, he presented himself as an advocate for the shift of power to the South, and his good self as a presidential candidate.

By some alchemy, the PDP ignored Section 3 its own constitution and decided, through a 37-member committee, that the party would jettison its zoning formula, the same formula that was appropriated by the rival All Progressives Congress (APC), Nigerias ruling party, and hence the party threw the presidency on its platform open. Nyesom Wike didnt think that was right and so he threw his hat into the ring and decided to run for the position. His ambition has turned out to be a teachable moment and a reality check, and perhaps, in the long run, a reminder of his own naivety. Twenty-four hours to the PDP Presidential Convention, held in Abuja on May 28, everyone thought that the Southern agenda would prevail and that Wike or any of the other Southern aspirants, including former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyim, and former Senate president, Bukola Saraki, would get the nomination of the party.

Within the said 24 hours, everything changed. Northerners are better politicians than Southerners, be it in the PDP or any other political party. Southerners talk too much. Northerners think and strategise. While the latter think of community and group interests, the egoistic, Mercedes Benz crowd down South thinks only of ego and personal ambition. At the PDP National Convention, as it happened, Governor Aminu Tambuwal stepped forward and openly declared support for Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. This was the game changer. In 2019, Nyesom Wike, governor of Rivers State, supported the same Governor Tambuwal. On May 28, Tambuwal disappointed him and threw him under the bus. I have not seen or heard of any attempt by Governor Tambuwal to say sorry or reach out to Wike. Instead, he got a heros welcome on his return to Sokoto and has since picked up the PDP senatorial ticket for Sokoto South.

Wike did not just suffer open humiliation from and treachery by Governor Tambuwal, he came second on that account. Tambuwal is from the North-West, a zone which controlled the majority of delegates at the PDP Convention. Wikes supporters continue to blame Tambuwal for Wikes loss. They insist that he violated the principle that one good turn deserves another. Wike came second in the PDP presidential primary process. What then remained was for the party to choose a running mate, and even in that regard Wike lost out. Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State, behaving like a Wike henchman, said on international television that Wike is the best thing that has ever happened to the PDP, post-2015, and that a committee of which he was a member, having selected him as the right person to be running mate to Atiku, feels doubly disappointed that Atiku chose someone else  Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, the PDP governor of Delta State. He admits, nonetheless, that Okowa is eminently qualified, having run the entire gamut of the public service administrative experience from local government chairman, all the way to the top. But he thinks Atiku Abubakar has erred by rejecting Wike, who was chosen by 14 out of a 17-member panel. Wikes supporters are mourning. They think they have been short-changed. They think Wikes contributions to the party have been thrashed to spite and humiliate him. Politics is a mad house. Wikes supporters also want to prove that they cannot be treated shabbily. There is indeed a new brand of madness growing like marijuana in the PDP that may offer an undeserved advantage to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), or the now much identified Third Force in Nigerian politics represented by the Labour Party and the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP).

Wikes supporters argue that if Okowa cannot be dropped, then Senator Iyorchia Ayu, the party chairman, must go. Within 48 hours of the PDP presidential Convention, Senator Iyorchia Ayu went straight to visit Tambuwal in Abuja to declare him the hero of the convention. I thought that was very bad conduct on the part of the party chairman. He was meant to be an impartial umpire, but by showing his bias so openly, he courted the current enmity that has been thrown at him.

It is therefore good reasoning that the leadership of the PDP is reaching out to Nyesom Wike. It also makes sense that the chairman of the partys BOT, Alhaji Walid Jibrin has told party members and stakeholders to stop misbehaving. There are persons within the party who have said Wike is a nobody and can be discounted. They forget that in 2019, Rivers State, under his watch, delivered the highest number of votes to the PDP. The big problem with the PDP is that it has too many big men, who think they are larger than life. They seem to have forgotten that the party failed to rule for 60 years, as a party leader once predicted, and that the times have changed. Following the BOT chairmans directives, Atiku Abubakar and Ifeanyi Okowa should visit Wike and make peace. The simple principle is that you cannot spank a child and not expect him to cry. Let him cry. He cries. You mollify him. But the question to ask in that regard is: Why Wike? Why is he the only one weeping? There were others in that race: Anyim, Saraki, Ohuabunwa, Dele Momodu, Bala Muhammed, Mohammed Hayatudeen, Ayo Fayose, Udom Emmanuel 13 aspirants, so why is Wike the only one crying as if he has lost his precious toy? Why does he and his supporters feel so entitled?

Atiku, in particular, needs to pay attention. In 2019, it was said at a point that he had chosen or had promised the now embattled Senator Ike Ekweremadu that he would be his running mate. He ended up choosing Peter Obi. In the 2019 presidential election, he didnt get the kind of support he expected from the South-East, because he, himself, mixed things up. Obi went into that election with him, while many of his kinsmen were divided by Atikus choice. In 2022, Atiku has done the same thing again. As former President Olusegun Obasanjos vice president, the same issue that Atiku faced was that of trust and loyalty. He says he wants to unify the PDP, the community and the general society. He must embark on that task without trust deficits. What is his response to the PDP BOT chairmans directive that a high-powered PDP delegation would visit Wike? As of the time of this writing, I have not seen or read any direct response from him, but whatever it is, he must refrain from the twin temptations of contempt and arrogance. Let him visit Wike. Politics is all about recognition, respect and relevance (the three Rs). That is all Wike wants. He needs that even if all it does is to energise his political libido. Let him visit all the aggrieved stakeholders of the party too, if he must.

There are some Wike extremists within the PDP who insist that Okowa must be removed and replaced with Wike. I dont think that would happen. The party and the candidate have gone beyond that. Governor Okowa in his own right has excellent credentials, although he too cant find his Secondary School Leaving Certificate! He is eminently qualified and experienced, they tell us. Nobody doubts that. It would be stupid to say that he should step down. Indeed, his own supporters claim that the furore that has been generated by Wike not being chosen as presidential candidate and his being ignored as a possible running mate was a strong vindication of Atikus choice and the preference for a quiet stakeholder and partner like Okowa. Someone in fact told me that Wike has shown that he would have created conflict in the presidency, if the party wins. I was tempted to say that Atiku did precisely so during Obasanjos second term, and such a future situation would have been Karmic. But I kept quiet. Politicians dont always like to hear the truth. What we know is that compatibility is crucial, and Atiku has chosen the man he feels comfortable with.

So, what is next? Wikes supporters argue that if Okowa cannot be dropped, then Senator Iyorchia Ayu, the party chairman, must go. Within 48 hours of the PDP presidential Convention, Senator Iyorchia Ayu went straight to visit Tambuwal in Abuja to declare him the hero of the convention. I thought that was very bad conduct on the part of the party chairman. He was meant to be an impartial umpire, but by showing his bias so openly, he courted the current enmity that has been thrown at him. But beyond that is his own promise that if the presidential candidate of the party came from the North, he would step down and allow a Southern chairman of the party to emerge. Balance. Federal character. Equity. Since the Convention, Senator Iyorchia Ayu has refused to move. He is the easiest victim within the PDP leadership hierarchy, nonetheless. If there must be a sacrificial lamb that would bring peace to the party, he must be willing and ready to take the bullet. He wont be the first party chairman to make such sacrifice. Let him know this: Even if Wike and gang forgive Atiku and embrace Okowa, they would not tolerate Iyorchia Ayu. Bite the bullet, Senator Ayu.

The party is running against time and opportunity. It is mismanaging its internal politics to the advantage of the opposition. It is about time Atiku Abubakar began to unify the party, as promised. He must cut short his long vacation and get down to work. More importantly, he must beware of the aggrieved who have chosen to be calm and silent. Wike is a symptom, not the real problem.

Already, Peter Ayo Fayose, former governor of Ekiti State, has been saying that the PDP cannot overlook the principle of Federal Character in Section 3 (c) of its Constitution. And when an attempt is finally made to reconcile with Wike and others, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar must lead the group personally. It is not for him to send for Wike or to send emissaries. He is the one who wants to be president. He needs everybody on board. He has promised to unify the party, the community and the country. He cannot do so from a high horse. He must stoop to conquer. One of the things being said by Wikes supporters, for example, is that they are being treated as if they do not matter. They want to prove that they matter. Candidly, PDP leaders must not behave as if they have been cursed by the trickster god, known as Esu in Yoruba mythology. They must learn from the lessons of history. In 2015 and again in 2019, they lost the presidential election because their home was divided. The situation today is similar. The thinking that Atiku gets all his votes from the North and would do so again this time around is entirely myopic. Every vote in every part of the country matters, including Wikes only vote and the votes of his placard-carrying supporters, and all the overlooked aggrieved members of the party, of which there are many.

Nyesom Wike has since returned from his much-publicised vacation in Istanbul, Turkey, where I guess he ate a little turkey and licked some ice cream. My advice to him is that he needs to chill out, as they say. When a child is beaten, he has every right to cry. When an adult is betrayed, he has every reason to be angry. Wike wanted to be presidential standard bearer. He failed. He also lost the running mate slot. He was betrayed by those he didnt expect would do so. He has been openly angry enough. The whole world has heard him. But he must take one lesson away from it all: In Nigeria, when you want something so desperately, nobody will give it to you. There would be more than enough people who would deny you that which you crave, to humiliate and humble you. Wike is, without doubt, a victim of his own hubris and expectations, but he is also a victim, for the want of a better term, of the sadomasochism of the Nigerian elite political class. He should stop knocking his head against the wall.

Traditionally, when a child is aggrieved and he starts crying, every effort will be made to mollify him, but if he keeps on crying and wailing, after a while, he would be left alone and those seeking to appease him would adopt a wait-and-see position in the expectation that once he gets tired, he would keep quiet. Wike should not stretch his matter to that point. He also needs to avoid a situation where he would become the easy and convenient reference in the event that the PDP loses the 2023 presidential election or the butt of jokes if the party triumphs. No tree makes a forest, except of course you are cut in the mould of an Obafemi Awolowo. And Wike is not of that mould.

The only group enjoying all of this would be Bola Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) camp, and maybe, perhaps, the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), the Kwankwasiya party, and also, the Labour Party and its Obi-dient crowd, who claim that Peter Obi is the answer, or that the PDP belongs to the museum of political relevance or that Peter Obi left the PDP because he saw tomorrow. They all exaggerate, of course. But leaders of the PDP must be careful not to lose the election before it takes place, with their own misconduct and greed. Senator Walid Jibrin, chairman of the partys BOT has already warned the rank and file to desist from acrimony. He has a point. Years back, a prominent member of the party told me that the result of any election is usually known six months earlier. He predicted correctly at the time that the PDP would lose the 2015 presidential election because the party was divided right down the middle. The PDP has found itself in the same situation today. The party is running against time and opportunity. It is mismanaging its internal politics to the advantage of the opposition. It is about time Atiku Abubakar began to unify the party, as promised. He must cut short his long vacation and get down to work. More importantly, he must beware of the aggrieved who have chosen to be calm and silent. Wike is a symptom, not the real problem.

Reuben Abati, a former presidential spokesperson, writes from Lagos.
Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno has inaugurated a committee on the repatriation of Borno citizens leaving in Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

Inaugurating the committee on Monday in Government House Maiduguri, Mr Zulum said the committee would also manage repentant insurgents, particularly how they are to come out of the bush, their rehabilitation and reintegration into society.

Mr Zulum said proper handling of the task assigned to the committee, which has the states Deputy Governor, Umar Kadafur, as chairman, would lead to the increased surrender of remnants of the insurgents and bring peace to Borno for the needed development.

He explained that already the Federal Government had constituted a similar committee on repatriation of victims of insurgency taking refuge in neighbouring countries.

The federal committee is headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and would collaborate with that of Borno State.

The governor, however, noted that there was currently a challenge of lack of space to accommodate surrendering insurgents as all the three camps provided for them had been filled to capacity.

He said the government had discussed with the head of the military operation in Borno, the need to have bigger camps.

While reiterating the commitment of the state to fund the activities of the committee, Mr Zulum said it should also look for other sources of funding from public and private organisations.

He explained that a few months ago, the state secured 15 million Euros as support from Germany and the money was being managed by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The co-chairman, Kaka Shehu, who thanked the governor for the confidence reposed in the committee, assured the government and people of Borno of their commitment to delivering on their task.

Mr Shehu said the committee would work in close synergy with its federal counterpart for maximum results.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Mr Zulum also inaugurated a committee for the resettlement of residents of Mairari and Gudumbali, the headquarters of Guzamala Local Government area.

The area is the only remaining local government headquarters in Borno whose residents were yet to return since its recovery from insurgents.

(NAN)
Gunmen on Monday kidnapped a Catholic priest, Emmanuel Silas, in Kauru Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

The chancellor of the Catholic Diocese of Kafanchan, Emmanuel Okolo, confirmed the incident in a statement to reporters in Kaduna.

Mr Okolo said: it is with great pain that we announce to you the kidnapping of our Priest, Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Silas. The event occurred in the early hours of July 4, 2022, when he could not turn up for morning Mass.

He was abducted from the parish rectory at St. Charles Catholic Church, Zambina, in Kauru Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

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We solicit for intense prayer for his quick and safe release, we equally wish to call on all and sundry to refrain from taking the laws into their hands.

We will use every legitimate means to ensure his quick and safe release.

May Jesus crucified on the Cross, listen to our prayers and hasten the unconditional release of His Priest and all other kidnapped persons, the official statement said.

The latest incident happened about a week after gunmen killed a Catholic priest, Vitus Borogo, on a farm in Kujama, along the Kaduna-Kachia road.
The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in Kaduna State, Uba Sani, on Monday, presented Hadiza Balarabe as his running mate in the 2023 general election.

After consultations with critical stakeholders of Kaduna State, I am happy to announce that I have picked Her Excellency, Dr. Hadiza Sabuwa Balarabe as my running mate in the 2023 governorship election in Kaduna State, Mr Sani said in a statement.

Mrs Balarabe is the incumbent deputy governor in Kaduna State. If the party wins the election next year, it will be the first time a deputy governor served in the same role under different governors in Nigeria.

Mr Sani said he picked her as his running mate because of her record of performance under the administration of outgoing governor Nasir El-Rufai.

Hadiza Balarabe has contributed immensely to the giant strides recorded by Mallam Nasir El-Rufais administration in infrastructure and human capital development.

Dr. Balarabe has demonstrated hard work, punctuality, dedication and team spirit in the discharge of her responsibility as Deputy Governor which has endeared her to the critical stakeholders in the State.

I wish to therefore call on the good people of Kaduna State to support the choice of Dr. Hadiza Sabuwa Balarabe as my running mate.

I also enjoin them coming out en-masse to vote for our ticket during the forthcoming 2023 general election. Your mandate in 2023 will enable us to build a peaceful, prosperous, and greater Kaduna State.

Together, we are determined to make the State a reference point for good and responsive governance, Mr Sani said.
About 1,238 intending pilgrims to Mecca from Kano State are stranded and may miss the 2022 hajj exercise if nothing is done to airlift them in the few hours before the Saudi Arabian authorities close their airspace.

The Saudi Arabian authorities announced they will close their airspace at 12 a.m. on Wednesday, July 6, 2022, for the annual ritual.

The executive secretary of the Kano Pilgrims board, Muhammad Dambatta, said over half of the intending pilgrims from the state are yet to travel due to flight hitches.

Only 1,075 out of the 2,313 have been airlifted, Mr Dambatta said.

A university lecturer, Adams Abdullahi, an intending pilgrim, accused the National Hajj Commission (NAHCON) of frustrating the effort of the Kano State Pilgrims Board to airlift the pilgrims.

These people are not happy with the Executive Secretary of Kano State Pilgrims boards over his initial rejection of Azman as the state carrier and his insistence that he will not allow hajj saving scheme pilgrims who registered through Jaiz Bank in 2022 over those that registered in 2019, 2020 and 2022 under Kano state pilgrims board, Mr Abdullahi, who lectures at the Bayero University, Kano said.

How can NAHCON descend to such pettiness of trying to deny pilgrims their lifetime opportunity to perform their religious obligations, the lecturer said

He urged President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene and direct the NAHCON to provide bigger aircraft to airlift the intending pilgrims from the state before Wednesdays deadline.

However, Mr Dambatta said his organisation is making plans to provide an aircraft on which the intending pilgrims will travel before the deadline.

He blamed the NAHCON for assigning an Azman Air aircraft with limited capacity to the state instead of an aircraft with a larger capacity it requested.

Azman Air is airlifting only 100 passengers to Saudi Arabia and it took them six hours to land in Jadda instead of four hours. They have so far done five trips but they were unable to convey half of the Kano pilgrims.

Governor Abdullahi Ganduje has visited the National Hajj Commission to intervene in the delay, I initially wrote three letters of complaint with regards to the capacity of the Azman Airliner, Mr Dambatta said.

READ ALSO: NDLEA warns intending Hajj pilgrims against drug trafficking

Lately, the NAHCON has not responded to our complaints, they have promised to send in Flynas airliner to evacuate the intending pilgrims, hopefully, the Flynas airliners are coming to rescue the Kano pilgrims, he said.

Meanwhile, the NAHCON has assured intending pilgrims from the country that none of them will be left behind.

The commissions spokesperson, Fatima Sanda, told PREMIUM TIMES that the delay in Kano was not intentional.

The NAHCON had assigned airliners to respective states for the 2022 hajj exercise earlier than scheduled, but some states kicked against their airliners and insisted on other alternatives.

Had it been Kano started airlifting their pilgrims on schedule, the problems being faced would have been resolved.

If every state rejects the choice of the Airliner by the National Hajj Commission there will be no guiding rules and the exercise would be rowdy, Mrs Sanda said.

When asked that Kano has large numbers of intending pilgrims, and thus needs a bigger aircraft, she said Kaduna has a similar number of intending pilgrims but it accepted the choice of the NAHCON.

The problem is that the time wasted on rejecting the proposed airliner should have been used in airlifting the pilgrims, she said.

She assured that all the remaining about 3000 Nigerian pilgrims including those from Kano will travel before the closure of the Saudi airspace on Wednesday night.
An Italian Catholic priest, Luigi Brena, abducted by gunmen on Sunday in Edo State has been rescued by the police.

Mr Brena, 64, was abducted along Ogunwenyi through Usen community in Ovia South West Local Government Area of Edo State.

The police spokesperson in the state, Jennifer Iwegbu, who confirmed this in a statement on Monday, said three of the kidnappers were killed, while the rest escaped into the forest with gunshot injuries.

They abandoned their victim, the official said.

The rescued cleric is the third Catholic priest to be abducted by gunmen in Edo in less than 48 hours and the fourth in less than a week.

PREMIUM TIMES earlier reported the abduction of two Catholic priests, Udo Peter of St. Patricks Catholic Church, Uromi and Philemon Ugboh of St. Joseph Retreat Centre, Ugboha in Esan South East Local Government Area of the state.

Both priests were abducted on Saturday along the Benin-Auchi Expressway.

Their abduction came barely a week after Christopher Odia, another Catholic Priest was killed a few hours after he was abducted at his rectory on June 27 while coming out for Mass.

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Mr Odia was the administrator of St. Michael Catholic Church, Ikabigbo, Etsako West Local Government Area, and also the Principal of St. Philip Catholic Secondary School, Jattu, in the state.

Gunmen had similarly killed another Catholic Priest, Vitus Borogo, in his farm in Kaduna, North-west Nigeria

Kidnap-for-ransom is now one of the dominant crimes across various parts of the country.

The Methodist Prelate, Samuel Kanu-Uche, and the Methodist Bishop of Owerri were recently kidnapped along Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway in Abia State.

Members of the church reportedly paid N100 million ransom before the clerics were released.
The Acting Governor of Edo State, Philip Shaibu, on Monday said the state government was strengthening its security architecture and reviewing strategies to guarantee the safety and security of residents across communities in the state.

Mr Shaibu said this while addressing reporters after an emergency State Security Council meeting at the Government House, Benin.

The emergency meeting followed the abduction of two catholic priests on Benin-Auchi Road at the Ekpoma axis in the state.

The acting governor said, We are working to secure our Churches and communities. We are looking beyond securing the churches alone but focusing on securing our communities and state.

There is work in progress and we have discussed a whole lot of security issues and in the coming weeks, things will surely change in the state to ensure a secured environment for Edo people.

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The Commissioner of Police in the state, Abutu Yaro, said the security situation of the state had been reviewed at the Security Council meeting, while measures had been adopted to secure and make the state safe for all.

He said: We wish to inform you and all persons in the state and beyond that the Edo State Government is on top of the situation and people should be reassured that despite the situation at the moment, the state is stable and under control.

The police commissioner said security agencies in the state were working round the clock to secure the release of the abducted Catholic priests.

The state Chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Oyenude Kure, called for prayers from Christians in the state, urging them to support governments efforts at improving security.

(NAN)
The State Working Committee (SWC) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ebonyi State has suspended its Chairman, Tochukwu Okorie, over alleged gross misconduct.

The partys Deputy State Chairman, Emmanuel Nworie, told reporters after the committees emergency meeting on Monday in Abakaliki that the suspension was for a period of one month.

Mr Nworie said the chairman was suspended over his failure to organise executive meetings for a period of four months since he was reinstated as chairman by the Court of Appeal in Abuja.

He also told reporters that the suspended chairman abandoned other party activities since his reinstatement.

According to Mr Nworie, the suspended chairman allegedly joined an aspirant to file a suit against the party in the state, saying it is unlawful and unacceptable by the SWC members.

At the emergency SWC meeting, we reviewed the activities of our chairman, Tochukwu Okorie and his misconduct.

The chairman has failed to organise a meeting for more than four months which is against the partys Constitution, Mr Nworie said.

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The deputy chairman, the legal adviser, the publicity secretary, and the women leader, were among those at the emergency meeting.

The Court of Appeal, Abuja, on May 23, ordered the reinstatement of Mr Okorie as the Ebonyi PDPs chairman and sacked Silas Onu who was occupying the post.

Reacting to the development, Mr Okorie described his suspension as illegal, saying: it is only the national leadership that can suspend me.

I am a member of the National Executive Council of the party and no member of the state working committee has the power to suspend me.

On the alleged gross misconduct, I am the chairman as directed by the court. I have the prerogative power to access the partys account in carrying out party activities, he said.

(NAN)
An angry mob, on Monday, set two suspected ritualists ablaze for allegedly raping and killing a 10-year-old girl in Ede-Oballa, Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State.

A witness from the community told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the incident threw the community into mourning.

According to the witness, the girls corpse was found in a nearby bush with her breast and vagina removed.

The natives have been worried that ritualists have entered into the community. Only ritualists will rape a girl to death and remove her vital organs for their evil acts.

That is why when residents heard the perpetrators had been arrested by the Neighbourhood Watch, everybody rushed to its office.

The crowd overpowered the security men and grabbed the two ritualists that killed the girl and set them on fire and watched them burn to death.

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It was the intention of the security men to take the suspects to the police but they were overpowered by the mob, the witness said.

A community leader, Val Omeje, and the councillor representing the community, Hyginus Ogbu, confirmed the incident.

They also confirmed that the suspects are from the community.

NAN could not get a comment from the police spokesperson in Enugu State, Daniel Ndukwe.

In a reply to a text message sent to his mobile phone, Mr Ndukwe said, l have seen your text message, I will get back to you.

He had, however, yet to get back to the NAN correspondent at the time of filing the report.

(NAN)
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State and his Kano State counterpart, Abdullahi Ganduje, arrived in Osun on Monday for the re-election campaign of Governor Gboyega Oyetola.

They are co-chairmen of the All Progressives Congress (APC), National Campaign Council for the Osun governorship election of July 16.

The National Secretary of APC, Iyiola Omisore, was also at the campaign, which took place at Okuku town, Odo-Otin Local Government Area of the state.

The trio maintained that Mr Oyetola would emerge victorious at the first ballot.

They also expressed confidence that the APC would secure a landslide victory at the governorship election.

Speaking at the palace of Abioye Oyebode, the Olokuku of Okuku, Mr Sanwo-Olu said all members were aware of Mr Oyetolas outstanding performance, hence the commitment to ensure his re-election.

He added that the governor had performed creditably to deserve another term to consolidate on the good works he started.

We have come to support your son, a governor who is a pride among governors.

This is a man who God has blessed with deep wisdom and wealth of experience, no wonder he is doing wonderfully well.

We are proud to be associated with him and he is an example to many of us.

We have come to show you that he is not alone on this journey. By the grace of God, Oyetola will be re-elected come July 16.

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This election is one that is projected to bring progress to Osun State, and to Nigeria as a whole.

So, we expect Oyetolas re-election to come with ease and landslide victory.

The good people of Osun, if you are privileged to have an uncommon leader, give him all the support possible.

If fellow governors can testify that he is a shining light, that should give a fair idea of how uncommon he is, Mr Sanwo-Olu said.

He told the traditional ruler that more APC stalwarts from across the country would be in Osun State next week for the national campaign for Oyetola.

In his remarks, Mr Ganduje said the leadership and members of the party were resolute to deliver Osun to APC.

We are here to give maximum support to our brother, your son, Governor Oyetola.

From what we have heard and seen, he has performed excellently in all sectors and God has used him to bring social development to Osun State within the three-and-a-half years he has been administering the state.

He has done a lot in education, infrastructure, empowerment, and he has built a good relationship with workers, trade unions and traditional institutions, among others.

This is the confidence we have that it will be a landslide victory for him at the coming election. There is no way this will be an inconclusive election, he said.

Also speaking, Mr Omisore said the party had put in place necessary mechanism to ensure free, fair and credible election.

He said that victory was assured for the party in view of the positive feedbacks of its campaigns.

We have heard from our visiting governors what Governor Oyetola represents and what his re-election presupposes.

These words are open challenge to us to do what is right for the sake of Osun State and its future, Mr Omisore said.

Responding, Mr Oyebode lauded Mr Oyetola for making traditional rulers in the state proud by fulfilling his promises to their subjects.

We wholeheartedly declare our support for Governor Adegboyega Oyetola.

You have made us proud and given us enough reasons to speak about you to our subjects with confidence because you have fulfilled your promises to our people, he told Mr Oyetola.

Addressing party members and supporters at the campaign venue, Governor Oyetola commended Osun citizens for the confidence reposed in him.

He said that their votes in 2018 gave him the privilege to prove his good intention for the state.

The governor said he was ready to consolidate on the strong progressive foundation he had laid in the last three-and-a-half years.

(NAN)
An Ado-Ekiti High Court has sentenced a 49-year-old man, Dele Adeyanju, to four years imprisonment for raping an 11-year-old girl.

The convict, arraigned before Justice Bamidele Omotoso, on a count charge of rape in September 2019, was sentenced without an option of a fine.

The prosecutor, Akinola Abon, told the court that the defendant had, on January 14, 2019, at Omuo-Ekiti in Ekiti East Local Government Area of Ekiti, raped the 11year-old girl.

The offence, according to the prosecutor, contravenes Section 31 of the Childs Right Law, Cap. C7, Laws of Ekiti State of Nigeria, 2012.

To prove his case, the prosecutor called four witnesses and tendered the victims statement, including a medical report as exhibits.

NAN reports that the defendant, however, did not call any witness in his defence.

I resolve the sole issue in favour of the prosecution and against the defendant.

Finally, I hold that the prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt the allegation of rape against the defendant.

READ ALSO: Court sentences man to life imprisonment for rape

He is accordingly convicted as charged.

Consequently, the defendant, Dele Adeyanju, is hereby sentenced to four years imprisonment, without an option of fine, the judge said.

He said the term of imprisonment must begin to run from March 17, 2021, when the convicts bail was revoked by the court.

(NAN)
The World Sustainability Organisation (WSO) has urged Nigerians to desist from sea turtle consumption.

In an event held in Lagos on Tuesday, the founder and director of the group, Paolo Bray, told journalists that sea turtles act as a check on predatory species, especially jellyfish which feed on other fish of commercial value.

The group under its project, Friend of the Sea, said that excess jellyfish population can disrupt marine environments.

So in areas where we have seen a decrease in turtles populations due to the accidental bycatch in fisheries as in the Gulf of Mexico, which is the case study, we have seen amazing growth in jellyfish population with the detrimental consequences for the other fish stocks which have decreased dramatically, Mr Bray said.

And this could very soon be up and although its also in the waters of Nigeria and also causes the decrease of bycatches of other important commercial species.

He said Nigeria has five of the seven species of sea turtles and they should not be allowed to go into extinction.

They come to the land to lay eggs which exposes them to poaching. They lay up to 10,000 eggs, he said.

Threats

Mr Bray said the sea turtles are faced with natural and man-made threats.

He listed the natural threats as habitat destruction, poaching, entanglement in fishing gears, pollution & oil spills and climate change.

While the man-made threats include, mangrove destruction for firewood, light pollution, lack of research data, real estate, and plastic debris.

ALSO READ: Seven children die after eating poisonous sea turtle

He further said that sea turtles are hunted for food and shell (nest predation), and traditional use.

He said that there is a need to create awareness and alternatives to poaching.

Challenges

Doyinsola Ogunye, a representative of The Sea Turtle Sanctuary (TSTS), said it is challenging to convince local fishermen to release sea turtles after the catch.

Its a huge challenge in blood and sweat from getting the calls that the turtles are being poached. To find your way there and having to convince these people and take the turtle back, sometimes the turtle is already distressed, Mrs Ogunye said.

And now in Nigeria, we dont have any space on our shorelines that cater to turtles that we find. So its between, you know, the devil and the deep blue sea type of thing, where we have to release the turtles to fend for themselves, as opposed to you know, taking the turtle in for one or two days to find out if its fit for that journey.

Mrs Ogunye said the major challenges are ignorance and lack of enforcement of the law.

They need to put in more effort. In a lot of places all around the world, turtles are being conserved, turtles are being protected, and thats because its critically endangered, she said.

During the event, Atlantic Shrimpers Limited was awarded for the companys engagement to reduce turtle bycatch.
GLOBIS Europe will initially serve as a hub in the EMEA region for corporate training programs and the GLOBIS Unlimited online learning platform. Starting January 2023, Pre-MBA courses will also be offered online.

The office is located in Brussels, a hub of politics, economics, and culture in the region, conveniently located in the heart of Europe. Paris, Amsterdam, London, and the Ruhr industrial region of Germany are within two hours by train. With its multilingual, multicultural workforce, Belgium ranks high for talent against the world's leading economies.

Toru Takahashi, Managing Director of GLOBIS Corporate Education, and Director of the Singapore-based GLOBIS Asia Campus and GLOBIS Thailand, will be serving as CEO and president of GLOBIS Europe. Sven Van Stichel, marketing and strategy lecturer at GLOBIS University, will serve as COO and director of the board. The Board of Directors will also include Tomoko Kimijima, Deputy Dean, Graduate School of Management, GLOBIS University.

GLOBIS Europe continues the GLOBIS mission to support ecosystems of people, capital, and knowledge for a positive impact on the future of business. To date, over 180,000 people have completed GLOBIS courses, and over 1,900,000 have received on-site corporate training. GLOBIS Capital Partners is a leading venture capital fund in Japan with a total AUM of close to 1B. The next chapter in this legacy brings GLOBIS into a key market on the global stage.

For more information about GLOBIS Europe, contact us at:

geu-info@globis.com

GLOBIS Europe

GLOBIS Europe was founded on July 1, 2022, and will serve as a hub for Pre-MBA courses, corporate training programs, and the GLOBIS Unlimited online learning platform. GLOBIS Europe marks an important step forward in the GLOBIS vision to empower global leaders across the world.

About GLOBIS

Since its foundation in 1992, GLOBIS has fostered a vision to create and innovate societies by fostering management ecosystems of people, capital, and knowledge. Today, the company is involved in a range of activities, from higher education and corporate training to venture capital. GLOBIS also operates the G1 Institute and the KIBOW Foundation, both non-profit organizations to promote creativity and innovation in society. The GLOBIS MBA and corporate training programs are offered both online and in person across Japan, Shanghai, Singapore, Thailand, the USA and Europe. GLOBIS University is the proud home of Japan's largest MBA and is rapidly growing to claim this title for all of Asia.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1851209/GLOBIS_Europe_photo.jpg

SOURCE GLOBIS Corporation
The increase in territorial conflicts, the rise in need for advanced rockets and missiles, and the surge in defense budget of emerging economies drive the growth of the global rocket and missiles market.

PORTLAND, Ore., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research published a report, titled, "Rocket and Missiles Market by Speed (Subsonic, Supersonic, Hypersonic), by Product (Cruise Missiles, Ballistic Missiles, Rockets, Torpedoes), by Guidance (Guided, Unguided), by Platform (Ground, Airborne, Naval): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2031". According to the report, the global rocket and missiles industry generated $54.8 billion in 2021, and is anticipated to generate $82.0 billion by 2031, witnessing a CAGR of 4.2% from 2022 to 2031.

Prime determinants of growth

The increase in territorial conflicts, the rise in need for advanced rockets and missiles to counter the modern combat around the country's border, and the surge in defense budget of emerging economies drive the growth of the global rocket and missiles market. However, strict regulations related to arms use & transfer and high-cost associated with rocket and missile technology are the factors that are anticipated to hamper the market growth. Contrarily, the rise in the adoption of hypersonic missile systems and the preference for automatic target recognition (ATR) missile systems present new opportunities in the coming years.

Download Report (334 Pages PDF with Insights, Charts, Tables, Figures) at https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/10000

Covid-19 Scenario

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the global rocket and missiles market, due to nationwide lockdown that forced all rocket and missiles manufacturing facilities to shut their operations.

Disruptions in the supply chain led to sudden fall in the availability of raw materials, thereby hampering the market on the global level.

Shortage of skilled labor force was a challenge to continue production in full capacity. However, the market recovered soon in the post-pandemic.

Request for Customization at https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-for-customization/10000

The cruise missiles segment to maintain its leadership status throughout the forecast period

Based on product, the cruise missiles segment held the highest market share in 2021, accounting for nearly half of the global rocket and missiles market, and is estimated to maintain its leadership status throughout the forecast period. Moreover, this segment is projected to manifest the highest CAGR of 4.9% from 2022 to 2031, owing to rise in demand and development of cruise missiles throughout the world.

The ground segment to maintain its lead position during the forecast period

Based on platform, the ground segment accounted for the largest share in 2021, contributing to nearly half of the global rocket and missiles market, and is projected to maintain its lead position during the forecast period. This is owing to high demand for ground-based rockets and missiles systems globally. However, the airborne segment is expected to portray the largest CAGR of 5.4% from 2022 to 2031, owing to rise in investments to develop fast and accurate air-deployed rockets and missiles globally.

Interested to Procure the Data with Actionable Strategy & Insights? Inquire here at https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/10000

North America to maintain its dominance by 2031

Based on region, North America held the highest market share in terms of revenue 2021, accounting for around two-fifths of the global rocket and missiles market. This is owing to increase in R&D activities, technological developments by key players, and rapid adoption of innovative technologies in making advanced, reliable, precise, and efficient warfare, security, and defense systems. However, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to witness the fastest CAGR of 5.5% from 2022 to 2031, owing to rise in procurement and development of advanced missile and rocket systems across several Asian nations, for instance, China, India, Japan, and South Korea.

Leading Market Players

BAE Systems plc

Elbit Systems Ltd

Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd

Kongsberg Gruppen

LIG Nex1

Lockheed Martin Corporation

Northrop Grumman Corporation

Raytheon Technologies Corporation

Saab AB

Thales Group

The Boeing Company

Buy Complete Report Now! https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/checkout-final/b819c3acf3b9e131c3b4e11c66dec725

Similar Reports We Have on Defense Industry:

Nuclear Bombs and Missiles Market by Type (Aircraft Bombers, ICBM, SLBM, Other), by Range (<1000km, 1000km-5000km, >5000km), by Status (Active, Reserve And Retired): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2020-2030.

Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) Security Market by Type (Chemical Security, Biological Security, Radiological Security, and Nuclear Security), Function (Decontamination, Protection, Detection, and Simulation), and Application (Military and Law Enforcement): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20212030.

Hypersonic Missile Market by Product (Hypersonic Glide Vehicles and Hypersonic Cruise Missiles), Application (Wire Guidance, Command Guidance, Terrain Comparison Guidance, Terrestrial Guidance, Inertial Guidance, Beam Rider Guidance, Laser Guidance, and RF & GPS Reference), and End User (Military and Civil): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20212030.

Missile Launching Systems Market by Platform (Naval Vessel-Based, Ground Vehicle-Based, and Airborne), and End-User (Army, Navy, and Air force): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202030.

Cruise Missile Market by Launch Platform (Air, Surface Combatants, Land and Submarine), Range (Short-range Missiles, Medium-range Missiles and Long-range Missiles), Application (Attack and Defensive) and Speed (Subsonic, Supersonic and Hypersonic): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202030.

Ballistic Missile Market by Launch Mode (Surface-to-Surface, Surface-to-Air, Air-to-Air, Air-to-Surface, and Subsea-to-Air) and Range (Short-range, Medium-range, Intermediate-range, and Intercontinental): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20212030.

Carrier Rocket Market by Payload Type (Cargo, Satellite, and Others), Payload Carrying Capacity (Less than 4 tons, 4 tons to 8 tons, and Above 8 tons), Range (LEO, MEO, GEO, and Others) and End User (Government, and Commercial): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20212030.

Rocket Launchpad Market by End-use (Rocket Assembling, Inspecting), Rocket Type (Solid-Fuel Rocket, Liquid-Fuel Rocket, Ion Rocket, Plasma Rocket): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20212030.

About Us

Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions." AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.

We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Allied Market Research CEO Pawan Kumar is instrumental in inspiring and encouraging everyone associated with the company to maintain high quality of data and help clients in every way possible to achieve success. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.

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SOURCE Allied Market Research
Information Commissioner's Report on the Results of the 2021/2022 Privacy Awareness School Survey

The report relates to the results of the privacy awareness survey carried out in schools in Gibraltar during the 2021/22 academic year.

The Survey examined the relationship between the use of digital technology, social networking sites (SNS) and privacy controls amongst Year 5, 7, 9 and 11 students from local schools, including level 1 and 2 students from the Gibraltar College.

The Survey forms part of the Information Commissioners awareness raising campaign for schools, which has been held annually since the 2013/2014 academic year, in cooperation with HM Government of Gibraltars Department of Education.

The results of the Survey are set within the Information Commissioners report (the Report), which highlights key changes and/or behavioural trends amongst students regarding their use of digital technology and SNS, including their privacy practices. The Report also provides additional information and analysis regarding the use of various platforms such as YouTube, WhatsApp and TikTok, as well as online gaming platforms, which have become increasingly popular amongst students in Gibraltar.

The Survey was completed by a total of 1093 students, largely between the ages of 9 and 17 years. The sample size for the 2021/2022 academic year has increased compared to last years survey, which had a reduced sample size due to the restrictions in place, as well as school closures at the time, stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following on from last years format, the Survey consisted of a questionnaire made available to students by an online platform or in paper format, with questions focusing on the usage of SNS and mobile devices, including measures for the protection of personal information and privacy.

Some of the key findings of the Report are summarised below 

1. Almost all students surveyed use SNS.

2. The use of SNS amongst Year 5 students has increased every year since 2019.

3. Posting comments on SNS has decreased amongst Year 11 students but increased amongst Year 5 and 9 students.

4. Over a third of Year 7 students seek consent from family and friends before posting information about them on SNS, which although still a low uptake, represents a positive increase to previous years.

5. There has been a general drop in the number of students who use privacy controls, compared to last years survey results. The use of privacy controls is less prevalent amongst Year 5 students.

6. YouTube is the most popular SNS. The majority of students use it only to watch videos and listen to music, which presents a more autonomous practice when compared to the use of other media rich SNS.

7. Less than 40% of students seek consent from others before posting information about them on SNS.

8. A third of all students are aware of the privacy controls available to them in online gaming platforms but choose not to use them.

9. Year 5 Students are more likely to refuse than accept access when installing a new app on a mobile device.

Based on the above, the Information Commissioner has concerns in regard to the increased use of SNS amongst younger students in Gibraltar, in particular, because most SNS are designed for individuals over the age of 13. Notwithstanding, the Report notes some positive trends amongst students in regard to their online privacy practices.

The Information Commissioner will continue to promote privacy awareness amongst students in Gibraltar through his campaign and encourage the use of appropriate privacy controls to help students, in particular, those considered more vulnerable, protect their personal information and privacy when using SNS and online gaming platforms.

The Report is available to download from the GRAs website: https://www.gra.gi/data-protection/privacy-awareness/school-campaign
Professor John C. Mathers, Chair of Rank Prize's Nutrition Committee, explained that: "Professor Martin is a powerful advocate, and practitioner, of plant science for human health. As we tackle the twin challenges of increasing human health and protecting the health of the planet, her research is globally significant."

On receiving the award, Professor Cathie Martin commented that "receiving the Rank Prize is wonderful recognition that we might have achieved something worthwhile."

The winners of the 2022 Rank Prize for Optoelectronics are seven internationally leading scientists who have pioneered the development of a new solar-cell technology based on perovskite semiconductors which looks set to play a key role in the future of solar power:

Professor Michael Graetzel

Dr Akihiro Kojima

Dr Michael Lee

Professor Tsutomu Miyasaka

Professor Nam-Gyu Park

Professor Sang Il Seok

Professor Henry Snaith

Professor Donal Bradley, Chair of Rank Prize's Optoelectronics Committee, noted that "the work of these researchers is an excellent example of fundamental contributions to physical science being rapidly and successfully translated into new technology that is poised to address truly urgent societal challenges linked to climate change."

Professor Snaith responded that the "last ten years has been an unexpected and unbelievable journey of discovery, and the next decade promises to be equally exciting, as we accelerate the global transition to carbon-free energy production."

About the Rank Prize



2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the Rank Prize. Established by Lord J. Arthur Rank, a British industrialist and philanthropist, the Prizes are awarded biennially in the fields of nutrition and optoelectronics. Previous winners include Arthur Ashkin and Shuji Nakamaru, who have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. Find out more at www.rankprize.org.



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Image - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1853320/Rank_Prize_winners_2022.jpg

SOURCE Rank Prize
Ranked First in Credit Scoring and Domestic Leader | ASEAN

SINGAPORE, July 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Azentio Software ("Azentio"), a Singapore-headquartered technology firm owned by funds advised by Apax Partners, is pleased to announce it has achieved high rankings across multiple categories in the IBS Intelligence (IBSi) Sales League Table (SLT) 2022, which identified prominent banking solutions that made their mark in 2021.

Azentio has secured the top position at IBSi SLT Industry Leader Special Awards 2022 for Credit Scoring and Domestic Leader | ASEAN. The company has also made a strong presence in the SLT Leadership Club 2022, being announced winner in the following categories:

Compliance Management

CRM

Data Warehousing & Business Intelligence

Lending | Retail

Islamic - Lending | Retail

Islamic - Universal Banking | Core

Several other solutions from Azentio were also positioned prominently in the report, including Digital Banking, Digital Solution, Corporate Lending, Treasury, Forex, Factoring and Asset Management.

While the IBSi Industry Leader Special Awards provide an understanding of leading suppliers in each category and region, the SLT Leadership Club recognises the best-performing systems in different categories and geographies.

Azentio was also recognized as a Competitive Player in the Universal Banking | Core, Private Banking & Wealth Management, and Risk & Compliance categories; Breakthrough Player in the Wholesale Banking, and Digital Banking & Channels categories; and as a Wider Focus Player in the Lending category.

Commenting on Azentio's performance, Robin Amlot, Managing Editor of IBS Intelligence said, "Singapore-based Azentio Software has established itself as a powerhouse of financial software solutions in the Middle East, Africa, India and South East Asia regions, as demonstrated by its top-ranking in the IBSi SLT Industry Leader Special Awards in two categories. We congratulate the company on this performance and the depth and breadth of its portfolio, underlined by the fact that Azentio's products ranked first or second in 8 categories!"

Tony Kinnear, Chief Executive Officer of Azentio, stated, "It is pleasing to see Azentio's banking business make solid progress across multiple categories in IBSi's SLT. This year, Azentio leads the Credit Scoring category with our acclaimed credit scoring software powered with AI and ML algorithms, enabling financial institutions to make faster and more informed decisions about the creditworthiness of loan applicants with greater accuracy. Azentio also debuted with its #1 ranking as Domestic Leader I ASEAN for the overall breadth and depth of its product range built specifically for the needs of the region."

With a 20-year track record behind it, the IBSi SLT 2022 showcased the sales performance of banking technology suppliers, objectively ranking most sought-after products across 17 categories, with three new categories launched in this edition. It included system purchases made by over 1000+ banks across 250+ software products from 60 suppliers across the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa, APAC and ASEAN. The number of deals evaluated this year was 1,900+ reported from 134 countries.

About Azentio

Azentio Software provides mission critical, vertical-specific software products for clients in banking, financial services and insurance segments. The company has over 1000 clients in more than 65 countries with a team of over 2,000 employees across offices in 9 countries globally. Azentio Software Private Limited is wholly owned by funds advised by Apax Partners.

About IBS Intelligence

IBS Intelligence (IBSi) is the world's only pure-play financial technology focused research, advisory, and news analysis firm, with a 30-year track record and clients globally.

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1712686/Azentio_Software_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Azentio Software Pvt Ltd
Broker Secures Ten Commercial Mortgages Representing Seven States and Seven Property Types

NEW YORK, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Yoel Goldberg, a 23-year-old senior loan originator with Eastern Union, recently closed ten commercial mortgages valued at a total of more than $30 million over the course of a six-month period. The transactions, secured between last December and May of this year, represented seven property types in seven states.

Eastern Union, based in New York, is one of America's largest providers of commercial mortgage brokerage and capital markets advisory services.

Yoel Goldberg, a 23-year-old senior loan originator with Eastern Union, recently secured ten commercial mortgages valued at a total of more than $30 million over a six-month period. Yoel Goldberg of Eastern Union secured $7.07 million in financing toward the acquisition of a 182,084-square-foot industrial distribution center in Champaign, IL.

Among the ten deals, Mr. Goldberg secured $7.7 million in financing for an industrial property in Elgin, IL, $7.07 million for a similar property in Champaign, IL, $4.74 million for a triple-net-lease retail site in Salt Lake City, UT, and $2.4 million for another triple-net-lease retail site in Charleston, SC.

In addition to industrial and triple-net-lease retail assets, Mr. Goldberg's transactions have included multi-family properties, a school, a mixed-use site, a medical office, and a single-family portfolio.

Yoel Goldberg, who lives in Brooklyn, joined Eastern Union two years ago.

"I've quickly learned that owners want their brokers to provide them with a clear and realistic understanding of the market landscape," said Mr. Goldberg. "I'm talking with banks and lenders all over the country. I'm in a position to help clients see how realistic their expectations are, even if that means advising them to keep shopping around. Owners appreciate honesty and transparency, which serve as good relationship builders,"

"Yoel Goldberg stands out because he's committed to doing what it takes to be successful," said Abraham Bergman, president and CEO of Eastern Union. "He's executed transactions covering a wide spectrum of asset types, and he's worked hard to learn from senior brokers."

The properties financed by Mr. Goldberg were located in Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina and Utah.

Yoel Goldberg earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from Brooklyn College and also spent a year studying business, administration and marketing at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel.

About Eastern Union

Founded in 2001, Eastern Union is a national commercial real estate firm that provides both financing services and capital markets advisory services. It employs more than 90 real estate professionals and closes an average of $4 billion in transactions annually. Eastern Union leverages its relationships with lenders and its marketplace knowledge to secure the best available rates and terms.

Headquartered in New York, Eastern Union secures financing for transactions of all sizes across the United States. Transactions, which can include multi-state and multi-site portfolios, encompass conventional commercial mortgages, structured debt, healthcare, hospitality, mobile home parks, single-family rentals, investment sales, and -- handled in conjunction with company affiliate Eastern Equity Advisors -- equity placement.

For more information, visit www.easternunion.com.

Media contact:

Steve Vitoff

Eastern Union

516 652 0785

[email protected]

SOURCE Eastern Union
The Globally Respected Manufacturer Is Continuing Its Expansion Efforts in North America

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Ananta Medicare has spent the last two decades establishing its presence as one of the pre-eminent health and wellness manufacturers in the world. The company operates multiple manufacturing plants in India, which produce high-quality food supplements, herbal products, and medicines.

The products produced in these facilities are unique to the Ananta brand. They are based on in-house formulations that have helped the company stand out in a crowded global marketplace.

"At this point, we are one of the most reputed manufacturers in the world," explains company president, Mr. Pradeep Jain. "This comes from years of work and dedication. It also stems from our products, which are effective, high-quality, and uniquely our own."

Jain goes on to explain that his company has been able to create numerous products targeted at a wide variety of different demographics. For example, Anantavati is a phytoneuroregulator that helps regulate brain activity and restore the natural balance of the nervous system. Along with offering this de-stressor in an adult format, Ananta has also developed its Anantavati Kids as an alternative for younger patients.

Jain points out that, regardless of the specific product in question, Ananta's vision remains the same. "Ananta Medicare always aims to preserve and protect those essential human values of good health and high quality of life. If each person can address these in their life, you can be happy each and every day. At Ananta, we help our customers do just that."

Thanks to a high degree of professionalism and a track record that includes years of successful work in pharmaceutical markets around the world, Ananta Medicare has steadily become a recognizable name in the medical and health and wellness community. It has earned the confidence of patients and doctors alike from multiple countries across the globe  soon to include the United States.

The company is in the process of entering the North American market, where it hopes to have an immediate impact for the better on the lives of Americans everywhere in the months and years to come. Its message of hope, in the form of preserving health and promoting quality of life, is one that is bound to resonate with Americans who are tired of years of health-related scares and lifestyle restrictions that have left them hungering for something more fulfilling. For those looking for answers to these ongoing issues, Ananta may be just what the doctor ordered.

About Ananta Medicare: Ananta Medicare Limited was founded in 1999 and consists of a group of companies that specialize in the manufacturing and marketing of high-quality products with natural components. These include generic medicines, food supplements, and cosmetics. The brand has plants in India each dedicated to specific manufacturing needs. It also has offices in the UK, India, and Ukraine. The vision of the company is and has always been to protect and preserve health and increase quality of life. Learn more at anantamedicare.com .

Media Contact:

Sourabh Kumar

Business Development Manager

Ananta Medicare Limited

+91 9570620303

[email protected]

SOURCE Ananta
Peter's 13-year tenure as Managing Director, Australia, of Resource Capital Funds (RCF) (18-years total tenure), a mining private equity fund headquartered in Perth, will help reaffirm and grow Appian's presence in Australasia. Peter has also most recently served as Managing Director for Ora Banda Mining Ltd, a publicly listed gold producer.

Prior to joining RCF in 2003, Peter gained valuable technical experience in mining production, planning and management while working as the Underground Manager at the Emily Ann Nickel Mine for LionOre Australia (Nickel) Limited and with WMC Resources Limited.

Peter graduated from the University of Queensland with a Bachelor of Engineering (Mining) degree and is a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia (FINSIA), having successfully completed a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment.

Michael W. Scherb, Founder and CEO of Appian, commented: "It is fantastic that Peter has joined Appian, as we continue to attract the most skilful and knowledgeable advisors and employees to our Firm. His decades-long experience based out of Perth, combined with technical expertise, will be incredibly valuable for our ambitious plans in Australia and Asia. With this appointment, we have yet again demonstrated our commitment to consolidating our position as a market leader in sectors of strategic importance to the business."

Peter Nicholson, Senior Advisor, Head of Australia and Asia at Appian, said: "I am delighted to join Appian as the business builds on its already strong foundation in Australia and Asia. Natural resources are a critical sector across the region, and I look forward to working with our team to showcase our unique business model and opportunities."

For further information:

FGS Global +44 (0)20 7251 3801 / [email protected]

Charles O'Brien, Richard Crowley, Theo Davies-Lewis

Appian Capital Advisory +44 (0)20 7004 0951 / [email protected]

Michael W. Scherb

About Appian Capital Advisory LLP

Appian Capital Advisory LLP is the investment advisor to long-term value-focused private equity funds that invest solely in mining and mining-related companies.

Appian is a leading investment advisor in the metals and mining industry, with global experience across South America, North America, Australia and Africa and a successful track record of supporting companies to achieve their development targets, with a global operating portfolio overseeing nearly 5,000 employees.

Appian has a global team of 58 experienced professionals with presences in London, Toronto, Vancouver, Lima, Belo Horizonte, Montreal and Perth.

For more information please visit www.appiancapitaladvisory.com, or find us on LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1720474/Appian_Logo.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1852414/Peter_Nicholson.jpg

SOURCE Appian Capital Advisory LLP
CHARLOTTE, N.C., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Bank of America Corporation announced today that it will redeem on July 21, 2022 all $1,500,000,000 principal amount outstanding of its 2.816% Fixed/Floating Rate Senior Notes, due July 2023 (CUSIP No. 06051GGQ6) (the "Notes").

The redemption price for the Notes will be equal to 100% of the principal amount of the Notes, plus accrued and unpaid interest to, but excluding, the redemption date of July 21, 2022. Interest on the Notes will cease to accrue on the redemption date.

Payment of the redemption price for the Notes will be made through the facilities of The Depository Trust Company. The Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company, N.A. is the trustee and paying agent for the Notes.

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 more than 54 million verified digital users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. Bank of America offers industry-leading support to approximately 3 million small business households through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and approximately 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE: BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Forward-looking statements

Certain information contained in this news release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not guarantees of future results or performance and involve certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions difficult to predict or beyond our control. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statement and should consider the uncertainties and risks discussed under Item 1A. "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021, and in any of our subsequent Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect the impact of circumstances or events that arise after the date the forward-looking statement was made.

For more Bank of America news, including dividend announcements and other important information, visit the Bank of America newsroom. Click here to 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
Award-winning online safety company adds adaptable phone to its comprehensive portfolio

ATLANTA, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Bark Technologies, a leader in the online safety space for children, today announced the upcoming release of its first-ever smartphone, launching in Q4 of 2022. The Bark phone will combine the company's award-winning content monitoring, filtering, and location software with additional features in a simple, all-in-one package that allow it to grow and adapt with a child. The announcement comes on the heels of Bark's recent $30M round of funding.

While the Bark phone can be configured with more restrictive permissions to serve as the ideal choice for a child's first smartphone, parents can also choose to enable additional features suitable for older children.

Details include:

Adaptable settings and access make it perfect for all parenting styles

Perfect for all ages and stages of a child's development: Caregivers can allow what they want, when they want, and adapt access as children grow into young adults

Out of the box protection: Bark comes pre-installed on the device, giving parents peace of mind

Sleek modern design that kids will love  no clunky childlike branding or structure

Dynamic parental controls including:

Limit text and calls by phone number



Set granular screen time limits



Remotely lock the phone



Approve app downloads



Intelligently monitor social media, text messages, and emails



Block apps and websites



Location-based notifications

"We are thrilled to bring to market a smartphone that prioritizes the needs of families, evolves with children, and offers Bark's level of detailed monitoring and sophisticated AI, while being super simple to set up," said Bark founder and CEO, Brian Bason. "The Bark phone will provide the most comprehensive option on the market for parents to help keep their kids safe online, without sacrificing the features, performance, and camera quality that kids crave."

Customers wishing to reserve a phone for the 2022 holiday season can be put on this waitlist .

About Bark

Bark is an award-winning parental control app that helps protect nearly 6 million children at home and in more than 3,100 schools and districts nationwide. Bark is currently available in the United States, Guam, South Africa, and Australia.

Using highly sophisticated artificial intelligence, Bark alerts families to concerning behaviors in a variety of categories, including cyberbullying, depression, suicidal ideation, violence, and online predation, and gives caregivers best next steps for how to address those issues.

Bark monitors more than 30 of today's most popular social media platforms and apps, as well as text messages, images, videos, chats, emails, and files. Families also get the ability to create custom screen time schedules, block websites and apps, and receive location alerts when kids are on the go. Visit www.bark.us for more information.

SOURCE Bark Technologies
Burb doubles down on U.S. product expansion with forthcoming Florida launch, reports successful California wholesale presence

VANCOUVER, BC, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Burb Cannabis Corp. ("Burb" or the "Company"), an international cannabis culture brand and high-end retailer of branded products and apparel has received final approval from the Metro Vancouver Regional District (MVRD) Board of Directors to open a cannabis retail store at the University of British Columbia, marking it's eighth location in British Columbia ("BC"), the maximum allowable per the province's current retail cap for any single brand.

"This was a big victory for us after a contentious debate around public safety and community fit," said John Kaye, CEO and Co-Founder at Burb. "Despite concerns grounded in age-old stigma from nearby residents, many of whom were off-shore residential owners, the Board made an informed decision that aligned with the overwhelming voice of the student body as well as the tenets of legalization in our country. We're beyond excited to bring Burb to campus and provide safe access to students and residents this fall."

Burb's eighth dispensary marks the first-ever cannabis retail store approved on a major university campus in Canada and the world.

Along with its BC-based retail portfolio, Burb is also pleased to announce early wholesale success in California, with its consumer packaged goods business scaling to more than 50 stores in just a couple of months since launch. The brand's premium dried flower products can now be found at leading retailers across the state including Cookies, Harborside, Urbn Leaf, Mainstage, Dr. Greenthumb, Emjay and many others.

"We're delighted to partner with TRP, the wholesale division of Cookies Retail Group, to bring our Los Angeles grown premium flower products to the state of California and look forward to launching in the state of Florida this fall exclusively through Cookies retail stores," said Kaye.

The brand is under license to TRP for both states and is working with famed LA-based cultivation partner Green Label, headed by Jason McKnight, to provide consistent, premium indoor flower supply for the brand.

"We're innovating with Jason, working with amazing genetics providers and doing our best to bring the flavours we know and love to the California market," added Kaye.

In addition to Burb's international cannabis business, the company owns and produces a celebrated podcast called Light Culture . The show is hosted by Paper Magazine Co-Founder and former Editor-in-Chief David Hershkovits. Light Culture has surpassed 100 episodes, profiling a diverse set of cultural thought leaders across a variety of genres since its inception in 2018. As an award-winning journalist and published author, Hershkovits has followed the rise of hip hop, indie film, the crossover of fashion and streetwear, and the new cannabis culture for a range of publications, including Vanity Fair, GQ, New York Daily News and The Village Voice.

About Burb Cannabis Corp., "Burb"

Burb is an international cannabis brand bringing "BC Bud" culture to the world through its network of licensed retail stores, curated cannabis products, fashion-forward apparel and innovative ancillary products as well as its weekly podcast, Light Culture , hosted by Paper Magazine founder David Hershkovits. Burb is honouring the legacy and designing the future of cannabis culture.

SOURCE Burb
SAN FRANCISCO, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The global catheter stabilization devices market size is expected to reach USD 2.4 billion by 2030, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 7.3% from 2022 to 2030. The increasing usage of catheters, growing demand for minimally invasive surgeries, increasing prevalence of lifestyle-related diseases, rising number of surgeries being performed, and population aging are key contributors to market growth.

Key Industry Insights & Findings from the report:

The arterial securement devices segment held the majority of the revenue share in 2021 due to the frequent and widespread use of arterial catheters in modern healthcare practices.

CVC securement devices are expected to exhibit the highest growth during the forecast period due to their increasing usage in cardiac procedures.

Hospitals dominated the end-use segment in 2021 due to the large number of surgeries performed in hospitals and a high prevalence of infections.

North America dominated the global catheter securement devices market owing to increasing awareness levels, aging population, and large usage of catheters.

dominated the global catheter securement devices market owing to increasing awareness levels, aging population, and large usage of catheters. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), approximately 39,000 transplants were done in the U.S. in 2021. This statistic suggests a considerable demand for urinary catheter stabilization equipment, which is utilized in renal transplantation surgeries.

Get more Insights from full market research report, "Catheter Stabilization Devices Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Product (Arterial Securement, Central Venous Catheter Securement, Peripheral Securement, Urinary Securement), By End-use, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2022 - 2030", published by Grand View Research.

Catheter Stabilization Devices Market Growth & Trends

Intravascular catheters have become an essential part of patient care in hospitals and other healthcare settings. According to the Joint Commission, 3 million central venous catheters (CVC) are used in the U.S. annually, and around 250,000 CVCs are used in the U.K. annually. However, the rising use of catheters increases the risk of bloodstream infections related to its usage. Dislodgement, migration, accidental removal, or occlusion of catheters may lead to infections and complications and may pose a risk to patient safety. Thus, the surging number of catheter placements is one of the key contributors to the growth of this market.

Growing awareness among healthcare professionals and the increasing need to reduce the burden of catheter-associated infections are also expected to boost the adoption of stabilization devices. Catheter securement is crucial for reducing related infections & complications and thus, is gaining significance in patient care. Various national and government organizations, such as the CDC, Australia, and New Zealand Urological Nurses Society (ANZUNS), and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), issue guidelines that recommend the use of securement devices in the treatment of patients.

The emergence of COVID-19 had slowed the market growth. The reason for this is a shortfall of raw materials for manufacturing equipment, supply chain slowdowns, manufacturing, and supply unit shutdowns, and a decrease in inpatient admissions to medical facilities. The COVID-19-affected patients were given priority, which resulted in the cancellation and delaying of all surgical treatments

Catheter Stabilization Devices Market Segmentation

Grand View Research has segmented the catheter stabilization devices/catheter securement devices market based on products, end-use, and region:

Catheter Stabilization Devices Market - Products Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2030)

Arterial Securement Devices

Central Venous Catheter Securement Devices

Peripheral Securement Devices

Urinary Catheter Securement Devices

Chest Drainage Tube Securement Devices

Other Securement Devices

Catheter Stabilization Devices Market - End-use Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2030)

Hospitals

Homecare Settings

Others

Catheter Stabilization Devices Market - Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2030)

North America

U.S.



Canada

Europe

Germany



U.K.

Asia Pacific

China



Japan

Latin America

Brazil



Mexico

Middle East & Africa

& South Africa

List of Key Players of Catheter Stabilization Devices Market

C.R. Bard , Inc.

, Inc. Baxter

3M

Centurion Medical Products.

B Braun Melsungen

Merit Medical

Systems, Inc.

ConvaTec, Inc.

TIDI Products LLC.

Smith's Medical

Check out more related studies published by Grand View Research:

Catheter Market - The global catheter market size is anticipated to reach USD 85.2 billion by 2030, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 6.5% from 2022 to 2030. An increasing number of surgeries due to a rise in the number of chronic ailments such as diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, urological disorders, end-stage renal diseases, and other chronic conditions is expected to increase the adoption rate of catheters, thus driving the market over the forecast period.

The global catheter market size is anticipated to reach by 2030, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 6.5% from 2022 to 2030. An increasing number of surgeries due to a rise in the number of chronic ailments such as diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, urological disorders, end-stage renal diseases, and other chronic conditions is expected to increase the adoption rate of catheters, thus driving the market over the forecast period. Kyphoplasty Market - The global kyphoplasty market size is expected to reach USD 950.83 million by 2030, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 5.2% from 2022 to 2030. The increasing geriatric population is a key contributing factor attributable to the market growth during the forecast period. Compression fractures affect many individuals worldwide. Vertebral compression fractures (VCFs) are the most common fracture in osteoporosis patients, affecting approximately 750,000 people every year. The occurrence of this condition gradually rises as people age, with an estimated 40% of women aged 80 and older affected.

- The global kyphoplasty market size is expected to reach by 2030, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 5.2% from 2022 to 2030. The increasing geriatric population is a key contributing factor attributable to the market growth during the forecast period. Compression fractures affect many individuals worldwide. Vertebral compression fractures (VCFs) are the most common fracture in osteoporosis patients, affecting approximately 750,000 people every year. The occurrence of this condition gradually rises as people age, with an estimated 40% of women aged 80 and older affected. Drug Device Combination Products Market - The global drug device combination products market size is expected to reach USD 251.9 billion by 2030, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 8.8% from 2022 to 2030. The rising demand for minimally invasive techniques due to enhanced patient outcomes associated with it is the high impact-rendering driver of this market. These devices facilitate early diagnosis and reduced treatment duration in a majority of surgical procedures. Growing demand is also a consequence of minimal pain, heightened cost efficiency, improved safety, better efficacy, rapid recovery, and reduced hospital stay rendered by these devices.

Browse through Grand View Research's Medical Devices Industry Research Reports.

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, U.S.-based market research and consulting company, provides syndicated as well as customized research reports and consulting services. Registered in California and headquartered in San Francisco, the company comprises over 425 analysts and consultants, adding more than 1200 market research reports to its vast database each year. These reports offer in-depth analysis on 46 industries across 25 major countries worldwide. With the help of an interactive market intelligence platform, Grand View Research Helps Fortune 500 companies and renowned academic institutes understand the global and regional business environment and gauge the opportunities that lie ahead.

Contact:

Sherry James

Corporate Sales Specialist, USA

Grand View Research, Inc.

Phone: 1-415-349-0058

Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519

Email: [email protected]

Web: https://www.grandviewresearch.com

Grand View Compass | Astra ESG Solutions

Follow Us: LinkedIn | Twitter

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/661327/Grand_View_Research_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc.
COLUMBUS, Ohio, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Clean Express Auto Wash has been awarded a 2022 Top Workplaces honor by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. The list is based solely on anonymous employee feedback gathered through a third-party survey administer, Energage. Clean Express received high marks from its employees surrounding key critical culture drivers including alignment, execution and connection, among others.

"During this very challenging time, Top Workplaces has proven to be a beacon of light for organizations, as well as a sign of resiliency and strong business performance," said Eric Rubino, Energage CEO.

Clean Express opened its first express car wash in August of 2020. The company currently operates 11 locations across Greater Cleveland in communities including Eastlake, Elyria, Garfield Heights, Middleburg Heights, Parma, Solon, South Euclid and Streetsboro.

"Clean Express has experienced incredible growth in the past two years, and we're proud to have more than 300 team members supporting our washes," said John Roush, Clean Express Auto Wash Founder and CEO of Express Wash Concepts. "Being recognized as a Top Workplace thanks to our team members is pretty humbling, and this is a very proud moment for our young company. "Our goal is to continue to be recognized as a repeat top workplace for years to come."

Home grown and operated, Clean Express has donated more than $150,000 to local non-profits since 2020 through its Clean Cares initiative. Local beneficiaries include the Cleveland Guardians, 1,000 Ties, Children First of Cleveland, City Mission, Miracle League of Lake County, and many more.

About Clean Express Auto Wash:

Clean Express Auto Wash is Greater Cleveland, Toledo and Pittsburgh's newest, premier express car wash with 17 locations and growing. Clean's fast, high-quality and environmentally friendly car washes are 100% satisfaction guaranteed, and the Company's popular Unlimited Wash Club offers unlimited car washes at any Clean Express Auto Wash location for one low monthly fee.

Clean Express Auto Wash is part of the Express Wash Concepts portfolio, which includes 68+ Ohio, Indiana, Pittsburgh, Virginia and North Carolina-based express car wash locations under the following brands: Moo Moo Express Car Wash, Flying Ace Express Car Wash, Green Clean Express Auto Wash and Bee Clean Express Car Wash. For more information, please visit www.cleanexpresswash.com.

SOURCE Express Wash Concepts
MSc Leadership and Healthcare Practice Graduation

At a Graduation Ceremony held at the City Hall, eight students were recently awarded an MSc Leadership and Healthcare Practice.

The degree concentrated on the development of knowledge and skills to lead and manage complex situations in healthcare in order to improve patient and service outcomes. Most of the students, all employees within the GHA and ERS, worked onsite during the pandemic while undertaking their studies.

Minister for Health, The Hon Albert Isola MP, His Worship the Mayor and Professor Patrick Geoghegan, GHA Director General attended the ceremony and were joined by Professor Margaret Rowe who represented the University of Salford. Ms Rowe is highly regarded in the UK and the international stage, and was the Higher Education national representative on the Nursing and Midwifery Council Revalidation Strategic Steering Group and currently on a Council of Deans representative.

Prof Patrick Geoghegan OBE congratulated students not only on achieving excellent grades with a successful outcome but in addition for their hard work during the COVID-19 Pandemic when they continued looking after very sick people, their families and persisted with their studies. Their commitment to their day jobs and undertaking their extra studies is testament of the high calibre of Staff Members that work for the GHA and ERS, this was not only a challenge but a great achievement by all involved. The Director General also took the opportunity in announcing that in September 2022, the GHA will be launching a Learning Action Group to support the Master Graduates and other aspiring Staff Members in order to further develop their leadership and management skills and ensure that in the future, local staff will lead and manage the GHA, ERS and other Public Sector Departments.
New Retail Partners Include Walgreens, Walmart, Albertsons, and Kroger, with Projected Year-Over-Year Growth Rate of 232% for 2022 over 2021

FORT WORTH, Texas, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Ear care company Eosera, known for carrying the most comprehensive and effective lineup of at-home ear care solutions, is pleased to announce it has added Walgreens, Walmart, Albertsons, and Kroger to the list of nationwide retailers selling their products. This follows Eosera's already established presence in major retailers including CVS, Rite Aid, Amazon, and a variety of food stores, bringing their total number of locations to 28,000, a rapid expansion that occurred over just five years on the market. As well, 2022 is set to be the disruptor brand's best year ever, with a projected growth rate for 2022 over 2021 of 232%, and May 2022 sales up 1000% over May 2021.

Eosera, Inc

Eosera's growth comes as the earwax removal industry is projected to surpass $164M by 2029 . Though still frequently underestimated as a serious medical concern, earwax impaction sends roughly 12 million Americans to the doctor yearly. The ailment can cause a feeling of fullness in the ear, dizziness, tinnitus, and even communication delays in children, making regular maintenance and irrigation in the case of excess buildup an absolute necessity. These numbers are further inflated among certain populations, such as children, seniors over the age of 65, and people who frequently wear devices such as hearing aids, earbuds, or ear plugs, which contribute to earwax buildup.

"I am thrilled to see our products launch in major stores such as Walgreens, Walmart, Albertsons, and Kroger," said Eosera Co-Founder and CEO Elyse Stoltz Dickerson. "Our ultimate goal is to heighten the conversation around ear health, shed light on some of the most common ailments that can occur, and allow people to avoid doctors' visits through preventive care. We're confident that the increased presence of our products in 28,000 retailers nationwide will continue to educate consumers on the proper ways to take care of their ears at home."

Each of Eosera's key products fills a significant gap in the home ear care category, offering a variety of reliable, doctor-formulated and recommended options that have previously been absent from the market. The flagship product, the Earwax MD , dissolves earwax in just 15 minutes with its unique blend of ingredients, and is the only clinically proven product on the market. Until the Earwax MD, the majority of earwax removal products in the category not only utilized outdated technology, but even caused further harm in the case of products like cotton swabs and ear candles. Similarly, the Wax Blaster MD helps rinse away earwax while contributing to general cleaning and maintenance efforts. Meanwhile, the Ear Pain MD and Ear Itch MD are unlike any other products currently on retail shelves, as the former contains the maximum amount of lidocaine available for an OTC product, while the latter's coconut oil base and spray technology make it soothing and primed for optimal distribution into the ear canal.

Eosera carries a full suite of products that provide solutions to ailments in addition to earwax impaction, pain, and itch, including general maintenance, and earbud cleaning. The company has also expanded into the health tech space with the Ear View MD , a Smart Otoscope that sends live footage and images of the external ear canal to a smartphone or tablet. Eosera looks forward to further combating major issues in ear health and making regular maintenance an integral part of at-home wellness and self care routines.

About EOSERA:

Eosera, Inc. is a biotech company that develops innovative products that target under addressed healthcare needs in the earcare space and beyond. Co-founded and led by CEO Elyse Stoltz Dickerson, Eosera offers a full line of ear care products that remove earwax, relieve itch and pain, and provide routine cleanings to improve overall ear health. Eosera products are safe, effective, formulated by scientists, and recommended by doctors. The company's products are currently available in over 28K stores nationwide and online, including Walgreens, Walmart, CVS, and Amazon. For more information, visit www.EARcareMD.com .

Media Contact:

Dini von Mueffling Communications

Brittany Colvin Gbur

[email protected]

646-650-5003

SOURCE Eosera, Inc
Leader in Automotive Aftermarket Repair Facilities Completed Eight Acquisitions and Adds a Third Major Brand in First Half of 2022

GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- FullSpeed Automotive, which is among the nation's largest franchisors and operators of automotive aftermarket repair facilities and home to flagship brands Grease Monkey and SpeeDee Oil Change & Auto Service, is accelerating growth with an acquisition strategy set to fuel its expansion goal of 1,000 units by the end of 2023. Most recently, the automotive brand acquired the intellectual property of Kwik Industries, Inc., including ownership of the Kwik Kar brand, and purchased from local independent operators a total of 25 more Kwik Kar related centers. The completion of this acquisition brings FullSpeed to ten acquisitions in 2022, for a total of 40 units across 6 states.

FullSpeed's most recent acquisitions include the 25 new Kwik Kars in Dallas for a total of 54 company operated Kwik Kar related centers, four Texas Express Lube centers, and units in Connecticut, Florida, New Mexico and Wisconsin.

Kwik Kar specializes in full-service oil changes, scheduled maintenance, state inspections, and many other automotive repair services. The iconic Kwik Kar brand will add impressive strength to FullSpeed's current roster of flagship brands, which already includes Grease Monkey and SpeeDee Oil Change & Auto Service. In 2022, Kwik Kar was rated #2 in overall customer satisfaction for full-service maintenance and repairs by JD Power.

"We are thrilled to acquire a quality brand like Kwik Kar that has such a tremendous reputation and loyal customer base," said Kevin Kormondy, Chief Executive Officer of FullSpeed Automotive. "This acquisition further solidifies our position as one of the nation's largest automotive aftermarket services operators and franchisors. We look forward to further developing the Kwik Kar brand as well as growing the number of units that we own."

FullSpeed's franchise development is also on the fast track to growth with 25 newly awarded franchise agreements this year. With an aggressive M&A and franchise development strategy, FullSpeed plans to continue expansion efforts across the country. Since FullSpeed was acquired by MidOcean Partners in November 2020, it has completed over 30 separate acquisitions covering 110 locations, and now has over 740 franchised and company-owned locations.

"Acquisitions are a key priority of FullSpeed's aggressive growth strategy as we continue our expansion efforts," said Greg Penman, Vice President of Mergers & Acquisitions at FullSpeed Automotive. "The first half of the year has been off to a busy start with several large and successful acquisitions across the country, and we are working very hard to make strategic decisions to set FullSpeed up for success in the future."

FullSpeed Automotive is looking to bring on additional qualified and engaged individuals seeking single, multi-unit, and conversion opportunities. When franchisees invest with FullSpeed Automotive brands, they're investing in an organization with a strong culture, solid systems, and a proven business model s backed with 70+ years of experience in providing quality car care in the industry.

For more information on FullSpeed Automotive and the company's flagship brands, visit fullspeedautomotive.com or call 800-364-0352.

About FullSpeed Automotive

FullSpeed Automotive is among the nation's largest franchisors and operators of automotive aftermarket repair facilities and home to flagship brands Grease Monkey and SpeeDee oil change and Auto Service. FullSpeed Brands offers oil changes, tire sales and rotations, brake services, car washes, and other ancillary services through multiple brand formats that target several desirable segments of the service market. The company's strategic geographic footprint of 740 -plus franchised and company-owned locations provide density in high growth markets. The company's flagship brands include Grease Monkey, SpeeDee Oil Change & Auto Service, and Kwik Kar. In 2022, both Grease Monkey and SpeeDee were included in Entrepreneur's prestigious Franchise 500 ranking. FullSpeed is headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado. For more information, go to www.fullspeedautomotive.com.

About MidOcean Partners

MidOcean Partners is a premier New York-based alternative asset manager specializing in middle-market private equity and alternative credit investments. Since its inception in 2003, MidOcean Private Equity has targeted investments in high-quality middle-market companies in the consumer and business services sectors. MidOcean Credit was launched in 2009 and currently manages a series of alternative credit strategies, collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), and customized separately managed accounts.

SOURCE FullSpeed Automotive
This news release constitutes a "designated news release" for the purposes of the Company's prospectus supplement dated December 10, 2021 to its short form base shelf prospectus dated October 27, 2021.

VANCOUVER, BC, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - GoldMining Inc. (the "Company" or "GoldMining") (TSX: GOLD) (NYSE-American: GLDG) is pleased to announce the closing of the previously announced grant of an option on the Company's Almaden Project (the "Project"), located in Idaho, U.S.A. to a subsidiary of NevGold Corp. ("NevGold") and the Company's strategic investment in NevGold. As consideration for the option, the Company received consideration of C$3.0 million, which was satisfied by NevGold by issuing 4,444,444 common shares of NevGold ("NevGold Shares").

The Option

Pursuant to the option agreement between the parties (the "Option Agreement"), the Company's subsidiary has granted NevGold's subsidiary an option to acquire a 100% interest in the Project. To exercise the option, NevGold must, among other things:

make a total of C$6 million of additional payments to GoldMining's subsidiary between January 1, 2023 and January 1, 2024 , which payments may be satisfied by NevGold in cash or through the issuance of NevGold Shares, on the following schedule:

of additional payments to GoldMining's subsidiary between and , which payments may be satisfied by NevGold in cash or through the issuance of NevGold Shares, on the following schedule: January 1, 2023 : C$1.5 million

:

July 1, 2023 : C$1.5 million

:

January 1, 2024 : C$3.0 million

In the event that NevGold elects to satisfy any of the foregoing payments by issuing NevGold Shares, the number of such shares will be based upon the volume weighted average price of the NevGold Shares for the then-applicable 30-trading day period.

complete qualifying expenditures on the Project aggregating to C$2.25 million , comprised of C$1.5 million on or before June 1, 2023 and a further C$0.75 million on or before December 31, 2023 .

Strategic Investment

The Company has completed its initial strategic investment in NevGold by subscribing for 1,481,481 NevGold Shares at a price of C$0.675 per share for total subscription proceeds of C$1.0 million.

In connection with the closing of the initial option grant and the strategic investment, GoldMining and NevGold have entered into an investor rights agreement on customary terms, which provides for, among other things, the grant of certain anti-dilution rights by NevGold to GoldMining and the right to nominate one board member of NevGold, provided the Company maintains an equity interest in NevGold above 4.99%.

Pursuant to the Option Agreement, GoldMining has agreed to purchase additional NevGold equity in an amount to the lesser of C$1.25 million and 40% of the total gross proceeds raised by NevGold in the event NevGold completes a qualifying financing prior to November 30, 2022.

Early Warning Report

Prior to the acquisition of NevGold Shares disclosed herein, the Company did not beneficially own or exercise control and direction of any NevGold Shares. Immediately thereafter, the Company beneficially owned and exercised control and direction of 5,925,925 NevGold Shares, representing approximately 10.53% of the outstanding NevGold Shares, based upon 50,344,287 outstanding NevGold Shares as of July 3, 2022 prior to the issuance of the NevGold Shares to the Company.

The NevGold Shares were acquired by the Company for investment purposes, and in the future, the Company may acquire additional securities of NevGold, dispose of some or all of the existing or additional securities the Company holds or will hold, or may continue to hold its current position, depending on market conditions, reformulation of plans and/or other relevant factors.

An early warning report (the "Report") will be filed by the Company pursuant to NI 62-103 on SEDAR at www.sedar.com under the profile of NevGold. The Company's head office is located at 1030 West Georgia Street, Suite 1830, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6E 2Y3. To obtain a copy of the Report, please contact the Company as follows:

GoldMining Inc.

Attn: Pat Obara, Chief Financial Officer

1030 West Georgia Street, Suite 1830

Vancouver, BC V6E 2Y3

Tel: (855) 630-1001

About GoldMining Inc.

The Company is a public mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition and development of gold assets in the Americas. Through its disciplined acquisition strategy, the Company now controls a diversified portfolio of resource-stage gold and gold-copper projects in Canada, U.S.A., Brazil, Colombia and Peru. The Company also owns more than 20 million shares of Gold Royalty Corp. (NYSE American: GROY).

Forward-looking Statements

This document contains certain forward-looking statements that reflect the current views and/or expectations, including statements regarding the exercise and any future payments or expenditures under the Option Agreement and the expected benefits of the transactions under the Option Agreement. Forward-looking statements are based on the then-current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the business and the markets in which GoldMining operates. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including: delays to plans caused by restrictions and other future impacts of COVID-19 or any other inability of the Company or NevGold to meet expected timelines for planned project activities; the inherent risks involved in the exploration and development of mineral properties, fluctuating metal prices, the ability of NevGold to exercise the option under the Option Agreement, risks related to government and environmental regulation, social, permitting and licensing matters, and uncertainties relating to the availability and costs of financing needed in the future. These risks, as well as others, including those set forth in GoldMinings Annual Information Form for the year ended November 30, 2021, and other filings with Canadian securities regulators and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, could cause actual results and events to vary significantly. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information, or the material factors or assumptions used to develop such forward-looking information, will prove to be accurate. The Company does not undertake any obligations to release publicly any revisions for updating any voluntary forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities law.

SOURCE GoldMining Inc.
- Provides Share Repurchase Update

HOUSTON, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Group 1 Automotive, Inc. (NYSE: GPI), ("Group 1" or the "Company"), an international, Fortune 300 automotive retailer with 201 dealerships located in the U.S. and U.K., today announced that it has closed on the disposition of its Brazil operations. The Company also provided a year-to-date update on its share repurchase activity.

Disposition of Brazil Operations



The Company announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary GPI SA , LLC closed the sale transaction under the Share Purchase Agreement (the "Agreement") with Original Holdings S.A., a sociedade por acoes incorporated in Brazil and an affiliate of Simpar S.A, a publicly listed company in Brazil ("Original"), with UAB Motors Participacoes Ltda ., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Group 1, as an intervening party (" UAB "). Under the terms of the Agreement, Original acquired 100% of the issued and outstanding equity interests of UAB from the Company for BRL 510 million in cash (the "Transaction").



As of year-end 2021, UAB operated 16 dealerships representing Land Rover, BMW, Honda and Toyota which generated BRL 1.7 billion in annual revenue.



"I want to thank our employees in Brazil for their dedication and work ethic over the past nine years of Group 1's ownership. This great team was instrumental in the development of a very successful and professional automotive dealership group. As announced last year, our strategic decision to exit the Brazilian market and redeploy capital to other growth opportunities is in the best interest of our shareholders. We look to continue growth via acquisitions in both the U.S. and U.K. markets, while also returning capital to our shareholders," said Earl J. Hesterberg , Group 1's President and Chief Executive Officer.



For additional details regarding the Transaction, please see the information contained in the Form 8-K filed on November 15, 2021 .



The investment firm of Laplace Financas Empreendimentos Participacoes Ltda acted as financial advisor to Group 1 Automotive, Inc.





The Company announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary GPI SA sociedade por acoes Simpar UAB Participacoes Ltda UAB UAB BRL As of year-end 2021, UAB BRL Share Repurchases



The Company also updated its year-to-date share repurchase activity of 1,437,729 shares of common stock at an average price of $176.74 for a total of $254.1 million , which represents 8.3 percent of Group 1's outstanding share count at January 1, 2022 . Purchases may be made from time to time, based on market conditions, legal requirements, and other corporate considerations, in the open market or in privately negotiated transactions. The Company expects that any repurchase of shares will be funded by cash from operations. Repurchased shares will be held in treasury.

ABOUT GROUP 1 AUTOMOTIVE, INC.

Group 1 owns and operates 201 automotive dealerships, 268 franchises, and 46 collision centers in the United States and the United Kingdom that offer 35 brands of automobiles. Through its dealerships, the Company sells new and used cars and light trucks; arranges related vehicle financing; sells service contracts; provides automotive maintenance and repair services; and sells vehicle parts.

Group 1 discloses additional information about the Company, its business, and its results of operations at www.group1corp.com , www.group1auto.com , www.group1collision.com , www.acceleride.com , www.facebook.com/group1auto , and www.twitter.com/group1auto .

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which are statements related to future, not past, events and are based on our current expectations and assumptions regarding our business, the economy and other future conditions. In this context, the forward-looking statements often include statements regarding our goals, plans, projections and guidance regarding our financial position, results of operations and business strategy, and often contain words such as "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "should," "foresee," "may" or "will" and similar expressions. While management believes that these forward-looking statements are reasonable as and when made, there can be no assurance that future developments affecting us will be those that we anticipate. Any such forward-looking statements are not assurances of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in the statements. These risks and uncertainties include, among other things, (a) general economic and business conditions, (b) the level of manufacturer incentives, (c) the future regulatory environment, (d) our ability to obtain an inventory of desirable new and used vehicles, (e) our relationship with our automobile manufacturers and the willingness of manufacturers to approve future acquisitions, (f) our cost of financing and the availability of credit for consumers, (g) our ability to complete acquisitions and dispositions and the risks associated therewith, (h) foreign exchange controls and currency fluctuations, (i) the impacts of COVID-19 and the armed conflict in Ukraine on our business and the supply chains upon which our business is dependent, (j) the impacts of any potential global recession, (k) our ability to maintain sufficient liquidity to operate, and (l) our ability to successfully integrate recent and future acquisitions. For additional information regarding known material factors that could cause our actual results to differ from our projected results, please see our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements after the date they are made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Investor contacts:

Jason Babbitt

Vice President, Treasurer

Group 1 Automotive, Inc.

[email protected]

Media contacts:

Pete DeLongchamps

Senior Vice President, Manufacturer Relations, Financial Services and Public Affairs

Group 1 Automotive, Inc.

[email protected]

or

Clint Woods

Pierpont Communications, Inc.

713-627-2223

[email protected]

SOURCE Group 1 Automotive, Inc.
Physician council will lead recommendations and maintain medical guidance as clinical research drives improvements in patient diagnoses and precision medicine treatments within community health systems

SPARTANBURG, S.C., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Guardian Research Network, Inc. (GRN), a non-profit community hospital research consortium, launched its new Scientific Advisory Council (SAC) with the council's first meeting last week.

Made up of leading physician-scientists from GRN's national network of health systems, the group represents a collaboration between member physicians and GRN executives. GRN has developed expertise using real-world healthcare data to advance technology and clinical trials.

GRN Scientific Advisory Council Chairman Manmeet Ahluwalia, M.D., FACP, MBA, Miami Cancer Institute, part of Baptist Health South Florida

According to the GRN council charter, the SAC is to "be the governance committee for providing medical judgment, expert advice, creative ideas, and best use of GRN's resources to benefit network participants in the dual mission of hospital-led research and patient care."

Initially, the council will include six scientific and population health leaders from GRN's network members. The council will be led by Manmeet Ahluwalia, M.D., MBA, deputy director, chief scientific officer, and chief of solid tumor medical oncology at Miami Cancer Institute, part of Baptist Health South Florida.

"The formation of this Scientific Advisory Council underscores the commitment of GRN members to innovation. By facilitating connections to ground-breaking research, these health systems illustrate their dedication to continuously exploring improvements in patient care and playing a role in the discovery of new ways to diagnose and treat diseases," said Dr. Ahluwalia, GRN Scientific Advisory Council Chairman.

The following network physicians will serve a two-year term on the GRN council, including:

Samir Dalia , M.D., Mercy Oncology and Hematology Clinic

Mercy Oncology and Hematology Clinic Marc Bingham , M.D., system chief medical information officer at Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System

system chief medical information officer at Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System Brett Oliver , M.D., chief medical information officer for Baptist Health

Tarek (Trey) Bishara , M.D ., medical director of Clinical Laboratories at McLeod Regional Medical Center, and trustee on the McLeod Health Board of Trustees

McLeod McLeod Gian Varbaro , M.D., M.B.A., chief medical officer at Bergen New Bridge Medical Center, and assistant professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School

"We are excited and honored to welcome these hospital-based physician-research leaders who have agreed to serve as stewards for GRN resources. It's a testimony to their hearts for their patients and their desire to bring better treatments to serious diseases such as cancer and diabetes. Our SAC's expertise combined with GRN's growing Real World Data capabilities in the community settings where 84%1 of U.S. healthcare is delivered will create an exciting complement to the traditional, purely academic model," says Mark L. Watson, M.D., Ph.D., chief operating officer for Guardian Research Network.

GRN focuses on precision medicine and population health studies including better testing for early cancer diagnosis and evaluating high unmet medical need patient treatment options in community settings. New projects governed by the council are expected to drive the next generation of healthcare benefits to patients.

1 https://www.aha.org/infographics/2020-07-24-fast-facts-infographics

About Guardian Research Network, Inc. (GRN)

GRN, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, is a nationwide health system research consortium focused on advancing technology to accelerate cures for life-threatening diseases such as cancer. GRN works with life sciences clients and health system partners to increase participation in data-driven clinical trials, optimize therapeutic and diagnostic studies, and employ real-world data to improve patient access to precision medicines in under-served communities. For more, visit www.guardianresearch.org.

GRN Media Contact

Charlene Smith-McCaw, MBA

Guardian Research Network

[email protected]

610-888-9024

SOURCE Guardian Research Network
DUBLIN, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Luxury Cosmetics Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global luxury cosmetics market reached a value of US$ 47.35 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach a value of US$ 64.55 Billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 5.3% during 2021-2027. 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.

Luxury cosmetics are manufactured using premium ingredients and they are widely available in sophisticated packaging. They comprise skincare, haircare, makeup products and fragrances that are sold at a higher price as compared to the drugstore cosmetics. They offer high-end quality, consistency and longevity, which have a noticeable effect on the skin. Some of the variants can effectively clean the top layer of the skin without causing damage and aid in preventing negative environmental impact.



Due to a rise in the disposable income levels of individuals, especially in developing regions, there is an increase in the demand for luxury cosmetics. This, along with the growing awareness about the benefits of using luxury cosmetics, represents one of the key factors driving the market.

Additionally, there is a rise in the penetration of the internet, which has resulted in the expansion of the e-commerce industry across the globe. This, coupled with the wide availability of luxury cosmetics through online and offline distribution channels, is propelling the growth of the market.

Moreover, the escalating demand for halal cosmetics among consumers due to the presence of powerful actives and proven vegan ingredients is positively influencing the market. Besides this, the rising utilization of luxury cosmetics to solve hair and skin related problems, such as hair fall, dandruff, skin rashes, and acne, is offering lucrative growth opportunities to industry investors.

Apart from this, key market players are extensively investing in research and development (R&D) activities to introduce anti-aging cosmetics, fragrances, and oral care products, which is catalyzing the demand for luxury cosmetics. Furthermore, the escalating demand for high-performing color cosmetic products among fashion professionals is bolstering 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 Avon Products Inc. (Natura & Co.), Coty Inc., Estee Lauder Companies Inc., Kao Corporation, Kose Corporation, L'Oreal S.A., LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Oriflame Cosmetics AG, Puig, Revlon Inc., Shiseido Company Limited and Tatcha LLC.



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the global luxury cosmetics market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global luxury cosmetics 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 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 luxury cosmetics 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 Luxury Cosmetics 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 Skincare

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Haircare

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast

6.3 Makeup

6.3.1 Market Trends

6.3.2 Market Forecast

6.4 Fragrances

6.4.1 Market Trends

6.4.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Type

7.1 Organic

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Conventional

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 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 Specialty and Monobrand Stores

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 End User

9.1 Male

9.1.1 Market Trends

9.1.2 Market Forecast

9.2 Female

9.2.1 Market Trends

9.2.2 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 Avon Products Inc. (Natura & Co.)

15.3.1.1 Company Overview

15.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.1.3 SWOT Analysis

15.3.2 Coty Inc.

15.3.2.1 Company Overview

15.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.2.3 SWOT Analysis

15.3.3 Estee Lauder Companies Inc.

15.3.3.1 Company Overview

15.3.3.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.3.3 SWOT Analysis

15.3.4 Kao Corporation

15.3.4.1 Company Overview

15.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.4.3 SWOT Analysis

15.3.5 Kose Corporation

15.3.5.1 Company Overview

15.3.5.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.5.3 SWOT Analysis

15.3.6 L'Oreal S.A.

15.3.6.1 Company Overview

15.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.6.3 SWOT Analysis

15.3.7 LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton

15.3.7.1 Company Overview

15.3.7.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.7.3 SWOT Analysis

15.3.8 Oriflame Cosmetics AG

15.3.8.1 Company Overview

15.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.8.3 SWOT Analysis

15.3.9 Puig

15.3.9.1 Company Overview

15.3.9.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.9.3 SWOT Analysis

15.3.10 Revlon Inc.

15.3.10.1 Company Overview

15.3.10.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.10.3 SWOT Analysis

15.3.11 Shiseido Company Limited

15.3.11.1 Company Overview

15.3.11.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.11.3 SWOT Analysis

15.3.12 Tatcha LLC

15.3.12.1 Company Overview

15.3.12.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.12.3 SWOT Analysis

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/p0j53b

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/539438/Research_and_Markets_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Research and Markets
"We are pleased to welcome Tom to Leidos and excited to draw upon his impressive background in internal audit," said Roger Krone, Leidos Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "Tom will play a key role in leading our audit function and supporting our unwavering commitment to integrity and ethical behavior."

Sanglier brings more than 32 years of experience in the areas of financial and operational auditing, risk assessment, and internal control. He most recently served as Senior Director, Finance & Operations Internal Audit at Raytheon Technologies. There he oversaw risk assessment and audit activities for two international businesses. Sanglier also served as Partner, Advisory Services at Ernst & Young, where he developed and managed a portfolio of multi-national clients in the defense, manufacturing and software industries.

Sanglier earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Michigan and holds various professional certifications, including Certified Public Accountant and Certified Internal Auditor. He serves on the Institute of Internal Auditors global board of directors and is chairman for the North American board of directors. He is also a published book author on auditing and disruptive technology.

About Leidos

Leidos is a Fortune 500 technology, engineering, and science solutions and services leader working to solve the world's toughest challenges in the defense, intelligence, civil, and health markets. The company's 43,000 employees support vital missions for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Leidos reported annual revenues of approximately $13.7 billion for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021. For more information, visit www.Leidos.com .

SOURCE Leidos
TSX-V: MKO; OTCQX: MAKOF

VANCOUVER, BC, July 5th, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Mako Mining Corp. (TSXV: MKO) (OTCQX: MAKOF) ("Mako" or the "Company") is pleased to provide an update on its first anniversary since declaring commercial production at its San Albino mine in Northern Nicaragua. All $ references in this press release are expressed in United States dollars.

Akiba Leisman, CEO of Mako states that "this past year has been transformative for the Company. Mako has now been in commercial production for 1 year. Since that time, the Company has profitably produced in excess of 36,000 ounces of gold, reached nameplate capacity of 500 tpd in December of last year, invested over $6 million in growth exploration, repaid approximately $10 million in principal, and began a capital return program to shareholders. This has set the stage for an expansion of our operations to 1,000 tpd, while beginning a $17.2 million exploration program which has already led to additional discoveries on our property. We are especially proud that our resource model has positively reconciled by over 10% in terms of Au ounces despite 28% of the material mined being from the inferred category. There are still aspects of the mine and plant that need further optimization, which are currently being addressed, but the first year of commercial production has been a success, and our team should be proud of their accomplishments."

A detailed operating update for Q2 2022 will be released later in July. Having just finished Q2 2022, some of the production statistics below are estimates as they have not been fully reconciled. Additional details and commentary will also be made available in that forthcoming update.

First Year Recap

Mining  Over the past 12 months of mining, the grade of the diluted vein has averaged greater than 16 g/t Au, and blended with historical dump and other material, mining has been able to deliver over 500 tonnes per day of greater than 7.5 g/t Au to the mill.

The resource model is proving to be excellent, with mine reconciliation being positive 10.5% during this period in term of Au ounces. The comparable material from the mineral resource estimate prepared by Mine Development Associates, a division of RESPEC, out of Reno, Nevada was categorized as 42% measured, 30% indicated and 28% inferred material.

A technical report for the mineral resource is available under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com and is also available on the Company's website at www.makominingcorp.com (see press release dated October 19, 2020)

The processes and procedures our team have implemented for grade control have been outstanding. Mining dilution is generally kept to levels below 30 cm on either side of the vein. Furthermore, as we are now mining more difficult material to process, our ability to selectively mine is a benefit as we can sample, separate and stockpile difficult to process material. Fortunately, the material that has been more difficult to process tends to be from the foot-wall and hanging-wall of the vein rather than the high-grade vein itself.

Processing  The mill throughput was fully debottlenecked beginning in December 2021, after a series of adjustments were made to the plant, and as our employees became fully trained. The processing facility has been operating at above nameplate capacity of 500 tpd since late last year.

The plant transitioned to almost exclusively fresh material in March of this year. The fresh material contains naturally occurring carbon which can interfere with the gold recovery process. Eliminating free cyanide in the grinding circuit and only adding cyanide to the slurry in the CIL is essential in order to achieve optimal recoveries. Reducing cyanide concentrations from recycled water to optimal levels required a change in reagents. We were previously using the standard INCO/SO2 process (sodium metabisulfite and copper sulfate) but the results weren`t consistent and reliable. To adjust, we are now detoxing with sodium hypochlorite (common bleach), but the logistics needed to obtain necessary quantities will take some time to develop. Additionally, there are minor plant modifications being implemented to automate the detoxification process that will require de minimis levels of additional capex which are expected to be completed in Q3 2022. Despite these challenges, the Company sold just over 9,000 ounces of gold for the quarter, similar to the last 2 quarters.

In the meantime, we have developed robust sampling mechanisms and processes to make sure particularly problematic material is kept away from the mill as well as other initiatives such as: i) blending stockpiled oxide material from historical waste dumps to the mill feed, ii) increasing carbon to CIL tanks to reduce metal loss, iii) regenerating carbon more frequently, iv) making minor adjustments to the Knelson concentrator to increase capacity and availability of our gravity circuit.

The mill head grade has averaged greater than 7.5 g/t Au for the past year, ranking San Albino amongst the highest-grade open pit operations in the world. To the extent possible, high-grade material was deferred until the middle of June while some of the metallurgical issues were addressed; however, head grades have exceeded 10 g/t Au since June 16th, 2022.

Our tailings are filtered and stacked dry (at approximately 18% moisture) and stored on a geomembrane-lined tailings storage facility ("TSF"). There is no discharge of water throughout our facility. Compaction of the tails at our TSF is better than planned, which bodes well for the life of mine capacity of the TSF. Rainy season commenced in May, and the various water management systems we've implemented have been working above specifications. Mako is the only company in Nicaragua that uses a dry-stack TSF, and we are especially proud of our environmental stewardship at San Albino.

Exploration results continue to be strong and justified the expansion of our exploration program to $17.2 million (see press release dated March 9, 2022) which we expect to spend over the next 18 months.

The Company recently announced a new discovery at Las Conchitas North (see press release dated June 1, 2022) and expanded the area around the San Albino SW Pit from 50m x 50m to 530m x 470m (see press release dated June 21, 2022).

At Las Conchitas, we expanded the Mango Zone to 213m down dip by intersecting 138.29 g/t over 1.3m estimated true width (see press release dated March 17, 2022) and demonstrated up to 850m of strike potential at Las Conchitas with drilling (see press release dated August 18, 2021).

Regionally, channel sampling at La Segoviana has yielded up to 105.7 g/t over 1.5m estimated true width (see press release dated March 24, 2022), and drilling for the first time in history has commenced at Potrerillos.

Safety and Health  The Company views safety as a cornerstone of our operations. We have made significant investments in safety training and facilities. Mako didn't register any lost time accidents this past year.

COVID still poses some challenges; however, our protocols and corrective measures avoided production slowdowns even during 2021 when the impact of the pandemic was more severe. Mako registered 195 positive cases in the past 12 months and 88.4% of our employees are vaccinated.

Community & Permits  We are very fortunate to have a community that supports responsible mining. Mako is heavily invested in improving the community in which we operate, contributing to infrastructure projects such as bridges and road maintenance, and supporting institutions such as the local police and schools. Mako also prioritizes local employment, with 97% of our workforce from Nicaragua and 70% from the local Nueva Segovia region. Over the past year, two separate community consultations passed with unanimous consent, which led to the approval of our regional Potrerillos and La Segoviana drilling permits. Over the course of the next 6-9 months, we expect to receive additional permits to begin mining at Las Conchitas and develop the associated infrastructure (e.g. roads, waste dumps, etc.) in order to justify the expansion of our plant to 1,000 tpd for which we received an expansion permit in 2021.

Financial  Over the past 12 months approximately $10 million of principal has been repaid to Wexford and Sailfish and 1.4 million shares have been repurchased. The last equity raise the Company did was nearly 2 years ago (see press releases dated June 26 and July 17, 2020) and no additional debt capital has been raised since February 2021 (see press release dated February 22, 2021) 1.

Operating cash flow from the mine has allowed us to spend over $6 million on growth exploration since declaring commercial production, and to commence a $17.2 million exploration program beginning in March.

1 The $6.4m debt facility raised on February 22, 2021, from Nebari Natural Resources Credit Fund was subsequently refinanced by a $8m gold loan from Sailfish Royalty Corp (see press release dated August 30, 2021). 100% of the gold loan was used to repay debt: $6.4m to Nebari and $1.6m to Wexford. The $1.6m repaid to Wexford as part of this refinancing is in addition to the $10m of principal repayments made to Wexford and Sailfish over the past 12 months.

Qualified Person

John Rust, a metallurgical engineer, and qualified person (as defined under NI 43-101) has read and approved the technical information contained in this press release with the exception of the mine reconciliation figures. Mr. Rust is a senior metallurgist and a consultant to the Company.

John M. Kowalchuk, P.Geo, a geologist and qualified person (as defined under National Instrument 43-101) has read and approved the mine reconciliation figures contained in this press release. Mr. Kowalchuk is a senior geologist and a consultant to the Company.

On behalf of the Board,

Akiba Leisman

CEO

About Mako

Mako Mining Corp. is a publicly listed gold mining, development and exploration company. The Company operates the high-grade San Albino gold mine in Nueva Segovia, Nicaragua, which ranks as one of the highest-grade open pit gold mines globally. Mako's primary objective is to operate San Albino profitably and fund exploration of prospective targets on its district-scale land package.

Visit our website at www.makominingcorp.com and SEDAR www.sedar.com.

Forward-Looking Information:

Statements contained herein, other than historical fact, may be considered "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. The forward-looking information contained herein is based on the Company's reasonable assumptions and current plans and expectations, and forward-looking statements contained herein include, without limitation, that a detailed operating update for Q2 2022 will be released later in July; that minor plant modifications being implemented to automate the detoxification process are expected to be completed in Q3 2022; that over the course of the next 6-9 months, we expect to receive additional permits to begin mining at Las Conchitas and develop the associated infrastructure (e.g. roads, waste dumps, etc.) in order to justify the expansion of our plant to 1,000 tpd; and that the Company can operate San Albino profitably in order to fund exploration of prospective targets on its district-scale land package. Such forward-looking information is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking information, including, without limitation, the risk that the estimated production statistics do not prove to be accurate; the ongoing results of the Company's drilling programs do not produce the positive results expected; the minor plant modifications are not completed on the timeline expected; that the Company does not obtain the necessary additional permits to begin mining at Las Conchitas and development the associated infrastructure on the timeline expected or at all; political risks and uncertainties involving the Company's exploration properties; the inherent uncertainty of cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expense; commodity price fluctuations and other risks and uncertainties as disclosed in the Company's public disclosure filings on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Such information contained herein represents management's best judgment as of the date hereof, based on information currently available and is included for the purposes of providing investors with the Company's expectations regarding the Company's operations, financial health and proposed exploration programs, and may not be appropriate for other purposes. Mako does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Mako Mining Corp.
In her new role, Myers oversees Care Management, Managed Long-Term Care, H.I.V. Services, and Childrens services. She also supports other aspects of the medical management of the Plan and continues to maintain an H.I.V. primary care practice.

Dr. Myers has extensive experience in public and population health, infectious diseases, and internal medicine and is well-versed in evidence-based practice and sexual health. Before joining MetroPlusHealth, she worked at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH), where she was Director of H.I.V. Prevention in the Bureau of H.I.V. from 2013-2020 and led the scale-up of biomedical H.I.V. prevention strategies and H.I.V. self-testing citywide.

"Julie is exceptionally qualified and has demonstrated excellent leadership in H.I.V. Services," said Sanjiv Shah, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of MetroPlusHealth. "Since joining MetroPlusHealth, she has also made outstanding contributions in key areas including Utilization Management, Pharmacy, Care Management, COVID-19 initiatives, and Community and Media outreach to members and providers."

"I am delighted to be part of the terrific team at MetroPlusHealth under the leadership of Drs. Schwartz and Shah, and I am now both honored and energized to serve a greater number of New Yorkers in this new role," said Julie Myers, M.D., M.P.H., Deputy Chief Medical Officer of MetroPlusHealth. "As always, I remain firmly committed to supporting our members to live healthy lives through excellent access and high-quality, person-centered care."

Myers earned her B.S. from Yale University, her M.D. from Cornell University's Weill Medical College, and an M.P.H from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She completed her internship and residency in Internal Medicine-Primary Care at Massachusetts General Hospital and her clinical fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

For more information about MetroPlusHealth, visit www.metroplus.org .

About MetroPlusHealth

Since 1985, MetroPlus Health Plan has built a reputation for providing access to affordable, quality health care to residents across New York City. MetroPlusHealth is the plan of choice for over 600,000 New Yorkers and has a five-star rating based on the State's 2020 Consumer's Guide to Medicaid and Child Health Plus Managed Care Plans in New York City. The health plan's robust network of primary care doctors and specialists includes many independent community providers. Culturally sensitive, and fluent in more than 40 languages, MetroPlusHealth's staff is as diverse as the great city it serves. For more information about MetroPlusHealth plans, benefits, and services, visit www.metroplus.org and join the conversation at facebook.com/metroplushealth and twitter @metroplushealth. MetroPlusHealth is a wholly-owned subsidiary of N.Y.C. Health + Hospitals, the nation's largest public health system.

CONTACT:

Divendra Jaffar

212-908-3380/646-952-3243

[email protected]

SOURCE MetroPlusHealth
For the 5th year in a row, Milton Security and Cyber Defense Technologies team up to host VETCON at DEFCON 30.

BREA, Calif. and DULLES, Va., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- In the close-enough words of Kenny Loggins, "Highway To The..Painful Zone", VETCON Co-Founders Milton Security (the global leader of Dynamic Threat Hunting) and Cyber Defense Technologies (CDT) (specialists in security solutions for mission-critical systems) jointly announced an in-person VETCON V at DEFCON 30 in Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday, August 13, 2022.

VETCON

Co-founded in 2018 by Jim McMurry and William Kimble, the founders of Milton Security and Cyber Defense Technologies, respectively, the VETCON conference became an official event of the DEFCON Hacker Conference designed to support veterans in the Information Security (InfoSec) field. Unofficially, VETCON became one of DEFCON's "Can't Miss" events, allowing veterans an entertaining space to network, connect and, quite literally, relive the glamorousand occasionally unglamorousdays of serving America.

"Last year's event, 'RECALLED' was a massive success, given that we were just allowed to be back in-person for events," said James McMurry, Milton CEO. "This year, we're expecting an even bigger turnout and stronger, friendly competition among the different branches. This year's theme is inspired by quite a few 80s references that have re-emerged at the top of their respective charts and if I have any piece of advice for attendees, you might want to brush up on those references."

This year's VETCON theme is "NEED FOR SPEED: Highway to the Painful Zone." Through various military service-borne contests and feats of menial skills, veterans are pitted against different services to win official VETCON swag, the ultimate badge of honor and collector's items for veteran DEFCON attendees. One service will reign supreme at the end of the night and carry forward bragging rights until next year's event. In addition to the friendly competition, there will also be a "Recruiting Office", a resume review services for veterans.

William Kimble, CEO of Cyber Defense Technologies added, "The VETCON party at DEFCON is more than just fun and gamesour mission brings veterans in the InfoSec community closer through networking, teamwork, and healthy competition. Although I look forward to the interservice rivalry, as a Marine veteran, I'm sure the Marines will win everything."

The event is open to all DEFCON attendees with a focus on military veterans. VETCON V will take place starting at 2100 on Saturday, August 13th. The VETCON planners are expecting around 2,500 people in attendance. For those that cannot attend in person, the VETCON discord channel is an option for virtual attendance. Further details will be provided as the date approaches. To follow along for future updates, follow @VetConActual on Twitter or visit the website at www.vetconactual.com .

About Milton Security

Milton Security is the global leader in Dynamic Threat Hunting. Operating a true 24x7x365 Security Operation Center with AI/ML-enhanced human Threat Hunters, Milton Security is on a mission to put exceptional cyber security within reach for all organizations. For 15 years, Milton's team of Threat Hunters have stopped hundreds of thousands of threats and assisted organizations in defending against threat actors around the clock.

We were the first Dynamic Threat Hunting provider, and we're still the leader.

www.miltonsecurity.com | +1.888.674.9001 | [email protected]

Milton Security, Inc., is a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business started in 2007.

Milton Media Contact:

Sal Vilardo

Director of Marketing

[email protected]

(657) 452-7343 x5008

About Cyber Defense Technologies

Cyber Defense Technologies (CDT), based in Dulles, Virginia, provides niche cyber capabilities to critical security missions since 2010. As a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), the firm is comprised of a cadre of 85% US Military veterans. CDT is focused on securing critical technologies that preserve national security domains. CDT's high-caliber services are achieved through utilizing extensively credentialed engineers with freedom of thought to solve challenging security problems. CDT's niche is the enhancement and safeguarding of security missions within high stakes organizations.

Security Driven. Mission Focused.

www.cyberdefensetechnologies.com | +1.800.658.1846 | [email protected]

Cyber Defense Technologies is a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business started in 2010.

CDT Media Contact:

Stacy Jutras

Director of Marketing

[email protected]

571.393.1379

SOURCE Milton Security, Inc.
From Papaya to Styrax Benzoin, Every Natralus Ingredient Is Chosen for Its Safe, Efficacious Effect on the Skin

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- It's one thing to create natural products. It's another to use the correct natural ingredients to create potent, effective natural tools. Nowhere is this struggle between natural ingredients and efficacy more apparent than in the skincare, hygiene, and cosmetics industries.

The struggle to maintain healthy, beautiful skin without harmful chemical additives is what led the founder of Natralus Australia to launch his company in the first place. The indie beauty brand is already popular in the Land Down Under and has recently begun the process of entering the U.S. market. The hope is to deliver the company's natural, high-quality natural skin health products to increasingly informed American consumers who are looking for healthy-yet-effective options for their daily skincare routines.

"The motto of our company is to facilitate natural skin health," explains Natralus founder and current CEO and Managing Director John Rowe, "That's why each and every formula Natralus creates is crafted with a purpose, with an end goal in mind. We don't just throw stereotypical ingredients into a blender and then put them in a bottle. We do our research and find the best superfoods Mother Nature has to offer. Then we blend them to perfection to create each of our products."

The most common superfood ingredient that the Natralus team utilizes is Carica papaya or "Paw Paw" as it's known in Australia. "We've been Australia's leading Natural Paw Paw brand since 2010," says Rowe, adding that, as a skincare ingredient, Paw Paw has the power to function as an antioxidant and can help by its anti-aging, healing, and restorative qualities.

Rowe also highlights several other superfoods that his brand consistently utilizes, such as Shea Butter, Calendula, and Styrax Benzoin . With each item, the founder reflected the deep wisdom that lies at the heart of his company's operations. He highlights the Southeast Asian Styrax Benzoin tree as a particular example, "What are the benefits of benzoin?" Rowe muses, "You can attribute the skincare benefits of the essential oil to its potential properties as, among other things, a moisturizer, deodorant, disinfectant , astringent, and antiseptic."

To drive home the depth that Natralus Australia pours into its research and development, Rowe emphasizes that throughout his company's existence, his team has always strived to create a range of natural hygiene and cosmetic products that customers can consistently return to for their needs. "Forget all of the other options," Rowe declares with a smile, "All you need is Natralus." It's already a true statement for many happy Australian customers  and likely many new American ones in the not-too-distant future, as well.

About Natralus Australia: Indie natural skin health brand Natralus Australia was established in 2010 and operates out of Adelaide, Australia. The company focuses on empowering women and parents to use a more natural approach for both themselves and their families throughout their skincare and wellness activities. Learn more about Natralus at natralus.com .

Media Contact

Brittany Rowe

T: +61 8 8382 3000

F: 1300 838 293

E: [email protected]

A: PO Box 156 Lonsdale SA 5160

W: www.natralus.com.au

SOURCE Natralus
DUBLIN, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Medical Laser Market - Global Outlook and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

As a technology that offers a high degree of flexibility, productivity, sustainability, and precision, laser technology has widespread acceptance and success across several industries, including manufacturing, automotive, and, most importantly, medical & healthcare industries.

From laser eye surgery to the non-invasive treatment of many ailments, laser technology has enabled healthcare facilities, physicians, surgeons, and nurses to provide better care more swiftly and efficiently.

A rise in demand for minimally invasive and non-invasive procedures in cosmetics and dermatology boosts demand for medical lasers across the globe. Commercial entry of innovative diode lasers and solid-state lasers have enabled surgeons to perform scar-less and bloodless surgeries, fueling the demand for medical laser surgeries.

Increasing acceptance of LASIK surgery for severe visual impairment contributes to the growth of the medical laser market. Around 720,000 Americans in the U.S. underwent LASIK surgeries in 2020. Approximately 760,000 LASIK surgeries were performed in Europe.

The following factors are likely to contribute to the growth of the global medical lasers market:

Laser Advancements for Pain-Free Aesthetic Treatments

Growing Trend of Laser-Based Medical Imaging

Increase in Target Population and Number of Eye Procedures

Growing Demand for Medical Tourism in Developing Countries

Growing Demand for Pain-Free Laser Treatments

Patients opt out of surgical procedures in favor of newer laser-based technologies with lower risk and better results. These treatments are more precise and take a shorter time than surgical treatments. The healing time is faster, and the patient experiences less pain, scarring, and swelling post-surgery. In plastic surgery and cosmetic treatment, medical lasers play a significant role in procedures that are non-invasive and void of post-treatment recovery time and can be applied to wrinkle removal, fat reduction, and muscle toning.



Advancements of Lasers in the Medical Industry

The introduction of the latest medical technology and the rising popularity of minimally invasive surgeries are now pushing medical science to an upper level. With the growing and aging population worldwide, machine learning and artificial intelligence are offering new and better approaches. A.I. incorporation into cosmetic laser treatment can help eliminate the potential of human error, enhance precision for better results, reduce potential risks and side effects, simplify treatment for doctors, and creating more cost-effective approach for patients and doctors.

Other potential uses for A.I. also include laser removal of tattoos and skin cancer treatment. Lasers are also showing promising results in medical imaging. Medical lasers are being used in several applications, including advanced technologies that meet current challenges in clinical diagnosis and can address a wide range of health care issues. Photoacoustic imaging is one method that includes examining living materials by using laser light and ultrasonic sound waves.

Furthermore, in recent years, novel biomedical laser applications based on new laser types or novel energy delivery systems are also gaining significance.



Factors Affecting the Growth of the Medical Laser Market

Hazards associated with lasers are major factors hindering their adoption in the medical field. Visible light lasers can damage the retina by causing blind spots, and on the optic nerve can lead to vision impairment. Diode Laser, Neodymium yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd: YAG) laser, and holmium yttrium aluminum garnet (Ho: YAG) laser-focused on the retina can cause damage to the tissues in the eyes.

Furthermore, the high cost of laser-based treatments such as cosmetic/aesthetic procedures and eye treatments are shifting people towards alternate procedures. In addition to this, stringent guidelines by the regulatory authorities are posing significant challenges to medical laser manufacturers.



Impact of COVID-19 on Medical Laser Market

With the advent of COVID-19, most surgical procedures were postponed while only emergency cases were addressed. Due to this, there was a significant decline in the aesthetic procedures performed using medical lasers. As lockdown restrictions eased for non-essential services, many surgeons began seeing an influx of patients seeking aesthetic plastic surgery. According to annual Aesthetic Plastic Surgery Statistics for 2020 published by the Aesthetic Society, Americans spent over $9 billion on aesthetic plastic surgeries, even amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Competitive Landscape

The global medical laser market is highly competitive and dynamic, characterized by many international, regional, and local vendors providing various lasers. Bausch & Lomb, Candela Medical, Koninklijke Philips, Boston Scientific, Cutera, Fotona, Hologic, El.En. S.P.A, IRIDEX, and Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical are the major vendors with significant shares in the market.

Significant acquisitions have made these companies stronger by expanding their consumer base, minimizing marketplace competition, and creating higher value than each company offers individually.

For instance, Boston Scientific acquired Lumenis to integrate its medical lasers portfolio and expand its global footprint to advance growth across Europe and Asia. Furthermore, vendors are also active by-product launches, such as Candela Medical, which announced the launch of the Frax Pro system in 2021. Several market players invest in developing medical laser fibers for better productivity, like OmniGuide Holdings, which recently launched a new OTO-U CO2 laser system fiber.

Key Questions Answered:

1. What is the Estimated Value of The Global Medical Laser Market By 2027?

2. What is the Growth Rate of The Global Medical Laser Market?

3. What are the Latest Global Medical Laser Market Trends?

4. Who are the Key Players in The Global Medical Laser Market?

5. Which Region Will Have the Highest Growth in The Global Medical Laser Market?



Key Topics Covered:



1 Research Methodology



2 Research Objectives



3 Research Process



4 Scope & Coverage

4.1 Market Definition

4.2 Base Year

4.3 Scope of the Study



5 Report Assumptions & Caveats

5.1 Key Caveats

5.2 Currency Conversion

5.3 Market Derivation



6 Market at a Glance



7 Introduction

8 Market Opportunities & Trends

8.1 Advances in Laser Technology for Pain-Free Aesthetic Treatments

8.2 Increased Product Launches

8.3 Growth in Laser-Based Medical Imaging

8.4 Machine Learning & Ai Augmenting the Growth of Medical Lasers



9 Market Growth Enablers

9.1 High Demand for Non-Invasive Cosmetic Surgeries

9.2 Increased Target Population and Number of Eye Procedures

9.3 Higher Acquisitions and Product Approvals

9.4 Growth in Demand for Medical Tourism in Developing Countries



10 Market Restraints

10.1 Major Risks Associated With Medical Laser Surgeries

10.2 High Cost of Laser-Based Treatments

10.3 Regulatory Hurdles on Medical Laser Systems



11 Market Landscape

11.1 Market Overview

11.2 Market Size & Forecast

11.3 Impact of Covid-19 on Medical Lasers Market

11.4 Five Forces Analysis



12 Type

12.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

12.2 Market Overview

12.3 Diode Laser Devices

12.4 Gas Laser Devices

12.5 Solid-State Laser Devices

12.6 Dye Laser Devices



13 Power

13.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

13.2 Market Overview

13.3 High

13.4 Low



14 Application

14.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

14.2 Market Overview

14.3 Diagnosis, Therapy & Surgery

14.4 Aesthetics



15 Procedure

15.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

15.2 Market Overview

15.3 Ophthalmology

15.4 Dermatology

15.5 Dentistry

15.6 Gynecology

15.7 Urology

15.8 Cardiology

15.9 Others



16 End-User

16.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

16.2 Market Overview

16.3 Hospitals

16.4 Aesthetics Clinics

16.5 Physicians' Offices

16.6 Others



17 Geography

17.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

17.2 Geographic Overview



18 North America

18.1 Market Overview

18.2 Market Size & Forecast

18.3 Key Countries



19 Europe

19.1 Market Overview

19.2 Market Size & Forecast

19.3 Key Countries



20. Apac

20.1 Market Overview

20.2 Market Size & Forecast

20.3 Key Countries



21. Latin America

21.1 Market Overview

21.2 Market Size & Forecast

21.3 Key Countries



22. Middle East & Africa

22.1 Market Overview

22.2 Market Size & Forecast

22.3 Key Countries



23. Competitive Landscape

23.1 Competition Overview

23.2 Market Share Analysis



24. Key Company Profiles

24.1 Bausch & Lomb

24.2 Candela Medical

24.3 Koninklijke Philips N.V

24.4 Boston Scientific

24.5 Hologic

24.6 Fotona

24.7 Cutera

24.8 El.En. S.P.A

24.9 Iridex

24.10 Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical



25. Other Prominent Vendors

25.1 Beijing Adss Development

25.2 Advanced Medtech

25.3 Aerolase

25.4 Alcon

25.5 Alna-Medicalsystem

25.6 Angiodynamics

25.7 Aspen Laser

25.8 Astanza Laser

25.9 Beijing Sanhe Beauty S & T Co.

25.10 Biolase

25.11 Biolitec

25.12 Biotec Italia

25.13 Bison Medical

25.14 Bluecore Company

25.15 Coherent

25.16 Cryolife

25.17 Dentsply Sirona

25.18 Dominion Aesthetic Technologies

25.19 Domino

25.20 Gigaalaser

25.21 Inmode

25.22 Ipg Photonics

25.23 Jenoptik

25.24 Leaflife Technology

25.25 Linline Medical Systems

25.26 Lutronic

25.27 Lynton Lasers

25.28 Medart Aps

25.29 Medency

25.30 Photomedex

25.31 Ra Medical Systems

25.32 Reimers & Janssen

25.33 Sciton

25.34 Venus Concept

25.35 Wavemed

25.36 Wuhan Dimed Laser Technology

25.37 Wuhan Zjzk Technology

25.38 Zeiss International

25.39 Zimmer Medizinsysteme



26. Report Summary

27. Quantitative Summary



28. Appendix

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/wmhine

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

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Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/539438/Research_and_Markets_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Research and Markets
GLENDALE, Calif., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Lilit Davtyan, Chief Executive Officer for marketing automation company Phonexa, has been named a nominee for the Los Angeles Business Journal's "Women's Leadership Awards."

Davtyan's nomination comes at a remarkable time for the executive and Phonexa, as the company continues acting on its dedication to female empowerment within the industry and its leadership teams with various female-centered initiatives.

Lilit Davtyan

"Being nominated for this prestigious award is exciting, and an incredible honor," said Davtyan. "I want to thank the Los Angeles Business Journal for the recognition and for continuing to empower women across all industries."

As one of the first hires of Phonexa  the performance marketing software and all-in-one marketing automation solution for calls, leads, clicks, email, SMS, accounting, and more  Davtyan's rise through the ranks was most recently highlighted by her appointment to CEO in October .

Davtyan's career has been marked by a growing and diverse portfolio of impressive recognition and honor from prestigious publications and awards organizations alike.

Over the last two years, Davtyan was named "CFO of the Year" by the Los Angeles Business Journal in 2020 , nominated again for the honors by the LABJ in 2021, and also nominated by the Los Angeles Times for a CFO Leadership Award .

In May, Davtyan was named a finalist for the San Fernando Valley Business Journal's "Women's Leadership Awards."

Davtyan also received the title of a Gold Winner for the "Woman Leadership of the Year" category by TITAN Business Awards. She was also named " Executive of the Year " for the 2021 Los Angeles Business Journal's Women's Leadership Series & Awards.

Davtyan's successful track record has spilled over into her contributions and current membership in the Forbes Business Council and CHIEF, a private network designed to promote female leaders.

Davtyan currently oversees Phonexa's big-picture growth strategies as she works to bond Phonexa with other companies through meaningful partnerships .

Davtyan is also a Certified Public Accountant who received her B.B.A. from Woodbury University and received her Masters of Business Taxation from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

For more information about Davtyan, connect with her on LinkedIn .

About Phonexa: Phonexa is an all-in-one marketing automation solution for calls, leads, clicks, email, SMS, accounting, and more. The software company powers direct advertisers and lead generators alike across all businesses and industries by optimizing inbound web and call campaigns, and outbound call, email, and SMS campaigns  all while having the ability to enhance the consumer journey along every step of the way. Complete with a suite of turnkey marketing products and solutions, Phonexa's customizable tools are uniquely designed to maximize workflow efficiency and revenue. Phonexa has the scalability, tools, and partnerships to serve clients across industries, especially those with high consumer demand products and services. For more information, please visit www.Phonexa.com.

Contact:

Manouk Akopyan

818-800-0000

[email protected]

SOURCE Phonexa
Prior to joining RCA, Dr. Un was the Chief Psychiatric Officer for Aetna/CVS and led in the creation of Aetna's vast behavioral health program for the insurer's more than 1 million health providers across the nation. Dr. Un received his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and completed his residency at University of Pennsylvania Hospital.

"RCA's vision for integrated behavioral health services is accessible, precise and personalized," Dr. Un said. "World-class mental health care demands precision with diagnosis, treatment planning and delivery. All three elements have to align to meet the patient where they are with their recovery needs and their readiness to change."

Joining Dr. Un, Dr. Peter Vernig, has been appointed as Vice President of Mental Health Services. Dr. Vernig will oversee the expansion of mental health care across the organization including outpatient, inpatient, and digital health. Prior to joining RCA, Dr. Vernig was Chief Clinical Officer at Friends Hospital in Philadelphia, the oldest private psychiatric hospital in the country.

Dr. Vernig is well known in the mental health field and speaks widely on treatment for mental illness, emerging health trends, and modern behavioral health strategies.

"The focus of RCA's mental health program is to provide effective and compassionate care for people living with mental illness in a structured program that meets patients' individual needs," Dr. Vernig said. "We have seen the need for mental health services grow exponentially. This was happening prior to the COVID pandemic, and the fear, isolation, and uncertainty of the past several years has accelerated this trend. We have developed new RCA programs to help our patients address their mental health needs whether they have a substance use disorder or not."

More than 44 million Americans suffer from some type of mental health disorder each year. To address the scale of this growing problem, Drs. Un and Vernig's comprehensive structured mental health program is offered at the outpatient level for patients with the many different forms of mental illness. Evidence-based care is available for patients with bipolar, depressive, anxiety, trauma, personality, and many other mental health conditions who are experiencing a wide variety of symptoms.

"Symptoms and signs of mental health conditions are really difficult to discern for a lay person," explained Dr. Un. "Very often, it evolves slowly, in a way that feels like, it's just stress or it's just me adjusting to a relationship issue. When we start to notice that we're not relating to others like we used to, that our patterns of sleep, energy, and appetite have changed, or whether we're not just functioning well at school or at work, those are all signs and symptoms that we might benefit from an assessment." See video of Dr. Un's comments here.

As with RCA treatment for substance use disorder, mental health care is affordable and covered in-network with many private insurers.

RCA's new mental health outpatient treatment program is available now in Pennsylvania and in Indiana, with additional programs expected this year across the RCA network. Care is available with highly skilled psychiatrists, therapists and counselors able to treat patients in their homes or dormitories across the state through virtual care, hybrid options, as well as in person in specific locations.

Dr. Un and Vernig also oversee successful RCA inpatient programs to treat mental health disorders coexisting with SUD. Called the Balance program, this treatment option is available at many RCA inpatient and outpatient treatment centers across the country and has been acclaimed widely by patients and families across the RCA network. The program uses Dialectical Behavior Therapy to address the needs of patients. "So many people in recovery from drugs and alcohol also live with the challenges of mental illness. This can make staying healthy in the long term more challenging. By focusing on both, we aim to treat not just the symptoms of a patient's substance use disorder but the source as well," said Dr. Vernig.

ABOUT RCA:

Recovery Centers of America is dedicated to helping patients achieve a life of recovery through evidence-based alcohol and drug addiction treatment and mental health care. RCA has ten inpatient treatment facilities in the United States in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Illinois. RCA also has outpatient programs near all inpatient facilities and centers offering medications for addiction (MAT) treatment programs in New Jersey (including Somerdale, Camden County, Trenton, and Woodbridge) and Pennsylvania (Lansdowne), RCA also offers telehealth treatment services. Patients can obtain immediate mental health treatment and substance use disorder care by calling 1-800-RECOVERY.

Media Contact:

[email protected]

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RecoveryCentersofAmerica/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/recoverycentersofamerica/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/recovery-centers-of-america

Twitter - https://twitter.com/RecoveryCOA

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKJMInu81ZCVAgqfvjlHxyw

SOURCE Recovery Centers of America
Based in Connecticut, iTech has over 20 years of experience offering expert solutions as an IBM Gold Business Partner. The company has worked alongside financial services, manufacturing and retail organizations, helping customers leverage IBM i infrastructure strategies. The acquisition of iTech brings a team of certified technical consultants, IBM i system administrators and skilled technicians with a deep understanding of IBM Power Systems.

"At iTech, we take pride in our dedication to the success of our people and customers," said Pete Massiello, President of iTech Solutions Group. "Joining Service Express gives us the ability to expand our service offerings to existing and new customers, which was challenging as a smaller organization. I'm looking forward to working with the Service Express team to create synergy and bring our solutions to more companies around the globe."

In addition to hardware solutions, consulting and managed services, iTech provides customers with IBM i cloud hosting solutions by utilizing iInTheCloud infrastructure. iInTheCloud is a cloud hosting provider with Tier III data centers built on IBM Power Systems to deliver secure, scalable and resilient solutions for companies running IBM i, AIX and PowerLinux.

iInTheCloud allows organizations to host production, test, development or replicate environments to support disaster recovery and business continuity. The company's Michigan-based data centers grant companies access to redundant power, cooling and communication feeds ensuring environments are highly available.

"My focus has always been on creating flexible, reliable, and scalable solutions for IBM i and Power System customers around the Midwest," said Larry Bolhuis, Co-President of iInTheCloud. "With Service Express' headquarters only minutes from our data centers, the company has been the go-to service provider for many of our customers, as well as for iInTheCloud since its inception. I'm excited to expand our support options and capabilities for our new and existing customers."

Service Express offers an extensive portfolio of solutions, including data center maintenance, managed and infrastructure services designed to help customers maintain and evolve their digital IT strategies.

"The acquisition of iTech and iInTheCloud accelerate the expansion of our managed and infrastructure service offerings to the U.S.," said Ron Alvesteffer, President and CEO of Service Express. "We anticipate strong company growth as we continue to broaden and diversify our solutions, bringing a wider portfolio of services to customers in the U.S. and U.K."

For more information on Service Express and the company's solutions, visit serviceexpress.com.

About Service Express

Service Express is an industry-leading data center solutions provider specializing in global multivendor maintenance, hybrid cloud, managed and infrastructure services, hardware solutions and more. Companies around the globe trust Service Express to deliver reliable end-to-end support. Service Express' flagship technology, ExpressConnect, helps IT teams automate support with monitoring, ticketing, integrations and account management. For more information, visit serviceexpress.com .

About iTech Solutions Group

iTech Solutions, an IBM Gold Business Partner, helps organizations get the most performance, utilization and return on investment from existing or new IBM Power Systems running IBM i, while ensuring critical business data is secure. Offerings include IBM Power Systems and storage, managed administration and OS subscription services, IBM i cloud hosting, OS Upgrades, PTF maintenance, HMC and FSP Upgrades, security assessments and remediation, HA replication solutions, DR testing, tape and disk encryption, virtual tape libraries, and more. For more information, visit itechsol.com.

About iInTheCloud

iInTheCloud specializes in IBM i cloud hosting solutions by leveraging IBM Power and IBM Flash Systems in its Tier III data centers. The company works alongside organizations to deliver secure, scalable and resilient solutions to meet specific system requirements. With iInTheCloud's secure cloud, companies can consolidate workloads, increase server utilization, reduce capital costs, lower management costs, virtualize and provision memory, processor, and I/O resources. For more information, visit iinthecloud.com.

SOURCE Service Express
Ventuure will act as key strategic partner to high growth startups to build the foundations of world leading companies capable of achieving $100m annual recurring revenue.

Ventuure's service modules have been specifically designed from the knowledge gained working with hundreds of high growth startups. Strategy services include value proposition development, pricing, sales and product marketing. Consultancy is augmented by Ventuure's agency offering, delivering branding, web development, SEO, sales materials and PR to drive new revenues.

CEO, Oliver Morgan said, "Ventuure combines our unique experience of enterprise tech, venture financing and top agency delivery in a single organisation. Our mission is to drive startup growth, by delivering our clients fundamental advantages, they can't get from anywhere else."

He went on to say, "Tech startups lose sales and follow-on investment because they fail to explain what they do. At Ventuure, our group of industry experts provide startups the means to differentiate their technology in a way that investors and customers understand."

Katie Booth, COO Ventuure, commented, "We work with the world's best startups who demand results from their partners and expect them to run towards the challenge. At Ventuure we match our client's pace and energy - something that traditional consultancies and agencies can't do."

In addition to consultancy and agency services, Ventuure will be launching an investment readiness programme built in collaboration with top VCs, tech leaders and experienced later-stage CEOs. The programme will be available from Q4 2022 and delivered in partnership with global accelerators as well as being offered on a one-to-one basis.

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1853001/Ventuure_Co_founders.jpg

SOURCE Ventuure
INDIANAPOLIS, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- American Legion National Commander Paul E. Dillard thanked congressional leaders for their decision to allow Hershel W. "Woody" Williams to lie in state at the Capitol Rotunda.

"We are grateful that Sen. (Chuck) Schumer and Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi recognize the outstanding service provided by the last Medal of Honor recipient to pass away from World War II," Dillard said. "Woody was not just an amazing Marine, he was an outstanding veterans advocate. He is responsible for Gold Star Family memorials being placed in communities across the country. After his Marine Corps career, he continued to serve veterans as a VA counselor. We were proud to have Hershel W. Williams as a member of The American Legion for 72 years. Delegates to our national convention in 2018 unanimously passed a resolution to honor the last World War II Medal of Honor recipient with a state funeral. We believe this distinction is well-deserved and a meaningful reminder to all that we owe our very survival as a nation to the veterans of World War II."

About The American Legion

The American Legion, the nation's largest veterans organization, is dedicated to the motto of "Veterans Strengthening America." Chartered by Congress in 1919, The American Legion is committed to mentoring youth and sponsoring wholesome community programs, advocating patriotism and honor, promoting a strong national security and continued devotion to servicemembers and veterans. Nearly 1.8 million members in more than 12,500 posts across the nation and regions overseas serve their communities with a devotion to mutual helpfulness.

Contact: John Raughter, Media Relations

[email protected] or 317-630-1350

SOURCE The American Legion
The partnership offers Toyota Tsusho customers access to state-of-the-art quantum solutions

TEL AVIV, Israel and TOKYO, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Quantum Machines , the provider of breakthrough quantum control solutions that accelerate the development and implementation of quantum computers, and Toyota Tsusho Corporation (Toyota Tsusho), a member of the Toyota Group, delivering to countries around the world a diverse range of products and services, today announced a partnership to offer Japanese customers cutting edge quantum technologies. The partnership will enable Toyota Tsusho customers to integrate comprehensive quantum technologies and build quantum capabilities for the future.

QM and Toyota Tsusho will present at the Q2B Conference taking place at The Westin Tokyo, July 13-14, 2022 .

The emergence of quantum computing will revolutionize many industries including mobility and transportation, chemical materials, finance, and more. Today, the pace and quality of quantum development are constrained by the need to constantly reprogram and repurpose hardware that wasn't designed with the specific needs of quantum computing in mind.

Quantum Machines (QM) has established itself as the leading provider of control and operation systems - the actual "brain" within quantum computers. The company's Quantum Orchestration Platform (QOP) comprises the most advanced classical hardware and software for the control and operation of multi-qubit quantum processors. QM's OPX+ can support any existing QPU architecture and enables users to execute even the most challenging quantum algorithms right out of the box.

An early promoter of quantum technologies, Toyota Tsusho has been developing businesses utilizing quantum computers since 2017. The partnership combines Toyota Tsusho's unique understanding of their customer ecosystem with QM's quantum computing expertise to provide access to innovative quantum control solutions that support their long-term goals and quantum computing aspirations.

"Quantum technologies hold immense potential for the future of many industries, but not every company has the capacity to develop the infrastructure to support their quantum computing ambitions," said Dr. Itamar Sivan, Co-founder and CEO of Quantum Machines. "Our partnership with Toyota Tsusho will enable organizations to take advantage of quantum technologies to develop new quantum-based solutions that disrupt their industries, without the need to reinvent the wheel, dramatically shortening the time to market."

"Our goal is to constantly provide our customers with new technologies and value propositions," said Mr. Kazunori Mori, a general manager at Toyota Tsusho. "Partnering with Quantum Machines is a natural fit for our mission and will provide our customers with access to crucial quantum computing technologies that have the potential to reshape entire industries moving forward."

About Toyota Tsusho

Toyota Tsusho Corporation was founded in 1948 as the trading company for the Toyota Group. Today, Toyota Tsusho operates in more than 130 countries with approximately 65,000 Group employees, all striving to contribute to the creation of prosperous societies. Toyota Tsusho continues to expand as a global leader in vehicle exports and automobile production support. The company has seven operating divisions (Metals/ Global Parts & Logistics/ Automotive/ Machinery, Energy & Project/ Chemicals & Electronics/ Food & Consumer Services/ Africa) focused around three business fields. These are the Mobility field, which contributes to future convenient societies, the Resources & Environment field, which ensures sustainable societies, and the Life & Community field, which supports comfortable and healthy lifestyles.

About Quantum Machines

Quantum Machines (QM) drives quantum breakthroughs that accelerate the path towards the new age of quantum computing. The company's Quantum Orchestration Platform (QOP) fundamentally redefines the control and operations architecture of quantum processors. The full-stack hardware and software platform is capable of running even the most complex algorithms right out of the box, including quantum error correction, multi-qubit calibration, and more. Helping achieve the full potential of any quantum processor, the QOP allows for unprecedented advancement and speed-up of quantum technologies as well as the ability to scale into the thousands of qubits. Visit us at: www.quantum-machines.co

Media Contact:

Gavriel Cohen

[email protected]

+914-336-4633

SOURCE Quantum Machines
Gaston Aussems comments: "I'm incredibly excited to be taking the baton from Sahar at such an exciting time for TPAY MOBILE. The company's mission of empowering underserved regions' digital economies is something I wholeheartedly support, and I look forward to being part of the next stage of its journey."

Gaston Aussems was CEO of European payments giant Mollie for over seven years, where his leadership was a crucial success factor in the company achieving its unicorn valuation in 2020. He has since spent two years as a venture partner, at firms including Atlantica and Antler, and a board member of impact investor Oikocredit as well as various fintechs and telecommunications companies, including Yolt and Talk360.

Sahar Salama explains: "All of us at TPAY MOBILE should be so proud of everything that we have achieved. We changed the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa for the better by delivering cross-border micropayments at scale, and significantly improving financial inclusion in the region. While we were always ambitious in our vision of what TPAY MOBILE could become, we never imagined that our services would be so rapidly adopted by our partners and customers, and this makes me excited for what the future holds, especially as TPAY MOBILE expands its payment capabilities to new digital merchants and non-digital services.

"The time is now right for someone new to take TPAY MOBILE to the next level, and I trust that Gaston is that person. His experience of successfully scaling a complex, multi-country payments company, combined with his technical background, product-focused mentality, and global, entrepreneurial mindset, makes him the perfect person to execute TPAY MOBILE's ambitious plans. I will be moving on to focus on a purely strategic and advisory role for the Group in this exciting next growth phase for TPAY MOBILE."

Babatunde Soyoye, current Group Chairman at TPAY MOBILE, says: "It has been a pleasure to partner with Sahar over the years and witness the passion, hard work and dedication that has helped grow TPAY MOBILE into the innovative company it is today. Sahar laid a great foundation in building a unique mobile payments network of merchants and Telcos across Middle East, Africa, and Turkey. The next phase of growth is about building on this incredible platform to make TPAY MOBILE the market leading digital merchant acquirer and mobile payments enabler in its markets and we believe that Gaston will help us achieve this".

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1853028/TPAY_MOBILE_1.jpg

SOURCE TPAY MOBILE
GOTHENBURG, Sweden, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Invitation to attend Vitrolife's conference call regarding presentation of the interim report January  June 2022. The presentation will be held in English.

Time: Friday 15 July, 2022 at 10.00 a.m. CET.



Registration can preferably be done 10-15 minutes before the conference start time on:



Sweden dial in number: +46 (0)8 5664 2754

International dial in number: +44 (0)330 165 3641

Conference name: Vitrolife AB, Interim Report January  June 2022

Conference code: 5371726

Passcode: 551839



Vitrolife participants:

Thomas Axelsson, CEO

Patrik Tolf, CFO



The press release for Vitrolife's interim report will be released at 8.00 CET on the same day.



Before the conference call, presentation material will be available at the company web page, https://www.vitrolife.com/investors/Presentations/



A recorded version of the telephone conference will be available for seven days on number

+44 (0)20 3859 5407 (International), access code 5371726.



Gothenburg, 5 July 2022

VITROLIFE AB (publ)

Contact:

Patrik Tolf, CFO, phone +46 (0) 31 766 90 21

This is a translation of the Swedish version of the press release. When in doubt, the Swedish wording prevails.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/vitrolife-ab--publ-/r/conference-call-interim-report,c3596257

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/1031/3596257/1600773.pdf Conference call Q2 2022

SOURCE Vitrolife AB (publ)
Downtown Damonte To Bring Unparalleled Innovation, Amenities and Lifestyle to Northern Nevada

RENO, Nev., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- With the launch of a thousand fireworks, northern Nevada's premiere master-planned community, Damonte Ranch, kicked off its annual 4th of July celebration and announced the much-anticipated, new community addition, Downtown Damonte.

Downtown Damonte is a 73-acre mixed-use development in the heart of Damonte Ranch and is one of three new projects to be developed by a partnership between The Di Loreto Companies and Nevada Pacific Development Corporation. Downtown Damonte will be a walkable canvas of dining, housing, office, retail, medical, recreational, and commercial opportunities with a target occupancy date of late 2024 to early 2025.

Downtown Damonte will be the place where businesses, families, and friends come together to meet, unwind, celebrate, dine, shop, stroll and enjoy day-to-day living. Downtown Damonte will include a new urban core and mixed-use district, which will include:

244,000+ square feet of retail, shopping, dining, and bars

150,000+ square feet of Class A office space

180+ hotel rooms

Up to 900 residential units

Biking and pedestrian paths with a walkability and bike rating of 62

Seasonal programming and special events

Three significant projects currently in the development and construction stages will surround Downtown Damonte:

Ridgeline, Inc. Reno Campus. Within Downtown Damonte and adjacent to the urban core will be a technology campus for Ridgeline Inc. Founded by Dave Duffield, Ridgeline is a financial technology company developing an industry cloud platform for investment management. The Ridgeline campus is anticipated to have more than 1,500 employees.

Liberty Dogs Campus. Located immediately south of Downtown Damonte will be the new Liberty Dogs Campus. Liberty Dogs will be among the nation's premier service dog training programs and facilities for veterans. The program will provide the nation's veteran heroes with the ability to lead more independent and fulfilling lives through the enhanced emotional and psychological well-being that research shows a service dog provides. The Liberty Dogs program is the vision of local Nevada residents Dave and Cheryl Duffield and is funded through the Dave & Cheryl Duffield Foundation.

Damonte Ranch Marketplace. To the east of Downtown Damonte will be the new Damonte Ranch Marketplace. The marketplace will include a Chevron Gas Station and convenience store, a Wild Wild West Car Wash, and Tahoe Natural Cafe. The marketplace is currently under construction on the southwest corner of Steamboat Parkway and Veteran's Parkway.

"We have definitely saved the best for last," said Perry Di Loreto, president of The Di Loreto Companies and master developer of Damonte Ranch. "As a result of the partnership between the Di Loreto Companies and Dave and Cheryl Duffield, we are thrilled to bring these significant and unparalleled additions to Damonte Ranch and our entire community. We are very excited to share our vision for Downtown Damonte, the Liberty Dogs Campus, and the future home of Ridgeline, Inc. as we conclude more than 30 years of development in Damonte Ranch. It will truly be an unmatched destination where families, friends, and businesses can come together to live, work and play in south Reno," Di Loreto said.

"Cheryl and I are honored to partner with The Di Loreto Companies to bring Liberty Dogs into the Downtown Damonte family," said Dave Duffield, co-founder of the Dave & Cheryl Duffield Foundation. "It's both extraordinary and humbling to think that we will be able to enhance the lives of our local and national veterans through the new Liberty Dogs service dog training program, and we can't wait for it to begin operating in 2025, if not sooner. I am also excited to be able to bring Ridgeline's new technology campus to Reno."

With breathtaking views of Mt. Rose and Slide Mountains, Downtown Damonte is located at the intersection of Damonte Ranch Parkway and Steamboat Parkway just east of I-580/U.S. 395 South in South Reno.

For more information about Downtown Damonte, please visit DowntownDamonte.com.

About Damonte Ranch

Founded in the early 1900s by Italian immigrant Louis Damonte, Damonte Ranch is located on 2000 acres of scenic land in Reno, Nevada. Damonte Ranch is a master-planned community surrounded by the natural beauty of the Sierra Nevada mountains and wetlands. Damonte Ranch offers diverse residential choices, abundant greenbelts, a community park, and meandering walking, hiking, and bike trails.

SOURCE The Di Loreto Companies
Demonstrating further integration of ESG into its business to address crucial sustainability challenges

TEL AVIV, Israel, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ADAMA Ltd. (SZSE 000553), a leading global crop protection company, has issued its 2021 ESG report. The publication of this report cements the company's commitment to high standards around transparency, sustainability, and social responsibility.





Ignacio Dominguez, CEO of ADAMA, said: "Climate change and the imminent global food crisis demand that agriculture and our industry must transform if we are to have sustainable food security for a growing population. ADAMA chooses to put ESG values in the center of its activity and to integrate sustainability into every aspect of the business  products, manufacturing, operations, and people. Our investment in novel formulation technologies to deliver superior products with enhanced biological performance is resulting in better solutions for farmers and a favorable sustainable footprint, ultimately benefiting all our stakeholders. We'll continue to listen to farmers and deliver what they need to succeed, making sustainable agriculture part of the solution".

Michal Arlosoroff, EVP, General Legal Counsel, Company Secretary, Chief Corporate Communication & Chief Sustainability Officer, said: "As an agrochemical company, we have an even greater obligation to put ESG at the forefront of our operations. We take this commitment seriously and I am proud of the results and progress that we have made in our ESG journey, including reducing our carbon footprint; improving safety; and reducing our products' environmental impact through a combination of efforts across the whole business. For 2022, we have set additional ambitious goals for even more sustainable processes."

2021 ESG Highlights

Outperformed regulatory requirements while growing production volumes. ADAMA reduced GHG emissions by 30% over the last decade; achieved a 51% decrease in TOC discharge per tonne during that same time period; and recycled and reused 36% more hazardous waste compared to the previous year.

ADAMA reduced GHG emissions by 30% over the last decade; achieved a 51% decrease in TOC discharge per tonne during that same time period; and recycled and reused 36% more hazardous waste compared to the previous year. Funded $60 million toward greener manufacturing operations . Investments in this area included a new chlorine production facility, new wastewater reactor, balancing pool to enhance treatment efficiency and redundancy and new scrubbers to upgrade air emission controls.

. Investments in this area included a new chlorine production facility, new wastewater reactor, balancing pool to enhance treatment efficiency and redundancy and new scrubbers to upgrade air emission controls. Increased portfolio of biological products. ADAMA continues to strengthen its portfolio and pipeline of biological products which give farmers alternative options in combination and programs with chemicals. The Bralic product originally launched in Mexico , based on garlic oil extract alone and has a favorable impact on insect infestation, is expanding to additional markets.

ADAMA continues to strengthen its portfolio and pipeline of biological products which give farmers alternative options in combination and programs with chemicals. The Bralic product originally launched in , based on garlic oil extract alone and has a favorable impact on insect infestation, is expanding to additional markets. Invested 2.9% of total profit in social responsibility. $2.5 million were donated globally to support community activities. In addition, 20% of ADAMA's people in Israel were involved in volunteering activities. Community projects include academic excellence programs for educating future scientists; connecting youth with farmers to support labor needs and expose young people to working in agriculture; providing medical facilities with crucial COVID-related support such as oxygen generation equipment.

were donated globally to support community activities. In addition, 20% of ADAMA's people in were involved in volunteering activities. Community projects include academic excellence programs for educating future scientists; connecting youth with farmers to support labor needs and expose young people to working in agriculture; providing medical facilities with crucial COVID-related support such as oxygen generation equipment. Promoting diversity and inclusion. A global Diversity & Inclusion Committee was formed in 2021 and drives the execution of various initiatives to amplify the diversity of our teams and the inclusiveness of our culture. In Israel , cooperation begun with Co-Impact - a local NGO, to increase employment from the Arab society.

A global Diversity & Inclusion Committee was formed in 2021 and drives the execution of various initiatives to amplify the diversity of our teams and the inclusiveness of our culture. In , cooperation begun with Co-Impact - a local NGO, to increase employment from the Arab society. Retained employees' rate at 87% in 2021.

ADAMA's sustainability report and ESG report, audited by KPMG, is available here.

About ADAMA

ADAMA Ltd. is a global leader in crop protection, providing solutions to farmers across the world to combat weeds, insects and disease. ADAMA has one of the widest and most diverse portfolios of active ingredients in the world, as well as state-of-the-art R&D, manufacturing and formulation facilities. With a culture that empowers our people to listen to farmers and ideate from the field, ADAMA is uniquely positioned to offer a vast array of distinctive mixtures, formulations and high-quality differentiated products, delivering solutions that meet local farmer and customer needs in over 100 countries globally. For more information, visit us at www.ADAMA.com and follow us on Twitter at @ADAMAAgri.

ADAMA Contact:

Tal Moise

Public Relations

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE ADAMA Ltd.
CINCINNATI, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Ran Gupta, Total Asset Planning, is the newest member of the Ameritas Hall of Fame, Ameritas president and CEO Bill Lester announced today. Gupta will enter the Hall of Fame as a 2022 inductee.

The prestigious Hall of Fame award is the highest honor an Ameritas field partner can achieve. The award recognizes people who, over the course of their careers, exhibited outstanding leadership qualities, a commitment to bettering their community, and significant professional contributions to both the insurance industry and to Ameritas.

"This award recognizes members of our field force who have exhibited exceptional leadership qualities and have made significant contributions to both our industry and Ameritas over the course of their careers," Lester said. "Congratulations, Ran  you deserve this lifetime achievement award."

About Ran Guptaawa

Raneshwar K. Gupta is a financial professional with Total Asset Planning, offering life insurance, disability insurance, annuities, investments, retirement plans and estate planning. Born in Tarn Taran, Punjab, India, he migrated to the United States in 1984, settling in Cincinnati with his wife, Manju, and two children.

Working with Mutual of New York, Gupta was named New Agent of the Year in 1985. Joining Union Central in 2001, he qualified for his first Leaders Conference in Kauai, Hawaii in 2006 before earning the Inner Circle in 2007 and making his first Summit trip to Prague, Czech Republic in 2008. He has been a member of the President's Club three times, Inner Circle twice, Summit of the Inner Circle 12 times and the Leaders Club once. He is a member of Million Dollar Round Table, having achieved Court of the Table and Top of the Table six times each. Gupta is also a member of the National Associate of Insurance and Financial Advisors and has served on many Ameritas committees and task forces.

Gupta and his family are very involved in their community, being a patron member of the Hindu Temple of Greater Cincinnati since 1984. He has held various positions with the temple, including president from 2018 to 2020.

About Ameritas 

Ameritas is a marketing name for Ameritas Mutual Holding Company and its affiliated subsidiary companies, including Ameritas Life Insurance Corp. and Ameritas Life Insurance Corp. of New York. Founded in 1887, Ameritas offers a wide range of insurance and financial products and services to individuals, families and businesses. These products and services include life insurance; annuities; individual disability income insurance; group dental, vision and hearing care insurance; retirement plans; investments; asset management; and public finance. Securities offered through affiliate Ameritas Investment Company LLC., member FINRA/SIPC, and investment advisory services offered through affiliate Ameritas Advisory Services, LLC. For more information, visit ameritas.com. AIC and AAS are not affiliated with any other entity mentioned herein.

Contact:

Derek Rayment, Sr. Media Relations Specialist

Ameritas Life Insurance Corp.

Phone: 402-467-7850

[email protected]

SOURCE Ameritas
ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. today announced the acquisition of La Mesa, Calif.-based Wrightman, Inc., doing business as Surety Associates of Southern California Insurance Services (SASC). Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 2010, SASC is a surety bond agency serving clients across California, Arizona and Nevada. Cyndi Beilman and her associates will continue to operate from their current location under the direction of Scott Firestone, head of Gallagher's Southwest region retail property/casualty brokerage operations.

"SACS is a well-known, well-established surety bond agency that will further enhance our surety presence in the Southwest Region," said J. Patrick Gallagher, Jr., Chairman, President and CEO. "I am very pleased to welcome Cyndi and her associates to Gallagher."

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE:AJG), a global insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting services firm, is headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. Gallagher provides these services in approximately 130 countries around the world through its owned operations and a network of correspondent brokers and consultants.

Investors: Ray Iardella Media: Kelli Murray VP - Investor Relations Director  Global Media Relations 630-285-3661/ [email protected] 847-273-3896 / [email protected]

SOURCE Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.
COLUMBUS, Miss., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- BankFirst Capital Corporation (OTCQX:BFCC) ("BankFirst" or the "Company"), parent of BankFirst Financial Services (the "Bank"), today announced the opening of a new loan production office located at 431 West Main Street, Suite 403, Tupelo, Mississippi, 38804 (the "LPO").

In making the announcement, BankFirst's President and Chief Executive Officer, Moak Griffin, said, "We are thrilled with the opportunity to expand our market presence in northeast Mississippi with the opening of a new LPO in Tupelo. We look forward to meeting with our customers and serving the lending needs of the community." Jamie Osbirn, Northeast Mississippi Regional President of the Bank, will oversee the operations of the LPO. Mr. Osbirn has over 20 years of banking experience in the Tupelo market, primarily focusing on commercial real estate.

With the opening of the new LPO, the Bank now has 36 offices serving Mississippi and Alabama, and has assets in excess of $2.0 billion.

About BankFirst Financial Services

BankFirst Capital Corporation (OTCQX: BFCC) is a registered bank holding company based in Columbus, Mississippi with approximately $2.0 billion in total assets as of March 31, 2022. BankFirst Financial Services, the Company's wholly-owned banking subsidiary, was founded in 1888 and is locally owned, controlled, and operated. The Company is headquartered in Columbus, Mississippi, and the Bank operates additional branch offices in Columbus, Flowood, Hattiesburg, Jackson, Louin, Macon, Madison, Newton, Starkville, and West Point, Mississippi; and Addison, Aliceville, Arley, Bear Creek, Carrollton, Curry, Double Springs, Fayette, Gordo, Haleyville, Lynn, Northport, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The Bank also operates four loan production offices in Biloxi, Brookhaven, and Oxford, Mississippi and Birmingham, Alabama. BankFirst offers a wide variety of services for businesses and consumers. The Bank also offers internet banking, no-fee ATM access, checking, CD, and money market accounts, merchant services, mortgage loans, remote deposit capture, and more. For more information, visit www.bankfirstfs.com.

Available Information

The Company maintains an Internet web site at www.bankfirstfs.com/about-us/investors. The Company makes available, free of charge, on its web site the Company's annual meeting materials, annual reports, and quarterly earnings reports. In addition, the OTC Markets Group maintains an Internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding the Company (at www.otcmarkets.com/stock/BFCC/overview).

The Company routinely posts important information for investors on its web site (under www.bankfirstfs.com and, more specifically, under the Investor Relations tab at www.bankfirstfs.com/about-us/investors). The Company intends to use its web site as a means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with its disclosure obligations under the OTC Markets Group OTCQX Rules for U.S. Banks. Accordingly, investors should monitor the Company's web site, in addition to following the Company's press releases, OTC filings, public conference calls, presentations and webcasts.

The information contained on, or that may be accessed through, the Company's web site is not incorporated by reference into, and is not a part of, this press release.

Member FDIC

SOURCE BankFirst Capital Corporation
Jay Hormel and Hormel Foods Corporation introduced the SPAM Brand to the forefront in 1937 with six simple ingredients - pork with ham, salt, water, potato starch, sugar, sodium nitrite. The goal was to create a convenient and affordable protein with an extended shelf life. The SPAM Brand got its name from Ken Daigneau, the brother of a Hormel Foods vice president, after he won a contest and $100 for naming the product.

During World War II, more than 100 million pounds of SPAM luncheon meat was shipped abroad to feed allied troops. The product also reached England and the countries of the Asian Pacific, where rationing and American GIs made the canned meat a necessity but was then adopted as a star ingredient in several popular dishes. Hence, an international love affair was born.

The SPAM  Brand's influence today

In the year 2022, the SPAM Brand is showing no signs of slowing down. From tacos to Korean barbeque to the famous SPAM Musubi, 12.8 cans of SPAM products are consumed every second. The brand has also hit several other milestones including:

Over 9 billion units sold across 48 countries

11 different varieties featured in hundreds of delicious and creative recipes

7 years of consecutive record sales

Almost 500,000 visitors to the SPAM Museum, which can be visited in person or virtually

And you can find the SPAM Brand beyond your local grocer. In fact, SPAM products and recipes are on the menus of over 700 American restaurants, available at 7-Elevens and McDonald's in Hawaii and in the pantries of celebrity chefs like Dale Talde, Jordan Andino, Jamie Chung, Roy Choi and more.

"From recipes passed down from generation to generation to family get-togethers, people's connection to the SPAM Brand is deeply rooted in longevity, versatility, convenience and cultural heritage," said Steven Venenga, vice president of marketing for the SPAM Brand. "While we celebrate all that the SPAM Brand has accomplished, the most important achievement is the inspiration and joy this little blue can has given its fans in the kitchen and beyond."

As for what is upcoming, the brand is eager to share several announcements later this year, including a new limited-time SPAM variety that is sure to excite around the holiday season.

For more information about the SPAM Brand and recipe inspiration, visit www.SPAM.com and follow along on social at www.facebook.com/SPAMbrand, www.youtube.com/SPAMbrand, www.twitter.com/SPAMbrand or @SPAMBrand on Instagram.

ABOUT HORMEL FOODS  Inspired People. Inspired Food.

Hormel Foods Corporation, based in Austin, Minn., is a global branded food company with over $11 billion in annual revenue across more than 80 countries worldwide. Its brands include Planters, SKIPPY, SPAM, Hormel Natural Choice, Applegate, Justin's, Wholly, Hormel Black Label, Columbus, Jennie-O and more than 30 other beloved brands. The company is a member of the S&P 500 Index and the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats, was named on the "Global 2000 World's Best Employers" list by Forbes magazine for three years, is one of Fortune magazine's most admired companies, has appeared on Corporate Responsibility Magazine's "The 100 Best Corporate Citizens" list for 12 years, and has received numerous other awards and accolades for its corporate responsibility and community service efforts. The company lives by its purpose statement  Inspired People. Inspired Food.  to bring some of the world's most trusted and iconic brands to tables across the globe. For more information, visit www.hormelfoods.com and http://csr.hormelfoods.com/.

Media Contact:

Cassandra Hall

[email protected]

412.394.6699

SOURCE Hormel Foods Corporation
STAMFORD, Conn. , July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- BestEx Research Group, LLC, a provider of high-performance algorithmic execution and measurement solutions for equities, futures, and foreign exchange trading, today announced the appointment of Paul Merolla as General Counsel.

Hitesh Mittal, Founder and CEO of BestEx Research said, "As we continue to expand into new markets and asset classes, Paul's regulatory and financial services expertise will be invaluable. We are committed to providing our global clients advanced, research-driven algorithmic trading solutions, and having robust legal oversight allows us to best serve their dynamic needs across asset classes and markets."

Added Mr. Merolla, "I look forward to supporting and contributing to the continued growth and expansion of BestEx Research. I trust that my knowledge and experience will be valuable assets to Hitesh and his management team as we work to provide BestEx Research's global client base with leading-edge trading solutions paired with unparalleled transparency."

Mr. Merolla, who brings more than four decades of experience to the role, most recently spent eleven years as a partner at the Murphy & McGonigle law firm and nearly four years at the LeClairRyan law firm. Prior, he served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel at institutional broker Instinet Group Incorporated, now a Nomura company, and before that as Vice President and Associate Counsel at Goldman Sachs. Earlier in his career, he spent ten years as senior counsel at Drexel Burnham Lambert Group and served as an associate attorney at Shearman & Sterling. Mr. Merolla is a Past President of the SIFMA Compliance & Legal Society. In March 2022, he was awarded the Alfred J. Rauschman Award for his service and contributions to the financial services industry. Mr. Merolla is a graduate of Fordham University and Fordham Law School and served as a lieutenant in the United States Army.

Mr. Merolla will report to CEO Hitesh Mittal and will be based in BestEx Research's headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.

About BestEx Research

BestEx Research Group, LLC was founded in 2017 by a team of industry experts in systematic trading. BestEx Research is creating a new category of innovative, broker-neutral solutions that combine sophisticated execution algorithms with a user-friendly dashboard and transaction cost analysis for multiple asset classes. The cloud-based platform is the first independent algorithmic trading solution for equities, futures, and foreign exchange in all markets. BestEx Research algorithms are reducing trading costs for buy-side managers and providing sell-side firms a seamless trading solution for their clients. For more information on BestEx Research's mission and products, or to request a product demo, please visit www.bestexresearch.com. Please follow BestEx Research on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Media Contact

Josh Passman, Lansons

[email protected]

914 391 1199

SOURCE BestEx Research
Seasoned health technology executive Lakshmi Gudapakkam to become CEO and former HCA Healthcare, Inc. executive Dr Rick Abramson appointed as Chief Medical Officer.

New leadership team to drive expansion of world's first comprehensive AI radiology platform globally and entry into the US.

CADt FDA approvals for Annalise Enterprise CXR to bring new opportunities for US clinicians.

SYDNEY, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- annalise.ai, the global radiology AI company with rapidly growing presence in Asia- Pacific, Europe and the United Kingdom, today announced the appointment of accomplished healthcare technology executives Lakshmi Gudapakkam as Chief Executive Officer and clinical strategist Dr Rick Abramson as Chief Medical Officer. With the new appointments, annalise.ai expects to further accelerate its global market presence and entry into the US market following recent FDA approvals for part of its comprehensive radiology AI product.

With a mission to help one million patients every day, annalise.ai combines cutting-edge AI with clinical expertise to bring comprehensive AI products to market quickly, with state-of-the-art performance and a focus on clinical success. Formed in 2019 as a joint venture between healthcare AI platform harrison.ai and I-MED Radiology Network, Australia's largest diagnostic imaging network, the company is focused on rapidly developing and commercialising comprehensive AI products to advance patient care.

annalise.ai products have been used to help more than one million patients since launch. Annalise Enterprise CXR, the world's first comprehensive decision-support AI solution for chest X-rays, is already in clinical use at over 400 sites in Australia and the UK and accessible by one in four Australian radiologists. A recent peer-reviewed diagnostic accuracy study published in The Lancet Digital Health found Annalise Enterprise CXR improved radiologists' diagnostic accuracy across 102 chest X-ray (CXR) findings*.

The company has clearance for clinical use for Annalise Enterprise CXR in Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe, South-East Asia, and New Zealand, and is expanding its products to new geographies. Earlier this year, Annalise Enterprise CXR received CADt FDA clearance for use in triage and notification of pneumothorax and tension pneumothorax on chest X-rays.

The appointment of Lakshmi Gudapakkam as CEO will help accelerate expansion plans globally and into the US along with the development of new AI radiology tools. Mr Gudapakkam brings a wealth of healthtech expertise, serving in senior global technology and business leadership roles for more than 20 years in GE Healthcare & Philips Healthcare and for the last four years with Quest Diagnostics, as their Vice President and General Manager for their East Region.

During his time with GE Healthcare, Mr Gudapakkam led large global teams across US, Canada, Europe, India, China and Australia in large, breakthrough product development for radiology imaging, cardiology imaging and healthcare informatics.



At Philips Healthcare, he oversaw breakthrough products in CT & Advanced Visualization Imaging. Later, Mr Gudapakkam moved into global business leadership roles, building up the Philips Healthcare footprint across China, India and rest of Asia. Mr Gudapakkam led large global businesses including the Global Value Segment business, Global X-ray & Mammography business and later a portfolio of global businesses including CT, Molecular Imaging, X-ray & Mammography.

During his time at Quest Diagnostics, Mr Gudapakkam oversaw expansion of the company's diagnostic services through lab management partnerships, managing the scaling of the testing through the COVID pandemic period while leading major transformational programs including standardising IT systems and building out a mega lab in Clifton, New Jersey and consolidating lab testing in the East region.

Across his career, Mr Gudapakkam has dealt closely with both technologists and clinical experts in radiology and imaging, providing a broad network and the perfect mix of skills and business acumen to help translate complex technologies into specialist healthcare.

Strengthening its global leadership bench even further, Rick Abramson, MD, MHCDS, FACR, joins the annalise.ai team as CMO and will be responsible for guiding the company's clinical roadmap for international expansion. A US-based physician leader and board-certified radiologist, Dr Abramson brings more than 25 years of experience in healthcare including prior roles in clinical practice, academic research, policy development, and management. Previously corporate vice-president over the radiology service line at HCA Healthcare, Inc., Dr Abramson led enterprise strategic development for radiology and artificial intelligence across HCA's network of 185 hospitals in the US and the UK.

In his new role with annalise.ai, Dr Abramson will help advance stakeholder partnerships with healthcare providers, technology developers and regulatory bodies across the world.

Both Mr Gudapakkam and Dr Abramson will be based in the United States, supported by a strong global team of several hundred annalise.ai staff across Australia, the UK, Europe and now US with expected growth in other locations aligned with projected business growth.

Having played an integral role in the formation and success of the joint venture, annalise.ai Founding CEO Dimitry Tran will continue to serve as Director of the Board and part of the harrison.ai team. Dr Aengus Tran, Co-Founder and CEO of harrison.ai, will also continue as annalise.ai's Chief AI Officer.

Dimitry Tran, Founding CEO and Board Director of annalise.ai, said: "We set out nearly three years ago to create a cutting-edge AI solution that empowers clinicians to make faster, more accurate decisions on radiology diagnosis. With the hard work of our global team, we've built an extremely strong and sustainable business with a proven model and global roadmap. To truly achieve our goals, and grow globally, we must move into the next phase of our maturity and strategy. I'm excited to welcome Mr Gudapakkam and Dr Abramson to the annalise.ai team to lead the company through this next phase of expansion and to help deliver on our mission to help one million people every day."

Clare Battellino, Chair of annalise.ai, said: "Lakshmi is an exceptional executive and someone we are thrilled to have to help drive annalise.ai's vision and strategy forward into our next phase of growth as a company. His approach to innovation, deep expertise in the healthtech space and established network will help to catapult annalise.ai into the future. Dimitry's contribution to annalise.ai cannot be overstated, having tirelessly shepherded the formation and growth of annalise.ai from the beginning. We're delighted that he will continue to have crucial input in the future of annalise.ai as a director of the Board."

Dr Aengus Tran, Co-Founder and CEO of harrison.ai, said: "Leveraging harrison.ai's AI capability and its leading clinical partners I-MED, annalise.ai has gone from strength to strength in taking its breakthrough radiology AI products to market. Having achieved sustainable momentum, annalise.ai is on track to help create a more equitable healthcare system for everyone. Lakshmi is well-positioned to help us achieve those goals and will ensure we have the right skills and global connections to expand our reach into new countries, new regulatory areas and new radiology products."

Lakshmi Gudapakkam, Chief Executive Officer of annalise.ai, said: "To meet the growing demands on our global healthcare system, we need smart tools that help specialists diagnose and treat patients more effectively and accurately. The team at annalise.ai have shown an astounding ability to not only provide this capability quickly, but do so with clinical experts and patients at the forefront. I'm excited to join the team and contribute to achieving our goal of helping one million patients every day."

*Study quote: Assisted radiologist performance -- The deep-learning model statistically significantly improved the classification accuracy of radiologists for 102 (80%) of 127 clinical findings, was statistically non-inferior for 19 (15%) findings, and no findings showed a decrease in accuracy when radiologists used the deep-learning model. Unassisted radiologists had a macroaveraged mean AUC of 0713 (06450785) across all findings, compared with 0957 (09540959) for the model alone.

Contact: Virginie Cosentino, [email protected]

SOURCE annalise.ai
CHICAGO, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Calamos Investments, a global investment management firm, announced today the hiring of Jessica Fernandez as Chief Marketing Officer. Fernandez joins Calamos from Invesco Ltd., where she led retail and institutional marketing and strategy for North America.

Calamos President and CEO John Koudounis stated, "We are excited to welcome Jessica to our team. We continue to execute on our strategic plan for the future of Calamos, which includes attracting top talent. Jessica will apply her experience and perspective to help enhance our brand as we build on our deep and proud heritage, recent accomplishments and success as an organization. We are dedicated to offering innovative risk-managed products to assist investors across market cycles, and she will work with us to articulate that critical message."

"I brought John Koudounis on board in 2016 to collaborate with me to chart the future of our firm. Together we have made tremendous progress in pinpointing the strategic direction for our ongoing growth. Jessica's objective will be to help us effectively communicate the Calamos brand mission and values for our clients and partners through a comprehensive marketing effort," said John Calamos Sr., Founder, Chairman and Global Chief Investment Officer.

Founded in 1977, Calamos is an active investment manager that specializes in strategies designed to help investors manage market risk and volatility. The firm pioneered investing in convertible securities and liquid alternatives. Earlier this year, Calamos was recognized as Best Overall Small Fund Family for 2022 by Refinitiv Lipper.

"Calamos is a highly distinguished brand with an impressive nearly 50-year presence in the market. I am thrilled to join a team of such exceptional caliber and experience under the leadership of John Calamos and John Koudounis. Contributing my expertise as a marketer to this illustrious name and brand marks a significant opportunity," Fernandez said.

"Jessica brings great energy, creativity, and 20 years of experience as a specialist in marketing strategies for the asset management industry. She has deep knowledge of our sector and will be an invaluable addition to our team," said Dan Dufresne, Calamos Chief Operating Officer.

Fernandez has particular expertise in strategic marketing and execution across various marketing functions, investment disciplines and business channels, including institutional, retail, independent broker dealer and registered investment advisor (RIA). At Invesco, Fernandez served as Head of Americas Segment Marketing. She has also held executive marketing positions at Oppenheimer Funds, Eagle Strategies LLC, ICON Investments, and Alliance Bernstein.

Fernandez will report to COO Dufresne and will be based in the firm's new and expanded New York office at Rockefeller Center.

About Calamos

Calamos Investments is a diversified global investment firm offering innovative investment strategies including alternatives, multi-asset, convertible, fixed income, equity, and sustainable equity. The firm offers strategies through separately managed portfolios, mutual funds, closed-end funds, private funds, and UCITS funds. Clients include major corporations, pension funds, endowments, foundations, and individuals, as well as the financial advisors and consultants who serve them. Headquartered in the Chicago metropolitan area, the firm also has offices in New York, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Portland (Oregon), and the Miami area. For more information, please visit www.calamos.com.

*Calamos Investments LLC, referred to herein as Calamos Investments, is a financial services company offering such services through its subsidiaries: Calamos Advisors LLC, Calamos Wealth Management LLC, Calamos Investments LLP and Calamos Financial Services LLC.

SOURCE Calamos Investments
Credit Union Branches Accepting Donations of New Backpacks for Elementary and Middle School Students

GLENDALE, Calif., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- California Credit Union has launched a school backpack drive to benefit local elementary and middle school students in partnership with the Los Angeles Boys & Girls Club.

Through July 30th, California Credit Union invites community members to make a difference in a student's life by dropping off a school backpack to any branch location in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. A complete list of California Credit Union locations is available here.

Donated backpacks should be new and appropriate for elementary/middle school students. The credit union will fill all donated backpacks with essential school supplies for distribution to students in need through the Los Angeles Boys & Girls Club in time for the fall school year.

"We're asking our community to join with us in helping every student start the school year ready to learn and thrive. Many families in our community are challenged to provide new back-to-school backpacks, and together we can make a difference in a child's life and academic success," said California Credit Union CEO Steve O'Connell. "Every backpack brought to one of our branches will be filled with school supplies and given to local students so they can begin the school year with the tools they need to succeed."

More information about California Credit Union's School Backpack Drive in partnership with the Los Angeles Boys & Girls Club can be found here.

The Los Angeles Boys & Girls Club serves families in communities across Northeast Los Angeles. The organization's mission is to inspire and enable all youth, especially from disadvantaged circumstances, to realize their full potential as productive, care and responsible members of the community. Classes for teens include gang prevention, Relationship Smarts, social interaction, wellness, the arts, and physical fitness. For more information about the Los Angeles Boys & Girls Club, please visit labgc.org.

About California Credit Union

California Credit Union is a federally insured, state chartered credit union founded in 1933 that serves public or private school employees, community members and businesses across California. With more than 165,000 members and assets of over $4 billion, California Credit Union has 24 branches throughout Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties. The credit union operates in San Diego County as North Island Credit Union, a division of California Credit Union. California Credit Union offers a full suite of consumer, business and investment products and services, including comprehensive consumer checking and loan options, personalized financial planning, business banking, and leading-edge online and mobile banking. Visit ccu.com for more information, or follow the credit union on Instagram or Facebook @CaliforniaCreditUnion.

SOURCE California Credit Union
Increase in demand for Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices is primarily attributed to the rising prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, rising expenditure on cardiac health globally, rising adoption of mobile and telemetry cardiac monitors, rising prevalence of cardiac arrhythmias, rising technological advancements in monitoring devices, among others are also expected to bolster the demand for these services during the forecast period (2022-2027).

LAS VEGAS, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- DelveInsight's Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market Insights and Forecast report provides the current and forecast Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market, upcoming innovations in the devices, individual market shares, challenges, drivers and barriers, market trends, and key competitors in the Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market.

Some of the salient features from the Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market report:

As per DelveInsight analysis, in terms of revenue share, North America is predicted to register the fastest growth in the Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices market.

is predicted to register the fastest growth in the Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices market. Some of the Global Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Device companies with their surgery procedures/ products in various stages of development include Abbott Laboratories, Boston Scientific Corporation, Avanos Medical, Inc., Auris Health, Inc., Olympus, CONMED Corporation, ERBE ELEKTROMEDIZIN GMBH, AngioDynamics, Medtronic Inc., AtriCure, Inc., Biosense Webster, Inc., Teleflex Incorporated, St. Jude Medical Inc., Lepu Medical Technology ( Beijing ) Co., Ltd., MicroPort Scientific Corporation, and others.

and others. DelveInsight analyzes that the global cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices market will grow at a CAGR of 6.33% during the forecast period from 2022 to 2027.

On January 10, 2022 , Global Instrumentation LLC received the CE Mark certification for the M5 wearable ECG recorder that had earlier been approved by the Food and Drug Administration authority in January 2021 .

received the CE Mark certification for the M5 wearable ECG recorder that had earlier been approved by the Food and Drug Administration authority in . On May 02, 2022 , Agatsa, the world's smallest ECG Maker received Food and Drug Administration clearance along with its entry into the United States market.

the world's smallest received Food and Drug Administration clearance along with its entry into market. in July 2021 , Abbott introduced Jot Dx Insertable Cardiac Monitor for continuous remote monitoring, leading to a faster time to diagnosis compared to ICMs that may use traditional bedside monitors.

introduced for continuous remote monitoring, leading to a faster time to diagnosis compared to ICMs that may use traditional bedside monitors. On March 12, 2021 , Qardio had received the United States Food and Drug Administration clearance for the QardioCore continuous ambulatory ECG.

had received the United States Food and Drug Administration clearance for the continuous ambulatory ECG. On February 10, 2021 , CardiacSense Medical Grade Watch received CE Mark approval for continuous detection of atrial fibrillation.

To pick on the latest highlights related to Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices market, get the snapshot of the key highlights entailed in the Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market Report

Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Overview

A heart arrhythmia is an irregular heartbeat and tends to occur when the electrical signals that coordinate the heart beats do not work appropriately. The faulty signals in the heart cause it to beat too fast (tachycardia), too slow (bradycardia), or irregularly. The cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices are small and wearable devices that track the rhythm of the heart. They are used for the detection or determination of irregular heartbeats (also known as cardiac arrhythmia). While most arrhythmias are harmless, some can be serious or even life-threatening.

Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market Insight

Geographically, the Global Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices market is studied for North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Rest of the World. In terms of revenue share North America currently leads the Global Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices market and is expected to remain constant during the forecast period. This domination is owing to the rising prevalence of arrhythmias, growing technological advancements in the cardiac monitoring devices, rising number of awareness programs, and the rising geriatric population is also likely to increase the regional cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices market.

Further, various strategic development and launch of new products will also drive the market. For instance, in July 2021, Abbott introduced Jot Dx Insertable Cardiac Monitor for continuous remote monitoring, leading to a faster time to diagnosis compared to ICMs that may use traditional bedside monitors. Furthermore, on November 04, 2019, Shimmer received the CE Mark approval for its ECGmd Holter monitor electrocardiograph as a Class IIa medical device under the Medical Device Directive ((93/42/EEC).

Click here to understand more about the key players in the Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market and their future @ Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Future Assessment

Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market Dynamics

The cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices market is witnessing a growth in product demand owing to various reasons, one of the major factors influencing the growth of the cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices market is the rising prevalence of cardiovascular disorders worldwide. Other factors that are also responsible for a major boost in the cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices market include technological advancements associated with the cardiac arrhythmia devices and the rising number of awareness programs in the coming years. Also, owing to the rising prevalence of cardiac arrhythmias leading to huge investments by cardiac arrhythmia monitoring device manufacturers, there will be a higher demand for cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices as they are intended for the management of atrial fibrillation and assessment of cryptogenic stroke, thereby influencing the overall cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices market positively.

Conversely, however limitations such as complications that are associated with the cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices and the high cost of treatment involving cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices are some of the factors expected to limit the Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices market.

Furthermore, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highly impacted the market for Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices as people are not able to visit the hospital for elective surgery, they have preferred devices that can help in real-time monitoring from the home. There had been a temporary negative impact on the cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices market owing to the shutting down of the manufacturing units, and disruption caused in the supply chain among other factors. But after the resumption of hospital visits and the opening of the manufacturing facilities, the market for cardiac arrhythmia monitoring had resumed its growth and can be anticipated to spur in the forecast period of 2022-27.

To gain a better understanding of the COVID-19 impact on Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices, get a snapshot of the COVID-19 Impact On Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market

Scope of the Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market Report

Coverage : Global

Global Study Period: 2019-2027

2019-2027 Market Segmentation By Device Type - ECG Monitors, Implantable Cardiac Monitors, Holter Monitors, Mobile Cardiac Telemetry And Others

- ECG Monitors, Implantable Cardiac Monitors, Holter Monitors, Mobile Cardiac Telemetry And Others Market Segmentation By Application - Tachycardia, Bradycardia, Atrial Fibrillation, And Others

Tachycardia, Bradycardia, Atrial Fibrillation, And Others Market Segmentation By End-User - Hospitals And Clinics, Ambulatory Centres, Diagnostic Centres And Others

- Hospitals And Clinics, Ambulatory Centres, Diagnostic Centres And Others Market Segmentation By Geography - North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of World

- , , , and Rest of World Key Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Companies - Abbott Laboratories, Boston Scientific Corporation, Avanos Medical, Inc., Auris Health, Inc., Olympus, CONMED Corporation, ERBE ELEKTROMEDIZIN GMBH, AngioDynamics, Medtronic Inc., AtriCure, Inc., Biosense Webster, Inc., Teleflex Incorporated, St. Jude Medical Inc., Lepu Medical Technology ( Beijing ) Co., Ltd., MicroPort Scientific Corporation, and others.

Abbott Laboratories, Boston Scientific Corporation, Avanos Medical, Inc., Auris Health, Inc., Olympus, CONMED Corporation, ERBE ELEKTROMEDIZIN GMBH, AngioDynamics, Medtronic Inc., AtriCure, Inc., Biosense Webster, Inc., Teleflex Incorporated, St. Jude Medical Inc., Lepu Medical Technology ( ) Co., Ltd., MicroPort Scientific Corporation, and others. Porter's Five Forces Analysis

Product Profiles

Case Studies

KOL's Views

Analyst's View

Delveinsight Analysis: The global cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices market will grow at a CAGR of 6.33% during the forecast period from 2022 to 2027.

Know more about which MedTech player is set to emerge as the trendsetter in the Global Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market @ Key Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Companies Analysis

Table of Contents

1 Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market Report Introduction 2 Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market Executive summary 3 Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market Regulatory and Patent Analysis 4 Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market Key Factors Analysis 5 Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Porter's Five Forces Analysis 6 COVID-19 Impact Analysis on Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market 7 Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market Layout 8 Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market Global Company Share Analysis  Key 3-5 Companies 9 Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market Company and Product Profiles 10 Project Approach 11 KOL Views 12 DelveInsight Capabilities 13 Disclaimer 14 About DelveInsight

Learn more about the report offerings @ Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market Outlook

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DETROIT, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Wayne County Community College District (WCCCD) and Bay College are in partnership discussions to increase opportunities in building a pipeline to careers in the water and wastewater management industries in Michigan.

Skilled water and wastewater management workers are in high demand. The industry is short more than 10,000 workers nationwide in an industry that is critical to public health, environmental health, and natural resource management.

"We are excited to work with Bay College to expand opportunities and to strengthen the knowledge and innovation around such a critical area in our state," said WCCCD Vice Chancellor for Educational Affairs Dr. David Beaumont.

The partnership between WCCCD and Bay College, located in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, would aim to assist with current increased interest, opportunities and access to programs that train technicians and build pipelines to careers in the water and wastewater management industries in Michigan through articulation of courses and degree programs. A final partnership agreement is anticipated in July and expands Bay College's partnerships to southeast Michigan.

"The unique opportunity for WCCCD and Bay College to partner together to support an industry that is critical to all of us is very exciting," said Bay College Vice President for Business, Technology, Allied Health and Workforce Training Cindy Carter.

WCCCD offers a College Certificate in Water and Environmental Technology (WET) where students study water and wastewater treatment processes, and are introduced to topics that include water chemistry, microbiology, toxicity, and pollution prevention. Bay College offers a Water Resource Management Associate's degree designed for specialized training in water and wastewater treatment theory and application to both entry-level personnel and those already in the field.

Bay College has an enterprising partnership with Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC) supported by a national $3.8 million U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant for the West region of Michigan. Separately, Wayne State University recently announced a $584,114 contract with the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) to develop a research project that would address the critical shortage of technicians and engineers for water utilities nationwide.

Partnership discussions with Bay College is one of many efforts by WCCCD to increase interest, exposure and access to STEM fields as well as developing a talent pipeline to workforce for in-demand, high-wage fields with immediate needs.

About WCCCD:

WCCCD, one of the largest urban community colleges in Michigan, is a multi-campus district with six campus locations and specialty campuses, including the Mary Ellen Stempfle University Center, the Heinz C. Prechter Educational and Performing Arts Center, the Michigan Institute for Public Safety Education (MIPSE), the Curtis L. Ivery Health and Wellness Education Center, and the Outdoor Careers Training Center. The District serves students across 36 cities and townships, and more than 500 square miles. WCCCD is committed to the continued development of innovative programs, workforce transformation, hosting community-based training sessions, and improving student facilities and services. www.wcccd.edu.

SOURCE WCCCD
The development gap between the North and the South is widening, and the world has entered a new period of turbulence and changes, he said, adding that promoting global development has become a major subject faced by mankind.

Therefore, China proposed the Global Development Initiative, Xi said. China is ready to make joint efforts with countries around the world to follow a people-centered approach, stay committed to benefits for all, and prioritize development on the international agenda, said the Chinese president.

He stressed China's readiness to work with other countries in promoting innovation-driven development and harmony between man and nature, accelerating the implementation of the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and pursuing more robust, greener and healthier global development.

The Global Development Initiative was put forward by the Chinese president in September last year at the general debate of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly.

The forum, named "Global Development: Common Mission and Contributions" Think Tank and Media Forum, was held by the State Council Information Office, co-hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Development Research Center of the State Council and the China Media Group.

Link: https://youtu.be/wCor-gxxSn8

SOURCE CCTV+
WASHINGTON, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. (CFP Board) announced today public sanctions against 17 current or former CFP professionals or candidates for CFP certification, effective immediately or on the date noted in each case. Public sanctions taken by CFP Board, in order of increasing severity, include Public Censures, Suspensions, Temporary Bars, Permanent Bars and Revocations of the right to use the CFP marks.

CFP Board's Enforcement Process

As part of their certification, CFP professionals make a commitment to CFP Board to abide by CFP Board's Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct (Code and Standards) or its predecessor, the Standards of Professional Conduct (Standards), which included the Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility, Rules of Conduct and Financial Planning Practice Standards. Individuals on the pathway to CFP certification make a commitment to abide by CFP Board's Pathway to CFP Certification Agreement (Pathway Agreement).

CFP Board's Procedural Rules set forth the process for investigating matters and imposing sanctions where violations have been found.

CFP Board enforces its ethical standards by investigating alleged violations and, where there is probable cause to believe there are grounds for sanction, presents a Complaint containing the alleged violations to CFP Board's Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission). The Commission meets at least six times a year to review any matter in which CFP Board has alleged that a CFP professional has violated CFP Board's Code and Standards or its predecessor Standards, or an individual pursuing initial CFP certification has violated the Pathway Agreement. The Commission functions in accordance with the Procedural Rules and reviews all matters on a case-by-case basis, considering the details specific to an individual case. If the Commission determines there are grounds for sanction, then it may impose a sanction. Commission orders may be appealed by a Respondent or CFP Board pursuant to the Procedural Rules.

In certain circumstances, such as when a CFP professional is in default due to failure to acknowledge receipt of a Notice of Investigation or file an Answer, CFP Board staff must deliver an Administrative Order of Suspension, Temporary Bar, Revocation or Permanent Bar. Administrative Orders are subject to appeal.

More information on CFP Board's enforcement process can be found at CFP.net/enforcement. In addition, at CFP.net/verify, CFP Board provides the public with:

An Individual's CFP Board disciplinary history and CFP certification status.

Links to other sources of information about CFP professionals that may be more recent or that may contain information that has not led to CFP Board discipline and does not appear on CFP Board's website. This information may include customer disputes, disciplinary actions taken by a regulator or employer, certain criminal matters and certain financial matters (such as bankruptcy proceedings and unpaid judgments or liens).

Links to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's (FINRA's) BrokerCheck and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC's) Investment Adviser Public Disclosure databases for individuals who are subject to FINRA or SEC oversight.

The Public Sanctions on 17 Individuals

A short summary of each sanction can be found below.

STATE NAME LOCATION SANCTION Florida Jennifer Todd Nash, CFP Tallahassee Public Censure Illinois Robert Lyman, CFP Barrington Public Censure Arizona Brent W. Barnes Chandler Temporary Bar Kansas Gregory Hanshew Emporia Temporary Bar Pennsylvania David Paul Carson Lancaster Temporary Bar Texas Gregory P. Morgan Coppell Temporary Bar Arizona Robert F. Keats Phoenix Suspension Michigan Anthony Agbay Bloomfield Hills Suspension New York Allan Katz Staten Island Suspension Pennsylvania Kenneth S. Raymond McMurray Suspension Tennessee Richard L. Carman Memphis Suspension Colorado Brandon Self Colorado Springs Permanent Bar Pennsylvania J.C. Morrow Washington Permanent Bar Rhode Island Robert J. Sclama North Providence Permanent Bar Florida Iva Hauck Girtman Bushnell Revocation Florida Edward L. Stahley, Jr. Rockledge Revocation Virginia Brian Bogart McLean Revocation

PUBLIC CENSURE

FLORIDA

Jennifer Todd Nash, CFP (Tallahassee, Florida): In April 2022, the Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) and Ms. Nash entered into a Consent Order in which Ms. Nash agreed that CFP Board would issue a Public Censure. In the Consent Order, Ms. Nash consented to findings that she failed to timely pay taxes to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for eight years between 2010 and 2018, resulting in the IRS filing six federal tax liens totaling approximately $573,000. The Commission determined that Ms. Nash's conduct violated Rule 6.5 of the Rules of Conduct, which provides that a certificant shall not engage in conduct that reflects adversely on her integrity or fitness as a certificant, upon the CFP marks or upon the profession. Because Ms. Nash had not yet established an installment agreement with the IRS, Ms. Nash agreed to perform additional remedial work in addition to the Public Censure. Ms. Nash is required to certify to CFP Board every six months for three years her progress towards resolution of the tax liens. Any failure to comply with the certification requirement shall be considered a default, as defined by Article 11.4 of the Procedural Rules, with Ms. Nash subject to an Administrative Order of Suspension for one year and one day. Accordingly, the Commission issued to Ms. Nash a Public Censure.

ILLINOIS

Robert Lyman, CFP (Barrington, Illinois): In April 2022, the Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) and Mr. Lyman entered into a Consent Order in which Mr. Lyman agreed that CFP Board would issue a Public Censure. In the Consent Order, Mr. Lyman consented to findings that he failed to manage his personal finances, in violation of Rule 6.5 of the Rules of Conduct, when he failed to pay his federal taxes for tax years 2011 through 2018, resulting in a debt of $246,393 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). As a result of this tax debt, the IRS filed several liens against Mr. Lyman. Mr. Lyman entered into an installment agreement with the IRS in June 2020 and is current with that agreement. Mr. Lyman agreed to perform additional remedial work in addition to the Public Censure. Mr. Lyman is required to certify to CFP Board every year for three years his progress towards resolution of the tax liens. Any failure to comply with the certification requirement shall be considered a default, as defined by Article 11.4 of the Procedural Rules, with Mr. Lyman subject to an Administrative Order of Suspension for one year and one day. The Commission issued to Mr. Lyman a Public Censure.

TEMPORARY BAR

ARIZONA

Brent W. Barnes (Chandler, Arizona): In May 2022, CFP Board issued an administrative order temporarily barring Mr. Barnes from applying for or obtaining the CFP certification marks for one year and one day. This sanction followed Mr. Barnes' failure to acknowledge receipt of CFP Board's Notice of Investigation, as required by Article 1.1 of the Procedural Rules. CFP Board sought to investigate a 2018 consent order with the California Department of Business Oversight in which Mr. Barnes agreed to cease and desist from making unsuitable recommendations and taking performance fees. Mr. Barnes' conduct may have violated Rule 4.3 of the Rules of Conduct, which requires a CFP professional to comply with the laws, rules and regulations governing professional services. Mr. Barnes has been deemed in default, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Temporary Bar. Mr. Barnes' administrative temporary bar was effective as of June 13, 2022.

KANSAS

Gregory Hanshew (Emporia, Kansas): In March 2022, CFP Board issued an administrative order temporarily barring Mr. Hanshew from applying for or obtaining the CFP certification marks for one year and one day. This sanction followed Mr. Hanshew's failure to acknowledge receipt of CFP Board's Notice of Investigation, as required by Article 1.1 of the Procedural Rules. CFP Board sought to investigate two civil judgment liens filed against Mr. Hanshew, a 2016 employment separation under allegations of misconduct and a 2019 arrest for obstructing a peace officer. Mr. Hanshew's conduct may have violated Rules 5.1 and 6.5 of the Rules of Conduct. Under Article 4.1.a. of the Procedural Rules, Mr. Hanshew has been deemed in default, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Temporary Bar. Mr. Hanshew's administrative temporary bar was effective as of April 25, 2022.

PENNSYLVANIA

David Paul Carson (Lancaster, Pennsylvania): In April 2022, CFP Board issued an administrative order temporarily barring Mr. Carson from applying for or obtaining the CFP certification marks for one year and one day. This sanction followed Mr. Carson's relinquishment of his certification and his failure to acknowledge receipt of CFP Board's Notice of Investigation, as required by Article 1.1 of the Procedural Rules. CFP Board sought to investigate a $65,023 federal tax lien filed against Mr. Carson. Mr. Carson's conduct may have violated Standard E.2 of the Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct, which provides that a CFP professional may not engage in conduct that reflects adversely on the CFP professional, the CFP marks or the profession. Under Article 4.1.a. of the Procedural Rules, Mr. Carson has been deemed in default, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Temporary Bar. Mr. Carson's administrative temporary bar was effective as of May 10, 2022.

TEXAS

Gregory P. Morgan (Coppell, Texas): In April 2022, CFP Board issued an administrative order temporarily barring Mr. Morgan from applying for or obtaining the CFP certification marks for one year and one day. This sanction followed Mr. Morgan's failure to acknowledge receipt of CFP Board's Notice of Investigation, as required by Article 1.1 of the Procedural Rules. CFP Board sought to investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr. Morgan's termination by his firm in April 2021. Mr. Morgan's conduct may have violated Standard A.2 of the Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct. Under Article 4.1.a. of the Procedural Rules, Mr. Morgan has been deemed in default, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Temporary Bar. Mr. Morgan's administrative temporary bar was effective as of May 3, 2022.

SUSPENSION

ARIZONA

Robert F. Keats (Phoenix, Arizona): In May 2022, CFP Board issued an administrative order suspending Mr. Keats' right to use the CFP certification marks for one year and one day. This sanction followed Mr. Keats' failure to acknowledge receipt of CFP Board's Notice of Investigation, as required by Article 1.1 of the Procedural Rules. CFP Board sought to investigate the facts and circumstances surrounding a civil suit filed against Mr. Keats by a customer on November 9, 2021. Mr. Keats' conduct may have violated Standard E.2 of the Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct, which provides that a CFP professional may not engage in conduct that reflects adversely on his or her integrity or fitness as a certificant, on the CFP marks or on the profession. Under Article 4.1.a. of the Procedural Rules, Mr. Keats has been deemed in default, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Suspension. Mr. Keats' administrative suspension was effective as of June 14, 2022.

MICHIGAN

Anthony Agbay (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan): In March 2022, CFP Board issued an administrative order suspending Mr. Agbay's right to use the CFP certification marks for one year and one day. This sanction followed Mr. Agbay's failure to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within the required time frame. CFP Board alleged that Mr. Agbay refused to respond to CFP Board's requests for information and a Notice of Failure to Cooperate. CFP Board sought to investigate a 2016 federal tax lien filed against Mr. Agbay. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that Mr. Agbay failed to satisfy his Duty of Cooperation, thereby violating Standard E.5 of the Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct. Mr. Agbay failed to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within 30 calendar days of the date of service, as required by Article 3.2 of the Procedural Rules. Under Article 4.1.b. of the Procedural Rules, Mr. Agbay has been deemed in default, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Suspension. Mr. Agbay's administrative suspension was effective as of April 22, 2022.

NEW YORK

Allan Katz (Staten Island, New York): In May 2022, the Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) issued an order in which Mr. Katz received a three-month suspension of his right to use the CFP certification marks. The Commission issued its order after determining that: (1) Mr. Katz violated Rule 4.3 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct, which provides that a CFP professional shall be in compliance with applicable regulatory requirements governing professional services provided to the client, when he entered into a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent (AWC) with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) consenting to findings that he violated FINRA Rule 2010 when he reused a customer's signature page 11 times  with the customer's permission  to expedite transaction processing; (2) Mr. Katz violated Rule 5.1 of the Rules of Conduct, which provides that a certificant who is an employee/agent shall perform professional services with dedication to the lawful objectives of the employer/principal and in accordance with CFP Board's Code of Ethics because his reuse of original signatures violated his firm's policies and procedures; and (3) Mr. Katz violated Standard E.3.c. of CFP Board's Code and Standards, which states that a CFP professional must provide written notice to CFP Board within thirty (30) calendar days after the CFP professional, or an entity over which the CFP professional was a Control Person, has had conduct mentioned adversely in a Finding in a Regulatory Action involving failure to comply with the laws, rules or regulations governing Professional Services. Accordingly, the Commission issued to Mr. Katz a suspension for three months. Mr. Katz's suspension is effective from June 6, 2022, through September 6, 2022.

PENNSYLVANIA

Kenneth S. Raymond (McMurray, Pennsylvania): In April 2022, the Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) and Mr. Raymond entered into a Consent Order in which Mr. Raymond agreed that CFP Board would issue a three-month suspension of his right to use the CFP certification marks. In the Consent Order, Mr. Raymond consented to findings that he violated Rule 6.5 of the Rules of Conduct when he was charged with Driving under the Influence in 2010 and convicted of another instance of the same charge in 2016. Mr. Raymond also violated Rule 6.2 of the Rules of Conduct when he failed to report these events to CFP Board and made false and misleading statements regarding his conviction in the Ethics Declaration he completed as part of his Renewal Application in 2017. The Commission issued to Mr. Raymond a suspension for three months. Mr. Raymond's suspension is effective from April 26, 2022, through July 26, 2022.

TENNESSEE

Richard L. Carman (Memphis, Tennessee): In May 2022, CFP Board issued an administrative order suspending Mr. Carman's right to use the CFP certification marks for one year and one day. This sanction followed Mr. Carman's failure to respond to CFP Board's Notice of Investigation, as required by Article 1.1 of the Procedural Rules. CFP Board sought to investigate: (i) three federal tax liens filed against Mr. Carman, totaling approximately $920,0000; (ii) his July 2021 termination from a firm for exercising improper time and price discretion in client accounts without written authorization; and (iii) his April 2022 termination from another firm for violating its policy related to the disclosure of tax liens. Under Article 4.1.a. of the Procedural Rules, Mr. Carman has been deemed in default, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Suspension. Mr. Carman's administrative suspension was effective as of June 14, 2022.

PERMANENT BAR

COLORADO

Brandon Self (Colorado Springs, Colorado): In May 2022, CFP Board issued an administrative order permanently barring Mr. Self from applying for or obtaining the CFP certification marks. This sanction followed Mr. Self's failure to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within the required time frame. CFP Board alleged that Mr. Self engaged in Exam Misconduct by participating in a GroupMe chat group titled "March 2021 CFP Exam" wherein, on five separate occasions, Mr. Self solicited assistance from chat group participants who had already taken the March 2021 CFP Exam by requesting information about examination questions they observed on the March 2021 CFP Exam. CFP Board also alleged Mr. Self knowingly gained an advantage over other March 2021 CFP Exam-takers when he studied topics based on the information he received from those individuals who had taken the March 2021 CFP Exam. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that Mr. Self's conduct violated the Pathway to CFP Certification Agreement, which provides that Exam Misconduct includes attempting to give or receive assistance, or otherwise communicating about the Exam, during the Exam administration. Mr. Self failed to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within 30 calendar days of the date of service, as required by Article 3.2 of the Procedural Rules. Under Article 4.1.b. of the Procedural Rules, Mr. Self has been deemed in default, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Permanent Bar. Mr. Self's administrative permanent bar was effective as of June 2, 2022.

PENNSYLVANIA

J.C. Morrow (Washington, Pennsylvania): In May 2022, CFP Board issued an administrative order permanently barring Mr. Morrow from applying for or obtaining the CFP certification marks. This sanction followed Mr. Morrow's failure to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint. CFP Board alleged that Mr. Morrow failed to pay his federal tax obligations for 2015, 2016 and 2017, which resulted in two federal tax liens and a total outstanding debt to the Internal Revenue Service of approximately $202,000. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that Mr. Morrow's conduct violated Standard E.2 of the Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct, which provides that a CFP professional may not engage in conduct that reflects adversely on his or her integrity or fitness as a certificant, on the CFP marks or on the profession. Mr. Morrow failed to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within 30 calendar days of the date of service, as required by Article 3.2 of the Procedural Rules. Under Article 4.1.b. of the Procedural Rules, Mr. Morrow has been deemed in default, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Permanent Bar. Mr. Morrow's administrative permanent bar was effective as of June 14, 2022.

RHODE ISLAND

Robert J. Sclama (North Providence, Rhode Island): In May 2022, CFP Board issued an administrative order permanently barring Mr. Sclama from applying for or obtaining the CFP certification marks. This sanction followed Mr. Sclama's failure to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within the required time frame. CFP Board alleged that Mr. Sclama violated the Terms and Conditions of Certification and License by refusing to respond to CFP Board's requests for information and a Notice of Failure to Cooperate. CFP Board sought to investigate a pending civil litigation matter against Mr. Sclama, in which two of his clients allege fraud, negligence, breach of contract and professional malpractice. Mr. Sclama failed to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within 30 calendar days of the date of service, as required by Article 3.2 of the Procedural Rules. Under Article 4.1.b. of the Procedural Rules, Mr. Sclama has been deemed in default, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Permanent Bar. Mr. Sclama's administrative permanent bar was effective as of June 13, 2022.

REVOCATION

FLORIDA

Iva Hauck Girtman (Bushnell, Florida): In September 2020, CFP Board issued an administrative order permanently revoking Ms. Girtman's right to use the CFP certification marks. This sanction followed Ms. Girtman's failure to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within the required time frame. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that Ms. Girtman was charged with grand theft larceny in March 2015 after she admitted that over a five-year period, she stole approximately $19,500 in reward points from her employer's company credit card. Ms. Girtman was terminated for her actions. The Complaint also alleged that Ms. Girtman entered into a pre-trial intervention program whereby she paid restitution to her former employer and paid for an independent audit of her former employer's accounts to prove that no additional funds had been tampered with. The Complaint alleged that the independent audit found no other irregularities. Ms. Girtman's petition for expungement of the felony charge was granted. The Complaint further alleged that Ms. Girtman failed to report her charge to CFP Board. Finally, the Complaint alleged that Ms. Girtman's conduct violated Rules 5.1 and 6.5 of the Rules of Conduct. Ms. Girtman failed to provide an Answer to the Complaint within 30 calendar days as required by Article 3.2 of the Procedural Rules. In accordance with Article 4.1.b. of the Procedural Rules, Ms. Girtman has been deemed in default, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Revocation. Ms. Girtman's administrative revocation was effective as of September 29, 2020.

Edward L. Stahley, Jr. (Rockledge, Florida): In May 2022, CFP Board issued an administrative order permanently revoking Mr. Stahley's right to use the CFP certification marks. This sanction followed Mr. Stahley's failure to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within the required time frame. CFP Board alleged that Mr. Stahley violated Standard E.2.a. of the Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct, which provides that a CFP professional may not engage in conduct that reflects adversely on his or her integrity or fitness as a certificant, on the CFP marks or on the profession, when he was convicted of his third DUI in October 2021. Mr. Stahley failed to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within 30 calendar days of the date of service, as required by Article 3.2 of the Procedural Rules. Under Article 4.1.b. of the Procedural Rules, Mr. Stahley has been deemed in default, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Revocation. Mr. Stahley's administrative revocation was effective as of June 13, 2022.

VIRGINIA

Brian Bogart (McLean, Virginia): In September 2020, CFP Board issued an administrative order permanently revoking Mr. Bogart's right to use the CFP certification marks. This sanction followed Mr. Bogart's failure to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within the required time frame. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that Mr. Bogart was permitted to resign during the firm's investigation into Mr. Bogart's participation in an unapproved private fund and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Cautionary Action Letter that addressed deficiencies in Mr. Bogart's conduct relating to a private fund offering. Mr. Bogart also failed to make any conflict of interest disclosures to multiple clients and a prospective client when he sought to obtain their investment in the private fund, of which Mr. Bogart was a partial owner in the newly created entity. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that Mr. Bogart's conduct violated Rules 1.4, 2.2, 2.2(B), 4.3 and 5.1 of the Rules of Conduct. Mr. Bogart failed to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within 20 calendar days of the date of service, as required by Article 7.3 of the Disciplinary Rules. In accordance with Article 4.1.b. of the Procedural Rules, the allegations set forth in the Complaint were deemed admitted, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Revocation. Mr. Bogart's administrative revocation was effective as of October 20, 2020.

ABOUT CFP BOARD

Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. (CFP Board) is the professional body for personal financial planners in the United States. CFP Board sets standards for financial planning and administers the prestigious CFP certification  one of the most respected certifications in financial services  so that the public has access to and benefits from competent and ethical financial planning. CFP Board, along with its Center for Financial Planning, is committed to increasing the public's awareness of CFP certification and access to a diverse, ethical and competent financial planning workforce. Widely recognized by firms and consumer groups as the standard for financial planning, the CFP certification is held by more than 93,000 people in the United States.

SOURCE Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc.
Pure chickpea protein demonstrates high solubility, great flavor and performance in non-dairy creamers

REHOVOT, Israel, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ChickP, Ltd., a foodTech startup, and pioneer in plant-based protein innovation, introduces its protein isolates customized for trendy dairy-alternative barista-style coffee drinks. The company developed an advanced prototype of a chickpea-based milk analog. This plant-based creamer for coffee demonstrates the versatility of ChickP's pure protein, following its sterling performance as an egg replacer for vegan mayonnaise.

ChickP Cracked The Code for Creamy Dairy-Free Barista Beverages

This solution has been designed to serve food formulators working in the alternative dairy space to create compelling milk analogs specifically for creamy beverages such as coffee.

Accurately recreating flavor, texture, and nutritional values in dairy milk analogs with plant-based alternatives creates significant challenges. Many plant proteins on the market have bitter or off flavors, low protein content, and grainy or chalky textures. Even with the use of multiple masking agents, added sugar, or flavor modifiers, the results lack the appearance and organoleptic characteristics of real, creamy milk. Moreover, the long list of ingredients on the label can be negative for consumers.

"Plant-based barista drinks set new challenges," explains Liat Lachish Levy, CEO of ChickP. "Consumers want a holistic, better-for-you, yet full flavor experience. Our technologists took full advantage of our new state-of-the-art application lab to overcome organoleptic and technical challenges in creating creamy, dairy-free 'milk' for the perfect cappuccino."

High Foaming, Smooth Texture

Chickpeas are a rich source of high-quality protein. ChickP's IP-protected technology extracts this pure protein while removing bitterness and many non-nutritional factors. The resulting ingredient has a neutral flavor, mitigating the need for sugar or flavor additives in the final product, and enabling beverage formulators to significantly shorten ingredients list to deliver an all-natural product. Moreover, it demonstrates excellent foaming capabilities due to its high solubility and smooth texture. The model plant-based barista milk contains 3% protein. Existing vegetable-origin barista products typically contain less than 1% protein.

"Consumers are looking for plant-based milk, but they also demand great taste and texture," notes Maor Dahan, application manager of ChickP. "Our chickpea S930 and G910 isolate are the most refined form of protein with the advantage of matching color, flavor, and functional properties to food and beverage applications. This protein has great solubility, exhibiting excellent water dispersion properties across a wide range of pH. It has a low viscosity and an optimized flavor." Chickpea is not listed as an allergen and is not genetically modified.

"We currently are developing over twenty plant-based applications with leading food and beverage companies with our pure ChickP protein," reports Lachish Levy. "Our customers turned to us to solve major challenges of plant-based products and we were able to provide comprehensive solutions in terms of flavor, complete nutrition profile, and functionality. Together with our customers and partners, we are unlocking the potential of our ChickP protein to offer the best solutions across multiple applications. Our customers confirm that ChickP isolate offers the best dairy-like solution on the market today."

Holistic creamy milk replacer

"Our ChickP protein ticks all the boxes," says Lachish Levy. "It's packed with highly nutritious complete protein containing all nine essential amino acids. But more than that, it has a rich texture, and provides smooth, stable full foaming, with a white color, perfect for showcasing the most artful barista's skills.

According to The Good Food Institute[1], dairy-free milk represents 35% of plant-based food sales growth in the US market, at $2.5B in annual sales. Dollar sales of plant-based milk grew 20% in the past year, and 27% over the past two years. Plant-based milk is a major entry point for households trying products across plant-based categories. With some three-quarters of the world's population sensitive or intolerant to lactose, ChickP dairy-free milk allows them, as well as consumers concerned about animal welfare, to enjoy a cappuccino or latte with the perfect silky microfoam.

Small but mighty, power your day with ChickP protein. Be sure to visit us at the IFT First Expo at the Startup Pavilion, booth #S4286-M and sample our delicious ChickP applications such as whey protein-like powder and sport nutrition bars.

About ChickP

ChickP was founded in 2016 by Ram Reifen, MD, a pediatric gastroenterologist and professor of human nutrition who was driven by a desire to create a protein that can help feed the world while benefiting consumers and food manufacturers. The company is the owner of a breakthrough patented technology for production of chickpea protein (90%), developed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem ChickP helps its customers to develop nutritional, plant-based products with speed-to-market and reliability. The start-up raised US$10M so far in a completed A round fundraising. ChickP is ISO-certified and has self-affirmed GRAS status.

For further information, please contact:

www.gfi.org/marketresearch/ [1]

SOURCE Liat Simha
SAN ANTONIO, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: CCO) (the "Company") will release 2022 second quarter results before the market opens on Tuesday, August 9, 2022, by 7:00 a.m. and will host a conference call to discuss the results at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time.

The conference call number is 1-844-200-6205 (U.S. callers) and 1-929-526-1599 (international callers), and the access code for both is 285910. A live audio webcast of the conference call will be available on the "Events and Presentations" section of the Company's website (www.investor.clearchannel.com). The related earnings materials, including reconciliations of any non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures and any other applicable disclosures, will be available on the "Financials" section of the Company's website after 7:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

Approximately two hours after the live conference call, a replay of the webcast will be available for a period of thirty days on the "Events and Presentations" section of the Company's website.

About Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc.

Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. ("CCOH") (NYSE: CCO) is at the forefront of driving innovation in the out-of-home advertising industry. Our dynamic advertising platform is broadening the pool of advertisers using our medium through the expansion of digital billboards and displays and the integration of data analytics and programmatic capabilities that deliver measurable campaigns that are simpler to buy. By leveraging the scale, reach and flexibility of our diverse portfolio of assets, we connect advertisers with millions of consumers every month across more than 500,000 print and digital displays in 26 countries.

SOURCE Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc.
MD Anderson's Moon Shot Program is an ambitious plan to make a leap in patient care and outcomes for those suffering with cancer the world over. This innovative model focuses on "innovation, scale, and collaboration" as methods for its patient bases and research platforms. The program was first founded in 2012 in response to a growing need for rapid advances in the face of growing death and suffering figures. The program goal is to produce new solutions, care regimens, and therapeutics to prevent and treat cancers of all kinds.

One such cancer, anaplastic thyroid cancer, or ATC, it's a rare and aggressive cancer that requires immediate treatment in order to improve survival chances. While only 500 new cases of ATC are diagnosed yearly in the United States, most go misdiagnosed or overlooked, impacting the amount of time left for proper treatment and care. MD Anderson's Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer Clinic has a storied history treating hundreds of these patients either directly or as part of a comprehensive treatment plan.

The Moon Shot Program has previously also received broad attention during national events including the national Cancer Moonshot Summit, which brought together experts, advocates, patients, and survivors from across the country. The summit is one of the only forums where professionals treating and researching various cancers come together to share their findings and inclusively work together toward cures and advancement.

About Colbeck Capital Management

Colbeck Capital Management is a leading, middle-market private credit manager focused on strategic lending. Colbeck partners with companies during periods of transition, providing creative capital solutions. Colbeck sponsors its portfolio companies through consistent engagement with management teams in areas such as finance, capital markets and growth strategies, distinguishing itself from traditional lenders. Founded in 2009 by Jason Colodne and Jason Beckman, the principals have extensive experience investing through market cycles at leading institutions such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

SOURCE Colbeck Capital Management
Vendor Landscape

The data center market in Malaysia is fragmented, and the degree of fragmentation will accelerate during the forecast period. Vendors in the market are adopting various growth strategies such as R and D, technological innovations, strategic collaborations, M and A, market expansion activities, and investments in market growth opportunities to remain competitive. Some companies are focusing on M and A strategies to enhance their market share and geographic footprints. Vendors equipped with improved technical and financial resources are focusing on developing products that can make competitors' products outdated and non-competitive even before they are launched.

Cisco Systems Inc., Cummins Inc., Dell Technologies Inc., Eaton Corp. Plc, Fujitsu Ltd., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Inspur Group, International Business Machines Corp., Legrand SA, Lenovo Group Ltd., NEC Corp., NetApp Inc., NTT Communications Corp., NTT Corp., Schneider Electric SE, and Vertiv Holdings Co. are identified as some of the major market participants. Although the demand planning and expansion by hyperscalers, digital transformation initiatives and efforts, and the growing demand among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) will offer immense growth opportunities, need for high capital investment, growing concerns over server security, and server workload optimization will challenge the growth of the market participants. To make the most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments.

Read Our Report Sample for more insights into the vendor landscape and the factors impacting the market growth.

Data Center Market in Malaysia 2022-2026: Segmentation

The data center market in Malaysia is segmented as below:

Type

Data Center Servers



Data Center Storage



Data Center Networking Solutions



Data Center Powering and Cooling Solutions

The market growth in the data center servers segment will be significant over the forecast period. Increasing investments in the expansion and the construction of new data center facilities in Malaysia is driving the growth of the segment.

Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. Our data center market in Malaysia report covers the following areas:

Data Center Market in Malaysia 2022-2026: Vendor Analysis

We provide a detailed analysis of around 25 vendors operating in the data center market in Malaysia. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research report on the data center market in Malaysia is designed to provide entry support, customer profile, and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support.

Data Center Market in Malaysia 2022-2026: Key Highlights

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2022-2026

Detailed information on factors that will assist data center market growth in Malaysia during the next five years

during the next five years Estimation of the data center market size in Malaysia and its contribution to the parent market

and its contribution to the parent market Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the data center market in Malaysia

Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of data center market vendors in Malaysia

Related Reports:

Data Center Market In Malaysia Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 15.72% Market growth 2022-2026 USD 2.08 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 14.86 Regional analysis Malaysia Performing market contribution Malaysia at 100% Key consumer countries Malaysia, Malaysia, and Malaysia Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled Cisco Systems Inc., Cummins Inc., Dell Technologies Inc., Eaton Corp. Plc, Fujitsu Ltd., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.,

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Inspur Group, International Business Machines Corp., Legrand SA, Lenovo Group Ltd.,

NEC Corp., NetApp Inc., NTT Communications Corp., NTT Corp., Schneider Electric SE, and Vertiv Holdings Co Market Dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis,

COVID 19 impact and future consumer dynamics, market condition analysis for the forecast period, Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized

Table Of Contents :

1 Executive Summary

1.1 Market overview

Exhibit 01: Executive Summary  Chart on Market Overview



Exhibit 02: Executive Summary  Data Table on Market Overview



Exhibit 03: Executive Summary  Chart on Country Market Characteristics



Exhibit 04: Executive Summary  Chart on Market Segmentation by Type



Exhibit 05: Executive Summary  Chart on Vendor Market Positioning

2 Market Landscape

2.1 Market ecosystem

Exhibit 06: Parent market



Exhibit 07: Market Characteristics

3 Market Sizing

3.1 Market definition

Exhibit 08: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition

3.2 Market segment analysis

Exhibit 09: Market segments

3.3 Market size 2021

3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2021-2026

Exhibit 10: Chart on Malaysia - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 11: Data Table on Malaysia - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 12: Chart on Malaysia : Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

: Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 13: Data Table on Malaysia : Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

4 Five Forces Analysis

4.1 Five forces summary

Exhibit 14: Five forces analysis - Comparison between 2021 and 2026

4.2 Bargaining power of buyers

Exhibit 15: Chart on Bargaining power of buyers  Impact of key factors 2021 and 2026

4.3 Bargaining power of suppliers

Exhibit 16: Bargaining power of suppliers  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.4 Threat of new entrants

Exhibit 17: Threat of new entrants  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.5 Threat of substitutes

Exhibit 18: Threat of substitutes  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.6 Threat of rivalry

Exhibit 19: Threat of rivalry  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.7 Market condition

Exhibit 20: Chart on Market condition - Five forces 2021 and 2026

5 Market Segmentation by Type

5.1 Market segments

Exhibit 21: Chart on Type - Market share 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 22: Data Table on Type - Market share 2021-2026 (%)

5.2 Comparison by Type

Exhibit 23: Chart on Comparison by Type



Exhibit 24: Data Table on Comparison by Type

5.3 Data center servers - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 25: Chart on Data center servers - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 26: Data Table on Data center servers - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 27: Chart on Data center servers - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 28: Data Table on Data center servers - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.4 Data center storage - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 29: Chart on Data center storage - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 30: Data Table on Data center storage - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 31: Chart on Data center storage - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 32: Data Table on Data center storage - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.5 Data center networking solutions - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 33: Chart on Data center networking solutions - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 34: Data Table on Data center networking solutions - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 35: Chart on Data center networking solutions - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 36: Data Table on Data center networking solutions - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.6 Data center powering and cooling solutions - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 37: Chart on Data center powering and cooling solutions - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 38: Data Table on Data center powering and cooling solutions - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 39: Chart on Data center powering and cooling solutions - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 40: Data Table on Data center powering and cooling solutions - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.7 Market opportunity by Type

Exhibit 41: Market opportunity by Type ($ million)

6 Customer Landscape

6.1 Customer landscape overview

Exhibit 42: Analysis of price sensitivity, lifecycle, customer purchase basket, adoption rates, and purchase criteria

7 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

7.1 Market drivers

7.2 Market challenges

7.3 Impact of drivers and challenges

Exhibit 43: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2021 and 2026

7.4 Market trends

8 Vendor Landscape

8.1 Overview

8.2 Vendor landscape

Exhibit 44: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation

8.3 Landscape disruption

Exhibit 45: Overview on factors of disruption

8.4 Industry risks

Exhibit 46: Impact of key risks on business

9 Vendor Analysis

9.1 Vendors covered

Exhibit 47: Vendors covered

9.2 Market positioning of vendors

Exhibit 48: Matrix on vendor position and classification

9.3 Cisco Systems Inc.

Exhibit 49: Cisco Systems Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 50: Cisco Systems Inc. - Business segments



Exhibit 51: Cisco Systems Inc. - Key news



Exhibit 52: Cisco Systems Inc. - Key offerings



Exhibit 53: Cisco Systems Inc. - Segment focus

9.4 Dell Technologies Inc.

Exhibit 54: Dell Technologies Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 55: Dell Technologies Inc. - Business segments



Exhibit 56: Dell Technologies Inc. - Key news



Exhibit 57: Dell Technologies Inc. - Key offerings



Exhibit 58: Dell Technologies Inc. - Segment focus

9.5 Fujitsu Ltd.

Exhibit 59: Fujitsu Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 60: Fujitsu Ltd. - Business segments



Exhibit 61: Fujitsu Ltd. - Key offerings



Exhibit 62: Fujitsu Ltd. - Segment focus

9.6 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.

Exhibit 63: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. - Overview



Exhibit 64: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. - Business segments



Exhibit 65: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. - Key news



Exhibit 66: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. - Key offerings



Exhibit 67: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. - Segment focus

9.7 Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.

Exhibit 68: Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 69: Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. - Business segments



Exhibit 70: Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. - Key offerings



Exhibit 71: Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. - Segment focus

9.8 International Business Machines Corp.

Exhibit 72: International Business Machines Corp. - Overview



Exhibit 73: International Business Machines Corp. - Business segments



Exhibit 74: International Business Machines Corp. - Key offerings



Exhibit 75: International Business Machines Corp. - Segment focus

9.9 Lenovo Group Ltd.

Exhibit 76: Lenovo Group Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 77: Lenovo Group Ltd. - Business segments



Exhibit 78: Lenovo Group Ltd. - Key offerings



Exhibit 79: Lenovo Group Ltd. - Segment focus

9.10 NEC Corp.

Exhibit 80: NEC Corp. - Overview



Exhibit 81: NEC Corp. - Business segments



Exhibit 82: NEC Corp. - Key news



Exhibit 83: NEC Corp. - Key offerings



Exhibit 84: NEC Corp. - Segment focus

9.11 NetApp Inc.

Exhibit 85: NetApp Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 86: NetApp Inc. - Business segments



Exhibit 87: NetApp Inc. - Key news



Exhibit 88: NetApp Inc. - Key offerings



Exhibit 89: NetApp Inc. - Segment focus

9.12 NTT Communications Corp.

Exhibit 90: NTT Communications Corp. - Overview



Exhibit 91: NTT Communications Corp. - Product / Service



Exhibit 92: NTT Communications Corp. - Key news



Exhibit 93: NTT Communications Corp. - Key offerings

10 Appendix

10.1 Scope of the report

10.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist

Exhibit 94: Inclusions checklist

10.3 Currency conversion rates for US$

Exhibit 95: Currency conversion rates for US$

10.4 Research methodology

Exhibit 96: Research methodology



Exhibit 97: Validation techniques employed for market sizing



Exhibit 98: Information sources

10.5 List of abbreviations

Exhibit 99: List of abbreviations

About Us

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

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UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.technavio.com/

SOURCE Technavio
The industry's most efficient mining system drives higher profitability on renewable energy.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- DaVinci 3.0 has announced plans to host the company's newly released DragonFly Mining System with Compute North, a leader in sustainable, large-scale computing infrastructure. The patent-pending DragonFly Mining System is housed in a UL certified weatherproof exterior and offers superior mining output, connected to renewable energy, in almost any climate.

DaVinci 3.0 Announces Plans to Host New Immersion Crypto Mining System with Compute North

"We are excited about the future that immersion cooling offers the cryptocurrency mining industry, delivering increased productivity and efficiency as well as extending the useful life of the miners," said Dave Perrill, CEO and Co-founder at Compute North. "We are honored that DaVinci 3.0 has chosen to host their mining system with us."

DaVinci 3.0 released the DragonFly Mining System at the Consensus conference in June in Austin, TX. The company has an environmental-first philosophy and has spent the last 16 months in stealth mode, developing the DragonFly design in collaboration with experts from MIT, RPI, and Cornell.

The best-in-class hyper efficiency of the DragonFly is seen in its 5 Petahash output, using just 200kwh of power. It is built in the USA, virtually maintenance free, and boasts 65% less electronic waste than traditional mining systems.

The first-generation release is currently shipping to U.S.-based partners and clients. DaVinci 3.0 has begun taking orders for the second-generation unit (boasting an industry leading efficiency of 15 joules per terahash) for deliveries in 2023.

"Hosting the DragonFly with Compute North is a natural fit, and we foresee a great partnership being built from this," said Patrick J. Sweeney II, CEO and founder of Boston based DaVinci 3.0. "Immersion cooling offers next generation mining efficiency and solves many of the environmental challenges which have been associated with cryptocurrency mining. The DragonFly is a best-in-class example for the future of crypto mining, especially in a compettive market environment."

About DaVinci 3.0

THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL AND EFFICIENT INDUSTRIAL-SCALE CRYPTO MINING SYSTEM ONLY FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY USERS

SOURCE DaVinci 3.0
Read the original article on Business Insider.

Recent drills involving U.S. Navy submarines and Marine Corps special operators in the Pacific and the Mediterranean highlight an overlooked insertion and exfiltration method that would be relevant in a conflict with China.

In early 2021, Force Recon Marines conducted a rare training with USS Ohio near Okinawa, and earlier this year U.S. Marines trained with USS Georgia in the Mediterranean "to synchronize" Navy and Marine Corps operations.

Although submarine operations are mostly associated with Navy SEALs or U.S. Army Green Beret combat divers, Marine special operators have a long history of submarine operations  Marine Raiders were the first U.S. military unit to conduct a submarine-borne raid, attacking Makin Island in the Pacific in August 1942.

Submarine operations

U.S. Marines in combat rubber raiding craft approach U.S. Navy Ohio-class USS Ohio during an exercise near Okinawa, February 2, 2021. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Destiny Dempsey)

The main benefit of using submarines for exfiltration and infiltration of special-operations forces is the difficulty of detecting them.

Getting to the fight on a submarine is considerably more discreet than arriving on an MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter or jumping from an MC-130 Combat Talon airplane. If the infiltration and exfiltration are performed properly, the adversary may never know that US commandos and the sub carrying them were there.

Submarine operations allow "Recon Marines and Raiders to infiltrate undetected and conduct reconnaissance or raid missions with low probability of compromise," retired Marine Raider Maj. Fred Galvin told Insider.

U.S. Marines board USS Ohio during training near Okinawa, February 2, 2021. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Destiny Dempsey)

This allows those operators to carry out missions of a "strategic nature" but it also "affects the enemy's psychology in that they cannot easily defend against it and in order to defend against it they must commit massive personnel and material resources," added Galvin, who began his career in the Marine Reconnaissance community.

In the vastness of the Pacific, submarine operations could be very important in a conflict with China, allowing Marine special operators to conduct offensive and defensive operations.

"As the stand-in force in the first island chain, it is critical that Force Reconnaissance Marines are capable of being employed across a myriad of US Navy platforms in order to enhance the lethality of the fleet in the littoral environment," Maj. Daniel Romans, commander of the Force Recon company that trained with USS Ohio, said in a press release.

How it's done and why it's risky

However, as with most special-operations infiltration and exfiltration methods, submarine operations come with a lot of risk. Combat diving generally has significant physical risk, which only increases when a nuclear-powered submarine is involved.

"The risks include significant physiological risks while conducting submarine lock in, lock out and closed-circuit diving operation due to complicated pressure changes in the operation," said Galvin, who is author of "A Few Bad Men," an account of the first Marine special operations combat deployment to Afghanistan and how it overcame attacks from all sides.

The lock-in and lock-out technique is used to get operators into and out of a submerged submarine undetected by enemy eyes or sensors. The Navy has a certain number of submarines with specially designed "lock-out trunks."

A Marine exits the lock-out trunk on USS Mississippi during a special-operations training in Hawaii, November 17, 2015. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Tony Simmons)

At the release point, the operators enter the lock-out trunk wearing their scuba gear and the truck is flooded to match the outside water pressure. Once the appropriate pressure is reached, the operators open the trunk's hatch and head to their target, taking with them any necessary gear, such as inflatable boats.

Throughout this procedure, the submarine remains submerged but close to the surface.

During lock-out operations, commandos have to be very careful with their air levels and ensure that the air in the trunk doesn't have too much carbon dioxide, which can be deadly for the operators and compromise the mission, as too much of the gas can create bubbles that an adversary can pick up with sonar.

Lock-outs are no piece of cake, and lots can go wrong during the process, especially when there are operational restrictions  for example, operating at night and the general need for secrecy.

U.S. Marines train with combat rubber raiding craft aboard USS Georgia near Souda Bay, March 27, 2022. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt Dylan Chagnon)

Mistakes under those conditions "can result in convulsions, hypoxia, decompression sickness, as well as becoming disoriented, navigational errors, exhaustion, oxygen toxicity, severe cramps (especially during cold-weather diving operations) and equipment malfunctions, which can lead to not being able to have the entire team continue the subsurface mission," Galvin said.

Some of those side effects can appear after the subsurface phase of the infiltration or exfiltration and can even lead to long-term effects for the operators affected.

Submarine-borne infiltration and exfiltration "has one of the highest operational-risk assessments of all special-operations missions and requires highly trained, specialized diving medical technicians, diving medical officers to operate decompression chambers, and training on submarine chamber operations," Galvin added.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate.
TAYLOR, Mich., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Entering its 10th year in business, Duhome, an international furniture brand, is adding to its existing footprint in United States with the opening of a second 120,000 sq ft warehouse in MI, in addition to the former 58,000 sq ft warehouse in City of Industry, CA. Strategically located in 21010 Trolley Industrial Drive Taylor, MI, the new warehouse is only about 10 hours from the pickup location - New York port, IL. The company invested thousands of dollars in the brand-new warehouse for faster delivery to any location in Central and Eastern USA, allowing customers to benefit from shorter turnaround times.

Startup of Newly Built Warehouse in MI

Duhome has grown along with its customers to become one of the most-recognized furniture brands in the global market. Constantly growing demand from Duhome's customers across the whole country made the second warehouse expansion an absolute must. In response to increasing market demand for enhanced delivery, construction work for the new warehouse in MI began in January 20th, 2021 and all work has been complete in a few months. With new improvement and optimized logistics collaboration in the recent months in 2022, Duhome warehouse system are now up and running smoothly, and operations at the new warehouse are already in full swing.

Help Increase Efficiency of Deliveries for Customers

After months of construction, the expanded warehouse in MI becomes an ideally-equipped place for storing up to 100-120pcs 40-foot containers and serves as a distribution hub for a variety of Duhome furniture to surrounding region, including New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, etc., while ensuring adequate stock-holding for efficient deliveries. Employees at the newly built warehouse are responsible for regular goods acceptance, packing, repacking, order picking, quality control and returning.

A further advantage of the location is its easy access to various shipping methods and tight connection to the central America and east coast - which greatly reduces lead times, creates efficiencies and allows for future business growth by being closer to terminal customers. With this latest expansion, Duhome goes one step further to provide customers with the assurance to get their beloved furniture in 2-5 days generally.

The second warehouse in MI is designed with up to 16 loading docks and 28 feet high ceilings for easy movement of truck, and also accommodates 100-120pcs 40-foot containers on a 120,000 sq ft of floor space. Divided into 3 sections separated by firewalls, the warehouse guarantees the highest safety standards and protection. And an advanced air-conditioning and climate control system is also available to keep all stock maintained at the perfect temperatures and in peak condition. Thus, Duhome customers could receive the furniture in the best condition and in the most efficient way.

"It's been a team effort to make the opening of our new warehouse possible," said CEO of Duhome, Mr. Du. "We're thrilled to see Duhome continues to grow, and the expansion to a second warehouse is a good result of incredible continuous growth in our business and brand awareness."

About Duhome:

For more than ten years, Duhome has been striving to offer an assortment of modern furniture designed to complement home lifestyles across the world. Early on, Duhome established the headquarter in Germany with a local warehouse. And today with two warehouses in both east and west coast in USA, the company now expands at a faster pace and offers a vast warehouse space worldwide.

It is one of the most crucial steps in Duhome's history for new businesses to proper and flourish. Not only will the expansion underscore Duhome's commitment to support the marketing needs and customer satisfaction, it will also give the company an ample room to grow offerings in the globe market. This is an investment for the future. With the newly expanded warehouse in MI and advanced warehousing facility therein, the company will be perfectly positioned for further growth in a highly dynamic market by offering customers the optimized solution at all times.

For further information on Duhome, please visit: https://www.duhome.com/.

Media Contact: Marketing Department, Tel: +1 626-581-8998; E-mail: [email protected]

SOURCE Duhome
Acquisition creates new business unit that delivers expense optimization and streamlining of highly complex technology systems

OAK BROOK, Ill., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- E78 Partners, a leading provider of finance, accounting and technology solutions for the Office of the CFO and private equity firms, announced today that it has acquired Profit Enhancement Systems (PES), a technology-enabled managed service provider with nearly 30 years' experience optimizing and managing cloud, mobility and infrastructure costs.

"PES has earned a reputation for delivering reductions in business technology expenses while enhancing performance, accessibility and security. From day one, they're going to significantly strengthen the value we offer our clients, enabling us to have an immediate, meaningful impact on their bottom line," said John Signa, founder and CEO of E78 Partners.

As a member of the E78 family of companies, PES will form the basis of a new cost optimization business unit with a specific focus on eliminating clients' overspend while helping them get the most out of their cloud, data, wireless and related IT systems. They are one of the few firms serving a spectrum of clients that includes Fortune 500 companies, private equity firms and middle-market businesses, and their expertise across this range is expected to accelerate E78's emergence as a single-source growth and performance improvement partner for previously underserved market segments.

The company's range of solutions is particularly appealing to businesses operating in today's uncertain environment. IT spend today is increasing in scope and complexity, and PES's set of software and service solutions give CIOs, CFOs and other decision makers the ability to regain control of their procurement decisions and recurring expenditures.

"Over the past 29 years, we've set the standard for what a technology-focused cost management company can do for its clients," said John Cataldo, CEO and chairman of PES. "As a part of E78, we have the capital support and operational expertise to propel us to an even higher level of performance and widen our service offering to include E78's suite of financial management services and expertise. Now, as a platform within E78, we will become the acquirer of choice in our market, with PES having the ability to transform channel partners into service providers via PES's managed service practice. This is a game-changing moment in the industry."

The acquisition of PES is the latest in a series of transactions that E78 has made over the past two years, solidly establishing the company as a national presence in the professional services industry. E78 is sponsored by Further Global Capital Management, a private equity firm that backs best-in-class management teams operating in the business and financial services industries as a thought partner, network builder and capital source.

"PES has a proven value proposition, an outstanding reputation and, most importantly, a client centric culture that aligns with E78," said Max Baumrin, a partner with Further Global. "This is an exciting transaction for E78 as it grows into the industry's preeminent provider of accounting, finance and technology solutions."

ABOUT E78 PARTNERS

Founded in 2016 by former private equity professionals, E78 Partners is a private-equity focused accounting, finance and technology consulting and outsourcing firm that has developed and acquired a suite of services focused on delivering value through the Office of the CFO. More information is available at e78partners.com.

ABOUT PES

Profit Enhancement Systems, LLC (PES) is a technology-enabled spend management and strategic sourcing practice with nearly 30 years' experience optimizing and managing cloud, mobility and infrastructure costs. PES is the most tenured and respected technology expense management firm in the United States with clients in every industry, from privately held portfolio companies to publicly traded global organizations, including many ranked in the top tiers of the Fortune 500. PES is headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee, with offices across the country. More information is available at profitenhancement.com.

MEDIA CONTACTS & INQUIRIES

PRESS INQUIRIES

Jon Cooper

Chief Marketing Officer

[email protected]

(630) 819-5118

SALES INQUIRIES

John Buccola

Senior Managing Director

[email protected]

M&A INQUIRIES

Seth Deutsch

Chief Growth Officer

[email protected]

SOURCE E78 Partners
REDDING, Calif., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a new market research report titled, "Education and Learning Analytics Market by Offering (Software, Services), Deployment, Application (People Acquisition & Retention, Operations, Performance Management, Others), User Group (Academic, Corporate) and Geography - Global Forecasts to 2029", the education & learning analytics market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 23.8% from 2022 to 2029 to reach $36.59 billion by 2029.

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Education & learning analytics describes the use of data to understand learners' needs and improve educational services accordingly. It can be used to test the effectiveness of different learning techniques, track students' progress and identify areas for improvement, and give educators insight into the most successful tactics. The learning analytics (LA) market is rapidly growing in educational institutions globally, especially for higher education and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) providers, which drive the need to improve students' success rates, retention, learning experience, and course material efficiency.

The growth of this market is driven by the growing need for data-driven decisions to improve the quality of education and extensive government initiatives for education modernization. However, a lack of awareness regarding education analytics standards and data hygiene among educational institutes is expected to restrain the growth of this market. The incorporation of machine learning and artificial intelligence in education & learning analytics is expected to create growth opportunities for the players operating in this market. However, data privacy & security concerns & misconceptions and a lack of knowledge regarding education & learning analytics solutions are major challenges for market growth. Additionally, the increasing adoption of distance learning and the growing utilization of cloud-based learning analytics solutions are major trends prevalent in the global education & learning analytics market.

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Education & Learning Analytics Market

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, educational institutions had started effectively incorporating data analysis, slightly boosting the education & learning analytics market from its nascent stage. The shutting down of schools, academic institutions, and educational enterprises compelled learners to adopt the remote learning approach to manage their syllabus and courses. Many universities successfully transitioned to e-learning. For example, Zhejiang University (China) managed to get more than 5,000 courses online just two weeks into the transition using DingTalk ZJU. Imperial College London started offering a course on the science of coronavirus, which was launched on Coursera, becoming the most enrolled course in 2020. Also, governments across the globe made efforts to devise open-source e-learning solutions to provide education to all students regardless of their technical barriers. For instance, the Government of India developed several free e-learning platforms such as SWAYAM, DIKSHA, and NPTEL for learners pursuing various courses.

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Thus, with the growing adoption of remote learning and e-learning platforms, institutions can leverage learner/student data to make future decisions to support institutional progress and improve learners' performance. Thus, the adoption of learning analytics is expected to grow exponentially in the coming years. The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on incomes, and as a result, many governments across the globe ordered schools and other educational institutions to reduce tuition fees to provide some relaxation to learners. This factor lowered the adoption of newer technologies among educational & academic institutions due to being largely non-essential. However, learners' growing dependency on e-learning platforms is expected to encourage the adoption of learning analytics solutions & services among educational & academic institutes, boosting the growth of this market in the coming years.

Extensive Government Initiatives for Education Modernization

Learning analytics explores the relationship between learning system usage and various outcomes, which can positively impact students, faculty, administrators, researchers, and learning system designers. In order to increase the productivity of students, learners, and faculties, governments worldwide are undertaking initiatives to promote education & learning analytics. For instance, in 2021, the Ontario government announced making a USD 50 million investment in virtual learning and educational technologies to help expand access to high-quality, market-responsive, and globally competitive 'Ontario Made' education. Thus, growing government initiatives supporting and promoting the incorporation of education & learning analytics are expected to drive the growth of the learning analytics market.

In developing countries, governments are focused on encouraging educational institutions to adopt modernized learning techniques by developing ICT infrastructure and enhancing internet connectivity, driving the adoption of learning analytics solutions. For instance, initiatives by the Indian government, such as SWAYAM, E-Basta, Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), Skill India, and Digital India are enabling modern ICT infrastructures needed by students and teachers in the country. Furthermore, governments of other developing countries in Asia-Pacific, including Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, also consider analytics an effective way for development across different sectors, including education & learning. Thus, supportive government initiatives are expected to encourage modernized learning, driving the growth of the education & learning analytics market.

Some of the government initiatives in this space are as follows:

In 2021, the U.S. government passed a new law, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), providing a total of USD 170.3 billion in funding for education. This funding includes more than USD 125.4 billion for state K12 public education programs and USD 39.6 billion for higher education, with the remaining funds going to other educational programs and activities. The act also provides USD 7.2 billion in funding for the federal E-Rate program, which will be extended to provide devices and connectivity to students, educators, and patrons of public libraries.

in funding for education. This funding includes more than for state K12 public education programs and for higher education, with the remaining funds going to other educational programs and activities. The act also provides in funding for the federal E-Rate program, which will be extended to provide devices and connectivity to students, educators, and patrons of public libraries. In 2020, the Australian Ministry of Education announced plans to invest USD 50 million through 2024 to support university-initiated proposals designed to increase innovation, capability, and efficacy in higher education. The ministry approved 35 proposals at 22 public universities in the areas of Digitization in Teaching and Learning, Learning Analytics, Skills for the Digital Age, Usage of Digital Transformation for the Social Dimension, Open Science and E-Administration.

through 2024 to support university-initiated proposals designed to increase innovation, capability, and efficacy in higher education. The ministry approved 35 proposals at 22 public universities in the areas of Digitization in Teaching and Learning, Learning Analytics, Skills for the Digital Age, Usage of Digital Transformation for the Social Dimension, Open Science and E-Administration. In 2019, the German government announced plans to invest USD 5.9 billion ( EUR 5 billion ) between (20192024) in digitalizing the country's education sector.

The global education & learning analytics market is segmented by offering (software and services), deployment (on-premise and cloud-based), application (people acquisition & retention, operations, performance management, and others), user group (academic institutions and corporate users), and geography. The study also evaluates industry competitors and analyses the market at the country level.

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Based on offering, the global education & learning analytics market is segmented into software and services. In 2022, the software segment is expected to account for a larger share of the global education & learning analytics market. However, the services segment is projected to grow at a faster rate owing to the growing preferences of educational institutions concerning the technical support and maintenance of the education and learning analytics platforms. Besides, the use of professional services also helps save considerable time and expenditure on the platform, thus, allowing more time for the institutes to concentrate on their core objectives.

Based on deployment mode, the global education & learning analytics market is segmented into on-premise and cloud-based. In 2022, the cloud-based segment is expected to account for a larger share of the global education & learning analytics market. This segment is also expected to grow at a higher CAGR during the forecast period. Benefits such as enhanced scalability, accessibility, and automated upgradation offered by cloud-based analytics solutions contribute to the growth of this segment.

Based on application, the education & learning analytics market is segmented into people acquisition & retention, curriculum development, operations management, finance management, performance management, and other applications. In 2022, the performance management segment is expected to account for the largest share of the global education & learning analytics market. The large share of this segment is mainly attributed to the growing need for monitoring the individual performance of learners and the growing demand from educational institutes to develop personalized content. The segment is also expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period.

Based on geography, the market is broadly segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa. The Asia-Pacific region is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The high growth rate is attributed to rapidly developing economies, the presence of a young and tech-savvy population in this region, rising disposable incomes, rapid infrastructure development, growing proliferation of cloud computing and smartphones, and the growing sense of responsibility towards the environment.

The global Education & learning analytics market is consolidated and dominated by a few major players, namely Microstrategy Incorporated (U.S.), TIBCO software Inc. (U.S.), Alteryx Inc. (U.S.), D2L Corporations (Canada), SAS Institute Inc. (U.S.), IBM Corporation (U.S.), Microsoft Corporations (U.S.), Cornerstone OnDemand, Inc. (U.S.), SAP SE (U.S.), Oracle Corporations (U.S.), Blackboard Inc. (U.S.), Tableau Software (U.S.), Qlik (U.S.), Yellowfin (Australia), Latitude CG, LLC (U.S.) and among others.

Browse in-depth TOC on "Education & Learning Analytics Market - Global Opportunity Analysis And Industry Forecast (20222029)"

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Scope of the Report:

Education & Learning Analytics Market, by Offering

Software

Services

Managed Services



Professional Services



Technical Support and Maintenance



Consulting Services

Education & Learning Analytics Market, by Deployment Mode

On-premise

Cloud-based

Education & Learning Analytics Market, by Application

People Acquisition & Retention

Curriculum Development

Operations Management

Finance Management

Performance Management

Other Applications

Education & Learning Analytics Market, by User Group

Academic Institutions

K-12



Higher Education

Corporate Users

Large Enterprises



Small & Medium-sized Enterprises

Education & Learning Analytics Market, by Region

North America

U.S.



Canada

Europe

Germany



U.K.



France



Italy



Spain



Rest of Europe

Asia-Pacific

Japan



China



India



South Korea



Rest of Asia-Pacific

Latin America

Mexico



Brazil



Rest of Latin America

Middle East & Africa

& Africa UAE



Israel



Rest of MEA

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Related Report:

Learning Management System (LMS) Market by Product Offering (Solutions, Services), User Group (Education, Corporate), Delivery Mode (Distance Learning, Instructor-led Learning), Deployment Type (Cloud, On-Premise), and Geography- Global Forecast to 2025

https://www.meticulousresearch.com/product/learning-management-system-market-5052

English Language Learning Market by Methodology (Offline, Online, Blended Learning), End-User (Individual, Education, Government, Corporate Learners) - Global Forecast to 2027 https://www.meticulousresearch.com/product/english-language-learning-market-5127

Online Language Learning Market by Product (SaaS, Apps, Tutoring), Mode (Consumer, Government, K-12, Corporate), Language (English, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese) and Geography - Global Forecast to 2027

https://www.meticulousresearch.com/product/online-language-learning-market-5025

About Meticulous Research

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The name of our company defines our services, strengths, and values. Since the inception, we have only thrived to research, analyze, and present the critical market data with great attention to details. With the meticulous primary and secondary research techniques, we have built strong capabilities in data collection, interpretation, and analysis of data including qualitative and quantitative research with the finest team of analysts. We design our meticulously analyzed intelligent and value-driven syndicate market research reports, custom studies, quick turnaround research, and consulting solutions to address business challenges of sustainable growth.

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SOURCE Meticulous Market Research Pvt. Ltd
Education Consulting Market: Segmentation Analysis

Type Landscape

By type segmentation, it is classified into the K-12 and higher education

The education consulting market share growth in the K-12 segment will be significant for revenue generation.

will be significant for revenue generation. The number of K-12 educational institutions is increasing across the world, which, in turn, is driving the demand for professional education consulting services. As primary and secondary-level educational institutions are adopting an interactive, example-oriented approach toward learning, several students are seeking education consulting services. Hence, the K-12 segment is expected to witness significant growth during the forecast period.

Geography Landscape

By Geography segmentation, it is classified into North America , Europe , APAC, South America , and MEA

38% of the market's growth will originate from North America during the forecast period. The US and Canada are the key markets for education consulting in North America . Market growth in this region will be faster than the growth of the market in the European, South American, and MEA regions.

during the forecast period. The US and are the key markets for education consulting in . Market growth in this region will be faster than the growth of the market in the European, South American, and MEA regions. The increasing number of unfilled job opportunities in the STEM industry will facilitate the education consulting market growth in North America over the forecast period.

To know about the market contribution of each segment - Grab a sample now!

Education Consulting Market: Market Dynamics

Drivers: The rising demand for customized learning, the growing importance of STEM education & increasing number of e-learning enrollments in the higher education sector is one of the major factors propelling the market growth.

The rising demand for customized learning, the growing importance of STEM education & increasing number of e-learning enrollments in the higher education sector is one of the major factors propelling the market growth. Challenges: The factors such as the increasing popularity of open educational resources, low awareness about education consulting services, and lack of effective metrics will hamper the market growth.

Education Consulting Market: Vendors Covered

The education consulting market is fragmented and the vendors are deploying growth strategies such as organic and inorganic strategies to compete in the market.

BRITANNICA EDUCATION CONSULTING LTD.

Broils Consulting Group LLC

ClearView Consulting Co.

Edmentum Inc.

Education Consulting Services LLC

Education Elements Inc.

Edway Education Consulting

ELITE SCHOLARS OF CHINA

Generation Ready Inc.

Global Education Ltd.

To know about the vendor offerings - Click Now!

Get ready to achieve excellent business outcomes from this exclusive Education Consulting Market report by Technavio. The report will include highlights of the overall market which includes frequently asked questions such as -

What are historical revenue figures and estimated revenue figures as well as CAGR during the forecast timeframe?

What is the current trend taking place in the market space?

Which are business tactics that will influence competitive scenarios along with defining the growth potential of the market?

What are market drivers, restraints, and challenges impacting demand & growth of the market?

Which regions & segments will garner massive revenue and emerge as market leaders in upcoming years?

The competitive scenario provided in the Education Consulting Market report analyzes, evaluates, and positions companies based on various performance indicators. Some of the factors considered for this analysis include the financial performance of companies over the past few years, growth strategies, product innovations, new product launches, investments, growth in market share, etc. Don't wait, Make a strategic approach & boost your business goals with our Education Consulting Market Forecast Report - Buy Now!

Related Reports:

The corporate leadership training market share is expected to increase to USD 18.59 billion from 2021 to 2026, and the market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 9.51%.

share is expected to increase to from 2021 to 2026, and the market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 9.51%. The e-learning market share in the UK is expected to increase to USD 11.57 billion from 2021 to 2026, and the market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 15.27%.

Education Consulting Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2020 Forecast period 2021-2025 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 5.01% Market growth 2021-2025 USD 579.19 million Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 3.89 Performing market contribution North America at 38% Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled BRITANNICA EDUCATION CONSULTING LTD., Broils Consulting Group LLC, ClearView Consulting Co., Edmentum Inc., Education Consulting Services LLC, Education Elements Inc., Edway Education Consulting, ELITE SCHOLARS OF CHINA, Generation Ready Inc., and Global Education Ltd. Market Dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID 19 impact and future consumer dynamics, market condition analysis for forecast period, Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

Table of content:

1 Executive Summary

2 Market Landscape

2.1 Market ecosystem

Exhibit 01: Parent market



Exhibit 02: Market characteristics

2.2 Value chain analysis

Exhibit 03: Value chain analysis: Education services

3 Market Sizing

3.1 Market definition

Exhibit 04: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition

3.2 Market segment analysis

Exhibit 05: Market segments

3.3 Market size 2020

3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2020 - 2025

Exhibit 06: Global - Market size and forecast 2020 - 2025 ($ million)



Exhibit 07: Global market: Year-over-year growth 2020 - 2025 (%)

4 Five Forces Analysis

4.1 Five forces summary

Exhibit 08: Five forces analysis 2020 & 2025

4.2 Bargaining power of buyers

Exhibit 09: Bargaining power of buyers

4.3 Bargaining power of suppliers

Exhibit 10: Bargaining power of suppliers

4.4 Threat of new entrants

Exhibit 11: Threat of new entrants

4.5 Threat of substitutes

Exhibit 12: Threat of substitutes

4.6 Threat of rivalry

Exhibit 13: Threat of rivalry

4.7 Market condition

Exhibit 14: Market condition - Five forces 2020

5 Market Segmentation by Type

5.1 Market segments

Exhibit 15: Type - Market share 2020-2025 (%)

5.2 Comparison by Type

Exhibit 16: Comparison by Type

5.3 K -12 - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

-12 - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Exhibit 17: K-12 - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)



Exhibit 18: K-12 - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

5.4 Higher education - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 19: Higher education - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)



Exhibit 20: Higher education - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

5.5 Market Opportunity by Type

Exhibit 21: Market Opportunity by Type

6 Customer landscape

7 Geographic Landscape

7.1 Geographic segmentation

Exhibit 23: Market share by geography 2020-2025 (%)

7.2 Geographic comparison

Exhibit 24: Geographic comparison

7.3 North America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Exhibit 25: North America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

Exhibit 26: North America - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.4 Europe - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Exhibit 27: Europe - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

Exhibit 28: Europe - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.5 APAC - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 29: APAC - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)



Exhibit 30: APAC - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.6 South America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Exhibit 31: South America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

Exhibit 32: South America - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.7 MEA - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 33: MEA - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)



Exhibit 34: MEA - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.8 Key leading countries

Exhibit 35: Key leading countries

7.9 Market opportunity by geography

Exhibit 36: Market opportunity by geography ($ million)

8 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

8.1 Market drivers

8.2 Market challenges

Exhibit 37: Impact of drivers and challenges

8.3 Market trends

9 Vendor Landscape

9.1 Overview

9.2 Vendor landscape

Exhibit 38: Vendor landscape

9.3 Landscape disruption

Exhibit 39: Landscape disruption



Exhibit 40: Industry risks

10 Vendor Analysis

10.1 Vendors covered

Exhibit 41: Vendors covered

10.2 Market positioning of vendors

Exhibit 42: Market positioning of vendors

10.3 BRITANNICA EDUCATION CONSULTING LTD.

Exhibit 43: BRITANNICA EDUCATION CONSULTING LTD. - Overview



Exhibit 44: BRITANNICA EDUCATION CONSULTING LTD. - Product and service



Exhibit 45: BRITANNICA EDUCATION CONSULTING LTD. - Key offerings

10.4 Broils Consulting Group LLC

Exhibit 46: Broils Consulting Group LLC - Overview



Exhibit 47: Broils Consulting Group LLC - Product and service



Exhibit 48: Broils Consulting Group LLC - Key offerings

10.5 ClearView Consulting Co.

Exhibit 49: ClearView Consulting Co. - Overview



Exhibit 50: ClearView Consulting Co. - Product and service



Exhibit 51: ClearView Consulting Co. - Key offerings

10.6 Edmentum Inc.

Exhibit 52: Edmentum Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 53: Edmentum Inc. - Product and service



Exhibit 54: Edmentum Inc. - Key offerings

10.7 Education Consulting Services LLC

Exhibit 55: Education Consulting Services LLC - Overview



Exhibit 56: Education Consulting Services LLC - Product and service



Exhibit 57: Education Consulting Services LLC - Key offerings

10.8 Education Elements Inc.

Exhibit 58: Education Elements Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 59: Education Elements Inc. - Product and service



Exhibit 60: Education Elements Inc. - Key offerings

10.9 Edway Education Consulting

Exhibit 61: Edway Education Consulting - Overview



Exhibit 62: Edway Education Consulting - Product and service



Exhibit 63: Edway Education Consulting - Key offerings

10.10 ELITE SCHOLARS OF CHINA

10.11 Generation Ready Inc.

Exhibit 67: Generation Ready Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 68: Generation Ready Inc. - Product and service



Exhibit 69: Generation Ready Inc. - Key offerings

10.12 Global Education Ltd.

Exhibit 70: Global Education Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 71: Global Education Ltd. - Product and service



Exhibit 72: Global Education Ltd. - Key offerings

11 Appendix

11.1 Scope of the report

11.2 Currency conversion rates for US$

Exhibit 73: Currency conversion rates for US$

11.3 Research methodology

Exhibit 74: Research Methodology



Exhibit 75: Validation techniques employed for market sizing



Exhibit 76: Information sources

11.4 List of abbreviations

Exhibit 77: List of abbreviations

About Us

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SOURCE Technavio
MADRID, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Gamelearn has launched its latest, interactive report, Contradictions of Corporate Training 2022 , in which more than 1,500 employees and HR and L&D professionals were surveyed. Results reveal that, although 64% of organizations increased their investment in digital training in the past year, there's still a mismatch between their e-learning offerings and employees' expectations.

Employees from organizations in different sectors were asked what they thought about the online training they received, and their verdict was alarmingthey rated the e-learning at their companies with an average NPS of -29. This is in-line with the typical ratings associated with e-learning, which is now exacerbated by digital burnout.

When asked what employees would like to find in their online courses, the answer was overwhelmingreal-life simulations (66%) and gamification (40%). Curiously, HR and L&D professionals and consultants also believe they should include these ingredients in their courses.

The majority of employees and professionals, and even their companies' budgets, are ready to embrace new formats and methodologies in digital corporate training. So why isn't there more notable progress in that regard? Innovation can sometimes be identified with new and complicated processes, but nothing could be further from the truth in cases such as game-based learning.

The basic ingredients of game-based learning are simple but very effective. The idea is to combine quality content with an attractive story and engaging gamification elements, coupled with simulations that allow immediate feedback (learning by doing). This formula has allowed serious games, or training video games, to achieve an NPS of 45, a far cry from the -29 employees rated their traditional e-learning courses last year. These serious games have become a solid bet to renew digital corporate training programs.

With this methodology, HR and L&D teams have met and continue to meet their training objectives, in line with the expected impact on the business. While employees enjoy a format that engages them, being able to assimilate and retain what they learn while having fun.

If you want to learn more about the opinions of +1,500 employees and HR and L&D professionals on online corporate training, access the interactive report here.

About Gamelearn:

Gamelearn is the leading platform in video games for corporate training. The Spanish company has revolutionized the corporate training sector with its game-based learning methodology.

SOURCE Gamelearn
Danuo Science Group have licensed the rights to two Enosi therapeutic programs for Greater China

DOVER, Del., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Enosi Therapeutics, a Delaware Corporation, focused on providing industry-leading therapeutics for cancer and autoimmune diseases, has announced a partnership with Danuo Science Group, based in Hong Kong, to further develop two products currently in Enosi's pipeline for Greater China.

Enosi's Growth Factor Trap (EN-2000 Program) and TNFR1 Blocker (EN-1000 Program) were licensed as part of the partnership. Both programs have the potential to be used as cross-over drugs to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases. EN-2000 blocks inflammatory growth factors that drive cancer and rheumatoid arthritis while EN-1000 is a specific blocker of TNFR1, which Enosi believes may be useful in treating autoimmune disease, cognitive disorders and other disorders. Enosi's programs are intended to help the 50% of cancer and autoimmune disease patients that do not benefit from current therapies.

Danuo will provide $5M in upfront licensing fees and certain conditional funding. With technical support from Enosi, Danuo will fund development in China and provide Enosi with data to use in its own filings in ROW. Including up-front payments, Enosi estimates the value of this collaboration to be more than $100M as the Company moves through the discovery and development phases of its treatments. Both Enosi and Danuo expect the first patient to be treated in China within the next 2-3 years.

About Enosi Therapeutics

Enosi Therapeutics is a drug research and development company focused on providing industry-leading therapeutics for autoimmune diseases and cancer. The company was founded by Professor Sir Marc Feldmann, who discovered anti-tumor necrosis factor (anti-TNF) therapy as an effective treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases (Lasker Award, 2003); and Dr. H. Michael Shepard, whose research in humanized antibodies created the first monoclonal antibody therapy targeting oncogene encoded-proteins (Lasker award, 2019). Enosi Therapeutics combines expertise in cancer and autoimmune diseases with Executive Chairman Dr. James N. Woody's unique combination of medical, scientific and management expertise to expand therapeutic options. To learn more about Enosi Therapeutics visit www.enosi-life.com .

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements speak only as of the date of this release, and we will not necessarily provide updates of our projections or other forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements are subject to many risks and uncertainties

CONTACT:

Tom Becker

Corporate Development Manager

[email protected]

Enosi Therapeutics Corp.

590 Pearl Street

Suite 311

Eugene, OR 97401

702-445-7038

www.enosi-life.com

SOURCE Enosi Therapeutics
PPM Consultancy Procurement report explains key category management objectives that should form the base for sourcing strategy, including:

Top-line growth

Scalability of inputs

Green initiatives

Category innovations

Supply base rationalization

Demand forecasting and governance

Minimalization of ad hoc purchases

Adherence to regulatory nuances

Cost savings

Customer retention

Reduction of TCO

Supply assurance

Sign Up for a Sample PPM Consultancy Procurement Market Report: www.spendedge.com/report/ppm-consultancy--procurement-market-intelligence-report

This report evaluates suppliers based on provision for applicable insurance policy, real-time analysis, pipeline software solutions, and conduct pipeline surveys. In addition, suppliers are also shortlisted based on business needs, technical specifications, operational requirements, security compliance, regulatory mandates, legal requirements, quality control, change management procedures, pricing models, penalty clauses, SLA nuances, acceptance criteria, and evaluation criteria.

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Asset Recovery Services - Forecast and Analysis: The asset recovery services will grow at a CAGR of 9.49% during 2021-2025. Asia Asset Recovery Pte Ltd., TES-Amm Singapore Pte Ltd., and Iron Mountain Inc. are among the prominent suppliers in asset recovery services market. Click the above link to download the free sample of this report.



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Table of Content

Executive Summary

Market Insights

Category Pricing Insights

Cost-saving Opportunities

Best Practices

Category Ecosystem

Category Management Strategy

Category Management Enablers

Suppliers Selection

Suppliers under Coverage

US Market Insights

Category scope

About SpendEdge:

SpendEdge shares your passion for driving sourcing and procurement excellence. We are the preferred procurement market intelligence partner for 120+ Fortune 500 firms and other leading companies across numerous industries. Our strength lies in delivering robust, real-time procurement market intelligence reports and solutions.

Contact

SpendEdge

Anirban Choudhury

Marketing Manager

Ph No: +1 (872) 206-9340

https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us

SOURCE SpendEdge
TOKYO, July 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On July 1, 2022, Tokyo local time, compliant JPY-based Stablecoin JPY World (JPYW) announced officially that it has reached an ecosystem co-construction and cooperation in transactions with the Japanese blockchain game  Mechaverse. According to the official Twitter of Mechaverse, the two parties will explore and implement various aspects, such as the settlement, payment, liquidity injection, and staking derivatives of JPY-based Stablecoin in Mechaverse. Finally, it will achieve the goal of increasing number of users, creating a well-known animation IP image, and making it convenient to enter the Web3.0 metaverse.

JPYW is a prepaid token launched by PassPay that can be purchased and used on the official website of PassPay at a price of 1 YEN = 1 JPYW. JPYW ensures a 1:1 anchor with the YEN in the form of margin. As a compliant JPY-based stablecoin under the "Revision of Funding Resolution Act", it has become the only blockchain stablecoin that is certified and licensed by the government of Japan. Meanwhile, the company has also finished submitting the application and the deposit for "issuer of prepaid payment method (internal)" to the government.

As the first Japanese mecha blockchain game of Mechaverse Labs, Mechaverse combines high-quality Japanese animation IP and playable blockchain games based on the Web3 operating platform and solution, as well as exploring the value of NFT and constructing the entrance to metaverse of Japanese anime mecha through GameFi's feature of linking values.

This cooperation is seen as a bridge between the traditional Japanese market and the Crypto world which drives a new flow and value into the crypto world.

Why is JPYW the "only child" of the stablecoin?

With the strict filing and review mechanism of "Funding Resolution Act" in Japan, only JPY-based Stablecoin can operate legally after obtaining approval, which also prevents other types of stablecoins from entering the Japanese crypto trading market. As the "only child" of the stablecoin that has been certified by the local government, JPYW began to strive for compliance as early as before the "Funding Resolution Act" was released. The team hired the largest law firm in Japan to form a strong and legal consultant team to plan compliance, apply at the drafting stage of regulations and participate in various inquiries from the Financial Services Agency actively.

In terms of the custody method of collateral, the physical collateral of USDT/USDC are mostly bills and cash of commercial banks, while JPYW is a blockchain stablecoin that is fully collateralized by YEN, and all the collaterals will be handed over to the government. Therefore, the mechanism of exchange and redemption is more sound, the security of funds is stronger and the risk is lower.

JPYW will bring into full play of stablecoin and start by breaking three barriers: 1. Breaking the barrier between crypto assets and real assets; 2. Breaking the barrier of cross-border transactions and exchanges; 3. Breaking the barrier between crypto assets as the mainstream assets in the future digital society and the insufficient acceptance of reality.

To realize such a vision, PassPay must first expand the use cases of JPYW and enrich financial instruments and product solutions. Therefore, in terms of use cases, PassPay chose to cooperate with Mechaverse(a metaverse platform that also belongs to Japan) and similar Crypto projects. In terms of operation of users, JPYW can be obtained through gift card and purchase on its official website, which will be used after connecting to the Metamask wallet according to the official white paper. A large number of projects, including Mechaverse, are available on Metamask. It is easier to achieve operability and compatibility in the early stage of asset access.

PassPay will launch more financial products such as STO derivatives trading, physical NFT trading, and gold tokenized trading soon in the future.

SOURCE Mechaverse
LOS ANGELES, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- FCTI, Inc., a nationwide ATM solutions provider, today announced its hire of new Vice President of Finance, Bennett Robinson. As the lead financial officer, Robinson will be responsible for conducting thorough economic analysis, managing the finance team, and working with business development to structure deals that meet financial targets.

Robinson has over three decades of experience in financial planning and analysis. Throughout his career, he has worked for large, well-known companies, including Travelocity.com, American Airlines, and 7-Eleven.

Prior to joining the FCTI team, Robinson spent fifteen years with global ATM provider, Cardtronics/NCR. During his tenure, he led financial assessment and structuring of large retail and financial institution deals, including contracts such as 7-Eleven Canada, Target, Fifth Third, and Citibank.

"The financial industry provides unique challenges when it comes to planning, deal structures, and profitability," said Robinson. "I look forward to working with the FCTI team to create strategic initiatives, build out new products, and grow the business into the future."

Robinson holds an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelors of Science in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of California, Berkeley.

Contact:

Rebecca Hellmann

***@fcti.net

Photo(s):

https://www.prlog.org/12923877

Press release distributed by PRLog

SOURCE FCTI, Inc.
NEW YORK, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Klein Law Firm announces that a class action complaint has been filed on behalf of shareholders of First High-School Education Group Co., Ltd. (NYSE: FHS) alleging that the Company violated federal securities laws.

This lawsuit is on behalf of all persons or entities who purchased FHS American Depositary Shares in or traceable to the Company's March 2021 initial public offering.

Lead Plaintiff Deadline: July 11, 2022

No obligation or cost to you.

Learn more about your recoverable losses in FHS:

https://www.kleinstocklaw.com/pslra-1/first-high-school-education-group-co-ltd-loss-submission-form?id=29458&from=4

First High-School Education Group Co., Ltd. NEWS - FHS NEWS

CLASS ACTION CASE DETAILS: The filed complaint alleges that First High-School Education Group Co., Ltd. made materially false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (a) the new rules, regulations and policies to be implemented by the Chinese government following the Two Sessions parliamentary meetings were far more severe than represented to investors and posed a material adverse threat to the Company and its business; (b) contemplated Chinese regulations and rules regarding private education were leading to a slowdown of government approval to open new educational facilities which would have a negative effect on FHS's enrollment and growth; and (c) as a result, representations made in connection with the Company's initial public offering regarding FHS's historical financial and operational metrics and purported market opportunities did not accurately reflect the actual business, operations, and financial results and trajectory of the Company at the time of the initial public offering, and were materially false and misleading and lacked a factual basis.

WHAT THIS MEANS TO YOU AS A SHAREHOLDER: If you have suffered a loss in FHS you have until July 11, 2022 to petition the court for lead plaintiff status. Your ability to share in any recovery doesn't require that you serve as a lead plaintiff.

NO COST TO YOU: If you purchased FHS securities during the relevant period, you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out-of-pocket fees.

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR FINANCIAL INTERESTS: For additional information about the FHS lawsuit, please contact J. Klein, Esq. by telephone at 212-616-4899 or click this link: https://www.kleinstocklaw.com/pslra-1/first-high-school-education-group-co-ltd-loss-submission-form?id=29458&from=4.

ABOUT KLEIN LAW FIRM

J. Klein, Esq. represents investors and participates in securities litigations involving financial fraud throughout the nation. The Klein Law Firm is a boutique litigation firm with experience in a wide range of areas including securities law, corporate finance and commercial litigation. Since 2011, our experienced attorneys have achieved superior results for our clients with a personalized focus. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

CONTACT:

J. Klein, Esq.

Empire State Building

350 Fifth Avenue

59th Floor

New York, NY 10118

[email protected]

Telephone: (212) 616-4899

www.kleinstocklaw.com

SOURCE The Klein Law Firm








In just one night, the specimen collection stations for a new round of nucleic acid testing were established. A new batch of epidemic prevention resources and daily necessities arrived one after another... July 4 was the 9th day of the current round of COVID-19 outbreaks in Sixian County, Suzhou City, Anhui Province.



On July 4, the workers of Yulan Community in Sixian County, Anhui Province, were receiving supplies ordered by the residents. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Huang Bohan

"We have to make all the preparations." Chen Xiujuan, secretary of Zhuqiao Community of the Yunhe Street Office in Sixian County, stayed up all night again and detailed the day's work with colleagues early in the morning, "Today, the seventh round of nucleic acid testing will be carried out in all areas of the county. We must ensure that in our community, no one is missed in the test, and everyone must get material supply." she said.

Since discovering asymptomatic infections on June 26, Sixian County has implemented static management throughout the county to keep civilians at home. When the reporter interviewed in the county town, he found that many people were busy working on the front line for daily supplies and medical materials and providing grass-roots assistance to ensure the operation of the city.

Under the scorching sun, technicians from the Sixian Power Supply Company of State Grid put on protective clothing and connected the temporary power supply to the newly settled mobile cabin hospitals to provide electricity for the masses. The workers of the Sixian Meteorological Bureau kept carrying out equipment maintenance to ensure the timely and accurate upload of observation data and to provide various weather services during the pandemic.

Lu Qiang, director of the Sixian Commerce Bureau, introduced that since the outbreak of the epidemic, the local government appointed 8 supermarkets as the main suppliers of daily necessities for the county, 15 larger supermarkets near densely populated communities as sub-suppliers and small fresh food supermarkets as the necessary supplement. They have been organizing and carrying out "zero-contact" online ordering and distribution in the community. At present, the average daily delivery is nearly 30,000 orders.

On July 4, at Jiamei supermarket in Sixian County, Anhui Province, staff were packing goods. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Huang Bohan

The Sixian Market Supervision and Administration Bureau has comprehensively organized and carried out price supervision, and strictly investigated illegal acts such as hoarding, fabricating price increase information, and driving up prices, which disrupted the market price order. Currently, the county's flour, rice, edible oil, and other living materials are in sufficient supply. Except for the slight increase in the prices of meat and vegetables, the prices of rice, flour, grain, and oil are generally stable.

Xiao Xu from Luomiao Village, Shantou Town recalled a scene three days ago: early that morning, his lover was in labor, and he called the police in a panic; after the Longshan police station received the message, the police quickly picked them up and sent them to the county hospital. "Because of their efforts, my family's little baby successfully arrived, and our normal life has not been disrupted." Xiao Xu said. Since the outbreak of the epidemic, all communities in Sixian County have established a docking system with medical institutions and smoothed the channels for medical treatment.

On the streets of Sixian County under the epidemic, there are occasional vehicles coming and going. The local government demanded that the main traffic roads and the material supply vehicles must be kept undisrupted; expressways and ordinary roads should not be blocked or closed without authorization; county and rural roads should not be forcibly isolated; expressway service areas should not be closed without authorization; and freight vehicles should be operating in closed-loop, by point-to-point transportation.

Streets of Sixian County, Anhui Province, on July 4 (aerial photo). Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Huang Bohan

"My heart is in Sixian County, and we will fight the pandemic together"... Many of the vehicles entering Sixian County had banners, the aid materials from many places arrived one after another, and there were medical personnels from all over Anhui came with them.

Bozhou, Chuzhou, and other places have sent nucleic acid testing cabins and vehicles to Suzhou, with a daily testing capacity of 171,000 tubes. At present, the state, the province, and other cities have sent 131 rescue experts to Suzhou, and 120 medical personnel have been dispatched at the municipal level.

In order to further strengthen the public service work during the pandemic, Sixian County opened the "12345 epidemic service hotline " to listen to public opinions and collect questions. Generally, the reasonable appeals reported by the masses can be preliminarily settled within 4 hours.

Yue Xihuan, Secretary of the Party General Branch and Director of the Neighborhood Committee of Huayuanjing Community in Sixian County, said that the community will continue to carry out information notification, livelihood guarantees and other work through online and offline methods such as WeChat groups, broadcasting, and electronic display screens. After working in the community for several days, he told the reporter: "If we keep moving, the city will not stop!"

Reporter: Xu Haitao, Chen Nuo, Dai Wei

Translator: Zheng Chen
SAN DIEGO, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Fluidra, global leader in pool and wellness equipment and connected solutions, today announced the appointment of Jon Viner as Executive Vice President of their Commercial, Spa & Specialty Division. Under the leadership of Troy Franzen, President of Fluidra North America, Viner will be responsible for maximizing operating efficiencies and broadening Fluidra's expanding product categories in the division.

The role will drive the development and execution of the go-to-market strategy, oversee the launch of new innovative products, reinvigorate and foster strong relationships with dealers, distribution partners and SPA Manufacturer's and will be accountable for delivering sustainable top line growth across all business segments.

Viner joins Fluidra with more than 20 years of expertise managing strategy and operations in the chemical industry. Most recently, Viner held the position of President of BioLab Inc., a leading pool and spa chemical manufacturer, where he played a crucial role overseeing the global business development and performance of the organization.

"We're excited to welcome Jon to the Fluidra team as he is very familiar with the pool & spa industry and understands the various channels and go to market strategies which will directly translate to our future success," says Franzen. "His knowledge of our customer base will be invaluable in establishing his quick integration into the business to deliver an outstanding customer experience while bringing improved solutions that ensure, on a daily basis, we accomplish our mission of "providing the perfect pool and wellness experience sustainably."

About Fluidra

Fluidra S.A. (FDR:SM) is the global leader in pool and wellness equipment and connected solutions. It is included in the Ibex 35, the benchmark index of the Spanish stock market, and in the FTSE4Good Index Series, the benchmark sustainability index. Fluidra provides an extensive offer of innovative and connected products and services, operating in more than 45 countries. The company has a portfolio of some of the most recognized brands in the industry, including Jandy, AstralPool, Polaris, Cepex, Zodiac, CTX Professional and Gre.

To learn more about Fluidra, visit fluidrausa.com or call 800-822-7933.

SOURCE Fluidra
Flycoin has taken another step to strengthen its infrastructure and security in safeguarding FLY

POMONA, Calif, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- FlyCoin, Inc., a cryptocurrency-based travel rewards technology company, is pleased to announce that it will utilize Anchorage Digital to serve as the custodian of a significant portion of its minted cryptocurrency, FLY. Anchorage Digital is a regulated institutional platform and the first crypto company to receive a national bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

"Flycoin only selects the most reputable and trusted custodians of cryptocurrency to properly safeguard FLY for us and our partners. We are excited to partner with Anchorage Digital, as currently, they are the only federally regulated custodian of digital assets. We selected Anchorage for its robust security and controls, and its ability to easily move funds without sacrificing security," stated Lenny Moon, Flycoin's CEO. Earlier in June, Flycoin also announced that it had partnered with Bitgo as its first custodian.

Custodians of digital assets, like Anchorage Digital, play an essential role in providing transparency to holders and keeping assets safe while transferred across brokers and exchanges. Anchorage's model allows institutions to transact with the same security architecture and controls of its custody model.

"We believe both protocols and institutions are better served with custody that's proven to be resilient, and regulated at the highest level. We're pleased to custody FLY and meet the Flycoin team's standards," said Diogo Monica, President and Co-Founder Anchorage Digital.

Flycoin is leading the charge in moving the travel rewards industry toward a more customer-centric standards. It is growing and expanding an ecosystem of companies across the travel & hospitality industry, by enabling their customers to earn and redeem FLY, a cryptocurrency that provides the end-users greater utility and flexibility than the traditional loyalty point.

Current Flycoin partners include BitGo, Thanks Again, Northern Pacific Airways, Ravn Alaska, and the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation (AEDC).

About Anchorage Digital

Anchorage Digital is a regulated crypto platform that provides institutions with integrated financial services and infrastructure solutions. With the first federally chartered crypto bank in the US, Anchorage offers institutions an unparalleled combination of secure custody, regulatory compliance, product breadth, and client service. Founded in 2017, Anchorage is valued at over $3 billion and is backed by leading institutions including Andreessen Horowitz, GIC  Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, Goldman Sachs, KKR, and Visa. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Anchorage is remote-friendly with offices in New York, New York; Porto, Portugal; Singapore; and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Learn more at anchorage.com , on Twitter @Anchorage , and LinkedIn .

About FlyCoin, Inc.

FlyCoin is moving the evolution forward in loyalty programs by providing a cryptocurrency-based reward that is free from the limitations of traditional loyalty programs. FlyCoin's revolutionary technology infrastructure provides companies in the consumer loyalty space - including travel and hospitality, financial services, and more, with a powerful, turnkey solution to incentivize users in a more customer-centric way. Users can earn FlyCoin's newly minted token, FLY, reward doesn't expire, is easily transferable, and has an abundance of redemption options. Stay tuned and get project updates on Twitter. https://twitter.com/FlyCoinOfficial . For more information, please visit https://www.flycoin.org .

SOURCE FlyCoin, Inc.
DUBLIN, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Food Robotics Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global food robotics market reached a value of US$ 1.9 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach US$ 3.9 Billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 12.73% during 2021-2027. 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.

Food robots carry out complex manufacturing processes, such as dispensing, feed placement, packaging and casing, pick-and-placing products into containers, sorting raw material, and labeling packages. They help perform repetitive and tedious production tasks at high speed in extreme conditions like high temperatures.

They also save space and time, lower production costs, improves the cleanliness, safety, and efficiency of manufacturing processes. As a result, leading players in the food and beverage (F&B) industry worldwide are automating the food production process using food robotics technology to mass-produce products with high precision and yields.

The lack of skilled and low-cost labor represents one of the significant factors augmenting the growth of the market across the globe. With the integration of big data and artificial intelligence (AI), various advancements in robotic technology are being made that allow quick, gentle handling of sensitive food products like biscuits, frozen pizzas, and fruit and vegetables. Robots deployed in the F&B sector can also create custom designs and complex patterns on cakes or other bakery items.

Apart from this, these robots are gaining traction in high-end restaurants and luxury hotels for efficient order picking and packaging. Once an online order is placed, they detect the location of the specific product, package aptly, and provide the customer with real-time information about delivery status. Furthermore, prominent market players are innovating food robotics for performing industrial tasks.

As a result, they are integrating intelligent vision systems that can sort products based on color, shape, and size on a conveyor belt with accuracy. Moreover, due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak and implementation of complete lockdown in numerous countries, most of the F&B manufacturing facilities experienced a shortage of workers. This, along with the need for the adoption of social distancing measures and surging demand for packaged food products, is propelling 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 ABB Ltd, Bastian Solutions LLC (Toyota Industries Corporation), Denso Corporation, Fanuc Corporation, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd., Kuka AG (Midea Group Co. Ltd.), Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Rockwell Automation Inc., Seiko Epson Corporation, Staubli International AG, Universal Robots A/S (Teradyne Inc.) and Yaskawa Electric Corporation.



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the global food robotics market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global food robotics market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the type?

What is the breakup of the market based on the payload?

What is the breakup of the market based on the application?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry?

What is the structure of the global food robotics 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 Food Robotics Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Type

6.1 SCARA

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Articulated

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast

6.3 Parallel

6.3.1 Market Trends

6.3.2 Market Forecast

6.4 Cylindrical

6.4.1 Market Trends

6.4.2 Market Forecast

6.5 Others

6.5.1 Market Trends

6.5.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Payload

7.1 Low

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Medium

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast

7.3 Heavy

7.3.1 Market Trends

7.3.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Application

8.1 Packaging

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Repackaging

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast

8.3 Palletizing

8.3.1 Market Trends

8.3.2 Market Forecast

8.4 Picking

8.4.1 Market Trends

8.4.2 Market Forecast

8.5 Processing

8.5.1 Market Trends

8.5.2 Market Forecast

8.6 Others

8.6.1 Market Trends

8.6.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Region

10 SWOT Analysis



11 Value Chain Analysis



12 Porters Five Forces Analysis



13 Price Analysis



14 Competitive Landscape

14.1 Market Structure

14.2 Key Players

14.3 Profiles of Key Players

14.3.1 ABB Ltd

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 Bastian Solutions LLC (Toyota Industries Corporation)

14.3.2.1 Company Overview

14.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.3 Denso Corporation

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 Fanuc Corporation

14.3.4.1 Company Overview

14.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.4.3 Financials

14.3.4.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.5 Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd.

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 Kuka AG (Midea Group Co. Ltd.)

14.3.6.1 Company Overview

14.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.6.3 Financials

14.3.6.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.7 Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

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 Rockwell Automation Inc.

14.3.8.1 Company Overview

14.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.8.3 Financials

14.3.8.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.9 Seiko Epson 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 Staubli International AG

14.3.10.1 Company Overview

14.3.10.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.11 Universal Robots A/S (Teradyne Inc.)

14.3.11.1 Company Overview

14.3.11.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.12 Yaskawa Electric Corporation

14.3.12.1 Company Overview

14.3.12.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.12.3 Financials

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ctyh88

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SOURCE Research and Markets
NOIDA, India, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a new report published by UnivDatos Markets Insights the Green Power Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15% from 2021-2027. The analysis has been segmented into Power Source (Wind, Solar, Low-Impact Hydropower, and Others); Region/Country.

Click here to view the Report Description & TOC

The Green Power market report has been aggregated by collecting informative data on various dynamics such as market drivers, restraints, and opportunities. This innovative report makes use of several analyses to get a closer outlook on the Green Power market. The Green Power market report offers a detailed analysis of the latest industry developments and trending factors in the market that are influencing the market growth. Furthermore, this statistical market research repository examines and estimates the Green Power market at the global and regional levels.

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Market Overview

Green energy is any energy type that is generated from natural resources, such as sunlight, wind, or water. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), green power is a subset of renewable energy and represents those renewable energy resources and technologies that provide the highest environmental benefit. EPA defines green power as electricity produced from solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, eligible biomass, and low-impact small hydroelectric sources. Customers often buy green power for its zero-emissions profile and carbon footprint reduction benefits.

In 2020, the consumption of all other fuels declined while the only source which increased the demand for energy sources was renewables 2020. As the global economy recovers from the crisis, The renewable energy source witnessed an uptake, therefore, expanding more quickly. As per International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2020, the annual renewable capacity additions increased and witnessed the highest year-on-year increase since 1999 and increased by 45% or 280 GW.

Green Wind Energy Council (GWEC) expects that over 469 GW of new onshore and offshore wind capacity will be added in the next five years that is until 2025. With the explosive growth of Green Power installations in China, Asia Pacific continues to take the lead in global wind power development with its share of the global market increasing in 2020. In addition, governments across several countries such as the U.S, India, Japan, Germany, etc., launched several initiatives to remove the dependency on electricity generation from fossil fuels. For instance, as per IRENA, the total installed capacity of hydropower increased from 1,099,767 MW in 2015 which increased to 1,210,616 MW by 2020.

COVID-19 Impact

The impact of Covid-19 on renewable electricity technologies with long lead times, such as hydropower, offshore wind, CSP, and geothermal, remains limited. Hydropower capacity additions are forecast to increase both in 2020 and 2021, driven by the commissioning of two mega hydropower projects in China and supporting the rebound of renewables next year. The forecast for offshore wind remains unchanged as most projects are already financed and under construction.

The global Green Power market report is studied thoroughly with several aspects that would help stakeholders in making their decisions more curated.

Based on the power source, the market is bifurcated into wind, solar, low-impact hydropower, and others. The wind category is expected to witness the fastest growth during the forecast period. This is mainly due to the constant technological advancements in the wind energy sector. Higher-capacity wind turbines have larger swept areas and produce more power for the same resource quality, thereby generating higher wind farm output levels.

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Green Power Market Geographical Segmentation Includes:

North America ( United States , Canada , and Rest of North America )

( , , and Rest of ) Europe ( Germany , United Kingdom , Italy , France , Spain , and the Rest of Europe )

( , , , , , and the Rest of ) Asia-Pacific ( China , India , Australia , Japan , and the Rest of Asia-Pacific )

( , , , , and the Rest of ) Rest of the World

For a better understanding of the market adoption of Green Power, the market is analyzed based on its worldwide presence in the countries such as North America (United States, Canada, Rest of North America), Europe (Germany, France, Spain, United Kingdom, and Rest of Europe), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, India, Australia, and Rest of APAC), and Rest of World. Currently, Asia Pacific holds a lucrative market share owing to the growing focus on renewable energy. The Asia Pacific acquired an extensive market share in the market and is expected to grow at an extensive rate mainly owing to the growing industrialization, urbanization, and population coupled with increasing investments in renewable power and infrastructure, which is further contributing to the growth of the green power market in the region. Furthermore, the rise in research and development activities for green power sources, growing energy demand in developing countries like China and India coupled with favorable government policies, and a growing focus on increasing the share of renewable energy in the power generation mix are some of the prominent factors driving the region's market. Thus, as the world aims to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels amid the energy transition, several major economies in the region are now looking to ramp up their share of renewable power. For instance, Bhadla Solar Park (India) was commissioned in March 2020 with an installed capacity of 2.25GW and it spans 14,000 acres.

The major players targeting the market include

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy

GE Renewable Energy

Brookfield Renewable Partners L.P.

Iberdrola SA

JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd.

NextEra Energy, Inc.

Orsted A/S

Adani Green Energy Limited

Suzlon Energy Limited

Tata Power

Competitive Landscape

The degree of competition among prominent companies has been elaborated by analyzing several leading key players operating globally. The specialist team of research analysts sheds light on various traits such as global market competition, market share, most recent industry advancements, innovative product launches, partnerships, mergers, or acquisitions by leading companies in the global green power market. The major players have been analyzed by using research methodologies for getting insight views on market competition.

Key questions resolved through this analytical market research report include:

What are the latest trends, new patterns, and technological advancements in the Green Power market?

Which factors are influencing the Green Power market over the forecast period?

What are the global challenges, threats, and risks in the Green Power market?

Which factors are propelling and restraining the Green Power market?

What are the demanding global regions of the Green Power market?

What will be the global market size in the upcoming years?

What are the crucial market acquisition strategies and policies applied by global companies?

We understand the requirement of different businesses, regions, and countries, we offer customized reports as per your requirements of business nature and geography. Please let us know If you have any custom needs.

About UnivDatos Market Insights (UMI)

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About UnivDatos Market Insights

UnivDatos Market Insights (UMI) is a passionate market research firm and a subsidiary of Universal Data Solutions. We believe in delivering insights through Market Intelligence Reports, Customized Business Research, and Primary Research. Our research studies are spread across topics across the world, we cover markets in over 100 countries using smart research techniques and agile methodologies. We offer in-depth studies, detailed analysis, and customized reports that help shape winning business strategies for our clients.

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SOURCE UnivDatos Market Insights Pvt. Ltd.
Market Dynamics

The increasing consumer demand for natural haircare products is one of the key factors driving the growth of the market. Factors such as growing health concerns regarding the use of chemical products and the shift toward natural products are encouraging most vendors in the market to focus on the development and launch of new and innovative products manufactured using natural ingredients. Also, major vendors operating in Africa are investing in R&D to gain a better-informed understanding of the customers and other specifications. All these factors are increasing the availability and sales of natural haircare products, thereby driving the growth of the market.

In addition, the launch of products targeted at specific hair types in Africa and the growing use of online channels will further influence the market growth. However, the availability of counterfeit products in East Africa might hamper the growth of vendors.

Read Our Report Sample to identify other factors impacting the growth of the market.

Vendor Landscape

The haircare market in Africa report includes information on the product launches, sustainability, and prospects of leading vendors including Amka Products Pty Ltd., Combe Inc., Henkel AG and Co. KGaA, Johnson and Johnson, LOreal SA, Revlon Inc., Shiseido Co. Ltd., The Estee Lauder Co. Inc., The Procter and Gamble Co., and Unilever PLC. The competitive scenario provided in the haircare market in Africa report analyzes, evaluates, and positions companies based on various performance indicators. Some of the factors considered for this analysis include the financial performance of companies over the past few years, growth strategies, product innovations, new product launches, investments, growth in market share, etc.

The haircare market in Africa is fragmented and highly competitive. Vendors in the market are continuously investing in R&D to develop new and innovative products and comply with growing regulatory provisions on cosmetic products. Some vendors are involved in strategic alliances and M&As to gain a competitive edge in the market.

Market Segmentation

Segmentation by Product

By product, the market is classified into shampoo, conditioner, hair color, hair styling products, and others.

The shampoo segment will have the largest share of the market.

The segment is driven by the launch of innovative products that cater specifically to the requirements of customers.

The rising number of supermarkets, hypermarkets, convenience stores, and specialty stores is also contributing to the growth of the segment.

Segmentation by Geography

By Geography, the market is analyzed across South Africa , Nigeria , Kenya , and the Rest of Africa .

, , , and the Rest of . South Africa will have the largest share of the market.

will have the largest share of the market. New product launches and product line extensions by vendors are driving the growth of the regional market.

Gain more insights into the market landscape. Request a Sample Report Now

Related Reports:

Haircare Market in Africa: Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 6.35% Market growth 2022-2026 USD 994.06 million Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 5.78 Regional analysis Africa Performing market contribution Africa at 100% Key consumer countries South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Rest of Africa Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled Amka Products Pty Ltd., Combe Inc., Henkel AG and Co. KGaA, Johnson and Johnson, LOreal SA, Revlon Inc., Shiseido Co. Ltd., The Estee Lauder Co. Inc., The Procter and Gamble Co., and Unilever PLC Market Dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID 19 impact and future consumer dynamics, market condition analysis for forecast period. Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

Table of Contents:

1 Executive Summary

1.1 Market overview

Exhibit 01: Executive Summary  Chart on Market Overview



Exhibit 02: Executive Summary  Data Table on Market Overview



Exhibit 03: Executive Summary  Chart on Country Market Characteristics



Exhibit 04: Executive Summary  Chart on Market by Geography



Exhibit 05: Executive Summary  Chart on Market Segmentation by Product



Exhibit 06: Executive Summary  Chart on Incremental Growth



Exhibit 07: Executive Summary  Data Table on Incremental Growth



Exhibit 08: Executive Summary  Chart on Vendor Market Positioning

2 Market Landscape

2.1 Market ecosystem

Exhibit 09: Parent market



Exhibit 10: Market Characteristics

3 Market Sizing

3.1 Market definition

Exhibit 11: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition

3.2 Market segment analysis

Exhibit 12: Market segments

3.3 Market size 2021

3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2021-2026

Exhibit 13: Chart on Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 14: Data Table on Regional - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 15: Chart on Africa : Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

: Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 16: Data Table on Regional - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

4 Five Forces Analysis

4.1 Five forces summary

Exhibit 17: Five forces analysis - Comparison between 2021 and 2026

4.2 Bargaining power of buyers

Exhibit 18: Chart on Bargaining power of buyers  Impact of key factors 2021 and 2026

4.3 Bargaining power of suppliers

Exhibit 19: Bargaining power of suppliers  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.4 Threat of new entrants

Exhibit 20: Threat of new entrants  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.5 Threat of substitutes

Exhibit 21: Threat of substitutes  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.6 Threat of rivalry

Exhibit 22: Threat of rivalry  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.7 Market condition

Exhibit 23: Chart on Market condition - Five forces 2021 and 2026

5 Market Segmentation by Product

5.1 Market segments

Exhibit 24: Chart on Product - Market share 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 25: Data Table on Product - Market share 2021-2026 (%)

5.2 Comparison by Product

Exhibit 26: Chart on Comparison by Product



Exhibit 27: Data Table on Comparison by Product

5.3 Shampoo - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 28: Chart on Shampoo - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 29: Data Table on Shampoo - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 30: Chart on Shampoo - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 31: Data Table on Shampoo - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.4 Conditioner - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 32: Chart on Conditioner - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 33: Data Table on Conditioner - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 34: Chart on Conditioner - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 35: Data Table on Conditioner - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.5 Hair color - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 36: Chart on Hair color - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 37: Data Table on Hair color - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 38: Chart on Hair color - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 39: Data Table on Hair color - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.6 Hairstyling products - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 40: Chart on Hairstyling products - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 41: Data Table on Hairstyling products - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 42: Chart on Hairstyling products - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 43: Data Table on Hairstyling products - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.7 Others - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 44: Chart on Others - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 45: Data Table on Others - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 46: Chart on Others - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 47: Data Table on Others - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.8 Market opportunity by Product

Exhibit 48: Market opportunity by Product ($ million)

6 Customer Landscape

6.1 Customer landscape overview

Exhibit 49: Analysis of price sensitivity, lifecycle, customer purchase basket, adoption rates, and purchase criteria

7 Geographic Landscape

7.1 Geographic segmentation

Exhibit 50: Chart on Market share by geography - 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 51: Data Table on Market share by geography - 2021-2026 (%)

7.2 Geographic comparison

Exhibit 52: Chart on Geographic comparison



Exhibit 53: Data Table on Geographic comparison

7.3 South Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 54: Chart on South Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 55: Data Table on South Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 56: Chart on South Africa - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 57: Data Table on South Africa - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.4 Nigeria - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 58: Chart on Nigeria - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 59: Data Table on Nigeria - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 60: Chart on Nigeria - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 61: Data Table on Nigeria - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.5 Kenya - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 62: Chart on Kenya - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 63: Data Table on Kenya - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 64: Chart on Kenya - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 65: Data Table on Kenya - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.6 Rest of Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 66: Chart on Rest of Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 67: Data Table on Rest of Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 68: Chart on Rest of Africa - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 69: Data Table on Rest of Africa - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.7 Market opportunity by geography

Exhibit 70: Market opportunity by geography ($ million)

8 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

8.1 Market drivers

8.2 Market challenges

8.3 Impact of drivers and challenges

Exhibit 71: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2021 and 2026

8.4 Market trends

9 Vendor Landscape

9.1 Overview

9.2 Vendor landscape

Exhibit 72: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation

9.3 Landscape disruption

Exhibit 73: Overview on factors of disruption

9.4 Industry risks

Exhibit 74: Impact of key risks on business

10 Vendor Analysis

10.1 Vendors covered

Exhibit 75: Vendors covered

10.2 Market positioning of vendors

Exhibit 76: Matrix on vendor position and classification

10.3 Amka Products Pty Ltd.

Exhibit 77: Amka Products Pty Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 78: Amka Products Pty Ltd. - Product / Service



Exhibit 79: Amka Products Pty Ltd. - Key offerings

10.4 Combe Inc.

Exhibit 80: Combe Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 81: Combe Inc. - Product / Service



Exhibit 82: Combe Inc. - Key offerings

10.5 Henkel AG and Co. KGaA

Exhibit 83: Henkel AG and Co. KGaA - Overview



Exhibit 84: Henkel AG and Co. KGaA - Business segments



Exhibit 85: Henkel AG and Co. KGaA - Key news



Exhibit 86: Henkel AG and Co. KGaA - Key offerings



Exhibit 87: Henkel AG and Co. KGaA - Segment focus

10.6 Johnson and Johnson

Exhibit 88: Johnson and Johnson - Overview



Exhibit 89: Johnson and Johnson - Business segments



Exhibit 90: Johnson and Johnson - Key news



Exhibit 91: Johnson and Johnson - Key offerings



Exhibit 92: Johnson and Johnson - Segment focus

10.7 LOreal SA

Exhibit 93: LOreal SA - Overview



Exhibit 94: LOreal SA - Business segments



Exhibit 95: LOreal SA - Key news



Exhibit 96: LOreal SA - Key offerings



Exhibit 97: LOreal SA - Segment focus

10.8 Revlon Inc.

Exhibit 98: Revlon Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 99: Revlon Inc. - Business segments



Exhibit 100: Revlon Inc. - Key news



Exhibit 101: Revlon Inc. - Key offerings



Exhibit 102: Revlon Inc. - Segment focus

10.9 Shiseido Co. Ltd.

Exhibit 103: Shiseido Co. Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 104: Shiseido Co. Ltd. - Business segments



Exhibit 105: Shiseido Co. Ltd. - Key offerings



Exhibit 106: Shiseido Co. Ltd. - Segment focus

10.10 The Estee Lauder Co. Inc.

Exhibit 107: The Estee Lauder Co. Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 108: The Estee Lauder Co. Inc. - Business segments



Exhibit 109: The Estee Lauder Co. Inc. - Key news



Exhibit 110: The Estee Lauder Co. Inc. - Key offerings



Exhibit 111: The Estee Lauder Co. Inc. - Segment focus

10.11 The Procter and Gamble Co.

Exhibit 112: The Procter and Gamble Co. - Overview



Exhibit 113: The Procter and Gamble Co. - Business segments



Exhibit 114: The Procter and Gamble Co. - Key news



Exhibit 115: The Procter and Gamble Co. - Key offerings



Exhibit 116: The Procter and Gamble Co. - Segment focus

10.12 Unilever PLC

Exhibit 117: Unilever PLC - Overview



Exhibit 118: Unilever PLC - Business segments



Exhibit 119: Unilever PLC - Key news



Exhibit 120: Unilever PLC - Key offerings



Exhibit 121: Unilever PLC - Segment focus

11 Appendix

11.1 Scope of the report

11.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist

Exhibit 122: Inclusions checklist



Exhibit 123: Exclusions checklist

11.3 Currency conversion rates for US$

Exhibit 124: Currency conversion rates for US$

11.4 Research methodology

Exhibit 125: Research methodology



Exhibit 126: Validation techniques employed for market sizing



Exhibit 127: Information sources

11.5 List of abbreviations

Exhibit 128: List of abbreviations

About Us

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

Contact

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media & Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.technavio.com/

SOURCE Technavio
SAN JOSE, Calif., LONDON, and BENGALURU, India, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Happiest Minds Technologies Limited (NSE: HAPPSTMNDS), a 'Born Digital. Born Agile,' Mindful IT Company, today announced being named a finalist for the 2022 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards in the Business Applications Power Automate category. The company was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.

Rajiv Shah, Executive Board Member & CEO, Digital Business Services (DBS), Happiest Minds Technologies said, "We are delighted to be named a finalist in the Business Applications Power Automate category of the 2022 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. At Happiest Minds, we believe in delivering business outcomes using the right set of technologies and working together with Microsoft has helped us meet our vision. Being one of the earliest adopters of Power Automate, we have successfully conducted 7+ RPIAD workshops with Microsoft and we look forward to building a mutually rewarding relationship going forward."

Dinesh Ramachandran, SVP and Global Alliance Head, Happiest Minds Technologies said, "Collaboration has been pivotal to our growth strategy at Happiest Minds. We have been investing in building deep capabilities, service offerings, and solutions spanning Azure Cloud, Internet-of-Things, Power Platform & Security solutions. Our similar aligning efforts offer customers a win-win combination of disruptive innovation from Microsoft's trusted enterprise platform & our demonstrated industry and technology expertise in building innovative and sustainable business solutions."

The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards recognizes Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered outstanding Microsoft-based applications, services and devices during the past year. Awards were classified in various categories, with honorees chosen from a set of more than 3,900 submitted nominations from more than 100 countries worldwide. Happiest Minds Technologies was recognized for providing outstanding solutions and services in Business Applications, Power Automate category for its work done at Coca-Cola Bottling United streamlining order processing using Power Automate.

Happiest Minds was recognized in this award category for its innovative use of Microsoft Cloud technologies to develop a solution for Coca-Cola Bottling United that modernizes and automates order processing, from purchase orders to account payable updates. The digital initiative is closely tied to business goals delivered across multiple aspects:

The agile platform enabled the scaling of the Freestyle Campaign in North America and expanding the solution to Coke Bottlers globally.

and expanding the solution to Coke Bottlers globally. Cost reduction and reduced manual activities that freed up hours for strategic initiatives helping in increased productivity and reduced cost of operations.

"I am honored to announce the winners and finalists of the 2022 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards," said Nick Parker, corporate vice president of Global Partner Solutions at Microsoft. "These partners were outstanding among the exceptional pool of nominees, and I'm continuously impressed by their innovative use of Microsoft Cloud technologies and the impact for their customers."

The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards is announced annually prior to the company's global partner conference, Microsoft Inspire, which will take place on July 19-20 this year.

Additional details on the 2022 awards are available on the Microsoft Partner Network blog: https://blogs.partner.microsoft.com/mpn/congratulations-to-the-2022-microsoft-partner-of-the-year-awards-winners-and-finalists/. The complete list of categories, winners and finalists can be found at https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/inspire/awards.

About Happiest Minds Technologies:

Happiest Minds Technologies Limited (NSE: HAPPSTMNDS), a Mindful IT Company, enables digital transformation for enterprises and technology providers by delivering seamless customer experiences, business efficiency and actionable insights. We do this by leveraging a spectrum of disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud, digital process automation, internet of things, robotics/drones, security, virtual/augmented reality, and more. Positioned as 'Born Digital. Born Agile', our capabilities span digital solutions, infrastructure, product engineering, and security. We deliver these services across industry sectors such as automotive, BFSI, consumer packaged goods, e-commerce, edutech, engineering R&D, hi-tech, manufacturing, retail, and travel/transportation/hospitality.

A Great Place to Work-Certified company, Happiest Minds is headquartered in Bangalore, India, with operations in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Australia, and the Middle East.

Media Contact: [email protected]

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1812236/Happiest_Minds_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Happiest Minds Technologies
IAR Systems is proud to announce its new v3.10 of IAR Embedded Workbench, and IAR Build Tools for Renesas RH850, a world-leading device often used to create groundbreaking solutions in the next generation vehicles by the automotive industry globally.

UPPSALA, Sweden, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The growing complexity of automotive applications require real-time control without sacrificing performance. This can only be achieved with modern multi-core RH850 Automotive MCUs from Renesas. IAR Systems is the only tool vendor to deliver development tools for the entire line-up of Renesas MCUs, and the latest releases strengthen the long-standing collaboration.

The IAR Embedded Workbench for RH850 and IAR Build Tools for RH850 have been upgraded to the latest technology platforms, including the latest C/C++ language (library support for the C++17 language standard), which will allow developers to build far more advanced code to handle more complex tasks.

Today's release also includes 64-bit IDE & Editor enhancements with Dark Mode, and cross-platform IAR Build Tools streamlined for automated build and test processes in frameworks built on Ubuntu, Red Hat, or Windows.

The release also provides developers with extensions for Visual Studio Code to meet increasing customer demand. The extensions are compatible with the latest versions of IAR Embedded Workbench, and IAR Build Tools for RH850, made available seamlessly at Visual Studio Code Marketplace.

The latest version of IAR Toolchain for RH850 supports all the latest Renesas RH850 high-performance and scalable automotive multicore MCUs.

"Our investments in Embedded Development Solutions for RH850 in the latest technology platforms will improve our joint customers' ability to innovate by simplifying the move to - and use of - high-performance multi-core MCUs", said Rafael Taubinger, Senior Product Marketing Manager at IAR Systems.

The IAR Toolchain provides exceptional design flexibility for embedded developers working with the extensive Renesas product portfolio. It also delivers outstanding performance and enables customers to easily switch between different architectures and choose the one best suited for a specific application while using the same development tools. The products from IAR Systems are proven to simplify the reuse of code, shorten time to market, and reduce design time and project cost while improving productivity, allowing developers to focus on accelerated innovation.

Since the beginning, IAR Systems and Renesas have had a profound and robust relationship based on trust, thought leadership, and a mutual passion for innovation and customer success. As a Renesas Alliance Partner, IAR Systems are committed to continuing to supply high-end tools for all Renesas MCUs, beyond the +4000 Renesas devices already supported.

Find more information about the new products at https://www.iar.com/products/architectures/renesas/iar-embedded-workbench-for-renesas-rh850/ and https://www.iar.com/products/architectures/renesas/iar-build-tools-for-rh850/

IAR Systems Contacts

Rafael Taubinger, Senior Product Marketing Manager, IAR Systems

Tel: +46 18 16 78 00 Email: [email protected]

Jesper Andersson - Rydaker, CMO, IAR Systems

Tel: +46 18 16 78 00 Email: [email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/iar-systems/r/iar-systems-enable-innovation-in-automotive--providing-full-support-for-renesas-rh850,c3595949

The following files are available for download:

SOURCE IAR Systems
His responsibilities will include: uniting the IDnow and ARIADNEXT engineering teams, located across several countries of the world, into a cohesive entity; orchestrating technological choices and orientations and defining architectures to meet the product teams' requirements, including automatic, video and signature solutions; streamlining and combining all the Group's existing and future verification solutions to optimise the new IDnow platform.

"I'm looking forward to building a high-performing engineering department at IDnow. The former IDnow and ARIADNEXT teams both have valuable benefits and skills and my job will be to bring this together into one platform that answers the needs of European companies across jurisdictions and use cases," explained Jean-Marc Guyot.

"I'm especially excited to work with the teams in France and Germany and to meet the high standards in technology that are key for the IDnow Group," he added.

Jean-Marc Guyot started his career in 1995 as a system architect at LSI Logic, where he worked on the first Digital Terrestrial TV digital demodulation chip. He then joined NXP as Product Marketing Director.

In 2004 he founded Silembia, a high-tech startup, that he then sold to Silicon Laboratories (an American semiconductor company) and moved to the USA to manage the merger of the teams. Back in France in 2014, he joined ENENSYS to create the Telecom Business Unit with a focus on LTE Broadcast technology. There, he actively participated in the 3GPP SA4 standardisation committee. Early in 2019, he became Vice President of Engineering for Cloud-Based Security Services at WALLIX, before taking over the entire R&D department. He created the R&D site in Rennes which now employs more than 40 people and also re-sited the company in the future CyberPlace beacon building in Rennes. Finally, he and his teams won the "Grand Defi Cyber" with the OSCAR project and implemented the transformation of the R&D teams into agile mode.

"Jean-Marc brings a wealth of technology and international leadership experience into his role. His arrival at IDnow will further accelerate the development of IDnow's Identity proofing platform, starting with combining the best-in-class technology stack from all IDnow group companies. I'm looking forward to working with him," commented Vikas Seth, IDnow Chief Product Officer.

About IDnow group (https://www.idnow.io/)

IDnow group is a leading identity proofing platform provider in Europe with a vision to make the connected world a safer place. The IDnow platform offers a broad range of identity verification and document signing solutions combined with a comprehensive service offering. Ranging from automated to human-assisted, from purely online to point-of-sale, the identity proofing methods are optimised to assure the highest security standards with maximum user conversion.

In 2021, IDnow acquired the French market leader for identity verification technology, ARIADNEXT, and the German identity verification provider identity Trust Management AG, enabling IDnow to offer its customers one of the broadest portfolios of identity proofing solutions through a single, integrated platform.

The company has offices in Germany, United Kingdom and France and is backed by renowned institutional investors, including Corsair Capital and Seventure Partners. Its portfolio of over 900 international clients, spans a wide range of industries, and includes leading international players such as, Western Union, UBS, Sixt and SNCF, as well as digital champions like N26, Solarisbank, LYDIA and Tier Mobility.

Press contact:

Christina Schwinning:

[email protected]

+49 89 413 24 60 54

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1853022/IDnow_1.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1342896/IDnow_Logo.jpg

SOURCE IDnow GmbH
MINNEAPOLIS, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A settlement has been reached in a class action antitrust lawsuit filed on behalf of Commercial and Institutional Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs with Defendant Smithfield Foods, Inc. and related or affiliated entities ("Smithfield" or "Settling Defendant"). The Settlement requires Smithfield to pay $42,000,000. There will be no payments to the Settlement Class at this time. You will be notified later of an opportunity to file a claim. Before any money is paid, the Court will hold a hearing to decide whether to approve the Settlement.

The United States District Court for the District of Minnesota authorized this notice. This Court ordered notice may affect your rights. Please read this notice carefully.

WHO IS INCLUDED?

For settlement purposes, members of the Settlement Class are defined as all entities who indirectly purchased Pork from Defendants or co-conspirators or their respective subsidiaries or affiliates in the United States from January 1, 2009, to April 19, 2022, for their own business use in commercial food preparation.

Only Settlement Class members in the following jurisdictions are eligible to potentially recover money from the settlement: Arkansas Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia and/or Wisconsin.

For purposes of the Settlement, "Pork" means porcine or swine products processed, produced or sold by Smithfield, or by any of the Defendants or their co-conspirators, including but not limited to: primals (including but not limited to loins, shoulders, picnics, butts, ribs, bellies, hams, or legs), trim or sub-primal products (including but not limited to backloins, tenderloins, backribs, boneless loins, boneless sirloins, riblets, chef's prime, prime ribs, brisket, skirt, cushion, ground meats, sirloin tip roast, or hocks), further processed and value added porcine products (including, but not limited to bacon, sausage, lunch meats, further processed ham, or jerky products), offal or variety products (including, but not limited to hearts, tongues, livers, head products, spleens, kidneys, feet, stomach, bladder, uterus, snoot, ears, tail, brisket bone, intestines, jowls, neck bones or other bones, skin, lungs, glands, hair, or pet food ingredients), rendered product and byproducts (including, but not limited to, lard, grease, meat meal, bone meal, blood meal, or blood plasma), casings (including, but not limited to, mucosa), and carcasses.

In addition to Smithfield, the Defendants and alleged co-conspirators in this lawsuit are JBS USA Food Company, JBS USA Food Company Holdings, Swift Pork Company, Clemens Food Group, LLC, The Clemens Family Corporation, Hormel Foods Corporation, Seaboard Foods LLC, Triumph Foods, LLC, Tyson Foods, Inc., Tyson Prepared Foods, Inc., Tyson Fresh Meats, Inc., and Agri Stats, Inc.

If you are not sure you are included, you can get more information, including a detailed notice, at www.PorkCommercialCase.com or by calling toll-free 1-855-867-0738.

WHAT IS THIS LAWSUIT ABOUT?

Commercial and Institutional Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs allege that Defendants and their co-conspirators conspired and combined to fix, raise, maintain, and stabilize the price of Pork products, from at least January 1, 2009, with the intent and expected result of increasing prices of Pork products in the United States, in violation of federal antitrust laws and various state antitrust, consumer protection and unfair trade practices, and unjust enrichment laws. Smithfield denies it did anything wrong. The Court did not decide which side was right, but both sides agreed to the Settlement to resolve the case and get benefits to the Settlement Class. The case is still proceeding on behalf of the Commercial and Institutional Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs against other Defendants who may be subject to separate settlements, judgments, or class certification orders.

WHAT DOES THE SETTLEMENT PROVIDE?

The Settlement Agreement provides that Smithfield will pay $42,000,000 to resolve all Settlement Class members' claims against Smithfield for the Released Claims (as defined in the Settlement Agreement). In addition to this monetary benefit, Smithfield has also agreed to certain injunctive relief and to provide specified cooperation in the Commercial and Institutional Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs' continued prosecution of the litigation. No money will be distributed at this time. Settlement Class Counsel will continue to pursue the lawsuit against the other Defendants. Settlement Class Counsel may request that the Court award attorneys' fees and permit the reimbursement of certain litigation costs and expenses. Settlement Class Counsel will also seek permission to set aside up to five percent of the Settlement Fund for future litigation expenses to be used in the continuing lawsuits against the non-settling Defendants and will seek service awards for the class representatives. When Settlement Class Counsel's motion for fees, costs, expenses, and service awards is filed, it will be available on the Settlement Website. The motion will be posted on the website at least 14 days before the deadline for objecting to, commenting on, or excluding yourself from the Settlement. Settlement Class Counsel will ask the Court for attorneys' fees based on their services in this litigation, not to exceed one third of the Settlement Fund net of any expense reimbursement and class representative service awards, and will ask to be reimbursed for certain expenses already incurred on behalf of the Settlement Class in an amount up to $1,600,000. All Settlement funds that remain after payment of the Court ordered attorneys' fees, costs, expenses, and service awards will be distributed at the conclusion of the lawsuit or as ordered by the Court. You will be notified later, if and when there is an opportunity to make a claim to receive a payment.

WHAT ARE YOUR RIGHTS AND OPTIONS?

You do not need to take any action to remain a member of the Settlement Class and be bound by the Settlement Agreement. As a Settlement Class member, you may be able to participate in (or exclude yourself from) any future settlements or judgments obtained by Commercial and Institutional Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs against other Defendants in the case.

If you do not want to be legally bound by the Settlement Agreement, you must exclude yourself. Your exclusion request must be postmarked by September 3, 2022, or you will not be able to sue or to continue suing the Settling Defendant for the Released Claims (as defined in the Settlement Agreement). If you exclude yourself, you cannot get money from the Settlement. If you do not exclude yourself from the Settlement Class, you may object to the Settlement. Your objection must be postmarked by September 3, 2022. The detailed notice explains how to exclude yourself or object. Details may also be found on the FAQs page of the Settlement website.

While this Settlement is only with the Settling Defendant at this time, the Settlement Class includes purchasers of Pork products (as defined in the Settlement Agreement) from any of the Defendants or their co-conspirators. If you are a member of the Settlement Class and do not exclude yourself, you may be eligible to participate in (or exclude yourself from) any additional settlements which may arise with any other Defendants in the case.

The Court will hold a hearing in this case In re Pork Antitrust Litigation (Commercial and Institutional Indirect Purchaser Actions), Case No. 0:18-cv-01776 (D. Minn.) on October 17, 2022, at 10:00 a.m. via video conference, to consider whether to approve the Settlement Agreement. You may ask to speak at the hearing, but you do not have to.

This notice is a summary only. You can find more details about the Settlement at www.PorkCommercialCase.com or by calling toll-free 1-855-867-0738. Please do not contact the Court.

# # #

SOURCE United States District Court for the District of Minnesota
DUBLIN, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Indoor Location Mergers and Acquisitions Report" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

M&A deals in the indoor location area have maintained a steady pace of 4-5 deals a year. At the high end of the spectrum, prices have increased to up to $400 Million for the highest priced recent deal and $165 Million for the second highest. At the lower end, many earlier stage companies have been acquired in the $2-3 Million range. The report Indoor Location Mergers and Acquisitions Report gives prices and strategic details for 33 acquisitions in the indoor location area.

While there is a continuation of deals centered around key component technologies, recent years have seen a shift towards acquisitions of start-ups with full-service solutions. At the same time, we continue to see lower-priced acquisitions of smaller component technologies by companies seeking to fill gaps in their own existing offerings.

Some acquired technologies will be used for post-pandemic contact tracing or hybrid workplaces, some for E911 services, and some for more traditional location services such as retail, mapping, and marketing.

Whether you are a start-up company dreaming of your own M&A, a major company looking to acquire a technology vendor, an investor analyzing company valuations, or anyone else wanting to understand M&A in the indoor location area, this is the report for you.

Key Topics Covered:

Executive Summary

Summary of Acquisitions and Prices

Table of Contents

Trends in Acquisition Prices

Predictions - The Next Indoor Localization Acquisitions

Indoor Location Markets and Technologies

Thirty Seven Indoor Location Related Company Acquisitions

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/gwcxd8

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

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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Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/539438/Research_and_Markets_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Research and Markets
Lottery players in Montana can place ticket orders for beloved lottery games, including Powerball, Mega Millions, Lotto America, Lucky for Life, Montana Cash, and Big Sky Bonus on Jackpocket's easy-to-use mobile app. The secure platform allows players to conveniently place ticket orders, view an image of their ticket, check lottery results, and even receive prizes up to $599 directly on the app. If players win more than $599, the winning ticket will be transferred to them for redemption at the Montana Lottery.

First-time players can receive a free lottery ticket on the Jackpocket app by entering the code BIGSKY at checkout.

"Accessibility and convenience are of the utmost importance right now, which is why we're looking forward to offering Montanans, both long-time lottery players and new players alike, a digital-forward way of streamlining their day," said Jackpocket CEO and Founder Peter Sullivan. "Innovation and safety are at the forefront of everything we do at Jackpocket, and we're committed to keeping those guiding principles at the forefront of online gaming."

By broadening access to the lottery, Jackpocket helps drive state revenue while also attracting new consumers who otherwise would not be active lottery players. Over sixty-five percent of Jackpocket app users are 18 to 45 years old. Since 1987, the Montana Lottery has contributed more than $302 million to the state's General Fund, which supports public education, safety and health programs, and to the Montana STEM scholarship program.

Montana is now the 12th state available for lottery play on the Jackpocket app along with Arkansas, Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and Washington, D.C. Lottery players have won over $150 million in lottery prizes using the Jackpocket app, and 14 individual players have won prizes worth $1 million or more to date.

To ensure player safety, Jackpocket offers consumer protections such as daily deposit and spend limits, self-exclusion and in-app access to responsible gaming resources. Jackpocket is a member of the National Council on Problem Gambling, and the first third-party lottery service to receive a responsible gambling certification from the NCPG's Internet Responsible Gambling Compliance Assessment Program.

For more information, visit jackpocket.com or download the Jackpocket app on iOS or Android .

About Jackpocket

Jackpocket is on a mission to create a more convenient, fun and responsible way to play the lottery. The first licensed third-party lottery app in the United States, Jackpocket provides an easy, secure way to order official state lottery tickets. Jackpocket is currently available in Arkansas, Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and Washington, D.C., and is expanding to many new markets. Download the app on iOS or Android and follow along on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .

SOURCE Jackpocket
"John is a dynamic leader, brand strategist, and accomplished executive who brings an impressive background in helping to transform philanthropic enterprises," said Dana W. White, chief communications officer, Hyundai Motor North America and Hyundai Hope On Wheels and Genesis Inspiration Foundation board member. "His diverse background and leadership abilities will make a positive difference in the lives of children."

Guastaferro was most recently the executive director of the Anaheim Community Foundation (ACF), where he led a transformational process to revitalize the foundation's brand and board, establishing ACF as a trusted hub of philanthropy. He also secured $4 million and launched the ACF Response & Recovery program, which helped marginalized residents impacted by the pandemic. Earlier in his career, Guastaferro served as vice president of marketing and development for the Anaheim Family YMCA.

Guastaferro is a board member of Orange County Advisors in Philanthropy and Orange County Grantmakers, a volunteer leader with several service organizations, and a passionate practitioner of the arts. Guastaferro holds a B.S. in Business Administration from California State Polytechnic University-Pomona and is certified as a Certified Fund-Raising Executive. Guastaferro reports to each foundation's Board of Directors.

Hyundai Hope On Wheels

Hyundai Hope On Wheels is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that is committed to finding a cure for childhood cancer. Launched in 1998, Hyundai Hope On Wheels provides grants to eligible institutions nationwide that are pursuing critical research aimed at improving treatments and saving lives. Hyundai Hope On Wheels is one of the largest non-profit funders of pediatric cancer research in the country. Primary funding for Hyundai Hope On Wheels comes from Hyundai Motor America and its more than 820 U.S. dealers. Since its inception, Hyundai Hope On Wheels has pledged $200 million in support of more than 1,000 childhood cancer research grants. To learn more about Hyundai Hope On Wheels, please visit HyundaiHopeOnWheels.org.

Genesis Inspiration Foundation

The Genesis Inspiration Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to supporting education through the arts. Its mission is to improve educational outcomes by providing access to transformative arts programming that engages and inspires children in traditionally under resourced communities. Since its inception in 2018, Genesis Inspiration Foundation has donated nearly $3 million to fund youth arts programming at museums, schools and nonprofit arts and cultural organizations nationwide. Primary funding for Genesis Inspiration Foundation comes from Genesis retailers and charitable donations. To learn more about Genesis Inspiration Foundation, visit genesisinspirationfoundation.org.

SOURCE Hyundai Hope On Wheels; Genesis Inspiration Foundation
John Hancock has invested over $15 million to provide summer jobs, financial education, and professional development opportunities to over 6,000 young people since program inception

BOSTON, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Today, John Hancock, the US division of Toronto-based Manulife (NYSE: MFC), celebrates the 15th anniversary of its annual MLK Scholars Program, the Nation's largest and most comprehensive corporate summer jobs program of its kind. Since the program's inception in 2008, the program has provided summer employment for more than 6,000 Boston youth at nonprofit organizations throughout Boston and at John Hancock.

"This year marks a momentous anniversary for our MLK Scholars Program," said Marianne Harrison, John Hancock president and CEO. "For the past 15 years, the program has gone far beyond a summer job for students  it also provides the skills, knowledge, education, and advice that will help them succeed across many aspects of their lives. For many Scholars, the professional relationships and financial capability established throughout the summer provide the foundation for a meaningful and prosperous future. John Hancock is extremely proud of the MLK Scholars Program and its ability to drive inclusive economic opportunities for our young people to help build a more equitable Boston."

Each summer, in partnership with The Boston Globe, Boston University, Mass General Brigham, and the City of Boston, John Hancock sponsors the employment of nearly 600 Boston teens at 50 local non-profit and corporate organizations. This unique youth employment model empowers Boston teens with career readiness skills and financial literacy tools, in addition to a steady paycheck.

"The MLK Scholars program is a proven model of success for Boston's youth and for leading private and public institutions," Michelle Wu, Mayor of Boston, said. "Thanks to the resources and guidance from partners like John Hancock, our City is leading the way on summer jobs programs. We encourage others to join us in our continued commitment to youth employment and financial education."

The John Hancock MLK Scholars summer jobs model leverages youth employment to build capacity within the non-profit community for summer programming, creating opportunities for long-term employment within our public service and private corporate sectors. The program benefits the organizations that employ MLK Scholars by engaging Boston's diverse student population in potential career paths in their industries  with some students even returning as college interns and full-time hires. At the same time, Scholars are given equitable access to economic opportunity through financial education, mentorship, and professional development opportunities.

Through the program, students also have access to a one-of-a-kind digital education program featuring financial and mental wellness resources for young adults in partnership with EVERFI. Since 2018, this digital education has been a resource not just for participants in the MLK Scholars program, but for all youth participating in summer employment programs supported by the Boston Private Industry Council and the City of Boston.

A new survey of Massachusetts youth conducted by EVERFI and John Hancock shows that more than three in four respondents who participated in a summer youth employment program and had access to the John Hancock Well-Being Education Center agreed that receiving a regular paycheck changed the way they think about managing money, that the education they received over the summer helped them manage their money, and that they now feel more prepared to manage their money. For the third year, young people participating in Boston summer youth employment programs including MLK Scholars reported a positive impact on their financial management confidence and plans from participating in both the education and employment opportunities.

The report proves that summer youth employment programs provide participants with a valuable combination of receiving a regular paycheck and ongoing education to support personal financial skill development, with 78 percent of respondents stating that they feel more prepared to manage their money than they did before participating in the program. Further, participants reported higher levels of resilience and optimism than their peers in Massachusetts. Nearly nine in ten participants (89%) agreed that "when faced with challenges, I believe that I have the power to change my situation for the better." In comparison, just three quarters (75%) of Massachusetts high school juniors and seniors agreed during the 2020-2021 school year. Similarly, more summer youth employment program participants reported being optimistic about their own future (86%) than Massachusetts high school students more broadly (77%).

For more information about the MLK Scholars program, visit https://www.johnhancock.com/about-us/corporate-responsibility/mlk-nonprofit.html

Research Methodology

EVERFI and John Hancock's 2022 research report summarizes the findings from 227 youth who responded to surveys during the summer of 2021 about their financial preparedness, the value of employment and financial education, and their plans for the future, including educational and financial goals. Where possible, comparisons are made to responses from a sample of Massachusetts high school juniors and seniors participating in EVERFI's education programs. Comparisons are drawn from responses collected before students began an EVERFI course.

About John Hancock and Manulife

John Hancock is a unit of Manulife Financial Corporation, a leading international financial services provider that helps people make their decisions easier and lives better by providing financial advice, insurance, and wealth and asset management solutions. Manulife Financial Corporation trades as MFC on the TSX, NYSE, and PSE, and under 945 on the SEHK. Manulife can be found at manulife.com.

One of the largest life insurers in the United States, John Hancock supports more than ten million Americans with a broad range of financial products, including life insurance and annuities. John Hancock also supports US investors by bringing leading investment capabilities and retirement planning and administration expertise to individuals and institutions. Additional information about John Hancock may be found at johnhancock.com.

SOURCE John Hancock
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. and AMSTERDAM, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- LabConnect Inc., a leading global provider of central laboratory and functional outsourcing services for biopharmaceutical, pharmaceutical, medical device, and contract research organizations, today announced that the company is expanding its operations into Europe with the appointment of Marc van Kempen as the General Manager for the region and its acquisition of Cryo Store B.V., headquartered in Joure, The Netherlands. Cryo Store provides a full range of temperature controlled biostorage, supply, and logistics services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and health care industries.

Regarding the acquisition of Cryo Store, Dawn Sherman, Chief Executive Officer of LabConnect stated, "We are pleased to add Cryo Store's biostorage, cold chain logistics and kit building capabilities to support our central laboratory projects from within Europe. When our industry leading sample tracking tools are combined with Cryo Store's proven expertise in logistics management we will be able to offer our clients unparalleled support for today's analytically and logistically complex clinical trials."

Menno Rene Sappe, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Cryo Store stated, "We have served LabConnect and its clients in Europe for over a decade and we are looking forward to expanding the range of services that will be provided from our location. We are proud of the work we have accomplished over the past 13 years and are excited to be part of LabConnect's strategic platform supporting its clinical studies in Europe."

In addition to the acquisition of Cryo Store, LabConnect is pleased to announce the appointment of Marc van Kempen as General Manager Europe. "Marc is an experienced, healthcare business leader with a proven track record in new product launches and the execution of growth strategies. In addition, he has deep knowledge of the bio-pharma industry on an international level," said Sherman. Prior to joining LabConnect, Marc served as General Manager/CEO of Qualizorg B.V., Business Development Director for ProPharma Group in Europe, Vice President Global Development Customer Solutions for Teva Pharmaceuticals, and Commercial Director MSD, The Netherlands. Van Kempen said that "With the strong increase in complex clinical studies in immuno-oncology and cell and gene therapy, there is an increasing demand for the services LabConnect provides in Europe." Marc is looking forward to further strengthening existing connections and exploring new partnerships in Europe.

For more information, visit www.labconnect.com.

About LabConnect

LabConnect is recognized as the leading provider of central laboratory support services for analytically and logistically complex studies such as immuno-oncology, cell and gene therapies, and rare and orphan diseases. LabConnect offers unique and innovative services that have been specifically designed to meet the exacting demands of today's clinical trials. LabConnect's worldwide scope of services includes routine and specialized testing, real-time sample tracking, data integration, biorepository, sample processing, and specialized functional outsourcing. Leading the evolution in central laboratory services since 2002, our services are customized to fit the unique needs of your trial.

About Cryo Store

Founded in 1999 Cryo Store is ISO 9001 certified and holds a GDP compliant wholesale distribution license. On site capabilities include biostorage (liquid nitrogen, -80c, -30c +4c, ambient), kit building, supply distribution and extensive dry ice production. Cryo Store has developed a full range of validated shippers and offers dry ice provisioning combined with logistics track and trace services.

For more information, visit www.labconnect.com or contact via email at [email protected] .

SOURCE LabConnect
New smart vacuum equipped with smart features and powerful 100AW suction senses and traps dust and dirt with DPC Technology, maximizing battery efficiency

Available now in the UK only on Amazon.co.uk for 259.99

ANAHEIM, Calif., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Levoit, the #1 selling air purifier brand in the US*, launches new VortexIQ 40 Flex Cordless Stick Vacuum in the United Kingdom, which is now available to purchase for 259.99 only on Amazon.co.uk. The VortexIQ 40 Flex Cordless Stick Vacuum is designed to make cleaning efficient and seamless, featuring Dynamic Power Control (DPC) Technology that allows the vacuum to detect debris and automatically adjust suction power levels in real-time.

Levoit

From now until Monday, July 11, Levoit is offering a limited time discount that can be applied to the purchase of the VortexIQ 40 Flex Cordless Stick Vacuum.

The new smart vacuum offers a multi-functional and lightweight design, easy-to-use technology, and innovative features, including:

Powerful Suction: This vacuum uses 100,000 RPM (Revolutions Per Minute), VortexAir Technology, and a suction power of 100AW to increase the motor air duct efficiency and create a strong cyclone effect

This vacuum uses 100,000 RPM (Revolutions Per Minute), VortexAir Technology, and a suction power of 100AW to increase the motor air duct efficiency and create a strong cyclone effect Flexible Design: A flexible vacuum body allows for easy access under tables, sofas, and chairs

A flexible vacuum body allows for easy access under tables, sofas, and chairs 4-Stage Filtration: Enhanced with washable dual HEPA filters, trap at least 99.99% of particles 0.3 microns airborne particles such as dust, pet dander, and bacteria 

Enhanced with washable dual HEPA filters, trap at least 99.99% of particles 0.3 microns airborne particles such as dust, pet dander, and bacteria Long Runtime: Vacuum for up to 40 minutes before having to recharge

Vacuum for up to 40 minutes before having to recharge Easy Storage: Store the vacuum and its three head accessories on the mountable charging dock

Store the vacuum and its three head accessories on the mountable charging dock New Mini-power Brush: Remove 99% of mites and is tailored for families with pets.

Designed to auto-adjust the suction power to handle any level of dirt, the VortexIQ 40 Flex Vacuum also features a user-friendly LED Control Panel that allows the user to illuminate the floor to ensure that even the darkest corners are cleaned.

"Following the success for the VortexIQ 40 Cordless Stick Vacuum in the United States, Levoit saw demand for a similar model in the United Kingdom and wanted to provide families with a smart home appliance that would make cleaning simple, effective, and convenient," said Grace Yang, CEO and Founder of Vesync Co, Ltd. "This model will be exclusive to the UK market and only available on Amazon. The smart vacuum is lightweight and comes with a charging dock and accessory holder and features a user-friendly one-click dust bin making dirt removal from most surfaces a pain-free task."

Levoit is Vesyncv's air solutions brand that offers innovative products designed to foster a healthier lifestyle. To learn more about Levoit, please visit Levoit.com.

Download Images Here

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Levoit

*Source: The NPD Group / Retail Tracking Service, US unit sales, 12 months ending October 2020. Based on Amazon sales.

Achieved under laboratory conditions; results may vary.

About Levoit:

Launched in 2016, Levoit connects homes with smart products to create clean and comfortable atmospheres. The brand's collection of air purifiers and humidifiers features industry-leading technologies and smart home applications. As part of the Vesync Family of Brands, Levoit has received worldwide recognition for its continued innovation in reliable, intuitive designs. To learn more, visit www.levoit.com.

Media Contact:

Reputation Management Consultants

Jackie Dadas-Kraper, Senior Director

248.842.0597

[email protected]

SOURCE Levoit
CHICAGO, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- "Lysine is essential for animal health, yet the product, which is primarily manufactured in China, has remained in short supply across North America since this pandemic started in 2020,' observed Gary Rain, President of Anitrition Biotech, a lysine distributor in Chicago.

Anitrition Biotech

There seems to have been little improvement in this situation. As a result of China's zero-Covid lockdowns since March of 2022, hundreds of container ships have remained in the area around Shanghai Port. In the US, port congestion in Long Beach and Tacoma has continued into this year, which exacerbates the lysine shortage across North America.

"A client ordered one container load of lysine from China and the shipment was scheduled for February 2022; unfortunately, the container arrived at Chicago in the middle of June," said Lincoln Hugh, President of All Miles Transport, which has been shipping lysine from Asia for American importers.

However, there is a positive trend. According to Mr. Hugh, Chinese lysine manufacturers and exporters began to shorten supply chains in September of 2021, including warehousing of the product in the US. "In April 2022, the first shipment of lysine arrived in Foreign Trade Zone #271 in Savannah, IL, aimed at supplying midwest animal feed manufacturers," as Mr Hugh noted.

More recently, Chinese lysine exporters and manufacturers have begun to build lysine inventory in Chicago. In June alone, Anitrition Biotech received container loads of three famous Chinese brands: Golden Corn, Fufeng and BBCA. "We store these brands in our climate-controlled warehouse in Libertyville, IL, and we can readily ship out any of the three brands to our customers in America and Canada," said Mr Rain.

"We have started building lysine inventories in Chicago, and the news has been circulating in China's lysine industry. We have state-of-the-art warehousing facilities, capable of handling both 25-kg bags and one-ton tote bags. Our climate-controlled warehouse also ensures the product's quality during long-term storage. We received requests from Chinese lysine manufacturers and distributors for additional warehousing capacity. Polifar Group, for instance, requests us to stock 500 tons of lysine in Chicago by the end of 2022," says Mr Rain.

Chicago offers unmatched advantages as an Asian lysine wholesale center. Trucks from Chicago can reach most parts of the midwestern states within half a day. "As gas prices are soaring, we are also arranging rail transportation for long-distance (800+ miles) delivery," said Mr Hugh. Another of Chicago's advantages, as Mr Hugh observes, is that it is only a half-day drive to Winnipeg, in the Canadian province of Manitoba, where animal feed manufacturers abound.

Building inventories in Chicago and then delivering the product to American customers involves a greater cost compared with shipping the product to US consumers directly from Asia. "Yet as international shipments often remain unreliable, supply chain robustness has become a major concern for American corporate executives. That is the primary reason we build lysine inventories in Chicago," observed Mr Rain.

Media Contact:

Lincoln Hugh

301-605-2373

SOURCE Anitrition Biotech
"With the addition last year of the Formetrix portfolio to our existing additive manufacturing activities, we quickly outgrew our initial MacLean Additive space in Macomb, MI. This facility gives us the room we need to develop our durable tooling product lines, support our ever-growing steel powder customer base, as well as continue our 3D printed production part activities," said Greg Rizzo, Vice President and General Manager for MacLean Additive.

A Grand Opening ceremony will take place at 2 p.m. on July 6, 2022 at the MacLean Additive facility located at 7689 19 Mile Rd. Sterling Heights, MI 48314. Credentialed media is welcome to attend, however no photographs will be allowed inside the building. Among local dignitaries and invited guests, the ribbon on the new facility will be cut by MacLean-Fogg President and CEO, Duncan MacLean. "Our Grand Opening guests will see that we have a lot of room to grow in this 35,000 square foot facility. We didn't choose this large a facility because it was the only one available, we choose this facility because we know we'll have the demand to fill it," stated MacLean.

"MacLean Fogg had a choice of where to locate this new additive manufacturing facility, and they chose Sterling Heights," said Sterling Heights Mayor Michael Taylor. "Their decision to locate in our community underscores the solid reputation we have for welcoming our business community and really engaging with them to ensure their success. The Sterling Innovation District is strategically located at the heart of customer demand and access to the specialized engineering and technician talent needed to fill that demand. That makes it a perfect fit for cutting-edge manufacturing facilities like MacLean Additive."

For inquiries regarding invitations to the Grand Opening event, please contact [email protected].

About MacLean-Fogg Component Solutions

MacLean-Fogg Component Solutions, a division of the MacLean-Fogg Company, is a leading supplier of fastener solutions, engineered solutions, plastic solutions and additive solutions for automotive, heavy vehicle, military and other industrial markets. Visit www.macleanfoggcs.com or contact [email protected] to learn more.

About MacLean-Fogg

MacLean-Fogg Company is a worldwide enterprise with 35 global manufacturing facilities, annual sales in excess of $1 billion (USD), and a workforce of 3,500 dedicated employees. MacLean-Fogg Company operates through two primary businesses, MacLean-Fogg Component Solutions (MFCS) and MacLean Power Systems (MPS). Visit www.macleanfogg.com to learn more.

SOURCE MacLean-Fogg
CHICAGO, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the report "Microgrid Market by Connectivity (Grid-connected, Off-grid), Offering (Power Generators, Controllers, Energy Storage, Software, Services), End User (Commercial & Industrial, Military, Utilities), Type, Power Rating & Geography - Global Forecast to 2027", published by MarketsandMarkets, the global market size is estimated to be USD 26.9 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 63.2 billion by 2027, at a CAGR of 18.6% during the forecast period. Some of the Key factors propelling the market growth includes the increasing emphasis on decarbonization by end users and governments, growing need for reliable uninterrupted power supply, and surge in the use of microgrids for rural electrification. Moreover, rising government initiatives to encourage the development of microgrids will drive the growth of the industry in the near future.

Ask for PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=917

Grid connected segment of microgrid market expected to grow at a higher CAGR during the forecast period

The grid connected segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Grid-connected microgrids contain multiple generators, distribution systems, and sophisticated controls. Furthermore, these technologies enhance grid resiliency, enhance power quality, and reduce their environmental effects, in addition to improving grid reliability. This results in an increase in demand. A major factor fueling the growth of this segment is the expansion of utility-based grid networks globally, as well as the large-scale harnessing of renewable energy sources, such as offshore wind.

Software segment likely to witness higher growth between 2022 and 2027 as software in microgrid projects helps to simplify technical and economic factors

Microgrid software is mainly used for modelling variable sources of energy, such as solar and wind, with variable thermal loads. Software such as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), energy management, generator and load management, and system reconfiguration software are used in microgrids to allow the simulation and optimization of resources. The use of such software helps simplify technical and economic factors involved in a microgrid project and compare the cost and feasibility of different configurations of hardware; this allows designers to use highly specialized software to model the technical performance of microgrids.

Browse in-depth TOC on "Microgrid Market"

186  Tables

80  Figures

293  Pages

Inquiry Before Buying: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_BuyingNew.asp?id=917

Key players in the microgrid market include

Schneider Electric ( France ),

), General Electric (US),

Siemens ( Germany ),

), Eaton Corporation (US),

ABB ( Switzerland ),

), Honeywell International Inc. (US),

Hitachi Energy ( Switzerland ),

), HOMER Energy (US),

S&C Electric (US), and Power Analytics (US).

The energy storage systems for microgrid hardware segment to register second-highest growth rate during the forecast period

The microgrid market for energy storage systems segment is projected to register the second-highest growth rate during the forecast period, by hardware type. The growing need for energy storage systems to optimize delivery of power is driving the growth of this segment. Energy storage systems are flexible and versatile distributed energy resources (DER) used by microgrids. Modern storage systems are significantly fast-responding resources that can both generate and absorb power and, in a few cases, regulate real and reactive power quality in an electric distribution system. These capabilities allow storage systems to serve a variety of roles within a microgrid. Energy storage systems enhance the stability and efficiency of microgrids by decoupling the energy generation sources from loads.

5 MW to 10 MW power rating segment is projected to grow at a faster rate from 2022 to 2027

The segment is projected to grow at a faster rate due to the high-power requirements in universities, smart cities, and commercial applications. Microgrid systems covered under this segment are mostly designed for the commercial & industrial sector, colleges/universities, and large cities/communities.

Asia Pacific likely to be the fastest growing region in global microgrid market during the forecast period

The Asia Pacific region which comprises of Australia, China and Japan, and the Rest of Asia Pacific is expected to witness the highest growth rate during the forecast period. The growth of the market in this region can be attributed to the high rate of rural electrification in several economies such as India, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The lack of proper electricity infrastructure in emerging economies and countries comprising a large number of islands, such as Indonesia and the Philippines, has led to a growing demand for cost-effective microgrids in the region. This is expected to contribute to the growth of the microgrid market in Asia Pacific during the forecast period.

Related Reports:

Microgrid Controller Market by Connectivity (Grid connected & Remote), Offering (Hardware, Software, and Services), Vertical (Government, Utilities, Commercial, Military & Defense, Healthcare) and Geography - Global Forecast to 2024

Digital Substation Market with Covid-19 Impact Analysis by Module (Hardware, Fiber-Optic Communication Networks, and Scada Systems), Type (Transmission and Distribution), Voltage, Installation Type, Industry, and Region - Global Forecast to 2025

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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.

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SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
Utilizing Mogrify's proprietary direct cellular reprogramming platform, the collaboration will seek to identify novel combinations of transcription factors involved in cell differentiation to generate new cochlear hair cells. As part of the collaboration, Astellas Gene Therapies, a division of Astellas, is covering the research cost of the work as well as contributing its expertise in adeno-associated virus (AAV) based genetic medicine and translational capabilities to complete experiments in pre-clinical models. Mogrify will exploit its bioinformatic platform, screening and validation process to characterize potential therapeutic factors.

An estimated 1.57 billion people globally suffer from hearing loss1, and US data suggests that over 10% have severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss in at least one ear2. This degree of hearing loss significantly reduces quality of life and, with no drug treatments currently available, represents a large unmet need.

Dr. Louise Modis, CSO, Mogrify, said: "Mogrify's human regulatory network-centric approach is well placed to identify superior factor combinations, therefore increasing the efficiency of direct conversion toward the target cell type in the ear. Combined with Astellas' capabilities for gene therapy and research of sensorineural, this provides a clear path for the development of a novel in vivo reprogramming therapy for sensorineural hearing loss."

Dr. Mathew Pletcher, Senior VP, Division Head of Gene Therapy Research & Technical Operations, Astellas, said: "In this collaboration, we will look to combine the unique delivery attributes of AAV-based gene therapy, with our deep translational capabilities in otology developed through our "Targeted Therapeutics for Auditory Regeneration", and "Direct Reprogramming (Transdifferentiation)" initiatives. Through this collaboration, we will seek to address a significant unmet need in sensorineural hearing loss.

1. Hearing Loss Collaborators. Hearing loss prevalence and years lived with disability, 1990-2019: findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. Lancet. 2021 Mar 13;397(10278):996-1009.

2. Goman AM, Lin FR. Prevalence of Hearing Loss by Severity in the United States. Am J Public Health. (2016);106(10):1820-1822.

For high-resolution and alternate images please contact Zyme Communications.

About Mogrify www.mogrify.co.uk

Mogrify has developed a proprietary suite of platform technologies that utilize a systematic big-data approach to direct cellular reprogramming (Rackham et al., Nature Genetics, 2016) and the maintenance of cell identity (Kamaraj et al., Cell Systems, 2020).

The platforms, MOGRIFY and epiMOGRIFY, developed over a 12-year period via a multi-national research collaboration, deploy next-generation sequencing, gene regulatory and epigenetic network data to enable the prediction of the transcription factors and growth factors required to produce any target human cell type from any source human cell type.

The platforms can be used to enhance existing stem-cell forward programming methods, or bypass development pathways altogether, affecting a direct transdifferentiation between a mature cell type to another mature cell type.

Mogrify is applying its proprietary and award-winning platforms to generate the functional cell types required to transform the lives of patients, delivering a novel class of in vivo reprogramming therapies across ophthalmology, otology, metabolic and other areas of degenerative disease.

Uniquely positioned to address a regenerative medicine market estimated to be worth $150 billion USD by 2028, Mogrify is commercializing its technology via a combination of in vivo reprogramming therapy development, co-development partnerships, as well as the exploitation of the platform in other therapeutic and non-therapeutic applications.

Based in Cambridge, UK, the Company has raised over $40 million USD funding from Parkwalk, Ahren Innovation Capital, 24Haymarket, Trend Investment Group, Dr. Darrin M. Disley, OBE, Dr. Jonathan Milner and the University of Bristol Enterprise Fund III, as well as strategic investors; Astellas Venture Management.

Follow Mogrify on Twitter @Mogrify_UK and LinkedIn @Mogrify

About Astellas www.astellas.com/en

Astellas Pharma Inc. is a pharmaceutical company conducting business in more than 70 countries around the world. We are promoting the Focus Area Approach that is designed to identify opportunities for the continuous creation of new drugs to address diseases with high unmet medical needs by focusing on Biology and Modality. Furthermore, we are also looking beyond our foundational Rx focus to create Rx+ healthcare solutions that combine our expertise and knowledge with cutting-edge technology in different fields of external partners. Through these efforts, Astellas stands on the forefront of healthcare change to turn innovative science into value for patients. For more information, please visit the Astellas website.

About Astellas Gene Therapies

Astellas integrated its wholly owned subsidiary, Audentes Therapeutics, Inc. as of April 1, 2021 and established "Astellas Gene Therapies" within the organization as an Astellas Center of Excellence to develop genetic medicines with the potential to deliver transformative value for patients. Based on an innovative scientific approach and industry leading internal manufacturing capability and expertise, we are currently exploring three gene therapy modalities: gene replacement, exon skipping gene therapy, and vectorized RNA knockdown and hope to also advance additional Astellas gene therapy programs toward clinical investigation. We are based in San Francisco, with manufacturing and laboratory facilities in South San Francisco and Sanford, North Carolina.

Cautionary Notes (Astellas)

In this press release, statements made with respect to current plans, estimates, strategies and beliefs and other statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements about the future performance of Astellas. These statements are based on management's current assumptions and beliefs in light of the information currently available to it and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: (i) changes in general economic conditions and in laws and regulations, relating to pharmaceutical markets, (ii) currency exchange rate fluctuations, (iii) delays in new product launches, (iv) the inability of Astellas to market existing and new products effectively, (v) the inability of Astellas to continue to effectively research and develop products accepted by customers in highly competitive markets, and (vi) infringements of Astellas' intellectual property rights by third parties. Information about pharmaceutical products (including products currently in development) which is included in this press release is not intended to constitute an advertisement or medical advice.

SOURCE Astellas Pharma Inc.
OKOTOKS, AB, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - (TSX: MTL) Mullen Group Ltd. ("Mullen Group" and/or the "Corporation") intends to release its 2022 Second Quarter earnings results on Thursday, July 21, 2022, at 6:00 a.m. ET, and has scheduled a conference call and webcast as follows:

Date: July 21, 2022



Time: 10:00 a.m. ET



Conference Call Dial-in: 1-800-319-4610 (for participants in North America)

416-915-3239 (Toronto or Overseas participants)

403-351-0324 (Calgary or Overseas participants)



Webcast: www.mullen-group.com

A replay of the call will be available approximately two hours after the completion of the call until Thursday, August 4, 2022, by dialing 1-800-319-6413 or 604-638-9010, access code 9116 followed by the pound sign.

Please note the change in timing for the release of our 2022 Second Quarter earnings results as well as our conference call.

About Mullen Group Ltd.

Mullen Group is one of North America's largest logistics providers. Our network of independently operated businesses provide a wide range of service offerings including less-than-truckload, truckload, warehousing, logistics, transload, oversized, third-party logistics and specialized hauling transportation. In addition, we provide a diverse set of specialized services related to the energy, mining, forestry and construction industries in western Canada, including water management, fluid hauling and environmental reclamation. The corporate office provides the capital and financial expertise, legal support, technology and systems support, shared services and strategic planning to its independent businesses.

Mullen Group is a publicly traded corporation listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "MTL". Additional information is available on our website at www.mullen-group.com or on the Corporation's issuer profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Contact Information

Mr. Murray K. Mullen - Chair, Senior Executive Officer and President

Mr. Richard J. Maloney - Senior Operating Officer

Mr. Carson P. Urlacher - Senior Accounting Officer

Ms. Joanna K. Scott - Senior Corporate Officer

121A - 31 Southridge Drive

Okotoks, Alberta, Canada T1S 2N3

Telephone: 403-995-5200

Fax: 403-995-5296

SOURCE Mullen Group Ltd.
Webcast to be held at 08.30 CEST on Wednesday 6 July

OSLO, Norway, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Nordic Nanovector ASA (OSE: NANOV) today provides an update on PARADIGME, its Phase 2b trial of Betalutin (177Lu lilotomab satetraxetan) in 3rd-line relapsed and anti-CD20 refractory follicular lymphoma (3L R and R FL). Following a comprehensive review and independent data evaluation of PARADIGME and a subsequent request for regulatory agency interaction, the Board of Directors (Board) has taken the difficult decision to discontinue the study. No further patients will be enrolled into PARADIGME.

The PARADIGME trial enrolled a total of 109 patients. The Company will now ensure a wind-down of PARADIGME in a structured manner ensuring patients receive the best possible care during this period.

While Betalutin, at the selected dose of 15 MBq/kg after a pre-dose of 40 mg lilotomab (40/15), has continued to display an attractive safety profile and positive signs of efficacy in some patients, the Board considers that the observed profile does not fully meet the objectives set out for the PARADIGME study. Only one out of three patients responded to the treatment with the average duration of the response of approximately six months. As a result, the Board is of the opinion that the demonstrated profile is no longer sufficiently competitive to bring Betalutin to the market in the third line relapsed and refractory FL indication, within a timeframe that makes financial and commercial sense for the Company.

The Company still believes there could be a market for Betalutin in light of its safety profile, promising efficacy in earlier lines of therapy and unique feature of being delivered as a one-time dose. However, a potential new development programme would need to be conducted in a different patient population and line of treatment. The Company will therefore explore potential partnerships and will also seek advice from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to discuss if there could be a possible way forward for Betalutin in an alternative setting.

The Company will now focus its efforts and resources on developing its pipeline of proprietary CD37-targeting products from which Nordic Nanovector believes it can create value for shareholders over the longer term. These pipeline opportunities include:

 Humalutin, a radioimmunotherapy candidate based on a chimeric anti-CD37 antibody and the beta-emitting radionuclide lutetium-177 for non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

 Alpha37, an alpha-emitting radioimmunotherapy candidate based on a chimeric anti-CD37 antibody conjugated to lead-212, currently being explored with partner OranoMed for relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.

 A portfolio of fully humanized anti-CD37 antibodies with potential in haematological cancers and autoimmune diseases.

 A CD37 DOTA CAR-T cell opportunity in haematological cancers, which is the subject of a research collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania.

Following the decision to discontinue PARADIGME, the Board has also decided to implement a restructuring of the Company with immediate effect with the purpose of reducing costs where necessary to enable support of essential activities associated with development of the pipeline.

The Company's cash position at the end of Q2 2022 was approximately NOK 280m (end of Q1 NOK 356.3m). Full Q2 results will now be reported on 31 August.

Chairman, Jan H. Egberts commented: "The decision to discontinue PARADIGME is extremely disappointing not only for the Nordic Nanovector team, but also for patients, healthcare providers and our shareholders as there continues to be an unmet medical need in frail and elderly patients with Follicular Lymphoma. The new independently reviewed data from PARADIGME, in an increasingly competitive market and with the slow speed of recruitment makes progressing PARADIGME further very difficult. Consequently, the Board no longer sees a viable path to commercialisation in the current indication that would make sense for the Company and its shareholders. We are extremely grateful to all the clinical investigators and patients who have participated in PARADIGME."

CEO, Erik Skullerud commented: "Our focus will now shift to our pipeline of other CD37-targeting assets, which give us multiple shots on goal, including Humalutin, Alpha37, a portfolio of fully humanized anti-CD37 antibodies and the CD37 CAR-T. We look forward to communicating our development plans for these assets in more detail in the coming months."

Nordic Nanovector will host a webcast at 08.30 CEST on Wednesday 6 July, elaborating on the strategic decision to stop PARADIGME and including a Q&A session. To join the webcast please sign up via our website www.nordicnanovector.com.

For further information, please contact:

IR enquiries

Malene Brondberg, CFO

Cell: +44 7561 431 762

Email: [email protected]

Media Enquiries

Mark Swallow/Frazer Hall (MEDiSTRAVA Consulting)

Tel: +44 203 928 6900

Email: [email protected]

About Nordic Nanovector:

Nordic Nanovector is committed to develop and deliver innovative therapies to patients to address major unmet medical needs and advance cancer care. The Company aspires to become a leader in radionuclide therapy of cancer. In addition to Betalutin, for which Nordic Nanovector retains global marketing rights, the Company's novel pipeline includes Humalutin, a radioimmunotherapy candidate based on a chimeric anti-CD37 antibody and the beta emitter lutetium-177 for NHL; Alpha37, a based on a chimeric anti-CD37 antibody and the alpha emitting radionuclide lead-212, currently being explored with partner Oranomed for relapsed refractory chronic lymphocytic leukaemia; a portfolio of fully humanized anti-CD37 antibodies with potential in haematological cancers and autoimmune diseases; and a CD37 DOTA CAR-T cell opportunity in haematological cancers, which is the subject of a research collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania.

Further information can be found at www.nordicnanovector.com.

Forward-looking statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances, since they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future and which, by their nature, will have an impact on Nordic Nanovector's business, financial condition and results of operations. The terms "anticipates", "assumes", "believes", "can", "could", "estimates", "expects", "forecasts", "intends", "may", "might", "plans", "should", "projects", "targets", "will", "would" or, in each case, their negative, or other variations or comparable terminology are used to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not historic facts. There are a number of factors that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause these differences include, but are not limited to, risks associated with implementation of Nordic Nanovector's strategy, risks and uncertainties associated with the development and/or approval of Nordic Nanovector's product candidates, ongoing and future clinical trials and expected trial results, the ability to commercialise Betalutin, technology changes and new products in Nordic Nanovector's potential market and industry, Nordic Nanovector's freedom to operate (competitors patents) in respect of the products it develops, the ability to develop new products and enhance existing products, the impact of competition, changes in general economy and industry conditions, and legislative, regulatory and political factors. No assurance can be given that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Nordic Nanovector disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

This information is subject to a duty of disclosure pursuant to Section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/nordic-nanovector/r/nordic-nanovector-to-discontinue-paradigme--its-phase-2b-trial-with-betalutin--in-3l-r-and-r-follicu,c3597087

SOURCE Nordic Nanovector
Credit Union Branches Accepting Donations of New Backpacks for Elementary and Middle School Students

SAN DIEGO, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- North Island Credit Union has launched a school backpack drive to benefit local elementary and middle school students in partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater San Diego.

Through July 23rd, North Island Credit Union invites community members to make a difference in a student's life by dropping off a school backpack to any branch location in San Diego County. A complete list of North Island Credit Union locations is available here.

Donated backpacks should be new and appropriate for elementary/middle school students. The credit union will fill all donated backpacks with essential school supplies. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater San Diego will distribute the stuffed backpacks to Club kids in need in time for the fall school year.

"We're asking our community to join with us in helping every student start the school year ready to learn and thrive. Many families in our community are challenged to provide new back-to-school backpacks, and together we can make a difference in a child's life and academic success," said North Island Credit Union CEO Steve O'Connell. "Every backpack brought to one of our branches will be filled with school supplies and given to local students so they can begin the school year with the tools they need to succeed."

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater San Diego changes lives through quality youth programs and guidance in a safe, affordable and fun environment. The Clubs serve kids ages 5-18 at 20 community-based sites countywide, making a difference in the lives of San Diego's future leaders  today's youth. Through its Back 2 School Drive, its members receive all the basic necessities to start the school year off right.

More information about North Island Credit Union's School Backpack Drive in partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater San Diego can be found here.

About North Island Credit Union, a division of California Credit Union

California Credit Union is a federally insured, state chartered credit union founded in 1933 that serves public or private school employees, community members and businesses across California. With more than 165,000 members and assets of over $4 billion, California Credit Union has 24 branches throughout Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties. The credit union operates in San Diego County as North Island Credit Union, a division of California Credit Union. California Credit Union offers a full suite of consumer, business and investment products and services, including comprehensive consumer checking and loan options, personalized financial planning, business banking, and leading-edge online and mobile banking. Please visit northisland.ccu.com for more information or follow the credit union on Instagram or Facebook @northislandcu.

SOURCE North Island Credit Union
JERSEY CITY, N.J., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- InsightAce Analytic Pvt. Ltd. announces the release of a market assessment report on the " Global Oligonucleotide Synthesis, Modification and Purification Services Market Oligonucleotide Mfg. Type (Antisense Oligonucleotides, siRNA, miRNA, And Other Oligonucleotides), Applications (Research And Diagnostic, Therapeutic, And Contract Manufacturing (OEM)), Operation Scale (Large-Scale Oligonucleotide Synthesis, Intermediate-Scale Oligonucleotide Synthesis, And Small-Scale Oligonucleotide Synthesis), Therapeutic Areas (Oncological Disorders, Eye Disorders, Metabolic Disorders, Autoimmune Disorders, And Other Therapeutic Areas), End-users (Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Companies, Hospitals & Diagnostic Laboratories, Contract Research Organizations (Cros) And Contract Manufacturing Organizations (Cmos), And Academic Research Institutes) - Trends, Industry Competition Analysis, Revenue, and Forecast till 2030."

According to the latest research by InsightAce Analytic, the global oligonucleotide synthesis, modification, and purification services market is valued at US$ 1.56 billion in 2021, and it is expected to reach US$ 6.53 billion by 2030 with a CAGR of 17.50% during a forecast period of 2022-30.

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Recently, there has been an augmented interest in involving modified oligoribonucleotides in molecular biology, biochemistry, and medicine. Oligonucleotides are referred to as short, single-stranded DNA or RNA molecules. Synthetic DNA or RNA oligonucleotides obtained by solid-phase synthesis are employed in various molecular biology applications such as PCR, real-time PCR, sequencing, site-directed mutagenesis, and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) assays, microarrays, and various therapeutic applications. Chemically modified oligonucleotides have been widely researched for the creation of novel antisense and siRNA treatments for many years. Companies require more solid and reliable tools for characterising and monitoring oligonucleotide and mRNA products to allow timely manufacture of innovative vaccines and medicinal products.

Factors such as the increasing need for custom, high-quality oligos for NGS applications, advancement in the synthesis and purification technologies, rising product launches by market players, high prevalence of chronic and genetic disorders, increasing geriatric population, increasing custom oligo synthesis services, rising R&D activities in biotechnology companies for improving oligo synthesis and purification processes, increasing demand for personalized medicines are expected to boost the demand for oligonucleotides during the forecast period. Furthermore, the market players' expansion of manufacturing facilities and strategies such as partnerships, mergers, and agreements are estimated to enhance the market's growth in the coming days. For instance, in February 2018, STA Pharmaceutical Co. (China), a WuXi AppTec group company, and Regulus Therapeutics (US) entered into an oligonucleotide synthesis collaboration agreement for research and mid-scale non-GMP/cGMP manufacturing. Additionally, in June 2017, CordenPharma International entered into a collaboration with GE Healthcare's Dharmacon business to develop an end-to-end solution for oligonucleotide-based drug discovery.

However, the high expenses for the purification process, complex manufacturing procedures, oligo-degradation in the generic research, in-house development of oligonucleotides may hinder the growth of the global oligonucleotide synthesis, modification, and purification services market.

Geographically, North America is projected to hold the highest share of this market over the forecast years, followed by Europe. Europe is expected to grow significantly in this market due to the availability of better healthcare infrastructures and the increasing usage of oligonucleotides to develop novel drug therapies.

Major market players operating in the oligonucleotide synthesis, modification, and purification services market include Ajinomoto Bio-Pharma Services, Integrated DNA Technologies, Kaneka Eurogentec, LGC Biosearch Technologies, Microsynth, MilliporeSigma, BioSpring, CordenPharma, Nitto Denko Avecia, TriLink Biotechnologies, Eurofins Scientific SE, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Agilent Technologies, Inc., GE Healthcare, GeneDesign, Inc., Bio-synthesis Inc., ATDBio Ltd, Burkert UK Limited, Almac Group, and Other Prominent Players.

Key Developments In The Market:

In Oct 2021 , TriLink BioTechnologies stated that it plans to provide EyeGene, Inc. with its CleanCap mRNA capping process and the modified nucleoside, uridine triphosphate, for the manufacturing of EyeGene's mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. This cooperation with EyeGene is anticipated to be the first clinical-stage initiative to utilise TriLink's GMP-grade modified uridine triphosphate designed for further processing.

TriLink BioTechnologies stated that it plans to provide EyeGene, Inc. with its CleanCap mRNA capping process and the modified nucleoside, uridine triphosphate, for the manufacturing of EyeGene's mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. This cooperation with EyeGene is anticipated to be the first clinical-stage initiative to utilise TriLink's GMP-grade modified uridine triphosphate designed for further processing. In June 2021 , Thermo Fisher Scientific teamed up to build end-to-end procedures for complicated oligonucleotide and mRNA products. This collaboration combines the University of Sheffield's research expertise with Thermo Fisher's sample preparation, liquid chromatography (LC), high-resolution accurate-mass (HRAM), mass spectrometry (MS), and data interpretation software technologies to develop streamlined analytical workflows and robust fit-for-purpose processes.

Thermo Fisher Scientific teamed up to build end-to-end procedures for complicated oligonucleotide and mRNA products. This collaboration combines the University of Sheffield's research expertise with sample preparation, liquid chromatography (LC), high-resolution accurate-mass (HRAM), mass spectrometry (MS), and data interpretation software technologies to develop streamlined analytical workflows and robust fit-for-purpose processes. In January 2021 , MilliporeSigma (US) acquired AmpTec, a leading Germany -based mRNA contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO). The deal strengthens MilliporeSigma's capabilities to develop and manufacture mRNA for its customers for use in vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics applicable in Covid-19 and many other diseases.

MilliporeSigma (US) acquired AmpTec, a leading -based mRNA contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO). The deal strengthens MilliporeSigma's capabilities to develop and manufacture mRNA for its customers for use in vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics applicable in Covid-19 and many other diseases. In September 2019 , GeneDesign ( Japan ) acquired Ajinomoto Bio-Pharma Services, becoming part of the contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO). The integration of GeneDesign's services offerings with Aji Bio-Pharma's small and large molecule capabilities in the U.S., Belgium , and India strengthens the CDMO's capabilities.

GeneDesign ( ) acquired Ajinomoto Bio-Pharma Services, becoming part of the contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO). The integration of GeneDesign's services offerings with Aji Bio-Pharma's small and large molecule capabilities in the U.S., , and strengthens the CDMO's capabilities. In 2019, Integrated DNA Technology (US) launched 'oPools- oligo pools', a pool of high-quality DNA oligonucleotides with 350 nucleotides in length.

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Market Segments

Global Oligonucleotide Synthesis, Modification, and Purification Services Market, by By Oligonucleotide mfg. Types, 2022-2030 (Value US$ Bn)

Antisense Oligonucleotides

siRNA

miRNA

Other Oligonucleotides

Global Oligonucleotide Synthesis, Modification, and Purification Services Market, by Applications, 2022-2030 (Value US$ Bn)

Research and Diagnostic

Therapeutic

Contract Manufacturing (OEM)

Global Oligonucleotide Synthesis, Modification, and Purification Services Market, by Operation Scale, 2022-2030 (Value US$ Bn)

Large-Scale Oligonucleotide Synthesis

Intermediate-Scale Oligonucleotide Synthesis

Small-Scale Oligonucleotide Synthesis

Global Oligonucleotide Synthesis, Modification, and Purification Services Market, by Therapeutic Areas, 2022-2030 (Value US$ Bn)

Oncological Disorders

Eye Disorders

Metabolic Disorders

Autoimmune Disorders

Other Therapeutic Areas

Global Oligonucleotide Synthesis, Modification, and Purification Services Market, by End-Users, 2022-2030 (Value US$ Bn)

Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Companies

Hospitals & Diagnostic Laboratories

Contract research organisations (CROs) and contract manufacturing organisations (CMOs)

Academic Research Institutes

Global Oligonucleotide Synthesis, Modification, and Purification Services Market, by Region, 2022-2030 (Value US$ Bn)

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Latin America

Middle East & Africa

North America Oligonucleotide Synthesis, Modification, and Purification Services Market, by Country, 2022-2030 (Value US$ Bn)

U.S.

Canada

Europe Oligonucleotide Synthesis, Modification, and Purification Services Market, by Country, 2022-2030 (Value US$ Bn)

Germany

France

Italy

Spain

Russia

Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific Oligonucleotide Synthesis, Modification, and Purification Services Market, by Country, 2022-2030 (Value US$ Bn)

India

China

Japan

South Korea

Australia & New Zealand

Latin America Oligonucleotide Synthesis, Modification, and Purification Services Market, by Country, 2022-2030 (Value US$ Bn)

Brazil

Mexico

Rest of Latin America

Middle East & Africa Oligonucleotide Synthesis, Modification, and Purification Services Market, by Country, 2022-2030 (Value US$ Bn)

GCC Countries

South Africa

Rest of Middle East & Africa

Why should buy this report:

To receive a comprehensive analysis of the prospects for the global oligonucleotide synthesis, modification, and purification services market

To receive an industry overview and future trends of the oligonucleotide synthesis, modification, and purification services market

To analyze the oligonucleotide synthesis, modification, and purification services market drivers and challenges

To get information on the oligonucleotide synthesis, modification, and purification services market size value (US$ Mn) forecast to 2030

Major Investments, Mergers & Acquisition in the oligonucleotide synthesis, modification, and purification services market industry

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Other Related Reports Published by InsightAce Analytic:

Global mRNA Extraction and Purification Market

Global Antibody Purification Services Market

Global Antisense Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Market

Global mRNA Synthesis and Manufacturing Services Market

About Us:

InsightAce Analytic is a market research and consulting firm that enables clients to make strategic decisions. Our qualitative and quantitative market intelligence solutions inform the need for market and competitive intelligence to expand businesses. We help clients gain competitive advantage by identifying untapped markets, exploring new and competing technologies, segmenting potential markets and repositioning products. Our expertise is in providing syndicated and custom market intelligence reports with an in-depth analysis with key market insights in a timely and cost-effective manner.

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SOURCE InsightAce Analytic Pvt. Ltd.
BARCELONA, Spain, July 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Omdia released the white paper: "The enduring value of IP + Optical" at the 2022 Next Generation Optical Networking (NGON) forum held in Barcelona, Spain.

The white paper offers analysis of "IP over WDM" and "IP+Optical", states t IP over WDM was initially designed for one specific cloud service provider niche application. For communications service providers (CSPs)"IP+Optical" continues to be the more practical solution for CSP network, application and operational needs.

As stated in the white paper, the IP over WDM (IPoWDM) concept has been around for many years. Its fundamental premise has always been the ability to deploy transmission optics within routing platforms to delayer and simplify networks.

However, the hardware and software standardization of IPoWDM are work in progress industry initiatives and a significant integration effort is shifted from the vendors to the CSPs.

In contrast to the multi-variant architecture of IPoWDM, IP + Optical continues to demonstrate enduring value for the CSP community.

CSPs can continue to quickly leverage best-of-breed technology developments. Networks can be managed with existing skill sets and resources. Major advances in wavelength management continue, both in the core, at scale, and at the edge.

Meets CSP's desire to maximize spectral efficiency and total system capacity.

Omdia believes that IP+optical synergy will bring enduring value to CSPs.

For more details, download the white paper of the Enduring Value of IP + Optical.

SOURCE Omdia
In 2017, DeWitt's Intellectual Property litigators Harry Van Camp, Eli Van Camp and Laura Davis successfully obtained a jury decision in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin for approximately $4 million in damages for copyright infringement and unjust enrichment.

On appeal by the Defendant Flora, Inc. from the jury verdict and entry of final judgment in favor of the Plaintiff Amy Sullivan the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued an opinion affirming in part, vacating in part, and remanding the case back to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. On July 1st, U.S. District Court Judge William Conley released the post appeal decision and order confirming the judgment.

At issue in the case was whether Flora, Inc., a business that hired Wisconsin-based graphic artist Sullivan to create work for advertising use, had used Sullivan's illustrations from previous videos without her consent in new, independent online promotional advertising.

Sullivan reserved all usage of her illustrations to herself except for two English language promotional videos. After the initial use, Flora, Inc. no longer had the permission of Sullivan to use the illustrations. That is where the problems began - Flora, Inc. even after being notified of copyright infringement continued to use Sullivan's copyrighted illustrations. After presenting its case to the jury in Wisconsin, the jury agreed that Flora, Inc. had damaged Sullivan economically through its copyright violations.

DeWitt's Intellectual Property litigators are recognized as leaders in the Intellectual Property field by IAM Patent 1000, IP Stars, Martindale-Hubbell, World Trademark Review, and others. Its attorneys work with clients around the world in all matters related to IP. They have successfully represented the IP interests of clients in federal and state courts across the country.

About DeWitt

DeWitt LLP was founded in 1903 and is one of the 10 largest law firms based in Wisconsin, with an additional presence in Minnesota. It has more than 130 attorneys practicing in Green Bay, Madison and Greater Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has the experience to service clients of all scopes and sizes. The firm is known for its work in a variety of legal areas including background screening, business law, employee stock ownership plans, employee benefits, intellectual property, patents, trademarks and copyright law, construction litigation, employment relations, environmental, estate planning, family business, family law, government relations, litigation, real estate, tax law, and more. Additional information is available at dewittllp.com.

SOURCE DeWitt LLP
For further insights on market overview and dynamic analysis, View Sample Report

Parent Market Analysis

Technavio categorizes the global online on-demand food delivery services market as part of the global restaurants market. External factors influencing the parent market's growth potential in the coming years have been thoroughly investigated in our research analysis. To know more about the levels of growth of the market throughout the forecast period, Download a Report Sample.

Online On-Demand Food Delivery Services Market Value Chain Analysis

The core components of the value chain of the restaurants market include the following:

Inputs

Inbound logistics

Operations

Outbound logistics

Marketing and sales

Service

Support activities

Innovation

To unlock information about vendor drive costs and customer service, Download Our Sample Report.

Vendor Insights

The online on-demand food delivery services market is fragmented and the vendors are deploying growth strategies such as pricing and marketing strategies to compete in the market. We provide a detailed analysis of vendors operating in the market, including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Delivery Hero SE, Glovoapp23 SL, Grab Holdings Inc., Grubhub Inc., Just Eat Takeaway.com NV, Meituan Dianping, Roofoods Ltd., Uber Technologies Inc., and Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd. among others.

Product Offerings

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. - The company offers online on-demand food delivery services such as Ele.me, Alipay, Taobao, and Koubei mobile apps to order meals, food, groceries, and many more.

The company offers online on-demand food delivery services such as Ele.me, Alipay, Taobao, and Koubei mobile apps to order meals, food, groceries, and many more. Delivery Hero SE - The company offers foodpanda, which provides a wide range of food, groceries, and more, quickly and conveniently.

The company offers foodpanda, which provides a wide range of food, groceries, and more, quickly and conveniently. Glovoapp23 SL - The company offers online on-demand food delivery services such as glovo that are convenient and less time-consuming.

The Online On-Demand Food Delivery Services Market forecast report offers in-depth insights into key vendor profiles and offerings. Download a Sample Report

Key Market Dynamics-

Online On-Demand Food Delivery Services Market Key Drivers:

Increasing partnerships between restaurants and online food delivery aggregators

Online on-demand food delivery service vendors are partnering with established restaurants. For instance, in January 2020, McDonald's India announced that it had partnered with Zomato to expand the availability and accessibility of food products in North India and East India. In October 2021, Rebel Foods reportedly partnered with Foodpanda to expand its presence in Southeast Asia.

Download a Report Sample for highlights on market Drivers & Trends impacting the market

Related Reports:

Mobile Food Services Market by Type and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2022-2026

Fast Casual Restaurants Market by Product and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2022-2026

Online On-Demand Food Delivery Services Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2020 Forecast period 2021-2025 Growth momentum & CAGR 19.52 % Market growth 2021-2025 USD 118 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 28.78 Regional analysis APAC, North America, Europe, MEA, and South America Performing market contribution APAC at 57% Key consumer countries China, US, India, UK, and Japan Competitive landscape Leading companies, Competitive strategies, Consumer engagement scope Key companies profiled Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Delivery Hero SE, Glovoapp23SL, Grab Holdings Inc.,Grubhub Inc., Just Eat Takeawaycom NV,

MeituanDianping,Roofoods Ltd.,Uber Technologies Inc., andZomato MediaPvt. Ltd Market dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis,

COVID-19 impact and recovery analysis and future consumer dynamics, Market condition analysis for the forecast period Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized

Table of Contents

1 Executive Summary

2 Market Landscape

2.1 Market ecosystem

Exhibit 01: Parent market



Exhibit 02: Market characteristics

2.2 Value chain analysis

Exhibit 03: Value chain analysis: Restaurants

3 Market Sizing

3.1 Market definition

Exhibit 04: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition

3.2 Market segment analysis

Exhibit 05: Market segments

3.3 Market size 2020

3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2020 - 2025

Exhibit 06: Global - Market size and forecast 2020 - 2025 ($ billion)



Exhibit 07: Global market: Year-over-year growth 2020 - 2025 (%)

4 Five Forces Analysis

4.1 Five forces summary

Exhibit 08: Five forces analysis 2020 & 2025

4.2 Bargaining power of buyers

Exhibit 09: Bargaining power of buyers

4.3 Bargaining power of suppliers

Exhibit 10: Bargaining power of suppliers

4.4 Threat of new entrants

Exhibit 11: Threat of new entrants

4.5 Threat of substitutes

Exhibit 12: Threat of substitutes

4.6 Threat of rivalry

Exhibit 13: Threat of rivalry

4.7 Market condition

Exhibit 14: Market condition - Five forces 2020

5 Market Segmentation by Business model

5.1 Market segments

5.2 Comparison by Business model

5.3 Order-focused food delivery services - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 17: Order-focused food delivery services - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ billion)



Exhibit 18: Order-focused food delivery services - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

5.4 Logistics-focused food delivery services - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 19: Logistics-focused food delivery services - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ billion)



Exhibit 20: Logistics-focused food delivery services - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

5.5 Market opportunity by Business model

Exhibit 21: Market opportunity by Business model

6 Customer landscape

7 Geographic Landscape

7.1 Geographic segmentation

7.2 Geographic comparison

7.3 APAC - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

7.4 North America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

7.5 Europe - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

7.6 MEA - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

7.7 South America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

7.8 Key leading countries

7.9 Market opportunity by geography

8 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

8.1 Market drivers

8.2 Market challenges

8.3 Market trends

9 Vendor Landscape

9.1 Overview

9.2 Landscape disruption

10 Vendor Analysis

10.1 Vendors covered

10.2 Market positioning of vendors

10.3 Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

10.4 Delivery Hero SE

10.5 Glovoapp23 SL

10.6 Grab Holdings Inc.

10.7 Grubhub Inc.

10.8 Just Eat Takeaway.com NV

10.9 Meituan Dianping

10.10 Roofoods Ltd.

10.11 Uber Technologies Inc.

10.12 Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd.

11 Appendix

11.1 Scope of the report

11.2 Currency conversion rates for US$

11.3 Research methodology

11.4 List of abbreviations

About Us:

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provide actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

Contact

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media & Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.technavio.com/

SOURCE Technavio
Segmentation by Application (In-Scope/Out-of-Scope)

In-Scope:

Offline:

The paper notebooks market share growth by the offline will be significant during the forecast period. The offline segment held the major share of the global paper notebooks market in 2020. It includes the sales of paper notebooks through various brick and mortar stores, such as departmental stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets, specialty stores, and exclusive company-operated outlets. Offline stores enable direct interaction between customers and retailers. Departmental stores can be easily operated in rural areas and are accessible to a wide range of people. Significant growth of the education sector led by the rising number of educational institutions and increasing student enrolment is driving the demand for paper notebooks.

Out-of-Scope:

Online

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Paper Notebooks Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2020 Forecast period 2021-2025 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 7% Market growth 2021-2025 $ 16.55 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 7.09 Regional analysis APAC, Europe, North America, South America, and MEA Performing market contribution APAC at 48% Key consumer countries US, China, Germany, UK, and India Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled C. Josef Lamy GmbH, Exacompta Clairefontaine SA, Hallmark Licensing LLC, ITC Ltd., kikki.K Pty Ltd., Kokuyo Camlin Ltd.,

Leuchtturm Gruppe GmbH & Co. KG, Ryohin Keikaku Co. Ltd., The Hamelin Group, and The ODP Corp Market Dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis,

COVID 19 impact and future consumer dynamics, market condition analysis for forecast period, Customization preview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized

Highlights-

Segmentation- The report extensively covers market segmentation by Application (offline and online) and Geography (APAC, Europe , North America , South America , and MEA).

Key Companies- C. Josef Lamy GmbH, Exacompta Clairefontaine SA, Hallmark Licensing LLC, ITC Ltd., kikki.K Pty Ltd., Kokuyo Camlin Ltd., Leuchtturm Gruppe GmbH & Co. KG, Ryohin Keikaku Co. Ltd., The Hamelin Group, and The ODP Corp. among others.

Driver- Emergence of various types of paper to drive the market.

Challenge- Stringent regulations on paper manufacturing to hamper the market growth.

More additional information about the Paper Notebooks Market. Access more research insights with recommendations of relevant topics from Technavio's library of +17,000 Reports. Buy Now

Vendor Insights-

The paper notebooks market is fragmented and the vendors are deploying growth strategies such as organic and inorganic strategies to compete in the market.

C. Josef Lamy GmbH- The company offers various products, such as hardcover notebooks, softcover notebooks, and booklets.

Exacompta Clairefontaine SA- The company offers various notebooks and writing pads such as Side Stapled Notebooks, Rhodiarama soft cover notebooks, and Rhodia Silver Webnotebooks.

Hallmark Licensing LLC- The company offers various notebooks such as White Etched Dots Faux Leather Notebook with Pen, Dalmatian Spots Slim Notebook, and Peanuts Woodstock Small Paperback Notebook.

Find additional highlights on the vendors and their product offerings. View Sample Report

Learn More about Key Driver & Challenge of the Market-

Paper Notebooks Market Driver:

Emergence of various types of paper:

The different types of papers available in the market, which are being used for manufacturing paper notebooks, are anticipated to increase the adoption of consumers and drive the market during the forecast period. The various types of papers used for making notebooks are includes, Bond Paper, Endpapers, Parchment Paper, Recycled Paper, Munken, And Wove. Bond paper is a high-quality, tough paper that is made from cotton. It is mostly used in banks and government organizations for documentation purposes. Endpapers are the first and last cover pages of a notebook, which are used to cover the papers inside the book. They are mostly plain white or any other color of choice and mostly represent the brand logo design of the notebook company. Wove paper is a plain paper mostly found in books where printing is required. Owing to the emergence of various types of paper used for manufacturing paper notebooks, the use of paper notebooks among customers is expected to increase.

Paper Notebooks Market Challenge:

Stringent regulations on paper manufacturing:

The paper manufacturing process usually emits harmful gases such as carbon monoxide and methane, which cause pollution and negatively impact the environment. Toxic emissions are one of the major challenges expected to hamper the growth of the market during the forecast period. Stringent regulations on the manufacturing of paper notebooks for environmental safety significantly influence the existing practices and future opportunities in the notebook industry. The regulations are the preventive measures, which must be complied with by vendors to reduce the negative environmental impacts of manufacturing paper notebooks. For instance, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) implemented the Formaldehyde Standards for Composite Wood Products Act of 2010. This act regulates the emissions of formaldehyde from composite wood products during the manufacture of paper and paper notebooks. Owing to these regulations, vendors operating in the market incur high production costs and compliance costs associated with the production of paper products such as paper notebooks. This may lead to a decline in the production of paper notebooks and hamper the growth of the market during the forecast period.

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Office Stationery Market in Europe by Product, Distribution Channel, and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025: The office stationery market in Europe has the potential to grow by USD 8.06 billion during 2021-2025, and the market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 3.46%. The office stationery market vendors should focus on grabbing business opportunities from the paper products segment as it accounted for the largest market share in the base year. Find More Key Market Insights Here

Table of Contents

1 Executive Summary

2 Market Landscape

2.1 Market ecosystem

Exhibit 01: Parent market



Exhibit 02: Market characteristics

2.2 Value chain analysis

Exhibit 03: Value chain analysis: Office services and supplies market

3 Market Sizing

3.1 Market definition

Exhibit 04: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition

3.2 Market segment analysis

Exhibit 05: Market segments

3.3 Market size 2020

3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2020 - 2025

Exhibit 06: Global - Market size and forecast 2020 - 2025 ($ million)



Exhibit 07: Global market: Year-over-year growth 2020 - 2025 (%)

4 Five Forces Analysis

4.1 Five forces summary

Exhibit 08: Five forces analysis 2020 & 2025

4.2 Bargaining power of buyers

Exhibit 09: Bargaining power of buyers

4.3 Bargaining power of suppliers

Exhibit 10: Bargaining power of suppliers

4.4 Threat of new entrants

Exhibit 11: Threat of new entrants

4.5 Threat of substitutes

Exhibit 12: Threat of substitutes

4.6 Threat of rivalry

Exhibit 13: Threat of rivalry

4.7 Market condition

Exhibit 14: Market condition - Five forces 2020

5 Market Segmentation by Application

5.1 Market segments

Exhibit 15: Application - Market share 2020-2025 (%)

5.2 Comparison by Application

Exhibit 16: Comparison by Application

5.3 Offline - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 17: Offline - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)



Exhibit 18: Offline - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

5.4 Online - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 19: Online - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)



Exhibit 20: Online - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

5.5 Market opportunity by Application

Exhibit 21: Market opportunity by Application

6 Customer Landscape

7 Geographic Landscape

7.1 Geographic segmentation

Exhibit 23: Market share by geography 2020-2025 (%)

7.2 Geographic comparison

Exhibit 24: Geographic comparison

7.3 APAC - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 25: APAC - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)



Exhibit 26: APAC - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.4 Europe - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Exhibit 27: Europe - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

Exhibit 28: Europe - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.5 North America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Exhibit 29: North America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

Exhibit 30: North America - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.6 South America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Exhibit 31: South America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)

Exhibit 32: South America - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.7 MEA - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 33: MEA - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ million)



Exhibit 34: MEA - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.8 Key leading countries

Exhibit 35: Key leading countries

7.9 Market opportunity by geography

Exhibit 36: Market opportunity by geography ($ million)

8 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

8.1 Market drivers

8.2 Market challenges

Exhibit 37: Impact of drivers and challenges

8.3 Market trends

9 Vendor Landscape

9.1 Vendor landscape

Exhibit 38: Vendor landscape

9.2 Landscape disruption

Exhibit 39: Landscape disruption



Exhibit 40: Industry risks

10 Vendor Analysis

10.1 Vendors covered

Exhibit 41: Vendors covered

10.2 Market positioning of vendors

Exhibit 42: Market positioning of vendors

10.3 C. Josef Lamy GmbH

Exhibit 43: C. Josef Lamy GmbH - Overview



Exhibit 44: C. Josef Lamy GmbH - Product and service



Exhibit 45: C. Josef Lamy GmbH - Key offerings

10.4 Exacompta Clairefontaine SA

10.5 Hallmark Licensing LLC

Exhibit 50: Hallmark Licensing LLC - Overview



Exhibit 51: Hallmark Licensing LLC - Product and service



Exhibit 52:Hallmark Licensing LLC - Key news



Exhibit 53: Hallmark Licensing LLC - Key offerings

10.6 ITC Ltd.

Exhibit 54: ITC Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 55: ITC Ltd. - Business segments



Exhibit 56:ITC Ltd. - Key news



Exhibit 57: ITC Ltd. - Key offerings



Exhibit 58: ITC Ltd. - Segment focus

10.7 kikki.K Pty Ltd.

Exhibit 59: kikki.K Pty Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 60: kikki.K Pty Ltd. - Product and service



Exhibit 61: kikki.K Pty Ltd. - Key offerings

10.8 Kokuyo Camlin Ltd.

Exhibit 62: Kokuyo Camlin Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 63: Kokuyo Camlin Ltd. - Business segments



Exhibit 64: Kokuyo Camlin Ltd. - Key offerings

10.9 Leuchtturm Gruppe GmbH & Co. KG

Exhibit 65: Leuchtturm Gruppe GmbH & Co. KG - Overview



Exhibit 66: Leuchtturm Gruppe GmbH & Co. KG - Product and service



Exhibit 67: Leuchtturm Gruppe GmbH & Co. KG - Key offerings

10.10 Ryohin Keikaku Co. Ltd.

Exhibit 68: Ryohin Keikaku Co. Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 69: Ryohin Keikaku Co. Ltd. - Product and service



Exhibit 70: Ryohin Keikaku Co. Ltd. - Key offerings

10.11 The Hamelin Group

Exhibit 71: The Hamelin Group - Overview



Exhibit 72: The Hamelin Group - Business segments



Exhibit 73: The Hamelin Group - Key offerings

10.12 The ODP Corp.

Exhibit 74: The ODP Corp. - Overview



Exhibit 75: The ODP Corp. - Business segments



Exhibit 76: The ODP Corp. - Key offerings



Exhibit 77: The ODP Corp. - Segment focus

11 Appendix

11.1 Scope of the report

11.2 Currency conversion rates for US$

Exhibit 78: Currency conversion rates for US$

11.3 Research methodology

Exhibit 79: Research Methodology



Exhibit 80: Validation techniques employed for market sizing



Exhibit 81: Information sources

11.4 List of abbreviations

Exhibit 82: List of abbreviations

About Us

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

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SOURCE Technavio
Sartori's Old World Cheddar wins Best Cheddar Cheese of 2022

PLYMOUTH, Wis., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Sartori Cheese is excited to announce that Old World Cheddar was named PEOPLE Best Cheddar Cheese of 2022. The PEOPLE 2022 Food Awards happens yearly, and their 150 testers ate, drank and cooked 1,300 assorted products to crown the best new supermarket products.

Old World is a one of kind cheddar inspired by Sartori's 80-year cheesemaking heritage. Sartori's Master Cheesemakers used Italian-inspired cultures to create this unique sharp flavor experience. PEOPLE taste testers awarded the cheddar high marks due to "its sharp, buttery taste" and creamy texture.

"Our team puts so much work into every cheese we make," said Pam Hodgson, Master Cheesemaker at Sartori Cheese. "Our Old World Cheddar was no exception. Seeing this cheese highlighted in such an established publication is a huge honor for our local family farms and Sartori Team Members."

Learn more about Old World Cheddar and the other winners at www.people.com/food-awards, and check out newsstands nationwide on Friday, June 24th to see all the PEOPLE 2022 Food Awards winners in the July 4, 2022 PEOPLE issue.

About Sartori

Sartori, a fourth-generation family-owned company, has proudly produced award-winning, artisan cheese for customers worldwide since 1939. Rooted in Plymouth, Wisconsin, Sartori's emphasis on a high-quality and handcrafted approach to cheesemaking is a timeless family tradition. For more information, please www.sartoricheese.com or email [email protected].

For more information contact:

[email protected]

SOURCE Sartori Cheese
Schemes co-designed and led by PQShield 's researchers and advisory board will become global standards for post-quantum cryptography, following NIST's six-year standardization process

Demand for quantum-ready solutions has been on the rise as companies seek to defend against the quantum security threat, and today's announcement will only accelerate this by removing months of uncertainty

PQShield is the only algorithm-agnostic cybersecurity company that can demonstrate and deliver quantum-safe cryptography on chips, in applications, and in the cloud

LONDON, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today announced the outcome of its post-quantum cryptography standardization project. The new draft standards are all schemes contributed to by the advisory board and researchers at PQShield , a UK-headquartered cybersecurity company specialising in post-quantum cryptography. PQShield also advised on all other algorithms developed as part of the NIST standardisation process.

Specifically:

PQShield's Dr Thomas Prest led and co-authored Falcon , a digital signature algorithm;

led and co-authored Falcon a digital signature algorithm; PQShield's Oussama Danba co-authored NTRU, a key encapsulation mechanism also shortlisted as a finalist;

co-authored NTRU, a key encapsulation mechanism also shortlisted as a finalist; PQShield advisory board members Professor Peter Schwabe (Radboud University and the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy) and Professor Chris Peikert ( University of Michigan ) co-authored the finalists and alternates CRYSTALS-Dilithium, NTRU, SPHINCS+, Classic McEliece, CRYSTALS-KYBER, and FrodoKEM.

Of these, CRYSTALS-KYBER was today chosen by NIST as the new standard for public-key encryption/KEMs. Falcon, CRYSTALS-Dilithium and SPHINCS+ will all be standardized for digital signatures.

Professor Peter Schwabe, PQShield advisory board member, says: "It is great to see the NIST post-quantum cryptography standardization effort come to a first conclusion today after months of anticipation. This has been a major effort for the international research community across both academia and industry, and the team at PQShield has been a big part of this.

"Since the standardization project began in 2016, there's been a shift in attitudes towards PQC, and it is now understood as a critical part of a secure future. Now, it is going to be exciting to see more and more applications and systems transition to this next generation of asymmetric cryptography."

The quantum threat has been high on the global security agenda for months, with governments and their partners planning their transition to quantum-resistance even before NIST's standards were announced. In a recent White House fact sheet following the G7 summit, the deployment of Post-Quantum Cryptography was listed as one of the key challenges of the 21st century.

In January, a White House Memorandum called for US government agencies to identify any encryption not compliant with quantum-proof standards and provide a timeline towards transition. Separately, the French national security agency (ANSSI) recommended the immediate introduction of post-quantum defences throughout the private sector.

Now that global cryptography standards have been announced, more companies will begin planning their transition to quantum-readiness - a trend PQShield is already witnessing first hand.

Dr Ali El Kaafarani, PQShield's founder and CEO, says: "Today's news marks a turning point in the fight for information security, thanks to a huge effort by NIST and the wider cryptography community.

"Previous cryptographic standards meant that the quantum threat touched everyone, with everything from medical records to national intelligence exposed to 'harvest now, decrypt later' attacks. NIST's new Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) standards are a welcome arrival, and I am extremely proud of the team at PQShield for their intense efforts in helping to deliver these - especially Thomas and Peter for having their own contributions chosen.

"But there's no room for complacency. Across sectors, the race is now on to implement the new cryptographic defences, protecting data wherever it is vulnerable. Now, having actual standards to follow will help companies to put concrete transition roadmaps in place."

PQShield is an algorithm-agnostic vendor, offering size optimised and side-channel resistant implementations of all relevant NIST PQC finalists in hardware and software, which meant it could support companies in their transition to quantum-readiness even before today's standards were announced.

Since raising $20 million in Series A funding in January, PQShield has made a series of deals to introduce its quantum-ready cryptographic solutions to organisations across sectors, including a licensing deal with Microchip Technology and a collaboration with Collins Aerospace .

Its hybrid cryptographic library, PQCryptoLib, was also the first submitted to the NIST Cryptographic Module Validation Program for FIPS 140-3, the mandatory standard for the protection of data within US and Canadian federal systems.

PQShield CEO, Ali El Kaafarani, added: "When it comes to defining PQC standards, the work doesn't stop here. NIST also confirmed a fourth round today to further examine the alternate schemes BIKE, Classic McEliece, HQC and SIKE, and the team at PQShield will be in action again scrutinising these alongside the wider community.

"On top of this, NIST also announced a new Call for Proposals to diversify the signature schemes portfolio available - and no doubt our team will submit more candidates. We very much look forward to the road ahead as we collectively work towards a quantum-safe future."

About PQShield

PQShield is a cybersecurity company specialising in post-quantum cryptography, protecting data from today's attacks while readying organisations for the threat landscape of tomorrow.

It is the only cybersecurity company that can demonstrate quantum-safe cryptography on chips, in applications, and in the cloud. Headquartered in the UK, with additional teams in the United States, France and the Netherlands, its quantum-secure cryptographic solutions work with companies' legacy systems to protect devices and sensitive data now and for years to come.

PQShield is principally backed by Addition, Crane Venture Partners, Oxford Science Enterprises (formerly OSI), Kindred Capital, and InnovateUK. Its latest white papers are available to read here .

www.pqshield.com | LinkedIn | Twitter

SOURCE PQShield
TAMPA, FL, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Primo Water Corporation (NYSE: PRMW) (TSX: PRMW) (the "Company" or "Primo"), a leading provider of sustainable drinking water solutions direct to consumers in North America and Europe, today announced that the Company will release its second quarter ended July 2, 2022, financial results before the markets open on Thursday, August 11, 2022.

Primo will host a conference call, to be simultaneously webcast, on Thursday, August 11, 2022, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. A question and answer session will follow management's presentation. To participate, please call the following numbers:

Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call

North America: (888) 664-6392

International: (416) 764-8659

Conference ID: 75198085

This is a live, listen-only dial-in telephone line.

Webcast for Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call

A live audio webcast will be available through the Company's website at www.primowatercorp.com. The webcast will be recorded and archived for playback on the investor relations section of the website for two weeks following the event.

ABOUT PRIMO WATER CORPORATION

Primo Water Corporation is a leading pure-play water solutions provider in North America and Europe and generates approximately $2.1 billion in annual revenue. Primo operates largely under a recurring razor/razorblade revenue model. The razor in Primo's revenue model is its industry-leading line-up of sleek and innovative water dispensers, which are sold through retailers and online at various price points. The dispensers help increase household penetration which drives recurring purchases of Primo's razorblade offering. Primo's razorblade offering is comprised of Water Direct, Water Exchange, and Water Refill. Through its Water Direct business, Primo delivers sustainable hydration solutions across its 21-country footprint direct to the customer's door, whether at home or to businesses. Through its Water Exchange and Water Refill businesses, Primo offers pre-filled and reusable containers at over 13,000 locations and water refill units at approximately 23,000 locations, respectively. Primo also offers water filtration units across its 21-country footprint.

Primo's water solutions expand consumer access to purified, spring, and mineral water to promote a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle while simultaneously reducing plastic waste and pollution. Primo is committed to its water stewardship standards and is proud to partner with the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) in North America as well as with Watercoolers Europe (WE), which ensure strict adherence to safety, quality, sanitation and regulatory standards for the benefit of consumer protection.

Primo is headquartered in Tampa, Florida (USA). For more information, visit www.primowatercorp.com .

SOURCE Primo Water Corporation
XIAMEN, China, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Qudian Inc. ("Qudian" or the "Company") (NYSE: QD), a consumer-oriented technology company in China, today announced that it has completed the previously disclosed optional repurchase of its 1.00% Convertible Senior Notes due 2026 (CUSIP No. 747798AB2) (the "Notes"). The repurchase right expired at 5:00 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time, on Thursday, June 30, 2022. Based on information from Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas as the paying agent for the Notes, all of the outstanding Notes, or US$47.5 million in aggregate principal amount, were surrendered on a valid basis and not withdrawn prior to the expiration of the repurchase right. Accordingly, the aggregate cash purchase price of the Notes was US$47.5 million. The Company has accepted all the surrendered Notes for repurchase and forwarded cash in payment for the total amount to the paying agent for distribution to the applicable holders. As a result, there are no outstanding Notes as of the date hereof.

About Qudian Inc.

Qudian Inc. ("Qudian") is a consumer-oriented technology company in China. The Company historically focused on providing credit solutions to consumers. The Company is exploring innovative consumer products and services to satisfy Chinese consumers' fundamental and daily needs by leveraging its technology capabilities. In March 2022, it launched a ready-to-cook meal business catering to working-class consumers in China.

For more information, please visit https://ir.qudian.com .

Safe Harbor Statement

This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates" and similar statements. Among other things, the expectation of its collection efficiency and delinquency contains forward-looking statements. Qudian may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the SEC, in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about Qudian's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement, including but not limited to the following: Qudian's goal and strategies; Qudian's expansion plans; Qudian's future business development, financial condition and results of operations; Qudian's expectations regarding demand for, and market acceptance of, its products; Qudian's expectations regarding keeping and strengthening its relationships with customers, business partners and other parties it collaborates with; general economic and business conditions; and assumptions underlying or related to any of the foregoing. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in Qudian's filings with the SEC. All information provided in this press release and in the attachments is as of the date of this press release, and Qudian does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.

For investor and media inquiries, please contact:

In China:

Qudian Inc.

IR team

Tel: +86-592-596-8208

E-mail: [email protected]

The Piacente Group, Inc.

Jenny Cai

Tel: +86 (10) 6508-0677

E-mail: [email protected]

In the United States:

The Piacente Group, Inc.

Brandi Piacente

Tel: +1-212-481-2050

E-mail: [email protected]

SOURCE Qudian Inc.
VANCOUVER, BC, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Scottie Resources Corp. ("Scottie" or the "Company") (TSXV: SCOT), (OTCQB: SCTSF); (FSE: SR8) is pleased to report that it has commenced its 2022 drill program focused on expanding its high-grade Blueberry Contact Zone. The Blueberry Contact Zone is located 2 km north-northeast of the 100% owned past-producing high-grade Scottie Gold Mine, 35 km north of the town of Stewart, BC, along the Granduc Road.

President and CEO, Brad Rourke commented: "Our 2022 exploration is in full swing with the first drill turning at Blueberry and field crews soil sampling on the Cambria Project. Our planned drill program at Blueberry will test validated targets developed during the 2021 program, which have the potential to double the strike length of the Blueberry Contact Zone. Between testing new targets and following up on the successful intercepts from last season, we expect to deliver another year of consistently strong results that define a large, road accessible, gold system in the Golden Triangle."

About the Blueberry Contact Zone

The Blueberry Zone is located just 2 km northeast of the 100% owned, past-producing Scottie Gold Mine located in British Columbia, Canada's Golden Triangle region. Historic trenching and channel sampling of the Blueberry Vein include results of 103.94 g/t gold over 1.43 metres, and 203.75 g/t gold over 1.90 metres. Despite high-grade surficial samples and easy road access, the Blueberry Vein had only limited reported drilling prior to the Company's exploration work. The target was significantly advanced during Scottie's 2019 drill program when an interval grading 7.44 g/t gold over 34.78 metres was intersected in a new splay off zone of the main Blueberry Vein. The drill results received in 2020 and 2021, coupled with surficial mapping and sampling suggest that this splay is in fact a major N-S mineralized structure, of which the Blueberry Vein was only a secondary structure. This zone is much wider than pursued in previous exploration models and drilling in 2021 expanded its strike length to 720 meters and its depth to 225 meters. The zone is steeply dipping, and there is no current restraint on its potential depth; the mineralization at the adjacent Scottie Gold Mine has a vertical extent greater than 450 m. The Blueberry Zone is located on the Granduc Road, 20 km north of the Ascot Resources' Premier Project, which is in the process of refurbishing their mill in anticipation of production in 2022 (August 10, 2021). Newcrest's Brucejack Mine is located 25 km to the north.

Thomas Mumford, Ph.D., P.Geo and VP Exploration of Scottie, a qualified person under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed the technical information contained in this news release on behalf of the Company.

ABOUT SCOTTIE RESOURCES CORP.

Scottie owns a 100% interest in the high-grade, past-producing Scottie Gold Mine and Bow properties and has the option to purchase a 100% interest in Summit Lake claims which are contiguous with the Scottie Gold Mine property. Scottie also owns 100% interest in the Georgia Project which contains the high-grade past-producing Georgia River Mine, as well as the Cambria Project properties and the Sulu property. Altogether Scottie Resources holds more than 52,000 ha of mineral claims in the Stewart Mining Camp in the Golden Triangle.

The Company's focus is on expanding the known mineralization around the past-producing mines while advancing near mine high-grade gold targets, with the purpose of delivering a potential resource. The Company's focus is on expanding the known mineralization around the past-producing mine while advancing near mine high-grade gold targets, with the purpose of delivering a potential resource.

All of the Company's properties are located in the area known as the Golden Triangle of British Columbia which is among the world's most prolific mineralized districts.

Forward Looking Statements

This news release may contain forwardlooking statements. Forward looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forwardlooking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking statements. Forwardlooking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date such statements were made. The Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forwardlooking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy of accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Scottie Resources Corp.
NEW YORK, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Purcell & Lefkowitz LLP, a class action law firm dedicated to representing shareholders nationwide, is investigating a potential breach of fiduciary duty claim involving the board of directors of Ennis, Inc. (NYSE: EBF).

If you are a shareholder of Ennis, Inc. and are interested in obtaining additional information regarding this investigation, free of charge, please visit us at:

http://pjlfirm.com/ennis-inc/

You may also contact Robert H. Lefkowitz, Esq. either via email at [email protected] or by telephone at 212-725-1000. One of our attorneys will personally speak with you about the case at no cost or obligation.

Purcell & Lefkowitz LLP is a law firm exclusively committed to representing shareholders nationwide who are victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty and other types of corporate misconduct. For more information about the firm and its attorneys, please visit http://pjlfirm.com. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

SOURCE Purcell & Lefkowitz LLP
BOCA RATON, Fla., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- PreIPO Corporation ("PreIPO"), a Wyoming corporation with offices in Boca Raton, Florida and Boston, Massachusetts is pleased to announce that Shon Ranawat, CEO of PreIPO Corporation, the company that owns PreIPO.com, PreIPO-as-a-Service, TABs Diligence-as-as-Service and SPV-as-a-Service has been accepted by Y Combinator, the firm that helped fund Airbnb, Stripe, Doordash and Ginkgo Bioworks, to join their prestigious Startup School Program.

Y Combinator (YC) is a startup fund and program. Since 2005, YC has invested in nearly 3,000 companies including Airbnb, DoorDash, Stripe, Instacart, Dropbox, Coinbase and Reddit. The combined valuation of YC companies is over $300B. YC has programs and resources that support founders throughout the life of their company. Startup School teaches the basics of starting a company. The YC batch program helps founders as they build their product, talk to their customers, and raise funding. Work at a Startup makes it easy for founders to find their first engineers. YC Series A helps founders launch their A round. YC Growth Program provides founders with resources to scale their companies and hire an executive team, and YC Continuity invests in their later stage rounds.

Mr. Ranawat is gearing up to successfully position PreIPO Corporation for its pending Series A Round launch, scheduled for Q4 of 2022, while in the midst of the Company's $8.75M Seed Round raise, by attending the highly-touted Y Combinator Startup Program. Mr. Ranawat has been a disruptive tour de force in the Fintech industry and is known for his avant garde video productions such as: https://www.preipo.com/image/prevideo.mp4

According to Mr. Ranawat, "Being accepted into the celebrated and world-class Y Combinator Program will help PreIPO Corporation to optimize the success of its upcoming Series A Round through a deeply immersive training and methodology program that incorporates well-known Alumni's who have previously been funded, in part, by Y Combinator" into the over-arching curriculum."

About PreIPO Corporation

PreIPO is a financial technology company specializing in actively participating in private market securities transactions for qualified investors, sellers, issuers, and financial institutions through its vertically integrated ecosystem of 'licensable while-labeled' SaaS offerings designed especially for broker/dealers. As a pioneer in digitally distributed financial systems, PreIPO is deploying its proprietary PreIPO-as-a-Service Platform at PreIPO.com.

PR Contact:

Alexa Majdalawi

Chief Legal Officer

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE PreIPO Corp
Joining a significant portfolio of Miami Beach assets including the famed Raleigh Hotel, this acquisition builds upon an established SHVO commitment to Miami Beach. In partnership with Deutsche Finance America, the acquisition closed June 3rd for $39.3 million.

SHVO plans to develop unique Class A commercial space with renowned design firm Foster + Partners, recognized internationally for conceiving state-of-the-art office space. The first Foster + Partners office building in Miami Beach, this development builds upon SHVO's collaboration with Foster + Partners at Transamerica Pyramid Center in San Francisco. Kobi Karp Architects will reinforce this vision as local veteran expertise. The Alton is slated for an emphatic commitment to quality, sustainability, and a conscious initiative to elevate the standard of Miami Beach office space.

Lord Norman Foster, Founder and Executive Chairman of Foster + Partners, said "Our design is inspired by the climate and vegetation of Florida to create a protected courtyard and to merge the workplace with nature and the outdoors. The Alton will be a model of healthy lifestyle and sustainability."

"The Alton is an exceptional opportunity to elevate office space to a global audience and cultural significance featuring an above and beyond sustainability commitment, tailored super prime office space and quality unparalleled in Miami Beach," said Michael Shvo, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Outdoor space is a vital amenity and signature to the proposed setback massing. The site embraces high-design and execution potential slated to raise Miami Beach commercial space standards.

SHVO is committed to high-performance and high-design commercial properties as demonstrated by additional portfolio assets 711 Fifth Avenue and 530 Broadway in New York, and 333 South Wabash Avenue in Chicago.

About SHVO

SHVO is a real estate development and investment firm built on the vision of Chairman & CEO Michael Shvo to create culture-defining experiences in iconic properties.

Headquartered in New York City with offices in Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago, SHVO owns and operates a national portfolio with more than $8 billion in assets under management and 4.5 million square feet across commercial office and retail space, hospitality, and luxury residential assets. The firm's selective portfolio of architecturally significant properties, from innovative ground up new developments to revitalized landmarks that define skylines in the world's leading cities, includes the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, The Raleigh Hotel in Miami Beach, 333 South Wabash Avenue ('The Big Red') in Chicago, Mandarin Oriental Residences at 9200 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, Mandarin Oriental Residences Fifth Avenue in New York City and the AMAN New York Hotel and Residences at the Crown building.

Renowned for its expertise, SHVO is fully integrated with highly diversified industry experience in every aspect of acquisitions, finance, development, design, sales, leasing, property management, hospitality, and sustainability.

www.shvo.com.

About Foster + Partners

Foster + Partners is a global studio for architecture, urbanism and design, rooted in sustainability, which was founded over fifty years ago in 1967 by Norman Foster with his late wife, Wendy. Since then, he and the team around him have established an international practice with a worldwide reputation for thoughtful and pioneering design, working as a single studio that is both ethnically and culturally diverse. The studio integrates the skills of architecture with engineering, both structural and environmental, urbanism, interior and industrial design, model and film making, aeronautics and many more  our collegiate working environment is similar to a compact university. These diverse skills make us capable of tackling a wide range of projects, particularly those of considerable complexity and scale. Design is at the core of everything that we do. We design buildings, spaces and cities; we listen, we question, and we innovate.

The studio has established an international reputation with buildings such as the Hearst Headquarters in New York, 30 St Mary Axe, popularly known as The Gherkin, in London, Millau Viaduct in France, the German Parliament in the Reichstag, Berlin, The Great Court for the British Museum, Headquarters for HSBC in Hong Kong and London, the ME Hotel in London, Commerzbank Headquarters in Frankfurt, the Metro Bilbao, the Carre d'Art Nimes, the sustainable Masdar development in Abu Dhabi, and research centres for Stanford University, California. Recent work includes the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Samson Pavilion for CWRU and Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, Duo Central Park in Sydney, Apple's headquarters in California, Bloomberg's new European headquarters in London and the Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia. Currently, the practice is involved in projects such as the New Slussen Masterplan in Sweden, Kuwait International Airport, and 425 Park Avenue in New York.

www.fosterandpartners.com

SOURCE SHVO
BOSTON, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- STAG Industrial, Inc. (the "Company") (NYSE:STAG) today announced that, pursuant to its previously announced management succession plan, effective July 1st the Board of Directors appointed William R. Crooker to the role of Chief Executive Officer, in addition to his current role as President, and further appointed Mr. Crooker to the Board. As Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Crooker will lead and manage the Company's business, execute the strategies developed by management and the Board and serve as the chief spokesperson to the Company's employees, stockholders and business counterparties.

Additionally, Benjamin S. Butcher transitioned from Chief Executive Officer to Executive Chairman of the Board. As Executive Chairman, Mr. Butcher will manage the business of the Board, regularly consult with Mr. Crooker on key corporate matters and serve as a liaison between the Board and the management team.

The Company further announced that effective July 1st the Board promoted Michael C. Chase to Executive Vice President, in addition to his current role as Chief Investment Officer. Mr. Chase has served as a Senior Vice President  Acquisitions since the Company's formation and initial public offering in 2011 and has been Chief Investment Officer since 2020. From 2003 to 2011, Mr. Chase served as Managing Director for STAG Capital Partners, LLC, the predecessor business of the Company.

About STAG Industrial, Inc.

STAG Industrial, Inc. is a real estate investment trust focused on the acquisition, ownership and operation of industrial properties throughout the United States. As of March 31, 2022, the Company's portfolio consisted of 551 buildings in 40 states with approximately 110.1 million rentable square feet.

For additional information, please visit the Company's website at www.stagindustrial.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release, together with other statements and information publicly disseminated by the Company, contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. The Company intends such forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and includes this statement for purposes of complying with these safe harbor provisions. Forward-looking statements, which are based on certain assumptions and describe the Company's future plans, strategies and expectations, are generally identifiable by use of the words "believe," "will," "expect," "intend," "anticipate," "estimate," "should," "project" or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements in this release include statements about the Company's management team. You should not rely on forward-looking statements because they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that are, in some cases, beyond the Company's control and which could materially affect actual results, performances or achievements. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to, the risk factors discussed in the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021, as updated by the Company's quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Accordingly, there is no assurance that the Company's expectations will be realized. Except as otherwise required by the federal securities laws, the Company disclaims any obligation or undertaking to publicly release any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statement contained herein (or elsewhere) to reflect any change in the Company's expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.

SOURCE STAG Industrial, Inc.
FORT COLLINS, Colo., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- STOW IT, a Colorado-based start-up, has become the largest vehicle storage provider in Denver, returning over $200 million to the city. STOW IT works with locals that have extra space to connect with those who need storage for cars, boats, RVs, and other vehicle storage. They are expanding nationwide and looking to bring those with extra space passive income through vehicle storage.

Becoming a STOW IT Host

Any business or individual with extra space can become a host on STOW IT. The company features many different types of hosts with different types of spaces including:

Commercial Storage

Airport parking facilities



Storage facilities



Parking garages



Parking Lots

Individually Owned Storage

Barns



Garages



Residential land

STOW IT Host Benefits

Being a host on STOW IT is super convenient because they offer the following to make renting out your space simple:

Reservation booking

Payment processing

Guaranteed payments: you will always get paid on time, even if your renter is late on their payment

get paid on time, even if your renter is late on their payment Hands-on support from their experienced customer service team

How to Become a Host

Listing your space on STOW IT is very easy. Within ten minutes you can have your space listed on STOW IT and automatically marketed to their 15,000 plus individuals who visit their site each month. You control every aspect of renting your space out, how much you make, and what items you can store.

If you have extra space and you are looking to make passive income from it, you can sign up to become a host here.

Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE STOW IT
ATLANTA, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Aaron's Company, Inc. (NYSE: AAN; "the Company"), a leading, technology-enabled, omnichannel provider of lease-to-own and retail purchase solutions will host a conference call and webcast on Tuesday, July 26, 2022, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time to discuss its second quarter 2022 financial results scheduled for release before the market opens on that day. Chief Executive Officer, Douglas A. Lindsay, and Chief Financial Officer, C. Kelly Wall, will host the call.

The public is invited to listen to the call by dialing 1-844-200-6205 a few minutes before the scheduled start time and requesting to join the Company's call and using access code 336133. For international participants the number is 1-929-526-1599, and access code 336133. The call will also be accessible by visiting the Company's investor relations website at investor.aarons.com. The webcast will be archived for playback at that same site.

About The Aaron's Company, Inc.

Headquartered in Atlanta, The Aaron's Company, Inc. is a leading, technology-enabled, omnichannel provider of lease-to-own and retail purchase solutions of appliances, electronics, furniture, and other home goods across its brands, Aaron's and BrandsMart U.S.A. Aaron's offers a direct-to-consumer lease-to-own solution through its 1,300 company-operated and franchised stores in 47 states and Canada, as well as its e-commerce platform. BrandsMart U.S.A. is one of the leading appliance and consumer electronics retailers in the southeast United States and one of the largest appliance retailers in the country with ten retail stores in Florida and Georgia. For more information, visit investor.aarons.com.

SOURCE The Aaron's Company, Inc.
VANCOUVER, BC, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Deep-South Resources Inc. ("Deep-South" or "the Company") (TSXV: DSM) reports that at the hearing held on June 30, 2022, the court ordered the following:

Haib Minerals (Deep-South fully owned subsidiary) must file its heads of argument 15 days ( September 12, 2022 ) before the hearing;

) before the hearing; The Minister of Mines and the other respondents must file their heads of argument 10 days ( September 19, 2022 ) before the hearing;

) before the hearing; The indexed and paginated papers and the record must be filed by September 23, 2022 ;

; The hearing will be held on October 3 and 4, 2022.

The Company will provide regular updates in this regard and any other matter concerning this situation.

About Deep-South Resources Inc

Deep-South Resources is a mineral exploration and development company Deep-South growth strategy is to focus on the exploration and development of quality assets in significant mineralized trends and in proximity to infrastructure in stable countries. In using and assessing environmentally friendly technologies in the development of its copper project, Deep-South embraces the green revolution.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Information contained in this news release which are not statements of historical facts may be "forward-looking information" for the purposes of Canadian securities laws. Such forward-looking information involves risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking information. The words "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "contemplate", "plan", "intends", "continue", "budget", "estimate", "may", "will", "schedule", "understand" and similar expressions identify forward-looking information. These forward-looking statements relate to, among other things: the Minister's refusal to renew the Company's Licence, the Company's intention to contest the Minister's decision before the Courts of Namibia and the outcome of such proceedings.

Forward-looking information is necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by Deep-South, are inherently subject to significant technical, political, business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Known and unknown factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information. Factors and assumptions that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, among other things: political risks associated with the Company's operations in Namibia; the failure of the Namibian Government to comply with its continuing obligations under the Act to allow for the renewal of the Licence; the impact of changes in, or to the more aggressive enforcement of, laws, regulations and government practices; the inability of the Company and its subsidiaries to enforce their legal rights in certain circumstances. For additional risk factors, please see the Company's most recently filed Management Discussions & Analysis available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

There can be no assurances that forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as many factors and future events, both known and unknown could cause actual results, performance or achievements to vary or differ materially from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements contained herein or incorporated by reference. Accordingly, all such factors should be considered carefully when making decisions with respect to Deep-South, and prospective investors should not place undue reliance on forward looking information. Forward-looking information in this news release is made as at the date hereof. The Company assumes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking information to reflect changes in assumptions, changes in circumstances or any other events affecting such forward-looking information, except as required by applicable law.

SOURCE Deep-South Resources Inc.
The STAC, announced last November at the 2021 White House Tribal Nations Summit, was created to ensure that Tribal leaders have direct communication with Federal officials. Members of the STAC will exchange views, share information, and provide advice and recommendations regarding DOI programs, policies, and funding that affect Tribal nations. The committee will also work to improve government-to-government relations between the DOI and Tribes. The committee is composed of a primary Tribal representative from each of the 12 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Regions, as well as one alternate from each region. As the primary member of the BIA's Pacific Region, Ms. Pinto will represent more than 100 federally-recognized tribes throughout California.

Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, states, "Tribal members who are joining the first-ever Secretary's Tribal Advisory Committee will be integral to ensuring Tribal leaders can engage at the highest levels of the Department on issues that matter most to their people. I look forward to continued engagement and ensuring that the Department honors and strengthens our nation-to-nation relationships with Tribes."

Chairwoman Pinto states, "I'm very honored to be chosen to serve as a guiding voice on the STAC. Representing my people on this scale and helping to shape policies that affect all Tribes across the US will truly be one of the highlights of my life. I thank Secretary Haaland for appointing me to serve on the STAC."

About Chairwoman Pinto

Chairwoman Pinto has been involved with the JIV Tribal Council since 1997. In 2015, she was the first woman elected Chairwoman of the JIV, and has led the Tribe to make significant economic progress on its path to self-reliance. Under Ms. Pinto's leadership on the Tribal Council, the JIV oversaw the groundbreaking of a world-class gaming facility on its reservation in February 2014. In October 2016, Jamul Casino opened, creating nearly 1,000 permanent jobs. She continues working to expand the Tribe's land base and increase economic opportunities for members of the JIV. She is also co-founder of the Acorns to Oaks Tribal program, which organizes activities designed to help prevent drug and alcohol abuse and teen pregnancy, and promote education.

Ms. Pinto serves on the board of the Southern California Tribal Chairman's Association and as Chair of the Board of Directors for the Southern Indian Health Council. She also Chairs the Health & Safety Task Force for the Tribal Government, Casino and Gaming Commission, which was created at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020. She is a Transportation Committee Advisory Board Member and co-chair of the Interagency Technical Working Group on Tribal Transportation Issues with the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) as well as Advisory Board Member for the Native American Advisory Committee (NAAC). She also serves on the San Diego International Film Festival Native American Advisory Board.

About Jamul Casino

Opened in 2016, the Jamul Casino is located in Jamul, California, San Diego County, and is owned and operated by Jamul Indian Village Development Corporation (JIVDC), a wholly owned enterprise of the Tribe. The $430 million, award-winning casino features nearly 1,700 slot machines, 46 live table games, a dedicated poker room, and various restaurants, bars and lounges. Jamul Casino supports more than 1,000 permanent jobs in the region and is the closest casino to downtown San Diego, which is the eighth-largest city in the United States by population. For more information about Jamul Casino, please visit www.jamulcasinosd.com.

Media Contact: Beth Binger

BCIpr

619-987-6658

[email protected]

SOURCE The Jamul Indian Village of California
DUBLIN, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Enterprise Quantum Computing Market (2022-2027) by Component, Technology, Deployment, Application, 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 Enterprise Quantum Computing Market is estimated to be USD 2.74 Bn in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 11.45 Bn by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 33.1%.

Market dynamics are forces that impact the prices and behaviors of the Global Enterprise Quantum Computing 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 1QB Information Technologies, Amazon Web Services, Anyon Systems, Atom Computing, Cambridge Quantum Computing, ColdQuanta, D-Wave Systems, Google, Honeywell, Intel, IBM, IonQ, ISARA, Microsoft, Nvidia, QC Ware, Rigetti, River Lane Research, Silicon Quantum Computing, Xanadu Quantum Technologies, Zapata Computing, 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 Enterprise Quantum Computing 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 Enterprise Quantum Computing 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 Enterprise Quantum Computing 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 Demand for Faster Secure Data Transfer, Data Operations, and Communications

4.1.2 Increase in Investments in Quantum Computing Technology

4.2 Restraints

4.2.1 Stability and Error Correction Issues

4.2.2 Highly Investment Intensive Process

4.3 Opportunities

4.3.1 Technological Advancements in Quantum Computing

4.3.2 Surge in Number of Strategic Partnerships and Collaborations to Carry Out Advancements in Quantum Computing Technology

4.4 Challenges

4.4.1 Lack of Skilled Professionals



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 Enterprise Quantum Computing Market, By Component

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Software

6.3 Hardware

6.3.1 Quantum Processing Units (QPU)

6.3.2 Dilution Refrigerator

6.3.3 I/O subsystem

6.4 Service

6.4.1 Consulting Services

6.4.2 Quantum Computing as a Service (QCaaS)

6.4.3 Training & Education

6.4.4 Support & Maintenance

6.4.5 Others



7 Global Enterprise Quantum Computing Market, By Technology

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Quantum Annealing

7.3 Superconducting Qubits

7.4 Topological and Photonic

7.5 Trapped Ions

7.6 Quantum Dot



8 Global Enterprise Quantum Computing Market, By Deployment

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Cloud-Based

8.3 On Premise



9 Global Enterprise Quantum Computing Market, By Application

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Machine Learning/Deep Learning/AI

9.3 Optimization

9.4 Simulation & Data Modeling

9.5 Quantum Chemistry

9.6 Quantum Finance



10 Global Enterprise Quantum Computing Market, By End-User

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Banking & Finance

10.3 Chemicals

10.4 Energy & Power

10.5 Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals

10.6 Space & Defense

10.7 Academia

10.8 Government

10.9 Transportation And Logistics



11 Americas' Enterprise Quantum Computing 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 Enterprise Quantum Computing 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 Enterprise Quantum Computing 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 Enterprise Quantum Computing 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 1QB Information Technologies

16.2 Amazon Web Services

16.3 Anyon Systems

16.4 Atom Computing

16.5 Cambridge Quantum Computing

16.6 ColdQuanta

16.7 D-Wave Systems

16.8 Google

16.9 Honeywell

16.10 Intel

16.11 IBM

16.12 IonQ

16.13 ISARA

16.14 Microsoft

16.15 Nvidia

16.16 QC Ware

16.17 Rigetti

16.18 River Lane Research

16.19 Silicon Quantum Computing

16.20 Xanadu Quantum Technologies

16.21 Zapata Computing



17 Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/pkpkds

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/539438/Research_and_Markets_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Research and Markets
SAN FRANCISCO, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Thriversity shares the best ways to combat the massive layoffs that are making the news and LinkedIn feeds daily! Seven months into 2022 and Crunchbase has reported that already "more than 22,000 workers in the U.S. tech sector have been laid off in mass job cuts so far in 2022."

"These are dynamic, and quickly evolving times for employment, and employees can often feel like they are taking the brunt of it," says Brianna Rooney, CEO and Founder of Thriversity.

Chances are many people have or will be impacted by a layoff, whether it happens directly to them or someone they know. Thriversity challenges people, when faced with the uncertainty of sudden unemployment, to reframe this as an opportunity to change their path.

Rest and Recharge

The pressure to get back to work mounts very quickly, after all, bills don't pay themselves. To be the best representation of themselves, they must take time to recharge. A layoff is a traumatic experience and taking care of their needs is imperative to refocus, regroup, and start the search.

Prioritize Your Wants and Needs

Sometimes a layoff is a blessing. Many people often tolerate things in their careers that don't serve them, and don't represent their true selves, or their goals.

Before people start their search, they should take a deep look at their previous role, outline what they like and don't like, and then take it a step further and outline what they are looking for in their next role.

What drives people?

What do these people want to do daily?

What type of companies interest them?

What are their non-negotiables?

Time to tackle a job search!

Polish Up a Resume

A resume is the first opportunity to grab the attention of recruiters and hiring managers alike. Make it straight to the point, and have it pop so it stands out in the crowd.

Prepare for Interviews

A good resume cracks the door open for a new role, and now, it's time to get ready to answer the most challenging questions with ease to help cultivate winning answers.

Recruiters, you may be thinking, "I do interviews all day, every day." How often do these interviews involve talking about them and why they would be a great? It is easy for people to have blind spots when it comes to themselves. Don't take the chance, be prepared!

Contact:

Brianna Rooney

818-564-5431

[email protected]

SOURCE Thriversity
Funded by the Engelstad Foundation, the program offers law enforcement medical training and equipment to save lives before emergency medical personnel are allowed onto scene

LAS VEGAS, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Touro University Nevada, home to Nevada's largest medical school, announces the Las Vegas Crisis Response Medical Training Program with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD). The program offers comprehensive medical training and curriculum for Metro officers to help save lives in emergency crime situations in Las Vegas.

Made possible by a $1 million dollar grant from the Engelstad Foundation, the program provides one-of-a-kind, simulated reality medical training for officers, teaching them to stop life-threatening bleeds often associated with accidents, lacerations, firearm wounds, and other incidents where law enforcement is first on the scene. The medical training program also provides local first responders with Individual First Aid Kits (IFAKs), comprehensive medical kits needed to perform life-saving measures in the field.

"This collaboration allows our officers to enhance their abilities to apply critical care during any situation," said Christopher Darcy, Undersheriff, LVMPD. "The training and the Individual First Aid Kits that come with it have transformed the way our officers are taught to respond to a situation where medical care is required. Officers practice using the first aid kits on simulated human-casualty mannequins, which provide a hyper-realistic experience meant to induce stress. This means that in a real-world scenario, officers will be better prepared to render first aid to critically wounded subjects until medical personnel can arrive on scene."

"Partnering with Metro is a perfect example of how a collaboration between a medical school and a law enforcement agency can help save lives," said Shelley Berkley, Senior Vice President, Touro University. "In the past, officers were not provided with this type of life-saving training. Thanks to the Engelstad Foundation, Touro University Nevada and Metro are working together to ensure that our first responders can provide life-saving care when they arrive on scene. We believe this program may be one of the first-of-its-kind in the nation, and we hope that it serves as a model to other municipalities as we work together to make our communities safer."

More than 1,200 Metro officers have already completed the training program, with 700 more officers expected to complete the training by September.

"Just as we strongly believe in the importance of hands-on training for our medical students through lab coursework and residency programs, we believe that law enforcement should receive hands-on medical training that allows them to provide on-the-spot critical care," said Dr. Andrew Priest, Campus President and Provost of Touro University Nevada. "This partnership supports Touro University Nevada's mission of providing quality healthcare and education programs in concert with the Judaic commitment to social justice, intellectual pursuit and service to humanity. And while our hope is to never come across a situation that requires such training, we want our community's first responders to be equipped and ready to save as many lives as possible."

The first phase of the program includes training for all Metro commands, encompassing nearly 3,000 officers. The training program is administered at the new Joint Emergency Training Institute (JETI), a high-tech, reality-based training center for law enforcement in east Las Vegas.

The JETI is the permanent home to LVMPD's Multi-Assault, Counter Terrorism Action Capabilities team (MACTAC). Through this program, Touro aims to provide training to all existing and incoming law enforcement personnel in the Valley, with training made available for additional agencies as well. The university is seeking additional private funds to expand the medical training program.

"This program means a lot to our officers, especially given the recent tragedies our country and our world have endured, including the October 1, 2017 incident in Las Vegas - an event that served in large part as the genesis for our new world-class training center," said Capt. Reggie Rader of Metro's Organizational Development Bureau. "Our officers are expanding their skills and knowledge in stopping bleeds from critical wounds, triage care, emergency care, and hospital transfers, to name a few. These skills can be the difference-maker in reducing deaths and improving outcomes both during daily medical emergencies where officers are first to the scene as well as situations involving violent crime."

ABOUT TOURO UNIVERSITY NEVADA

Touro University Nevada (Touro) is Nevada's largest school of medicine and largest school of physician assistant studies, fully accredited, and a private, non-profit, Jewish-sponsored institution. Opened in 2004, Touro was established to help address critical needs in health care and education and as a resource for community service throughout the state. Its mission is to provide quality education programs in the fields of healthcare and education in concert with the Judaic commitment to social justice, intellectual pursuit, and service to humanity. Touro is home to more than 1,500 students in a wide variety of degree programs including osteopathic medicine, physician assistant studies, education, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and medical health sciences. The University's Henderson campus includes a multi-specialty health center for the public that accepts all health insurance and the multi-disciplinary Sharon Sigesmund Pierce and Stephen Pierce Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities. For more information on Touro, visit www.tun.touro.edu or call 702-777-8687.

ABOUT LVMPD

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is the largest police agency in the state of Nevada serving approximately 1.7 million residents and 32-million visitors a year. The agency employs 4,700 police employees and 1,300 detention employees. LVMPD is committed to our mission to protect the community through prevention, partnership and professional service. That commitment and dedication extends to the millions of visitors that Las Vegas plays host to each year.

SOURCE Touro University Nevada
NEW YORK and PARIS, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- TransPerfect , the world's largest provider of language and technology solutions for global business, today announced that it was chosen by Star Invest Films for dubbing and subtitling services to enable the release of its film, Son of the South in France as Un fils du Sud. Work was completed by TransPerfect's AGM Factory division, which is part of the MediaNEXT suite of media globalization solutions.

Son of the South is a film based on an autobiographical account of a man who grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, during the Civil Rights Movement.

TransPerfect and Star Invest Films, a French film distribution company, partnered over the past three years to bring multiple localized films to new markets, such as:

Un fils du Sud , 2022 ( Son of the South )

, 2022 ( ) Wild Men, 2021 ( Vilmnd )

2021 ( ) D'Artagnan et les Trois Mousquetaires , 2021 ( Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds )

, 2021 ( ) Mission Paradis, 2019 ( Come as You Are )

2019 ( ) Relic, 2020

"Star Invest Films is proud of the dubbing, subtitling, and other work we've done with TransPerfect and the AGM Factory team. This collaboration has created fantastic content and a partnership with TransPerfect across Son of the South and other projects," said Gregory Ouaniche, General Manager at Star Invest Films France.

TransPerfect's AGM Factory team, operated by General Manager Yann Legay, is a French provider of image and audio services for content distributors, broadcasters, and film studios. AGM's portfolio includes acclaimed clients and feature films that the company has helped localize, many of which have gone on to premiere at renowned film festivals and receive prestigious awards.

In joining the TransPerfect family of companies in 2019 as part of the MediaNEXT division, AGM supplemented its traditional dubbing and subtitling operations with a full AI-powered suite of cloud-based tools that automate and simplify workflows for adapting media for audiences worldwide. This includes subtitling, voiceover, and dubbing solutions that utilize machine learning and offer remote production capabilities.

TransPerfect President and CEO Phil Shawe stated, "We are proud of our long-standing partnership with Star Invest Films to help them bring new productions, such as the award-winning Son of the South, to new audiences."

About AGM Factory

AGM is a global post-production and sound recording company with studios in Paris and Rennes, France. Today, it provides a comprehensive range of post-production services for the film industry. The company's expertise lies in rush management, image editing, sound editing, foleys, sound mixing, post-sync/ADR, dubbing, subtitling, audio description, EMS (subtitling for deaf and hard of hearing), DCP, and manufacture and quality check of deliverables.

To find out more about AGM Factory and the services they offer, visit: www.agmfactory.com

About MediaNEXT

MediaNEXT is TransPerfect's specialized media division that offers a wide variety of media globalization solutions for international storytelling.

MediaNEXT's hybrid model for media localization leverages a cloud-based technology platform and a worldwide network of production centers, recording studios, and mixing rooms. MediaNEXT's unique media solutions are supported by state-of-the-art technology and deliver top-quality translation, subtitling, voiceover, dubbing, and accessibility services to many of the world's most renowned brands.

To find out more, visit: www.transperfect.com/medianext.

About TransPerfect

TransPerfect is the world's largest provider of language and technology solutions for global business. From offices in over 100 cities on six continents, TransPerfect offers a full range of services in 200+ languages to clients worldwide. More than 6,000 global organizations employ TransPerfect's GlobalLink technology to simplify management of multilingual content. With an unparalleled commitment to quality and client service, TransPerfect is fully ISO 9001 and ISO 17100 certified. TransPerfect has global headquarters in New York, with regional headquarters in London and Hong Kong. For more information, please visit our website at www.transperfect.com.

SOURCE TransPerfect
Six startup teams were selected by Taiwan government's Department of Industrial Technology (DoIT) of the Ministry of Economic Affairs via a program, TREE, to represent the emerging technology of the country at the SelectUSA Investment Summit "Taiwan Deep Tech". Among the startups, two received recognition by SelectUSA: Robotic company Mechavision , which builds a layer of fast-responsive tactile skin to industrial robots to ensure that the safety requirements of human-robot collaboration are met, is one of the global top 10 tech startups. Biomedical company BELX , which develops plant-based drugs for the treatment of solid tumors, viral infectious diseases and aging-related chronic diseases, is selected into the Global Women in Tech Mentorship Network Project (SGWIT).

"Taiwan government is very supportive of tech innovation, especially those deep tech startups from research institutions," said Dr. Chyou-Huey Chiou, Director General of the DoIT. He referenced that Taiwan was ranked on the top of the Innovation Capability category in the World Economic Forum (WEF) global competitiveness assessment. He also mentioned that the U.S. provides great growing opportunities for startups. "That's why we are bringing startups to attend SelectUSA and visit Silicon Valley's startups."

After the summit, those startups were invited by the U.S. government (American Institute in Taiwan and San Francisco City) to visit the Bay Area to exchange ideas with local innovative startups. U.S. startup founders were impressed by technical capabilities of Taiwan startups: Atayalan Technology offers enterprises with optimized 5G private network management software technology. Adirtek provides a big data analytic Internet of Things technology to ensure quality products for semiconductor manufacturers. ELECLEAN applies electro-chemical technology to transform water into reactive oxygen species by using nano-catalysts and won World Health Organization certification with its patented, chemical-free self-cleaning technology.

Those six startups also visited Bay Area investors, including Tim Draper and Chih-Kai Cheng, Chair of B Current Impact Investment. Draper used the example that he invests in one of the six startups, Taiwan Cybersecurity Foundry , to illustrate that he invests in companies that are ahead of the industry. Taiwan Cybersecurity Foundry provides information security monitoring services for companies in the supply chain, medical, e-commerce and high-tech manufacturing sectors. Cheng said that B Current invests in sustainability startups, and he is excited to see those amazing Taiwan and U.S. startups that are bringing a positive impact to the environment.

Startups will conclude the trip this coming week but interested VC, research institutions and corporations can contact the TREE program to partner with those startups. Contact: Erica Lin at [email protected]

About TREE Program

The innovative Taiwan Research-Institute Entrepreneur Ecosystem Program (TREE) was launched by the Taiwan government's Department of Industrial Technology of the Ministry of Economic Affairs in 2021. It forges an ecosystem that assists research institutions in building enthusiasm and skills for setting up new spin-off companies through systematic and customized consultations. TREE helps startups during the commercialization processes with innovative thinking to accelerate their growth.

SOURCE TREE
After the market closes on Monday, August 1, Univar Solutions plans to issue its second quarter news release. At the same time, the Company will post a slide presentation in the investor relations section of its website at https://investors.univarsolutions.com . Following the release, at 9:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday, August 2, the Company will host a webcast with investors to discuss the second quarter results. The webcast will be accessible through the investor relations section on the Univar Solutions' website.

Following the event, an archived version of the webcast and supporting materials will be available on the Univar Solutions' website at https://investors.univarsolutions.com.

About Univar Solutions

Univar Solutions (NYSE: UNVR) is a leading global commodity and specialty chemical and ingredient distributor representing a premier portfolio from the world's leading producers. With the industry's largest private transportation fleet and technical sales force, unparalleled logistics know-how, deep market and regulatory knowledge, formulation and recipe development, and leading digital tools, the Company is well-positioned to offer tailored solutions and value-added services to a wide range of markets, industries, and applications. While fulfilling its purpose to help keep communities healthy, fed, clean and safe, Univar Solutions is committed to helping customers and suppliers innovate and focus on Growing Together. Learn more at univarsolutions.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes certain statements relating to future events and our intentions, beliefs, expectations, and predictions for the future, which are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which may be beyond the Company's control. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations and assumptions. A detailed discussion of these factors and uncertainties is contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Potential factors that could affect such forward-looking statements include, among others: the ultimate geographic spread of the COVID-19 pandemic; the duration and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic; actions that may be taken by governmental authorities to address or otherwise mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; the potential negative impacts of COVID-19 on the global economy and our customers and suppliers; the overall impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business, results of operations and financial condition; other fluctuations in general economic conditions, particularly in industrial production and the demands of our customers; significant changes in the business strategies of producers or in the operations of our customers; increased competitive pressures, including as a result of competitor consolidation; significant changes in the pricing, demand and availability of chemicals; our levels of indebtedness, the restrictions imposed by our debt instruments, and our ability to obtain additional financing when needed; the broad spectrum of laws and regulations that we are subject to, including extensive environmental, health and safety laws and regulations; an inability to integrate the business and systems of companies we acquire, including of Nexeo Solutions, Inc., or to realize the anticipated benefits of such acquisitions; potential business disruptions and security breaches, including cybersecurity incidents; an inability to generate sufficient working capital; increases in transportation and fuel costs and changes in our relationship with third party providers; accidents, safety failures, environmental damage, product quality and liability issues and recalls; major or systemic delivery failures involving our distribution network or the products we carry; operational risks for which we may not be adequately insured; ongoing litigation and other legal and regulatory risks; challenges associated with international operations; exposure to interest rate and currency fluctuations; potential impairment of goodwill; liabilities associated with acquisitions, ventures and strategic investments; negative developments affecting our pension plans and multi-employer pensions; labor disruptions associated with the unionized portion of our workforce; and the other factors described in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We caution you that the forward-looking information presented in this press release is not a guarantee of future events or results, and that actual events or results may differ materially from those made in or suggested by the forward-looking information contained in this press release. In addition, forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "plan," "seek, "will," "expect," "intend," "estimate," "anticipate," "believe" or "continue" or the negative thereof or variations thereon or similar terminology. Any forward-looking information presented herein is made only as of the date of this press release, and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information to reflect changes in assumptions, the occurrence of unanticipated events, or otherwise, except as required by law.

SOURCE Univar Solutions Inc.
The online certificates will focus on the business of cannabis, its medical properties, the legal landscape of the industry, and agricultural opportunities in the emerging industry.

WEST HAVEN, Conn., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The University of New Haven announced today that it is collaborating with Green Flower , a California-based cannabis education company, to launch several new online certificate programs that focus on opportunities in the cannabis industry. The University of New Haven is the first college or university in Connecticut to collaborate with Green Flower, which has developed relationships with schools across the country.

The four certificate programs will cover business, healthcare and medicine, law and policy, and agriculture and horticulture. The certificates are open to anyone, regardless of their skill sets, and are ideal for entrepreneurs, healthcare providers, legal professionals, and growers who want to learn more about opportunities in the emerging field of cannabis.

Currently, 27 states, including Connecticut, have decriminalized possession of marijuana. Connecticut is projected to reach $130 million in legal cannabis sales by the end of the year and $160 million by 2025, with more than 3,000 jobs expected to be created to meet demand. Nationwide, jobs in cannabis are projected to grow by 250 percent by 2028, far outpacing the growth in any other industry.

"This is a unique opportunity for the university to collaborate with an industry leader in the cannabis education industry to offer in-demand certificate programs that enable individuals from a variety of fields and interests to develop specialized knowledge and skills in some of the most important areas of the cannabis industry," said Danielle Wozniak, MSW, Ph.D., provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of New Haven. "Trained professionals are needed to fill the jobs that are being created now and that will be created in the future. Students will receive cutting-edge preparation in these certificate programs to prepare them to excel in this emerging and highly competitive growth market while applying ethical business practices and quality standards to the Connecticut cannabis industry."

Each certificate program consists of three eight-week courses. Students receive online instruction in their chosen topic area from expert faculty members vetted and selected by Green Flower. The education programs are developed by board-certified doctors and lawyers along with experts in engineering and agriculture.



Each of the four cannabis certificate programs start on September 5. The cost is $2,950 per program. Enrollment is now open.



Students who sign up for multiple cannabis certificate programs will save 33 percent on each additional program. Each certificate program begins with the "Cannabis 101" course.



Upon completion of a cannabis certificate program, students will receive a digital badge issued by the University of New Haven and the Green Flower Institute. Students will also have access to a robust employer network. For more information, visit cannabiseducation.newhaven.edu .

About the University of New Haven

The University of New Haven is a private, co-educational university that was founded on the Yale campus in 1920.

Over the past 18 years, under the leadership of Chancellor and CEO Steven H. Kaplan, Ph.D., the university has experienced significant growth  both in enrollment and in the expansion of the university's West Haven campus. Enrollment has increased to 7,500 undergraduate and graduate students.

In the last decade, the university has completed more than $300 million in major capital projects while launching more than two dozen new academic programs. The University of New Haven also has campuses in Tuscany, Italy, and Orange, Conn.

For more information about the University of New Haven, visit www.newhaven.edu .

About Green Flower

Founded in 2014, Green Flower is the industry leader in cannabis education, empowering thousands of consumers, regulators, and professionals with the knowledge they need to succeed in the emerging cannabis industry today. Green Flower's content and technology platform powers the cannabis programs of top universities and colleges across the country, provides customized learning and compliance solutions for cannabis businesses of all sizes, and equips individuals with the skills and credentials necessary to make an impact in the modern cannabis industry.

University of New Haven Contact:

Carolyn Meyer

203-932-7416

[email protected]



SOURCE Green Flower
Price College of Business Creates Online Programs for Rapidly Growing Professions

NORMAN, Okla., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- In response to the rapidly growing demand for supply chain management and business analytics professionals, the Michael F. Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma recently launched two new online master's degree programs to prepare business leaders for these lucrative, in-demand fields.

The Master of Science in Business Analytics and Master of Science in Supply Chain Management programs provide students with both the technical knowledge and business acumen necessary to accelerate their careers in these growing professions. Taught by experienced industry leaders and world-class Price College faculty with deep expertise in supply chain management and data science, each program is offered 100% online and can be completed in as few as 16 months.

"At Price College, any new program we offer must address a significant need within the state and far beyond for highly skilled talent," said Corey Phelps, dean of the Price College of Business. "Over the next 10 years, we expect to see 25% to 30% growth in employment opportunities within both supply chain management and business analytics, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Graduates of these new programs are sure to be in high demand at attractive salaries in a variety of industries."

In the master's in supply chain management program, students gain specialized knowledge of the profession while learning such key leadership skills as problem-solving, strategic and system-level thinking, ethics and sustainability. The program is built on a well-rounded business foundation from Price College's accounting, finance and MBA programs.

The master's in business analytics program focuses on the application of statistical modeling, data warehousing and mining, programming, forecasting, and operations research techniques to analyze business performance. The curriculum focuses on utilizing cutting-edge tools and techniques, including R, Python, SQL, Tableau, Excel and SPSS, to make data-driven business decisions within a variety of industries.

Enrollment is currently open for the fall 2022 semester.

"OU and Price College are answering the call for educating our workforce to be ready for the future," Phelps said. "Our nationally ranked online master's programs are delivered live in highly engaging, interactive and impactful classes rather than pre-recorded sessions, and meet students where they are, allowing them to complete their degree quickly. Adding these new fields of study is just one way we are continuing to ensure the enduring global competitiveness of Oklahoma and the nation."

For more information on Price College's online programs, or to enroll, visit price.ou.edu.

About the Michael F. Price College of Business

The University of Oklahoma Michael F. Price College of Business has experienced significant growth over the past five years, becoming OU's second-largest college with over 5,000 students. The college offers highly ranked undergraduate, master's, executive and doctoral programs across six academic divisions. More information is available at price.ou.edu.

SOURCE The University of Oklahoma Price College of Business
Mr. Infuso joins Valour's asset management team with immediate effect, taking the lead on the global sales of exchange-traded products (ETPs) as Chief Sales Officer.

TORONTO, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Valour Inc. (the "Company" or "Valour") (NEO: DEFI) (GR: RMJR) (OTCQB: DEFTF), a technology company bridging the gap between traditional capital markets and decentralised finance, announced today that it has appointed Marco Infuso to the role of Chief Sales Officer ("CSO"). With his international experience in the field of digital assets and ETFs, he will drive sales throughout Europe, as well as win new customer groups globally.

Mr. Infuso, a business administration graduate, has held various management positions in asset management over the last 21 years, including in roles at DZ BANK, Pioneer Investments, Lombard Odier, and Commerzbank . Most recently, he made headlines as Managing Director at crypto ETP issuer 21Shares AG with the launch of crypto savings plans in Germany.

In addition to his studies in business administration, Mr. Infuso deepened his knowledge on blockchain and cryptocurrency by gaining the Certified Crypto Financial Expert (CCFE), the leading Swiss crypto & blockchain title for the financial industry.

Valour drew attention in January this year with an investment in SEBA Bank's Series C raise along with a preferred partnership agreement with SEBA Bank, a leading, globally active private Swiss crypto bank, which holds a FINMA license.

"Digital assets are indispensable in today's modern portfolio approach; if they are then also distributed by a regulated provider and finally resemble "normal" ETFs in terms of price, then we are finally talking about the democratization of cryptos for everyone," Mr. Infuso commented as motivations for the move.

"With the SEBA VALOUR Metaverse Index (ISIN DE000SL0F989) we have recently shown how close we are to the pulse of the crypto era while always keeping the customer in focus," said Tommy Fransson CEO of Valour Asset Management. "We are extremely pleased to have convinced Mr. Infuso of our innovative strength and of the economies of scale through our strategic partnership with SEBA Bank - welcome on board."

Valour offers fully hedged digital asset ETPs with low to zero management fees, with product listings across four European exchanges. Valour's existing product range includes Valour Uniswap ( UNI ), Cardano ( ADA ), Polkadot ( DOT ), Solana ( SOL ), Avalanche ( AVAX ), Cosmos ( ATOM ) and Enjin ( ENJ ) ETPs, as well as Valour's flagship Bitcoin Zero and Valour Ethereum Zero products, the first fully hedged, passive investment product with Bitcoin ( BTC ) and Ethereum ( ETH ) as underlyings which are completely fee-free, with competitors charging up to 2.5% in management fees.

The Company also announces that Ms. Diana Biggs has elected to step down from her role as Chief Strategy Officer to pursue other opportunities. Management and the board of directors of the Company would like to thank Ms. Biggs for her services and continued support of the Company and wish her all the best in her new endeavours.

Learn more about Valour at https://valour.com/

About Valour

Valour Inc. is a technology company bridging the gap between traditional capital markets and decentralized finance. Our mission is to expand investor access to industry-leading decentralized technologies which we believe lie at the heart of the future of finance. On behalf of our shareholders and investors, we identify opportunities and areas of innovation and build and invest in new technologies and ventures in order to provide trusted, diversified exposure across the decentralized finance ecosystem. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit https://valour.com

Cautionary note regarding forward-looking information:

This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to the regulatory environment with respect to the growth and adoption of decentralized finance; the pursuit by Valour and its subsidiaries of business opportunities; and the merits or potential returns of any such opportunities. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company, as the case may be, to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Such risks, uncertainties and other factors include, but is not limited the acceptance of Valour ETPs by exchanges; growth and development of DeFi and cryptocurrency sector; rules and regulations with respect to DeFi and cryptocurrency; general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

SOURCE Valour, Inc.
HOUSTON , July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Comerica Bank has announced Vickie Cohn will lead its Central and South Texas retail team, replacing Theresa Bazan, who recently was promoted to National Sales Enablement Director for Consumer and Small Business Banking.

In this senior vice president role, Cohn will be responsible for the development and effective leadership of the Austin, Kerrville, Houston and San Antonio markets' retail banking center network.

"Vickie brings an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience to the Regional Director role," Rhonda Davenport, National Retail Banking Director, said. "She is a well-respected leader who continuously focuses on building a cohesive team and inspires colleagues to focus on customer experience and community involvement."

Cohn, who has more than 25 years of retail banking experience, joined Comerica in 2009 and most recently managed the Houston North District. Throughout her career, Cohn has held various leadership roles in retail banking, including as a multi-state training manager. In addition to her day-to-day responsibilities, Cohn is communications chair for Comerica's South Texas Women Forum, an employee resource network group committed to recruiting, developing, supporting and retaining female employees at the bank.

"Through investing in employee development, she has a strong track record for delivering growth," Davenport said. "We are happy to reward her hard work and dedication with increased responsibilities."

An active community volunteer and Junior League of The Woodlands member, also serves on the Credit Coalition Committee, an organization that empowers consumers through financial and homebuyer counseling and education to make informed, reasonable and responsible decisions regarding their financial and housing goals.

Cohn earned a bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the University of Texas at Austin.

Comerica Bank is a subsidiary of Comerica Incorporated (NYSE: CMA), a financial services company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and strategically aligned by three business segments: The Commercial Bank, The Retail Bank, and Wealth Management. Comerica focuses on relationships, and helping people and businesses be successful. In addition to Texas, Comerica Bank locations can be found in Arizona, California, Florida and Michigan, with select businesses operating in several other states, as well as in Canada and Mexico. Comerica reported total assets of $89.2 billion as of March 31, 2022.

SOURCE Comerica Incorporated
NEW YORK, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Klein Law Firm announces that a class action complaint has been filed on behalf of shareholders of Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) alleging that the Company violated federal securities laws.

This lawsuit is on behalf of persons and entities that purchased or otherwise acquired Wells Fargo common stock between February 24, 2021 and June 9, 2022.

Lead Plaintiff Deadline: August 29, 2022

No obligation or cost to you.

Learn more about your recoverable losses in WFC:

https://www.kleinstocklaw.com/pslra-1/wells-fargo-wfc-lawsuit-loss-submission-form?id=29477&from=4

Wells Fargo & Company NEWS - WFC NEWS

CLASS ACTION CASE DETAILS: The filed complaint alleges that Wells Fargo & Company made materially false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Wells Fargo had misrepresented its commitment to diversity in the Company's workplace; (ii) Wells Fargo conducted fake job interviews in order to meet its Diverse Search Requirement; (iii) the foregoing conduct subjected Wells Fargo to an increased risk of regulatory and/or governmental scrutiny and enforcement action, including criminal charges; (iv) all of the foregoing, once revealed, was likely to negatively impact Wells Fargo's reputation; and (v) as a result, the Company's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

WHAT THIS MEANS TO YOU AS A SHAREHOLDER: If you have suffered a loss in Wells Fargo you have until August 29, 2022 to petition the court for lead plaintiff status. Your ability to share in any recovery doesn't require that you serve as a lead plaintiff.

NO COST TO YOU: If you purchased Wells Fargo securities during the relevant period, you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out-of-pocket fees.

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR FINANCIAL INTERESTS: For additional information about the WFC lawsuit, please contact J. Klein, Esq. by telephone at 212-616-4899 or click this link: https://www.kleinstocklaw.com/pslra-1/wells-fargo-wfc-lawsuit-loss-submission-form?id=29477&from=4.

ABOUT KLEIN LAW FIRM

J. Klein, Esq. represents investors and participates in securities litigations involving financial fraud throughout the nation. The Klein Law Firm is a boutique litigation firm with experience in a wide range of areas including securities law, corporate finance and commercial litigation. Since 2011, our experienced attorneys have achieved superior results for our clients with a personalized focus. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

CONTACT:

J. Klein, Esq.

Empire State Building

350 Fifth Avenue

59th Floor

New York, NY 10118

[email protected]

Telephone: (212) 616-4899

www.kleinstocklaw.com

SOURCE The Klein Law Firm
Wisetek aims to grow the business substantially and increase its contribution to the local community. The facility is fully operational and offers bespoke services such as remote employee services, repair, and mobile HDD shredding.

The site will service a number of client organisations throughout the USA, including multinational and nationally based businesses as well as all of Wisetek's private customers who will be able to leverage this facility.

In addition, the Northborough premises will store stock from Wisetek Market, an e-commerce business that gives consumers a channel to buy high quality refurbished equipment from a recognised vendor specialising in technology reuse, without having to pay premium prices for brand new items. Every item listed on Wisetek Market undergoes a rigorous assessment process to determine its suitability, during which the hardware is thoroughly tested. Any existing data on the device is wiped, and the equipment is refurbished as necessary before it is certified to be listed and sold on the site.

It is a key priority for Wisetek to expand its presence in the USA, in order to facilitate its growth in the American market. The company has achieved a milestone of 200 employees in the USA in FY22 and has plans for growth to 300. On a global scale, the company currently employs over 450 people worldwide.

Sean Sheehan, CEO of Wisetek said: "Wisetek is incredibly proud to announce the establishment of this new facility in Massachusetts, which will enable us to grow our presence in the region. This development speaks to the rapid growth of Wisetek and the ITAD sector as a whole, as more and more organisations are realising the importance of implementing fit for purpose processes in this area, in order to ensure security, compliance and sustainability. We look forward to growing Wisetek's business in the USA, as well as continuing to expand internally in the years to come."

"This new facility demonstrates Wisetek's continued investment to address the growing global demand for our services. Wisetek is committed to providing the most comprehensive range of services to the US market and this facility enables us to better support our partners in sustainable resource consumption through the critical reuse, refurbish, and remarketing of IT components."

Eugene McCabe, USA President, Wisetek said: "The establishment of this new facility is a significant achievement for Wisetek in the US, and speaks to the growing demand we are seeing for our services in the region. We look forward to seizing the opportunities that this new facility will afford us to expand our client base and service businesses and organisations operating in different sectors in the US."

Sustainability will be a key priority for Wisetek at its new facility, the company operates a Zero Landfill Policy across all its sites and strives to reduce the level of waste going to landfill. Wisetek has processed a significant number of electronic equipment and parts to date. The company continues to erase and destroy a large number of disk drives and have refurbished or newly manufactured enterprise rack systems.

Since it was established in 2007, Wisetek has grown exponentially and has expanded its international footprint to include facilities in the USA, Ireland, the UK, the Middle East, and Thailand. Wisetek has additional facilities in the USA, including - Austin, Texas; Winchester, Virginia; and Sacramento, California. Wisetek has experienced significant growth recently in its direct-to-consumer e-commerce business, Wisetek Market, through which it sells a range of affordable IT devices.

Issued on behalf of Wisetek by Heneghan

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1851313/Wisetek.jpg

SOURCE Wisetek
ftwilliam.com is a leading provider of software and services to retirement plan service providers, which offers modern, cloud-based employee benefits software, including retirement plan documents, government forms, compliance testing, and reporting and distribution tracking. FTW is the market leader in Form 5500 software based on DOL/5500 filings. FTW's customers include eight of the ten largest retirement plan administration firms and seven of the top ten accounting firms in the US.

ftwilliam.com's industry-leading customer support differentiates it from competitors in the market and is the major reason for FTW's high NPS (Net Promoter Score). Other key differentiators for FTW relative to its competitors are: 100% SaaS; easy-to-use and intuitive software; and full integration between modules leading to greater efficiency and profitability for retirement plan service providers. All customer support team members have professional industry credentials from retirement plan industry associations, and their proven retirement plan expertise is another reason for FTW's high customer satisfaction and retention rates.

"Our customer support team is the reason behind FTW's continued success, and we are honored they were recognized for a Globee," said Rocco Impreveduto, Vice President of Transactional, Retirement and eCommerce at Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. "As we continue scaling our expert solutions, FTW's customer support team will remain committed to providing top-notch support and expert assistance to our customers."

The American Best in Business Awards are open to all organizations with at least one or more offices in the United States of America. All organizations operating in the U.S.A.  large to small and startups, government, public and private, for-profit, and non-profit  are eligible to submit nominations to the American Best in Business Awards in a wide range of categories honoring achievement in every aspect of business + work life. More than 70 judges from a wide spectrum of industry experts participated in the judging process.

See the complete list of 2022 winners here: https://globeeawards.com/american-business-awards/winners/

About Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.

Wolters Kluwer (WKL) is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the healthcare; tax and accounting; governance, risk, and compliance; and legal and regulatory sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with specialized technology and services.

Wolters Kluwer reported 2021 annual revenues of 4.8 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,800 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands.

Wolters Kluwer shares are listed on Euronext Amsterdam (WKL) and are included in the AEX and Euronext 100 indices. Wolters Kluwer has a sponsored Level 1 American Depositary Receipt (ADR) program. The ADRs are traded on the over-the-counter market in the U.S. (WTKWY).

For more information, visit www.wolterskluwer.com , follow us on LinkedIn , Twitter , Facebook , and YouTube .

MEDIA CONTACT:

Linda Gharib

Director, Brand & Communications

Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.

Tel: +1 (646) 887-7962

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.
RALEIGH, N.C., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A superhero just landed on your brand-new Kia and totals it. Are you on the hook for damages or will your insurance company bail you out? Autombolog answers this question in the new article illustrated by revered illustrator Richard Case.

Illustration by Richard Case

The team at Automoblog interviewed Nick Vitali, Vice President of North Carolina agency All About Insurance . We asked Vitali what coverage is best if a superhero falls on and destroys your car or if a supervillain steals your car as a getaway vehicle. Vitali says that comprehensive coverage is your best bet in those situations. Comprehensive insurance covers everything from theft to accidents that you didn't cause.

The graphics in the article were created for Automoblog by Richard Case, who has contributed his artistic vision to both the Marvel and DC universes. He is perhaps best known for his seminal work with Grant Morrison on the esteemed Doom Patrol series. Case now works with Ubisoft and other game developers as an illustrator and art consultant. To learn more about Richard Case, you can check out more of his work here .

The article guides readers on what type of policies will protect their vehicles if they ever catch themselves thrown into the crossfire between good and evil.

For more information on car insurance, you can visit Automoblog here .

About Automoblog:

Automoblog is an automotive news site dedicated to providing drivers and car enthusiasts the latest information and tips in the automotive industry.

Media Contact:

Jennifer Chonillo

(919) 283-9316

[email protected]

SOURCE Automoblog
ROCKVILLE, Md., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- XML Financial Group (XML), an independent wealth and investment management firm with offices in Maryland, Virginia and Colorado, today announced it has completed its merger with Samson Wealth Management Group, a wealth management practice in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania.

The deal, which took effect on July 1, will help broaden technology and operational support systems for both firms, as well as boost client resources. It also helps XML expand its office footprint into Pennsylvania.

Mark Samson, who founded Samson Wealth Management Group in 2012, will join XML's leadership team. Both firms are part of the Focus Financial Partners family of wealth advisors.

"We're always focused on offering new resources to our clients to help them achieve their personal and financial goals," said Brett Bernstein, CEO and Co-Founder of XML. "This merger will boost our operations and advisor team so we can continue providing our valued clients across the Mid-Atlantic region with the kind of high-touch services they deserve."

XML recently launched its first-ever client wealth management app. The new native channel allows clients and prospective clients to interact with their advisors and portfolios from anywhere they have an internet connection.

Together with its affiliated broker-dealer, XML Securities, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC, XML has approximately $3 billion in client assets. The Samson team adds approximately $644 million in client assets to XML.

"We are thrilled to join forces with XML and provide our clients with expanded wealth and investment management services to help them navigate complex financial situations and achieve their dreams," said Samson, a perennial name on the Forbes Best-In-State Wealth Advisors list in Pennsylvania over the past five years. "Our team is excited to get started and forge new opportunities for our clients as part of the XML family."

About XML Financial Group

XML Financial Group ("XML") is an independent wealth and investment management firm headquartered in Rockville, Maryland. XML offers a suite of wealth and investment management services to high-net-worth individuals, businesses and families located across the country. For more information about XML, please visit www.xmlfg.com .

About Samson Wealth Management Group

Samson Wealth Management Group ("SWMG") is an independent wealth and investment management firm in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. SWMG offers financial planning services to high-net-worth individuals, businesses and families located in the Philadelphia metro area and across the country. For more information about SWMG, please visit www.samsonwmg.com.

About the Forbes Best-In-State Wealth Advisors List

The Forbes ranking of Best-In-State Wealth Advisors, developed by SHOOK Research, is based on an algorithm of qualitative criteria, gained through telephone, virtual and in-person due diligence interviews, and quantitative data. Those advisors that are considered have a minimum of seven years' experience, and the algorithm weights factors like revenue trends, assets under management, compliance records, industry experience and those that encompass best practices in their approach to working with clients. Portfolio performance is not a criterion due to varying client objectives and lack of audited data. Neither Forbes nor SHOOK receive a fee in exchange for rankings.

Media Contact:

Jay Scott

[email protected]

484-695-3774

SOURCE XML Financial Group
AstraZeneca PLC (LSE:AZN) has struck a deal to swallow up a US-based owner of potential new drug cancer medicines for an initial U$S100mln (82.6mln) and up to US$1.06bn in milestone payments.

The FTSE 100 company said it has agreed to buy TeneoTwo Inc and its main drug assets, which include TNB-486, a type of an emerging class of therapeutic antibodies known as T-cell engagers.

T-cell engagers are molecules that are engineered to redirect the immune system's T-cells to recognise and kill cancer cells.

With the acquisition, AstraZeneca aims to accelerate the development of TNB-486, which is currently being tested as a new medicine to treat B-cell haematologic malignancies, including diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and follicular lymphoma.

These would add to the Anglo-Swedish giants Calquence haematology drug and a pipeline of haematology medicines using different methods and mechanisms to treat a broad spectrum of blood cancers.

By redirecting the body's natural immune response to target B-cell malignancies, TNB-486 alone or in combination with CD20-targeted therapy could potentially deepen clinical responses and improve patient outcomes, said Anas Younes, AZs senior vice president haematology research & development.

We believe this innovative molecule, which was designed to optimise the therapeutic window of T-cell activation, will enable us to explore novel combinations that have the potential to become new standards of care in this setting."

The deal is expected to close before the end of September.
Dechra Pharmaceuticals PLC (LSE:DPH) is in demand after an analyst upgrade.

RBC Capital Markets raised its recommendation on the firm, which focuses on the veterinary market, from sector perform to outperform.

It said: "We think Dechra is a well run compound growth story, benefiting from strong market trends, resilience to recession and will remain active in M&A."

The analysts cut their target price tfrom 5300p to 4200p to reflect a decline in the whole sector.

But they added: "[Dechra's] shares have come down significantly relative to that of its other high quality peers, and we think current levels provide an attractive entry point for what we see as a defensive business with good organic growth and history of solid execution."

Dechra is up 5.94% at 3638p in a falling market.

3.08pm: Bluerock Diamonds drops by nearly a quarter after dilutive fundraising

Bluerock Diamonds PLC (AIM:BRD) has lost its sparkle after unveiling a refinancing which could see existing shareholders heavily diluted.

It has signed a 1mln loan note with Teichmann Company Limited which will later be converted to equity at 7p a share and take Teichmann's stake from 17.4% to 51%.

The company will seek a waiver from the Takeover Panel so Teichmann would not have to make a mandatory offer for Bluerock.

Mike Houston, executive chairman said, "The need for financing has arisen as a result of the excessive and extended rainy season this year which has delayed the ramp up of production and the development of our main pit leading to significantly lower production levels and lower grades than expected.

"As announced earlier, we have been exploring how to finance the financial hole left by the lower than expected revenue at a time when we are investing heavily in developing the mine.

"Having explored these options, the only source of funds available to Bluerock in the form and magnitude required was that offered by Teichmann albeit on terms that dilute existing shareholders significantly. Teichmann has demonstrated a strong ongoing commitment to the company and their closer involvement in the management of [the Kareevlei diamond mine] is expected to assist the company during this critical phase of development."

Bluerock has dropped 26.53% to 9p.

1.02pm: Nanosynth surges after directors spend 3mln on shares

Nanosynth Group PLC (AIM:NNN) has moved sharply higher after two directors spent around 30,000 buying shares today.

The nanoparticals specialist said chief executive Mark Duffin and chief financial officer Andrew Stedman bought 4,166,667 and 2,083,333 shares respectively at a price of 0.48p per share.

These are their first shareholdings in the business and represent 0.2% and 0.1% respectively of the company.

The purchases come a day after the company gave a strategic update on its plans to move out of face mask production and develop other projects, with various discussions underway about commercial partnerships.

In the market Nanosyth has jumped 58.77% to 0.57p.

12.07pm: Equals Group reports record first half

Equals Group PLC (AIM:EQLS) expects full year earnings to beat market expectations after a record breaking first half.

The fintech payments group focused on the SME marketplace said six month revenues jumped 84% to 31.3mln, with gross profits up 47% at 15mln.

Ian Strafford-Taylor, chief executive officer, said: "We are extremely pleased to see an 84% increase in our revenues in the first half with all segments performing exceptionally well. We believe that our revenues are highly 'inflation-resistant' and that this should be beneficial for the group and our shareholders in the second half of 2022 and beyond."

Its shares have added 10.83% to 87p.

11.08am: Edenville Energy energised as it appoints new chief executive and chairman

A flattering response from the market to some incoming board members at Edenville Energy PLC (AIM:EDL)

The operator of the Rukwa coal project in Tanzania said Alistair Muir and Jeff Malaihollo had stepped down with immediate effect from their roles as chief executive officer and non-executive chairman respectively.

Among a number of new appointments, Noel Lyons joins as the new chief executive while existing board member Nick von Schirnding replaces Malaihollo as chairman.

Lyons has more than 30 years experience in the oil, gas and mining sector mainly in Africa and the Middle East, and is also the founder of Clean Invest Africa plc, a company focused on acquiring stakes in clean energy related projects.

Edenville said the moves come as it looks to expand its Rukwa project to benefit from the increased demand and pricing for its coal, together with exploring other opportunities to broaden its operations.

The new board plans to spend "significant time in Tanzania" and move certain experienced personnel from other existing African coal operations, which they are associated with, to Tanzania.

Lyons said: "Given my ongoing operational experience in Africa I believe we are well positioned to optimise the proposed expansion of Rukwa, both in terms of production rates and sales."

Edenville shares have added 9.8% to 14p.

10.31am: Transense Technologies (AIM:TRT) says earnings may beat forecasts after tax credit

Transense Technologies (AIM:TRT) is in demand after an upbeat trading statement.

The developer of sensor systems said full year revenues had risen by almost 50% to 2.6mln, in line with market expectations.

Adjusted earnings are also expected to be in line with forecasts, although net earnings may be better than expected thanks to an increased tax credit arising from extending the recognition of deferred tax assets arising from prior years' losses.

The company said global economic conditions were likely to become even more challenging in the months ahead.

But it added: "The company's business model provides considerable resilience. The momentum that has built up in royalty income now generates sufficient net income to comfortably cover fixed overheads..the board is optimistic about growth prospects despite the gathering economic headwinds."

Its shares are up 8% at 67.5p.

9.27am: Resolute Mining lifted by end of sanctions on Mali

Resolute Mining Limited (ASX:RSG, LSE:RSG), which has producing gold mines in Mali and Senegal is on the rise.

Its shares are up 10.25% to 14.25p after economic and financial sanctions imposed on Mali by ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) on 9 January 2022 were lifted on 3 July 2022.

Resolute said the ECOWAS decision was made after Mali's interim government proposed a 24-month transition to democracy and published a new electoral law.

8.41am: Kitwave climbs after moving out of the red

Kitwave Group PLC (AIM:KITW) has seen its shares surge after returning to profit and predicting a significantly better than expected full year performance.

The wholesaler said business had returned to pre-pandemic levels in the first six months of the year, with particularly strong demand in the latter part of the period.

Revenues rose 51.8% to 223.3mln, while it moved from a 3.4mln loss to a 4.4mln profit.

Chief executive Paul Young said: "With the detrimental effects of COVID-19 significantly reduced, the group made great strides operationally and commercially during the period .

"Trading recovered at a quicker pace from the pandemic than we had anticipated, notably within vending, ambient and foodservice. It should be noted that this reporting period includes Christmas 2021, a period that was still overshadowed by high rates of positive COVID-19 cases and hesitancy to socialise amongst consumers.

"The outlook for the UK economy is dominated by cost-of-living issues which provide an element of uncertainty in relation to end consumer demand for the group's products

" While the board is cognisant that these issues could impact trading in future periods, given the better than expected performance in the first half and the strong start to the second, we expect to be significantly ahead of expectations for the current year."

Its shares are up 9.82% at 151p.

Up a similar amount is Quiz PLC (AIM:QUIZ).

The fashion retailer also moved out of the red, reporting a full year pretax profit of 0.8mln compared to a 9.6mln loss.

Revenues rose by 97%, helped by a 66% rise in sales through its own website.

Since the year end, it saw a 62% increase in revenues for the three months to the end of June.

It said high levels of full price sales meant an increase in gross margins to 60.3%, consistent with pre-pandemic levels.

Chief executive Tarak Ramzan said: "The group delivered a very encouraging full year 2022 performance with very strong revenue growth and a return to profitability. This outcome reflects increased demand for Quiz's product offering and was supported by the decisive actions we have taken in recent years to transform the business and successfully leverage the group's omni-channel model and infrastructure.

"We are very pleased with the strong uplift in active customers and sales growth through our own website, which is now supported by a flexible and profitable portfolio of stores and concessions.

"Despite the well-documented challenges across the retail sector, we remain encouraged by customer demand for the Quiz brand, with sales up by 62% in the year to date. Whilst there are significant levels of uncertainty impacting the consumer right now, we are confident that Quiz is well positioned to continue to deliver against its strategy and drive long-term, sustainable and profitable growth."

Its shares have added 9.76% to 11.25p.
How the SMRs might look, according to Rolls

Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC (LSE:RR.) asked Boris Johnson to approve the engineering giant's mini nuclear reactor project within the next six months or risk delaying a project essential to Downing Street's green energy initiative.

Tom Samson, chief executive of the FTSE 100 group's Small Module Reactors arm, said it will not be able to deploy its first reactor by 2029 unless ministers place an order before the end of 2022, warning a delay in the tight deadline could have severe repercussions.

Rolls-Royce SMR has received around 500mln of investment for a plan to use its nuclear submarine technology, which the Royal Navy uses to power ships.

"If we do not have an instruction to deploy our technology in the UK by the end of this year, then our ability to meet 2029 will move back accordingly," warned Samson, reported in the Telegraph.

He said the Rolls-Royce SMR is "ready to sign a contract to deliver our first unit" and once it has received instruction from the government, it will be able to "immediately begin building the factories to produce our modules" and work with nuclear authorities and others to host its technology within the UKs existing nuclear estate.

Each 470MW plant will be able to power approximately 1mln homes, a key part of the Prime Minister's plans for an energy revolution.

In March this year, the government asked the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to begin a design assessment of the companys SMR concept, after the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy concluded that the design was ready to be assessed.

The ONR's generic design assessment (GDA) process normally takes four to five years for large-scale reactor designs.

The Rolls-Royce-led consortium, of which backers include Qatars sovereign wealth fund and 210mln from the UK government, has chosen its shortlist of locations for the factory: Richmond in North Yorkshire, Ferrybridge in West Yorkshire, Sunderland, Deeside in Wales, Stallingborough in Lincolnshire, and Carlisle.

After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Johnson held talks with nuclear industry executives as the government said it was seeking to make Britain more energy independent.
DX (Group) PLC said its board will undertake further work relating to an internal investigation at the parcels and courier group that started in October 2020.

Last November, DX's Audit and Risk Committee raised a corporate governance inquiry into the internal investigation and in February this year DX announced the resignation of its auditor, Grant Thornton, which had voiced its concerns regarding the progress of the inquiry and investigation.

The initial findings of the inquiry and investigation have been reported to the board, which has resolved to undertake further work.

The board expects this further work and the recently commenced audit of the company's report and accounts for the financial period ended 3 July 2021 to be completed by 30 September 2022, DX said in a statement.

Trading in the company's shares will remain suspended on AIM. The shares were suspended in January this year pending the publication of the group's 2021 annual report and accounts.

In February 2022, the logistics company reiterated that the inquiry is a corporate governance investigation and said it was connected to a disciplinary matter. It does not relate to the financial performance or the financial position of the group, DX said.
British Airways is cancelling 650 flights over the rest of July from Heathrow and Gatwick.

The airline, which is part of International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (LSE:IAG), has informed airports that it will not be operating the flights to more than 70 destinations, affecting an estimated 105,000 passengers.

Airlines were last month offered an amnesty to hand back any take-off and landing slots they feel they will not be able to operate during the summer.

The Department for Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) earlier told the companies they needed to rejig plans for the remainder of the summer and develop a schedule that is deliverable.

Gatwick Airport last month cut the number of flights able to take off and land this summer, due to a lack of staff.

BA is also being hit by a lack of staff and could face strike action after staff voted for a walk-out.

In a statement this morning, BA said: As the entire aviation industry continues to face the most challenging period in its history, regrettably it has become necessary to make some further reductions.

Were in touch with customers to apologise and offer to rebook them or issue a full refund.

BA said making the cancellations now would make it "easier to consolidate quieter daily flights to multi-frequency destinations well in advance and to protect more of our holiday flights".

The amnesty window shuts on Friday, after which airlines could be fined for last-minute cancellations and schedule changes.

IAG shares were down 0.2% to 107.36p in early trading on Tuesday.
FTSE 100s early gains quickly evaporated with the index down 27 points at 7205. Retailers are providing some support led by Ocado and Sainsburys but miners are the main culprits.

Sainsburys is higher even though reported a fall in sales compared to last year as customers tightening spending amid the cost of living crisis. The dip was mainly driven by lower general merchandise and clothing revenues.

AstraZeneca has struck a deal to purchase TeneoTwo, a US based blood cancer drug development company, for an initial U$S100mln. The FTSE 100 company said it has agreed to buy the company and its main drug assets.

Tesla will pause production at its plants in both Shanghai and Germany for several weeks as it starts work to bolster production, according to reports. The EV manufacturer just last week reported record production numbers in June.

Older peoples superbrand Saga said it remains on track to post an underlying profit this year thanks to a strong rebound in demand for cruises and holidays. Saga expects to generate an underlying profit before tax of 35-50mln this year.

Supreme warned that revenue and underlying earnings are likely to be below last year and below market expectations due to a slowdown in lighting sales. The battery and lighting distributor, which also sells e-cigarettes, said it is slashing its dividend payout ratio from 2023 onwards.

Destiny Pharma started a new research programme to investigate the efficacy of a preventive medicine for people suffering from oral mucositis because of cancer treatment. The research into XF-73 will be conducted in the US by expert Professor Stephen Sonis.
5 July 2022

*A corporate client of Hybridan LLP

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Whats cooking in the IPO kitchen?

Immediate acquisitions (IME.L) is to re-join AIM via a Reverse Takeover of Fiinu Holdings Limited. Once complete the Company is proposing to change its name to Fiinu Group plc. Fiinu intends to be a provider of a consumer banking product, the Plugin Overdraft , which is designed to provide customers with an overdraft facility without having to change their current account or request an overdraft from their existing bank. Fiinu's technology arm manages and develops the platform, using open banking, and once the platform is fully operational will also look to develop secondary revenue streams by licensing Fiinu's intellectual property rights. Capital to be raised 8.01m. Target Mkt Cap c.53m. Due 8 July.

LifeSafe Holdings, a fire safety technology business with innovative fire safety products, intends to join AIM. LifeSafe has developed what the Directors believe to be market disrupting, eco-friendly fire safety protection products to both protect (via fire extinguishers) and detect (via carbon monoxide, smoke and heat alarms) fires. At the centre of the Group's product range is the FER1000 extinguishing fluid, which has been developed by LifeSafe to extinguish five different types of fire: electrical, paper, textiles, cooking oil, and petrol and diesel. The Group's best-selling product using this patent pending extinguishing fluid is the StaySafe 5-in-1 fire extinguisher. It was launched on Amazon Prime in the UK in August 2021 and subsequently became Amazon Prime's top selling fire extinguisher in the UK in the same month. In n the year ended 31 December 2021, the Group generated revenues of 670k and a loss post taxation of 1.5m. 3m to be raised. Anticipated Mkt Cap 16.58m. Due 6 July 2022.

MicrosSalt, a portfolio company of Tekcapital PLC (LSE:TEK) (AIM: TEK), is eyeing a listing on the London market in 2023. MicroSalt is the U.S. operating subsidiary of Salarius, Ltd. With MicroSalt, companies can make full flavour snacks with the same saltiness as traditional snacks yet with half of the sodium. MicroSalt has recently executed its first bulk B2B MicroSalt order in the US. This progress follows on the heels of the expansion of MicroSalt's SaltMe brand of low-sodium potato chips into over 3,000 retail stores nationwide in the U.S., up from 2,400 stores last quarter.

Banquet Buffet

Atalaya Mining (AIM:ATYM, TSX:AYM) 305p 426.5m

The mining and development company producing copper concentrates and silver by-product announced the results of the first 22 exploration drill holes on the Campanario Trend, one of several mineralised zones comprising Proyecto Masa Valverde (PMV) in southern Spain. The initial drilling results confirm PMV's continued exploration potential and the possibility to quickly define a shallow mineral resource. Drilling to date has focused around the historical Campanario workings, which only represents approximately 10% of the entire strike length of the mineralised structure. Intersected mineralisation includes massive and semi-massive sulphides as well as stockwork-type material, consistent with the Masa Valverde and Majadales deposits. These results demonstrate the significant exploration potential of Atalaya's strategic land package in the world-class Iberian Pyrite Belt.

CML Microsystems Plc (LSE:CML) 365p 58.1m

The mixed-signal, RF and microwave semiconductors company announces its results for the year ended 31 March 2022: revenue up by 27% to 16.96m, gross profit up by 35% to 12.80m due to improved product mix. Profit before tax was 1.74m (2021: 0.01m) after accounting for share-based payments and net finance income. Net cash totaled 25.04m (2021: 31.9m) after a 9.0m dividend to shareholders. The company is proposing to pay a dividend of 5p per ordinary share.

Cordel Group PLC (AIM:CRDL) 4.5p 7.7m

The artificial intelligence company in transport corridor analytics, announced that it has been awarded a 12-month contract to deliver its LiDAR-based solutions to One Rail Australia. Cordel has delivered to One Rail Australia a solution for ballast profile analysis to automate processing for over 2,000km of freight railway. The solution consists of a LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) captured Digital twin of the entire Tarcoola to Darwin rail network, which runs through the centre of Australia. Cordel's automated analysis measures ballast deficiency, depth and volumes, with materials estimation to replenish deficient areas.

Equals Group PLC (AIM:EQLS) 87p 157.2m

The fintech payments group focused on the SME marketplace provided a trading update for the six months ended 30 June 2022 (H1-2022). Its revenue increased by 84% to 31.3m, a record high level. Gross profits for the period have been estimated at 15.0m, up 47% on H1-2021. Gross profit margins were, in the aggregate, 48.2%, compared to 50.6% in H2-2021. Cash balance rose to 15.1m (30 June 2021: 10.1m). International payment accounted for 51% of its revenue in H1-2022.

Kitwave Group PLC (AIM:KITW) 151.3p 105.9m

The wholesaler and distributer specializing in impulse products such as confectionery announce its interim results for the six months ended 30 April 2022 (H1 2022). Revenue up 51.8% to 223.3m as trading back to pre-pandemic levels. Profit after tax was 4.4m (H1 2021: loss after tax 3.4m). Trading post period has been significantly ahead of expectations, leading the company to revise its financial expectations upwards for the year ended 31 October 2022. The Board has declared an interim dividend of 2.50p per share for the financial year ending 31 October 2022. Its growth to date has been achieved both organically and through acquisitions of smaller, predominantly family-owned, complementary businesses in the fragmented UK grocery and foodservice wholesale market.

Mast Energy Developments PLC (LSE:MAST) 2.9p 5.5m

The UK-based multi-asset owner and operator in the reserve power market announced an update with regards to its current flagship producing asset, the 9 MW Pyebridge Synchronous Gas-powered Standby Generation Facility (Pyebridge) that was acquired in August 2021. Pyebridge generated a revenue of c. 130k for the 3-month period March to May 2022, with an output of 371 MWh and at an average selling price of c. 354 per MWh. This average selling price is around 5x higher than the average at the time of the company's IPO in April 2021. Although the associated generation gas cost also increased during this time, there is a positive net variance that will add to Pyebridge's profitability.

Mortgage Advice Bureau (Holdings) PLC (AIM:MAB1) 869p 495.5m

The UK-based specialist appointed representative networks for mortgage intermediaries announced that the intended acquisition of approximately 75% of Project Finland Topco Limited (Fluent) has received change in control approval from the FCA. This acquisition was announced in March 2022 for a total cash payment of c.73m, funded from renewed and increased debt facilities, existing cash resources, and a successful share placing of 40m (before expenses). The deal is expected to occur on or around Monday 11 July 2022.

Supreme PLC (AIM:SUP) 87.5p 102.0m

The manufacturer, supplier and brand owner of fast-moving consumer products announced its results for the year ended 31 March 2022 (FY22). Revenue was 130m, up 7% supported by growth in vaping products and nutrition and welling products. The net debt was 4.0m exiting FY22 (FY21: 7.6m), alongside a new 25m facility with HSBC in March 2022 for acquisitions. For FY23, the company expects revenue and EBITDA to be lower than Y22 levels and below previous market expectations, driven by a recent marked decline in the Lighting category following a slow-down in sales compounded by customer overstocking in FY22.

Transense Technologies (AIM:TRT) 67.5p 10.8m

The developer of specialist sensor systems provided a trading update for the financial year ended 30 June 2022. Revenue for the year has increased by almost 50% to around 2.6m, in line with market expectations. Net earnings may exceed market expectations as a consequence of an increased tax credit arising from extending the recognition of deferred tax assets arising from prior years' losses. Net cash balances at 30 June 2022 amounted to 1.05m (FY21: 1.04m). The top line growth was underpinned by 75% loyalty income increase to US$2m in the iTrack, a tyre management solutions for the off-the-road (OTR) market.

Quiz PLC (AIM:QUIZ) 10.5p 13.0m

The omni-channel fashion brand announces its results for the year ended 31 March 2022 (FY22). Sales were 78m, up 97% year-over-year due to the removal of social restrictions. Operating profit was 0.9m (FY21: 9.4m loss). Operating cash inflows of 5.3m (2021: outflow of 2.5m). The company does not plan to pay dividends for the year as it hopes to strengthen its balance sheet. Its net cash was 4.4m ended in FY22 (FY21: 1.5m in net cash). The company has achieved sales of 27.3m during the first quarter of its FY23 (three months to 30 June 2022), consistent with the period prior to the pandemic on a like-for-like basis.

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The British crown is among the country's largest wind tycoons, with a portfolio of marine assets worth 5 billion that keeps on growing.

Today the crowns land manager confirmed plans to lease five slices of Celtic Sea seabed to wind farm developers, increasing the amount the Royals will reap from leases and annual deposits.

The Crown Estate, which manages land on behalf of the Royals, owns almost all of Britains seabed out to 12 nautical miles. Anyone looking to develop a wind or fish farm off the coast must apply to the estate for a seabed lease.

The crown's land manager could net billions, or more likely millions of pounds, from the latest plans to develop floating wind farms off the coast of Cornwall and Wales, according to the estate's 2021 annual report.

"We are looking to the future with our plans for floating wind in the Celtic Sea, which could ultimately attract several billion pounds of investment to Wales and the South West," the estate said.

Its modus operandi is to run competitive auctions for seabed leases, where, like housebuilders, operators buy land on which to build and wind farm developers and power producers compete to secure seabed rights.

Last year, the crown leased six slices of the UK seabed to offshore wind developers in its fourth leasing round, meanwhile introducing a new deposit for developers to pay.

The estate netted 312.7m of net profit that year, it said in its annual report, based on an uptick in visits to Windsor Castle after Covid and solid revenue from its marine portfolio.

This surge in profit is estimated to lead to a future payout to the Royals of about 78mln, based on a 25% Royal grant, half of which goes towards up-keep and half to the Queen herself.

The crowns marine portfolio is now worth about 5bn, 22% than a year earlier, according to its full-year earnings report, driven largely by offshore wind, in particular the Round 4 valuation.

The Royals boosted their net assets to 16.5bn up from 15.2 billion a year earlier.

The marine portfolio was the second most valuable below the Queen's London assets, which include a swathe of Regent Street properties, in 2021.

Our Marine business continuing to play a key role in enabling the UKs ambitious journey to net-zero, while our London and Regional portfolios face stress and uncertainty from economic headwinds, the estate said in its financial report.

Wind farms are even more profitable for the Royals following the introduction of a new option fee deposit on developers. The Crown Estate generated 879mln (Eur1bn) in option fee deposits alone for leases won in the fourth leasing round last year, averaging out at about 111mln each year per gigawatt of capacity, according to RenewableUK.

Dalia Majumder-Russell, a partner at law firm CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP, told Proactive that these additional fees are "definitely a factor" in whether we will continue to see further reductions in the price of offshore wind.

The fee is effectively a placeholder charge developers payable to reserve seabed leases until developers get planning permission, which could generate a further 444mln of annual income from the latest floating offshore projects in the Celtic Sea.

Most of the biggest wind tycoons are outside the UK, in places such as Denmark, the US and Spain.

Warren Buffet is one of the worlds largest wind profiteers, owning Berkshire Hathaway Inc (NYSE:BRK.A) and making a one-time bid for Oncor.

Turbine maker Vestas, founded by Peder Hansen, is among the top three profitable wind companies, behind NextEra Energy (NYSE:NEE) which has a US$156bn market cap and General Electric (NYSE:GE).

NextEras largest shareholders include mainly pension funds, and among them is T. Rowe Price Associates, founded by the late Thomas Rowe Price.

To invest in wind farm assets on the open market, some of the biggest investment trusts that hold stakes in wind energy include Global X Wind Energy ETF and First Trust Global Wind Energy ETF.
Alchemy Resources Ltd (ASX:ALY) has completed multiple exploration programs and made good progress at its 100%-owned Karonie gold and lithium project, east of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.

The company has ticked off several boxes as it progresses work at Karonie including:

completion of project-wide regional soil geochemical sampling along the lithium prospective 'Goldilocks trend';

completion of detailed mapping and sampling on high-priority lithium targets;

completion of 100 x 40-metre infill soil sampling on Cherry, Hickory and Pecan; and

gold exploration drilling at Gilmore, Karonie East and KZ5 completed.

Alchemy is now assessing priority target areas for potential drill programs and more infill soil sampling, while it waits for assays for 793 infill soils, 1471 regional soils, 68 rock chip and 278 RC drill samples.

Chief executive officer James Wilson said of the companys progress, We are making good progress on our accelerated lithium-gold focused exploration programs.

"The gold drilling, lithium regional soils and lithium infill soils are now complete, and we have over 2,600 samples in the lab with results pending for all batches.

"The detailed mapping has identified more pegmatite dykes and chemical zonation within the increased 7.3 x 1.5-kilometre target area at Cherry-Hickory-Pecan which remains open under cover.

"Our exploration activities have the potential for considerable opportunities for growth in the near term.

Fruitful results

Alchemy has finished its detailed mapping and rock-chip sampling at the Cherry-Hickory-Mesquite and Pecan prospects at Karonie.

The program targeted several objectives including:

Mapping additional pegmatite bodies. Identifying zonation within the pegmatites to identify the most prospective zones. Obtaining additional surface rock-chip samples. Infilling the existing soil geochemistry on a 100 x 40-metre pattern.

The mapping identified numerous additional pegmatites with the overall mapped dimensions of the zone increasing to 7.3 kilometres x 1.5 kilometres.

Further ground-truthing of the lithium anomalies has revealed additional outcropping pegmatites at Cherry and Hickory.

Numerous additional outcrops have been mapped with a combined strike extent of >1.4 kilometres.

A broad zonation has been recognised, trending from outer zones of high rubidium anomalism in proximity to the Cherry Prospect, to tantalum-rich (and lower rubidium) zones at Hickory.

In particular, the strongest zones of tantalum mineralisation (122ppm tantalum) occur at the northern end of mapped pegmatites at Hickory where these trend under cover.

Cherry-Hickory Prospect with infill soil sampling and mapped pegmatites.

Further to this, infill soil sampling and rock chip sampling programs were finished in late June 2022 over the Cherry-Hickory and Pecan prospects, with 793 soil samples and 68 rock chip samples submitted for multi-element analysis. Results are pending.

Field photographs of pegmatite outcrops at Cherry and Hickory.

Soil sampling at Karonie

Alchemy has previously completed a desktop study and generated additional lithium targets in the broader Karonie regional area.

The Karonie tenure covers more than 50 kilometres of strike extent along the contact zone of a regional granite.

These areas sit within a prospective 'Goldilocks Zone', a defined corridor in which lithium-caesium-tantalum (LCT) pegmatites exist. This zone lies outboard of the granitic terrain and within the greenstone belts and is largely untested for battery minerals and in many cases for gold.

Alchemy has designed a project-wide 400 x 400-metre spaced soil sampling program to explore for indications of potential LCT pegmatite mineralisation. The sampling involved the collection of 1,471 samples and was completed in late June 2022. Samples have been submitted to the laboratory and results are pending.

Gold exploration

Alchemy finished its RC drilling in mid-June 2022 on the Karonie East infill and KZ5 drill program with 18 RC holes drilled for 2,412 metres.

Holes in the Karonie East area are designed to test a magnetic feature which runs along the northern zone over a 2-kilometre strike length, targeting a northeast-trending structural dislocation which Alchemy believes is a key control on mineralisation in the region.

Assays from the recent aircore drill program returned several zones of anomalous gold (>0.1 g/t) over a strike length of about 950 metres, with a best intercept of 2 metres at 2.7 g/t (48 metres) in KEAC009, including 1-metre at 3.99 g/t from 48 metres logged in saprolite.

RC drilling was designed to test the mineralisation in bedrock below these intercepts and along strike from this zone. Samples from this drilling have been submitted for analysis with results pending.

Over at K25, a single deep RC hole (KZRC110) was completed to test a historically defined electro-magnetic (EM) plate to the north of the existing defined resources.

In mid-2021 Alchemy completed a drill campaign which was used to complete a maiden JORC compliant resource.

As a result of the infill drilling and resource modelling, a re-interpretation of the mineralisation envelope showed that mineralisation was offset to the northwest.

This offset zone aligns with an EM plate which was generated via a Moving Loop and Fixed Loop EM survey conducted in 19913 and could represent a northern extension to the KZ5 mineralisation.

Drilling in KZRC110 finished at 198 metres depth and intersected zones of massive sulphides between 155-161 metres which was in line with the modelled depth of the EM plate. Samples have been submitted to the laboratory with assay results pending.

Whats next

Alchemy will continue to busy itself at Karonie with plenty of news flow to come from the following:
Rumble Resources Ltd (ASX:RTR) has welcomed internationally recognised mining executive Geoff Jones as a non-executive director.

The 30-year veteran has been involved in the evaluation and development of major projects across a diverse range of commodities at a global level and his appointment is expected to strengthen the boards capability, as it advances the emerging world-class Earaheedy Zinc-Lead Project in Western Australia.

We are delighted to have attracted such a highly regarded mining executive like Geoff to the Rumble board, as he brings with him a wide ranging and successful global background in mine project development and construction, Rumble managing director Shane Sikora said.

Geoffs knowledge and experience will be invaluable as Rumble continues to advance the emerging world-class Earaheedy base metal discovery.

Rumble is focused on rapidly advancing the large-scale zinc-lead-silver-copper discovery at the Earaheedy Project in Western Australia. The project has the potential to be a world-class base metal discovery of provincial scale.

About Geoff Jones

The new non-executive director Geoff Jones, BE (Civil Eng), FIEAust, CPEng, is a civil engineer with more than 30 years experience in engineering design and construction for minerals processing and mine project development in Australia and overseas.

Jones previously worked for Baulderstone Hornibrook, John Holland, Minproc Engineers and Signet Engineering before serving as group project engineer for Resolute Mining Ltd where he was responsible for the development of its mining projects in Australia, Ghana and Tanzania.

Since 2011, Geoff has been the managing director for GR Engineering Services Ltd (ASX:GNG), a leading process engineering consulting and contracting company that specialises in providing high quality engineering design and construction services to the mining and mineral processing industries. Geoff also currently serves as non-executive director of Ausgold Ltd (ASX:AUC).

Jones said of his appointment: What attracted me to Rumble was the potential provincial scale of the remarkable Earaheedy Zinc-Lead Project.

"I am delighted to be joining the board of Rumble Resources at this exciting time in the companys development and look forward to actively contributing my knowledge and experience as we progress the Earaheedy Project further in the months and years ahead.
Kingfisher Mining Ltd (ASX:KFM) has returned high-grade rare earths from the latest drilling at its 100%-owned Mick Well Rare Earth Elements (REE) Project in the Gascoyne Mineral Field in Western Australia as well as the discovery of a second mineralisation zone consisting predominantly of fresh monazite.

Analysis of samples from discovery hole MWRC011 at MW2 prospect has returned up to 5 metres at 3.45% total rare earth oxides (TREO), including 3 metres at 5.21% TREO and 1-metre at 7.13% TREO.

Other results from the current drilling showing high values of neodymium (Nd) and praseodymium (Pr) are:

4 metres at 1.03% TREO with 0.17% Nd and Pr from 29 metres, including 1-metre at 2.78% TREO with 0.46% Nd and Pr from 32 metres;

5 metres at 3.45% TREO with 0.65% Nd and Pr, including 3 metres at 5.21% TREO with 0.98% Nd and Pr from 102 metres and 1-metre at 7.13% TREO with 1.33% Nd and Pr; and

8 metres at 1.05% TREO with 0.19% Nd and Pr from 72 metres.

Additional drill results from other targets in the Mick Well area as well as the Kingfisher project are expected in the coming weeks.

Extremely positive sign

Kingfisher executive director and CEO James Farrell said: The results from MW2 continue to point to the emergence of an exciting and previously unrecognised REE region.

"The grade of the mineralisation intersected in MWRC011 has significantly exceeded our expectations, especially with over 7% TREO intersected over a 1-metre interval.

The identification of a second mineralised zone, which has the same geology as the recently announced discovery of a new 800-metre zone of outcropping REE mineralisation is an extremely positive sign for the potential of the MW2 Prospect.

We have already planned follow-up drilling at MW2 and we are looking forward to receiving the results from the recent drilling of other targets in the Mick Well and Kingfisher areas in the coming weeks.

The current drilling program was designed to confirm the dip and strike of the mineralisation at MW2 and follow-up the results from the companys REE discovery earlier in the year.

Second mineralisation zone

Kingfisher said the results of the drilling confirmed a second zone of high grade mineralisation, consisting predominantly of fresh monazite with the same geology as the recently reported and yet-to-be drilled 800 metres of outcropping mineralisation 500 metres northwest of MW2, which returned rock chips up to 21.13% TREO.

The new zone is now recognised to include a WNW-striking zone of allanite and monazite and a much higher grade NW-striking mineralised zone which has monazite as the dominant REE mineral.

This updated interpretation is based on relogging of all of the RC drill chips together with the sample results as well as structural information collected from wireline logging of the drill holes.

Drill holes MWRC015 and MWRC016 both ended in potassium fenite, which is very similar to the potassium fenite intersected immediately before the monazite mineralisation in MWRC011.

This, together with the revised geological interpretation for MW2, indicates that the monazite zone may be immediately below the current depth of these drill holes, which the company now plans to extend MWRC015 and MWRC016 as well as undertake additional high priority drilling on the southwest end of the section.

Chalba Shear Zone

Kingfisher is targeting REE mineralisation along a 54-kilometre corridor associated with the Chalba Shear Zone, a broad WNW-trending crustal-scale structure that has played an important role in providing a conduit for the intrusion of the carbonatites, as well as the associated alteration and late-stage mineralised veins and carbonatite dykes.

Fenites and potassium fenites are well-developed in the Mick Well area and are an important host of the REE mineralisation.

2022 exploration program

Kingfisher has planned extensive and targeted exploration programs for its Gascoyne projects for 2022.

The planned exploration is designed to be cost-effective and aims to develop and test drill targets from ground-based work including mapping and rock sampling.

It also plans to simultaneously develop a pipeline of exploration opportunities through integrating current and airborne geophysical surveys with geological knowledge from the companys breakthrough REE discovery at Mick Well.
Kingston Resources Ltd (ASX:KSN) has appointed ICA Partners to support a strategic review of the Misima Gold Project in Papua New Guinea following the conclusion of a definitive feasibility study (DFS) for the asset.

Kingston has designed the review to assess all opportunities to maximise shareholder value from Kingstons 100% interest in the project.

The review will be conducted in parallel with mining licence and environmental and social impact assessment work programs, expected to be completed in the third quarter.

Review to assess long-term value opportunity

The board, in consultation with ICA Partners, looks forward to investigating opportunities to advance the companys interest in Misima by identifying, evaluating and entering into potential strategic transactions relating to the long-term value opportunity at Misima, Kingston Resources managing director Andrew Corbett said.

We look forward to working on this exciting review and we are confident that there are strategic opportunities to advance the Misima Gold Project but more importantly to achieve significant value creation for our shareholders.

ICA Partners is a specialist mining advisor firm said to have wide-ranging transactional experience gained over many years in multiple commodities and jurisdictions, and maintains widespread relationships across global corporate and capital markets.

About Misima

Misima hosts a JORC-compliant resource of 3.8 million ounces and an ore reserve of 1.73 million ounces.

It was operated as a profitable open pit mine by Placer Pacific between 1989 and 2001, producing more than 3.7 million ounces before it was closed when the gold price was below US$300/ounce.
Boadicea Resources Ltd (ASX:BOA)s Jon Reynolds speaks with Proactives Elisha Newell about the companys recent milestones in the Fraser Range. This week, the company identified a massive sulphide electromagnetic (EM) target known as the Snowys Prospect, part of its 100%-owned Fraser South Project in Western Australia's Fraser Range. The addition of the high-priority Snowys Prospect is seen as a major boost to BOAs exploration plans, with the company aiming to get drilling at Snowys underway once the necessary planning is complete. The company believes the target has potential for Nova-style nickel sulphides or volcanogenic massive sulphides (VMS) mineralisation systems. Reynolds also highlights the 10 additional priority targets identified by BOA in the EM survey across the Fraser South and Southern Hills tenements, which give the company plenty of potential exploration prospects for further investigation.
Titomic Ltd (ASX:TTT)s Herbert Koeck speaks with Proactives Elisha Newell about the Melbourne-based start-up that is making waves in the additive manufacturing world. Titomic specialises in the commercialisation of large-scale metal additive manufacturing, using its patented cold spray additive manufacturing technology known as Titomic Kinetic Fusion (TKF). Koeck explains that the company has customers in multiple industries depending on the application and use case. Aerospace, Defence and Transportation are just some of the industries that may benefit from TTMs technology, but it also has applications in mining and oil and gas. The CEO outlines the companys business models and distinct revenue streams, its plans for growth and how it is providing another tool in the toolbox of existing manufacturing that allows companies to bring products to market faster than they previously could.
Providence Resources PLC (AIM:PVR, OTC:PVDRF) has appointed Alan Curran as the companys new interim chief executive, with James Mentons role now reverting back to non-executive chair.

Curran most recently led a transformational restructuring strategy at Verus Petroleum, where he was chief executive between 2014 and 2019, Providence noted.

"I am pleased that Alan has agreed to join Providence Resources as interim chief executive," Menton said. As a board, our primary objective is to progress our appraisal programme leading to a phased commercial development of the Barryroe oil and gas field.

We are confident that the field can be successful and I have no doubt that, with his extensive experience in the oil and gas industry, Alan's knowledge and expertise will assist the board in optimising the Barryroe Field."

Curran, meanwhile, commented: "I am delighted to be joining Providence Resources at this pivotal time for the company.

As one of the largest undeveloped oil and gas fields offshore Europe, there is no doubt that the Barryroe Field presents a unique opportunity to develop a critically important Irish source of oil and gas to substitute some of the imports that will be needed to meet ongoing demand during the energy transition."
Intensely veined and altered volcanic rocks associated with gold anomalism exposed in soil sampling and historic Champion Mine gold-silver workings.

PolarX Ltd (ASX:PXX) has returned strong results up to bonanza grade in its maiden reverse circulation (RC) percussion drilling program at Star Canyon within the Humboldt Range Gold-Silver Project in Nevada, USA.

The highlight result is 9.1 metres at 124.36 g/t gold and 48.6 g/t silver from 27.4 metres in hole BC22-005, including 3 metres at 371 g/t gold and 143.5 g/t silver.

This bonanza result sits within numerous wide lower-grade intersections less than 3 kilometres from the 5-million-ounce operating Florida Canyon Gold Mine while the Rochester Mine is about 20 kilometres south of the Fourth of July claims.

Broad results

Other results include:

73.2 metres at 0.28 g/t gold from 36.6 metres to the end of hole in Carlin-style mineralisation immediately down hole from the bonanza intersection in BC22-005;

42.7 metres at 0.32 g/t gold, including 25.9 metres at 0.48 g/t gold from 19.8 metres. This is also spatially associated with a broad zone of silver mineralisation over 59.4 metres at 3.5 g/t silver from 3 metres depth; and

61 metres at 0.19 g/t gold from 39.2 metres.

Highlight strong potential

PolarX said these results highlighted the potential for Star Canyon to host high-grade gold and silver veins within a potentially bulk mineable Carlin-style system in Nevada, a world-class precious metals province.

PolarXs claims are ideally located in Nevada, adjacent to large-scale operating mines and important road, rail, power and workforce infrastructure.

Star Canyon prospect is part of a much larger anomalous gold and silver zone known to contain many other mineralised veins with bonanza grade potential.

Broad Carlin-style gold and silver mineralisation occurs throughout the tested part of the soil anomaly and the central mineralised limestone corridor.

The mineralisation remains open and largely untested for the extension of bonanza-grade veins.

Maiden RC program

PolarXs maiden RC drill program at Star Canyon consisted of 10 RC percussion holes to test the strong gold and silver anomaly identified from the companys soil sampling program.

This program has only tested an area of 600 x 400 metres within the soil anomaly which measures 2,500 x 1,000 metres.

The coincidence of the two mineralisation styles within the one project demonstrates the potential for high-grade veins to significantly increase the metal inventory of a large tonnage Carlin-style resource that may be present and that could be amenable to a bulk mining operation.

Aerial view looking northwards towards the Ridgeline Target which comprises the extension of the high-grade Monster Veins and associated gold-in-soil anomalism.

Follow-up plans

In light of the strong results, PolarX is highly encouraged and is prioritising follow-up drilling at Star Canyon and the associated Ridgeline Target.

Ridgeline has good road access and can be drilled from the roadside to test for high-grade veins within Carlin-style mineralisation similar to Star Canyon.
Noxopharm Ltd (ASX:NOX) has added three more US sites for its CEP-2 sarcoma study following the participation of the Mayo Clinic and Washington University in the study, bringing the number of well-known participating US cancer centres to four.

The Mayo Clinic supports the care of more than 1.3 million patients in the US every year, with its Rochester site in Minnesota named best hospital in the US in 2021-2022 by the US News & World Report. Its considered one of the top three hospitals for cancer care in the country. The clinic's Florida site will also participate in the study.

Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis is a leader in medical research, teaching and patient care and receives one of the largest funding packages from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research and training.

The participation of these two institutions in NOXs sarcoma trial demonstrates the ability to attract leading medical researchers to the companys drug development process, based on a science-driven strategy of advancing the most promising therapies to key value inflection points.

Study aims to improve quality of life

We are delighted to have such prestigious institutions participating in the CEP-2 trial investigating treatments for soft tissue sarcoma, a challenging cancer with few treatment options, Noxopharm CEO Dr Gisela Mautner said.

It is our hope that we will identify an effective treatment to improve outcomes and quality of life for sarcoma patients worldwide.

The three new sites will begin treating patients with Veyonda and doxorubicin for metastatic soft tissue sarcoma in line with the City of Hope Cancer Center, another of the top-ranked cancer hospitals in the US, which is already conducting the study.
Antilles Gold Ltd (ASX:AAU, OTCQB:ANTMF) has established an exploration target range for its El Pilar gold-copper oxide deposit in Central Cuba based on historical data analysed by Canadian mining consultants, BBA International Inc.

The El Pilar oxide deposit overlays a potentially significant copper-gold porphyry deposit  one of three within an extensive porphyry system that is included in the companys exploration agreement with the Cuban Governments mining company, GeoMinera.

Moving forward, Antilles will kick off a 14,000-metre drilling program at El Pilar later this month aimed at updating the conceptual exploration target into a resource, with assays expected to be delivered in September.

The entire funding for an open-pit mine at El Pilar could potentially come from the surplus cash flow expected to be generated by the joint ventures first project, the La Demajagua gold-silver open-pit mine, where commissioning is planned for mid-2024.

Project significance

Antilles executive chairman Brian Johnson said that the development of an open-pit mine at El Pilar with significant metal value in a small tonnage would be an important step in generating growth in cash flow and profits within the mining joint venture.

The joint venture now has the prospect of developing three mid-sized projects within the next four years - La Demajagua gold-silver sulphide deposit, El Pilar gold-copper oxide deposit and Antonio copper-zinc sulphide deposit.

However, he said the real prize could be the large El Pilar copper-gold porphyry deposit, and if drilling at depth replicated shallow historic drilling of the outcropping deposit, the porphyry system could be a company maker.

Looking ahead, the initial drilling results in September 2022 will be of great importance in determining the companys future direction.

About Antilles

Antilles strategy is to participate in the successive development of previously explored gold, copper and zinc deposits in mineral-rich Cuba.

The company is at the forefront of the emerging mining sector in Cuba and expects to be involved in the development of a number of projects through its 49:51 mining joint venture with the Cuban Governments mining company, GeoMinera SA.

The company is comfortable operating under the applicable law on Foreign Investment in Cuba which protects minority shareholdings, and the realistic Mining and Environmental regulations, and has been granted a generous fiscal regime by the Government which is supportive of its objectives.
Coffee with Samso Episode 147 with Callum Baxter, former chief technical director of Greatland Gold PLC (AIM:GGP, OTC:GRLGF) is the second episode of the Exploration Discovery Series which is all about mineral exploration discoveries.

It's a cold and damp morning but that doesn't dampen what we are going to tell you about the Havieron discovery by Greatland Gold PLC (AIM:GGP, OTC:GRLGF). in 2018. It was a major success, and it is now a gold and copper mine nearing production stage.

According to the company's website, the project is currently in development under a Joint Venture with Newcrest Mining, Australias largest gold producer. Havieron is located just 45km from Newcrests Telfer mine. This allows the project to leverage Telfers existing infrastructure and processing plant to significantly reduce the projects capital expenditure and carbon impact for a low cost pathway to development under an ore tolling arrangement.

Figure 1: Location of the Havieron project (Source: Greatland Gold website).

According to the latest presentation from the company, the updated Probable Ore Reserve and Mineral Resource is in Figure 2.

The significance of these numbers is in the manner that the deposit was discovered. In many cases, investors are only looking at the results of a long journey of mineral exploration.

Figure 2: Probable and Mineral Estimate for the Havieron deposit. (Source: Greatland Gold website).

The journey for a discovery is never an overnight process. In reality, discoveries of any mineral deposit has a minimum timeframe of years and development is usually in decades (including exploration and resource development).

The Coffee with Samso - Exploration Discovery Series is aimed at showcasing the discovery and also the more interesting parts of the exploration journeys. The insides of what happened and what did and what could not have happened that led to the discovery, for me is the fun part of the conversation.

The discovery of Havieron is one of the recent success that has come about because management kept the faith and applied the principals of mineral exploration. As an exploration geologist, the discovery of Havieron is one that excites me. The chase for discovery is one of the most satisfying feelings one could experience. The idea of setting up a company to source funding to chase the elephant deposits is high on my bucket list.

This is why I want to bring these stories onto the Samso platform so that the average investor out there can have insights into these journeys.

I hope you enjoy the video and get some sense of the "excitement" that was in the room when Callum and his associates received the results from the drilling.

Chapters

00:00 Start

01:35 Callum Introduction

03:46 Was undercover discovery always the plan?

06:33 Was it a geophysical target?

08:10 Chasing the elephants.

08:56 Chasing broad wide anomalies.

10:34 What were the challenges like for Greatland Gold at that time?

12:28 The magic formula for exploration success.

13:54 The story behind the discovery.

20:29 Was the discovery luck?

21:41 Was the core of the deposit giving a lot of clues?

23:21 How has technology in Geophysics helped mineral exploration?

27:36 Would the new technology today have changed the modelling?

29:09 Big Elephant deposits still exist.

31:03 Potential of discovery.

32:12 What is Callum Baxter doing now?

33:27 Is Callum heading back into the industry?

33:46 What is happening in the market?

37:26 Are there more Elephants in the Paterson Range?

38:50 Conclusion

About Callum Baxter

Former Chief Technical Director of Greatland Gold PLC (AIM:GGP, OTC:GRLGF)

Exploration geologist and founding Director of UK based Greatland Gold PLC.

Commenced working in the mineral exploration industry after completing geology undergraduate qualifications in 1991 in Western Australia. Participated in discovery of large gold resources (Jundee/Nimary) before moving into other commodities including base metals and nickel. Member of AusIMM and AIG.

Worked with juniors, mid-tier explorers and major mining companies globally over more than 25 years. Completed an MSc in Ore Deposit Geology in the early 2000s. Co-founded Greatland which listed on AIM in the UK in 2006. Greatland is focussed on discovery of large precious metal and base metal deposits in Australia, in areas that have not been subject to extensive previous exploration.

Greatland has achieved recent success with the discovery of high-grade gold and copper mineralisation at the Havieron deposit, under 400m of cover, in the Paterson Region of Western Australia.

Please let Samso know your thoughts and send any comments to info@Samso.com.au. Remember to Subscribe to the YouTube Channel, Samso Media and the mail list to stay informed and make comments where appropriate. Other than that, also feel free to provide a Review on Google.

For further information about Coffee with Samso and Rooster Talks visit: www.samso.com.au

About

Samso is a renowned resource among the investment community for keen market analysis and insights into the companies and business trends that matter.

Investors seek out Samso for knowledgeable evaluations of current industry developments across a variety of business sectors and considered forecasts of future performances.

With a compelling format of relaxed online video interviews, Samso provides clear answers to questions they may not have the opportunity to ask and lays out the big picture to help them complete their investment research.

And in doing so, Samso also enables companies featured in interviews to build valuable engagement with their investment communities and customers.

Headed by industry veteran Noel Ong and based in Perth, Western Australia, Samsos Coffee with Samso and Rooster Talk interviews both feature friendly conversations with business figures that give insights into Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) companies, related concepts and industry trends.

Noel Ong is a geologist with nearly 30 years of industry experience and a strong background in capital markets, corporate finance and the mineral resource sector. He was founder and managing director of ASX-listed company Siburan Resources Limited from 2009-2017 and has also been involved in several other ASX listings, providing advice, procuring projects and helping to raise capital.

He brings all this experience and expertise to the Samso interviews, where his engaging conversation style creates a relaxed dialogue, revealing insights that can pique investor interest.

Noel Ong travels across Australia to record the interviews, only requiring a coffee shop environment where they can be set up. The interviews are posted on Samsos website and podcasts, YouTube and other relevant online environments where they can be shared among investment communities.

Samso also has a track record of developing successful business concepts in the Australasia region and provides bespoke research and counsel to businesses seeking to raise capital and procuring projects for ASX listings.

Disclaimer

The information contained in this article is the writers personal opinion and is provided for information only and is not intended to or nor will it create/induce the creation of any binding legal relations. Read full disclaimer.
Wiluna Mining Corporation Ltd (ASX:WMC, OTC:WMXCF) has delivered high-grade sulphide intersections from its discovery, resource development and grade control drilling programs around current mining areas and new targets across the Wiluna Mining Operation in Western Australia.

The companys discovery drilling campaign covers nine large-scale targets testing for high-grade sulphide shoots with high-grade intersections including:

5 metres at 4.97 g/t gold including 2.6 metres at 8.24 g/t; and

1.70 metres at 3.86 g/t including 0.70 metres at 5.66 g/t.

Resource development drilling at Woodley, along strike to the south of the Bulletin zone, has demonstrated continuity of high-grade sulphides largely beyond the current mineral resource limits and results include:

3 metres at 11.31 g/t gold;

13 metres at 9.77 g/t including 1.60 metres at 40.34 g/t; and

4.40 metres at 5.60 g/t including 0.50 metres at 34.70 g/t.

Meanwhile, grade control drilling has delivered wide, high-grade sulphide intersections at Bulletin and Happy Jack, supporting the immediate production profile and ramp-up of sulphide concentrate production, with notable results including:

14.29 metres at 11.55 g/t gold;

9.5 metres at 7.13 g/t; and

13.85 metres at 4.66 g/t and 7.46 metres at 6.56 g/t.

Moving forward, Wiluna will resume its resource development and grade control programs with two rigs mobilising to the site mid-this month.

Discovery program

Wilunas discovery drilling targets high-grade shoot discoveries 'under the headframe' at the project.

These discoveries increase the underground ore grade and grow gold production at Wiluna.

The company is targeting analogues to historically mined shoots, such as the Bulletin shoot that historically produced approximately 800,000 ounces at 8 g/t.

Resource development drilling

Wiluna's resource development drilling intersected mineralisation at shallow levels, approximately 500 metres below the surface, and close to the existing Woodley Decline for ease of access.

Notably, the companys drill program has demonstrated continuity of high-grade sulphides largely beyond the current mineral resource limits.

Grade control drilling

Grade control drilling continues to confirm high-grade sulphide mineralisation in areas within the current 12-month mine schedule at both Happy Jack and Bulletin zones, with extensions to mineralisation also defined.

At Bulletin, drilling within the upper northern area of the mine continues to return high-grade sulphide intervals within planned stope areas and has also highlighted the potential for a (previously undiscovered) footwall lode.

Drilling at Happy Jack North returned several higher-grade intervals which are expected to improve the overall stope grades being mined between the 1400-1300 Levels.
A clutch of sites off the coasts of Cornwall and Pembrokeshire have been identified where floating windfarms could be built in the Celtic Sea.

The crown estate, which generates revenue for the Treasury and the royal family, has reportedly identified five "areas of search" for wind power development plots, which will go up for auction next year.

These are areas between Wales and Cornwall where wind resources are abundant, according to the Queen's property manager, which said a technical analysis and engagement process led to site identification.

In mid-2023, a tender process will be launched to offer the project development areas to businesses.

It is anticipated that these areas will produce 4 gigawatts (GW) of floating offshore wind power by 2035, enough to power almost 4mln homes.

Research by the crown estate estimates that a further 20 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity could be installed in the Celtic Sea by 2045, with the crown estate noting the areas take into account navigation routes, fishing activity, and environmental concerns.

"We already have the largest offshore wind deployment in Europe. Floating technology is key to unlocking the full potential of our coastline," said Greg Hands, energy and climate change minister.

"We want to deliver up to 5GW of floating offshore wind by 2030. These projects can help power millions of homes with clean, and cheaper, renewable energy, reducing reliance on expensive fossil fuels."

"The Celtic Sea has the potential to become one of the great renewable energy basins of the world, bringing economic growth and abundant clean power," said Huub den Rooijen, managing director marine at the Crown Estate.

"This leasing round is a first step, and we need to work together to bring technology costs down, deliver environmentally sound solutions and respect the needs of the many other users of the marine space."
Supermarket Income REIT investment advisor Atrato Capital join Proactive to talk about the acquisition of a number of retail sites as well as a newly arranged 412.1m credit facility.

Atrato' Rob Abraham and Haffiz Kala spoke with Katie about the latest deals.

In Basingstoke, the firm has bought a Tesco superstore along with a M&S Foodhall and an Iceland. And in Doncaster, it has acquired an ASDA supermarket.
Paradigm Biopharmaceuticals Ltd (ASX:PAR) has activated the first UK site in a Phase 3 study assessing the effect of Zilosul on osteoarthritis, beginning the screening and recruitment process after receiving regulatory and ethics approval from the UK.

This first site is at the University of Leeds, led by investigator professor Hemant Pandit, and Paradigm is planning to open a total of seven sites in the UK in the coming months.

Canada Health has also given regulatory approval for the trial, although ethics approval is still pending. Paradigm expects to activate up to 10 clinical sites in Canada once such approval has been received.

Approval received from four jurisdictions

I am pleased we are moving forward with regulatory approval within another planned jurisdiction for the global phase 3 program, Paradigm Biopharmaceuticals chief medical officer Dr Donna Skerrett said.

The interaction with Health Canada was positive throughout the regulatory process and the company looks forward to announcing anticipated ethics approval and subsequent participant recruitment in Canada.

Equally, the achievement by the Paradigm team to activate participant recruitment in the UK highlights Paradigm's ongoing execution of activities for this global phase 3 trial in knee OA.

Paradigm has now secured regulatory approval from four major jurisdictions for its Phase 3 trial; the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Health Canada, and the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
Dhaka, July 5 : Prime Minister of Bangladesh and the President of Awami League, the ruling party in the country, Sheikh Hasina has said that despite her "tireless effort to secure the future of the nation, some people at home and abroad have been trying to oust the Awami League (AL) led government".

"What is the guilt of Sheikh Hasina's government? For what crimes, they want to dislodge the AL government?" she asked while addressing party leaders and activists during visit to her ancestral home in Gopalganj's Tungipara on Monday.

It was Hasina's first visit to her hometown through the Padma Bridge since its opening by her on June 25. The Prime Minister, accompanied by her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy and daughter Saima Wazed, also offered prayer at Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's mausoleum in Tungipara.

Hasina paid tributes to Bangabandhu by placing a wreath on his mausoleum.

She reminded her party activists as well as the countrymen that the world is now going through a "critical juncture" due to the double blow of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, and reiterated her call to all to show austerity in every sector particularly in using energy like electricity.

"Each of the Awami League leaders and workers has to work for changing the mindset of doing only for oneself," she said.

The Prime Minister said that her government has been working "tirelessly to transform Bangladesh into a developed and prosperous nation -- free from poverty and hunger as envisioned by the Father of the Nation".

She asked the party leaders and activists to stand beside the people to pursue the government's move that none will remain poor, homeless and hungry anymore.

"Big countries, such as America and England, around the world are now suffering from food crisis. We're still in a good position and trying to be well. It requires help from all," Hasina asserted.

She said her government has built the Padma Bridge, given electricity to every house, giving home to landless and homeless people, and is ensuring food security for all.

Further, describing the grassroots activists as the lifeline of her party, she said, "The grassroots activists alway take right decision, and hold up the party." She asked the party leaders to inquire about the wellbeing of every partyman and stand by them if required.

Hasina urged the party leaders to bring "every inch of land across the country under cultivation" to grow more food as Bangladesh never faces such a crisis.

She recalled the "inhuman torture on the leaders and activists of AL during the regimes of Pakistan Army President Ayub Khan and Yahiay Khan".

On her way to Tungipara, Hasina and her family members spent some time on the Padma Bridge and took a rest for a while in Jajira point's service area.

Hasina, who was first to pay the toll of the country's longest Padma Bridge during its opening, also paid the toll from and off to Dhaka.

She criticized the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and other like-minded parties who came to power to "make their own fortunes". Hasina said that the AL since its foundation has been working to "give the people something instead of making their own fortune".

The Prime Minister said, "The Father of the Nation did not form the party for the lust of power and wealth, rather he did so to work for the welfare of the countrymen." So, she said, the leaders and workers of the party follow the ideal of Bangabandhu and stand beside the people.

"The power of people is the main strength. Time and again, attacks were carried out on my life. But, almighty Allah saved me so that I can do something for the wellbeing of the people of my motherland. That's why, my government had been able to construct the much-hyped Padma Bride by own funding, and carry out other development projects to ensure the country's overall development," Hasina added.

She said that the country can combat any disaster with collective efforts of all, which it (the country) has proved by successfully tackling the floods.

The Prime Minister added that Bangladesh has administered the Covid-19 vaccine to the masses free of cost "which many developed countries could not do".
Washington, July 5 : US police are looking for a 22-year-old man who opened fire on a July 4 parade in Highland Park, Chicago killing 6 people and wounding a dozen on Monday.

The police identified Robert E. "Bobby" Crimo III as a "person of interest" and also released his picture for people to identify and inform the authorities.

The police said that the shooter used a high-powered rifle and shot into the parade from the rooftop of a building on the route. Christopher Covelli of the Lake County sheriff's office and the Lake County major crimes task force, said the shooting was "very random, very intentional".

There was no word on his motivation yet.

Fourth of July is the American Independence day and it is a national holiday.

Lake County Coroner Jennifer Banek said that five people died at the scene of the shooting, all adults. And the sixth victim died in hospital. All of the victims have been identified, though authorities still were notifying families.

The shooter allegedly opened fire on the parade at around 10 a.m. Miles Zaremski, a Highland Park resident, told the Chicago Sun-Times: "I heard 20 to 25 shots, which were in rapid succession. So it couldn't have been just a handgun or a shotgun." Witnesses described people fleeing in utter panic when shooting started.

"It was a quiet, peaceful, lovely morning, people were enjoying the parade," Adrienne Drell, a former Sun-Times reporter, said, "Within seconds, to have that peacefulness suddenly ripped apart, it's scary. You can't go anywhere, you can't find peace. I think we are falling apart." US President Joe Biden said in a statement, "I recently signed the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost thirty years into law, which includes actions that will save lives. But there is much more work to do, and I'm not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence." The legislation, which was crafted and passed with bipartisan support from Democrats and Republicans, seeks to expand background check for prospective gun buyers, prevents abusive boyfriends and partners from buying guns and seeks to encourage states to pass laws to allow authorities and relatives to deny gun possession to people who are a danger to themselves and others.

This legislation broke decades of logjam on gun reforms.

"Today's shooting is an unmistakable reminder that more should be done to address gun violence in our country," Vice-President Kamala Harris said in a separate statement. "President Biden recently signed into law the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost 30 years a" and we will continue fighting to end this senseless violence.
Rome, July 5 : The death toll from a dramatic landslide caused by a melting glacier has climbed to seven a day after the tragedy in northern Italy, as rescuers continued to search for survivors.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi on Monday travelled to the area where at least seven hikers lost their lives after part of the Punta Rocca glacier, at the summit of the Marmolada in the Dolomite Mountains, collapsed on Sunday. This led to a massive landslide of ice, snow, and rock.

Authorities have now discovered one more body, after the original death toll was announced on Sunday. Ten people were injured, two seriously, Xinhua news agency reported .

The number of missing persons was reduced when officials from the region of Trentino reported that an Austrian hiker had been found. Nevertheless, 13 others are still missing.

Officials have attributed the tragedy to scorching temperatures; when the glacier collapsed, the temperature at the mountain peak was reportedly around 10 degrees Celsius, when a normal temperature for this time of year is below zero.

As of late Monday, officials said they continued to hope that more survivors would be found. Search efforts are now focused on the use of autonomous drones with heat sensors.
Jerusalem, July 5 : Israel has said that tests of the bullet that killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh could not determine whether soldiers shot her because of the "physical condition" of the bullet.

A ballistic examination, which was conducted in a forensic laboratory in Israel by Israeli experts, could not yield a definitive conclusion on the origin of the bullet that killed the Palestinian-American reporter, Xinhua news agency reported, citing a statement by the Israeli military.

"The physical condition of the bullet and the quality of the characteristics on it do not enable a ballistic examination to conclusively determine whether or not the bullet was fired from the weapon which was examined," the statement read.

The bullet remained under the custodianship of the United States Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority Michael R. Fenzel after receiving it from the Palestinian authorities and until it was returned on Sunday following the conclusion of the examination.

Representatives of the US Security Coordinator were also present during the ballistic examination.

US State Department said on Monday that gunfire from Israeli positions likely killed Abu Akleh, but independent investigators could not give a conclusive answer regarding the source of the bullet.

In late May, the Palestinian Authority announced that its probe revealed that Abu Akleh was "deliberately" shot by an Israeli sniper, but Israel has denied this.

A prior Israeli investigation concluded that no Israeli soldier "deliberately fired at Ms. Abu Akleh." According to Israel, she came under fire during a fire exchange between Israeli forces and armed Palestinians.

Meantime, the U.S. Security Coordinator, by summarizing both the Israeli and Palestinian investigation, said in a statement that gunfire from Israeli positions was "likely responsible" for the death of Abu Akleh but it "found no reason to believe that this was intentional." Abu Akleh was killed while covering an Israeli military raid in Jenin in the northern West Bank on May 11. She was wearing a vest marked "Press" and a helmet.

Separate investigations carried out by the United Nations and several international media outlets have found the shot that killed Abu Akleh was fired by Israeli soldiers.
Lugano, July 5 : Tasked with establishing the principles and framework for the future reconstruction of the conflict-torn country, a two-day Ukraine Recovery Conference has opened here.

The conference participants are expected to define the criteria for handling assistance to Ukraine and for the distribution of roles among the various partners, Ignazio Cassis, president of the Swiss Confederation and head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, said in his opening address on Monday.

He said he expected the senior officials from around 40 countries and representatives from 18 international organisations attending the conference to adopt the "Lugano principles" conducive to the sustainable recovery of Ukraine, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The sustainable restructuring of the economy should be guided by the principle of building back better and creating the conditions for prosperity and intact livelihoods," he said.

Ukraine's Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who attended the conference in person, said that his country will need $750 billion for a three-stage reconstruction plan, which he presented in detail.

Addressing the conference by video link from Kiev, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the plan also covers the country's institutional development.

Among the key principles and goals, Zelensky singled out heightened security, technological development, compliance with environmental standards, transparency and the rooting of the reconstruction project in Ukraine's real economic life.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, told Monday's opening session that her institution has proposed to the government of Ukraine the creation of a reconstruction platform to map investment needs, coordinate action, channel resources and support an ambitious reform agenda.

The event, co-hosted by the governments of Switzerland and Ukraine, was originally planned as the 5th annual Ukraine Reform Conference. It was renamed earlier this year to reflect the new focus of the gathering.

"The way to rebuild Ukraine is through a broad-based political and diplomatic process. Switzerland and Ukraine want to start this process in Lugano," the Swiss Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said that next year's Ukraine Recovery Conference will be hosted by the UK.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
San Francisco, July 5 : Electric vehicle company Tesla has confirmed that its vehicles can now scan for rough roads, like potholes, to help avoid them damaging the vehicles by adjusting the suspension.

In a new 2022.20 software update, the automaker wrote about a new feature of the "Tesla Adaptive Suspension" system, reports the auto-tech website Electrek.

"Tesla Adaptive Suspension will now adjust ride height for an upcoming rough road section. This adjustment may occur at various locations, subject to availability, as the vehicle downloads rough road map data generated by Tesla vehicles," the company was quoted as saying.

This is the first confirmation of the Tesla vehicle fleet scanning the roads to evaluate its conditions.

For now, it is not about Autopilot, or Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta, navigating around those "rough road sections", but Tesla adapting the suspension for those conditions, the report said.

This feature is only going to be available in Tesla vehicles with adaptive suspension, like the new Model S and Model X Back in 2020, CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla Autopilot is eventually going to detect potholes and make mini-maps to remember them and avoid them.

However, currently, Tesla Autopilot is not quite there yet, but it can be now seen as the first confirmation that Tesla's fleet of vehicles is looking for them or more "rough road sections" in general.
Kiev, July 5 : Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his country is presently negotiating with Turkey and the UN regarding the export of grain through ports.

During a briefing in Kiev on Monday alongside visiting Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Anderson, Zelensky said that implementing this project "will be difficult in some places, but definitely possible", because both Ukraine, as a grain exporting country, and farmers, who need exports to prepare for next year's sowing, are interested in this, reports Ukrayinska Pravda.

The President noted that 22 million tonnes of grain are currently blocked in Ukraine.

"We are currently negotiating with the Turkish side and the UN. Our representatives who are responsible for the safety of grain exiting our ports. But it is a very important moment for someone to guarantee the safety of the ships of certain countries that will come to us to load food products other than Russia, which we do not trust," he was quoted as saying.

He noted that the UN takes a leadership position in this process, and does not act as a moderator. "They seem ready to lead this process." The President also added that "Ukraine is not wasting time and we are working on various ways, both by rail and by river, to export our grain".

The Russian military fleet is blocking sea routes to Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea coast, making it impossible to safely transport grain to other countries, Ukrayinska Pravda reported.

The international community fears that a shortage of Ukrainian grain on the global food market could trigger even greater instability.

Meanwhile, Turkey is trying to mediate port unblock talks by demining the Black Sea and escorting bulk carriers for their safety.

However, Ukraine insists that acceptable guarantees for demining ports are weapons that Ukraine can deploy in the region.

On Monday, Kiev's ambassador to Ankara Vasyl Bodnar announced that a cargo ship carrying grain from a Russian-occupied region of Ukraine has been detained by Turkish customs authorities.

It remained unclear where the cargo came from or how it was obtained.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Bengaluru, July 5 : Even as the arrest of a senior IPS and an IAS officer is being viewed as a setback for the ruling BJP, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai has said that his government was committed to cleanse the entire system.

The judiciary's biting remark on the functioning of the government and referring to rampant corruption in allotting important posts is said to be a setback to the BJP, according to party insiders.

Criminal Investigation Department (CID) sleuths have arrested senior IPS officer, Additional DGP Amrit Paul, in connection with the Police Sub-Inspector scandal. J. Manjunath, former Bengaluru Deputy Commissioner has been arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) and remanded to judicial custody in a bribe case. Both arrests were made on Monday.

Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai stated that ruling BJP was committed to cleanse the entire system through an unbiased and uncompromising probe. "Our government will act against the guilty even if it happens to be top officials," he maintained.

"The earlier governments had not bothered to investigate even when voices were raised against such scams during their regime," Bommai said.

However, party sources said that the development has raised serious questions for the ruling BJP, as the action has been taken after a rap by the High Court in the case of former DC Manjunath.

"Though, both Congress and BJP leaders have been arrested in connection with the PSI Recruitment scandal, the ruling party is more answerable and it is a setback in the election year," sources in BJP said.

The state general Assembly election is scheduled in 2023 and will be held in less than a year. Congress party is claiming that their survey suggested a comfortable majority in the upcoming Assembly elections.

The BJP central leadership, which has taken over the reins of the state unit, have already collected documents relating to 40 per cent commission allegations made by the Contractors' Association against state ruling BJP.

Manjunath was shunted out from the post of DC of Bengaluru Urban after being slammed by the High Court bench. The High Court Justice H.P. Sandesh, who was looking into the case of DC office staff being caught red-handed while receiving bribes in Bengaluru Urban DC office by ACB, stated that he had been getting transfer threats from the accused persons.

In a serious setback to the ruling BJP government, Justice Sandesh stated that he is ready to be transferred. "I am ready for it for the good of people. Your ACB ADGP (Seemanth Kumar Singh) seems to be a powerful person. One person has told this to my colleague. I have been informed about it by a judge. The threat of transfer will be recorded in the order," Justice Sandesh stated.

"I don't fear anyone. I am ready to bell the cat. I have not bought any property after becoming a judge. I don't care if I lose the position of judge. I am the son of a farmer. I am ready to till the land. I don't belong to any political party. I don't adhere to any political ideology," he remarked to the chagrin of the ruling establishment.

Opposition parties will pounce on the ruling BJP in the state. Sources said the BJP leaders are crossing their fingers as there are allegations of senior politicians' involvement in the PSI recruitment scandal.
Ghaziabad, July 5 : The Chhattisgarh Police on Tuesday reached the residence of a TV news channel anchor in Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad to arrest him in a case.

"Chhattisgarh Police is standing outside my house to arrest me without informing the local police, is it legal," Rohit Ranjan, an anchor at a Hindi news channel tweeted earlier in the morning.

The Chhattisgarh police also replied to the anchor's tweet asking him to cooperate with the police.

"There is no such rule to inform. Still, now they are informed. Police team has shown you court's warrant of arrest. You should in fact cooperate, join in the investigation and put your defence in court," said the police.

The journalist tweeted at 6.16 a.m. in the morning, the Chhattisgarh Police responded at 8.09 a.m. and half an hour later, the Ghaziabad Police also shared its reply.

"The matter is in the cognizance of the local police, the Indirapuram police station is on the spot, action will be taken as per the rules," the Ghaziabad Police said.

Notably, the channel had played a 'doctored' video clip of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in which he was heard calling the attackers of Udaipur incident as children, justifying the heinous killing of Kanhaiya Lal.

Pertinent to mention here that the original video was Rahul Gandhi's comment on the SFI violence on his Wayanad office but it was deliberately and mischievously doctored to appear as if it was a comment on the heinous murder of Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur.

On Saturday, the party also demanded an appropriate apology from the BJP on behalf of party leaders who shared the said 'doctored' video.
Sanaa, July 5 : Yemen's internationally-recognized government has authorised the deployment of troops to confront terror groups and secure state institutions in the country's southern regions, a military official said.

The official told Xinhua news agency that elite units of the southern Giants Brigades troops backed by armoured vehicles were heavily deployed to secure the strategic oil-rich province of Shabwa, where vital economic projects are being implemented.

"The troops began deployment according to the government's instructions to secure the investment projects and tourist resorts established recently after expelling the Houthi militia from Shabwa," the official said.

He clarified that "the local authorities also began establishing major infrastructure projects in various areas of Shabwa to maintain a stable environment following years of conflict".

In the neighbouring Abyan, newly-recruited southern security forces were dispatched to the province's mountains and valleys to confront the Yemen-based Al Qaeda branch that attempts to gain a foothold in the area.

An official of Abyan's local government confirmed to Xinhua that "preparations are underway to carry out a large military campaign to confront al-Qaida elements during the upcoming hours".

The official added that the recent military deployment strengthened security and stability in Yemen's southern regions that hope to capture the development opportunities represented by a nationwide cease-fire.

Under the UN auspices, Yemen's warring parties entered a two-month ceasefire on April 2.

The related parties had agreed to extend this UN-brokered truce for another two months.

Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014 when the Iran-backed Houthi militia seized control of several northern provinces and forced the government out of the capital Sanaa.
Unnao, Uttar Pradesh : "The water in our village is just poison. We can't even cook our food using this water, forget drinking it," says an exasperated Munni Devi, as she herds her buffaloes by a canal in her village.

Around 70km from Lucknow, in Unnao district's Sikanderpur Karan block, is the village of Gudsar. Residents here, like 48-year-old Munni Devi, are simply frustrated - frustrated that the lack of a basic necessity like drinking water can make their lives this miserable.

Harrowed residents resigned to fate "We are poor people. We cannot afford to buy water. Whenever we have relatives coming over, we have to go fetch water from 2km away. Because of the smelly, polluted and rotten water in our village, relatives have almost stopped visiting us," says Munni Devi, who lives with her family of eight - three sons and three daughters, and husband Ram Lal who works as a labourer.

Pointing at her buffaloes sitting in the water, she says, "Look at them. No matter how healthy a buffalo is, the water in our village will just make them sick and weak. If an animal won't drink water properly, how is it supposed to stay healthy?" Sitting next to her, Anita Devi says the water in their village barely ever quenches thirst.

"When we go outside the village somewhere, we drink lots of water because the water here just feels light," she says.

Sitting in the veranda of his house, 62-year-old Dayaram Lodhi echoes their sentiments.

"The water never used to be like this," Lodhi tells 101Reporters. "The water started getting contaminated after the canal came up next to our village." Picking up a bottle of water, Lodhi adds, "What you see now is crystal clear water. Wait for a while, and this water turns completely yellow. It's so polluted that even a metal bucket gets completely ruined." Lodhi, who has 15 members in his family who consume around 50 to 60 litres of water a day, says the quality of water started turning bad around 20 years ago. Another Gudsar resident Ram Prakash Verma echoes this claim.

"Once this canal came up, things changed. Earlier, the groundwater level wasn't this bad either." As per a report of the State Water Resources Agency, in Uttar Pradesh, a total of 28 districts had a problem of arsenic contamination in groundwater, including Unnao. In March, 2019, Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation and Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation had jointly filed an affidavit before NGT. The affidavit highlighted the arsenic affecting a population of 1.3 crores in Uttar Pradesh.

The 58-year-old, who owns roughly 2.5 acres of land, says farming had become increasingly difficult because of the water quality, which had deteriorated primarily due to fluoride and arsenic contamination.

Arsenic gets entry into the food chain through the use of pollutant-contaminated water for irrigation, and this plays a major role in deciding the agricultural income of this village.

"The wheat harvested last year was completely ruined. The level of chemicals in the canal water is so high that any form of vegetation simply dies. Not only is the quality of wheat and rice poor, the yield is also below average. We are forced to sell the harvest at low prices. The contamination has now seeped deep into the groundwater," he says.

Yogendra Kumar, another resident of Gudsar, shows this reporter a plastic box.

"Because of the water here, the box has turned red. You can only imagine what the water could do to the human body," says the 24-year-old, adding that there's a good possibility that at least one or two members of each family in the village of 400 has some form of stone disease. "The pollution in the water here has only increased the occurrence of diseases among residents. Most people just stay sick after falling ill." Non-functional hand pumps, inactive govt

Criticising the inaction by authorities with regard to tackling this water crisis, Kumar says: "Whenever we complained to any authority, we only received false promises. There are around 15 high-quality hand pumps in the village, but none of them work. The water drawn from traditional hand pumps is simply awful. The RO plant set up here three years ago worked for first six months and then didn't give one drop of water." Village pradhan Amresh Kumar, too, spoke about the RO plant: "Since it was a plant set up by the Uttar Pradesh government, the panchayat had no funds for it." In rural areas, the India-Mark hand pumps are supposed to be rebored. "But no such repair or reboring work has been done on the hand pumps," says Amresh Kumar, adding that he was given charge of the village only recently.

For daily drinking purposes, residents of Gudsar rely on the hand pumps, which give out highly contaminated water. But villagers now say they are getting used to it.

"Who can afford to get tanker water every day? One can arrange for tankers for weddings and other functions, but for daily use, hand pumps are all we have," says a villager.

Uncontrolled fluoride, arsenic contamination Dr Alok Pandey, the physician at the Unnao district hospital, told 101Reporters, that the level of fluoride in water must not exceed 1.5mg/litre, while that of arsenic shouldn't exceed 0.05mg/litre.

"If the fluoride level exceeds the permissible limit, it can prove fatal. Excess fluoride can lead to misshapen arms and legs, can cause weakness, fever and can also lead to various stomach and dental ailments," he explains.

Incidentally, the arsenic level in Unnao district exceeds the 0.05mg/litre limit, as per National Green Tribunal (NGT) data. In July, 2014 a sample testing run by Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, identified 20 districts of Uttar Pradesh, including Unnao as 'severely toxic' zones, based on the arsenic concentration in groundwater.

Mohit Chak, the superintendent engineer of the Unnao water department, says there are 53,816 hand pumps in Unnao, which has a population of over 25.7 lakh. In Sikanderpur Karan block, 26 RO plants were set up.

Asked about the condition of the RO plants in Sikanderpur Karan, Chak claims he did not have any knowledge regarding their non-functioning.

"Once I get information, work to get them repaired will be initiated," he says, adding that of the 319 villages in the block, 76 were affected by excess fluoride.

"As many as 1,455 of the 4,355 villages in Unnao face issues related to excess fluoride in the water. Of these, 28 villages face TDS (total dissolved solids) pollution." Regarding provision of pure drinking water, the superintendent engineer informs 101Reporters that the tender process for the central government's Jal Jeevan Mission had yet to begin at the block level. The scheme aims to provide drinking water directly to every household by 2024, and Chak says the results of the scheme will start to show. However, keeping in view the serious health consequences, NGT in the order dated 28.01.2020 had set a deadline for completion of total remedial work by December, 2020.

As far as the Jal Jeevan Mission tender process is concerned, the official says it will be done by July and work for the same will begin thereafter.

Tanneries to blame Local residents blame the various tanneries in the region for the contamination of the water. They insist that these tanneries, located in the industrial areas of Sikanderpur Karan block's Banther, release chemicals in massive quantities into the canals near the villages. The water in these canals seep into the groundwater, further contaminating that, as well.

Rituraj Sahu, the managing director of the CETP (common effluent treatment plant) that filters contaminated water discharged by factories in the industrial area, says there are several factories and tanneries that release chemicals into nearby water bodies. To filter the chemical-laden water, Sahu says the CETP has a capacity of around 4.5 MLD (million litres per day).

"Currently, the plant filters around 1.5 MLD of contaminated water. None of it is released into the nearby canals of Banther," Sahu claims.

However, as per a report of the Central Pollution Control Board, 35.42 MLD of contaminated water is released into this canal.

The NGT, too, had questioned the Uttar Pradesh government about "inadequate" progress in provision of drinking water.

Nevertheless, the situation on ground remains poor for villagers. People still have to fetch drinking water from over 2km away.

"The situation has now become such that people are refusing to get their daughters married to anyone from our village," rued one villager.

(The author is a Unnao-based freelance journalist and a member of 101Reporters, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.)
Bhopal, July 5 : Madhya Pradesh Assembly Speaker's personal secretary Avdhesh Tiwari was removed from his post for alleged misuse of power to influence result in favour of his wife in panchayat election.

Tiwari's wife Krishnavati was one of the candidates for sarpanch post in Sura gram panchayat (under Gangeo block) in Rewa district.

Krishnavati Tiwari lost the polls by 20 votes, post which Avdhesh Tiwari, using political influence, forced presiding officer for recounting of votes.

After recounting, Krishnavati lost the polls to Deepti Dwivedi by a margin of 12 votes. However, Avdhesh Tiwari again forced the election team to recount the votes for the third time. Subsequently, after holding counting for the third time, Krishna Tiwari was declared winner by three votes.

The other candidates, who were the second and third runners up, accused the presiding officer and police officials deployed in Sura gram panchayat of favouring Krishna Tiwari.

Ironically, when people of the village raised objections alleging that election was not conducted in fair manner, Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) and in-charge of election did not even accept their application and left the polling booth.

Evidence showed that family members of Deepti Dwivedi tried to convince SDM and other election officials to conduct election in a fair manner and demanded recounting of votes again, but the officials were heard saying "nothing will happen now".

During the voting, presiding officer of polling booth was seen distributing tokens at 4 p.m. despite the Election Commission fixing voting time between 7.30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

After no response from the election officials or SDM and district collector, one of the candidates for the sarpanch post attempted suicide by consuming poison. He was rushed to Sanjay Gandhi Memorial hospital Rewa and after treatment was discharged from the medical facility.

Deepti Dwivedi was still hopeful that the administration will pay heed on her grievances.

"For the last three days, we have been trying to meet district collector and SDM but none is ready to meet us. They are under pressure of Avdesh Tiwari. We have all evidence that how unfair election was conducted here in Sura gram panchayat. We will stage a protest at district collector office, and if needed, will go the state election commission. A defeated candidate was declared winner, this is unacceptable," Deepti Dwivedi said.

Whether the Election Commission or the administration will pay heed to these allegations and will order for an inquiry into this matter is yet to be seen. However, soon after this controversy erupted, MP Assembly Speaker Girish Gautam asked Avdhesh Tiwari to resign for his post with immediate effect.

Avdesh Tiwari was removed from his post on Sunday.

The Panchayat polls were held on July 1.
Islamabad, July 5 : At least 10 Pakistani soldiers were injured, three of them seriously, when a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of security forces in North Waziristan district, officials said.

Officials said the convoy was going from Mirali to Miramshah, the district headquarters, when a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle blew himself up near one of the vehicles, reports Dawn news.

The attack was carried out near the Khadi market in Mirali.

Deputy Commissioner Shahid Ali Khan confirmed the suicide attack on the convoy, saying 10 security personnel were wounded.

Earlier, a police official said 15 personnel were injured in the attack.

Sources said three personnel were seriously wounded and shifted to a military hospital in Bannu garrison.

Soon after the attack, security forces cordoned off the area and a search operation was in progress.

Residents said Mirali-Miramshah road had been closed for traffic and no group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, Dawn reported.

The Inter-Services Public Relations did not issue any statement on the incident.

This was the second suicide attack on the security forces during the last one month.

A suicide bomber riding a motorcycle had attacked a convoy of security forces in the Razmak area of North Waziristan on May 30, injuring two soldiers and two children.

The attack occurred when the government was holding talks with the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan terror outfit which had declared a ceasefire for an indefinite period.
New Delhi, July 5 : Flexible workspace provider WeWork that exposed the personal information and selfies of thousands of people who visited its co-working facilities in the country, on Tuesday said it has fixed the bug that was part of a third-party software.

The vulnerability exposed visitors' names, phone numbers, email addresses and selfies.

In a statement to IANS, the company said that the bug was in a third party tool integrated with their website for a testing phase, at the peak of Covid-19 pandemic to reduce the possible transmission of infection due to human interaction via "our standard guest registration process".

"The application had a bug that allowed unintentional access to the basic visitor information, we have already transitioned out of it and have stopped using it across all our locations," a company spokesperson said.

"Member data confidentiality is of paramount importance to us and we are always vigilant of any such cases and act on it on priority," the spokesperson added.

The company, however, did not elaborate on how many visitors were impacted and whether it notified them about the data breach owing to the bug.

Security researcher Sandeep Hodkasia found unencrypted visitor data that got exposed owing to a bug in the check-in app on WeWork India's website.

"I recently uncovered a security vulnerability in the WeWork app that exposed all visitors' PII (Personally identifiable information) data," tweeted Hodkasia, who is Co-founder of AppSecure.

PII is any information about an individual maintained by an agency that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual's identity, such as name, social security number, date and place of birth, mother's maiden name, or biometric records and any other information that is linked to an individual, such as medical, educational, financial, and employment information.

WeWork India is currently present at more than 40 locations with over 62,000 members.
New York, July 5 : US scientists have discovered how a protein and enzymes interact to allow the hepatitis A virus to replicate. They also used a known drug to stop viral replication in an animal model.

While there is vaccination available for hepatitis A virus, there are currently no treatments for the disease that can exist for long periods of time in the environment, such as on our hands and in food and water.

Globally, tens of millions of hepatitis A infections occur each year. Symptoms include fever, abdominal pain, jaundice, nausea, and loss of appetite and sense of taste.

The team from University of North Carolina discovered that replication requires specific interactions between the human protein ZCCHC14, a protein that interacts with zinc and binds to RNA, and a group of enzymes called TENT4 poly(A) polymerases.

They also found that the oral compound RG7834 stopped replication at a key step, making it impossible for the virus to infect liver cells.

These findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are the first to demonstrate an effective drug treatment against hepatitis A in an animal model of the disease.

"Our research demonstrates that targeting this protein complex with an orally delivered, small-molecule therapeutic halts viral replication and reverses liver inflammation in a mouse model of hepatitis A, providing proof-of-principle for antiviral therapy and the means to stop the spread of hepatitis A in outbreak settings," said Stanley M. Lemon, Professor in the University's Department of Medicine.

"We found ZCCHC14 binds very specifically to a certain part of hepatitis A's RNA, the molecule that contains the virus's genetic information. And as a result of that binding, the virus is able to recruit TENT4 from the human cell," he added.

In normal human biology, TENT4 is part of an RNA-modification process during cell growth. Essentially, HAV hijacks TENT4 and uses it to replicate its own genome.

The study suggested that stopping TENT4 recruitment could stop viral replication and limit disease.

The team then tested the compound RG7834, and found that the oral compound dramatically diminished the virus's ability to cause liver injury in mice that had been genetically modified to develop hepatitis A infection and disease.

The research suggests the compound was safe at the dose used in this study.

While "this compound is a long way from human use", Lemon said, "it points the path to an effective way to treat a disease for which we have no treatment at all".
Patna, July 5 : Three persons of a family were killed after a speeding Scorpio rammed a bike in Bihar's Bettiah city of West Champaran district on Tuesday.

The accident occurred at Bettiah-Lauria main road near Parsa Madhia Chowk. After the accident, the alleged driver left the vehicle on the spot and fled. The deceased are identified as Shiv Mukhiya, Dashrath Mukhiya and Nutan Mukhiya.

The police said that Dashrath Mukhiya was suffering from illness and his son Shiv Mukhiya and his uncle Nutan Mukhiya were on the way to Motihari for treatment. When they reached Parsa Mathia Chowk, the SUV coming from the opposite direction rammed into them.

The local residents rescued them and admitted them to a private hospital where they died.

"We have seized the vehicle and efforts are on to identify the accused," said an officer of the town police station.
Beijing, July 5 : China has rejected claims by the US space chief that Beijing might be contemplating a "takeover" of the Moon as part of its military space program, and accused Washington of seeking to turn space into a "warfighting domain".

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told German newspaper Bild in an interview that the world must "must be very concerned" about China potentially "landing on the moon and saying, 'it's ours now and you stay out'".

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian responded to the accusations on Monday, saying that this was "not the first time that the head of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration has ignored the facts and spoken irresponsibly about China".

"The US side has constantly constructed a smear campaign against China's normal and reasonable outer space endeavours, and China firmly opposes such irresponsible remarks," he added, claiming that China has always stood against weaponisation and promoted a shared future of humanity in outer space, RT reported.

When asked to clarify what military purposes China could be pursuing in space, Nelson said that Chinese astronauts are learning how to destroy other countries' satellites, and claimed that the competition for the south pole of the Moon would be especially intense.

He also said that by 2035 Beijing might finish construction of its own Moon station and start experiments a year later.
Mumbai, July 5 : Deepika Padukone, who was enjoying a vacation in the United States, ended her stay here as chief guest at the 10th edition of the Konkani Sammelan in San Jose, California.

Hosted in the heart of Silicon Valley, at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, the three-day event laced with performances, music shows, seminars, food and the works, celebrates and promotes the Konkani cultural heritage and an initiative to keep the culture alive across the world.

The Bollywood star later took to her social media to thank the Konkani Association of California.

She posted a few pictures in ethnic outfit and wrote in the caption: "A people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. Thank you #KAOCA and to the people of my community for your love, warmth and blessings. I couldn't be more proud (sic)."

Deepika was joined by her parents and husband Ranveer Singh, who enjoyed his first tryst with the full-blown event that also saw an opening performance by Shankar Mahadevan.

In a few viral videos, Ranveer can be seen making a brief appearance on the stage as he impressed the audience with a few lines in Konkani. Sitting beside Deepika in an ethnic outfit, he said "I'm really happy" in Konkani.

Soon after, the room filled with a loud cheer. Deepika also cheered her husband and said, "Well done". Towards the end, Ranveer said, "Dev bare karu (May God bless you)" and exited the stage.

-- Syndicated from IANS
Kolkata, July 5 : Instances of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee being compared with iconic souls are rising among the Trinamool Congress legislators.

After party MLA Nirmal Maji compared her with Maa Sarada and Allah, another legislator Biswajit Das has likened the chief minister to Rani Rashmoni -- the legendary philanthropist and founder of iconic Dakhineswar Kali temple near Kolkata, famous for its association with Ramakrishna Paramhansa.

Incidentally, Biswajit Das, the MLA from Bagda Assembly constituency in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, is a turncoat BJP legislator from the state who joined Trinamool Congress soon after the 2021 West Bengal Assembly polls. BJP has already filed a case in the Calcutta High Court demanding Das's disqualification as an MLA under the anti-defection law.

At a party rally in his own constituency late Monday evening, Das said that just as the memories of Rani Rashmoni are restored in the hearts of people even so many years after her demise, so will be Mamata Banerjee even after centuries. "The way our chief minister has worked for the poor and downtrodden is simply exemplary. I have talked to so many people before and after talking to them I always witness the shadow of Rani Rashmoni in Mamata Banerjee," he said.

According to BJP state spokesman in West Bengal, Shamik Bhattacharya, even after joining Trinamool Congress betraying the people of Bagda constituency who voted for him as a BJP candidate, Das is yet to make a place for himslef in the state's ruling party. "So, he is resorting to such flattery with home coming to the forefront. The example of Nirmal Maji comparing the chief minister with Maa Sarada seems to have encouraged Das," he said.

Now again the same question is surfacing that even after such flattery comments causing embarrassment for Trinamool Congress in public, why is the chief minister silent on this issue. After Belur Math, the global headquarter of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, issued a strong rejoinder to Nirmal Maji's comments comparing chief minister with Maa Sarada, wide and spiritual consort of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, a section of Trinamool Congress leadership censured him. However, the chief minister herself maintained a total silence in the matter.

Das shifted from Trinamool Congress to BJP in 2019 and got elected as a BJP candidate from Bagda Assembly constituency in the 2021 elections. However, in August 2021, that is within three months of the election he joined Trinamool Congress claiming that he was not comfortable with BJP. However, officially in the records of the West Bengal assembly, Das continues to be a BJP legislator.
New Delhi, July 5 : The Congress on Tuesday came down heavily on the BJP over its alleged links with apprehended LeT terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir and killers of Kanhaiya Lal whose pictures with BJP leaders.

Addressing a press conference here, Congress Communication In charge, Pawan Khera sought answers from the BJP.

He said: "Two incidents in the past week have exposed the two-faced BJP. First, we learned that one of the accused in Kanhaiya Lal's horrific murder in Udaipur was a BJP worker. Then it emerged that a captured Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist in Jammu and Kashmir was not only a BJP office-bearer who had previously been captured in photos with Home Minister Amit Shah but was also planning to attack the Amarnath Yatra." It is "shocking" that the BJP, a party that loses no opportunity to preach about nationalism, has members and office-bearers who are deeply implicated in violent anti-national activities, he added.

He alleged that there is long list of BJP functionaries who have been caught participating at the behest of Pakistani agencies in terrorism and espionage.

Former BJP leader and ex-sarpanch Tariq Ahmad Mir was arrested two years ago for procuring weapons for Hizbul Mujahideen commander Naveed Babu, he alleged. In 2017, the Madhya Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) arrested the BJP IT Cell member Dhruv Saxena along with ten accomplices for spying for the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, Balram Singh, a Bajrang Dal leader from Madhya Pradesh, was arrested in a terror funding case.

He added that in 2017, a special court of the NIA sentenced Assam BJP leader Niranjan Hojai to life imprisonment for participating in a Rs 1,000 crore scam to divert government funds to support a militant group.

The BJP has also knowingly given a ticket to Masood Azhar's acolyte Mohammad Farooq Khan to contest the Srinagar municipal election from Ward 33. Khan was previously a member of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front and the Harkatul Mujahideen.

Khera said they appeal to the people to India to see through the BJP's fake nationalism and its disturbing willingness to flirt with anti-national forces.

"What kind of an ideology finds place for both Nupur Sharma and Riyaz Attari? And accommodates radicals like Talib Hussain? Is the BJP inspired by the alliance between the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League in which extremists of all religions banded together to prevent nationalist forces like the Congress to come to power?" he added Denying any such links, the BJP accused the Congress of playing politics on the recent incidents.
BEIJING, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday sent a congratulatory message to President of the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria Abdelmadjid Tebboune on the 60th anniversary of the victory of the Algerian War of Independence.

Sixty years ago, the Algerian people realized national independence and people's liberation after going through an arduous struggle, opening a glorious chapter of the liberation movements of the Arabian and African people, Xi said.

The Chinese government and the Chinese people provided support and assistance to Algeria's independence revolution, and the two countries and their people had forged a profound friendship during the struggles, he added.

In recent years, political mutual trust between the two countries has been strengthened continuously and bilateral practical cooperation has been fruitful, taking the China-Algeria comprehensive strategic partnership to ever new levels, he said.

Xi also said that he highly values the development of China-Algeria relations, and stands ready to work together with President Tebboune to push forward bilateral communication and cooperation in all fields within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative to benefit both countries and their people.

On the same day, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang sent a congratulatory message to Algerian Prime Minister Ayman Benabderrahmane.

Since the two countries established diplomatic ties 64 years ago, bilateral relations have been developing healthily and steadily, Li said, noting that he is willing to work with Benabderrahmane to expand and deepen mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries in various fields, enrich the content of the China-Algeria comprehensive strategic partnership, and continuously improve the well-being of the people of the two countries.
Sanaa, July 5 : Three Yemeni soldiers were killedin a drone strike launched by the Houthi militia in the country's southern province of Dhalea, a government official said.

"An explosive-laden drone of the Houthi group struck a security site near Qatabah district in the northern parts of the government-controlled province of Dhalea," the official told Xinhua news agency late Monday.

He confirmed that the drone attack resulted in the killing of three security personnel and the injury of two others.

"An ambulance rushed to the bombing site to rescue the injured soldiers but were targeted by the Houthi snipers stationed in the area," he noted.

The Houthis, which control large swathes of northern Yemen, are yet to comment on the attack.

Since April 2, the warring parties in Yemen have been abiding by a nationwide ceasefire.

Although the truce has largely been upheld, the internationally-recognized government and the Houthi group frequently trade accusations of violations.

Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014 when the Iran-backed Houthi militia seized control of several northern provinces and forced the internationally-recognised government out of the capital Sanaa.

The war has since killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 4 million, and pushed the country to the brink of starvation.
New Delhi, July 5 : A group consisting of 15 retired judges of various high courts, 77 retired bureaucrats and 25 retired armed forces officers have issued an open statement saying that 'unfortunate and unprecedented comments' were made by a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justices Surya Kant and Justice J.B. Pardiwala, while hearing a petition by former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma, which has sent shockwaves in the country and outside.

The statement said the observations, simultaneously relayed by all news channels in high decibel, are not in sync with judicial ethos and by no stretch these observations, which are not part of the judicial order, can be sanctified on the plank of judicial propriety and fairness.

"Such outrageous transgressions are without parallel in the annals of judiciary. Nupur Sharma sought access to the justice system before the highest court as that court alone could consider grant of relief being sought. The observations that have no connect jurisprudentially with the issue raised in the petition, transgressed in an unprecedented manner all canons of dispensation of justice," said the statement.

It added that such observation, perceptionally there is virtual exoneration of the dastardliest beheading at Udaipur in broad daylight. "The observations also graduate to the most unjustifiable degree that this was only to fan an agenda... In the annals of judiciary, the unfortunate comments have no parallel and are an indelible scar on the justice system of the largest democracy," said the three-page open statement.

The officers' said Sharma was de facto denied access to the judiciary and in the process, there was an outrage on the Preamble, spirit and essence of the Constitution.

"The observations, judgmental in nature, on issues not before the court, are crucification of the essence and spirit of the Indian Constitution. Forcing a petitioner by such damning observations, pronouncing her guilty without trial, and denial of access to justice on issue raised in the petition, can never be a facet of a democratic society", added the statement. Sharma had moved the top court seeking clubbing of FIRs, registered in various parts of the country, into one FIR at Delhi in the matter connected with her remarks against the Prophet Muhammed.

The statement said the allegations constitute only one offence for which separate prosecutions (FIRs) were launched and Article 20 (2) of the Constitution prohibits prosecution and punishment more than once for the same offence. "Article 20 falls under Part III of the Constitution and is a guaranteed fundamental right. The Supreme Court in a number of cases including Arnab Goswamy vs. Union of India (2020) and T.T. Anthony vs. State of Kerala clearly laid down the law that there can be no second FIR and consequently there can be no fresh investigation in respect to the second FIR on the same issue. Such an action is violative of fundamental rights as guaranteed under Article 20(2) of the Constitution", it said.

"Such an approach of the Supreme Court deserves no applause and impacts the very sanctity and honour of the highest court of land", it added.

The coordinators are Justice P.N. Ravindran former judge of Kerala High Court, and Anand Bose, former chief secretary, Kerala
Colombo, July 5 : Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that India had to limit the loan assistance given to the crisis-hit island nation in the wake of the recent global crises, including the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war.

"Due to the recent global crises, this situation has become more acute and we, who were in the frying pan, have now fallen into the oven. Due to the Ukraine-Russia war, our problem has worsened. What has happened now is the addition of an international crises on top of our crisis," Wickremesinghe said while addressing Parliament on Monday.

"This situation is not unique to us. This affects other countries as well. India and Indonesia are also affected by this global crisis. Therefore, India has had to limit the loan assistance that they have given to us," he explained.

The premier went on to say that a donor-aid conference would be organised bringing together India, China and Japan, the friendly countries that have helped Sri Lanka in the wake of the worst economic crisis since it gained independence from the British in 1948.

The conference comes as the country is preparing a four-year comprehensive loan assistance programme after getting the approval of IMF Board of directors.

Wickremesinghe warned that unlike previous occasions where Sri Lanka held talks with the IMF as a developing country, now it is "in the negotiations as a bankrupt country".

He said the country's economy is presently shrinking and according to central bank statistics, the current economic growth rate is between negative four and negative five.

"According to IMF statistics, it is between negative six and negative seven. This is a serious situation. If we make a determined journey along this road map, we can achieve an economic growth rate of negative one by the end of 2023," he said.

"By 2025, our aim is to create a surplus in the primary budget. Our effort is to raise the economic growth rate to a stable level. Our expectation is to establish a stable economic base by 2026." According to the Prime Minister, Sri Lanka has to pay $3.4 billion between June and December this year, $5.8 billion in 2023, $4.9 billion in 2024, $6.2 billion in 2025, $4.0 billion in 2026 and $4.3 billion in 2027.

The total debt burden of the government at the end of 2021 was 17.5 trillion LKR and by March 2022, it increased to 21.6 trillion LKR, he added.
Ottawa, July 5 : A final settlement agreement, the largest in Canada's history, has been signed on compensation for the First Nations children and families who suffered because of the discriminatory underfunding of services.

Indigenous Services Canada said that the next step is to bring the final settlement agreement, valued at C$20 billion ($16 billion), to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal asking for the latter's confirmation that the settlement satisfies its orders on compensation, reports Xinhua news agency.

The final settlement agreement will then be brought to the Federal Court of Canada for approval.

If approved, the process to implement the settlement will begin.

After the agreement is approved by the Federal Court and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, the groups eligible for compensation will include children who were removed from their homes under the First Nations Child and Family Services program between April 1, 1991 and March 31, 2022; children who were impacted by the government's narrow definition of Jordan's Principle between December 12, 2007 and November 2, 2017; children who did not receive or were delayed in receiving an essential public service or product between April 1, 1991 and Decembers 11, 2007; as well as caregiving parents or caregiving grandparents of the children.

Since announcing agreements-in-principle in January, the Canadian government, the Assembly of First Nations and counsel representing the plaintiffs in the Moushoom and Trout class actions have worked collaboratively over the past six months to reach this final agreement.
Toronto, July 5 : Painkillers are not always beneficial as patients recover from minor surgery, and may also be the reason behind the surge in the current opioid crisis, according to a study published in The Lancet.

The study led by a team at the McGill University in Canada examined the results of 47 randomised clinical trials in patients discharged after undergoing a minor or moderate procedure, ranging from molar extraction to foot surgery.

The findings showed that opioid prescribing after recovering and getting hospital discharge post a surgery does not reduce pain intensity but does increase adverse events.

Opioid prescribing was associated with increased risk of vomiting and other adverse events, including nausea, constipation, dizziness, and drowsiness.

Dr. Julio Fiore, an assistant professor at McGill suggested that clinicians can consider prescribing opioid-free analgesia in these surgical settings.

Avoiding opioids could in many cases improve a patients' recovery experience, while helping to mitigate the well-documented perils of opioid addiction, Fiore was quoted as saying to CBC News.

"We really expect that these findings encourage changes in prescribing practices. After all, like the prescription of opioids, like after discharge, our research showed that it does not seem to be as beneficial for patients as previously believed," he said.

However, Fiore noted there is a need for more research involving the prescription of opioids after major surgeries to determine best practices.

Of the studies examined, 30 involved minor procedures (most of which were dental) and 17 involved procedures of a more moderate nature on, for instance, a shoulder or foot.

Among the opioids most commonly prescribed by surgeons are oxycodone, hydromorphone, tramadol and codeine, according to the researchers.
Ramallah, July 5 : Palestine has rejected the results of a ballistic probe by a US team into the bullet that killed veteran Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May in the West Bank.

On Monday, the Israeli army announced that the investigation could not determine the party responsible for the killing of the Al Jazeera journalist, reports Xinhua news agency.

Palestinian presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement early Tuesday that the Palestinian side "holds Israel fully responsible for the killing of Abu Akleh" and called on the US "to maintain its credibility", reports Xinhua news agency.

On July 2, the bullet that killed Abu Akleh was received by Michael Wenzel, the U.S security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, for a professional and independent ballistic examination.

The ballistic test was conducted in an Israeli forensic laboratory with experienced representatives from the US attending all the stages of the test to determine the weapon from which it was fired, the Israeli military said in a statement.

"Despite the efforts made, it has been found that in light of the condition of the bullet and the quality of the markings on it, it is not possible to determine whether the bullet was fired from the weapon tested or not," the statement added.

By summarising both Israeli and Palestinian investigations, the US security coordinator said in a statement that gunfire from Israeli positions was "likely responsible" for the journalist's death but no reason was found "to believe that this was intentional".

Abu Rudeineh said that the Palestinian side "won't accept, under any circumstances, the tampering with the outcome of the Palestinian investigation".

"We will pursue the case of her (Abu Akleh) assassination in international courts, especially before the Criminal Court," he added.

Abu Akleh, 51, a Palestinian Christian born in Jerusalem, was shot in the head on May 11 while covering an Israeli army incursion into the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.

The incident drew widespread Palestinian, Arab and international condemnation.
Beijing, July 5 : Canadian officials say they have been barred from the trial of billionaire Xiao Jianhua by Chinese authorities.

The Chinese-Canadian tycoon's trial was said to have started on Monday, five years after he disappeared from a luxury Hong Kong hotel, the BBC reported.

His case remains shrouded in secrecy, and the authorities have not specified what charges he faces.

Chinese authorities have yet to comment publicly on the trial, or said where it is taking place.

On Tuesday, in a statement to reporters, Canada's Embassy in China said their consular officials had made "several requests" to attend the trial proceedings, BBC reported.

"Our attendance was denied by Chinese authorities." The trial was due to begin on Monday, the Embassy said earlier.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Monday he was unaware of the situation, when asked about the trial during a daily press briefing.

In 2017, Xiao was whisked away from the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong, where he was understood to have been living at the time.

His family filed a missing person's report with Hong Kong authorities after he disappeared, but withdrew it a day later, saying they had "regained contact" with Xiao.

Hong Kong police said surveillance footage at the scene showed Xiao did not leave the hotel under duress, but refused to release the footage.

Xiao later issued a statement that was run on the front page of a popular newspaper saying he was receiving medical treatment abroad. He also praised the "rule of law" in China and said that he had not been kidnapped and taken to the Chinese mainland.
Bengaluru, July 5 : The Congress on Tuesday demanded a judicial inquiry in the police sub inspector (PSI) recruitment scam after a top IPS officer was arrested. The BJP hit back saying the developments in the case happened because of the state home minister's action.

While former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah called for a judicial inquiry overseen by a sitting judge of the High Court, Karnataka Congress unit president D.K. Shivakumar demanded the resignations of the chief minister and home minister.

Speaking to the media on Tuesday, Shivakumar accused the state government of trying to cover up the scam and said Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai and Home Minister Araga Jnanendra should resign on moral grounds.

"The current developments have cast a black spot on Karnataka's reputation. The spot might seem small, but it has tarnished the image of the state and its administration," Shivakumar said.

The state Congress chief said that if the chief minister and home minister fail to resign, then the Governor must step in and dismiss the state government.

Stating that 1.2 lakh aspirants had applied for 545 PSI vacancies, Shivakumar alleged that around 300 appointments were made in return of bribes totalling between Rs 300 - Rs 500 crore. He alleged that only those who had paid bribes were arrested while the political bigwigs behind the scam had been let off.

Meanwhile, in a counterattack on the opposition charges, the Karnataka Chief Minister said the Congress had no moral authority to demand the home minister's resignation. "As soon as the scam came to light, we ordered an inquiry and handed over the case to the CID. It's because of the home minister's sincerity that the crime has been exposed.

Pointing out that 50 accused persons, including 20 police officials have been arrested for the scam, the chief minister said his government has not tried to save anyone.

On Monday, Criminal Investigation Department (CID) sleuths arrested senior IPS officer, Additional DGP Amrit Paul, in connection with the scam.
Navsari : July 5 (IANS) Though BJP's Jalalpore MLA R.C. Patel has expressed his wish to be re-nominated for a sixth term, if left to state unit president C.R. Patil, he will ensure that a replacement is found, as per sources.

The five-time MLA's statement that he was interested in getting a sixth term but the party does not seem interested has taken many by surprise with some party workers eyeing his seat.

While addressing the Koli Community meeting on Sunday in Navsari, Patel said: "I am 80 per cent interested in re-contesting Assembly elections for the sixth time, but the party is only 20 per cent interested in renominating me." Party sources and political opponents are of the view that if C.R. Patil will have a say in selection of candidate, he will field a new face.

Patel belongs to the Koli community, and the community dominates not only Jalalpore, but also Navsari and Gandevi constituencies. If the party plans to drop Patel, it will have to select heavyweights from the community, or the three seats' prospects will be in doldrums, party sources say.

In 1998, Patel defeated Congress Stalwart C.D Patel with 1,692 votes, with every election the margin increased, in 2007 margin was 33,161, 2012 - 17867 and in 2017 25,664 votes margin.

Navsari District BJP President Bhurabhai Shah is confident of winning all four seats falling in the district. So far R.C. Patel's renomination is concerned, Shah said: "It is too early to say about candidates, on each seat many party workers are aspiring to contest, only the party parliamentary board will decide whether to renominate him or not." BJP is doing injustice to Koli community, though Thakor and Koli community population together is 50 per cent of the state, the party is nominating hardly 12 to 14 Koli candidates, whereas 45 candidates from upper caste Patidars, Congress has decided to give due importance to Koli community and its candidates, claimed Shailesh Patel, president of the Navsari Congress Committee.

Sources from the BJP said: "R.C. Patel's statement has come because of synergy between him and C.R. Patil is not good. In 2017 Assembly elections, C.R. Patil wanted to replace him, in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, R.C. Patel has campaigned that the party should nominate Koli candidate for the Navsari Lok Sabha seat." Sources said though R.C. Patel was five-term MLA, he was not made minister in Bhupendra Patel cabinet, whereas first time tribal MLA Gandevi constituency Naresh Patel was made minister. R.C. Patel was asked to continue as Deputy Whip of the party, it was clear injustice to Jalalpore MLA. So, if he is advocating for his candidature, there is nothing wrong in it.
Jakarta, July 5 : A search and rescue operation was underway on Tuesday for 15 Indonesian fishermen who went missing after their boat capsized in the Arafura Sea, an official said on Tuesday.

The boat, KM Setia Makmur 06, was hit by huge waves during poor weather when it was sailing in the rough waters on July 2, Darmawan Widi, spokesman of the search and rescue office in Indonesia's Papua province, told Xinhua news agency.

The operation was launched after the office received the information about the incident, and several other fishing boats near the site were asked to help, said the official.

"Ten people have been rescued safely, but 15 others remain missing," he said.

The search for the victims was also conducted by air and a plane of the Indonesian Air Force was involved, according to the official.

"Today, a navy's warship would also be deployed to the scene," he said.

The fishing boat departed from a seaport in Dobo, the capital of Kepulauan Aru (Aru islands) district of Maluku province, on June 24, he added.
Jaipur, July 5 : Referring to various media reports, Rajasthan Congress chief Govind Singh Dotasra on Tuesday wrote a letter to DG, NIA demanding a thorough probe into the BJP's alleged connections with terrorists.

In the letter, he said, "As per media reports, Mohammad Riyaz Attari (one of the prime accused in the Udaipur killing) has been a member of BJP who has been attending different events of the party. He has attended many party events and BJP workers were seen welcoming these leaders. Photos of the perpetrators of this incident with BJP leaders are going viral. Media reports say that he was an active worker of BJP." According to the latest news published in the media, a terrorist caught in Jammu was the chief of the BJP's IT cell. What is their collusion with terrorists, he questioned and urged the agency to probe the matter.

Dotasra also commented on BJP leaders visiting Udaipur after their return from their Hyderabad meeting.

He said, "Bharatiya Janata Party has no concern with the public. There is a blind race going on among them in which they just have to become the chief ministerial candidate, so they have neither any feelings left in them nor do they have any vision for the state. This is the reason why BJP leader is going to Kanhaiya Lal's house after 7 days of incident enjoying their Hyderabad tour. CM cancelled his Jodhpur tour and reached Udaipur; DG, CS, ACS Home and I myself went to Udaipur with CM Saheb but no BJP leader reached." "Gulabchand Kataria is a local MLA and Leader of Opposition, it was his responsibility to stay in Udaipur in such a crisis and help the government in controlling the situation, but he went to Hyderabad the very next day after the June 28 incident," he commented.

"Now all BJP leaders including Vasundhara Raje, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat are competing to go to Kanhaiya Lal's house because of politics. The Chief Minister had called an all-party meeting so that the situation could be discussed and peace could be restored in Rajasthan, but neither the Leader of the Opposition, nor the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, nor the BJP State President came to that meeting. Today the people of Rajasthan are compelled to think what good will such irresponsible opposition do to Rajasthan," Dotasra stated.

"The incident happened on June 28. Rajasthan BJP leaders should tell where they were and why were they missing after this incident when the whole of Rajasthan was in sorrow. Then pictures of them celebrating in five star hotels of Hyderabad were coming out. Now they are going to Udaipur as political tourists and talking nonsense," he added.
New Delhi, July 5 : JK Peace Forum, a Kashmiri organisation, has thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the approval and allocation of a separate Budget towards the return and rehabilitation of the Kashmiri Migrants.

The budgetary allocation will be effective from March 2022.

The Budget allocated for the year 2021-2022 is Rs 825 crore, which is 2.5 per cent of the total Budget of the union territory.

Satish Mahaldar, chairman of the JK Peace Forum said this is over and above the existing relief and Cash Assistance.

This is for the first time in 32 years that a separate Budget has been introduced for the Kashmiri migrants, who are living in exile since 1990.

"This will ensure that no migrant or refugee is made destitute, denied fundamental rights or forced to live in fear. The Kashmiri Migrants would have a greater access to justice and greater respect for human rights, human dignity and the rule of law." The benefits of the Budget are to be celebrated and shared, while ensuring no community member is left behind, said Mahaldar, adding that it is a part of the human settlement policy of the UT and Centre. The forum also thanked J&K Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha.
New Delhi, July 5 : The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday filed a 5000-page charge sheet in connection with MGNREGA fund scam involving suspended IAS officer Pooja Singhal and others before a special Jharkhand court.

Based on documentary evidence, statements, bank transactions and few digital evidence, the ED has named Singhal, mining officials and others as accused in the charge sheet.

This is the first charge sheet running over 5000 pages in the matter.

Allowing the charge sheet, the court fixed the matter for the next date of hearing.

Singhal, the mining secretary in Jharkhand, was dismissed from her post soon after her arrest in the matter.

In May, the ED grilled Ravi Kejriwal, the former Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) treasurer in this connection.

The ED had scanned last three years transactions of Singhal to check the suspicious money trail if any. Documents of all her properties were also scanned.

Earlier, four cars belonging to Singhal's charted accountant Suman Kumar were seized. The source said that someone else had made the payments for luxury cars, which was suspicious. A few incriminating documents were also recovered by the central agency.

During the investigation, the ED had recovered Rs 19 crore in cash said to be Singhal's money.

Statements of Singhal and her husband have been recorded in the matter.
Mumbai, July 5 : Popular TV host and actor Gitikka Ganju Dhar, who was last seen in the Sushmita Sen starrer 'Aarya 2', will now share screen space with the cast of much-awaited Aamir Khan starrer, 'Laal Singh Chaddha'.

The movie is scheduled to release on August 11. Along with Aamir Khan, it also stars Kareena Kapoor.

Gitikka shares her experience working in this film: "At first, when I received a call for audition, I was pleasantly intrigued. When I was confirmed as a part of the cast, I could not believe it. When I began to shoot, I was super impressed with the execution of the production. It was a very professional atmosphere with everyone geared towards filming a world-class movie." "The detailing of every aspect of the production was exemplary. I am lucky that the first filmic experience of my career is with Aamir Khan Productions," she said.

"I could have not asked for a better experience in terms of learning and execution, both. It was inspiring and endearing to watch everybody work hard, very hard to inject magic into Laal Singh Chaddha." On sharing screen space with Aamir Khan, she comments: "I was a big Aamir Khan fan when Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak was released. I told him this. I also told him that my meagre scoring in the Board Examination was due to the 'QSQT' mania that most Indians had experienced." "Well, the experience of working with Aamir was precious. I observed, I learnt and I was full of admiration for his approach as an actor. He is full of passion and is tireless in his endeavour to translate the larger vision of the film onto every scene and every shot," she concludes.

Some of the popular shows hosted by Gitikka on television include Meri Saheli, Zaike Ka Safar, Sehat Ki Rasoi and Chitrahaar.
Chennai, July 5 : In what is being seen as a laudable gesture, the makers of Rakshit Shetty-starrer 'Charlie 777' on Tuesday announced that they would be contributing five per cent of the film's profits to NGOs across the country that have been dedicatedly working towards the welfare of Indie dogs and animals.

In a statement, actor Rakshit Shetty, who played the lead in the film, said that the contributions would be made in the name of Charlie.

That apart, he also said that they would be sharing 10 per cent of the film's profits with every individual who had advanced the culmination of the film.

The actor said, "It has been 25 days since '777 Charlie' has reached you, and it has been receiving unsurpassed love since. Our happiness sees no bounds as we begin to grasp the kind of admiration and recognition this film has earned us.

"We believe that the only way to celebrate this success is by celebrating the multitude of people who have tirelessly worked in union in bringing this film on screen. We have therefore resolved to share 10 per cent of the profit that '777 Charlie' makes, with every individual who has advanced the culmination of this film.

"As the makers of '777 Charlie', we are aware of the kind of effort and resource that goes into creating a happy and safe environment for the animals around us. In this light, we would like to contribute 5 per cent of the profit, in the name of Charlie, to NGOs across the country that have been dedicatedly working towards the welfare of Indie dogs and animals.

"Using our light to ignite someone else's, will illuminate the world. Thanks to each one of you for lighting our world with your love."
Singapore/New Delhi, July 5 : The Singapore government is planning to introduce additional tough measures to safeguard consumers from the crypto meltdown, including restrictions on retail trading.

Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister and Minister in Charge of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), said that the recent market conditions clearly demonstrate the risks with prices of several cryptocurrencies dipping significantly, reports ZDNet.

The country, known for a crypto-friendly atmosphere, is now mulling over additional rules in cryptocurrency trading "necessary to safeguard the general public".

"MAS has been carefully considering the introduction of additional consumer protection safeguards. These may include placing limits on retail participation and rules on the use of leverage when transacting in cryptocurrencies," Shanmugaratnam said in a written response to a parliamentary question.

The Singapore authority in January this year restricted the marketing and advertising of cryptocurrency services in public places.

Since then, crypto providers have removed cryptocurrency ATMs and advertisements from public areas and public transport venues.

The European Union last week reached a provisional agreement on cryptocurrency regulations that aimed to "protect investors and preserve financial stability".

MAS in May announced plans to pilot use cases of asset tokenisation and assess the feasibility of autonomous trading powered by Blockchain technology.

In India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last week slammed unbacked crypto assets (such as Bitcoin), stablecoins and decentralised finance (DeFi) and crypto asset trading platforms, underscoring the need for regulatory guardrails to ensure financial stability and consumer and investor protection.

In its annual "Financial Stability Report" (FSR) 2022, India's central bank and regulatory body said that the early ramifications are reflected in the crypto ecosystem with one stablecoin losing almost all its value and another depegging from the US dollar.

It referred to the collapse of TerraUSD and Luna cryptocurrencies that threw many investors into a panic in May. In a crash, the once bullish TerraUSD and sister coin Luna had lost almost all their value, sending shock waves across the world.

RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said that cryptocurrencies are a clear danger to the financial systems, adding that the world must be mindful of the emerging risks on the horizon.
Sydney, July 5 : A team of international researchers may have uncovered the cause of the neurological conditions seen in patients with long-Covid, such as brain fog.

The team from Swinburne University of Technology and La Trobe University in Australia and Luxembourg University in Luxembourg revealed that fragments of proteins from the SARS-CoV-2 virus can form amyloid clumps in the brain that look similar to the amyloids found in patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Further, the study published in the journal Nature Communications showed that these amyloids are highly toxic to brain cells.

To understand, the team designed, performed and analysed the biochemical flow cytometry assays used to determine the mechanism of brain cell death triggered by the amyloids and assisted with physical characterisation of the amyloids at the Australian Synchrotron.

"If further studies are able to prove that the formation of these amyloids is causing long-Covid then anti-amyloid drugs developed to treat Alzheimer's might be used to treat some of the neurological symptoms of long-Covid," said Dr Mirren Charnley, a postdoctoral researcher at Swinburne.

Long-Covid is marked by neurological symptoms, such as memory loss, sensory confusion, severe headaches, and even stroke.

These neurological symptoms are similar to the early stages of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, which are characterised by the presence of clumps of ordered proteins a" known as amyloids - in the brain.

The long-Covid symptoms can persist for months after the infection is over.

While there is evidence that the virus can enter the brain of infected people, the precise mechanisms causing these neurological symptoms are unknown.
Moscow, July 5 : Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has denied media reports suggesting that Chinese President Xi Jinping refused to visit Russia.

"This is not true. This is completely untrue. The fact is that certain Covid restrictions in China continue, and this is absolutely normal, and this should be treated with understanding," RT quoted Peskov as saying.

"And as all these relaxations of these restrictions allow, of course, all visits will be carried out," he said.

Earlier, the media reported that the Chinese President refused to visit Moscow in response to the invitation from his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

As reported, the Russian leader invited Xi during a telephone call on June 15.

Peskov said that the country's Ministry of Defence has its own plans in connection with the launch of the process of Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

"Such options are being worked out not in the Kremlin, but in the Ministry. We have already said many times that there are relevant plans there and work is being done to ensure our security," Peskov said.

Thus, he answered the question whether the Kremlin is considering the option of placing a NATO base on the border with Russia and how Moscow can respond in this regard.

At the same time, Peskov added that Putin had already assessed the entry of Finland and Sweden into NATO.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
New Delhi, July 5 : India's Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra on Tuesday spoke to Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Ali Bagheri Kani and discussed various bilateral issues, according to a Ministry of External Affairs statement.

"The two sides discussed various elements of bilateral relations, including progress on the Chabahar Port. The Foreign Secretary underscored India's commitment to strengthen bilateral cooperation with Iran in addressing shared opportunities and challenges. Both sides also discussed international and regional issues including Afghanistan," the statement said.

The discussion comes soon after Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian visited India in June and met his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar. He also paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"Was happy to receive Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian for a useful discussion on further development of Centuries-old civilizational links between India and Iran. Our relations have mutually benefited both the countries and have promoted regional security and prosperity," the Prime Minister tweeted after the meeting.
Beijing, July 5 : The founder of Geely, China's private automaker and Volvo's parent company, Li Shufu has acquired the Chinese smartphone brand Meizu.

Xingji Technology, a smartphone company launched by Geely's founder and chairman last September, acquired a controlling stake of 79.09 per cent from it.

"The two parties will work together to provide users with core products of multi-terminal, full-scene, and immersive integration experience," the company said in a statement.

Founded in 2003 by Jack Wong, Meizu began as a manufacturer of MP3 players and later MP4 players.

In 2008, Meizu moved its focus to smartphones.

"Through the layout of the mobile phone business, the deep integration of the consumer electronics industry and the automotive industry, and the creation of a cross-border user ecological chain, super synergy can be achieved," Shufu said.

Post this acquisition, Meizu Technology will continue to operate as an independent brand.

Huang Zhang, as the product strategy consultant of Meizu Technology, will continue to contribute to the development of Meizu Technology, and the top management team of Meizu Technology will remain stable.

Zhang said that in the past two decades, Meizu Technology has always adhered to the dedication and ultimate craftsmanship spirit, and maintained the persistent pursuit of products.

After the strategic investment in Meizu Technology, the two parties will cooperate in-depth, give full play to the experience and accumulation of years of consumer electronics research and development, and work together to become the world's first full-ecological technology company with multi-terminal, full-scene, and immersive core technologies.
Islamabad, July 5 : Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has slammed former Prime Minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan for continuing the "politics of hate and intolerance", which he said has divided the whole nation and inflicted damage that might never go away.

Asif said Imran Khan's politics and narrative based on "hate" against all those who are against him has inflicted a great damage.

"Imran Khan only divided Pakistanis, not only in Pakistan but also in abroad. That is why a person in Canada abuses us. He did not even leave the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) mosque," said the Defence Minister while speaking at the floor of the National Assembly.

"He (Imran Khan) spreads hate everywhere. He could not give love to his blood relatives, how can he give love to this nation," Asif asked.

Referring to the incident at Majid-e-Nabvi, where PML-N and other political leaders were hurled with abuses and physically assaulted by supporters of Imran Khan, Asif said, "People involved in the incident in Masjid-e-Nabvi were mostly British citizens. There are wealthy people from different countries. Their loyalties are shared." "I respect them but they should not damage the country they were born in," he said.

Imran Khan is also facing criticism for spreading a false narrative of a US-led regime change, through which his government was ousted from power, while on the other hand his party attempts to do damage control with Washington.

Pakistan President Arif Alvi recently gave a presidential protocol to the new US Ambassador to Pakistan, Donald Blome, when he welcomed him in a grand way as Blome took office in Islamabad.

As President Alvi is from Imran Khan's political party PTI, the ministers in the Shehbaz Sharif government have slammed the party for playing a double game of spreading false anti-US narrative and at the same time welcoming the US Ambassador with a presidential protocol.

"It was President Alvi who refused to administer the oath of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and said that his conscience did not allow him to accept Sharif as Prime Minister because he was brought into power following a US-led regime change conspiracy. Now the same President welcomes the Ambassador from the same country, which allegedly kicked Imran Khan, chairman of Alvi's party, out of power," said Kamran Shahid, senior political analyst.

"I wonder which conscience of the President allowed him to do this," Shahid added.
Seoul, July 5 : South Korea on Tuesday started transporting the country's first lunar orbiter to the US ahead of next month's launch using a SpaceX rocket, officials said.

South Korea plans to launch the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, also known as Danuri, aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 8.24 a.m. on August 3, Yonhap reported.

According to the Ministry of Science and ICT, Danuri was sent from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute in Daejeon, 160 kilometres south of Seoul, to Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, in a specially-designed container.

The orbiter will be flown to the Orlando International Airport and arrive at the Florida space centre on Thursday. It will later undergo maintenance, assembly and other pre-launch preparations for about a month before launch, the report said.

Danuri will begin circling around the moon in December and conduct a yearlong mission to observe it using an array of instruments, including cameras and magnetometers. It will also identify potential landing sites for future lunar missions.

Last month, South Korea successfully launched its first homegrown space rocket, Nuri, also known as KSLV-II, from the country's southern coastal village of Goheung in a major milestone in the nation's space programme.

South Korea launched a preliminary feasibility study for the successor to the Nuri rocket, with the goal of sending a lunar landing module to the moon in 2031, the report said.
Chennai, July 5 : The Edappadi K. Palaniswami (EPS) faction leaders of the AIADMK, former Minister D. Jayakumar, and P. Benjamin have petitioned the Tamil Nadu Director General of Police to provide police protection for the party general council meeting on July 11 to be held at Vangaram. The leaders said that anti-social elements may try to disturb the meeting and hence they need protection.

The EPS supporters have convened the meeting and invitations have been sent to all the general council members of the party including O. Panneerselvam.

The meeting has been convened to elect EPS as the party general secretary and bring to an end the present dual leadership in the party. Presently O. Panneerselvam is the coordinator of the party while Palaniswami is the co-coordinator. The invitation to the general council meeting states that if the meeting cannot be held due to any Covid-related restrictions, then it will be held in the online mode.

The main agenda of the meeting according to leaders close to Edappadi is to abolish the posts of coordinator and joint coordinator and put an end to the dual leadership in the party and elect a single general secretary.

The invitation states that as the amendments made to the by-laws of the party on December 1, 2021 for electing a coordinator and joint coordinator were not ratified by the general council meeting on June 23, a situation has arisen wherein the coordinator and joint coordinator cannot function.

Sources in the EPS faction told IANS that on June 23, 2190 members of the general council had made a request to convene the next general council meeting on July 11. The meeting will be convened by AIADMK Presidium Chairman, A. Tamizhmagan Hussain at 9.15 am on July 11.

Sixteen topics are to be discussed at the general council meeting including opposition to the anti-people activities of the DMK government of Stalin. The foisting of cases against former AIADMK ministers by the present DMK government will also be discussed.

Meanwhile, the OPS faction has moved the Madras High Court to stall the general council meeting. However, the division bench of the Madras High Court did not accept the complaint and directed a single bench of the court to hear the case. It is to be seen whether the OPS faction will move the single bench of the Madras High Court.
Peshawar, July 5 : After a polio health worker and at least two security officials were shot dead by unknown assailants during a polio vaccination drive, more than 2,000 health workers, who are assigned to administer polio and Coronavirus vaccines in North Waziristan district of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KP), have announced a boycott of the campaign due to lack of security provided to them by the government.

Hundreds of paramedics, health workers and polio vaccination campaign members staged a protest outside the Miranshah Press Club, demanding security to their health workers and vaccinators, who go out in a door-to-door campaign vaccination drives in security risk areas like the North Waziristan district.

Protesters chanted anti-government slogans and demanded security and compensation for the dead and injured health workers, who have been targeted by assailants.

"We work in areas, which have been highly sensitive and dangerous for polio and coronavirus health workers. Our health workers have been attacked, targeted, killed and assaulted many times. The government has failed to provide us ample security and has also failed to compensate those who have laid their lives in the line of duty in the past," said a protester.

Protesting health workers carried placards with slogans such as "Protest the Polio Worker", "Announce Compensation Package for the martyrs and the injured", as they raised slogans in favour of their demands, vowing to boycott the polio and coronavirus vaccination campaign until their demands are met by the government.

"Our responsibility is to administer polio vaccine and the responsibility of the government is to maintain law and order. Police and district administration have failed to arrest the attackers and have also failed to protect the polio workers," said Malik Jalaluddin, President, All Paramedics Association.

Jalaluddin said the demands of protection of workers and compensation for the injured and martyred is a legitimate demand, which has been pending with the government for some time. He said he will not risk thousands of lives of his workers and will not leave them to the mercy of those, who target and kill them.

"If the government cannot protect the polio workers, then we will not take part in the vaccination campaigns," said Malik Jalaluddin.

"Our boycott will continue until the government takes concrete steps for improvement in the law and order," he added.

Pakistan is the only country after Afghanistan, with deposits of polio virus. In the past, militant groups have not only targeted and killed dozens of polio workers but have also threatened locals, especially in the tribal areas of Pakistan, of dire consequences of they let their children get polio vaccinations.

At the moment, there are at least 900 paramedics and at least 1,700 class four employees, assigned to administer the vaccination drives in the North Waziristan district. However, with targeted attacks on health workers continuing unabated, polio workers have refused to be part of the vaccination drive.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Chennai, July 5 : A sanitary worker, who allegedly sexually assaulted a woman patient at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, was arrested on Monday, police said.

The 49-year-old woman said she was recovering after surgery for a kidney ailment at the hospital when accused Pazhani entered her room on June 30 under the guise of cleaning it and sexually assaulted her.

The woman, who was accompanied only by her 11-year-old daughter at the hospital, subsequently informed the nurses, who lodged a police complaint.

Pazhani was arrested from his residence at Triplicane.

Charged under Sections 354 of the IPC for outraging a woman's modesty and also relevant sections of the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Woman Act, 1998, he was produced before a court which sent him to judicial custody.

Police said that Pazhani was eying the woman for several days and found that other than the 11-year-old daughter, no other relatives were there with her.
Hyderabad, July 5 : In an embarrassment to the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), a senior party leader on Tuesday made serious allegations against Education Minister P. Sabitha Indra Reddy.

Greater Hyderabad's former Mayor, Teegala Krishna Reddy alleged that the minister is encouraging encroachments in Maheshwaram, the Assembly constituency on the outskirts of Hyderabad which she represents.

Krishna Reddy, also a former MLA from Maheshwaram, slammed the minister for "destroying" the Meerpet Mantrala lake. Stating that he would not keep quiet over the destruction, he said, that if necessary, he would launch an indefinite fast.

He said the minister was promoting encroachments and remarked that even lakes and schools are not being spared.

The former Mayor said he would soon meet Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to brief him on the happenings in the constituency.

Krishna Reddy also noted that Sabitha Indra Reddy was not elected an MLA on the TRS ticket, and also accused her of neglecting development of the constituency.

The allegations by Krishna Reddy brought in open the fight between two groups within the TRS in the constituency.

Krishna Reddy's allegations came amid reports that he was planning to join the opposition Congress. He, however, denied the reports and said he would remain with the TRS.

He has been unhappy ever since Sabitha Indra Reddy switched loyalties to the TRS along with some other Congress leaders in 2019. Chief Minister KCR rewarded her with a Cabinet berth.

Krishna Reddy had served as Mayor of Greater Hyderabad from 2002 to 2007. He was elected from Maheshwaram constituency on a Telugu Desam Party (TDP) ticket in 2014. However, a few months after the polls, he crossed over to the TRS along with three other TDP MLAs.

In 2018, Krishna Reddy contested from Maheshwaram on a TRS ticket but lost to Sabitha Indra Reddy, the then Congress candidate.

Krishna Reddy's open attack on Sabitha Indra Reddy has embarrassed the TRS leadership. The supporters of the minister have demanded action against him for making the allegations.

The development came close on the heels of a Mayor of Badangpet Corporation and two corporators resigning from TRS and joining the Congress.

Mayor Parijatha Narsimha Reddy along with corporators Santosha Srinivas and Peddabavi Sudershan Reddy joined the Congress in New Delhi on Monday in the presence of party leader Rahul Gandhi.

Narasimha Reddy was elected mayor of the newly-created urban body on the outskirts of Hyderabad after defecting to the TRS from Congress along with few other corporators.

Alleging that she was being sidelined in the TRS, she sent her resignation to the party's Ranga Reddy district and MLA Manchireddy Kishan Reddy.

She stated that despite her sincere efforts to work for the TRS, the party leaders in Maheshwaram Assembly constituency and Badangpet Corporation were sidelining her.
St. Petersburg, July 5 : A multi-millionaire Russian businessman has been shot dead at his mansion, the latest elite with links to energy giant Gazprom to die in recent months, media reports said.

Yuri Voronov, 61, head of a logistics company that held lucrative contracts with Gazprom in the Arctic, was found dead at his home in an ultra-wealthy suburb of St Petersburg around 2 p.m. on Monday, Daily Mail reported.

Voronov was found floating in the swimming pool with a gunshot wound to his head, a Grand Power pistol nearby, and several spent cases at the bottom of the pool.

He is at least the sixth wealthy Russian businessman to die in mysterious circumstances since the start of the year, many of them with links to Gazprom, and two of whom died in the same St Petersburg suburb as Voronov, Daily Mail reported.

The Russian Investigative Committee is probing Voronov's death, which they are currently attributing to a "dispute with business partners".

His wife has reportedly told investigators that Voronov believed he was being swindled out of "a lot of money" by "dishonourable" contractors and partners.

But a number of deaths at other mansions near St Petersburg have led to rumours of murders being staged to look like suicides.

Alexander Tyulakov, 61, a senior Gazprom financial and security official, was found hanged at his home in the exclusive Leninsky development by a lover in February.

Investigators said he had killed himself, but local reports said his body showed signs of a beating - suggesting the hanging was staged.

Three weeks earlier, in the same housing development, 60-year-old Leonid Shulman was found stabbed to death in his bathroom.

Shulman was the head of transport at Gazprom Invest, a branch of the energy giant that handles its investment projects.

Billionaire Alexander Subbotin, 43, a former senior executive at energy giant Lukoil, was also found dead in May, Daily Mail reported.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Kolkata, July 5 : Youtuber and vlogger Roddur Roy, who was arrested recently by Kolkata Police for posting a video message on social media where he used unparliamentary language against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, on Tuesday found indirect support from Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member, Mahua Moitra.

Participating in a conclave here, the Trinamool MP said that politicians should ignore those using bad language against them.

"There is a strong line between criticism and inciting violence. However, if somebody is using bad language that we may not like, as political leaders, we should let it go," she said sharing her opinion about the arrest of Roy.

Incidentally, on Monday, while participating in the interactive session of the same conclave, Banerjee denied knowing any details of the arrest of the YouTuber.

This is not the first time Moitra stood in contrast with her party's view or that the Chief Minister. After the recent rape and murder of a minor girl in Hanskhali of Nadia district, the Chief Minister, in a public meeting, gave a love angle twist in the case. On the very next day, after meeting the family members of the victim, Moitra refuted the love angle on legal grounds and said that consensual sex with a minor is rape as per law and a crime.

"As a party MP, all I want to say is that I am totally against such incidents. I cannot speak for others. But I will not tolerate such things," she said.
Mumbai, July 5 : Against the backdrop of heavy rains in several parts of Maharashtra, the state government is fully geared to tackle the situation by deploying 24 teams of the NDRF and the SDRF in the flood-prone coastal Konkan on Tuesday.

Two teams each of the National Disaster Response Force have been deployed in Mumbai, Thane, and Kolhapur and one each in Palghar, Raigad, and Ratnagiri.

One team each of the State Disaster Response Force are already in the field in Nanded and Gadchiroli where heavy rains continue since Tuesday evening.

Besides, 9 NDRF teams are kept ready - with 3 each at the base stations in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur, in addition to 2 SDRF teams at the base stations in Dhule and Nagpur.

Chief Minister Eknath Shinde is monitoring the disaster management and response as downpour continued in many districts including Mumbai since Monday evening.

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief spokesperson Mahesh Tapase slammed the state government for its shoddy preparedness despite heavy rains in many parts and warning of more rain over the next few days.

"It is the job of the respective District Guardian Ministers to monitor these things.. But the new government has not yet appointed any ministers owing to severe differences between CM Shinde and Bharatiya Janata Party Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis," he alleged.

Owing to this, even 6 days after the government was sworn-in, the cabinet is not in place nor have Guardian Ministers been appointed and this could severely hamper the work of disaster management in the coming days of the predicted downpour, said Tapase.

Meanwhile, Mumbai recorded 117 mm rains, Mumbai suburbs 124mm, and Palghar notched 100 mm average rain in the past 24 hours, said an official.

Owing to a flood-like situation developing in two villages of Amravati, work has been taken up to evacuate the stranded villagers, using available locals teams.

Though there is no flood situation in Ratnagiri, 2 major rivers in the district are flowing above the danger levels and the authorities are on full alert, and in Kolhapur as river level has risen, two NDRF teams have been deployed.

Several hillslides on the Parshuram Ghat on Mumbai-Goa Highway led to the closure of the road as a precaution.
Chennai, July 5 : A software developer from Coimbatore, who was in Chennai for weekend holiday along with his family, was beaten to death by an Ola cab driver following a dispute over delay in entering the one-time password (OTP) on the Old Mahabalipuram Road here on Sunday.

Greater Chennai Police Commissioner, Shankar Jiwal, told IANS that the police have now directed all the cab operators to monitor the antecedents of the drivers they employ for ferrying passengers.

Jiwal also called upon the cab operators to submit Aadhaar and other identification records of the drivers with the local police stations for background check.

On Sunday, H. Umendar (34), a software developer, visited a mall to watch a movie along with his wife Bhavya, their two children, Bhavya's sister Divyapriya and her two children.

Bhavya booked an Ola cab at around 3.30 pm and on seeing the registration number of the vehicle, all seven hopped into it.

The driver of the vehicle, Ravi (41) from Salem, was furious that the customers entered the vehicle without verifying the OTP and asked them to get out of the car.

This led to an altercation between Ravi and Umendar and in a fit of rage, Ravi showered blows on the software developer. The driver also smashed his mobile phone on the forehead of Umendar, besides hitting him on the nose repeatedly.

Umendar was rushed to the hospital, where he was declared brought dead. Ravi tried to flee from the scene but was apprehended by the local people and handed over to the police. He has been sent to judicial custody.
New Delhi, July 5 : Delhi Police has apprehended a supplier of illegal arms and ammunitions who had delivered more than 100 pistols across different states, an official said on Tuesday.

The accused, identified as Abdulla, was apprehended when he was on his way to deliver pistols to a potential buyer.

Furnishing details, Deputy Commissioner of Police Shweta Chauhan said a secret information was received that a bulk supplier of firearms active in the area of Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi-NCR would come in the area of Prasad Nagar police station to deliver pistols to the buyer near Jheel Park.

Subsequently, a police team was constituted which laid a trap at a specified location.

"At around 11.40 p.m., the team reached near Jheel Park and spotted a person standing in the dark, carrying a cloth bag in his hand. The police personnel swiftly approached the suspect and on seeing the police party, the accused tried to flee but he was overpowered by them," the DCP said.

Further, 4 sophisticated country made pistols were recovered from his possession and accordingly, the police registered a case under sections 25, 54 and 59 of the Arms Act at Prasad Nagar police station.

On sustained questioning, the accused person disclosed that he used to supply illegal pistols and live cartridges in the area of Delhi/NCR and Uttar Pradesh, and he had allegedly delivered more than 100 pistols.

He further said he used to supply pistols on behalf of his handler Muzzafar Lari a.k.a. Dada who is a resident of Lucknow.
Karachi, July 5 : Pakistan Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon said on Tuesday that the April 26 Karachi University suicide bombing was a jointly planned by the banned Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF), in which a "neighbouring country" had played a role, media reports said.

In April, a female suicide bomber, Shari Baloch, detonated herself outside KU's Confucius Institute, killing three Chinese teachers and their local driver. At the time, the BLA had claimed responsibility for the attack, Dawn reported.

In a meeting on Monday with a Chinese delegation at the Chief Minister's house, Sindh police chief Ghulam Nabi Memon disclosed that an "important suspect" has been taken into custody.

During a press conference, Inam Memon said that the suspect, whom he termed as a terrorist, has revealed that the KU attack was the joint work of the BLF and the BLA.

He said that at the time, the BLA had claimed responsibility and had also released video statements, "proudly" taking credit for the cowardly attack.

After that, the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) collected CCTV footage, conducted geo-fencing and DNA sampling which led to the arrest of the BLF commander in Karachi, he said, identifying the suspect as Daad Baksh, Dawn reported.

"During the investigation process, the suspect made some important revelations. He said that he was the commander of a BLF sleeper cell in Karachi," Inam Memon said.

The suspect also said that he had been conducting recce of different BLA targets on the orders of his organisation's commander, Khalil Baloch alias Musa, he said.

He had conducted recce of the sensitive installments and of the Chinese citizens working at KU, the minister added.

He went on to say that the suspect met with the husband of the female suicide bomber, Haibastan Bashir, and another "important terrorist" named "Zeb" in Karachi, and helped carry out the KU attack, Dawn reported.

Memon said that the suspect has revealed that Zeb was the KU attack mastermind, who entered Pakistan from a "neighbouring country" and had been staying in Karachi with Baloch and her husband, Dawn reported.

He said that while being interrogated, the suspect confessed to conducting reconnaisance in Gulbai along with his accomplice as well as firing at a vehicle carrying two Chinese engineers in July 2021, which left one injured.

He further confessed that he joined the BLF in 2013 and carried out multiple attacks on security forces in Balochistan's Balgatar area, Inam Memon said.

"In 2017, he fled to a neighbouring country at the directives of the BLF commander. He later returned and stayed in Karachi." He went on to say: "In 2022, the terrorist went to a neighbouring country and was trained by Zeb in making IEDs at the BLF and BLA camp at the Majeed Brigade's headquarters in Captain Rehman Gul's basement." "Zeb is an extremely dangerous terrorist and an expert in making IEDs," Inam Memon said, adding that he had entered KU before Baloch and had left immediately after the attack was carried out, Dawn reported.
Chennai, July 5 : Actress Tamannaah Bhatia, whose recent Telugu film, 'F3' has gone on to become a hit, has disclosed that her biggest fear in life is losing her memory.

The actress, who is now shooting in Mumbai, chose to answer questions posed by fans and admirers on Twitter while waiting to get to her shooting spot on Tuesday.

One of the questions posed to her during this interaction was on what her biggest fear was. Tamannaah replied, "Losing my memory ... damn, sounds scary." The actress also picked Shubhashini from the Tamil film 'Dharmadurai' and Avantika from 'Baahubali' as two of the most special characters she has played until now.

To a question on which fictional character she would be most excited to meet in real life, Tamannaah replied, "Sherlock Holmes".

The actress also said that trusting one's gut and living life to the fullest was the one thing she would want to share with others.

To a query on whether she had any hidden talents that people don't know about yet, the actress said, "I make up my own words like 'chichi matchi' which means navel, 'kitkittayi' meaning to tickle, 'Ja La Ling' which means envy."
Mumbai, July 5 : A SpiceJet flight landed safely in Mumbai with its outer windshield of the cockpit cracked, an airline spokesperson said on Monday.

The incident took place on SpiceJet flight SG-3324 operating from Kandla (Gujarat) to Mumbai by a turboprop Q400 aircraft.

At around 23,000 feet height, the outer pane of the windshield on the co-pilot's side cracked but the cabin pressurisation was observed to be normal.

The flight landed safely at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport later, said the spokesperson, but the cause of the accident - the second on Monday for the low-cost carrier - is not clear yet.
Thiruvananthapuram, July 5 : The Congress and the BJP on Tuesday sought the resignation of Kerala Minister for Fisheries and Culture and CPI-M leader, Saji Cherian, for slamming the Constitution even as the minister apologised in the assembly and clarified that it was never meant to portray the Constitution in poor light.

"The reports that I spoke against the Constitution at a party meeting have been twisted. I am one who has the utmost respect for the Constitution. I spoke in my style and it was never meant to portray the Constitution in poor light. I am deeply saddened and apologise for this if it appears to have been misconstrued and became news," said Cherian in the assembly on Tuesday.

Meanwhile in Delhi, politburo member of the CPI-M, M.A. Baby tried to play it down, saying that this could well be a slip of the tongue by Cherian and he has already given his version and hence the matter can be treated as closed.

"Those who wrote the Constitution have pointed out that there can be amendments to the Constitution. Cherian might have had a slip of the tongue and it can be seen like that," said Baby.

Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan is understood to have asked for a detailed report on the issue and a team of BJP leaders will be meeting him shortly to demand the ouster of Cherian.

State Congress president K. Sudhakaran said the national leadership, if they have any sense of propriety, should ask Cherian to quit.

"I do not know if Vijayan has that quality. If he does not quit, then legal steps will be taken against him," said Sudhakaran.

Retired Kerala High Court judge B. Kemal Pasha said Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan should ask for his resignation.

Criticising the minister, Pasha said, "What he said is a violation of the oath that he has taken and Vijayan should ask for his resignation." Leader of Opposition V.D. Satheesan said, "What Cherian said is not acceptable and Vijayan should ask for his resignation.

"If Vijayan does not act, we will seek legal recourse," said Satheesan.

The day also saw numerous protests across the state by the BJP and Congress activists, who took to the streets demanding the resignation of Cherian.

The Congress party in Pathanamthitta district has complained to the district Superintendent of Police (SP) to register a case against Cherian for his illegal and criminal act of attacking the Constitution.

With the Congress and the BJP up in arms, it's trouble for Cherian. In 1985, R. Balakrishna Pillai, a minister in the Karunakaran government had to resign following a speech he made, when he said a Punjab model agitation (Khalistan) will have to be launched in Kerala to get developmental projects.

Pillai had to quit following a high court observation about the Constitution and in all likelihood, Cherian might go the way Pillai went, as the Congress is all set to approach the court.

In a related development, the local CPI-M unit where Cherian spoke has removed the controversial speech from their Facebook account.

Cherian, a two-time legislator from the Chengannur Assembly constituency in Alappuzha district, during a CPI-M meeting at Pathanamthitta had said, "The Indian Constitution is not fair to the labour class as there is no protection for them and instead of that some 'stupid' (used popular colloquial words like 'kunthem' and 'kudachakrem') things like secularism and democracy are written in it.

"The Constitution is what the British said and has been written by an Indian. It's something which one allows for loot and nothing there for the labour," said Cherian.

He slammed the judiciary and said, "In labour cases, the courts are favourable to the business people and that's what has helped the Adanis and Ambanis."
Ahmedabad, July 5 : Digital India is catalysing India's 'Techade' and startups and unicorns are the new drivers of the digital economy, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Tuesday.

The 'Digital India' initiatives have brought in a seismic transformation in the economic landscape of the country, by creating more opportunities and putting the youth in the driver's seat of the digital economy," he said at the 'StartUps Conference' here.

Minister of Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw and several founders and co-founders of startups and unicorns were also present at the event.

"Our success and capabilities range from the India stack, UPI, internet consumer tech, electronics and semiconductors, Web3.0, Industry 4.0, AI and high performance computing. These capabilities of leadership and entrepreneurship are increasingly defining New India," Chandrasekhar stressed.

The entrepreneurs present included Ghazal Alagh, founder of Mamaearth, Varun Khaitan, co-founder, Urban Company, Rohan Verma, CEO of MapmyIndia, Srinath Ramakrishnan, Co-founder, Zeitwerk, Anil Sharma, Head, Corporate incubation, TCS and others.

Chandrasekhar, along with CEOs of 50 Indian startups and unicorns, recently met British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to discuss future collaborations and partnerships between India and the UK in the innovation and technology sector.

He also discussed achievements of 'Digital India' and sought future collaborations with the UK Prime Minister in the technology sector.

On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched 'Digital India Week 2022' on the theme 'Catalysing New India's Techade' nationwide at Mahatma Mandir, Gandhinagar.

He inaugurated 'IndiaStack Global', 'My Scheme', 'Meri Pahechan', 'Digital India Bhashini', 'Digital India Genesis', 'Chips to Startup Programme' and 'Catalysing New India's Techade E-Book' at the event.
Hyderabad, July 5 : A woman from Hyderabad lost Rs 39 lakh to cyber fraudsters who cheated her in the name of the 'KBC lottery'.

Cyber Crime Police of Hyderabad City arrested Rakesh Kumar from Patna for the fraud.

According to police, a housewife of Khairatabad area received a phone call on October 2, and the caller informed her that she won a lottery by KBC and also explained to her the withdrawal procedure.

The caller advised her to deposit amounts towards various fees. Some other people in the guise of a bank manager also spoke to her and convinced her to send money. She sent a total amount of Rs 39 lakh in the name of different charges, but later realised that she had been cheated.

After the woman lodged a complaint, police took up the investigation and cracked the case in Patna with the arrest of the accused. Police seized 16 mobile phones, 73 debit cards, 30 SIM cards, 11 bank passbooks and two cheque books.

Police have cautioned people not to believe any lotteries like KBC lottery or Naptol and lucky draws announced by the unknown persons.

In another case, Cyber Crime Police arrested 11 persons including four women from Noida for cheating a woman in the name of reward points.

A woman resident of Kanchanbagh received a call from a person claiming to be from SBI Credit Card division and offered to redeem reward points into cash. The victim followed the caller's instructions, and also revealed the OTP received on her phone. She lost a total amount of Rs 1 lakh in three transactions.

During the probe into the victim's complaint, the police arrested 11 accused by busting a call centre in Noida, which was being used for the cyber fraud.

The accused are Neeraj Kumar, 35, Rohit Kumar, 28, Akash Kumar, 23, Ajay Singh, 23, Pragya Tondon, 22, Sachan Vaishnavi, 19, Himanshi Kateri, 22, Radhika Dhamija, 22, Priyanka Sharma, 28 and Preeti Kumari Sinha, 20.

The initial investigation revealed that the accused are involved in 18 cases across Telangana and 101 crimes all over India.

Explaining the modus operandi of the gang, police said they call the victims and introduce themselves as bank officials calling from head office. They lure the victims in the name of reward points over their credit cards. Later they convince the victims to reveal their card details for redeeming the reward points. When victims reveal their card details, the accused make POS transactions and obtain the OTPs from the victims and complete the transactions.
Guwahati, July 5 : A worker from Assam who was held captive in Haryana's Mewat for nearly 2.5 years has been rescued following a joint operation by Assam and Haryana police, an official said on Tuesday.

The person was identified as Anand Baraik a.k.a. Bahadur.

According to sources, a stranger took him to Haryana's Mewat on the pretext of providing an employment opportunity. But it was learned that Bahadur was not paid a single penny for the last 2.5 years.

He was forced to work without pay. Despite repeated requests, he was not allowed to return to his home.

Based on inputs, the Assam police with the help of the Haryana security personnel managed to trace Bahadur's location and rescued him, the sources added.

On Tuesday, he was brought to Guwahati.

Kamrup Superintendent of Police Hitesh Roy told IANS that the detail of this matter is yet to be investigated. However, he confirmed the rescue of the man.
Kolkata, July 5 : A circular from West Bengal Chief Secretary, H.K. Dwivedi has ignited possibilities of earlier polls to the three-tier panchayat system in the state, originally scheduled for the middle of 2023, and being considered by political circles as litmus test for all parties before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

In the said circular, issued late on Monday, he has directed all the state government departments concerned to complete their pending projects relating to rural development, specially on the rural road network, rural water supply, and rural housing and sanitation within the next six months.

In the circular, the Chief Secretary has specially asked the state Panchayat Department to direct the three tiers of the panchayat system, namely Zilla Parishads, Panchayat Samitis and Village Panchayats, to take more proactive role and cooperate with the state government departments concerned to complete these pending projects within the deadline of the six months.

He also directed the block development officers to make regular field visits and monitor the progress of work.

As per records the current terms of the three tiers of the panchayats are scheduled to end by the end of May 2023, which means that the fresh elections will be conducted in June.

Recently, Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, at a district administrative review meeting directed the different departments to complete the pending projects as fast as possible since dates of the panchayat elections can be announced any time. Within a week of her announcement, came the circular from the Chief Secretary.

Although state Panchayat Minister, Pulak Ray was not available for his comments, a senior member of the state cabinet told IANS, on strict condition of anonymity that the plans are there to complete the panchayat election process by April 2023 so that the ruling party can henceforth fully concentrate for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

"If you note the circular from the Chief Secretary, the focus is only on the rural development projects, which gives clear indications of early polls," the cabinet member said.

The results of the last three-tier panchayat elections in the state came as a surprise for many, as the BJP, then for the first time in its history, came up as the principal opposition party in the state, overtaking over Left Front.

The BJP carried forward its success in the panchayat polls in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, bagging 18 out of 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state.
Chennai, July 5 : Raashi Khanna, who enjoys a huge fan base in both Tamil and Telugu film industries, met some of her fans in person and gifted them plants.

Posting a video of meeting her fans on Instagram, the actress wrote, "Everyone's journey has its own highs and lows and I think an actor's courage to face uncertainties and failures comes from a long line of supporters holding their fort.

"Without even remotely knowing us, you know so much! It's this silent language of love that pushed me out of my shell to meet and greet and thank you for your unconditional love and support.

"Don't even know what I did to deserve this but my heart is full of gratitude and love. Thank you so much!" On the work front, the actress is part of several upcoming films, including the Dhanush-starrer 'Thiruchitrambalam' and Karthi-starrer 'Sardar'. In 'Thiruchitrambalam', Raashi plays a character named Anusha, who happens to be Dhanush's high school friend in the film.
Geneva, July 5 : The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday said that 5,322 laboratory-confirmed cases of monkeypox had been reported to it from 53 countries -- both endemic and non-endemic.

"From January 1 to June 30 this year, we have 5,322 laboratory-confirmed cases and one death," from 53 countries, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told reporters.

Of these, "85 per cent are in Europe, followed by the African region, the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Pacific", she added.

Even as the case numbers are rapidly increasing, the WHO has not yet declared the virus a global health emergency. It said the virus is "unusual and concerning" and an "evolving threat".

"The WHO continues to ask countries to pay particular attention to monkeypox cases to try to stop further infections," Chaib said.

WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had said that they are following the monkeypox cases "extremely closely" and that if the situation further evolves, he would "reconvene the meeting quickly". However, the global health agency is yet to convene a second meeting.

The majority of the current confirmed cases of monkeypox are male and most of these cases occur among of gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men in urban areas and are clustered social and sexual networks.

There have been few hospitalisations to date, and one death in an immunocompromised individual was reported, the WHO said.

The WHO recently also expressed concern as the outbreak has spread to vulnerable people, including children, pregnant women and those with weak immune systems. Reports claimed infections in children under 18 in Spain and France, while two cases have been found in the UK since May.

While the virus did manifest earlier in children, this reportedly is the first in the recent outbreak.

The increasing trend of infections, majorly seen among men who have sex with men "is likely to continue", said Ghebreyesus.

"We are starting to see this with several children already infected.

"I am concerned about sustained transmission because it would suggest that the virus is establishing itself and it could move into high-risk groups including children, the immunocompromised and pregnant women," Ghebreyesus said.

--IANS rvt/vd

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Latest updates on Monkeypox Virus Outbreak
Ranchi, July 5 : Khunti's Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM), Syed Riaz Ahmed, was sent to jail on Tuesday evening on charges of sexual harassment of an IIT student. Earlier, he was produced in Khunti district court. After going to jail, he will most likely be placed under suspension, according to the government rules.

An FIR was lodged against him by an IIT student from Himachal Pradesh in Khunti Mahila Police Station under IPC sections 354A (sexual harassment) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) on Monday evening. On Tuesday, her statement under section 164 was recorded in the court.

Twenty IIT students had come to Khunti for an academic tour and internship. The incident took place on July 2. It was alleged that the SDM had called the girl students to his residence for a party where drinks were also served.

It is alleged that the SDM took her aside on the pretext of talking to her and spoke obscenely with her. He tried to kiss the girl. At this, the girl left with her companions. The victim is studying in IIT Indore, Madhya Pradesh.

Riyaz Ahmed, a 2019 batch IAS officer, hails from Nagpur, Maharashtra. His wife is also an IAS officer, who is posted as SDM in Chhattisgarh.
Kolkata, July 5 : The Kolkata Police on Tuesday announced the formation of an eight-member special investigation team (SIT) to prove the alarming event of trespassing into the residence of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Joint Commissioner (Crime) Murli Dhar Sharma will be the overall in-charge of the SIT and he will be assisted by Deputy Commissioners Harikrishna Pal and Surya Pratap Yadav.

The remaining five members of the sit will be a combination of officers from the special task force and the detective department.

Sources in the city police said that the arrested trespasser, Hafizul Mollah, entered the Chief Minister's residence late on Saturday night with an iron rod and hid there for over eight hours.

The proposed SIT will probe the case from multiple angles. The first point will be to identify the loopholes in the security setup at Banerjee's residence that gave scope to the trespasser to sneak in.

The second angle will be to identify whether there was any negligence on the part of any particular official engaged in security duty that night.

The third angle will be to find out the actual motive of the trespasser behind sneaking into the Chief Minister's residence.

Meanwhile, the family members of the accused have appealed to the court and the state government that since Hafizul Mollah is suffering from mental illness for quite some time, his case should be considered with compassion.

In the wake of the trespassing incident, certain restrictions have been imposed on the police personnel who will be assigned for the Chief Minister's security, both at her residence as well as in the state secretariat Nabanna.

They will now have to join duty after submitting their mobile phones, according to a circular issued by Deputy Commissioner Subhankar Bhattacharya.

Ridiculing the circular, CPI-M central committee member Sujan Chakraborty said that instead of finding out the real lacunae in the security system, the police administration is imposing unnecessary restrictions on the lower-level police personnel.

"This proves that the Chief Minister does not believe her own shadow," he said.

Reacting to it, Women and Child Development Minister Sashi Panja said that such comments are irresponsible considering that the security of the Chief Minister is of utmost importance.
Bhopal, July 5 : Two days after a video of BJP Rajya Sabha member Sumitra Balmiki surfaced on social media where she was seen in a furious mood after her belongings were shifted in her absence, a caretaker of the Circuit House in Sagar district was suspended on Tuesday.

Sagar district collector Deepak Arya said the rest house caretaker Harinarayan Kori has been suspended with immediate effect. Meanwhile, the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) and the district hospitality officer Sapna Tripathi were issued show-cause notices. The administration has sought their reply within two days, otherwise disciplinary action will be proposed against them.

In the video, Balmiki can be heard saying, "I have complained to Bhopal. Just because a mantri has come, does it mean you can do this." As per the report, Balmiki was in Sagar to participate in the election campaign for BJP candidates contesting the ongoing local body polls and she was staying in a government rest house. Officials told IANS that Balmiki came to Sagar on July 3 to campaign for the BJP's mayoral candidate for Sagar.

"She was staying in the rest house but in the evening when she returned to the rest house, she found that her belongings had been shifted to another room in her absence. Valmiki alleged that the male staffer touched her innerwear," said a BJP leader over the phone.

The show-cause notice said that the dignity of the Rajya Sabha MP was not taken care of by the subordinate staff of the district hospitality officer and the prescribed protocol was not followed. It comes under the category of serious misconduct under the Civil Services Conduct Rules, said the notice.

Meanwhile, the Congress attacked the BJP-led state government for insulting a Dalit leader. Congress Rajya Sabha MP Vivek Tankha uploaded this video on his Twitter handle and admonished the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government for showing disrespect to an MP in order to welcome a minister.

"We came to know that she was evicted from the room because it was booked for a minister of the Madhya Pradesh government. However, the minister did not visit the rest house after the controversy. It is an insult to a Dalit woman leader and it showed the real character of the BJP," said KK Mishra, Madhya Pradesh Congress spokesperson.
Los Angeles, July 5 : French actress Judith Chemla, who earned a Cesar nomination for 'Camille Rewinds', has shared her story of suffering domestic abuse.

She took to her Instagram account and posted a series of photos of the injuries that she said she sustained a year ago from domestic abuse suffered at the hands of her daughter's father, whom she did not name, reports 'Deadline'.

This past May, according to 'FranceInfo', film director Yohan Manca, with whom Chemla was previously in a relationship, was given an eight-month suspended prison sentence for domestic violence against the actress.

'Deadline' noted that in the lengthy Insta post, Chemla wrote, "I have so much evidence that he continues to try and harm me... What must it take for him to leave me alone?" She later added, "I can't stand it anymore. I demand peace. Is it clearer like this?" The post began, "A year ago my face was injured, blue, purple under my eye, I saw myself deformed. A year ago I looked at my face in the mirror and I knew that I could no longer hide my face." 'Deadline' added that in the post, Chemla also refers to filing more than one complaint against the perpetrator and asks, "Should I go back to the police a third time? Filing a third complaint in a year? To be in the film industry and have the sword of Damocles of eight months of a suspended sentence, isn't that enough?

"... Should I keep this to myself? He would continue to feel above the law... He will continue to believe he is able to pressure me and harass me morally." Chemla was on the cast of the recently released comedy 'Not My Type' and also starred in 'My Brothers And I', which ran in the 2021 Un Certain Regard section of Cannes. Neither she nor the director, Manca, however, appeared for the official screening.

Citing sources at the time, 'Variety' reported that Chemla had filed a complaint against Manca with the police in the 10th Arrondissement of Paris after he allegedly threw a cell phone at her in the street near Theatre du Rond-Point on July 3, 2021.
Chennai, July 5 : The Tamil Nadu Agricultural Marketing Board and and a farmers producers association in the state's Perambalur district have filed an application for Geographical Indication (GI) tag for the Chettikulam small onion.

NABARD's Madurai Agri-Business Incubation Farm is the facilitator for this application, which says that this particular onion is cultivated in Chettikulam village in Allathur block in Perambalur.

The small onion in this area has around 15-18 layers of dried outer scales and has a shelf life of 8 to 9 months. As many as 70,000 tonnes are produced in 12,500 hectares in the area. The high sulphur content in this region gives this particular onion the highest pungency taste.

The Ministry of Food Processing Industries has been on the 'Mission Onion Programme' for doubling the farmers' income by 2022 and has set up a Common Food Processing Incubation Centre at Chettikulam village to address the issue of small onion farmers.

Interestingly farmers of the region give a small quantity of onion after crop as an offering at the Lord Murugan temple of the area.
Los Angeles, July 5 : Swedish film 'Faithless', based on the script by legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, is getting a TV adaptation and the director Tomas Alfredson, who is known for his work on 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy', is attached for all the six episodes, reports 'Deadline'.

Fremantle-owned 'The Rain' producer Miso Film is behind the six-episode adaptation of the 2000 Cannes entry, which explores the relationship between passion and love through an erotic triangle as David falls in love with his best friend Mark's wife, the beautiful Marianne, leading to painful consequences for the two families.

Each episode will last for 45 minutes.

The original story is loosely based on Bergman's experiences of adultery and was directed by Norwegian actress-director Liv Ullmann. 'Deadline' noted that Sara Johnsen ('The Occupation') is writing the adapted script for the TV special.

Alfredson said in a statement accessed by 'Deadline': "Now it is finally time to make a television series of Ingmar Bergman's shocking love triangle drama. I have a hard time seeing that I have ever faced a bigger task and promise that I will lift my hat for what has been and roll up my sleeves for what will be."
Kolkata, July 5 : A list of present and former Trinamool Congress legislators - including a minister - recommending out-of-turn teachers' recruitment by West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) was submitted to the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday.

Counsel for petitioners, Tarunjyoti Tiwari also submitted copies of the recommendations on the letterheads of these sitting and formal legislators duly signed by them to a division bench headed by Chief Justice Prakash Srivastav.

None of the names recommended by the ruling party lawmakers qualified in the written test for teachers' recruitment by the WBSSC in 2014, when the current state Commerce and Industries Minister and Trinamool Secretary General Partha Chatterjee was the Education Minister.

The present and former public representatives named in the matter include state Fisheries Minister, Akhil Giri, former Balagarh (Hooghly) legislator, Asim Maji and former Bijpur (North 24 Parganas) lawmaker, Subhrangshu Roy.

Roy is the son of former Trinamool national General Secretary and currently official BJP legislator, Mukul Roy, against whom there is an ongoing case in the Calcutta High Court for disqualification since he rejoined the Trinamool after the 2021 Assembly polls.

The bench of Justice Srivastava, however, has reserved the judgement.

Already the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate are conducting parallel probes in the WBSSC recruitment irregularities scam.

As many 269 individuals have lost their jobs following the order of a single-judge bench as all of them got jobs flouting norms and without qualifying in the examination. Chatterjee has also been grilled more than once by CBI sleuths in the matter.
Bhopal, July 5 : A month after 42-year-old RTI activist Ranjeet Soni was shot dead in a government office in Madhya Pradesh's Vidisha district, a fact-finding team of activists has released a report noting that Soni had been under severe pressure from local government contractors to stop his activities.

The report available with IANS mentioned that the team visited Vidisha on June 19 to meet the family of Soni, who was killed on June 2. The team comprised activists Anjali Bhardwaj, Rolly Shivhare and Amrita Johri who are members of the working committee of the National Campaign for Peoples' Right to Information; Ajay Dubey who is board member of Transparency International, India, and Santosh Malviya who works with Dubey in Madhya Pradesh.

The report states that Soni's widow Gayatri said that he was most recently pursuing issues related to fake Fixed Deposit Receipts (FDRs) made by certain contractors in collusion with officials to bid for government contracts.

The report suggested that Soni himself was a contractor for government work but stopped working with two of those arrested for his murder -- Jaswant Raghuvanshi and S. Kumar Choube -- after a falling out. Police have arrested three others, including the shooter Ankit Yadav who was allegedly assigned the task.

Soni had been using the RTI Act to access details of public work and government expenditure and would file complaints against irregularities he had noticed. Local journalists told the fact-finding team that over 130 RTI requests had been filed by Soni.

Based on the RTI replies, he filed complaints before various authorities including the Lokayukta, public works department and the Chief Minister's Office seeking action.

"A perusal of the RTI applications filed by him show that in several cases he was seeking information which in any case should have been proactively disclosed by the concerned public authority as required under Section 4 of the RTI Act," reports said.

The fact-finding report notes the discovery of several RTI applications made by Soni to unearth allocations and acquisitions at government hospitals, eligibility of persons appointed for government jobs, and details of road construction. In 2016, Soni filed a police complaint alleging a physical attack by Raghuvanshi and his people over an RTI on road construction deals filed by him. Raghuvanshi allegedly also got a person, who Soni alleges he did not even know, to file a case under the SC/ST Act against him.

The family, even before Soni's death, had made significant changes to their lives to accommodate the shift in Soni's profession, even selling their house and moving when payments to Soni stopped due to "action by these contractors." "In our view, the connection between Ranjeet's murder and his use of the RTI Act to access information and expose alleged corruption/irregularities cannot be denied," the team notes in the report.

The report also mentioned that the family is in deep financial crisis and the government must provide immediate compensation. The report requests the authorities to place in the public domain, on the website of the concerned public authorities, all the RTI applications filed by Soni in the last one year (including any pending applications) along with the information and replies.
Chennai, July 5 : Bharatiya Janata Party leader Nainar Nagendran said that if Prime Minister Narendra Modi thinks so the state of Tamil Nadu can be divided into two. He was addressing a public gathering on Tuesday.

The BJP leader was responding to a statement by former Union minister and DMK leader, A. Raja urging the Prime Minister not to force his party to demand a 'separate state'.

Nagendran said that Tamil Nadu has 234 legislators and it can be divided into two states with 117 legislators each. He said that BJP leaders will become Chief Ministers in the south and north. He added that it will be Pandiya Nadu and Pallava Nadu and said, "Don't think we can't do it. We are in a place where we can do it. If our PM Modi thinks, it shall be done." He said that if Raja can demand a separate state, then the BJP can have a wish to divide Tamil Nadu.

The DMK slammed the statement of Nainar Nagendran and party leader TKS Elangovan accused the BJP of being drunk with power.

Speaking to media persons in Chennai on Friday, Elangovan said, "This is not in retaliation to what Raja has said. The division of state should be based on the people's demands. This only shows that they have powers that they can misuse or abuse. This shows the mindset of the BJP."
Washington, July 5 : Partners in the Blue Pacific, established late last month by the US, Australia and three other allies, is seen by analysts -- and by Beijing -- as the latest in a series of moves to counter China's drive to expand its diplomatic and military reach in the South Pacific, a report said.

The group announced itself in a joint statement on June 24, saying it came together in response to growing pressure on the rules-based free and open international order Japan, New Zealand and Britain round out the membership, VOA reported.

Australia and the US have gone on heightened alert over the past year because of China's effort to expand its influence in the South Pacific, where more than a dozen small and mainly impoverished countries rely on aid and trade from larger nations.

Over the past year, China has shown increasing interest in the region, where it seeks to expand its Naval influence in support of long-standing business interests, especially in fishing, experts have told VOA.

Beijing signed a security agreement with the Solomon Islands in April and reached 52 bilateral economic-focused "cooperation outcomes" after its foreign minister visited 17 of the region's small archipelagic countries in May and June.

"The South Pacific is being rediscovered," said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales in Australia, referring to the impact of Chinese activity, VOA reported. "Now the US, Australia, New Zealand and Japan are moving into higher gear." Washington has exerted influence in the South Pacific for decades through compacts, a type of alliance with countries that were once under US rule. Australia, close to the South Pacific geographically, sees strong relations with the island nations as key to its security, according to a Lowy Institute commentary.
Kandahar, July 5 : Mullah Omar, the elusive and reclusive one-eyed founder of the Taliban, once hid his personal vehicle by burying it when the US forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 in retaliation to the 9/11 attacks, media reports said.

Now, in 2022, the Taliban have dug up the vehicle of their founder in Zabul province, where it was buried 21 years ago, Express Tribune reported.

The Toyota vehicle was buried by Mullah Omar when he arrived at Zabul province in southern Afghanistan from Kandahar.

The car was found wrapped in plastic and mostly undamaged. The front mirror was, however, broken, a local said.

The vehicle will soon be displayed at the Afghan National Museum.

Born in 1960 in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, Mullah Omar fought with the Afghan fighters against the Soviet army in the 1980s and lost his right eye in battle.

Some reports suggest the Taliban leader had himself cut out his wounded eye, while others suggest he was treated at a hospital in one of the neighbouring countries, Express Tribune reported.

After the Soviets pulled out in 1989, Omar was said to have returned to his native area as a prayer leader and teacher. He gathered a band of students which was later said to have become the Taliban.

The Taliban took power in Kabul under Omar's leadership in 1996 but were later toppled by a US-led invasion in 2001.
Zhejiang, July 5 : A former student leader of the 1989 protest movement at Hangzhou University in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang is being force-fed in detention after refusing food and drink, media reports said.

Xu Guang has been formally arrested on suspicion of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble", a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), after he protested the confiscation of his mobile phone by the police, fellow rights activist Zou Wei said, RFA reported.

"Xu Guang is on hunger strike, and his family was a little concerned [about saying anything in public], because the state security police got in contact after my last interview," Zou said.

"I got a call from the state security police just 10 minutes after I gave that interview. They called me twice," he said.

The news emerged via a defence lawyer who was allowed to visit Xu in detention in mid-June, but who didn't dare to go public with the information for fear of reprisals from the authorities, Zou said, RFA reported.

"They met once, but the lawyer didn't dare to say anything, and I didn't say anything either, because the case is so [politically] sensitive." "The relevant departments got to the lawyer and talked them out of [saying anything]," he said.

Xu, 54, was detained after he held up a placard outside Hangzhou's Yuquan police station demanding his phone back.
Hyderabad, July 5 : Cyberabad police on Tuesday registered a case against rebel MP of Andhra Pradesh's ruling YSR Congress Party, Raghurama Krishna Raju for allegedly assaulting a policeman.

On a complaint by a constable of the intelligence wing of Andhra Pradesh police, a case was registered at Gachibowli police station against the MP and his son Bharat for allegedly beating up the cop late on Monday.

The MP's personal assistant Shastri, a CRPF constable and ASI was also named in the First Information Report (FIR). Constable Farooq Basha alleged that he was attacked when he was discharging his official duties. He alleged that he was illegally confined in the MP's house for three hours.

The constable told police that five persons including Raju attacked him. He said they forcibly carried him in their car though he told them that he is an intelligence constable.

The complainant alleged that his identity card and purse were snatched and the MP and others abused him and attacked him with sticks.

Raju also lodged a complaint against the Andhra police constable. Police said they were looking into it.

Meanwhile, the MP wrote a letter to Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, demanding immediate action against those who conducted recee at his house. He alleged that six men conducted recce at his house on Monday.

The MP wrote to the chief minister that in view of the threat to his life, he has been provided CRPF security. The CRPF personnel chased those conducting recce and caught one of them while remaining escaped in a car.

Raju said the person who was caught claimed that he is Andhra Pradesh intelligence constable Subhan Ali Basha but refused to show the identity card. He also refused to call senior officials.

The MP said he complained to Gachibowli police station about the incident and demanded inquiry into the reasons for conducting recce. He claimed that he had complained to Gachibowli inspector in the past about the recce but no action was taken.

The MP also alleged that Cyberabad Police Commissioner Stephen Ravindra was cooperating with Andhra Pradesh police. He expressed surprise over booking of cases against him and his security personnel.

Raju said he suspects that the unidentified men had come to kill him and his family members.

The incident had occurred hours after Raju dropped his plans to visit Bhimavaram in Andhra Pradesh to attend the launch of 125th birth anniversary celebrations of freedom fighter Alluri Sitarama Raju by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday.

The Lok Sabha members from Narsapuram complained to Prime Minister Modi over not being invited for the programme.

Ramakrishna Raju has written a letter to Modi that the officials have not included his name in the list of invitees though he is the local MP. He blamed the YSRCP government for not including his name in the list.

The MP had left Hyderabad for Andhra Pradesh by Narsapur Express on Sunday night. He boarded the train at Lingampalli station but got down at Begumpet station in Hyderabad.

He also alleged that his followers were arrested and tortured by Andhra Pradesh police as he was planning to visit Bhimavaram. He claimed that he had to retreat for the well being of his followers.
New Delhi, July 5 : Two sharpshooters of Neeraj Bawania gang were arrested by the Inter-State Cell of Delhi Police's Crime Branch, an official said on Tuesday.

The accused were identified as siblings Naveen, alias Kala, 26, and Ashwani, alias Sonu, 28, both residents of Haryana's Jhajjar.

Joint Commissioner of Police, Crime Branch, Dheeraj Kumar said a tip-off about the movement of wanted criminal Kala was received at the Crime Branch and a team was constituted to work on it and further develop it.

"On June 22, the team got information that Kala would come near Najafgarh, Delhi with arms and ammunition," he said. A trap was laid down and after a short scuffle, he was overpowered and apprehended, he added.

During interrogation, Kala disclosed that he, along with his brother, who is lodged in Jhajjar Jail, had committed to avenge the death of Rajeev alias Kala Asodiya by eliminating all the persons involved in the latter's murder.

Delhi Police then applied for a production warrant against Sonu and he was subsequently arrested inside the jail and a police custody remand of the accused was also obtained for detailed interrogation.

Sonu confessed that he arranged the weapon to eliminate one of the shooters of Ashok Pradhan gang.

Rajeev was an infamous gangster of Haryana and fellow villager of Sonu, who considered him his idol. A relative of Bawania and Naveen Bali, he was shot dead during a court appearance in Jhajjar on March 22, 2017 by the Pradhan gang.

After his death, his gang members joined the Bawania gang.
Bhopal, July 5 : The campaigning for the first phase of urban body elections in Madhya Pradesh ended on Tuesday and the voting will be held across 133 municipal corporations in 49 districts of the state on July 6 (Wednesday), officials said.

The voting will be held between 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. According to the State Election Commission (SEC), a total of 13,148 polling booths have been set up for the first phase of civic polls.

The voting for the second and the last phase is scheduled to be held on July 13, and the counting would be done on July 17.

State Election Commissioner Basant Pratap Singh said of the 133 civic bodies that are going to polls in the first phase, polling will be held in 11 municipal corporations, 36 municipal councils and 86 city councils. Voting will be done through EVMs.

Here in Bhopal, the work of distribution election-related materials started early on Tuesday and continued till late evening. Three waterproof domes have been built at Bhopal's Lal Parade ground for this purpose.

Meanwhile, the Madhya Pradesh police have claimed to have seized over 1,300 unlicensed weapons and liquor worth Rs 8.5 crore ahead of polls, an official said on Tuesday.

The administration has seized 1,349 unlicensed weapons and ensured that over 2.58 lakh licensed arms holders deposit their weapons in the nearest police stations to maintain law and order during the polls, the official said.

Also, action has been taken against 1,73,714 people under the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) and 20,984 non-bailable arrest warrants have also been executed, the official said.

The administration also seized 51,366 litres of liquor worth over Rs 5.82 crore, including 13,096 litres in Dhar district alone, the official added.
Ahmedabad, July 5 : The Vice President of Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) Gujarat unit, Sagar Rabari, on Tuesday lashed out at RSS-affiliate Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) for the plight of the farmers in the state.

He said, "Farmers of Gujarat are suffering due to the wrong policies of the government. Even after 70 years of Independence, the farmers in Gujarat do not get enough water for irrigation or adequate electricity. There is widespread corruption in the sale of subsidised fertilisers." While addressing the media, he stated, "The Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) has never been credible because it has given more importance to politics than the issues of the farmers and has worked to deceive the farmers. Today, the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh is working not for the farmers, but for the BJP." He added, "Now the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh has applied for reduction in power prices. If they want the welfare of the farmers, they can bring an immediate solution by talking to the BJP government. But instead they are working to deceive the farmers by giving false applications. Bharatiya Kisan Sangh has only used the farmers to help the BJP come to power." Talking about the major issues of the farmers of Gujarat, Rabari said, "The main problem the farmers of Gujarat are facing at the moment is that electricity is used for agriculture all over Gujarat, for which three different types of prices have been fixed. Rs 650 horsepower/unit/annual, Rs 0.60/unit per meter, and Rs 0.80/unit per meter.

"If the farmer is using a motor of 100 horsepower then the annual bill will be 650x100, i.e., Rs 65,000, so the monthly electricity bill will be Rs 5,416. Does a farmer really earn that much?"
New Delhi, July 5 : Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution (CA, F&PD) on Tuesday Piyush Goyal criticised states that are delaying submission of audited documents for receiving subsidies and gave them a deadline of August 15 to complete the procedure.

On Tuesday, at a conference of food ministers from across India, Goyal also warned the states that the Centre will not pay any interest if the delay is caused due to the state's lethargy.

"If you don't comply with audited documents within the stipulated date, we will not pay any dues, but we will also not pay any interest on it." Goyal was talking about the food subsidy to the states as paid by the Centre. Stating that even the Centre is answerable to the public, the Minister announced that the deadline to submit claims of pending dues till the year 2019-20 is August 15.

Several states have not provided audited documents to support their claims for subsidies.

"No dues will be entertained after this deadline. All the pending bills of the states / UTs that will finalise the audited accounts with supporting documents by August 15, 2022, will be cleared within 60 days i.e., by October 15," he said.

He also gave a deadline to his staff and officers for paying by January 31 next year the pending bills of the states / UTs that provide documents by September 30. "And the states / UTs that will take longer than that, they will not be paid any interest," he threatened.

When many participating states / UTs raised concern over the delay in CAG audit, the Minister said he will get in touch with the CAG for expediting the audits of the food departments of those states.

Goyal's stiff stance came in wake of the announcement that all claims after April 2020 are going to be digitised and therefore, before embarking on that system, the old dues need to be cleared in the old system.
New Delhi, July 5 : The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday said that they have filed charge sheet before the special NIA court, Mohali against four accused in the conspiracy behind the killing of a Hindu priest by Khalistan Tiger Force militants in Jalandhar in January 2021.

The case pertains to attack on priest Kamaldeep Sharma at village Bhar Singh Pura, Phillaur, Jalandhar by Kamaljeet Sharma alias Kamal and Ram Singh alias Sona on the directions of Canada-based Arshdeep Singh alias Arsh and Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

The case was initially registered on January 31, 2021 by Punjab Police and the probe taken over by the NIA on October 8, 2021.

"Investigations have revealed the entire conspiracy was hatched by accused Arsh and Nijjar to disturb peace and disrupt communal harmony in Punjab by killing a Hindu priest. The arrested accused Sharma and Sona had shot at the victim Kamaldeep Sharma," an NIA official said.

Based on the investigation, the NIA charge sheeted all four under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, and the Arms Act.
Patna, July 5 : After the day-long visit to Patna by NDA's Presidential candidate Draupadi Murmu, NDA leaders, including Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, claimed that she will easily win the election.

"The way Draupadi Murmu is getting support, we are sure about her victory by a big margin," Kumar said.

State Industry Minister Shahnawaz Hussain said: "The NDA is united in Bihar and you saw the glimpse of it today. We are all supporting Draupadi Murmu. Current President Ram Nath Kovind belongs to Scheduled Caste and now we have a tribal woman as the Presidential candidate. She has already won the hearts of 14 crore Bihari people." Former Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said: "We are all influenced by her simplicity and sincere approach. She is an ideal candidate whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose for the President's post. She is going to win by a big margin. I appeal to opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha to withdraw his candidature before the Presidential poll, as he is going to face defeat." Former Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said: "PM Narendra Modi coined the slogan 'Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikash' and he is sticking to it. Selecting a tribal leader for the post of President is a prime example. A number of opposition parties are also in the favour of Draupadi Murmu. Even Mamata Banerjee has said that had the NDA informed her earlier that Draupadi Murmu would be its candidate, she would have supported her." Reacting to the candidature of Draupadi Murmu, state RJD chief Jagadanand Singh said: "It is not a contest of personality, it is a contest of ideology. We are fighting for the rights of the tribal people. The NDA is projecting a person for the President's as part of its politics to retain power.

"This is not a question of two candidates. It is a question of two ideologies. They are spreading hatred towards the Muslim community. They are burning the country."
Srinagar, July 5 : The online registration for recruitment into Indian Army has commenced from Tuesday, officials said.

The recruitment rally by the Army Recruiting Office, Srinagar will be conducted from September 17 to 30 at Haiderbeig, Pattan.

The recruitment rally will be for recruitment as Agniveers under Agnipath Scheme.

"All eligible unmarried male candidates born between 01 Oct 1999 to 01 April 2005 (both dates inclusive) with requisite educational qualifications from UT of J&K belonging to Srinagar, Anantnag, Baramulla, Pulwama, Badgam, Kupwara, Shopian, Ganderbal, Bandipora and Kulgam districts and UT of Ladakh belonging to Leh and Kargil districts can apply for enrolment under categories of Agniveer General Duty, Agniveer Technical, Agniveer Clerk/Store Keeper Technical and Agniveer Tradesmen," army said in a statement.

"Registration is open online at website www.joinindianarmy.nic.in with effect from 05 Jul 2022 to 03 Aug 2022. Candidates are advised to register online at the earliest. Army Recruiting Office, Srinagar has advised that recruitment is a free service and selection is fair and purely based on merit. No money is required to be paid to anyone. Details can be obtained on Email ID - arosrinagar123@gmail.com & Landline Nos 0194-2311282 & 0194-2310164."
Kolkata, July 5 : A follower of Maa Sarada, the wife and spiritual consort of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, on Tuesday filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Calcutta High Court demanding action against Trinamool Congress legislator Nirmal Maji over the latters comments describing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as the incarnation of Maa Sarada.

The petition has been filed by Sumana Bandopadhyay. According to her counsel Sirshendu Singh Roy, while describing the Chief Minister as Maa Sarada's incarnation, Maji distorted history.

"Hence we have appealed for intervention of the high court so that Maji tenders a public apology for his attempts to distort history," he said.

At a recent public rally, Maji, a three-time Trinamool Congress legislator from Uluberia (North) in Howrah district, described Banerjee as the incarnation of Maa Sarada. He also attributed some imaginary statements to Maa Sarada in support of his claim.

According to Maji, a few days before Swami Vivekananda's death, Maa Sarada told some of Swamiji's followers that when she will be reborn, she will be reborn in Kalighat near the famous Kali Temple. Incidentally, Banerjee's residence is located near the Kali Temple in Kalighat.

"Maa Sarada also said that she will be involved in sacrifice, and social and political activities. From all these calculations, it is evident that Mamata Banerjee is the incarnation of Maa Sarada," Maji said.

Swami Subirananda, the general secretary of Belur Math, the global headquarters of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, recently issued a strong rejoinder terming Maji's statement as imaginary.

Despite that, Maji stuck to his stand. Now it is to be seen how the Calcutta High Court reacts in this matter.
Hubballi : , July 5 (IANS) The police in Karnataka have arrested two persons in connection with the murder of 'Sarala Vaastu' fame Chandrashekar Guruji at a hotel in Unakal near Hubballi earlier on Tuesday.

The police managed to arrest Manjunath Dummavada and Mahantesh Shirur -- within four hours after Guruji was stabbed to death, from Ramdurg town in Belagavi district.

Both hail from Kalaghatagi taluq of Dharwad district. Manjunath was a former employee with Guruji. Mahantesh's wife Vanajakshi -- detained for questioning, had also worked for Guruji.

The alleged killers were trying escaping to Maharashtra after committing the crime.

Police teams after gathering information about accused persons travelling in the bordering district of Belagavi tracked them down and nabbed them.

Guruji of 'Saral Vaastu' fame was stabbed to death in Hubballi earlier on Tuesday. The assassins had come disguised as his devotees to a private hotel in Unakal near Hubballi city.

According to the police, the culprits took Guruji's blessings by touching his feet first when he was at the hotel reception. Catching him unawares, the miscreants then stabbed him repeatedly.

Police said that Guruji has been stabbed multiple times on chest and abdomen. After Guruji collapsed in a pool of blood, the assailants escaped from the spot.

The incident took place in broad daylight in front of guests at the hotel.

Police said Guruji has been stabbed more than 60 times on his chest and abdomen repeatedly.

The incident caused horror as the chilling footage of the act came out in public domain and went viral on the social media, shocking the people.

Preliminary investigations have suggested that persons known to Guruji may have committed the crime.

The police have taken Vanajakshi, a former employee of Sarala Vaastu Company run by Guruji, into custody to question her, according to sources.

The police have identified the killers as Manjunath Dummavada and Mahantesh Shirur. Manjunath was a former employee. Mahantesh's wife Vanajakshi -- detained for questioning, had worked for Guruji.

Hubballi and Dharwad Police Commissioner Labhu Ram has rushed to the spot and monitoring the investigation. He said 5 special teams have been formed to nab the killers and investigation would be conducted by an officer of the rank of ACP.

Police said Guruji was stabbed more than 50 times. The police are gathering information from the CCTV footages. The motive of the killing is yet to be ascertained.

Chandrashekar Guruji was one of the most popular vaastu experts. He had regularly featured on television and was one of the known faces in the state. Further investigation is on.

Police sources explained Guruji had bought properties in the name of former employee Vanajakshi. His firm suffered losses due to Covid pandemic. Guruji had asked Vanajakshi to return certain property to him.

However, Vanajakshi's husband did not want to return any property to Guruji.

Guruji was pressurising them to return the property to him and killed for the same reason, police sources said.

Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, Home Minister Araga Jnanendra and Minister for Revenue R. Ashok paid their condolences to the brutal killing of Guruji and had earlier assured that killers would be nabbed at the earliest.

Speaking to media persons Bommai said, killing of Guruji is a heinous and unfortunate act. "It has been clearly captured in the CCTV footage. The motives for the murder would be known only after the investigation."
United Nations, July 5 : UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has appointed Lt Gen. Mohan Subramanian as the commander of UN peacekeeping in South Sudan, the largest troop deployment in UN missions, Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric announced Tuesday.

Subramanian succeeds Lt Gen Shailesh Tinaikar, also of India, as the force commander of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), Dujarric said.

The mission set up in 2011 has 17,982 personnel, of whom 13,254 are troops, the most in the 13 current UN peacekeeping operations.

India has contributed 2,385 troops and 30 police personnel to UNMISS.

Subramanian was the commandant of the Defence Services Staff College (DSSC) appointed in February this year, according to its website.

The UN said that Subramanian was most recently the General Officer Commanding, Military Region Operational and Logistic Readiness Zone in Central India "contributing to the Army's operational and logistic preparedness".

He had earlier served in a UN peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone in 2000.

According to the DSSC, Subramanian, who was commissioned in the Corps of Army Air Defence in 1986, has been awarded the Ati Vishisht Seva Medal, Sena Medal and Vishisht Seva Medal.

He studied at the Sainik School in Amaravatinagar in Tamil Nadu, the National Defence Academy, Khadakwasla, and the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun.

He is also a graduate of the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, the Higher Command Course at Army War College, Mhow and the Advanced Professional Programme in Public Administration, Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi.

He has MPhil degrees in Defence and Management Studies as well as Social Sciences and has completed programmes in Defence and Strategic Studies, Human Rights and Public Administration.

According to the UN, he has also served as the Additional Director General for Procurement and Equipment Management at the Defence Ministry's Integrated Headquarters, General Officer Commanding a Strike Infantry Division, Deputy General Officer Commanding of Infantry Division, and Commander of a Mountain Brigade.

He has commanded an Air Defence Regiment in Desert Sector and an Infantry Division in Eastern Theatre, according to the DSSC.

The Security Council created UNMISS to consolidate peace and security and later extended the mandate to protect civilians and help human rights monitoring and provision of humanitarian aid.

Rwanda is the top troop contributor to UNMISS with 2,643. Nepal has deployed 1,751 troops in the mission and Bangladesh 1,627.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed @arulouis)
Bhopal, July 5 : The Madhya Pradesh government has constituted a committee comprising top officials to look after the hospitality and security for the two conferences of G-20 countries to be held in Indore and Bhopal.

Chief Secretary Iqbal Singh Bains has formed the committee of senior officials of the state administration, which includes additional chief secretaries of the general administration and home departments, besides other senior officials, an official told IANS on Tuesday.

The committee, headed by the Chief Secretary, will look after the hospitality and security of the participants during the two conferences of G-20 countries, the official said in a statement. However, no dates for these events were mentioned in the statement.

The Principal Secretary in the Tourism Department will be the nodal officer of this committee, it was stated.

As per the statement, India will host over 190 meetings and conferences of G-20 delegates from December 1, 2022 to November 30, 2023 across the country.
Hyderabad, July 5 : Rebel MP of Andhra Pradesh's ruling YSR Congress Party, K. Raghu Rama Krishna Raju, two of his CRPF security detail and two others were booked by Hyderabad's Cyberabad police for the alleged kidnap and assault of a policeman.

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) on Tuesday suspended the two personnel.

On a complaint by a constable of the intelligence wing of Andhra Pradesh Police, a case was registered at Gachibowli police station against the MP, his son Bharat, his personal assistant and two CRPF personnel for kidnap, assault, wrongful confinement, and criminal intimidation.

The MP's personal assistant, CRPF Assistant Sub-Inspector K. Ganga Ram and constable Nanaware Sandip Sadhu were also named in the FIR.

After Cyberabad police registered a case, CRPF's 221 Battalion Commandant Mahesh Kumar suspended both the CRPF personnel and directed them to report the battalion headquarters at Greater Noida.

A video clip showing CRPF personnel along with three others lifting a person from roadside and bundling them in a car has also surfaced.

Police have booked MP and four others under Indian Penal Code's (IPC) Sections 365 (kidnap), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter a public servant from duties), 384 (extortion), 342 (wrongful confinement), 409 (Criminal breach of trust by public servant) and 506 (criminal intimidation).

Constable Farooq Basha alleged that he was attacked when he was discharging his official duties. He alleged that he was illegally confined in the MP's house for three hours.

The constable, who was on spotter duty, told police that five persons including Raju attacked him. He said they forcibly carried him in their car though he told them that he is intelligence constable.

The complainant alleged that his identity card and purse were snatched and the MP and others abused him and attacked him with sticks.

Raju also lodged complaint against the Andhra Police constable. Police said they were looking into it.

Meanwhile, the MP wrote a letter to Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, demanding that immediate action be taken against those who conducted a recce at his house. He alleged that six men conducted recce at his house on Monday.

The MP wrote to the Chief Minister that in view of threat, he has been provided CRPF security. The CRPF personnel chased those conducting recce and caught one of them while remaining escaped in a car.

Raju said the person who was caught claimed that he is Andhra Pradesh intelligence constable Subhan Ali Basha but refused to show the identity card. He also refused to call senior officials.

The MP said he complained to Gachibowli police station about the incident and demanded inquiry into the reasons for conducting recce. He claimed that he had complained to Gachibowli inspector on the past about the recce but no action was taken.

The MP also alleged that Cyberabad Police Commissioner Stephen Raveendra was cooperating with Andhra Pradesh Police. He expressed surprise over booking of cases against him and his security personnel.

Raju said he suspect that the unidentified men had come to kill him and his family members.

The incident had occurred hours after Raju dropped his plans to visit Bhimavaram in Andhra Pradesh to attend the launch of 125th Abirth anniversary celebrations of freedom fighter Alluri Sitarama Raju by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday.

The Lok Sabha members from Narsapuram complained to Prime Minister Modi over not being invited for the programme.

Raghu Rama Krishna Raju has written a letter to Modi that the officials have not included his name in the list of invitees though he is the local MP. He blamed the YSRCP government for not including his name in the list.

The MP had left Hyderabad for Andhra Pradesh by Narsapur Express on Sunday night. He boarded the train at Lingampalli station but got down at Begumpet station in Hyderabad.

He also alleged that his followers were arrested and tortured by Andhra Pradesh Police as he was planning to visit Bhimavaram.

The MP was provided Y category security by the Centre in 2020 after he alleged threat to his life from YSRCP leaders.
Noida, July 5 : A TV news anchor working for a private Hindi channel was on Tuesday arrested by the police for circulating rumour. He was later released on bail, an official said.

The accused journalist, identified as Rohit Ranjan, was seen anchoring with a 'doctored' video clip of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, in which the latter was heard calling the Udaipur attackers as 'children', justifying the heinous killing of tailor Kanhaiya Lal last week.

However, the original video had Rahul Gandhi's comments on the SFI attack at his Wayanad office, which was "deliberately and mischievously" doctored to make it appear as if it was a comment on the heinous murder of Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur.

"The anchor was summoned to the Sector 20 police station and after interrogation, he was arrested on the basis of evidence," the official told IANS.

He was later released on bail as the charges levelled by the Noida Police came under bailable offence. Notably, the channel itself had lodged a complaint against the said anchor after the doctored video blunder.

Interestingly, the anchor was arrested on the very same day when the police from Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh reached the accused anchor in Ghaziabad to arrest him in the said case.

"Chhattisgarh Police is standing outside my house to arrest me without informing the local police, is it legal?" Ranjan had tweeted on Tuesday morning.

The Raipur Police replied to the anchor's tweet, asking him to cooperate with the police.

"There is no such rule to inform. Still, now they have been informed. The police team has shown you the court's warrant. You should in fact cooperate, join the investigation and place your defence in court," Raipur Police said.

The journalist tweeted at 6.16 a.m., while the Raipur Police responded at 8.09 a.m. Half-an-hour later, the Ghaziabad Police also shared its reply.

"The matter is in the cognisance of the local police, action will be taken as per the rules," the Ghaziabad Police said.

Meanwhile, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh accused the Noida Police of deliberately interfering with an ongoing investigation to shield the accused.

"They have deployed state machinery, without cause or explanation, to hide an individual accused of serious offences from a legitimate investigation. What is it that their political masters are afraid of being uncovered through an investigation," the Congress leader questioned.

He said that the arrest warrant was issued by a competent court on an application moved with facts available in the public domain.

"This is an act of wilful contempt of the court's warrant by the UP police and their political masters. This is also the second time that we have seen this happening... the BJP is deploying the police force to shield repeat offenders from legitimate investigation and inquiry," Ramesh said.
London, July 6 : In a big blow to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who recently survived a leadership challenge, two of his top ministers -- Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid -- quit the government on Tuesday.

Javid, who is of Pakistani-descent and was the former Home Secretary, quit first.

"I have spoken to the Prime Minister to tender my resignation as Secretary of State for Health & Social Care. It has been an enormous privilege to serve in this role, but I regret that I can no longer continue in good conscience," he said in a tweet.

Javid said he can no longer serve in Boris Johnson's government in "good conscience" as he has "lost confidence" in the Prime Minister.

Setting out his decision to quit in a letter, he wrote: "I am instinctively a team player but the British people also rightly expect integrity from their Government. The tone you set as a leader, and the values you represent, reflect on your colleagues, your party and ultimately the country. Conservatives at their best are seen as hard-headed decision makers, guided by strong values. We may not have always been popular, but we have been competent in acting in the national interest.

"Sadly, in the current circumstances, the public are concluding that we are now neither. The vote of confidence last month showed that a large number of our colleagues agree. It was a moment for humility, grip and a new direction. I regret to say, however, that it is clear to me that this situation will not change under your leadership - and you have therefore lost my confidence too." Soon after, Sunak also put in his paper, saying "we're fundamentally too different".

In his letter, he said "the public rightly expect the government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously. I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning." Noting that "our country is facing immense challenges", he said: "I publicly believe the public are ready to hear that truth. Our people know that if something is too good to be true then it's not true. They need to know that whilst there is a path to a better future, it is not an easy one.

"In preparation for our proposed joint speech on the economy next week, it has become clear to me that our approaches are fundamentally too different." "I am sad to be leaving government but I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we cannot continue like this," he added.
New Delhi, July 6 : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday said it has registered two separate cases against two accused persons and other unknown individuals for allegedly causing huge loss to Lakshadweep Khadi and Village Industries Board (LKVIB).

A senior CBI official said that earlier, a joint surprise check was conducted by the CBI and Vigilance officials of the union territory of Lakshadweep on June 25 in the Kavaratti Island situated office of LKVIB.

"It was alleged that some influential and other persons in connivance with unknown public servants of Lakshdeep Khadi and Village Industries Board (LKVIB) fraudulently availed loan under Consortium Bank Credit Scheme (CBC) for purchasing fishing vessels and other accessories and did not repay the same, thereby causing huge loss to the government exchequer.

"The non-remittance of loan by the Ainfluential beneficiaries resulted into a situation, where Khadi and Village Industries Commission, Mumbai stopped releasing the funds to LKVIB and thus the development work to be carried out by the Board came to stand still. Further loans to fresh applicants could not be disbursed and it also curtailed the benefits of other islanders," said a CBI official.

The first case was registered against Kamarbhanu T., the secretary of AAHAL Development society, Kiltan Island, Lakshadweep; unknown public servants and unknown private persons for causing an alleged loss of Rs 53,46,835 and the second case was registered against T.K. Ahmed Haji, MD of Rahat Development Society, Kavaratti Island, and unknown private persons for causing an alleged loss of Rs 46,75,206 to LKVIB.

"Searches were conducted today at the residential premises of accused including at Kavaratti, Lakshadweep and Calicut (Kerala) which led to recovery of incriminating documents," said the CBI official.
New Delhi, July 6 : The Delhi government implemented a new excise policy effective from November 15 last year, placing the entire liquor business in the hands of a few private players.

With the implementation of the new excise policy, the liquor business was withdrawn from Delhi government's four corporations, namely Delhi State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (DSIDC), Delhi Tourism and Transportation Development Corporation (DTTDC), Delhi State Civil Supplies Corporation Ltd (DSCSC) and Delhi Consumers Cooperative Wholesale Store (DCCWS).

According to sources, the new liquor policy is favouring the wholesalers' business.

These states corporation were earlier responsible for nearly 50 per cent of liquor sales in Delhi, which have now been handed over to the big private players.

The new excise policy has authorised the wholesalers to do business with the retailers as per their own convenience, giving a few of wholesalers significant control over the supply to retail vends and the extent of discount to be offered.

Aa per reports, the new excise policy has given just some big liquor players the control to supply the brands of Pernod Ricard India Pvt Ltd and Diageo India to the vendors, which account for over two-third of the Indian liquor brands sold in Delhi.

Recently, the excise department of the Delhi government extended the Excise Policy 2021-22 for two months up to July 31, which extended the validity of renewable licences, including those for retail liquor stores.

The extension was made subject to payment of pro-rata fee for the extension period, including security deposits whereever applicable.

"The L-1 licencees who are willing to avail this extension period of two months from 01.06.2022 to 31.07.2022 for making sales of their registered brands at the existing price, are required to deposit two months' fee, i.e., licence fee, brand registration fee, label registration fee, BWH fee and any/all other fees as applicable to L-1 licencees on pro-rata basis for a period of two months in advance to be realised in government account latest by 31.05.2022," the notification from the excise department had said.

Meanwhile, Delhi BJP leader Manjinder Singh Sirsa recently filed a complaint with the CBI, accusing the Delhi government of implementing an excise policy that "extended wrongful gains and favour to liquor wholesalers in Delhi at the cost of state's revenue".

"The policy has been drafted and notified with the sole intent to facilitate creating of monopoly in the liquor market," he said in the complaint, adding, "The policy has been tailor-made for a few wholesalers as one of the eligibility conditions to bid for a wholesaler's license (L-1) was to have a minimum annual turnover of Rs 150 crore for three previous years. This eliminated the small players from the bidding process."
Patna, July 6 : Bollywood action star Vidyut Jamwal arrived in Patna on Tuesday for the promotion of his upcoming film 'Khuda Haafiz Chapter 2: Agni Pariksha'.

While interacting with mediapersons in Patna, Jamwal said that he has come to Patna for the first time and it has changed his thinking.

"The city is beautiful and has improved road infrastructure. I have visited the newly built Patna's marine drive on the bank of Ganga river and it is beautiful. The marine drive is a new location for film shooting, and I will do the road chasing action scene on this stretch one day," he said.

"When I was planning the promotion of the film, I told the director Farrukh Kabir to go to Patna for the promotion. I knew, the people of Bihar are very creative and brave. I have a stunt team and the best stuntman of our team belongs to a small village of Patna. I knew it, hence, I have decided to go to Patna and meet the people," Jamwal said.

Shahnawaz Hussain, the industry minister of Bihar who has invited the action stars Vidyut Jamwal and Farrukh Kabir to his official residence on Tuesday evening, said that action star and youth icon Vidyut Jamwal arrived in Patna and it is a great experience for every person of Bihar.

"Bihar is changing now. After Mumbai, Patna is the only city having marine drive in the country. Vidyut is a youth icon and he came to Bihar. I am hopeful that he will shoot his film in Bihar one day. Amitabh Bacchan in an ad says 'kuch din to gujariye Gujarat mein' (spend a few days in Gujarat). I am saying 'ek baar to aayiye Bihar mein' (come once to Bihar)," Hussain said.

"Jamwal wishes to shoot film at marine drive, Bihar government will give him permission for the shooting," the minister said.
Kiwi is the top sizing app for Shopify merchants that increases sales and decreases returns. We're elated to have acquired it.  Lauralynn Drury, VP of Digital Experience, Staytuned

Staytuned, the software company that provides a suite of revenue-growth tools for Shopify merchants, has completed the acquisition of Kiwi, a Shopify app that helps brands create size charts and size recommenders in minutes.

Between marketing costs rising, supply chain timelines increasing, product margins are getting tightly pinched. We turned to what features are in the control of merchants to protect marginand we found Kiwi. The app allows merchants to create custom size charts and size recommenders for their product assortment.

Custom size charts are a three-way win,



Accurate and product-specific size charts increase customer confidence and improve conversion rate from the PDP.

Helpful size guidance helps customers select the right size, and reduce the return rate.

Kiwi leverages built-in Shopify tagging and collection logic, to help merchants save time adding the right size charts to each product. Plus, Kiwi helps lower the number of emails and chats from customers, saving even more time.

The merchant base for Kiwi is impressive, including brands like Wild One, BCBG, Scalpers, Rollie Nation, Talentless and more. The set-up is a breezeany merchant can get this installed, customized, and live in just a few minutes, said Lauralynn Drury, VP of Experience at Staytuned.

Staytuned currently serves 19,000 ecommerce merchants across its portfolio of apps. The mission of the company is to enable merchants to unlock efficient and scalable growth using user-friendly toolsKiwi was a clear fit.

Kiwi was motivated by my personal experience of selling clothing on Shopify, where inaccurate sizing could majorly impact my sales and conversions. It was purpose-built to solve this ubiquitous pain point of online shopping for Shopify merchants by enabling their customers to find the right sizes within seconds. The app has become the go-to solution for solving the sizing challenges on Shopify. We are excited to partner with StayTuend to further our mission to enable Shopify merchants across the world to become more productive and successful., said Sam Chuang, Founder of Kiwi, whos currently working on a new ecommerce S&OP solution.

Kiwi started in November of 2018 with the mission to help Shopify merchants capture additional revenue by recommending the right size to their customers without any hassle. The best part is the size recommender where you simply enter your body dimensions and the app tells you the appropriate size automatically.

About Staytuned

Staytuned builds, acquires, and grows Shopify apps that enable ecommerce merchants to grow their business faster and more efficiently. We support our apps with scalable and reliable technology and processes and serve our merchants with empathy, humanity, and respect. Today, over 19,000 stores are using one or more of our apps to accelerate their business. Got an app to sell? Drop a line!
Power Breezer provides smart evaporative cooling devices and intelligent dock area monitoring systems for real-time productivity and safety metrics gains. The Power Breezer Sky (Sky) is a next generation evaporative cooling solution designed to cool people where nothing else can.

Power Breezer, a global leader in evaporative cooling solutions that increase the productivity, retention, morale and welfare of associates in the e-commerce fulfillment industry, is proud to able to support World Markets employee first initiatives to protect those associates working in distribution centers.

Post the COVID-19 pandemic, online shopping has increased and while we click and shop for everything from produce and vitamins to pool floats and iPad covers from the comfort of home  the staff fulfilling orders at our distribution centers, farms, and manufacturing warehouses across the country, typically work in extreme temperature conditions.

Bay Area-based World Market installed the Power Breezers units into their Stockton CA and Windsor VA Distribution Centers - The first sites in the company to have this technology. "Our top priority is to ensure our warehouse team is motivated and has a safe working environment when heat stress is considered. One of our key investments in our workers' health and well-being is the Power Breezer Sky, which has been added to our DCs," said Bob Tway, World Market VP Supply Chain. After just a few short weeks of having the evaporative cooling fans installed, the staff cheered every time they were turned on. Management noticed an improved work environment with increased morale and happiness of employees. With such a positive response, World Market is looking to install more Power Breezers Sky units in 2023.

Employee workplace safety is vital and top concern  In April, OSHA announced the National Emphasis Program to protect employees from heat-related workplace hazards and injuries. "We are pleased to partner and support World Markets efforts to raise morale, care, and safety of their warehouse and ecommerce teams by installing the Power Breezer Skys innovative cooling solution. Says Bryan Hoadley, Power Breezer CRO.

Power Breezer provides smart evaporative cooling devices and intelligent dock area monitoring systems for real-time productivity and safety metrics gains. The Power Breezer Sky (Sky) is a next generation evaporative cooling solution designed to cool people where nothing else can (learn more). The Sky has intelligence and provides customers with autonomous cooling assisting its customers with protecting their employees working in high temp, at-risk environments like trailers and warehouses. Power Breezer is not AC, although it sure feels like it, but a super powerful evaporative cooling fan that is mounted and mobile and can be used indoors or outdoors. With the introduction of the new Sky mounted Power Breezer, the company has pivoted to address the concerns of warehouse and manufacturing plants, especially those workers in extreme heat inside trailers moving those Ecommerce packages fulfilling our orders.

About World Market:

World Market (http://www.worldmarket.com) operates 242 stores under the World Market and Cost Plus World Market trademarks. The stores feature an ever-changing selection of casual home decor and furniture, housewares, gifts, jewelry, decorative accessories, over 500 international wines, and gourmet foods and beverages offered at affordable prices and imported from more than 50 countries. Many items are unique and exclusive to World Market and are regularly supplied by an international network of individual and regional artisans developed over the Companys more than 50 years in the import business.

ABOUT MAXIFY SOLUTIONS INC (http://www.maxify-solutions.com)

In spite of the insatiable demand for e-commerce fulfillment centers tend to operate at about 40% efficiency. For the industry to continue its profitable growth, maximizing fulfillment efficiencies (Maxify) is critical. Maxify offers solutions which will increase the productivity of both people and assets in the e-commerce fulfillment industry. Tens of millions of Americans work in extremely harsh and grueling heat conditions such as in e-commerce fulfillment centers, logistics warehouses, on Military bases or in the field. Heat is not only unsafe but is also uneconomical, it reduces staff productivity, retention, morale and yield. At Maxify, we believe everyone deserves to be cool and our Power Breezer lineup includes intelligent systems that enable set-and-forget autonomous evaporative cooling. Unlike HVAC, Power Breezer systems release no greenhouse gasses and by cooling people and not spaces, our systems typically consume 1/20th of the energy of HVAC, thereby providing a sustainable cooling with rapid ROI. Assembled in Charlotte, North Carolina, Power Breezer is the worlds most advanced evaporative cooling system.
meyoungprecher.jpg The truth shall set you free

The author Willy Kipapa wrote Why the Bible is not Gods Word. He believes God is a God of truth He wouldnt inspire men to write about Himself and have many contradictions and made-up stories.

The bible has principles that are true and good. It also has stories that are made up and bad.

Here are a few examples of contradictions in the bible. There are 2 different books in the bible that tells how Judas died. The two books tell two different stories of how Judas died there are 4 contradictions in these stories.

Mathew 27 New International version

]3 When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. 4 I have sinned, he said, for I have betrayed innocent blood.

What is that to us? they replied. Thats your responsibility.

5 So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

6 The chief priests picked up the coins and said, It is against the law to put this into the treasury since it is blood money. 7 So they decided to use the money to buy the potters field as a burial place for foreigners. 8 That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day.

Acts 1 new international Version

18 (With the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. 19 Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)

In Acts 18 Judas bought the field. In Mathew 7 the priest bought the field.

In Mathew 5 Judas hangs himself. Acts 18 Judas bought a field where he fell headlong his intestines burst open.

Some bible commentary says Judas hanged himself on a tree the branch broke Judas fell and his intestines burst open. But they dont have an explanation for the other 3 contradictions.

In Mathew 3 Judas felt remorse? In Acts 18 Judas did not feel remorse?

In Mathew 6-9 they called the field of blood because the priest used blood money from Jesus.

In Acts 18 -19 they called the field of blood because Judas intestines burst open.

To get the free e-book. People can download it at Willys website willysawesomelife.com. On Willys website, there will be different types of videos and more free stuff.

In Willys book, he shows Roman Caesars had strong reasons to hire expert storytellers to write the New Testament. He also shows stories in the Old Testament that are not true. Truth never changes. Today just about everyone knows slavery is wrong. If slavery was promoted in the bible then it wasnt what God wanted men to write. Willy shows the bible promotes slavery, masters having sex with their slaves, genocide, and so much more.

Willy believes thats why throughout history Christian empires conquered new nations killed natives who did not convert to Christianity and turned people into slaves.

They also stole resources and lands. Christians were deceived because of some of the lies that are in the bible. They felt they should take dominion of the earth. While preaching about Jesus. They felt they were superior.

Willy also shows the Bible is not historically correct and is not backed up with archaeology.

Willy admits many Christians have done great things and God has shown his love to many people because of their hard work. But Christians have been duped by some made-up stories that are in the bible. Mr. Kipapa believes if people are open to the truth they will see his new book is filled with the truth. The bible is still filled with words of wisdom. People just need to discern the truth from the lies Willys book will help. If people want to contact Willy they can email him at carefulwilly@yahoo.com

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Mt Pisgah, Polk County, Oregon AVA

Mount Pisgah, Polk County, Oregon, the newest appellation in Oregon and nested American Viticultural Area (AVA) in the Willamette Valley, has received federal recognition as an official AVA. Drawn to reflect distinct soil, topography and climate attributes, Mount Pisgah, Polk County, Oregon AVA becomes the 23rd federally recognized winegrowing region in Oregon and the 11th nested AVA within the Willamette Valley. The new nested AVA was granted approval by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) on June 3, 2022 and takes effect on July 5, 2022.

Located in Polk County, the Mount Pisgah, Polk County, Oregon AVA is characterized by the warmth of the nearby Willamette River, the mild influence of the Van Duzer winds, and the rain shadow of Laurel Mountain to the west. It is the Valleys second smallest AVA at 584 planted acres but one of its most densely planted. Mount Pisgah was formed 65 million years ago as a sea floor volcano, and has since been covered by marine sediment which pushed up out of the ocean. This unique geology allows the grapes to develop a deep complexity in the regions shallow soils.

Five years ago, Brad Ford of Illahe Vineyards petitioned the TTB for the addition of the AVA to the wine country map. Ten vineyards and three wineries join the new Mount Pisgah, Polk County, Oregon AVA. A full list of wineries and vineyards can be found below.

Thanks to an excellent group of growers who helped identify the most important aspects of our little mountain, I have no doubt we will continue to work together to build a beautiful destination for people willing to go the extra mile, said Ford.

The most common grape varieties in the AVA are Pinot noir, Pinot gris, Pinot blanc, Chardonnay and Tempranillo. Mount Pisgah, Polk County, Oregon AVA is located 15 miles west of Salem, Oregon, and is the second most southern nested AVA within the Willamette Valley AVA, next to Lower Long Tom, which was newly established in November 2021.

Recognition of Mount Pisgah, Polk County, shows again how we continue to learn about, and appreciate, new areas of viticultural distinction in Oregon. Each one adds its own chapter to Oregons story of unique soils, unmatched geology, topography and globally recognized wine quality said Oregon Wine Board President Tom Danowski. These federal AVA designations take years to achieve as the standards are rigorous for establishing a region as clearly differentiated.

Were so excited to see Mount Pisgah, Polk County, Oregon AVA recognized in the larger story of the Willamette Valley, said Morgen McLaughlin, executive director of the Willamette Valley Wineries Association. The regions kingpin varietal, Pinot noir, is such an expressive grape: it insists on telling you where its from. Both the industry and consumers who look to Oregon for its one-of-a-kind appellations and the sense of place in Oregons wines can celebrate the addition of Mount Pisgah, Polk County, Oregon.

To differentiate from another Mount Pisgah in Oregons Lane County, it was necessary for the AVA to be named Mount Pisgah, Polk County, Oregonnow the second longest named AVA in Oregon after The Rocks District of Milton-Freewater AVA, approved in 2015 and nested in the Walla Walla Valley AVA. Oregon is home to 995 wineries and 1,370 vineyards planted, generating an annual economic impact of $7.2 billion for the state.

Images of the new AVA can be found in the folder here

Mount Pisgah, Polk County, Oregon AVA:

Details

Official date of recognition: June 3, 2022

Final rule is effective: July 5, 2022

Total acreage: 5,530

Planted acreage: 584

Number of wineries: 3

Number of vineyards: 10

Varieties: Pinot noir, Chardonnay, Pinot gris, Tempranillo and Pinot blanc

Soil: Marine Sedimentary

Wineries

Illahe Vineyards

Open Claim Vineyards

Amelie Robert Estate

Vineyards*

Illahe Vineyards

Ash Creek Vineyards

Open Claim Vineyards

Erratic Oaks Vineyard

Freedom Hill Vineyard

Croft Vineyards

Fern Creek

Amelie Robert Estate

Mistletoe Vineyards

Cooper Hollow

*The wineries above are located on an estate vineyard.

About the Oregon Wine Board

The Oregon Wine Board is a semi-independent Oregon state agency managing marketing, research, communications, and education initiatives that support and advance the Oregon wine and wine grape industry. The Board works on behalf of all Oregon wineries and independent growers throughout the states diverse winegrowing regions. Visit oregonwine.org

About the Willamette Valley Wineries Association

The WVWA is a nonprofit industry association dedicated to achieving recognition for Oregons acclaimed Willamette Valley as a premium Pinot noir-producing region. The WVWA has more than 230 members representing wineries, tasting rooms and vineyards throughout the Willamette Valley. The organization also hosts Willamette: The Pinot Noir Auction, Oregon Pinot Camp, Pinot in the City, May in Wine Country, The Giving Season and the Cellar Season. Visit http://www.willamettewines.com for more info.
The new S4D integration pushes Sitecore web form submissions to Microsoft Dynamics 365. Forms are mapped to one or more Dynamics entities, but typically to leads. Beyond forms, S4D can transact any resident data between the two systems in real-time.

FuseIT announces the release of S4D, a Sitecore to Microsoft Dynamics 365 real-time bidirectional integration. S4D is centered around sending Sitecore web form submissions to Dynamic entities, typically to leads or contacts. Sitecore content managers who create web forms are able to use S4D to map the form fields to Dynamics. S4D works in real-time so when a website visitor completes a form, the form values are instantly available to the Dynamics sales team.

About S4D

S4D extends FuseIT's range of integration products that includes S4S, the popular enterprise Sitecore to Salesforce integration. FuseIT's move into the Microsoft Dynamics space may be viewed by some as late. When questioned on this, FuseIT's CEO, Terry Humphris, said, "Customers were asking for integrations that better meet the needs of the market so we listened and delivered". Given the success of S4S, Humphris said, "It made sense to take the learnings of S4S and apply them to integrating Sitecore with Dynamics. Salesforce and Dynamics are, after all, cloud-based CRMs with similar data schemas". The resulting S4D integration is a greenfield project built from scratch with several features even being pushed back into S4S.

What are the challenges that S4D solves?

S4D is a no-code integration that captures the field values in Sitecore web forms and submits them to Dynamic entities. There are a number of challenges that have been overcome, namely, preventing duplicates, ensuring good data is not overwritten by bad, dealing with lead conversion, updating related entities, and capturing the form field values if the network connection to Dynamics is lost. There are also performance considerations when dealing with large companies that have multiple CRM instances, high numbers of form submitters, and/or use staging tables to pre-process inbound leads and contacts.

The S4D integration transacts data in real-time which makes it possible to use Dynamics as a single source of data. This improves data quality, eliminates sync jobs, enables transaction issues to be reported immediately, and allows remote data to be pretested before being overwritten. The alternative to transacting in real-time is batch processing or blind syncing. Batch processing creates duplicates in both systems, generates unreliable data due to transfer delays, is not able to deal with complex objects (and relationships), and has a number of other challenges.

FuseIT will be extending S4D in the coming months. The next task is to push the website behavior of each Siteore visitor to Dynamics when the visitor submits a web form. This provides intelligence to the sales team who are often tasked with contacting the visitor. Beyond this, S4D will be extended to allow the sales team to control the web experience of targeted Sitecore visitors from Dynamics.

About FuseIT

FuseIT enterprise integrations optimize the delivery of digital experiences to the world's leading brands. Purpose-built and dedicated to integrating a select few systems, the integrations don't compromise on function or performance. The team at FuseIT is highly skilled in all the technologies they integrate, Sitecore, Salesforce, Micro Focus Content Manager, and Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Charter Flight Group (FLYCFG) Lindsey, Ryan and Yves are all extremely deserving of their respective promotions, and they are all well-equipped to propel us forward as we continue to serve current and future private jet travelers

Charter Flight Group (FLYCFG) is excited to announce the promotions of three vital team members. FLYCFG is proud to congratulate Lindsey Turcotte, Yves Brancheau, and Ryan M. Sargent on their recent promotions.



Lindsay Turcotte has been promoted to Director of Sales

Yves Brancheau to Chief Information Officer

Ryan Sargent to Chief Operating Officer

Lindsey has been with FLYCFG for three years as Senior Aviation Sales Manager, Yves has served the company for nearly four years as a Software Engineer, and Ryan has been a part of the team for over six years in multiple roles, including Vice President of Operations. Each of them is highly regarded within the company and has contributed heavily to the success of FLYCFG in their individual positions.

Lindsey, Ryan, and Yves are all extremely deserving of their respective promotions, and they are all well-equipped to propel us forward as we continue to serve current and future private jet travelers, said CEO Jordan Brown, It is impossible to exaggerate their contributions to what Charter Flight Group has become and how it continues to grow. We have a clear vision of what we hope to accomplish moving forward and are excited to continue to build on the progress that we have made over the past year. We believe this is the perfect team to allow us to do that.

FLYCFG experienced considerable growth in 2021, welcoming thousands of brand-new customers with open arms to meet the increasing demand for private air travel. In recent months, the company has opened a new office in Texas and acquired a new sister company in Jet Charter. Considering all of this, it is clear that FLYCFG and its parent company have big plans to continue to serve customers while increasing its capacity to reach even more private jet travelers.

A Jet Genius Florida Holdings Company based in Boca Raton, FL, FLYCFG is a leading player in the private jet charter industry. For years, FLYCFG has given its customers access to on-demand air travel with over 6,000 options of private jets, all while meeting the highest safety standards in the industry. Even as FLYCFG continues to grow, it is clear that the commitment to providing clients with a comprehensive, remarkable travel experience remains at the forefront of every move.

To learn more about all of the excellent benefits that FLYCFG offers or to book your next trip, contact FLYCFG or call (888) 634-7449 today.
Extra Technology is laser focused on customer success, and by welcoming Extra Technology to the BP3 family we will be able to better serve our mutual clients in the UK and Europe more broadly.

BP3, a global leader in designing and delivering business process automation programs, today announced it has completed the acquisition of specialist automation consultancy Extra Technology. The acquisition will strengthen BP3s position in a rapidly growing intelligent automation market in EMEA and the US, with Extra Technology having proven itself to be resilient to market changes over recent years.

The acquisition of one of the global leaders in workload automation is the seventh in BP3s history and plays a key role in BP3s growth strategy, ensuring BP3 remains on course to become the leading provider of intelligent automation services globally.

The deal will see Extra Technology operate as a BP3 company and separate legal entity, before being fully integrated into BP3 over the course of the next two years.

The addition of Extra Technologys unparalleled workload automation capabilities and expertise, backed by a team of fully-certified experts, many whom come from workload automation vendor and senior IT manager backgrounds, will allow BP3 to significantly expand its current offering.

The synergy between BP3s offering and client base and that of Extra Technology will allow customers of both companies to benefit from a broader portfolio of top-tier workload automation and intelligent automation solutions, as well as intelligent document processing, process automation, robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence.

The acquisition will also provide customers with support for additional software packages and access to an increased number of experts in the field of automation and artificial intelligence.

Together, these expanded capabilities will allow customers to scale and reap the rewards of automation faster, while cementing BP3s expanded presence in the EMEA market and allowing it to broaden its appeal to US-based customers.

In addition to Extra Technologys robust workload automation business, BP3 will acquire Extra Technologys 20 employees and London office, with all employees at both companies expected to remain in their current roles.

Scott Francis, CEO, BP3, says: Extra Technology is laser focused on customer success, and by welcoming Extra Technology to the BP3 family we will be able to better serve our mutual clients in the UK and Europe more broadly. Our clients are looking for better solutions to modernize their applications that run their core business, and fresh ways to automate vast amounts of physical and digital paperwork. Together, we can meet those needs more completely for our clients on both continents.

Mark Mannion, CEO, Extra Technology, adds: This is a very exciting time for everyone at Extra Technology. Weve had the pleasure of working with BP3 to delivery great results for clients before  and were even more excited about doing that under the same banner going forward. Both our company culture and our product offering are closely aligned to BP3s and together we will be able achieve even more than we have alone. The combination of our robust solutions and ecosystems of partners will strengthen our joint offering to customers, both existing and new, and provide new opportunities for employees.

About BP3 Global, Inc.:

BP3 gives people faster ways to get things done. We streamline and automate the processes that drive your business, with clients across a number of industries including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing telecommunications, hospitality and travel. We have achieved an unprecedented 99% success rate, bringing more focus, more foresight, and more follow-up to every project. It is how and why some of the world's more respected brands such as Charter Communications, Keller Williams, and Eli Lilly  rely on BP3. BP3 is a leader in Forresters Q3 2020 Wave of Digital Process Automation Service Providers and has recently won partner of the year honors from Automation Anywhere and Camunda.

For more information, please visit http://www.bp-3.com

About Extra Technology

Founded in 2007, Extra Technology is a leading provider of expert automation solutions, as well as consultancy and education across a variety of automation technology, including workload automation, process automation, automated operations and release automation.

The company also specializes in integrating diverse multi-vendor automation environments into a single Intelligent Automation platform, boosting compliance and efficiency and radically reducing costs. Unlike other technology integrators, Extra Technology offers extensive, real-world experience, thereby delivering significant value to customers globally.

For more information about Extra Technology, please visit: https://www.extratechnology.com/
Headquartered in Fishers, Indiana, RQAW is a full-service engineering and architecture firm. In acquiring RQAW, DCCM is expanding its existing partnership with industry veteran Troy Woodruff, who will be continuing in his role as Chief Executive Officer of RQAW.

RQAW has a long history in the A/E/C industry, said James F. (Jim) Thompson, PE, DBIA, CEO of DCCM. Our operation has grown rapidly, and once combined with DCCM, RQAW will provide us with a solid platform throughout the Midwest. Additionally, we look forward to capitalizing on RQAWs diverse services being offered in our other geographies across the U.S. I am pleased to welcome such an experienced team of professionals to DCCM, and I am enthusiastic about the opportunities this relationship presents.

RQAWs mission is to deliver infrastructure and building solutions that propel communities forward, said Troy Woodruff. This strategic partnership with DCCM will enable us to complete the build-out of our vision to deliver our services across the United States. We are thrilled to be joining the DCCM family.

Elie Azar, Managing Director of White Wolf, added We are excited to partner with Troy and the entire RQAW team in their continued growth. This strategic partnership expands not only DCCMs list of services but also its footprint across the Midwest and particularly the state of Indiana.

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About RQAW

RQAW is a full-service engineering and architecture firm with all disciplines available in-house, including architecture, transportation engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, construction inspection, and civil and structural engineering. RQAW serves various markets such as state and local government entities, K-12 and higher educational institutions, military sectors, commercial, and healthcare.

For more information, please visit: https://rqaw.com/.

About DCCM

DCCM is a provider of design, consulting, and program & construction management professional services focusing on infrastructure marketplaces throughout the public and private sectors. Through a family of complementary brand companies, DCCM serves a variety of end markets while offering a national reach.

DCCM is aggressively hiring key industry professionals in all disciplines and is actively seeking further acquisition opportunities throughout North America.

For more information, please visit: http://www.dccm.com.

About White Wolf

White Wolf is a private investment firm that began operations in late 2011 and is focused on management buyouts, recapitalizations and investments in leading middle market companies. In general, White Wolf seeks both private equity and private credit investment opportunities in companies that are headquartered in North America with $10 million to $200 million in revenues.

Preferred industries include: manufacturing, business services, information technology, security, aerospace and defense, government services, and infrastructure services.

For more information, please visit: http://www.whitewolfcapital.com.
AVIE! Medspa and Laser Center in Loudoun County, Virginia is now offering Upneeq, an FDA-approved once-daily prescription eyedrop for acquired ptosis, or low-lying lids. Upneeq was shown in clinical trials to lift upper eyelids and open eyes within hours after the first dose.

AVIE! Medspa and Laser Center in Loudoun County, Virginia is proud to offer a promising solution for low-lying lids with Upneeq, a once-daily prescription eyedrop that lifts your upper eyelids to open your eyes without surgery.

Acquired ptosis, or low-lying lids, is a common condition that can affect your appearance and eyesight. It typically occurs with age and results when the muscles in the eyelid stretch and weaken, causing the lid to droop.

FDA-approved Upneeq is an ophthalmic solution containing oxymetazoline hydrochloride, an alpha-adrenergic agonist that stimulates the Muller's muscle, an involuntary eyelid muscle, to contract. You may be an ideal candidate for Upneeq prescription eyedrops if your low-lying lids are causing the following concerns:

 Your eyesight is impaired

 You look tired all the time

 Your eyes appear asymmetrical

 You have trouble reading, driving or using your computer

 You are bothered by your appearance

Whats more, Upneeq was shown in clinical trials to lift upper eyelids and open eyes within hours after the first dose.

AVIE! Medspa and Laser Center is the premiere destination in Northern Virginia for every aesthetic need, from skin rejuvenation to anti-aging, body contouring and more. To learn more about Upneeq prescription eyedrops for acquired ptosis/low-lying lids or our other treatments, please call (703) 870-3844 or request a consultation online today!

About AVIE! Medspa & Laser Center

AVIE! Medspa & Laser Center has been offering the latest in cosmetic medical spa treatments in a relaxing spa environment in Leesburg, Virginia since opening in March 2009. Owner and Master Aesthetician Kim Marinetto, RN, in conjunction with Medical Director Khalique Zahir, MD, and their highly skilled team of nurses, nurse practitioners and aestheticians, provide specialized cosmetic and aesthetic programs so each of their clients needs are addressed on an individual basis with personalized follow-ups.

Aesthetic treatments at AVIE! have minimal to no downtime. Services include EMSCULPT, EMSCULPT NEO, EMTONE, Halo, microneedling, VirtueRF microneedling, EMSELLA, CoolSculpting, Ultherapy, Botox, Juvederm Ultra XC, Juvederm Ultra Plus XC, Vollure XC, Voluma XC, Volbella XC, chemical peels, MicroLaserPeel, BBL photofacials, MOXI, HydraFacial Syndeo, dermaplaning, skin tightening, ProFractional Skin Resurfacing, laser hair removal, professional skin analysis, PRP, PRFM, vitamin B12 shots and blepharoplasty by Dr. Zahir. AVIE! has performed over 315,000 Botox and dermal filler treatments since 2009. AVIE! also carries physician-level skin care. Consultations are complimentary and financing is available. For more information, please call (703) 870-3844 or visit http://www.aviemedspa.com.

About Kim Marinetto, RN & Master Aesthetician

Kim Marinetto has over 33 years of experience as a registered nurse. In the past 15 years, she has focused her practice on cosmetic medicine, adding to her credentials a Medical Aesthetician Certification in 2006, along with additional certifications in Botox Cosmetic, facial fillers, sclerotherapy and various advanced laser systems. Kim is a Master Aesthetician in the state of Virginia. Additionally, Kim is an Aesthetic Provider Council member for Alastin Skincare USA. She has done extensive training on laser technology and her coursework is recognized by the AMA.

About Khalique Zahir, MD

Dr. Khalique Zahir, medical director of AVIE! Medspa and Laser Center, graduated from West Virginia School of Medicine and is board-certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery and The American Board of Surgery. Dr. Zahir practiced general surgery from 19921999 at West Virginia University and St. Marys Hospital, then cosmetic, plastic and reconstructive surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center from 19992001. Dr. Zahir also holds a Virginia Medical License and a Maryland Medical License. He has written over 20 articles published in national health journals and is an assistant clinical professor of surgery at VCU School of Medicine.
Anchor Legal Group, PLLC is pleased to announce that Charles Charlie D. Pittman, Jr. has joined our team. Mr. Pittman brings years of experience and a record of excellence in real estate transactions, title insurance, and real estate investment business matters. We are pleased to add his dedicated legal service and extensive knowledge of Virginia Real Estate Law to the firm.

Born in Munich, Germany, Mr. Pittman graduated from the University of Virginia and later earned his Juris Doctor from William & Mary Law School in 1981. Prior to joining Anchor Legal Group, Mr. Pittman was the founder of Charles D. Pittman, Jr. & Associates, P.C., where he focused his practice on the areas of estate planning, business law, and real estate law in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Mr. Pittman has also served as a Professor of Real Estate Transactions at the Regent University School of Law, Chairman of the Title Insurance Committee to the Virginia State Bar Real Property Section, and a lecturer for the Real Estate Paralegal Continuing Education and certification courses.

The attorneys and staff at Anchor Legal Group, PLLC are excited to welcome Charles D. Pittman, Jr., Esq. to our team and look forward to the work he will do with the firm.

If you need assistance with estate planning, purchasing or selling real estate, or any other legal issue, reach out to the legal professionals at Anchor Legal Group, PLLC. Our experienced and dedicated team of attorneys will ensure that you receive the legal guidance you need and deserve. Call 757-LAW-0000 or contact us online to schedule a free consultation. Located in Virginia Beach, Virginia, we also serve clients in Chesapeake, Norfolk, Suffolk, Portsmouth, Newport News, Hampton, and Eastern Shore, Virginia.
Blockchain Analytics There has been a conscious effort in implementing stricter crypto regulations all over the world. Blockchain analytics will play a crucial role in decision-making processes for organizations dealing with crypto and blockchain technology.

The crypto sector is evolving at a frantic pace as global financial regulators adapt and bring in tighter regulations to ensure compliance with AML regulations. HashCash Consultants CEO Raj Chowdhury asserts that blockchain analytics will be essential in bridging the gap, and establishing order while promoting areas of maximum growth.

The mainstream adoption of crypto has also resulted in a sharp increase in cybercriminal activities and money laundering. As a consequence, financial task forces around the world stepped in, pointing to the existing fallacies. Enterprises dealing with crypto need to step up and adapt to the compliance updates. Blockchain analytics will be instrumental in keeping track of all occurring transactions while remaining versed with the upcoming trends.

A noted blockchain pioneer, Chowdhury acknowledges the significance of blockchain analytics in the upcoming days, stating, There has been a conscious effort in implementing stricter crypto regulations all over the world. Blockchain analytics will play a crucial role in decision-making processes for organizations dealing with crypto and blockchain technology.

Enterprises offering blockchain analytics services investigate digital asset transactions among global financial institutions. The delivered solutions offer actionable insight helping organizations to comply with the existing protocols placed by regulators in regard to cryptocurrencies.

The playing field required for innovation must not compromise the achievements we have made so far. Like any technology, blockchain is not immune to misuse. Hence the regulation is a necessity not only for AML compliance but also for developing blockchain research and the global crypto-community, remarked Chowdhury, who had previously commented on the role of crypto education in preventing high-APY DeFi scams and how the upcoming crypto evolution depends upon balance and active association.

The Chowdhury-led HashCash Consultants has been a global frontrunner in white-label blockchain solutions with an unmatched commitment to excellence, trust, and transparency. The company enjoys strategic alliances with global corporations and financial institutions in more than 26 countries across 6 continents. Winning top honors in blockchain development, HashCash has made notable contributions in Brazil, the US, UAE, and more.

Blockchains impact as a disruptive technology has been universally accepted. However, it is imperative not to get swayed in the waves of innovation and work out the improvement areas using blockchain analytics.

About Raj Chowdhury:

Raj Chowdhury is the Managing Director of HashCash Consultants and Paybito. Raj pioneered the first interbank Trade Finance and Remittance implementation of Blockchain Technology between two of the largest global banks. Raj is an eminent voice in the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency space and actively engages with policymakers in this area. He is a contributor to Economic Times, Business World, CNNMoney and advises industry leaders in the adoption of Blockchain. He is a member of Asha Silicon Valley, a nonprofit committed to education for children in emerging countries. Author of the book 'The Dark Secret of the Silicon Valley', Raj is an investor in blockchain and cryptocurrency companies and an active member of the philanthropic community.
Star Refrigeration Scottish Roadshow

Engineers, contractors and business owners from the food and drink manufacturing, cold storage, pharma, petrochemical and ice rink sectors took advantage of Star Refrigerations free CPD events on 14th and 16th June 2022. The delegates arrived at Curl Aberdeen and the Moorings Hotel in Glasgow for the Net Zero Roadshow and heard presentations on the industrys most pressing topics including the F-gas regulation, legislation updates and reducing energy/carbon footprint.

One of the most popular Q&A sessions was energy efficiency and waste heat recovery as businesses continue to battle with the soaring rise in energy costs.

Calum McKenzie, Star Refrigerations Regional Manager  Scotland, said, There was a great turnout for the 2022 Roadshow with attendees from a variety of different sectors, and were proud we were able to host these events and provide expert advice and guidance. It is clear that the phase down of high GWP HFCs demands urgent action, and the use of natural refrigerants such as ammonia and CO2 will only continue to accelerate.

In addition to the half day of specialist seminars, attendees were given the chance to visit a local Star site to view a recently installed refrigeration plant and learn about its operation. Star employees took delegates on tours of Curl Aberdeen and Lineage Logistics, explaining how energy efficiency design, controls and aftercare keep the plants performing at their optimal condition.

Julie Dunn from Dunn Food and Drinks, said, Star has delivered a fantastic day of presentations and Q&A sessions which have helped us plan for the future and protect our business from imminent legislation changes and rising energy costs.

For customers who could not attend the Roadshow dates, the presentations are available on request. Star is also planning further regional roadshows in England later this year and is offering customers the opportunity for mini-roadshows at their premises to run through the topics and answer any specific questions.

Brian Banks of Piramal Pharma Solutions said, Its important that all engineering managers keep their knowledge up to date, especially where compliance is concerned. The Star refrigeration event reviewed some important potential changes to regulatory guidance and that knowledge will help me to de-risk future installations. I also gained knowledge that will help my team to manage our existing refrigeration systems better. "

To my knowledge the format of the event is unique. I dont think there are many deep technical specialist teams who are happy to freely share their expertise in this way.

It was clear that Star are passionate about helping wider industry to become more sustainable and the information the experts provided was of genuine value, presented in a relaxed but professional way.

The day was still a great experience and very worthwhile. Thank you for inviting me.

For more information about the 2022 Star Roadshow and access to the presentations, please get in touch with Astrid Prado at aprado@star-ref.co.uk

For more information about Star Refrigeration go to https://www.star-ref.co.uk
HALEO Clinic Logo image "Everyone's sleep is different. HALEO addresses sleep disorders at scale for employers and employees. We personalize care for effective sleep assessment for interventionincreasing productivity and reducing costs and risks in the workplace." Bradley Smith, Founder and CEO, HALEO Clinic.

HALEO, a world-renowned professional virtual sleep clinic, today announced it has closed a CAD $5.2 million (US $4.04M) Seed-Extension financing round to accelerate business growth across the United States and Canada. Boreal Ventures and AQC Capital led the round, along with investments from Investissement Quebec, Desjardins Capital, Real Ventures and the Pan-Canadian Consortium MEDTEQ+ (with support from the Government of Canada). Members of the Anges Quebec network and other notable angel investors also participated in the round.

Read this release in French.

HALEO is a professional virtual care solution for sleep that uses evidence-based techniques, such as cognitive behavioural therapy and image rehearsal therapy. Licensed therapists provide care to patients using HALEOs proprietary, clinically proven treatment protocols delivered through its state-of-the-art mobile application. The solution not only changes peoples lives by helping them return to healthy sleep and by reducing symptoms of mental illness, it also significantly reduces the absence management, disability, safety, and prescription medication costs assumed by the employer. Many employers describe HALEO as a highly effective physical and mental health solution that carries none of the taboos often associated with workplace assistance programs.

This seed-funding extension will fuel HALEOs research and development for new solutions across treatment modalities such as digital therapeutics, and across underserved clinical fields including shift work, nightmares, sleep optimization and sleep medication management. HALEO recently launched a new solution for shift workers (SW-CBTi) experiencing insomnia. This protocol is designed and clinically proven to be effective for first responders, manufacturers, transporters, front-line healthcare professionals and other shift workers.

Bradley Smith, HALEOs Founder and CEO, said that the company has been focused on delivering outstanding care for sleep at scale since it was founded in 2015. Everyones sleep is different, and so are the organizational cultures of the clients we serve. We personalize care and systematically assess the effectiveness of our interventions for each patient. We also customize our communication and reporting tools for our customers to maximize employee engagement, added Smith.

Kalthoum Bouacida, partner at AQC Capital, says the global Sleep Aids market is huge, yet none of the existing solutions effectively resolve the problem of poor sleep at the population level. HALEOs virtual sleep clinic meets this challenge head-on. I am really excited to see HALEO treating millions of patients.

David Charbonneau, managing partner at Boreal Ventures, added what sets HALEO apart is how its solution integrates professional clinical expertise in sleep into a digital platform. The result is a seamless clinical experience delivering high engagement, strong adherence to treatment and very satisfied customers. HALEO is a rare type of health benefit: a clinically proven solution that has demonstrated the ability to scale to the point that it significantly and measurably reduces an organizations costs and risks.

For Julien Ponce, Chairperson of HALEOs Board of Directors, HALEO is addressing an important market need. Front-line health care workers and first responders are in greater demand than ever before. These factors along with two years of a global pandemic, financial uncertainty, and general stress and mental health all contribute to the increase of sleep disorders. The rise of poor sleep hinders productivity, retention, and safety, which adds costs and risks to employers, said Ponce.

Q&A with more specifics about this fundraise and the HALEO mission.

To learn more about HALEO, visit: https://www.haleoclinic.com/en/news

About AQC Capital

AQC Capital is a venture capital fund supporting start-up businesses. The fund invests in Quebec companies in all sectors that seek to bring innovation to global markets. AQC Capital teams up with Anges Quebec, the largest angel investor network in Canada, and together the groups bring smart capital to start-ups thanks to their experience and network.

About Boreal Ventures

Founded in 2021, Boreal Ventures is an investment fund. Its mission is to capitalize on local scientific talent to participate in the creation of tomorrow's technological flagships. Boreal Ventures' philosophy is based on transparency and dedication to the success of the companies of its portfolio. Boreal Ventures aims to create a strong "deep tech" ecosystem, one success at a time. Boreal Ventures intends to achieve this by acting as a talent pipeline and catalyst for growth by making a $27 million investment fund available to technology start-ups.

About HALEO Clinic

Founded in 2015, HALEO is a virtual sleep clinic whose mission is to provide access to quality care based on clinically proven solutions for those suffering from insomnia or other sleep disorders. From sleep education and screening to the treatment of sleep disorders, HALEO helps improve the health and performance of employees while helping employers reduce their costs and risks.
How can educational systems adapt to empower students to take action on global 21st century issues such as the global climate crisis?

In the new NET ZERO show, Climate Activist Cherry Sung from South Korea explores how a conservative and standardized education system could implement an environmental education that empowers people. Sung interviews Chris Dede of Harvard's Graduate School of Education to discuss his solutions. Dedes research, which includes infusing technology into large-scale educational improvement initiatives such as climate change curricula, is focused on developing new types of educational systems that prepare learners for the challenges of a 21st century world.

Students need to feel 2 things, states Dede. Relevance that what they are learning actually has meaning in their lives and they need to feel agency. We want people that are advocates for change - that can only take place through environments that are learning by doing environments that teach you how ecosystems are shaped by the world. Dede notes that while its easy to feel a sense of despair about climate change, its not too late - the earth has powerful mechanisms for recovering from things if we give it the opportunity to do that.

Watch the Interview here

The Protect our Planet Movement in association with Planet Classroom has launched the acclaimed Net Zero video and podcast series in which 24 youth climate activists from the Protect Our Planet (POP) Movement in association with Planet Classroom ask international thought leaders working on the environment the big questions as to how their nations are progressing towards their 2050 Net Zero pledges.

About the Protect Our Planet Movement

The Protect Our Planet (POP) Movement is an initiative designed to address the urgent need to share information and knowledge with the youth on solutions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the UN, mitigate climate change, and adapt to its growing impacts. Intended to ultimately reach the size, scale, and momentum to become a global movement, POP mobilizes the youth worldwide to take collective action needed to mitigate climate change and protect threatened ecosystems.

About the Planet Classroom Network

The Planet Classroom Network, organized by CMRubinWorld, brings together musicians, dancers, video game creators, filmmakers, activists, learning innovators and emerging technologists from around the world to entertain, educate and engage youth, and to provide a rich cultural experience for all. Content showcased for youth and by youth on the Planet Classroom Network is provided by 30 cultural organizations from around the world. Young people globally played a significant role in conceptualizing, creating, and producing the network's vision and programming.

For more information on CMRubinWorld

Follow @CMRubinWorld on Twitter

Contact Information:

David Wine

David(at)cmrubinworld(dot)com


Just as the Sixth Street Viaduct connects communities, HNTB is celebrating its presence in Los Angeles with eye-catching We Are Here advertising, expanding on the community-first theme the firm has used nationally since 2019

Aligning with the opening of the largest bridge project in the history of Los Angeles, HNTB Corporation is launching a visibility campaign to celebrate the firms presence in the LA community.

As engineer-of-record and architect-of-record on the Sixth Street Viaduct replacement connecting the historic Boyle Heights neighborhood to the downtown Arts District  HNTB will launch billboards and television commercials that speak to the firms commitment to Los Angeles and impact on connecting people and places through its work. The advertising campaign will run through the summer.

Just as the Sixth Street Viaduct connects communities, HNTB is celebrating its presence in Los Angeles with eye-catching We Are Here advertising, expanding on the community-first theme the firm has used nationally since 2019, said Wayne Feuerborn, HNTB West Division president. Im excited we are launching our first advertising campaign in Los Angeles, where we continue to work on iconic, essential and equitable infrastructure projects that will improve mobility for everyones benefit.

HNTB has roots in Southern California dating back to 1914 with the landmark design of Pasadenas historic Arroyo Seco Bridge. The firm has grown in California to include seven offices and more than 350 employees.

While working on many of the regions most visible infrastructure projects, HNTB also is committed to serving the communities where employees live and work. The successful SPARK-LA partnership with the City of Los Angeles Department of Public Works and Los Angeles Unified School District just completed its sixth year, sharing STEM curriculum with the Girls Academic Leadership Academy: Dr. Michelle King School for STEM, and adding Schurr High School, a four-year public school in the Montebello Unified School District, to the program for the first time this year.

In addition to multiple community service projects and sponsorships, HNTB in Los Angeles has received many honors in recent years, including Employer of the Year by Womens Transportation Seminar, American Council of Engineering Companies Firm of the Year, and Best Places to Work in Los Angeles by Los Angeles Business Journal.

Creative for the We Are Here advertising campaign was designed by the firms inhouse team. RW2 Productions produced the television commercials. Media buys were managed by the firms Southern California public relations partner, Agnes Huff Communications Group, and Nick Simard, CEO of Outdoor Media Buyers.

About HNTB

HNTB Corporation is an employee-owned infrastructure solutions firm serving public and private owners and construction contractors. With 108 years of service, HNTB understands the life cycle of infrastructure and addresses clients most complex technical, financial and operational challenges. Professionals nationwide deliver a full range of infrastructure-related services, including award-winning planning, design, and program and construction management. For more information, visit http://www.hntb.com, or follow HNTB on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
SIUE's (L-R) Jessica DeSpain, PhD; Kristine Hildebrandt, PhD; Howard Rambsy II, PhD; and Margaret Smith, PhD. "The RISE-DH fellows will engage with four established projects, giving them the opportunity to learn more about the field of ethnography, linguistic archiving, community engagement, literature, and technical cultural remix."

Promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the study of humanities and social sciences is crucial now, more than ever, especially when facing challenges brought on by the pandemic. A new experiential learning and training program for 150 African American students at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Realizing Inclusive Student Engagement in the Digital Humanities (RISE-DH), is working to combat the challenges and provide a more equitable future.

Led by the SIUE College of Arts and Sciences Interdisciplinary Research and Informatics (IRIS) Center, the innovative programming has received a $100,000 grant supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).

On campus and in our region, technology resources are not evenly distributed, said principal investigator (PI) Jessica DeSpain, PhD, co-director of the IRIS Center. Beyond the expense of and access to hardware and software, digital humanities has a long history of racist and exclusionary practices.

Project co-PIs include Howard Rambsy II, PhD, distinguished research professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, Margaret Smith, PhD, research assistant professor of digital humanities in the IRIS Center, and Kristine Hildebrandt, PhD, associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literature and co-director of the IRIS Center.

RISE-DH helps address the digital divide of people of color and the digital humanities. The program has three goals:



To engage African American students in the study of Black literature and culture using digital humanities methods that will help them develop 21st century skills and imagine careers in the humanities and social sciences

To support incoming students who are struggling to feel connected to the University in the wake of the pandemic

To create equitable access to high-impact practices.

The RISE-DH fellows will engage with four established projects, giving them the opportunity to learn more about the field of ethnography, linguistic archiving, community engagement, literature, and technical cultural remix, said DeSpain.

Along with the established projects, RISE-DH will also have a peer mentorship component to the program that will connect senior and incoming students on campus. The program will begin in fall 2022 with its first cohort.

The grant was awarded to 21 grantees whose projects and programs relate to and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. A full list of SSRC grants awarded is available http://www.ssrc.org/programs/ssrc-neh-sustaining-humanities-infrastructure-program-ship/grantees/.

Central to SIUEs exceptional and comprehensive education, the College of Arts and Sciences offers degree programs in the natural sciences, humanities, arts, social sciences and communications. The College touches the lives of all SIUE students, helping them explore diverse ideas and experiences, while learning to think and live as fulfilled, productive members of the global community. Study abroad, service-learning, internships and other experiential learning opportunities better prepare SIUE students not only to succeed in our regions workplaces, but also to become valuable leaders who make important contributions to our communities.
From Before the Beginning to Forevermore: A Brain Stretching Story: a helpful Bible study for young readers. From Before the Beginning to Forevermore: A Brain Stretching Story is the creation of published author Judy Knapp, a dedicated teacher who served for thirty-six years before retiring and continuing to serve as a Sunday school teacher. Knapp is a two-time district Teacher of the Year award winner.

Knapp shares, Do you know some of the stories from the Bible? Theres the story of how God created the earth; Noah and the ark; Joseph and his coat of many colors; Moses and the burning bush; David and the giant, Goliath; the story of Jesuss birth; many stories of Jesus healing people; and, of course, the wonderful story of the first Easter. Did you ever wonder how each of these stories and many others were chosen to be in the Bible and how they fit together? Each of these small stories is part of a much, much larger story.

Now most stories begin and end. They start with once upon a time and end with they lived happily ever after. The Bible is different because it is Gods story, and He is a forever God. His story goes from before the beginning and continues to forevermore, and it is all about His big plan for you and me. Are you interested in learning more? I should warn you that since God is so big, His story takes a bit of brain stretching to understand. But dont worry, brain stretching is not painful.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Judy Knapps new book brings readers an engaging opportunity to find a deeper understanding of Gods word.

Knapp shares in hopes of aiding young believers on their journey to nurturing a deep connection with God.

Consumers can purchase From Before the Beginning to Forevermore: A Brain Stretching Story at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about From Before the Beginning to Forevermore: A Brain Stretching Story, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Indelible Footprints: an engaging genealogical study. Indelible Footprints is the creation of published author Kay Nelson, a native of Wisconsin who attended Bryan University. Married for sixty years, Nelson is the proud mother of four children, a former educator, and a pastors wife.

Nelson shares, I have been the recipient of a treasure chest of family heirlooms. There are old pictures, poems, genealogies, and stories. Because past generations were so faithful to preserve their family history, I felt compelled to preserve their footprints. My favorite heirloom is a metal crest that dates back to the 1200s. The stamp reveals a bird with writing in the Welsh language which, when translated, reads, Faith in God makes all things right. I have several unique things that the book contains, such as a contract with the Indians for land and a Civil War diary written by my great-grandfather. There are newspapers dated March of 1863 offering a bounty of $20,000 for the head of Lincoln. Poems were written by my grandmother depicting the emotional trauma she went through during World War II that came from my treasure chest. The stories of my uncles who were in that war one in the South Pacific and the other in Germany. There are stories of the French Huguenots, pioneers, Pilgrims, and Scotch Reformers that were imprisoned for their faith as well as stories of the devastation of the bubonic plague, both in England and in Germany. It also includes a pilot that transported the Apollo 13 astronauts. My linage contains, missionaries, preachers, and a preachers wife. Because former generations were faithful to preserve their history, I felt compelled to include their stories in the book, making their footprints indelible.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Kay Nelsons new book will captivate anyone with an appreciation for history.

Nelson offers a powerful and interesting study that examines various mementos and heirlooms from generations past.

Consumers can purchase Indelible Footprints at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Indelible Footprints, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Law Office of Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP For more information about the class action lawsuit against Pro Management Company Inc., call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

The Los Angeles employment law attorneys, at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP, filed a class action complaint alleging that Pro Management Company Inc. violated the California Labor Code. The Pro Management Company Inc. class action lawsuit, Case No. CVRI2202118, is currently pending in the Riverside County Superior Court of the State of California. A copy of the Complaint can be read here.

The complaint states Pro Management Company Inc. allegedly failed to fully relieve Plaintiff and other California Class Members for their legally required thirty (30) minute meal breaks. Employees were also allegedly required, from time to time, to work in excess of four (4) hours without being provided the legally required ten (10) minute rest periods. The California Supreme Court defines off-duty rest periods as time during which an employee is relieved from all work related duties and free from employer control.

Additionally, Pro Management Company Inc. allegedly failed to pay employees for all the time they were under the employer's control. This, allegedly, includes the time Plaintiff and other California Class Members had to submit to mandatory COVID-19 questionnaires and temperature checks prior to clocking in for the day. To the extent that the time worked off the clock did not qualify for overtime premium payment, Defendant allegedly failed to pay minimum and overtime wages for the time worked off-the-clock.

For more information about the class action lawsuit against Pro Management Company Inc., call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP is an employment law firm with offices located in San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Riverside and Chicago that dedicates its practice to helping employees, investors and consumers fight back against unfair business practices, including violations of the California Labor Code and Fair Labor Standards Act. If you need help in collecting unpaid overtime wages, unpaid commissions, being wrongfully terminated from work, and other employment law claims, contact one of their attorneys today.

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This bare earth lidar digital elevation model was collected in Park County, Mont. Image courtesy of USGS As our land and seas evolve, these data and other efforts provide invaluable resources in our fight against climate change.

In June, days of heavy rains and snowmelt led to the flooding of Yellowstone River and rivers in other parts of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, causing what the U.S. Geological Survey has referred to as a 1 in 500-year event. The flooding destroyed bridges, swept away roads, spurred mudslides, led to the evacuation of more than 10,000 visitors and temporarily closed Yellowstone National Park.

Immediately following the flooding, local GIS officials contacted USGS and Woolpert to procure lidar data recently collected across Yellowstone and Park County, Mont., to aid in their response. Steven Jay, Park County GIS/IT analyst, said the data, including collections over many remote and densely forested areas, is needed to model the terrain, prioritize areas at a higher risk of flooding and identify areas of erosion.

Woolpert and USGS responded to this request and delivered lidar data and imagery within 24 hours, helping accelerate recovery and providing needed resources to help the park reopen. Woolpert Vice President John Gerhard said this event and the swift request from Yellowstone officials for current and accurate lidar data and imagery illustrates their value in emergency response and recovery. He said these collections have been driven by USGS, its 3D Elevation Program and its 3D Hydrography Program.

USGS has been working to update the National Map to ensure that needed elevation data are routinely collected for multiple applications, especially in times of distress, Gerhard said. As our land and seas evolve, these data and other efforts, like the Greater Yellowstone Climate Assessment, provide invaluable resources in our fight against climate change. We will continue to support these efforts in Yellowstone and these key USGS initiatives however we can.

About Woolpert

Woolpert is the premier architecture, engineering, geospatial (AEG) and strategic consulting firm, with a vision to become one of the best companies in the world. We innovate within and across markets to effectively serve public, private and government clients worldwide. Woolpert is an ENR Top 150 Global Design Firm, has earned six straight Great Place to Work certifications and actively nurtures a culture of growth, inclusion, diversity and respect. Founded in 1911 in Dayton, Ohio, Woolpert has been Americas fastest-growing AEG firm since 2015. The firm has 1,900 employees and more than 60 offices on four continents. For more, visit woolpert.com.
A Small Town Christmas: a heartfelt Christmas tale for all ages. A Small Town Christmas is the creation of published author Linda Talcott.

Talcott shares, Take a step back in time to a more simple way of living at Christmas.

Open your hearts and feel the magic when life wasnt all about cell phones, gaming, social media, and wasnt so fast paced.

Look through a childs eyes and her memories to enjoy the old-fashioned family way, the love, town festivities, and Santa Claus.

Let this book take you back and feel the excitement grow in a Christmas that once was.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Linda Talcotts new book will encourage a sense of peace and wonder during the Christmas season.

Talcotts appreciation for the old-fashioned way of living is apparent within the pages of this charming holiday tale.

Consumers can purchase A Small Town Christmas at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about A Small Town Christmas, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Erin Massey Walters, the new Office Manager for Massey, Clark, Fischer, Inc. At Massey, Clark, Fischer, we do a good, honest job for our clients. We specialize in helping Florida businesses and individuals find quality insurance coverage. As an independent Agency, we work with 70+ carriers to meet your needs and budget. - Hank Massey, CEO of Massey, Clark, Fischer, Inc.

Massey, Clark, Fischer has officially welcomed the third generation into their family-owned and operated Florida insurance Agency, just before celebrating their 65th anniversary. Headed by H.W. Hank Massey, the company recently welcomed Erin Massey Walters (Hanks daughter) as its new office manager.

Erin Massey Walters graduated from the University of Florida with her B.S. in Advertising in 2006. She went on to obtain her Juris Doctor from Barry University School of Law in May 2009. Erin spent almost 10 years as a civil and criminal trial lawyer. Today, Erin loves helping her father, Hank, manage the Agency.

Describing how she feels to be part of a family business with such a rich legacy, she said:

It gives me a sense of pride. Family is #1 to us. Its how we grew up and its always been a part of my awareness. Its the best thing ever to see your parents in action. Dad is such a good boss. Seeing him in this role, seeing the clients happy and taken care of, is something Im so proud of and happy to be part of. Erin Massey Walters, Office Manager, Massey, Clark, Fischer, Inc.

Over the years, multiple members of the Massey family have held roles (some unofficially) in the business. These include Sally Massey (Hank's mother), Tammie B. Massey (Hank's wife), J. Michael Massey (Hank's brother), Leslie Massey (Hanks sister) and Jessica Massey Shelton (Hank's daughter). Now, Erin Massey Walters (Hanks daughter) is helping to manage the Agency in the role of Office Manager.

Massey, Clark, Fischer was formed in August 1999 with the merger of Massey Insurance and Financial Services, Inc. and Clark, Oen, Johnson, & Fischer, Inc. Both organizations trace their roots back to 1958.

In 1958, Harry W. Massey, Sr. founded Massey Insurance and was later appointed as the General Agent for the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. In 1969, Franck D. Massey joined his brother in the business. Then in 1979, H.W. Hank Massey, Jr., Harrys son, joined the organization. Hanks brother, J. Michael Massey, joined several years later. In 1985, Massey Insurance purchased the property and casualty insurance arm of Stockton, Whatley and Davin, expanding their service offerings beyond life insurance. Fourteen years later, they merged with Clark, Oen, Johnson, & Fischer, Inc. and renamed the firm Massey, Clark, Fischer, Inc.

President of the Agency since 2003, Hank Massey is dedicated to fulfilling the insurance needs of business owners and individuals in Florida. Speaking to the family-owned and multi-generational history of the business, Hank described it as something that brings him immense pride and joy. He recalls how much of an honor it was to work alongside his father and uncle, both of whom he described as being great mentors.

At Massey, Clark, Fischer, we do a good, honest job for our clients. We specialize in helping Florida businesses and individuals find quality insurance coverage. As an independent Agency, we work with 70+ carriers to meet your needs and budget. - Hank Massey, CEO of Massey, Clark, Fischer, Inc.

Massey, Clark, Fischer, Inc. prides itself on being a local, independent Agency that takes the time to get to know its clients. They thoroughly evaluate clients insurance needs so their businesses and their personal assets are protected at the most competitive rates. Their mission is simple: match clients with the most comprehensive insurance package that caters to their distinct lifestyles. Over the decades, the relationships formed with their carriers allow them to effectively compare rates and coverage plans to ensure that their clients receive the protection they need.

For more information, contact Massey, Clark, Fischer Inc. directly at (561) 478-1660.
Meeting Group Selects Centric PLM for Complete Collection Visibility Our product quality is high and Centric PLM will help speed workflows and ultimately improve collaboration and quality of work.

Meeting Group, a premium Italian-based womens sportswear producer, has selected Centric Softwares Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source and sell products such as apparel, footwear, sporting goods, furniture, home decor, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

Meeting Group was born thanks to the meeting of an athlete and a young industrial designer in 1967 in Treviso, Italy. The duo created a dynamic brand specializing in the production of premium Italian apparel for women who appreciate an active lifestyle, and naturally mix sport with glam-fashion. For more than 50 years, Meeting Group has been manufacturing apparel with great care and passion and maintains nearly 90 percent of their production locally, with the remaining in Turkey and the Far East.

Meeting Group is focused on expanding their womens activewear collection DEHA. This brand line draws its inspiration from the world of Ballet and offers a perfect mix between the technical performance of its fabrics and a more fashionable design. DEHA produces two collections per year, has nearly 500 SKUs and is distributed in over 1,000 multi-brand stores worldwide and in the most prestigious international department stores.

When Andrea Dei Rossi, Chief Innovation Officer at Meeting Group joined the team, he immediately identified the need for digital transformation. The group was working with an outdated Product Data Management (PDM) system that wasnt integrated with the companys ERP system, causing delays and data integrity issues.

I knew we could not continue to work in this way, says Dei Rossi. The first step was to move to a new technology platform with a modern and easy to use interface, where data could be stored and retrieved in real-time.

Dei Rossi wanted to improve product quality and team collaboration by having a single source of truth. He knew a PLM system could help speed processes from design to Bill of Materials (BOM) to costing and help the group analyze collections more efficiently.

The main purpose of this project is data centralization and organization, says Dei Rossi. Today, information is scattered throughout our ERP system, in Excel files and on peoples computers. We wanted to have a single repository for data that is visible to everyone.

Centric PLM is expected to streamline the product development process, streamline collaboration and improve overall supply chain efficiency.

It will be great to access all the data live and not have to sort through emails and external charts to find relevant information. We spend too much time on internal communication and we want to make our work more efficient. So we wanted a system where we can organize all our documents and communicate with the whole team in a very effective way. We are also excited about Centric PLMs workflow management system and to be able to better collaborate with vendors. Its going to make us more efficient and faster, adds Dei Rossi.

Dei Rossi had worked with Centric Software in the past and was familiar with the power of Centric PLM. He selected Centric as a PLM partner based on Centrics apparel industry expertise, client references and easy to use interface.

Our product quality is high and Centric PLM will help speed workflows and ultimately improve collaboration and quality of work.

We are thrilled that Meeting Group has chosen Centric PLM as their single source of truth, says Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software. We look forward to working with a premium, Made in Italy brand that is focussed on innovative, high-quality design and production.

Learn more about Centric PLM

Request a Demo

Meeting Group (http://www.meeting-spa.com)

In the revolutionary sixties, while Italian design and fashion knew a moment of extraordinary expression, there was the meeting between a young athlete Raimondo Tauro and a young designer Renato Vendramel. From this meeting in 1967 the Meeting Group S.p.A. was born. This dynamic reality in the Treviso area, soon became a leader in the premium Italian sportswear market.

Meeting Group specializes in the production of top-quality Italian apparel, manufactured with great care and passion, for women who appreciate an active lifestyle. Its products are designed for sporty and casual people who like to dress according to a personal style rather than simply following fashion. Meeting Group offers innovative design and extreme care for every detail, creating each time, unique and distinctive collections.

Thanks to the know-how gained over the years, and to the precious contribution of figures of excellence in the textile industry, the company has always managed the whole supply chain: from the stylistic creativity to the modeling and from the production to commercial distribution.

DEHA (http://www.deha.it)

DEHA was founded in 2005 by Meeting Group as a celebration of the dance world and evolved into a total look. It has established itself quickly thanks to its recognizable style characterized by quality, softness and femininity.

Today, DEHA is the synthesis of the evolution of Meeting Groups original spirit and its history. It has become its pulsing heart. This brand line draws its inspiration from the world of Ballet, and offers a perfect mix between the technical performances of its fabrics and a more fashionable design.

DEHA is distributed in over 1,000 multi-brand stores worldwide and in the most prestigious international department stores with shop-in-shop.
Chris brings a strong financial background and expertise in strategy building and implementation as well as project management," said MiEN Company President & CEO Remco Bergsma. "That, along with his wealth of experience with companies that build and design spaces, makes him a great fit for MiEN.

MiEN Company has announced that Krzysztof (Chris) Skrzypek is joining the company as its) VP of Finance. In his new role, Skrzypek will coordinate with MiENs business units, vendors and sales teams to guide the companys growth and strategic direction as it designs and installs active learning environments that adapt to pedagogical needs.

Skrzypek comes to MiEN with significant experience in project management, strategy building and financial leadership. Most recently, he was a sales director for Farmers Insurance Group where he oversaw sales and profit execution for one of the companys business insurance markets. During Skrzypeks more than 17 years at Farmers Insurance, hed previously earned titles such as distribution strategic director and finance manager. In these positions, he collaborated with Farmers executive team on planning and execution of all company objectives.

Previously, Skrzypek served as controller and financial analyst at Horizon Group Properties in Michigan from 2004 to 2006. There, he worked with Horizons CFO on financial statements and refinancing forecasts. Before Horizons, Skrzypek was a controller for an Illinois construction company from 2002 to 2004. He was responsible for all financial reporting to the CFO as well as updating budgets and forecast models to maintain the companys financial stability.

It is extremely exciting to join a company thats making such innovative contributions to the future of education and has the potential for significant growth for years to come. I feel privileged to have the opportunity to work with the MiEN team and their customers, said Skrzypek.

We are delighted to welcome Chris to our team, said MiEN Company President and CEO Remco Bergsma. He brings a strong financial background and expertise in strategy building and implementation as well as project management. That, along with his wealth of experience with companies that build and design spaces, makes him a great fit for MiEN.

About MiEN Company

MiEN is a global company serving the education industry with innovative furniture products and services that promote and support active and interactive learning environments in engaging and functional ways. An American company with a strong European influence, its products and services represent the ideas and collaborative efforts of an expert team of suppliers, designers, and engineers. Built strong and durable using eco-friendly, sustainable materials, its products rank high in the industry in meeting the demands of creating dynamic and collaborative learning environments. For more information go to https://miencompany.com

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The Heart of the Civil War Heritage Areas (HCWHA) 2022 Porch Program Series continues on Saturday and Sunday, July 9 and 10 with the roar of cannon fire as the South Mountain Artillery Company once again visits the Newcomer House (image attached). This was the same site where Captain John Tidball's flying artillery charged up a hill to high ground during the 1862 Battle of Antietam. Talk and firings will happen at 11 AM, 1 PM, and 3 PM on Saturday, July 9 and Sunday, July 10.

The Newcomer House will be open from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Volunteer docents will be available to share knowledge about the Newcomer House and offer assistance to visitors to the three county Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area.

This is the sixth season of Porch Programs at the Newcomer House, HCWHAs Exhibit and Visitor Center at Antietam National Battlefield. Porch Programs feature presentations, demonstrations, pop-up exhibits, interactives and more from April through December.

The Newcomer House is located at 18422 Shepherdstown Pike in Keedysville, MD. The house is open 10am-4pm weekends in April, May, October and November and daily June through September. For more information, contact Newcomer House Manager Rachel Nichols at rachel@heartofthecivilwar.org or (240) 308-1740.
USOSM President and CEO Richard Hall welcomes Margaret Maggie Anderson and Paul B. Hebert to the board of directors, effective immediately. The strength of our board and the governance of the company are key to our strategic direction. We felt it was important at this time in our company's development, to add to and strengthen our board.

In response to its continued development, U.S. Oral Surgery Management (USOSM)  a specialty management services company that exclusively serves premier oral and maxillofacial surgeons  has appointed two new members to its board of directors. They are Margaret Maggie Anderson of Lifeline Vascular Care and Paul B. Hebert of Advantage Care Physicians of New York (ACPNY). Anderson and Hebert will begin serving on the board, effective immediately.

The strength of our board and the governance of the company are key to our strategic direction. We felt it was important at this time in our company's development, to add to and strengthen our board, said Richard Hall, USOSM president and CEO. Maggie brings a deep background and exceptional track record of scaling large, multi-unit healthcare companies. Paul brings comprehensive financial management experience, along with a broad understanding of the payor landscape. Both will be tremendous additions to our board.

Hall also serves on the board, along with Oak Hill Capital Principal Peter B. Armstrong, Oak Hill Capital Managing Partner Brian N. Cherry, Oak Hill Partner Micah D. Meisel, Dr. Thomas S. Weil of Austin Oral Surgery and Dr. Vincent J. Perciaccante of South Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery. The eight board members are like-minded  they are committed to maintaining the highest levels of clinical excellence for all USOSM partner practices, while improving financial and operational performance for all.

When you look at my background and the things Ive done in the healthcare space, its an ideal fit for helping USOSM to continue its growth. Its almost like my career path has brought me here. It all comes together, so as a team, we can get USOSM where it wants to go, notes Hebert. Its exciting to be a part of a group that is so focused on growth, that sees the opportunities out there and works hard, with integrity to accomplish its goals. There is so much potential in this area, in general, and with USOSM, in particular. Everyone who is involved with USOSM talks about it with passion and that speaks volumes.

Hebert has more than 30 years of experience in operational and financial management for major healthcare organizations and related companies. He is the chief administrative and financial officer for ACPNY, a primary and specialty care practice, serving half a million patients across the New York metropolitan area and a part of the EmblemHealth family of companies.

At ACPNY, Hebert is responsible for developing and implementing strategic and operational improvements to drive profitable growth, as well as building relationships with clinicians through financial education, transparency and aligning incentives with the organizations clinical and performance goals. In addition, he serves as the ACPNY liaison for EmblemHealth and has led the ACPNY practices in their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prior to ACPNY, Hebert held a number of leadership positions for UnitedHealth Group, including senior vice president of finance for UnitedHealthcare, CEO of UnitedHealthcare Dental, and chief operating officer of specialty benefits for Optum. Hebert also served in a number of leadership positions for Aetna Inc., including CFO for small and middle markets, vice president and head of provider data services and credentialing, vice president and head of the Sarbanes-Oxley project management office, vice president and director of the internal audit department and audit operations head for the international internal audit department. Hebert earned his bachelors degree in accounting from Central Connecticut State University.

Anderson echoes Heberts sentiments, saying: My background in healthcare and private equity and the experiences Ive had there have helped prepare me for this role with USOSM. Im very enthusiastic about the space and this strong management team. Theyre already very effective, and I look forward to helping USOSM continue its growth.

Anderson has more than 25 years of combined experience in the healthcare and private equity industries. Currently, she is an owner and managing partner of Lifeline Vascular Care, a leading healthcare management company that seeks to create joint-venture relationships with physician partners to acquire existing ambulatory surgery centers or develop new ones. Lifeline was carved out of the global Fortune 500 healthcare delivery company, DaVita, where Anderson served for a number of years as senior vice president and was responsible for a billion dollar operating group, in addition to Lifeline.

Prior to DaVita, Anderson was the president of Biomet 3i, a global, dental implant company. Before that, she was a director of operations at TPG, a private equity fund in San Francisco, where she led the carve-out of Fenwal and the acquisition of Biomet. In addition, Anderson was a member of the senior team of the management consulting firm AlixPartners, where she led operational turnarounds and restructurings.

Anderson also was a principal with Caledonia Group, a performance improvement consulting firm, serving the private equity sector, and held a variety of leadership positions at GM Powertrain. Anderson earned her MBA from Wright State University and her bachelors degree from the General Motors Engineering & Management Institute.

Headquartered in Irving, Texas, USOSM has partner practices spanning 19 states. They include Texas, Colorado, Georgia, Tennessee, Minnesota, Alabama, Oklahoma, Louisiana, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Arizona, California, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and Massachusetts. A shared services organization, USOSM collaborates with premier oral and maxillofacial surgeons to offer a partnership solution for continued and accelerated practice success. USOSM provides operational, marketing and administrative support services, reinvests resources, and applies best practices to improve clinical and financial performance and produce steadier, more profitable growth for all. For more information, visit https://www.usosm.com/.
Paramount Dental Arts in Clifton, NJ Patients are our top focus. We strive to make sure they are comfortable, understand their dental procedures, and have the tools they need to be successful in caring for their oral health.

Paramount Dental Arts in Clifton, NJ, is proud to announce the launch of its new website. With a strong in-office patient focus, the practice decided to create this new website in order to extend its reach to patients outside of the office for 24/7 ease and convenience.

The dental team at Paramount Dental Arts understands the importance of educating patients on dental health, oral hygiene, and any dental procedures that may be needed. They listen to and address patient concerns in a way that is both educational and encouraging. The launch of their newly designed website will give patients answers to their most common questions and concerns, as well as provide them with additional resources.

According to Dr. Todd K. Schild, "Patients are our top focus. We strive to make sure they are comfortable, understand their dental procedures, and have the tools they need to be successful in caring for their oral health. The new website helps us accomplish this."

Launching the new website is just part of what the team at Paramount Dental Arts is doing to make the patient experience more enjoyable. The office has also created a fully digital workflow to make information, including treatment history and treatment plans, accessible in real-time. This digital workflow keeps patients informed and allows the practice to provide the highest level of treatment for each patient.

Compassion for patients is a driving force of Paramount Dental Arts. From the moment an appointment is made until the procedure is complete, patients feel a strong family and community connection. Our patients know that their concerns are heard and they feel like they are part of their treatment, says Dr. Schild.

About Paramount Dental Arts

The dental team at Paramount Dental Arts is highly-trained and experienced and always puts patient comfort at the top of their priority list. The practice provides a comprehensive list of general dentistry, cosmetic dentistry, restorative dentistry, and pediatric dentistry services, including:



Dental cleanings

Extractions

Root canals

Gum disease

Oral cancer screenings

Mouthguards

Teeth whitening

Veneers

Dental implants

Crowns

Bonding

Bridges

Dentures

Prosthodontics

Periodontal treatments

Fillings

To learn more about Paramount Dental Arts, call their office at (973) 777-1772, view their new website at https://www.paramountdentalarts.com, or visit their office located at 1050 Clifton Avenue, Clifton, NJ 07013.
"As a co-founder of the SDPC and a current ParentSquare customer, I appreciate ParentSquares thorough and collaborative approach to student data privacy, Chief Information Officer of Cambridge Public Schools Steve Smith said.

ParentSquare Inc., developer of the premier unified school-home engagement platform for K-12, today announced it has become a member of the nonprofit Access for Learning (A4L) Communitys Student Data Privacy Consortium.

Started in 1997 by vendors and schools collaborating, the A4L Community and its special interest group the Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC) is a unique, non-profit collaboration composed of more than 3,000 schools, districts, local authorities, states, US and International Ministries of Education, software vendors and consultants. The A4L Community is committed to a common set of national and state-wide privacy standards that support these educational stakeholders in establishing common expectations regardless of the platform hosting those applications. The SDPC is specifically designed to address the day-to-day, real-world, multifaceted issues faced when protecting learner information by setting expectations between market providers and end users.

Protecting student data and privacy is critical in today's learning environment, ParentSquare Chief Strategy Officer Dr. Chad A. Stevens said. Our membership with A4L is just one more step weve taken to ensure greater governance of our data privacy best practices as we remain steadfast in our commitment to protect student data privacy.

ParentSquares membership with A4L will simplify the procurement process for districts that have selected the school-home communications platform giving them greater confidence in knowing that the technology platform meets the highest standards of privacy protection required by their respective state authorities.

Previously, ParentSquare earned the iKeepSafe Privacy Certifications and also reaffirmed its commitment to the latest version of the Student Privacy Pledge (introduced by the Future of Privacy Forum and the Software & Information Industry Association), which is a legally binding and public declaration to safeguard student informationjoining over 200 other signatories in the edtech industry.

"As a co-founder of the SDPC and a current ParentSquare customer, I appreciate ParentSquares thorough and collaborative approach to student data privacy, Chief Information Officer of Cambridge Public Schools Steve Smith said. Their adherence to industry-standard security protocols and privacy requirements are important so schools, students and caregivers can have the utmost confidence in the school-home communications platform.

About ParentSquare

ParentSquare is relied upon by millions of educators and families in 47 states for unified, effective school communications. ParentSquare provides parent engagement tools that work from the district office to the individual classroom, supported by powerful metrics and reporting. ParentSquares technology platform features extensive integrations with student information and other critical administrative systems, translation to more than 100 languages, and app, email, text, voice, and web portal access for equitable communication. ParentSquare (http://www.parentsquare.com), founded in 2011, is based in Santa Barbara, CA.

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Customers looking for an SUV should check out the 2022 Toyota RAV4 XLE Premium at Royal South Toyota in Bloomington, Indiana.

Powered by a 2.5L four-cylinder engine with Direct Shift 8-speed Electronically Controlled automatic Transmission with intelligence (ECT-i), the 2022 Toyota RAV4 XLE Premium features a front-wheel drivetrain and available all-wheel drive.

Currently, the inventory at Royal South Toyota in Bloomington, Indiana, includes the 2022 Toyota RAV4 XLE Premium which is available at 1.75% APR for 48 months so that customers can easily finance the purchase.

Some of the other features of the 2022 Toyota RAV4 XLE Premium include a 19-inch multi-spoke Super Chrome-finished alloy wheels, a power tilt moonroof, Smart Key System, Safety Connect, Toyota Safety Sense 2.0, LED projector headlights, Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, and Amazon Alexa compatibility.

Prospective buyers can test drive the model by visiting the dealership website at http://www.royalsouthtoyota.com. The dealership can be contacted at 833-900-2609 or customers can also choose to drop by 3115 South Walnut Street in Bloomington, Indiana, for a first-hand experience.

Reach out to Royal South Toyota for further assistance.
The NATO Summit this year invited the heads of state from four Asian-Pacific countries  Japan, ROK, Australia and New Zealand  to warm up for expanding the organization to the region. Meanwhile, the US, the boss of NATO, has been tightening its alliances in the region too. These point to NATOs intention to extend its tentacle to the Asia Pacific and become a globalized organization after it roiled Europe.

History has proven that wherever NATO extended its tentacle, there would be division and commotion. A quick review of its history shows that the organization had sided with West Europe against East Europe and the Soviet Union, then joined with East Europe against Russia, and it is now thinking of joining hands with some Asian Pacific countries against China. The process of NATOs eastward expansion is all along a process of causing division in other countries and regions.

NATO is following the American strategy to copy the division trick in Asia Pacific.

Most political elites in America have always admitted that NATO is the most important strategic resource to guarantee Americas global hegemony. Without it, Washington would lose the tool to control European countries, and it would be hard to push the evolution of security order on the Eurasian continent in a way beneficial for US hegemony and interests.

From forcefully interfering in the Balkan crisis in the 1990s to stabilizing the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first decade of the 21st century, to the more frequent involvement in Asian Pacific affairs today, NATO has long broken the boundary that keeps it to European affairs and continuously redefined its position and purpose following Americas adjustment of its own global strategy. As Washington shifts its strategic focus to Asia Pacific and launches relevant policies intensively, NATO is also trying to expand to the region and reinforce its functional and organizational presence there by hyping the so-called China threat.

To coordinate with Americas global counter-terrorism efforts, NATO launched the Contact Countries program at the Riga Summit in 2006 to forge a new mechanism of security coordination with Americas Asian Pacific allies such as Japan, ROK, Australia and New Zealand. That was the beginning of regularly expanding itself to involve the Asia Pacific. Under this mechanism, NATO has coordinated more closely with the so-called countries of common values in Asia Pacific in intelligence, military and other areas. For the past decade and more, NATO, leveraged on the global partners program as a bond, has mobilized the resources of its Asian Pacific partners to deal with the Afghan issue and has sped up the security and defense coordination with Japan, ROK, Australia, and New Zealand.

Under Americas lead, NATO is applying its experience gained in the past 30-plus years  dominating European security by creating division on the continent  to its efforts to build a new security architecture in Asia Pacific. Washington is dissatisfied with the current jigsaw puzzle kind of security architecture in this region, whereas its numerous bilateral military alliances, trilateral security partnership (AUKUS), Quad and Five Eyes cannot fully demonstrate its traditional behavioral pattern, which is seeking hegemony and forming exclusive clique in the region.

In recent years, the US has, on the one hand, made constant attempts to integrate the existing alliances and mechanisms in the Asia Pacific. On the other hand, it is also urging NATO to merge into the region both in system and in action in order to enhance the expansive momentum.

NATOs expansion will jeopardize regional peace and prosperity.

With its strategic gravity moving to the east, the US has obviously accelerated the deployment of the Asian Pacific security architecture lately. In addition to encouraging the connection and cooperation between NATO and Asian Pacific countries such as Japan, ROK, Australia and New Zealand, American political figures, including President Biden, have visited other countries in the region upon each others heels. They are trying to create an international sentiment of China threat, and push the host countries to align their security and defense strategy with NATO and other US allies, in a bid to forge a regional or even global security architecture with NATO at the core and then to push the US allies in Asia Pacific into containing China .

These moves of US bear a strong resemblance to its practices of creating division by aggravating the conflict between NATO members and Russia. NATOs eastward expansion has already led to the Russia-Ukraine military conflict, a prolonged confrontation between Russia and NATO, and a massive rift in Europe. In a similar fashion, the US-led NATOs expansion to Asia Pacific will create trouble in the region and jeopardize its peace and prosperity. This military alliance, following the strategic logic of major-country geopolitical rivalry, will definitely force Asian-Pacific countries to pick sides between China and the US. As a result, crises, conflicts and the possible security and economic disruption will likely cut off the process of regional economic integration entirely.

Waving the banner of common values but doing the dirty job of helping the US-led West secure hegemony, NATO is trying to create division and bloc confrontation again in the Asia Pacific. Countries in the region should stay highly alert.

Editors note: This article is originally published on huanqiu.com, and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
Eppie Titong, VXI SVP and Country Manager, receives the ICT Employer of the Year and Best Foreign-Owned Company of the Year Awards "The real inspiration behind this award is the credible and consistent stance of everyone in VXI for something beyond profit. We have created an effective working culture with an enduring appreciation for loyalty and passion, said Eppie Titong, SVP and Country Manager.

VXI Global Solutions, a leading provider of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services to businesses around the world, dominated the recently held 16th International ICT Awards by clinching the honors for Best Employer of the Year and Best Foreign-owned Company of the Year. The event was held at the Marriott Hotels Manila Ballroom in Pasay City last June 29, 2022, organized by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines.

The qualification criteria were structured around the foundations of HR leadership, growth of the company, size, quality, and diversity of clientele as well as HR competencies, company management, and support by a company of public goods.

Being honored at this year's ICT awards is a testament to the people of VXIs incredible effort and commitment in the face of great challenges. The real inspiration behind this award is the credible and consistent stance of everyone in VXI for something beyond profit. We have created an effective working culture with an enduring appreciation for loyalty and passion, said Eppie Titong, SVP and Country Manager.

Instead of seeking to get more out of people, VXI built a vast competitive advantage by meeting and exceeding our employees core needs. This ICT Award recognition is all about taking care of the most important people in the company and elevating ourselves together," said Jovy Llanes, Global VP of Human Resources.

The Best Employer of the Year Award recognizes VXI as the outstanding employer in the Philippines for ICT-enabled provision of services that is an inspirational role model for the Philippine business community and internationally, while the Best Foreign-owned Company of the Year distinguishes VXI as the outstanding foreign-owned company for ICT-enabled provision of services that serves as an inspirational role model for the Philippine business community and internationally.

VXI has previously won the ICT awards for Best Employer of the Year (2018), Best Company of the Year (2019), Most Innovative Company of the Year (2018 & 2019), Best Contact Center, and BPO Company of the Year (2017, 2018 and 2019), and was elevated to the ICT Hall of Fame for Best Contact Center and BPO Company of the Year in 2019.

PRESS CONTACT

VXI Corporate Communications

comms@vxi.com

-----------------------------------------------------------

About VXI Global Solutions

VXI Global Solutions is a BPO leader in customer service, customer experience, and digital solutions. Founded in 1998, the company has 40,000 employees in more than 40 locations in North America, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean. VXI delivers omnichannel and multilingual support, software development, quality assurance, CX advisory, automation & process excellence to the worlds most respected brands.

VXI is backed by private equity investor Bain Capital and is one of the fastest-growing, privately-held business services organizations in the United States and the Philippines, and one of the few US-based customer-care organizations in China.

For more information, visit http://www.vxi.com.
WebFindYou's IDX integrations will help increase session times, and repeat visits and further enrich the content on the websites of real estate companies and agents. Our clients in the real estate space highly requested this feature. So we're excited to have integrated IDX into our True Digital Marketing Technology, which was the missing piece to make us the preferred web platform and digital marketing technology for the real estate industry.

WebFindYou, the global leader in True Digital Marketing Technology for businesses, agencies, and freelancers, has added IDX (Internet Data Exchange) integrations to its software to help further support real estate companies and agents to maximize brand awareness, leads, conversions, and sales online.

WebFindYou's Technology enables companies, agencies, and freelancers to implement the most successful digital strategy there is  True Digital Marketing  in the most simplified and cost-effective manner possible. This thereby allows businesses of all sizes to maximize brand awareness, leads, conversions, and sales via a True Digital Marketing web platform that provides step-by-step and easy-to-follow tasks with supporting video tutorials without relying on third-party plugins and/or apps.

WebFindYou's Technology has long supported real estate companies, brokers, and agents in the past. However, now with this new IDX integration, they can enrich their websites even more with real-time property searches using MLS data to display detailed featured real estate listings to further drive visibility, traffic, and growth for their online presence.

To celebrate the Technology's latest component, WebFindYou's CEO, Robert Blankenship, stated, "Our clients in the real estate space highly requested this feature. So we're excited to have integrated IDX into our True Digital Marketing Technology, which was the missing piece to make us the preferred web platform and digital marketing technology for the real estate industry. This latest development will help increase session times and repeat visits and further enrich the content on the websites of real estate companies and agents to ultimately increase their leads, conversions, and sales."

The value of WebFindYou's IDX component and functionality goes beyond showing active property listings via the MLS database on real estate websites. Featured property listings are presented to potential homebuyers in a variety of ways.

Clients can execute basic and advanced searches to filter out homes that don't match their search criteria. Users can view homes with detailed information and see gallery images of the properties as well as see similar properties based on their searches. They can interact and view listings on a map with the ability to draw a polygon to define a search location. Potential buyers could tour properties virtually and attend live-streamed open house events; realtors with WebFindYou have the choice of only displaying featured properties with virtual tours as well.

Those interested in viewing a home can schedule a tour with the real estate agent or broker on their website, and visitors can select their preferred date. If a client has a question, they can enter a message for the realtor to learn more about the property. Users also have the ability to share listings on their social media and save their favorite homes and searches.

The purpose of IDX is to keep the potential homebuyer on the realtor's website versus pointing them to a third-party real-estate marketplace site (e.g., Zillow). Keeping clients on the realtor's website helps protect their contact information from third-party solicitations. This provides peace of mind, and they can confidently share their data with the real estate agent or broker.

Real estate agents or brokers with WebFindYou will spend less time on complicated, frustrating, and arduous SEO tasks. The reason is that the True Digital Marketing Technology reduces the SEO process by 50% to what WebFindYou calls "Simplified Content Marketing." And because it is True Digital Marketing Technology, it comes already equipped with its own optimized and interconnected digital marketing toolset to achieve True Digital Marketing, such as optimized social media marketing and ad management, pay-per-click optimizations and ad management, email marketing, live chat, blog management, a customer relationship management (CRM) system, tracking technology, analytics, and so much more. It also minimizes the distribution of said content to a few simple clicks of the mouse.

Those in real estate can now focus more on the management of their clients and the selling of homes, while their website management and digital marketing activities are greatly simplified and more effective due to the power of the True Digital Marketing Technology by WebFindYou.

Anyone in real estate interested in learning more about WebFindYou's True Digital Marketing Technology and the new IDX integrations can visit their website at https://www.webfindyou.com or call WebFindYou toll-free at 1-866-SEO-WEBS (736-9327) or directly at (786) 347-2770.


On June 29,Thai publisher Thanapol Eawsakul, editor-in-chief of the political academic publisher Same Sky Books, was arrested for "procuring and sharing information or documents kept secret for national security" and violation of the Computer Crimes Act, according to a picture of the arrest warrant posted to the Thai Lawyers for Human Right's Twitter account.

Eawsakul, who was shortlisted for the IPA's Prix Voltaire prize, was accused of the crime after he made a post to his personal Facebook page, in which he speculated that Special Branch police might be investigating diplomat Russ Jalichandra, former Thai ambassador to Mozambique and Kazakhstan and owner of the Facebook page The Alternative Ambassador.

Kristenn Einarsson, chair of the IPAs Freedom to Publish Committee, said in a statement: "This latest arrest of Thanapol Eawsakul is particularly concerning. His commitment to the freedom to publish has brought constant harassment from the Thai authorities for many years. This harassment has to stop."

Eawsakul's publishing house was raided in January with police reportedly seizing his computer and mobile phone while looking for the book Sathaban Phra Maha Kasat and Sangkhom Thai (The Monarchy and Thai Society) which was deemed to be a threat to national security, but is not published by Same Sky.

Eawsakul has been released from custody after Rangsiman Rome, a member of the Thai parliament, posted bail of 100,000 baht ($2,800) for him, the IPA said. Eawsakul now has to report in to the police every 15 days.

The IPA said it will continue to monitor the situation.
Produced by Banijay Studios France, CAPA Drama and Les Gens, the acquisition marks the latest international deal for this CANAL+ Creation Originale and follows last years pre-sale to UK public broadcaster BBC2.Created and written by Deborah Davis (The Favourite), Marie Antoinette tells the story of the incredibly modern and avant-garde young queen, played by Emilia Schule (Kudamm 56/ 63). Marie Antoinette was barely 14 years old when she left Austria to marry the Dauphin of France. Growing from a stubborn young princess navigating the rules of the French court under pressure to continue the Bourbon line, to a true fashion icon, she impressed with her natural charisma, and recreated life in Versailles in her image: free, independent and feminist ahead of time. Even with rumours undermining her reputation, the notorious figure would defeat the enemies of the Versailles court with courage and dignity.Marie Antoinette is produced by Claude Chelli and Margaux Balsan for Capa Drama, Alban Etienne and Stephanie Chartreux for Banijay Studios France, and Christophe Toulemonde for Les Gens. Filming took place in prestigious historical places including the Chateaux of Versailles, Vaux-le-Vicomte, Lesigny, Champs, Voisins, and in the emblematic studios of Bry-sur-Marne.The series is directed by Pete Travis (Bloodlands) and Geoffrey Enthoven (Children of Love). The BBC First agreement was negotiated by Kell Hoddinott, VP Australia and New Zealand, Banijay Rights.Commenting on the announcement, Kell Hoddinott, VP Sales, Australia and New Zealand, Banijay Rights, who negotiated the BBC First agreement, said: Boasting outstanding scenery and performances, Marie Antoinette is continuing to gain strong traction worldwide. Its an absolute delight to secure this deal with BBC First and we are in no doubt Australian audiences will fall in love with this series, which so wonderfully chronicles the life of a unique young queen as she navigates the often dark and manipulative world of Versailles.Added BBC Studios Australia and New Zealand head of branded services Chrissie Carras: Were delighted to bring this epic drama to Australian audiences. Its a fascinating story which will keep audiences enthralled from beginning to end.
The backlash against the encroachment of wind and solar projects continues. On June 23, the Butler County (Ohio) Board of Commissioners adopted a measure that designates a restricted area that prohibits the construction of an economically significant wind farm, a large wind farm, and/or a large solar facility. The measure, which passed unanimously, covers all unincorporated areas within a dozen townships in the county.

The vote is the latest example of local communities rejecting or restricting the growth of large renewable projects. According to an article by Denise G. Callahan, a reporter for the Journal-News, an outlet known as Butler Countys Local News Now, the commissioners enacted the measure after hearing from township representatives. Commissioner Cindy Carpenter told Callahan she understands as a public official she has a responsibility to consider ways of reducing reliance on fossil fuels, but she must also be responsive to township officials. Carpenter was quoted in the article as saying We respect that they are the elected officials closest to the citizens.

Adding the 12 townships (but not the Butler County commissioners vote) to the Renewable Rejection Database brings the total of wind energy rejections so far this year to 20. Since 2013, there have been 344 rejections or restrictions of wind projects across the U.S. in states from Maine to Hawaii.

As I have reported many times, the raging backlash against the renewable industry doesnt fit the convenient narrative that wind and solar are green and that they are cheaper than traditional forms of energy production. These rejections are not being covered by The New York Times or National Public Radio, but they reflect the growing outrage in rural American towns and counties over the land grab that is being attempted by some of Americas biggest companies in the name of climate change.

Further, as siting wind and solar projects has gotten more difficult, big renewable companies are resorting to hardball legal tactics to intimidate location communities into accepting projects they do not want. For example, in May, Chicago-based Invenergy, the worlds largest privately held renewable energy company, sued Worth County, Iowa as part of an effort to force the county to accept a wind project the county doesnt want. That lawsuit came after MidAmerican Energy, a subsidiary of corporate behemoth Berkshire Hathaway, sued Madison County, Iowa, the province known for its picturesque wooden bridges. (Invenergy refused to comment on their lawsuit against Worth County. In an email, a MidAmerican spokesman claimed the company is not trying to intimidate the county.)

Over the past few months, Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin have emerged as the epicenter of the rural backlash against Big Wind and, increasingly, Big Solar. Ohio is particularly notable because last year, Senate Bill 52 took effect. That measure allows counties to prohibit the construction of renewable projects. As reported by EnergyWire, Policy support for renewables has been eroding in Ohio for a decade. The erosion of support, of course, was due to surging local opposition to renewable projects.

But SB 52 also provides a clear example of the growing urban-rural divide when it comes to renewable energy policy. The bill, which was signed into law by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, (a Republican) passed through both chambers of the Ohio legislature but it did not get a single Democratic vote. In addition to giving counties final say over projects, the measure also requires renewable energy developers to go to the Ohio Power Siting Board for approval, a move that may give opponents a second venue in which they can kill proposed projects.

Now back to Butler County. A quick web search located the minutes of the June 23 meeting of the Butler County Board of Commissioners. The minutes show that the measure adopting the Restricted Area in Butler County includes all unincorporated areas within Reily Township, Fairfield Township, Hanover Township, Liberty Township, Madison Township, Milford Township, Morgan Township, Oxford Township, Ross Township, St. Clair Township, Wayne Township, and West Chester Township.

Butler County is the kind of place that doesnt get much attention from elite academics, big media outlets, and climate activists. Its a largely rural county located north of Cincinnati, along Ohios border with Indiana. The population of the county is less than 400,000. Butler County has 13 townships. Of those, 12 are included in the ban on new wind and solar.

Ill conclude with another quote from Callahans coverage of the Butler County ban on large renewable projects. She quoted County Commissioner Cindy Carpenter, who said the county agreed to implement the ban because local township officials speak to us as the voice of the citizens. So I have decided to support their request.

Robert Bryce is the host of the Power Hungry Podcast, executive producer of the documentary, "Juice: How Electricity Explains the World," and the author of six books, including most recently, "A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations." Follow him on Twitter: @pwrhungry.
Julia Roberts and her husband, Danny Moder, are celebrating 20 years of marriage.

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Roberts, 54, marked the occasion Monday by sharing a tribute to Moder on Instagram.

The actress posted a throwback photo of herself and Moder kissing.

"TWENTY #can'tstopsmiling #can'tstopkissing," she captioned the post.

Actress and producer Rita Wilson, who celebrated 34 years of marriage with actor Tom Hanks in April, was among those to congratulate Roberts and Moder in the comments.

"Happy Anniversary, lovebirds!" Wilson wrote.

Moder shared a more recent photo with Roberts on their 19th wedding anniversary in 2021.

"Today we start our 20th year of marriage. This photo was on a dusty road before that big idea... just holding on to this beautiful girl one day at a time. One epic day at a time," he wrote.

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Roberts and Moder, a cinematographer, married in July 2002. The couple have three children, twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, 17, and son Henry, 15.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Firefighters in Northern California are battling a fresh wildfire that broke out Monday east of Sacramento at a recreation area packed with Fourth of July revelers and forced a number of evacuations
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Investigators from the New Hampshire State Police Major Crime Unit collect evidence at 484 Scofield Mountain Road, in Winchester, on Thursday, July 14, 2022, after the shooting death of Timothy Hill. Winchester police were called to the residence on Wednesday for a welfare check and found th
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.
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP)  Google will automatically purge information about users who visit abortion clinics or other places that could trigger legal problems now that the U.S. Supreme Court has opened the door for states to ban the termination of pregnancies.

The company behind the internet's dominant internet search engine and the Android software that powers most of the world's smartphones outlined the new privacy protections in a Friday blog post.

Besides automatically deleting visits to abortion clinics, Google also cited counseling centers, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, and cosmetic surgery clinics as other destinations that will be erased from users' location histories. Users have always had the option edit their location histories on their own, but Google will proactively do it for them as an added level of protection.

Were committed to delivering robust privacy protections for people who use our products, and we will continue to look for new ways to strengthen and improve these protections," Jen Fitzpatrick, a Google senior vice president, wrote in the blog post.

The pledge comes amid escalating pressure on Google and other Big Tech companies to do more to shield the troves of sensitive personal information through their digital services and products from government authorities and other outsiders.

The calls for more stringent privacy controls were triggered by the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion. That reversal could make abortion illegal in more than a dozen states, raising the specter that records about people's location, texts, searches and emails could be used in prosecutions against abortion procedures or even for medical care sought in a miscarriage.

Like other technology companies, Google each year receives thousands of government demands for users' digital records as part of misconduct investigations. Google says it pushes back against search warrants and other demands that are overly broad or appear to be baseless.
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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)  A group seeking a statewide vote on whether to fully legalize adult use of marijuana in Oklahoma submitted boxes of signatures on Tuesday with hopes of getting the question on the November ballot.

Oklahomans for Sensible Marijuana Laws submitted more than 164,000 signatures to the Office of the Secretary of State, far more than the roughly 95,000 they need to qualify State Question 820 for the ballot. They also beat the Aug. 1 deadline they had by nearly a month.

Campaign advisor Ryan Kiesel, an attorney and former Democratic state lawmaker, said the extra signatures and the additional time should ensure the question makes it on the November general election ballot.

I think it's very unlikely that there's a credible challenge to our process that could delay this," Kiesel said.

If approved by voters, the question would legalize the use of marijuana for any adult over the age of 21. Marijuana sales would be subjected to a 15% excise tax on top of the standard sales tax, and the revenue it generates would be used to help fund local municipalities, the court system, public schools, substance abuse treatment and the state's general revenue fund.

The current 7% excise tax on medical marijuana sales generates about $5 million in state revenue each month, plus another roughly $6 million each month in state and local sales taxes, according to figures from the Oklahoma Tax Commission.

The proposal also outlines a judicial process for people to seek expungement or dismissal of prior marijuana-related convictions.

We create a very simple, efficient, low-cost way for Oklahomans to be able to get those charges and convictions off their record," Kiesel said.

Oklahoma already has one of the most robust medical marijuana programs in the country, with roughly 10% of the state's residents having state-issued medical cards that allow them to purchase, grow and consume marijuana. Kiesel said full legalization would dovetail with the state's existing medical marijuana program, but allow adults without a license, including those who visit from out of state, to purchase marijuana.

The Yes on 820 campaign raised about $70,000, all of it from two advocacy groups: New York-based Drug Policy Action, which advocates for sensible drug laws, and Washington, D.C.-based New Approach Advocacy Fund, which supports cannabis reform in states.

It's also likely that a marijuana question on the ballot in November could increase voter turnout. About 892,000 voters cast ballots on the medical marijuana question in June 2018 midterm primary election. By comparison, only about 528,000 voters cast ballots in the governor's race in last week's midterm primary election.

A separate proposal that would legalize marijuana in Oklahoma through a constitutional amendment is still in the signature gathering phase.

___

Follow Sean Murphy at www.twitter.com/apseanmurphy
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NEW FAIRFIELD  Police are investigating a crash on Shortwoods Road that took out a utility pole and sent a woman to the hospital Monday.

The crash happened around 5:35 p.m., when authorities say a 37-year-old Waterbury womans westbound 2016 Nissan Altima lost control, crossed over the eastbound lane and continued across a residential driveway before going down a small embankment and colliding with an Eversource pole.

The impact cracked the pole in half and caused wires to fall down onto the damaged vehicle.

The area of Shortwoods Road where the accident occurred was closed for over an hour while emergency personnel and Eversource responded to and cleaned up the scene.

Police said the driver was transported to Danbury Hospital with possible injury and her car was towed from the scene with disabling front-end damage.

The crash remains under investigation.

According to the University of Connecticuts Crash Data Repository, there have been at least 10 motor vehicle accidents on Shortwoods Road in the last three years.

First Selectman Pat Del Monaco said there are many narrow and windy roads like Shortwoods in New Fairfield.

What I think happens sometimes is people who arent familiar with those roads drive a little too fast and we have a result like we did (Monday), she said Tuesday.

The speed limits on roads like Shortwoods are low for a reason, Del Monaco said, and its important for motorists to adhere to them.

The roads are very narrow with limited visibility  not to mention theyre residential roads  so we advise people to observe those posted speed limits, she said.

CORRECTION: An original version of this article incorrectly reported the date of the crash. The crash was on Monday.
The Candlelight Party will discuss a possible alliance with four smaller opposition parties next month.

UDPATED at 1:36 p.m. EDT on 2022-07-12

Cambodias opposition Candlelight Party is once again urging government officials to stop harassing its members after a provincial governor from Prime Minister Hun Sens ruling party compared Candlelight members recently elected to local offices to a social plague, sources in the country told RFA.

The complaint comes as members of Candlelight prepare to meet with other minority parties to consider forming an alliance and to make recommendations to improve Cambodias elections process.

The Candlelight Party won roughly 19 percent of the countrys 11,622 open commune council seats in the June 5 election, establishing itself as the main opposition to the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP), which took more than 80 percent of the vote.

Prior to the election, the Candlelight Party candidates reported harassment and intimidation by members of the CPP and its supporters, including government officials. Unless the government acts, the discrimination against Candlelight and other opposition party members will grow, Candlelight officials fear.

At a post-election ceremony in the western province of Pailin, provincial Gov. Ban Sreymom threatened the newly elected councilors affiliated with the Candlelight Party, saying they were a plague we need to get rid of.

We dont teach people to be rude and provoke a social toxin or plague. We dont let them stay. They are a plague, they will be removed or be sprayed with insecticide to kill it, she said during the ceremony.

The comment will make it harder for the commune councils with representatives from both political parties to operate, the Candlelight Partys chief for the province, Khem Monykosal, told RFAs Khmer Service.

We havent even started our jobs, but there has been a threat already. This comment shouldnt be used and they should respect the peoples votes. The comment is a major offense to our councilors, he said.

RFA was unable to reach the governor for comment Tuesday. Interior ministry spokesperson Khieu Sopheak was also not available.

Ban Sreymoms comments were not discriminatory, asserted the CPP spokesperson Sok Ey San.

We empower the provincial governors to advise commune councilors, so I dont believe they use the events to attack [the Candlelight Party], he said.

Government officials should not use their offices to discriminate against their political rivals, Kang Savang, a monitor with the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia NGO, told RFA.

He urged the Ministry of Interior to investigate the case and to punish officials if they are in breach of the law.

Senior government officials should not use terms like that in public because it is against their duties as authorities, he said.

Candlelight Party Vice President Thach Setha said the Ministry of Interior must issue strict measures to prevent such comments in the future.

He hopes that the partys newly elected commune councilors will be able to serve their constituents unhindered so that they can develop their communities.

We want the Ministry of Interior to take tough measures and punish [CPP councilors] who dont share responsibilities with [opposition party] councilors, he said.

Opposition alliance

Five political parties including the Candlelight Party will meet Wednesday to discuss a possible alliance.

The four smaller parties  the Grassroots Democratic Party, the Cambodian Reform Party, the Khmer Will Party and the Kampucheanimym Party  will along with Candlelight also make recommendations to Cambodias government on improving the election process.

We are advocating progress on improvement to elections to the NEC [National Election Committee], and we all have plenty of work to do on the same path, Yang Saing Koma, founder of the Grassroots Democratic Party, told RFA.

The ruling party is not concerned about the alliance, CPP spokesperson Sok Ey San told RFA.

They all split from the big party, he said, referring to the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which was dissolved in 2017 by Cambodias Supreme Court, paving the way for Hun Sens CPP to win all of the seats in the National Assembly in general elections the following year.

Many of the former CNRP members who were barred from engaging in political activities as members of that party are now members of Candlelight.

Now they want to reunite, but the party lost election to the CPP already, Sok Ey San said, referring to the CPPs dominance in this years commune elections.

Exiled political analyst Kim Sok said the parties should merge in order to compete with the CPP by creating a new political force.

We cant say we are united and still support different parties, he said. If we dont merge there is no significant benefit.

Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this report named Khieu Sopheak as the interior minister. Khieu Sopheak is the ministry's spokesperson. A previous version of this report referred to the NEC as the National Election Commission. It is the National Election Committee.
Authorities in the former Portuguese enclave of Macau have imposed a series of stringent restrictions and multiple rounds of citywide mass testing for COVID-19 amid a fresh outbreak in the city, prompting criticism of attempts to mimic mainland China's zero-COVID policy in the tourism-dependent city.



Mass testing started at the end of last month, with hundreds of people standing in long queues in the rain and summer heat, as officials told businesses to shut down or minimize operations and the general public to stay home unless absolutely necessary.



Secretary for social affairs and culture Elsie Ao said Macau's current fight against COVID-19 was "even more difficult" than the Shanghai lockdown earlier this year, local media reported.



Residents' movements are being restricted by a COVID-19 health code app similar to that used in mainland China, with 16 buildings classified as "red zones" and more than 70 "amber zones".



Residents of red zones are barred from leaving their homes, while those in amber zones may only leave to pick up essential supplies at designated locations.



The city reported 852 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 on July 3.



A resident who requested anonymity said he had stood in line for two hours for his most recent PCR test, which are mandatory, along with interspersed rapid antigen tests done from home.



"I went to a school on Monday afternoon for a PCR test," the man said. "There were a lot of people queuing up outside, although the school did have air conditioning."



"I think the government's arrangements have led to greater concentrations of people, which has very likely actually increased the number of people infected with the virus," he said.



"It happened to be raining heavily while I was standing in line just now, and a lot of people there were criticizing the government."



Tired of stocking up

He said many people are tired of constantly rushing to the supermarket to try to lay in supplies of food and other essentials amid sudden shortages.



"Everyone has been rushing to buy supplies at the supermarkets every day, mostly rice or cases of instant noodles," he said. "When I went to a supermarket just now, the instant noodles were all gone."



"People are posting fake news in chats saying that there isn't enough stock in supermarkets, and telling everyone to rush and buy stuff, even though the government has said repeatedly that there is plenty of supply," he said.



"I think people are frightening themselves."



He said many people are confused by the shifting rules on people's movements.



"The government's policies seem to change every day," he said. "I'm in a red zone, and people there are in lockdown and can't go out."



"They depend on friends and relatives to get supplies, but mine got confused by the information and missed the window set by the government, so my supplies weren't delivered," he said. "A lot of people are criticizing the authorities for messing with people."



Waste of money

Macau-based journalist Roy Choi said it wasn't entirely clear how effective the Macau authorities' approach would be in detecting and eliminating COVID-19, however.



"[Mass testing] may randomly detect and confirm more cases, but it also means that citizens have to make appointments, stand in line and take the risk of being around other people, which will increase the number of cluster infections," Choi told RFA. "It's not just a major upheaval for people; it's a waste of public funds and manpower."



"Macau is pretty much at a standstill, and it seems that this has only happened in Macau and some cities in mainland China," he said. "Is it actually necessary?"



"What science is it based on? It even makes people wonder if the authorities are passing on the benefit to certain companies that conduct nucleic acid testing," Choi said.



He said the Macau government, in charge of an economy that is export-based, should move towards living with COVID-19 as soon as possible.



"The most embarrassing thing at the moment is that Macau has to follow mainland China's lead," Choi said. "This policy is political," he said.



The government is handing out subsidies to eligible employees of 15,000 patacas (around U.S.$1,800), while taxi drivers, tour guides and those who make their living from fishing will each receive 10,000 patacas each.



Tax rebates will also be offered on tourism and housing taxes, fees for hotels and catering firms, and a road tax rebate for commercial vehicles, local media reported.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
A former student leader of the 1989 protest movement at Hangzhou University in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang is being force-fed in detention after refusing food and drink, RFA has learned.



Xu Guang has been formally arrested on suspicion of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), after he protested the confiscation of his mobile phone by police, fellow rights activist Zou Wei said.



"Xu Guang is on hunger strike, and his family was a little concerned [about saying anything in public], because the state security police got in contact after my last interview," Zou said.



"I got a call from state security police just 10 minutes after I gave that interview," he said. "They called me twice."



The news emerged via a defense lawyer who was allowed to visit Xu in detention in mid-June, but who didn't dare to go public with the information for fear of reprisals from the authorities, Zou said.



"They met once, but the lawyer didn't dare to say anything, and I didn't say anything either, because the case is so [politically] sensitive."



"The relevant departments got to the lawyer and talked them out of [saying anything]," he said.



Xu, 54, was detained after he held up a placard outside Hangzhou's Yuquan police station demanding his phone back.



He had been approached by officers from the Xihu district police department and warned to keep a low profile during the 33rd anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre on June 4.



His family received official notification of Xu's formal arrest on Saturday, Zou said.



A friend of Xu's who gave only the surname Jiang said warnings to stay out of the public eye were common for Xu around the massacre anniversary.



"Xu Guang was illegally hauled in for questioning by local police, who confiscated his communications device[s] and issued a warning," Jiang said.



"So Xu went down to the police station with a placard that said 'overturn the official verdict on June 4'," she said. "The state security police detained him on the same day."



"According to Xu Guang's family, he is on hunger strike in the detention center," she said, adding that everyone is concerned about his health.



Repeated calls to Xu's sister Xu Yan rang unanswered on Tuesday.



Xu has previously served a five-year jail term after trying to formally register the China Democracy Party (CDP) as a political party in 1998, and has repeatedly called on the CCP to overturn the official verdict of "counterrevolutionary rebellion" on the 1989 protests.



He is currently being held in the Xihu Detention Center.



The New York-based Human Rights in China (HRIC) describes the June 3-4, 1989, massacre as a government-backed military crackdown that ended large-scale, peaceful protests in Beijing and other cities during that year.



"Despite persistent citizen demands for the truth and an accounting of the bloodshed, the authorities have offered nothing beyond their characterization that the protests were 'counterrevolutionary riots' -- a label they later changed to 'political disturbance' ... suppressed by 'decisive measures'," the group says in a standing description on its website.



"The Chinese government has never publicly accounted for its actions with an independent and open investigation, brought to justice those responsible for the killing of unarmed civilians, or compensated the survivors or families of those killed," HRIC said.



"In fact, it has never made public even the names and the number of people killed or wounded during the crackdown, or of those executed or imprisoned afterwards in connection with the protests," it said.



Public mourning for victims or discussion of the events of spring and summer 1989 are banned, and references to June 4, 1989, blocked, filtered or deleted by the Great Firewall of government internet censorship.



Beauty influencer Austin Li, part of a generation of younger Chinese people who consequently know little of the massacre, had his June 3, 2022, livestream interrupted after he displayed a tank-shaped ice-cream dessert, prompting censors to pull the plug immediately.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Organizations that fund the government sometimes use farmland for other businesses, exacerbating food shortages.

North Korea is cracking down on government-run entities that illegally use farmland for other money-making activities, like gold mining and manufacturing, sources in the country told RFA.

For a country chronically short on food, allowing farmland to be used for anything but growing food could lead to a public backlash. Authorities are now warning collective farms and revenue-producing arms of various governmental agencies that they could be punished for doing anything except growing food on lands designated for agricultural production.

Late last month, orders were issued from the central government to investigate the destruction and illegal use of agricultural lands meant to produce grain. Investigations are now underway, an official from the northern province of Ryanggang told RFAs Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

The order highlighted that there are a large number of land violations in the grain producing areas, and this is hindering the countrys grain production plans. Most of the countrys special organizations openly violate agricultural land policies for gold mining or construction projects. These are powerful and reputable organizations, he said.

The special organizations are divisions within government agencies like the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of State Security and parts of the military. They include Office 39, the organization charged with procuring slush funds for the countrys leader Kim Jong Un and his family.

The government has limited capability to properly fund itself, and each ministry or agency must go into business in order to function properly.

The source said that the special organizations have been ignoring the agricultural designations for land use and invading them with new factories, buildings or mining operations.

Each cooperative farm has therefore been ordered to report in detail how the special organizations are using their land, especially for goldmines and construction, he said.

In principle these organizations cannot do anything other than agriculture on those lands without permission from the state, but it is common for them to use threats or bribery to convince local officials to allow them to use the land for other purposes, the source said.

Entities that legally want to repurpose farmland must go through an arduous bureaucratic process that includes permission from five different organizations: the collective farm, the provinces farm management office, the provincial government, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of National Territory Environment Protection, according to the source.

Authorities have been taking steps to increase food production in recent years, but they are missing the most important point. The fastest way to solve the long-term food shortage is to give the farmland back to the farmers and allow them to process their own harvest, he said.

Such a move could provide incentive for the farmers to earn a living off of the crops they grow, but it would also go against the ideas collective farming and communal land ownership.

Cooperative farms in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong are also under investigation, and authorities are punishing those implicated in bribery, a resident of the city of Hoeryong told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

With this order, the organizations that were invading the farmland as well as the officials who took bribes will not be able to sleep at night, the second source said. However, this order was only a loud proclamation, and it is ultimately a fruitless measure that will end in smoke.

The Central Committee has a history of talking about strict measures but rarely enforces them, the second source said.

For whatever reason, the organizations that are capable of invading agricultural land and using it for other purposes are powerful, and a lot of the foreign currency that they earn goes into party funds, he said.

Translated by Claire Shinyoung O. Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
The comments came as an ASEAN envoy ended a visit without meeting all stakeholders.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has called on Myanmars military regime to work with the opposition to resolve the countrys political crisis, days after an ASEAN envoy concluded a visit there without meeting any anti-junta stakeholders.

According to a statement posted on the Chinese Foreign Ministrys official website on Monday, Wang told the junta that Beijing wants to see reconciliation in Myanmar and that all those involved in politics should hold a dialogue for the sake of the people.

Wang was in Mandalay regions Bagan city on Sunday to attend the 7th Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Summit, co-chaired by China and Myanmar. Chinas Foreign Ministry said Wang met with junta Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin on Monday to discuss reconciliation in Myanmar and informed him that his country can only move forward when political and social stability are achieved.

A statement from the junta following Mondays meeting said the two sides discussed ways to work more closely with the United Nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The statement did not address Chinas call for cooperation with Myanmars opposition, and calls by RFA seeking comment from junta deputy information minister, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, went unanswered Tuesday.

Myanmar-based political analyst Sai Kyi Zin Soe told RFA Burmese that the military regime is seeking legitimacy on the global stage with the help of China after drawing condemnation from its fellow member nations in ASEAN over its Feb. 1, 2021, coup and an ensuing crackdown that has caused the deaths of at least 2,065 civilians, according to Thailands Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

They are aiming for international acceptance of what they are doing at home, he said.

But Sai Kyi Zin Soe said the junta cannot expect its status within ASEAN to change overnight, even with the help of China, and expects a power struggle will continue with the bloc.

Chinas Foreign Ministry has said it supports the international communitys efforts to protect Myanmars interests and reputation, according to a report by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

A spokesman for the Pro-democracy Strike Committee (Dawei), an anti-junta group, told RFA that the junta is seeking Chinese help because of declining international support.

The junta has no international support at all  and so they must rely on China, said the spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity. As China is a world power, the regime is relying on it to obtain international recognition.

Concern for investments

Kyaw Zaw, a spokesman for the office of the president for Myanmars shadow National Unity Government (NUG), told RFA that Wang attended the Lancang-Mekong meeting in an attempt to legitimize the junta, and warned that doing so would be harmful to the countrys economy and development.

It would be detrimental to regional security, as it would lead to more instability in the area and there will be even more violence in Myanmar, he said. The situation would become an obstacle for economic development. The militarys actions are based on violence, and violence does not bring stability.

Kyaw Zaw said the NUGs goals are aimed at achieving economic growth for the country and that the shadow government is committed to protecting genuine businesses, while the military is turning economic projects into battlefields.

Since the coup, Myanmars armed opposition has targeted Chinese investment and development in the country, particularly projects that could earn the junta income it says is used to oppress the people.

At least 77 clashes took place in the 42 townships where the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor project was to be implemented between July 2021 and April 2022, according to research group Institute for Strategy and Policy Myanmar.

Political analyst Ye Tun said China is concerned about its investments in Myanmar as the conflict is unlikely to end any time soon.

Because of that, they are also concerned about their future investments in Myanmar and their security, he said.

Thats why they are pushing for the implementation of the ASEAN agreement, he added, referring to a Five-Point Consensus agreed to by Min Aung Hlaing at an emergency ASEAN meeting on the crisis in April 2021.

Points agreed to during last years emergency ASEAN meeting included an immediate end to violence in the country, the distribution of humanitarian aid, dialogue among all parties, and the appointment of an ASEAN special envoy to Myanmar who would be permitted to meet with all stakeholders. The junta has yet to implement any of the points in the 14 months since the meeting, while continuing its violent crackdown on opponents.

China has become the largest source of foreign investment in Myanmar since the withdrawal of Western businesses following the military coup. However, trade between the two countries dwindled to U.S. $4.3 billion in the 2021-2022 budget year, down from more than U.S. $5 billion a year earlier, according to figures from the juntas Ministry of Commerce.

ASEAN Special Envoy Prak Sokhonn and Snr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing meet in Naypyidaw, June 30, 2022. Credit: Myanmar military Sham effort

Wang Yis comments came days after Prak Sokhonn, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations special envoy to Myanmar, concluded a June 29-July 2 trip to Myanmar, during which he met with junta chief Snr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin, and International Cooperation Minister Ko Ko Hlaing.

He also met with seven ethnic armed groups  all signatories of a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement with the government since 2015  and seven political parties that won seats in Parliament in the countrys November 2020 election.

A July 2 statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Cambodia, which hosts the rotating chair of ASEAN, said Sokhonn met with Min Aung Hlaing and Wunna Maung Lwin to find a way to work with the U.N.s representative for Myanmar, stop the violence, release political prisoners, speak with civilians  including Suu Kyi  and access areas where humanitarian assistance is difficult to reach. The statement said he discussed how the U.N. and international NGOs should be involved in humanitarian assistance with the juntas minister for International Cooperation, Ko Ko Hlaing.

However, the envoy did not meet with any armed ethnic groups that are opposed to the juntas coup, nor the National League for Democracy (NLD), which won Myanmars 2020 election in a landslide victory before being deposed in last years putsch.

Kyaw Htwe, a member of the NLD's Central Working Committee, said Sokhonns failure to meet the opposition or other anti-junta stakeholders during his second visit to Myanmar as ASEAN envoy would only serve to legitimize military rule.

It was a meaningless, sham effort by the junta which showcased it as a sign of goodwill towards Myanmars democracy, but the special envoy was only allowed to meet with those who support the military, he told RFA.

In fact, history has shown that talks excluding all ethnic groups and [detained NLD leader] Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who is the legal winner of the 2020 elections and who still has the support of the people, have proved futile.

Rakhine National Party Chairman Thar Tun Hla, who met with Sokhonn, called the special envoys visit unsuccessful, as it only focused on implementing one facet of the Five-Point Consensus.

He only informed us that we will be able to do humanitarian work, he said. There are five points to the ASEAN consensus. Of the five, he has fulfilled only one and so the likelihood of the trip being a success is low.

Aid allotment

Thar Tun Hla said that while no other agreements were reached, Sokhonn had revealed that ASEAN allotted U.S. $1.5 billion in humanitarian aid for Myanmar.

A spokesman for the Karen Social Welfare Group in Kayin state said that Sokhonns visit wouldnt benefit refugees on the ground because he had only discussed humanitarian issues with the military.

The military is the one causing trouble for our people  everyone can see this, he said. [He] only met directly with the military regime [and those they approved], and not the people, so we dont think it will be beneficial for the refugees.

During his first visit in March, Sokhonn met with only a few people chosen by the junta. While he held more meetings this visit, political analysts said his failure to meet with key figures, such as Suu Kyi, will not be of much use.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
The attack is raising fears that a shaky ceasefire between the military and the AA is about to collapse.

The six AA fighters killed in the military air strike on their base.

The Arakan Army (AA) said an attack by two military fighter jets on Monday killed six of its members and left scores injured.

The bombing also damaged a hospital, a clinic and a garment factory in the area near the Thai border, controlled by AA ally the Karenni National Liberation army

Witnesses said the jets flew into Thai airspace after the bombings.

The dead were identified as Kyaw Oo Hlaing, Kyaw San Htay, Tun Lin, Bo Than Kyaw, Nay Zaw Oo, and Zar Ni Win, aged between 20 and 31.

Rakhine residents have been posting messages on Facebook mourning those killed in Mondays air strike.

Calls to the military council spokesman by RFA went unanswered. AA spokesman Khing Thukha told local media outlets that his troops were not fighting with junta forces in the area. He said the airstrike was unprovoked and the AA plans to retaliate.

Pe Than, a former Peoples Assembly member from Rakhine State, said that the juntas bombing of the AA could lead to renewed fighting.

We all know who lives there and whose camp is this, he said. That means this was a deliberate attack. [The junta] have to attack these camps because of the situation in Karen State. [In spite of a ceasefire] the military sees the AA as the enemy, so the lull in fighting during the ceasefire is unlikely to last.

The military council and the AA agreed to a ceasefire, which has largely held for more than a year.

The AA operates primarily in Rakhine State, where it is seeking autonomy from the ethnic Rakhines, but also operates in other states, including Kayin (Karen) state.

It has been a long and bitter conflict. On November 19, 2014, 23 cadets from the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), Chin National Front (CNF), All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF), and eight cadets from the AA died when the military shelled their training academy in Laiza, Kachin state.

Myanmars shadow National Unity Government (NUG) has invited the AA to join an alliance of regional armies to fight the military, which could also lead to an escalation in violence. The AA has so far ignored the NUGs overtures and instead focused on its own territorial ambitions.

But tensions between the junta and the AA have been high since early May, with locals and Rakhine politicians concerned that fighting will soon intensify.

The resumption of full-scale conflict between the military and the AA could put the lives of millions of ethnic minority residents of Rakhine at risk, according to a report published this month by the International Crisis Group (ICG), an NGO.

It said AA efforts to gain territory in the north could affect as many as 3 million ethnic Rakhines and Rohingyas. Tom Kean, ICG senior adviser on Myanmar, told RFA this month that a humanitarian consequences from renewed fighting would probably be worse than they were during the two-year war.

ICG said the group now controls between half and three quarters of Rakhine, Myanmar's westernmost state which borders Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal.
Nguyen Lan Thang was a long-time contributor of blog posts on politics and society to RFA Vietnamese.

UPDATED at 5:45 p.m. EDT on 2022-07-05

Vietnamese police on Tuesday arrested a prominent political activist and blogger on a charge of spreading anti-state propaganda that could land him in jail for as long as 20 years, as authorities continue to crack down on dissenting voices in the one-party communist country.

Nguyen Lan Thang, a contributor to RFAs Vietnamese Service since 2013, was taken into custody at around 8 a.m. while on his way to a coffee shop in Thinh Quang ward in the capital Hanoi, family sources said.

He now faces a charge of making, storing, spreading or propagating anti-State information, documents, items and publications opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Speaking to RFA, fellow activist Thai Van Duong called Nguyen Lan Thang a fighter in the pro-democracy movement, saying the two had participated together in anti-China protests in Hanoi.

Thang was an activist not only in his social media postings but also in his daily life, Duong said.

Both I and my friends and the international media know that Thang has an excellent character, unlike the descriptions given of him by opponents of the pro-democracy movement.

Only those who have interacted with Nguyen Lan Thang can understand his personality and the way he performs his activities, Duong said.

Independent journalist and former RFA blogger Nguyen Tuong Thuy is shown at his trial in Ho Chi Minh City, Jan. 5, 2021. Credit: Reuters 'Wave of abuse'

Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that Nguyen Lan Thang had peacefully campaigned for democratic reform and justice, so he should be respected and listened to rather than face this kind of unjustified repression.

Vietnams excessive and unacceptable crackdown on freedom of expression has just snared another victim who will invariably face a kangaroo court trial and years in prison for speaking his mind, Robertson said.

Governments around the world should demand Nguyen Lan Thangs immediate and unconditional release, and pressure Hanoi to stop this wave of abuse.

Thang, who comes from a family of scholars in Hanoi, has a Facebook following of more than 152,000. He has taken part in protests defending Vietnams sovereignty in disputed areas of the South China Sea and worked to help people affected by floods and storms in the countrys Central Highlands.

In his discussions of a wide range of political and social issues and Thang struck a moderate tone, seeking balance and avoiding sharp, direct criticism, frequently ending his blog posts with the phrase "Love all."

In one post he compared the arrest and jailing of activists in Vietnam who raised questions about social issues avoided by most other people to the treatment of the Greek philosopher Socrates.

In his most recent post for RFA on April 7, Thang noted news reports about Russian ships turning off their locator systems to evade being tracked for illegal oil sales. He recalled that during the Iraq War, tycoons from a certain "socialist-oriented market economy" had repainted oil ships to buy sanctioned Iraqi oil at a discount and "became very very rich and acquired a lot of land, factories, and banks."

In 2013, he was detained and interrogated at Noi Bai Airport in Hanoi after returning from Thailand and the Philippines, where he had met with U.N. human rights officials to report on human rights abuses in Vietnam. A year later he was barred from leaving the country to attend a World Press Freedom Day event organized by UNICEF in the United States.

Jailed Vietnamese blogger Nguyen Van Hoa, who wrote and made videos for RFA before his arrest in 2017, is shown in an undated photo. Credit: danlambao Caught in crackdown

Thang is the latest of four Vietnamese bloggers to be caught up in a crackdown on critics of the Communist Party that has seen Facebook posters, journalists and writers receive hefty jail terms for their work.

In May, RFA reported that Nguyen Truong Thuy, who had blogged on civil rights and freedom of speech issues for RFA Vietnamese for six years, was in failing health with limited access to medical treatment.

The 72-year-old former vice president of the Vietnam Independent Journalists Association is serving an 11-year sentence on a charge of propagandizing against the state" and was suffering from back pain, high blood pressure, scabies and inflammatory bowel disease, Thuys wife, Pham Thi Lan, told RFA after visiting him on May 14.

Truong Duy Nhat, who had been a weekly contributor to RFA Vietnamese before his abduction by police in Thailand in January 2019, was convicted in March 2020 of abusing his position and authority in a decade-old land fraud case and jailed for 10 years, a charge Nhat has described as politically motivated.

Nhat declared at his trial that after seeking political asylum in Thailand at the beginning of 2019, he was arrested by Thai Royal Police on January 26 and handed over to Vietnamese police, who took him across the border into Laos, and from there back to Vietnam.

Nguyen Van Hoa, who had blogged and produced videos for RFA, was handed a seven-year jail term in November 2017 after using a drone to film protests outside a Taiwan-owned steel plant, whose spill of toxic waste the year before had left fishermen and tourism workers jobless in four coastal provinces.

Amnesty International has said that Hoa was tortured by the authorities to confess to his crime and in May 2019 was being held in solitary confinement as punishment for his refusal to cooperate.

Arrested on Jan. 11, 2017 for abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state under Article 258 of the Penal Code, Hoa was later charged with conducting propaganda against the state.

According to RFA reports, Vietnam has arrested at least 18 dissidents since the beginning of the year, most of them charged with conducting propaganda against the state" under Article 88 of the 1999 Penal Code and Article 117 of the 2015 Penal Code.

Both laws have been criticized by activists and rights groups as measures used to stifle voices of dissent in Vietnam.

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Written in English by Richard Finney.
The USS Ronald Reagan's visit is seen as a show of strength and solidarity with Hanoi.

The USS Ronald Reagan operating in the Philippine Sea in May 2021.

UPDATED at 12:20 p.m. EDT on 2022-07-06

The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan is to visit Vietnam in the second half of July, the first U.S. carrier to stop in a port there in more than two years, two local sources said. The last visit was the USS Theodore Roosevelt in March 2020 when all 5,000 crew had to test for COVID-19 upon visiting Danang.

The supercarrier was conducting exercise in the Philippine Sea at the weekend after leaving Guam late June. Vietnam has now fully opened to foreign visitors as the government adopts a policy of living with COVID.

Lt. Cmdr. David Levy at U.S. Pacific Fleet Public Affairs declined to comment on the planned port call, telling RFA that "as a matter of policy, we dont discuss future operations." If confirmed, it will be only the third U.S. navy aircraft carrier to visit the country since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

The first carrier to make a port call in Vietnam was the USS Carl Vinson, in March 2018. There were talks about a planned visit by the USS Abraham Lincoln in May but it didnt materialize. The Abraham Lincoln is now taking part in the biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) naval exercise near Hawaii.

The USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), named after the 40th U.S. President, is a Nimitz-class, nuclear-powered supercarrier, homeported in Yokosuka, Japan.

It too suffered a COVID outbreak in March 2020 when in the West Pacific, prompting a lockdown at the Yokosuka Naval Base, home of the U.S. 7th Fleet.

By the end of March 2020, the U.S. Navy reported a total of 134 personnel had contracted COVID without naming their specific ships.

Caption: An F/A-18F Super Hornet launches from the flight deck of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Philippine Sea (March 2020). Credit: U.S. Navy

Free and Open Indo-Pacific

The shipping and maritime sources close to the Vietnamese Navy said the USS Ronald Reagan, carrying 90 aircraft including a number of F/A-18E Super Hornets and sophisticated missile systems, will pay a five-day visit to Danang in central Vietnam sometime in the next two weeks.

All visits by foreign warships are carefully regulated by the Vietnamese military which doesnt want to be seen as siding with any world power. In recent years, however, former enemies Hanoi and Washington have made big strides towards a strategic partnership amid Chinas assertive moves in the South China Sea, over which Vietnam and five other nations hold competing territorial claims.

Since the U.S. lifted an arms embargo on Vietnam in 2016, during the Obama administration, Vietnam has started acquiring U.S. military hardware including vessels for its growing coast guard force.

The U.S. accuses China of militarizing the sea and regularly dispatches naval ships to perform so-called freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs), to much protest from Beijing.

In June 2016, before an international tribunal requested by the Philippines delivered an historic ruling against Chinas excessive and illegal claims in the South China Sea, the Ronald Reagan was deployed to the region in a mission largely seen as a show of support for the case.

In the latest development, the world's largest naval exercise, Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2022, led by the United States, is underway until Aug. 4 to showcase the maritime might of the U.S. and allies.

Five countries bordering the South China Sea  Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore  are amongst the 26 participating nations with 25,000 personnel.

Chinas English-language official mouthpiece China Daily has published a scathing editorial calling the display of navy clout a show of intimidation.

This political clout is aimed at ensuring an Indo-Pacific that is subject to the dictates of the U.S. rather than one that is truly free and open, it said.

The paper warned that with the rise of its national strength, China has developed the capacity to defend its core interests, sovereignty and territorial integrity in a broader scope in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

China launched its third aircraft carrier, developed and built entirely in the country, on June 17. The Fujian is an 80,000 tonner vessel equipped with high tech equipment such as electromagnetic catapults for launching aircraft. It is the first aircraft carrier wholly designed and built in China. The first carrier, the Liaoning, was bought from Ukraine and repurposed. The second, the Shandong, was based on the Liaonings design.

China now has three carriers, compared to U.S.s eleven. The Chinese Defense Ministry has said the country would develop more aircraft carriers depending on national security needs.

This story has been updated to add a comment from U.S. Pacific Fleet in the 3rd paragraph, and to correct the name of the Chinese aircraft carrier, Fujian, in the second to last paragraph.
Jailed Iranian civil activist Zartosht Ahmadi Ragheb has said in a message that he rejected a proposal by prison officials to seek a pardon.

In a message published online on July 4, Ragheb, who is imprisoned in Rajaeeshahr prison, west of Tehran, said that a delegation from the prosecutor's office visited him twice last week and asked him if he wanted to apply for a pardon. "Never," he said he replied.



Ragheb is a former employee of the fire department who has been arrested several times due to his peaceful activism.



He is also one of the 14 civil and political activists who published a statement in June 2018 demanding the resignation of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and asking for fundamental change of the constitution.



Ragheb, who has been in prison for the past four months, underwent stomach surgery in June and was returned to prison despite not completing his treatment.

With writing and reporting by Ardeshir Tayebi
Iran has been holding a Belgian man for the past four months on "espionage" charges, Belgium's justice minister has said, as the country considers a controversial treaty with Tehran.

The man was seized in Iran on February 24 and has been in "illegal" detention since, Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne told Belgian lawmakers without identifying him. Some reports suggested that Iran had arrested an former NGO worker.

Quickenborne said officials from Belgium's embassy in Tehran had twice visited the jailed man to give all possible assistance, and that his family had earlier on July 5 made public his detention.

"I cannot say more, at the express request of the family," the minister said.

His comments came as Belgium's parliament is set to debate whether to ratify a proposed treaty with Iran that could allow an Iranian diplomat serving a 20-year sentence for plotting a bomb attack outside Paris to be sent back to Tehran.

The treaty has been criticized by opposition lawmakers and lawyers for a dissident Iranian group, who say it would pave the way for Assadollah Assadi, convicted of terror charges and sentenced in February 2021, to be repatriated.

The treaty's text "is tailored to Assadi", opposition deputy Georges Dallemagne said.

Assadi was found guilty of attempted terrorism after a plot to bomb a rally of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an exiled opposition group, near Paris in June 2018. The NCRI is the political wing of the exiled Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO or MEK), an exiled opposition group that is seeking to overthrow the Islamic republic.

Dallemagne predicted the Belgian government would present any release of Assadi as a "humanitarian operation," a trade for a Swedish-Iranian academic, Ahmadreza Djalali, who is being held in Iran under sentence of death.

Djalali was accused of providing information to Israel to help it assassinate several senior nuclear scientists. He taught at a Brussels university. However, it is not clear if he would be covered by the treaty as he doesn't have Belgian nationality.

Amnesty International said in May that Iranian authorities were using Djalili as a hostage "to pervert the course of justice in Sweden and Belgium."

The London-based rights group suggested that Iran's threat to execute Djalali was tied to the trial in Stockholm of Hamid Nouri, a former prison official, who is accused of having a role in the mass execution and torture of political prisoners at an Iranian prison in the 1980s. Amnesty also said that Iran wants the release of Assadi.

Contacted by AFP, a spokesman for Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said, "there is no connection with Djalali's case.

He added that the minister would "explain his point of view" to parliament on July 5. The spokesman declined to give further details.

A copy of the treaty obtained by AFP showed it was signed on March 11 by the Belgian Justice Ministry and the Iranian ambassador to Belgium. It says that "the best way" to boost cooperation with Iran in justice matters was to allow convicts to serve out their sentences in their home countries. It also allows that each jurisdiction grant amnesty to the returned convicts or commute their sentences.

"This is an erosion of the legal system," opposition lawmaker Michael Freilich said. "Iran has made clear publicly that they don't see Assadi as a terrorist, but as a diplomat. He will be freed as soon as he steps foot on Iranian soil."

Debate on the treaty was to start on July 5, with the full parliament to vote whether to adopt it later in the week.

With reporting by AFP and Politico
U.S. special envoy for Iran Robert Malley says Iran has added demands unrelated to discussions on its nuclear program during the latest talks in Doha aimed at breaking an impasse in negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

"They have, including in Doha, added demands that I think anyone looking at this would be viewed as having nothing to do with the nuclear deal, things that they've wanted in the past," he said in an interview with National Public Radio.

"The discussion that really needs to take place right now is not so much between us and Iran, although we're prepared to have that. It's between Iran and itself. They need to come to a conclusion about whether they are now prepared to come back into compliance with the deal," Malley added.

He said that there was a proposal on the table for a timeline by which Iran could come back into compliance with the nuclear deal and Washington could ease sanctions on Tehran.

Two days of indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States ended in Qatar on June 29 after failing to make significant progress.

Under the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran agreed to limits on its controversial nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. But the arrangement began to fall apart in 2018 when then- U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the deal.

Washington subsequently reimposed crippling sanctions on Tehran, while Tehran gradually backed away from some of the commitments in the deal.

Iran has been engaged for more than a year in negotiations in Vienna with Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and China directly -- and the United States indirectly -- to revive the deal.

Negotiators were reportedly close to a new agreement in March, but the talks abruptly stalled in April, with Tehran and Washington blaming each other for failing to make the necessary political decisions to settle remaining issues.

With reporting by Reuters
For a third straight night, thousands of people took to the streets of North Macedonia's capital, Skopje, to protest against a deal that could help the country join the European Union. The July 4 protest was against a French proposal that seeks to end a dispute with Bulgaria, which insists that North Macedonia formally recognize that its language has Bulgarian roots. But Skopje has said its identity and language are not open for discussion.
An Antonov cargo plane that crashed late on July 16 in northern Greece, was transporting 11.5 tons of Serbian weapons to Bangladesh, Serbian Defense Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic has said.

All eight crew members on board the Antonov An-12 operated by a Ukrainian airline died in the accident near the city of Kavala, Greek state broadcaster ERT reported.

Stefanovic confirmed that the owner of the plane is a Ukrainian company, and that the weapons were being sent by private Serbian arms manufacturer Valir. He said the plane was carrying illuminating mortar bombs and mines, adding that the weapons shipment had been agreed with the Bangldeshi Defense Ministry "in accordance with international rules."

"Unfortunately some media have speculated that that the plane was carrying weapons destined for Ukraine but that is completely untrue," he said.

He also confirmed that all crew members had died in the crash.

"I think the crew were Ukrainian but I don't have any information about that. They were not Serbian," Stefanovic told reporters.

Denys Bohdanovytch, general director of Meridian, the Ukrainian cargo airline operating the plane, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle the crew were all Ukrainian. He gave no information about the cargo.

The Ukrainian consul in Thessaloniki, Vadim Sabluk, visited the area on July 17.

Athens News Agency said he had given the authorities the identities of the eight crew members and said the plane had been flying to Bangladesh.

Earlier, the mayor of the affected community of Pangeo, Filippos Anastasiadis, said that the plane had been carrying "dangerous material," likely munitions.

State media reported poisonous fumes were in the air from 12 tons of "toxic material" on board.

According to media reports, the cargo aircraft was travelling from Serbia to Jordan on July 16 and had requested clearance to make an emergency landing at nearby Kavala airport, but did not manage to reach it.

Local residents reported seeing a fireball and hearing explosions for two hours after the crash.

The An-12, a Soviet-built turboprop aircraft, was operated by cargo carrier Meridian, according to state broadcaster ERT.

According to state-run TV, the army, explosives experts, and Greek Atomic Energy Commission staff will approach the area after it is deemed safe, as fears about the toxicity of the unknown cargo were forcing them to stay away.

As a precaution because of a strong smell emanating from the crash site, authorities told inhabitants of the two localities closest to the crash site to keep their windows shut all night, to not leave their homes, and to wear masks.

ERT reported that army and explosive experts were en route to the site.

The debris was said to be scattered across a radius of hundreds meters, and the area was cordoned off.

A large deployment of firefighters, ambulances, and police initially went to the area before retreating and ordering journalists and spectators to leave immediately.

A firefighter told ERT that they were waiting for special forces and that two colleagues had been taken to hospital with breathing difficulties.

With reporting by AP, AFP and dpa
SKOPJE -- European Council President Charles Michel has urged North Macedonia to back a French-proposed compromise on ending a dispute with neighboring Bulgaria that has blocked the country's bid to join the European Union.

Michel told a news conference in Skopje on July 5 that long-delayed talks to admit North Macedonia into the EU could begin immediately if it accepted the proposal.

"Together we are on the verge of a possible breakthrough in your country's EU accession process," Michel said, speaking alongside Macedonian Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski.

Michel said the country had a "historic opportunity" to agree to the beginning of negotiations and again become a "champion of enlargement."

Kovachevski reiterated his support for the "balanced proposal," adding that "our aim is to start membership talks."

French President Emmanuel Macron announced the proposal last week, saying he believed a compromise agreement was near.

But the center-right VMRO-DPMNE opposition party and other right-wing opponents reject the French plan, saying it concedes too much to Bulgaria in the dispute over history, language, identity, and culture.

VMRO-DPMNE has attacked the French proposal as a "legalization of the assimilation of the Macedonian people," accusing Kovachevski's government of accepting "humiliations and distortions of identity."

North Macedonia's president, Stevo Pendarovski, and the government have backed the proposed deal, which calls for the country to acknowledge in its constitution the existence of an ethnic Bulgarian minority. It would also provide for regular reviews on how the bilateral dispute is being addressed.

Violent protests against the proposal erupted over the weekend in Skopje. Tensions escalated during a new protest against the proposal on July 5.



Around 100 demonstrators threw rocks, Molotov cocktails, and other objects at the fence surrounding the parliament building and at the policemen defending it. Several policemen were hurt, but the police forces eventually pushed back and arrested several demonstrators.

Thousands of people protested the proposal the night before in Skopje. Some of the protesters threw paper towels, plastic bottles, water balloons, and eggs at government buildings in the capital.

Police prevented the crowd from forcing their way into government offices.

Bulgaria, which has already formally accepted the French proposal, insists that North Macedonia formally recognize that its language has Bulgarian roots, acknowledge a Bulgarian minority, and quash "hate speech" against Bulgaria.

North Macedonia has been a candidate for EU membership for 17 years. Bulgaria has been able to block the start of accession talks because unanimity is required under EU rules.

Before Bulgaria raised its objections, North Macedonia settled a decades-old dispute with Greece, another EU member, by adding the word "north" to its name. Greece had complained that the name Macedonia implied claims on its own territory, history, and cultural heritage.

The dispute with Bulgaria has also stalled the progress of Albania toward EU membership because the bloc has tied its accession talks to those of North Macedonia.

With reporting by AP and dpa
1 A Russian-backed separatist holds a Soviet-era flag, which was raised to mark the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II at the "I love Lysychansk" monument on July 4 after Ukrainian forces were forced to withdraw.
The head of the Donetsk regional military administration has urged the last remaining civilians to evacuate the eastern Ukrainian region as Russia escalated its offensive, hitting several cities and towns in the region and elsewhere in the country.

More than 350,000 residents remain in Donetsk, and Pavlo Kyrylenko said getting them out is necessary to save lives and enable the Ukrainian Army to defend against the Russian advance.



"The destiny of the whole country will be decided by the Donetsk region," Kyrylenko told reporters on July 5 in Kramatorsk, the administrative center of Donetsk. "Once there are fewer people, we will be able to concentrate more on our enemy and perform our main tasks."



Ukraine's railway system said more passenger wagons were being added to trains leaving Pokrovsk, a city northwest of the regional capital, to step up departures.



Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address that air alerts were issued late on July 5 in nearly all parts of the country, including places that had experienced relative calm in recent weeks.



"The Russian Army does not take any breaks. It has one task -- to take people's lives, to intimidate people -- so that even a few days without an air alarm already feel like part of the terror," he said.



Russia's main targets are now Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, Kyrylenko said, describing the shelling as "very chaotic" without "a specific target...only to destroy civilian infrastructure and residential areas."



Slovyansk came under sustained bombardment on July 5, Mayor Vadym Lyakh said on Facebook. He initially urged people to evacuate but then said residents who remained should take cover in shelters.



Kyrylenko said earlier that at least two people were killed and seven wounded as a result of the shelling of Slovyansk on July 5. Kyrylenko posted a video on social media showing smoke rising from a commercial area and photos of firefighters dousing flames. The claims could not be independently verified.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on July 5 that the war in Ukraine would continue until all the goals set by Russian President Vladimir Putin were achieved. However, Shoigu said the main priorities for Moscow were "preserving the lives and health" of the troops, and "excluding the threat to the security of civilians."



Ukrainian forces early on July 5 took up new defensive lines in Donetsk, where they still control major cities, after withdrawing from Lysychansk.

The withdrawal prompted Russia to claim full control of the eastern Luhansk region, although Zelenskiy vowed to regain the lost ground.

Putin on July 4 declared that Russian forces should continue to advance throughout the Donetsk region "as has happened in Luhansk."

An intelligence report from the British Defense Ministry on July 5 said the battle for the Donbas "has been characterized by slow rates of advance" and Russia's heavy use of artillery, leveling towns and cities in the process.

"The fighting in Donetsk Oblast will almost certainly continue in this manner, the intelligence report said.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke by phone with Zelenskiy on July 5, telling him he believes Ukraine can retake territory recently captured by Russia.

Johnson reiterated Britain's commitment to helping Kyiv defend itself and rebuild, and Zelenskiy thanked him for a further 100 million pounds ($119 million) in support.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said the prime minister also updated Zelenskiy on the latest U.K. military equipment, including 10 self-propelled artillery systems, which would be arriving in the coming days and weeks.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, how Kyiv is fighting back, Western military aid, worldwide reaction, and the plight of civilians and refugees. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said on July 5 that the first group of Ukrainian soldiers had recently arrived in Britain as part of a program to train up to 10,000 new Ukrainian recruits.

Wallace said the weekslong courses, based on Britain's basic soldier training, includes weapons training, battlefield first aid, patrol tactics, and training on the law of armed conflict.

Zelenskiy said earlier Kyiv's armed forces were undeterred in their efforts to "break" Moscow's will to pursue the war against his country hours after Putin ordered his military to continue its offensive.

Zelenskiy said in his nightly video message on July 4 that despite Ukraine's withdrawal from Lysychansk, which enabled Russia to claim full control of the eastern Luhansk region, its troops continued to fight.

"We need to break them," he said. "It is a difficult task. It requires time and superhuman efforts. But we have no alternative."

Ukraine's military said it withdrew from the bombed-out city of Lysychansk late on July 3 to save the lives of its soldiers, while Zelenskiy vowed to retake the city "thanks to the increase in the supply of modern weapons."

"This is the last victory for Russia on Ukrainian territory," Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskiy, said in a video posted online.

Arestovych said that besides the battle for Donetsk, Ukraine was hoping to launch counteroffensives in the south of the country.

"Taking the cities in the east meant that 60 percent of Russian forces are now concentrated in the east and it is difficult for them to be redirected to the south," he said.

"And there are no more forces that can be brought in from Russia. They paid a big price for Syevyerodonetsk and Lysychansk," he said.

Early on July 5, Russian rockets hit the southern city of Mykolayiv, on the main highway between Kherson and Odesa, Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and dpa
Dozens of countries have committed to support Ukraine through what is expected to be a long and expensive recovery, and agreed on the need for broad reforms to boost transparency and battle corruption.

Wrapping up a two-day conference in the southern Swiss city of Lugano on July 5, leaders from some 40 countries signed on to the Lugano Declaration, laying out a set of principles for rebuilding Ukraine.

Signatories, including the United States, Britain, France, and Japan, condemned Russia's military aggression against Ukraine "in the strongest terms" and urged Moscow to withdraw its troops without delay.

Swiss President Iganzio Cassis, who co-hosted the conference with Ukraine, hailed the declaration as a "key first step on the long road of Ukraine's recovery."

"Our work prepares for the time after the war even as the war is still raging," he told the closing ceremony.

"This should give the people in Ukraine hope and the certainty that they are not alone."

The signatories welcomed commitments to provide political, financial, and technical support and launched the "Lugano principles" to guide the reconstruction effort, which Kyiv says could cost up to $750 billion.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on July 5 that the declaration was "definitely the start of our long-distance" process.

"We have to make everything that was destroyed better than it was," he said.

Scott Miller, the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, urged allies of Ukraine to help not only with longer-term rebuilding but also with more immediate needs.

While we recognize the importance of preparing for Ukraines future, all of us must also deliver on our commitments to provide Ukraine its immediate and urgent needs," he said.

Many attendees pointed out that rebuilding efforts were likely to take many years. Some called for support for Ukraine along the lines of the U.S. Marshall Plan for Europe after World War II.

The Lugano principles stress that "the recovery process has to contribute to accelerating, deepening, broadening, and achieving Ukraine's reform efforts and resilience in line with Ukraine's European path."

"The recovery process has to be transparent and accountable to the people of Ukraine," the document says.

It also calls for the recovery process to be "inclusive and ensure gender equality," and for Ukraine to be rebuilt in a "sustainable manner."

With reporting by Reuters and AFP
(Photo : Harold Cunningham/Getty Images ) BASEL, SWITZERLAND - MARCH 24: Andrew Wu, LVMH Group Greater China President, Xu Xingli, General Manager at Chang'E Aerospace Technology (Beijing) LLC, Jean-Claude Biver, TAG Heuer CEO and President of the LVMH Watch Division and Zuo Wei Researcher at National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Deputy Chief Designer of CLEP Ground Application System during TAG Heuer China Lunar Exploration Program in partnership with China's Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP) Special Edition watches press conference at Baselworld 2018 on March 24, 2018 in Basel, Switzerland

For the first time, China's Chang'e 4 lunar lander has been able to successfully grow plants on the moon under its aspiring lunar mission, an undoubtful competitive edge versus NASA. However, NASA officials also suggest that the military space program of China may be plotting to take over the moon.

China's Moon Heist

Bill Nelson, NASA's administrator, has said that China National Space Administration, a state-owned space corporation, may be plotting to take over the moon as a part of the country's military space program. During the interview, Nelson confirmed that the US was involved in the space race with Beijing, reports RepublicWorld.

Nelson iterated that in 2035, China would have completed the construction of its own Moon station and will launch numerous moon programs. The 79-year-old administrator acknowledged that the US space administration has been very concerned regarding China's moon landing and its agenda of hijacking the moon.

For the first time, the Chang'e 4 lunar lander was successfully able to grow plants on the Moon, giving it a competitive edge over NASA. The lunar biosphere experiments were conducted in collaboration with 28 Chinese universities. Photographs released by the China National Space Administration showed budding cotton seed sprouting into a successful biological matter, the first in human history. The lunar development marked the completion of the first biological experiments on the moon.

China has been able to grow plants out of rapeseed and potato seeds. However, cotton seeds were the first to sprout in the challenging conditions of the Moon, says Professor Liu Hanlong from Chongqing University.

On the other hand, in recent news, China has rejected Nelson's statements calling it an irresponsible smear. They reiterate that China has always called for building a community of nations in space, reports Reuters.

ALSO READ: Large Hadron Collider Faces New Challenge in Physics 10 Years After Higgs Boson Discovery





China's Future Space Plans

In 2028, China is expected to launch a new generation of heavy-duty rockets that are said to be able to send a crewed spacecraft to the moon, reports Reuters. The new heavy-lift launch vehicle should be able to put a 15- to 50-ton spacecraft on the right trajectory to the moon, explains Liu Bing, the deputy designer at the China Aerospace Science and Technology. At the same time, it would be powerful enough to place a 12 to 44-ton probe on a trajectory to Mars.

Previously, China has predicted that it would complete designing and constructing a rocket with enough thrust to transport several of its astronauts to the moon by 2030. However, China still lags behind the US regarding experience and technology. The last NASA crewed landing occurred in 1972. With US astronauts are expected to return to the moon by 2024.

China has been developing its superheavy Long March 9 rocket, with liftoff weighing 4,140 tons and a thrust of 5,760 tons. Currently, the biggest rocket developed by China weighs 849 tons and has a thrust of roughly 1,078 tons.

Besides their ambitious lunar missions, China has also set its eyes on a Mars sample-return mission for 2030.

RELATED ARTICLE: NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Shares Colorful, Clear Map of the Red Planet [LOOK]

Check out more news and information on Space in Science Times.
The guided-missile destroyer Suzhou (Hull 132) of the 41st Chinese naval escort taskforce accompanies the merchant ships.

BEIJING, July 5 -- Recently, the 41st Chinese naval escort taskforce escorted six merchant ships to the western part of the Gulf of Aden in succession.

After the arrival at the gathering point in eastern Gulf of Aden, the escorted merchant ships Heilan Journey and Eemslift Nelli set sail with the PLA Navys guided-missile destroyer Suzhou (Hull 132), which was attached to the 41st Chinese naval escort taskforce, towards the predetermined waters as scheduled. After more than 600 nautical miles voyage, the ships reached the all-clear area in the western Gulf of Aden, and the naval taskforce returned to the gathering point in eastern Gulf of Aden as planned to continue the following tasks of escorting merchant ships Darlene, Nasco Jade, Heilan Song and Horn of Harmony, to the designated sea area.

To ensure the security of the escorted merchant ships, the Chinese naval taskforce, in light of recent local sea conditions, kept vigilance and anti-terrorism and anti-piracy deployment all the trip. They used ship-borne radar, electronic reconnaissance equipment, and photoelectric detection equipment to observe and search for small targets at close range at sea. The helicopters were also on standby throughout the whole process. Meanwhile, the taskforce kept real-time communication with the escorted ships regularly.

During the voyage, the Chinese crew members onboard the ship Heilan Journey raised the national flag of China on the deck and hung up a banner saying Many thanks to the Chinese Navy for escorting to express their gratitude.

According to Huang Hua, chief of staff of the taskforce, the escorting mission serves as a test of the taskforces ability to perform military operations other than war (MOOTW). The taskforce will maintain sharp vigilance to ensure that various emergencies are to be handled prudently.

The guided-missile destroyer Suzhou (Hull 132) of the 41st Chinese naval escort taskforce accompanies the merchant ships.
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UPDATE: Containment of the Electra Fire in Amador County grows to 10%, but hotter, drier weather worries fire crews

JACKSON, Amador County  Flames from the Electra Fire burning southeast of Jackson swelled to cover 3,900 acres Tuesday, with numerous neighborhoods evacuating while residents in other areas hunkered down for as long as they could amid billowing smoke.

By 9 p.m., firefighters had managed to get 5% containment around the fast-growing wildfire, which sparked Monday near Vox Beach, Cal Fire said, noting the blaze grew at a dangerous rate of speed overnight.

Chris Vestal, public information officer for the Electra fire, said late Tuesday that firefighters were pleased with the progress of the day but worried about upcoming weather.

The weather is getting hotter, drier coming up the next couple of days, he told The Chronicle.

Thats bad news for wildfire containment.

Now Playing: Video taken after roughly 100 people in Amador County fled to a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. facility in an attempt to escape the Electra Fire. They were trapped there for hours as the fire raged around them. Video: Provided by Bobby Zelmer

Helicopters relentlessly dropped water in the afternoon into a canyon below Quail Drive in unincorporated Pine Acres, east of Clinton, where smoke was pouring into the neighborhood. At the foot of Quail Drive, a bulldozer cleared out brush and firefighters converged on the scene, including a Tamalpais hand crew that helped control a backfire down the slope. Remaining residents asked firefighters questions and raked leaves from the sides of their homes amid the smoke.

A fire commander chirped over the radio, summing up the efforts: Its a successful game of Whac-a-Mole.

Amador County Sheriffs Office

Chris Mays, 40, a two-year resident of the wooded community, walked to the end of Quail Drive with his son. His wife, three kids, uncle, two dogs, three cats and chickens and ducks were packed and ready to evacuate. But Mays wasnt ready to leave.

It sucks. Thats my house, he said. I told my family, Im not leaving until the fire hits the f house.

He said hed seen the smoke shortly after the fire started to the southwest. If we see houses on fire then well get out of here, he said.

Cal Fire said the blaze threatened critical power infrastructure, and steep, rugged terrain made it difficult for fire crews to access the South Fork of the Mokelumne River drainage area. A PG&E spokesperson said it had a number of assets potentially at risk, but that the utility understood its equipment did not cause the fire, based on the time and location of the start. The cause was under investigation, Cal Fire said.

More than 1,200 structures were considered in danger from the fire late Tuesday.

About 100 people had taken shelter from the spreading flames at a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. facility Monday and then were safely evacuated from that location, according to Amador County Sheriff Gary Redman.

Ethan Swope/The Chronicle

Residents in Amador County and in the Butte Mountain Road area were under mandatory evacuation orders, with evacuation orders and warnings extending Tuesday afternoon to encompass an area just east of Jackson stretching to an area west of Pine Grove. Cal Fire also issued evacuation orders for all residents within a 2-mile radius around Lake Tabeaud.

At one evacuation site at Italian Picnic Grounds in Sutter Creek, Jim and Lesley Davis grilled hamburgers beside their trailer after being forced to flee their Jackson home on Monday. The couple last evacuated from a wildfire in 2015, when the Butte Fire swept through the area.

Fire Tracker Follow wildfires across the state Latest updates on wildfires burning across Northern and Southern California

Lesley said she was napping around 4:30 p.m. Monday when her friend called. Are you aware theres a fire near your house! Lesley recalled her girlfriend yelling. She jumped up and alerted her husband, who prepared their trailer while she wrangled their two cats, Fritz and Miles, Rocky the dog, and five chickens into animal crates.

A massive dark plume of smoke billowed from behind their house as they pulled out of the driveway. Their property with grazing pastures and a vineyard is a quarter-mile from the fires origin.

Amador County Sheriffs Office

That really put an exclamation point on our need to evacuate, said Jim Davis.

Dave Rice was cooking dinner when evacuation orders hit the area. He helped his visually impaired wife into their truck and towed their trailer to a nearby evacuation center.

Its not the first wildfire hes seen from his property, but he said natural disasters are everywhere. If he loses his home to the Electra Fire, he and his wife will likely move to Florida to be closer to his daughter.

If God pulls the rug out from under our feet, then were gone, he said.

Caltrans said that State Road 26 was closed, both eastbound and westbound, from Buckeye Lane to Lower Dorray Road. One first responder was injured fighting the blaze.

Ethan Swope/The Chronicle

Jordan Parker (he/him), Matthias Gafni and Joshua Sharpe are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jordan.parker@sfchronicle.com, matthias.gafni@sfchronicle.com, joshua.sharpe@sfchronicle.com
Regarding Lowell High perpetuates exclusion (Open Forum, July 1): Exclude is an ugly word. The San Francisco Unified School Districts former superintendent, Vincent Matthews, used it, saying, The evidence is clear that test-based admission at Lowell resulted in a school where students of certain racial and socioeconomic backgrounds are excluded.

While it is true that Asian American students are overrepresented at Lowell High School, it does not follow that Lowell excludes Black students or students of poor socioeconomic backgrounds. The students that Lowell excludes are simply those whose grade point average or academic test scores are below those it admits. Those students exclusion is due to their lack of academic achievement, not their race or social status. The cause is largely the fault of poorly performing and poorly motivating public middle schools.

Instead of arguing in favor of academic mediocrity for all public high school students, I would like the ex-superintendent to encourage efforts to improve the academic ambition and educational opportunities for all of San Franciscos public middle-school students.

Cynthia Travis, San Francisco

Give EPA more power

Regarding EPA limited in curbing emissions (Nation, July 1): We are facing a crisis of a lifetime, and in response, the Supreme Court is radically changing the landscape of our government.

Climate change is no longer something that will happen in the future. It is here, and we are seeing the effects worsen with each passing day.

The Environmental Protection Agency needs to have the power to push our energy grid toward cleaner energy. Numerous reports demonstrate that we are in a dire situation. We need strong climate legislation that pushes our country into a safer, greener, cleaner future.

Pass the budget reconciliation bill with its climate provisions. Congress needs to step up and pass legislation to explicitly provide the EPA with the necessary power. This is not just a solution to the crisis of the day, its a start to the solution to the crisis of our generation.

Robyn Nason, San Francisco

History will repeat

I wonder how many of you have had an abortion. Please dont answer, just think about the question.

Heres a few of my own friends stories: A good Christian girl who slept with the wrong guy, a friend suffering in an abusive marriage, another who got pregnant in college and a one-night stand.

All of them had abortions. This list is endless; the names and dates have obviously changed but the situations remain the same.

But by far the hardest to hear was from my 90-year-old mother in Washington state; she had never told me this until last week. In 1954, her close friend and next door neighbor, with two young kids and a husband who couldnt find work at the time, attempted to abort her third pregnancy with a coat hanger, but she bled out and died, leaving her young family behind.

Sound familiar? Thats where we are headed. Its mind numbing.

Gina Jausoro, Santa Cruz

People are powerless

Regarding Marcos, silent on dads abuses, takes helm (World, July 1): In refusing to acknowledge his fathers human rights abuses and monumental corruption, new President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is off a predictably bad start, continuing the tradition of rule by the wealthy that has persisted in the Philippines since World War II and beyond.

That the lessons learned by the People Power movement that forced his father to flee have been forgotten by the majority saddens those who have worked so hard in their country to build a true democracy  and shows how fragile a democracy can be.
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In the days after a draft ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked, LGBTQ leaders from across California huddled to strategize their response to a once unthinkable question: How could they protect marriage equality from the Supreme Court?

The question carries a deeper sense of urgency here than in other blue states due to Californias Proposition 8, the 2008 initiative that voters approved to ban same-sex marriage. While a U.S. District Court judge struck it down in 2010, the text of Prop. 8 remains a vestige in the state Constitution that cannot be removed without voter approval.

LGBTQ advocates warn that if the Supreme Court overturned its own decision enshrining marriage equality  as some conservative justices have suggested  theres a risk that Prop. 8 could become law again.

Assembly Member Evan Low, a San Jose Democrat who chairs the Legislatures LGBTQ Caucus, was part of the group of leaders who huddled after the courts draft ruling was leaked in May. For many, he said, the moment stoked dark memories of the Prop. 8 fight.

Its a nightmare to relive this pain that we thought we put away tightly and neatly in a little box, he said. Im just lost for words to know that we could relive this again.

The group quickly concluded that the ruling striking down Prop. 8 wasnt ironclad enough to protect potential threats to marriage rights in light of the Supreme Courts direction after it revoked a nearly 50-year constitutional right to abortion. They largely agreed to propose a ballot measure to formally remove Prop. 8 from the California Constitution.

But the camp was initially split between those who thought the measure should appear on the ballot this November and those who wanted to wait until the 2024 presidential election cycle, sources involved with the discussions told The Chronicle.

The strategy sessions included prominent LGBTQ legislators and advocacy groups. They commissioned a poll to determine how Californians felt about gay marriage some 12 years after the polarizing Prop. 8 fight.

The poll showed, not surprisingly, that a solid majority of Californians support marriage equality today, sources told The Chronicle.

Nevertheless, the group decided to wait until 2024 to take the issue back to voters. Organizers said they have already drafted language for the amendment, which state legislators could put on the ballot.

The decision to wait two years to put the question to voters was driven by three major factors: a desire to focus on abortion right now, poor timing amid a midterm election year and the need to raise gobs of money.

Organizers said they worried that the gay-marriage effort, if put before voters this fall, could compete for resources and attention with Proposition 1, a state constitutional amendment on the ballot that would enshrine the right to access abortion and contraception.

Samuel Garrett-Pate, a spokesperson for Equality California, one of the states largest LGBTQ advocacy groups, said the immediate attention needs to be on reproductive rights that are already imperiled. He said organizers are also focused on the midterm elections as Democrats fight to hold onto control of Congress.

Our focus right now is 100% on safeguarding access to abortion and reproductive freedom, he said. Any conversation about a 2024 ballot measures wont come until after November 2022 because we cant afford to take our eye off that ball.

Turnout is also typically lower in midterm elections like this year. Organizers said they would have the best shot at repealing Prop. 8 in 2024, when a presidential election is likely to drive up turnout, particularly among progressive-leaning voters.

LGBTQ advocates said they also feared that rushing to put the marriage issue on the ballot this fall could backfire if the campaign is hastily put together.

Some organizers said there wasnt enough time, between late May and November, to raise the millions of dollars needed to run a statewide campaign that ensures Prop. 8 is repealed by a wide margin. Typically, supporters of statewide ballots measure begin raising money a year or more in advance.

You dont want to just put it on the ballot, said state Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat. You need to be prepared to run a full statewide campaign, which means raising a lot of money. It would be such a disaster if it even got close.

Even though a marriage amendment likely wont appear on the ballot until 2024, LGBTQ leaders and Democratic officials have been outspoken about the potential threat facing the community.

They warn that the Supreme Courts rationale for overturning Roe shows its prepared to upend other decisions related to privacy and bodily autonomy. In a 6-3 ruling, the courts conservative majority held that the right to obtain an abortion was not deeply rooted in the Nations history and traditions since the procedure wasnt legal in many places prior to 1973.

The sense of panic was exacerbated by a concurring opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, arguing that the court should reconsider all its precedents related to marriage equality, anti-sodomy laws and contraception.

A section of the courts draft opinion leaked in May also seemed to balk at two monumental rulings for LGBTQ rights: Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 ruling that guaranteed marriage equality; and Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 ruling that prevented states from outlawing anal sex.

None of these rights has any claim to being deeply rooted in history, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his draft opinion.

The concern, for many LGBTQ leaders, is that if the Obergefell decision were reversed by the court someday, that lawsuits would be filed to try to overturn the District Court ruling that knocked down Prop. 8, allowing the vestiges of the measure to become law in California.

We do need to get Prop. 8 out of the Constitution, Wiener said. Theres no doubt about that.

At the same time, some LGBTQ leaders say theres reason to believe that the Supreme Court wont undo marriage rights in the near future. None of the other conservative justices signed Thomas concurring opinion, and the courts majority said those other rights are inherently different than abortion because the latter concerns the potential life of a fetus.

Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion, Alito wrote.

Garrett-Pate, of Equality California, said marriage equality is not immediately threatened in California according to his groups legal analysis. He said theres a key distinction between the Obergefell decision and then-Chief U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walkers ruling that overturned Prop. 8.

Most notably, the Supreme Courts ruling in the Obergefell case found that denying same-sex couples the right to marry violates the 14th Amendment, which guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law and the right to due process.

Walkers ruling in the Prop. 8 case, however, was more sweeping. In addition to equal protection concerns, Walker concluded that the state Constitution guarantees same-sex couples an equal right to marry.

Garrett-Pate said even if the Obergefell decision were overturned, the Prop. 8 ruling would stand, at least in the near term.

Conversely, we have an immediate threat to abortion access in this country, he said. Were focused on the here and now while remaining vigilant about the future.

Meanwhile, legislators are gearing up to take the fight over repealing Prop. 8 to voters in 2024. Low, the LGBTQ Caucus chair, said hes long wanted to remove the measure from the state Constitution, but some advocates thought it would poke the bear and trigger an unnecessary fight.

Low said that calculus has been upended by the Supreme Courts willingness to overturn societal norms and revoke rights already granted to Americans. But hes confident that Californians views on the issue have evolved since the Prop. 8 saga.

Californians believe in love, simply put, Low said.

Dustin Gardiner (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dustingardiner
Four people were injured Monday evening after a vehicle rear-ended a car, causing it to crash into a bus stop near San Franciscos Golden Gate Park, authorities said.

The crash happened just before 6 p.m. at the Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way intersection in the Inner Sunset neighborhood, San Francisco Police spokesperson Allison Maxie said in a statement.

A preliminary investigation found that one vehicle rear-ended the other, which then crashed into pedestrians at a bus stop, police said.

Supervisor Myrna Melgar, whose district includes the Inner Sunset, tweeted Monday evening that multiple people waiting at the bus stop were hit, four of whom were in critical condition.

Terrible collision reported at 9th Ave and Lincoln, Melgar tweeted.

No arrests were made as of Tuesday afternoon, police said.

Police officers provided aid to several injured people at the scene and requested paramedics, who transported four individuals to nearby hospitals, authorities said.

A 59-year-old man suffered life-threatening injuries and remained hospitalized as of Tuesday afternoon, authorities said.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

The other victims  two women, ages 29 and 19, and a 16-year-old boy  had non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

Mondays crash comes nearly three weeks after a vehicle crashed into a Muni bus in the Marina District, injuring six people, including a Muni driver. The vehicle driver was arrested for driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, driving without a drivers license, recklesss driving, speeding and failing to stop at a traffic signal, authorities said.

Jessica Flores (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jessica.flores@sfchronicle

.com Twitter: @jesssmflores
PBNJ Productions/Getty Images

A 2-acre wildfire near San Franciscos Twin Peaks sent smoke billowing into the air Monday evening as firefighters worked to contain the blaze, San Francisco Fire Department said.

The grass fire, which erupted at 1087 Twin Peaks Boulevard, caused so much smoke in the area that fire officials suggested those living nearby close their windows and doors.
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As many Bay Area tech companies shrink office footprints and some leave San Francisco altogether, one tech giant still has big plans for the city by the Bay.

Google Cloud just signed the largest new lease since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, as first reported by the San Francisco Business Times. The company will take over Stripes former headquarters in SoMa at 510 Townsend, a 300,000-square-foot space the payment processing company occupied since 2015.
The Oakland Police Department said at least four people were struck by bullets Monday night inside RingCentral Coliseum following a post-game fireworks show after the Oakland Athletics' 5-1 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays.

According to a Tuesday news release from the Athletics, police believe the injuries were the result of "celebratory gunfire."

"Following last night's Oakland A's post-game fireworks show, officers were notified of a possible shooting victim inside the ballpark," the release said. "During the preliminary investigation, officers located three fans struck by bullet fragments from what appears to be celebratory gunfire throughout the city of Oakland."

The release said a fourth victim later walked in to an area hospital. All four victims sustained non-life-threatening injuries, according to authorities. The A's said Oakland police will work with ballpark security to "ensure the safety of all those attending future A's games at the Coliseum."

The Oakland Police Department and Crime Stoppers of Oakland are offering a $20,000 reward for any information that leads to an arrest in the shootings, which are still under investigation. Anyone with information is encouraged to call the department's Felony Assault Unit at 510-238-3426.

Monday's shooting capped off a holiday weekend of violence throughout the U.S. According to the New York Times, authorities in roughly a dozen cities reported shootings over the weekend, with most of them occurring on July 4. That includes a mass shooting at a parade in a suburb of Chicago, where a gunman killed six people and left about three dozen others injured.
A Michigan man who got lost in the Sierra National Forest last month while investigating the famously mysterious demise of a young California family got lost himself and required rescue, according to the Mariposa County Sheriff's Office.

In a news release that was posted on Facebook Saturday, the sheriff's office said the man  who was reported missing on June 29  was investigating the deaths of Ellen Chung, 31, Jonathan Gerrish, 45, their 1-year-old daughter, Miju, and their dog, Oski, whose mysterious fates last August made international headlines. Deputies say the man told another hiker that he found the determined cause of the deaths in that case "odd" and wanted to do research on his own.

A sheriff's office investigation that concluded in October said the family likely died of hyperthermia and dehydration due to extreme heat, but a 77-page report on the case shows that investigators looked for algae-infested water, mines that might emit toxic gas, poisonous vegetation and evidence of lightning strikes before coming to their determination.

After the hiker spoke to the Michigan man on the Hites Cove/Savage Lundy Trail on June 28, they noticed that his rented vehicle was still parked at the trailhead the next morning. They called the sheriff's office to report him as missing shortly after. They said the man was in his 60s and was wearing sweatpants.

It's unclear how long the man was lost and when exactly he was rescued. A spokesperson for sheriff's office did not respond to an SFGATE request for such information. The news release from the sheriff's office said the man entered the area through a gate that was affixed with a "closed" sign, and that he became lost after being unable to find the trail that leads to the Savage Lundy portion of the area.

The release said the man tried to make numerous 9-11 calls after becoming lost, but no calls went through. Deputies say he had two one-gallon jugs of water with him, but during extremely hot days, had to eventually resort to drinking river water. After a search and rescue mission was conducted in coordination with the Fresno County Sheriff's Office  the search involved the use of a helicopter  the man was found along Hites Cove Road. The release said the man was treated by medical personnel for badly blistered feet and dehydration.

The irony that the man was rescued by the department he was trying to prove wrong was not lost on Mariposa County Sheriff Jeremy Briese.

"We had local, national and international news surrounding the tragic incident last year on the Savage Lundy trail. Each time we spoke about it we informed the public on ways to stay safe in the area," he said in the release. "To have someone purposely put themselves in danger, using vital resources and potentially putting the safety of our staff in danger, all to try and prove us wrong is maddening, and quite frankly, sickening. I am proud of my team for their professionalism and for bringing this man back to safe location. Please recreate responsibly.
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After the U.S. Supreme Court revoked the federal right to an abortion that's been in place for half a century, companies like Amazon, Disney, Apple and JP Morgan pledged to cover travel costs for employees who live in states where the procedure is now illegal so they can terminate pregnancies.

But the companies gave scant or no details on how they will do this and it's not clear if they will be able to  legally  while protecting employees' privacy and keeping them safe from prosecution.

Most employers were not prepared for Roe to be overturned, and even those that were didnt realize the law would literally be changed the next minute, said Brian Kropp, a vice president at the consulting firm Gartner. Theyre trying to play catch-up.

Kropp said many companies announced plans to offer travel benefits without the infrastructure in place to make them work. Some, he added, are creating supplementary policies that employees can buy to cover abortion travel, while others are contacting insurers to see if travel can be added to their current plans. Others are trying to figure out how to offer a benefit without breaching employees privacy.

Are employees going to have to tell their manager they are going to have to travel from Texas to California to have an abortion? Kropp said.

The answer is no  but they would likely have to tell human resources or a similar department that they are pregnant and want to get an abortion, said Sharona Hoffman, a health law professor at Case Western Reserve University. The company or its health insurer would then provide money upfront or a reimbursement after the fact.

Hoffman called the travel cost pledges a generous benefit from companies, and said she would not be surprised if this becomes a practice that more companies undertake  just without trumpeting it, for fear of the backlash that can come with public statements on a divisive issue such as abortion.

Its not necessarily altruistic, she said. It also makes some sense for companies to not have a bunch of employees that are highly distressed because they have unwanted pregnancies and have to carry the child to term.

For now, most big companies offering an abortion travel benefit will likely add it to existing health care plans, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a partner with the law firm Morgan Lewis who helps companies develop and maintain their benefits.

Big companies are generally self-insured, which means they pay for all claims and have more flexibility to decide what the plans will cover. A third party then processes the claims on their behalf.

Thats the case at outdoor clothing company Patagonia, which updated its health coverage last fall to add travel costs for employees after Texass law banning most abortions went into effect. Patagonia said abortion and travel costs are administered in the same manner as other medical services, ensuring confidentiality for employees.

Restaurant review company Yelp said its abortion travel benefit is also administered by its health insurance provider. Yelp has told its employees that if they do use the travel benefit, Yelp will not have access to the details of the service.

Microsoft, meanwhile, noted that it already covers abortion, as well as gender-affirming care, for its employees and has now extended the coverage to include travel expenses for these and other lawful medical services" if they are not available in an employee's home state.

Smaller companies may have fewer options. They typically buy health insurance for their employees from insurers that are subject to state regulations. Those companies have less flexibility to design benefits, and they may operate in states that ban abortion.

Dr. Ami Parekh, chief health officer at Included Health, which offers health care navigation services and virtual care for employers, said it is quite a scramble right now for large employers to navigate this fast-moving landscape.

Theyre moving as fast as they can, Parekh said. And I bet you theyre going to be nimble and change as needed as things come up.

For instance, some companies are offering to pay for a partner to travel with the person getting the abortion.

With the legal landscape shifting quickly, even adding travel benefits to a current medical plan carries some risk. In May, 14 state lawmakers in Texas sent a letter to Lyft warning the company to rescind its abortion travel benefit, saying they plan to introduce legislation that would ban companies from doing business in Texas if they pay for abortions or reimburse abortion-related expenses.

That said, no such legislation has been enacted as of now in Texas or anywhere else. It is also not against the law to travel to states where abortion is legal, Hoffman noted. There are efforts afoot, however, to change that.

And while the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, protects sensitive patient information, it can be overruled in cases where a crime has been committed. Thats the case now in states where abortion has become a crime.

Its challenging for employers to navigate what is a rapidly evolving legal landscape, said Sharon Masling, the head of Morgan Lewiss reproductive rights task force. Theres going to be a lot of litigation over the next few years.

Beyond the legal questions, abortion travel benefits also present some thorny workplace issues, Kropp said. Employees who dont support abortion may be angry that their company is paying for other employees travel, for example. Even those who do support abortion may question why the company isnt paying them to travel for fertility treatments or transgender health care, he said.

This is why it's likely, experts say that some companies are offering travel benefits but aren't making public announcements about it.

My sense is most employers are trying to very quickly figure out whats best for their employees and dependents, Parekh said. And not all employers want to spend the energy to be very public about that at this moment in time.

__

Associated Press staff writers Haleluya Hadero and Anne D'Innocenzio in New York and Matt O'Brien in Providence, Rhode Island contributed to this story.
BERLIN (AP)  The International Energy Agency says high prices for natural gas and supply fears due to the war in Ukraine will slow the growth in demand for the fossil fuel in the coming years.

In a report published Tuesday, the Paris-based agency forecast global demand for natural gas will rise by 140 billion cubic meters between 2021 and 2025. That's less than half the increase of 370 bcm seen in the previous five-year period, which included the pandemic downturn.
LATEST July 5, noon To read the Electra Fire updates for Tuesday, click here.

July 5, 7:35 a.m. The Electra Fire tripled in size overnight growing from nearly 1,000 acres on Monday night to 3,034 acres on Tuesday morning, Cal Fire said. There is no containment.

The dozens of people who were sheltering at a PG&E facility on Electra Road were safely evacuated, Amador County Sheriff Gary Redman said. Most of them were enjoying the Fourth of July at Vox Beach along the Mokelumne River when the blaze began. Redman said it's believed the fire started in the area, possibly because of a barbecue or fireworks.

July 4, 7:55 p.m. The Electra Fire in Amador County exploded to nearly 1,000 acres in a matter of hours after sparking Monday afternoon, sending up an enormous pyrocumulous cloud that can be seen as far away as Sacramento.

Shortly before 5 p.m., Cal Fire assessed the wildfire at "approximately 75 acres burning at a dangerous rate of spread in dry grass in North Fork of the Mokelumne." By 7:30 p.m., it was already at 959 acres with no containment. The cause of the fire is unknown, but it's believed to have started near Electra Road and Highway 49. Mandatory evacuations are in place east of the Mokelumne Hill area for now, but conditions can change quickly. Check the evacuation map here for the latest information, or call or text Evacuation Teams of Amador at 1-209-419-2000. First responders went door-to-door within a two-mile radius of Lake Tabeau to let people know they must leave immediately.

A map of the Electra Fire can be seen here:

To make matters more complicated, the fire is burning near a PG&E station along Electra Road. PG&E's outage map shows that thousands of customers throughout Amador and neighboring Calaveras County are now without power. According to KCRA, about 100 people are sheltering in place at the PG&E facility, which took in individuals who were recreating at Vox Beach along the Mokelumne River when the blaze broke out. The Mokelumne River watershed supplies the water for the East Bay Municipal Utility District and provides drinking water to 1.4 million Bay Area customers.

"Steep and rugged terrain is making access difficult by ground but firefighters are making access," Cal Fire said in its evening incident report. First responders are also reportedly working to clear downed trees and debris to reach the PG&E facility on Electra Road; its occupants are not in immediate danger.

Evacuees can head to the Italian Picnic Grounds at 581 Highway 49 in Sutter Creek or San Andreas Town Hall at 24 Church Hill Rd. in San Andreas. If you have small or large animals, head to the Amador County Fairgrounds. Both directions of State Route 26 from Buckeye Lane to Lower Dorray Road are closed until further notice, Caltrans said.

You can monitor the fire on AlertWildfire's livestreaming cameras here.
LATEST July 6, 7:30 a.m. With weather conditions improving, firefighters started to gain control of the Electra Fire in California's Amador County in the last 24 hours. By the end of the day Tuesday, containment stood at 5%, and on Wednesday morning, it was 10%, Cal Fire said.

The fire didn't grow overnight and was still 3,900 acres on Wednesday morning. There are still 1,217 structures threatened. Cal Fire said in its Wednesday morning incident report that the fire stayed active over the first half of the night with some upslope runs, but calmed later in the evening and early this morning.

"Firefighters are working to strengthen control lines," Cal Fire said.

National Weather Service forecaster Eric Kurth said humidity levels over the fire increased late last night.

"We got more of a delta flow with some of the marine air moving in," Kurth said. "Even some of that delta stratus has come in. There was moisture in the air. One spot near the fire was at 90% humidity. I'd say that's a favorable thing."

July 5, 9:20 p.m. The Electra Fire in California's Amador County was 3,900 acres with 5% containment as of 9 p.m. Tuesday, Cal Fire said.

There are 1,217 structures threatened.

"The Electra Fire is actively burning, with short intense unslope runs," Cal Fire said in its incident report. "Shortage spotting with rollout is contributing to the fire spread. The threat is critical infrastructure being monitored and assessed, and protection plans are being put into place."

July 5, 2:15 p.m. Fire activity on the Electra Fire in California's Amador County picked up on Tuesday afternoon. Flames were burning in the Electra Road area along the Amador and Calaveras county line, the Amador County Sheriff's Office said.

Wildfire cameras showed three massive plumes of smoke plumes rising above the mountains.

Cal Fire issued a new mandatory evacuation order for all residents in the Butte Mountain Road area. Cal Fire also issued an evacuation warning for all residents in a 2-mile radius centered around Lake Tabeaud.

You can get the latest evacuation information from the Amador County Sheriff's Office. You can also check the evacuation map.

The Amador County Animal Response Team was activated Tuesday afternoon. Residents can bring large animals to the Amador County Fairgrounds.

Road closures are in effect at the following intersections, the sheriff's office said:

- Tabeau Road southbound at Highway 88

- Mount Zion Road southbound at Highway 88

- Clinton Road at Butte Mountain Road

- Clinton Road at Amador Lane

- Clinton Road at West Clinton Road

- Electra Road at Highway 49

July 5, noon The fast-moving Electra Fire in Amador and Calaveras counties continues to threaten "critical power infrastructure," Cal Fire said Tuesday. The wildfire began on the Fourth of July near Vox Beach along the Mokelumne River and has burned 3,034 acres as of Tuesday morning. There is no containment and 450 structures are threatened.

The wildfire is burning near a PG&E station on Electra Road. The facility temporarily provided shelter for holiday vacationers who were relaxing on Vox Beach when the blaze broke out. About 100 people waited in the station for rescue as first responders cleared downed trees and power lines to get to them. They were all safely evacuated by 9:30 p.m. Monday, Cal Fire said.

"There is continued threat to critical power infrastructure," Cal Fire said in its morning incident report. "Steep rugged terrain is making access challenging for fire crews in the South Fork of the Mokelumne River drainage, however firefighters continue to construct control lines."

PG&E's outage map shows that thousands of customers throughout Amador and neighboring Calaveras County are without power. Another piece of infrastructure is in proximity to the blaze: The Mokelumne River watershed supplies the water for the East Bay Municipal Utility District and provides drinking water to 1.4 million Bay Area customers.

Noah Berger/AP

The Electra Fire exploded in a matter of hours. Shortly before 5 p.m. Monday, Cal Fire assessed the wildfire at "approximately 75 acres burning at a dangerous rate of spread in dry grass in North Fork of the Mokelumne." By 7:30 p.m., it was already at 959 acres with no containment. The cause of the fire is unknown, but Amador County Sheriff Gary Redman said the fire possibly began at Vox Beach, potentially due to a barbecue or fireworks.

Mandatory evacuations are in place east of the Mokelumne Hill area for now, but conditions can change quickly. Check the evacuation map for the latest information, or call or text Evacuation Teams of Amador at 1-209-419-2000. A map of the Electra Fire can be seen here:

Evacuees can head to the Italian Picnic Grounds at 581 Highway 49 in Sutter Creek or San Andreas Town Hall at 24 Church Hill Road in San Andreas. If you have small or large animals, head to the Amador County Fairgrounds.

There are a number of road closures, per Caltrans:

-Electra Road at Highway 49

-Clinton Road at Butte Mountain Cutoff

-Butte Mountain Road at Butte Mountain Cutoff

-Highway 26 at Buckeye Lane to Ridge Road

You can monitor the fire on AlertWildfire's livestreaming cameras.

Noah Berger/AP
PG&E

LATEST July 5, 3:30 p.m. The Solano County Office of Emergency Services said just before 3 p.m. that all evacuations for the Nelson Fire burning in Cordelia, Calif., were lifted.

July 5, 1:12 p.m. A wildfire raced through a parched landscape in Cordelia, Calif., 45 miles southwest of Sacramento, on Tuesday afternoon, triggering evacuations.
(Photo courtesy of Twitter user @crsy)

A camp fire smell wafted through the air in San Francisco on Monday evening as a wildfire burned on Twin Peaks.

Lt. Jonathan Baxter, a spokesperson with the San Francisco Fire Department, told SFGATE at 6 p.m. that the fire was still active and had burned about 2 acres, but crews were gaining control.
TIRANA, Albania (AP)  Albania's Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a life sentence imposed on a local man over the killing of two Czech tourists during a carjacking robbery in 2015.

Sokol Mjacaj, 27, was convicted of fatally shooting the two tourists in Prekal village, 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of the capital Tirana, according to the verdict made available by the court's spokeswoman.
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Alert: Police chief: Person of interest in July 4 shooting at Chicago-area parade is in custody after brief chase
Thousands of anchovies smothered the shore of a Bay Area estuary last week after people reported widespread sightings of the tiny, silvery fish falling from the sky across San Francisco.

The Golden Gate National Recreation Area shared a photo on Twitter showing the natural phenomenon at Bolinas Lagoon, explaining the anchovies were in the midst of a mass die-off event that caused them to wash up along the coastline en masse.

Cristina Torresan, a communications manager for Marin County Parks, which manages the preserve, said she began receiving reports of the stranded fish last Tuesday, but specified that its not an isolated event.

Its thought that this happens periodically when anchovies are abundant and get driven into bays and estuaries by predators, Torresan said in a statement. With that many fish crowded into shallow areas like Bolinas Lagoon, the available oxygen in the water is quickly depleted, and they suffocate.

Ed Mann/National Park Service

Sometimes, the anchovies cant find their way out because they trap themselves in a fixed, circular path when they swim inside a relatively enclosed body of water, Eric P. Bjorkstedt, a researcher with the National Marine Fisheries Service and Cal Poly Humboldts Telonicher Marine Lab, told SFGATE. This can come up more frequently with larger schools of fish, and hes seen it before in Monterey Harbor, where anchovies have previously gotten stuck between the breakwater and the wharf.

When this occurred in the fall of 2017, Monterey harbor staff placed aerators in the water, which increase oxygen levels and operate similarly to a bubbler in a fish tank to ultimately combat the chance of a die-off event and the subsequent odor that wafts through the surrounding area.

[It] can be a serious, smelly mess, Bjorkstedt said. Big phytoplankton blooms can exacerbate this by driving higher biological oxygen demand as the bloom abates and phytoplankton cells die, sink and decay.

Marin County Parks

When a die-off event does ensue, like the one in Bolinas Lagoon, theres not much that can be done beyond letting nature take its course. And it looks like seagulls, pelicans and other scavengers have had their fill of the decomposing feast  Marin County park rangers reported that the fish were gone by Friday, Torresan said.

Larry Collins, president of the San Francisco Community Fishing Association, previously told SFGATE that the current explosion of the anchovy population spanned from Half Moon Bay to Point Reyes. People are telling me theyve never seen bait this thick, he said.

Torresan said she cant confirm whether the die-off event is linked to the population boom. However, Julian Espinoza, a spokesperson for the National Park Service, said that hes continued to receive visitor inquiries about fallen anchovies on hiking trails in the Marin Headlands.

I cant recall a similar event in recent history, he said.

SFGATE trending news reporter Sam Moore contributed to this report.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  Most Pennsylvania lawmakers were absent from the state Capitol on Tuesday, five days into the new budget year without a state government spending agreement in place.

Leaders were hoping negotiations would wrap up over the coming days and the House announced voting sessions were scheduled through Friday.

Thursday might be a strong possibility for a lot of budget action, a spokesperson for the majority Republicans in the state Senate told reporters in a Tuesday morning email update. Erica Clayton Wright, press secretary for Majority Leader Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland, said that could change based on discussions and staff preparations."

The state House, whose schedule is also controlled by majority Republicans, planned to return to session Wednesday afternoon and also posted public notice of floor sessions to start Thursday and Friday mornings. Senators also will return to the Capitol on Wednesday evening.

Clayton Wright said 'steady progress' has been made and there are no new items to report on directly.

Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa of Allegheny County said work was continuing.

There's still some issues that need to be ironed out," Costa said Tuesday afternoon. It may take a little bit of time to do that.

Discussions about what is expected to be a roughly $42 billion spending plan have centered on a proposal for additional outlays for public schools that is backed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.

Wolf's press secretary, Beth Rementer, said Tuesday that conversations are going in the right direction and that they expected a final product this week.

House Republican spokesperson Jason Gottesman characterized budget talks over the weekend as having been positive and that his caucus was optimistic they will make final votes here in short order.

Among possible features of a deal could be a cut in the state's 10% tax on corporate income along with more money for nursing homes, county-administered mental health counseling programs, child care subsidies and property tax or rent subsidies for the elderly and disabled.

Negotiators are also focusing on Wolf's new charter school regulations, limits on third-party funding to help counties pay to run elections and state money for the University of Pittsburgh, which some anti-abortion lawmakers want to use as leverage to stop the institution's federally funded fetal tissue research.

Lawmakers' inability to pass a budget may eventually halt some state payments, although that sort of fallout likely will take several weeks to affect government services.

In a long-term stalemate, the state must make debt payments, cover Medicaid costs, issue unemployment compensation payments, keep prisons open and pay workers.

But at some point the Wolf administration could have to postpone payments to utilities, insurers, suppliers and landlords, and delay expenditures on such discretionary items as tax credits and grants.
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BEIJING (AP)  From the snowcapped peaks of Tibet to the tropical island of Hainan, China is sweltering under the worst heatwave in decades while rainfall hit records in June.

Extreme heat is also battering Japan, and volatile weather is causing trouble for other parts of the world in what scientists say has all the hallmarks of climate change, with even more warming expected this century.

The northeastern provinces of Shandong, Jilin and Liaoning saw precipitation rise to the highest levels ever recorded in June, while the national average of 112.1 millimeters (4.4 inches) was 9.1 % higher than the same month last year, the China Meteorological Administration said in a report Tuesday.

The average temperature across the nation also hit 21.3 degrees Celsius (70.34 Fahrenheit) in June, up 0.9 C (1.8 F) from the same period month last year and the highest since 1961. No relief is in sight, with higher than usual temperatures and precipitation forecast in much of the country throughout July, the administration said.

In the northern province of Henan, Xuchang hit 42.1 C (107.8 F) and Dengfeng 41.6 C (106.9 F) on June 24 for their hottest days on record, according to global extreme weather tracker Maximiliano Herrera.

China has also seen seasonal flooding in several parts of the country, causing misery for hundreds of thousands, particularly in the hard-hit south that receives the bulk of rainfall as well as typhoons that sweep in from the South China Sea.

China is not alone in experiencing higher temperatures and more volatile weather. In Japan, authorities warned of greater than usual stress on the power grid and urged citizens to conserve energy.

Japanese officials announced the earliest end to the annual summer rainy season since the national meteorological agency began keeping records in 1951. The rains usually temper summer heat, often well into July.

On Friday, the cities of Tokamachi and Tsunan set all-time heat records while several others broke monthly marks.

Large parts of the Northern Hemisphere have seen extreme heat this summer, with regions from the normally chilly Russian Arctic to the traditionally sweltering American South recording unusually high temperatures and humidity.

In the United States, the National Weather Service has held 30 million Americans under some kind of heat advisory amid record-setting temperatures. The suffering and danger to health is most intense among those without air conditioning or who work outdoors, further reinforcing the economic disparities in dealing with extreme weather trends.
Lamar University could receive $2 million for a project aimed to help ensure Texas always has access to the energy supply it needs.

The U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies in late June gave the funding its first necessary approval before making it to the school's coffers.

But the project isn't a certainty yet.

Next, the process has to be approved by the full Appropriations Committee, which could make changes to the action taken by the subcommittee.

If the bill is passed by the full committee, it will be scheduled for floor consideration where the entire Congress can weigh in.

If Congress approves the bill, it will be forwarded to the Senate.

RELATED: Beaumont students get feet wet with ExxonMobil

Both chambers will work to reconcile the differences between their respective versions since both have identical appropriations committee and subcommittee structures.

The next fiscal year begins Oct. 1 and the process is expected to be finished prior to that date.

According to a news release from U.S. District 14 Rep. Randy Weber, the project would boost regional economic development, create high-paying jobs and enhance the long-term sustainability of the country and its global energy supply.

"By utilizing data analytics tools to improve cybersecurity, this project ensures that Texas will continue to lead the nation in reliable energy production," the release said.

RELATED: Local elected officials show concern that Biden energy policy could hurt SETX economy

In an April letter sent from Weber to Committee on Appropriations Chair Rose DeLauro, D-Connecticut, and Ranking Member Kay Granger, R-Texas, more project details .

The project is intended to build on the accomplishments of Lamar's existing centers -- Center for Resiliency, Center for Midstream Management and Sciences and the Center for Advances in Port Management -- by developing data analytics tools to enhance Texas' energy and petrochemical cybersecurity in order to "achieve safer, resilient and economically viable operations in both physical and virtual space."

RELATED: Report: Ransomware attacks nearly doubled in 2021, up 92.7%

The project would include working with the Southeast Texas Regional Planning Committee, the ports of Beaumont and Port Arthur and local industry.

"The Texas energy and petrochemical industry depends on reliable transfer of feedstocks and products through millions of miles of gas, liquid and oil pipelines as well as the shipping and logistics operations at the ports of Houston, Beaumont and Port Arthur," the letter read.

Frequent natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes were noted in the letter as a reason to establish a networking center and data collaborative for "improved multi-disaster resiliency."

"If we receive that support, we will work very closely with our congressional delegate to develop a Center of Excellence," said Lamar University Associate Provost for Research and Sponsored Programs and Dean of the College of Graduate Studies Jerry Lin. "This Center of Excellence will have multiple components that includes research, education and outreach."

RELATED: Local advocates detail impact of Supreme Court EPA decision

Though the project may not ultimately receive funding when the budget process concludes, Lin said it's important nonetheless for Texas' strengths to be publicized.

"In Southeast Texas, particularly the Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange area, the collective industrial operations represent a critical (part of) the clean energy and resiliency initiative as well as energy security for the nation and also to the global community," he said. "Lamar University will be able to contribute positively in this bigger global initiative."
PORTLAND, Maine (AP)  Police in a Maine city deployed pepper balls on Monday night when members of a crowd shot fireworks at the officers, who were attending to a shooting victim.

Portland police said they responded to a report of a man who had been shot near a park on Monday night. Police said they were rendering aid to the victim when a crowd nearby became hostile and discharged fireworks at them.
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DETROIT (AP)  One of the first things 84-year-old Mahalie Wilson sees when she steps out of her home on Detroit's east side is the brick, steel and concrete skeleton of the long-vacant Packard plant that looms over the neighborhood.

Built in the early 1900s and still churning out high-end cars into the 1950s, the massive complex that was once one of the city's industrial jewels is now one of the nation's foremost examples of urban blight  an inescapable reminder of Detroit's better days.

I deal with it, Wilson, who's lived within shouting distance of the plant since 1969, said recently from behind her front security screen door. Ive got used to it. I dont pay it any attention.

Detroit has aggressively taken on its blight problem since emerging from the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history eight years ago, and has razed more than 20,000 abandoned houses in that time. That work is ongoing, but it has been largely covered by federal funding and the city still must figure out how to pay for the much more expensive demolition or find developers to repurpose scores of abandoned or aging apartment buildings, factories and other massive eyesores.

The problem is hardly unique to Detroit  Baltimore, Milwaukee and Dayton, Ohio, are among the many cities looking to rid themselves of old structures. But it might be most pronounced in Detroit because of its relatively rapid decline during the decades of white flight, when white, middle-class families left for the suburbs and beyond, and the city lost more than half of its people.

Like the Packard plant, many factories in Detroit were located close to workers' homes. As the buildings faded and became blighted, so did Wilson's neighborhood and others across the city.

For me, its absolutely clear  older industrial sites closed due to white flight, said Andre Perry, a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

In many cases, Black people moved in because of the lower property values, hoping that some development comes their way," he added. "When development dollars are needed to go to Black spaces, its hard to come by.

If Mayor Mike Duggan has his way, parts of the 3.5 million-square-foot, 40-acre Packard plant complex will be demolished by years end. Other portions will be redeveloped. Its among 100 large structures the city has identified to be torn down or renovated.

This is emblematic of the industrial challenges we have, said Antoine Bryant, Detroit's planning and development director. The easiest solution would be to demolish, he said, but "how can we add to the city instead of just taking away?"

Bryant pointed to a $134 million plan to redevelop the six-story former Fisher Body 21 auto plant into more than 400 apartments and retail space.

Jason Hackworth, a professor in the University of Torontos Geography and Planning Department, is skeptical of any plans to preserve whats left of the Packard plant and believes Fisher Body 21s fate will be the wrecking ball.

The Packard probably should have been demolished decades ago," he said.

I dont know of another city that has as prominent of abandoned industrial and commercial facilities as Detroit. ... Certainly nothing I know of thats the size of the Packard plant in any other city, Hackworth added. Developers dont have the money to develop or demolish it.

In 2013, Peruvian developer Fernando Palazuelo bought the property for $405,000 at a tax foreclosure auction. His plans to restore and reopen it with apartments and shops never materialized. The plant's future now is in the city's hands.

Palazuelo has done virtually nothing with it since he bought it out of foreclosure in 2013, other than amass more than a million dollars worth of unpaid drainage bills, property taxes and blight tickets, said Chuck Raimi, the city's acting corporation counsel.

The city fully intends to rid the community of this massive blighted complex once and for all, Raimi continued. "For its part, the city already has demolished more than 100,000 square feet of the portions of the plant it owns and will be demolishing the remaining portions it doesnt plan to save for redevelopment later this year.

The Associated Press was unable to reach Palazuelo for comment.

Still, the Packard plant isn't Detroit's most well-known ruin. That title once belonged to the nearly 20-story Michigan Central train station in the city's Corktown neighborhood. Ford Motor Co. bought the building several years ago and is converting it and properties around the station into a future hub for mobility and innovation.

Dayton plans to demolish a 129-year-old building that for a short time was the Wright brothers first bike shop.

It is a dangerous building and the front facade is beginning to separate from the building and poses a hazard to pedestrians and motor vehicles, said Todd Kinskey, director of Daytons Planning, Neighborhoods & Development department. Several engineering studies recommend demolition and no developer has been willing to pursue redevelopment.

In 2016, Maryland and Baltimore officials announced a more than $93 million plan to tear down blighted structures and rehabilitate others.

In the East Baltimore neighborhood, which is about 70% Black, efforts to redevelop two large blighted sites have proven successful in recent years.

Yard 56, which features shops, office space and lofts, has been developed on the site of a porcelain and ceramics plant that was built in 1911 and abandoned in 2006.

A former lithograph plant also has found new life.

It was in an economically depressed area ... and vacant for many years, said Colin Tarbert, president and chief executive of the Baltimore Development Corp. Trees were growing out of it. Now its reopened and with a number of new companies, plus non-profits and a construction training center housed there.

Whether demolished or repurposed, the plan for such buildings should lift the Black communities where theyre located, said the Brookings Institution's Perry.

It takes a city effort to attract and recruit developers to reimagine the sites in the image the community wants, he said. It takes municipal and neighborhood leaders to use whatever leverage possible to say Black people and Black communities matter. And, by the way, you will get your return. If you just add water it will grow.

Some, like Crystal Glass, just wonder why it takes so long.

Glass opened her social club in 2009 in the shadow of Detroit's Packard plant. She's not sure if redeveloping or razing it will help her business.

I'd just like to see something, anything besides that, Glass said.

___

Williams is a member of APs Race and Ethnicity team.
Officials in Connecticut reported Tuesday the states first-known case of monkeypox.

The patient was identified as a man between the ages of 40 and 49, from New Haven County.

Though Connecticut had until Tuesday no confirmed cases of the disease, there were 460 cases nationwide as of July 1, according to data maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Of those 460 cases, the CDC reported 23 in Massachusetts, one in Rhode Island and 90 in New York state. Local news reports said at least four of those 90 cases were in Westchester County.

Connecticut Department of Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani said the agency believes that the risk to Connecticut residents from this case is low, though the United States is currently experiencing a monkeypox outbreak, and there will likely be additional cases in Connecticut in the weeks ahead.

University of Connecticut virologist Paulo Verardi, a specialist in pox diseases like monkeypox and smallpox, said the virus is primarily spread by direct, skin-to-skin contact, though it also spreads through respiratory droplets and indirect contact.

Thats because the virus, this class of viruses, theyre very thermo-stable, he said. They can stay in nature for a long period of time, and still be infectious.

Last month, the White House announced an initial round of vaccine deployment to combat the monkeypox outbreak, though Connecticut was not included in the first round.

The lack of vaccine dosages locally was based on the number of monkeypox cases and the at risk population in each state, DPH spokesman Chris Boyle said.

The Connecticut Department of Public Health was notified Wednesday afternoon by CDC that Connecticut will not be receiving an initial allocation of Jynneos doses as a part of the first phase of the recently released whole of government National Monkeypox Vaccination Strategy to reduce transmission, Boyle said last month. Instead, DPH can request doses for the vaccination of identified close contacts of cases.

At an event Tuesday, Juthani said with transmission being primarily skin-to-skin contact, vaccines for the geenral public would not be necessary.

At this point in time, the risk is low enough, she said. The contact that most patients are having is close skin-to-skin contact. Respiratory is a theoretical risk. We do not see evidence of that so far, but well continue to monitor for it. So vaccines for the general public are not recommended at this time.

Reporter John Moritz contributed to this story.
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP)  A Florida woman is accused by a North Carolina sheriff's office of stabbing the man she provides care for with a felt-tipped marker and pushed him out of a moving car.

The Cumberland County Sheriff's Office said in a news release on Monday that Arlene Mary Bonitz, 57, of Palm Harbor, Florida, was driving south on Sunday on Interstate 95 near the 64-mile marker in Godwin, North Carolina. In the car with her was a man for whom she provides care and support due to his cognitive issues, the sheriff's office said.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP)  The government said it will protect a rare freshwater mussel and the 36 miles (58 kilometers) of streams where it lives in eastern Alabama after a more than decadelong campaign by environmentalists to protect the animal from the threat of extinction.

A notice from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the Canoe Creek clubshell, which lives in only two tributaries of the Coosa River in northeast Alabama, is now considered an endangered species. The decision means stricter oversight of Big Canoe Creek and Little Canoe Creek West, where the mussel lives.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  The Great Salt Lake has hit a new historic low for the second time in less than a year as the ongoing megadrought worsened by climate change continues to shrink the largest natural lake west of the Mississippi.

Utah Department of Natural Resources said Monday in a news release the Great Salt Lake dipped Sunday to 4,190.1 feet (1,277.1 meters). That is lower than the previous historic low set in October, which at the time matched a 170-year record low.
CUMBERLAND, Va. (AP)  A federal judge on Tuesday approved a plan that calls for transferring about 4,000 dogs currently housed at a troubled Virginia breeding facility to shelters where they can be adopted, according to court records.

The development came in a civil enforcement case the federal government initiated in May against Envigo RMS, which owns and operates the facility in Cumberland that breeds beagles for medical research.

After federal officials accused the company of a series of animal welfare violations, U.S. District Court Judge Norman Moon issued a restraining order imposing a series of restrictions on the facility. In June, company officials announced plans to close it.

On Friday, Envigo and the government jointly filed a transfer plan that called for the removal of all of the facility's beagles by the Humane Society of the United States, which will transport the dogs to shelters where they can be adopted.

According to court documents, Envigo will cover a monetary fee for each dog to help defray the costs to the shelters of preparing the beagles for adoption.

Court records show Moon issued an oral order approving the transfer plan Tuesday. The removal process is expected to take about 60 days, according to the draft plan.

Hundreds of dogs determined to be in acute distress had already been seized from the facility.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Norfolk-based animal rights group that had investigated the facility, celebrated Tuesday's development.

Envigos surviving victims will soon be given the opportunity to have what every dog deserves  the freedom to enjoy life, love, and respect for their individuality as members of a family home," PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch said in a statement.
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HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. (AP)  A man charged Tuesday with seven counts of murder after firing off more than 70 rounds at an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago legally bought five weapons, including the high-powered rifle used in the shooting, despite authorities being called to his home twice in 2019 for threats of violence and suicide, police said.

Lake County States Attorney Eric Rinehart said the suspect, if convicted of the first-degree murder charges, would receive a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole. He promised that dozens more charges would be sought.

A spokesman for the Lake County Major Crime Task Force said the suspected shooter, who was arrested late Monday, used a rifle similar to an AR-15" to spray more than 70 rounds from atop a commercial building into a crowd that had gathered for the parade in Highland Park, an affluent community of about 30,000 on the Lake Michigan shore.

A seventh victim died of their injuries Tuesday. More than three dozen other people were wounded in the attack, which Task force spokesman Christopher Covelli said the suspect had planned for several weeks.

The assault happened less than three years after police went to the suspect's home following a call from a family member who said he was threatening to kill everyone there. Covelli said police confiscated 16 knives, a dagger and a sword, but said there was no sign he had any guns at the time, in September 2019.

Police in April 2019 also responded to a reported suicide attempt by the suspect, Covelli said.

The suspect legally purchased the rifle used in the attack in Illinois within the past year, Covelli said. In all, police said, he purchased five firearms, which were recovered by officers at his fathers home.

The revelation about his gun purchases is just the latest example of y oung men who were able to obtain guns and carry out massacres in recent months despite glaring warning signs about their mental health and inclination to violence.

Illinois state police, who issue gun owners licenses, said the gunman applied for a license in December 2019, when he was 19. His father sponsored his application.

At the time there was insufficient basis to establish a clear and present danger and deny the application, state police said in a statement.

Investigators who have interrogated the suspect and reviewed his social media posts have not determined a motive or found any indication that he targeted victims by race, religion or other protected status, Covelli said.

Earlier in the day, FBI agents peeked into trash cans and under picnic blankets as they searched for more evidence at the scene. The shots were initially mistaken for fireworks before hundreds of revelers fled in terror.

A day later, baby strollers, lawn chairs and other items left behind by panicked parade goers remained inside a wide police perimeter. Outside the police tape, some residents drove up to collect blankets and chairs they abandoned.

David Shapiro, 47, said the gunfire quickly turned the parade into chaos.

People didnt know right away where the gunfire was coming from, whether the gunman was in front or behind you chasing you, he said Tuesday as he retrieved a stroller and lawn chairs.

The gunman initially evaded capture by dressing as a woman and blending into the fleeing crowd, Covelli said.

The shooting was just the latest to shatter the rituals of American life. Schools, churches, grocery stores and now community parades have all become killing grounds in recent months. This time, the bloodshed came as the nation tried to celebrate its founding and the bonds that still hold it together.

A police officer pulled over 21-year-old Robert E. Crimo III north of the shooting scene several hours after police released his photo and warned that he was likely armed and dangerous, Highland Park Police Chief Lou Jogmen said.

His father, Bob, a longtime deli owner, ran for mayor in 2019. The candidate who won that race, current Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering, said she knew Crimo as a boy in Cub Scouts.

And its one of those things where you step back and you say, 'What happened? Rotering told NBCs Today show. How did somebody become this angry, this hateful, to then take it out on innocent people who literally were just having a family day out?

Crimos attorney, Thomas A. Durkin, a prominent Chicago-based lawyer, said he intends to enter a not guilty plea to all charges.

Asked about his clients emotional state, Durkin said he has spoken to Crimo only once  for 10 minutes by phone. He declined to comment further.

Steve Greenberg, the lawyer for the parents, told The Associated Press Tuesday evening the parents arent concerned about being charged with anything related to their sons case.

There is zero chance they will be charged with anything criminal, he said. They didnt do anything wrong. They are as stunned and shocked as anyone."

The shooting occurred at a spot on the parade route where many residents had staked out prime viewing points early in the day.

Among them was Nicolas Toledo, who was visiting his family in Illinois from Mexico, and Jacki Sundheim, a lifelong congregant and staff member at nearby North Shore Congregation Israel. The Lake County coroner released the names of four other victims.

Nine people, ranging from 14 to 70, remained hospitalized Tuesday, hospital officials said.

Since the start of the year, the U.S. has seen 15 shootings where four or more people were killed, including the one in Highland Park, according to The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University mass killing database.

Scores of smaller-scale shootings in nearby Chicago also left eight people dead and 60 others wounded over the July 4 weekend.

In 2013, Highland Park officials approved a ban on semi-automatic weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines. A local doctor and the Illinois State Rifle Association quickly challenged the liberal suburbs stance. The legal fight ended at the U.S. Supreme Courts doorstep in 2015 when justices declined to hear the case and let the suburbs restrictions remain in place.

Under Illinois law, gun purchases can be denied to people convicted of felonies, addicted to narcotics or those who are termed mental defectives and capable of harming themselves or others. That might have stopped a suicidal Crimo from getting a weapon.

But under the law, just who is a mental defective must be decided by a court, board, commission or other legal authority.

The state has a so-called red flag law designed to stop dangerous people before they kill, but it requires family members, relatives, roommates or police to ask a judge to order guns seized.

Crimo, who goes by the name Bobby, was an aspiring rapper with the stage name Awake the Rapper, posting on social media dozens videos and songs, some ominous and violent.

In one animated video since taken down by YouTube, Crimo raps about armies walking in darkness as a drawing appears of a man pointing a rifle, a body on the ground and another figure with hands up in the distance.

Federal agents were reviewing Crimos online profiles, and a preliminary examination of his internet history indicated that he had researched mass killings and had downloaded multiple photos depicting violent acts, including a beheading, a law enforcement official said.

The official could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who had been in Chicago to address the National Education Associations annual meeting Tuesday, visited the site of the shooting to offer condolences to first responders and local officials.

The whole nation should understand and have a level of empathy, to understand that this can happen anywhere, in any peace loving community, Harris said in brief comments to reporters in Highland Park. And we should stand together and speak out about why its got to stop.

Shapiro, the Highland Park resident who fled the parade with his family, said his 4-year-old son woke up screaming later that night.

He is too young to understand what happened," Shapiro said. "But he knows something bad happened.

___

Foody reported from Chicago. Groves reported from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Associated Press writers Don Babwin in Chicago, Mike Householder in Highland Park, Bernard Condon and Mike Balsamo in New York, Aamer Madhani in Washington, Jim Mustian in New Orleans, Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco and researcher Rhonda Shafner also contributed.

___

This story has been corrected to show Shapiros son was 4.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Republican Kevin Nicholson, a business consultant whose campaign for governor in battleground Wisconsin failed to catch on with conservative voters, announced Tuesday he was dropping out of the race five weeks before the Aug. 9 primary.

Nicholson had consistently trailed in the polls behind former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and construction business co-owner Tim Michels. Donald Trump endorsed Michel s, who is running as an outsider candidate just as Nicholson had been. Michels has tapped his personal wealth to get his message out in a blitz of television ads since he joined the race in April.

Nicholson said in an interview on Mark Bellings conservative talk radio show that the only way he could compete with Michels at this point in the race was going negative. But Nicholson said that going on a full-throated attack in the last month of the race was not the right move.

While our team has the capability to do that, that is not something I want to do  nor do I believe that it would be good for the party to do so, Nicholson said in a statement announcing the end of his candidacy. This election is too important for our state and our movement.

Nicholson's departure is unlikely to shake up the dynamics of what has been a two-person race ever since Michels got in and started spending heavily from his personal wealth to catch up to Kleefisch. A Marquette University Law School poll released on June 22 had Nicholson at 10% compared with 27% for Michels and 26% for Kleefisch. State Rep. Timothy Ramthun was at at 3%, with 32% of respondents undecided.

Kleefisch thanked Nicholson on Twitter for the hearty debate and competition" and invited his supporters to join her.

Michels in a tweet praised Nicholson for pushing his outsider message about the needs to shake up the Madison machine and said he would work to win over his supporters.

Nicholson previously ran for U.S. Senate in 2018, losing in the Republican primary. He had been eyeing a run for Senate again this year, but went for governor rather than challenge the incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in a primary.

Nicholson said he would not endorse anyone before the upcoming gubernatorial primary. The Republican winner will advance to face Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in a race that's a national priority for both parties. Whoever wins will be governor during the 2024 presidential race in the state. Evers has served as a block on the Republican-controlled Legislature, vetoing numerous bills making it more difficult to vote absentee that were passed after Donald Trump lost the state in 2020.
ANNISTON, Ala. (AP)  Police in Alabama were searching on Tuesday for a 47-year-old man after a missing 75-year-old woman was found in a house associated with him, in a closet and bound with tape.

There's a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest of Tony Lamar White, of Anniston, the Calhoun County Sheriff's Office said on its Facebook page Tuesday.
STEUBENVILLE, Ohio (AP)  The remains of an Army Air Force sergeant from Ohio who died after he was sent to a prisoner of war camp during World War II have now been positively identified, Defense Department officials announced Tuesday.

Tech. Sgt. William F. Teaff, 26, of Steubenville, was assigned to the 351st Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group (Heavy), 8th Air Force. On March 6, 1944, he was the radio operator aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber that was part of a larger mission to bomb targets in Berlin, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, or DPAA.

German fighters attacked the B-17s formation while it flew over the Netherlands, and Teaffs plane was destroyed. The plane's navigator was killed when aircraft was hit, but the rest of the crew bailed out before it exploded in the sky.

The crew was captured by the Germans and several of them, including Teaff, were sent to a prisoner of war camp. Teaff died July 10 that year while being treated for diphtheria. He was one of three Americans who died in that POW camp.

After the war, the American Graves Registration Command couldn't recover the three Americans remains because the POW camp  now inside Lithuania due to post-war border shifting  was deep inside the Soviet occupation zone. Despite continued efforts over the next few years, Teaff's remains couldn't be found and he was declared non-recoverable in March 1954.

After Lithuania became independent in 1992, officials learned the Soviet Union destroyed the POW camp in 1955 and reverted the area to farmland. In 2006, officials investigated the site and recommended excavation, but significant issues prevented them from sending a recovery team.

DPAA partnered with Ohio Valley Archeology Inc. in 2019, and a team was later able to find possible gravesites for the three missing Americans. Then, the DPAA partnered with a Lithuanian archeological group and excavated the area in August 2021.

The remains were transferred to a lab in Nebraska for analysis. Scientists used dental and anthropological analysis, as well as material and circumstantial evidence to identify Teaff.

Teaff was actually accounted for back in April, officials said, but the announcement was delayed until his family received a full briefing. The date and location for Teaffs funeral has not been determined.
Eric Gay/AP

SAN ANTONIO (AP)  More than half of the 53 migrants found dead or dying in a tractor-trailer in Texas last week have been identified, the youngest among them 13 years old, officials said Tuesday.

The medical examiner's office is still awaiting confirmation on the identifications of 18 victims more than a week after the nation's deadliest smuggling attempt, according to officials in Bexar County, where the trailer was found abandoned on a backroad on the edge of San Antonio.
UNITED NATIONS (AP)  The pro-independence Polisario Front accused Morocco of obstructing a visit by the U.N. envoy for the disputed Western Sahara region and called on the United Nations to reveal the reasons why.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric had said Friday that the secretary-generals personal envoy, Staffan de Mistura, would conduct a new phase of visits to all concerned parties in the region in the coming days, starting in the Moroccan capital of Rabat on Saturday.

But Monday, Dujarric said in a note to U.N. correspondents that de Mistura has decided not to proceed with a visit to Western Sahara during this trip, but looks forward to doing so during his upcoming visits to the region.

The Polisario Fronts U.N. representative, Sidi Omar, responded in a statement obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press saying the group deeply deplores that Morocco has once again resorted to obstructionism and delay tactics to prevent the personal envoy  from conducting his first visit to the territory.

Morocco annexed Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony believed to have considerable offshore oil deposits and mineral resources, in 1975, sparking a conflict with the Polisario Front. The U.N. brokered a 1991 cease-fire and established a peacekeeping mission to monitor the truce and help prepare a referendum on the territorys future that has never taken place because of disagreements on who is eligible to vote.

The Polisario Front ended the 29-year cease-fire with Morocco in November 2020 and resumed its armed struggle following a border confrontation with Morocco that continues today.

Morocco has proposed wide-ranging autonomy for Western Sahara. But the Polisario Front insists the local population, which it estimates at 350,000 to 500,000, has the right to a referendum.

Omar said in the statement that Moroccos obstruction of de Misturas visit demonstrates beyond any doubt that the occupying state has no political will to engage constructively in the U.N. peace process in Western Sahara.

The U.N. spokesman insisted in response to a question Tuesday that de Mistura did not lose freedom of movement and said this was not billed as a regional visit. Dujarric said the U.N. envoy has made clear that there will be, in time, visits to other parties.

Dujarric said de Mistura had a useful meeting Tuesday with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita on the political process on Western Sahara.

Moroccos Foreign Ministry said that at the meeting with de Mistura, the Moroccan delegation reiterated its support for a political resolution that is solely based on the Moroccan autonomy initiative.

The ministry said Morocco also reaffirmed its commitment to roundtables and the U.N. Security Council resolution adopted in October extending the peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara and calling for a political resolution that is realistic, pragmatic, sustainable and based on compromise.
GARY, Ind. (AP)  Gunfire during a July Fourth block party in northwestern Indiana left three people dead and seven wounded early Tuesday, police said.

The shooting happened in a residential neighborhood of Gary, Indiana, about 12:45 a.m. and officers who responded found three people down and unresponsive, city police Lt. Dawn Westerfield said.
YORK, Neb. (AP)  A child was killed over the weekend when the roof over a hotel pool in southeastern Nebraska collapsed, police there said.

The incident happened around 9 p.m. Sunday at a Hampton Inn in York, police said in a news release. Officers and firefighters responding to multiple 911 calls about the roof collapse found one person  a boy  trapped beneath the debris and pronounced him dead at the scene. His name and age had not been released by midday Tuesday.
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LONDON (AP)  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government faced a new crisis Tuesday after two of his most senior Cabinet ministers resigned within minutes of each other.

Treasury chief Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid quit, saying the government under Johnson's leadership was no longer competent or acting in the national interest.

The apparently coordinated exits came after Johnson was hit by allegations he lied about how he handled claims of sexual misconduct by a lawmaker who was appointed to a senior position.

Both Javid and Sunak are key members of the Cabinet and both are seen as potential successors to Johnson, leaving his position perilous.

A look at who Sunak and Javid are:

___

RISHI SUNAK, TREASURY CHIEF

In his resignation letter, Sunak told Johnson it has become clear to me that our approaches are fundamentally too different.

The public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously. I recognise this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning," he wrote.

Sunak was, until recently, widely regarded as the partys brightest rising star, the best-known of potential leadership contenders  and the bookies favorite to succeed Johnson.

Sunak, 42, was thrust into the spotlight when he became treasury chief in 2020, tasked with the unenviable job of steering the economy through its worst economic slump on record because of the pandemic. He dished out billions of pounds in emergency spending to help businesses and workers, and his policies have generally been seen in a positive light.

But partygate changed those fortunes. Like Johnson, he was issued a police fine for attending a lockdown-flouting birthday party at Downing Street in June 2020. He has also come under heavy criticism for being slow to respond to Britains severe cost-of-living crisis.

Sunak also faced pressure following revelations that his wife, Akshata Murthy, avoided paying U.K. taxes on her overseas income, and that the former investment banker held on to his U.S. green card while serving in government.

Born to Indian parents who moved to the U.K. from East Africa, Sunak attended the exclusive Winchester College private school and studied at Oxford.

Some see his elite education and past work for the investment bank Goldman Sachs and a hedge fund as a deficit because he seems out of touch with ordinary voters.

___

SAJID JAVID, HEALTH SECRETARY

In his statement, Javid said he could no longer, in good conscience, continue serving in this government.

Javid, 52, has been health secretary since June 2021, leading Britains COVID-19 response.

Before that, he served as treasury chief, but resigned in early 2020 after clashing with Johnson over his order to fire his team of advisers.

The fact that Johnson brought him back into the government to handle the coronavirus response reflects his reputation for competence.

Javid, a father of four, was first elected in 2010 and has held various positions in government, including serving as home secretary and leading departments for business, culture and housing.

He ran in the 2019 Conservative leadership election, but was eliminated in the fourth round and lost to Johnson.

The son of Pakistani immigrants, Javid has billed himself as a common-man alternative to his private school-educated rivals  although he had a lucrative career in investment banking before entering politics.
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BEIJING (AP)  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with leaders in Mongolia on Tuesday during a trip to Asia to seek support amid his countrys diplomatic isolation by the West and punishing sanctions leveled over its invasion of Ukraine.

Lavrov met with Mongolian Foreign Minister Battsetseg Batmunkh and paid a courtesy call on President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, Mongolian state media reported.

Mongolia is a landlocked nation sandwiched between Russia and China, and has sought to maintain friendly relations with both neighbors while also cultivating close ties with the U.S., whose relations with Moscow and Beijing have become increasingly fraught.

Mongolian and Russian state media gave no details of any specific discussions about the Ukraine conflict, while emphasizing strong bilateral relations. The two sides have signed a series of trade agreements, and a pipeline carrying Russian natural gas to China is being built through Mongolian territory.

Reaffirming his commitment to strengthening bilateral relations, (Lavrov) expressed readiness to cooperate with Mongolia in all aspects," Mongolia's official Montsame news agency said of Lavrov's meeting with Khurelsukh.

Ukraine and Russia's rejection of Western criticism were major themes of Lavrov's public comments.

He was quoted by the Russian state news agency Tass as saying that the West is seeking to turn Ukraine into an openly Russophobic, neo-Nazi state, a military foothold that would threaten Russias security.

He said he had informed the Mongolians in detail about what the Kremlin calls a special military operation in Ukraine.

We are interested in making the facts about how the representatives of the Kyiv regime behaved and continue to behave in Ukraine available to the broad world community," Lavrov said.

Unfortunately the West is doing everything to block the work of the media, which provide objective information about what is happening, he said, without offering any evidence.

Russia's government has blocked access to multiple independent domestic and foreign news outlets in the country over their coverage of the war in Ukraine and has forbidden its citizens from describing its aggression as an invasion.

Russia has falsely called the war a campaign to de-Nazify Ukraine  a country with a democratically elected Jewish president who wants closer ties with the West.

Lavrov was to travel to Vietnam later Tuesday for a two-day visit, according to the Vietnamese government's official website.

He is to meet on Wednesday with Vietnamese leaders including Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

The visit comes as the two countries mark 10 years since they expanded their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership. Russia was a close backer of Hanoi's Communist government during the Vietnam War against the capitalist south and its American and other Western allies.

Later in the week, Lavrov is scheduled to attend a meeting in Indonesia of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 leading rich and developing countries.
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KIGALI, Rwanda (AP)  Congo's President Felix Tshisekedi will meet with his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame in Angola amid rising tensions between the two neighboring countries, a Congolese government spokesman said.

The two leaders on Wednesday will discuss bilateral relations and the armed conflict in eastern Congo, where M23 rebels last month took a town near the Uganda border, Congo spokesman Patrick Muyaya told The Associated Press Tuesday.

Congolese officials have asserted that M23 is backed by Rwanda, and have accused the much smaller neighbor of occupying Congolese territory.

They will be discussing Rwandas aggression in Congo, Muyaya said by phone. Asked whether Congo still believes Rwandan troops are fighting alongside M23 rebels in eastern Congo, Muyaya replied, "That is obvious."

Rwanda has long denied supporting M23, disputing the accounts of conflict observers, U.N. experts and others. M23 is made up mostly of ethnic Tutsi fighters from Congo who say their government hasnt honored past commitments to reintegrate them into the national army.

The African Union earlier this year asked Angola's president to mediate the Congo-Rwanda dispute. A Catholic cardinal in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, is calling for the pope's involvement in peace efforts.

Tshisekedi said last week that his efforts to make peace with Rwanda should not be seen as a sign of weakness. But some within Congo are opposed to any talks while M23 rebels continue to occupy Congolese territory.

Kagame had harsh words for Congolese authorities in televised remarks Monday, accusing Congo of backing a different rebel group that includes fighters accused of taking part in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Congo has always denied supporting the group commonly known by its initials as FDLR.

That is the same story for 20 years ago. Why would Congo be supporting them to shell Rwanda territory? Those accusations are not true," Muyaya said. We have to deal with hundreds of armed groups inside the country and we have been talking to all neighbors about a common strategy to end foreign armed group activities.

Regional leaders under the East African Community bloc  which Congo recently joined  are working toward deploying a peacekeeping force in eastern Congos restive provinces.

It remains unclear when the force, which would be authorized to disarm insurgents like M23, will be deployed.

___

AP journalist Jean-Yves Kamale in Kinshasa, Congo, contributed.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  A San Francisco couple that parked their car for decades on a paved part of their property in front of their home has been banned from doing so unless they want to risk steep fines.

KGO-TV reported Monday that city officials sent a letter to Judy and Ed Craine telling them they can't park on the pavement on their property on a hilly street even though they have for 36 years. With the letter came a notice of a $1,542 fine and the threat of a $250-a-day fee for continued parking on their property.
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CAIRO (AP)  Sudanese security forces descended on an anti-coup sit-in to try and disperse protesters in the capital of Khartoum, wounding at least 11 people, a medical group said Tuesday. The crackdown came shortly after Sudan's military ruler promised to step down once a civilian government is formed.

Security forces used tear gas on the demonstrators in the citys neighborhoods of Burri and al-Jawda late Monday, according to the Sudans Doctors Committee, which tracks protest casualties. Some of those hurt were hit by tear gas canisters and other solid objects in the head and elsewhere, tweeted the group.

Earlier in the day, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan said in a televised speech that the military will withdraw from negotiations meant to solve the ongoing political crisis, and promised to dissolve the military-led sovereign council after a new transitional government is formed.

The council has governed the country since the military seized power in a coup last year. Burhan's statement was unclear and gave no timeframe on his own stepdown.

It was also not immediately known what Burhan meant by saying the military would withdraw from the internationally mediated talks between the ruling generals and the country's pro-democracy movement, which has denounced the October coup and demanded an immediate transfer of power top a civilian government.

On Tuesday, Sudan's leading pro-democracy group, the Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change, dismissed Burhan's promises as a clear maneuver and a tactical pullback that ostensibly accepts the idea of having the military return to the barracks but practically deprives it of all meanings.

A resolution lies first in having the military relinquish power and letting revolutionary forces form a fully civilian transitional government, a statement released by the group said.

Sudanese pro-democracy activists have been holding sit-ins in different parts of Khartoum demanding that the generals return to the barracks and hand over power. The sit-ins began a day after authorities carried out a brutal clampdown on anti-coup marches that killed nine people and wounded 629 on Thursday alone, according to the medical group.

Sudanese military authorities have met the near-weekly street protests since the coup with a crackdown that has so far killed 113 people, including 18 children.

Sudan has been plunged into turmoil since the Oct. 25 military takeover upended its short-lived transition to democracy after three decades of repressive rule by former strongman Omar al-Bashir. Al-Bashir and his Islamist-backed government were removed by the military in a popular uprising in April 2019.

Since the coup, the U.N. political mission in Sudan, the African Union and the eight-nation east African regional Intergovernmental Authority in Development group have been trying to broker a way out of the political impasse. But talks have yielded no results so far. Pro-democracy groups have repeatedly said they will not negotiate with the military, and have called for them to immediately hand the reins to a civilian government.
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ANKARA, Turkey (AP)  Police in Turkey's capital broke up an LGBTQ Pride march Tuesday and detained dozens of people.

Turkish authorities have banned LGBTQ events, but around 50 people holding rainbow flags nevertheless marched toward a main park to mark the end of Pride Month.

Police officers prevented the group from reaching the park, detaining the participants on a busy street in central Ankara.

Some of the marchers were forced to the ground, angering passers-by who tried to physically intervene or pleaded with officers to let them go. Plain-clothed officers were seen pushing them away.

Organizers said at least 30 people were detained.

A small group of Islamists, who regard the LGBTQ community as a threat, held a counter-demonstration near the park.

Turkey previously was one of the few Muslim-majority countries to allow Pride marches. The first was held in 2003, the year after President Recep Tayyip Erdogans party came to power.

In recent years, the government has adopted a harsh approach to public events by groups that do not represent its religiously conservative views. Large numbers of arrests and the use of tear gas and plastic pellets by police have accompanied Pride events.

More than 300 LGBTQ people were briefly detained following a ban on Pride events in Istanbul late last month.
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BERLIN (AP)  Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska was named Tuesday as one of four recipients of the prestigious Fields Medal, which is often described as the Nobel Prize in mathematics.

The International Mathematical Union said Viazovska, who holds the chair in number theory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, was being honored for her research into geometric problems.

Viazovska, 37, said she was very humbled to receive the prize for her work, which she said addresses a very old and natural question," namely the densest way to pack identical spheres.

While many people are familiar with the problem having seen cantaloupes stacked like a pyramid in a supermarket, Viazovska took it to another dimension  the eighth and 24th, to be precise  solving it in a way that drew widespread praise from top mathematicians.

This is actually a very useful tool used in many areas of technology," she told The Associated Press.

Viazovska said Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 had profoundly changed her life and those of all Ukrainians.

Ukraine is my native country and seeing how its being destroyed, how many lives are lost ... of course, its all very difficult," she said.

The other winners were French mathematician Hugo Duminil-Copin of the University of Geneva; Korean-American mathematician June Huh of Princeton; and British mathematician James Maynard of the University of Oxford.

The Fields Medal is awarded every four years to mathematicians under age 40. The recipients are normally announced at the International Congress of Mathematicians, which was originally due to be held in Russia this year but moved to Helsinki instead.

The ongoing barbaric war that Russia still continues to wage against Ukraine clearly shows that no other alternative was feasible," said Carlos E. Kenig, the president of the International Mathematical Union.

Viazovska recently dedicated one of her lectures to Yulia Zdanovksa, a young Ukrainian mathematician and computer scientist from Kharkiv. who was killed in a Russian missile attack.

When someone like her dies, its like the future dies," Viazovska said. Right now, Ukrainians are giving the highest price for our beliefs and for our freedom.

___

Karl Ritter contributed to this report from Unterseen, Switzerland.
YANCEYVILLE, N.C. (AP)  A Virginia man has been arrested in connection with a deadly shooting in North Carolina, authorities said.

KyUn Talik Thompson, 20, of Danville, Virginia, is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of 18-year-old Kimora Johnson, of Yanceyville, North Carolina, according to the Caswell County Sheriff's Office.
BALDWIN  The Lake County Modelers and Flyers Association (LCMFA) is hosting its annual Western Michigan remote control (RC) Expo this weekend, July 7-9, at the Baldwin RC Park, part of the Baldwin Municipal Airport.

This is LCMFAs second 2022 main event. The RC Car and Rock Crawler Tracks will be open to the public. You bring the kids and dads; we have the cars for you to try you RC car operating skills! A flight simulator trailer with two simulators will be available. Bring the family and we will have all of you flying RC models in no time at all. There is a pyrotechnic show scheduled for noon Saturday. There will be several turbine jets and extreme aerobatic flying.
SANAA, Yemen (AP)  An explosion at an arms depot in Yemens southern province of Abyan on Tuesday killed six people and wounded 32, medical officials said.

The cause of the early morning blast that ripped through a warehouse located at a popular market in the town of Lawdar, was not immediately known. The town is controlled by forces loyal to Yemen's internationally recognized government.

Many of the wounded have critical injuries, the officials said, adding that they fear the death toll could rise further. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the explosion. The warehouse was used to store weapons and also explosives, both of which are commonly sold at the market in Lawdar.

Yemen has been engulfed in a civil war since 2014, when the Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital, Sanaa, and forced the government into exile. The following year, a Saudi-led coalition entered the war to fight the Houthis and try and restore the government to power.

Despite a relentless air campaign and ground fighting, the war has fallen largely into a stalemate, and spawned one of the worlds worst humanitarian crises.

Over the years of the conflict, the Arab world's poorest country has also become awash with small arms that have been smuggled into poorly controlled ports. In May, at least five civilians were killed and 20 were wounded when a man dropped a hand grenade in a crowded fish market in Yemens southern port city of Aden.
Facing a critical shortage of police officers and dispatchers, San Leandro city leaders on Tuesday will consider using funds from vacant positions to pay eligible staffers up to $20,000 in an effort to keep them on the payroll.

The city currently has a 40 percent vacancy rate among its total 135 sworn officers and professional staff, according to Police Chief Abdul Pridgen.

In a report the San Leandro City Council will consider on Tuesday, the chief said the city's police force has the lowest percentage of deployable officers among Alameda County agencies that responded to queries about staffing.

The city has 90 sworn officer positions, but 21 of those positions are vacant and another 12 are on workers' compensation leave, according to a resolution authorizing the pay incentive.

Authorities are still searching for three adults who went missing after attempting to save a child in the water near Three Mile Slough Bridge in Rio Vista on Sunday.

California State Parks was notified of a possible triple fatal drowning at approximately 1:25 p.m. at the Brannan Island State Recreation Area, a spokesperson for the agency said.

It appears that a child was in distress and five people went to attempt to rescue the juvenile. The child was recovered safely, but three adults who went in to try and save the juvenile have since been unaccounted for, authorities said.

State Parks has been working with the U.S. Coast Guard and the Sacramento and Solano County Sheriff's departments on the recovery efforts, the Cal Parks spokesperson said.

The Coast Guard said that searches were carried out overnight and on Monday.

Contra Costa Fire has reported multiple fires during the July 4th holiday on Monday night, several of which they said were caused by illegal fireworks.

In the 9 o'clock hour, Con Fire said they had responded to 11 fires, including three which were known to have been caused by fireworks, the agency said. In the other six cases, fireworks could not be ruled out. At one point during the hour, the agency was fighting nine simultaneous fires, they said.

In the 10 o'clock hour, Con Fire had responded to 11 grass and exterior fires involving trees, fences, yards and parks. Two of the fires were known to have been caused by fireworks, with the "remainder likely," the agency said.

As of 11:20 p.m., Con Fire was battling seven separate fires in the county.

Several fire departments around the Bay Area report that their crews are fighting multiple fires late Monday and early Tuesday caused by illegal fireworks.

Just before midnight, the Vallejo firefighters union reported that crews had responded to multiple fires caused by fireworks across the city.

The Oakland Fire Department posted a tweet that as of 11:59 p.m. crews had fought five vegetation fires caused by fireworks since 5 p.m. The department's tweet included the following: "Call volume overall for fires and medical incidents citywide saw a significant spike. We anticipate a long night ahead and we're ready."

Authorities responded to a call on Monday morning about a man who had fallen from a cliff at Thornton State Beach in Daly City, the California Highway Patrol said.

First responders arrived at the scene from the North County Fire Authority with Battalion 123 to investigate a person stuck on the cliffside, the agency said, but they were unable to find the person so they contacted the CHP air support at approximately 9:19 a.m., CHP confirmed.

The man received medical attention but the extent of his injuries, if any, were not reported.

A 6.5 acre vegetation fire in the vicinity of Port Chicago Highway and Driftwood Circle in Bay Point appears to have been started by a firecracker, Contra Costa Fire said.

Cal Fire personnel along with Contra Costa Fire have contained the blaze, according to Con Fire at 8 p.m. on Monday.

A witness reported someone setting off fireworks from a vehicle, which then started the fire, Con Fire said.

No structures were damaged and no injuries were reported.

The San Francisco Police Department's Traffic Unit will be conducting DUI saturation patrols on Monday evening between 7 p.m. and 3 a.m., according to Sergeant Jarrod Yee.

Officers will be looking for signs of drug or alcohol impairment.

Police said that research has shown that publicizing DUI checkpoints and patrols can reduce crashes involving impaired drivers by up to 20 percent.

Recent statistics reveal that 30 percent of drivers involved in fatal crashes had one or more drugs in their system, police said.

People caught driving under the influence can expect jail time, fines, fees, DUI classes and other expenses that can exceed $10,000, police said.

A person has been rescued from the water at Pier 28, according to the San Francisco Fire Department on Monday.

The incident was first reported to the fire department at 5:06 p.m.

The person was rescued and delivered to the hospital where they are currently in stable condition, as of 6:45 p.m.

There is no further information at this time.

The San Francisco Fire Department has contained a one-alarm, two-acre grass fire in the 1000 block of Twin Peaks Boulevard near Christmas Tree Point Road, the agency said at 4:44 p.m. on Monday.

No structures were threatened and there have been no injuries, fire officials said.

The fire is under investigation.

People who live near the area are advised to close their windows and doors to avoid the smoke.

All others are advised to avoid the area.

Five people were displaced Monday morning after a fire burned a Daly City home, fire officials said.

The fire was reported at 9:04 a.m. in the 1000 block of Hanover Street, where fire crews found heavy smoke and fire coming from the house, according to the North County Fire Authority Fire Authority.

Firefighters aggressive attacked the fire while searching for anyone inside. No residents were found in the home and crews were able to extinguish the blaze before it spread or caused any more damage.

No injuries were reported.

Five people who lived there were displaced and are being assisted by the American Red Cross.

Police said a man was stabbed to death late Monday in East Palo Alto.

Officers responded to an 11:35 p.m. report of a stabbing victim in the 400 block of East O'Keefe Street. Upon arrival, officers found the victim and applied first aid before paramedics arrived, but the stabbing victim died at the scene.

Police withheld the victim's name pending notification of next of kin, according to a news release police issued about 3 a.m. Tuesday.

The stabbing death marks East Palo Alto's third homicide of 2022.

The National Weather Service forecast for the greater San Francisco Bay Area calls for mostly sunny skies Tuesday, with daytime highs in the mid 60s along the coast and in the low to mid 70s in the rest of the region. Overnight lows are expected in the 50s.

A warming and drying trend begins Wednesday with a return to near normal conditions by the weekend.

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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Editors note: This story originally ran on Jan. 28, 2019.

San Francisco is the ultimate city for tourists.

Ignoring the fact that many spend their time here shivering on a hill, overlooking a bay shrouded in fog, the city offers an incredible trove of what any tourist loves  great landmarks, museums, amazing food, epic outdoor fun, an island prison. It keeps them coming back year after year.

But the rich history of the city extends way beyond these world-renowned spots. All over town, from tony Pacific Heights to the foggy streets of the Excelsior, are homes and addresses that are part of some of San Francisco's most noteworthy, and most notorious, moments.

Some of these locations, like the famed "Mrs. Doubtfire" mansion, are so well known they're on every tour bus's itinerary. But there are many other notable addresses around town (see 6114 California Street, the former home of the Church of Satan), that a lot of visitors to the city probably never come across.

Now, they can. Here are 15 addresses all around San Francisco where something happened that changed the world  for instance, where television was invented or, just as important to some, where Jerry Garcia grew up. And then there are those homes that at one time owned front-page headlines, like the Crocker-Amazon home where Patty Hearst was finally arrested in 1975, a year after her abduction by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Paramount Pictures 1958

900 Lombard Street

In Alfred Hitchcock's classic "Vertigo," this home a block below the crooked street was the address of James Stewart's apartment. And it has been a regular stop for visiting cinephiles ever since. In recent years, it garnered controversy when the home's owners altered its appearance.

Dianne de Guzman / SFGATE

710 Ashbury Street

Just up from Haight Street, this Victorian has long been known simply as the Grateful Dead house. Some band members lived in this house in the 1960s and, in 1967, Ron "Pig Pen" McKernan and Bob Weir were arrested in a famous bust that you can read all about in this recap from the Chronicle's Big Event blog.

Google Street View

87 Harrington Street

The home in the Excelsior District where Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia grew up is the ideal destination for those wandering around before or after attending the annual Jerry Day in McLaren Park.

Google Street View

2150 Beach Street

After Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio wedded in San Francisco's City Hall in 1954, the couple didn't just jet off to New York or Los Angeles. Instead they briefly lived in this modest home in the Marina district not far from where DiMaggio grew up in North Beach. Marina neighbors describe having coffee at this residence with DiMaggio years later.

Google Street View

6114 California Street

Did you know the Church of Satan was headquartered in the Richmond District in the 1960s? Known as the Black House, this residence was home to both the Church of Satan and its founder Anton LaVey. Here is more about LaVey and the bizarre goings-on inside the California Street abode.

Google Street View

2400 Fulton Street

If you were looking for somebody to love in the 1960s, maybe you headed to "The Mansion." The home of the Jefferson Airplane was ground zero for S.F. rock parties of the era. The band named their 1987 compilation album for the home.

Google Street View

2080 Washington Street

The Spreckels Mansion in Pacific Heights was an instant landmark when it was built by sugar baron Adolph Spreckels in 1912. And the stories behind its builder Adolph and wife Alma are worth reading. Its current owner is romance writer Danielle Steel.

Google Street View

333 Grant Avenue

It was here on Jan. 25, 1915, that Thomas A. Watson received the first transcontinental phone call ever. The call was placed by Watson's fellow inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, and made to coincide with the Panama-Pacific International Exposition being held in the city.

Amanda Bartlett/SFGATE

1709 Broderick Street

You know this house: It is home of the classic '90s sitcom "Full House" and then its sequel "Fuller House." So what if neither show has ever been shot there? The exterior is well-known enough that the steady stream of tourists is a nightmare for the neighbors.

Google Street View

625 Morse Street

Journey out to this home in the Crocker-Amazon neighborhood where, on Sept. 19, 1975, heiress Patty Hearst was arrested over a year after she had been abducted by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Google Street View

202 Green Street

A plaque outside this building tells it all: In a simple laboratory on this site, 202 Green Street, Philo Taylor Farnsworth, U.S. pioneer in electronics, invented and patented the first operational all-electronic "television system" on Sept. 7, 1927.

Screen grab Google Maps

2640 Steiner Street

The Pacific Heights residence known by many as the "Mrs. Doubtfire" home still attracts visitors on a regular basis. The private home went on the market in 2016 for $4.45M. After Robin Williams' death, many paid respects to the late star by placing flowers and tributes on the steps of this house.

Google Street View

1010 Montgomery Street

Allen Ginsberg did not just write his Beat generation epic "Howl" while walking around San Francisco's streets with a pen and notepad. According to Bill Morgan's "The Typewriter Is Holy: Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation," the famed poet wrote a significant amount of the poem while living in an apartment in this building in North Beach.

Google Street View

1010 Cole Street

You've probably used Craigslist plenty of times to buy a couch or rent an apartment. Time to visit this three-bedroom apartment in the Inner Sunset where Craig Newmark launched his hugely successful classified business back in the 1990s. In recent years, the unit hit the market for $1.39M.

Google Street View

1542A Haight Street

When Jimi Hendrix lived in San Francisco in the 1960s, he was right at the epicenter of the counterculture in this apartment building near Ashbury Street. You can't miss it with the big mural on the side and the "Jimi Hendrix Red House" awning on the front.
Jimi Hendrix placed his guitar in the front seat and then proceeded to sit in the back.



Despite being the hottest new act in popular music on that summer day  June 25, 1967  he was traveling alone without any entourage. In fact, when Jeffrey McMeans knocked on the door of room 152 at the Travelodge near Fishermans Wharf, he was surprised to discover Hendrix quietly waiting by himself to be picked up.

Just an hour prior, McMeans, a 24-year-old San Francisco State student, was at a meeting in the Psychedelic Shop on Haight Street, volunteering his time in support of an on-the-fly free concert in Golden Gate Park. When shop co-owner Jay Thelin asked if anyone had a car, McMeans raised his hand. Soon after, he was chauffeuring Hendrix back across town in his dilapidated vehicle  a 1959 Studebaker with holes in the ragtop roof  on a foggy Sunday afternoon.

As they headed south through the city toward the Haight-Ashbury, Hendrix sat in the back seat, shy and polite, wearing a black and gold Victorian-era military jacket that he had found in a secondhand clothing store in London. McMeans was also sporting some vintage apparel of his own, in the form of a womans fur that he had fashioned into some sort of Davy Crockett cap crossed with a Russian babushka headpiece. Hendrix couldnt help but comment on how cool it was.

I tried to give it to him, McMeans explained to SFGATE recently by phone, but he declined, saying it wouldnt fit over his hair.

Avalon/Getty Images

The two arrived at the Panhandle on Fell Street near Ashbury, where a crowd of about 200 people had already started to gather around a flatbed truck that would serve as a makeshift outdoor stage.

Hendrix pulled up and boom  it was on, says author and longtime SF Chronicle culture writer Joel Selvin. It was all a reflection of what San Francisco was like in 1966 and early 67. It was the center of the rock music universe, and things happened as if by spontaneous combustion.

During that first weekend of the Summer of Love, Hendrixs free show in the Panhandle was not only a unique moment in one of the most exciting chapters of his career, but also an event which embodied everything that was organic and wonderful about the Haight Ashbury scene at its peak  the high water mark, as Hunter S. Thompson would famously reflect a few years later, just before the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Before San Francisco, Hendrix stormed Europe

Ivan Keeman/Redferns

June of 1967 was the month when everything came together for Jimi Hendrix.

It began in Swinging London, where he was wrapping up a dizzying eight-month excursion that saw him  in this particular order  outshine guitar god Eric Clapton, change his stage name from Jimmy James to Jimi Hendrix, form a band (The Jimi Hendrix Experience), begin touring, appear on British television and record his trailblazing debut album Are You Experienced?

Hendrix put an exclamation point on this prolific run when he played at a London theater owned by Beatles manager Brian Epstein on June 4, with the Fab Four in attendance. He even opened the show with a blistering cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, just days after the Beatles had released the album.

Collectively, Hendrixs European sojourn was more than just a successful strategy for launching his career. It was a feedback-driven counterpoint to the British Invasion, reminding the likes of Clapton, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger that rock n roll was ultimately rooted in the Black art form of the American blues  and that Hendrix was its sonic torchbearer. In a more immediate sense, he was simply the best guitarist that they had ever seen.

As he departed Europe, Are You Experienced? chased Sgt. Pepper up the English music charts, ranking second behind the Beatles first place slot. Though the album wouldnt be released to the American market until August, Hendrix set his sights on making a similar impact stateside and was booked for a run of shows in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. Yet for their very first appearance in the U.S., the Experience were slated for the Monterey Pop Festival alongside A-list acts such as Otis Redding, the Who, Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead.

Michael Ochs Archives Michael Ochs Archives Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Michael Ochs Archives Scenes from Jimi Hendrix's iconic performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, on June 18, 1967. (Images via Getty) Scenes from Jimi Hendrix's iconic performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, on June 18, 1967. (Images via Getty)

After a notorious backstage incident in which the Who successfully lobbied not to have to play after Hendrix, the Experience delivered one of the seminal performances in rock n roll history, which famously culminated in Jimi lighting his guitar on fire before an awestruck crowd.

San Francisco was next.

The Haight-Ashbury gets experienced

In the coming days, Hendrix was scheduled for a series of shows at Bill Grahams Fillmore Auditorium as the opening act on a bill beneath Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo and Haight-Ashbury rock royalty Jefferson Airplane. Although his album wasnt available in America yet, Hendrix already had a buzz around him as he arrived in San Francisco.

KMPX  the local station which every hip person listened to  had an English copy of Are You Experienced? and they were pounding every track: Foxey Lady, Purple Haze, Red House, Selvin said. So when the Airplane showed up to play that first Fillmore gig  the entire place was there to see Hendrix. And he wiped the floor with them.

Just like the Who, Jefferson Airplane quickly realized they couldnt follow Hendrix and abruptly dropped from the lineup to purportedly honor some phantom commitment in Los Angeles.

Scrambling to fill the vacancy, Bill Graham reached out to on-the-rise local act Big Brother and the Holding Company. This put Hendrix and Janis Joplin on the same bill for a stunning run of 10 shows in one week (and, some insiders suggest, resulted in a tryst between the two stars backstage at the Fillmore one evening).

Jon Brenneis/Getty Images David Fenton/Getty Images Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Photos from the Fillmore: Legendary concert promoter Bill Graham, left, talking on the phone in his office at the Fillmore West; Janis Joplin, upper right, and fans dancing at the Fillmore, circa 1967. (Images via Getty) Photos from the Fillmore: Legendary concert promoter Bill Graham, left, talking on the phone in his office at the Fillmore West; Janis Joplin, upper right, and fans dancing at the Fillmore, circa 1967. (Images via Getty)

For many in attendance, it was the first time they ever encountered Hendrix and his music.

We knew the name but we really didnt have any idea what his music was, says Steve Laveroni, a local high school student at the time who attended one of the Fillmore concerts with his older brother. We were just in amazement at the cacophony of sounds coming from his guitar. We had grown up seeing all the big San Francisco bands of that era, but Hendrix was just unlike any of them.

As the week progressed, Hendrix went from an obscure opening act to a must-see headliner.

He did two sets a night and he was just stunning everybody who saw it, Selvin says. People were walking out of those Fillmore shows breathless.

'Another day at the carnival'

In many ways, Hendrixs free concert in the Panhandle at the end of that week was a sort of victory lap: a lighthearted and spontaneous afternoon outing in the park after conquering the high stakes shows before the masses at Monterey and the hip kids at the Fillmore.

The event kicked off shortly after Hendrix emerged from Jeffrey McMeans junkshow Studebaker on the north side of Fell Street. Local outfit Ace of Cups, a pioneering all-female rock band, took the stage as the opening act. Meanwhile, Hendrix met up with Experience bandmates Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell behind the stage, drinking cans of Lucky Lager and smoking cigarettes. Hendrix also chatted with longtime colleague (and future drummer) Buddy Miles, whom he knew going back to his early days as a guitarist for hire on the Black music Chitlin Circuit.

 Jim Marshall Photography LLC

Legendary photographer Jim Marshall  who exactly one week earlier had taken a now-iconic photograph of Jimi lighting his guitar on fire at Monterey  was on hand with multiple Leicas dangling from his neck. He took photos of Jimi and the other musicians mingling with those in attendance and grooving along to the Ace of Cups opening set. Jimi was clearly a fan.

At some point Jimi and Buddy were standing right in front of us while we were playing, recalls Ace of Cups guitarist Denise Kaufman. Later when he went back to Europe, he told Melody Maker magazine that we were one of his favorite bands that he encountered while touring in America.

All of the gear on the flatbed truck, from the amps to the drum kit, belonged to the Ace of Cups. Having watched Hendrix destroy his equipment at Monterey, some of the band members grew nervous about sharing it with him. We finally had some equipment that was brand new to us, Kaufman told SFGATE, and I remember [our lead guitarist] Mary Ellen being a little worried. But Hendrix kind of picked up on it and said, Dont worry, Ill take really good care of your equipment.

Courtesy of the Ace of Cups

So on a foggy summer afternoon, in front of a few hundred spectators, Hendrix and his bandmates participated in the recent-though-robust Haight-Ashbury tradition of performing for free on a narrow strip of Golden Gate Park in the heart of the city.

It was another day at the carnival, says SF local Rusty Goldman (who watched the Hendrix show that day under the influence of LSD). There were different bands playing all the time; it was word on the street and if you were a local you would catch wind of them, whether it was in the Panhandle or Speedway Meadow or wherever.

A case study to this dynamic, McMeans had smoked a joint in his car until he couldnt see out the windows and then proceeded to position himself at center stage. Marshall even took a photo of Hendrix in which McMeans can clearly be seen near his feet wearing his custom-made babushka and looking up in awe while laconically holding on to the microphone cord.

 Jim Marshall Photography LLC

Unsurprisingly perhaps after 55 years, no one can seem to remember the specific songs that Hendrix played that day, though his better documented shows from that era are heavy on Foxey Lady, Purple Haze, Hey Joe, The Wind Cries Mary and a hefty cover of Chip Taylors Wild Thing, not to mention his trademark theatrics, from playing guitar with his teeth to behind his head.

In all, about 300 to 400 people watched him perform that afternoon and its mention still invokes strong memories to the old-time San Franciscans who were in attendance. Hendrix concluded his run at the Fillmore later that evening, and then departed SF for Los Angeles the next day. His summer eventually took a strange twist when his management booked him as the opening act for the Monkees, a ludicrous pairing which only held together for seven shows.

The Haight's last hurrah

The Haight-Ashbury scene took a bad turn in the coming weeks and months. The combination of youthful word of mouth, increased media coverage and the song San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)  written by Los Angeles musician John Phillips  drove thousands to the neighborhood from all corners of the country. For all of its positive-sounding optics, the Summer of Love really signified the downward trend of the culture in the Haight.

The streets just filled up with people we had never seen before, says Selvin, and they lined the sidewalks. Spare change? became the mantra. There was a lot of hostility with the police and even open violence  something that was simply antithetical to the whole hippie movement.

Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

Although the exact timing of the decline of the Haight Ashbury subculture is a highly subjective matter, other events support the late 67 timeline. By October, the Thelin brothers shuttered the Psychedelic Shop, declaring the hippie movement dead and staging a makeshift funeral procession through the neighborhood. Many integral members of the culture began relocating around this time, such as Big Brother bassist Peter Albin, who left the Haight when a mugger put a knife to his wifes throat. Most telling perhaps, was that one of the new arrivals that summer was an eccentric fellow named Charles Manson.

Within this timeline, Hendrixs showing in the Panhandle was nearly a last call of sorts, a still-groovy calm right before the storm.

The free Hendrix concert was almost the last moment of everything that was so magical and wonderful about San Francisco in 66 and early 67, says Selvin. Things almost seemed to change the very next week, and then right away the dream was over.
WFO MIDLAND/ODESSA Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Tuesday, July 5, 2022

_____

FLASH FLOOD WARNING

The National Weather Service in Midland/Odessa has issued a

* Flash Flood Warning for...

Northeastern Jeff Davis County in southwestern Texas...

Southwestern Reeves County in southwestern Texas...

* Until 500 PM CDT.

* At 159 PM CDT, Doppler radar indicated thunderstorms producing

heavy rain across the warned area. Between 1 and 2 inches of rain

have fallen. Additional rainfall amounts of 1 to 2 inches are

possible in the warned area. Flash flooding is ongoing or expected

to begin shortly.

HAZARD...Flash flooding caused by thunderstorms.

SOURCE...Radar.

IMPACT...Flash flooding of small creeks and streams, urban

areas, highways, streets and underpasses as well as

other poor drainage and low-lying areas.

* Some locations that will experience flash flooding include...

Balmorhea, Balmorhea State Park, Balmorhea Lake, Buffalo Trail

Scout Camp, Star Mountain, Toyahvale and Black Mountain.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

Turn around, don't drown when encountering flooded roads. Most flood

deaths occur in vehicles.

In hilly terrain there are hundreds of low water crossings which are

potentially dangerous in heavy rain. Do not attempt to cross flooded

roads. Find an alternate route.

Flooding is occurring or is imminent. It is important to know where

you are relative to streams, rivers, or creeks which can become

killers in heavy rains. Campers and hikers should avoid streams or

creeks.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
WFO SHREVEPORT Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Tuesday, July 5, 2022

_____

HEAT ADVISORY

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE

National Weather Service Shreveport LA

334 AM CDT Tue Jul 5 2022

...HEAT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM CDT THIS EVENING...

* WHAT...Heat index values between 105 and 109 expected.

* WHERE...All of north central and northwest Louisiana,

southeast Oklahoma, south central and southwest Arkansas and

east and northeast Texas.

* WHEN...Until 7 PM CDT Tuesday.

* IMPACTS...Hot temperatures and high humidity 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.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
WFO SPOKANE Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Monday, July 4, 2022

_____

FLASH FLOOD WARNING

The National Weather Service in Spokane has issued a

* Flash Flood Warning for...

The Cedar Creek Burn Scar in...

West Central Okanogan County in north central Washington...

* Until 915 PM PDT.

* At 609 PM PDT, Doppler radar indicated thunderstorms producing

heavy rain over the Cedar Creek Burn Scar. Flash flooding is

ongoing or expected to begin shortly.

HAZARD...Flash flooding caused by thunderstorms in and around

the Cedar Creek Burn Scar.

SOURCE...Radar.

IMPACT...Flooding of areas in and around the Cedar Creek Burn

Scar.

* Some locations that will experience flash flooding include...

Mazama.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

The affected areas are in and below the Cedar Creek burn scar south

of Highway 2 from Mazama to Winthrop, including the Chickadee

Trailhead and Wolf Creek Road. Some drainage basins impacted include

Cedar Creek, Varden Creek, Little Boulder Creek, Wolf Creek, and

Thompson Creek. Moderate to high intensity rainfall on the burned

area may cause flash flooding, mud slides and rock slides. Campers,

hikers residents, and motorists in and below the Cedar Creek burned

area should take immediate precautions to protect life and property.

Flooding is occurring or is imminent. It is important to know where

you are relative to streams, rivers, or creeks which can become

killers in heavy rains. Campers and hikers should avoid streams or

creeks.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather




Saigon Investment had a talk with Dr. HO QUOC TUAN, University of Bristol, U.K., to discuss this issue further and asked him as to what Vietnam needs to do to face this new trend.

JOURNALIST: - Sir, what do you think about the trend of issuing CBDC in the world, and which direction should Vietnam go in the future?

Dr. HO QUOC TUAN - To start with we need to look at why Central Banks must bring in this system. Firstly, Central Banks see the future of the world as a cashless society, and they want to introduce an option for a digital currency. Secondly, by developing CBDC it is a way to create pressure as well as create a payment system with the expectation of reducing financial costs. Thirdly, some countries like China have ambitious plans for their currency to become the world's main dominant reserve currency. If the renminbi doesn't play that role today, they hope pioneering the cryptocurrency will give them this edge.

Looking at these options, Vietnam needs a CBDC to solve two problems, that of a cashless payment system and not to have any dependency on any economy. If countries implement cryptocurrencies, we can completely deploy our own cryptocurrencies and connect with them, instead of using others.

However, developing in any direction is reasonable, not only for Vietnam but also ASEAN countries that have huge trade with China, as there is the risk of being dominated by China's CBDC. Therefore, Vietnam needs to connect with ASEAN countries to have a trading system for cryptocurrencies for ASEAN countries only, or even countries like Japan and South Korea can join this system. In a common network, each country can have its own CBDC that is linked to each other. When this system is formed and works effectively, China's CBDC cannot dominate the regional market, and will be forced to negotiate with the whole group of countries in this network.

In this way, we hope to be less affected by the leading countries in electronic payments in the world today, including China, since it is more difficult for another coin to counterbalance such a strong network. If China wants to counterbalance, it must establish its own network or join this network. In case it participates, Chinas rights will be limited because even though its currency is strong, it will only represent one vote in the network like other countries.

Currently, with electronic payments being very popular, China is trying to promote the use of electronic money in the country and will promote the use of commercial partners, including Vietnam. If we do not develop this system early enough, and make Vietnamese businesses used to using China's CBDC in payments, it will be very difficult to change this habit later.

- Sir, specifically speaking what should Vietnam do now?

- We have a project of an International Financial Center located in Ho Chi Minh City, and CBDC is a natural component of this center. The Financial Center combined with technology is the basis to use the CBDC in Vietnam. At the same time, it is necessary to have a specialized multi-disciplinary committee that has many management agencies in it. Currently, almost everything related to cryptocurrencies is left to the State Bank of Vietnam, while this issue is not simple if you look at the structure of the organizations that are using CBDC, in the U.K. for instance. This is not only relevant to the State Bank of Vietnam but also to many other agencies.

Because if assigned to an implementing agency, they can only deal with their internal problems. Specifically, the State Bank of Vietnam only cares about monetary security. While for digitization we have to pay more attention to data security. China, the US, or Europe are all very interested in this issue. If we leave everything to the Central Bank, they cannot have enough power to determine where the server is to be located, and who can access or use the data. Therefore, we must change the way the legal institution functions, specifically in terms of the role of associations and lawyers in this.

The current way of making law in Vietnam is to assign a management agency to submit a draft for comment. Should it be possible for this new field, specialized law-making agencies must sit down with departments and agencies and set up an initial framework, instead of assigning the State Bank of Vietnam or the Ministry of Finance to make laws.

Lawyers often work and liaison with many relevant national and international organizations. They understand the problems and can compare with international law to come up with new frameworks. In other words, it is necessary to form a specialized agency when there are new problems, which can be pushed through this department. This department can be led by people who understand the relevant laws and have very quick access to international law.

- Sir, there is an opinion that the next currency revolution is happening quietly through the issuance of CBDC. What is your opinion on this?

- This question is very difficult to answer accurately because predictions about the future financial market since four to five years ago to date have not been correct. There is a view that the CBDC will heat up, but there is also a prediction that the CBDC will go nowhere, and will remain a bubble, and then deflate. But if we don't do it, when this trend becomes mainstream, we will depend on other countries' currencies. This is going against the point of view of the Prime Minister of Vietnam, which is to build an independent and self-reliant economy.

As such, we are forced to research and prepare for such a future. So, if CBDCs go mainstream, we will have got the tools to thrive. If you want to have the tools ready, you don't have to find a way to catch the trend but prepare the foundation to capture the trend when it heats up.

- Thank you very much.

Yen Lam
Vietnamese Ambassador to Morocco and Benin Dang Thi Thu Ha (L) presents her credentials to Beninese Foreign Minister Aurelien Agbenonci. (Photo: baoquocte.vn)



The Vietnamese diplomat pledged that she will work hard for stronger traditional friendship between the two countries for the interest of the peoples of both sides.

She gave some proposals to promote bilateral partnership in all fields, especially politics, economy and trade as well as cooperation at multilateral forums.

For his part, Agbenonci highlighted the sound relations between Benin and Vietnam, and showed admiration for the socio-economic achievements that Vietnam has gained over the years.

He expressed his hope that the two sides will take specific steps to further beef up their friendship and cooperation, especially as both sides are preparing for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of their diplomatic relations in 2023.

After the presentation, Ambassador Ha paid courtesy calls to Beninese Minister of Agriculture Gaston Cossi Dossouhoui and Minister of Industry and Trade Alimatou Shadiya Assouman. She also had a meeting with leaders of the Benin Chamber of Commerce and Industry and leaders of the Council of Owners and a number of officials at Benins Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Both sides discussed specific measures in the bilateral relations, and agreed to support each other at multilateral forums. They also sought measures to bolster partnership in promising areas such as agriculture, aquaculture, trade, investment, and cashew processing.

Ambassador Ha affirmed that Vietnam is willing to give technical support, share experience and cooperate with Benin in agriculture as well as areas of Vietnams strength. The two sides agreed to propose to authorised agencies of both sides the establishment of sub-committees for cooperation in particular areas, along with the increase of delegation exchange and the appointment of honourary consuls in each country. Initially, the two countries will organise online meetings to connect businesses of both sides, they said.

On the occasion, Ambassador Ha also had a meeting with the Vietnamese community in the West African country.

VNA
Digital technologies and Direct Benefit Transfer into the accounts of beneficiaries have helped India save Rs 2.23 lakh crore from going into the hands of middlemen, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday.

Modi was addressing the inaugural session of the Digital India Week in Gandhinagar.

Though India was left behind during the third industrial revolution, it was guiding the world in the fourth industrial revolution, he said.

With the passage of time, the country that does not adopt modern technology, time moves ahead leaving it behind. India was a victim of this during the Third Industrial Revolution. But today we can proudly say that India is guiding the world in the fourth industrial revolution, Modi said.

Lauding the Digital India programmes roles in expanding services provided online, the prime minister said it was the perfect example of how technology could be revolutionary in transforming the lives of ordinary people.

Everything from birth certificate to life certificates for senior citizens is online. All these works took days and now can be done in moments. There is an excellent infrastructure for digital governance in the country today, he said.

The prime minister also launched a slew of new initiatives under the Digital India programme, including announcing the first batch of 30 institutions to be supported under the Chips to Startup (C2S) programme.

Commenting on the fintech progress in the country, Modi said that the solution was by the people, of the people, for the people.

UPI has been appreciated the world over, including the World Bank. The technology is by the people, it has been made a part of the people lives, which is of the people, and it has made peoples lives easier, which therefore is for the people, he said.

Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw and Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar also addressed the inaugural session.

Vaishnaw said India today had more than 100 unicorns, compared to 2014 when there were less than 10.

Eight years ago, electronics manufacturing in the country was almost negligible. Today, it is a $75 billion industry, which is roughly a Rs 6 lakh crore industry, employing 25 lakh people in high quality jobs, he said.

Chandrasekhar said that the transformation of India from a technology consumer to a technology producer for the world had become the new identity for the country.

In the last two years, Digital India has contributed a lot to the resilient fight put up by India against the Covid-19 pandemic. The coming decade should be Indias techade. Today every corner in the country has the startup spirit and it is being catalysed everywhere, he said.
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A few months ago Infant formula maker Bubs Australia was hit in the diaper by a rainbow when a contamination crisis crippled US local supply from its dominant manufacturer. It was a company-making moment for Bubs - a chance to exercise strategic opportunism.

But such a game-changing opportunity to potentially triple revenue in the space of a year required funding.

On Tuesday Bubs hit the green light on a $63 million capital raising to fund its serendipitous expansion in the giant US market.

Milking the opportunity and feeding revenue. Credit:SHUTTERSTOCK

Indeed Bubs is one of only a few Australian companies in a position to comfortably raise equity in the current choppy market - certainly one of the few that could issue shares at a relatively small discount.
Its been five years since CPA Australia sacked chief executive Alex Malley, who walked away with a handsome $4.9 million payout after months of ructions among the accounting associations board, and widespread anger at his penchant for naked self-promotion.

Now Malleys back  literally, kicking off a new gig as chief executive of the Australian Chiropractors Association.

Former CPA Australia head Alex Malley in 2013. Credit:Peter Braig

Perhaps the back scratchers have short memories. Malleys ousting followed revelations the organisation had spent $6 million worth of members money plugging the bosss book, The Naked CEO (including on a Times Square billboard) and his Sunday morning television show In Conversation With Alex Malley. That was on top of the $1 million a year spent trying to make Malley a social media influencer on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Revelations Malley was on a salary of $1.79 million a year poured more fuel on the bonfire of anger among CPAs membership, and helped accelerate his demise  he was finally fired after board directors had rushed for the exits.
Nine black people are strung up, hanged by their necks, between two trees. For many Australians, such an image evokes the lynchings of the American south  what they dont know is the same thing was done to Australian First Nations people during the frontier wars.

Fiona Foleys Annihilation of the Blacks, 1986. wood, synthetic polymer paint, feathers, string, 204.5 x 267 x 85.7 cm, 13 parts. National Museum of Australia collection. Credit:Courtesy of the artist

Artist Fiona Foley in front of her works at McClelland Gallery. Credit:Natalie Tuck

Its one of Fiona Foleys early works, Annihilation of the Blacks, created in 1986 when she was at art school, and is part of the survey exhibition Fiona Foley: Veiled Paradise, at McClelland Gallery. Curated by Angelina Hurley at the QUT Art Museum, the show traces Foleys career over nearly four decades, showing an extraordinary body of work, at times confronting, beautiful, unsettling and captivating.

The piece is simple and devastating, a reference to a massacre that happened on Foleys Badtjala Country on the Maryborough River, the story passed down through oral history from her mother to her. Colonial soldiers at the time of the massacre would suspend bodies up in trees as a warning to Indigenous survivors. In the foreground, a single white figure casts a long shadow, reflecting the long-lasting trauma inflicted by these colonial actions. Foley says the sculpture is the first monument by an Aboriginal artist to honour an Aboriginal massacre in Australia.
Small Axe is a series of self-contained films, each telling a different story of the West Indian community in London between 1969 and 1982, a period whose events remain painfully relevant today given recent political upheavals in the UK, where Caribbean immigrants continue to be vilified and used for politicians cynical ends. The first episode deals with the Mangrove Nine, a group of activists prosecuted for inciting a riot after protesting against police targeting of a significant black community hub.

Made by the lovingly incendiary hand of Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen (most definitely no relation to the motorbike-loving idol of the 60s), Small Axe is that rare beast: a historical drama that illuminates injustice and struggle with depth and compassion bound up with a certain righteous fury.

When television decides to shine a light on social issues, the outcome can go myriad different ways. Handled clumsily or carelessly, a program with a conscience can wind up preachy, patronising or glib  easy pitfalls for creators to fall into. When done well, with not just a conscience but a passion for story and character and attention to detail, TV can reflect the darkness and complexity of the real world in ways that compel, exhilarate and enrage.

After that instalment, which set a tone of political ferocity with its depiction of institutional racism, corruption and grassroots fightback, the second episode brings a more intimate focus, depicting a single house party in west London in the early 80s. It is titled Lovers Rock after the romantic offshoot of reggae that arose in London and weaves together love stories and perspectives on cultural pride in the face of marginalisation, intersecting narratives playing out against the backdrop of a pulsing soundtrack.

The series third episode switches the mood again with the true story of Leroy Logan (John Boyega, a million miles from Star Wars), a young black man who decides, after seeing his father assaulted by police, to join the force himself to achieve change from within. Here the story is raw and harrowing: Logans quest to change the police culture is inspirational, but its not a feelgood tale, with the reality of that culture portrayed in starkly sickening terms.

Letitia Wright in Mangrove. Credit:Des Willie

Although the stories vary widely as McQueen ranges over the diverse experiences of his people, each episode of Small Axe is built on the same foundations: a drive to document historical racism, yes, but far more, a determination to celebrate the humanity of the people who lived with and fought  and continue to fight today  against that racism.

To a greater or lesser degree, the political conflict of the black community against white authoritys oppression is omnipresent in the series, but to the everlasting credit of McQueen and his superbly talented team of writers and actors, there is so much more depth here than a basic raging against the machine couldve achieved.
NSW is expected to receive more heavy rain on Tuesday as authorities warn a weather system developing off the states coast could bring a fresh deluge as it moves north and targets areas including the Mid North Coast - a region already devastated by flooding multiple times in the past 18 months.

More evacuation warnings were issued overnight and on Tuesday morning, including for parts of Windsor and Shanes Park, in Sydneys north-west and west.

Sand is washed over Marine Parade in Maroubra on Tuesday after heavy rain and damaging surf. Credit:Peter Rae

At 10am AEST on Tuesday, there were 102 evacuation orders in place across the state and 55 warnings impacting more than 55,000 people who live in communities that are bracing themselves for the mammoth recovery effort that lies ahead.

Authorities are focused on the Hawkesbury-Nepean regions, as well as the Hunter and Newcastle, which could see rainfalls of about 100mm on Tuesday.
From the Special Representative of The Age CANBERRA, Friday  A new Federal Ministry was sworn in this afternoon under the leadership of Mr F. M. Forde, previously deputy leader of the Government.

Three of the candidates nominated for the prime ministership of Australia. Ben Chifley won the leadership ballot, ending Fordes time in the top job. [L-R]: Norman Makin, Frank Forde and Ben Chifley. Credit:Argus Collection

Mr Forde will be Prime Minister and Minister for the Army and Mr J. A. Beasley, in addition to his office as Vice-President of the Executive Council, will be Minister for Defence. In Mr Curtins Ministry the Prime Minister held the portfolio of Defence.

There are no other changes in the Ministry as it stood under Mr Curtins leadership. The Minister for the Navy, Mr Makin, will continue to act as Minister for External Affairs in the absence of the Attorney-General, Dr Evatt.

Mr Forde said tonight:The Governor-General, the Duke of Gloucester, summoned me today to Government House, Canberra. I tendered his Royal Highness certain advice. His Royal Highness has been pleased to ask me to form a Government.

The Attorney-General, Dr Evatt, who is travelling on a steamer between the United States and Australia, and the Minister for Commerce, Mr Scully, will be sworn in later.
Network Ten and Canberra-based political reporter Tegan George failed to reach a settlement of her Federal Court bullying claim against the broadcaster during mediation earlier this year, the court has heard.

George launched Fair Work Act proceedings against Ten in January this year, following a series of internal complaints to her employer about her workload and workplace culture in the broadcasters Parliament House bureau.

Tegan George says she told Peter van Onselen in 2020 that she did not feel supported, respected or even welcome in Tens Canberra bureau.

She has been on leave from her role since June 7 last year owing to a personal illness her lawyers say was suffered in the course of her employment. The parties attended mediation on May 18 but failed to reach a resolution, the Federal Court heard on Tuesday.

In documents filed in court, George alleges she was denied a safe workplace by Ten and that her complaints to senior managers about conflicting directions from managers, a high workload and a fraught working relationship with political editor Peter van Onselen were left unresolved.
Former Sydney teacher Chris Dawsons marriage proved a problem in his pursuit of a teenage babysitter, and he ultimately decided the answer was to murder his wife, a court has been told.

But the defence says he has never been afforded the presumption of innocence, and claim his wife abandoned the family home as the world they had built together was falling down around her.

Chris Dawson is on trial in the NSW Supreme Court, where he has pleaded not guilty to murder. Credit:Steven Siewert

Dawson, 73, is on trial in the NSW Supreme Court after pleading not guilty to the murder of his wife Lynette Dawson, who vanished from Sydneys northern beaches in January 1982.

Continuing his closing address on Tuesday, Crown prosecutor Craig Everson, SC, said Dawsons marriage to Lynette and his association with the babysitter and his former student, known as JC, collided with each other in the latter part of 1981.
Commuters will face another day of disruption after the workplace umpire rejected a bid from the NSW government to temporarily stop industrial action on Sydneys public transport network.

Thousands of rail workers are set to continue their industrial action on Wednesday following the interim decision by the Fair Work Commission on Tuesday afternoon. The states rail network is expected to only be running at half its usual capacity on Wednesday.

Industrial action last Friday resulted in delays, cancellations and crowding on some trains. Credit:Janie Barrett

The Rail Tram and Bus Union made some concessions at Tuesdays hearing, agreeing to limit the impact of the action on the rail network by staffing a larger number of foreign-built trains than they originally planned.

The government had warned Fair Work that the industrial action risked taking a toll on the state economy and blowing out the cost of a new metro rail line in Sydney by almost $250 million.
Police rescue man trapped in ute in floodwaters in Sydneys north west

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About 20 inmates at a youth detention centre in Perth will be moved to the Casuarina Prison after what the Department of Justice says has been months of disruption and damage.

Director General Adam Tomison said the young offenders at the Banksia Hill Detention Centre had been destroying infrastructure, assaulting staff and harming themselves.

Banksia Hill Detention Centre. Credit:Michael OBrien

They will now be moved to a new standalone facility at Casuarina so they can be more safely managed and less disruptive to the other Banksia Hill detainees.

This newly-built unit will operate as a separate youth detention facility within the prison grounds ... allowing other detainees at Banksia Hill to return to their normal education, programs and recreation activities that have been affected by the ongoing disruptions, Dr Tomison said.
A livestock disease that would devastate Australias livestock industry and rural communities has been detected in Bali, the closest it has ever come to Australia, and the government has warned an outbreak here could cost the economy up to $80 billion.

The highly contagious foot and mouth disease spread through Indonesia to the holiday island, the federal Agriculture Department confirmed on Tuesday, prompting urgent warnings for travellers in a desperate attempt to stop them from bringing the livestock disease home with them.

Foot and mouth disease causes painful lesions on cloven-hoofed animals including sheep, cattle, pigs and goats. Credit:Louie Douvis

The disease spreads among livestock either as an airborne disease or through contaminated feed, faeces and even clothing. It does not infect humans but a visitor to Bali who goes near a farm animal could bring the disease home on their clothes or shoes.

Frontline biosecurity officers are inspecting flights from the island, the department confirmed.
Almost 40 federal prosecutions could be shelved as the federal government warns the union-hunting construction watchdog to significantly wind down its operations to avoid wasting taxpayers money.

The doomed Australian Building and Construction Commission has 36 outstanding cases against unions, including allegations of death threats during a picket line, while facing claims it is a politicised body that launches illegitimate actions.

Employment and Workplace Minister Tony Burke expects the ABCC to wind down its operations. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke said the commission shouldnt receive public funding following its pursuit of the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU) in a case that prompted the Federal Court to ban the display of the Eureka flag.

Im expecting them to start winding down their operations significantly, Burke told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
The extinction risk for greater gliders in NSW and Victoria has been upgraded by the federal government, which now rates the species once common in eastern forests as a risk of dropping off the planet in coming years.

Habitat loss from logging, land clearing for agriculture, intensifying bushfires and rising average temperatures have combined to turn the largest gliding possum in eastern Australias forests into a rarity.

The greater glider has been listed as endangered in Victoria and NSW. Credit:Josh Bowell

After escalating the species listing from vulnerable to endangered, federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said greater priority would be placed on conservation efforts for iconic greater gliders, which range from Proserpine in North Queenslands Whitsunday region to central Victoria.

The government is determined to take real action to protect our native species and their habitats, Plibersek said.
PHILIPSBURG:--- I had hoped that Monday, July 4th would be a day of revelations, after the sequence of events, which started on June 29th with a public meeting of parliament. Public meetings of parliament have become a rarity as these meetings are now usually called at the behest of the government, the MP explained.

What we see a lot of are committee meetings and while there is nothing wrong with committee meetings, the stark difference is that only in a public meeting, the so-called OVs, can parliament's decisions be made.

The bedrock of our system is a parliamentary democracy, coupled with the concept of ministerial responsibility, meaning the appointed ministers are accountable to parliament and the people. Anytime this accountability is being eroded, as it is now, we are heading down a slippery slope.

In the opinion of the MP, the meeting regarding the report of the Ombudsman on the tendering and awarding of the garbage contracts warranted an urgent meeting and an urgent response by parliament. Its unfortunate that even in parliament, the blindness by some towards blatant wrongdoings brought into question again the role of one of our high councils of state.

I stated during that fateful meeting of parliament that attacking any of our high councils of state, to condone questionable acts of government is wrong and undermines the very democratic foundation our system relies on. This system of checks and balances is even more important, given the dubious role some members and or factions in parliament afford themselves.

That MP S. Ludmila Duncan decided to break with the National Alliance did not come as a surprise and she must have her reasons for doing so.

To use the MPs resignation as a reason for what followed that day and onward is nothing short of a sham.

The corridors of parliament are as porous as a sponge. Things said and done, so-called on the inside is outside these corridors before the words are even spoken or the ink is dried.

Thursday last, parliament was held at bay with the meeting on labor and mental health, ironically in the absence of the MPs who requested these agenda points to begin with.

Dont get me wrong, there is always something to be said or queried about mental healthcare on St. Maarten. In fact, the presentation on Thursday did not in my view give the comfort of an urgent approach to this matter by the government. We are working on it is the governments usual catchphrase.

If there is one thing that was worked on by the governing coalition on Thursday, June 30th, it was to get out a hastily put together and poorly worded agreement, trying to secure their efforts to strengthen the coalitions dwindling numbers.

What an embarrassment to any self-respecting government or member of parliament! Moreover, what an ill-concealed attempt to sabotage the ministry of Tourism, Economic Affairs, transport, and telecommunication. Of all the areas in the world, is this the ministry that the 8 members of parliament will allow to become a ping pong?

With the nonsensical line that the coalition will look at the governing program and national development vision to agree on policy, legislative and executive priority areas to be addressed in the remaining term. And that the minister of TEATT will be jointly nominated by the party and the MPs Arrindell and Brownbill.

Who could have fallen for this gimmick? MP Wescot questions. And what am I to understand from this?

To begin with, MP Brownbills consent to this agreement is on shaky ground. He is deputizing for suspended MP Buncamper. Granted, deputizing can mean different things in different circumstances and this particular provision is not found in any other constitution in the Kingdom to give any direction. It was taken from the Kingdom Law on the Joint Court of Justice. But in the latter there is no reference to a deputy, MP Wescot explains her assertion.

It's ironic that on Thursday, June 30th, the Electoral Reform Committee of parliament discussed moving forward with electoral reform because the government -by the way, that campaigned on electoral reform- dropped this matter completely. The irony is that in my comments in that meeting, I stressed the need to address article 50 regarding dismissal and suspension of MPS as a matter of urgency.

MP Wescot minced no words in stating: I am utterly disappointed in the Prime Minister of St. Maarten, who for the sake of holding on to that office, accepted this type of political horse-trading. The PM knows full well that a review of the governing program and national development vision is misleading, as today it is all about the country package.

While I scoffed at the parliamentary recess, due to the many pressing matters on the table of parliament, such as the budget amendments and the salary cuts to be eliminated, it just might be a blessing in disguise.

I know that calling for a cabinet of professionals with clear mandates under the Prime Minister given the many crossroads we find ourselves at, is presently wishful thinking. However, suppose we really understand the socio-economic crossroads we are at. In that case, it is not too much to ask, since the position seems to be up for grabs, to consider a professional for the ministry of TEATT, MP Wescot concluded her thoughts on the events of the past days.
POINTE BLANCHE:--- The Causeway Bridge remains out of service for motorized traffic.

Technicians worked on Tuesday troubleshooting the issue, however, there has been no progress to date, and the teams involved will continue Wednesday working diligently to resolve the problem.

Bridge manufacturer Hollandia specialists working remotely from the Netherlands, supported by local technical teams from NV GEBE, Electec, along with Port St. Maarten Group staff, are part of the assembled group that has been working almost around the clock to find a resolution.

The Simpson Bay Lagoon Authority (SLAC) apologizes for the inconvenience caused.

On Monday afternoon the Causeway Bridge suffered a technical problem while it opened for maritime traffic. In the process of closing the bridge, the system malfunctioned possibly due to a power grid outage.

SLAC will keep the community informed with respect to any updates.
PHILIPSBURG:--- As of August 1st, 2022, the intention is to make EHAS more convenient by allowing vaccinated persons to receive immediate pre-approval, once the form is filled out in its entirety.

The entry requirements will not change for the country, but by allowing an automated immediate response, many cancellations can be avoided. It is important to note that the checks on arrival will still take place at the airport, and persons may be required to test locally if their documents are not valid.

Despite claims that EHAS is detouring tourists from visiting the country, statistics show that this is far from the truth. In the high season of 2021-2022, Sint Maarten was at approximately 120% of its 2019 pre-COVID arrival numbers and to date, we are at 90% of the 2019 arrivals.

We often look at other countries without realizing the full measures being taken there. For instance, while Aruba may not require any testing to enter the country, they do require that an ED form be filled out prior to traveling and they still have a nightlife closure time of 1 AM during the week.

Even though America has finally eased its entry requirements, noncitizens are required to be vaccinated to enter their country. This shows that everyone is trying to find a balance that would also protect their population, while still attracting visitors.

Sint Maarten is no exception, the intention is for EHAS to transition into our Port Health Authority, which is mandatory for all the countries within the kingdom. An international health regulation (IHR) meeting was held last month in Aruba and is scheduled to be a yearly event. The IHR requires each country to be able to detect, assess, report, respond and stop outbreaks of infectious diseases before they spread internationally. This means that Sint Maarten must have a Port Health Authority at all points of entry, to meet our obligations as international ports.

"I am not someone that likes to remove regulations and then have to replace them later. Said Ottley. The Minister is working on transitioning the EHAS to a more effective system that fosters safety without negatively affecting our visiting numbers. The plan is to allow this automated approval to be accessible for all visitors regardless of their vaccination status by October 15th, 2022.
PHILIPSBURG:--- Since February 2022 there have been reports of Long-spined sea urchins (Diadema) die-off from a number of islands in the Caribbean, including St. Eustatius, St. Maarten, Saba, and Curacao. Marine Protected Area authorities within the Dutch Caribbean region are concerned these events could be echoing the massive die-off of sea urchins that occurred in the 1980s which almost completely wiped out the Caribbean long-spined sea urchin populations. A new edition of the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance (DCNA) free digital newsletter Bionews draws attention to the current state of the die-off, what is being done to restore these populations and what you can do to help.

Importance of coral reefs

Long-spined sea urchins play a critical role in maintaining healthy coral reefs, which are essential for coastal protection and a crucial source of income for people in the Dutch Caribbean as they are a magnet for tourism. Long-spined sea urchins help sustain the delicate balance within the reef by grazing on algae, an overabundance of which can damage coral.

Caribbean-wide disease

In the mid-1980s, a disease swept through the Caribbean wiping out nearly the entire sea urchin population. In mid-February 2022, reports started emerging about new extensive die-off events in the Caribbean region. Reports from within the Dutch Caribbean first came in on March 14th from the island of St. Eustatius. Follow on reports from the remaining Dutch leeward islands of Saba and St. Maarten soon followed. In Curacao, the first sightings of diseased sea urchins were reported in early June. Two weeks later, more than 90% of the surveyed population had disappeared.

Diadema Workshop

In April, DCNA, together with the University of Applied Sciences Van Hall Larenstein (VHL), hosted a Diadema Restoration Workshop. This workshop gave researchers and park authority managers a comprehensive view of the overall situation of the Diadema sea urchin in the Caribbean, including the current die-off events and restoration techniques.

You can help

Citizens and tourists can also help track sea urchin health in the Caribbean by adding their observations of healthy, sick or dead urchins. These reports will help park authority managers to determine the causes and work on restoration approaches. You can report your sightings by visiting the AGRRA website (https://www.agrra.org/sea-urchin-die-off/) or contact your local Park Management Organization.

Other advice to prevent spreading the disease:

- Wash dive gear in lots of fresh water and let sun-dry

- Dive on uninfected sites before (known) infected sites

- Do not step on them or (re)move them: Alive or dead

Learn more

learn more about the current state, what is being done to restore these populations and what you can do to help by reading DCNAs latest edition of its free digital newsletter Bionews available at https://dcnanature.org/news/.

DCNAs newsletter BioNews is kindly funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV), and DCNAs activities by the Dutch Postcode Lottery.
By Xie Ruiqiang

The largest-ever Rim of the Pacific 2022 (RIMPAC 2022) military exercise led by the US is ongoing in and around the Hawaiian Islands and Southern California. Both Japan and ROK assigned large-scale fleets to participate in the exercise. Considering the accelerated military collaboration among the three countries, the spokesperson of the DPRK Foreign Ministry said on July 2 that the latest NATO Summit has made one thing clear: by militarizing Europe and expanding NATO to the Asian-Pacific doorstep, the US is aiming at curbing and containing China and Russia at the same time, with the US-Japan-ROK military alliance as a critical tool.

The US, Japan and ROK are strengthening military cooperation.

After Yoon Suk-yeol came into office, the military cooperation among the three countries quickly heated up. They have organized several trilateral military exercises or exercises involving the three. The US Air Force kicked off the Red Flag-Alaska exercise in Alaska on June 10, which included about 300 participants from the Japan Air Self-defense Force (JASDF) and ROK Air Force. It was the first training session during Bidens term that involved only the three countries.

Yonhap News reported that during RIMPAC 2022, ROK, the US, Japan and Australia will carry out the Pacific Dragon exercise, which included the detection and tracking of ballistic missiles, near Hawaiian waters in early August.

The US-Japan-ROK Pacific Dragon anti-missile exercise that was initiated in 2016 is aimed at enhancing intelligence sharing among the three countries, strengthening their interaction in terms of intelligence networks, and testing the compatibility and interoperability of their anti-missile systems against DPRK.

In addition to joint military exercises, Japan and ROK are considering resuming the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), which was originally signed in November 2016 to facilitate their sharing of military information on DPRKs nuclear missiles. However, the agreement has been all but non-existent owing to historical issues, the export of semiconductors, and other spats between the two countries.

Are the US, Japan and ROK on the way to an alliance?

Political interaction among US, Japan and ROK has promoted their military collaboration.

On June 29 and 30, local time, the NATO Summit was held in Madrid, the capital of Spain. Leaders of the ROK and Japan participated in the summit for the first time and they held a meeting between themselves. On the afternoon of June 29, US President Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and ROK Prime Minister Yoon Suk-yeol held a trilateral meeting, capturing close attention as the previous such meeting was almost five years ago.

According to Li Chunfu, vice director of the Center for Asia Research at Nankai University, the twenty-five-minute meeting was very short for a trilateral event  too short to talk about anything concrete. It was more of a political symbol indicating that the three countries would work more closely together.

However, the improvement of the ROK-Japan relationship and the tightening of military cooperation among the US, Japan and ROK wont be plain sailing. Historical issues, territorial disputes, and public mood in each country are all obstacles.

At the end of May, ROKs oceanographic research ship conducted research activities near the disputed islets lying halfway between the two countries, called Dokdo by ROK and Takeshima by Japan, incurring a protest from the Japanese side.

There is also no small objection from within ROK against enhanced trilateral military cooperation. ROKs Chosun Ilbo published an article saying that many people are worried about the improvement of relations on the premise of security cooperation will motivate Japan to further expand its military capacities.

When Yoon Suk-yeol was still running for the office, he was asked about the ROK-US-Japan military alliance and Japans involvement in the Korean Peninsula, to which he answered that Japan could enter ROK in emergency period, but (the alliance) may not necessarily be based on that precondition. That response caused quite an uproar.

Editor's note: This article is originally published on thepaper.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.
WASHINGTON  Clarinetist and tenor saxophonist, Ken Peplowski will appear alongside bandmates Ehud Asherie on piano, Peter Washington on bass, Willie Jones III on drums, and Houston Person on tenor saxophone as the closing act for the Mainstage shows at Litchfield Jazz Festival on Saturday, July 30.

Peplowski, like so many jazz stars, started performing at a very young age and would go on to build a stellar career.

Born in 1959 in the dynamic port city of Cleveland, Ohio, Peplowskis intertest in music was cultivated early in his life by his father. A police officer and an amateur musician on the side, Peplowskis father had a crack at a variety of instruments but failed to master any particular one. These rejected instruments would find new companionship with the young Peplowski brothers; his brother Ted would gravitate to the trumpet and Ken to the clarinet. As it happens both boys had musical aptitude.

By the time they were around 12 years old, their father had them form a polka band called the Harmony Kings and hire out weddings and other gigs. Peplowski described this sudden push toward live performance as, exactly like if you wanted to learn how to swim by being thrown into the water. We [had] to progress, because we all of a sudden find ourselves having to play these jobs (Lee Mergner, jazztimes.com, 2019).

By the time the brothers were in high school, Ken began experimenting more with jazz while performing with their schools stage bands and other local musicians. Ken would even start teaching at his local music store, mastering his saxophone and clarinet. Later, he studied at Cleveland State for two years. Here, he would begin performing in the big leagues. He had the opportunity to perform alongside Teddy Wilsons trio and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra under the direction of Buddy Morrow with whom he toured from 1978-1980 when he moved to New York at the age of 21 to work freelance.

There, Peplowski would work with top pros, most notably Benny Goodman and Carl Jefferson, and record some 20 albums as a leader with Concord Records over a decade. These include his debut album, 1988s Double Exposure and 1992s The Natural Touch which was awarded Best Jazz Record of the Year by the Prises Deutschen Schallplatten Kritiken. This success led to his touring throughout Asia, Europe, and the US and still making time to headline gigs like the Hollywood Bowl and the Newport Jazz Festival. In this busy period, he also recorded as a sideman, and sometimes as a leader, with musicians like the Eddie Higgins Quintet, Bobby Short, Shelly Berg, Jay Leonhart, and Joe La Barbera.

All of this success was not without heartache, according to Peplowski, as his family believed he had abandoned them. I think, he said, my parents lived vicariously through us, but they gave me lots of grief and guilt about abandoning my brother, and they would say that Ill never make it (Lee Mergner, jazztimes.com, 2019). His father, he said, was particularly rough on him, critical of his work even after standing ovations and never complimenting him. Peplowski pushed through these issues, thinking, Im going to get so good that you cant ever say anything (Lee Mergner, jazztimes.com, 2019).

True to his word, Ken Peplowski went on to succeed exponentially with his music. In total, he would record 70+ CDs as a soloist and some 400 as a sideman over the course of his career. He would go on to play on the soundtracks to Woody Allen movies, become music director for interactive French and Italian cookbooks, and become director for the Sarasota Jazz Festival, the Newport Beach Jazz Party, and the Newport, Oregon Jazz Festival, and won many awards for his work.

Ken Peplowski is widely regarded as the greatest living jazz clarinetist. He has gone above and beyond to become one of the premiere modern performers in the jazz world and a true master of the clarinet and saxophone. Today, at 63, Peplowski can be found most often teaching workshops for students of all ages, directing and performing in jazz festivals around the globe, or recording albums like the 2019 duet Counterpoint (Arbors Records) with Dick Hyman.

Visit Litchfield Jazz Festivals website at www.litchfieldjazzfest.com to learn more about the performances in store July 29-31. To purchase tickets to see Ken Peplowski perform at 5:15 pm, along with the whole July 30 Litchfield Jazz Fest Saturday lineup, and share an Artist Talk at 2:25 p.m. with fellow saxophonist Albert Rivera, go to ljf2022.eventbrite.com.

Saturday mainstage performances are all in the Tisch Family Auditorium in the Perakos Art and Community Center at the Frederick Gunn School, Washington.
DARIEN  It was sunshine and smiles at the annual July 4th Push-n-Pull Parade at Darien High School on Monday.

Presented by VFW Post 6933, the parade processed from Darien High School to the VFW featuring hundreds of children on bikes, scooters, wagons, parents pushing strollers, and other non-motorized vehicles.
Hazleton, PA (18201)

Today

Cloudy early with scattered thunderstorms developing this afternoon. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High 78F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms early, then cloudy skies after midnight. Low 63F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
The National Cybersecurity Directorate (DNSC) and the Romanian Association for Information Security Assurance launched on Tuesday the study "The Strategic Resilience of the European Union, Technology and Digital Fields Included: Future Scenarios and Romania's Contribution", conducted as part of the series of Strategy and Policy Studies (SPOS) 2021, with the support of the European Institute in Romania and of the European Commission's Representation to Romania.

According to the study's findings, strategic resilience mainly involves the existence of a balanced, articulated and flexible economic and social system where daily processes and activities take place without major disruptions, with a view to achieving national development goals and ensuring the individual contribution to the cooperation and collaboration systems the state is a part of.

In addition to the internal benefits related to a high standard of living, to avoiding the major effects of crises and ensuring the prosperity of the citizens, a strong state that respects the unanimously recognized principles and rules, human rights, the rule and supremacy of law, a strengthened market economy and a high level of security are always seen as a serious, desirable and respected ally.

The prerequisite for reaching such a level is first of all a very good organization and efficiency in action at national level, a solid educational system that provides the necessary skilled and educated workforce, as well as the rational and adequate allocation of resources for development, based on long-term development strategies which should capitalize on Romania's existing potential, the cited study states.

"At this moment, in the current geopolitical context, with a war on our border, we see resilience as an essential, fundamental component from the economic point of view of the decision makers, of the society. Everyone is impacted and feels the consequences of what is happening in the world," said DNSC director Dan Campean at the launch conference of the study.

He pointed out that resilience is on everyone's agenda during this period, whether they are European authorities or companies.

"The problem with this concept is that it is simple and complex at the same time. (...). I hope that our study will lead to broader discussions on this subject," Campean added.

In his turn, DNSC cybersecurity manager Sabin Popescu argued that, starting from the shortcomings at the beginning of the pandemic, such as the lack of protective masks and other products in stores, the solution was a better integration of efforts at European level.

"We should have long-term development strategies in place, define what we can do in certain areas, see what scientific, human, material resources we have. We could act at regional level, develop joint projects with neighboring countries, attract foreign investments, and this way the attracted resources could be bigger," said Popescu.

He added that evolution is impossible without education and that issues must still be solved in this respect. "Autonomy does not mean isolation, but partnerships based on verified principles and values, which have proven their strength in difficult times. Education is paramount, without education we cannot evolve, and here we still have issues to solve," said Sabin Popescu.

Director general of the AGERPRES National News Agency Claudia Nicolae referred to the fake news phenomenon which has lately picked up momentum.

"At EU level, news agencies have started working together under joint European projects, precisely in order to provide readers with validated information platforms," Nicolae said.

According to her, the press has been through a very difficult period during the pandemic, which came along with a lack of information to help provide a complete and informed picture.

"We were suddenly in the position of making news off the TV, a situation where you can't ask questions, speeches do not keep you one hundred percent clear, but we had to adapt to this way of broadcasting news," said the AGERPRES manager.

Claudia Nicolae pointed out that lately, media outlets have been subjected to increasingly virulent cyberattacks and that even AGERPRES is a fairly frequent target.

"We managed to avert these attacks with the help of the human factor, which remains essential in journalism. On June 16, the new code of practice on misinformation was published, in a version adjusted to the current post-pandemic and war context. In 2018, the application of the code was voluntary, bur now it also includes sanctions and there is a 6-month period for adaptation. Regardless of the situation, we provide accurate and objective news," Claudia Nicolae added.

Research and innovation, as well as investments in start-ups will be important in supporting European technological supremacy. A fragmented global innovation ecosystem would slow down the innovation process, which would have negative consequences on the health system, where it could delay the fight against new diseases, the study concludes.

Public-private partnerships will be important in supporting the further development of technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, robotics and quantum computers.

The European Union could explore co-design and cooperation avenues with private investors in order to develop public-private financing mechanisms to further finance innovative start-ups. Also, the European bloc must strengthen inter-regional relations and build an economic agenda on such common priorities in order to be able to implement its strategy globally.
President Klaus Iohannis declared on Tuesday that he discussed with Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca and the Ministers about amendments to the Fiscal Code, showing that a modernization of the entire framework is required.

"I discussed these projects with the prime minister and the ministers. Firstly, I believe it is important to know that these matters will be up for public debate and will not be decided over night, as it is being said. There is another stage of talks with the business environment, with the unions. The second matter, there is no point in speculating matters that may never be put into practice, such as rationalizing gas or other things that nobody wants and if there were talks, those were technical talks, because if a catastrophe should occur, it is better to be prepared for it, but we are not working in that scenario. On the other hand, it is a well known matter that there is a series of taxes and levies that were introduced in other circumstances, without being very well-founded or discussed. We need a modernization of this entire framework. That is being worked on, it will be presented by the Government, not by myself. I asked them to carefully analyze, to not end up being an additional burden for the common people, to not have a business inhibition, but rather to have a correction which makes matters more transparent, fairer and which will definitively lead to a better collection of money to the state budget. A better collection meaning a reduction in tax evasion," the head of state said, during a press conference at Cotroceni Palace.

He highlighted that "there are no talks about any levies or taxes for the common people, but situations where there were regulations that were not thoroughly thought out, namely regulations that come to eliminate certain loopholes from the Fiscal Code".AGERPRES
President Klaus Iohannis said on Tuesday that "it is clear that we cannot function in the 21st century with national security laws made in '91-'92.

"The president does not draft laws, the president doesn't even have a right to a legislative initiative, so that I can say that I did not draft them. Furthermore, those who worked on them, the initiators will tell you when they will be presenting the laws. (...) I have requested since the first term for teams of specialists to work on these laws, because some of them are simply anachronistic, if we are think only of the law for organizing the Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE), which is not even compatible with the Constitution, after which Romania functions in certain articles," the head of state said, during a press conference at Cotroceni Palace.

Iohannis said that "it is clear that we cannot function in the 21st century with national security laws made in '91-'92.

"How the laws will look like in the end, we will see. What is clear is that drafts were prepared by specialists in the field, that was brought to my attention," Iohannis said.

Furthermore, the head of state said that those supposed drafts "never even entered the legislative circuit".

"The moment they enter the legislative circuit, politicians will be able to express and when they reach me I will express even clearer and I guarantee that these drafts reach me at leasat twice: once Supreme Council for Country's Defence (CSAT), after which for promulgation or another procedure. I can assure you at this moment that no law will get past me, which contains provisions that does not respect basic principles after which we want to function," Iohannis added.

The head of state also said that the law draft is in Government. "CSAT and legislative procedure laws reach me. Don't believe that I censor drafts before entering an approval circuit. That does not happen," the head of state added.

Regarding his statements about information based on sources tied to drafts of national security laws, Iohannis said then that "it is wrong, during this early stage of drafts of national security laws for people to be nervous, because they are still being worked on and will be worked on for quite some time".

"Not any draft is drawn up in a sensible area needs to be made public before those that respond to that document or that piece of legislation finish their work just as it is provided by the Constitution," the head of state said.

Moreso, he said that these laws "have not even begun their legislative path".

"To show up and criticize a draft that was never in legislative debate seems pretty risky, as well as the fact that countless discussions emerged about something that is not yet defined, proved that I was right, in my opinion," the president said.

He also said that journalists don't have to feel threatened.

"You know that I am not using my power to inhibit the independent media. On the contrary. I am using my power to keep the freedom of the press," he added. Also, regarding drafts brought into discussion, Iohannis said: "I have not read them, I did not censor them".AGERPRES
Romanian citizens, men and women, with permanent residence in Romania, aged between 18 and 35, who have not completed active military service or in reserve, will be able to request, during peacetime, participation on a voluntary basis, in a basic military training program of up to four months, shows a draft amendment to the Law on the preparation of the population for defense published on Tuesday by the Ministry of National Defense (MApN).

According to a press release sent to AGERPRES, the Ministry of National Defense published on Tuesday, in the legislative transparency procedure, the initial form of a draft law amending and supplementing Law 446/2006 on preparing the population for defense.

The proposed legislative solutions ensure the coherence and correlation of the content of the law with the provisions of the regulatory acts in the field of defense and national security that have just entered into force, the cited source mentions.

"One of the most important provisions is the addition of a new category of personnel, military volunteers on active duty, in the structures of the Ministry of National Defense, as well as the creation of the legal framework for their participation in a basic military training program. Thus, in peacetime, Romanian citizens, men and women, with permanent residence in Romania, aged between 18 and 35, who have not performed active military service or in reserve, will be able to request the Ministry of National Defense to participate, on a voluntary basis, in a basic military training program, lasting up to four months, as a military volunteer on active duty," the Ministry of National Defense said.

The introduction of this concept, says the Ministry of National Defense, envisages the increase in the number and quality of the mobilization reserve which has progressively diminished as a result of the suspension, starting with January 1, 2007, of the compulsory military service in peacetime. As a result, the Romanian citizens who will perform, after the adoption of the regulatory act, the military service as a volunteer military in active duty can represent an important source for completing the Romanian Army's mobilization reserve.
TUESDAY, July 5, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- COVID vaccination is highly protective against severe disease in people of all body weights, new British research finds.

The study of over 9 million adults found that those who'd received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine were strongly protected against hospitalization or death from the disease. And the effectiveness was just as great for obese people as those with a healthy weight.

That had been a concern, as there is evidence the flu vaccine is less effective for people with obesity, said lead researcher Carmen Piernas-Sanchez, from the University of Oxford.

"This prompted us to look into COVID vaccines," she explained.

Based on the findings, the vaccines are similarly effective for people who are normal weight, overweight or obese. But, Piernas-Sanchez said, more research is still needed to understand why obesity appears to make people more vulnerable to becoming severely ill when they do contract COVID.

For now, she and other experts stressed the importance of vaccination, including booster shots.

"The vaccines aren't perfect, and you can still get COVID. But they are very effective against severe disease," said Dr. Aaron Glatt, chief of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau, in Oceanside, N.Y.

The latest study looked at the pre-Omicron era, but Glatt said the vaccines remain highly effective against severe COVID.

Dr. Lalitha Parameswaran, an infectious disease specialist at NYU Langone Hospital Brooklyn, agreed.

"Vaccination remains the most important method to avoid severe illness and death from COVID, and this has remained true in the Omicron era," Parameswaran said.

Booster doses, she added, offer protection against mild to moderate illness, and "further enhance the protective response to severe illness."

The findings, published recently in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology journal, are based on medical records from over 9 million British adults. Between December 2020 and November 2021, over 566,000 tested positive for COVID; about 33,800 were hospitalized, while just under 14,400 died.

Overall, the study found, people who received two doses of any COVID vaccine given in the United Kingdom  AstraZeneca, Pfizer or Moderna  were much less likely to fall seriously ill.

Vaccination cut the risk of hospitalization by almost 70% among overweight, obese and normal-weight adults, compared to their counterparts who were unvaccinated. There was a similar reduction in the risk of dying from COVID-19.

People who were underweight showed somewhat less protection: Vaccination lowered their risk of being hospitalized for COVID by half, and their risk of dying by 40%, the investigators found.

It's not clear why, according to Piernas-Sanchez. But she noted it's possible that some underweight people had health conditions, including cancer, that lower the immune response to vaccines.

The researchers also found that when vaccinated people did get COVID, those who were obese faced a greater risk of landing in the hospital or dying than people in the normal-weight range.

It's been recognized since early in the pandemic that obese people are at increased risk of severe COVID-19. Experts believe there are several reasons: Obesity can impair immune function and make people more prone to clotting and breathing problems, for example.

"Given the high effectiveness of the vaccines, the absolute number of severe cases was reduced massively," Piernas-Sanchez said. "But among the fewer severe cases that are happening, those with low or high body weights are at increased risks, compared with people of a healthy weight."

It all suggests that achieving a healthy weight will help protect people from severe COVID-19, Piernas-Sanchez said.

What about booster shots? In this study, few people of any weight got severely ill after a COVID booster dose.

But, the researchers said, more studies are needed to know whether booster doses erase the excess risk linked to obesity.

That said, all three experts advised people to get the recommended booster doses. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is advising a second booster shot for adults age 50 and older, and some younger people who are immune-compromised.

The study also found that underweight adults were less likely than everyone else to be vaccinated: About one-third were unvaccinated as of November 2021.

Again, the reasons are unknown. But the researchers speculate that public health messages, which emphasize the risks tied to obesity, might give thin people the idea that they have nothing to worry about.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on obesity and COVID.

SOURCES: Carmen Piernas-Sanchez, PhD, MSc, research lecturer, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, U.K.; Aaron Glatt, MD, chief, infectious diseases and hospital epidemiologist, Mount Sinai South Nassau, Oceanside, N.Y., and professor, medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City; Lalitha Parameswaran, MD, MPH, infectious disease specialist, NYU Langone Hospital Brooklyn, and clinical assistant professor, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York City; The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, June 30, 2022, online
The grinding two-plus years of the pandemic have yielded outsize benefits for one company  Pfizer  making it both highly influential and hugely profitable as COVID-19 continues to infect tens of thousands of people and kill hundreds each day.

Its success in developing COVID medicines  including essential work performed in Chesterfield  has given the drugmaker unusual weight in determining U.S. health policy. Based on internal research, the companys executives have frequently announced the next stage in the fight against the pandemic before government officials have had time to study the issue, annoying many experts in the medical field and leaving some patients unsure whom to trust.

Pfizers 2021 revenue was $81.3 billion, roughly double its revenue in 2020, when its top sellers were a pneumonia vaccine, the cancer drug Ibrance, and the fibromyalgia treatment Lyrica, which had gone off-patent.

Now its mRNA vaccine holds 70% of the U.S. and European markets. And its antiviral Paxlovid is the pill of choice to treat early symptoms of COVID. This year, the company expects to rake in more than $50 billion in global revenue from the two medications alone.

Paxlovids value to vaccinated patients isnt yet clear, and Pfizers COVID vaccine doesnt entirely prevent infections, although each booster temporarily restores some protection. Yet, while patients may recoil at the need for repeated injections  two boosters are now recommended for people 50 and older  the requirement is gold for investors.

Hopefully, we could be giving it annually and maybe for some groups that are high-risk more often, CEO Albert Bourla told investors this year. Then you have the treatment [Paxlovid] that will, lets say, resolve the issues of those that are getting the disease.

Just last week, the Biden administration agreed to buy another 105 million doses of Pfizers COVID vaccine for the fall booster campaign, paying $3.2 billion. At $30.47 a dose, its a significant premium over the $19.50-a-dose rate the government paid for the first 100 million. The vaccine is being modified to target early omicron variants, but newer variants are gaining dominance.

Because the virus keeps mutating and will be around for a long time, the market for Pfizers products wont go away. In wealthier countries, the public is likely to keep coming back for more, like diners at an all-you-can-eat restaurant, sated but never entirely satisfied.

The reliance on Pfizer products at each stage of the pandemic has steered the U.S. response, including critical public health decisions.

When last year Bourla suggested that a booster shot would soon be needed, U.S. public health officials later followed, giving the impression that Pfizer was calling the tune. Some public health experts and scientists worry these decisions were hasty, noting, for example, that although boosters with the mRNA shots produced by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech improve antibody protection initially, it generally doesnt last.

Demand for annual booster shots

Since January, Bourla has been saying that U.S. adults will probably all need annual booster shots, and senior FDA officials have indicated since April that they agree.

At a June 28 meeting of FDA advisers considering a potential fall vaccination campaign, Pfizer presented studies involving about 3,500 people showing that tweaks to its COVID vaccine allowed it to elicit more antibodies against the omicron variant that began circulating last December. But most of the advisers said the FDA should require the next vaccine to target an even newer omicron variant, known as BA.5.

That would mean more work and expense for Pfizer, which called on the FDA to enable it to make future changes to the COVID vaccine without human trials  similar to how annual influenza vaccines are approved. If such a process were implemented, responses to future waves could be substantially accelerated, said Kena Swanson, Pfizers vice president for viral vaccines.

FDA officials at the meeting did not immediately respond to the suggestion.

As societies abandon other efforts to control COVIDs spread, such as mask mandates and physical distancing, Pfizers prospects look even brighter, especially now that the company has brought out the first oral COVID treatment, Paxlovid.

People are going to get out there, Angela Hwang, president of Pfizer Biopharmaceuticals Group, told investors May 3. We know with all of that, infections are going to increase, and thats the role that Paxlovid can play.

During a recent investor call, a Pfizer official could spin the recent reports that the virus can hide from Paxlovid into good news, predicting that, as with the vaccine, patients may need multiple courses.

Immunocompromised patients may carry this virus for a very, very long time, Dr. Mikael Dolsten said in the investor call. And we see that area as a real new opportunity growth area for Paxlovid to do very well, where you may need to take multiple courses.

Lobbying to promote vaccination programs

Pfizer has spent handsomely to bolster its influence during the pandemic. Since early 2020, it has shelled out more than $25 million for in-house lobbying and payments to 19 lobbying firms, pushing for legislation to protect its products and promote more robust U.S. vaccination programs.

Pfizers donations to political candidates in the 2020 cycle were larger than those of any other drug company, totaling about $3.5 million, with the greatest share going to Democrats. Joe Biden got $351,000; Donald Trump just $103,000.

Unlike Moderna, Sanofi, Novavax, and Johnson & Johnson, which got billions of dollars in U.S. support, Pfizer did not seek government money to develop its vaccine, saying it would work independently.

Pfizer did benefit from $445 million the German government provided to BioNTech, Pfizers partner in developing the vaccine. And, in the end, Pfizer relied substantially on U.S. government logistical support, according to a new book by former Health and Human Services official Paul Mango.

Pfizer recorded $7.8 billion in U.S. revenue for its COVID vaccine in 2021. The government has options to buy 1.6 billion Pfizer vaccine doses and has so far bought 900 million of them, including 500 million purchased at not-for-profit prices to be donated to poor countries.

Pfizers terms in the contracts exclude many taxpayer protections. They deny the government any intellectual property rights and say that federal spending played no role in the vaccines development  even though National Institutes of Health scientists invented a key feature of Pfizers vaccine, said Robin Feldman, a patent law expert at the University of California.

The agreement could set a precedent, in which another company could cite Pfizers contracts to argue the government has surrendered any rights to an invention, she said.

The government also has agreed to buy about 20 million five-day courses of Paxlovid for $530 each.

Prices for the COVID drug and vaccine will go up once the pandemic period is over, Bourla said at a January event, to reflect the cutting-edge technology.

Pfizer spokesperson Sharon Castillo declined to respond to specific questions about Pfizers influence on pandemic policy. She released a statement saying that since Day 1 of this pandemic, we have been laser-focused on working collaboratively with all relevant stakeholders to bring to the world two medical breakthroughs. In doing so, we have moved at the speed of science, complied with the strict regulatory processes, and relied on our scientists expertise and manufacturing prowess.

There is little question that the company ripped a scientific home run in responding rapidly to meet the medical needs created by the pandemic. It used artificial intelligence to track the spread of the virus and find the best places to recruit volunteers for its vaccine trials and deployed rapid drug-screening tools to develop Paxlovid.

Why some vaccinologists are worried

Its success with the COVID vaccine has raised hopes for a Pfizer vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, a danger to babies and older adults. The company is also moving toward seeking licensure for shots that protect against Lyme disease and hospital infections.

Pfizer had long shunned the vaccine business, with its historically modest financial returns. It dropped out of human vaccine production in the late 1960s after the recall of its disastrous measles vaccine, which sickened scores of children after exposure to the virus caused unexpected reactions with antibodies stimulated by the shot. The company returned to the field in 2009 when it bought Wyeth, which was making a highly effective and uncommonly profitable vaccine against pneumonia and ear infections.

Now, Pfizer is a new kind of global powerhouse. In 2021 alone, the company hired nearly 2,400 people. We are a household name right now to billions of people, Bourla said in January. People are trusting the Pfizer vaccines.

The companys power worries some vaccinologists, who see its growing influence in a realm of medical decision-making traditionally led by independent experts.

During a recent investor call, analyst Evan Seigerman of BMO Capital Markets asked whether the world was kind of walking blindly into recommending boosters so frequently.

Data from Israel, which uses only Pfizers vaccine and has provided most of the studies that have led to vaccination booster recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggests that third and fourth doses of the mRNA vaccines increase antibody levels that quickly wane again. Added boosters saved some lives in the over-60 population, but the data is less clear about the benefit to younger adults.

When President Biden in September 2021 offered boosters to Americans  not long after Bourla had recommended them  Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia and a developer of a vaccine for an intestinal virus, wondered, Wheres the evidence you are at risk of serious disease when confronted with COVID if you are vaccinated and under 50?

Policies on booster recommendations for different groups are complex and shifting, Offit said, but the CDC, rather than Bourla and Pfizer, should be making them.

Were being pushed along, he said. The pharmaceutical companies are acting like public health agencies.
TUESDAY, July 5, 2022 (HealthDay News)  Doctor burnout and suicide are a growing concern, a new study finds.

We often overlook the physical health of our health care workers, but poor health can lead to difficulty performing tasks at work, which then leads to job stress and mental health issues, said corresponding author Dr. Kristen Kim, a resident in psychiatry at UC San Diego Health.

About 1 in 15 doctors experience suicidal thoughts, according to the study. It reviewed death investigation information from 200 physician suicides nationwide between 2003 and 2018.

Researchers identified six themes in the reports: inability to work due to deteriorating health; substance use that put employment at risk; relationship conflicts affecting work; the interplay of mental health and work-related issues; legal problems; and financial stress.

In the short term, the study said, doctors need better access to primary care services, as well as help with scheduling challenges and concerns about confidentiality.

In the long term, broader changes are needed to address workplace stress and poor physician self-care, the study said.

The unspoken culture of medicine encourages self-sacrifice, deferred needs and delayed rewards, Kim said. We always want to put our patients first, but healers cannot optimally heal unless they themselves are first whole.

She encouraged health care workers to take advantage of resources available to them, such as the UC San Diego Healer Education Assessment and Referral (HEAR) program. Recently endorsed by the U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on Health Worker Burnout, it provides access to confidential mental health counseling.

The authors added that health care systems and medical schools should provide more personal finance education and legal support. Cultivating a sense of safety and community among physicians is also important, they said.

There is a lot of work to be done, Kim said, but identifying and acknowledging the problem is always the first step towards a solution, and thats exactly what were doing.

The findings were published June 29 in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. A similar study in 2020 also examined the issue.

More information

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can provide help.

SOURCE: University of California, San Diego, news release, June 29, 2022
LINCOLN COUNTY  A woman was killed early Sunday morning after being struck by a vehicle on Highway 47 east of Brushy Ridge Lane.

The Missouri Highway Patrol identified the woman as Kailey Spencer, 33, of Troy, Missouri. She was a pedestrian and was struck around 1:30 a.m. by a 2015 Ram 1500 pickup truck driven by a 30-year-old man, who was not injured.

Lincoln County Ambulance District personnel pronounced Spencer dead at the scene at 3 a.m.

The scene of the crash is about two miles west of Winfield on Highway 47.
Updated at 3:45 p.m. Tuesday.

ST. LOUIS  A 17-year-old boy was shot and killed Monday afternoon in the city's Kingsway West neighborhood.

The boy was identified Monday as Makahyah Griffin. He lived in the same block, near the edge of the Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood, where he was killed.

The shooting happened just after 4 p.m. on July Fourth. Griffin traveled to a fire station in the 5200 block of Natural Bridge Avenue, authorities say, before he was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Police do not have a suspect in the killing.

At least 56 children have been injured or killed by gunfire in the St. Louis region this year, according to a Post-Dispatch tally.
A disabled woman has died after being hit repeatedly over the weekend by her 70-year-old brother, who was the womans court-ordered guardian and had grown frustrated taking care of her, authorities said.

Police on Tuesday identified the victim as Katherine Sokolich, 63, of the 900 block of Alpine Ridge Drive in unincorporated St. Louis County. Court documents in the probate case spell her first name Kathryn.

She died Sunday afternoon, police said, of injuries suffered in Saturday nights attack at the condo she shared with her brother.

On Sunday, St. Louis County prosecutors charged her brother, Anthony Sokolich, with first-degree assault. He is being held in lieu of $250,000 cash bail. Sokolich lives at the same Hickory Sound condominium as his sister did.

She had some disabilities and it appeared he was frustrated with taking care of her, County police Sgt. Tracy Panus told the Post-Dispatch on Tuesday morning.

Panus said prosecutors filed the assault charge on Sunday, before the sister died. Panus said she expects that charges will be amended now that the woman has died.

On Feb. 1, a St. Louis County probate judge found that Kathryn Sokolich had total incapacity and total disability; her brother was appointed guardian and conservator of her estate.

The judge said the sister was totally incapacitated and totally disabled by reason of (her) mental and/or physical condition and is unable to manage essential requirements for food, clothing, shelter, safety, or other care, and financial resources.

Anthony Sokolichs attorney in that guardian case, Sally Mills Topping, could not be reached Tuesday, and neither could Meredith P. Murphy, the attorney who represented the sister. Anthony Sokolich did not yet have an attorney listed for his criminal case.

The probate judge said the sisters condition required she be placed in a supervised living situation, which the brother would pick. The brother was ordered to give the court updates.

Last month, he apparently missed a deadline. The judge gave Anthony Sokoloch until this week, July 6, to file an inventory and appraisement in the estate. If he didnt meet that deadline, the judge warned, Anthony Sokolich could be cited and possibly removed as the one in charge of her estate.

At about 9 p.m. Saturday, Anthony Sokolich called 911. He asked the dispatcher to send an ambulance because his sister was unconscious after he hit her multiple times, St. Louis County police Officer Karl Streckfuss said in court papers.

Police found her unconscious with injuries to her face. At the hospital, doctors told police that the woman had suffered a severe brain bleed. Police said the brother admitted hitting her.
Police arrested a driver on suspicion of DWI after he fatally hit a pedestrian on the shoulder of a highway ramp in south St. Louis County late Monday, authorities said.

The Missouri Highway Patrol said Scott J. Drennen was struck by an SUV and killed just before midnight Monday. Drennen, 29, of Festus, died at the scene.

Police arrested the SUVs driver, a 39-year-old man from the St. Louis. He was cited for DWI resulting in death. The Post-Dispatch typically doesnt name suspects until prosecutors file charges.

The crash was reported at 11:53 p.m. Monday on southbound I-55 at the merge to Highway 67 and Interstate 270. The patrol said Drennen was walking on the left shoulder on the ramp from southbound I-55 to I-270.

A southbound 2018 Hyundai Kona drove onto the shoulder, hitting Drennan. The driver suffered moderate injuries and was taken to the St. Louis County jail, police said.
The Francis Howell School District is restarting its Lunch Heroes program after a two-year pause. The program allows people to donate money to buy meals for students who have exhausted their lunch accounts.

Donation programs help hungry children to concentrate on learning. And they will become more important because the pandemic-era federal aid that made free meals available to all public school students  regardless of family income  is ending, raising fears about the effects on families already struggling with rising food, housing and fuel costs.

Families across the country are facing a difficult reality of having to choose between feeding their kids or filling up their gas tank or purchasing medicine, said Vince Hall, chief government relations officer for Feeding America, a nonprofit network of food banks.

About 1 in 5 students in the Francis Howell district in St. Charles County qualifies for free or reduced-price meals. Before launching Lunch Heroes in 2017, the district had been accruing $10,000 in debt each year for unpaid lunches. School lunches cost about $50 a month per student.

The federal rules will revert to their pre-coronavirus pandemic status: Families who are eligible based on income will be required to apply for their children to receive free or reduced-price lunches. Schools in predominantly low-income areas will be allowed to continue serving breakfast and lunch to everyone for free.

Cost increases are expected in more affluent districts. The Grant School District in Fairview Heights will raise its prices this fall to $3.50 for lunch and $2 for breakfast.

Since waiving the eligibility requirement during the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees school meal programs, has seen the number of participating students soar.

During this past school year, about 30 million kids a day were getting free meals, compared with 20 million before the pandemic, said Cindy Long, administrator of the USDA Food and Nutrition Service.

At summer meal distributions, 1.3 billion meals and snacks were given out nationwide in fiscal year 2020 at a cost of $4.1 billion. Thats an eightfold increase from the previous year in terms of meals and cost, according to the USDA.

A bill passed in Congress last month and signed by President Joe Biden aims to keep the rules around summer meal programs as they have been during the pandemic, allowing sites to operate in any community with need, rather than just where theres a high concentration of low-income children, and offer to-go meals. It also provides flexibility for schools to make substitutions for certain types of food without being fined if they run into supply chain problems.

School districts nationwide are struggling to provide sufficient and healthy food choices for their students because of supply chain problems, according to the Virginia-based School Nutrition Association.

Manufacturers have discontinued or raised prices on products including low-sodium chicken breasts, low-fat milk and yogurt, and whole-grain bread, according to a June report from the group.

For the next school year, a handful of states have taken it upon themselves to keep school meals free for all students.

California and Maine made universal meals permanent last year; Vermont is continuing free meals for all public school students for another year using surplus state education funding. In Massachusetts, House lawmakers included $110 million in the budget to extend universal school meals for a year, but the Senate version did not. Now both versions are before a conference committee. Colorado will ask voters this November whether to fund free universal breakfast and lunch at schools.

Not only do free universal meals provide nutrition so kids can learn, they also provide some reliability for kids and families during a challenging time, Vermont state Rep. Karen Dolan said. They remove the stigma of being a free or reduced-price lunch kid and the embarrassment of families who cant pay their kids lunch accounts, officials said.

Blythe Bernhard of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
JEFFERSON CITY  A recently formed silica sand mining company has won a key state permit for its site in Ste. Genevieve County, but a county health ordinance remains in the companys way.

On Thursday, the same day the Missouri Department of Natural Resources granted NexGen Silica a surface mining permit, the company sued the Ste. Genevieve County Commission and the health department in Ste. Genevieve County Circuit Court in an attempt to strike down the county ordinance.

The actions last week were the latest developments in a monthslong fight between NexGen Silica and residents who live near the proposed mine.

Opponents have raised concerns over possible effects to local wells and on air quality in and around the site, which is within miles of public lands such as Hawn State Park.

The residents group, called Operation Sand, had pushed the County Commission to approve the health ordinance in May to stymie the mine proposal.

One of the leaders of Operation Sand, Jillian Ditch, said Tuesday she wasnt surprised the Department of Natural Resources issued a surface mining permit to NexGen.

Operation Sand and myself, we believe in the health ordinance, Ditch said. We know that its sound and valid and it will be upheld in court.

Circuit Judge Timothy Inman was assigned to the case on Friday but recused himself the same day.

The companys 46-page lawsuit argues the ordinance is preempted by the Missouri statutes, was passed using a defective and unlawful procedure, and is unconstitutional.

It says the Ordinance prohibits Nexgen from constructing and conducting its sand mine operation.

Nexgen Silica intends to produce frack sand and/or industrial sands, moving the materials for transport on the Mississippi River at Ste. Genevieve, the company said in April.

While frack sand is used in natural gas drilling, industrial sand has a wide range of applications, from glass to computer chips, Clark Bollinger, general manager for Nexgen Silica, said at the time.

The company and the Department of Natural Resources held an hourslong public meeting on May 19 where residents and other opponents aired concerns, including around light and noise pollution.

The director does not have jurisdiction over all concerns raised by the public during the review of an application for industrial mineral mining activity, Larry Lehman, director of the Land Reclamation Program, wrote to Roger Faulkner, the registered agent for NexGen, on Thursday.

Lehman said the states permit did not supersede any local requirements the company must meet. The proposed mine is about an hour south of St. Louis.

The Permittee is required to comply with all applicable environmental laws and regulations enforced by the Department, Lehman told the company.

The DNR responded to resident concerns in an attachment to the land reclamation permit it issued, including potential damage to public lands.

At one point, the DNR says the Missouri Department of Conservation provided a Heritage Review Report of the site. The state said there were no records of federal or state endangered species within the proposed area.

But the Department of Conservation did have records for 53 species  ranging from uncommon but not rare to critically imperiled in the state  within 5 miles of the site.

This does not indicate these species are also present on the site, but it is not certain they arent, the document said.

The department also sought to address watershed concerns.

Nexgens proposed site sits within the Establishment Creek Watershed, as does Hickory Canyons Natural Area, the document said. Pickle Springs, Hawn State Park and Horton Farms Conservation Area are all within the River aux Vases Watershed.

This should mean water on Nexgens property will not drain towards Pickle Springs or Hawn, the state said. While Hickory Canyons is within the same watershed, there is a ridge that separates the two properties. Runoff from each property should flow to their own individual branches of Establishment Creek.

The initial permitted site is on about 115 acres, according to the state, though the total mine plan area is 249 acres.

The company must also secure additional state permits.

The Department of Natural Resources, in a fact sheet on the proposed project, said NexGen could not engage in any activities covered by the Land Reclamation Program permit without a wastewater permit.

Since Nexgen has stated an intent to process the sandstone on-site, they will also need a permit from the departments Air Pollution Control Program, the state said.
SKOPJE, North Macedonia (AP)  European Council President Charles Michel urged North Macedonia on Tuesday to back a French-proposed compromise on ending a dispute with neighboring Bulgaria that's blocking the country's long-delayed European Union accession bid.

Violent protests erupted in North Macedonia's capital, Skopje, where demonstrators tried to storm government buildings, after French President Emmanuel Macron announced the proposal  which many in the small Balkan country find controversial  last week. Macron said at a NATO summit in Madrid that a compromise solution to lift Bulgaria's opposition to its neighbor's EU aspirations had been achieved, without giving details.

A few hundred people took part in a new protest late Tuesday in Skopje against the French proposal. Held during a rainstorm, it ended peacefully.

North Macedonias president, Stevo Pendarovski, and the government have backed the proposed deal, which calls for the country to acknowledge in its constitution the existence of an ethnic Bulgarian minority. It would also provide for regular reviews on how the bilateral dispute is being addressed, which could potentially hamper North Macedonia's future accession course.

But the center-right main opposition VMRO-DPMNE party, many international law experts and civic organizations say the proposal favors Bulgarian demands which dispute their own country's views of regional history, language, identity and heritage.

As an EU member, Bulgaria has the power to block its neighbor's accession bid.

At a joint news conference Tuesday with North Macedonias prime minister, Dimitar Kovachevski, Michel stressed that the French proposal is too important an opportunity to be missed.

Michel said that if North Macedonia accepts the proposal, then the path for the country to start EU accession talks could open within days.

Kovachevski reiterated his support for the balanced proposal," adding that "our aim is to start membership talks.

On a third day of mass protests late Monday in Skopje, protesters threw stones, eggs and bottles at the government offices and parliament building in downtown Skopje. Police prevented the crowd of several thousand people from forcing their way into government offices. Four police were injured in front of parliament.

Bulgaria has already formally accepted the French proposal, which now requires the backing of North Macedonia's parliament.

Bulgaria insists that North Macedonia formally recognizes that its language has Bulgarian roots, acknowledges a Bulgarian minority and quashes hate speech against Bulgaria.

North Macedonia has been a candidate for EU membership for 17 years. The country received a green light in 2020 to begin accession talks, but no date for the start of the negotiations has been set.

Before Bulgaria raised its objections, North Macedonia settled a decades-old dispute with another neighbor and EU member, Greece, to forward its aim of joining the 27-nation bloc. As a result it added the word North to its previous name, Macedonia, which Greece had complained implied claims on its own territory, history and cultural heritage.

The dispute with Bulgaria has also stalled the progress of another Balkan country, Albania, toward EU membership because the bloc is treating the pair as a political package. North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Albania are all NATO members.
LUGANO, Switzerland (AP)  A top U.S. diplomat on Tuesday urged allies of Ukraine to help the war-battered country meet its immediate and urgent needs  not only longer-term rebuilding  as scores of countries wrapped up a two-day conference aimed at helping Ukraine recover from Russia's war, when it ends one day.

Scott Miller, the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, added a dose of urgency to the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano, at which the Ukrainian prime minister a day earlier presented a $750 billion plan to help his country both recover now  where possible  as well as in the immediate aftermath of the war and over the long term.

Many attendees pointed out that efforts were likely to take many years, and rebuilding would need to take place in several phases. Some called for support for Ukraine along the lines of the U.S. Marshall Plan for Europe after World War II  hinting of a big long-term project.

While we recognize the importance of preparing for Ukraines future, all of us must also deliver on our commitments to provide Ukraine its immediate and urgent needs, said Miller, one of many government envoys who decried Russia's war and detailed their support for Ukraine.

Some, however, cautioned that quick fixes were unlikely.

I really understand that we want to be ready overnight  to start tomorrow," Swiss President Ignazio Cassis told reporters. "But we clearly declare: It is the first step of a long journey.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, flanked by Cassis, cautioned that his government would carefully select immediate projects for rebuilding places like schools, hospitals and other infrastructure as the war rages on because Russian forces could simply "destroy it again.

It will be an unfinished process, Shmyhal said, alluding to a broader fast recovery in a second phase. "So we should wait for the finish of war actions, and then begin this fast recovery.

He voiced hopes to lock down and utilize an estimated $300 billion to $500 billion in Russian-owned assets that have been frozen in many Western banks to help pay for Ukraine's reconstruction. Such money could complement cash from Ukraine's own  heavily strained budget, as well as support from allies abroad.

Its very important for the civilized world to give the signal to Russia, as aggressor  and to other potential aggressors in the future  to understand that unprovoked aggression should be paid by this aggressor," he said. Russia should pay for this recovery, he added.

Cassis, however, pointed to the legal complexities of such an undertaking to wrest such Russian funds, saying the right of property is a fundamental right  is a human right. Switzerland has frozen 6.3 billion Swiss francs (about $6.5 billion) in Russian assets, while the Swiss Bankers Association estimates 150-200 billion francs worth of total Russian-owned assets are held in Swiss financial institutions.

The Swiss leader said fundamental rights can at times be violated  as was done in some cases during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic  but we have to create the legal base for such moves first.

You have to ensure the citizen that is protected against the power of the state, Cassis said.

A final document dubbed as the Lugano Declaration laid out goals to help Ukraine build back better  which it comes to government transparency, respect for the environment, and fighting corruption that has plagued the country since it split from Russia after the end of the Soviet Union three decades ago.

Many said the European Union's plan to take in Ukraine as a member one day could help underpin that reform process.

Follow APs coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden on Tuesday bestowed the nation's highest military honor to four Army soldiers for heroism during the Vietnam War, bravery that he said had not diminished even with the passage of time.

Biden presented the Medal of Honor to Staff Sgt. Edward N. Kaneshiro, Spc. Five Dwight W. Birdwell, Spc. Five Dennis M. Fujii, and retired Maj. John J. Duffy. Speaking at a ceremony in the White House East Room, Biden praised their heroism, noting that many like them don't receive the full recognition they deserve.

Today, we're setting the record straight. We're upgrading the awards of four soldiers who performed acts of incredible heroism during the Vietnam conflict, Biden said.

Its just astounding when you hear what each of them have done, he said. They went far above and beyond the call of duty. Its a phrase always used but ... it takes on life when you see these men.

Addressing the three living soldiers and relatives of Kaneshiro, who is deceased, the president said, I'm proud to finally award our highest military recognition, the Medal of Honor, to each of you.

Biden noted that more than 50 years had passed since the jungles of Vietnam where, as young men, these soldiers first proved their mettle. But time has not diminished their astonishing bravery, their selflessness in putting the lives of others ahead of their own and the gratitude that we as a nation owe them.

Kaneshiro, killed in action by hostile gunfire in Vietnam in 1967, received his honor posthumously for a Dec. 1, 1966 raid where his unit came under fire by North Vietnamese troops. His actions were credited with helping his unit withdraw from the village where they were fighting. Kaneshiro was born and raised in Hawaii, a son of Japanese immigrants.

Birdwell was honored for actions helping to head off an assault and evacuate wounded at Tan Son Nhut Airbase near Saigon on Jan. 31, 1968, despite injuries to his torso and face, during an opening salvo in what is known as the Tet Offensive, an especially bloody period of the war.

Birdwell, a member of the Cherokee Nation and a lawyer in Oklahoma City, had received a Silver Star for his actions. Biden said it took Birdwell's commanding officer decades to realize that Birdwell had not received the proper recognition and took steps, even in retirement, to make this day possible.

At long last, long last, your story is being honored as it should have been always, Biden told Birdwell.

Fujii received a Medal of Honor for actions over four days in February 1971 treating wounded and directing air strikes against enemy positions after his air ambulance was forced to crash land.

Duffy was recognized for leading troops who came under ambush after their commander was killed in action, repelling attackers and evacuating wounded, despite his own injuries. Duffy went on to become an author and once was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

He is the definition of a warrior poet, Biden said.
BEIJING (AP)  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with leaders in Mongolia on Tuesday during a trip to Asia to seek support amid his countrys diplomatic isolation by the West and punishing sanctions leveled over its invasion of Ukraine.

Lavrov met with Mongolian Foreign Minister Battsetseg Batmunkh and paid a courtesy call on President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, Mongolian state media reported.

Mongolia is a landlocked nation sandwiched between Russia and China, and has sought to maintain friendly relations with both neighbors while also cultivating close ties with the U.S., whose relations with Moscow and Beijing have become increasingly fraught.

Mongolian and Russian state media gave no details of any specific discussions about the Ukraine conflict, while emphasizing strong bilateral relations. The two sides have signed a series of trade agreements, and a pipeline carrying Russian natural gas to China is being built through Mongolian territory.

Reaffirming his commitment to strengthening bilateral relations, (Lavrov) expressed readiness to cooperate with Mongolia in all aspects," Mongolia's official Montsame news agency said of Lavrov's meeting with Khurelsukh.

Ukraine and Russia's rejection of Western criticism were major themes of Lavrov's public comments.

He was quoted by the Russian state news agency Tass as saying that the West is seeking to turn Ukraine into an openly Russophobic, neo-Nazi state, a military foothold that would threaten Russias security.

He said he had informed the Mongolians in detail about what the Kremlin calls a special military operation in Ukraine.

We are interested in making the facts about how the representatives of the Kyiv regime behaved and continue to behave in Ukraine available to the broad world community," Lavrov said.

Unfortunately the West is doing everything to block the work of the media, which provide objective information about what is happening, he said, without offering any evidence.

Russia's government has blocked access to multiple independent domestic and foreign news outlets in the country over their coverage of the war in Ukraine and has forbidden its citizens from describing its aggression as an invasion.

Russia has falsely called the war a campaign to de-Nazify Ukraine  a country with a democratically elected Jewish president who wants closer ties with the West.

Lavrov was to travel to Vietnam later Tuesday for a two-day visit, according to the Vietnamese government's official website.

He is to meet on Wednesday with Vietnamese leaders including Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

The visit comes as the two countries mark 10 years since they expanded their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership. Russia was a close backer of Hanoi's Communist government during the Vietnam War against the capitalist south and its American and other Western allies.

Later in the week, Lavrov is scheduled to attend a meeting in Indonesia of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 leading rich and developing countries.
A 2024 ticket of former Vice President Mike Pence and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney might just be the thing that saves the Republican Party and our republic. Since Donald Trumps descent on the golden escalator in 2015, there have been far too many missed off-ramps for Republican officials who did not want Trump to be the GOP presidential candidate in 2016. Next year might just be the last one of those off ramps. A Pence-Cheney ticket would restore trust in Americas democratic institutions and begin the strengthening of the political party structure within the GOP.

Debating whether Trumps popularity is waning within the partys voter base is futile. Trumps approval is not decreasing in any meaningful way and, for the purposes of this argument, it doesnt really matter. This is about party elites finally taking back control of their party from their radical constituents. Will they do it? Probably not because theyre too afraid, but heres an assertion for how and why they should.

The Republican Party elites and party bosses missed their window to take Trump out in 2016. Its not that they didnt know what would happen. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tweeted on May 3, 2016: If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed  and we will deserve it. Graham had the foresight to know what would happen if the Republican base voter took control of the party.

Republicans deserve to be taught a lesson and be punished electorally for putting party over country, but that doesnt seem likely. Many key statewide elections will undoubtedly go the GOPs way in key gubernatorial and secretary-of-state races. And many of those Republican winners may be untrustworthy with the keys to our democracy.

Republicans state that while they may not have liked Trumps tweets, they liked his policies. A Pence-Cheney ticket would provide stable leadership along with traditional Republican values and policies.

On June 16, conservative Judge J. Michael Luttig testified before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, saying, Donald Trump and his allies are a clear and present danger to American democracy. To this very day, the former president, his allies and supporters, pledge that in the presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor  were to lose that election, that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election.

While a clear and present danger to American democracy was the takeaway headline, what Luttig wrote in his written testimony was even more powerful for my argument. Luttig emphasized the Republican Party leaderships need to go first in prioritizing the conservation of Americas democracy. In order to end these wars that are draining the lifeblood from our country, a critical mass of our two parties political leaders is needed. This number needs to include a critical mass of leaders from the former presidents political party.

Many state parties have been infiltrated by Trumpian officials. But certaintly there are plenty of silent, establishment Republicans in each state as well. These elites need to be honest about Trumps ongoing threat and act responsibly. This is the critical mass that Luttig references. If the Republican Party is going to save itself, it must act ahead of 2024. If not, I believe, its RIP GOP.

Pence and Cheney are not particularly popular with the Trumpian base of Republican voters. Some, as we are learning, even wanted Pence to die by hanging from a gallows for not having overturned a free and fair election. That said, the Commonwealth of Virginia showed the rest of the Republican establishment the way to win with sane candidates. Virginia bypassed the traditional state-run Republican primary in 2021 and opted for an unassembled convention. Approximately 30,000 pre-registered Republicans voted at approximately 40 sites across the commonwealth. By bypassing the primary, traditionalist conservative Glenn Youngkin won the Republican nomination for governor in Virginia. He then went on to beat Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe.

Many consider Pence to have been too quiet during the Jan. 6 select committee hearings. I wanted him to testify. But the fact remains that despite enormous pressure while he was in office, Pence maintained his commitment to the oath he swore to the Constitution. I, for one, will be forever grateful for that.

Cheney also continues to reassert her allegiance to the Constitution. She told an audience during a Wyoming candidates debate: We are now embracing a cult of personality. I wont be part of that, and I will always stand for my oath and stand for the truth.

All Americans, no matter their party affiliation, should demand that candidates seeking the highest office in the land put the Constitution and the rule of law above all.

Given the alternative of either Trump or Ron DeSantis versus Pence, theres no contest in my view. Pence might not be a first choice, but he is a safe choice for our democracy.

Lynn Schmidt is a Post-Dispatch columnist and Editorial Board member. lynnschmidtrn@outlook.com On Twitter: @lynnschmidtrn
Every mass shooting in America is a tragedy, but the one that killed seven people near Chicago Monday was especially jolting, as it combined two singularly American phenomena: the nations annual celebration of its independence and the chronic scourge of gun violence at a level unheard of in the rest of the advanced world. Why was a 21-year-old man who had posted violent imagery glamorizing mass shootings able to legally buy a weapon of war and at least 70 rounds of ammunition, and take it to a rooftop over a July 4 parade? That ludicrous scenario was as uniquely American as the parade itself.

The bipartisan, better-than-nothing gun-safety measure President Joe Biden signed into law late last month might help prevent future shootings like this when its fully implemented (it isnt yet), because it will create expanded background-check requirements for gun buyers between ages 18 and 21. But the attack also dramatizes, in several ways, what remains to be done.

For example, the reason authorities were able to so quickly identify the alleged shooter was that the AR-15-style rifle he left behind was legally purchased, with a serial number that allowed federal authorities, working with local police, to trace it to the seller and, from there, obtain the buyers identity. But the new federal law doesnt close a loophole that allows buyers to avoid federally licensed dealers who keep such records, instead buying anonymously from private sellers in states that dont impose universal background checks.

Had the shooter bought his gun in Missouri, for example, he could have bought it anonymously from a private dealer who wouldnt be required to keep records of the transaction. Even tracing the serial number might have been a problem in Missouri because such tracing is done by the feds. Missouris deranged new statute declaring federal gun restrictions unenforceable here has local police officials hesitant to work with federal law enforcement at any level for fear of inadvertently violating that law.

Nationwide restrictions on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines  like the restrictions on fully automatic weapons that have worked well for decades  could prevent some of these shootings, as could truly universal background checks and a nationwide red-flag law to replace the current patchwork of state laws.

There is no constitutional impediment to reasonable gun restrictions, as even the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia specified in his role as the courts most adamant Second Amendment enthusiast. There are only political impediments, imposed by an extremist minority of lawmakers and judges who block even the most commonsense reforms.

The ultimate reform must start at the voting booth. Until that happens, America will continue to be held hostage every day  even on its birthday  by those who insist, wrongly and grotesquely, that nonstop carnage is the price of freedom.
Norway has become the latest in a long list of dissatisfied customers for the Airbus NH90 helicopters produced since 1995. NH90 entered service in 2007. Norway was one of the first customers, ordering 14 NH90s in 2001 for naval and coast guard duties. Airbus agreed to deliver these by 2008. Airbus was not able to deliver on time and delays continued to the present. Norway wants to cancel the deal and get a refund for payments already made. This is nothing new for the NH90 and these disputes tend to eventually be settled before ending up in a very newsworthy trial with more testimony and detail than Airbus wants to see publicized.

The Norway nightmare comes after an even more embarrassing example last year when Australia decided to retire its 48 NH90 helicopters early and replace them with cheaper and more reliable American UH-60s. Australia called its 48 NH90s the MRH90. The use of a variant on NH90 is common among many customers for helicopters. Six of the Australian helicopters were the Airbus MRH-90 ASW (anti-submarine warfare) helicopter. These are being replaced by six more American MH-60R helicopters for ASW work. The navy already has some MH-60Rs and that experience reinforced the UH-60 reputation for being cheaper to operate (per flight hour) as well as cheaper to buy than the NH90.

The new UH/MH-60s for Australia will join 29 AH-64E Apache gunships also ordered to replace 22 Airbus Tiger gunships that began arriving in 2004. Australia decided to replace the Tigers in 2016, for many of the same reasons that made the MRH-90s expendable. It took longer to select a new gunship, even though there were only three viable candidates; the AH-64E and smaller and cheaper models like the American AH-1Z and Italian A129. The only other producer of military transport and gunship helicopters is Russia and these are rarely considered by Western buyers because of performance issues.

The Tiger costs about as much as the AH-64, a heavier (ten-ton) gunship that has been in service since the 1980s. The six-ton Tiger has a crew of two and a max speed of 280 kilometers an hour. It cruises at 230 kilometers an hour and usually stays in the air about three hours per sortie. It is armed with a 30mm automatic cannon, 70mm rocket pods (19 rockets per pod), and various types of air-to-ground missiles (eight Hellfire types at once). It can also carry four Mistral anti-aircraft missiles.

The first twelve Australian AH-64s will arrive in 2026 and the rest by 2028. The AH-64E is the latest iteration of the famous tank buster gunship which has been used by the U.S. Army since 1984 when the AH-64A entered service. So far about 2,400 Apaches have been delivered to customers in various versions. The latest model, the AH-64E, entered service in 2011 and attracted many export customers, including India, Saudi Arabia and Britain. The AH-64 is a heavily armed and armored attack helicopter with a maximum takeoff weight of 11.5 tons. Efforts to develop a replacement for Apache have had a difficult time coming up with a new gunship that is worth the cost of developing to replace the constantly upgraded Apache. For that reason, production of Apache is expected to continue until at least 2040 and possibly even 2050. The Apache of 2021 is a much different and better helicopter than the original 1986 model.

The basic shape of the helicopter gunship has not changed since the AH-1 first appeared in the 1960s. As China has discovered, designing and building helicopters is even more difficult than developing jet fighters and commercial airliners. Usable helicopters did not appear until 1945 but widely useful military and civilian models did not appear until the late 1950s when the UH-1 entered service.

Airbus became a serious competitor for American commercial air transport manufacturers but was less successful with their Eurocopter division, which incorporated French, German and Spanish helicopter manufacturers. There are still British and Italian firms competing for military and civilian sales. Eurocopter took on the UH-60/AH-64 dominance of the military helicopter market and largely failed to match the success of the American manufacturers.

The MH-60R and MRH90 are similar in capabilities but the MRH90 costs about 20 percent more. MH-60R entered service in 1985 and is considered more reliable than the MRH90, which entered service in 2007 and had a lot of equipment and reliability problems, some of them still unresolved. Despite that 471 have been built so far. The UH-60 model has been produced in large numbers so far, with more than 4,000 in service or on order.

In 2010 Australia received eight of the 50 NH90 helicopters it ordered, and was not happy with the aircraft's performance. The Australian experience was similar to what the Germans and other customers encountered with their NH90s. The overall complaint is poor reliability, design, and durability. Many more spare parts must be stocked than was originally planned. There have been long waits to get needed spares from the manufacturer NHIndustries, which is a French division Airbus that develops and produces military helicopters.

The German Army conducted an evaluation of their new NH90 helicopters, and were not pleased. Their conclusion was that, for combat missions, another model helicopter should be used whenever possible. A particular problem was the lack of ground clearance. The NH-90 can't land on a piece of ground with any obstacles higher than 16 cm (6.4 inches). That makes many battlefield landing zones problematic. That assumes you can even get on a NH90 and find a seat. The passenger seats cannot hold more than 110 kg (242 pounds). Combat equipment for German troops weighs 25 kg (55 pounds), meaning any soldier weighing more than 85 kg (187 pounds) must take stuff off, put it on the floor, then quickly put it back on before exiting. Then there's the floor, it's not very sturdy, and combat troops using the helicopter for a short while cause damage that takes the helicopter out of action for repairs. Worse, there is the rear ramp. It cannot support troops carrying all their equipment, making it useless for rapid exits of combat troops. There is not enough room in the passenger compartment for door gunners. There are no strap downs for larger weapons, like portable rocket launchers or anti-aircraft missiles. The passenger compartment also does not allow for carrying cargo and passengers at the same time. The winch is not sturdy enough for commandos to perform fast roping operations. And so on. The Germans were not pleased with the NH-90.

Germany was one of the first customers for the NH-90s and plans to procure 122. It may take until 2030 to complete that purchase. The ten-ton NH-90 can carry 21 troops or twelve casualties on stretchers, plus the crew of two. It first flew in 1995.

Europe already has several veteran helicopter manufacturers, as does the United States. Airbus wants to be competitive across a wide range of aircraft and has found that experience is more expensive, time-consuming than expected. Their recent experience in Australia and Norway are examples of how initial success is difficult to sustain.
South Asia is becoming a growing problem for China. India (officially) and a growing number of Pakistanis (unofficially) see China as a major threat. Currently China continues to move more troops to the Indian border to confront Indian forces and slowly advance into Indian territory. China has not been idle in areas where there is little direct military confrontation. Along the Indian border Chinese troops and engineers continue building roads, structures and fortifications. Lately the border conflicts with China have remained quiet, mainly because China has more urgent problems to deal with. One of those problems does impact India. China backs the military government in Myanmar (Burma). India has a 1,4oo kilometer border with Burma in the northeast and long had problems with tribal separatist rebels there, on both sides of the border. India finally worked out peace deals with all their rebels before the pro-India elected government in Burma was ousted in February 2021. The Burmese army war with northern tribes resumed because the army is seen as the main reason for all the corruption and illegal Chinese economic activity in the north. Fourteen months later there is a lot more fighting in northern Burma and a lot of refugees fleeing to India. The Indian government has ordered border police to turn away or forcibly return such refugees to Burma. Local state governors refuse to enforce those orders, if only because so many of the refugees have kin in India. Many of the refugees belong to the same tribe that straddles the border. A lot of non-tribal Burmese entered as well and India sought to stop those refugees to avoid more trouble with China. The state governors protected these refugees as well. In some cases, separatist tribal gunmen in India used force to block Indian government efforts to curb the flow of refugees. The federal government has not escalated this dispute, in part because the local resistance is an adequate excuse for allowing the Burma refugees in despite protests from China. The Myanmar military government is sustained by China, which provides all the fuel, bombs, shells and other munitions needed to keep the fight going. The army infantry are reluctant to fight when they encounter armed resistance, which continues in the tribal areas. The urban rebels are slowly arming but still depend on a lot of demonstrations by unarmed protestors. So far, Burmese soldiers and police have killed nearly 2,000 people and imprisoned over 14,000. Aside from China, most nations in the region want the military government to free the elected and appointed officials of the overthrown government. Without Chinese support the Burmese generals could not have sustained their coup and might not even have attempted it without assurances of Chinese support. India and other nations bordering China see the Burma coup as a threat.

China is also running into problems with anti-Chinese attitudes in Pakistan. Violence in southwest Pakistan (Baluchistan province) escalated when Pakistan and China agreed in 2013 to build the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) project. This cooperation began a decade earlier when China agreed to expand the port of Gwadar in Baluchistan. Many Pakistanis, not just the Baluchis, saw such cooperation with China, especially the CPEC, as a threat to Pakistani independence. This was made clear in 2021 when the Pakistani Navy and Coast Guard refused to give up 47 hectares (116 hectares) at the site of the expanded Gwadar port project. The commanders of the Navy and Coast Guard were making a public protest against the policy of being so economically and militarily dependent on China. This opposition has been growing within the military leadership, who see this dependence on China as a surrender of independence which also puts Pakistan at risk of becoming collateral damage if China decides to fight India and its Western and East Asian allies for control of the Indian Ocean. The Pakistani naval officers have done the math and believe China has little chance of prevailing against that kind of coalition. Worse is the fact that Pakistan is becoming so economically and diplomatically dependent on their northern neighbor. This public protest, which the Chinese demanded be resolved quickly, began in late 2020 and surfaced in 2021 because the Chinese were visibly upset at such insubordination. The growing opposition within Pakistan, and the Pakistani military towards the increasing brutality of the military against elected officials, critical media and anyone who opposes the military getting its way, also exists in the military. Not just among junior members but among some senior commanders.

The military decided over a decade ago that Pakistan should be willing to pay a high price to get CPEC done because it meant Pakistan had an ally against Iran and even Western powers that might have some violent disagreement with Pakistan. China addressed that by pointing out that China does not have allies, just powerful trading partners (the West in general) and client states (like Pakistan). That has always been the Chinese outlook and it hasnt changed.

While China is picking up most of the $60 billion cost of CPEC, it means that China owns many of those new economic assets, especially the new port of Gwadar. In early 2017 China and Pakistan signed an agreement granting China a 40-year lease on new Chinese-built facilities at Gwadar. The lease granted China most (over 80 percent) of the revenue brought in by port and free trade zone operations. China usually imports its own workers from China to do most of the work on projects like this. By 2022 China had nearly a hundred thousand foreigners, most of them Chinese, in Pakistan, some of them with their families. The easiest way to provide protection is to have most of them live in a heavily guarded and restricted access area. Gwadar is a key part of CPEC and it has the misfortune of being in a province (Baluchistan) that does not want to be part of Pakistan. China and the Pakistanis try to ignore this by not reporting on non-Islamic terror attacks on CPEC construction projects. The government has long been accused of suppressing news of tribal separatists in Baluchistan attacking government targets and especially those related to CPEC. The separatists claim they regularly carry out attacks on CPEC construction projects, but most of their attacks are still directed at Pakistani security forces and government facilities.

Because of the security threat to Gwadar, China demanded that Pakistan build 30 kilometers of three-meter-high security fencing near the two main entrances to Gwadar. In addition, the Chinese installed 500 security cameras within the perimeter of the port. Pakistanis fear the entire port area will eventually be fenced off to protect what is described by locals as a Chinese naval base guarded by Chinese and Pakistani troops. Since early 2019 Pakistan has been responding to Chinese complaints about lack of security, and agreed to add more troops to the security forces already assigned to guard over 300 Chinese projects in Pakistan and the 25,000 foreigners (mainly Chinese) who were then working on them. The security force had over 15,000 personnel with 9,000 being soldiers and the rest local para-military forces. This will be in addition to the special naval force that protects navy facilities in Gwadar and the waters off Pakistan.

In mid-2017 Pakistan also agreed to build a walled and restricted residential area near the port of Gwadar to house up to half a million people, most of them Chinese that will eventually be working in Pakistan. This will include some military personnel and a lot of family members. Chinese construction work on Gwadar port facilities is visible to anyone on the ground or flying by, and it was noticed that some features of the new port and airport facilities are clearly intended for military use. India has long claimed that China (despite denials) was planning to use Gwadar as a base for Chinese warships and naval aircraft. Pakistan never had a problem with the Chinese military using Gwadar as it helped keep local troublemakers out. Pakistan has assured China that there would be no terrorist violence against Chinese working on upgrading the port of Gwadar and land links north to China. The military now has to assure their Chinese overlords that dissent with the Pakistani military will be suppressed as well. That is not working and the violence against the military and Chinese in Baluchistan continues to escalate.

June 21, 2022: A South Korean built SLV (Satellite launch vehicle) rocket put a South Korean built satellite in orbit for the first time. This makes South Korea the seventh nation to do this with locally built SLVs and satellites. The satellite put into orbit increases the accuracy and reliability of GPS location data used by aircraft. This is particularly important for South Korea because North Korea has tested GPS jammers near the border that disrupt GPS service for aircraft. So South Korea did something about it, which improves flight safety near North Korea and annoys North Korean military planners.

It took South Korea less than a decade to design and build this technology. In 2017 South Korea conducted a successful test of a locally made solid fuel ballistic missile with a range of 800 kilometers. This enables South Korea to hit targets anywhere in North Korea with weapons (ballistic missiles) that North Korea is not equipped to stop. This came 18 months after the announcement that a ballistic missile with a range of 500 kilometers was successfully tested. That test ended decades of restrictions on South Korean ballistic missile development. In 2012 the United States halted its efforts to restrict South Korean missile development. The South Koreans tried for over a decade to develop warmer relations with North Korea and all efforts failed. The 2010 North Korea attacks (using artillery and a torpedo that sank a warship) on South Korea changed a lot of attitudes in South Korea, and the United States. North Korea is still a big problem but since 2010 South Korea has been free to try whatever it thinks will work. Currently has over a hundred ballistic and cruise missiles aimed at North Korea This has unnerved North Korea, which still hasnt built a functional SLV, instead using ballistic missiles designed to deliver warheads, not insert one or more satellites into a precise orbit. North Korea improvises a lot because it has to and thats why North Korea is still trying to do what South Korea did today. North Korea tries to block news of South Korean successes from reaching North Koreas. That has proven impossible in the Internet Age but the news is delayed. South Korea media are aware of the audience in the north and often announce achievements like the successful satellite and SLV program as a Korean achievement. Over the past decade there have been more South Korean technology advances that are often described as Korean, deliberately leaving out North or South. This boosts morale among the Koreans in North Korea where the North Korean officials officially deny that such South Korean achievements exist. Since the 1950s the official North Korean attitude was that South Korea was the economically backward Korea run by South Korea officials who did what the United States demanded. The North Korean government has an increasingly difficult time dealing with their official propaganda version of South Korea and the actual South Korea that now has a GDP per capita that is more than twenty times that of the north. The GDP gap continues to widen, which is why North Koreans caught viewing recordings of South Korean media are sent to prison and those responsible for distributing these recordings are often executed. The South Korea space program is bad news for China because it will eventually mean another competitor for satellite launch services. China has surpassed Russia in this area but now faces a resurgent American launch services industry because the U.S. SpaceX technology uses reusable booster rockets and can land by themselves and be reused. Already one of these SpaceX boosters has been reused over a dozen times.

June 30, 2022: More problems in the South China Sea as the Philippines ordered six. This time it was six OPVs (Offshore Patrol Vessels) from South Korea. This came after a competition involving proposals from Australia, Turkey and several other nations. The South Korean entry was the export version of the new HDP-1500 OPV. The export version is customizable but the basic features are an 81 meter (260 foot), 1,700-ton ship with a top speed of 38 kilometers an hour and endurance of 28 days. There are accommodations for 51 personnel, including the 41 crew. Standard armament consists of a 76mm cannon and four CIWS (Close In Weapons Systems) for missile defense and other threats within a few thousand meters of the ship. There is a landing pad and hangar for a helicopter. Under the helipad there is space for additional weapons or equipment in four cargo spaces. The HDP-1500 can be equipped with anti-ship missiles or to hunt and attack submarines as well for mine-clearing. South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are all building more warships for their own use or export. China sees these three nations as a key component, along with American naval forces in the West Pacific of a naval coalition that China cannot ignore or easily deal with. South Korea is also building ballistic missiles to counter those of North Korea but these missiles can also hit Chinese targets in wartime.

June 29, 2022: The United States has added five Hong Kong based firms to the growing list of Chinese companies sanctioned for violating economic sanctions on Russia because of Ukraine. Russia discovered it was more dependent on Western component suppliers than realized. Cut off from these suppliers has halted production of many Russian missiles, guided weapons, and aircraft. Russian airlines are grinding to a halt because they can no longer obtain spare parts. China manufactures some of these spares under license but many other unauthorized (counterfeit) components continue to be made and quietly sold. The Chinese counterfeits have improved their quality levels because one of these components causing an accident in a Western built airliner used by a Russian airline causes major problems for the airlines involved. The Chinese counterfeits also show up with U.S. airlines and even American military aircraft. This is where Chinese counterfeit parts are usually discovered because the American military is much more diligent about authenticating the source of components. Russian counterfeits are not as reliable nor are those from outlaw manufacturers in several other countries. China is taking risks violating sanctions to keep Russian military and commercial aircraft flying. The risk is seen as acceptable because China is now building locally designed airliners and is better at it than Russia. In the future China will be an alternative to Boeing and Airbus for airliners. China has always had a marketing edge because they will sell to anyone who can pay. No political or ideological background check required.

June 28, 2022: China suffered another diplomatic defeat in Qatar, where two days of negotiations between the United States and Iran over lifting economic sanctions ended unsuccessfully because the United States believed Iran was making unreasonable demands and was not serious about the Western efforts to end the sanctions. China and Russia are willing to trust Iranian pledges to not cheat. The American problem is that Iran refuses to allow verification of their claims that they were not continuing work on nuclear weapons. Some European nations were willing to drop verification demands as well but the U.S. was not and a growing number of European nations were supporting this demand.

June 26, 2022: China is disappointed with the poor performance of Russian forces in Ukraine and the long-term damage done to the Russian economy. This means Russia is no longer as powerful a component of the Chinese coalition facing the West. China has provided as much economic support to Russia as it can without incurring crippling sanctions. This provides long-term economic benefits for China by providing a major source of oil and natural gas delivered via pipelines rather than ship. These energy supplies will also be cheaper than any other source. Until Russia invaded all of Ukraine in 2022, Russia was still hurting from low oil prices. These were headed up in 2018, peaking at $74 a barrel in early October then falling over 40 percent (to $43) by the end of 2018. Oil prices recovered a bit in 2019 but the prospects of much more price growth in 2019 were not good. The major customer for oil, China, continues to reduce use because Chinese economic growth continues to decline and it is feared China might even suffer a major recession because of the continued economic problems. Because of the sanctions Russia has to sell its oil and gas at a discount to China, which China is willing to trade with Russia using rubles and yuan (the Chinese currency) rather than dollars. This means Russia receives less value for its oil and gas sold to China. Meanwhile, other nations are able to replace Russia as a supplier of oil and natural gas. These alternate suppliers provide LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) at a lower cost than Russia provides via pipeline. European customers dont trust Russia, partly because of the war against Ukraine but also because of the increasing belligerence against NATO. This is all about an imaginary NATO scheme to weaken Russia. Russians seem quite capable of doing that all by themselves. European nations are turning away from Russia for oil and natural gas and the only alternative for Russia is China, which is willing to invest in new or expanded pipelines going to China as well as provide modern oil and gas technology for upgrading Russian production facilities. This increased dependence on China limits long-term economic and military prospects for Russia, which is becoming a subsidiary of the Chinese economy. This is not a positive development for China, where the economy is already in trouble and the side effects are becoming obvious. There is the growing exodus of foreign entrepreneurs and tech specialists. This is the result of China cracking down on Chinese entrepreneurs who had built huge fortunes and showed signs of independent thinking. Chinese government officials value obedience above all else even though that contradicts the economic reforms of the 1980s that turned the Chinese economy loose and resulted in the second-largest economy in the world. Now the economic growth is stumbling, mainly because of bad government decisions. This includes establishing closer links with Russia and turning on anyone criticizing the government. This is a reminder that China is still a communist police state and by law the security forces and military are committed to protecting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), not China. Economic growth was achieved by loosening the traditional right government control over everything. Independent thought and action have served its purpose but are now seen as a threat to CCP power, especially the power to make bad, and very expensive economic and political decisions. Closer economic and political links with Russia are hurting the economy and criticism of that by anyone, especially Chinese, is seen as an attack on the legitimacy of the CCP. Economic growth continues to decline and is now under two percent a year and getting worse. That means more unemployment and lower living standards for most Chinese.

June 20, 2022: China is suffering from a widespread covid19 outbreak. New strains of covid19 spread faster although they are less often fatal. China has responded with more frequent lockdowns in cities experiencing an outbreak. Currently landlocked Anhui Province in Central China is suffering the most shutdowns because of covid19 infections. This is causing economic problems and even more difficulty in dealing with North Korea. The current outbreak is more about fear than illness of death. China never admitted how many Chinese died from the initial covid19 outbreak, which began in China. To maintain the fiction that China was not the source of covid19, China continues to treat any outbreak as a major threat and shuts down all activity in cities and urban areas for weeks until there are no more covid19 positive people in the area. This is difficult to do with the current strains that are about as lethal as influenza and spread with flu-like speed.

Fear of covid19 virus spreading from China to North Korea has caused some extraordinary efforts to prevent anyone from crossing the Chinese border, especially coming in from China. Those hardest hit by this are the people smugglers and illegal traders, especially those who arrange for money from North Koreans in China or South Korea to be transferred to families in North Korea. This has become a big business, moving as much as $20 million a year. In 2018 enterprising North Korea donju (legalized entrepreneurs) proposed a new scheme to obtain hard currency and the government accepted. Donju noticed the government was willing to adopt a more pragmatic attitude towards defectors that have established themselves outside of North Korea, usually in China, South Korea and the West. The government has long known that defectors often send money back to families still in North Korea. This was accomplished via a network of smugglers who moved all sorts of forbidden goods in and out of North Korea. In 2018 the North Korea began allowing these remittances to get into North Korea legally, in return for a 20 percent fee. North Korea also allowed reunions of defectors with their North Korean kin for a price (over $100,000). There are North Korea expatriates willing and able to pay that much, and North Korea saw this as an excellent source of foreign currency. Implementing this was possible because many donju ran the older system. Before this, Chinese brokers would, for a 20 percent fee, arrange to have a Chinese or North Korean merchant inside North Korea pay the remittance. Even then, you are not safe. If any local communist officials find out you are getting money this way, you can be arrested or, if you are lucky, hit up for a bribe. Nevertheless these remittance families were known, or suspected and many donju got their start with money from remittance families, many of whom were donju themselves.

The North Korean and Chinese money brokers were usually involved in other forms of smuggling things into and out of North Korea and the current crackdown on any illegal border traffic has been hard on these professional smugglers. It has gotten so serious that some North Korean border guards refuse to be bribed, something that is expected to eventually fade pass along with the covid19 danger. Inside North Korea even donju with family ties to high ranking (in the government bureaucracy) families are subject to arrest and punishment for activities involving cross-border movement of any kind. All this further destabilizes the North Korea government and increases the risk of a political collapse in North Korea followed by a massive surge of North Koreas trying to get out via the Chinese border.

June 17, 2022: North Korean trade with China, its major trading partner, dropped 80 percent in May because rail traffic between China and North Korea was halted in response to a major outbreak of covid19 in North Korea. Many North Koreans, including many senior officials, are calling for rail traffic to resume. The growing starvation deaths and unrest in North Korea is seen as justification for resuming trade with China.

June 10, 2022: In Africa (Congos southern Lualaba province) the China Molybdenum conglomerate denied reports that Congos state mining company has taken control of Tenke Fungurume Mining (the world's second-largest cobalt producer). This contradicts a statement made by the secretary-general of Gecamines, Congo's state mining company. China Molybdenum is the majority owner of Tenke Fungurume Mining. Congo has been prosecuting these Chinese mining operations for corruption and bribing senior government officials to get favorable (to China) contracts in Congo.

June 7, 2022: Russia and China have been very public about their envy, anger and hostility towards the new American Starlink space-based communication system. Russia was the first to feel the pain caused by Starlink and declared Starlink founder Elon Musk an enemy who should be executed. China was less emotional and more practical by making public a government study of the Starlink problem and asking for comments and new solutions. This is a common practice in China and used to be in Russia, especially when the Soviet Union existed. The Soviets used this publicity technique primarily to let all officers in the military know of new tactics, concepts or problems the state was having with something. Public discussion was allowed to help eliminate the less useful suggestions and solutions. Starlink, a subsidiary of SpaceX, is not the only multiple small satellite ISP (Internet Service Provider) system. There are similar efforts underway in several countries, including Russia and China. 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. China sees Starlink as a serious threat to the current government and its control over the population as well as the effectiveness of their military. Thats no speculation because its already happening to Russian forces, often live on TV, in Ukraine.

June 4, 2022: For over fifty years China has been working towards designing and building its own commercial airliners. Finally, COMAC (Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China), a state-owned firm did it with the C919 narrow-body twin-engine airliner. The C919 competes with the latest Boeing 737 model, the 737 Max. The Max ran into serious quality problems after introduction, which was later traced back to a change in management selection as Boeing sought to reduce costs and increase its ability to compete with its major rival AirBus by no longer requiring senior managers to have an engineering, as well as a business background. Fixing that problem will take the rest of the decade to complete.

In the 1990s China aimed for world domination in as many manufacturing industries as possible. China was still hobbled by a lack of domestic engineering skills that enabled the development and production of high-tech items like aircraft engines and many other components of world class military and commercial aircraft. As China became a major market for Western airliners China gained enough clout to persuade Boeing and Airbus to establish assembly plants in China that would produce Boeing 737s and the similar AirBus 320s, the commercial aircraft most popular in China. AirBus and Boeing still had to provide many components, like engines, that China could not yet produce. The Chinese government founded COMAC in 2008 by merging several smaller aircraft and component companies. COMACs first product was the ARJ21, a 90-passenger regional airliner powered by two General Electric jets. The ARJ21 ran into a lot of development problems which delayed introduction by eight years. Technically, the first ARJ21 entered commercial service in 2016 with one aircraft in one airline. This was part of the development process and mass deliveries did not begin until 2020. The delay enabled COMAC to quickly develop the larger (105 passenger) ARJ21-900 as well as freighter and 20 passenger business jet versions.

The experience with the ARJ21 led COMAC to begin production and further development of the C919, which made its first flight in 2017. Seen as a cheaper competitor for the 737 and AirBus 320, it encountered even more problems than the ARJ21. As of mid-2022 only seven development aircraft have been built. This included accusations of stealing technology and manufacturing techniques so that China could produce key components in China as the Chinese developed designs. The Chinese espionage effort was discovered in 2015 and arrests made. This sort of thing is nothing new but in the case of commercial aircraft it limited export sales. It also made several smaller Western aircraft manufacturers rethink deals with China for co-production. This espionage was one reason why America implemented sanctions and trade-restriction against China in 2018.

The C919 also lost another competitive edge, price. Originally designed to sell for about half what 737s and A32os cost, fixing all the problems encountered have increased the cost of the C919 to the point where it is nearly the same as 737 and A320. COMAC already has orders for over a thousand C919s from Chinese airlines but greater profits only come via export sales. Artificially lowering the price to gain sales is illegal according to the international trade agreements China agreed to in order to gain access to major export markets. The Chinese industrial espionage efforts will further limit export sales. Undeterred, COMAC plans to eventually dominate the world-market for narrow-body airliners like the 737 and A320. COMAC is planning on developing larger wide-body airliners as well and by the middle of the century be a major competitor for Boeing and AirBus.

June 3, 2022: The navies of the United States and China are in a naval arms race as each turns out more unmanned surface and subsurface ships. So far in 2022 China has produced the Zhu Hai Yun, a 2,000-ton ship that carries up to fifty unmanned submarine, surface and airborne vehicles. Zhu Hai Yun is operated remotely to get it out to the high seas, where the ship operates autonomously to carry out a variety of missions. China is depending on its AI (Artificial Intelligence) software to effectively carry out its mission and then signal that it is returning. The U.S. Navy has similar but smaller (145-ton) unmanned surface ships that do not carry and operate other autonomous vehicles but can stay at sea for up to sixty days carrying out ASW (Anti-submarine warfare) missions. The navy has also developed larger autonomous cargo ships to move supplies long distances. Smaller armed and unarmed autonomous vessels have been in service for decades to patrol ports and coastal areas. China believes it has a lead in AI control software and the Zhu Hai Yun is an effort to test that. The Americans are depending on less ambitious technologies that have produced impressive results so far and a new Orca autonomous submarine takes those proven concepts further than ever before.

A month before China presented the Zhu Hai Yun, the Americans received the first of 24 Orca 80-ton XLUUV (extra-large UUVs) that can carry and deploy a variety of naval mines and evade enemy detection due to their small size.

Orca was the U.S. Navy solution to the difficulties with deploying offensive mobile naval mines and a robotic submarine in enemy controlled waters, like the South China Sea. Orca could even operate as an offensive weapon against Chinese submarines seeking to block access to the South China Sea and Taiwan. China is considered the major submarine threat in the Pacific and the South China Sea is seen as a major future battleground.

Currently China has about 55 diesel-electric subs of recent design in service versus 42 operated by Japan and South Korea, each with 21. Malaysia and Indonesia each have two and Australia has six. The United States has about 30 nuclear attack subs in the Pacific. The anti-China coalition also has a large array of surface and aerial ASW forces.

To even the odds China has built a network of underwater sensors in the South China Sea that is complemented by ASW aircraft and surface ships. South Korea and Japan have similar technology monitoring their coastal waters. The only nation capable of blocking Chinese subs from moving out of the South China Sea is the United States, which has underwater sensors and a large fleet of ASW aircraft. The problem is defeating the Chinese diesel-electric submarine force. China has been trying to build effective SSNs for decades and that is still a work-in-progress. Chinese non-nuclear subs are another matter and they have become world-class.

The U.S. Navy believes robotic subs carrying mobile mines would be an effective new ASW asset because the U.S. is already developing some of the new ASW technology needed for this. This includes UUVs (Unmanned Underwater Vessels) and mobile mines. Over a decade ago the navy adopted civilian underwater UUVs used for monitoring the oceans and has been using them to do that as well as collect data useful for wartime submarine operations. With a growing number of civilian and military customers, American UUV developers and manufacturers have been coming up with new ocean research UUVs that also have military applications.

May 30, 2022: China was surprised at the failure of Russian forces to quickly conquer Ukraine and the fierce Ukrainian resistance that tore apart the invasion force. South Korea and Japan took notice. Taiwanese have been particularly encouraged by the success of the Ukrainians in developing a defense that worked against a delusional and overconfident invader. Not quite Finland in 1940 but close, and Ukraine is an updated version of the 1940 example. Taiwan wants to be the East Asian model for derailing invasions by larger neighbors.

Taiwan has good trading and diplomatic relations with many of the smaller nations near Russia that pioneered the concept of preparing for the worst and winning, not just surviving. This has become a common and successful strategy among small European states. Small East Asian nations like Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have the same problem and are all studying the Ukrainian war intently for lessons they can use.

May 28, 2022: In Tajikistan, national security officials from China, Iran, India, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, but not Pakistan, met to discuss the terrorism situation in Afghanistan. All agreed that the terrorism threat from Afghanistan was growing despite the new IEA government insisting they have it under control. There was also agreement that diplomatic recognition and financial aid or investment was on hold until the IEA got serious about the terrorism threat. A senior IEA official recently said that all were welcome in Afghanistan, including known Islamic terror groups. The one exception is ISK (Islamic State Khorasan), the local ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) group that regularly kills non-Moslems or non-Sunni Moslems, especially Shia. This causes major problems with Shia-majority Iran, which considers itself the protector of Shia everywhere. The security officials agreed that the Pakistan-backed Taliban dominate the IEA government and seem unable to control what they have created. That includes the sanctuary the TTP enjoys in Afghanistan. TTP wants to impose an IEA-like government in Pakistan. Tajikistan also noted that a similar Tajik group had received sanctuary in Afghanistan just across the Tajik border.

May 27, 2022: Since January Japan has completed a process that creates a strong military alliance with Australia. That raised questions of why doesnt Japan have a similar close defense relationship with South Korea, which has a larger economy and population than Australia. South Korea also has much larger armed forces with modern equipment and ample budgets to keep the ships at sea, warplanes in the air and the ground troops involved in combat longer than the Japanese.

South Korea and Japan have many reasons to be allies, but have a difficult time making formal agreements to cooperate against North Korean or Chinese aggression. When pressed on this, South Korea points out that because of the widespread antipathy towards Japan for past events, the Japanese must do something dramatic to improve their popularity in South Korea. There have been many efforts to deal with this problem and none have done enough.

South Korean anger towards Japan can be traced back to when Korea was a brutally treated Japanese possession from 1910 to 1945. The four decades of Japanese occupation were very cruel. Think how bad the Nazi occupation of conquered countries was during World War II and realize that the Japanese occupation of Korea was much worse and for much longer. The Japanese dont help with their post-World War II attitude that Japan was a victim because it was forced into World War II by evil Westerners and was only trying to help its neighbors by occupying them and treating them badly. Japanese have a hard time understanding how their victims dont appreciate all that Japan tried to do for them. What the foreigners do remember is what the Japanese did to them, something the Japanese tend to downplay or deny outright.

Its popular in Japan to believe that when they defeated Russia, after a brief war in 1905, they should have been accorded more respect by the West. The Japanese seemed to overlook the fact that most European countries had defeated Russia at one time or another. Even Sweden had done so, and later on even tiny Finland would as well. The problem here was that everyone but Japan saw Japan as a major bad guy during World War II.

As a result of the 1904-5 Russo-Japanese War Japan got control over Korea in 1910, along with some German colonies a decade later for joining the allies during World War I. Japan expected more for its World War I support and these resentments led to increased aggression against China and, eventually, to attacking the United States and European possessions in East Asia in 1941. The United States liberated what is now South Korea while the Russians did the same in North Korea.

Officially, South Korea suggests that Japan cede to South Korea claims on Dokdo Island in order to improve relations. South Korea has long been willing to sacrifice good relations with Japan over the issue of who owns the uninhabited Dokdo (Takeshima to the Japanese) islands in the Sea of Japan (East Sea in Korean). Both countries have been sending more air naval reconnaissance missions to the islands, and the mass media in both countries have been jumping all over the tension. Japanese politicians would take an enormous domestic political hit if they managed to get the votes to give South Korea Dokdo. But it would make Japan popular enough in South Korea to get the long-desired (by defense officials in both countries) cooperation treaty. Australia, like the United States and other Western nations, get along with both Japan and South Korea. That means South Korea and Japan both oppose Russian, Chinese and North Korean threats but do so separately. Mass media and politicians in South Korea and Japan see this feud as an asset rather than a problem that must be solved at all costs. This is a unique situation and one, so far, that resists all efforts to resolve.
Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) could deliver a monster quarter, according to Credit Suisse analyst Manav Gupta.

The analyst reiterated an Outperform rating and a $125.00 per share price target ahead of the expected 8K filing. Indicators are pointing towards very strong final results, Gupta noted.

While expectations was earnings will be up QoQ (given strength in commodity), both downstream and upstream came in better than expectations. Refining is set to deliver a record quarter. Based on the indicators provided by XOM, total upstream could be up +$2.8Bn QoQ while refining would be up +$5.2Bn (positive surprise). Chemicals (both commodity and specialty) should be flat QoQ, positive given US commodity chem margins were under pressure, Gupta told clients in a note.

The analyst reminds investors that XOMs earnings come in above the midpoint of guidance (implied by indicators) in the past. The Street is calling for Q2 EPS of $2.97 per share while indicators are calling for a monster $4.03 per share print.

Gupta also expects reactions across the sector once Exxons 8K filing is out.

XOMs 8K filing is the barometer that measures health of the energy sector. Based on the filing we expect materially higher QoQ refining earnings for VLO, PSX, MPC and DINO and also strong QoQ improvement in upstream earnings for SU, CVE and CVX, the analyst concluded.

By Senad Karaahmetovic
FILE PHOTO: Model Y cars are pictured during the opening ceremony of the new Tesla Gigafactory for electric cars in Gruenheide, Germany, March 22, 2022. Patrick Pleul/Pool via REUTERS

By Eva Mathews

(Reuters) - Tesla Inc faces a series of hurdles ranging from production snags to rising inflation that may hit profits, Wall Street analysts said on Tuesday, as the electric-car maker reported a fall in deliveries for the first time in two years.

Stung by China's COVID-19 lockdowns and soaring costs, Tesla said on Saturday it delivered 254,695 vehicles in the second quarter, down about 18% from the first quarter.

(Graphic: Tesla's production and delivery numbers since 2020: https://graphics.reuters.com/TESLA-DELIVERIES/akpezlkedvr/chart.png)

Supply chain snarls at the company's newer facilities in Texas and Germany also hurt production, with analysts warning that these issues may crimp Tesla's profits.

The world's largest electric-car maker's shares fell more than 3% but reversed course to close up 2.6%, benefiting from a rally in growth stocks.

So far this year, the stock has lost about a third of its value.

(Graphic: How markets reacted to Tesla's delivery numbers: https://graphics.reuters.com/TESLA-DELIVERIES/xmvjowmjjpr/chart.png)

"Tesla's luster has dimmed yet again with this latest drop in deliveries coming in lower than expectations," Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Susannah Streeter said, adding that this was a setback to the carmaker's ambitions to stay at the front of the EV pack.

"Tesla is faced with a whack-a-mole scenario, the faster one problem is fixed, another pops up."

J.P Morgan analysts, who cut their PT on the company's shares by $10 to $385, said Tesla's production and financial results could be hurt by company-specific execution issues at the carmaker's new factories in Texas and Berlin.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently described both factories as "gigantic money furnaces" that are losing billions of dollars.

Streeter cautioned that the cost-of-living squeeze around the world due to red-hot inflation could have a knock-on effect on demand down the line.

Some analysts, however, expect a recovery toward the end of the year.

The Austin and Berlin plants are likely to remain a drag on results until they attain higher utilization rates, but expect volumes to rebound strongly in the second half of the year, Garrett Nelson, senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, said.

(Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Ankur Banerjee and Shounak Dasgupta)
Ambrx Biopharma Inc., or Ambrx, (NYSE: AMAM), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company using an expanded genetic code technology platform to create Engineered Precision Biologics (EPBs), today announced the appointments of Edward Hu and Kate Hermans to its Board of Directors.

I am delighted to welcome both Edward and Kate to Ambrxs Board, said Feng Tian, Ph. D., Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO of Ambrx. Together, they have decades of experience in business strategy and operations in the pharmaceutical industry on a global scale. I look forward to working closely with Edward and Kate and utilizing their invaluable insight as we continue to progress ARX788 and the rest of our clinical development pipeline.

Edward Hu has more than 25 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Mr. Hu currently serves as the Global Chief Investment Officer, as an executive director, and as the Vice Chairman of WuXi AppTec Co., Ltd., positions he has held since May 2020. Previously, Mr. Hu served as the Co-Chief Executive Officer of WuXi AppTec Co., Ltd from August 2018 to May 2020, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Investment Officer of WuXi AppTec Co., Ltd from April 2014 to August 2018, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of WuXi AppTec Co., Ltd from February 2009 to April 2014, and Chief Operating Officer of WuXi AppTec Co., Ltd from August 2007 to February 2009. Mr. Hu serves as a non-executive director of CANbridge Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a position he has held since July 2022 and also served as a non-executive director of WuXi Biologics (Cayman) Inc. from February 2014 to June 2021 and as a director of Viela Bio Inc. from May 2018 to March 2021. Mr. Hu holds an MBA and an MS in chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University, and a bachelors degree in physics from Zhejiang University.

Kate Hermans has more than 20 years experience in the pharmaceutical and healthtech industries. Currently, she is the Chief Executive Officer of Hermans International LLC, a commercial and investment advisory firm she founded in 2012 for startup and early-stage enterprises. Previously, Ms. Hermans served as an investor and Chief Business Officer (Pharma) for 83bar Inc., from December 2018 to July 2021. She served as Vice President, Marketing at Radius Health, Inc. from March 2017 to April 2018. Prior to her time at Radius Health, Inc., Ms. Hermans held commercial and operations executive leadership roles at Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer/Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and the Intel Corporation, working in the U.S., China, Africa, and globally. Ms. Hermans is a Board Director on the Advisory Board of Clue and serves on the Board of Mid-Atlantic Diamond Ventures. Ms. Hermans is also a member of the Healthcare Executive Review Committee for Ben Franklin Tech Partners, a member of the Board of Directors for the Alzheimers Association, Delaware Valley Chapter, and the Advisory Board of the Womens Resource Center. Ms. Hermans earned a Master of International Management degree from The Thunderbird School of Global Management and a B.A. in International Relations from Wheaton College, MA.
Platform offers interoperable cross-border connectivity and performance management without operator constraints.

Verdane leads the growth equity investment, which also includes participation from existing investors: Maersk Growth, People Ventures and The Danish Growth Fund.

With proven product-market fit, the investment will be used to scale Onomondos team and internationalise the business further.

Funding to accelerate growth in Europe with plans to triple Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in 2022 & 2023.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Asset-rich industries like transport, manufacturing, and logistics have long attempted to harness the Internet of Things (IoT) to manage supply chains, improve automation and drive efficiency. Despite advances in hardware and cloud, the connectivity component of the IoT remains a stubborn barrier, with todays approaches relying on a patchwork of national telecoms operators or Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs). This patchwork means enterprises cannot gain sufficient interoperability, visibility, or control over their connected assets on a global basis.

For digital transformation to happen at scale in physical industries, a fundamentally different technical and commercial architecture for IoT connectivity is needed. This is what Danish scale-up Onomondo has built by redesigning existing connectivity architecture to create a single virtualised IoT network, without reliance on the traditional operator network stack. Instead, the firm has integrated more than 700 operators at the Radio Access Network (RAN) level across more than 180 countries, as well as layering its own API-based IoT platform on top. This means users gain granular, real-time insight into the performance of each connected device, allowing them to tap into their global grid and troubleshoot IoT devices from anywhere.

Devices connected to Onomondo contain an interoperable SIM card, meaning assets can seamlessly move across national borders without the inherent complexity of roaming. Data is transferred directly across the Onomondo virtual network to one of the firms cloud partners (Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud and more), so enterprises can easily understand what is going on between devices and the network, through to the core network, and on to the IoT cloud from a single interface.

As a natural extension of the architectural redesign, Onomondo also redesigned its commercial offering to be unlike any offering existing today. As the platform includes a connectivity marketplace, enterprises can set priorities based on cost, coverage and performance, empowering the platform to automatically select the best operator in any given location, at any given time. This feature prevents operator lock-in by offering the freedom to control precisely which networks devices connect to, as well as giving enterprises the flexibility to balance the quality of coverage and cost-optimization, depending on the use case.

Michael Karlsen, Co-Founder & CEO, and Henrik Aagaard, Co-Founder & CTO at Onomondo commented: It's interesting how the attention in IoT has traditionally centered around Hardware and Cloud. Connectivity was the commodity added in the end. We see a clear shift now towards the market asking for more from their connectivity solution. This trend will dramatically heighten the success rate of IoT and lower both complexity and barriers to entry. All of this will eventually benefit both people, profit, and planet. Onomondo and our recent momentum is a clear representation of this shift and we have found Verdane to be the perfect partner to help us deliver fully on this vision and accelerate our growth.

This latest funding round has been led by Verdane, a leading growth equity investment firm that specialises in growing digital consumer, software, and sustainable society businesses. Coupled with participation from existing investors, Onomondo will leverage the new funds to drive growth and meet its planned projection of tripling its ARR in 2022 and 2023. The company also plans to scale its team from 50 to 100 by the end of 2022, helping to expand its customer base, which currently includes the likes of Bosch, Carlsberg, MAN Energy Solutions, and Maersk.

Drawing from a deep understanding of traditional network infrastructure, Michael, Henrik and the Onomondo team is bringing a fresh, next-generation approach to the challenges the IoT market continues to face today, Pal Malmros, Partner at Verdane concluded. We are convinced that Onomondos solution has the potential to vastly accelerate global roll-out of IoT, as well as expand the total set of addressable use cases, and we look forward to partnering with the company to significantly accelerate the business expansion and growth internationally, drawing on the Verdane teams experience from over 45 other software investments.

ENDS

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220705005016/en/

Sarah Mulder

Fire on the Hill

Telephone: +44 7720401466

Email: [email protected]

Source: Onomondo
SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- On Thursday, July 28, 2022 at approximately 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, Franklin Resources, Inc. (the Company) [NYSE:BEN] will release its third quarter operating results. A written commentary on the results will also be available via investors.franklinresources.com at approximately 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time.

In addition, Jenny Johnson, President and CEO; Matthew Nicholls, Executive Vice President, CFO and COO; and Adam Spector, Executive Vice President - Global Advisory Services and Head of Global Distribution, will lead a live teleconference at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time to answer questions. Access to the teleconference will be available via investors.franklinresources.com or by dialing (844) 200-6205 in the U.S., (833) 950-0062 in Canada or (929) 526-1599 in other locations. A replay of the teleconference can also be accessed by calling (866) 813-9403 in the U.S. using access code 388697 through August 4, 2022, or via investors.franklinresources.com. Analysts and investors are encouraged to review the Companys recent filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and to contact Investor Relations at (650) 312-4091 before the live teleconference for any clarifications or questions related to the earnings release or written commentary.

About Franklin Templeton

Franklin Resources, Inc. [NYSE:BEN] is a global investment management organization with subsidiaries operating as Franklin Templeton and serving clients in over 155 countries. Franklin Templetons mission is to help clients achieve better outcomes through investment management expertise, wealth management and technology solutions. Through its specialist investment managers, the Company offers boutique specialization on a global scale, bringing extensive capabilities in fixed income, equity, alternatives, and multi-asset solutions. With offices in more than 30 countries and approximately 1,300 investment professionals, the California-based company has 75 years of investment experience and approximately $1.45 trillion in assets under management as of May 31, 2022. For more information, please visit franklinresources.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220705005850/en/

Franklin Resources, Inc.

Investor Relations: Selene Oh (650) 312-4091, [email protected]

Media Relations: Matt Walsh (650) 312-2245, [email protected]

investors.franklinresources.com

Source: Franklin Resources, Inc.
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) held by the World Trade Organization (WTO) took place from June 12 to 15 in Geneva. Justin Sun, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Grenada to the WTO, led the Grenada delegation to attend the conference and spoke on the first day of the event about multilateral trade, e-commerce, and digital economy, among other topics.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220704005428/en/

H.E. Justin Sun Attends MC12 and Furthers TRON Ecosystem Growth (Photo: Business Wire)

Justin Sun as the Ambassador: Delivered a Speech at WTO's MC12

On December 20 last year, Justin Sun was officially appointed as the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Granada to the WTO and was authorized to represent Grenada at the WTO meetings during his mandate.

Sun's presence at MC12 also marks his debut as the ambassador in front of a global audience.

According to available sources, the Ministerial Conference is the highest decision-making body of the WTO and is usually convened every two years. By convention, this conference requires each WTO Member to participate as a delegation, which usually consists of a Member's Minister of Commerce and Trade, Minister of Agriculture and other ministries related to trade, as well as the permanent ambassador to the WTO.

It is reported that the WTO MC distributes to delegates badges of different colors based on their positions. Here we notice that Sun's got a red one. As Grenada's Ministry of Trade, Industry, Co-Operative & CARICOM Affairs was unable to attend the conference due to personal reasons, Justin Sun headed the Grenada delegation this year, and his red badge manifests the ministerial-level power he may exercise at the conference.

As the founder of TRON, Justin Sun has built major influence and a strong network, which makes him absolutely qualified for such a supreme honor. At MC 12, he addressed that the development of e-commerce and the broader digital economy, including blockchain and other technologies, will give a strong boost to the global economy.

Sun's schedule as a WTO ambassador is becoming increasingly packed. On June 18, he announced on Weibo that he had met Laurie LO, Permanent Representative of the Hong Kong SAR of China to the WTO, at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Geneva.

As he had pledged, Sun has been actively promoting digitalization at the WTO and blockchain technology worldwide. To this end, it is critical to build a sound TRON ecosystem, one of the accessible financial infrastructures indispensable in a decentralized future.

Having been in the industry for over a decade, Sun has earned himself many notable titles, with TRON having a bigger say within the industry and across the world. Despite such achievements, he still sticks to his original aspiration of making the Internet decentralized again. By building the most accessible financial infrastructure in public chains, stablecoins, DeFi, Web3, and other fields, Sun has brought his TRON, China's No.1 public chain, onto the global stage.

Brimming with passion and devotion, this young entrepreneur has resumed his journey toward a splendid blockchain-powered future.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220704005428/en/

Angela An

[email protected]

Website: https://tron.network

Twitter: @trondao

Discord: discord.gg/tron

Source: TRON DAO
AUCKLAND, New Zealand--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- New Image Group has acquired skincare and cosmetics brand Nutrimetics from Tupperware Brands Corporation (NYSE: TUP) for an undisclosed sum.

Nutrimetics is a natural fit with New Images portfolio of health and nutrition products says Graeme Clegg, founder and chairman of the privately owned New Image Group.

Nutrimetics is such an iconic brand with a proud 54-year history that has seen generations of women and men benefit from its incredible skincare and income opportunity. In the future, as part of New Image Group, it will be available to so many more people globally through our independent consultants.

New Image Group has two subsidiaries  New Image International, which covers the global direct selling retail sales channel, and NIG Nutritionals, which takes care of all manufacturing and packaging in New Zealand for New Image International and its other customers serving domestic and international sales channels.

Rod Taylor, CEO of New Image International, says as Tupperware had decided to divest its beauty business units, he and others formerly associated with Nutrimetics saw it as an opportunity for New Image Group.

After we had completed extensive due diligence, we were delighted our offer for the whole business was accepted, Mr. Taylor says. A recent Nutrimetics conference on Australias Gold Coast confirmed our enthusiasm is well founded.

We have plans to bring in new business systems to Nutrimetics and to increase the sales and marketing support for our independent consultants and grow revenue.

The acquisition includes Nutrimetics Australia, Nutrimetics International New Zealand, Nutrimetics Manufacturing and Nutrimetics France.

About Us: New Image Group is a leading New Zealand-based wellness and nutritional product manufacturer and exporter since 1984, with a globally renowned reputation for colostrum and infant formula. New Image International was recently independently ranked # 30 in the top 100 global direct selling companies. It has an integrated supply chain with dedicated farms and purpose-built spray plant and packing facilities in New Zealand. It has consultants in Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, and South Africa.

The Group includes two sister companies  New Image International and NIG Nutritionals  which separately cover the direct-to-consumer and traditional wholesale sales channels. New Image International abides by the World Federation of Direct Selling Associations Code of Ethics

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220704005419/en/

Rod Taylor

Chief Executive Officer

New Image International

Mob: +64 22 0255877

Email: [email protected]

https://newimagegroup.co.nz/

Source: New Image Group
LYON, France--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- POXEL SA (Euronext: POXEL - FR0012432516), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative treatments for chronic serious diseases with metabolic pathophysiology, including non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and rare metabolic disorders, today announces the publication of two preclinical articles on X-Linked Adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) for PXL065 and PXL770. These molecules have separate and distinct mechanisms of action: PXL065 is a novel, proprietary deuterium-stabilized R-stereoisomer of pioglitazone which exerts effects via multiple non-genomic pathways engaged by thiazolidinedione molecules; PXL770 is a novel, first-in-class direct adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activator. Both compounds are preparing to enter into Phase 2a clinical Proof-of-Concept (POC) biomarker studies in ALD patients with adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN) as soon as possible, subject to financing.

An article on PXL065 has been published in The Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease (JIMD) and is entitled Therapeutic potential of deuterium-stabilized (R)-pioglitazone - PXL065 - for X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy. It is available here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35510808/.

An article on PXL770 has been published in The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (JPET), and is entitled Beneficial effects of the direct AMP-Kinase activator PXL770 in in vitro and in vivo models of X-Linked Adrenoleukodystrophy. This publication is available here: https://jpet.aspetjournals.org/content/early/2022/06/25/jpet.122.001208.

These publications describe similar beneficial preclinical profiles of PXL770 and PXL065 in models of ALD. Elevated levels of toxic very long chain fatty acids (VLCFA) are a driver of ALD pathology. The published in vitro results show correction of this phenotype in ALD patient-derived cells. In a classical in vivo rodent model of ALD, elevated VLCFA levels were also suppressed by chronic treatment with both compounds (in plasma, brain and spinal cord). The two compounds also improved mitochondrial function and signs of inflammation in patient-derived cells. Importantly, improvements in neurologic deficits were also documented in the ALD mouse model (sciatic nerve morphology and locomotor function) with each of the two compounds. Given different mechanisms of action, it is anticipated that pursuit of the pending (identical design) Phase 2a clinical studies could yield results that will help determine diffentiation between these agents in this disease.

About ALD

X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) is an orphan neurometabolic disease caused by mutations in the ABCD1 gene which encodes for a key protein that is required for metabolism of very long chain fatty acids (VLCFA) by peroxisomes (cellular organelles). ALD is the most common leukodystrophy with a prevalence similar to hemophilia  up to 1/10,000 individuals in the general population have ALD [https://rarediseases.org]. Forms of this disease include cerebral ALD (C-ALD) and adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN) which is the most common form  typically occurring in adolescence through adulthood. AMN is characterized by chronic and progressive distal axonopathy involving the long tracts of the spinal cord and to a lesser extent the peripheral nerves resulting in progressive stiffness and weakness in the legs, impaired gait and balance, incontinence, and loss of sensation. Nearly all men with a diagnosis of ALD will develop AMN, and many women also present with features of AMN with a later onset. C-ALD is characterized by inflammatory demyelination of cells in the brain and typically afflicts children, but many men with AMN may also develop cerebral disease; these white matter brain lesions lead to severe neurologic deficits and death. There are no approved medicines for ALD (other than glucocorticoid supplements for associated adrenal insufficiency). C-ALD when first detected in early childhood, can be treated with hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. HSCT is currently limited to early stage of C-ALD and this procedure is at risk of severe adverse reactions.

About Poxel SA

Poxel is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative treatments for chronic serious diseases with metabolic pathophysiology, including non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and rare disorders. Poxel has clinical and earlier-stage programs from its adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activator and deuterated TZD platforms targeting chronic and rare metabolic diseases. For the treatment of NASH, PXL065 (deuterium-stabilized R-pioglitazone) is in a streamlined Phase 2 trial (DESTINY-1). PXL770, a first-in-class direct AMPK activator, has successfully completed a Phase 2a proof-of-concept trial for the treatment of NASH, which met its objectives. For the rare inherited metabolic disorder, adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), the company intends to initiate Phase 2a proof of concept studies with PXL065 and PXL770 in patients with adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN). TWYMEEG (Imeglimin), Poxels first-in-class lead product that targets mitochondrial dysfunction, has been approved and launched for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in Japan. Poxel expects to receive royalties and sales-based payments from Sumitomo Pharma. Poxel has a strategic partnership with Sumitomo Pharma for Imeglimin in Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan and nine other Southeast Asian countries. The Company intends to generate further growth through strategic partnerships and pipeline development. Listed on Euronext Paris, Poxel is headquartered in Lyon, France, and has subsidiaries in Boston, MA, and Tokyo, Japan.

For more information, please visit: www.poxelpharma.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220704005412/en/

Investor relations / Media

Aurelie Bozza

Investor Relations & Communication Senior Director

[email protected]

+33 6 99 81 08 36

Elizabeth Woo

Senior Vice President, Investor Relations & Communication

[email protected]

NewCap

Emmanuel Huynh or Arthur Rouille

[email protected]

+33 1 44 71 94 94

Source: Poxel SA
FILE PHOTO: A screen displays the company logo for Uber Technologies Inc. on the day of it's IPO at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., May 10, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc said it was launching its ride-hailing and platform in Israel by connecting to a nationwide network of licensed taxis, as it continues to expand globally.

Thousands of taxi drivers -- both independent and working for companies -- have already joined up, with the service that also includes ride sharing mainly available to passengers in Israel's two largest cities, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, it said.

Uber, which operates in more than 70 countries and 10,000 cities globally, will compete locally with services such as Gett and Yango.

A previous attempt by Uber to operate in Israel was halted by a court in 2017. Israels Transportation Ministry, Taxi Driver Union and a rival ride-hailing company had won the injunction after complaining that the U.S. company used drivers who lacked the proper business licenses and insurance.

"We want to use technology to turn taxi services, working with other public transportation services, into the alternative to the private car they can be," said Gony Noy, general manager of Uber Israel.

The partnership in Israel follows similar deals in Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Turkey, South Korea, Hong Kong as well in New York and San Francisco. The company has said it wants to have every taxi available on its app by 2025.

(Reporting by Steven Scheer; Editing by Ari Rabinovitch)
CHICAGO, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Associa Chicagoland, a leading provider of community management services throughout Illinois and Northwest Indiana, recently partnered with Associa Cares, the community management industrys leading charitable organization, to provide financial assistance to 55 families from Chicagos Woodridge Club Condominiums who were displaced by a tornado. Associa Cares is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping families and communities in need as a result of natural and man-made disasters. Many of those receiving assistance lost all of their belongings.

On June 20, 2021, a powerful tornado destroyed or damaged several of the communitys units and buildings. Although Woodridge Clubs insurance covered most repairs, it did not pay for lost or damaged personal possessions or temporary housing. As a result, many affected homeowners have struggled to rebuild and 24 families have yet to return home. In response, Associa Chicagoland and Associa Cares partnered with Woodridge Clubs property management firm, MC Property Management, and the associations board of directors to provide the affected families with financial assistance to help ease their burden.

I am incredibly proud to be part of this effort to provide families with the financial relief they badly need, said Stephanie Skelley, CMCA, AMS, Chicagoland president. It is heartwarming to see team members from Associa Chicagoland, the Woodridge Club Condominium board of directors, and different management companies put their competitive differences aside and come together in the spirit of helping others in need.

About Associa Cares

Associa Cares is a US-based nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization created to assist families and communities in crisis as a result of natural and man-made disasters. Through donations raised from Associa employees and at fundraising events across the country, Associa Cares is able to provide aid to the families affected by these types of tragedies. Associa Cares has provided over $4.3 million in assistance to more than 3,300 families since 2007. To view Associa Cares fundraising disclosures, please visit: http://www.associacares.org/fundraising-disclosure-statement/.

Associa Cares funds are distributed to families of Associa-managed and non-Associa managed communities. To donate to Associa Cares or apply for assistance, please visit our website at www.associacares.org.

Stay Connected

Like Associa Cares on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/associacares/

Like Associa on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/associa

Subscribe to the Blog: https://hub.associaonline.com/

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/associa

Join us on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/associa

Danika Knoop Associa 214-272-4095 [email protected]

Source: Associa
MONTREAL, July 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CN (TSX: CNR) (NYSE: CNI) is pleased to announce that the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) has agreed to binding arbitration, bringing the strike to an end at 00:01 EDT on July 5, 2022. Employees in Signals and Communications will return to their roles at 07:00 AM EDT on July 6, 2022.

CN would like to thank its management employees and contractors for their service which allowed rail operations to continue uninterrupted during the strike.

About CNCN is a world-class transportation leader and trade-enabler. Essential to the economy, to the customers, and to the communities it serves, CN safely transports more than 300 million tons of natural resources, manufactured products, and finished goods throughout North America every year. As the only railroad connecting Canadas Eastern and Western coasts with the U.S. South through a 18,600-mile rail network, CN and its affiliates have been contributing to community prosperity and sustainable trade since 1919. CN is committed to programs supporting social responsibility and environmental stewardship.

Contacts:

Media Investment Community Jonathan Abecassis Paul Butcher Senior Manager Vice-President Media Relations Investor Relations 438-455-3692 [email protected] (514) 399-0052 [email protected]

Source: Canadian National Railway Company
Regulated information

Nazareth (Belgium)/Rotterdam (The Netherlands), 5 July 2022  7AM CET

Fagron expands its US sterile compounding footprint with East coast acquisition

Fagron, the leading global player in pharmaceutical compounding, has acquired from Fresenius Kabi a 503B outsourcing facility in Boston. The transaction covers all operational aspects of the facility, including customers, suppliers, and around 80 employees, as well as a supply agreement with Fresenius Kabi.

Rafael Padilla, CEO of Fagron commented: This acquisition is an important step for us in realizing our strategic objective of becoming the leading global platform for sterile outsourcing services. The demand for outsourced compounding is increasing in the US and aligned to increased regulatory scrutiny necessitates a high focus on quality. Whilst this acquisition will initially be dilutive, we are confident our team will successfully bring the facility in line with our FSS US operations in due course. This expansion will allow us to elevate our US sterile compounding business to the next level and compete with the top-3 players in the US market.

Andrew Pulido, president Fagron North America commented: We are very happy with the opportunity to add this best-in-class 503B outsourcing facility to our operations. By adding the capacity of this facility to our current operations in Wichita, we not only make another important step towards meeting the continuously growing demand for sterile outsourcing services in the US market, but also significantly strengthen our geographic proximity towards existing and potential customers on the East Coast. This facility was built by Fresenius Kabi to initially serve the leading academic medical center in the area through scale, cost efficiencies and provide flexibility around production while maintaining very high-quality standards. We expect the transition of the facility towards Fagron processes will take approximately 12 to 18 months and expect it to start making a positive contribution to results in the 2nd semester of 2023. We welcome the Fresenius Kabi Compounding employees in Boston to the Fagron team.

John Ducker, president and CEO Fresenius Kabi USA commented: We are pleased to have found a buyer like Fagron, with its experience in hospital compounding, to assure continuity of this business for employees and customers. We are confident that the excellent team in Boston, combined with Fagrons expertise, will continue to be a compounding partner of choice for hospitals. This divestiture is part of a strategy at Fresenius Kabi to focus on growth in biopharmaceuticals, medical technologies, clinical nutrition, and a broad range of injectable medicines used across the continuum of care.

Fagron finances the acquisition from its own resources.

Further information

Karen Berg

Global Investor Relations Manager

Tel. +31 6 53 44 91 99

[email protected]

About Fagron

Fagron is a leading global company active in pharmaceutical compounding, focusing on delivering personalized medicine to hospitals, pharmacies, clinics and patients in 35 countries around the world.

Belgian company Fagron NV has its registered office in Nazareth and is listed on Euronext Brussels and Euronext Amsterdam under the ticker symbol FAGR. Fagrons operational activities are managed by the Dutch company Fagron BV, which is headquartered in Rotterdam.

Important information regarding forward-looking statements

Certain statements in this press release may be deemed to be forward-looking. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and are influenced by various risks and uncertainties. Consequently, Fagron cannot provide any guarantee that such forward-looking statements will, in fact, materialize and cannot accept any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events or for any other reason.

In the event of differences between the English translation and the Dutch original of this press release, the latter prevails.

Please open the link below for the press release:

Fagron expands its US sterile compounding footprint with East coast acquisition
PRINSBURG, Minn., July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- After a name change from G&S Transports to G&S Logistics, and aggressive business growth in the first quarter of the year - G&S Logistics looks forward to continuing scaling and offering new and advanced services to their customers in 2022.



As G&S Logistics continues to check off major mile stone events in growth, the companys main goal continues to be supporting its overall mission to achieve supply chain solutions for its customers inbound and outbound freight flow, while maximizing freight transportation opportunity, and minimizing total cost of its customers bottom line.

This aggressive growth initiative is being spearheaded by newly appointed COO/EVP, Angelo Byrd, brought on to the G&S Logistics team at the beginning of the year. Byrd is known for his strategic leadership, ability to capitalize on unique industry opportunities, scale business and accelerate growth. His resume is stacked with experience at Dupre Logistics, J.B Hunt Transport Services, Inc., ARI Logistics and C.H. Robinson Worldwide.

We are incredibly excited about G&S Logistics growth in the next year, we are taking an aggressive approach to automation, technology, adding additional staff offices around the United States and onboarding new carriers, says Byrd. Big and exciting changes are ahead, and we are laser focused on making it happen.

G&S Logistics' recent initiatives and accomplishments of the company include:

Technology: This includes deploying digital freight broker solutions from Descartes Systems Group. By investing in automation and technology, G&S Logistics will be able to operate at higher levels of efficiency and cooperate collaboratively with customers, and connect more easily with carrier partners.



This includes deploying digital freight broker solutions from Descartes Systems Group. By investing in automation and technology, G&S Logistics will be able to operate at higher levels of efficiency and cooperate collaboratively with customers, and connect more easily with carrier partners. Hiring: Continued hiring of key team members and plans for office expansion across the United States.



Continued hiring of key team members and plans for office expansion across the United States. Staying Mission Focused: A continued focus to keep reliability and providing G&S Logistics trusted service first and foremost. This gives its customers a more competitive edge in the marketplace to streamline profit margins and improve efficiency.



As G&S Logistics moves into its next growth phase, these focuses will remain central to the continued evolution of the company.

With a proud history since 2012, along with growth in excess of 20% annually, and over 100 years of transportation experience within the teams senior leadership, G&S Logistics feels prepared and focused to scale to the next level of growth.

To learn more about G&S Logistics, click here to visit its website https://gandslogistics.com/.

About G&S Logistics: G&S Logistics is an industry leading logistics provider that manages all shipments from truckload, LTL to air and ocean. The G&S Logistics Team prioritizes connecting their customers to the best solutions for all of their shipping, logistics and supply needs. G&S Logistics began business in 2012 and is Headquartered in Prinsburg, Minnesota. It is the brokerage arm of the asset-based trucking organization Punt Companies LLC. For more information, please visit: https://gandslogistics.com/.

G&S Logistics

[email protected]

320-207-2810

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e7c2aafb-5f70-4b67-996f-7cca41680f9b
MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kruger Products ranked fifth on the annual Corporate Knights Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada list. This marks the fifth consecutive year, two of which Kruger Products has made the top 10 list.

We are honored to be recognition by Corporate Knights, one of Canadas most respected environmental think tanks, for our commitment to sustainability and the progress weve demonstrated, said Dino Bianco, CEO, Kruger Products. Sustainability is intricately tied to our mission of making everyday life more comfortable, and we strive to embed it deeper and deeper into our organization so that we are making a positive difference for the future.

The Best 50 Corporate Citizens represent the rising standard and ambition for corporate sustainability leadership in Canada. The ranking is based purely on quantitative data submitted on a range of ESG metrics.

This year Kruger Products distinguished itself with top-quartile scores on Green Revenue, Waste Productivity, CEOAverage Worker Pay Ratio, Employee Turnover, and Executive Racial Diversity. These accomplishments are the result of a company-wide effort from our corporate and plant employees, driven by the unified goal of reducing our environmental footprint and strengthening our company.

About Kruger Products L.P.

KPLP is Canada's leading manufacturer of quality tissue products for household, industrial and commercial use. KPLP serves the Canadian consumer market with such well-known brands as Cashmere, Purex, SpongeTowels, Bonterra and Scotties'. In the U.S., KPLP manufactures the White Cloud brand, as well as many private label products. The Away-From-Home division manufactures and distributes high-quality, cost-effective product solutions to a wide range of commercial and public entities. KPLP has approximately 2,700 employees and has been named a Greater Toronto Area Top Employer for ten consecutive years. The Company operates nine FSC COC-certified (FSC C-104904) production facilities in North America. For more information visit www.krugerproducts.ca.

About Corporate Knights

Corporate Knights is a respected media and research company that quantifies clean capitalism drivers, making the data meaningful for decision makers. Its annual corporate citizen recognition program is a reputable benchmark for corporate sustainability leaders in Canada and sets the standards for corporate sustainability leadership in Canada.

For Further Information:

Francois ParoyanSVP, General Counsel & Corporate AffairsKruger Products L.P.416-606-6735[email protected]

Source: Kruger Products
New York, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright today announced that Daniel Pepper has joined its Information Governance, Privacy and Cybersecurity team in New York as a partner.

With more than 25 years of experience in data privacy, cybersecurity and information technology law, Pepper advises on proactive data privacy and security practices, data breach incident response and regulatory compliance. He also supports clients on compliance with domestic and international security laws, regulations and standards. Pepper, who joins the firm from BakerHostetler, handles complex technology transactions and is proficient at structuring technology acquisitions, licensing and distribution arrangements and cloud-based/SaaS transactions.

Jeff Cody, Norton Rose Fulbrights US Managing Partner, said:

Dan is a well-regarded lawyer and an excellent addition to our New York office. Our firms Litigation Trends Survey consistently highlights cybersecurity as a top concern for law firm clients, and Dan provides, along with our world-class team, our clients with great experience in the cybersecurity space.

Chris Cwalina, Norton Rose Fulbrights Global Co-Head of Information Governance, Privacy and Cybersecurity, said:

Now more than ever, our clients look to us for solutions to their cybersecurity and data privacy issues. Dans decades of experience, which includes serving as senior in-house counsel for multinational telecommunications companies, will be an asset to our team as we continue to guide clients through the everchanging cyber landscape.

Pepper, who is a Certified Information Privacy Professional/US (CIPP/US), said:

Privacy issues are impacting companies on a global scale, and the threat is steadily increasing. Norton Rose Fulbrights Information Governance, Privacy and Cybersecurity team spans the globe to provide clients with an unsurpassed scope of coverage, and Im excited to join such a world-class team.

Pepper frequently counsels clients on compliance with state, federal and international privacy and data security laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), New Year SHIELD Act, California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA) and Chinas Cybersecurity and Data Security Laws.

Licensed in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Pepper received his JD from Duquesne University School of Law and his BA in political science from Rutgers University. He also completed the Executive Leadership Program at The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

For further information, please contact:

Dan McKenna, US Director and Global Head of PR and Communications

Tel: +1 713 651 3576

[email protected]

Notes for editors:

Norton Rose Fulbright

Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright provides the worlds preeminent corporations and financial institutions with a full business law service. With more than 4,000 lawyers and other legal staff based in Europe, the United States, Canada, Latin America, Asia, Australia, Africa and the Middle East, Norton Rose Fulbright has offices in more than 50 cities worldwide, including London, Houston, New York, Toronto, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Sydney and Johannesburg.

Norton Rose Fulbright is recognized for its industry focus across all of the key sectors: financial institutions; energy, infrastructure and resources; transport; technology; life sciences and healthcare; and consumer markets. Through its global risk advisory group, the firm leverages its industry experience with its knowledge of legal, regulatory, compliance and governance issues to provide clients with practical solutions to the legal and regulatory risks facing their businesses.

Operating in accordance with its global business principles of quality, unity and integrity, Norton Rose Fulbright aims to provide the highest possible standard of legal service in each of its offices and to maintain that level of quality at every point of contact.

Norton Rose Fulbright Verein, a Swiss verein, helps coordinate the activities of Norton Rose Fulbright members but does not itself provide legal services to clients. For more information, see nortonrosefulbright.com/legal-notices.

Law around the worldnortonrosefulbright.com

Attachment

Dan McKenna Norton Rose Fulbright 7136513576 [email protected]

Source: Norton Rose Fulbright
Sydney, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Proactive, provider of real-time news and video interviews on growth companies listed in Australia, has covered the following companies:

C29 Metals Ltd (ASX:C29) is trading higher after securing two of five exploration licence applications in the highly prospective Olympic Dam iron oxide copper-gold (uranium) (IOCG) province of the Stuart Shelf in central South Australia. Click here

Krakatoa Resources Ltd (ASX:KTA) has wrapped up resource drilling at its 100%-owned Dalgaranga Critical Metals Project, around 70 kilometres from Mt Magnet in WA. Click here

Flynn Gold Ltd (ASX:FG1) has returned strong results in its maiden drilling program underway at Trafalgar prospect within the Golden Ridge Project in northeast Tasmania, with shares soaring by as much as 90%. Click here

Chimeric Therapeutics Ltd (ASX:CHM) has strengthened its management team with the appointment of experienced pharma executive Cassandra Harrison as vice president of Clinical Operations and Data Management. Click here

Kingston Resources Ltd (ASX:KSN) has appointed ICA Partners to support a strategic review of the Misima Gold Project in Papua New Guinea following the conclusion of a definitive feasibility study (DFS) for the asset. Click here

Lithium Power International Ltd (ASX:LPI) has secured new tenure in the three major hard rock lithium regions of Western Australia following the acquisition of CMC Lithium with its project in the Greenbushes area and two tenements from Lysander Lithium in the Eastern Goldfields region  adding to LPIs previous holdings in the Pilbara Craton. Click here

Australian Gold and Copper Ltd (ASX:AGC) has fielded strong near-surface gold results from a 23-hole reverse circulation (RC) program across 2,370 metres at the Boxdale-Carlisle Reefs gold-arsenic-sulphide trend, recording up to 8.9 g/t gold. Click here

Perpetual Resources Ltd (ASX:PEC) is set to kick off a reconnaissance auger drilling program later this month at the Beharra Silica Sand Project, 300 kilometres north of Perth in Western Australia. Click here

Red River Resources Ltd (ASX:RVR) has struck bonanza-grade gold in the first hole drilled at Bakers Creek prospect of the Hillgrove Gold Project in New South Wales, with a priority assay returning 4.50 metres at 29.5 g/t gold and 0.3% antimony from 466 metres, including 0.45 metres at 257 gold from 467.75 metres. Click here

SensOre Ltd (ASX:S3N) has grabbed the opportunity to acquire Intrepid Geophysics, a leading provider of geophysics software and services headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, to expand its AI geophysics capacity. Click here

Red 5 Ltd (ASX:RED)s ramp-up of its 100%-owned King of the Hills (KOTH) Gold Project in Western Australia is proceeding to plan, after the company poured first gold on June 5, 2022. Click here

Antilles Gold Ltd (ASX:AAU, OTCQB:ANTMF) has established an exploration target range for its El Pilar gold-copper oxide deposit in Central Cuba based on historical data analysed by Canadian mining consultants, BBA International Inc. Click here

Jindalee Resources Ltd (ASX:JRL) will make its first appearance on the US-based OTCQX exchange platform today in a move the company says will increase its accessibility to US investors. Click here

SenSen Networks Ltd (ASX:SNS, OTCQB:SNNSF) has set another record month for sales cash inflows in June of A$1.8 million following a record month in May of A$1.1 million. Click here

Noxopharm Ltd (ASX:NOX) has added three more US sites for its CEP-2 sarcoma study following the participation of the Mayo Clinic and Washington University in the study, bringing the number of well-known participating US cancer centres to four. Click here

Kingfisher Mining Ltd (ASX:KFM) has returned high-grade rare earths from the latest drilling at its 100%-owned Mick Well Rare Earth Elements (REE) Project in the Gascoyne Mineral Field in Western Australia as well as the discovery of a second mineralisation zone consisting predominantly of fresh monazite. Click here

Firefinch Ltd (ASX:FFX) will bank $12.9 million from the sale of a block of Leo Lithium Ltd (ASX:LLL) shares. Click here

Rumble Resources Ltd (ASX:RTR) has welcomed internationally recognised mining executive Geoff Jones as a non-executive director. Click here

Altech Chemicals Ltd (ASX:ATC) has inked a framework agreement with German institute Fraunhofer IKTS to expedite the testing and qualification process for Altechs Silumina Anodes product. Click here

Alchemy Resources Ltd (ASX:ALY) has completed multiple exploration programs and made good progress at its 100%-owned Karonie gold and lithium project, east of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. Click here

PolarX Ltd (ASX:PXX) has returned strong results up to bonanza grade in its maiden reverse circulation (RC) percussion drilling program at Star Canyon within the Humboldt Range Gold-Silver Project in Nevada, USA. Click here

About Proactive

Proactive is a unique tech-enabled platform providing companies globally with a comprehensive investor engagement solution across their business lifecycle.

With six offices on three continents, Proactive works with innovative growth companies quoted on the worlds major stock exchanges, helping executives to engage intelligently with investors.

In 2020, Proactive featured in 809 million search results, our content was viewed over 165 million times and our readers spent over 10 million hours on our websites. Proactive has produced over 300,000 articles and 20,000 executive interviews since it was established in 2006.

For more information on how Proactive can help you make a difference, email us at [email protected]

Source: Proactive
FILE PHOTO: JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon speaks at a Remain in the EU campaign event attended by Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne (not shown) at JP Morgan's corporate centre in Bournemouth, southern Britain, June 3, 2016. REUTERS/Dylan Ma

By Elizabeth Dilts Marshall

NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said on Wednesday the United States could be in store for an economic boom through 2023 if more adults get vaccinated and federal spending continues.

"I have little doubt that with excess savings, new stimulus savings, huge deficit spending, more QE (quantitative easing), a new potential infrastructure bill, a successful vaccine and euphoria around the end of the pandemic, the U.S. economy will likely boom," Dimon wrote in his annual letter to shareholders published on the bank's website.

"This boom could easily run into 2023 because all the spending could extend well into 2023."

As head of the biggest U.S. bank, Dimon is widely seen as the face of America's banking sector, and he used the letter to share his views on the country's economic health and to press for policies to help address inequality and improve the criminal justice system.

The average U.S. consumer's finances are in "excellent shape," Dimon said, and the stock market's high valuations are justified. The price of U.S. treasuries, however, are not, he wrote.

The economic growth Dimon projects the United States could see in the next two years will create opportunities to "deal with issues stemming from inequality," Dimon wrote.

He called for raising the federal minimum wage, improving training for jobs at high schools and colleges and making it easier for people with criminal records to get jobs.

Dimon, who has called for higher taxes to pay for federal stimulus, said corporations could support many of these initiatives if the government adopted rigorous budgeting, transparency and discipline when it comes to its spending.

"We must remember that the concepts of free enterprise, rugged individualism and entrepreneurship are not incompatible with meaningful safety nets and the desire to lift up our disadvantaged citizens," Dimon wrote.

(Reporting By Elizabeth Dilts Marshall; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - July 4, 2022) - Blue Thunder Mining Inc. (TSXV: BLUE) (OTCQB: BLTMF) ("Blue Thunder" or the "Company") is pleased to announce a non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") for gross proceeds of up to C$500,000, comprising a maximum of 33,333,333 units of the Company (each, a "Unit") at a price of C$0.015 per Unit, each Unit comprised of one common share and one common share purchase warrant (a "Warrant").

Each Warrant will be exercisable to purchase an additional share of the Company at a price of C$0.05 for a period of three years from the closing date of the Offering (the "Closing Date"). If the volume-weighted average price of the common shares of the Company on the TSX Venture Exchange over the preceding 20 trading days is greater than C$0.20, the Company can elect to accelerate the term of the Warrants to 30 calendar days following the date a press release announcing the notice of acceleration is issued.

The Company is relying on the minimum pricing amendments announced by the TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV") on June 23, 2022 (the "Pricing Amendment") in offering the Units at a price that is less than $0.05. As per the Pricing Amendment, the Company confirms that the aggregate number of its listed shares issued at a price less than $0.05 in the last 12 months does not exceed 100% of its issued and outstanding listed shares, on a non-diluted basis, at the beginning of the 12-month period. All securities issued under the Offering will be subject to a TSXV hold period in addition to the restricted period under applicable securities laws and will be legended accordingly.

While Insiders will be significant participants, this Offering is open to all qualified investors. The Company particularly encourages existing shareholders who wish to participate in the Offering to contact the Company through Grove Issuer Services Inc. at [email protected].

Of the total proceeds to be raised, $75,000 is to be paid to Non-Arm's Length Parties, up to $30,000 toward Investor Relations activities, and the balance to be used for general working capital purposes and certain project expenditures as set out in the table below.

CORPORATE EXPENSES





General Admin & Accounting $ 80,000

Professional Fees $ 40,000

Regulatory & Exchange Fees $ 25,000

Bus Dev / IR $ 30,000

Accounts Payable $ 75,000

Officers Compensation $ 75,000

Total Corporate Expenses $ 325,000







PROJECT EXPENDITURES



Field Work - mapping & trenching $ 70,000

Data Compilation & Interpretation $ 40,000

Geophysics & Geochemistry $ 20,000

Accounts Payable $ 45,000

Total Project Expenditures $ 175,000



The Company anticipates Insider participation of at least C$200,000 or 13,333,333 Units. The issuance of Units to Insiders will be considered a "related-party transaction" within the meaning of TSX Venture Exchange Policy 5.9 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions and Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). The Company intends to rely on the exemptions from the "minority approval" and "formal valuation" requirements of MI 61-101 in respect of any Insider Participation.

Closing of the Offering is anticipated to be completed on or about July 8, 2022, and is subject to the approval of the TSX-V and other customary closing conditions. There can be no assurances that the Offering will be completed on the terms set out herein, or at all, or that the proceeds of the Offering will be sufficient for the uses of proceeds as set out above.

The securities offered have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration requirements. This news release does not constitute an offer for sale of securities in the United States.

About Blue Thunder

Blue Thunder (TSXV: BLUE) (OTCQB: BLTMF) is a gold exploration company that controls 100% of one of the largest land positions near the Chapais-Chibougamau gold district of Quebec with significant historical production and major recent discoveries. The project is situated on the two major regional trends hosting IAMGOLD's Nelligan and Northern Superior Resources Lac Surprise to the south and IAMGOLD's Monster Lake to the north with excellent highway and road access. The Muus Project covers approximately 51,000 hectares in five separate blocks of prospective ground in the eastern part of the Abitibi Greenstone Belt. The Project is considered particularly prospective for gold mineralization, as a series of prominent ductile and brittle fault-sets transect the Property, including the Guercheville and Fancamp deformation zones, both of which are associated with numerous past and currently producing precious- and base-metal mines in the District.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Chad Williams,

Non-Executive Chairman and Director

Blue Thunder Mining Inc.

401 Bay Street, Suite 2704,

P.O. Box 4, Toronto, Ontario, M5H 2Y4

For more information, please visit our website bluethundermining.com, or contact: Ms. Namrata Malhotra: [email protected] | 416 642-1807

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 press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements other than statements of historical fact, including without limitation, statements regarding the anticipated content, commencement and exploration program results, the ability to complete future financings, required permitting, exploration programs and drilling, and the anticipated business plans and timing of future activities of the Company, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct.

The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, the state of the financial markets for the Company's equity securities, the state of the commodity markets generally, variations in the nature, the analytical results from surface trenching and sampling program, including diamond drilling programs, the results of IP surveying, the results of soil and till sampling program. the quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located, variations in the market price of any mineral products the Company may produce or plan to produce, the inability of the Company to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required, including TSXV acceptance, for its planned activities, the inability of the Company to produce minerals from its properties successfully or profitably, to continue its projected growth, to raise the necessary capital or to be fully able to implement its business strategies, the potential impact of COVID-19 (coronavirus) on the Company's exploration program and on the Company's general business, operations and financial condition, and other risks and uncertainties. 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. This news release contains information with respect to adjacent or similar mineral properties in the Chibougamau District in respect of which the Company has no interest or rights to explore or mine. Readers are cautioned that the Company has no interest in or right to acquire any interest in any such properties, and that mineral deposits, and the results of any mining thereof, on adjacent or similar properties, are not indicative of mineral deposits on the Company's properties or any potential exploration thereof.

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/129946
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - July 4, 2022) - LevelJump Healthcare Corp. (TSXV: JUMP) (OTCQB: JMPHF) (FSE: 75J) ("LevelJump" or the "Company"), a Canadian leader in B2B telehealth solutions, is very pleased to announce that, further to its news releases of April 6th, 2022, it has now completed and closed a non-brokered private placement financing. In connection with the private placement, the Company has issued a total of 5,858,334 units for aggregate gross proceeds of $877,000.15 at a price of $0.15 per unit (a "Unit").

Each Unit consists of one common share of Leveljump and one common share purchase warrant ("Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder to acquire one additional common share of Leveljump at an exercise price of $0.20 for a period until January 31, 2024.

The net proceeds from the financing will be used towards acquisitions and for general working capital purposes.

All securities issued pursuant to this financing will be subject to resale restrictions for a period of four months and one day from closing under applicable securities legislation.

About LevelJump Healthcare

LevelJump Healthcare Corp., (TSXV: JUMP) is building a national telehealth medical company and brand, currently by providing teleradiology (remote radiology) services to its client hospitals and imaging centers. Additionally, JUMP owns and operates independent healthcare facilities (IHF's) focused on diagnostic imaging.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF

LEVELJUMP HEALTHCARE CORP.

Mitchell Geisler, Chief Executive Officer

[email protected]

(833) 840-2020

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws relating to the Company's business plans and the outlook of the Company's industry. Although the Company believes, in light of the experience of its officers and directors, current conditions and expected future developments and other factors that have been considered appropriate, 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. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this release and the Company assumes no responsibility to update them or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances other than as required by applicable securities laws. The Company undertakes no obligation to comment on analyses, expectations or statements made by third-parties in respect of the Company, Canadian Teleradiology Services, Inc., their securities, or their respective financial or operating results (as applicable).

Neither the Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

The securities being offered have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any U.S. state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, United States persons absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable U.S. state securities laws. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities in the United States, nor in any other jurisdiction.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/129937
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 5, 2022) - PORTOFINO RESOURCES INC. (TSXV: POR) (OTCQB: PFFOF) (FSE: POTA) ("Portofino" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the execution of a definitive collaboration agreement with Recursos Energeticos y Mineros De Salta S.A. ("REMSA"), the state-owned mining company of the Province of Salta, Argentina.

The agreement provides Portofino with the opportunity to earn a majority interest in an 8,445-hectare concession within the Arizaro lithium salar which is located in the heart of the world-renown Argentine Lithium Triangle and in close proximity to multiple world-class lithium projects.

The Company's Argentine geological team has completed initial reconnaissance mapping and sampling. A targeted systematic, trenching, sampling and shallow augur drilling program is anticipated to commence shortly.

Pursuant to previous disclosure, a number of other mineral properties, targeted for lithium brine potential, have been identified by Portofino and REMSA and the Company will continue to negotiate with REMSA to execute additional collaboration agreements in the near term. The prospection and initial exploration campaigns will be performed by REMSA with technical input provided by Portofino.

David Tafel, CEO of Portofino, commented: "This unique agreement provides Portofino with a significant opportunity to be positioned in the largest lithium brine salar in Salta, located within one of the best lithium exploration and development jurisdictions in the world. We are very pleased to be able to execute this initial collaboration agreement and anticipate working closely with REMSA to finalize additional agreements regarding specifically identified lithium-bearing salar properties."

Mr. Alberto Castillo, CEO of REMSA commented: "Portofino's team has demonstrated a high level of professional and technical ability and REMSA looks forward to advancing this relationship. Salta province has established consistent, transparent, and responsible mineral policies which are leading to substantial, sustained foreign investment that is providing immense local economic benefits while simultaneously prioritizing protection of our environment."

Subject to results of surface sampling and geophysical exploration activity, Portofino, together with its Argentine partner RONIALEM S.R.L., may propose an initiative to form a joint venture with REMSA. The proposal would be subject to certain payment terms and conditions.

The Arizaro Lithium Salar

The Arizaro salar is located in western Salta Province at a surface elevation of 3,460 meters ("m"). The salar covers an area of approximately 1,600 square kilometers reportedly making it one of the largest salt flats in the world and second largest in Argentina. The trans-Andean Salta-Antofagasta railway and the well-serviced road, Provincial Route 27 crosses through the middle of the salar.

The salar occupies an irregular northeast-southwest basin that measures approximately 80 kilometers ("km") long and up to 30 km wide. The basin is thought to be fault-bounded and filled mainly with semi-consolidated sands and cobbles.

Brines occur within the basin and are reported to be zoned with lithium and potassium-rich brines historically sampled to depths below surface and reaching several hundred meters. Several international companies are conducting sampling and drilling projects on the Arizaro salar with drill holes being planned to depths of up to 500 m.

About REMSA

REMSA is a corporation formed in 1985, that oversees the administration of the energy and mineral resources of the Province of Salta. It contributes to the productive and social development of the province by managing and promoting the exploration and development of projects within the mining and energy sectors.

Qualified Person

The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Mike Kilbourne, P.Geo., who is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. The QP has not completed sufficient work to verify the historic information on the properties in the province of Salta, Argentina, particularly regarding historical exploration, neighbouring companies, and government geological work.

About Portofino Resources Inc.

Portofino is a Vancouver-based Canadian company focused on exploring and developing mineral resource projects in the Americas. Portofino has an opportunity to earn a majority interest in multiple lithium projects in Salta, Argentina and controls 100% of the Yergo Lithium property which encompasses the Aparejos Salar in Catamarca. The properties are situated in the heart of the world-renown Argentine Lithium Triangle and in close proximity to multiple world-class lithium projects. The Company also has the right to earn 100% interest in three northwestern Ontario, Canada lithium projects: Allison Lake North, Greenheart Lake and McNamara Lake.

Portofino's South of Otter and Bruce Lake projects are in the historic gold mining district of Red Lake, Ontario, Canada proximal to the Dixie gold project discovered by Great Bear Resources and now owned by Kinross Gold Corp. In addition, Portofino holds three other northwestern Ontario gold projects; the Gold Creek property located immediately south of the historic Shebandowan mine, as well as the Sapawe West and Melema West properties located in the rapidly developing Atikokan gold mining camp.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"David G. Tafel"

Chief Executive Officer

For Further Information Contact:

David Tafel CEO,

Director 604-683-1991

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release may contain forward looking statements concerning future operations of Portofino Resources Inc. (the "Company"). All forward- looking statements concerning the Company's future plans and operations, including management's assessment of the Company's project expectations or beliefs may be subject to certain assumptions, risks and uncertainties beyond the Company's control. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and that actual performance and exploration and financial results may differ materially from any estimates or projections.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/129948
BOONE, N.C., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Waya Health today announced one of the largest single deployments of virtual reality within a U.S. healthcare system, company president Joe Morgan, MD, said.

Waya Health makes one of largest single deployments of virtual reality in a U.S. healthcare system, at VHA.

The project entails implementation of Waya Health's immersive virtual reality (VR) creative arts therapy application across 56 Veterans Health Administration (VHA) medical centers, from New York City to Los Angeles, and Spokane to Miami.

"We are proud to provide the VHA with a unified system that promotes many ways of veterans healing, virtually," Dr. Morgan said.

Under its $1.8 million contract with VHA, Waya Health shipped more than 350 VR systems with its proprietary software to VHA medical centers in 34 states and Puerto Rico. The company also is providing training, technical support, and software upgrades over the course of the two-year contract.

"The potential for immersive technology, specifically VR, to positively impact the lives of our staff and veterans is endless," said Anne Lord Bailey, PharmD, director of Clinical Tech Innovation and co-lead of VHA Extended Reality Network. "From helping address pain to empowering rehabilitation, we are seeing veterans engage in their care in really powerful ways. Creative arts therapy VR has been no exception."

Creative arts therapies promote physical, emotional, psychological, and social rehabilitation. They also help to relieve pain and other symptoms related to terminal illnesses.

The VR creative arts therapy modules that Waya Health developed and VHA is using include painting, dancing, drama, and playing musical instruments in addition to evidence-based relaxation environments.

VHA began using and testing Waya Health's technology in 2018 in a variety of clinical situations in its hospitals and community living centers, including pain relief, mental health, and clinical assessments.

"VHA has been an incredible embracer of innovation," Dr. Morgan said. "They're light years ahead of the rest of healthcare with a system-wide, integrated, virtual reality system. They're going to reap the benefits in terms of outcomes, from a cost standpoint, and in terms of the kinds of care they're able to provide."

"As clinicians, we understand that giving the same quality of care that we did yesterday is never going to be good enough. We are always trying to raise the bar and find new ways of improving care. At Waya, we are making it easy for innovative healthcare institutions to leverage virtual reality to accomplish just that!"

About Waya Health:

A pioneer and leading innovator in the use of virtual reality in healthcare, Waya Health was founded by board-certified physicians in Boone, NC, in 2016. The Waya Health Platform improves patient outcomes, lowers costs, and increases revenue across multiple clinical settings  all while reducing the need for drug therapies, including pain medication. The truth is, most patients would rather be somewhere else. With Waya, they can be.

About the Veterans Health Administration Innovation Ecosystem (VHA IE):

VHA IE is the catalyst for enabling the discovery and spread of mission-drive health care innovation to advance care delivery and service that exceeds expectations, restores hope, and builds trust within the veteran community. As part of the VHA Office of Discovery, Education and Affiliate Networks (DEAN), VHA IE leverages the collective power of innovation champions across VA, academia, non-profit organizations, and industry to operationalize innovation in the nation's largest integration healthcare system.

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SOURCE Waya Health
JAKARTA, Indonesia, July 1, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- First in Indonesia, Alam Hijau Anagata (AHA) launched an eco-friendly crypto token called AHA Token. Launched in December 2021, AHA Token aims to become Indonesia's largest and most trusted contributor to carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction, by supporting the development of green energy projects. AHA Token will collaborate with Indonesian relevant stakeholders to achieve the mixed energy target of containing 23% of renewable energy by 2025, in line with the government's mission.

In the early stages, the Solar PV and Carbon Trade Platform projects will be AHA Token's main focus. Now is the right momentum, considering the ongoing growth of solar roof panels' usage in Indonesia. By August 2021, the number of Solar Power Plant (PLTS) users had reached 4,133, almost double from 2,346 customers in the previous year. The Indonesian Solar Energy Association (ISEA) estimates that PV mini-grid capacity could reach 1,000 MW next year and rise between 3,000 MW and 5,000 MW per year starting in 2025, so the impact on reducing tons of CO2 emission is huge.

AHA Token Contribution to Environmental Contribution

AHA's take on the green investment concept is expected to make waves, especially since the public has towering concern over deteriorating environmental conditions. Unlike other tokens that are mined with high energy consumption, AHA Token relies on a decentralized yield-generation utility eco-token system based on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) technology, thus providing safe and profitable transactions for all investors. This token is also the first in Indonesia to provide staking and dividends as a return on investment for all active holders.

"AHA Token's utilization is divided into three main functions, namely investment, transaction, and donation. We want to embrace people who share our green mindset and want to contribute to reducing global carbon emissions. AHA Token serves as a reward for their actions. Not only positioning it as a crypto, we also plan to launch gamification in the AHA ecosystem that supports tree-planting programs across Indonesia," said Aswin Regawa, CEO of AHA Token.

AHA Token is committed to bolstering Indonesia's transition into green energy and contributing to projects related to green energy in the country, such as water and air treatment, carbon trading, as well as other projects with unique business value. Furthermore, AHA Token will also promote various global green projects with sustainable economic value in the future, starting from Indonesia.

To achieve this vision, AHA Token has started carrying out reforestation and environmental preservation efforts. They started with the planting of mangroves in Serangan in February 2022, 1,000 mangroves in Buleleng in March 2022, and 1,200 mangroves at Telaga Waja Beach, Tanjung Benoa, in April 2022. This series of activities aims to raise awareness about the importance of maintaining life and earth sustainability.

For investors, AHA Token has appealing advantages, one of which is that the token has been linked to USDT, for a more efficient distribution process, as well as a more stable price. In addition, the process of buying and selling tokens is also safer, easier and confidential, because it is connected to a decentralized system. The AHA Token has now entered the Pre-Sale stage.

About AHA Token

AHA Token is an eco-friendly token issued by Anagata Green Nature. First launched in December 2021, AHA Token's vision is to become Indonesia's largest and most trusted contributor to carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction, by supporting the development of green energy projects, both at home and abroad. AHA Token uses a decentralized yield-generation utility eco-token system based on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) technology, thus providing transactions that are more secure and environmentally friendly. Learn more here! You can also join Telegram and AHA Token Instagram to get more information about green lifestyle!

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SOURCE Token AHA
ALIQUIPPA, Pa., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Southern Pines Trucking, www.spinestrucking.com, a leader in the specialized and cryogenic transportation industries, announces the addition of Darren Coast to their leadership team as President, Cryogenic Division. Southern Pines' Cryogenic Division provides cryogenic gas transportation services to numerous industries including steel, healthcare, aerospace, food and beverage, chemicals/refining and electronics. As President of the Cryogenic Division, Coast will grow the tanker fleet and further diversify Southern Pines' customer base while maintaining the company's high standards of safety, service and quality relationships.

"My top priority is our drivers. I understand the daily challenges they face and the high demand that exists for their services. Our highly skilled drivers are the reason we're able to provide such safe and reliable service to our customers. I'm here to help them and add to our growing team of professional drivers," said Coast.

Prior to joining Southern Pines, Coast served as the Chief Financial Officer of PGT Trucking, Inc., an affiliate of Southern Pines, and held several key leadership positions at PGT for more than 20 years. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from Westminster College and has over 27 years of experience in the transportation and logistics industries. He is a member of the American Trucking Association, the Truckload Carriers Association, and National Tank Truck Carriers. Coast brings his extensive knowledge and background across multiple disciplines to Southern Pines.

"Darren has held many different positions during his tenure at PGT, and we are always looking to provide opportunities for career development and advancement to our employees," said Pat Gallagher, Southern Pines Trucking Chief Executive Officer. "Darren is a great fit to lead the Cryogenic Division, and I look forward to seeing Southern Pines grow and succeed under his direction."

About Southern Pines Trucking:

Southern Pines Trucking is a multi-service transportation firm offering cryogenic tanker and heavy haul services in the continental U.S. and parts of Canada. With more than 20 years' experience in the specialized transportation industry, Southern Pines is equipped to handle any unique shipment needs. Southern Pines provides safe, reliable transportation services, builds quality relationships and offers a challenging and rewarding work environment. For more information, visit www.spinestrucking.com.

Contact: Katie Irvine, PGT TruckingPhone: 724.987.1812 Email: [email protected]

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SOURCE Southern Pines Trucking
Investment Community Teleconference Set for August 9, 2022 at 8 a.m. ET

TORONTO, July 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Hydro One Limited (TSX: H), the largest electric transmission and distribution utility in Ontario, plans to release its second quarter financial results the morning of August 9, 2022 before North American financial markets open. A summary of the results will be distributed by newswire and the complete MD&A and financial statements will be posted at www.hydroone.com/investors and www.sedar.com.

Hydro One's management will host a teleconference with the investment community at 8 a.m. ET that same morning to discuss the results and outlook. Those wishing to listen to the teleconference should access the live webcast on the Investor Relations Events and Presentations section of Hydro One's website at www.hydroone.com/investors. A rebroadcast of the teleconference will be available following the call at the same link.

Those members of the North American financial community wanting to ask questions during the call should go to this link (registration link), and you will be provided with personalized dial-in details. To avoid delays, we encourage participants to dial into the conference call fifteen minutes ahead of the scheduled start time. Other interested parties and media are welcome to participate on a listen-only basis.

Hydro One Limited (TSX: H)

Hydro One Limited, through its wholly-owned subsidiaries, is Ontario's largest electricity transmission and distribution provider with approximately 1.5 million valued customers, approximately $30.4 billion in assets as at December 31, 2021, and annual revenues in 2021 of approximately $7.2 billion.

Our team of approximately 9,300 skilled and dedicated employees proudly build and maintain a safe and reliable electricity system which is essential to supporting strong and successful communities. In 2021, Hydro One invested approximately $2.1 billion in its transmission and distribution networks, and supported the economy through buying approximately $1.7 billion of goods and services.

We are committed to the communities where we live and work through community investment, sustainability and diversity initiatives. We are designated as a Sustainable Electricity Company by the Canadian Electricity Association.

Hydro One Limited's common shares are listed on the TSX and certain of Hydro One Inc.'s medium term notes are listed on the NYSE. Additional information can be accessed at www.hydroone.com, www.sedar.com or www.sec.gov.

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SOURCE Hydro One Limited
GLASTONBURY, Conn., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Jazz pianist and composer James A. Norkawich brings his own diverse musical background to the mainstream with a new music genre referred to as "Classical Crossover". By covering modern songs and using classically trained artists to craft unique arrangements, Norkawich blends old and new in brilliant fashion. He provides what he describes as musical clarity and the development for expression and interpretation. His latest track "Who Wants to Live Forever" features classically trained vocalist Tyrone Piper.Multi-instrumentalist James A. Norkawich hails from Bridgeport, Connecticut and comes from a musical background. His grandfather, an organist, first got him into the home spinet organ. After receiving his first chord organ, he went onto study piano from the Verrilli Music Studio and specialized in organ under the direction of Frank Markham. Norkawich also became a member of the Connecticut Valley Theatre Organ Society and was accepted into the Regional Center of the Arts in Bridgeport at the age of 16. He also gained experience working with other artists including Rosa Rio, lyn Larsen, Father James Miller, Bob Ralston and Larry Ferrari.

An after-school program, the RCA, had professional musicians and dancers for college credit. By age 17-18, James was performing in front of crowds of thousands and appearing on numerous television programs with the rest of the RCA ensemble. After graduating from high school, Norkawich was awarded a four-year scholarship to the University of Bridgeport and eventually received a full scholarship for his Masters. After college, he went onto perform with acts including Spyro Gyra, Dave Samuels, Brian Torff and many others around the New England area. In his spare time, Norkawich performed at the Covenant Church of Easton as part of their worship ensemble and played at private engagements including weddings.

Following his various studio projects including two Latin Christian albums, his latest endeavor is a genre he describes as "Classical Crossover", which provides a unique canvas for his many talents. Using classical music as a background for more contemporary sounds, Norkawich collaborates with other musicians to bring a modern spin to a more traditional sound. The result is a complex and lush piano driven wall of sound with infinite room for experimentation and improvisation. The music features classically trained musicians doing both cover songs and traditional songs, but with a new free-flowing nature that presents both the old and the new in such a way that hasn't really been done before.

"Who Wants to Live Forever" is a brilliant display of the influences and talents that Norkawich possesses, and a great introduction to the idea of Classical Crossover. The haunting piano provides the landscape for the soulful vocals to create an introspective track that is familiar enough to recognize, but different enough to intrigue. Aiming to provide a shot in the arm to an industry that has stagnated in a lot of ways, Norkawich hopes that his music will draw new audiences. He strives to provide listeners with some insight into the very different world that the genre seamlessly brings together.

When putting this single together, Norkawich was looking for a voice that had the creativity of Freddie Mercury, and vocal dynamics of Adam Lambert. Through the Classical Crossover community he asked Tyrone Piper if he would would make a vocal imprint on a Queen classic. You can hear Piper emote the passion and dynamics on this track as a one of a kind piece that fans of all music styles can enjoy. The song speaks volumes but when you hear Norkawich and Piper combined, its amplified to the next level.

"Music is the soundtrack of our lives.", said Norkawich. He is looking to put his own spin on music we know and love. In this new genre he strives to bring in artists within the genre and work with them in anyway possible. Hoping that Classical Crossover will also lead to writing opportunities, Norkawich plans to distribute his new track for listeners worldwide, and it can already be found on major streaming sites including Spotify and YouTube.

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SOURCE James A. Norkawich
Southeastern Electric Exchange (S.E.E.) recognizes PPL Electric with Industry Excellence Awards for safety and supply chain innovations

ALLENTOWN, Pa., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- PPL Electric Utilities is proud to announce it has won a pair of Industry Excellence Awards from Southeastern Electric Exchange (S.E.E.) for innovations in both employee safety processes and supply chain management. The awards were presented at S.E.E.'s annual conference on June 29.

"Innovating for the future is a major focus," said PPL Electric Utilities President Steph Raymond. "Whether that's finding new ways to increase organizational safety, bolster efficiencies through supply chain management or pioneering a new technology. These awards showcase how our continued efforts translate into benefits for our employees and customers."

Safety is a core value for PPL Electric. And despite having the two safest years in its history in 2017 and 2018, the company continued to look for ways to increase overall safety within the organization. This led to the development of a safety-focused leadership training program that provides mentoring skills and a forum to discuss all aspects of safety incidents, regardless of whether they resulted in injuries.

After a review of safety trends, PPL Electric found that engaged leaders helped to reduce safety incidents by passing on knowledge to both less experienced and new employees. Along with introducing this new safety leadership program, the company created a process for discussing safety incidents and launched quarterly learning sessions that addressed key topics.

PPL Electric was also honored for a recent supply chain management innovation. PPL Electric's supply chain organization took over the storage and delivery of the utility's steel structures in 2020. This move helped to reduce costs by 40 percent and resulted in increased reliability and service for customers.

Prior to taking over these processes, the company relied on a third-party vendor to both store and deliver these structures. The recent change has become an asset for PPL Electric and its customers as steel structures are now stored within PPL Electric's service territory and are available for quicker delivery when there is an immediate need, leading to better customer service.

PPL Electric Utilities delivers safe, reliable and affordable electricity to more than 1.4 million homes and businesses in eastern and central Pennsylvania. It regularly ranks among the country's best utility companies for reliability and customer satisfaction. PPL Electric Utilities is a major employer and an active supporter of the communities it serves. It is a part of the PPL Corporation (NYSE: PPL) family of companies. Visit pplelectric.com or connect on social media via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for energy efficiency tips, bill help information, guidance on shopping for an electricity supplier, storm updates and more.

S.E.E. is a non-profit association of investor-owned utilities that was founded in 1933. The 22-state association helps to promote the common interests and growth of its members, develop and enhance the resources of member companies, and provide coordination of storm restoration services to impacted members. For more information about S.E.E., visit its website at theexchange.org.

Note to Editors: Visit our media website at www.pplnewsroom.com for additional news and background about PPL Corporation.

Contact: For news media: Russ Hryvnak, 570-807-2229, [email protected] PPL Electric Utilities

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SOURCE PPL Electric Utilities
Schemes co-designed and led by PQShield 's researchers and advisory board will become global standards for post-quantum cryptography, following NIST's six-year standardization process

Demand for quantum-ready solutions has been on the rise as companies seek to defend against the quantum security threat, and today's announcement will only accelerate this by removing months of uncertainty

PQShield is the only algorithm-agnostic cybersecurity company that can demonstrate and deliver quantum-safe cryptography on chips, in applications, and in the cloud

LONDON, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today announced the outcome of its post-quantum cryptography standardization project. The new draft standards are all schemes contributed to by the advisory board and researchers at PQShield, a UK-headquartered cybersecurity company specialising in post-quantum cryptography. PQShield also advised on all other algorithms developed as part of the NIST standardisation process.

Specifically:

PQShield's Dr Thomas Prest led and co-authored Falcon , a digital signature algorithm;

a digital signature algorithm; PQShield's Oussama Danba co-authored NTRU, a key encapsulation mechanism also shortlisted as a finalist;

PQShield advisory board members Professor Peter Schwabe (Radboud University and the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy) and Professor Chris Peikert (University of Michigan) co-authored the finalists and alternates CRYSTALS-Dilithium, NTRU, SPHINCS+, Classic McEliece, CRYSTALS-KYBER, and FrodoKEM.

Of these, CRYSTALS-KYBER was today chosen by NIST as the new standard for public-key encryption/KEMs. Falcon, CRYSTALS-Dilithium and SPHINCS+ will all be standardized for digital signatures.

Professor Peter Schwabe, PQShield advisory board member, says: "It is great to see the NIST post-quantum cryptography standardization effort come to a first conclusion today after months of anticipation. This has been a major effort for the international research community across both academia and industry, and the team at PQShield has been a big part of this.

"Since the standardization project began in 2016, there's been a shift in attitudes towards PQC, and it is now understood as a critical part of a secure future. Now, it is going to be exciting to see more and more applications and systems transition to this next generation of asymmetric cryptography."

The quantum threat has been high on the global security agenda for months, with governments and their partners planning their transition to quantum-resistance even before NIST's standards were announced. In a recent White House fact sheet following the G7 summit, the deployment of Post-Quantum Cryptography was listed as one of the key challenges of the 21st century.

In January, a White House Memorandum called for US government agencies to identify any encryption not compliant with quantum-proof standards and provide a timeline towards transition. Separately, the French national security agency (ANSSI) recommended the immediate introduction of post-quantum defences throughout the private sector.

Now that global cryptography standards have been announced, more companies will begin planning their transition to quantum-readiness - a trend PQShield is already witnessing first hand.

Dr Ali El Kaafarani, PQShield's founder and CEO, says: "Today's news marks a turning point in the fight for information security, thanks to a huge effort by NIST and the wider cryptography community.

"Previous cryptographic standards meant that the quantum threat touched everyone, with everything from medical records to national intelligence exposed to 'harvest now, decrypt later' attacks. NIST's new Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) standards are a welcome arrival, and I am extremely proud of the team at PQShield for their intense efforts in helping to deliver these - especially Thomas and Peter for having their own contributions chosen.

"But there's no room for complacency. Across sectors, the race is now on to implement the new cryptographic defences, protecting data wherever it is vulnerable. Now, having actual standards to follow will help companies to put concrete transition roadmaps in place."

PQShield is an algorithm-agnostic vendor, offering size optimised and side-channel resistant implementations of all relevant NIST PQC finalists in hardware and software, which meant it could support companies in their transition to quantum-readiness even before today's standards were announced.

Since raising $20 million in Series A funding in January, PQShield has made a series of deals to introduce its quantum-ready cryptographic solutions to organisations across sectors, including a licensing deal with Microchip Technology and a collaboration with Collins Aerospace.

Its hybrid cryptographic library, PQCryptoLib, was also the first submitted to the NIST Cryptographic Module Validation Program for FIPS 140-3, the mandatory standard for the protection of data within US and Canadian federal systems.

PQShield CEO, Ali El Kaafarani, added: "When it comes to defining PQC standards, the work doesn't stop here. NIST also confirmed a fourth round today to further examine the alternate schemes BIKE, Classic McEliece, HQC and SIKE, and the team at PQShield will be in action again scrutinising these alongside the wider community.

"On top of this, NIST also announced a new Call for Proposals to diversify the signature schemes portfolio available - and no doubt our team will submit more candidates. We very much look forward to the road ahead as we collectively work towards a quantum-safe future."

About PQShield

PQShield is a cybersecurity company specialising in post-quantum cryptography, protecting data from today's attacks while readying organisations for the threat landscape of tomorrow.

It is the only cybersecurity company that can demonstrate quantum-safe cryptography on chips, in applications, and in the cloud. Headquartered in the UK, with additional teams in the United States, France and the Netherlands, its quantum-secure cryptographic solutions work with companies' legacy systems to protect devices and sensitive data now and for years to come.

PQShield is principally backed by Addition, Crane Venture Partners, Oxford Science Enterprises (formerly OSI), Kindred Capital, and InnovateUK. Its latest white papers are available to read here.

www.pqshield.com | LinkedIn | Twitter

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SOURCE PQShield
DALLAS, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Simmons Bank, as Trustee of the Sabine Royalty Trust (NYSE: SBR), today declared a cash distribution to the holders of its units of beneficial interest of $0.549990 per unit, payable on July 29, 2022, to unit holders of record on July 15, 2022. Sabine's cash distribution history, current and prior year financial reports and tax information booklets, a link to filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission and more can be found on its website at http://www.sbr-sabine.com/. Additionally, printed reports can be requested and are mailed free of charge.

This distribution reflects primarily the oil production for April 2022 and the gas production for March 2022. Preliminary production volumes are approximately 40,082 barrels of oil and 1,024,821 Mcf of gas. Preliminary prices are approximately $105.12 per barrel of oil and $4.57 per Mcf of gas.

This month's distribution is lower than the previous month's due to decreased production of oil and gas, primarily due to the timing of receipts through the end of the month.

The production from the new horizontal gas wells in Panola County, Texas, has contributed approximately $880,000 reflecting March production. They were averaging about 752 Mcf per day per well during March totaling over 186,000 Mcf with an average pricing of $4.41 per Mcf. In addition to these proceeds, the additional 8 new wells which were paid upon for the month of March, contributing approximately $200,000, reflecting an average of 215 Mcf per well, per day.

Additionally, another 3 new horizontal wells, also in Panola County, are being paid on by another operator for the month of production for April 2022, however, the funds were not received in time for this distribution.

As more regular monthly receipts are made in the months to come, additional information will be made available.

The table below compares this month's production and prices to the previous month's:

Net to Trust Sales Volumes Average Price Oil (bbls) Gas (Mcf) Oil (per bbl) Gas (per Mcf) Current Month 40,082 1,024,821 $105.12 $4.57 Prior Month 64,786 1,037,379 $94.63 $5.19

Revenues are only distributed after they are received, verified, and posted. Most energy companies normally issue payment of royalties on or about the 25th of every month, and depending on mail delivery, a varying amount of royalties are not received until after the revenue posting on the last business day of the month. The revenues received after that date will be posted within 30 days of receipt.

Due to the timing of the end of the month of June, approximately $900,762 of revenue received will be posted in the following month of July in addition to normal receipts during July.

The 2021 Annual Report with Form 10-K and the January 1, 2022 Reserve Summary has been posted on the Sabine website at http://www.sbr-sabine.com/.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sabine-royalty-trust-announces-monthly-cash-distribution-for-july-2022-301580551.html

SOURCE Sabine Royalty Trust
Tampa General Hospital patients needing further care at home can now continue to receive the same world-class care they experienced while in the hospital.

TAMPA, Fla., July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- To improve the quality of home care for its patients, Tampa General Hospital (TGH) is partnering with home health agency, the Visiting Nurse Association, (VNA) to form TGH Home Care powered by VNA of Florida. The new entity will provide a full range of home care services for Tampa General patients, as well as those in the community needing home care.

"Through TGH Home Care powered by VNA of Florida, patients will have the choice to remain with our network of care for the services they need while continuing to recover in the comfort of their home," said Adam Smith, executive vice president and chief ambulatory officer, Tampa General. "Staying within Tampa General means our patients can make a seamless and safer transition home. They remain our patient, which means they can more easily access the combined resources of an academic medical center and an experienced home care agency, that supports improved quality, outcomes, and overall patient experience. Adding a new service such as home care will help us move forward in achieving our vision of being the safest and most innovative academic health system in America."

Home care is a variety of personal and skilled nursing care services provided in the home for patients recovering from an illness or injury or living with a chronic medical condition. TGH Home Care powered by VNA of Florida offers both in-home personal care and nursing services, including home health aides, skilled nursing, rehabilitation, chronic disease management, medical social services and more.

"We have been providing home health services to Floridians since 1976, with care delivered to Tampa General patients and the surrounding communities for 26 years. Our team has a deep understanding of the diverse and complex needs that patients of a Level I Trauma Center may have," said Jennifer Crow, CEO, Visiting Nurse Association. "Our long-standing expertise and VNA's mission to serve all patients with quality home health care align perfectly with Tampa General Hospital's commitment to providing world-class care. We promise to deliver the highest level of care and we believe that our partnership will be the catalyst that creates a full circle of excellence for patients needing in-home support for their recovery."

A patient's return to the comfort of their home begins at the hospital, where a TGH Home Care powered by VNA of Florida nurse meets with the patient and their family to learn about their home setting and needs for care. The nurse will directly access important information to make the patient's return home an easier process with all the services and equipment needed for recuperation.

"With electronic medical record integration, our patients will receive the benefit of continuous care coordination as they work towards regaining their independence, with caregiver and family support at home. This new TGH service also offers patients access to nurse navigators who can provide ongoing support as patients progress and return to the community," said Elan Melamed, senior director ambulatory experience and operations. TGH Home Care powered by VNA of Florida services are available for patients in the community as well.

TGH Home Care powered by VNA of Florida will serve all patients in Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Manatee, Hardee and Highlands counties, no matter what hospital they are discharged from. Whether patients live in the Tampa Bay region, or have traveled for their care, the Visiting Nurse Association has seven locations throughout Florida which create a network for patients across the state.

TGH Home Care powered by VNA of Florida began providing services June 20. For more information, visit https://www.vnaflorida.org/ or call 813-692-5969.

ABOUT TAMPA GENERAL HOSPITAL Tampa General Hospital, a 1,041-bed not-for-profit academic medical center, is one of the largest hospitals in America and delivers world-class care as the region's only center for Level l trauma and comprehensive burn care. Tampa General Hospital is the highest-ranked hospital in the market in U.S. News & World Report's 2021-22 Best Hospitals, and one of the top four hospitals in Florida, with five specialties ranking among the best programs in the United States. The academic medical center's commitment to growing and developing its team members is recognized by two prestigious 2021 Forbes magazine rankings  America's Best Employers by State, third out of 100 Florida companies and first among health care and social organizations and 13th nationally in America's Best Employers for Women. Tampa General is the safety net hospital for the region, caring for everyone regardless of their ability to pay, and in fiscal 2020 provided a net community benefit worth more than $182.5 million in the form of health care for underinsured patients, community education, and financial support to community health organizations in Tampa Bay. It is one of the nation's busiest adult solid organ transplant centers and is the primary teaching hospital for the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine. With six medical helicopters, Tampa General Hospital transports critically injured or ill patients from 23 surrounding counties to receive the advanced care they need. Tampa General houses a nationally accredited comprehensive stroke center, and its 32-bed Neuroscience, Intensive Care Unit is the largest on the West Coast of Florida. It also is home to the Jennifer Leigh Muma 82-bed Level IV neonatal intensive care unit, and a nationally accredited rehabilitation center. Tampa General Hospital's footprint includes 17 Tampa General Medical Group Primary Care offices, TGH Family Care Center Kennedy, TGH Brandon Healthplex, TGH Virtual Health and 19 outpatient Radiology Centers. Tampa Bay residents also receive world-class care from the TGH Urgent Care powered by Fast Track network of clinics, and they can even receive home visits in select areas through TGH Urgent Care at Home, powered by Fast Track. As one of the largest hospitals in the country, Tampa General Hospital is the first in Florida to partner with GE Healthcare and open a clinical command center that uses artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to improve and better coordinate patient care at a lower cost. For more information, go to www.tgh.org.

ABOUT VISITING NURSE ASSOCIATIONFor over 45 years, Visiting Nurse Association of Florida (VNA) has been serving Florida communities as their trusted nonprofit home health care provider. We are a Medicare-certified agency delivering award-winning care for patients in the comfort of their own homes. VNA staff total more than 1,000 healthcare professionals, including nurses, physical, occupational and speech therapists, aides and ancillary staff. As one of the largest Florida based agencies, we have been the premier choice for residents in need of quality home health care - including patients facing a new diagnosis or illness, care following a hospitalization, post-surgical care, treatment for chronic illnesses and much more. We currently serve more than 15 counties throughout Florida and consistently rank among the elite providers by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) star rating system. With a record of health care excellence that spans over four decades, modeled after Florence Nightingale, you can trust Visiting Nurse Association of Florida to treat you and your loved one with compassion, professionalism, and respect.

Media Contact: Karen BarreraAssistant Director of Communications & Partnerships(813) 844-8725 (direct)(813) 928-1603 (cell)[email protected]

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SOURCE Tampa General Hospital
Funded by the Engelstad Foundation, the program offers law enforcement medical training and equipment to save lives before emergency medical personnel are allowed onto scene

LAS VEGAS, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Touro University Nevada, home to Nevada's largest medical school, announces the Las Vegas Crisis Response Medical Training Program with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD). The program offers comprehensive medical training and curriculum for Metro officers to help save lives in emergency crime situations in Las Vegas.

Made possible by a $1 million dollar grant from the Engelstad Foundation, the program provides one-of-a-kind, simulated reality medical training for officers, teaching them to stop life-threatening bleeds often associated with accidents, lacerations, firearm wounds, and other incidents where law enforcement is first on the scene. The medical training program also provides local first responders with Individual First Aid Kits (IFAKs), comprehensive medical kits needed to perform life-saving measures in the field.

"This collaboration allows our officers to enhance their abilities to apply critical care during any situation," said Christopher Darcy, Undersheriff, LVMPD. "The training and the Individual First Aid Kits that come with it have transformed the way our officers are taught to respond to a situation where medical care is required. Officers practice using the first aid kits on simulated human-casualty mannequins, which provide a hyper-realistic experience meant to induce stress. This means that in a real-world scenario, officers will be better prepared to render first aid to critically wounded subjects until medical personnel can arrive on scene."

"Partnering with Metro is a perfect example of how a collaboration between a medical school and a law enforcement agency can help save lives," said Shelley Berkley, Senior Vice President, Touro University. "In the past, officers were not provided with this type of life-saving training. Thanks to the Engelstad Foundation, Touro University Nevada and Metro are working together to ensure that our first responders can provide life-saving care when they arrive on scene. We believe this program may be one of the first-of-its-kind in the nation, and we hope that it serves as a model to other municipalities as we work together to make our communities safer."

More than 1,200 Metro officers have already completed the training program, with 700 more officers expected to complete the training by September.

"Just as we strongly believe in the importance of hands-on training for our medical students through lab coursework and residency programs, we believe that law enforcement should receive hands-on medical training that allows them to provide on-the-spot critical care," said Dr. Andrew Priest, Campus President and Provost of Touro University Nevada. "This partnership supports Touro University Nevada's mission of providing quality healthcare and education programs in concert with the Judaic commitment to social justice, intellectual pursuit and service to humanity. And while our hope is to never come across a situation that requires such training, we want our community's first responders to be equipped and ready to save as many lives as possible."

The first phase of the program includes training for all Metro commands, encompassing nearly 3,000 officers. The training program is administered at the new Joint Emergency Training Institute (JETI), a high-tech, reality-based training center for law enforcement in east Las Vegas.

The JETI is the permanent home to LVMPD's Multi-Assault, Counter Terrorism Action Capabilities team (MACTAC). Through this program, Touro aims to provide training to all existing and incoming law enforcement personnel in the Valley, with training made available for additional agencies as well. The university is seeking additional private funds to expand the medical training program.

"This program means a lot to our officers, especially given the recent tragedies our country and our world have endured, including the October 1, 2017 incident in Las Vegas - an event that served in large part as the genesis for our new world-class training center," said Capt. Reggie Rader of Metro's Organizational Development Bureau. "Our officers are expanding their skills and knowledge in stopping bleeds from critical wounds, triage care, emergency care, and hospital transfers, to name a few. These skills can be the difference-maker in reducing deaths and improving outcomes both during daily medical emergencies where officers are first to the scene as well as situations involving violent crime."

ABOUT TOURO UNIVERSITY NEVADATouro University Nevada (Touro) is Nevada's largest school of medicine and largest school of physician assistant studies, fully accredited, and a private, non-profit, Jewish-sponsored institution. Opened in 2004, Touro was established to help address critical needs in health care and education and as a resource for community service throughout the state. Its mission is to provide quality education programs in the fields of healthcare and education in concert with the Judaic commitment to social justice, intellectual pursuit, and service to humanity. Touro is home to more than 1,500 students in a wide variety of degree programs including osteopathic medicine, physician assistant studies, education, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and medical health sciences. The University's Henderson campus includes a multi-specialty health center for the public that accepts all health insurance and the multi-disciplinary Sharon Sigesmund Pierce and Stephen Pierce Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities. For more information on Touro, visit www.tun.touro.edu or call 702-777-8687.

ABOUT LVMPDThe Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is the largest police agency in the state of Nevada serving approximately 1.7 million residents and 32-million visitors a year. The agency employs 4,700 police employees and 1,300 detention employees. LVMPD is committed to our mission to protect the community through prevention, partnership and professional service. That commitment and dedication extends to the millions of visitors that Las Vegas plays host to each year.

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SOURCE Touro University Nevada
Police deploy after gunfire erupted at a Fourth of July parade route in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, U.S. July 4, 2022 in a still image from video. ABC affiliate WLS/ABC7 via REUTERS

By Eric Cox and Brendan O'Brien

HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. (Reuters) -A gunman perched on a rooftop opened fire on families waving flags and children riding bikes at a Fourth of July parade on Monday, killing six and wounding more than 36 in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park.

The gunman climbed to the roof of a business using a ladder in an alley, police said. The attack turned a civic display of patriotism into a scene of mayhem.

Hours later, police announced that they had a suspect in custody after 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III surrendered to authorities.

The main street in Highland Park became a crime scene spanning blocks, strewn with abandoned chairs and flags. Witnesses who later came back to retrieve strollers and other items were told they could not go beyond police tape.

"It sounded like fireworks going off," said retired doctor Richard Kaufman, who was standing across the street from where the gunman opened fire, adding that he heard about 200 shots.

"It was pandemonium," he said. "People were covered in blood tripping over each other.

The shooting comes with gun violence fresh on the minds of many Americans. Just hours after the shooting in Highland Park, two Philadelphia police offers were shot near the Benjamin Franklin Parkway as thousands of people celebrated a Fourth of July concert and fireworks show. Both officers were later released from hospital.

In May, a gunman murdered 19 school children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, just 10 days after a man shot dead 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.

The Chicago suburb attack is likely to rekindle the debate about gun control and whether stricter measures can prevent the mass shootings that happen so frequently in the United States.

Police said they did not know what the motive was for the shooting in Highland Park. The wounded ranged in age from 8 to 85, including four or five children.

Nicolas Toledo, a man his 70s, was the first victim identified as of late Monday by his family.

"My grandfather Nicolas Toledo father of 8 and grandfather to many left us this morning July 4th, what was suppose to be a fun family day turned into a horrific nightmare for us all," his granddaughter, Xochil Toledo, said in a statement issued by the family on social media.

"As a family we are broken, and numb," she added.

Another victim was Jacki Sundheim, a teacher at a synagogue in Highland Park. The North Shore Congregation Israel confirmed her death in an email to congregants.

"There are no words sufficient to express the depth of our grief for Jacki's death and sympathy for her family and loved ones," the synagogue said.

VIOLENT IMAGES ONLINE

Social media and other online posts written by accounts that appeared to be associated with either Crimo or his rapper alias, Awake The Rapper, often depicted violent images or messages.

The accounts showed a man with physical characteristics and facial tattoos similar to those in photos of the suspect released by police.

One music video posted to YouTube under Awake The Rapper, for example, showed drawings of a stick figure holding a rifle in front of another figure spread on the ground.

In a different video, a stick figure is shown bleeding in front of police cars. Reuters could not verify if the YouTube account belonged to Crimo, although the account was terminated on Monday after he was named a suspect.

A YouTube spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

President Joe Biden said he and his wife Jill were "shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day."

Biden referred in his statement to bipartisan gun-reform legislation he signed recently but said much more needed to be done, and added: "Im not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence."

'REALLY TRAUMATIZING'

A 36-year-old native of Highland Park who wanted to be identified as Sara, told Reuters she had attended the parade most years since her childhood.

"Not even five minutes after, very shortly after, the police and firetrucks part of the parade had gone by I heard pop, pop, pop, pop, pop," she said, adding that she first thought they were muskets sometimes used in parades.

"The popping didnt stop ... again it went pop, pop, pop, pop, pop and I turned and I said those are gun shots, run!

Highland Park's population is 30,000 and nearly 90% white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About a third of the population is Jewish, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

After the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings, Congress last month passed its first major federal gun reform in three decades, providing federal funding to states that administer "red flag" laws intended to remove guns from people deemed dangerous.

The law does not ban sales of assault-style rifles or high-capacity magazines but does take some steps on background checks by allowing access to information on significant crimes committed by juveniles.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien and Eric Cox; Additional reporting Caroline Stauffer in Chicago; Kanishka Singh, Chris Gallagher, David Brunnstrom and Chris Bing in Washington; and Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California; Writing by Daniel Trotta, David Brunnstrom and Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Mary Milliken, Noeleen Walder and Bill Berkrot)
By John Revill and Silke Koltrowitz

LUGANO, Switzerland (Reuters) -The cost of rebuilding Ukraine following Russia's invasion could reach $750 billion and rich Russians should help pay the bill, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said on Monday.

"We believe that the key source of recovery should be the confiscated assets of Russia and Russian oligarchs," he told a conference in the Swiss city of Lugano, citing estimates that frozen Russian assets were worth $300-$500 billion.

"The Russian authorities unleashed this bloody war. They caused this massive destruction and they should be held accountable for it."

Russia has said its "special military operation" in Ukraine is meant to demilitarise its southern neighbour and protect Russian speakers from what it calls nationalists.

Ukraine and its Western allies say this is a baseless pretext for flagrant aggression that aims to seize territory.

Shmygal's views on Monday was echoed by British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss who said Russia needed to be held accountable for the damage caused by its "appalling war," while Kyiv also needed help to rebuild its shattered economy.

"We are looking at options for the deployment of Russian assets," Truss told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.

"At the same time we are doing what we can to get the Ukrainian economy restarted - getting those grain exports out of Odesa, making sure we are supporting Ukrainian industry and business to get going," she said.

Shipping insurance and adequate weaponry to protect ports exporting grain were among the areas being looked at, Truss said.

Also addressing the Ukraine Recovery Conference, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the European Union would establish a central platform to coordinate rebuilding efforts and also help to cement Ukraine's status as a candidate for EU membership, which the EU agreed last month.

"Since the beginning of the war, the European Union has mobilised around 6.2 billion euros ($6.48 billion) in financial support," von der Leyen said. "And... more will come. We will engage substantially in the mid- and long-term reconstruction."

The platform will map investment needs and channel resources, von der Leyen said.

It will bring together countries, the private sector, civil society, as well as international organisations, such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank.

The European Investment Bank, the lending arm of the European Union, is proposing a funding structure previously used during the COVID-19 pandemic to help rebuild Ukraine.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed the reconstruction efforts.

"To rebuild Ukraine is to restore the principles of life, to restore the spaces of life, to restore what makes people human," he said by videolink.

($1 = 0.9570 euros)

(Reporting by John Revill and Silke Koltrowitz; additional reporting by Max Hunder in Kyiv; editing by Barbara Lewis and Andrew Heavens)
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(Tribune News Service)  The commander and top non-commissioned officer of the 88th Air Base Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base reviewed the past two years and offered parting remarks in a new video posted Tuesday.

Col. Pat Miller and Chief Master Sgt. Jason Shaffer, both soon ending their tours at Wright-Patterson, spoke with each other in the 18-minute-plus video posted to Facebook.

Miller will hand the flag to Col. Christopher Meeker in a ceremony Thursday at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. Miller's next assignment will take him to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, where he will be director of Logistics, Engineering and Force Protection at the headquarters of the Pacific Air Forces.

Shaffer is headed to the 56th Fighter Wing at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona.

"When you look at the mission side, all right, obviously the last two years have been dominated by COVID," Miller said in the video. "And that's given us some amazing opportunities. You look at how we've had to navigate the installation, the community, through the different HPCON (Health Protection Condition) levels, going from no vaccines, to vaccines available, to vaccine distribution, issuing the second most vaccines in the United States Air Force."

The base, Ohio's largest single-site employer, moved most workers to remote work locations off the installation in the early days of the pandemic, about two months before Miller assumed command of the Air Base Wing  Wright-Patterson's host unit  in June 2020.

And the pandemic remains a concern. With COVID-19 case numbers rising, Wright-Patterson returned to a more stringent HPCON Bravo from Alpha, effective noon Sunday, the base said on social media over the weekend.

The new designation brings with it a minimum weekly requirement of testing for employees who have not received the COVID vaccine, the base said.

The base also deployed 119 medics to Detroit, Mich., to issue more than 240,000 vaccines during the pandemic, sending out five medical support teams, establishing an "aggregation mission" to support those deploying, so "they don't carry the virus inadvertently downrange," all while trying to keep child care centers and other base missions open, Miller added.

"It has been a dynamic environment that has given us an opportunity to do some amazing things," Miller said. "An environment where we were only bound by our imagination."

"We have some of the most outstanding professionals in the Air Force  and they're killing it," Shaffer said.

"Take away COVID, right," Miller said. "COVID was just this unique thing. We still had the normal, day-to-day things in running this installation."

Both men had appreciative words for each other, Shaffer saying to Miller at one point: "This has been amazing because of you."

"I appreciate that," Miller responded.

"For me it has always been about trying to do justice by the team, trying to be the best servant-leader I can be," the commander said.

Shaffer said mission chiefs have a chance to make an impact on the installation as a whole. "It was really awesome, sir, just being able to help so many people."

The 88th Air Base Wing has 5,000-plus employees.

(c)2022 the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio)

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(Tribune News Service)  Firefighters are battling the Garrison Fire blazing in the southern part of Monterey County in California.

As of Monday at noon, the fire was 60% contained and had burned about 150 acres of vegetation, according to Camp Roberts Public Information Officer Keba Baird.

Smoke was visible from Highway 101, according to a Camp Roberts Installation Services Facebook post.

The fire started in a riverbed near Camp Roberts' East Garrison, MATES. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, Baird said.

Camp Roberts shut off power Sunday afternoon and restored it to some areas by 10 p.m., according to a Camp Roberts Installation Services Facebook post.

On Monday, power was restored to Camp Roberts' Main Garrison on the west side of Highway 101. Power remained off at the East Garrison, MATES, where the fire started, Baird said.

Military personnel and first responders have access to Camp Roberts, a Facebook post said.

The Camp Roberts Fire Department, Camp Roberts Department of Public Works, Cal Fire Monterey, Cal Fire San Luis Obispo and the Ventana Hotshots are on the scene responding to the fire. No people or structures have been harmed by the fire, Baird said.

(c)2022 The Tribune (San Luis Obispo, Calif.)

Visit The Tribune (San Luis Obispo, Calif.) at www.sanluisobispo.com

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FOLSOM, Calif. (Tribune News Service)  Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews came home to Folsom in time for Independence Day, and thousands of people were there to welcome him.

Its surreal, he said.

He returned home from Walter Reed National Medical Center in Maryland, where he was learning to live as a double amputee after a suicide attack outside the Kabul airport left him severely injured. That August 2021 attack killed 13 U.S. military service members assigned to a humanitarian mission and at least 170 Afghan civilians, marking the chaotic end to Americas long war in Afghanistan.

At a ceremony at the Folsom Pro Rodeo on Sunday evening, the community welcomed Vargas-Andrews home and honored other fallen troops.

Vargas-Andrews in remarks to the crowd turned the attention to military service members who did not come home from the Kabul mission.

Im not the first person to get blown up, Vargas-Andrews said. Those 13 werent the first 13 to get killed  there have been hundreds of thousands. Its very easy for attention to be brought and the support of communities to be strong at the beginning but it dies off very quickly. Those 13 families and the friends of those 13, theyre never going to forget it, and hopefully, the rest of us wont either.

One of the 13 was Sgt. Nicole Gee, 23, who grew up in nearby Roseville. Gees sister joined the ceremony on Sunday evening to honor her and the others lost.

The ceremony also recognized Marine Capt. John Jeremy Sax of Placer County, who died on June 8 in a Marine aircraft crash in Southern California.

Of the 18 Marines wounded at the Kabul airport, Vargas-Andrews was the most critically injured, losing his left leg at the hip and his right arm above the elbow.

He said his surgeons had told him his physical fitness that helped him survive the blast.

I think this whole situation is probably my moms biggest I told you so, moment in regards to me enlisting in the Marine Corps, but shes too nice to say it, Vargas said. For those friends and family of mine who thought I was a maniac for the way I worked out over the years, this is my I told you so moment.

Vargas-Andrews graduated from Folsom High School in 2016 and joined the Marine Corps the following year. In Kabul, he contributed to humanitarian efforts to reunite Afghan children with their families.

When Vargas-Andrews landed at Sacramento International Airport on Friday night, he was met by supporters and escorted home to Folsom by a police motorcade. Vargas-Andrews described the support from the community he received upon his return as unbelievable.

We moved to Folsom as a family in 2013 and I never knew the community we had until this, his mother, Tiffany Andrews, said at a news conference on Sunday. Im so happy to call this my home after everything.

Throughout his recovery Vargas-Andrews said the 13 troops who lost their lives in Kabul motivated him to push forward.

Most people on the outside looking in think that what Im doing, what Ive done so far in recovery, is incredible and amazing, Vargas-Andrews said in a speech at the rodeo on Sunday. Im not a hero. This is something I have to do for myself and my family, for those 13 real heroes who are not standing here in my place.

2022 The Sacramento Bee.

Visit at sacbee.com.

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(Tribune News Service)  A year before Britain handed Hong Kong to China, then-President Jiang Zemin hailed the one country, two systems plan for the city as a model for the country to one day unify with Taiwan.

Taiwan would get a high degree of autonomy  the same pledge China used for Hong Kong  while keeping legislative and independent judicial power, and its own armed forces, according to Jiangs speech, copies of which were distributed at Hong Kongs handover center in 1997.

For Taiwan though, the proposal has never been an option. Even the Kuomintang  a vestige of the losing side in Chinas civil war and the main force backing eventual unification with the mainland, has rejected the model. Making Xis task even more daunting is a drastic shift in the consensus in Taiwan against any form of integration with China, thanks to the islands growing sense of nationhood and to the Chinese Communist Partys sweeping crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong.

Chinas handling of Hong Kong shows all promises of autonomy and respect for local conditions will be violated, said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London, who has written books on Hong Kong and Taiwan. It becomes very difficult even for advocates for greater engagement with the mainland in Taiwan itself to be able to sustain that argument.

On July 1, China celebrated the 25th anniversary of Hong Kongs handover, the halfway mark in the 50 years of autonomy enshrined in a treaty cementing Chinas deal with Britain. The UK has said China breached commitments made under the deal, but Xi called one country, two systems a success and has personally endorsed it as the model under which he intends to take over Taiwan  by force, if necessary.

The dispute over Taiwans sovereignty is the main issue that risks one day leading to war between the US and China, with calls growing among American politicians for a commitment to get involved if Beijing invades the island. China has steadily ramped up its military pressure in recent years, regularly sending warplanes near Taiwan and warning the U.S. that the strait separating the island from Fujian province isnt international waters.

Last November, the Communist Party affirmed the framework for resolving the Taiwan question in a landmark historical resolution. Xi may further articulate his goals for Taiwan during a once-in-five-year Communist Party Congress later this year, when hes expected to secure a third term as president.

Beijings suppression of Hong Kongs pro-democracy protests has underscored key differences with Taiwan, where the 2014 Sunflower Movement demonstrations successfully stopped legislation to closely integrate the economy with China. The island has since strengthened its image as a liberal bastion with a female leader where gay marriage is legal, just as Chinas relations with the West have deteriorated over everything from its support for Russia to its treatment of the LGBTQ community and Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

There is little support in Taiwan for a political union with China, according to the Election Study Center at Taipeis National Chengchi University. Since 1997, the percentage of the population that backs formal independence has doubled to more than 30%, while support for unification has more than halved to single digits.

The idea that the PRC will evolve into something more free and democratic seems increasingly unlikely to a larger and larger share of the population, said Nathan Batto, an academic who helps administer the Election Study Center poll, referring to the Peoples Republic of China. Taiwan is fiercely democratic, and the repression of Hong Kong and Xi Jinpings concentration of power over the last decade have made it clear that limited government, much less full democracy, is fundamentally incompatible with the PRC.

Even those in Taiwan who favor eventual unification are attracted by the grand history, tradition and culture of China, he added. Very few of them are attracted by this repressive PRC regime.

While Britain ruled much of Hong Kong under a lease that expired in 1997, Taiwan isnt subject to any such legal arrangement. Proponents of independence say it should get to choose its own fate, arguing it was never fully ruled by the Qing dynasty, which ceded it to Japan in the nineteenth century.

Only 25 years have passed, and what China promised in the past, unchanged for 50 years, is no longer true, Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang told reporters in Taipei on Friday. We know that we should stick to guarding Taiwans sovereignty, freedom and democracy as Chinas one country, two systems cant stand the test.

Shifting sentiment in Taiwan, especially among younger generations that predominantly identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese, has bolstered support for President Tsai Ing-wens ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which asserts the island is already a de facto independent nation awaiting broader international recognition.

The KMT, which has never given up its goal of unifying with the mainland since fleeing to Taiwan in 1949, has also rejected one country, two systems. In 1987, then-KMT President Chiang Ching-kuo suggested an alternative to Chinas model for unification called one country, better system  whereby the people of China and Taiwan choose which system of government they prefer.

But Xi isnt budging.

The concept of peaceful reunification and one country, two systems is the best approach to realizing national reunification, Xi said in a landmark speech on Taiwan in January 2019. It embodies the Chinese wisdom that we thrive by embracing each other, gives full account to Taiwans reality and is conducive to the long-term stability in Taiwan after reunification.

The speech was seen as a major turning point in recent cross-strait relations. Xis clear articulation of one country, two systems as the only path the Communist Party is willing to consider punctured any illusions that Beijing may be willing to allow unification to occur under an alternative model more acceptable to Taiwan.

Yet since Xis speech, Taiwans economy has prospered, thanks to a response to the coronavirus that avoided a full lockdown and allowed growth and exports to expand, in contrast to some of the heavy-handed curbs seen in China. Taiwans economic growth in 2020 outpaced Chinas for the first time in 30 years.

Freedom, democracy and opposition to one country, two systems have become common denominators within Taiwanese society, said Christina Lai of the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica in Taipei. This consensus means we have a comparative advantage compared to Hong Kong because Beijing has never achieved unification with Taiwan. That gives the Taiwanese public a really important role at the negotiating table.

China has ended most contacts with the island, angered by Tsais stance that she is willing to sit down and talk only if Beijing drops its precondition that Taiwan accept it is part of one China.

Concerns about the islands fate have grown in the wake of Russias invasion of Ukraine. The unexpectedly strong response to Moscows aggression by both Ukraine and the international community will have taught Beijing to plan well and avoid being underprepared, said Tsang from SOAS.

The reality is that Xi Jinping will try to catch Taiwan through a combination of diplomacy and intimidation, and if diplomacy backed up by intimidation cannot work, then it will do whatever it takes, even using force, Tsang said. How can he achieve the China dream of national rejuvenation if he does not take what he calls the sacred territory of Taiwan.

___

2022 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com.

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Two Chinese coast guard vessels came within 12 miles of the disputed Senkaku Islands early Tuesday morning, continuing a weekslong pattern of foreign activity in the waters around Japan.

The two ships approached a Japanese fishing boat, prompting the Japan Coast Guard to dispatch patrol vessels to intercept and protect the fishing boat, Japans Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said at a news conference Tuesday.

The Chinese ships were still in the area Tuesday despite demands from the Japanese vessels to leave Japans territorial waters, Matsuno said. The Japanese government strongly protested Beijings actions, he added.

Also known as Diaoyu by China, the Senkakus are a chain of small, uninhabited islands located approximately 105 miles northeast of Taiwan and about 280 miles west of Okinawa. Officially administered by Japan, the islands are also claimed by China and Taiwan.

Monday, Russian and Chinese frigates also steamed past the Senkakus just beyond Japans territorial waters, Matsuno said Tuesday. He said the Chinese warship was present several minutes and the Russian vessel stayed more than an hour. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force monitored the Russian and Chinese presence, according to the Ministry of Defense.

The Russian ship possibly entered the area to avoid Typhoon Aere, which made landfall in southwest Japan on Tuesday, while the Chinese ship followed and monitored the Russians, Matsuno said. Japans deputy chief cabinet secretary Seiji Kihara publicly protested the frigates presence.

Senkaku Islands are an inherent territory of Japan, in light of historical facts and based upon international law, Kihara said in a Monday news conference. We will act firmly and calmly to protect our territorial land, air and waters.

Beijing responded by justifying the vessels presence in the area.

Diaoyu Dao and its affiliating islands have been part of Chinas territory, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lijian Zhao said at a Monday news conference. The activities of Chinese vessels in the adjacent waters are legitimate and lawful. The Japanese side has no right to point fingers over these activities.

China and Japan regularly trade barbs over the island chain, usually over Chinese activity in the area. In September, a flotilla of seven Chinese vessels entered the area, the largest since 2016, the Japan Coast Guard said at the time.

The flotillas presence prompted a response from President Joe Biden in October during his first official call with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in which Biden reiterated his commitment to defend the Senkakus through military force in the event of an attack.

Activity near the island chain this week, however, followed weeks of activity by Russian and Chinese warships throughout the Japanese archipelago thats kept the country on alert.

Between June 12 and July 1, two Chinese guided-missile destroyers and a replenishment oiler effectively circumnavigated Japan. A flotilla of seven Russian warships completed a similar journey between June 15 and June 21.

Those trips coincided with the conclusion of a 12-day U.S. naval exercise in the Philippine Sea and preceded the start of Rim of the Pacific 2022, a naval exercise staged from Hawaii and California that includes 26 nations.
YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan  Reports of an unusual foam led to the discovery in May of two toxins at a wastewater treatment facility on the base, Naval Forces Japan said Tuesday.

Wastewater treatment plant officials notified the base on May 4 they had discovered the foam, and subsequent testing May 9 confirmed the presence of the chemicals PFOS and PFOA, Naval Forces Japan spokeswoman Cmdr. Katie Cerezo told Stars and Stripes by email Tuesday.

The chemicals were found in a combined concentration of 112 parts per trillion in one test and 57 parts per trillion in a second, exceeding the U.S. Forces Japan limit of 50 parts per trillion. The base immediately notified Japanese officials, she said.

We are committed to protecting the safety and health of the community and the environment, and to determining the cause of the release, Cerezo said in the email.

The base south of Tokyo, the homeport of the U.S. 7th Fleet, is continuing to investigate the situation and plans to resample the wastewater treatment plant on Wednesday, she said.

The naval bases treatment plant likely discharged the contaminated water into the Port of Yokosuka, according to a Yokosuka city news release Friday.

The South Kanto Defense Bureau also sampled the wastewater, but has not yet received the results, a spokesperson told Stars and Stripes on Tuesday.

PFOS and PFOA are found in firefighting foam, aircraft grease, water-repellent materials and other products that use fluorine chemicals. Studies involving lab animals show exposure to PFOA increases the risk of certain tumors, according to the American Cancer Society. Studies involving human exposure to PFOA are so far inconclusive.

Officials from the South Kanto Defense Bureau and Navy investigators inspected the wastewater facility. The Navy found no issues with the bases fire extinguishing system and no additional foam has been found since the initial report, the city said.

Yokosuka Mayor Katsuaki Kamiji wrote to Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi on Friday, calling the situation extremely regrettable, asking for the government of Japan to take preventive measures and to investigate the situation, including whether the surrounding environment had been affected.
Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said hes open to military exchanges with China, as he sought ways to expand ties between the two nations beyond the South China Sea territorial dispute.

Marcos said at a briefing Tuesday he will find ways to work to resolve the conflicts with Beijing when he meets with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The Southeast Asian nations links with China should be strengthened and are not limited to the disputed sea, Marcos added.

Lets add to that: lets have cultural exchanges, educational exchanges, even military, if that will be useful, the Philippines leader said.

Wang Yi is visiting the Philippines on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The two nations tensions in the contested waters have heightened in the past weeks, with Manila protesting Beijings alleged illegal fishing and shadowing of Filipinos boats. The Philippines also ended oil exploration talks with China.

Marcos earlier said he plans to negotiate a deal with China to resolve the dispute, while also planning to uphold Philippines sovereignty and its military alliance with the U.S.
Air France-KLM will pay nearly $4 million to settle allegations of falsely reporting when it delivered the mail of service members and other Americans overseas.

From 2010 to early 2016, the airline group submitted electronic scans that inaccurately recorded when and where it delivered mail to avoid late delivery penalties, the Justice Department Civil Division contended in pursuing the company under the False Claims Act.

The U.S. Postal Service uses Air France-KLM to collect mail at various Defense Department and State Department locations overseas, as well as six sites in the U.S., and deliver the mail to numerous destinations.

The settlement resolves the governments allegations against the airline group, the Justice Department said in a statement Friday.

Air France acquired the Dutch airline KLM in 2004, creating Air France-KLM, one of the worlds largest air carriers. The settlement does not require the airline to admit liability.

The $3.9 million settlement is the seventh involving airline liability for false delivery scans under the Postal Services international commercial transportation services contract. The settlements have resulted in a combined $84 million.

Last week, Delta Air Lines agreed to pay $10.5 million to settle claims that it had falsified information about mail deliveries, including deliveries to U.S. service members abroad.

And United Airlines agreed in February 2021 to pay more than $49 million to resolve criminal charges and civil claims relating to the transportation of international mail between 2012 and 2015.
BARCELONA, Spain  Spain is increasing military spending as it works toward meeting a NATO commitment by dedicating 2% of gross domestic product to defense, the government said Tuesday.

Cabinet members approved a one-off expenditure of almost 1 billion euros (around $1.04 billion) for Spain's Defense Ministry that the government said was needed to cover unexpected expenses produced by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Spain has sent military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and deployed more troops and aircraft to NATO missions in Eastern Europe.

NATO leaders agreed at a summit held in Madrid last week to expand their efforts to get all alliance members up to the 2% of GDP mark. Currently, only nine of the Western military alliance's 30 members meet or surpass that goal.

Spain pledged at a NATO summit held in Madrid last week that it would reach the 2% of GDP goal by 2029. That would mean doubling its budget for military spending from the current 13 billion euros ($13.4 billion) to 26 billion euros ($27 billion) in seven years.

Spain currently spends 1% of its GDP on defense. Only Luxembourg spends a lower percentage of GDP on defense than Spain in the North Atlantic alliance, according to NATO.

The U.S., which provides the bulk of NATO forces, has had a long-standing complaint that several of its European allies don't pitch it enough. Spain, for example, has tried to compensate for underspending by contributing troops, planes and ships to NATO missions.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February has sparked a rearmament movement across many European countries. Germany, which until now has only spent 1.4% of its GDP on defense, has approved a 100 billion-euro ($107 billion) special fund to strengthen the country's military.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at last week's summit that the allies have reaffirmed their commitment to the 2% minimum. He said that 19 members have pledged to meet it by 2024, with the remaining five, including Spain, to then follow.

"Two percent is increasingly considered a floor, not a ceiling," Stoltenberg said at the summit where NATO declared Russia as its top threat and described China's growing military ambitions as a "challenge."

Spain's decision designed to show NATO that it is serious about spending more on its armed forces risks causing friction within its left-wing governing coalition, which doesn't hold a majority in parliament.

The government's junior member, United We Can, is firmly opposed more spending on the military sought by Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. The left-wing party has called for a meeting of the coalition to discuss its spending priorities.

Government spokeswoman Isabel Rodriguez said after the Cabinet meeting that the military funding approved Tuesday was adopted "as part of our commitment to a clear and firm response to (the) invasion of Ukraine and to meet the extraordinary costs for our armed forces created by the war."
QAYYARAH, Iraq  Iraqs midday summer sun blasted down as the women huddled in the shade of their tent and reflected on how far they had come. The distance to Iraq from al-Hol detention camp in Syria was not far, just a few miles, but the journey home had taken years.

The situation back in the camp had been hellish: Frequent killings in the night caused dread to descend with the darkness. Years after the official defeat of the Islamic State, its followers there had turned the camp into a new theater of violence and control.

The return to their homes in Iraq through this new camp, which signs declared a rehabilitation center, prompted Hadeer Khalid, 34, to shed tears of relief. To be back in our country means everything, she said, as her children giggled impishly in the corner. The situation for them was so bad there, she said, glancing at the smallest ones. We couldnt breathe.

Al-Hol camp remains one of the most intractable problems for the region  effectively an open-air prison holding tens of thousands of mostly women and children from around the world, many with family ties to the Islamist militants and few with home governments willing to accept them back.

In Iraq, the Islamic States rise and fall have left deep scars, and memories of the bloodshed are fresh. The question looming across the militants former territories is how, or indeed if, the communities that were ripped apart can be stitched back together again  and whether they will accept their former neighbors returning from the camp.

Unlike most countries, Iraq is actually trying to bring its people home. Diplomats from the Western countries that have refused to take back their citizens have described al-Hol as a festering sore on the global conscience. Governments have tried to wash their hands of those people, one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue in their home capital.

Since May 2021, almost 2,500 Iraqis have been repatriated from al-Hol, which houses about 30,000 Iraqis among its 55,000 inhabitants. More returns are expected to follow, officials say.

Although Iraqs remaining camps for the internally displaced have often grown ramshackle from lack of funding and neglect  the government closed most of them last year  the facility housing the al-Hol returnees is orderly and well run. In some cases, the inhabitants have painted bright murals on the outside of their tents. There are psychologists giving sessions to those with signs of trauma.

When Washington Post reporters visited the Jeddah camp, almost all returnees interviewed said they had been in al-Hol since 2017, meaning that they had fled the Islamic States caliphate several years before its fighters made a final stand in the Syrian border hamlet of Baghouz.

Women often say they had little control over family decision-making. In some cases, a husband or a father had joined the group as a fighter. In others, male relatives had been ordered to continue working in municipal jobs.

Psychologists who have visited the Iraqi camp say signs of trauma are most acute among the children. They can be anxious and withdrawn. Involuntary urination due to stress or fear is not uncommon. Small noises can make them jump. Some have had suicidal thoughts.

Residents said they had mostly kept their children inside their tents in al-Hol, fearing violence and indoctrination outside, and so sons and daughters are only now learning to play in the open air. Its taken them a while to feel like they can do that, said Alia Ibrahim, a 65-year-old from Tal Afar, a predominantly Shiite Turkmen city that Islamic State forces controlled for three years.

Her 3-year-old granddaughter, Maria, was sleeping on the floor of the tent, alongside a doll with its arms ripped off. Although her father, Abdullah, who also spent years in al-Hol, wanted to take his little girl home to Tal Afar, he was wary. Its not an easy idea, he said. We know that people will judge us.

If getting people across the border is one challenge, taking them the rest of the way home is yet another.

Across government ministries, high-ceilinged conference rooms and town hall meetings, Iraqi officials are trying to work out how to do that.

In the city of Irbil recently, Saeed Jayashi, an adviser to one of Iraqs national security bodies, looked around a table of notables from next-door Nineveh province who had gathered in a busy hotel to hear what he had to say ahead of the planned return of several hundred people to their hometowns.

He took a deep breath, and began.

Each Iraqi, whether he was good or bad, were responsible for them, he told the group. Please be honest with me today. Whatever is concerning you  Im all ears.

Many agreed that children should not be punished for the crimes of their parents. But most of their questions still focused on the security screening process. Participants had watched lurid videos from al-Hol showing women and children attacking media crews, and chanting defiantly in support of the Islamic State.

We have a problem  these people still believe in the ideology, said one man. Another nodded. We dont want to bring ISIS people back, he told the room.

Iraqi authorities say the slow pace of repatriation is partly attributable to the lengthy screening process. Individual returnees are vetted by multiple security agencies for involvement in alleged crimes, although rights groups point out that the criteria for decision-making is not transparent.

As the conversation returned repeatedly to how Iraqi authorities could truly know what was in the minds of the returnees, Jayashi addressed the questions one by one.

We should be clear here, he said. Were not bringing back ISIS people, were bringing back innocent people. We have to separate out these terms.

More than 80% of the millions of Iraqi civilians displaced by the war against the Islamic State have returned home. But for those whose families joined the group, acceptance has varied. While there are few reports of violent retribution against returning families, many describe lives of destitution and ostracism. Mothers do not like their children playing with the returnees. Neighbors who once shared meals now keep their doors closed.

In Mosuls Old City, its skyline still jagged after U.S. airstrikes pulverized the district during the militants final stand, most residents said they struggle to believe that anyone from al-Hol could ever return. You think theyd come back here? 56-year-old Ghassan Abdul Ghani, a shopkeeper, asked incredulously.

The militant group called Mosul its capital, and it ruled with an iron fist for three years. With the traumas of that period still etched in homes and bodies, residents of the Old City said they would have a hard time living alongside returnees from al-Hol.

I mean, its impossible. No one would accept it, said Abdul Ghani.

Forty miles south in the town of Qayyarah, where several families are due to return in coming months, residents were divided on who should be allowed to come home. Most agreed that women and children should be treated as without guilt, but the idea of the returnees living among them made many anxious.

In his pharmacy on a side street, Jamal Jihad, 42, was resigned to it, although he didnt like it much. At the end of the day, its the officials who are going to decide this, not us, he said as he bustled about the pharmacy hed rebuilt once the militants had left.

People here have suffered a lot, he said. Whatever happens now, well just have to accept it.

Nearby, 47-year-old Fares Ahmed said he could not even picture the families return. He paused a second, and his brow creased sharply, as if a jolt of pain had passed through. They killed seven of my brothers when they controlled this place, he said quietly. I collected their bodies from the morgue.

Surely no one in this small town would allow anyone linked to the group to come back, he said, would they?
WASHINGTON  Secretary of State Antony Blinken will see his Chinese counterpart this week at a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 bloc of nations that will likely exacerbate splits over Russia's war in Ukraine.

While strained U.S.-China ties will be the focus of Blinken's talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the broader G-20 gathering in Indonesia of leading industrialized nations will almost certainly be overshadowed by the Ukraine conflict and its effect on global food and energy security. And Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will be there, marking the first time he and Blinken will be in the same room, let alone the same city, at the same time in nearly six months.

The State Department announced Tuesday that Blinken would meet with Wang in Bali, but had little to say about the possibility of him seeing Lavrov, whom the U.S. has shunned since the Ukraine invasion in February. U.S. officials have accused Lavrov and other Russian diplomats of a lack of seriousness in the run-up to the Ukraine war.

The Biden administration has ruled out "business as usual" with Russia while it remains in Ukraine and U.S. officials said there would be no formal discussions between Blinken and Lavrov in Bali. But they could not rule out the possibility of a chance encounter, which would their first since they last met in Geneva in January.

"The secretary intends to engage fully in the G-20. I'm not going to speak to any plans on the part of Foreign Minister Lavrov ... but I can tell you the secretary will be a full and active participant in the G-20, which we see as a valuable forum," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

Like many recent international diplomatic gatherings, the Bali meeting will be focused on Ukraine as the participants set the stage for a summit of G-20 leaders, also to be held in Indonesia, in November. But unlike, the Western-dominated G-7 and NATO summits that were held in Europe last week, the G-20 will have a different flavor.

China and many other participants, including India, South Africa, Brazil and several other large developing nations, have resisted signing onto U.S. and European opposition to Russia's invasion. Some have outright refused Western entreaties to join condemnations of the conflict, which the U.S. and its allies see as an outright attack on the international rules-based order that has prevailed since the end of World War II.

The divergence has set the stage for a potentially contentious preparatory meeting ahead of November's summit, amid questions about whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend. The U.S. has made clear it does not believe Putin should attend but has urged the Indonesian hosts to invite Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy should the Russian leader participate.

In the meantime, the U.S. and China are separately at severe odds over numerous issues ranging from trade and human rights to Taiwan and disputes in the South China Sea.

Blinken's meeting with Wang was announced after China's envoy to trade war talks with Washington expressed concern about U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports in a call with with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Neither side gave any indication that progress has been made on the matter.

In his meeting with Wang, Price said Blinken "will reinforce our commitment to working with international partners to confront global challenges, including food and energy insecurity and the threat Russia's continued war against Ukraine presents to the international order."

From Bali, Blinken will travel to Bangkok, Thailand, to make up for a trip to the Thai capital that he was forced to cancel late last year due to COVID-19 reasons.
CHICAGO  In a state with some of the country's toughest gun regulations and a city that bans semi-automatic weapons, Dana Gordon still feared a mass shooting could happen here.

Gordon, a Highland Park resident and an anti-gun violence activist, knew the familiar questions from victims of mass shootings across the country  how could such violence could come to their school, their supermarket or movie theater, their city.

The latest act of mass violence to hit the U.S. came Monday in the northern Chicago suburb, when police said a gunman climbed to the top of a business along Highland Park's Independence Day parade route and opened fire. Seven people died and more than 30 people were wounded.

The violence has focused attention on Highland Park's 2013 ban on semi-automatic weapons and large-capacity magazines.

Illinois officials have long contended that legal and illegal weapons are easily purchased in surrounding states, hampering local laws' effectiveness. Authorities said Tuesday that the suspected gunman, a 21-year-old resident of nearby Highwood, legally purchased the rifle used in the attack in the Chicagoland area but did not say exactly where he bought it.

They also have not specified the type of weapon used, only describing it as high powered and "similar to an AR-15."

Highland Park's clampdown survived a legal challenge from a local pediatrician and the Illinois State Rifle Association that ended at the U.S. Supreme Court's doorstep in 2015 when justices declined to hear the case.

Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering responded to the win, at the time arguing: "Banning assault weapons and large capacity magazines is a common sense step to reducing gun violence and protecting our children, our law enforcement and our communities from potential mass violence and grief."

Two conservative justices  Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia  said they would have heard the case and struck Highland Park's limits.

"The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting," Thomas wrote.

For Gordon and other activists in Highland Park, Monday's violent attack was a push to continue working toward national restrictions on such weapons and ammo.

Highland Park's local and federal elected officials back gun restrictions, showing it by their presence at anti-gun violence rallies and their votes. Police were also stationed all along the parade route. But that didn't stop the killings on Monday, Gordon said.

"People have to realize, there's nothing that makes any community immune," she said. "The only thing that's going to help any of us is if we vote out legislators who refuse to do anything about guns."

Gordon helped organize an anti-gun violence arts event in town last month following the mass shootings at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and a school in Uvalde, Texas. Weeks later, she was fielding receiving phone calls from friends who fled their city's holiday parade in terror.

Gordon said since the shooting she's received dozens of emails from friends and neighbors, expressing their shock that such violence could hit their home. She said it gives her hope that influential voices can make a change  tempered by her belief that national change is the only hope of preventing future mass shootings.

"You can't protect people all the time," she said. "This is a gun issue."

The Buffalo and Uvalde killings did prompt Congress to pass the most sweeping gun violence bill in a decade. The package toughens background checks for the youngest gun buyers, keeps firearms from more domestic violence offenders and helps states put in place red flag laws that make it easier for authorities to take weapons from people adjudged to be dangerous.

But it was signed into law just days after the Supreme Court's ruling struck down a New York law that restricted peoples' ability to carry concealed weapons. And it didn't include more sweeping proposals long backed by activists including an assault-style weapons ban and background checks.

"I know there's much more work to do, and I'm never going to give up, but this is a monumental day," President Joe Biden said after signing the bill on June 25.
STEUBENVILLE, Ohio  The remains of an Army Air Force sergeant from Ohio who died after he was sent to a prisoner of war camp during World War II have now been positively identified, Defense Department officials announced Tuesday.

Tech. Sgt. William F. Teaff, 26, of Steubenville, was assigned to the 351st Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group (Heavy), 8th Air Force. On March 6, 1944, he was the radio operator aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber that was part of a larger mission to bomb targets in Berlin, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, or DPAA.

German fighters attacked the B-17's formation while it flew over the Netherlands, and Teaff's plane was destroyed. The plane's navigator was killed when aircraft was hit, but the rest of the crew bailed out before it exploded in the sky.

The crew was captured by the Germans and several of them, including Teaff, were sent to a prisoner of war camp. Teaff died July 10 that year while being treated for diphtheria. He was one of three Americans who died in that POW camp.

After the war, the American Graves Registration Command couldn't recover the three Americans' remains because the POW camp  now inside Lithuania due to post-war border shifting  was deep inside the Soviet occupation zone. Despite continued efforts over the next few years, Teaff's remains couldn't be found and he was declared non-recoverable in March 1954.

After Lithuania became independent in 1992, officials learned the Soviet Union destroyed the POW camp in 1955 and reverted the area to farmland. In 2006, officials investigated the site and recommended excavation, but significant issues prevented them from sending a recovery team.

DPAA partnered with Ohio Valley Archeology Inc. in 2019, and a team was later able to find possible gravesites for the three missing Americans. Then, the DPAA partnered with a Lithuanian archeological group and excavated the area in August 2021.

The remains were transferred to a lab in Nebraska for analysis. Scientists used dental and anthropological analysis, as well as material and circumstantial evidence to identify Teaff.

Teaff was actually accounted for back in April, officials said, but the announcement was delayed until his family received a full briefing. The date and location for Teaff's funeral has not been determined.
(Tribune News Service)  After serving more than 10 years in the military, Ismail Somai decided to use his GI Bill benefits to study at a seminary school near Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

The school, which was part of House of Prayer Christian Church, promised him a bachelors degree in advanced biblical studies, and Somai, who is originally from Guyana, had dreams of becoming a pilot for missionary trips to South America.

Instead, he says he was deceived by a church that operated more like a cult than a religious organization, and a veterans advocacy organization says the church as a whole has defrauded veterans out of at least $7 million over the last two years.

The churchs location in Fayetteville, N.C., was raided by the FBI on June 23, according to ABC 11.

The FBI can confirm court authorized law enforcement activity in the vicinity of Fayetteville, North Carolina, but couldnt confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation, a spokeswoman wrote in an email to McClatchy News.

Somai said that after studying at the school for nearly four years, he left with no degree and feeling as though hed been manipulated and taken advantage of.

This organization adds a whole new stress and a different level of torment that you cant experience in the military, Somai told McClatchy News.

Allegations against House of Prayer Christian Church

Veterans Education Success, a Washington D.C.-based veterans advocacy organization, sent a letter to the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2020 outlining a series of allegations against the church that were gathered from students and members.

House of Prayer Christian Church, which has multiple churches and seminary schools around the country, misled Department of Veterans Affairs inspectors about the qualifications of its teachers, charged veteran students on the GI Bill higher tuition than other students, required students to recruit new students on or around military bases during class time and changed its curriculum repeatedly to keep students enrolled longer, never giving them a degree or certificate of completion, according to the letter.

Former church members also told Veterans Education Success that church leaders encouraged them to apply for disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs, even if they didnt have a disability, and donate the benefits to the church, the letter says.

Some students described the church as cult-like, telling Veterans Education Success that members who questioned church leaders were publicly humiliated and those who tried to leave were stalked and harassed.

When I see schools taking advantage of service member veterans and their families, it really makes me sick to my stomach, because I know the challenges that theyve gone through, in a lot of cases, in service to their country  Will Hubbard, vice president for veterans and military policy with Veterans for Education Success, told McClatchy News.  Its really sickening.

The Rev. Jeff Derby of the House of Prayer Christian Church responded to a request for comment from McClatchy News by sending audio clips of the organizations childrens choir and photos of church members on missionary trips around the world.

I am sending to you some pictures of the great work that House of Prayer Christian Church or otherwise known in some locations as Assembly of Prayer Christian Church is doing throughout the world! he wrote in an email. Derby listed 14 missionary trips the church has taken to locations including Israel, Nigeria and Brazil. He did not address the allegations against the church.

But Hubbard said the church defrauded students on the GI Bill out of an estimated $7 million in education benefits over the last two years. The GI Bill includes full or partial coverage of tuition and fees, a monthly housing allowance and a textbook and supplies stipend for veterans.

The Department of Veterans Affairs GI Bill online comparison tool, which helps veterans compare what benefits they may be eligible for at different approved schools, no longer lists House of Prayers Fayetteville, N.C., or Hinesville, Ga., seminary school locations. Fayetteville is about 60 miles south of Raleigh.

This is something that Veterans Education Success has been pushing (the Department of Veterans Affairs) to do, Jake Fisher, spokesman for Veterans Education Success wrote in an email to McClatchy News. This means that the VA has likely stopped funding those locations.

The Department of Veterans Affairs referred requests for comment to the Department of Justice and the FBI.

A students experience

Somai began studying at House of Prayers seminary school in Fayetteville a few years after his final deployment to Afghanistan in 2012.

He said he was excited to study there but soon started noticing oddities.

When Department of Veterans Affairs officials came for inspections, students would have to set up the churchs sanctuary to appear as if classes were held there, when in reality they were held in a different building that had a worse-quality room with a noisy refrigerator that distracted students, he said.

Attending church events was part of each students grade, and they often had to spend class time recruiting new students or performing chores for church leaders, Somai said.

It was very rigid, very structured, he said. You must follow their codes.

After a few years of studying, Somai said school officials told him that he would receive an associate degree instead of a bachelors. They later said students would earn only a certificate.

Somai said he never received any official qualification from the school.

Youre charging us so much, for what? he said. Youre robbing the government.

Somai said he eventually left the school and decided to speak out so that more veterans wouldnt have the same experience he did.

Hubbard, of Veterans Education Success, said his organization hopes to have the church cut off from all education benefits and church leaders held accountable.

Students who attended this school did so in order to better their careers and their lives, but instead wasted their benefits and their time, essentially walking away with nothing to show for it, he said. Most of them are pretty angry that they expected to have an education, they expected to have a better future, and as many of them have described, that was stolen from them.

2022 The Charlotte Observer.

Visit charlotteobserver.com.

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Godfrey Igunbor (21) was under pressure to pay his college fees when he pocketed the money while working at the shop hatch at a west Dublin filling station

Godfrey Igunbor (21) was under pressure to pay his college fees when he pocketed the money while working at the shop hatch at a west Dublin filling station.

Judge David McHugh adjourned the case at Blanchardstown District Court for a restorative justice report.

Igunbor, of Rosse Court Heights, Lucan, pleaded guilty to theft at Circle K, Newlands Cross on May 9, 2020.

The court heard staff discovered a discrepancy where stock levels of certain items including tobacco were low.

An internal investigation was carried out in the shop and the manager viewed CCTV from the till area. Igunbor was on the night shift as a shop assistant when he operated a second till system that was separate to the shop tills.

When a customer approached the night hatch, he processed the transaction using cash from his own supply to give the appropriate change.

This was done in full view of the store CCTV, the court heard.

The shop was at a 4,000 loss.

Igunbor was under significant financial pressure to pay his 3,000 college fees when he unfortunately chose to take money that was not his, his lawyer said.

He had paid back the money as soon as he could and was now funding his degree studies legitimately. He was now working in a bingo hall where he was trusted to handle cash.

Igunbor was embarrassed by the shame he had brought on his family, his lawyer said.

He was an enterprising young man and was due to begin his third year of studies.

The lawyer asked the judge to take account of the fact that the theft was not for Igunbors own enjoyment, but to fund his college education.

Judge McHugh ordered a restorative justice report and adjourned the case to October.
Hong Kong: Chris Sun inspects elderly vaccination

Secretary for Labour & Welfare Chris Sun inspected a COVID-19 vaccination day at a residential care home for the elderly (RCHE) in Ho Man Tin today to take a closer look at the latest progress of outreach vaccination for residential care homes (RCHs).

Mr Sun encouraged residents and reminded the RCHE to take heed of the epidemic's developments and continue to implement proper anti-epidemic measures for its staff and residents. He then observed the vaccination service provided by a visiting medical officer.

The first-dose vaccination rate at RCHEs and RCHs for persons with disabilities across the city had exceeded 90% by mid-June.

Mr Sun said the second-dose vaccination rate has reached 83% to date, noting that the Social Welfare Department and the Department of Health are working closely with medical teams with a view to raising the vaccination rate of the second dose as soon as practicable.

He appealed to residents for timely COVID-19 vaccination for the protection of themselves and others.

Mr Sun also said that the new-term Government would take stock of the experience gained from the fifth wave of the epidemic and continue to review the implementation progress of improvement measures taken forward by the Inter-departmental Task Force to Enhance RCHs' Capabilities in Epidemic Fight, from infection control, enhancing ventilation, setting up a one-stop e-platform and a dedicated RCH hotline to reactivating holding centres and quarantine centres.

The Government will further consolidate the anti-epidemic barriers and strengthen support and co-ordination in preparation for COVID-19 developments, he added.

This story has been published on: 2022-07-05. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Cooney, with an address at Glenshane Drive in Tallaght, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Jordan Davis (22)

A Dublin man has been found guilty of murdering a dad-of-one by shooting him three times while he pushed his four-month-old son in a pram in broad daylight.

The jury of seven men and four women took just over three hours to find that Wayne Cooney was the cyclist who circled Jordan Davis for three days like a "shark moving towards its prey" before firing eight shots at him from a 9mm pistol. Mr Davis suffered three gunshot wounds including one to the head that killed him instantly.

Following the jury verdict Mr Justice Tony Hunt remanded Cooney (31) in custody ahead of a hearing next Friday morning in which members of the victim's family will be invited to speak before Cooney is jailed for life.

Mr Justice Hunt thanked the jurors for their hard work in a "distressing" trial and he described the recklessness of Cooney in firing eight times while Mr Davis pushed his son in a pram as "astonishing".

Jordan Davis

Mr Davis' mother Sandra Davis, who gave evidence during the trial, was supported by friends and family as the verdict was read out.

The prosecution alleged that Mr Davis owed 70,000 to a local drug dealer, identified only as CD in the trial, who was the brother of Cooney's then girlfriend. When Mr Davis's mobile phone was examined by gardai they found a message from CD warning Mr Davis: "I'm on your case mate, it won't be long," and later telling him: "Soon, very soon, bang bang."

Prosecution barrister Bernard Condon SC told the jury that the circumstantial evidence against Cooney was such that he was either the shooter or the "most unlucky person ever". A garda had identified Cooney from CCTV footage as the cyclist circling Mr Davis.

Cooney's DNA was found on a glove in an area where the shooter could be seen discarding gloves and a black bodywarmer minutes after the shooting. Cooney was also identified returning to the same area to retrieve the bodywarmer about one hour and 20 minutes after the shooting.

The prosecution also relied on mobile phone evidence that showed Cooney's phone was calling CD at moments when the person identified on CCTV as the shooter could be seen holding a phone to his ear.

READ MORE: Murder accused told Gardai he had given gloves found near scene with his DNA to clothes company

READ MORE: Man accused of murder of dad is either guilty or 'most unlucky person ever', court told

After the shooting Cooney's movements were tracked by CCTV as he walked to a nearby bus-stop. Witness Stacey Hayes told the trial she picked Cooney up after hearing about the shooting. Ms Hayes was driving a car with Cooney's girlfriend in the passenger seat giving her directions. Ms Hayes did not know that Cooney had just murdered Jordan Davis.

Cooney denied to gardai that he was the person on the bicycle and his barrister, Giollaiosa O Lideadha SC, told the jury that the prosecution case contains "large holes" and does not amount to proof beyond reasonable doubt. He said there could have been a number of people who had a motive to murder Mr Davis and he questioned the credibility of the garda who identified Cooney from CCTV footage. He further questioned the prosecution's claim that they had proven that the mobile phone belonged to Mr Cooney.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt told the jury that if they were satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Cooney was the cyclist who came up behind Jordan Davis and shot him, they must find him guilty of murder.

Cooney, with an address at Glenshane Drive in Tallaght, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Jordan Davis (22) at a lane-way beside Our Lady of Immaculate National School in Darndale in Dublin on May 22 2019. He also pleaded not guilty to possessing a 9mm semi-automatic pistol and to possessing ammunition in circumstances that give rise to the reasonable inference that he did not have them for lawful purposes. The jury convicted him on those counts also.
Ms O'Doherty had argued that the measures were taken over a virus that was "no different to the common cold."

In a six to one decision, the court's ruling brings to an end the pairs legal action commenced shortly after the state introduced various regulations and measures in response to the pandemic over two years ago.

Ms O'Doherty and Mr Waters' appeal was against a decision by the High Court, later upheld by the Court of Appeal (CoA), not to grant them permission to bring their action against the measures on the basis it was misconceived and entirely without merit.

Giving the Supreme Court's lead judgement the Chief Justice Donal O'Donnell said that the High Court was correct to refuse to grant leave in this case.

The Chief Justice along with High Court President Ms Justice Mary Irvine, Mr Justice John MacMenamin, Ms Justice Iseult O'Malley, Ms Justice Marie Baker, and Mr Justice Brian Murray all upheld the lower courts' findings.

In a separate decision Mr Justice Gerard Hogan said he would have allowed the appeal on certain grounds only.

In their judicial review proceedings against the State and the Minister for Health, with the Dail, Seanad and Ceann Comhairle as notice parties, the applicants sought to have various legislative measures declared unconstitutional and flawed.

The appeal was opposed by the State, represented in the proceedings by Michael Collins SC and Patrick McCann SC.

The State argued that the lower court's decisions should remain undisturbed and the appeal should be dismissed.

The High Court and the COA's findings that the applicants had not produced sufficient evidence to support their arguments and that their claims were at least arguable were correct, the State argued.

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Mr Waters had argued that the High Court was wrong not to grant him and Ms O'Doherty leave. Sufficient evidence had been put before the High court to show that their claims were arguable.

He said that the measures, such as the lockdown, brought in over a pandemic he did not believe existed had fundamentally and impermissibly breached fundamental constitutional rights that he and other citizens enjoy.

He said that no due diligence was carried out by the state in relation to "the draconian" and unconstitutional measures that were introduced.

He said there was a lack of debate among Irish politicians and a failure by the Irish mainstream media to properly assess and scrutinise the measures introduced.

Ms O'Doherty had argued that the measures were taken over a virus that was "no different to the common cold."

They also claimed the measures create a regime akin to martial law, are disproportionate and that there were other steps that are less onerous and less limiting of personal freedoms that could have met the public health concerns.

They also say that the introduction of the legislation at a time when there was a small number of Covid-19 cases in the State was disproportionate and these unlawfully and unjustifiably restricted constitutional and ECHR rights.

In their action Ms O'Doherty and Mr Waters had challenged legislation including the 2020 Health Preservation and Protection and Other Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act; the 2020 Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act Covid-19 Act and the 1947 Health Act (Affected Areas) Order.

In May 2020, Mr Justice Charles Meenan refused to grant them leave, saying their claims were not arguable.

He said they had not provided any expert evidence or facts to support their view the laws were disproportionate or unconstitutional.

Last year, the COA dismissed all grounds of their appeal.

Mr Justice Birmingham said the court was quite satisfied that the approach taken by the High Court in relation to their case was correct.

The controversial and tendentious case presented no serious legal issue that would justify the granting of permission, the CoA also found.

Mr Waters and Ms O'Doherty had throughout the proceedings represented themselves in the hearings.
Hutch (58), who was extradited from Spain, and former Dublin City councillor Dowdall (44), of Navan Road, Dublin, are both charged with the murder of David Byrne (33) at the Regency Hotel in Dublin on February 5, 2016.

The Supreme Court has been urged to rule that the pending trials of Gerry Hutch and ex-Sinn Fein councillor Jonathan Dowdall in the non-jury Special Criminal Court (SCC) would be unlawful.

This is because the SCC has become a de facto permanent court when the relevant legislation only provides that it be temporary, the five-judge Supreme Court heard.

The argument was made in an appeal by the two men, who are charged with murder, against a High Court decision rejecting their challenge over the the SCC.

The High Court found the temporary/permanent argument was a political question and therefore not justiciable before a court. If the decision to continue the SCC is made without bad faith, or absent mala fides, then the courts could not intervene, it was also found.

Hutch (58), who was extradited from Spain, and former Dublin City councillor Dowdall (44), of Navan Road, Dublin, are both charged with the murder of David Byrne (33) at the Regency Hotel in Dublin on February 5, 2016. They deny the charges.

Michael O'Higgins SC, in submissions on behalf of Mr Dowdall, argued that if the court finds the SCC is operating as a permanent court, then it is operating outside the powers provided under the Offences Against the State Act 1939 under which it was first set up.

There was also a duty to keep the role of the SCC under review by the Government and the Dail and if that duty has not been discharged then the court is acting outside its powers, he said.

Although it is not a question of how much time has passed which makes something permanent, almost 50 years since the proclamation setting up the present SCC, it is not operating on a temporary basis but has morphed into a permanent court and is in "expansion mode", he said.

Brendan Grehan SC, for Mr Hutch, argued the Executive and the State had misinterpreted the legislation which allows the denial of the right to trial by jury. It was not an acceptable state of affairs to oust the jurisdiction of the courts to intervene when it is up to the Supreme Court, ultimately, to decide what a law means, he said.

Jonathan Dowdall

Patrick Gageby SC, for the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, which was given permission to participate in the appeal as an amicus curiae (friend of the court), said his client's substantial concern was whether the finding that the proclamation (setting up the SCC) was purely political so long as the Government held a genuine opinion that it was not impermissible.

The Commission submitted that it was fully justiciable and the power of the courts to review cannot be constrained.

Mr Gageby also said the issue of whether the ordinary courts are inadequate for the trial of certain crimes is "highly factual" and not a matter of high policy or the sovereign power of the State.

There was also the question of statutory protection for jurors in circumstances where ordinary jury courts are not considered adequate, he said. It was notable that in the last 50 years, there has been remarkably little change in legislative provision for the protection and assistance of jurors to ensure they are free from any adverse influence, he said.

Remy Farrell SC, for the DPP and the Minister for Justice, said his side acknowledged the unusual nature and structure of the provision providing for the SCC in that it permits its own commencement on the basis of the circumstances as they apply at the time.

In relation to the question of the intimidation of jurors, the relevant yardstick is not whether there is intimidation but whether the ordinary courts are adequate for certain offences. The question of whether there should be a review of the SCC, or how often a review should be held, was a purely political decision, he said.

Shane Murphy SC, for the Oireachtas, the Attorney General and Ireland, said Section 35.5 of the Offences Against the State Act confers on the Oireachtas the right to pass a resolution to annul the SCC should it be thought to be necessary. There was no evidence however the Oireachtas had failed in its duty in this respect and in fact there has been no attempt to annul, he said.

Chief Justice Donal ODonnell, presiding, said the court was reserving its decision.
The 42-year-old will stand trial later this year for the alleged sexual assault of a child

A man who was caught with thousands of child abuse images and hundreds of videos looked up taking blood from infants online, a court has heard.

The 42-year-old Dublin man was jailed today for 18 months for possessing child abuse material. He cannot be named because he is due to stand trial later this year for the alleged sexual assault of a child.

The man googled 'venipuncture' of babies, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard. Gardai came across the term when they were analysing the man's search history after he was caught with 3,257 explicit child abuse images and 347 videos in the home he lived in with his mother in September 2017.

A further 18,500 images of pre-pubescent children were found in the man's possession, although these were not illegal, Sergeant Aoife O'Brien told Garrett McCormack BL, prosecuting.

The man pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography at his Dublin home on September 4, 2017. A further count of distributing child pornography was taken into account. This charge related to internet conversations the man had online with someone he thought was an 8-year-old boy.

He sent this person, who later turned out to be an adult, a video containing child abuse material, the court heard.

Sgt O'Brien said gardai received a confidential tip-off that an illegal image had been uploaded from the man's address and a search warrant was obtained. After speaking with his mother, gardai attempted to search the man's bedroom, but his door was locked.

When the man arrived home and opened the door for gardai, they found baby nappies on the floor of his bedroom along with about 150 colour print-outs of child abuse material on the bed. The man had hundreds of DVDs on his bedroom shelves and he pointed out some that contained child abuse material to gardai.

An analysis of his google search history found certain proclivities in relation to young children, the court heard. Sgt O'Brien said this included 'venipuncture' or the taking of blood infants.

The man has no previous convictions. He denies the charge of sexual assault of a child that he is facing trial on it later this year.

Paul Green SC, defending, handed up a psychologist report to the court. He said his client was an isolated man. He had a good work history but has not worked since this offending came to light.

The man was found to be at the low range of cognitive functioning, defence counsel said. He has expressed condemnation for his actions and realises that he was complicit in making children the victims of sexual abuse. Counsel urged Judge Martin Nolan to be as lenient as possible.

Sentencing the man, Judge Nolan said it was clear that he had an unhealthy interest in children. He noted he lived a reclusive lifestyle and had been deemed at a low risk of reoffending.

The judge said the most aggravating factor was the fact the man had engaged online with someone he thought was an eight-year-old child. It demonstrates that this defendant, at that particular time, was prepared to contact a child, which is a serious offence, the judge said.

He handed down a sentence of 18 months.
Patrick Hollywood (41) said that if they made the wrong decision, you will get a visit to your home by men in balaclavas who will ensure that you will listen.

Patrick Hollywood warned of violence in some of the correspondence, claiming he had the complete support of local IRA volunteers, a judge at Newry Crown Court was told.

Hollywood (41) said that if they made the wrong decision, you will get a visit to your home by men in balaclavas who will ensure that you will listen.

Quoting from one of the letters, prosecution QC Ciaran Murphy told the court how Hollywood had written there will be direct violence against you and your children. Do not view this as an idle threat.

"We know exactly who you are and where you live and know that you are in a position to fully carry out our requests. The lives and safety of you and your children depend upon it.

Hollywood, from the Upper Fathom Road in Newry, was a teacher and vice principal at St Patrick's High School in Keady.

He entered guilty pleas to seven charges of making a threat to kill, six of harassment, four of attempted intimidation and single counts of forgery and causing another person to fear that violence would be used against them, all committed between December 31, 2016, and December 1, 2018.

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The teacher turned bully has admitted harassing former principal of the school, Pat McGuckian, who resigned from her post in April 2018, citing what she described as "a vicious campaign of bullying and harassment having received a series of malicious and anonymous letters since January 2017.

With some of the victims sitting in the public gallery and others watching the hearing by videolink, Mr Murphy explained that in January 2017 the then principal, Mr McGuckian, began receiving anonymous letters. These were signed by your loyal but concerned staff and the Irish National Teachers' Association which to her mind, became more threatening and intimidating as time passed.

Later that year, Mrs McGuckian, Hollywood and a third teacher were sanctioned by CEA and CCMS because of cheating in exams but those sanctions, which would have ended Hollywoods career, were subject to appeals.

Mr Murphy told Judge Gordon Kerr QC that if the appeals were not heard and adjudicated upon, the sanctions would be removed so, in writing the threatening letters, including letters to himself, Hollywood had engaged in a complex and sophisticated plan to put himself in the position of now being a victim.

As well as writing to Mrs McGuckian, Hollywood had also written to the HR manager of the CCMS, the chief executive officer of CCEA as well as their colleagues where he threatened that they were putting your life and your familys life in grave danger  please do not underestimate this letter.

One of the victims, the court heard, was Hollywoods own solicitor who was representing him in his disciplinary proceedings.

Outlining how some of the letters referenced the IRA, Mr Murphy highlighted that of course, the involvement of a paramilitary organisation with a history of serious crime and violence in NI has its own implications for the victims.

He revealed that such was their fear, one victim took a leave of absence to Europe while another resigned their position and left the country, adding that the victim impact reports and statements make for grim reading.

Arrested and interviewed, Hollywood initially refused to answer police questions, but officers enquired and searches uncovered a laptop hidden in his parents home where many of the letters he claimed he had received were found.

Hollywood claimed that having received the letters, he had typed them up despite having access to a fully functional printer and copier.

The police and cybercrime investigation established that the defendant was responsible declared Mr Murphy, adding that it was only when all of the forensic and computer evidence had been obtained that Hollywood finally admitted his guilt.

Defence QC Charles McKay revealed that in amongst what he said was a toxic culture in the school, the cheating effectively amounted to some children being given the answers to some test questions.

While he said his instructions remained that Hollywood maintains he did write some of the initial anonymous letters to Mrs McGuckian and that he had received letters that threatened him and his children, Mr Murphy said the Crowns position was still that Hollywood had written all the letters in order to muddy the waters and deflect blame away from himself.

Mr McKay argued there was clear medical evidence that at the time, Hollywood had been suffering from a schizophrenic condition and delusional behaviour.

But as Judge Kerr told him, the evidence showed that he was clearly thinking and taking steps to try to disguise his activities and that would suggest that he knew his activity was both wrong and illegal.

Freeing Hollywood on bail until Friday, Judge Kerr warned that the custodial threshold has been met.
The incident remains under investigation.

A woman was arrested at Dublin Airport last month on suspicion of human trafficking offences, gardai have revealed.

She was held on suspicion of committing an offence under Section 6 of the Criminal Justice (Smuggling of Persons) Act 2021 but was released without charge. The incident remains under investigation.

The arrest was made as part of the EMPACT (European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats) joint-action operation against human trafficking between 6 and 13 June 2022, which saw An Garda Siochana collaborate with European law enforcement authorities Europol and Interpol.

Officers attached to the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB), Garda National Protective Services Bureau (GNPSB), and the Border Management Unit (BMU) at Dublin Airport conducted 264 inspections on targeted flights and ferries at Dublin Airport, Cork Airport, Dublin Port and Rosslare Port, along with additional checks on buses between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Read more Irish law enforcement helps catch 130 child trafficking suspects in European operation

In total, more than 22,480 law enforcement officers from 22 countries have helped to make at least 130 arrests in relation to this operation, according to Europol.

Approximately 60 additional suspects were identified, and more than 100 new investigations were initiated as a result.

More than 130 possible victims of human trafficking were identified, with more than a dozen of them being confirmed as minors.

Over the course of the two-week operation, law enforcement agencies also checked the identity of over 11,130 minors, who remain the most vulnerable group within persons being trafficked and exploited.

Many fall victim to sexual exploitation, forced begging or different types of forced criminality, including petty crimes and drug trafficking, Europol said in a statement.

They also become victims of labour exploitation and domestic slavery.
No other injuries have been reported following the incident and gardai in Tallaght are investigating.

Emergency services were alerted to the incident in the Bawnlea area of Tallaght shortly after 2pm.

Gardai are investigating if a low-velocity weapon, believed to be a pellet gun, was used in the shooting.

The injured man suffered non-life threatening injuries during the incident in which two shots were discharged at the property.

A front window of the house was also shattered before the perpetrator fled the scene.

The victim has since been taken to Tallaght University Hospital nearby where he is receiving treatment.

No other injuries have been reported following the incident and gardai in Tallaght are investigating.

Gardai remain at the scene this afternoon which has been sealed-off for a technical examination.

It's understood that, at this stage, there is no obvious motive for the attack.

No arrests have yet been made and gardai are appealing for witnesses to contact them.

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A garda spokeswoman said: "Gardai are currently at the scene of a shooting incident that occurred at a residence in the Jobstown area of Tallaght this afternoon, Tuesday 5th July 2022 at 2.15pm.

"Shots were fired at the front window of the residence. A male (aged in his 60s) who was present in the house at the time of the incident received a number of pellet wounds.

"His injuries are believed to be non-life threatening and he has been taken to Tallaght University Hospital for treatment.

"The scene is currently preserved for a technical examination and investigations are ongoing," the garda spokeswoman added.

In a separate incident in Bawnlea in January, a 14-year-old boy was hospitalised for facial injuries after being shot with a pellet gun.

The shooting happened outside a shop in the area and the teenager was taken to Crumlin Children's Hospital.

The local boys injuries were described as non-life threatening and it is understood that he made his way home before being brought to hospital in an ambulance.
An onlooker said the drivers of the car headed straight for a family who had to dive out of the way

The Sunday afternoon peace of a number of villages was shattered as a car careered through at breakneck speed before eventually being forced to a stop after mounting a pavement.

The sensational scene concluded in the river bank in Trim county Meath after the chase had initially begun in the Blanchardstown area of Dublin.

Gardai in the Meath town were alerted that the dangerous duo were headed their way and then told of a car driving dangerously on the Dublin Road from Trim having been observed speeding though the quiet village of Batterstown..

An onlooker told the Sunday World: The two of them in the car were just kids really, if they were teenagers they were barely teenagers, and they managed to avoid the first attempt to stop them.

They mounted a pavement and drove directly at a family out for a Sunday stroll who had to kind of dive out of the way.

They flattened three of the four tyres when they went up on the pavement and when they realised they couldn't drive any further they jumped out and as cops chased them they jumped into the Boyne and began swimming across it.

The guards just radioed for assistance and had colleagues waiting to pick them up when they got out.

It sounds like a funny incident but it was anything but, the Garda car chasing them seemed to be damaged, a family had a lucky escape and the swell on the Boyne meant it was very treacherous so they were fortunate they didn't drown.

They were fairly wet and bedraggled when they got out. Where they went in was right beside Trim Castle where Braveheart was filmed, and while they were no Mel Gibson they did behave like two professional stuntmen.

A Garda spokesperson confirmed the incident, saying: Gardai in Trim were alerted to a car driving dangerously on the Dublin Road, Trim on Sunday afternoon 3rd July, 2022 at approximately 4pm.

The car failed to stop for Gardai and it finally came to a stop on the river bank and two youths tried to evade Gardai and jumped into the river.

They were later arrested and conveyed to Trim Garda station where they were detained under Section 4 of Criminal Justice Act, 1984.

Both male youths (early teens) were released into the custody of their parents and a file will be forwarded to the Youth Referral Programme.
Many fall victim to sexual exploitation, forced begging or different types of forced criminality, including petty crimes and drug trafficking

Irish law enforcement agencies have taken part in a successful Europe-wide operation against child trafficking that resulted in the arrests of 130 suspects as well as the identification of around 130 potential victims.
Police in Hillsboro, Oregon, confirmed that both the driver and a passenger involved in the accident are both adult Irish males who were working in the US

One Irish man is dead and another is fighting for his life following a serious road accident near Portland, Oregon, early on Sunday.

Police in Hillsboro, Oregon, confirmed that both the driver and a passenger involved in the accident are both adult Irish males who were working in the US. Other details about their ages, backgrounds and origins in Ireland are not available at this time.

One of the occupants of the vehicle was pronounced dead at the scene while the other was rushed to hospital with what police described as potentially life-threatening injuries.

The accident occurred around 4.30am on Sunday when police responded to a report of a vehicle that had rolled over on its roof and was on fire.

Local media reported that police were able to remove one of the occupants, who was taken to a local hospital while the other occupant was deceased.

A spokesman for the Hillsboro Police told Independent.ie an investigation into the accident is ongoing and the identities of the casualties have not been released as they attempt to notify next of kin.

The cause of the accident is not known at this time.

Hillsboro is the fifth largest city in the north-western American state and is home to many technology companies.

The tragedy occurred just hours before the annual Fourth of July celebrations in the US on Monday.
The 58-year-old, who has not been named, was rescued by mountain rangers from the Dix Pond swamp in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York last month.

The 58-year-old, who has not been named, was rescued by mountain rangers from the Dix Pond swamp in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York last month.

Those who helped find the man said that he was discovered in hypothermic conditions and may not have survived a fourth night at the swamp.

Forest ranger Andrew Lewis said when he was found the man was drenched from head to toe.

The swap is one of the most brutal swamps you could get stuck in. You wouldnt want to be in there for three minutes, never mind three days, he added.

It is understood that the man had recently left his job as a college professor in Singapore and wanted to hike in the Adirondack Mountains, leaving his wife with a rough outline of his plans.

On June 22, the mans wife contacted rescue rangers Jamison Martin from Singapore after not hearing from her husband in three days.

The man's SUV was later located in the Elk Lake parking area and a search operation was launched.

The man told mountain rangers that he didn't think he would make it through the night had they not arrived.

He has since received health checks and is preparing to return to Singapore.

He told his wife that he was never going to hike that mountain range again, a rescuer said.
A third assassination attempt on the life of convicted drug dealer Gary The Canary Carey along with rising tensions in a volatile Dublin feud are stretching the resources of An Garda Siochana.

With 24-hour armed support around the young gangs in the Finglas area and investigations suggesting the involvement of three dangerous mobs from the southside of the city in the Carey hit, gangland tensions are rising and with them the pressure on our police.

Nicola Tallant is joined by Irish Independent Crime Correspondent Ken Foy to discuss the feuds of Dublin. He tells of a recent hit attempt on Finglas mob boss 'Mr Flashy', about the cost of liking a social media post and about the lone wolf with nine lives who has muscled in on the wrong turf.

Crime Word Podcast can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and Soundcloud.

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Thank you for making me the happiest man in the world

Delighted to finally announce that my best friend said yes, the star revealed on social media today.

I am getting married July 2023. Thank you for making me the happiest man in the world. Love you more than anything @brmbrenda.

Johnny first sprung to fame on Love/Hate as Pauley, and later as kidnapper Ciaran Holloway on Fair City and will shortly reprise his role in the stage show Copper Face Jacks The Musical.

He appeared on Dancing With The Stars in 2018.

The 35-year-old had been in a long-term relationship for six years with Rachael Treacy, and then found love on Dancing With The Stars with pro dancer Emily Barker.

Johnny and Brenda embrace after he popped the question

Johnnys father died after a long battle with cancer the day before actor was due to perform in the ninth live show. Ward was given the option to have a week off from the competition and return in Week 10 but he chose to perform in honour of his father.

Emily and Johnny broke up several months after the show, Emily is now seeing Englishman Olly Ashton.

Johnny has been dating Brenda since February last year, having met her in the Curragh while out exercising and was worried if she was in difficulty.

Johnny and Brenda smiling on a night out

"I saw this blonde girl in the distance and she fell over so I checked to see if she was okay, the actor, from Walkinstown, Dublin, told RSVP recently.

"We walked the same direction afterwards and it was almost like the way panto characters would meet, a chance encounter for the prince and princess.

"We got chatting on Instagram a couple of days after and we did the walk again."

Brenda runs a salon in Dunlavin, Co Wicklow and her family are big Fair City fans.

Dozens of wellwishers offered Johnny their congratulations.

Among them was fellow Fair City actor Rodrigo Ternevoy, who played Christiano, wrote: Huge congratulations guys.

Panto star Rob Murphy (Buffy) raved: Woohho congratulations, delighted for you both.

Another panto star, Joe Conlan, who has performed with Johnny in the Gaiety Theatre, raved Congratulations my friend.
Monday nights instalment of the hit reality dating show saw the boys move mad with six new bombshells while the original girls headed to Casa Amor.

Monday nights instalment of the hit reality dating show saw the boys move mad with six new bombshells while the original girls headed to Casa Amor.

Irish contestant Dami Hope, who is currently coupled up with Indiyah, shocked viewers on Monday night when he shared a kiss with Summer.

But the microbiologist isnt the only boy whose head has turned in the villa as Andrew locked lips with Coco despite being paired up with Tasha since day one.

And Coco also caught the eye of Davide  who has just rekindled his romance with Ekin-Su after a dramatic few weeks - with the pair also sharing a kiss.

Amber, who was crowned the winner of the series with Greg OShea back in 2019, said that the boys antics has put her off dating men for good.

Taking to Twitter, she reacted to the episode and admitted that she was left sickened by their behaviour.

"Switching teams was the best decision I made in my life. Watching men makes me feel ill. I couldn't put myself through it again, she said.

One of Amber's fans replied to the post, writing: Me and my girlfriend were saying just yesterday that we predict you'll end up settling down with a woman.

And Amber quickly responded: That's cute. Tell me why.

The follower continued: Because you seem to be very disenchanted by men these days, and we feel like a woman (the right woman) is more likely to appreciate you for all your complexities and inner fire. And treat you with the level of care/sensitivity that you deserve.

Clearly touched by the message, Amber said: "Now I'm crying."

Last year, the 24-year-old teased that she was bisexual after sharing a TikTok clip of a lesbian woman and adding a heart emoji.

One fan commented a series of fruit emojis and wrote: "Bestie, I'm afraid to ask you this, to which Amber replied: Sometimes.

She later addressed the cryptic post while speaking to The Daily Star, saying: The fruit emojis mean the fruit emojis, what can I say? Some days I might be, some days I might not.
The girls have been whisked away to the infamous pad to meet six new guys leaving the OG boys to mingle with six new ladies at the villa  and its safe to say things are getting heated.

The girls have been whisked away to the infamous pad to meet six new guys leaving the OG boys to mingle with six new ladies at the villa  and its safe to say things are getting heated.

Viewers were left unimpressed after Monday nights episode, which saw Dami crack on with Summer just days after coupling up with Indiyah.

During last nights show, the 26-year-old snuck up to the terrace with Summer where he laid it on factor 50 and said: You fancy me. You feel like there is a bit of chemistry between us. You wanna kiss me. You wanna share a bed with me tonight. You still definitely want to kiss me.

The pair then locked lips, putting a strain on his relationship with Indiyah.

Later, Dami began to feel some remorse after Luca encouraged him to sleep in a bed with Summer, warning: Stop egging other people on man. Whats wrong with you? Just be real for once.

Defending himself, Luca responded: What cos you f***ed up tonight and youre regretting it?

And Dami said: I just told you how I feel about Indiyah, but at the end of the day youre trying to tell me Ive done something wrong. I dont feel like Ive done anything wrong.

While it seems like Dami may have regretted his kiss with Summer, furious fans of the show have turned their backs on the microbiologist for betraying Indiyah, especially after he gave her his ring as she took off for Casa Amor.

One person tweeted: Im sorry but Dami has done WRONG  He was even trying to gaslight himself saying I dont think Ive done anything wrong.

Another said: Dami went from becoming my fav to becoming my least fav within a week. Dami really is a d***head.

Others aired out their concerns ahead of the notorious Casa Amor recoupling, which will see contestants choose to stick with their original partner or couple up with a new contestant.

One fan wrote: I hope Dami couples up with someone else, because Indiyah deserves better. Why is this man so impressionable and overly excited? He even called Luca boring for being closed off, he is a RED FLAG. My girl deserves better.

Another added: Bro even if Dami doesnt recouple up with Summer and goes back to Indiyah, hes already been too disrespectful. All the comments hes made are so unnecessary.

After last nights show, Dami's friends and family defended the Wexford native by claiming that producers had painted him as the villain.

The trailer really did nothing but paint him as the villain, while the episode showed that was not the case, they said.

Dami is just being himself with no filter. Acting the same way he would inside and outside the villa.

Love Island continues tonight at 9pm on Virgin Media Two and Virgin Media Player.
Western Bay of Plenty District Council is on a mission to explain what role the organisation plays in the community.

The council has launched a new campaign aimed at spelling out the roles council, and elected members (mayor, councillor and community board member) have.

By standing for Council, candidates in this years local elections will have the potential to influence and inform decisions on the almost 40 different services that Council provides.

Not only that, but each elected members role  be it the Mayor, Councillors, or Community Board members  has a different set of responsibilities and requires a variety of skills and experience to help deliver real change for the community.

Council CEO John Holyoake says that there is a common misconception that Councils only deliver roads, rates and rubbish  but there is much more to the role than that.

Its time to bust the myth about Councils role in the community. We provide and maintain not just infrastructure, but also services and facilities that help you enjoy the great Western Bay lifestyle we know and love. Think skateparks, swimming pools, playgrounds, libraries, community events, arts and culture, transport and animal services.

Council also plays a vital role in promoting the economic, social, cultural and environmental wellbeing of its communities, now and in the future. This means we need to think about how the actions or activities we undertake or support now, will impact not only on the present communities but also how they will affect future generations.

Were facing changing times, and our community is changing too, which means the people making decisions need to have all sorts of experience and skills. Its about capturing everyones voices, young and old, which is why this year were asking for Generation Change to come forward and stand, says John.

What makes a great Elected Member (Mayor, Councillor and Community Board member)

Councillors are responsible for bringing their own, and their communitys, views to the table to support decision-making and setting of vision for the District. The Mayor plays an important role in leading all elected members and representing the District at a national level.

And while there is no blueprint for a perfect Councillor, some of the skills to be effective include: the ability to think strategically and for future generations, analyse information and make decisions, networking and relationship building skills, an appreciation of the role Council plays in the District, and being prepared to commit time, energy and passion to the role.

Community board members roles are primarily about networking and relationships. Its their job to listen to the community and feed back to Council on matters in their area. Candidates are expected not only to attend community board meetings but to engage with various groups to stay connected and informed.

How you Council is up to you

Immediately following the election, the newly nominated Mayor establishes the political structure for the next three years.

This years successful candidates will have the opportunity to provide feedback on the new structure and potentially see some new practices adopted such as:

meetings running after work hours with time restrictions or

setting a limit of meetings each month.

Council already accommodates remote meeting attendance via Zoom to enable participation when councillors can not be physically present.

Council knows that changes to the current meeting structure and schedule is needed to facilitate this different approach to meetings.

Its about thinking differently. Because having different voices around the table makes for more balanced decision making, says John.

Were not making any promises, rather acknowledging we need to change too and heres some ways we could potentially do this by working together.

Support from Council

Council has a responsibility to support its elected members, so they can focus on doing an excellent job for the community. This includes

support to claim for childcare, travel, travel time and hearings fees (for those qualified as commissioners)

providing a laptop to access electronic meeting papers and technical support.

the Governance team being available to assist elected members with any questions and responsibilities.

Candidate nominations open Friday 15 July. Visit generationchange.nz for more information on how to stand for Council or a community board, what being a Councillor involves, and how to enrol to vote.
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Encrypted phones, covert boat trips, a clandestine meeting in a Phuket restaurant, and a yacht lost at sea with $4 million worth of cocaine on board.

Two Waikato men who had leading roles in a complex  and ultimately ill-fated  plan to smuggle an unprecedented amount of drugs into New Zealand, namely 500 kilograms of methamphetamine and 625kg of cocaine, have been jailed for their part in the scheme.

Te Awamutu builder Peta Evan Taukiri, 36, and Taharoa electrician Raynor Denton, 33, were imprisoned for two years and six months, and three years respectively when they appeared in the Hamilton District Court on Monday, on charges of participating in an organised criminal group, conspiring to deal in methamphetamine and conspiring to deal in cocaine.

The pair were arrested as part of Operation Van, which targeted a two-year-long scheme that was led by a person living overseas, who cannot be named. Others allegedly involved also cannot be named because they are still before the courts.

The same police operation helped lead to the seizure of 137.5kg of methamphetamine from a storage unit in Rotorua in 2019. It involved a variety of local and international agencies.

It targeted money laundering activities and the importation of huge quantities of methamphetamine and cocaine by a transnational organised crime group.

Court documents state the offending happened between June 2016 and March 2018. Taukiri was initially contacted by members of an international crime syndicate and he subsequently recruited Denton.

As the court heard, the pair used encrypted Blackberry phones to communicate with the head of the crime syndicate, however some of their text messages and phone calls ended up being intercepted and monitored by overseas law enforcement agencies.

Sea-borne drug smuggling plot hatched

Taukiri and Denton and others hired a charter vessel which they took for a trip on the harbour near Kawhia to discuss the plan, and another clandestine meeting was held in a cafe in Te Awamutu not long after.

Taukiri and Denton were given $10,000 and dispatched to Thailand to meet with the suppliers of the drugs in August 2016. They met with one of the facilitators and a crew member of a boat to make arrangements.

A plan was hatched to use two aluminium boats outfitted with professional radar equipment and an arrangement was made to rendezvous at a location off the Kawhia coast with a shipment of methamphetamine.

The two defendants were told they stood to garner a windfall of $500,000 each, if the scheme proved a success. However, one of the boats was intercepted by an overseas law enforcement agency soon after setting off from a port in Asia.

A subsequent plan involved sending a yacht with 625kg of cocaine on board to a rendezvous in the Bay of Plenty. This would have given the pair a promised $1 million payday.

Bad weather struck that vessel and it and its illicit cargo are believed to have been lost at sea.

Leading role for $1m payday

Crown prosecutor Jacinda Hamilton said Taukiri and Denton had leading roles in the schemes which, in terms of the amounts involved, was unprecedented.

These were not simply men who were passive receivers. They were involved every step of the way in importing the drugs into this country.

They were prepared to shoulder significant risk for huge gain ... You could never call these defendants patsies.

Hamilton urged Judge Simon Menzies to take a starting point for sentencing of 14 years in jail.

There needs to be a very clear deterrent message. The community needs to understand that the risk is just not worth it.

The judge obliged  however heavy deductions, including three years each for the findings of cultural reports, previous good standing in the community, prospects for rehabilitation, and a 25 per cent discount for their guilty pleas, greatly reduced the amount of jail time.

Judge Menzies did accede to the Crowns request for a 50 per cent non-parole period on each sentence.

$100,000 Sallies donation

Prior to sentencing, barrister Roger Laybourn, who acted for Taukiri, said his client wanted to give further substance to his contrition in the form of a $100,000 donation to the Salvation Armys drug rehabilitation programmes.

It is absolute concrete proof of his remorse ... It is not crocodile tears, this is actually going to happen.

He wants to demonstrate he is a good man who has done a stupid thing.

Dentons counsel, Thomas Sutcliffe, argued his client was not one of the main offenders.

He willingly participated ... and does not resile from that but he was not a leading force.

Also, the drugs never actually made it to these shores, he said.

While it was serious, it did not actually bear fruit.

Denton was now a changed man, he said.

He has given quite immensely back to the community in which he is involved.

The loss of a decent man, which he now is, to be able to provide support for his family and his community is tragic. It is truly tragic.

-Stuff/Mike Mather.
Tauranga and Whakatane hospital staff are asking visitors to wear masks and follow other public health requirements to keep patients safe from Covid-19 and the flu.

They are also asking people to avoid visiting friends and whanau in hospital if they are sick with an infection that can be transmitted to others.

The number of people with Covid-19 and the flu has been creeping up in recent weeks, and the two local hospitals were caring for a total of 22 patients with Covid-19 as of Monday.

Chief Operating Officer Bronwyn Anstis says there have been several instances at local hospitals recently in which visitors have infected patients and staff with Covid-19.

There is the potential for some people visiting their loved ones to be carrying Covid-19 or the flu without showing any symptoms, says Bronwyn.

Because they dont know theyre infectious, there is the possibility of visitors putting staff and vulnerable patients at risk by removing their masks and getting too close to other people.

The hospitals are asking visitors to:

- wear a properly fitted mask

- wash/sanitise their hands regularly

- keep their distance from other people as much as possible.

The safety of patients and staff is our highest priority, says Bronwyn.

Please be kind to our staff  theyre doing their best to keep everyone safe.

Respiratory diseases like Covid-19, the flu and RSV can place a lot of pressure on hospitals  partly because large numbers of patients need care, and partly because staff catch the diseases and cannot work.

At various times this winter, some Tauranga and Whakatane hospital departments have had 10 per cent or more of their staff on sick leave while the hospitals are caring for large numbers of patients.
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Join Date: Jan 2020 Location: Thodupuzha Posts: 12 Thanked: 78 Times

re: Tall tales from the second-hand car market Scam used car odometer tampering



I have been searching for an used car for a relative. It's been a month.



Most of the searches are on OLX.



I have realised prices of used cars have gone up. Point in reference being I myself had bought a used Estilo in 2018 for 170,000/-. It was a 2010 car VXi, single owner, run 21,000 KM (genuine KM as i checked Maruti's service record through a friend who works at an authorised service centre).



Similar vintage Estilo's with mileage around 60K are advertised now at around 200,000/- and upwards without much margin for bargain.



I am presuming reason for increase in price of used cars seems to be:

1. New cars have become expensive and as new cars are becoming increasingly unaffordable for people who need a mode of transport with 4 wheels the demand for used cars have increased

2. Don't know if there is also an impact of longer waiting periods on new cars but I presume it may be pushing up demand for used cars for someone needing a car for immediate use.

3. Most of the cars advertised on OLX are by individual brokers, car dealers and there are only few and far advertised by owners themselves. The intermediary adds their commission to the cost.

4. Also some owners might want to avoid the hassle of bargaining and getting called by lot of people and thus hand over the vehicle to an intermediary.

5. With the prevelance and easy access to online portals and calculators like OLX, OBV calculator, Carz24 calculator a seller can get a fair understanding and a reference point for their own cars from similar cars advertised and peg the selling price higher.

6. Also another thing I noted used cars in Metro, Cat A cities are selling cheaper compared to Cat B and beyond. Possibly there is more supply of used cars in the 1st two category.



Bizarre Experience - Scam in the market



One of the vehicle advertised on OLX was a 2010 Estilo LXi single owner, run 40,000 KM expected price 200,000. Advertised by someone whose name is different compared to the owner's name (how did I figure out the owner's name - read further).



Which meant the person who advertised is a intermediary mostly a small time broker dealing in everything from property, 4 wheelers, 2 wheelers, Scrap, agriculture produce, livestock. Essentially someone looking to make a fast buck with no clue of vehciles.



To the query are you a broker response was I am a relative, owner is abroad, they are old, don't know how to post an ad on OLX. Which is the usual response.



Now how did I figure out who is the actual owner. I use an App called RTO Vehicle Information and enter the RC number gives all details including Insurance, which owner 1, 2, 3 whether the vehicle is blacklisted any police case.

Except contact. The RC number is usually mentioned in the OLX Ad or ask the guy who advt the vehicle for the RC number.



Before going and seeing the vehicle I also seek the help of a SA at a nearby Maruti Service Centre and try to get the a) Service History b) last service KM using the RC number. If the vehicle has visited a service centre you get both the details. But there are cases where the vehicle has not visited the service centre after the 1st three services as a new vehicle.



In this example of the Estilo I mentioned above the last service was done on Oct 2019 and recorded the mileage as 40,700 KM. Armed with this information I saw the car. Condition of the vehcile overall was not as it should have been for a low mileage car, rust spots all over, clutch play, engine oil light on the dash stayed lit up.



And the most important and glaring alert was the odometer reading which was 40,900 KM in July 2022. Which means it's only run 200 KM in over 4 years highly unlikely.



When I pointed it out to the guy he said during COVID it has not run much and that I should drive the vehicle and see the condition.



Also another point to note was the IDV in the insurance paper was 90,000/- and he was demanding 200,000/- for the car.



I refused the offer to drive the vehicle and refused to make an offer and walked away.



Problem with buying a vehicle with ODO reading tampered



Without knowledge of the actual ODO reading the next owner will unknowingly delay the scheduled maintenance. Especially the major ones like timing belt and tensioner change. Which if damaged can be an expensive fix.



Meter tampering it seems is rampant. I tried to dig for more information unofficially and it seems the electronic ODO meter can be flashed and reset for 800/- odd bucks.



Some tips from my learning



1. Use the RTO Vehicle Information App to know vehicle and owner details

2. Connect with a Service Advisor to check for a) last service record b) last service KM

3. In the insurance document of the vehicle look for two specific things:

a) IDV which indicates the price at which the insurers have valued the vehicle

b) NCB% which indicates has there been any claim in last 5 years. This may not be of use if the owner has got repairs done and not claimed insurance.



Wish list



Ideally there should be national registry (could be in the form of a Website / App) which integrates all the information which currently is available in different places some easy to access some not so easy (service record, accident repair, insurance repair). Will help address the scam to some extent and also overall help having better maintained cars on the road, lesser loss of life and limb.



Such registries do exist in US and European markets.



Hope my experience would be of use to others.



Mods, I remember there are some threads about 'How to buy a *USED* Car in India' and "Odometer tampering is ridiculously easy". If you find my post is relevant and could be part of that thread also. Please do include / link the same. Could not figure out how to link. Thank you.
In context: Being laid off from a job is a nightmare scenario for most people, but in the case of Tesla, it seems some fired staff hold no anger towards CEO Elon Muskthey're just grateful for the experience of working there.

It's been over a month since Musk sent emails to Tesla executives instructing them to pause all hiring worldwide and cut employee numbers by 10%. He since clarified that the figure represents salaried workers only, while the number of hourly employees will increase. However, this still means around 3.5% of Tesla's total workforce is being laid off, an amount he said is "not super material."

Some of those who found themselves without a job launched a lawsuit against Tesla, claiming the lack of a 60-day notice period violated federal laws. But it appears not all those who have been let go are upset.

Insider discovered several LinkedIn posts from fired Tesla employees praising their time at the company. One former worker at the autopilot division that recently saw 200 people let go and an entire San Mateo, California, office closed wrote: "During the past year and a half, I worked for a company where I genuinely believed in what we were doing. I felt a great sense of pride to work on a project that marks the beginning of future transportation and a full sense of pride in knowing we were the first."

An engineer from the same division working on the navigation system was equally appreciative. They said working on the nav tools was one of their greatest achievements, adding that they wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

Plenty of other posts used similar language, praising both Tesla and former colleagues. "Some of us (the 10%) might be mad or frustrated, but I'm not. I'm thankful I was part of it, got to learn so many new things and I wish all of my former colleagues the best (no matter what)," wrote one person who joined Tesla in 2016.

Not everyone had such positive things to say about Tesla, though. A former XR developer said there were "a lot of systemic issues at play here."

In other Tesla news, a recent report claimed that following Elon Musk's demand for all staff to return to the office, many of those who returned to the Fremont, California, plant found there weren't enough desks or parking spaces. The EV giant also revealed that its shipments fell 18% in Q2 due to Covid shutdowns in China and supply issues.

Masthead: Craig Adderley; center: Martin Geiger
What just happened? The long-troubled Intellivision Amico could be dead and buried. Its trademark with the USPTO now reads as Abandoned, suggesting the developers have given up on ever releasing the machine that once had ambitions of being a Nintendo-style family console.

VGC spotted that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) entry for the Intellivision Amico had been changed to Abandoned, signifying that the applicant has either not filed a 'Statement of Use' or requested an extension on the trademark within six months of the approval.

Intellivision can't submit a Statement of Use as the Amico still isn't on sale. Since filing the trademark on October 19th, 2018, the company has had four extension requests, the last of which was approved on November 18, 2021. With no further extensions requested, the abandonment notice was filed on June 21, 2022.

It might not be game over for Intellivision. It still has two months to file a 'petition to revive,' which would involve confirming the delay was unintentional and requesting a fifth extensionor a Statement of Use.

It was back in 2018 when video game music veteran Tommy Tallarico acquired Intellivision rights from Mattel. The new system was supposed to arrive in October 2020, but Covid saw the date pushed to April 2021, then fall 2021. The console still hasn't arrived.

In addition to the delays, the Amico looked like it was on more shaky ground last month when Intellivision CEO Phil Adam told pre-order customers that the company had significantly reduced its number of staff as it looked to "dramatically" reign in operating costs. He said that because of the layoffs, the processing of refund requests, which had increased due to the uncertainty, had been delayed.
"Sleep in Orbit" is a new smart earbuds that will help astronauts monitor their sleep in a different condition than what their body is accustomed to on Earth, and it would be a new tool for their venture to the celestial heavens. Researchers from the Aarhus University developed this new tool for those who will have the chance to visit and stay in space, especially those assigned to the International Space Station.

'Sleep in Orbit' Smart Earbuds for Space: What Is It?

(Photo : Harry Cunningham on Unsplash)

According to Aarhus University, researchers from the institution are now developing a new technology that would help deliver a smart device that would allow astronauts to sleep. It is a known fact that space may bring many rigorous effects for a person, despite undergoing intense training to condition their body for the experience.

The solution is from its Center for Ear-EEG, through a wearable technology that would help monitor an astronaut's sleep and, in turn, help them adapt to the space environment they are facing. This new device called "Sleep in Orbit" is a way to monitor the sleep they get in zero-gravity conditions, with their vessel containing artificial gravity to compensate.

Additionally, it would monitor the cosmic effect that a person will endure once in space, looking at other factors, including their patterns, sleeping in an artificial day and night setup, and more.

Read Also: NASA: Swimming Robots to Detect Life on Different Planets, SWIM Project for Europa

Sleep in Orbit: Why is it a Need for Astronauts?

Aarhus University wants to investigate the environment that the astronauts will live in and, of course, their sleep that would affect their physical and mental well-being for their entire stay in space. While the smart earbuds will not do anything yet to help them there, they would gather information on how different space agencies and companies would improve their conditions.

The Sleep in Orbit device would launch to the International Space Station with Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen.

Space Innovations and Advancements

There are many studies regarding the conditions that astronauts, cosmonauts, and other humans that go to space will face, and it is an important one as it relies on their health for the venture's progression. A study regarding the long-term effects of space on their health includes many changes in a person's body that affect their lifestyle when they are above the clouds.

Being a person who will reach space is no joke and is one of the highest recognitions humans may receive, as it is not an easy feat to get selected for these missions and provide information firsthand.

NASA is also developing the use of cultured meats for its astronauts to bring with them on missions, and it may help answer the food supplies and needs of those staying in orbit.

The world is looking at an abundance of space missions and people going off-planet for many tasks and discoveries that would help bring people the knowledge they seek for the cosmos. It is essential to protect the health and well-being of the astronauts and other space people that will see a change in their sleeping habits and lifestyle once deployed.

Related Article: Virgin Orbit Scrubs First Night Launch of the LauncherOne Rocket After the Alarming Temperature of the Propellants

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Written by Isaiah Richard

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
This U.S. town is actually different from other places. Instead of allowing visitors to use their smartphones, Pocahontas County, which is located in West Virginia, doesn't recommend using online devices.

(Photo : Photo by CHRISTOPH SCHMIDT/dpa/AFP via Getty Images)

Picture taken on April 25, 2018 shows a modified caution sign warning against so-called "smombies", people watching their smartphones, in a street close to a school in Reutlingen, southern Germany.

Even if you try to use your smartphone, all you can do is access your photos, offline apps, and other files since there is no internet or cellular connection there.

If you love to take photos of the places you visit and share them on your social media accounts, this will be a nuisance.

But, for other people, Pocahontas County is a life-changing place.

This US Town Bans Smartphones!

According to a Business Insider author, Anna Rollins, Pocahontas County is a town that is not serviceable by internet or cellular.

(Photo : Photo by Go Nakamura/Getty Images)

A person records rain and wind on his smartphone as Hurricane Delta makes landfall on October 9, 2020 in Lake Arthur, Louisiana. Hurricane Delta makes its way toward Louisiana, threatening to bring powerful winds and storm surge to the area of the coast still recovering from Hurricane Laura.

Also Read: Smartphones Will Soon Replace DSLR Cameras in Photography, Sony Predicts

She said that when they arrived at Watoga State Park, West Virginia, text messages weren't not working. Rollins shared that she received a friend's message saying she had given birth to a baby girl.

Of course, she wanted to congratulate her on the newborn baby. However, the "Message failed to deliver" notification popped up when Anna tried to her text message.

She asked her husband about this, and the man clarified that there was no cell service in the area. Her husband added that using smartphones there is actually "illegal."

Pocahontas County Visitors' Experience

Most parts of Pocahontas County have no internet or cellular service because the area is actually used for scientific research.

It is called the "Quiet Zone" because authorities make sure that online devices will not interfere with the Green Bank Observatory's large telescope.

Since smartphones are not serviceable in the area, Rollins said that she became better at parenting since she has fewer distractions.

If you want to see further details about her family's experience in the "Quiet Zone," you can click this link.

On the other hand, Lifestyle AllWomensTalk provided some advantages of not using smartphones, such as the following:

You will have more time for your true enjoyment.

Your eyes will have more rest since you do not peer at a tiny screen.

You will become less reliant on the internet, which is a good thing for your mental health.

In our previous story, mobile carriers in Ukraine went rogue to keep residents' smartphones alive.

On the other hand, a TikToker shared some unusual iPhone tricks.

For more news updates about smartphones and other daily devices, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: Tech Habits 2022 to Follow to Improve Your Sleeping Pattern

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Written by: Griffin Davis

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
New York, July 4 - It's the Fourth of July here in the U.S., but something was brewing between IBT Media and Newsweek CEO Dev Pragad. On the eve of Independence Day, July 3, Newsweek published a rare, bombshell headline about itself, "IBT Media Sues Newsweek CEO, Demanding He Return the Magazine." Newsweek reporter Alex Rouhandeh revealed that the ownership of Newsweek assets was being legally challenged and Newsweek published the story on the heels of HNGN breaking the same story, and only after HNGN had contacted a Newsweek reporter for comment. As of press time, Rouhandeh has not responded to requests for comment.

(Photo : NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)

The IBT Media lawsuit details how Pragad carefully calculated and systematically deceived the owners of IBT Media. In the same lawsuit, it described how the CEO fabricated a carefully crafted public image as the one who 'saved the news,' replete with his fraudulent efforts celebrated as part of a Harvard case study.

"He collected false acclaim and awards and touted his claimed achievements with Newsweek in digital magazines, podcasts, and even a case study at Harvard Business School," the suit says. "And ultimately, Pragad took steps towards betraying his friends and welching on his deal."

The article omits huge portions of the lawsuit that accuses Pragad of fraud, greed, and betrayal and of weaponizing the Newsweek newsroom. Due to Pragad's allegedly repeated violations of law, including "Fraudulent Inducement," -- the lawsuit seeks relief from the court that any transfer of shares to Pragad be declared "void and unenforceable." The lawsuit further seeks relief, asking the court to declare "that IBT holds title to 100% of the membership interest in Newsweek, LLC."

On behalf of Pragad, Newsweek's counsel Robert Weigel of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, said, "IBT's lawsuit against Newsweek and its CEO Dev Pragad flies in the face of express written agreements. It is a desperate attempt by IBT to avoid its clear obligations and it's wholly without merit." He went on to connect the issue to unrelated issues of inter-company debt and again to Olivet University, which is not a party to the suit.

(Photo : Photo by John Gress/Getty Images)

Newsweek CEO Pragad orchestrated systematic and calculated deception against the owners of IBT Media?

Although it is expected that Pragad's lawyer will support him, the story itself is written to support Pragad and downplay the suit. Despite substantial and full of never-seen-before revelations about Pragad's dealings and the company's origin, Newsweek did not link to the suit directly, and instead only pointed back to past Newsweek articles that attack Johnathan Davis, the owner of Newsweek, and other entities he has distant relationships with, such as Olivet University and other entities.

As for the substance of the lawsuit, Newsweek appears to have covered it in a manner primarily calculated and aimed at skirting the core allegations contained in the lawsuit.

For instance, Newsweek states that "IBT Media sold its 50% stake in the magazine's publisher to Dev Pragad", though the sale was never consummated in the first place.

Even the opening lines of Newsweek's description take text from the suit, reading that "this case is about the rightful ownership of the famed Newsweek brand," but abruptly ends mid-sentence omitting the crucial characterization that it is also about "Pragad's betrayal and greed."

The article then dives into a robust defense for Pragad and Newsweek, leaning on a statement "supplied" by an unnamed spokesperson at Newsweek itself. This is a common tactic for the company as it attempts to cover itself.

In an April 22 Newsweek article about Olivet, where another or possibly the same -- unnamed company spokesman failed to reach their own CEO, who "did not respond to comments," but was able to declare, "Dev Pragad is not a target of any federal investigation" -- something only Pragad would be able to verify.

On top of favorable spin and omission of facts, Rouhandeh and Newsweek Editor Nancy Cooper failed to check the most basic facts before publishing the story. The article claims that IBT Media received a money-laundering charge years ago, though HNGN has confirmed that is not the case.

This follows a common pattern at Newsweek of making false allegations and influencing sources in an effort to write a story with a pre-determined narrative. As HNGN has reported before, Newsweek has been accused of playing a "certain" role in swaying the New York State Department of Education in the Olivet University case and continues to do so in other cases.

As noted in the lawsuit and by HNGN coverage, this article is one of many in a series of Newsweek articles lashing out against Newsweek's owner, Davis. However, Newsweek's audience seems not to have been pleased with the coverage. Commenters noted that "the article was one of the worst they've seen Newsweek cover," while another mentioned that "Newsweek hasn't been good since the internet." One Newsweek reader sarcastically noted in response to the latest piece: "If you have ever seen any real news on this page, that would be breaking news."

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
NASA brings a new advancement to its Martian study, and it is through the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) that delivered the first extensive map of Mars. It brings a 5.6 gigapixel map of the Red Planet, and it is a massive quality for a map and image that the spacecraft delivers to the world.

The new map will serve as the world's guide to Mars and help its future expeditions on the Red Planet to correctly determine different locations, regions, and areas on its surface.

NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter: 5.6 GP Map of Mars

(Photo : NASA JPL, MRO)

SciTechDaily reports that Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter brought a new map of Mars for the world to see, and being the massive 5.6-gigapixel image it got, it is segmented into parts. The map is a full view of the planet and captures the current state it is in, along with the craters, rocks, and erosions that the on-ground rovers see.

The data is available on the Planetary Data System from NASA, and it hosts the first segment or part of the map that the MRO brought to the world. It brings a different look to the planet, as it is more than an image that shows what it looks like in space.

It presents the entirety of Mars and brings what future expeditions would need to successfully navigate the Red Planet, like what early cartographers developed for the Earth.

Read Also: China Releases Astonishingly Detailed Photos of Mars for the First Time

Why is a Mars Map Important?

A map to any location or object is vital as it presents leads and gives people a sure spot to look into for their needs and requirements. The same thing applies to Mars, as it is an unknown planet with a massive area that future astronauts will explore and study for the world's information.

The modern way it is used is via the MRO's cameras, and it brings a better view of the planet that would apply to space and the Martain surface once explorers touch down.

Mars and its Study

The study on Mars is a massive venture for NASA, shaping the world and the universe as we know it as it brings important information about the other planets around us. Mars is a close relative of the Earth as a terranean planet, and it brings a rocky stature similar to the world, only that several elements differ from home.

The Curiosity rover is one of the earliest modern Mars spacecraft that ventures on the planet to collect samples and investigate the elements behind it. NASA hopes that it will lead to answers soon. Now, Curiosity is on its way to look for signs if the Martian planet is habitable for humans and if it could sustain life like here on the Earth.

Another focus on Mars is with the tandem of the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter that also goes on daily trips towards different locations to survey the planet.

Researchers believe that Mars is also habitable like the Earth, and future expeditions may come if proven that it is safe to stay there and can sustain a person's daily lifestyle. Now, future expeditions are possible thanks to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that brought the map of the planet, and it is possible to plan strategic ventures towards it.

Related Article: NASA Perseverance Rover's MEDA Sensor Damaged by Mars Rocks-Reducing Its Efficiency! Can It Still Be Used?

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Written by Isaiah Richard

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The month of July is beach season for Japan. Swimmers, sunbathers, and surfers start flocking to beaches, and as such, lifeguards are on the watch to keep beachgoers safe.

However, one beach along the Pacific coast uses artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure that people enjoy their time on the beach without any harmful incidents.

Detecting Rip Currents

According to The Mainichi, authorities in Kanagawa prefecture, south of Tokyo, have used an AI system that will detect rip currents -which are responsible for 60% of drowning deaths - and issue an alarm to lifeguards and swimmers nearby.

The Yuigahama Beach in the town of Kamakura is a well-known surfing location and was publicly opened on Friday, July 1, following two years of prohibitions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The opening is anticipated to draw big crowds amid what the weather service expects would be an extremely hot summer.

Rip current data was gathered over the course of six months in the winter of 2021 by specialists at the Japan Lifesaving Association and Chuo University in Tokyo to ensure the AI system functioned, according to the Mainichi.

The lifesaving association said that a web camera installed on a pole could spot rip currents and anyone swimming in their proximity while alerting a lifeguard right away through a smartwatch.

According to The Mainichi, photographs were also employed to create a warning system that provides government officials real-time data about swimmers following a tsunami.

Read also: This Instagram's Age Verification Tool Will Allow AI to Verify How Old You Are, and You Can't Deny It

"Barrier-free, Safe, and Eco-friendly"

The local initiative to combat rip currents is a part of a larger effort to revitalize the beach after it was closed by the pandemic and promote the region's environmental credentials. In the prefecture, there are roughly 20 beaches that have been prohibited for the previous two summers, and among those beaches is Yuigahama.

A wheelchair-accessible slope has also been erected in an effort to provide a barrier-free beach for those with disabilities. This allows users to access the sand safely.

Additionally, Yuigahama's bars and restaurants have reportedly been the first in Japan to utilize biodegradable forks and spoons.

The president of the Yuigahama Beach Business Association, Motohide Masuda, told the Mainichi that his organization was following a proactive, "barrier-free, safe, and eco-friendly" strategy to promote a "modern Yuigahama."

Related Article: AI in Doctor-Patient Relationship Still Subject to Digital Transformation, Raises Bioethics Issues

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Written by Joaquin Victor Tacla

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Elon Musk's Tesla is no longer the world's biggest electric vehicle (EV) producer.

Its Chinese competition BYD has now claimed the top rank in EV production, and Tesla sits at the second spot.

BYD Dethrones Tesla

According to a Nikkei Asia report, Tesla sold around 564,000 cars in the first half of 2022. BYD increased its sales by 314.9 percent from the first half of 2021 to 641,350 new energy vehicles sold in the first half of 2022. Additionally, 323 519 battery electric vehicles were purchased out of the sales.

The most recent lockdowns in China, and more notably in Shanghai, had a significant negative impact on several EV manufacturers, including Tesla, Nio, Li Auto, and Xpeng.

The majority of BYD's plants are situated in areas that did not experience prolonged periods of lockdown. Thus, manufacturing carried on as usual.

Tesla was able to sell 936,172 vehicles in 2021, but it's unknown whether the business can reclaim the top spot. BYD, which has surpassed LG to become the world's second-largest producer of EV batteries, is partially controlled by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway.

Read also: New Massive Tesla Recall in Germany Involves Software Glitch, Affecting eCall System of Model Y, Model 3

Why Did Tesla Fall to 2nd Place?

Due to the COVID lockdown in the city, Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory 3, which shoulders half of its global output in 2021, was closed for 22 days in May. The factory's productivity struggled to return to pre-pandemic rates even after it had resumed due to constant parts bottlenecks.

Holding factories that won't be affected by lockdowns and having easy access to a wide range of batteries is what exactly catapulted BYD to the top EV producer spot.

Since January, BYD's stock has increased 36 percent, and the automaker is now closing in on a market valuation of one trillion Chinese yuan, or roughly $149 billion.

BYD's quick climb to the position of the top domestic vehicle manufacturer in China has been aided by Beijing's campaign for citizens to reduce their carbon emissions, according to Insider.

The Insider further noted that despite a pollution investigation into one of its facilities in the province of Hunan, the EV company had maintained growth in sales and share value. Residents in the region had complained of nosebleeds, vomiting, and other health difficulties, which prompted the investigation.

The challenges Tesla is currently experiencing are significant. Elon Musk recently referred to Tesla's gigafactories in Austin and Berlin as "gigantic money furnaces."

The carmaking company has recently raised its prices for its vehicles. It is currently subject to investigation regarding Autopilot crashes and is also embroiled in a legal battle with its former workers.

Related Article: Tesla Allegedly Breaks Elon Musk's Order as Newly Hired Employees Appear on LinkedIn

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Written by Joaquin Victor Tacla

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Unsplash/Jenny Ueberberg) EV

New car buyers in the United Kingdom are willing to switch to electric vehicles as long as it is affordable.

Most U.K. residents had a lot of issues with switching from traditional to electric vehicles.

They have voiced concerns about charging, range, long-term battery capacity, and other factors. But now, the drivers have changed their minds about switching.

U.K. Buyers Willing to Go Electric

In 2011, Driving Away From Fossil Fuels reported that less than 1% of the car buyers in the U.K. said that they would consider buying an electric car even if it was at an affordable price. In 2015, the number went up to 2%.

In 2022, it was reported that 100% of new car buyers in the U.K., or around 2,000 participants, have said that they would choose an electric vehicle over a traditional one if they were at an affordable price.

Also Read: Tesla is Opening Up Its Supercharger Networks in the U.K. for All E.V. Owners as Company Shares Rise

The data was commissioned by the E.V. campaign group FairChange, and they looked at the drivers' preferences by comparing the electric and traditional car attributes, including their specifications and costs, according to Electrek.

The report also showed that the buyers would opt for an electric vehicle despite 81% of them admitting that they are relying on on-street parking, which makes overnight charging of E.V.s challenging.

Also, the survey found that the deployment of public charging infrastructure will not affect the consumer demand for electric vehicles.

This is because the majority of the new car buyers that were surveyed had said that they have access to off-street parking.

The discovery that finding a charging infrastructure will not affect the demand for new E.V.s cuts against claims made by some manufacturers that the government must not ban petrol and diesel vehicles in 2030 because there is a lack of public charging infrastructure to accommodate all E.V. vehicles.

Supporters of electric vehicles in the U.K. want to use the report to show the government that the switch to E.V.s from traditional cars may happen faster than expected and that they need to prepare the infrastructure for it.

Campaign for Better E.V. Infrastructure

The E.V. spokesperson for the RAC, Simon Williams, has called on the U.K. government to make accessibility to electric vehicles better.

According to Express.Co, Williams said that the RAC research shows that the high costs of E.V.s continues to be a major factor in uptake, so they find it encouraging to know that car buyer would want to go electric without any hesitation if they are as affordable as a traditional car.

Williams added that the government "has been bold in setting the 2030 date for the end of the sale of petrol and diesel cars and vans," but they also need to focus on bringing new E.V.s down in price, so they are accessible to all U.K. residents.

Williams believes the early removal of the plug-in car grant in early 2022 was a mistake. He said that even though the grant had been reduced, it had helped encourage car manufacturers to produce more E.V.s at a lower price point.

Without the plug-in car grant for E.V.s, there is less incentive for car manufacturers to concentrate on this end of the market, which will affect drivers who really want to go electric but can't afford it.

Both RAC and FairChange have called on the U.K. government to abolish the VAT differential between public E.V. charging and home charging. A 20% rate of VAT is charged on public chargers, compared to only 5% on home chargers.

Related Article: U.K. E.V. Drivers Mock Petrol Cars as Gas Shortage Continue Its Problem on Local Areas

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Written by Sophie Webster

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(Photo : Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 24: Elizabeth Tower, often known as Big Ben, is pictured behind a British flag on June 24, 2022 in London, England. The Conservatives lost both the Tiverton & Honiton and Wakefield By-elections overnight. Tiverton & Honiton turned Liberal Democrat with Richard Foord overturning a 24,000 Conservative majority, a historic swing of 30%. Labour took Wakefield with a 12.7% swing from the Conservatives, their MP Simon Lightfoot won 13166 votes.

United Kingdom has taken another step further in combatting widespread disinformation propagated by foreign actors. This includes Russia and Putin's global campaign for the acceptance of his incursion into Ukraine.

United Kingdom Files Online Safety Legislation Anew

An amendment to the body of laws on regulating digital media has been filed in the UK to enhance online safety rules, forcing social media companies to proactively look for pieces of disinformation available online coming from foreign state actors. The goal of the legislation is to mitigate the risks of fake news seeping into the borders of the UK.

A 145-page legislation draft was recently published by the UK government as a call for accountability for digital services to manage content and ensure online safety. Dubbed the Online Safety Bill, this draft legislation is a subject of debate, especially as the stifling of freedom of expression is raised by critics, and yet its advantages seem to outweigh the concerns.

The same piece of legislation will primarily introduce an amendment, making "foreign meddling" a priority offense under the new Online Safety Bill. To do this, social media and other platforms must be legally obligated to proactively detect and delete state-sponsored or state-linked misinformation that aims to harm the UK.

The legislation is considered a sound form of protection against "foreign interference," such as unwelcome foreign involvements in elections, among others. The Online Safety Bill promises worse penalties for these. The particular interest of the bill in protecting the country from intrusive foreign parties is a reinforcing measure to the world's current battle against Russian disinformation on the Ukraine war.

It is also expected that stricter protocols on online security can mitigate incidents similar to the Russian prank call to UK Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace and, of course, to Russia's reported involvement in the Brexit referendum vote leading to the UK's departure from the European Union. With legislation in place, the Russian interference in the referendum could have been investigated. Instead, despite available evidence, no effort was made to do so.

'Hostile Online Warfare' Remains a Pressing Concern

Though online disinformation is a worldwide concern, "hostile online warfare," specifically from Russia, was identified by the UK's Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Nadine Dorries as a pressing problem from which the UK deserves to be protected. In her department's public statement, Dorries asserts that Russia is able to weaponize social media to distort realities and gain political control through disinformation.

With this, she claims that the Online Safety Bill, alongside the National Security bill, paves the way to intensifying internet protections by legally requiring the accountability of social media networks to filter out disinformation that is government-initiated or sponsored.

Online disinformation is tagged a "priority offense." Therefore, now just as punishable as terrorism and human trafficking. This means platforms like Twitter and Facebook can be fined up to 18 million or 10% of their global annual turnover, whichever is higher, for failure to take proactive measures against content that are harmful or illegal. With the Online Safety Bill, the government also holds power to block access to identified sites if deemed necessary.

Related Article: Russia Fines Google For The 2nd Time Over 'Banned Content' About Ukraine and More

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A wave of remembrance at the incense burner at Inha University... "You have to stop the second attack"
Lara Nicholson writes for The Advocate as a Report for America Corps Member. Email her at lnicholson@theadvocate.com or follow her on Twitter @LaraNicholson_.

To learn more about Report for America and to support our journalism, please click here.
Bubs Australia chairman Dennis Lin has said he is confident the infant formula maker can continue to supply the giant US market in the long term after the company announced a $63 million capital raising.

The ASX-listed company has so far delivered 360,000 of 1.25 million tins of baby formula to the US through a temporary enforcement discretion scheduled to end on November 14, but Lin said the company was in discussions with the regulator to provide ongoing supply to the worlds biggest economy beyond this cut-off date.

Bubs CEO Kristy Carr and executive chairman Dennis Lin. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

Overall, our confidence is relatively high in being able to continue to supply American families in whatever shape or form, regulatory-wise, beyond the 14th of November. Were just working with the [FDA] in terms of how that might look for it to be seamless, Lin said.

The US, which is still grappling with an infant formula shortage that began in February, is experiencing out-of-stock rates of 74 per cent, according to retail tracking data. Lin doesnt expect the shortage to ease until September. This is far from a short-term thing, he said.
It was only during a literature festival in 2019 that she realised she would have to return to the richly sensory Dutch world she had created. For the first time in a while I was asked to discuss The Miniaturist and, after wed left the stage, the interviewer told me Id come alive in a different way while discussing the book; that Id been suffused with something. I told my agent I was ready to go back to Nella. And when I did begin thinking about her [and the books other characters] again, it felt like taking old childhood toys out of a box. There was so much tender connection, and so many questions. While The Miniaturist was driven by the tension between innocent but tenacious young Nella and her domineering but vulnerable sister-in-law Marin, The House of Fortune focuses on the frisson between Nellas survivalist mentality and her niece Theas idealism. I knew that baby Thea would grow up to have her own story, says Burton. The dialogue between women of different generations has been a running theme through all of my books. I was curious about what theyd find to teach each other. Nella is an older woman whose sexual appetite was unfulfilled. And Thea is a younger woman who experiences sexual pleasure and romantic love. Theyre in conflict over whats more important for Thea to have a happy life, and neither of them have the answers. As the only child of a vivacious, occasionally embarrassing mother, Burton understands the challenges of this dynamic. She tells me her mum  a keen crafter  always wore bright colours and had a laugh you can hear from streets away. She sometimes sprayed polka dot dye into her white-blonde hair and often talks to strangers.

Weve always had very direct conversations, she adds. And that must feed into the energy of my fiction. Her house  my childhood home  burned down while I was writing The House of Fortune. Luckily the Sylvanian Families toy village  Burtons favourite childhood toy and partial inspiration for the dolls house at the heart of The Miniaturist  survived the conflagration. But its ironic that the fetishiser of tiny things had her childhood home in Wimbledon destroyed by the glare from a crafting magnifying glass, which concentrated the suns rays onto a flammable curtain. Loading Burton says that the playful control of narrative she developed with her toys fed into her early ambition to become an actor. After Oxford, she studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, but never got the parts she craved. She laughs about her walk-on part in the TV adaptation of The Miniaturist: I was in the Silversmiths Ball scene. I loved getting dressed up and walking around inside a world of my invention. But when I watched the finished episode I saw that only the tip of my nose made the final cut. Pretty humbling to realise that would be the pinnacle of my acting career. Her experience of watching The Miniaturists sets dismantled is reflected in The House of Fortune. By the late 17th century, the VOC [Dutch East India Company] was in decline, says Burton. Nellas fortune was built on that trade and at the beginning of this book we see her grand mansion is emptying out. Its like a film set thats shutting down.

Her characters all respond differently to the economic decline. Nella wants to cling to the old class structure and marry Thea off to a wealthy aristocrat, but Thea has fallen for a handsome set painter at the local theatre. Because Thea is a woman of dual heritage, and Im not, Burton was grateful for the feedback of a sensitivity reader. I wanted readers to be gunning for Thea, and our sensitivity readers feedback was very enlightening. She said: Thea is living in Amsterdam in the winter and if you think her hair isnt going to get frizzed up by that then youre mistaken! I had scenes in which she got ready to leave the house in five minutes and my SR said it would have taken much longer than that to dress her hair. So I watched lots of online tutorials about how to treat African Caribbean hair. Burton doesnt rule out the possibility she might return to Nella for a third time. My connection to Nella and her world is very deep, she says. Ive signed a contract to write two more childrens books, and I want to spend time with my son. But I cant let go of Nella. She rolls her eyes. I picture myself at 65 thinking, Right then, Nella, lets see what youre doing now  The House of Fortune is published by Picador on July 12, $34.99. The Telegraph, London
Former prime minister Scott Morrison has been keeping a low profile since his election loss. After swapping Kirribilli House for his adopted home of the Sutherland Shire, hes back doing what he pretends to love best  making curries for Jen and the girls, watching the Sharks, a spot of lawnmowing, even taking his old staff out for a screening of Top Gun and some tenpin bowling.

Keeping busy: Scott Morrison. Credit:John Shakespeare

But ScoMo will be back on the hill for the first parliamentary sittings in just a few weeks.

Hell be occupying more humble digs now, relegated to the outer corridors of Parliament House in an office befitting a backbencher. In a sign of respect to PM30, the new Morrison office isnt quite in the parliamentary boondocks; its down the southern side of the building close to the ministerial wing and Opposition Leader Peter Duttons office.

The new-look Team ScoMo will also lack the firepower of the PMO, with his band of unfriendly flacks moving on after the election. Senior media adviser Ben Wicks is off to the business world and his old PMO colleague Nick Creevey announced he was leaving politics right after the election. Fellow spinner Rosa Stathis is also on the hunt for new opportunities.
Protesters rally outside a federal courthouse in Austin, Texas, over the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade. Credit:AP

You could almost hear the furious banging at keyboards across the nation as women listed countless good uses for a woman wielding a wooden mallet. None pretty. Mine included. Funny, nasty, shocking, gory, wicked, witty and, most of all, violent. Yes, full of violence.

A friend of mine has just made one. Its large, wooden and looking for trouble. She crafted it at a tin-shed session and posted a photo on Facebook, holding it aloft, looking damn pleased with herself. Someone asked what its for.

But oh, my! The delicious virtue in that violence. (Is there such a thing? Can violence ever be virtuous? Of course, it can. Just ask Vladimir!)

Just then, I remembered inciting violence online is, in fact, a crime. So I hit delete and got back to work: which happened to involve trawling through research papers on a bunch of womens conferences held in the 1970s. A flick of the page, and Im up to August 1975, a gathering held at Melbourne University titled, Women and Madness Conference.

At that moment the mallet, madness, and womens seething rage crystallised into sharp focus. Of course women are feeling violent at this time. Why wouldnt we be?

The US Supreme Court action reversing Roe v Wade, after 50 years, strips naked a womens right to own her own body. As such, it levels a profound violence on women. The violence of authoritarian, totalitarian, masculine ownership and female subjugation.

As we all know, violence begets violence. Men are masterful at ensuring that, as the history of conflict throughout the world repeatedly reminds us.
A trio of Liberal women have emerged as frontrunners to replace Marise Payne in the Senate amid growing expectation in the Liberal Party that the former foreign minister will step down after the NSW state election in March 2023.

Discussions are also under way about who could replace former prime minister Scott Morrison in the seat of Cook  if he chooses to walk away  with a number of candidates touted.

Former foreign minister Marise Payne is expected to quit before her six-year term expires. Credit:Steven Siewert

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age spoke to nine current federal and state parliamentarians from NSW and their unanimous view was that Payne, who took on the behind-the-scenes role of shadow cabinet secretary after the election loss, would not serve a full six-year term in the new parliament.

Payne entered federal parliament in April 1997 and her place on the Liberal Senate ticket is all but certain to go to another member of the moderates faction.
With a little one at home and another on the way, it is time for me to seek a job that offers greater flexibility, the Euroa MP said.

Ryan, who is pregnant with her second child, told The Age she was quitting politics in November to spend more time with her family.

Ryan, 36, was elected to the Victorian parliament eight years ago and was immediately elevated to the deputy position of the junior Coalition partner. She was expected to eventually take over the leadership of the Victorian Nationals.

Serving my community as the first member for Euroa has been the honour of a lifetime. The greatest pleasure of this job has been the opportunity it has afforded me to meet everyday people doing extraordinary things.

Im also immensely proud to have served as the deputy leader of the Nationals for the past eight years and to be the first woman in the partys history to be elected to a leadership position, state or federal. I want to thank our leader Peter Walsh and my colleagues for their friendship and unwavering support over that time.

Ryan said her community deserved an MP who could devote 150 per cent of their time and energy representing them and she could no longer provide that commitment.

In reality, that means someone who can give [themselves] freely on weeknights and weekends and that, at this stage in my life, is not compatible with my wish to be more present for my family, she said.

I leave my role firm in the belief that the Nationals are as important to country communities today as they were 100 years ago. Country people need a party that works together as a team to represent the unique challenges we face.
Renters face tough conditions as they have fewer homes to choose from at the same time rents hit record highs.

The national rental vacancy rate is at its lowest point on record for the fourth consecutive month at 1 per cent, the latest Domain Rental Vacancy Report shows.

Renters have little to choose from and are forced to pay rising rents. Credit:

While all capital cities remain in a landlords market, Sydneys vacancy rate held at its lowest point on record at 1.4 per cent.

Melbourne declined for the sixth consecutive month from 1.6 per cent in May to 1.5 per cent in June, more than halving compared to a year ago.
Singapore: Australias ambassador to China has met with Chinas vice-foreign minister in Beijing, days before the countrys foreign ministers are due to cross paths at the G20 in Bali.

The meeting between Graham Fletcher and Xie Feng paves the way for a potential meeting between Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Chinas top envoy Wang Yi at the Bali foreign ministers summit from Thursday.

China and Australias foreign ministers Wang Yi and Penny Wong. Credit:AP/Getty

Wong and Wang narrowly avoided each other in the Pacific in May and June with each paying visits to Samoa, Tonga, Solomon Islands and Fiji as Beijing attempted to push through a regional security deal.

Chinas regional military ambitions were one of a dozen disputes between Australia and China that led to high-level diplomatic contact being frozen for more than two years. But that relationship has shown signs of improvement since Defence Minister Richard Marles met with a lower-ranked Chinese Defence Minister in June. A meeting between Wong and Wang would be the highest level contact between equivalent Australian and Chinese ministers since September 2019.
Rome: Pope Francis has given the clearest sign yet that he will resign if his health deteriorates.

Speculation has been mounting about the future of his papacy, compounded by recent health issues and his surprise decision to call the meeting of cardinals in late August, a time when the Vatican is usually on holiday.

Francis also previously announced a visit to LAquila, an Italian town linked to Celestine V, a pope who resigned in the late 13th century, leading to speculation that he was planning to follow in his footsteps.

Pope Francis recites the Angelus noon prayer from the window of his studio overlooking St Peters Square, at the Vatican, on Sunday. Credit:AP

In an interview on Monday, he denied he was on the brink of retiring, saying the prospect had not crossed his mind in recent months.
Oscar and Emmy winner Helen Hunt will return to the stage in the Old Vic Theatre's European premiere of Jonathan Spector's off-Broadway play Eureka Day, which runs September 6-October 31 at the south London venue.

The satire is set at a progressive day school in California circa 2017. When a mumps outbreak occurs, the school community turns on each other over questions of vaccination. Eureka Day had its New York premiere at Walkerspace in 2019, in a production by Colt Coeur.

Katy Rudd will direct the Old Vic production. Further information is still to be announced.
The Wyoming Highway Patrol is happy to announce that we are accepting applications for the 104th Wyoming State Trooper Basic Academy.

We will be testing in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on September 21st, 22nd, and 23rd, 2022.

As a Wyoming State Trooper, you will find a challenging career assisting citizens in ensuring traffic safety while promoting peace and order throughout the state.

Law enforcement is not just a job; it is a passion-driven career where you can make a difference every day. Be a part of a premier law enforcement team that holds itself to the highest standards!
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Fourteen human rights organizations from the United States, Europe, and Asia observed the first Chinese Human Rights Lawyer Day in Washington on July 9, 2017. (Shi Qingyun/The Epoch Times)

2 Chinese Rights Activists Tried in Secret for Advocating Democracy and Human Rights

Two long-standing Chinese rights activists were put on trial behind closed doors on June 22 and June 24.

Xu Zhiyong, a legal scholar and civil rights activist, and Ding Jiaxi, a veteran human rights lawyer, faced unfair and spurious charges of subverting state power, which is an attack on freedom of association, according to a June 21 report from Amnesty International.

Xu and Ding co-founded the New Citizens Movement that called for the rule of law and freedom in China.

Dings wife, Luo Shengchun, now living in the United States, wrote on Twitter on June 20 that her husbands lawyers were forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement, banning them from speaking with the media. She wrote four days later that she received only a short message from one of her husbands lawyers, telling her that the trial, lasting almost 12 hours, ended before 9 p.m. on June 24 and that a court record had just been signed.

Xus sister went to Linshu County in Chinas eastern Shandong Province, where her brother was to be trialed in the county court, but several police officers broke into her hotel room at 1 a.m. and forced her to leave. She was not allowed to attend her brothers trial, wrote Luo.

There has not yet been a verdict, and Luo insists that both her husband and Xu are innocent. She called the trials pitch darkness of secret Chinese communist regimes court trials in her Twitter posts.

Sheer Political Persecution

In December 2019, Xu and Ding had a gathering with over 20 rights lawyers and friends in Xiamen, a southeastern coastal city in China. The meeting sparked a nationwide hunt for Xu, Ding, and their friends. Ding was captured on Dec. 26, 2019, and Xu was taken weeks later on Feb. 15, 2020. They have both been detained since.

The police detained those who attended the gathering, but they had no evidence or any legal ground to do that, Wu Shaoping, a Chinese human rights lawyer, told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times in a recent interview.

We are just Chinese citizens and human rights lawyers who care about our society. We met for some food and we chatted about current and political issues, Wu said. He told the publication that he participated in the Xiamen gathering.

Wu said that he had been watching the progress of the cases of Ding and Xu, whose lawyers were given a pre-court meeting on June 17 and June 20, respectively, before the trials.

We know the cases. There are over 100 dossiers for each case. The regimes court allowed the lawyers only one day to read through the so-called evidence, but they did not allow the lawyers to photocopy any of the dossiers. The court is only going through the motions, said Wu. He condemned the trial as sheer political persecution.

Support

The closed-door trials sparked support for Xu and Ding in China and overseas, with many condemning the trials and asking for their immediate release.

Amnesty International called the Chinese Communist Partys (CCPs) subversion charges spurious.

The Chinese authorities have targeted Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi not because they committed any internationally recognized crime, but simply because they hold views the government does not like. These unfair trials are an egregious attack on their human rights, said Amnesty Internationals China Campaigner Gwen Lee.

Mary Lawlor, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, wrote on Twitter on June 24 that Ding should be guaranteed a transparent & fair trial, including by allowing his lawyers to submit all relevant evidence.

International Service for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization with offices in Geneva, Switzerland, and New York, United States, wrote on the same day that they join Dings wife in urging China to respect basic due process and release Ding Jiaxi.

Human Rights in China, a Chinese non-governmental organization founded in 1989 by overseas Chinese students and scientists, posted a statement on June 24, calling for the immediate release of Xu and Ding and condemning in the strongest terms their closed-door trials for subversion of state power.

Human Rights Lawyers in China, a group of lawyers who vow to defend the human rights of the Chinese people, published a statement, demanding the Chinese regime immediately set Xu and Ding free.

Friends and supporters also joined Dings wife, posting on Twitter their photos with placards, urging the Chinese regime to free Ding and Xu.

The French Embassy in China published a post on Chinas popular social media platform Weibo, saying that We are with them [Xu and Ding], and demanding the Chinese regime immediately set them free.

Open Letter to Xi Jinping

Xu, while on the run in 2020, wrote an open letter to CCP leader Xi Jinping. In the letter, he criticized Xis policies, from both economical and political perspectives, including the SinoU.S. trade war, the Belt and Road Initiative, poverty alleviation, suppression of freedoms in Hong Kong, and the handling of the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.

Sometimes I look up at the stars and I ask myself: Who am I? Why did I come to this world? Have you ever asked yourself these questions? Sometimes I stand high and look back at the world, and I see myself as tiny as dust. Have you ever looked back? Life is in such a hurry, why are we so obsessed with the maze and illusions? Have you ever pondered it? Xu addressed Xi in his open letter, calling on Xi to go home and rest upon the end of the second term.

The open letter is archived on the website of China Digital Times, an independent, bilingual media organization that brings uncensored news and online voices from China to the world, according to its website.

According to a statement by the Human Rights Lawyers Group in China, Xu promoted the abolishing of Chinas notorious system of detaining and dispatching migrant workers and successfully helped the children of migrant workers to take the national entrance examination in places other than their hometowns.

Ding advocated the establishment of the concept of citizenship by the Chinese people, demanded the establishment of an official property publicity system, rescued petitioners, and promoted equal rights for the elderly, according to the statement from the Human Rights Lawyers Group in China.

Both of them were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment during detention, including long hours of interrogation and being bound to an iron tiger-chair torture device with their limbs contorted for more than 10 hours per day for many days, according to Amnesty International on June 21.

It is so dark. Does that mean its almost dawn? Luo Shengchun, Dings wife, wrote on Twitter, expecting justice and freedom to come soon.

Gao Miao contributed to the article.
The Benjamin Franklin Parkway during the July 4th fireworks show in Philadelphia on July 4, 2022. (Courtesy of KYW)

2 Police Officers Shot During Fourth of July Fireworks in Philadelphia: Reports

Two police officers sustained injuries after they were shot in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during fireworks to celebrate the fourth of July, according to reports.

The officers were sent to the Jefferson University Hospital and were reported in stable condition as of late Monday, reported WPVI.

The shooting took place a little before 10 p.m. along the Ben Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, near the Philadelphia Museum of Art, just as the fireworks display was getting started after a music concert celebrating the July 4 holiday had ended.

One of the officers, with the Philadelphia Police Highway Patrol, sustained a graze wound to the head, while the other officer, who was with the Montgomery County Bomb Unit, sustained a gunshot wound to the shoulder, reported WTXF-TV.

For those looking to reunite with loved ones on the Parkway, please meet at 1901 Vine Street in front of the Free Library of Philadelphia. All others, please avoid the area, the Philadelphia Police Department said on Twitter late Monday after shots were fired that sent crowds scattering.

Police have not said what had prompted or triggered the gunfire and no arrests have been reported as of late Monday.

July 4 is a national holiday across the United States that marks when Congress signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Read More Civic Virtues as Moral Facts: Recovering the Other Half of Our Founding

The shooting that injured the two police officers came just hours after a shooting in a Chicago-area suburb that killed six people and injured at least 24 others. A suspect has been taken into custody.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) on Twitter thanked law enforcement and wished the two injured police officers a speedy recovery.
3 Killed, 6 Hurt in Winnetka Crash

WINNETKA, Calif.A three-vehicle crash in Winnetka that killed three men and injured six others may have been caused by excessive speed, police said Monday.

The crash was reported about 9 p.m. Sunday in the 19700 block of Vanowen Street., according to Los Angeles Fire Department spokeswoman Margaret Stewart.

Two 30-year-old men and one 25-year-old man died at the scene, their names withheld pending notification of relatives, Stewart said.

Six other people were taken to hospitals with potentially serious injuries, she said. They all had stable vital signs when transported. Their ages, genders, and extent of injuries were not available.

Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Andrew Neiman told reporters at the scene the Ford Explorer with the three men inside was moving at 6570 mph in the 35 mph zone at the time of the crash.
Three Mile Slough bridge in Sacramento, Calif., in February 2022. (Google Maps/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

3 Men Missing in California After River Rescue Attempt

SACRAMENTO, Calif.Three men are missing and presumed dead in California after a child was caught in a river current and they swam out in an attempt to rescue him, authorities said.

The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that the boy was swept away at a popular boating and swimming destination called Three Mile Slough.

The delta area of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers is about 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of Sacramento.

The boy was pulled from the water and wasnt hurt but three of his relatives were pulled under after they went in after him, said Rio Vista Battalion Chief Brandon Wilson.

People saw them go under and never saw them come back, Wilson said.

Authorities searched for the men for two hours in hopes of rescuing them but later transitioned to a recovery operation, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The Youth Research Center published a study on "Young Hongkongers Vision for Hong Kongs Future, and finds that nearly half of the Hong Kong youth are pessimistic about Hong Kong's future development. (Photo from the website of HKFYG)

50 Percent of Young Hongkongers Feel Hopeless About the Future, 60 Percent Concerned of Losing Freedom

The latest Hong Kong Chief Executive, John Lee Ka-chiu, declared before he took office, There are many issues in Hong Kong, lets solve one each day. I will also prioritize our housing issues as soon as I am sworn in.

The general public has high expectations of Lee. A youth organization released a study report on June 3, 2022, Young Hongkongers Vision for Hong Kongs Future. It shows that the issue of youth housing has become the top issue that young people most expect the new chief to resolve first.

Nearly two-thirds of the interviewees think the new government urgently needs to deal with the housing shortage in Hong Kong.

On the other hand, about 50 percent of Hong Kong youth are pessimistic about the citys future development, and almost 40 percent of them hope to see Hong Kong as a free city after ten years.

The Youth Research Center, which was established by The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups (HKFYG), published a study on Young Hongkongers Vision for Hong Kongs Future. The online survey was conducted from May 13 to 29, 2022, with 1054 HKYFG members aged between 15 and 34.

The results show what young Hongkongers expect the new government can do for them. Solving youth housing is the most urgent at 45 percent, followed by, listening to youth voices at 35.3 percent, and mending its relationship with the young people of Hong Kong.

Of most of the social issues being discussed, nearly two-thirds (66.5 percent) agree that the new government must urgently address the housing shortage.

However, the study also finds that nearly half of the Hong Kong youth are pessimistic about Hong Kongs future development, while less than 20 percent are optimistic.

In addition, nearly 40 percent of the interviewees hope to see Hong Kong being a free city 10 years from now, followed by stability and prosperity at 32.4 percent and livability at 25.2 percent.

The core values of which the youngsters want the government to achieve the most, are unsurprisingly, freedom at 59.7 percent, democracy at 41 percent, and rule of law at 35.9 percent. The result displays that freedom is something that the youth is concerned about.

Two-thirds of the interviewees (66.6 percent) believe that the Hong Kong government has zero trust in young people, while over 50 percent believe that the public does not trust the youth in Hong Kong.

Conversely, 63.6 percent of the participants do not trust the authorities, which reflects there are trust issues between the two.

Individually, almost 50 percent think they might still live in Hong Kong ten years later and 20 percent will move or migrate overseas.

Based on the Hong Kong governments census data in 2021, if calculated from the 590,000 young people aged 15 to 24 in Hong Kong, there are more than 100,000 young Hongkongers that will leave the city.
A Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter aircrew rescued seven people after their 39-foot personal vessel was struck by lightning 100 offshore of Clearwater Fla., on June 25, 2022. (Petty Officer 1st Class Ayla Hudson/U.S. Coast Guard) The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.

7 Rescued by Coast Guard After Lightning Strikes Boat Off Florida

The U.S. Coast Guard has rescued seven people after their vessel was struck by lightning off Florida.

The incident took place about 100 miles offshore of Clearwater, Pinellas County.

A four-person aircrew from Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater traveled in an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter to rescue the two men and five women, and brought them to the air station where their family members were waiting.

The search for the boat took nearly two hours.

According to a U.S. Coast Guard press release, the seven people were thankfully in good condition.

The Coast Guard District Seven command center found the vessel in distress after receiving an alert from the vessels emergency position-indicating radiobeacon (EPIRB).

An EPIRB is a portable, battery-powered radio transmitter that works by sending a continuous radio signal that emergency rescue teams can use to detect those in need of rescue.

#BREAKING USCG Air Station Clearwater rescued 7 people after their boat was hit by lighting 100 mil offshore of #TampaBay. Everyone is ok & reunited w/ family & friends thanks to them activating their EPIRB. Read more @ https://t.co/sINUsheQ9t #EPIRB #lightningstrikes #USCG pic.twitter.com/08SCd6WKoq  USCGSoutheast (@USCGSoutheast) June 26, 2022

The command center successfully contacted the vessel owners wife, who said that her husband and the others onboard were part of a fishing tournament. The vessel was 39 feet long.

The owner of the boat, Glenn Rumer, said that lightning completely destroyed the boat in a direct hit.

The outrigger that actually got struck exploded into splinters and was on fire when it landed, he told NBCs TODAY show. The motors, the electrical, everything went out. We were completely dead in the water.

Lt. David McKinley, a Coast Guard pilot, said in a statement that lightning storms are routinely encountered in the waters around Florida and can pose a significant hazard to boaters.

Fortunately, the boaters in this case were well prepared with all necessary safety equipment including an EPIRB, flares, and a marine [Very High Frequenc] VHF radio to ensure a quick and efficient rescue.

Rumer separately told FOX13 Tampa that it was the first time he had used the EPIRB after more than 40 years of experience on the water. It worked when it was supposed to, he told the outlet.

He added that his friend Josh was hit by the lightning. The electricity from the lightning actually went through him and caused him to black out and go to the floor, Rumer said, but noted that his friend got up immediately after the strike.

The boat has been towed back to shore.
Kemi Badenoch said that is is "vital that women feel safe and comfortable when using public facilities." (Martin Keene/PA)

All Public Buildings Must Have Separate Male and Female Toilets, Announces British Government

The government has announced a rule that all new public buildings must have mandatory separate male and female toilets, calling it a common sense approach.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities said that this will mean women, who may need to use facilities more often for example because of pregnancy and sanitary needs, have appropriate facilities.

Britains move is a sharp contrast to that of U.S. President Joe Biden who is using the full force of the state to promote gender ideology.

Last year Biden signed an executive order tasking the government with redefining all its policies and regulations regarding discrimination based on sex to include gender identity, which would mean men who identify themselves as women cant be excluded from using all services and amenities reserved for women.

The British move follows a call for evidence that gathered a wide range of views, including from pregnant women, older people, disabled people, and people who come under the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

In the UK, gender-neutral facilities mean men and women share the same space for waiting and hand wash facilities. Unisex, or universal, toilets are dedicated, self-contained toilets which maintain privacy for the single user.

Minister for Equalities Kemi Badenoch MP said it is vital that women feel safe and comfortable when using public facilities, and that their needs are respected.

These changes will ensure that separate toilets for men and women are preserved at the same time as providing universal toilets for those that want them. This is a common-sense approach, she added.

Campaign groups such as Fair Play for Women provided evidence to the government arguing that the trend to replace male-only/female-only spaces when premises are built or refurbished with gender-neutral toilets places women at a significant disadvantage.

Proper single-sex toilet provision enables girls to attend school, and facilitates the participation of women in public life. In some cases, for example in rural India, it contributes to the basic safety of women, reducing their risk of assault, rape, and murder, it wrote.

Also providing evidence, Safe Schools Alliance UK said that for reasons of safety, privacy & dignity, toilets in schools should be separated on the basis of sex. It said that it is quite clear that gender neutral in fact means mixed-sex, which presents safeguarding issues for both women and children.

The rise in gender neutral toilets raised safety concerns from women who feel they are losing privacy and being unfairly disadvantaged, wrote the British government.

Separate unisex (or universal) toilets should be provided if there is space, but should not come at the expense of female toilets, it added.

Petr Svab contributed to this report.
American Independence: A Cause for Celebration and Hope for the Future

Commentary

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

John Adams, future president of the United States, wrote this after the passage of the Lee Resolution, which unanimously declared the colonies independent from the British Empire.

While Adams had an integral role in getting another future president, Thomas Jefferson, to write the Declaration of Independence, Adamss timing was a bit off. The annual celebration Adams described ended up being on July 4, the day the Declaration of Independence was announced, and explained the Lee Resolution. And just like that, a new nation was born.

Promise of Tomorrow

We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we will all hang separately. Ben Franklins simple statement at the time of the signing of the Declaration encapsulates the enormous risk the Second Continental Congress took by declaring independence. In the 246 years since that day, we may have lost sight of the sacrifices they made in hopes of a brighter future, and the certain death they would have faced if the battle against the British Empire had been unsuccessful.

The American Revolutionary War began almost a year earlier in Lexington, Massachusetts, on April 19, 1775. The Thirteen Colonies at the time were not a perfect union. In fact, there were no real loyalties or deep abiding connections between them other than geographical location.

The idea of being an American was a foreign concept to the colonists. While many expected a treaty to come and the end of the conflict, the issues between the future Americans and the Crown only grew deeper.

The Declaration of Independence was, and still is, our nations why statement. Its the document that brought a continent together. It took thirteen individual subservient colonies and made them thirteen states of a larger union.

The union was not perfect; it may never be. But the Declaration of Independence is the founding document that lays out our ideals and principles. Its an aspirational document that spells out why we exist and what we hope to be.

Hope for the Future

Today, these United States are increasingly divided. While some even speak of a potential civil war, I think there is more hope for continued unity. When I think of the hope for unity, I think of Jefferson and Adams themselves.

In the years after the Declaration was signed, Adams and Jefferson became bitter rivals. In the election of 1796, Adams was elected to succeed George Washington as the second president of the United States. Since Thomas Jefferson finished in second place, at the time, it made him the vice president.

Jefferson attempted to undermine many of Adamss actions as president. By the election of 1800, Adams and Jefferson were firmly in two different political parties and running deeply personal campaigns against each other. Jefferson won the election, making Adams the first one-term president.

Adams wrote Jefferson a letter in 1801 wishing him well and a prosperous presidency. After that, the two did not speak for almost 12 years.

The two men reconciled over a series of letters, 158 letters to be exact, to each other beginning in 1812. The once bitter rivals had become brothers again.

On the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of IndependenceJuly 4, 1826John Adams died. Among his last words were: Thomas Jefferson lives.

What Adams did not know is that Jefferson had actually died a few hours earlier that day. Both men, once brothers, once bitter rivals, passed on the same day, celebrating this great nation they were pivotal in creating.

Words That Endure

But Thomas Jefferson does indeed live. His words have lifted many nations into independence. His founding statement provided a guide for ideals to live by for our nation for almost a quarter millennium and continues to provide a framework for many others seeking to be free.

So, on the 246th anniversary of brave men declaring our independence, celebrate. If you have never read the Declaration of Independence, or just need a dose of the Spirit of 76, read it here.

Be proud of the exceptional nation we are all a part of. From sea to shining sea, celebrate the sacrifices many have made to get us here today. Proudly hang the star-spangled banner for all to see. And remember that although we may have differences, we are all Americans.

Happy Independence Day!

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
An unidentified protester covered in fake blood shouts into a bullhorn at a Women's March in support of abortion and promoted by the Pima County Democratic Party in Tucson, Ariz., on July 4. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

Arizona Pro-Abortion Protesters Condemn Roe V. Wade Decision on Fourth of July

TUCSON, Ariz.More than 250 pro-abortion protesters gathered at a public park near downtown Tucson on July 4, wielding signs and some chanting expletive-laden slogans condemning the Supreme Courts June 24 decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

The crowd lined up along both sidewalks of 22nd Street as passing cars honked horns and waved. Ironically, the pickup trucks driver flying an American flag and an unflattering Joe Biden banner, also honked and waved as if to mock the gathering.

The evening rally at Reid Park, billed as a Womens March, occurred against a July 4 city fireworks display and was promoted by the Pima County Democratic Party on Twitter.

The post said, Lets Mourn With [Expletive] The 4th. See you at Reid Park. Bring comfortable shoes, water, lawn chairs, posters, and your anger.

Protesters hold signs supporting abortion rights at a Womens March held in Tucson, Ariz., on July 4, 2022. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

The post was later deleted with a follow-up Twitter message that called the graphic language used in the ad a mistake, following criticism from both Arizona Democrats and Republicans.

Id like there to be a lot more awareness, rally participant Megan Smith of Tucson told The Epoch Times.

I hope we can get some [abortion] restrictions lifted and make it a little bit safer in Arizona. Unfortunately, its very pro-life in Tucson.

Mary Thompson of Tucson said she hoped the protest would get people to think about how serious this is, regarding the Supreme Courts June 24 ruling on abortion.

Passions ran high during a pro-abortion rally condemning the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe vs. Wade in Tucson, Ariz., on July 4, 2022. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

Its damaging, and its dangerous not to have a choice, Thompson told The Epoch Times about pregnancy. So many people died. I remember when people died and people were jailed because of abortion.

This is what we stand for. This is independence. This is important.

Another protester knelt as she made a sign for the rally, saying its just that womens rights are human rights.

As women, we need to support each other and know that were out there for each other, she told The Epoch Times.

Im sick of the Republicans, another protester said. Im tired of people making decisions for us.

The woman making the sign then walked up to the man being interviewed by an Epoch Times reporter, saying, I wouldnt talk to this guy. She then accused the newspaper of being an ultra-right-winga characterization The Epoch Times disputespointing to a Wikipedia entry she brought up on her cell phone.

She told the reporter he should leave the rally and when he refused, said, Ill follow along with you.

An unidentified woman makes a sign during a protest supporting abortion rights in Tucson, Ariz. on July 4, 2022. The woman told an Epoch Times reporter he should not be at the rally or talking with participants. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

Thats not acceptable, the reporter responded. This is a public gathering. Im a journalist with a valid publication. It is a free country, right?

As word of the reporters presence spread throughout the crowd, a man with a bullhorn shouted, Do not give this guy information. Hes not with us. He is not our friend. Hes not like us. Hes just like them.

Another protester at a Womens March in Tucson, Ariz., shouts into a bullhorn in support of abortion rights on July 4, 2022. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

Other protesters asked the reporter to leave the rally because he made them feel uncomfortable.

Another protester later accused an ice cream vendor of being with a pro-life company and warned others not do business with him.

A rally participant shouted at an Epoch Times reporter that he should leave the Womens March in Tucson, Ariz., on July 4, 2022. The protester also shouted, My body, my choice. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

Only a handful of police officers monitored the rally, which remained peaceful despite the sometimes harsh political messages on signs and placards.

Public Cervix Announcement. [Expletive] Off! one sign read.

[Expletive] The Church. [Expletive] The State Women Should Decide Their Fate, and Abort the Court, other signs read while an unidentified woman shouted into a bullhorn, My body, my [expletive] choice.

Wearing a flag neckerchief, Paula Sherrick of Tucson watched the rally from a distance, calling it a poor celebration on the Fourth of July.

My brother is a Vietnam veteran who fought for his country, Sherrick told The Epoch Times. Im proud to be an American, [but] this is not the America I grew up in.
Armed Man Robs 79-Year-Old Woman in Culver City

CULVER CITY, Calif.An armed man in Culver City wrapped his arm around a 79-year-old womans neck to remove her cellphone and eventually snatch the fanny pack off her waist as she sat on a fire hydrant after walking her dog, authorities said Monday.

Police were dispatched to Jefferson Boulevard and Indian Wood Road at about 1:20 a.m. Sunday, where paramedics treated the woman for non-life-threatening injuries, the Culver City Police Department reported.

The woman had been sitting on the fire hydrant when the suspect approached her from behind and wrapped his arm around her neck. He then threw her to the ground.

While holding a handgun in his left hand, he forcefully removed her cellphone, which was attached with a lanyard around her neck. He then ripped the womans fanny pack off her waist, which contained cash and keys.

The suspect ran eastbound on Jefferson Boulevard and out of sight. No description of the man was available.

Culver City police urged anyone with information regarding the armed robbery to call them at 310-253-6316 or 310-253-6202.
Attorneys Claim Government Manufacturing Evidence to Charge, Incarcerate Jan. 6 Prisoners

Rep. Louie Gohmert says 'if you have evidence thats of an exonerating nature for the defendant, you have to turn that over.'

As Jan. 6 prisoners continue to languish in jail without trials, without bond and in subhuman conditions, two Jan. 6 attorneys are claiming the government is manufacturing evidence to arrest and incarcerate them. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) says the government is also hiding evidence that could possibly exonerate some of them.

This is not the first time Democrats have manufactured evidence to support their allegations in a legal proceeding.

A History of Fabricating Evidence

In July of 2018, the infamous Steele dossier was revealed to be little more than a collection of unverified opposition research funded by Hillary Clintons presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to obtain a warrant to spy on former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page and to derail the Trump campaign.

During a Sept. 26, 2019, Intelligence Committee hearing, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) read a fabricated transcript of a phone call between former President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. When he was caught, he claimed it was a parody.

During the first impeachment trials in February 2021, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) used a photoshopped version of a Twitter post Trump re-tweeted about supporters fighting for the country to make it seem more ominous.

After being caught and being forced to admit they doctored a text message between Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the December 2021 Jan. 6 hearings, and also excluded content about how they had wanted former Vice President Mike Pence to handle electoral votes during the Joint Session of Congress, Jordan further opined that their statement saying We regret the error, is really government-speak for, We got caught lying.

At the televised House committee hearing related to the protests that took place at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021Jordan said members of the House select committee had altered a text message exchange between him and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and lied to the American people about it.

J-6 Cases: Manipulating Evidence

Joseph McBride, an attorney for multiple Jan. 6 prisoners and defendants, is certain the government is manipulating evidence.

In terms of attorneys, McBride told The Epoch Times, Im probably the most outspoken attorney in the United States of America who is representing Jan. 6 defendants.

McBride said he has five, going on six criminal defendants related to Jan. 6 and three civil rights cases. He also represented five Jan. 6 defendants before the Jan. 6 committee. Considering the depth of his involvement, McBride believes hes far and away the most eligible and outspoken attorney among those attached to the Jan. 6 legal battles.

You are not allowed to punish a pre-trial detainee in the United States of America because you are innocent until proven guilty McBride stated. It is only after you have been convicted of a crime or plead through a crime that you can be punished for a crime. Punishment for a crime is deprivation of freedom.  My clients and others like them have been brutally assaulted. Theyve been locked away in cells for months at a time. Theyve been denied medical care and have had their human rights, their civil rights, and their constitutional rights violated by the staff at the D.C. gulag, by the staff at the Northern Neck jail because they have been green-lighted by the Biden machine to harm anybody who showed up at the Capitol on January 6 to speak out about the election results. It is unconstitutional. It is immoral. It is un-American. It is wrong.

Suspicious Affidavits

McBride also says the governments use of lengthy and extravagantly detailed affidavits is much different than your normal cases and theyre frontloading these complaints with facts that arent proven and these allegations are subsequently being weaponized in the court of public opinion.

According to McBride, complaint affidavits are generally written as hastily as possible because the only purpose of a complaint affidavit is to initiate the legal process by establishing probable cause. Complaint affidavits are normally followed quickly by the return of an indictment by a grand jury.

But the Jan. 6 complaint affidavits can run in excess of 20, 30, 40, and even 50 pages long, which begs the question of why?

For McBride, the answer is simple. Because Department of Justice (DOJ) policy only allows the government to make public comments about matters that are already a matter of public record, making sure all of that detail is part of the public record enables the government to release this information to the public to destroy the reputations of the accused ahead of a trial.

Another Jan. 6 attorney, Bill Shipley, is equally convinced the government is manufacturing evidence to support a narrative.

Shipley has called into question the validity of photo and video screenshot evidence used in three of his cases. Two of them are outlined below.

The Case of Brian Mock

According to the 14-page Criminal Complaint (pdf), Brian Christopher Mock has been charged with: Assaulting, Resisting, or Impeding Certain Officers, Knowingly Entering or Remaining in any Restricted Building or Grounds Without Lawful Authority; Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds, Obstruction of Law Enforcement During Civil Disorder, Acts of Physical Violence in any of the Capitol Buildings or Grounds.

However, all of the charges are based on screen grabs from videos that do not confirm the allegations.

Shipley told The Epoch Times both the government and the court have acknowledged that video 1 does not show any actual assault by defendant Mock as alleged in the indictment.

If video 1 showed Mr. Mock kicking the fallen officer it would have been simple to write, The video shows Mr. Mock kicking the fallen officer,' Shipley said. Judge Howell didnt write that because video 1 doesnt show that. The government knows it, Mr. Mock knows it, and Judge Howell knew it.

The simple reality is that video 1 shows the unidentified victim officer already on the ground when Mr. Mock is first seen on camera. There are two other protestersone wearing camouflage and the other wearing a red haton the ground with the victim officer at the moment defendant Mock is first seen. Defendant Mock is standing in close proximity to the three of them. He is not seen shoving the fallen officer to the ground.

According to Shipley, the entire segment of video 1, which is relevant to the first alleged assault, lasts only four seconds. At no point during those four seconds does video 1 show Mocks foot making contact with any part of the Officers body.

Nevertheless, the government made a proffer in its emergency motion (pdf) that the video showed defendant Mock shoving the officer to the ground and then kicking the officer and relied heavily on a single screenshot from the video that appears to show defendant Mocks right foot off the ground.

If the government had video of Mr. Mocks right foot striking the victim officer, it is quite certain it would have included a screenshot of that particular moment instead of the one it choose, Shipley argued. The obvious conclusion is the government has no such video. It hasnt produced one in discovery.

Screengrab from video used by the FBI to prove their allegation that Bryan Mock kicked a police officer, who was laying on the ground. (FBI criminal complaint for Bryan Mock)

In another incident, Mock is accused of shoving an officer to the ground, causing and injury to the officers right elbow.

According to the 14-page criminal complaint (pdf), filed June 10, 2021, by Special Agent Beth Alvarez, Officer [SK] recalled being shoved onto his back by one of the rioters. During the melee, Officer [SKs] right elbow was hit right in the area where two protective pads on his arm meet.

When Mock was arrested, Alvarezthe affiant on the complaint affidavitwrote the following statement under oath:

According to Victim 2, his right elbow hit the ground right in the area where two pads come together after the shove, causing excruciating pain at the time of impact.

The complaint affidavit is dated June 10, 2021, precisely one month after the interview of the officer. During the 30 days between those two documents, the mechanics of how the officer injured his elbow changed. She first wrote he suffered the injury to his elbow during the melee, without reference to Mock or his actions. However, one month later, Alvarez wrote that his right elbow hit the ground right in the area where the two pads come together as a result of Mocks shove.

Brian Mock has created a GiveSendGo account to help offset his ongoing legal expenses.

The Case of Lucas Denny

According to a 42-page criminal complaint (pdf), Denny is charged with: Assaulting, Resisting, or Impeding Certain Officers with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon, Civil Disorder, Obstruction of an Official Proceeding, Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding, Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building or Grounds with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon, Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon, Engaging in Physical Violence in a Restricted Building or Grounds with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon, and an Act of Physical Violence in the Capitol Building.

On page 27, Special Agent James P. Farris swore under oath:

Officer K.K. then deployed a crowd-control spray and Denney retreated into the crowd. Less than a minute later, Denney picked up a long metal pole from the ground which he swung towards Officer K.K., as depicted below.

Page 27 from the criminal complaint filed by James. P. Farris of the FBI on Dec., 7, 2021 in the United States District Court of the District of Columbia. (FBI criminal complaint)

Shipley said when the government presented this case to the grand jury on the morning of March 7, 2022, the single-count grand jury indictment that was returned charged Denney with using a dangerous or deadly weapon, that is, a long gray-in-color pole, did forcibly assault Officer K.K. of the Metropolitan Police Department.

However, the body-worn camera footage from Officer K.K.s camera showed that the pole was flexed in a manner inconsistent with metal.

Screengrab from video used in Criminal Complaint by the FBI to show Luke Denny was using a metal pole, classified as a dangerous or deadly weapon, to strike police officers. However, the metal pole is clearly flexing. The government later admitted it was a plastic sprinkler pipe. Lucas Denny is currently incarcerated for his participation in the Capitol protest in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (FBI criminal complaint)

This is not a circumstance where Special Agent Farris was acting under time pressure, Shipley contends. His affidavit in support of the complaint was signed on December 7, 2021, 11 months after the incident. The fact that Farris would be so carelessat bestas to describe the object as a metal pole when the video clearly shows it was nota fact conceded by the government when it was unwilling to go on the record with the grand jury that the pole in question as made of metalis more than sufficient reason to adopt a cautious approach to any of the other conclusions drawn by Farris in his affidavit.

According to My Law Questions: A false affidavit is one in which a person signs it and swears that the statements attested to in the document are true, complete, and accurate when the statements are in fact misleading or false. Submitting a false affidavit is a criminal offense and constitutes perjury in most jurisdictions.

The Case of Christopher Worrell

According to a 17-page criminal complaint (pdf), Christopher Worrell is charged with: Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building or Grounds with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon, Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon, Engaging in Physical Violence in a Restricted Building or Grounds Using a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon, Act of Physical Violence in the Capitol Grounds or Buildings, Civil Disorder, Assaulting, Resisting, or Impeding Certain Officers Using a Dangerous Weapon.

Despite the repeated allegations of using/possessing a deadly or dangerous weapon, specifically spraying pepper gel at Capitol Hill police, there is no evidence of Worrell actually spraying pepper gel at police officers.

The FBI Task Manager who filed the report admits from the beginning, he did not currently know with certainty the target at which WORRELL was spraying.

In the criminal complaint is a photo, supplied by an unnamed photographer, that shows two Capitol Police officers (circled in green) standing atop a staircase near a dark statue wrapped in plastic. Both are leaning forward, spraying the people belowwho are standing peacefully and posing no threat to themin the face with pepper gel. Multiple people in the crowd can be seen covering their faces and reacting in pain. Worrell (circled in red) can be seen standing a sizeable distance away, recording the incident like several others with his cell phone.

Then, using a screenshot from a video that appears to show Worrell at the time of the pepper gel assault, we are shown there is a man dressed in black standing where the police had been standing, as well as a woman with red gloves covering her face. Worrell can be seen spraying pepper gel beyond these two people. However, it is unclear what or who he is aiming at.

Photo of Chris Worrell spraying a canister of pepper gel while at the capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. (FBI criminal complaint)

In another screen grab from the video, this one considerably blurred, you can see several other people gathered at the top of the same steps near the dark statue wrapped in plastic, including another man dressed in black with a mask covering his face. But there are no police officers and Worrell does not appear to be there. Yet another pair of screen grabs from the video do show Worrell. However, he is clearly standing at a distance away from the stairs.

As reported by The Epoch Times on June 20, several reports and first-hand eyewitness accounts describe how there was a covert cadre of provocateurswidely suspected to be federal agents and Capitol Police officerswho were disguised to mingle among the otherwise peaceful protested for the purpose of instigating acts of violence during the protests for the purposes of entrapment. The Epoch Times further revealed evidence that now proves that plainclothes members of a special Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU) were also embedded among the protesters to document the actions of the demonstrators and MPDs response to any civil disobedience or criminal activity.

Screengrab from video used by the FBI to prove the allegation that Chris Worrell sprayed police with pepper gel. However, the image does not show police being struck with pepper gel. (FBI criminal complaint)

Screengrab from video used by the FBI to prove the allegation that Chris Worrell sprayed police with pepper gel. However, the image does not show police being struck with pepper gel. (FBI criminal complaint)

There are multiple photos showing a line of police officers standing in a completely different location that do not show where Worrell was standing in relationship to them.

Photo showing a line of police officers, used by the FBI to show they were in the area where Chris Worrell was spraying pepper gel. However, Worrell is not seen in the image. (FBI criminal complaint)

However, despite the multiple photographs and screenshots from all the videos used to allege that Worrell appeared to be spraying police with pepper gel, there are no photos showing the police were actually standing there when Worrell was spraying the pepper gel or any photos showing the police being hit with or reacting to being hit with pepper gel.

Moreover, after admitting he did not currently know with certainty the target at which WORRELL was spraying, and having no evidence showing the target of the pepper gel, why did the investigating agent still said he believes the likely intended target of WORRELLs pepper pray assault was the line of law enforcement officers present in these photographs.

As The Epoch Times reported June 13, Worrell, who was released by order of a federal judge after being denied cancer treatment for eight months, is now in dire straights, according to his girlfriend. The cost for his treatments 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.

Evidence Withheld

Machinations such as this remind Gohmert of the Ted Stevens case from back in 2008.

According to a 28-page indictment (pdf), former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) was charged with seven counts of making false statements on his Senate financial disclosure forms from 2001 to 2006 and with concealing more than $250,000 worth of gifts, including home renovations, that he received from an Alaska oil services company.

Stevens was prosecuted and convicted and subsequently lost his reelection campaign. Shortly before his tragic death in a plane crash in August 2010, Stevens was exonerated after a whistleblower revealed that prosecutors withheld critical evidence of the Senators innocence in violation of his constitutional rights.

In the Ted Stevens case, we found out the FBI created evidence and hid evidence in order to get a conviction, Gohmert told The Epoch Times. He ended up being exonerated but only after he lost his election. We also know that Project Veritas caught a Democratic leader saying we paid for people to come in and instigate violence at Trump events so we could claim Trump was violent. All of these things in the background and you come forward to January 6.

We still cant get all of the videotape, Gohmert said, referencing the 14,000 hours of surveillance video from Capitol security cameras that has been withheld under sovereign immunity. The evidence could be used in the defense of those charged in relation to the incident and being held in jail.

They continue to hide that information, Gohmert asserted. As every lawyer knows who has dealt with any criminal case, its been a Constitutional requirement for the Supreme Court for decades, if you have evidence thats of an exonerating nature for the defendant, you have to turn that over.

The Epoch Times reached out to the FBI and DOJ for comment.

Zachary Stieber and Ken Silva contributed to this report.
A main street is under floodwater in Lismore, Australia, on March 31, 2022. (Dan Peled/Getty Images)

Aussie PM Criticised for Lack of Concern Over NSW Flood Crisis

Australias Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been criticised by one of his political opponents for putting his reputation on the global stage over the needs of New South Wales residents hit by the flood crisis.

Currently, an estimated number of 32,000 people in the state have been evacuated and thousands of homes deluged.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has issued multiple flood warnings for the state, including major warnings for communities along the Hawkesbury, Nepean, and Colo rivers, which in some places have reached the record levels seen in February and March 2022.

Albanese is due to come back to Australia late on Tuesday and visit flood-affected areas of Hawkesbury following his return from the NATO leaders summit in Spain and side trips to France and Ukraine.

The PM has said in a post on Twitter he was briefed about the situation by phone by NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet soon after visiting war-torn Ukraine on Monday AEST on the situation in NSW.

Have crossed into Poland from Ukraine and left radio silence. My first actions were briefings by @murraywatt and @Dom_Perrottet on NSW flooding and ensuring Federal Government assistance is being provided, Albanese said.

Have crossed into Poland from Ukraine and left radio silence. My first actions were briefings by @murraywatt and @Dom_Perrottet on NSW flooding and ensuring Federal Government assistance is being provided.  Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) July 4, 2022

Albanese Compared to Morrison During 2019-2020 Bushfires

Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor told Sydneys radio station 2GB the PM is more concerned about his reputation on the global stage than making sure people in NSW have a place to sleep.

Almost every day during the election campaign, he said he would step up and take responsibility as a leader, Taylor said.

It was flooding for 48 fours, and hes only just picked up the phone to Dominic Perrottet to ask if he needs a hand.

The Liberal MP added that he was with former PM Scott Morrison during the bushfires in his electorate of Picton.

In 2019, Morrison was under fire for going on holiday while the country was facing extensive bushfires.

But while Albanese made a real scene of Morrisons response to the bushfires in 2019-2020, he couldnt even pick up the phone, Taylor said.

Frankly, its not good enough.

But Treasurer Jim Chalmers defended Albaneses response, saying, theres been a lot of work thats been necessary amongst our international partners because a lot of those relationships were run down.

He told 9News on Tuesday that Albaneses work on the international stage hasnt prevented us from advancing our agenda at home.

For many of the communities affected, this is the fourth damaging flood event in less than 18 months.

We certainly saw that through the Northern Rivers floods (in NSW in March), but at this point, the advice to me is that it hasnt reached that level, Federal emergency management minister Murray Watt told ABC television.

Scores of evacuation orders and warnings have been declared, mostly northwest of Sydney, where major flooding is occurring along the Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers.

Steve Milne and AAP contributed to this report.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (l) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speak to the media during a press conference at the Presidential Palace in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, July 3, 2022. Mr Albanese made a 12 hours long visit to Kyiv meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

Australia Removes Tariffs on Ukrainian Imports

The Australian government has removed all taxes on goods coming from Ukraine for the next 12 months as part of its recently announced aid package.

Coming into immediate effect on July 4, the Minister for Trade and Tourism Don Farrell said that eliminating tariffs was part of ongoing efforts to deepen the two countries bilateral trade relationship.

These kinds of measures by Australia and other international partners that support Ukraines economy and expand trade opportunities are vital to Ukraines recovery and reconstruction in the short and long term, Farrell said in a media release.

Australia condemns Russias unilateral, illegal and immoral aggression against the people of Ukraine. This measure demonstrates our commitment to support the economy of Ukraine as it deals with the ongoing, devastating effects of Russias invasion.

The Ukrainian embassy to Australia notes the countrys major export commodities Down Under include edible oils like sunflower oil, metallurgy and machinery, vessels, as well as fertilizers.

A Ukrainian army tank sits in position in a sunflowers field near the village of Maryinka, a suburb of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, on Aug. 5, 2014. Ukraine accounts for almost 50 percent of the worlds sunflower oil exports. (Andrey Krasnoschekov/AFP via Getty Images)

The measures will see tariffs of up to five percent on goods manufactured or produced in Ukraine reduced to zero for a 12-month period. However, excise-equivalent duties, like those applied to fuels, alcohol and tobacco products, will remain in place.

According to the minister and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the imports from Ukraine reached close to $122 million in 2021, while Australias exports to Ukraine were valued at $29.8 million in 2018.

Australia to Provide $100 Million in Military Aid

The announcement by the trade minister comes a day after the Australian prime minister visited Ukraine on July 3, where he travelled to several towns surrounding the capital Kyiv including Bucha, Irpin, and Hostomelwhere the Ukrainian government says some of the worst atrocities of the Russian invasion occurred. Russia has denied all allegations.

As part of his visit, the prime minister announced the government would provide AU$99.5 million in military assistance, which will include 14 M113 armoured personnel carriers, 20 Bushmaster-protected mobility vehicles, and drones supplied from Australias defence industry.

Australia will also contribute to NATOs Ukraine Comprehensive Assistance Package Trust Fund and give $8.7 million (US$6 million) to assist Ukraines Border Guard Service in upgrading border management equipment, improving cyber security, and enhancing border operations in the field.

In total, this will bring Australias total contributions to the war effort to approximately $388 million.

Currently, Australia is the largest non-NATO contributor to Ukraines national defence.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is seen as he visits Maidan square in Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 3, 2022. Albanese made a 12-hour-long visit to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

Australia will also join its alliesCanada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United Statesin banning imports of Russian gold to reduce its ability to fund the invasion.

Ukrainian Ambassador to Australia Vasyl Myroshnychenko told ABC Radio National on July 4 that Australia was punching well above its weight in terms of the countrys support for Ukraine.

My president said, look, this is really amazing that Australia has been doing so much but being so far away from Ukraine. Everybody in Ukraine is very impressed that theres support coming from Australia and the Australian people, he said.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks in Washington on June 16, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Authors Correct Study That Inflated Child COVID-19 Deaths After CDC Officials Promoted It

A study that inflated the number of COVID-19 deaths among children has been corrected after being promoted by top officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The paper falsely stated that at least 1,433 deaths primarily attributed to COVID-19 had occurred among those 19 and younger in the United States, but the actual number is 1,088, the authors acknowledged in the updated version (pdf).

The authors, led by British scientist Seth Flaxman, incorrectly utilized data from the CDCs National Center for Health Statistics for the initial version. They said that they only included deaths where COVID-19 was considered the underlying, or primary, cause. But they actually also counted deaths where COVID-19 was listed as a contributing cause.

The initial version incorrectly used these data, the authors said in the updated paper.

Flaxman did not respond to a request for comment. Emails reviewed by The Epoch Times showed he did not understand how to use the CDC database that lists COVID-19 deaths before being told how to use it following publication of the study.

The other authors, all but one of whom are based outside of the United States, have not publicly commented on the correction.

In this image from video, Dr. Katherine Fleming-Dutra of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention presents to the Food and Drug Administrations Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee during a virtual meeting on June 14, 2022. (FDA via The Epoch Times)

Three CDC Officials Promoted Study

The paper, which has still not been peer-reviewed, was cited by three CDC officialsincluding the agencys director, Dr. Rochelle Walenskywhile promoting COVID-19 vaccination for children under 5 years old in meetings and a press briefing in June.

During March 2020 through April 2022, COVID-19 was among the top five leading causes of death in every age group of children under the age of 19 and the number one infectious cause of death in children, Walensky said during a briefing, putting forth the same figures as outlined in the study.

But multiple issues with the research were identified by outside observers. The most important problem was including deaths were COVID-19 was not listed as the primary cause. Another was listing cumulative COVID-19 deaths against the annualized 2019 deaths of other causes, such as accidents.

CDC officials Dr. Katherine Fleming-Dutra and Dr. Sara Oliver cited the paper in talks with the agencys vaccine advisory panel and experts who advise the Food and Drug Administration on vaccines. Dr. Matthew Daley, who chairs the CDC panels COVID-19 vaccines work group, also referenced it.

The PowerPoint slides that the officials showed during the meetings while citing the paper were disseminated widely on social media by outside officials like Dr. Nirav Shah, the director of the Maine CDC, in asserting that COVID-19 vaccines are necessary for children.

The CDC, Walensky, Fleming-Dutra, Oliver, and Daley have not responded to queries and have not alerted the public to the corrected paper.

Kelley Krohnert, a citizen researcher and mother who flagged the issues and alerted Flaxman to them, told The Epoch Times that the refusal to address the corrected data is part of a pattern from the CDC during the pandemic.

It would be nice if somewhere they would acknowledge and accept responsibility for alarming parents with a statistic that turns out is completely bogus, Krohnert said.

A vial of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine in Seattle, Wash., on June 21, 2022. (David Ryder/Getty Images)

Change in Results

The initial paper covered deaths recorded between March 2020 and April 2022.

The data highlighted by the CDC officials was already wrong because they used the cumulative number of deaths linked to COVID-19 in comparison with annualized figures for other causes of death, such as heart diseases and assault.

That slant put COVID-19 as a top five cause of death for all children.

Annualizing the COVID-19 deaths and comparing them to other annualized figures, COVID-19 ranked lower.

For instance, instead of being the fourth leading cause of death for children under one year old, it was the ninth leading cause of death for that age group.

In the updated version, researchers left out the cumulative numbers. They took the death data for the 12 months starting on April 1, 2022, and compared the numbers with other causes of death from the year 2019.

Accidents, suicide, and malignant neoplasms were among the issues that caused more deaths than COVID-19, the researchers found. COVID-19 was listed as the eighth leading cause of death for 0- to 19-year-olds during the time studied. According to the death certificate data, just 764 deaths were linked to the disease.

The authors maintained that the threat COVID-19 poses to children means that kids should get COVID-19 vaccines and pharmaceutical treatments and mitigations such as ventilation should be used. In the earlier version, they said their findings underscore the importance of continued vaccination campaigns for children 5 years in the US and for effective Covid-19 vaccines for under 5 year olds.
Amy Hamm, a nurse from Vancouver, B.C., is seen in a file photo. British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives (BCCNM) has recently dropped a charge accusing Hamm for making statements with medically inaccurate information while defending sex-based rights. (Courtesy of Amy Hamm/Justice for Constitutional Freedom)

BC Nurses Regulator Drops Medically Inaccurate Allegation in Charge Against Nurse for Endorsing Sex-Based Rights

British Columbias regulatory body for nurses and midwives has dropped a charge against a nurse that accused her of making medically inaccurate statements in her advocacy for sex-based rights.

In November 2020, the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives (BCCNM) began investigating Amy Hamm, a registered nurse in Vancouver, following public complaints about her gender critical opinions and comments.

The BCCNM Inquiry Committee referred Hamm to its Disciplinary Committee, and in a charge served on April 1, it alleged that she was spreading discriminatory and medically inaccurate information on online platforms, including podcasts, videos, published writings, and social media.

The charge, also known as a citation, said Hamm had made discriminatory and derogatory statements regarding transgender people, some of which statements included medically inaccurate information, while identifying yourself as a nurse or nurse educator.

On June 28, the BCCNM publicly posted a revised citation, removing the words that described Hamms statements as medically inaccurate information.

We were surprised to learn that the College intended to argue about whether Ms. Hamms statements constituted medically inaccurate information. It appears they have since thought the better of it, Lawyer Lisa Bildy told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Bildy was retained by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) to handle the case and is providing pro bono legal assistance to Hamm.

Bildy said while they are pleased to have the case narrowed somewhat, she will continue to challenge the allegations that Hamms comments and advocacy for sex-based rights for women and girls were discriminatory and derogatory.

Charge

The charge against Hamm came after her involvement in erecting an I [love] JK Rowling billboard displayed in Vancouver, endorsing the British best-selling authors support for sex-based rights, according to a July 4 news release from JCCF.

Rowling was subjected to name-calling and labelled transphobic after she spoke out for womens and girls rights and safety on the biology-versus-gender debate in a 2020 article.

Gender critical feminists typically argue that while transgender individuals have the right to live their lives with dignity and without harassment, self-identifying as transgender does not equate to literally changing sex, said the JCCF statement.

Confusing sex, which is a biological classification, with self-identified gender, in the view of gender critical feminists, poses a risk to womens sex-based rights, particularly in vulnerable settings where females have an expectation and need for same-sex privacy and protection, such as womens prisons, changerooms, and rape shelters.

College Responds

When asked to comment on Hamms case, BCCNM spokesperson Johanna Ward told The Epoch Times that a nurses actions outside of work have the potential to negatively impact both the publics perception of them and trust in the nursing profession, and that behaviours considered unprofessional conduct under the Health Professions Act fall under BCCNMs purview.

BCCNM recognizes that its not appropriate to regulate and discipline all conduct that occurs when a nurse is off duty, Ward said. However, when there is a link between a nurses off-duty conduct and the profession that demonstrates a sufficiently negative impact on the profession or the public interest, we can and will take action.

BCCNM, regulating in the public interest, recognizes that all British Columbians should feel safe when interacting with registrants of the College. The College takes all allegations of discriminatory comments or conduct against any group seriously.

When asked for the criteria used to determine whether a nurses off-duty behaviour has a sufficiently negative impact on their work and image, the BCCNM said that it wouldnt comment further as the disciplinary hearings are ongoing.

A hearing on Hamms case was originally set for the spring of 2022 but has been adjourned to fall 2022. The hearing will now be held via videoconference from Sept. 21 to Sept. 23 and Oct. 24 to Oct. 27, 2022.

Finally a bit of good news about my upcoming hearing. Im still in the thick of it, but it feels vindicating to have the @BCnursemidwife stop falsely & publicly accusing me of spreading medical misinformation. Truth is not hateful!https://t.co/KCEuEXMjgn  Amy Eileen Hamm (@preta_6) July 4, 2022

Important Precedent

In a series of Twitter posts on July 4, Hamm expressed optimism about the change to her charge, saying that she will never give in or give up in the fight against it.

Finally a bit of good news about my upcoming hearing. Im still in the thick of it, but it feels vindicating to have the @BCnursemidwife stop falsely & publicly accusing me of spreading medical misinformation, she wrote in a tweet. Truth is not hateful!

JCCF said it is concerned that regulatory bodies across Canada are increasingly policing the speech of professionals with threats of disciplinary action.

Hamms case will set an important precedent for regulating professionals who engage in the public policy debates, Bildy said in the JCCF news release.

The College is tasked with keeping patients safe and regulating the profession in the public interest. Their job is not to give social justice activists a tool for cancelling people with whom they do not agree or who have opinions outside of a narrow orthodoxy, she said.

Professional governing bodies are created by statute and are therefore subject to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom of speech, thought, belief, opinion and expression are Charter rights belonging to all people, even health professionals.
Saanich Police joined by Victoria Police and RCMP respond after a shootout outside a Bank of Montreal where two suspects were killed and six officers were injured in Saanich, B.C., on June 28, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Chad Hipolito)

BC Police Officers Recovering After Bank Shootout Overwhelmed by Support

An officer who was injured in a deadly shootout outside a bank in Saanich, B.C., last week remains in intensive care after three surgeries.

Saanich Chief Const. Dean Duthie told a news conference that the officer, who has eight years of service with the department, has been showing signs of improvement day by day.

Three Saanich officers and three from the Victoria Police Department, all members of the emergency response team, were injured in the gunfight with two heavily armed robbers outside a Bank of Montreal.

Duthie says another Saanich officer is stable and remains in hospital, while Victoria police said Sunday that one of their officers is still in care and faces a long recovery.

The chief says the injured officers and the department have been overwhelmed by an outpouring of public support.

RCMP have taken over the investigation into the bank robbery, where 22-year-old twins, Mathew and Isaac Auchterlonie from Duncan, B.C., were killed by police on June 28.
Biden Administration Sues Arizona Over Law Requiring Voters Prove Theyre US Citizens

President Joe Bidens administration on July 5 sued Arizona over a law that requires voters to prove theyre U.S. citizens.

The law, House Bill 2492, violates two federal statutes, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a 17-page complaint filed in federal court in Phoenix.

One of those statutes requires states to accept a federal form to register voters, and the form does not require voters to prove their citizenship, the complaint says.

As long as an individual completes the Federal Form and meets all its requirements, and is otherwise eligible to vote, states must register that individual to vote in all federal elections in the state, including presidential elections, it says.

The Law

The Arizona law (pdf) requires applicants to provide satisfactory evidence of citizenship.

Examples of such evidence include a copy of a birth certificate, a copy of a passport, and a copy of naturalization documents.

County recorders, under the law, are ordered to reject applicants who do not satisfy the requirement.

State lawmakers passed the law in March, and Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed the bill into law that month.

Election integrity means counting every lawful vote and prohibiting any attempt to illegally cast a vote, Ducey said in a letter outlining why he supported the bill.

State Rep. Jake Hoffman, a Republican who sponsored the bill, said the signing was a giant step toward ensuring elections are easy, convenient, and secure in our state.

Opposition

Portions of the law violate the National Voter Registration Act and the Civil Rights Act, DOJ lawyers allege.

The former bars state officials from requiring citizenship proof beyond a voters attestation, under penalty of perjury, on the form used to register applicants to vote in federal elections, the new suit states.

The act specifically precludes any state requirement that an applicant seeking to register to vote using a Federal Form also submit [proof of citizenship], the lawyers wrote.

The law also violates the part of the Civil Rights Act that bars officials from rejecting voter applicants because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting, if such error or omission is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under State law to vote in such election, the suit asserts.

Relief should be entered in declarations that parts of the Arizona law violate federal law, the lawyers told the court. Additionally, Arizona officials should be blocked from enforcing the sections requiring proof of citizenship.

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (L) discusses the problem of human trafficking in Arizona at a press conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., on June 22. Scottsdale Mayor David Ortega (C) and Scottsdale Police Chief John Walther (R) spoke about the citys efforts to combat the problem through a partnership with the Arizona Anti-Trafficking Network and Homeland Security Investigations. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

Brnovich Knew

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican running for U.S. Senate, said Friday that the DOJ planned to file the suit, and that he would fight the legal action.

Brnovich said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke wrote to him recently, alerting him to the suit.

Please be assured that I will defend this law to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary, he wrote, before questioning why the administration would use its resources to challenge a common sense law in Arizona designed to guard against non-citizen voting, while the Biden Administration is simultaneously opening our borders to encourage a flood of illegal immigration.

Under Biden, the United States has recorded record levels of apprehensions of illegal immigrants at the U.S.Mexico border, with no signs of the crisis abating.

Is the federal government attempting to undermine our sovereignty and destabilize our election infrastructure? Brnovich asked Clarke. I hope that is not your intention. I strongly urge you to reconsider your pursuit of this misguided suit and to instead recognize Arizonas constitutional authority to conduct lawful and secure elections.

After the suit was filed, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) said it was frivolous. Arizona law requires one to be a citizen to vote. As does federal law, he wrote on Twitter. Just like showing ID to buy alcohol or rent a hotel room, none of which are discriminatory showing your ID to vote is easy, common and necessary.

But Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) was among other lawmakers speaking out in support of the DOJs filing.

Its wrong to force Arizonans to jump through hoops to vote, and AZ Republicans are betting on the radical right-wing Supreme Court to uphold these new laws, he said on social media. Glad to see @TheJusticeDept file suit to protect the rights of Arizona voters.
Boris Johnson Knew About Chris Pincher Probe, Downing Street Confirms

Prime Minister Boris Johnson was briefed about a formal investigation against Chris Pincher in 2019 when Pincher was a Foreign Office minister, Downing Street confirmed on Tuesday.

It comes after a former top civil servant questioned the accuracy of previous statements from Downing Street about Johnsons awareness of a formal complaint against Pincher.

Pincher, MP for Tamworth, resigned from the whips office and had his Conservative Party membership suspended last week over the alleged groping of two male guests at a Conservative Party private members club on June 29.

The allegations have put Downing Street under pressure to explain why Pincher, who had resigned as a junior whip in November 2017 following a complaint that he made an unwanted pass at the former Olympic rower and Conservative candidate Alex Story, was given the job of deputy chief whip in February this year.

Pincher was first brought back by Theresa May as deputy chief whip in January 2018 after he referred himself to both the police and the Conservative Party complaints procedure.

When Johnson became prime minister in July 2019, Pincher was moved to the Foreign Office as minister for Europe and the Americas before returning to the whips office for a third time in February 2022.

Chris Pincher, then minister of state in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, pictured in Downing Street, London, on Feb. 8, 2022. (Aaron Chown /PA Media)

A spokesperson for Downing Street said on Friday that he was not aware of the prime minister being aware of specific allegations against Pincher before appointing him. He also said it would not have been appropriate for Johnson to block Pinchers appointment on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations without any formal complaints against him.

On Monday, Downing Street changed its line, with a spokesperson saying Johnson was aware of allegations that were either resolved or did not progress to a formal complaint.

The spokesperson said Johnson did take advice on some of the allegations that had been made, but maintained that there was no formal complaint at that time and it was deemed not appropriate to stop an appointment simply because of unsubstantiated allegations.

Lord McDonald: No 10 Needs to Come Clean

But Lord Simon McDonald, the then-Foreign Office permanent under-secretary who commissioned an investigation into an allegation against Pincher in 2019 when he was in the Foreign Office, said on Tuesday that the complaint was upheld.

He also said he had briefed a relevant senior official in the Cabinet Office about the investigation, and the official had told him that Johnson was briefed in person.

McDonald made the revelation in a letter he sent to Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone. He also published the letter on Twitter.

This morning I have written to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards  because No 10 keep changing their story and are still not telling the truth. pic.twitter.com/vln9FU4V50  Simon McDonald (@SimonMcDonaldUK) July 5, 2022

Speaking to BBC Radio 4s Today programme on Tuesday morning, the retired civil servant said he believed Downing Street needed to come clean.

I think that the language is ambiguous, the sort of telling the truth and crossing your fingers at the same time and hoping that people are not too forensic in their subsequent questioning and I think that is not working, he said.

McDonald said he disputed the use of the word resolved,' which sounds as though a happy and agreed conclusion was reached.

Britains Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab arrives in Downing street in central London on May 28, 2020. (Niklas Hallen/AFP via Getty Images)

Then-Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab gave a different account of the events, saying the investigation into inappropriate conduct concluded that disciplinary action was not warranted and that he and McDonald both told Pincher to never repeat the conduct.

Raab also said he had referred the matter to the Cabinet Office ethics and propriety team who looked at it and they confirmed there wasnt a case for proceeding under the Ministerial Code.

Downing Street: Johnson Forgot About the Briefing

Johnsons official spokesman confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that the prime minister was briefed about the complaint relating to Mr. Pincher in the Foreign Office which was resolved, adding that he thought the prime minister was told by someone in the Cabinet Office and that had been a number of months after the complaint was investigated.

He also said that it took some time to establish the fact that Johnson was briefed.

At the time last week that was the prime ministers view. You will appreciate it takes some time to establish he was briefed, albeit we dont think in formal briefing on this, the spokesman said.

This dates back a number of years. On Friday, it was our belief that he was not informed about that specific incident.

The spokesman said that he had updated reporters on Monday after more information became available but had not at that point been able to refer to the complaint at the Foreign Office.

The Prime Minister at the time when he offered the job was not aware of any new specific allegations that were being looked at, the spokesman said.

As I clarified yesterday, he was aware of both media speculation and an allegation that was resolved. That was the fullest picture we had yesterday which we sought to set out. This information does take time to establish.

It was not raised as a disciplinary issue or anything related to the Ministerial Code and the prime minister was informed but not asked to take any action.

Asked if Johnson regretted appointing Pincher as deputy chief whip, the spokesman said: The prime minister wouldnt want to see this sort of behaviour from any of his ministers. Its not what you would want to see from anyone in public life.

PA Media contributed to this report.
The logo of Brussels Airlines at the entrance of the company headquarters, near the International airport of Zaventem, during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Diegem, Belgium on May 12, 2020. (Yves Herman/Reuters)

Brussels Airlines to Cancel Around 700 Flights Over Summer Holiday

BRUSSELSThe Belgian subsidiary of Lufthansa, Brussels Airlines, is canceling close to 700 flights over the summer holiday period, around 6 percent of those scheduled, to reduce workload and avoid strikes, the airline said on Monday.

We are meeting the demands of the unions today and we hope it can rule out further actions (this summer), Brussels Airlines spokesperson Maaike Andries emailed. For long-term solutions, we will organize a meeting with the unions on August 23.

The cancellations would lead to 10.2 million euros ($10.66 million) in lost revenue, the airline added.

Pilot and cabin crew unions of Brussels Airlines held a three-day strike last month, after complaining that the pressure of work was too high and that the company had been aware of the situation for around a year but failed to alleviate it.

Across Europe strikes and staff shortages are forcing airlines to cancel thousands of flights, causing hours-long queues at major airports, dashing hopes of a first summer holiday for many after COVID lockdowns.

($1 = 0.9565 euros)
Burma's military ruler Min Aung Hlaing presides over an army parade on Armed Forces Day in Naypyitaw, Burma, on March 27, 2021. (Stringer/Reuters)

Burmas Military Junta Agrees to Expedite Chinas Belt and Road Projects

China sent its top diplomat to Burma for talks with the military junta, which overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi last year, as Beijing seeks to increase bilateral ties in the region.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Burmese counterpart U Wunna Maung Lwin on the sidelines of the seventh Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Foreign Ministers meeting in Burmaalso known as Myanmaron July 3.

During the meeting, Wang said the relations between China and Burma remained rock-solid and unbreakable regardless of domestic changes in either country, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

The Chinese regime will maintain its friendly policy with Burma and support the countrys efforts in safeguarding its legitimate rights and interests and national dignity on international occasions, Wang said.

The two sides agreed to speed up the construction of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) and hold discussions at an appropriate time to elevate bilateral economic and trade cooperation.

They also agreed to implement the cross-border power grid agreement and ensure the smooth operation of China-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines.

The ministry stated that Wunna Maung Lwin conveyed to Wang his gratitude for Chinas selfless help to Myanmars national development and pledged to support Beijings positions on Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang.

China-Burma Relations

China maintains its close ties with Burma despite widespread condemnation of the military juntas removal of Suu Kyis elected government and repression of pro-democracy protesters.

Anti-coup protesters during a march in Mandalay, Burma, on March 14, 2021. (AP Photo)

Several Western countries have hit the Burmese military and its businesses with sanctions due to its suppression of anti-coup protesters and the prosecution of Suu Kyi, while China and Russia blocked the U.N. Security Council from condemning the military coup last year.

At least 1,600 people have been killed, and more than 12,500 people have been detained since the military seized power in February last year. About 440,000 others have been displaced, according to the United Nations.

Burmas previous government, led by Suu Kyi, signed 33 bilateral agreements with China in January 2020 to implement the CMEC, which is part of Beijings Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that critics have denounced as a debt trap for smaller nations.

The CMEC involves a number of infrastructure projects in Burma, including a railway connecting Chinas Yunan Province to Kyaukphyu in Rakhine State, which will provide Beijing with direct access to the Indian Ocean, as well as the construction of a deep seaport there.

According to local reports, the agreements also include the establishment of a Friendship-Province Relationship between the Yunnan Province and Burmas Yangon region and the implementation of the CMEC in the Mandalay region.

Both sides agreed to conduct a feasibility study on the China-Burma Power Interconnection Project.

But the agreements did not include the Chinese-backed $3.6 billion hydropower dam project in the Kachin State, which was halted in 2011 due to public dissent over the projects environmental and socioeconomic implications.
California Leaders Unveil Plan for Radical New Abortion Rights

Commentary

When the U.S. Supreme Courts Dobbs opinion reversing Roe v. Wade leaked earlier this year, I wrote that California Democrats will try to turn this into an election issue as they have nothing else to run on, but that in so doing they would likely overplay their hand. It has happened.

The California legislature and Governor Gavin Newsom have rushed to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November. Even though the California supreme court has already ruled that the constitution contains a right to privacy that includes abortion rights, the Democrats want the amendment so that the issue is on the November ballot. When you read the text of the proposed amendment, it becomes clear there is a second, radical reason for the amendment.

The amendment reads:

The state shall not deny or interfere with an individuals reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.

Notice that the amendment places no limitation on these rights. Thus, it appears women, and doctors, will have the right to abort a child right up until the time of birth. A one hundred percent, fully formed and ready for delivery baby, it appears, can be killed and removed and thrown in the trash under this amendment. This certainly blurs the line between birth and abortion.

For instance, does the baby have to be killed while inside the womb, or can it be killed outside the womb? It raises so many troubling questions that I found myself looking up the definition of the word abortion. This is an important question considering it may wind up in the constitution, undefined.

It turns out there is no settled definition of abortion. Wikipedia notes, Definitions of abortion vary from one source to another. Abortion has many definitions that can differ from each other in significant ways. Given the contentious nature of abortion, lawmakers and other stakeholders often face controversy in defining abortion. Considering this, it is quite interesting that California leaders chose not to define the term or place any limits on it.

If you google the definition of abortion the Oxford dictionary comes up with the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy. Under this definition an abortion could be performed at any time. Of course, it is most often performed in the first 28 weeks because nowhere is it legal after that absent the health of the mother. Applying this definition to the amendment would confirm that it is intended to permit it at any time.

Another place to look is Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. They used the term partial birth abortion to refer an abortion performed in the second and third trimesters involving a surgical procedure that removes an intact fetus from the uterus. In Gonzales v. Carhart, the Court upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 as a reasonable restriction on abortion rights. In so doing, both Congress and the Supreme Court confirm that an abortion can take place in the third trimester, i.e., right up until birth.

However, this is contradicted by Blacks Law Dictionary, which defines abortion as The artificial or spontaneous termination of a pregnancy before the embryo or fetus can survive on its own outside a womans uterus. And medical definitions are split, with one saying, the standard medical definition of abortion [is] termination of a pregnancy when the fetus is not viable, while another defines it broadly as the termination of a pregnancy, whether spontaneous or induced.

With all this uncertainty, why would California leaders leave the term undefined? It is likely because they want the term to be defined as broadly as possible while not expressly stating that the right remains right up until birth. They now have plausible deniability that that is not what is intended.

One clue can be found in Assembly Bill 2223, which recently passed the state Assembly and now awaits a vote in the Senate. It effectively legalizes abortion right up to the date of delivery. It protects women from any criminal or civil liability for an abortion at any time. It expressly protects women who engage in a self-managed abortion, which means ending ones own pregnancy outside of the medical system.

We also know that Newsom is intent on making California the most abortion friendly state in the nation. He intends to spend $125 million this year on his Reproductive Health Package. The monies will go to ensure everyone can get a free abortion regardless of whether they have insurance and without any co-pay. In California, abortions will be easier and cheaper to get than physicals. The package earmarks tens of millions to reproductive health care providers, aka abortion clinics, to entice more to open in order to expand access and prepare for the influx of abortion tourism.

Newsom had originally indicated that California would pay the travel expenses of women coming to California for abortions, but he pivoted and now notes that the tens of millions to the clinics are designed to free up their budgets so they can use their own money to help women travel to California.

Newsom also sees an opportunity to woo businesses to relocate to California, touting, in addition to Californias beautiful weather, its plentiful and majestic abortion clinics. California has been losing companies to states offering business friendly climates for decades. Newsom hopes to turn that around by appealing to companies concerned that pregnant employees are bad for the bottom line. (He may be on to something since Dicks Sporting Goods announced it would pay employees up to $4,000 in travel expenses to obtain an abortion.)

So, as expected, just days after the ruling, Democrats have already overplayed their hand. Abortions up until birth is a fringe position offensive to most people. But so is requiring a rape victim to carry the rapists baby to term. For Republicans to capitalize on this issue, they must leave the radical positions to the Democrats.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
California Must Adopt Constitutional Carry After Data Breach

Commentary

The state of California cannot be trusted with sensitive data. This has been proven again with the data breach of concealed carry permit information by the state Department of Justice.

As The Epoch Times reported, Firearms owners who have a concealed carry permit in California had their data leaked [June 27] after Attorney General Rob Bonta launched a 2022 Firearms Dashboard Portal, according to gun rights groups.  And some local law enforcement officials in California said that concealed carry permit owners should make sure their homes are secure because home addresses were part of the data breach.

This could include judges and law enforcement. The threats to them are real. Earlier in June, a California man was arrested trying to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh due to the pending reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision from 1973. About the same time, in Wisconsin, former Juneau County Circuit Court Judge John Roemer was murdered by a man he had sentenced to 15 years in prison, who then committed suicide.

Two years ago, U.S. District Judge Esther Salas son was killed and her husband, Mark Anderl, critically wounded in their home in New Jersey in an attack by a lawyer who didnt like how Salas handled a case. The lawyer also committed suicide.

In response to the negligence with the California data, the gun rights group Gun Owners of California demanded the resignation of Attorney General Rob Bonta.

President Sam Parades told me, Releasing the private information of all CCW applicants, issued or denied, over the past 10 years, everyone who bought or sold a firearm over the past who knows how many years, everyone who has a firearms safety certificate, and everyone on the Gun Violence Restraining Order database is atrocious!

That includes judges, reserve peace officers, DAs, Deputy DAs and hundreds of thousands of everyday people like you and me. That is something that everyone should be concerned with. All of those peoples lives have been put in jeopardy by the release of their names, addresses, drivers licenses, gender and criminal records. AG Bonta should quit.

Constitutional Carry

Concealed carry means carrying a firearm in public by adult citizens with a clean criminal record. That right just was affirmed (pdf) by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case New York Pistol & Rifle Association v. Bruen. But it does allow reasonable measures such as taking a gun-safety class and registering with a state data base, such as the one just breached in California.

There also is constitutional carry, which means any adult with a clean criminal record can carry a concealed gun without any prior approval by the state. No names in databases. Its also called permitless carry, unrestricted carry, or Vermont Carry, because that liberal state long pioneered the policyand, by the way, has one of the countrys lowest murder rates.

Currently, half of American states have constitutional carry, or soon will. Other states are considering it.

Given Californias problems with its permit database, constitutional carry obviously should be adopted here. No database, no problem.

Unfortunately, thats highly unlikely at a time when Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislators are demanding yet more anti-gun laws. Newsom said defiantly on June 23 after the Supreme Courts decision, While this reckless decision erases a commonsense gun safety law that existed for decades, California anticipated this moment.  Next week, I will have 16 new gun safety bills on my desk, including a bill that will allow individuals to sue gun makers and distributors for violating certain gun laws. I look forward to signing all of those bills.

In the light of the Supreme Court strengthening the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms, we can anticipate lawsuits against these unconstitutional California bills. Unless Newsom pulls a Jefferson Davis and gets California to secede, its still part of our indivisible Union.

But whats also needed is a state initiative to institute constitutional carry, settling the matter.

Past Data Problems

The concealed carry data breach also is part of a longstanding pattern of the state of Californias incompetence with databases. Most cruelly, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit two years ago, the Employment Development Departments database was so decrepit millions of newly unemployed workers had to wait months for their payments.

I was working at the time as press secretary to state Sen. John Moorlach. Our great staff handled these hundreds of EDD cases with compassion, working with EDD to get people their benefits. When they needed extra help due to the large number of calls, they asked me to pitch in. It was heartbreaking to hear our constituents stories of not being able to pay the rent or even put food on the table. But I also took heart from their gratitude when they finally got the benefits they had earned.

Part of the computerized incompetence was the EDD lost an incredible $31 billion to fraud. That money must be paid through future unemployment taxes paid by us all.

Then theres the DMV, a national byword for incompetence. There are many stories over the years. Heres one from 2013 as reported by the tech site IEEE Spectrum, The Golden States Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) must think it has checked into an IT version of Hotel California, where once a DMV modernization project is started, it can never ever finish it.

Last week, on behalf of DMVs management, Californias CIO informed state legislators that it had decided to cancel at the end of January the remainder of its US $208 million, 6-year IT modernization project with Hewlett-Packard, which was supposed to be completed in May of this year.

And heres a disaster I remember writing editorials on from way back in 1994: The California Department of Motor Vehicles has spent $44 million over the last six years on a computer modernization project it now admits is a hopeless failure, prompting the Legislature to order an investigation.

Its ironic the state still the epicenter of the global computer industry cannot piece together government data systems that work.

But with the concealed carry data breach, that incompetence could prove deadly.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Parliament Hill is seen beyond a security screening area for people arriving for Canada Day celebrations at Lebreton Flats in Ottawa on July 1, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Justin Tang)

Canada Day Security Checks Hindering Celebrations, Protests a Further Sign of Creeping Govt Authoritarianism

Commentary

Canadas descent into authoritarianism was illustrated July 1 when we saw citizens being herded through metal detectors and having their bags searched under a heavy security presence as they tried to celebrate Canada Day in the nations capital.

Police issued warnings and followed through as hundreds of vehicles were ticketed and dozens towed for being too close to Parliament Hill. The celebrations, most of which were held in LeBreton Flats Park this year, had a low turnout and were described as subdued. Its hard to celebrate a nations creation when you are treated as a potential criminal and could be ticketed for using sidewalk chalk or causing any unusual noise.

While the COVID-19 pandemic is fading, the government appears to be addicted to its newly gained authority and is continuing its work to erode fundamental pillars of democracy and individual liberties. The state has learned just how easily Canadians will hand over their freedoms under the guise of protecting the public good.

The Trudeau government already had a poor track record of respecting the rule of law and judicial independence after the SNC-Lavalin scandal unfolded in 2019. There was never a sense that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau felt anything had been done wrongeven after conflict of interest and ethics commissioner Mario Dion concluded that he had contravened the Conflict of Interest Act when he tried to pressure then-justice minister and attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould in an active case. Perhaps Trudeau was right, considering he never faced anything more serious than a judicial finger-wagging for his actions. The prime minister feels above the law and for now, maybe he is.

Perhaps Trudeau was feeling emboldened from the lack of consequences for his past actions when he allegedly tried to influence, through the RCMP commissioner, the active investigation into the Nova Scotia mass shooting in the spring of 2020.

He sees institutions such as the judiciary and RCMP as subservient to his office rather than independent of it. It doesnt help when the prime minister personally appoints the head of the RCMP and the attorney general. Canadas power structure is laid out in a way that makes it nearly impossible to hold a prime minister accountable for his or her actions while in office.

The House of Commons is supposed to act as one check upon the authority of the prime ministers office. In a majority government it rarely is, though. All the same, the House is the place where the government is questioned and held to public account for its actions by members of the opposition. The pandemic has provided the government with the means to greatly de-fang the House through hybrid sittings. Members havent had to appear in person for sessions since the pandemic began in 2020. They could virtually attend and vote through an app. The government learned to enjoy this lack of effective albeit often raucous questioning they used to have to endure in attending Parliament in person, and have quietly extended the hybrid status of the House into 2023 with nary a peep from the public or legacy media.

The legislative agenda this year reflected a government that has embraced authoritarianism as its core ideology. Nearly every major government bill tabled in the House and the Senate had the purpose of further empowering the government over its citizens.

An RCMP tactical vehicle drives past the Parliament Buildings after a massive police operation quelled the Convoy Protest in Ottawa on Feb. 20, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Bills C-18 and C-11 are both modelled to control information and expression. Bill C-18 would impose strict regulations on internet platforms such as Google and Facebook, requiring them to pay eligible news businesses for content. A government committee would determine which news businesses are eligible, of course, while small outlets could be left by the wayside. Bill C-11 would empower the CRTC to regulate streaming content from Netflix to independent podcasters. Both bills appear to be solutions seeking a problem. The government sees unfettered media and speech as a problem.

Bill S-7 was designed to give customs authorities the ability to compel access to the personal digital devices of citizens on grounds of reasonable, general concern. It appears that the Senate may stop the bill, but it has to be asked why this bill was proposed in the first place. Why does the government have such a pressing need to access the personal information of citizens?

Bill C-21 proposes a freeze on all handgun sales in Canada and imposes stringent new regulations on long guns. Canada isnt immune from firearm crime but it is well established that legal firearm owners have little to do with it. Regardless, the government is adamant about cracking down on law-abiding firearm owners.

The invocation of the Emergencies Act in Ottawa in February was the governments most egregious attack upon civil liberties. While the blockades were disruptive and needed addressing, it is becoming evident that the imposition of the Emergencies Act was a gross overreaction as the governments rationale for invoking the act crumbles under committee scrutiny.

Accountability, democracy, civil liberties, and transparency appear to be annoying afterthoughts to Canadas Liberal government. They are all hindrances that need to be skirted and bypassed when possible. When the government is found to have gone too far, they are unapologetic. Indeed, they tend to react with legislation designed to further empower the state over citizens.

The current government is ideologically obsessed with top-down control. Citizens are to be led and controlled, ostensibly for their own good rather than listened to.

Worst of all, most of Canadas citizens appear to be OK with this right now. Our docile nature only emboldens this government.

The images of children being patted down while dejected-looking lines of people make their way through security into an Ottawa park for a subdued celebration of Canada should serve as a wake-up call. Parliament Hill is supposed to be the place of the people, and citizens couldnt even use it to celebrate Canada Day this year.

The Hill is now the place of the government, and the people come second.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with Finland President Sauli Niinisto at the NATO Summit in Madrid on June 29, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Paul Chiasson)

Canada First Ally to Ratify NATO Membership Bids From Sweden, Finland

Canada has become the first country to ratify Sweden and Finlands request to join NATO, bringing the two countries closer to full membership.

The Prime Ministers Office says Justin Trudeau met with Finlands president, Sauli Niinisto, and Swedens prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, at the NATO Summit last week.

In a statement, Trudeau says Canada champions the alliances open door policy for any European country in a position to advance the commitments and obligations of membership.

The Finnish and Swedish ambassadors submitted official letters of application to NATO on May 18, and Canadas federal cabinet issued orders-in-council on May 26 authorizing the foreign affairs minister to ratify accession protocols for both countries.

The House of Commons also voted unanimously this spring to support the membership bids.

All 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland on Tuesday, sending the membership bids to the alliance countries for legislative approval.

Canada deliberately issued the orders-in-council on May 26 to speed through the ratification process and get it done within hours instead of the usual months.

The move further increases Russias strategic isolation in the wake of its invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February and military struggles there since.

This is truly a historic moment for Finland, for Sweden and for NATO, said alliance Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

The 30 ambassadors and permanent representatives formally approved the decisions of last weeks NATO summit when the alliance made the historic decision to invite Russias neighbour Finland and Scandinavian partner Sweden to join the military club.

Despite the agreement in the alliance, parliamentary approval in member state Turkey could still pose problems for their final inclusion as members.

Last week, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Ankara could still block the process if the two countries fail to fully meet Turkeys demand to extradite terror suspects with links to outlawed Kurdish groups or the network of an exiled cleric accused of a failed 2016 coup in Turkey.

He said Turkeys Parliament could refuse to ratify the deal. It is a potent threat since NATO accession must be formally approved by all 30 member states, which gives each a blocking right.

Stoltenberg said he expected no change of heart. There were security concerns that needed to be addressed. And we did what we always do at NATO. We found common ground.

Every alliance nation has different legislative challenges and procedures to deal with, and it could take several more months for the two to become official members.

I look forward to a swift ratification process, said Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has given the process added urgency. It will ensconce the two nations in the Western military alliance and give NATO more clout, especially in the face of Moscows military threat.

We will be even stronger and our people will be even safer as we face the biggest security crisis in decades, said Stoltenberg.

Tuesdays signing-off does bring both nations deeper into NATOs fold already. As close partners, they already attended some meetings that involved issues that immediately affected them. As official invitees, they can attend all meetings of the ambassadors even if they do not yet have any voting rights.

By Sarah Ritchie
Xiao Jianhua, a Chinese-born Canadian billionaire talks to reporters outside the International Finance Centre in Hong Kong in December 2013. (Next Magazine via AP)

Canada Says China Bars Diplomats From Canadian Tycoon Trial

BEIJINGChinese authorities refused to let Canadian diplomats attend the trial of a Chinese-born Canadian tycoon who disappeared from Hong Kong five years ago, Canadas government said Tuesday.

Xiao Jianhua was last seen at a Hong Kong hotel in January 2017 and was believed to have been taken to the mainland by Chinese authorities. He was placed under investigation by anti-graft authorities that year, according to news reports, though the Chinese regime has released no details.

The Chinese regime has never confirmed whether Xiao, the founder of Tomorrow Group, which has been linked to a series of anti-corruption prosecutions and seizures of financial companies by regulators, was detained or what charges he might face.

The Canadian government said earlier Xiao was due to stand trial Monday but gave no indication whether a trial took place or where. It gave no details of possible charges.

Canada made several requests to attend the trial proceedings. Our attendance was denied by Chinese authorities, a Canadian government statement said.

A foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, said he had no information about Xiao.

Xiao vanished amid a flurry of prosecutions of Chinese businesspeople accused of misconduct.

That fueled fears the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might be abducting people outside the mainland. Hong Kong at that time prohibited Chinese police from operating in the former British colony, which has a separate legal system.

Since then, Beijing has tightened control over Hong Kong, prompting complaints it is violating the autonomy promised when the territory returned to Chinese rule in 1997. The CCP imposed a national security law in 2020 and has imprisoned pro-democracy activists.

Hong Kong police investigated Xiaos disappearance and said the subject crossed the border onto the mainland. But an advertisement in the Ming Pao newspaper in Xiaos name the same week denied he was taken against his will.

At the time of his disappearance, Xiao was worth nearly $6 billion, making him Chinas 32nd wealthiest person, according to the Hurun Report, which follows the countrys wealthy.

Founded in 1999, Tomorrow expanded into banking, securities, insurance, coal, and real estate.

The company became one of the highest-profile targets in a campaign by the CCP. News reports said Xiao was suspected of improperly using money from banks and other companies to pay for acquisitions, but no charges against him have been announced.

In 2020, regulators seized nine companies controlled by Xiao. That included four insurers, two securities firms, two trust firms, and a company involved in financial futures. The business magazine Caixin reported at the time that the seized assets totaled almost 1 billion yuan ($150 million).

A retired bank regulator, Xue Jining, admitted taking bribes of 400 million yuan ($62 million) in bribes in a corruption case linked to Baoshang Bank Ltd. in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, which regulators seized from Tomorrow in 2019.

Auditors found Tomorrow misused money from Baoshang Bank, according to news reports.

One of the Tomorrow companies seized in 2020, Tianan Property Insurance Co., put its assets up for sale last month, asking 2.1 billion yuan ($315 million).
Cannabis Legalization and COVID-19 Lockdowns Increased Cannabis Use: UN Report

The legalization of cannabis and the COVID-19 lockdowns are likely to have contributed to increased cannabis use, according to a United Nations report.

Cannabis legalization appears to have accelerated the upwards trends in reported daily use of the drug, said the UNs World Drug Report for 2022 (pdf), released on June 27.

Places that legalized cannabiscertain states in the United States, Canada, and Uruguayhave increased its use and frequency as well as reporting greater proportions of use in adolescents (pdf).

However, according to the UN, the increase in cannabis use started long before legalization in 2007 to 2008.

Further, these places also generally show a decreased perception of cannabis harm.

Whilst cannabis use among adolescents has not changed much, there has been a significant increase of younger adults more frequently using high-potency products, the report said.

A previous study by Columbia University indicated that the legalization of recreational marijuana has increased its use in certain demographics.

Various U.S. states have legalized the non-medical use of cannabis, starting with Washington and Colorado in 2012. Uruguay legalized it in 2013, and Canada in 2018, along with other places, though the report focused on these three countries.

Canada and American states that legalized cannabissuch as Colorado and Californiasaw increased emergency room visits as a result of cannabis use, as well as increases in proportions of people with cannabis-related psychiatric disorders and suicides across all places that have legalized cannabis.

Further, periods of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic drove increases in the use of cannabis in 2020the most recent data availablethe report said.

Trends in Drug Use During the Pandemic

Cannabis remains one of the most widely abused drugs and is the third most popular substance after tobacco and alcohol globally. The report said around 284 million people, or 5.6 percent of the worlds population, had used a drug such as heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, or ecstasy in 2020.

Of those, 209 million used cannabis, taking up 4 percent of the global population.

Cocaine production reached a new record in 2020 and trafficking by sea is growing, the report added, with seizure and drug treatment data suggesting an expansion outside the two main markets of North America and Europe into Africa and Asia.

Opioids remain the deadliest drugs, responsible for 77 percent of the worlds drug-related deaths, the report said. Global opioid seizures set a new high in 2020 with fentanyl driving overdose deaths to a new record: the provisional estimate for 2021 is 107,622 in the United States.

Canada also reported a disturbing 95 percent increase in opioid overdose deaths in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A July 4th celebration in the heart of the nation fills the streets with performers and a crowd stretching for a mile. Some of those attending tell us what it means to them to celebrate America.

And a group is celebrating freedom of speech and religion on Americas birthday. Whats the story that makes them cherish these values on this land? And what message are they hoping to bring to fellow Americans?

Former Congressman and retired Lt. Col. Allen West joins us to share what July 4th means to him as we reflect on the nations founding.

President Joe Biden is facing pushback for a tweet calling on gas stations to lower prices. A major U.S. energy lobby is making fun of the post, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also weighs in.

Historian and author of George Washington Entrepreneurs John Berlau joins us to reflect on this special day in history and on what our Founders would think of our system of government two and a half centuries later.

The Department of Homeland Security will continue to enforce the Remain in Mexico policy for several more weeks until it is officially struck down.

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St. Bernard Catholic Church on Atwood Avenue in Madison, Wis. (Courtesy of Google Maps via The Epoch Times)

Catholic Church in Wisconsin Vandalized With Anti-Pro-Life Messages

Authorities in Wisconsin are looking for one or more suspects believed to be connected to a vandalism incident where pro-abortion graffiti messages were sprayed on a Wisconsin church in Madison, west of Milwaukee.

The Madison Police Department said the front entrance of St. Bernard Catholic Church was damaged with spray-painted messages that contained anti-pro-life and anti-police signs, WMTV reported.

Michael Radowicz, the churchs pastor, said in a statement obtained by the network that he understands some people may be angered over the U.S. Supreme Courts overturning of the landmark abortion ruling Roe v. Wade, but acts of vandalism wont solve anything.

St. Bernard Parish is saddened over the graffiti on the front of the church, Radowicz said. We join in prayer for those who did this, that the Lord may heal their hearts, the pastor added.

Radowicz concluded his statement by saying that Madison officials have launched an investigation into the crime.

Authorities are asking anyone with information on the incident to step forward and contact Madison Area Crime Stoppers at 608-266-6014 or visit p3tips.com. A cash reward is also being offered for any clues that result in an arrest.

The spray-painted message reportedly critiqued the churchs position on abortion by referencing Native-American children that were killed in the 19th and 20th-century, according to a picture shared on Twitter.

Pro-life my [explicit] [explicit] lets talk about all the native kids youve killed!!! the graffiti reads.

The Catholic faith prohibits any taking of life.

The U.S. Supreme Court last month reversed Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that essentially legalized abortion across the country. The reversal has created questions about whether Wisconsins 1849 ban on abortion is now in effect.

Despite claims made by some pro-abortion activists, the overturning of Roe v. Wade does not itself end legal abortion across the nation, but rather returns the matter to the states to enact their own abortion policies.

Growing Number of Attacks on Churches and Pro-Life Organizations

In early May, the office of a pro-life group in Wisconsin was set on fire and vandalized with graffiti in what police described as a targeted attack. The graffiti-sprayed message onto the walls said, If abortions arent safe, then you arent either.

Graffiti on a wall outside the Wisconsin Family Actions offices in Madison, Wis., on. May 8, 2022. (Molly Beck/USA Today Network via Reuters)

Authorities in Madison said in an incident report at the time that a Molotov cocktail was hurled inside the building. When the device failed to ignite, it also appears a separate fire was started in response, officials stated

Firefighters quickly doused the flames and no injuries were reported.

The group, called Wisconsin Family Action, announced after the May attack that it plans to repair its office and continue its mission, which it describes as promoting marriage, family, life, and religious freedom.

The latest acts of vandalism targeting religious institutions in Wisconsin happened as a string of Catholic Churches across the United States and Canada have faced a series of vandalism and arson attacks in recent years.

At least 144 incidents involving the targeting of Catholic sites have occurred across 36 states and Washington D.C. since May 2020, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

According to the organization, the incidents include destroying and defacing statues and defacing gravestones along with burned American flags left next to them, as well as arson, among other forms of destruction and vandalism.

From NTD News
A map shows the location of the northern state of Kaduna, in Nigeria, on July 5, 2022. (Google Maps)

Catholic Priest Abducted in Nigeria, Diocese Says

KANO, NigeriaA Nigerian Catholic priest was abducted from his rectory in the town of Zambina in the northern state of Kaduna in the early hours of Monday, the local Catholic diocese said on Monday.

It said parishioners went to look for Father Emmanuel Silas after waiting in vain for him to conduct the morning mass.

It is not clear who carried out the abduction.

Armed gangs are rife across Nigerias northwest where they rob or kidnap for ransom, and violence has been increasing, where thinly stretched security forces often fail to stop the attacks.

The latest kidnap comes after gunmen last week abducted four Chinese workers with some local employees and killed an unknown number of people at a mine in Niger state in northwestern Nigeria.
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrives for the 2022 West Point Commencement Ceremony at West Point Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., on May 21, 2022. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

China Attack on Taiwan Not Imminent, but US Watching Closely: Gen. Milley

Chinas military attack on Taiwan will not come soon, but the United States is watching the situation closely, said Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

When asked by the BBC on Sunday whether he thought China would attack Taiwan, the top U.S. general replied: Theres no indications or warnings of anything imminent at this time. But again, we watch it very, very closely.

Milley confirmed China is clearly developing the capability to attack the island nation at some point, which Chinese leader Xi Jinping has mentioned in public speeches.

However, he described the issue of deciding to take action as a political option. And whether they would or not, its a political choice, its a policy choice, that will be based off of how the Chinese view the cost-risk benefit at the time.

Milleys comments come amid hiking tensions across the Taiwan Strait, a sensitive waterway separating mainland China and Taiwan.

Non-War Military Action Sparks Speculation

Xi held discussions in mid-June for his approval of a plan that guides Chinese troops to prepare for non-war military action to secure Chinas sovereignty, security, and development interests, and regional stability.

Taiwan defense commentator Chi Le-yi views Xis move as an effort to rationalize the Chinese Communist Partys potential military operations either in Taiwan or in the South China Sea, providing a legal basis for future aggressive operations.

In the event of Chinas attack on Taiwan, he [Xi Jinping] wouldnt call that a war, which breaks out between two countries. He must use a rhetoric of special military action or non-war military action. He must define war that way, just as he seeks to wipe out domestic separatist forces, the expert told RFA.

Russia launched a war against its neighbor Ukraine in February, calling it a special military operation, which has caused 11,152 civilian casualties as of July 3, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

China regards Taiwan as a breakaway province that must be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary, though it has never ruled the island. The self-ruled island is a de facto independent country with its own democratically elected government, military, constitution, and currency.

China has been sending fighter jets into Taiwans air defense zone, posing a threat to the democracy of more than 23 million people.

The United States has no official diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but it sells arms to it under its Taiwan Relations Act, which allows the worlds largest economy to provide the island with the means to defend itself.

President Joe Biden agreed in May to keep a commitment to defend Taiwan militarily in case of attack by China.

Some analysts do not rule out that Xi would use war as a last resort to seal his leadership and his third term as Chinas paramount leader despite the potential disastrous consequences.
A deeply moving & inspirational documentary about a challenging subject.

NR | 57m | Documentary | 2020

Manny Drukier narrowly escaped his demise during World War II by jumping from a death train as a teenager and managing to find refuge at a home for orphans. Produced by Long Trek Home Productions, the 2020 Holocaust documentary, Finding Manny, is the almost hour-long real-life story of a kind-hearted, yet strong, Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor. Its an inspirational film about his return to a painful time in his past in order to help a new generation of children.

The film begins with Manny talking about his time at the childrens school in Germany, called Kloster Indersdorf. We also get to hear from some of his family members, including his wife Freda.

Manny Drukier (L), with his wife Freda in Finding Manny. (Long Trek Home Productions/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Eventually, a German Holocaust historian named Anna Andlauer who is determined to track down as many survivors of the school as she can, reaches out to Manny. Anna hopes that if Manny travels to the school in Indersdorf (now a grade school) and speaks to the children there (and those from the surrounding villages), it will enable them to better understand the Holocaust.

But Mannys memories from the years of living in concentration camps understandably hold a dark place in his psycheso much so, that he has never even talked to his family about that period of his life, let alone strangers. He is initially resistant to the idea, and the first part of the movie becomes a question of whether or not Manny will face the pain of his childhood in order to help others.

Anna Andlauer in Finding Manny. (Long Trek Home Productions/Screenshot via The Epoch Times))

The film travels back and forth from the present day, to old documentary footage of the wide-scale persecution of the Jewish people during World War II, and is adeptly narrated by Stephen Baldwin.

Mannys wife Freda is of the mind that her husband should travel to Germany in order to face his past and help the local children understand what happened during the Holocaust. Throughout the film, Mannys various family members talk about their perspectives of their youth with Manny, and of his lifes journey. He eventually feels compelled to make the trip to Germany.

The family decides to travel to Poland for the first time together, in order to rediscover their roots, as well to see each of the places Mannys parents and siblings used to hide from the Nazis, and where they were later shipped to. The film also reveals how the Germans first set up numerous Jewish ghettos in 1941, and later, how they decided to mass liquidate all Jewish people in 1944.

Manny Drukier, (R) with friends during World War II in Finding Manny. (Long Trek Home Productions/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

An apt correlation is also made between what Jews went through During World War II and the more recent persecution Falun Dafa practitioners have experienced at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Despite the crushing trauma Manny went through, he remained an optimistic person throughout his lifealways trying to look at the bright side of things. This leads to the film to ultimately being an uplifting story of a man who faced incredible odds and not only survived, but later, thrived. Indeed, Manny holds no ill will toward any of the German or Polish people he encounters. To him, individuals are just that and shouldnt be grouped in with the negative deeds of others. Likewise, he says that he feels no entitlement because of his past and is not a victim.

Finding Manny is a sometimes heart-wrenching biopic that is highly inspirational in the end. Its a film that strikes the right moral tone without becoming sanctimonious. Just be aware that there is some strong content in the form of footage of the bodies of deceased Jews being dumped into mass graves, as well as of hangings, so parental guidance is recommended.

Finding Manny

Director: Kacey Cox

Stars: Manny Drukier, Anna Andlauer, Stephen Baldwin (voice)

Running Time: 57 minutes

MPAA Rating: Not rated

Release Date: Sep. 24, 2020

Rated: 5 stars out of 5

Watch on Epoch Cinemavisit the link here.



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Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
An aerial view shows oil tanks of Transneft oil pipeline operator at the crude oil terminal Kozmino on the shore of Nakhodka Bay near the port city of Nakhodka, Russia, on June 13, 2022. Picture taken with a drone. (Tatiana Meel/Reuters)

Citi Predicts Oil Prices Plunging 36 Percent in Case of Recession

Investment bank Citigroup is predicting oil prices to tumble by the end of the year if the world slips into a recession.

Crude oil prices could end up at $65 per barrel by the end of 2022, analysts from the bank said in a July 5 note, Bloomberg reported. By 2023, prices could collapse further to $45. The prediction is contingent on a decline in oil investment and the absence of any market intervention by OPEC+.

For oil, the historical evidence suggests that oil demand goes negative only in the worst global recessions, the bank said. But oil prices fall in all recessions to roughly the marginal cost.

Brent crude was trading at around $103 per barrel as of 12:11 a.m. EDT on July 5. For Citis prediction to come true, oil has to fall over 36 percent from current prices in 2022 and by more than 56 percent to hit the 2023 forecast.

Meanwhile, analysts at JP Morgan are predicting oil to more than triple in price if Russia decides to cut down output. In a note, analyst Natasha Kaneva warned that oil could increase to $380 per barrel if Moscow reduces oil output by 5 million barrels per day. In case of a 3 million barrel-per-day decrease, prices could hit $190 per barrel.

It is likely that the government could retaliate by cutting output as a way to inflict pain on the West, the analysts wrote in what they described as a worst-case scenario. The tightness of the global oil market is on Russias side.

US Gas Prices

While the international oil supply affects U.S. gasoline prices, American consumers have to deal with another issue in the coming months that could have a major impact on fuel coststhe hurricane season.

In recent years, hurricanes are known to have temporarily knocked off processing capacity in the U.S. Gulf Coast, where 47 percent of the countrys motor fuel is produced.

To make matters worse, five oil refineries were shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic. One refinery has suffered extensive damage due to storms. Refinery utilization at present is close to 95 percent, indicating strong demand.

We are heading into hurricane season in the tightest refining market weve ever been in on a global scale, Rory Johnston, founder of the Commodity Context newsletter, told Reuters.

In 2017, when Hurricane Harvey flooded the Texas coast, the states refining capacity was temporarily shut down. Retail gasoline prices jumped 29 cents in the aftermath. In 2005 when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita disrupted refining capacity at plants in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, gas prices jumped 46 cents.

According to data from the American Automobile Association (AAA), regular gasoline averaged $4.80 per gallon on July 5, up from $3.13 per gallon a year ago but slightly down from the $5.016 per gallon record high hit last month.
First responders work the scene of a shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., on July 4, 2022. (Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)

Conflicting Accounts Emerge Over Whether Highland Park Shooting Suspect Was Known to Law Enforcement

The individual accused of shooting and killing six people at an Illinois July 4 parade was not known to law enforcement, according to the mayor of Highland Park.

Mayor Nancy Rotering told NBC that she did not believe Robert Crimo was previously known to police before the incident, although he had posted numerous videos and songs on social media that indicated he may have violent tendencies. Crimo allegedly called himself Awake the Rapper and had thousands of listeners on Spotify.

The mayors account directly conflicts with what authorities had local media outlets, with a police spokesman telling WGN-TV that Crimo was in fact known to law enforcement. The Epoch Times has contacted the Highland Park Police Department for comment.

We know that several postings really reflected a plan and a desire to commit carnage for a long time in advance, said Rotering, who had run for office against Crimos father when he ran for mayor of Highland Park several years ago.

Rotering said that she knew Crimo when he was a Cub Scout and clearly had a mental breakdown in recent days.

I know him as somebody who was a Cub Scout when I was the Cub Scout leader  He was just a little boy, she told the Today show. And its one of those things where you step back and you say, What happened? How did somebody become this angry, this hateful, to then take it out on innocent people who literally were just having a family day? said Rotering, who later pushed for more gun-control measures.

Highland Park Police Chief Lou Jogmen said a police officer pulled over Crimo about 5 miles north of the shooting scene, several hours after police released the mans photo and warned that he was likely armed and dangerous. Authorities initially said he was 22, but an FBI bulletin and Crimos social media said he was 21.

Police declined to immediately identify Crimo as a suspect but said identifying him as a person of interest, sharing his name and other information publicly was a serious step.

Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Christopher Covelli said at a news conference several of the deceased victims died at the scene and one died at a hospital. Lake County Coroner Jennifer Banek said the five people killed at the parade were adults, but didnt have information on the sixth.

Highland Park Police Commander Chris ONeill, the incident commander on scene, said the shooter apparently used a high-powered rifle to fire from a spot atop a commercial building where he was very difficult to see. He said the rifle was recovered at the scene. Police also found a ladder attached to the building.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Tamara Lich (R), an organizer of Freedom Convoy, smiles during a news conference in Ottawa, on Feb. 3, 2022. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

Crown Says Tamara Lich Breached Bail Terms by Interacting With Fellow Convoy Organizer

OTTAWACrown prosecutors say Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich had an interaction with convoy spokesperson Tom Marazzo at a June 16 event in Toronto in violation of her bail conditions. The Crown cited the allegation while Lich appeared before a court in Ottawa on July 5 over charges that she failed to comply with her bail conditions.

The crown has presented a photograph of Lich and Marazzo at the event and a video recording as evidence. The video allegedly shows Lich giving a speech at the event, and then sitting at a table where Marazzo and others are seated.

Marazzo, a military veteran, volunteered as a spokesperson for the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa in February.

Lichs defence has questioned the course of action taken by the prosecution and police, including issuing a Canada-wide warrant for her arrest, dispatching long-time veteran homicide detectives for her case, and holding her in custody for nine days so far, after her re-arrest on June 27.

The defence says a brief congratulatory exchange after winning an award wouldnt lead to any illegal activity, and isnt a breach of bail conditions. The court heard testimony that lawyers were present at the event and approved the picture taken of Lich and Marazzo. The defence added that Lichs bail conditions specify that theres to be no communication except in the presence of counsel.

The defence says Lich should be released.

The court in Ottawa where Tamara Lich is appearing before a judge on July 5, 2022. (Limin Zhou/The Epoch Times)

Lich, one of the key organizers of the Freedom Convoy protest movement against COVID-19 mandates, was first arrested in Ottawa on Feb. 17. She was charged with counselling to commit mischief and obstructing police, among other charges.

After initially being denied bail and remaining in custody for 19 days, she was released on March 7 with several conditions, including having no contact with other convoy organizers.

In late April, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms selected Lich as the winner of its 2022 George Jonas Freedom Award, inviting her to accept the award in a ceremony in Toronto on June 16. Crown prosecutors said in May that by agreeing to attend the ceremony, Lich had breached her bail conditions and should be sent back to jail to await trial.

However, on May 25, Ontario Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips ruled that Lich didnt breach her bail conditions, saying that courts are not a thought police.

Lich was arrested 11 days after the June 16 award event in her hometown of Medicine Hat, Alberta, and was transferred to Ottawa to attend a bail hearing. Her initial court appearance on June 30 was brief, with the court saying she will remain in custody until her full hearing on July 5.

The Freedom Convoy protest started as a demonstration against the federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate imposed on cross-border truck drivers in January, but expanded into a bigger movement with many joining the cause to protest various COVID-19 mandates and restrictions.

The protests in Ottawa lasted for around three weeks, and ended after the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14, with police clearing the demonstration in an escalated operation over a few days.

Limin Zhou Follow Limin Zhou is a reporter based in Ottawa.
Law enforcement works the scene after a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., on July 4, 2022. (Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)

Democrats Respond to Illinois Parade Shooting by Calling for More Gun Control Laws

President Joe Biden and other top Democrats suggested they want more gun control laws passed following the mass shooting at a parade in Highland Park, Illinois, that left at least six dead and more injured on Monday.

I have spoken to Governor Pritzker and Mayor Rotering, and have offered the full support of the Federal government to their communities, he said in a statement released by the White House, referring to Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Nancy Rotering, both Democrats.

Biden then suggested that he will support more gun laws. I recently signed the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost thirty years into law, which includes actions that will save lives. But there is much more work to do, and Im not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence, the statement said.

On Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, called for more restrictions on purchasing certain types of rifles.

Let me tell you, we all know, at least some of us do, its not enough, Durbin told CNN. You know, [that] they still think that a shooter can buy a weapon that is really designed for the military to kill people in volume, and has no sport or hunting purpose, and turn that weapon loose on an innocent crowd in Highland Park tells us theres much more to be done.

Fellow Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat, also issued a statement after Mondays shooting and claimed that we cant stop there, adding Congress has to pass additional commonsense reforms. She did not elaborate.

And Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) agreed that Congress should take up new gun control measures, according to a Twitter post he made after the mass shooting.

In 2013, Rotering signed an ordinance (pdf) that banned certain types of firearms that the city deemed as assault rifles. And, according to the Giffords Law Center, a group that supports gun control measures, Illinois has among the strictest gun laws in the United States. The group gave the state an A- grade in 2021, alongside New York state, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Connecticut.

Chicago, meanwhile, has even stricter gun rules. For example, in 2013, Chicago, Cook County, and several other Chicago-area suburbs banned firearms that they defined as assault weapons.

During an interview with NBC News on Tuesday, Rotering said she knew the shooting suspect, identified as 22-year-old Robert Crimo III, when he was a child and called for stricter gun laws later in the interview.

Crimo is suspected of opening fire at a Fourth of July parade, killing at least six people and injuring two dozen more. Officials have not established a motive in the case, although videos he uploaded online contained violent imagery and themes.

The shooting comes after Congress passed legislation that included red flag laws and ends on straw purchases, but top Republicans signaled this week they arent going to support new rules.

I think yesterdays shooting is another example of what the problem is, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters Tuesday, according to NBC News. The problem is mental health and these young men who seemed to be inspired to commit these atrocities.
Governor Gavin Newsom speaks to reporters at AltaMed Urgent Care in Santa Ana, Calif., on March 25, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

DeSantiss Team Responds to Newsom Ad Saying Florida Residents Should Move to California

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantiss office has responded to California Gov. Gavin Newsoms advertisements encouraging residents of the Sunshine State to move to the Golden State.

The people of Florida pay no mind to the pathetic smear campaigns from the Democrats and their allies in the corporate media, DeSantis spokesman Dave Abrams told The Daily Wire. Were too busy enjoying the freedom Gov. Ron DeSantis has created in the Sunshine State.

The ad from Newsom, a Democrat, triggered speculation that the California governor would run for office in 2024, possibly against DeSantis. Some have speculated that the Florida Republican would throw his hat into the race, although DeSantis has repeatedly downplayed those suggestions at events.

Newsom, meanwhile, has previously said he has no interest in running for president. The California governor survived a statewide recall effort last year and is running for reelection in the gubernatorial race in 2022.

Its Independence Dayso lets talk about whats going on in America, Newsom said in the ad, which was posted on his Twitter account. Freedom is under attack in your state.

Using left-wing talking points, Newsom then alleged, without providing evidence or details, that Florida officials are banning books, restricting speech, making it harder to vote, and criminalizing women and doctors.

Light a Pile of Cash on Fire

Abrams told the news outlet that Newsom might as well light a pile of cash on fire with the advertisements. Pass the popcorn for his desperate attempt to win back the California refugees who fled the hellhole he created in his state to come to Florida, he said.

Despite Newsom saying he doesnt want to run for president in two years, its unclear why hes running an ad in Florida.

In 2021, reports indicated that more than 300,000 people left California and moved to places like Texas and Florida, possibly due to the states left-wing politics and high cost of living.

Speaking about whether Newsom would join the 2024 presidential race, Cedric Richmond, a former senior Biden White House official who works for the Democratic National Committee, told Politico that everybody is trying to be relevant for the next race.

Newsom came through the recall election, and hes doing a pretty good job as governor, Richmond told the outlet. However, I think ambition makes people do different things.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a press conference held at the Cox Science Center & Aquarium in West Palm Beak, Florida, on June 08, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

DeSantis has garnered support from several high-profile individuals, namely because of his stance against COVID-19-related restrictions and mandatory vaccines during the pandemic.

Last month, podcaster Joe Rogan suggested that if DeSantis runs for president, he would back the Florida governor. Billionaire Elon Musk also wrote on Twitter that he would support a DeSantis bid.

Ron DeSantis would work as a good president, Rogan said in response to a recent question on his podcast. What he has done for Florida has been admirable.
Disney workers in Florida gather in front of Walt Disney World on Sept. 26, 2021 to oppose vaccine mandates. (Courtesy of Nick Caturano)

Disney Employees Suing Company Over Vaccine Exemption Refusals

The Walt Disney Company punished and then fired three longtime employees because they refused the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds, according to a new lawsuit against the company.

On July 30, 2021, Disney announced that its employees would have to take one of the several COVID-19 vaccines to continue working with the company.

When Floridas government forbade vaccinate or terminate policies, the company began a relentless push to vaccinate all employees, including those who had requested religious exemptions, the lawsuit states.

According to the plaintiffs, Disney burdened religious vaccine objectors with restrictions that went beyond its original pandemic policy.

The mask, face shield, and distancing from cast and guest were clearly punitive measures designed to destroy my health, segregate me, harass, discriminate, and intimidate me into taking an experimental vaccine, said Adam Pajer, one of the suing employees.

The Epoch Times contacted Disney for comment.

Religious Objections

Pajer, Barbara Andreas, and Stephen Cribb were longtime Disney employees.

Pajer worked at Disney for seven years and had some leadership responsibilities.

Andreas had worked there for 21 years and in leadership for 17 years.

Cribb was at the company for 11 years and received the Walt Disney Legacy Award, its highest award for park employees.

All refused to take a COVID-19 vaccine, citing religious objections.

Pajer said he believed he had a religious obligation not to harm his body and that the vaccine was harmful; Andreas objected to covering her face and the contamination of her blood by vaccine ingredients for religious reasons; and Cribb objected because he believed the Jansen, Moderna, and Pfizer vaccines were made using cells from aborted babies.

But instead of accepting these exemption requests, Disney pushed back. All three found the company was slow to respond to their requests, leaving them wondering about the position of their jobs.

When Disney finally responded, the employees faced interrogative interviews.

[A Disney employee] proposed hypothetical questions to Ms Andreas, such as whether she would consent to a vaccine that did not contain aborted fetal cells. Ms Andreas was very uncomfortable about such an inappropriate line of questioning regarding her sincere religious beliefs, the lawsuit reads.

Cribb said management asked him to abandon his religious convictions on the vaccine because the FDA approved it.

Pajer said managers yelled at him and lit a written statement about the discrimination he faced while he was still holding it.

A vial of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine in Seattle, Wash., on June 21, 2022. (David Ryder/Getty Images)

Eventually, Disney denied religious exemptions to all three employees. It also refused to speak with their lawyers.

In Cribbs case, Counsel requested that Disney direct correspondence directly to him, and Disney flatly refused, the lawsuit said.

Employees who refused to take the vaccine faced a series of restrictive safety measures that they argued amounted to coercion.

The unvaccinated employees said they had to wear masks while outside, wear N95 masks with Warning written on the front, eat in segregated areas, and not take off their masks even for a moment.

The company called for intrusive measures to test whether masks worked too. A technician sprayed a mist in employees faces, according to the employees lawyer.

Employees said that wearing a mask outside all day is stuffy and grueling in Floridas intense heat. But Disney management showed little mercy.

Targets for Bullying

I was accused of pulling a mask away from my face just to catch my breath after being forced to wear it for the entirety of my shift, inside and outside, when other cast had the choice not to wear them at all, said Pajer.

Disney didnt provide separate areas where unvaccinated employees could get lunch.

At the same time, Disney had ended outdoor mask mandates for unvaccinated guests.

The lawsuit said that pictures and videos during a 2022 outdoor Mardi Gras event showed that Cribb was likely the only person among hundreds of employees and guests at the resort wearing a mask.

He was overwhelmed by the humiliation of Disneys overt discrimination, the lawsuit reads.

According to Andreas, these measures singled out unvaccinated employees and made them targets for a bullying campaign.

Even after Disney allowed guests in without unmasked and unvaccinated, staff faced continued COVID-19 restrictions. Photo of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla, Aug. 30, 2021. (John Raoux/AP Photo)

We became the subject of harassment by other cast members and guests once the PPE provided a visual display of our private information, she said.

The lawsuit said that these restrictions resembled what Disney demanded of COVID-19-exposed staff before the vaccines became available.

The augmented protocols now suddenly enforced on plaintiffs consisted of harsh isolation and restrictions, causing serious breathing problems for plaintiffs, and making it nearly impossible to find a compliant manner and location in which to eat or drink while on shift, the lawsuit reads.

Fired for Faith

Finally, Disney fired all three employees for refusing to take the vaccine.

My dream-come-true became a total nightmare, said Cribb.

Suddenly, the same organization that had captivated my imagination in childhood with its one-of-a-kind magical appeal revealed its true selfa corporate machine bent on pursuing financial and political ends at any cost.

The three employees filed a joint lawsuit against Disney for taking retaliatory action because employees filed religious discrimination claims.

The trio asked the court to reinstate their employment, end Disneys enforcement of discriminatory protocols, and pay each plaintiff back for lost wages, lost benefits, attorney fees, and any other required relief.

Disney is not above the law. Their actions in the past month have shown the public that Christians have no place in their parks or on their payroll, said Andreas.
Dutch police officers stand guard near the entrance of the TEFAF Art Fair in Maastricht, Netherlands, on June 28, 2022. (Marcel Van Hoorn/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)

Dutch Step Up Fight Against Climate Mandates

Undercover police alleged to be stoking conflict as supermarket shelves go empty

Protests continue in the Netherlands over the governments proposed nitrogen policy, which could necessitate the mass slaughter of livestock and potentially shut down almost a third of the countrys farms at a time when global famine may be imminent.

Events in the country are being compared by commentators and politicians around the globe to the World Economic Forums Great Reset.

Dutch farmers, truckers, and others have used social media in a decentralized way to organize blockades of food distribution hubs across the coastal northwest European country.

The result: empty supermarket shelves.

A supermarket with empty shelves is a result of delays in truck deliveries brought about by farmer and trucker protests in The Netherlands on July 5, 2022. (Special to The Epoch Times)

Officials at Albert Heijn, a major Dutch grocer, didnt respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

However, the high-profile protests on July 4 didnt affect operations at Eindhoven Airport, one of several airports targeted in a Telegram post that went viral in the preceding days.

We will keep on monitoring the situation day by day, an Eindhoven spokesman told The Epoch Times on July 5.

In addition, a spokesperson for the Dutch Ministry of Defense told The Epoch Times the ministry wasnt asked by government to provide support in policing protests on July 4.

Farmers Are the Heart of the Country

Mark de Jong, a protester and the owner of a transportation company that employs 30 people, told The Epoch Times on July 2 that his countrys nitrogen crisis is caused by the Dutch government and the European Union (EU).

The farmers are not the problemthey are the people who have always looked after the land and nature, he said.

Thierry Baudet, a member of the Dutch House of Representatives, offered a similar perspective in a July 5 interview with The Epoch Times.

Baudet, who leads the Forum for Democracy party, traced the current conflict to Natura 2000, an EU network of conservation areas established in 1992 through the Habitats Directive. More than half of the countrys nationally protected areas are also covered by Natura 2000.

Yet, in the decades since the founding of the network, nitrogen deposition due to agricultural activityincluding from ammonia produced by livestock manurehas already begun showing a change in plant species that grow in the Netherlands.

That shift conflicts with the Habitats Directive, which mandates the careful conservation and maintenance of habitats and species protected as part of the Natura 2000 network.

At the time, politicians having always been as stupid as they are now, nobody was thinking ahead and wondering, look, what might this mean in the future? Baudet said.

We are politically facing a sort of a bureaucratic problem because the Netherlands has agreed with the EU that it will protect [existing plant species], but now because of increased population, more cattle, and so on, were going to have a change in vegetation in the country.

Baudet and some of his colleagues have pushed for more relaxed nitrogen greenhouse gas emissions standards in the Netherlands, in line with standards in Germany.

Yet, as part of a 2019 debate over the topic, then-Minister of Agriculture Carola Schouten asserted that the regulations must be stricter in the Netherlands, as reported by the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation.

What our politicians are doing is creating this whole fake narrative on nitrogen oxides being very poisonous and very dangerous and pollutants for the environment, Baudet told The Epoch Times. By putting forward that narrative, they are able to sell this projectthe expropriation of our farmers.

Willem, a trucker who preferred to use a pseudonym, told The Epoch Times on July 2 that he doesnt care if hes arrested while protesting. His livelihood, he said, depends on the farmers near him.

If they want to close the farmers here, I dont have a job anymore.

The farmers are the heart of the country, and thats why were fighting, he said, noting that he himself comes from a farming family.

Activists Fear Provocations by Undercover Police

Speculation has grown about undercover policedubbed Romeos by the Dutchsparking violence during otherwise peaceful protests.

One video on June 28 appears to show masked men in civilian clothes rushing toward a building, then backing away before entering a van with the insignia of the Dutch National Police.

Baudet described as very suspicious the proliferation of footage allegedly depicting agent provocateurs, adding that the farmers with whom he has spoken dont advocate violent tactics.

If there were actually farmers who were doing it, then that was an absolute fringe of the total population, he said.

He compared the suspected Romeos to the undercover agent provocateurs alleged to have provoked violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2020.

It is certain that undercover agents are deployed during demonstrations. That is not denied by the government, said Gideon van Meijeren, another member of the House of Representatives who belongs to Forum for Democracy, in a July 5 interview with The Epoch Times.

Representatives of the Dutch National Police didnt respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
People enjoy summer weather in Ottawa on July 4, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

Environment Canada Issues Heat Warning in Yukon, Wildfires Prompt Road Closures

Environment Canada is urging Yukoners to stay cool as a heat wave pushes temperatures up and dozens of new wildfires flare.

The weather agency issued a heat warning today for much of the territory with temperatures expected to reach 28 C with nighttime lows of 13 C.

The warning applies to Whitehorse, Old Crow, Dawson and other regions throughout the central, southern and western regions of the territory.

It comes after daily temperature records were set yesterday in Haines Junction, Carmacks and Teslin, with heat hovering around 30 C.

The territorys wildfire information dashboard shows about 30 new blazes have been recorded in the last 24 hours.

Part of the Klondike Highway remains closed due to smoke from the Crystal Creek fire, which has grown to more than 1,500 hectares.

An evacuation alert issued Sunday for Stewart Crossing, about 15 kilometres from the wildfire, remains in effect.
China analyst and human rights investigator Ethan Gutmann, author of The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China's Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem, speaks at a forum in Vancouver, Canada, on Oct. 25, 2014. (Sheng Yu/The Epoch Times)

Evidence Points to China Ramping Up Forced Organ Harvesting From Uyghurs: Expert

New evidence has emerged pointing to the Chinese regimes ongoing organ harvesting crimes, Ethan Gutmann, China studies research fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, told the International Religious Freedom Summit 2022 in Washington on June 28-30.

Gutmann reported his latest finding: a compound containing a hospital surrounded with a labor camp of 33,000 people in Xinjiangthe region in north western Chinathat has been subjected to imports ban by the United States over forced labor since late last month.

Less than a kilometer away, you have another labor camp of 16,000 people and a crematorium, Gutmann told EpochTVs China Insider program.

A twenty- minute drive away, you have an airport with a green lane, that is a human organ fast lane, for export only, out of Xinjiang, he added.

Sign at Xinjiang airport saying special visitors and human organ transplant channel. Organ harvesting witness Enver Tohti told an inquiry that such a sign in a Xinjiang airport was an indication of the volume of organ transplants happening in Xinjiang, China. (Enver Tohti)

According to the expert, the organs were transferred to a hospital near Shanghai.

After this camp was built, the kidney transplants at the hospital went up 100 percent, while the liver transplants went up 200 percent, Gutmann said.

According to estimates by researchers, the Chinese regime has detained more than one million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in internment camps in the far western region of Xinjiang, where they are subjected to torture, rape, forced labor, and political indoctrination by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The U.S. government and other Western democracies have labeled Beijings actions a genocide.

In Gutmanns estimation, 25,000 to 50,000 Uyghurs are being killed for their organs every yearthe number somewhat resembles that of estimates for Falun Gong adherents.

As the author of the book The Slaughter, Gutmann recalled the account of a witness describing how the crematorium stunk of human bones burning when driving by everyday.

From Falun Gong Adherents to Uyghurs

According to Gutmann, organ transplantation has become an industry after growing exponentially due to the exploitation of Falun Gong adherents in China.

Related Coverage China Forcibly Collects Blood From Falun Gong Practitioners, Raising Concerns About Organ Harvesting

When organ sources from detained Falun Gong practitioners appeared to run out during 2013-2014, the authorities launched a knocking on the door campaign in nine provinces. The police went into Falun Gong practitioners homes and left with blood and DNA tests.

Gutmann says the move was aimed at tissue cross matching.

This is setting up the possibility of using these people as organ sources, he said.

Thats how it expanded to every province in China. Thats how they went from 10,000 transplants per year, to something like 60 to 100,000 transplants per year, Gutmann said of his estimates.

Later, with this camp popping up in 2016, the Chinese regime launched similar types of testing on every Uyghur above the age of 12.

But it was concentrated in a single physical area, which made it much easier for the West to ignore it, Gutmann noted.

And with some 1 to 2 million Uyghurs in labor camps, the authority also has in hand an enormous stable of readily available tissue types.

Misled by Regime

Despite the rampant ongoing atrocity, the medical community appears to still be misled by the Chinese regimes rhetoric.

According to Gutmann, a lot of doctors in the West have wanted to help China in this area, claiming that the regime is trying to reform and that, They may have done some terrible things, i.e. organ harvesting, in the past but thats the past. And lets look to the future.

Yet, mounting evidence has, in Gutmanns opinion, shown this to be the contrary.

Anyone who is looking to reform Chinas medical system, or wants to do anything cooperative, has to grapple with the evidence that I have just given, he said.

They have to start by explaining, What is the transplant hospital doing in a slave labor camp during COVID? he said.

For intelligent, reasonable, ethical doctors from the west to sign on to any of this is madness. It is a grave danger to the medical world, Gutmann said.

Since 2006, a plethora of research, investigation, and testimony about the Chinese regimes organ transplant abuses have emerged.

The 2019 London-based China Tribunal concluded that the Chinese regime has, for years, been killing prisoners of conscience for their organs for transplant on a substantial scalea practice thats still ongoing. It concluded that such actions amounted to crimes against humanity and that the main victims have been incarcerated Falun Gong practitioners.

Although the CCP in 2014 announced that it was ending its practice of using the organs of its prisoners, the evidence since then shows that China has been ramping up the practice of forced organ harvesting from the Uyghurs, Gutmann said.

Combating Efforts at Various Levels

Gutmann suggested grassroots efforts to raise awareness of the atrocity within the medical community.

People should bring it up to their doctors, their dentists  and question them if they have heard about the issue. They can also ask, Why is the medical community so relaxed about this?

Former ambassador at large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback has also urged all groups in civil society to push for answers. He also said that, given the poor human rights record of the Chinese regime in relation to the persecution of Falun Gong and the genocide of the Uyghurs, the United States should make human rights under the Chinese regime a mainstream foreign policy issue.

It needs to be up there with defense, it needs to be up there with the economy, Brownback said.

If you dont, as a government, stand up and protect religious freedom for everybody, everywhere, youre going to have the clash of civilizations and a lot of violence around the world, he added.

UPDATE: This article has been updated with a photo of a green lane in Xinjiang.

Hannah Ng Reporter Follow Hannah Ng is a reporter covering U.S. and China news. She holds a master's degree in international and development economics from the University of Applied Science Berlin.
Facing Backlash, City of Orlando Apologizes for July 4 Statement

The City of Orlando, Florida, has apologized for its official message about the July 4 holiday that questioned why people would want to celebrate it at all.

A lot of people probably dont want to celebrate our nation right now, and we cant blame them, the original statement in a July 1 City News email newsletter read. When there is so much division, hate, and unrest, why on earth would you want to have a party celebrating any of it?

But in all seriousness, you know in your heart, Fourth of July fireworks are amazing, especially when you are standing in 90 heat, 100% humidity, next to 100,000 of your closest friends. In that moment, something takes over and we all become united in an inexplicable bond. Yes, America is in strife right now, but you know what  we already bought the fireworks.

The statement drew widespread criticism on social media, including from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantiss press secretary Christina Pushaw.

Yikes. City of Orlando, is this your official position on our country and on 4th of July? Pushaw wrote on Twitter.

The city released an apology the next day, saying it sincerely regrets the negative impact the message had on some in our community.

We understand these words offended some of our residents, which was not our intent, the city wrote in its apology. We value the freedoms we have in this country and are thankful to the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for those. We take pride in celebrating the 4th of July to express our gratitude to those men and women and honor the country we live in.

Florida state Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat, whose House district covers parts of Orlando and Orange County, said the city shouldnt have apologized for saying what many Americans feel about the holiday.

Yall do not need to apologizeyour first email captured the tone of how many Americans (and Orlandoans) are feeling right now, Eskamani wrote on Twitter. Its ok not to be ok.

Pushaw called out Eskamanis response, saying this is an example that Democrats do not have the same view of America as we do.

Democrat elected official shares negative sentiments about 4th of July, does not think that the City of Orlando should have issued even a tepid apology to those who love America and were offended, the spokeswoman wrote.

The controversy comes after California Gov. Gavin Newsom launched a new July 4 ad attacking DeSantis, claiming that Freedom is under attack in Florida and Republican-run states alike.

Read More Civic Virtues as Moral Facts: Recovering the Other Half of Our Founding

Your Republican leaders, theyre banning books, Newsom says in voiceover of images of DeSantis, accusing Republican governors of making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors.

I urge all of you living in Florida to join the fight or join us in California, Newsom says in the ad, although the latest census data shows a mass exodus from California.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, California experienced a net loss of 261,902 people from the year between July 1, 2020 to July 1, 2021 alone. By contrast, Florida is the nations second largest gainer of population, adding 211,196 residents during the same period.
FDA Warns Against Use of Neck Floats After Death of Baby

Baby neck floats are under fire again after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned against their use in water therapies following the death of one baby and hospitalization of another in unsupervised usage.

Do not use baby neck floats for water therapy intervention, the FDA wrote in a media statement released on June 28.

Especially with babies who have developmental delays or special needs, such as spina bifida, spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) type 1, Down syndrome, or cerebral palsy. The use of these products can lead to death or serious injury.

Though these events are rare, the FDA advised that they can happen, with both of the cases happening when a caregiver was not directly monitoring the baby.

Neck floats are inflatable plastic rings that can be placed around babies necks and allow them to float freely in the water.

Parents and caregivers use these products while bathing a baby or when babies are swimming, and also during physical therapy for babies with developmental delays or disabilities. Some floats are marketed for babies as young as 2 weeks old, as well as for premature babies.

The agency said companies are marketing their neck floats for water therapy, claiming improvement in motion, muscle tone, lung capacity, and better sleep, among many other benefits.

However, these products have not received official approval or clearance as physical therapy tools, nor has their effectiveness or safety been fully established.

Not the First Warning

It is not the first-time baby neck floats are under fire from public health scrutiny.

In 2017, health experts warned against the use of baby neck floats.

Associate Professor Kyran Quinlan of Rush University Medical Center and former chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Council on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention, called them potential death traps.

Neck floats for babies scare me to death, and I hope they scare parents, he said on WDSU.

These are potential death traps  to have your precious baby one poorly sealed seam away from going under at the pool is frightening.

Other experts also warned against air-filled swimming aids, including armbands, as any deflation takes away their buoyancy. The media scrutinized Otteroo, a major baby neck float company for recalling 3,000 neck floats in 2015 due to 54 reports of deflation.

Though the FDA warned that the benefits of a baby neck float as a form of water therapy have not been established, some studies have suggested the use of the companys neck floats improved motor skills in babies and have potential as a form of aquatic therapy. One studys author later became a consultant for Otteroo after publishing the paper.

The Otteroo website also posts anecdotal testimony from parents who report seeing physical improvements in their premature and developmentally impaired babies development since using Otteroo as water therapy.

In response to the negative media attention on Otteroo and other baby neck floats in 2017, the company released a statement in 2018 stating that the product is not a death trap and not dangerous, but also that the product is not a babysitter, nor a life-saving device, and that it is not for swimming and did not give neck strain.

The Epoch Times contacted Otteroo for a comment.
Sweden's Foreign Minister Ann Linde (R), and Finland's Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto (L) attend a news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, after signing their countries' accession protocols at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels on July 5, 2022. (Yves Herman/Reuters)

Finland, Sweden Sign to Join NATO but Need Ratification

BRUSSELSNATOs 30 allies signed an accession protocol for Finland and Sweden on Tuesday, allowing them to join the nuclear-armed alliance once parliaments ratify the decision, the most significant expansion of the alliance since the 1990s.

The signing at NATO headquarters follows a deal with Turkey at last weeks NATO summit in Madrid, where Ankara lifted its veto on the Nordic membership bids following assurances that both countries would do more to fight terrorism.

This is truly a historic moment, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said alongside the foreign ministers of the two countries. With 32 nations around the table, we will be even stronger.

The protocol means Helsinki and Stockholm can participate in NATO meetings and have greater access to intelligence but will not be protected by the NATO defense clausethat an attack on one ally is an attack against alluntil ratification. That is likely to take up to a year.

It was at an allied summit in Madrid in 1997 that Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic were invited to join, in the first of several waves of NATOs eastern expansionseen as an achievement for the West but which has angered Russia.

Moscow has repeatedly warned both countries against joining NATO. On March 12, the Russian foreign ministry said there will be serious military and political consequences.

Stoltenberg urged allies to swiftly ratify and assured the two Nordic countries of NATOs support in the meantime.

The security of Finland and Sweden is important for our alliance, including during the ratification process, he said.

Many allies have already made clear commitments to Finlands and Swedens security, and NATO has increased our presence in the region, including with more exercises.

Turkish Warning

NATOs ambassadors and Stoltenberg stood together for a photo in which the foreign ministers of Sweden and Finland held up their signed protocols, before breaking out into applause.

Thank you for your support! Now the process of ratification by each of the allies begins, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said on Twitter.

However, Turkeys President Tayyip Erdogan warned last Thursday at the NATO summit that Finland and Sweden must first keep promises made to Turkey in a deal or ratification will not be sent to the Turkish parliament.

After weeks of diplomacy, Erdogan and his Finnish and Swedish counterparts agreed measures to allow the two Nordic countries to overcome a Turkish veto that Ankara imposed in May due to its concerns about terrorism.

According to a signed memorandum, Finland and Sweden pledged not to support the Kurdish militant PKK and YPG groups or the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, which Ankara labels a terrorist organization.

By Robin Emmott and Sabine Siebold
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear speaks onstage during the 2022 Concordia Lexington SummitDay 2 at Lexington Marriott City Center in Lexington, Ky., on April 8, 2022. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images for Concordia )

Flags to Be Lowered in Kentucky After 3 Officers Killed: Governor

FRANKFORT, Ky.Flags at Kentucky state buildings will be lowered to half-staff Tuesday morning in honor of three officers who were killed when a man with a rifle opened fire on police attempting to serve a warrant, Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday.

Flags will remain at half-staff until sunset Thursday in remembrance of Floyd County sheriffs deputy and Martin City fire Chief William Petry, Prestonsburg police Capt. Ralph Frasure, and Prestonsburg police Officer Jacob Chaffins, Beshear said in a news release.

The three were killed Thursday night in an hourslong standoff at a home in Allen, a small town in the hills of Appalachia in eastern Kentucky. A German shepherd police dog named Drago was also killed and several other law enforcement officials were wounded in the shooting, officials said.

Lance Storz, 49, was taken into custody after the shooting, authorities said.

Lance Storz. (Pike County, Kentucky, jail via AP)

Floyd County Sheriff John Hunt told reporters Friday that four deputies initially responded to the home, then called for backup when they were shot at. The sheriff said Storz surrendered after negotiations that included his family members. Hunt had told local media the deputies were serving a court-issued warrant Thursday evening related to a domestic violence situation.

Storz was arraigned Friday. He pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder of a police officer and was jailed on a $10 million bond. One of the charges was originally attempted murder of a police officer, but a judge said at the hearing that was upgraded to murder after Chaffins died.

Hunt told news outlets Sunday that officers were performing a welfare check after a call from a relative of Storzs wife about possible abuse. Floyd County Judge-Executive Robbie Williams said the officers did not know they were walking into an ambush and the shooter had a field of fire of more than 200 yards (180 meters), the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.

There was one single-lane road leading into his home and the home was in an elevated position. This created a nearly unbreachable position, Williams said.

The officers performed valiantly, and did everything in their power to neutralize the suspect and attempt a surrender, Williams said.

Upon surrender, the reality and magnitude of what just occurred began to sink in and our community was going to be forever changed, Williams said.

Funeral services have been set for this week for the slain officers, Beshear said.
Chicago police work at the scene of a shooting near East Chicago Avenue and North State Street in the Near North Side neighborhood, in a file photo LaRiviere/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

Fourth of July Weekend Shootings in Chicago Leave 62 Injured, 10 Dead

More than 70 people were shot from Friday until Tuesday morning over the Fourth of July holiday weekend in Chicago, police said.

Authorities confirmed that 10 people died and 62 people were wounded in separate incidents, according to local media reports.

In the latest fatal incident, a man was shot and killed and two others were wounded at a party in the Woodlawn neighborhood on Tuesday morning at around 2:50 a.m. The male, 31, was shot six times and was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, police told NBC Chicago.

Authorities said that two males were shooting at each other at the 2200 block of South Wentworth Avenue at around 10:50 p.m. A 24-year-old unidentified woman was shot in the torso and was later pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital, officials told the Chicago Sun-Times and ABC7.

The incident left a 42-year-old injured, and an official said shes in good condition at a nearby hospital, the paper reported. One of the suspects, a 38-year-old male, was shot in the buttocks and is in critical condition in Northwestern Memorial Hospital, authorities said.

Early on Sunday, a 35-year-old male was shot dead at around 3 a.m. while in a vehicle in Brighton Park, officials said. The male was in the passenger seat as a female driver was driving a car on the 3800 block of South Kedzie Avenue when he was hit in the neck by gunfire.

And on Friday, authorities said a 26-year-old male was shot and killed in the South Sides Englewood district. The male was outside about 5:45 p.m. in the 6500 block of South Wolcott Avenue when someone approached and shot him.

On Sunday, two people were injured and one persona 24-year-old maledied in a shooting at Grand Crossing on the South Side, police said. They were shot in the backyard of a house in the 7000 block of South Harper Avenue at around 5:30 a.m. local time.

During last years Fourth of July weekend in Chicago, 19 people were killed and over 100 were injured. And in 2020, 79 people were shot, including 15 deaths, while 68 people were shot and five died in 2019.

North of Chicago, in Highland Park, a 22-year-old male was taken into custody for allegedly shooting and killing seven people and injuring two dozen more during a Fourth of July parade Monday. Officials have not established a motive in the case.

According to the Giffords Law Center, a group that supports gun control measures, Illinois has among the strictest gun laws in the United States. The group gave the state an A- grade in 2021, alongside New York state, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Connecticut.

Chicago, meanwhile, has even stricter gun rules. For example, in 2013, Chicago, Cook County, and several Chicago-area suburbs like Highland Park banned firearms that they have defined as assault weapons.
Save BeesSave Vets is the motto of the charity Hives for Heroes, and they do exactly that.

While bees and veterans may sound like an unlikely pairing, founder and CEO Steve Jimenez discovered theyre a perfect match for helping both two-legged and six-legged creatures.

A major problem among veterans is the suicide rate. Jimenez noted there are more vets who have died by suicide than were killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

When you look at numbers, like 20 to 22 a day for the suicides, we consider that an epidemic, he told The Epoch Times.

Jimenez described two aspects of military service: One is familynot in the genetic sense but in the emotional senseand the other is mission.

Theres a culture of caring for your brother and sister to your left and right. And you have a clear and defined mission: defend the United States and/or anything that your commanding officer has shared. So this is the mission of our unit; this is what we do, he said.

But often upon discharge, veterans lose their sense of family and no longer feel they have a mission. This is sometimes combined with mental or physical health issues.

And this is where Hives for Heroes comes in. The charity provides veterans with a family atmosphere and sense of purpose through beekeeping.

Bees and the Military Have a Lot in Common

One may find it difficult to connect the dots from bees to vets, so Jimenez laid out the social order of bees.

On the bee side, there are clear rules, theres a clear hierarchy, there are clear job descriptions, and they all inherently know them, he said.

Jimenez described how young bees with a specific job will get promoted to another job and then another before the end of their 40-day life cycles.

Sounds a lot like the military.

In keeping with the bee-and-military hierarchy theme, Hives for Heroes calls its first-year beekeepers newBEES, the second-year worker bees, and the third-year mentors.

USMC veteran, founder, and CEO of Hives for Heroes, Steve Jimenez (L), with USMC veteran and director of service, Javier Delgado (C), and Brett Harmeling, of the board of advisors, at the apiary at TechnipFMC in Houston. (Courtesy of Hives for Heroes)

Providing Purpose and Connection

Jimenez knows that veterans often gravitate toward bars, where theyll spend a lot of money drinking and commiserating with each other, sometimes leading to DWI arrests. He believes no one benefits from this scenario, especially the families of the vets.

Through Hives for Heroes, veterans start getting outside of the bar and into the bee yard, Jimenez said.

Those bees become the larger purpose and now you have friends to do that with, he said. So now you have the mission and purpose that [you] used to have in the military and you have the relationships you used to have in the military, all toward a common goal.

The charity is headquartered in Houston, but there are newBEES and mentors paired up throughout the country. When Jimenez started it three years ago, he had about 20 pairs. In year two it grew to about 350, and this year he has about 1,125.

In the past week, we had 30 applications, he said.

Much of the work is done one-on-one (a mentor with a newBEE), but the organization also holds large events through corporate sponsors. These include education (usually via video) on topics such as honey bottling and and hive building.

One sponsor, TechnipFMC, a Houston-based energy company, partnered with Hives for Heroes on two recent events: the harvesting and bottling of honey that was given out to employees, and leadership development training.

TechnipFMC is about a $20 billion company and we had their entire C-level [corporate executives] for almost two hours, Jimenez said of the latter event.

Hives for Heroes also participates in events organized by others, such as National Honey Bee Day (the third Saturday in August) and World Bee Day (May 20).

Its at events such as these, as well as non-corporate events the charity organizes, where the family aspect sparkles.

Were family friendly, meaning spouses and kids are welcome at every event, Jimenez said.

Founder and CEO of Hives for Heroes Steve Jimenez (C) and Stan Gore give a lesson about bees at the Houston Rodeo and Livestock Show earlier this year. (Courtesy of Hives for Heroes)

Conservation

According to the YouTube video The Death of Honey Bees Explained, a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder has led to the rapid decline of honey bees throughout the world. Hives for Heroes is doing its part to fix that.

Our goals are to conserve and grow the honey bee as a pollinator, Jimenez said. One of about every three spoonfuls of food that you put in your mouth is pollinated by a bee.

Its really cool that the veteran, at a hyper-local level, is contributing to the overall ecology and the overall environment.

A Life Saved

Jimenez served in the Marines, where he reached the rank of captain. In 2018, seven years after he returned to civilian life, he found himself with a shotgun in his mouth, on the verge of becoming one of that days 22 veteran suicides.

Someone close to him called the police, and the officer who responded had also once served as a Marine and was able to save Jimenez from himself.

Soon after, a friend from a military nonprofit Jimenez was part of invited him to a beekeeping event, prefacing it by saying the bee is her spirit animal.

Jimenez was hesitant at first but went, not knowing what to expect. He suited up in beekeeping gear and opened the lid, which released the bees. He found himself being in the moment.

All this chaos actually becomes calm and is very familiar to veterans, especially combat veterans, he said.

This experience, combined with the growing need to help vets who find themselves at rock bottom as he once was, led to the start of Hives for Heroes.

An Active Role in Prevention

Jimenez knows that he and his volunteers arent the calvary thats going to show up at the last minute and stop a vet from committing suicide.

Were actively preventing suicide, he said. We want to get out in front of suicide, so that thought doesnt come.

This isnt a beekeeping organization; its a people organization, he said. It just so happens bees are awesome.

Success Story

Ron Ray of Trafalgar, Indiana, is a 10-year Army combat veteran from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

After his return to civilian life, the former staff sergeant found himself battling alcoholism and addicted to the painkillers prescribed by Veterans Affairs for combat injuries.

Soon the prescriptions werent enough, and he sought out other suppliers for pills. One questionable pill led to an overdose.

Ray, who connected with Jimenez a few years ago, gives much of the credit for his current sobriety to Hives for Heroes.

The bees  they keep me clean; they keep me sober, he told The Epoch Times.

Ray discovered an unexpected bonus from beekeeping: The swelling from bee stings, or possibly the venom, actually relieves pressure caused by his combat injuries.

His experience with Hives for Heroes inspired him to start his own company, ARK Apiary, where he removes hives from the walls of peoples homes and businesses. For his first job, he removed 47 hives from one apartment complex.

It isnt just removal he does, but also relocation of the hives to either a hospital yard or his own apiary.

ARK Apiary also makes and sells lip balms, candles, jarred honey, and other products made from the honey his bees produce.

Ray has mentored two newBEES and was recently assigned his third. So far its been working great, he said. Long-lasting relationships far beyond just beekeeping.

Ray and his first newBEE from more than a year ago talk on a daily basis, and Ray still talks to his own mentor. Its just becoming a bigger and bigger family every day, he said.

With all the success Hives for Heroes has had in its three years, one might say, Its the bees knees.
China's leader Xi Jinping (C) arrives with Hong Kong's incoming Chief Executive John Lee (L) in Hong Kong on July 1, 2022, (Selim Chtayti/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Hong Kong Lawmaker Who Took Photo With Chinas Xi Tests Positive for COVID-19

A Hong Kong lawmaker who met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a rare visit to the city last week said hes tested positive for COVID-19.

Steven Ho, a member of Hong Kongs largest pro-Beijing party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), confirmed he was infected with COVID-19 on July 2, according to a statement on his Facebook page.

Ho said he tested negative on June 30, the day he and other over 100 Hong Kong politicians met Xi.

I didnt just say hello to the chairman, but also said, Thank you for your hard work, chairman, the politician wrote in a June 30 post on Facebook. He nodded to me, and was so amiable.

According to a photo released by Hong Kong authorities, the 42-year-old was standing two rows behind the top leader of the Chinese Communist Party. Everyone was wearing a mask.

Xi, who hadnt left mainland China since early 2020, arrived in Hong Kong on June 30. The rare visit was to mark the 25th anniversary of the former British colonys handover to CCPs rule and swear in the citys new leader, John Lee, a former police officer handpicked by Beijing.

Ho said he didnt attend the swearing-in ceremony on July 1 after returning an uncertain COVID-19 test that day.

Chinas leader Xi Jinping leaves the podium following his speech in Hong Kong on July 1, 2022, (Selim Chtayti/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Ramped-Up Epidemic Protocols

Ahead of Xis arrival, thousands of local officials, foreign representatives, and a handful of foreign journalists who were scheduled to meet Xi were ordered to take nucleic acid tests every day and undergo a week-long hotel quarantine as part of the COVID-19 precautions.

Another politician, Tam Yiu-chung, the citys sole delegate to Beijings rubber-stamp legislature, was absent from all events after returning positive results during hotel quarantine.

The communist regime has implemented a strict zero-COVID policy that aimed to eliminate every infection by mandatory quarantine and screening in both mainland and Hong Kong, running counter to a global trend of trying to co-exist with the virus.

The Chinese leader is seeking to secure an unprecedented third term in office at an important party conclave this autumn.

During last weeks visit, Xi was in Hong Kong on Thursday and Friday but stayed overnight in neighboring Shenzhen. His whereabouts at this time, and the reasons why he may have chosen Shenzhen, have not been officially confirmed.

Reuters contributed to the report.
With a global recession predicted within the next 612 months (some say were already in one), we look at not only the financial hardship economic downturns bring, but also how they can often be used to expand the role of government in our lives.

Stephen Moore, acclaimed economist and former economic adviser to the Trump White House, joins Fresh Look America to explain how big governments big spending is devouring our freedom. Moore reflects on the vision the Founding Fathers had for the American economy and contrasts that with what hes seeing in Washington today.

Dont miss this unique insight into the state of America today.

* Click the Save button below the video to access it later on My List.

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How to Model Fallacy, According to the Lancet

Commentary

There is supposed to be a clear line between medical publishing and propaganda. No less so than in the pages of the Lancet, previously considered a relative bastion of integrity in publishing. Honesty in medical publishing, meaning publication on the basis of transparent rigorous review and impartiality, is of particular importance to medicine and public health. The outcomes of such publications contribute to saving or killing people.

In 2020 the Lancet published an apparently fraudulent study discrediting the use of hydroxychloroquine in the management of COVID-19. While this was later withdrawn, it should not have passed first glance of a serious editor, as the data published by a previously unknown institution could not be credibly collated in the timeframe concerned.

A Lancet commission to investigate the origins of SARS-CoV-2 included people who had direct conflict of interest, as they would potentially be culpable if its findings revealed a lab-based origin. This followed the publication of a letter stating that a lab-release origin of SARS-CoV-2 was a conspiracy theory and misinformation, despite the first cases being reported within a few miles of the Wuhan Institute of Virology where research on SARS-like viruses was being performed, hundreds of miles from the habitat of the putative zoonotic hosts.

The Lancet again apparently missed the obvious conflict of interest in this letters authorship until forced to confront it.

Together with the Lancets unquestioning acceptance of mass vaccination in countries with very low mortality and high competing priorities, and its pushing of zero-Covid in the context of a global spread with no transmission-blocking interventions, the journals poor history on COVID-19 does suggest an intentional bias.

Modeling Fantasy for Profit

Last week, the Lancet published a modeling study by Oliver Watson and others from Imperial College London, funded by, among others, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This predictive model from Imperial College suggests that COVID-19 vaccination introduced at the end of 2020 saved 14.4 to 19.8 million lives in the subsequent 12 months. A summary is provided here. The Imperial College modeling team previously massively overstated anticipated COVID-19 deaths in 2020.

Models should pass basic credibility criteria to be published, based on plausibility. Alternatively, a lack of coherence with real-world data or known biology should be stated. For reasons upon which one can only speculate, the Lancet again seems not to have actually assessed the credibility of the paper prior to publication. This matters, as others who lack an apparent basic understanding of scientific process, such as The Economist and various commentators on social media, then disseminate the models predictions as fact.

People can die when public health is twisted in this way.

Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 commenced in late 2020, and significant vaccination rates were not achieved in most populations until at least a few months into 2021. In a respiratory virus outbreak the most vulnerable, most likely to die, are likely to be overrepresented in mortality in year one. However, this first year did not produce anything like the mortality claimed to have been saved by the vaccines in 2021. Lockdowns and other nonpharmaceutical interventions dont account for this.

Post-infection immunity is effective in mitigating COVID-19, and more so than vaccination alone. Serological surveys indicate that most people gained post-infection immunity by mid- to late-2021. As infection rates are higher than vaccination rates for much of the worlds population, post-infection immunity would be expected to play a larger role than vaccination in reducing subsequent mortality. The African continent, with the lowest vaccination rate, has the lowest mortality ratea multi-factorial relationship but one that should have given the Lancet, The Economist, and any thinking person pause for thought.

One could argue that vaccination was more targeted to the highly vulnerable and so disproportionately impactfulbut this would run against the Lancet papers claim that higher vaccination rates would save even more people. The vaccine is not transmission-blocking, so the vulnerable minority account for nearly all possible vaccine impact.

The suggestion by Watson et al. that all-cause mortality can be used as a proxy for COVID-19 also runs foul of the evidence in two areas:

Firstly, randomized controlled trials of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines show a small excess all-cause mortality in the vaccinated group over the placebo. This alone makes a substantial reduction in overall mortality through vaccination unlikely, with adverse events possibly promoting non-COVID-19 mortality.

Secondly, a large increase in all-cause mortality is associated with, and expected from, lockdown measures. This is evidenced by rising malaria and tuberculosis, reduced childhood vaccination, and over 75 million added people in extreme poverty. Poverty raises mortality, killing infants in particular. UNICEF estimated 228,000 child lockdown deaths in the 6 countries of South Asia in 2020 alone, and when extrapolated across sub-Saharan Africa and through 2021 this is a lot of dead children. So lockdown deaths, which are not from COVID-19, comprise a large part of excess mortality.

Modeling or reporting COVID-19 mortality or lives saved raises a further issue that the Lancet and the wider media have consistently overlooked. COVID-19 deaths are concentrated in the elderly (age >75 years) with multiple comorbidities. This is the population sub-group most likely to die in the next months or year.

A child saved from malaria is likely to gain 70 years of life, while a person saved from COVID-19 is likely to gain one year or less. While that year is important, relatively few would equate it to their grandchilds potential loss. It also means the term saved requires considerable nuance, as those that Watson et al. claim were saved by the vaccines in the first half of 2021 are likely to have died by now from something else.

This is why metrics incorporating life-years lost or disabled were standard up to 2020, including in the Lancets lucrative partnership with IHME on the Global Burden of Disease assessments funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. To abandon these metrics when a pandemic appears that overwhelmingly targets those with the shortest life expectancy is extraordinary.

Weighing Lives and Profit

Tens of billions of dollars are being generated for large pharmaceutical companies and their investors through mass vaccination for COVID-19. The Lancet is a business, and as such is dependent on pleasing these dominant influencers of medical research. As diversion of resources from diseases of higher burden to mass-vaccination of young immune populations in low-income countries is demonstrably harmful to overall health through resource diversion and general impoverishment, this presents difficulties for the Lancet.

Killing children en masse is a bad look for a medical journal, but the evidence indicates this resource diversion will do, and the Lancet clearly feels inclined to support it. When a major Lancet partner faces significant income loss if the mass-vaccination paradigm is questioned, standing on principle and ethics would have taken courage and incurred risk.

This is the ethical dilemma that the high level of private investment in public health has brought. Pharma investors sponsor global health schools, research, modeling and the public health institutions, including the WHO, which use their outputs. For-profit publishing houses must be aligned with these funding sources to thrive.

The losers in all this are the populations who have commodity (i.e. vaccine) equity forced on them at the expense of health equity and the freedom to choose. As malaria, malnutrition, and other diseases of poverty increase, public health and its medical journals must focus elsewhere on areas profitable to their funders.

Succumbing to conflicts of interest is hardly new in human society, and humans are excellent at justifying it. This is why we need external oversight in areas where such conflicts can cause great harm. New rules on conflict of interest and transparency are needed in medical publishing, including reforms to ensure transparent peer review and open access to rebuttals of published papers. For-profit institutions cannot be the main arbiter in determining what health information reaches the public.

For now, though, it is difficult to see a path to improvement unless the publishers themselves value integrity, and the journalists interpreting them value truth. We have allowed vested interests to dominate public health discourse because we value their money more than the printed word. This matters because honesty in medical publishing determines the quality of life, and likelihood of death, of people. It is not an abstract problem.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
A study led by the University of Queensland (UQ) has found that humpback whales can learn complex songs from whales in other regions.

Led by Dr. Jenny Allen at UQs School of Veterinary Science, researchers discovered that New Caledonian humpback whales were able to learn songs from their Australian east coast counterparts with great accuracy.

This really indicates a level of cultural transmission beyond any observed non-human species, she said in a UQ release on Friday.

The study observed male humpback whale song patterns from each region between 2009 and 2015, with a focus on how culture is transmitted between the two populations.

Both the number of sounds the whales made and the length of the sound patterns were taken into account to determine the level of complexity.

Dr. Jenny Allen of the University of Queensland out in the field. (Image supplied by the University of Queensland)

By listening to the Australian humpback population, we were able to see if the songs changed in any way when sung by the New Caledonian whales, Allen said.

Allen told The Epoch Times that the whales were able to learn the songs in their entirety, without changing anything or leaving anything out, and on the occasions when something was omitted, it was a whole chunk.

Whale songs are generally made up of four to seven chunks, and they would either learn these directly or remove a chunk and substitute their own in its place, she said.

Allen also noted that each year they observed the whales, they sang a different song, confirming that humpback whales can learn a complete song pattern from another population, no matter how difficult or complex.

The study findings indicate that whales are learning songs from each other on shared migration routes like New Zealand or feeding grounds such as Antarctica.

A humpback whale jumps out of the water in the western Antarctic peninsula on March 05, 2016. (EITAN ABRAMOVICH/AFP via Getty Images)

Its rare for this degree of cultural exchange to be documented on such a large scale in a non-human species, Allen said.

Allen told The Epoch Times only male humpbacks sing these songs, and researchers are pretty confident the songs are related to reproduction.

We think the songs are to either demonstrate the male is a formidable opponent or an ideal mate, she said. It may be more of an embellishment to show off their good singing.

Better Understanding Leads to Better Conservation

Although humpback whales are no longer on the endangered species list, Allen stressed their populations still need to be monitored and carefully managed, a task potentially aided by these findings.

Having an in-depth understanding of a species is known to greatly improve the efficacy of conservation and management methods, she said.

We now have a more holistic picture of the behaviours, movements and interactions of different humpback whale populations, including how they transmit culture.

She went on to say that this knowledge better equips humans to protect whales against the many threats they face as the planet continues to change.

Whaling throughout the 1900s brought the humpback close to extinction, but following a ban on commercial whaling, the species has made a strong comeback, with populations in some areas reaching 93 percent of their pre-hunting numbers, Marine-Mammals.info reported.

However, as Allen pointed out, the report states that humpbacks still face threats such as those brought about by fishing activities and shipping, and some conservationists are concerned that the delisting happened too soon.

The UQ research was conducted in collaboration with Operation Cetaces from New Caledonia and is published in Scientific Reports.
Illinois Town in Mourning After Mass Shooting at July 4 Parade

HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.Morgan Moss, a lifelong resident of Highland Park, Illinois, couldnt sleep the night of July 4. On the morning of July 5, he went back downtown and quietly walked around the crime scene.

He was in the Fourth of July parade driving a company bus when a gunman began randomly shooting at the crowd from a rooftop. After opening the bus door to let a dozen parade-goers in, he took a side road and drove them to a safe location.

Later, a coworker showed him footage of a victim killed at the parade and that image stayed with him. The massacre claimed seven lives and left dozens more wounded.

An abandoned bike at the crime scene in downtown Highland Park, Ill. on July 5, 2022. (Cara Ding/The Epoch Times)

It shocked him, even more, when he learned who the suspect wasRobert Crimo III, the son of a well-known former business owner and mayoral candidate in the close-knit, affluent town. Crimo, who was taken into custody without incident, has been charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, local officials said on July 5.

As time progresses, wounds heal, but we must learn from mistakes, too, Moss told The Epoch Times. Im talking about doing something about young men who keep shooting up places across America time and time again.

He wants more mental health support for these young men, as well as more focused monitoring of social media to prevent tragedies like what happened in his town. Crimo had posted violent content online before the attack.

Jamie Draper (L) and Joanna Dolins stand in downtown Highland Park, Ill., on July 5, 2022. (Cara Ding/The Epoch Times)

Jamie Draper and Joanna Dolins, both Jewish residents, told The Epoch Times that its heartbreaking to see such a tragedy in their hometown.

Its the first time that a mass shooting has erupted in this affluent town north of Chicago. About a third of the towns population is Jewish.

Here, almost everybody knows everybody, and kids grow up with all the resources and advantages. Nowadays, it seems like anything could happen any time in any place, Draper said.

The shooting has changed him a bit, Draper said. Now, when he goes out, hes more alert about potential dangers.

The suspect got into trouble breaking the law before, and people in town know about that, he said. I just hope that more will be done to prevent things like this from happening again.

The suspect is believed to have escaped via an alleyway behind commercial buildings in downtown Highland Park, Ill. on July 4, 2022. (Cara Ding/The Epoch Times)

He supported the towns ban on rifles (such as AR-15s) in 2013. The ban faced legal challenges all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately declined to hear the challenge in 2015.

Sixteen-year-old Stephanie Diaz told The Epoch Times that she thinks more gun restrictions would help.

This is a very safe town. Nothing ever happened. It just goes to show that this isnt a problem of Highland Park or Chicago. This is a problem of the United States of America, she said.

Dave, a 63-year-old resident who declined to give his last name, said that he thinks its more important to focus on mental health issues than guns.

When I grew up, we didnt have internet or social media. But now kids get to see all kinds of ugly things online, and sometimes it is even hard for their parents to know whats going on, he said.

His daughter went to the same high schoolHighland Park High Schoolas Crimo, who later dropped out, Dave said.

Benny Roberts stands in downtown Highland Park, Ill., on July 5, 2022. (Cara Ding/The Epoch Times)

Benny Roberts, a visitor from northern Indiana, made a cross and carried it to Highland Park on July 5.

People are talking about, Well, we should just put on more gun laws,' he said Well, its not even about the gun laws. They need to put Jesus back in their hearts, they need to put Jesus back in the families, in their household.
In Blow to Democrats, Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Republican Appointee

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Republican-appointed member of the Wisconsin Board of Natural Resources, which determines policies for the states Department of Natural Resources (DNR), thwarting efforts from Democrats to remove him from the post.

In 2015, the Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, appointed Dr. Fred Prehn, a dentist and businessman from Wausau, to the DNR board for a six-year term that expired on May 1, 2021. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers appointed Sandy Naas to the board as Prehns replacement. However, Prehn refused to step down, thereby blocking Naas from taking the seat.

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul eventually filed a lawsuit to remove Prehn from the post. In September 2021, a judge from Dane County ruled in favor of Prehn, forcing Kaul to take the matter to the state Supreme Court. In a 43 ruling on June 29, the Supreme Court sided with Prehn.

The expiration of Prehns term on the DNR Board does not create a vacancy. Prehn lawfully retains his position on the DNR Board as a holdover. Therefore, the Governor cannot make a provisional appointment to replace Prehn, wrote Chief Justice Annette Ziegler in the majority opinion.

Until his successor is nominated by the Governor and confirmed by the senate, Prehn may be removed by the Governor only for cause. This conclusion complies with the plain language of the Wisconsin Statutes and does not raise constitutional concerns. The States complaint is dismissed with prejudice.

Evers criticized the Supreme Court decision, calling it an erosion of democracy at the hands of Republicans in this state, according to the Wisconsin Examiner.

The Term Argument

The state Supreme Court decision has triggered a fight over the concept of terms and vacancies with regard to appointments.

Most people on the street would say when a term  expires, theres an opening. The Supreme Court has said that commonsense understanding is not right, University of WisconsinMadison political science professor Barry Burden told The Associated Press. The ruling raises the question of why is there a term at all, he added.

At the court, Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Gabe Johnson-Karp insisted that term appointments for DNR board members do not include a holdover period. As such, the expiration of Prehns term means that a vacancy was created, he argued, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.

Justice Rebecca Bradley disputed this line of thinking, stating that there is no declaration by the Legislature in the statutes that the expiration of an appointed term automatically creates a vacancy.

Justice Pat Roggensack pointed out that the only reason the issue is under debate is due to the fact that the governor appointed Naas to serve on the DNR board. However, the governor cant really make an appointment into a position thats not vacant, he said, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.

Prehn has argued that the 1964 Thompson v. Gibson decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court allows him to stay in his post until the state Senate, which is currently under control of Republicans, confirms his successor.

In the 1964 case, the court allowed a state auditor to continue in his post since no replacement had been confirmed.
A view of the Fourth of July Parade in Huntington Beach, Calif., on July 4, 2022. (Alex Lee/The Epoch Times)

Independence Day Parade Returns to Huntington Beach After 2-Year Hiatus

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif.Thousands of residents gathered on the streets of Surf City on July 4 to welcome back its annual parade after a two-year pause for the pandemic.

The Huntington Beach parade is the longest-running Fourth of July parade west of the Mississippi and has become a popular Orange County tradition. This summer it returned for its 118th year.

Every year I look forward to the Fourth of July in Surf City, and I am confident that there will be something here for everyone to enjoy over the long holiday weekend, Mayor Barbara Delgleize told The Epoch Times.

Huntington Beach Mayor Barbara Delgleize participates in the Fourth of July Parade in Huntington Beach, Calif., on July 4, 2022. (Alex Lee/The Epoch Times)

The parade stretched approximately 2.5 miles long and featured over 100 different groups including elected officials, military veterans, public safety personnel, marching bands, community groups, and others.

The parade route began on Pacific Coast Highway and 9th Street, went to Main Street, and proceeded through downtown and residential areas, ending just past Yorktown Avenue.

A view of the Fourth of July Parade in Huntington Beach, Calif., on July 4, 2022. (Alex Lee/The Epoch Times)

Its nice to see everybody come out and enjoy Huntington Beach, said Jake Saenz, a resident of Corona, told NTD.

Don Johnson, a resident of Huntington Beach since 1966, said he enjoyed seeing different groups and all the patriots come together.

A view of the Fourth of July Parade in Huntington Beach, Calif., on July 4, 2022. (Alex Lee/The Epoch Times)

We love that we see all of our friends, and we just love everybody coming out to support America and our freedom, he said to NTD.

Jack Rice, a member of the veteran organization American Legion Post 133, said the group invited World War II veterans to participate in the parade. He said its significant to have them recognized for their service.

WWII veterans participate in the Fourth of July Parade in Huntington Beach, Calif., on July 4, 2022. (Alex Lee/The Epoch Times)

Its very emotional for us, because we finally get some recognition, and being veterans, the sacrifices that were made by these people are very special, said Rice to NTD.

One of the largest groups in the parade was led by a group of adherents of the spiritual discipline Falun Gong, a practice of meditative exercises with an emphasis on moral character that originated in China. Their bright yellow shirts and colorful banners made them stand out as they marched toward Yorktown Avenue.

Falun Dafa practitioners participate in the Fourth of July Parade in Huntington Beach, Calif., on July 4, 2022. (Alex Lee/The Epoch Times)

Millions of Falun Gong practitioners were arrested and tortured after the Chinese Communist Party launched a large-scale persecution in July 1999 with the aim of crushing the spiritual movement.

Alina Jin, a Falun Gong practitioner who dressed up as a heavenly maiden, said she hopes the parade can help to raise awareness of the religious persecution against Falun Gong practitioners.

Were representing Falun Dafa being truthful, compassionate, and tolerant. We also want the world to know that the persecution is [still] happening in China, Jin told NTD.

Falun Dafa practitioners participate in the Fourth of July Parade in Huntington Beach, Calif., on July 4, 2022. (Alex Lee/The Epoch Times)

Independence Day in Huntington Beach will close out with a fireworks show presented by Robert Mayer, a long-time resident and major developer in Huntington Beach, and his family. The show will take place by Huntington Beach Pier at 9 p.m. and is free for all to watch.
Undated family handout photo of Jermaine Baker, who was shot dead by police near Wood Green Crown Court on Dec. 11, 2015. (Baker family/PA)

Inquiry Says Unarmed Black Man Shot Lawfully by UK Police

A public inquiry has concluded the shooting by police of a young black man in London in 2015 was lawful but the operation itself was seriously flawed.

Jermaine Baker, 28, was part of a gang who were planning to spring a notorious gangster from a prison van en route to a crown court in north London.

On Dec. 11, 2015, the gang was plotting to free Izzet Eren, a Turkish gangster from north London, from a prison van as it took him to a hearing at Wood Green Crown Court.

Scotland Yard had been tipped off and the bid to free him was aborted after Baker was shot dead by police as he waited in a stolen Audi A3 car near the courthouse.

Baker was unarmed but a replica Uzi submachine gun was found in the car.

The inquirys report, which was published on Tuesday (pdf), said there were a number of failures in Operation Ankaathe polices attempt to intercept and stop the escape plotwhich included failure properly to consider any outcome other than armed interception, failure to engage with Her Majestys Prison and Probation Service about Izzet Erens escape risk, and failure to inform Serco, the company transporting Eren, of the escape plan.

Judge Clement Goldstone QC, who chaired the inquiry, also found the Operation Ankaa team had failed to keep proper records or to record briefings.

But he ruled the officer who shot Bakerwho has been granted anonymity and is known only as W80acted lawfully.

Police Officer Believed Baker Posed a Lethal Threat

He said: I have concluded that W80 shot Mr Baker because he honestly believed that Mr Baker posed a lethal threat and that it was reasonably necessary for him to shoot in order to defend himself.

The public inquiry considered the circumstances of W80s decision to discharge his weapon and also examined what happened after Baker received his fatal injuries.

Goldstone wrote: I have accepted W80s evidence that Mr Baker moved his hands in the direction of the bag that he was wearing. As a result of briefings received, W80 believed that the suspects in the car would be armed with weapons and might try to fight their way out of the Audi mission vehicle. I have accepted W80s evidence that he honestly believed that Mr Baker was not complying with the instruction to place his hands on the dashboard and that he was reaching for a firearm. W80 shot Mr Baker once.

Eren, 39, was one of the leaders of the Tottenham Turks gang, which had been involved in a long-running feud with its arch-rivals the Bombacilars (Bombers) from Hackney, leading to more than a dozen deaths since 2009.

He was eventually convicted and jailed for 21 years for firearms offences but was transferred back to Turkey in August 2019 to serve the rest of his sentence. He absconded from a Turkish jail a month later and remained a fugitive until May 2022 when he was captured in Moldova and extradited back to Britain.

Baker was one of three men waiting in a stolen Audi A6 to try to break inmate Eren out of a prison van.

Giving evidence at the inquiry last year, Bakers mother, Margaret Smith, said she felt the value of her sons life had been forgotten by police officers involved in the operation.

She said: This could happen to anyone. Jermaines life was exceptional and unusual in the way that it ended, but the story of being written off as a child could be told by so many black boys and young men.
Japan's Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi waits for a meeting at the Pentagon with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin May 4, 2022, in Washington. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Japan Is on the Front Lines of New Cold War, Researcher Warns

A well-known Japanese commentator has said that the world is in a Cold War situation which has Japan on the front lines.

Kohyu Nishimura, a research fellow with the Institute of Asian Strategic Intelligence, told The Epoch Times that Japan is in danger, but the Japanese people do not understand it clearly.

I think the world has entered a 21st-century version of the Cold War, Nishimura said.

In the past, during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, conflict over the Korean peninsular was the front line of the Cold War in East Asia, Nishimura said.

Today, 30 years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the structure of the Cold War has completely changed, he said.

Tensions in this new Cold War have been transferred to the Japanese archipelago. Places such as Okinawa and Taiwan, that is, the area along the large archipelago line, have been pushed to the forefront of this new Cold War.

The current problem is that Japanese nationals who are at the forefront do not clearly recognize the situation. Otherwise, the industrial chain should be withdrawn or transferred from communist China as soon as possible, and trade exchanges with China should be reduced on a large scale.

He said that at present, some Japanese companies have realized the danger and have taken action, but more companies have yet to wake up.

The Chinese Communist Partys (CCPs) inspectors (implying secret agents) have spread all over Japanese society, such as politics, business, administration, media, and elsewhere,  Nishimura said.

This restricts and constrains Japans actions against the CCP in many ways, he said. The term economic security has become popular recently, and Japan is really in danger.

Shangri-La Dialogue

Nishimuras comments follow a speech given by Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi at the Shangri-La Dialogue, also known as Asian Security Conference, held in Singapore on June 11.

Kishi said that there are potential dangers in the Indo-Pacific region similar to Russian military aggression as per Moscows invasion of Ukraine.

Kishi said in his speech that he once again recognized that, there is actually a country on earth that has really threatened to use nuclear weapons and use powerful military force to change the status quo unilaterally.

Japans Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi speaks at the Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore on June 11, 2022. (Roslan Rahman/AFP via Getty Images)

Considering China, which is stepping up its maritime activities, and North Korea, which is advancing nuclear and missile development, Kishi said there are potential dangers in the Indo-Pacific, similar to Russian aggression, adding that this international concern has become a broad consensus.

Kishi said Japan is at the front line to defend the rules-based international order. In order to fundamentally strengthen Japans defense capabilities, the Japanese government will secure a necessary defense budget.

He also said he saw that Beijing will not give up the possibility of using military force against Taiwan and building up its military power without transparency.

Countries that ignore the rules, take advantage of other countries crises through loans and other means, so the cooperation is not reciprocal, he said, alluding to the CCPs use of the The Belt and Road Initiative. Behind the generous funding is adding the host country to an unbearable debt burden.

Successive Action

Kyodo News reported on June 7 that the Ministry of Defense of Japan plans to create an integrated commander position and an integrated command to provide support for the unified organization of the countrys military forces.

According to the report, considering China has strengthened its maritime activities and responded to new security fields such as space and cyber, the Ministry of Defense believes it is necessary to create new positions focused on improving its defense forces mobility.

Sankei Shimbun reported on June 4 that the Japanese government plans for the first time to send a civilian official of the Ministry of Defense to Taiwan to strengthen its information-gathering capabilities due to Chinas increasingly aggressive military operations in the Taiwan Strait.

This is the second major change in the personnel of the Japanese Ministry of Defense in Taiwan after the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996 when Japan dispatched a retired self-defense officer to Taiwan to collect intelligence. Sankei Shimbun believes that Japans decision to send incumbent officials from the Ministry of Defense to Taiwan is a step forward in Japans security policy.

Chinas first home-built aircraft carrier sets out from the port of Dalian DSIC (Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co.) Shipyard for sea trials in Dalian, Liaoning Province of China on May 13, 2018. (Getty Images)

In May this year, Chinese military activity was frequently detected around Japan with the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning staying in waters south of Okinawa for about three weeks. Carrier-based fighters and helicopters took off and landed more than 300 sorties, while bombers flew twice over the area.

Koji Yamazaki, the leader of Military Attache of the Japanese Ministry of Defense and chief of staff, emphasized the sense of vigilance at a press conference held at the end of May, saying that this is an activity that the Liaoning has never done before, and it has a great impact on the overall security.

Japans Checks and Balances

Japanese commentator Nishimura believes that the countrys parliament and the Ministry of Defense should cooperate more closely, which he said is critical. In addition, Japans Self-Defense Forces should have more exchanges and cooperation with the Taiwanese military.

Actually, the 2+2 talks (that is, the Japan-U.S. Security Assurance Agreement Committee) will take some steps on the Taiwan issue. Biden said that he will use military force, and I think it will work in this direction, Nishimura said.

From this point of view, if Japan does not improve its own checks and balances, it will be really in danger. Of course, it does not mean that something can be done immediately. Of course, constitutional reform is necessary, but once the constitution is involved, it will touch many CCPs inspectors, so that the constitution cannot be reformed smoothly.

He also said that Japanese politicians should re-examine the three non-nuclear principles.

As long as you question the three non-nuclear principles and apply for reform, it will arouse concern and controversy around the world, which will also enhance Japans balance and deterrence, and at least form a certain deterrent to North Korea and the CCP.

The three non-nuclear principles refer to a doctrine that successive Japanese governments after World War II adhered tonot to be in possession of, or manufacture nor import nuclear weapons. Although former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe suggested that was necessary to consider a nuclear sharing policy, the current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has made it clear that he will still adhere to the doctrine.

Survey on Taiwan Invasion

Ninety percent of Japanese believe that Japan should prepare itself for Chinas invasion of Taiwan, according to a survey conducted by the Japanese media Nikkei Asia in May.

Fifty percent of respondents said that Japan should act as much as possible within existing laws; 41 percent support changing the countrys constitution to enable military intervention. Overall, 91 percent of Japanese believe that Japan should prepare for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

As part of Nikkei Asias supporting report it said that in the event of an emergency in Taiwan, Japan will take action in accordance with the provisions of the Peace and Security Law (referred to as the Security Law). The law gives the Japan Self-Defense Forces the ability to conduct foreign operations in limited circumstances.

An H-6 bomber of the Chinese army flies near a Taiwan F-16 on Feb. 10, 2020. (Taiwan Ministry of National Defense/Handout via Reuters)

Past leader Abe has also made a series of remarks in support of Taiwan among them ones said at a forum held by the Institute of National Policy Studies, a non-governmental think tank in Taiwan at the end of 2021.

If Taiwan has a problem, then Japan has a problem, and the Japan-U.S. alliance also has a problem, he said.

Su Ziyun, director of Military Strategy and Industry, Taiwan National Defense Security Research Institute, told The Epoch Times that if China invades Taiwan, in accordance with the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and Japans Self-Defense Forces Act, Japan should support the U.S. logistics efforts and may provide some supplies to Taiwan.

But Taiwan will not count on other countries to help, Su Ziyun said. We are strong enough to take responsibility for our own defense, this is the top priority. Of course, we are optimistic and welcome other countries support. But we have to be cautious.

Epoch Times reporter Ellen Wan contributed to this report.
Japanese Coast Guard vessel and boats (rear and right) sail alongside a Japanese activists' fishing boat (center) near a group of disputed islands called Diaoyu by China and Senkaku by Japan on Aug. 18, 2013. (Emily Wang/AP Photo)

Japan Protests Chinese Warship Near Disputed Islands

TOKYOJapan protested to Beijing after spotting Chinese and Russian warships just outside its territorial waters around the disputed East China Sea islands on Monday.

Japans Defense Ministry said a Chinese frigate sailed inside the contiguous zone, just outside Japanese territorial waters around Senkaku Islands, which the Chinese regime also claims and calls the Diaoyu, for several minutes Monday morning.

The Chinese warships presence was confirmed about 40 minutes after a Russian frigate had entered the waters for more than an hour, the ministry said.

It was not immediately clear what was behind the latest ChineseRussian military activity in the area. Japanese defense officials mentioned a possibility that the ships may have been there to avoid a typhoon.

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara said Japan lodged a protest expressing grave concern to Beijing over the incident.

The Senkaku islands are an inherent part of Japans territory historically and under international law. The government will deal with the matter calmly but firmly to protect the Japanese land, territorial waters and air space, Kihara said.

There was no violation of the territorial waters, he said.

In Beijing, the Chinese communist regime justified the frigates entry and criticized Tokyos protest.

Japan sees the Chinese regimes increasingly assertive military activity in the East and South China seas as a threat to regional stability. Tokyo is especially sensitive to Chinese activities near the disputed islands.

Kihara said that Mondays incursion into the contiguous zone, which is between the territorial sea and the wider exclusive economic zone, by the Chinese warship was a fourth such event since June 2016.
John Robson: In a Sign of Our Woke Times, Parks Canada Cancels Learn-to-Camp Lesson After Activist Complains

Commentary

Nothing, not even maple syrup, can rival the cottage as a Canadian icon. But lately our love affair with nature is becoming a bit of a non-country song because we overwhelmingly live in big cities where a sterile monocultured lawn is as green as it gets. And when you try to put kids back in touch with real trees, lakes, birds, and bugs instead of this abstract viyerminn teachers keep urging them to save from capitalism, guess what.

Before I tell you, I should concede that stupid things have always happened where humans are involved. Some are funny, some tragic, and some both. (Once again, with Chesterton, I insist that the opposite of funny isnt serious, its not funny.) Had I been reading the Stirpes Nationalis around the time Caesar was gasping out his last convoluted quip to Brutus, or Elagabalus setting tongues wagging, I would doubtless have gone O tempora o mores with the optimes. But I would have been right that some small, silly, infuriating items really do indicate large and ominous trends.

So off to our tent city. Or (Canada being diverse, bilingual, and all that sait porter stuff), our ville de tente. See, the government was trying to give camping lessons in Montreal, already silly and ominous since nothing in the recent performance of public authorities in Canada inspires me to let them help pitch even my modern tent let alone our old green canvas beast.

In any case, Parks Canada ventured into the heart of the lack of wilderness to offer people what it thinks it knows of basic camping skills along Montreals Lachine Canal for a mere $108.75 per tent. And what could go wrong, you ask, other than tripping on a peg line, one of those shiny lightweight carbon-fibre poles snapping, or someones paddle going up the canal?

Ha. Lots. And not bears getting into the food, a marshmallow bursting into flames, or dad having to unhook a fish without impaling his own thumb and looking confident the whole way. No. The woke show up and put out the fire.

Specifically, some perpetually outraged activist, to repeat myself, said the initiative comes off as a bad joke as the citys authorities frequently dismantle encampments for the homeless erected on public land, according to The Canadian Press. In keeping with their signature tune thats not funny, the activist said, I laughed out of despair when I saw that. These people dont do amusement, do they?

Which brings me to a Thomas Sowell quotation that despite being popular online turns out to be legitimate: Historians of the future will have a hard time figuring out how so many organized groups of strident jackasses succeeded in leading us around by the nose and morally intimidating the majority into silence. Good question.

If you asked a random collection of Canadians, from traditionalists raised on the cry of the loon to newcomers who have yet to sing or live the Blackfly Song, whether theyd rather have their kid in a Parks Canada camping program or a homeless addict tent city, they would not have difficulty detecting the difference or indicating a preference. Whereas the activists are going with the squalor and, probably, pushing to have it renamed the Fly of Colour Song. And the politicians and chattering classes lack the courage or will to say buzz off.

In a profile in manque de courage, the mayor of Montreal punted, saying it was up to Parks Canada. Instead of sneering, news outlets used the latest woke neologism unhoused people. And Parks Canada collapsed its own tent, cancelling the first event without explanation. At press time three more were still listed, so theres hope. But also ridicule and anxiety.

Annie the Activist said Cest insultant et ironique, and the outlet that quoted her also unearthed a doctoral candidate in community health to, of all things, agree with her. But whats insulting and ironic is various governments funding people who cant tell legal from illegal activity.

It would be like not knowing the difference between using a hammer to build a permitted house on your own property and to demolish someone elses as a mob. But what if they do? What if they know a structured, authorized program designed to help people build a more healthy lifestyle from random occupation of public space by people in crisis who, squatting in filthy tents, intimidate others while continuing their own downward spiral?

What if, given the transvaluing of all values thats in nowadays, they do know and prefer the latter? It is surely revealing that our activist wanted the camping program dismantled and the tents given to organizations like hers to use to foment disorder and undermine public health. And the people in charge gave in.

Theres a sign for our times.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Alex Berenson speaks on censorship and freedom of speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 26, 2021. (CPAC/Screenshot via NTD)

Journalist Alex Berenson Reaches Settlement With Twitter

Independent journalist Alex Berenson and Twitter have agreed to a settlement over a lawsuit that alleged the big tech company violated Berensons constitutional rights when it banned him.

The parties have reached a settlement in principle, according to a joint stipulation filed in federal court in California on June 29.

However, additional time is needed to finalize details of the settlement, the parties said.

Lawyers for Berenson and Twitter, in the filing, asked U.S. District Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee, to extend deadlines to produce certain documents, known as discovery, in light of the agreement.

Alsup extended the deadlines by 14 days, less than the 28 days requested, and said that he would not allow any further extensions.

Counsel are fully able to negotiate and litigate at the same time, he wrote in an order.

The extensions mean Berenson had until June 30 to produce certain documents and Twitter has until mid-July to produce certain materials.

Additionally, Twitter can take a deposition of Berenson by the end of July and Berenson can take depositions of two current or former Twitter employees by mid-August.

Discovery

The filings contain no details concerning the settlement details. Berenson said in an initial blog post that he couldnt share details until the settlement is actually filed but later pointed out how hed promised that there would be no settlement without third-party discovery.

Berenson emphasized he will not accept an agreement unless it allows him to not only obtain materials from Twitter, but to talk about those materials.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

Twitter banned Berenson, formerly of the New York Times, from the platform in August 2021, claiming he violated the companys rules against promoting COVID-19 misinformation.

Berenson said in the suit that he was assured by a senior executive that he would not be banned, that he did not break the rules, and that Twitter broke its promises and policies in removing him.

He accused Twitter of violating the U.S. Constitutions First Amendment, federal laws, and the California Common Carrier Law, as well as breaching the user contract it entered with Berenson.

Twitter tried to dismiss the suit, but Alsup allowed it to proceed with the breach of contract claims.

Here, Twitter allegedly established a specific, detailed five-strike policy regarding COVID-19 misinformation and its vice president gave specific and direct assurances to plaintiff regarding his posts pursuant to that policy. Any ambiguities in a contract like Twitters terms of service are interpreted against the drafter, Twitter, he said in his order on Twitters motion. And, at the pleading stage, this order must construe all allegations in the light most favorable to plaintiffs allegations. Plaintiff plausibly avers that Twitters conduct here modified its contract with plaintiff and then breached that contract by failing to abide by its own five-strike policy and its specific commitments set forth through its vice president.
Man, 64, Killed at Home by Burglar on July Fourth

LOS ANGELESA 64-year-old man who died in a struggle with a would-be burglar inside his Lincoln Heights apartment was identified on July 5, while a search continued for his assailant.

Jose Mancia died in the confrontation that occurred about 9:30 p.m. Monday at 2008 Griffin Avenue, according to police and the coroners office. Mancia was pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities said he appeared to have suffered some type of blunt-force trauma during the struggle with the intruder.

The victims wife was in the apartment at the time but was not injured. Police said the couple had been outside watching July Fourth fireworks but were back inside their apartment when the attempted burglary occurred.

It was unclear if the suspect, described only as a male, stole anything from the apartment or if he was armed with a weapon.

A man identified as the victims younger brother told ABC7 that the victim walked with a cane, and he may have tried to hit the intruder with the cane.

This guy maybe hit him, and thats why he died, Oscar Mancia told the station.

The male suspect, who was wearing a mask and dark clothing, fled the scene and remained at large Tuesday.
Man Convicted of DUI Crash That Killed Long Beach Couple, Son on Halloween 2019

LONG BEACH, Calif.A young man who drove drunk on Halloween night 2019 and ran down a Long Beach couple and their 3-year-old son was convicted on July 5 of three counts each of murder and gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.

Jurors deliberated about two hours before finding Carlo Adrian Navarro, now 23, guilty in the deaths of Joseph Awaida, 30, Raihan Dakhil Awaida, 32, and their son, Omar, who were struck around 9:55 p.m. Oct. 31, 2019, in the area of Country Club Drive and Los Cerritos Park Place.

Joseph Awaida died that night. The couples son died Nov. 2, and his mother died the following day.

Navarro, who was 20 at the time of the crash, is facing as much as 45 years to life in prison when he was sentenced Sept. 15.

Navarro was driving a 2002 Toyota Sequoia southbound on Country Club Drive and failed to make a turn, according to Long Beach police. Instead, he drove onto the sidewalk and hit the family as they were walking home after a night of trick-or-treating, authorities said.

Navarro was arrested at the scene but was later released on $100,000 bail. He was re-arrested the following week in connection with an unrelated burglary case.

Outside court after the verdict, Joseph Awaidas mother and Omars grandmother, Vera, said she was very satisfied with the verdict and called it the best possible outcome that could have happened.

But she added, Its not really justice because theyre not back.
An image of former President Donald Trump and his family is displayed on screen during the third hearing of the January 6 committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 16, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

McCarthys Responses to Trumps Criticism Over Nominations for Jan. 6 Panel

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on June 27 defended his decision in relation to nominations of the House Select Committee in response to former President Trumps criticism.

McCarthy asserted that he had made the right decision in an interview with Dana Perino on Fox News.

The right decision was the decision I made. If other people change their opinion, read the rules, and I think theyll come right back to the same conclusion, he said.

His statement came almost a week after Trump said the top Republican in the House of Representatives erred by not having GOP members on the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol breach.

It was a bad decision not to have representation on this Committee, Trump told Wayne Allyn Root on his show. That was a very, very foolish decision.

I think in retrospect [McCarthy shouldve put Republicans on] to just have a voice. The Republicans dont have a voice. They dont even have anything to say, Trump said to CEO Punchbowl News Anna Palmer.

Its not even a question that McCarthy should have placed members on the panel, he said.

McCarthy picked five members for the panel, including House Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) refused to seat Jordan and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) The development then prompted McCarthy to pull all of his picks.

Unless Speaker Pelosi reverses course and seats all five Republicans, we will not participate, McCarthy said at the time.

McCarthy again argued that Pelosi would have only picked Republicans that backed her views.

According to McCarthy, those Republicans who voted to impeach Trump such as Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC), and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) would have all been put on the nominee list.

In his opinion, the outcome would remain unfavorable to Trump and his supporters just the same.

So it would be exactly the same but the American public would sit back and think, Oh, this is very bipartisan, even though the rules would not allow us to bring any witnesses in or ask questions, he told Perino.

McCarthy further affirmed that he had talked recently with Trump about the matter.

In reply to Perinos questioning about his recent relationship with Trump, McCarthy said, Oh, all good. Yes.

McCarthys relationship with the former president has allegedly gone sour recently as audio recordings emerged that showed the minority leader disparaged Trump in phone calls after the Capitol breach.

Yet, Trump confirmed in April that their relationship was not damaged.

In early June, Trump further gave his endorsement of McCarthy calling him an outstanding Representative for the people of California, and a strong and fearless Leader of the House Republican Conference.

Zachary Stieber contributes to this report.
A man waves an American flag as he walks outside the Missouri State Capitol building in Jefferson City, Mo., on Jan. 20, 2021. (Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images)

Missouri State Lawmaker Resigns After Conviction on Multiple Charges, Including Fraud

A Missouri lawmaker has resigned from the states House of Representatives after a federal jury found her guilty of fraud and other charges that involve her medical practices in southern Missouri.

State Rep. Tricia Derges, a Republican who was elected in November 2020 to represent District 140 (Christian County), sent a resignation letter to Missouri House Speaker Rob Vescovo on July 1, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

It has truly been an honor to serve the citizens of the 140th District, Derges, 64, wrote in the resignation letter, reported The Hill. They are some of the finest people I have ever met. To be a part of the process that helped bring positive change to our community and to assist with many of the personal struggles of my constituents is something I will forever treasure.

She did not mention her charges and conviction in the letter.

According to a release from the Department of Justice, Derges was found guilty on June 28 of 22 federal charges10 counts of wire fraud, 10 counts of distributing drugs over the internet without a valid prescription, and two counts of making false statements to a federal law enforcement agent.

This is an elected official who stole money from the public, a purported humanitarian who cheated and lied to her patients, and a medical professional who illegally distributed drugs, U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore said in a statement.

She violated her position of trust to selfishly enrich herself at the expense of others. But a jury of her peers, in a unanimous verdict, saw through her smokescreen of excuses and ridiculous claims, and now she will be held accountable for her criminal behavior.

A COVID-19 swab test. (Mufid Majnun/Unsplash)

Awaiting Sentencing

Derges, who is licensed as an assistant physician, operates three medical practices called Ozark Valley Medical Clinic in Springfield, Ozark, and Branson, as well as a non-profit corporation called Lift Up Someone Today, based in Springfield, which provides free medical services for people who are poor, homeless, or uninsured.

Three of the wire fraud charges involved Derges having fraudulently applied for nearly $900,000 in federal COVID-19 emergency aid that she said was for COVID-19 testing and other eligible expenses incurred by her non-profit Lift Up. However, the non-profit never provided any testing services; its medical clinic closed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and was closed from March to June 2020, the Justice Department noted.

The other seven wire fraud charges were related to Dergess promotion of amniotic fluid treatment that authorities said she had falsely promoted as containing stem cells. The federal indictment charged Derges with defrauding four victims in the scheme from which she gained $191,815.

The 10 counts of distributing drugs over the internet without a valid prescription are related to Derges having written electronic prescriptions for Oxycodone and Adderall for people without consulting them in personwhich is required by federal lawand sending the prescriptions to pharmacies over the internet.

Her two counts of making false statements involved her lying to federal agents investigating the case in May 2020, when she told them that the amniotic treatment she used contained stem cells, which they said she knew was false. She also told them that she had not provided that treatment for a patient for urinary incontinence, which prosecutors said she also knew was false.

Derges did not step down from public office after she was dealt the charges in 2021, even though she was asked to do so in February by Vescovo, the state House speaker. She was stripped of her committee assignments and prevented from attending party caucus meetings. The states Republican Party also blocked Derges from running for reelection as a Republican candidate this fall.

Derges is out on bond, and is expected to be sentenced in a few months. The charges carry a maximum combined sentence of 410 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines.
Children play football while visiting Portchester Castle, near Portsmouth, southern England, on Aug. 5, 2020. Originally built in the late 3rd century, Portchester Castle is the most impressive and best preserved of the Saxon shore forts. For medieval kings it was an important embarkation point for crossing the Channel. (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)

MP Warns Vast Chunks of Our Past Will Be Lost If Schools Dont Teach Medieval History

A Conservative MP has urged the teaching of medieval or earlier English history in schools, saying children know more about Martin Luther King Jr. than they do about the UKs first kings.

Talking to The Telegraph, MP for Rother Valley Alexander Stafford said that the subject was greatly neglected in schools, with very little taught at GCSE or A-level and that most students dont have the option to study anything pre-1066.

But one historian told The Epoch Times that although the reasons behind the subject not being taught are complex, in ideological terms a past that goes back further is little bit dangerous to those who would prefer to change the world on a basis of an almost year-zero mythology.

Neglected

Early Medieval England was from 4101066, while the Medieval period is the time between 1066 and 1485.

It is a situation where students are far more likely to learn about someone like Martin Luther King than they are about Alfred the Great, said Stafford.

There is a lot more of our history; our country is quite old with a lot of formative history. We need to discuss it, talk about it, added the MP, who studied the subject, and warned of a self-fulfilling cycle between children not being taught medieval history in school, and later not pursuing it in higher education.

Current GCSE specifications should include history from three eras: Medieval (5001500), Early Modern (14501750) and Modern (1700present day).

I would say most students havent heard of Athelstan, who is the first king of a united England, Stafford said, adding, I believe it is important that we get medieval history, from the fall of the Roman Empire in the West from 476 to the discovery of the New World in 1492, really in the spotlight.

Nicholas Joseph, lecturer in education at the University of Derby, told The Epoch Times that theres no simple answer as to why it is that medieval history is neglected in the way that it is.

To teach medieval stuff at a reasonably high level, youve got to know quite a bit about it. If you dont then how are you going to start; its much easier for competency to die away than it is to rebuild it, said Joseph, who has a doctorate in medieval history and has lectured on the subject.

People look at the Bayeux tapestry or Queen Mathilde tapestry, which relates Britains conquest by William the Conqueror in 1066, in Bayeux, western France, on Sept. 13, 2019. (Loic Venance/AFP via Getty Images)

Moral Lessons

Its always going to be bedeviled by the R-word, which is relevance. If you have to demonstrate relevance its always going to be easier to do that with modern stuff than with medieval stuff, he said.

Joseph is part of the Academics for Academic Freedom, a campaigning group for lecturers, academic-related staff, students, and researchers who want to defend unimpeded inquiry and expression.

While Stafford did not claim that medieval history is caught in the crosshairs of the culture wars, overall history lessons are. As part of Inclusive Britain, the governments new strategy for tackling racism in the UK, the Department for Education has been told to commit to some specific actions over the next two years designed to create a more inclusive history curriculum.

In April, The Telegraph reported that academics who favour decolonisation were being consulted for Englands new history curriculum, raising ideological fears in schools.

Speculating on whether identity politics could hamper the teaching of medieval history, Joseph said he doesnt think theres anything about medieval history that makes it immune to being abused to put across political agendas.

Teachers have courses on recent history in the filing cabinet already that carry the desired moral lessons. So why go to the effort of developing courses on medieval history to teach the same moral lessons? said Joseph.

Propaganda

He said that a past that goes back further than the 20th century has a living significance in the patterns of our thought. Perhaps that is a little bit dangerous to those who would prefer to change the world on a basis of an almost year-zero mythology.

The longer the past is, the more difficult the challenge of making the future appears to be, he said.

Good history has been written even by bad people, he said.

A commitment to the basic rules of discipline of history, the pursuit of truth through engagement with sources, has allowed good history to be written in conditions of political tyranny, whereas if you dispensed with that, if you decide you are too clever for that, or that is theoretically naive, then you end up with propaganda.

Devaluing or undervaluing the basic rules of the discipline reduces the whole thing to propaganda. In fact, it prevents you from writing anything other than propaganda, added Joseph.
National Chiefs Suspension Overshadows AFN Annual Assembly

Controversy overshadows the Assembly of First Nations annual gathering this week as it seeks the continued suspension of its national chief.

The AFN is holding its 43rd Annual General Assembly both virtually and at the Vancouver Convention Centre on July 57. The organizations executive committee has drafted a resolution that asks the chiefs to ratify and continue the suspension of National Chief RoseAnne Archibald.

On June 16, Archibald called for an independent audit of the AFN spanning the last eight years. She also issued a statement saying she was being persecuted for trying to investigate corruption within the assembly.

The next day, the AFNs executive committee alleged that Archibalds allegations breached her oath of office as well as the AFNs code of conduct and whistleblower policy. The committee suspended Archibald with pay pending an investigation into four complaints lodged against her by her staff.

Melissa Mbarki, a policy analyst and outreach coordinator for the Indigenous Policy Program at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, says Archibald was an inspiring figure for those who voted her into the AFNs highest office.

When she was campaigning for AFN, she wanted transparency and accountability, and this is something that resonated across the country. People definitely were interested in what she had to say. We were like, Yes, this is what we need. This is the kind of leader that we needsomebody thats going to question things, and somebody thats just going to stand up for everyones rights, said Mbarki, who grew up on the Muskowekwan Reserve in Saskatchewan.

The AFNs executive initially indicated that Archibald would not be allowed to speak at the national convention, but later relented. Mbarki called the initial decision condescending.

That is really insulting. Number one, its very hard for women to get into positions like that. And until they make a decision and say shes no longer leader, shes entitled to go to those meetings and shes entitled to speak at these meetings, because her voice still matters. And her voice is going to matter even after all of this, she said.

If they didnt allow her to speak, that would have caused some uproar in my community and the surrounding communities because we all support her. So they have to be very mindful of what they do in this situation, because [either] theyre going to look like its the old boys club bullying a woman, or are they going to move forward and work with her?

In a June 17 statement, Archibald said there were fictitious attacks against her by AFN staff. She also said she was locked out of her email and found out about her suspension through the media. She called these events a seemingly staged coup and said she was targeted for refusing to sign off on staff payouts worth more than $1 million.

According to an AFN statement, Archibald tried to get a hearing before the Ontario Superior Court prior to the AFN annual general assembly and alleged the executive committee lacks the power to suspend her. The judge sided with the AFN executive, who argued the matter should be settled internally and in the assembly.

This decision  does not support the claims that our actions were illegal or outside our authority, Regional Chief Paul Prosper said in the statement. We are sorry that the national chief chose the path of colonial court confrontation to resolve this.

Its Going to Cause a Lot of Backlash

Mbarki says stripping Archibald of her authority over the AFNs corporation will not end the questions raised by her allegations.

That is very condescending, and they definitely need to approach this in a very respectful manner because theres a lot of eyes on them right now. Its really making us question if what is going on is true, and if it is, its going to cause a lot of backlash, especially right now, she said.

Reserves are so poor. We have no clean water in some of them, and theres new reserves going onto the boil water advisory in a weeks time. Were dealing with so much that if shes questioning expenses of some executives or employees in that corporation, she has every right because some of that money could be going to our communities to help with these issues.

Ken Coates, a professor at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan, likens the situation to the federal Liberal sponsorship scandal of roughly 20 years ago. He believes the situation will be difficult to handle.

Indigenous politics is very personal. Its very networked and very collaborative, very regional. And so you have lots of people going off. And this debate is going on, on a regular basis, right now. It is happening all the time across the country, Coates said in an interview.

If National Chief Archibald is removed, therell be lots of people very upset about that, particularly as shes the first woman national chief. But it also depends on who comes in to replace her if shes removed. And if shes not removed, you may get some criticism of the people who took action against her, the executive committee in particular. And so, this one is not likely to end happily for everybody. Thats almost impossible.

Mbarki says the AFN has become less relevant to some bands in the past 10 or so years, as bands that support oil and gas development and pipelines dont always find their views advanced by the federally funded organization based in Ottawa.

Coates agrees that some bands dont look to AFN leadership the way they used to.

If you have modern treaties [or] if you just received a major settlement from a major land claim or a court case, the AFN isnt front and centre anymore, he said.

If youre involved in major economic ventures, or activities, as they are say with the Squamish First Nation in British Columbia or some of the First Nations in Saskatchewan, you dont look to the AFN to provide guidance, because youre taking control of your own economic future and doing a whole bunch of things anyway. It is a trend. Theres a transition going on already thats really quite dramatic.

I cant imagine the AFN disappearing completely, however, Coates adds.

It does seem to need a national association of some sort. What is interesting is that over the last little while, there has been a very substantial amount of movement back to the regional and community level. So not all the chiefs pay as much attention to the AFN as they did 20 years agoand thats not a bad thing.

The Epoch Times attempted to contact Archibald, AFN staff, and Prosper for comments but received no replies.

The Canadian Press contributed to this article.


Protests have broken out in the Netherlands, where the government has begun restricting agriculture in a push to reduce nitrogen use. This follows a broader global trend, where governments are placing restrictions on farmers and fertilizers under claims of fighting global warming. And meanwhile, Sri Lanka serves as an example of where these policies could lead, where restrictions on fertilizers caused food shortages that are now sparking riots.

We will also have war correspondent Michael Yon joining us live from the Netherlands to talk about the current farmers protests and whats happening on the ground there.

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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The Tesla electric car charging station in the car park at The Star Casino in Pyrmont in Sydney, Australia on April 14, 2015. (Ben Rushton/Getty Images)

Battery Storage a Barrier to Net-Zero Push: Engineer

Advocates Omitting Key Detail in Renewable Push

Advocates for a rapid transition to net-zero have not explained the real limitations of battery storage supposed to underpin the viability of the net-zero push, according to an industry engineer.

Nick Kastelstein, a senior mechanical engineer at GPA Engineering, says media coverage has also failed to inform the public about the true nature of Australias energy needs, claiming the debate has been oversimplified.

You have this problem where you generate electricity when the sun shining, or the wind is blowing, and you need to store it somewhere and withdraw it later. But that kind of volume of storage is enormous, absolutely enormous, he told The Epoch Times.

Kastelstein said that while lithium-ion batteries had a role to play by stepping in when there were faults in the network, in terms of pure storage and firming they were unsuitable.

Warning signs adorn the fence surrounding the compound housing the Hornsdale Power Reserve, featuring the worlds largest lithium ion battery made by Tesla, during the official launch near the South Australian town of Jamestown, in Australia, Dec. 1, 2017. (David Gray/Reuters)

He pointed to the Tesla-built Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia, the worlds largest renewable battery at the time of its construction in 2017.

The Hornsdale battery in South Australia for example, if you looked at the states electricity supply curve, you can hardly even see what is contributed by the battery, he said. That kind of bulk storage that we would need for renewable sources isnt going to cut it. I think everyone whos realistic knows that.

Battery technology has been changing and improving so much over the years, it just gets better and better, he added. But they are still have a pretty low level of technology readiness.'

Even one of the largest battery systems in the world today, the FPL Manatee Energy Storage Center in Florida, is estimated to be able to power approximately 329,000 homes for only two hours.

Net-Zero Push Underway in Australia

In recent weeks, Australias Energy Minister Chris Bowen and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) have called for more investment in battery storage as part of the countrys push towards net-zero.

Under the Labor government, Australia will aim to cut emissions by 43 percent by 2030, up from the previous target of 26-28 percent, and reach net-zero by 2050.

The government will also attempt to overhaul the energy grid so that 82 percent of electricity will come from renewable sources by 2030. As of December 2021, around 64.67 percent of Australias electricity generation comes from coal-fired power plants.

Bowen has blamed a lack of investment in storage for Australias recent energy woes, including increasing electricity prices and skyrocketing gas prices.

Yes, you can say the wind doesnt always blow, and the sun doesnt always shine. Well, the rain doesnt always fall out there, but we managed to store the water, he told reporters on June 16. We can store the renewable energy if we have the investment, and that investment has been lacking for the last decade. Thats the problem.

Chris Bowen, Labor Partys minister for energy and climate change, speaks to media during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on June 16, 2022. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

While AEMOs newly released 30-year electricity market roadmap aims to shut down around 60 percent of coal-fired generators by 2030 and increase investment in renewable energy, while at the same time servicing the electricity needs of a growing population (demand is set to double by 2050).

To maintain a secure, reliable and affordable electricity supply for consumers through this transition to 2050, investment is required for a nine-fold increase in grid-scale wind and solar capacity, triple the firming capacity (dispatchable storage, hydro and gas-fired generation) and a near five-fold increase in distributed solar, Daniel Westerman, the CEO of AEMO, said in a statement.

However, Kastelstein said the energy debate had been simplified into measuring how much renewable energy contributed to the electricity grid.

Of all the energy, electricity is just 20-25 percent of our consumption. The other 75-80 percent of the energy we consume is via direct use of coal and gas in industrial processes, domestic and commercial gas, and the big one, liquid fuels for vehicles, he said.

Eighty percent of our energy usage as a country is non-renewable. And as a country, we export twice as much than we use. So from our total energy output, solar and wind account for just 0.8 percent.
Newsom Pardons Woman Who Fatally Shot Man Who Trafficked Her

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has granted a pardon to Sara Kruzan who spent 18 years in prison for murdering the man who trafficked her for sex as a teen.

In 1995, when she was 16, Kruzan was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder. She had fatally shot the man who she said had sex trafficked her since she was 13.

In 2010, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger commuted Kruzans sentence to 25 years to life with the possibility of parole. A few years later, in 2013, she was resentenced to 19 years to life and released after serving 18 years in prison.

Newsoms pardon noted that Kruzan had transformed her life since being released from prison and dedicated herself to community service.

This act of clemency for Ms. Kruzan does not minimize or forgive her conduct or the harm it caused, Newsom, a Democrat, said in his pardon. It does recognize the work she has done since to transform herself.

A bit of good news to start a holiday weekend  a very deserving woman, Sara Kruzan, was pardoned by @CAgovernor today. If you dont know her story  1/2 pic.twitter.com/zOGF3jLEwr  Anita Chabria (@anitachabria) July 1, 2022

The governors office said the pardon does not expunge or erase a conviction, but may remove counterproductive barriers to employment and public service, restore civic rights and responsibilities, and prevent unjust collateral consequences of conviction, such as deportation and permanent family separation.

The Governor weighs numerous factors in his review of clemency applications, including an applicants self-development and conduct since the offense, whether the grant is consistent with public safety and in the interest of justice, and the impact of a grant on the community, including crime victims and survivors, the governors office said.

Kruzans pardon was one of 17 pardons, 15 commutations, and one medical reprieve announced by Newsom on July 1. While being in office, Newsom has granted a total of 129 pardons, 123 commutations, and 35 reprieves.
While having dinner with a Chinese couple several years ago, I listened as they described their visiting parents response to the American landscape. Having recently arrived from China, the parents amazement about the Dakotas was particularly amusing. So much space! was the loose translation. They could build so many apartments!

I laughed heartily at the time, realizing just how different American interests were from those of the Chinese. Americans certainly didnt need myriads of high rises stretching across the Dakota plains!

But in retrospect, I now wonder if there were more underlying that comment than simply the Chinese need for space. Could such a thought also stem from the communist ideology that pervades China, an ideology that squelches freedom and seeks control over every aspect of life?

Home ownership, the ideal of a little house with a white picket fence, is the American dream. That house is a place of rest, a place to gathera place to live, work, and play in. At its heart, the little-house-and-picket-fence dream is freedom itself: control over a small piece of property an American can call his own.

That American dream still lives. But not everyone thinks thats a good thing, judging from a recent Time magazine headline that declared America Needs to End Its Love Affair With Single-Family Homes.

Housing developers, the article explains, are continually trying to buy land and develop communities of multi-family dwellingsin essence, the high-rises our friends from China were so eager to build. But these same developers seem to be mildly exasperated because, despite their best efforts to patiently explain the benefits of housing density, many individuals continue to inquire and dream about single-family homes.

Teaching children how to maintain, repair, or beautify your home will help them have greater pride in owning their own home in the future. (Biba Kayewich)

I would love to own a single family home and have pets and children running around, one woman told Time. I would rather not be in an apartment building. It doesnt feel as homey.

Unfortunately, affordable single-family home ownership is increasingly difficult to achieve. Corporations such as BlackRock are gobbling up single-family homes and turning them into rentals, writer Pedro Gonzalez explains in the August 2021 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

In the article, he also draws attention to the fact that multi-family housing is pushed by those who fear climate change and view America through a racist lensfor, of course, single-family dwellings encourage both a larger carbon footprint and the concept of the nuclear family, the latter of which was once a direct target of Black Lives Matter.

The increasing difficulty of owning a home is likely not accidental, foras philosopher James Burnham wrote in his 1941 book The Managerial Revolution,ownership means control; if there is no control, then there is no ownership. Thus, if our ruling elites can prevent average folks from owning their own homes, doing so will strip those same people of more freedom and control over their own lives.

Burnham himself uses this issue of home ownership to illustrate how property rights translate into freedom: If I own a house, let us say, that means thatat least under normal circumstancesI can prevent others from entering it. In developed societies with political institutions, it means also that the state (the police in this instance, backed by the courts) will if necessary enforce this control of mine over access to the house. If I cannot, when I wish to, prevent others from entering the house, if anyone else or everyone has the same rights of entry as I, then neither I nor anyone would say that I am the owner of the house.

Burnham also notes that the control that comes with ownership offers many benefits to the owner, including warmth, shelter, [and] privacy. Take that control away and give it to someone elsesuch as a corporation or the governmentand the individual can kiss both freedom and those benefits goodbye.

But if we want those benefits, then we need to hold on to the American dream ever more tightly, not only for ourselves, but for others also.

Do you want to be free from the grasp and control of government? Then put your earnings toward a house and other amenities that will make that home more comfortable for yourself and those you love, instead of spending your earnings on experiences or other frivolous items.

Do you want your children to know and value freedom? Then encourage them toward home ownership and set aside a small nest egg to help them toward that purpose one day. Teach them how to do the things that will aid in maintaining that house. Learning to paint, repair, and beautify a home while young will lay the groundwork for greater pride and ownership inand desire fortheir own future property.

Do you want others to experience the freedom that having a place to call their own brings? Encourage them to buy a house and then pay it off quickly. Give them a helping hand with their house projects where youre able. Make your own home a bright spot to which you can invite them so that they get a taste of the freedom and benefits that home ownership brings.

Those who seek to control our bodies and minds would like nothing better than to stick each of us into a soul-crushing, rented high-rise in order to quash our freedom. Dont let them do it. Theres no place like homeespecially when its in the land of the free.
New York Mayor Eric Adams is joined by NYPD Deputy Chief Jason Savino (left) and NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig at a Brooklyn police facility where it was announced that arrests have been made against violent street gangs in New York City, on June 6, 2022. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Off-Duty New York City Correction Officer Shoots Man Pointing Gun at Crowd

An off-duty New York City correction officer has been hailed a hero after he shot a man who pointed a gun at a crowd at a memorial service in Queens on Sunday night.

The incident occurred at a Queens motorcycle club around 8 p.m. during a memorial event. Police said the off-duty correction officer, David Donegan, was in the vicinity of the crowd and saw the male pointing the gun at the crowd.

Donegan quickly took out his gun and fired at the individual, striking his torso. Police confirmed that three individuals were transferred to hospital with gunshot wounds. It is unclear if Donegan was shot by the first or second shooter who got involved.

Yesterday evening, as a crowd of people were observing an event remembering the passing of a friend, two individuals pulled out weapons and pointed them, firing at the crowd including our Correction Officer, David Donegan, said Correction Officers Benevolent Association (COBA) President Benny Boscio in a statement.

Thankfully, Officer Donegan, who was off duty at the time, immediately pulled out his weapon and engaged them, firing several shots. During the exchange of shots fired, our officer was hit in the leg and transferred to a nearby hospital.

Please see the statement from COBA President Benny Boscio on the courageous acts on off-duty Officer, David Donegan. pic.twitter.com/GskStntn9Z  COBA (@NYCCOBA1) July 4, 2022

New York Mayor Eric Adams hailed Donegan as a hero, saying that he saved the lives of innocent people, Fox 5 reported.

Hes a hero. Taking proper action while off duty is one of the most difficult things to do, said Adams.

He also said the shooter had a criminal record and was awaiting sentencing for a prior robbery with a firearm.

While on sentencing hes back on the street with a firearm. Theyre finding their way back on our streets to continue to wreak havoc on innocent people, Adams said.

Boscio said that while the police investigation was ongoing, one thing is crystal clear, had our officer not exercised his training and made a split second decision, this incident could have cost many innocent people their lives, including his own. His actions were nothing short of heroic.
Family and friends of al-Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, Anton Abu Akleh, attend a candle vigil outside the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank Biblical city of Bethlehem on May 16, 2022. (Hazem Bader/AFP via Getty Images)

Origin of Bullet That Killed Al Jazeera Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh Inconclusive: US State Department

Abu Akleh killed in crossfire between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli counterterrorism unit

The U.S. Department of State on Monday said that independent investigators couldnt clearly conclude the origin of the bullet that killed Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

The 51-year-old reporter for Al-Jazeeras Arabic language channel died on May 11 while on assignment covering an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin and becoming caught in crossfire. When she was fatally shot in the head, Abu Akleh was wearing a bullet-proof vest that was marked press.

Independent, third-party investigators could not reach a definitive conclusion regarding the origin of the bullet that killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement. Ballistic experts determined the bullet was badly damaged, which prevented a clear conclusion.

The investigation was overseen by the U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC)an office created by the State Department in 2005 that provides security assistance to the Palestinian Authority as part of an effort to help Israel and Palestine establish peace in the Middle East.

Palestinians hold posters displaying veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was fatally shot as she covered a raid on the West Banks Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank city of Hebron, on May 11, 2022. (Hazem Bader/AFP via Getty Images)

Counterterrorism Operation

On the day of Abu Aklehs death, May 11, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that its soldiers were carrying out counterterrorism activity in the Jenin camp and surrounding locations to apprehend terror suspects, during which they came under massive fire  by tens of armed Palestinian gunmen.

The terrorists also hurled explosive devices toward the soldiers, endangering their lives, the IDF said. The soldiers responded with fire toward the sources of the fire and explosive devices. Hits were identified.

Israels later investigation into the shooting concluded that only a forensic analysis of the bullet would be able to confirm whether it was an Israeli or Palestinian who fired the shot that killed Abu Akleh. The IDF said in a statement issued Monday that if an Israeli soldier was responsible, the journalist would have been hit by mistake amid an exchange of gunfire with the terrorists.

The IDF will continue to thwart terrorism wherever needed while taking precautions and measures to prevent harm to non-combatants. The IDF regrets harm to non-combatants, including during an exchange of fire or active combat zones, and is fully committed to protecting the sanctity of human life and the protection of the freedom of the press, the statement reads.

Separately, the Palestinian Authority (PA), which had conducted its own investigation, had blamed Israeli soldiers for the journalists death. The PA on July 2 announced it would hand over the bullet that killed Abu Akleh to the United States for a ballistic analysis of the shell.

Price on July 4 said that the USSC had been granted full access to investigations by the IDF and PA, and after summarizing both investigations and conducting forensic and ballistic analysis, it concluded that gunfire from IDF positions was likely responsible for Abu Aklehs death.

According to Price, the USSC concluded the shooting was likely not intentional but rather the result of tragic circumstances during an IDF-led military operation against factions of Palestinian Islamic Jihad that came after a series of terrorist attacks in Israel.

In a statement, Abu Aklehs family said they will continue to call for justice and accountability and urge the United Nations and International Criminal Court to take immediate action in order to bring justice.

President Joe Biden is set to visit Israel and the West Bank next week.
Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Marc Miller (R) listens as Minister of Indigenous Services Patty Hajdu, appearing via video conference, speaks during a news conference regarding the order from the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to compensate Indigenous children and their families, in Ottawa on Oct. 29, 2021. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)

Ottawa Signs $20 Billion Compensation Agreement on First Nations Child Welfare

Ottawa has signed a $20 billion final settlement agreement to compensate First Nations children and families after a tribunal ruled that it has underfunded child welfare payments on reserves.

In January, the federal government, the Assembly of First Nations, and plaintiffs in two classaction lawsuits reached an agreement-in-principle, in which the government committed to provide payment to First Nations children and families who were determined to be underfunded or didnt receive public support dating back to 1991.

The parties announced on June 4 that the agreement had been finalized though it must still be approved by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) and Federal Court.

The $20 billion accounts for half of an overall $40 billion deal that aims to reform the child welfare system, including funding over five years for the First Nations Child and Family Services program.

Indigenous Services Canada says the settlement is the largest in Canadian history.

In December 2020, the attorney general of Canada filed an application for a judicial review of CHRTs compensation order for First Nations children, arguing that broadening the eligibility criteria of children receiving services through Jordans Principle went beyond the tribunals jurisdiction.

Jordans Principle is a child-first principle meant to prevent First Nations children from being denied essential public services or experiencing delays in receiving them, according to the CHRT.

The CHRT had ruled in July 2020 and November 2020 respectively that the federal government must adhere to its orders by providing services to First Nations children, including children without Indian Act status who live off-reserve but are recognized as members by their Nation.

The Federal Court upheld the Tribunals decision and dismissed the attorney generals application last September, saying that the Applicant has not succeeded in establishing that the Compensation Decision is unreasonable.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
U.S. Navy JAG Lilly Bean (R) and her brother Harrison Schultz from Florida celebrate America's freedom with their children in Coronado, California on July 4, 2022. (Jane Yang/The Epoch Times)

Pass on American Values to Our Children: Coronado Celebrates Freedom

Coronado, on a peninsula in San Diego Bay, is a dynamic resort city and home to about 24,000 with a U.S. Navy base. This July Fourth marks the 73rd Independence Day parade in the city.

People of all ageslocals and visitorslined the citys main street to cheer on the over 100 groups of parade participants. Military groups got the warmest and loudest cheers.

Celebrating freedom, and enjoying family and friends, people came out to have a good time, while reflecting on Americas values and giving thanks to those who work to keep this country free.

Navy JAG: Pass on the American Values to Our Children

Lilly Bean is a U.S. Navy JAG (Judge Advocate General) stationed in Coronado. Her brother Harrison Schultz and his three children are visiting from Florida. With big smiles on their faces, the cousins had fun drawing American flags on the ground.

I love July Fourth, especially living here [in Coronado]. Its an awesome opportunity to get together and celebrate our country and unity while being grateful for this place that we live, Lilly Bean told The Epoch Times.

Schultz told The Epoch Times he appreciated this opportunity to just enjoy being an American and supporting everyone here. To him, being American means keeping the values that America was founded on and really enjoy the freedoms and teach the kids the right and the wrong.

Both Bean and Schultz agree that freedom is the most important American value. To keep the American values, we simply go back to the basics like be kind and respectful. Help each other out, stand up for whats right, have the courage to speak up when things arent done correctly. These are the things that are really important, Bean said.

Schultz added, and pass these values to our children.

Coronado Mayor: July Fourth is a Celebration and Remembrance

Coronado mayor Richard Bailey welcomes people to enjoy the Independence Day parade in Coronado on July 4, 2022. (Screenshot/NTD Television)

Coronado has a very rich American history, we are a very proud naval town, and we are proud of our nation, Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey told The Epoch Times.

Today is both a celebration and a remembrance. It is a celebration of the courage and the bravery of the men and women who fought for our independence so many years ago. Its also a remembrance that today is just as important to continue to fight for those same rights and principles as it was back in our nations founding.

To Bailey, the most important American value is the equal treatment for all under the law. This is Americas promise as a country, and it is perfect. It is something we should continue to strive for.

Bailey said he anticipated somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people visiting Coronado today. Its exciting to see everyone wanting to celebrate our nations independence and have a great time.

Military Mom: Thankful to Live in a Free Country

Military mom Gail Pedrotty enjoys the Independence Day parade in Coronado on July 4, 2022. (Screenshot/NTD Television)

Gail Pedrotty is a mother of three sons who are on active duty. Long-time residents of Coronado, she and her husband operate a medical office and are very involved with the military ministry. In addition, Pedrottys father was a World War II veteran.

Coming to watch the parade has been a family tradition for them: We are here to celebrate America. The kids used to wake up at four in the morning to come out here and reserve their spots, Pedrotty told The Epoch Times.

A proud military mom, Pedrotty is very grateful. She said, We are very thankful. Im very proud of them [sons]. And I pray for them all the time because of what theyre doing. Its the sacrifices that they definitely make for all of us.

We live in a country thats free, and [Coronado is] a city that is welcoming. You can come and walk around and feel like you belong here. To Pedrotty, this is the American value we should all treasure.

Vietnam Veteran: Focus on the Positive, Help Others

Vietnam veteran Wayne Strictlandenjoys the Independence Day parade in Coronado on July 4, 2022. (Screenshot/NTD Television)

Wayne Strickland is a Vietnam Veteran and retired from the Coronado fire department. He participated in the parade with other Vietnam veterans to celebrate Americas independence and thank all the veterans who gave their lives to keep America free, he told The Epoch Times.

Strickland said that he is a member of the Coronado Rotary Club, so helping others is whats important. He said, People need to keep their moral standards high. Look at the good and positive things, dont dwell on the negative. Help others.

Retired Salesman: People Should Celebrate America

Retired salesman Byron Miller enjoys the Independence Day parade in Coronado on July 4, 2022. (Screenshot/NTD Television)

Retired salesman Byron Miller has watched the parade every year for the past 30 years.

He told The Epoch Times that the most important value of this country is its opportunities: Everybody can be anybody they want. Weve had a black president. We have black Supreme Court justices  I dont see that happening in other countries.

One of the reasons people want to come here is our social services are free, free medical, free welfare. They have to earn it though, Miller said.

Miller donates money to the parade because he would like to help promote it so more people can enjoy and celebrate Independence Day. He said, we should be celebrating. Now people dont learn about America in school anymore, all they learn is how bad we are.

Miller hopes for an honest press and that the country can find its moral compass.

Coronado 2022 Independence Day parade participant: traditional Chinese waist drum by San Diego Falun Dafa practitioners. (Jane Yang/The Epoch Times)

Coronado 2022 Independence Day parade: kids greeting the Navy service members. (Jane Yang/The Epoch Times)

Coronado 2022 Independence Day parade: Scottish pipe band (Jane Yang/The Epoch Times)

Coronado 2022 Independence Day parade: Coronado Rotary Club. (Jane Yang/The Epoch Times)

Jane Yang and Tina Deng contributed to this report.
Law enforcement works the scene after a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., on July 4, 2022. (Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)

Person of Interest in Illinois July 4 Parade Mass Shooting Arrested

The person of interest in the Highland Park, Illinois, July 4 parade mass shooting has been arrested, police said.

Robert (Bobby) E. Crimo III, 22, was taken into custody without incident by the North Chicago police after a brief pursuit, Highland Park Police Chief Louis E. Jogmen told reporters.

Crimo came to stop during the vehicle chase and officers were able to take him into custody.

Various videos show Crimo crawling on the ground after he stopped his vehicle at the crossroad of U.S. Highway 41 and Westleigh Road in Lake Forest. Officers approached him and arrested him.

State and federal authorities identified Crimo as the suspect of the shooting earlier in the day.

Through law enforcement partnerships and community information and leads, a person of interest has been identified as Robert (Bobby) E. Crimo III, the City of Highland Park said in a statement.

A photo of Crimo was released along with the statement.

Robert (Bobby) E. Crimo III, 22, has been identified by authorities as the person of interest in the July 4 parade mass shooting that happened in Highland Park, Ill., on July 4, 2022. (Courtesy of the City of Highland Park)

Police declined to answer questions about how they identified Crimo. Before his arrest, Highland Park Police Chief Lou Jogmen warned on Monday afternoon that he could be armed and dangerous.

The city government had urged local residents in downtown Highland Park to shelter in place while the authorities continued their active investigation.

An active investigation continues into the shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade. The parade route in downtown Highland Park and the central business district remains an active crime scene; therefore, we highly recommend individuals living in this area to continue to shelter in place, the city said in a statement at the time.

The authorities didnt say if Crimo is the suspected shooter.

7 Killed, At Least 30 Wounded

A gunman on a rooftop opened fire on the Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago on Monday, killing at least seven, wounding at least thirty, and sending hundreds of marchers, parents with strollers, and children on bicycles fleeing in terror, police said.

The suspect remains on the loose hours later as authorities continue to scour the area.

The shooter opened fire around 10:15 a.m. local time when the parade was about three-quarters through, authorities said.

Highland Park Police Commander Chris ONeill, the incident commander on the scene, said the gunman apparently used a high-powered rifle to fire from a spot atop a commercial building where he was very difficult to see.

ONeill said the rifle was recovered at the scene.

Police also found a ladder attached to the building.

Pain and Unnecessary Suffering

The shooting occurred at a spot on the parade route where many residents had staked out prime viewing points early in the day for the annual celebration. Dozens of fired bullets sent hundreds of parade-goers, some visibly bloodied, fleeing.

They left a trail of abandoned items that showed everyday life suddenly, violently disrupted: a half-eaten bag of potato chips, a box of chocolate cookies spilled onto the grass, a childs Chicago Cubs cap.

Dr. Brigham Temple, medical director of emergency preparedness for NorthShore University Health Center, said the Highland Park hospital received 26 patients after the attack and all but one had gunshot wounds. Their ages ranged from 8 to 85, and Temple estimated that four or five patients were children.

He said 19 of them were treated and discharged. Others were transferred to other hospitals, while two patients, in stable condition, remained at the Highland Park hospital.

The Associated Press contributed to the report.
The lawyer representing whistleblower Brook Jackson said Pfizer is arguing the court should dismiss Jacksons lawsuit alleging fraud in Pfizers COVID-19 clinical trials because the U.S. government knew about the wrongdoings but continued to do business with the vaccine maker.

A lawsuit filed by whistleblower Brook Jackson alleging Pfizer and two of its contractors manipulated data and committed other acts of fraud during Pfizers COVID-19 clinical trials is paused following a motion by the defendants to dismiss the case.

In an interview with The Defender, Jacksons lawyer said Pfizer argued the lawsuit, which was filed under the False Claims Act, should be dismissed because the U.S. government knew of the wrongdoings in the clinical trials but continued to do business with the vaccine maker.

Under the False Claims Act, whistleblowers can be rewarded for confidentially disclosing fraud that results in a financial loss to the federal government.

However, a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision that expanded the scope of a legal principle known as materiality resulted in a series of federal court decisions in which fraud cases brought under the False Claims Act were dismissed.

As interpreted by the Supreme Court, if the government continued paying a contractor despite the contractors fraudulent activity, the fraud was not considered material to the contract.

Pfizer is a federal contractor because it signed multiple contracts with the U.S. government to provide COVID-19 vaccines and Paxlovid, a pill used to treat the virus.

Pfizer claims they can get away with fraud as long as the government would write them a check despite knowing about the fraud, attorney Robert Barnes said.

The other two defendants in the case are Ventavia Research Group, which conducted vaccine trials on behalf of Pfizer, and ICON PLC, also a Pfizer contractor.

In an attempt to strengthen the False Claims Acts anti-retaliation provisions and install new safeguards against industry-level blacklisting of whistleblowers seeking employment, Congress in July 2021 introduced the False Claims Amendments Act of 2021.

In December 2021, Pfizer hired a well-connected lobbyist, Hazen Marshall, and the law firm Williams & Jensen to lobby against the bill.

Pfizer previously was heavily fined in connection with the False Claims Act. As part of a 2009 settlement, the company paid $2.3 billion in fines  the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice  stemming from allegations of illegal marketing of off-label products not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Pfizer, one of the most criminally fined drug companies in the world, wants to weaken the laws that hold them accountable, Barnes told The Defender.

Congress has taken no action on the False Claims Amendments Act since November 2021, when the bill was added to the Senates legislative calendar.

Barnes said the outcome of Jacksons case against Pfizer is significant not just for his client, but also for the American public.

This case will determine if Big Pharma can rip off the American people using a dangerous drug that harms millions without any legal remedy because they claim the government was in on the scam.

Jackson was a regional director for Ventavia for a brief period in 2020 but was fired after she notified the FDA about issues with Pfizers vaccine trials.

After she was fired, she gave The BMJ a cache of internal company documents, photos and recordings highlighting the alleged wrongdoing by Ventavia.

The documents she provided contained evidence of falsified data, blind trial failures and awareness on the part of at least one Ventavia executive that members of the companys staff were falsifying data.

Jacksons documents also provided evidence of administrators who had no training or medical certifications, or who provided very little oversight during the trials.

Jackson filed her complaint in August 2021, in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas, Beaumont Division, alleging Pfizer, Ventavia and ICON deliberately withheld crucial information from the United States that calls the safety and efficacy of their vaccine into question.

A district court judge in February unsealed Jacksons complaint, which included 400 pages of exhibits.

According to the complaint, Jackson, who had more than 15 years of experience working with clinical trials, repeatedly informed her superiors of poor laboratory management, patient safety concerns and data integrity issues during the approximately two weeks she was employed by Ventavia.

Brook [Jackson] brought a Qui Tam action and a retaliatory discharge case against Pfizer and others for fraud on the people concerning Pfizers false certifications to the U.S. Department of Defense about the safety and efficacy of their COVID-19 vaccine, Barnes said.

A Qui Tam case refers to a provision under the False Claims Act that allows individuals and entities with evidence of fraud against federal programs or contracts to sue the wrongdoer on behalf of the U.S. government

She was part of the clinical trials, witnessed extraordinary malfeasance, blew the whistle, and was quickly fired after she blew the whistle.

Barnes said his legal team will in August file its opposition brief to Pfizers motion to dismiss, and the judge may rule on the motion to dismiss by fall 2022.

07/05/22 Childrens Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Childrens Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Childrens Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Childrens Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

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Salute to America Independence Day Parade was held in Philadelphia on July 4, 2022 to celebrate the 246th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. (Leon Liu/The Epoch Times)

Philadelphia Celebrates Freedom on Fourth of July

PHILADELPHIAThere is hardly a more patriotic place to celebrate Independence Day than Philadelphia, the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. On July 4, Philadelphia turned out to celebrate freedom and honor the history of the nation.

Wawa Welcome America festivities in Philadelphia spanned 16 days, including free museum attendance, hoagie giveaways from Wawa, concerts, a fireworks finale over the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and moreall free to the public.

Welcome America is just a great time for free family fun. People come together and share the excitement, Laurie Bruce, Public Relations Manager of Wawa, the event sponsor, told The Epoch Times, Its about keeping people connected, and it just means a lot to be able to do that.

Philadelphias premier celebration of July 4 started at Independence Hall with a patriotic ceremony celebrating the 246th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It included singing by Miss America Emma Broyles, Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra performances, and a reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Salute to America Independence Day Parade was held in Philadelphia on July 4, 2022, to celebrate the 246th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. (Leon Liu/The Epoch Times)

Were all aware of how much the world has changed over the last 250 years and just how tough the last couple of years have been for us, said State Park Superintendent Cindy MacLeod in her Celebration of Freedom speech. The need for understanding our history has never, never been greater. The need for participating in our democracy has never been greater.

Were happy, and everybody is getting together to celebrate, Jim Kenney, the mayor of Philadelphia, told The Epoch Times, If you see whats going on in the country today, were so divided. And we need to come back together and kind of rethink what were all about.

After being put on hold since 2020 due to COVID-19, Salute to America Independence Day Parade returned this year with Miss America 2022, Emma Broyles, as the grand marshal. People enjoyed lavish floats, United States military units, marching bands, cultural groups, dance performances, historical characters, and much more.

Freedom Is Not Free

People like Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraines ambassador to the United Nations, know how precious freedom is. He felt exceptionally humbling to be in Philadelphia, the birthplace of America, at the very moment that when Ukraine fights for his freedom and independence, and when we have many people killed for the freedom.

Sergiy Kyslytsya (Right), Ukraines ambassador to the United Nations and Iryna Mazur, Honorary Consul of Ukraine in Philadelphia, at the Wawa Welcome America festivities in Philadelphia on July 4, 2022. (Frank Liang/The Epoch Times)

He told The Epoch Times: Its my honor today to read the parts of the Declaration of Independence in front of the free citizens of Philadelphia during the ceremony, along with Iryna Mazur, honorary consul of Ukraine in Philadelphia.

The United States has a very long, comparative long history of fighting for freedom, and offering the protection to all people who are persecuted in their countries, and becoming the second home to them, said Kyslytsya, And the very text of the Declaration of Independence is a testimony to the founding principles of this country.

July 4, its about the Declaration of Independence, Kyslytsya continued, I think that every American, every people, every person who lives in this country, should read at least once the Declaration of Independence before he or she goes to see the fireworks.

Kyslytsyas appreciation of freedom resonated with Mazur.

Ukraine and Ukrainian people are a live example right now that freedom is not free, Mazur told The Epoch Times. She said what Ukrainians are doing today is what the Americans did almost 250 years ago when they fought for their independence and freedom. America is known for defending the principles of democracy and freedom since its creation.

Mazur said to people in authoritarian countries like China and Russia: Do not lose your chance to be free. This is your chance to take things into your hands and to show the world that you can be people of freedom.

Both Kyslytsya and Mazur expressed great gratitude to America. Thank you so much for your support, for your generosity, for your compassion, and for believing in Ukraine! said Mazur.

American Flag Unites Us

The winner of the 2022 Celebrate Freedom Award with a $10,000 grant is Dr. Matthew Burke, the founder and executive director of 10 CAN, Inc. or the Christian Adventure Network. It is a nonprofit charitable organization focusing on saving heroes, raising the next generation of warriors, and restoring families through the great outdoors, according to its website.

My children see me as a hero, but I am no hero. I am just a humble servant of God and an American patriot. Im passionate about helping others, reuniting our country, and getting kids into the outdoors, Burke told the crowd after accepting his award at the ceremony.

Matthew Burke (Middle), the winner of the 2022 Celebrate Freedom Award, the founder and executive director of 10 CAN, Inc. or the Christian Adventure Network is at Wawa Welcome America festivities in Philadelphia on July 4, 2022, with Jim Kenny (Left), the Mayor of Philadelphia. (Frank Liang/The Epoch Times)

As a veteran and an American patriot, Burke believes that this nation could not have come this far as a free country without the sacrifice of many patriots.

Patriotism was what unites us as a common cause, Burke told The Epoch Times while holding a small American flag, This is what unites us, the colors, the stars, and stripes. And without this, were all individuals. And this is what keeps us going. This is what unites us and makes us strong as a nation.

Celebrating Independence Day and receiving the award made Burke feel happy, honored, sad, all at the same time, he said. The reason is the hate and division attempting to divide our country. And the solids of the majority do nothing. Then the loud minority, the people who are trying to destroy our country, they win, and we have to stand up, and we have to fight for our independence, and we have to fight for justice, equality, and diversity.

We need to focus on what we have a commonality and instead of our differences, Burke believes.
Gianno Caldwell attends the "I Have A Dream" Foundation's 5th Annual Los Angeles' Dreamer Dinner at Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, California, on March 18, 2018. (Leon Bennett/Getty Images)

Political Analyst Gianno Caldwell Criticizes Soft-on-Crime Polices for Parade Mass Shooting

Political analyst Gianno Caldwell, whose 18-year-old brother was killed in a shooting in Chicago last month, said the July 4 parade mass shooting is the result of soft-on-crime policies.

The defund the police mantra has become like a disease thats spreading from the inner cities to suburbs everywhere, Caldwell told the New York Post on July 4.

He added, The idea of defunding the police and reallocating those funds comes with a mentality that criminals are embracing, which is that the police cant touch me.

Now criminals dont fear the police because police officers are handicapped from doing their jobs, Caldwell said.

The defund the police mantra is a disease thats spread to the suburbs and going further. Criminals are empowered by this and police are demoralized by this. This idea is getting people killed.  Gianno Caldwell (@GiannoCaldwell) July 4, 2022

On Monday, a gunman opened fire from a rooftop on the Independence Day parade in downtown Highland Park, Illinois, killing at least six and injuring at least 30. A person of interest, 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III has since been taken into custody.

Highland Park, a wealthy suburban city, is located about 27 miles north of Chicago.

Caldwells brother, Christian Beamon, was fatally shot by an unidentified male in Chicagos Morgan Park neighborhood on June 24. According to Fox, two others were also shot and the shooter fled the scene in a black sedan.

Following his brothers death, Caldwell took to Twitter to express his feelings.

Yesterday was the worst day of my existence. I received a call informing me that my teenage baby brother was murdered on the south side of Chicago, he wrote. Never could I have imagined my baby brothers life would be stolen from him. Please keep my family in your prayers.

Caldwell also told the Post that he feels Chicago is not a safe city anymore.

People in Chicago now fear doing their daily activities, he said. That means going to work, going to school, going to the grocery store. Individuals dont know if their number is going to be called next and be the person getting shot and murdered.

Violence broke out across Chicago over the Fourth of July weekend, with at least seven people killed and 29 injured in shootings.

Caldwell said he believes locals in Highland Park are going to demand changes immediately.

This is where millionaires and billionaires in Illinois live. If they cant feel safe at a parade, the next election is going to be brutal. Theyve got to reverse these soft-on-crime policies, Caldwell said, before adding that these policies have enabled individuals to carry out mass shootings.

Law enforcement escorts a family away from the scene of a shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, on July 4, 2022. (Mark Borenstein/Getty Images)

Elections

Illinoisans will choose a new governor in the 2022 midterm election, a race between incumbent Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, and two-term state Sen. Darren Bailey, a Republican. Both released statements on Twitter following the parade mass shooting.

I will stand firm with Illinoisans and Americans: we mustand we willend this plague of gun violence, Pritzker wrote.

We need to demand law and order and prosecute criminals. We need more police on our streets to keep our families safe, Bailey wrote. We must also better prioritize our budget to invest more in mental health. I have been calling on this for months.

In April, Bailey took to Twitter to say how he and the current governor see the police differently.

I will continue to stand up to radical Democrats and their extreme policies to defund the police. As your next Governor, Ill defend the police and fight for safer communities for every Illinoisan, Bailey wrote.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker speaks during a transgender support rally at Federal Building Plaza in Chicago, Illinois, on April 27, 2022. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

In the states 10th Congressional District, where Highland Park is located, incumbent Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) will face Republican Joe Severino, a philanthropist and a former small business owner.

My condolences to the family and loved ones; my prayers for the injured and for my community; and my commitment to do everything I can to make our children, our towns, our nation safer. Enough is enough! Schneider wrote on Twitter.

Praying for the fallen and injured, plus the brave law enforcement working to apprehend the assailant, Severino wrote on Twitter.

In June, Severino published an op-ed in North Cook News, criticizing Schneiders previous remarks on the 2020 Kenosha shooting.

Here in Illinois, Chicago sadly led America with over 800 murders last year in 2021, Severino wrote. We cannot accept the dangers of having anti-cop radicals like Brad Schneider representing the 10th Congressional District any longer.

We must respect the police, back the blue, and demand law-and-order, he concluded.
A doctor examines an eight-month pregnant woman at a health center in Denver, Colorado on March 15, 2017. (Jason Connolly/AFP via Getty Images)

Pro-Life Texas Insurance Company Pledges to Cover Child Birth Expenses

As some of the nations largest employers vow to pay their employees to travel out of state for abortions, an insurance company in Texas went viral on social media for promising to cover employees expenses related to having a child.

Buffer Insurance, a Dallas-Fort Worth area company, responded to the U.S. Supreme Courts overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision with a pro-life message, pledging to adjust its benefits policies to better support employees to be new parents.

Specifically, the company said it would provide its female employees with paid maternity and paternity leave, as well as pay for the medical costs of giving birth to or adopting a baby.

Secular companies are paying the travel costs for employees to abort babies out-of-state, Buffer wrote in a June 27 Facebook post. Today we are announcing that Buffer will pay the costs for our employees who birth babies.

It is also offering such benefits to its insurance clients.

Employers: If youd like to learn how you can provide these benefits to your employees, let us know. We have ready-to-use policies you can add to your employee handbooks, it added.

Paying Employees to Get Out-of-State Abortions

The move comes as a growing list of high-profile companies, including Walt Disney Company, Meta, Comcast, Conde Nast, Warner Bros., JPMorgan Chase, and Johnson & Johnson, said they will pay their employees who have to travel to another state to get an abortion in the aftermath of the end of Roe.

On June 24, the Supreme Courts 6-3 conservative majority overruled Roe, which legalized abortion at a national level. The new decision doesnt outlaw abortion but instead hands the question of abortion access back to individual states.

Prior to the ruling, a wave of corporations had already offered to pay in travel expenses for its abortion-seeking employees after a leaked draft opinion suggesting that the high court was intended to revoke Roe. Those companies include Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Airbnb, Starbucks, Tesla, Uber, PayPal, and Yelp.

In Texas, the Republican-led state Legislature last year passed a trigger law that would automatically install a heartbeat abortion ban 30 days after Roe no longer applies. On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Texas can enforce its pre-Roe abortion ban, which has been unenforceable over the past decades but remained a part of the state law.

Under the ban, which dates back to 1925, performing an abortion carries a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The courts order, however, only allows for civil enforcement of the ban, meaning that prosecutors will not be able to press criminal charges against abortion providers.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed the bill that outlaws abortions once a heartbeat is detected in a fetus, said his administration will continue to save every child from the ravages of abortion and help our expectant mothers in need.

The U.S. Supreme Court correctly overturned Roe v. Wade and reinstated the right of states to protect innocent, unborn children, Abbott said. Texas has also prioritized supporting womens healthcare and expectant mothers in need to give them the necessary resources so that they can choose life for their child.
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino rises during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 14, 2022. (The Canadian Press/ Patrick Doyle)

Proposed Reforms for RCMP Panned by Professor, Former Mounties

A stronger role for the RCMPs management advisory board, as suggested by Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, will do little to solve its fundamental problems, say an Ottawa criminology professor and some retired Mounties.

Mendicino said in early June that his department was looking into how best to strengthen the oversight role of the RCMPs Management Advisory Board.

The Liberal government created the board in 2019, and the partys last election platform promised to enhance the board to be in line with other Canadian police services to have full oversight over the RCMP.

In a recent interview with The Canadian Press (CP), Mendicino said the board would need to communicate regularly with his office to help build Canadians trust and confidence in the force. This would include producing reports that his office can then use to advance public discourse about the RCMP.

He also said he expects the board to offer tangible recommendations on how to diversify the RCMPs workforce and advance reconciliation with indigenous peoples.

Darryl Davies, a criminology professor at Carleton University who was commissioned for investigations by the RCMP in the past, had called for a civilian body to oversee the RCMP as early as 2017. In an interview with The Epoch Times, he said governments have offered more talk than action.

The public safety minister claims he is going to improve oversight over the RCMP. It is a complete farce.  All they do is support the status quo ad nauseum, he said, while advising some changes that he says would allow for more independence.

The RCMP logo is seen outside Royal Canadian Mounted Police E Division Headquarters, in Surrey, B.C., in a file photo. (The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck)

The commissioner of the RCMP [should issue] reports to Parliament and not a minister of public safety. Also, the commissioner of the RCMP should be appointed by a justice committee consisting of representatives appointed by each political party, with no one party having a majority of members. As it stands, the appointment is made by the prime minister.

In his CP interview, Mendicino talked about having strong and transparent communication between the Management Advisory Board and the minister, though not the board and the public. In 2020, the Toronto Star asked the RCMP what advice it had received from the board during its first 18 months in existence, and whether the advice would be made public, and the media outlet said it was refused that information.

Rae Banwarie, who retired from the force in 2017, told The Epoch Times that the compositions and secrecy of the board should raise questions.

Why are [the boards] directives to the commissioner of the RCMP not public documents? Is this not one of the core reasons for the rot in the force today? Banwarie asked.

Why are no retired RCMP police officers part of this advisory board? Would they not be the best people who know the organization inside and out and could make recommendations for transformational change? Those from the non-commissioned ranks  know the issues and have not been compromised by promotions and blindly do as they are told [in order] to move ahead career-wise.

Smoke and Mirrors

Mendicino told CP that his department will keep all options on the table when it comes to whether or not any of these changes require legislation, but Banwarie believes legislation is needed to make board decisions binding.

This announcement is just smoke and mirrors for the public. If Minister Mendicino really wants change in the RCMP, he will make these fundamental changes in legislation today. I would put my hand up to be part of this board, he said.

Former Mountie Rob Creasser also wants legislation but doubts it will materialize.

Even if the current public safety minister enacts legislation to ensure that government keeps their paws off a civilian oversight group, which I dont think hell do, there have to be meaningful consequences and penalties spelled out in that legislation that will ensure compliance. Dont make it like the current ethics legislation that contains absolutely zero consequences other than a finding of guilty, Creasser told The Epoch Times.

If the government is so excited about creating committees, why not have the recommendations these committees make binding on the government? I can assure you that will never happen because it takes control of the RCMP away from those that want to manipulate it, pure and simple.

Although the board includes some former police officers, none have RCMP experience. Like Banwarie, Creasser believes ex-Mounties need a place on the board.

The makeup of this civilian board is key, he says.

[Retired Mounties] may not have the business acumen that the current board has, but we certainly have the moral and ethical integrity to ensure that standards are upheld and will be vocal if theyre not. Weve all been around the outfit long enough to know whats what and the role government has had in shaping the organization into the sad state of affairs it currently sits.

On May 19, the Liberals introduced legislation to replace the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP. The new Public Complaints and Review Commission would receive $112 million over five years, along with over $19 million annually on an ongoing basis, and would handle complaints about the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) as well as the RCMP concerning their non-national-security-related activities.

The new commission would require the RCMP and CBSA to respond to its interim reports within six months and also report annually on its progress in implementing the commissions recommendations.

Retired Mountie Leland Keane believes proper leadership would do more than a series of adjustments called for by a commission.

One-hundred-plus chief superintendents and above making decisions that avoid risk in order to receive incentive pay will not be changed by a complaints board. The senior executives of the RCMP are not viewed as police by members of the force. Lack of resources for actual serving police in the field is not [changed] by risk-averse executives, Keane told The Epoch Times.

A complaints board is not useful to what ails the RCMP. Complaints are an indication of dissatisfaction with the performance of members or processes of the force. The function of the board is to reply to complaints but it is not enough to merely answer complaints or even to address them.
The Government is continuing to impose sanctions on the allies of Russian president Vladimir Putin (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik/Kremlin Pool Photo/AP)

Putin Urges Military Pause in Ukraine Region

Russian President Vladimir Putin urged military leaders to carry out an operational pause in Ukraine after the seizure of two key areas near the border.

While meeting with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Putin said all units involved in the Luhansk offensive should pause to build up strength, according to state media.

The units that took part in active hostilities and achieved success, victories in the Luhansk direction, of course, should rest, increase their combat capabilities, Putin said.

Over the past weekend, Russias military forced Ukrainian troops to retreat in Lysychansk, one of the last cities under Kyivs control in Luhansk. Both Luhansk and Donetsk are located in the eastern region known as Donbas.

Russian forces, meanwhile, struck targets across Ukraines eastern Donetsk region on Tuesday. Russia says it wants to wrest control of the entire Donbas region from Ukraine on behalf of Moscow-backed separatists in two self-proclaimed peoples republics.

After Russian forces on Sunday took control of Lysychansk, the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk, Ukrainian officials said they now expect Moscow to focus its efforts on the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in Donetsk.

Intelligence Update

Intelligence officials in the West said that with the latest offensive, Russia appears to have achieved better coordination between its military units.

Russias relatively rapid capture of Lysychansk extends its control across virtually all of the territory of Luhansk Oblast, allowing it to claim substantive progress against the policy objective it presented as the immediate purpose of the war, namely liberating the Donbas, an intelligence update from the British Defense Ministry said Tuesday.

A Ukrainian serviceman sits next to a destroyed tank at an abandonned Russian position near the village of Bilogorivka not far from Lysychansk, Lugansk region, on June 17, 2022. (Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images)

The Institute for the Study of War on Monday also released a report saying that Ukrainian forces have been increasingly targeting Russian military infrastructure with U.S.-made weapons, including long-range missiles, that hit deep in Russian-occupied areas. Those weapons were sent to Ukraine by the Biden administration as part of several packages that are collectively worth more than $40 billion.

The increased ability of Ukrainian forces to target critical Russian military facilities with Western-provided [High Mobility Artillery Rocket System] demonstrates how Western military aid provides Ukraine with new and necessary military capabilities, the report said.

The Russian defense ministry said Tuesday that it had used high-precision weapons to destroy command centers and artillery in Donetsk, where Ukraine still controls a number of major cities.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a phone call on Tuesday that he believed Ukraines military could retake territory recently captured by Russian forces. Johnson updated Zelenskyy on the latest deliveries of British military equipment, including 10 self-propelled artillery systems and loitering munitions, which would be arriving in the coming days and weeks, a spokesperson said.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Quebec Victims Group Surprised After Man Gets Conditional Discharge for Sex Assault

A crime victims advocacy group expressed concern on Tuesday after a Quebec man was granted a conditional discharge in a sexual assault case, in part because the judge felt a conviction could damage the mans career.

Marie-Christine Villeneuve of Crime Victims Assistance Centres says she worries the light sentence may be discouraging to victims and make them reluctant to report sexual assaults.

If youre a victim seeing this kind of decision, its possible that you could be more fearful of turning to the legal process, of filing a complaint, and maybe fearful about really getting justice at the end of this process, she said in an interview.

The ruling, she said, appears to run contrary to the current trend, which is more toward concern for the victim at the heart of the legal process.

In the June decision, a Quebec court judge in Trois-Rivieres, Que., opted to give Simon Houle probation and a conditional discharge, partly because a conviction would make it hard for Houle to travel as an engineer. Houle pleaded guilty last year to sexual assault and voyeurism after assaulting an acquaintance in 2019 and taking photos of the intimate parts of her body as she slept. He was 27 at the time.

The victim was awoken by the light of a camera to find Houle assaulting her with his fingers after she had fallen asleep at a friends home after a night of drinking at a bar with a group of friends. Her shirt had been lifted and her bra unfastened, the court decision said.

The woman panicked and went to the kitchen, where the accused followed her and brought her back to bed. A search of his phone would later reveal that he had taken nine photos.

Judge Matthieu Poliquin found that the victim suffered significant harm as a result of the assault, including anger, shame, fear of seeing the accused, and consequences for her school, work and personal life. She was also in a vulnerable state due to the fact she had consumed alcohol and was sleeping, the decision said.

However, the judge noted that the assault happened all in all quickly, adding that Houle had taken therapy seriously and sincerely regretted his actions.

A sentence other than a discharge would have a significant impact on his career as an engineer, the judge wrote. This profession requires travelling around the world, he added, while acknowledging that Houle had not yet been required to travel by his employer due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Houle admitted during therapy to have assaulted another person in 2015. The judge described that admission as concerning but said it also showed a desire for transparency. No charges were filed as a result of the 2015 incident.

Houle was also convicted of impaired driving in 2014 but had never been convicted of a violent crime.

Poliquin said Houle was at low risk of reoffending and had been convincingly rehabilitated. It is in the general interest that the accused, an asset for society, can continue his professional career, the judge wrote.

A conditional discharge can be granted in cases when a person pleads guilty but is not convicted as long as they fulfil certain conditions. Houle was given three years of probation and must pay $6,000 to a victims aid group.

If he meets the conditions, he will avoid a permanent criminal record.

Quebecs Crown prosecutors office says it will seek to appeal the judges sentencing decision in the coming weeks.

Houles sentence, which was first reported by Radio-Canada, sparked an avalanche of online comments denouncing the decision.

Villeneuve said that while the verdict may be disappointing to some, it is important to remember that it is only one decision and that the legal system is only one path to healing for victims.

While the courts have not traditionally been inviting to sexual assault survivors, there are attempts underway to rebuild confidence through the implementation of specialized sexual assault tribunals, she said. Villeneuve added that her organization is there to support victims, whether they choose to file a formal complaint or not.

By Morgan Lowrie
A pedestrian passes by on the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis on April 9, 2019. The university closed its Confucius Institute in 2019. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Republican Lawmakers Seek to Crack Down on Beijings Trojan Horse Activities in US Universities

A Republican congressman and his colleagues are hoping to crack down on the Chinese Communist Partys trojan horse activities taking place in U.S. universities.

Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) recently introduced H.R.7779, which proposes to establish Department of Homeland Security funding restrictions on institutions of higher education that have a relationship with Confucius Institutes. There are currently 15 Republican co-sponsors of the bill.

Speaking to The Epoch Times in late June, Pfluger explained that the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] is utilizing Confucius Institutes to infiltrate American university campuses to engage in espionage, steal our intellectual property, intimidate Chinese dissidents, promote communist propaganda, and funnel information back to the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA).

He also said that under no circumstances should American taxpayer dollars be used to enrich the CCP or the PLA [Peoples Liberation Army], adding that Congress must ensure taxpayer dollars are cut off from these programs for good.

As Confucius Institutes (CIs) became more exposed and began to shut down across the country, a new report by the National Institute of Scholars (NAS) suggests that many of the public educational and cultural promotion programs are rebranding themselvescontinuing the CCPs effort to influence operations within the United States.

Although over 100 of the 118 CIs in the United States have closed or are in the process of closing, Beijing remains committed to influencing U.S. universities. At least 38 programs have been replaced by comparable substitutes, according to the NAS report.

NAS senior research fellow and co-author of the report, Rachel Peterson, stated at a June 21 discussion forum that the Chinese government is betting that if it takes away the name Confucius Institute and tweaks the structure of their program, no one will be the wiser and realize that Chinese government influence remains alive and well on American higher education.

As a result, Pflugers bill includes not only the many CIs across the country, but other Chinese entities of concern as well. To that end, the Department of Homeland Securitys (DHS) Restrictions on Confucius Institutes and Chinese Entities of Concern Act prevents DHS funds from flowing to U.S. universities that host a CI or maintain a relationship with a Chinese entity of concern.

The bill will require DHS to create a list that identifies entities and individuals affiliated with the CCP that pose the same risks as Confucius Institutes to American universities and distribute that list to universities, Pfluger explained.

And based on the list of names, he said, universities would be required to report donations to DHS.

By forcing universities to disclose these individuals, he said, Congress and the American people can have a more comprehensive look at the entities who are attempting to exploit DHS grant dollars to enrich the PLA.

Accompanied by over a dozen Republican colleagues, Pfluger said he also introduced H.R.7851 to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to require institutions of higher education to disclose certain ties to China-affiliated organizations.

According to the congressman, the bill will increase transparency requirements for universities that receive funding from individuals, universities, think tanks, cultural/educational/language programs, any Chinese state-owned entities, or organizations that have CCP members sitting on their board of directors.

If this bill were enacted, Pfluger said it would require universities that receive donations of more than $5,000 from any entities affiliated with the CCP to publicly report these donations to the Secretary of Education and on a webpage that can be easily found on the universitys website.

A human rights group urges Tufts University to close its Confucius Institute in Somerville, Mass., on March 13, 2021. (Learner Liu/The Epoch Times)

The CCPs Trojan Horse

Pfluger is hoping his legislative actions will continue to sound the alarm and combat the CCPs nefarious activities and propaganda inside Americas universities. He said the CCP had used CIs as a trojan horse to infiltrate Western universities and engage in malign activities that support the CCP and the PLA.

Confucius Institutes have used their influence to silence academics who speak out against the CCP and PLA, spread propaganda campaigns on behalf of the CCP to influence public opinion, recruit influence agents on U.S. campuses, and engage in espionage and intellectual property theft, much of which supports the PLA, he said.

As a result, he said, any foreign entity looking to undercut the democratic values [America holds] dear should be viewed as a direct threat to the nations democracy. Time and time again, he said, the CCP has shown that it will stop at nothing to exert its control over the free world.

The CCPs ability to suppress free speech and debate in the United States is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated, Pfluger said.

Congress and the Biden administration must send a strong, unified message that our nation will not tolerate the CCPs malign activity.
Smoke rises after shelling during Ukraine-Russia conflict in Donetsk, Ukraine, on July 4, 2022. (Kazbek Basayev/Reuters)

Russia Strikes Ukraines Donetsk After Seizing Luhansk Region

KYIVRussian forces struck targets across Ukraines eastern Donetsk region on Tuesday to prepare the path for an expected armoured thrust to try to take more territory as the five-month-old war entered a new phase.

The strikes, reported by the regions local governor and the Russian military, followed Moscows capture of the Ukrainian city of Lysychansk on Sunday, a move that handed it total control of the Luhansk region, one of its main war aims.

Taking full control of Donetsk, the other region in Donbass, the industrialised eastern part of Ukraine that has become the stage of the biggest battle in Europe in generations, is another goal of what Moscow calls its special military operation.

Ukrainian forces which retreated from Lysychansk at the weekend took up new defensive lines in Donetsk on Tuesday, according to Serhiy Gaidai, the Ukrainian governor of Luhansk.

In a foretaste of what is likely to follow, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of neighbouring Donetsk, said on TV that his region had been hit overnight.

Sloviansk and Kramatorsk came under shelling. They are now also the main line of assault for the enemy from the Lyman direction  there is no safe place without shelling in the Donetsk region, he said.

The Russian defence ministry, which says it does not target residential areas, said it had used what it called high-precision weapons to destroy command centres and artillery in Donetsk, where Ukraine still controls major cities.

President Vladimir Putin has told troops involved in capturing Luhansk who would also be part of any attempt to capture cities in Donetsk, to rest and recover their military preparedness, while units in other parts of Ukraine keep fighting.

Since the outset of the conflict, Russia has demanded that Ukraine hand both Luhansk and Donetsk to Moscow-backed separatists, who have declared their independence.

People wait to receive humanitarian aid in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on July 4, 2022. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)

Last Victory Claim

This is the last victory for Russia on Ukrainian territory, Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, claimed in a video posted online.

These were medium-sized cities. And this took from 4th April until 4th Julythats 90 days. So many losses.

Arestovych said besides the battle for Donetsk, Ukraine was hoping to launch counter offensives in the south of the country.

Taking the cities in the east meant that 60% of Russian forces are now concentrated in the east and it is difficult for them to be redirected to the south, he claimed.

And there are no more forces that can be brought in from Russia. They paid a big price for Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.

Early on Tuesday, Russian rockets hit Mykolaiv, a southern city on the main highway between Kherson and Odesa, the mayor, Oleksandr Senkevych, said.

Zelenskyy said on Monday that despite Ukraines withdrawal from Lysychansk, its troops continued to fight.

The armed forces of Ukraine respond, push back and destroy the offensive potential of the occupiers day after day, Zelenskyy said in a nightly video message.

We need to break them. It is a difficult task. It requires time and superhuman efforts. But we have no alternative.

By Max Hunder and Tom Balmforth
Long-term use of anxiety drugs may put undue pressure on the brain and lead to an increase in risk for cognitive decline, memory loss, and dementia, according to an international study that sheds light on the mechanisms by which the drugs affect the brain.

Using a genetic model developed in their laboratory, the health researchers at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation examined how the use of classical anti-anxiety drugs, such as diazepam, can rewire and interfere with the brain.

They discovered that the medicine created pressure on microglial cells or small cells that directly influence the functioning of neural networks, which may lead to the severing of the connections between brain neurons.

Its almost like unplugging neural connections, and that would explain how very subtle changes could drive a further progression of dementia ormore speculativelycause severe fatigue, co-author Professor Richard Banati said.

Over time, it was observed that while the anxiety is controlled by diazepam, the cognitive deficit gets worse.

The research was published in Nature Neuroscience and spanned Germany, Australia, the United States, China, and Switzerland.

The knowledge gained in this work by a large international team helps in the development of anti-anxiety drugs without such detrimental cognitive effects, Banati said.

Potent Alternative to Medication

Meditation has been shown to have positive physical benefits. (Shutterstock)

There have been a wealth of scientific studies over the past 50 years validating the health and wellness benefits of meditation for treating anxiety.

Margaret Trey, a counsellor and researcher who uses meditation in therapy, did a doctoral dissertation at the University of South Australia on a popular Chinese meditation practice, yielding results surprising enough to shift the public perception of meditation from a mysterious activity to a type of mind-body medicine.

Im not looking at the molecules or the genes. Im just looking at peoples perceptions of how they got better because they do this meditation practice, Trey said.

Trey administered an online survey comparing the health and wellness effects of practitioners measured against a control group of non-practitioner participants.

Lo and behold, they dont have to take any drugs for anxiety disorder or depression anymore. There are people who have recovered from various psycho-emotional disorders, she said.

The resultsdetailed in Treys latest book, The Effect of Falun Gong on Health and Wellnessstrongly suggest that practising meditation has a positive effect on both physical and emotional health.
File photo showing mascots resembling characters from the Minions movie franchise at a premiere in Universal City, Calif., on April 11, 2014. (Valerie Macon/Getty Images)

Some UK Movie Theaters Ban Teens in Suits Over Viral GentleMinions Trend

A new trend on social media has throngs of teenage boys dressed in formal suits flocking to screenings of the latest Minions movie, prompting some movie theaters in the UK to ban teens in suits over rowdy behavior.

The trend involves large groups of teenage boys calling themselves the GentleMinions attending screenings of Minions: The Rise of Gru, the latest installment in the Despicable Me franchise.

Videos of suit-wearing teens going to watch the movie in big groups and cheering loudly have gone viral on social media.

But some of the movie-goers riding the viral #gentleminions train have been accused of disruptive behavior during screenings, including being noisy and tossing items around.

This has prompted a number of movie theaters in the UK to ban groups of suit-clad teenagers from their venues, according to posts on social media, as well as reporting from both the BBC and Britains Press Association.

The Regal Cinema in Wadebridge, Cornwall, has banned any unaccompanied suit-wearing minors from watching the film.

In a statement posted on Twitter, The Regal wrote: We are currently not admitting unaccompanied children wearing suits for Minions: The Rise Of Gru.

This is due to the issues we have encountered over the last two days and its associated behavior.

File photo showing a general view at the premiere of the first Minions movie in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 27, 2015. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Images shared on social media showed an Odeon cinema displaying a sign that said: Due to recent disturbances following the #gentleminions trend, any group of guests in formal attire will be refused entry for showings of Minions: The Rise of Gru.

The sole movie theater in Guernsey has halted screenings of the film entirely, with Mallard Cinema manager Daniel Phillips-Smith telling the BBC that the groups had engaged in acts of vandalism, threw things, swore, argued with other movie-goers, and abused staff.

Its been absolutely heart-breaking, weve had families who wont even go back into the screen when weve tried to sort it out, families leaving before the film has even started and of course the children have been in tears, Phillips-Smith told the outlet.

In some cases, police have been called to rowdy screenings, with Guernsey Police confirming to the BBC that theyve received reports of incidents.

Universal Pictures has endorsed the trend, saying in a post on Twitter that we see you and we love you.

The Minions franchise kicked off in 2010 with Despicable Me. The latest film, Minions: The Rise of Gru, tells the origin story of reformed supervillain Gru and his legion of tiny yellow henchmen known as the Minions.
(L to R) Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and South Korea's President Yoon Suk-yeol pose for a group photograph ahead of a Indo-Pacific Partners meeting during the NATO summit at the Ifema congress centre in Madrid, on June 29, 2022. (Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP via Getty Images)

South Korea to Cooperate and Protect Universal Values With NATO: Yoon Suk-Yeol

In a push for a new global partnership, South Korean President, Yoon Suk-yeol, attended the NATO summit last week in Spain to foster economic and security collaboration with NATO members.

In his debut speech at the summit, Yoon emphasized the importance of value-based solidarity to protect universal values and tackle concurrent conflicts.

Freedom and peace are guaranteed through solidarity with the international community, Yoon said. I hope that our cooperative relations serve as the cornerstone for solidarity that protects universal values and principles.

Yoon also warned of ongoing conflicts and issues that endanger these values, which, according to a Reuters interview with an unnamed South Korean official, was a reference to China and Russia.

As a new structure of competitions and conflicts is taking shape, there is also a movement that denies the universal values that we have been protecting, he said.

Notably, the NATO summit addresses Chinas ambitions and assertive behavior as one of the systemic challenges to the rules-based international order in its updated guidelines for the first time in history.

Additionally, according to The Chosun Media, Yoon and Stoltenberg reaffirmed at a meeting on Jun. 30 that they would both continue the commitment to completely denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.

Yoon and Stoltenberg also agreed to form a new strategic cooperative partnership and that South Korea would establish a permanent mission at NATO headquarters.

During the NATO summit, the South Korean president also held a trilateral meeting on the sideline with U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to discuss North Koreas provocations in its nuclear and missile programs.

In particular, Yoon emphasizes that its only when NATO and the Indo-Pacific stay in solidarity that democratic values, such as freedom, human rights, and the rule of law, will be respected.

Europe as an Alternative to China

In addition to strengthening political and military ties with NATO, the Yoon Suk-yeol administration also held bilateral summit meetings with ten European countries to discuss partnerships in several key industries, such as nuclear and military technology, semiconductors, and renewable energy.

According to the Yonhap News Agency, the South Korean President seeks to secure semiconductor supply chains, expand cooperation in nuclear energy and defense, and expand partnerships in the space industry in multiple bilateral meetings on the sidelines with the Netherlands, Poland, and France, respectively.

Furthermore, the administration states that the purpose of increasing bilateral partnerships with European countries is for the Korean economy to become less reliant on China.

According to The Korea Times, Choi Sang-mok, South Koreas senior presidential secretary for economic affairs, states that the Yoon Suk-yeol administration seeks alternative trading partners to ensure survival, as the declining economy of China has made the country a less reliable trading partner for South Korea.

The era of an export boom with China we have been enjoying for the past 20 years is seeing its end. That is why we need to find alternative markets and diversify our trade partners, said Choi at a press briefing in Madrid, Spain, on June 28.

Pursue a Common Value: Yoon Suk-yeol

In the wake of restoring and strengthening its relationships with the West, South Korea is also experiencing threats and opposition from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In a press conference on July 1st, Yoon reiterated the importance of a value-based approach in dealing with international and domestic issues.

Regarding the trilateral meeting or the NATO Summit, it is not about excluding a certain country, Yoon told reporters aboard his presidential jet as he returned to South Korea. Whenever we are dealing with domestic issues or international agendas, we should pursue a common value and protect rules that everyone should follow.
Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) Airbus A320 planes are parked at Copenhagen airport in Kastrup, Denmark, on March 15, 2020. (TT News Agency/Johan Nilsson via Reuters)

Strike-Hit Airline SAS Files for US Bankruptcy Protection

STOCKHOLMScandinavian airline SAS has filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States to help accelerate restructuring plans, it said on Tuesday, warning strike action by pilots had impacted its financial position and liquidity.

Wage talks between SAS and its pilots collapsed on Monday, triggering a strike that adds to travel chaos across Europe as the peak summer vacation period begins.

That accelerated the airlines decision to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States, the airlines Chief Executive Anko van der Werff said.

We are confident that this process will enable us to become a stronger and even better airline for our customers, and a much healthier business partner in the years to come, he told a news conference.

Due to the strike, he said, the date has been brought forward, because the company now needs to be prepared against further liquidity loss.

The work stoppage could cost SAS nearly 100 million Swedish crowns ($10 million) per day, a Sydbank analyst calculated, potentially erasing up to half of the airlines cash flow in the initial four to five weeks alone in a worst-case scenario.

The company said in a statement it would continue to serve its customers throughout the bankruptcy process, although the pilot strike is grounding roughly half the airlines flights, affecting some 30,000 passengers per day.

Data from flight tracking website FlightAware showed 232 SAS flights77 percent of those scheduled had been canceled on Tuesday, while Oslos Gardermoen airport, one of SAS hubs, had the worlds highest cancellation rate on the day.

SAS, whose biggest owners are the Swedish and the Danish states, said the purpose of the filing with a U.S. federal court was to accelerate a restructuring plan announced in February.

Through this process, SAS aims to reach agreements with key stakeholders, restructure the companys debt obligations, reconfigure its aircraft fleet, and emerge with a significant capital injection, SAS said in a statement.

It expects to complete the Chapter 11 process in nine to 12 months, it added. SAS shares, which can be traded as normal during the bankruptcy protection proceedings, were down 9.4 percent at 0832 GMT.

Slashing Costs

During the pandemic, other nonU.S. airlines including Avianca, Aeromexico, and Philippine Airlines have used the Chapter 11 process to renegotiate contracts with key suppliers like aircraft lessors while continuing to operate.

Rival Norwegian Air emerged from bankruptcy protection involving courts in Dublin and Oslo last year.

It doesnt mean anything for the normal operations. They are trying to repair the motor while driving, Sydbank analyst Jacob Pedersen told Reuters of the SAS filing.

This is happening because SAS hasnt been able to accomplish the changes through negotiations.

SAS needs to attract new investors and has said that in order to do that it must slash costs across the company, including for staff and for leased planes that stand idle because of closed Russian airspace and a slow recovery in Asia.

The airline said on Tuesday its assessment was that its cash balance of 7.8 billion Swedish crowns was sufficient to meet its business obligations in the near term.

It said discussions with lenders regarding another $700 million of financing to support its operations during the restructuring were well advanced.

It added however that the strike has a negative impact on the liquidity and financial position of the company and, if prolonged, such impact could become material.

Swedens government has said no to injecting more cash into the carrier, while Copenhagen has said it may do so on the condition SAS is able to attract new investors.

Danish Finance Minister Nicolai Wammen said he had noted SAS decision to file for bankruptcy protection, but did not elaborate further.

Nordnet analyst Per Hansen said the application showed SAS needs a fresh start and that it thinks the strike will drag on.

Chapter 11 protection comes early, he said. Management and the board want to make it absolutely clear for all stakeholders that the situation is very serious.

($1 = 10.3216 Swedish crowns)

By Anna Ringstrom and Stine Jacobsen
Supreme Court Decision on Abortion to Have Net Neutral Impact on Midterm Voting: Poll

The Supreme Courts June 24 decision to strike down Roe v. Wade, delivering the ability to regulate abortions back to the states, will motivate a variety of voters, according to a new poll.

The move will make some voters more likely to vote Republican in the upcoming midterm elections, but will drive others to Democrat candidates, according to the survey.

An equal percentage of respondents, 36 percent, said theyre more likely to vote for a Democrat as those more likely to vote for a Republican in the midterms, in a poll performed by Harvard University and The Harris Poll.

The remaining respondents said the decision, which struck down the courts 1973 decision that declared access to abortion was a constitutional right despite not being mentioned in the Constitution, will have no effect on how they vote in the midterms.

Presidential elections are held every four years; the elections held in between them are known as midterms. Along with featuring all members of the U.S. House of Representatives, voters will choose some U.S. senators and many state lawmakers and other politicians.

The HarvardHarris poll was conducted on June 28 and June 29 among 1,308 registered voters. The margin of error and breakdown of party affiliations were not provided.

Democrats are much more likely to support easy access to abortion and few, if any, restrictions on getting or performing abortions. Republicans are largely in favor of restricting or outright banning abortion. In some cases, GOP lawmakers support criminal penalties for health care workers who perform abortions in violation of state laws.

Another recent poll indicated that Democrats may have more to gain from the Supreme Courts ruling.

Approximately 78 percent of Democrat respondents to the NPR/PBS/Marist survey said the decision makes them more likely to vote in the midterms, versus 54 percent of Republicans and 53 percent of independents. Additionally, 86 percent of Democrats said they will definitely vote for a candidate who will support a federal law that would restore Roe v. Wade, compared to 67 percent of Republicans who would vote against such a candidate. Independents were split, but more said theyd align with Democrats on the matter.

The poll was conducted on June 24 and June 25 among 941 U.S. adults, including 868 registered voters. The margin of error was plus/minus 4.9 percent, or 5.1 percent for the voter subset.

Respondents to both polls were more likely to oppose the Supreme Court decision.

Fifty-five percent of respondents, including majorities of Democrats and independents, to the Harvard poll were opposed, compared to 45 percent in support. But 72 percent of respondents said they supported either a total abortion ban with exceptions for rape or incest, a ban after six weeks, or a ban after 15 weeks.

Among respondents to the other poll, 56 percent opposed the decision, versus 40 percent who supported it.

Editors Note: This article has been updated with more precise language.
People walk past the Supreme Court building during a rainstorm in Washington on June 23, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Supreme Court to Hear Fraud Appeal Related to Cuomo-Era Scandal

The Supreme Court has agreed to review the wire fraud conviction of Louis Ciminelli, who was involved in the scandal-plagued Buffalo Billion development plan in upstate New York when Andrew Cuomo was the governor.

The case grew out of the ambitious Buffalo Billion Investment Development Plan (pdf), which envisioned the construction of a solar panel factory among other projects, and was aimed at attracting more than $8 billion in investments for Buffalo and the rest of western New York, creating nearly 14,000 jobs.

Prosecutors claimed Ciminelli, the CEO of LPCiminelli; Alain Kaloyeros, who is a former head of SUNY Polytechnic Institute; and COR Development executives Steven Aiello and Joseph Gerardi rigged bids for state contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

They were convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and other charges by a federal court in Manhattan in 2018.

The high court decided on June 30 to hear Ciminelli v. United States (,court file 21-1158). As is their custom, the justices did not provide reasons for their decision to accept the case.

The Biden administration had urged the court to reject the appeal.

Ciminelli claims that the right-to-control theory of fraud the government argued and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld in the case, is invalid.

The theory holds that the deprivation of complete and accurate information a person needs to make an economic decision constitutes property fraud.

Section 1343 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code prescribes a sentence of up to 20 years in prison for anyone who devises a scheme to defraud or obtain money or property by fraud and who transmits information by wire, radio, or television in furtherance of the fraud.

In this case the lower court misapplied and overextended the theory, Ciminelli argued in his petition (pdf) filed with the court Feb. 18.

This court should intervene once again to confirm that the federal fraud statutes are not an all-purpose protection of ethereal interests, permitting conviction even where the government cannot prove an intention to cause economic loss, the petition stated.

Prosecutors use this abstract information-deprivation theory when they cannot show a traditional scheme to harm property. But this courts precedent, common law definitions of property, statutory context, and principles of statutory interpretation all confirm that the right-to-control theory is invalid.

But Ciminelli contended that even though a scheme that deprives a person of economic information alone, without threatening economic loss, may violate an intangible interest or a sense of moral uprightness, it does not rise to the level of a property fraud.

Ciminellis lawyer, Michael Dreeben, told the Albany-based Times Union he was pleased the high court will take up the appeal.

Our team is gratified that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Mr. Ciminellis case, which will allow the court to address our challenge to the validity of the right-to-control theory used in the prosecution, Dreeben said.

We look forward to presenting our position to the court in full briefing and argument.

The Supreme Courts ultimate decision in the case could affect the pending appeals of other individuals convicted in the Buffalo Billion scandal.

Kaloyeros, Aiello, and Gerardi all have petitions pending before the Supreme Court.

The justices began their summer recess June 30. The court may take up the petitions at some point in the future, possibly after deciding Ciminellis appeal.

The decision to take up Ciminellis case came as the high court agreed to accept the separate appeal of Joe Percoco, formerly a longtime aide to Cuomo, a Democrat, who resigned Aug. 24, 2021, as he faced investigations for sexual harassment and for his handling of nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Percoco is challenging the federal honest-services fraud statute after he was convicted in 2018 on conspiracy charges under the law.

He reportedly took in more than $300,000 from companies that hoped to gain influence with the Cuomo administration. He was released last year, four years into a six-year prison sentence.

Percoco had been an official in Cuomos office but had temporarily stepped down from the post to run the governors reelection campaign at the time he accepted the money.

He claims innocence, arguing that because he was not a government official at the time he accepted the funds, no corruption was involved, The Epoch Times reported.

His appeal overlaps to an extent with other cases.

Aiello was convicted of directing bribes to Percoco in order to secure his influence in the Buffalo Billion project.
Tamara Lich, an organizer of the "Freedom Convoy" that demonstrated for over three weeks in downtown Ottawa to oppose federal COVID-19 mandates, embraces supporters as she leaves the courthouse in Ottawa after being granted bail, on March 7, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Justin Tang)

Tamara Lich to Remain in Jail to Await Court Decision on Charge of Breaching Bail Terms

Judge scheduled to hand down decision on July 8

Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich will remain in jail again to await an Ontario courts decision on whether she breached her bail conditions when she attended a June 16 award ceremony event in Toronto, at which fellow convoy organizer Tom Marrazo was present.

Justice of the Peace Paul Harris said at Lichs July 5 court appearance that he will need to take some time before giving a final decision on the case. He is expected to announce his decision at a court appearance scheduled for Lich on July 8.

In the meantime, Lich is to stay in the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre for at least three more nights.

Crown prosecutor Moiz Karimjee presented as evidence a photograph of Lich and Marazzo appearing together at the ceremony in Toronto where Lich was presented with an award, and a video recording which the the prosecution says allegedly shows Lich and Marazzo interacting, which the crown says breaches Lichs bail conditions.

The court in Ottawa where Tamara Lich appeared before a judge on July 5, 2022. (Limin Zhou/The Epoch Times)

Marazzo, a military veteran, volunteered as a spokesperson for the truckers Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa in February. The protest, which called on the federal government to end its COVID-19 vaccine mandate and other related public health regulations, lasted more than three weeks. It ended after the Liberal government invoked the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14, giving the police additional powers to clear what they said was an illegal demonstration in an escalated operation over a few days.

Lichs defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon said in court that a brief congratulatory exchange after winning an award wouldnt lead to any illegal activity, and isnt a breach of bail conditions. The court also heard testimony that lawyers were present at the event and approved the picture taken of Lich and Marazzo. Greenspon said Lichs bail terms specified that theres to be no communication except in the presence of counsel.

Your honour, you have heard this evidence. It consists of a less than three-second congratulatory interaction after a speech at an awards dinner, and a photograph of Ms. Leach standing next to Mr. Marazzo, Greenspon said.

The defence also said the police and prosecution could have handled the issue differently, questioning their course of action including issuing a Canada-wide warrant for her arrest, dispatching long-time veteran homicide detectives for her case, and taking her into custody for nine days so far, after her re-arrest on June 27.

Testimonies

The court heard from Ottawa police Det. Chris Benson, the lead on Lichs case, who said the photograph of Lich and Marazzo together at the June 16 event shows that Lich breached her bail conditions due to her physical closeness to Marazzo.

Greenspon questioned if Benson had any evidence that the alleged less than three seconds interaction between Lich and Marazzo seen on the video is anything more than a congratulatory handshake, and perhaps a thank-you.

I guess I dont know what was said, I couldnt hear, Benson said.

The court also heard from Lichs surety, whose identity cant be revealed due to a publication ban. The surety said they became aware of the photo of Lich and Marazzo a few days after the event and immediately contacted Lich out of a concern if her bail conditions were violated. The surety said Lich assured them that legal counsel was present at the event.

First Arrest in Ottawa

Lich, one of the key convoy organizers, was first arrested at the national capital on Feb. 17 and charged with counselling to commit mischief and obstructing police, among other charges.

She spent 19 days in custody after initially being denied bail by Ontario Court Justice Julie Bourgeois, and was released on March 7 when Ontario Superior Court Justice John M. Johnston overturned Bourgeois decision. Lich was released under a number of bail conditions, including having no contact with fellow convoy organizers.

In April, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom selected Lich as the winner of the 2022 George Jonas Freedom Award, and invited her to accept the award in a ceremony in Toronto on June 16. Crown prosecutors said in May that by agreeing to attend the ceremony, Lich had breached her bail conditions and should be sent back to jail to await trial. However, on May 25, Ontario Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips ruled that Lich didnt breach her bail conditions, saying that courts are not a thought police.

After Lich was re-arrested on June 27 in her hometown of Medicine Hat, Alberta, she was transferred to Ottawa to attend her bail hearings.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report

Andrew Chen Follow Andrew Chen is an Epoch Times reporter based in Toronto.
The Big Lie of Woke Capitalism

Social justice investing is part of the Great Reset agenda of moving from shareholder to stakeholder capitalism

Commentary

Apparently, the woke left in America is a big fan of free market capitalism and investing. At least, thats what Slates Andrew Petillon would have us all believe in his recent article, The Republican War on Woke Capitalism Is Really Just a War on Capitalism.

That is nothing moreand nothing lessthan a well-constructed lie.

Woke Capitalism and ESG

Some definitions of terms are in order.

According to The Economist, woke capitalism involves public campaigns that appeal to millennials, who typically hold more socially liberal views and are arguably less informed on what free market capitalism is than prior generations.

So-called woke capitalism is also sometimes referred to as ESG investing, which itself has various meanings. The acronym ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance. Its a vague categorization or standard applied to companies and investors to determine how, for lack of a better word, woke they may or may not be.

Domestically, ESG is a metric for woke capitalism. Some of the main concepts surrounding ESG are climate change, sustainability, green technology, social justice causes such as workers rights, working conditions, changing social norms, exploitation of minorities, and so forth. There is also the aspect of governmental oversight or promotion of those causes. A company or investors ESG ranking may be the determining factor for investment or even boycotts.

The Fascism of Stakeholder Capitalism

Woke capitalism embraces the idea of stakeholder capitalism. Stakeholder capitalism, which is what the Business Roundtable and the World Economic Forum (WEF) call for, demands that companies toe the ESG line, not necessarily to private shareholders, but to the often unelected and their woke socialist standards. The latter include equality of outcomes, hiring decisions, diversity requirements, income equality, and more. Shareholders like you and me are not part of the plan.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (L) addresses the assembly next to the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on May 26, 2022. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

Obviously, ESG has both red and green leftist political and ideological preferences that marry business with government policymakers, not merely business and shareholder interests. That, by the way, is fascism.

The Woke Capitalism Lie

Internationally, ESG identifies and ranks companies and investors that either do business with countries considered politically incorrect, lack ESG values, or both. A negative ESG rating could also result in negative publicity, divesture, or boycotts by Wall Street and Main Street investors.

According to Petillon, ESG or woke capitalism is somehow directly related to and is an aspect of free market capitalism. In fact, from its inception as a metric, the use of ESG factors in the financial analysis was deemed to be complementary to a companys fiduciary responsibilities to investors and shareholders.

But are either assertions true?

And are ESG criteria really part of the fiduciary responsibilities that a public company has to its shareholders? In some cases, sure. For example, some investors dont want to invest in companies that make alcohol, tobacco, or firearms. Those investors are free not to invest in those companies.

Imposing leftist criteria on a company whose responsibilities are to its shareholders doesnt sound like free market capitalism. Instead, it is mandated behavior by the unelected. There are laws that all companies must follow, of course, but those vary by state and federal jurisdictions. ESG is separate from bothor at least, they used to be.

But to those on the left, ESG or woke capitalism is also virtuous capitalism because they believe that companies ought to behave, invest, and produce what the woke mob determines is correct. Those companies that dont comply must be punished and, if possible, driven out of business. As the ESG trend and political influence progress, it exercises more controlbehavioral and politicalover all companies, public and private. Thats the end goal for woke capitalism.

Orwellian Wordplay Is the Leftist Way

See whats going on with the wordplay?

The approach is to add the word capitalism to add validity to the woke agenda, but thats not even remotely true.

The free market, Petillon asserts, is demanding that public corporations, and even private ones, adhere to ESG requirements. He further states that to be against the imposition of ESG standards for companies is to be against the free market.

Theres just one big problem with the free market argument for ESG. It didnt come from the free market. Its a product of the United Nations Environment Program Initiative in the Freshfields Report in October 2005.

The clever part is that once ESG was established as some virtuous objective, it would simply be a matter of building up the support for its realization. That support includes left-wing politicians, media, academic institutions, and globalist financial organizations in a coordinated push to make ESG a part of U.S. corporate behavior and publicly shame those businesses that did not comply.

See how that process works?

Leverage the mainstream media, top, left-leaning universities, and other overtly left societal allies and push the woke agenda as if it were a grassroots, free market phenomenon.

A mural depicting British novelist George Orwell with the words Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear in Belgrade, Serbia, on May 8, 2018. (Oliver Bunic/AFP via Getty Images)

In short, the ESG investing agenda is an attempt by the U.N. and the WEF, both supranational organizations, to arbitrarily impose their will on private and public companies. The objective is to compel them to comply with their woke standards, not U.S. laws, to determine how they should operate, what policies they should have, who they should do business with, and what political and social agenda they should promote within their organization, even who they can have on their boards of directors.

This toxic perspective governs most of the left thinking about requiring corporate political obedience to causes that have nothing to do with the free market.

From Shareholder Capitalism to Stakeholder Capitalism

But woke capitalism isnt really free markets or even true capitalism. Petillon and the rest of the woke and Great Reset know this; they just wont admit it. Eventually, however, it involves demanding compliance to those arbitrary standards.

As Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter: ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.

Musk is right, of course.

ESG is indeed a weapon thats being used to attack Americans liberty, the traditional U.S. capitalist economy, and its millions of big and small businesses. ESG needs to be destroyed before it destroys us.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Trump Rebukes Rep. Cheney After She Hints at Making Criminal Referral

Former President Donald Trump fired back at Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) following her hint of making a criminal referral to the Justice Department against him in relation to the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

Trump wrote in his Monday post on Truth Social: Liz Cheney  keeps saying, over and over again, that HER  Unselect Committee may recommend CRIMINAL CHARGES against a President of the United States who got more votes than any sitting President in history.

His angry remark came one day after Cheney talked about the possibility of prosecution against the former president in an interview with ABC News.

Cheney said that avoiding such a criminal charge against Trump given his alleged role in last years incident would be a much graver constitutional threat.

Ultimately, the Justice Department will decide that. I think we may well as a committee have a view on that and if you just think about it from the perspective of what kind of man knows that a mob is armed and sends the mob to attack the Capitol? the vice chair of the Jan. 6 panel said.

Trump disputed her argument, saying that charges should be instead pressed against those that cheated on the Election, or those that didnt properly protect the Capitol.

The former president further vented his anger on the Jan. 6 Hearing committee in a subsequent post, rebuking that its members are all those who had gone after him in prior political attacks.

Why doesnt the highly partisan Unselect Committee  the same people (all Trump haters & profiteers  books, speeches, etc.) that were involved with Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax # 2, the No Collusion Mueller Report and, overall, the GREATEST WITCH HUNT IN THE HISTORY OF THE USA, go after the people who have been rioting, burning down cities, leading the massive crime wave, & killing many all over the U.S., including drug & human traffickers? No, lets get Trump! Trump said.

During the ABC interview, the Wyoming lawmaker also expressed her trust in Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Trumps chief of staff Mark Meadows. She testified that Trump protested in a car when a Secret Service agent told him they would not take him from the site of his speech to the Capitol where people were gathering. Trump then allegedly lunged for the cars steering wheel and then toward the agent, she told the committee.

The account was later dismissed by both Trump and the Secret Service agent.

Yet, Cheney said that she was absolutely confident in Hutchinsons testimony and called her an incredibly brave young woman.

Cheney has drawn the ire from both Trump and her Republican colleagues after she joined 10 GOP lawmakers in the House to vote for the impeachment against the former president back in January 2021.

Cheney appears to be in a poor position to retain her seat, as according to a WPA Intelligence poll (pdf) conducted on May 2425, she is 30 percentage points behind her Trump-endorsed opponent Harriet Hageman in the August Republican House primary.
(L-R) Health Secretary Sajid Javid, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson arriving at No 9 Downing Street in London on Sept. 7, 2021. (Toby Melville/PA Media)

UK Cabinet Ministers Quit as Boris Johnson Apologises Over Chris Pincher Appointment

British financial and health ministers quit on Tuesday, dealing a fresh blow to Prime Minister Boris Johnsons leadership.

It comes after Johnson admitted it was a mistake to keep Chris Pincher in government despite sexual misconduct allegations against him.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid wrote on Twitter that he had tendered his resignation, saying it had been an enormous privilege to serve in this role, but he could no longer continue in good conscience.

Within minutes, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak post his letter of resignation on Twitter, adding: The public rightly expect [the] government to be conducted properly, competently, and seriously.

I recognise this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning, Sunak wrote.

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries voiced her support for the prime minister on Twitter, saying Im not sure anyone actually doubted this, however, I am 100 [percent] behind [Boris Johnson the prime minister] who consistently gets all the big decisions right.

Javid: You Have Lost My Confidence

In a scathing letter, Javid said he no longer has confidence in Johnsons leadership.

The tone you set as a leader, and the values you represent, reflect on your colleagues, your party, and ultimately the country, the letter reads.

Conservatives at their best are seen as hard-headed decision-makers, guided by strong values. We may not have always been popular, but we have been competent in acting in the national interest, Javid said. Sadly in the current circumstances, the public are concluding that we are now neither.

Javid said the vote of confidence Johnson survived last month, which saw 41 percent of Conservative MPs rebelling against the prime minister, showed that a large number of our colleagues agree. 

It was a moment for humility, grip, and new direction, he said, adding that it was clear that the situation will not change under Johnsons leadership.

And you have therefore lost my confidence too, he concluded.

Javid also praised Johnson, saying he will forever be credited with seeing off the threat of Corbynism, breaking the deadlock on Brexit, and shining a very welcome light on the regional disparities in our country.

Sunak: Fundamentally Different Approaches

Sunak said it was not a decision he has taken lightly to resign when the UK is dealing with the economic consequences of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and other serious challenges.

However, the public rightly expect [the] government to be conducted properly, competently, and seriously, Sunak said. I recognise this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning.

Sunak said he had been loyal to Johnson, publicly supporting him while having private disagreements, but he indicated some fundamental differences in the approaches he and Johnson want to take in running the country.

Our country is facing immense challenges. We both want a low-tax, high-growth economy, and world-class public services, but this can only be responsibly delivered if we are prepared to work hard, make sacrifices, and take difficult decisions, he said.

I firmly believe the public are ready to hear that truth. Our people know that if something is too good to be true then its not true. They need to know that whilst there is a path to a better future, it is not an easy one. In preparation for our proposed joint speech on the economy next week, it has become clear to me that our approaches are fundamentally too different.

Johnson: Mistake to Keep Pincher in Government

Pincher, MP for Tamworth, resigned from the whips office and had his Conservative Party membership suspended last week over the alleged groping of two male guests at a Conservative Party private members club on June 29.

The allegations have put Downing Street under pressure to explain why Pincher, who had resigned as a junior whip in November 2017 following a complaint that he made an unwanted pass at the former Olympic rower and Conservative candidate Alex Story, was given the job of deputy chief whip in February this year.

Downing Street previously said Johnson didnt know about any specific allegations against Pincher before appointing him, but said on Tuesday that Johnson had been briefed about a formal investigation against Pincher in 2019 but forgot about it last week.

It came after Lord Simon McDonald, the then-Foreign Office permanent under-secretary who commissioned an investigation into the allegation against Pincher, published a letter saying Johnson was told about the outcome of the investigation.

Johnson acknowledged he should have sacked Pincher in 2019 instead of keeping him and appointing him to other government roles.

Asked if that was an error, Johnson said: I think it was a mistake and I apologise for it. In hindsight, it was the wrong thing to do.

I apologise to everybody who has been badly affected by it. I want to make absolutely clear that theres no place in this government for anybody who is predatory or who abuses their position of power.

Speaking to reporters in his House of Commons office, Johnson did not deny an allegation by his former adviser Dominic Cummings that said he had known Pinchers behaviour before giving him a key job in the whips office, joking: Pincher by name, Pincher by nature.

What I can tell you is that, if I look at the background of this and why I regret it so much, is that about three years ago there was a complaint made against Chris Pincher in the Foreign Office, the complaint was cleared up, he apologised, Johnson said.

It was raised with me, orally, I was briefed on what had happened. If I had my time again I would think back on it and recognise that he wasnt going to learn a lesson and he wasnt going to change and I regret that, he said.

It was something that was only raised with me very cursorily but I wish that we hadI, in particularhad acted on it and that he had not continued in government because he then went on, Im afraid, to behaveas far as we can see, according to the allegations that we havevery, very badly.

Johnson spoke to reporters as he faced a mounting Tory backlash over his handling of the row.

The prime ministers authority has already been weakened by a confidence vote which saw 41 percent of his MPs try to oust him, amid lingering anger over the partygate scandal.

PA Media contributed to this report.
Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association on the picket line outside the Old Bailey in London on July 4, 2022. (Kirsty OConnor/PA)

UK Solicitors Could Follow Barristers and Go on Strike Over Pay

The criminal justice system in England and Wales faces further disruption with criminal defence solicitors considering taking industrial action, in the wake of the strike by barristers.

The London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association (LCCSA) has launched a survey asking its members: Are you content with the current proposals set out in the governments response to CLAIR [Criminal Legal Aid Independent Review (pdf)], and the timeframe in which they intend to implement them?

The survey goes on to ask: If a majority of firms with legal aid contracts in the London area publicly commit to any or all of the following actions until the government agrees an immediate 25 percent increase in legal aid fees for criminal defence work, would you join them?

Defence solicitors play a vital role in the criminal justice system. An arrested person has a right to consult with them before being interviewed and, if a person is charged with an offence, it is the solicitor who first hears that persons defence and then has to instruct a barrister who will defend them at a crown court trial. Solicitors also represent clients directly in the magistrates courts.

If solicitors were to go on strike it would cause major disruption to a system which is already struggling with a backlog of trials and major disruption caused by the barristers strike.

Appetite for Bold Action Among Solicitors

The LCCSA said there was an appetite for bold action but also an anxiety that if we down tools and further disrupt an already lumbering justice system, our contracts could be taken off us.

But it is not just solicitors in the London area who are unhappy about their pay under the legal aid system.

One leading solicitor in the north of England, who declined to be named, told The Epoch Times: My firm is trying to recruit law graduates to become trainee solicitors but, because of the level of legal aid, the most we can offer is 28,000 [$33,600]. There are firms in the City [of London] who are offering 150,000 [$180,000]. So how can we possibly compete?

The Criminal Bar Association (CBA) claimed they had disrupted 1,000 cases on Monday, the third day of their strike.

Barristers will remain on strike on Tuesday and Wednesday, with a four-day strike the following week and a five-day action on the week of July 18.

Among those cases disrupted was the trial of allegedly anti-Semitic podcaster James Allchurch at Swansea Crown Court, which has been put back until March 2023.

Jo Sidhu, the chairman of the CBA, told LBC, Weve had continuing discussions with the Ministry of Justice, but Im afraid to say to you the ministers are refusing to discuss with us, to sit around the table and negotiate the way through this problem.

The Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab, has said the barrister strike is regrettable and would only delay justice for victims.
A nuclear propulsion Ohio class submarine, the USS Florida sails on Jan. 22, 2003 off the coast of the Bahamas. Australia as part of the AUKUS deal will get the tech for nuclear powered subs. (David Nagle/U.S. Navy/Getty Images)

UN Nuclear Watchdog Scrutinising AUKUS Submarine Safeguards

Australias Foreign Minister Penny Wong has reaffirmed the countrys commitment to nuclear non-proliferation after a meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on July 4.

Rafael Grossi, head of the IAEA, was in Adelaide, where he met with the Australian foreign minister to discuss the international security environment, nuclear proliferation risks from regimes in North Korea and Iran, as well as safeguards around the impending AUKUS deal between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

I reiterated Australias total commitment to our obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, Foreign Minister Wong told AAP after the meeting.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong at the Pacific Island Forum in Suva, Fiji, on May 26, 2022. (Pita Simpson/Getty Images)

I reaffirmed Australias commitment to working transparently and openly with the IAEA to ensure our acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines sets the highest possible non-proliferation standards.

Grossi said after the meeting that Australias commitment to non-proliferation reassured him.

We must ensure that whatever is done in this area will notwill neverrun counter to the basic principle of preventing nuclear weapons proliferation, he said in comments obtained by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Nuclear Submarines Falls In IAEA Grey Area

Under the AUKUS deal, Australia will become one of the few nationsand the only non-nuclear weapons powerin the world to control nuclear-powered submarines.

The deal was signed off in September 2021 under the previous Morrison government to counteract Beijings aggression in the immediate region. The move to upgrade Australias navy does place the country in a grey area under the IAEAs safeguards.

The safeguards are designed to monitor the use of nuclear materials around the world to prevent their implementation in weaponry.

Yet they do not cover the use of nuclear materials for naval propulsiona situation designed to prevent the sharing of top-secret technology between countries.

Grossi last year said the AUKUS agreement was very tricky to deal with, but it could be managed.

Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks during an AFP interview in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 30, 2020. (Alex Halada/AFP via Getty Images)

A country  is taking material away from the inspectors for some time, and we are talking about highly, very highly enriched uranium, he told the BBCs HardTalk programme on Sept 24, 2021.

What this means is that we, with Australia, with the United States and with the United Kingdom, we have to enter into a very complex, technical negotiation to see to it that, as a result of this, there is no weakening of the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

He further told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that because nuclear-powered vessels were underwater for months on end, IAEA inspectors would be unable to access the submarines. In turn, the AUKUS partners would need to find ways to ensure regular inspections could be carried out to satisfy non-proliferation obligations.
Uncle of Highland Park Mass Shooting Suspect Speaks Out

The uncle of a 22-year-old male who police have described as a person of interest during the July 4 parade mass shooting near Chicago said there was nothing suspicious about his nephew.

Robert Crimo III lived with his father, who reportedly owned a deli and ran for mayor of Highland Park several years ago, and his uncle in his grandfathers house, but his uncle said he had generally few interactions with him. The uncle, Paul Crimo, told local media that there were no signs his nephew was going to commit a mass shooting.

Theres no concerns that I had seen, Paul Crimo told a local Fox station. There were no signs of trouble. I saw no signs of trouble. And if I did see signs, I would have said something.

Paul Crimo said he lived in the same house as Robert Crimo, saying that the 22-year-old would sometimes help him around the house. However, Robert often kept to himself in his own apartment in the back of the home, saying he was an aspiring rapper.

Robert Crimo, he added, had been unemployed for the past several years.

Im deeply heartbroken, and Ill be heartbroken for the rest of my life, Paul Crimo told the Fox station. Seeing what happened just breaks my heart. I just want to tell everybody that Im very sorry, from the bottom of my heart, and Im really so sorry that this happened.

Hes a quiet kid, Paul Crimo added to CNN of the suspect, saying that he doesnt know of any political views held by his nephew. Hes usually on his own. Hes a lonely, quiet person. He keeps everything to himself.

The uncle continued: I associate with him, but I dont really like to engage with him. I say hi and then when I leave I say bye. Thats it.

Paul Crimo, uncle of Robert Crimo III, leaves his home in the Chicago suburb of Highwood, Illinois where Crimo III was living, on July 5, 2022. (Max Herman/AFP via Getty Images)

More Details

The shooting left at least six people dead and more than two-dozen injured. Reports indicated that the gunman opened fire on crowds of people while he was on top of a building with a rifle, although officials have not revealed the exact firearm that was used.

The younger Crimo, meanwhile, had a significant presence online, often posting music videos to YouTube and songs on Spotify.

Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering, who signed an ordinance (pdf) that banned many types of rifles in Highland Park in 2013, on Tuesday told the Today show that she knew Crimo when he was a Cub Scout and she was the leader.

I know him as somebody who was a Cub Scout when I was the Cub Scout leader.  He was just a little boy, she told the Today show.

And its one of those things where you step back and you say, What happened? How did somebody become this angry, this hateful, to then take it out on innocent people who literally were just having a family day? she asked.
Former ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns gives his opening statement during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on his nomination to be the U.S. ambassador to China, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 20, 2021. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)

US Envoy Urges China to Stop Telling Russias Lies

The U.S. ambassador to China on July 4 criticized the Chinese foreign ministry for spreading Russian propaganda and disinformation, denying Beijings assertion that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) instigated the RussiaUkraine war.

Speaking at the World Peace Forum in Beijing, U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns called the Russian war against Ukraine the greatest threat to global world order, and alleged that China had picked up Russian disinformation.

I would hope that Chinese foreign ministry spokespersons would stop accusing NATO of starting this war. Thats Russian propaganda, Burns told the forum, according to Bloomberg.

I hope Foreign Ministry spokespersons would also stop telling lies about American bioweapons labs, which do not exist in Ukraine, he said. These all came from Russia. Unfortunately, this has been picked up by the Chinese.

Burns said that Russias invasion of Ukraine has not only resulted in the loss of countless innocent lives in Ukraine but has also depleted the global food supply.

The fact is you are blockading Ukrainian ports, you are intentionally bombing Ukrainian grain and agricultural centers, and thats depriving the rest of the world of the grain thats needed in this food crisis, he remarked.

Russian Ambassadors Response

The Russian ambassador to China, Andrey Denisov, refuted Burnss assertions, claiming that NATO was involved in the war with Russia through proxies. He also denied claims that Ukrainian grain exports were blocked by Russia.

Basically, our colleagues here in China say that they clearly know where the roots of the Ukraine crisis are, he told the World Peace Forum in Beijing, according to the South China Morning Post.

China has a good relationship with Ukraine. And thats where I hope that in one way, China can send some kind of signal to our neighbors to be more realistic, he added.

Speaking to reporters, the Chinese foreign ministrys spokesperson Zhao Lijian dismissed Burnss remarks and said that China has always made its judgment independently about the RussiaUkraine war.

It is the U.S., not China, that has been spreading disinformation and telling lies, Zhao said, noting that the United States owes the world an explanation regarding its biolabs in Ukraine.

Russia had previously demanded that Ukraine be prohibited from joining NATO. Russian Ambassador Mikhail Galuzin said in February that Ukraine joining NATO would intensify the alliances military threat to Russian security.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy subsequently said in March that his country will not become a member of the military alliance, although NATO provided the Ukrainian military with weapons and ammunition.

RussiaChina Relations

China and Russia declared a no limits partnership on the opening day of the Winter Olympics in February 2022, backing each other over standoffs on Ukraine and Taiwan with a promise to enhance collaboration against the West.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) shakes hands with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a welcoming ceremony at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council of Heads of State in Qingdao on June 10, 2018. (Sergei Guneyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

The two nations released a joint statement outlining their leaders intention to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext, oppose color revolutions, and will increase cooperation in the aforementioned areas.

Russia said it recognizes Taiwan as an inalienable part of China and rejects the islands independence in any form, while Beijing backed Russias opposition to the enlargement of NATO, according to the joint statement.
A member of the U.S. military receives the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at Camp Foster in Ginowan, Japan, on April 28, 2021. (Carl Court/Getty Images)

US Marines Ask Court for Relief From COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate

Several members of the U.S. Marine Corps filed an amended complaint seeking relief from the Department of Defenses COVID-19 vaccine mandate for service members, claiming they were denied religious exemptions.

The complaint was filed (pdf) in the U.S. District Court Middle District of Florida against the Defense Department, Secretary Lloyd Austin, and Gen. David H. Berger, the head of the Marine Corps.

The plaintiffs are Marines who face a deadline to receive an injection that violates their sincerely held religious beliefs since all of the COVID shots are associated with aborted fetal cells, said a news release from Liberty Counsel, which filed the claim on 15 Marines behalf.

Those Marines, the release added, have been refused any religious exemption or accommodation, although the deadline to receive the vaccine has long passed. These dates have passed, and disciplinary actions have already commenced, it said.

Now, the Marines are seeking relief to prevent them from facing court-martials, dishonorable discharges, or other demeaning measures, according to the group.

As we prepare to celebrate Independence Day, we must continue to fight for the freedom of those who protect us every day. No service member should be forced to choose between serving God and serving country, Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said in a statement. The Department of Defense continues to violate the law and ignore their religious freedom. This lawlessness must end.

Since the Defense Department handed down the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for service members in August last year, numerous lawsuits have been filed. Two months ago, for example, a former Marine Corps captain filed a suit in the Eastern District of Texas and alleged the mandate is unlawful.

The heart of the claim is that these are not vaccines, former Marine Corps Capt. Dale Saran told The Epoch Times in late May about the suit. They dont have any live virus in them; the only thing that makes them even remotely related to a vaccine is the route of administrationa shot through a needle.

And in March, U.S. District Judge Reed OConnor blocked the militarys vaccine mandate for all Navy members who were seeking religious exemptions to the shot.

Each is subject to the Navys COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Each has submitted her religious accommodation request, and none has received accommodation, according to his order. Without relief, each servicemember faces the threat of discharge and the consequences that accompany it. Even though their personal circumstances may factually differ in small ways, the threat is the sameget the jab or lose your job.

That ruling came days before the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Pentagon in that case, temporarily granting the departments request to allow top Navy officials to consider a Navy service members vaccination status on deciding whether they should be deployed.

The Epoch Times has contacted the Department of Defense for comment on the Liberty Counsel-backed complaint.
Illegal immigrants who crossed the Rio Grande River walk along concertina wire in Eagle Pass, Texas, on May 22, 2022. (Allison Dinner/AFP via Getty Images)

US-Mexico Border Is Worlds Deadliest Land Crossing: UN Study

The U.S.-Mexico border has become the worlds deadliest land crossing, according to data recently brought to light by a United Nations study.

A historic high of 728 recorded immigrant deaths and disappearances along the U.S.-Mexico border crossing in 2021 has made the land crossing the deadliest in the world, according to the study conducted by the United Nations agency, the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

These deaths accounted for the majority of the 1,238 immigrant deaths in the Americas in 2021, the IOM said in a press release on July 1, adding that these numbers should be considered an undercount due to difficulties in collecting data.

The study attributed the deaths and disappearance of immigrants in the Americas to a lack of options for safe and regular mobility, saying that this would drive migrants, presumably those choosing to enter as illegal aliens, to pursue riskier dangerous pathways to their destinations.

The agency also noted how the dangers faced by migrants are highlighted by recent news about what amounted to the deadliest known smuggling incident in American history: the discovery of 53 bodies in a tractor-trailer packed with 67 illegal immigrants in San Antonio on June 27.

The record deaths came as Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents reported a record number of apprehensions along the southern border.

According to CBP statistics obtained by The Epoch Times, border patrol agents from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego apprehended 232,628 illegal border crossers in Maythe highest monthly total in 23 years.

In the same month, 79 illegal immigrants were found dead or died while crossing the border, according to the CBP data.

When that many people come across the border, its just a matter of mathyou increase those that come across the border, you increase those that put themselves into the hands of the criminal cartelsyou are certainly going to increase the deaths at the border, Tom Homan, former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told The Epoch Times in June.

Very vulnerable people take the risk and pay criminal cartels who dont give one cent about these people, Homan said, adding that more migrants have died so far during President Joe Bidens term in office than any time [he] can remember in [his] 35-year career.

Since Biden took office in January 2021, border authorities have apprehended more than 3.2 million illegal border crossers, according to CBP data. An additional 800,000 or so have been detected but evaded capture.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.

Charlotte Cuthbertson contributed to this report.
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and German Chancellor speaks to the media in Berlin on Jan. 21, 2019. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Uzbekistan Imposes Month-Long State of Emergency in Unrest-Hit Province After 18 Dead

Uzbekistan declared a month-long state of emergency in Karakalpakstan province after 18 people were killed in protests against proposed constitutional amendments regarding an Uzbek provinces autonomous status.

Protests erupted in Nukus, the capital of the autonomous republic of Kakalpakstan, between July 1 and July 2, killing 18 people and injuring at least 243 others, including 38 law enforcement officers, AKIpress News Agency reported.

The General Prosecutors Office of Uzbekistan said that 516 protesters were detained, and 12 vehicles were impounded during the protests and riots against the governments proposed constitutional changes that will strip the province of its secession rights.

Uzbekistans government has since declared a state of emergency from July 3 to Aug. 2, restricting entry and exit of vehicles in Karakalpakstan and banning peaceful gatherings.

Following the unrest, Uzbekistans President Shavkat Mirziyoyev visited Nukus on July 2 and announced that the proposed amendments would be dropped.

The draft constitutional law, introduced to the attention of our people, has not yet been adopted, but has only been submitted for public discussion, the president said in a statement.

Taking into account, as well as ethnic, cultural characteristics, national customs, and values, I deem it necessary to leave the legal status of the Republic of Karakalpakstan unchanged. That is, Articles 70, 71, 72, 74, and 75 of the Constitution will remain unchanged.

Karakalpakstans authorities made a blanket statement about the protests in Nukus being triggered by a criminal group of persons attempting to seize government buildings and destabilize the socio-political situation in the Central Asian country.

The organizers of the riots were hiding behind populist slogans, manipulating the consciousness and trust of citizens, and not obeying the legitimate demands of the authorities, the republics state legislative body said in a statement.

It stated that an unspecified number of individuals who actively resisted law enforcement agencies have been detained and will be held accountable in accordance with applicable law.

Under these conditions, the attempts of certain unhealthy external forces from abroad to influence the development of the situation in Karakalpakstan, including through targeted information releases and distortion of current events, cause concern, it noted.

Karakalpakstans Future

Karakalpakstan was constituted as an autonomous republic under the ruling Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1932 before becoming part of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic in 1936.

Uzbekistan declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, after which Karakalpakstan agreed in 1993 to remain as part of Uzbekistan for at least 20 years, on the condition that it retained the right to secede by holding a referendum.

The proposed constitutional amendments would deprive Karakalpakstan of the right to secede, sparking massive protests in Nukus on July 1. Media have reported that the government blocked internet access after the draft was announced last week.

Government forces used stun and smoke grenades to disperse demonstrators gathered outside the Jokargy Kenes, the Karakalpak legislative council, Eurasianet reported, citing footage received from residents.

Uzbek authorities reportedly detained journalist Lolagul Kallykhanova on July 1 over a now-deleted video of her urging Karakalpakstan to secede. The Committee to Protect Journalists has demanded that the government explain why she was detained.

CPJ is concerned about the wellbeing of #Karakalpak journalist Lolagul Kallykhanova, reportedly detained by Uzbek security services amid mass protests in the autonomous Karakalpakstan region, and calls on Uzbek authorities to provide full information about any charges against her  CPJ Europe and Central Asia (@CPJ_Eurasia) July 1, 2022

Massive protests erupted in the Uzbek city of Andijian in 2005, where hundreds of peaceful anti-government protestors were killed by government forces.

In January, anti-government protests in neighboring Kazakhstan came close to forcing change, until President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev received military help from Russia that quelled the efforts.
Military veteran James Topp walks with supporters toward the War Memorial in Ottawa on June 30, 2022, the last stop on his trek from Vancouver to the nations capital to protest vaccine mandates. (Noe Chartier/The Epoch Times)

Veteran James Topp, Who Walked From Vancouver to Ottawa, to Face Court Martial

James Topp, who completed his walk from Vancouver to Ottawa on June 30 in protest of vaccine mandates, is now facing a court martial for charges previously laid against him by the military.

Topp holds the rank of warrant officer and is currently a reservist after serving in the regular force.

Hes been charged with two counts of conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline for publicly speaking against the vaccine mandates in February. He was in military dress uniform when he did so.

Topp had initially elected to get a court martial, but charges were re-laid without the option for a court martial. The military has now made another about-turn.

Thats what he wanted in the first place, and they took it away from him. So I think hes happy to be able to make his case, Topps lawyer Philip Millar told The Epoch Times.

Millar said hes unclear why the military chose to go this route and he doesnt know when the trial will take place.

Some changes took place in the military justice system recently, with provisions of Bill C-77 (2019) coming into force on June 20. Those provisions replaced the unit-level summary trials with summary hearings in the military justice system.

Summary hearings are non-penal and non-criminal disciplinary processes grounded in administrative law principles, whereas summary trials were criminal-law based.

Trek Completion

Topp completed his 4,300-kilometre journey on June 30, arriving at the National War Monument with over 1,000 supporters joining him.

This gave Topp a lot of notoriety, Millar pointed out.

The lawyer said that regardless of the reason why the CAF chose to court-martial Topp, its a good opportunity for him to have the matter adjudicated by a judge, so that at least he can make his case without it being done by the chain of command that created the policy.

Topp could have faced a penalty, such as fines, but with the court martial the outcome could be more serious.

On the other hand, the trial will allow Topps defence to present a broad range of arguments, potentially challenging the policy that Topp was speaking out against.

Millar said in a previous interview that the policy to prevent soldiers from taking political stances is not a bad one, but thats generally when youre talking about war.

He was speaking about being forced to vaccinate  so I think it was a little different. And I would have challenged the legality of the order in necessity because when its political, its different. The military is not supposed to be a political tool.

The Department of National Defence was contacted for comment but didnt respond by publication time.
Whether intentional or not, mounting evidence now indicate the COVID-19 injections will result in depopulation through premature death and adverse effects on fertility in women and men alike. Research from Israel reveals the shot deteriorates sperm count and sperm motility in men for about three months post-jab

A reanalysis of data from the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccine trials found that, combined, Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 jabs were associated with a risk increase of serious adverse events of special interest of 12.5 per 10,000 vaccinated. Meanwhile, the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalization was only 2.3 per 10,000 participants for Pfizer and 6.4 per 10,000 for Moderna

Most Level 3 adverse events were also dismissed as unrelated to the shot. Only a small number were listed as related. Examples of Level 3 side effects include tachycardia (disruption of the normal electrical impulses that control your heart rate  the very problem that underlies most cases of sudden adult death syndrome or SADS) and ventricular arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythm that makes the lower chambers twitch rather than pump  another underlying cause of SADS)

Examples of Level 4 adverse events  all of which were written off as not related to the mRNA injection  include acute respiratory failure, cardiac arrest, brain abscess, adrenal carcinoma (adrenal cancer) and chronic myeloid leukemia (blood and bone marrow cancer)

Pfizer classified almost all severe adverse events that occurred during its Phase 3 trials as unrelated to the injection. A 2,566-page document catalogues serious adverse events and six deaths during the trial. These events were all classified as toxicity level 4, which is the most serious, yet none of them was deemed related to the injection

Its becoming more and more apparent as to why Pfizer tried  albeit unsuccessfully  to withhold their COVID jab trial data for 75 years. With the release of more data, internet sleuths are uncovering problems suggestive of fraud and manipulation.

As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration continues to release Pfizers clinical trial documentation,1 were finding more and more evidence that very little has been done on the up-and-up, and the COVID jab trials may be among the most fraudulent in medical history.

Can All Serious Adverse Effects Be Written Off?

Importantly, Pfizer classified almost all severe adverse events that occurred during its Phase 3 trials as unrelated to the injection. As reported by The Defender, June 21, 2022:2

The latest release by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine documents reveals numerous instances of participants who sustained severe adverse events during Phase 3 trials. Some of these participants withdrew from the trials, some were dropped and some died.

The 80,000-page document cache includes an extensive set of Case Report Forms (CRFs) from Pfizer Phase 3 trials conducted at various locations in the U.S., in addition to other documentation pertaining to participants in Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine trials in the U.S. and worldwide 

The CRFs included in this months documents contain often vague explanations of the specific symptoms experienced by the trial participants. They also reveal a trend of classifying almost all adverse events  and in particular severe adverse events (SAEs)  as being not related to the vaccine.

The Defender article includes 11 examples3 of trial participants who experienced severe adverse effects that were classified as unrelated to the experimental gene transfer technology theyd received just days or weeks earlier.

A 2,566-page document4 catalogues the serious adverse events and six deaths that occurred during the trial. These events were all classified as toxicity level 4, which is the most serious, yet none of them were deemed related to the injection.

This simply isnt believable. Its completely unrealistic, especially when serious events occur in multiple participants. A handful of examples of Level 4 adverse events listed in this document  all of which were written off as not related to the mRNA injection  include:5

Acute respiratory failure

Cardiac arrest

Brain abscess

Adrenal carcinoma (adrenal cancer)

Chronic myeloid leukemia (blood and bone marrow cancer)

The six deaths reported were listed as being caused by arteriosclerosis, cardiac arrest, hemorrhagic stroke and myocardial infarction.6 Many participants also dropped out or were excluded from the trial due to serious side effects involving the heart, cardiovascular system, cancer, stroke, hemorrhage and neurological impacts.

Examples of Level 3 Adverse Events

Most Level 3 adverse events were also dismissed as unrelated to the shot. As reported by The Defender, only a small number were listed as being related to the injection. Examples of Level 3 side effects include:7

Deafness/hearing loss

Tachycardia (disruption of the normal electrical impulses that control your heart rate  the very problem that underlies most cases of sudden adult death syndrome or SADS)

Ventricular arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythm that makes the lower chambers twitch rather than pump  another underlying cause of SADS)

Neutropenia (low neutrophil level in your blood; neutrophils are a type of white blood cell made by your bone marrow that fight infections by destroying viruses and bacteria)

Vertigo

45% Experienced One or More Adverse Events

Another document8 that raises suspicions of bias is one admitting that 40% to 45% of participants who received BNT162b1 and BNT162b2 across age groups and across dose levels reported one or more AEs [adverse events] from Dose 1 through 28 days (i.e., 1 month) after Dose 2.

BNT162b2 was the candidate injection that went on to receive Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the FDA. Among those who got the highest dose (30 micrograms) of BNT162b2, 50% of younger participants 25% in the older age group reported one or more adverse events.

The most common adverse events were nervous system disorders, followed by musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders. Yet despite high rates of side effects across dose levels, this document also insists that most AEs were considered by the investigator as not related to study intervention.

During the open-label period of the study, 12,006 participants were followed for a minimum of six months, and among those, 28.8% reported at least one adverse event at some point during that follow-up, and 2.1% reported one or more severe adverse events.

Incidence Rate in Treatment Group FAR Higher Than Placebo

As reported by The Defender:9

The review provides data for participants from dose 3  to the data cutoff date. The severe adverse event incidence rate (IR) was 6.0 per 100 PY (patient-years), with specific conditions reported including pulmonary embolisms, thrombosis, urticaria, a cerebrovascular accident and COVID-19 pneumonia.

Here, the review adds that the IR for original placebo participants who had at least 1 life-threatening AE from Dose 3 to the data cutoff date was 0.5 per 100 PY.

Only one such life-threatening event, an instance of anaphylactoid reaction, was considered to be related to the vaccination. Other life-threatening, serious adverse events included cardio-respiratory arrest, gastrointestinal necrosis, deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism 

Notably, according to the review, all  events of facial paralysis were considered by the investigator as related to study intervention. [Editors note: these specifically refer to events that occurred during the open-label follow-up period when BNT162b2 Dose 3 or Dose 4 was offered to both placebo and initial treatment groups.]

Young Children Have Extremely Low Risk of Death From COVID

In the end, we all know what happened. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Pfizer concluded the shot was safe and effective for everyone and the FDA went along with it. The vaccine manufacturers and the FDA have decided it isnt even worth invoking the precautionary principle for the very youngest of children, which is nothing short of reprehensible, criminal maleficence.

In mid-June 2022, against strong objections from physicians, scientists and researchers, the FDAs vaccine advisory panel  the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC)  unanimously agreed to grant EUA to both Pfizers and Modernas COVID shots for infants and young children.10,11

Pfizers EUA is for a three-dose regimen (3-microgram shots) for children 6 months to 5 years old, while Modernas EUA is for a two-dose regimen (25-microgram shots) for children 6 months to 6 years.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,12 an estimated 75% of American children ages birth to 11 already have some level of immunity, having been exposed to one of the several variants that have come into circulation over the past two-plus years.

This immunity level alone makes EUA for COVID shots questionable. CDC data also prove young children have a very low risk of hospitalization and death from COVID, which makes the EUAs even more questionable.

Data13 published in mid-March 2022 suggest babies and young children under the age of 4 have had a peak hospitalization rate for COVID of 14.5 per 100,000. That peak occurred after Omicron became predominant. The hospitalization rate for the Delta variant in this age group was 2.9 per 100,000.

In all, since March 2020, a total of 2,562 infants and young children (6 months to 4 years) have been hospitalized WITH COVID. Of those, 2,068 had COVID listed as the primary reason for admission (84.7% of the total), and only 624 required ICU admission.

The median length of hospital stay was 1.5 days (range: one to three days). Of the 2,562 children with suspected COVID infection, 16 of them (0.6%) died in the hospital. Death certificate data push that number a bit higher. The Vaccine Reaction notes,14 According to death certificate data,15 202 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 among children 6 months to 4 years of age through May 11, 2022.

While any death is tragic, its worth noting that 923 (35.8%) of the children hospitalized with suspected COVID also had one or more underlying medical conditions.16 We dont know for sure, but its quite possible that those who died with a COVID diagnosis actually died from whatever underlying condition was present or had brought them to the hospital in the first place.

What Im trying to say is that 16 to 202 deaths over two-plus years arent cause for panic, and thats true even if COVID was the primary cause of those deaths. The likelihood of your child getting injured by the mRNA shot is undoubtedly significantly greater than their risk of dying from COVID.

Jab More Likely to Put You in the Hospital Than Keep You Out

The same is true for adults, by the way. A June 2022 analysis17,18 of Pfizer and Moderna trial data found the shots are more likely to put you in the hospital than keep you out of it. As reported by The Daily Sceptic:19

A new paper20 by BMJ Editor Dr. Peter Doshi and colleagues has analyzed data from the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccine trials and found that the vaccines are more likely to put you in hospital with a serious adverse event than keep you out by protecting you from COVID.

The pre-print (not yet peer-reviewed) focuses on serious adverse events highlighted in a WHO-endorsed priority list21 of potential adverse events relevant to COVID-19 vaccines. The authors evaluated these serious adverse events of special interest as observed in phase III randomized trials of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines 

Dr. Doshi and colleagues found that the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with an increased risk of serious adverse events of special interest of 10.1 events per 10,000 vaccinated for Pfizer and 15.1 events per 10,000 vaccinated for Moderna 

When combined, the mRNA vaccines were associated with a risk increase of serious adverse events of special interest of 12.5 per 10,000 vaccinated  The authors note that this level of increased risk post-vaccine is greater than the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalization in both Pfizer and Moderna trials, which was 2.3 per 10,000 participants for Pfizer and 6.4 per 10,000 for Moderna.

This means that on this measure, the Pfizer vaccine results in a net increase in serious adverse events of 7.8 per 10,000 vaccinated and the Moderna vaccine of 8.7 per 10,000 vaccinated.

Doshis team wasnt the first to reanalyze Pfizers trial data. The Canadian COVID Care Alliance has also published a clear and easy-to-read summary22 of the Pfizer trial results, and the many questions raised by it. As noted by Dr. Robert Malone:23

The bottom line is that the Pfizer Phase 3 trial which was used by NIAID [the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases], FDA and CDC to justify the emergency use authorization is pretty much a junk clinical trial which was inappropriately halted long before it even got close to meeting the intended follow up period, did not provide a sufficiently long follow up analysis of vaccination-associated adverse events, and in which the control group was intentionally eliminated.

This resulted in basically erasing any opportunity to ever get to the bottom of what the major true risks of the Pfizer mRNA inoculations were. In terms of more minor risks, the study was not powered (not big enough) to evaluate those.

FDA and CDC Have Neglected Important Duties

Doshi and his coauthors also note the FDA also watered down results by including thousands of additional participants with very little follow-up, of which the large majority had only received one dose.

They then further diluted the appearance of risk by counting only the number of people affected rather than counting the total number of individual adverse events. This makes a big difference, as twice as many people in the treatment group reported multiple serious adverse events, as compared to the placebo group.

The FDA and CDC have both also failed to produce promised follow-up investigations. In July 2021, now a full year ago, the FDA said it would investigate four potential adverse events of interest following Pfizer vaccination, namely pulmonary embolism, acute myocardial infarction, immune thrombocytopenia and disseminated intravascular coagulation, but to date, no update has been issued.

Similarly, in early 2021, the CDC published a protocol on how to use proportional reporting ratios to detect signals in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), but no study or report showing what that protocol might have found has ever been published.

As it turns out, the CDC hasnt been looking for safety signals in VAERS  not with the proportional ratios protocol or any other. So, while theyve publicly claimed they havent seen any signals of concern, the reason they havent seen any signals is very simple: They never looked at the data!24

Thats how ridiculous things are now. When a drug company or health agency claims they havent found a problem, you actually have to ask them, where, when, how and how often did you look? But of course, virtually no one would ever ask such questions because they would assume these agencies are competent, which of course is a false assumption.

Their Fraudulent Behavior Could Be Their Undoing

As you probably know, the makers of the COVID shots are indemnified against legal liability for any injuries and all deaths stemming from their products. No one is able to sue them for damages.

Whether intentional or not, mounting evidence now indicate the COVID-19 injections will result in depopulation through premature death and adverse effects on fertility in women and men alike.

The only way to hold them responsible is to prove theyve committed fraud. This would remove their liability immunity. As detailed at the beginning of the article, their consciously choosing to miscategorize adverse events during the initial trials and concealing the harms should be a slam dunk to convict them of fraud.

But there is also another fact they concealed: Theres evidence showing they knew the mRNA doesnt stay in the injection site but, rather, distributes throughout the body,25 and this too could be a smoking gun that proves fraud. If convicted of fraud, Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen would likely face liabilities in the trillions of dollars in damages.

When I exposed Mercks Vioxx scandal in 1999 in this newsletter, before they even released their drug on the market, I thought that was huge. Their drug killed more than 60,000 people, and they could have been liable for $25 billion in damages, but their clever lawyers reduced it to $5 billion.

Well, that catastrophe is a drop in the bucket compared to the COVID scam, which has likely killed between 600,000 and 750,000 Americans, disabled as many as 5 million, and injured an estimated 30 million Americans in one way or another.26,27 Thats just the estimated toll in the U.S., so you can imagine what the global numbers might be. Its a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. A June 2022 survey by Steve Kirsch also found:28

6.6% of COVID jabbed respondents suffered heart injury (about 10 million Americans, based on the national vaccination rate)

6.3% had to be hospitalized for their side effects (another 10 million Americans)

9.2% of those who took the jab had to seek medical help for their injury, which translated over the whole country would be about 18 million doctors visits

People who got the shot were more likely to die from COVID than the unvaccinated

2.63% of the responders had lost someone in their household to COVID infection, and 2.03% had lost someone in their household to the COVID jab

Expect Depopulation

Whether intentional or not, mounting evidence now indicates the COVID-19 injections will result in depopulation through premature death and adverse effects on fertility in women and men alike. Ive previously discussed the risk of pregnancy loss and infertility in women who get the shot, as the mRNA has an affinity for accumulating in the ovaries29 (as well as the adrenals, liver and bone marrow).

Research30,31 from Israel now also reveals the shot deteriorates sperm count and sperm motility in men for about three months. Considering the multidose mRNA shots are recommended at three-month intervals, you can see how this can really decimate a mans prospects of fathering a child.

Fertility has been on a steady decline for decades in most parts of the world,32 but the worldwide COVID jab campaign may massively speed that up. Germany recently released data showing a 10% decline in birth rate during the first quarter of 2022.33

Other countries are also seeing a drop in birth rate, nine months after the start of the mass vaccination campaign against COVID. Between January and April 2022, Switzerlands birth rate was 15% lower than expected, the U.K.s was down by 10% and Taiwans was down 20%.34

What punishment could possibly be appropriate for company heads and health agency leaders responsible for causing massive depopulation worldwide through products that were based on fraudulent science and fictional claims? I doubt if theres enough money in the world to set that right.

Future Trials To Be Skipped Altogether

As if matters werent already beyond horrible, the FDA is considering allowing manufacturers to reformulate their COVID injections in perpetuity without conducting any additional clinical trials!35 In other words, theyd allow drug companies to change the mRNA and/or other ingredients without any safety or efficacy testing whatsoever. As reported by Toby Rogers, Ph.D., in a June 27, 2022, article in The Defender:36

FDA released a briefing document37 in connection with this scheme to end science as we know it in connection with future COVID-19 shots  The briefing document is 18 pages of text, 1.5 line spacing, with just 19 references  9 of which are pre-prints or from the CDCs in-house newsletter Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) which means they are not peer-reviewed.

Any true believer in The Narrative(TM) could have written this in a few hours. To base the entire future of COVID-19 shots on this glorified undergrad term paper is madness 

The core argument of the briefing document is hilarious (or rather, it would be hilarious if it was not a plan to permanently institutionalize genocide and hide the evidence). In several places the FDA argues (colloquialisms mine):

1. These COVID-19 shots work great  Boosters too, total home run, the Israelis even have 10-weeks of data showing that they might help old people. What more evidence could you want?

2. Okay, well, it depends on what you mean by work. These shots do not stop infection, transmission, hospitalization, or death, even though thats why we licensed them. Any protection wears off fairly quickly, but Its Not Our Fault(TM) because This Wily Virus(TM) mutates too fast and no one told us that it would ever mutate.

3. So these shots must be reformulated but we cannot possibly ask Lord Pharma to do proper clinical trials ever again because we already know that these shots work great (see point #1)!

In short, the FDA argues that since there are time constraints, evaluation of effectiveness must rely on measures other than actual health outcomes. In other words, whether the shots actually lower your risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death will have no bearing.

The only measure theyll take into account is whether or not the jab triggers a rise in antibody levels, which has never been proven to be beneficial. If anything, the increase in COVID antibodies actually increases your risk of infection. This also means that as long as antibody levels are through the roof, the death rate could be just about anything, because its not part of the safety equation.

Faith in Magic Has Officially Replaced Science

As noted by Rogers,38 The Future Framework is a plan to base the entire COVID-19 vaccine program on magical thinking rather than science. Indeed, Dr. Deborah Birx recently confirmed that the whole vaccine push has been based in faith in magic.39

June 23, 2022, Birx answered questions from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked whether the government was lying or guessing when they stated that vaccinated individuals couldnt catch or spread COVID. At first, she claimed she didnt know, but when pressed, she replied, I think it was hope that the vaccine would work in that way.40

So, the government issued mandates and made unequivocal, absolute statements that were not allowed to be questioned because they HOPED the shots would work a certain way  all while insisting they were the ones following and trusting the science and anyone who questioned their logic was a dangerous nut job. Let that sink in. Hope is literally the diametrical opposite of science.

Its an Insiders Plot

As explained by Rogers, the same old players are behind this brazen attempt to eliminate the need for clinical trials: CDC staffers, academics who are in the pockets of Bill Gates and the NIAID, the drug companies themselves and the World Health Organization. Rogers writes:41

I did not understand until just yesterday (as I started to write this article) that this entire Future Framework is actually coming from the WHO. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the biggest voluntary contributor to the WHO. So Gates is likely directing the play.

Gates requires that WHO use the McKinsey consulting firm so this is probably a McKinsey operation (and McKinsey also works for Pharma so this is a huge conflict of interest). As Naomi Wolf points out, the involvement of the WHO also raises troubling questions about the influence of the Chinese Communist Party over this process.

As far back as January, the WHO/Gates/McKinsey junta realized that these shots were terrible and so they decided to use that as an opportunity to seize even more power and control.

The WHO set up a Technical Advisory Group on COVID-19 Vaccine Composition (TAG-CO-VAC) to implement these Orwellian Future Frameworks across the developed world to lower manufacturing costs for Pharma and avoid bothersome health data that might hurt profits. All the messaging we have seen from the FDA and leaked to the press was initially developed and released by TAG-CO-VAC.

No doubt, we live in unprecedented, precarious times. Logic, reason, science and sanity itself has been tossed aside by those who claim the right to make decisions for all mankind. If the FDA goes forward with this Future Framework scheme, the only safe assumption is that COVID shots will become more and more dangerous.

Worse, we can expect other vaccines and drugs to be allowed on the market without clinical trials as well. It truly could change the science of medicine as we know it.

Of course the WHO also wants to seize control over health care worldwide, which would eliminate medical rights everywhere. Its a nightmare scenario with no end in sight as of yet. All we can do is continue to push back, to inform ourselves, to speak out, share facts and data, and refuse to comply with unscientific recommendations based on little more than hope in fabricated conclusions.

Originally published July 05, 2022 on Mercola.com

Sources and References
You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

But you must try, try and try

Try and try, youll succeed at last.

Reggae musician Jimmy Cliffs lyrics apply to most situations in life: being a good husband and father, a promotion at work, or learning French. Very often, we truly can get something if we really want it and were willing to try, try and try.

And the same holds true for an education.

Old-School Education

Schooling of any kind was often hard to come by in our past.

Go back to 1860 and we find only 40 public high schools in the United States. Most students at that time enrolled in private academies, which were small, local schools supported by their churches and communities, or learned the basics of reading, writing, and mathematics at home. In fact, very few young people who attended schooland many who had to work received no education at allstayed in a classroom for only a few years.

Go even farther back in time, and we find no state-supported schools whatsoever, though education remained important to many Americans. Settlers in colonial New England, for instance, emphasized literacy, in part so that young people might read the Bible. In the South, the wealthy often hired private tutors, and many children of tradesmen and farmers learned their lessons at their mothers knee.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, designed to regulate a vast territory that included such future states as Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, declared that Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of educations shall forever be encouraged.

To secure that idea, the government set aside one parcel of land in each town for the building of a school.

Built around 1907 in Butler County, Iowa, this one-room schoolhouse was of many located every two miles throughout the countryside. (Public domain)

One Size Did Fit All

As time passed, the one-room school became an American standard. Parents often constructed the buildings for these tiny islands of learning, supplemented teacher pay with goods such as bushels of apples and potatoes, and frequently gave teachers bed and board in their homes to defray their expenses. As late as 1919, there were 190,000 one-room schoolhouses in the United States.

One of my college professors, Ed Burrows, attended a school in rural South Carolina that ran from grades 1 through 7, served about 50 students, and had only two teachers. It operated a little like a one-room school, with grades often sharing the same room; Ed told me one great advantage of this arrangement was that he could learn as he heard the older students doing their recitations and lessons while he and the younger students did their book work. In many other places, these schools were smaller, and grades 18 shared the same teacher and classroom.

The Situation Today

Over the past century, of course, large public schools became the norm for education. Today, there are about 100,000 K12 schools in the United States. Sixty years ago, more such schools existed, but many of these have consolidated.

Like our ancestors, we too have retained an eclectic assortment of other institutions. Charter schools, private academies both old and new, some of them secular and some with a religious mission, and homeschooling give parents an array of educational options.

The Students of Yesteryear

If we look back at that hodge-podge of schooling in the 18th and 19th centuries, so much of it unsupervised by any government, we might wonder, given our own structured approach to learning, how such a system could produce educated young people.

Yet, this was this epoch that give the new nation inventors such as Tom Edison and George Washington Carver, statesmen in the mold of James Madison and Daniel Webster, and women as brilliant and learned as Abigail Adams and Louisa May Alcott. Some of these historical figures came out of those one-room schools, others attended private institutions, and many, like Edison, John Adams, and his wife Abigail, received at least a part of their education in the home.

Which then raises this question: How was it that these schools, so primitive when compared to our own, produced so many people of genius and gave to millions of others a solid foundation of learning for life?

Old Ways From the Old Days

In several ways, those schools had advantages we now lack. In the towns and rural areas, they were generally small, a center of the broader community, and were more socially cohesive. Moreover, the culture of that time was utterly different from our own. The farm boy of 1900 was innocent of the distractions of electronics and technology.

Despite these differences, however, we can discover some techniques and tips from those who lived in that era that might enhance our own methods of education. Here are a few of them:

The old schools focused on the basics. They taught reading, penmanship, civics, history, science, and mathematics. That was the standard curriculum until the 1960s, and thanks to my mother and her scrapbooks, I have the report cards to prove my case.

The most important of these subjects was reading. In 19191920, the illiteracy rate among young adults was 6 percent. Today, it is double that figure. To expect a democracy to thrive, much less an individual, while remaining functionally illiterate is nearly impossible. Those schools used phonics and memorization to teach their younger students to decipher words. Many of our schools might want to follow suit.

Until fairly recently, rote learning was another tool of the classroom. In third grade arithmetic, for example, we memorized the times tables. Mrs. Fleming explained to us how this worked, and then we began, chanting both at home and in class: 2 times 2 is 4, 3 times 3 is 9, and so on. These days, many educators deride memory work, ignoring a means of learning that extends thousands of years into the past.

The ancient Roman tag Repetitio est mater studiorum, or Repetition is the mother of studies (learning) is as true today as it was then.

The Biggest Factor of All

Perhaps the greatest difference between our system of education today and that of, say, 1900, is the pursuit of education itself.

Get yourself an education, Id sometimes hear as a kid, and that same injunction was doubtless given to people like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Amelia Earhart (who was homeschooled until age 12), Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day OConnor (another homeschooler) and Clarence Thomas, and an army of other Americans.

All those young men and women understood that getting an education wasnt a passive process, that learning was as much up to them as to any school. With that attitude, many of them became lifelong learners. After his father died, for instance, my paternal grandfather reluctantly left school in seventh grade to help work the family farm. For the rest of his life, however, he was an avid reader, particularly of histories and biographies.

We need to inculcate this same fierce desire for learning in our children today. Education isnt pablum to be delivered on a spoon, but is instead a path to be pursued, not only for the job it may bring, but because a solid education makes us more fully human.

If we can fire up that passion for learning in our children, they will shine no matter what kind of school they attend.
A "for sale" sign hangs in front of a home in Miami on June 21, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Zillow Revises Home Price Appreciation Forecast, New Prediction Down 8 Points

Home prices in the United States, which are showing signs of cooling following a pandemic-recovery spike, are now expected to rise at a slower rate than previously predicted, according to real estate marketplace firm Zillow.

In its March report, Zillow predicted home prices would rise 17.8 percent year-over-year by February 2023. In its latest forecast published in June, Zillow predicts home prices will appreciate only 9.7 percent for the 12 months ending May 2023.

Not only is the latest prediction a major downward revision of the companys earlier estimate, it also signifies a major deceleration from the 20.4 percent price appreciation seen over the past year. The reason for the companys downward revision of home price growth is the cooling housing market.

It will take time to confirm, but for now the trend appears to show that the market passed an inflection point for home values between April and May, transitioning from ever-hotter to somewhat-cooler price growth. This deceleration is a clear signal that buyers are dialing back their demand for homes in the face of daunting affordability challenges, Zillow said in the June report.

Multiple other market experts are also predicting an appreciation in home prices in 2023. CoreLogic forecasts a 5.6 percent price growth over the coming year. Mortgage Bankers Association expects home prices to rise by 3.1 percent and Fannie May by 3.2 percent.

Capital Economics is predicting the opposite, forecasting home prices will decline by 5 percent over the coming year. The prediction is based on challenges to home affordability, including mortgage rates rising to 6.5 percent by the middle of 2023.

Impending Recession

A major factor that could severely dent the prospects of home price appreciation is an economic recession. If the United States slips into a recession, Moodys Analytics calculates national home prices will fall by 5 percent over the coming year, with significantly overvalued regional housing markets seeing price declines of up to 20 percent.

According to Taylor Marr, a Redfin deputy chief economist, home prices have passed their peak. Many homes are less valuable now than they were just a few months ago. However, homes are still more valuable now than three years ago, and Marr expects them to remain that way.

The impact to housing depends largely on the severity of the recession. Unemployment increasing sharplywhich hasnt happened yet and isnt expected to happenwould put an additional strain on demand because people will have less money. But if the recession is mild, mortgage rates could fall and housing demand wouldnt slow down further, Marr said in a June 1 Redfin news release.

Places like Sacramento, California, and Boise, Idaho, which saw big demand booms during the pandemic, are expected to see prices decline year-over-year in case of a recession, Marr said.

Expensive metros and places like the Bay Area, which have a lot of tech workers, might also see a fall in home prices, he added.
As she finished mowing the lawn of her home in Girard, Ohio, Amy Kren had a somewhat familiar feeling.

The shortness of breath and tightness in her chest seemed like another asthma attack. She went into the garage and put a hand on a lawn chair to steady herself and placed her other hand on her chest, trying to catch her breath. The symptoms didn't subside so she went into the house and took a couple puffs of her inhaler, hoping the medicine would help.

Her husband, Brian, suggested calling 911. She refused, insisting the symptoms would pass.

They didn't. Worse, she started to feel like a blood pressure cuff was squeezing her left arm. Now Amy was ready to call 911.

The paramedics did an electrocardiogram and gave her nitroglycerin and baby aspirin. As tears streamed down her face, she thought, "Why would a 38-year-old be having a heart attack?"

At the hospital, a team of health care workers rushed to her side. That prompted Amy to think about her children. She wondered, "What if I don't ever get to see them again?"

Brian couldn't comfort her. This was 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic prevented him from joining her inside the hospital.

"You never think this is going to happen to you (and) you naturally think the worst," Brian said. "Not being able to be there with her contributed to the surrealness of the whole situation."

Heart attacks are caused by blocked arteries. Usually, the blockages are caused by plaque. In Amy's case, the blockages came from blood clots. Doctors removed them via a catheterization procedure.

Tests revealed the blood clots were linked to a genetic risk associated with her birth control pills. (Estrogen-based contraceptives do increase the risk of blood clots, and women with an inherited clotting disorder, family history of blood clots, surgery, obesity and extended travel are at higher risk.)

Amy didn't know any of that. It's a risk that won't impact her son but one that she'll eventually have to explain it to her daughters, now 13 and 9. They will need to have bloodwork done to look for the gene before going on birth control.

She'll also teach them about the warning signs of a heart attack, something else she wishes she'd known sooner. For instance, weeks before her heart attack, she'd experienced extreme fatigue, back pain, swollen ankles and profuse sweating without realizing her body was sending her a message.

"Those were signs that I ignored," she said. "Had I not experienced that great pain (in my left arm), I probably would've just taken some Tylenol or ibuprofen and gone about my day."

After leaving the hospital, Amy felt leg pain and swelling. She called her cardiologist several times to make sure those were a normal part of recovery. She also feared having another heart attack.

"I was happy to come home to see my kids, but the fear of it happening again and not having the medical team right there if anything were to happen scared me to death," she said. "I was a nervous wreck to leave the hospital."

Since then, Amy has been eating healthier meals, cutting back on salt and caffeine. She lost 30 pounds. Her improved fitness also lowered her chances of another heart attack. Then, this past March, she felt heart palpitations and tightness in her chest.

She went to the hospital and the symptoms turned out to be stress-related. Brian was grateful that she sought immediate medical care, just to be sure. "One of the things we learned through Amy's experience is that when you see the signs, don't hesitate to call," he said.

Amy chose to share her story because she wants to encourage others to understand the importance of seeking immediate medical care.

At first, she was reluctant to do so because it meant reliving the experience. The more often she tells her story, the stronger she feels. Her perseverance is fueled by responses from women who've heard her speak. Recently, a neighbor's mom experienced heartburn and heart palpitations and went straight to the hospital.

"She told me afterwards that I inspired her to go," Amy said. "If I can help just one person, then what I went through is worth it."

Stories From the Heart chronicles the inspiring journeys of heart disease and stroke survivors, caregivers and advocates.

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ATHENS, Greece (AP)  Greeces prime minister said Tuesday that Russia's war in Ukraine is a turning point in the course of Europe, stressing that any type of outcome that could embolden aggression by other nations on the continent must be avoided.

Greece, which has long-standing disputes with far larger neighbor Turkey that brought them to the brink of war three times in the last half-century, has voiced strong support for Ukraine in its war against the Russian invasion.

The battle of Ukraine is not just another event on the international scene. It is a turning point in the course of Europe, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.

We owe it today to Ukraine to avert any type of fait accompli which could be imitated tomorrow by new potential trouble-makers," he said.

Mitsotakis noted he was referring to the constant aggressive behavior of Turkey, with which relations have shown increasing strain over the past two years. Although both NATO members, the two countries have decades-old disputes over a series of issues, including territorial claims in the Aegean Sea and energy exploration rights in the eastern Mediterranean.

Recent quarrels have focused on Greek islands off Turkeys coast, with Ankara accusing Athens of maintaining a military presence there in violation of treaties. Greece counters it is acting according to international law and is defending its islands in the face of Turkish hostility.

One thing is certain, we do not need new revisionism and the revival of imperial fantasies, Mitsotakis said. And another thing is also certain, Greece will not tolerate any questioning of its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The Greek prime minister said his country was keeping our doors shut to threats, keeping our windows open to peaceful contacts. Disputes between nations are resolved based on international law, not through bullying.

Last Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Greece of violating its airspace  something which Greece frequently accuses Turkey of doing to its own airspace, and denies violating Turkey's.

We dont have an issue like lets go to war with Greece, lets make war. But Greece is not standing by their promises, Erdogan said after Friday prayers, accusing Greece of having violated Turkish airspace 147 times.

Of course, if youre going to violate our airspace like this, then what falls on us? My air force will give you the necessary visuals. Thats what our air force is doing, Erdogan said, adding that our armed forces are doing their duty and if these airspace violations continue after this, we will continue to do our duty in the same way.

The Turkish president said the leaders of many NATO countries had tried to reconcile him and Mitsotakis. Erdogan said that we are not thinking that right now, but would see what happens in the future and evaluate it then.

___

Zeynep Bilginsoy contributed to this report from Istanbul.
The Madison Countys Judiciary Committee has unanimously approved placing an advisory referendum on the Nov. 8 ballot dealing with the subdivision of the 3rd Judicial Circuit.

Madison County States Attorney Tom Haine, who has been fighting the issue in the courts, presented the resolution which was approved with little discussion. The full county board must approve the plan for the referendum to appear on the November ballot.

It has no binding effect, but it allows people to voice an opinion, Haine said.

This spring Illinois modified judicial subcircuits in Cook County and creating subcircuits in some downstate counties, including Madison County. While the law does not impact other judicial circuits until the 2024 election cycle, it singled out Madison County for implementation in the 2022 election cycle. The primary, including three 3rd Circuit Judicial races, was Tuesday.

At last week's committee meeting, Madison County Board Member Mike Babcock, R-Bethalto, asked if the proposed referendum would fix the problem. Haine compared the referendum to a Second Amendment Sanctuary resolution county voters passed in November 2018.

On Tuesday, judicial candidates in four primary races were unopposed; candidates in two, both Democrats, ran as write-ins. The unopposed candidates will appear on the Nov. 8 ballot; the two write-ins must wait until the results are officially counted to see if they received enough votes to qualify for the ballot.

The new state law also set up a system where the first three judges elected must come from one subcircuit, which is heavily Democratic; then the next three from a second subcircuit, which is split. The third subcircuit, more heavily Republican, will only have two judges and residents would be unable to vote in a judicial race for about 10 years, according to county officials.

The Illinois law was criticized as being highly partisan and hastily done with limited chance for debate.

The original bill was introduced February 2021 by state Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville and sponsored by former state Sen. Rachelle Crowe, D-Glen Carbon, who has left the state legislature to become a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois. On Jan. 5 the bill was amended by Senate President Dan Harmon, D-Oak Park, completely throwing out the old language and inserting the new proposal.

The bill was approved along party lines and signed two days later by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

In February a circuit court judge in Sangamon County initially granted a temporary restraining order halting implementation of the law, but later ruled against the county and other plaintiffs. Oral arguments on an appeal of that ruling were heard June 22 in the 4th District Appellate Court. The case is still pending.
Madison County officials this week discussed the COVID vaccine and if parents should contact their childs pediatrician before getting the shot.

On Friday, the Health Department Committee discussed COVID vaccines for children under 5 years old.

The big news is that the FDA and CDC gave the green light to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for children 6 months to 5 years old, Chairman Kurt Prenzler said.

On June 21, the Food and Drug Administration and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention authorized the vaccine.

Prenzler asked the committee if the Health Department should recommend parents get the advice of their childs pediatrician before being vaccinated. He said he attended the Health Advisory Committee meeting on Tuesday and asked its members the same question.

He said the reason he brought it up was the censorship surrounding COVID, especially when vaccines first became available. Mainstream and social media censored the public as well as physicians who asked questions or had differing opinions, Prenzler said.

The advisory committee had a very robust discussion, he said. All thought it was a good idea for parents to check with a pediatrician. A couple said they didnt want to create any barriers.

Prenzler thinks its a good idea for parents to do a discount double check to make sure the vaccine is right for their child and their medical needs.

Health Department Interim Director Amanda Pruitt said the county received 300 doses of Pfizer (three shots) and 100 doses of Moderna (two shots.)

Board member Victor Valentine of Edwardsville asked if the county was the only agency providing this vaccine.

Pruitt said no, there were a couple of pediatric providers also offering the vaccine.

Prenzler said one of things he learned is under federal law pharmacies are not allowed to administer vaccines to children under 3 years old.

County Board member Terry Eaker of Bethalto said as the board and as the public health department we have taken a stand where we dont recommend (the vaccine) either way.

But, this is something that parents need to talk to their physicians about, Eaker said.
Peter Dejong

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP)  Two suspects in the slaying a year ago of Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries have been arrested overseas, prosecutors in the Netherlands announced Tuesday, a day after the suspected director of the shocking killing was detained.

The national prosecutor's office said a 27-year-old man was arrested on the former Dutch Caribbean colony of Curacao on Monday and a 26-year-old man was detained in Spain on the same day. Both men are Dutch nationals who will be flown to the Netherlands to face justice.
Eight zoning requests were approved and two postponed during a busy meeting of the Madison County Zoning Board of Appeals last week.

The approved requests, which must go through the Building and Zoning Committee before being voted on by the full County Board, include a request for a campground, a bar/restaurant and workers at a home business.

Ronald and Rita Christlieb, owners of property at 7645 Possum Hill Road, Worden, had requested a special use permit to allow an overnight campground on the site. There had been several letters in opposition.

SBK Group LLC, on behalf of owners Ronald and Larry Blake, had requested a special use permit to allow an eating and drinking establishment in an existing structure in a B-4 Wholesale Business District at 5528 Maryville Road in Chouteau Township.

Kent and Margaret Barnett, owners of property at 758 Birch Street, East Alton, had requested a variance to build an accessory structure 25 feet tall, instead of the maximum 20 feet allowed in an R-3 Single Family Residential District in Wood River Township.

Mike and Michele Riffel had requested a variance to construct an attached garage at 12157 Cedar Hills Drive, Highland, that would be 25 feet from the east property line instead of the required 50 feet. The property is zoned A Agricultural.

Jill Bertels, on behalf of Bertels Land Inc., had requested the rezoning of about one-half acre of a dual-zoned lot to R-3 Single-Family Residential from A Agricultural at 4568 Seiler Road, Dorsey, in Moro Township.

Billy Marquez had requested a special use permit to have a private parking lot and a Type B Home Occupation with six employees rather than one normally allowed to operate a cleaning company from his home at 3122 Harvard Place, Collinsville.

Joshua Kirbach on behalf of Weber Living Trust, owner of 5446 Chain of Rocks Road, Edwardsville, had requested rezoning of 2.88 acres to PD Planned Development District from B-3 Highway Business District.

Mark Frey and Gail Frey, owners of 4164 Illinois 160, Highland, had requested rezoning of 1.62 acres to PD Planned Development District from R-2 Single Family Residential.

All were approved and will move to the Building & Zoning Committee.

Two hearings were postponed.

Blake Tourville had requested a variance at 8702 N. Illinois 159, Dorsey, to construct an accessory building 4 feet from the south property line instead of the required 15 feet. The property is zoned A Agricultural. The request was postponed because there appears to be a property line discrepancy, and Tourville and a neighbor will have a survey completed before it is brought to the ZBA again.

A request by I-55 RV Park & Campground LLC on behalf of owners Jeffrey and Pamela Bladdick, for a special use permit for 4260 Blackburn Road, Edwardsville, to operate a trailer/RV park was delayed because of questions regarding an intergovernmental agreement between Edwardsville, Madison County and the Illinois Department of Transportation regarding a nearby intersection. The issue was cleared up during a conference call two days after the meeting, and is good to go according to Building & Zoning officials. The property is zoned A Agricultural.
On Saturday-July 2, I was pleased to participate in a zoom conference sponsored by the American Ethiopian Political Affairs Committee (AEPAC) on the effects of ethno-nationalism in Ethiopia. In a brief presentation, I discussed the need to eliminate ethno-nationalism for the preservation of the Ethiopian nation-state. My analysis and recommendations are unique, provocative, and challenging.

I suggest Ethiopian leaders and thoughtful citizens review my remarks printed below, which can serve as a foundation for Ethiopian policy, moving forward.

Read my presentation below:

Let me start by thanking the American Ethiopian political affairs committee for allowing me to make this presentation today.

I will begin with some challenging conceptions that people may consider irrelevant to our discussion today, but for me these are principles that are very relevant to the aims of this conference. For sake of brevity, I have organized my presentation into four crucial topics, followed by recommendations.

What Makes Us Human?

Human beings are the only species endowed with the unique quality of the creative imagination, in shorthand creativity, or what Plato called hypothesizing the higher hypothesis. With this exceptional quality of creative thought, intrinsic only to humankind, we human beings are capable of discovering the scientific and cultural principles of the universe that we ourselves live in. It is by applying these discovered principles that we transform the universe. Humankind has progressively altered the physical universe, making it more propitious for the growth of the human race, both qualitatively and quantitatively. This is not conjecture, but the truth. How did the human species, that once populated the African continent with thousands of hunters and gatherers come to transform our planet with eight billion people? Through our innate powers of discovery.

This quality of creative mentation is fundamental to what we call human nature, and it is universal. It is the prevailing quality that defines each one of us as a human being.

There are of course differences among us in language culture and geography. However, we human beings are identical in our potential for creative thought; in our potential to make contributions in discovering the Creators laws embedded in our physical universe.

Thus, we are as human beings far more similar than we are different. Our likeness is universal, our differences insignificant.

The Importance of The Nation Sate

Human beings willfully begotten the Nation State. From centuries of dialogue and discussion, we made the conception of the Nation State a reality and codified it in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. Humankind established the Nation State as human law, because it was understood to be a necessary institution for the continued existence of civilization. Without the existence of the Nation State, society would not continue to progress.

The Nation State is the means for people to self-govern, to deliberate for their future. Nation States provides the continuity of the citizens contributions over generations, from the past to the future. The Nation State has the responsibility to protect and nurture the powers of human creative thought for the benefit of all its people. The Nation State therefore must be sovereign from internal and external assaults on its existence.

The Nation State must be inviolable. It may still be an imperfect institution, but it is the most advanced institution we human beings have invented, to advance our humanness, and protect the rights of our citizens. The nation state must be preserved and defended until we create a more perfect organization of society.

Ethno-Regional Federalism of the former ruling ERPDF coalition party failed.

Ethno-Nationalism is Contrary to The Nation State

A sustainable Nation State transcends all local interests and transcends ethnicity.

Ethnicity can and should contribute to the beauty and enrichment of a civilization. Ethno-nationalism is entirely different. It functions as a cancer on society, which if allowed to exist, will undermine, and eventually destroy the Nation State. Ethno-nationalism usurps the power of the sovereign Nation State by insisting that as an ethnic group it should be treated as if it were a nation. Ethno-nationalism is inherently racist and discriminatory because it separates people of the same nation according to biological and geographical distinctions. Human beings are not defined by their blood-lines! It creates antagonistic ethnic based fiefdoms in false competition with each other for power. While the Nation State exists to provide for the general welfare of all its people, the followers of ethno-nationalism seek the aggrandizement of the interests of their ethnic group. Those supporting ethno-nationalism whether they know it or not, are advocating the destruction of their nation, in this case, Ethiopia.

In my study of African history, I have found that weakened Nation States contributed to the lack of economic development for that country. I was horrified and saddened when I first arrived in Nigeria in 1994, to view the reality of ethnic competition and its effects on the nation.

Africas Future

The present 1.5 billion people living on the African continent should be organized into viable Nation States, which are not a mere collection of ethnicities. I was told when I was in Nigeria that the country had 250 different ethnicities in addition to the three dominant ethnic groupings. This reality is still affecting Nigeria today. There are a reported 3,000 different ethnicities across the African continent. We must work to establish on the African continent, Nation States that are politically and economically sovereign. The people of each nation should determine their future through deliberations, debate, and discussion of ideas. There can be no claims to ethnic superiority or a historical right to political control. As President Lincoln said when he was campaigning to lead the USA, the nation must protect equally the lives of all its men and women.

In a true Republic, the government has the obligation to develop the creative potential of each and every citizen, and each and every child born. Each citizen has the obligation and the right to use his or her creative potential to contribute to the peaceful and prosperous future of their nation for generations to come. These are the conditions of government and citizenship which we should work to foster throughout the many nations on the African continent. I do not believe that Africa will prosper as its population climbs to 2.5 billion people in the next 30 years, unless we create strong Nation States and educated citizens who act in the interests of their nation, not their ethnicity.

Ethnicity should be muted and removed from the political arena

V. Recommendations

I suggest we use the following recommendations, which are not prioritized, to formulate the best policy for Ethiopia, moving forward.

We must amend the Ethiopian Constitution.

The Preamble of Ethiopias Constitution properly emphasizes the conception of a united nation with a common purpose and goal for all its people: advancing our economic and social development, common interest.and the emergence of a common outlook, and to live as one economic community. Article 14 resonates with the US Constitution, stating: Every person has the inviolable right to life, the security of person, and liberty. The same principle is echoed in Article 43 of the Constitution: The Right to Development. The basic aim of development activities shall be to enhance the capacity of citizens for development and to meet their basic needs.

The weakness of the Constitution begins in Article 8: Sovereignty of the People, where sovereign powers are divided up between Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia. This is an obvious compromise to ethnicity. In truth; there is only one Ethiopian people and only one Ethiopian nation. The divisions in Ethiopian society are made explicit in Article 39: Every Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has an unconditional right to self-determination, including the right of secessionthe right to a full measure of self-government

This separation of Ethiopians into multiple groups, outlined in the Constitution, is the seed for the conflicts gripping Ethiopia today. Ghana has outlawed the existence of parties which are based on ethnicity. Rwanda has taken a different approach for the same purpose.

A National Dialogue

I propose we conduct the national dialogue on the highest ideational plateau. We should have an inclusive, unfettered discussion, which may be contentious at various points in time. The central theme of this national dialogue should be the conceptual difference between citizenship and ethno-nationalism. This disease of ethno-nationalism has plagued Ethiopia and many other African countries for years and has to be addressed head on in the most straightforward manner. It is the only way that I can see that the citizens of Ethiopia can come to an understanding of what it means to be a citizen of the nation of Ethiopia. This will be a challenging and lengthy process, but I see no way to avoid this path.

A National Mission to Unite the People

Prejudices from ethnic and religious difference will not evaporate over-night. We should create a platform with the most propitious conditions for the shedding of these biases over time. To help accomplish this, I propose that we articulate a national mission for Ethiopia, which will also be regional in scope.

Let the nation of Ethiopia adopt the mission to eliminate poverty and hunger. Ethiopia should also commit to become the economic engine for the Horn of Africa, to help the other nations in the region end the economic suffering of their people. With this shared mission, for the benefit of all Ethiopian people, we can create a common self-interest, fostering the collaboration of each Ethiopian citizen with the rest of society. We know that under the proper environment, Ethiopians will desire the best conditions for their lives and those of their offspring. With this common interest for development of the nation for future generations in the forefront, each Ethiopian citizen can locate his or her self-interest in the interest of the other. Even though prejudices may still exist, Ethiopians can accept working together for the common interest of creating a prosperous future for their children and grandchildren. All human beings are born good and have the potential noble for actions.

No doubt, this approach will also be challenging, but it can be effective over time in eliminating the hostilities that have developed from a history of division and ethno-nationalism.

My dear friends, I hope my modest contribution will help lead us to a better Ethiopia in the months and years ahead.

Thank you very much for listening. I yield back the balance of my time.

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over 30 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, and consultant on Africa. He is also the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com . Mr. Freemans stated personal mission is; to eliminate poverty and hunger in Africa by applying the scientific economic principles of Alexander Hamilton.
The Federal Government of Nigeria has said that terrorists belonging to the Islamic States West Africa Province (ISWAP) are behind the various attacks unleashed on Christians in the country.

The FG through the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, made this known on Monday while speaking to newsmen in London.

While condemning the call by five United States Republican Senators asking for the re-designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern because of alleged persecution of Christians, the Minister said the call was based on false premise and misunderstanding of what was going on in the country.

It would be recalled that five US Senators made the call in a letter to the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, alleging that there was a violation of freedom of Nigerian Christians rights to practise their religion.

Meawhile, the minister who is in London for engagements with international media as well as some relevant Non-Governmental-Organisations, was quoted as saying, We want to say once again that Nigeria does not have a policy that denies people the freedom to practise their religion.

The country also does not have a policy of violation of freedom of religion and it is not true that Nigeria persecutes anybody on account of his or her faith.

He added, Nobody in Nigeria is being persecuted, but we have issues of criminality going on and the criminals really do not make distinction of any religion.

They kidnap for money, they hold people for ransom irrespective of their religion and there are some issues of communal matters dating back to many years.

If statistics is to be taken, I can say confidently that as many Muslims as Christians have been victims of these criminals.

Lai Muhammad further stated that the only known group that target Christians is the Islamic States West Africa Province.

He, however, said the Federal Government had mounted large scale military operations to wipe out the criminals and they are yielding results.

What ISWAP is doing is that because of their dwindling influence, they are now attacking churches and Christians in order to create crisis between various religious groups.

But as a government, we are after them, he said.

The minister accused that some NGOs were also feeding the international community with wrong information to get funds from donors.

Mohammed reaffirmed that the two major religions in Nigeria, Islam and Christianity are also collaborating to find solution to the crisis and bring peace and harmony.
The Peter Obi Support Network has stated that the presidential candidate of New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) , Rabiu Kwankwaso is a liability rather than asset to the Peter Obi aspiration.

It said Kwankwaso and Obi are ideologically apart, adding that an alliance between the duo can hardly work.

In a statement, the Director, Strategic Communication, POSN, Onwuasoanya Jones, said Kwakwansos recent utterances on Politics Today, on Channels Television showed that he is an ethnic inspired candidate, rather than a New Nigeria patriot and advocate which the Obi campaign is hinged on.

The group therefore called for the immediate discontinuation of the alliance talks between the two leaders.

The statement reads in part, Following his recent outing on Politics Today aired on Channels Television, all doubts have been erased that the presidential candidate of the fledgling NNPP, Dr. Rabiu Kwankwanso, is not ideologically inclined to Mr Peter Obi or the Labour Party, especially on the key issues driving the former Anambra governors aspiration to the presidency.

His Excellency Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwanso has regrettably manifested a most distasteful understanding of the Nigerian situation, as he advertised himself as primarily hinging his aspiration to the presidency on the basis of where he comes from rather than where he wants to take Nigeria to, by arguing that his candidacy is propelled by the North rather than by Nigerians and also emphasising on our ethnic differences rather than blunting them.

We should understand that Dr. Kwankwanso sharing a ticket with Peter Obi will alienate genuine Nigerian patriots who have bought into the Peter Obi candidacy out of their conviction that it is a unifying, ideas driven and masses propelled pan Nigerian project.

By coming on television, even while the alliance talks are yet to be finalised, to categorically foreclose the chances of pairing with Mr Peter Obi as running mate, Dr. Kwankwanso has shown himself as coming to this alliance negotiations with a closed mindset and as a self-centered manipulator rather than being open to superior ideas, logics and credible electoral and political data or having the slightest pretext to patriotism.

And it is without any iota of doubt that should Kwankwaso by any political magic or dangerous spin of fate emerge President, he will be one of the worst primordialists and religious bigots to have presided over the affairs of this country.

Kwankwansos continuous association with the Peter Obi candidacy will be a liability rather than an asset as his utterances and those of his aides and key supporters have continued to raise eyebrows among patriotic Nigerians who are driving the Peter Obi electoral revolution out of their conviction on his competence and unquestionable patriotism.

It bears reiterating that Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, is not motivated by any ethnic, sectional or religious sentiments nor is he banking on the votes of a particular section of the country against the other, but inspired by the dream to, working together with like-minds, accomplish a working, productive, secured and equitable Nigeria, for all, and through the votes of all Nigerian patriots from all sections and classes of Nigeria.

Dr. Kwankwansos motivation and confidence in vying for the presidency are clearly rooted on some self-serving ethnic and class biases, and such an individual shouldnt be allowed to taint the purely progressive, selfless and people-inspired aspiration of His Excellency, Mr. Peter Obi.
It has been four years now since Vice President Yemi Osinbajo called for the creation of a state police force, because he knows better but has no independent power to push it. Along with the progressive reasoning of Osinbajo are many Nigeria governors, including but not limited to Nyesom Wike, Douye Diri, Godwin Obaseki, Bello Matawalle, Rotimi Akeredolu, Nasir El-Rufai, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, and Kayode Fayemi, who recently and strongly called for decentralized police systems.

Four years ago, Ahmad Lawan, then the Majority Leader of the Senate, welcomed the idea. Three years ago, Lawan still welcomed the idea of state police as the Senate President, but he knows that the psychology of security and police nationalization, which is inherent in the former army general, President Muhammadu Buhari, makes him helpless.

Lawan is basically Buharis accommodator and deliverer. The same thing goes with the attorney-general of the federation and minister of justice, Abubakar Malami.

Buhari, apparently, is a man of deep ethno-religious politics who is always in search of ways to give security to Muslim Northern Nigeria, dogged by frail and vulnerable institutions and a sluggish economy partly due to its long-standing tribal, sectional, and religious politics, which must be protected by a centralized federal police structure.

Buhari, by his very militarized and religious approaches, has deep ethical and ideological differences with non-northern regions noted for ideas and the spirit of decentralization of institutions.

Unfortunately for the person and leadership of Buhari, Nigeria is bigger than him and his helpers, Lawan and Malami in particular. Powers such as policing and control of natural resources have dwelled almost exclusively in the federal government, a situation that has left the states essentially subservient to the center, but it is about to fall big time come 2023.

There is a dramatic change about to occur, and Buhari knows that. There isn't a thing he and his devotees can do about it. His psychology of absolute authority is about to expire. A state police force would be one that is established, funded, and controlled by the state government within a true federal system.

The current federal police system, which came into existence in 1861, is subject to the authority of the Inspector-General of police and under the command of the commissioner of police of different states, is known for its chronic poor productivity and inefficiency.

It is necessary that the current police structure be legislatively changed and limited to narrow federal functions such as protecting the lives of federal and diplomatic leaders and federal properties. The Nigeria police, chronically known for partly being used for VIP (very important person) protection and engaged as private hires to serve as shoe shiners, bag carriers, and errand boys for the VIP, are free to continue that way but stay away from the law enforcement business of state governments.

Even a child currently knows that with favors from police chiefs to governors and notable people, officers are used to persecute perceived political and commercial opponents and mismanage for private gains. Certainly, there is always going to be the possibility of abuse in future state/local police systems, but there is a progressive approach that states can add to the security matrix.

States can develop work and fee policies on the employment and hiring of off-duty uniformed police officers to provide security in businesses, supermarkets, and stores across the state, and encourage private entities to use private security guards under contract.

Across Nigeria, there are already security networks and outfits in some states that others should emulate, which will transition smoothly and permanently into institutionalized and professional state and local police systems.

A Nigeria is coming where the people vying to take the presidency do not come from a military background and mindset. They will be more sympathetic to states exercising their power on behalf of their people.

After Buhari, Lawan, and Malami, Nigeria will be on its way to a situation where Federal law will establish the rights and rules for all the citizens, and State law will add to those rights. One such right is the statewide authority to conduct its law enforcement activities and services. I will say to the governors to "chill," meaning calm down. While change can't come soon enough for current Nigeria, it is almost here.

John Egbeazien Oshodi, who was born in Uromi, Edo State in Nigeria to a father who served in the Nigeria police for 37 years, is an American based Police/Prison Scientist and Forensic/Clinical/Legal Psychologist. A government consultant on matters of forensic-clinical adult and child psychological services in the USA; Chief Educator and Clinician at the Transatlantic Enrichment and Refresher Institute, an Online Lifelong Center for Personal, Professional, and Career Development. He is a former Interim Associate Dean/Assistant Professor at Broward College, Florida. The Founder of the Dr. John Egbeazien Oshodi Foundation, Center for Psychological Health and Behavioral Change in African Settings In 2011, he introduced State-of-the-Art Forensic Psychology into Nigeria through N.U.C and Nasarawa State University, where he served in the Department of Psychology as an Associate Professor. He is currently a Virtual Behavioral Leadership Professor at ISCOM University, Republic of Benin. Founder of the proposed Transatlantic Egbeazien Open University (TEU) of Values and Ethics, a digital project of Truth, Ethics, and Openness. Over forty academic publications and creations, at least 200 public opinion pieces on African issues, and various books have been written by him. He specializes in psycho-prescriptive writings regarding African institutional and governance issues.

Prof. Oshodi wrote in via [email protected]


Political parties in Nigeria are like the mysterious stranger that you know about, yet cannot fully understand. You know they exist, they occupy your thoughts, you know they are important and they influence your reality, but you are not entirely sure what they do or what role they play. You are blinded by the facade they maintain and the opinions they curate. You know there is a deeper meaning behind all their actions yet you are unsure if they drive the actions of politicians or are mere victims of political ambitions. All you know is that they are a pressure group that comes out every four years, organises a fanfare, follows the democratic process and presents the countrys leaders; and of course, you believe that political parties are that elite group reserved for the countrys top 1%.

One of the questions I have been asked quite often is this if you are advising others to actively participate in politics and join political parties, why havent you picked up a partys membership card? There are several reasons for this decision. One of which is that my work is deeply influenced by my interest in a candidate and how much I believe in their cause. Simply put, I work for people, not political parties.

Why am I talking about this today? Over the past few weeks, I have been trying intentionally to shine a light on different career paths that influence politics without the need to contest elections. However, at this point, it seems necessary to discuss my experience with party politics.

Before I go further, I would like to clearly state that due to Nigerias political structure you cannot practice politics without getting involved with political parties. Even if you decide to remain non-partisan, your employer is partisan. Thus, you will experience party politics with or without your permission. It will happen. Make peace with that.

My last experience gave me a front seat into party polities. Before now, I had minor encounters with party politics but I maintained a disinterest, choosing to focus on the communication aspect. What I did not realize then was that the politicking process started from the lowest level of the party structure with the participation of the everyday Nigerians; the ones that cry blood when Spaghetti hit the N400 market price.

So here is what happens when a person decides to run for office.

Nigeria's constitution does not allow for independent candidates, unfortunately, so the person has to join a political party. You would analyze the best party to join depending on the position you seek to contest, the ruling party, your personal chances and your resources (mostly financial). You should make this analysis about 5-10 years before you actually contest. Most parties have a specific time a person must serve in the party before you can contest on their platform; that is where the case of waivers comes in. After you pick up your membership cards, you have to consciously start building your network and resources. This might take years, except you have the financial resources and like to dash people money.

At this stage, the party is merely a club and you attend its activities once or twice every three months (depending on if it is an election year or not). A strategic person will start implanting people and pumping in financial resources to have a strong hold on the decision-making process of the party. All these will give you a better chance at the primary elections which is a party affair without much interference from the general public. It is at this stage even very popular people lose elections due to the so-called party interests. It is also at this stage that the tone is set for how the national cake will be divided when such people get into office.

Here also, the prospective candidate goes for consultations with party members. Unlike what you presume, the pepper seller complaining about how her gain is N50 after selling an entire crate of egg might be a woman leader and thus a partys major stakeholder. The plumber with five children unable to attend university due to increment in fees might be a local government party chairman, thus a major stakeholder. These stakeholders are everyday citizens with membership cards of political parties. The cabal consist of your hairdresser who will cry about the increasing price of hair attachment. The delegates are made up of the electrician you tipped an extra N100 because of his sad story of how he has not eaten in days. These are the stakeholders that will collect thousands of naira before swearing their loyalty to your ambition. This is why money cannot be fully separated from politics, because God forbid you consult these people without cash at hand.

While this politicking is going on, the intelligent well-meaning Nigerians sit on a high stool, pretend we are too pure to get involved in party politics, point fingers at politicians, and raise our noses at the National structures of parties without knowing why and hold twitter spaces on what we can do to take back our country. I am not condemning agitation or activism. But the issue is, we are too focused on the politics at the centre we completely forget that political parties control over 1533 political positions ranging from the States House of Assemblies, National Assembly, Gubernatorial positions etc. and all these positions affect us in more ways than we know.

If the right people invest their time into becoming party members and earn a seat at the table for party decision-making, we can cut down the cost of participating in Nigerias politics. With the right people and the right attitude, political parties will no longer be a place for people to just cash-out. Rather, it will be an actual pressure group interested and invested in presenting the countrys best as the political class.

Nothing stops political parties from identifying proven leaders in society and encouraging them to participate in politics. What we have now is that when people want to serve as a public servants, they sacrifice their blood, sweat and tears to this organisation, sometimes almost losing everything they have in this twisted process. At the end of the day, the platform contributes more to our problems than aiding the solution.

Another election year is here. Primary elections are over which means that to a certain extent, the backroom deals have been concluded. New alliances will be entered and the crumbs left from the distribution of the national cake before the primaries are now being shared.

Political parties have made billions and trillions in the past few months. Campaigns will officially start towards the end of September and the fanfare will once again be in our faces. I say again if you seek change, unlike me, do register as a member of a political party. Unlike me, serve the party and become a force that cannot be ignored even if it is at the ward level. We can keep signing electoral acts and protesting, speaking English and condemning vote trading; the decision-makers will keep identifying loopholes and the pepper seller will keep cashing out every four years.
In the absence of 11th hour miracle, when an assessment of performance of the Executive arm of government will be carried out on May 29 next year, using the economy, security and corruption as index, President Muhammadu Buhari may likely go down as a failed President.

If this happened, the Legislative organ of government should largely be blamed. Firstly, for failing to invoke the doctrine of checks and balances to ensure the President discharges his statutory obligations in line with national interest and aspirations. Secondly, for failing to halt breach of federal character principle by the President. Thirdly, for failing to interrogate the Executive for sliding economic indices, worsening corruption, rising insecurity, capital flight, mounting loans, multiple tax burden, unemployment, and decaying infrastructure, including poor electricity and education.

For these flops, the 9th National Assembly is an accessory to current woes of the country, and cannot be absolved. The Legislature is the second organ of Government, free and independent from the control of the Executive, yet, the lawmakers have made it an extension, and apron string of the President.

Signs that the 9th National Assembly will be a weakling and lacking a mind of its own, emerged when the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan said any request that comes from Mr. President is a request that will make Nigeria a better place, and would therefore expeditiously ensure passage of legislation therefrom.

I am most certain that even the Chairman of Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), whom Lawan was receiving at the time he made this remark, might be shocked at the statement.

With this declaration by the Senate President and head of National Assembly, the Legislature has violated the doctrine of separation of powers and checks and balances as enunciated by French philosopher, Charles Baron Montesquieu, in his book, The Spirit of Law. The intention of Montesquieu was the need to separate the three organs of government, namely, the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary, to enable each arm serve as check on the other to ensure equilibrium.

It is aimed at protecting their respective liberty, and preventing any organ of government from becoming too powerful as to transmute into tyranny and authoritarianism. The doctrine has become a template for good governance and global reference for protection and advancement of egalitarianisms. It forms part of constitution in countries where democracy is practiced.

For undermining this doctrine, Lawan has not only sacrificed the trust of the people on the altar of self-aggrandizement but projected President Buhari as all-knowing and omniscient President who can do no wrong, and whose intellectual capacity is beyond the competence of the Senate and House of Representatives combined.

Besides, the National Assembly (NASS) has encouraged the creation and emergence of an all-powerful President with uninhibited liberty to go off course at will even on matters of national interest. For example, the federal character principle as contained in the 1999 Constitution is breached with impunity by President Buhari, and despite criticism, has shown no remorse.

Section 14, Sub-section 3 of the 1999 Constitution says that The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies .

The Buhari Administration has done exactly the opposite. All key national appointments contravene Section 14, Sub-section 3 as evidently reflected in the dominance of people from the north, particularly, from the Fulani ethnic group. Yet, the Senate sees nothing wrong with this imbalance, as long as it originates from the President. By this, the President has promoted what the constitution intended to avoid - disunity and national disloyalty.

All key and juicy ministries, departments and agencies of government (MDAs), including security agencies, are headed, and firmly in the hands of northerners, just as all three organs of government were headed by northerners up till few weeks ago when Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad resigned as Chief Justice of Nigeria, paving the way for the most senior justice, Olukayode Ariwoola, a southerner, in acting capacity.

It is small wonder therefore that Nigeria is currently plagued by disunity, disloyalty and suspicion induced by disenchantment arising from dominance of the Northern region over other sections. This is an aberration for a country that is made up of different ethnic nationalities, which have agreed to come together under a federation of equal partners, anchored on sincerity, equity and justice, particularly in matters pertaining to appointments and distribution of resources.

In advanced democracies, the Senate would have compelled the President to reverse such appointments to reflect federal character or face impeachment. But the National Assembly lacks the courage to reject Buharis nominees or even initiate impeachment threat, obviously, for fear of Executive intimidation.

Put differently, despite the dangers posed to the unity of the country by this constitutional contravention, the Senate has seen no reason to veto the Presidents nominees despite backlash concerns and fear of disunity and national disloyalty as envisaged by the Constitution.

When a country deliberately closes its doors against other sections and ethnic groups just to achieve ethnic dominance, unwittingly, misses contributions of intelligent and bright minds from the neglected areas to national development. That the country has been on a downward swing in the last seven years, is the price of nepotism.

Ironically, those who have been favoured by this structural abnormality do not see anything wrong with it, even within the context of the constitution. They keep blind eyes, reminding others that Nigerias unity is not negotiable. This is an illusion. Attaining peace in the face of obvious mismanagement of diversities and dishonest policies, is a tall order.

From the demeanor of NASS, the law makers are overwhelmed by subservient corporatism and loss of liberty. This has eroded its influence and degraded the premium placed on it by the Executive. This is evident during NASS committee meetings where some ministers, including senior officials of the Executive flagrantly snub summons, particularly during budget review sessions by Committee on Finance and Appropriation. Yet, these same ministers and senior officials are the first to raise grounds for further amendments after budgets have been transmitted to the President, leading in some cases, to delay in passage of the countrys national budget.

Unfortunately, the Judiciary is also unable to invoke the doctrine of checks and balances, as it appears not to have recovered from the intimidation it suffered in the hands of the Executive when operatives of the Department of State Service (DSS) in 2016 raided the homes of some federal judges, including serving Supreme Court justices.

Perhaps, if the law makers were courageous enough, and the Judiciary lives up to its billings to restrain the President appropriately, the Executive would have been shaped up.

Calls for federalism, and emergence of separatist movements in Nigeria are symptoms of national discontent. When majority of people are not happy owing to domination of one ethnic group or section over others, coupled with rising insecurity and worsening economy, implies that the government is inefficient.

An efficient government is one that is able to provide the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. This is a measurement performance tool developed by English philosopher and Jurist, Jeremy Bentham, which world researchers and political scientists deploy to assess governments globally.

Since NASS has abdicated its autonomy and authority, who then can challenge the Executive over breaches of federal character principle and other statutory obligations, including economy and security management? If Chief Gani Fawehinmi of blessed memory were alive, no doubt, would have instituted litigation.

NASS appears not to understand the essence of Montesquieus theory. Therefore, it will do the country good for law makers to take basic courses in Political Science during their training at the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies.

As it stands, what legacy will the 9th National Assembly under the chairmanship of Ahmad Lawal be leaving as the law makers vacate office in less than a year from now? Certainly, they cannot be divorced from the performance of the Buhari Administration when the score card is evaluated on May 29, 2023.

Dr. Mike Owhoko, Lagos-based journalist and author, can be reached at www.mikeowhoko.com.
Reno Omokri and Femi Fani Kayode is working for Atiku, and Tinubu full time, after goading IPOB and Igbo Youth to take up arms against the state, the North and Muslims. He is scheming to be in the campaign council of either of them, the manner Fani-Kayode is scheming for Bola Tinubu after his alliance with Yahaya Bello failed at APC Primaries . There is nothing wrong with it, but the treachery and deceit is monumental.

I wrote a piece on the 18th of May titled Reno Omokri, Fani Kayode Deceived IPOB, Igbo Youth, Now Works for Atiku, Buhari, Bello and warned Igbo Youth that these two IPOB Champions have sold them to the highest bidder.

Fani Kayode, his co deceiver, is working for Buhari and Yahaya Bello, after deceiving Igbo Youth on social media to hate everything Buhari, everything Atiku, everything Tinubu , everything Islam and everything Fulani.

I warned Igbo Youth in the controversial piece  Fani Kayodes Treachery, IPOB Naivety and Pantami Porridge that soon Reno Omokri and others will abandon them. I hope those silly things in IPOB have learnt their lessons.

The hatred Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB spewed on northerners in the South East, including the insults, are with full support of these two men.

They deceived Igbo until they blew their chances at the presidency. Having used Ndigbo, they jumped ship, declared Igbo Presidency impossible. Now Reno Omokri is the greatest enemy of the new found Igbo Champion, Peter Obi. He uses all in his means to demarket Obi, to the angst of the followers of the former Anambra State Governor, who are mostly frustrated Nigerian youth.

Fani-Fayode and Reno Omokri led the pack that called Buhari all manners of unprintable names. They described Buhari as demon, terrorist, pedophiles, evil, nauseating and called Islam religion of bloodshed.

They also described Atiku as corrupt, insensitive, Dubai escapist and foxy. Today, one is salivating at A tikus soup pot after deceiving Igbo Youth to abandon PDP.

They wished Buhari and Tinubu dead. Described Tinubu as fraudulent, certificateless, vegetable, criminal, cocaine pusher and all uncomplimentary names. Igbo youth cheered them, adored them and groveled senselessly before them, while those of us who disagreed with the views were called all manner of names.

I warned against IPOB mob mentality and hate speech, and asked them to instead build lasting intellectual alliances. They abused me, and held on to these two deceivers. Today, their champions have negotiated themselves into the soup pot of Buhari, Tinubu and Atiku, and showed disdain for their new found champion, Peter Obi.

Rev Obinna Akukwe warned the confused, and misguided IPOB Commanders that one day, these emergency champions will sell them for mess of porridge. Immediately Kanu was humiliated into DSS cell, Reno Omokri and Fan Kayode gradually started distancing from them. This is how many emergency friends of IPOB and Ndigbo are abandoning them for greener pastures.

Its time Igbo chose their friends carefully. Its time for Igbo youth to learn that those goading them to take up arms against the state are the greatest enemies of Igbo Presidency. This is the admonition of Rev Obinna Akukwe,

(Obinna Akukwe, Columnist, Activist, [email protected], facebook, twitter @obinnaakukwe)

Biafra Business PLC: Simon Ekpas 3 million dollars Fund Raising Tears IPOB Apart

Igbo Mandate Congress Reports

Igbo Mandate Congress IMC, the foremost activist group on peace mission in the South East do hereby update Igbo , Elders, Clergy and Elites that the call by Simon Ekpa, Auto Pilot Commander of Indigenous Peoples of Biafra IPOB, for fifty Biafrans that will give him 10,000 dollars monthly for six months, totaling 3 million dollars, in exchange for Biafra by 2023, is about to unleash another round of bloodshed within the IPOB camps and the fragile South East

The request by Simon Ekpa is tearing the Biafra family apart and they are threatening anybody tha dares give Ekpa any financial support.

On the18th of May, in an internal memo to select Igbo leaders by Rev Obinna Akukwe part of which was published titled Biafra Business PLC: Why Nnamdi Kanu Will Not be Granted Bail , stated clearly that

I know that Nnamdi KANU will not be granted bail today (May 18th) .The people who burnt down Anambra State after Governor Soludo visited Nnamdi Kanu did so to frustrate any peace effort. They attacked 33 Onitsha, attacked GRA on Sunday to let Soludo know that nobody can collect teir business.

They proceeded to Idemili North Local Govt to burn down the council. Two days later they burnt down Nnewi Local Council.

Its not about Biafra, its a multimillion dollar business concern using Biafrans, Ojukwu and Pogrom as bait. The funds coming from US, UK, Germany, others, running into millions of dollars, is too much for one group to swallow alone. Those coming from Nigeria from oliticians, traders and artisans runs into billions annually, and one group cannot monopolize it

Once Nnamdi KANU is released, all funds will enter inside one pocket. I pity Kalunta Kalu and his siblings. They have entered One Chance.  Those around him are part of the racket. Rev Obinna Akukwe will not reveal more than this.

I hope those scrambling for multimillion dollar Biafra business, killing innocent people, should settle their differences so that KANU s bail can sail through during next sitting. Let the DOS group give the Auto-Plot group their share of Biafra cake, and all these bloodshed will stop

Today, forty five days after the warnings, the financial warfare has taken a dangerous dimension. The DoS group, ably led by Chika Edozien, is threatening fire, brimstone and recently sacked six leaders of IPOB in the US. The sack is already generating tension.

Rev Obinna Akukwe counsels confused Igbo Leaders the umpteenth time, to settle the IPOB Dos and IPOB Auto-Pilot crisis, including financial warfare, before they turn the South East into Afghanistan.

(Rev Obinna Akukwe, Columnist, Activist, is the Director General of Igbo Mandate Congress , Vice Chairman BoT Igbo Think Tank ITT, @ igbomanndate , [email protected])
Crew rescued as cargo boat sinks in storm

PHUKET: A captain and seven crewmen on a cargo boat were rescued near Koh Khai yesterday (July 4) after their boat sank in heavy seas while heading for Phi Phi Island.

marineSafety

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Tuesday 5 July 2022, 12:02PM

Sophiya Wattanasong notified Marine Police at 2:30pm that her vessel Andaman Smooth 999 was in distress and taking on water.

The boat had departed Unity Pier in Krabi and was heading to Phi Phi Island. Ms Sophiya had lost contact with the boat at 2pm.

Marine Police dispatched a rescue boat, and other commercial boats in the area joined the search for the sinking vessel.

The boat was found taking on water near the Koh Khai islands at 3:50pm. Cargo was scattered beside the ship amid strong waves, with the seven captain and crew still on board.

The seven were brought safely onto Marine Police boat TR 331 before the Andaman Smooth sank, with cargo still on board.

Suree Rattanasong, manager of Unity Co Ltd, which operated the Andaman Smooth 999, said the boat departed Unity Pier in Krabi at 12:30pm.

At that time the weather was calm and safe for the boat to leave port, he said.

After about 20 minutes, the operator lost contact with the boat and contacted the authorities. Other boats in the area were called to render assistance, he added.

After the rescue it was learned that the Andaman Smooth had encountered large waves, causing structural damage to its bow and leading to the boat taking on water, Mr Suree said.

The crew were unable to make repairs to prevent the large volume of water pouring into the boat, which eventually sank.

Mr Suree said it was too early to give a defined value for the cargo and boat lost to the sea, but were together easily worth several million baht. This process is in review, he said.

The boat sinking today comes on the anniversary of the sinking of the Phoenix tour boat on July 5, 2018. The Phoenix capsized and sank in storm conditions southeast of Phuket, killing 47 Chinese tourists.
Expats caught up in Phuket visa scams face being forced to leave the country

PHUKET: Victims of visa scams whose permits to stay have expired more than 90 days will be asked to leave the country, according to one of the people who attended a meeting at Phuket Immigration last Friday (July 1).

immigrationcrimepolice

By The Phuket News

Tuesday 5 July 2022, 04:54PM

The Phuket Immigration Office has so far remained silent on the extent of the visa scams, which amount to B3 million and are resulting in foreigners facing expulsion from the country. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

More than 100 foreigners have been caught out by the scams, with two companies in Phuket having formal complaints filed against them by victims: Phuket Siam Corporation Company in Koh Kaew and Asia Titan Group on Thepanusorn Rd in Wichit.

A group of the victims were called to a meeting at the main Phuket Immigration Office in Phuket Town so officers could hear their problems and explain solutions, one of the attendees told The Phuket News.

If the victim is under 90 days overstay and they have had their passport returned [from the relevant visa company], they must first file a police report. If the payment was made to Siam Corp, then the police report must be filed in Phuket Town. If the payment was made to the Titan Group, then the report must be filed with Wichit Police, the group representative explained.

Then they must take the police report to Phuket Immigration and pay the B500 per day fine, up to the maximum B20,000 for overstay, she continued.

They will be given a two-month COVID visa according to their last stamp. This can only be done before July 25 as COVID visa extensions will no longer be issued thereafter, she added.

They will not have to travel to cross a border. They will not have any problems with their status when they renew their visa next time.

However, victims who have not had their passport returned by the visa company will not have the same conditions applied.

We were told that if you do not have your passport, they cannot put your status on hold even though you have made the reports to both police and immigration, the representative said.

The explanation given was that without a passport in hand, immigration officers had no passport into which they could enter a stamp.

Foreigners stuck without a passport because the visa company had failed to return them must apply for a new passport, immmigration officers advised.

Foreigners who have applied for a new passport  and have already filed a police report  will not be arrested while on the streets, the representative said the group was told.

Any victims without their passport returned who do not have enough time to apply and be issued a new passport will have to leave the country. Immigration officers advised the foreigners to obtain an Emergency Travel Document from their embassy in order to leave the country.

They will fall into the 90-day overstay and face the current reality [law] that their names will be entered into the immigration system that they have overstayed and face a one-year blacklist of entering back into Thailand, the representative said.

Even those who have had their passport returned, without the visa extension as promised by the visa companies, and have overstayed by 90 or more days will also see no mercy.

Everyone who has overstayed 90 or more days will have to pay the B20,000 fine and will need to leave Thailand, the representative said.

They will be blacklisted for one year. If they want to join the lawsuit against the company they must first make the police report, then find someone to represent them in court and be prepared to leave Thailand.

No time frame has been given before they have to leave Thailand. I assume that according to Thai law they need to leave the same day you pay your overstay, she added.

PUBLIC SILENCE

At time of press, Phuket Immigration and its superintendent Col Thanet Sukchai had yet to give any public statements or give any advice or explanations to victims about what penalties they may face.

The move to enforce the expulsion from Thailand and blacklist penalties for 90-day overstay is the first time they have been reintroduced since they were suspended during the COVID pandemic, when travel out of Thailand was nigh impossible.

The meeting at the main Phuket Immigration Office in Phuket Town last Friday came after Phuket Immigration issued its sole public notice recognising the situation.

The notice urged any foreigners affected by a visa broker or visa renewal agency, by taking their passports, and their money, but failing to have their visa stays extended on their behalf to contact the Phuket Immigration Help Center at 086-4077763 or 076-221905 ext 10.

The notice asked foreigners to have the following documents prepared before contacting the Help Center:

Passport or copy of passport

Evidence of action against the company/agent about the visa

Evidence of legal proceedings such as documents, reports etc (if any)

Other related information

Foreigners may file a formal complaint through the hotline or make an appointment to receive assistance, the notice read.

While the scale of the problem has been largely ignored while being played out on social media channels in English, the news of the widespread scam has made its way into mainstream Thai-language news.

Of note, ThaiPBS in their report marked that money defrauded from foreigners by the visa companies by not providing the solicited service amounted to as much as B3 million.

STALLING

Phuket City Police Chief Col Sarawut Chuprasit last week vowed to prosecute visa agents who have deceived tourists.

However, as of last Friday (July 1), representatives from the Siam Corp visa company had yet to present themselves at Phuket City Police Station.

Victims were told last Friday that police had to first request the company representatives to present themselves. If the request were ignored, police could then issue a summons for representatives to present themselves. If the summons were ignored, police could then move to have arrest warrants issued.

The delay in action is contributing to the problem, the group representative told The Phuket News.

Many of the victims are still under 90 days overstay. They should be able to sort their problems out and become legal again. But without their passports [that cannot be done], she said.

Despite that over 100 people have filed police reports, the process has not been expedited, so many people who have not had their passports returned have no way of getting them back, she said.
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Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

Today

Cloudy skies with periods of rain this afternoon. High near 27C. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Showers and thundershowers this evening will give way to steady rain overnight. Low 20C. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
Larry Ruark is a Sun Chronicle columnist. His essays are published here the first Tuesday of each month. Reach him at larryruark37@gmail.com .
BEIJING (AP)  Chinese authorities refused to let Canadian diplomats attend the trial of a Chinese-born Canadian tycoon who disappeared from Hong Kong five years ago, Canadas government said Tuesday.

Xiao Jianhua was last seen at a Hong Kong hotel in January 2017 and was believed to have been taken to the mainland by Chinese authorities. He was placed under investigation by anti-graft authorities that year, according to news reports, though the government has released no details.

The government has never confirmed whether Xiao, the founder of Tomorrow Group, which has been linked to a series of anti-corruption prosecutions and seizures of financial companies by regulators, was detained or what charges he might face.

The Canadian government said earlier Xiao was due to stand trial Monday but gave no indication whether a trial took place or where. It gave no details of possible charges.

Canada made several requests to attend the trial proceedings. Our attendance was denied by Chinese authorities, a Canadian government statement said.

A foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, said he had no information about Xiao.

Xiao vanished amid a flurry of prosecutions of Chinese businesspeople accused of misconduct.

That fueled fears the ruling Communist Party might be abducting people outside the mainland. Hong Kong at that time prohibited Chinese police from operating in the former British colony, which has a separate legal system.

Since then, Beijing has tightened control over Hong Kong, prompting complaints it is violating the autonomy promised when the territory returned to China in 1997. The ruling party imposed a national security law in 2020 and has imprisoned pro-democracy activists.

Hong Kong police investigated Xiaos disappearance and said the subject crossed the border onto the mainland. But an advertisement in the Ming Pao newspaper in Xiaos name the same week denied he was taken against his will.

At the time of his disappearance, Xiao was worth nearly $6 billion, making him Chinas 32nd wealthiest person, according to the Hurun Report, which follows the country's wealthy.

Founded in 1999, Tomorrow expanded into banking, securities, insurance, coal and real estate.

The company became one of the highest-profile targets in a campaign by the ruling party to reduce risks in Chinese financial industries. News reports said Xiao was suspected of improperly using money from banks and other companies to pay for acquisitions, but no charges against him have been announced.

In 2020, regulators seized nine companies controlled by Xiao. That included four insurers, two securities firms, two trust firms and a company involved in financial futures. The business magazine Caixin reported at the time that the seized assets totaled almost 1 billion yuan ($150 million).

A retired bank regulator, Xue Jining, admitted taking bribes of 400 million yuan ($62 million) in bribes in a corruption case linked to Baoshang Bank Ltd. in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, which regulators seized from Tomorrow in 2019.

Auditors found Tomorrow misused money from Baoshang Bank, according to news reports.

One of the Tomorrow companies seized in 2020, Tianan Property Insurance Co., put its assets up for sale last month, asking 2.1 billion yuan ($315 million).
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  Scandinavian Airlines on Tuesday filed for bankruptcy in the United States, warning a walkout by 1,000 pilots a day earlier had put the future of the carrier at risk.

The move adds to the likelihood of travel chaos across Europe as the summer vacation period begins.

The Stockholm-based SAS airline group said it had voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 in the U.S., a legal process for financial restructuring conducted under U.S. federal court supervision.

Filing for Chapter 11 in New York puts civil litigation on hold while the business reorganizes its finances.

SAS said that its operations and flight schedule will be unaffected by the announcement.

CEO Anko van der Werff said that the pilots' strike accelerated the move. I think we have been very clear that this could happen, he said.

The important thing is that this is about bankruptcy protection, it is not about a bankruptcy, but it is about financial reconstruction, van der Werff said.

The carrier said it is in well advanced discussions with a number of potential lenders ... to support its operations throughout this court-supervised process.

A rescue plan presented in February was aimed at securing long-term competitiveness. SAS shares dropped more than 9% to 0.56 kronor ($0.05) on Tuesday.

The pilots reacted strongly to the news of the Chapter 11 filing. Roger Klokset, head of the SAS pilots union, said the group had stretched negotiations and mediation from November last year until the day before the application, without ever having the intention of entering into an agreement with the SAS pilots."

The pilots in Denmark, Sweden and Norway walked out on Monday, citing inadequate pay and working conditions and expressing dissatisfaction with the decision by the carrier to hire new pilots to fill vacancies at its subsidiary airlines, SAS Link and SAS Connect, rather than rehire former pilots who were laid off due to the pandemic.

Van der Werff said the strike was "devastating for SAS and puts the companys future together with the jobs of thousands of colleagues at stake.

The walkout is estimated to lead to the cancellation of approximately 50% of all scheduled SAS flights and impact around 30,000 passengers per day. Flights operated by SAS Link, SAS Connect and SAS external partners are not affected.

The airline is part-owned by the governments of Sweden and Denmark. In 2018, Norway sold its stake but holds debt in the airline, and has said it might be willing to convert that into equity.

Right now, it is difficult to assess the significance of the Chapter 11 request for duration of the pilot strike, chief analyst Jacob Pedersen of Denmark's Sydbank said. However, its doubtful whether it will bring (the pilots) back to the negotiating table.

The move by SAS was not surprising but came faster than we expected," Pedersen said in an analysis. Although SAS is now under bankruptcy protection, it is not a beach holiday for the company.

___

Jari Tanner in Helsinki contributed to this report.
SKOPJE, North Macedonia (AP)  European Council President Charles Michel urged North Macedonia on Tuesday to back a French-proposed compromise on ending a dispute with neighboring Bulgaria that's blocking the country's long-delayed European Union accession bid.

Violent protests erupted in North Macedonia's capital, Skopje, where demonstrators tried to storm government buildings, after French President Emmanuel Macron announced the proposal  which many in the small Balkan country find controversial  last week. Macron said at a NATO summit in Madrid that a compromise solution to lift Bulgaria's opposition to its neighbor's EU aspirations had been achieved, without giving details.

A few hundred people took part in a new protest late Tuesday in Skopje against the French proposal. Held during a rainstorm, it ended peacefully, but afterwards a small number of protesters threw stones at police outside parliament before being dispersed.

North Macedonias president, Stevo Pendarovski, and the government have backed the proposed deal, which calls for the country to acknowledge in its constitution the existence of an ethnic Bulgarian minority. It would also provide for regular reviews on how the bilateral dispute is being addressed, which could potentially hamper North Macedonia's future accession course.

But the center-right main opposition VMRO-DPMNE party, many international law experts and civic organizations say the proposal favors Bulgarian demands which dispute their own country's views of regional history, language, identity and heritage.

As an EU member, Bulgaria has the power to block its neighbor's accession bid.

At a joint news conference Tuesday with North Macedonias prime minister, Dimitar Kovachevski, Michel stressed that the French proposal is too important an opportunity to be missed.

Michel said that if North Macedonia accepts the proposal, then the path for the country to start EU accession talks could open within days.

Kovachevski reiterated his support for the balanced proposal," adding that "our aim is to start membership talks.

On a third day of mass protests late Monday in Skopje, protesters threw stones, eggs and bottles at the government offices and parliament building in downtown Skopje. Police prevented the crowd of several thousand people from forcing their way into government offices. Four police were injured in front of parliament.

Bulgaria has already formally accepted the French proposal, which now requires the backing of North Macedonia's parliament.

Bulgaria insists that North Macedonia formally recognizes that its language has Bulgarian roots, acknowledges a Bulgarian minority and quashes hate speech against Bulgaria.

North Macedonia has been a candidate for EU membership for 17 years. The country received a green light in 2020 to begin accession talks, but no date for the start of the negotiations has been set.

Before Bulgaria raised its objections, North Macedonia settled a decades-old dispute with another neighbor and EU member, Greece, to forward its aim of joining the 27-nation bloc. As a result it added the word North to its previous name, Macedonia, which Greece had complained implied claims on its own territory, history and cultural heritage.

The dispute with Bulgaria has also stalled the progress of another Balkan country, Albania, toward EU membership because the bloc is treating the pair as a political package. North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Albania are all NATO members.
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ALTON  Independence Day turned violent Monday night in Alton.

At 10:20 p.m. Monday Alton firefighters were called to the Oakwood Estates Housing Complex in the 800 block of Oakwood Avenue for a reported shooting victim. Alton Police requested a "load and go," meaning the subject was not stablized at the scene because of the severity of the injuries.

Alton Fire Department paramedics loaded a person into an ambulance and headed for OSF St. Anthony's Medical Center where an ARCH helicopter was to meet them.

Just as firefighters arrived, a second gunshot victim with a leg wound was located inside an apartment. She was taken by ambulance to SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis.

A crowd had gathered, shouting and creating a disturbance that could only be described as chaos. Police were actively trying to separate multiple people from fighting.

At 10:30 p.m. Alton Police called the Illinois State Police and an emergency request for assistance was broadcast on the Illinois State Police Emergency Radio Network. Alton Police were joined by officers from East Alton and Wood River, as well as the Illinois State Police, the Madison County Sheriff's Department and the Jersey County Sheriff's Department.

Police eventually were able to calm the crowd somewhat. Assisting officers were sent to block both entrances to OSF St. Anthony's Health Center to prevent disturbances from spreading to the hospital emergency room.

One person of interest was immediately detained at the scene, according to Alton Deputy Police Chief Jarrett Ford. The subjects involved in the incident are all generally familiar with each other, he said.

Crime scene tape was stretched around apartment entrances and, at 11 p.m. Monday, the scene was secured for detectives to conduct an investigation.

No further information was available Monday morning.
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)  A satellite the size of a microwave oven successfully broke free from its orbit around Earth on Monday and is headed toward the moon, the latest step in NASA's plan to land astronauts on the lunar surface again.

It's been an unusual journey already for the Capstone satellite. It was launched six days ago from New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula by the company Rocket Lab in one of their small Electron rockets. It will take another four months for the satellite to reach the moon, as it cruises along using minimal energy.

Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck told The Associated Press it was hard to put his excitement into words.

It's probably going to take a while to sink in. It's been a project that has taken us two, two-and-a-half years and is just incredibly, incredibly difficult to execute, he said. So to see it all come together tonight and see that spacecraft on its way to the moon, it's just absolutely epic.

Beck said the relatively low cost of the mission  NASA put it at $32.7 million  marked the beginning of a new era for space exploration.

For some tens of millions of dollars, there is now a rocket and a spacecraft that can take you to the moon, to asteroids, to Venus, to Mars, Beck said. Its an insane capability thats never existed before.

If the rest of the mission is successful, the Capstone satellite will send back vital information for months as the first to take a new orbit around the moon called a near-rectilinear halo orbit: a stretched-out egg shape with one end of the orbit passing close to the moon and the other far from it.

Eventually, NASA plans to put a space station called Gateway into the orbital path, from which astronauts can descend to the moons surface as part of its Artemis program.

Beck said the advantage of the new orbit is that it minimizes fuel use and allows the satellite  or a space station  to stay in constant contact with Earth.

The Electron rocket that launched June 28 from New Zealand was carrying a second spacecraft called Photon, which separated after nine minutes. The satellite was carried for six days in Photon, with the spacecraft's engines firing periodically to raise its orbit farther and farther from Earth.

A final engine burst Monday allowed Photon to break from Earth's gravitational pull and send the satellite on its way. The plan now is for the 25-kilogram (55-pound) satellite to far overshoot the moon before falling back into the new lunar orbit Nov. 13. The satellite will use tiny amounts of fuel to make a few planned trajectory course corrections along the way.

Beck said they would decide over the coming days what to do with Photon, which had completed its tasks and still had a bit of fuel left in the tank.

Theres a number of really cool missions that we can actually do with it," Beck said.

For the mission, NASA teamed up with two commercial companies: California-based Rocket Lab and Colorado-based Advanced Space, which owns and operates the Capstone satellite.

___

Find more AP Science coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/science
ALTON  The Sierra Club will have its monthly speaker series at 6:30-8 p.m. Tuesday, July 12, at the Old Bakery Beer Company, 400 Landmarks Blvd., Alton.

Bill Iseminger, an archaeologist and well known author who recently retired as assistant site manager at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville, is the featured speaker. His presentation will cover the previous cultural traditions and the rise, fluorescence and demise of Cahokia. He will discuss the site's many features and results of past and current archaeological research, as well as the development of a world-class Interpretive Center.
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EAST LONDON, South Africa (AP)  South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is set to attend the funeral in East London Wednesday for 21 teenagers who died in a mysterious tragedy at a tavern almost two weeks ago.

A large tent has been erected for the service, which is expected to be attended by hundreds of grieving family members and residents of East London's Scenery Park township.

We expect them (the community) to be there. We expect them to mourn," said Ondela Sokomani, regional chairman of the Youth League of South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress.

There is deep-seated frustration about how matters are run in Scenery Park, said Sokomani, referring to the problems of underage drinking of alcohol, substance abuse, crime and the government's failure to provide basic services to the poor residential area.

It is still not known what caused the deaths of the young people, aged between 13 and 17, whose bodies were found in the Enyobeni tavern. All were under the legal drinking age of 18 in South Africa. Pathologists are studying the cause of death from blood samples. A stampede has been ruled out because the victims' bodies did not show serious injuries, said police.

A somber mood hangs over the neighborhood surrounding the rundown tavern, where some residents have placed wreaths and flowers. Authorities have closed the bar, amid questions of how so many underage teenagers could have gathered in an establishment selling alcohol after midnight on June 26.

Community members say there is a well-known problem of underage drinking.

The stench of alcohol still lingers inside the club where the floor is littered with broken bottles of beer, cider and wine. Police have finished investigations at the bar so it is no longer cordoned off as a crime scene and security allowed journalists to briefly view the premises.

Handbags, sneakers, and hair weaves are also strewn across the floor, an indication of the chaos on the deadly night.

Ramaphosa will be attending the service amid several challenges including South Africa's extended power cuts, wide-ranging allegations of corruption and questions about large amounts of cash reportedly found hidden in furniture in the president's game farm.

In addition to a speech by Ramaphosa, the funeral service is to include hymns by local choirs and addresses by religious and community leaders.

Following the service, the families will bury the teens' bodies in various cemeteries around the area.
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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP)  Sri Lankas negotiations with the International Monetary Fund on a bailout are more complex and difficult than before because it is a bankrupt nation, the countrys prime minister said Tuesday.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told lawmakers that recent discussions with a visiting IMF mission were fruitful but not as straightforward as in the past.

The South Asian island nation is in its worst economic crisis in memory. Its people are suffering acute shortages of essentials, food, fuel, cooking gas and medicines, obliged to wait in long lines to buy limited supplies. The government has shut schools and asked employees other than those in essential services to work from home.

Our country has held talks with the IMF on many occasions before. But this time the situation is different from all those previous occasions. In the past, we have held discussions as a developing country," Wickremesinghe said.

But now the situation is different. We are now participating in the negotiations as a bankrupt country. Therefore, we have to face a more difficult and complicated situation, he said in explaining a roadmap for an economic recovery.

Wickremesinghe said earlier that a preliminary agreement on a bailout has been submitted to the IMF's board of directors for approval. But due to the state of bankruptcy our country is in, we have to submit a plan on our debt sustainability to them separately. Only when they are satisfied with that plan can we reach an agreement at the staff level. This is not a straight-forward process, he said.

He said Sri Lanka's financial legal advisors are working on a debt sustainability report to be submitted in August.

Discussions are underway with India, Japan and China to form an aid consortium once a staff-level agreement with the IMF is reached, Wickremesinghe said.

Sri Lanka suspended repayment on foreign debts worth about $7 billion that were due this year because its foreign exchange levels fell to record lows. The country's total foreign debt is $51 billion, $28 billion of which must be repaid by 2027, an average repayment of about $5 billion a year.

Frustrated people have been holding street protests for months and often scuffle among themselves and with police at fuel stations.

Wickremesinghe said the Central Bank is forecasting an economic contraction of 4% to 5% this year. The IMF estimates Sri Lanka's economy will shrink 6% to 7%.

Sri Lanka's economy has been gutted by the pandemic, which compounded longstanding problems of economic mismanagement. It's GDP fell to $76.2 billion in 2021, down from $94.4 billion in 2018 and won't recover to the level it was at in 2018 until 2026, Wickremesinghe said. He said one government target was to achieve minus 1% growth by the end of next year.
Tom Emery

COLLINSVILLE  Some of the fascinating women of Illinois history will be the topic of a free discussion at the Mississippi Valley Library District in Collinsville on July 12 at 6 p.m

Notable Women of Illinois History will be presented by Tom Emery and is based on his 2018 book of the same title. Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville who has earned fifteen awards from the Illinois State Historical Society.
I am quite sorry to hear that a Pride parade is coming to Alton in the fall. The Bible says in Jeremiah 9:23-24, Let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness (NASB version).

If we dont take pride in knowing the Lord then the Devil can lead us into being proud of other things. Well take pride in things we should be ashamed of rather than plead for God to lead us out of them.

We need God because sin, according to the Bible, isnt just an addiction; it is slavery (John 8, Romans 6). Perhaps the reason sexual experience is blindly held as more important than the life of an unborn baby is due to this aspect of slavery.

California Congressman Ted Lieu recently held a silent period at the microphone to demonstrate that Jesus Christ didnt mention anything about homosexuality, implying He wouldnt then condemn it. But Jesus also didnt say anything specifically about gambling, pedophilia, drug use, kidnapping, or prostitution. Are these all OK with Him then?

Jesus did quote the Old Testament book of Leviticus chapter 19, Love your neighbor as yourself. Do you think then He would have disagreed with the previous chapter (18) which says a male lying with a male is an abomination or the following chapter (20) which says such is a detestable act ?

Jesus also quoted from Deuteronomy when refusing the Devils temptations, an Old Testament book in which chapter 22 says wearing an opposite-sexs clothes is an abomination. So would He have approved of drag queens teaching children in libraries ? Further, are leaders like Apple CEO Tim Cook or Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg correct in saying their lifestyle is a gift from God or brought them closer to Him?

The answer to all these questions is a firm NO.

And any minister who condones the Pride parade in Alton should not be followed because he is misrepresenting God and could do so in any area where God has clearly spoken. Its his word over Gods. Anyone observing and approving at the Pride parade should note how condemning the apostle Paul is in Romans 1:18-32 in which he gives a list of sins and ends condemning those who give hearty approval to those who practice them.

Read the passage and see how God feels about these things. Dont let TV network news or politicians be your preacher or Bible.

Dont be caught giving any approval to lies and sin. Rather look for opportunities to help someone take pride in knowing the Savior from sin, Jesus Christ. Thats why He came.
Scranton, PA (18503)

Today

Cloudy early with scattered thunderstorms developing this afternoon. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High 83F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Chance of a shower or two during the evening, followed by partly cloudy skies overnight. Low 67F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Westerly, RI (02891)

Today

Generally cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 79F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Thunderstorms during the evening will give way to cloudy skies after midnight. Low 71F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Massachusetts police chiefs should no longer deny or impose restrictions on licenses to carry a gun just because the applicant doesnt have a good reason to carry, the states attorney general says
Westerly, RI (02891)

Today

Thunderstorms likely this morning. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms this afternoon. High 78F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Variable clouds with scattered thunderstorms. Low 71F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Naima Mari paid off a personal loan in January last year, hoping that would be the end of it.

The 34-year-old had borrowed 2,000 from 118 118 Money after being signed off work because of her mental health.

But nearly a month after repaying the sum in full, Naima began receiving threatening letters and text messages from a debt collector. It emerged that 118 118 Money had sold her details to a third-party agency.

Citizens Advice warns that the number of people being contacted by debt collectors on behalf of energy suppliers has increased by a third since last year

The case adds to growing concerns over the heavy-handed tactics used by debt collectors amid the cost-of-living crisis.

Citizens Advice warns that the number of people being contacted by such agencies on behalf of energy suppliers has increased by a third since 2021.

Some 26,000 people have been in touch with Citizens Advice so far this year about debt collectors chasing missed utilities bills.

And last month it was reported that a British Gas representative with two third-party debt collectors had broken into the home of a couple who were not even customers.

The employee picked the lock after mistaking the homeowners for their neighbour, who hadnt settled his bill.

Naima suffered panic attacks after her experience.

I had already paid the debt so they should not have been after me, she says. It was such a stressful time.

Selling debts to third parties is common practice among creditors. Most debts will be sold on only if the account holder has defaulted on payments.

Typically, they will be sold for less than the face value, but it means the creditor gets some of the money owed and does not have to spend time and money chasing payments.

The firm that buys the debt will then pursue the borrower for the full amount, which is where their profit comes from.

Naima has since received an apology from 118 118 Money for what it describes as an administrative mistake. It says that, owing to a timing error, the account was not removed from the debt sale file and was sold.

She was offered 100 compensation, but rejected it.

Squeezed budgets: Charities warn of a looming debt crisis as many people are now relying on credit to cover essential spending such as food

Her case is similar to that of 52-year-old Ian Funnell, who also received a notice from a debt collector for a payment he had already made.

Ian, from Tonbridge, Kent, and his wife, Melissa, 47, ordered a parcel to be delivered by shipping company UPS. When it arrived, he was charged 50.83 for customs tax, which he paid the driver in cash.

But a month later, he received an invoice from UPS demanding money.

Despite confirming his previous payment with the company, he received another invoice with an additional 4 fee.

He paid it in an attempt to get the company off his back. But then the couple received a letter from a debt collection firm called Controlaccount demanding the money.

Ian explained the situation to the firm, which agreed to drop the case. But the stress caused him sleepless nights.

Hes been so worried about it, says Melissa. It makes you question whether it will affect your credit rating.

A UPS spokesperson says the firm is resolving the issue for the recipient, and regrets any inconvenience caused.

For more advice on how to manage debt or to make a complaint about how a debt collector has behaved, visit stepchange.org.

moneymail@dailymail.co.uk
Before he retired 17 years ago, my husband worked for gentlemens outfitters Keogh & Savage in Greenock.

Unbeknown to him, the chief executive of the company took out a pension for him with Aviva.

The policy was fully paid up, but the document was only found in a safe after his former bosss death last year.

Forgotten pension: A reader has struggled to track down an old workplace pension taken out by her husband's boss

This pension should have been paid to my husband when he was 65. He is now 82 and an invalid.

On his behalf I have been trying to get this pension paid into his bank since October last year and have been made all kinds of promises by Aviva.

Earlier this month, I was told it had no idea when the payment will be made.

Im so frustrated and do not know what to do next. I am 78 and feel I am pitting my wits against a huge organisation that doesnt really care.

I. K., Gourock, Inverclyde.

You had mixed feelings about this surprising pension news, delivered by the son of your husbands late employer, after he had cleared out the office safe.

With you both well and truly retired, you rightly felt you could have done with this lost treasure over the past 17 years.

But you were also philosophical and told me it was better late than never and that the lump sum from the pot, plus a regular income  however small  would help you both through the looming cost of living crisis.

You chased for eight months, with Aviva recently promising that the payment would be sent, and the regular pension arranged. But the constant delays were getting you and your husband down.

I decided to give Aviva a prod on your behalf. This appeared to do the trick and, within a few days, a lump sum of 9,800 was finally issued.

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In addition, it promised it would start paying your husband a monthly pension of 178.

So far so good  or so both you and I thought. Then came a terrible blow.

You contacted me to say you had a very upsetting call from Aviva telling you that your husband was not due the 9,800 lump sum that it had just paid you after all, and that you would have to return it.

Nor would he be receiving the promised monthly payments for the rest of his life.

A red-faced Aviva also contacted me to confirm this bombshell. It had found out that the pension had already been paid out in full  a total of 16,000  to your husband back in 2009. You and your husband were not only upset by this turn of events but mortified that anyone might think you were claiming falsely.

Neither Aviva nor I think that. Your husbands declining health explains the oversight.

In any case, Avivas pension team should have told you as soon as you got in touch with all the relevant details that the pension had been paid out in full 13 years ago. It certainly should not have left you chasing a rainbow for eight months.

Aviva held its hands up to this unfortunate error and apologised to you and your husband.

An Aviva spokesman says: We are very sorry that we did not identify that we previously paid out the customers pension in 2009, and the time it has taken to communicate this to his wife, who has been looking into her husbands pension on his behalf.

In recognition of the blunder and your wasted time, Aviva has paid you a sum of 1,500 in compensation. I hope that suits you, sir  sorry, madam.

Straight to the point My 90-year-old mother-in-law was charged 25 to be moved on to Virgin Medias new digital phone line system. How can this be right? A. M., Gosport, Hampshire. A Virgin spokesman apologises and says your mother-in-law was given inaccurate information as no one has to pay to move to a digital landline. The charge has been refunded, plus 50 as a goodwill gesture. *** After taking out an equity release loan in July last year, I wrote to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to cancel my pension credit payments. Despite chasing its customer service team multiple times, they have not been stopped. G. M., Newbury, Berks. The DWP has written to you to apologise for the delay and has cancelled your pension credit. You will not have to pay any of the extra payments back. *** We were due to go to New York in April but had to cancel after catching Covid. We made a 4,500 claim to our insurer Breeze, underwritten by AXA, and were told the money would be in our account in three to five days. It has now been more than 40 days and we still havent received it. A. S., Sutton. Although the claim was processed, the money was not transferred due to an administrative error. The payment has now been made and you have been offered 300 in compensation on top. *** My wife and I had a smart meter installed by SSE earlier this year. We were told if we booked it by March 21, we would get 50 off our bill but the reduction was never made. Weve tried to chase but cant get through. B. H., Isle of Wight. An SSE spokesman apologises for the delay, which was down to a shortfall in service. It has credited the missing 50 to your account.

Travel insurance less than first class

I am a 71-year-old widow living in Cornwall and regularly travel by train to see my very elderly parents in Lincolnshire.

This is an eight-hour journey, involving four different trains and the London Underground. I booked the trip through the Trainline website and decided to travel first-class as the ticket was a good price.

The drawback was it was non-refundable. But there was an option to book travel insurance so, for peace of mind, I purchased that for an extra 4. A few days before I was due to travel, I experienced flashing lights and large floaters in my right eye.

An emergency appointment with my optometrist diagnosed posterior vitreous detachment, which is where the vitreous gel surrounding the retina comes away and, in some cases, can lead to a retinal tear which can then lead to sight loss.

She advised me not to lift heavy objects, particularly for the first few weeks. I decided it was not safe to travel as it would have involved lifting my heavy case on and off multiple trains.

I put in a claim to Trainline, via its insurer Ergo (part of the Mayday Group). It refused to process my claim and keeps referring me to Ts and Cs, which state I need to provide a report from a medical practitioner detailing my illness.

I pointed out that it would have been of no use to visit my GP as she did not have the expertise nor the scans at her fingertips.

However, my optometrist emailed my GP the details of my condition and the advice against heavy lifting, a copy of which I emailed to Ergo, along with my unused tickets. Please help.

Y. D., Falmouth, Cornwall.

You told me that you spend considerable sums of money each year purchasing tickets via Trainline and have always been happy with its service  but your view is less rose-tinted after having to cancel your recent trip.

I thought it plain to see your claim deserved to be paid so contacted Trainline. It quickly agreed to offer a full refund on your 158 ticket, though it said this was a goodwill gesture and that third-party insurer Ergo was responsible for deciding on any claim.

I asked Ergo for a comment but it simply said it was still awaiting your medical documentation.

You tell me you will continue using Trainline in future but wont be ticking the insurance option again as you felt its claims process is too inflexible.
Shares in AO World hit their lowest level in over two years after reports it is facing a cash crunch.

The white goods and electronics retailer slumped 18.2 per cent, or 12.35p, to 55.65p after it emerged over the weekend that credit insurer Atradius had cut its cover for suppliers to the company as its finances deteriorated.

Credit insurance is used to protect suppliers against the risk of customers going bust before they have paid for orders and forms a key part of retailer supply chains.

Crunch time: AO World slumped 13.1% after it emerged over the weekend that credit insurer Atradius had cut its cover for suppliers to the company as its finances deteriorated

Without credit insurance, suppliers usually request payment upfront, placing pressure on a companys cash flow.

The cut from Atradius could force AO to clarify its cash position and reassure investors that it will still be able to pay for goods, The Sunday Times reported.

AO was previously one of the big winners from the pandemic as lockdown measures and a focus on home improvements led to a surge in demand with its share price hitting a record high of nearly 430p in January last year.

However, it has been hit by a string of misfortunes so far this year, with the group issuing its third profit warning in three months in April as customers cancelled warranties, a key source of revenue, amid the cost of living crunch.

The firm is also in the process of shutting down its German business after intense competition, rising costs and a fall in demand for online shopping following the easing of lockdown restrictions caused a deterioration to its outlook in the country, despite spending years trying to break into the market.

Concerns about the health of its balance sheet now threaten to pile even more pressure on the struggling business, with analysts at broker Peel Hunt warning the reduction in credit insurance cover could materially impact AOs business model.

The FTSE 100 was up 0.9 per cent, or 64 points, at 7232.65 but the FTSE 250 fell 0.2 per cent, or 44.03 points, to 18592.95.

Stock Watch - Jadestone Energy Jadestone Energy surged after it restarted production at its Montara oilfield off the coast of Northern Australia. Production had been stopped last month due to a leak in one of the oil storage tanks. But Jadestone announced activity had resumed at the site on Sunday, significantly ahead of schedule, following a temporary repair. Work on a permanent fix, as well as a full inspection, is expected to start within days. Shares jumped 6.8 per cent, or 5.5p, to 86.5p.

Energy stocks helped lift the blue-chip index into the green as traders bet global oil supplies would continue to be tight keeping prices elevated despite fears a slowdown in the global economy could dent demand.

Hopes the sector will continue raking in cash were bolstered by rising fuel prices, with petrol hitting a record of 191.53p a litre, triggering protests on motorways.

BP rose 4.4 per cent, or 16.95p, to 401.45p, Shell gained 3.9 per cent, or 82p, to 2203p and North Sea-focused Harbour Energy added 5.2 per cent, or 17.3p, to 349.9p.

Fundamentally [oil] supplies continue to be tight and there is still enough economic activity to stop oil prices slumping, said AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould.

However, lingering recession fears could act as a ceiling on the oil price so we might not see the black stuff race ahead in value too much from current levels.

Builders merchant Grafton Group slumped 7.7 per cent, or 60.2p, to 721.6p after it announced the departure of its long-serving chief executive.

Gavin Slark, who has led the FTSE 250 business for 11 years, will step down at the end of this year.

A search for a successor is currently under way.

Engineer Spirax-Sarco was up 0.8 per cent, or 75p, at 10130p after striking a deal to buy electric heating specialist Vulcanic from a French private equity firm for 226million.

The purchase will expand the groups electric thermal solutions business, which makes products such as power control systems and steam boilers.

Pets At Home was one of the biggest mid-cap fallers, dropping 8.3 per cent, or 25.8p, to 284.2p after analysts at RBC downgraded the stock to underperform from sector perform and cut their price target to 280p from 330p.
The executive responsible for running easyJets operations has resigned following a gruelling period of disruption, including thousands of flight cancellations.

The budget airlines chief operating officer Peter Bellew has stepped down amid growing anger over flight disruption.

EasyJet has been one of the worst hit for cancellations in recent months, axing thousands of flights, including many on the day they were due to depart.

Resignation: Easyjet's chief operating officer Peter Bellew (pictured) has stepped down amid growing anger over flight disruption

The aviation sector is struggling to cope with rising demand for travel amid staff shortages and difficulties obtaining security clearance for recruits.

Bellew has been at the heart of the problems in recent months and in April the pilots union Balpa said he was behind a breakdown in relations between their members and easyJets management  particularly in its handling of staff absences.

Bellew, who joined easyJet two-and-a-half years ago, resigned to pursue other business opportunities, according to the Luton-based carrier.

The company has appointed David Morgan  who has been with the airline since 2016  as interim chief operations officer.

British Airways, which has also suffered from heavy disruption this year, overhauled its senior management in May, including splitting the role of chief operating officer.

Bellew joined from Ryanair in 2019, prompting an unsuccessful court challenge from the Irish airline to prevent him working for a rival.

His exit comes as easyJets top executives are set to fly to Mallorca this week for a corporate retreat while thousands of passengers bear the weight of the ongoing travel chaos in UK and across the EU.
AstraZeneca has agreed to acquire a biotechnology company in a deal that will boost its pipeline of haematology drugs.

The pharmaceutical giant said it has agreed to spend up to $1.27billion (990million) purchasing TeneoTwo, including one of its experimental treatments for the common blood cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

It will pay $100million upfront to acquire all of the company's equity, followed by up to $1.17billion in milestone payments dependent on its research and development (R&D) and commercial performance.

Acquisition: Astrazeneca said it has agreed to spend up to 990million purchasing TeneoTwo, including one of its experimental treatments for non-Hodgkin lymphoma

Completion of the takeover is forecast to happen during the third quarter, pending regulatory approval, and is not anticipated to affect AstraZeneca's current financial outlook for this year.

TeneoTwo was formerly part of American biotech firm Teneobio until being spun off when the latter company was purchased by Amgen for $900million 12 months ago.

It is currently testing the TN-486 experimental drug, a therapeutic antibody known as a T-cell engager, which are molecules designed to make certain white blood cells in a person's immune system detect and kill cancer cells.

At the moment, the drug is in a Phase 1 clinical trial involving 80 patients with either relapsed or refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma who had received at least two lines of prior treatment.

This non-randomised study has already been running for more than a year and is predicted to conclude in June 2023.

Anas Younes, AstraZeneca's senior vice president of haematology R&D, said the drug, either alone or with CD20-targeted therapy, 'could potentially deepen clinical responses and improve patient outcomes'.

'We believe this innovative molecule, which was designed to optimise the therapeutic window of T-cell activation, will enable us to explore novel combinations that have the potential to become new standards of care in this setting.'

Should trials of the TN-486 treatment be successful, the FTSE 100 group will have further expanded its portfolio of haematology drugs, joining the likes of Calquence, a major treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Calquence was one of AstraZeneca's 10 highest-earning medicines in 2021, with sales jumping by 137 per cent from the previous year to more than $1.2billion.

Last year also saw the company spend $13.3billion buying Boston-based Alexion Pharmaceuticals, a specialist in drugs used to treat rare diseases.

Alexion's collection of medicines used to treat blood disorders include Soliris and Ultomiris, which both treat PNH, a disease that causes red blood cells to break apart, and the rare kidney condition Atypical Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome.

AstraZeneca shares closed trading only 8 points, or 0.07 per cent, down at 108 on Tuesday, although their value has climbed by nearly 28 per cent in the past six months.
'Our customers are watching every penny and every pound', the boss of Sainsbury's said today, as it revealed a sales dip amid mounting 'pressure on household budgets'.

Like-for-like sales fell by 4 per cent in the 16-weeks to 25 June, driven by lower sales of clothing and general merchandise, the supermarket giant said.

Boss Simon Roberts expects the squeeze on household budgets to worsen as the year rolls on, and said Sainsbury's was trying to keep prices low to help ensure it can offer value for shoppers.

With many people seeing their discretionary income levels fall, grocery sales fell 2.4 per cent, while general merchandise sales fell 11.2 per cent.

Looking ahead: Sainsbury's boss Simon Roberts expects the squeeze on household budgets to worsen this year

Argos sales also fell by 10.5 per cent over the period when compared against the same period a year ago.

One person unlikely to be feeling the pinch too much is the supermarket boss himself. Sainsbury's paid Roberts 2.8million in bonuses and incentives, and an 875,000 salary for the year to 5 March. With benefits and pension contributions it took his package to 3.8million, up from 1.3million.

Roberts said Sainsbury's understood how hard it was for millions of households, adding that it was doing everything it could to keep prices low.

He said: 'We really understand how hard it is for millions of households right now and that's why we are investing 500million and doing everything we can to keep our prices low, especially on the products customers buy most often.

'We're working hard to reduce costs right across the business so that we can keep investing in these areas that customers care most about.

'The progress we are making on improving value, quality, innovation and service is reflected in our improved grocery volume market share.

'Our customers are watching every penny and every pound but they also look to Sainsbury's when they want to treat themselves, particularly at special occasions. We are really connected to our customers and through strong delivery of our plan, we have outperformed the market at key events.'

Falling sales: Sainsbury's saw its like-for-like sales fall by a 4% in its first quarter

The supermarket did, however, identify a gradual improvement in trade during the quarter. Argos sales, for example, were down by 19 per cent over the first five weeks, but down just 7 per cent over the last 11 weeks.

Sainsbury's, Britain's second biggest supermarket after Tesco, said it still expected its underlying pre-tax profit for the year to be between 630million and 690million.

The company also said its chief financial officer Kevin O'Byrne would retire in March 2023 and would be succeeded by commercial and retail finance director Blathnaid Bergin.

Sainsbury's shares were up 1.25 per cent or 2.60p to 211.00p this afternoon, with the sales dip largely expected by markets. The group's share price has fallen over 23 per cent in the last year.

Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor, said: 'There will be little dancing in the aisles following this update, as Sainsbury struggles to maintain momentum.

'Set against ever tightening competitive screws, Sainsbury had its work cut out on any number of fronts going into the statement. And the ferocity of competition in the sector is plain to see.'

He added: 'Despite something of a relief bounce in opening exchanges, the share price has reflected the companys current travails, having dropped by 23 per cent over the last year, as compared to a marginal gain of 1 per cent for the wider FTSE 100.

'Competition in the sector remains intense, ranging from a resurgent Tesco to the price discounters Aldi and Lidl.

'The market consensus of the shares as a hold suggests that the jury is currently out on Sainsburys immediate prospects, with Tesco (strong buy) being the clearly preferred play.'
A gunman perched on a rooftop opened fire on families waving flags and children riding bikes at a Fourth of July parade on Monday, killing six and wounding more than 36 in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park.

The gunman climbed to the roof of a business using a ladder in an alley, police said. The attack turned a civic display of patriotism into a scene of mayhem.

Hours later, police announced that they had a suspect in custody after 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III surrendered to authorities.

The main street in Highland Park became a crime scene spanning blocks, strewn with abandoned chairs and flags. Witnesses who later came back to retrieve strollers and other items were told they could not go beyond police tape.

It sounded like fireworks going off, said retired doctor Richard Kaufman, who was standing across the street from where the gunman opened fire, adding that he heard about 200 shots.Advertisement  Scroll to continueReport an ad

It was pandemonium, he said. People were covered in blood tripping over each other.

The shooting comes with gun violence fresh on the minds of many Americans. Just hours after the shooting in Highland Park, two Philadelphia police offers were shot near the Benjamin Franklin Parkway as thousands of people celebrated a Fourth of July concert and fireworks show. Both officers were later released from hospital.

In May, a gunman murdered 19 school children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, just 10 days after a man shot dead 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.

The Chicago suburb attack is likely to rekindle the debate about gun control and whether stricter measures can prevent the mass shootings that happen so frequently in the United States.

Police said they did not know what the motive was for the shooting in Highland Park. The wounded ranged in age from 8 to 85, including four or five children.

Nicolas Toledo, a man his 70s, was the first victim identified as of late Monday by his family.

My grandfather Nicolas Toledo father of 8 and grandfather to many left us this morning July 4th, what was suppose to be a fun family day turned into a horrific nightmare for us all, his granddaughter, Xochil Toledo, said in a statement issued by the family on social media.

As a family we are broken, and numb, she added.

Another victim was Jacki Sundheim, a teacher at a synagogue in Highland Park. The North Shore Congregation Israel confirmed her death in an email to congregants.

There are no words sufficient to express the depth of our grief for Jackis death and sympathy for her family and loved ones, the synagogue said.

VIOLENT IMAGES ONLINE

Social media and other online posts written by accounts that appeared to be associated with either Crimo or his rapper alias, Awake The Rapper, often depicted violent images or messages.

The accounts showed a man with physical characteristics and facial tattoos similar to those in photos of the suspect released by police.

One music video posted to YouTube under Awake The Rapper, for example, showed drawings of a stick figure holding a rifle in front of another figure spread on the ground.

In a different video, a stick figure is shown bleeding in front of police cars. Reuters could not verify if the YouTube account belonged to Crimo, although the account was terminated on Monday after he was named a suspect.

A YouTube spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

President Joe Biden said he and his wife Jill were shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day.

Biden referred in his statement to bipartisan gun-reform legislation he signed recently but said much more needed to be done, and added: Im not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence.

REALLY TRAUMATIZING

A 36-year-old native of Highland Park who wanted to be identified as Sara, told Reuters she had attended the parade most years since her childhood.

Not even five minutes after, very shortly after, the police and firetrucks part of the parade had gone by I heard pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, she said, adding that she first thought they were muskets sometimes used in parades.

The popping didnt stop  again it went pop, pop, pop, pop, pop and I turned and I said those are gun shots, run!

Highland Parks population is 30,000 and nearly 90% white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About a third of the population is Jewish, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

After the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings, Congress last month passed its first major federal gun reform in three decades, providing federal funding to states that administer red flag laws intended to remove guns from people deemed dangerous.

The law does not ban sales of assault-style rifles or high-capacity magazines but does take some steps on background checks by allowing access to information on significant crimes committed by juveniles.

SOURCE: REUTERS
HUNTER  In a recent column, I detailed how the Greene County town of Hunter is routinely towing cars parked near a popular trail, leaving hikers stranded along a remote mountain road.

More specifically, I wrote about how hikers over Memorial Day weekend parked along Platte Clove Road, unaware they were doing so illegally, went for a hike and then emerged from the Huckleberry Point Trailhead to find their cars missing. There were no signs telling them who to contact or where to retrieve their cars.

They were left mystified, bewildered and, ultimately, very angry.

"I've been so incensed since that day," Michael Allred, a hiker from Brooklyn, told me.

A few hours after that column was published online, I received an email from Pauline Sung, who is from Cincinnati and had decided to hike that very same trail with her family. Her subject line: Stranded at Platte Clove/Huckleberry Trailhead.

"I read your article about the towing happening in this part of the park," Sung wrote. "I am currently standing with approximately 20-25 adults and children who are currently stranded with no information on who to contact."

Sung explained that two of the people she was with were over 70 and another had a medical condition.

"We are all visiting from out of town and have no idea where we are," she said. "Im among a handful with even scant cell service."

Who, Sung asked, should they call? What should they do?

I have to admit that it hadn't occurred to me that the column should include information for hikers left marooned by the town's towing policy. So I'll do that now: The non-emergency number for Hunter police is 518-589-7200 and the town's impound lot is at the Hunter Town Hall at 5742 Route 23 in Tannersville. It closes at 8 p.m.

Of course, desperate hikers shouldn't be forced to search online news articles for such information. If Hunter is going to tow and strand people, the least it can do is post a few signs telling visitors where and how vehicles can be retrieved.

That Hunter hasn't bothered to do so is shameful and inexcusable.

It's more than 7 miles from the hiking trail to Tannersville. Given that the road to town, County Road 16, is winding, mountainous and doesn't provide walkers with much protection from its fast-moving traffic, I wouldn't recommend the journey, particularly for families tired after a day in the woods.

Allred and the others stranded on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend loaded into the back of a U-Haul truck driven by a neighbor for the ride into town, while others have attempted to hitchhike. I wouldn't recommend either of those options either.

Sung's group was rejected by several taxi companies that either declined to make the drive or were frustrated by the hikers' inability to provide an exact location.

But the stranded were able to rustle up a taxi driver who showed up with a minivan  citing the difficulty involved in retrieving people, he asked that I not publish his name or number. Then, those who were driven to retrieve their cars, after forking over more than $600 in fees, went back up Platte Clove Road to retrieve the others.

There was, Sung told me, a nice spirit of camaraderie and cooperation among the stranded. But that doesn't mean she would want to relive the experience  or wish it on anybody else.

Imagine, she said, if an infant had been stuck up there, or a diabetic whose insulin was in the towed car. Why, Sung wondered, would a town take such a risk?

It's a fair question. Alas, Hunter Town Supervisor Sean Mahoney refuses to speak with me. He did, however, send a statement defending the practice in the name of public safety.

"Many of our roads are narrow, mountain roads that do not allow for safe parking on the shoulder as (cars) impede and obstruct passage of traffic," Mahoney wrote. "In some cases, this has completely blocked access for our EMS personnel to some areas of our town. When one person parks illegally, it often starts a trend which others follow, which then compounds the issue greatly. Accidents can also occur, putting everyone involved at risk."

I'm not arguing that Hunter doesn't need to keep its road passable. Nor am I arguing that people should park illegally.

But a policy that leaves families, including children, stranded on remote mountain roads without water, shelter or information about where to go can't be justified as a public-safety measure, because it's putting people at risk. (One Greene County tow-truck owner told me he doesn't take part in the towing because his lawyer warned him against it.)

Sung's email wasn't the only one I received after last weekend's column. Some Hunter residents wrote me (or posted on social media) to express frustration with how the rural town's narrow roads are overrun on weekends. A few expressed open vitriol toward "city people," with some saying drivers who park illegally deserve whatever happens. (Seems harsh, to be honest.)

Mahoney, meanwhile, argues that the town's no-parking signs are impossible to miss. "We do not want to tow your vehicle," the supervisor added. "We want you to enjoy our town and all it has to offer."

Well, hikers don't want to have their vehicles towed, and I believe Sung, Allred and others who told me they didn't see the no-parking signs, because they were obscured, inconspicuous or placed far from where they parked.

"It just seems kind of reckless to be doing it the way that they're doing it," Sung said. "It's just irresponsible."

cchurchill@timesunion.com  518-454-5442  @chris_churchill
BAMAKO, Mali (AP)  Two United Nations peacekeepers from Egypt were killed and five others seriously wounded when their vehicle hit a landmine planted by suspected jihadis in northern Mali on Tuesday, the U.N. said.

The deadly attack comes just days after the renewal of the mandate of the U.N. Mission to Mali, known as MINUSMA.

This morning, an armored vehicle of a MINUSMA logistics convoy hit a mine on the Tessalit-Gao road, the mission announced in a press release.

According to an initial report, two peacekeepers died of their injuries and five others were seriously wounded as a result of the attack, the statement added.

The victims are all Egyptian nationals, a U.N. official told The Associated Press, insisting on anonymity because he is not allowed to speak to the press until the U.N. informs the families.

Ten U.N. peacekeepers have been killed in Mali since the beginning of the year.

First deployed in 2013, the mandate of the U.N. mission in Mali to help battle against Islamic extremist rebels was renewed last week although the Malian government said it will not support the mission's aim to promote and safeguard human rights.

Russia and China abstained from the French-drafted U.N. resolution, which extends the mandate of the mission until June 30, 2023, with its current ceiling of 13,289 military personnel and 1,920 international police.

More than 270 peacekeepers have died in Mali, making it the U.N.s deadliest peacekeeping mission, according to U.N. officials.

Mali is ruled by a military junta that seized power in August 2020. Col. Assim Goita has been named president.

Malis junta has grown closer to Russia, as Moscow has looked to build alliances and gain sway in Africa. The Russian Wagner Group has deployed a team of fighters in Mali.

Last week a European military task force that helped Malis government fight Islamic extremists formally withdrew from the West African country amid tensions with its ruling military junta.

The French military, which spearheaded the Takuba task force, announced that it had ended its work in Mali. The move was tied to Frances decision earlier this year to withdraw troops from Mali after nine years of helping Malian forces fight violent extremists who had threatened to seize power.

The European Takuba force was composed of several hundred special forces troops from 10 countries: Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden. It aimed at training and protecting Malian combat forces.
SAO PAULO (AP)  Cardinal Claudio Hummes, the Brazilian Catholic cardinal who inspired Pope Francis to pick his name after the 2013 conclave, died on Monday at the age of 87. He was one of the countrys main religious leaders and a strong advocate for the poor.

Sao Paulo archbishop, Cardinal Odilo Scherer, said in a statement that Hummes died after a long illness, which he endured with patience and faith in God. Hummes had been archbishop of Sao Paulo and, before that, of the city of Fortaleza.

Hummes also worked for Pope Benedict XVI between 2006 and 2011 as prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, the Vatican office which oversees the education, training and other matters for Catholic priests. He left the job because of age limits.

Pope John Paul II made him Sao Paulos archbishop in 1998 and three years later the Brazilian became a cardinal.

Hummes was sitting near Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio during the latest conclave, and, according to the pope himself, the Brazilian encouraged him as the vote neared the end.

A great friend, a great friend, Francis said about Hummes in his first press conference after being elected. When things started getting a little dangerous, he cheered me on. And when the vote came to two thirds, the usual applause began, as the pope had been elected. He hugged me, kissed me and said: Do not forget about the poor. Those words were carved on my mind.

Francis decided to name himself after St. Francis of Assisi, who was particularly devoted to caring for the poor.

Leftist former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who leads polls to return to the office after Octobers elections, was a friend of the man Brazilians call Dom Claudio. Hummes was considered a moderate in the Catholic church, though.

His unconditional love for others always put him on the side of the poor, even in the most adverse situations, da Silva said on Twitter.

Brazils President Jair Bolsonaro, whose far-right administration was often criticized by Hummes, has not made any comments about the cardinals death.

Hummes was also devoted to causes of the Amazon and of Indigenous peoples, who have had troubled relationships with religious leaders of other communities. The cardinal was one of the main inspirations for the Synod of the Pan-Amazonian Region in October 2019, which focused on environmental debates.

Indigenous peoples have shown in many ways they want our church to defend and protect their rights, build their future, Hummes said during the synod, adding the Indigenous of the Amazon deserve have the leading roles in their future, far from the action of anyones colonialism.

Recently, Francis named the first-ever Amazonian cardinal, given the importance the region has had on his pontificate and the attention he has wanted to draw to it.

Francis named Hummes in 2020 to lead the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon region, which is fostered by the debates of the synod. The Brazilian cardinal said in a letter in July 2021 that he feared the decisions of the debate might be hollow.

It is good to continue debating what we should do, but even with that being a good thing it is not enough, Hummes wrote.

Hummes was born in the tiny town of Montenegro, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, bordering Uruguay and Argentina. The cardinal's funeral was held Monday evening at Sao Paulo's central church and burial was scheduled for Tuesday morning.
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LUGANO, Switzerland (AP)  A top U.S. diplomat on Tuesday urged allies of Ukraine to help the war-battered country meet its immediate and urgent needs  not only longer-term rebuilding  as scores of countries wrapped up a two-day conference aimed at helping Ukraine recover from Russia's war, when it ends one day.

Scott Miller, the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, added a dose of urgency to the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano, at which the Ukrainian prime minister a day earlier presented a $750 billion plan to help his country both recover now  where possible  as well as in the immediate aftermath of the war and over the long term.

Many attendees pointed out that efforts were likely to take many years, and rebuilding would need to take place in several phases. Some called for support for Ukraine along the lines of the U.S. Marshall Plan for Europe after World War II  hinting of a big long-term project.

While we recognize the importance of preparing for Ukraines future, all of us must also deliver on our commitments to provide Ukraine its immediate and urgent needs, said Miller, one of many government envoys who decried Russia's war and detailed their support for Ukraine.

Some, however, cautioned that quick fixes were unlikely.

I really understand that we want to be ready overnight  to start tomorrow," Swiss President Ignazio Cassis told reporters. "But we clearly declare: It is the first step of a long journey.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, flanked by Cassis, cautioned that his government would carefully select immediate projects for rebuilding places like schools, hospitals and other infrastructure as the war rages on because Russian forces could simply "destroy it again.

It will be an unfinished process, Shmyhal said, alluding to a broader fast recovery in a second phase. "So we should wait for the finish of war actions, and then begin this fast recovery.

He voiced hopes to lock down and utilize an estimated $300 billion to $500 billion in Russian-owned assets that have been frozen in many Western banks to help pay for Ukraine's reconstruction. Such money could complement cash from Ukraine's own  heavily strained budget, as well as support from allies abroad.

Its very important for the civilized world to give the signal to Russia, as aggressor  and to other potential aggressors in the future  to understand that unprovoked aggression should be paid by this aggressor," he said. Russia should pay for this recovery, he added.

Cassis, however, pointed to the legal complexities of such an undertaking to wrest such Russian funds, saying the right of property is a fundamental right  is a human right. Switzerland has frozen 6.3 billion Swiss francs (about $6.5 billion) in Russian assets, while the Swiss Bankers Association estimates 150-200 billion francs worth of total Russian-owned assets are held in Swiss financial institutions.

The Swiss leader said fundamental rights can at times be violated  as was done in some cases during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic  but we have to create the legal base for such moves first.

You have to ensure the citizen that is protected against the power of the state, Cassis said.

A final document dubbed as the Lugano Declaration laid out goals to help Ukraine build back better  which it comes to government transparency, respect for the environment, and fighting corruption that has plagued the country since it split from Russia after the end of the Soviet Union three decades ago.

Many said the European Union's plan to take in Ukraine as a member one day could help underpin that reform process.

___

Follow APs coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
The State Liquor Authority is considering a major rule change that would save some independent restaurants and small liquor stores significant amounts of money and, from a consumer's perspective, could improve the variety and selection of alcoholic beverages.

It also presents an interesting potential for a political battle, because the two companies most opposed to the change  the distribution behemoths Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits, the largest U.S. distributor in America, with more than 5,000 brands, and Empire Merchants North  have been revealed to have the ear of Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose campaign was the recipient of $25,000 in contributions from Southern Glazer's.

The Times Union reported in April, "During the recent state budget negotiations, according to Democratic state Sen. James Skoufis, Hochuls office repeatedly shot down Senate proposals to level the playing field within the alcohol industry  ideas strongly opposed by Southern Glazers."

At issue now is what's known as split-case fees. The way the alcohol-distribution system is set up in New York, manufacturers generally sell to wholesalers, who then provide products to businesses that serve consumers, including bars, restaurants and wine shops.

Wholesalers incentivize larger purchases with volume discounts  the per-case price drops if a retailer or restaurant buys three, five or 10 cases instead of just one, for example  and discourage smaller buys by imposing extra charges if minimums are not met.

Since 1969, the SLA has permitted distributors to add a fee if a customer doesn't want a full case, recognizing that there is labor involved in opening manufacturer-sealed cases and putting, for example, four bottles each of three kinds of wines or spirits to make a full 12-bottle case.

Reasons vary for wanting to buy less than a full case. Sometimes it's because a bar or restaurant doesn't need, or can't afford, to buy a whole case of an upscale, niche product that sells more slowly than big-brand wines or spirits. And sometimes there isn't sufficient storage space for full cases of everything a business wants to offer. Being allowed to buy split cases means the potential for greater choice for the consumer. If a restaurant or wine shop that showcases Barolo can get four-bottle allotments from three wineries instead of a full case from one without being dinged with an excessive split-case fee, a customer's options triple.

The last time the SLA's regulation was amended, in 1980, distributors were limited to charging a fee of $1.98 per case for split cases. The official cap hasn't changed over the past four decades but, due to lack of enforcement and other complicated factors, some distributors have dramatically jacked up their split-case charges. According to local restaurateurs, retailers and Scott Wexler, executive director of the Empire State Restaurant & Tavern Association, split-case fees can now reach $30 to $40 or more per case from Southern Glazer's and Empire Merchants North. That's an average of $2.50 to $3.33 per bottle over what a retailer would pay for a full case. A retailer told me one wholesaler that deals only in spirits is up to $4 per bottle on split cases, but I have no confirmation of that elsewhere. Some smaller distributors that represent low-production boutique wines and spirits charge as little as 66 cents per bottle to split cases, or even nothing.

A new SLA regulation introduced last week would cap split-case fees at $7.39, or 62 cents per bottle. The savings for a business would be up to 85 percent.

"We estimate this would save some of our members at least $50 a week in split-case fees," said Wexler, who has been campaigning for years for an enforced cap and has been in active negotiations with the SLA about it since 2019.

"We recognize that there is extra labor involved in splitting a case, but it's certainly not $3 a bottle," Wexler said, "Most of what the wholesalers are taking from that is pure profit off the back of small retailers so they can discount prices to the large retailers that are buying in huge volume."

Restaurants and liquor stores have to deal with the big guys in order to offer popular brands. The general public can comparison-shop among liquor stores for the best prices. But if a restaurant's customers are calling for Tito's vodka  and they are, to the tune of 10 million cases and $1.4 billion in revenue annually  the sole source for it for a New York restaurant or liquor store is Southern. The same for Jack Daniel's and Empire. Southern also has sole distribution of Grey Goose vodka, Bulleit bourbon, Malibu rum, Jameson whiskey and the Bacardi line. Among Empire's portfolio are Stolichnaya vodka, Hennessy cognac, Moet Champagne and Barefoot wines.

The proposed cap "would definitely make a big difference," said Tess Collins, owner of McGeary's Pub in downtown Albany, which has a large selection of mainstream products that come from the big distributors. Collins said, "We get hit with so many fees: a delivery fee, a (fuel) charge on top of that, split cases, $20 for not buying enough. It really adds up quick."

Restaurants that have a different focus are able to avoid Southern and Empire except for a few products, which they buy in full- or multi-case lots and store until it's gone.

"We only deal with the big two when we absolutely must," said Vic Christopher, owner of Clark House Hospitality in Troy. He exclusively uses boutique distributors that charge minimal or no split-case fees for the small, eclectic selection at his retail shop, 22 2nd St. Wine Co. That is largely true for purchases for his Lucas Confectionery wine bar and Donna's Italian Restaurant, Christopher said, though he must buy some brands from Empire and Southern for his dive bar, called The Bradley, and The Tavern Bar, located above Donna's.

"I get around them as best as I can," said Patty Novo, owner of Taverna Novo in Saratoga Springs. She hunts for discounts and package deals, buys from small distributors and makes select purchases when necessary from the industry giants.

Novo said she doubted the proposed SLA cap would offer her significant regular savings, given the nature of her wine and spirits list, but, she said, "Every little bit helps. If I can order six bottles instead of 12 and not get whacked with a fee, that's definitely an improvement."

The SLA formally published the change being considered in the New York State Register on Wednesday (see pages 43 to 45 in the PDF). The issue will be open to public comment until five days after the SLA's public hearing on the matter, scheduled for Sept. 14, and the board is required by law to respond to comments. An agency spokesman said the vote on the proposal will be scheduled at the board's discretion, likely during its Sept. 28 meeting.

This story originated in the email-only Table Hopping newsletter. The free newsletter is delivered every Thursday afternoon. Sign up for it at timesunion.com/newsletters/table-hopping.
Judging from the rising homicide count & escalating violence this weekend . . .

It seems that Kansas City is doomed to repeat another year of historic homicide & rising crime.



A quick round-up now that the weekend is complete and everyone is returning to the grind with a hangover . . .

Despite warnings from police & politicos regarding celebratory gunfire. Friday started a spate of shooting.



The weekend continued with a scary standoff in Westport and a gunman still at large.

A wild Saturday night quickly turned into Sunday morning tragedy after a woman was discovered shot dead.



Monday morning we learned about news of MASS SHOOTING NEAR THE T-MOBILE CENTER ALONG WITH A SPATE OF CAR BREAK-INS.



Two more July 4th murders brought the homicide count to 75.



Finally . . .

Last night there was a report of another killing on the South side . . .

Homicide 8900 block of Longview Road

Just before 6pm officers were called to the 8900 block of Longview on a party down. Upon arrival, officers located the victim just off the roadway suffering from apparent trauma. EMS responded to the scene and transported the victim to the hospital. The victim was pronounced deceased at the hospital.



Detectives and Crime Scene Personnel have responded to the scene. They will be processing the scene for evidence and canvassing for any potential witnesses.



If you have any information, you are asked to call detectives at 816-234-5043. Or you can remain anonymous by calling the Tips Hotline at 816-474-TIPS. Theres a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to interest in this case.

################



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com links . . .

1 man shot to death Monday evening in south Kansas City, Missouri KANSAS CITY, Mo. - One man was shot to death Monday evening in south Kansas City, Missouri, marking the third homicide victim of the day in the city. The latest victim was found just before 6 p.m. just off the road in the 8900 block of Longview Road.

Local business owner reacts to shooting near T-Mobile Center Police responded to the area near the T-Mobile Center just after midnight, when officers heard gunshots outside the Center while investigating a separate incident (car break-ins) nearby.

Kansas City police investigate homicide on Longview Road KMBC file image SOURCE: KMBC file image Kansas City police said they are investigating a homicide Monday evening in the 8900 block of Longview Road.Police said officers were called to the area about 6 p.m. on a report of a person down.Authorities said officers found a man just off the roadway suffering from apparent trauma.

Accordingly . . .



NEARLY A DOZEN SHOOTINGS AND 4 MURDERS OVER THE HOLIDAY WEEKEND SIGNAL LITTLE PROGRESS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CRIME AT THE HALFWAY POINT OF 2022!!!



We will ALWAYS hope & pray that there's time to turn around and change course . . .

But the reality is that we've seen far more interest in election year politics than addressing the worsening crime crisis in Kansas City.



Developing . . .
This showdown at the ballot box might be one for the ages . . .



Check this quick bit of insight and scheduling so that you can take part AND complain if/when things don't go your way . . .



"Missouri's voter registration deadline is coming up first on Wednesday, July 5, as the final day to submit a voter registration form. Missouri voters will soon have to provide a photo ID to cast their ballot.



In Kansas, Secretary of State Scott Schwab sent out a reminder concerning the deadline to register to vote. The deadline for the 2022 primary elections is July 12 in Kansas. "



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .
Tonight we take a moment to consider why we gather on this corner of the Internets in order to talk politics, local issues & American culture . . .

But more than anything else, here's our main takeaway . . .

TKC REMAINS THE MOST INDEPENDENT NEWSY BLOG IN KANSAS CITY!!



A bit of background . . .



Over the years we've faced a number of challenges but it seems that along with finding "our voice" via this online experiment. . . We've also stumbled upon something important . . .

Whilst the Internets is flooded with all manner of sketchy content . . . Our commitment to editorial independence is probably the most important aspect of this blog.



A quick explanation . . .

There are plenty of places to get the news, even on local issues . . . What has kept readers coming back, other than the bawdy jokes, snark & constant typos . . . Is that we are AN INDEPENDENT KANSAS CITY NEWS, SNARK & COMMENTARY SOURCE.

There are currently a bevy of progressive websites attempting to replace the newspaper and they haven't found any traction . . . Right-wing sites have also FAILED miserably. There's even a local Black-militant blog that earned a 25K grant for publishing sketchy allegations & racial rants . . . But none of these online outlets have branched out past their niche audiences.



Meanwhile . . . Whilst I'm still living in my mom's basement & riding the bus to the nearest strip mall in order to renew my garbage burner mobile phone . . . In terms of traffic, user participation and local policy impact . . . TKC has never been better.

Even amid a more "relaxed" publishing schedule . . .

This dump has never had more readers than right now.

And all of this bloggy progress has come with greater challenges . . . (Don't worry, I'm not gonna ask for money yet . . .)



Longtime denizens know that we switched up the comments . . . Overall that has decreased the count but improved the quality . . . We want to continue to venture along that path and we aren't above another design change.

We once called this place a "Free Speech Zone" and there's still more freedom on TKC than any other major KC publishing outlet . . . But a comment free-for-all isn't intrinsically informative or useful . . . It usually ends up in hate crimes and stalking threats. We like our "members first" model but overall strive for better ease of use.

Still . . .



The whole point of this blog is to provide a resource and share our love for the local news whilst inviting & welcoming a variety of different viewpoints as an ALTERNATIVE to mundane mainstream coverage & analysis.



To that end . . . We've been more successful than any other local publishing endeavor and we believe our blog community provides a better cross-section of Kansas City in a discussion of politics & culture than any other "place" on the Internets . . . Including rigged and sketchy social media gathering spots that ask about "the best place to live" and "where to get local kombucha" day after day after day . . .

And that brings us to the state of Kansas City.

We're still in the midst of a historic & deadly crime wave.

Local corruption is reaching surprising levels as institutions like the police & transit system endure debilitating meddling from elected leaders.

As we approach election season . . . There is reason for hope despite activist fixation on racial & cultural divisions in the face of more pressing problems like crumbling infrastructure, rising taxes & degradation of basic city services.

Accordingly . . .

More than anything else we believe that INDEPENDENT, SILLY AND SNARKY TKC BLOG COMMUNITY COMMENTARY can help Kansas City keep our priorities in place.

We always welcome suggestions as to how to make this blog better.



And we thank longtime commenters for coming along on our journey.

More importantly . . .

We thank VETERANS for their service in protecting the freedom that we enjoy.

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!!

We hope to see you back for the next update and for however long as we can continue, enjoy & keep up this cowtown news experiment.

As always, thank you for reading.


Today a presser was scheduled following and alleged weekend hate crime . . .



Sadly, the rising star candidate was undermined again . . .



"Welp, I just got the call that my defaced campaign banner was ripped off and stolen ahead of our press conference today at 9 AM. I had some prepared remarks, but Im mad as hell and Im not backing down! This isnt Kansas City, and were going to prove whoever did this wrong!"

However, despite the disappointment . . .

There was a great deal of news followup regarding ACROSS THE GLOBE . . .

In national & international publications, the LGBT leader garnered solidarity and support.



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com links . . .

Gay Missouri Candidate's Campaign Sign Defaced with Antigay Slur Justice Horn, a gay Democratic candidate for local government in Kansas City, Mo., discovered a large campaign sign with the word "fag" scrawled on it. On Sunday, Justice Horn, a Missouri activist who is running for the Jackson County Legislature, said that one of his campaign banners had been defaced with a homophobic slur.

Gay wrestler running for office won't back down after homophobic 'hate crime' An LGBTQ+ activist running for elected office remained defiant after his campaign poster was vandalised with a vile, homophobic slur. Justice Horn, a former NCAA wrestler turned Kansas City politician, was devastated to learn his banners had been targeted by vandals who sprayed the F slur across his photo.

Anti-gay slur defaces banner of candidate in Kansas City Shock, anger and a renewed sense of purpose are the emotions Justice Horn is feeling after a Pride-themed campaign banner was defaced with an anti-gay slur this weekend in Kansas City, where he is running for countywide office. Horn, a former NCAA wrestler who is openly gay, discovered "FAG" spray-painted on the banner Sunday, as he said in a post on Instagram.

LGBTQ Victory Fund Condemns Homophobic Attack Against Jackson County, Missouri Candidate Justice Horn - LGBTQ Victory Fund Washington, DC - Today Mayor Annise Parker, President & CEO of LGBTQ Victory Fund, condemned a homophobic attack against out LGBTQ candidate Justice Horn. Horn's campaign sign was defaced with a homophobic slur July 4th weekend in Kansas City, Missouri.

Developing . . .
An important point . . . The Mayor was scheduled to attend but not to speak at this massive gathering.



Local news imaging doesn't do it justice . . . Social media shots from the crowd show at least 1000 marchers attending this pro-choice rally on the Country Club Plaza.

We've all seen pictures of abortion protests . . . However a woman on the Kansas City Country Club Plaza dressed as a character from the Handmaid's Tale proved to be a haunting image.

Now . . .



There was a bit of worthwhile coverage . . .



Organizers of the We Are Not Free march said the group is peacefully protesting in support of reproductive freedom at a time when many Americans celebrate their liberties. The protesters argue abortion rights are human rights.



Theres a lot of attention focused on the upcoming Aug. 2 election in Kansas, where voters will determine whether that states constitution protects a womans right to an abortion.



We are founded on freedom, said Stacy Henderson, lead organizer for the rally.



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

'We Are Not Free' march in Kansas City protests Roe v Wade reversal KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Abortion rights supporters rallied Monday on the Country Club Plaza, arguing they're not free on this Independence Day. Organizers of the "We Are Not Free" march said the group is peacefully protesting in support of reproductive freedom at a time when many Americans celebrate their liberties.

Developing . . .
After a fatal shooting near the Scotiabank Arena around 8 p.m. Saturday, Toronto police locked down and evacuated Union Station. Police said they located a man with gunshot wounds near York Street and Bremner Boulevard, where the man died.
Member of Parliament for Chaguanas West and Attorney at Law Dinesh Rambally is eager to see the transcripts from the Special General Meeting of the Law Association.

It was at this meeting on Friday where two motions against Attorney General Reginald Armour failed.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces have repulsed an assault on Bilohorivka and forced the enemy to withdraw after their offensive towards the Vuhlehirsk thermal power plant and an unsuccessful reconnaissance operation on the outskirts of Berestove.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said this in a Facebook post, Ukrinform reports.

As of 18:00 on July 4, the situation in the Volyn and Polissia directions has not changed significantly. The units of the Belarusian armed forces continue to fortify defensive positions in the border areas.

In the Sivershchyna (northeastern) direction, the enemy shelled the areas of the settlements of Vasylivske, Bilopillia and Atynske in the Sumy region.

In the Kharkiv direction, Russian occupiers continue their artillery shelling of the city of Kharkiv and settlements to the north, northeast and east of the city. The enemy also carried out airstrikes near Petrivka. Ukrainian soldiers harshly stopped the enemy's attempt to storm the village of Sosnivka and pushed the invaders back.

Trying to somehow interfere with the logistical support of the units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, the enemy remotely mined the area near Cherkaski Tyshky. A counter-battery fight is going on there.

In the Sloviansk direction, the enemy is attempting to improve the tactical position of its units. Enemy forces fired artillery in the areas of Dolyna, Dibrivne, Bohorodychne, Mazanivka, Sukha Balka, Krasnopillia, Virnopillia, Velyka Komyshuvakha and carried out airstrikes near Dibrivne and Bohorodychne. The enemy is conducting an assault in the direction of the settlement of Mazanivka, with partial success.

In the Donetsk direction, the occupiers are concentrating their main efforts on hitting our units with fire. The enemy conducted aerial reconnaissance using Orlan-10 UAV near Pavlohrad and Pokrovsk.

In the Kramatorsk direction, the aggressor shelled the areas of Bilohorivka and Verkhnokamianske using tanks and howitzers. Russian forces also launched an airstrike near Tetianivka.

Ukrainian soldiers successfully repelled the assault on the settlement of Bilohorivka. The occupiers retreated.

In the Bakhmut direction, the enemy used artillery in the areas of Spirne, Berestove and Vershyna. The enemy also carried out an airstrike near Vershyna.

Ukrainian defenders forced the enemy to retreat after their offensive in the direction of the Vuhlehirsk TPP and an unsuccessful reconnaissance battle in the direction of the outskirts of Berestove.

In the Avdiivka, Kurakhove, Novopavlivka, Zaporizhzhia, and Southern Buh directions, the enemy used tanks, mortars, barrel and rocket artillery along the contact line.

In the Black Sea, Russian invaders keep three carriers of high-precision weapons ready to launch missile strikes on targets across Ukraine. They carry up to 20 Kalibr sea-based cruise missiles.

Ukrainian defenders inflict losses on the enemy in all directions where active hostilities continue.

"Russian occupiers, in order to somehow justify their destruction of civilian objects on the territory of Ukraine, continue to spread fakes about the location of military units in schools, churches and hospitals. We urge you to trust information only from verified sources and not to spread Russian fakes and disinformation," the report said.
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny thanked Poland and the Czech Republic for the tanks supplied to Ukrainian defenders.

The Commander-in-Chief of Ukraines Armed Forces said this in a Facebook post, Ukrinform reports.

"The help of brotherly Poland and Czech Republic is invaluable to us. Thanks to your tanks, we are fighting our common centuries-old enemy. We are fighting for Ukraine, for the Czech Republic, for Poland. For every meter of our Slavic land," Zaluzhny stressed.

The Commander-in-Chief also thanked Poland and the Czech Republic for the help and support provided to Ukrainian people who found refuge in these countries from Russian bombs and missiles.

"Together we will stand. Your tanks are the help from real brothers," he emphasized.

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Russian invaders have fired missiles at Mykolaiv and Bashtanka, destroying social infrastructure facilities and residential houses.

The relevant statement was made by Mykolaiv Regional Council Head Hanna Zamazieieva on Telegram, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

In the morning of July 5, 2022, two districts in the city of Mykolaiv came under enemy fire. Some buildings were destroyed, including residential houses. Rescuers and medics are working at the scene. The data on casualties are yet to be checked, Zamazieieva wrote.

Six Russian missiles were fired at Bashtanka alone. Three of them were shot down by the Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense units. The enemy again struck the administrative building.

In addition, Russian troops opened fire on such communities as Shyroke, Inhulka, Bereznehuvate and Halytsynove. Destructions in detached houses were reported. According to the preliminary data, there were no casualties among civilians.

A reminder that, on February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian troops are shelling and destroying infrastructure facilities and residential areas in Ukrainian cities and villages.

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Russian forces have shelled the area near the village of Bleshnia, Chernihiv region.

Viacheslav Chaus, head of the Chernihiv Regional Military Administration, said this in a Telegram post, Ukrinform reports.

"The enemy continues shelling border areas in the Chernihiv region! An hour ago, the Russians shelled the area near the village of Bleshnia (Semenivka community). We have 40 explosions (they probably fired from multiple launch rocket systems) and 10 explosions probably caused by artillery fire. So far there are no casualties or destruction," the statement said.

Russia's invading troops were forced out of the Chernihiv region in April. Since then, the enemy has been periodically shelling the border villages of the Chernihiv region.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine successfully repelled the Russian assaults near Krasnopillia in Slovyansk direction. In Donetsk direction, the main efforts of the enemy are focused on taking control of the Bakhmut  Lysychansk highway and capturing Bilohorivka.

This is stated in the latest report of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Russian invasion as of 18:00 on July 5, published on Facebook.

"In the Southern Buh direction, the enemy systematically fired tube and rocket artillery on civilian and military infrastructure in the areas of Osokorivka, Dobrianka, Potiomkine, Ivanivka, Bereznehuvate, Partyzanske, Chervona Dolyna, Kyselivka, and Myrne. A threat of missile strikes on the critical infrastructure of the region remains," reads the report

No signs of the formation of enemy offensive groups were detected in Volyn and Polissya directions, but the threat of missile and air strikes from the territory of the Republic of Belarus remains. According to the available information, the control and alert system is being checked in the armed forces of Belarus.

In Siversky direction, the enemy continues to keep the section of the Ukrainian-Russian border under heavy guard. In addition, the enemy fired on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the area of  Mkhy and launched an airstrike near Esman.

In Kharkiv direction, the enemy defends the previously captured lines. The invaders used tanks, mortars, tube and rocket artillery to fire on the areas of Udy, Dementiyivka, Nove, Ruski Tyshki, Tsyrkuny, Kutuzivka, Bazalivka, Pryshyb, Shevelivka, and Protopopivka. The enemy assaulted Sosnivka, had no success, retreated. The Russians also launched an airstrike near Kharkiv.

In Slovyansk direction, the enemy tries to improve its tactical position. Artillery shelling was recorded near Dibrivne, Dolyna, and Adamivka. The Armed Forces of Ukraine successfully repulsed the enemy assaults near Krasnopillia.

In Donetsk region, the main efforts of the enemy are focused on taking control of Bakhmut  Lysychansk highway and capturing Bilohorivka.

In Kramatorsk direction, the enemy fired on civilian infrastructure near Kryva Luka and Serebrianka, launched a missile and air strike near Siversk. Fighting continues in the area of Bilohorivka.

In Bakhmut direction, the enemy fired mortars, rocket and tube artillery on the Ukrainian troops in the areas of Kodema, Pokrovske, Zaytseve, Zalizne, and Novoselivka.

With the support of artillery and operational-tactical aviation, the invaders assaulted the areas of Spirne and Vershyna, the fighting continues.

Artillery shelling continues along the contact line in Avdiivka, Kurakhove, Novopavlivsk, and Zaporizhzhia directions. The enemy launched airstrikes on the positions of Ukraines Defense Forces near Avdiivka.

"Our units continue to successfully execute missile and artillery fire missions in the designated directions. It is increasingly difficult for the enemy to replenish its units that suffer losses while waging war in the territory of Ukraine," the General Staff emphasizes.

As reported, on July 5, the Ukrainian air defense units shot down three enemy missiles targeting the port infrastructure of Ochakiv, Mykolayiv region, and Chornomorsk, Odesa region.

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About 200 invaders were killed and 300 more were wounded as a result of the attack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on a Russian military base in Melitopol two days ago.

"The Armed Forces of Ukraine attacked one of the Russian military bases in Melitopol: barracks, ammunition and fuel depots. More than 200 ruscists were killed, more than 300 were wounded. This is not official information, but more than reliable information. A ruscist hospital, which they had deployed at our medical facilities, was struck. So the ruscists suffered significant losses during the destruction of this military base," Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov said during the nationwide telethon, Ukrinform reports.

According to him, collaborators are afraid to go to work in Melitopol after the attack. Some of them have already left the city, some still want to do so.

The invaders also move the surviving equipment to other military bases and hide it in forest strips. According to Fedorov, about 1,000 Russian soldiers are stationed in Melitopol.

About 50% of the residents  70,000 people  still stay in the city. In recent weeks, parents and children, who want to enter Ukrainian universities, have been leaving Melitopol. After the strikes by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, another wave of mass departure began.

The invaders filter locals, kidnap people, search for partisans.

As reported, shots were heard in Melitopol on the night of July 3. The Armed Forces of Ukraine disabled one of the four Russian military bases. More than 30 strikes were launched exclusively at the enemy military base.

Melitopol has been occupied by the Russian troops since the end of February.

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Ukraine will receive ten self-propelled artillery systems and loitering munitions (suicide drones) from the United Kingdom in the coming weeks.

This is said in a press release issued by the office of the head of the British government following a phone conversation between UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Prime Minister updated on the latest UK military equipment, including 10 self-propelled artillery systems and loitering munitions, which would be arriving in the coming days and weeks, the document says.

Johnson also told Zelensky about discussions held at G7 and NATO last week.

The Prime Minister said the world was behind Ukraine, and he believed President Zelenskyys military could retake territory recently captured by Putins forces, the document says.

On grain, the leaders agreed on the importance of getting it out of Ukraine as soon as possible, and the Prime Minister said the UK continued to work closely with partners on next steps and stood ready to help in any way possible, the document reads.

The parties also discussed Eurovision 2023, and the Prime Minister said the UK had asked the EBU to consider Ukraines proposals for the event.

As Ukrinform reported, in became known in late June that the United Kingdom will almost double its military support to Ukraine with an extra GBP 1 billion (over $1.2 billion), to help the country move beyond defense against Russia's invasion to mounting offensive operations.
The Australian Government has endorsed a decision to remove tariffs on imports to Australia from Ukraine for a period of 12 months.

The relevant statement was made by Australian Trade and Tourism Minister Don Farrell, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

The Australian Government has announced it will remove tariffs on imports to Australia from Ukraine. The measure, which is part of the package of support announced by the Prime Minister following his visit to Kyiv, will take effect from today [July 4, 2022  Ed.]. It follows similar actions by our international partners, such as the European Union, and the United Kingdom, Farrell noted.

In his words, Ukraines imports to Australia reached about $122 million in 2021. The aforementioned measure will see tariffs of up to 5 per cent reduced to zero for a period of 12 months on a range of goods that are produced or manufactured in Ukraine. Excise-equivalent duties, such as those that apply to fuels, alcohol and tobacco products, will remain in place.

Australia condemns Russias unilateral, illegal and immoral aggression against the people of Ukraine. This measure demonstrates our commitment to support the economy of Ukraine as it deals with the ongoing, devastating effects of Russias invasion, Farrell added.

A reminder that, on July 3, 2022, during a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised to reduce customs duties on Ukrainian goods imported to Australia.

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The Government of Ukraine suggests creating several Ukraine recovery offices: in Washington, Brussels, London and other cities, with the head office in Kyiv.

The Platform for Ukraine Recovery will consist of three levels. The first is the high level, where the leaders of the states will be represented. The second level is the Joint Coordination Group, which will comprise heads of executive power as well as decision-makers from Ukraine, the USA, the EU, Great Britain, Poland and other partner countries. The third level is the thematic groups by industries. Twenty-four groups of the National Council for the Recovery of Ukraine. Today and in the future, we invite everyone who has the experience and desire to make Ukraine better to join these groups," Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal said at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano, the Government portal informs.

Moreover, the Head of the Government noted, Ukraine will initiate the establishment of an advisory group, which will include world-renowned European politicians, American and European economists: "These professionals will help not only to shape a strategy but also to demonstrate our level of openness."

The Prime Minister emphasized that the Ukraine Recovery Plan was drafted on the basis of key principles  end-to-end vectors  the observance of which will allow the country to effectively change and rebuild.

"The better recovery than it was before. Build back better. Our goal is not just to restore glass and concrete, but to build a new country," the Head of Government emphasized.

Therefore, the key principles are as follows: utmost possible safety of people and business, rule of law, European integration and compliance with EU candidate criteria, transparency and accountability in recovery, reconstruction of Ukraine with the utmost involvement of green technologies, digital tools during the recovery process and general digitalization, involvement of private capital in the reconstruction process.

As reported, the Ukraine Recovery Conference on the restoration of Ukraine after the military aggression of the Russian Federation is held in Lugano, Switzerland, on July 4-5.

On July 5, representatives of more than 40 countries and about 20 international organizations approved the Lugano Declaration as the outcome document of the Ukraine Recovery Conference URC2022 and pledged to support Ukraine.

According to the Government of Ukraine, the recovery program is already estimated at USD 750 billion.

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As part of the bilateral cooperation with Ukraine, Switzerland will double its funding to more than 100 million Swiss francs (over 100 million U.S. dollars) by the end of 2023.

President of Switzerland Ignazio Cassis stated this at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano on July 5, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

The President of Switzerland noted that his country provides financing through Ukraine's multilateral partners - the UN, OSCE, Red Cross, World Bank, EBRD and others.

Cassis also announced the allocation of at least 15 million Swiss francs for digital transformation following an appeal by Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal.

"Switzerland has been a partner of Ukraine for many years. We support reforms and sustainable development. We provide humanitarian aid, adhering to our humanitarian tradition," he stressed.

As reported, the international Ukraine Recovery Conference is held in the Swiss city of Lugano on July 4-5 with the participation of Ukrainian and international politicians, leaders of the EU and international organizations, international financial bodies, etc.

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The Kingdom of the Netherlands has allocated a EUR 200 million loan for Ukraine, which will be used through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the day-to-day needs of Ukraines public sector, including the payment of salaries.

A representative of the Dutch government stated this at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano on July 5, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

"Continuing our efforts to address Ukraine's most urgent financial needs, I am announcing today that we have provided another EUR 200 million in financial assistance. This loan will be transferred to a special IMF account. The funds will be spent on the day-to-day needs of the Ukrainian government bodies, such as salaries for civil servants, school teachers, and medical workers," said the representative of the Dutch government.

According to her, this will be another contribution of Amsterdam to the previous financial support for Kyiv, which currently totals EUR 140 million.

Read also: Switzerland to increase support for Ukraine to 100M francs

She emphasized that the Netherlands pays great importance to the problem of impunity and supports the punishment of Russian war criminals who commit crimes in Ukraine.

As reported, the international Ukraine Recovery Conference is held in the Swiss city of Lugano on July 4-5 with the participation of Ukrainian and international politicians, leaders of the EU and international organizations, international financial bodies, etc.

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A sea of blue and yellow colors and traditional vyshyvanka embroidered shirts, to the beat of the symbolic "Red Viburnum" song and the "Glory to Ukraine!" slogans through the loudspeaker, as well as non-stop cheers from the crowd of spectators who came to the central streets of Washington.

This was the debut of the Ukrainian delegation at the U.S. Independence Day parade, which took place on Monday, Ukrinform's own correspondent reports.

As part of the column marched employees of the Ukrainian Embassy in the USA, the Carpathia folk dance ensemble, members of the United Help Ukraine, US Ukrainian Activists (USUA), and Ukrainian American Veterans organizations, and others.

"When the war started on February 24, and when we together with the United States took our strategic partnership to a whole new level, with the U.S. today being actually our brothers and sisters, helping us side by side in this fight, we just couldnt but take part in this parade. Therefore, we believe that its very important," Ukrainian Ambassador to the USA Oksana Markarova noted in a comment to the agency.

She explained that Independence Day for the United States is a time when Americans remember again and again each year the values for which they fought during the formation of their nation, which were laid down in the Declaration of Independence of 1776, and which America continues to stand for every day.

"These are the values for which Ukraine is currently fighting against Russian aggression, so this is our act of solidarity with our American sisters and brothers, as well as our kudos to them for the fact that they strongly support us in this fight," Oksana Markarova added.

U.S. Army Colonel (Rtd) Askold Moseychuk, a member of the Ukrainian American Veterans organization, who marched as part of the Ukrainian column alongside his comrades-in-arms, noted that he was proud to participate.

"Since we are all of Ukrainian origin, we are proud of the memory of our Motherland, our parents, grandfathers and great-grandfathers. We are advocating support for Ukraine in its ongoing fight against Russian invasion," said Askold Moseychuk.

He emphasized that participation in the parade in Washington as part of the Ukrainian group is a kind of gesture of support for all Ukrainians.

According to President of USUA (United States Ukrainian Activists) charity, Nadiya Shaporynska, participation in the American parade is "a really great honor" for the Ukrainian community. She said that the activists with her organization have been providing support to Ukraine almost 24 hours a day since the outbreak of the war, and have already allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars for the purchase of medical equipment and medication, as well as for all kinds of other support for Ukrainian hospitals. In addition, USUA organizes constant actions outside the White House with calls for more aid to Ukraine, as well as further punishment for Russia.

"One of our main messages that we are voicing outside the White House is to declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, because what is happening in Ukraine is genocide and war crimes against the people of Ukraine and the genocide of Ukrainian culture," stressed Nadiya Shaporynska.

As President of United Help Ukraine Maryna Baydyuk said, the participation of the Ukrainian delegation in the parade, as well as the friendly and truly warm reaction of the Americans, testify to a strong mutual bond.

"We want to show the American people that we stand with them, that Ukrainians actually support what is happening in America. They (people in Ukraine - ed.) are sending us greetings even now, and in fact today I received many greetings from the guys who are on the front lines, congratulating our organization and all Americans on Independence Day," Maryna Baydyuk noted.

She emphasized that the main message of the Ukrainian column is gratitude to the Americans for all the support they have provided, especially over the recent months. Although Ukraine joined the parade in Washington for the first time this year, it will definitely not be the last time, she added.
Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees visits the Regional Assistance Center for Aid to Ukraine in Usti nad Labem, Czech republic on June 26, 2022.  UNHCR/Michal Novotny

Prague  I have just returned from the Czech Republic, where I met government representatives as the country prepares to take over the Presidency of the European Union (EU) on 1 July. It comes during a key period when the EU and its Member States, along with other countries, continue to show remarkable support to refugees from Ukraine and to neighbouring host countries, following the unprecedented decision in March to activate the Temporary Protection Directive.

The response to the Ukraine refugee situation has highlighted Europes capacity for an organized and workable approach to asylum  one that benefits states and safeguards the rights of refugees. The Czech Republic itself has been generously and effectively hosting one of the largest populations of Ukrainian refugees in Europe. As such, under its Presidency, the country has a unique opportunity to harness this experience and encourage further progress in EU asylum reform.

I am hopeful that the incoming Presidency will build on the good work of the outgoing French EU Presidency, and the European Commission, which together have been instrumental in pushing forward the Solidarity Declaration. This voluntary scheme would provide for relocation places as well as financial support, and responsibility-sharing across the bloc with those EU Member States where most asylum seekers arrive. I trust that the Declaration and any forthcoming pledges will help to ensure greater responsibility-sharing for asylum seekers, and ultimately better protection for people fleeing war, violence and persecution.

UNHCR encourages EU Member States under the Czech Presidencys leadership to translate this political commitment into prompt and practical action for those most in need.

UNHCR remains ready to support the Czech Republic and other EU Member States to continue on this positive path towards a European Union that better protects refugees across the continent and beyond.

For more information, please contact:

In Geneva: Shabia Mantoo, [email protected] , +41 79 337 76 50

, +41 79 337 76 50 In Brussels: Maeve Patterson: [email protected] , +32 470 99 54 35,

, +32 470 99 54 35, In Budapest: (For Czech Republic) Zoran Stevanovic, [email protected] , +36 305 309 633

UNHCR recommendations to the Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU can be found here.
Geneva, 5 July 2022 - In a briefing paper published today, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, UNICEF, the United Nations Childrens Fund, and IOM, the International Organization for Migration, detail the practice of child immigration detention across countries in Europe, and offer a range of alternatives and recommendations to help countries in ending child detention.

Detention has a profound and negative impact on child health and well-being and can have a long-lasting negative impact on childrens cognitive development. Placement in detention is known to exacerbate psychological distress and children held in detention are at risk of suffering depression and anxiety as well as violence and abuse.

"Several countries in Europe have demonstrated that alternatives to detention for children and families can be safe, dignified and cost-effective  we urge all European States to adopt these approaches to protect the rights and well-being of refugee and migrant children," said Pascale Moreau, UNHCRs Regional Director for Europe.

In the joint review conducted by IOM, UNHCR and UNICEF in 38 countries across the European region, the agencies found many worrying examples of child detention. It also found that alternatives to detention such as supported independent living, foster and family-based care, and other child-friendly and child-centred models are already in place in various European countries and offer viable and cost-efficient solutions for host States.

"Children on the move are first and foremost children, regardless of where they are from and why they left their homes. Detention of children is never in their best interests, is a violation of their rights, and must be avoided at all costs," said Afshan Khan, UNICEF's Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia and Special Coordinator for the Refugee and Migrant Response in Europe.

The recommendations set forth by the three agencies include expanding alternatives to detention for children and families, investing in reception conditions and national child protection systems and enhancing national data collection and monitoring capacities within States as well as the European Union.

"Family unity and the best interests of the child go hand in hand in the context of persons on the move. We encourage governments to work to replace immigration detention for children and families with community-based programmes, case management and other rights-based alternatives, which have proven highly effective, said Ola Henrikson, IOM Regional Director for the EEA, EU and NATO.

Read the Advocacy Brief here.

For Editors:

The advocacy brief is the result of an ongoing collaboration among the three agencies and has led to the release of several joint publications on the situation of refugee, migrant and unaccompanied children in Europe. These include the briefing paper on access to education published in September 2019, as well as annual factsheet with trends and data on accompanied, unaccompanied and separated refugee and migrant children in Europe.

About IOM

As the leading inter-governmental organization in the field of migration, with 174 member states and a presence in over 100 countries, we work closely with our partners to promote safe, humane and orderly migration that benefits migrants and society.

For more information about IOM, visit www.iom.int

About UNHCR

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, protects people forced to flee their homes because of conflict and persecution. We save lives, protect rights and help build better futures.

For more information about UNHCRs work in Europe, visit www.unhcr.org/europe

About UNICEF

UNICEF promotes the rights and well-being of every child, in everything we do. Together with our partners, we work in 190 countries and territories to translate that commitment into practical action, focusing special effort on reaching the most vulnerable and excluded children, to the benefit of all children, everywhere.

For more information about UNICEF and its work for children, visit www.unicef.org/eca

For more information on this topic, please contact:
July 4 2022

Moda Living and Robertson Construction have conducted a topping out ceremony at Holland Park, an emerging build to rent block in Glasgow city centre.

The occasion was marked by the commission of an evocative painting of the development by local artist Ida Henrich, part of efforts to celebrate the artistic heritage of a neighbourhood defined by the Glasgow School of Art.

This approach is embodied by cementing an artists paintbrush into the top floor, literally enshrining art within the built fabric of a development which stresses community living through inclusion of a 24 hour gym; private dining rooms, a cinema, games rooms and roof terraces complete with green space and BBQ areas.

Rising on the site of the former Strathclyde Police HQ Holland Park will offer 433 apartments when complete in a series of buildings rising up to 22 storeys, with ground floor commercial units helping to knit the building into the streetscape.

Designed by Haus Collective Moda, Holland Park, should open in 2023.
July 5 2022

Drum Property Group has begun work on a high-profile build to rent development designed by Halliday Fraser Munro at the foot of Leith Walk, Edinburgh.

Steads Place will provide 110 rental apartments on a 2.9-acre former industrial estate, including a two-storey red sandstone retail parade, refurbishment of which has almost completed.

Attention has now turned to land to the rear for the new build portion of the scheme, now scheduled for completion by spring 2024 after forward funding was obtained from Edmond de Rothschild Real Estate Investment Management.

A further 38 affordable homes are due to be delivered in a final phase of construction towards the end of the year, to be managed by Hillcrest Homes.

Hillcrest development manager David Milton said, Steads Place provides the opportunity to deliver 23 new social-rented homes and 15 mid-rented homes, all of which will be allocated to those in housing need.

The social rented homes will deliver a good mix of one, two and three bed apartments and we are particularly pleased to be delivering family sized homes in this location."

Student housing was originally proposed for the site but dropped during efforts to obtain planning consent.
SEOUL, July 5 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 5th Jul, 2022 ) :Six U.S. F-35A stealth fighter jets arrived in South Korea Tuesday for joint drills with South Korean warplanes, the South Korean Defense Ministry said.

The radar-evading U.S. fighters, deployed to the Korean Peninsula from Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, will conduct joint exercises with the South Korean air force until July 14, the ministry said in a statement.

It was reportedly the first known deployment of the U.S. stealth fighter jets here since late 2017.

The U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) said in a separate statement that the U.S. aircraft plans to operate and fly with several different U.S. and South Korean aircraft, including South Korea's F-35s.

It noted that the familiarization and routine training flights will enhance the interoperability of the two air forces to perform and operate on and around the Korean Peninsula.

It added that the U.S. aircraft plans to operate over South Korea and surrounding waters off the coasts during the scheduled 10-day training mission.
SalaberrydeValleyfield, Canada, July 5 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 5th Jul, 2022 ) :Five years after the #MeToo movement sent shockwaves around the world with tales of unreported sexual harassment and assault, Canada's Quebec province is moving to ensure victims are heard in court.

The largely French-speaking province is working to set up the world's first specialized court for cases of sexual violence and domestic abuse, which experts hope will help build confidence that the legal system is not turning a blind eye to such incidents.

"Today, women are afraid they will not be believed. They are afraid of the questions they will face, and the curt nature of the attorneys interrogating them," says Julie Desrosiers, the co-chair of a committee of experts tasked with looking at the issue.

"Women must be reassured that they will not be hurt again during the legal process," said the law professor, who added that "the law must support changes afoot in society." The US defamation case that pitted actor Johnny Depp against his ex-wife Amber Heard, which aired sordid accusations of abuse from both sides, has highlighted the issue once again, as Heard faced rampant online harassment over her claims.

Many experts feared the verdict, which was largely in Depp's favor, would serve to keep women from making formal accusations against their partners.

In Quebec, the process of change began in 2018, when a small bipartisan group of women politicians decided to attack what they called a systemic problem.

"After MeToo, I asked myself what we could do as elected officials, what concrete actions we could take," said Veronique Hivon, a provincial lawmaker from the independence-minded Parti Quebecois.

The experts' committee was put in place: they interviewed dozens of victims of sexual violence about their experiences in court, as well as judges, lawyers, police officers and social workers.

Their December 2020 report said trust needed to be rebuilt, and the group made about 190 recommendations for how complaints could be better handled, including the creation of a specialized court.

A little less than a year later, the Quebec legislature unanimously voted for create the judicial body.

The court is still in its nascent phases but its founders have a sprawling vision of what it could become: they hope it will employ more prosecutors to look at cases of sexual violence, have more funding for investigations and training for cops and judges.

Organizers also hope to be able to provide assistance to victims throughout the process, with the end goal being to ensure that the legal system no longer resembles an "obstacle course" for accusers.

"With the creation of this specialized tribunal, we are sending a strong message, a collective message: these crimes no longer have a place in our society," Quebec's provincial justice minister Simon Jolin-Barrette told AFP.

But that is no small task, given that as in numerous other countries, sexual assault remains underreported in Quebec -- it is in fact one of the least reported crimes in the province.

Only five percent of victims end up filing a formal complaint, even though there is no statute of limitations on such cases in Canada.

Of the few who have pursued their attackers, many say they have regrets.

"I understand it's a good thing for society that I filed suit, that I went through with the process to the end," Juliette Brault, who was assaulted at the age of 19, told AFP.

"However, despite the conviction of my attacker, I regret doing it. If I had to do it over, I would not have filed a complaint and I would not wish for anyone to live through what I experienced," she said, calling her trial a "very painful, violent" time.

Brault -- a former elite athlete who is now 24 and runs a day care center -- remembers that she initially thought filing the complaint would be the hardest thing she had to do.

"In the first police station where I went months after I was assaulted, the officer wanted to take my complaint in the middle of the office, in front of everyone.

I left and it took me months to find the strength to go to another station," she recalled.

But then when Brault was cross-examined by her attacker's attorney, "I was crying so much that I couldn't breathe. I felt like a run-of-the-mill witness, with no one taking my condition into account," she said.

Many victims say the legal process forces them to relive their trauma in a searing way.

Lea Clermont-Dion, who was the victim of a sexual assault as a minor and made a documentary about her experience called "You just have to file a complaint," says she was "revictimized" during three days of questioning by lawyers for her attacker.

"For too many years, victims were mistreated by the legal system," says Clermont-Dion, who is now 31.

During questioning, she says, "I really felt at one point like I was the accused, that I was the attacker. The feeling of guilt is completely made worse by these interrogations," she added.

For Clermont-Dion, training will be key to the success of the new court, which officials hope will be up and running across the province within five years, including in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, about an hour's drive south of Montreal.

She says everyone involved in the process needs to understand the concepts that arise in cases of sexual violence, including the idea that a victim could fall prey to the undue influence of a boss or another authority figure.

Indeed, training is already under way. Ten courts have been chosen for the initial pilot project for the special court, for a period of three years. The ultimate goal is to have a specialized court in each courthouse in the province.

In Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, the courthouse is being renovated to feature separate waiting rooms for victims of sexual assault, where they can meet with psychologists and social workers.

Separate entrances are being built so they do not bump into their accusers in the hallways, and screens are being put up in courtrooms and teleconference rooms so that victims can testify without having to look at their attackers.

For Elizabeth Pilote of the Center to Help Victims of Crimes, "clearly the biggest fear victims have is to be in the same room as the accused." Having people from the center to provide assistance to victims from the moment they file their complaints could help "improve the response to victims' questions about each step of the process," says Pilote.

The chief prosecutor in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Pierre-Olivier Gagnon -- who is coordinating the implementation of the pilot project -- says in order to combat the "scourge" of sexual violence and domestic abuse, the justice system "must adapt." Two countries have already tried to create special tribunals for cases of sexual violence: New Zealand and South Africa. As for domestic abuse, those courts exist in multiple forms, and already are in place in some Canadian provinces.

But Quebec is attempting to merge the two types of cases in one tribunal; officials argue that both stem from a patriarchal view of society -- and women are the Primary victims.

Not everyone is on board for the experiment: some in legal circles say that creating a special court could result in an infringement on the presumption of innocence for any defendant, and could even affect the impartiality of the proceedings.

Jolin-Barrette counters that "the rules of the law remain the same." "What we're doing is simply to make the legal process much more humane and victim-focused."For Elisabeth Corte, who co-chaired the experts' committee with Desrosiers and is a former chief judge in Quebec, "improving trust will require us to say and explain exactly what we are doing."In order to eradicate the dysfunctional nature of the old system, it's time to "grab people's attention," Corte says.
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Johannesburg, July 5 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 5th Jul, 2022 ) :Chief Justice Raymond Zondo's welcoming and cheerful smile belies an uncompromising nature that saw the jailing of former South African president Jacob Zuma during a high-level corruption probe.

Over the past four years, the 62-year-old has led a sweeping investigation that revealed a web of well-orchestrated state graft under Zuma and threatens to further shake the ground under the political establishment.

Published in late June, the final part of his report detailed how rampant corruption under Zuma gutted state coffers and recommended that 200 individuals face criminal charges.

Yet, speaking to AFP from his Johannesburg office, Zondo said the more than 5,000-page document also raised broader questions about Africa's most advanced economy.

"How did we as a country get to a stage where we got somebody as president... that is ready to do such things? What is wrong in our system?" Zondo asked.

One of the most troubling findings was Zuma's preparedness to do "wrong things" at the instance of the wealthy Indian-born Gupta brothers, the judge said.

"If there's anything to me that is very important out of this commission is how do we make sure that South Africa never ever gets somebody who would act like that to be its president," he said, a cup of rooibos tea and a small cookie sitting on his large wooden desk.

"In life there's no guarantees... but we have to do whatever we can to minimise the chances that such a thing would happen." Zuma's nine-year presidency gained a reputation for graft where cronies influenced government appointments, contracts and state businesses.

Lawyer turned Constitutional Court judge, Zondo was appointed by Zuma himself in 2018 to head a judicial commission probing state corruption, commonly referred to as "state capture".

Four years later, the report described Zuma as a "critical player" in the high-level plunder of state-owned enterprises that dogged his 2009 to 2018 tenure.

The man once wept in front of cameras during interviews for the position of deputy chief justice as he recounted his difficult rags-to-fame journey and how a village businessman offered to pay his school and university fees.

- Threats - He was later to become the man who obtained a jail term for the former president.

The burly and gentle corruption buster asked the country's top court to try Zuma for contempt of court after the former president snubbed the investigation panel.

After a trial Zuma attended, he was last year jailed for 15 months for refusing to testify before the investigators.

Zuma's jailing sparked riots last July that left more than 350 people dead.

The probe has gained Zondo celebrity status in South Africa, his deep voice and round face a regular feature on television over the past four years, with more than 400 days of testimony broadcast live.

But it came at a personal cost.

Zondo and his family received death threats that the father-of-eight said were linked to the July unrest.

"They would have had to kill me to stop me (from continuing with the probe)," he said. "But members of my family didn't make any decisions, they should have been left alone." In March he was named South Africa's chief justice, an all-powerful role he now plans to return to full time.

"I've done my part, I don't get involved in prosecution," he said of potential future proceedings, adding he had finally enjoyed a "little bit of rest" after handing the report to President Cyril Ramaphosa on June 22.

Those who wanted to learn more about what went wrong could go and read it, added the judge, a fan of traditional Zulu music known as maskandi and gospel.
ULAN BATOR, July 5 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 5th Jul, 2022 ) :The Mongolian government on Tuesday decided to declare 2023 and 2024 as "Years to Visit Mongolia" to promote the country's pandemic-hit tourism sector.

"The move will give a major boost to our country's goal of attracting 1 million foreign tourists in 2024," Mongolian Minister of Environment and Tourism Bat-Ulzii Bat-Erdene told a press conference after a regular meeting of the government.

Meanwhile, the government on Tuesday launched an online platform for promoting Mongolia internationally, said Bat-Erdene.

In addition, every foreign tourist who has obtained an e-visa to come to Mongolia will soon receive a greeting letter from the prime minister of Mongolia titled "Welcome to Mongolia," he said.

Currently, Mongolia's economy is largely dependent on its export-oriented mining sector. Developing tourism is seen as the most viable way to diversify the economy.

Mongolia has set a goal of welcoming 1 million foreign tourists and earning 1 billion U.S. Dollars from tourism in 2024.

The country attracted a total of 42,060 foreign tourists in the first five months of this year, up 391.7 percent from the same period last year, as a result of re-opening its borders to foreign tourists in February.
ULAN BATOR, July 5 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 5th Jul, 2022 ) :A total of 33 people have been killed in 28 water-related accidents registered across Mongolia so far this year, the country's National Emergency Management Agency said Wednesday.

Eight of the victims were children, the agency said, adding that the main causes of the water-related deaths were swimming after consuming alcohol, negligence and leaving children unsupervised.

Heavy rainfall is expected in large parts of the country in the coming days, the emergency agency said, warning the public to remain vigilant and stay away from flooded lakes and rivers to prevent possible accidents.
Kyrgyz Ambassador to Pakistan Totuiaev Ulanbek Asankulovich Tuesday called on Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training Rana Tanveer Hussain and discussed matters pertaining to bilateral interests

ISLAMABAD, Jul 5 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 5th Jul, 2022 ) :Kyrgyz Ambassador to Pakistan Totuiaev Ulanbek Asankulovich Tuesday called on Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training Rana Tanveer Hussain and discussed matters pertaining to bilateral interests.

Welcoming the envoy, Rana Tanveer said Pakistan looked forward to taking its ties with the Kyrgyz Republic to the next level, said a news release. Secretary Education Naheed S. Durrani also attended the meeting.

The minister said there existed immense potential to increase bilateral cooperation that would prove to be beneficial for the two countries, adding "Pakistan and Kyrgyz Republic should take advantage of the opportunity at hand and ensure maximum cooperation.

" The minister discussed ways and means for the exchange of expertise and knowledge in the field of vocational and technical training, adding, the two countries could benefit from the experience of each other.

Rana Tanveer welcomed the idea of the exchange of teachers and students to further cooperation in the field of education.

He said Pakistan could learn from the expertise of the Kyrgyz Republic in Engineering whereas the Kyrgyz Republic could learn from Pakistan concerning academic research.

The minister said both the countries were enjoying cordial relations and had a great friendship, adding, the people of Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan had close cultural and spiritual ties.
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Speaker National Assembly Raja Pervez Ashraf will chair the meeting.

ISLAMABAD: (UrduPoint/UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News-July 5th, 2022) Meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security will be held in Islamabad on Tuesday to discuss current national security issues.

Speaker National Assembly Raja Pervez Ashraf will chair the meeting.

A letter has been sent to the members of the Committee to attend the meeting including Leader of the Opposition in National Assembly, Senior Parliamentary Leaders of both the Houses, Federal Ministers, Senior Political Leaders, Provincial Chief Ministers, President and Prime Minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Chief Minister of Gilgit-Baltistan.

The committee will also be attended by senior members of the National Assembly and the Senate, members of Standing Committees on Defense, Federal Secretaries Defense, Foreign Affairs, Interior, Kashmir Affairs, Health and National Security Division, four provincial chief secretaries, chief secretary Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.
The Parliamentary Committee on National Security on Tuesday gave a formal approval to the government for holding talks with the proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) besides forming a parliamentary oversight committee to ensure the process moved within constitution's ambit.

ISLAMABAD, Jul 5 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 5th Jul, 2022 ) :The Parliamentary Committee on National Security on Tuesday gave a formal approval to the government for holding talks with the proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) besides forming a parliamentary oversight committee to ensure the process moved within constitution's ambit.

The committee, which met with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in chair, underscored the importance of the national grand reconciliation dialogue and called Tuesday's meeting a first step in that direction.

It was told that for stability of regional and internal peace, a government committee was holding talks with the TTP with the cooperation from Afghan government and led by the civil and military leadership, while observing the constitutional limits.

The committee said that the final outcomes of the talks would be implemented after the government's approval and the fulfilment of the formalities within the ambit of the constitution.

The participants of the meeting reiterated that Pakistan had achieved unprecedented successes against extremism and terrorism which were also acknowledged globally.

The committee also paid tribute to the sacrifices of the nation as well as the security forces which led to the establishment of state's writ across the country.

The parliamentary body reiterated that the powers for the use of force rested only with the government.

While acknowledging the sacrifices of the victims of terrorism including those of the Peshawar's Army Public school attack, the meeting made it clear that the state had been and would remain the protector of sacrifices of the martyrs as well as the victim families.

The parliamentary committee also paid tribute to the brave people from tribal areas who rendered huge sacrifices and faced immense difficulties to achieve peace and stability.

It was told that the effective and practical measures by the security forces were part of a strategy comprising the components of clear, hold, construction and devolution of powers to the civil administration.

The participants resolved that the government was committed to the empowerment and prosperity of the said areas, in accordance with the people's desires.

The meeting was attended by the national parliamentary and political leadership, Senate chairman, members of the National Assembly and Senate standing committee related to the Parliamentary Committee on National Security, and defence, Federal ministers, chief ministers of provinces and Gilgit Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir prime minister and the military leadership.
An Ethiopian rebel group on Tuesday denied accusations it was responsible for a massacre of civilians in the restive far west of the country, and pointed the finger of blame instead at government-allied militias

Addis Ababa, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 5th Jul, 2022 ) :An Ethiopian rebel group on Tuesday denied accusations it was responsible for a massacre of civilians in the restive far west of the country, and pointed the finger of blame instead at government-allied militias.

Violence has been on the increase in the Oromia region in recent months, with one rights group suggesting the situation there had been overshadowed by the brutal conflict that erupted in Tigray 20 months ago.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said in a statement posted on Twitter on Monday that the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) had committed mass killings in the Qellem Wollega area of western Oromia, without giving further details.

But OLA spokesman Odaa Tarbii retorted on Twitter: "The regime thinks it can just point fingers & escape accountability".

"Two divisions of the ENDF (Ethiopian National Defence Force) along with allied forces are occupying the towns of Qellem Walaga, including Machaara where civilians were killed en masse by the regime's militias as security forces did nothing," he wrote.

"Both local & international entities have to demand independent investigations and hold Abiy and co accountable for their cruelty." The OLA is a shadowy group that gained new prominence last year when it struck up an alliance with the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) that has been at war with government forces in northern Ethiopia.

Both have been designated terrorist groups by Addis Ababa. Abiy on Monday vowed to "eradicate" the OLA, although he has opened the door to possible peace talks with the Tigrayan rebels.

The US-based Amhara Association of America said Monday's attack targeted ethnic Amharas in Mender 20 (Village 20) in Qellem Wollega in the west of Oromia, the largest and most populous region of Ethiopia.

It said the killings began at dawn and lasted several hours.

A survivor quoted by the regional state-run Amhara Media Corporation said at least 300 bodies had been collected in the village.

It was not possible to verify the information as access to the area in western Oromia, which borders South Sudan, is restricted.

In a country comprising dozens of ethnic groups, the Amharas are the second largest after the Oromo.

- 'Cycle of violence' - Last month, the Ethiopian authorities accused the OLA of killing several hundred mainly Amhara people in the village of Tole in West Wollega, an area adjacent to Qellem Wollega.

The OLA, which has been fighting the Federal government in Oromia since 2018, denied the claims.

No official toll from the Tole massacre has been published, but Abiy's spokeswoman Billene Seyoum said last week that 338 victims had so far been identified.

On June 30, several days after the Tole attack, government spokesman Legesse Tulu told reporters that districts of Qellem Wollega, Western Wollega and Horo-Guduru Wollega were "under the complete control of our joint/coordinated security forces".

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, a state-affiliated independent body, on Monday called for an "urgent reinforcement" of government security forces in the area to prevent further civilian deaths.

"The continued insecurity in the area and what appears to be the ethnically targeted killing of residents must be put to a stop immediately," EHRC chief commissioner Daniel Bekele said in a statement.

US-based Human Rights Watch said on Monday it had documented serious abuses in Oromia, including in the west where an "abusive" government campaign against the OLA had trapped civilians in the crossfire.

It said the Tigray conflict, which has witnessed a lull in recent months after the government declared a "humanitarian ceasefire", was overshadowing a "persistent cycle of violence" against civilians by security forces and armed groups in Oromia.
In a wide-ranging interview with Vatican News, Cardinal-elect William Goh discusses the reality in the international business hub of Singapore, explaining how affluence can impact religion. Having concluded the bicentennial celebration of the Churchs presence on the small island nation in December last year, the Cardinal-elect also offers his candid views on the Churchs priorities and the achievements and difficulties in Asia.

By Deborah Castellano Lubov

On Aug. 27, 2022, Singapore will have its first Cardinal. Cardinal-elect William Goh says he never expected nor sought it, and reflects on the expectations placed on him as he serves the Catholics in one of Asias smallest and richest countries, often portrayed as an international business hub. Despite this, he tells Vatican News in a wide-ranging interview why the Church is flourishing there and how sometimes business and affluence can lead to even more of a quest for God.

How did you learn Pope Francis had named you a Cardinal?

I was preparing a homily and when the news came in, some people sent me some SMS messages congratulating me on being elevated to the rank of Cardinal. I thought maybe it was fake news, so I didn't pay much attention. I just continued working on my homily. I didnt believe it was true at first until many more messages came in, referring to the announcement the Pope made at the end of the Angelus. The full awareness only set in later that evening and the next day.

Pope Francis with Archbishop Goh during 2018 Ad Limina visit

Why do you believe the Holy Father has selected you to be Cardinal? And in what way do you look forward to counseling him as Cardinal?

Well, honestly, I do not know why the Holy Father has chosen me. I'm just an ordinary bishop. I'm just doing my work. I'm an ordinary man, so to speak; a sinner like the rest. Why did the Holy Father choose me? I really do not know. You must ask him [smiling]. This was not something that I aspired to, and certainly not something ever on my mind. I was more focused on completing my term of office here as Archbishop, do a good job and then retire gracefully. But now that reality has set in, I believe that it is the will of God for me to do more than what I'm doing in the Archdiocese of Singapore.



Cardinals that come from different continents and countries will be able to share with the Holy Father the situation in the different countries, regarding the Catholic faith as well as that of the other religions and the political situations.

Can you tell us about the small Christian minority in Singapore?

Actually, I wouldn't say that we are a small Christian minority. We are quite a potent force, actually, because if you were to look at the countrys statistics, Singapore has a population of some 3.5 million citizens.

Christians make up almost 20 percent of the population. With Catholics being about 7 percent of the population, we make up 37 percent of the countrys total Christianity population. So actually, Christianity, between Catholics and Protestants, make up the second largest religious group in Singapore

So as far as the religious composition of Singapores population stands, Buddhism is about 31%, followed by Christianity almost 20%, then Islam around 15%, Taoism is almost 9%, and Hinduism with 5%.

Singapore

As a Church, we are the biggest, because we have 240,000 adult Catholics is (those 15 years and older). If you include the children, we are 350,000 or 360,000. [In Singapore, statistics show there are some 240,000 Catholics aged 15 years and above. Other Christians number about 411K and the Catholics are 242K]

We are quite a major, you can say, presence in Singapore. But the other group that is equally big is or slightly bigger than us would be the growing number of those without religions. About 20% do not profess any religion. But that doesn't mean to say they're atheist. It's just that they don't subscribe to any particular religion. Doesn't mean that they don't believe in God. Some might not, but 20% they do not belong to any religion as such.

Christianity is quite a big community and that is why in Singapore we play a very important role in the country.

Singapore

What is it like to be a practicing Catholic in Singapore?



In Singapore, the people are highly educated and most of them hold academic degrees and the people here have high expectations of priests, not just only in terms of their moral life, but in terms of their preaching and teaching. The Catholic population basically, comes from the middle class, upper lower middle class. Mostly all Catholics have an education.

Looking at the faith of our people, they want to know more. They want to listen to good homilies. They are searching. They want to grow in faith. Of course, the older generation tends to be a bit more devotional in their faith, just practicing, but they have strong faith. For the younger group, they are very much into wanting to discover more of their faith.

Our Catholics are actually very active, whether in the Church or in social political life. They have a great influence in society. And we are; you know, we are Asians. We are very polite. We don't make a lot of noise. We don't shout. We don't protest all those things [smiling]. But we in our own ways, in a quiet way, we witness to the faith.

Image of celebrations for the bicentennial of the Church in Singapore

What is that witness like?

All in all, I say we have a very active number of Catholics. Pre-Covid, all our churches every Sunday are packed to the brim. Every Sunday. But then, of course, if you think in terms of the entire Catholic population, which is about, including children, maybe about 360,000[the figure takes into account the total Catholic population in Singapore, including children and migrants, of which one-third are deemed to be active Catholics who attend Church services], we think about 140,000 or 150,000 might go to church on Sunday. If everybody goes to church, we would need to build more churches. The people are really I mean, I think on the whole--it's not just the Catholics alone - Asians are religious minded. We tend to see the importance of the sacred - God in our life.

Singapore is one of the richest Asian countries and one of the smallest in the world? My question had been, would you describe it as a religious country?

Yes. In fact, Singapore, we don't consider ourselves a secular country, [confirmed] every time when we have dialogue with the government. Actually, all religions are partners of the government. That is why we consider ourselves a multi-racial, multi-religious state with a secular government to ensure neutrality.

Singapore

So, 80% of Singaporeans, including those in the government, they have a faith, have a religion, and they are very what we call - very fervent believers, whichever party they belong to. Even the government and those in government service, 80% have a faith in God or belong to some religion. We are multi-religious and the government sees us as partners because at the end of the day it is for the betterment of the people to help get the people to be united together and to help the country to grow. The government is very grateful to all the religions.

I think the great thing about our government is its neutrality. That is why it is a secular government. Its very important to preserve the harmony among the many religions that we have in Singapore. And, we don't fight with each other.

In fact, we have a law. If you were to insult another religion, you go to jail. So, nobody insults the Catholics here because we have deep respect for each other and we come together very often among the religions. Most of the religious leaders, we, know each other in a very personal way. So, for any issues, any difficulties, we will talk with each other and are supportive of one another. That is why there is religious harmony in Singapore which you might not be able to see in some other countries, even in Asia.

I must say, even though you say Singapore is very affluent, this is true, but, you know, that affluence can drive people to extreme directions.

In what way are you suggesting affluence can impact religiosity?

Affluence can make a person lose faith in God and [be centered] on materialism. But affluence can also force or drive people into looking for meaning and purpose in life. So, for Singaporeans, we are quite affluent. That is true. Most people have more than what they need, but people are looking for meaning and purpose, especially the younger generation, those who are, let's say, 30 and below, because the parents, they are affluent, they are all well established. Money is not the real problem for those in their thirties because most families have only two children.

The young people today, they are not so interested in looking for jobs that will give them good pay or good remuneration. They are asking: does this job give me purpose and meaning? So that is why, in our Christian faith, I always try to help these people to see the meaning and purpose of life. What are you living for? Are you living for this Gospel? Is that where your heart is, where your treasure is? This is where I drive the people to make them reflect more consciously, and see that what actually makes us happy is not things, but that they have a certain what we call, level of satisfaction and sense of purpose.

Pope Francis amid the young people

Pope Francis has dedicated throughout his pontificate many signals of attention toward the peripheries of the world and the smallest and the newest Churches. And what about the Pope's teachings has struck you the most?

What I like most about the Holy Father's teaching is, is inclusivity that somehow everybody is important and also this strong emphasis on compassion. I think what the Church needs today is really compassion. And priests, especially priests and religious, I think we need to show more compassion for people who are weak, who are not able to live up to the teachings of the Church. We need to journey with them as what the Holy Father sees instead of being judgmental, because I believe that we are all struggling to be faithful to the Gospel. We are not perfect either. I think the Gospel is the ideal of course. We cannot compromise the values of the Gospel, but at the same time we need to be realistic. We need to be compassionate, to feel with those who are struggling to live up to their faith. I like the Holy Fathers emphasis on compassion and inclusivity. Everybody must somehow be embraced by the Church, whether those who are divorced, those who are LGBTQ, those who are on the peripheries, the poor. And I think this is what the Church is all about.

Why do you believe Pope Francis is giving the Church in Asia particular attention with his choices of Cardinal nominations during his consistories?

Well, I think the faith in Asia is very alive. It's almost the same as in Africa. Here the Church is considered quite new. We are! Our Archdiocese only celebrated its 200th anniversary last year as when Christianity came to Singapore. Again, I think we go back to the point that the Holy Father stressed on inclusivity [when considering] the question of the universal Church.

If the Church is ready to be universal, I think it must be more proportionately represented by the different continents and countries, so that the Church can be truly called the Catholic Church. In Asia, if you think in terms of conversion, there are plenty of opportunities to spread the faith because Asia is such a big continent and the faith is young. The faith is growing and the people are still young. The opportunities for evangelization are so great in Asia.

What do you see as being the greatest challenges for the Church in Asia? And what, on the other hand, can the Church in Asia teach the rest of the Church?

Let me share something with you. When I attend the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences, the FABC, you realise that Asia is such a big continent. Through so many countries, it reflects the makeup of Asia. The countries are so diverse in terms of political stability, culture, religion, and standards of living. We have many and very diverse languages when we come together.

Street view of Tokyo

At the FABC, we just celebrated our 50th anniversary, which we have postponed to this year. Trying to get a consensus is a big challenge because we are very diverse. Even Singapore is so different from our next-door neighbor, Malaysia, in terms of their pastoral, religious and cultural challenges. I think that diversity is the greatest challenge for Asia.

We thank God in Singapore we have a government that promotes interreligious dialogue. But in other countries, unfortunately, a lot of, you can say, subtle or sometimes, even obvious, oppression of religions, especially of the Christian faith, the Catholic faith. Many of these governments they have state religions and so, a lot of sensitivity would be involved for dialogue in terms of getting the people to be united. If the government is not pro-interreligious harmony, [it] is a bit difficult.

In Singapore, we try to become as you can see, the model of what and how all religions can live together in peace, in harmony, but precisely because in Singapore, we don't have a state religion.

Religions are purely religions. We don't get involved in politics. Politicians are people. They are voted by the people. We leave the government to decide for the people. But the government is not against religion, so religion is a help. For us, then, we can promote harmony much easier.

But in larger Asia, religion is mixed, often mixed up with politics. Religion tries to use politics to gain power, politics tries to use religion to gain political policy. That becomes very confusing. And we don't know sometimes, when religion is really used to promote the faith or used as instruments to gain political power. It's a bit complex. On top of that, in Asia, the challenges of spreading the good news will be much more difficult because there are so many languages and you need to translate, for one country, into four or five languages. Although in Singapore, everybody speaks English. That has saved us a lot of trouble. My mother tongue is a Chinese dialect. But everybody in Singapore will know English, which makes conversing easier. Of course, we encourage retaining of culture. We still encourage others who come from other countries, like Myanmar, Vietnam, France or Italy, to keep their languages and culture. But then the other challenge, I think of Asia, is how to inculturate the faith. We must also be prudent with inculturation.

Photo of a Pre-Covid FABC Meeting

You spoke before about good news. When looking at a Church where in the West there is somewhat a dwindling of priestly vocations, but in some parts of Asia, there's really a boom, isnt there?

In Asia again, there are differences. This is our challenge. In Singapore, we have vocations, not to say we do not have them, but in an affluent country, sometimes it is a bit more difficult to get people into priestly religious life. Although I think in terms of vocations, we have quite a lot if we bring in together the religious vocations, not just the diocesan priesthood. But you notice and this is again a great difficulty for the Asian Church in those countries that are, you can say, not so affluent, they have plenty of vocations, too many! We do not know whether they are true vocations or not, or just to escape from the poverty cycle.

So, discernment [is needed] because the seminaries are often full. There is difficulty trying to discern. But we must work to recognize what vocations are really genuine, even as we are trying to look for good vocations!
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin has left Kinshasa to travel to Juba, the second stop on his trip to Africa on behalf of the Pope. He will meet Tuesday with the President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, and the First Vice President, Riek Machar.

By Salvatore Cernuzio - Juba



Cardinal Parolin says he is leaving the Democratic Republic of Congo "refreshed by his experience. Now he begins Tuesday the second part of his trip to Africa on behalf of the Pope. The next stop is Juba, capital of South Sudan, where - the cardinal tells the Vatican media accompanying him on the trip - the hope is to help bring about lasting peace, so that "there may be the ability to reconcile, and agreements may be found to close this painful page," perhaps before the general elections of 2023.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, "an intense moment

Before boarding a plane at Addis Ababa airport in Ethiopia, the Cardinal described his time in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a very beautiful, intense and positive moment. At least, the first impressions confirm that the visit served precisely to bring the Pope's presence and affection to the population and the Church that awaited him with such hope. I hope that all this can be repeated in South Sudan.

"Certainly," Cardinal Parolin stressed, "the situation, including the political one, is very delicate. So we will have to continue, as the Holy See has always done, to insist on peace so that there is the ability to reconcile and find agreements to close a painful page. It is hoped also with the next elections in 2023 that this can be realised.

The retreat of Sudanese leaders in Santa Marta

The Secretary of State then recalled the retreat in Santa Marta in April 2019, which was attended by the President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, and the Vice Presidents-designate, Riek Machar and Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabio. At the end of days of prayer and discussion, and in an unprecedented gesture, the Pope knelt to kiss their feet and implore peace for the country. "We are putting ourselves in the same line as the Pope, Cardinal Parolin said, precisely to reiterate this invitation, this exhortation, this prayer for peace."

Read also 04/07/2022 Cardinal Parolin with the poor in Kinshasa: You have passed from death to life On his second day in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cardinal Pietro Parolin shares Pope Francis closeness with local religious congregations and the poor whom they assist, ...

The greeting in Kinshasa

The Secretary of State left the Congolese capital Kinshasa in the early afternoon of 4 July, after celebrating an early morning Mass with the community of the diocesan major seminary. There, he greeted and stopped to talk with formators and seminarians with whom he enjoyed a moment of fraternity, interspersed with various songs. The Cardinal who also signed the Book of Honour, then moved to the Apostolic Nunciature, which welcomed him with great affection during these three days. To the entire 'family' of the Nunciature, led by Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, Cardinal Parolin addressed words of gratitude and encouragement: You work for the Pope, do not forget that. Once again, the Cardinal reiterated the Pontiff's desire to travel there as soon as possible.

The programme in Juba

On the agenda in Juba is a meeting with the President of the Republic, Salva Kiir, in the afternoon followed by a meeting with the First Vice President, Riek Machar. In the evening, a meeting with the country's bishops is scheduled. On 6 July, one of the most significant moments of the trip to South Sudan will take place: the visit to the Bentiu camp among displaced people living in difficult conditions, with poor water and hygiene services. Cardinal Parolin will celebrate a Mass for them, and then meet UN representatives and the governor. On 7 July there will be a Mass in John Garang Mausoleum Park, a memorial dedicated to the leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army and first vice president of Sudan following the peace agreements. It is the same place where the Pope was to celebrate Mass. The Secretary of State will bless the foundation stone of the new Apostolic Nunciature in Juba and meet clergy and religious. At the end of the trip, there will be a visit to the Catholic University and to the Children's Centre in Usratuna, a place where people belonging to different religions collaborate for the integration of disabled children and the training of their families. On the afternoon of the 8 July, the Cardinal will depart for Rome, where he is scheduled to arrive the following day.
The US government recently approved a 24-month tariff exemption for solar panels from four Southeast Asian countries: Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Thailand to meet national renewable electricity demand. Vietnam Briefing looks at the opportunities and how Vietnams solar panel manufacturing is likely to benefit in the long term.

On June 6, 2022, the US announced a tariff exemption for solar panels from Vietnam along with Cambodia, Malaysia, and Thailand for up to 24 months to meet the skyrocketing solar energy demand in the US.

The transition to renewable energy is a priority for the US as it strives to transform its economy into a sustainable and green economy. However, the shortage of domestic manufacturing capacity has led the US to mass import solar panels from Vietnam  a trusted partner in trade.

While experts had anticipated that further tariff expansion on Asian countries would be the case after the US announced an extended tariff for Chinas solar panels in 2011, the exemption of tariff for the four Southeast Asian countries was not expected.

Here, we examine the current situation of solar panel manufacturing in Vietnam and how it can serve the US electricity market.

Vietnams solar panel manufacturing industry

The solar panel manufacturing industry in Vietnam is growing for both foreign and domestic firms specializing in manufacturing photovoltaic cells and modules. The competition is especially fierce, given that there are mostly foreign-owned companies, including China and the US, with only one Vietnamese firm.

First Solar is a US-based firm and the leading performer of solar panel production in Vietnam, with an annual production capacity of up to 2.7 GW, far exceeding all other players. First Solar is committed to a long-term partnership with the Vietnamese industry, as it has invested a total capital investment of US$830 million out of the US$1.2 billion committed capital investment.

The majority of other firms are either owned or invested by prominent Chinese conglomerates. That is, both Trina Solar Vietnam and JA Solar receive 100 percent investment from Chinas TrinaSolar group and JA Solar group, respectively. The two firms combined currently make up a large portion of Vietnams solar panel supply.

The only Vietnamese firm in the industry, IREX is a subsidiary of SolarBK. This is the only local firm known to manufacture solar panels, with a market share of just 1 percent.

Vietnam is slowly positioning itself on the global market as a leading exporter of solar panels, exporting to 50+ countries worldwide and making up a considerable share of the worlds electricity supply pie. Vietnams current export of solar panels as of 2020 is as follows:

Country Export Value (in US$) US 3.4 billion Canada 91 million The EU 57.8 million Turkey 19.5 million The UK 17.2 million Japan 15.6 million Australia 1.5 million

US electricity consumption and supply

Electricity consumption in the US has been at an all-time high for the past several years, ranging from 3,800 to 4000 terawatt-hours.

The US electricity needs has been met by a combination of different sources, including coal, natural gas, renewable sources, and nuclear power. The market share of the sources can be seen in the below infographic.

Natural gas still boasts the number one position as the leading generator of electricity in the US, claiming 40 percent, while renewables, coal, and nuclear power share relatively equal proportions at 21 percent, 19 percent, and 20 percent respectively.

It can be assumed that renewable energy utilization in the US is on the rise, up 9 percent compared to 2019, and projected to claim a further 10 percent by 2025, overtaking natural gas as the dominant source of electricity.

The pattern has indicated an immense potential for solar panel export to the US as the country shifts its focus to renewable energy.

Tariff exemption for Vietnams solar panels: What does it mean for businesses?

Vietnam has been a prominent exporter of solar panels to the US for the past couple of years, claiming over US$3.4 billion in export value in the industry as of 2020. Today, the US is the biggest export market for Vietnam while the latter is the formers 10th supplier of import goods. The top Vietnam export category is electrical machinery, generating US$27 billion in 2020 and US$ 36 billion in 2021, which includes the export of photovoltaic panels.

Data shows that in Q3 2021, solar panel module imports of the US fell sharply by 27 compared to Q2, due to the consequences of US tariffs on solar panels from China.

A drastic fall in photovoltaic panel imports due to tariff expansion in parallel with post-pandemic supply chain disruption and difficulties in global shipping has left the US deficit in solar cell supply, which has been leveraged as a call for emergency measures by US President Joe Biden who invoked the Defense Production Act after complaints from industry groups of supply chain issues hampering the solar panel industry.

The tariff exemption for solar panels from Vietnam and three other Southeast Asian countries comes as an ideal push for solar manufacturers in these countries and will help ramp up production to meet domestic solar panel production demand.

The exemption indicates the promising prospects of investing in manufacturing solar panels in Vietnam. Vietnam offers immeasurable opportunities for developing photovoltaic production, with an increasing number of economic zones and industrial parks on the rise, making Vietnam an attractive China+1 destination. Meanwhile, the US tariff exemption of the commodity means businesses in the industry are bound to multiply their profits while the costs remain unchanged.

However, the Vietnam Trade Remedies Authority advised businesses to stay cautious when it comes to the anti-circumvention investigation by the US. Its reported that the US is still conducting further investigation into whether the four Southeast Asian nations are practicing circumvention on anti-dumping and tariff-countervailing on solar panels from China.

Although there has yet to be any official statement from the US on the issue, it is advisable for investors and manufacturers to take advantage of the 24-month tariff exemption to elevate their business while looking to diversify their markets to avoid dependence on the US.

Further, businesses should ensure their products comply with rules or origin guidelines to be eligible for exports to the US. That is, the manufacturing of solar panel components and modules must be manufactured in Vietnam to ensure the origin of the finished products.

Tax exemption expiration: What to expect?

Following the next 24 months, the concern is on whether the US will lift the exemption. Experts have held the view that should the domestic solar panel industry in the US fail to scale up, either tariff exemption or reduced tariff may be implemented to meet the countrys renewable energy demand.

However, as the future of renewable energy is promising and countries are uniformly shifting their focus to a green and sustainable economy, the demand for solar panels is likely to remain intact in the long term. Should the US no longer provide tariff support, investors may seek to diversify their markets due to growing demand. As of now, Vietnam is exporting solar panels to well over 50 countries, and this list is likely to grow.

For further insights on how to enter the solar panel market or actively manage the current operation for greater efficiency, investors can contact our experts for an in-depth discussion.
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Vietnams energy consumption will continue to grow as the economy recovers from the pandemic-induced downturn outstripping GDP growth.

Tight deadlines will make it difficult for investors to benefit from revised feed-in-tariffs, but new investment mechanisms are being considered.

Other challenges regarding infrastructure and administrative processes need to be addressed to fully take advantage of Vietnams solar energy potential.

Vietnams golden era for solar development

In June 2020, Sharp Energy Solutions Corporation (SESJ) completed a mega solar power plant in Ninh Thuan province, which is expected to generate 76,373 megawatt hour (MWh) per year. The plant is the newest addition to SESJs five other existing solar power plants in Vietnam.

Sharp is only one of the many companies that cashed in on Vietnams hunger for renewable power by investing in large-scale solar power projects. As the country bounces back from the pandemic-induced downturn, its energy demand is expected to rise by over 9 percent from 2021 in the next decade. The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) in a draft report forecast that Vietnam will need about US$128.3 billion of investment to develop its electricity industry in the 2021-2030 period.

For years, Vietnam like many other developing countries relied on coal as the cheapest and easiest option to meet energy needs. However, technological progress and growing environmental concerns have made renewable energies more attractive. In 2017, solar energy played almost no part in Vietnams energy strategy. By the end of 2019, Vietnam surpassed Malaysia and Thailand to reach the largest installed capacity of solar panels in Southeast Asia. The country found itself with 5 gigawatts (GW) of photovoltaic projects, far exceeding the 1 GW by 2020 target.

The following article takes a look at Vietnams recent solar boom and the future trajectory of solar energy development in the country.

FiT approved in the midst of uncertainty

Much of Vietnams recent success with solar energy can be attributed to feed-in-tariffs (FiT). FiTs encourage investment in renewable energy by guaranteeing an above-market price for producers. Since they usually involve long-term contracts, FITs help mitigate the risks inherent in renewable energy production.

In April 2020, the Vietnamese government finalized new solar FiTs, ten months after the previous FiT program expired in June 2019. The new tariffs are 10-24 percent lower than before and are still uniform across regions but differentiated by type (ground-mounted, floating, and rooftop).

Under the new decision, solar projects were required to achieve commercial operation by December 31, 2020, to benefit from the new FiT rates. The delay in the governments approval gave solar developers a very narrow time frame to work with.

With the current supply chain disruptions affecting solar cells and module delivery from China, and other pandemic-induced economic uncertainties, it was very challenging for firms to become operational before the deadline. Thus, advisory firms like FitchSolutions expect that the new FiT scheme will not be the main driver of investments in solar energy in Vietnam.

Looking forward, Vietnam still intends to implement an auction mechanism in the future. All projects who do not qualify for the new FIT rates will go through a competitive bidding process. By giving the government the ability to issue a call for tenders and select the most price-competitive firms, the scheme will help better manage clean energy development across the country.

However, a transition away from a FiT scheme may take longer than expected given that undeveloped large-scale photovoltaic projects were just approved to receive tariffs. Attracting investment will largely depend on the governments ability to deliver a clear auction scheme and other incentives on time.

Long-term commitment to boost solar energy

The revised FiT came shortly after the Vietnamese government announced that it intends to double its power generation capacity over the next decade. This will increase the proportion of renewable energy to 20 percent in an attempt to reduce reliance on coal for electricity production.

In late 2019, the Prime Minister approved the outline of the national Power Development Plan (PDP) VIII, expected to be completed sometime in 2021. The PDP VIII covers the period of 2021 to 2030 with a vision to 2045 and sets out renewable energy development and investment attraction as two of the key priorities.

The draft PDP forecasts that by 2030, Vietnams electricity sources could reach 132.2 GW with 27 percent from coal-fired plants, 21 percent from gas thermal power, 18 percent from hydroelectricity, 29 percent from wind, solar, and renewable energy, and four percent from other imported sources.

The plan encourages the development of renewable energy and discourages hydroelectricity. Renewables made up 13 percent of power in 2020 but the aim is to make it 30 percent by 2030. This is an ambitious goal but reflects the governments push to switch to renewables.

In addition to developing the PDP VIII, the MOIT also submitted Proposal No.544/TTr-BCT on January 21, 2020, which outlines a pilot program on direct power purchase agreement (DPPA) mechanisms.

The DPPA program would allow energy producers to sell and deliver electricity to corporate consumers instead of going through a state-owned electric utility company. The proposal sets a two-year timeframe for implementing the pilot program and lays out the criteria for participating developers and private power consumers. It is expected to range between 400-1000 megawatts (MW) and will be available nationwide.

Despite some criticism of the DPPAs limited scope, the proposal is a positive development for the growth of renewables in Vietnam. It signals that Vietnam is a serious solar player that is willing to implement supportive mechanisms to retain investor interest in the renewable energy sector.

Investors will have to contend with other challenges

Beyond the uncertainties over future investment schemes, there are other factors that both investors and government authorities need to consider as Vietnam moves forward with solar energy development.

First, there are some infrastructure shortcomings that hinder energy transmission. Most solar power plants are concentrated in the sunny southern region, where they tend to overwhelm the national grid. Meanwhile, some solar plants have seen their operation date delayed due to incomplete transmission lines.

The government has proposed to develop the power transmission system and source power from central, south-central, north-central, and central regions. It also stated to apply the research of a smart grid system and use Industry 4.0 technology to optimize transmission systems.

Bringing energy to economic centers and northern cities is, therefore, still a challenge. The new PDP aims to address this by ensuring that energy development is balanced among the regions, and that power grids are connected within Vietnam and with neighboring countries as well.

Further, ground-mounted solar projects need to consider land rights, an issue that looms large in Vietnam. Though investors can benefit from exemptions from land-use fees and rents, administrative processes can take time and cause significant delays.

There are still uncertainties regarding the future of coal. While the PDP VIII emphasizes sustainable development to address climate change, Vietnams coal imports in the first half of 2020 surged by 53.8 percent from a year earlier, a record high. According to the MOIT, coal-fired plants account for around 35 percent of Vietnams power generation capacity.

The ministry expects that the country will face severe power shortages as the construction of new power plans fall behind the fast-growing demand for energy. Thus, coal may continue to fill the energy gap in the upcoming years.

However, there are signs of dwindling interest for coal. The majority of planned coal power capacity has been delayed or postponed. Though alleged corruption and engineering difficulties partly explain these delays, local opposition and a global movement away from coal power are also major contributing factors.

For example, South Korean and Japanese lenders have pulled back their investment in coal power projects, while Chinese companies are becoming more aware of the risks of continuing to invest in coal. Most recently, Mitsubishi Corp in February pulled out of a coal-fired power plant in Central Vietnam due to international concern about the environmental impact of coal.

Nevertheless, with proper strategic planning and increased support for investment, Vietnam can leverage the opportunities provided by the solar boom and cement its position as a renewables leader in Southeast Asia.

Note: This article was first published in August 2020, and has been updated to include the latest developments.
Malawi's National Organization for Nurses and Midwives says about 2,000 nurses will leave the country this year for jobs in Saudi Arabia and the United States. The group says the nurses were forced to take jobs abroad due to high unemployment in Malawi. Health rights campaigners say the brain drain is alarming as more than half of nursing positions in Malawi's public hospitals are vacant, which the government blames on lack of funding.



Malawi's National Organization for Nurses and Midwives said that currently more than 3,000 trained nurses in Malawi are unemployed.



We feel the pinch that unemployed nurses and midwives have gone through and are going through, said Shouts Simeza, president of the organization. Having graduated with a qualification and having been licensed to practice for five years without being recruited is not an easy way of doing things.

Simeza said the first group of 1,000 nurses is expected to leave for Saudi Arabia in August. The plan is to send 1,000 each year for a five-year project.



George Jobe, executive director of the Malawi Health Equity Network, said he is concerned the nurses going abroad do not know enough about the jobs they are taking.

Who else has gone to these countries and checked the health facilities they will work in, and under what condition? Jobe said. These are some of the issues, but paramount to everything is that we wished these were recruited here.

Simeza said the organization has received assurances about the work in Saudi Arabia.



Government statistics show that 65 percent of nursing positions in public hospitals in Malawi remain vacant.



Dorothy Ngoma, adviser to the president on maternal mortality and reproductive health, said that unless the government finds a way to boost pay for nurses, many more will leave the country.



What will happen is that even the ones that are in the mainstream will choose to quit government jobs here and go to the U.S and earn more money, said Ngoma, who is also a past president of the nurses organization. And there is nothing wrong with that. But, it definitely might cause brain drain and that might not be good for Malawi.



However, the Malawi government says it cannot hire more nurses now, because of financial constraints.
A small new study published Tuesday by scientists at the U.S. National Institutes of Health suggests that the immune response triggered by coronavirus infections damages the brain's blood vessels and could be responsible for long COVID symptoms.

The paper, published in the journal Brain, was based on brain autopsies from nine people who died suddenly after contracting the virus.

Rather than detecting evidence of COVID in the brain, the team found it was the people's own antibodies that attacked the cells lining the brain's blood vessels, causing inflammation and damage.

This discovery could explain why some people have lingering effects from infection including headache, fatigue, loss of taste and smell, and inability to sleep as well as "brain fog"  and may also help devise new treatments for long COVID.

NIH scientist Avindra Nath, the paper's senior author, said in a statement: "Patients often develop neurological complications with COVID-19, but the underlying pathophysiological process is not well understood.

"We had previously shown blood vessel damage and inflammation in patients' brains at autopsy, but we didn't understand the cause of the damage. I think in this paper we've gained important insight into the cascade of events."

The nine individuals, ages 24 to 73, were selected from the team's earlier study because they showed evidence of blood vessel damage in their brains based on scans.

Their brains were compared to those from 10 control individuals.

The scientists discovered that antibodies produced against COVID-19 mistakenly targeted cells that form the blood-brain barrier, a structure designed to keep harmful invaders out of the brain while allowing necessary substances to pass.

Damage to these cells can cause leakage of proteins, bleeding and clots, which elevates the risk of stroke.

The leaks also trigger immune cells called macrophages to rush to the site to repair damage, causing inflammation.

The team found that normal cellular processes in the areas targeted by the attack were severely disrupted, which had implications for things such as their ability to detoxify and to regulate metabolism.

The findings offer clues about the biology at play in patients with long-term neurological symptoms, and can inform new treatments, for example, a drug that targets the buildup of antibodies on the blood-brain barrier.

"It is quite possible that this same immune response persists in long COVID patients resulting in neuronal injury," Nath said.

This would mean that a drug that dials down that immune response could help those patients, he added. "So these findings have very important therapeutic implications."
Canada says its diplomats in China were barred from attending the trial of a Chinese-born Canadian billionaire who disappeared from a Hong Kong hotel in 2017.

The Canadian government issued a statement Tuesday that Ottawa made several requests to attend the trial proceedings of Xiao Jianhua. Our attendance was denied by Chinese authorities, the statement said.

The Canadian embassy in Beijing said Monday it was aware that Xiao would be going on trial that day, but did not specify the location or charges against him.

Xiao, the founder of Beijing-based financial group, Tomorrow Group, was born in China and was known to have links to Chinas Communist Party echelon.

His disappearance came as the Chinese government was prosecuting businesspeople accused of bribery and other misconduct, in an anti-corruption campaign said to be spearheaded by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Xiao vanished at a time when Chinese police were prohibited from operating in Hong Kong, which has a separate legal system under the one country, two systems framework put in place after the territorys handover from Britain to China.

Chinese authorities have not confirmed or denied whether Xiao was detained, nor have they disclosed possible charges against him.

The 2016 Hurun China list of richest people, the countrys equivalent of the Forbes list, ranked Xiao as the 32nd wealthiest person in China with an estimated net worth of $5.97 billion.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
The Canadian government said Monday it had signed a $15.5 billion agreement to compensate First Nations children and families harmed by chronic underfunding of child welfare.

The Assembly of First Nations and plaintiffs in two class action lawsuits agreed to the deal.

Indigenous Services Canada, a government agency, said the settlement is the largest in Canadian history.

The parties have agreed on a plan for settling compensation claims to recognize the families and people who have suffered tremendously through discriminatory and systemically racist child-welfare practices," said Patty Hajdu, the Indigenous services minister.

The settlement accounts for half of an overall $31.1 billion deal that aims to reform Canada's child welfare system, including five-year funding for the First Nations Child and Family Services program.

The settlement must still be approved by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and the Federal Court.

Cindy Woodhouse, the Manitoba regional chief at the Assembly of First Nations, praised the deal.

And after three decades of advocacy and months of negotiations, I'm proud to say on behalf the AFN that we have reached another historic milestone for our children and their families," she said in a statement.

The First Nations Children and Family Caring Society and the Assembly of First Nations filed a complaint under the Canadian Human Rights Act in 2007, arguing that Indigenous child welfare services were chronically underfunded compared with services provided to children in other communities.

Data from the 2016 census shows that less than 8% of Canadian children under age 15 are Indigenous, but Indigenous youths make up more than half the children under 15 in foster care.

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled in 2016 that the federal government had discriminated against First Nations children. The government appealed the ruling, but the court upheld the decision.
The World Food Program warns the Central African Republic is facing unprecedented levels of food insecurity due to conflict, population displacement, widespread poverty, and underemployment.

WFP officials say they anticipate a sharp increase in commodity prices this year and extending well into 2023. They say the price of rice is expected to rise by 30%, wheat flour by 67%, and vegetable oil by a staggering 70%.

That, they note, will make staple food products unaffordable for millions of people, leading to more hunger and more distress as people are forced to resort to extreme measures to put food on the table.

WFP spokesman Tomson Phiri says 2.2 million people are food insecure in C.A.R.

The figure might not shock you out of your seats but when you look at the population size, that is nearly half the population of the Central African Republic," said Phiri. "And the country now joins the league of nations, such as Afghanistan, Yemen, South Sudan with the highest proportion of acutely food insecure.

As less food becomes available, Phiri says more children will suffer from malnutrition.

UNICEF says the number of severely acutely malnourished children under age five is expected to rise in the country by 10% this year to 69,000. Children suffering from the condition are at risk of dying if they do not get the right medical and nutritional care.

Phiri says the WFP is struggling to provide the food and specialized treatment needed by children, women, and other vulnerable people in the C.A.R. and a lack of money is hindering those efforts.

Our costs of operating are skyrocketing," said Phiri. "The United Nations World Food Program is appealing urgently for $68.4 million. Without immediate funding, food and nutrition insecurity will only increase for millions of people.

Phiri says the challenges facing the C.A.R. are well documented and pre-date the crisis in Ukraine. But noting the impact of the war on rising commodity and fuel prices, he says humanitarian assistance will be required well beyond this year and into 2023.
Chileans are one step closer to voting for a new constitution that would replace the charter imposed by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

The countrys constitutional assembly presented a draft of the proposed new constitution Monday to President Gabriel Boric during a ceremony in Santiago. The text includes 388 articles that recognizes the existence of Chiles Indigenous groups and focuses on social issues such as environmental, health care, housing and gender equality.

A referendum to approve the proposed new constitution will be held on September 4. The referendum comes two years after Chileans voted overwhelmingly to replace the one implemented in 1973 by Pinochet, and revised throughout his brutal 17-year reign, that favors free-market economic initiatives. Massive and violent protests erupted in 2020 over income and social inequality.

But public support for the proposed charter has fallen since the beginning of the year due to the chaotic drafting process during the year-long assembly.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi will meet his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, for talks in Angola this week, officials said Monday.

There were no details on what they would discuss, but the neighbors have been at diplomatic loggerheads since a surge of attacks in eastern Congo by the M23 rebel group  which Kinshasa accuses Kigali of backing.

Rwanda denies supporting the rebels and has, in turn, accused Congo of fighting alongside insurgents  a faceoff that has raised fears of fresh conflict in the region.

The meeting is likely to take place on Tuesday or Wednesday in Angola's capital, Luanda, according to the officials  two of them from Congo and one Rwanda  who did not wish to be named.

Earlier on Monday, Kagame said he did not mind Rwanda being excluded from a regional military force set up in April to fight rebels in east Congo, removing a potential stumbling block to the initiative.

Congo had welcomed the plan but said it would not accept the involvement of Rwanda.

"I have no problem with that. We are not begging anyone that we participate in the force," Kagame told Rwanda's state broadcaster in a wide-ranging interview.

"If anybody's coming from anywhere, excluding Rwanda, but will provide the solution that we're all looking for, why would I have a problem?" Kagame said.

At the end of March, the M23 started waging its most sustained offensive in Congo's eastern borderlands since capturing vast swaths of territory in 2012 and 2013.

Rwanda accuses Congo's army of firing into Rwandan territory and fighting alongside the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, an armed group run by ethnic Hutus who fled Rwanda after taking part in the 1994 genocide.

Recent attempts to stop the violence militarily have proven unsuccessful, and in some cases backfired, security analysts and human rights groups say.

Despite billions of dollars spent on one of the United Nations' largest peacekeeping forces, more than 120 rebel groups continue to operate across large swaths of east Congo almost two decades after the official end of the central African country's civil wars.
At least 500 children have died this year of malnutrition as Somalia deals with record-breaking drought, the U.N. Childrens Fund (UNICEF) said.

UNICEF Somalia says the death toll is just the tip of the iceberg as many deaths go unreported.

UNICEF Somalia spokesman Victor Chinyama told VOA the drought is having its worst effects on children, with 400,000 at risk of severe acute malnourishment.

If not reached immediately with emergency support, those children will be in danger of dying, Chinyama added.

"And so far, we have recorded about 500 deaths of children that have been admitted for severe acute malnutrition and this is only a tip of the iceberg because we know that there are many more children whose deaths are never recorded. These children are dying in their homes, they are dying on the way as they travel in search of help," he said.

"Help is desperately needed at this point," Chinyama said.

He said UNICEF Somalia has appealed for $112 million in emergency funds for this year but have only received about half.

The worst drought in the Horn of Africa in four decades is set to get worse as the region faces a fifth straight failed rainy season.

Officials in the town of Dolow, on Somalias border with Ethiopia and Kenya, say they still host about 10,000 people displaced from the last major drought in 2011.

In a visit Sunday to an IDP camp in Dolow, Mayor Mohamed Hussain Abdi told VOA that are caring for about 3,000 displaced people from the current drought.

Somalis are arriving every day in search of food, water and shelter, Abdi said.

"Dolow is a hub of U.N. agencies and international organizations. Dolow is a borderline area. And that resulted, you know, large number of internal displaced persons come here to seek ... help from U.N. agencies and the government," he said.

Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamed, who was elected in May, appointed that same month a special envoy for drought response, Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame.

Warsame has been tasked with scaling up aid to those Somalis most in need.

Warsame visited Dolow in June and told VOA that officials were doing everything they could to avert famine.

"Thats why we are calling (on the) international community and international donors to pay attention to Somali drought and increase their level of humanitarian assistance. Also, my government will do as much as possible to facilitate and contribute the assistance of the aid and support to the people who are affected by the drought," he said.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said since January theyve provided life-saving assistance to nearly 4 million Somalis.

In late June, the U.N. and its partners launched an appeal for nearly $1 billion for a Drought Response and Famine Prevention Plan in Somalia that would target 6.4 million people.
NATO members signed the accession protocols for Finland and Sweden, paving the way for them to join the military alliance. Plus, after losing a key city, Ukraine says it has struck a Russian military base. And how one non-profit is working with Ukrainian children to share their art with the world.
Iran added demands unrelated to discussions on its nuclear program during the latest talks and has made alarming progress on enriching uranium, the U.S. envoy for talks on reinstating a nuclear deal said Tuesday.

U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley said that there was a proposal on the table for a timeline by which Iran could come back into compliance with the nuclear deal and Washington could ease sanctions on Tehran.

Indirect talks between Tehran and Washington aimed at breaking an impasse over how to salvage Iran's 2015 nuclear pact ended in Doha, Qatar, last week without the hoped-for progress.

Malley said Iranian negotiators added new demands.

"They have, including in Doha, added demands that I think anyone looking at this would be viewed as having nothing to do with the nuclear deal, things that they've wanted in the past," he said in an interview with National Public Radio.

The demands included some that the United States and Europeans have said could not be part of negotiations.

"The discussion that really needs to take place right now is not so much between us and Iran, although we're prepared to have that. It's between Iran and itself," Malley said. "They need to come to a conclusion about whether they are now prepared to come back into compliance with the deal."

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Twitter after speaking with the EU's top diplomat Josep Borrell, "Agreement is possible only based on mutual understanding & interests. We remain ready to negotiate a strong & durable agreement. US must decide if it wants a deal or insists on sticking to its unilateral demands."

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said there was currently not another round of talks on the book with Iran, adding that Tehran has repeatedly introduced, over the recent weeks and months, extraneous demands that go beyond the confines of the nuclear deal struck in 2015.

"To introduce anything that goes beyond the narrow confines of the JCPOA suggests a lack of seriousness, suggests a lack of commitment. And that, unfortunately, is what the team saw once again in Doha," Price told reporters.

Under the nuclear pact, Tehran limited its uranium enrichment program, a potential pathway to nuclear weapons, though Iran says it seeks only civilian atomic energy.

Then-U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned the deal in 2018, calling it too soft on Iran, and reimposed harsh U.S. sanctions, spurring Tehran to breach nuclear limits in the pact.

Now Tehran is much closer to having enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb, Malley said, though they do not appear to have resumed their weaponization program. "But we are of course alarmed, as are our partners, about the progress they've made in the enrichment field," Malley said.

Iran has enough highly enriched uranium on hand to make a bomb and could do so in a matter of weeks, he said.

Malley said Americans were also working a parallel track to secure the release of Americans detained in Iran. Siamak Namazi, who was detained in 2015 and is the longest-held Iranian American prisoner, made a plea for help in a New York Times piece on Sunday headlined: "I'm an American, Why Have I Been Left to Rot as a Hostage of Iran?"

"We hope that regardless of what happens with the nuclear talks, we'll be able to resolve this issue because it weighs in our minds every single day," Malley said.
Rescue teams in the Italian Alps said Tuesday they found eight survivors who had been missing since a glacial avalanche killed at least seven people on Sunday.

The avalanche happened on the Marmolada ridge, the highest peak in the Dolomites, standing more than 3,300 meters.

"When we arrived, we saw a disaster. We realized the dimensions of this enormous avalanche," said Stefano Coter, head of the local alpine rescue team and one of the first people to reach the scene.

"We found injured people in need of help and other people who were dead," he added.

Nicola Casagli, a geologist and avalanche expert at Florence University, told CBS News that the effects of a glacial avalanche were more devastating than a snow avalanche.

"These types of events, which are ice and debris avalanches, are impulsive, rapid, unpredictable phenomena, reaching very high speeds and involving large masses," he said. "And there is no chance of getting to safety or perceiving the problem in advance, because by the time you perceive it, you've already been hit."

Officials have been using drones, helicopters and cellphone signals to locate more victims.

Authorities say five people were still unaccounted for as of Tuesday morning local time.

The immediate area remains closed to tourists through the duration of the rescue and recovery operation.

Some information in this report came from Reuters.
More residents in Australias largest city have been told to evacuate or prepare to evacuate their homes amid another day of massive flooding triggered by heavy rains.

Emergency authorities Tuesday issued evacuation orders and warnings Tuesday for 50,000 residents in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales state, up from Mondays figure of 32,000 residents. A strong storm cell has produced several days of torrential rain that has caused dams and rivers to overflow, swamping roads and inundating hundreds of homes in and around Sydney. Emergency workers have conducted several rescues overnight of people trapped in their homes or cars stuck in flooded roads.

New South Wales state Premier Dominic Perrottet urged residents Tuesday not to be complacent. This event is far from over, he told reporters.

New South Wales state has declared a natural disaster for 23 areas across the state, which authorizes financial assistance for affected residents.

The storm has complicated efforts to tow a cargo ship that has been drifting off the coast of Sydney since losing power on Monday. An attempt to tow the ship and its 21 crew members to shore failed when heavy winds and huge waves caused a towline to snap.

Sydney is facing its fourth major flooding event since March 2021, causing billions of dollars in damages.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse
The French medical aid group Doctors Without Borders reported a jump in cases of malnourished Nigerian children at its Maiduguri nutrition center in the country's northeast.

The group, known by its French abbreviation MSF, said in a press release July 1 it had recorded an unprecedented influx of malnourished children in its treatment centers between May and June  the highest levels since commencing its project in northeastern Nigeria five years ago.

MSF said it had admitted 2,140 malnourished children this year  about 50 percent higher than cases treated the year before.

MSF said a third of the children were from displaced families barely getting by.

The group warned that cases could worsen between July and September  the so-called lean season, usually when the highest cases of malnourished children are reported every year.

MSF called for immediate action to reverse the negative trends.

"Why we're saying this now is that this year we have been seeing very early, even when we're not in the lean season," said Htet Aung Kyi, MSF's Nigerian coordinator. "And that's why we'd like to call for urgent upscale of activities to prevent the future deterioration of the situation in the area."

MSF responded to the increased malnutrition by extending the capacity of its treatment center from 120 beds to 200 beds.

MSF said its outpatient therapeutic feeding program has also seen a 25 percent increase in enrollment compared with last year.

A camp secretary of the Kawar Maila camp in Borno state, Bukar Bukar, said aid hardly gets to them these days, despite increasing numbers of children suffering from malnutrition there.

"In our camp, they've already withdrawn giving the food, that is the reason that the children have malnutrition. Last year we got food, we got everything. One piece of the milk is 700 Naira, we don't even make that when we go to the market to sell our farm produce. Even last week some people went farming and Boko Haram killed two or three of them," the secretary said.

For years, malnutrition has been a concern in the conflict-affected Borno state, but trends have been exacerbated by the cumulative impacts of insecurity, displacement, a recent surge in food prices, poverty and lack of access to health care.

"The current ability to respond to that is fairly robust," said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF's Nigeria country director. "Insecurity incidences of where capacity might be compromised makes that response mechanism very fragile. We're concerned that our ability to be able to respond to acute malnutrition  if it is compromised  the situation could deteriorate very quickly."

MSF said Nigeria needs not only to increase intervention and medical response but also to address other health issues such as measles, cholera and disease outbreaks that could affect children and worsen the situation.
NATO members on Tuesday signed the accession protocols for Finland and Sweden to join the military alliance.

Both countries submitted their applications in May, breaking longstanding non-aligned stances in response to Russias invasion of Ukraine.

This is a good day for Finland and Sweden, and a good day for NATO. With 32 nations around the table, we will be even stronger and our people will be even safer as we face the biggest security crisis in decades, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.

He added that "NATOs door remains open to European democracies who are ready to and willing to contribute to our shared security.

With the accession protocols signed, each of NATOs 30 member countries now have to ratify them according to their individual national procedures.

Both Finland and Sweden have a history of working with NATO as partner countries, including attending NATO meetings and participating in military exercises.

As a future member of the alliance, Sweden will contribute to the security of all allies, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said at the start of Tuesdays meeting.

Finlands Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said his country looks forward to working with NATO allies to safeguard a secure and prosperous Euro-Atlantic region.

Together we are stronger in defending the rules-based international order and the principles of democratic freedom and rule of law, Haavisto said.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters
Neither Israelis nor Palestinians are pleased with the U.S. State Departments conclusion about the shooting death of Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh almost two months ago. Israeli forensic experts analyzed the bullet in the presence of American officials, who have since said the bullet was most likely fired by Israeli soldiers, but it was too damaged to make a conclusive determination.

Ever since Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American, was shot and killed in the West Bank town of Jenin while Israeli soldiers were carrying out arrests of Palestinians wanted for terrorist attacks, Israel has urged Palestinian Authority officials to turn over the bullet that killed Abu Akleh. The Palestinians have refused, saying they do not believe that Israel can carry out an unbiased investigation.

But over the last few days, under American pressure, the Palestinians surrendered the bullet, and the U.S. supervised an Israeli forensics evaluation.

U.S. officials say the bullet was most likely fired by Israeli soldiers, though the bullet was too damaged to know definitively. Lior Nadivi, an Israeli forensics expert, said he has problems with the U.S. investigations conclusions.

I can understand the first part that they could not have a match on the bullet, because from what I have seen from the previous media photos that were released, the bullet was not in a good condition, he said. I cannot understand the second half, in which they determined that the shot came from the Israeli side.

Israel originally said it is possible the shots came from Palestinian gunmen in the area. But several investigations by the U.N., CNN, and The New York Times, concluded that there were no Palestinian gunmen in the area when Abu Akleh was shot.

Olivier Rakowicz, a former Israeli army spokesman, said the Palestinians made it impossible for Israel to carry out an investigation.

From the very beginning after she was killed, it was impossible to get the elements of any investigation because one side, the Palestinian side, actually refused to cooperate with the Israeli side, he said. I would like to say we never said it is not us, it is them, like they say it. We said we need to have a full and transparent investigation to get all the elements in order to know what happened.

At the same time, the Palestinians also rejected the American conclusions. Palestinian prosecutors released a statement saying they think the bullet can be traced to a specific gun and repeated the Palestinian claim that Abu Akleh was deliberately targeted by Israeli soldiers.

Lina Abu Akleh, a relative of the slain journalist, said the family will continue to fight for justice.

The statements come just days before U.S. President Joe Biden arrives in the region.

Israeli analysts said U.S. officials had hoped the investigation of the bullet would help reach definitive conclusions in Abu Aklehs death so it would not overshadow the visit. But they say Washingtons statement on the probe is unlikely to put the issue to rest.
Police in the midwestern U.S. state of Illinois have captured a man they have labeled a person of interest in Mondays deadly shooting attack on an Independence Day parade.

Twenty-two-year old Robert E. Crimo III (the Third) was taken into custody hours after a brief car chase just outside of Highland Park, a wealthy suburb of Chicago, where six people were killed and more than 30 others wounded when a gunman opened fire on parade goers from the rooftop of a building along the route.

Police said five people died at the scene, while another person died at a nearby hospital. The Mexican Foreign Ministry says one of those killed was a Mexican national.

A doctor at a Highland Park hospital says they received 26 wounded people from the parade between eight and 85 years of age.

Cellphone video captured scores of people running from the scene in panic as the sound of rapid gunfire echoed loudly off nearby buildings. Lawn chairs, baby strollers, portable food containers and other objects were scattered along the parade route, abandoned by people who ran for cover.

U.S. President Joe Biden issued a statement saying he and his wife, first lady Jill Biden, were shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day.

The Highland Park shooting occurred more than a week after President Biden signed the first major federal gun violence bill passed by Congress in decades. The bipartisan compromise bill was passed after two mass shootings in May, including a racist attack that left 10 people dead at a grocery store in a black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, and a rampage at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 schoolchildren and two teachers dead.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
The gunman in the deadly Independence Day attack in suburban Chicago fired more than 70 rounds at paradegoers and fled the scene by dressing as a woman to blend in with people frantically trying to escape the carnage, police said Tuesday.

Police said the shooter used an AR-15-style assault weapon during the attack that killed seven people and wounded more than 30 others in the affluent community of Highland Park during a Fourth of July celebration.

They said the shooter may have been planning the assault for weeks.

Police arrested a 21-year-old suspect, Robert Crimo III, hours later when a policeman spotted him driving in his car just outside Highland Park, a community of 30,000 people on the Lake Michigan shoreline.

Police allege he opened fire on parents and their children from the rooftop of a building adjoining the parade route as they watched marching bands and local dignitaries celebrate the country's 1776 founding.

Authorities have not filed criminal charges.

The gunfire was initially mistaken for fireworks celebrating the national holiday. Once the crowd realized it was gunfire, panicked paradegoers began to flee or scrambled into stores to escape the attack.

FBI agents and local police searched for more evidence Tuesday, sifting through trash cans along the parade route and looking under picnic blankets abandoned by families in their haste to escape. A day after the shooting, baby strollers, lawn chairs and other items left behind by panicked paradegoers remained inside a wide police perimeter.

Investigators who have questioned the suspect and reviewed his social media posts have not determined a motive for the attack, Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Christopher Covelli told a news conference. Crimo legally bought the weapon found at the scene of the attack and a second rifle found in his car, Covelli said.

Police said they have not found any indication that the shooter targeted anyone by race, religion or other protected status.

Crimo, who goes by the name Bobby, is an aspiring rapper with the stage name Awake the Rapper, posting videos and songs, some ominous and violent, on social media sites.

The Highland Park attack was the latest mass shooting in the United States in recent weeks, with earlier assaults on people occurring at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York; an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas; and a medical office in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

U.S. President Joe Biden issued a statement saying he and his wife, first lady Jill Biden, were "shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day."

The Highland Park shooting occurred more than a week after Biden signed the first major federal gun violence legislation passed by Congress in decades, although it would not have blocked the sale of the assault weapon used in Monday's attack.

The bipartisan compromise bill requires new background checks of gun buyers under 21 and provides more money to beef up security at schools and for mental health care for those considered at risk of harming themselves or others.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
Russia launched massive shelling Tuesday of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine, the citys mayor said, as Moscows forces initiated attacks in Donetsk province after winning control of neighboring Luhansk province.

In an interview on Ukrainian television, Mayor Vadim Lyakh first urged residents to flee. Hours later, he reversed course and advised them to take cover in shelters. Prior to Russias invasion more than four months ago, the city had a prewar population of about 107,000.

Artillery is already hitting the city, Lyakh warned, saying that 40 houses were destroyed by Russian shelling on Monday. On Facebook, Lyakh said one person was killed Tuesday and seven others were wounded as bombs landed in the citys central market.

After Russian President Vladimir Putin declared Monday that his countrys forces had taken control of Luhansk province, Sloviansk and Bakhmut, an important supply point for Ukrainian forces, appeared next in Russias sights as it advances in Donetsk, half of which it already controls.

The Ukrainian military said Russian forces also bombed several Donetsk towns and villages near Sloviansk in the past day but were repelled as they tried to advance toward a town about 20 kilometers to the city's north. Ukraine said that south of the city, Russian forces were trying to push toward two more towns and shelling areas near Kramatorsk.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday the war in Ukraine would continue until all the goals Putin set are achieved. However, Shoigu said currently "the main priorities" for Moscow were "preserving the lives and health" of its troops, as well as "excluding the threat to the security of civilians."

Earlier in the war, Russia failed to topple the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or capture the capital, Kyiv, but since then has focused on taking over the eastern industrialized Donbas region.

Britains Defense Ministry said Tuesday it expects Russia to use the same tactics it employed to seize virtually all of eastern Ukraines Luhansk province as it pushes to control Donetsk.

"The battle for the Donbas has been characterized by slow rates of advance and Russias massed employment of artillery, levelling towns and cities in the process," the ministry said in a statement. "The fighting in Donetsk Oblast will almost certainly continue in this manner."

Putin declared victory Monday in Luhansk province as Ukrainian troops retreated from their last stronghold in the city of Lysychansk.



The Russian leader said that the military units "that took part in active hostilities and achieved success, victory" in Luhansk, "should rest, increase their combat capabilities."

Ukraine's Luhansk governor, Serhiy Haidai, told The Associated Press on Monday that Ukrainian forces had retreated from Lysychansk to avoid being surrounded.

"There was a risk of Lysychansk encirclement," Haidai said, explaining that Ukrainian troops could have remained a while longer but would have potentially sustained too many casualties.

"We managed to do centralized withdrawal and evacuate all injured," Haidai said. "We took back all the equipment, so from this point, withdrawal was organized well."

Haidai told the Reuters news agency that there was nothing critical in losing Lysychansk, and that Ukraine needed to win the overall war, not the fight for the city.

"It hurts a lot, but it's not losing the war," he said Monday.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
Russias aggression against Ukraine is high on the agenda as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with other foreign ministers from the Group of 20 largest economies, or G-20, later this week in Bali, Indonesia.



Blinken departs Wednesday for a G-20 ministerial being held in Bali July 7-8, where he will also have pull-aside meetings with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Bali.



In addition to attending G20-related engagements, the secretary will hold a bilateral meeting with Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi. Among other bilateral engagements, Secretary Blinken will also meet with the Peoples Republic of China [PRC] State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the margins of the G20, said the State Department in a Tuesday statement.



Blinken will have two lengthy meetings with Wang, with the first session likely focusing on bilateral relations and second one on international issues, according to diplomatic sources.



Blinken will head to Bangkok after the G-20 ministerial. Expanding health and climate cooperation, as well as efforts to relieve the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar after last years military coup, are among the agenda items, according to the State Department.



While Ukraine is not a G-20 member, its foreign minister, Dymtro Kuleba, was invited to this weeks ministerial after Ukraine became a European Union candidate country. Kuleba said he has coordinated his countrys positions with the EUs foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, ahead of the ministerial.



We both agree on the need for the seventh EU sanctions package on Russia and we are working on it, said Kuleba in a tweet.





U.S. officials have said Russias war on Ukraine has caused global economic instability and that Washington will not ease pressure on the Kremlin until Russia ends its military offensive.



There is no formal meeting scheduled between Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Bali.



U.S.-China



Blinkens meeting with the Chinese foreign minister would be their first in-person meeting since the chief U.S. diplomat, in late May, unveiled the Biden administrations strategy to outcompete the PRC.



In his remarks, Blinken said the United States is not seeking to decouple from China and the relationship between the worlds two largest economies is not a zero-sum game.



For months, senior State Department officials have said they have not seen China providing material support to Russia for its war against Ukraine, warning of consequences if the Beijing government does so.



Last week, the U.S. Department of Commerce added five companies in China to a trade blacklist for allegedly supporting Russias military and defense industrial base.



Some Republican U.S. lawmakers say the Biden administrations actions are not enough.



The (Biden) administrations feeble concept of consequences will do little to deter the CCPs (Chinese Communist Partys) ongoing support for (Russian President Vladimir) Putins war crimes, said House Foreign Affairs Committee lead Republican Michael McCaul on June 29. McCaul said there should be significant sanctions on those offending companies.



G-20 division on Russias war in Ukraine



Russia's participation at G-20 events has been a source of tension within the group that is composed of the Group of Seven leading industrialized economies, or G-7, and other large developing economies.



Many members, especially the G-7, have forcefully condemned Russias invasion and supported serious economic sanctions. Members such as China and India have abstained on various United Nations resolutions and refrained from publicly condemning Russia.



U.S. President Joe Biden has said that Russia should not remain a member of the G-20, but China, Brazil and South Africa have voiced their objections to removing Russia from the grouping. Those countries are also members of five large emerging economies known as BRICS and see themselves as an alternative to the U.S.-led world order.

Some G-20 members say divisions widened by Russias war in Ukraine should not overshadow this years theme of economic recovery after the coronavirus pandemic.

Indonesia, which holds the rotating presidency of the Group of 20, says it maintains an independent foreign policy and does not side with world powers. Indonesias reluctance to exclude Russian President Vladimir Putin from the G-20 summit reflects its wish not to be seen as choosing a side and to focus this years G-20 discussions on post-COVID-19 economic recovery.



Last week, Indonesian President Joko Widodo became the first Asian leader to visit Ukraine and Russia, after which he said Putin had agreed to provide security guarantee for food and fertilizer supplies from both Russia and Ukraine amid increasing concerns over a global food crisis.



European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told German broadcaster ZDF recently that Putins possible presence at the G-20 summit in November should not be a reason for Western leaders to boycott the meeting or paralyze the entire G-20.



In my opinion, G-20 is too important, also for the developing countries, the emerging countries, that we should let this body be broken by Putin.



This weeks ministerial will not produce an official document or communique, according to G-20 co-sherpa Dian Triansyah Djani.



U.S.-Thailand



In Bangkok, Thailand, Secretary Blinken will meet with Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai. He looks forward to discussing a range of issues, including building on the successes of Thailands APEC 2022 agenda during our 2023 APEC host year, said the State Department.



Thailand is a key U.S. security ally in Asia. The two countries signed a landmark information exchange agreement in June, following the first joint U.S.-Thailand Strategic and Defense Dialogue in May in which the two nations agreed to expand cooperation in cybersecurity and post-COVID-19 economic recovery.



In 2022, the U.S. remains Thailands leading security partner though China has emerged as a serious contender. Thailand seeks equilibrium in security cooperation between the two powers, said Paul Chambers, an adviser for international affairs at the College of ASEAN Community Studies of Thailand-based Naresuan University.



Chambers told VOA the Thai Air Force is seeking to buy eight F-35 aircraft from the U.S. but Washington is concerned that F-35s advanced technology might be compromised by Thailands close military ties with Beijing.



The top diplomats visit to Bangkok was rescheduled from last December following positive COVID-19 test results involving members of Blinkens flight crew and one traveling reporter.
Almost every morning before he starts work, South Koreas new president stops to chat with a scrum of journalists camped in the lobby of his presidential office. Standing on a red carpet in front of a row of flashing cameras, boom microphones, and reporters trying to out-shout one another, Yoon Suk Yeol offers opinions on a range of issues, both serious and lighthearted.

Yoon has weighed in on whether the K-Pop group BTS should receive exemptions from mandatory military service. He has commented on when North Korea will conduct its next weapons test. He regularly answers questions about his wife, whose extravagant personna and busy public schedule have drawn constant media scrutiny. On one occasion, he casually invited a reporter to a meal of kimchi stew.

Its the fulfillment of a campaign promise for Yoon. A conservative political outsider who had never held elected office, Yoon pledged to be more accessible than past South Korean presidents, many of whom were criticized for doing too few media engagements.

While Yoons informal communications style would be routine in many countries, it is unprecedented in South Korea. Outside of annual press conferences, South Korean presidents rarely meet the media. When they do, their comments are typically deliberate, formal, and unremarkable.

As a result, Yoons so-called doorstepping sessions are causing a major stir in South Korean political circles. Critics say his behavior is shallow and undignified, lowering the standards of political etiquette. Its childish small talk, said Yu Hyun-jae, professor of communications at Seouls Sogang University. This kind of casual language may have developed in the United States, but theres no such culture in Korea, Yu told VOA.

Even some of Yoons conservative allies are uneasy with his unconventional communications style. In an interview with local media, Kim Jong-in, the former head of South Koreas main conservative party, said Yoons remarks have been inappropriately simplistic. Political rhetoric, Kim said, should not be constructed in a way ordinary people talk." Since the presidents words are delivered directly to the public, they should be very sophisticated and deliberate," he added.

Setting the agenda

So far, South Korean media are making the most of the new presidents approachability. Yoons impromptu remarks dominate political coverage, generating breaking news alerts and sparking fresh news cycles that serve as fodder for heated talk show debates throughout the day.

Some critics worry Yoon will use that feedback loop to frame public debate or create distractions, especially as his political fortunes seem to worsen. Barely a month after taking office, Yoons approval rating has already sunk below 45%.

Yoons defenders say its only natural to use the presidency to set agendas in a democracy, where the power of persuasion is key to enacting policies. Yoon, they argue, is only speaking directly to the people, circumventing media outlets widely seen as biased.

That kind of tactic is increasingly common in democracies around the world. In the United States, ex-President Donald Trump spoke to reporters several times a day and shared his thoughts on a near constant basis using social media.

Theres only one Trump

Some analysts have compared Trump and Yoon, noting both men are relatively non-ideological outsiders with little political experience before becoming president.

But the comparison only goes so far. Whereas Trump, a former TV game show host, had decades of working with or in the media, the ex-prosecutor Yoon often appears uncomfortable in front of the camera. Many of his allies fear he will make gaffes.

Another difference: Yoon does not employ social media in the same way as Trump, who would often use Twitter to lob highly personal insults at his critics and rivals.

Trumps outreach was usually to obfuscate or self-promote, whereas Yoon seems to be answering questions seriously and making a good faith effort, said Robert Kelly, a professor of political science at South Koreas Pusan National University.

Any president in a democracy has massive agenda-setting power  the bully pulpit and all that. I dont find that a big deal, Kelly added. If Yoon is monopolizing the discussion, [Korean lawmakers] can push back.

But concerns about Yoons media approach may linger, in part because of the young nature of South Koreas democracy. In the view of one journalist at a left-leaning newspaper, many South Koreans remember the countrys previous military rule, when newspapers dutifully published the presidents words on their front pages every morning. While todays dynamic may be fundamentally different, Yoons approach still makes many Koreans uncomfortable, said the journalist, who did not receive permission to discuss the issue publicly.

As a solution, the Kwanhun Club, a non-partisan association of Korean journalists, proposes reducing the size of the media pool camped outside Yoons office. Such a restructuring, the organization says, would make the doorstepping sessions more substantive, in part by improving the quality of questions. The presidential office has not yet responded to the proposal, the Kwanhun Club said.

In the meantime, Yoon appears to be getting more comfortable engaging the media. In recent weeks, his doorstepping sessions have lasted for a longer time  giving both his supporters and critics more to debate.

It could be regarded as positive if he is trying new things, said Lee Junhan, a professor at Incheon National University. But if it merely ends up being a show, thats a problem.
Southern European states including Italy and Spain are urging NATO allies to address threats from North Africa, after the alliance agreed on a new "strategic concept" at its summit last week in Madrid.

'Hostile actors'

While the war in Ukraine dominates NATO's agenda, member states bordering the Mediterranean want the alliance to prepare for other potential flashpoints from the south, including a rapid increase in irregular migration. Spain warned it could be used as a pressure tactic by what it called "hostile actors."

Hundreds of migrants attempted to breach the border fence separating the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco last month. At least 23 people died during the attempted crossing. The migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, are desperate to reach Europe to claim asylum and find a better life.

Many migrants also arrive by boat on the Spanish Canary Islands, 100 kilometers off the African coast. The numbers arriving in the first six months of the year have more than doubled since 2021  and Spain fears the pressure on its borders could be about to worsen.

Ukraine war

Ukraine is one of the world's top suppliers of grain, but the Russian invasion has cut its exports by around two-thirds. The United Nations has warned that the situation will exacerbate an already worsening hunger crisis in Africa. Europe is readying for an increase in migration.

"We have been looking at whether there is more movement of people linked to the increase in prices, to the difficulty of these countries in accessing grain and wheat," Txema Santana, a migration advisor to the government of the Canary Islands, told the Reuters news agency. "What we have been told is that for the moment there is not, but it is a matter of time."

Russian mercenaries

A resurgent Islamist militancy in parts of the Sahel is also driving migrant flows. Europe also says Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group are exacerbating the conflict. The European Union has imposed sanctions on the Wagner Group, which it says works for the Kremlin. Moscow denies any links but says it is providing "military assistance" through state channels.

"It is very clear that the Wagner company is there and that there are foreign troops in several countries of the Sahel," Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told the Reuters news agency last month. "And definitely it is not foreign troops that the Sahel needs. What the Sahel needs is development and stability," he added.

Morocco deal

Spain is seeking international help. In March it struck a deal with Morocco to secure a clampdown on irregular migration.

"What the war in Ukraine meant for this migratory route is that Morocco changed its international relations profile, accentuated it, and proposed a change in relations with Spain to ensure that at this time of conflict the arrival of people would be lower. In return, Spain was asked, among other things, to change its diplomatic relations with Western Sahara.

"Spain has accepted this and this is leading to many geopolitical changes and will lead to many changes in the borders and the situation of migrants in Western Sahara and Morocco," explained government adviser Txema Santana.

Critics accuse Madrid of outsourcing migration policy to a country with a history of human rights abuses.

The Moroccan Association for Human Rights, along with the Spanish migration charity Walking Borders, cited the incident at the Morocco-Melilla border in June, describing it as a "tragic symbol of European policies of externalizing borders of the EU."

A Moroccan official told Reuters that security personnel "had not used undue force."

NATO

At last week's NATO summit, Spain secured official recognition by the alliance of the threats emanating from North Africa. At a press conference at the close of the summit, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said he had achieved his aims for the meeting.

"We are really glad to have included the southern flank in the strategic concept  especially about the African sub-Saharan and Sahel area, which is one of the major concerns for Europe and particularly for our country as a consequence of instability and risks coming from the irregular flux of migrants, terrorism, food crisis, energy crisis and the climate emergency too," Sanchez said.

Meanwhile, NATO forces held exercises in recent days just off the Spanish and North African coasts. The FLOTEX-22 drills included forces from Spain, Britain, Belgium and the United States, along with other European units integrated into the EU's maritime force.

Residents of the Spanish town of Tarifa had a front-row view of the drills. One resident, who asked not to be named, welcomed the focus on North Africa.

"It is a very unstable area; it is a ticking time bomb, you know what the Maghreb is, anything can come of it, a war, conflict," he told VOA. He was referring to northwestern Africa, including Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia.

Spain maintains it is not calling for any NATO intervention in North Africa, but instead recognition of what it calls hybrid threats.

VOA's Alfonso Beato contributed to this report.


The man accused of detonating a car bomb that killed a prominent Maltese journalist has confessed to the crime in an interview with a Reuters reporter and says he will soon implicate others in plotting to assassinate her.

Speaking from jail in his first comment on the case, George Degiorgio said if he had known more about Daphne Caruana Galizia  the journalist he and two others are accused of killing in 2017  then he would have asked for more money to carry out the hit.

"If I knew, I would have gone for 10 million. Not 150,000," he said, referring to the sum in euros that he said he was paid for killing the journalist.

"For me it was just business. Yeah. Business as usual!" he told a Reuters reporter. He later added, "Of course I feel sorry."

The interview with Degiorgio was conducted during research for a podcast into the Caruana Galizia case, entitled "Who Killed Daphne?"

His admission came after several attempts by Degiorgio's lawyers since 2021 to secure a pardon in return for testimony about Degiorgio's role in Caruana Galizia's murder and other alleged crimes involving prominent figures on the island.

On June 22, Malta's Appeal Court rejected remaining legal challenges by Degiorgio to the murder charges against him and his brother Alfred, who is co-accused. The judgment clears the way for trial to go ahead.

The car-bomb assassination of the investigative journalist and blogger caused shock across Europe. Maltese authorities charged Degiorgio and two other men  his brother Alfred and an associate, Vince Muscat with murdering Caruana Galizia in October 2017 at the behest of a top island businessman.

Degiorgio told Reuters he would plead guilty ahead of any jury trial. "I'm going to speak to the magistrate," he said. He indicated he would provide testimony to implicate others in the murder and in a previous unrealized plot to kill the journalist.

His motive, he said, was to seek a sentence reduction for himself and Alfred and to ensure that "we're not going down alone!"

Until now, both of the Degiorgio brothers had denied involvement in the killing. Muscat pleaded guilty to the murder charges in 2020 and was sentenced to a reduced term of 15 years in jail in return for testifying about this case and some other crimes. William Cuschieri, the lawyer for Alfred and George Degiorgio, did not respond to requests for comment from either brother.

One of the island's richest businessmen, Yorgen Fenech, was also charged in November 2019 with commissioning Degiorgio and his two accomplices to carry out the hit.

Fenech has denied the charge but has not yet presented his defense.

In a statement, his lawyer, Gianluca Caruana Curran, said Fenech planned to prove in court "he at no point wanted, actively searched for or sponsored" Caruana Galizia's assassination.

"While strongly protesting his innocence, Mr. Fenech maintains that with the evidence available, independent and serious investigations are capable of leading to the arrest and arraignment of the true perpetrators behind the assassination."

Fenech was identified as the mastermind by an alleged middleman, taxi driver Melvin Theuma, who escaped prosecution for his role in the case in return for testifying. Theuma said he arranged the murder with the Degiorgio brothers on Fenech's behalf.

He testified that he never told the Degiorgio gang Fenech's identity.

In the interview, Degiorgio said he was willing to testify that a top Maltese political figure had tried to arrange a hit on Caruana Galizia in a separate plot two years earlier.

Degiorgio also said he would offer to testify about the involvement of two senior former ministers in an armed robbery.

Reuters is not at this stage publishing further details of those allegations or naming the individuals accused by Degiorgio, all of whom deny any involvement in any crime.

Malta Police Force and the prosecutors handling the murder case did not respond to requests for an official comment on Degiorgio's remarks.

William Cuschieri, the lawyer for Alfred and George Degiorgio, did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Caruana Galizia was killed after she leveled a series of corruption allegations against prominent people, including ministers in the island's Labour Party government.

Her murder raised suspicions that some of the people she was investigating could be involved in plotting her death.

Fenech, who stands accused of ordering up the successful 2017 hit, was first identified in connection with Caruana Galizia in November 2018 articles by Reuters and the Times of Malta.

The report named him as the owner of a company known as 17 Black that Caruana Galizia alleged, without citing evidence, was being used to bribe politicians. Fenech was also the head of a controversial power station project in Malta.

According to prosecution evidence presented in court in multiple preliminary hearings since 2018, George Degiorgio and his gang had tracked the journalist throughout the summer of 2017. In the early hours of October 16, 2017, prosecutors allege, the gang planted a bomb under a seat in her car.

That afternoon, Degiorgio was allegedly on a yacht in the island's Grand Harbour when his brother Alfred, who was watching the house, called to say Caruana Galizia had entered her car and driven off. Degiorgio then sent a text message from the yacht to a mobile device that detonated the bomb, prosecutors told the court.

After the car exploded, Caruana Galizia's son Matthew heard the blast, ran out from the family home and discovered his mother's body. He has been campaigning for justice for his mother ever since.

Asked about Degiorgio's comments, he told Reuters: "George Degiorgio's own words show he is a stone-cold killer undeserving of any reprieve."

Arrested two months after the killing, George Degiorgio said nothing to police, declining even to give his name during interrogation. Until the Reuters interview, he had remained silent, and his lawyers have spent four years denying he was involved in the murder. He has also filed a series of legal challenges contesting the evidence against him.

But he is now seeking a deal with the prosecution, ahead of a trial, in return for admitting the charges and providing the new information.

Alfred Degiorgio, like his brother, has pleaded not guilty to murder charges but has not presented his case. He too has made several applications to be pardoned of the charges in return for testifying about what he knows.

George Degiorgio said that before taking the hit job, he hadn't known much about Caruana Galizia or her family, including the fact that they were ordinary people, not criminals. "That's it. Of course! I never met her in her life," he said.

The Degiorgio brothers have made several bids since March 2021 for an official pardon for their crimes. The latest, filed on April 4 by their lawyer, William Cuschieri, said, without giving names or specifics, that the Degiorgios could testify to "Crimes of attempted violent robbery and attempted voluntary homicide in which one of the authors was a Minister and another author who is a Minister."

The request was rejected by Malta's government on April 24, citing the national interest and the administration of justice, according to an official statement.

Malta's prime minister, Robert Abela, previously condemned attempts by the Degiorgios to win a pardon, calling them "criminals" seeking to buy their freedom. Cuschieri, the lawyer for the Degiorgios, responded by saying the prime minister was breaching their rights to a fair trial and, without providing details, said the brothers had "direct information" about a minister's involvement in crime.
Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska on Tuesday became just the second woman to receive the prestigious Fields Medal, described as the Nobel Prize in mathematics.

The 37-year-old Viazovska, received the medal during a ceremony in Helsinki, Finland, along with three other mathematicians: 36-year-old Hugo Duminil-Copin of the University of Geneva, 39-year-old Korean-American June Huh of Princeton University, and 35-year-old British mathematician James Maynard of the University of Oxford.

The International Mathematical Union, which administers the Fields Medal, cited Viazovska, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, for her 2016 discovery that equal-sized spheres can be stacked symmetrically in the eighth dimension and higher. Her discovery proved a theory first proposed by German astronomer and philosopher Johannes Kepler more than 400 years ago.

The Fields Medal is awarded every four years to mathematicians under 40 years old.

The late Maryam Mirzakhani of Iran was the first woman to win the medal in 2014.

The ceremony was initially scheduled to be held in Saint Petersburg, Russia during a meeting of the International Congress of Mathematicians. But it was moved to the Finnish capital after hundreds of mathematicians signed an open letter protesting the choice of Saint Petersburg after Russia invaded Viazovskas native Ukraine in February.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.
When Russian forces fired a missile at a crowded railway station in Ukraines Kramatorsk in April, 59 people were killed and 109 more injured. One mother and daughter lost limbs but survived, and are now heading to the U.S. for prosthetics. Omelyan Oshchudlyak has the story. Camera and video editing by Yuriy Dankevych.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet is calling for an end to the war in Ukraine and for perpetrators of atrocities and crimes in the conduct of the war to be held accountable. Bachelet presented her latest update on the situation in Ukraine to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva Tuesday.

Bachelets report covers the period between February 24 when Russia invaded Ukraine and May 15. The report presents an exhaustive tally of killings, widespread destruction, arbitrary detentions, forced disappearance and other gross violations of human rights.

In reviewing this list of atrocities, the U.N. rights chief noted that the unbearable toll of the conflict in Ukraine continued to mount, adding that civilians bore the brunt of the ongoing hostilities. She accused Russia and to a lesser extent Ukraine of violating international humanitarian law (IHL).

The high numbers of civilian casualties and the extent of destruction caused to civilian infrastructure continue to raise significant concerns that attacks conducted by Russian armed forces are not complying with IHL, she said. While on a much lower scale, it also appears likely that Ukrainian armed forces did not fully comply with IHL in eastern parts of the country.

Bachelet said the United Nations has documented more than 10,000 civilian deaths or injuries across Ukraine, adding the actual figures are likely to be considerably higher. She said most of these civilian casualties were caused by explosive weapons, including cluster munitions, in populated areas.

Even though the civilian toll from such weapons, used in the manner they have been, has become indisputable, Russian armed forces have continued to operate the same way  with predictable consequences on the civilian population and its infrastructure, she said

Speaking via video link from Kyiv, Ukraines First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova told the council that Russias missiles, bombs, and projectiles claim the lives of innocent Ukrainians daily. She said the Office of Ukraines Prosecutor General has registered more than 20,000 crimes of aggression and war crimes committed by Russian forces.

The attacks on the shopping mall in the city of Kremenchuk, which killed dozens of innocent civilians, has no justification from a military perspective, she said. It was a clear-cut terrorist attack. We urge international human rights and investigative mechanisms to provide their objective assessment of all Russian crimes.

First Councilor at the Russian Mission in Geneva Evgeny Ustinov accused the high commissioner of spreading lies and rejected the report as part of a disinformation campaign against Russia. He said the high commissioners office had become an accomplice in the crimes of the Kyiv regime and its Western sponsors.
Partners in the Blue Pacific, established late last month by United States, Australia and three other allies, is seen by analysts  and by Beijing  as the latest in a series of moves to counter Chinas drive to expand its diplomatic and military reach in the South Pacific.



The group announced itself in a joint statement on June 24, saying it came together in response to growing pressure on the rules-based free and open international order Japan, New Zealand and Britain round out the membership.



Australia and the United States have gone on heightened alert over the past year because of Chinas effort to expand its influence in the South Pacific, where more than a dozen small and mainly impoverished countries rely on aid and trade from larger nations.



Over the past year, China has shown increasing interest in the region, where it seeks to expand its naval influence in support of long-standing business interests, especially in fishing, experts have told VOA.



Beijing signed a security agreement with the Solomon Islands in April and reached 52 bilateral economic-focused cooperation outcomes after its foreign minister visited 17 of the regions small archipelagic countries in May and June.



The South Pacific is being rediscovered, said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales in Australia, referring to the impact of Chinese activity. Now the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Japan are moving into higher gear.



Washington has exerted influence in the South Pacific for decades through compacts, a type of alliance with countries that were once under U.S. rule. Australia, close to the South Pacific geographically, sees strong relations with the island nations as key to its security, according to a Lowy Institute commentary.



The latest initiative



The groups formation fits with a broader U.S.-led strategy to pace Chinas influence in the South Pacific, said Alexander Huang, strategic studies professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan.



In September, the United States, Australia and Britain signed a military technology-sharing deal that outraged Beijing. Australia, India, Japan and the United States belong separately to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, to look after their interests in the Indo-Pacific.



Washington already has military bases in Guam and Hawaii. Every two years it holds the RIMPAC military exercises in the Pacific with 25 other countries  excluding China.



The Blue Pacific effort will test how well U.S. allies can work together toward the shared goal of containing Chinese expansion, Huang said. Thayer said the United States is looking to Australia and New Zealand to carry weight and assist with that process.



Thayer added that Prime Minister Anthony Albaneses new Australian government also hopes the effort to enhance the nations South Pacific friendships will please voters, who want the administration to take a tough stance on China.



The partners have already given a combined $2.1 billion in development assistance to the South Pacific and are united in continuing that aid in line with transparency and the permission of recipient countries, the Australian government statement said.



Australia and New Zealand felt they must take some actions to show the nearby sea isnt being changed under Chinese influence, said Huang.



He said the Blue Pacific partnership is a response to the Chinese for sure, and if they dont do it now, their future challenge will probably become even bigger.



Security and development, especially on climate issues, will probably become another cause for the group, said Fabrizio Bozzato, senior research fellow at the Tokyo-based Sasakawa Peace Foundations Ocean Policy Research Institute. Low-lying nations such as Kiribati face dangerously rising sea levels



Chinese resentment



Government-sponsored media outlets have raised doubts about the Blue Pacific group in China, which touts its assistance to the region.



Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was quoted on a ministry website June 3 saying his countrys deals for the region would ensure mutual respect and common development.



The Chinese news website Global Times suggested on June 26 the effort could be targeting China and criticized its absence of concrete plans to promote economic cooperation and the lack of capacity to provide economic investment.



Chinese officials expressed anger over the Australia-United Kingdom-United States Partnership, or AUKUS, a military technology deal established last year, and said the alliance is a threat to peace Chinese state-owned media have called the Quad dialogue an exclusive clique targeting China.



Bozzato said Australia, the United States and their allies may shape a more appealing identity in the South Pacific but cannot expel China due to the depth of its relations there. That is impossible, since China has established itself as a partner of many key Pacific island states and of the region as a whole, he said.
As a young Black officer, Troy Mosley arrived at Fort Benning in Georgia in 1995 where he eventually took command of a 300-person company at the age of 31. The irony of leading hundreds of troops at a world premier military base named in honor of a Confederate officer who fought to defend slavery was not lost on him.



It was kind of a peace offering to the defeated Confederates that we will allow you all to have some dignity and some honor in noble defeat, says Mosley, now a retired lieutenant colonel and author. But what it said to me as a Black American and a Black army officer was that my inclusion was not as meaningful or as important, and therefore, I was an American by grace only, but not really welcome at the table.



More than 20 years later, Fort Benning is among nine military installations in the American South, all named after officers who fought against the United States in the Civil War, that is likely to be renamed. A congressionally mandated commission has proposed new names for the bases.

Fort Benning would become Fort Moore, named after Lieutenant General Hal Moore, who served in Korea and Vietnam, and his wife, Julia, an advocate for military families. During the selection process, some pushed to rename Fort Benning after Roscoe Robinson Jr., the first African American four-star general, who served in Korea and Vietnam. Mosley thinks the naming commission steered away from that to avoid potential pushback.



There are elected officials that criticize the military for being a woke organization, says Mosley, who is president of a group called Citizens Against Intolerance. I think that a lot of that criticism comes from elected officials who've never served a day in the military, and they don't understand that the military has the structure, the bones, of America's greatest meritocracy. You have people from all walks of life who come together for a shared belief in a system of governance, and they're willing to put their lives on the line to defend that.



The proposal would rename the Army installations for a diverse group of people including women, African Americans, a Latino and a Native American.

Fort Lee, Virginia, named for General Robert E. Lee, commander of Confederate troops, would become Fort Gregg-Adams in honor of retired Lieutenant General Arthur Gregg, who served in Korea and Vietnam, and Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams, who served in World War II. Both are African American.



Fort Hood, Texas, named after Confederate General John Bell Hood, would be renamed Fort Cavazos, after Richard E. Cavazos, the first Hispanic American four-star general.



Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, named for Confederate General Ambrose Powell Hill, would become Fort Walker, in honor of Dr. Mary Walker, the Armys first female surgeon who received the Medal of Honor for her Civil War service.



Fort Pickett, Virginia, named for George Pickett, a Confederate major general, would be renamed Fort Barfoot, after Technical Sergeant Van T. Barfoot, a Native American who received the Medal of Honor after fighting off Germans during World War II.

I think the military is trying to show that the new names reflect military values, and one of those values is diversity and unit cohesiveness; that we have people of all kinds serving in the military, says Jeff South, retired associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, and that having bases named just after white men, especially white men who fought against freedom for African Americans and against the U.S. Army itself, is offensive on several levels.



Other Defense Department properties named after Confederate figures could also be changed. The commission is reviewing the names of more than 750 military assets, including streets and signs, to see if they should also be changed.

The renaming commissions final report is due to be presented to Congress in October. In keeping with the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, the defense spending legislation that created the panel, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin must implement the recommendations by January 2024.



There is some thinking that Congress might get cold feet, especially after the midterm elections, depending on who controls the House and Senate, South says. So, it's not quite a done deal yet. But because it was a bipartisan vote earlier, the thinking is that Congress will go ahead and affirm what the renaming commission has proposed.



For his part, Mosley says hes proud of the military for recognizing the strategic, operational and practical importance of diversity.



We can't stay the same and become better simultaneously. Improvement requires change, and I think that the changes that the military has embraced to become a more inclusive organization only serves to make them better, he says. And I think that in doing so, they will not only make for a more lethal and more effective armed service, but they will also establish themselves as an institution for other organizations to emulate.
The U.S. Navy's Mideast-based 5th Fleet is starting to offer rewards for information that could help sailors intercept weapons, drugs and other illicit shipments across the region amid tensions over Iran's nuclear program and Tehran's arming of Yemen's Houthi rebels.



While avoiding directly mentioning Iran, the 5th Fleet's decision to offer cash and other goods for actionable intelligence in the Persian Gulf and other strategic waterways may increase pressure on the flow of weapons to the Houthis as a shaky cease-fire still holds in Yemen.



Already, the Houthis have threatened a new allied task force organized by the 5th Fleet in the Red Sea, though there's been no attack by the Iranian-backed forces on the Navy in the time since.



Meanwhile, the 5th Fleet says it and its partners seized $500 million in drugs alone in 2021  more than the four prior years combined. The 5th Fleet also intercepted 9,000 weapons in the same period, three times the number seized in 2020.



"Any destabilizing activity has our attention," Commander Timothy Hawkins, a 5th Fleet spokesman, told The Associated Press. "Definitely we have seen in the last year skyrocketing success in seizing both illegal narcotics and illicit weapons. This represents another step in our effort to enhance regional maritime security."



The 5th Fleet's new initiative launches on Tuesday through the Department of Defense Rewards Program, which saw troops offer cash and goods for tips on the battlefields in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere after al-Qaida launched the September 11, 2001, attacks. Since ground fighting has largely halted across the region, the 5th Fleet decided to use the program as it patrols the waterways of the Middle East.



Hawkins said operators fluent in Arabic, English and Farsi would man a hotline, while the Navy also would take tips additionally online, in Dari and Pashto. Payouts can be as high as $100,000 or the equivalent in vehicles, boats or food for tips that also include information on planned attacks targeting Americans, Hawkins said.



It's unclear whether the 5th Fleet's uptick in seizures represents a return to shipping after the coronavirus pandemic or an increase overall in the number of illicit shipments in the region. Traffickers typically use stateless dhows, traditional wooden sailing craft common in the Mideast, to transport drugs and weapons.



One destination for weapons appears to be Yemen. The Houthis seized Yemen's capital, Sanaa, in September 2014 and forced the internationally recognized government into exile. A Saudi-led coalition armed with U.S. weaponry and intelligence entered the war on the side of Yemen's exiled government in March 2015. Years of inconclusive fighting has pushed the Arab world's poorest nation to the brink of famine. A truce that began around the holy Muslim month of Ramadan appears for now to still be holding.



Despite a United Nations Security Council arms embargo on Yemen, Iran long has been transferring rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, missiles and other weaponry to the Houthis. Though Iran denies arming the Houthis, independent experts, Western nations and U.N. experts have traced components back to Iran.



Asked about whether new seizures could increase tensions with Iran, Hawkins listed the weapons and drugs the Navy hoped to intercept under the program.



"That's what we're after," the commander said. "That's not in the interest of regional stability and security."



Iran's mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment. The U.S. Navy and Iran continue to have tense encounters in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil traded passes.



The rewards program marks the latest initiative under 5th Fleet Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, who also launched a drone task force last year amid tensions with Iran.



Cooper's other effort, the Red Sea task force, has drawn criticism from the Houthis in the past. The rebel group, which has repeatedly denied being armed by Iran, did not respond to a request for comment on the new Navy program.



However, Ali al-Qahom, a Houthi official, tweeted last week that the rebels are monitoring increased U.S. activity in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf waters.



"Because of this, defense and confrontation options are open," he said. "They and their diabolical projects have no place" in the region.
For three years, Lek secretly cultivated her cannabis plants in rural northeastern Thailand, still afraid of arrest by authorities wielding tough drug penalties despite the promises of a gradual loosening of the law.



On June 9, cannabis was effectively decriminalized and she finally emerged from the underground weed scene to become a legitimate grower, part of an army of newcomers to the most-hyped market in Thailand.



Were in a vacuum period so anyone can practically do anything for now, said Lek 34, whose full name is Piyatida Jantra, as she prunes her 100 or so plants in Korat.

The area is the gateway to Isaan, a region of rice and sugar farmers facing plummeting prices for their staples and in desperate need of a new cash crop.



Thailand is the first Southeast Asian country to take such liberalizing steps, recognizing the medicinal  and economic  benefits the plant may bring.



The countrys journey toward becoming a paradise for cannabis consumers and entrepreneurs is unexpected in a kingdom where successive governments have taken a zero-tolerance attitude toward drugs.

The change began with a 2019 election pledge by Anutin Charnvirakul, a connected billionaire with big political ambitions, who promised to unlock the law to help farmers in the Isaan area with a new cash crop primarily for the medicinal market.

Isaan is the most highly populated part of Thailand and will be crucial in securing votes in the next general election, scheduled in the first quarter next year.



Turning on the tap to billions of dollars of new potential revenue also was warmly welcomed by the monopolies that dominate the Thai economy  and backed by the army-linked government, in which Anutin serves as health minister.



Major corporations and rich private investors got ahead of the law, buying up vast plantations to grow cannabis in the best soils across the north and northeast, and establishing factories to extract premium CBD oil.



That left them in a position to seize market share when last months decriminalization made it legal to grow, trade and use all cannabis products, from the leaves and stems to the bud.

Legally restricted for medicine or food

Currently, cannabis is in theory restricted to use in medicine or in food and must contain less than 0.2 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the compound that creates the high.



In practice, it is a legal gray area that has ruled out prosecutions under drug laws; there is currently not even a minimum legal age to buy or sell it.

A cannabis bill is due in the coming months to detail exactly what can and cant be done.



For smallholders like Lek, there are fears it will be written with the interests of large corporations in mind, rather than homespun businesses like hers.



The government needs to go all the way  where every household can grow their own, no more controls, she told VOA News.



But once the law is passed, I guarantee you theres only going to be one big group of capitalists who will gain.



'Amsterdam of Asia'



At present, cannabis chaos pervades the kingdom: Tourists are openly smoking joints on the famous Khao San Road in Bangkok, while some Thais have appeared on TikTok videos seemingly unable to move after eating marijuana brownies. The government has urged cannabis growers and users to be responsible and discreet.



The main goal of weed legalization is still for medicinal benefits, to boost the economy and wellness, the prime ministers spokesperson told reporters on June 29.



We ask that everyone cooperates during this vacuum period until the official law is passed.



Weed aficionados are celebrating a law change allowing a long-hidden culture into the light. Its also stirring a major market opportunity and research into the benefits of a plant found native in Thailand for centuries.

Everyone will have their own space within this industry, said Chokwan Kitty Chopaka, an advocate and entrepreneur who has been bombarded by inquiries since opening her dispensary in downtown Bangkok a couple of days after it became legal.



Its not just growers, sellers and consumers  we still also need researchers, accountants, marketeers, product photographers.



Other industry insiders say there is no rolling back the law.



One of those is Siriya Thepcharoen, based at Siam Cannabis Land in Chonburi, eastern Thailand, which includes a museum, vast underground laboratories growing weed strains like White Widow and a plantation. She said the mission of her company, NUSA CSR, is to help make Thailand the global hub for medicinal marijuana use.



We are targeting medical tourists with certain conditions like insomnia, stress, Alzheimers, and for the elderly who also want to come to Thailand for R&R, she told VOA.



But we will also target young people who may travel here for recreation, seeing Thailand as the Amsterdam of Asia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory Monday in Ukraines eastern Luhansk province as Ukrainian troops retreated from their last stronghold in the city of Lysychansk.

Moscows forces immediately turned their attention to fighting in the adjoining Donetsk province. It is part of the industrialized Donbas region Putin has sought to take control of during his invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth month, after failing earlier to topple the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or capture the capital, Kyiv.

Ukraine said Russian forces are now trying to advance on Siversk, Fedorivka and Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, about half of which is controlled by Russia.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin in a televised meeting Monday that Russian forces had taken control of Luhansk. In turn, Putin, said that the military units "that took part in active hostilities and achieved success, victory" in Luhansk, "should rest, increase their combat capabilities."

Ukraines Luhansk governor, Serhiy Haidai, told the Associated Press Monday that Ukrainian forces had retreated from Lysychansk to avoid being surrounded.

"There was a risk of Lysychansk encirclement," Haidai said, saying that Ukrainian troops could have remained a while longer but would have potentially sustained too many casualties.

"We managed to do centralized withdrawal and evacuate all injured," Haidai said. "We took back all the equipment, so from this point withdrawal was organized well."

The Ukrainian General Staff said that Russian forces, aside from pushing toward Siversk, Fedorivka and Bakhmut, are also shelling of the key Ukrainian strongholds of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, deeper in Donetsk.

Ukrainian authorities said that on Sunday, six people, including a 9-year-old girl, were killed in the Russian attack on Sloviansk and another 19 people were wounded. Kramatorsk was also shelled Sunday.

The British Defense Ministry intelligence briefing Monday called the conflict in Donbas "grinding and attritional," and said it is unlikely to change in the coming weeks.

Military analysts said the Russian army has a massive advantage in firepower, but not any significant superiority in the number of troops. Ukraine is hoping to counter the Russian onslaught in Donbas with the ongoing resupply of munitions from Western nations, including the United States.

Zelenskyy acknowledged the Ukrainian withdrawal from Lysychansk during his nightly video address late Sunday but vowed that the countrys forces will fight their way back.



"If the command of our army withdraws people from certain points of the front where the enemy has the greatest fire superiority, in particular this applies to Lysychansk, it means only one thing: We will return thanks to our tactics, thanks to the increase in the supply of modern weapons," Zelenskyy said.

The fact that we protect the lives of our soldiers, our people, plays an equally important role. We will rebuild the walls, we will win back the land, and people must be protected above all else, Zelenskyy said.

Luhansk Governor Haidai told the Reuters news agency there was nothing critical in losing Lysychansk, and that Ukraine needed to win the overall war, not the fight for the city.

It hurts a lot, but its not losing the war, he said Monday.

Recovery plan

Switzerland is hosting a conference Monday and Tuesday focusing on what it will take to rebuild Ukraine.

The meeting in Lugano brings together leaders from dozens of countries as well as international organizations and the private sector.

Ukraines ambassador to Switzerland, Artem Rybchenko, said the conference would help produce a roadmap for his countrys recovery.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
HIGHLAND PARK, ILLINOIS  A gunman on a rooftop opened fire on an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago on Monday, killing at least six people, wounding 24 and sending hundreds of marchers, parents with strollers and children on bicycles fleeing in terror, police said. The suspect remained on the loose hours later as authorities scoured the area.

Highland Park Police Commander Chris O'Neill, the incident commander on scene, urged people to shelter in place as authorities search for the suspect. He said Monday afternoon that a "very active apprehension effort" was underway.

The July 4 shooting was just the latest to shatter the rituals of American life. Schools, churches, grocery stores and now community parades have all become killing grounds in recent months. This time, the bloodshed came as the nation tried to find cause to celebrate its founding and the bonds that still hold it together.

Mayor Nancy Rotering said the violence "has shaken us to our core." She added, "On a day that we came together to celebrate community and freedom, we are instead mourning the tragic loss of life and struggling with the terror that was brought upon us."

The shooting occurred at a spot on the parade route where many residents had staked out prime viewing points early in the day for the annual celebration. Dozens of fired bullets sent hundreds of parade-goers  some visibly bloodied  fleeing. They left a trail of abandoned items that showed everyday life suddenly, violently disrupted: A half-eaten bag of potato chips; a box of chocolate cookies spilled onto the grass; a child's Chicago Cubs cap.

"There's no safe place," said Highland Park resident Barbara Harte, 73, who had stayed away from the parade fearing a mass shooting, but later ventured from her home.

Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Christopher Covelli said at a news conference "several of the deceased victims" died at the scene and one was taken to a hospital and died there. Police have not released details about the victims or wounded.

Lake County Coroner Jennifer Banek said the five people killed at the parade were adults and she doesn't have information on the sixth victim who was taken to a hospital and died there.

The shooter opened fire around 10:15 a.m., when the parade was about three-quarters through, authorities said.

Covelli said the gunman apparently used a "high-powered rifle" to fire from a spot atop a commercial building where he was "very difficult to see." He said the rifle was recovered at the scene. Police also found a ladder attached to the building.

"Very random, very intentional and a very sad day," Covelli said.

President Joe Biden on Monday said he and first lady Jill Biden were "shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day." He said he had "surged Federal law enforcement to assist in the urgent search for the shooter, who remains at large at this time."

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were conducting an urgent trace of the rifle, agency spokesperson April Langwell said. Federal agents conduct such traces to identify when, where and to whom the gun was last sold.

Biden signed the widest-ranging gun violence bill passed by Congress in decades, a compromise that showed at once both progress on a long-intractable issue and the deep-seated partisan divide that persists.

Police believe there was only one shooter but warned that he should still be considered armed and dangerous. Several nearby cities canceled events including parades and fireworks, some of them noting that the Highland Park shooter was still at large. Evanston, Deerfield, Skokie, Waukegan and Glencoe canceled events. The Chicago White Sox also announced on Twitter that a planned post-game fireworks show is canceled due to the shooting.

"You have a tragic mass act of violence that was random here today at a community event where people were gathered to celebrate, and the offender has not been apprehended thus far," Covelli, the crime task force spokesman, said. "So, could this happen again? We don't know what his intentions are at this point, so certainly we're not sure of that."

More than 100 law enforcement officers were called to the parade scene or dispatched to find the suspected shooter.

Hours after the shooting, law enforcement officers searched an office building near where the shooting occurred. Nearby, armed FBI agents in camouflage had also escorted a family with two small girls across Central Avenue. The children looked visibly frightened even as their mother attempted to reassure them that the agents leading and flanking them would protect them.

"Don't worry, you're safe now," she told them. "These guys will protect you."

Ominous signs of a joyous event suddenly turned to horror filled both sides of Central Avenue where the shooting occurred. Dozens of baby strollers  some bearing American flags, abandoned children's bikes and a helmet bedecked with images of Cinderella were left behind. Blankets, lawn chairs, coffees and water bottles were knocked over as people fled.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a statement: "There are no words for the kind of monster who lies in wait and fires into a crowd of families with children celebrating a holiday with their community."

Gina Troiani and her son were lined up with his daycare class ready to walk onto the parade route when she heard a loud sound that she believed was fireworks  until she heard people yell about a shooter. In a video that Troiani shot on her phone, some of the kids are visibly startled at the loud noise, and they scramble to the side of the road as a siren wails nearby.

"We just start running in the opposite direction," she told The Associated Press.

Her 5-year-old son was riding his bike decorated with red and blue curled ribbons. He and other children in the group held small American flags. The city said on its website that the festivities were to include a children's bike and pet parade.

Troiani said she pushed her son's bike, running through the neighborhood to get back to their car.

"It was just sort of chaos," she said. "There were people that got separated from their families, looking for them. Others just dropped their wagons, grabbed their kids and started running."

Debbie Glickman, a Highland Park resident, said she was on a parade float with coworkers and the group was preparing to turn onto the main route when she saw people running from the area.

"People started saying: 'There's a shooter, there's a shooter, there's a shooter,'" Glickman told the AP. "So we just ran. We just ran. It's like mass chaos down there."

She didn't hear any noises or see anyone who appeared to be injured.

"I'm so freaked out," she said. "It's just so sad."
WASHINGTON 

One of the key lawmakers investigating the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol last year says that if the Justice Department concludes that former President Donald Trump fomented the mayhem to block Congress from certifying his 2020 reelection loss  it should not hesitate to prosecute him.

Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the vice chairperson on the panel investigating the insurrection and a vocal anti-Trump Republican, acknowledged to ABC News that the prosecution of a former U.S. president would be unprecedented and difficult for an already politically divided country.

But the Wyoming Republican said that not prosecuting Trump, if it were warranted, would be a "much graver constitutional threat" for the United States. Trump, a Republican, lost to Democrat Joe Biden, but to this day claims that vote-counting irregularities cost him a second four-year term in the White House.

In an interview last Wednesday that was broadcast Sunday on the This Week show, Cheney said that if a president can engage in these kinds of activities, and the majority of the president's party looks away; or we as a country decide we're not actually going to take our constitutional obligations seriously, I think that's a much, a much more serious threat" than prosecuting him.

"I really believe we have to make these decisions, as difficult as it is, apart from politics. We really have to think about these from the perspective of: What does it mean for the country?" she said.

"There's no question that he engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors. I think there's no question that it's the most serious betrayal of his oath of office of any president in the history of the nation. It's the most dangerous behavior of any president in the history of the nation," she said.

Asked whether the committee could make a referral to the Justice Department for prosecution of Trump and others, Cheney said, "Yes," while adding that the Justice Department "doesn't have to wait" for the panel to act. She said the committee could issue "more than one criminal referral, including for possible witness tampering by former Trump aides trying to influence witnesses to stay loyal to Trump as he weighs a campaign to try to reclaim the presidency in the 2024 election.

The Justice Department is in the midst of an ongoing wide-ranging investigation of the riot but has not said it is specifically targeting Trump.

Cheney offered her thoughts a day after she led two hours of questioning Tuesday of Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to Trumps last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

Hutchinson, 25, gave an explosive behind-the-scenes account of Meadowss and Trumps actions before and during the January 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol by about 2,000 Trump supporters.

She told lawmakers how Trump became angrier and more volatile as the reality of his election loss set in and he realized that despite his private and public entreaties, former Vice President Mike Pence would not agree to upend the election outcome and send the results in several key states Trump narrowly lost back to their state legislatures so they would name electors supporting Trump to replace those legitimately chosen to vote for Biden in the Electoral College.

She testified that Trump was told ahead of a rally near the White House before the riot at the Capitol unfolded that some of his supporters were armed and equipped with body armor and yet urged them to fight like hell to upend the election outcome.

She said that a Meadows aide told her that Trump was angered that his Secret Service security detail would not drive him to the Capitol where his supporters were massing before storming into the Capitol. In one moment disputed by the Secret Service, Hutchinson said Trump tried to grab the steering wheel from a security agent and demanded he be driven to the Capitol.

As some of the rioters chanted Hang Mike Pence!  she said Meadows told her that Trump approved of the sentiment, saying his No.2 in command deserved to be hanged. Some unknown Trump supporters had erected a gallows on the National Mall within eyesight of the Capitol.

Trump has worked to disparage Hutchinsons testimony, posting on social media that "I hardly know who this person ... is, other than I heard very negative things about her.

"She is bad news!" he added.

In the ABC interview, Cheney said she was "absolutely confident" about Hutchinsons testimony, saying, She's an incredibly brave young woman."In the United States, presidents are effectively chosen in separate elections in each of the 50 states, not through the national popular vote. Each states number of electoral votes is dependent on its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway. The rioters who stormed the Capitol tried to keep lawmakers from certifying Bidens eventual 306-232 victory in the Electoral College.



At the heart of Trumps effort to stay in power was an audacious plan espoused by a key Trump lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and conservative lawyer John Eastman, to get legislatures in states Trump narrowly lost to appoint new electors supporting him to replace the official ones favoring Biden.

While the House committee cannot bring criminal charges, the Department of Justice is closely monitoring the hearings to determine whether anyone, Trump included, should be charged with illegally trying to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

No U.S. president has ever been charged with a criminal offense after leaving office.

Trump has often derided the nine-member House of Representatives panel investigating the riot at the Capitol and attacked its witnesses who have painted a highly unfavorable account of his postelection pressure campaign to stay in office against repeated findings of his own key aides, including former Attorney General William Barr, that there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to overturn the election outcome.

The investigative panel is comprised of seven Democrats, Cheney and another vocal Republican critic of Trump, Congressman Adam Kinzinger.

Cheney said, "I think you will continue to see in the coming days and weeks additional detail about the president's activities and behavior on January 6 last year.

In one of the hearings set for later this month, the committee is exploring how Trump watched the riot unfold on television for more than three hours while rejecting pleas from aides and his elder daughter, Ivanka, a White House adviser to him, to publicly urge to rioters to leave the Capitol.

More than 800 of them have been arrested and more than 300 have pleaded guilty to an array of criminal charges or been convicted at trials and handed prison terms of a few weeks to more than four years.
* Acquired Zimbabwe lithium project in $422 mln deal

* Given five years to produce battery-grade lithium

* Local battery-grade lithium production "not feasible" -Huayou

By Nelson Banya

HARARE (Reuters) - China's Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt 603799.SS faces regulatory pressure to produce battery-grade lithium in Zimbabwe within five years, official documents seen by Reuters show, something the miner has already said cannot be achieved.

China's biggest cobalt refiner acquired the hard-rock Arcadia lithium mine just outside Harare for $422 million earlier this year and has announced plans to spend $300 million.Read full story

But it has said production of battery-grade lithium in Zimbabwe is "not feasible" due to a shortage of electricity and other key inputs.

However, as a condition for approving the deal the Competition and Tariff Commission has stipulated that battery-grade lithium be produced within five years.

"The transaction was approved subject to the condition that the merged entity, its subsidiaries, affiliates and successors in title should undertake to produce battery-grade lithium in Zimbabwe within five years of receiving this determination," the commission said in a June 22 notice seen by Reuters.

That is at odds with Huayou's stated plans to build only a concentrator plant to process ore, not a converter for further processing to produce battery-grade lithium carbonate.

"For each tonne of battery-grade lithium carbonate production, it needs 2,800 kWh of green renewable power, 500-600 cubic metres of natural gas, 2.2 tonnes of concentrated sulfuric acid (98.5%), 2 tonnes of first-class sodium carbonate, 20 kg of first-class sodium hydroxide, 4 tonnes of heavy calcium powder, and 1.6 tonnes of food-grade carbon dioxide," Huayou said in May when it announced its investment plans for Arcadia.

"There is a chronic shortage of these supporting and auxiliary materials in Africa, and the costs incurred by importation would be huge and unaffordable."

Neither Huayou nor Zimbabwe's mines ministry responded to requests for comment on the competition commission's directive.

Mining analyst Paul Chimbodza said Zimbabwe, which has a 5% tax on raw lithium exports to promote local processing, needs to temper its "noble" battery aspirations.

"This young industry needs to walk before it can run," Chimbodza said.

(Reporting by Nelson Banya; editing by Helen Reid and Jason Neely)
The Chinese will soon hand over a state-of-the art new parliament building to Zimbabwe amid serious state security concerns.

Some Zimbabweans have also questioned the Chineses intentions for donating the building to a nation with massive natural resources being allegedly parceled out to the Asian nation.

The new parliament was built at a cost of more than US$200 million with certain building materials sourced from China.

Independent political analyst, Rejoice Ngwenya, questioned the so-called gift, saying it will come at a high cost to the nations sovereignty.

"Parliament is a very important building in a country and should not be given to some foreigner to build it. This can be equated to losing ones dignity and put the sovereignty issue at stake," said Ngwenya.

Another political analyst based in South Africa, Munjodzi Mtandiri, said people should have been consulted before the government signed an agreement with the Chinese to build the six-storey circular complex in Mt. Hampden.

"The problem with our leaders is that they just make important decisions without consulting the people. Building new parliament near Harare is against the spirit of devolution. It should have been built in another town like Bulawayo," said Mtandiri.

Opposition Citizen Coalition for Change deputy spokesperson, Ostalos Siziba, said the new parliament should also bring good ways of doing business in parliament like creating people-centred laws.

"It's good that we have a new parliament but it should also reflect the new ways of doing things in parliament by creating laws that respect and uphold the freedoms of our people," said Siziba

Norton independent member of parliament, Temba Mliswa, took a swipe at the government for setting up a new parliament building saying it wont improve the quality of debate, which is currently lacking.

"The improvement of technology that will come with the new parliament building has nothing to do with the quality of debate improving. The quality of debate improves if you choose members of parliament with capacity no matter how nice and how well-equiped," said Mliswa.

There are fears that the new building could have been bugged with sophisticated equipment for eavesdropping but the assertion has been denied by a representative of the contractor, Cai Libo of Shanghai Construction Group.

"You know that Zimbabwe and China are all-weather friends and as a friend you don't do such kind of a thing to a friend. The government of Zimbabwe is authorized for a special examination of the building," said Libo.

Deputy Information Minister, Kindness Paradza, said China's friendship with Zimbabwe started long back during the liberation struggle when China provided weapons to ZANU PFs armed wing, ZANLA.

"It should be stated from the onset that it's not new that China is helping Zimbabwe. This started way back during the armed struggle when we received ammunition for free from the Chinese people. Why can it be an issue now? said Paradza.

Some claim that it's payback time for China for being awarded various projects they are doing in the country.

The Chinese are reportedly funding the setting up of Natpharm Stores at Sally Mugabe Hospital, awarded tenders for airport expansion in Harare, Bulawayo and Vic Falls, refurbishing power projects in Hwange and Kariba. They also have water reticulation projects in most cities and towns, running into millions of dollars.
Just like fine wine, Italian honey has centuries of tradition behind it.

There are more than 300 types of honey on the market in Italy with different colours and flavours depending on the plants from which the bees draw nectar.

The most common is millefiori honey, but there are also numerous varieties of mono-floral honey.

How to choose? Among the most widely used in Italian cooking is acacia honey, which has a delicate taste and is the most suitable if you do not want to cover other flavours.

Lime honey, very sweet and aromatic, is great for desserts.

Chestnut honey and strawberry tree honey, on the other hand, are rather bitter and go well with main courses of meat, charcuterie boards and cheeses.

Now that we have your mouth watering, lets dive into Italys long history with honey, how the U.S. looks to Italian bees for preserving the species, and what to look for when shopping for the best honey in Italy.

The history of honey in Italy

There are numerous archaeological finds of mans love of bees and honey from Greek and Roman times.

Thriving in a particularly industrious way, with the queen at its head, bees constitute a perfect symbol to represent kingship (think of the Barberini Bees of the powerful aristocratic family).

In ancient Rome, bee products were widely used and several testimonies highlight the various aspects of beekeeping: the collection of honeycomb from the cavity of a tree in an allegorical painting, or the stages of breeding with round beehives in evidence in the sepulchral relief of aristocrats Titus Paconius Caledus and his wife Octavia Salvia (1st century B.C.).

Bee reliefs inside medieval Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome

Places famous for their bee production lined the Mediterranean coasts and included mainly Greece, Egypt, and Sicily.

In Sicily, the first documented records of beekeeping date back to the time of the Magna Graecia. Theocritus, in 300 B.C., extolled the honey and bees of the region Ibla.

In Ibla, beekeeping was certainly important even before the Greek invasion, and it was especially so in the area of Pantalica where, from 1250 to 700 B.C., according to historians, there was the capital of the Sicilian state of the mythical Hyblon king of the bee people.

The Sicilians took from the Greeks and made the bee an object of worship. The myth of Aristeus, son of Apollo and Cyrene, who, having learned from the nymphs the art of raising bees, cultivating vines, olive trees and making cheese, spread his knowledge throughout Greece and Italy.

The myth of Aristeus is also present in Sardinia; the discovery of a bronze statuette depicting a man with his body covered with bees, a hero who taught Sardinians the cultivation of olives and vines, milk processing and beekeeping, dates back to 1843.

In Sicily, the Iblaean beekeepers proceeded to harvest without killing the bees, thanks to the particular structure of the hive that allowed them to open and extract the combs with honey while leaving the nucleus intact; similarly, in Sardinia, the hives were "emptied" before taking the combs with honey.

In the Sardinian tradition, honey extraction was done by squeezing the combs by hand or by pressing. Pressing the combs was the technique used by Sicilian beekeepers, and the resulting honey was much richer in pollen than honey.

With such a technique, considerable quantities of wax were obtained, which were put to various uses: candles, cosmetics, and artistic crafts.

In Sicilian tradition, wax remnants full of honey and pollen were crumbled in hot water and left to ferment, obtaining alcohol. One of its uses was to produce a liquor with thyme honey, a drink mentioned by some ancient Roman authors as a beverage intended for the rich.

Human intervention with bees has long been practiced; as early as Pliny reported on the transport of beehives along the Po River on boats.

Until the beginning of the last century, in Calabria, women could be seen in groups carrying hives on their heads at night. In Sicily, the movement of bees was entrusted to mules.

U.S. beekeepers come to Italy to improve genetics

Bee scientists in the United States have been coming to Italy to improve the genetic variability of their bee populations.

One of the causes of high bee mortality in the United States, according to a Washington State University research team, is the genetic variability of honey bees is being depleted. This has left them short of genetic traits that could help them resist varroa, a common disease among bees.

Susan Cobey, a geneticist in WSU's entomology department and queen bee breeder, explains why: "Honey bees are not native to the American continent, we brought them here, but in 1922 the U.S. closed its borders to bee imports to prevent the spread of Acarapis woodi (the small trachea mite that did so much damage a few years earlier in the U.K.) and since then our bee populations have been interbreeding with each other."

And that is why Susan Cobey and some of her collaborators have been traveling across Europe and Asia since 2008 to collect sperm from the drones of native bees in Italy, Slovenia, Germany, Kazakhstan and the Republic of Georgia-countries where honeybees have favorable genetic traits, such as resistance to varroa mites.

Beekeeper and honey production on a nature reserve in Modena, Italy

Italian beekeepers have become increasingly aware of the risks of dissipating variability in bee species even in Italy, and have undertaken great efforts to prevent the extinction of various sub- species.

The Best Honey in Italy

Whether you like the classic millefiori, acacia, chestnut, eucalyptus, linden or honeydew, it doesn't matter, Italy is rich in quality honey with special characteristics.

Many Italian beekeepers are engaged in honey production. But which are the best honeys?

The Tre Gocce d'Oro Competition, a competition among the best honeys in Italy organized by the National Honey Observatory, held in September on the outskirts of Bologna, is now in its 42nd edition.

A collection of colourful bee hives, active with bees collecting honey, in Sicily, Italy

The contest celebrates the best of Italian honey, with varieties that tell the story of Italys biodiversity. The competition is broken into categories:

- The Thousand Honeys, the Millefiori

- The honeys from organic beekeeping

- The Great honeys of Sicily

- The Great honeys of Puglia

- The Great honeys of Abruzzo

- Slow honeys

If you have the chance to try any of the above, one of the best ways is with a slice of pecorino cheese to contrast the sweetness and bring out the flavour. Here is the list of winners from 2021.

What makes one honey better than another?

The best honey products are from Italy's second largest region, Piedmont, and the second smallest, Molise. Tuscany, Sardinia, Abruzzo and Puglia are also full of prized honeys.

When youre shopping for honey in an Italian supermarket be sure to check the label for where it comes from.

In recent years, Italian honey producers have sounded the alarm over what they call false honey imported from China. It is a product created in a lab, with the addition of sugar syrup and with production methods that do not comply with European standards.

We encourage you to buy honey produced by small local companies in specialty stores or at local markets. Or buy it directly from the producers.

Sign selling homemade cheese and honey in Italy

Most Italian beekeeping companies have their own site with a section for online purchasing.

Don't be misled by special offers: honey must be paid an appropriate price that cannot fall, for example for a millefiori, below 10 euros per kg.

Honey production in Italy today

Climate change is making life very difficult for bees and also for those who have chosen to raise them professionally, but bees in Italy are producing a lot of honey this year.

The president of the Biella Beekeepers Association, Paolo Detoma, said, "This will be one of the best years for honey. The frosts that we feared might come in the spring have not happened, and the flowering is perfectly normal: we will have an excellent product."

Other than climate change, one problem facing Italian honey supply is a lack of space not contaminated by industrial agriculture.

An innovative plan has encouraged the proliferation of urban beehives even on city rooftops. In Turin, 120,000 bees have been placed in the city as "sentinels of the environment" and will produce 20 kilos of honey.

What is certain, however, is that the demand for honey is there and is also increasing. In Italy there has been a rediscovery of honey as a food to be used in the kitchen not only for breakfast but also for the preparation of other meals.

Next Christmas, head to Naples for some honey- soaked Struffoli and youll get an idea of exactly how Italians make honey a star ingredient in their cooking.

Homemade sweet Italian Struffoli with honey and sprinkles
36.5 million allocated to Italian regions worst hit by drought.

Italy has declared a state of emergency in five northern regions battling the worst drought in 70 years, the government announced on Monday night.

Emergency funds of 36.5 million are to be divided between the regions of Emilia Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lombardia, Piemonte and Veneto.

The funds will be used to tackle the water shortage in the five regions regions surrounding the Po which, at 652km, is Italy's longest river.

The state of emergency "is aimed at addressing the current situation with extraordinary means and powers", the government said in a statement, with the measures due to stay in place until the end of this year.

The emergency funds will be divided as follows: 10.9 million to Emilia Romagna; 4.2 million to Friuli Venezia Giulia; 9 million to Lombardia; 7.6 million to Piemonte; 4.8 million to Veneto.

Praising the "excellent work" done so far by regional authorities, Italy's minister for regional affairs Mariastella Gelmini said the water crisis requires "national intervention" and "immediate solutions".

Priorities include guaranteeing drinking water to all citizens, she said, as well as assisting companies and the hard-hit agricultural industry.

The minister underlined that the current water crisis has highlighted an "already quite critical situation in our country: for decades no new reservoirs and dams have been built, we are dealing with obsolete infrastructure or leaking aqueducts."

Gelmini said that 2.8 billion from Italy's National Plan of Recovery and Resilience (PNRR) is earmarked to address "water management in a structural way", including the repair and modernisation of water networks and investments in irrigation systems for the agriculture sector.

The drought has been compounded by unseasonably hot weather and low rainfall earlier this year, leading several towns and cities in northern Italy to introduce water rationing.

Farmers in the Po valley are faced with rising levels of salty seawater seeping back into the river, destroying their crops, with more than 30 per cent of Italy's agricultural produce at risk, according to farming organisation Coldiretti.

On Sunday at least seven people died in an avalanche after a glacier collapsed in the northern Italian Alps, a tragedy which premier Mario Draghi linked to global warming.
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Chinas growing influence in the microstates of the Pacific Ocean has raised alarm among the powers that traditionally dominated the region  Australia, New Zealand, and the US. If they want to halt Beijings advance, theyre going to have to start offering more in return. Share with The Post: Whats one way youve felt the impact of inflation? ArrowRight A security pact with the Solomon Islands earlier this year first showed the scope of Beijings ambitions, permitting Chinas police and military to operate in the country. Similar deals were offered to a group of 10 countries alongside a visit by Foreign Minister Wang Yi in May. Wang is now seeking a meeting with foreign ministers of the island countries at the same time that leaders assemble in July for the annual Pacific Islands Forum, the main multilateral body for the region.

China can afford to be so energetic in its diplomacy because the status quo has grown stale, and is no longer clearly serving the interests of these governments. Traditionally, the Pacific has been divided between an Australian sphere of influence in the mountainous, more populous territories of Papua New Guinea and Melanesia; a New Zealand sphere in the Polynesian archipelagoes south of the equator; and a US one in the smaller islands of Micronesia strung between Hawaii and Guam north of the equator.(1)

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Its hard to argue the region has done very well from this arrangement. Thanks to their geographic isolation and minuscule populations, Pacific states do far worse than small island countries elsewhere in the world. Outside Fiji, tourism is rudimentary; to this day, most goods exports consist of fish, coconut and pearls. The offshore financial centers that helped make Mauritius and many Caribbean countries relatively wealthy were stamped out here before they got established. Income levels, when adjusted for the relatively high cost of living, are on a par with sub-Saharan Africa:

What the Pacific nations lack in terms of economic strength, however, they make up for with one strong card: their sovereignty. If you include East Timor, Pacific island nations make up 13 of the 38 members of the Small Island Developing States grouping at the UN. That bloc, in theory, has greater voting power than the 27 nations of the European Union, or the 22 non-island states in the Americas, helping secure committee appointments and diplomatic wins for its allies(2). Melanesian countries like the Solomon Islands, moreover, are less than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from the coast of Australia, making a Chinese military presence there a worry for Canberra.

Island governments have a long history of trading diplomacy for development assistance. Four of the 14 states that recognize Taiwan instead of mainland China are in the Pacific; three others have in the past switched allegiance between Taipei and Beijing, making the most of the geopolitical competition between the powers.

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Their willingness to entertain more substantial overtures from Beijing is a sign these nations are growing more assertive, according to Sarina Theys, a lecturer in diplomacy at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji. Theyre realizing they have more power than they initially thought, she says. Theyre becoming more vocal and claiming their place on the global stage.

In that sense, Chinas growing interest is seen locally not so much as a threat, but as an opportunity to gain leverage with the traditional major powers on the periphery of the Pacific. Australian foreign minister Penny Wongs first act after coming to power in the countrys May election was a diplomatic visit to woo governments attracted by Beijings overtures. A more open door for labor and permanent migration into Australia is also promised by Wongs government.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in March appointed the former U.S. ambassador in Malaysia to oversee the renewal of pacts expiring over the next two years with Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia, three nations that are closely aligned with America through migration and development agreements.

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In per-capita terms, the larger Pacific powers have been extraordinarily generous in aid and development assistance over the years. Its not clear, though, whether Beijings promises of investment will happen, or be effective if they do. The experience of countries like Sri Lanka and Pakistan, left with too much debt and under-utilized infrastructure, recommends a policy of caution.

China isnt obviously a better actor on the single biggest issue for island governments, either  the global warming that threatens the very viability of some of the more low-lying states.

Climate change is an existential challenge in the region, says Theys. Its the most important security threat the Pacific island states have.

Still, a more competitive diplomatic space in the Pacific is very much in the interests of the region, even if it annoys neighbors whove grown comfortable with the status quo. In entertaining but ultimately rejecting the 10-nation security pact proposed by Wang, island governments have shown that theyre growing skilled at the traditional statecraft of minor powers  playing larger nations off each other.

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Major powers will have to pay more attention to the Pacific in their future dealings. For island governments, thats no bad thing.

More From Bloomberg Opinion:

 The West Forgot About the Pacific Islands. China Didnt: Ruth Pollard

 China Scores a Victory In the New Battle of the South Pacific: James Stavridis

 Obesity Is Stalking Poor Countries Where Hunger Once Reigned: David Fickling

(1) France, which has territories in several corners of the region, is an additional player.

(2) To be sure, the presence of France, the U.K. and the U.S. on the U.N. Security Council gives greater weight to those regions.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy and commodities. Previously, he worked for Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

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Indonesian President Joko Widodo visited Kyiv and Moscow last week, offering to be a diplomatic bridge between the two. The first Asian leader to make the trip to both capitals since Russias invasion of Ukraine, he made a few headlines, but no real progress. Share with The Post: Whats one way youve felt the impact of inflation? ArrowRight Critics saw the journey as image politics. And yet, Widodos not wrong to see a role for states outside the wealthy world in helping to resolve a crisis that has punished emerging markets, particularly those that are also importers of food, fertilizer and fuel, like Indonesia. Southeast Asias most populous country is well placed to act. It has historic political and military ties to Russia and economic connections with Ukraine; it also holds this years presidency of the G20 and next years chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. It has a strong diplomatic presence to back any initiative. Even small-scale success, however, requires ambition and a concerted push for more than empty Kremlin promises.

Jokowi, as the Indonesian leader is known, had more than one concern on his travels: most obviously, the threat to food security  a longstanding headache for Jakarta thats only worsened since Russias troops began streaming over the border into one of the worlds largest grain exporters, bombing silos and farmland, disrupting logistics and driving up prices. Indonesia is a major buyer of Ukrainian wheat.

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The G20 summit, scheduled for November in Bali, also needs to be salvaged. Unwilling to leave out Russia, Jokowi has invited Ukraine, but now needs to hope both will attend remotely to limit the risk of paralyzing the entire gathering.

There were no miracles. In Ukraine, Jokowi visited the scarred city of Irpin, as other dignitaries have before him, called for peace and offered to carry a message to President Vladimir Putin. In Moscow, the Indonesian leader said he had secured Russian guarantees for the security of food and fertilizer supplies, but offered no specifics  while the Kremlin simply turned the occasion into a demonstration of support, and proof that efforts to cut off Russia cannot succeed.

Can Indonesia achieve more? Certainly. But it must test the limits of its non-aligned position and acknowledge that unpicking a global food crisis and a war that violates the basic principles of Indonesias own foreign policy  among them, respect for sovereignty and non-aggression  is impossible if Russia is allowed to pit the West against the rest. Nor will platitudes on the need for talks suffice. It wont be enough to allow this peacebuilding effort to fade as Jakartas recent attempts have, say in Afghanistan or Myanmar.

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Indonesia exemplifies the balancing act many emerging nations have struggled with over the past few months. They are juggling discomfort with Moscows disregard for basic norms and the reality of popular support for Russia  the result of Soviet-era ties, distrust of the West, admiration for a strongman leader and the widespread perception, fed by pro-Russian social media propaganda, that Putin is supportive of Islamic nations. Indonesia voted in favor of a United Nations resolution condemning Russian aggression and Jokowi pointedly visited Kyiv first, but the nation has also sidestepped explicit censure of Russia and refused Ukrainian requests for weapons. That can prove an advantage.

Clearly, the idea of Indonesia bringing an end to the entire war is, at best, optimistic. Putin has shown no indication that he is ready to negotiate an enduring peace and feels he can outlast Ukraine in a war of attrition. After all, he does not have to worry about the vagaries of electoral cycles the way Western leaders do. Hes also a man who perceives himself as the great leader of a great power, waging an existential fight  so not amenable to being influenced by a country he sees as a lesser player on the world stage. Ukraine, meanwhile, may be skeptical of Indonesias bona fides.

With an eye on its import bill and another on the South China Sea, though, Indonesia still has good reason to act. Failure to do so will allow Moscow to make a bad situation worse by claiming unquestioning support in the Global South, and encourage Beijing to learn all the wrong lessons. Jakarta also has the required clout, because Russia needs not just China but the wider emerging world to avoid isolation and retain global influence. That includes this large, populous Muslim nation, a major importing economy and a regional heavyweight.

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First, Jokowi must resist being complicit in Russian efforts to blame the West for a food calamity that the Kremlins own actions have exacerbated  as Senegalese President Macky Sall was last month. There is nothing neutral about supporting one sides dangerous and misleading narrative. He must push back too against attempts to use grain and fertilizer exports as bargaining chips.

But he can go further, as a loud emerging-market voice, pushing for the Kremlin assurances necessary to free Ukrainian exports  not just vague statements. He can press Moscow for specific and public guarantees to merchant shippers and insurers in order to open up Black Sea ports like Odesa. He can help persuade Turkey and others to provide the necessary security guarantees for Ukraine, where officials would otherwise resist removing the mines protecting its coast. And yes, Jokowi can demand Western action too, including swift and meaningful financial support for vulnerable economies and coordinated efforts to mitigate the consequences of sanctions overcompliance.

Non-aligned positions, especially for those with traditions dating to the original 1955 Bandung meeting, are hardly irrational. And yet, Indias external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, is wrong to separate Europes problems and the worlds  the surge in grain, fertilizer and fuel prices proves that. The question is not whether to act, but how to do so. Neutrality is not to be confused with passivity in the face of disaster.

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More From Bloomberg Opinion:

 The West Must Move East for NATO to Survive Putin: Hal Brands

 The Weakness of Putins Economic Show of Force: Clara F. Marques

 China and Russia Are Now More Inseparable Than Ever: Minxin Pei

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.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

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At their summit in Madrid last week, NATOs leaders agreed to add two new members, Finland and Sweden, and to beef up the alliances presence in Eastern Europe. Taken together, the moves will greatly enhance NATOs firepower and strengthen its ability to deter Russian aggression. They also could create new risks, which all member states will need to be attentive to.

The summits most significant breakthrough came before it officially began, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to support the Nordic countries bids to join NATO. In exchange, Erdogan received assurances that both countries would not support Kurdish groups that Turkey considers terrorists  as well as a pledge from US President Joe Biden to support the sale of new F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.

However distasteful to give in to Erdogans demands, the price was worth it. Adding Finland and Sweden will significantly upgrade the alliances air-defense and intelligence capabilities and help NATO counter Russian activity in the Baltic Sea and the Arctic. It also sends a powerful message to Russian President Vladimir Putin: namely, that his attempt to use the invasion of Ukraine to weaken and divide NATO has done just the opposite.

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Having agreed to move forward with Nordic expansion, the leaders of NATOs member states will still need to convince their respective legislatures to ratify the deal. In the meantime, the allies should increase intelligence sharing and defense cooperation with Finland and Sweden to deter Russia from taking hostile action while their membership bids are pending.

Beyond expanding to the north, NATO announced other measures that have the potential to transform Europes security landscape. Biden said the US will establish a permanent Army headquarters in Poland and rotate more forces to Romania and the Baltic states. Two additional squadrons of US F-35 stealth fighters will be sent to the UK to bolster NATOs air power. Fully deploying the new assets will double the size of NATOs defenses on its eastern flank.

It remains to be seen whether the allies can sustain the resolve that was on display in Madrid. US and European officials predict the war in Ukraine is likely to continue for months to come. Support for tougher sanctions against Russia may collapse as energy and food costs mount. Its also possible that Putin will lash out in retaliation against NATOs new assertiveness, perhaps by targeting vulnerable Baltic states  which might test the willingness of the US and Europe to heed their obligations to defend any ally that comes under attack.

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The work of defending Ukraines freedom, let alone countering Russian influence in Europe, is far from over. But NATO has so far shown impressive unity and determination in meeting the challenge. For that, Biden and his fellow leaders deserve credit and support.

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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The global cybersecurity community was set alight this week by news that data on more than 1 billion people were leaked from a Shanghai police database. The implications could be wide-ranging, yet the most astounding aspect of this case may be the fact that it likely wasnt a hack that caused it, but basic errors in digital hygiene.

The asking price for the database, which includes several billion case records, is just 10 bitcoin ($202,000). This indicates the seller is someone who happened across the data and is being opportunistic rather than a professional hacker motivated by money. A sample of the data posted in an online forum, and viewed by Bloomberg Opinion, shows records of people across China with names, identification and mobile phone numbers, the original source of the data, and a reference to the first time the details were entered into the record. Chillingly, the database includes fields referring to express delivery and food-order details. This could imply that this data were compiled by police from multiple sources across the country, beyond what law enforcement typically gathers firsthand. Of course, there may be other explanations for such data, too.

Bloomberg Opinion was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the data, yet numerous posts in that same forum indicate that users have checked it and found it to be real. Shanghai authorities havent publicly responded to the alleged data breach. Representatives for the citys police and Cyberspace Administration of China, the countrys internet overseer, did not respond to requests for comment by Bloomberg News.

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Whereas hackers seek to penetrate a computer system, possibly using malware and phishing attacks, this breach seems to be far more straightforward. It appears a software developer may have left an access key visible in an online code repository or in a blog post, according to data posted in public forums and social media, and discussions among people familiar with the case but not directly involved. This key is similar to, but functions differently from, a password.

With that key, and a basic understanding of how the database was set up  which wouldnt require inside knowledge  its likely the information was extracted by accessing a poorly configured server. The consensus in the cybersecurity community leans toward this not being a hack, but an example of sloppiness and poor security practices, though the exact method for obtaining the data hasnt been confirmed.

Information posted online indicates that the database was run by the Shanghai police, but may have been hosted on a server operated by Alibaba Holding Group Ltd.s Alicloud. Theres no suggestion that Alicloud is responsible for any security vulnerabilities. Alibaba didnt respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment. Its not clear that the person, or people, who downloaded data is the same as those selling it.

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Data breaches are notoriously common. From targeted attacks  as in the 2020 Solarwinds hack by Russian agents  to those caused by poor security, like the 2019 case of First American Financial Corp. Yet this Shanghai police incident may end up being one of the largest ever leaks, especially given the depth of information contained.

While theres no evidence that financial details such as credit card numbers are included, investigators are likely to pore over the data to build a picture of modern Chinese society and how the government functions. A previous leak of a Chinese police database formed the foundation for research into how authorities monitor and control the countrys Uyghur population. This work was subsequently published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and the Intercept. Beijing has repeatedly denied accusations that it represses Uyghurs.

As a greater understanding of this breach comes to light, including what all the fields mean and how they connect to various organizations across China, were likely to garner an even more-detailed understanding of Chinas data-collection framework and how it uses information to keep tabs on its people. Yet we shouldnt lose sight of the fact that 1 billion people are now potential victims of yet another digital breach caused by bad security practices.

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More From This Writer and Others at Bloomberg Opinion:

 North Korean Hackers See Crypto In Their Crosshairs: Parmy Olson

 Australia Sends a $7.5 Billion Cyber Signal to China: Tim Culpan

 They May Be Kids, But Lapsus$ Hackers are Giants: Tim Culpan

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Tim Culpan is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology in Asia. Previously, he was a technology reporter for Bloomberg News.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

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Police take control of opposition towns Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight Nicaraguan police took control of five municipalities run by a party opposed to President Daniel Ortega in recent days, dismissing elected leaders and installing ruling party sympathizers in their place, opposition organizations said Monday. The move comes four months before local elections in 153 municipalities. On Monday morning, police raided four city halls run by opposition party Citizens for Freedom, or Ciudadanos por la Libertad (CxL). Another in Pantasma  an opposition stronghold also in the hands of CxL  was raided over the weekend.

All legitimately elected municipal governments under the banner of Citizens for Freedom have been taken over by the regime, said Kitty Monterrey, president of CxL, on Twitter.

Nicaraguas government and police force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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CxL was outlawed in 2021 before the election that gave Ortega another five-year term, in a vote decried by the international community as a sham. But the municipalities already run by the party remained in their hands until now.

 Reuters

Gunmen surround, attack army patrol

A Mexican army patrol was surrounded and attacked in the town of Altar, Mexicos president said Monday.

Altar, about 60 miles south of Sasabe, Ariz., has long been known as a staging ground for immigrant smuggling and is reportedly controlled by a faction of the Sinaloa cartel.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that on Sunday, soldiers had detained three criminal suspects but were quickly surrounded by 10 to 15 pickups and 60 gunmen.

The assailants outnumbered the soldiers 10 to 1, Lopez Obrador said.

He said the assailants offered soldiers $500,000 to free one of the detained suspects, and when the soldiers refused, a gunfight broke out and one soldier was killed.

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Sonora Gov. Alfonso Durazo wrote on his social media accounts that four suspects had been detained for weapons possession.

 Associated Press

18 killed, hundreds wounded in unrest

Eighteen people were killed and 243 wounded during unrest in Uzbekistans autonomous province of Karakalpakstan that broke out last week over plans to curtail its autonomy, Uzbek authorities said Monday.

Security forces detained 516 people while dispersing the protesters Friday but have now released many of them, the national guard press office said.

On Saturday, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev dropped plans to amend articles of the constitution concerning Karakalpakstans autonomy and its right to secede. He also declared a month-long state of emergency in the northwestern province.

Official reports said protesters had marched through the provincial capital of Nukus on Friday and tried to seize local government buildings, triggering the worst bout of violence in almost two decades in the Central Asian nation of 34 million.

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According to the prosecutor generals office, 18 people died from grave wounds sustained during the clashes.

Karakalpakstan  situated on the shores of the Aral Sea, which has for decades been a site of environmental disaster  is home to Karakalpaks, an ethnic minority group whose language is closer to Kazakh than Uzbek.

 Reuters

Sudan military pulls out of talks, general says: Sudan's leading general said Monday that the country's military will withdraw from negotiations meant to solve the ongoing political crisis after a coup last year, allowing civil society representatives to take their place. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan also promised that he will dissolve the sovereign council he leads after a transitional government is formed. Pro-democracy groups have repeatedly said they will not negotiate with the military and have called for it to immediately hand the reins to a civilian government.

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Hurricane Bonnie moves north: Hurricane Bonnie moved roughly parallel to Mexico's Pacific coast Monday, after crossing over Central America from the Caribbean and dropping heavy rain but causing little damage. Forecasters said they expected the storm to stay well out to sea and pose no threat to land. Bonnie had maximum sustained winds of 90 mph Monday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

 From news services

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BAMAKO, Mali  Two United Nations peacekeepers from Egypt were killed and five others seriously wounded when their vehicle hit a landmine planted by suspected jihadis in northern Mali on Tuesday, the U.N. said. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia's war in Ukraine. ArrowRight The deadly attack comes just days after the renewal of the mandate of the U.N. Mission to Mali, known as MINUSMA.

This morning, an armored vehicle of a MINUSMA logistics convoy hit a mine on the Tessalit-Gao road, the mission announced in a press release.

According to an initial report, two peacekeepers died of their injuries and five others were seriously wounded as a result of the attack, the statement added.

The victims are all Egyptian nationals, a U.N. official told The Associated Press, insisting on anonymity because he is not allowed to speak to the press until the U.N. informs the families.

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Ten U.N. peacekeepers have been killed in Mali since the beginning of the year.

First deployed in 2013, the mandate of the U.N. mission in Mali to help battle against Islamic extremist rebels was renewed last week although the Malian government said it will not support the missions aim to promote and safeguard human rights.

Russia and China abstained from the French-drafted U.N. resolution, which extends the mandate of the mission until June 30, 2023, with its current ceiling of 13,289 military personnel and 1,920 international police.

More than 270 peacekeepers have died in Mali, making it the U.N.s deadliest peacekeeping mission, according to U.N. officials.

Mali is ruled by a military junta that seized power in August 2020. Col. Assim Goita has been named president.

Malis junta has grown closer to Russia, as Moscow has looked to build alliances and gain sway in Africa. The Russian Wagner Group has deployed a team of fighters in Mali.

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Last week a European military task force that helped Malis government fight Islamic extremists formally withdrew from the West African country amid tensions with its ruling military junta.

The French military, which spearheaded the Takuba task force, announced that it had ended its work in Mali. The move was tied to Frances decision earlier this year to withdraw troops from Mali after nine years of helping Malian forces fight violent extremists who had threatened to seize power.

The European Takuba force was composed of several hundred special forces troops from 10 countries: Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden. It aimed at training and protecting Malian combat forces.

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TIRANA, Albania  Albanias Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a life sentence imposed on a local man over the killing of two Czech tourists during a carjacking robbery in 2015. Sokol Mjacaj, 27, was convicted of fatally shooting the two tourists in Prekal village, 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of the capital Tirana, according to the verdict made available by the courts spokeswoman.

The two Czechs, Michal Svatos and Anna Kusinova, were travelling in their car when Mjacaj stopped them at gunpoint in Lotaj village, 190 kilometers (120 miles) north of Tirana. He climbed into the car and told them to drive toward Shkodra city.

Near Prekal the Czech driver braked hard and ran from the car but was shot by the gunman. It was unclear how the Czech woman was shot dead.

Mjacaj admitted to the killings and said he had aimed to rob the couple. Local media said he was arrested after trying to sell a camera that belonged to the Czechs.

Tuesdays verdict follows Mjacajs appeal against two previous guilty rulings by lower courts.

The number of Czech tourists visiting Albania has increased significantly in recent years. Most come by car, attracted by the tiny Western Balkan countrys largely unexplored natural beauties and its comparatively low prices.

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark  Denmarks largest cinema chain kept all its movie theaters closed Tuesday because a 17-year-old employee was one of the three people killed in a weekend shooting attack at a shopping mall. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia's war in Ukraine. ArrowRight Nordisk Film Biografer, which has 23 theaters nationwide, said on Facebook that the company made the decision out of respect for the victims  the teenage boy it employed, a 17-year-old girl and a 47-year-old Russian man  and to talk the situation through with our staff.

One of the chains locations is at the Fields shopping center, located on the outskirts of the Danish capital.

Four other people were hospitalized in critical but stable condition after suffering gunshot wounds in Sundays shootings. Authorities have said a 22-year-old Danish man in custody apparently selected people to shoot at random.

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In all, around two dozen people were hurt, most in the panicked stampede after gunfire rang out at the mall. Neither the gunman nor the victims can be named under a court order.

We stand together in this difficult time, said Crown Prince Frederik who had attended a memorial ceremony for the victims held outside the Fields shopping center Tuesday evening.

We are all here tonight to commemorate those killed, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told the crowd of several thousand people that also included top officials, firefighters and first responders. A minute of silence was held and many of the thousands had red eyes and were visibly moved. Many hugged each other during the event.

Tonight we can feel the grief, tonight we can feel the love, Copenhagen Mayor Sophie H. Andersen said from a stage that had been put up outside the shopping mall. She spoke before a musical interlude by a female choir.

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The area was full of flowers, lit candles and handwritten notes.

Authorities have said the suspect acted alone and they have ruled out terrorism as a motive. On Monday, the suspect was ordered held for 24 days in a secure mental health facility on preliminary charges of murder and attempted murder.

Stine Rysgaard, a spokesperson for the shopping mall, said the multi-story mall with more than 130 shops remains closed until at least July 11. all She said the mall had proper security but declined to give details, citing the ongoing investigation.

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BRUSSELS  The 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland on Tuesday, sending the membership bids of the two nations to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals  and possible political trouble in Turkey. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia's war in Ukraine. ArrowRight The move further increases Russias strategic isolation in the wake of its invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February and military struggles there since.

This is truly a historic moment for Finland, for Sweden and for NATO, the head of the alliance, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, said.

The 30 ambassadors and permanent representatives formally approved decisions made at a NATO summit in Madrid last week, when the leaders of member nations invited Russias neighbor Finland and Scandinavian partner Sweden to join the military club.

Securing parliamentary approval for the new members in Turkey, however, could still pose a problem even though Sweden, Finland and Turkey reached a memorandum of understanding at the Madrid summit.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Ankara could block the process if the two countries failed to grant Turkeys demands for the extradition of people it views as terror suspects. The people wanted in Turkey have links to outlawed Kurdish groups or the network of an exiled cleric accused of a failed 2016 coup in Turkey.

He said Turkeys Parliament could refuse to ratify the deal. It is a potent threat since NATO accession must be formally approved by all 30 member states, which gives each a blocking right.

Stoltenberg said he expected no change of heart. There were security concerns that needed to be addressed. And we did what we always do at NATO. We found common ground, he said.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has given the process added urgency. It will ensconce the two nations in the Western military alliance and give NATO more clout, especially in the face of Moscows military threat.

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We will be even stronger and our people will be even safer as we face the biggest security crisis in decades, Stoltenberg said.

At a news conference, the foreign ministers of Sweden and Finland were asked whether the memorandum specified people who would have to be extradited to Turkey. Both ministers said no such list was part of the agreement.

We will honor the memorandum fully. There is, of course, no lists or anything like that in the memorandum, but what we will do is to have better cooperation when it comes to terrorists, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said.

Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto was equally adamant.

Everything that was agreed in Madrid is stated in the document. There are no hidden documents behind that or any agreements behind that, Haavisto said.

Every alliance nation has different legislative challenges and procedures to deal with, and it could take several more months for the two Nordic nations to take their place as official NATO members.

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Denmark and Canada were quickest out of the blocks. They handed over their ratification documents in Washington as the first NATO countries just hours after the accession protocols were signed in Brussels, Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod told The Associated Press by phone.

It was a good signal not only to Sweden and Finland, but to other NATO countries that the speed of ratification is important, he said. We hope this inspires other countries to react fast.

The documents need to be handed over in Washington because NATOs founding treaty was signed there in 1949.

Germanys parliament is set to ratify the membership bids Friday, according to the Free Democrats, a partner party in the countrys coalition government. Other parliaments might only get to the approval process after long summer breaks.

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I look forward to a swift ratification process, Haavisto said.

In the meantime, the protocols approved Tuesday bring both nations deeper into NATOs fold already. As close partners, they already attended some meetings that involved issues that immediately affected them. As official invitees, they can attend all meetings of the ambassadors even if they do not yet have any voting rights.

___

Geir Moulson in Berlin, and Karl Ritter in Unterseen, Switzerland, contributed to this report.

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CAIRO  Sudanese security forces descended on an anti-coup sit-in to try and disperse protesters in the capital of Khartoum, wounding at least 11 people, a medical group said Tuesday. The crackdown came shortly after Sudans military ruler promised to step down once a civilian government is formed. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia's war in Ukraine. ArrowRight Security forces used tear gas on the demonstrators in the citys neighborhoods of Burri and al-Jawda late Monday, according to the Sudans Doctors Committee, which tracks protest casualties. Some of those hurt were hit by tear gas canisters and other solid objects in the head and elsewhere, tweeted the group.

Earlier in the day, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan said in a televised speech that the military will withdraw from negotiations meant to solve the ongoing political crisis, and promised to dissolve the military-led sovereign council after a new transitional government is formed.

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The council has governed the country since the military seized power in a coup last year. Burhans statement was unclear and gave no timeframe on his own stepdown.

It was also not immediately known what Burhan meant by saying the military would withdraw from the internationally mediated talks between the ruling generals and the countrys pro-democracy movement, which has denounced the October coup and demanded an immediate transfer of power top a civilian government.

On Tuesday, Sudans leading pro-democracy group, the Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change, dismissed Burhans promises as a clear maneuver and a tactical pullback that ostensibly accepts the idea of having the military return to the barracks but practically deprives it of all meanings.

A resolution lies first in having the military relinquish power and letting revolutionary forces form a fully civilian transitional government, a statement released by the group said.

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Sudanese pro-democracy activists have been holding sit-ins in different parts of Khartoum demanding that the generals return to the barracks and hand over power. The sit-ins began a day after authorities carried out a brutal clampdown on anti-coup marches that killed nine people and wounded 629 on Thursday alone, according to the medical group.

Sudanese military authorities have met the near-weekly street protests since the coup with a crackdown that has so far killed 113 people, including 18 children.

Sudan has been plunged into turmoil since the Oct. 25 military takeover upended its short-lived transition to democracy after three decades of repressive rule by former strongman Omar al-Bashir. Al-Bashir and his Islamist-backed government were removed by the military in a popular uprising in April 2019.

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Since the coup, the U.N. political mission in Sudan, the African Union and the eight-nation east African regional Intergovernmental Authority in Development group have been trying to broker a way out of the political impasse. But talks have yielded no results so far. Pro-democracy groups have repeatedly said they will not negotiate with the military, and have called for them to immediately hand the reins to a civilian government.

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Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size So many books and so little time. The good thing about winter, though, is that those of us in cooler climes are not so inclined to go out. Ergo, more time to stay in and relish a good read. There are plenty of good reads looming this month. From Carmel Birds memoir for book lovers and a collection of essays by the remarkable Patrick Radden Keefe to the latest novel by Claire G. Coleman and Chris Womersleys return to the world of Cairo, there really is something for everyone. Here is a selection of 10 books that should be on your reading pile. The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday. Credit: Telltale, Carmel Bird Transit Lounge, $32.99, July 1

If you love books, the prolific Carmel Birds latest is one you should relish. Partly an exploration of books that have influenced her and partly a memoir prompted by the reading of the books in her library during the pandemic, its an attempt to find some sort of pattern to her work, and also perhaps a pattern to her life. Whatever, its endlessly fascinating and is beautifully published as a handsome hardback. Fiction, she writes, is a tissue of lies. Lies in an attempt to construct a different world of truth. Hard to argue with that.

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Credit: Lapvona, Ottessa Moshfegh Jonathan Cape, $32.99, July 5

When James Ley reviewed Moshfeghs last novel, he wrote the sardonic intelligence of Moshfeghs novels is backed up by her ability to craft smartly conceived and carefully layered narratives with a facility that would seem to border on outright precocity. She has become something of a cult author, renowned for her amoral narrators. Lapvona is a village in medieval times that has been through the worst of the plague, but one that is subject to horrors galore. Benighted young Marek has the toughest upbringing and then falls foul of the governor and the priest. A post-pandemic allegory? Perhaps. Credit: Lying Beside You, Michael Robotham Hachette, $32.99, June 29

Its hard to top Michael Robotham for his sheer criminal consistency. Want a great thriller that will keep you fixated until the last word? Hes your man. His latest brings back Cyrus Haven and Evie Cormac, his teenage offsider who is like a human lie-detector. The set-up? Twenty years ago Cyrus brother slaughtered their parents and sisters; now hes getting out of jail. Then, two women go missing ... and youre hooked. Credit:

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Rogues, Patrick Radden Keefe Picador, $36.99, July 7

Keefe is the New Yorker writer best known for his books Empire of Pain, which exposed the Sackler familys deep involvement in the opioid plague, and Say Nothing, about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. This selection of his long-form work from the magazine includes pieces on drug lord El Chapo, a man who delved deeply into the mystery of the Lockerbie bombing, and Mark Burnett, the man who created The Apprentice and resurrected Donald Trump as an icon of American success. Great long-form journalism. Credit: Friends Like These, Meg Rosoff Bloomsbury, $16.99, July 5 The American writer and long-time London resident burst onto the YA scene with her brilliant 2004 novel, How I Live Now. Since then, she has written a further nine books, including this tale of Beth who gets a coveted internship at what I assume is The New York Times after a story she stumbled on was picked up by the national media. Its one of those summer-of-discovery novels, but its handled in Rosoffs characteristic witty, sharp and stylish way. Rosoff has also written a novel for adults, Jonathan Unleashed, and finished her equally brilliant friend Mal Peets final novel, Beck, after his death. Credit:

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The Diplomat, Chris Womersley Picador, $32.99, June 28

Remember Womersleys novel Cairo, which revolved around the eponymous block of apartments in Fitzroy, the motley group who lived there, and the theft of Picassos Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria? Well here comes the taciturn painter from that novel, Edward Degraves, back in town after doing a runner to London with Gertrude  now freshly dead; hes carting round her ashes  and clean after a spell in detox. Its all about dealing with the people and ghosts from the past and finding a way forward. Credit: The War Game, David Horner Allen & Unwin, $45, July 5 What with Russias invasion of Ukraine and the concern with Chinas ambitions in our region, war is a topic not far from the minds of politicians and the military these days. Historian David Horner, emeritus professor at ANU and a prolific author, offers a perceptive study of the decision to go to war, the conduct of those wars and Australias relationship with its allies. In the years between 1914 and 2003, Australia went to war nine times, Horner writes, and to understand why we need to focus on the decisions of the political leaders, and in particular the prime ministers. Credit:

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Enclave, Claire G. Coleman Hachette, $32.99, June 29

There are echoes aplenty in Colemans allegorical novel. If you liked Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale or Charlotte Woods The Natural Way of Things, this one is clearly for you. Christine lives with her family in Safetown, the enclave of the title, where everything is ordered and you do what youre supposed to. The workers who make their lives pleasant are brought in from the outside, but no one goes out there until Chris does the unthinkable  she falls for a worker, who is both black and a woman. Then she makes a run for it. Credit: The House of Fortune, Jessie Burton Picador, $34.99, July 12 Eight years after Burtons bestselling The Miniaturist comes  at last  a sequel that returns us to the Herengracht house in Amsterdam where Nella Oortman lived after she made her disastrous marriage to Johannes Brandt. But the years have passed  Nella is 37  and things have taken a turn for the worse. She would like her niece, Thea, the daughter of Johannes sister Marin, to make a profitable marriage that might save the familys dwindling fortunes. But Thea is in love with Walter Riebeeck, a set designer at the city playhouse. How can Nella justify putting Thea through what she experienced all those years ago? Credit:

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For an industry obsessed with cashmere, leather, suede and viscose instantly rendered redundant by a single drop of water, fashion is obsessed with getting us wet. Models pony-walking with dewy skin and drenched hair arranged across their shoulders, or diving into swimming pools while dripping with diamonds in sequinned evening gowns are regular features of runway shows and magazine editorials.

French fashion house Chanel opened its most recent ready-to-wear show with models trading their two-tone pumps for knee-high gumboots worn with tweed socks and tights, while British brand Burberry showed trench coats for the umpteenth time, but designers arent entirely to blame for putting water inVogue. Movies are the overflowing dam of seductive imagery, filled with slick raincoats and umbrellas that always open at the first attempt, where wet is wonderful and runny noses are saved for off-screen.

Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in The Notebook and Andie MacDowell with Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Credit:

Without movies, we would never have had the wisdom of Derek Zoolander rain down on us in Zoolander (2001) that, Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.

Moist movie moments mostly occur during a romantic climax. Think Noah (Ryan Gosling) with a white shirt pressed against his skin and Allies (Rachel McAdams) clinging blue dress beneath storm clouds in The Notebook (2004); Carrie (Andie MacDowell) in a boxy slate coat delivering one of the worst lines in movie history to Charles (Hugh Grant) in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), with the obligatory wet white shirt pressed against his skin: Is it still raining? I hadnt noticed.
There is a milder form of the disease that mostly results in a skin rash, but there is also the more serious respiratory form, that causes inflammation of the nose, throat and heart, as well as causing nerve damage and paralysis in severe cases. In extreme cases it can be deadly. Both children who acquired the disease in northern NSW have the respiratory form, referred to as diphtheria of the throat. Two recent diphtheria cases in northern NSW have sounded a warning bell about rates of vaccination against diseases thought consigned to history. Credit:File Image There is a safe, long-standing vaccine against diphtheria, which has been used in Australia since the early 1930s and which has seen the disease virtually wiped out in this country. Crucially, Maher says the vaccine does not act against the bacteria itself, but rather against the toxins it produces. Thats why you have to have high levels of [vaccine] coverage because you dont really have a herd immunity against the bacteria, he says. Instead, the vaccine gives your body the ability to deal with that toxin.

The fatality rate for diphtheria can be as high as 20 per cent, and until widespread vaccination was available it was one of the leading causes of death in children. The northern region of NSW is notable for its lower vaccination rate for a number of diseases including diphtheria. These sorts of diseases are things of the past only for as long as we sustain robust vaccination programs against them. Dr Chris Maher, senior vaccine advisor to UNICEF Australia Nationally the number of children considered fully vaccinated, which includes their diphtheria shot, by the age of two is more than 90 per cent, but in the far north of NSW it is just below 85 per cent, according to the latest data from 2021. The thing you have to keep in mind is that we do have quite high levels of vaccination still in this country, especially compared to other parts of the world, Maher says. But cases like this are a clear indicator that, at least in that community, you have kids who do not have immunity against that disease.

The director of the North Coast Public Health Unit, Paul Douglas, said in a statement that risk of further transmission to the broader community from these cases is very low. All close contacts have been followed up and offered post exposure prophylaxis, which can include antibiotics and immunisation to reduce the risk of transmission, he said. The best protection against diphtheria is vaccination, so please ensure you and your family or loved ones are up to date according to the current Australian Childhood Immunisation Schedule. The cases come as authorities in the UK are on high alert for signs of polio cases, after the virus that causes the disease was detected in wastewater samples in north and east London. The UK was declared polio-free in 2003 and their last known case of the disease, which causes paralysis and death, mainly in children, was in 1984. The eradication of polio in all but a small handful of countries is widely regarded as one of the great triumphs of childhood vaccination. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted childhood immunisation schedules in Australia and across the world, but as life returns to normal, authorities are urging parents to get their children their regular vaccinations.

Maher helped roll out vaccine programs against diphtheria and other diseases in Mongolia and ex-soviet countries in Central Asia in the 1990s, and says they proved a great success against what had been devastating levels of the disease. While he does not think Australia is anywhere close to those levels, he says they provide a reminder of where we do not want to end up. Loading These sorts of diseases are things of the past only for as long as we sustain robust vaccination programs against them, he says. If we let that fall then they will not be diseases of the past, they will be part of our lives again, and if they get any traction they can move very quickly through communities.
A tight-knit religious group in Queensland had differing views to quite a number of things before several members were arrested over the alleged murder of an eight-year-girl, police say.

On Tuesday, police arrested 12 people over the death of Elizabeth Rose Struhs, whose body was found in a house at Rangeville in the Toowoomba region, west of Brisbane, in January.

Her parents, Kerrie Elizabeth Struhs and Jason Richard Struhs, had already been charged with murder, torture and failing to provide the necessaries of life.

The 12 people arrested on Tuesday were members of a religious group known as the Saints to which the parents belonged. Police allege they were also aware of the girls medical condition but did not seek medical assistance.
Perth Zoos 65-year-old Asian elephant Tricia, the oldest to be cared for by a zoo in Australia and one of the oldest elephants in the world, is close to the end of her life after a rapid decline in health.

Tricia is a well-known and loved animal at the zoo, and has celebrated many birthdays surrounded by keepers and members of the public.

Her 64th birthday was celebrated in style at the zoo. Credit:Getty Images

In a statement, Perth Zoo said given her significant age, Tricias health was being monitored closely by veterinary experts and her dedicated elephant keepers, and had been for many years.

For some time, she has been receiving treatment and supportive care for various age-related complaints, however over the last week, her health has deteriorated rapidly, the statement said.
Britain, the United States, France and Canada all reopened their much larger missions in April and May. Australias embassy is co-located with Canadas. Australia was the first of its key allies to close its embassy in Afghanistan, which angered some officials within the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the overseas spy agency, because it meant they lost their presence on the ground to gather vital intelligence. While Kyiv is still being hit by a Russian missile every few weeks, many like-minded countries have assessed that it is safe to reopen their embassies since Russia appeared to give up on capturing the city more than two months ago. A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the Australian government was looking closely at when we can move our embassy back to Kyiv.

As the Prime Minister has said, Australia would like to have a presence on the ground in Ukraine, the DFAT spokesperson said. There are a number of operational, security and safety issues to take into account and we are considering all of those factors. Michael Shoebridge, the head of the defence program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the balance of risk has shifted in Ukraines capital. Its certainly more dangerous than other parts of the world, but it seems secure enough to have an embassy there, he said. This is a critical part of solidarity with the Ukrainian people. If were right and this conflict is going to be extended, we need a presence that is going to enable us to engage directly with the Ukrainians. Loading

Shoebridge said Canada and Australia would deploy similar risk assessments and the Canadians appear to have made the right decision. Its hard to see a reason that the Canadian risk assessment and ours are so different in their result. Its much easier to understand why the Canadians have reopened their embassy than to understand why we havent, he said. We dont want first out and last back as our brand. Australians are seen as engaged as international actors and that involves accepting risk. If you were in Baghdad during the Iraq surge or in Afghanistan for the decades of that conflict, there was a persuasive insecurity which was much more obvious  and thats just not the case in Kyiv. Herve Lemahieu, research director at the Lowy Institute, said it was always difficult striking the right balance between protecting diplomatic staff and letting them do their jobs, but if you look at Australias decisions we tend to be more risk-averse than other countries and I think thats sometimes to our detriment.

Australia was one of the first western countries to close its embassy in Kabul, and on the one hand you could say we had a lot of foresight  but on the other hand it would have been wiser to keep it open longer and to process all the humanitarian visas, he said. My understanding was the closure of the Kabul embassy was a real logistical impediment to getting people out. According to multiple current government sources, Australia has been reviewing whether to reopen the embassy in Ukraine for more than a month and some officials cant understand why it cant be reopened using similar security protocols to Canada. There are questions as to why it is taking so long, one senior government source said, who is not authorised to speak publicly. Loading

Foreign diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity also questioned the decision not to reopen. Journalists for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age recently spent almost a week in Kyiv and were able to move freely through the city. Nearly all major international media outlets have journalists permanently based in Kyiv and regularly report on visits by foreign leaders. Australia's security agencies took a conservative approach to Albanese's visit when compared to trips made by other leaders in recent weeks. While several international outlets reported Albaneses visit in real time, the federal government imposed a 36-hour media blackout on Australian reporters travelling with the PM to Kyiv, who were told they couldnt take any electronic devices into the country. They were also told that unlike previous prime ministerial visits to places such as Afghanistan, a US-led coalition force is not in place to provide overarching security.
The inner workings of deputy Premier Roger Cooks electorate office have been revealed during an unfair dismissal hearing where a former employee sacked for taking unauthorised leave claims it was a practice rife among colleagues.

Former Labor staffer Sanja Spasojevic is challenging her July 2020 dismissal in a branch of the WA Industrial Relations Commission.

Health Minister Roger Cook with former staffer Sanja Spasojevic who is challenging her sacking from his office. Credit:Nine News

Day one of her legal battle heard how there was only three recorded days of annual leave on her file for three years at Cooks office and one of her colleagues kept a diary of her attendance and sent the details to Cooks chief of staff.

The states legal team, led by high-profile senior counsel Mark Ritter, argued that on six occasions from 2018 to 2020 Spasojevic either did not submit leave forms for leave taken, or claimed personal leave when she should have claimed annual leave.
It was pandemonium, he said. People were covered in blood tripping over each other. The New York Times named one of the dead as 76-year-old Nicolas Toledo, who was in a wheelchair and had not wanted to attend the parade, but his disabilities required that he be around someone full time and his family had not wanted to miss the event. We were all in shock, his granddaughter Xochil Toledo said. We thought it was part of the parade. A stretcher is seen after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade. Credit:Nam Y. Huh At least one of those killed was a Mexican national, a senior Mexican foreign ministry official said on Twitter.

The shooting comes with gun violence fresh on the minds of many Americans after a massacre on May 24 killed 19 schoolchildren and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and a May 14 attack that killed 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. US President Joe Biden offered the full support of the federal government to the community. Jill and I are shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day, he said. In his statement, Biden referred to bipartisan gun-reform legislation he signed recently but said much more needed to be done and added: Im not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said grief would not bring back the victims and prayers alone would not stop the terror of rampant gun violence.

There are no words for the kind of monster who lies in wait and fires into a crowd of families with children celebrating a holiday with their community, he said. A Lake County police officer walks down Central Ave in Highland Park on Monday, Credit:Brian Cassella Grief will not bring the victims back, and prayers alone will not put a stop to the terror of rampant gun violence in our country. Children waving American flags, riding tricycles or enjoying a ride in a wagon pulled by adults froze as people in the crowd screamed while gun shots rang out, according to a video posted on social media. The video showed a marching band suddenly breaking formation and running away, and other images of people leaving their belongings behind as they sought safety.

Witness Amarani Garcia, who was at the parade with her young daughter, told the American ABC TV affiliate she heard gunfire nearby, then a pause for what she suspected was reloading, and then more shots again. There were people screaming and running. It was just really traumatising, Garcia said. I was very terrified. I hid with my daughter actually in a little store. It just makes me feel like were not safe anymore. A Chicago Sun-Times columnist posted a picture of a pool of blood at the foot of a bench. Everyone was running, hiding and screaming, the channels website reported CBS 2 Digital Producer Elyssa Kaufman saying.

It sounded like a string of about 20 firecrackers that were let off inside of your mental garbage bin, it was that loud, Jeff Leon, 57, told CNN, estimating the gunfire lasted less than a minute. So, I didnt immediately react, I thought it was just how people are on the fourth. A 36-year-old native of Highland Park who wanted to be identified only as Sara, told Reuters she had attended the annual parade most years since her childhood. Terrified parade-goers fled Highland Parks Fourth of July parade after shots were fired, leaving behind their belongings as they sought safety. Credit:Chicago Sun-Times via AP Not even five minutes after, very shortly after, the police and firetrucks part of the parade had gone by I heard pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, she said, adding that she first thought they were muskets some times used in parades. I looked and there were no muskets. The popping didnt stop ... again it went pop, pop, pop, pop, pop and I turned and I said those are gun shots, run!

Hundreds of parade-goers  some visibly bloodied  left their belongings behind. Dozens of baby prams, some bearing American flags, abandoned childrens bikes and a helmet bedecked with images of Cinderella were abandoned. Blankets, lawn chairs, coffees and water bottles were knocked over as people fled. High-profile shootings in the US The latest high-profile shooting in the United States happened on July 4, when a gunman opened fire on parade-goers in a Chicago suburb. Other notable episodes of gun violence in recent weeks: VESTAVIA HILLS, ALABAMA At least two people died and another was hospitalized on June 16 after a shooting at St. Stephens Episcopal Church in a Birmingham suburb. Police said a suspect is in custody. DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS Police shot and killed a man who fired gunshots June 13 at a Dallas-area gymnasium where at least 150 children were attending a day camp. CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE Three people died and 14 people were injured in a shooting June 5 in front of a restaurant. Three people have been arrested. PHILADELPHIA Three people died and 11 others were injured June 4 on a busy block in Philadelphia during a melee that began with a fistfight and was followed by random gunfire. Two men are in custody in two of the deaths; other people have also been arrested in connection with the melee. DAYTON, OHIO A jail inmate being treated at a hospital shot and killed a security guard June 1, pointed the weapon at others and killed himself in a parking lot. TULSA, OKLAHOMA A gunman killed his surgeon and three other people at a medical office June 1. The gunman killed himself as police arrived. UVALDE, TEXAS An 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School on May 24 in the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade. More than 15 other people were wounded. Law enforcement killed the attacker. CHICAGO A shooting killed two people and injured seven others on May 19 just blocks from the Magnificent Mile shopping district. Two men have been charged. LAGUNA WOODS, CALIFORNIA One person was killed and five others injured May 15 after a man opened fire on Taiwanese parishioners in Southern California. Authorities have said the gunman was motivated by hatred for Taiwan. He has been charged with murder and other counts. BUFFALO, NEW YORK A gunman opened fire May 14 at a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood, killing 10 people and injuring others. He has been charged with federal hate crimes that could carry the death penalty if he is convicted. The shooting is likely to rekindle the American debate about gun control, and whether stricter measures can prevent mass shootings that happen so frequently in the United States.
BISMILLAH KHAN

Shehnai player

Ustad Bismillah Khan - the legendary maestro who transformed the Shehnai (a type of wind instrument) from an instrument only used in marriage ceremonies to an honoured position in the classical pantheon - exemplified a performer who believed musicians are supposed to be heard and not seen.

Born as the second son to parents Paigambar Khan and Mitthan on March 21, 1916, Khan was christened as Qamaruddin initially, before his grandfather uttered Bismillah after looking at the newborn. He was born into a family of court musicians in the princely state of Dumraon in Bihar, Bismillah's father was a court musician employed in the Dumrao palace by the Raja of Bhojpur. His great grandfather Hussain Baksh and his grandfather, Rasool Bux Khan were the Shehnai-nawaz of the Bhojpur King's court.

At the age of three when his mother took him to his maternal uncle's house in Banaras, Bismillah was fascinated watching his uncle practice the shehnai. The little child's reaction astonished his uncle who predicted that the boy would one day become a great player of the instrument. Later, Bismillah Khan was trained and apprenticed by this uncle, the late Ali Bux 'Vilayatu', a Shehnai player attached to Varanasi's Vishwanath Temple. He also appeared as his uncle's accompanist at several music conferences in the1930s till his uncles death in 1940. At the age of 14 (1930), Bismillah accompanied his uncle to the Allahabad Music Conference. This was his first opportunity to reproduce the composition of 'bandash' and his skill was greatly appreciated. Bismillah familiarized himself with various forms of music of UP, such as Thumri, Chaiti, Kajri, Sawani etc. Later he studied Khayal music and mastered a large number of ragas. He brought the shehnai to the center stage of Indian music with his concert at the Calcutta All India Music Conference in 1937.

With the opening of the All India Radio in Lucknow in 1938 came Bismillah's big break. He soon became an often-heard Shehnai player on radio. His greatest moment came, when India gained Independence on August 15,1947 and he became the first Indian to greet the nation with his Shehnai. He played to an audience, which included Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who later gave his famous 'Tryst with Destiny' speech. The maestro again came into the limelight when he performed Raga Kafi from Red Fort on Indias first Republic Day ceremony. There upon, the plaintive strains of his Shehnai used to mark the Republic Day celebrations for generations of Indians. His first trip abroad was to Afghanistan where King Zahir Shah was so taken in by his performance that he gifted him priceless Persian carpets and other souvenirs. He also performed in Europe, Iran, Iraq, Canada, West Africa, USA, USSR, Japan, Hong Kong and almost every capital city of the world.

Khan has been conferred with innumerable awards, including coveted awards by the Government of India, which include 'Bharat Ratna' in 2001, second 'Rajiv Gandhi National Sadbhavana Award' in 1994, 'Padma Vibhushan' in 1980, 'Padma Bhushan' in 1968 and 'Padmashri' in 1961. He has also been awarded the Sangeet Natak Academy Award and the Tansen Award of the Madhya Pradesh government. Bismillah Khan acquired honorary doctorates from the Banaras Hindu University and the Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan. Bismillah Khan is also the first Indian who was invited to perform at the prestigious Lincoln Center Hall in the USA.

He has acted in one Hindi film, 'Jalsaghar', a movie by Satyajit Ray. He also worked with Lata Mangeshkar's rendering of the title song "Mere sur aur tere geet" for the film 'Goonj Uthi Shehani', and for the song 'Ye Jo Des Hai Tera' in a Hindi movie Swades (2004). He has recorded duets with Vilayat Khan on the sitar, Prof. V.G. Jog on the violin as well as with N.Rajam, an exceptional violinist trained in Hindustani music by Omkar Nath Thakur, and Shahid Parvez a young sitarist of uncommon sensitivity.

A pious Shia Muslim and also a devotee of Mother Saraswati, Khan was one of the finest musicians in post-independent Indian Classical music and one of the best examples of Hindu Muslim unity in India. He was often seen playing at various temples and on the banks of the holy river Ganges in the northern Indian city of Varanasi, his home town.

Khan who led a simple, unostentatious life in the manner of a Sufi carried the honorific of an 'ustad' (guru)- never owned a car, and liked to travel around Varanasi in a bicycle rickshaw. The great maestro who introduced 'Shehnai' to a global audience died of heart failure at the age of 90 on August 21, 2006. He is survived by five sons, three daughters and a large number of grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Allentown, PA (18103)

Today

Humid with limited sunshine. Scattered showers and thunderstorms, most widespread later in the afternoon. Watching for gusty winds, heavy downpours and possible localized flooding. .

Tonight

An evening shower or thunderstorm; otherwise, mostly cloudy and muggy. There might be some clearing late.
Reading, PA (19601)

Today

Humid with limited sunshine. Scattered showers and thunderstorms, most widespread later in the afternoon. Watching for gusty winds, heavy downpours and possible localized flooding. .

Tonight

An evening shower or thunderstorm; otherwise, mostly cloudy and muggy. There might be some clearing late.
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.  Police say a gunman on a rooftop opened fire on an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago, killing at least six people, wounding at least 30 and sending hundreds of marchers, parents with strollers and children on bicycles fleeing in terror.

Authorities said 21-year-old Robert E. Crimo III was named as a person of interest in the shooting and was taken into police custody Monday evening after an hourslong manhunt.

The July 4 shooting was just the latest to shatter the rituals of American life. Schools, churches, grocery stores and now community parades have all become killing grounds in recent months. This time, the bloodshed came as the nation tried to find cause to celebrate its founding and the bonds that still hold it together.

The shooting occurred at a spot on the parade route where many residents had staked out prime viewing points early in the day for the annual celebration. Dozens of fired bullets sent hundreds of parade-goers  some visibly bloodied  fleeing. They left a trail of abandoned items that showed everyday life suddenly, violently disrupted: A half-eaten bag of potato chips; a box of chocolate cookies spilled onto the grass; a childs Chicago Cubs cap.

Theres no safe place, said Highland Park resident Barbara Harte, 73, who had stayed away from the parade fearing a mass shooting, but later ventured from her home.

Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Christopher Covelli said at a news conference several of the deceased victims died at the scene and one was taken to a hospital and died there. Police have not released details about the victims or wounded.

Latest updates:
Shira Bellan had tired of seeing Homer Simpson and comic book logos stare back at her while she browsed bongs online.

Shira Bellan had tired of seeing Homer Simpson and comic book logos stare back at her while she browsed bongs online.

She and then-girlfriend Shanda Gagne wondered: where are the sleek, esthetically pleasing goods?

"We wanted to find products that would be appealing to women, and we found that that was really forgotten about in the (cannabis) industry," Bellan, 35, said.

So, she and Gagne began their own company. At Character Co. (2090 Corydon Ave.) Batman and Superman were nowhere to be found.

Instead, glassware of different colours and painted patterns mingled with greenery along the walls shelves. Locally made bath bombs and hoodies lined the front. Edibles, flowers and other items found in Manitoban cannabis dispensaries took their place near the shops faux brick wall.

JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Edibles for sale at Character Co. Shira Bellan said shes noticed more cannabis paraphernalia that appeals to women since establishing Character Co.

"Every little detail to this store we thought of and we planned out," Bellan said.

Its minutes away from her childhood home. Her mom will often stop in to buy a bath bomb or give a design tip, Bellan said.

"We have a lot of women come in that are inexperienced with the use of any type of marijuana," she said. "Its easier for us to relate to a lot of things. If someone says I have cramps, we know what to tell them."

She, Gagne, and store manager Jody Donnelly run the front desk  its a three-person show.

Though the co-owners were intentional about their feminine appeal, they cater to all genders. Or, to all characters, hence the name.

"We knew a lot of different characters enjoy cannabis," Gagne said. "Its just, (some are) quiet about it because of all that stigma."

We knew a lot of different characters enjoy cannabis... Its just, (some are) quiet about it because of all that stigma.  Shanda Gagne

Many clients are middle-aged or seniors, she added.

"We love everyone, and to us, anyone can be a character," Bellan said.

Character Co. has been selling cannabis paraphernalia online for over four years.

Bellan met Gagne at a Toronto bar while on vacation around eight years ago. The two clicked, and soon, Gagne moved to Winnipeg to be with her partner.

They launched Character Co.s website in 2016 after being frustrated by the male-dominated market. They bought wholesale goods like bongs and sold them online.

"It was just a side project. Shanda still worked; I still worked," Bellan said.

JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Shira Bellan said pandemic-related politics reduced sales: masked potential customers turned away upon seeing maskless people in the shop.

In the early days of their venture, Bellan was a landlord and dog-walker while Gagne worked in finance for Dufresne Furniture.

"It just came to a point where it was like, do we continue this as just a hobby where we only put 20 per cent of our investment into it, or do we really want to go to the next level?" Gagne, 37, said.

After Ottawa legalized cannabis in 2018, the business partners decided to make the leap: they wanted a dispensary.

But, they had to wait. Government approval happened in waves, with the first being to major retailers, Bellan said.

Then, it took a year of paperwork and backend logistics before receiving approval. Bellan wanted a site in River Heights, near her family home. There were renovations to do, and a pandemic to contend with.

Character Co. officially opened last September; both Bellan and Gagne work there full-time.

"Its terrifying, no doubt. I constantly go back and forth on whether I made the right decision," Gagne said of quitting her corporate job.

"It was a no risk, no reward kind of mentality at the time."

We love everyone, and to us, anyone can be a character.  Shira Bellan

It was a tough few months with COVID-19 and the blizzard-filled winter, Gagne said. Many locals avoided the Corydon Avenue strip mall because it contains Monstrosity Burger, a restaurant known for its anti-mask and anti-restriction stance, Gagne said.

"Id say I (had) to kick out two people a day, at least, for not wearing a mask, and I (got) at least one who (would) argue with me because they have a (medical) exemption," she said.

Bellan said pandemic-related politics reduced sales: masked potential customers turned away upon seeing maskless people in the shop.

"Im a 5-2 female. Im not about to get in some mans face over a mask," she said, adding the company follows the governments rules.

Starting Character Co. as LGBTTQ+ women has not added barriers. Rather, people seem extra supportive, Gagne said.

Bellan scouts for female and locally owned companies to promote in the store.

JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Character Co. has been selling cannabis paraphernalia online for over four years.

"Everything that we can support women for, we are," she said.

She called Laura Kuzyk, a resin artist, in December. Bellan had searched Creations by Kuzyks Instagram page and wanted the coasters and trays.

Kuzyk experimented with Manitoba-grown hemp leaves for Character Co. and is working on ash trays.

"Just that she wants my stuff in her store, it was really nice to hear that," the artisan, who has run her business for a year, said.

Kuzyk said shes been asked to send the shop more goods  theyve gained popularity.

"That was really exciting," she said.

There are more women-led cannabis companies than years past, but the gains have been slow and small, according to Sherry Boodram, the co-founder and CEO of CannDelta, a Toronto-based consulting firm specializing in cannabis.

Several factors, including a lack of funding or connections, are often roadblocks to women and people of colour who want to start in the industry, Boodram said.

"When you see someone thats in the space that represents yourself, (it) gives you the confidence and even the network to be able to also participate," she said.

When you see someone thats in the space that represents yourself, (it) gives you the confidence and even the network to be able to also participate.  Sherry Boodram

Fourteen per cent of Canadas licensed commercial cannabis production businesses are female-led, compared to 86 per cent male-led, according to a study Boodram cited from Health Canadas Forum on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

She didnt have the statistics about Canadas cannabis retail sector, which Character Co. occupies.

Having various genders and ethnicities in leadership roles will expand the cannabis industry, Boodram said.

"They will bring their owned lived experiences," she said. "They can target different markets, they can produce different products."

Bellan said shes noticed more cannabis paraphernalia that appeals to women since establishing Character Co.

"I think that women in the industry are starting to be a little more present," she said. "It makes me happy."

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com

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OTTAWA - Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne says the convergence of Canada's automotive and mining sectors is working to lure more companies to Canada to make electric cars and the batteries that power them.

Tony Mancina Head of Engineering for Stellantis Canada (L), talks with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (R) and Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry Francois-Philippe Champagne during a tour of the Stellantis Automotive Research and Development Centre in Windsor, Ont. on May 2, 2022.THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Geoff Robins

OTTAWA - Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne says the convergence of Canada's automotive and mining sectors is working to lure more companies to Canada to make electric cars and the batteries that power them.

Over eight weeks last spring, automakers and battery companies announced more than $13 billion in new investments in the electric vehicle manufacturing sphere in Canada, including batteries and their components, buses and electric cars.

Those announcements included retooling or expanding auto manufacturing plants that already exist in Canada.

Champagne is in Japan this week where he is meeting with the heads of several Japanese automakers that do not have a Canadian manufacturing presence, including Mitsubishi, Nissan and Subaru.

Champagne says the sales pitch is to point out that in a world where supply chain issues are a massive headache for manufacturers, Canada has the skilled workforce, the raw materials and the stability they desire.

He says he's telling companies that "stability, predictability, and the rule of law is in high demand and short supply."

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While he is also meeting with Honda and Toyota, both of which are retooling Canadian plants so they can make electric vehicles, the meetings with the others are different, he says.

"If you talk to people who have an established footprint in Canada it's different, because they've already invested," he said.

For the others, he says most have told him, "it's really the three things that really drive investments: talent, ecosystem and resources. And when you put that together, Canada becomes kind of the supplier of choice."

This trip follows another to Europe in the spring where Champagne met with all the major German automakers, including Volkswagen, which is regularly duking it out with Toyota to see which will be the biggest car company in the world.

Another trip to Asia, likely to include Korea, is in the works for the fall.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 5, 2022.
MONTREAL - A two-week strike at Canadian National Railway Co. is ending after the union representing 750 signals and communications workers agreed to binding arbitration.

CN rail workers strike at the CN MacMillan Yard in Vaughan, Ont., on Monday, June 20, 2022. Canadian National Railway Co. says a strike by 750 signals and communications workers will end early Tuesday after the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers agreed to binding arbitration. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

MONTREAL - A two-week strike at Canadian National Railway Co. is ending after the union representing 750 signals and communications workers agreed to binding arbitration.

Steve Martin, a spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said the strike that was launched June 18 will end just after midnight.

Employees will return to their roles Wednesday morning, the company said in a news release.

The IBEW initially rejected the railway's proposal to resolve remaining differences, on wages and benefits, through binding arbitration, saying the concessions didn't go far enough.

But Martin said the time was right to take this step now.

"It was a collective decision by the negotiating committee that considering all the facts and the current state of where we're at in the strike that it was the most reasonable thing to do," he said in an interview.

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In addition to wages, arbitration will decide on a lifetime cap on some health benefits.

The Montreal-based railway thanked management employees and contractors for their service that "allowed rail operations to continue uninterrupted during the strike."

The company's offer from late June included a 10 per cent wage hike over three years and better schedules ensuring two consecutive days off.

CN hauls more than 300 million tonnes of commodities and consumer goods across the continent each year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 4, 2022.

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After the U.S. Supreme Court revoked the federal right to an abortion that's been in place for half a century, companies like Amazon, Disney, Apple and JP Morgan pledged to cover travel costs for employees who live in states where the procedure is now illegal so they can terminate pregnancies.

FILE - This Sept. 6, 2012, file photo, shows the Amazon logo in Santa Monica, Calif. After the U.S. Supreme Court revoked the federal right to an abortion that's been in place for half a century, companies like Amazon, Disney, Apple and JP Morgan pledged to cover travel costs for employees who live in states where the procedure is now illegal so they can terminate pregnancies. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)

After the U.S. Supreme Court revoked the federal right to an abortion that's been in place for half a century, companies like Amazon, Disney, Apple and JP Morgan pledged to cover travel costs for employees who live in states where the procedure is now illegal so they can terminate pregnancies.

But the companies gave scant or no details on how they will do this and it's not clear if they will be able to  legally  while protecting employees' privacy and keeping them safe from prosecution.

Most employers were not prepared for Roe to be overturned, and even those that were didnt realize the law would literally be changed the next minute, said Brian Kropp, a vice president at the consulting firm Gartner. Theyre trying to play catch-up.

Kropp said many companies announced plans to offer travel benefits without the infrastructure in place to make them work. Some, he added, are creating supplementary policies that employees can buy to cover abortion travel, while others are contacting insurers to see if travel can be added to their current plans. Others are trying to figure out how to offer a benefit without breaching employees privacy.

Are employees going to have to tell their manager they are going to have to travel from Texas to California to have an abortion? Kropp said.

The answer is no  but they would likely have to tell human resources or a similar department that they are pregnant and want to get an abortion, said Sharona Hoffman, a health law professor at Case Western Reserve University. The company or its health insurer would then provide money upfront or a reimbursement after the fact.

Hoffman called the travel cost pledges a generous benefit from companies, and said she would not be surprised if this becomes a practice that more companies undertake  just without trumpeting it, for fear of the backlash that can come with public statements on a divisive issue such as abortion.

Its not necessarily altruistic, she said. It also makes some sense for companies to not have a bunch of employees that are highly distressed because they have unwanted pregnancies and have to carry the child to term.

For now, most big companies offering an abortion travel benefit will likely add it to existing health care plans, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a partner with the law firm Morgan Lewis who helps companies develop and maintain their benefits.

Big companies are generally self-insured, which means they pay for all claims and have more flexibility to decide what the plans will cover. A third party then processes the claims on their behalf.

Thats the case at outdoor clothing company Patagonia, which updated its health coverage last fall to add travel costs for employees after Texass law banning most abortions went into effect. Patagonia said abortion and travel costs are administered in the same manner as other medical services, ensuring confidentiality for employees.

Restaurant review company Yelp said its abortion travel benefit is also administered by its health insurance provider. Yelp has told its employees that if they do use the travel benefit, Yelp will not have access to the details of the service.

Microsoft, meanwhile, noted that it already covers abortion, as well as gender-affirming care, for its employees and has now extended the coverage to include travel expenses for these and other lawful medical services" if they are not available in an employee's home state.

Smaller companies may have fewer options. They typically buy health insurance for their employees from insurers that are subject to state regulations. Those companies have less flexibility to design benefits, and they may operate in states that ban abortion.

Dr. Ami Parekh, chief health officer at Included Health, which offers health care navigation services and virtual care for employers, said it is quite a scramble right now for large employers to navigate this fast-moving landscape.

Theyre moving as fast as they can, Parekh said. And I bet you theyre going to be nimble and change as needed as things come up.

For instance, some companies are offering to pay for a partner to travel with the person getting the abortion.

With the legal landscape shifting quickly, even adding travel benefits to a current medical plan carries some risk. In May, 14 state lawmakers in Texas sent a letter to Lyft warning the company to rescind its abortion travel benefit, saying they plan to introduce legislation that would ban companies from doing business in Texas if they pay for abortions or reimburse abortion-related expenses.

That said, no such legislation has been enacted as of now in Texas or anywhere else. It is also not against the law to travel to states where abortion is legal, Hoffman noted. There are efforts afoot, however, to change that.

And while the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, protects sensitive patient information, it can be overruled in cases where a crime has been committed. Thats the case now in states where abortion has become a crime.

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Its challenging for employers to navigate what is a rapidly evolving legal landscape, said Sharon Masling, the head of Morgan Lewiss reproductive rights task force. Theres going to be a lot of litigation over the next few years.

Beyond the legal questions, abortion travel benefits also present some thorny workplace issues, Kropp said. Employees who dont support abortion may be angry that their company is paying for other employees travel, for example. Even those who do support abortion may question why the company isnt paying them to travel for fertility treatments or transgender health care, he said.

This is why it's likely, experts say that some companies are offering travel benefits but aren't making public announcements about it.

My sense is most employers are trying to very quickly figure out whats best for their employees and dependents, Parekh said. And not all employers want to spend the energy to be very public about that at this moment in time.

__

Associated Press staff writers Haleluya Hadero and Anne D'Innocenzio in New York and Matt O'Brien in Providence, Rhode Island contributed to this story.
BERLIN (AP)  German biotech company CureVac said Tuesday it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against rival BioNTech for work that it says contributed to the development of the BioNTech-Pfizer coronavirus vaccine. BioNTech said its work is original and it would vigorously contest the claim.

BERLIN (AP)  German biotech company CureVac said Tuesday it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against rival BioNTech for work that it says contributed to the development of the BioNTech-Pfizer coronavirus vaccine. BioNTech said its work is original and it would vigorously contest the claim.

CureVac, which last year reported disappointing results from late-stage testing of its own first-generation COVID-19 shot, earlier this year started a clinical trial of a second-generation vaccine candidate developed with British pharmaceutical company GSK.

The company said it was seeking fair compensation from BioNTech for the alleged infringement, but it didn't cite an amount.

CureVac said it would not pursue a court injunction and doesn't intend to take legal action that impedes the production, sale or distribution by BioNTech and partner Pfizer of their successful Comirnaty vaccine.

Both CureVac and BioNTech have worked to develop the messenger RNA technology employed in their respective vaccines and potentially for other uses.

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CureVac said it filed its suit against BioNTech and two subsidiaries at the state court in Duesseldorf. It asserted in a statement that its intellectual property portfolio protects multiple inventions that are considered essential to the design and development of BioNTechs SARS CoV-2 mRNA vaccine, among others.

Those, it said, relate to the engineering of mRNA molecules, including sequence modifications to increase stability, and mRNA vaccine formulations specific to COVID-19 vaccines.

BioNTech said in a statement that it values and respects valid intellectual property rights, adding that its work is original, and we will vigorously defend it against all allegations of patent infringement.

However, we are aware that it is not unusual that other companies in the pharmaceutical industry, having witnessed the success of Comirnaty, are now suggesting that the vaccine potentially infringes their intellectual property rights, it said.

___

Follow all of APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
HONG KONG (AP)  Hong Kongs new leader John Lee said Tuesday at his first news conference since taking office that he will work on easing restrictions for travelers while balancing the risks of a coronavirus outbreak overwhelming the health care system.

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee, right, and convener of the Executive Council Regina Ip leave a news conference in Hong Kong, Tuesday, July 5, 2022. Lee said Tuesday in his first news conference since taking the reins that he will work towards legislating easing restrictions for travelers, but that it must be balanced with limiting the spread of the coronavirus so as not to overwhelm the healthcare system. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

HONG KONG (AP)  Hong Kongs new leader John Lee said Tuesday at his first news conference since taking office that he will work on easing restrictions for travelers while balancing the risks of a coronavirus outbreak overwhelming the health care system.

Hong Kong and mainland China are among the few places in the world that still quarantine arrivals to reduce the spread of the virus two and a half years in the pandemic. Most travelers coming to Hong Kong are required to serve a seven-day mandatory quarantine at designated hotels.

Lee, a former security official who was the only candidate in the election for Hong Kong's chief executive, took office Friday, succeeding Carrie Lam.

Speaking at his first news conference ahead of an Executive Council meeting Tuesday, Lee said Hong Kong is an international city and that he was conscious of the need for Hong Kong to remain open and convenient to travelers.

But it is also important that we address the risks at the same time so that we will maintain good balance, he said. Lee said the city's health minister was evaluating data to determine how the quarantine duration could be adjusted and would formulate options for Lee to consider.

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Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee, right, and convener of the Executive Council Regina Ip leave a news conference in Hong Kong, Tuesday, July 5, 2022. Lee said Tuesday in his first news conference since taking the reins that he will work towards legislating easing restrictions for travelers, but that it must be balanced with limiting the spread of the coronavirus so as not to overwhelm the healthcare system. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

COVID-19 cases have been rising in Hong Kong, with more than 1,000 daily since mid-June, compared to just over a hundred daily in early May. The city reported 1,841 new infections on Monday.

Lee also said Hong Kong had a constitutional duty to enact a new security law, in addition to the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020 that has wiped out most political dissent and put many democracy supporters under arrest, in hiding or in exile.

Enacting Article 23 of the Basic Law, Hong Kongs mini-constitution, has long been controversial. When the government first attempted to draft such laws in 2003, protesters took to the streets in a massive demonstration that prompted the government to shelve its plans.

The crackdown that followed 2019 protests included reshaping Hong Kong's legislature. Should Lee enact Article 23, the laws are likely to pass in the body now filled with pro-Beijing lawmakers.

Lee said Hong Kongs situation and levels of security risks will be assessed before the legislation is enacted. Were very confident that we will be able to do it well, he said.

Lee also pledged to work on housing issues in Hong Kong  the most expensive property market in the world  stating that he will try and fix short-term issues as quickly as possible and will look at how to turn available land into spade-ready sites to increase the speed and efficiency of housing production.
MONTREAL - It took Gloria Schwartz three days to retrieve her child's luggage.

A passenger looks for his luggage among a pile of unclaimed baggage at Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport in Montreal on June 29, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

MONTREAL - It took Gloria Schwartz three days to retrieve her child's luggage.

The Ottawa resident's son was returning last Tuesday to his hometown from Tel Aviv, where he had been studying medicine, before heading off to California for a practicum following a four-day visit with his parents.

On top of having the reunion reduced by a day after Air Canada cancelled a connecting flight from Montreal citing a lack of groundcrew, the carrier failed to get his bags to Ottawa on time, Schwartz said in an interview.

"All his clothing and all his worldly possessions were in a duffel bag, which the airline lost. We picked him up, brought him home and then the next day I had to take him shopping because he literally had nothing to wear but the clothing on his back."

Passengers preparing to run the gauntlet of Canadian air travel face a key obstacle on top of flight delays and cancellations: late luggage. In recent weeks, airlines have filled the country's biggest airport terminals with row upon row of belated bags, causing headaches for thousands of customers.

For travellers flying with Air Canada on Monday, the odds were their flight was delayed; 63 per cent of the carrier's trips landed late, the most of any large airline across the globe, according to tracking service FlightAware.

Some 52 per cent of all flights out of Toronto's Pearson airport were held up, more than any other airport in the Western Hemisphere, and No. 3 worldwide after Sydney and Frankfurt.

Flight delays mark a particularly sticky problem for luggage flow, with a shortage of baggage handlers to shuttle suitcases from late arrivals to connecting planes while also grappling with last-minute gate changes.

"There's a lot of behind-the-scenes work ... that requires some additional handling, particularly if you're connecting from a domestic flight or a U.S. flight to an international flight," said John Gradek, head of McGill University's aviation management program.

"Every bag gets X-rayed or examined ... There are chemical sniffers and explosive sniffers  detectors," he said, but nonetheless called the tarmac and baggage bottlenecks "a non-stop soap opera  it's nuts."

Airlines contract out suitcase delivery to courier companies who deliver luggage to passengers, costing Canadian carriers "millions" amid a rise in fuel surcharges by shippers, Gradek added.

Travellers are owed up to $2,300 from airlines for costs incurred due to baggage delays or lost items under Canada's passenger rights charter and the Montreal Convention, an international treaty.

"They may typically tell you that we are going to reimburse you only $100 or $250 for the first 48 hours, which is a lie," said Gabor Lukacs, president of the Air Passenger Rights advocacy group.

"Its really an onslaught. Its insane whats happening ... these immense piles of luggage."

Lukacs recommends passengers buy any clothes and items they need as a result of the tardy portmanteau, keep the receipts and file a claim with the airline soon after, rather than waiting to get through to it to confirm purchases will be reimbursed. If the claims are rejected, small claims court is the next step, he said.

Airlines and government agencies have been scrambling to deal with an overwhelming travel resurgence in recent months.

Air Canada has hired more than 2,000 workers at airports and more than 750 in customer service centres this year for a payroll surpassing 32,000. That's 93 per cent of 2019 levels, even as its flight numbers fall below 80 per cent of pre-pandemic figures after the carrier last week announced cuts of 15 per cent to its summer schedule. The roughly 9,500 nixed flights in July and August affect hundreds of thousands of passengers.

Canada's airport security and customs agencies have also been on a hiring spree. More than 1,000 new security screeners came on board since April  though not all have clearance to work the scanners  and 700-plus student border officers took up spots at checkpoints over the summer, according to the federal government.

Despite the increased staffing, Schwartz said she was unable to get through to Air Canada customer service. She instead eventually received a call from the airport's lost and found.

"If you want your bag today, you'd better come get it, because if you want us to deliver it to the house it'll probably take three, four more days," Schwartz said, recalling the phone conversation.

"There were literally hundreds and hundreds of pieces of luggage and infants' car seats and all kinds of things piled up without any supervision or security. So anyone could walk in and steal bags.

"It's very upsetting for people," she added. "It really screws people around."

Air Canada did not respond to questions about baggage snarls.

WestJet said bags that go unclaimed are delivered to headquarters in Calgary for further processing and 90 days in storage. If the bag goes "unmatched," the items will be donated or disposed of, said spokeswoman Denise Kenny.

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"Recognizing the current travel ecosystem, we are making every effort to connect our impacted guests with their missing bags and have not seen an uptick related to reports of baggage theft," she said in an email.

The travel turbulence prompted the Canadian Transportation Agency to post a notice on its website Tuesday advising passengers on what to do in cases of flight delays and cancellations and luggage problems.

The regulator suggests passengers file a claim to the airline within seven days of receiving damaged baggage, 21 days of receiving delayed bags or "as soon as possible" if it remains lost after three weeks. Travellers should then file a complaint to the carrier "if you believe that the airline did not follow its obligations."

"If you are not satisfied with the airline's response to your complaint or request for compensation, or have not received a response within 30 days, you can make a complaint with the CTA."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 5, 2022.

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ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore oil regulator is laying charges in connection with a 2019 oil spill in the Hibernia field, which sits about 315 kilometres off the coast of St. John's.

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore oil regulator is laying charges in connection with a 2019 oil spill in the Hibernia field, which sits about 315 kilometres off the coast of St. John's.

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The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board says it charged Hibernia Management and Development Company with three offences related to the spill.

A tugboat positions itself near the base of the Hibernia platform in Bull Arm, Trinity Bay, N.L., Thursday, May 22, 1997. Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore oil regulator has laid charges in connection with a 2019 oil spill in the Hibernia field, which sits about 315 kilometres off the coast of St. John's. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

That company operates the Hibernia oilfield, which is owned by several oil giants including ExxonMobil Canada, Chevron and Suncor.

The regulator alleges that the company failed to stop work or activity that was likely to cause pollution and that it didn't follow risk-management processes.

The third charge is connected to an alleged violation of the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act, which prohibits spills in the province's offshore area.

The July 17, 2019, incident resulted in an estimated 12,000 litres of oil spilling into the Atlantic Ocean.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 5, 2022.
OTTAWA - Canada has become the first country to ratify Sweden and Finland's request to join NATO, bringing the two countries closer to full membership.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with Finland President Sauli Niinisto at the NATO Summit in Madrid on Wednesday, June 29, 2022. Canada has become the first country to ratify Sweden and Finland's request to join NATO, bringing the two countries closer to full membership.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

OTTAWA - Canada has become the first country to ratify Sweden and Finland's request to join NATO, bringing the two countries closer to full membership.

The Prime Minister's Office says Justin Trudeau met with Finland's president, Sauli Niinisto, and Sweden's prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, at the NATO Summit last week.

In a statement, Trudeau says Canada champions the alliance's open door policy for any European country in a position to "advance the commitments and obligations of membership."

The Finnish and Swedish ambassadors submitted official letters of application to NATO on May 18, and Canadas federal cabinet issued orders-in-council on May 26 authorizing the foreign affairs minister to ratify accession protocols for both countries.

The House of Commons also voted unanimously this spring to support the membership bids.

All 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland on Tuesday, sending the membership bids to the alliance countries for legislative approval.

Canada deliberately issued the orders-in-council on May 26 to speed through the ratification process and get it done within hours instead of the usual months.

The move further increases Russias strategic isolation in the wake of its invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February and military struggles there since.

"This is truly a historic moment for Finland, for Sweden and for NATO," said alliance Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

The 30 ambassadors and permanent representatives formally approved the decisions of last weeks NATO summit when the alliance made the historic decision to invite Russias neighbour Finland and Scandinavian partner Sweden to join the military club.

Despite the agreement in the alliance, parliamentary approval in member state Turkey could still pose problems for their final inclusion as members.

Last week, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Ankara could still block the process if the two countries fail to fully meet Turkeys demand to extradite terror suspects with links to outlawed Kurdish groups or the network of an exiled cleric accused of a failed 2016 coup in Turkey.

He said Turkeys Parliament could refuse to ratify the deal. It is a potent threat since NATO accession must be formally approved by all 30 member states, which gives each a blocking right.

Stoltenberg said he expected no change of heart. "There were security concerns that needed to be addressed. And we did what we always do at NATO. We found common ground."

Every alliance nation has different legislative challenges and procedures to deal with, and it could take several more months for the two to become official members.

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"I look forward to a swift ratification process," said Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has given the process added urgency. It will ensconce the two nations in the Western military alliance and give NATO more clout, especially in the face of Moscows military threat.

"We will be even stronger and our people will be even safer as we face the biggest security crisis in decades," said Stoltenberg.

Tuesdays signing-off does bring both nations deeper into NATOs fold already. As close partners, they already attended some meetings that involved issues that immediately affected them. As official invitees, they can attend all meetings of the ambassadors even if they do not yet have any voting rights.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 5, 2022.

 With files from The Associated Press
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. - Residents cheered and applauded prosecutors and police Tuesday as the alleged perpetrator of a deadly Fourth of July shooting rampage in a Chicago suburb was charged with seven counts of first-degree murder.

A Lake Forest, Ill., police officer walks down Central Ave in Highland Park, Ill., on Monday, July 4, 2022, after a shooter fired on the northern suburb's Fourth of July parade. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Chicago Tribune - Brian Cassella

HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. - Residents cheered and applauded prosecutors and police Tuesday as the alleged perpetrator of a deadly Fourth of July shooting rampage in a Chicago suburb was charged with seven counts of first-degree murder.

The accused gunman, 21-year-old Robert E. Crimo III, faces the prospect of life in prison with no chance of parole, as well as "dozens" more likely charges, said Lake County state's attorney Eric Rinehart.

Another round of whoops and cheers went up as Rinehart told a news conference, just steps from the scene of Monday's deadly shooting, that prosecutors will ask that Crimo be held without bail.

"What should have been a celebration of freedom has ended in despair for our community," Rinehart said, a battery of officials, investigators and police behind him.

"All of the people who died steps from here lost their freedom  all of it, every ounce of freedom that they had. The freedom to love, the freedom to learn and the freedom to live a full life.

"Their freedom matters too."

Behind him, at the corner of Central Ave. and Green Bay Rd., the detritus of an abandoned national holiday was still visible, a testament to the moment America's patriotic fervour dissolved into panic.

Seven people were killed and 38 people were injured Monday when a lone gunman, perched on a rooftop and disguised in women's clothing, opened fire on spectators while they were watching the Fourth of July parade pass through the core of this leafy suburb.

Upturned folding chairs, drink cups and a child's pink bicycle were still visible behind police barricades, the street lights festooned with rainbow flags and the Stars and Stripes.

At the end of the street, a flagpole rose from the centre of the chaos, its massive U.S. flag hanging limply at half-mast.

Rinehart described the attack as premeditated and promised more charges related to the injured would be forthcoming, including attempted murder and aggravated battery.

And he delivered a pointed sermon about the need to reimpose a ban on assault weapons, something Congress accomplished in 1994 only to see the ban expire 10 years later.

"It lasted for 10 years, and studies have shown that mass shootings like what happened (Monday) went down during those 10 years," said Rinehart, himself a Highland Park resident.

"We should have that same ban in Illinois and beyond, in the entire country."

Earlier Tuesday, police revealed they visited the suspect's home twice in 2019.

Christopher Covelli, a spokesman for the Lake County Major Crime Task Force, said they first responded to Crimo's home in April 2019 after learning he had attempted suicide a week earlier.

Police spoke with his parents and the matter was dealt with by mental-health professionals as there wasn't any law-enforcement action to be taken at that time, he said.

The next interaction happened in September of that year, when a family member reported that Crimo said he was going to "kill everyone," and that he had a collection of knives.

Covelli said police responded to his home, where they removed 16 knives, a dagger and a sword, but there was no probable cause to arrest and no complaints were signed.

The Highland Park Police Department did immediately notify the Illinois State Police about the incident, he said.

"Police cant make an arrest unless there is probable cause to make an arrest or somebody is willing to sign complaints regarding an arrest," he said.

"Absent of those things, police dont have the power to detain somebody."

Crimo legally purchased five guns, including the rifle used in the attack and one found in a vehicle with him when he was arrested, as well as handguns and other firearms seized at his father's home Monday.

Authorities also on Tuesday released the identities of six of the seven victims: Katherine Goldstein, 64; Irina McCarthy, 35; Kevin McCarthy, 37; Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63; and Stephen Straus, 88, all from Highland Park; and Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78, of Mexico.

The violence in Highland Park came just six weeks after a deadly elementary school rampage in Uvalde, Tex., killed 19 children and two teachers, shocking  but not surprising  a country now utterly awash in staggering firepower.

Covelli said the community in Highland Park has been very helpful in providing information to law enforcement, but based on video surveillance, police believe a woman saw Crimo drop his rifle inside a red blanket immediately following the shooting.

He urged that witness to come forward and speak with investigators, as well as anyone else with relevant firsthand information.

Covelli said the suspect planned the attack for several weeks and wore women's clothing to conceal his facial tattoos and to blend into the crowd as he fled the scene.

He said the suspect brought a legally purchased high-powered rifle to the parade, climbed onto the roof of a business via a fire escape ladder and fired more than 70 rounds.

Video clips posted to social media showed the festivities collapsing into panic as revellers realized they were under fire and scrambled for cover.

After the attack, police said Crimo dropped his rifle and escaped, blending into the crowd as if he were an "innocent spectator" and walking to his mother's house, where he borrowed her car.

Police put out an alert with information about Crimo and the vehicle, and a member of the public who spotted the vehicle dialed 911 and officers were able to apprehend him.

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The officer added there is no indication that anyone else was involved in the attack and a motive has not been determined. Police have no information that it was religiously or racially motivated, Covelli said, adding it appears to be "completely random."

In a tweet late Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered condolences to the victims, their families and the Highland Park community.

They "wanted nothing more than to celebrate their country  but instead had their lives change forever," Trudeau tweeted.

"To the injured, and to the loved ones of the victims: Canadians are keeping you in our thoughts."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 5, 2022.

 With files from The Associated Press
Ottawa police say they "met the challenges" of the busy Canada Day long weekend, which featured the first in-person celebrations since the pandemic began alongside protests.

Ottawa police say they "met the challenges" of the busy Canada Day long weekend, which featured the first in-person celebrations since the pandemic began alongside protests.

City officials promised a robust police presence and zero tolerance for those breaking bylaws or causing disturbances as they planned for the return of anti-government and anti-COVID-19-mandate protesters.

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A march and gathering at the National War Memorial Thursday evening drew a large crowd of over 1,000 people, but protests planned for Canada Day itself were much smaller.

Police say they arrested 12 people and laid 50 criminal charges, although only some appear to be related to the protests.

Four people were arrested Thursday evening and three were eventually charged after police say an officer was choked during an altercation at the war memorial.

Another man was arrested earlier that day for allegedly breaching bail conditions barring him from entering Ottawa.

Other incidents included a fight near LeBreton Flats on Canada Day, where police say a 19-year-old man was arrested at gunpoint after brandishing a knife at RCMP; an alleged assault on the same day in Lower Town, where a 38-year-old man and a 42-year-old man were arrested; along with several weapons and drug charges over the weekend.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 5, 2022.
The City of Winnipeg is launching another effort to find tenants for the former Canada Post tower downtown, a plan it expects would move some city offices into the building.

The City of Winnipeg is launching another effort to find tenants for the former Canada Post tower downtown, a plan it expects would move some city offices into the building.

The city is seeking a consultant to determine how best to make use of the tower at 266 Graham Ave., which it bought as part of the scandal-plagued Winnipeg Police Service headquarters project.

In 2009, the city spent $29 million to buy the Canada Post tower and warehouse. While police now work out of the former warehouse and occupy some space in the office tower, six of its 11 floors remain vacant.

Meanwhile, it cost the city $670,000 more to operate the tower than the city earned from the structure in 2021, though that figure doesnt factor in "the value of the space occupied by civic tenants," a city spokesperson confirmed.

Coun. Brian Mayes said thats a financial challenge the city must address.

"I think, for Winnipeggers, weve got to try and see what we can salvage out of this site Its (over) a decade since the key decisions were made around the police headquarters and I feel like weve got to start recovering some revenue from this," said Mayes, a former chairman of councils property and development committee.

The WPS headquarters opened in June 2016 at a cost of about $214 million, well above its original $135 million price tag. An external audit found the project was severely mismanaged. The RCMP conducted a lengthy investigation into fraud and forgery allegations, but no criminal charges were laid.

A city report once predicted the municipal government could sell the tower attached to the police headquarters for $18 million. But the city later determined the tower, which was built in 1958, would need about $20 million of renovations.

The city is seeking a contactor to complete a feasibility study to determine who could occupy the building . A request for proposals notes the city expects future occupants "will include personnel from selected city departments," though no decision has been made.

Civic employees appear to be promising tenants for the site, in part because police must ensure security isnt compromised by those who move in next to their operations, said Cindy Gilroy, the chairwoman of councils property and development committee.

"I know the police were wanting to make sure that they knew the tenants who were going to be in there. So using it for city staff would be really ideal and it could be a way that we could amalgamate some offices. Its nice to start filling some of the buildings up that are empty downtown," said Gilroy.

The councillor said she believes the security concerns were a big part of the reason why the effort to find a new use for the space failed in 2016.

Gilroy said there is the added need to make use of downtown buildings, since many were vacated during the pandemic.

"Part of our downtown revitalization is trying to make sure we dont have empty buildings downtown. If we can be proactive and be a part of that, we should be doing what we can to fill them up," she said.

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Mayes agreed bringing more city workers together at a downtown building is worthwhile, noting that could save the city money on leased spaces.

The consultant is expected to determine what renovations the tower requires to meet current building codes, estimate how much repairs would cost and recommend "cost-effective solutions for re-use of the tower" on a floor-by-floor basis.

In an email, city spokesman Kalen Qually said two of the occupied floors are leased to third parties, while three already serve a civic use.

The city expects to spend about $120,000 on the feasibility study.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga
Emergency room average wait times in Winnipeg increased in May, while the number of patients who left HSC without receiving care in April nearly doubled its January 2021 sum.

Emergency room average wait times in Winnipeg increased in May, while the number of patients who left HSC without receiving care in April nearly doubled its January 2021 sum.

According to Shared Health records, in April, 1,097 patients left the downtown Health Sciences Centre ER without being seen by a physician, compared to 862 who did so in January  and 591 in January 2021.

The longest wait times for nine out of 10 patients seeking medical care at Winnipeg hospitals in May was 7.92 hours  up from 7.62 in April, provincial government data show.

Median wait times increased to 2.97 hours in May, from 2.87 in April.

At Manitobas largest hospital emergency department  HSC  the longest wait for nine out of 10 adult patients in May was 11.15 hours, down from 11.92 in April. For children, however, that wait time in May increased to 4.38 hours from 3.62 in April.

At St. Boniface Hospital, the longest wait for most patients decreased to 8.35 hours from 8.65. At Grace Hospital, it increased to 7.84 hours from 7.72.

When asked Monday for comment, Shared Health pointed to a news release issued June 30, quoting HSC chief operating officer Dr. Shawn Young. In it, he said wait times are holding steady, despite a substantial increase in patient demand, adding: "Many patients will continue to wait longer than normal throughout these busy summer months."

Staff shortage continues to diminish HSC ER DANIEL CRUMP / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Night shifts at Health Sciences Centre emergency department were reportedly desperately understaffed over the Canada Day long weekend. Posted: 5:54 PM Jul. 4, 2022 ER patients at Manitobas largest hospital face compromised care and the potential for neglect in the waiting room as chronic nursing staff shortages continue, one front-line worker says. Over the Canada Day long weekend, night shifts at Health Sciences Centre emergency department were reportedly desperately understaffed and additional nurses had to be brought in from the downtown Winnipeg hospitals intensive care units, while managers also stepped in to cover. Read Full Story

A number of initiatives generated by conversations with staff have been introduced or are in the planning stages, the release said. They include additional home care resources on weekends to help patients return home after being discharged and creating a staffing pool of nurses with previous emergency and urgent care experience interested in picking up shifts.

The HSC is also looking at self-scheduling, so nurses have more say in when they work. On Friday, nine nurses enrolled in a four-week orientation program to work in the ER or urgent care will report for shifts at one of Winnipegs hospitals.

All local hubs saw a huge January to April increase in the volume of patients who left without being seen by a physician, according to Shared Health data obtained by the NDP through a freedom of information request.

HSC logged 1,097 adult patients leaving in April, compared to 862 in January. At the HSC childrens ER, 138 young patients left in April before being seen, compared to 46 in January.

At Grace Hospital, 245 left in April, compared to 168 in January. At the ER at St. Boniface, 519 left in April, compared to 290 in January.

On the bright side, three hospitals saw fewer patients give up and leave in April than the previous month.

In March, 1,098 patients left the adult ER at HSC, and 260 left the Grace; at Seven Oaks General Hospital urgent care centre, 297 left in April without being seen by a doctor, compared to 302 in March.

The information obtained by the NDP showed 2,877 patients left without being seen in April. The total number of patients who arrived at Winnipeg ERs and urgent care centres that month was 23,103 Shared Health said tonight.

The NDP blames the Progressive Conservative government for staffing problems it says are at the root of long ER waits.

"The PCs have really failed Manitobans when it comes to health care," Opposition Leader Wab Kinew said Monday. Manitobans who go to the hospital should be able to expect that theyll be seen and assessed, he said.

"We know that the staffing situation is whats driving this. We cant afford to lose any more folks."

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The first step the provincial government should take is showing more respect toward workers, said Kinew. That would include negotiating a contract with health-care support staff whove been without one for five years, he added.

Nurses, whove complained about burnout and mandatory over time, should have a better work-life balance and be able to directly swap shifts without having to go through a manager, the NDP leader said.

"We need to fix the situation."

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
A Winnipeg company is suing the provincial health authority for nearly $3 million, alleging Shared Health violated its intellectual property rights and engaged in a biased procurement process.

A Winnipeg company is suing the provincial health authority for nearly $3 million, alleging Shared Health violated its intellectual property rights and engaged in a biased procurement process.

In a statement of claim filed in the Court of Queens Bench on June 30, OwniCloud Inc. said it was asked to develop a diagnostic image case allocation system by a Shared Health quality specialist on Dec. 22, 2021.

Within a five-day period and without a contract, the company built the system at the request of Shared Health and demonstrated an early model to the quality specialist on Dec. 27, with subsequent work to complete the system proceeded at the request of the Shared Health employee, according to the statement.

Three weeks later, the Shared Health employee informed the company it preferred a different information technology company for the job and would no longer pursue the program created by OwniCloud Inc., the statement of claim continued.

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Efforts by OwniClound Inc. to communicate with Shared Health were refused, the statement alleges.

According to court documents, the Shared Health employee carefully organized an unfair competition to solicit services for the provincial health authority, violated typical tendering processes and infringed upon OwniCloud Inc.s intellectual property rights. The Shared Health employee is not listed as a defendant.

OwniCloud Inc. is claiming more than $2.9 million in damages. The company declined to comment on the civil suit Tuesday.

Shared Health has not yet filed a statement of defence.

Given this is a matter before the courts, Shared Health will defer public comment at this time, a spokesman said.

 Staff
Two Ukrainian refugees attacked at The Forks on Canada Day intend to leave Manitoba, as a rash of incidents highlights an increase in violent crime in Winnipeg.

Two Ukrainian refugees attacked at The Forks on Canada Day intend to leave Manitoba, as a rash of incidents highlights an increase in violent crime in Winnipeg.

The citys emergency services responded to three serious stabbings and two shootings, including Winnipegs 27th homicide of the year, over a bloody long weekend.

Friday nights stabbing at The Forks was the third attack in five days at the national historic site.

"We saw a young man holding his chest and his neck desperately asking for help as he walked toward traffic," said witness Julya Zan. "The knife was sticking out of his neck."

As other drivers went around the victim, Zan, 26, and her husband, Jorge Torres, stopped their car and helped him as he lay on a sidewalk, she said.

SUPPLIED Julya Zan and her husband, Jorge Torres, pulled over and helped the victim after he was stabbed Friday night.

The couples friend was on the phone with 911.

The 22-year-old victim and his friend told Zan they were crossing Israel Asper Way at York Avenue when they accidentally bumped into a group of at least three men around 10:40 p.m.

After apologizing, both men were hit with bear spray, and one was stabbed.

"He said it was so shocking and it happened so fast he didnt realize he had been stabbed," said Zan, who moved to Canada from Ukraine in 2010.

She spoke in Ukrainian to the victims, who were in shock, as they waited for police and paramedics to arrive.

"As I was trying to calm this man down, I was freaking out," she said. "Ive never seen anything like that before."

As the stabbing victim turned pale and was rushed off in an ambulance, Zan worried he wouldnt make it.

In a news release, Winnipeg police said the victim was "bleeding profusely" with a life-threatening wound.

Staff at Health Sciences Centre stabilized him after he arrived in critical condition.

His 23-year-old friend was treated and released.

Police are looking for multiple suspects, who fled on foot.

As I was trying to calm this man down, I was freaking out... Ive never seen anything like that before.  Julya Zan

Zan, who has visited the stabbing victim in hospital, said the men told her they fled Kyiv when Russia launched its unprovoked war on Ukraine in February.

After spending time in Poland, they arrived in Canada two weeks ago.

The pair moved into an apartment in downtown Winnipeg the day of the attack, said Zan.

"They told me they dont want to be here anymore. They are looking at moving to another province," she said. "Their opinion about Manitoba and Winnipeg has definitely changed."

Traumatized by what she witnessed, Zan doesnt feel comfortable returning to the area. She has had flashbacks of the victim with the knife stuck in his neck.

"It could have been anybody; he was a totally innocent guy walking down the street," she said. "It just makes you question if you should be going downtown."

MIKE SUDOMA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The sidewalk along Israel Asper Way, where an incident occurred on Canada Day, resulted in two victims being taken to hospital.

In the earlier incidents at The Forks, a father and daughter were attacked by three teenage girls at about 8 p.m. on June 27, and two men were stabbed at about 12:30 a.m. two days later, said police.

Four youths and two adults were arrested in the latter attack.

On June 20, a 16-year-old boy was critically injured and an 11-year-old boy was caught in the crossfire during a shooting at the Red River Ex.

Between April 2021 and March 2022, reports of violent crime in Winnipeg increased by 18.3 per cent compared with the previous 12-month period, according to the latest police figures.

The total was 3.7 per cent higher than the five-year average.

Reports of violent crime in March, as Manitoba emerged from another COVID-19 lockdown, jumped by 19.7 per cent compared with March 2021.

The figure was 37.9 per cent higher than the five-year average for the month.

Coun. Markus Chambers, chair of the Winnipeg Police Board, said the city could be on pace for a record number of homicides, with 27 so far.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Coun. Markus Chambers, chair of the Winnipeg Police Board, said the city could be on pace for a record number of homicides, with 27 so far.

A record 44 homicides occurred in 2019.

Of this years killings, the police clearance rate is high, and most have involved people who know each other or gang activity, said Chambers.

"This is not the perception that we want, that its a violent city," he said, noting tougher economic times can lead to an increase in crime.

To be proactive, Chambers said, he wants the police board to meet with downtown groups to discuss safety in the area.

He said the board wants to hear from Winnipeggers to help police to identify neighbourhoods that may require an increase in police presence or strategies to combat crime.

Recent violence isnt doing any favours for Winnipegs reputation and attempts to attract new residents and tourists.

It could have been anybody; he was a totally innocent guy walking down the street... It just makes you question if you should be going downtown.  Julya Zan

Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war, for example, are using social media to seek recommendations on where to live when they arrive in Canada.

"I would think something like this, in the short term, may discourage some people from coming to Winnipeg on their own, which would be unfortunate because, in general, it is a safe and welcoming place," said Ostap Skrypnyk, a member of the Ukrainian Canadian Congresss Manitoba council.

One of the councils leaders was planning to visit the victim of Fridays stabbing in hospital.

The Winnipeg Police Services public information office was busy Monday, as it released information about five violent incidents over the Canada Day long weekend.

Amid that workload, a spokeswoman said police were "unable to accommodate" a Free Press request for comment on crime trends and prevention.

I would think something like this, in the short term, may discourage some people from coming to Winnipeg on their own.  Ostap Skrypnyk

Mayor Brian Bowman was not available for comment, his spokesman said.

No one from The Forks management was made available for an interview Monday.

In an email, spokeswoman Jenna Khan said The Forks is co-operating with police and it does not have any further details about Fridays incident.

Security was increased following the two earlier attacks.

In addition to The Forks security team, Winnipeg police officers and cadets, the Downtown Community Safety Partnership, SABE Peace Walkers, Mama Bear Clan and Impact Security were on site during Fridays celebration, called "A New Day," said Khan.

Crime and public safety are certain to be among the key issues when Winnipeggers elect a new mayor and councillors in October.

Mayoral candidate Jenny Motkaluk said she would like to see The Forkss CEO, Sara Stasiuk, and police Chief Danny Smyth make public statements about the recent violence.

She said she isnt prepared to reveal her platform on crime, but police officers are "taxed" and measures should focus on "maximizing" the time they spend in the community.

Fellow candidate Rick Shone said Fridays attack was "embarrassing and really disgusting."

If elected, he would like to work with the province and community agencies on a strategy to free up officers from having to respond to less urgent or non-violent calls.

Shone and former mayor Glen Murray, another candidate, cited a need to work with federal and provincial governments on long-term plans for social issues that are among the contributing factors to criminal behaviour.

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Murray and candidate Scott Gillingham, the councillor for St. James, said they would advocate for a greater focus on community-based policing and prevention.

St. Boniface-St. Vital MP Dan Vandal, the Liberals senior portfolio minister in Manitoba, said public safety is the federal governments top priority.

He said Ottawa is trying to prevent crime by investing in programs for people with mental health needs and/or addictions, and those who are in or at risk of falling into gangs.

Provincial Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen said the province is working with police across the province to prevent violent crime.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @chriskitching
When musician Matt Schellenberg goes on tour, he keeps a face mask on in any indoor space.

When musician Matt Schellenberg goes on tour, he keeps a face mask on in any indoor space.

A keyboardist and member of Manitoba-based pop group Royal Canoe, Schellenberg and his bandmates stay masked-up in venues, only taking them off to play  a "little gamble," as he refers to it  even though the vast majority have dropped use of the personal protective equipment.

"It just seemed like a no-brainer to me that I can just put this thing on my face that makes my chance of not getting COVID astronomically higher," Schellenberg told the Free Press on Monday.

"So I kind of dont understand why people dont do it."

Schellenberg has slowly but surely become part of a minority in many public spaces, where those who choose to wear a mask regardless of public health orders have dwindled over time, even amongst those who had held on to the practice post-provincial restrictions.

The musician said he was the only one wearing a mask in a group of around 100 people when visiting the Forks recently, adding it can at times feel alienating.

"It feels isolating," Schellenberg said. "But the challenge is to not allow it to put you in any sort of holier than thou situation I think that the whole thing just can create tension, and I try my best to not be like, Oh, Im somebody who cares, and Im surrounded by people who dont, because, obviously, its more nuanced than that."

Curtis Wiebe, a draftsman who lives in the small community of Kleefeld in southern Manitoba, said its "pretty much guaranteed" hell be the sole person wearing a mask should he walk into the local general store.

"Im kind of tired of being that guy whos always telling people (the COVID-19 pandemic is) not over, whatever, so I dont really say anything," he said. "But I just kind of try to do my thing and be consistent with what I think I need to do.

"I wonder, too, sometimes if theres like a little bit of a collective grief or shock or something that were going through, where people just really want things to go back to the way they were."

Watching Winnipeggers, in particularly, slowly begin to leave their masks at home has been an interesting phenomenon, epidemiologist Cynthia Carr said. It might be a response to peoples heightened understanding of the risks of going unmasked. Immunized people who see the province is defining its response level as "green," meaning "limited risk," may feel theyre better-equipped to face the novel coronavirus than they were earlier on in the pandemic, she added.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS As is evident at The Forks on Monday, mask wearing is increasingly rare.

"Our concept of risk and danger associated with the virus has changed, and a great deal of that is because of the success of vaccines in preventing severe illness," Carr said.

This could also be behind the slow uptake for third and fourth COVID-19 vaccine doses (around half of eligible Manitobans have received a third shot, while just 11.3 per cent of those who can get a fourth shot have done so), which could have dangerous consequences, Carr said.

Why are many who were originally staying the course even after the province lifted mask mandates forgoing mask-wearing over time?

It could be a number of factors, Brandon University sociology Prof. Christopher Schneider said.

Exhaustion and fear around being one of a few wearing a mask in a crowd, mixed messaging from leadership, and a "profound lack in a unified trust in any one thing" after years of conflicting information online stand out, he said.

"COVID is no longer dominating the headlines as it once was over the past couple of years. Its still there, no doubt, but there are other things happening, and I think, in part, its not on top of everybodys mind anymore," he said.

"And I think that provides the illusion that maybe COVIDs gone away, or at the very least its under control, and that things are fine now."

A return to indoor mask mandates should case counts surge has been warned by Canadas chief public health officer, and medical professionals are already calling for it to be reinstated as several countries around the world have seen a rise in COVID-19 cases in the past month and the emergence of new Omicron subvariants.

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While he supports the idea, Schneider doesnt believe bringing back the mask mandate would go over well with many Manitobans.

"The cats been let out of the bag I think theres been a failure in leadership across provincial governments, and the government more generally, in terms of not staying the course," he said.

"And now a lot of the messaging is like, Oh, its OK, I guess youve got your vaccines, I guess its OK, and now theyre going to switch gears, apparently, or allegedly, or maybe, and say, All right, now back to the mask. I think people are going to be upset by that."

Carr was more optimistic about the possibility, saying now that people have gotten through a mask mandate, they might be more amenable to the process coming back.

"Im hoping that it would make sense for people to be on board and react and go, We can see now the cases are circulating, were going back indoors, this makes sense," she said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca
ER patients at Manitobas largest hospital face compromised care and the potential for neglect in the waiting room as chronic nursing staff shortages continue, one front-line worker says.

ER patients at Manitobas largest hospital face compromised care and the potential for neglect in the waiting room as chronic nursing staff shortages continue, one front-line worker says.

Over the Canada Day long weekend, night shifts at Health Sciences Centre emergency department were reportedly desperately understaffed and additional nurses had to be brought in from the downtown Winnipeg hospitals intensive care units, while managers also stepped in to cover.

Paramedics were not asked again to cover for the lack of nurses in the department, Shared Health confirmed Monday. (The hospital made that request of already stretched-thin paramedics during a particularly busy weekend last month.)

One HSC ER nurse said patients are inevitably waiting longer and are being neglected as a result of the understaffing.

"Weve just accepted that we are working dangerously understaffed and we work minute by minute to survive," said the ER nurse, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing for her job if she were to speak out publicly.

"Patient care was most certainly compromised over the weekend due to lack of staff. Patients are being neglected. Not to any fault of the nursing or support staff, but simply because there isnt enough resources.

"We are stretched so thin we cannot provide even the most basic human care in some instances. There is no incentive to retain highly trained staff. Subsequently this weekend, patients suffered, and their conditions worsened because care could not be provided to them in a timely manner."

In a statement, a Shared Health spokesperson stated staff shortages at HSCs adult emergency department have been well-documented and continued over the long weekend.

"As you know, these challenges are not unique to our facility, as hospitals throughout the country are experiencing similar issues," the statement reads.

"As we have on previous weekends, call-outs occurred to both regular and part-time staff, as well as those in the casual pool. On-shift staff were approached to work overtime. Critical care nurses were also reassigned at various points to assist in the adult ED and managers were working in the department to support staffing needs."

Shared Health didnt provide figures when asked how many ER nurses were working per shift at the HSC over the long weekend.

In a move to further rely on additional non-specialized nurses to treat trauma patients, resuscitation training for some licensed practical nurses at HSC begins this month, Shared Health confirmed last week. More than a quarter of ER nurses at HSC have left those positions.

In a statement issued on June 28, a Shared Health spokesman wrote the nurse staffing vacancy rate was then 26.6 per cent in the HSC emergency department.

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"Education standards for LPNs in Manitoba are amongst the highest in the country, allowing them to play an important role in the provinces health-care system  including in emergency departments  and qualified to perform to a higher scope of practice. This includes work in resuscitation and trauma," the spokesman stated.

"Extending opportunities to LPNs to participate in orientation training for resuscitation and trauma reflects our support for these valuable staff by providing them with opportunities to work to their full scope of practice. The training of these nurses will be done in stages, with a few LPNs scheduled to participate in resuscitation training (in July)."

Each nursing shift at HSC is supposed to have at least 24 ER nurses. Even when day-shift staffing is close to normal, an increasing number of sick calls tend to come at night largely due to the mental and physical exhaustion nurses experience during their 12-hour shifts at the inner-city hospital "due to the abundance of violence in this city," the experienced ER nurse said.

"Night shift is its own special breed. Knowing the potential patients we may face, coupled with a lack of resources and support, its just too much to do for any amount of time," she continued.

"Its hard to continue to go to work when at the end of the day you feel as though you have failed your community members."

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca
We did the best we could with what we had at the time is an expression nurses with our decades of experience know well. We use those words to describe to new nurses how we responded to crises at our hospitals when we were in their shoes.

Opinion

"We did the best we could with what we had at the time" is an expression nurses with our decades of experience know well. We use those words to describe to new nurses how we responded to crises at our hospitals when we were in their shoes.

What has us raising alarm bells, however, is that the "what we had at the time" part was supposed to keep getting better. Yet things are worse now than ever.

We have both experienced the devastation of caring for victims of horrific vehicle collisions. But in Darlenes case, the experience of working in a very small hospital in northern Manitoba with minimal nurses on duty when 18 crash victims arrived needing urgent care, has echoes to the COVID-19 crisis todays nurses have been enduring.

The pressure those three nurses felt to stay on top of patient needs was immense, but that was a crisis moment. It had an end point, and that helped them get through. Today, nurses feel that level of pressure and intensity every single day and night on the job, with no end in sight.

Nurses are telling us staff shortages have become so severe at several Winnipeg hospitals, including our flagship hospital Health Sciences Centre, they are going to work with a constant sense of impending doom and are feeling more distressed now than at any other point in their careers.

They have patients waiting up to 24 hours in the ER, and the usual per-shift complement of 24 ER nurses has recently dropped as low as 12, so triage nurses dont have time to regularly re-assess patients in the waiting room as theyre supposed to.

This crisis has been years in the making. Even before the pandemic, burnout rates among nurses were extreme. More than 60 per cent experienced some symptoms of burnout, while almost 30 per cent were experiencing clinical burnout. Since the pandemic, those numbers have increased to 94 per cent of nurses experiencing burnout, with almost half now classified as clinical, meaning they need mental health supports.

The very people Manitobans depend upon to care for them are no longer able to care for themselves.

As a result, many nurses are quitting, and positions arent being filled. In Manitoba, we have a province-wide vacancy rate of 21.4 per cent. All of our six regions have double-digit vacancy rates, with the highest at 33.3 per cent and the lowest at 18 per cent.

And more than half of all nurses in Canada are considering leaving their current position in the next year, including 19 per cent who are considering leaving nursing altogether.

We know of serious staffing shortages at HSC, Grace Hospital and St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, as well as at rural Manitoba facilities, which have been forced to close for weeks. Concerted government action is urgently needed to turn the tide and stem the exodus of nurses from the system.

For starters, we need to restore hope in two ways. First, by giving them a light at the end of the tunnel with firm timelines and real accountability for improving nurse-to-patient ratios. That means funding proven programs to retain and recruit more nurses, including returning those who have left the profession. And funding for more nursing seats, bridging programs, new mentorship initiatives, and support for transitioning internationally educated nurses.

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And second, by providing immediate and ongoing support for nurses mental health programs.

Nursing has always been a tough job, done by those who want to help people and arent afraid of a challenge. The problem is its not a tough job anymore, its an impossible one. Canadas nurses are some of the strongest, most resilient people we know. They have seen great hardship and suffering in their patients, so they do not ask for help lightly.

And if we dont take immediate action, we risk suffering a system-wide failure of our treasured universal public health-care system.

For years, the Manitoba governments of Brian Pallister and now Heather Stefanson have been asking the federal government to increase health transfers. Next week, federal, provincial and territorial governments will assemble at the Council of the Federation meeting in Victoria, B.C., to discuss health care. We would like to see a clear commitment on the part of the Manitoba government to invest any additional funds into directly improving patient care by rebuilding the nursing workforce.

Our message has never been clearer. Our health-care system is on the brink of catastrophe. We must fix the dire shortage of nurses.

Darlene Jackson is a registered nurse and president of the Manitoba Nurses Union, and Linda Silas is the president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. The Manitoba Nurses Union recently produced a mini-documentary series,\ titled "The Frontline is Not Okay."
Another 15 million people joined the NATO alliance on June 28. Finland and Sweden, formerly neutral countries but near to Russia, gave in to Turkish blackmail, and that cleared the way for them to join the western alliance. (Every NATO member, including Turkey, has a veto on new members joining.)

Opinion

Another 15 million people joined the NATO alliance on June 28. Finland and Sweden, formerly neutral countries but near to Russia, gave in to Turkish blackmail, and that cleared the way for them to join the western alliance. (Every NATO member, including Turkey, has a veto on new members joining.)

The circumstances were a bit squalid, since both Sweden and Finland abandoned their support for Turkeys oppressed Kurdish minority in order to unblock their own path to NATO membership. Russia is not planning to invade them at the moment, but as soon as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, both Scandinavian countries were knocking at NATOs door.

They are small countries Russia could eventually overwhelm by sheer numbers, but they are rich and the Finns, at least, reckon that their well-trained armed forces could make a Russian conquest slow and expensive. Since there was no good reason for Moscow to invade them, until last February that seemed to be enough. Then suddenly, it wasnt.

The problem, although nobody mentions it out loud, is nuclear weapons. The two Baltic countries have no nukes of their own (although Sweden once considered getting them), and now President Vladimir Putin and his enablers hint at nuclear strikes every time anything goes wrong with his war against Ukraine.

The only way Finland and Sweden can get protection from Russian nuclear blackmail is to join NATO, three of whose members (the United States, Britain and France) have nuclear weapons of their own. Since all NATO members are obliged to protect any member under attack, that gives the Swedes and Finns a nuclear guarantee.

There have, of course, been the usual warnings from the usual sources that letting these two countries into NATO will make the Russians even more paranoid and therefore even more prone to attack their neighbours (although the latter part of that warning is never fully articulated). But this is sheer nonsense.

The Russians are indeed paranoid, but that is a state of being, not a response to some particular act they interpret as aggressive. They come by their paranoia honestly, in the sense that they have been invaded by the "A-team" of would-be world conquerors (the Mongols, Napoleon, Hitler) and live in a country with no "natural" frontiers.

But it is paranoia, and it will be there whatever other people do. The Russians never really intended to conquer western Europe, but they did put their own puppets into power in all the eastern European countries and turn them into satellites after the Second World War. That was "defensive" in their own minds, but it felt like aggression to everybody else.

Not only did the Russians impose their own Communist system on all these countries and cut them off entirely from the rest of Europe with the "Iron Curtain"; they ruthlessly crushed any revolts by the subject peoples  in East Germany in 1953, in Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968  and imprisoned or executed tens of thousands of people.

After 40 years of Soviet military occupation, therefore, it was inevitable that those eastern European countries would seek shelter in an expanded NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And it was necessary for NATO to take those countries in, because otherwise they would have tried to build their own defences against Russia.

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Historical might-have-beens are usually highly debatable, but its close to certain that if Poland had not been able to join NATO and come under its nuclear guarantee, it would have its own nuclear weapons by now. Given the countrys long history of subjugation and brutalization by Russia, the Poles would have seen any other course as sheer madness.

Yes, all those countries joining NATO "provoked" Moscow, but when you are dealing with a career paranoiac there is no choice. The fact is that at no time since 1945 have the western powers had the military strength to invade Russia successfully on the ground. Since about 1960 they have not had the capacity to win a nuclear war against Russia either.

The Russians arent stupid. They are paranoid because of their history, but they can count. At one level they fully understand NATO could not invade them because (a) it lacks the necessary superiority in conventional military forces (even after the recent demonstration of their own armys parlous state), and (b) Russia has nuclear weapons.

So they have unreasonable fears, but they also know how to use the known fact of their paranoia to justify aggressive actions of their own. In the hands of a man like Putin this can be a powerful diplomatic tool, and the only sensible way to counter it is to refuse to enter into that intellectual swamp at all.

Just stop psychologizing about the Russians, and do whatever seems reasonable and necessary.

Gwynne Dyers new book is The Shortest History of War.
By the time Arcel Bissonnette was banned from practising medicine less than two years ago, the former Ste. Anne, Manitoba physician was already facing multiple charges of sexual assault, some connected to alleged incidents dating back to 2004.

By the time Arcel Bissonnette was banned from practising medicine less than two years ago, the former Ste. Anne, Manitoba physician was already facing multiple charges of sexual assault, some connected to alleged incidents dating back to 2004.

Almost two years before Mr. Bissonnette was arrested by police and charged on Nov. 5, 2020, with six counts of sexual assault, a complaint against him was brought to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba. The college is prohibited from releasing information about a complaint or a subsequent investigation (only the results of a final disciplinary decision are made public).

Instead, a condition was placed on Mr. Bissonnettes licence that required a female chaperone to be in the room when he examined female patients. Mr. Bissonnette, who now faces 22 charges of sexual assault after more allegations surfaced, was also required to post a notice in his practice outlining the conditions of his licence.

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The College of Physicians and Surgeons must do a better job of holding physicians accountable when they are found guilty of professional misconduct.

It raises the question: if Mr. Bissonnette could not be trusted to perform certain types of exams without someone looking over his shoulder, why was he allowed to practise medicine at all? If the complaint against him was sufficiently serious to warrant such an extreme intervention, one might conclude he should not have been permitted to see any patients.

This is not an isolated case, as a recent Free Press investigative series on physician oversight has uncovered. It is not uncommon for physicians facing complaints to have conditions placed on their licence following allegations of professional misconduct. Many are also required to post notices informing patients of those conditions, leaving it up to patients to decipher their meaning.

Shamoon Hasham Din had his physicians licence revoked June 2 after failing to comply with conditions that a female chaperone be present when treating female patients. He also reportedly created false and misleading medical records and treated pediatric patients when he was not permitted to do so. The conditions on his licence stemmed from misconduct that occurred in 2020-21; however, he was also temporarily suspended in 2018 after an inappropriate relationship with a teen patient.

Robert Zoppa had his physicians licence revoked in March after multiple counts of professional misconduct dating back to 2010, including having sexual relations with two female patients and prescribing drugs to patients while keeping some for personal use. The former Selkirk family doctor also breached the conditions of his licence before it was revoked.

Former Winnipeg doctor Naseer Ahmed Warraich lost his right to practise medicine in July 2021, but not before he was given multiple warnings and second and third chances over a 15-year period to clean up his act. Mr. Warraich was suspended for two months in 2006 for professional misconduct, including for co-signing prescriptions for patients in the United States whom he had not seen. More recently, he billed Manitoba Health for examinations of patients in nursing homes he had not seen and failed to maintain a standard of care. Mr. Warraich also had conditions on his licence, including a requirement that a medical supervisor oversee his practice.

ANDREW HARRER / BLOOMBERG FILES It is not uncommon for physicians facing complaints in Manitoba to have conditions placed on their licence following allegations of professional misconduct.

As an oversight body, the CPSM must do a better job of holding physicians accountable when they are found guilty of professional misconduct. There is too much secrecy around complaints against doctors. A review of how the college conducts investigations and how it imposes disciplinary action on its members is long overdue.

That review should include an overhaul of the provincial Regulated Health Professions Act to make the process more open and transparent. Patient safety should be the primary objective under the act. Right now, it more often seems the interests of medical practitioners take precedence.
LONDON (AP)  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was clinging to power Tuesday after two of his most senior Cabinet ministers quit, saying they had lost confidence in Johnsons leadership amid shifting explanations about his handling of a sexual misconduct scandal.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks at the start of a cabinet meeting, in Downing Street, London, Tuesday, July 5, 2022. (Justin Tallis/Pool Photo via AP)

LONDON (AP)  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was clinging to power Tuesday after two of his most senior Cabinet ministers quit, saying they had lost confidence in Johnsons leadership amid shifting explanations about his handling of a sexual misconduct scandal.

Treasury chief Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid resigned within minutes of each other, costing Johnson the support of the men responsible for tackling two of the biggest issues facing Britain  the cost-of-living crisis and surging COVID-19 infections.

Both cited Johnsons credibility after a day in which the prime minister was forced to backtrack on earlier statements about the scandal that has rattled his government for the past six days.

The debacle is only the latest to hit Johnson, who last month narrowly survived a vote of no confidence triggered by similarly shifting stories about lockdown-breaking parties in government offices.

In his letter of resignation, Javid said the confidence vote showed a large number of Conservative Party lawmakers had lost trust in Johnson.

It was a moment for humility, grip and a new direction, Javid said. I regret to say, however, that it is clear this situation will not change under your leadership  and you have therefore lost my confidence too.

Britain's Home Secretary Priti Patel attends a cabinet meeting, in Downing Street, London, Tuesday, July 5, 2022. (Justin Tallis/Pool Photo via AP)

A few minutes later, Sunak echoed those sentiments.

The public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously, Sunak said. I realize that this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning.

Both Sunak and Javid are seen as possible contenders to replace Johnson if he is forced out.

While the resignations heaped pressure on the prime minister, Johnson has in the past proven to be an adept politician, fighting off criticism to prolong his career.

Johnson quickly named two loyalists to the positions: Steve Barclay got Javid's old job, while Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi replaces Sunak as Treasury chief, Downing Street said.

At the same time, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss swiftly threw her support behind Johnson. Other Cabinet members, including Culture Secretary Nadine Dories, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace and Home Secretary Priti Patel, were also in his corner.

But Scott Lucas, an emeritus professor at the University of Birmingham and a longtime political observer, said it would be difficult for Johnson to ultimately survive the departure of two such senior members of his Cabinet.

FILE - Britain's Chancellor Rishi Sunak, right, listens as Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson addresses his Cabinet during his weekly Cabinet meeting in Downing Street, June 7, 2022 in London. Two of Britains most senior Cabinet ministers have quit on Tuesday, July 5, 2022, a move that could spell the end of Prime Minister Boris Johnsons leadership after months of scandals. Treasury chief Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid resigned within minutes of each other. (Leon Neal/Pool Photo via AP, file)

Hes not going to go without a fight, Lucas said. I just dont know how many people are left to fight alongside him.

The latest scandal began Thursday, when Chris Pincher resigned as deputy chief whip amid complaints that he groped two men at a private club. That triggered a series of reports about past allegations leveled against Pincher and questions about why Johnson promoted him to a senior job enforcing party discipline.

Pincher denies the allegations.

Johnson's office initially said he wasnt aware of the previous accusations when he promoted Pincher in February. By Monday, a spokesman said Johnson knew of allegations that were either resolved or did not progress to a formal complaint.

That account didnt sit well with Simon McDonald, the most senior civil servant at the U.K. Foreign Office from 2015 to 2020. In a highly unusual move, McDonald went public with claims that the prime ministers office wasnt telling the truth.

McDonald said in a letter to the parliamentary commissioner for standards that he received complaints about Pinchers behavior in the summer of 2019, shortly after Pincher became a Foreign Office minister. An investigation upheld the complaint, and Pincher apologized for his actions, McDonald said.

Mr. Johnson was briefed in person about the initiation and outcome of the investigation," McDonald wrote.

From left, British Health Secretary Sajid Javid, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrive at No 9 Downing Street for a media briefing on May 7, 2021. Two of Britains most senior Cabinet ministers have quit, a move that could spell the end of Prime Minister Boris Johnsons leadership after months of scandals. Treasury chief Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid resigned within minutes of each other. (Toby Melville/PA via AP)

Hours after McDonalds comments were published, Johnsons office changed its story again, saying the prime minister had forgotten that Pincher was the subject of an official complaint.

Then minutes before Javid and Sunak announced their resignations, Johnson told reporters that Pincher should have been fired from the government after a previous 2019 incident.

Asked if it was an error to appoint Pincher to the government, Johnson said, I think it was a mistake, and I apologize for it. In hindsight it was the wrong thing to do.

The shifting explanation from Johnson fueled discontent within the Cabinet after ministers were forced to publicly deliver the prime ministers denials, only to have the explanation shift the next day.

Johnsons authority had already been shaken by last months confidence vote. Although he survived, 41% of Conservatives voted to remove him from office. But until Tuesday his Cabinet had largely stayed put and loyal.

Concerns about Johnsons leadership were fueled by his responses to months of allegations about lockdown-breaking parties in government offices that ultimately resulted in 126 fines, including one levied against Johnson.

Two weeks later, Conservative candidates were badly beaten in two special elections to fill vacant seats in Parliament, adding to the discontent within Johnsons party and suggesting the ongoing accusations were finding a toehold with the public.

When Pincher resigned last week as deputy chief whip he told Johnson that he drank far too much the previous night and had embarrassed myself and other people.

Johnson initially refused to suspend Pincher from the Conservative Party, but he relented after a formal complaint about the groping allegations was filed with parliamentary authorities.

Critics suggested Johnson was slow to react because he didnt want Pincher forced to resign his Parliament seat, setting up the Conservatives for another potential special election defeat.

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Even before the Pincher scandal, suggestions were swirling that Johnson may soon face another no-confidence vote.

The existing rules require 12 months between such votes, but several Conservative lawmakers have suggested they support changing the rules in an upcoming vote on the issue.

Senior Conservative lawmaker Roger Gale, a long-standing critic of Johnson, said he would support a change of the rules.

Mr. Johnson has for three days now been sending ministers  in one case a Cabinet minister  out to defend the indefensible, effectively to lie on his behalf. That cannot be allowed to continue, Gale told the BBC. This prime minister has trashed the reputation of a proud and honorable party for honesty and decency, and that is not acceptable.

___

Follow all of AP's coverage of Prime Minister Boris Johnson at https://apnews.com/hub/boris-johnson
Charges have been filed against a man for allegedly forcing a woman to have intercourse with him at a graduation party and also confining her and not allowing her to leave.

Jordan X. Mennes, 18, has been charged with second degree sexual assault and false imprisonment.

If Mennes is convicted of sexual assault he faces up to 25 years in prison followed by up to 15 years of extended supervision. The false imprisonment charge could lead to three years in prison followed by three years of extended supervision if found guilty.

At his initial appearance on June 15, Columbia County Judge Troy Cross set Mennes bond at $5,000 with standard felony conditions, including no contact with the victim or their residence and workplace.

Online records show Mennes posted his cash bond on June 17 and was released from custody.

According to the criminal complaint filed on June 15, a Columbia County Sheriffs detective interviewed a woman on June 15 about a graduation party she attended on June 13 in the town of Leeds on June 11 and June 12. The events took place in a shed with a number of other party-goers.

The victim alleged that Mennes sat on her lap a number of times even after she asked him not to. Mennes also allegedly touched the victims breast over her clothes. Throughout the evening Mennes allegedly grabbed the victim by the throat making it difficult for her to breathe. This allegedly happened about 20 times.

Around 4 a.m. the victim wanted to leave the party while others were sleeping but Mennes told her to stay and sleep there.

At some point Mennes allegedly told the victim, you are going to hate me tomorrow, and then took her pants off and performed oral sex on her. The victim reported telling Mennes to stop multiple times.

The victim told authorities that Mennes was forcing himself on her for sexual intercourse for 10-15 minutes while she told him to stop multiple times.

The victim continued looking for her keys to leave and eventually found them in the shed. But Mennes did not let her leave by grabbing her by the arms leaving bruises. Mennes eventually fell asleep and the victim was able to leave.

When Mennes was questioned by authorities about the incident he said he could not remember anything. Mennes told a Sheriffs Sergeant he blacked out during the party.

Mennes did remember separating the victims keys from everyone elses keys. There was a video that police saw on Mennes phone with a 3:07 a.m. timestamp that showed Mennes and the victim together. The complaint describes the video showing Mennes, highly intoxicated, sitting on the victims lap.

Mennes is scheduled to be back in court on July 11 for a pre-trial conference.
Kalahari Resorts and Conventions in Wisconsin Dells, like its other nationwide locations, is inspired by African culture. The company now has a program to help with clean water in the continent as well as earn its artists more recognition.

The Water Colors Life Project is an initiative started for those two reasons, according to a release from Kalahari. Todd Nelson, the founder and CEO of Kalahari, and his family travel to Africa on a regular basis and are inspired by the beauty and spirit. African artwork is displayed on walls throughout the resorts and music from the continent is played as well.

The culture, spirit, craft and artistry of Africa has always inspired me and my family, said Nelson in the release. We have seen firsthand how limited access to clean water has negatively impacted these African communities, and knew we wanted to help.

Along with displaying the artwork, Nelson said in a statement via email that 100 African artists were asked to sculpt an interpretation of Love in 2021. All 100 sculptures were auctioned for charity and are now in new American homes. The Nelson Family Life Foundation, a non-profit set up by Kalaharis founder and his family, is asking 100 new artists to do the same in 2022, with the sculptures scheduled to arrive later in July.

Each sculpture will be featured in an online fundraiser, with half of profits funding the Water Colors Life Project and the other half supporting food security for communities the non-profit serves. All Kalahari locations will feature a number of the sculptures, according to Nelsons statement.

Providing clean water will consist of drilling one borewell per month throughout the continent. The first three were drilled in Zimbabwe, in the city of Bulawayo and the Matopos Hills region as well as another location. The holes, which are vertically drilled wells, will house manual pumps that will provide fresh water from underground to their areas.

We are excited to continue this project into the future as there is a huge need for fresh water throughout the continent of Africa and view our campaign as a long-term investment, said Nelson in his statement.

Nelson added in his statement that 10 boreholes have now been drilled in Zimbabwe as a result of the project. There are plans to expand the project to other countries in Africa which need access to clean water, according to the statement.

According to the Water Colors Life Project website, 115 people in Africa die every hour due to complications rising from unsanitary water supply. The site also says that the borewells provide a long-term solution to water accessibility.

Guests at Kalahari are able to donate to the Water Colors Life Project in a few ways. They can donate change in Wishing Wells located in the resorts, round up purchases to the next dollar amount, and buy campaign-themed water bottles. Signage displaying the project will have QR codes that guests can scan to link them to the projects webpage, which features a link for direct donation.

The Nelson Family Life Foundation will match the first $1 million in guest donations. According to the foundations website, its mission is improving the lives of individuals in the communities we serve through health and education initiatives.

Brad Bensman, the executive director of the foundation, said in the release that more than 400 million people living in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from water scarcity, with the website indicating this problem for one-third of the continents entire population.

The foundation is looking to bring awareness to African communities and their struggles while enabling Kalahari guests to assist with providing clean and safe water to those areas. Nelson said in his statement that as communities gain access to the water, the foundation is open to providing other necessities such as food, clothing, and additional shelter.

The Nelson Family Life Foundation is committed to help to meet the needs of the African people however helps them the most, said Nelson in the statement.
One person was killed and 10 were injured in a multi-vehicle crash just outside Lake Geneva on Monday, authorities reported.

At about 2:25 p.m. officers with the town of Linn Police Department responded to the area of Highway 120 and Highway B for a reported motor vehicle crash with injuries.

Responding officers located a three-vehicle crash with 11 total patients, nine of whom were transported via ambulance to area hospitals and trauma centers, according to a news release from the Town of Linn Police Department.

One victim was later pronounced dead at Froedtert Hospital. The crash is currently under investigation and no other information has been released.

The Town of Linn was assisted by the Walworth County Sheriffs Office, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Town of Bloomfield Police, Town of Linn Fire and EMS, Mercy Hospital, City of Lake Geneva Fire and EMS, Hebron Fire and EMS, Fontana EMS, Village of Walworth EMS and Bloomfield/Genoa City EMS.
RACINE  A man who used social media to contact a 13-year-old girl, who was then raped multiple times over multiple dates, will serve a substantial prison sentence following a hearing in Racine County Circuit Court on Friday.

Miguel A. Joubert Vazquez, 28, will serve 19 years in prison for seven counts of second-degree sexual assault of a child, two counts of using a computer to facilitate a child sex crime, one count of strangulation/suffocation, child abuse/intentionally causing harm, and three counts of misdemeanor bail jumping.

The defendant was found guilty by a jury on April 29 of all but one charge, which was using a computer to facilitate a sex crime.

The defendant has 418 days credit for time served.

Attorney Annette E. Rauch, attorney for the defendant, said in court the defendant would not make a statement because he intended to appeal the case.

She pointed out the defendant believed the relationship was consensual and noted he received text messages from the girl supported the claim. The girl left her residence voluntarily, Rauch noted, and sent messages to the defendant telling him she missed him.

He believed they were in a relationship; albeit, a short one.

However, as the Racine County DAs Office noted, the accuser was just 13-years-old, too young for a consenting, sexual relationship.

Case history

The defendant reportedly began contacting the 13-year-old girl on social media in October 2019.

Vazquez reportedly picked her up, drove to a parking lot and raped her. There was a second encounter in November.

When she learned the defendant was 25 and not 19 years old, as he claimed, the girl confronted Vazquez about his age. He allegedly responded by demanding she perform oral sex. She refused and he choked her; afterward, Vazquez told the girl she needed to start acting right, according to the complaint.

When Vazquez dropped the girl off at her apartment, she was locked out. She got back in Vazquezs car. He drove her to a place near St. Patrick Street where she was sexually assaulted again.

Another time, Vazquez drove the girl to another Mount Pleasant parking lot where she was sexually assaulted again. The fourth and final time, he allegedly grabbed her head and forced her to perform a sexual act.

The girl walked into the Racine Police Department in November 2019 and reported the sexual assaults.
Kevin Nicholson dropped out of the gubernatorial race Tuesday after facing an uphill battle within the Republican field against a Donald Trump-endorsed candidate, a former lieutenant governor and polls that favored his opponents.

Nicholsons only path forward would be running a negative campaign blasting his opponents, a strategy he doesnt want to engage in, the former Marine said in a statement Tuesday.

Nicholson  a Republican management consultant who previously ran for the U.S. Senate but lost the primary in 2018  said he will not endorse any of the Republican gubernatorial candidates before the Aug. 9 primary. Those candidates are businessman Tim Michels, former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and state Rep. Timothy Ramthun, R-Campbellsport. The winner will face Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on Nov. 8.

I will whole heartily support the nominee on August 10th and will work to get Republicans up and down the ballot elected, Nicholson said in a statement Tuesday. Our fight is not over, and I will continue to be engaged on the battlefield to elect conservative outsiders in the state of Wisconsin.

A Marquette Law School Poll released two weeks ago found 10% of Republican primary voters favored Nicholson, far behind Michels at 27% and Kleefisch at 26%. Nicholson was only beating out Ramthun at 3%. Polling also found Evers held a slight edge in head-to-head matchups with each of the four.

Nicholson announced his campaign in an interview with WTAQ in late January, describing an anti-establishment effort targeting both Democrats and entrenched Republicans. Since joining the race, Nicholson called for the end of traditions like the Republican Party of Wisconsins pre-primary election candidate endorsement process.

We have had many highs over the last six months, and I am proud of what we have built, Nicholson said Tuesday. Ive traveled our state and heard from thousands of Wisconsinites who believe our society is off track, who want an outsider as their governor, and not someone from the Madison Machine.

He also campaigned on anti-abortion policies before and after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, calling himself 100% pro-life. While he once supported abortion rights, Nicholson said in a survey that he would ban abortions in all cases.

Asked whether he thought the 2020 election was stolen at a debate last week, Nicholson said, illegal conduct occurred, but Ill stop right there.

Kevin Nicholson leaving the race only means that there is one less radical Republican in the gubernatorial primary, Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesperson Hannah Menchhoff said in a statement. Nicholson exposed deep divisions among Wisconsin Republicans who only want to move further to the right.

Nicholson had received a hand from Fighting for Wisconsin, a super PAC registered as an independent expenditure committee that supported him with over $2 million for ads. But the ads werent enough for Nicholson to overcome Kleefisch, who ran a longer campaign, or Michels, a multimillionaire who received Trumps endorsement.

Speaking to talk show host Mark Belling on WISN after his announcement Tuesday, Nicholson said, I was really trying to articulate why conservative ideas are going to help to get us out of the mess that were in, and encouraged the Republican gubernatorial candidates to follow that messaging.

In the interview, Nicholson did not rule out running for office in the future.

This race was better for him being in it, working as hard as he did, and pushing his outside message about the need to shake up the Madison machine, Michels said in a statement following the announcement, adding that hell work to earn the support of those loyal to Nicholson.

Kleefisch on Twitter thanked Nicholson for the hearty debate and competition to make our state and movement better!

Moving forward, I humbly ask Nicholsons supporters to join our team, Kleefisch said in a subsequent post. Ive taken on the Madison swamp before and won, and this fall, I will beat Tony Evers.
Shen Yueyue, Vice-Chairperson of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and President of the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), conducted an investigation tour of residential communities, enterprises and villages in Jining, Heze and Jinan cities of East China's Shandong Province from June 8 to 10.

Shen stressed that women's federations should give full play to their role as bridges linking the Party with women, guide women to become builders of the great cause, advocates of civilized social conduct and strivers who pursue their dreams, rally those who work for children's welfare, endeavor to become a guide for children's growth, a guardian for children's rights and interests, and a builder for children's future, promote the development of women and children's cause, and contribute to coordinating COVID-19 response with economic and social development.

Shen Yueyue (C), Vice-Chairperson of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and President of the All-China Women's Federation, conducts an investigation tour of East China's Shandong Province from June 8 to 10. [China Women's News/Yang Rui]

When visiting local enterprises, Shen spoke with women entrepreneurs, business starters and scientific and technological workers. She learned about their difficulties and problems, and asked them what the women's federations can do for them, and how the women's federations have helped them receive benefits from policies and solve their actual problems.

Shen called on them to bolster their confidence, promote the spirit of innovation, and play a leading role in pursuing progress while ensuring stability, keeping employment stable and accelerating the recovery of economic growth.

Shen urged women's federations to explain and publicize national and local policies and measures for easing the difficulties of businesses, set up a communication platform between relevant government departments and women entrepreneurs in accordance with the needs and problems of the enterprises, and take targeted measures to help more women, especially women college graduates to get jobs and/or start businesses.

Shen Yueyue (C), Vice-Chairperson of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and President of the All-China Women's Federation, conducts an investigation tour of East China's Shandong Province from June 8 to 10. [China Women's News/Yang Rui]

During her investigation tour, Shen learned about the building of family, family education and family traditions at women's homes, children's homes and parents' schools in villages and communities. Shen called for strengthening the building of family civilization and guiding Party members and officials to develop good family traditions.

Shen called for more efforts to implement the mechanism of school-family-community cooperation in family education and the law on family education guidance, and pool the strength of experts, experienced parents, volunteers, social workers, veterans and veteran cadres, experts, teachers and role models, to become a guide for children's growth, a guardian for children's rights and interests, and a builder for children's future.

Shen also visited left-behind children whose parents have migrated to other areas for work and disadvantaged families. She urged staff members of women's federations to extend more assistance and love to them and safeguard the rights and interests of disadvantaged groups.

Shen Yueyue (C), Vice-Chairperson of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and President of the All-China Women's Federation, talks with local women during her investigation tour. [China Women's News/Yang Rui]

In a village in Sishui County in Jining, Shen hailed the efforts made by a women volunteers' team which provides care and assistance to rural left-behind children, migrant children and children in need under the guidance of the local women's federation. She urged county-level women's federations to lead village-level women's federations in promoting the participation of ordinary women in women's work.

In another village in Sishui, Shen talked with women villagers and members of the executive committee of the village's women's federation about their earnings and future plans. She hoped that members of the executive committees of the women's federations at grassroots level will guide more women toward playing a role in guaranteeing food security, raising income, promoting rural revitalization and building a beautiful village.

Shen Yueyue (C), Vice-Chairperson of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and President of the All-China Women's Federation, attends a meeting during her investigation tour. [China Women's News/Yang Rui]

Shen communicated with full- and part-time staff members of the women's federations, grassroots-level women cadres and women representatives at a symposium. She stressed that the women's federations at all levels should unite and guide women to unswervingly follow the Party's leadership in forging ahead on the new journey, serve the overall interest and the women, and contribute to containing the epidemic, stabilizing the economy and keeping development secure.

Efforts should be made to strengthen the building of family, family education and family traditions and let the core socialist values take root in the families.

Shen urged women's federations to further raise their sense of responsibility, attach great importance to the protection of the rights and interests of women, pay special attention to ordinary women, especially those in need, and consolidate women and children's sense of fulfillment, happiness and security. She also stressed following the Party's leadership, deepening the reform of women's federations and implementing the work of guiding, serving and contacting women at the grassroots level.

(Source: China Women's News/Translated and edited by Women of China)
Greenwich is a big town situated in Fairfield County in the southwestern part of the US State of Connecticut. Being the biggest town on the state's Gold Coast, Greenwich houses several hedge funds and other financial services companies. Greenwich is Connecticut's southernmost and westernmost municipality and also in the six-state region of New England. The town serves as a significant community of the BridgeportStamfordNorwalkDanbury metropolitan statistical area, which make up the entire Fairfield County. The town has been named after the royal borough of Greenwich, situated in the southeastern part of London in the United Kingdom.

Geography And Climate Of Greenwich

Aerial drone shot over by North Street in Greenwich, Connecticut looking towards the Long Island Sound.

The town covers a total area of 174.1 sq. km, of which 123.8 sq. km is occupied by land, and 50.3 sq. km is covered by water. Greenwichs area is almost double the size of Manhattan. The town is surrounded from the west and north by Westchester County, New York, and from the east by the city of Stamford, whereas it faces the Village of Bayville from the south across the Long Island Sound.

Greenwich experiences a humid continental climate, with warm and wet summers and very cold and snowy winters, and it is partly cloudy year-round. Over the course of the partly cloudy skies around the year, the temperature fluctuates seasonally between -4 C and 29 C and is often below -12 C or above 33 C.

Brief History Of Greenwich

Saint Mary Church located at Greenwich Avenue in Greenwich, Connecticut. Editorial credit: Miro Vrlik Photography / Shutterstock.com

The current Greenwich Point was initially known as "Elizabeth's Neck" in honor of Elizabeth Fones - one of the founders and daughter-in-law of John Winthrop, the founder, and Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was John Winthrop who did the 1640 purchase of the Point and a significant part of the area, currently the Old Greenwich. The town was established in 1640 by the New Haven colony agents Robert Freaks and Captain Daniel Patrick, who traded the land from the Siwanoy Indians against 25 English coats. The town came under Dutch jurisdiction but was returned to Connecticut in 1650 and was announced as a township in 1665 by the General Assembly in Hartford. The town played a major role in the American Revolution when General Israel Putnam escaped from the British troops under Major General William Tryon in 1779, although British forces captured and robbed the town. By the 19th century, some prominent New Yorkers established luxurious estates in the town of Greenwich.

The Population And Economy Of Greenwich

Horizontal view of the posh Greenwich Avenue shopping district in downtown Greenwich, Connecticut. Editorial credit: Brian Logan Photography / Shutterstock.com

As per the latest US Census, Greenwich has a population of 63,518 residents. 75.2% of Greenwich residents were born in the United States, with 27.1% having been born in Connecticut. Besides, around 11.6% of those residents are not US citizens and have mainly originated from Latin American countries.

Greenwich is an economic hub of Fairfield County and its metropolitan statistical area, serving as a residential suburb of New York City. Finance and insurance play a primary role in the towns economic structure, with more than 20% in the job market, followed by scientific and technical services. From a different economic perspective, the average annual income of a Greenwich resident is $94,200, undergoing a 6.4% sales tax and a 5.5% income tax.

Top Attractions In Greenwich

The Bruce Museum

Bruce Museum of Arts and Science in Greenwich, Connecticut. Image Credit: Noroton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

This museum blends natural history with art, along with perfectly curated exhibitions displaying local and global environmental history, Native American agriculture in Connecticut, as well as intertidal wildlife, and a primeval forest environment in a woodland panorama. Moreover, the art collection at the Bruce Museum focuses on the mimics who followed the Cos Cob Art Colony, like Leonard Othman, Childe Hassam, and Emil Carlsen. Furthermore, The sculpture assortment is breathtaking, including pieces by Auguste Rodin, Frederick MacMonnies, and Hiram Powers.

Greenwich Avenue Historic District

Historic district sign located at Greenwich Avenue in Greenwich, Connecticut. Editorial credit: Miro Vrlik Photography / Shutterstock.com

Downtown Greenwich is studded with Italian, Georgian Revival and Commercial-style buildings, that were built a few decades from the late 19th century to the time after World War I. Pedestrians can take a leisured stroll, admiring the sophisticated architecture and sincere memorials like the town hall, in addition to the Richardsonian Romanesque-style Havemeyer Building that was built in 1892. Greenwich Avenue is recognized as a shopping attraction as well, for its advanced boutiques, galleries, and design stores.

Panoramic view over the beach of Greenwich Point Park. Editorial credit: 365 Focus Photography / Shutterstock.com

In addition to the above attractions, Greenwich hosts a variety of beaches that offer recreational activities for the visitors, like the Greenwich Point Park, which is a part of Greenwichs four beaches that are located on a peninsula into Long Island Sound, and are a popular place for visitors. Moreover, the town is home to a Polo Club, a local library, and Montgomery Pinetum Park. With the lifestyle and education opportunities the town offers, the Town of Greenwich is considered to be one of the best places to live and visit in Connecticut.
St. Johns River is about 500 km long, making it the longest river in Florida, United States. Approximately 3.5 million people live along the river and its watersheds. The river flows through 12 counties in the state, starting from the northeastern part and draining into the Atlantic Ocean. At its broadest, the river measures 3 miles across from bank to bank. St. Johns River separates into three river basins. The largest is the Lower Basin, which covers about 2,600 square miles. The Upper Basin covers approximately 2,000 square miles, and the Middle St. Johns River Basin covers 1,200 square miles in a highly urbanized area of central Florida. About 16,000,000 tons of freight pass through the rivers ports in Jacksonville every year. Along with commercial traffic, the St. Johns River is considered the most important river for recreation in the state. In the modern era, the St. Johns River is known as a haven for fishing, boating, and swimming.

Geography Of St. Johns River

Aerial view of St. Johns River winding through central Florida.

The St. Johns River lies in a coastal plain, in an area that was once made up of coastal dunes, estuary marshes, and barrier islands shaped by the force of ocean waves. The source of St. Johns River lies in St. John's Marsh, located west of Vero Beach in Indian River County. As a blackwater stream, it is fed via swamps and marshes. The groundwater seeps through the sand, collecting in a slight depression that eventually becomes the steady stream of a river. The river's headwaters are located at Blue Cypress Lake. The St. Johns River then flows northwards due to a slope in the river bed. From Saint John's Marsh, and over the course of its 500km journey, the river gradually runs downwards about 30 feet. The long, slow slope makes it one of the slowest running rivers in the world.

Jacksonville, Florida, downtown skyline along the St. Johns River at dusk.

The waters of the St. Johns River are clear as it flows past the marshes. Once it reaches Brevard County, the river becomes navigable. When the river reaches the Jacksonville area, about 40 km from its mouth, the water becomes brackish due to the influx of seawater. It creates what is called an estuarine ecosystem. Turning east from Jacksonville, the river's mouth is located at the Atlantic Ocean in Mayport, Florida. Its total basin size is 22,900 sq. km. The river's discharge at Mayport is an average of 420 cubic meters per second, with a maximum volume of 4,200 cubic meters per second.

Climate Of St. Johns River

Water temperatures of the St. Johns River generally range from a low of just over 55 F to a high of over 80 F during the summer months. Summers along the St. Johns River are long and hot. Summer skies are most often cloudy, with high humidity. Winters are short and cool, with partly cloudy skies. Precipitation is frequent all year round, with rain falling 11 days per month during the summer. Annual totals average about 50 inches per year. Air temperatures vary from about 46 F to 90 F throughout the year. During extreme weather conditions, flooding may occur. In 2017, the surge of water from Hurricane Irma resulted in historical water levels and flooding through the downtown area of Jacksonville up to 5-ft 7-in for many miles along the rivers banks.

Ecology Of St. Johns River

Sandhill cranes near the St. Johns River in Florida.

The St. Johns River hosts a diverse and complex ecosystem along its length. Hundreds of species of fish, and thousands of invertebrates, make their home in its slow-moving, nutrient-rich waters, along with hundreds of species of plants. The food chain begins with the invertebrates, including crayfish, grass shrimp, and apple snails, which eat the plant material in the water and become a food source for birds and fish. Mosquitoes become food for more than 150 species of dragonflies and damselflies.The river is also home to small animals such as frogs, salamanders, snakes, and turtles, particularly in the marsh areas. Many of the aquatic species are more active during the cooler night hours. Many birds depend on the river and its shallow areas for food and survival. In the marshes, birds that wade through the water, such as the white ibis and wood stork, consume the frogs and small fish.

Alligator in St. Johns River, Florida.

Alligators are a common sight in the St. Johns River, resting along its banks. Eels are native to the area, along with flounder, redfish, and black drum. Bottom-dwelling species such as the robin and toadfish can also be found here. Bull sharks are occasionally seen and caught in the river, along with blacktip, sandbar, and sharpnose sharks. Bull sharks can tolerate freshwater, while the other species of shark stay mainly in the estuary waters. Manatees are often spotted in the river, as well as in nearby spring waters. During the winter, the manatees often seek out warmer spring waters. Skates and manta rays also pass through the river.Saltwater shrimp make an annual run up the river to spawn for a shrimping season that may last from August until Thanksgiving. Heavy rainfalls during this period can disrupt the shrimp run and send the crustaceans back out into the ocean. Rhesus monkeys can be found in the area where the St. Johns River meets the Wekiva River. Rhesus monkeys are excellent swimmers and have thrived in the area. The rhesus macaques, native to many regions of Asia, were released by a tourism operator in the 1930s and, despite several attempts to control their population, continue to be spotted in the area and along the Ocklawaha River, a tributary of the St. Johns River. The St. Johns River gets polluted as a result of run-off from residential as well as commercial development, roads, and agriculture, as well as aging and defective septic tanks. There is also some contamination with metals, PCBs, and pesticides that gets discharged into the river from nearby agricultural fields.

Brief History Of St. Johns River

Fort Caroline National Memorial is a reconstruction of Fort de la Caroline, an attempted French colonial settlement along the St. Johns River in Florida.

Archaeological evidence shows the beginning of human habitation in the St. Johns River area from the Middle Archaic period, or between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago. Indigenous populations thrived in the area and created several settlements along the river. From the findings, they ate freshwater snails and oysters in abundance. Around 750 CE, corn was first cultivated in the area, and the population grew. When the Spanish colonists first arrived in the 16th century, the local Timucua people numbered around 14,000. The Spaniards named the river Rio de Corrientes (River of Currents). The Timucua were eventually forced into slavery by the Spanish. They settled on the lands west of the river, while the European colonists settled on the eastern bank. Later, the Seminoles settled in the area, calling the river Welaka. The French and Spanish disputed the territory, culminating in the Spanish sack of the French Fort Caroline in 1565. The Spanish called the river San Mateo and occupied the fort until 1569. Spanish Franciscan missionaries named a mission theyd set up at the mouth of the river San Juan del Puerto (St. John of the Harbor). It first appeared on a map dating about 1680. Florida became part of the jurisdiction of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1763, reverting to Spanish rule decades later in 1795. Settlements began to be set up along the river, starting from the area around what is now Orange Park. Plantations growing citrus fruits and cotton were developed in the Jacksonville area in the early 19th century.

Nancy Lee fishing boat on the St. Johns River surrounded by seagulls on a warm summer day. Editorial credit: StephanieFarrell / Shutterstock.com

The arrival of steamships in the 1860s sparked a growth in commerce and population along the river. During the Civil War, the USS Columbine, a Union vessel that patrolled the river, was sunk by Confederate supporters. The Melbourne Tillman drainage project, established in the 1920s, lowered the Upper Basin, draining the rivers headwaters to the Indian River eastwards. The intent was to supply water for the expansion of agriculture. However, it resulted in the accumulation of sediment and degradation of the water. In 2015, the Canal 1 Rediversion project partially reversed the drainage. By 2017, up to 43% of the discharge had been returned to the Upper St. Johns Basin. The population of Florida and the urbanized areas of the St. Johns River region have grown exponentially since the mid-20th century in the Upper Basin area.
First responders work the scene of a shooting at a Fourth of July parade on July 4, 2022 in Highland Park, Illinois.
Calls for Ruabon Station to brought up to a modern standard for all travellers

The deputy leader of Wrexham Council has called for a local train station to be brought up to a modern standard for all travellers.

Ruabon Station currently only has step access between platforms meaning disabled, those with young children or travellers with luggage are not access the Chester platform.

It is the only station on the Chester to Shrewsbury route that is failing to meet passengers expectations of modern, accessible train stations.

Campaigners have been calling for several years for access to be improved, however previous funding bids have failed.

Deputy council leader, David A Bithell has written to Network Rail to highlight the need to modernise the station and has been told that the organisation intends to nominate Ruabon Station under the Access for All Programme in Control Period 7.

Cllr David A Bithell, Deputy Leader with responsibility for Strategic Transport, said, I have written to Network Rail indicating the importance of Ruabon station, second in Wrexham only to the General Station.

Its extremely popular with local travellers and a key interchange for visitors to the World Heritage Site at Pontcysyllte.

The lack of access to those with mobility problem, parents with young children and those with heavy luggage means they are really disadvantaged by not being able to access the Chester line at Ruabon.

It now needs to be brought up to a modern standard for all travellers.

Im grateful to Network Rail for their support going forward and look forward to working with them and local groups on this project as we move forward.

The Access for All is a UK government initiative launched in 2006 to create an obstacle free, accessible route from the station entrance to the platform.

This includes providing lifts or ramps, as well as associated works and refurbishment along the route.
Public health officials confirm seven more Monkeypox cases in Wales

Public health officials have confirmed that seven more Monkeypox cases have been identified in Wales.

It brings the total number of cases in Wales to 16.

Monkeypox cases are continuing to rise in the UK, with more than 1,200 confirmed infections as of June 30.

Sue Mably, Consultant in Public Health, for Public Health Wales, said: Public Health Wales is today (4 July) confirming that seven additional cases of monkeypox have been identified in Wales. This brings the total in Wales to 16.

The cases are being managed appropriately. To protect patient confidentiality, no further details relating to the patients will be disclosed.

What is monkeypox?

Monkeypox is a rare illness often associated with travel to Central and Western Africa, it is usually a mild illness that does not spread easily between people and usually gets better by itself, with most people recovering within a few weeks.

The most recent cases are presenting predominantly in gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men. They have no travel links to a country where monkeypox is endemic, so it is possible they acquired the infection through community transmission.

As the virus spreads through close contact, we are asking these groups to be alert to any unusual rashes or lesions on any part of their body and to contact a sexual health service if they have concerns.

What are the symptoms of monkeypox?

If you get infected with monkeypox, it usually takes between 5 and 21 days for the first symptoms to appear.

The first symptoms of monkeypox include:

fever

a headache

muscle aches

backache

swollen glands

shivering (chills)

exhaustion

A rash usually appears 1 to 5 days after the appearance of fever, often beginning on the face, then spreading to other parts of the body including the genitals, hands and feet.

The rash changes and goes through different stages, and can look like chickenpox, before finally forming a scab, which later falls off.

The symptoms usually clear up in 2 to 4 weeks.

How is monkeypox spread?

Monkeypox can be spread when a person comes into close contact with a person infected with the virus or contaminated items the infected person has touched.

The virus enters the body through broken skin (even if not visible), respiratory tract, or the mucous membranes (eyes, nose, or mouth).

Person-to-person spread is uncommon, but may occur through:

Touching clothing, bedding or towels used by an infected person

Touching monkeypox skin lesions or scabs, particularly if your own skin has sores or cuts

The coughs or sneezes of an infected person

What should I do if I think I might have monkeypox?

If you think you have monkeypox symptoms  however mild you should:

Contact NHS 111 or call a sexual health clinic immediately. Your call will be treated sensitively and confidentially.

Avoid close personal or sexual contact with others until youve consulted a medical professional.

Please do not go directly to your GP surgery, contact clinics ahead of your visit and avoid any close contact with others until you have been seen by a clinician.

Your call or discussion will be treated sensitively and confidentially.

Is monkeypox treatable?

Although there are few specific antiviral treatments available for monkeypox, the illness is usually mild and most of those infected will not require treatment and will recover by themselves within a few weeks.
Speak up, interrupt: BTP urges bystanders to report sexual harassment on the railway

British Transport Police (BTP) is urging the public to do their bit in making the railway a hostile environment for sexual harassment, as reports continue to rise.

A new campaign launched this week  called Speak Up, Interrupt  aims to empower bystanders and witnesses of all forms of inappropriate sexual behaviour on the network and to report incidents or safely intervene where they can.

Reports of sexual harassment and sexual offences to BTP have risen by 175 per cent since before the pandemic (2019/20 compared to 2021/22).

BTP say this shows that more people are aware that this behaviour isnt acceptable, and that they are becoming more confident in reporting it to police  which is a step in the right direction, however theres more to be done.

Now the force is now calling on the public to help, whether thats by alerting police or taking simple and non-confrontational steps to interrupt or diffuse a situation if you see behaviour such as leering, catcalling, touching, pressing, upskirting, or indecent exposure.

This could involve: Speaking to police or rail staff

Giving the victim a way out of the situation by offering your seat

Interrupting the situation by striking up an unrelated conversation or standing between the perpetrator and the victim

Supporting the victim by asking them if they are ok

Or, if it is safe to so, speaking calmly to the person causing the issue
Tourism leader challenges Welsh Governments radical second homes rules

The Welsh Government has been accused of disregarding the experience, expertise and livelihoods in the tourism industry with its radical programme to address second homes issue in Wales.

Suzy Davies, Wales Tourism Alliance chair and former Welsh Conservative MS, has challenged the Welsh Government to face up to the unintended consequences of its policy changes and says the contribution genuine tourism businesses make to the viability of communities is being ignored.

A recent change to the occupancy threshold needed for a holiday let to be treated as a business dismissed the majority view in the governments own consultation, as well as compelling evidence of harm to the professional furnished holiday let sector, she added.

Her comments follow yesterdays announcement of new planning laws, a statutory licensing scheme and proposals to change land transaction tax in a package of measures to address second homes in Wales.

Mrs Davies said that, on the face of it, proposals reflecting a determination to distinguish between genuine businesses and second homes might be welcome, as would a form of registration which guaranteed quality.

However, the recent experience over the 182-day occupancy threshold has left businesses disillusioned about the weight Welsh Government gives to their evidence. There is no confidence that proposals will protect their status from being recognised.

In the absence of detail, it is not clear where the distinctions will be drawn and whether any rules will be applied retrospectively. Further, there is no confidence that money raised through a licensing system would be used to enforce standards, she added.

First Minister Mark Drakeford and leader of Plaid Cymru Adam Price set out the next steps in a programme of actions to help create thriving communities and to support people to afford a home.

The co-operation agreement between the Welsh Government and Plaid Cymru includes a commitment to tackle the issue of second homes affecting many communities in Wales.

The package of measures includes:

Changes to planning regulations by the end of the summer, including three new planning use classes  a primary home, a second home and short-term holiday accommodation. Local planning authorities may require planning permission for change of use from one class to another and will also be able to control the number of second homes and holiday lets in any community.

Plans to introduce a statutory licensing scheme for all visitor accommodation, including short-term holiday lets, making it a requirement to obtain a license. The Welsh Government says this will help raise standards across the tourism industry.

Local authorities will develop a national framework which will allow them to raise land transaction tax rates for second homes and holiday lets in their local area.

The Welsh Government has already given councils discretionary power to increase council tax premiums on second and empty homes and changed the rules on holiday lets taxation.

First Minister Mark Drakeford said: Tourism is vital to our economy but having too many holiday properties and second homes, which are empty for much of the year, does not make for healthy local communities and prices people out of the local housing market.

There is no single, simple solution to these issues. Any action we take must be fair. We do not want to create any unintended consequences, which could destabilise the wider housing market or make it harder for people to rent or buy.

Mrs Davies said: Welsh Government needs to mean what it says about unintended consequences and recognise that genuine tourism businesses contribute to the viability of communities, she said.

Whatever their aims, their unwillingness to address the unintended consequences of the policies they have already introduced hasnt convinced the industry of their sincerity on this.

Holiday let businesses are professionally run, often locally owned, employ local people, provide custom for local businesses and pay business premium for things like rubbish collection.

However, across the whole of Wales, they have already been caught up as part of Welsh Governments policy to control the separate, different issue of second home proliferation in some specific communities.

Tourism providers recognise the worry about second homes but have grave reservations about how Welsh Government intends to resolve it. We are already nervous about the reference to a licensing scheme rather than a registration scheme; this has brought nothing but bureaucratic grief in Scotland.

The Welsh tourism industry is as keen as Welsh Government and Plaid Cymru to see a prosperous, balanced visitor economy where tourism businesses are valued participants in their communities. Yet every announcement comes as a blow to the industrys confidence as its experience, expertise and livelihoods are disregarded.
For more information on Will Lehmans campaign, visit WillForUAWPresident.org.

United Auto Workers presidential candidate Will Lehman issued a video statement Monday supporting the formation of a rank-and-file committee at auto parts company Ventra and denouncing the efforts of the UAW bureaucracy to block a united struggle of all autoworkers.

"Support auto parts workers at Ventra and GM Subsystems!" - UAW presidential candidate Will Lehman

Last week, workers at the Ventra plant in Evart, Michigan voted by 94.5 percent to defeat a UAW-backed contract, which maintained poverty-level wages, imposed higher out-of-pocket health care expenses on workers and did nothing to end the sweatshop conditions at the plant.

On Thursday, the UAW bureaucracy announced a last-minute deal covering 700 workers at GM Subsystems, a low-paying subsidiary of General Motors. A strike by the material handling and warehouse workers could have quickly shut GMs key assembly plants in Detroit, Lansing, Lake Orion and Flint, Michigan.

Lehman, a 34-year-old manufacturing worker at a Mack Trucks plant in Macungie, Pennsylvania, announced his campaign for the UAW presidency last week.

In his latest statement, he declared his solidarity with the Ventra and GM Subsystems workers, saying they were in a crucial battle, which deserved the support of all rank-and-file workers, against both the corporations and the UAW bureaucracy. The ruling class of corporate owners is not going to make concessions anywhere unless forced to by workers. But everywhere workers are blocked from using our strength by corrupt union officials that defend profit, not the needs of their own members, he said.

The last thing UAW President Ray Curry and the rest of the leadership in the misnamed Solidarity House headquarters in Detroit want is a strike at one of the parts companies. This is the same thing the UAW did at Dana and Nexteer last year.

Lehman denounced the statement of UAW International rep Dan Kosheba who arrogantly told Ventra workers, who only make $14-$17 an hour, that they could not get any higher raises because they are not the Big Three.

In fact, until the 1980s, independent parts workers had nearly as high wages as Big Three workers. The UAW agreed to cut the wages of parts workers to boost the Detroit automakers profits and then backed the GMs and Fords spinoff of Delphi, Visteon and American Axle to pit Big Three and parts workers against each other.

Lehman hailed the decision of the Ventra workers to form a rank-and-file committee and cited the point they made in their founding statement: Were all part of one relationship. You cant work without us, and we cant work without you. We all need each other. And weve all got to stick together for solidarity and to make sure we win a better life for ourselves and the whole working class.

Over the last two years, he concluded, we have seen an increase in strikes and other struggles by UAW members, from Volvo Trucks, Dana and John Deere, to the current CNH strike, and the fights at Ventra and GM Subsystems. This is part of the growing struggle of the working class across the US and the world. I am running to abolish the pro-company UAW bureaucracy, to put rank-and-file workers in power and unite the working class to fight for equality for all.

For more information on Wills campaign, visit WillForUAWPresident.org.
The New York Times reported Monday that dozens of US ex-military personnel are operating on the ground in Ukraine and that retired senior US officers are directing portions of the Ukrainian war effort from within the country.

Coming after revelations that the United States was directly involved in coordinating and planning the assassination of Russian generals and the sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet, the report further refutes the false claim by the Biden administration that the United States is not at war with Russia.

In its report, the Times wrote:

Americans are in Ukraine. An unknown number are fighting on the front lines. Others volunteer to be members of casualty evacuation teams, bomb disposal specialists, logistics experts and trainers. At least 21 Americans have been wounded in combat since the war started, according to a nonprofit organization that evacuates them. Two have been killed, two have been captured and one is missing in action.

In February, US President Joe Biden said, Our forces are not and will not be engaged in a conflict with Russia in Ukraine. In March, Biden reiterated, The idea that were going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks  going in with American pilots and American crews, just understand, dont kid yourselves, no matter what you all say, thats called World War III.

Since that announcement, the United States has provided over 200 armored personnel carriers and over 20 helicopters to Ukraine, as well as M109 self-propelled armored howitzers, Harpoon anti-ship missiles and HIMARS long-range missiles.

In addition to these military armaments, it is now clear that the United States has sent troops. The US military claims that these forces, including one colonel and one lieutenant colonel, are operating on their own and are not under the command of the US military.

But these denials are a lie, meant to deceive the American people, who overwhelmingly oppose their government going to war with Russia. The officers admitted as much, telling the Times that their actions give the United States plausible deniability.

The Times interviewed Andrew Milburn, a retired Marine Corps Special Operations colonel on the ground in Ukraine, who declared that his actions and those of the dozens of American soldiers are executing U.S. foreign policy in a way the military cant.

Speaking by phone from a village about 15 miles from the front lines in eastern Ukraine, Mr. Milburn said his efforts supported US goals while insulating the United States from involvement. Im plausible deniability, he said. We can do the work, and the U.S. can say they have nothing to do with us.

Significantly, the US officers are helping to plan combat missions, serving as a critical conduit for US direction of the war effort.

The Times reports of the existence of a so-called Mozart group of dozens of US soldiers who are actively engaged in training thousands of Ukrainian troops on how to use weapons provided by the United States, such as javelin anti-tank missiles.

The Times report does not constitute investigative reporting but rather a controlled release of information designed to condition the American population to accept the unthinkable: A hot war between nuclear-armed powers.

Bit by bit, Bidens lying claim that the United States is not at war with Russia is being replaced with the reality that the United States is, in fact, at war with the worlds second largest nuclear power. The American population is simply to be presented with a fait accompli and accept the facts on the ground that they are at war.

This course of action faces overwhelming popular opposition. In a YouGov poll published this week, 40 percent of respondents said the US should be less militarily engaged in conflicts around the world, compared with 12 percent who said it should be more engaged.

In the poll, 46 percent of respondents said they oppose the United States military becoming directly involved in combat in the Russia-Ukraine war, compared to just 23 percent who support such a move.

Despite a series of military setbacks for Ukraine, the United States has only intensified its involvement in the war.

Congress has officially allocated $54 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine since the start of the war, translating to at least $418 million per day. The US and its allies have sent over 100,000 anti-tank weapons, hundreds of drones, hundreds of armored vehicles, and dozens of helicopters and other aircraft. Since the start of the war, the United States has permanently deployed 20,000 additional troops to Europe.

Last week, at the conclusion of the NATO summit in Madrid, Spain, the members of NATO, including most European states as well as the United States and Canada, adopted a strategy document pledging to deliver the full range of forces needed for high-intensity, multi-domain warfighting against nuclear-armed peer-competitors.

This language has not been published in the New York Times, Washington Post or Wall Street Journal or cited by any of the major broadcast networks. Behind the backs of the American people the United States government is making preparations for world war, of which the conflict in Ukraine is just the opening salvo.
Greek border authorities are enslaving asylum seekers and coercing them to participate in illegal police pushback operations forcing desperate refugees back across the border into Turkey.

Those involved are promised transit through Greece into Europe.

Six asylum seekers who participated in pushback operations along the Evros river, running across the land border with Turkey in north-eastern Greece, gave testimony to a joint investigation by the Guardian, Lighthouse Reports, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and ARD Report Munchen. The journalists also interviewed Greek police sources, and residents in surrounding towns and villages.

The media outlets published their month-long investigation simultaneously on June 28, and in the Greek language Reporters United. The revelations confirm numerous accounts of proxies being used in pushback operations, most recently in a report published in April by NGO Human Rights Watch.

Pushbacks have increased since 2020, with the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR recording almost 540 incidents since then across Greeces land and sea borders. This represents a fraction of the pushbacks that have taken place. The NGO Aegean Boat Report, which monitors the Greek governments pushback operations across the Greek-Turkish sea border, recorded 81 such incidents in the last month alone.

Greek police and army guard as migrants gather at a border fence on the Turkish side, during clashes at the Greek-Turkish border in Kastanies, Evros region, on Saturday, March 7, 2020. [AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos]

Bassel, a man in his late 20s, was arrested in late 2020, according to Reporters United, as part of a group of Syrians after they crossed the river in an inflatable dinghy. They were beaten and stripped to their underwear before being taken to the police station [in the border town of Tychero] in a vehicle without number plates. There they took their belongings and locked them in a cell with 150 other detainees.

At the police station, Bassel was confronted with an appalling choice according to Lighthouse Reports. Threatened with smuggling charges because he spoke English: His only way out, they told him, was to do the Greeks dirty work for them. He would be kept locked up during the day and released at night to push back his own compatriots and other desperate asylum seekers. In return he would be given a travel permit that would enable him to escape Greece for Western Europe.

Bassel was told the work would be unpaid but that he could take his pick of the migrants belongings according to the Guardian. Similar accounts were given by other asylum seekers interviewed, who stated they were beaten by police if anything went wrong.

Based on the testimonies received, Reporters United described in chilling detail what goes on during a pushback operation:

At night police transported the slaves and the migrants to be pushed back separately. The slaves prepared the boats under the supervision of the policemen who were armed. During the pushbacks the border guards collaborators would often force migrants to take off all their clothes and if they found that they still had money hidden on them they would take it and beat them. This practice was corroborated by a police source. After that was the difficult part of getting across the river. Bassel recounted how he had to tie the rope onto a tree on the Turkish side of the river in order to pull the boat. The slaves would then lead the migrants onto the boats. Usually 20 per trip (18 asylum seekers and two slaves one at the front and one at the back of the boat) until all the migrants had been pushed back across. Bassel has said that he saw people drowning in the river.

Some of the asylum seekers captured and forced to participate in pushbacks had been lured for this purpose by people smugglers, who handed them over to Greek border guards. This was the fate of three of the asylum seekers interviewed, who were held at the Neo Cheimonio police station. According to Reporters United, they each paid 5,000 to a middleman in Istanbul who brought them into contact with a people smuggler who took them across the border from the Turkish side into the Greek side. There another Syrian known as Mike was waiting to pick them up accompanied by police. Their collaboration with Greek police had just begun. Two of the three said that they werent aware before they came to Greece of what would be required of them. The third one said he knew.

Mike reportedly works directly for the Greek police as recruiter and co-ordinator of migrants used in pushbacks. He lives in a container on the grounds of the police station in the border village of Neo Cheimonio. According to Reporters United, Mike and his brother, who is also involved in trafficking, face multiple charges in Syria for fuel and people smuggling.

The extent of the operation is such that it is widely known in the surrounding towns and villages. According to Reporters United, locals who were interviewed openly talked of migrants who are collaborating with the police, saying they could be found working near the river or in the local area where they are often seen masked and accompanied by police officers as they buy supplies such as cigarettes, potato chips and croissants before going for the pushback operations at night-time so that they are not detected by the Turks.

The policy of coercing migrants to participate in pushbacks was approved by the government. According to Reporters United one of the investigations police sources revealed the idea was proposed to politicians as a means of protecting officers from direct involvement in pushbacks, given that they are afraid of being exposed to danger from skirmishes with Turkish forces or with smugglers.

Europes response to the revelations that a European Union member is engaged in state sponsored criminality on a massive scale was a perfunctory statement by European Commissioner spokeswoman on migration affairs Anitta Hipper asking Greece to investigate. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock responded with a tweet stating that events in Evros and Melilla are unacceptable.

In practice, the pushback operations are conducted not against the EUs wishes but with its direct approval and participation. A recent investigation by Lighthouse Reports found that European Border Agency Frontex was involved in at least 22 confirmed pushback operations in the Aegean between March 2020 and September 2021 while the real number could be ten times higher than that.

The Greek government has avoided commenting on the revelations, assisted by Greeces mainstream media which has barely reported the story. Its silence has been enabled by the pseudo-left Syriza, the countrys biggest opposition party, whose mention of the investigation was confined to comments by Kostas Arvanitis, a Syriza European Parliament member. He said, these chilling revelations demand here and now concrete, responsible and convincing answers, while claiming that the EU has repeatedly expressed concern.

In power between 2015 and 2019, Syriza set up camps to intern refugees fleeing hardship and persecution, at the behest of the EU. The most notorious was on Moria, on the island of Lesbos, dubbed by the BBC as the worst refugee camp on Earth before it burned down in September 2020.
Health workers in Sri Lanka walked out on strike on June 29 and 30 in protest against the lack of fuel and their inability to get to work. It followed the Rajapakse-Wickremesinghe governments announcement on June 20 of a virtual national two-week shutdown.

Health workers at Cancer Hospital Maharagama protest against the Rajapaksa government, Sri Lanka, May 6, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

The lockdown is another desperate measure to deal with extreme shortages of fuel and other basic needs produced by the worsening collapse of the economy. The countrys heavily-indebted economy was seriously hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and then catastrophically impacted by the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

Last weeks strike involved public health inspectors (PHIs), family health service employees, ECG and EEG recordists, laboratory technicians, health entomology science officers, dental doctors and nurses.

The walkouts disrupted work at several hospitals across the island, including the National Hospital in Colombo and provincial hospitals in Polonnaruwa, Wathupitiwala, and Balapitiya. Health workers also took action on July 2 at provincial hospitals in the Puttalam district.

In a separate campaign over the same issue, doctors, nurses and junior health staff members joined a march on June 29, organised by the Alliance of Health Services, from the National Hospital in Colombo to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghes residence. Police forcibly blocked the march before it reached the residence.

Health workers from the Lady Ridgeway Hospital in Colombo, the countrys main childrens hospital, protested outside the facility on the same day. They carried handwritten placards saying, End to patience, Stop the collapse of the health service, and Provide transport facilities, and demanded the government resign.

Nurses protest outside Lady Ridgeway Hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka, April, 2022 [Photo by image supplied to WSWS courtesy of nursing staff]

Interviewed by the media, protesters denounced the government, accusing it of allowing the health service to collapse by not providing health workers with transport or fuel. The government claimed workers could get fuel from specified filling stations. This was rejected by protestors, who told the media that some had been forced to wait in queues for over a week to get small amounts of fuel.

The official monthly fuel allowance for PHIs, moreover, is just 1,200 rupees ($US3.35), which is not enough for three litres of petrol at current prices. Health workers said their entire monthly wage would be spent on the fuel they needed to travel to work.

Last weeks strikes and protests by health workers are a part of a rising wave of industrial action by the working class over fuel shortages and the collapse of transport. On June 28, postal workers began strike action over their inability to report for work, forcing them to do a weeks work in a three-day period. On July 1, railway workers walked out for several hours in protest over the same issue.

These struggles are part of the working-class uprisings that erupted in April and May over worsening scarcities and skyrocketing cost of essentials, such as food, fuel and cooking gas, and hours-long daily power outages.

On April 28 and May 6, millions of workers participated in general strikes demanding President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his government resign. On May 9, health workers and other key sections of the working class played a leading role in the walkouts over the violent attacks in Colombo on anti-government protesters by ruling-party goons.

These struggles are part of rising class struggles internationally, not just in South Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, but also the imperialist centres, including in the US, UK, Europe and Australia.

The recent action by Sri Lankan health workers was organised by eight health sector trade unions: the Public Health Inspectors Union, the State Midwives Service Association, the Family Health Services Officers Unions, ECG and EEG Recordists Unions, Associations of Technicians of Medical Laboratories and Public Health Laboratories, Health Entomology Science Officers Associations and the Dental Association.

These unions claim that putting pressure on the government through protests and limited strikes will force the government to grant workers demands, but these organisations, along with the other health unions, have betrayed health workers struggles over the past two years.

By contrast, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) has insisted that the working class can only secure decent wages, secure jobs, better social conditions and, above all, the supply of essentials like fuel, food and cooking gas at affordable prices, in a political struggle against the government and the profit system.

The SEP insists that workers need to form independent, democratically-functioning networks of action committees in all factories, plantations, workplaces and working-class neighborhoods to unleash their social power and defeat the capitalist onslaught.

These action committees need to link up with the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, initiated by the International Committee of the Fourth International, to establish the unity with their class brothers and sisters internationally in a common struggle against ruling class onslaught on their basic social and democratic rights.

Notably, the Federation of Health Professionals (FHP), the main health union alliance, did not participate in the June 2930 industrial action and protests, and maintained a stony silence over the desperate situation facing their members.

FHP leaders previously declared they were managing the anger of their members in order to block ongoing strikes. This, however, was becoming increasingly difficult, they said, and called on the government to be wise, and to assist them in this endeavour.

FHP president Ravi Kumudesh recently promoted Prime Minister Wickremesinghea pro-US, right-wing figuredeclaring that he could be pressured into granting concessions for working people. Kumudesh advised Wickremesinghe not to turn his back on the people, saying he had become prime minister because of the peoples struggle.

Government Nursing Officers Association (GNOA) chief Saman Ratnapriya, who is another FHP leader, has been promoting government attempts to get health workers, including nurses, to look for foreign employment. This perspective, which is in line with International Monetary Fund demands for major cuts in public sector jobs, will worsen the dilapidated state of the health sector, already in deep crisis over the lack of drugs, equipment, staff and essential facilities.

Kumudesh, Ratnapriya and the FHP leadership played a key role in winding down the anti-government uprising in April and May, replacing the general strikes and other industrial action with limited protests.

The lack of fuel and the governments declared shutdown has brought the country to a grinding halt. Major cities, including the capital Colombo, increasingly resemble ghost towns. Public sector offices are limited to skeleton essential staff, schools are closed and replaced with online education, and the private sector has been asked to implement work from home practices.

Workers are being forced to use scarce filled-to-capacity trains or buses. Rising numbers of deaths and serious injuries are being reported, caused by dangerous riding on the footboards and roofs of buses and trains.

The ruling establishment, including the corporate media, is becoming increasingly nervous about a revival of mass working-class struggles. A July 2 editorial in the Island nervously warned: Industrial action tends to snowball, and the unions that down tools at this juncture are likely to trigger a wave of strikes, which will deliver the coup de grace to the economy on oxygen support.

WSWS reporters spoke with health workers from several areas about the harsh conditions they confront.

A nurse from Marawila Base Hospital in the Northwestern province explained that she had been queuing for fuel late into the night on July 1, even though the government had claimed that day that fuel was supplied for all health workers.

Our salaries are actually being cut by the government through the exorbitant prices of essentials. The trade unions are maintaining a stony silence about these issues and dont even call a meeting to discuss the situation, she said.

She denounced the governments calls for nurses to get foreign jobs in order to reduce state sector jobs and agreed that the implementation of socialist measures through an international working-class movement was an important strategy for their struggle.

A striking public health inspector from Payagala in the Western province, said: We are prohibited from talking to the media but what we have to highlight is that we cannot cope with these exorbitant fuel prices in order to perform our specified duties. If we spend our meagre salary on fuel then our families will have to starve and die.

A junior staff health worker from the Kandy National Hospital said a 20,000-rupee salary increase would not be enough to deal with the current situation and overtime payments had been curtailed.

We are disgusted about the trade unions, he said. The workers are aware that the parliament will not solve these problems of the working class. Expropriating the profits of big business seems to be a more viable solution, he said, adding that he supported the Health Workers Action Committee at the Kandy National Hospital.
Are you a nurse? Contact us to speak out about working conditions by filling out the form at the end of this article.

Registered nurse Morgan Flynn prepares to enter a patients room in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, N.H., Monday, Jan. 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

An anonymous nurse at Childrens Hospital in New Orleans posted an exposure of the hospitals unsafe working conditions on social media last month. Barely 24 hours after making the original post, which received over 100 comments, the nurse made a second post reporting that they had been terminated effective immediately.

The original post said that workers have tried for months to address the issue of patient surgical safety with upper management, and today they made it clear its their way or the highway. Before going into the details of the meeting with management, the nurse outlined 10 of the current issues at hand.

They include:

The surgery department currently has 60% open FULL TIME RN POSITIONS.

Nurses work 5 scheduled days, and guaranteed to be brought in for Saturday call add-on cases for minimum 4 hours.

Between Jan 2022 and Sept 2022, were looking at 8 experienced nurses either leaving permanently or going on leave, and there are only 3 new grads starting end of the summer.

Experienced nurses with 2+ years experience are getting ready to leave or travel, there are some instances where nurses in orientation were placed with people who were only 2-3 months out of their 3-month long orientation.

The nurse added, To give you an idea of how bad staffing is, we had a day where we were scrambling to find staffing because we only had 8 available nurses to start 11 scheduled rooms [and] 1 trauma coverage.

Topping the list of Childrens safety concerns published in the nurses second post is Improper Staffing. Other concerns included in that post include:

20 (21-1 board runner) current staff to run up to 12 operating rooms during the day, possibly up to 4 at night when calling in surgical director. In Sept[ember], it will be approximately 13 nurses to cover 12 rooms.

Members assigned to call are being overworked. 40+ [hour] work week during the week due to staying for surgeries that run past 7pm. Callbacks for emergent cases. If its your assigned weekend, guaranteed minimum 4 hour stay due to scheduled add ons. Some members on call are running 17-18 hour days.

Even 6/8 [June 8], a transplant coordinator, former pacu [postanesthesia care unit] nurse, was pulled to circulate a OMFS [oral and maxillofacial surgery] case when she had no current, recent, formal training to do so.

Multiple issues with Improper training, such as Trainee nurses were tasked to circulate their own rooms as early as 2 months into orientation.

The nurse states that during a meeting with management on the morning of the original post, we were berated for wanting more staff  for patient safety even though we already received  a 15k retention compensation over 3 payments. The administrator kept mentioning how were receiving this 15k retention bonus and how we should be grateful when really we were meeting to see what we can do to get a plan for safe staffing.

In response to this economic coercion to keep workers silent, the nurse defiantly wrote, while it is appreciated, it is not enough to pull the wool over our eyes regarding the current severity of staffing in surgery and how it affects patient safety.

Several health care workers familiar with the situation at Childrens corroborated the nurses revelations.

Another nurse told the World Socialist Web Site that they agree completely with everything stated. When I started [at Childrens], I noticed issues right away. The OR [operating room] nurses were being asked to recover patients in PACU upon transferring them from the OR because PACU was short-staffed.

One of our senior leaders came to a morning meeting and explained to us that the hospital was short-staffed, and that we needed to do our part. The leader stated that if we felt it was unsafe then we could go to Ochsner (our competing hospital). The leader told us that if someone had anything to say to say something, say something in a very unprofessional and bullying manner.

Among other problems they encountered at Childrens, the nurse said, included leaving a business professional with no clinical background in the charge nurse position, with many rooms running instead of holding a case to do the right and safe thing and having a nurse charge (God forbid they lose a dime), lack of transparency with staff and other departments (surgeons, anesthesia).

Another worker at the hospital told the WSWS that staffing has impacted all units of the hospital, as it has impacted seemingly every unit in every hospital across the globe. One of the ways this has found expression at Childrens is that it has become common for patients to be boarded in the ED [emergency department] due to lack of staffing on the appropriate floors. Patients who come in to the ED and need to be admitted to the hospital cannot be admitted to the appropriate unit because there are not enough nurses to manage more admits.

Many ED nurses have now taken on roles similar to that of med-surge nurses, which is not their discipline or specialty.

The worker said that pulling nurses from one unit of the hospital to another is common practice. A nurse who is floated to a different unit often has difficulty with their patient assignments because they are not accustomed to caring for that patient population. The nurses I have worked beside who are floating on an ICU unit that they are not accustomed to have always been highly stressed throughout the shift. This stress is shared among other nurses on the floor who have to help the floated nurse care for the patient.

Nurses are taken advantage of every time they show up to work because management will not find a suitable solution to staffing issues, the worker continued. At the end of the week, it doesnt matter that the nurse may have accrued X amount of hours in overtime. Nurses need time away from the hospital. They are people and they are exhausted. The responsibility of patients well-being does not fall solely on the nurse. It falls on everyone from administration to tech.

In her second post, the terminated nurse said, Nurses are burned out from working 6 days a week due to call and seeing short staffing every day. Nurses with burnout are twice as likely to have thoughts of suicide, and excess workload and burnout can compromise patient safety care and lead to adverse events (Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality 2021).

Health care workers have described similar conditions of understaffing and overwork all over the country. One nurse recently sent a letter to the WSWS illustrating abysmal registered nursing-to-patient ratios at a HCA Healthcare-run facility in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Childrens Hospital is one of six hospital systems within the New Orleans-based Louisiana Childrens Medical Center (LCMC), a non-profit health care network that extends across Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region. According to tax documents filed with the IRS in 2019, LCMC CEO Gregory Feirns compensation totaled more than $1.5 million. Other board trustees for Childrens along with top management took home between $290,000 and $900,000, figures which have certainly increased since that year.

In stark contrast to these astronomical payouts, one worker at Childrens told the WSWS that the starting pay rate for nurses at LCMC facilities (Childrens) is $28 per hour with benefits. Without benefits, the hourly pay rate is somewhere in the $30s. For the amount of work that nurses do and the caliber of work that a nurses job entails, whether they are new nurses or not, $28 an hour in a state where gas in $5 per gallon and a loaf of bread is $5 is shameful.

The impact of the ongoing pandemic on supply chains, due to the refusal by the worlds governments to carry out basic public health measures to eliminate the virus, is the basic cause of the spiraling cost of living. Even though the corporate press and both parties are treating the pandemic as essentially over, the virus continues to spread rapidly across the country, and a sixth wave is underway in Louisiana. So far, official estimates place child infections and deaths in the US at over 13.6 million and over 1,600, respectively. More than 200,000 children in the US alone have lost a parent or caregiver.

There are so many problems with our health care system that are beyond anyones control. One is that we treat it too much like a business (of course it is, but patient care should ALWAYS be first), one hospital worker told the WSWS. We pay people the minimum amount feasible and expect them to wear 100 hats. We say we want staff to have work-life balance, but then we dont relieve them at the end of their shifts and ask them to pick up overtime left and right. I think what the pandemic did was highlight these issues and bring nurses and other providers to say, we have had enough.
Comments on the weekend from members of the House Select Committee into the attack on the U.S. Capitol suggest that the committee is moving towards recommending a criminal referral against ex-President Donald Trump, urging the Justice Department to prosecute Trump for his role in the attempted coup of January 6, 2021.

These remarks must be viewed in the light of the devastating testimony June 28 by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson about Trumps plans to go with the mob of his supporters to the Capitol building and join them in the attack, which was aimed at halting the congressional certification of Trumps defeat in the Electoral College. Her account has been confirmed and supplemented in several press reports that followed.

Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (Republican-Wyoming) gave her first interview since the hearings began, sitting down with Jonathan Karl of ABC News, with portions broadcast on Sunday mornings This Week program. Karl asked Cheney whether the hearings demonstrated that Trump should be prosecuted.

Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021. (Image credit: Flickr?blinkofanaye)

While Cheney noted that the decision would be made by the Justice Department, she left no doubt about the direction the committee was taking: I think we may well as a committee have a view on that and if you just think about it from the perspective of what kind of man knows that a mob is armed and sends the mob to attack the Capitol and further incites that mob when his own vice president is under threat, when the Congress is under threat. Its justits very chilling

She added, There could be more than one criminal referral, although it was not clear whether she meant multiple charges against Trump or multiple individuals charged with crimes, or both.

Asked what it would mean to see a former president prosecuted, one who was likely running for president again, Cheney said the greater threat was not to prosecute. She went on to say that the Republican Party cant survive if hes our nominee.

Democratic committee member Adam Schiff of California, appearing on Face the Nation on CBS, agreed with Cheney that there could be multiple criminal referrals to the Justice Department. He said, You know for four years, the Justice Department took the position that you cant indict a sitting president. If the Department were now to take the position that you cant investigate or indict a former president, then a president becomes above the law. Thats a very dangerous idea that the Founders would have never subscribed to. Even more dangerous, I think in the case of Donald Trump.

Two other committee members discussed the further course of the investigation. Adam Kinzinger (Republican-Illinois), appearing on CNNs State of the Union, said more witnesses have come forward in response to Hutchinsons televised testimony to offer their accounts.

Zoe Lofgren (Democrat-California) said the committee was in discussion with Trumps last White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, whose role was referenced in Hutchinsons testimony, as someone who repeatedly warned that Trumps plans to go to the Capitol on January 6 would subject him to criminal prosecution. Cipollone has declined to testify under oath, citing executive privilege, but the committee has now issued a subpoena requiring him to give a deposition on Wednesday, July 6.

Lofgren pointed out that the current president, Joe Biden, has waived executive privilege for all White House conversations relating to the events of January 6. Referring to Cipollone, she said, You know, our intention is to hear from him, and I think given the testimony of Ms. Hutchinson that he was trying to prevent crimes from being committed on that day, I would assume that he would want to come in.

As they have throughout the hearings, however, all the committee members, Democrat and Republican, sought to focus entirely on Trump the individual, on his criminal conduct and personal unwillingness to admit that he lost the presidential election by more than seven million votes, and avoided any discussion of the institutional backing which he had from sections of the military-intelligence apparatus and from within the Congress itself.

But new reports in the corporate press suggest conflicts within the capitalist state over whether to back Trumps power play and how far to go in doing so.

A report by Lucien Bruggeman and Josh Margolin of ABC News on June 30 declared that Hutchinsons testimony raises fresh questions about Secret Services handling of Jan. 6. It noted that the Secret Service may have had advanced warning of the potential for violence at the Capitol but apparently did nothing to prepare for it, even transporting Vice President Mike Pence, his wife Karen, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, then a US senator, to the Capitol without any increased security.

These security lapses may not have been a result of incompetence, but instead due to deliberate actions taken by senior White House officials, former Department of Homeland Security official John Cohen said on ABC, where he is now a paid commentator. If this information was not provided to the Secret Service, or if it was and the Secret Service failed to expand security operations, that would be highly disconcerting.

There were several clashes between top officials and the Secret Service on January 6, with Trump demanding to accompany the mob to the Capitol, only to be blocked by his guards, while Vice President Pence refused to get into his armored car in the Capitol garage because he did not want to leave the building, but rather wanted to be available for a resumption of the certification of electoral votes.

An article in the Washington Post, published July 2, reports that Trump began voicing his desire to personally lead a march to the Capitol toward the end of 2020, several days before his chief of staff Mark Meadows informed Cassidy Hutchinson that this was being considered.

Trump brought it up repeatedly with key advisers in the Oval Office, according to a person who talked with him about it, the report continues. There is no indication that these key advisers have yet testified about these discussions or about subsequent contacts they made with the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security (which includes the Secret Service) or the FBI.

The Post report continued: The president told others he wanted a dramatic, made-for-TV moment that could pressure Republican lawmakers to support his demand to throw out the electoral college results showing that Joe Biden had defeated him, the person said.

The events of the day suggest, however, that the plan to go to the Capitol was not driven by concern for television theatrics but had a far more sinister motivation. The press was not informed of the planned movement, the Post reported, as is invariably the case for an official presidential action.

Trump was planning his entry into the Capitol, not as a media gesture, but as the first open step in a violent coup, in which the mob would either forcibly disperse Congress or compel the assembled legislators, under threat to their lives, to overturn the results of the 2020 election and give the defeated president a continued lease on the White House.
On July 2, an advertisement appeared in the Weekend Herald offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the identity of the original source of the $3.41 million payment distributed among the families of the 29 workers who died in the Pike River coal mine disaster in New Zealand.

The payment was made in December 2013, without the agreement of the families, as part of a backroom deal between the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and lawyers for Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall. In exchange, MBIE dropped 12 charges that had been laid against Whittall for breaches of health and safety regulations. In 2017, the countrys Supreme Court ruled that the agreement was unlawful, but the charges against Whittall were not reinstated.

Families of the Pike River 29 and supporters picket on the road to the mine on July 9, 2021 [Credit: Kath Monk]

The series of underground explosions at Pike River in November 2010 were the result of extremely unsafe conditions in the mine, including grossly inadequate methane gas monitoring and ventilation, and no proper emergency exit. The main ventilation unit was installed underground, which is hardly ever done, partly because of the risk that it will spark an explosion. A 2012 royal commission of inquiry found that the company had prioritised production ahead of the workers safety and, ultimately, their lives.

Nearly 12 years later, however, no one has been held accountable. In April 2013, Pike River Coal was found guilty on nine counts of breaching health and safety rules, and ordered to pay a fine of $760,000 plus $3.4 million in reparations to the families. But the company had declared bankruptcy, so it did not pay anything, nor were any other managers or directors charged. Pike River Coal had received more than $90 million in insurance payouts following the disaster, most of which went to its two biggest creditors: the mines major shareholder New Zealand Oil and Gas, and the Bank of New Zealand.

It has never been explained how, just a few months later, Whittall was able to come up with $3.41 million to buy his way out of being prosecuted. On December 12, 2013, the National Business Review reported that the payment came from an unnamed insurance company. Media reports did not make clear the basis on which the insurance payout was made, and why the money was not used earlier to pay the companys court-ordered fines and reparations. Pike River directors John Dow, Ray Meyer and Stuart Nattrass stated that the funds would have been used to defend Whittalls case, had it gone to trial.

The notice offering a $5,000 reward for the source of the payment was published by former criminal barrister Christopher Harder, who has been working with Bernie Monk and Dean Dunbar, whose sons Michael and Joseph died in Pike River.

In a press statement, Harder said he had received anonymous information last week that [the money] did not come from Whittalls insurer, as was claimed at the time. He also said he had seen an email sent by Stuart Grieve, Whittalls lawyer at the time, to crown solicitor Brent Stanaway on December 7, 2013, discussing the statement in which they would announce the payment and the dropping of charges. In the email, Grieve allegedly told Stanaway to delete reference to the insurer which we consider neither necessary or appropriate.

In 2020, Harder complained to the New Zealand Law Society about the conduct of Grieve and Stanaway in arranging the unlawful deal. The society said it investigated the complaint, but decided that there was nothing wrong with the lawyers actions.

Undoubtedly, a key reason for not putting Whittall on trial was to shield the many other corporate figures, government regulators and union bureaucrats implicated in the disaster.

The royal commission found that the Department of Labourwhich was later rebranded WorkSafe and became part of MBIEwas aware of Pike River Coals dangerous and illegal practices, and should have taken action to shut down the mine, but did nothing. Whittalls defence team would certainly have drawn attention to this fact. The pro-business deregulation of safety standards in the mining industry, by successive Labour and National Party governments, would also have been exposed.

Other companies involved with Pike River might also have come under scrutiny. The royal commission identified the underground fans variable speed drive, made by Rockwell Automationa major US-based multinational corporationas a possible source of ignition, which could not be confirmed or ruled out without a forensic examination. Rockwell denied that there were any problems with its equipment.

A trial could also have lifted the lid on the role of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU, now called E tu), which had dozens of members at Pike River. The union functioned as an arm of management: it took no action to protect the workers, and made no public statement about the dangerous conditions in the mine, of which it was fully aware. In the days following the first explosion, EPMU leader Andrew Little falsely claimed that there was nothing unusual about the mine, and defended the companys safety record.

When the Labour Party-led government was elected in 2017, it promised to re-enter the mine and gather physical evidence in order to pursue a criminal prosecution for the disaster. However, the appointment of Little as minister for Pike River re-entry was a clear indication that the government would continue the years-long cover-up on behalf of the company.

Last year, the government permanently sealed the mine without conducting a manned exploration of the mine workings, where the fan and the human remains are located. Only the drift, or entry tunnel, was explored. Minister Little dismissed the protests of family members and their supporters, who demanded a thorough investigation, and rejected expert advice that the mine workings could be safely re-entered.

Police claim that their investigation of the disaster is ongoing, but it is far from clear whether a case can be built given the decision not to examine vital evidence. The police abandoned their initial investigation in 2013, saying that it could not be concluded without a re-entry of the mine to determine precisely what sparked the first explosion.

Pike River: The Crime and Cover-up by Tom Peters, Mehring Books

Bernie Monk told the WSWS that he and other family members are being kept in the dark. On May 25, he submitted a list of questions for police, under the Official Information Act, regarding the conduct of the investigation. He demanded to know which experts were advising the police, and to what extent they had engaged with the independent mining experts who submitted a plan for the recovery of the mine workings.

Monk asked police to confirm reports that images recorded in the mine workings, by cameras lowered down boreholes, showed deployed self-rescue devices. This would indicate that at least some of the 29 men survived the initial blast and were trapped inside the minecontrary to the royal commissions finding that they all died immediately or very soon after the first explosion.

Five days passed and then there was a second explosion, after which the government agencies said there was no chance of mounting any rescue attempt. Monk and other family members have called for an investigation into what caused the second explosion. Electrical engineer Richard Healey has suggested, based on his analysis of electronic data from the mine, that it was sparked by a conveyor belt being started up, something that police have denied.

Monk called for the release of documents to show who had authorised a decision, several months after the disaster, to pour concrete down a ventilation shaft into the mine workings. This would have flooded an area known as the fresh air base, where survivors of the first explosion might have congregated, destroying any evidence there. At the time, members of Pike River management were still allowed to come and go from the mine, which should have been treated as a crime scene.

Monk also asked police to release information relating to evidence that has gone missing from the mine site, especially a door to a control panel connected with the underground fan that was blown out of the mine. If tested, the door could have given vital information about the cause of the first explosion.

On June 17, Monk was informed by police that they required until July 21 to provide a substantive response to his questions.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong last week visited Vietnam and Malaysia. The trip was the latest in a whirlwind series of foreign engagements since the Labor government barely scraped into office in the May 21 federal election.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong with Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah [Source: Penny Wong Twitter]

As with previous repeated trips by Wong to the Pacific Islands and Indonesia, her visit to Southeast Asia was couched in terms of regional engagement and friendship. Much was made in the media of Wongs return to Sabah in Malaysia, where she was born.

All of this was a diversion. In reality, Wong is continuing on a mission laid out by US President Joseph Biden at a meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) in May. Held just days after the Australian election, Wong and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attended it as their first act in office.

Biden reaffirmed the centrality of the confrontation with China to American imperialisms strategy for securing global hegemony. Australias Labor government has been delegated the task of aggressively countering Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific, and lining up states throughout the region behind the US campaign against Beijing.

Notably, Wongs tour coincided with Albaneses presence at last weeks NATO summit in Madrid. There Albanese expressed his iron-clad support for a new NATO doctrine, which explicitly labels Russia and China as threats, extends NATOs focus to the Indo-Pacific and calls on member states to prepare for war against nuclear-armed powers. Albanese then visited Ukraine on Sunday, in a display of complete commitment for the US-NATO proxy war against Russia.

Wongs trip centred on the second prong of the war strategy of the Biden administration, its provocations and threats against China.

Whether coincidence or not, Wong arrived in Hanoi just days after a flare-up of tensions between Vietnam and China. Four days before her tour began, Vietnam issued a statement condemning China for conducting limited military drills in the Paracel Islands. The rocky outcrop in the South China Sea is claimed by China, Vietnam and Taiwan.

The Vietnamese statement had branded the Chinese military actions as a violation of its sovereignty, despite the fact that the dispute over the islands has never been resolved. Over recent months, there have also been diplomatic clashes over fishing rights in the vicinity of the Paracels.

In her main address, delivered at the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics, Wong essentially echoed the Vietnamese statement, though without explicitly mentioning China. Our two countries share an interest in a region that is peaceful, prosperous, that is stable, in which sovereignty is respected, she declared. A region where disputes are settled peacefully in accordance with international law and norms, not by size and power.

The remarks turn reality on their head. Beginning with the Obama administration, the US has deliberately inflamed regional disputes in the South China Sea that had simmered at low levels for decades.

The US elevated the sea to centre stage in order to instigate conflict between China and neighbouring countries and create flashpoints for military provocations that threaten outright conflict. This has included repeated US freedom of navigation operations, in or near waters claimed by China.

Last month, Beijing revealed that Australian, Canadian and US military planes had been conducting dangerous flights near Chinese military forces in both the South and East China Seas. These had resulted in several near misses, which were falsely represented by Canada and Australia as instances of Chinese aggression.

Wongs remarks underscore the hypocrisy at the centre of the US-led invocations of sovereignty and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. While frequently accusing China of violating the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the US has refused to sign the convention. Wongs comments about norms and laws were essentially a reference to the dictates of Washington.

While in Hanoi, Wong foreshadowed expanded military and security cooperation between Australia and Vietnam. She opened the Vietnam Australia Centre, which will train young political leaders in the country. In addition to the geo-strategic calculations, Vietnam is viewed by Australian imperialism as a major commercial opportunity. Trade between the two nations reached $9 billion over the first five months of the year, a more than 50 percent rise from the corresponding period in 2021. The country is a key provider of super-exploited, sweatshop labour.

The real issues underlying the Labor governments intensive focus on Indo-Pacific states came to the fore during Wongs trip to Malaysia. That countrys Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah told the media he had a very candid discussion with Wong. Asked whether his government had changed its views on the AUKUS military alliance, Abdullah said Malaysias previous position remained.

Together with Indonesia, Malaysia voiced concerns last September, when Australia, Britain and the US announced the new pact, which is explicitly aimed at preparing for military conflict in the region. Both Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta warned that the AUKUS partnership risked a major militarisation of the region and an end to its nominal status as a nuclear-free zone.

Under AUKUS, Australia is acquiring a fleet of nuclear-armed submarines, along with hypersonic missiles and other offensive capabilities. In the corporate press, it is openly discussed that these are to be directed against China.

Asked about the Malaysian objection, Wong said she had welcomed the opportunity to explain how we see AUKUS to [Malaysia] and to other counterparts in the visits I have made prior to this visit, which are obviously to Vietnam and to Jakarta.

In other words, the issue has been raised by each of the Southeast Asian nations Wong has visited. All of them fear being embroiled in a major military build-up that risks catastrophe. Wong, functioning as an emissary of the Biden administration, is seeking to quell the concerns and bring the regional states into line with the confrontation against China.

Her answers to the press on AUKUS were incredibly thin. The Labor government would engage respectfully and listen to the concerns of countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, while it pressed ahead with AUKUS.

Wong claimed that Australia remained committed to being a non-nuclear power. Senior political figures, however, including former Prime Minister John Howard, have openly admitted that the acquisition and maintenance of nuclear-powered submarines will require the development of a domestic nuclear industry.

Also notable during Wongs trip was a silence on the Ukraine conflict, despite the Labor governments commitment to the US-NATO proxy war with Russia.

Malaysia and Indonesia have both rejected calls to impose sanctions on Russia, with which they maintain important trade ties. While Wong was in Southeast Asia, Indonesian President Joko Widodo visited Ukraine and Russia, where he held a meeting with President Vladimir Putin and stood alongside him for a joint press conference.

Wong undoubtedly raised the need for Asian states to line up behind the conflict with Russia during her visits to Vietnam and Malaysia. That the issue was not mentioned publicly indicates that this call was declined.
On Monday morning, a gunman opened fire on the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago. Six people have died so far, and dozens are injured. It is the latest in a string of horrific mass shootings that continue to rip through American society.

A stretcher is seen after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade in downtown Highland Park, Ill., a Chicago suburb, Monday, July 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

More than two dozen have been hospitalized, including one child in critical condition. The age of those shot spanned between eight and 85 years old, including at least five children, with minor to severe injuries.

According to reports that have emerged, the gunman opened fire from a rooftop of a business along the route of the parade. Heavy gunfire can be heard on videos captured on social media as a marching band was performing. Hundreds of parade-goers fled in a mass stampede. Others who remained helped paramedics tie tourniquets on the victims. A number of bystanders described the scene as a war zone.

In an emotional statement to ABC 7 Chicago, local physician Dr. David Baum described the deadly scene he witnessed a couple hundred feet away. You saw massive amounts of bodies on the corners where the gunman just picked people off, he said. These bodies were decimated, these were eviscerations of body parts. The people who were gone, they had horrific injuries. The kind of injuries you only see in wartime

Police reported that the alleged shooter was 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III, who fled the scene. A massive manhunt by the police and federal law enforcement agencies began in the Chicago suburbs, and the suspect was caught and taken into police custody by the early evening.

More information will come to light in the coming days about the specific motivations for this latest act of homicidal violence, though there are initial indications that Crimo holds far-right political views. Ten months ago, he posted disturbing music videos, including one that showed imagery of a man with a rifle in a video called Toy Soldier. Several reports have now emerged of Crimo attending a Trump rally in 2020 and appearing to cheer on a Trump motorcade in 2021.

Highland Park also has a large Jewish population. While it is not clear at present if Crimos motives were anti-Semitic, in April a number of anti-Semitic flyers were littered around the city and other northern suburbs.

This event must be placed and analyzed within its broader social and political context. The United States is a society plagued by unprecedented levels of social inequality, police violence, massive levels of exploitation of the working class, endless wars, the worship of the stock market and the indifference of the ruling class to the needs of the population.

Mass violence has become part of American life. When Charles Whitman, known as the Texas Tower sniper, shot indiscriminately at a gathering of people in 1966, it was a truly shocking event in American society. Such mass shootings are a near daily occurrence now.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been over 307 mass shootings in 2022 to date in the United States, on track to exceed the 611 mass shootings in 2020, a figure that is approaching two such incidents daily.

Mass shootings have more than doubled since these events began to be tracked. In 2014, there were 269 mass shootings; 335 in 2015; 382 in 2016; 346 in 2017; 336 in 2018 and 417 in 2019, before leaping to 611 in 2020. Most recently, the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, in May, sparked widespread revulsion and anger. Chicago itself is a city plagued by violence.

President Biden barely referred to the horrifying events in Highland Park in his remarks at the White House yesterday, devoting all of 11 words that said nothing (You all heard what happened. You all heard what happened today.) Instead, he gave a number of paeans to the military in a pre-planned speech in which he declared that the United States is a great nation... Ive never been more optimistic about America than I am today. An optimism that digs deep, never gives up. Thats America.

Bidens delusional remarks about the state of American society along with his indifference to yet another mass shooting is in line with the interests of a ruling class that is wholly consumed with preparations for endless war and the maintenance of a policy of mass infection that has led to over a million dead in the United States in the COVID-19 pandemic. To the ruling class, life for the masses has become expendable and cheap one year after Biden declared independence from the virus.

To discuss the horrific mass shooting that had taken place just hours before would have struck a discordant note in Bidens declaration that We are a great nation... I have never been more optimistic about America than I am today. As with the pandemic, the American ruling classs solution to social problems is to just ignore them.

The police in the United States kill more than a thousand people with impunity every year, such as the latest horrific shootingthe murder of Jayland Walker, hit by over 60 bullets fired by police officers.

The richest 400 people in America control over $3 trillion in wealth, while half of Americans do not even have $400 in savings to cover an emergency. Such levels of inequality, across the country and in the Chicago area, are completely incompatible with democracy, as has been made clear with the shredding of the right to abortion by the Supreme Court, along with a slew of other decisions that pave the way for the eradication of the democratic rights of the population.

Biden and the Democratic Party have nothing to offer except the prospect of war against Russia and China, in large part due to the acute levels of social tensions at home. In response to the persistence of high gas prices that are wrecking working class families, Biden told the media he will fight the US-NATO war in Ukraine against Russia as long as it takes, threatening the danger of nuclear war and planetary suicide.

The promotion of political reaction, spearheaded by every institution of government, has been accompanied by the incitement of right-wing violence. Sections of the ruling class through the Republican Party are preparing for dictatorship by whipping up fascistic groups, right-wing terrorism and racially motivated and anti-Semitic attacks.

For their part, the Democrats have adopted a political strategy of accommodating their fascistic Republican counterparts, calling them colleagues even though Trump and a vast section of the state conspired to carry out a coup on January 6.

The Democrats have also begun to carry out an electoral strategy in which they boost far-right candidates within the Republican Party, part of the playbook used by Hillary Clinton and the media in 2016 that assisted Donald Trump.

The Democratic governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, recently spent millions on ads to boost the fascistic, Trump-backed multimillionaire Darren Bailey, helping him win the Republican primary election for governor. Bailey spoke in the nearby suburb of Skokie, Illinois (the site of a fascist march in the 1970s), where he said in response to the shootings in Highland Park, Lets move on and celebrate the independence of this nation.

The latest horrific mass shooting must be taken as a warning. Fascistic violence is dripping from every pore of capitalist society, and democratic forms of government are crumbling under the weight of Americas massive social inequality. The fight against fascist violence and the defense of basic democratic rights require the building of a socialist movement of the working class.
A Scandinavian Airlines plane. Shutterstock

Scandinavian Airlines pilots have gone on strike after pay negotiations failed.

The walkout will affect about half the airline's flights and 30,000 passengers a day, SAS said.

The decision to strike was labeled "devastating" and "reckless" by the CEO, Anko van der Werff.

Scandinavian Airlines pilots have gone on strike, forcing the European carrier to cancel hundreds of flights and disrupting travel plans of tens of thousands of passengers.

SAS and its pilots had been in talks over pay and working conditions since June 9 and the pilots' union warned of a strike if a deal was not reached.

However, negotiations reached a stalemate and 1,000 pilots in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have walked off the job, forcing the airline to cancel about half its flights, the company said. About 30,000 passengers a day will be affected.

"We deeply regret that our customers are affected by this strike, leading to delays and canceled flights," SAS said.

"We know all our passengers have been longing for this summer holiday and have booked travels for themselves and their loved ones. SAS employees are working hard to help our customers that have been affected by this unfortunate situation."

The airline's chief executive, Anko van der Werff, called the move "reckless behavior" and "devastating for SAS."

"We are ready to resume mediation as soon as possible and we will do our utmost to reach an agreement that is viable to secure the long-term competitiveness and financial sustainability of the company," he said. "We presume that the SAS Scandinavia pilots' unions realize what is at stake and choose to continue the work to find an agreement."

Some 174 SAS flights, or 52% of its schedule, have been canceled, according to FlightAware data.

The airline said any flights operated by SAS Link, SAS Connect, and any "external partners" will not be affected.

For affected customers who cannot be moved to a flight with another airline can request a refund or move their trip to a later date. SAS said rebooking on a different flight was "highly limited" due to limited availability.

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SAS is the first major airline to face strike action since the pandemic as carriers focus on recovering after years of financial struggles, Reuters reported.

Scandinavian has embarked on a $3 billion restructuring plan, according to Bloomberg, and the strike is another setback.

In 2019, SAS pilots walked out over failed pay negotiations, leading to nearly 700 flights being canceled.

SAS' pilot strike comes as the industry continues to battle booming demand and pilot shortages.

In the US, hundreds of Delta Air Lines pilots picketed outside hub airports on Thursday. Meanwhile, European low-cost carrier easyJet saw its chief operating officer resign on Monday over mass flight cancellations and delays this summer.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Ringing in the Fourth of July at the beaches? The fun is hardly over.

While you may have already caught the spectacle of fireworks in Rehoboth Beach and rocked out to the Funsters on Sunday night, plenty of festive activities are in store for this years July Fourth celebration.

And the beach towns are ready to party.

Known as one of the biggest and busiest weekends at the Delaware beaches, this holiday is full of charming small-town traditions  as well as vibrant bar scenes and, of course, patriotic fireworks displays over the ocean and bay.

BUSY BEACHES:From the Biden effect to COVID 'revenge travel,' why Delaware beaches are getting busier

Theres got to be a reason tens of thousands flock to the coast at this time of year, right?

While some may grumble about the spike in traffic and the food flying off grocery store shelves, theres some kind of magic about the beaches in the peak of summer.

A lot of that magic rises to the surface today in the wide grins of children with popsicle-stained teeth or the saucer-shaped eyes of all ages as they take in the bright colors lighting up the sky.

Here are some snapshots of red-white-and-blue bliss along Delaware's beach towns.

Homegrown traditions in Lewes

The day started around 9 a.m. in this historic beach town with the traditional childrens games, ranging from potato relays to three-legged races and hula hoop competitions.

This was the first time the games returned to Second Street in two years after pandemic delays. About 500 children participated, according to volunteer Courtney Harrigan, and even the governor and Lewes mayor got in the spirit with an egg toss.

It was good ole fashioned fun, which I think its all about, Harrigan said.

Children participate in the games on Second Street in Lewes Monday, July 4, 2022.

One of her favorite days of the year, the longtime Lewes resident said theres nothing quite like everybody laughing and cheering on that last kid in the sack race who pulls himself back up after tumbling toward the finish line. Its hometown, homegrown fun.

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Next, people decked out in red-white-and blue gear lined the canal for the boat parade. Eager to get the best shady spots, some people placed picnic blankets as early as 11 a.m. or noon. The boats started making their way down the canal around 1:30 p.m. Some of them took on creative themes, like the crew that dressed up in Top Gun style, and others were more classic, like the rowing crews or the small steam boat.

Boat parade getting started in Lewes! And yes, if you look close, someone just swam across the canal. Could not tell you why  #julyfourth #netDE pic.twitter.com/14QZll1n6Q  Emily Lytle (@emily3lytle) July 4, 2022

Before fireworks started later in the evening, people gathered around Kings Highway to watch the Doo-Dah parade.

People rallied in vintage cars, vibrant Jeeps and all kinds of decorated bicycles. Just as quickly as it started, the popular makeshift parade was over in about 20 min.

Rehoboth Beach keeps the celebration going

Even though Rehoboth celebrated Independence Day on Sunday with fireworks and the Funsters at the Bandstand, families and visitors continued to fill the beaches and boardwalk.

As expected, parking spots were rare along Rehoboth Avenue and lines stretched down the sidewalk as hungry visitors awaited French fries and ice cream.

By 6 p.m. people were getting their folding chairs ready for the special Bandstand performance featuring the U.S. Army Jazz Ambassadors.

Scenes from Rehoboth Beach on Monday, July 4, 2022.

Dewey Beach builds up to fireworks

Delawares favorite beach town for night life was preparing to party before fireworks launch around 9 p.m. near northbeach.

Groups of people were wearing cowboy hats with an American flag printed on them as they headed toward the bay for the fireworks.

Dewey Beach celebrates Independence Day and prepares for fireworks on Monday, July 4, 2022.

A steady stream of young people on summer break and families made their way down Route 1, and many gathered on the porches and patios of Deweys restaurants ahead of the 9 p.m. launch time.

Many placed chairs on the sand as they watched the sunset and awaited the next fireworks show to close out the summer holiday.

Emily Lytle covers Sussex County from the inland towns to the beaches. Got a story she should tell? Contact her at elytle@delmarvanow.com or 302-332-0370. Follow her on Twitter at @emily3lytle.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Charming July Fourth traditions take over Delaware's beach towns
John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune via Getty

The rifle shots from the roof of a store came more than 10 at a time and much faster than the tempo of the band playing Youre a Grand Old Flag at the Fourth of July parade on the street below.

A doctor at the scene on Monday morning in Highland Park later described the gruesome injuries of the six killed and more than a dozen wounded as something right out of a war.

This was the kind of carnage that this small suburban city north of Chicago was seeking to avoid when it banned assault rifles back in 2013.

The City Council has determined that assault weapons are traditionally not used for self-defense in the city of Highland Park, and that such weapons pose an undue risk to public safety, read the ordinance signed by Mayor Nancy Rotering on June 24 of that year almost a decade ago.

Rotering did all she could to defend the ban when a IIlinois pro-gun group joined a local gun collector in mounting a legal challenge. The matter went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which was so different in 2015 from the present one that the justices declined even to consider overturning it.

As was reported by The New York Times back then, Justice Clarence Thomas filed a dissent.

The ordinance criminalizes modern sporting rifles (e.g., AR-style semi automatic rifles), which many Americans own for lawful purposes like self-defense, hunting, and target shooting, Thomas wrote. Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons.

Note that in calling assault weapons modern sporting rifles, Thomas used the terminology of the gun industry. Among other things, it makes the AR-15 sound a lot less like something that should be banned.

Thomas remained exactly Thomas as the court tilted far to the right. He wrote last months majority opinion expanding the right to carry a firearm in public. He argued that having to demonstrate a particular need to go about strapping kept law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms.

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The Highland Park ban still stands, at least for the moment. But it offered little protection as long as so many other jurisdictions make assault weapons easy to acquire. Salvador Ramos of Uvalde, Texas, legally acquired two assault riflesboth advertised as modern sporting riflesthe day after his 18th birthday, and another two days later. He proceeded to murder 19 students and two teachers at a local elementary school.

In the aftermath, there were calls for an assault weapons ban, but the U.S. Senate could come up with nothing more than an enhanced background check for gun buyers between 18 and 21. A kid too young to drink can still buy all the modern sporting weapons he wants.

It was apparently no problem for the gunman who police say climbed onto a roof in Highland Park on Monday morning.

Police have named 21-year-old Robert Crimo as a person of interest in the massacre, and his YouTube channel includes a video that contains a drawing of a figure aiming a modern sporting rifle with a high capacity magazine at two figures, one sprawled on its back, the other on its knees, arms raised.

An actual gunman with an actual rifle waited as the parade kicked off, led by a police contingent with lights flashing and the fire department in an antique engine. They were followed by a marching band, which struck up Youre a Grand Old Flag.

In Chicago, a half-hour drive to the south, 57 people had been shot, nine fatally, so far on the holiday weekend. But that must have seemed a world away from this wealthy, low-crime suburb. Both sides of Highland Parks parade route were lined with people cheering and waving flags. The most American of holidays was being observed in classic all-American style.

Then came the shots, as fast as a finger can pull a trigger, transforming a celebration of the nations birthday into another mass murder scene. Strollers stood empty where parents had snatched up their kids and fled. An abandoned picnic blanket was used to cover one of the dead. A small American flag such as a child would wave lay on a patch of pavement, the red, white and blue joined by the deeper red of a victims blood.

In one of the early briefings, the police announced that they had recovered a high-powered rifle. The mayor who had done all she could to protect her city from such weapons then spoke.

This morning at 10:14 our community was terrorized by an act of violence that has shaken us to our core," Rotering said. On a day that we came together to celebrate community and freedom, were instead mourning the loss, the tragic loss, of life, and struggling with the terror that was brought upon us.

She had the look of the instantly haunted, the look of somebody who had done her very best only to see the very worst happen anyway.

This story has been updated to change Crimos age to 21

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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A man rides his bicycle along the underground Large Hadron Collider during its hiatus in 2020. The particle accelerator began smashing particles against on Tuesday 5 July (AFP via Getty Images)

After a four-year hiatus, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is firing up again on Tuesday, and despite rumors you may have heard on the internet, it will not create a trans-dimensional cross-rip, a black hole or any other techno-babbling apocalypse of science run amok.

As astrophysicist Katie Mack noted Tuesday on Twitter, every time the LHC fires up, I hear from people who are nervous about some kind of disaster, presumably due to alarmist science fiction, she wrote. Allow me to reassure you: even though the LHC is the most powerful particle collider on Earth, it is barely a game of marbles on the cosmic scale.

A project of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or Cern, the LHC is a ring of electromagnets 17 miles in circumference buried under France and Switzerland near Geneva used to accelerate beams of particles to incredibly high velocities and then smash them together to study the resulting piece. First smashing protons for science back in 2009, the LHC has led to the discovery of more than 50 new subatomic particles, and most famously the detection of the long hypothesized Higgs boson, also known as the God particle, in 2012.

Early LHC collisions took place at around one to 2 trillion electron volts, a measurement of the energy imbued in a particle by accelerating it based on the energy gained by an electron accelerated by a potential of one volt. The LHC has run through two previous cycles of experiments, collecting immense amounts of data from 2009 through 2013, and then from 2015 through 2018.

The new and third cycle of LHC experiments starting Tuesday will feature particles colliding at a record-breaking 13.6 trillion electron volts.

But while that seems like a lot, its still relatively insignificant in terms of what nature does all the time, according to Dr Mack.

High-energy astrophysical processes in the Universe, like energetic outflows from the regions around supermassive black holes, have created cosmic rays that reached Earth at more than a million times the energy of the LHC's most ambitious planned collisions. (And we're fine!)  Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) July 5, 2022

As the Cern website notes, one trillion electron volts is roughly equivalent to the energy released by a flying mosquito.

So while the LHC wont rip the fabric of time and space, it could help scientists rip the veil off some of the secrets of the universe. A Cern blog post notes scientists will be using the LHC to study the more subtle interactions of the Higgs particle as well as searching for signs of elusive dark matter, a mysterious entity that scientists know makes up about 27% of stuff in the universe, but have never directly observed.
A Trump-backed candidate for Michigan secretary of state made comments in 2020 comparing abortion to satanic practice and child sacrifice, CNNs KFile reported on Monday.

Kristina Karamo, a community college professor and former poll worker who claimed to witness election fraud during the 2020 presidential election, made the comments during an episode of her podcast Its Solid Food in October 2020.

Abortion is really nothing new. The child sacrifice is a very satanic practice, and thats precisely what abortion is, she said. And we need to see it as such.

Karamo also said abortion is the greatest crime in the countrys history.

When people in other cultures, when they engage in child sacrifice, they didnt just sacrifice the child for the sake of bloodshed, she said. They sacrificed the child because they were hoping to get prosperity and thats precisely why people have abortion now. Because Im not ready. I dont wanna have a baby. I dont feel like it. I dont have time. I wanna make more money. I want my freedom. So youre sacrificing that child hoping to get something out of their death, which is your freedom, your happiness, your prosperity.

Karamos campaign did not immediately return a request for comment from The Hill.

The report comes in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, thrusting abortion rights into the center of this years midterm elections.

A handful of states moved to immediately ban abortion after the ruling, and others will have bans come into effect 30 days after it.

A 1931 Michigan law bans abortion in the state with no exceptions for rape or incest. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) filed a motion to the states highest court last month asking it to recognize a right to abortion in the state constitution.

Karamos campaign website emphasizes her opposition to abortion.

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She has received increased attention after claiming without evidence that widespread voter fraud occurred throughout Michigan in 2020.

If Karamo is elected secretary of state, she would be in charge of overseeing elections in the state during the next presidential cycle.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.  Prosecutors charged the suspected gunman in the shooting rampage at a Fourth of July parade in this Chicago suburb with seven counts of first-degree murder Tuesday, hoping to put him behind bars for the rest of his life.

Lake County State's Attorney Eric Rinehart said that, if convicted, Robert E. "Bobby'' Crimo III faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

"These are just the first of many charges that will be filed against Mr. Crimo,'' Rinehart said. "I want to emphasize that. There will be more charges. We anticipate dozens of more charges.''

Police said Crimo fired more than 70 shots from a rooftop Monday, killing seven people and wounding nearly 40 more with a legally purchased assault rifle before fleeing. He was captured that evening after an intense manhunt.

Latest developments:

Investigators have interrogated the suspect and reviewed his social media posts but provided no motive for the attack, describing it only as "random."

Lake County Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli said the gun  similar to an AR-15  was legally purchased by Crimo in the Chicago area.

Hundreds gather for vigil the day after shooting

Hundreds of people congregated in downtown Highland Park Tuesday evening, blocks from the scene of the shooting. Families, neighbors and friends held hands, hugged and cried. Others laughed and smiled as they unexpectedly bumped into loved ones.

Its good to face your fear and come back to the scene. Theres something about coming back, said Elise Dayan, 54, a 21-year resident of Highland Park.

Some exchanged stories of where they were during the parade. Some hung orange ribbonsfor gun safetyin the trees. Others placed flowers, prayed and lit candles. Many kids wore Highland Park High School shirts and sweatshirts.

It feels good to be with other people going through the same thing, said Highland Park native Lucy Melinger, 19, who lives a block from the scene of the shooting.

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Melinger said the gunshots could be heard from her house during Monday's shooting, and that her family at the parade ran back to the house amid the panic.

 Grace Hauck

Suspect was visited by police twice in 2019  had knives confiscated

The man accused of killing seven people and wounding dozens at a Fourth of July parade was the subject of two police visits in 2019, one after he threatened "to kill everyone'' in the house, police said Tuesday.

Covelli said Crimo III had 16 knives, a dagger and a sword confiscated during that incident in September 2019. Five months earlier, police had responded to a reported suicide attempt by Crimo, according to Covelli.

Crimo, 21, planned the attack for weeks, police said, and was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder. After firing more than 70 shots from a rooftop, Crimo abandoned an assault rifle he had bought legally, blended into the crowd by wearing women's clothes and walked to his mother's home, said Covelli, who revealed a seventh victim died Tuesday.

Another rifle and three other weapons, also purchased legally, were found in the car Crimo was driving Monday evening when he returned to Illinois after driving to Wisconsin and was spotted by a neighbor who called 911. He was arrested after an intensive manhunt.

Six of seven victims identified, ages 35-88

The Lake County Coroner's office identified the six people killed Monday in the shooting rampage at Highland Park. A seventh victim died Tuesday, authorities said, but they have not revealed the person's name.

Five of the six identified victims lived in Highland Park. The exception was Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78, who hailed from Morelos, Mexico.

The other five who died Monday were:

Katherine Goldstein, 64; Irina McCarthy, 35; Kevin McCarthy, 37; Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63; and Stephen Straus, 88.

The victims included a dedicated synagogue worker, a grandfather watching Fourth of July festivities from his wheelchair, and the parents of a two-year-old son.

Here's what we know about the victims.

Vice President Harris visits Highland Park

Vice President Kamala Harris paid an unannounced visit late Tuesday to the site of the violence.

Harris motorcade arrived at the shooting site at 7:05 p.m. local time. Childrens bikes, a baby stroller, water coolers, toys and lawn chairs were scattered along the brick sidewalks. Harris and Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, who were invited to visit by Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering, spoke for several minutes to local officials. Nearby residents shouted "Thank you for coming."

"We have to take this stuff seriously," Harris said. "The whole nation should understand and have a level of empathy to understand that this can happen anywhere, in any peace-loving community. And we should stand together."

Earlier Tuesday, Harris called the shooting a senseless act of gun violence during remarks to a meeting of the National Education Association in Chicago.

We need to end this horror, she said. We need to stop this violence. And we must protect our communities from the terror of gun violence.

 Michael Collins

Grieving at vigil: 'Theres no five-step plan for this'

Pearson Lau, a lead pastor at Trinity Grace Church in Highland Park, stood outside his congregation with a 10-foot cross high in the background and spoke to reporters choked up with emotion. He was leading a vigil service one day after a mass shooting killed seven and injured dozens in the affluent Chicago suburb.

As a Christian, I dont think we have all the answers in scripture for something like this, Lau said. God doesnt say, Heres why people do evil things. I wish we did. I read in my devotion this morning. It said, God bottles our tears and he recounts our loss. The hope that we have is that hell bring justice and righteousness to this world one day.''

Lau spoke to grieving parishioners for an hour, many of them teary-eyed entering and leaving the church  some processing stories of personal heartache and others still in shock from the trauma endured by a close-knit community.

Charlotte Bank was one attendee filled with mixed emotions in her mourning. Bank told reporters she had seen the shooter, Robert Crimo III, attend services at that church. (Im) here to reconcile my own feelings, she said.

Lau said the Fourth of July tragedy illustrates the need for more awareness about the impact of shootings regardless of the community where they take place.

"Ive heard a lot of people say this is not the type of thing to happen in Highland Park,'' Lau said. "But our brothers and sisters on the south side of Chicago, they see this almost every single day. We grow callous to that. Numbers just become numbers.

The way that Ive been thinking about it (at the vigil) is to do Gods work and just get out of the way. Theres no five-step plan for (grieving) this.

 Scott Gleeson

Teenage resident recalls Crimo as someone 'up to no good'

Highland Park resident Martin Brubaker, 18, said he recalls Bobby Crimo coming into the local Jewel Osco supermarket several times with a group of friends, "high'' and wearing hoodies in the middle of summer.

When I saw him, I was like, that guy is up to no good,'' Brubaker said. "Its not that I thought he was gonna do this. Its more like I dont want to talk to that guy.

Crimo can be seen in a widely circulated Chicago Tribune photo of a Trump rally. The man standing to Crimos right in the photo is Peter Christos, 18, according to Deerfield resident Natalie Reed, 18, who attended school with Christos at Glenbrook North.

Hes very anti-mask, anti-vaccine, Reed said of Christos. He would kind of harass other students for wearing masks. He rallied up a bunch of people and did a lot of Trump rallies. Hes the one who got people together for most of them in Northbrook.

 Grace Hauck

'Legally obtained guns' a big issue, mayor says

Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering signed a city ordinance banning assault weapons almost a decade ago, after the Sandy Hook massacre, so the rifle allegedly used in Monday's attack couldn't be legally purchased in the Chicago suburb.

"At some point this nation needs to have a conversation about these weekly events involving the murder of dozens of people with legally obtained guns," she said in an interview on NBC's "Today" show. "If that's what our laws stand for, then I think we have to examine the laws."

Rotering said that "somebody clearly had a mental breakdown" but that the focus should be on access to guns, not mental health.

"I want us to talk about the fact that there are weapons of war on our streets that people can legally obtain  and then take out dozens of people," she said. "Our community is never going to recover from its wound."

Members of the FBI's evidence response team remove personal belongings one day after a mass shooting in downtown Highland Park, Illinois.

A SYNAGOGUE WORKER, A LOVING GRANDFATHER: What we know about the victims of Highland Park shooting

Suspect was turned away at synagogue in April, rabbi says

Crimo apparently tried to enter a synagogue near the shooting site in April and was turned away, according to Rabbi Yosef Schanowitz, co-director of the North Suburban Lubavitch Chabad  Central Avenue Synagogue.

Schanowitz told USA TODAY on Tuesday that authorities have asked him not to speak about the specifics, but confirmed Crimo was asked to leave his synagogue shortly after entering during Passover services. Like many synagogues, the Central Avenue one is guarded by armed security during services, Schanowitz said.

The synagogue is located along the parade route, and Schanowitz said he rushed outside after the shooting to help protect four Chicago-area teens who were staffing a Jewish information table.

"The first thing I told them was to call their parents," said Schanowitz, who comforted victims and residents after the attack.

"You hear people who are in disbelief, there are people who are angry, and there are people who are sad and in shock," he said.

 Trevor Hughes

The day after: Residents reeling with shock, pain

FBI agents and other law enforcement officers peered into trash cans, looked under picnic blankets and scoured Central Avenue at the site of the shooting searching for evidence. Tori Merel, her husband, Brian, and their 2-year-old son, Miles, placed flowers by the crime scene. Several bouquets lay outside the caution tape and street blocked off by police. Merel, a longtime resident, has lots of friends and family in Highland Park but said none were wounded.

This is heartbreaking to see this happening here, said Merel, 38. We live close by. My son loves firetrucks. I was thinking to myself we should take him to the parade because he loves firetrucks."

That's when they started hearing sirens. Word quickly spread that there was a mass shooter.

If this can happen here, I promise it can happen anywhere," she said. "This is the last place I would ever imagine something like this happening.

ROBERT CRIMO TAKEN INTO CUSTODY: Highland Park shooting: What we know

'Now Highland Park is in the list of those towns' hit by mass shootings

Justin Dickman, 15, and his siblings made a family tradition of attending the parade each year but skipped Monday's event. If they had attended, sitting in their usual spot outside a T-shirt shop, theyd have been half a block away from the shooter.

He used to bike around Highland Park without worrying about his safety. Now, Dickman's not sure if anywhere is truly safe.

Where I grew up is a crime scene now. Knowing that people died where I frequent often, its hard to believe, he said.

A sense of disbelief among residents was paired with the realization that a mass shooting could happen anywhere, even their affluent, quiet suburb.

Highland Park will be listed among Buffalo, Uvalde, Texas, and other cities known for their mass tragedies, said Debbie Winick, who was walking her dog with her daughter.

I just woke up with that sinking feeling,'' Winick said. "Like, here we are. Now Highland Park is in the list of those towns.

 Sophie Carson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Strong gun laws could face Supreme Court rebuke

The drumbeat for tighter gun regulations is growing louder, but it might be too late for legislation that could make a difference, warns Dr. Jonathan Metzl, professor of sociology and director of the Center for Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University.

We are seeing politicians powerfully speaking out about changes to gun laws to make communities like Highland Park safer from gunfire," Metlz told USA TODAY. "However, practically every intervention proposed, such as limiting assault rifles in public and instituting red flag laws, is likely unconstitutional under the recent Supreme Court gun legislation ruling.

Witness: 'It just devolved. It was chaos.'

Adam Sherman, 30, of Deerfield, was at the parade with his parents and was planning to meet up with his sister and her three children, but he ran into his first-grade teacher and stopped to chat. Soon after, Shermans father heard about eight pops and remarked, They shouldnt be making those kinds of sounds, given the times we live in.

About 30 seconds later, more shots rang out, and Sherman saw a flood of people running in his direction. Shermans father started searching for his daughter and children, but he couldnt find them. They all began running too.

One second, it was the parade, and then it just devolved. It was chaos, Sherman said. One of those moments, visually, that unfortunately I dont think Ill ever forget.

Sherman learned that his sister and her children got home safely. But he worries about how the children, all under 7 years old, will be able to live with what happened.

As Sherman spoke on a sidewalk near the shooting scene, a loud noise came from a cement truck nearby, startling him and the others around him.

We shouldnt have to live in fear, he said in response.

 Sophie Carson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Governor pushes for stricter gun regulations

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, speaking at a news conference hours after the rampage, said the nation's founding fathers carried muskets, not assault weapons, and would not have agreed to a constitutional right to an assault weapon with a high-capacity magazine.

"Grief will not bring the victims back, and prayers alone will not put a stop to the terror of rampant gun violence in our country," Pritzker, a Democrat, said on Twitter. "I will stand firm with Illinoisans and Americans: we must  and we will  end this plague of gun violence."

Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey apologized for suggesting people "move on" during a Facebook live stream from Skokie, where the Fourth of July parade was canceled after the shooting here.

"The shooter is still at large," Bailey said. "So let's pray for justice to prevail, and then let's move on and let's celebrate the independence of this nation."

Panic at fireworks displays in other cities

The impact of Monday's shooting rampage was felt across the nation. In Orlando, the fireworks celebration at Lake Eola was abruptly ended amid reports of a shooting that caused a chaotic scramble as the crowd fled the area.

"To our community members now in Downtown Orlando, please know that there is NO evidence of a shooting in the area," Orlando Police tweeted. "Our officers are now working to secure the area. There is NO public safety hazard at this time."

In Harrisburg, Pa., fears of a shooting sent hundreds of people running moments before the citys fireworks display started. Police said the panic may have been prompted when kids threw firecrackers at the ground.

Police later reported that a fight had broken out but that "contrary to some reports, there were no shots fired."

In Washington, D.C., two loud noises near 11th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW prompted people nearby to flee toward the National Mall, The Washington Post reported. Authorities on the scene confirmed the sounds were fireworks and said the noises probably sparked the alarm.

Holiday shootings in Philadelphia, Minneapolis

Eight people were wounded, some critically, in a shooting in a Minneapolis park during an unofficial Fourth of July celebration. Police said the assault took place about 11:30 p.m. Monday at Boom Island Park.

We were just watching fireworks and we just heard a whole bunch of shots, Kaayla Laanaee told WCCO-TV. I just heard them going over my head to the trees.

In Philadelphia, two police officers were shot during the city's Welcome America Party Monday night. Both were treated at a hospital and released early Tuesday.

"I'm waiting for something bad to happen all the time." Mayor Jim Kenney said. "I'll be happy when I'm not mayor and I can enjoy some stuff."

Mass shootings 'an American tradition'?

There have been 15 shootings in which four or more people have been killed, including the Highland Park attack, across the nation so far in 2022, according to The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University mass killing database.

Pritzker said that "while we celebrate the Fourth of July just once a year, mass shootings have become a weekly  yes, weekly  American tradition.

BAND MEMBERS EYEWITNESSES TO TRAGEDY: The band struck up a joyous tune as they traveled in the parade. Then the shooting started.

Contributing: The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Highland Park shooting live updates: 7 counts of first-degree murder
Juli Haller was part of Donald Trumps legal brigade in Michigan, filing a lawsuit alongside the ubiquitous Sidney Powell that claimed absentee vote counts were likely manipulated by a computer algorithm developed by allies of deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

The lawsuit was quickly deemed baseless, and she was among nine attorneys ordered by a federal judge to pay the city of Detroit and state of Michigan's legal fees and referred for possible disbarment. In a blistering rebuke, Judge Linda V. Parker called it a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.

But unlike Rudy Giuliani, whose law license was suspended in New York and Washington, D.C., for championing similar cases, or Hallers own co-counsel, Powell, whose law license is at risk in Texas, Haller is going strong. She has gained a robust client roster that includes two alleged members of the far-right vigilante group the Oath Keepers who are accused of fueling the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Hallers trajectory  from rebuked purveyor of baseless claims to a go-to attorney for MAGA extremists  infuriates many liberal activists, including some groups who are targeting the lawyers for discipline, and alarms some nonpartisan specialists in legal ethics. They say those who helped legitimize the former presidents lies should not be allowed to use it as a foundation to build their legal practices, lest it serve as an incentive to profit from ever more outlandish claims that shake the confidence of Americans in the integrity of U.S. elections and endanger democracy.

In total, at least 16 lawyers who represented plaintiffs in five federal lawsuits promoting Trumps baseless election fraud claims in the key battlegrounds of Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona remain in good standing or have no record of disciplinary action with their respective bar associations or licensing authorities, according to a POLITICO review.

Fourteen of them have since engaged in additional work in support of the election fraud conspiracies or conspiracists behind Trumps attempt to remain in power despite losing the election to President Joe Biden. These include defending accused Jan. 6 rioters, consulting for partisan election audits or partaking in advocacy or legal cases sowing doubts about the integrity of the nations elections, POLITICO found.

Story continues

Powell and Giuliani are the most well-known national legal voices who promoted conspiracies fueling the violent attack on the Capitol. Efforts to reach them were unsuccessful.



Powell, in November of 2020, said she would release the Kraken by providing evidence of widespread voting fraud proving Trump won the election. In fact, all of the suits were dismissed within days by judges appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents. But in the process, Giuliani and Powell brought together a pool of attorneys who were willing to push Trumps lies into court.

Now, however, many legal experts consider this network of attorneys a risk to future orderly elections administration and argue monetary penalties are an insufficient deterrent, simply because the lawyers involved can easily raise funds from disgruntled Trump supporters who may believe and are eager to spread the election lies.

These lawyers have to be stopped from practicing law. Its that simple, asserts David Fink, an attorney leading the charge to disbar the attorneys in Michigan, including Haller. They disregarded their oath, they told lies to the court and they spread the Big Lie, said Fink.

In arguing that monetary fines are not sufficient deterrent, Fink cited a report that Powell raised $14 million by spreading baseless claims about election fraud, including through the lawsuits.

Fink is aligned with The 65 Project, a new bipartisan group spending millions to try to disbar 100 lawyers who worked on Trumps post-election lawsuits. Its initial round of ethics complaints targeted top names on Trumps team, filed with their respective state bars in March. The group is now gearing up to file a wave of complaints against lesser-known attorneys who filed legal cases on baseless evidence, Michael Teter, the groups director, confirmed.

Its unclear how many state bar associations are pursuing any kind of disciplinary action, or whether they have rejected complaints, because most require that investigations remain confidential. Most states that do provide disciplinary records online only post the final opinions or orders.

POLITICO contacted bar associations or regulatory boards responsible for disciplinary actions in Washington, D.C., Michigan and Wisconsin, where a number of the lawyers are registered. They all declined to comment, citing confidentiality rules.

In addition to being one of nine attorneys who represented plaintiffs in the Michigan case, Haller was involved in four similar cases dismissed in other states, including as a lead attorney in Arizona, according to the court docket. Similar to the Michigan case, the Arizona suit raised questions about ballot tampering and hacked voting machines, including a statement attributed to an alleged former military intelligence expert only identified as Spider. A judge dismissed it without a hearing, stating plaintiffs were sorely wanting of relevant or reliable evidence.

In an appellate brief filed last February in Michigan, the attorneys involved in that case stated they are targets of a partisan smear campaign.

A Democrat Governor, a Democrat Secretary of State, and a Democrat Attorney General have joined a Democrat-appointed, Democrats-confirmed judge to ask a disciplinary body appointed and superintended by a Democrat-controlled state entity to kill the careers of Republican lawyers for advancing what is a mainstream Republican position on the 2020 Presidential Election.

Although judges reviewed written claims and documentation before dismissing her cases, Haller argues her team never got to make its case before the judge in Arizona, similar to what happened in other cases.

There were no evidentiary hearings held, and an old expression, Absence of Justice leads to Strife comes to mind; just ask the George Floyd protesters about that. I personally had nothing to do with Jan. 6, she said in response to emailed questions from POLITICO.

In next-door Wisconsin, Michael Dean was the lead attorney for plaintiffs in a Wisconsin case alleging fraud via ballot-stuffing. Deans team sought to decertify election results, declare Trump the winner and impound Dominion voting machines.



In dismissing the case, Judge Pamela Pepper stated: Federal judges do not appoint the president in this country. One wonders why the plaintiffs came to federal court and asked a federal judge to do so. Dean has been representing former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who is conducting a partisan audit of Wisconsins 2020 election results and has called for decertifying the states Electoral College votes after accusing Democratic leaders of large cities of fraud.

Such audits are a way of continuing the fight over 2020, even after courts have dismissed the cases. They have emerged as another source of work for pro-Trump attorneys.

Dean did not respond to a request for comment.

David Levine, a former Boise, Idaho, elections director, is among those in support of harsher punishment for lawyers who continue to fan the flames of election controversies long after theyve been discredited. Levine is now a fellow for election integrity at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, part of the German Marshall Fund, a nonpartisan policy organization.

If these folks arent held accountable, theyll feel emboldened to continue to engage in actions that not only erode trust in the legal profession and integrity of elections but endanger lives of the American people, he said.

We saw in 2020 how false election information could not only fuel an insurrection but cause bodily harm and loss of lives, said Levine. After Watergate, we saw the legal profession be at the forefront of ethics reform. Its dramatically different from what were seeing here, he said.

Claims not backed by law

U.S. lawyers have substantial leeway in filing court cases and in what they say outside the courtroom. Still, state bar associations generally try to self-police the legal profession according to a common set of rules that prohibit attorneys from bringing cases unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so that is not frivolous, as the American Bar Association states.

In New York, a state appeals court suspended Giulianis license for making demonstrably false and misleading statements about widespread voter fraud.

And in Michigan, Rules of Professional Conduct stipulate that a lawyer may not knowingly make a false statement of material fact or law or fail to correct such a statement.

According to a pending complaint filed by a coalition of several Michigan lawyers with the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission, the team in the case involving Haller not only made numerous false assertions but notably failed to disclose to the court that their false factual claims had been dismissed in state courts prior to filing the suit. According to that complaint, when presented with an opportunity to defend their claims, the attorneys voluntarily dismissed the case rather than offer a factual defense.

In her sanctions order statement, Parker, the judge, stated: While individuals may have a right 'within certain bounds' to make baseless allegations of fraud in the public, attorneys cannot 'exploit their privilege and access to the judicial process to do the same.'" Parker continued: The attorneys abused the well-established rules applicable to the litigation process by proffering claims not backed by law; proffering claims not backed by evidence.

The mind of the lawyer

Legal experts say the key to disciplining lawyers for frivolous cases is determining whether they knew the facts and arguments on which they were bringing their cases were false.

Ben Ginsberg, among the nations most prominent conservative election lawyers, said, You have to get into the mind of the lawyer and whether they thought and they had reasonable evidence to believe the charges they brought had some shred of credibility to them.

Barry Richard, who represented former President George W. Bush in litigating the disputed 2000 election in Florida, agreed it would likely have to be proven the attorneys knowingly submitted false complaints in order to take more significant action such as the revoking of law licenses.

Yet, while state bar association rules differ, anybody who took the position, with no basis, that there was fraud committed has violated a bar rule  no matter what state it is  and is subject to discipline, said Richard.

Members on the bipartisan House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection have repeatedly warned that challenges to the nations system of nonpartisan election administration remain a significant threat.

Thats because, regardless of the ultimate penalties, if any, for Trump and his inner circle, his successful campaign to sow doubts about the security of U.S. elections has inspired GOP candidates across the nation to run on similar platforms. In two out of three governor and secretary of state contests, there is an election denier running, according to States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan organization that promotes secure elections.

Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argued that its important to take action against attorneys fanning the flames of election conspiracies before they can rely on officeholders to support the false claims.

Should various election deniers prevail in their campaigns, Burden said, if a lawsuit is brought, as frivolous as it might be, [the pro-Trump lawyers] may have an ally in office who may be willing to testify in favor of it or advance it in multiple ways, he said.

It is alarming that that network of election deniers remains active, said Burden.

Unrepentant

Many of Powells co-lawyers remain actively promoting conspiracies around 2020.

Stefanie Junttila, whos also gone by Stefanie Lambert, officially appeared as an attorney of record on behalf of the plaintiffs in the Michigan case. Despite the sanctions order, Junttila continues to post on her Telegram channel what she calls evidence of election fraud in 2020 and is representing Sheriff Dar Leaf, who is suing Michigans attorney general and secretary of state for obstructing his own self-proclaimed investigation into voter fraud. In 2020, Leaf attended a rally related to COVID restrictions alongside a militia member later accused of plotting to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

As recently as mid-April, Junttila shared on social media a video of her appearance on the Stew Peters Show, in which she claims to have evidence of fraud committed in Delaware County, Penn., by union-aligned elections officials. And on May 5, Junttila filed a brief appealing her sanctions, insisting there remain significant, legitimate concerns with the election, which had significant irregularities. Juntilla did not respond to a request for comment.

For her part, Powell, too, has been unrepentant.

In a July 2021 hearing before Parker, Powell stated: We would file the same complaints again. We welcome an opportunity to actually prove our case.
FILE PHOTO: The logo of German energy utility company Uniper SE is pictured in the company's headquarters in Duesseldorf

By Markus Wacket

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government will be able to buy stakes in energy companies buckling under the cost of soaring gas import prices, according to draft legislation seen by Reuters, as Berlin bolsters its defences in a deepening economic war with Moscow.

The amended law, which may come before parliament this week, could also allow the government to impose emergency levies on consumers, three sources told Reuters, though it was not clear how quickly it might exercise that right.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government is scrambling to deal with the impact of soaring energy prices after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, warning that utilities could face a "Lehman"-style collapse if they cannot pass costs on to consumers.

"We must brace ourselves for the fact this situation will not change in the foreseeable future, in other words - we stand before a historic challenge," Scholz told reporters after meeting with trade union and employers association leaders to discuss the cost of living crisis.

Under the new energy proposals, the government would be able to take voting or non-voting stakes in companies related to critical infrastructure via the same mechanisms used to bail out companies during the coronavirus pandemic.

The amendments are currently being discussed among government ministries and could be presented to parliament on Friday.

Officials have been talking to Uniper, the largest buyer of Russian gas in Germany, about a possible bailout. News of the proposed legislative changes drove shares down 24% on Monday, with traders citing nationalisation risks.

Uniper said last week it was discussing possible guarantees, raising credit facilities or even the state taking an equity stake. The sources told Reuters the government might take a stake in Uniper as a last resort. Uniper declined immediate comment.

A possible bailout for Uniper could be modelled on pandemic relief for airline Lufthansa, which was saved from bankruptcy during the coronavirus pandemic with a 9 billion euro ($9.4 billion) aid package, one government source said.

Story continues

"The federal government should be given options along the lines of the Lufthansa aid," the source said.

Lufthansa's bailout saw the state taking a 20% stake in the airline through an Economic Stabilization Fund, but without being able to exercise shareholder voting rights.

The airline was not allowed to take over other companies until 75% of the state aid had been repaid, and its shareholders and managers could not benefit from taxpayers' money, meaning dividends and bonus payments were put on hold.

SKY-HIGH PRICES

Decades after de-regulating their energy markets, governments across Europe are intervening to prop up utility companies struggling with sky-high prices, while also protecting consumers from soaring costs.

Several European energy suppliers have gone bust over the past year, where they have had long-term contracts with customers and have been unable to pass on the swift spike in prices.

Russia is Germany's top supplier of gas, making it more exposed than other European states to an economic war with Moscow.

A worsening gas crisis has prompted recession warnings in Europe's largest economy. Top bankers at a conference in Frankfurt echoed such concerns, with Commerzbank saying the risks were comparable to the European debt crisis a decade ago.

Germany has accused Russia of strangling the flow of energy to Europe through spurious pretexts in revenge for sanctions over the Ukraine war, and is closely watching whether flows will resume after scheduled maintenance July 11-21.

Russia has denied doing so, and said it was a reliable energy supplier that honours its contracts. Uniper said it was receiving around 40% of the normal amount of gas from Russia at the moment.

The benchmark Dutch front month gas contract rose 13.6% to 167 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) on Monday, its highest level since March 8. The price remains below a record but is still 500% higher than this time last year.

Germany's government has warned of possible energy shortages and rationing in the winter months if it cannot fill its gas storage quickly enough.

"The hope of filling the gas storage facilities to some extent by winter could be torpedoed by Russia at any time. Then there are hardly any compensatory possibilities left," said a note from Sentix that tracks investor morale in the euro zone.

"In Germany, some ideological boundaries have to be crossed to prevent a "Lehman moment" in the energy sector," it said, referencing the U.S. bank whose demise help triggered the 2008 financial crisis.

($1 = 0.9573 euros)

(Reporting by Markus Wacket and Andreas Rinke; Additional reporting by Susanna Twidale and Paul Carrel; Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Kirsti Knolle and Jan Harvey)
One person has died and four people have been seriously injured in a Fourth of July shooting at a residence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, police said.

The incident occurred at approximately 10:20 p.m. at a home in the 6300 block of 25th Avenue when authorities responded to reports of a shooting at the house and encountered a chaotic scene with obvious evidence of multiple gunshots being fired, according to a statement released by the City of Kenosha Police Department.

There were five victims from this shooting, all adults, authorities continued. One of the victims is deceased. The other four victims were transported to local hospitals with two being transferred to Milwaukee area hospitals due to serious injuries.

As of now, the Kenosha Police Department say there is no known motive, no suspects in custody and that the investigation into the shooting is open and active.

Police are asking for cooperation with the public and are urging anyone with information to contact the Kenosha Police Detective Bureau at (262) 605-5203 or the Kenosha Area Crime Stoppers at (262) 656-7333.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

1 dead, 4 seriously injured in Wisconsin July 4th shooting originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
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Guess whos back? Back again? Well, me after a long weekend, but also Elon Musk is tweeting again, and he has lots of thoughts about socks. My partner in crime, Haje, remains in an undesirable newsletter time zone but will be back later this week. I want to call out some things going on with TechCrunch. One is that TechCrunch Lives weekly event series is new and improved, so learn more and register. Most of us here at TechCrunch spend our days on WordPress, and the Found team spoke to Matt Mullenweg, CEO of its parent company Automattic, for the latest podcast.  Christine

The TechCrunch Top 3

Just a Glance : Manish wrote two of our top stories. The first is a scoop he got related to Glance, which is reportedly launching its lock screen content platform for Android in the U.S. in the next couple of months. He also dug into Twitters lawsuit against the Indian government that was prompted by content takedown orders. This is just another in a long line of troubles the company has had in this country.

No slowdown in climate tech : Paul reports on Climentum Capitals philosophy behind its new $157 million fund that will go into European startups helping reduce CO2 emissions.

We gotta figure out our exit scratgety: Youll have to go way back into the SNL archives to find that reference, but this is the first of two Haje public announcements for our founder friends. He says you really dont need that "exit plan" slide in your pitch deck  there are a lot of assumptions and predictions on a founders part, and it is hard to know who wants to buy your company, so just get rid of it.

Startups and VC

There are a number of very good TechCrunch+ stories today. I recommend starting with Alexs item on raising sweet capital in a sour market, where essentially he says venture capital firms should put their money to use when they can get more out of it. Then follow with his story from yesterday that does a bit more diving into 2021 company valuations.

Story continues

Speaking of putting capital to use in easier ways, some VC firms continue to raise funds, and Sequoia Capital has been very busy. Rita reports that Sequoias China unit took in $9 billion, coming at a time when, she writes, global investors are reevaluating risks in China amid a COVID-hit economy and an ongoing regulatory crackdown on the countrys internet upstarts. This complements a quick hit I did last week about Sequoia raising two funds stateside.

Meanwhile, Hajes other public service announcement for today is a reminder that not all of us comprehend at the same level, so startup founders should work to attract more bees with simple honey sentences rather than big, complicated fly ones.

Heres what else you might like today:

Without a clear ask, your pitch deck is useless

Image Credits: Haje Jan Kamps (opens in a new window)

Fundraising is difficult because most people dont have any experience asking strangers for money.

The ask slide where founders explain how theyll spend investors money is particularly challenging. To break through the mental barrier, Haje recommends starting out with metrics and milestones.

How much will you increase MAU or lower CAC? What are your target dates for expanding in new markets?

The more specific your goals are, the easier it is to know whether youre trending toward them, writes Haje.

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Some big news from yesterday was that Meta decided not to move forward with its crypto payments wallet, Novi, Natasha writes. The company isnt getting rid of it completely, so stay tuned as to how it might be repurposed.

Meanwhile, Google is doing a little postponing of its own  with KakaoTalk updates on its Play Store. Kate reports this has something to do with the messaging app refusing to remove its own payment links. You might remember, but Google doesnt like that.

Over in Europe, we have a trio of regulation stories. First is Natashas about the European Parliament giving its approval to a set of regulations regarding digital businesses. Then Paul writes about the U.K. pushing to make foreign interference, particularly Russian information, an offense under its proposed Online Safety Bill. Finally, Ingrid reports on the U.K. signing its first data-sharing deal since Brexit with South Korea.

Take a peek at some others:
SUN VALLEY, Idaho  Rupert Murdoch will attend Allen & Co.s Sun Valley conference this week, Variety has confirmed.

The annual event colloquially known as summer camp for billionaires kicks off as usual on July 5 at the Sun Valley Lodge in the titular Idaho resort town. Murdoch, 91, arrived on site during the July 4th holiday on Monday, according to a source familiar with the matter, two days after the Fox Corp. and News Corp. baron attended granddaughter Charlotte Freuds wedding to rapper Lukey Storey in the U.K.

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Murdochs decision to come to the Sun Valley retreat  an event he has attend numerous times over the years  is an interesting surprise, as his name was not among those on the list of invite-only Sun Valley guests obtained by Variety last month.

However, Murdochs sons James Murdoch, CEO of Lupa Systems, and Lachlan Murdoch, the current CEO of Fox Corp., were both already expected to attend. The two brothers are seemingly on very different sides of the political aisle these days, with James, having left the family business at Fox, moving toward the center and Lachlan, now firmly ensconced at the top at Fox Corp., standing behind Fox News amid ever-escalating criticism of its involvement with former President Donald Trump.

Rupert Murdochs choice to attend Sun Valley also comes amid a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and Fox Corp led by Dominion Voting Systems, and on the heels of the announcement of Murdochs divorce from Jerry Hall. Murdoch and the 65-year-old model were married in 2016, marking Murdochs fourth marriage. Murdoch and Hall attended Sun Valley together in 2018.

Murdoch was behind the sale of most of 21st Century Fox to the Walt Disney Co. in 2019 in a deal valued at $71.3 billion. At present he is chairman of Fox Corp., a publicly traded entity that owns Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox Television Stations, Fox News, Fox Business and Fox Sports. Through News Corp., the publishing empire at which he remains executive chairman, Murdoch controls The Wall Street Journal, The Sun and book publisher HarperCollins.

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Matt Donnelly contributed to this story.

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HIMARS working on the Zaporizhzhya Oblast

"I would call this tactic a very specific term  the Ukrainian steel thresher is now working in full swing, said Chernyk.

Read also: After receiving Western weapons, Ukraine's positions improve in Zaporizhzhya Oblast

That is, there is an immeasurable amount of their materiel, I mean ammunition dumps. Believe me, we are talking tens of thousands of tons all over the Russian Federation. ... But in Ukraine, high-precision millstones have appeared, which can grind these ammunition depots."

Read also: Ukraines army puts new American weapons to good use, says Pentagon

Four of the M142 HIMARS missile systems have already arrived in Ukraine, and the United States promises to deliver four more in mid-July.

The Ukrainian military is already using HIMARS at the front. It was reported on June 26 that two command posts of the Russian army were struck as a result of the use of HIMARS.

Thus, according to the expert, Ukraine is reducing the firepower capabilities of the Russian Federation, because "if there are no projectiles  there are no heavy artillery strikes."

"This is the right strategy and tactic, because it is quite difficult and expensive to hunt for individual divisions  everything is mobile, no one stands still, Chernyk said.

It doesn't matter what kind of artillery  trailed, wheeled, tracked or on a car chassis: you fire a volley  then move, fire a volley  move. We act inexactly the same way. And we finally have the means to (destroy) their munitions at long distances."

Read also: How Ukraine forced Russia to abandon Snake Island

Conflict Intelligence Team analysts say that a hospital in occupied Melitopol is overrun with Russians after being hit by the U.S. system.

The Pentagon has also said that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are successfully using the new weapons delivered from the United States.
The US is watching very, very closely for signs of an attack by China on Taiwan, the chief of the US military has said.

Theres no indications or warnings of anything imminent at this time, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, told BBC News. But again, we watch it very, very closely.

He said that a decision to attack by Beijing would be a political and policy choice, and based on Chinas view of the cost risk-benefit at the time, as he acknowledged the repeated threats made by president Xi Jinping to reclaim the island by force if necessary.

The statement comes amid increasing anxiety among Taiwanese that China will invade the self-governed island, prompting locals to take gun training.

Last week, Britains foreign secretary Liz Truss issued a warning to China at the G7 summit in Madrid saying that any attempt to invade Taiwan would be a catastrophic miscalculation.

She said Beijing was in danger of making the same mistake as Russian president Vladimir Putin, as she added: That is exactly what we saw in the case of Ukraine  a strategic miscalculation by Putin.

Taiwan has been self-governed since nationalist forces fled there in 1949 after the communists took control of China, and is considered to be a rebel province by Beijing.

China has vowed to regain control of the island and says force could be an option to do this, at the same time as stepping up its military provocations against Taiwan in recent years.

In June, Taiwan scrambled combat aircraft to warn away a fleet of 29 Chinese jets, including bombers, that entered its air defence zone, Chinas third-largest incursion since the beginning of the year.

The incursion included 17 fighters and six H-6 bombers as well as electronic warfare, early warning, antisubmarine and aerial refuelling aircraft, Taiwans defence ministry said.

While the bombers flew south of the island and into the Pacific ocean, some jets flew northeast of the Pratas, according to officials.

The issue of Taiwans sovereignty has been just one of the recent sticking points in relations between China and the US, which has close but informal relations and defence ties with Taipei.

In May, Chinas Peoples Liberation Army conducted an exercise around Taiwan as a solemn warning against its collusion with the US. The move came after US president Joe Biden signalled a change in the policy of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan by saying the country would get involved militarily if China attacked the island.
Oklahoma City police are investigating four homicides from the weekend.

A weekend of violence in Oklahoma City ended with four people shot and killed, including an elderly woman found dead on her front porch.

About 1:35 a.m. Saturday, police responded to reports of multiple gunshots in a parking lot with a large crowd in the 1100 block of NE 36.

Authorities said ChaRayia Johnson, 20, was taken by EMSA to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Later Saturday, about 9 p.m., police were called for a welfare check in the 3200 block of NE 14. Police found Velma Walker, 88, on the front porch of her residence, dead from gunfire.

More: After death of David Hammer, law calls for governor to pick new DA in Pottawatomie and Lincoln counties

Just before 7 p.m. Sunday, officers responding to calls near the 4200 block of N Lottie Avenue learned there was an altercation between Jaylen Colbert, 17, and two unknown people.

Jaylen was shot, according to authorities who said he was taken by private vehicle to a local fire station, then taken by EMSA to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Abou 9:45 p.m. Sunday, officers in the area of NW 36 and N Grand Boulevard reported spotting a vehicle driving erratically. They stopped the vehicle in an OnCue parking lot.

Officers said the driver, Shawn Tackitt, 41, had apparently been involved in a shooting and indicated the victim was dropped off at a local hospital, according to an Oklahoma City Police Department news release.

More: Lyft driver wears a wire, helps investigate possible marijuana licensing scam in Oklahoma

At the hospital, police found the shooting victim, Erin Fowler, 42, had died. Her death marked homicide No. 39 this year in Oklahoma City.

Police arrested Tackitt, who was booked into the Oklahoma County jail on a murder complaint.

Police Sgt. Dillon Quirk said investigations into the weekends homicides remain in the early stages.

Anyone with information may contact the Homicide Tip Line at 405-297-1200.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Four killed in weekend shootings in Oklahoma City
Jannet Ponder is back in the office, like so many other American workers. She brought plants with her to give her cubicle more tranquility, along with family photos and other personal, decorative items.

Ponder's homey cubicle illustrates a struggle playing out in offices and homes across the United States. Some workers are resisting mandates to return to the office, while many who do comply try to re-create their workspace of the past two years by bringing bits of home with them.

During the pandemic, Ponder, an administrative assistant at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, Texas, started gardening to relieve stress  a common COVID-19 trend. After coming back into the office, she decided to bring her plants with her.

We try to make this place as comfortable as home, Ponder said. I need to have some visual thing that says, 'This is from the house.'

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Many companies are turning to hybrid work schedules to help keep employees happy and boost production.

Productivity and lingering COVID concerns keep some at home

Ponder isn't alone in bringing some home to work.

Samantha Rife is an accountant and commutes 30 miles to her office in Atlanta several days a week. She would rather work entirely from home. As an introvert, Rife doesnt enjoy socializing and believes she is less productive in the office, she said.

In the office, "I have my jazz music on because I'm trying to keep myself calm, and I get out and walk every day during lunch.  I need that mental break, Rife said, adding that she brings in food from home. "I have my coffee and my bagel, so I guess in a sense I'm trying to re-create the environment I had at home, but it's not the same.

Rife believes she has more control over her life when working remotely, because she can do laundry or prepare food for her two teenage sons during work hours. She said those breaks are similar to the breaks she takes in the office.

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Elaina Fawbush is a data analyst in Louisville, Kentucky. Her office went remote in March 2020, but it has recently returned to in-person work, and about 85% of her colleagues are back, she said.

But Fawbush got permission to continue working at home because she is more productive there and is still concerned about COVID-19 after getting it twice.

In the office setting, you got a lot of distractions, a lot of interruptions. Also, ever since COVID  I don't like to be around a lot of people, Fawbush said. I just didn't want to go back into the office setting. I can do my job. I don't have to be in the office.

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Employees dont come into the office as much as asked

According to Why Working from Home Will Stick, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, only 82% of employees have come into the office as much as their employers desired, and 43% responded that the employers did not punish those who came in less frequently than required.

Managers have two choices in these scenarios: not enforce the in-person work hours and appear weak, or enforce the work hours and anger employees, said researcher Nicholas Bloom, economics professor at Stanford University. He added that some workers dont need to come in every day to get their jobs done and could be more productive at home.

There's nothing that would be more irritating than meeting your targets, doing a great job and still getting punished because you haven't come in to work in the office for as many days as possible, Bloom said. For some people in IT or in finance that can easily do their job from home for two, three days a week, there's just no reason to force them to come into  offices five days a week.

The data shows that many employers struggle to bring all their workers back to the worksites, said researcher Steven J. Davis, an economist who studies business dynamics. He added that enforcing return-to-work policies could lead to employees quitting.

To bring employees back to the office, the boss needs a compelling answer to this question: Why must I spend 30, 60, 90 minutes a day on commuting, when Ive shown I can do my job from home? Davis told USA TODAY via email.

Heading back to the office:Stay comfy with these style staples

More:Elon Musk reportedly demands Tesla, SpaceX employees return to the office

A hybrid work schedule could boost employees productivity

Bloom recommended companies employ a hybrid format, in which employees could work two or three days a week from home, to increase productivity. Companies should ask employees on the same teams to come in on the same days, he said.

The idea is that three days in the office are all full of meetings, presentations, trainings, client events, things that are group events, and you don't really need quiet space, you're not there to do quiet work, and your days working from home are filled with quiet work and your Zoom calls, Bloom said.

He added the two main reasons why employees value working remotely are time saved in commute and more flexibility, while the two main reasons why they want to come into the office are face-to-face collaboration and socialization.

Many employees cite time saved in commuting and more flexibility for their preference to work from home.

If employees have to come in, quiet work pods might be useful

According to a survey commissioned by Framery, a manufacturer of soundproof phone booths and pods, 46% of respondents identified fitness facilities and 44% of respondents identified designated quiet spaces as office benefits they want the most. The survey also shows 41% think their ability to concentrate in an open-floor plan office has worsened compared with before the pandemic.

Framery CEO Samu Hallfors said companies should find the best aspects in both remote and in-person work to change the work environment and motivate employees to come into the office.

Removing the distractions, giving you spaces that you can concentrate, giving you spaces where you can collaborate with your colleagues and make innovations, have those meaningful encounters with people. That really makes the difference, Hallfors said.

Need to host a remote work conference:Here's how to set up a meeting on Zoom

College grads getting high-paying jobs:How the labor shortage made way for better benefits

Christine Herforth, a design engineer in Ohio, said she prefers to go to the worksite only when she is needed, because she lives 45 miles away and feels more productive at home, she said.

When in the office, she uses headphones to prevent her colleagues from talking with her and interrupting her thoughts.

If its business-related, I'd take my headphones off. If not, I'll just smile and hope that youd go on, because designing and drawing and all of that all day really takes concentration. And I guess what I like about my home environment is that nobody's bothering me when I'm trying to draw or figure out complicated math equations, Herforth said.

She added the office will be moving into a bigger facility later this year, with a game room and quiet spaces, which Herforth believes will help with concentration.

Im really thankful that they have thought about these things to help us ease our transition back into work, Herforth said. I feel that this is what's going to help my transition back to work, because right now, it's not working.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Post-COVID return to office: Some workers bring back reminders of home
Amber alert has been issued in Texas for Emilee Solomon and another teenager (McGregor Police Department )

Texas officials have issued an Amber Alert for two teenage girls who were last seen near Waco last Wednesday after the police were sent a screenshot of a Snapchat story with the message help.

The McGregor Police Department appealed for help to locate Aysha Lynn Cross and Emiliee Solomon, both aged 14.

Law enforcement officials believe these children to be in grave or immediate danger, the alert stated.

Aysha is described as 52 (1.57m), 105 lbs (48kg), with black hair and hazel eyes, while Emiliee is also 52 (1.57m), 105 lbs (48kg), and has black hair and hazel eyes.

They were last seen around 3pm on 29 June near 1410 West 7th Street and the 900 block of West 10th Street in McGregor, Texas.

On 2 July, McGregor police lieutenant Ron McCurry reportedly said the disappearance of the girls did not meet the criteria for amber alerts.

However, he had noted that the situation was grim because in most such situations, young people return home safely within eight to 12 hours.

Police upgraded the case on Monday and issued an alert after they were sent a screenshot of Ayshas Snapchat story with the message help.

We are following all leads and doing everything we can to find these young girls, Lt McCurry told KWTX, adding that they didnt have much information on the missing girls.

The girls became best friends instantly after getting together just before school ended for the summer, Emilees stepmother Sara Dunn said.

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Emilee reportedly spent Wednesday night at Ayshas house and asked if she could stay longer. Later, she called home to say an uncle was picking her up but that did not occur, Ms Dunn added.

She said her daughter was dropped off at Bewley Park about midnight on Thursday and was likely picked up by someone.

I want her to know that everything is OK, Ms Dunn told the television station. It doesnt matter what she has done. I want to tell her to just come home. We love you no matter what. Our door is open. Come home.

Ayshas mother Shannon Valles and Ms Dunn have been running from pillar to post to find their daughters, including trying to correct misinformation put out on social media.
EDGARTOWN  After four decades with the Vineyard Gazette, 18 as the newsroom leader, Julie Wells is passing the torch to Brian P. Boyd.

Boyd was previously an editor with Shore Publishing, which covered news in 13 Connecticut coastal towns. The company published seven weeklies and associated websites, as well as specialty publications.

The search for a new editor for the Gazette has been years in the making, with COVID-19 putting a pause in the efforts. Boyds experience with community journalism and his devotion to excellence in writing make him an excellent choice, Wells said.

Brian Boyd

Boyd will join an editing team that includes Bill Eville, managing editor, Stephen Durkee, director of graphics and design, and Elizabeth Bennett, community editor.

Longtime editor Julie Wells stepping down

Wells called the Gazette a little paper that thinks big. It was founded in 1846 and is independently owned. Boyd will be the 10th editor of the broadsheet in its 176 years.

Publisher Jane Seagraves said Boyd is coming from a group of publications that have parallels with the Vineyard Gazette Media Group.

More: Private club on Martha's Vineyard pleads guilty to involuntary manslaughter of child

The Vineyard has many different communities, she said. He really understands the need to provide news coverage to different communities in different ways.

Julie is a hard act to follow, Seagraves said. In Brian we found someone who is equally passionate about community journalism.

She said Boyds experience, knowledge, passion and digital savvy will help the paper as it faces a changing industry.

More: The embrace of natural Black hair inspires festival in Oak Bluffs, marks cultural changes

The industry is under pressure, Seagraves said. Were fortunate to be doing well.

Wells, who was named to the New England Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2020, will continue with the Gazette as editor emeritus. She called the change good for the Gazette, and its staff and readers.

Contact Denise Coffey at dcoffey@capecodonline.com. Follow her on Twitter: @DeniseCoffeyCCT.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Vineyard Gazette hires Brian Boyd as editor
Jul. 5Fourth of July celebrations in a Portland neighborhood ended Monday with one man shot and assaulted and a chaotic scene in which police say a crowd aimed fireworks at the officers who arrived to help him.

The incident near Kennedy Park marked the second consecutive year that officers were attacked with fireworks over the Fourth of July weekend while responding to a call involving weapons in East Bayside, police say.

The 35-year-old Portland man who was shot was then assaulted as he lay helpless on the ground, police said.

While officers were trying to help him, a "hostile" crowd formed and they "came under attack" as people set off fireworks aimed at them, police said Monday.

The officers responded by shooting pepper balls into groups of people who were "targeting officers with mortar-style fireworks," Maj. Robert Martin said. The majority of the people at the scene were not residents of the neighborhood, according to police.

The incident began just after 11 p.m. Monday when officers were called to the area of Kennedy Park and Smith Street on a report that a man had been shot. Police say people gathered around as officers began treating the victim until medics from the Portland Fire Department took over his care.

Martin said people in the crowd became hostile toward the officers as they rendered aid to the victim. Officers who were containing the crime scene then came under attack with fireworks, he said. People continued to set off fireworks as officers remained at the scene for the next several hours.

"Officers were forced to deploy the pepper balls into the groups" that were setting off the fireworks, Martin said in a news release. "Several officers were struck with sparks from the fireworks that were intentionally aimed at them."

Pepper balls projectiles  deployed by a launcher similar to a paintball gun  are plastic-encased capsaicin powder that irritates the eyes and respiratory system if inhaled.

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No officers were seriously injured. The victim was taken to Maine Medical Center, where he is now in stable condition.

On Tuesday afternoon, a parking area and walking path in the Kennedy Park complex were littered with remnants of Roman candles and other fireworks debris. Near the playground, used sparklers were piled under a tree. Children played on the playground and on the large grassy lawn.

Timothy Boulier, who grew up in Kennedy Park and now lives in Westbrook, said he had visited his mother to watch the fireworks display on Munjoy Hill. The family, including his 6- and 8-year-old daughters, were hanging out by the playground while people used sparklers on the lawn.

As crowds came down Munjoy Hill after the city's fireworks display, people were setting off bigger fireworks on the basketball court, Boulier said. All of a sudden, fireworks went off right over his family and they ran inside.

"Kids were screaming and crying," he said Tuesday as he watched his younger daughter on the playground. "It was too close. It was very clear it was getting too dangerous out here."

Boulier said he was unaware of the shooting until Tuesday morning.

Natalie Freiheit recently moved into a house on Anderson Street that backs up to the Kennedy Park neighborhood. She's used to hearing the lively sounds of children playing  there are lots of families there  but Monday night was different. After the city fireworks display ended, the neighborhood was crowded with people and cars.

Freiheit had just returned home from the fireworks and was watching TV when she heard "really loud" fireworks.

"All fireworks sound like gunshots to me sometimes," she said, although she didn't realize at the time that there had been a shooting.

Then, Freiheit said, there was a lot of screaming and the loud noises continued.

A resident who lives in the apartment complex but didn't want to be named because of fears for their safety said the people gathering outside of the building on Monday night did not live there.

Martin said investigators are still trying to figure out a motive for the shooting, but they do not believe there is any danger to the public. He described the shooting suspect as a Black man, about 6 feet tall with a larger build.

The police department had assigned extra patrols to Munjoy Hill on Monday night because of the city's fireworks display. Some of those officers were redirected to Kennedy Park, Martin said.

No one has been charged in connection with the incident.
Clifford Alexander, Jr., foreground, greets an attendee after a dialogue featuring poet Elizabeth Alexander, upper left background, September, 24, 2010 in Washington, DC.

Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty

Clifford Leopold Alexander Jr., the first African American named Secretary of the United States Army, died this weekend at 88.

Alexander succumbed to heart failure at his home in New York City on Sunday, his daughter, Elizabeth, told the New York Times.

President Jimmy Carter appointed Alexander  born in Harlem, New York, in 1933  to the U.S. Army secretary role in 1977. His selection marked the first time a Black civilian became the head of any U.S. military branch, the Washington Post reported.

Alexander worked as a top advisor to several other U.S. presidents, including Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon. He was also a leading voice of the Civil Rights Movement, helping craft the landmark Voters Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting.

In 1955, Alexander graduated with Honors from Harvard University, where he became the institution's first Black student body president.

RELATED: Black World War II Vet Previously Overlooked for Purple Heart Finally Receives Medal 77 Years Later

Clifford L Alexander Jr. poses in his Washington office after resigning as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington on . Alexander, who said he will stay as a commission member to fill out the remaining three years of his term, criticized the present administration's attitudes on enforcing equal job opportunities

AP/Shutterstock

"Cliff saw his role as secretary of the Army as a key extension of the civil rights movement, and he inaugurated and enforced policies that were spectacularly effective in achieving his goal," Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. told the Times.

"The fact that the United States military is, perhaps, the most integrated institution in our society can be traced to the foresight of Clifford Alexander," he added.

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Alexander graduated from Yale Law School before joining the Johnson administration.

"I hope that I made a contribution in that time," he said prior to his death during an interview with FOX affiliate WNYW.

After leaving the government during the Nixon administration, Alexander became the first Black partner at a major D.C. law firm and hosted a syndicated news commentary show before Carter tapped him for the Army secretary position, according to the Post.

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Secretary of the Army Clifford Alexander Jr., said at a Fort McPherson news conference, that contrary to the opinion of some, he does not think the Army has too many generals, in Atlanta on . Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., said recently that he believes the number of active generals should be reduced

Charles Kelly/AP/Shutterstock

"Inclusiveness is something that says 'if you see someone out here that can do the job, bring them on in,'" Alexander told WNYW.

By the time he left the secretary position, Alexander had paved a path for more Black officers to become generals, including Colin Powell, who would later serve as the first Black Secretary of State.

Alexander is survived by his two children, Mark and Elizabeth, and his wife, Adele, according to the Post.
Kevin Nicholson former Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin.

Delafield business consultant Kevin Nicholson announced Tuesday that he's suspending his campaign in the Republican Party primary for governor.

In a statement, Nicholson said he didn't want to go negative as a way to catch up in the contest against the two front-runners, Hartland business executive Tim Michels and former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch.

He added that he does not plan to make any endorsements in the primary.

"Over the past week, I have assessed the state of the primary race, and it has become clear to me and my team the only path forward for our campaign is attacking the other candidates in the race on the airwaves and running a very negative campaign," Nicholson said in a statement.

"While our team has the capability to do that, that is not something I want to do  nor do I believe it would be good for the party to do so."

Subscribe to our On Wisconsin Politics newsletter for the week's political news explained.

Nicholson, who ran unsuccessfully in the 2018 Republican primary for U.S. Senate, said he will "work to get Republicans up and down the ballot elected. Our fight is not over, and I will continue to be engaged on the battlefield to elect conservative outsiders in the state of Wisconsin."

Mark Belling of WISN (AM-1130) was the first to report Nicholson's withdrawal.

In the most recent Marquette University Law School Poll, Michels (27%) and Kleefisch (26%) were in a virtual dead heat, while Nicholson trailed with only 10%. State Rep. Tim Ramthun was at 3%.

During the campaign, Nicholson ran as a political outsider. He repeatedly went after Republican Party leaders and insiders, whom he tagged as the Madison Machine. He fought for the party not to endorse any candidate at its convention.

A super PAC funded largely by billionaire Uline founder Dick Uihlein helped Nicholson by spending heavily in the race. But it was not enough to move him to the top of the pack.

More: Top legislative Republicans face primary challengers rising from grievances over the 2020 election

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More: In Wisconsin's high-profile primaries, Republicans are taking off the gloves while Democrats play it safe

In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Nicholson reflected on the decision that he said he reached with his wife, Jessie, over the Fourth of July weekend.

Not only was Nicholson facing the prospect of having to go negative to climb back in the race, but he also was up against the large spending by Michels.

Nicholson said he and Michels have similar messages.

"It's very hard to fight through that," Nicholson said. "I think my wife and I are very pragmatic. Our goal is not to burn people down. My goal is not to damage people or movements.

"We have to take a clear, sober-eyed view of things," he added. "And we did. That seems to be the best solution at this point."

Asked if his exit from the race meant that the so-called Madison Machine had triumphed, Nicholson said, "Yeah. Well, that remains to be seen."

He said he asked voters if they were serious about wanting to do things differently, and if they were, "then I was their candidate."

"At the end of the day I believe we were that candidate outside the system, outside the machine," he added.

Nicholson said he had no regrets about the campaign he waged.

"I certainly don't regret anything about (focusing on) the mistakes that led us to this point as a society, where our state and country are so fractured and we face so many severe problems," he said.

Asked if he would run for U.S. Senate in 2024 when Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin will face reelection, Nicholson said, "No idea."

He said he would do his "best" to help the eventual nominee in the general election against Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

"Let the voters decide who is the nominee first," he said.

In a statement, Michels said he respected Nicholson for his military service as a U.S. Marine and his work with the nonprofit No Better Friend Corp.

"This race was better for him being in it, working as hard as he did, and pushing his outsider message about the need to shake up the Madison machine," Michels said. "I will work hard to earn the support of his supporters, as I continue to grow our coalition. It is imperative we defeat Tony Evers this fall and that's our continued focus."

With Nicholson's exit, state Democrats wasted little time in criticizing the rest of the GOP field.

Kevin Nicholson leaving the race only means that there is one less radical Republican in the gubernatorial primary," said Democratic Party of Wisconsin Rapid Response Director Hannah Menchhoff. "Nicholson exposed deep divisions among Wisconsin Republicans who only want to move further to the right. Both Rebecca Kleefisch and Tim Michels are extremist insiders who are more worried about pandering to the ultra-MAGA base instead of doing whats right for Wisconsinites."

In a statement, Kleefisch said: Id like to thank Kevin Nicholson for the hearty debate and competition to make our state and conservative movement better. Moving forward, I humbly ask Nicholsons supporters to join our team. Ive taken on the Madison swamp before and won, and this fall, I will beat Tony Evers.

Journal Sentinel columnist Daniel Bice contributed to this article.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Kevin Nicholson drops out of Republican race for Wisconsin governor
Wimbledon quarter-finalist Nick Kyrgios is set to appear in court in Australia next month in relation to a charge of common assault.

The world number 40, who is due to play in the last eight of the mens singles on Wednesday, will appear at the Australia Capital Territory (ACT) Magistrates Court at 9.30am on August 2, according to court listings.

A police statement said: ACT Policing can confirm a 27-year-old Watson man is scheduled to face the ACT Magistrates Court on August 2 in relation to one charge of common assault following an incident in December 2021.

Nick Kyrgios has reached the Wimbledon last eight (Zac Goodwin/PA)

His barrister Jason Moffett told The Canberra Times in Australia the charge was in the context of a domestic relationship.

He said: The nature of the allegation is serious, and Mr Kyrgios takes the allegation very seriously.

Given the matter is before the court  he doesnt have a comment at this stage, but in the fullness of time well issue a media release.

In a statement released later on Tuesday, his lawyer Pierre Johannessen said: At the present time, the allegations are not considered as fact by the court, and Mr Kyrgios is not considered charged with an offence until the first appearance.

Nick Kyrgios is being filmed by a camera crew at Wimbledon (Adam Davy/PA)

Until the court formally accepts the prosecution will be proceeding with a charge, and that the charge before the court is to be applied to the person summoned to appear, it may be misleading to the public to describe the summons in any other manner than a formal direction to appear to face allegations, the precise nature of which is neither certain at this moment nor confirmed by either the prosecution or Mr Kyrgios.

While Mr Kyrgios is committed to addressing any and all allegations once clear, taking the matter seriously does not warrant any misreading of the process Mr Kyrgios is required to follow.

Kyrgios remained tight lipped as he left the practice courts at the All England Club on Tuesday afternoon.

He will face world number 43 Cristian Garin for a place in the Wimbledon semi-finals on Wednesday, with their match scheduled second on Court One.

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Nick Kyrgios during a practice session at Wimbledon on Tuesday (Adam Davy/PA)

The Australian has matched his best performance at SW19 by reaching the last eight.

But he has been mired in controversy and has been fined twice for his conduct at the tournament.

The 27-year-old received a 10,000 US dollar (8,260) punishment after he admitted to spitting in the direction of a spectator who had heckled him during the first-round tie against Paul Jubb, and a 4,000 dollars (3,300) fine for swearing during Saturdays fiery clash with fourth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas.

Kyrgios, who has regularly clashed with line judges at this grand slam, also broke the strict dress code at Wimbledon when he wore red Air Jordan trainers and a red cap for an on-court interview following his most recent victory over American Brandon Nakashima.
WASHINGTON  Back in the spring of 1982, a group of three conservative students put on a conference at Yale University with a simple mission: They wanted to offer a counterweight to what they saw as a saturation of liberal thinking at the nation's leading law schools.

Their timing was fortunate: Less than two years after Ronald Reagan ascended to the presidency, conservativism was having a national moment, and the students' effort to capitalize on that political success to fuel a movement in legal circles spread from campus to campus.

"As a conservative, you kind of felt like you were on an island," said David McIntosh, a former Republican congressman from Indiana and one of the co-founders of what became the Federalist Society. "One of the things that happened was when we put up a little bulletin and said, 'Hey, we're forming a conservative law student group, come have pizza with us,' 10 people would show up who didn't really know each other  didn't know there were other conservatives  and became friends."

Four decades later, the Supreme Court wrapped up a historic term that turned out to be a triumph for the conservative legal movement, including the Federalist Society. The nation's highest court ended the constitutional right to abortion it established in 1973 in Roe v. Wade, made it easier for Americans to carry guns and redrew the boundary separating church and state.

Abortion, guns, religion: Supreme Court ends historic term with big shift to the right

Chief: Roberts wanted to go slow curbing Roe v. Wade. His colleagues were in a hurry.

The rulings, though divisive and criticized on the left, followed a decadeslong push by the Federalist Society, which is today a powerful network of nearly 70,000 attorneys, to promote originalism, the idea of interpreting the Constitution as the framers would have understood it. The decisions were the result of a strategic effort by Republican presidential administrations to vet and promote judges with conservative ideologies.

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Democrats have balked for years at what they view as the Federalist Society's undue influence on a court that's supposed to be above partisan politics. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., sought to tie the group to others that air television ads supporting or opposing Supreme Court nominees. He pointed to the role the Federalist Society played in helping President Donald Trump select justices for the high court.

Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump's pick for the Supreme Court, is sworn in as an associate justice Oct. 8, 2018.

"The right-wing goal has been to control the court, to achieve policy gains against the will of the American public," Whitehouse said in a statement after the court overturned Roe v. Wade. "This decision is exactly the kind of deliverable they had in mind when they packed the court with Federalist-Society-chosen justices."

Conservatives had grown disillusioned with GOP-nominated associate justices on the court such as John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David Souter and Anthony Kennedy who turned out to be more swing votes than stalwart conservatives. Many have expressed similar misgivings about Chief Justice John Roberts, who broke from his fellow conservative justices in the abortion decision June 24 by declining to support their decision to overturn Roe.

When Trump vowed in the 2016 election to name justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn the landmark Roe decision, it made sense that he turned to Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society's co-chairman, to help build a list of candidates. Trump used that list to court evangelical voters and wound up nominating three justices: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

All three, along with Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, who was nominated by President George H.W. Bush, and Samuel Alito, one of President George W. Bush's nominees, voted to overturn Roe.

Leo declined a request for an interview.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was a strong proponent of originalism, a strict legal interpretation of the Constitution.

Edwin Meese, Reagan's second attorney general, said the purpose of the Federalist Society was never to overturn Roe v. Wade or to help presidents select jurists.

"The Federalist Society was aimed at getting us back to the Constitution," Meese said, "and the actual use of the Constitution for deciding cases as opposed to the way in which it had drifted under a number of courts and chief justices since about the 1950s."

It was about promoting a legal philosophy  originalism  that Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett ruled was inconsistent with Roe. One of the keynote speakers at the Yale conference in 1982 was Robert Bork, then a judge on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, who years earlier had written a seminal law review article elevating originalism.

Bork, according to a New York Times story, criticized the Supreme Court at the conference for an effort to ''nationalize morality.'' Bork told the conference that some issues were better left to the states, including abortion  an argument that Alito stressed throughout the court's blockbuster opinion.

"The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each state from regulating or prohibiting abortion," Alito wrote, and the court would "return that authority to the people and their elected representatives."

Reagan nominated Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987, but in a high-stakes fight conservatives still blame for politicizing the confirmation process, he was rejected by Senate Democrats. Another attendee of the Yale conference, Antonin Scalia, fared better. The former University of Chicago law professor was confirmed to the Supreme Court unanimously in 1986 and became its most outspoken originalist.

In his opinion upholding Mississippi's ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, Alito relied heavily on originalism. Alito called attention to the fact that the word "abortion" doesn't appear in the Constitution. He asserted the nation didn't understand abortion to be a protected right when the 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, noting that three-quarters of states had made the procedure a crime at any stage of pregnancy.

Graphic: Five crucial sections in the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade

Thomas made a similar historical assessment a day earlier in a decision last month invalidating a New York law that required residents to have a special reason to obtain a license to carry a handgun. Writing for a 6-3 majority, Thomas said judges shouldn't consider what a government says is the benefit of a gun law and instead focus on the text of the Constitution and whether there are antecedents for the challenged gun law.

Of course, history itself is often debatable  and even conservatives on the Supreme Court don't always agree on what result an original approach should yield. Sometimes, it's not clear what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Often there was a diversity of opinion at the nation's founding. That's part of the reason why the liberal justices on the Supreme Court reject originalism.

First Black woman: What to know about Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

"The framers ... understood that the world changes," the court's liberals wrote in dissent in the Mississippi abortion case. "So they did not define rights by reference to the specific practices existing at the time. Instead, the framers defined rights in general terms, to permit future evolution in their scope and meaning."

Police barriers protect the Supreme Court in the wake of controversial decisions in the 2022 term.

Amanda Hollis-Brusky, a political scientist at Pomona College, said the Federalist Society and the conservative legal movement are best understood in the context of which party held the White House. It was the Reagan administration where many of the group's early members, including some who sit on the Supreme Court today, started their careers. By the time President George W. Bush came to power in 2000, originalism had "grown up," she said, and could be deployed.

"It wasn't long before the (Federalist Society) founders were connected with conservative elites and folks working in the Reagan administration," said Hollis-Brusky, author of "Ideas With Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution." The group's founders, she said, learned "that in order for their ideas to have consequences, they really needed to gain access to the levers of power."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade was decades in the making
COPENHAGEN, Denmark  Scandinavian Airlines on Tuesday filed for bankruptcy in the United States, warning a walkout by 1,000 pilots a day earlier had put the future of the carrier at risk.

The move adds to the likelihood of travel chaos across Europe as the summer vacation period begins. SAS canceled hundreds of flights Tuesday, including services to New York (Newark) and Chicago.

The Stockholm-based SAS airline group said it had "voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 in the U.S., a legal process for financial restructuring conducted under U.S. federal court supervision."

Filing for Chapter 11 in New York puts civil litigation on hold while the business reorganizes its finances.

Traveling to Europe this summer?: 'Prepare for the worst.'

SAS said that its operations and flight schedule will be unaffected by the announcement, but the pilot's strike, which is behind most of Tuesday's cancellations, is also a factor behind the bankruptcy filing, according to SAS CEO Anko van der Werff. "I think we have been very clear that this could happen," he said.

FILE - SAS planes are grounded at Oslo Gardermoen airport during pilots strikes, in Oslo, Friday, April 26, 2019.

"The important thing is that this is about bankruptcy protection, it is not about a bankruptcy, but it is about financial reconstruction," van der Werff said.

The carrier said it is "in well advanced discussions with a number of potential lenders ... to support its operations throughout this court-supervised process."

A rescue plan presented in February was aimed at securing long-term competitiveness. SAS shares dropped more than 9% to 0.56 kronor ($0.05) on Tuesday.

Advice for travelers: What to do if your flight gets canceled

The pilots reacted strongly to the news of the Chapter 11 filing. Roger Klokset, head of the SAS pilots union, said the group "had stretched negotiations and mediation from November last year until the day before the application, without ever having the intention of entering into an agreement with the SAS pilots."

Story continues below.

The pilots in Denmark, Sweden and Norway walked out on Monday, citing inadequate pay and working conditions and expressing dissatisfaction with the decision by the carrier to hire new pilots to fill vacancies at its subsidiary airlines, SAS Link and SAS Connect, rather than rehire former pilots who were laid off due to the pandemic.

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Van der Werff said the strike was "devastating for SAS and puts the company's future together with the jobs of thousands of colleagues at stake."

By 3:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, more than 75% of SAS' flights had been canceled according to FlightAware, which track flight information in real-time. Flights operated by SAS Link, SAS Connect and SAS' external partners are not affected.

The airline is part-owned by the governments of Sweden and Denmark. In 2018, Norway sold its stake but holds debt in the airline, and has said it might be willing to convert that into equity.

"Right now, it is difficult to assess the significance of the Chapter 11 request for duration of the pilot strike," chief analyst Jacob Pedersen of Denmark's Sydbank said. However, "it's doubtful whether it will bring (the pilots) back to the negotiating table."

The move by SAS was "not surprising" but came "faster than we expected," Pedersen said in an analysis. "Although SAS is now under bankruptcy protection, it is not a beach holiday for the company."

The SAS strike isn't the only issue on the horizon for European travelers through the end of this summer. Refueling staff at London's Heathrow Airport announced they, too, would strike for 72 hours beginning on July 21.

Contributing: Jari Tanner, AP; Zach Wichter, USA TODAY

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Scandinavian Airlines pilots strike causes 200+ flight cancellations
The State Department on Tuesday tapped nuclear arms and sanctions expert Richard Nephew as its new coordinator combating corruption on the global stage.

The announcement, released via a statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken to mark global anti-corruption day, serves to elevate the fight against corruption across all aspects of U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance.

Creating and filling this position demonstrates the importance the United States places on anti-corruption as a core national security interest and reiterates the central role global partnerships play in this fight, Blinken said.

The role was created ahead of the 2021 White House Summit for Democracy where President Joe Biden sounded the alarm on a global democratic decline.

Democracy doesnt happen by accident, the president said in a statement at the Summit. We have to renew it with each generation. And this is an urgent matter on all our parts, in my view. Because the data were seeing is largely pointing in the wrong direction.

Nephews position marks a return to the State Department, where he previously worked as a deputy special envoy for Iran and as principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy.
Citrus and Beet Aguachile

Photo by Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Margaret Monroe Dickey / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen

I can viscerally remember the first aguachile that I ate. Let me set the scene. There I am, in Tijuana, crawling age, clinging to the edges of the coffee table as I wobble toward my dad's botana (snack): an aguachile of dried shrimp soaked in his concoction of lime juice, habanero, and sea salt, garnished with cucumbers and julienned red onion. From my father, I inherited my hunger for flavors so exciting that they make me dance. He also happens to be the source of my dark sense of humor, and as I advanced on the dish, he didn't pull it away. I snuck a shrimp.

It was an introduction to acid and salt like I had never experienced. I proceeded to cry and pull on my pigtails "as if they were on fire!" my mother recalls, laughing so hard tears fill her eyes. Two minutes later, I rebounded and went back for more. A craving for the big flavors of aguachiles became a recurring memory throughout my youth and a huge part of my career as a chef (minus the pigtails).

Aguachile translates to "chile water." The dish originally comes from Sinaloa's Sierra Madre Occidental mountains, where ranching was the local trade, and was made with machaca (dried beef floss) that was rehydrated in water and given a kick by tiny, round, potent wild chiltepin chiles. Like every dish across the globe, aguachiles migrated, heading to other parts of Mexico and beyond. In Tijuana, where I spent most of my time growing up, aguachiles consist of shrimp barely dressed in a lime sauce with chiltepines, always garnished with red onions, sea salt, and cucumber slices.

I started experimenting with aguachiles in 2015 at chef Javier Plascencia's celebrated restaurant Bracero Cocina de Raiz in San Diego. Cocina de raiz means "kitchen from our roots," but we were expected to think outside the parameters of the cooking we had been taught or had grown up with. That's where I started to approach cooking as a conversation between the ingredients and myself. And that's where I first started experimenting with aguachilesI came up with a version that used thinly shaved carrot as the star. Anything can be an aguachile if you take creative freedom with it.

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To honor the roots of the dish, I always stay true to the basic tenets of aguachilethe fundamentals of salt, acid, heat, and a little bit of sugar. The acid might come from lime, lemon, or orange. The heat might be from chiltepin, habanero, or serrano chiles. Salinity I might draw from sea salt, soy, or miso. And there must be a star of the dish, which might be tender scallops, or rib eye, or beets. I always think about which components contain sweetness, such as the natural sweetness of shrimp or scallops. Sweetness is key to the dish's addictive quality; it helps balance the fiery sensation that the capsaicin in the chiles creates, and it keeps you going back for more. There should also be cooling elements, like cucumbers, young coconut meat, or cilantro. It's important to use the best ingredients. If you don't have good ingredients, you can't understand the potential of the flavors locked inside them. Dried chiles, for instance, should not crack in your hand; they should have a leathery, chewy, almost candied texture, like fruit leather.

The more I understood each ingredient's job, the more my creativity soared. When I go into the walk-in and look at ingredients, I think: What has juice in it? What has water in it? What's the sugar content? If an ingredient is sweet, like a carrot, I need to balance it with acidity, salt, and heat. If I want to do a green aguachile with zucchini and chard, which are full of chlorophyll, I think about what else those ingredients need so that the result won't taste like taking a bite out of a farmers-market box. Once I have the flavors down, I might look to add crunch; I look for ways to balance textures and temperature. The heat in aguachiles comes only from the chile, like chiltepin or pasilla Mixe, which also has a smoky flavor. Oh, we've got a new player nowwe have smoke coming in! It's really like composing a song.

I hope these aguachiles inspire you to experiment. I also hope they help show you that Mexico is not exactly what you think it is. Mexico is not even what I think it is. There aren't enough words in the dictionary to define a country that has seen so much ugliness throughout its history and has resulted in so much beauty on the table. Our food is sacred to us, and we take so much pride in it. It embodies the mysticism of millennia, of people and plants and animals working in perfect harmony. The chile in aguachile shouldn't hurt. It shouldn't cause you indigestion. To us, habaneros are fruity and sweet with floral notes. They're hot, yes. But they have been selectively bred to be hotter. They aren't naturally so hot. If you have habaneros in the Yucatan, they're green and they're delicious and they have spice, but they're more floral than spicy. I want to teach people to befriend chiles and to befriend fruits and vegetables and to think of their potential outside of cooking them until they're unrecognizable.

I live in a huge world with a big pantry. In northern Mexico, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ingredients are at our disposal because people from those countries were in Tijuana. Mexico is a complex melting pot of people, where the story stops being about why we're so different and starts being about why we're so similar. Chinese laborers built the city of Tijuana; Japanese immigrants established the entire seafood industry in Ensenada. These are the stories that inspire me and give me permission to work with ponzu (for example, in my grilled rib eye aguachile) or to work with kombu.

In the recipes here, I share a few more ideas to get your curiosity going. Each illustrates the versatility of aguachiles, and whichever one you choose, I guarantee you will land on some of the best, boldest, and most exciting flavors you didn't know were possible. Provecho!

Coconut water, celery, ginger, and chiles come together to flavor the base of this delicate aguachile, while toppings of pine- apple, cucumber, and avocado help cool it down. Zepeda makes homemade coconut chips by shaving and toasting fresh coco- nut, but we've substituted readily avail- able store-bought coconut chips.

Shrimp, Coconut and Avocado Aguachile

Thin strips of carrot and cucumber, salty smoked roe, and roasted cashews give this aguachile deep layers of flavor and complex textures. For a vegan alternative, replace the trout roe with 1 bunch of roasted or grilled carrots.

Carrot and Trout Roe Aguachile

In this satisfying aguachile, slices of steak in ponzu sauce are topped with fresh tomatillos, onion, cucumber, and a cilantro salad that balances the meat's richness. If you can't find a precut 28-ounce rib eye, ask your butcher to cut one.

Grilled Rib Eye and Ponzu Aguachile

The purple beet juice broth for this aguachile is bright and a little spicy, with funkiness from black garlic and balancing sweetness from fresh orange juice.

Citrus and Beet Aguachile

Cooking strawberries in a double boiler gently releases their sweetness, creating

a juice with vibrant color and flavor. When mixed with scallions, cucumber, anise- scented hoja santa, and citrus juices, it creates the perfect base for a strawberry and radish aguachile.
Brittney Griner has been detained in Russia since February. Charlie Neibergall/AP

WNBA star Brittney Griner wrote a letter to Biden urging him to help get her released from Russia.

Griner has been detained since February, when she was accused of carrying vapes with hashish oil.

"I voted for the first time in 2020 and I voted for you," she wrote to Biden. "I believe in you."

The WNBA star Brittney Griner, who has been held in Russia since February, on Monday made a direct appeal to President Joe Biden for his help in freeing her and other Americans who've been detained while abroad in a handwritten letter delivered to the White House.

Griner's representatives released excerpts of the letter, in which the professional basketball player said she was "terrified" she might never leave Russia.

"As I sit here in a Russian prison, alone with my thoughts and without the protection of my wife, family, friends, Olympic jersey, or any accomplishments, I'm terrified I might be here forever," the Phoenix Mercury player wrote.

"On the 4th of July, our family normally honors the service of those who fought for our freedom including my father who is a Vietnam War Veteran. It hurts thinking about how I usually celebrate this day because freedom means something completely different to me this year," she added.

Griner, 31, has been held in Russia since mid-February, when officials alleged that they had discovered vape cartridges with hashish oil in her luggage while she was traveling through Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.

She was in the country to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg, the Russian professional women's team where she spends the WNBA off-season.

Just days after Griner's arrest, Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, which has cratered diplomatic relations with the United States and other Western countries, with Biden and other world leaders enacting a raft a sanctions against Moscow.

Griner's trial began on Friday. She faces up to ten years in prison.

In her letter, the player told Biden that she voted for him in the 2020 presidential election and asked that he also work to help free other individuals detained in foreign countries.

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"I realize you are dealing with so much, but please don't forget about me and the other American detainees. Please do all you can to bring us home. I voted for the first time in 2020 and I voted for you. I believe in you. I still have so much good to do with my freedom that you can help restore," she wrote.

"I miss my wife! I miss my family! I miss my teammates! It kills me to know they are suffering so much right now. I am grateful for whatever you can do at this moment to get me home," she added.

Last week, Griner's wife, Cherelle Griner, told CNN that the basketball player has been forced into a small cage for hours each time she has to travel for court appearances.

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for President Vladimir Putin, said late last month that Griner was not being held "hostage," but offered no timeline on her potential release.

"She violated Russian law, and now she's being prosecuted," he told NBC News. "It's not about being a hostage. There are lots of American citizens here. They're enjoying their freedoms  but you have to obey the laws."

Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said in a statement on Monday that the government was working to secure Griner's freedom.

Read the original article on Business Insider
The Supreme Courts 6-3 decision on Thursday to severely limit the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to combat greenhouse gas emissions is devastating at a time when climate change endangers the planet.

The decision also poses a broad and serious threat to the power of federal agencies to adopt regulations to protect public health and safety in other fields. By this ruling, the courts conservatives have opened the door to challenges to countless other regulations.

The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, applied the major questions doctrine (a legal analysis used to determine if a federal agency has exceeded its authority) in a way that would strike down any regulation that has significant effects on the economy unless the government agency can point to clear congressional authorization for the power it claims. This interpretation of the doctrine would give businesses a new way to attack other sensible regulations, even if they have been in place for years.

This case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, involves the authority of the EPA to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired and natural gas power plants. The Obama administration adopted an aggressive approach, known as the Clean Power Plan, to limit these emissions from coal-fired power plants, which are a major source of the pollution responsible for climate change. The Trump administration rescinded that plan and adopted its own Affordable Clean Energy Plan, which was far more permissive in allowing pollution.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Trump administration failed to follow proper procedures in rescinding the Obama-era plan and in enacting its own approach. West Virginia and several coal companies appealed to the Supreme Court for review.

Under basic and well-established legal principles, the justices should have dismissed this case. The EPA has stated that it does not intend to revive either the Obama or the Trump plans. The Biden administration has said that it will announce its own, new approach. Given that there is no regulation to be enforced, there is no reason to have ruled on this case.

Of course, the conservative majority wasnt concerned about hewing to the basic rules of adjudicating cases. Instead, it was intent on using this case to declare that the EPA had no ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants because Congress had not been sufficiently specific in granting this power in the Clean Air Act.

It ignores the explicit statutory power of the EPA under the Clean Air Act to regulate power plants and to adopt regulations to deal with air pollution. It relies on the amorphous idea that Congress must be more specific in granting authority when there is a major question, but the court has never defined major question or what is sufficiently specific authorization to meet this requirement.

Instead, every industry and corporation unhappy with a regulation that might cut into its profits can now sue the government on the grounds that Congress did not provide specific authority for the rule. The courts anti-regulatory approach rejects this reality: The smooth functioning of government requires that Congress be able to delegate to agencies broad authority to deal with urgent issues  such as climate change and a pandemic  without amending laws at every instance.

The decision reflects an aspect of the Roberts court that has not gotten as much attention as it has overturned precedents on abortion, guns and religion. This is a court that is profoundly pro-business, even in the face of clear threats to public health and safety.

At a time when the planet is in peril from greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, the conservative justices using their power to block government action will have huge long-term effects. As Justice Elena Kagan said in her dissent, The Court appoints itself  instead of Congress or the expert agency  the decisionmaker on climate policy. Yet she notes, Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change.

The courts hubris and its decision to give businesses a way to challenge every sort of federal regulatory power will do this nation great damage.
1. v. 53 - adjourned for now (Kieres, 250 million - 1.5 billion)

2. Care allowance adjourned (Muszynski) until February 19 (about 5 billion)

3. Transmission easement adjourned for now (Muszynski) (several billion)

Number 2 is reportedly already being handled by Tomek Fill, so I will cooperate with him on that. Micha".

REKLAMA

The short note is of great importance because it shows the total collapse of the rule of law in Poland. In essence, the leaked email confirms that the Prime Ministers Chief of Staff, Micha Dworczyk, met with the head of the Constitutional Tribunal, Julia Przyebska, and agreed with her that the Court would not deal with matters that are of considerable significance to the public but impose heavy financial burdens on the state budget. It is even more striking considering that parliamentary elections were scheduled to take place in the fall of that year, and PiS needed the money to persuade voters, by promising them, for instance, higher pensions.

To date, the Constitutional Tribunal handed down its decision only in case No. 1, as it was handled by Leon Kieres- the last remaining judge appointed prior to PiS judicial overhaul. The other two cases are still waiting to be decided by the group led by Julia P., because the Law and Justice government would prefer not to spend billions of zlotys from the state budget given the pandemic-induced economic crisis, and the Russian aggression against Ukraine.

The leaked email proves the illegal actions of Julia P., as Mr. Dworczyk refers to the allegedly independent head of the Constitutional Tribunal, such as appointing a biased adjudicating panel to ensure a favorable verdict. But the email is also the first tangible evidence showing that the Tribunal is fully controlled by the ruling camp. The Prime Ministers Chief of Staff himself admits it.

REKLAMA

These are the standards found in Belarus or Russia, not in a law-abiding EU member state.

Interestingly, Dworczyk's email was sent nearly four months before "Wyborcza" published an article that described the close personal ties between Julia Przyebska, the head of Polands ruling Law and Justice party Jarosaw Kaczynski, and Prime Minister Morawiecki.

At this point, it should also be mentioned that, as Radio TOK FM has learned just yesterday, the Polish government will not execute the European Court of Human Rights ruling and pay reparations to the two judges who won against the Polish state. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained that the basis for this step, which is completely unprecedented, is the judgment handed down by the politically-controlled Constitutional Tribunal, which declared one of the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights incompatible with the Polish Constitution.

REKLAMA

It is no surprise then that the provision challenged by the compromised Constitutional Tribunal concerned Article 6 of the Convention, which guarantees everyone the right to a fair trial by an independent and impartial court established in accordance with the law.

In doing so, the ruling camp is following the playbook of Putins regime, as it has done the same with the Strasbourg Court's rulings.

To read more about Mr. Dworczyks hack-and-leak scandal please see the following link .

***

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 Russian invasion in Ukraine. Our journalists are on the front lines in 32 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.
As armed Pakistani and Afghan migrants clashed in the woods within a mile of the Hungary-Serbia border, both nationwide pro-government dailies deplore the lack of international attention to what they call the problem of clandestine mass migration.

One man was killed and seven wounded on Saturday night when two groups of young undocumented migrants clashed in the forest north of Subotica where they had been camping for some time, waiting for a chance to cross into the European Union.



In Magyar Nemzet, Levente Sitkei calls the continuing flow of clandestine migrants along the Balkan route an invisible war. He lambasts western leaders for neglecting the problem for the past seven years, and initially even blaming Hungary for building a fence along its southern border to keep clandestine migrants out of the European Union.



Serbia and Hungary, Sitkei writes, are defending the rest of Europe  and expect no gratitude for what they are doing.

Magyar Hirlaps Mariann Ory calls attention to the difference between Ukrainian refugees, almost exclusively women and children, for whom Hungary is the first secure country  and those mainly young males, who have crossed several secure countries before reaching Hungary. She quotes the Hungarian authorities who claim to have stopped or returned 100 thousand migrants who tried to cross into Hungary illegally over the first six months of the year.



This opinion does not necessarily represent the views of XpatLoop.com or the publisher.

Your opinions are welcome too - for editorial review before possible publication online.

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YORK -- A motorcyclist who wrecked a motorcycle on Interstate 80 and hid from law enforcement has been sentenced in a case involving possession of a controlled substance, obstructing a police officer and second degree criminal trespassing.

Christopher Gray, 42, of Monticello, Iowa (also with an address in Minnesota) appeared for sentencing this past week in York County District Court.

This case began when York County Emergency Communications received a report that a white Honda motorcycle had gone off the road and into a ditch along Interstate 80 near mile marker 352 (one mile west of York).

Deputies arrived on scene, along with members of the York Fire Department.

Upon arrival, the motorcycle was located and the driver was nowhere to be seen, court documents indicate. This motorcycle was registered to Christopher Gray.

There were also two backpacks on either side of the motorcycle. In one, deputies found a bank card belonging to Gray along with a small glass jar with a white crystal substance (which was found to be methamphetamine), a broken glass pipe with burned methamphetamine residue inside and a used hypodermic needle.

EMTs and deputies located foot tracks through the weeds, over the barbed wire fence and into the adjacent cornfield. Due to the unknown state of the driver of the motorcycle, canine handlers from the Nebraska State patrol were contacted to assist in tracking the driver. Shortly after they arrived, a trooper had verbal contact with a man a few yards into the cornfield.

The trooper gave Gray several opportunities to come out of the cornfield, but he refused and yelled back that he was hurt or he could not move. After about 45 minutes, a service dog was sent into the cornfield and Gray was located. He was placed in handcuffs and was able to walk out of the cornfield on his own.

He was taken to York General Hospital for assessment and admitted he is a methamphetamine user and no longer uses intravenously because his veins are so small due to heavy drug use he now smokes it.

Gray has an extensive criminal history including multiple charges and convictions of crimes related to the possession of controlled substances and assaults on law enforcement officers.

Regarding this case, he was sentenced to three years of traditional probation with three future stints in jail that can be waived by the court, for possession of a controlled substance. The charges of obstruction of a police officer and criminal trespassing were dismissed as part of a plea bargain.
YORK  Autumn Johnson, 28, of Fairbury, has been sentenced to probation after taking methamphetamine into the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women in York.

Johnson was transported to the prison as a county safe keeper from Nuckolls County. She was transferred there by the Nuckolls County Sheriffs Department. While searching the contents of Johnsons property for inventory purposes, a corporal opened a pill bottle and found methamphetamine, according to court documents.

The corporal says in the affidavit for the court that Johnson came directly from the Jefferson County Jail where she was being housed for Nuckolls County. It was again noted that she was being housed at the prison as a safekeeper (being housed elsewhere due to jail space constraints) and she was not a convicted prison inmate.

Johnson was charged with possession of a controlled substance, a Class 4 felony, which was later amended to attempted possession, a Class 1 misdemeanor, as part of a plea agreement. She pleaded not guilty to the amended charge.

This past week, in York County District Court, she was sentenced to two years of traditional probation. She was also sentenced to two 30-day stints and one 26-day stint in jail, to be served in the future, which can be waived by the court if she is found to be compliant with the terms of her probation.
YORK  Ryan Lambert, 30, of York, has again been charged with child pornography felonies.

He was earlier convicted of the same in York County and sent to prison twice.

Now he is facing five counts of possession of child pornography, all Class 1C felonies that carry a possible maximum sentence of 5-50 years in prison.

According to the affidavit filed with the court by an investigator with the Nebraska State Patrol, the NSP received a cybertip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regarding the downloading of five videos in which children were the victims of sexual assault.

An internet provider was subpoenaed in order to identify the subscriber of the address to which the videos were provided.

It was found that the subscriber was in York and Ryan Lambert was a resident in that persons home. It was also noted that Lambert is currently on the Nebraska Sex Offender Registry because of prior offenses of possession of child pornography. The first conviction was in 2016 and the second conviction was while he was still in prison while on work release in 2019.

The investigator, according to court documents, went to the address where Lambert was staying and spoke with him. The investigator says Lambert admitted to creating the Dropbox account and it was named after his former cellmate from prison. He also handed the investigator his cell phone, as well as gave written consent for his phone to have data extraction.

Lambert appeared for arraignment in York County District Court this past week, during which he pleaded not guilty to all five felonies.

A jury trial has been scheduled for late October.
Honda Cars India is extending great deals on its model line-up for July. The company currently sells a total of 5 products in the Indian market, namely Jazz, Amaze, WR-V, City 5th-gen, and City 4th-gen. The company is also considering launching a new mid-size SUV in the Indian market that could go against the likes of Hyundai Creta, Kia Seltos and more. For now, Honda is trying to post big numbers on the sales tally with the help of exciting deals that it has up its sleeves to lure buyers. Deals of up to Rs 27,000 are applicable on purchasing a Honda car this month. So, read on to get finer details.

Honda City 5th-gen discounts

The 5th-gen avatar of the Honda City remains the best-seller in its segment. The sedan is loved for the way it looks and the super-refined petrol engine it comes with. This month, the C-segmenter is available with total benefits of up to Rs 27,396. The deal includes a cash discount of Rs 5,000, which is swappable with free accessories worth Rs 5,396. Moreover, an exchange bonus of Rs 5,000 is applicable, along with a customer loyalty bonus and corporate benefit of Rs 5,000 each. Furthermore, a Honda car exchange discount of Rs 7,000 can also be availed.

Also read: New Mahindra Scorpio-N Sports Edition rendered as hawt-looking SUV, gets 20-inch rims - Check images

Honda Amaze discounts

The Honda Amaze is one of the best-selling models in its segment. The sedan is offered with the option of a CVT gearbox with the diesel engine, and this option makes it one of the smoothest diesel-automatic sedans in the country. The Amaze is currently available with discounts of Rs 8,000, which comprises customer loyalty bonus of Rs 5,000 and corporate discount of Rs 3,000.

Honda City 4th-gen discounts

The 4th-gen Honda City is also on sale with some deals. The sedan can be bought with a customer loyalty bonus of Rs 5,000. Unlike the 5th-gen model, the 4th-gen Honda City can also be had with the 1.5L NA petrol motor.

Honda Jazz discounts

The premium hatchback of the Japanese carmaker is currently on sale with a starting price of Rs 7.90 lakh, ex-showroom. The hatchback can be bought this month with benefits of Rs 25,000. The deal comprises a Honda car exchange bonus worth Rs 10 000, a loyalty bonus of Rs 5,000, exchange benefit of Rs 7,000, and corporate benefit of Rs 3,000.

Also read: Indian Railways to change terminals for THESE trains from July 10, check list here

Honda WR-V discounts

The cross-hatchback can be purchased with total discounts of Rs 27,000. The deal comprises a discount on car exchange worth Rs 10 000, along with a Rs 5,000 customer loyalty bonus, Rs 7,000 car exchange bonus, and a Rs 5,000 corporate discount.

Note - For further details and exact pricing, reach out to your nearest Honda dealership.

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The government has become very active regarding traffic violations and has been taking due action against the ones breaking the rules. CCTV cameras are supporting the action of the government on the streets. These cameras have become a problem for drivers on Indian roads. However, the violators have found a way to deal with these cameras. In one such attempt, a Yamaha MT15 owner from Kerala had 'Loading...' written on his number plate instead of his registration number.

To be specific, the incident took place in Kanhagad in the Kasargod district of Kerala. Based on Mathrubhumi's report, the MT15 owner was stopped by cops during a routine check in the Naya Bazaar area of the district. The owner of the bike is a 21-year-old named J.P. Jaabir, who covered the number plate so the surveillance cameras would not be able to detect his registration plate.

There have been multiple such incidents where the owners of the vehicles have covered their number plates to escape the cameras. Based on the reports, there have been several incidents where the vehicle owners escaped the police to avoid action against their covered number plates. Furthermore, some of the owners changed the numbers on their vehicles so that the police could not track the original owners of the vehicles.

Also read: TVS Ronin Scrambler to launch in India tomorrow: Things you need to know

The Kerala Police has taken action against Jaabir and impounded his Yamaha MT15 motorcycle. Taking further action, the police searched for the original owners of the motorcycle to find out that it was registered in Jaabir's mother's name. Later on, after the discovery, he was released on bail, although the bike was not released and is to be produced in the judicial magistrate court. However, reports do not put light on what charges have been pressed on the bike's owner.
SpiceJet SG-11 flight from Delhi to Dubai was diverted to Karachi (Pakistan) after developing a technical fault. The Boeing 737 Max aircraft that was heading from Delhi to Dubai started showing unusual fuel quantity reduction from its left tank when it was mid-air. Therefore, the plane was diverted to Karachi.

When an inspection was done at the Karachi airport, no visual leak was observed from the left tank, officials noted. "SpiceJet flight from Delhi to Dubai diverted to Karachi. Boeing 737's engine has developed a technical fault. The captain of the aircraft sought a precautionary landing and was given permission. All passengers on board are safe. The call sign of the aircraft is SG11," sources told ANI.

More than 150 passengers were present onboard the SpiceJet flight (Delhi-Dubai) that made an emergency landing in Karachi, Pakistan after developing a technical fault. pic.twitter.com/Cl126cUMxF  ANI (@ANI) July 5, 2022

According to the Karachi airport officials, the flight was diverted when it was on the way to Dubai."The plane landed in Karachi 0803 am (local time), 53 minutes after being airborne. It has been on-ground for the past four hours. Passengers are being looked after. The plane has been parked in the designated area where engineers are assessing the problem," Pakistan`s civil aviation authority (CAA) official said.

In a statement, SpiceJet said, "On July 5, 2022, SpiceJet B737 aircraft operating flight SG-11 (Delhi-Dubai) was diverted to Karachi due to an indicator light malfunctioning. The aircraft landed safely at Karachi and passengers were safely disembarked."

"No emergency was declared and the aircraft made a normal landing. There was no earlier report of any malfunction with the aircraft. Passengers have been served refreshments. A replacement aircraft is being sent to Karachi that will take the passengers to Dubai," it said.

Also read: Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed Akasa Air unveils flight crew uniform featuring sneakers, recycled materials

As per aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), its fuel indicator started malfunctioning. Within last 17 days, this is the sixth incident on SpiceJet aircraft and DGCA is investigating all the six incidents. A few days ago a Spicejet aircraft flying from Delhi to Jabalpur had to return to Delhi after the cabin crew and passengers on the plane noticed smoke coming out of the aircraft.

The incident occurred when the plane was 5,000 ft in the sky. Based on the report the plane safely returned back to the airport, upon return the passengers safely disembarked off the plane. Before this a SpiceJet flight had to make an emergency landing because it caught fire mid-air due to a birdstrike.

(With inputs from agencies)

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Due to significant rainfall along the coast, two flights that were arriving from Dubai and Dammam and were scheduled to land at Mangaluru International Airport (MIA) on Tuesday morning were diverted to Bengaluru. According to PTI, both planes arrived in Bengaluru before departing for Mangaluru. Originally scheduled to land in Mangaluru at 4.40 am, the flight from Dubai instead made a detour via Bengaluru and arrived at Mangaluru at 8.49 am.

The flight from Dammam was scheduled to land in Mangaluru at 5.05 am. However, it was diverted to Bengaluru and could land here only at 3.35 pm. The Bahrain-Kannur-Mangaluru plane will also be delayed, the sources said. It will land here at 11.40 pm instead of the scheduled time of 7.10 pm.

The Mangaluru to Dubai flight was also delayed. The flight which was scheduled to take off at 6.45 am could take off only at 4.30 pm on Tuesday.

Also read: SpiceJet plane lands in Mumbai after windshield cracks mid-air

With inputs from PTI
The Spicejet Q400 plane had to make an unplanned landing in Mumbai after the windshield of its aircraft cracked mid-air, as reported by PTI. The crack in the windshield was discovered at a height of 23,000 feet in the sky. The incident occurred with flight SG3324 going from Kandla to Mumbai. This is the second emergency landing of a Spicejet plane for the day. Earlier another Spicejet aircraft going from Dubai to Delhi had to make an emergency landing in Karachi, Pakistan because of a technical issue in the aircraft. To be specific the plane faced the problem of unusual fuel quantity reduction during its flight.

Moreover, this is at least the seventh incident of technical malfunction happening on SpiceJet aircraft in the last 17 days. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is investigating the two incidents which took place on Tuesday, along with the previous five incidents, the DGCA officials noted.

Officials said the Kandla-Mumbai flight of SpiceJet was at 23,000 feet altitude when the windshield's outer pane cracked. The pilots then conducted priority landing at the Mumbai airport, they said.

Also read: SpiceJet Delhi-Dubai flight makes emergency landing in Pakistan, develops technical fault

Reacting to the latest incident, SpiceJet said, "On 5th July 2022, SpiceJet Q400 aircraft was operating SG 3324 (Kandla - Mumbai). During cruise at FL230, P2 side windshield outer pane cracked. Pressurization was observed to be normal. The aircraft landed safely in Mumbai."

With inputs from PTI
New Delhi: The Income Tax (I-T) Department has conducted raids at the offices and residences of a leading Chhattisgarh-based coal trader and transporter in connection with the alleged tax evasion of several hundreds of crores. According to reports, the raids were conducted at multiple locations across Chhattisgarh since June 30.

During the raids, I-T officials have reportedly seized several documents and undisclosed cash worth crores and also unearthed tax evasion of a few hundreds of crores after they raided the Chhattisgarh-based group engaged in coal transportation and linked businesses.

The raids were conducted at the house of a Congress leader and a well-known businessman associated with the coal business in Raipur and Mahasamund, said sources. The raids were also conducted at the house of the transporter who has worked with him in Korba by the Income Tax Department sleuths. The house of this transporter is located near Meher Vatika in Old Basti Durpa Road.

During the raids at the house of the transporter, who is alleged to have transported coal from the mine to various places through his trucks, the Income Tax Department officials found several incriminating documents which they took for detailed examination.

During this operation, the Central Armed Forces Personnel were deployed outside the residence of the transporter. During the operation, no outsider was allowed inside the house and no member of the house was allowed to go out.

It is being alleged that a coal washery located in Kothari has been sold for Rs 100 crores. Also, land worth Rs 77 lakhs has been recently registered in the name of the coal transporter. Meanwhile, five separate registries in the name of the same person, worth Rs 23 crore, have also been detected by the I-T officials. The coal transporter also has another house in Bilaspur, which has also come under the I-T Departments scanner.

The residence of a senior state govt officer was also searched by tax sleuths in Bhilai town of Durg district, apart from that of some businessmen. The I-T department officials said the group made unaccounted cash payments of about Rs 45 crore in purchasing coal washeries.

During the search, a large number of property agreements have been found, which reveal huge undisclosed investments made in the acquisition of immovable properties that appear to be benami in nature.

The surprise I-T Department raids have shaken the bureaucratic set-up in Chhattisgarh.
New Delhi, July 5 (IANS) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) was conducting raids at 40 locations in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and in southern states, in connection with a prevention of money laundering case linked to Vivo and other Chinese firms.

Sources said the office of Vivo and the premises of a few other Chinese firms were being raided.

Vivo has not said anything as of now and the ED officials also have not come on record.

The CBI has also been probing the case and have lodged a separate FIR.

In April, the ED had said they seized Rs 5,551.27 crore of Xiaomi Technology India Private Limited lying in the bank accounts under the provisions of Foreign Exchange Management Act in connection with the illegal outward remittances made by the company.

The company had released a statement then saying, "We have studied the order from the government authorities carefully. We believe our royalty payments and statements to the bank are all legit and truthful. These royalty payments that Xiaomi India made were for the in-licensed technologies and IPs used in our Indian version products. It is a legitimate commercial arrangement for Xiaomi India to make such royalty payments. However, we are committed to working closely with government authorities to clarify any misunderstandings."

On March 3, the Income Tax Department had said that they conducted raids against the Chinese firms dealing in telecom products and learnt that the companies were involved in tax evasion through fake receipts.

The I-T department had detected suppression of income of Rs 400 crore at that time.

The raids were conducted in the second week of February across India and in the National Capital Region.

The searches had revealed that the Chinese firms had made inflated payments against the receipt of technical services from its related parties outside India. The assessee companies could not justify the genuineness of obtaining such alleged technical services in lieu of which payment had been made as also the basis of determination of consideration for the same.

The search action had further revealed that the various firms had manipulated its books of account to reduce the taxable income in India through creation of various provisions for expenses, such as provisions for obsolescence, provisions for warranty, doubtful debts and advances, etc., which have little or no financial rationale. During the investigation, the groups had failed to provide any substantial and appropriate justification for such claims.

The company had said that they were working with authorities to clarify all misunderstandings.
New Delhi: Gujarat and Karnataka have been ranked as the best performers in developing startup ecosystem for budding entrepreneurs, according to the ranking of states and Union territories by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).

Among smaller states having population of less than one crore, Meghalaya has been adjudged as the best performer.

The rankings are based on the initiatives taken to develop the startup ecosystem for promoting budding entrepreneurs.

For the third time in a row, Gujarat was ranked as the best performer.

The exercise is aimed at supporting states and Union territories (UTs) in developing their startup ecosystem and learning from each other's best practices.

A total of 24 states and 7 UTs participated in the exercise, which ranked them under five categories -- best performers, top performers, leaders, aspiring leaders and emerging startup ecosystems.

Four states of West Bengal, Sikkim, Haryana and Jharkhand and UT Lakshadweep did not participate in the exercise.

The states and UTs were also ranked under these five categories based on the population of less than one crore.

Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana and Jammu and Kashmir were categorised as the top performers.

Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, and Goa are in the leaders category.

States and UTs in the aspiring leaders' category include Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chandigarh, Puducherry and Nagaland.

According to the ranking, the emerging startup ecosystems category includes Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Mizoram and Ladakh.

They were evaluated across seven reform areas consisting of 26 action points, ranging from institutional support, fostering innovation, access to market, incubation and funding support.

DPIIT Secretary Anurag Jain said that the exercise plays a crucial role in easing the business environment for startups in the country.

The states' startup ranking 2021 was released by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal here.

Goyal suggested all the stakeholders to aspire for becoming the number one start-up ecosystem in the world from the third position at present.

"Can we look at some district-level competition also," he asked.

He also asked the states to share best practices and handhold each other in further improving the ecosystem.

The government, he said, has acted as a catalyst for startups rather than a controller through initiatives like Fund of Funds, Seed Fund Scheme, income tax exemption for three years and resolving the issue of Angel Tax.

On ONDC

(Open Network for Digital Commerce), the minister said that in the next five years the initiative would democratise the e-commerce sector.

"Rather than three companies becoming 100 billion or trillion-dollar companies, you will have a 1,000 companies each of a billion-dollar, that is what ONDC has the power to do," he said.

ONDC will not only help domestic retailers "survive the onslaught" of big e-commerce firms but grow their businesses, improve profitability and customer service and become job creators, Goyal added.

At the recently concluded ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva, Goyal said the members of the multi-lateral body managed to agree on prohibiting subsidies for fishermen engaged in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

Startups can come up with solutions for Indian fishermen in areas like providing them safety or GPS systems so that they do not enter the waters of Pakistan and Sri Lanka, he said.

Further, the minister announced the mentorship, advisory, assistance, resilience, and growth (MAARG) portal.

It is a tool for startups that can be accessed from every corner of the country to request and connect with a mentor.

Member of National Startup Advisory Council Manoj Kohli, Country Head, Softbank India, said that the portal is ready and "we will be onboarding mentors in the next few weeks".

The mentorship programme would help in areas like profitability of a business model, dealing with corporate governance issues, scalability, funding gaps, branding and reputation building.

"We need to have a lot of Indian funding availability along with international funding," Kohli said.

Commenting on the rankings, Fintech company IOUX co-founder Vineet K Sachdev said that presently startups are subjected to a large number of regulatory compliances of various departments like Income Tax, GST, Labour, Environment, and Banks, he said.

"IOUX plans to offer blockchain-based solutions to this cumbersome process to ease the compliance burden of startups. Through the blockchain based process, all concerned departments like taxation, banks, and non-banking financial companies will be allowed to verify documents with proper e-KYC and digital signatures for recording regulatory compliances," Sachdev added.
New Delhi: Being a public servant or a graduate from a prestigious institute used to be regarded as social currency in the matrimonial market, but it appears that this is no longer the case. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT, recently remarked that the most-searched phrase on Shaadi.com is not IAS or IPS officer, as one might anticipate. Instead, startup founder now tops the list of popular keywords on the matrimonial platform.

The minister made the remark while speaking at Digital India Week. Rajeev Chandrasekhar claimed that "startup employee" and "startup founders" are currently the most searched-for keywords on Shaadi.com, according to credible sources. Read More: ED raids 40 locations linked to Vivo, other Chinese firms in money laundering case

"Let me conclude by sharing something that someone recently informed me," Chandrasekhar stated in his closing remarks at Digital India Week. "I'm reliably told on Shaadi.com  reliably told by someone else  that the keyword that is now most frequently looked for is not IAS, not IPS, not Tata firm or Birla company, but startup employee or startup founder." Read More: Indias unemployment rate in June lowest in last one year, reveals CMIE data

It's unclear whether the minister was kidding or speaking seriously, though his response to the post on Twitter suggests the former.

"Just for laughs," Chandrasekhar replied to a tweet regarding his remarks.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Digital India Week 2022 in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. PM Modi stated at the ceremony that the central government's flagship programme Digital India has relieved the poor of corruption and is trying to eliminate intermediaries in all fields.
Mumbai: The Eknath Shinde faction of Shiv Sena on Monday night issued a notice to 14 MLAs from the Uddhav Thackeray camp for violating a whip issued by Shiv Sena chief whip and Shinde loyalist Bharat Gogawale, but excluded the name of Aaditya Thackeray, son of party chief Uddhav Thackeray, 'out of respect', said a PTI report. The whip issued by Bharat Gogawale had reportedly asked all the MLAs of Shiv Sena to vote for Eknath Shinde in the trust vote in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly on Monday. In the trust vote, 164 MLAs voted for the motion of confidence while 99 voted against it.

A day before the floor test on Sunday, Maharashtra Speaker Rahul Narvekar had recognised Gogawale as the chief whip of Shiv Sena. "It is true that we have issued a notice for the violation of the whip to Shiv Sena MLAs who did not vote for CM Shinde. However, we have omitted the name of Aaditya from it out of respect," PTI quoted Gogawale as saying.

He said all Shiv Sena MLAs, including those in the Uddhav Thackeray camp, had worked together for a long time with Uddhav and Aaditya Thackeray, adding "We respect them, but they should have addressed our concerns."

Uddhav Thackeray dares BJP to hold mid-term polls in Maharashtra

On a day the Eknath Shinde-led government won the trust vote in the Maharashtra Assembly, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray targeted the BJP saying it was scheming to finish his party. He also dared the BJP to hold mid-term elections in the state, while addressing a meeting of Sena district presidents at the Shiv Sena Bhawan here on Monday.

The former chief minister, who had to resign due to Shinde's revolt, said it was an insult to the Constitution to run the Legislative Assembly arbitrarily, adding "The BJP is trying to finish Shiv Sena. I dare them to hold mid-term polls in the state. Instead of playing all these games, we will go in the people's court. If we are wrong, people will send us home and if you (BJP and Shinde group) are wrong, people will send you home."

Uddhav Thackeray's son Aaditya said the Sena will not be finished just because some people have left the party, adding that Maharashtra might face mid-term elections along with Gujarat elections, due in December this year.

Aaditya told reporters at the Sena Bhavan, "It is evident (in the floor test) that the whip issued by Shiv Sena was violated. That is why we have taken some action against it." The Worli MLA said the MLAs who had joined the Shinde faction will soon realise their "blunder" when they visit their constituencies and face people.

Last month, Eknath Shinde launched a rebellion against the Shiv Sena, and the majority of MLAs sided with him, which led to the collapse of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government led by Uddhav Thackeray. Shinde was sworn in as the chief minister on June 30, a day after Thackeray quit the post. BJP's Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in as the deputy CM.

(With PTI Inputs)
Agnipath Recruitment Scheme: The Indian Air Force will conclude the application process for the Agnipath Recruitment scheme today, July 5. Interested and eligible candidates can apply for 'Agniveervayu' posts on the official website of IAF at careerindianairforce.cdac.in till 5 PM today. The Indian Air Force commenced the registration process for Agnipath Recruitment on June 24 and the online examination for the Agniveervayu posts will start from 24 July 2022.

Agnipath Recruitment Scheme 2022: Important dates

Commencement of Application process: June 24, 2022

Last date to Apply for Agniveer in Indian Air Force: July 5, 2022

Online examination date: From July 24, 2022

Agnipath recruitment 2022: Eligibility criteria

Candidates must have the following educational qualifications to apply for Agniveervayu posts in Indian Air Force through Agnipath Yojana

(a) Science Subjects

Candidates should have passed Intermediate/10+2/ Equivalent examination with Mathematics, Physics and English from an Education Board listed as COBSE member with minimum 50% marks in aggregate and 50% marks in English.

OR

Passed Three years Diploma Course in Engineering (Mechanical/ Electrical/ Electronics/ Automobile/ Computer Science/

Instrumentation Technology/ Information Technology) from a Government recognized Polytechnic institute with 50% marks in aggregate and 50% marks in English in diploma course (or in Intermediate/Matriculation, if English is not a subject in Diploma Course).

OR

Passed Two years Vocational Course with non-vocational subject viz. Physics and Maths from State Education Boards/Councils which are listed in COBSE with 50% marks in aggregate and 50% marks in English in vocational course (or in Intermediate/Matriculation, if English is not a subject in Vocational Course).

(b) Other Than Science Subjects

Passed Intermediate / 10+2 / Equivalent Examination in any subject approved by Central / State Education Boards listed as COBSE member with minimum 50% marks in aggregate and 50% marks in English.

OR

Passed two years vocational course from Education Boards listed as COBSE member with minimum 50% marks in aggregate and 50% marks in English in vocational course or in Intermediate/Matriculation if English is not a subject in Vocational Course.

For More details on Agnipath recruitment eligibility criteria aspirants can check the Detailed Notification available here.

Agnitpath Recruitment Scheme: Age Limit

(a) Candidates born between 29 December 1999 and 29 June 2005 (both days inclusive) are eligible to apply.

"In case, a candidate clears all the stages of the Selection Procedure, then the upper age limit as on date of enrolment is 23 years," read the IAF's official notification.

Join Indian Air Force: Application Fees for Agnipath recruitment

The examination fees is 250/- which has to be paid by the candidates while registering for the online exam. The payment will be made through debit card/ credit card or internet banking.

Agnipath Recruitment Scheme 2022: How to apply for Agniveervayu posts

Interested and eligible candidates can apply for Agniveervayu posts in the Indian Air Force from today by visiting the official website careerindianairforce.cdac.in. Direct Link To Apply For AGNIVEERVAYU

Agnipath recruitment: Selection process

Candidates will be selected through Phase I and Phase II examination. Candidates who will qualify Phase I examination will be eligible to appear for Phase II examination. The name of the shortlisted candidates who qualify for the online test, shall have to appear for PFT followed by medical test.

"AGNIVEERVAYU will be enrolled in the Indian Air Force under Air Force Act 1950, for a period of four years. AGNIVEERVAYU would form a distinct rank in the Indian Air Force, different from any other existing ranks. Indian Air Force is not obliged to retain AGNIVEERVAYU beyond the engagement period of four years," stated the Indian Air Force.

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The Amarnath Yatra has been temporarily suspended due to bad weather. Pilgrims are not being allowed to proceed from The Nunwan base camp in Pahalgam. An official said in this regard that pilgrims are not being allowed to proceed from the Nunwan base camp due to bad weather. The decision has been taken keeping in mind the safety of the pilgrims. At present, there are about 3,000 pilgrims in the Nunwan camp.

The Amarnath Yatra began on June 30 this year. More than 65,000 pilgrims have already visited, according to the news agency. August 11 is the last day of this pilgrimage. The government, this year, is introducing a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system for pilgrims to track their movement en-route to ensure their well-being.

Over 3.42 lakh pilgrims had paid obeisance at the shrine, housing the naturally formed ice-shivlingam from July 1 to August 1, 2019 before the government cancelled the yatra midway ahead of abrogation of Article 370 and bifurcation of J&K into two union territories (on August 5, 2019).
High court sealed the decision of the University of Calcutta without listening to the demands of the students. The Calcutta High Court has said that the examination of Calcutta University will be held offline and not online. The division bench upheld the verdict of the single bench. Earlier, a section of students were named in the movement to inform about the decision of the University to conduct the offline examination. On the pretext of not completing the syllabus, the students advocated for taking the exam on the online open book system. The case reached the High Court due to the University's decision to take offline. When the single bench supported the offline examination, the students filed a case in the division bench.

Students affected in the last two years due to corona virus. Due to the increase in infections, the exam was conducted online last year. Although all the colleges and Universities opened after there is a reduction in the cases. But the students started an agitation demanding online examination in the open book system. Rejecting the claim, a division bench of Justice Subrata Talukdar said the exam will be held offline. Students do not have the right to decide in what mode the exam will be conducted.

At the same time, the court said that students have no right to decide how the exam will be conducted. There is no clear definition in the case as to what their fundamental rights are. However, on the issue of syllabus not being completed, the court said, "The syllabus is not finished, it is a matter of the University. But the University is confident about the syllabus. So the way they decided to take the test is legal."

Offline exams are returning to Kolkata after more than two years of corona-phase. The authorities have decided to stay offline even after a massive agitation demanding online exams. Colleges in the city are careful to ensure that the exams are conducted in a fair manner, in accordance with the rules. There are police picketing in many colleges. Strict invigilation has also been mentioned.
New Delhi: Chandrashekhar Guruji of 'Saral Vastu' fame was stabbed to death in Karnataka Hubballi on Tuesday (July 5, 2022), police said. Visual footage showed two people repeatedly stabbing him at the reception area of a hotel in the city. Within hours, both the accused were arrested in the Belagavi district and the reason behind the killing of Chandrashekhar Guruji is currently under investigation.

"Some people called him to the lobby area of the hotel where he was staying. One person wished him and suddenly started stabbing him. Due to multiple injuries, by the time he was shifted to the hospital, he was dead," ANI news agency quoted Hubballi Police Commissioner Labhu Ram as saying.

'Heinous': Karnataka CM Basavaraj Bommai on Chandrashekhar Guruji's death

Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said that Chandrashekhar Guruji's murder is "heinous" and informed that he has spoken to the Police Commissioner and asked him to nab the culprits seen in the video.

Three days ago a child in his family had died in Hubballi, for which he had come here to attend a ceremony.

Chandrashekhar Guruji was born in Karnataka's Bagalkot

Guruji was born in the Bagalkot district of Karnataka. He began his career as a contractor and later got a job in Mumbai where he settled and subsequently pursued the Vastu business there.
New Delhi: Chhattisgarh Police on Tuesday (July 5) tried to arrest Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan without even informing the UP Police. Rohit Ranjan lives in the Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh. The Chhattisgarh Police reached Rohit's house early in the morning around 5.30 AM and tried to arrest him. According to reports, as many as 15 sleuths of the Chhattisgarh Police reached Rohit's society and even snatched the mobile phones of guards posted at the gate.

Rohit Ranjan took to social media and tweeted in Hindi, "Chhattisgarh Police is standing outside my house to arrest me without informing the local police. Is this legally correct? In response to his tweet, Ghaziabad Police also tweeted, 'The matter is in the notice of the local police. Police station Indirapuram is on the spot. Action will be taken as per rules."

The matter is in the cognizance of the local police, the Indirapuram police are on the spot, action will be taken as per the rules: Ghaziabad Police pic.twitter.com/4X2HKcL7ND  ANI (@ANI) July 5, 2022

An ANI report said that Chhattisgarh police reached the house of Rohit Ranjan to arrest him in connection with an FIR registered against him. "He had earlier misquoted Rahul Gandhis video statement and had subsequently corrected himself on a TV broadcast."

Notably, Ghaziabad Police said that the matter is in the cognizance of the local police, and action will be taken as per the rules. The whole incident has raised questions about the working style of Chhattisgarh Police as to why did it enter Rohit's house in a civil dress without showing their ID cards.
Nagpur: Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday said he had proposed to BJP leadership to make Eknath Shinde, who had rebelled against Shiv Sena leadership, the new chief minister after the collapse of the MVA government last week. Fadnavis also admitted that he was not mentally prepared to assume the post of deputy CM, but changed his decision after a discussion was held with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and intervention by BJP president JP Nadda and Union home minister Amit Shah.

Fadnavis said BJP leadership believed that he should be part of the government as it was not right to run the government through an "extra-constitutional authority".

Talking to reporters here, Fadnavis said the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance had won the 2019 elections, but the mandate was 'stolen'. So his party and the Shinde-led Shiv Sena faction came together for a 'common ideology and not for power'.

"Our leaders Narendra Modi ji, Amit Shah and J P Naddaji and with my approval (the decision to make Shinde the CM was taken).... It will not be wrong if it is said that I took this proposal (to the BJP leadership) that Shinde is made the chief minister and they (the leadership) accepted it," Fadnavis said.

Shinde was sworn in as the chief minister on June 30 with Fadnavis as his deputy, a day after Uddhav Thackeray resigned as the CM ahead of the floor test.

"It was also decided that I will stay out of the government. But BJP president J P Nadda called me and said the party has decided (to make me the deputy chief minister). Even Union Home Minister Amit Shah also spoke to me," Fadnavis said.

Fadnavis said he was not mentally prepared to accept the Dy CM's post and had made up his mind that he will help the Eknath Shinde government from outside. "But I changed my decision obeying the orders of my leaders," he added.

(With PTI inputs)

Live TV
Zee News and DNA have an old and trustworthy relationship with its viewers. The relationship is built on trust. Zee News brings to you the latest developments from across the world on a daily basis in its programme DNA. We try our best to be true and factual - and for this - a large team of journalists works day and night in the Zee News' diverse newsroom.



However, we are also humans and on certain, rare, occasions, it's possible that we can commit a mistake. On 1st July, a human error occurred on our part. A news clip of senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was shown in an incorrect context. It was a human error. Zee News, the very next day, realised its mistake and apologised for the same on national telivision. However, the apology and the acceptance of mistake on the national TV were not enough for the Congress party.



Many Congress workers, in order to prove their loyalty to the Gandhi family, filed an FIR against Zee News journalist Rohit Ranjan in party-ruled Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. They even started trolling Rohit Ranjan on social media. While Zee News has no objection to legal proceedings, what disturbs us is Congress' Emergency-era mindset.



In today's DNA, Zee News's Aditi Tyagi makes an analysis of Congress' emergency-era mindset that believes in crossing all the limits and oppressing journalists.



In order to harass Rohit Ranjan, a team of Chhattisgarh police arrived at his residence at 5 am in the morning. Rohit Ranjan and his family were shocked to see cops at their doorstep. The police team arrived in plain clothes, i,e, they were not wearing the police uniform. They were even objecting to produce their identity cards. And, most importantly, they reached Rohit Ranjan's residence without even informing the local police. The cops even misbehaved with Rohit Ranjan's family members and the security guards of Rohit Ranjan's society.

In a nutshell, the cops didn't care about any rule in the book, and it appeared that they had "orders from the top" to arrest Rohit Ranjan.



Zee News appeals its viewers to support its journalist and its anchor Rohit Ranjan by tweeting #ISupportRohitRanjan.
New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned the wife and son of Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan for questioning in a money laundering case being probed against him, officials said. Khan, 73, is also an SP MLA from the Rampur seat. His son Abdullah Azam Khan, MLA from the Swar assembly seat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly, and wife Tazeen Fatma have been asked to depose separately before the ED's regional office in Lucknow this week.

The agency wants to record their statements under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in the case being probed against Azam Khan, they said. Azam Khan has been grilled by the agency in the case when he was lodged in Sitapur jail. He is out on bail at present.

Also read: Rampur Lok Sabha Bypoll Result 2022: Azam Khan accuses BJP of rigging the Bypolls



He was released from jail in May after 27 months following the Supreme Court granting him interim bail in an alleged forgery case.

Also read: SP leader Azam Khan, released on bail, says inspector threatened him of 'encounter'

The agency has initiated a probe against Khan in 2019 after taking cognisance of at least 26 FIRs filed by the state police against him including allegations that a university run by him in Rampur district of Uttar Pradesh has been raised over land that has been grabbed from an 'enemy property.

Khan is the chairman of the Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar Trust which runs the three branches of the Rampur Public School. He has earlier served as the urban development minister in the SP government headed by chief minister Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh.
Sukanta Majumdar, president of the state BJP, compared Mithun Chakraborty to a 'Nuclear Bomb' this time. He hinted at using Mithun as a weapon against the Trinamool. Mithun set foot in Kolkata on Monday. Sukanta also visited the state BJP headquarters in the evening. There Mithun had a meeting with Sukanta. After the meeting Mithun said that, he will work as an ordinary worker of the BJP. Mithun, however, did not reveal what responsibility he was being given. However, Sukanta indicated that he would be used against the Trinamool in the coming days.

Sukanta confronted the media on Monday before he left after a meeting with Mithun. When asked what role Mithun is going to play in the state BJP, he said, "Mithunda is a heavyweight campaigner, whom we call a star campaigner in English. In the normal way, the weapon will be used in a specific place. Nuclear bombs are not always used in war! Earlier, small hand grenades were used. When a nuclear bomb is needed, we will charge."

Also Read: Mithun Chakraborty is all set to replace BJP's Roopa Ganguly in Rajya Sabha before Vice Presidential election!

In the meantime, there is a strong buzz about Mithun Chakraborty. According to souces, BJP plans to activate BJP's organisation in Bengal by making Mithun Chakraborty a MP in Rajya Sabha. Mithun is all set to replace Rupa Ganguly in Rajya Sabha! Recently, the term of the Rajya Sabha posts of Roopa Ganguly and Swapan Dasgupta came to an end. The presidential election is ahead. Rajya Sabha MPs will vote in that election. The Centre wants to fill the BJP's vacancy in the Rajya Sabha before the election of the Vice President.

But Trinamool MP Saugata Roy is reluctant to give importance to Mithun. He said, "Mithun has no effect. As he lost his influence in Bollywood and took shelter in Ooty, opened a hotel, he should do that. Hotel chalaiye Dada! Nahi toh woh bhi Doob jayega." Sougata added, "Those who do not have the ability to stand up and fight, those who change the party after taking everything from one party, what will they change in Bengal? The people of Bengal don't like all this."
Khunti (Jharkhand): An IAS officer was on Tuesday arrested in Jharkhand's Khunti district on the charge of sexually harassing a trainee IIT student during a dinner party last week, police said. A local court remanded the officer, Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) of Khunti Syed Riaz Ahmed, to judicial custody for 14 days.

A case has initially been filed against the IAS officer of the 2019 batch under IPC sections 354A (sexual harassment) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) following a complaint lodged by the woman, Superintendent of Police Aman Kumar told PTI.

Accused arrested, remanded to judicial custody

The SDM was taken into custody on Monday night after the case was lodged at the women's police station. He was arrested during the day after another charge under IPC Section 354 (assaulting or using criminal force on a woman with intent to outrage her modesty) was added. It is a non-bailable offence.

SDM allegedly sexually harassed student when she was alone

Eight engineering students of an IIT, including the woman, came to Khunti from outside the state for training, Kumar said. They attended a dinner hosted at the Deputy Development Commissioner's residence on Saturday. At the party, liquor was served to the guests, including the students, he said.

When the SDM found her alone, he allegedly sexually harassed her there, she told the police in a statement. The police, prima facie, found the allegation to be true after Ahmed and some guests who attended the party were questioned, the SP said. An investigation is underway.

Meanwhile expressing anguish over the incident, the Bhartiya Janata Party took to streets against Khunti's now arrested SDM Ahmed and demanded his immediate sacking saying he has earned a bad name for Jharkhand. "This is shameful, disgusting and unthinkable ...We demand strictest possible action against the official so that no other officer dares to stoop to such level, " BJP state president and MP Deepak Prakash told PTI.

He said: "This conduct of an administrative officer is unpardonable and a blot on Jharkhand and amounts to insult of women. The state's image has been tarnished." BJP workers, led by state president of BJP Mahila Morcha Aarti Kujur reached Khunti and staged demonstrations at Netaji Chowk burning an effigy of the official.

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi: The Delhi Police has registered a case against filmmaker Leena Manimekalai in connection with a controversial poster of her documentary "Kaali", officials said on Tuesday. Police received a complaint from a lawyer, alleging that a poster is circulating on social media in which goddess Kali is shown smoking a cigarette. From the contents of the complaint and the social media post, prima facie, an offence under sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race etc. and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) was made out and a case registered against Manimekalai at the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operation (IFSO) unit of the Special Cell, a senior police officer said.

A probe in the matter has been launched, he added.

Under attack for the poster of her documentary "Kaali" showing the goddess smoking and holding an LGBTQ flag, Manimekalai on Monday said she will continue to use her voice fearlessly till she is alive.

Super thrilled to share the launch of my recent film - today at @AgaKhanMuseum as part of its Rhythms of Canada

Link: https://t.co/RAQimMt7Ln



I made this performance doc as a cohort of https://t.co/D5ywx1Y7Wu@YorkuAMPD @TorontoMet @YorkUFGS



Feeling pumped with my CREW pic.twitter.com/L8LDDnctC9  Leena Manimekalai (@LeenaManimekali) July 2, 2022

The poster had led to a social media storm with the hashtag #ArrestLeenaManimekalai", alleging that the filmmaker had hurt religious sentiments. Several Twitter users also slammed Manimekalai.

In response to the attacks, the filmmaker, based in Canada's Toronto, said she is willing to pay with her life.

"I have nothing to lose. Till the time I live, I wish to live with a voice that speaks what I believe without fear. If the price for that is my life, it can be given," Manimekalai wrote in a tweet in Tamil in response to an article on the controversy.

The Madurai-born filmmaker had shared the poster of "Kaali" on the microblogging website on Saturday and said the documentary was part of the "Rhythms of Canada" segment at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto.

Manimekalai also urged people to watch the documentary to understand the context behind the poster.

Earlier, the Uttar Pradesh police had also registered an FIR on charges of criminal conspiracy, offence in place of worship, deliberately hurting religious sentiments, and intention to provoke breach of peace against Manimekalai for her movie 'Kaali' for the disrespectful depiction of Hindu Gods.
New Delhi: After All India Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra expressed her views on Goddess Kaali at a recent event, she received a lot of backlash on it including from her own party TMC. Most people were under the impression that Mahua was speaking about Goddess Kaali in relation to the ongoing controversy surrounding the movie poster of a Canadian-based filmmaker Leena Manimekalai. The director's film poster was criticised for depicting a woman dressed as Goddess Kaali, holding a cigarette.

Clearing the air, Moitra took to Twitter to say that she was not talking about the movie poster and did not back it. "To all you sanghis - lying will NOT make you better hindus. I NEVER backed any film or poster or mentioned the word smoking. Suggest you visit my Maa Kali in Tarapith to see what food & drink is offered as bhog. Joy Ma Tara," she tweeted.

To all you sanghis- lying will NOT make you better hindus.

I NEVER backed any film or poster or mentioned the word smoking.



Suggest you visit my Maa Kali in Tarapith to see what food & drink is offered as bhog.

Joy Ma Tara July 5, 2022

Earlier, Moitra made headlines when at India Today Conclave, she said, "Kaali to me, is a meat-eating, alcohol-accepting goddess. You have the freedom to imagine your goddess. There are some places where whiskey is offered to gods and in some other places it would be blasphemy."

She further said that there are different religious offerings and rituals in different regions. "When you go to Sikkim, you will see that they offer whiskey to Goddess Kali. But if you will go to Uttar Pradesh and if you tell them that you offer whiskey to the goddess as prasad, they will call it blasphemy," she explained.

What is the Kaali poster row?

Earlier, today, the Uttar Pradesh police registered an FIR on charges of criminal conspiracy, offence in place of worship, deliberately hurting religious sentiments, and intention to provoke breach of peace against filmmaker Leena Manimekalai for her movie 'Kaali' for the disrespectful depiction of Hindu Gods. The controversy erupted after she took to Twitter to share a poster of her film which depicted a woman dressed in a costume portraying the Goddess and smoking. A flag of the LGBT community is seen in the background.

Live TV
New Delhi: Mahua Moitra, All India Trinamool Congress MP, has reacted to the controversy over Indian-origin, Canada-based filmmaker Leena Manimekalai's film poster which depicted a woman dressed as Goddess Kaali holding a cigarette along with a LGBTQ poster in the background. The politician was asked to comment on the criticism received by the poster during an event.

Speaking at India Today Conclav, Moitra explained, "Kaali to me, is a meat-eating, alcohol-accepting goddess. You have the freedom to imagine your goddess. There are some places where whiskey is offered to gods and in some other places it would be blasphemy."

She further said that there are different religious offerings and rituals in different regions. "When you go to Sikkim, you will see that they offer whiskey to Goddess Kali. But if you will go to Uttar Pradesh and if you tell them that you offer whiskey to the goddess as prasad, they will call it blasphemy," she explained.

What is the controversy of the 'Kaali poster'?

Earlier, today, the Uttar Pradesh police registered an FIR on charges of criminal conspiracy, offence in place of worship, deliberately hurting religious sentiments, and intention to provoke breach of peace against filmmaker Leena Manimekalai for her movie 'Kaali' for the disrespectful depiction of Hindu Gods. The controversy erupted after she took to Twitter to share a poster of her film which depicted a woman dressed in a costume portraying the Goddess and smoking. A flag of the LGBT community is seen in the background.

Who is Leena Manimekalai?

An Indian filmmaker, poet, and actor with a base in Toronto, Leena Manimekalai was born in Madurai. She has produced a dozen films in various genres, including documentary, fiction, and experimental poem films, in addition to five published poetry anthologies. She has received recognition from numerous national and international film festivals for her participation, mentions, and best film prizes.

She resides in Canada at the moment. She also runs a production firm called Leena Manimekalai Productions. Leena has directed a number of documentaries. Some of her most known films are, to name a few, Mathamma, Parai, Breaking The Shackles, Love Lost, A Hole in the Bucket, Goddesses, Sengadal, My Mirror Is the Door, and Song of Resistance.

Live TV
New Delhi: The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Tuesday (July 5, 2022) distanced itself from its MP Mahua Moitra's statement that for her, "Goddess Kali is a meat-eating and alcohol-accepting goddess". While speaking about filmmaker Leena Manimekalai's controversial poster of her documentary "Kaali", which has courted controversy for showing Goddess Kali smoking, Mahua Moitra said that it is up to individuals how they view their gods.

"If you go to Bhutan or Sikkim, for example, when they do puja, they give whisky to their god. Now, if you go to Uttar Pradesh and say that you give whisky to your god as prasad, they will say that is blasphemous," she said.

Moitra said that people have the right to imagine their gods or goddess in the way they want.

"For me, Goddess Kali is a meat-eating and alcohol-accepting goddess. And if you go to Tarapith (a major Shakti peeth in West Bengal's Birbhum district), you will see sadhus smoking. That is the version of Kali people worship (there). I, within Hinduism, being a Kali worshipper, have the right to imagine Kali in that way; that is my freedom," she said.

Moitra said, "I have the freedom to do it (envision a meat-eating goddess) as much as you have the freedom to worship your god as vegetarian and white-clothed."

'I NEVER backed any film or poster': Mahua Moitra amid Kaali poster row

After her comments went viral, she also issued a clarification attacking the Sangh Parivar.

"To all you sanghis - lying will NOT make you better hindus. I NEVER backed any film or poster or mentioned the word smoking. Suggest you visit my Maa Kali in Tarapith to see what food & drink is offered as bhog. Joy Ma Tara," she tweeted.

To all you sanghis- lying will NOT make you better hindus.

I NEVER backed any film or poster or mentioned the word smoking.



Suggest you visit my Maa Kali in Tarapith to see what food & drink is offered as bhog.

Joy Ma Tara  Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) July 5, 2022

The TMC, however, distanced itself from Moitra's comments and condemned the remarks.

"The comments made by @MahuaMoitra at the #IndiaTodayConclaveEast2022 and her views expressed on Goddess Kali have been made in her personal capacity and are NOT ENDORSED BY THE PARTY in ANY MANNER OR FORM. All India Trinamool Congress strongly condemns such comments," Mamata Banerjee's party said in a Twitter post.

The comments made by @MahuaMoitra at the #IndiaTodayConclaveEast2022 and her views expressed on Goddess Kali have been made in her personal capacity and are NOT ENDORSED BY THE PARTY in ANY MANNER OR FORM.



All India Trinamool Congress strongly condemns such comments.  All India Trinamool Congress (@AITCofficial) July 5, 2022

Kaali poster row: FIR registered against filmmaker Leena Manimekalai

Meanwhile, the police in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi have registered a case against filmmaker Leena Manimekalai in connection with a controversial poster of her documentary "Kaali". In Delhi, Police received a complaint from a lawyer, alleging that a poster is circulating on social media in which goddess Kali is shown smoking a cigarette.

From the contents of the complaint and the social media post, prima facie, an offence under sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race etc. and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) was made out and a case registered against Manimekalai at the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operation (IFSO) unit of the Special Cell, a senior police officer said.

Super thrilled to share the launch of my recent film - today at @AgaKhanMuseum as part of its Rhythms of Canada

Link: https://t.co/RAQimMt7Ln



I made this performance doc as a cohort of https://t.co/D5ywx1Y7Wu@YorkuAMPD @TorontoMet @YorkUFGS



Feeling pumped with my CREW pic.twitter.com/L8LDDnctC9 July 2, 2022

While in Uttar Pradesh, police registered an FIR on charges of criminal conspiracy, offence in place of worship, deliberately hurting religious sentiments, and intention to provoke breach of peace against Manimekalai for her movie 'Kaali' for the disrespectful depiction of Hindu Gods.
He was the BJP's star campaigner in the last assembly polls in West Bengal. However, he has not been in active politics since then. Will Mithun Chakraborty be seen in an active role in Bengal politics again? That's the million dollar question now. This time the buzz was increased by the 'Disco Dancer' himself. He said, "I could not come so long because of my ill health. Let politics be in place of politics. But the news that I have received is very sad that there has been unrest after the vote."

And in the meantime, there is a strong buzz about Mithun Chakraborty. According to souces, BJP plans to activate BJP's organisation in Bengal by making Mithun Chakraborty an MP in Rajya Sabha. Mithun is all set to replace Rupa Ganguly in Rajya Sabha! Recently, the term of the Rajya Sabha posts of Roopa Ganguly and Swapan Dasgupta came to an end. The presidential election is ahead. Rajya Sabha MPs will vote in that election. The Centre wants to fill the BJP's vacancy in the Rajya Sabha before the election of the Vice President.

Also Read: Mithun Chakraborty's arrival in Kolkata creates BUZZ around his evening visit to BJP office

2 votes are important enough for the BJP in the vice presidential election. According to sources, the candidates for these two seats, which have fallen vacant from Bengal, will be from Bengal only. This is what the Centre has assured the state leadership. After that, Mithun Chakraborty came to Kolkata at the behest of Delhi. Mithun came to the state office yesterday and held a meeting with state president Sukanta Majumdar. Initial discussions were held on how Mithun will be used actively for the state BJP in the coming days, sources said.

Also Read: Mithun Chakraborty coming to Kolkata, UPROAR after Bengal BJP State Chief said THIS

State president Sukanta Majumdar welcomed Mithun Chakraborty at Murlidhar Sen Lane. There were leaders like Rahul Sinha, Rudranil Ghosh. Explaining that he would be in full swing for the BJP this time, Mithun said, "I will continue to do the work that the party has given me."
Mumbai: Mumbai and its adjoining areas were lashed by heavy showers on Tuesday, causing waterlogging at a number of places, including railway tracks, which slowed the movement of trains and vehicles on roads. Normal life was adversely affected in the metropolis and no immediate respite was in sight as the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted moderate to heavy rain in Mumbai and its suburbs over the next 24 hours, with a possibility of very heavy showers at isolated places, said civic officials. Maharashtra's new Chief Minister Eknath Shinde took stock of the situation and directed state administration officials to take necessary precautions and ensure there was no loss of life or damage to property.

The island city (south Mumbai) received an average of 95.81 mm rainfall in the 24-hour period ended at 8 am, while the eastern and western suburbs recorded 115.09 mm and 116.73 mm rainfall, respectively, during the same period, they said. Between 8 am and 11.30 am, the island city received an average of 41 mm rainfall, while the eastern and western suburbs got 85 mm and 55 mm showers, respectively, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials said.

Mumbai rains hit suburban train services

Suburban train services, considered the lifeline of Mumbai, were affected on the Main and Harbour corridors of the Central Railway (CR) due to waterlogging on tracks near Kurla, Railway sources said. There was also a bunching of trains heading towards the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) in south Mumbai on the Main line, they said.

Tracks were inundated in Sion, Kurla, Tilak Nagar and Wadala areas of the Central Railway route, CR's chief public relations officer Shivaji Sutar said.

Commuters also complained of severe waterlogging in some subways in Panvel, Khandeshwar and Mansarovar stations on the Harbour line in neighbouring Navi Mumbai, forcing them to wade through ankle-deep water.

Mumbai water logging

The BEST undertaking, which provides public bus services in Mumbai and neighbouring cities, was forced to divert its buses via alternate routes, due to water logging in Sion, Chembur, Bandra, Air India Colony, Kurla and a few other locations, an official said.

The vehicular movement was slow at Dadar TT, Parel TT, Sakkar Panchayat Chowk, Wadala in central Mumbai, Tembi bridge in Chembur, and near the Mankhurd railway station due to water rising up to one to two feet, police said.

Traffic police personnel were deployed at various locations to avoid vehicular congestion, an official said.

Heavy rainfall alert for Maharashtra for next four days

The IMD has issued a heavy rainfall alert for Maharashtra over the next four days, following which Chief Minister Shinde directed state administration officials to take precautions and ensure there was no loss of life or damage to property. The IMD has issued an 'orange alert' for the south Konkan region and Goa and a 'yellow alert' for north Konkan, north central and south central Maharashtra and Marathwada regions.

The MeT department issues four colour-coded predictions based on the prevailing weather systems. The green colour indicates no warning, yellow is to keep a watch, orange is to stay alert, while red means a warning and that action needs to be taken.

The Chief Minister's Office said that Shinde is in touch with collectors of Thane, Raigad, Palghar, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts.

The National Disaster Response Force has also been asked to remain alert.

"The situation in Mumbai is also being closely monitored," it said.

The Kundalika River in Raigad district, located near Mumbai, has crossed the danger mark, as per an official statement.

The water level of Amba, Savitri, Patalganga, Ulhas and Gadhi rivers was hovering just near the danger mark, it said.

"In view of the increasing rains and flood-like situation, Chief Minister Shinde has held discussions with Chief Secretary Manu Kumar Srivastava. Guardian secretaries have been asked to reach their districts and monitor the situation," said the CMO statement.
NIMCET 2022 Result: National Institute of Technology, NIT Jamshedpur is expected to release the results for NIMCET 2022 today July 5. As per the official calendar released by NIT Jamshedpur, the NIMCET Result 2022 will likely be declared for candidates today, July 5, 2022 on the official website of the exam at nimcet.in. While there are higher chances that the result will be out today on 05 July 2022. The timings of the result are still not out. NIT Jamshedpur will certainly announce the result timing once they officially declare the NIMCET 2022 result date.

The NIT MCA Common Entrance Test, NIMCET 2022 was conducted on June 20, 2022. The provisional answer keys and question papers were released for candidates from June 23 to 24, 2022. Choice filing for the candidates is expected to begin from July 7 and conclude on July 12, 2022 as per the information available on nimcet.in.

ALSO READ: JEE Mains result to be out soon

NIMCET 2022 Result: Here is how to check NIMCET Result 2022

- Visit the official website  nimcet.in

- On the homepage, click on the link which reads NIMCET 2022 Result declared

- Enter your login credentials such as registration ID and password

- Your NIMCET 2022 Result will be displayed on the screen

- Download and take a printout.

NIMCET is an entrance exam conducted by NIT Jamshedpur. Candidates who wish to seek admission into the Masters of Computer Application, MCA courses offered at NIT Agartala, Allahabad, Bhopal, Jamshedpur, Kurukshetra, Raipur, Surathkal, Tiruchirappalli and Warangal appear for this entrance exam.
NEW DELHI: The Central Congress leadership has asked its Gujarat unit to refrain from making personal attacks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi but to raise people`s issues and target BJP policies in the run-up to the Assembly polls, slated for later this year, sources said. After racking their brains for about five hours on Monday, the Congress task force called Gujarat leaders and asked them to prepare unitedly for the Assembly polls to dethrone the BJP which is ruling the state for the past 27 years.

As part of the strategy, the party will highlight the state government`s failure particularly during Covid and post-Covid. Notably, Congress has witnessed some high profile exits in recent past besides suffering a blow in local body elections. Hardik Patel, who spearheaded the Patidar protest, has also changed his loyalty and joined the BJP.



Congress leaders Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, K.C. Venugopal, Randeep Surjewala, Ajay Maken, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and Congress` poll strategist Sunil Kanugolu were present in the meeting of the task force.



In the last Assembly polls, the party won 77 seats but many MLAs have switched sides since then.

The Gujarat Congress had won a record breaking 149 seats with a 55.55 per cent vote share in the 1985 Assembly elections, while the BJP could bag only 11 seats with a 14.96 per cent vote share.

ALSO READ:They used to come as journalists: BJP replies to Congress charge of alleged links with terrorists



In the 2012 elections, the Congress`s vote share declined to 38.93 per cent, whereas the BJP vote share jumped to 47.85 per cent.

Aam Aadmi Party`s threat to the Congress also figured in the discussion as Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday talked about his government in Delhi and governance in Gujarat.



Citing BJP`s 17-member delegation`s two-day visit to Delhi for a reality check of schools and Mohalla Clinics, Kejriwal said, Even after two-days visit, they could not find any shortcomings. This shows the performance of the AAP government in Delhi."



Kejriwal further said, The AAP government always welcomes constructive suggestions and criticism if it is good for the people at large. If any lapses are brought to our knowledge, we act at the earliest.
New Delhi: A group of former judges, bureaucrats and retired armed forces officers have criticised the recent Supreme Court observations against suspended BJP member Nupur Sharma. In an open letter sent to CJI NV Ramana, they have alleged that the apex court surpassed the "Laxman Rekha" and called for "urgent rectification" steps. Notably, the top court on July 1 castigated Nupur Sharma for comments on Prophet Muhammad, saying her remarks are disturbing and smack of arrogance. Referring to her apology for her comment against Prophet Mohammad, the SC bench had said that it was too late and her remark led to unfortunate incidents.

An open letter has been sent to CJI NV Ramana, signed by 15 retired judges, 77 retired bureaucrats and 25 retired armed forces officers, against the observation made by Justices Surya Kant and JB Pardiwala while hearing Nupur Sharma's case in the Supreme Court.

The letter stated that the roster of Justice Surya Kant be withdrawn till he attains superannuation and least be directed to withdraw the remarks and observations made by him during the hearing of the Nupur Sharma case.

An open letter has been sent to CJI NV Ramana, signed by 15 retired judges, 77 retd bureaucrats & 25 retd armed forces officers, against the observation made by Justices Surya Kant & JB Pardiwala while hearing Nupur Sharma's case in the Supreme Court. pic.twitter.com/ul5c5PedWU  ANI (@ANI) July 5, 2022

The open letter by the organisation 'Forum for Human Rights and Social Justice, J&K and Ladakh at Jammu' demands the roster of Justice Surya Kant be withdrawn till he attains superannuation and at least be directed to withdraw the remarks and observations made by him during the hearing.

According to the statement, "In the annals of judiciary, the unfortunate comments have no parallel and are indelible scar on justice system of the largest democracy. Urgent rectification steps are called for as these have potentially serious consequences on democratic values and security of the country."

Also read: 'These remarks were made for cheap publicity or for political....':Supreme Court

The statement was signed by 15 former judges, 77 ex-all India services officers and 25 veterans including former chief justice of the Bombay High Court Kshitij Vyas, former Gujarat High Court judge S M Soni, former Rajasthan High Court judges R S Rathore and Prashant Agarwal and former Delhi High Court judge S N Dhingra. Former IAS officers R S Gopalan and S Krishna Kumar, ambassador (retired) Niranjan Desai, former DGPs S P Vaid and B L Vohra, Lt Gen V K Chaturvedi (retired) and Air Marshall (retired) S P Singh have also signed the statement which said the SC observations are not in sync with judicial ethos.

The statement said, "By no stretch these observations, which are not part of the judicial order, can be sanctified on the plank of judicial propriety and fairness. Such outrageous transgressions are without parallel in the annals of Judiciary."

The letter stated that the roster of Justice Surya Kant be withdrawn till he attains superannuation and least be directed to withdraw the remarks and observations made by him during the hearing of the Nupur Sharma case. pic.twitter.com/xUQUYbYjX7  ANI (@ANI) July 5, 2022

On July 1, the Supreme Court came down heavily on Nupuir Sharma for her controversial comments against Prophet Mohammad, saying her "loose tongue" has "set the entire country on fire" and that she is "single-handedly responsible for what is happening in the country". The top court had refused to entertain Nupur's plea for clubbing of FIRs lodged in various states against her for the remark, and held that the comment was made either for cheap publicity, political agenda or some nefarious activities.

Also read: Nupur Sharma case: Why no FIR against TV anchor, asks SC, questions Delhi Police

Criticising the SC's observations, the statement said, "We, as concerned citizens, do believe that democracy of any country will remain intact till all the institutions perform their duties as per the constitution. Recent comments by the two judges of the Supreme Court have surpassed the Laxman Rekha and compelled us to issue an open statement." It further claimed that these "unfortunate and unprecedented" comments have sent shockwaves in the country and outside.

Noting that Nupur Sharma sought access to the justice system before the highest court, the statement said the court's observations have no connect jurisprudentially with the issue raised in the petition and "transgressed in an unprecedented manner all canons of the dispensation of justice", adding "She was defacto denied access to judiciary and in the process, there was an outrage on the preamble, spirit and essence of the Constitution of India."

It further said, "Legal fraternity is bound to be surprised and shocked at the observation that an FIR should lead to arrest. The observations on other agencies in the country, without notice to them, are indeed worrisome and alarming." The signatories also defended Sharma's plea for clubbing all FIRs against her citing previous orders of the apex court.

It may be noted here that Nupur Sharma's comments against the Prophet during a TV debate had triggered protests across the country and drew sharp reactions from many Gulf countries. The BJP subsequently suspended her from the party. The top court had also pulled up the Delhi Police saying, "What has happened in the investigation so far? What has Delhi Police done so far? Don't make us open our mouth? They must have put a red carpet for you."

(With ANI/PTI Inputs)
Patna: The Patna High Court has stayed the demolition drive in the city's Nepali Nagar area, but the district magistrate said that by the time he received the order, the 40-acre land was cleared of encroachment. The court stayed the process of demolition on Monday, and posted the matter for further hearing on July 6. Directing the authorities not to take any coercive action, the court asked the district administration to file a reply on the next date of the hearing.

"All encroachments have been removed from the 40-acre government land in Nepali Nagar. By the time the high court order came, the land was handed over to the housing board. The land belongs to the housing board. We have requested it to fence the land at the earliest," District Magistrate (DM) Chandrasekhar Singh said.

The district administration will file its reply on the next date of hearing, he said. "After Sunday's violence during the demolition drive, prohibitory orders under Section 144 of CrPC was imposed in the area. No untoward incident was reported on Monday. Chief of Jan Adhikar Party Pappu Yadav along with his supporters came and started protesting. They were immediately removed," Singh said.

Police have so far registered four cases against those who tried to stop the demolition drive in the area, he said. Stones were thrown and cooking gas cylinders hurled at police when they reached the area with bulldozers on Sunday, officials said, adding that they had to use tear gas to bring the situation under control.

"Land mafia is quite active in Nepali Nagar. They first encroached on the government land and after that, fraudulently started selling it," Singh had claimed on Sunday.
SRINAGAR: PDP Chief Mehbooba Mufti launched an attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government for giving patronage to terrorists while referring to Talib Hussain Shah, who as per the police reports, was planning to carry out major attacks on Amarnath Yatra. Talib Hussain, who has been identified as IT cell in-charge of BJP's Minority Morcha in Jammu, was recently arrested with another terrorist Faizal Ahmed Dar of Pulwama.

Highlighting the Pulwama attack, the PDP Chief on Monday told ANI, Such incidents have happened in past as well, BJP is giving shelter to the terror elements and using them for their political mileage.

The recent arrest of two terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir, Faizal Ahmed Dar a resident of Pulwama and a wanted terrorist Talib Hussain, has invited all-around attack on the BJP. The leaders from Congress as well as other regional parties here including former PDP chief Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti have severely flayed the BJP for allegedly patronising shady elements like Talib Hussain in its organisation.

A letter also went viral on social media, stating Talib's appointment in the BJP. Mr Talib Hussain Shah, at Drag, Kot Ranka, Budhan, District Rajouri, shall be the new IT & social media in-charge BJP Minority Morcha Jammu province with immediate effect (sic), the order copies of the same were sent to senior BJP leader Ashok Kaul and the national president of its Minority Morcha.

ALSO READ:Mehbooba's controversial statement on Nupur Sharma

Notably, Talibs Facebook profile was taken down following his arrest on Sunday as photos showing him with BJPs J&K president Ravinder Raina, Lok Sabha MP from Jammu Jugal Kishore, and other senior J&K leaders and functionaries were being circulated on social media.
New Delhi: Mukul Roy's son Subhranshu Roy has been named in the primary recruitment scam. It is alleged that when he was in the Trinamool Congress, MLA Subhranshu Roy had recommended a few primary teachers with his letterhead. None of the names that were recommended could pass the 2014 TET (2014 Primary TET). A case has been filed in the Calcutta High Court in this regard. The case was filed by BJP's lawyer Tarunjyoti Tiwari. The case was heard by a division bench of Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava on Tuesday.

Also Read - Primary TET: HC orders removal of Primary Education Board chairman Manik Bhattacharya

It may be mentioned here that Justice Avijit Gangopadhyay of the Calcutta High Court has already ordered a CBI inquiry into the appointment of primary teachers.

This time, the names of political leaders have been involved in the appointments. The case filed by BJP leader Tarunjyoti Tewari claims that Trinamool MLAs have written their names on their letter heads and recommended unqualified candidates for primary job seekers. The letter written on the pads of three such Trinamool MLAs was handed over to the court today.

It is alleged that the ruling party's MLAs have made a long list of candidates and made recommendations. State Fisheries Minister Akhil Giri, Hagali's Balagarh MLA Aseem Majhi and Mukul Roy's son, former Bijepur MLA Subhranshu Roy, had made the recommendations on the letter head. The documents of the recommendation letter have been submitted to the division bench of the Chief Justice.

At the end of the hearing, the court has suspended the verdict, and in the end, all the parties are watching what the court decides.

Live TV
New Delhi: Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi on Tuesday (July 5, 2022) said that she is "offended" with filmmaker Leena Manimekalai's "Kaali" poster and expressed that "respect has to be equal for all" and that "freedom of expression should never become a tool to offend deliberately". Taking to Twitter amid the ongoing controversy over the Kaali poster, Chaturvedi wrote, "Freedom of expression cannot be reserved for Hindu Gods and Goddesses while for the rest one must tip toe around religious sensibilities. I am offended with the movie poster on Ma Kali, respect has to be equal for all&FoE should never become a tool to offend- deliberately."

In the poster, a woman dressed as Goddess Kaali has been shown holding a cigarette.

Freedom of expression cannot be reserved for Hindu Gods and Goddesses while for the rest one must tip toe around religious sensibilities. I am offended with the movie poster on Ma Kali, respect has to be equal for all&FoE should never become a tool to offend- deliberately.  Priyanka Chaturvedi (@priyankac19) July 5, 2022

Feeling pumped with my CREW pic.twitter.com/L8LDDnctC9

 Leena Manimekalai (@LeenaManimekali) July 2, 2022

Meanwhile, complaints have been filed against the documentary film's director Leena Manimekalai in various states including Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Bihar.

In Delhi, Police received a complaint from a lawyer, alleging that a poster is circulating on social media in which goddess Kali is shown smoking a cigarette.

From the contents of the complaint and the social media post, prima facie, an offence under sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race etc. and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) was made out and a case registered against Manimekalai at the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operation (IFSO) unit of the Special Cell, a senior police officer said.

While in Uttar Pradesh, police registered an FIR on charges of criminal conspiracy, offence in place of worship, deliberately hurting religious sentiments, and intention to provoke breach of peace against Manimekalai for her movie 'Kaali' for the disrespectful depiction of Hindu Gods.

Kaali poster row: 'To me, she is a meat-eating, alcohol-accepting goddess,' says Mahua Moitra

Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra has also reacted to the controversy over Leena Manimekalai's poster and said to her, "Kaali is a meat-eating, alcohol-accepting goddess."

"If you go to Bhutan or Sikkim, for example, when they do puja, they give whisky to their god. Now, if you go to Uttar Pradesh and say that you give whisky to your god as prasad, they will say that is blasphemous," she said.

Moitra said that people have the right to imagine their gods or goddess in the way they want.

"For me, Goddess Kali is a meat-eating and alcohol-accepting goddess. And if you go to Tarapith (a major Shakti peeth in West Bengal's Birbhum district), you will see sadhus smoking. That is the version of Kali people worship (there). I, within Hinduism, being a Kali worshipper, have the right to imagine Kali in that way; that is my freedom," she said.

Moitra said, "I have the freedom to do it (envision a meat-eating goddess) as much as you have the freedom to worship your god as vegetarian and white-clothed."

'I NEVER backed any film or poster': Mahua Moitra amid Kaali poster row

After her comments went viral, Mahua Moitra also issued a clarification attacking the Sangh Parivar.

"To all you sanghis - lying will NOT make you better hindus. I NEVER backed any film or poster or mentioned the word smoking. Suggest you visit my Maa Kali in Tarapith to see what food & drink is offered as bhog. Joy Ma Tara," she tweeted.

To all you sanghis- lying will NOT make you better hindus.

I NEVER backed any film or poster or mentioned the word smoking.



Suggest you visit my Maa Kali in Tarapith to see what food & drink is offered as bhog.

Joy Ma Tara  Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) July 5, 2022

Mamata Banerjee's TMC, however, distanced itself from Moitra's comments and condemned the remarks.

"The comments made by @MahuaMoitra at the #IndiaTodayConclaveEast2022 and her views expressed on Goddess Kali have been made in her personal capacity and are NOT ENDORSED BY THE PARTY in ANY MANNER OR FORM. All India Trinamool Congress strongly condemns such comments," Mamata Banerjee's party said in a Twitter post.

The comments made by @MahuaMoitra at the #IndiaTodayConclaveEast2022 and her views expressed on Goddess Kali have been made in her personal capacity and are NOT ENDORSED BY THE PARTY in ANY MANNER OR FORM.



All India Trinamool Congress strongly condemns such comments. July 5, 2022

(With agency inputs)
The police have arrested a restaurant owner for selling chicken wrapped in a newspaper printed with Hindu gods and goddesses in Uttar Pradesh's Sambhal.

The action was taken against the restaurant owner after a man had complained about the same to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the state police chief.

Sambhal: What is the matter and where did it take place?

The incident took place in Sambhal, a city around 200 km away from New Delhi. As per reports, the hotel operator used to pack the chicken in the newspaper printed with pictures of the deities. After the incident came to light, a youth named Himanshu Kashyap complained about the hotel operator on social media to CM Yogi Adityanath, DGP of UP and SP of Sambhal district.

After getting information about the complaint through Facebook, the police took an action against the hotel operator Haji Talib for hurting the religious sentiments of the people.

Circle Officer Praveen Kumar of Sambhal area said that the police had received a complaint in the matter on Sunday. The police reached the restaurant immidiately and found the owner selling non-veg food in another paper that had pictures of Hindu gods and godesses printed on it.

An FIR has been registered against the hotel owner under relevant charges.
TBSE Board Result 2022: Tripura Board Class 10th, 12th Result 2022 date is expected to be announced today on the official website. The Tripura Board Results are expected to be out this week. As per the local media reports, the TBSE Board results likely to be declared on July 7, 2022 therefore no official announcement has been made yet. However, as per the reports officials are likely to announce the result date today July 5, 2022 through Tripura Board official website.

TBSE Board Result 2022: Heres how to check the scorecards

Visit the official website of Tripura Board  tbresults.tripura.gov.in

On the homepage, click on the link that reads Tripura Class 10, 12 Result 2022 term 2.

A login page will appear on the screen

Enter your application number, date of birth, captcha and click on the submit button

Then, TBSE 10th, 12th Results 2022 will appear on the screen

Download your result and save it for future reference

Students must enter their exam roll numbers and date of birth to view their TBSE Result 2022. Tripura Board held the TBSE Madhyamik Term 2 exams between April 18 and May 6, 2022. The TBSE HS Term 2 exams were originally scheduled to take place from April 25, 2022 to May 23, 2022, but were postponed and will now take place from May 2 to June 1, 2022.
New Delhi: The Jammu and Kashmir unit of the BJP on Tuesday responded to the Congress' allegation of an alleged link between the saffron leaders and the LeT terrorists apprehended by the security forces recently. Refuting the Congress charge, Ravinder Raina, J&K BJP President, said, Talib Hussain, a LeT terrorist & his accomplice, Faizal Ahmed Dar used to reach the BJP office pretending to be a journalist. They would attend press conferences as reporters inside BJP offices and even at political rallies.

Jammu, J&K | Talib Hussain, a LeT terrorist & his accomplice, Faizal Ahmed Dar used to reach the BJP office pretending to be a journalist. Would attend press conferences as reporters inside BJP offices & even at political rallies: Ravinder Raina, J&K BJP President (1/2) pic.twitter.com/oqJLb43Elj  ANI (@ANI) July 5, 2022

Raina further stated that Let terrorist Talib's phone has shown photos and videos which are disturbing. It seems that Talib recced our BJP J&K HQ office and even sent them to people across LoC to the LeT. Security agencies are investigating, can reveal some big links.

Talib's phone has shown photos & videos which are disturbing. It seems that Talib recced our BJP J&K HQ office & even sent them to people across LoC to LeT. Security agencies are investigating, can reveal some big links: Ravinder Raina, J&K BJP President (2/2) pic.twitter.com/Rm5uT0K9N1  ANI (@ANI) July 5, 2022

The clarification from Ravinder Raina came after the main opposition party Congress came down heavily on the BJP over its alleged links with apprehended LeT terrorists in J&K and killers of Kanhaiya Lal whose pictures with BJP leaders have come to the fore.

It may be recalled that the residents of Tuksan Dhok village in Jammu and Kashmir`s Reasi district recently exhibited exemplary courage by overpowering and capturing two most wanted Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists. They also snatched their weapons and handed them over to the security forces. The daredevil act of the villagers prompted J&K Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha, to announce a Rs 5 lakh reward for the denizens of Tuksan Dhok village.

The J&K Police identified the two captured terrorists as Talib Hussain Shah from Draj village in Rajouri and Faizal Ahmed Dar of Pulwama in South Kashmir. Two AK-47 rifles, seven grenades, a pistol, and a large number of arms and ammunition were seized from them.

On Tuesday, addressing a press conference, Congress' Communication-In-charge, Pawan Khera sought answers from the BJP over the issue. He said, "Two incidents in the past week have exposed the two-faced BJP. First, we learned that one of the accused in Kanhaiya Lal`s horrific murder in Udaipur was a BJP worker. Then it emerged that a captured Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist in Jammu and Kashmir was not only a BJP office-bearer who had previously been captured in photos with Home Minister Amit Shah but was also planning to attack the Amarnath Yatra."

It is "shocking" that the BJP, a party that loses no opportunity to preach about nationalism, has members and office-bearers who are deeply implicated in violent anti-national activities, he added.

He alleged that there is long list of BJP functionaries who have been caught participating at the behest of Pakistani agencies in terrorism and espionage. Former BJP leader and ex-sarpanch Tariq Ahmad Mir was arrested two years ago for procuring weapons for Hizbul Mujahideen commander Naveed Babu, he alleged.

In 2017, the Madhya Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) arrested the BJP IT Cell member Dhruv Saxena along with ten accomplices for spying for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, Balram Singh, a Bajrang Dal leader from Madhya Pradesh, was arrested in a terror funding case.

He added that in 2017, a special court of the NIA sentenced Assam BJP leader Niranjan Hojai to life imprisonment for participating in a Rs 1,000 crore scam to divert government funds to support a militant group.

The BJP has also knowingly given a ticket to Masood Azhar`s acolyte Mohammad Farooq Khan to contest the Srinagar municipal election from Ward 33. Khan was previously a member of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front and the Harkatul Mujahideen.

Khera said they appeal to the people of India to see through the BJP`s fake nationalism and its disturbing willingness to flirt with anti-national forces.

"What kind of an ideology finds a place for both Nupur Sharma and Riyaz Attari? And accommodates radicals like Talib Hussain? Is the BJP inspired by the alliance between the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League in which extremists of all religions banded together to prevent nationalist forces like the Congress to come to power?" he added

Denying any such links, the BJP accused Congress of playing politics on the recent incidents.

(With Agency Inputs)
NEW DELHI: Leena Manimekalai is a Madurai-born, Toronto-based filmmaker, who has landed in a bitter controversy over the poster of her upcoming documentary movie depicting Goddess Kaali as a smoking woman. The controversy erupted after she took to Twitter to share a poster of her film which depicted a woman dressed in a costume portraying the Goddess and smoking. A flag of the LGBT community is seen in the background.

Super thrilled to share the launch of my recent film - today at @AgaKhanMuseum as part of its Rhythms of Canada

Link: https://t.co/RAQimMt7Ln



I made this performance doc as a cohort of https://t.co/D5ywx1Y7Wu@YorkuAMPD @TorontoMet @YorkUFGS



Feeling pumped with my CREW pic.twitter.com/L8LDDnctC9  Leena Manimekalai (@LeenaManimekali) July 2, 2022

The portrayal of Goddess Kali in the poster did not go down well with a section of social media users who have demanded the poster be withdrawn. Some even demanded strict action against her and the hashtag '#ArrestLeenaManimekal` has since been trending on Twitter.

A police complaint has also been filed against the filmmaker for her wrongful portrayal of Goddess Kaali allegedly hurting the sentiments of Hindus. For hurting the sentiments of the Hindu society, a complaint was filed against Leena Manimekalai, the producer of the documentary film `Kaali`, the Delhi Police said, according to ANI.

FIR filed against '#Kaali' director #LeenaManimekalai in IFSO for her 'intentional act to hurt #Hindu Religious Sentiments.



In the documentary poster Goddess Kaali was shown smoking and holding LGBTQ flag. pic.twitter.com/zoFARrUI94  Organiser Weekly (@eOrganiser) July 4, 2022

A complaint was filed with Amrutha Guguloth, Deputy Commissioner of Delhi District Police. The complainants demanded punishment against Leena by taking strict action under strict sections of the law, including Section 295A of IPC, Section 79 of IT Act 2000 and Prohibition of Indecent Representation of Women Act, 1986.



Who is Leena Manimekalai?

Leena Manimekalai is a Madurai-born, Toronto-based Indian filmmaker, poet and actor. Her works include five published poetry anthologies and a dozen films in genres, including documentary, fiction and experimental poem films. She has been recognised for participation, mentions and best film awards in many international and national film festivals.

Leena hails from the Srivilliputtur region. She finished her secondary school in 1995 from the Holy Cross Convent. She pursued her education at Tamil Nadus Madurai Kamarajar University. In the year 2005, she completed an EU Fellowship in Media and Conflict Resolution. She also completed a PSBT Film Fellowship on Tamil Women Poetry and a Commonwealth Fellowship on Women in Film in 2008. She graduated from The School of Oriental and African Studies in 2012 with a degree in visual ethnography.

She currently lives in Canada. She is also the owner of Leena Manimekalai Productions, a producing company. Leena has directed several documentaries and her notable works include Mathamma, Parai, Breaking The Shackles, Love Lost, A Hole in the Bucket, Goddesses, Sengadal, My Mirror is the Door and Song of Resistance to name a few.

She has received numerous accolades and awards including the Silver Trophy for Best Documentary at the Europe Film Festival (2004), the Independent Diaspora Festivals in Paris and in Norway (2005), the Golden Conch at the Mumbai International Film Festival (2008), and others.
MUMBAI: Senior Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut has claimed that former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray-led faction of Shiv Sena will win more than 100 seats if mid-term polls take place in Maharashtra. We are confident of winning 100 seats as Shivsena... Uddhav Thackeray had said let's have mid-term polls and everything will be clear.. who will win and who will lose, Raut told news agency ANI.

Mumbai | We are confident of winning 100 seats as Shivsena... Uddhav Thackeray had said let's have mid-term polls and everything will be clear.. who will win & who will lose: Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut pic.twitter.com/Iz044vpRs7  ANI (@ANI) July 5, 2022

Speaking to news agency ANI, Raut said that no one can hijack Shiv Sena as it is Bala Saheb Thackerays party.

'Shiv Sena is Baba Thackeray's. Cannot be anyone else's. You cannot hijack it through money. CM Mamata Banerjee has said, not just money but something else was also given. It will be a big expose when this 'something' is revealed," Raut said.

Mumbai | Shiv Sena is Baba Thackeray's. Cannot be anyone else's. You cannot hijack it through money. CM Mamata Banerjee has said, not just money but something else was also given. It will be a big expose when this 'something' is revealed: Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut pic.twitter.com/sHbqLgkAs4  ANI (@ANI) July 5, 2022

He also expressed confidence that the rebel Shiv Sena MLAs, who are currently with Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, will return to the original party very soon.

We are still hopeful that these MLAs will return back... We were always in talks with rebels... They are our people, will come back. 'Subha ka bhoola agar shaam ko ghar aa jaye to usse bhoola nahi kehte,' Sanjay Raut said.

Mumbai | We are still hopeful that these MLAs will return back... We were always in talks with rebels... They are our people, will come back. 'Subha ka bhoola agar shaam ko ghar aa jaye to usse bhoola nahi kehte': Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut pic.twitter.com/8GnOsXB7CH  ANI (@ANI) July 5, 2022

Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut had on Monday questioned the legitimacy of the faction led by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and said the group cannot claim to be the original Sena.

Speaking to reporters in Delhi, Raut said these MLAs (of the Shinde group) should ask themselves some questions. They used the party symbol and all benefits that come along with it to win election, and then broke the same party.

"We will definitely contest it in court. The Shinde faction left the Shiv Sena, then how can they claim that their group is the original party, and not the one led by Uddhav Thackeray. The Thackeray name is synonymous with the Shiv Sena, the Rajya Sabha member said.

Raut went on to say that Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu had suspended JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav for defying the party's order not to participate in an event. "The event was not even in Parliament, but still he faced the action, the Shiv Sena's chief spokesperson claimed.

However, such a rule is not applicable to us when we expect similar action to be taken against 16 MLAs out of 39 (of the Shinde faction). Is it appropriate, he asked.

When a ruling is given as per the convenience of a person or a party, it is not a parliamentary democracy, he said.

It may be recalled that the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government in Maharashtra collapsed following a rebellion by the Eknath Shinde-led group. Shinde was later sworn in as the chief minister and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis as his deputy.

Shinde also won the trust vote in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly by a voice vote.
New Delhi: Categorically rejecting the posters of 'Kaali' which have created an uproar on social media, the Congress on Tuesday said that every religion should be respected. Congress spokesperson Gaurav Vallabh said, "We respect all deities of all religions and do not endorse anything which hurts anybody."

He said that it suits the BJP when there is controversy so that the government doesn't have to answer questions on the GST and other issues.

Meanwhile, Delhi Police has registered an FIR against Director Leena Manimekalai, a day after a complaint was lodged against her over the controversial poster of her new documentary.

The poster was shared by Manimekalai on social media on July 2. In the poster, Goddess 'Kaali Maa' has been shown smoking a cigarette.

The poster sparked off a massive uproar on social media and the demand to arrest the director trended on Twitter. The documentary revolves around the events that take place one evening, when Goddess 'Kaali' appears and strolls on the streets of Toronto.

On Monday, the Indian High Commission in Canada had also urged the organisers to withdraw all provocative material related to the 'Kaali' documentary.
Mumbai: Deepika Padukone, who was enjoying a vacation in the United States, ended her stay here as chief guest at the 10th edition of the Konkani Sammelan in San Jose, California. Hosted in the heart of Silicon Valley, at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, the three-day event laced with performances, music shows, seminars, food and the works, celebrates and promotes the Konkani cultural heritage and an initiative to keep the culture alive across the world.

The Bollywood star later took to her social media to thank the Konkani Association of California.



She posted a few pictures in ethnic outfit and wrote in the caption: "A people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. Thank you #KAOCA and to the people of my community for your love, warmth and blessings. I couldn't be more proud (sic)."

Deepika was joined by her parents and husband Ranveer Singh, who enjoyed his first tryst with the full-blown event that also saw an opening performance by Shankar Mahadevan.

In a few viral videos, Ranveer can be seen making a brief appearance on the stage as he impressed the audience with a few lines in Konkani. Sitting beside Deepika in an ethnic outfit, he said "I'm really happy" in Konkani.

Soon after, the room filled with a loud cheer. Deepika also cheered her husband and said, "Well done". Towards the end, Ranveer said, "Dev bare karu (May God bless you)" and exited the stage.

On the work front, Deepika has interesting projects in the lineup. She will next be seen in Shah Rukh Khan starrer spy-thriller Pathan. She also stars along with Prabhas in Project K. Deepika is also part of the official Hindi remake of Hollywood film The Intern that stars her and Amitabh Bahchan.
Mumbai: Actor Ranbir Kapoor is all praise for his `Shamshera` co-star Vaani Kapoor."Vaani is a very fine actor. She is someone who works very hard. She is so focused that she is always wearing headphones, listening to music and trying to be in character. Many times I`ve tried to distract her and just have stupid conversation. We really befriended each other," he said.



He added, "We really enjoyed each other`s company. I think what she`s done in Shamshera is quite outstanding and I am looking forward to how people find her character and her performance. She has a very important role in the film and people will have to wait to see the film to understand how important her role is."

On Tuesday, Vaani took to Instagram and treated her fans by sharing a few images of her photoshoot with Ranbir.

In the images, Vaani and Ranbir are seen flaunting their sizzling chemistry. Vaani looks super hot in a black dress, while Ranbir looks dapper in a rust suit. Ranbir chose to go shirtless while posing with Vaani.



"Balli & Sona," she captioned the post, leaving fans in awe of them.



"Killer pictures," a social media user commented. "You both look so hot," another one wrote.



Helmed by Karan Malhotra, Shamshera is set in the fictitious city of Kaza, where a warrior tribe is imprisoned, enslaved and tortured by a ruthless authoritarian general Shuddh Singh (played by Sanjay Dutt).



In the film, Ranbir is pitted against Sanjay Dutt who is playing an evil, merciless, cold-hearted brute force of nature, Shuddh Singh. Ranbir will be seen relentlessly fighting for his tribe`s freedom and dignity. Produced by Aditya Chopra, `Shamshera` is set to release in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu on July 22, 2022.
Indian Railways never leaves a stone unturned when it comes to providing comfort to its rail passengers. This time as well due to operational issues in terminals, the Indian Railways is changing terminals for various trains from July 10. Most of the trains under Northern Railway will undergo changes in schedule. Trains scheduled to operate in cities of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka will have their terminals changed. Until now, three pairs of trains which terminated at Varanasi station have now been shifted to Banaras station. From now on, the arrival and departure of these trains will be from Banaras.

Check list of trains which will get changed terminals:

-Train no. 14220, Hubli-Varanasi Express will terminate its journey at Banaras from July 11.

-Train no. 14219, Varanasi-Lucknow Express will begin its journey from Banaras with effect from July 12.

-Train no. 04202, Pratapgarh-Varanasi Express, will terminate its journey at Banaras from 10 July 2022.

Also read: Railways open longest skywalk connecting Bandra Terminus to Khar station in Mumbai

-Train no. 04201, Varanasi - Pratapgarh Express will start its journey from Banaras on July 11.

-Train no. 11071, Lokmanya Tilak Terminus-Varanasi Express, will terminate its journey at Banaras from July 10.

-Train no. 11072, Varanasi-Lokmanya Tilak Terminus-Varanasi Express, will start its journey from Banaras from July 12.

The changes have been made for convenience of passengers and to strengthen rail infrastructure. These trains will arrive at Gorakhpur and continue its journey to Janakpur in Nepal. After completing this journey, the trains will leave for Banaras.

Live TV
New Delhi: Garena Free Fire releases redeem codes on everyday basis. The 12-digit redeem code consists of alphabets and numbers. Players can get rewards such as skins for in-game weapons and characters to improve their gaming experience.

Garena Free fire is banned in India. However, if you are located outside India, you can access the reward codes and redeem them. For that you will be required to visit official Garena Free Fire reward site and log in to your Facebook, Google, Twitter IDs to access the Free Fire redemption page. (Also read: Google Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro features listed on ecommerce website: Details here)

Check out the Garena Free Fire Redeem Codes for July 05, 2022

HAYATOAVU76V

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TJ57OSSDN5AP

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(Also read: Shocking! Ex-Amazon Web Services engineer hacked data of 10 crore customers)

How to Redeem Garena Free Fire codes for today, July 05 2022

Step 1: Go to the official Garena Free Fire redemption portal



Step 2: Log in on the portal with either your Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google, VK, or Huawei ID.



Step 3: Enter a redeem code in the designated text box.



Step 4: Click on the Ok button to get free rewards in your game account.

(Disclaimer: Garena Free fire is banned in India. Hence we advise people to adhere to government rules)
New Delhi: The OnePlus Nord 2T 5G will be available on sale in India at noon today, July 5. Customers may purchase the phone from OnePlus India outlets and Amazon in two storage configurations and two colour options. The smartphone is the successor to last year's OnePlus Nord 2, and it is powered by Mediatek's latest Dimensity 1300 chipset. OnePlus fans who want to upgrade to the new Nord phone will be pleased to see the reintroduction of the alert slider, which was missing from the OnePlus Nord 2 CE and OnePlus 10R.

The OnePlus Nord 2T 5G comes in two variants: 8GB RAM and 128GB storage and 12GB RAM and 256GB storage. Their respective pricing are Rs 28,999 and Rs 33,999. Read More: Garena Free Fire redeem codes for today, 5 July: Check website, steps to redeem

In addition, the company is providing a Rs 1,500 immediate discount on ICICI Bank credit and credit cards. The same offer applies to EMI transactions using ICICI Bank credit and credit cards. Customers may effectively purchase the phone for Rs 27,499 and Rs 32,499. Read More: Apple brings BIG health features! Series 8 watch will be able to detect if you have a fever

OnePlus India even provides no-cost EMI for up to three months. Amazon also has the same bank offerings.

The OnePlus Nord 2T 5G is available in Jade Fog (green) and Grey Shadow (black).

The OnePlus Nord 2T features a 6.43-inch AMOLED display with Full HD+ resolution and a refresh rate of 90Hz. The display also supports HDR10+, which "makes your binge-watching time on apps like Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and YouTube more colourful." It has a Dimensity 1300 chipset under the hood, as well as up to 12GB and 256GB storage.

The triple rear cameras are housed within two big round cutouts that are similar to the round cutouts found on Huawie's recent flagships. A 50-megapixel Sony IMX766 primary camera is combined with an 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera and a 2-megapixel secondary sensor in the rear camera system. For sharp photos and videos, the primary camera has OIS (optical image stabilisation).

For selfies and video calls, the front panel contains a 32-megapixel sensor. Other notable features include an OxygenOS 12.1-based Android 12 operating system, 89W SuperVOOC rapid charging, and a 4,500mAh battery.
New Delhi: There are a variety of offenses that might result in punishment if you are a school student, ranging from failing to complete tasks to arriving late for class. However, a mother in the United Kingdom was recently startled when her daughter was given detention at school for having a 93 percent charge on her iPad. The mother, perplexed by the unique explanation for the punishment, tweeted about it. "My daughter was detained because her iPad was 93 percent charged when she came to school," wrote a user named Selina.

My daughter was issued a detention because her iPad, when she arrived at school, was 93%. The assistant head, who Ive since emailed, has set the expectation that iPads be no lower than 97% or pupils will be punished.



Im flummoxed.



Has anyone heard of such nonsense?  Selina (@Missy_E36) June 29, 2022

According to the mother, she emailed the assistant principal of her daughter's school, who informed her that children must arrive at school with at least 97 percent of their iPads charged. She further stated that anyone breaking this rule will be penalised. "I'm perplexed. "Has anyone heard of such nonsense?" the mother tweeted. Read More: OnePlus Nord 2T goes on sale in India today, will be priced at Rs 27,499: Check specs, features and more

In another tweet, the mother provided a screenshot of an email she sent to school officials, asking for an explanation for the unusual punishment. Selina stated that she had also mailed to her daughter's tutor and informed her that she would not be attending detention until she received a response. Read More: Garena Free Fire redeem codes for today, 5 July: Check website, steps to redeem

This is mental. Honestly, I'd be fuming  Nicola Ellen (@nicola_ellen_w) June 29, 2022

"Can you please explain why not having 100 percent battery is a viable basis to give a pupil detention?" the mother requested in the email. She emphasised that her daughter's iPad's 93 percent battery did not interfere with her studies in any way, and she continued to work on the device while at school.

The mother called the punishment "archaic," claiming that her daughter had done nothing wrong and hence did not deserve the penalty. She went on to say that such regulations instill "unnecessary dread" in pupils and are not an appropriate approach to operate a school.

As the story spread on Twitter, some individuals were perplexed by the unique restriction. One user mentioned how her son was once punished for having a dull pencil.

My daughter was issued a detention because her iPad, when she arrived at school, was 93%. The assistant head, who Ive since emailed, has set the expectation that iPads be no lower than 97% or pupils will be punished.



Im flummoxed.



Has anyone heard of such nonsense?  Selina (@Missy_E36) June 29, 2022

However, one user thought the rule was appropriate and pointed out that children struggle to charge their iPads at school, which hampers their learning.
Kolkata: Amid speculations that the BJP may soon send him to Rajya Sabha, replacing its sitting MP Rupa Ganguly, veteran Bollywood actor-politician Mithun Chakraborty has revealed who is his REAL BOSS in West Bengal. The Bollywood veteran who has not been very active in state politics despite being the partys star campaigner in the last assembly elections has also disclosed what he intends to do in future and how he plans to strengthen BJP in his home state in the days to come.

Mithun Da, as he is popularly known, made his first visit to the Bengal BJP office on Monday since last year's assembly polls, and vowed to work for his party.

While interacting with reporters, the actor-politician said, I have come to Calcutta under the direction of the central leadership. The party has given me some political programs. I will follow that partys instructions word by word. But in Bengal my boss is Sukanta Majumdar. I will join the movement in the interest of the people of Bengal under his direction.

Mithun made these remarks while sitting next to BJP central leader Rahul Sinha and Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumder. It may be recalled that the yesteryears Bollywood heart-throb Mithun Chakraborty had joined the BJP at a mega-rally at Brigade Parade Ground in March last year, just days ahead of the assembly polls.

He didn't contest the assembly election but he actively campaigned for his party and crisscrossed the length and breadth of the state canvassing for BJP candidates.

He, however, was not very active in state politics after that. Explaining his absence, he said, "I was not well for the last year, so I could not participate in political activities and neither come to the party office. The party has assigned me a few tasks, and I will do my best to fulfil those duties. I will work for the party in the state."

Mithun Da said that he always wanted to work for the underprivileged, and the saffron camp has given him a platform to fulfil his aspiration. "I want to continue to work for the people of the state. For me, Bengal comes first," he said.

During his interaction with reporters, the actor-politician said, "... and who knows that the tally of 18 (Lok Sabha) seats in 2019 might reach 36 seats in 2024 if people support us."

The septuagenarian actor, a former Naxalite, shot to stardom with his role as a tribal archer in Mrinal Sen's film iconic 'Mrigayaa' in 1976, for which he won the National Film Award for the best actor.

(With Agency Inputs)
BEIJING: Chinese authorities have blocked Canadian government representatives from attending the trial of Chinese-Canadian billionaire Xiao Jianhua, the Canadian embassy said on Tuesday. Xiao, who went missing in Hong Kong five years ago, was due to go on trial in China on Monday and Canadian consular officials had been pressing for consular access, the embassy said earlier in a statement.Canada made several requests to attend the trial proceedings, public diplomacy counsellor at the embassy, Nadia Scipio del Campo, said in an emailed statement sent to reporters.

Our attendance was denied by Chinese authorities When asked for further details such as to confirm the location of the trial, the embassy said it would not comment further due to privacy considerations.A spokesman at the Chinese foreign ministry, Zhao Lijian, said on Monday he was not aware of the situation when asked about Xiao`s trial at a media briefing. China-born Xiao, known to have links to Communist Party elite, has not been seen in public since 2017 after he was investigated amid a state-led crackdown on conglomerates.

ALSO READ: Stop meddling in Hong Kong's affairs: China asks Canada

Officials have not disclosed the specifics of the investigation. Xiao was whisked away from a Hong Kong hotel, in a wheelchair with his head covered, in the early hours of the day he went missing, a source close to the tycoon told Reuters at the time.

Xiao was ranked 32nd on the 2016 Hurun China rich list, China`s equivalent of the Forbes list, with an estimated net worth of $5.97 billion at the time.At the centre of Xiao`s empire is the financial group Tomorrow Holdings Co.

In July 2020, regulators seized nine of the group`s related institutions as part of a crackdown on risks posed by financial conglomerates. In 2021, regulators extended the one-year take-over period of the nine financial enterprises by another year to "further promote risk disposal work and defuse financial risks".

The extended custody is set to end on July 16. The seizures were preceded in 2019 by a takeover by regulators of Baoshang Bank, a lender once controlled by Tomorrow. Regulators cited severe credit risks.The lender, which had operated nationwide, was revamped into a much smaller lender in its home region of Inner Mongolia in northern China.

In recent years, a number of executives at big Chinese companies have been investigated or prosecuted amid a broader crackdown on corruption spearheaded by President Xi Jinping that has also ensnared politicians and bankers.

ALSO READ:China's President Xi Jinping at the risk of being Covid positive, here is why

Among those who have fallen from grace was Jiang Jiemin, former head of China National Petroleum Corp, who was jailed for 16 years for bribery and abuse of power in 2015.In 2017, Ai Baojun, a former chairman of Baoshan Iron and Steel who later became vice mayor of Shanghai, was jailed for 17 years for bribery and graft.
Bridgeport: Firefighters in Northern California were battling a fresh wildfire that broke out on Monday east of Sacramento. The fire burning in Amador County quickly spread to 959 acres (388 hectares) as of just after 7 pm Monday, according to Cal Fire. The fire agency had said earlier on Twitter that the fire was 75 acres (30 hectares) in size and burning at a dangerous rate of spread in dry grass. The fire is one of several burning in the state.

Earlier Monday, authorities said evacuation orders and warnings had been lifted in another Northern California county after a wildfire there threatened about 500 homes and other buildings.

Also Read: Massive fire breaks out in Delhi's Karol Bagh; family of 5 rescued

The Nevada County sheriff's office said the warnings related to the Rices Fire were lifted early Monday. Residents were urged to be careful when returning to the area because of potential damage. The fire broke out last Tuesday near the Yuba River and destroyed 5 homes and 8 other structures, fire officials said.

It began with a burning building and the flames spread to nearby dry vegetation in the rural area northeast of Sacramento about halfway between the state Capitol and the Nevada border. The fire has burned about 900 acres (366 hectares) and is 65 per cent contained.

Also Read - Pakistan: Hundreds of vehicles torched after fire in Karachi impoundment lot

(With AP inputs)
Hong Kong: Daily COVID-19 cases stay at 2k

The Centre for Health Protection today said it is investigating 2,085 additional locally acquired COVID-19 cases, of which 771 were directly identified through nucleic acid tests and 1,314 via rapid antigen tests (RATs) that were verified.

Separately, 183 imported cases were reported.

The centre added that three care homes for the elderly and another four for disabled people have identified new COVID-19 cases.

There were also 321 virus cases reported from 243 schools as a result of the daily RAT requirement for students and staff.

The centre advised several schools to suspend face-to-face lessons for specific classes for a week due to the higher proportion of infections discovered within the class.

Meanwhile, the Government made a restriction-testing declaration to cover Kwong Chi House, Kwong Fuk Estate in Tai Po, requiring people in the restricted area to undergo compulsory testing before the specified deadline.

As there were positive sewage test results with relatively high viral loads in several areas in Sai Kung, Sham Shui Po and North districts, the Housing Department and respective district offices will distribute COVID-19 rapid test kits to relevant residents as well as cleaning workers and property management staff working there.

For information and health advice on COVID-19, visit the Government's dedicated webpage.

This story has been published on: 2022-07-05. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
What's New

On the heels of the SCOTUS decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn (NYSR&PA) v. Bruen, all four lawsuits that were being held by the court, have been given a GVR order;

Arizona: the legislature has adjourned;

California: Gov. Newsom has signed two bills while six more are awaiting his consideration. Additionally it has come to light that the Attorney General's office has allowed a leak of a "massive list of gun owners and their personal information."

Delaware: Gov Carney signed all six gun bills that passed the legislature within the past 2 weeks; then the legislature adjourned;

New Jersey: Despite the SCOTUS decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen, the NJ Democrat legislators moved 7 gun bills through both Houses that will be signed by Gov. Phil Murphy.

New York: the legislature met in an extraordinary session to pass a law that will "counter" the NYSRPA v. Bruen decision.

Biden-Harris Administration:

Dettelbach nomination: On June 16, the Senate voted 52-41 to bring the Dettelbach nomination to head ATF up for a vote in the U.S. Senate. The Senate is in pro forma sessions until after the Fourth of July holiday. A final vote on Dettelbach will probably be scheduled when the Senate returns from its Fourth of July recess and he will become the first confirmed Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in seven years.

2021  2022 Congressional Activity;

BiPartisan Safer Communities Act The US media has been pushing for another federal "gun bill" for a long, long time. Supported by a growing number of professional agitators against the Second Amendment they succeeded in passing a bill that met the criteria of "doing something" after two school shootings shocked the nation. .....
Premier Anibal Torres, acompanado del titular del @MinCulturaPe y de la viceministra de @MINCETUR, sostuvo una reunion con el congresista @GuidoBellidoU, el alcalde provincial de Cusco y de los distritos de Machupicchu y Ollantaytambo para tratar sobre la reactivacion turistica. pic.twitter.com/NKlMeB1fRC
?? Ingresos tributarios por Impuesto a la Renta e IGV impulsan crecimiento de la recaudacion en junio



 Alcanzo los S/11 038 millones el mes pasado, S/1243 millones mas que en junio del ano 2021. pic.twitter.com/1cLMhjDCPc
A man linked to a fatal people-smuggling operation in which hundreds of asylum seekers died at sea 21 years ago has been refused bail.

Maythem Kamil Radhi is set to face trial in October for allegedly being part of a syndicate that put 421 people on an overcrowded and dilapidated vessel known as SIEV-X in 2001.

The attempt ended with 353 people drowning, 146 of them children, in Indonesian waters.

The 45-year-old is not charged over the deaths. He is facing one count of bringing groups of non-citizens to Australia.

Prosecutors argue Radhi played a "facilitation" role before the ill-fated voyage left Indonesia, crown prosecutor Daniel Caruana said during an earlier committal hearing.

Barrister Mark McCarthy applied in the Brisbane Supreme Court on Tuesday for Radhi to be bailed to return to his wife and children in New Zealand.

Alternatively he could live with a family friend in Sydney.

An arrest warrant for Radhi was issued in a Brisbane court in 2011.

But the process was delayed while his eligibility for extradition was argued in courts in NZ, where he had been living with his wife and three children since being accepted as a refugee in 2009.

Radhi surrendered in October 2019 after deciding to stop pursuing appeals against his extradition.

Mr McCarthy said Radhi did not flee while challenging his extradition for eight years, and could face as little as three more months in custody, if found guilty.

"There is a powerful disincentive for him to flee and a powerful incentive for him to attend his trial and to complete this matter," he added.

Mr Caruana opposed the application saying the risk of Radhi failing to appear in court if released on bail is unacceptable, especially with the matter "being so close to finalisation".

Justice Paul Freeburn refused the application.

"On balance it seems to me the proximity of the trial sways the case against granting bail," he said.
The Cayuga Community College Alumni Association has recognized three graduates with 2022 Alumni Association Awards.

Alisha Dymond Burnett ('09), Jason Meyers ('16) and Nicholas Valenti ('66) were recognized along with 2020 inductees Lisa Chelenza ('92) and the Hon. Timothy Rice ('77) and 2021 inductees Gerard Martin ('67), Robert Smith, Esq. ('77) and Thomas White ('92) at a celebration at Prison City Brewing in Auburn recently.

Burnett graduated from Cayuga with an associate degree in nursing. She is now chief flight nurse of Tampa General Hospital's Aeromed 2 base, transporting critically injured patients from scenes and ICU patients from hospital to hospital. She has worked in critical care as a registered nurse for 12 years and is chair of her flight program's quality management and performance improvement program.

Alisha demonstrates her love for nursing at Cayuga and continues to make our nursing program proud, said Burnett's nominator, professor Edie Smith (92), of Cayugas nursing program.

Meyers graduated from Cayuga with an associate degree in criminal justice and corrections. He is a community outreach coordinator for the Cayuga County Community Mental Health Center, and serves as coordinator and consultant for Peer Integration for Recovery. He is also part of the support team for the HEALing Communities Study to address opioid overdose deaths in the area.

If there was ever a success story here at Cayuga, this gentleman is it, said Meyers' nominator, Dr. Jerimy Blowers ('93). He is an instrumental force in our community, helping to guide people to substance abuse recovery."

Valenti graduated from Auburn Community College with an Associate in Applied Science in accounting. He previously served America as a Marine during the Vietnam War. Since 1979 he has been active in several local veterans organizations, helping bring The Wall That Heals to Cayuga County and making its Vietnam veterans memorial in Brutus a reality. He was recently selected as a New York State Veteran's Hall of Fame honoree by state Sen. John Mannion.

Mr. Valentis community service and lifes work are a testament to the core values and sense of community that are part of Cayuga Community Colleges traditions that are instilled within our graduates," said Valenti's nominator, Dr. Linda Townsend ('74).

For more information, visit cayuga-cc.edu.
CANANDAIGUA  Tom Crane is a strong believer in basic human rights. He also sees the Finger Lakes Region as a major contributor to several such movements nationwide. In fact, Crane views the social reform movements of hundreds of years ago and today so important that he calls our region the worlds front lawn for human rights.

He wants to recognize the contributions of such human rights icons as Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and organizers of the first womens rights convention in Seneca Falls, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. And, there is the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua that established peace between the United States and the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.

Crane has announced the start of a campaign to raise $30 million for The Human Rights Museum in the historic former Post Office and current YMCA at 32 Main St. in Canandaigua. The campaign will start with a goal of $2.7 million for the acquisition of the property. A larger goal of $30 million would be set to build out and operate the museum.

Crane, a barber by trade, said the museum will have what he called the worlds first Stop Bullying and Suicide Prevention galleries.

The Human Rights Museum will provide a sense of community and place to celebrate our collective heritage, offering a great way for the world to know our regions particular history, Crane said.

One major focus of the museum will be Anthonys 1873 trial in the Ontario County Courthouse. The old Post Office is across the street from the courthouse.

Crane noted that the 150th anniversary of that famous trial, judged to be one of the 10 most influential trials in American history, will be in June 2023. Anthony stood trial for voting in the 1872 Presidential election in Rochester, nearly a half-century before women were granted the right to vote.

Other human rights battles to be highlighted are the Underground Railroad, womens rights, and voting rights.

June 22 marked the one-year anniversary 11-year-old Gio Bournes death; the Waterloo sixth-grader committed suicide. His mother, Angelina Smith, worked in Cranes Canandaigua Hair shop for several years, so he knew her and Gio well. He said Gio was bullied before taking his life on the last day of school in 2021. His mother found him.

That was so sad and so unnecessary. That may have been prevented if some red-flag questions had been asked, Crane said. The museum will address that.

The museum idea was planted in Cranes mind by a 2014 visit from college friend Daniel Pena of California, who runs a major tourism operation.

When he saw the Finger Lakes for the first time, he said it had potential to be a tourism gold mine, not only for its natural beauty and recreation, but for the social reform history, Crane recalled. He told me that having a human rights museum in Canandaigua would give visitors something to do in times of bad weather.

I was generally aware of some historical events in this area, but I did a lot of research and found much more than I ever imagined happened here that led to ongoing major movements for human and civil rights.

He said a book by former Hobart and William Smith Colleges faculty member Micheline Eshay on the history of human rights is the template for planning the museum. He noted that the childrens portion and emphasis on bullying and suicide prevention came later, after Bournes tragic death.

If the money can be raised, Crane said a nationally renowned museum designer is ready to start the design. The museum would be a modern, interactive, state-of-the-art facility.

The theme of every life has value, as stated in the Its A Wonderful Life movie many say is based on Seneca Falls, will be incorporated in what we do, Crane said.

Crane said he has approached foundations run by three of the Canandaigua areas wealthiest families: the Sands, Wegmans and Golisanos. Canandaigua National Bank & Trust has set up an account for donations. Wealthy philanthropists are ready once the first major donor emerges, Crane said.

This is my passion, Crane said. I believe in this area and its history, and I believe many suicides among children can be prevented by asking them some questions that would or could raise red flags early enough so that steps could be taken to prevent a suicide.

There is such a rich history here as far as being the starting point for so many human rights movements. I think this museum would highlight that and be an attraction.

For more information, contact Crane on Facebook, at www.thehumanrightsmuseum.com, or via tom.crane.thehrmuseum@gmail.com.
[July 05, 2022] DigitalBridge Announces $200 Million Share Repurchase Authorization DigitalBridge Group, Inc. (NYSE: DBRG) ("DigitalBridge" or "Company") today announced that its Board of Directors has approved a $200 million share repurchase program, effective immediately, which includes the authorization to repurchase both the Company's outstanding common and preferred shares. Marc Ganzi, CEO of DigitalBridge, said, "This share repurchase authorization demonstrates our confidence in the continued demand we are seeing across our digital infrastructure portfolio and the momentum we are experiencing as the partner of choice to institutional investors in our sector. While macro-economic headwinds are impacting a number of sectors, digital infrastructure has proven to be resilient and our conviction in our long-term strategy and business model has never been stronger. We believe this share repurchase program provides us with another tool to create value for our long-term shareholders." The Board's authorization permits DigitalBridge to repurchase its shares through various methods, including open market repurchases, negotiated block transactions, accelerated share repurchases, open market solicitations and Rule 10b5-1 plans. The Company may repurchase common and/or preferred shares from time to time in compliance with SEC regulations and other legal requirements. The extent to which DigitalBridge repurchases its shares, and the timing of such repurchases, will depend upon a variety of factors including market conditions and other corporate considerations as determined by the Company's management, as well as the Company's repurchase program limits and its capital plan. The share repurchase program does not obligate DigitalBridge to acquire any particular amount of shares and may be extended, modified, or discontinued at any time. DigitalBridge today also announced it expects to effectuate a reverse stock split in which one Class A common equity share will be issued in exchange for every four existing Class A common equity shares in the third quarter f 2022. The Company plans to announce the effective date of the reverse stock split at least 10 days prior in accordance with NYSE notification requirements. The reverse stock split is intended to reinforce the completion of the Company's successful business transformation, more closely align DigitalBridge's outstanding share count with companies of similar size and scope, and generate additional administrative cost savings, consistent with management's ongoing initiatives to simplify and rationalize the Company. About DigitalBridge DigitalBridge (NYSE: DBRG) is a leading global digital infrastructure investment firm. With a heritage of over 25 years investing in and operating businesses across the digital ecosystem including cell towers, data centers, fiber, small cells, and edge infrastructure, the DigitalBridge team manages a $47 billion portfolio of digital infrastructure assets on behalf of its limited partners and shareholders. Headquartered in Boca Raton, DigitalBridge has key offices in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Singapore. For more information visit www.digitalbridge.com. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements relate to expectations, beliefs, projections, future plans and strategies, anticipated events or trends and similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "intends," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," or "potential" or the negative of these words and phrases or similar words or phrases which are predictions of or indicate future events or trends and which do not relate solely to historical matters. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and contingencies, many of which are beyond our control, and may cause actual results to differ significantly from those expressed in any forward-looking statement. Factors that might cause such a difference include, without limitation, the Company's ability to purchase shares under the repurchase program, whether the contemplated reverse stock split is effected in the anticipated time frame or at all, and other risks and uncertainties, including those detailed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021, Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2022, and its other reports filed from time to time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). All forward-looking statements reflect the Company's good faith beliefs, assumptions and expectations, but they are not guarantees of future performance. The Company cautions investors not to unduly rely on any forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this current report. The Company is under no duty to update any of these forward-looking statements after the date of this release, nor to conform prior statements to actual results or revised expectations, and the Company does not intend to do so. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220704005436/en/

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July 5, 2007

FAIR HAVEN  Wednesday's rain showers did not scare Samantha Lee from continuing a life-long tradition: sailing in Fair Haven's annual Fourth of July boating parade.

I like cheering and singing, said the 12-year-old from Camillus, who sailed Vagabond with her family. It's just fun going around the bay and celebrating the Fourth of July.

More than a dozen boats circled around Little Sodus Bay Wednesday, blowing their horns, playing music, waving hello to many a passer-by, and showing patriotism with American flags flapping in the breeze.

The rainy weather may have cut down the number of participants, but it didn't put a damper on those who came out for the festivities.

Just look at these kids. Look at them, said organizer Sam Colvine, motioning to some 10 children laughing, running around and stuffing their faces with cookies and juice. There's a smile on everyone's face. They don't care that it's raining.

The boat parade began in 1939 when Colvine and Raymond Sant rowed two flat-bottom rowboats decorated in balloons 100 yards around the bay. They continued the parade for two years until Sant joined the army to fight in World War II.

It wasn't until 1946 when Sant returned from the service that the parade began again. But this parade was different than the last, Colvine said. This time they had 1.5 horsepower motors that took them 500 yards around the bay. Every year Colvine and Sant would pick up new participants. Now, on a good day, the parade could see as many as 50 boats, he said.

The best part about the event, Colvine said, is how it brings people together.

Everybdy comes back to Fair Haven for the Fourth of July festivities, he said. There's a carnival for the kids, the merchants decorate the stores, the businesses come alive. Everybody that has ever been connected to Fair Haven comes back.

Every year local merchants donate prizes which are awarded to boats who are the most traditional for the Fourth of July, have the most balloons, the youngest skipper, most fun, playing the best music and are carrying the most umbrellas.

The Sojourn was awarded the Most American Flags Award. Calvin Lee, 4, of Camillus, strolled up to Colvine to accept the award: two fishing hooks.

I liked when we went out on the boat parade, Calvin said, beaming with excitement.

Sue and Tom McEneny and their three children Justin, 10, Erin, 7, and Tom, 4, came out from Wakeforest, North Carolina

We came to be with family members and enjoy a beautiful sunny day this place has to offer, said Sue McEneny with a chuckle. We were hoping for some sun but we are happy that we did it anyway.
A Buffalo pediatrician and two of his daughters died in an overnight fire in North Buffalo, according to the Buffalo Fire Department.

The mother was in serious condition after suffering smoke inhalation in the fire at 194 Huntington Ave. She was taken by ambulance to Erie County Medical Center.

Relatives confirmed the three who died were Dr. Jonathan D. Daniels, 53, who was one of only a handful of Black pediatricians practicing in the Buffalo area, and daughters, Jordan A. Daniels, 27, and Jensen A. Daniels, 23.

The mother, Janessa Givens-Daniels, 53, a senior associate director of financial aid at University at Buffalo, was able to escape the fire on her own.

The two-alarm blaze erupted at the single-family home on Huntington, between Parker and Voorhees avenues, at about 3:36 a.m., Fire Commissioner William Renaldo said.

Firefighters carried out two people who were trapped in the attic. Firefighters got another person out a side window on the second floor, he said.

Firefighters and AMR ambulance crews performed CPR, but the father and the two daughters died at the scene.

A dog also died in the fire.

Dr. Daniels, who grew up in Buffalo and was the first in his immediate family to graduate from college, said in a story in The Buffalo News published in 2019 that there were few African American students in medical school when he attended 25 years ago at University at Buffalo, and there were still very few. He encouraged New York State to invest more in programs that create a pipeline to medical school for more young African-Americans, Latino and Latina students and others underrepresented in medicine.

Daniels was one of only four Black pediatricians and among only three dozen Black physicians practicing in the Buffalo area, according to the Rev. Kinzer Pointer, the co-convener of the African American Health Equity Task Force.

African American physicians are not readily available and serve a large African American community in this area, Pointer said.

The loss of Dr. Daniels is one that the Rev. George Nicholas, leader of the African American Health Equities Task Force, describes as another devastating blow to the Black community.

I took my sons to Dr. Danielsall four of them. He was a terrific doctor. He would talk to them about being a Black man and sexuality. It was just that kind of care, Nicholas said. He was a good physician, good husband, good man, and good father.

Daniels' and his wife also have another daughter, Jillian, who was not present at the time of the fire.

In an interview with The News, Jillian Daniels said her father was a widely loved pediatrician in the community, who, if he was here would say something like, we have to keep moving.

She said the three Daniels sisters were all the best friends. When she had to make major life decisions, Jillian Daniels said she knew she could turn to both her older and younger sister.

Jordan was witty, caring and strongly believed in everything she did, she said, while Jensen had a fierce intelligence that she truly admired.

As she attempts to honor her dads words and keep moving, Jillian Daniels said she is grateful for her mothers survival and support from her friends.

UB President Satish K. Tripathi issued a statement calling the fire a devastating tragedy.

As a university community, our collective hearts are broken with the devastating tragedy that claimed the life of beloved faculty member, Dr. Daniels and his two cherished daughters, one of whom is an alumna, said Tripathi. Our deepest sympathies and thoughts are with Janessa as we pray for her full recovery.

Jordan Daniels received her MBA degree from the University at Buffalo School of Management in May.

Dr. Daniels served as associate director of admissions in UB's Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Dr. Daniels was a treasured colleague, physician, mentor and friend, and his absence will leave an unfillable hole in our school community, said Dr. Allison Brashear, UB vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. He was a tireless advocate for diversifying the physician workforce and has worked closely with the Associated Medical Schools of New York to expand the pool of scholars choosing careers in medicine and health care, by providing academic enrichment and support to students from educationally and/or economically underserved backgrounds.

While seeking his undergraduate degree, Dr. Daniels joined the United States Army Reserve 365th Evacuation Hospital during his sophomore year so that he could repay student loans. He served as a combat medic during Operation Desert Storm.

After returning to Buffalo and finishing his undergraduate degree, Daniels enrolled in and completed his residency at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Sirens woke neighbors

The smell of smoke lingered in the air on Huntington Avenue on Monday morning, as onlookers stopped to observe the scene. A woman left a bouquet of flowers.

Sirens from the fire trucks woke up neighbors, said Holly Cercone, another resident of the neighborhood.

I just immediately started praying because Ive never heard that many sirens before, she said.

In nearly 25 years of living in the neighborhood, Cercone said she'd never witnessed this level of devastation.

If you come by here, and you look at this, what's left of this house, and your heart's not moved? I don't know, she added.

John Fantini, a neighbor who witnessed the fire from his home across the street, said the sirens also woke him up. When he looked outside his bedroom window, he could see the back of the house engulfed in flames.

Ive never been this close to a house fire like that, he added.

Neighbors told fire investigators they saw flames in the rear of the home. When firefighters arrived, there were flames coming from the attic window, the commissioner said.

Investigators believe the fire started on the second floor and spread to the attic.

The cause of the blaze was under investigation. It was not believed to be fireworks-related.

Five firefighters were injured and taken to ECMC, where they were treated and released. Several suffered minor burns to their ears and neck. One suffered an ankle and knee injury.

The fire department estimated damage to the home at about $230,000. A neighboring home at 200 Huntington sustained about $55,000 in exposure damage.

News Staff Reporter Leah Clark contributed to this report.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Honda Motor announced today its monthly China sales reached 141,142 units in June 2022, jumping 19.4% from a year earlier.

Notably, the upward movement in June sales came after the Japanese automaker faced three consecutive months of two-digit year-on-year sales drop in the world's largest auto market.

As for the sales of the two joint ventures, GAC Honda saw its June sales jump 22.8% over a year ago to 70,774 units, while Dongfeng Honda scored a 16.3% blooming year-on-year increase by selling 70,368 vehicles last month.

For the first six months of 2022, Honda Motor sold 679,227 vehicles across China, representing a 13.6% year-on-year decrease due to the impact of the coronavirus resurgence and the supply constraints of auto parts.

The year-to-date sales of vehicles armed with the hybrid powertrain system Sport Hybrid added up to 100,022 units, sliding 14.4% compared to the same span of 2021.

With 351,203 vehicles sold in total, GAC Honda posted a 3.7% year-on-year decline in its Jan.-Jun. sales. Meanwhile, a two-digit dip of 22.3% confronted Dongfeng Honda's year-to-date sales, which stood at 328,024 units.

As for the launch of new products, the e:NP1, the first production model under GAC Hondas all-electric vehicle brand e:NP, officially hit the market on June 20. Coming with four trim levels, the new model is priced between 175,000 yuan ($26,160) and 218,000 yuan ($32,580) after subsidies.

On the same day, Honda Motor (China) Investment Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Honda Motor in China, announced that GAC Honda had begun construction of its new EV plant in Guangzhou. The plant is expected to begin operation in 2024 with an annual production capacity of 120,000 units.
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.

Chery OMODA 5 to hit market

The OMODA 5, an all-new SUV model from Chery, will hit the market on July 12. The globalized new model has started presale with a price range of RMB92,900 to RMB128,900.





Photo credit: Chery

iFLYTEK registers AI company in Sanming

iFLYTEK incorporated an artificial company in Sanming, Fujian province with a registered capital of RMB20 million. The new firms business includes the technology development of internet of things, development of intelligent robots.

Yutong Bus June sales down by 58% YoY

Yutong Bus sold 2,234 vehicles in June, representing a year-over-year decrease of 58.29%. Its total sales of the first half of this year fell 43.82% from a year ago to 11,567 units.

New Dongfeng Peugeot 408 to roll off line

The new-generation Dongfeng Peugeot 408 will go off the production line on July 12. The new model is the first model with new logo in China.

China-made Benz EQE to make debut this year

The China-made Mercedes Benz EQE is expected to make debut officially at the Guangzhou Auto Show this year. The SUV will be built by Beijing Benz, the German companys joint venture in China, from 2023 on.

Honda Motor boasts 19.4% YoY jump in June China sales

Honda Motor announced today its monthly China sales reached 141,142 units in June 2022, jumping 19.4% from a year earlier.



NIO announces completion of 10 million battery swaps

NIO provided its 10 millionth battery swap on July 4, 2022, the EV startup announced via its WeChat account. According to data released by NIO, it took the automaker 29 months to complete its first 1 million battery swaps, and only 1 month to climb from the 9 to the 10 millionths.

Guangzhou greenlights autonomous vehicles for pilot operation

Guangzhou issued two policy papers to build a pilot system for autonomous driving mixed operations in the city.



China reduces 7.1 billion yuan of car purchase tax in June



There were around 1.097 million cars benefiting from China's car purchase tax breaks during the first month after the policy came into force, according to the data released by China's State Taxation Administration. The tax cut policy had already saved about 7.1 billion yuan ($1.061 billion) for car buyers, data from the country's top taxation agency showed.



BAIC BJEV scores 144.43% YoY surge in H1 2022 sales

For the first half of this year, the automaker saw its cumulative auto outputs soar 181.97% from a year earlier to 6,082 units, while its vehicle sales amounted to 17,010 units, shooting up 144.43% compared to the same span of 2021.
For the first time in recent decades, the number of hunters in the country increased, up 5.6% last year. Will this last, or was it a one-time blip? The common reason given by many new hunters: "For the meat.

Why are more hunters good for wildlife? Because hunters fund wildlife conservation.

The increase in hunters, fishers, self-defenders, recreational shooters is a boon to the Federal Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration funding program. The excise tax imposed on the sale of all new hunting, fishing, shooting and boating gear allowed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to announce a record $1.5 billion generated for conservation and recreation projects last year.

Because Arizona Game and Fish manages all of the state's wildlife and is funded by solely by hunters and fishermen along with Federal Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration grants, this is good news indeed.

Americas sportsmen and women donated an additional $440 million to various wildlife conservation organizations last year, and this too is significant.

For example, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation allocated $2.1 million in grant funding to Arizona in 2021.

This money from RMEF goes to improve wildlife waters and restoring wildlife habitats. Over the years the RMEF grants to Arizona have completed 518 conservation and hunting heritage outreach projects that have conserved 458,422 acres of habitat and opened public access to 22,000 aces. The value of all these projects is estimated to be $37 million.

For information, go to RMEF.org.

And that is just one organization. When you add up the money generated by other wildlife conservation groups like the Arizona Antelope Foundation, the Arizona Elk Society, the Arizona Desert Bighorn Sheep Society, Quail Forever, Arizona Fly Casters, National Wild Turkey Federation and dozens more, we are talking serious money and thousands of volunteer labor hours to maintain the tremendous wildlife diversity that we have in Arizona.

The question is, which group do you support? Do you support our diverse wildlife at all? Wildlife is under tremendous pressure from the drought and habitat destruction from all the people moving into our state, so which group do you support?

Not a hunter or fisher? Arizona Game and Fish manages all of Arizonas 800 wildlife species, which need your help too.

Just think about it. If everyone in Arizona gave just $10 toward wildlife conservation, that alone would generate $76,000,000 for our wildlife.

I ask, what have you done for our wildlife? Become a wildlife hero. Go to https://www.azwildlifehero.com/support-us/make-a-donation.
Whether we accept it or not, cultural standards are different around the world. No two cultures are the same, so shouldnt Disney perceive the real meaning behind inclusivity and not enforce American standards on all?

In its June release of the new film Lightyear, Disney projects a same-sex kiss between two animated female cartoon characters. This brief moment has stirred controversy and resulted in the banning of the movie in many countries.

Lightyear is not the only issue facing Disney, however. Its merely the tip of the iceberg. The Florida legislature in the US has passed Bill HR 1557, dubbed by opponents as the dont say gay bill in the same state in which Disney World flourishes. The bill forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity to pupils from kindergarten through grade 3 in Florida schools.

The bill has dismayed many gay rights proponents, and when Disney ignored the issue, it took much heat. Soon afterwards, Disney retracted its silence, and CEO Bob Chapek spoke of inclusivity and the right of everyone to be presented.

Disney also promised to continue to make films with an increased commitment to diversity. Chapek reiterated Disneys intention to represent its audience. Its film The Eternals introduces Phastos, the first openly gay superhero, who has a husband and children. More gay characters will be featured in upcoming movies.

The character of Buzz in Lightyear is voiced by actor Chris Evans, who criticised the controversy to the Reuters news agency. Theres always going to be people who are afraid and unaware and trying to hold on to what was before. But those people die off like dinosaurs I think the goal is to pay them no mind, march forward and embrace the growth that makes us human, he said.

In contrast, many, even in the US, are against having Disney include transgender or gay characters in movies that have children as their target audience. Caroline Farrow, a representative of an ultraconservative group in the US, Citizen Go, asked Chapek whether it is perhaps time to reconsider what you can do to make Disney more family friendly, to make it safe for people around the world, not just one particular minority?

A sign posted in the window of an Oklahoma cinema in the US also delivered a message to parents. A same-sex kiss in Lightyear would be fast-forwarded, it said. An article in the US publication Wink News speaks of a summer camp cancelling a field trip to watch the movie after parents were upset over the same-sex kiss.

What Disney doesnt really get is the global impact and the implications and obligations of universality. Disneys audiences are far more diverse than Chapek realises. Not only American children watch Disney movies. They are also watched by children in Singapore, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, and many other countries. Prudence and common sense in these cultures question why a Moroccan or a Libyan child in kindergarten, say, should be exposed to sexuality in the first place, let alone LGBTQ content.

Sensitivity to social norms and values is key. Cultures are the basic standards of any country and are represented in its customs, arts, attitudes, and other notions. Ethnocentrism and the likes and dislikes of each culture, be they right or wrong, are focal points that can hardly be denied or ignored.

What Disney is promoting is therefore disproportionate. If Disney is to cater to minorities, then it should not be catering to one single minority. It should be catering to all minorities without disregarding the majorities either, and this is a difficult endeavour.

Does Disney cater to indigenous minorities, ethnic minorities, Southeast Asians, Muslims, bereaved Palestinians, or other viewers around the world? I doubt it. Yet, Disney films are watched around the world.

Do we breed fear of the unknown if we worry about what our children will absorb if they see a certain movie, especially a Disney one? Not necessarily: we all remember scenes and phrases from movies we watched way back, and many movies leave their marks on viewers.

In addition, Disney is expanding its presence in many other countries, many of which are anti-gay. If Disney intends to have its subscription-based streaming service available in areas and countries that have strict anti-gay laws, then it must worry. Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia fall into this category.

Simultaneously, Disney should be aware of the ramifications of such a bold but bizarre move. When Disney acted on the war in Ukraine, it paused all its business in Russia. The chances are that countries that find Disneys inclusiveness offensive will resort to the same retaliatory measures.

Lets not kid ourselves. The world has become so small that whatever happens anywhere, be it a Disney movie, a Netflix flick, or even a mere incident, is almost guaranteed to resonate across the globe. Other controversial issues will creep up, I guarantee you.

Neither Disney nor the world at large cares much about how parents raise their children. This is an onerous responsibility placed on the shoulders of parents. It is up to those parents to closely monitor what a child watches and review content beforehand.

Hence, the onus falls upon parents, educators, and guardians to enlighten children in the way in which they deem fit and be aware of the viewing habits they pass on to children. They may opt to be overly realistic and expose them to films that showcase violence and horror scenes, fantasy or science fiction, same-sex marriage issues, violence, and crime and gangsters that kill arbitrarily. Or they may opt to have them watch what they believe is more fitting. The parents and their children will bear the brunt of those actions either way.

Ultimately, it is all a power game. But despite the saying that what the powerful want to, the powerless have to, its up to individuals to set the guidelines and standards for their childrens education and not be victimised by the powerful.

* The writer is a former professor of communication based in Vancouver, Canada.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 July, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
With U.S. Independence Day upon us once again this July 4, the current political climate in the country leaves many to wonder if Americans have anything to be proud of nearly 250 years after the establishment of their country. A recently updated compilation of data by the Pew Research Center on Americans' perception of their country and democracy indicates that there may not actually be much.

One survey from July 2021 found that 52 percent of respondees said the U.S. is "one of the greatest countries in the world, along with some others," and another 23 percent said the country "stands above all other countries in the world," which is the lowest value recorded to date. Almost a quarter of respondees said that "there are other countries that are better than the U.S."

There were, of course, some differences by age and party. People over 65 were most likely to say the U.S. is better than all other countries (38 percent), while people aged 18 to 29 were the least likely to feel the same (10 percent). Republicans and right-leaning independents felt stronger (38 percent) that the U.S. is better than all other countries while just 12 percent of Democrats and left-leaning independents agreed. A majority (55 percent) of Democrats in the age range 18 to 29 agreed that other countries are better than the U.S.

Other surveys conducted by Pew this year and over the past several years indicate that around two-thirds of Americans believe that their country is less-respected on the international stage and that about the same number see the country's openness to the world as "essential." Pew surveys also found that nearly six in 10 are upset with how their country's democracy functions but that, according to a spring 2022 survey, about two-thirds remain optimistic about the future.

I believe that this latest data point can be chalked up to some form of America's well-known dynamism. Despite all indications that things are headed for disaster, I believe the general American will still cling to hope regardless. It is deeply embedded in the cultural psyche to believe the "good guys" will always win in the end, for better or worse.

Personally, I am not one of these people. I am not optimistic about the future of the United States, which is why I don't live there. I fall comfortably into the left-leaning, 18-29 demographic  which is also why I am more inclined to not believe that America is better than any other country and feel that other countries might even be better. This has to do, largely, with my lived experience.

Let me give an example to illustrate why I personally feel this way. Just a few days ago, I went to get an eye exam and purchase some contact lenses. My exam was free and I was billed for roughly $80 for a year's supply in contact lenses. I live in the Czech Republic. My sister, a student in the U.S., also visited the optometrist. She's on Medicaid, a subsidized health insurance program for low-income earners, but was quoted $550 for a year's supply in contact lenses and had to pay for her exam.

Think about that. My sister makes such little money in the U.S. that she actually has government-subsidized health insurance, but apparently, that doesn't apply to her ability to see. So she's charged nearly seven times as much for contact lenses as what I paid. That is absolutely outrageous.

Going down the list of ordinary living expenses, my sister's life in the U.S. (no offense to her) seems like some kind of dystopian mirror image of mine. She's paying hundreds per month for a car she needs for day-to-day life, meanwhile, Prague has one of the greatest public transportation systems in Europe that costs me a few hundred bucks per year. Then she has to pay for insurance for that car, plus fuel. She does have government health insurance but her access to it is spotty at best. And as I said before, she's a student, which is running her into serious debt.

It seems that each of these problems do not exist in other OECD countries. A growing number of Americans, particularly young Americans, are starting to realize that the grass is indeed greener on the other side  which is why so many are leaving and why, according to a June survey by Greenback Expat Tax Services, one in four expats is "seriously considering" or "planning" to renounce their citizenship.

American exceptionalism is in sharp decline, and it's not due to some foreign-operated propaganda barrage or some other form of indoctrination. It is due to the experience of living in the United States. Expect this number to continue to grow so long as the country doesn't get its house in order by joining the rest of the world in supporting its citizens.

The author Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter.

Source CGTN
On the Monday afternoon Carbon County flooded, Rich Holstein was laid up in a hospital bed. Hed had a toe amputated a few weeks prior and an infection landed him back for treatment with intravenous antibiotics.

I was getting phone calls, and I live damn near a half-mile from the river. There should not be water here, Holstein said of friends buzzing his phone as he was tethered by IV tubing, miles from home and unable to monitor the situation first-hand.

Then he saw his boat on the 5:30 p.m. newscast, floating on its trailer in front of his home.

By the time I got out there, all I could do was cry looking around at everything. It was just devastation, Holstein said. You wouldnt think ... Im 3/8th of a mile from the river. Im in the middle of town, in a mobile home, and I'm still flooded.

Had he been home in Fromberg, Holstein still couldnt have saved from the rapidly rising water all the wood he salvaged years ago from the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone. It was the material he used to build photo frames and a successful business in selling them. The river came for his livelihood too fast and in the middle of the night.

Holstein does figure he could have collected some clothing and at a minimum his vehicle. But when he finally got out of the hospital around 11 a.m. Tuesday, the scene that met him as home was something he described as all hell broken loose.

Id seen pictures of my Navigator (vehicle). It had floated about 10 feet away. And my campers flooded, Holstein said.

Because of his health issues  22 surgeries in the last four years  Holstein tried to "save every penny I could" for paying down medical debt. That included dropping comprehensive coverage on his vehicle, meaning the flood left it a total loss.

And as far too many people in Montana have learned over the last few weeks, homeowners insurance doesnt do a thing in the case of a flood.

My cars gone. My backup plan is my camper, but the camper had 2  feet of water in it, Holstein said.

Lack of coverage

Early estimates pegged the loss across Carbon, Park and Stillwater counties at about 115 residences fully or mostly destroyed. The state Commissioner of Securities and Insurance said the number of flood insurance policies in place throughout those communities was dismal.

There were just 18 policies in Red Lodge and 58 in unincorporated Carbon County. Livingston had only nine policies and there were 77 across the rest of Park County. There were 69 policies in Stillwater County, and just two in Columbus.

Theyre just horrible numbers, Troy Downing said.

Flood insurance is expensive, Downing said, and something few people get unless their lender requires it. And even in those cases, the insurance can sometimes cover only what the lender worries about  the home they put up the money for  and not its contents or what happens to the people who lived there.

If its lender-placed, the lender cares about protecting their interest in the mortgage, Downing said. They dont care about protecting your content or anything else. A lot of that is inadequate.

Most people in Montana who have flood insurance have coverage through the National Flood Insurance Program, which offers coverage in 23,000 communities around the nation in the floodplain that participate. There are also sometimes private insurance options.

As he traveled around the region meeting with people who lost homes and belongings, Downing said the most common reason he heard for people not purchasing insurance is that its too expensive.

In some rare cases, a flood policy can double the cost of regular home insurance, but Downing said more commonly getting coverage for a flood means a 50% to 90% increase in home insurance costs.

Renters are also in a similar position to homeowners  unless they have a specifically purchased policy, they are likely without any coverage.

Downing said it was heartbreaking to meet so many people who were painfully uninsured.

There's not a whole lot we can do other than listen and try to direct people to resources that are out there, Downing said.

As cleanup efforts started, Downing encouraged those with damage to document everything, even those without insurance. That was because of the hope that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would get involved.

FEMA aid

On June 23, Gov. Greg Gianforte requested FEMA activate the Individual Assistance program under the presidential major disaster declaration, citing in part a lack of flood insurance for many who lost homes and belongings.

"While some survivors have insurance policies, many are at risk for being underinsured and/or not having the correct peril for coverage," the request read. "The sudden impact of the severe flooding resulted in significant loss of many homes and personal property contained therein."

On Thursday, FEMA said it approved Montanas request.

I appreciate Administrator Deanne Criswell and her team at FEMA for working with us to fast track Individual Assistance for Montanans impacted by the flooding disaster, Gianforte said in a press release. These funds will help Montanans get back on their feet as they rebuild and recover in the weeks and months ahead.

People in Park, Stillwater and Carbon counties who have losses from flooding can now file a claim with their insurance company and apply for FEMA assistance at floodrecovery.mt.gov.

FEMAs program for individuals and households includes financial and direct services intended to meet basic needs and supplement disaster recovery efforts. The FEMA website warns assistance is not a substitute for insurance and cannot compensate for all losses caused by a disaster.

The assistance can help cover things like temporary housing through rental aid or paying for hotel costs, temporary housing units, money to repair or replace primary residence and access like driveways or roads, cash to help replace uninsured or under-insured losses such as personal property and vehicles, and more.

Downing said as he sees the images of destruction come from the Yellowstone region, he is thinking ahead of how to encourage people to buy flood insurance for the future. He pointed to Miles City, which was partly submerged with massive floods in 2018. Now there are 718 residences with flood insurance policies in town.

A lot of it is just memory, Downing said. If people bite the bullet and purchase those policies, its because theyve seen what can happen.

Lots of loss

Holstein, who has worked as an artist in the Yellowstone region for more than 20 years, was planning a career change because of his health. The flood unexpectedly forced him to accelerate that timeline.

Plug Holstein's former address where he lived and worked into the FEMA floodplain map and it shows he's on the far edge of an area that has a 0.2% annual chance of a flood hazard. Just a few structures away he'd be out of any sort of flood zone entirely.

Water submerging part of his home was the last thing he thought possible.

Emotionally, I will tell you, I sat on a park bench I built 25 years ago that survived the flood. I pulled it out of the mud, Holstein said in an interview last week. After Katrina, you see people sitting on the bench, on their stoop or something, and they just look blank. I never understood that. And that was just me now. You dont know where to start.

Getting into his house after the waters receded was death-defying, Holstein said. I didn't lose as hard inside the house as some did. I didnt lose everything, but I lost enough.

The saddest part, Holstein said, was when flood waters carried away the original wood flooring he reclaimed from the Old Faithful Inn. During the 100-year restoration of the hotel in Yellowstone, he spent four winters working for free to save the material from the landfill. Now it's all gone.

I cant sell Old Faithful Inn picture frames anymore, Holstein said. I lost my business.

Holstein estimates the wood that was left would have lasted another two to five years. He was also saving some for family and friends. Hes made nearly 30,000 frames from the Old Faithful flooring, he said.

Its all gone. It ended just like that, Holstein said. It was going to end anyway, because of me physically, but its not on my own terms. Its on Mother Natures terms.

An area that can't take hard hits

Montana's application to FEMA for individual assistance was peppered with statistics noting the financial challenges facing those who live in Park, Stillwater and Carbon counties.

The population is on the whole older than the rest of the state, meaning incomes are likely fixed. The number of those age 65 and up is 22.5% in Park County, 25.6% in Carbon and nearly 23% in Stillwater, compared to the statewide average of 18.7%

The price tag for a monthly mortgage is nearly 38% of the average household's income in Park County and rent is about a third of income across the affected area. Home prices have soared in the region and housing is hard to find. There is also a higher percentage of people living in mobile homes in the three counties than the rest of the state and country.

"Mobile home residents have been shown to be disproportionately impacted by disasters  due to physical characteristics of the home, location, social vulnerabilities of residences and complicated ownership agreements," Montana's request for federal aid said.

Two years ago, Holstein lost his house because of medical bills and moved into a mobile home to downsize and reduce expenses. He fixed it up with a new gas mainline.

When Holstein got out of the hospital and came back to a flooded residence, he saw what kept the back half of the home from falling fully into the water was that gas line  acting like an anchor.

With his home uninhabitable, Holstein is staying with his girlfriend, though space is tight.

On a trip to the hospital after seeing the flood damage at his home, a case manager offered Holstein a popup trailer. It was an incredible gesture, but still doesn't fix his housing problem.

Youre left speechless, Holstein said. Thats not coming from the hospital. Its coming from a person who just happened to come in and be working with me. A popup trailer gives me a place to go for a night, but I got nothing to tow it with, I gotta find a place to put it. That hasnt been solved yet."

With a lot of his town in a similar position, Holstein is worried people might just leave.

Theres already no housing in this area, Holstein said.   Theres maybe four to five rentals coming open in the last year. There's nowhere for anybody to go. You cant find a house. ... All of us that live out in the country love our little community. I leave my keys in the car and house unlocked. Its not the same.

Aside from trying to find a place to live, theres the cost of going back and forth between Fromberg and Billings to where Holstein found storage units for the few belongings he salvaged. Hes getting rides, but wants to pay for the gas. A local group is offering $25 and $50 gift cards, but that barely covers the gas for a trip and a half.

His side of town, Holstein said, was a low-income area.

Youre talking about people in Section 8, fixed incomes, single moms. Its not just me. Itll get through it. I'll survive. Mentally Im starting to get a little more past the initial shock, but hell, its taken over a week just to get past the initial shock, Holstein said. Its not a place that can take this kind of hit. Everybody has a story, everybody is going through their own situation."

What's next

In the days immediately after the flood, FEMA was largely absent, Holstein said.

Im on a wing and a prayer. They said save all your receipts, Holstein said. He's started a Go Fund Me to help offset his costs.

Still, Holstein's optimism kept showing up in an interview, even as he spoke with friends about where he needed help with a Bobcat someone had brought in to clear debris. Through his career, Holstein said he's donated about $414,000 to charities, and now the thing he's best able to give is sharing the mantra he's lived by for the last 25 years  "learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow."

He's reaching out to neighbors he sees walking around, showing the outward signs of defeat in slumped shoulders and hanging heads.

If you tell yourself you don't know how youre going to get through it or you dont know how its going to happen or youre talking negative to yourself, its going to knock you down, Holstein said. Im still keeping a good attitude and always smiling. What the hell else am I going to do? If I dont laugh at it, Im going to break down and cry.
A Montana man and woman who pleaded guilty to trafficking meth and fentanyl pills were sentenced to prison time last week.

Eric Charles Swan, 35, and Elizabeth Ardell Grace Ronshaugen, 30, will spend the next several years in prison after law enforcement found them carrying over 100 grams of methamphetamine and about 9,600 fentanyl pills on their way back to Billings from a trip to Denver in 2021.

The defendants actions are serious and have a direct impact on the community. The distribution of controlled substances is crippling communities throughout Montana and the United States. Although drug offenses can sometimes be referred to as victimless crimes, drug distribution and use leaves countless numbers of victims. The drug users, their families, and the communities they live in are all impacted by the distribution of these drugs, wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas K. Godfrey in his sentencing recommendations for Swan and Ronshaugen.

Agents with the Eastern Montana High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force stopped the two near Buffalo, Wyoming in November 2021, according to court documents. They were investigating a tip that Swan, of Wolf Point, was trafficking drugs into Montana. Through a search warrant granted for Swans cell phone data, officers saw Swan had traveled to Denver and was on his way back to Montana.

Ronshaugen, a Great Falls resident who was traveling with Swan in the vehicle, was carrying dozens of fentanyl pills hidden in her clothes and in a plastic bag. Wyoming law enforcement searched their vehicle and found a trove of drugs. Along with prescription painkillers, cocaine and nearly $9,800 in cash, they uncovered approximately 9,616 fentanyl pills, a little over a pound of heroin and 103 grams of meth.

A federal grand jury indicted Swan and Ronshaugen in December 2021 on counts of conspiracy to possess and possession with intent to distribute controlled substances. The two reached an agreement with federal prosecutors in March of this year in which they each pleaded guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute controlled substances.

The prosecution and defense wrote in their sentencing recommendations that the two had a history of substance abuse that dated back several years. They also had a criminal history, with Ronshaugen previously convicted for theft multiple times and Swan a six-time felon.

U.S. District Judge Dana L. Christensen sentenced Ronshaugen on June 29 to four years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release. Three days later, Swan was sentenced in federal court to eight years in prison and also five years of supervised release.

The Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force, which includes Montana, is projecting a record-setting year in terms of fentanyl seizures, according to data compiled by the federal program. The first quarter of 2022 ended with agents finding over 10,000 fentanyl pills during their investigations in the region, about a third of pill seizures made for all of 2021. They also confiscated about 8.6 pounds of loose fentanyl, eclipsing last year's total.

Meth still dominates federal and state investigations and convictions involving drugs in Montana, accounting for about two thirds of new investigations initiated by the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation Narcotics Bureau in 2021. However, fentanyl cases increased from 2 in 2020 to 43 in 2021.

While fentanyl is available as a prescription painkiller, the bulk trafficked in Montana and the rest of the United States is produced illicitly in underground labs. Those labs, typically located in Mexico, press the substance to appear like a prescription pill for traffickers. Those pills, created without any kind of standard or oversight, can be potent to the point of a single dose being fatal.

Eight people overdosed on fentanyl in Montana between May 22 and June 6, prompting a warning from county health officials. Two of those people were residents of Yellowstone and Custer counties.
[July 05, 2022] Microsoft Canada Recognizes CrucialLogics as Winner of the 2022 SI Breakthrough Partner Impact Award TORONTO, July 5, 2022 /CNW/ - CrucialLogics is proud to announce it has won the 2022 Microsoft Canada SI Breakthrough Partner Impact Award. These annual Canadian awards recognize the Microsoft partners that have focused on bettering the lives of Canadians through skilling initiatives, delivering excellent customer service and embracing digital transformation leveraging Microsoft technology. Microsoft Canada Recognizes CrucialLogics as Winner of the 2022 SI Breakthrough Partner Impact Award "We are deeply honored to be recognized by Microsoft Canada a the winner of the Microsoft Canada SI Breakthrough Partner Impact Award," said Nim Nadarajah, co-founder and Partner, Assurance & CxO Advisory Services of CrucialLogics. "This prestigious award recognizes the hard work of the CrucialLogics team and proves that our Consulting with a Conscience approach has an impact on our clients. We're happy to be recognized for our leadership, demonstrated expertise across all Microsoft solutions and for driving innovation and breakthrough for growth and long-term impact. Congratulations to all the winners and finalists for this year's Microsoft Canada Impact Awards." Microsoft Canada presented these awards in 32 categories on July 5, 2022 as part of a lead-up to Microsoft's Inspire conference. Winners were selected based on the outstanding work the companies provided to their customers and community. "We are pleased to recognize CrucialLogics as this year's recipient of the SI Breakthrough Partner Impact Award," said Suzanne Gagliese, Vice President, Global Partner Solutions, Microsoft Canada. "Our partners have demonstrated excellence in innovation and harnessed Microsoft's solutions to enable customers to achieve more. We take great pride in the diversity of our ecosystem and look forward to celebrating their outstanding achievements." About CrucialLogics

We are all things Microsoft and security to our customers. We help technology and business leaders make better IT decisions.?When you work with us, we are advisors first reviewing your?enterprise vision, identifying technology gaps, and developing an IT or business transformation strategy with key decision points translated into business?outcomes. We identify where you need to be and the decision points?along the way to digital transformation. Product or service names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. SOURCE CrucialLogics Inc.

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As of this year, the American Association of Retired Persons has awarded $3.4 million through 260 different Community Challenge Grants. Four Wyoming projects are included in the grants, according to the Wyoming AARP.

Within the state, the Casper Legion, Children's Museum of Cheyenne, Powder River Basin Resource Council and Veterans Rock were all named in the AARP press release last week.

Since 2017, the AARP Community Challenge Grants annually chooses projects and efforts around the country to aid through the grants. With the money awarded, organizations are given the opportunity to fund projects meant to improve livability in communities. Some of the efforts include improving housing, spaces open to the public, forms of transportation, civic engagement, COVID-19 recovery, diversity and inclusion and other projects.

This is really one of our favorite times of the year as we are able to support projects submitted by communities and organizations who are working hard to improve livability for all, said Sam Shumway, the AARP director for the state of Wyoming. This year we were able to fund two veterans-focused projects, which made the Community Challenge Awards process feel extra special.

The Casper Legion received $30,000 for its Wyoming Fallen Memorial, a memorial which features the name of every citizen in the state who has given their lives in combat. Since the area was given statehood, the list of names has reached more than 1,290 according to Dean Welch, the Post 2 Adjutant for the Casper Legion.

Located at Patterson-Zonta Park, the memorial -- in an effort with the Disabled American Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars -- will be accessible by foot, wheelchair or car. The monument includes a bent pipe and a large memorial arch. The construction for the memorial will begin towards the middle of July, and the organization currently plans to host the opening ceremony on Sept. 25.

One of our focuses in this project is to help the elderly and disabled get to the memorial and honor those who gave their lives, Welch added. I thought that kind of touches on AARP, having accessibility and having our citizens be able to show their respects.

Of the other Wyoming organizations, the Childrens Museum of Cheyenne was granted $2,645 to install five ADA-compliant benches for pedestrians and bicyclists on the Greater Cheyenne Greenway. Veterans Rock in Cheyenne amassed a grant of $4,000 in an effort to supply diverse forms of transportation to all veterans and their families. And the fourth organization in Sheridan, the Powder River Basin Resource Council, was given $3,712 toward their project in providing safe lighting and accessible seating throughout a community established food forest.
A girl who died after falling from a float before the start of Mandan's Independence Day parade was a 6-year-old who had recently graduated kindergarten in California.

Mandan police on Tuesday identified the girl as Mabel Askay, of Ventura, California. She was in town visiting relatives.

Askay was riding on the DK Orthodontics float en route to the parade staging area about 9 a.m. Monday. She fell from the trailer on Longspur Trail Southeast and was struck by a tire. She was pronounced dead at a hospital.

"We are heartbroken over this tragic accident," the Askay family said in a statement to the Tribune. "Mabel lit up every room she ever entered, and our world is now dimmer without her. We know she is with Jesus, but we are having a very difficult time saying goodbye. Please keep our family, including Mabel's older siblings, Fletcher and Matilda, in your prayers as we gather our strength to start the process of moving forward."

Authorities were continuing their investigation Tuesday, according to Deputy Chief Lori Flaten. It's not yet clear if any charges are warranted, she said.

As long as Ive been here, 45 years, weve had some injuries but nothing major, and no fatalities, Flaten said of the annual holiday parade that draws hundreds of entrants and thousands of spectators.

The parade went on as scheduled Monday.

A Facebook post by DK Orthodontics thanked people for their messages of concern.

We will be honoring and showing respect to the family during this unspeakable tragedy by showing them love and support, the post stated. The DK family asks for your prayers, support, and privacy for the grieving family.

A representative of the Mandan Progress Organization, the group that organizes Mandan's Fourth of July events, declined to comment on the death Monday, referring Tribune questions to police.

The Parent Teacher Association at Juanamaria Elementary School in Ventura -- where father Mike Askay is principal -- in a Facebook post offered condolences to the family of Mabel, who the group said had recently been promoted from kindergarten.

"The Askays ask for prayers and good wishes at this time. We also ask that you provide them with the space and privacy they need right now," the PTA said.

A GoFundMe crowdfunding account to benefit the Askay family had raised nearly $8,400 by Tuesday night.
A conference in Bismarck this week will focus on ways to integrate instruction about North Dakotas five American Indian tribes into the curriculum of the states K-12 schools.

The eighth annual North Dakota Indian Education Summit is Thursday and Friday at the North Dakota Capitol and the neighboring Heritage Center. About 250 have registered, a record, according to Lucy Fredericks, director of American Indian and multicultural education for the state Department of Public Instruction.

There will be dozens of breakout sessions, exhibitors and vendors. Several of the instructional sessions will concentrate on ways to blend Native American history, culture and traditions into the K-12 curricula of North Dakotas schools. A bill approved by the North Dakota Legislature last year requires schools to include Native American tribal history in elementary, middle school and high school instruction.

Our public education system has a great responsibility to help all of our students learn about the richly diverse history and experiences that exist in North Dakota. As a result, we will better understand each other and grow stronger, State Superintendent Kirsten Baesler said.
The latest North Dakota coronavirus news: biofuel boost, food aid and more.

Biofuel aid

The U.S Department of Agriculture is providing $700 million to help support biofuel producers who faced unexpected market losses due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The funds are being made available through the Biofuel Producer Program, which was created as part of the federal CARES Act.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the aid will pave the way to economic recovery for Americas biofuel producers, stimulate a critical market for U.S. farmers and ranchers, and support our nations transition to a clean-energy economy.

Biofuel producers in 25 states including North Dakota are getting assistance.

For more information, go to https://bit.ly/3uevzuN.

Mobile food pantry

Trucks carrying fresh vegetables, bakery items and boxed goods will make stops in 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):

Thursday:

Sheyenne, Ostby Hall, 11:30 a.m.  12 p.m.

New Rockford, 116 1st Ave. N., 11:30 a.m.  12:45 p.m.

Finley, Center Avenue, 2 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.
Construction is underway for a permanent home for Mandan Rodeo Days.

The event has become a Fourth of July staple in the Bismarck-Mandan area over the past century, but it has frequently relied on temporary venues. That was still the case this year, but the Mandan Park District and Mandan Rodeo Committee are building a venue that will host the annual event, along with others, going forward. Northwest Contracting began constructing the facility in late May.

The arena will cost $2.8 million, with $1 million of that raised through the Mandan Visitor's Promotion Fund, which is supported by city restaurant and lodging tax revenue. The rest has came from local organizations, community members and the Mandan Rodeo Committee.

"We are grateful to the community. We have had great enthusiasm and support, Mandan Parks Director Cole Higlin said.

Dakota Community Bank & Trust President and CEO Dale Pahlke donated $750,000. The facility is being named the Dale Pahlke Arena on the Dakota Community Bank & Trust Rodeo Grounds.

Plans to build an arena are not new. The rodeo has been without a permanent home for a while, according to Mandan Rodeo Committee Past President Jason Middleson. A number of potential arena projects have been proposed but didn't pan out -- until now.

It's something theyve been wanting to do for the past 30 years, Middleson said. It just hasnt worked out.

The permanent arena will create cost savings for the holiday event. The city of Mandan, the Mandan Park District, and the Mandan Rodeo Committee spend close to $35,000 on setup and tear-down costs, Middleson said. The money goes toward clearing a spot on the Dacotah Speedway racetrack, lighting and audio work, and other amenities.

The arena also will create better experiences for visitors, according to Higlin. Competitors will have a larger area to compete in that will feature better drainage during summer storms. Fans will sit in one of two 2,000-seat grandstands, both sheltered from the sun and rain by a canopy. Other features will include a video board and an area for food trucks. Some existing infrastructure will continue to be used.

The venue is growing to what it should have been from the beginning," Higlin said.

Middleson said the arena will attract more events and people to the community and continue the rich history of Mandan Rodeo Days. He also hopes the arena will enable the event to grow. It's already the largest rodeo in North Dakota, and one of the oldest in the country, according to Middleson. The event drew over 6,100 spectators last year, according to the Mandan Park District.

There is a lot of history with this rodeo and Mandan. When you say Mandan, you think of this rodeo," Middleson said.

Construction is set to be complete by fall. It was originally slated to wrap up by this July but was delayed due to supply chain issues and April snowstorms, according to the Park District. Mandan Rodeo Days will hold its first event in the new venue in July 2023.

For more information, go to https://mandanparks.com.
Two children are among the six people who died Friday evening in a massive crash after a Montana dust storm caused blackout conditions on Interstate 90. Montana Highway Patrol Sgt. Jay Nelson said investigators so far have found no other factors that contributed to the pileup that also sent eight others to area hospitals with varying degrees of injuries. The incident happened just west of Hardin, though additional ambulances had to be called in from Billings to help. The identities of the dead and conditions of the survivors are not yet being released. Gov. Greg Gianforte said on Twitter that he was deeply saddened by the news of a mass casualty crash.
Last night was stressful. My neighbors were igniting fireworks for hours and my two dogs shivered and shook all night long as I tried to comfort them. On our walk this morning we discovered this empty fireworks container on the sidewalk. I examined it closely and thought, what the actual hell, "Amazing Grace" branded fireworks? The container highlights lyrics of the song Amazing Grace ("how sweet the sound") superimposed on an American flag, and features images of a woman praying and an American soldier decked out in battle gear holding some kind of assault rifle. What is this?

It felt so very American, in the worst way, and seemed especially awful in the wake of mass shootings that happened over the weekend at several 4th of July parades. There is something so very disturbing about the convergence of gun worship, right-wing Christianity, American flags, and patriotism, and somehow this Amazing Grace fireworks container seemed to capture it all. After my walk, I looked up the company that made it, Bellino Fireworks, and discovered their Facebook page, which shows images many of their other fireworks. Many of the labels feature patriotic images of American flags, images of guns, or product names featuring weapons of all kinds. Here's a few of the names of their products: "Lethal Weapon," "Black Box Artillery," "44 Magnum 12 Rounds," "Snub Nose Artillery," "Weapons of Warfare," and "Locked and Loaded."

After every shooting, Christian nationalists emerge, wrapped in American flags, holding assault rifles and Bibles, peddling thoughts and prayers, and blaming mental health, Satan, liberals, or their latest target, "Big Pharma." But somehow, some way, it's never about the guns. Or the worship of guns in American culture.

As Samuel Perry writes in a recent article in Time,
It was a freezing February evening when 78-year-old Judith Schrecengost moved toward a third-floor window at the Town of Tonawanda nursing home where she lived, squeezed through an opening and plummeted to the ground.

She was last seen at dinner earlier that night. But her body was not found until the next morning, when staff at Safire Rehabilitation of Northtowns realized she was missing.

These are some of the conclusions from a state Health Department investigation into the incident, the latest serious issue flagged at two nursing homes operated in this area by Safire.

Safire Northtowns is among the most penalized nursing homes in the state since 2016. The 100-bed facility at 2799 Sheridan Drive is a candidate for a federal program that identifies the country's poorest-performing nursing homes and inspects them twice as often as other facilities in an effort to boost resident care. Safire spokesperson Michael Balboni said the facility "should be off the list shortly."

Authorities initially released little information about what happened to Schrecengost. It's now clear state and police investigators believe she fell, accidentally or otherwise, through a window that wasn't supposed to open more than 6 inches.

Schrecengost's family and their lawyers say Safire staffers failed to keep her safe and, further, missed several opportunities overnight to recognize she was missing.

"They took my mother away from me. She wasn't getting ready to crumple up and die on her own anytime soon," said Tina Delgrolice, one of Schrecengosts daughters. "She was a fighter."

It's not yet clear whether the nursing home will fined by the state following its investigation. The state Attorney General's office said it is continuing to examine the circumstances of the incident.

Balboni said he could not discuss specifics but noted Safire filed a correction plan, which was accepted by the state, and fixed problems with the windows. The correction plan included installing additional window limiters, as well as educating staff on policies for reporting a potential missing resident and possible accident hazards immediately.

Balboni said the nursing home owners are "very sad" about the resident's death and fully cooperated with the Health Department.

'She was a sweetheart'

Schrecengost, a great-grandmother, was born and raised in Niagara Falls. She once worked for Carborundum and was a devoted mother to her four children.

"She was a sweetheart. She would do anything for anybody. If somebody needed a place to stay, she was letting him stay at her house. I used to joke around with her and tell her, 'Oh, you got another stray?'" Delgrolice said.

Schrecengost's first husband died in the 1970s. She and her second husband moved in with Delgrolice in April 2020, though he died one month later.

Schrecengost remained in good health until suffering a stroke in late May 2021 that affected part of her brain. To ensure Schrecengost received the therapy she needed, Delgrolice said, they placed her at Safire.

"She was actually doing really good," Delgrolice said, though her mother had some challenges communicating.

The incident

The state investigation refers to Schrecengost only as "Resident #1," but in more than 2,300 words details the events culminating with staff finding her dead at 9:17 a.m. Feb. 8, face down in the courtyard on the building's west side beneath a window.

After interviewing staff members, the state reached the conclusion Schrecengost got out of a third-floor window that opened wider than it should have because of an improperly installed bolt.

A responding town police officer saw exterior cameras but was told they were not operational, according to a police report. When officers inspected Schrecengost's room, they noticed neatly folded clothes atop a made bed and found nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary.

And while dates in the Health Department's report are redacted, it's clear Schrecengost was not seen by staff for many hours.

One certified nursing assistant working on the third floor that evening noticed at one point the hallway was cold.

The nursing assistant found a window in one room was open wider than normal, glanced out, didn't see anything and then shut the window. The nursing assistant did not report the open window to anyone.

The state also interviewed a second certified nursing assistant, who left Schrecengost's dinner tray in her room. When this nursing assistant picked up the uneaten meal, Schrecengost was not in her room.

The second nursing assistant reported the uneaten meal to a licensed practical nurse. This nurse last saw Schrecengost at 6 p.m., sitting in the corner in the dining room wearing a hospital gown as though she were going to bed after dinner.

Schrecengost was last seen on video at 5:29 p.m. walking down the west unit hallway on the third floor toward an undisclosed room number.

The state also interviewed the facility's maintenance director, who noted an issue with the window believed to be the one Schrecengost "fell out of." The maintenance director told the state the bolt meant to prevent the window from opening more than six inches was not in the proper placement.

At various times during her stay at Safire, Schrecengost was subject to increased monitoring. This included the period directly after, in a phone call with Delgrolice, Schrecengost said she wanted to kill herself, according to the state report.

Schrecengost told a nurse who followed up with her that she did not want to harm herself. She was subjected to 15-minute checks but those were allowed to lapse, records show.

Delgrolice said her mother didn't want to be at Safire but there was nothing about her state of mind that worried her, or her family, that she was suicidal. She said she doesn't believe her mother intentionally went out the window.

Michael Scinta, an attorney from Brown Chiari who is representing Schrecengost's family with colleague Mike Benz, said Schrecengost's most serious immediate injury from the fall was a fractured pelvis. It's unknown how long she did survive, or could have survived, outside in the sub-freezing temperatures that night, Scinta said.

Schrecengost's body remained on the ground outside when Delgrolice and her daughter, Nicole Falcone, arrived Feb. 8 after receiving messages from Safire.

"I had nightmares that night," Delgrolice said.

In its investigation, the state said windows in two other resident rooms also did not have appropriate window stops installed.

In total, the Health Department confirmed three windows were out of compliance, which led to a citation that highlighted "the likelihood of harm and immediate risk to the health and safety of 4 residents with wandering behaviors."

As out-of-town investors buy WNY nursing homes, residents pay the price Since 2007, one-third of the 47 nursing homes in Erie and Niagara have been bought by out-of-towners. For thousands of vulnerable nursing home residents, that hasnt been

The facility has since reviewed all facility windows and installed additional window limiters, according to its state-approved correction plan.

Further, the two certified nursing assistants no longer work at Safire.

The facility's staff and agency workers also were educated by a hired consultant on policies pertaining to reporting a potential missing resident and possible accident hazards immediately to supervisors.

Previous fines

In late 2015, a downstate group completed its purchase of the former Sheridan Manor and renamed it Safire Rehabilitation of Northtowns.

And since 2016, Safire has received $68,500 in fines from the state Health Department  the 10th-highest amount out of 356 facilities that have been penalized during that timeframe, according to a Buffalo News analysis of state data.

The only area nursing home to get more in fines during that time period: Comprehensive Rehabilitation and Nursing Center at Williamsville, with $81,000 in penalties.

Meanwhile, Safire Rehabilitation of Southtowns in Buffalo  which has the same ownership group as the Northtowns facility  has received $59,000 in fines since 2016, which ranks 14th statewide. Richard Platschek, Judy Landa, Solomon Abramczyk and Robert Schuck are the key investors in the limited liability companies that own the two Safire homes, federal records show.

Two Safire nursing homes fined $56,000 for violations The one-star rated facilities were cited for failing to test workers for Covid-19, failing to ensure workers washed their hands properly, failing to report possible abuse cases and more.

"I would not say that these fines represent a threat to care, but obviously the Safire group is continuously trying to ensure the best resident experience," said Safire spokesperson Balboni.

The two Safire facilities have one-star federal ratings, or "much below average," a measurement based on three sources: health inspections, staffing and quality measures.

A painful loss

Schrecengost's family remains devastated by her death.

Delgrolice said she was advised to place her in a nursing home so that her mother could receive the kind of around-the-clock care she couldnt provide.

Schrecengost's survivors plan to sue Safire over her death.

The family deeply misses Schrecengost's presence at their regular Sunday gatherings, and they say Bills season and the holidays won't be the same without her.

Food is a big part of what binds them all together, and Falcone said she has struggled to duplicate her grandmother's fried potatoes, let alone her famous pumpkin cake roll. "She has a magic touch, you know?" Falcone said.

"I wanted to call her the other day," Delgrolice said. "I was like, 'I'll call'  I can't. She's not here."
"It's more than just stressful, it's overwhelming at times for them," said Niagara Falls Police Superintendent John Faso. "This is something that those officers will deal with for the rest of their lives."

Seaman said everyone involved in the case was given the opportunity to testify before the grand jury, though he said he would not reveal specifics about who testified or what they said.
A Buffalo pediatrician and two of his daughters died in an overnight fire in North Buffalo, according to the Buffalo Fire Department.

The mother was in serious condition after suffering smoke inhalation in the fire at 194 Huntington Ave. She was taken by ambulance to Erie County Medical Center.

Relatives confirmed the three who died were Dr. Jonathan D. Daniels, 53, who was one of only a handful of Black pediatricians practicing in the Buffalo area, and daughters, Jordan A. Daniels, 27, and Jensen A. Daniels, 23.

The mother, Janessa Givens-Daniels, 53, a senior associate director of financial aid at University at Buffalo, was able to escape the fire on her own.

The two-alarm blaze erupted at the single-family home on Huntington, between Parker and Voorhees avenues, at about 3:36 a.m., Fire Commissioner William Renaldo said.

Firefighters carried out two people who were trapped in the attic. Firefighters got another person out a side window on the second floor, he said.

Firefighters and AMR ambulance crews performed CPR, but the father and the two daughters died at the scene.

A dog also died in the fire.

Dr. Daniels, who grew up in Buffalo and was the first in his immediate family to graduate from college, said in a story in The Buffalo News published in 2019 that there were few African American students in medical school when he attended 25 years ago at University at Buffalo, and there were still very few. He encouraged New York State to invest more in programs that create a pipeline to medical school for more young African-Americans, Latino and Latina students and others underrepresented in medicine.

Daniels was one of only four Black pediatricians and among only three dozen Black physicians practicing in the Buffalo area, according to the Rev. Kinzer Pointer, the co-convener of the African American Health Equity Task Force.

African American physicians are not readily available and serve a large African American community in this area, Pointer said.

The loss of Dr. Daniels is one that the Rev. George Nicholas, leader of the African American Health Equities Task Force, describes as another devastating blow to the Black community.

I took my sons to Dr. Danielsall four of them. He was a terrific doctor. He would talk to them about being a Black man and sexuality. It was just that kind of care, Nicholas said. He was a good physician, good husband, good man, and good father.

Daniels' and his wife also have another daughter, Jillian, who was not present at the time of the fire.

In an interview with The News, Jillian Daniels said her father was a widely loved pediatrician in the community, who, if he was here would say something like, we have to keep moving.

She said the three Daniels sisters were all the best friends. When she had to make major life decisions, Jillian Daniels said she knew she could turn to both her older and younger sister.

Jordan was witty, caring and strongly believed in everything she did, she said, while Jensen had a fierce intelligence that she truly admired.

As she attempts to honor her dads words and keep moving, Jillian Daniels said she is grateful for her mothers survival and support from her friends.

UB President Satish K. Tripathi issued a statement calling the fire a devastating tragedy.

As a university community, our collective hearts are broken with the devastating tragedy that claimed the life of beloved faculty member, Dr. Daniels and his two cherished daughters, one of whom is an alumna, said Tripathi. Our deepest sympathies and thoughts are with Janessa as we pray for her full recovery.

Jordan Daniels received her MBA degree from the University at Buffalo School of Management in May.

Dr. Daniels served as associate director of admissions in UB's Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Dr. Daniels was a treasured colleague, physician, mentor and friend, and his absence will leave an unfillable hole in our school community, said Dr. Allison Brashear, UB vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. He was a tireless advocate for diversifying the physician workforce and has worked closely with the Associated Medical Schools of New York to expand the pool of scholars choosing careers in medicine and health care, by providing academic enrichment and support to students from educationally and/or economically underserved backgrounds.

While seeking his undergraduate degree, Dr. Daniels joined the United States Army Reserve 365th Evacuation Hospital during his sophomore year so that he could repay student loans. He served as a combat medic during Operation Desert Storm.

After returning to Buffalo and finishing his undergraduate degree, Daniels enrolled in and completed his residency at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Sirens woke neighbors

The smell of smoke lingered in the air on Huntington Avenue on Monday morning, as onlookers stopped to observe the scene. A woman left a bouquet of flowers.

Sirens from the fire trucks woke up neighbors, said Holly Cercone, another resident of the neighborhood.

I just immediately started praying because Ive never heard that many sirens before, she said.

In nearly 25 years of living in the neighborhood, Cercone said she'd never witnessed this level of devastation.

If you come by here, and you look at this, what's left of this house, and your heart's not moved? I don't know, she added.

John Fantini, a neighbor who witnessed the fire from his home across the street, said the sirens also woke him up. When he looked outside his bedroom window, he could see the back of the house engulfed in flames.

Ive never been this close to a house fire like that, he added.

Neighbors told fire investigators they saw flames in the rear of the home. When firefighters arrived, there were flames coming from the attic window, the commissioner said.

Investigators believe the fire started on the second floor and spread to the attic.

The cause of the blaze was under investigation. It was not believed to be fireworks-related.

Five firefighters were injured and taken to ECMC, where they were treated and released. Several suffered minor burns to their ears and neck. One suffered an ankle and knee injury.

The fire department estimated damage to the home at about $230,000. A neighboring home at 200 Huntington sustained about $55,000 in exposure damage.
Two Grand Island residents have had enough of putting up with a bar overlooking the Niagara River near their homes, where they say the patrons are boisterous, raucous and loud and frequently use foul language and display lewd behavior.

David Thomas and Glenn Wallace have sued Turner's Port of Call, seeking compensatory and punitive damages plus a court order to curb the behaviors and activities at the establishment that "torments and disturbs" them, according to their recent State Supreme Court lawsuit.

"The pounding music and other excessive noise emanating from the bar often continues unabated during the day and into the evening, night, and early morning hours," even to 4 a.m., according to their lawsuit.

It keeps them from sleeping, working, studying, reading, relaxing and quietly enjoying their properties, the two said in the lawsuit.

Thomas lives at 1004 East River Road, across the road from the bar and grill, and Wallace runs the bed and breakfast Niagara River Inn at his nearby residential property at 917 North Colony Road.

The lawsuit also named Turner's Port of Call owners Donald Turner Sr. of Fort Myers, Fla.; Donald Turner Jr. of Grand Island; and Grand Isles Properties LLC.

Attorney Christopher Cardillo, who represents the Turners and the bar, said the allegations from Thomas and Wallace are false and show they are hell-bent on leveling baseless allegations against a neighborhood institution and the owners of it.

Some patrons at Turner's Port of Call, located at 997 East River Road, use illegal drugs and others blow their car horns and toss away cans, bottles and other trash that end up on their properties, according to the lawsuit. Thomas and Wallace also said bright lights and neon signs, exhaust from patrons' cars and boats, and the open burning of trash near the river is "severely diminishing the value of their residences."

In August 2010, the Town of Grand Island granted a zoning variance to Turner Sr., and Thomas and Wallace were unsuccessful in annulling the decision.

Attorney Steven Cohen, who represents the two, said the town's Zoning Board of Appeals picks and chooses which laws it enforces based on politics and friendships.

Turner's is a popular place, and its owners have a lot of friends in the town," Cohen said. "Our clients live in the shadow of Turner's. Safety issues that Erie County has identified as serious are routinely ignored by the town's enforcement personnel.

Court documents from the two neighbors' 2015 lawsuit against the establishment indicate the Turner family has owned the bar since the 1960s.

Turners Port of Call has been a neighborhood staple for decades, prior to either Mr. Thomas or Mr. Wallace moving into their residence, enjoyed by friends and boaters alike, Cardillo said. Now, unhappy with the neighborhood into which they chose to move, they have brought multiple, baseless complaints alleging a neighborhood nuisance.

Other residents have taken notice of Turners Port of Call.

Antonella DiGuilio, a resident in the area for seven years, agrees with Thomas and Wallace that the bar and its patrons can be loud. DiGuilio, however, sees Turners Port of Call as more of a bother rather than a nuisance in the quiet neighborhood.

Its really just kind of out of context. It would make more sense if it was down by the yacht club, DiGuilio said, referring to the Buffalo Launch Club at 503 East River Road. People could eat at the restaurant and the bar.

Another resident, Ray Milstrey, said he did not notice Turners Port of Call was bar when he first moved into the area two years ago. Since then, he has heard some music from the bar on weekends, but that hasn't concerned him.
Now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, which for almost 50 years had protected the right to an abortion, conservatives are praising Donald Trump as the pro-life president. It was Trump who appointed three justices to the Supreme Court who everyone knew would strike down Roe v. Wade as soon as the opportunity arose. Yes, conservative commentators are celebrating the fact that they voted for Trump and helped bring about the day that abortion would be outlawed. They had made a deal with the devil, for they knew Trump was a corrupt, evil con-man and authoritarian who deep down did not care about the unborn, but rather pandered to the conservative base to secure their support and win votes. In exchange for Trump championing the right to life movement, conservatives allowed Trump to become the killer president. As along as Trump championed the right to life movement, conservatives turned a blind eye while Trump killed the dignity of the Office of President of the United States. Trump was left free to kill the concept of truth, respect for the law, reverence for the Constitution, and democracy itself. Conservatives gave him the knife that he plunged into the heart of our democracy when he rejected the will of the voters and incited an attempted coup to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
The pedantic parroting of the absurdity, there will always be war in a recent readers contribution, basically tells us, Accept it. Its OK. No big thing.

Might I assume that those who subscribe to such drivel have investments in the military industries?

Perhaps one who can afford such a point of view is fortunate to have not lost a child or family to the insanity.

Is it useless to waste time on solving problems, long before they come to the point of conflict?

Conflict that rejects problem solving, negotiation and diplomacy  is a straight path to war. The profiteers and their serial killers lead us there.

War is the stupidest thing. The profiteers are the serial killers sending kids to kill strangers. All this is unnecessary. We must stop Vladimir Putins insane brutality, not accept it. We and all nations must stop being compliant. We have no time left. We are already burning up the world.

We must not allow these ignorant tropes to send us into the abyss like lemmings.

Robert Nesbitt

Buffalo
Along with long, balmy days, summer signals the arrival of new shops and showrooms across the U.S. In our monthly roundup, Business of Home gathers all the expansions and openings to have on your radar.

Showroom Spotlight: Bakes & Kropp expands in Michigan

American cabinetry brand Bakes & Kropp has unveiled a new location in Bay Harbor, Michigan, the companys fifth U.S. showroom, with one in Plymouth, Michigan and three in New York. For co-owners Bob Bakes and Paul Kropp, along with senior kitchen designer Justin Sharer, the new space is an extension of the companys core brand, situated on the northeastern shore of Lake Michigan. Justin introduced me to the area a few years ago, Kropp tells Business of Home. He was advocating for [Bay Harbor], and I was like, Yeah, yeah. Then last year, he took me on a boat ride and showed me around, and I said, OK, now I know what youre talking about. Its a beautiful location. Adds Sharer: There are a lot of luxury homes and boats up here. The people here understand quality, and they want quality. Bakes & Kropp cabinetry fits that exactly.

With the showroom opening, the brand is staking its claim as a prominent local design center. There are definitely builders, architects and interior designers in the area, says Sharer. A lot of them work together, and there are good relationships. Its about showing them luxury[many] havent seen this level of quality in a cabinet compared to what other places are selling.

The Bakes & Kropp leadership team is confident that the new showroom stands in a league of its own and might just set a new design standard for the northern Midwest market. Its a very interesting opportunity for both [us and the designers in the area] to have the product here and not have to bring it in from Chicago or New York, says Kropp. Sharer echoes his excitement about the regional potential. When you walk into other showrooms up here, things look the same in every one, says Sharer. [Our new location is] really showing something that people have not seen yet, and were already getting a lot of love about that.

California

Multidisciplinary design and manufacturing company Henrybuilt, known for its kitchen systems, recently opened a new 4,000-square-foot location in Los Angeles. The showroom is open by appointment only in a converted gallery space at 806 Mateo Street.

Italian kitchen technology brand Bertazzoni has debuted its first U.S. experience center in San Franciscos Design District. Spanning 2,000 square feet, the location was modeled after Bertazzonis global headquarters in Guastalla, Italy, and features a comprehensive selection of the brands kitchen appliances.

Global design and furniture brand Lazzoni has opened a new showroom in Costa Mesa. The 5,000-square-foot space sits inside the South Coast Collection and The OC Mix, one of Orange Countys premier shopping centers.

A living room vignette from the Interior Define Studio Courtesy of Interior Define

Colorado

Digitally native DTC custom furniture and home decor brand Interior Define has introduced a storefront in Denvers Cherry Creek neighborhood. The location joins the brands new collection of Interior Define Studio concept stores, which launched last month in Baltimore and Minneapolis, and allows shoppers to customize furniture in-store, exploring various samples of cushion fills, textiles and more.

Illinois

Toronto-based office and ergonomic furnishings brand Teknion has unveiled a new showroom in Chicagos Fulton Market. Occupying Suite 700, the showroom marks Teknions sixth location to achieve WELL certification, a reflection of the brands ongoing commitment to sustainability.

New York

Designer Jonathan Adler has announced the opening of his latest retail concept, Adler Atelier. The three-story location unites the designers pottery studio, headquarters and a retail store under one roof in SoHo, offering shoppers a behind-the-scenes look at Adlers ceramics process.

Surface brand Cosentino has reopened its City Center showroom in Manhattan following renovations. The 4,000-square-foot space has been modeled after the companys Atlanta and Chicago showrooms to include a design workshop, an augmented reality design space and a high-definition digital slab display.

Rhode Island

New Yorkbased interior design firm Tori Jones Studio has opened its first store in New Shoreham. Located on Block Islands eastern shore, the shops inventory includes a curated selection of antiques, art, home decor and more.

Homepage photo: Inside the new Bakes & Kropp Bay Harbor, Michigan showroom | Courtesy of Bakes & Kropp
By Rod Nickel

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Canadian farmers planted the most wheat this spring in nine years, as bottlenecks in global supplies drove up prices of grain and food, a government report showed on Tuesday.

Farmers seeded more spring wheat and canola than they intended in spring, according to Statistics Canada, but wet conditions raise doubts about how much land remains unplanted.

The Russia-Ukraine war has stranded Ukrainian stocks of wheat and sunflower oil from global markets.

Canada, a major wheat and canola exporter, is recovering from severe drought last year and expects to make up some of the global shortfalls that are raising risks of famine.

Statistics Canada pegged all-wheat plantings at 25.4 million acres, the most since 2013, and up slightly from its April estimate of 25 million. The area represents a 9% increase from last year and landed at the top end of a range of industry estimates.

The bump-up in overall wheat plantings reflected more acres of spring wheat, used in baking, than farmers anticipated in the spring. By contrast, farmers tapered back slightly on plantings of durum, used to make pasta, from their spring intentions.

Statistics Canada said farmers planted 21.4 million acres of canola, more than they intended in spring when StatsCan predicted 20.9 million acres, but down nearly 5% from last year. The estimate for canola, used to make vegetable oil, was in line with industry expectations.

The changes to both wheat and canola estimates from the spring report are "relatively minor", said Bruce Burnett, director of markets and weather at MarketsFarm. "It gives us the potential for a bigger crop. Now its all about yields."

A big wildcard is how much land farmers were unable to plant. Heavy rains swamped Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan this spring.

StatsCan bumped its estimate of unplanted land up to 1.8 million acres from its April estimate of 1.6 million, the most in five years.

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Burnett said the actual size of land that farmers could not plant is likely larger.

ICE Canada November canola futures extended their losses after the report, dropping 2%.

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Sage

Sage is proud to further support colleagues who become parents in new, extended paid time off policy

ATLANTA, June 30, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sage (FTSE: SGE), the leader in accounting, financial, HR, and payroll technology for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), today announced the launch of a new parental leave policy for U.S. colleagues. The high-tech sector has led the market in creating attractive and progressive parental and family leave policies. This new policy will enable Sage to attract, engage and retain diverse and talented colleagues in an increasingly competitive market.



This new parental leave policy provides extended paid time off to parents, regardless of gender, as they welcome a child into their lives. Sage is also introducing a leading digital tool to help colleagues and their families throughout every stage of their parenting journey.

As part of Sages drive for innovation, the company continuously looks for ways to enhance benefits to be inclusive and competitive, and meet the needs of diverse colleagues. Offering programs that support our colleagues and their growing families is imperative to our success, states Aziz Benmalek, Sage President, North America. We have analyzed the needs of our colleagues and their families, as well as benefits and leave trends in the market, and want to build Sages brand as a progressive, inclusive, caring, and leading employer of choice.

Taking effect on July 1, 2022:

Eligible full-time and part-time colleagues may receive 18 weeks of paid parental leave for the birth, adoption, or by commissioning the surrogacy of a child. This leave is offered to all new parents, regardless of gender, and Sage will provide 100% of the colleagues regular base pay during the leave.

Cleo, a digital support program, will be available to guide colleagues and their families throughout every stage of the parenting journey. The program will provide tools for choosing childcare, getting financial planning help, finding savings on activities and supplies, and preparing for changing schedules.

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The companys new paid parental leave policy supports efforts to help colleagues balance the demands of a career and family and navigate returning to work. The new policy ensures fair and equal treatment of all colleagues when a new child arrives and promotes equal and shared parental responsibilities. Amy Cosgrove, Sage VP of People, North America added, The paid parental leave policy will expose Sage to a broader range of talent, broaden our representation in the market, increase colleague engagement, attract key talent, and ultimately, lead to all colleagues feeling even more positive about working at Sage.

In 2021, Sage was named to Glassdoors lists of the Best Places to Work in the U.S., Canada, UK, France and is recognized for work-life balance by Glassdoor. The company also received recognition from Comparably for Best Global Culture, Best HR Teams, and Best Places to Work in Atlanta.

To learn more about the open opportunities at Sage, please visit the Sage career site.

Media contacts:

Mara Maddox

mara.maddox@sage.com

About Sage

Sage exists to knock down barriers so everyone can thrive, starting with the millions of small- and mid-sized businesses served by us, our partners, and accountants. Customers trust our finance, HR, and payroll software to make work and money flow. By digitizing business processes and relationships with customers, suppliers, employees, banks, and governments, our digital network connects SMBs, removing friction and delivering insights. Knocking down barriers also means we use our time, technology, and experience to tackle digital inequality, economic inequality, and the climate crisis. Learn more at www.sage.com/en-us/ and www.sageintacct.com.




REGINA  A humanitarian flight carrying 230 Ukrainian citizens arrived in Regina on Monday evening, accompanied by a woman whose photo 50 years ago came to symbolize the horrors of another war.

A Saskatchewan government spokesman confirmed Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the girl in the famous 1972 Vietnam napalm attack photo, was aboard the flight carrying refugees from Russia's war in Ukraine from Warsaw to Canada.

An Associated Press report noted Kim Phuc, 59, who is a Canadian citizen, travelled with her husband Bui Huy Toan from Toronto to board the humanitarian flight.

The report said she wants her story and work for refugees to be a message of peace.

Phuc's iconic Associated Press photo in which she runs with her napalm-scalded body exposed, was etched onto the fuselage of the private non-governmental organization plane that flew the refugees to Regina.

The Saskatchewan government said in a news release that more than 1,000 Ukrainians have arrived in the province since Russian army forces invaded the country in February.

"Saskatchewan officials have been working with the Ukraine Embassy to Canada to co-ordinate assistance and support for Ukrainian citizens fleeing the ongoing war in their home country," MLA Terry Dennis, who is also the legislative secretary responsible for Saskatchewan Ukrainian relations, said in a statement.

"In true Saskatchewan spirit, a number of community groups, organizations and individuals have also been spending hours and hours preparing to help these Ukrainian families and individuals settle into life in our province."

Passengers on the Monday flight were to receive temporary accommodations in Regina, access to key supports and information related to living in Saskatchewan, the government said.

The government also said there is a settlement reception centre, with interpreters, where the new arrivals can get Saskatchewan health cards, assistance with setting up bank accounts, and information about housing, employment, education and income.

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The province said it will send non-perishable food items, sleeping bags, medical supplies and other in-demand items on the return flight to be distributed to people in Ukraine.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 4, 2022.

The Canadian Press
The first phase of the drill program at Berenguela was completed in May this year with 63 diamond holes sunk for 6,168 metres

Aftermath Silver (TSX-V:AAG) Ltd has hailed the latest diamond drill results from its Berenguela silver-copper-manganese asset in Peru, which will be included in a new resource estimate, currently underway.

The results come from 13 holes, four of which were twinned historic reverse circulation (RC) holes, and six holes hit silver-copper (Ag-Cu) mineralization from surface.

The first phase of the drill program at Berenguela was completed in May this year with 63 diamond holes sunk for 6,168m and Aftermath said it expects to receive all results by mid-July.

"Our 2021/22 drill campaign continues to deliver excellent results which will be incorporated into a new resource estimate that's currently underway," Ralph Rushton, president of Aftermath, told investors in a statement.

"Holes drilled on the eastern extent of the known mineralisation returned significant copper intersections confirming the polymetallic, zoned nature of the Berenguela mineralisation. Our twinning program continued to return results that compare favourably with historic values, and we have now acquired samples for metallurgical testwork later this year across various mineralized domains," he added.

Highlight results included 25.30 metres (m) at 452 grams per ton (g/t) silver and 1.63% copper in one hole, staring from 74.80 downhole.

That includes an intersection of 5m at 704g/t silver, and 2.67% copper from 77.8m downhole and 9.25m at 655g/t silver and 1.59% copper from 86.8m depth.

Another hole hit a length of 86.8m starting from surface at 1.57% copper plus 82 g/t silver.

Aftermath said it was incorporating the new drilling into a revised geological interpretation of the Berenguela mineralization which will be used to complete a new NI 43-101 resource estimate this year.

Historical mapping and resource modelling shows that the mineralisation extends roughly 1,300m along strike, including a 100m length zone with historic open-pit mining but no drilling, with a width of 200 to 400m.

Aftermath Silver (TSX-V:AAG) is a Canadian junior exploration company focused on silver, and aims to deliver shareholder value through the discovery, acquisition and development of quality silver projects in stable jurisdictions.

The company has developed a pipeline of projects at various stages of advancement.

Contact the writer at giles@proactiveinevstors.com
With the ever-growing popularity of electric vehicles, Columbus Community Hospital recently has added two new electric vehicle charging stations to better serve its patients and employees. Both stations are ChargePoint Level 2 commercial charging stations capable of charging two vehicles simultaneously.

We decided to add the electric car chargers after several requests from employees, physicians and community members who needed to charge their vehicles away from home, said Scott Messersmith, vice president of operations and human resources. We were able to utilize rebates offered by the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy through Nebraska Public Power District and Loup Power District to cover a large portion of the equipment and installation cost.

The first station is located in the hospitals designated employee parking lot, and the second is in the outer ring of the hospitals southwest parking lot, near the gazebo. The hospital welcomes anyone with an electric vehicle to use the charging station, and asks individuals who drive gasoline-powered cars to use other parking spaces.

Each station adds approximately 25 miles of charge onto an electric vehicle in an hour. The hospital set the charging rates based on recommendations from ChargePoint, with the cost increasing after the initial four-hour timeframe. The hospital encourages individuals to move their vehicle from the station once the charging is complete.

In addition to CCHs new charging stations, there are three other public vehicle charging stations in Columbus. Drivers can access these stations at Loup Power District, Nebraska Public Power District and the Highway 81 recreational vehicle park.

Loups electric vehicle charger was added in June 2021 in the parking lot on the west side of business general office, 2404 15th St. in Columbus. The ones at NPPD are located in the parking lot on the south side of the Columbus office, 1414 15th St.

Those chargers are also ChargePoint stations capable of putting 25 miles worth of charge onto an electric car in about an hour and able to charge two vehicles at once.

A portion of Loups charging station was paid for by a grant from the Nebraska Community Energy Alliance, as previously reported by the Telegram.

"There are a lot of private chargers in people's garages, but those are the public chargers," Loup Power District Vice President of Corporate Services Todd said in June 2021. "There are a number of electric vehicles (in Columbus) and we do offer incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles and chargers and wiring for your house to allow for that."
The fast-changing coronavirus has kicked off summer in the U.S. with lots of infections but relatively few deaths compared to its prior incarnations.

COVID-19 is still killing hundreds of Americans each day, but is not nearly as dangerous as it was last fall and winter.

Its going to be a good summer and we deserve this break, said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.

With more Americans shielded from severe illness through vaccination and infection, COVID-19 has transformed  for now at least  into an unpleasant, inconvenient nuisance for many.

It feels cautiously good right now, said Dr. Dan Kaul, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor. For the first time that I can remember, pretty much since it started, we dont have any (COVID-19) patients in the ICU.

As the nation marks July Fourth, the average number of daily deaths from COVID-19 in the United States is hovering around 360. Last year, during a similar summer lull, it was around 228 in early July. That remains the lowest threshold in U.S. daily deaths since March 2020, when the virus first began its U.S. spread.

But there were far fewer reported cases at this time last year  fewer than 20,000 a day. Now, its about 109,000  and likely an undercount as home tests arent routinely reported.

Today, in the third year of the pandemic, its easy to feel confused by the mixed picture: Repeat infections are increasingly likely, and a sizeable share of those infected will face the lingering symptoms of long COVID-19.

Yet, the stark danger of death has diminished for many people.

And thats because were now at a point that everyones immune system has seen either the virus or the vaccine two or three times by now, said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Over time, the body learns not to overreact when it sees this virus.

What were seeing is that people are getting less and less ill on average, Dowdy said.

As many as 8 out of 10 people in the U.S. have been infected at least once, according to one influential model.

The death rate for COVID-19 has been a moving target, but recently has fallen to within the range of an average flu season, according to data analyzed by Arizona State University health industry researcher Mara Aspinall.

At first, some people said coronavirus was no more deadly than the flu, "and for a long period of time, that wasnt true, Aspinall said. Back then, people had no immunity. Treatments were experimental. Vaccines didnt exist.

Now, Aspinall said, the built-up immunity has driven down the death rate to solidly in the range of a typical flu season. Over the past decade, the death rate for flu was about 5% to 13% of those hospitalized.

Big differences separate flu from COVID-19: The behavior of the coronavirus continues to surprise health experts and its still unclear whether it will settle into a flu-like seasonal pattern.

Last summer  when vaccinations first became widely available in the U.S.  was followed by the delta surge and then the arrival of omicron, which killed 2,600 Americans a day at its peak last February.

Experts agree a new variant might arise capable of escaping the populations built-up immunity. And the fast-spreading omicron subtypes BA.4 and BA.5 might also contribute to a change in the death numbers.

We thought we understood it until these new subvariants emerged, said Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious disease specialist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas.

It would be wise, he said, to assume that a new variant will come along and hit the nation later this summer.

And then another late fall-winter wave, Hotez said.

In the next weeks, deaths could edge up in many states, but the U.S. as a whole is likely to see deaths decline slightly, said Nicholas Reich, who aggregates coronavirus projections for the COVID-19 Forecast Hub in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Weve seen COVID hospitalizations increase to around 5,000 new admissions each day from just over 1,000 in early April. But deaths due to COVID have only increased slightly over the same time period, said Reich, a professor of biostatistics at University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Unvaccinated people have a six times higher risk of dying from COVID-19 compared with people with at least a primary series of shots, the CDC estimated based on available data from April.

This summer, consider your own vulnerability and that of those around you, especially in large gatherings since the virus is spreading so rapidly, Dowdy said.

There are still people who are very much at risk, he said.

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.
Over the Fourth of July weekend, many area residents were injured in accidents.

Three individuals were injured in a crash on Route H at 4:16 p.m. Friday.

According to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, a 2003 Dodge Dakota driven by Trevor B. Allen, 18, of Bonne Terre, was heading southbound on Route H near Brune Road when the vehicle was struck by a 2019 Hyundai Sonata driven by Justin W. Pollock, 39, of Farmington.

The report states that Pollock was traveling northbound on Route H, and had failed to negotiate a left curve in the roadway, crossed the centerline in the road, and began to travel northbound in the southbound lane. Allen attempted to avoid collision with Pollocks vehicle by applying pressure to the brakes of the 2003 Dodge Dakota, and began to skid. The front bumper of Pollocks car struck the front bumper of Allens vehicle.

Reports state Allen, as well as a 15-year-old occupant, of Bonne Terre, and Pollock all received serious injuries. Allen and the juvenile were both wearing seat belts, while Pollock was not. All three were transported to Mercy Hospital St. Louis, Pollock by Lifenet, and Allen and the occupant of his vehicle by Air Evac.

Damage to both vehicles were listed by the report as total.

On Friday, at 6:40 p.m. in Madison County, on Highway 72 at County Road 245, about three miles east of Fredericktown, a 2008 Ford Mustang driven by Heather D. Freeland, 37, of Sikeston, was travelling eastbound when the vehicle traveled off the right side of the roadway and overturned, according to the report.

Freeland, who was wearing a safety device, received moderate injuries and was transported by ambulance to Madison Medical Center in Fredericktown. Damaged listed on the report to the vehicle is total.

On Saturday, at 1 p.m. Francis M. Warren, 18, of Park Hills, was driving a 2012 Toyota Corolla on southbound Route N near Route NN, and was going too fast for the wet conditions of the roadway, according to the report. Warren failed to negotiate a right curve in the roadway, and began to slide.

The report states that Warren overcorrected, and the vehicle travelled off the right side of the roadway, began to rotate clockwise, and the front left quarter panel struck a tree. Upon impact, the vehicle continued to rotate clockwise and the rear left quarter panel struck a second tree.

Warren received moderate injuries and was transported by St. Francois County Ambulance District to Iron County Medical Center. The report states that Warren was wearing a safety device. Damage listed to the Corolla is extensive.

On Sunday night, at 8:05 p.m., on Route N north of King School Road, a 1994 Chevrolet Suburban driven by Madison M. Muser, 23, of Arcadia, was traveling northbound when the vehicle travelled off the right side of the road edge. The report states that Muser overcorrected, and the vehicle then travelled over the left side of the road edge, overturned, and ejected Muser.

Muser was not wearing a safety device, and received serious injuries. She was transported by Air Evac to Mercy Hospital St Louis. Damage listed to the vehicle by the report is total.

The MSHP responded to another accident Sunday night, at 8:15 p.m at US 67 southbound, north of Beginnings Road. A 1999 Mercury Mystique driven by Aaron M. Jefferies, of Valles Mines, attempted to enter the second lane from the shoulder, causing the Mercury's front to strike the rear of a 2021 Ford Explorer driven by Dana G. Moser, 49, of Farmington.

The report states that Jefferies vehicle then traveled off the left side of the roadway, struck a cable barrier, and overturned. Jefferies, who was wearing a safety device, received serious injuries and was taken by Life Net Helicopter to Mercy Hospital St. Louis.

Damage listed to Jefferies vehicle is total, while Mosers Explorer received minor damage and was driven from the scene.
The Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry has recognized State Rep. Dale Wright, R-Farmington, and Rep. Mike Henderson, R-Bonne Terre, as 2022 Business Champions. They are among several state lawmakers recognized by the chamber for supporting policies to grow the states economy and make Missouri a more competitive place to do business.

Responding to the recognition, Wright said, I want to thank the Missouri Chamber of Commerce for this recognition and for working in good faith with the legislature to advance policies that will create good-paying jobs and train our workforce to fill them. Our policies continue to attract new businesses to our state and encourage our existing businesses to expand and create new jobs. This is a win-win for employers and for employees who have increased opportunities for family-supporting jobs.

Henderson responded similarly.

As a career educator, I greatly appreciate the commitment the chamber and the legislature have made to invest in our workforce so that Missourians are ready and able to take on jobs that pay a top wage, he said. This has been a great partnership that has positioned our state and our workforce for sustained success. I want to thank the Missouri Chamber for the work theyve done and for recognizing my support for their efforts. I look forward to working with them in the future as we continue to move Missouri forward.

This year, the Missouri General Assembly worked through challenging conditions to help move Missouri forward. The lawmakers recognized as Business Champions helped the Missouri Chamber successfully advocate for a number of important pro-business policies.

The Business Champions list was created after an analysis of dozens of key votes on important business issues. To be included, state legislators needed to have at least a 70% record of siding with the Missouri Chamber on priority business issues. This year, 24 members of the Missouri Senate and 68 members of the Missouri House of Representatives met that criteria.

The Business Champion program is our way of thanking representatives Dale Wright and Mike Henderson, as well as Missouris other top pro-business lawmakers for their commitment to moving Missouri forward, said Missouri Chamber President and CEO Daniel P. Mehan.

Right now, we are in a critical moment that will determine how well our state will thrive in the post-pandemic economy," he continued. "The lawmakers we are highlighting as 2022 Business Champions were our most important supporters of the policies needed for Missouri to continue to seize this historic opportunity for growth.
United Way of St. Francois County (UWSFC) awarded 27 grants totaling $160,000 to local non-profits at its annual Grant Presentation Day event held last week at the Farmington Public Library.

Welcoming the crowd and introducing the organizations new executive director to the crowd was UWSFC Board of Directors member and former board president, Mark Toti.

Thank you for being here today as we celebrate a special day for the UWSFC as we present our checks for all you wonderful agencies that do such a tremendous job, he said. I dont know if you noticed the check and taken a good look at it, but its a lot bigger this year than it was last year, and were very, very happy about that.

"Its been a crazy couple of years for sure  COVID! We start to get past that and what happens? Gas prices! Its a credit to all of you that youve been able to do what you do with all those factors put in.

Its been a heck of a year for us, as well, here at the UWSFC  a year of change, of transition. We said so long to Clay Whitener and hello to our new director, Cassie Thomas. First of all, what you need to know about Cassie is she has a heart of gold, but it goes way past that. Shes really good at what she does. In just a few short months, shes opened a lot of new doors thats really going to benefit everyone in this room. Shes developed new programs that will help us out. In short, shes everything we could ask for and shes just going to get better as she gets more comfortable.

Addressing the crowd of about 50 people, Thomas said, Im very excited today that you all could make it and be a part of this, and Im so glad that we are able to help your mission. We just want to help as many people in this community as we possibly can, and I know that you all are prepared to help those that actually need it.

Its very important that we all work together and continue what were doing because everyone needs it, and as we all know, every single day we have something new that pops up that we need another resource. We need to keep moving forward and building on those resources, and Im always here if you have ideas and you would like to talk to me about anything thats coming up or need me to be a part of something  I would be glad to do that with you.

After introducing the UWSFC Board of Directors, Thomas said, Im very excited about today and $160,000 is a lot of money and I can say that Ive never given that much money away, so its going to be fun!

Receiving UWSFC grants were the following local non-profits: Habitat for Humanity of St. Francois County, Immaculate Conception, Good Shepherd Family Services, Bonne Terre Food Pantry, Helping Hands, Bonne Terre Senior Center, Parkland Foster Adopt, Mineral Area College Food Pantry, Desloge House of Praise Food Pantry, Rocky Creek Youth Ranch, West St. Francois County R-4 School District, Bismarck Senior Center, Visions of Hope, Farmington R-7 School District, St. Francois County Health Center, Park Hills Senior Center, Farmington Ministerial Alliance, Childrens Advocacy Center, St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry, East Missouri Action Agency, Farmington Senior Center, Carters Clubhouse, Elvins Food Pantry, SEMO Family Violence Council, L.I.F.E. Center for Independent Living and CASA of the Parkland.
For Ebenezer McCarthy Sr., Monday was a great day.

McCarthy, who is originally from Ghana, was one of 47 people who stood in the shadow of Thomas Jeffersons home and in front of hundreds of onlookers to take the oath of citizenship as part of the 60th annual naturalization ceremony at Monticello.

McCarthy, who first moved to America more than 20 years ago, was cheered on by family members in the audience.

Its a great honor to be a U.S. citizen, he said. Finally I can vote.

Speakers urged the newly minted citizens to take an active role in their communities, inform themselves and participate in American democracy by voting. Like McCarthy, the other citizens said in remarks and in interviews that they planned to do just that.

You now as new citizens are responsible to ensure that the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Pledge of Allegiance,  that we make sure that these principles remain firm and true, said Judge Michael Urbanski, the chief U.S. District judge for the Western District of Virginia.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this was the first year since 2019 that the event has been in-person and open to the public. Monticello officials estimate that more than 850 people were on hand to cheer on the new citizens.

Last year, 21 people took the oath at Monticello in a private ceremony. Mondays ceremony also was the second since the pandemic began for the federal U.S. District Court in the Western District of Virginia, which has not yet resumed oath ceremonies.

Its a real privilege to be doing this in-person, Urbanski said. Its truly the highlight of our year.

Urbanski led the applications for naturalization through the oath of citizenship, noting that the words they said were the same enshrined into U.S. law in 1802 when Jefferson signed the Naturalization Act.

To celebrate their first day as citizens, many sported the countrys red, white and blue in some fashion from socks to earrings.

In aid of the celebration, Monticello invited several community partners to set up information tables inside a tent on the West Lawn and highlight their work. Attendees also could register to vote inside the tent.

Nicolle Fierro Comarovschi, who is originally from Peru, came to the United States on a work and travel visa and then met her husband. She wanted to become a citizen in order to vote and make her voice heard.

A three-month stay turned into four years of being in the U.S., she said. It is very exciting to be here and an honor to participate.

Frank Friedman, who recently retired as president of Piedmont Virginia Community College after 23 years, delivered the ceremonys keynote address.

Friedman said that he and the ceremonys honorees have been fighting for the same thing: opportunity.

America has been on a 246-year journey to make opportunity available to all and, although weve made great strides, the journey continues, he said.

He added that the opportunities available in the U.S. come with an obligation to be involved, work to preserve democracy, support the rights of minorities and be tolerant of differences, among others.

Youre about to become citizens of this great country  a dream youve had probably for many years, he said. You deserve it because of what youve done to reach today, but you earn it by what you do going forward.

Kateryna Mekianov from Ukraine immigrated to the U.S. in 2015 after meeting her now-husband while she was studying in Poland. She graduated in May from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Im very excited to uphold the Constitution not only as a lawyer but also as a citizen now, she said.

The last several months have been stressful for Mekianov, whose family is still in Ukraine, which has been fighting a months-long war against Russia. Her mother is a medical doctor and has been in the field helping those who need medical care, though she was among the crowd Monday. Meanwhile, her father is a member of the Ukrainian military but was still able to watch the ceremony live online.

Theres a lot of uncertainty of whats going to happen, she said. I just fear for their lives and safety every day.

Hasib Haidary, who took the oath Monday, also worries about his family members who are still living in Afghanistan. He left the country in 2015 after working for the U.S. government as a translator from 2011 to 2014.

Haidary hopes to have his parents paroled in the U.S. through the Immigration and Nationality Act, but he hasnt heard back from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Hopefully they process the papers because living there [in Afghanistan] is not a guarantee, he said. You dont know whats going to happen tomorrow or next week because we still dont have an official government.

Still, Haidary was excited about taking the oath and getting an official U.S. passport with his correct information. When he initially immigrated, his name was not processed correctly.

Im happy that I got my real name back, Haidary said.

Many of those who took the oath Monday also were from Afghanistan.

Michelle Annette Fragar Baird from Australia said she wanted to become a U.S. citizen after falling in love with her husband and America.

Here I am 13 years later and its a very humbling experience today, she said. I just want to say thank you. Thank you for welcoming us. Thank you for today. And we do plan on participating and voting and all these things.
Manchester is one of the hottest neighborhoods in the city of Richmondalong with Scotts Addition, Jackson Ward, Monroe Ward, the Diamond District and part of Virginia Commonwealth University.

These communities are a part of the citys heat islands, where the temperatures are warmer than the majority of their surrounding areas. According to mapping data, large swaths of South Side and the East End are hotter than other areas in the city. Many factors contribute to the locations of Richmonds heat islands, but on hot summer afternoons, one is most noticeablea lack of trees for shade.

It was extremely noticeable during the warmer months that we did not have street trees, and theres a major lack of canopy coverage, said Sheri Shannon, a former Manchester resident. Even over things like the bus stop covers.

The urban heat island effect

Outside of the Science Museum of Virginia on a sweltering June afternoon, a construction crew was working on turning the former surface parking lot into a 6-acre public green space called The Green.

The $7.5 million project, which is expected to be completed in 2024, will offer a park-like space for recreation such as walking, relaxing and gathering. In November, the museum opened its new $14 million parking deck to the public. The four-level structure has 400 spaces, 25% more than was previously available in the surface lots adjacent to Broad Street.

The conversion of the large parking lot to a parking garage was the Science Museums effort to depave the grounds in an effort to reduce heat in the area. In a room on the first floor of the museum, SMV scientist Jeremy Hoffman said human landscapes, like pavement, asphalt and parking lots, have low albedo, wherein they absorb more of the suns energy during the day and re-emis it back into the air during the afternoon and into the evening.

This elevates or increases the temperature in those places that are more paved over than in those places that have more natural nature-based landscapes, Hoffman said.

This contributes to what is known as the urban heat island effect, he said, where cities almost always have higher temperatures than the outlying rural areas. Within Richmond, certain neighborhoods are also significantly hotter than others. The effects of heat islands become more noticeable during the summer months as Virginia continues to experience record-breaking extreme heat.

The solution to heat islands is a natural fix: trees.

In Richmond, the areas with the highest concentration of impervious surfacespavement, asphalt and parking lotsoften have the hottest afternoon temperatures. These areas often have the least amount of tree coverage in the city as well, Hoffman said, referring to neighborhoods like Jackson Ward and Manchester.

Richmonds hottest neighborhoods also tend to house more Black residents.

There is a clear history of maintaining greenness and environmental amenities in particular areas of the city at the expense of others, Hoffman said. This goes not only back to but includes very clearly in time in history redlining, where entire neighborhoods were basically locked into the way that they either looked at that time or it was set into motion that these neighborhoods were going to have differing levels of investment and future development.

Mapping heat and tree inequality

In the 1930s, the government-sponsored Home Owners Loan Corporation was given authority to evaluate residential areas for their mortgage security.

It soon became evident that the HOLC was disproportionately giving areas with a higher concentration of African American residents lower ratingsmany of those communities received a D for hazardous conditions. As a result, there were less opportunities for residents in those areas to access mortgage financing and become homeowners.

These neighborhoods were also passed up on opportunities for growth and development.

Those areas were and remain high in their number of African American residents and continue to harbor the effects of redlining practices todayspecifically, they are hotter and have less tree coverage.

When you say to people its hotter in some parts of the city, its like Oh okay, but when you have the scientific data that we went out and collected, it showed a 16-degree difference within less than a mile, said Jennifer Guild, manager of communications and curiosity at the Science Museum. Thats really impactful to have that data to be able to show people.

In one of the nations largest heat-mapping projects, more than a dozen Virginia colleges and universities organized teams of volunteers in July 2021 to measure temperatures across the state. Richmonds team, led by University of Richmond professor of biology and geography and the environment Todd Lookingbill, was part of a statewide project called Heat Watch. The statewide project expanded on a previous project by Lookingbill and his students back in 2017 in partnership with the Science Museum.

Based on the mapping data, Scotts Addition, the Diamond District, Jackson Ward, Monroe Ward, Manchester and a section of VCUs campus are the hottest neighborhoods in the city.

In four of the five neighborhoodsprimarily located in the center of the city or toward the eastthe percentage of tree canopy coverage is below 2%. In three of the neighborhoods, the amount of impervious surfaces covers more than 80% of the area.

The majority of the citys tree canopy cover is located in the West End, where the percentage of coverage in one neighborhood reaches over 70%and the average afternoon temperatures are cooler.

In addition to being cooler and having more trees, the median household income in West End neighborhoods are significantly higher than that of certain neighborhoods in the East End and parts of South Side. People living in low-income areas are more vulnerable to extreme heat. Whether its because of a lack of air conditioning or fewer cooling stations, like libraries and community centers, where people can cool down, it can put people at risk.

When we have these extreme events, they can lead to heat exhaustion and people get sick and can die from that, Lookingbill said. And so thats really a problem. Theres areas of extreme heat with areas of lower income where you may be less likely to have opportunities to escape the heat, and then it becomes really dangerous.

Communities at risk

On a recent Sunday, families and friends gathered outside of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on picnic blankets and patio tables. It was over 90 degrees.

Bobby Scott, a third-year medical student at VCU, sat at a table under a tree near the far side of the museums green space. It was cooler under there.

Right now, were under a big beautiful tree that provides a lot of shade, he said, but there are a lot of neighborhoods that have a lot more pavement, asphalt and less green space.

During his first week at medical school, Scott learned about the difference in the average life expectancy between Gilpin Court63and Westover Hills83. Around the same time, he was taught about the Medical College of Virginias role in grave robbing at Black cemeteries for cadavers in anatomy labs.

Learning about the historical picture of Richmonds health care system and todays health outcomes in different parts of the city made Scott interested in understanding the gap and addressing them. There are a lot of gaps in Richmonds health care system already, like the life expectancy, he said, and heat only exacerbates whats already there.

Were interested in understanding these gaps in the social infrastructure, economic factors and the social determinants of health, Scott said, but then also incorporating a bigger scope, including these environmental impacts and how climate change sort of fits in and contributes to thatbecause really thats what it comes down to.

Scott, 28, is a student member of the Virginia Clinicians for Climate Action, a network of clinician leaders advocating for climate change solutions. Hes also the co-founder and co-president of VCUs chapter of Medical Students for a Sustainable Future, a national organization that recognizes climate change as the 21st centurys biggest health threat and engages in ways to address it.

Heat works as an additional stressor on the body similar to that of a virus, Scott said in an analogy. Like COVID-19, some people who are exposed to it may turn out okay, but others who have different health conditions are more vulnerable, he said.

If you have a history of any sort of heart disease or cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease or respiratory conditions like COPD or asthma, theres a lot of research associating temperatures with exacerbating those conditions, Scott said.

Neighborhoods with more heat are, in turn, more likely to have chronic diseases, he said.

Determining the consequences of extreme heat in certain neighborhoods depends on heat vulnerability and heat exposure. A young construction worker with no previous health conditions and low vulnerability could still suffer the effects of heat because of prolonged exposure.

In these neighborhoods that we know are urban heat islands ... we have populations that are more vulnerable and we know that theyre being exposed more often, Scott said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suggests using trees and vegetation to reduce heat islands, but the uneven distribution of Richmonds trees puts many residents at risk of negative health outcomes. In a few areas, including the Diamond District and Carytown, the percentage of tree canopy coverage is less than 1%.

But Scott said its bigger than just planting trees.

Theres not one solution to any of thisits not just going to plant more trees, he said. It really is building trust in the communities that are being impacted. And lets see if we can work together to figure out what solutions may work but, ultimately, it needs to fit the individuals in that community and whats going to work for that area.

Planting seeds

The city itself has made attempts at understanding Richmonds history and improving environmental justice. In addition to a plan for five new green spaces in South Side totaling 36 acres, RVAgreen2050, the regions equity-centered sustainability initiative, is facilitating climate action and climate resilience.

Within the initiative, the citys Office of Sustainability has prioritized racial equity and environmental justice, recognizing that, Richmonds historywhether measured in centuries, decades, years, months, weeks or daysis fraught with racism.

Part of the initiative will identify neighborhoods in need of green space based on the citys Climate Equity Index.

Moreover, Reforest Richmond, a collaborative campaign within the city, is also aiming to help increase Richmonds urban tree canopy to 60% by 2037, according to the Richmond 300 Master Plan.

I think there are a few examples that we should celebrate, Hoffman said. But then also, no city is doing everything that they can.In the meantime, Hoffman and many organizations working directly with residents, including Groundwork RVA, have attempted to increase tree cover canopy and offset the harmful effects of heat islands in Richmond.

Hoffman and Groundwork RVA, a nonprofit that engages public school youth to transform city spaces into public green spaces, created Throwing Shade in RVA in 2018. The program taught students about urban heat islands and gave them the opportunity to engage in community based greening strategies. Since then, the partnership has continued to build on the data collected from the program.

Shannon is the co-founder of Southside ReLeaf, a community-based organization created in 2019 that is committed to environmental justice by improving the quality of life for South Side residents.

Aside from giving away treeswith hopes of reaching a goal of 750 total by the end of the yearShannon said at the heart of environmental justice is making policy changes.

Were advocating for these changes and were advocating for the improvement of everyones quality of life, she said. Until we start to make progress and right the wrongs, then that responsibility will fall onto the residents.
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Health reporter

Seth Klamann is the health reporter for the Gazette, focused on COVID-19, public health and substance use. He's a Kansas City native and a University of Missouri alum, with stops in Wyoming, Omaha and Milwaukee before moving to Denver.
FILE - Electricians with IBEW Local 3 install solar panels on top of the Terminal B garage at LaGuardia Airport, Nov. 9, 2021, in the Queens borough of New York. President Joe Biden plans to invoke the Defense Production Act to increase U.S. manufacturing of solar panels while declaring a two-year tariff exemption on panels from Southeast Asia.
After mixed messages recently about the cash-strapped state owned carrier, Zambias government has finally categorically denied media reports that it has decided to sell Zamtel.

In fact according to the ITWeb Africa news service, the countrys Vice-President Mutale Nalumango has gone much further, insisting that Zamtel will be recapitalised and not sold, the aim being eventually to enable it to compete favourably in the market.

Despite earlier reports of an unnamed equity partner, Science and Technology Minister Felix Mutati has insisted that so far no such no equity partner has been identified. However, Mutati was also quoted in June as saying that the government will not give the company the US$265 million recapitalisation it needs.

Since then he has suggested that a working committee would aim to investigate the viability of the company and recommend the way forward, saying: At the end of the day, we want to save Zamtel and that is our only objective.

That may be easier said than done. Zamtels working capital deficit is estimated at around US$59.8 million, and maintenance of current infrastructure, expansion and modernisation will add to the bill. Last weeks reports also mentioned outstanding debts of $175 million and a recapitalisation of at least US$265 million simply to stay afloat.

Theres also an issue with the sale of Zamtel in 2010 to Libyas LapGreen Networks for US$252 million by Zambias previous administration. The present administration insisted that the transaction was illegal and soon afterwards took over Zamtels operations. In 2017 the Libyan Investment Authority, (LIA), the investment arm of the Libyan government, took the Zambian government to court for abruptly reversing the sale of Zamtel without compensation.

The debt owed to Libya could add to Zamtels outgoings: between US$380 million and $500 million, depending on which news outlet is quoted and also depending on how much the government has so far paid.

However, given the eye-watering debts it is carrying, its hard to see how Zamtel can be made into a going concern without a massive injection of cash, not to mention a complete overhaul.
Satellite connectivity provider OneWeb entered the Brazilian market after being awarded a 15-year landing rights license by regulator Anatel, as part of long-term plans to expand in South America.

OneWeb executive chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said in a statement: OneWebs entry into the Brazilian market is a significant milestone for our path to providing global services. With the historic license approval from Anatel, and our planned satellite gateways in Petrolina and Marica, we are now in prime position to deliver on our central mission of improved access to connectivity for communities across the whole of South America.

OneWeb detailed its entry into Brazil being named as one of few countries to host two satellite gateways, which will be in the states of Petrolina and Marica.

Anatel voted unanimously to give OneWeb permission to land in Brazil in a move to boost connectivity for thousands of Brazilian citizens and businesses. OneWeb said its entry into Brazil is a vital hurdle in its long-term ambition to deliver solutions across South America and the Caribbean.

OneWeb head of government and regulatory affairs for Latin America and the Caribbean, Christopher Casarrubias added: The Government of Brazil has made closing the digital divide a priority, which is firmly reflected in OneWebs license approval. We now have significant momentum behind our plans to supply high-speed, low-latency internet to Brazil, as its satellite market becomes increasingly diverse and dynamic over the coming years.


Pan-African e-commerce platform Jumia has announced a partnership with Chinese smartphone manufacturer Realme. The joint aim is to roll out new devices at a time when Africas smartphone market is enjoying high growth; this in turn will benefit e-commerce.

The two companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) according to which realme will have an official store on Jumias platform.

The store will eventually connect Realme with online consumers in 11 African countries. However, for the moment the agreement only covers Nigeria. It is expected to expand first to Ghana, Kenya, and Cote dIvoire, and then to the other African countries where Jumia operates.

Jack Zhang, General Manager of realme CIS & MEA region, noted that the partnership reflects the companys ongoing commitment to technology decentralisation by making technology that used to be only in flagship models accessible to more consumers.

Sandeep Narayanan, VP, Consumer Electronics, Jumia, pointed out that sub-Saharan Africa is one of the worlds fastest-growing mobile regions and millions of African mobile users use a smartphone to access Jumia for their everyday needs. With this in mind, he said, we look forward to further enhancing the penetration of e-commerce in the region.

Certainly the growth in sales of affordable smartphones seems to favour both companies in this deal. Also relevant may be the need for African e-commerce to position itself more prominently as the 2023 arrival of Amazon in the region comes closer.
Katie Britt won the Republican Senate Primary the old fashioned way. She got out and worked for it and earned it and, folks, she won big. She beat Mo Brooks 63% to 37% in the GOP runoff. Katie carried an amazing 66 out of 67 counties.

Katie Boyd Britt was born to win this Senate seat at the youthful age of 40. Those of us around Alabama politics recognized early on that she had unique, God-given leadership abilities and integrity. We watched her grow up in Enterprise. She won everything in the Wiregrass from debate to dance. When I saw her become governor of Girls State as a junior in high school, I looked at Jack Hawkins, the Chancellor of Troy University, and said that young lady has governor or senator written all over her.

Katie went on to the University of Alabama and was elected Student Government president, then she graduated from law school at Alabama. She practiced law briefly then became Sen. Richard Shelbys chief of staff for five years. She then headed the Business Council of Alabama for three years before beginning her journey to follow her mentor, Richard Shelby, in the U.S. Senate seat he has held for 36 years.

Some of us who have known Shelby and been his friends and confidantes for over three decades were told soon after his sixth reelection victory in 2016 that these last six years would be his last hurrah. He told us he was going to encourage and support Katie Boyd Britt to succeed him. He wisely knew because of her age and acumen she has the potential to be one of Alabamas greatest senators.

The seniority system in the United States Senate is so enshrined and entrenched that in order to be great you have to serve awhile. In fact, in order to reach pinnacles of power in the senate you have to be there at least 20 to 25 years. We have had three great senators in Alabama history. Shelby is the most powerful and accomplished. The other two are Lister Hill and John Sparkman, who served Alabama in the U.S. Senate for 30 and 32 years, respectively. They were both powers. By the way, both Hill and Sparkman were SGA Presidents at the University of Alabama like Katie Boyd Britt.

Katie is younger than Shelby, Hill, and Sparkman were when they arrived in the U.S. Senate. She will have the distinction of being the first female elected to the Senate from Alabama as well as the first female Republican Senator from the Heart of Dixie.

There are several adages in politics that definitely apply to Katies overwhelming landslide victory. First of all, you do not ever want to get into a race where you are going to be outworked and outspent. She checked both boxes. She outspent her opponents significantly. Shelby made sure of that. Money is the mothers milk of politics. More importantly, she worked this state like nobodys business. She campaigned thoroughly in all 67 counties several times. It would be safe to say she outworked Mo Brooks and Mike Durant combined three to one. Katie built a statewide grassroots organization and it paid off with her carrying 66 of our 67 counties. She started early and stayed late.

Winning the GOP Primary for a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama is tantamount to election. However, Katie Boyd Britt will take nothing for granted. She will run hard and outwork her Democratic opponent, Will Boyd, and will prevail as expected in November.

The last minute Trump endorsement had no effect on behalf of Katie Boyd Britt. She was leading in all polls by 20 points with momentum and money on her side. She was going to win, overwhelmingly, on her own. It helped Trump a lot more than it did Katie. All he did was see a candidate who was going to win and jumped on the train. Thus, Trump used the old sayings, I bet on a sure thing, and find a parade and act like you are leading it. Katie knew Trumps endorsement was not necessary. However, she graciously and quietly accepted and continued unabated to an impressive victory, which she earned on her own merits.

Katie Boyd Britt will hit the ground running when she takes office as our first female elected Senator in January. She could be in the Senate for 40 to 50 years and will become one of Alabamas greatest U.S. Senators.

See you next week.

Steve Flowers is Alabamas leading political columnist. His weekly column appears in over 60 Alabama newspapers. He served 16 years in the state legislature. Steve may be reached at: www.steveflowers.us.
The European Business Climate Index in Vietnam declined by 4.4 to 68.8 points between the first and second quarter due to rising prices globally and geopolitical tensions.

Vietnam's potential growth is also being viewed with less favor by European business leaders, as 60 percent of respondents predicted that the Vietnamese economy would stabilize or improve in the third quarter of 2022, compared to 69 percent who held this belief entering the second quarter, according to a report released Monday by the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (EuroCham).

But most European business leaders remain upbeat about investing more in Vietnam, with 76 expecting their company to increase foreign direct investment (FDI) in Vietnam before the end of this quarter.

Positive views were expressed about Vietnam's prospects for green growth too, with 79 percent of participants saying their assessment of Vietnam's green development potential improved from the first quarter.

Regarding the link between green growth and FDI, nearly 90 percent of respondents believed Vietnam should increase green sector development to attract more foreign investment.

Some barriers remain in trade and investment, as 45 percent of participants said administrative procedures impede their ability to utilize the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), demonstrating the difficulty foreign companies face in navigating Vietnam's bureaucratic processes.

"Although the outlook for European business leaders has decreased since the last quarter, the factors affecting it are mostly beyond the Vietnamese government's control," said EuroCham Chairman Alain Cany.

He added that a "perfect storm" of external factors is contributing to global economic instability, and that the problem is not unique to Vietnam.

But as the Vietnamese government has shown its commitment to green growth, "it is an incredibly exciting and promising time to do business in this country," Cany said.

The Business Climate Index is quarterly survey conducted by EuroCham on its 1,200 business members in various sectors.
Vietnam's Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son at the 7th Mekong-Lancang Cooperation (MLC) Foreign Ministers Meeting held in Myanmar on July 4, 2022. Photo by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Vietnam highly values cooperation among countries through which the Mekong flows through, calling on member nations to ensure practical benefits for the people.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son made the remarks when attending the 7th Mekong-Lancang Cooperation (MLC) Foreign Ministers' Meeting held Monday in Myanmar.

Son said Vietnam always attaches importance to the MLC and is willing to make effective contributions to strengthen cooperation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated.

He highlighted that China and countries in the Mekong sub-region should guarantee the MLC gives priority to economic growth and sustainable development so that the people will benefit.

For that goal to be achieved, the Vietnamese minister proposed four groups of solutions:

He emphasized the need to speed up economic recovery, enhance the economy's resilience, and strengthen customs cooperation and trade facilitation in order to address goods congestion and ensure the circulation of goods and services.

He suggested supporting member countries in adapting to climate change and transitioning to a green economic model, including improving clean energy production and storage capacity and applying high technology to smart agriculture and climate change response.

He proposed stronger cooperation in managing and using water resources in a sustainable manner, especially through the sped-up development of an MLC action plan for water resources collaboration in the 2023-2027 period.

At the same time, he said it is necessary to encourage the expansion of consultations and dialogues among member countries on the water resources development plan while increasing coordination between the MLC and Mekong River Commission, and enhancing people-to-people contact through recovering and expanding tourism activities as well as cooperation among local administrations, the organization of culture, sports, and communications events, and the empowerment of women and youngsters.

Vietnam's Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son (R) and his counterparts from China, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar at the 7th Mekong-Lancang Cooperation (MLC) Foreign Ministers Meeting held in Myanmar on July 4, 2022. Photo by the Cambodia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation

Founded in 2016, the MLC consists of six member countries: China, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam. The Mekong flows through all. In China, it is called Lancang.

The 7th MLC Foreign Ministers' Meeting saw the six ministers concur that the MLC framework is of great importance for the Mekong sub-region, and thereby expressed firm commitment to uphold solidarity in pursuit of common goals that would benefit their peoples.

On the sidelines of the meeting, Son also met with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, during which both sides highly valued the progress of Vietnam-China relations over the years with regular high-level meetings and a stably growing trade partnership.

Son said Vietnam wishes China to continue creating favorable conditions for Vietnamese products, especially seafood, to be transited in China and enter a third country later, as well as to boost the development of traffic infrastructure along the border to facilitate travel for businesses from both nations.

Wang said China highly values Vietnam's role in the global supply chain and wishes to cooperate with Vietnam in commerce and investment to guarantee the stability of that chain.
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Russian forces are attempting to annex the Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine via appalling abuses of human rights, said Ambassador Michael Carpenter, U.S. Permanent Representative to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Kherson, has become part of what Ive called the Kremlins laboratory of horrors. . . .Were seeing the Kremlin executing on their playbook of trying to absorb Ukraine into Russia.



There are chilling reports that some 600 people are being detained in the Kherson region in specially equipped basements that serve as torture chambers. Those detained include local officials, journalists, civil society activists, and those whom the Russian forces have identified as having participated in pro-Ukraine rallies in Kherson and its region.



In addition, residents of Kherson are reportedly subjected to humiliating identity checks and often violent questioning. Russias forces are rounding up the local civilian population, detaining them in detention facilities or filtration points and interrogating them for any supposed links to the Ukrainian government or to independent media outlets. This process reportedly can involve several days of detention and interrogation before Russias forces determine who to kill, torture, detain indefinitely, or forcibly relocate to Russia.



Russia is installing its own puppets and proxies in the parts of the Kherson region under its control much as it did in 2014 and 2015 in Donetsk and Luhansk, reported Ambassador Carpenter.



Meanwhile, the Russian Government is sabotaging or cutting off internet access in the Russia-controlled territories to deny people the ability to acquire reliable information, to conduct financial transactions, or to communicate.



In the schools, principals are being forced to shift to a Russian Federation curriculum, though many are refusing to go along at great cost to their own safety.



Economically, Russia is trying to set the stage for future annexation as well. Locals are forced to use the Russian ruble and to register their commercial properties with the new puppet administrations.



Russia is violating the UN Charter and contravening all ten principles of the Helsinki Final Act, declared Ambassador Carpenter. The United States believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his forces must be held accountable for the horrific atrocities being carried out in Kherson and elsewhere in Ukraine.
Presbyterian Church rummage sale

ELKO  First Presbyterian Church of Elko will hold its new Annual Outdoor Rummage Sale from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, July 9, at 1559 Sewell Drive. Donated items will be accepted Friday, July 8, only. No clothing or electronics will be accepted. For more information, call the church at 738-3430.

St. Josephs Catholic Church Monumental VBS starts July 18ELKO  St. Josephs Catholic Church invites preschool to eighth-grade children to Monumental VBS: Celebrating Gods Greatness from 9 a.m. to noon from July 18-22.

At Monumental, kids explore the sunbaked Southwestern desert as they dig into Gods great love. Kids participate in memorable Bible-learning activities, sing catchy songs, play teamwork-building games, make and devour yummy treats, experience one-of-a-kind Bible Adventures, collect Bible Memory Buddies to remind them of Gods love, and test out Sciency-Fun Gizmos theyll take home and play with all summer long. Plus, kids will learn to look for evidence of God all around them through God Sightings.

Each day concludes with a Canyon Closing that gets everyone involved in living what theyve learned. Kids will also join a missions effort to provide school supplies for children living on reservations. Family members and friends are encouraged to join in daily for this special time at noon. For more information, call 775-738-8770.

Great Humboldt Duck Race

ELKO  Northeastern Nevada Museums Great Humboldt Duck Race is scheduled for 9 a.m. Friday, July 22 at Angel Park. The City of Elko Fire Department has generously volunteered to help wash the ducks down the hill due to low water levels in the river.

The community is invited to join the event at Angel Park to see who wins the $1,500 prize for first place. Everything Elko Magazine is sponsoring the $250 Lame Duck Award for the last duck to cross the finish line. The Great Humboldt Duck Race is the Museums largest fundraiser.

The proceeds fund programs and projects throughout the year, like Second Saturday, Classic Film Fest in the park, Brown Bag History, and special exhibits. Youth representatives from the Igloo Rec Center are partnering with us on duck adoptions, and they will receive a portion of the proceeds.

Stop by the museum or contact the front desk to adopt your ducks today. 738-3418

Free healthy teen programs

ELKO  Family Resource Center hosts free healthy teen programs each month for youth in grades 5 to 7 (ages 10-12) and grades 8 to 12 (minimum age 13.) These lively, interactive programs are evidence-based and age-appropriate. They incorporate medically accurate information along with crucial knowledge on identifying and handling social pressures, refusal skills, effective communication, and how to respond to peer pressure.

Youth learn about keeping themselves safe, puberty and reproductive health, personal hygiene, goal setting, and respect for self and others while building knowledge, skills, and confidence. Participants receive their choice of a free backpack full of school supplies or a $25 store gift card after completing the program.

Limit of one free incentive per participant, per year (runs from October to September.) A parent or guardian must pre-register the participant by completing a permission slip before class. These programs are presented the last two Saturdays of the month at FRC during the school year, and one day each month during the summer; exact dates and times are listed on our Facebook event page: facebook.com/elkofrc/events. For more info, contact 753-7352 or teenhealth@elkofrc.org.

Horizon offers bereavement support group

ELKO  If you or a loved one is grieving the loss of a loved one, please join the Horizon Hospice support group. Participants meet at 6 p.m. on the first and third Tuesday of the month at 1250 Lamoille Highway, Suite 413.

There is no cost to community members. Call 778-0612 for more information.

Al-Anon meets Wednesdays in Spring Creek

SPRING CREEK The Al-Anon Spring Creek Step Study Group meets at 7 p.m. Wednesdays at the Spring Creek Baptist Church, 360 Spring Creek Parkway. The program is in person or virtual.

If you or someone you know is worried about a family member or friends drinking problem, Al-Anon is a mutual support group that shares their experiences, strengths and hope. Zoom meeting ID 890 588 5311 Password F8KmfZOn.

Celebrate recovery and find freedom

ELKO  Find freedom for your hurts, habits and hang-ups with The Nazarene Church Christ-centered recovery program every Friday evening.

A large group meets at 6 p.m. and a smaller group gathers at 7 p.m. The church is located at 740 Sage St.

Call 738-6714 for more information.

Medicare providers in Elko

ELKO  The Medicare in Elko Workgroup has updated their list of Elko medical providers. Listed are those clinics that will accept a new patient using Medicare or Medicaid.

It specifically lists clinics where patients can set up appointments with specific providers. The tri-fold brochure also lists providers found outside of Elko, along with two state agencies that help people with their Medicare needs. Senior Services and other medical services are listed.

The updated list is available on the groups website, medicarinelko.org. They also have a Facebook page medicare in elko, with a link to the brochure.
ELKO  A man was arrested on drug and child endangerment charges after deputies investigated a report that he had stolen a checkbook from a family member.

The Elko County Sheriffs Office was called to a Ryndon residence June 30 on a domestic violence incident when a man reported Rick M. Robles, 49, had been using his checkbook to write checks to himself. A deputy reported finding four carbon copy receipts of checks written by Robles, and he was transported to jail.

A search warrant was served at his bedroom, where deputies said they found a large glass bong that contained a substance that tested presumptively positive as methamphetamine. Robles has two minor children with access to the bedroom, according to the deputys report.

The above mentioned bong and its contents were laying on the floor next to the bed where there was also a shelf containing the childrens school work and art work, PS4 controlleers, a multitude of video games and two Nintendo switches, stated the report.

Robles was booked into jail with bail listed at $245,640, most of which was for two counts of child endangerment.

Nevada Department of Corrections records indicate Robles was sentenced to prison in 2007 for theft, 2015 for attempted grand larceny and drug possession, and 2020 for grand larceny.
ELKO  A Montello man accused of eluding police in a car with meth and stolen property in December was arrested Sunday in Box Elder County, Utah, for failure to appear in court on the Nevada charges.

Robert L. Aviles, 38, was booked into Elko County Jail on Sunday with bail listed at $35,000. He was arrested on the night of Dec. 8 in West Wendover as police investigated a report of a burglary at a casino.

West Wendover police located a vehicle matching the description of one used in the theft. They chased the Toyota pickup through a residential area at speeds of 50 mph, according to an officers report. The pickup turned into a casino parking lot, jumped a curb, and Aviles fled on foot.

A substance that tested positive for methamphetamine was recovered from the vehicle, along with an iPhone that had been reported missing in a separate burglary case.

Aviles was charged with eluding a police officer in a manner posing danger to persons or property, possession of methamphetamine, and possession of stolen goods including several cell phones, tablets, players cards, bank card, and other miscellaneous items 

According to Nevada Department of Corrections records, Aviles was sentenced in 2004 to 2-5 years in prison for attempted burglary. He was later sentenced to prison on five attempted burglary charges, grand larceny, fraudulent use of a credit card, burglary and assault with a deadly weapon.

In 2007 he was accused of breaking into an office at the Red Lion Hotel in Elko, stealing a master key and entering guest rooms, according to Elko Daily files.
LAS VEGAS  The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust is granting $3.8 million to the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services to equip 11 law enforcement agencies with tablets, allowing officers to provide 24/7 access to behavioral health professionals via telehealth.

Recipients include the Elko Police Department.

Nevadas population of 3.1 million people is spread over 110,567 square miles, providing unique challenges for a coordinated behavioral health crisis-care response across the states rural and frontier landscape. The Virtual Crisis Care program will ensure that Nevadas most remote residents receive the same exceptional behavioral health care they would receive in Las Vegas or Reno.

Nevadans across the state all deserve access to care when in need or experiencing a crisis. I am so thankful to the Helmsley Charitable Trust for their partnership on this innovative project that will put resources into the hands of our rural law enforcement officers, said Gov. Steve Sisolak.

Walter Panzirer, a trustee with the Helmsley Charitable Trust, and state officials introduced Virtual Crisis Care during a news conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Nevadas program is modeled after a South Dakota pilot program that helps officers call on trained experts to de-escalate mental health crises such as suicide ideation, self-harm, and depression.

This partnership between law enforcement and behavioral health professionals has been instrumental in providing top-notch care on scene while reducing unnecessary trips to emergency rooms, mental health hospitals, and jails, Panzirer said. Were excited to help bring this innovative program to Nevada and improve rural and frontier residents access to vital mental health resources.

One in five calls to law enforcement involve a person who may be experiencing a mental health crisis, according to the national nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center. Virtual Crisis Care will help more of those individuals receive immediate care from mental health professionals in the privacy of their own homes, or wherever the crisis is occurring.

Providing access to mental health care for all Nevadans is a priority, and being able to work with our law enforcement partners to equip them with the tools and make sure that happens is a major step forward, said Misty Vaughan Allen, Nevadas state suicide prevention coordinator. This new telehealth option will allow immediate, on-site assistance to anyone in crisis.

Besides Elko Police Department, other agencies participating in the program are the Carson City Sheriffs Office, the Eureka County Sheriffs Office, the Humboldt County Sheriffs Office, the Lander County Sheriffs Office, the Lincoln County Sheriffs Office, the Mesquite Police Department, the Washoe County Sheriffs Office, the West Wendover Police Department, the White Pine County Sheriffs Office and the Winnemucca Police Department.

Under the Virtual Crisis Care program, law enforcement officers in the field can call the crisis response team at Avel eCare to request a safety assessment. Officers then provide the person needing help with a tablet for a video consult. Once the crisis response team completes the assessment and communicates with law enforcement, they work to establish follow-up care with local mental health resources.

The program will make a huge difference in the town of Elko, which sits about 200 miles from any large urban area and lacks significant mental health resources, said Elko Police Chief Ty Trouten. Using tablets, Elko police officers will be able to respond to peoples homes and connect them with quality care and follow-up.

I believe that this will make a significant difference, Trouten said. Its going to be another piece in the puzzle for our resource list and our spectrum of care that we can provide. Im very grateful for it and look forward to great things from it.

The Nevada Legislatures Interim Finance Committee approved the initial $1.3 million installment of grant funding on June 21 to help launch and support the Virtual Crisis Care program.
UNICEF, UNFPA, UN Women, MOLISA and DFAT restart Blue Heart 2022 awareness campaign to generate public attention and call for action in response to increased violence against children and women, Ha Noi, July 5, 2022



This initiative builds on the 2020 campaign that aimed to raise public awareness and change individual and social behaviors to help stop violence before it begins.

This 2022 campaign urgently calls for public attention and support to generate violence-free in home, school, community, and online environments.

The Government of Viet Nam has made relentless efforts towards ending violence against children and women in the past years with particular attention to the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on people, affirmed Deputy Minister of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) Nguyen Thi Ha.

However, this battle is still ongoing and can only be won with tremendous and joint endeavors from all members of society, organizations and responsible agencies, she added.

"Viet Nam has received great support from United Nations agencies and the Australian Government working on this matter. Together, we are stronger in promoting solutions and actions towards ending violence against children and women", the Deputy Minister emphasized.

Globally, one billion children suffer some forms of violence every year. The Viet Nam Sustainable Development Goal indicators on Children and Women Survey 2020-2021 indicated that more than 72 percent of children aged 10-14 years experienced violent discipline.

Emotional abuse was reported by 39 percent of such children, along with physical abuse (47 percent), sexual abuse (20 percent) and neglect (29 percent).

Another study showed that 21.4 percent of adolescent girls and 7.9 percent of adolescent boys reported having had suicidal thoughts, while another study revealed that 5.8 percent of adolescents reported having attempted suicide.

According to the UNFPA-supported 2019 National Study on Violence against Women in Viet Nam, 62.9 percent of women in Viet Nam experienced one or more forms of physical, sexual, emotional and economic violence, and controlling behaviors by their husband in their life time.

Violence is hidden in Viet Nam's society, as 90.4 per cent of survivors of violence did not seek any help from authorities and half of them never told anyone about the violence.

Furthermore, violence against women is costing the country 1.81 percent of GDP.
The delegation visits and works with the Vietnam-Korea Businessmen and Investment Association (Photo: thoidai.com.vn)

The visit aims to find out the life and aspirations of the Vietnamese community living and working in RoK, originating and related to HCMC, especially in the localities having twinning with HCMC such as: Busan city, Daegu city, Seoul city, Incheon city, Gangwon province, Gyeongsanbuk province and Gyeonggi province.



The delegation will be supported and guided overseas Vietnamese in RoK to participate in the work of the Overseas Vietnamese Association in the host country, aiming to build a strong Overseas Vietnamese Association; strengthen the connection between the Committee on Overseas Vietnamese in HCMC and the overseas Vietnamese associations in RoK.

At the same time, the delegation also communicates guidelines, policies and specific mechanism of HCMC to Vietnamese people in RoK,

At the same time, communications specific guidelines, policies and mechanisms of HCMC to overseas Vietnamese in RoK, maintain contact and connect information between overseas Vietnamese and entrepreneurs organizations and businesses in HCMC with cities with a large number of Vietnamese people in RoK, promoting cooperation relationships, calling for investment in the fields of interest of the city.

In addition, the delegation also introduces and promotes the image of HCMC to the overseas Vietnamese community in RoK with the spirit of solidarity, friendship, mutual understanding, creating a foundation for development cooperation between HCMC and major cities of RoK./.


Ho Chi Minh complete works in Lao language. (Photo: VNA)

At the ceremony, sharing with hundreds of students and lecturers of the Academy, Deputy Director of the Lao National Academy of Politics and Administration, Dr. Khamla Keoounkham, said that the introduction of the works being translated from Vietnamese to Lao into teaching is a very practical work, satisfying and creating favourable conditions for researchers, scholars, teachers, and those interested in the work, to access and research.

Dr. Khamla Keoounkham affirmed that President Ho Chi Minh's great thought expressed in the complete work is the whole system of profound views, including President Ho Chi Minh's deep awareness of crimes , the exploitation of the colonial regime on the colonial people. In the process of finding a way to save the country, he approached Marxism-Leninism and realized that this was the profound political theory foundation for the path of national liberation and human liberation.

In the national history of Vietnam, President Ho Chi Minh oriented the country to follow the path of socialism and took Marxism-Leninism as the revolutionary theory. In order to effectively organize and carry out the goal of building the country along the path to socialism, he attaches great importance to Party building and development, building exemplary in cadre and Party work, all for the people, who sacrificed and devoted their lives to the Vietnamese revolution as well as to the international communist movement.

According to Dr. Khamla Keoounkham, each of Ho Chi Minh's complete work has a profound theoretical and practical value, reflecting the process of his activities, the stages of the history of the Vietnamese revolution and the world, are valuable lessons not only for the Vietnamese people but also for all mankind, peace-loving people to study. President Ho Chi Minh is a shining example of sacrifice for the people, for the common good, for the country, for the people. The doctor emphasized, President Ho Chi Minh always cared about the people's lives, because he was deeply aware that only the masses of the people would make the revolutionary cause successful./.
Vietnamese labourers sent to work in Japan (Photo: TNO)

Specifically, as of June, Vietnam sent about 51,677 labourers abroad, reaching about 60% of the years plan, including about 32,053 labourers sent to Japan, 15,633 sent to Taiwan (China) and 1,209 to the Republic of Korea (RoK).

Currently, some markets are gradually loosening entry regulations for Vietnamese workers. For example, in the Japanese market, Vietnamese workers only need to receive 3 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to be able to start work.

Recently, the RoK Government also announced that Vietnam is not on the list of countries that need to strengthen quarantine. Currently, people entering from Vietnam can continue to apply the regulations on exempting medical isolation for 7 days if they have had enough basic doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

Along with that, in order to expand the labour market, the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs signed with the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade a Memorandum of Understanding on supporting Vietnamese citizens to participate in the agricultural worker program in Australia.

Vietnam and Malaysia have also signed a memorandum of understanding on recruitment, employment and labour repatriation between the two countries, continuing to pilot the implementation of sending workers to the Republic of Korea to work seasonally in the form of cooperation between localities./.
At the meeting (Photo: baoquocte.vn)

On July 3, on the occasion of attending the 7th Mekong-Lancang Cooperation (MLC) Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Bagan, Myanmar, Vietnamese Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son met Lao Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith.

The two ministers expressed their delight at the recent achievements in the special cooperation relationship between Vietnam and Laos. Accordingly, the exchange of high-level delegations has continued to be maintained; security - defense cooperation has been enhanced; key cooperation projects have been promoted by the two sides; two-way trade turnover in the first 5 months of 2022 reached nearly USD691 million, up 19% over the same period in 2021.

After the launching ceremony of the Vietnam - Laos Year of Solidarity and Friendship 2022 co-chaired by the Prime Ministers of the two countries in Hanoi in January 2022, the ministries, departments and agencies of Vietnam and Laos have coordinated to organize many meaningful activities to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations (September 5, 1962 - September 5, 2022) and the 45th anniversary of the signing of the Vietnam - Laos Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation (July 18, 1977 - July 18, 2022).

In terms of cooperation between the two ministries of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam and Laos, the two ministers affirmed to continue to work together to effectively implement the cooperation agreement between the two sides for the period of 2021-2025, including the effective implementation of the action plan on diplomatic and economic cooperation for the period of 2020-2025, promoting exchanges, strategic studies and regular exchanges between key units of the two ministries.

The two Ministers also agreed to strengthen coordination and mutual support at international, regional and sub-regional forums, together with other member states to maintain solidarity and strengthen ASEAN's central role./.
CAMPAIGN FOR JUDICIAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORMS

6/6 basement Jangpura B, Delhi - 110014

judicialreforms.org

Patrons: Shri Shanti Bhushan, Prof. B.B.Pande,Dr. Bhaskar Rao, Ms.

Arundhati Roy, Shri Pradip Prabhu, Prof. Babu Mathew, Dr. Baba

Adhav, Ms. Kamini Jaiswal, Shri Mihir Desai, Shri Manoj Mitta

Executive Committee: Prashant Bhushan (Convenor), Cheryl DAoSouza

(Secretary), Nikhil Dey, Alok Prasanna Kumar, Venkatesh Sundaram,

Indu Prakash Singh, Anjali Bhardwaj, Amrita Johri, Annie Raja,

Ramesh Nathan, Siddharth Sharma, Indira Unninayar, Vijayan MJ,

Vipul Mudgal, Koninika Ray, Prasanna S, Meera Sanghamitra, Nikhil

Borwankar

PRESS RELEASE | 5" July 2022

The Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms is deeply concerned about the manner in which the Delhi Police has filed questionable charges against Mr. Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of Alt News and arrested him, based on a 2018 tweet that merely involved remarks on a screenshot from an old hindi film. CJAR is further shocked at the manner in which the Delhi police revealed the contents of the order in the ongoing case of Mohammed ZubairAos bail, to the media, more than five hours prior to the order being pronounced on the 2" of July. Around 2 pm, messages were broadcast by media organisations that Zubair had been denied bail and he had been sent to 14 days of judicial custody. In reality, as of 2 pm the judge had reserved the order and was yet to return to preside over the Bench.

It is most shocking that several hours later when the bench actually assembled and the order was pronounced, it was exactly what the police had announced earlier - denial of bail and 14 days judicial custody. The explanation offered by the Deputy Superintendent of Police that "I had a word with my IO, I misheard it due to noise and inadvertently the message was posted in the broadcast is bizarre to put it mildly. No effort was made to correct the record when media outlets flashed this information and it was only when the counsels for the petitioner raised the issues did the clarification even come about.

This incident raises serious questions about the circumstances leading up to the pronouncement of the order and the interference of the Delhi Police in the judicial process. It appears that the Delhi Police and the magistrate had a prior backdoor agreement outside of court as to the nature of the order that was to be pronounced. We believe strict action must be taken against officials responsible for this. To reinforce the faith of the Public in the judiciary and constitutional governance the communication between the police and the Judge and the perceived influence of the police over the judicial process, needs a thorough independent probe, that must be conducted forthwith by the Delhi High Court.

We are further concerned that Mr. Zubair has now been remanded to 14 days judicial custody, based on an FIR filed on lst June by the Sitapur District Police in Uttar Pradesh for reportedly calling three Hindutva leaders as hate mongers. We feel that in both instances the Delhi and UP police have been inappropriately invoking the law to persecute a fact-checker. We demand that the constitutional right to liberty of Mr. Zubair be upheld and the ill-conceived charges against him be dropped immediately by the Delhi and UP police.
NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue (left) and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (Photo: VNA)

The official visit of National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue and a high-ranking delegation of the National Assembly of Vietnam to Europe from June 26-30 has received much media attention in Italy.

In particular, the articles focus on highlighting the positive cooperation results achieved between Vietnam and European countries, especially in trade and investment, and at the same time highlighting the outstanding achievements of Vietnam in ensuring human rights.

In an article titled "Vietnam strengthens trade and investment with Italy and Europe", La Citta Futura newspaper affirmed that the visit of National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue will strongly promote the partnership and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and European countries. Through an overview of the remarkable progress in two-way trade, the article emphasized that Vietnam is effectively implementing its commitments in free trade agreements with the European Union (EVFTA) and with the UK (UKFTA).

Up to now, Vietnam's key agricultural products such as pepper, cashew nuts, vegetables, fruits, coffee, tea and rubber have all enjoyed preferential tax rates in the EU market. At the same time, the EU is one of the five largest seafood export markets of Vietnam with an annual import demand of up to USD50 billion. The article also highlights Vietnam's position as Italy's leading partner in Southeast Asia, an effective bridge for the EU in general and Italy in particular with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Citing the content of the phone call on April 22, between Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the article emphasized the commitment of the Italian Government to promote the Italian parliaments ratification of the EU - Vietnam Investment Protection Agreement (EVIPA) in the context that many Italian businesses want to expand their investment and business activities in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Marx21 daily has an article titled "Vietnam's declaration in Europe on joining the United Nations Human Rights Council". The article emphasized that with the second nomination to join the UN Human Rights Council, Vietnam is showing the right direction in its policies on human rights development that centre on people.

One of the bright spots of Vietnam that is internationally recognized is its achievements in hunger eradication, poverty reduction, and social security assurance. As a member of the UN Human Rights Council for the 2014-2016 term, Vietnam has fully and responsibly participated in the Council's activities and programs.

The Government of Vietnam always affirms its message on protecting and promoting human rights, contributing many initiatives to help handle global human rights issues. That ASEAN countries unanimously selected Vietnam as the Southeast Asian candidate for an HRC seat in the 2023 - 2025 tenure reflected the blocs consensus and trust in Vietnam in this regard, according to Marx21./.
Solomiia Iosypenko, PhD, Attorney at Law, Mediator, Associate of MORIS

The large-scale invasion of russia on the territory of Ukraine dramatically changed the perception of Ukrainian society towards all spheres of civil life, including conflict resolution. The main body that resolves disputes in Ukraine is the court. However, since the impose of martial law, judicial bodies have begun to work with certain peculiarities, some of them have stopped their work or changed their location, and the territorial jurisdiction of cases has also changed. Given the situation and the emotional component, decision-making regarding the dispute settlement is currently significantly complicated. Despite this, conflicts exist and need to be resolved, so today, the issue of resolving disputes out of court is becoming more relevant than ever.

Alternatives to traditional justice have been known to humanity since the early phases of human civilization, since wars began. One of these alternative dispute resolution methods is mediation, the origins of which date back to 4000 B.C. in China.

With the adoption of the Law of Ukraine On Mediation at the end of 2021, it opened up the opportunity to settle disputes without applying to a court and with the lowest risk and cost.

Today, mediation is an effective tool for finding understanding between conflicting parties, mainly due to its flexibility. Because the order, place (possibility of conducting remote conversations), duration and number of meetings depends on the parties.

In conflict situations, the parties almost always feel strong emotions that guide human decisions, and when the occupational war is going on in the country, such emotions, in particular anger, fear, pain, and feeling of injustice, become especially exacerbated. Under such circumstances, resort to mediation is the best option for resolving the dispute.

Another advantage of calling to a mediator today is the significantly lower cost of the procedure compared to using other dispute resolution methods.

In what kind of disputes during wartime will mediation be useful?

- Corporate disputes. Disagreements between business partners and sometimes between top managers are common. Corporate conflicts have a negative impact on the work of the enterprise, and sometimes lead to the collapse of the business. In the situation of martial law, when entrepreneurs need to adapt to new realities and transform their business, settling the dispute in court is not the best option. Resort to a qualified mediator is the shortest way to a mutually beneficial conflict resolution. Furthermore, the mediation procedure reduces the risks of damaging the entrepreneur's reputation and preserves the confidentiality of such a dispute.

- Commercial disputes, in particular in the field of agriculture and real estate. According to the data of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, the total losses from the war only in the agriculture of Ukraine is $4.3 billion. Obviously, conflicts between business partners in these industries are predictable and inevitable, in particular, disputes regarding non-fulfillment of obligations under contracts of supply, storage, lease, etc. And in this aspect, mediation can be useful and effective.

- Family and civil disputes. The court decision of this category of cases, even in the pre-war period, was an emotionally exhausting process. Because, unlike mediation, the court is guided by the rules of law and does not work with the cause of the conflict. Today, disputes about the division of the property of the spouses in a situation where the property is destroyed or located in the temporarily occupied territory, crossing the border after February 24 by a child with one of the parents without the consent of the other, and in the case of divorce of the parents, establishing contact with such a child, alimony payment, determining place of residence of the child, disputes regarding non-fulfillment of obligations under the real estate lease agreement, etc. are relevant for resolution through mediation.

- A variety of conflicts without a judicial perspective.

In the end

Litigation and arbitration is, in fact, a "war" between the parties of the dispute, which creates a gap between them. Instead, the most valuable part of mediation is that the parties have the opportunity not only to resolve their dispute, but also to preserve and strengthen their relationship.

In the current realities of life, it is necessary to wage war against the aggressor, and resolve disputes with counterparties peacefully through the mediation.
The European Business Association (EBA) has called on the government to resolve the issue of tax residence of Ukrainian citizens abroad, since staying abroad for more than 183 days, they can be recognized as residents of the host country and there will be a risk of double taxation, the association said in a release.

"According to the rules in the vast majority of countries, Ukrainians can be recognized as tax residents of the host country and will be exposed to the risk of double taxation if they stay abroad for more than 183 days. Thus, they will be subject to taxation both in Ukraine and in the country of their actual stay. The situation with the taxation of income from business activity/provision of services by an individual entrepreneur in the territory of another state is similar. Given that some citizens were forced to leave the country back in February as the war had started, the issue of acquiring tax residency from another country should arise for them at the end of August  already in less than 2 months," the EBA said.

"Along with the double taxation of labor income received from Ukrainian employers, there is a risk of double payment of social contributions from the wages of employees who continue to work under labor contracts with Ukrainian employers, but are physically outside Ukraine due to the military aggression of the Russian Federation. In the countries where Ukrainian citizens are temporarily residing, there may be an obligation for Ukrainian employers and/or employees to pay contributions to state insurance for various types of payments from the income of Ukrainian employers  Ukraine has agreements on social security with some EU countries, which provide an exemption from the payment of social contributions in the host countries if a Ukrainian employer sends an employee to perform labor activities in the territory of another country. However, in most cases, the temporary stay of Ukrainian citizens on the territory of other countries is not due to a business trip and is not registered as such. Accordingly, there are no procedures for exemption from the payment of social contributions in host countries, where the obligation to pay such contributions arises," the report says.

"Given the above, the European Business Association appeals to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine with a proposal to establish contacts with the relevant state bodies of foreign countries as soon as possible and reach agreements with them that would eliminate the risk of double taxation of citizens of Ukraine who are temporarily abroad. Currently, we are not aware of such efforts on the part of state bodies of Ukraine," it said.
Ukraine, with support of Poland and Romania, can keep growth of export-import cargo turnover at 20% per month - Infrastructure Minister

Under the conditions of Russian blockade of seaports, Ukraine is making constant efforts to increase export-import cargo turnover through the western land border and ports on the Danube and is ready, with the support primarily of Poland and Romania, to maintain the pace of such an increase of 20% per month and even more, Minister of Infrastructure Oleksandr Kubrakov said.

"We can maintain this pace. But it depends on how our Polish and Romanian colleagues will maintain this pace," he told Interfax-Ukraine on the sidelines of the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano, Switzerland on Monday.

According to him, Poland is more supportive of such efforts by Ukraine, Romania is less, but the work continues.

As an example, he cited the recent expansion of the crossing at the Ukrainian-Polish border Krakovets-Korczowa, where the number of lanes for trucks was increased from 4 to 10 and additional pavilions for customs and passport control were created.

At the same time, the minister found it difficult to name what monthly volume of export-import cargo turnover has been achieved so far.

Kubrakov noted that the expansion of export-import logistics capacity is one of the important components of the Ukraine Recovery Plan.

As reported, Ukraine exported 1.41 million tonnes of grain crops in June 2022 compared to 1.2 million tonnes in May. At the same time, grain exports through the ports before the war amounted to 4-5 million tonnes.
Russian occupiers have already taken up to 500,000 tonnes of grain crops from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, while before the start of a full-scale invasion, there were about 1.5 million tonnes of grain in the occupied regions.

According to various sources, the invaders on average export 150,000-170,000 tonnes of grain from the country, such figures were announced by Ukraine's Ambassador to Turkey Vasyl Bodnar in an interview with the Glavcom edition.

The ambassador also explained the information about a 25% discount on the purchase of Ukrainian grain by Turkey, about which Turkish Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Vahit Kirisci told the local publication Yeni Safak in early June. According to Bodnar, this discount is not a payment for mediation, but a legal mechanism for buying grain from the territory of Ukraine to foreign markets.

"This is a completely different story that has nothing to do with mediation. It is about a legal mechanism for buying grain from the territory of Ukraine to foreign markets. The discount was discussed earlier, so that the Turkish side could export this grain using the available mechanisms," the ambassador explained.

He noted that if the Turkish side provided its ships for the export of grain from the ports on the Danube, this logistics would be much cheaper than the existing export routes through the western border with Poland, which costs almost 40% of the price of grain.

"We voiced this proposal to the Turkish side one and a half to two months ago, that is, before the negotiations to unblock our ports. Here the question is not only for the Turkish government, but also for traders, at what price they will sell grain to the markets, because it is constantly getting cheaper. The closer the new harvest, the lower the price for the old one. Since we have a large volume, it needs to be sold quickly," the ambassador emphasized.
Lake Mar Chiquita, Argentina ESA

The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over Lake Mar Chiquita  an endorheic salt lake in the northeast province of Cordoba, Argentina.

Lake Mar Chiquita, around 70 km long and 24 km wide, is fed primarily by the Primero and Segundo rivers from the southwest and from the Dulce river from the north. While these rivers flow into the lake, there isnt a natural outflow of water so it only loses water by evaporation, hence Lake Mar Chiquita being described as an endorheic lake. The lakes surface area, as well as its salinity, varies considerably (ranging between 2000 and 6000 sq km), although it is slowly diminishing in size owing to evaporation.

Several small islands lie in the lake, the most important of which is El Medano. Vast expanses of saline marshes can be seen on the lakes northern shore. The lake has been designated as a Ramsar Site of International Importance, and is considered one of the most important wetlands in Argentina owing to its rich biodiversity. Over 25 species of fish are known to breed in Lake Mar Chiquita, with fishing and livestock being the principal land uses.

The colours of this weeks image come from the combination of two polarisations from the Sentinel-1 radar mission, which have been converted into a single image.

As radar images provide data in a different way than a normal optical camera, the images are usually black and white when they are received. By using a technology that aligns the radar beams sent and received by the instrument in one orientation  either vertically or horizontally  the resulting data can be processed in a way that produces coloured images such as the one featured here. This technique allows scientists to better analyse Earths surface.

Shades of blue in the image show us where the differences between the two polarisations are higher, for example the saline marshes in the lakes north, whereas the crops and agricultural fields in the surrounding area appear yellow, indicating fewer differences between polarisations. Fields, such as those visible in the bottom-left corner of the image, appear blue most likely because they are wetter. Several villages, including San Francisco and Rafaela, are identifiable in white in the bottom-right of the image.

This image, acquired on 17 November 2020, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Larger image
Switzerland to double funding for Ukraine to over CHF 100 mln, allocate CHF15 mln for digital transformation

Switzerland against the background of the war and with the aim of reconstruction will strengthen support for Ukraine, Swiss President Ignazio Cassis said.

He said Switzerland would double funding in the framework of bilateral cooperation with Ukraine to more than CHF 100 million by 2023 ...

"Responding to the call of the Prime Minister (Denys Shmyhal), we will allocate at least CHF15 million for digital transformation," he said at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano on Tuesday.

The president added that Switzerland also allocates funds to Ukraine on a multilateral basis through the UN, the World Bank, the EBRD and other organizations.

Cassis noted that the principles formalized later on Tuesday in the Lugano Declaration would make it easier for Ukraine to raise funding for the Recovery Plan.
The Netherlands has allocated another EUR 200 million to help Ukraine through the International Monetary Fund, Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation of the Netherlands Liesje Schreinemacher said.

"Continuing our efforts to address the most urgent financial needs of Ukraine, I announce today that we have provided another EUR 200 million of financial assistance through a special IMF account. The funds will be spent on the current needs of the Ukrainian authorities, for example, on salaries of civil servants, teachers, doctors," she said at a conference on the restoration of Ukraine in Lugano on Tuesday.
From July 7, Ukraine will start export-import of 50 MW of electricity in the direction of Slovakia, according to information on the website of Ukrenergo.

According to the terms of the daily auctions announced today for July 7 (announced two days before the start of delivery), the capacity of electricity exports to Romania, as well as imports from it, has been reduced from this date from 100 MW to 50 MW.

As reported, on June 27 the European network of system operators for transmission of electricity ENTSO-E agreed to start commercial exports of the first 100 MW to Europe. Romania became the first direction for deliveries. It was planned that based on the results of the Romanian auctions, the issue of opening routes to Slovakia and Hungary would be considered, but in general at a capacity of 100 MW.

Over time, it is planned to increase it.

Import-export of electricity to Romania for 100 MW started on June 30. During the week of auctions, proceeds from the sale by Ukrenergo of access to the section reached UAH 106 million.

The number of auction winners ranges from five to nine bidders.
AT Market LLC (Kyiv), bottling high-altitude Carpathian water under the VODA UA trademark, will release a limited batch of water for the domestic market with three types of labels dedicated to the events of the war with the Russian Federation.

"Limited batches of water in glass and plastic containers will be intended mainly for sale in the HoReCa segment [hotels, restaurants, and cafes]," owner and founder of the company Dmytro Nikiforov told Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.

"We have several cases there. The first case is based on the plot with the Russian warship. We produce 'plastic' and 'glass.' Glass goes to the HoReCa segment, and we already have pre-orders from those restaurants that do not work with us in principle, but they are ready to take a certain number of bottles from this batch. The total number of bottles with the 'warship' is 40,000 in 'plastic,' and 5,000 in 'glass.' One can say that this is not even a limited edition, but a collection lot," Nikiforov said.

He also clarified that immediately after the release of the VODA UA batch with the "warship" or in parallel with it, a batch of water will be produced with a label in yellow and blue colors, developed in collaboration with Ukrainian artist Sonia Moroziuk and dedicated to the future victory of Ukraine in the war against Russian invaders. The head of the company clarified that this label will depict a Kyiv mural, which Moroziuk is now completing on the wall of one of the capital's houses.

It is also planned to release a batch of VODA UA with a label that will depict a ceramic majolica figurine in the form of a rooster, which survived in one of the apartments in Borodianka, Kyiv region, after shelling by Russian troops.

"We approached creatively: still water  with the label 'Good morning, we are from Ukraine,' and sparkling water  'Good evening, we are from Ukraine,'" Nikiforov said.

According to him, after the sale of this limited batch of water, VODA UA mulls production of its products with other labels dedicated to the events of the war with the Russian Federation.

VODA UA is a group of companies engaged in the extraction of Carpathian high-mountain waters under the trademarks VODA UA, Horianka, Karpatska Dzherelna Vysokohirna.
The issue of financing Ukraine's needs should be addressed consistently and taking into account current priorities, today, while the war continues, the main one is financing the deficit in the amount of about $5 billion per month, World Bank Vice President for Europe and Central Asia Anna Bjerde has said.

She told reporters on the sidelines of the Ukraine Recovery Conference that they have to plan sequentially and piecemeal because the war is still going on. The priority now is $ 5 billion, which guarantees that Ukraine will receive the money that it now needs to work and provide services. That's really what keeps us up at night, she said.

Bjerde noted that the World Bank is working hard to attract external funding for these purposes, including through its multi-donor fund.

Speaking of additional funding, the Vice President emphasized the importance of setting priorities, that is, the main sectors that need to be rebuilt. Among them, she named housing, roads, bridges and transport infrastructure, healthcare and education facilities, as well as water and energy supply and mine clearance.

"So I wouldn't say that we need to go and raise $750 billion today [general estimate of the Ukraine Recovery Plan presented by the government in Lugano]. Let's break it down the way the government did it: we need $65 billion [the government's estimate of the necessary funding for the first stage of the plan]," Bjerde said.

She added that a damage assessment is also needed, and the Kyiv School of Economics is doing a good job of that.

"We need to work together to see what we need to do in the first two months, five months, 12 months and so on, because it's too much to just say let's do it in one go. My message is, that the government should be able to continue to provide services, and we need to involve everyone to support Ukraine today  here and now," the World Bank Vice President stressed.
Govts of Wales and Scotland allocate GBP 100 mln for military assistance to Ukraine  Johnson

The Welsh government has allocated GBP 35 million for military assistance to Ukraine, Scotland has allocated GBP 65 million. Wales has accepted 3,000 Ukrainian refugees, Scotland  6,000, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

"The Welsh Government has contributed 35m to our military support for Ukraine, and Welsh families have taken in 3,000 refugees," Johnson said on Twitter Monday.

According to him, he discussed with the First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford the continuation of joint work against Russian aggression.

Johnson also wrote that he also talked with the First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon.

"I've just spoken to Nicola Sturgeon to herald the success of UK collaboration supporting Ukraine. I thanked the Scottish Governments 65 million contribution in upping UKs military aid to Ukraine to 2.3 billion & efforts to help house 6,000 Ukrainian refugees," he wrote.

Earlier, materials appeared in the media that allegedly the Welsh government did not agree on the allocation of GBP 35 million as part of a new package of British military assistance to Ukraine for GBP 1 billion.
Swedish PM gives Zelensky copy of letter of Charles XII on recognition of Zaporizhia Sich as independent state

Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson handed over to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a copy of a letter from King Charles XII recognizing Zaporizhia Sich as an independent state.

"I am handing over a copy of a letter from the National Archives of Sweden, written in 1711. King Charles XII wrote a letter about Pylyp Orlyk. There he gives instructions to the Swedish ambassador to recognize Zaporizhia Sich as an independent state. So that there would be no harassment from the Moscow tsar," she said at a press conference and in Kyiv after talks with the President of Ukraine.

"I think it fits well into the modern context. Some 300 years have passed, and we see that one of our successful projects in Ukraine is municipal selfgovernment and also democratic processes," Andersson stressed.

"The Russian aggression must end. We must end this war by supporting Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. And this should continue as long as necessary. There is a simple way to end this war  Russia must stop and go home," she said.

"Today I saw not only the ruins, but also the courage of the Ukrainian people under your leadership," the Swedish Prime Minister stressed.
The Russian occupiers launched a missile strike on Mykolaiv on Tuesday morning, the consequences are being clarified, mayor of the city Oleksandr Senkevych said.

"In the morning, the invaders launched rocket attacks on Mykolaiv. Rescuers, medics, emergency crews and utility workers are already working on the ground," he wrote on the Telegram channel on Tuesday morning.

Senkevych promised to provide more detailed information later.
Yermak in Lugano: The sooner mechanism of compensation for damage by Russia introduced in world, the less financial burden will have to be born by partner states of Ukraine

Head of the Presidents Office of Ukraine Andriy Yermak, speaking at a conference in Lugano, Switzerland, said that the sooner the mechanism of compensation by Russia for the damage caused by the war to Ukraine is introduced in the world, the less financial burden Ukrainian partners will have to bear.

According to him, "Ukraine has no illusions about Russia's intention to participate in the payment of reparations."

"Obviously, this is not going to happen. Therefore, the mechanism proposed by Ukraine provides for the use of Russian assets located abroad to pay compensation. Ukraine insists that this mechanism should operate in full compliance with the principles of the rule of law. We understand that there is a lot of work ahead, including through the change of national legislations of states," Yermak said.

He noted that the Ukrainian side is already negotiating with partner states to identify and implement a compensation mechanism, and also welcomed Canada for adopting a law allowing the confiscation of public and private assets of Russians whose owners are associated with violations of international law and human rights.

"We are waiting for similar steps from other partner states. We will be very happy to work together so that the terrorist state and its accomplices cannot hide their property in foreign jurisdictions with impunity. The more states join this work, the faster Ukraine will be able to restore its own destroyed economy. The sooner the compensation mechanism is implemented, the more efficiently the assets of the aggressor state will be converted into funds to restore the lives of Ukrainians, the less financial burden our partners will have to bear," Yermak said.

The head of the Presidents Office also stressed that Ukraine cannot wait.

"This restoration should be paid for by the terrorist state. We can't wait. We already have dozens of destroyed houses, thousands of destroyed infrastructure, hundreds of destroyed schools and hospitals, millions of homeless people. We need to rebuild the country just now," he concluded.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Belarus is in danger of being drawn into a war, but believes that this can be avoided.

"We believe that Belarus will not get involved in this war. There are and will be provocations," he said on Tuesday, speaking at the 26th annual round table talk The Economist.

"Missiles were launched from the territory of Belarus. There are a lot of people of different caliber who have brought suffering to Ukraine. We understand that this is not the decision of the Belarusian people. We believe that the Belarusian people should do everything not to get involved in this war," Zelensky said.

But, he noted, "and the responsibility should be on people who see what is happening." "We cannot remain silent and say that not we, but it is that the Russian Federation is firing these shots from our territory."
By Azernews

By Sabina Mammadli

Kazakh airline Qazaq Air plans to launch regular flights to Baku, Azernews reports, citing the Civil Aviation Committee of the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructural Development of Kazakhstan.

Kazakh committee continues to work on restoring and expanding the route network of international air transportation in connection with the lifting of restrictive measures in the world," the committee said.

Qazaq Air plans to start operating regular flights on the new Aktobe-Baku-Aktobe route starting from July 7.

Flights will be operated on Thursdays and Sundays on Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 aircraft, the committee added.

Diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan were established on August 30, 1992.

The Kazakh embassy in Azerbaijan was opened on January 9, 1993, and the Azerbaijani embassy in Kazakhstan on March 1, 2004.

The two countries closely cooperate in various fields of economy. Some 159 companies with the Kazakh capital operate in Azerbaijan in the sphere of industry, construction, trade, agriculture, transport, and services. Azerbaijani companies are also represented in the Kazakh market and Azerbaijan's investments in the Kazakh non-oil sector from 1995 to 2021 amounted to more than $200 million, while Kazakhstan's investments in the Azerbaijani non-oil sector totaled about $100 million.

The trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan amounted to $135.7 million in 2021.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky held talks with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, thanked for the recent decisions in aid, the leaders also discussed food security for the world and security guarantees for Ukraine.

"Held talks with Boris Johnson. Thanked for the continued support of Ukraine - the recent decision to provide GBP1 billion in aid and today's regarding GBP 100 million. We talked about food security for the world and security guarantees for Ukraine. Grateful for the UK's willingness to accept URC 2023," Zelensky wrote on Twitter.
A technical delegation of UNESCO will make a visit to Kyiv this week, Assistant Director-General of UNESCO Africa Department Edouard Matoko has said.

"We plan together with the government of Ukraine to send a technical mission to Kyiv this week in order to assess needs and expectations of the Ukrainian authorities and determine the forms of our involvement," he said at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano on Tuesday.

UNESCO along with all partners are ready to provide technical assistance within the spheres of their competence and contribute to the recovery and development plan of Ukraine, he added.

Matoko also said that UNESCO regularly monitors the impact of the war on cultural facilities, educational establishments as well as security of journalists.

UNESCO is also committed to ensure uninterrupted education for all citizens of Ukraine, support for online education in Ukraine and abroad as well as integration of refugees  students and teachers  in host countries, he said.

Matoko added that UNESCO has mobilized around $5 million under agreements with donor countries in these spheres.
Representatives of the authorities of 42 countries signed the final declaration of the conference on the restoration of Ukraine in Lugano, which condemned Russia's military aggression against Ukraine and called on Russia to immediately withdraw its troops from the territory of Ukraine.

According to the declaration, the signatories reaffirmed their full support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within internationally recognized borders, and also stated that Russia's military aggression against Ukraine, deliberately targeting the civilian population, has led to significant human losses, catastrophic destruction of infrastructure, schools, hospitals, housing citizens and cultural heritage, deep economic and financial losses for Ukraine, and destabilized global value chains and jeopardized world food security.

The countries also committed to support Ukraine on its path to recovery, and also recognized the Ukraine-initiated draft Recovery and Development Plan as the main framework document that sets the direction for the recovery process and ensures the coordinated participation of many stakeholders and partners.

In addition, the parties supported the creation of an effective coordination platform between the government of Ukraine and all bilateral and multilateral partners, organizations and international financial organizations for the preparation and implementation of the Recovery and Development Plan of Ukraine.

The signatories stressed the importance of fair and transparent development financing, lending and borrowing in accordance with international rules, standards and recognized principles in the process of Ukraine's reconstruction.

They also invited the private sector, representatives of academia and civil society, as well as participants at the regional level, to enter into partnership with Ukrainian counterparts.

The Declaration was signed by heads of state and government, ministers and high representatives of Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Greece, Denmark, Estonia, Israel, Ireland, Iceland, Spain, Italy, Canada, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, United Kingdom of Great Britain, the United States of America, Turkey, Ukraine, Hungary, Finland, France, Croatia, Japan, as well as senior officials and high representatives of the Council of Europe, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Commission, the European Investment Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Ukraine, in preparation for the heating season in the context of ongoing military aggression from Russia, is creating a stock of modular boiler houses and generators, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has said at a press conference in Lugano.

"We are creating an appropriate stock of modular boiler houses that can be quickly brought in and deployed. We are making a stock of special generators for electricity and a stock of purifiers for drinking water," the press service of the Cabinet of Ministers quoted him as saying.

Shmyhal noted that this is necessary, since if large power plants are destroyed, it will be difficult to quickly restore district heating.

The prime minister noted that all procedures are prescribed for such a case, and they are agreed with local governments. All issues of the heating season, he said, are in the focus of the Ministry for Communities and Territories Development and the Ministry of Energy, an appropriate headquarters has been created to prepare for the autumn-winter period.

Shmyhal also said that Ukraine has signed agreements for the installation of modular houses for almost 15,000 families.
Lugano Declaration provides for regular control over recovery progress, financial flows in Ukraine

The Lugano Declaration provides for regular control over recovery progress and financial flows in Ukraine, President of Switzerland Ignazio Cassis said during the presentation of the document.

At a press conference on the results of the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano, Switzerland, Cassis presented seven main principles of the Lugano Declaration.

The first one is partnership. Ukraine will launch the recovery process and implement it jointly with its international partners. Recovery process and financial flows will be regularly controlled, the president said.

The second principle is reform focus. Recovery, sustainability as well as continuation, deepening and extension of reforms are interrelated, Cassis said.

The third principle is transparency, accountability and rule of law as the process of ensuring independent justice system and fight against corruption must include accountability.

The fourth principle is democratic participation, the president, adding that the recovery process will not be centralized. It will be based on democratic participation as well as local communities and local decisions.

The fifth principle is multi-stakeholders engagement. The process must involve national and international participants from business, civil society, science, and local communities, Cassis said.

The sixth principle of gender equality and inclusion. The minorities should not be expelled from the process, everyone must be involved, he stressed.

The seventh principle is sustainability. Recovery and reforms will not be limited to the infrastructure and institutions. They will also cover social, economic, and environmental aspects, Cassis said.
Kyivstar will provide UAH 300 million, Vodafone Ukraine - UAH 90 million and Datagroup - UAH 10 million as part of the Digital4Freedom initiative on the UNITED24 platform, the relevant memorandums were signed by the heads of these companies with Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano.

"Digital infrastructure is the most resilient and efficient in times of war. For it cannot be destroyed by missiles. And now our offer to the world's top technology companies is digital lend-lease. We invite companies to join us in building the digital future of the free world and contribute to development of digital Ukraine," Fedorov said.

He emphasized that it is very important that Ukrainian companies became the first major donors of the digital restoration of Ukraine, thereby showing foreign colleagues faith in the future of the country.

According to Fedorov, Digital4Freedom is a unique opportunity for foreign companies to introduce advanced technologies and creative solutions at the state level.

At a joint press conference, Kyivstar President Oleksandr Komarov noted that it is very important to maintain high standards of services even during the war and lay the foundations for a quick recovery after it.

"As President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said today, you can win the war but lose the peace. We must win the war and win the peace," the Kyivstar CEO commented on the company's readiness to support such initiatives.

Vodafone Ukraine CEO Olha Ustynova pointed out that the company is investing in western Ukraine during the war, where demand for communication services has grown, despite huge losses in other regions of Ukraine.

The Ministry of Digital Transformation said the department expects that such top global technology companies as Microsoft, Rakuten, Apple, Amazon, Google, IBM, Palantir, Mastercard, Visa, etc. will become participants in the Digital4Freedom initiative.

According to Fedorov, large smartphone manufacturers could also take part in digital lend-lease, since Ukraine intends to implement the e-smartphone project even in war conditions - 8 million devices for people over 60 years old.
On Thursday, July 7, at 12.30, the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine news agency will host a roundtable discussion entitled "Wartime medicine. View of practitioners and industry experts: trends, challenges, prospects." Participants include Head of the Department of Cardiometabolic Diseases of the Clinic for Adults of the state institution "Center for Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine," PhD in Medical Sciences Yevhen Marushko; ophthalmologist of the highest category, head of the department of inflammatory pathologies of the eye and microsurgical treatment of their consequences at state institution "Filatov Institute of Eye Diseases and Tissue Therapy of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine" Oleksandra Zborovska; Business Development Director of ADONIS medical group of companies Svitlana Lonska; Head of the Department of Nephrology and Renal Replacement Therapy of the National University of Health Protection, owner of the Nephrology Clinic, Professor Dmytro Ivanov (8/5a Reitarska Street). The broadcast of the press conference will be available on the Youtube channel of the Interfax-Ukraine agency. Admission of journalists requires registration on the spot.
Egyptian and US air forces conducted air drills with the participation of multirole combat aircraft from both sides at an Egyptian military airbase, a statement by the Egyptian military spokesman said.
Egypt needs to import five million tons of wheat for the fiscal year 2022/23, Egyptian Minister of Supply Ali Moselhi told Reuters on Tuesday.

In 2021, Egypt imported 5.5 million tons of wheat, according to data released by the supply ministry in December, recording a huge drop from 12.8 million tons of wheat imported in 2020.

About 4.1 million tons of local wheat have been collected from farmers since the beginning of the supply season, which started in April and runs through August, chairman of the state-run General Company for Silos and Storage Kamal Hashim said on Saturday.

It is the first time that Egypt has collected more than four million tons of local wheat, Hashim added.

The local wheat supply, which is expected to increase from 3.5 million tons in 2021 to six million tons this year, will boost the strategic wheat reserves to cover local consumption until January 2023, according to official statements.

The increase in the expected volume of wheat this year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, is a result of increasing the amount of land devoted to wheat cultivation by more than 400,000 feddans.

It also came because of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisis directives to provide farmers with incentives to sell more of their crop to the Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade.

Moselhi told the Senate in May that Egypt is doing its best to achieve greater self-sufficiency in wheat production, aiming to meet 65 percent of domestic needs by the year 2024.

In the meantime and on the heels of the Russia-Ukraine war, Egypt  the worlds top wheat importer  is seeking to diversify its sources of wheat. Before the war, 80 percent of Egypts wheat imports were sourced from Russia and Ukraine.

Moselhi also stated in his remarks to Reuters that Egypt added Portugal to its list of countries from which wheat can be imported. Egypt received a shipment of 63,000 tons of wheat from France in mid-June.

The EU has recently allocated 100 million in immediate relief to encourage investments in Egypt's agricultural sector and secure the country's food needs during the global grain crisis that resulted from the Russian-Ukrainian War, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced on 15 June during his visit to Egypt.

In early June, Egypts General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC) announced that it has signed a contract to purchase 465,000 tons of wheat from Russia, Bulgaria and Romania in what is reportedly the countrys largest wheat purchase since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

During the first week of May, Egypt signed a deal to import 61,500 tons of Indian wheat.

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Egypt will import 180,000 tons of wheat from India within days as per a contract with the Indian side, Egyptian Minister of Supply and Internal Trade Ali Moselhi said on Sunday.

Moselhi made the remarks in a press conference reviewing the ministrys preparations for the Adha feast (Eid Al-Adha), one of the holiest occasions in the Muslim calendar, scheduled for July this year.

Moselhi said the government has already received a total of more than 3.9 million tons of wheat from local farmers during this wheat supply season, up by 10-12 percent from last year.

The minister said the wheat supply season, which started in April, will continue until the end of August.

Egypt has spoke with the Russian Ministry of Agriculture and Russian companies about importing wheat, Moselhi said, adding that they are waiting on Moscows response and intend to come up with a plan within 10 days.

He added that while Russian wheat is available, securing transport has become more expensive amid the current crisis.

Egypt seeks to import around 5.5 million tons of wheat starting July for the subsidised bread system, the minister said.

The country also seeks to decrease its wheat imports by 10 percent as well as decrease the amount of wheat used in making subsidised bread by adding sweet potato, Moselhi noted.

Using sweet potato for making bread could save up to a million tons of wheat, Moselhi explained, noting that Egypt has self-sufficiency in sweet potato and is studying the technology required for the process.

Moselhi added that the new budget for the fiscal year 2022/2023 witnessed a major increase in subsidy allocations.

The countrys strategic stock of wheat is sufficient for nearly 5.7 months, Moselhi said.

Sugar and rice oil stockpiles are sufficient for 6.7 months and 3.3 months respectively, the minister said. Also, the countrys reserves of oil and frozen meat are enough for 6.2 months and six months respectively.

Egypt has repeatedly affirmed the presence of stockpiles of strategic commodities for the coming six months amid the Ukraine war and the looming food crisis globally.

Egypt, the worlds largest wheat importer, relies on wheat to produce bread, a key staple for Egyptians.

Prior to the Russia-Ukraine war, Egypt got 80 percent of its imported wheat from these two countries.

The country requested in late May $500 million from the World Bank to buy wheat through the Emergency Food Security and Resilience Support Project, according to a document released by the World Bank.

Egypt consumes around 18 million tons of wheat annually while local production of wheat stands at around 8-9 million tons of wheat, Moselhi said in May last year.

Over the past weeks, Egypt has worked to diversify its wheat import sources, signing contracts to purchase wheat from several countries, including France, Bulgaria, Romania and India. In mid-June, Egypt received a new shipment of 63,000 tons of wheat coming from France.

During the first week of May, Egypt signed a deal agreeing to import its first shipment from India comprising 61,500 tons of wheat.

Despite the urgent need, Egypt has worked to maintain guarantee the quality of its wheat imports. Earlier this month, authorities denied receiving a shipment of Indian wheat coming from Turkey after being rejected by Turkish authorities for not meeting safety standards and specifications.

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South Africa: Presidential B-BBEE Advisory Council meeting a game-changer

President Cyril Ramaphosa has described the inaugural meeting of the Presidential Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Advisory Council as a game changing event of high importance.

He said that the inaugural meeting of the B-BBEE Advisory Council is a milestone in the long journey the country has traversed since the Black Economic Empowerment Commission produced its seminal report 22 years ago.

The President was making remarks at the inaugural meeting of the Presidential B-BBEE Advisory Council on Tuesday.

He said the meeting bears testament to years of hard work by government, in collaboration with the private sector, to advance progressive legislation to transform the economy.

The establishment of this council is without a doubt a game changer as we now look to expand the frontiers of B-BBEE as a critical enabler of economic growth and social transformation. I want to congratulate each of you on your appointment.

You will be advising government, and guiding the trajectory of B-BBEE as we recover and rebuild from years of slow economic growth and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.

The President said the council will be reviewing progress around B-BBEE and advising on the Draft Codes of Good Practice that the Minister will be publishing for public comment.

Among other things, the council will also be reviewing sector charters and providing advice on draft transformation charters such as the Draft Legal Services Charter that will soon be published for public comment.

B-BBEE and employment equity

With regards to B-BBEE and employment equity, there has been substantial progress with regards to the representation of blacks and women in the workplace, including in senior management, in both the public and private sectors, President Ramaphosa said.

He highlighted that the deliberate efforts of government to transform the economy has resulted in more black South Africans and women owning and managing businesses, and having stakes in large companies.

The President noted that the worker shareholder regime continues to improve and small businesses also continue to benefit from preferential procurement by the state, and receive a range of support to grow and expand.

At the same time we know we are not as far as we hope to be, and that is why the work of this Council will be critical.

When we speak about the next frontier we are talking about a new vision for B-BBEE; that builds on successes, that learns from shortcomings, and that is both agile and adaptive in response to the realities of the national and global economies, the President said.

In this years State of the Nation Address, the President called for a new consensus to achieve higher rates of economic growth, social transformation and advance common prosperity.

He said consolidating B-BBEE is one of the aspects such a consensus will rely upon.

The President emphasised that there can be no growth without economic inclusion, adding that there can be no inclusive recovery and reconstruction unless B-BBEE is at the centre.

It is our expectation that this Council will assist us as government to enhance the implementation of B-BBEE and associated policy such as the Codes of Good Practice, the Sector Charters, and recent instruments like the DTICs Black Industrialists Programme and Worker Ownership requirements.

Between you, you have a range of experience, from working in state-owned enterprises, to private companies, to SMMEs, to public procurement, to serving as regulators on B-BBEE, competition and trade policy, he said.

President Ramaphosa expressed confidence in the council, saying he has no doubt that this expertise will be brought to bear as the council undertake its work, in collaboration with the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition and other departments.

Next year the country will mark 20 years since the promulgation of B-BBEE legislation.

As we journey towards this occasion, we want to see the Council at the forefront of advocacy campaigns, especially to counter negative narratives that are gaining traction around B-BBEE.

We also want you to join us in championing initiatives like the Black Industrialists Programme. We are looking forward to hosting the Black Industrialist Conference later this month, the President said.

The President wished the council well, saying he had no doubt that the council is up to the task as they assume their duties at a challenging time.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-07-05. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have agreed to expand cooperation in the transit of hydrocarbon fuel, and energy efficiency, Azernews reports, citing the Energy Ministry.

The discussion took place during the meeting between Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov and his Kazakh counterpart Bolat Akchulakov.

During the visit, the parties agreed to increase the share of renewable sources in energy production and consumption, as well as to hold the next meeting of the current working groups in the energy field as soon as possible.

They also decided to hold joint training, seminars, and exchange of experience in these spheres and implement other activities of mutual interest.

They also noted the contribution of the commission to the strengthening of relations between the two countries. In addition, the sides discussed practical bilateral cooperation in the field of energy.

Representatives of the Economy and Energy Ministries, as well as Azerbaijan's State Oil Company, participated in the meeting. It should be noted that Parviz Shahbazov arrived in Kazakhstan in order to participate in the 18th meeting of the joint intergovernmental commission on trade and economic cooperation between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

The eighteenth meeting of the Azerbaijani-Kazakh Joint Intergovernmental Commission on trade and economic cooperation will be held in Nur-Sultan on July 5.

The participants in the meeting will review the work done since the 17th meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission, and discuss cooperation in trade and economic, energy, transport, logistics, industrial and information and communication sectors, agriculture, food security, and other sectors.

The co-chairs of the joint intergovernmental commission are Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov and Kazakh Trade and Integration Minister, Deputy Prime Minister Bakhyt Sultanov.
Recommendations from Egypts National Dialogue will be referred to the House of Representatives and the government for implementation, said Diaa Rashwan, head of the Press Syndicate and the general coordinator of the National Dialogue.

In a statement aired during his talk show programme 'New Egypt' on 'ETC' TV channel on Friday, Rashwan said: At the end of the National Dialogue Conference, which is expected to kick off this week, it will be natural that its recommendations will be referred to the House of Representatives and the government so it can be implemented on the ground.

If these recommendations require legislative amendments, they will be passed to the House, and if these recommendations require taking a number of executive steps, they will be referred to the government, said Rashwan.

He also emphasised that President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi would attend the final meetings of the National Dialogue.

As promised, President El-Sisi will attend the meetings of the final stages of this dialogue in person, said Rashwan.

Furthermore, he explained that the National Dialogue will kick off only after its timetable of debates is declared to the public.

There will be a schedule of debate for the dialogue, and this is very important to ensure its success, said Rashwan.

According to the coordinator, the dialogues 10-member Council of Trustees will be tasked with drafting the dialogues schedule of debate.

This Council will also run the debate to make sure that the dialogue does not turn into a talking shop.

He added that those who were invited to the dialogue are the ones who only believe in 2013s 30 June Revolution.

Those who agree that Egypt should be a modern and civilian state are the ones who will participate in the dialogue, and not the ones who seek to hijack the state for their own radical religious agenda, he said, emphasising that the main job of the National Dialogue is to resurrect the spirit of the 30 June Revolutions alliance.

Egypts 30 June Revolution erupted in 2013, leading to the removal of the one-year rule of the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated former president Mohamed Morsi.

Rashwan also explained that the job of the dialogue is not only to give room for all forces to voice their opinions of Egypts existing political, economic, security, and cultural conditions and problems.

We also want participants to give a recipe for reform and tell us how this recipe should be implemented and in how much time, and at the end we will collect all recipes and recommendations to be submitted to the president, the government, and parliament to be implemented.

On 26 April, during a Ramadan Family Iftar Banquet hosted by the president, El-Sisi revealed that he would call for a national dialogue to chart a new political and economic roadmap for Egypt in the coming years.

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Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said on Sunday that his call for a national dialogue is meant to bring together all intellectuals, unions, and political parties except one faction that resorted to killing, in reference to the terrorist-designated Muslim Brotherhood group.

El-Sisi made his remarks during a meeting with a number of media professionals on the sidelines of the inauguration of the country's light rail transit (LRT).

The national dialogue, which El-Sisi called during the annual Egyptian Family Iftar banquet on 26 April for all political forces without any exceptions or discrimination," is set to begin on Tuesday with a meeting of its board of trustees.

A myriad of political parties and forces have welcomed the step and expressed willingness to join the dialogue.

The General Coordinator of the National Dialogue Diaa Rashwan has affirmed that no one will be excluded from the national dialogue except those who have blood on their hands or carried out terrorism or violence.

The administration of the national dialogue announced in late June a diverse board of trustees that include parliamentarians, journalists, professors and officials.

The Muslim Brotherhood were ousted from power on 3 July 2013 after sweeping nationwide demonstrations against its rule from 30 June to 3 July.

The group, which unleashed a widespread campaign of terror against police and army personnel as well as deadly attacks on churches after its ouster from power, was designated a terrorist group in December 2013.

During the meeting on Monday, El-Sisi explained that the Muslim Brotherhood are excluded from the national dialogue because they turned down the proposal in July 2013 to hold early presidential elections to resolve the crisis at the time and opted to attempt to rule by force.

"On 3 July we presented them with a vision to overcome their crisis... by holding early presidential elections.

"The people went out on the streets... we said let's give them a chance to express their opinion... but they (the Muslim Brotherhood) insisted they have supporters and that this was a conspiracy.

"We said let's see if it really is a conspiracy and hold early presidential elections."

The president added, "we said if people vote for you again then okay ... and if they don't, you can remain part of the political process in Egypt. This did not happen... they chose war."

If one [chooses] warring then there is no common ground for dialogue and discussion, the president stressed.

"We were talking about dialogue and they were talking about killing," El-Sisi stated.

The idea of holding a national dialogue to find a way out was not on the Muslim Brotherhood's agenda at the time and they wanted to run the country by force, he added.

El-Sisi stressed on Sunday in a message to the nation on the ninth anniversary of 30 June Revolution that the 3 July 2013 decision was a turning point in the history of Egypt, the region, and the world.

Egypt was heading down a road of no return at the time, El-Sisi added, pointing out that some countries that took the same road suffered from chaos.

The president said they [Muslim Brotherhood group] did not understand the meaning of a state and all what they thought about was how to incite people on the street.

President El-Sisi accused the Muslim Brotherhood group of destroying the state's potential over the period of 18 months of their rule.

He described the protest of 35 million Egyptians against the Muslim Brotherhood on 30 June 2013 as a "blessing" from God.

President El-Sisi said the situation after the 3 July decision was very difficult, lauding the historic statement of late Saudi king Abdullah bin Abdel-Aziz to support Egypt in the face of any sanctions.

"Our success is not only the success of the millions who took to streets on 3 July, but it was the success of the Arab brothers who stood by Egypt and understood our needs," El-Sisi said.

Nine years later: A better place

The president added that over the past years he has exerted tremendous efforts and has not stopped explaining what is going on in Egypt honestly.

What Egypt has seen since 2011 affected everything, the president noted, stressing that he seeks to change the life of Egyptians for the better.

He said Egypt is a much different olace today compared to nine years ago.

On the LRT project, El-Sisi said it is part of the country's big plan to develop its infrastructure and transport sector at a cost of over EGP 1 trillion.

Ahead of the meeting with the media professionals, the president inaugurated the country's LRT that links the New Administrative Capital and Greater Cairo. The LRT is a sustainable means of green mass transportation that runs on electricity instead of diesel.

He stressed the importance of projects of this sort in a country the population of which increases by 2.5 million people annually, saying that without these projects the state would not be able to move forward.

The state is working towards a better future, he said, adding that throughout the past three years the country maintained its stability despite the global crises, facing all attempts to discredit it or sabotage its achievements.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday the reconstruction of his war-battered country is the ``common task of the entire democratic world,`` as his prime minister laid out a $750 billion recovery plan once the guns of Russia's invaders fall silent one day.

As Russian forces continued their crushing advance in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, Zelenskyy spoke by video message to the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Switzerland about the needs of the country that has been on an up-and-down march toward democracy since the end of the Cold War and now faces widespread devastation.

``The reconstruction of Ukraine is not a local project, is not a project of one nation, but a common task of the entire democratic world _ all countries, all countries who can say they are civilized,`` Zelenskyy told hundreds of attendees in Lugano. ''Restoring Ukraine means restoring the principles of life, restoring the space of life, restoring everything that makes humans humans.``

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said such a recovery would require a sort of ``Marshall Plan'' for Ukraine to help it rebuild.

Such ambitions, Zelenskyy said, will require wide-scale construction, funding and security ``in all of our country which will be forced to continue living beside Russia.''

The task, which is already under way in some areas that were liberated from Russian forces, aims to leverage outside expertise, government funds and work of Ukrainians to rebuild hospitals, schools, government buildings, homes and apartments _ but also water pipes, gas lines and other battered infrastructure.

``Today, we're all united in our defense. Tomorrow in our reconstruction,'' said Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who attended in person. He presented a recovery plan that meets immediate needs _ even as the war continues _ followed by a ``fast recovery'' when it's over, and then longer-term requirements.

Shmyhal said the cost of the recovery plan is estimated at $750 billion, and insisted a key source of funding ``should be the confiscated assets of Russia and Russian oligarchs.'' He cited unspecified estimates that such sums total $300 billion to $500 billion now.

``The Russian authorities unleash this bloody war. They caused this massive destruction and they should be held accountable for it,`` Shmyhal said.

Valdis Dombrovskis, vice president of the European Union's executive branch, said using such confiscated Russian assets would involve criminal law, so the ``legal obstacles'' weren't resolved, ``but we think it's important that according to the principle of `aggressor pays' it's also Russia's assets which are directed to the reconstruction of Ukraine.''

Earlier Monday, a leading Swiss nongovernmental group called out Switzerland as a ``safe haven'' for Russian oligarchs and as a trading hub for Russian oil, grain and coal.

Public Eye urged the Swiss executive branch to ``use all levers at its disposal to stop the financing of this inhuman aggression,'' a reference to Russia's war that has killed thousands of people, driven millions from their homes, and rippled through world economy by driving up food and fuel prices.

It said Switzerland has been over the years a ``popular refuge'' for Russian business magnates to park their assets. The group said firms use Switzerland as an ``unregulated commodity trading hub'' and exploit a lack of transparency about financial dealings in the country.

There was no immediate response from the Swiss government.

The group welcomed Switzerland's ``humanitarian engagement'' for Ukraine through the conference but called on the government to strictly implement international sanctions on Russian elites and their government, and better regulate its trading hub.

Switzerland is a major international financial center and its government has traditionally touted Swiss ``neutrality'' _ which is enshrined into law _ and Switzerland's role as an intermediary between hostile countries and as a host of many international and U.N. institutions.

The Swiss Bankers Association has estimated that the assets of Russian clients deposited in Switzerland's banks total 150-200 billion Swiss francs (about $155-$210 billion), making the country a key repository of Russian money abroad.

Switzerland, which is not a member of the EU, has largely joined the bloc's sanctions against Russia. The website of the Swiss federal economics department says that as of May 12, a total of 6.3 billion francs have been frozen in Switzerland in connection with Russia's war in Ukraine.

In its call for transparency and better regulation in Switzerland, Public Eye said that ``as a safe haven for oligarchs close to the Kremlin and as a trading hub for Russian oil, grain and coal, Switzerland bears a big political responsibility.''

The conference in lakeside Lugano brings together hundreds of representatives from government, advocacy groups, the private sector, academia and U.N. organizations _ and scores of Ukrainian ministers, lawmakers, diplomats and others. It builds upon a multi-year, multi-country discussion about reform in Ukraine _ even before the war began _ but this time the focus is ``recovery'' from the war.

Environmental groups want to help Ukraine build back better. Lobby groups Solar Power Europe and Wind Europe, together with their Ukrainian counterparts, urged Ukraine to set a target of producing at least 40% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, bringing it in line with European Union targets.

According to the International Energy Agency, Ukraine generated less than 10% of its electricity from renewable sources in 2019, the last year for which data was published. Most of Ukraine's electricity comes from nuclear power and burning coal.

A small group of Greenpeace activists staged a media stunt by pretending to set up a fake wind turbine on the banks of Lake Lugano, as part of a call with Ukrainian NGOs to support sustainable energy development in the country whose infrastructure has been widely damaged.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday declared victory in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, one day after Ukrainian forces withdrew from their last remaining bulwark of resistance in the province.

Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin in a televised meeting Monday that Russian forces had taken control of Luhansk, which together with the neighbouring Donetsk province makes up Ukraine's industrial heartland of Donbas.

Shoigu told Putin that ``the operation'' was completed on Sunday after Russian troops overran the city of Lysychansk, the last stronghold of Ukrainian forces in Luhansk.

Putin, in turn, said that the military units ``that took part in active hostilities and achieved success, victory'' in Luhansk, ``should rest, increase their combat capabilities.''

Putin's declaration came as Russian forces tried to press their offensive deeper into eastern Ukraine after the Ukrainian military confirmed that its forces had withdrawn from Lysychansk on Sunday. Luhansk governor Serhii Haidai said on Monday that Ukrainian forces had retreated from the city to avoid being surrounded.

``There was a risk of Lysychansk encirclement,'' Haidai told the Associated Press, adding that Ukrainian troops could have held on for a few more weeks but would have potentially paid too high a price.

``We managed to do centralized withdrawal and evacuate all injured,'' Haidai said. ``We took back all the equipment, so from this point withdrawal was organized well.''

The Ukrainian General Staff said Russian forces were now focusing their efforts on pushing toward the line of Siversk, Fedorivka and Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, about half of which is controlled by Russia. The Russian army has also intensified its shelling of the key Ukrainian strongholds of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, deeper in Donetsk.

On Sunday, six people, including a 9-year-old girl, were killed in the Russian shelling of Sloviansk and another 19 people were wounded, according to local authorities. Kramatorsk also came under fire on Sunday.

An intelligence briefing Monday from the British Defense Ministry supported the Ukrainian military's assessment, noting that Russian forces will ``now almost certainly'' switch to capturing Donetsk. The briefing said the conflict in Donbas has been ``grinding and attritional,'' and is unlikely to change in the coming weeks.

While the Russian army has a massive advantage in firepower, military analysts say that it doesn't have any significant superiority in the number of troops. That means Moscow lacks resources for quick land gains and can only advance slowly, relying on heavy artillery and rocket barrages to soften Ukrainian defences.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made capturing the entire Donbas a key goal in his war in Ukraine, now in its fifth month. Moscow-backed separatists in Donbas have battled Ukrainian forces since 2014 when they declared independence from Kyiv after the Russian annexation of Ukraine's Crimea. Russia formally recognized the self-proclaimed republics days before its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.

In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the withdrawal, but vowed that Ukrainian forces will fight their way back.

``If the command of our army withdraws people from certain points of the front where the enemy has the greatest fire superiority, in particular this applies to Lysychansk, it means only one thing: We will return thanks to our tactics, thanks to the increase in the supply of modern weapons,'' Zelenskyy said.

Since failing to take Kyiv and other areas in Ukraine's northeast early in the war, Russia has focused on Donbas, unleashing fierce shelling and engaging in house-to-house combat that devastated cities in the region.

Russia's invasion has also devastated Ukraine's agricultural sector, disrupting supply chains of seed and fertilizer needed by Ukrainian farmers and blocking the export of grain, a key source of revenue for the country.

In its Monday intelligence report, Britain's defense ministry pointed to the Russian blockade of the key Ukrainian port of Odesa, which has severely restricted grain exports. They predicted that Ukraine's agricultural exports would reach only 35% of the 2021 total this year as a result.

As Moscow pushed its offensive across Ukraine's east, areas in western Russia came under attack Sunday in a revival of sporadic apparent Ukrainian strikes across the border. The governor of the Belgorod region in Western Russia said fragments of an intercepted Ukrainian missile killed four people Sunday. In the Russian city of Kursk, two Ukrainian drones were shot down, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

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More than two dozen children have died of hunger in the past two months in a single hospital in Somalia. Dr. Yahye Abdi Garun has watched their emaciated parents stumble in from rural areas gripped by the driest drought in decades. And yet no humanitarian aid arrives.

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, a donor who was preparing to give a half-million dollars to a Somali aid group told its executive director Hussein Kulmiye it was redirecting the money to help Ukrainians instead.

And now, as Somalis fleeing the drought fill more than 500 camps in the city of Baidoa, aid workers make ``horrific'' choices to help one camp and ignore 10 others, Norwegian Refugee Council Secretary General Jan Egeland said, telling The Associated Press he is ``angry and ashamed.'' His group's Ukraine appeal was fully funded within 48 hours, but its Somalia appeal is perhaps a quarter funded as thousands of people die.

The war in Ukraine has abruptly drawn millions of dollars away from other crises. Somalia, facing a food shortage largely driven by the war, might be the most vulnerable. Its aid funding is less than half of last year's level while overwhelmingly Western donors have sent more than $1.7 billion to respond to the war in Europe. Yemen, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Congo and the Palestinian territories are similarly affected.

The $2.2 billion appeal for Ukraine is almost 80% funded, according to United Nations data, an ``exceptional'' level for any crisis at the midway point of the year, said Angus Urquhart, humanitarian and crisis lead for the Development Initiatives consultancy. The smaller appeal for Somalia is just 30% funded.

This year's global shift in money and attention is perhaps most urgently felt in the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia and Kenya, where some areas could be declared in famine within weeks. The United States Agency for International Development says regional authorities haven't seen anything on this scale in well over 100 years. Millions of livestock, families' source of wealth and nutrition, have died.

People are next.

To the shock of some exhausted Somalis who walk for days through parched landscapes to places like Mogadishu in search of aid, there is often little or none.

Hawa Osman Bilal sat outside her makeshift tent holding the clothes of her daughter Ifrah, who like many vulnerable Somalis died after the difficult journey to seek help.

``She was skinny and emaciated, and she died in front of me,'' Bilal said. The girl was buried nearby, one in a growing number of tiny graves.

The crowded camp's caretaker, Fadumo Abdulkadir Warsame, told the AP that about 100 families had arrived in the past week alone, swelling the population to 1,700 families. There is no food to give them. ``The only thing we can afford for them is bread and black tea,'' he said. ``There is no aid from the donors yet.''

At a nearby storeroom run by the local organization Peace and Development Action, supported by the U.N. World Food Program, the stock has shriveled. ``The world has turned its back on Somalia to focus on Ukraine,'' manager Shafici Ali Ahmed said.

The White House acknowledged the problem in a June 28 statement on global food security, saying that ``while the entire globe will continue to be affected by Russia's actions, the most immediate needs will present in the Horn of Africa,'' where Somalia once sourced 90% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine but now struggles to find supplies amid soaring prices.

``We're really trying to stave off mass deaths at this point,'' Sarah Charles, assistant to the administrator for USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, told the AP, adding that ``unfortunately, the nature of these crises is such that they go slow and then go very fast.''

Nimo Hassan, director of the Somalia NGO Consortium, and several others said they believe donor countries' representatives on the ground understand the urgency, but decision-makers in capitals like Brussels and London appear distracted by the war in Europe.

``They're not saying openly, `We're focused on Ukraine,' but you can see what they're doing in Ukraine,'' Hassan said. ``It should be based on need, not a political decision, you know?''

Less than 30% of the new arrivals at camps for those fleeing drought in Somalia were receiving immediate food or other assistance as of April, the U.N. humanitarian agency has said.

``Not all emergencies are born equal,'' said Victor Aguayo, the UNICEF director of nutrition and child development, speaking from the Somali region of Ethiopia, where he reported a ``very significant increase'' in the number of children under 2 with severe wasting.

``Some emergencies all of a sudden grab the attention,'' Aguayo said, adding that UNICEF is not receiving enough money to contain the Horn of Africa crisis as 1.8 million children need urgent treatment.

The World Food Program, like UNICEF, must shift limited resources from preventing acute hunger to focusing on the desperately hungry. That means more than a half-million children under 2 in Somalia have lost prevention help ``at the peak of famine prevention efforts,'' WFP spokesman Altan Butt said.

Across Somalia, where a weak humanitarian response to the 2010-12 drought was in part to blame as a quarter-million people died, humanitarian workers watch this one with fear as a fifth straight rainy season might fail for the first time in memory.

The southern district of Dollow near Ethiopia is ``overwhelmed'' by new arrivals, and at least 40 people died from April through June, district commissioner Mohamed Hussein Abdi said. Displaced people now outnumber residents.

At mother-child health centers in Somalia's northern Puntland region, nearly every other patient was severely malnourished, said Justus Liku, a food security adviser with the aid group CARE.

``We can see places where there's not a drop of water,'' said Ahmed Nasir, deputy director of Save Somali Women and Children, speaking to the AP from the field. ``If those people in decision-making offices could see what we see now, they would just release the funds immediately.''

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The National Dialogue called for by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi will address national priorities aiming to reach common grounds among participants, including political, partisan, and syndicate forces, Diaa Rashwan, the coordinator of the dialogue, stressed in the inaugural session of the Board of Trustees meeting.

Rashwans remarks came during the morning session of the meeting of the Board of Trustees of the National Dialogue on Tuesday, which was held at the headquarters of the National Training Academy (NTA).

During the session, the Board of Trustees reviewed details and regulations of the dialogues upcoming activities.

The session, which was covered by the media and aired live on television, was attended by 15 of the 19 members of the Board of Trustees.

The Board of Trustees is comprised of parliamentarians, journalists, professors, human rights lawyers, and officials. Its tasks includes the coordination of the multi-directional and multi-stage dialogue. It will also take the final decisions on the dialogues preliminary results to be submitted to the president.

The National Dialogue was called for by President El-Sisi during the annual Egyptian Family Iftar banquet on 26 April for all political forces without any exceptions or discrimination."

The president promised to attend the final stages of the dialogue.

During today's meeting, Rashwan, also the head the Journalists Syndicate, said that the dialogue is open for all political, partisan, and syndicate forces to discuss national priorities.

However, those who had incited or participated in violent acts will be excluded, Rashwan added.

He noted that the dialogue should yield specific legislative or procedural proposals to be submitted to the president, adding that all proposals submitted within the framework of the dialogue will be taken into consideration without exception.

A myriad of political parties and forces have welcomed and agreed to join the National Dialogue.

Over 96,000 citizens applied to participate in national dialogue, according to Rashwan.

"We are starting today to found the New Republic through the national dialogue upon an invitation of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, who asserted the importance of launching the dialogue for a modern and civil democratic country," Rashwan underlined.

He noted that the political powers and unions are a main part of the Egyptian people, but they do not represent all people.

The coordinator general clarified that there is a large majority that are neither allied with the government or against it and they are all invited to take part in the dialogue.

He stressed that many groups of Egyptians have the right to participate in the dialogue through their ideas and suggestions.

Priorities are not only political, but also economic, sports, cultural, and more, Rashwan pointed out. He added that these priorities will be referred to the political leadership to take decisions on them.

The Egyptian people depend a lot on the execution of this dialogue, especially since its participants are supposed to express most sectors of society, he added.

Rashwan affirmed that each phase of the dialogue should have outcomes so that people can see achievements being accomplished.

Open debate

Various members of the Board of Trustees expressed their opinions on topics that should be prioritised during the dialogue while others submitted proposals for immediate steps needed to be taken to ensure the success of the dialogue.

Since the dialogue was launched by the president in April, online registration was opened and the dialogues administration has received tens of thousands of proposals from citizens, public figures, and entities, said Mahmoud Fawzy, the Secretary-General of the Supreme Council for Media Regulation (SCMR).

Political parties, civil society organisations, parliamentarians, syndicates, and ministries and public authorities have also submitted proposals, Fawzy said.

A total of 96,533 forms have been filled out online by citizens from all governorates to share their proposals and visions within the framework of the national dialogue with Cairo being on the top of the governorates in terms of the turnout, Fawzy explained.

Proposals sent by citizens included political, social, and economic issues, he said.

Fawzy added that the NTA, which is tasked with managing the dialogue, sent 500 invitations to various entities over the last period.

During the meeting, Rasha Ragheb, the executive director of the NTA, affirmed that the academy will transparently manage the dialogue and at an equal distance from all parties as per the presidents directives.

Who should be excluded?

Journalist Abdel-Azim Hammad, a member of the Civil Democratic Movement, said that the movement endorses the exclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood or any other group that uses violence.

On Sunday, President El-Sisi stressed in a meeting with media professionals that the call for a national dialogue is meant to bring together all intellectuals, unions, and political parties except for one faction that resorted to killing, referencing the terrorist-designated Muslim Brotherhood.

During the meeting, Gouda Abdel-Khalek, professor of economics and a former social solidarity minister, said that those who try to involve religion in politics should also be excluded until they abandon this idea as the dialogue paves the way to a modern democratic civil nation.

Journalist Mohamed Salmawy, another member of the Board of Trustees, also affirmed that those who do not believe in modern civil states under the 2014 Constitution should be excluded from the dialogue even if they did not commit violence. Salmawy argued that the 2014 Constitution, which separates religion from politics, should be the reference for the dialogue.

Releasing "prisoners of conscience"

Hammad said that the sessions should start only after the release of "prisoners of conscience" so that they can also participate in the dialogue.

Amr Hashem Rabie, deputy head of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS), also said the issue of releasing pretrial detainees and pardoning those who received sentences is a "very fundamental" issue in order to start the dialogue.

He also affirmed the need for a legislative amendment to several laws that are used in the arrest of many.

Political dialogue, for everyone

Human rights lawyer Negad El-Borai urged the other members of the Board of Trustees to abandon some of their previously held political stances to be able to reach consensus with different political forces.

El-Borai warned that consensual solutions should not come at the expense of freedoms.

He affirmed that the dialogue is mainly political urging the board to not be tempted to drown the dialogue with sub-issues that do not lead to anything."

While Rashwan suggested that the dialogue sessions be broadcasted live, El-Borai said that the board meetings should be conducted in a calm environment, and meetings results should be announced to the public.

For his part, MP Talaat Abdel-Kawy, president of the General Federation of NGOs and Foundations, said that all Egyptians, including youth, should feel that they participate in charting the future of the nation by participating in the dialogue.

Fatma Khafagy, the coordinator of the Arab States Civil Society Organisations and Feminists Network , said that she is proud that women represent a quarter of the boards members.

Political researcher and author Samir Morcos, also a member of the Board of Trustees, hailed the dialogue and argued that it is the beginning of a new stage of politics in Egypt.

Morcos affirmed the importance of addressing the youth, noting that 80 percent of the Egyptian population are under 40 years of age.

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The period of constructive engagement between the US, Russia, and China that the world was looking forward to just one year ago seems to have completely disappeared, writes Hussein Haridy

At this time last year, six months after the Biden administration had come to power in the US after four tumultuous years of the former Trump administration, the world was beginning to look forward to a period of reflection and calm in order to reorder world affairs around the inescapable necessity of security and stability for all powers, whether great or small.

Newly elected US President Joe Biden, an old hand in foreign affairs from his Senate days, had promised to favour multilateral diplomacy while working with the USs traditional allies to rejuvenate the strategic alliance that binds them together. He also signalled a willingness to work with Russia and China. He held a virtual summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in which they both agreed on Strategic Stability talks. Similarly, he held a virtual summit with President Xi Jinping of China.

The world was almost on the verge of an extended period of constructive engagement among the leading three great powers. How did one year make such a difference in world affairs?

Let me start with the two back-to-back summits that took place in Germany and Spain in the last week of June. I am referring to the G7 Summit and the NATO Summit. Future historians will probably consider the two together as defining a new era of disorder in world politics, an era that will extend for the next ten years judging by the decade-long plans of the New Strategic Concept for NATO that was adopted at the Madrid Summit on 30 June and covers the strategic priorities and challenges of its member countries for the next ten years.

At both summits, Russia and China were defined as immediate and long-term threats. For the first time since the establishment of NATO in April 1949, the Alliance named China, which incidentally is not covered by the geographical zone that it defends according to its founding charter, as a threat to the security interests and values of the member countries of NATO. The joint communique of the G7 Summit, released on 28 June, called on China to improve its human-rights record and abide by international rules after going over areas of cooperation with Beijing.

The hawkish British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss went a bit further before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the British parliament on 28 June when she said that I want to see the G7 acting as an economic NATO, not just looking at the challenge of Russia, but also at the challenge of China. She added that we recognise that China has built up its armed forces. It is more active in the European area, and therefore [we need] to be more actively looking at the threat from China. She concluded by stressing that this is a key step forward for NATO in its actions on China.

This is the same China that had just concluded a very lucrative deal with Airbus, the leading European jet manufacturer, whereby four Chinese carriers, Air China, China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, and Shenzhen Airlines, would buy  hold your breath  292 Airbus A320 jets. Unsurprisingly, Boeing, the main US competitor to Airbus, issued a statement expressing its disappointment that what it termed geopolitical differences continued to constrain the export of US jets to the worlds second-largest aviation market.

In their New Strategic Concept, the member countries of NATO define Russia as the most significant and direct threat to Allied security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area. It goes without saying that the war in Ukraine has hardened the position of the Alliance towards Russia. However, the targeting of China was more intriguing.

The document adopted at the Madrid NATO Summit states that the Peoples Republic of Chinas (PRC) stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values. The PRC employs a broad range of political, economic and military tools to increase its global footprint and project power.

The NATO countries, according to the New Strategic Concept, will work together responsibly to address the systemic challenge posed by the PRC to Euro-Atlantic security and ensure NATOs enduring ability to guarantee the defence and security of the Allies. The following paragraph is key to understanding the true essence of the growing confrontation between the US-led NATO and both Russia and China.

It states that the deepening strategic partnership between the PRC and the Russian Federation, and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order, run counter to our values and interests.

Given such a formulation, it is no wonder that Moscow and Beijing are left with no choice but to reinforce their strategic alliance on the basis of the five-thousand-word declaration made after the summit between the Russian and Chinese presidents last February in Beijing.

In a move that will certainly raise regional tensions in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand were invited to the NATO Summit in Madrid, a first in the history of the Alliance. Fumio Kishida, Japans prime minister, said, as quoted in the UK Financial Times last weekend, that the participation of the four Asia-Pacific allies in the summit reflected their leaders belief that the security of Europe and that of the Asia-Pacific were inseparable.

I am not sure that all member countries in NATO or in the Asia-Pacific region will subscribe to this point of view, which is highly debatable and very risky to long-term security in the Asia-Pacific region.

Chinese Permanent Representative to the UN Zhang Jun warned that the Asia-Pacific region would face turmoil and conflict if NATO extended to the region. He rightly added that NATOs five successive eastward expansions after the Cold War had failed  and I would add miserably in the light of the war in Ukraine  to make Europe more secure. The implication is that NATOs New Strategic Concept will neither assure security nor stability in either the European theatre or in the Asia-Pacific region.

In the light of the above, the question is whether the Arab countries will continue speaking and acting as the allies and strategic partners of the US in the years to come. I doubt they have any interest whatsoever in being part of the Western confrontation with Russia and China, whether actively or passively.

Our neutralism in this confrontation should be made clear to the US president when he comes to Saudi Arabia in July to confer with the six leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) plus the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq.

* The writer is former assistant foreign minister.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 July, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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In Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a moving national event took place last week: the official burial of the remains of the Congolese national liberation hero, Patrice Lumumba, 61 years after his assassination in 1961. The coffin, which naturally took centre stage in the ceremony, contained no more than Lumumbas gold capped tooth. That was all that remained of the man who had served as the DRCs first prime minister after its independence from Belgium. After less than three months in office, he was ousted by a Belgian and CIA backed coup and killed by firing squad. His body was never found. The Belgian officer who oversaw the execution admitted to dismembering the corpse, dissolving it in acid and grinding up and scattering the bones. He also kept the gold tooth all these years.

Last month, King Philippe of Belgium visited the DRC to express his regrets (as opposed to apology) for the crimes his country committed as a colonial power. The Congo was a Belgian colony from 1908 to 1960. Prior to that, king Leopold II seized the territory in 1885 and claimed it as his personal possession. The Belgian occupiers became notorious for their appalling atrocities. The above mentioned mutilation of Lumumbas corpse and the officers pocketing of his gold tooth as well as two fingers as souvenirs epitomised that cruelty. After the Congolese prime ministers murder, Belgian agents began to hunt down his family members. It was the Egyptian intelligence services that ultimately saved them. This was at the time when Egypt actively supported African and other Third World liberation movements. The commander of the Egyptian peacekeeping forces in the Congo, major general Saadeddin Al-Shazli and Egyptian ambassador Murad Ghaleb, who would subsequently become foreign minister, were integral to the operation. They produced fake Ethiopian passports for the translator at the embassy and for Lumumbas family, who were then smuggled to Cairo where they were hosted for many years. The Congolese heros daughter, Juliana Lumumba, took the occasion of her fathers burial to express her gratitude to Egypt and president Gamal Abdel-Nasser.

Now wouldnt this story make an exciting and illuminating film and a welcome change from some of the mindless action films produced these days?

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 July, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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Many documents in the archives of Frances Foreign Ministry refer to Ismail Pasha, Mohamed Alis grandson, Ibrahim Pashas son, and Egypts most important ruler in the second half of the 19th century, as the Magnificent, portraying him as a grand Renaissance prince and patron.

Ismail, to use his famous phrase, wanted to make Egypt a part of Europe. Indeed, Ismail led a colossal urban transformation that made parts of Cairo and Alexandria appear as if they were in Paris, Rome, or Vienna.

For him, however, it was about much more than architecture. Ismail also utterly overhauled life in Cairo and Alexandria. His governments introduced modern sanitation, water purification, city lighting, and paved roads. Cairo and Alexandria were redrawn into new districts and boroughs, and entire new parts were developed, often with hundreds of imported trees and plants from various parts of the world.

He commissioned an exquisite new opera house (sadly burned down in 1970) and a number of theatres. Ismail sent out dozens of scientific and cultural expeditions, often way beyond Egyptian borders. His reign saw the emergence of Egypts first schools of modern geography, agriculture, horticulture, and the first attempts at the preservation of monuments.

It was during his time that a mania for Egyptology began to appear in different parts of Europe that in time provided the momentum for building the worlds first purpose-built museum in Cairo. It was not surprising that Fatma, one of Ismails daughters, played a decisive role in the creation of Egypts and the Middle Easts first secular university.

Ismail entered European consciousness through his legendary lavishness in celebrating the opening of the Suez Canal, most likely the grandest party in the world in the second half of the 19th century. For Ismail, the celebration was about much more than the inauguration of the strategic maritime passage. He saw the opening of the Suez Canal as the unveiling, in front of the entire world, of modern Egypt, his Egypt.

That Egypt was very different from the country in the first three-quarters of the 19th century, not only in terms of how it looked, but also in its demography. Immigration boomed during Ismails time. Entrepreneurs and adventurers came to Egypt from different parts of the world, especially from the Eastern Mediterranean, attracted by the opportunities that Ismails transformations had given rise to.

Many Egyptians participated in the transformation. Dozens of families from the Nile Delta and southern Egypt sold major land holdings to buy into the new Egypt that was then emerging. New fortunes were made, often anchored on servicing the urban changes of the time. For the first time since Mohamed Ali had come to power, Egyptians were beginning to appear near the uppermost echelons of wealth and power in the country.

Cairo and Alexandria, and quickly after them some of the larger towns in the Delta, saw revolutions in social norms and behaviour. But the truly important changes were taking place in the systems of education (more westernised and secular), judiciary (the beginning of secular laws in Egyptian courts), and governance (the first attempts at a national charter).

Ismails project was anchored on confidence. His Egypt did not look at Europe with starry eyes and copy it blindly. By the time of Ismail in the third-quarter of the 19th century, Egypt already had over half a century of exposure to the West through Mohamed Alis modernisation programme discussed in the first article in this series and Ibrahims campaigns in Southern Europe and the Levant, the topic of the second article in the series.

By Ismails time, Egypt had enough experience to discern what in European modernity could be imported and assimilated to the countrys then increasingly multi-cultural society. To Ismail, making Egypt a part of Europe meant incorporating Europe into the Egypt that he was weaving, not imposing what was essentially western on what was naturally eastern.

But the project had enormous costs. Ismail bankrupted Egypt, and his disastrous financial management was matched by his administrative skills. He failed throughout his reign to sustain a coherent government. He had a fiery temper, which alienated some of his most competent aides and associates. And though he seems to have had a genuine appreciation for meritocracy, he was an absolute ruler. The state was his, and he was the state. It was for this reason, and particularly for his creditors in Britain, that Ismail was merely an incompetent and delusional despot.

Some of Ismails problems were not of his making, however. By the time he came to power, Britain and France had already destroyed his grandfathers and fathers short-lived empire. As discussed in the previous article in this series, they had vanquished the idea of resisting Western interests from the circles of the Mohamed Ali Dynasty.

Throughout his reign, Britain was effectively steering the Ottoman Empire on the most strategic issues, the result of the Ottomans descent into irrelevance as well as decades of smart British positioning in Istanbul. This meant that Ismail faced an Ottoman court that was often willing to prioritise the interests of the Western powers, including those of English financiers, over any other considerations.

Ismail was not ruthless enough. He was a visionary; he loved art and culture; he lived life to the full. But he was not cut out for the manoeuvring of geo-politics and the intrigue of international relations, and he lacked the steely determination of his grandfather Mohamed Ali to eliminate opponents, whether near or far away.

As his debts mounted, Ismail lost control of Egypt to foreign creditors. He tried to fight, and according to the archives of the British foreign office, he often put on tantrums. His loss, however, was all but inevitable.

He was removed from power and sent into exile and spent the last years of his life between southern Italy and the quiet shores of the Bosphorus in Turkey. Illness took its toll. In photographs taken of him shortly before his death, his body appears frail and the fiery sparkle of his eyes is all but gone.

For many, Ismail failed. Egypt fell under complete British control and lost its independence, and Ismail lost his kingdom. Egypt was to suffer for at least four decades until World War I from the economic dominance of the European powers. Judging by Ismails legacy in the period that immediately followed his reign, his project certainly failed.

His legacy, however, is much wider than its immediate political and economic consequences, and it remains with us almost 150 years after he was deposed and exiled. Ismail left us the most beautiful parts of Cairo and Alexandria. He envisioned and created Egypts first modern urban spaces, with all the services and amenities and regulations that this entailed.

As a result of his project, Ismail made Egypt and increasingly large sections of the Egyptian people confident and comfortable with interacting with European modernity.

Ismail did not make Egypt a part of Europe. But he did usher in different elements of the idea of Europe into Egypt.

*The writer is the author of Islamism: A History of Political Islam (2017) and Egypt on the Brink (2010).

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 July, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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Israeli caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Tuesday used his first trip abroad since taking office to urge world powers to step up pressure on Iran over its nuclear activities, calling the Islamic republic a threat to regional stability.

Lapid met in Paris on Tuesday with French President Emmanuel Macron, who called on Lapid to revive talks toward peace with the Palestinians and said Israelis are ``lucky'' to have him in charge.

Lapid, who took office Friday, focused on Israel's concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions and the stalled global deal aimed at curbing them. Israel accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons - a charge Iran denies - and says the tattered nuclear deal doesn't include sufficient safeguards to halt Iran's progress toward making a bomb.

``The current situation cannot continue as it is. It will lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, which would threaten world peace. We must all work together to stop that from happening,'' Lapid told reporters.

He and Macron, both centrists, called each other friends, but disagreed over the Iran nuclear deal.

The 2015 deal offered Iran relief from economic sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear activities. In 2018, then President Donald Trump, with strong Israeli backing, withdrew from the deal, causing it to unravel. Since then, Iran has stepped up key nuclear activities, including uranium enrichment, well beyond the contours of the original agreement.

Macron called for a return to the 2015 deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but acknowledged that it ``will not be enough.'' France helped negotiate the deal and is one of the parties in talks aimed at trying to revive it. Israel says that if the agreement is restored, it should include tighter restrictions and address Iran's non-nuclear military activities across the region.

Lapid called the JCPOA a ``dangerous deal,`` saying it isn't tough or far-reaching enough.

He said Israel and France ``may have disagreements about what the content of the agreement should be, but we do not disagree on the facts: Iran continues to violate the agreement and develop its program, enriching uranium beyond the level it is allowed to and removing cameras from nuclear sites.''

He heads the centrist Yesh Atid party, and was one of the architects of the historic alliance of eight diverse factions that found common ground in opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu, the first governing coalition to include an Arab party.

Lapid will stay in office until a November election and perhaps beyond if no clear winner emerges. Making his first trip abroad as prime minister, Lapid may try to use the meeting with Macron to bolster his credentials as a statesman and alternative to Netanyahu with the Israeli electorate.

Macron used their meeting to urge efforts by Israel toward long-term peace with the Palestinians.

``There is no alternative to a return to political dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians,'' he said, to revive ``a process that's been broken for too long.''

Lapid didn't address Macron's appeal in their public remarks. Lapid, unlike Netanyahu, supports a two-state solution with the Palestinians. But as a caretaker leader, he isn't in a position to pursue any major diplomatic initiatives.

He and Macron were also expected to discuss Lebanon, days after Israel said it downed three unmanned aircraft launched by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah that were heading toward an area where Israel recently installed an offshore gas platform. Hezbollah, which fought a monthlong war against Israel in 2006, has confirmed sending the unarmed drones in a reconnaissance mission.

Israel and Lebanon don't have formal diplomatic relations, but have been engaged in indirect U.S.-brokered talks to delineate their maritime border. France is a key supporter of Lebanon, a former French protectorate, and Macron has unsuccessfully tried to broker a solution to Lebanon's political crisis.

``Hezbollah has more than 100,000 rockets in Lebanon, aimed at Israel. It tries to attack us with Iranian rockets and UAVs,'' Lapid said, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles. ``Israel will not sit back and do nothing, given these repeated attacks.''

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By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have discussed the macroeconomic situation and financial stability in the country, Azernews reports.

The discussion took place during the meeting between Azerbaijan's Central Bank Chairman Taleh Kazimov with the IMF's Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva.

"Kristalina Georgieva(@KGeorgieva), Managing Director of the IMF, Mr.Sharifov @maliyyegovaz and I discussed #macroeconomic situation and #financialstability in Azerbaijan, forecasts for 2022 and medium term, and priorities of the monetary and financial stability policies," Kazimov wrote on his official Twitter page.

Moreover, Taleh Kazimov spoke at a meeting of the World Bank (WB) Electoral Group and the Digital Finance Panel held as part of the meeting dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Electoral Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

"We shared our views on the projects being implemented in Azerbaijan in this sphere and the prospects for further cooperation with these organizations," Kazimov wrote.

Azerbaijan joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on September 18, 1992. Since Azerbaijan's induction into the organization, the IMF has implemented several programs in Azerbaijan that foster economic growth.
Vice President of the European Investment Bank Gelsomina Vigliotti explains its recent activities in Egypt and help in preparation for the COP27 meeting in November to Maha Hassan.

Vice President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) Gelsomina Vigliotti was in Cairo last week to represent the bank at the inauguration of the latest part of Line 3 of the Cairo Metro, for which the EIB provided 600 million euros in financing.

This project represents the largest single transport project backed by the EIB in Africa, Vigliotti said.

Transferring millions of people every day and providing a faster and more sustainable transport alternative to car use, the Metro is a model for sustainable transport in global cities that will improve access to jobs and education, cut pollution, and reduce carbon emissions, she added.

The EIB is the worlds largest international public bank, owned directly by the 27 European Union member states. Egypt is the banks largest country of operations outside the EU, according to Vigliotti.

Since 1979, the bank has provided Egypt with more than 14 billion euros to finance water, energy, education, and transport projects as well as in the form of private-sector investment. Since the EIB opened its first office outside Europe in Cairo in 2003, it has strengthened its engagement with the Egyptian government, public sector partners, and business.

In 2021 alone, the EIB provided Egypt with just over one billion euros for urban transport, high-speed telecommunications, and business financing through a new credit line with Banque Misr.

Vigliotti said that in the coming few months, significant new EIB financing for the private sector will be unveiled, provided through new credit lines with leading local partners in the banking sector.

She said the bank was looking forward to its role in helping Egypt to prepare for the UN COP27 meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh in November, adding that the EIB is the worlds largest financier of climate action, renewable energy, and water projects.

As the current chair of a group of multilateral financial institutions, the bank, according to Vigliotti, is working with global partners to mobilise global capital to tackle the impact of climate change and accelerate investment that delivers climate action.

She added that although this was her first official visit to Egypt, she and her colleagues had been working closely with Egyptian partners over recent months.

Last month, Vigliotti and EIB President Werner Hoyer received both Minister of International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat and Foreign Minister and COP27 President-designate Sameh Shoukri at the EIBs Luxembourg headquarters to discuss how the bank can help with arrangements for the COP27 meeting.

EIB Management Committee Vice President Ambroise Fayolle was also in Cairo in May for discussions with COP27 organisers and to enhance climate cooperation.

This is also the first high-level EIB visit to Egypt since the bank launched its new dedicated development finance arm, EIB Global. According to the EIB website, the new arm is dedicated to development finance, climate action, innovative investments, and sustainable living.

EIB Global was launched at the start of the year following approval by the EIBs 27 EU member states.

Vigliotti said the EIBs firm commitment and strong engagement with Egypt, as part of the Team Europe approach born in the context of the EUs Covid-19 response to support partner countries and respond to the pandemic in a coordinated manner, reflected the close partnership between the EU and Egypt.

The excellent cooperation between the EIB, the EU Delegation in Egypt, and Team Europe partners is key for Europes close cooperation with Egypt, she said.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the EIB worked closely with Egyptian financing partners to ensure that Egyptian companies could continue to access finance when faced with the unprecedented health, business and trade challenges triggered by the pandemic, she told Al-Ahram Weekly.

Since the pandemic started, the EIB has provided more than eight billion euros for private and public investment across Africa. It has provided more than 1.6 billion euros of new targeted business financing in Egypt during the crisis.

This includes the streamlined financing approved by the EU finance ministers in April 2020 within weeks of the impact of the pandemic being recognised.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 July, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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The rhetoric about a military alliance bringing Israel together with its former regional foes is receding due to disapproval by many Arab governments and widespread public opposition.

When US President Joe Biden confirmed that he would be visiting the Middle East this month, he placed the primary focus of his trip on Israels security and said he would be looking to deepen Israels integration with the region.

Biden was playing down reports that he would discuss skyrocketing energy prices with the leaders of the regional oil-producing countries when he meets them on the second leg of his 13-16 July tour that will take him to Saudi Arabia.

On the surface, Bidens remarks about Israels security being paramount were nothing new. Former US presidents have always made Israels security the cornerstone of US Middle East policy.

But for many in the Arab world, Bidens emphasis seemed to be another reward for Israels road to normalisation with several Arab nations, which started with his predecessor former US president Donald Trump who sponsored the so-called Abraham Accords in September 2020.

The agreements between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, later joined by Morocco and Sudan, and named after the patriarch of the three monotheistic religions made official what had been covert ties between nominal enemies.

Hailed by their signatories as a historic breakthrough, the agreements were aimed at charting a new course in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, setting the stage for fully-fledged partnerships in security, economics, culture, and other realms.

For Israel, it was a major shift in Middle Eastern geopolitics since these states recognised and normalised diplomatic relations with it without its having to compromise on the Palestinian issue and Syrias Occupied Golan Heights.

However, scepticism about the agreements being groundbreaking has been growing, and many in the Arab world see the normalisation as providing Israel with a rare opportunity to chart a new course and to begin to think of itself as a major player in a new regional order.

Nearly two years after the Abraham Accords, this scepticism has been reinforced as Israel and the US are seeing the dividends of the accords and are rushing to turn them into a model to establish and maintain a new system in the Middle East.

Charged with Bidens intention to shore up US Middle East responsibilities after his election promises to downsize the US footprint in the region, the US Congress and Israel have been pushing for a joint regional defensive architecture similar to NATO between Israel and its new Arab partners.

Bipartisan legislation introduced in the US Congress last month required the Pentagon to present a strategy for integrating the air-defence capabilities of Israel and the Arab states in order to counter ballistic missile and other projectile threats from Iran and its proxies.

Earlier, CENTCOM, the US military command responsible for protecting US security interests in the Middle East, sought to support efforts to knit together air-defence systems between Israel and its new partners in order to share air-defence data to build an overlapping radar picture.

Israels defence minister, Benny Gantz, said Israel and several Arab countries had joined a new US-led network that he called the Middle East Air Defence Alliance, or MEAD, aimed at countering Iran.

Then at the start of this week, the Wall Street Journal reported on secret meetings held in Egypt that saw military officials from Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, the UAE, and Bahrain come together to discuss cooperation on defence.

Jordans King Abdullah II rushed to declare his support for the military alliance, which he described as very unusual for the region. I would be one of the first people that would endorse a Middle East NATO, he told the US network CNBC in an interview on 24 June.

Choruses of experts who work for US think tanks close to Israel have also voiced their support for the formation of an Arab NATO and have begun lobbying to remove obstacles hindering Israels role in such arrangements.

Yet, beyond the rhetoric uncertainty remains about the normalisation creating a new world of opportunities for Israel either in terms of official pan-Arab endorsement of the agreements or its being part of the region on people-to-people terms.

So, while Israel and the US have remained assertive about drawing the Arab countries into closer military cooperation, the proposed security umbrella, or so-called Arab NATO, remains questionable.

To underline how the idea is mired in confusion and has hit a set of obstacles, Arab powerhouse Saudi Arabia, which already benefits from military cooperation with the US, remains cautious about any future defence alliance with Israel.

In the Gulf, three countries, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar, all of which host US military bases, have showed no interest in joining. Iraq, also invited to Bidens summit meeting, has just passed a law against normalising ties with Israel.

Even Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace agreement with Israel, has refrained from giving public support to the proposal. Its Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri, has made clear that establishing a Middle East military alliance will not be raised during any upcoming events, in a reference to the upcoming summit with Biden this month.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Al-Safadi has played down King Abdullahs statements and told Aljazeera TV that the idea of a joint Arab-Israeli military alliance is not on the table.

What the overall perspective tells us is that the normalisation agreements that were officially greeted with much fanfare do not necessarily reflect Arab priorities, which favour US actions to respond to their security needs rather than to promote risky deals with Israel that make them vulnerable to external and domestic shocks.

The vision of the US allies in the Gulf has been obvious. They want the US to abandon what they view as Washingtons tepid response to Iran and its proxies, which are confronting the region with militancy, ballistic missiles, drone attacks, and a nuclear threat.

For all practical purposes, the Arab states in the Gulf have avoided escalation with Iran, and there are good reasons for them to stay on that course and leave the US and Israel to engage with Iran and its regional proxies, including by acting militarily.

On the other hand, while these governments positions reflect the respective interests of the Arab states, there are notably clear challenges ahead for any such Arab NATO from the Arab publics, which have showed little support for normalisation even in countries that have signed peace agreements with Israel.

Across the Arab world, there are already signs of public resentment at the proposed military pact that many believe is not beneficial and could create a further divide between the Arabs and the Iranians.

Moreover, the plans to forge an Arab NATO of Sunni Muslim countries will likely raise sectarian tensions in the region between Sunnis and Shias who have been increasingly at odds since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 that empowered the countrys majority Shia.

Successive US administrations have been aware of the Gulf countries strategy to drag them into a war with Iran or trap the US in a permanent standoff with Tehran, seeing this as contradicting US interests in the region.

Even former president Trump, the godfather of the Abraham Accords, made it clear that he did not want to rush into a new conflict on behalf of Saudi Arabia after attacks on Saudi oil installations in 2019.

Observing multiple aspects of the so-called Arab NATO initiative underlines the emptiness of this supposed regional system, made obvious in the contradictory reactions and confusion it has been generating.

While Israel hopes a security pact with its partners in the Abraham Accords will trigger a domino effect that will make all the Arab states recognise it, key Arab members of the proposed alliance will feel it as a threat to their leadership in the region.

Nevertheless, the void in the current regional order has revealed that the Arab world will remain in need of a new security structure that Israel and the US will endeavour to be members of together with the Arabs.

Even if the proposed Arab NATO remains just a propaganda initiative, Israel and the US will continue to champion other security arrangements with the Arab world as a way of imposing Israel as a regional superpower.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 July, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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Reassembling the political alliance of 30 June is high on the agenda of the national dialogue that opened in Cairo on Tuesday.

Egypts pro-government and opposition figures and parties are holding talks on the nations top political and economic concerns. The national dialogue, promised by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi fewer than three months ago, held its opening session on Tuesday against a background of hopes, scepticism, and anticipation.

This was the first such meeting since 2016 when President Al-Sisi met with the countrys intellectuals and political figures to discuss priorities, including certain liberties over which critics were expressing concerns and plans for the economic reform agenda being launched at the time.

The national dialogues 19-member Board of Trustees met to review the details and timetable of a series of meetings that will be held after Eid Al-Adha holidays. In a press conference held on the launch of the first meeting, Press Syndicate chairman and coordinator of the dialogue Diaa Rashwan said that Tuesdays meeting of the board finalised the details of the working group and the agenda.

He said that the public would be kept informed of the progress of the dialogue in a transparent manner. At the end of the dialogue debates, he added, recommendations would be referred to the president, the House of Representatives, the lower house of Egypts parliament, and the government so they could be implemented.

If the recommendations require legislative amendments, they will be passed to the House, and if they require executive steps, they will be referred to the president and the government, Rashwan noted.

He stated that the dialogue will be held in a number of stages, with the recommendations reached at the end of each stage being referred to the president. This will give people the sense that something concrete is being achieved.

The call and preparations for the national dialogue have been associated with wide debate about its objectives and potential participants. Officials have said on record that the dialogue is designed to pave the way for the new republic that President Al-Sisi has promised. Earlier this week, Al-Sisi said that those who were in office during the massive demonstrations of the 30 June Revolution would not be invited to the dialogue.

Al-Sisi said that on 3 July 2013 he had proposed to the then ruling regime that it should listen to the demands of the protesters calling for early presidential elections. However, the office-holders of the time had refused to take part in any political dialogue.

One faction will not be invited to the present dialogue because it preferred the language of terrorism to the language of dialogue, Al-Sisi said, adding that since you chose violence and the hijacking of the country to serve your own interests, it would be meaningless to hold a dialogue with you.

At the start of the dialogue on Tuesday, Rashwan said that today we are opening a new stage in Egypts republican system, with no faction excluded from the dialogue, except those who resort to, incite, or participate in violence and those who refuse to recognise the legitimacy of the state and the 2014 constitution, even as we are aiming to create a strong state with a functioning constitution.

In a press conference on the same day, Rashwan told reporters that the organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood is not invited to the national dialogue.

Those who oppose the constitution and the legitimacy of the regime are effectively calling for a coup and cannot be included in the dialogue, he said.

Rashwan added that the main job of the national dialogue is to resurrect the spirit of the 30 June alliance. It should not only give room to all forces to voice their opinions on Egypts political, economic, security, and cultural conditions, but also help to provide answers to some pressing problems.

He pointed out that the objective of the dialogue is to create common ground among all the political forces in order to reach a unified agenda on reform.

The Egyptian people have high hopes that this dialogue will help to achieve many of their aspirations and goals, he added.

Dialogue secretary-general Mahmoud Fawzi said that more than 400 invitations had been extended to political parties, syndicates, unions, and public figures, while delegations from more than 25 political parties had visited the National Training Academy (NTA) where the dialogue is being held to present their proposals on the agenda.

Proposals submitted online number 69,532, in addition to the 15,000 received in print. We have also received more than 793 text messages and 435 WhatsApp messages from all the governorates, with Cairo at their head. This reflects the very positive response to the dialogue, Fawzi said.

We were keen to make sure that all factions were represented in the dialogue, but in particular the invitations targeted civil-society organisations, the political and intellectual elite, journalists, media people, MPs and senators, businessmen, human rights organisations, representatives of Al-Azhar and the Coptic Church, opposition figures, research centres, and universities.

The dialogues secretariat-general has been divided into four teams, with each responsible for organising and coordinating the meetings of the national dialogue, he added.

Fawzi said that calls for political reform had come out on top of the proposals submitted to the dialogues secretariat-general. Most want the laws regulating the political parties and elections to be reformed, he said, adding that other key proposals focus on human rights, local councils, and legislative reform.

Abdel-Azim Hammad, a member of the Civilian Movement, a loose political alliance of opposition figures and parties, said the movement wanted all those detained for political reasons to be released, adding that this would help it to participate in the dialogue.

Gouda Abdel-Khalek, a former minister of social solidarity and a leading figure in the left-wing Tagammu Party, said that political reforms should top the agenda of the dialogue.

It is high time that Egypt exited from political stagnation, he said.

Negad Al-Borai, a human rights activist, stressed that the dialogue should focus on political issues and should not be allowed to go into minor everyday problems, as this could cause us to become bogged down.

Prominent writer Mohamed Salmawy said that the fact that an overwhelming number of Egyptians gave a positive response to the dialogue gives it the required legitimacy, not to mention the fact that the call for the dialogue was made by the legitimately elected president.

Salmawy said that the 2014 constitution should be the main reference for the dialogue, as each article speaks the language of a modern, civil, and democratic state standing up against all forms of violence.

Amr Hashem Rabie, a senior researcher at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said there should be a time limit on the dialogue. We want a dialogue that lasts for no more than two months and not for six months, Rabie said, adding that it is clear that political reforms are those that will lead to reforms in other sectors, and these are what we should focus on.

Rashwan said at the press conference that he is hopeful that the dialogue will lead to greater freedom of the press and presidential pardons leading to the release of imprisoned activists.

Following his original call for the national dialogue, President Al-Sisi signed presidential pardons for several activists. At the same time, the prosecution released over 100 held in pre-trial detention.

The next session of the dialogue is scheduled for 19 July.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 July, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi stressed in a phone call with his Cypriot counterpart Nicos Anastasiades that Egypt looks forward to elevating cooperation with Cyprus, particularly at the levels of security, military, economy and energy, to achieve the interests of the two peoples.

President El-Sisi expressed Egypt's appreciation for Egypts special relations with Cyprus and their positive development, Presidential Spokesperson Bassam Rady said in a statement.

The Cypriot president expressed his keenness to exchange views and consult with President El-Sisi on regional issues of common interest, as well as coordinate on issues pertinent to cooperation between the two countries, Rady noted.

The call also touched on regional developments and both sides affirmed the alignment of the two countries' interests and positions in the eastern Mediterranean region.

Egypt, Cyprus and Greece are part of the East Mediterranean Gas Forum, a Cairo-based international organisation that aims to establish a regional gas market and enhance trade relations among member states.

The leaders ofthe three countries have held several tripartite summits in recent years, the last of which was in October in Athens, to enhance cooperation in various fields, at the top of which is energy.

During this summit, the three countries signed an agreement on linking their respective power grids.

Today's call also witnessed a discussion on ways to coordinate efforts with Egypt as a leading partner of the European Union in the fields of combatting terrorism, extremism and irregular migration, Rady pointed out.

Egypt, which host some six million refugees from Arab and African countries, has stepped up its efforts since 2016 to deal with irregular migration, setting a legislative framework to combat smuggling of migrants.

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France, which is a large producer and exporter of wheat, has made it a priority to ensure that Egypt gets the wheat it needs during the current harvest season, affirmed Frances Ambassador to Egypt Marc Barety.

The move came in a bid to support Egypt in its efforts to confront the repercussions of the Russian-Ukrainian War, which resulted in food security problems around the world, he added in a meeting held with a host of journalists on the occasion of Frances National Day on 14 July.

Meanwhile, the ambassador said France has played a crucial role in allowing Egypt to obtain 100 million in support from the EU to counter the rising food prices earlier this year.

He added that the aid will be used in establishing more silos and increasing grain production.

Also, the World Banks (WB) Board of Executive Directors announced its approval on Wednesday of a $500-million-loan to back Egypts social protection net and food security in the face of the impacts of the war.

The loan will support Egypts national efforts to lower waste and loss in the wheat supply chain by upgrading and expanding climate-resilient wheat silos under the Emergency Food Security and Resilience Support Project, the WB said.

Egypt  one of the largest wheat importers in the world  used to get 80 percent of its imported wheat from Russia and Ukraine prior to the conflict, which started in February.

Thus, the country announced that it would be diversifying its import sources to include other countries  such as France, Bulgaria, Romania, and India  in order to ensure sufficient wheat supplies.

Furthermore, in June, Egypt received a new shipment of 63,000 tonnes of wheat from France. The country will also import an additional 180,000 tonnes of wheat from India within a few days, said Minister of Supply and Internal Trade Aly Moselhi late last month.

Moreover, Egypts General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC)  the countrys grain buyer  announced on Thursday that it has secured 815,000 tonnes from a bid in which four counties  France, Romania, Russia, and Bulgaria  participated as part of the countrys plan to diversify its sources of wheat on the heels of the war.

In June, the GASC also announced the signing of a contract to purchase 465,000 tonnes of wheat from Russia, Bulgaria, and Romania in what is reportedly the countrys largest wheat purchase since the start of the current crisis.

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The Board of Trustees of Egypt's National Dialogue concluded its first meeting on Tuesday evening after agreeing on the bylaws regulating work for the 19-member board as well as the dialogue's code of conduct and ethics.

During a news briefing at the National Training Academy (NTA) to mark the end of the first day of the dialogue, Diaa Rashwan, the general coordinator of the National Dialogue, stressed that "those who have planned, executed, or incited acts of terrorism" are excluded from the dialogue.

"The dialogue is open for all except those who have blood on their hands, topped by the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood group, rejecters of Egypt's 2014 constitution," Rashwan said.

He stressed that "there is no 'red lines' in the national dialogue .. the dialogue is open [for all opinions] in the interests of the people .. and all suggestions will be submitted to the president."



Rashwan announced that 17 members of the Board of Trustees of the National Dialogue attended the dialogue's opening session, noting that their role is confined to moderating the national dialogue without interfering into the issues under debate.

He explained that decisions were agreed upon by consensus of the 17 members who took part in today's sessions.

The bylaws document contains 19 articles and stipulates the role of the Board of Trustees of the National Dialogue and its subcommittees and activities, Rashwan said.

The second document stipulates the code of conduct and ethics during the dialogue and will be also posted later on the official website of the national dialogue, Rashwan added.

The dialogue's Board of Trustees will hold the second meeting on 19 July, where it will continue forming the subcommittees and review proposals of agenda, he announced.

Opening session

In a news briefing at the inaugural session of the Board of Trustees of the National Dialogue's meeting earlier on Tuesday, Rashwan reaffirmed that the national dialogue called for by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi will address national priorities aiming to reach common grounds among participants, including political, partisan, and syndicate forces.

During the session, the Board of Trustees reviewed details and regulations of the dialogues upcoming activities.

The session, which was covered by the media and aired live on television, was attended by 15 of the 19 members of the Board of Trustees.

The Board of Trustees is comprised of parliamentarians, journalists, professors, human rights lawyers, and officials. Its tasks includes the coordination of the multi-directional and multi-stage dialogue. It will also take the final decisions on the dialogues preliminary results to be submitted to the president.

The National Dialogue was called for by President El-Sisi during the annual Egyptian Family Iftar banquet on 26 April for all political forces without any exceptions or discrimination."

The president promised to attend the final stages of the dialogue.

During today's meeting, Rashwan, also the head the Journalists Syndicate, said that the dialogue is open for all political, partisan, and syndicate forces to discuss national priorities.

However, those who had incited or participated in violent acts will be excluded, Rashwan added.

He noted that the dialogue should yield specific legislative or procedural proposals to be submitted to the president, adding that all proposals submitted within the framework of the dialogue will be taken into consideration without exception.

A myriad of political parties and forces have welcomed and agreed to join the National Dialogue.

Over 96,000 citizens applied to participate in the dialogue, according to Rashwan.

"We are starting today to found the New Republic through the national dialogue upon an invitation of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, who asserted the importance of launching the dialogue for a modern and civil democratic country," Rashwan underlined.

He noted that the political powers and unions are a main part of the Egyptian people, but they do not represent all people.

The coordinator general clarified that there is a large majority that are neither allied with the government or against it and they are all invited to take part in the dialogue.

He stressed that many groups of Egyptians have the right to participate in the dialogue through their ideas and suggestions.

Priorities are not only political, but also economic, sports, cultural, and more, Rashwan pointed out. He added that these priorities will be referred to the political leadership to take decisions on them.

The Egyptian people depend a lot on the execution of this dialogue, especially since its participants are supposed to express most sectors of society, he added.

Rashwan affirmed that each phase of the dialogue should have outcomes so that people can see achievements being accomplished.

Open debate

Various members of the Board of Trustees expressed their opinions on topics that should be prioritised during the dialogue while others submitted proposals for immediate steps needed to be taken to ensure the success of the dialogue.

Since the dialogue was called by the president in April, online registration was opened and the dialogues administration has received tens of thousands of proposals from citizens, public figures, and entities, said Mahmoud Fawzy, the Secretary-General of the Supreme Council for Media Regulation (SCMR).

Political parties, civil society organisations, parliamentarians, syndicates, and ministries and public authorities have also submitted proposals, Fawzy said.

A total of 96,533 forms have been filled out online by citizens from all governorates to share their proposals and visions within the framework of the national dialogue with Cairo being on the top of the governorates in terms of the turnout, Fawzy explained.

Proposals sent by citizens included political, social, and economic issues, he said.

Fawzy added that the NTA, which is tasked with managing the dialogue, sent 500 invitations to various entities over the last period.

During the meeting, Rasha Ragheb, the executive director of the NTA, affirmed that the academy will transparently manage the dialogue and at an equal distance from all parties as per the presidents directives.

Who should be excluded?

Journalist Abdel-Azim Hammad, a member of the Civil Democratic Movement, said that the movement endorses the exclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood or any other group that uses violence.

On Sunday, President El-Sisi stressed in a meeting with media professionals that the call for a national dialogue is meant to bring together all intellectuals, unions, and political parties except for one faction that resorted to killing, referencing the terrorist-designated Muslim Brotherhood.

During the meeting, Gouda Abdel-Khalek, professor of economics and a former social solidarity minister, said that those who try to involve religion in politics should also be excluded until they abandon this idea as the dialogue paves the way to a modern democratic civil nation.

Journalist Mohamed Salmawy, another member of the Board of Trustees, also affirmed that those who do not believe in modern civil states under the 2014 Constitution should be excluded from the dialogue even if they did not commit violence. Salmawy argued that the 2014 Constitution, which separates religion from politics, should be the reference for the dialogue.

Releasing "prisoners of conscience"

Hammad said that the sessions should start only after the release of "prisoners of conscience" so that they can also participate in the dialogue.

Amr Hashem Rabie, deputy head of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS), also said the issue of releasing pretrial detainees and pardoning those who received sentences is a "very fundamental" issue in order to start the dialogue.

He also affirmed the need for a legislative amendment to several laws that are used in the arrest of many.

Political dialogue, for everyone

Human rights lawyer Negad El-Borai urged the other members of the Board of Trustees to abandon some of their previously held political stances to be able to reach consensus with different political forces.

El-Borai warned that consensual solutions should not come at the expense of freedoms.

He affirmed that the dialogue is mainly political urging the board to not be tempted to drown the dialogue with sub-issues that do not lead to anything."

While Rashwan suggested that the dialogue sessions be broadcasted live, El-Borai said that the board meetings should be conducted in a calm environment, and meetings results should be announced to the public.

For his part, MP Talaat Abdel-Kawy, president of the General Federation of NGOs and Foundations, said that all Egyptians, including youth, should feel that they participate in charting the future of the nation by participating in the dialogue.

Fatma Khafagy, the coordinator of the Arab States Civil Society Organisations and Feminists Network , said that she is proud that women represent a quarter of the boards members.

Political researcher and author Samir Morcos, also a member of the Board of Trustees, hailed the dialogue and argued that it is the beginning of a new stage of politics in Egypt.

Morcos affirmed the importance of addressing the youth, noting that 80 percent of the Egyptian population are under 40 years of age.

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The prices of imported wheat and oil have hiked, which poses a burden on the states finances and budget, Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait said on Monday, asserting that the Ministry of Finance is managing the countrys financial matters under pressure.

During a phone interview with Hadrat Al-Muwatin programme on Al-Hadath Al-Youm channel, Maait stated that the price of a tonne of imported wheat noticeably increased to $504 from $130, which puts pressure on the states finances, especially since Egypt is the largest importer of wheat in the world.

He added that the country imports 12 million tonnes of wheat annually, and this huge difference in international prices places immense pressure on the states budget.

This comes in addition to the increase in the price of a barrel of oil from $65 to $125.

We import approximately 120 million barrels of oil annually, he said.

Furthermore, the finance minister called on citizens and the government to unite to see the bigger picture of the financial state, both internally and externally.

Egypt  one of the worlds largest wheat importers  has in recent years imported nearly 80 percent of its grain from Russian and Ukraine through the Black Sea due to its high quality, competitive pricing, and the two countries geographical proximity.

On the heels of the supply chain disruptions caused by the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian War, Egypt is diversifying its import sources, at the top of which is India, which has exempted Egypt from its recent wheat export ban.

In 2020, Egypt imported 12.8 million tonnes of wheat at a cost of about $3.2 billion, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS).

Given the war has raised the cost of importing wheat worldwide, Egypt has sought to increase local production, aiming to collect six million tonnes of the strategic crop throughout August, up from the 3.5 million tonnes collected in 2021.

Additionally, Minister of Supply and Internal Trade Aly Moselhi said in late June that the government has already received a total of more than 3.9 million tonnes of wheat from local farmers during this wheat supply season  an increase of 10 to 12 percent from last year.

The minister also said that the wheat supply season, which started in April, will continue until the end of August.

Moreover, he affirmed that the country has a strategic stock of wheat sufficient for nearly 5.7 months.

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Egypt and the UAE have finalised the details of an agreement to establish a project to generate power from a wind farm with a capacity of 10 gigawatts, Minister of Electricity Mohamed Shaker said on Tuesday.

The announcement was made following a meeting between Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and an Emirati delegation headed by UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology Sultan Al-Jaber in the capital Cairo on Tuesday.

The meeting was also attended by Shaker and Egypts Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat and Mohamed El-Ramahi, CEO of Abu Dhabis state-owned green energy firm Masdar and Khaled Salmeen, CEO of the Abu Dhabis state-owned oil company.

Shaker said the deal is set to be signed after the Eid Al-Adha holiday, which starts on Saturday, according to a statement by the Egyptian cabinet. The statement did not provide further details.

During the meeting, Al-Jaber was briefed on the results of recent consultations to implement the recently-signed trilateral initiative between Egypt, the UAE and Jordan.

In late May, the three countries signed the joint initiative of integrated industrial partnership for sustainable economic development in the Emirati capital of Abu Dhabi.

As part of the initiative, the UAEs government allocated an investment fund of $10 billion for joint projects with Egypt and Jordan.

Al-Jaber said on Tuesday the first meeting of the trilateral partnership's higher committee is scheduled to be held later this month in Cairo, with the aim of following up on the projects that have been agreed upon.

Furthermore, Tuesday's meeting witnessed discussion on aspects of the proposed cooperation between the Egyptian ministry of communications and the UAE side in the field of establishing communication towers, and others, the statement added.

The Emirati delegation also met with President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi Tuesday, who said Egypt looks forward to promoting cooperation with the UAE in all domains in a way that serves the interests of the two countries.

El-Sisi also said Egypt seeks to explore additional prospects for cooperation with the UAE in all areas, particularly in sectors where the both countries enjoy preferential advantages, read a statement by Egyptian Presidential Spokesman Bassam Rady.

The president welcomed boosting the size and scope of UAE investments in Egypt and lauded the progress achieved in the relations between the two countries across various levels.

In his meeting with El-Sisi, Al-Jaber praised the investment and trade climate in Egypt as conducive, highlighting "the comprehensive development process now underway in the country under the leadership of President El-Sisi," Rady added.

"This offers diverse opportunities for the UAE and foreign investments in the Middle East region and Africa in general," he assured, noting that the UAE is keen to strengthen frameworks of the strategic cooperation between the two countries across the various levels.

The meeting also tackled ways of enhancing bilateral cooperation in investments, IT, energy and communications, Rady noted.

The meeting also was attended by ministers Shaker and Talaat, and Chief of Egypt's General Intelligence Major General Abbas Kamel, in addition to Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Affairs Authority Khaldoon Al-Mubarak.

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President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi initiated a call for wide-ranging national dialogue among a multiplicity of political, social, and economic actors in Aprils Ramadan Family Iftar Banquet.

Such a call is a response to complexities imposed by international crises; on top of which is the RussianUkrainian War and its economic drawbacks, which affected most of the globe.

Egypt, I believe, through the anticipated dialogue, is primarily attempting to maintain its sovereignty, institutions, and utilities while seeking to secure itself a place under the sun of the newly emerging world as a regional major player.

A fleeting glimpse into responses to the presidents call shows it has stirred interests and interactions, along with a strong will to participate.

At the core of the dialogue lies common consensus on means to safeguard human rights in Egypt while setting the stage for a decent non-discriminatory life for all citizens under overarching democratic legislations to further protect human rights.

Notwithstanding the remarkable success of the state in overcoming a plenitude of challenges throughout the last decade  most importantly succeeding in ending chaos and eradicating terrorism  pre-trial detention remains a matter of huge concern that, in my view, needs to be granted ample time of the dialogues agenda.

A human rights approach to settle that matter seems to be simple and direct  a thorough legislative review of certain provisions in a number of laws, such as Law No. 94 of 2015, which is known as the Anti-Terrorism Law; Law No. 14 of 2020 amending Law No. 8 of 2015 on Regulating Lists of Terrorist Entities and Terrorists; as well as Law No. 15 of 2020 amending Law No. 94 of 2015.

Moreover, there must be consideration of amending the Criminal Procedures Codes articles on pre-trial limits.

Such laws and regulations have exceptionally been enacted in times when Egypt and its institutions were under fierce terrorist attacks. Yet, given the current state of security and stability, abolishing particular terms of the mentioned laws may ensure the immediate release of a large number of pre-trial detainees; and there will be no need for President El-Sisi to personally grant them a presidential pardon.

Furthermore, climate change and its impact on the enjoyment of the right to health is yet another major concern for human rights activists in Egypt. Climate changes directly affects citizens basic enjoyment of their economic and social rights.

Extreme weather and temperatures in Egypt impact crop yields and undermine livestock, leading to rising production costs and, ultimately, soaring food prices.

Likewise, air pollution and outbreaks of vector-borne diseases, as well as increased hot-weather-related morbidities and mortalities shall negatively and directly impact citizens enjoyment of their right to health and might trigger waves of displacement due to a scarcity in resources.

Egypts National Dialogue is an ample opportunity for human rights activists in Egypt to exchange their views and ideas for the future from a human-rights lens and on the grounds of international instruments and charters. More importantly, the dialogue shall support Egypts determined and steadfast transition into the newly emerging world.

* Saeed Abd El Hafez is the head of the Forum for Development and Human Rights Dialogue.

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By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan have signed a roadmap for cooperation in the agricultural sector, Azernews reports.

The roadmap was signed during a meeting between Azerbaijans Agriculture Minister Inam Karimov and his Uzbek counterpart Zhamshid Khodzhayev, held within the framework of the first meeting of the agriculture ministers of the member and observer countries of the Organization of Turkic States.

The first meeting of agriculture ministers was chaired by Uzbek Agriculture Minister Zhamshid Khodzhayev with the OTS Secretary-General Baghdad Amreyev. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the opportunities for expanding cooperation between the member countries of the organization in the agriculture sector, increasing trade turnover, and implementing projects of mutual interest.

Speaking at the meeting, Inam Karimov noted that Azerbaijan is making great efforts to achieve sustainable transformation of the agro-food system. In this regard, he emphasized that green energy, digitalization, and innovative solutions are the main principles of the countrys efforts to create a sustainable national agro-food system.

Azerbaijan is implementing a successful digital transformation in the agriculture sector. Our current practices are recognized by relevant international organizations as one of the best in the world. More than 500,000 farmers in Azerbaijan use digital agriculture services and state support through the electronic agricultural information system, he said.

The minister stressed that Azerbaijan is ready to share this experience with the member countries of the Organization of Turkic States.

During the meeting, it was noted that the Turkic states have great potential for cooperation in all areas of agriculture.

The volume of trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan amounted to $111.9 million in 2021.
The construction of the first reactor at Egypts Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant begins this month.

The Egyptian Nuclear and Radiological Regulatory Authority (ENRRA) announced on 29 June that it has granted the long-awaited permit to begin the construction of Egypts first nuclear reactor at the Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) west of Alexandria.

The ENRRA said the permit was issued to the countrys Nuclear Power Plants Authority (NPPA). It is a historic step and opens the door for the beginning of the construction of the first of the four planned reactors at the NPP, which will be only the second to be built on the African continent [after South Africas Koeberg NPP], the ENRRA statement said.

NPPA Chairperson Amgad Al-Wakeel said the NPPA had applied for construction permits for Dabaa Unit 1 and Unit 2 in January 2019, while the applications for permits for Unit 3 and Unit 4 were submitted on 30 December 2021.

The Dabaa site is located on Egypts Mediterranean coast some 320 km northwest of Cairo and 135 km west of Alexandria.

The NPP will be built by the Russian state-owned integrated company Rosatom, under contracts which entered into force in December 2017.

Rosatom will build a state-of-the-art plant with reactors to the Russian VVER-1200 innovative Generation III+ design, according to Rosatom Director-General Alexey Likhachov, who added that the plant would meet the highest safety standards.

Dabaa will be the first NPP of this generation on the African continent, and it will further secure Egypts regional technological leadership, Likhachov said. He indicated that the construction of the first reactor at the Dabaa plant was scheduled to begin in July.

Under contracts between the NPPA and Rosatom, the latter will help train the Egyptian personnel who will operate and maintain the Dabaa NPP. Rosatom will also help with the maintenance of the NPP for the first decade of its operation. The Russian group will supply Dabaa with nuclear fuel throughout the NPPs life.

Rosatom will also construct a spent nuclear fuel storage facility at Dabaa, as well as supply the containers in which the used fuel will be stored.

Al-Wakeel said that the construction of the nuclear reactors would be under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The supervision of the IAEA as well as the ENRRAs permit were necessary steps before we begin the actual construction of the first reactor on the ground, he said, adding that the four-unit plant will be operating at a full capacity of 4,800 Megawatts by 2030.

The first Unit (reactor) will operate at a capacity of 1,200 Megawatts first, while the remaining three reactors will operate at full capacity by 2030.

The beginning of the construction of the Dabaa reactors comes after seven years of Russia and Egypt signing a cooperation protocol on the building and operation of the Dabaa NPP in November 2015.

In December 2017, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement in Cairo opening the door for starting work on the plant at a construction cost of $28.75 billion.

Al-Wakeel said the project was expected to generate net revenues of $264 billion for the state treasury over 60 years.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 July, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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Concerns are rising that the fallout from political instability in Libya and Sudan could spill over Egypts western and southern borders.

It has been a week of increasing protests in Libya and Sudan, with large demonstrations in both countries protesting against declining services, poor living conditions, political mismanagement, and other political and social ailments.

The demonstrations have come as no surprise to Cairo, which has been keeping a close watch on, and often enough has been involved in managing the political disputes of, its Arab and African neighbours.

We have been anticipating the tension in Libya to increase for quite some time, and we have been trying to push for a reasonable deal to end it, but the parties in Libya have failed to cooperate sufficiently, said one informed Egyptian government source.

He added that Cairo had tried to encourage the Tripoli-based government of Abdel-Hamid Dbeibah, elected in February last year, to take steps towards greater political inclusiveness. It had also offered support to the parallel government of Fatehi Bashaghah appointed in February this year by the Tobrok-based Libyan House of Representatives.

But neither managed to live up to the challenge of taking Libya onto a track of political stability, the source said.

In press statements made this week, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri said that Egypt was doing all it could to avert the resumption of military hostilities in Libya. According to the informed Egyptian government source, there have been several high-level calls over the past couple of weeks with Libyan political and military leaders to encourage detente.

However, he added, there has not been much of a positive response. It seems, he argued, that the countrys political leaders are not able to move towards making the necessary compromises.

Increasingly, the same source said, Libyas political and military leaders seem to be more focused on their own constituencies than on the need to reach a deal that could end the problems of the country as a whole.

The current situation might be working for the time being, but it could not work for long, he added. Eventually, the Libyan leaders would have to find a way to resolve the basic problems the Libyan people are complaining about, including long power cuts.

According to the source, the position of some of the political leaders who insist that the countrys new constitution should include an article forbidding the nomination of military leaders or political leaders with military backgrounds to high positions will likely continue to block the work of the drafting committee.

Khalifa Haftar, the powerful military leader in the east of Libya and previously a close ally of Egypts, has insisted that this article should be eliminated.

Meanwhile, political leaders in the south of Libya, who have not been vocally involved in the squabbles that the country has been going through for the last ten years, have recently been indicating an intention to take the destiny of this part of the country into their own hands.

This is not the kind of news that Haftar would want to hear, because he has been proclaiming himself as the strong man of both the east and the south of Libya. According to informed diplomatic sources in Cairo, Haftars sway in the south of the country is already suffering a considerable decline.

Against the backdrop of growing tensions, Dbeibah, who has been losing international support, tried on Monday to accommodate the public anger.

He acknowledged that his government had not done enough to improve the poor quality of public services, especially electricity, and he promised to attend to the matter. He also committed himself to continue to work to secure Libyas overdue legislative and presidential elections.

However, the demonstrations have continued, and according to the Egyptian government source, the Libyan street is fed up with the countrys current crop of leaders. The time might be ripe for new ones to enter the political scene, he said, adding that this might not be an easy target to deliver.

The fact of the matter is that any new leader in Libya will have to have some regional and international support, and today there is no agreement among the regional and international players on the path that Libya should take to get out of its present misery. Everybody is talking about the need to have parliamentary and presidential elections, but there is no agreement on how to get there, he said.

In Sudan, the political disarray has also been increasing, with confrontations between demonstrators and the security forces in the country this week leaving nine protesters dead and many others wounded.

The civilian forces in the country are blaming the leaders of the armed forces and Sudans Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for compromising on, following measures taken by Sudans top military leader Abdel-Fattah Al-Borhan in October last year and supported by leader of the RSF Mohamed Dagalo, better known as Hemedti.

Cairo has offered political support to Al-Borhan since he became chair of the Transitional Military Council that runs Sudan after the ouster of the former Omar Al-Bashir regime in 2019.

Over the past few months, Cairo has been getting increasingly worried about Al-Borhans chances of fixing the situation in the country, however. Some official sources in Cairo have been worried that Al-Borhan might need to reconsider his political plans if he is to spare the country from chaos, especially after a recent show of anger in the international community that suspended a promise to scrap the countrys foreign debts amounting to $64 billion.

The same official sources say that Cairo is not reassured about Al-Borhans ability to manage the differences between the top generals of the armed forces and those in the RSF. While they exclude for now any chance of internal military squabbling, they say that nobody can predict how the situation could develop if Al-Borhan were to fail to find a formula to fix this problem or reach a political deal with the countrys civilian forces.

This will not be easy, especially since the civilian forces disagree among themselves and the [conflicting] military leaders receive support from conflicting regional players, one of the official sources said. He added that the Trilateral Mechanism of the UN, the African Union, and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, was not working in harmony.

As the protests continued unabated on Monday, Al-Borhan said the army would allow for a civilian government and not take part in the political dialogue being facilitated by the trilateral committee.

In a televised statement, he said the armed forces will not stand in the way of the democratic transition in Sudan, adding that they were committed to holding elections to allow the Sudanese people to decide.

There was no immediate reaction to this statement in Cairo, with official sources saying it was keeping close watch on developments in Sudan. Al-Borhan has been a close ally of Egypts, and Egypt would still wish him to be part of the political equation in Sudan, the sources said.

They also agreed that Egypt had hoped Haftar to be a significant part of the political equation in Libya. But what counted most for Egypt, the sources said, was for neither country to fall into chaos or under the rule of hostile political forces.

Prolonged chaos in these two geographically sensitive neighbouring countries, the sources said, could make for a difficult security situation for Egypt.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 July, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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There is no end in sight to the violence and economic failure into which Sudan is slipping.

For months Sudan has been seeing weekly protests against the 25 October 2021 military takeover, often brutally repressed using tear gas and live bullets.

On the third anniversary of the break-up of the sit-in outside the general command headquarters in Khartoum, which took place from 30 June to 3 July and in which hundreds of protesters died, Sudan saw its largest demonstrations since the toppling of Omar Al-Bashir.

According to the Sudanese Doctors Committee, a non-official syndicate, more than 112 people died and hundreds were wounded in protests during the past eight months.

Indeed, the picture in Khartoum is gloomy, with heavy security reinforcements, the closure of bridges connecting the outskirts to the capital, and the shutdown of the Internet following calls by protesters to mobilise the masses.

It appears there is no end in sight for the violence Sudan is slipping into, especially after the Trilateral Mechanism, comprising the United Nations, African Union, and Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an eight-country trade bloc in Africa, decided to put off negotiations between the civilian and military camps. Moreover, the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) have turned down calls for talks with army leadership.

The Trilateral Mechanism had announced in late April that it would kick-start a Sudanese dialogue in the second week of May, later postponing it to 8 June. A few days later it said the talks were put off indefinitely because the FFC refused to take part in the negotiations.

The FFC refused to participate in the dialogue due to the position of the Resistance Committees that raise the slogan of the Three Nos, says Othman Al-Bushra, a leader in the Umma Party, one of the countrys largest parties.

The Resistance Committees are unofficial organisations that have become a social and political force since the 25 October tensions. They coordinate weekly protests, raising the slogan No negotiation, no legitimacy, no partnership.

The extremist members of the FFC are to blame. They charged the masses and it became more difficult to lower the ceiling of their expectations, Al-Bushra continued.

It is true the masses are being charged, but unbridled repression by the military is the main reason for the civilian opposition becoming more and more hard line, said Mohamed Al-Asbat, the former spokesperson of the FFC in Europe.

A statement by the FFC said talks with the military were a fake political solution that legitimises the takeover.

Not all FFC members refuse to sit down for talks with the military, however. An announcement by the FFCs formerly ruling Central Council demanded the abolishment of the state of emergency, releasing political prisoners, and ending the repression of protesters, to set up the mood for dialogue.

Army Commander and head of the Sovereign Council Lieutenant-General Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan, cancelled the state of emergency in late May, which prompted the release of political detainees who were arrested under emergency laws that no longer support their detention.

This was a political manoeuvre meant to calm the Wests anger and buy time to reach an agreement with the civilian elements guaranteeing their permanent presence in Sudanese politics, said Al-Asbat.

The FFC responded by saying that abolishing the state of emergency was not enough, stressing the need to go back to civilian rule.

In August 2019, Sudan was set to be governed in a transitional period of 53 months by civilian-military rule until general elections were held in early 2024.

Later on several forces joined in the power-sharing deal, including the Juba Declaration Forces, in 2020, and organisations that fought against the rule of Al-Bashir in Darfur, in addition to forces south of the Blue Nile and from the Nuba Mountains, adjacent to South Sudan.

For some time, Sudan was governed by two centres: the Sovereign Council, led by Al-Burhan; and the government, presided over by Abdallah Hamdok.

The consensus between the civilian and military components broke down with the 25 October tensions.

Worse than the political deadlock, however, are the deteriorating economic conditions in Sudan. The Sudanese pound was floated and the middle-class became unable to make ends meet, with a frenzied race to buy foreign currency.

Many of those who want to buy dollars on the black market are either public sector banks or banks associated with the government, said Khaled Ismail, a Sudanese professor of economics. The state wants to buy dollars to acquire fuel and medicine, and to this end it pays exorbitant prices.

Most likely, the foreign currency in the governments pockets is not enough to meet the countrys needs of fuel, the prices of which has doubled and may increase to $200 per barrel.

Throughout this year, the prices of fuel, electricity, medicine, and food increased by 300 per cent, although Al-Burhan had vowed to improve the living conditions of the Sudanese.

Sudan has not received the aid the West had promised, which exacerbated the economic conditions. Making matters even worse is the deterioration of the security situation in Darfur after conflicts broke out again.

The Rapid Support Forces, led by Deputy President of the Sovereign Council Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hamedti, whose members belong mainly to Arab herding tribes in west Sudan and whose armed members were called the Janjaweed militias, are accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes against local farmers.

The 15-year-old war resulted in the death of more than 300,000 people, according to the UN, while millions fled their homes to avoid conflicts that left dozens of villages burning at the hands of the Janjaweed.

Hamedti called on his Rapid Support Forces to confront trouble-makers, which many observers interpreted as a call to resume the ethnic Civil War.

There is potential for a border war between Sudan and Ethiopia over the fertile Fashqa region, too. Nor this is the only border war Sudan may engage in.

According to colonial agreements, Fashqa is Sudanese territory, though it was controlled by armed farmers of the Ethiopian Amhara ethnicity, but the Sudanese army recaptured the greater part of it recently after the fall of Al-Bashir.

With the war in Ukraine, rising food and energy prices and a deteriorating situation in Sudan and Ethiopia, the two countries are unable to engage in fights or even border clashes.

But there are those who benefit from wars, and they may be in a position to start one.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 July, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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Despite Disneys much-vaunted claims of inclusivity, it does not seem to realise that audience values differ around the world, writes Azza Radwan Sedky

Whether we accept it or not, cultural standards are different around the world. No two cultures are the same, so shouldnt Disney perceive the real meaning behind inclusivity and not enforce American standards on all?

In its June release of the new film Lightyear, Disney projects a same-sex kiss between two animated female cartoon characters. This brief moment has stirred controversy and resulted in the banning of the movie in many countries.

Lightyear is not the only issue facing Disney, however. Its merely the tip of the iceberg. The Florida legislature in the US has passed Bill HR 1557, dubbed by opponents as the dont say gay bill in the same state in which Disney World flourishes. The bill forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity to pupils from kindergarten through grade 3 in Florida schools.

The bill has dismayed many gay rights proponents, and when Disney ignored the issue, it took much heat. Soon afterwards, Disney retracted its silence, and CEO Bob Chapek spoke of inclusivity and the right of everyone to be presented.

Disney also promised to continue to make films with an increased commitment to diversity. Chapek reiterated Disneys intention to represent its audience. Its film The Eternals introduces Phastos, the first openly gay superhero, who has a husband and children. More gay characters will be featured in upcoming movies.

The character of Buzz in Lightyear is voiced by actor Chris Evans, who criticised the controversy to the Reuters news agency. Theres always going to be people who are afraid and unaware and trying to hold on to what was before. But those people die off like dinosaurs I think the goal is to pay them no mind, march forward and embrace the growth that makes us human, he said.

In contrast, many, even in the US, are against having Disney include transgender or gay characters in movies that have children as their target audience. Caroline Farrow, a representative of an ultraconservative group in the US, Citizen Go, asked Chapek whether it is perhaps time to reconsider what you can do to make Disney more family friendly, to make it safe for people around the world, not just one particular minority?

A sign posted in the window of an Oklahoma cinema in the US also delivered a message to parents. A same-sex kiss in Lightyear would be fast-forwarded, it said. An article in the US publication Wink News speaks of a summer camp cancelling a field trip to watch the movie after parents were upset over the same-sex kiss.

What Disney doesnt really get is the global impact and the implications and obligations of universality. Disneys audiences are far more diverse than Chapek realises. Not only American children watch Disney movies. They are also watched by children in Singapore, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, and many other countries. Prudence and common sense in these cultures question why a Moroccan or a Libyan child in kindergarten, say, should be exposed to sexuality in the first place, let alone LGBTQ content.

Sensitivity to social norms and values is key. Cultures are the basic standards of any country and are represented in its customs, arts, attitudes, and other notions. Ethnocentrism and the likes and dislikes of each culture, be they right or wrong, are focal points that can hardly be denied or ignored.

What Disney is promoting is therefore disproportionate. If Disney is to cater to minorities, then it should not be catering to one single minority. It should be catering to all minorities without disregarding the majorities either, and this is a difficult endeavour.

Does Disney cater to indigenous minorities, ethnic minorities, Southeast Asians, Muslims, bereaved Palestinians, or other viewers around the world? I doubt it. Yet, Disney films are watched around the world.

Do we breed fear of the unknown if we worry about what our children will absorb if they see a certain movie, especially a Disney one? Not necessarily: we all remember scenes and phrases from movies we watched way back, and many movies leave their marks on viewers.

In addition, Disney is expanding its presence in many other countries, many of which are anti-gay. If Disney intends to have its subscription-based streaming service available in areas and countries that have strict anti-gay laws, then it must worry. Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia fall into this category.

Simultaneously, Disney should be aware of the ramifications of such a bold but bizarre move. When Disney acted on the war in Ukraine, it paused all its business in Russia. The chances are that countries that find Disneys inclusiveness offensive will resort to the same retaliatory measures.

Lets not kid ourselves. The world has become so small that whatever happens anywhere, be it a Disney movie, a Netflix flick, or even a mere incident, is almost guaranteed to resonate across the globe. Other controversial issues will creep up, I guarantee you.

Neither Disney nor the world at large cares much about how parents raise their children. This is an onerous responsibility placed on the shoulders of parents. It is up to those parents to closely monitor what a child watches and review content beforehand.

Hence, the onus falls upon parents, educators, and guardians to enlighten children in the way in which they deem fit and be aware of the viewing habits they pass on to children. They may opt to be overly realistic and expose them to films that showcase violence and horror scenes, fantasy or science fiction, same-sex marriage issues, violence, and crime and gangsters that kill arbitrarily. Or they may opt to have them watch what they believe is more fitting. The parents and their children will bear the brunt of those actions either way.

Ultimately, it is all a power game. But despite the saying that what the powerful want to, the powerless have to, its up to individuals to set the guidelines and standards for their childrens education and not be victimised by the powerful.

* The writer is a former professor of communication based in Vancouver, Canada.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 July, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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An important event is soon to take place in Jeddah: US President Joe Biden will meet with nine Arab heads of state. The meeting will be of unprecedented historic value, perhaps surpassed only by the meeting that occurred on 14 February 1945 between US president Franklyn Roosevelt and the Saudi monarch, king Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, aboard the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in Egypts Suez Canal. At the time, as today, humanity was in the grips of earth-shattering events. It was the final chapters of World War II and Roosevelt had come from the Yalta Conference which determined the fate of the post-war period. Today, the US president will be arriving in the Middle East soon after the G7 economic conference in Schloss Elmau, Germany, and after meeting with NATO members in Madrid, Spain. The purpose of both meetings was to determine the fate of the world during and after the Russian-Ukrainian war.

When Biden meets the Arab leaders, Ukraine will be at the top of his agenda. This story opens with the Russian invasion of a democratic state, threatening European security and ending continent-wide peace in a manner unprecedented since World War II. The G7 meetings are no longer just about the economic affairs of the member states or the world. Participants also discuss major issues related to energy. Their last meeting would certainly have attempted to ascertain how the current war might be resolved in a way that ends Russia as a threat to Europe and ensures that it never reemerges in Tsarist or Soviet imperial form. The Middle East will have been slotted into this perspective in terms of the extent to which Russia, as well as China, have extended their influence in the region. The world has three major powers: the West led by the US, Russia and China. Iran is not a great power, but it remains a challenge and source of threat. It is a principal reason why the Jeddah summit was arranged.

Another, older story weaves into this. It relates to the career of the US president from the time he served as a senator in the early 1970s. Politically, that journey was saturated with Americas war in Vietnam and how the end of that war should usher in a return to the USs original resolve not to engage in overseas conflict, but rather lead the world as a model of liberal democracy.

That model had to be militarily and economically strong enough not just in order to remain the foremost superpower in the world but also for all time. It was no coincidence that in many of his speeches and writings during his electoral campaign, Biden divided the world into two camps: democrats and authoritarians. In Jeddah, he will not have a seconds doubt that he is addressing members of the latter camp, regardless of their differing circumstances, evolutions and major reforms. But for the moment, he will set such thoughts aside in order to focus on his first priority: victory in the global battle against Russia and China. He also wants to solve the energy problem for international economic reasons and he wants the Arabs to have closer relations with Israel to serve his domestic calculus. Afterwards, he will undoubtedly return to previous fish to fry.

The US is changing, like other countries, which brings us to a third story. Regardless of Bidens actions in Europe and the Middle East, the fact remains that the US is not in the Biden era but in the post-Trump era. The US political system has considerable continuity, even after a president leaves office. Not only do Trumps ideas retain a hold, he also laid the foundation for perpetuating them through the Supreme Court whose members, once appointed, serve for life should they so wish. By the time Trumps term ended, six out of the nine Supreme Court justices, who shared his outlook, had the power to turn life in the US upside down.

Democracy is founded on the idea of building consensuses between different sociopolitical groups. In a previous era, when liberals made up the majority, the court ruled to sanction abortion across the country. In its initial Roe versus Wade case, the court made this a federally protected right that states could not infringe on. Last month, the conservative court reversed that ruling, handing the matter back to the states. In so doing, it opened the gates of hell. Now that many states have prohibited abortion, will a woman be able to travel to another state that permits it? Will it eventually become a nation-wide crime? The battle over this issue has divided an already divided US more than ever. Moreover, it is interweaving with other bitterly contentious issues, such as gun control. Although the constitution grants the right to bear arms, these ubiquitous weapons are massacring children in public schools and Black people in shopping centres.

A fourth story connects Trump and Biden, as though their fates are intertwined. It revolves around the storming of the Capitol Building on 6 January 2020, when Congress convened to ratify the results of the presidential elections, which had already been confirmed by the electoral college and the relevant federal committees. As early as his first candidacy, Trump tried to promote the falsehood that Democrats rig the polls. When he won in 2016, he ignored his disproven fiction only to revive it when he lost in 2020. He then called on his most fanatical, ultra-right and racist supporters to march on Congress to keep it from ratifying the results. That very morning he and his aides went to the gathering crowds to address them in person. He told them to save American democracy from the Democrats tampering and instructed them to summon the courage and resolve to go into the Capital Building to impose the will of the people. His followers did as he asked, but their assault failed and, once the storm had passed, Congress ratified the results of the ballot box.

Not only did the rioters leave considerable destruction in their wake, people also died that day. A criminal investigation was launched accordingly. At the same time, the House of Representatives formed a special committee to investigate links to the Oval Office. Witnesses were called, evidence was examined and bit by bit the facts were made available to the public and historical records. The American dilemma here is that only a handful of members of the Republican Party upheld the credibility of the elections while the majority backed Trumps claim that they were forged. The majority of Republicans also held that the act of terrorism on the part of the gangs of fanatics who stormed the Capitol building was just an opinion and an exercise of freedom of expression.

As this story continues to unfold, it will not feature much in the way of the defence of democracy and exhibit little awareness on the sources of democratic failure such as populism, the tyranny of the majority or the corruption of the ruling minority. Its overwhelmingly dominant theme will be the Congressional midterm elections, the prelude to another story: the second half of President Bidens term and perhaps the remainder of his career. It is something of an American convention that the opposition party prevails in the midterms. The effect is to tie the presidents hands or force him to govern by executive order which the next president can simply overturn. At the point it is not just the US stability that will be at stake but its democratic order.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 July, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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For many readers, the name of the Egyptian writer and intellectual Taha Hussein will likely be synonymous with the three volumes of autobiography that he published at various times during his lifetime and that were eventually bound together under the collective title of The Days.

The first volume, appearing in the 1920s and recording Taha Husseins early life in a village in Upper Egypt, was well received on its publication in Egypt and swiftly appeared in translation abroad. The second and third volumes, taking the story through his experiences as a student at Al-Azhar University in Cairo and then in France during the First World War, appeared at the same time and later and had to wait longer for foreign translations to appear.

An omnibus edition of all three books in English translation is readily available today, meaning that non-Arabic-speaking readers have the opportunity to read one of the best-known autobiographies in modern Arabic literature by a man who during his lifetime was described as the dean of Arabic letters and whose literary, critical, and historical works are still widely read not only in Egypt but also throughout the Arab world.

However, while most readers will be able to name at least these three works by Taha Hussein, those wanting to fill out their picture of him have by no means been spoiled for choice. As Egyptian academic Hussam R. Ahmed explains in his The Last Nahdawi, a new biography of Taha Hussein, while English-speaking readers have been able to turn to Pierre Cachias biography first published in the 1950s, Arabic-speaking readers may have been less well served.

Writers on Taha Hussein have sometimes taken partisan views of the issues he engaged with in his lifetime, Ahmed says, and too often his writing has either not been completely understood or has been hitched to particular agendas. It is against this background that he has produced his own new biography, probably the best-researched in any language, which concentrates not only on Taha Hussein as a leading member of the Arab Renaissance (nahda) whose writing encapsulated many of its characteristic concerns, but also as a public figure who wanted to implement them in practice.

One idea still sometimes heard about Taha Hussein, Ahmed says, is that he was an ivory tower intellectual, content to survey the controversies of his time, but not deigning to participate in them. Nothing could be further from the truth, he argues, since Taha Hussein was always committed to finding ways to give his ideas concrete form in the shape of enduring institutions, including when he was Egypts minister of education in the middle of the last century.

He had many significant obstacles to overcome in achieving his later position as one of the Arabs worlds most important writers and as an intellectual involved in public affairs. He was from a poor background, and his early poverty is an important theme of his writing. The same thing is true of his blindness, a result of a lack of medical treatment when he was a boy, and all readers of his autobiography will likely remember his descriptions of searching for readers ready to read to him and writers able to write out the books that he first composed in his head and then dictated.

Few if any of the books Taha Hussein consulted in his scholarly work would have been available in Braille, in any case not widely used for Arabic texts at the time, and of course during the formative part of his career at least there was no recording technology.

While many readers will likely associate Taha Hussein with his volumes of autobiography, others will remember his many novels, short stories, and other literary works. There are his various works of criticism, including on the mediaeval poet Abu al-Ala al-Maari, also blind, on whom he wrote his doctoral thesis in Egypt, and on poetry in Arabic before the advent of Islam that gave rise to much controversy when it first appeared. There are his works on the history of Islam and his many works on modern Egypt, including his journalism, his books on education, and his works of cultural criticism.

Taken together, all this amounts to an immense body of work, essential for understanding the cultural life of Egypt in particularly the first half of the last century. When the late Anglo-Lebanese historian Albert Hourani composed his famous Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, a picture of intellectual life in the Arab world in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, he gave an important place to Taha Hussein. It would be difficult to imagine any account of the Arab Renaissance that does not similarly celebrate him.

REVALUATION: Hussam R. Ahmed does not employ a life and works approach in his biography of Taha Hussein, but instead demonstrates how over the course of his long career certain characteristic emphases can be discerned.

He begins by examining Taha Husseins relationship to France during the 1950s when successive French governments were doing their best to retain a foothold in the North African Arab countries of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, then under French colonial rule, including, in the latter, by fighting a bloody independence war.

Taha Hussein, at home in both Arab and French culture, saw clearly from the beginning that France would have to withdraw from North Africa and that Egypt had an important role to play not only in helping to rebuild connections between the east and west of the Arab world, disrupted by European colonialism, but also in reinforcing Arabic literacy in the North African countries, neglected or discouraged under French colonial rule.

While minister of education immediately before Egypts July 1952 Revolution, Taha Hussein set up Egyptian cultural institutes across the Mediterranean, also wanting to establish institutes for Arabic and Islamic studies in Tangiers and Rabat in Morocco, as well as in Tunis and Algiers. In doing so, he came up against the hostility of the French authorities, fearful of what they described as the Arabisation of North Africa and the spreading of traditional Islamic culture, and as a result he was forced to suspend permits for French cultural missions in Egypt and halt the issuing of Egyptian visas.

Ahmed says that Taha Husseins belief in Egypts cultural mission throughout the Arab world, designed to reinforce Arab culture and combat European colonialism, establishes a link with the priorities of the post-1952 regime. He sees this belief in the importance given to setting up institutions that would promote such ideas and says that it was part and parcel not only of a desire to renew and reinvigorate the Arab linguistic and cultural heritage, while bringing it into contact with contemporary ideas  a characteristic feature of the cultural programme of the generation to which Taha Hussein belonged  but also of a desire to show how these things could be achieved in practice while reaching the largest possible audience.

The renewal and reinvigoration of education was a significant part of Taha Husseins institutional programme, shown in activities like his support for the new Egyptian University, now Cairo University, when it was set up in the early decades of the last century. He worked hard to improve standards of Arabic expression, shown in his work in primary and secondary education and in his serving on and often chairing the Arabic Language Academy in Cairo.

Taha Hussein himself described his own education at length in his autobiography, both in the traditional Arab heritage at Al-Azhar and in European literature at the Egyptian University and at the Sorbonne University in Paris. When he was later in a position to implement his ideas in practice, first as an advisor to the ministry of education and later as the minister himself, he underlined what he saw as the importance of the then recently established Egyptian Faculty of Arts.

The limited education available to most Egyptians under particularly British colonial rule was to be replaced by access to a new institution that offered students a new kind of knowledge that opened horizons for them, Ahmed says, with this directly contributing not only to the awakening of a new spirit of intellectual freedom, but also to the formation of a new generation of Egyptians, who, with the 1919 Revolution, became responsible for an intellectual awakening Egypt had never experienced before.

In line with the overall cultural programme of many other intellectuals of his generation, Taha Hussein insisted that new cultural contributions, whether in the novel, poetry, or the other arts, must be made in classical Arabic in order to build on and enrich the existing centuries-old heritage, Ahmed says. He refused to endorse any artistic or literary expression in colloquial Arabic Engaging with classical Arab-Islamic thought was at the heart of his oeuvre, [and] keeping Arabic alive was essential for engaging with that tradition.

What this meant in practice was democratising the language, bringing it closer to everyday concerns, simplifying grammatical rules if necessary, and above all coining new words, creating new educational tools and methods, and producing better dictionaries. When Taha Hussein was appointed to the Arabic Language Academy in 1940, he swiftly set about revising its tasks with a view to the modernisation of education and the encouragement of contemporary literary production. He saw a key role being played by the state and state institutions, not necessarily in competition with the languages traditional custodians, but certainly in performing tasks that he felt they could not do.

The Arabic language that I want taught in schools is the classical language and nothing else, Taha Hussein said, his public role as minister of education complementing his convictions as an intellectual. It is the language of the Holy Quran and the venerable hadith. It is the language of what the ancients have left us in poetry and prose, science, literature and philosophy. Democratisation, for Taha Hussein, could not mean the use of the colloquial language in written expression, since it could neither serve as a means to accomplish what our intellectual life needs nor further the transmission of the great heritage that the classical Arabic language has preserved for us.

Ahmeds book aims to correct many misconceptions about Taha Hussein. He was neither an ivory tower intellectual nor an elitist, he says. His views on Egypts role in reinforcing Arab culture in the face of European colonialism prefigured the later emphases of the 1952 Revolution, and his welcome for it was based on a belief that it would further such aims.

While Taha Hussein later expressed serious misgivings about the post-1952 regime and was excluded from playing any significant role in it as a result, this was because he could not agree that the role of intellectuals was to act as cheerleaders, Ahmed says. In that sense, he always took longer and broader views than those encouraged by the imperatives of the moment, with this important new biography revealing their internal coherence.

Hussam R. Ahmed, The Last Nahdawi: Taha Hussein and Institution Building in Egypt, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021, pp287.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 July, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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Khedival Cairo and Historic Cairo have become terms familiar to all with any knowledge of the culture and history of the Egyptian capital. They were coined by eminent professor of urban design Soheir Zaki Hawas, notably the author of the Encyclopaedia of Khedival Cairo: Identification and Documentation of Urban Architecture in Downtown Cairo (2002).

This seminal work, which establishes the boundaries and features of this part of the city, was the fruit of extensive research begun in 1996. It is one of the many contributions that Hawas has made to the study of Cairos architecture and for which she was awarded this years State Appreciation Award in Arts and Architecture.

The Encyclopaedia came as a surprise to the government and experts in the field, Hawas recalls. It went on to become a foundational work for legislation aiming to conserve this important part of Egyptian history and the urban environment as part of the nations cultural heritage.

The first legislation to protect Egypts unique urban heritage was adopted in 2004, resolving debates about identifying what is both old and architecturally unique and therefore meriting conservation. The legislation established the National Organisation for Urban Harmony (NOUH) and led to the inclusion of a chapter in Unified Building Law 119/2008 updating architectural regulations in urban areas.

It empowered the NOUH to identify areas, buildings, and establishments of unique architectural value and equipped it with the tools to delineate boundaries and set requirements for the preservation of this heritage. Hawas served on the technical committee of the NOUH, whose mission depended heavily on the research she undertook for the Encyclopaedia of Khedival Cairo.

Downtown Cairo often inspires nostalgia, but it can also trigger anger over sometimes ugly encroachments onto the facades of elegant buildings. Unsightly signs and billboards, non-harmonious architectural modifications, and unplanned changes in commercial activities have eroded the areas sophisticated charm.

For these reasons, Hawas Encyclopaedia was greeted with pleasure by all lovers of Downtown Cairo and architecture buffs on its appearance in 2002. Today, social media often comes alive with before-and-after images of newly renovated buildings restored to their former elegance in the area. Hawas Encyclopaedia has entries on them all, detailing their history, date of construction, architects, owners, internal and external building materials, architectural style, and other such information.

On the basis of this vast database, former prime minister Ibrahim Mahleb appointed her to launch the Downtown Cairo Renovation Project that aimed to renovate and restore the facades of 200 buildings in the area between Ramses, Tahrir, and Ataba squares.

The expertise that Hawas has acquired through her academic work and applied activities have made her someone to look up to for the younger generations of Egyptian and Arab architects, for whom the lexicon of urban heritage has become a lingua franca.

I have received many awards in Arab and European capitals, Hawas told Al-Ahram Weekly. But the recognition I have received in Egypt has given me a joy that exceeds all others. I had no idea that the Society of Egyptian Architects had nominated me for this Award. It came as such a surprise. But for me it was an important sign that I was headed in the right direction.

When I was working on documenting the buildings of Khedival Cairo, all this invaluable heritage filled me with pride. I felt I was working with my own property, she said.

But there are problems facing efforts to conserve the citys architectural heritage. These buildings are a form of national wealth, but, unlike antiquities, they are not owned by the state. They belong to the property owners, and they are still in use. This is why it is important that the owners and users of this valuable architectural heritage also feel a sense of pride and belonging, Hawas said.

This applies to urban areas all around the world. The urban heritage belongs to the society that owns and uses it. If societies do not recognise the value of what they possess, that value will depreciate.

Hawas hopes the government will do more to help the occupants of historic buildings maintain and renovate them. She would like to see the introduction of regulations that would require the occupants to maintain the buildings and their facades in ways that use original materials and conform with an authentic style.

This would help support the owners of these buildings and save them from attempts to have them removed from the national heritage list, enabling their demolition and the sale of the land. Incentives are needed in order to persuade owners to conserve the buildings, she said.

Hawas definition of architecture is rooted in a particular philosophy. Architecture is the mother of the arts. It combines rhythm, repetition, and harmony like in music, and proportions, materials, and their effects like in the plastic arts. When you design a building, you are creating a three-dimensional work of art. You need to look at it in several ways, from several perspectives, and from both the inside and the outside to fully appreciate the aesthetics of architecture.

Time is a crucial criterion when it comes to architecture, she said. Time is not just about chronology or history. It is the cumulative time between viewing the structure from the outside and then going inside to view it from the interior and appreciate its uses.

Architectural aesthetics also do not stop at style and facades. They include the ability of the exterior and interior designs to serve the intended use of the building. If a building is meant to be a hospital, the more the design facilitates how the users operate and function within the building, the more beautiful and comfortable it is. The same applies to designs for a school or university, Hawas concluded.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 July, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with leaders in Mongolia on Tuesday during a trip to Asia to seek support amid his country's diplomatic isolation by the West and punishing sanctions leveled over its invasion of Ukraine.

Lavrov met with Mongolian Foreign Minister Battsetseg Batmunkh and paid a courtesy call on President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, Mongolian state media reported.

Mongolia is a landlocked nation sandwiched between Russia and China, and has sought to maintain friendly relations with both neighbors while also cultivating close ties with the U.S., whose relations with Moscow and Beijing have become increasingly fraught.

Mongolian and Russian state media gave no details of any specific discussions about the Ukraine conflict, while emphasizing strong bilateral relations. The two sides have signed a series of trade agreements, and a pipeline carrying Russian natural gas to China is being built through Mongolian territory.

``Reaffirming his commitment to strengthening bilateral relations, (Lavrov) expressed readiness to cooperate with Mongolia in all aspects,`` Mongolia's official Montsame news agency said of Lavrov's meeting with Khurelsukh.

Ukraine and Russia's rejection of Western criticism were major themes of Lavrov's public comments.

He was quoted by the Russian state news agency Tass as saying that the West is seeking to turn Ukraine ``into an openly Russophobic, neo-Nazi state, a military foothold'' that would threaten Russia's security.

He said he had informed the Mongolians ``in detail'' about what the Kremlin calls a ``special military operation'' in Ukraine.

``We are interested in making the facts about how the representatives of the Kyiv regime behaved and continue to behave in Ukraine available to the broad world community,`` Lavrov said.

``Unfortunately the West is doing everything to block the work of the media, which provide objective information about what is happening,'' he said, without offering any evidence.

Russia's government has blocked access to multiple independent domestic and foreign news outlets in the country over their coverage of the war in Ukraine and has forbidden its citizens from describing its aggression as an invasion.

Russia has falsely called the war a campaign to ``de-Nazify'' Ukraine _ a country with a democratically elected Jewish president who wants closer ties with the West.

Lavrov was to travel to Vietnam later Tuesday for a two-day visit, according to the Vietnamese government's official website.

He is to meet on Wednesday with Vietnamese leaders including Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

The visit comes as the two countries mark 10 years since they expanded their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership. Russia was a close backer of Hanoi's Communist government during the Vietnam War against the capitalist south and its American and other Western allies.

Later in the week, Lavrov is scheduled to attend a meeting in Indonesia of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 leading rich and developing countries.

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A day after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory in seizing an eastern Ukraine province essential to his wartime aims, his troops escalated their offensive in the neighboring province Tuesday, prompting the governor to urge a mass evacuation of residents.

Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that getting the 350,000 people remaining in Donetsk province out is necessary to save lives and to enable the Ukrainian army to better defend towns from the Russian advance.

``The destiny of the whole country will be decided by the Donetsk region,'' Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko told reporters in Kramatrosk, the province's administrative center and home to the Ukrainian military's regional headquarters.

``Once there are less people, we will be able to concentrate more on our enemy and perform our main tasks'' Kyrylenko said.

The governor's call for residents to leave appeared to represent one of the biggest suggested evacuations of the war. According to the U.N. refugee agency, more than 7.1 million Ukrainians are estimated to be displaced within Ukraine, and more than 4.8 million refugees left the country since Russia's invasion started on Feb. 24

The governor said that because they house critical infrastructure such as water filtration plants, Russia's main targets are now Kramatorsk and a city 16 kilometers 10 miles) to the north, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Kyrylenko described the shelling as ``very chaotic'' without ``a specific target ... only to destroy civilian infrastructure and residential areas.''

Sloviansk also came under sustained bombardment Tuesday. Mayor Vadim Lyakh said on Facebook that ``massive shelling'' pummeled Sloviansk, which had a population of about 107,000 before Russian invaded Ukraine more than four months ago. The mayor, who urged residents hours earlier to evacuate, advised them to take cover in shelters.

At least one person was killed and another seven wounded Tuesday, Lyakh said. He said the city's central market and several districts came under attack, adding that authorities were assessing the extent of the damage.

The barrage targeting Sloviansk indicated that Russian forces were positioned to advance farther into Ukraine's Donbas region, a mostly Russian-speaking industrial area where the country's most experienced soldiers are concentrated.

Sloviansk has previously taken rocket and artillery fire during Russia's war in Ukraine, but the bombardment picked up in recent days after Moscow took the last major city in neighboring Luhansk province, Lyakh said.

``It's important to evacuate as many people as possible,'' he warned Tuesday morning, adding that shelling damaged 40 houses on Monday.

The Ukrainian military withdrew its troops Sunday from the city of Lysychansk to keep them from being surrounded. Russia's defense minister and Putin said the city's subsequent capture put Moscow in control of all of Luhansk, one of two provinces that make up the Donbas.

The office of Ukraine's president said the Ukrainian military was still defending a small part of Luhansk and trying to buy time to establish fortified positions nearby.

The question now is whether Russia can muster enough strength to complete its seizure of the Donbas by taking Donetsk province, too. Putin acknowledged Monday that Russian troops who fought in Luhansk need to ``take some rest and beef up their combat capability.''

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that the war in Ukraine would continue until all of the goals set by Putin are achieved. However, Shoigu said ``the main priorities'' for Moscow at the moment were ``preserving the lives and health'' of the troops, as well as ``excluding the threat to the security of civilians.''

When Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, his stated goals were defending the people of the Donbas against Kyiv's alleged aggression, and the ``demilitarization'' and ``denazifaction'' of Ukraine.

Pro-Russia separatists have fought Ukrainian forces and controlled much of the Donbas for eight years. Before the invasion this year, Putin recognized the independence of the two self-proclaimed separatist republics in the region. He also sought to portray the tactics of Ukrainian forces and the government as akin to Nazi Germany's, claims for which no evidence has emerged.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian military said Russian forces also shelled several Donetsk towns and villages around Sloviansk in the past day but were repelled as they tried to advance toward a town about 20 kilometers (12 miles) to the city's north. South of the city, Russian forces were trying to push toward two more towns and shelling areas near Kramatorsk.

Meanwhile, Moscow-installed officials in Ukraine's southern Kherson region on Tuesday announced the formation of a new regional government, with a former Russian official at the helm.

Sergei Yeliseyev, the head of the new Moscow-backed government in Kherson, is a former deputy prime minister of Russia's western exclave of Kaliningrad and also used to work at Russia's Federal Security Service, or the FSB, according to media reports.

It wasn't immediately clear what would become of the ``military-civic administration'' the Kremlin installed earlier. The administration's head, Vladimir Saldo, said in a Telegram statement that the new government was ``not a temporary, not a military, not some kind of interim administration, but a proper governing body.''

``The fact that not just Kherson residents, but Russian officials, too, are part of this government speaks clearly about the direction the Kherson region is headed in the future,`` he said. ``This direction is to Russia.''

Kherson's Russia-installed administration previously stated plans for the region to become part of Russia, either through a referendum or other means.

There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials.

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In a city boasting champagne brunches with views of the sea, Michelin star restaurants, and endless high-end Asian food options, a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant with plastic chairs and metal tables is one of Dubais go-to spots.

Ravi restaurant, a small, family-owned Pakistani place, is rooted in the community of South Asian workers who helped build Dubai. Yet over the decades, it has become a staple of the food culture in a city that usually gravitates to everything glitzy and over-the-top.

The restaurant opened its doors in the United Arab Emirates in 1978 in the Dubai neighborhood of Satwa, at a time when it was a sandy area full of big lorries and small construction shops. The emirate was mostly a desert land in the 1970s with a meager, low-built skyline overlooking the Gulf.

Ravi served home-style dishes, mainly to South Asian construction workers.

Its founder, Chaudary Abdul Hameed, wanted to find a way to serve better food to the working class, said his son Waseem Abdul Hameed, who is also the restaurants operations manager. That meant keeping prices affordable, with meals costing an average of $7.

Over the years as Dubai boomed, it became a hit among Emiratis and the Western and Asian expats who flooded the emirate.

Famed food critic Anthony Bourdain helped put Ravi on the map when he visited it for one of his TV series in 2010. A few years later, rapper Snoop Dogg dropped in as well, and Ravi was elevated to a must-see attraction.

Besides its portions, prices and flavors, its ironically Ravis lack of pretentiousness that gives it cache.

Customers wearing everything from business suits to traditional saris or sneakers crowd the restaurant for big meals or late-night snacks. Its common to see lines of people at the door, or people taking their food and eating it at the curb.

Inside, customers sit at tables with plastic covers underneath flickering neon lights. Chatter downs out the sound of ceiling fans. Chicken biryani, chicken tikka, daal and naan are slung out of the kitchen over the service counter, and as waiters rush the plates to the table, the smell of curry and grilled meat wafts through the air.

Last week, the low-key eatery was scene to a very Dubai-style splash: A gathering of social media influencers to promote the launch of shoemaker Adidas brand collaboration with Ravi.

Adidas produced a specially designed limited-edition Superstar Ravi sneaker  green and white, emblazoned with the restaurants name and the year it opened, and a list of the six most famous dishes from its menu on the inside of the shoes tongue.

Both Ravi and Adidas declined to disclose the terms of the deal to The Associated Press, or to answer questions about whether the restaurant will be making any money from the sale of the shoes.

Waseem Abdul Hameed said it reflects how the restaurant is part of Dubais cultural fabric. You have to go to Ravi restaurant for a meal, so thats why they chose us.

Its a stark contrast with other recent lines released by Adidas, like one with Gucci that includes sneakers selling for $899 in Dubai and other cities. But the collaboration speaks to how brands like Adidas are looking for new ways to connect to consumers searching for uniqueness.

On a recent hot summer day after the shoe launch, customers lined up outside Ravi.

Its authentic, thats what it is, thats why I like it, said 32-year-old Dubai resident Dana, whos been coming to Ravi for years with her friends.

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By Trend

The State Tax Service under the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Azerbaijan exceeded the forecast for revenues to state budget by 46.7 percent from January through June 2022, countrys Finance Ministry told Trend.

According to the ministry, the amount transferred to the budget in excess of the forecast amounted to 2.06 billion manat ($1.2 billion).

Totally, over 6.4 billion manat ($3.7 billion) were transferred to state budget through the State Tax Service during the reporting period (an increase of 49.3 percent over the year).

At the same time, revenues from non-oil sector amounted to about 4.3 billion manat ($2.5 billion), which is 1.2 billion manat ($705.8 million), or 38 percent more than the same period 2021.
France has repatriated 35 children and 16 mothers from camps in Syria holding family members of suspected jihadists since the Islamic State group was ousted in 2019, the foreign ministry said.

"France has today undertaken the return to the country of 35 French minors who were in camps in northeast Syria. This operation also includes the return of 16 mothers from these same camps," a statement from the foreign ministry said.

It added that the minors were handed over to child protection services while the mothers would face judicial proceedings.

Rights groups have long urged the French government to bring home some 200 children in detention who were either brought to IS territory by their parents or born there during the years of fighting.

They are being held in Kurdish-run camps in northeast Syria where malnutrition and disease is rife.

One of the biggest and most overcrowded is Al-Hol where two children die every week on average, according to a report by the Save the Children campaign group last September.

France has argued that its security concerns are paramount, having suffered a series of attacks from IS jihadists, including the November 2015 assaults on the Bataclan concert hall and other targets around Paris that left 130 people dead.

Many of the children are with their mothers or fathers who pose a risk, and France has insisted that French nationals face local justice.

Before Tuesday's operation, France had repatriated 126 children since 2016.

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Allies of Ukraine meeting in Switzerland were due Tuesday to adopt a declaration spelling out the principles and priorities of rebuilding the war-shattered country, estimated to cost at least $750 billion.

Leaders from dozens of countries, international organisations and businesses have been meeting in the southern Swiss city of Lugano under tight security since Monday, discussing the best path forward for reconstruction, even as Russia's war continues to rage in Ukraine.

Speaking on the first day of the Ukraine Recovery Conference, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a long line of government ministers described the massive destruction caused by Russia's February 24 invasion.

"Reconstruction of Ukraine is not a local task of a single nation," Zelensky said via video message.

"It is a common task of the whole democratic world," he said.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the recovery "is already estimated at $750 billion".

"The key source of recovery should be the confiscated assets of Russia and Russian oligarchs," he said.

"The Russian authorities unleashed this bloody war. They caused this massive destruction, and they should be held accountable for it".

The conference, which had been planned before the invasion, had originally been slated to discuss reforms in Ukraine before being repurposed to focus on recovery.

Shmyhal laid out the government's phased reconstruction plan, focused first on the immediate needs of those affected by the war, followed by the financing of thousands of longer-term reconstruction projects aimed at making Ukraine European, green and digital.

Those priorities are expected to be reflected in a final Lugano Declaration setting out the general principles defining a framework for rebuilding Ukraine, which should be adopted when the conference wraps up around midday Tuesday.

As billions of dollars in aid flow into Ukraine, lingering concerns about widespread corruption in the country mean far-reaching reforms will also be seen as a condition for any recovery plan decided.

The former Soviet state has long been ranked among the world's most corrupt countries by Transparency International. In Europe, only Russia and Azerbaijan ranked worse.

The Ukrainians have proposed that allied countries "adopt" specific regions of Ukraine, and lead the recovery there to render it more efficient.

Britain has proposed taking on the Kyiv region, while a diplomatic source said France would concentrate on the heavily-hit Chernihiv region.

In all, around 1,000 people are attending the conference, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who let out an enthusiastic "Slava Ukraini" (glory to Ukraine) after insisting on the importance of rebuilding a Ukraine better than before the war.

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But the budget allocation for the School Mental Health Resources and Research Center, which offers counseling and support for students, has dropped from W1.5 billion in 2015 to W936 million this year (US$1=W1,197).

Some 709 schoolkids attempted suicide last year, the biggest number since the Ministry of Education started tallying the statistics in 2011.

Prof. Hong Hyun-joo at Hallym University said, "Children who complain about depression are highly likely to resort to drastic measures if they watch content online depicting suicide or self-harm. Offices of education need to hire professionals and establish their own systems of monitoring and treating students who are in danger."

The number of attempted suicides by juveniles has surged 19 times from just 37 cases in 2011, and they happen earlier and earlier. Until 2017, most of the attempts were made by high schoolers, but last year the 259 high schoolers who tried to kill themselves were outnumbered by 391 middle schoolers.

There were no recorded suicide attempts by elementary schoolchildren in 2011, but last year there were 58. Out of the 144 youngsters who committed suicide last year, three were in elementary school. The increase happened although the overall number of youngsters is falling, from 7.8 million in 2006 to 5.6 million last year.

Experts blame lack of communication as young people are increasingly wrapped up in their electronic devices. They also blame an alarming fad of YouTube videos depicting suicides and self-harm. A song about suicide became popular among elementary schoolkids recently, while selfies showing self-harm have become a trend among teenagers.

Liberty Korea Party lawmaker Kwak Sang-do, who published the data, said, "We are in desperate need of support for each schoolkid facing a mental health crisis."
The automakers are afraid that any punitive measures taken against SK could seriously hurt their battery supply. After the ITC's preliminary ruling in favor of LG, which could force SK to shut its factory in Georgia, Volkswagen and Ford said they could face huge problems producing electric cars, and it would cost American jobs during the coronavirus pandemic.

Global automakers in the U.S. have sent a petition to the International Trade Commission seeking leniency for SK Innovation in a legal dispute over the misappropriation of trade secrets with rival LG Energy Solution.

 Battery Makers' Clout

Battery demand is increasing exponentially as carmakers start shifting to electric cars, but suppliers of the fuel cells have been unable to keep up. This has forced automakers to go all out to secure stable supplies of batteries.

GM is currently building a joint venture battery factory with LG, which will be the second for the Korean company. This could raise concerns that GM is becoming too dependent on LG. But industry insiders say stable supplies are the prime concern. There are even rumors that LG had to turn down a supply request from another automaker because it was already at full capacity.

The situation is expected to continue for a considerable time. Market analysts SNE Research said battery supply currently surpasses demand, and there is a dire shortage if Chinese manufacturers are excluded. It warned that demand will surpass supply until 2025 and a supply shortage will last until 2030.

One U.S. automaker with a Korean supplier recently saw one of its electric cars catch fire. Such an incident would usually prompt the automaker to press the battery producer to compensate for damage. But the automaker is apparently hesitant to sue the battery maker for fear of a disruption in supply.

 Chinese Dominance of Raw Materials

Another problem is that China currently controls the supply of raw materials for lithium-ion batteries like nickel, cobalt and manganese. Africa's Congo region accounts for 70 percent of the supply of cobalt, which is the most expensive of them, and Chinese companies own the rights to four out of seven cobalt mines in the Congo.

China also accounts for 76 percent of the global supply of precursors -- a combination of nickel, cobalt and manganese. Aluminum, which is not a rare metal, is also necessary to produce anodes, and China controls 57 percent of global aluminum output. It also accounts for 64 percent of the global output of graphite and silicon, which are used to make cathodes.

What is most troubling is that China accounts for 98 percent of global output of rare-earth elements that are used to make permanent magnets for electric motors. China has the world's largest reserves (44 million tons) of rare-earth elements. Its proportion of global output last year fell to 62 percent due to checks by the U.S. and Australia, but the U.S. still relies on China, sending raw materials to the Asian country for processing and importing them again.

Korea imports half its rare-earth elements from China. That means they can always be used as a bargaining chip by China in its trade war with the U.S. Last year, China passed a law authorizing the limitation of rare-earth-element production and exports.
Ukraine's Luhansk governor, Serhiy Haidai, told the Associated Press Monday that Ukrainian forces had retreated from Lysychansk to avoid being surrounded. "There was a risk of Lysychansk encirclement," Haidai said, saying that Ukrainian troops could have remained a while longer but would have potentially sustained too many casualties. "We managed to do centralized withdrawal and evacuate all injured," Haidai said. "We took back all the equipment, so from this point withdrawal was organized well."

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin in a televised meeting Monday that Russian forces had taken control of Luhansk. In turn, Putin, said that the military units "that took part in active hostilities and achieved success, victory" in Luhansk, "should rest, increase their combat capabilities."

Ukraine said Russian forces are now trying to advance on Siversk, Fedorivka and Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, about half of which is controlled by Russia.

Moscow's forces immediately turned their attention to fighting in the adjoining Donetsk province. It is part of the industrialized Donbas region Putin has sought to take control of during his invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth month, after failing earlier to topple the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or capture the capital, Kyiv.

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory Monday in Ukraine's eastern Luhansk province as Ukrainian troops retreated from their last stronghold in the city of Lysychansk.

The Ukrainian General Staff said that Russian forces, aside from pushing toward Siversk, Fedorivka and Bakhmut, are also shelling of the key Ukrainian strongholds of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, deeper in Donetsk.

Ukrainian authorities said that on Sunday, six people, including a 9-year-old girl, were killed in the Russian attack on Sloviansk and another 19 people were wounded. Kramatorsk was also shelled Sunday.

The British Defense Ministry intelligence briefing Monday called the conflict in Donbas "grinding and attritional," and said it is unlikely to change in the coming weeks.

Military analysts said the Russian army has a massive advantage in firepower, but not any significant superiority in the number of troops. Ukraine is hoping to counter the Russian onslaught in Donbas with the ongoing resupply of munitions from Western nations, including the United States.

Zelenskyy acknowledged the Ukrainian withdrawal from Lysychansk during his nightly video address late Sunday but vowed that the countrys forces will fight their way back. "If the command of our army withdraws people from certain points of the front where the enemy has the greatest fire superiority, in particular this applies to Lysychansk, it means only one thing: We will return thanks to our tactics, thanks to the increase in the supply of modern weapons," Zelenskyy said.

"The fact that we protect the lives of our soldiers, our people, plays an equally important role. We will rebuild the walls, we will win back the land, and people must be protected above all else," Zelenskyy said.

Luhansk Governor Haidai told the Reuters news agency there was nothing critical in losing Lysychansk, and that Ukraine needed to win the overall war, not the fight for the city. "It hurts a lot, but it's not losing the war," he said Monday.

 Recovery Plan

Switzerland is hosting a conference Monday and Tuesday focusing on what it will take to rebuild Ukraine. The meeting in Lugano brings together leaders from dozens of countries as well as international organizations and the private sector. Ukraine's ambassador to Switzerland, Artem Rybchenko, said the conference would help produce a roadmap for his country's recovery.
Made from granite and draped in a cloth featuring verses from the Koran, the Kaaba stands nearly 15 meters (50 feet) tall. It is the structure all Muslims turn toward to pray, no matter where they are in the world. "When I first saw the Kaaba I felt something weird and started crying," Egyptian pilgrim Mohammed Lotfi told AFP.

On Monday afternoon, pilgrims carrying umbrellas to shield themselves from the scorching sun flocked to souvenir and barber shops in Mecca, while others shared meals under palm trees on streets close to the Grand Mosque. Many new arrivals had already begun performing the first ritual, which requires walking seven times around the Kaaba, the large black cubic structure at the center of the Grand Mosque.

One million people, including 850,000 from abroad, are allowed at this year's hajj after two years of drastically curtailed numbers due to the pandemic. The pilgrimage is one of five pillars of Islam, which all able-bodied Muslims with the means are required to perform at least once.

Banners welcoming the faithful, including the first international visitors since 2019, adorned squares and alleys, while armed security forces patrolled the ancient city, birthplace of the Prophet Mohammed. "This is pure joy," Sudanese pilgrim Abdel Qader Kheder told AFP in Mecca, before the event that officially starts Wednesday. "I almost can't believe I am here. I am enjoying every moment."

White-robed worshippers from around the world have packed the streets of Islam's holiest city ahead of the biggest hajj pilgrimage since the coronavirus pandemic began.

At least 650,000 overseas pilgrims have arrived so far in Saudi Arabia, authorities said on Sunday. In 2019, about 2.5 million people took part in the rituals, which also include gathering at Mount Arafat and "stoning the devil" in Mina. The following year, when the pandemic took hold, foreigners were barred and worshippers were restricted to just 10,000 to stop the hajj from turning into a global super-spreader. That figure rose to 60,000 fully vaccinated Saudi citizens and residents in 2021. Pilgrims this year -- only those younger than 65 are allowed -- will participate in the hajj under strict sanitary conditions.

The hajj has seen numerous disasters over the years, including a 2015 stampede that killed up to 2,300 people and a 1979 attack by hundreds of gunmen that, according to the official toll, left 153 dead.

 Unaccompanied Women

The pilgrimage is a powerful source of prestige for the conservative desert kingdom and its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is returning from the diplomatic wilderness.

Days after the hajj, Prince Mohammed will welcome U.S. President Joe Biden who, with oil prices soaring following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has reneged on a vow to turn Saudi Arabia into a "pariah" over the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents.

The hajj, which costs at least $5,000 per person, is a money-spinner for the world's biggest oil exporter trying to diversify its economy. In normal years the pilgrimage brings in billions of dollars.

It is also a chance to showcase the kingdom's rapid social transformation, despite persistent complaints about human rights abuses and limits on personal freedoms. Saudi Arabia -- which has under recent reforms permitted raves in Riyadh and mixed-gender beaches in Jeddah -- now allows women to attend the hajj unaccompanied by male relatives, a requirement that was dropped last year.

 'Serenity'

Masks are no longer compulsory in most enclosed spaces in Saudi Arabia but they will be mandatory at the Grand Mosque, the holiest site in Islam. Pilgrims from abroad will have to submit a negative PCR test result.

The Grand Mosque will be "washed 10 times a day by more than 4,000 male and female workers," with more than 130,000 liters (34,000 gallons) of disinfectant used each time, authorities said. Since the start of the pandemic, Saudi Arabia has registered more than 795,000 coronavirus cases, 9,000 of them fatal, in a population of about 34 million.

Aside from COVID, another challenge is the scorching sun in one of the world's hottest and driest regions, which is becoming even more extreme through the effects of climate change. Although summer has only just begun, temperatures have already topped 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in parts of Saudi Arabia.

But Iraqi pilgrim Ahmed Abdul-Hassan al-Fatlawi said the heat is the last thing he thinks of when in Mecca. "I am 60 years old, so it's normal if I get physically tired because of the hot weather, but I am in a state of serenity, and that's all that matters to me," he told AFP.
The number of teenagers who attempted suicide doubled over the four years before the coronavirus pandemic.

Medical researchers analyzed data from the National Emergency Department Information System (NEDIS) and found that the number of 14 to 19-year-olds who were rushed to emergency rooms after attempting suicide surged 2.1 times from 1,894 in 2016 to 3,892 in 2019.

The figure out of 100,000 teenagers increased 35.6 percent a year from 57.5 in 2016 to 135.5 in 2019.


A new public-private consultative body has been tasked with finding solutions to the issue of compensation for victims of wartime forced labor for imperial Japan.

The first meeting chaired by Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyun-dong was prompted by the urgent need to find a diplomatic compromise that will be acceptable to both the victims and the Japanese government before the Korean assets of Japanese companies that employed forced labor during World War II are sold off.

But the victims are demanding direct dialogue with the Japanese companies and have so far been deaf to any compromise solutions from the Korean government and experts.

Tokyo for its part has flatly forbidden the companies, which include Nippon Steel, to comply with Korean court orders to compensate their former slave laborers and refuses even to use the term "forced labor."
By Masakatsu Ota, KYODO NEWS - Jul 5, 2022 - 17:12 | All, World

The chairman of the first meeting of parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons urged Japan, the only nation that has experienced a nuclear attack, to change its stance on the treaty.

"Of course, it's a decision of the government of Japan, and it's not at all for me to say. But, I would hope that this approach will change," Ambassador Alexander Kmentt told Kyodo News in a recent online interview. The senior Austrian diplomat chaired the three-day U.N. conference held in Vienna last month.

Though nonsignatory countries such as Germany, Belgium, Norway and the Netherlands, all of which are North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, joined the meeting as observers, Japan did not despite high expectations among survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that it would.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has said that as no nuclear weapon states have joined the treaty, Japan would rather promote "realistic efforts" toward a world free of nuclear weapons based on the trust between it and the United States.

"The TPNW states parties have said very clearly that they want to be open, so we are open for engagement. So, it's nothing that we have done in the preparation of this conference that is an excuse for not participating," said Kmentt.

"I think, if you want to be a bridge builder, you have to be taking part in the conversation," he added.

Kishida has said that Japan will play the role of "a bridge builder" between non-nuclear weapon states supporting the TPNW and nuclear powers providing a nuclear umbrella to allies such as Japan.

Kmentt said he saw a subtle change of stance taken by nuclear states toward the ban treaty. "It is probably slowly changing, and some of the attitude of some of the nuclear-armed states has become less antagonistic."

"I think, definitely, the United States has been engaging more, which I think is positive. But a lot more needs to be done," Kmentt said. "It's a very distinct change, because the previous (U.S.) administration was very outspoken in trying to tell states not to ratify the TPNW."

Kmentt welcomed the participation of the NATO states, saying, "The observer states recognize that the TPNW is an important treaty and that they want to send a constructive signal of wanting to engage in the conversation."

He called on non-states parties to engage in discussions, saying their decision not to participate is "very short-sighted."

"So, I felt that participation of some of the states was very positive. I wanted to refer you to, for example, the statement of Germany, which was a very good example of how a country that is, at the moment at least, not ready to join the treaty can nevertheless, express in a good way that they respect this treaty and that they are actively wanting to have a constructive dialogue."

Kmentt also emphasized the importance of the Vienna Declaration, a consensus document of the meeting that was overshadowed by Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the war on Ukraine.

The states parties said in the declaration that immediate action is needed to achieve a world without nuclear weapons and that any use or threat of nuclear weapon use is a violation of international law.

"I think it lays out in a very coherent and convincing way the rationale on which this treaty is based, the consequences, the risks, the lack of credible progress, the threat of nuclear weapons, the uncertainty that surrounds nuclear deterrence. I think this is a very strong document."

In August, the review conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT, is scheduled to be held in New York, bringing together nuclear-armed states, such as the United States, Russia and China, and non-nuclear states supportive of the TPNW.

"We are not in a business of competition with the NPT," Kmentt said. The June meeting sent a clear message that the TPNW is complementary to the NPT and that joining the nuclear ban treaty is "the clearest manifestation of support for the NPT."

He also urged nuclear-armed states to agree to "concrete steps" to accelerate nuclear disarmament which is required for them under the NPT.

"One of the reasons why the TPNW came about is because exactly this step-by-step approach that the prime minister (Kishida) is mentioning simply is not working...Without any concrete steps, I think the damage, or the credibility deficit, for the NPT will just continue," he said, referring to stalled process of nuclear disarmament.

Calling the TPNW's entry into force in January 2021 and the first meeting of states parties "key developments that have happened in the past seven years" since the last NPT review conference, Kmentt said, "it would be to the detriment of the credibility of the NPT if you don't acknowledge (that) fact, I think."

Related coverage:

1st U.N. nuke ban treaty meeting urges "immediate action"

1st U.N. nuke ban treaty action plan to vow to help affected states

Hiroshima, Nagasaki mayors call for nuclear abolition at treaty meet
KYODO NEWS - Jul 5, 2022 - 21:07 | All, Japan

KDDI Corp. said Tuesday its "au" mobile phone service had been fully restored by the afternoon, ending 86 hours of service disruptions that affected millions of customers and a range of business activities.

The service outage affected up to 39.15 million mobile connections, disrupting banking systems, the transmission of weather data, parcel deliveries and network-connected cars, among other things, according to Japan's second-largest mobile carrier by subscribers.

But the company's woes are far from over amid mounting criticism of its handling of the unusually long network disruption, including from the regulator, while affected customers called for compensation.

"We deeply apologize for significant inconvenience caused over a prolonged period of time," a KDDI executive said at an online press conference.

The matter of compensation would be "promptly considered after confirming the extent of the (outage's) impact," the executive said.

According to KDDI's terms and conditions, individual users are eligible for compensation if a service outage lasts 24 hours or longer, although damages such as loss of work resulting from connection issues are unlikely to be covered.

Earlier Tuesday, Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Yasushi Kaneko criticized KDDI for its handling of the disruption, saying the mobile operator failed to provide sufficient information to customers in a timely manner.

The company "has not fulfilled its responsibility as a telecommunications operator," with some customers still unable to make voice calls after KDDI said it had ended restoration work Sunday, Kaneko told reporters.

Taking into account the unprecedented impact of the outage, the government will set up a panel to compile measures to prevent a recurrence, he said.

Referring to the disruption of emergency calls, Kaneko said, "It is extremely regrettable that it has got to the point of potentially threatening people's lives and we are taking the situation seriously."

KDDI first suffered a disruption at around 1:35 a.m. Saturday. The company said Monday afternoon that its services had almost been restored nationwide, but it stopped short of announcing the problems were resolved, saying it still needed time to check its network.

The company said Tuesday its services had been fully restored as of 3:36 p.m., including for its low-cost UQ Mobile brand and lower-priced "povo" mobile customers.

The Japan Meteorological Agency has demanded that KDDI come up with measures to prevent a similar incident after some data distribution from its regional weather observation system was suspended.

The system observes and distributes temperature and precipitation data.

Of the around 1,300 observation stations nationwide, about 550 had stopped transmitting data due to the outage, land minister Tetsuo Saito said, adding the situation had returned to normal.

"Real-time observation data from the system is important for local people and organizations involved in disaster prevention," Saito, the minister of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism, told reporters Tuesday.

Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Shigeyuki Goto said he has requested the country's 47 prefectures to make efforts to prevent any impact on medical services in the event of a similar situation.

Some municipalities had reported that medical facilities were unable to communicate with on-call doctors and drivers who were delivering pulse oximeters to coronavirus patients because of the outage, he said.

Gifu Gov. Hajime Furuta said there had been two cases of people not being able to reach emergency services due to KDDI's outage, but both were resolved without serious consequences.

"To ensure there is no serious interference with medical and nursing-care services, we will work with prefectural governments to secure a stable system," Goto said.

The network failure occurred when a router for voice calls was replaced during regular maintenance, with repair work triggering a concentration of traffic that led the company to reduce user access.

During that time, the carrier experienced a cascade of technical problems that further prolonged the connection difficulties.

The latest service outage follows a system failure at NTT Docomo Inc., Japan's largest mobile carrier, in October last year that lasted around 29 hours and affected at least 12.9 million users.

Related coverage:

KDDI network almost recovered, compensation in focus for disruptions
By Azernews

By Laman Ismayilova

The National Carpet Museum will present the Lampa carpet on July 6, Azernews reports, citing the Carpet Museum.

The carpet was donated to the museum's Shusha branch by the Vice-Chairman of the Council of Elders, a recipient of the personal presidential scholarship, and the first Ombudsman, professor Elmira Suleymanova.

This carpet was woven in Shusha in the 1930s. The first samples of such carpets were woven in Shusha in the early XIX century. Such carpets, also known as Shusha, used to adorn mansions and palaces.

Later, the Lampa became widespread in Karabakh as dast hali gaba, a carpet set consisting of a wide central known as "hali" and narrow side parts called "kanare".

Stylized with beautiful flowers, including Kharibulbul, the Lampa carpet reflects the unique beauty of the Karabakh region and the aesthetic taste of the people living there.

These remarkable carpets, preserved in world museums and numerous collections, remain significant.

In recent years, the National Museum enriched its collection with museum objects of historical and artistic significance within the State Program for the Preservation and Development of Carpet Art in Azerbaijan for 2018-2022, and numerous organizations, including the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, the Culture Ministry.

Azerbaijani and foreign philanthropists and collectors also played a key role in the replenishment of the collection.

Founded in 1967, the National Carpet Museum never ceases to amaze everyone with its beautiful architecture.

Initiated by eminent carpet artist Latif Karimov, it is beautiful inside and outside.

The museum's new building is designed in the form of a rolled carpet.

The Carpet Museum stores over 14,000 exhibits of the finest Azerbaijani carpets.

The museum hosts multiple events, including international symposiums, conferences, and various exhibitions.

In 2019, the museum received national status for its significant contribution to the popularization and promotion of Azerbaijani Carpet Weaving Art.

In 2020, the Carpet Museum enriched its collection with beautiful pile carpets purchased by the Culture Ministry at the Sartirana Textile Show in Italy.

The XIX century Guba carpet Ugakh was donated to the Carpet Museum, while Karabakh's Chalabi carpet enriched the collection of the museum's Shusha branch.

Moreover, the Carpet Museum won Travelers' Choice Awards for the fourth time in a row last year.
Police of Akron in the U.S. state of Ohio released Sunday body-camera footage of the fatal shooting of African American Jayland Walker by multiple officers last week. (WARNING: disturbing images) #GLOBALink





Produced by Xinhua Global Service
Students and teachers of the Frans Nambinga Art Training School pose for a group photo in Windhoek, Namibia, June 30, 2022. (Photo by Ndalimpinga Iita/Xinhua)

WINDHOEK, July 4 (Xinhua) -- At a structure made out of corrugated iron in Havana informal settlement on the outskirts of Windhoek, capital of Namibia, children were drawing images of idyllic scenes of peace, social issues, objects and ideal environments, reflecting their aspirations.

"This is a poster of a lady. I used an old magazine, discarded box, which I pasted on paper, and then coloured it. I like drawing beautiful ladies; imagining a world where society protects women," 13-years old Lavinia Tobias interpreted her drawing.

Tobias is one of the 40 youngsters hosted at the Frans Nambinga Art Training School in Havana, one of Windhoek's most populated informal settlements.

The school, started in 2018, is teaching art techniques to children and youth amid perennial challenges in informal settlements.

"We offer performing and visual arts classes to people in the community. Not only to nurture talent but to avoid children being pushed into sly activities on the streets," said Frans Nambinga, artist and school founder.

A trip to China, where Nambinga partook in a six-month-long program under the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held in Hangzhou in Zhejiang province in China in 2013, further ignited the idea.

"In China, I learned a lot about the creative art industry, especially after visiting museums, galleries, factories, and observing how they run art programs for children," he said.

Nambinga also lends industry experience and qualifications from the College of Arts and John Muafangejo Art Centre to impart skills.

The school also fuses art education with culture in the form of history, dance and food to transmit traditions across generations, according to Letisia Hamukoto, a trainer at the school.

The school has since given a chance to feed the dreams of young people, with many keen to make art their mainstay.

Tobias, who started the program at the age of six, said it had become her escape from the bustle of streets in the informal settlement.

"I feel safer here rather than being on the street. Art allows me to dream and share my artistic passion with friends and neighbours. I hope to go far with it, even China or America, to showcase my craft and learn from others," Tobias said.

The youngsters also learned social skills. "Being here teaches me how to mix and work in a team with others," said 12-year-old Leticia Ndamekele, who has been with the program since 2019.

What is more, extramural activities at the art school have a ripple effect of improved academic performance in mainstream schools, especially in art subjects.

"We received feedback that school-going children develop a different way of thinking and exhibit more confidence in presentation," Nambinga said.

Moreover, it also creates employment and study opportunities for the youth.

"The youth maximize skills learned to make a living through music or visual arts. We also provide those who wish to pursue further studies with a certificate and portfolio that would qualify them for admission into art colleges," he added.

In the interim, the centre has registered an increasing demand for arts education in the area, creating both benefits and unintended challenges. COVID-19 outbreak, inadequate space, resources and funds to expand are a hurdle. This is more so because artistic work, mainly the school, is the primary source of income.

"This is my lifeline. However, programs do not always generate substantial income as most locals and parents cannot afford to pay the standard 100 Namibian dollars (6.72 U.S. Dollars). I do not chase them away; I teach them regardless," Nambinga said.

Complementary support also comes from collaborating with institutions on joint projects.

According to Nambinga, some institutions partner with the school to execute an idea through an exhibition or performing arts to raise awareness about a social issue.

"Host institutions fund such projects, which brings in an income. But we need more support," he added.

Despite the challenges, Nambinga hopes to grow the school and accommodate more children.

"It is not easy being an artist in Namibia due to limited support and commercial prospects. But I am optimistic about the future. We hope to expand through continued strategic collaborations to nurture youngsters, so they succeed," he said.

The art school has trained about 100 young people since its inception. 

A child displays a drawing made of recycled materials at the Frans Nambinga Art Training School in Windhoek, Namibia, June 30, 2022. (Photo by Ndalimpinga Iita/Xinhua)

Frans Nambinga, artist and founder of the Frans Nambinga Art Training School, helps children collect their paintings in class in Windhoek, Namibia, June 30, 2022. (Photo by Ndalimpinga Iita/Xinhua)

Children prepare for dance training at the Frans Nambinga Art Training School in Windhoek, Namibia, June 30, 2022. (Photo by Ndalimpinga Iita/Xinhua)
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Myanmar's Foreign Minister U Wunna Maung Lwin attend a joint press conference following the seventh Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Bagan, Myanmar, July 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Dongqiang)

BAGAN, Myanmar, July 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Monday that the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) has been turned into a "golden model" of regional cooperation six years after it was launched with fruitful results.

During a joint press conference with Myanmar's Foreign Minister U Wunna Maung Lwin, which was held following the seventh LMC Foreign Ministers' Meeting earlier in the day in Bagan, Myanmar, Wang said the six countries along the Lancang-Mekong river will continue to treat each other on an equal footing and cooperate closely to promote development and work for the upgrading of the LMC mechanism.

Wang said a host of new cooperation consensus has been achieved at the foreign ministers' meeting.

First, the meeting set future directions for the LMC cooperation, namely, enhancing strategic guidance, deepening economic integration, expanding agricultural cooperation, upholding green development, promoting digital cooperation, and maintaining closer people-to-people and cultural exchanges.

Second, the meeting announced six plans to be implemented in the next stage for the LMC cooperation, which include an action plan on Lancang-Mekong agricultural cooperation, a beneficial plan on Lancang-Mekong water resources, a cooperation plan on Lancang-Mekong digital economy, a Lancang-Mekong space cooperation plan, a Lancang-Mekong talent plan, and a Lancang-Mekong public health cooperation plan.

Third, the meeting endorsed the Five-Year Plan of Action on the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (2023-2027) and issued documents including a joint press communique and joint statements on deepening customs-trade security and customs clearance facilitation, agricultural cooperation and the guarantee of food security, disaster management cooperation, and cultural exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations.

Wang said China will continue to pursue a neighborhood diplomacy featuring amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, and is ready to share the dividends of cooperation with Mekong countries, so as to add more vitality and dynamics to the LMC and create a better future for the people of regional countries. 
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Myanmar's Foreign Minister U Wunna Maung Lwin, Lao Vice Premier and Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith, Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn, Thai Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai and Vietnamese Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son attend the seventh Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Bagan, Myanmar, July 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Dongqiang)

BAGAN, Myanmar, July 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here on Monday that the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) has achieved fruitful results in promoting regional stability and prosperity.

When chairing the seventh LMC foreign ministers' meeting, Wang said that since last year the six LMC countries have earnestly implemented consensuses reached at the third LMC leaders' meeting in 2020.

First, the countries have joined hands to combat COVID-19 and build an immune shield. China provided over 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines and dispatched medical expert teams to the Mekong countries, and helped the countries establish COVID-19 nucleic acid testing labs and mobile cabin hospitals, he said.

China also helped train some 1,300 Traditional Chinese Medicine personnel for the Mekong countries.

Second, they have promoted high-quality connectivity and jointly created a "development engine," Wang said. Since the operation of the China-Laos Railway in early December last year, nearly 800,000 tons of freight have been transported cross-border, covering more than 100 kinds of goods.

Chinese-built projects which have been completed include the rehabilitation and expansion of Cambodia's National Road No. 11, the new terminal at Thailand's Suvarnabhumi International Airport and the Cat Linh-Ha Dong metro line in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi.

The Kyaukpyu deep-sea port project in Myanmar has started its environmental assessment, social assessment, and geological survey and feasibility study.

In 2021, trade between China and the Mekong countries reached 398 billion U.S. dollars, up 23 percent year-on-year. In the first five months of this year, trade between the two sides witnessed a 16-percent growth.

Third, the countries have rolled out sub-national cooperation to build a "bridge of friendship," Wang said. The first forum on Lancang-Mekong local government cooperation was successfully held, creating a new platform for local level cooperation.

Fourth, the countries have been jointly pushing cooperation on people's well-being to build a happy home, Wang said. China has expanded imports of agricultural products from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. In 2021, China's imports from the Mekong countries reached 17.4 billion dollars, up nearly 33 percent year-on-year.

Moreover, the China-aided national stadium project in Cambodia has been inaugurated; the lighting project supported by China in the Lao capital Vientiane has been completed; the China-sponsored maintenance and renovation project of the national stadium in Myanmar has also been handed over; and notable progress has been made in the China-built rural water supply project in Vietnam.

The LMC consists of six countries -- China, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. The Lancang River originates from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in southwestern China. It is called the Mekong River as it flows through the other five countries before emptying into the sea. 
BEIJING, July 5 (Xinhua) -- China secured a bumper summer harvest of oil crops this year, with an uptick both in rapeseed output and procurement prices, the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration said Tuesday.

By June 30, the country had purchased 660,000 tonnes of rapeseed, an increase of 320,000 tonnes year on year. The procurement prices of the oil crop ranged from 6 yuan (about 0.9 U.S. dollars) to 7.2 yuan per kilo, 0.8-1.8 yuan higher than last year.

China has stepped up efforts to advance the expansion of oil crop planting to wean itself off imports. Currently, China's dependency ratio on edible vegetable oil imports is 70 percent.

As the major cooking oil, rapeseed oil accounts for half of the domestic oil consumption and plays a core role in ensuring the security of the edible oil supply.

China's rapeseed output will likely reach 14.95 million tonnes in 2022/23, and rapeseed imports are expected to be 2.8 million tonnes, according to the China National Grain and Oils Information Center. 
Photo taken on June 17, 2022 shows the desiccated bed of a river in Turin, Italy. (Str/Xinhua)

The state of emergency, which will remain in force until at least the end of the year, will give the government extra funds and power to deal with the hot and dry conditions that threaten to reduce the country's agricultural output by as much as a third.

ROME, July 4 (Xinhua) -- The Italian government on Monday declared a state of emergency related to the prolonged heatwave and drought conditions that have badly hit the country, particularly its north.

The state of emergency, which will remain in force until at least the end of the year, will give the government extra funds and power to deal with the hot and dry conditions that threaten to reduce the country's agricultural output by as much as a third.

Photo taken on June 18, 2022 shows the Po river in Turin, Italy. (Str/Xinhua)

The government also earmarked a total of 36.5 million euros (38.1 million U.S. dollars) for the northern regions of Emilia-Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lombardy, Piedmont and Veneto to tackle their water shortages.

Focus will be placed on easing droughts along the Po River -- Italy's longest waterway that is running 85 percent below its normal water levels -- and the Eastern Alps.

Most areas in Italy have been gripped by record-high temperatures, with the mercury constantly surpassing 40 degrees Celsius.

Photo provided by Italy's Alpine Rescue on July 3, 2022 shows a general view of Marmolada Glacier in northern Italy. (Italy's Alpine Rescue/Handout via Xinhua)

The decree comes a day after a glacial landslide in northeastern Italy that killed at least seven people. High temperatures have been blamed for the glacial collapse. 
Video: Police of Akron in the U.S. state of Ohio released on July 3, 2022 the body-camera footage of the fatal shooting of African American Jayland Walker by multiple officers last week. (Xinhua)

Police in the United States shoot and kill over 1,000 people each year, and African Americans are victims at a disproportionate rate, according to data from Mapping Police Violence.

WASHINGTON, July 5 (Xinhua) -- The brutal police shooting of African American Jayland Walker by multiple officers with dozens of shots in Akron, Ohio, a week ago has torn open the nation's scar of racism.

Protesters continued to take to the streets in Akron on Monday to demand justice for Walker while decrying police violence and racism.

A day earlier, the Akron Police Department released body-camera footage of the deadly encounter, which took place after midnight on June 27 during an attempted traffic stop.

Officers attempted to pull over Walker on unspecified traffic violations and they chased his vehicle on the expressway for several minutes, according to the police.

Walker then allegedly jumped out of his car while the footage showed officers pursuing him on foot before opening fire.

The police department said officers "reported a firearm being discharged from the suspect vehicle" during the encounter.

Walker, 25, suffered more than 60 gunshot wounds and was unarmed at the time, Akron Police Chief Steve Mylett told reporters on Sunday.

Eight officers who were directly involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave as part of the protocol in a police shooting.

The city had contacted the Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation and requested an independent investigation into the incident. The process is underway.

The screenshot taken from ABC's web streaming shows people protesting against the police killing of Black man Jayland Walker in Arkon in the U.S. state of Ohio on July 3, 2022. (Xinhua)



"A traffic violation ended in 60 gunshot wounds before they handcuffed his dead body," Brian Normoyle, an American political and social commentator and writer tweeted. "There can be no excuse."

"Remember it. Don't forget it. And add it to the interminable list of atrocities against Black Americans perpetrated by systemic racism," Normoyle wrote.

Akron-native and Lakers star LeBron James also sent a message on Sunday to his hometown in the wake of Walker's death, tweeting "prayers for my city today."

Walker's family has questioned the use of deadly force against him by the officers.

An attorney for the family, Bobby DiCello, said that he has not seen any evidence yet regarding allegations that Walker had shot at officers and that the man was unarmed and fleeing when being shot.

Akron declared a state of emergency on Monday, imposing a curfew for the city's downtown for the night and canceling the Independence Day fireworks performance.

"Early yesterday, we had several peaceful protests in the downtown footprint related to the officer-involved shooting of Jayland Walker," Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan said in a statement on Monday. "These protests did not escalate to violence and destruction."

"However, as night fell and others began to join, the protests became no longer peaceful. There was significant property damage done to downtown Akron," Horrigan continued. "We cannot and will not tolerate violence or the destruction of property."

The police killing of Walker came a month after the second anniversary of African American man George Floyd's murder by white police officer Derek Chauvin who pressed his knee on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds during a street arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Photo taken on May 22, 2022 shows George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

Floyd's death set off nationwide demonstrations against police brutality and racism in the United States in the summer of 2020.

"Racism is real in America. It has always been. Xenophobia is real in America. It has always been," U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said from the White House in May.

According to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll that month, three-quarters of African Americans are worried that they or someone they love will be attacked because of their race. The survey also found that more than half of African Americans believe the problem of racism will get worse in their lifetimes.

Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, also weighed in on Walker's suffering, saying that his death "was murder. Point blank."

"This doesn't happen to white people in America," Johnson said. "We are just trying to live our lives, and we are tired of being hunted like prey. We know that pulling over for the police is often a death sentence."

Police in the United States shoot and kill over 1,000 people each year, and African Americans are victims at a disproportionate rate, according to data from Mapping Police Violence.

African Americans are nearly three times more likely to be shot and killed by law enforcement than their white counterparts, the data showed. 
A plane carrying medical supplies donated by a Chinese company arrives in Algiers, Algeria, on March 27, 2020. (Xinhua)

BEIJING, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday sent a congratulatory message to President of the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria Abdelmadjid Tebboune on the 60th anniversary of the victory of the Algerian War of Independence.

Sixty years ago, the Algerian people realized national independence and people's liberation after going through an arduous struggle, opening a glorious chapter of the liberation movements of the Arabian and African people, Xi said.

The Chinese government and the Chinese people provided support and assistance to Algeria's independence revolution, and the two countries and their people had forged a profound friendship during the struggles, he added.

In recent years, political mutual trust between the two countries has been strengthened continuously and bilateral practical cooperation has been fruitful, taking the China-Algeria comprehensive strategic partnership to ever new levels, he said.

Xi also said that he highly values the development of China-Algeria relations, and stands ready to work together with President Tebboune to push forward bilateral communication and cooperation in all fields within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative to benefit both countries and their people.

On the same day, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang sent a congratulatory message to Algerian Prime Minister Ayman Benabderrahmane.

Since the two countries established diplomatic ties 64 years ago, bilateral relations have been developing healthily and steadily, Li said, noting that he is willing to work with Benabderrahmane to expand and deepen mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries in various fields, enrich the content of the China-Algeria comprehensive strategic partnership, and continuously improve the well-being of the people of the two countries. 
Police vehicles are seen at North Shore Hospital in Highland Park, Illinois, the United States, July 4, 2022. Six people have been confirmed killed in a mass shooting at an Independence Day parade Monday morning in Highland Park in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Vincent Johnson/Xinhua)

NEW YORK, July 4 (Xinhua) -- The latest mass shooting targeting participants of an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, in the northern suburbs of Chicago, on Monday morning has sent a new round of shock waves across the United States.

Not only the death of six people and injury of 31 others, but also the on-going manhunt of the shooter hours after the calamity leave many on high alert.

Tom Genest, a resident from Highland Park, told Xinhua that his family has been living there for several generations and gun shooting has never happened in the area before.

Many police were deployed along the route of the parade, according to Genest, who was around two blocks away from the scene when gun fire took place.

Celebration activities in nearby areas like the City of Evanston and Village of Deerfield have been cancelled out of an abundance of caution.

In New York City, the police is keeping a close eye on large gatherings amid fears of copycat moves as the city is scheduled to display spectacular fireworks over the East River and hold other celebration activities on Monday.

"The New York City Police Department will have officers on the ground throughout the five boroughs to prevent crime with a particular focus on gun violence," New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement.

The carnage on Monday re-focused people's attention on gun violence and gun control in the country and brought back the memories of recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas; Buffalo, New York; Tulsa, Oklahoma, and other places.

The mass shooting in Highland Park "is a devastating reminder of the horrific damage gun violence inflicts in our communities," said New York Police Department Commissioner Keechant Sewell.

Alan Goldsher, a writer from the Chicago area, said via his twitter account, "I grew up two suburbs away from Highland Park. The fact that there was a mass shooting in that area is beyond concerning ... It's not a Chicago thing. It's a society thing."

Gun violence is a matter of accessibility and abundance of guns and is a public health issue rather than a mental health issue, according to a recent opinion piece by Hank Milius, president and chief executive officer at Meridian Health Services from Indiana.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker condemned the "monster" and "evil" behind the mass shooting, saying, "We must and we will end this plague of gun violence."

In a statement issued by the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden said he was "shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day."

Biden urged federal law enforcement to assist in the search for the shooter.

Biden mentioned the bipartisan gun reform legislation which he recently signed into law and said more work needs to be done to fight the "epidemic of gun violence."

The gun safety law requires young people ages 18 to 21 to undergo enhanced background checks, but the law alone is unlikely to tackle the gun violence issue.

Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court added tensions over gun control in late June by striking down a century-old New York State law requiring gun owners to have probable cause in order to carry a concealed weapon.

The United States has recorded 309 cases of mass shootings so far this year, and as many as 22,324 people died from gun violence, without easing from the jump in the previous two years, according to Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit organization that tracks gun-related violence in the country. 

A police vehicle runs towards the scene of a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, the United States, July 4, 2022. Six people have been confirmed killed in a mass shooting at an Independence Day parade Monday morning in Highland Park in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Vincent Johnson/Xinhua)

The VIP grandstand of the Independence Day parade sit empty after a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, the United States, July 4, 2022. Six people have been confirmed killed in a mass shooting at an Independence Day parade Monday morning in Highland Park in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Vincent Johnson/Xinhua)

An empty stroller is left behind at the scene of a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, the United States, July 4, 2022. Six people have been confirmed killed in a mass shooting at an Independence Day parade Monday morning in Highland Park in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Vincent Johnson/Xinhua)

Police officers take photos and investigate at the scene of a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, the United States, July 4, 2022. Six people have been confirmed killed in a mass shooting at an Independence Day parade Monday morning in Highland Park in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Vincent Johnson/Xinhua)

A child's chair sits empty after it was abandoned in a hurry during a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, the United States, July 4, 2022. Six people have been confirmed killed in a mass shooting at an Independence Day parade Monday morning in Highland Park in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Vincent Johnson/Xinhua)

A police vehicle runs out of the scene of a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, the United States, July 4, 2022. Six people have been confirmed killed in a mass shooting at an Independence Day parade Monday morning in Highland Park in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Vincent Johnson/Xinhua)

A sniper looks over after a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, the United States, July 4, 2022. Six people have been confirmed killed in a mass shooting at an Independence Day parade Monday morning in Highland Park in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Vincent Johnson/Xinhua)

A police officer stands guard at the scene of a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, the United States, July 4, 2022. Six people have been confirmed killed in a mass shooting at an Independence Day parade Monday morning in Highland Park in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Vincent Johnson/Xinhua)

Central Ave is lined with empty lawn chairs and personal belongings after a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, the United States, July 4, 2022. Six people have been confirmed killed in a mass shooting at an Independence Day parade Monday morning in Highland Park in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Vincent Johnson/Xinhua)
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Myanmar's Foreign Minister U Wunna Maung Lwin, Lao Vice Premier and Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith, Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn, Thai Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai and Vietnamese Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son attend the seventh Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Bagan, Myanmar, July 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Dongqiang)

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China will continue to pursue a neighborhood diplomacy featuring amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, and is ready to share the dividends of cooperation with Mekong countries, so as to add more vitality and dynamics to the LMC and create a better future for the people of regional countries.



BAGAN, Myanmar, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Monday that the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) has been turned into a "golden model" of regional cooperation six years after it was launched with fruitful results.

During a joint press conference with Myanmar's Foreign Minister U Wunna Maung Lwin, which was held following the seventh LMC Foreign Ministers' Meeting earlier in the day in Bagan, Myanmar, Wang said the six countries along the Lancang-Mekong river will continue to treat each other on an equal footing and cooperate closely to promote development and work for the upgrading of the LMC mechanism.

Wang said a host of new cooperation consensus has been achieved at the foreign ministers' meeting.

First, the meeting set future directions for the LMC cooperation, namely, enhancing strategic guidance, deepening economic integration, expanding agricultural cooperation, upholding green development, promoting digital cooperation, and maintaining closer people-to-people and cultural exchanges.

Second, the meeting announced six plans to be implemented in the next stage for the LMC cooperation, which include an action plan on Lancang-Mekong agricultural cooperation, a beneficial plan on Lancang-Mekong water resources, a cooperation plan on Lancang-Mekong digital economy, a Lancang-Mekong space cooperation plan, a Lancang-Mekong talent plan, and a Lancang-Mekong public health cooperation plan.

Third, the meeting endorsed the Five-Year Plan of Action on the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (2023-2027) and issued documents including a joint press communique and joint statements on deepening customs-trade security and customs clearance facilitation, agricultural cooperation and the guarantee of food security, disaster management cooperation, and cultural exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations.

Wang said China will continue to pursue a neighborhood diplomacy featuring amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, and is ready to share the dividends of cooperation with Mekong countries, so as to add more vitality and dynamics to the LMC and create a better future for the people of regional countries.
By Azernews

By Laman Ismayilova

The list of historical Azerbaijani cultural and religious sites damaged or destroyed as the result of the Armenian occupation can be continued indefinitely.

Azerbaijan has launched a grand reconstruction plan for its lands liberated from the three decades of the Armenian occupation after the Second Karabakh War in 2020.

At the same time, Azerbaijani Culture Minister Anar Karimov announced that the ministry plans to examine archival documents in neighboring countries for a deep study of Azerbaijan's historical and cultural monuments, Azernews reports citing Azertac.

Furthermore, the publications will be printed and promoted at the international level.

The statement was made at the book presentation "Our material and cultural heritage in the historical lands of Azerbaijan: from Irevan to Zangezur".

In his speech, Anar Karimov touched upon the restoration work currently underway.

"Times have changed. Our native lands occupied by Armenia for almost thirty years were liberated by the Azerbaijani army under the leadership of President, Supreme Commander-in-Chief Ilham Aliyev. Now construction works are being carried out in those areas. Along with infrastructure projects, Azerbaijan's historical and cultural monuments are being restored and returned to their former appearance...," said Anar Karimov.

Speaking at the event, the chairman of the Board of the Center for Social Studies, Zahid Oruj, said that the book thoroughly examines the history of 244 monuments and provides their register according to the correct scientific classification.

The publication provides insight into 40 mosques, 38 mortuary monuments, 15 temples, 13 fortresses, 19 Albanian churches, 13 caravansaries, 8 tombs, 6 ethnographic-archaeological monuments, and three mausoleums, and much more.

Deputy Chair of the Milli Majlis especially emphasized the importance of the event dedicated to Azerbaijan's historical and cultural heritage destroyed by Armenia.

Chairman of the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations Mubariz Gurbanli said that the book reflects important issues and can give successful results in preventing the policy of appropriation conducted by Armenia.
ADEN, Yemen, July 5 (Xinhua) -- At least 10 people were killed in an explosion that rocked a weapon warehouse in Yemen's southern province of Abyan on Tuesday, a security official told Xinhua.

A large explosion rocked a building used to store weapons in Abyan's district of Lawdar, leaving at least 10 killed and more than 35 others injured, the local security source said on condition of anonymity.

Search for survivors continues at the site, said the source, adding the death toll could rise.

A number of nearby residential buildings and business stores were partially damaged as a result of the explosion, the source said.

The cause of the explosion is unknown and an investigation was launched by local authorities. 
LHASA, July 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua has stressed efforts to consolidate poverty alleviation achievements and push forward rural vitalization on all fronts to ensure that people do not return to poverty in large numbers.

Hu, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks during his inspection in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region from July 1 to 4.

In Tibet, Hu learned about the employment and income of people who had risen out of poverty, agricultural development with local features, rural infrastructure construction and public services in the region.

Consolidating poverty alleviation outcomes should be a priority for areas having been lifted out of poverty, said Hu, calling for continuous efforts to increase people's incomes by developing modern agriculture and animal husbandry, boosting the processing and circulation of agricultural products, and developing rural tourism, among others.

Hu also underlined efforts to advance rural vitalization, enhance rural infrastructure construction, boost public services, and keep improving the production and living conditions of farmers and herdsmen.

Work should be done to keep promoting the development of ethnic minority areas, and encourage all ethnic groups to work together in pursuit of common development and prosperity, he said. 
JERUSALEM, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Minister of Economy and Industry Orna Barbivai on Tuesday announced the reopening of Israel's Economic and Trade Mission office in Turkey.

The representation in Istanbul will resume activity on Aug. 1, after being drastically reduced in 2019, said a statement issued by her ministry.

There has been a decline in Israeli economic activity with Turkey since 2010 over political tensions, Shira Kaveh, the ministry's spokeswoman, told Xinhua.

The latest decision to resume activity is part of the warming of relations between the two countries in recent months, which included a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Ankara in early March.

In late May, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu paid a visit to Israel, during which the two countries agreed to boost their economic cooperation.

The Israeli ministry noted that Turkey is the fourth most important trading partner and the fifth most important export destination for Israel in 2021. The two countries also share a free trade agreement signed in 1997.

Mutual trade in goods and business services between the two countries amounted to 7.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, an increase of about 30 percent from 2020, according to the ministry. 
HONG KONG, July 5 (Xinhua) -- The Office of the Commissioner of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) has strongly disapproved, firmly rejected and roundly condemned gross interference in Hong Kong affairs and China's internal affairs that tramples on the basic norms of international relations.

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland, some French politicians smeared the practice of "one country, two systems" in Hong Kong and the new governance team of the HKSAR government, and a few consulates-general in Hong Kong also hyped up the slanders, said a spokesperson for the office on Monday.

The spokesperson said that since its return to the motherland, Hong Kong has fully leveraged its role as an important window and bridge connecting the Chinese mainland with the world, and maintained its status as an international financial, shipping and trading center.

Hong Kong's remarkable development achievements fully prove that "one country, two systems" has strong vitality and is a good system for ensuring Hong Kong's long-term prosperity and stability and safeguarding the well-being of Hong Kong compatriots, the spokesperson said.

Hong Kong has transitioned from chaos to stability and is on a new stage towards greater prosperity and effective governance, the spokesperson said, adding the national security law in Hong Kong has plugged Hong Kong's loophole in safeguarding national security, and the improved electoral system has ensured that the principle of "patriots administering Hong Kong" is implemented.

"We believe that with the able leadership and firm support of the central government, the strong backing of the motherland, and common efforts of more than 7 million Hong Kong compatriots, the patriotic Hong Kong governance team will lead all social sectors to open a new chapter for Hong Kong, and Hong Kong will certainly enjoy a brighter future," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson pointed out that a few Western countries made irresponsible comments on the practice of "one country, two systems" in Hong Kong and on Hong Kong affairs and China's internal affairs at such a festive moment for all Chinese people, which fully exposed their sinister intention to disrupt the stable Hong Kong and well-developed China.

Any smear about the successful practice of "one country, two systems" will be futile, any interference into China's internal affairs will never succeed, and no external force can stop the steady development of "one country, two systems" and Hong Kong's prosperity and stability, the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson stressed that Hong Kong is part of China and Hong Kong affairs are purely China's internal affairs.

The spokesperson urged the relevant countries to recognize the general trend, reflect on themselves, change course, abide by international law and basic norms governing international relations, immediately stop the words and deeds that intend to disrupt Hong Kong, and stop meddling with China's internal affairs, otherwise they will shoot themselves in the foot. 
BEIJING, July 5 (Xinhua) -- The 5th Digital China Summit will be held in the city of Fuzhou in east China's Fujian Province from July 23 to 24, the organizers announced Tuesday.

The summit, co-sponsored by authorities including the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the provincial government of Fujian, will focus on innovation-driven new changes and digitalization-led new landscapes in pursuing the Digital China initiative.

A special exhibition will be held as part of the summit to display the latest achievements in building a "digital China" over the last five years. The organizers said there would also be a digital product expo at the summit.

Cao Shumin, deputy head of the CAC, said the summit adheres to its role as a platform to issue the country's policies on information technology development. It also showcases the latest achievements in pursuing the Digital China initiative, conducts exchanges on e-government and digital economy theories, and pools strengths to advance cooperation in relevant aspects. 
Staff members select goods ordered online at Jiamei Supermarket in Sixian County, Suzhou City, east China's Anhui Province, July 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Bohan)

HEFEI, July 5 (Xinhua) -- East China's Anhui Province, which is combating the latest COVID-19 resurgence, has taken a range of measures to guarantee the supply of daily necessities.

From June 26 to July 4, a total of 186 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 895 asymptomatic carriers had been logged in the latest epidemic resurgence in Anhui, with the majority of cases being reported in Sixian County, the provincial health commission said Tuesday.

More than 60 supermarkets have been arranged to supply daily necessities to residents in the virus-hit Sixian, where 52 confirmed cases and 164 asymptomatic carriers were reported on Monday alone.

To reduce people-to-people contact, residents can place orders online. Nearly 30,000 orders of individual and collective buying are delivered per day on average in Sixian, according to Lu Qiang, head of the county's bureau of commerce.

"I bought two packages of chicken wings, four apples, eight steamed buns and some vegetables. It cost me less than 80 yuan (around 12 U.S. dollars), which is about the same price at normal times," said a resident surnamed Yao, who did the grocery shopping online.

Local authorities are also monitoring prices and cracking down on illegal behaviors such as hoarding, fabricating information and price gouging. At present, daily necessities such as flour, rice, meat, cooking oil and more are in stable supply in Sixian.

"We deliver about 3,000 orders of groceries per day on average," said Meng Tao, general manager of Jiamei supermarket in the county.

Meng and 94 other supermarket employees have been living in the supermarket or designated hotels since the latest COVID-19 emergence.

"We try to arrange one delivery vehicle for each residential community after we gather all the orders. The groceries will be picked up by volunteers waiting at community gates and then sent to each household after disinfection," said Meng.

A management system of "three heads" has been implemented in the county to ensure the smooth delivery of supplies and the needs of residents are met in a timely and orderly manner.

Xu Ke, 27, a local government official, is appointed as the head of the Taoliwenyuan community in Sixian. Together with 14 building heads and 68 unit heads, Xu is responsible for collecting the needs of and delivering supplies to the households in the community.

Each unit head is in charge of the daily supplies of 13 households. For the vulnerable group such as the aged and the disabled, the unit heads will call them or go to their homes to provide services. "The management system breaks down our work to each individual, which enables us to respond to people's needs more precisely," Xu said.

"Some residents have also donated rice, vegetables and instant noodles to those in need in the community. We are all like a big family in this special situation, trying to weather through the difficult time together," she added. 

Aerial photo taken on July 4, 2022 shows a delivery vehicle of Jiamei Supermarket delivering ordered goods to a residential community in Sixian County, Suzhou City, east China's Anhui Province. (Xinhua/Huang Bohan)

Staff members of a residential community transport ordered goods of residents in Sixian County, Suzhou City, east China's Anhui Province, July 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Bohan)

A staff member packs goods at Jiamei Supermarket in Sixian County, Suzhou City, east China's Anhui Province, July 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Bohan)

A staff member packs goods at Jiamei Supermarket in Sixian County, Suzhou City, east China's Anhui Province, July 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Bohan)

Staff members select goods ordered online at Jiamei Supermarket in Sixian County, Suzhou City, east China's Anhui Province, July 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Bohan)

A staff member selects goods ordered online at Jiamei Supermarket in Sixian County, Suzhou City, east China's Anhui Province, July 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Bohan)

Staff members pack goods ordered online at Jiamei Supermarket in Sixian County, Suzhou City, east China's Anhui Province, July 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Bohan)

Staff members select goods ordered online at Jiamei Supermarket in Sixian County, Suzhou City, east China's Anhui Province, July 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Bohan)

A staff member packs goods at Jiamei Supermarket in Sixian County, Suzhou City, east China's Anhui Province, July 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Bohan)
A Palestinian woman inspects a mobile application called Our Space at the Community Media Center in Gaza City, on June 30, 2022. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

About 58 percent of women in the Palestinian territories were exposed to domestic violence in 2021, either physical or psychological.

by Sanaa Kamal

GAZA, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Hiba Mohammed, a middle-aged Palestinian woman in Gaza, has eventually managed to stand on her feet against the domestic violence she has been suffering for years.

A month ago, the 49-year-old registered in a mobile application called Our Space, which was recommended by her friend to seek help and put an end to her suffering.

"I have been suffering since I was 14 when my family forced me to marry a man about 15 years older than me," the mother of four told Xinhua.

For 20 years, the woman recalled, she was subjected to various kinds of domestic violence, either from her husband or his family who treated her as a maid rather than a wife or daughter-in-law.

A Palestinian woman walks on a field in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia, on Feb. 12, 2019. (Xinhua/Stringer)

In 2015, her husband died from cancer. Yet her suffering did not stop there, as her brothers forced her to leave her children to marry a new elderly man in her family home.

"Since returning to my family home, I have been deprived of seeing my sons while my brothers beat me from time to time ... and I became a new maid of my brothers' wives who did not respect me," she whined.

In an attempt to escape from her tragic life, Hiba tried to commit suicide more than once by taking doses of medicinal pills, but all failed and only led to more abuses.

A Palestinian woman attends a music therapy session at the Kayan Cultural Center in Gaza City, on Feb. 23, 2022. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

A similar story was told by Halima Ahmed from the town of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, where she was subjected to beatings by her brothers and husband for more than 10 years.

"Unfortunately, the societal culture encourages women to accept insults and obey their husbands, even if his decisions were wrong," the 40-year-old mother of seven told Xinhua.

"After many years of suffering, my husband abandoned me and my sons. We were left without a breadwinner and faced poverty," she said.

With the help of the Our Space app, both Hiba and Halima now receive psychological support provided by a feminist institution, which assists them in confronting domestic violence.

"This application helps battered women access their own institutions with less time, effort, cost, and more confidentiality," Salma Swirki, a psychologist at the Women's Affairs Center in Gaza, a partner of the Our Space app, told Xinhua.

"As soon as a woman contacts us, we communicate with her through the free number available on the application, or via e-mails in order to provide our guidance to her ... After that, we manage a meeting with the woman and prepare a counselling program for her in a face-to-face manner," she said.

People visit an exhibition called "March Flower" about the Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip, in Gaza City, on March 9, 2020. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

In partnership with 14 women's nongovernmental organizations, the app provides psychological, economic, social, and legal support, as well as shelter for women who suffer from domestic violence.

About 58.2 percent of women in the Palestinian territories were exposed to domestic violence in 2021, either physical or psychological, according to a report issued by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in March. 
People shop at a grocery store in the Brooklyn borough of New York, the United States, on June 10, 2022. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)

According to data from the CDC, 33 percent of Americans should be masking while indoors and an additional 36 percent should be considering the measure based on their risk for severe COVID-19 as of Thursday.

LOS ANGELES, July 5 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that nearly 70 percent of the country's population should either be wearing or considering wearing masks inside public spaces, U.S. News and World Report reported.

According to data from the CDC, 33 percent of Americans should be masking while indoors and an additional 36 percent should be considering the measure based on their risk for severe COVID-19 as of Thursday, the news outlet reported on Friday, noting that the percentage of Americans who should be wearing a mask indoors in public spaces or considering the measure is increasing as the United States heads into the holiday weekend.

Coronavirus cases in the United States are increasing slightly while hospitalization rates are also up. The country is currently averaging nearly 110,000 new cases each day, which is about 10,000 more infections than the average a week prior, said the report.

The majority of states are seeing increasing COVID-19 infections, the report added, citing data from Johns Hopkins University.

The development came after two new Omicron subvariants that are highly transmissible took over as the dominant strains circulating in the country. Experts have predicted that the subvariants - BA.4 and BA.5 - could lead to a small increase in cases or, at the very least, an extended plateau of the latest coronavirus wave, according to the report. 
CHICAGO, July 5 (Xinhua) -- The death toll of a massive shooting during an Independence Day parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park on Monday has risen to seven, as police updated the number of people wounded to 46.

Sergeant Christopher Covelli from the Lake County Major Crime Task Force confirmed the death at a news conference on Tuesday.

Covelli said 22-year-old suspect Robert "Bobby" Crimo III used a high-powered rifle and fired more than 70 rounds into the crowd.

The police said Crimo pre-planned the attack for several weeks, and acted alone in the attack.

During an Independence Day parade held in Highland Park in the northeastern part of U.S. state Illinois, Crimo used a high-powered rifle and fired from a rooftop into parade participants. The rifle has been recovered at the scene.

The police found a second rifle in Crimo's vehicle when he was arrested Monday evening.

Highland Park is an affluent neighborhood 40 km north of Chicago, and residents there will hold a candlelight vigil for the deceased Tuesday night. 
A military parade is held to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Algeria's independence, in Algiers, Algeria, on July 5, 2022. (Algerian Ministry of National Defence/ Handout via Xinhua)

ALGIERS, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Algeria on Tuesday held a grand military parade to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its independence from French colonialism, with the attendance of senior local and foreign officials.

In a televised message before the parade, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said the Independence Day celebrations "bear the meanings of loyalty to the martyrs, and to the eternal message of November" 1954, referring to the victory of the Algerian War of Independence.

Algerian soldiers march in a military parade to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Algeria's independence, in Algiers, Algeria, on July 5, 2022. (Algerian Ministry of National Defence/ Handout via Xinhua)

Tebboune, who is also commander-in-chief of the People's National Army, inspected parade formations of land, air and naval forces as well as the National Gendarmerie as they passed through a seaside square near the newly built Grand Mosque of Algiers.

The parade also featured hundreds of military vehicles, including missile launchers, armored personnel carriers, and Soviet-era tanks.

An aerial refueling tanker and six fighter jets stage a flyover during a military parade to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Algeria's independence, in Algiers, Algeria, on July 5, 2022. (Xinhua)

After the flyover of Algerian fighter jets in a triangle formation, a showcase of warships including frigates and submarines concluded the parade.

Senior Algerian military officials including Army Chief of Staff Said Chengriha attended the parade, together with foreign leaders and ministers, including the presidents of Tunisia, Ethiopia and Niger.

Missile launchers are seen during a military parade to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Algeria's independence in Algiers, Algeria, on July 5, 2022. (Algerian Ministry of National Defence/ Handout via Xinhua)
By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Elnur Mammadov and Japanese Deputy Assistant Minister, the special representative for Central Asia, the Caucasus, and GUAM, Ambassador Tokuda Shuichi have discussed multifarious cooperation and regional security issues, Azernews reports.

The discussions took place as a part of the next, 12th meeting of political consultations between the Foreign Ministries of the two countries on July 4.

The sides discussed the current level of relations between the two countries, and the prospects for expanding and developing cooperation in political, economic, humanitarian, and other fields during the meeting.

The parties also exchanged views on cooperation between Azerbaijan and Japan in energy, alternative energy, economy, humanitarian and other sectors.

The diplomats congratulated each other on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and Japan.

Mammadov provided extensive information to the opposing party regarding the region's present post-conflict state, the mine clearance procedure in the territories liberated from occupation, and the restoration and building activities carried out by Azerbaijan in the regions.

The sides also discussed collaboration within international organizations, regional challenges, especially the situation in Ukraine, and subjects of mutual interest during the meeting.
LONDON, July 5 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under renewed pressure to go following the shock resignations of two key cabinet ministers on the same day, political experts told Xinhua on Tuesday.

"This looks like the beginning of the end for Boris Johnson. He's lost two of the ministers, who many would regard as among the most competent in the Cabinet, those who have a quality that would be accepted by other potential leaders," said Professor Iain Begg, a political expert at the London School of Economics and Political Science's (LSE) European Institute.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak resigned on Tuesday in protest against Johnson's leadership. Javid said he "can no longer, in good conscience, continue serving in this government," while Sunak criticized the government's lack of competence.

Though Johnson has scrambled to make a swift cabinet reshuffle by appointing Steve Barclay as the new health secretary and Nadhim Zahawi as the new Chancellor, Begg believes the departure of two high-profile ministers and their scathing attack on Johnson's leadership will add to the pressure on his already precarious premiership.

"The two resignations tonight and a couple of other resignations by lesser figures clearly intensify the pressure on Boris Johnson to go," he told Xinhua, noting a series of scandals engulfing the prime minister.

He called Johnson's survival of a no-confidence vote within his own party weeks ago "a close-run thing."

In the confidence vote over the "Partygate" scandal that saw Johnson and government employees revel in alcohol-fueled parties at Downing Street over the past two years when the country was in COVID-19 lockdown, lawmakers who voted against him amounted to more than 40 percent.

The latest scandal involved Johnson's appointment of lawmaker Christopher Pincher to deputy chief whip despite being informed of formal complaints about his sexual misconduct.

Johnson went on television to apologize for Pincher's appointment minutes before the two cabinet ministers' announcements of resignation.

"Johnson is now extremely weakened. The question for him now is whether others, either in the Cabinet or in his own party, will say, this is too much. We must get rid of this man because he's bringing us all down," Begg said. "The accumulation of forces is pointing in the direction of him going, and going quickly."

"The likelihood is there's going to be a lot soul-searching, both among members of the Cabinet who are not directly beholden to Boris Johnson and others in the party, and the likelihood is that they will find a way to topple him," he added.

Professor Jon Tonge from the political department at the University of Liverpool told Xinhua, "Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on political death row. Any further resignations and it's surely the end. His political credibility is in ruins regardless." 
OUAGADOUGOU, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Nine people, including six army auxiliaries and three civilians, lost their lives in an attack by armed men in northern Burkina Faso on Saturday, a release from the regional governor said late on Monday.

The statement by David Valentin Ouedraogo, governor of the Nord Region, said armed men raided the Namissiguima village Saturday, caused significant damages and went away with livestock.

"Security sweep operation by the defense and security forces established a death toll at nine, comprising six members of Defense of the Motherland (VDP) unit and three civilians", it said. 
ISLAMABAD, July 5 (Xinhua) -- A Dubai-bound passenger flight from India made an emergency landing at Jinnah International Airport in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi after it developed a technical fault, officials said on Tuesday.

Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) spokesperson Saifur Rehman told local media that the Indian aircraft Boeing 737 with nearly 100 passengers on board was heading to Dubai when the pilot of the plane contacted the control tower at Karachi airport and requested a landing.

The Pakistani authorities allowed the plane for an emergency landing and the aircraft landed safely at the airport, Rehman said.

The airplane reported an oil leakage and the repair work was underway, the official said, adding that the passengers aboard have been safely moved to the transit lounge.

The CAA spokesperson said that all flight operations at Jinnah International Airport are normal.

Authorities in Pakistan said that an alternative flight will be arranged to send the passengers to their destination if the plane is not fixed. 
KABUL, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Some 1,000 people after receiving police training have been commissioned to the Afghan police forces, authorities said on Tuesday.

Up to 400 police received graduation certificates from Paktia Police Academy Training Center at a ceremony held in eastern Paktia province Tuesday morning, the local government said in a statement.

In southern Kandahar province, 600 recruits graduated from a regional police training center in the provincial capital Kandahar city on Monday, according to the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs.

They will be deployed in Kandahar and neighboring Zabul province to ensure law and order, the statement said.

The newly trained personnel held parades during the graduation ceremonies, demonstrating their ability to combat drug trafficking, kidnapping, and other crimes.

The Taliban-run administration has intensified efforts to improve the professionalism of the police and build the capacity of police personnel to ensure law and order in the war-torn Asian country.

On Monday, 500 police recruits joined Afghan police in the northern Afghan region. 
SYDNEY, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Health authorities of the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) warned on Tuesday that the state is facing a new wave of COVID-19, urging the public to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

"We are at the beginning of the third wave of Omicron which is likely to peak in late July or early August. This increase in community transmission brings with it greatly increased risks for those not up to date with their vaccines," said NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard in a statement.

The state health department recorded 10,504 new COVID-19 cases and 14 deaths in the past 24 hours till 4:00 p.m. Monday. Compared to the state's COVID-19 figures last week, hospitalisations also grew to 1,782 with an over 200 increase.

Hazzard said the current wave of infections was driven by the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, and figures show 56 percent of COVID-related deaths in the state this year were in people who have had two or fewer doses.

"The best way you can protect yourself from serious illness or worse is to get every vaccination that is available to you," the health minister said.

The warning cited data from Australia's National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, which stressed that "fully vaccinated people could get 65 percent greater protection against hospitalisation or death from Omicron than two vaccine doses alone afford."

NSW Chief Health Officer Dr. Kerry Chant said in addition to booking in for a booster, people should exercise common sense and wear a face mask in public indoor spaces, where physical distancing cannot be maintained.

"Unless we pull together as one again, this new wave will hit schools and businesses hard, just like BA.1 did, which saw thousands of workers absent." 
JAKARTA, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Rescuers continued searching for 15 fishermen who went missing after their boat sank in the Arafura Sea, an Indonesian official said on Tuesday.

The boat, KM Setia Makmur 06, was hit by huge waves during poor weather when it was sailing in the sea on Saturday, said Darmawan Widi, spokesman of the search and rescue office in Merauke district of Indonesia's Papua province.

A search and rescue operation was carried out after the office received the information about the incident, and several other fishing boats near the site were asked to help the operation, said the official.

"Ten people have been rescued safely, but 15 others remain missing," he told Xinhua, saying the boat carried 25 people.

The search for the victims was also conducted by air and a plane of the Indonesian air force was involved, according to the official.

"Today, a navy's warship would also be deployed to the scene," he said.

The fishing boat departed from a seaport in Dobo, the capital of Kepulauan Aru (Aru islands) district of Maluku province, on June 24, he added. 
ISTANBUL, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Turkey banned entry to all the forests of its largest city Istanbul on Tuesday until the end of July over fire concerns, according to local officials.

Istanbul Governor Ali Yerlikaya announced on Twitter that all kinds of activities involving fire and fuel, such as barbecuing and smoking hookahs, are also strictly prohibited in national parks, local parks, and picnic and ecotourism areas.

He noted that in a city with a population of more than 16 million, human activities in such areas, which are usually crowded with Istanbulites during the summer months, can ignite fires easily.

Concerns of forest fires have been rising in the country as a massive wildfire caused devastation in southwestern Turkey by burning down nearly 4,000 hectares of forest last month. The police detained a man who confessed to having started the fire following a quarrel with his family members.

The country's western provinces Izmir and Canakkale also saw some wildfires over the past week, according to press reports.

Last summer, Turkey was hit by one of the worst forest fires in its history fueled by strong winds, high temperatures, and low humidity, which swept 53 provinces, killed at least eight people and numerous animals. 
Celebrating Venezuela's Independence Day, Google doodle honors the signing of the 1811 Venezuelan Declaration of Independence which is also known as Cinco de Julio. Today is Venezuela's Independence Day. The Declaration, housed in the nation's capital, Caracas, establishes Venezuela's sovereignty from Spain.

In recent years, it has also been observed as National Armed Forces Day (Da de la Fuerza Armada Nacional) to recognise the dedication of all active-duty personnel as well as veterans of Venezuela's National Bolivarian Armed Forces.

A TV broadcast that includes a speech from the president kicks off Independence Day. Following that, a military Independence Day parade is held in Caracas's centre.

The day is spent engaging in family activities, socialising with friends and family, and various outdoor and indoor pursuits. Every public office and school is closed, as well as certain private businesses with the exception of commercial companies. The National Assembly has a televised special session in the morning in honour of the holiday, during which the declaration is read aloud in public and the work of the members of the Constituent Congress of 1811, who made it possible, is remembered.

Many state capital cities also have holiday parades and celebrations, often with the state governor as the main guest.



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BEIRUT: Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati reaffirmed his opposition to resolving the dispute over the maritime border with Israel through unofficial means.

In a meeting on Monday with Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, Mikati said, "Lebanon considers hat any action outside the diplomatic setting sought by the government to settle maritime border demarcation with Israel is unacceptable and exposes the country to unnecessary risks."

In response to Hezbollah's July 2 launch of three unarmed drones on a reconnaissance mission toward the Karish gas field in the eastern Mediterranean, which Israel believes is within its economic zone and Beirut contends is situated in disputed waters, the prime minister-designate made the comments.

The terrorist group, which is based in Lebanon, said that it sent the drones to show that the Shia movement has the "military and logistical capacity" to stop Israel from obtaining gas from the gas field. Mikati urged all parties to "display a spirit of tremendous national responsibility and adhere to the state's negotiation method" in his speech on Monday.

He also reiterated Lebanon's support for US Energy Envoy Amos Hochstein's initiatives to find a solution for Israel's maritime border demarcation that fully preserves his country's rights.

Ukraine Recovery Conference held in Switzerland

Kiev deems the military operation in Lugansk region 'successful'

US failed to take initiative in Doha nuclear talks: Iran
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron has reorganized his Cabinet for the second time in six weeks, the Elysee announced.

Brigitte Bourguignon (Health), Justine Benin (Sea), and Amelie de Montchalin (Ecological Transition) are the three ministers that lost their positions in the legislative elections in June and were replaced on Monday, according to the Xinhua report. Yael Braun-Pivet, a former Minister of the Overseas Territories, also resigned from her position after being named President of the National Assembly.

Braun-Pivet's Ministry will be taken over by Gerald Darmanin, who has also retained his post as Interior Minister. Damien Abad, the former Minister of Solidarity and Social Cohesion who has been charged with attempted rape, was replaced by Jean-Christophe Combe, the former head of the French Red Cross.

The new government includes 41 members, including 10 Secretaries of State, 15 Minister representatives, and 16 Ministries. Elisabeth Borne, the new prime minister nominated by Macron on May 16, is anticipated to announce the new administration's agenda to the National Assembly on July 6. After winning the presidential election in April, Macron first-named ministers for the new administration on May 20.

Lebanon likely to settle maritime border dispute with Israel

Inflation in SouthKorea rises to 24-year high

Macron and Albanese discuss future ties between France, Australia
By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

Azerbaijans third-largest city of Sumgayit has sent humanitarian aid, including food, household items, and medical supplies to Ukraine, Azernews reports, citing the city administration.

The humanitarian cargo to be delivered to the Polish Warsaw airport departed from the Heydar Aliyev International Airport at 1000 hours on July 5 with the Ukrainian ambassador in Baku and members of Sumgayit city administrations in presence.

The humanitarian supply, totaling 50 tons, was sent in response to an official request to the Sumgayit city administration from Ukraine's Cherkasy regional administration as twin cities and is meant for the needs of the regional population, the report underlined.

On July 5, at the Heydar Aliyev International Airport, Ukrainian ambassador to Azerbaijan Vladislav Kanevsky told the media that Azerbaijan had supplied over 1,500 tons of humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

"I am glad that another meeting is taking place here, in a symbolic place, at Baku airport. It is from here that Azerbaijan's humanitarian aid to Ukraine is sent. And I would like to express my sincere gratitude to friendly Azerbaijan, to all the Azerbaijani people for providing such important humanitarian aid to Ukraine. In total, Azerbaijan has already handed over to Ukraine more than 1,500 tons of important humanitarian cargo worth over 20 million dollars. This is not just a formal gesture - Azerbaijan is transferring critical aid to the civilians of Ukraine. It includes both food and medical equipment. It is gratifying that the process of providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine has reached a new level, and in this regard, I would like to thank the Executive Power of Sumgayit for providing assistance to Cherkasy, its twin city. This initiative has become an example for other cities and regions of Azerbaijan, which have started to actively provide assistance to Ukraine. This is a gesture of true friendship between the Ukrainian and Azerbaijani peoples," the ambassador stressed.
BUCHAREST: Romania's President Klaus Iohannis has said his country supports Serbia's European Union integration process.

Iohannis informed Nikola Selakovic, the Serbian Foreign Minister, who was in town, that Romanian officials were prepared to assist their Serbian counterparts with technical knowledge. Iohannis and Selakovic discussed the security situation in Europe during their discussion, highlighting their shared interest in maintaining regional peace and assisting the Western Balkan states in moving closer to the European Union.

Iohannis expressed his gratitude for the two governments' recent signing of an agreement to link the Belgrade-Vatin highway in Serbia with the Timisoara-Moravita motorway in Romania. He also emphasised the significance of encouraging cooperation and conversation in areas of shared interest.

Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca and Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu underlined their nation's commitment to aiding the advancement of Serbia's EU accession process during their conversations with Selakovic.

Ciuca stated that Bucharest supported a fair procedure based on the merits of the candidate nations. Selakovic acknowledged his hosts' assistance.

Israel, US, Arab nations agree to strengthen ties

Nuclear talks to begin in Doha on Tuesday, says Iran

Pak govt to approach G20 against Indias plan
KIEV:: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his country is currently negotiating with Turkey and the United nations regarding the export of grain via ports.

Zelensky said that implementing this project "will be difficult in some places, but definitely possible" because both farmers and Ukraine, as a grain exporting nation, are interested in it, according to Ukrayinska Pravda. Zelensky was speaking at a briefing in Kiev on Monday alongside visiting Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Anderson. The President mentioned that Ukraine is presently blocking 22 million tonnes of grain.

"We are currently in negotiations with the UN and the Turkish side. The grain leaving our ports is safe thanks to our agents. But now is a crucial time for someone to ensure the security of the ships from specific nations that will arrive at our port to deliver food products in place of Russia, which we do not trust "He was reported to have said.

He noted that the UN takes the initiative in this process, and does not act as a moderator. "Ukraine is not wasting time and we are working on numerous means, both by train and by river, to export our grain," the President further stated.

The Russian naval fleet is obstructing sea access to Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea coast, making it impossible to move grain to other nations in a secure manner, Ukrayinska Pravda said.

US planning to train Ukrainian military: Ambassador

Ukraine Recovery Conference held in Switzerland

Ukraine military confirms fall of Lysychansk city to Russia
LUGANO: A two-day Ukraine Recovery Conference has begun today, with the goal of creating the guiding principles and framework for future rehabilitation of the conflict-torn nation. Ignazio Cassis, president of the Swiss Confederation and head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, said in his opening address on Monday that the conference participants would be expected to define the standards for handling assistance to Ukraine and for the division of responsibilities among the various partners.

In his opening address on Monday, Ignazio Cassis, president of the Swiss Confederation and head of the Federal Deptt of Foreign Affairs, said that the conference participants are expected to set the criteria for handling help to Ukraine and for the distribution of roles among the various partners.

"Building back better and establishing the circumstances for prosperity and intact lives should be the roadmap for the sustainable reorganisation of the economy," he said.

Denys Shmyhal, the prime minister of Ukraine, who was present at the meeting in person, stated that his nation would require $750 billion for a three-stage restoration plan.

Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, spoke at the meeting via video link from Kiev and noted that the plan also addresses institutional development in the nation. Zelensky highlighted increased security, technological advancement, adherence to environmental standards, transparency, and the project's integration with Ukraine's actual economic life as some of the fundamental concepts and objectives.

Ukraine military confirms fall of Lysychansk city to Russia

Zelensky Norwegian PM discuss support for Kiev

US extends USD 820mn in security assistance for Ukraine
Famous Ghanaian actress Kisa Jibeckal has openly discussed her pregnancy for the first time. Before that, she has been publicly denying every time that she has a child. But now she has admitted due to a show that she is also the mother of a child. However, he refused to tell about his father.

Due to one of her interviews, Kisa Gibekel has revealed that her child is in the US. His interview has gone viral. She said that due to pregnancy, she went to america to meet her brother. Due to the pandemic, the lockdown was imposed and she could not return to Ghana to give birth to the child. Jibeckle said that being born in the US, her child became a U.S. citizen. When asked about the father of the child, Jibekal said it will remain a secret for the people.

The same Kisa Jibekal was also in the news for body surgery. It was being claimed that he had enhanced the body shape to attract rich men. However, due to the interview, he denied this. Jibeckel said he didn't do all this just to attract men. He said that after giving birth to the child, he did not feel good about his body. He underwent surgery so that he could get his old body. Jibeckle said she believed that her body was precious and that it was only for the big men with money. But she has understood everything about men. So they don't need men anymore. However, she also said that she is not a lesbian. So if anyone feels that she is now only interested in women, then they should remove the notion from their mind.
Home  Travel  Travellers  Nepal welcomes 237,000 foreigners in 6 months as the tourism industry heads towards revival

Kathmandu, July 4

Statistics show the countrys tourism industry is heading towards a revival as the impact of the Covid pandemic is on the wane.

The number of foreign tourists visiting Nepal has significantly increased in the past six months as Covid-related travel restrictions are gradually being removed.

From January 1 and June 30, 2022, as many as 237,696 foreign tourists visited Nepal, according to Nepal Tourism Board.

Further, the figure might be more than this as Nepal does not count Indian tourists coming via land routes in this data. But, even among the air passengers, the number of Indians is remarkably high this time.

Whereas 46,957 foreign tourists arrived in Nepal in June, 23,248 are Indians, according to the boards director, Mani Raj Lamichhane. The United States, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom and Australia follow India on the list of biggest contributors to Nepals tourism industry.

Here is the monthly data of foreign tourists arriving in Nepal in the first six months of 2022.
Krishna Gurung turned vegan in 1998 when veganism was an anomaly in Nepal. It was more difficult for him to get vegan products including clothes and shoes than vegan food.

But, it is changing of late. We are now seeing a lot of vegan products. From physical stores to online, these products are also getting separate sections these days, Gurung says, But, they are still not enough.

Veganism in Nepal has been brought up in debates and promotion only in the past decade. But, veganism and vegan products are still shrouded in a lot more misconceptions. It means vegans have to be sceptical and compromise on the products they consume.

But, these people say they are committed to changing the situation.

Vegan products in Nepal

Vegan products can be seen in the market, but vegans are not happy with the number.

Samu Yonjan shares, If we talk about the shoes alone, it is very hard to find a pair that is not made of leather. Sellers do not and cannot identify what is pure leather and what is synthetic. So, we have to poke around and find shoes that work for us. But, it is not always favourable. We choose plastic shoes and wear them for a long time.

Vegan food items. Photo courtesy: Shova Bhujel

It is the same even for makeup and raw materials for food products, says Yonjan, owner of Loving Heart Restaurant, one of the few vegan restaurants in Kathmandu.

Pasang Sherpa, the proprietor of Shoe Bar & Accessories, is one of the few suppliers conscious of serving the vegan community. She supplies shoes made of certified vegan leather and they have gained traction in Nepal, becoming popular not just in the vegan community but in others. Many lady doctors who require feasibility, comfort and durability, have chosen the sandals that have vibrant animal prints. Other consumers include expats that have been more into the designs and their unique appeal.

Sherpa sees there is a market for vegan products among animal lovers including vegans and Jains. Impressed by the design and quality, I became a regional dealer for GOBY and during the lockdown started selling the products through my Facebook page.

Yonjan says if such shoes are available, she would rather collect money and purchase them instead of going for unidentified synthetic leather shoes.

Naturally, vegan products are meant to be used by vegans. But, Gurung highlights, Though they do not announce they are vegan, many people are using plant-based, cruelty-free products. Many more want to, but they are not aware of the options. Many are waiting for things to get more common and accessible before they make that switch in their lifestyle.

It means there is a market for vegan products in Nepal.

Recently, at a temple, I saw a man taking off his belt and accessories outside because we generally do not go into the temples with leather products. So we leave them outside, even risking loss or theft. But, its alternative could be vegan leather, isnt it?

Vegan leather shoes by Shoes Bar & Accessories. Photo Courtesy: Pasang Sherpa

However, Sherpa is yet to fully capitalise on the markets in Nepal whereas Gurung says no one has pinpointed the market yet. A market study is needed to determine how many people are adopting a vegan lifestyle and how many others are willing to make that switch.

Marketing veganism in Nepal

Veganism in Nepal has gained some traction with issues like protests against the Gadhimai festival and dispersed cases of animal cruelty. It also gets a boost when social leaders and celebrities such as Angfuri Sherpa, Krishna Pranami, and Ashmi Shrestha talk about veganism. But, that approach to promoting veganism through influencers has not been explored in Nepal.

According to Gurung, who is also a businessperson, Business-wise, in Nepal, there will not be a great profit as it is. But, it is the right choice for a sustainable effort for the community. Yet, there are a few ways we can communicate the choices to people.

We can first start with making people aware that vegan products are available and that people have cruelty-free options. Another is making them aware of the carbon footprint they leave behind by importing live animals or animal products. In this, reaching out to the younger generation is easier than the older ones because they are so conscious of these issues now and many are already adopting such a lifestyle.

The approach of veganism in Nepal is still about making people understand that using their rights should never diminish others rights even if they are animals or that animal cruelty should not be promoted for food or products and vice versa. Sherpa adds, There are options like the shoes that are made cruelty-free, guilt-free and azo-free.

Fighting against misconceptions

People demonstrated on the day of National Animal Rights Day, in Maitighar, on June 5, 2017. Photo Courtesy: Shova Bhujel

Veganism in Nepal are still shrouded in misconceptions, says Shova Bhujel, a vegan activist. The first is that vegetarianism is a choice but veganism is said to be a cult. And whenever we try to talk about veganism, they take it as a personal attack and it turns into a debate, between two communities.

Despite the backlash, the community is continuing their work and that is because, they say, compassion goes a long way. The environmental connection with veganism might be effective, but when people feel inconvenienced, they are more likely to switch back to their old lifestyle. However, we have found that when people make a compassionate connection with the animals, it lasts longer with better impacts on both life and the environment.

Hence, the market for vegan products is not necessarily for vegans in the community but for all animal lovers and those who favour animal-cruelty-free practices, says Bhujel.

The foreseeable Future

The concept of veganism is still vague in Nepal. But, the activists are committed to continuing their efforts to talk about the idea.

To increase awareness, the World Vegan Association is soon organising International Vegan Festival in Lumbini, Kathmandu and Pokhara with sessions about veganism, animal cruelty and human health along with the vegan products for the vegan and non-vegan community. It is assumed that 10,000 attendees from national to international delegates will attend the festival and that will help them inform the people of Nepal.

After the Vegetarian Fest 2017, the market for vegetarians and vegans got a boost. Now, we are also hoping for the same in Nepal with the fest. It might be a good platform to connect for those who wish to get an alternative option that is aligned with their lifestyle and know more about vegan products, hopes Gurung.

Meanwhile, Sherpa intends to continue her pursuit to establish brands in Nepal that will have USPs. She says she is already in the process. But, for her vegan leather shoes, she will now focus on customisation and cater to peoples specific needs.
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Fortune Business Insights

According to Fortune Business Insights, the global Precision Diagnostics Market size is projected to reach USD 138.85 billion by 2028, at CAGR of 12.6% during forecast period; Rising Prevalence of Cancer and Neurological Disorders to Propel Market Development

Pune, India, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global precision diagnostics market size was USD 54.05 billion in 2020. The market is expected to grow from USD 60.35 billion in 2021 to USD 138.85 billion in 2028, exhibiting a CAGR of 12.6% during the forecast period. The rising prevalence of cancer and neurological disorders and increasing effective treatment procedures are expected to foster market development. Fortune Business Insights presents this information in its report titled Precision Diagnostics Market, 2021-2028.

Precision diagnostics are disease diagnosis methods that explain the patients condition in a detailed and precise manner. It enables medical professionals to carry out treatment procedures in an effective manner. It is used to cure diabetes, cancer, and other disorders using esoteric tests, genetic tests, and others. The rising prevalence of cancer and neurological disorders is expected to surge the product demand. Further, increased spending on healthcare and medical services is expected to spike the adoption of effective treatment procedures. These factors are expected to boost the industry growth.

Industry Development

May 2021: Philips launched its novel Spectral Computed Tomography 7500 system to offer spectral data for all patients.





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Report Scope & Segmentation

Report Coverage Details Forecast Period 2021 to 2028 Forecast Period 2021 to 2028 CAGR 12.6% 2028 Value Projection USD 138.85 Billion Base Year 2020 Precision Diagnostics Market Size in 2021 USD 60.35 Billion Historical Data for 2017 to 2019 No. of Pages 140 Key Market Players Quest Diagnostics (New Jersey, U.S.), QIAGEN (Hilden, Germany), Swiss Precision Diagnostics (Geneva, Switzerland), Koninklijke Philips N.V (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Lantheus Medical Imaging, Inc. (Massachusetts, U.S.), Bluebird Bio, Inc (Massachusetts, U.S.) Precision Diagnostics Market Growth Drivers Rising Demand for Personalized Medicine to Augment Market Development Presence of a Well-established Healthcare Sector to Boost Industry Growth in North America Prominent Companies Launch Novel Products to Boost Brand Image





Drivers and Restraints

Rising Demand for Personalized Medicine to Augment Market Development

The rising demand for personalized medicine and treatment procedures is expected to surge the demand for the product. It enables medical professionals to diagnose patients in detail and solve health issues effectively. The sudden rise in COVID-19 infections has facilitated the demand for effective procedures globally. Furthermore, the rising demand for the treatment procedure in oncology and other disorders is expected to boost the treatment procedures adoption. For example, as per the information provided by the Neurological Alliance, approximately 14.7 million neurological cases were registered in 2019, and 1 among 6 people suffered from neurological disorders.

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Moreover, manufacturers collaborate to manufacture and provide effective treatment procedures and services. For example, Personal Genome Diagnostics Inc. and Massachusetts General Hospital collaborated in 2021 to develop advanced treatment services. These factors are predicted to drive the precision diagnostics market growth.

However, high capital investments in the research and development of precision diagnostics and medicines may hinder the market development.





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Segments

By type, the market is segmented into esoteric tests, genetic tests, and others. Based on application, it is classified into immunology, cardiovascular, oncology, and others. As per end-user, it is categorized into homecare, clinical laboratories, and hospitals. Geographically, it is studied across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa.

Report Coverage

The report provides a detailed analysis of the top segments and the latest trends in the market. It comprehensively discusses the driving and restraining factors and the impact of COVID-19 on the market. Additionally, it examines the regional developments and the strategies undertaken by the market's key players.





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Regional Insights

Presence of a Well-established Healthcare Sector to Boost Industry Growth in North America

North America is expected to dominate the global precision diagnostics market share due to a well-established healthcare sector. The market in North America stood at USD 20.84 billion in 2020 and is expected to gain the largest portion of the market share in the coming years. Further, collaborations between government and manufacturers are expected to bolster market development. For example, Neuberg Diagnostics Private Limited set up a new pathology laboratory in Telangana, India, in July 2021. Through this set up, the company shall expand its international and domestic presence and set up incubation centers in the U.S. and Europe. These factors are expected to boost the industry growth.

In Europe, the sudden spike in COVID infections is expected to boost the demand for effective diagnostic procedures. Furthermore, rapid technological advancements and the incorporation of effective treatment procedures are expected to propel market development.

In Asia Pacific, the rising development of effective drugs for rare disorders and technological disorders is expected to surge the product demand. Furthermore, extensive adoption of the product for the treatment of diabetes and other disorders is expected to bolster market progress.

Competitive Landscape

Prominent Companies Launch Novel Products to Boost Brand Image

The prominent players operating in the market launched novel products to improve their market position. For example, Trivitron Healthcare announced its novel HbA1c and Hb variant detection products in June 2021. This strategy may enable the company to develop precise treatment procedures and a global brand image. Furthermore, research and development may enable market players to develop effective medical solutions and capture consumers attention. This strategy may help companies improve product offerings and boost their annual revenues.





Precision Diagnostics Market Segmentations:

Segmentation By Type Genetic Tests

Esoteric Tests

Others (Direct to Consumer Tests) By Application Oncology

Cardiovascular

Immunology

Others By End User Hospitals

Clinical Laboratories

Homecare By Geography North America (By Type, By Application, By End User, and By Country) U.S. (By Type) Canada (By Type)

Europe (By Type, By Application, By End User, and By Country) U.K. (By Type) Germany (By Type) France (By Type) Italy (By Type) Spain (By Type) Rest of Europe (By Type)







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Leading companies operating in the precision diagnostics market trends have undertaken various organic and inorganic growth strategies. The companies have been implementing various strategies that have helped them in their growth and, in turn, brought about several breakthroughs and transitions in the industry. The companies have utilized organic strategies such as launches, and product approvals.

Moreover, the market players have also deployed several utilized inorganic strategies, including mergers & acquisitions, partnerships, and collaborations.

List of Key Players Profiled in the Report

Quest Diagnostics

QIAGEN

Swiss Precision Diagnostics

Koninklijke Philips N.V

Lantheus Medical Imaging, Inc.

Bluebird Bio, Inc

Table Of Content

Introduction Research Scope Market Segmentation Research Methodology Definitions and Assumptions

Executive Summary

Market Dynamics Market Drivers Market Restraints Market Opportunities

Key Insights Prevalence of Key Conditions (Cancer, Diabetes etc.)  Key Countries Recent Industry Developments  Mergers, Acquisitions & Partnerships New Product Launches Impact of COVID-19 on the Market

Global Precision Diagnostics Market, Insights and Forecast, 2017-2028 Key Findings / Summary Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Type Genetic Tests Esoteric Tests Others (Direct to Consumer Tests) Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Application Oncology Cardiovascular Immunology Others Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By End User Hospitals Clinical Laboratories Homecare Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Geography North America Europe Asia Pacific Latin America Middle East & Africa



ToC Continue!





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Brainy Insights Pvt. Ltd.

Increasing the R&D activities for the development of novel drugs to treat the ankylosing spondylitis is anticipated to propel the growth of the ankylosing spondylitis drugs market in upcoming years.

Newark, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As per the report published by The Brainy Insights, the global ankylosing spondylitis drugs market is expected to grow from USD 4.93 billion in 2020 to USD 9.82 billion by 2028, at a CAGR of 9.14% during the forecast period 2021-2028.



Increasing investment in Research & Development activities for the development of novel drugs to treat the ankylosing spondylitis are propelling the growth of the market in upcoming years. Many companies are heavily investing in and focusing on the development of unique drugs and new therapies. The pharmaceutical companies are also adopting the merger and acquisition strategies for the development of the drug. Thus, rising investment in the R&D to innovate new medicines, positively influencing the market growth.



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Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a kind of inflammatory disease that, over time, can cause some of the small bones spine (vertebrae) to fuse, which makes the spine less flexible and can result in a hunched-forward posture. The optimal treatment of ankylosing spondylitis involves medications that suppress immunity or reduce inflammation as well as physical therapy. Though the condition is not curable, exercise and medications can help in coping up with the disease. The medication prescribed to a patient of AS is basically to managing the pain and controlling the symptoms. There are a number of different classes and types of medications used in the treatment of ankylosing spondylitis. Biologics are the newest treatment for ankylosing spondylitis, which effectively helps to reduce the pain.



Increasing incidence of ankylosing spondylitis and high prevalence across the globe are propelling the growth of ankylosing spondylitis drugs market. Also, the increasing number of female patients suffering from ankylosing spondylitis is also fuelling the growth of the market. Limited awareness about ankylosing spondylitis and adverse side effects of the various medication taken, may limit the market growth over the forecast past.



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Major players in the global ankylosing spondylitis drugs market are Johnson & Johnson, Abbvie, Hetero, Merck & Co., BoehringerIngelheim, UCB, Amgen, Janssen Biotech, Inc., ZydusCadila and Izana Bioscience among others. Developing and developed countries are facilitating more significant opportunities and significant players are continuously focused on new developments, strategic partnerships, acquisitions and venture capital investments to obtain high growth in the market.



 In August 2017, BoehringerIngelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced FDA approval for Cyltezo (adalimumab-adbm), a biosimilar for the treatment of multiple chronic inflammatory diseases including ankylosing spondylitis and rheumatoid arthritis.

 In December 2019, Amgen announced that The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved Avsola (infliximab-axxq), a biosimilar to Remicade (infliximab), to treat active ankylosing spondylitis.

 In January 2019, ZydusCadila announced the launch of its biosimilarAdalimumab, and to be marketed under the brand name Exemptia, to treat autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, and Ankylosing Spondylitis.



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The small molecules segment held the major market share of 48.25% in the year 2020



The molecule type segment is divided into small molecules, biologics, and biosimilars. The small molecules segment held the major market share of 48.25% in the year 2020. It is one of the widely used drugs for the treatment, thus, boosting the growth of the market.



The oral segment accounted for the major market share and valued at USD 3.15 billion in the year 2020



The route of administration segment includes oral and parental. The oral segment accounted for the major market share and valued at USD 3.15 billion in the year 2020. This is mainly due to major drugs for these conditions are given by oral route of administration. In addition to this, ease of administration and patient preference for oral medications, fueling the growth of this segment.



The hospital's pharmacy held the major market share and valued at USD 2.26 billion in 2020



The hospital's pharmacy held the major market share and valued at USD 2.26 billion in 2020. This is attributed to a larger stock of medications, including more specialized and investigational medications for the treatment of ankylosing spondylitis.



Regional Segment Analysis of the Ankylosing Spondylitis Drugs Market



 North America (U.S., Canada, Mexico)

 Europe (Germany, France, U.K., Italy, Spain, Rest of the Europe)

 Asia-Pacific (China, Japan India, Rest of APAC)

 South America (Brazil and Rest of South America)

 Middle East and Africa (UAE, South Africa, Rest of MEA)



The North America region is accounted for the highest market value of USD 1.97 billion in 2020. This is mainly attributed to the increasing incidence and higher prevalence of ankylosing spondylitis in countries such as the U.S. and Canada. Apart from this, high expenditure on healthcare and availability of advanced diagnostics tools, further boosting the growth of the market in the North America region. Furthermore, the presence of key pharmaceutical companies in the region, driving the growth of the market. Asia Pacific is an emerging region in the ankylosing spondylitis drugs market, owing to increasing awareness about ankylosing spondylitis disease in the region. Furthermore, increasing healthcare expenditure across the region, positively influencing the growth of the market in the region. The emerging economies in the region like India, China etc. are focusing on improving the healthcare infrastructure. Furthermore, Latin America is growing at the healthy growth rate in the global ankylosing spondylitis drugs market, owing to increasing awareness about this condition across the region.



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The global ankylosing spondylitis drugs market is analysed on the basis of value (USD billion). All the segments have been analyzed on global, regional and country basis. The study includes the analysis of more than 30 countries for each segment. The report offers in-depth analysis of driving factors, opportunities, restraints, and challenges for gaining the key insight of the market. The study includes porter's five forces model, attractiveness analysis, and competitor position grid analysis.



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Ballinger Cares is a nonprofit organization that offers food and clothing to those in need.

BALLINGER  An idea that began more than 25 years ago lives on through Ballinger Cares, a nonprofit organization dedicated to assisting those in need with food, clothing and household items.

Ballinger Cares has a new home at the old National Guard armory at 402 Crosson Avenue  appropriately named the Hugh Wade Center.

Better known as Father Wade, it was the longtime Ballinger pastor's idea to start a food pantry after he arrived at St. Mary's Star of the Sea Catholic Church in 1996.

The program was operated by the Ballinger Ministerial Alliance, and the pantry was staffed by volunteers of all faiths.

"We didn't have a way to get people food that needed it, and so it was because of him that it got started," said Peggy Freeman, one of the volunteers who worked at the community pantry until it closed in September 2020 after 22 years when the owner decided to sell the building.

Wade died the following month at the age of 74.

"A group of us got together and decided (the pantry) was too important to the community," Freeman said. "Those of us who worked there knew how many people came in for clothing and food."

After the pantry closed, the Ballinger Ministerial Alliance continued to distribute food from the Senior Citizen Center with the monthly shipments they received from the Food Bank of West Central Texas in Abilene.

In May 2021, Ballinger Cares opened a resale center in an 800-square foot space owned by Runnels County to begin offering clothing again.

A grant from the San Angelo Health Foundation recently allowed Ballinger Cares to purchase the armory, giving them the room they needed to bring everything back together.

Ballinger Cares has a bridal room with new dresses at the Hugh Wade Center, 402 Crosson Ave.

"All the shirts in there cost $1, and children's items are 50 cents. A few really nice things are marked up like formal wear, things like that. But they're good prices. And when someone needs something, they don't have to pay anything," Freeman said.

"The food is free to those who qualify, but anyone who has emergency needs will be helped out when they need it."

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Ballinger Cares also has furniture, various household items and even a bridal room with new dresses as well as women's evening wear.

The armory gave Ballinger Cares so much room they were able to welcome other community-based organizations into the building such as Meals on Wheels, Cornerstone Community Action Agency, and the Health and Wellness Coalition of Runnels County.

Freeman said Ballinger Cares is in need of more volunteers since its recent expansion. For more information on volunteering or donating, call the Hugh Wade Center at 325-365-4300 or board chairman Carla Campbell at 325-365-6049.

Ballinger Cares is open Monday-Saturday from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. (Tuesday's hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m.).

This article originally appeared on San Angelo Standard-Times: Ballinger Cares finds new home for community pantry
By Trend





An appeal has been sent to UNESCO regarding Yerevan and its Tapabashi neighborhood, Chairman of Azerbaijan's Miras Social Organization in Support of Cultural Heritage, expert Fariz Khalili said on July 5, Trend reports.

Khalili made the remark at the presentation of research on Destruction of the heritage and erasure of historical legacy of Azerbaijani people in Armenia: The fate of Tapabashi neighborhood  the last remnant of the Azerbaijani national cultural and historical heritage in the city of Irevan.

According to him, a group of Azerbaijani scientists and public representatives appealed to UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay in connection with the ongoing process of cultural genocide by Armenia against the national, cultural and historical heritage of the Azerbaijani people in Yerevan, including the Tapabashi neighborhood.
ReportLinker

The bar tools market is expected to grow from US$ 1,788. 58 million in 2021 to US$ 2,334. 89 million by 2028; it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 5. 2% from 2021 to 2028. The shift of the drinking culture to home has led to the growing trend of in-house bars and the increasing consumption of alcohol at home, thereby boosting the sales of bar tools.

New York, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Bar Tools Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Type and Distribution Channel" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06289888/?utm_source=GNW

Bar tools are being increasingly used to prepare cocktails and mocktails at home.



Based on type, the global bar tools market is segmented into cocktail glasses, cocktail shakers, bottle openers, bar tool sets, and others.In 2020, the bar tool sets segment led the bar tools market.



The bar tool set is a set of various bar tools together at a discounted price, and the tools included in a bar tool set vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.



The bar tools market, based on geography, is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), South & Central America (SCAM), and the Middle East & Africa (MEA).In 2020, North America dominated the global market.



The changing lifestyle of consumers and the growing health awareness have led to an increasing preference for low-alcoholic drinks such as cocktails, driving the demand for bar tools in North America.Stylish cocktail glasses are used for providing an aesthetic and elegant look to the in-house bars.



Moreover, consumers are increasingly focusing on mixing and creating new drinks at home, leading to a rise in demand for bar tools such as cocktails or wine shakers, bar spoons, and a measuring jigger. Europe is the second-largest market for bar tools, and Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest-growing region in the bar tools market.





Many industries, such as the consumer goods industry, faced unprecedented challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic.The shortage of raw materials and labor, the shutdown of factories, and other operational difficulties due to COVID-19 safety protocols adversely affected the bar tools market.



The lockdown severely impacted the supply and production of bar tools, thus, restraining the markets growth.However, vaccination drives have led to a rise in business activities worldwide.



The economies are reviving their operations, and the demand for bar tools is expected to rise globally in the coming years. Key manufacturers have resumed their operations, thereby restoring the production capacity of bar tools.



Carlisle FoodService Products, Cocktail Kingdom LLC, Cresimo, Viski, Norpro Inc., OXO, SAHM, Vacu Vin, Rabbit, and Julisk are among the leading players in the bar tools market. These companies are adopting strategies such as mergers & acquisitions and product launches to expand their geographic presence and consumer bases.



The overall global bar tools market size has been derived using both primary and secondary sources.To begin the research process, exhaustive secondary research has been conducted using internal and external sources to obtain qualitative and quantitative information related to the market.



Also, multiple primary interviews have been conducted with industry participants to validate the data and gain more analytical insights into the topic. Participants of this process include industry experts such as VPs, business development managers, market intelligence managers, and national sales managersalong with external consultants such as valuation experts, research analysts, and key opinion leadersspecializing in the global bar tools market.

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Rita Baga is booking a trip to Belgium for the latest installment in the RuPaul's Drag Race empire.

The Canada's Drag Race season 1 finalist will host season 1 of Drag Race Belgique, according to new posts from the French-Canadian queen and the Belgium's spin-off's official Instagram account.

"My biggest dream comes true as I'm thrilled to announce that I've been chosen to host a Drag Race franchise," Rita wrote. "Can't wait to show you the talented queens that are reigning in the beautiful Belgium, this country that has been my home few years ago when I was completing my university degree. The drag scene in Belgium is vibrant, dynamic and unique!"

EW has reached out to representatives for production company World of Wonder to confirm Rita's position on the panel.

Rita joins fellow Drag Race alums from the American version like Brooke Lynn Hytes (Canada's Drag Race), Nicky Doll (Drag Race France), and Jiggly Caliente (Drag Race Philippines) as permanent fixtures on spin-off panels around the world.

WOW previously unveiled Belgium's international edition in April, noting that the series will air in French with subtitles on the WOW Presents Plus subscription streaming service as well as a local network in its native region.

RuPAUL's DRAG RACE. Belgique

Richard Phibbs/Paramount+ Mama RuPaul takes 'Drag Race Belgique' to Belgium for season 1.

"Drag is a universal language, and Drag Race continues to attract global viewers, so we are thrilled to introduce a fierce new group of queens with Drag Race Belgique," said World of Wonder co-founders Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato  executive producers alongside RuPaul and Tom Campbell  in a statement. "As our drag family continues to grow, we look forward to watching these Belgium queens sashay onto our screens."

Drag Race Belgique joins the ever-expanding global queendom fronted by Mama Ru, with other iterations of the Emmy-winning franchise popping up in Chile, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Canada, Holland, Australia, Italy, Spain, and France, with future seasons set to premiere soon in the Philippines and Sweden.

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Rita Baga

World of Wonder Rita Baga to host 'Drag Race Belgique'

A global all-star edition, RuPaul's Drag Race UK vs. the World, debuted in February, with Irish queen Blu Hydrangea taking the series' first cross-border crown. A Canadian version  Canada's Drag Race vs. the World  is also coming soon.

Subscribe to EW's BINGE podcast for full recaps of RuPaul's Drag Race, including weekly All Stars 7 recaps and reactions with the cast, special guests, and more.

Related content:
China is preparing to hand over a new US$140 million parliament building as a gift to Zimbabwe - the latest in a series of grand projects across Africa designed to deepen its influence in the continent, where it is the largest trading partner and lender.

The site at Mount Hampden, about 18km (11 miles) northwest of the capital Harare, heralds the start of a new city.

Work on the new parliament has been completed. Photo: Xinhua alt=Work on the new parliament has been completed. Photo: Xinhua>

The 650-seat building will replace the current 100-seat, colonial-era building which Zimbabwean officials consider too small for the country's 350 legislators.

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.

Sitting on the top of a hill, the imposing circular complex, which has been built by China's Shanghai Construction Group, is fully paid for by Beijing.

The contractors said the facility was now ready to be handed over, 3 years after construction started on a project that employed more than 500 Chinese technicians and 1,200 local workers.

"There is no doubt that the new parliament will become a landmark building in Zimbabwe and even in the whole of Southern Africa," Shanghai Construction Group manager Libo Cai said on Wednesday.

"It will be yet another milestone for the China-Zimbabwe friendship which keeps getting stronger year after year."

The building covers a total area of 33,000 square metres (355,200 sq ft) and has two main buildings - a six-storey office building and a four-storey parliament building.

Cai said the building was fully funded by the Chinese government.

To ease congestion in the crowded capital, Zimbabwe plans to relocate the judiciary and executive branches, and some of its administrative units, to the site. A statehouse and official residences for the House speaker and Senate president will also be built there.

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The new city will eventually become home to the country's reserve bank, upmarket suburbs, hotels and shopping malls.

The Chinese embassy in Zimbabwe said in a tweet that "thanks to the hardworking of the Chinese and Zimbabwean technicians, it [the parliament] is expected to trigger more mega projects in the Mount Hampden area and boost the development of a new satellite city".

It is the latest in a series of similar Chinese-funded projects across the continent, where Beijing has also paid for the construction of palaces, sports stadiums and conference centres as part of a decades-old diplomatic strategy.

When Beijing first started establishing diplomatic relations with Africa between the 1950s and 1970s, it offered financial help and interest-free loans and sent over medical teams.

In return, those nations helped Beijing secure the Chinese seat on the United Nations Security Council in 1971, which had been occupied by the Republic of China government that fled to Taiwan in 1949.

Other recent projects include the Kenneth Kaunda International Conference Centre, which China Jiangsu International Economic and Technical Cooperation Group handed over to the Zambian authorities in late May.

The centre, named after the country's first president, is expected to host the upcoming African Union midyear summit and was described by President Hakainde Hichilema as "a symbol of the unshakeable friendship between Zambia and the People's Republic of China".

China has also opened a new conference centre in Zambia. Photo: Xinhua alt=China has also opened a new conference centre in Zambia. Photo: Xinhua>

In Ethiopia, work on the US$80 million Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters is also nearing completion. The country also plays host to the ultra-modern US$200 million African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, funded and built by China as a "gift to the African people".

Research by Paul Nantulya, from the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies at Washington's National Defence University, has calculated that China constructed or renovated 186 government buildings in at least 40 African countries between 2000 and 2018.

Nantulya has previously described China as playing the long game, saying in February: "Its presence is felt each time an African walks into any of those buildings. China is creating a portrait of itself as an enduring partner that remains present and stands in solidarity with African governments."

David Shinn, a professor at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs and a former US ambassador to Ethiopia, said building diplomacy had long been an important part of China's foreign policy, but it had increased in significance in recent years.

He said most of the construction projects were funded by loans but others had been gifts. Aside from the new Zimbabwe parliament and the AU headquarters, the latter also includes Kenya's foreign ministry and Burundi's presidential palace.

"This allows China to have considerable influence with the officials who benefit from the facilities," Shinn said.

But, he said: "Chinese companies usually install all of the communications equipment. This raises potential security issues for the African recipients."

In one major controversy in 2018, Beijing was accused of bugging the AU headquarters.

The French newspaper Le Monde, citing anonymous AU sources, said that for five years, data had been transferred nightly from computers in the building to Chinese servers and hidden microphones had also been found.

Beijing rejected the accusations as "preposterous" and baseless.

Stephen Chan, professor of politics and international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, said all the parliament buildings were of similar design and reflected the Chinese model of a circular central chamber.

The circular chamber in Zimbabwe's new parliament is a design replicated across the continent without input from local architects. Photo: Xinhua alt=The circular chamber in Zimbabwe's new parliament is a design replicated across the continent without input from local architects. Photo: Xinhua>

"In other words, the symbolism of government and opposition directly facing each other is sidestepped," Chan said.

Likewise, he said airports were of the same design but those were tied to loans and were not gifts.

"So the two practices, of building diplomacy as gifts and the lending of money, have been in use side by side for some time and will continue to be separate practices," he said.

"What building diplomacy neglects, however, is the use of African architects and African architectural imagination. It cancels self-reliance not only in building for oneself but self-expression in the imagination of Africa's best architects."

.

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.
Despite the economic downturn and perilous position many startups find themselves in, some industries are seeing continued momentum in terms of inwards investments -- one of those is climate tech.

In 2021 alone, some $40 billion was invested across more than 600 deals, a trend that is seemingly continuing into 2022 with significant capital plowed into startups combatting the climate crisis. In tandem, we've seen a slew of new funds emerge dedicated to the cause, positioning fledgling climate-focused companies well to flourish against a backdrop of scale-backs and layoffs elsewhere in the startup world.

The latest such fund to emerge on the scene is Climentum Capital, which today announced the first close of its inaugural 150 million ($157 million) fund, which is designed to help curb CO 2 emissions and "accelerate Europe's green transition," the company said.

TechCrunch caught up with founding partner Yoann Berno to get the lowdown on what Climentum is striving to achieve, and how it sets itself apart from the incumbents in the space.

Sustainable investment

The driving force behind Climentum's investment philosophy is Europe's new Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), which came into force last year. SFDR is designed to improve transparency in the sustainable investment sphere, so finance companies are more accountable for specific claims they make around their sustainability credentials -- it's partly to do with preventing greenwashing. Climentum, specifically, is focused on being a so-called "Article 9 fund," which means that it's making sustainable investments and carbon emission reduction a core investment objective. And in the process, it gives the fund's backers access to all the relevant data they need to report on their own ESG (environmental, social and governance) targets.

Climentum's operations are spread across three core Northern European hubs in Denmark (Copenhagen), Sweden (Stockholm) and Germany (Berlin), with backing from a host of Nordic pension funds and Europe-based conglomerates. This includes chemical giant BASF's venture capital arm, which sees Climentum as a conduit to achieving its own climate-focused goals.

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"We are backed by BASF which sees in us a strategic investment to get closer to their decarbonization objectives, and a source of intel to guide their corporate strategy in the coming decade," Berno continued.

Berno was also keen to stress that two of Climentum's five founding general partners are female (one of whom has yet to be formally announced), which he sees as a positive differentiator in an industry dominated by men.

"We are 40% female, which is as good as it gets in the industry -- [it's] still not at full parity, but we will continue pushing our gender equality agenda," Berno explained.

Climentum Capital: Morten Halborg, managing partner (Copenhagen); Yoann Berno, investment partners (Berlin); Dorte Hirschberg, investment partners (Berlin); and Stefan Mard, impact partner (Copenhagen). One more partner is to be announced, based out of Stockholm. Image Credits: Climentum Capital

Climentum has currently only secured around half of the targeted 150 million for its first close, but it expects to close the full fund by the year's end. In the longer term, it's looking to make some 25 investments across Europe, from late-seed stage to Series A, with individual figures ranging from around 1 million to 5 million. The six core focus categories that Climentum will target for reducing CO 2 will be next-gen renewables; food and agriculture; industry and manufacturing; buildings and architecture; transportation and mobility; and waste and materials.

Climentum said that it is already close to finalizing three investments which are currently at the due-diligence stage and are focused on material recycling, alternative protein production and insect farming.

So far, so good. But in a field teeming with climate-focused investors and a seemingly insatiable appetite for startups promising to help repair Planet Earth, Climentum is touting tough thresholds in terms of how the team benefits financially from their collective investments. In essence, it has to overcome two stringent hurdles as part of what it's calling a "dual carry" investment model.

"The first hurdle is financial with a competitive return target of three-times over the fund's lifetime," Berno said. "The second [hurdle] is a [climate] impact hurdle with an ambitious CO 2 emissions reduction target, which will be measured at the portfolio level at the end of the fund."

In other words, Climentum is measuring success not purely on how much of a return they get for their backers, but how much of an impact their investments have on their climate goals.

It's also important not to overlook the strategic locations that Climentum has focused on. The firm is not only going where the policies and attitudes toward green technologies are among the strongest of anywhere else in the world, but also where there is already a significant climate-focused tech startup community.

"Sweden, Germany and Denmark are in the top five countries in the world in terms of forward environmental regulations and public mandate to accelerate the green transition," Berno explained. "[And] the three capital cities are some of the most active startup hubs in Europe, with a disproportionate amount of climate tech startups."

A climate of change

It's also worth looking at the timing of Climentum's fund launch, which looks pretty good from myriad standpoints. With growing pressure on the energy markets due to the war in Ukraine, and many countries trying to reduce their reliance on Russian gas, this bodes well for "alternative" energy sources, as well as technologies that promise to help nations reduce their energy consumption. On top of that, supply chain issues are causing a shortage of food such as protein, which places emerging startups focused on insect farming, for example, in a strong position.

Moreover, the broader economic downturn also puts investors such as Climentum in a good position, including the terms they may now be able to agree with startups.

"The current economic slowdown has stopped the euphoria on the VC market and caused a significant reduction in startup valuations and amounts deployed," Berno said. "As an investor, we are liquidity provider to a market that desperately needs more liquidity to continue financing rapidly evolving innovation."

When everything is thrown together into a giant melting pot, it seems clear that now is as good a time as there ever has been for climate tech startups to flourish. There is demand from consumers and corporations alike, while governments are cooking up policies that make society-wide green philosophies much more than a "nice-to-have" -- any business that wants to function in today's world needs to take its climate responsibilities seriously.

"The climate tech companies that have a real solution to some of the world's biggest problems already have pent-up demand from consumers, corporates and governments," Berno said. "This phenomenon justifies some of the high valuations which will be amplified by the demand for acquisitions from corporates desperate to meet their 2030 emission targets."
ReportLinker

The analyst estimates the global fiber optic test equipment (FOTE) market will experience a 5. 0% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2021 to 2028. The objective of this study is to identify the most prevalent trends impacting the FOTE market in the base year 2021 and to identify which factors will drive and restrain market growth during the forecast period of 2022 to 2028.

New York, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Global Fiber Optic Test Equipment Growth Opportunities" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06290213/?utm_source=GNW

In particular, discussion covers the product areas that will bolster growth during this time frame. To complete this analysis, Frost & Sullivan spoke with senior management at FOTE manufacturers and conducted secondary research. Discussion highlights:In-depth analysis with market sizing of product segments: optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR), optical light source (OLS), optical power meter (OPM), fiber inspection probe (FIP), optical loss test set (OLTS), remote fiber test system (RFTS), optical spectrum analyzer (OSA), and others. Others include polarization mode dispersion (PMD) test equipment, tunable laser (TL), coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM), dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM), and chromatic dispersion (CD).Regional perspective of demand patterns in advanced and emerging markets: North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia-Pacific (APAC), and the Rest of World.Application segment analysis: research & development (R&D), manufacturing, and field.End-user analysis: Telecommunication companies and carriers, enterprises, cable television service providers, government and defense, fiber-optic component (FO comp) and cable manufacturers, and independent research laboratories (IR labs). The research also includes market growth forecasts by region and by segment as well as an in-depth analysis of the competitive landscape including vendors market share.With new technologies introduced, test equipment is getting more innovative and priced higher than basic instruments. Vendors that are able to offer a variety of benchtop and portable instruments will be able to balance their portfolios and address end-user applications and customer needs accordingly. This study offers a holistic picture of the top opportunities and challenges the FOTE test equipment vendors face globally.

Author: Sujan Sami

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ReportLinker

The key factors contributing to the growth of the speech and voice recognition market include increasing demand in healthcare for improving efficiency and the growing use of smart appliances. Speech and voice recognition technologies are mostly used in the healthcare sector to report health checkups, data entry, and when the doctor or the attendant/nurse is unavailable.

New York, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Speech and Voice Recognition Market by Deployment Mode, Technology, Vertical and Geography - Global Forecast to 2027" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05061072/?utm_source=GNW

Such software solutions enable healthcare professionals to enter notes into the electric health record (EHR) system or their computers without taking time out from patient care and remain productive throughout the day. This eliminates the need for healthcare providers to stay late at work to complete paperwork, allowing them to visit more patients during the day. Easy to use and hands-free features of an automated speech recognition system in medical applications enable doctors to get their work done efficiently, driving the speech and voice recognition market growth.



Extensive penetration of speech and voice recognition technologies in smart appliances

The demand for smart homes and smart appliances is increasing owing to various factors, including the growing internet penetration, rapid technological advancements, and increased focus on home automation to achieve security and convenience.The COVID-19 pandemic has also prompted the use of smart devices and appliances in almost every aspect of daily life.



People are encouraged to work from home, leading to high demand for speech and voice recognition technology-based products.

Manufacturers of smart appliances are adding the voice recognition feature to their products to enable users to control all their appliances from a single speech and voice recognition technology-based product.The demand for products such as Alexa, Cortana, and Siri, has increased significantly.



Samsung Electronics (South Korea), a leading manufacturer of smart appliances, has introduced the Smart Things app with inbuilt voice recognition technology to allow users to control all the appliances in the house with single voice commands.Several other manufacturers, such as Whirlpool and Philips, have similar voice-activated control solutions.



As consumers move toward automation, the demand for speech and voice recognition technology-based products is also likely to increase.



APAC is the fastest-growing region in theSPEECH AND VOICE RECOGNITION market

The speech and voice recognition market in Asia Pacific is expected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2022 to 2027 owing to technological advancements, improved awareness regarding the benefits of these technologies among the masses, and the low cost of speech and voice recognition devices.China, Japan, and India are the key countries in the Asia Pacific region for the speech and voice recognition market.



Baidu (China) and iFlytek (China) are the top two companies in the region operating in the speech and recognition market.



The breakup of primaries conducted during the study is depicted below:

 By Company Type: Tier 1  35 %, Tier 2  45%, and Tier 3 20%

 By Designation: C-Level Executives  35%,Directors  25%, and Others  40%

 By Region: North America 45%, Europe  20%, APAC 30%, Rest of world5%



ResearchCoverage

The report segments the speech and voice recognitionmarket and forecasts its size, by volume and value, based on region (Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and RoW), Deployment Mode (On-Cloud, On-Premises/Embedded), Technology (Speech Recognition, Voice Recognition),andVerticals (automotive, enterprise, consumer, banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), government, retail, healthcare, military, legal, education, and others (aerospace, utilities, and travel & tourism)).The report also provides a comprehensive review of market drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges in the speech and voice recognitionmarket.



The report also covers qualitative aspects in addition to the quantitative aspects of these markets.



Key Benefits of Buying ThisReport

1 This report includes market statistics pertaining to thedeployment mode, technology, verticals, and region.

2 An in-depth value chain analysis has been done to provide deep insight into thespeech and voice recognitionmarket.

3 Major market drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities have been detailed in this report.

4 Illustrative segmentation, analyses, and forecasts for the market basedon deployment mode, technology,verticals,and regionhave been conducted to providean overall view of thespeech and voice recognition market.

5 The report includes an in-depth analysis and ranking of key players.

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Major Islamic finance providers Hejaz Financial Services announce partnership with outsource Financial to expand its network of Halal home loan brokers.

Sharia loans

Sharia loans

MELBOURNE, Australia, July 06, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Islam finance sector is experiencing an immense amount of growth, and Australian Halal loans providers are making big moves to keep up. Hejaz Financial Services - which is currently in the process of establishing itself as Australia's first digital Islamic bank - has announced a partnership with outsource Financial in order to provide even more Muslims with Sharia loans and achieve the Australian dream of property ownership; Chief Operating Officer Muzzammil Dhedhy discusses the alliance.

According to Hejaz Financial Services' Dhedhy, Halal finance has recently seen a surge in demand as consumers - both Muslim and otherwise - become more aware of ethical, Sharia-compliant financial services. A past lack of awareness of and access to these services has prevented consumers from taking advantage of Islamic finance, says Dhedhy. However, with Hejaz Financial Services' recent partnership with outsource Financial, Australians will certainly find it much easier to access these finance products moving forward.

Outsource Financial will allow Hejaz to expand its network of 320 accredited brokers even further. This network will allow consumers not only to achieve their dreams of owning property or land in Australia, but also to reach other financial goals of all kinds. This is a mutually beneficial partnership, as outsource Financial now has the opportunity to diversify its suite of products and services to include Australians from all religions, belief systems and walks of life.

Of course, Dhedhy assures consumers that each service offered will remain completely Sharia approved; the Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) carries out mandatory screenings to ensure Hejaz and other Islamic financial services providers are compliant with Sharia principles and regulations. These principles and regulations include zero interest being charged on financial products; ethical, low-risk investing; asset-based or asset-backed financing and more. To learn more about Halal financial services, contact the expert team at Hejaz today.

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Contact us -

Level 11, 2 Queen Street Melbourne 3000

PO BOX 96 Flinders Lane VIC 8009

1300 043 529

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NEW YORK, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Iroquois Capital Management, LLC (together with its affiliates, "Iroquois"), one of the largest stockholders of PharmaCyte Biotech, Inc. ("PharmaCyte", "PMCB" or the "Company") (NASDAQ:PMCB) with beneficial ownership of approximately 6.3% of the outstanding common stock of the Company, today provided the following statement in response to certain actions recently taken by the Company, which Iroquois believes are a thinly-veiled attempt to entrench the incumbent directors on the Company's Board of Directors (the "Board") ahead of an upcoming election contest for control of the Board at the 2022 annual meeting of stockholders (the "2022 Annual Meeting").

"Iroquois has been consistent in its view that change is needed at PharmaCyte to ensure improved accountability from what, in our opinion, is its dysfunctional Board and management that we believe is beholden to Kenneth L. Waggoner, the Company's Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer and General Counsel. We believe that Mr. Waggoner has surrounded himself in the boardroom with his hand-picked appointees who clearly lack credible capital markets and public company directorship experience and who have failed to ever purchase a single share of the Company's stock in the open market, unlike Iroquois and certain of our independent nominees, some of whom have now individually purchased more stock in the Company than the current Board and management ever have during their entire collective tenure. We believe this Board's dysfunction is directly responsible for the Company's severe stock price underperformance, constantly changing timelines and missed milestones with respect to its Phase 2b clinical trial, dismal corporate governance and investor communication practices and misaligned executive compensation structure.

We are disappointed, but unfortunately not surprised, by the Company's recent efforts through its counsel to block Iroquois' access to customary stockholder list materials requested in accordance with Nevada law, and to which Iroquois is entitled to under Nevada law, which are needed to communicate with fellow stockholders regarding our slate of highly qualified director candidates for election at the 2022 Annual Meeting. We would note that when we have seen these kinds of desperate actions in the past, this type of gamesmanship is typically driven by hired advisors who are enabled by members of management or the Board to take whatever obstructionist tactics, however maligned and clearly in contravention to well-settled corporate law, are needed to delay stockholders' collective voice from being heard at an upcoming election contest. To be clear, we see such obstructionist efforts as nothing more than a mere distraction from a Board that falsely heralds itself as being focused on creating value for stockholders while it appears to privately act out of desperation, and we reiterate our commitment to ensuring that no such actions by the Board will be allowed to stop stockholders from having their voice heard at the 2022 Annual Meeting.

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To add insult to injury, despite the Company's failure to ever present a framework to Iroquois in which Mr. Waggoner and his hand-picked appointees would finally relinquish control of the Board to make room for fresh perspectives and a group of professionals with the requisite skillsets, experience, drive, sense of accountability and demonstrated skin in the game needed to turn the Company around, today the Company through its counsel invited Iroquois' nominees for interviews, each conditioned upon such nominees' completing lengthy questionnaires  which we highly doubt any of the incumbent directors have been asked to complete  in advance of such interviews. This is despite the fact that our nomination notice was fully compliant with the Company's governing documents and contained all of the information regarding such nominees that will ultimately be required to be set forth in a definitive proxy statement which we plan to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This unfortunate sequence of events is not lost on us and we want to make perfectly clear to the Company, its advisors and any interconnected parties friendly to the Board with whom it may seek to conspire against the best interests of the Company's stockholders, that we are closely monitoring the developments of the Company and have a capable litigation team standing ready to challenge any transaction, or series of transactions, approved by the Board, who we believe have not earned the right to conduct any M&A, especially in furtherance of what appears to us to be a failed business strategy, that may be designed with no legitimate business purpose other than to further entrench the incumbent directors ahead of the potential election contest at the 2022 Annual Meeting.

We maintain that any such transaction, if effectuated by the issuance of stock of the Company rather than cash when its shares are traded below 50% of their book value, would mark nothing more than an egregious attempt to put shares in hands friendly to the dysfunctional Board on the eve of the incumbent directors' potential ouster at the 2022 Annual Meeting. We understand that given the Company's August 2021 capital raise, it is not in a position to authorize any further issuances of the Company's shares of Common Stock, and we seriously caution the Company, and any potential counterparty, from effectuating an end-run to such clear constraints simply to maintain the status quo in the boardroom, which we will not hesitate to challenge as being an entrenchment effort made in bad faith and in breach of the incumbent directors' fiduciary duties to the Company's stockholders, the real owners of PharmaCyte.

We look forward to continuing our engagement efforts with fellow PharmaCyte stockholders who we believe have been treated manifestly unfairly under this Board's oversight and will not hesitate to do whatever it takes to ensure stockholder voices are heard and accountability returns to the boardroom in connection with the 2022 Annual Meeting. We encourage our fellow stockholders to make clear to Mr. Waggoner and other members of the Company's dysfunctional Board to stop squandering the Company's resources on such misguided and self-serving efforts and to enter into meaningful discussions with Iroquois to timely and expeditiously address management's shortcomings in the best interests of the Company and its stockholders."

About Iroquois Capital Management, LLC

Iroquois Capital Management, LLC is a New York-based investment adviser that provides investment advisory services to Iroquois Master Fund Ltd., a privately pooled investment vehicle.

Certain Information Concerning the Participants

Iroquois Master Fund Ltd., a Cayman Island exempted limited company ("Iroquois Master"), together with the other participants named herein (collectively, "Iroquois"), intends to file a preliminary proxy statement and accompanying WHITE proxy card with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") to be used to solicit votes in connection with the 2022 annual meeting of stockholders of PharmaCyte Biotech, Inc., a Nevada corporation (the "Company").

IROQUOIS STRONGLY ADVISES ALL STOCKHOLDERS OF THE COMPANY TO READ THE PROXY STATEMENT AND OTHER PROXY MATERIALS AS THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION. SUCH PROXY MATERIALS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT NO CHARGE ON THE SEC'S WEB SITE AT HTTP://WWW.SEC.GOV. IN ADDITION, THE PARTICIPANTS IN THIS PROXY SOLICITATION WILL PROVIDE COPIES OF THE PROXY STATEMENT WITHOUT CHARGE, WHEN AVAILABLE, UPON REQUEST. REQUESTS FOR COPIES SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO THE PARTICIPANTS' PROXY SOLICITOR.

The participants in the proxy solicitation are anticipated to be Iroquois Master, Iroquois Capital Management, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company ("Iroquois Capital"), Iroquois Capital Investment Group LLC, a Delaware limited liability company ("ICIG"), JNS Holdings Group LLC ("JNS"), a New York limited liability company, Richard Abbe, Kimberly Page, Stephen Friscia, Charles S. Ryan, Jonathan L. Schechter, Joshua N. Silverman and Jude C. Uzonwanne.

As of the close of business on July 5, 2022, , Iroquois Master is the direct beneficial owner of (i) 1,240,743 shares of common stock, par value $0.0001 per share (the "Common Stock") and (ii) 196,000 shares of Common Stock issuable upon the exercise of certain warrants, all of which are subject to a 4.99% blocker provision (the "Warrants"). As of the close of business on July 5, 2022, ICIG is the direct beneficial owner of (i) 68,370 shares of Common Stock and (ii) 84,000 shares of Common Stock issuable upon the exercise of Warrants. Iroquois Capital, as the investment manager to Iroquois Master, may be deemed the beneficial owner of the (i) 1,240,743 shares of Common Stock and (ii) 196,000 shares of Common Stock issuable upon the exercise of the Warrants directly owned by Iroquois Master. As of the close of business on July 5, 2022, Mr. Abbe does not directly beneficially own any securities of the Company. Mr. Abbe, by virtue of his position as the President of Iroquois Capital and as a managing member of ICIG, may be deemed the beneficial owner of the (i) 1,309,113 shares of Common Stock and (ii) 280,000 shares of Common Stock issuable upon the exercise of the Warrants owned in the aggregate by Iroquois Master and ICIG. As of the close of business on July 5, 2022, Mrs. Page does not directly beneficially own any securities of the Company. Mrs. Page, by virtue of her position as a Director of Iroquois Master, may be deemed the beneficial owner of the (i) 1,240,743 shares of Common Stock and (ii) 196,000 shares of Common Stock issuable upon the exercise of the Warrants directly owned by Iroquois Master. As of the close of business on July 5, 2022, Mr. Schechter is the direct beneficial owner of 50,000 shares of Common Stock. As of the close of business on July 5, 2022, Mr. Silverman does not directly beneficially own any securities of the Company. Mr. Silverman, by virtue of his position as a managing member of JNS, may be deemed the beneficial owner of the 50,000 shares of Common Stock directly owned by JNS. As of the close of business on July 5, 2022, Messrs. Friscia, Ryan and Uzonwanne do not own beneficially or of record any securities of the Company.

Investor Contacts

Richard Abbe

Managing Member

Iroquois Capital Management, LLC

(212) 974-3070

Saratoga Proxy Consulting LLC

John Ferguson / Joe Mills, 212-257-1311

info@saratogaproxy.com

Cision

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/iroquois-capital-issues-statement-in-response-to-recent-actions-by-the-pharmacyte-biotech-board-of-directors-301580828.html

SOURCE Iroquois Capital Management, LLC
Kruger Products

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kruger Products ranked fifth on the annual Corporate Knights Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada list. This marks the fifth consecutive year, two of which Kruger Products has made the top 10 list.



We are honored to be recognition by Corporate Knights, one of Canadas most respected environmental think tanks, for our commitment to sustainability and the progress weve demonstrated, said Dino Bianco, CEO, Kruger Products. Sustainability is intricately tied to our mission of making everyday life more comfortable, and we strive to embed it deeper and deeper into our organization so that we are making a positive difference for the future.

The Best 50 Corporate Citizens represent the rising standard and ambition for corporate sustainability leadership in Canada. The ranking is based purely on quantitative data submitted on a range of ESG metrics.

This year Kruger Products distinguished itself with top-quartile scores on Green Revenue, Waste Productivity, CEOAverage Worker Pay Ratio, Employee Turnover, and Executive Racial Diversity. These accomplishments are the result of a company-wide effort from our corporate and plant employees, driven by the unified goal of reducing our environmental footprint and strengthening our company.

About Kruger Products L.P.

KPLP is Canada's leading manufacturer of quality tissue products for household, industrial and commercial use. KPLP serves the Canadian consumer market with such well-known brands as Cashmere, Purex, SpongeTowels, Bonterra and Scotties'. In the U.S., KPLP manufactures the White Cloud brand, as well as many private label products. The Away-From-Home division manufactures and distributes high-quality, cost-effective product solutions to a wide range of commercial and public entities. KPLP has approximately 2,700 employees and has been named a Greater Toronto Area Top Employer for ten consecutive years. The Company operates nine FSC COC-certified (FSC C-104904) production facilities in North America. For more information visit www.krugerproducts.ca.

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About Corporate Knights

Corporate Knights is a respected media and research company that quantifies clean capitalism drivers, making the data meaningful for decision makers. Its annual corporate citizen recognition program is a reputable benchmark for corporate sustainability leaders in Canada and sets the standards for corporate sustainability leadership in Canada.

For Further Information:

Francois Paroyan

SVP, General Counsel & Corporate Affairs

Kruger Products L.P.

416-606-6735

francois.paroyan@krugerproducts.ca




CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom and TOKYO, July 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Mogrify Limited (CEO: Darrin M. Disley, Ph.D., "Mogrify"), a biopharmaceutical company transforming the lives of patients through a novel class of in vivo reprogramming therapies, and Astellas Pharma Inc. (TSE: 4503), (President and CEO: Kenji Yasukawa, Ph.D., "Astellas"), a leader in regenerative medicine, today announced that they have executed a collaborative research agreement on in vivo regenerative medicine approaches to address sensorineural hearing loss.

Dr. Louise Modis, CSO, Mogrify

Utilizing Mogrify's proprietary direct cellular reprogramming platform, the collaboration will seek to identify novel combinations of transcription factors involved in cell differentiation to generate new cochlear hair cells. As part of the collaboration, Astellas Gene Therapies, a division of Astellas, is covering the research cost of the work as well as contributing its expertise in adeno-associated virus (AAV) based genetic medicine and translational capabilities to complete experiments in pre-clinical models. Mogrify will exploit its bioinformatic platform, screening and validation process to characterize potential therapeutic factors.

An estimated 1.57 billion people globally suffer from hearing loss1, and US data suggests that over 10% have severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss in at least one ear2. This degree of hearing loss significantly reduces quality of life and, with no drug treatments currently available, represents a large unmet need.

Dr. Louise Modis, CSO, Mogrify, said: "Mogrify's human regulatory network-centric approach is well placed to identify superior factor combinations, therefore increasing the efficiency of direct conversion toward the target cell type in the ear. Combined with Astellas' capabilities for gene therapy and research of sensorineural, this provides a clear path for the development of a novel in vivo reprogramming therapy for sensorineural hearing loss."

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Dr. Mathew Pletcher, Senior VP, Division Head of Gene Therapy Research & Technical Operations, Astellas, said: "In this collaboration, we will look to combine the unique delivery attributes of AAV-based gene therapy, with our deep translational capabilities in otology developed through our "Targeted Therapeutics for Auditory Regeneration", and "Direct Reprogramming (Transdifferentiation)" initiatives. Through this collaboration, we will seek to address a significant unmet need in sensorineural hearing loss.

1. Hearing Loss Collaborators. Hearing loss prevalence and years lived with disability, 1990-2019: findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. Lancet. 2021 Mar 13;397(10278):996-1009.

2. Goman AM, Lin FR. Prevalence of Hearing Loss by Severity in the United States. Am J Public Health. (2016);106(10):1820-1822.

For high-resolution and alternate images please contact Zyme Communications.

About Mogrify www.mogrify.co.uk

Mogrify has developed a proprietary suite of platform technologies that utilize a systematic big-data approach to direct cellular reprogramming (Rackham et al., Nature Genetics, 2016) and the maintenance of cell identity (Kamaraj et al., Cell Systems, 2020).

The platforms, MOGRIFY and epiMOGRIFY, developed over a 12-year period via a multi-national research collaboration, deploy next-generation sequencing, gene regulatory and epigenetic network data to enable the prediction of the transcription factors and growth factors required to produce any target human cell type from any source human cell type.

The platforms can be used to enhance existing stem-cell forward programming methods, or bypass development pathways altogether, affecting a direct transdifferentiation between a mature cell type to another mature cell type.

Mogrify is applying its proprietary and award-winning platforms to generate the functional cell types required to transform the lives of patients, delivering a novel class of in vivo reprogramming therapies across ophthalmology, otology, metabolic and other areas of degenerative disease.

Uniquely positioned to address a regenerative medicine market estimated to be worth $150 billion USD by 2028, Mogrify is commercializing its technology via a combination of in vivo reprogramming therapy development, co-development partnerships, as well as the exploitation of the platform in other therapeutic and non-therapeutic applications.

Based in Cambridge, UK, the Company has raised over $40 million USD funding from Parkwalk, Ahren Innovation Capital, 24Haymarket, Trend Investment Group, Dr. Darrin M. Disley, OBE, Dr. Jonathan Milner and the University of Bristol Enterprise Fund III, as well as strategic investors; Astellas Venture Management.

Follow Mogrify on Twitter @Mogrify_UK and LinkedIn @Mogrify

About Astellas www.astellas.com/en

Astellas Pharma Inc. is a pharmaceutical company conducting business in more than 70 countries around the world. We are promoting the Focus Area Approach that is designed to identify opportunities for the continuous creation of new drugs to address diseases with high unmet medical needs by focusing on Biology and Modality. Furthermore, we are also looking beyond our foundational Rx focus to create Rx+ healthcare solutions that combine our expertise and knowledge with cutting-edge technology in different fields of external partners. Through these efforts, Astellas stands on the forefront of healthcare change to turn innovative science into value for patients. For more information, please visit the Astellas website.

About Astellas Gene Therapies

Astellas integrated its wholly owned subsidiary, Audentes Therapeutics, Inc. as of April 1, 2021 and established "Astellas Gene Therapies" within the organization as an Astellas Center of Excellence to develop genetic medicines with the potential to deliver transformative value for patients. Based on an innovative scientific approach and industry leading internal manufacturing capability and expertise, we are currently exploring three gene therapy modalities: gene replacement, exon skipping gene therapy, and vectorized RNA knockdown and hope to also advance additional Astellas gene therapy programs toward clinical investigation. We are based in San Francisco, with manufacturing and laboratory facilities in South San Francisco and Sanford, North Carolina.

Cautionary Notes (Astellas)

In this press release, statements made with respect to current plans, estimates, strategies and beliefs and other statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements about the future performance of Astellas. These statements are based on management's current assumptions and beliefs in light of the information currently available to it and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: (i) changes in general economic conditions and in laws and regulations, relating to pharmaceutical markets, (ii) currency exchange rate fluctuations, (iii) delays in new product launches, (iv) the inability of Astellas to market existing and new products effectively, (v) the inability of Astellas to continue to effectively research and develop products accepted by customers in highly competitive markets, and (vi) infringements of Astellas' intellectual property rights by third parties. Information about pharmaceutical products (including products currently in development) which is included in this press release is not intended to constitute an advertisement or medical advice.

Dr. Mathew Pletcher, Senior VP, Division Head of Gene Therapy Research & Technical Operations, Astellas

Mogrify and Astellas announce collaboration

Cision

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SOURCE Astellas Pharma Inc.
By Azernews

By Sabina Mammadli

Azerbaijan is geographically a small nation but it possesses huge political, economic, and political leverages over the South Caucasus and wider region, Azernews reports.

As Azerbaijan is rebranding itself internationally, the world is now witnessing a renewed era. Not only did the global community start perceiving the winner-state differently, but that is also reflected in the countrys stronger, more trusting relations with other states.

The constant relations between President Ilham Aliyev and Joe Biden of the USA stand as a testimony.

President Aliyevs congratulatory letter to the US leader on the occasion of the July 4 Independence Day was reciprocal to the two congratulatory letters from Biden to Aliyev.

"Azerbaijan plays a decisive role in helping to stabilize Europe's energy security by supplying Ukraine with important fuel through the Southern Gas Corridor," the US president acknowledged in his first letter to the Azerbaijani leader.

In the second letter, he stated that the United States of America reaffirms its support for the independence and sovereignty of Azerbaijan. More importantly, U.S.s support for Azerbaijan is not merely words, but action, which can be best seen in the fact that the U.S. leader once again bypassed the 907th amendment to the Freedom Support Act, which would allow the US to provide direct military assistance to Azerbaijan.

In his letter, President Ilham Aliyev stated that the cooperation between the two countries, which today has risen to the level of strategic partnership in a number of important areas, has created conditions for the expansion of political ties. He especially highlighted the cooperation in the energy, security sectors, and in the fight against terrorism.

Moreover, the head of our state, in addition to congratulatory words, pointed to specific areas in which Azerbaijan expects assistance from the United States. In particular, the process of normalizing Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, opening communications, and establishing contacts between people at a time when favorable conditions are being formed in the South Caucasus for establishing sustainable peace and economic progress. More specifically, the Azerbaijani President pointed out that Washington can make a valuable contribution to the process of preparing a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan based on the five principles, the latter adds.

In the same vein, President of the European Council Charles Michel and Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev held on June 5 a telephone conversation. During the conversation, Ilham Aliyev expressed the hope that the negotiations on the normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the signing of a peace treaty, the delimitation and demarcation of borders, and the opening of transport and communication lines would lead to real results.

Actually, this was a way to recall that the EU should put pressure on Armenia, whose leaders are attempting to avoid their obligations in every possible way. Considering the increased importance of Azerbaijan as a country playing a crucial role in ensuring the energy security of the EU, it is quite possible to expect positive signals from Brussels in the near future.

The reality is that Azerbaijan is building stable ties. Say, Azerbaijani-Iranian relations "passed the stage of misunderstanding" and "now are in the stage of increasing development," Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian told a meeting with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov. He noted the growth in the volume of trade between the two countries in recent months and expressed hope that bilateral trade and economic relations will be expanded both in the private and public sectors.

Azerbaijani-Turkish relations are distinguished by a fraternal nature, the Azerbaijani-Georgian relations are also at their best, as well as the Azerbaijani-Russian ties. At the same time, official Baku has very warm relations with both Ukraine and Israel.

All of these are bright examples of Azerbaijans well-considered strategy and tactics for building mutually beneficial relations with both leading powers in the region and worldwide.
ReportLinker

Major players in the online trading platform market are Charles Schwab Corporation, Ally Financial Inc. , TD Ameritrade, Fidelity Investments, E-Trade Financial Corporation, AAX, ErisX, Huobi Group, Interactive Brokers, MarketAxess, Merril Edge, Plus500, Tradestation, Bitstamp, EToro, BitPay, Eruption, Octagon Strategy Limited, Blockstream, Bitfinex, Tradeweb, DigiFinex, Templum, Unchained Capital, Cezex, and SIMEX.

New York, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Online Trading Platform Global Market Report 2022" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06290028/?utm_source=GNW





The global online trading platform market is expected to grow from $9.6 billion in 2021 to $10.21 billion in 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.4%. The online trading platform market is expected to grow to $13.13 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of 6.5%.



The online trading platform market consists of the sale of online trading platforms services by entities (organizations, sole traders, and partnerships) that are used for trading and investing online. An online trading platform is a software or website that allows investors and traders to position trades through financial intermediaries and track accounts with a combination of robust features and low fees digitally.



The main product types of the online trading platform are commissions, transaction fees, and other related service fees.Commissions are used in trading and equity stock.



Commissions are called stock trading fees, or brokerage fees that the sale of specific investments is charged when customers buy or sell stocks.They consist of various components such as solutions, and services.



These are applied by institutional investors and retail investors.



North America was the largest region in the online trading platform market in 2021.Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest-growing region in the forecast period.



The regions covered in the online trading platform market report are Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, Middle East, and Africa.



The online trading platform market research report is one of a series of new reports that provides online trading platform market statistics, including online trading platform industry global market size, regional shares, competitors with a online trading platform market share, detailed online trading platform market segments, market trends and opportunities, and any further data you may need to thrive in the online trading platform industry. This online trading platform market research report delivers a complete perspective of everything you need, with an in-depth analysis of the current and future scenario of the industry.



The growth in digitalization globally has driven the online trading platform market.Online trading platforms are digitally-enabled transactions of trade in goods and services.



Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the online trading platform is increasingly focusing on streamlining the business models by adopting digitalization. According to the report of the UK board of trade, a British government body concerned with commerce and industry, approximately the digital sector alone contributed 151 billion ($197 billion) to the British economy, employing almost 5% of the national workforce representing as much as $11 trillion ($14 trillion) or 15.5% of global GDP. Hence, the growth in digitalization globally will increase the demand for online trading platforms market.



Technological advancement is a key trend gaining the popularity in online trading platforms market.Online Trading platform developers and service providers are focusing on various product development analyses to provide a user-friendly and advanced platform for both trading and investing.



For instance, in July 2020, US based online trading company, E*TRADE Financial Corporate Services, Inc. launched the Equity Edge Online (EEO) Developer Platform. Through the launch of the Developer Platform, processes that were historically analog can now be automated, streamlined, and scaled which will free up the time of clients previously spent on administrative tasks.



In February 2020, Morgan Stanley, a US-based, multinational investment bank and financial services company has acquired E*TRADE Financial Corporation for $13 billion. The acquisition forms a powerful growth engine with Morgan Stanleys Wealth Management franchise, and enhances the workplace offering through online brokerage and digital banking capabilities, providing a significantly enhanced client experience., E*TRADE Financial Corporation is a US-based digital brokerage and banking space that provides an electronic trading platform.



The countries covered in the online trading platform market report are Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, South Korea, UK, USA.

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06290028/?utm_source=GNW



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



__________________________

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CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001




LONDON & TOKYO, July 05, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), Europes leading quantum computing company, today announced raising 38 million (US $46.45 million) in the first close of an on-going Series A. The investment is the UKs largest ever Series A in quantum computing and will accelerate research and development and fuel expansion in Asia-Pacific. The round was co-led by Lansdowne Partners, one of Europes leading investment firms, and The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners (UTEC), Japans largest deeptech VC fund. British Patient Capital and existing investors Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) and Oxford Investment Consultants (OIC) also participated.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220704005233/en/

Deployment of OQC's 8 qubits processor Lucy by two quantum engineers. (c) Oxford Quantum Circuits

OQCs patented 3D architecture, the Coaxmon, combines unparalleled scalability with world-class performance. This funding follows the February 2022 launch of OQCs latest system, Lucy, on Amazon Braket - making it the first European quantum company on AWS. The companys technology can be used by businesses in financial services, pharma and logistics to increase their competitive edge.

This Series A investment will be used to further scale the companys quantum systems and its private quantum computing as-a-service offering. It will also consolidate OQCs position in Europe and accelerate international expansion in Asia-Pacific, including the Japanese market - a hotspot for financial services eager to realise the advantages of quantum computing.

Quantum computing has the potential to shape our future and improve peoples lives and has long been recognised as a matter of strategic national importance. British Patient Capitals investment in the round is part of its wider ambition to cement the UKs position as a science and technology superpower.

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Lenny Chin, Principal at UTEC, said "Quantum computing promises to be the next frontier of innovation, and OQC, with its state-of-the-art Coaxmon technology, aims to integrate the forefront of modern physics into our everyday lives. UTEC is honoured to be part of OQCs mission of making quantum technology accessible to all and will support OQCs expansion into Asia-Pacific through collaborations with academia including the University of Tokyo, and partnerships with Japans leading financial and tech corporations."

Peter Davies, Partner & Head of Developed Markets Strategy at Lansdowne Partners, said "Since launching the UKs first commercially-available quantum computer, we have continued to be highly impressed with both the technical developments and also the future ambitions of OQC. We are very excited to be investing in this innovative and forward-thinking company."

Judith Hartley, CEO, British Patient Capital said "The UK has long been at the forefront of global technology developments. Our investment in Oxford Quantum Circuits exemplifies our continued commitment to ensuring the UK stays at the forefront of deeptech innovation. The sphere of quantum computing is a vital link in the chain of technological, scientific, and business advancement, from breakthroughs to better business modelling across the board. We are excited to help fund OQCs expansion into the Asia-Pacific regions, allowing this new frontier in technology to develop even further through exposure to the global market."

Ilana Wisby, CEO of OQC, said "This initial close is the UKs largest ever Series A in quantum computing, demonstrating the confidence our investors have in our ability to lead the global quantum industry. Its testament to the significant technological and commercial progress we have achieved in recent months, thanks to our world-class team. It is also the first step in our international expansion, bringing quantum to our customers fingertips  wherever they are in the world."

Editors Notes

About OQC: OQC is Europes leading quantum computing company. We bring quantum to our customers fingertips and enable them to make breakthrough discoveries. Our quantum computers are available via private cloud and on Amazon Braket.

www.oxfordquantumcircuits.com

About Lansdowne: Lansdowne Partners is a European headquartered investment manager operating a diversified range of actively managed equity strategies.

www.lansdownepartners.com/london

About UTEC: The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners, Inc. is the largest venture capital fund focused on science and technology in Japan, and one of the largest deep tech funds in Asia. UTEC has invested in over 140 Japanese and Global startups with a track record of 17 IPOs & 14 M&As.

www.ut-ec.co.jp/english

About BPC: British Patient Capital is the trading name of British Patient Capital Limited, a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of British Business Bank plc, the UK governments economic development bank. Launched in June 2018, British Patient Capital has 2.5bn to invest over 10 years in venture and venture growth capital to support high growth potential innovative UK businesses.

www.britishpatientcapital.co.uk

About OSE: Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) is a Science Business Builder, committed to helping solve the worlds toughest problems for more people, in more places, faster. The company does this by transforming world-leading science into world-changing businesses, partnering the best scientists from the worlds best university with the best business brains.

www.oxfordscienceenterprises.com

About OIC: Oxford Investment Consultants backs extraordinary founders turning scientific research into products addressing the worlds greatest challenges. The OIC team has decades of investment experience, partnering with transformative biotech, healthcare and deeptech companies from Oxford University and other world-leading UK research institutions.

www.oxfordinvestmentconsultants.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220704005233/en/

Contacts

Kaya Cheshire

ThoughtLDR Ltd.

kaya@thoughtldr.com

+44 7464 338017
Paramount Gold Nevada Corp.

WINNEMUCCA, Nev., July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Paramount Gold Nevada Corp. (NYSE American: PZG) (Paramount or the Company) announced today that Samantha Espley, P.Eng. has been appointed to its Board of Directors (Board) as an independent director.



Ms. Espley is a highly experienced mining engineer with over 30 years of industry experience, currently as a senior executive advisor for Stantec Engineering (Leading Mining Transformation) and recently as a corporate director with Vale, the worlds largest nickel and iron ore producer. Her global experience includes managing operations, geology, and engineering with many industry leaders including Inco, Falconbridge, Dome, Denison-Potacan and Noranda. Ms. Espley is the former President of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM), and has remained active in several roles on the Board of Directors of the CIM.

Paramount Chairman, Rudi Fronk, commented on the appointment: Samantha is joining our board at a critical time as we approach permitting approval for our underground Grassy Mountain gold mine. Her immense experience in building and managing underground mining operations will be an invaluable asset to the Company and strengthens our board significantly as we make the transition to a producer.

Ms. Espley, a fellow with the Canadian Academy of Engineering, is a professional engineer with a degree from the University of Toronto and a Masters of Applied Science & Engineering, which she received from Laurentian University.

Her professional accolades include the Governor Generals Gold Medal, CIM Distinguished Service Medal and the Women in Mining Trailblazers Award.

To stay informed of future press releases, subscribe to our E-Alerts Program and to learn more about our projects visit the projects section of our website.

About Paramount Gold Nevada Corp.

Paramount Gold Nevada Corp. is a U.S. based precious metals exploration and development company. Paramounts strategy is to create shareholder value through exploring and developing its mineral properties and to realize this value for its shareholders in three ways: by selling its assets to established producers; entering joint ventures with producers for construction and operation; or constructing and operating mines for its own account.

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Paramount holds a 100% interest in four gold projects: Grassy Mountain, Frost, Sleeper and Bald Peak.

The Grassy Mountain Gold Project consists of approximately 8,200 acres located on private and BLM land in Malheur County, Oregon. The Grassy Mountain Gold Project contains a gold-silver deposit (100% located on private land) for which results of a positive Feasibility Study have been released and key permitting milestones accomplished.

Frost is comprised of 84 unpatented lode claims covering approximately 1,730 acres located 12 miles southwest of the Companys proposed high-grade, underground Grassy Mountain gold mine in Malheur County, Oregon (Grassy).

The Sleeper Gold Project is located in Northern Nevada, the worlds premier mining jurisdiction. The Sleeper Gold Project, including the former producing Sleeper mine, totals 2,322 unpatented mining claims (approximately 60 square miles or 15,500 hectares). The Sleeper gold project is host to a large gold deposit (over 4 million ounces of mineralized material) and the Company has completed and released a positive Preliminary Economic Assessment. With higher gold prices, Paramount has begun work to update and improve the economics of the Sleeper project.

The newly acquired Bald Peak Project in Nevada, consists of approximately 2,260 acres.

Paramount Gold Nevada Corp.

Rachel Goldman, Chief Executive Officer

Christos Theodossiou, Director of Corporate Communications

844-488-2233

Twitter: @ParamountNV




Getty Images North America/Getty Images

The economic downturn is worse than expected, but there could be more downside ahead, Morgan Stanley said Tuesday.

A recession could send the S&P 500 more than 20% lower to 3,000 this year, analysts said.

"Until earnings estimates are cut to more reasonable levels or valuations reflect that risk, the bear market is not complete."

The current economic downturn is already worse than expected, but there's still more downside ahead for the market, according to Morgan Stanley.

Analysts led by Mike Wilson wrote in a Tuesday note that the stock market may not yet be sure what to make of falling bond yields. But yields still appear to be lagging economic data that's coming in worse than expected.

"In other words, the risk of growth slowing more than expected has only increased," according to the note.

The purchasing managers index from the Institute of Supply Management has been falling this year and points to continued declines, analysts added. If the economy slips into a recession, which is Morgan Stanley's bear case, then the PMI would fall to the low 40s, suggesting the S&P 500 would hit 3,000 late this year, more than 20% below current levels.

War in Ukraine and China's extended COVID-19 lockdowns have made the economy worse than forecasted, and now analysts expect earnings to play a significant role in what happens next in the stock market.

There are signs that profit expectations will be slashed in the coming months, the analysts said. Based on its earnings views, Morgan Stanley said a fair value for the S&P 500 would be about 3,400 to 3,500, or about 11% below current levels.

"Until earnings estimates are cut to more reasonable levels or valuations reflect that risk, the bear market is not complete," they said.

Read the original article on Business Insider
FACT.MR

Continuous Research & Development and Capacity Expansions to Remain the Mainstay of Key Market Players across Regions

Seoul, South Korea, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As per the new report released by Fact.MR, a market research and competitive intelligence provider, the global market has reached a valuation of US$ 58.5 million and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 5.1 % through 2032.



The powder form of niobium carbide has a high level of hardness and melting point. This helps in using it for refractory materials with high temperature levels and hardness. It is also being used in jet engine turbine blades, valves, cutting tools, etc. Niobium carbide provides good stability to chemical agents and is used as an additive to cemented carbide, being highly preferred over tantalum carbide.

For Critical Insights on Niobium Carbide Market, Request a Sample Report

https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=7534

NiobelCon has been conducting extensive research to find the complete use of niobium carbide in various hard material applications. This research is also focused on developing and qualifying NbC-based alloy systems. The company is doing this research in collaboration with KU Leuven (MTM) and the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM).

Hard materials that are based on niobium carbide can be used for industrial applications such as tools for cutting, drilling, etc. Tungsten carbide is a widely used material today, which will be replaced by niobium carbide in the future due to its better application, results, and cost-effectiveness.

For Which Application is Niobium Carbide Usage Prominent?

Tools made from niobium carbide powder provide efficient and effective metal cutting. More than metal cutting, the importance of machining composite materials with high performance is growing in the automotive sector. It also helps in reducing the weight of machining equipment and various other dynamic applications.

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The most important feature is that they are known as non-toxic materials and are environment-friendly. The feature of high chemical stability has reduced the need for extra coating required for hot machining applications. Due to the above factors, cutting and machining applications across industries are high demand niobium carbide generators among various other applications, and the segment is expected to account for 32.5% market share in 2022.

To learn more about Niobium Carbide Market, you can get in touch with our Analyst at https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=AE&rep_id=7534

Key Segments Covered in the Niobium Carbide Industry Survey

Niobium Carbide Market by Purity :



2N Niobium Carbide

3N Niobium Carbide 4N Niobium Carbide 5N Niobium Carbide



Niobium Carbide Market by Application :



Carbide Alloys

Coating Materials Mettallurgical Cutting & Machining (In Tool bits) Others





Niobium Carbide Market by Form :



Flakes

Powder Sputtering Target





Competitive Landscape

H.C. Starck, Japan New Metals, ESPI Metals, Stanford Advance Materials, Changsha Langfeng Metallic Material, NanoShel, PPM Ltd., and Ultramet are leading niobium carbide manufacturers.

Fact.MR has provided detailed information about the various strategies adopted by key players in the niobium carbide market, along with detailed sales analysis of niobium carbide, top niobium carbide manufacturers, top 2N / 3N niobium carbide suppliers, SWOT analysis, sales generated from target niobium carbide products, and the top niobium carbide manufacturers positioned across geographies.

Get Customization on Niobium Carbide Market Report for Specific Research Solutions

https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=RC&rep_id=7534

Key players in the Niobium Carbide Market

H.C. Starck

Japan New Metals

ESPI Metals

Stanford Advance Materials

Changsha Langfeng Metallic Material

NanoShel

PPM Ltd.

Ultramet

Key Takeaways from Niobium Carbide Market Study

More than 90 percent of niobium is used as ferronobium in the steel industry. A very small share of the rest is used to make niobium carbide.

Niobium carbide sales have reached 1,260 tons in the few past years.

Niobium carbide is one of the major substitutes for tantalum carbide. Hard metal producers are focusing on replacing tantalum carbide with niobium carbide so that they can compensate for the rising prices of cobalt.



Fact.MRs Domain Expertise in Chemicals and Materials Division

Expert analysis, actionable insights, and strategic recommendations of the highly seasoned chemicals and materials team at Fact.MR helps clients from across the globe with their unique business intelligence needs.

With a repertoire of over thousand reports and 1 million-plus data points, the team has analysed the chemicals and materials division across 50+ countries for over a decade. The team provides unmatched end-to-end research and consulting services. Reach out to explore how we can help.

Explore More Chemical and Materials Industry Reports:

Super Absorbent Polymers Market - Detailed industry analysis reveals that worldwide super absorbent polymer consumption is predicted to increase at 4.9% CAGR to reach a valuation of US$ 9.7 Bn by 2032.

Paper Dyes Market- The global paper dyes market is slated to experience modest growth through 2021 and beyond, with worldwide revenue having surpassed US$ 950 Mn as of 2020. A new forecast by Fact.MR estimates that paper dye revenues will increase at a decade-long CAGR of over 2%.

Dyes and Pigments Market- The global dyes and pigments market size is expected to reach US$ 38 billion by 2031. The dyes and pigments market is projected to grow at a moderate CAGR of over 3% during the forecast period.

Electroceramics Market- As per Fact.MRs electroceramics industry survey, sales of electroceramics surpassed US$ 8 Bn at the beginning of the historical period (2016), expanding 1.2X to reach US$ 9 Bn by 2020. The market is further anticipated to expand, albeit moderately, to reach over US$ 11 Bn by 2031, with alumina electroceramics generating 2/5 of overall market revenue.

Hard Coatings Market- The global hard coatings market revenue topped US$ 750 Mn in 2020, in spite of recessionary impacts induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Sales remained high amid high uptake in the food processing industry. Future prospects are likely to receive significant nudge, with the market anticipated to reach a valuation exceeding US$ 1 Bn by 2031.

Automotive Ceramics Market- The market for automotive ceramics experienced steady growth until 2020, closing in at approximately US$ 2 Bn amid high deployment across several automotive allied industrial domains, most notably across electronics manufacturing. A new forecast by Fact.MR anticipates demand for automotive ceramics to expand 1.4X from 2021 to 2031.

Solid State Battery Market- In 2020, the global Solid State Battery Market were valued at US$ 56.9 million. At around 30% CAGR, projected market growth during 2021 - 2031 is expected to be significantly higher than previous years. By 2031, the market for portable solid state batteries is expected to account for an absolute dollar opportunity of nearly US$ 911 Mn.

Stone Paper Market- Recently released stone paper business analysis by Fact.MR, a market research and competitive intelligence provider, reveals that the market is estimated to grow 1.8X by the end of 2031. Advertising and marketing captures a lions share of the demand for stone paper with 1.5% Y-o-Y growth in FY2020 as compared to FY2019.

Biofuels Market- Newly-released biofuels industry analysis by Fact.MR reveals that global revenue from the sales of biofuels in 2020 was US$ 134 Bn. The industry is likely to expand at a CAGR of 4.8% during 2021  2031. Bioethanol is expected to be the highest revenue generating segment, accounting for an absolute dollar opportunity of nearly US$ 53.6 Bn over the next ten years.

Aerospace Composites Market- Aerospace Composites Industry analysis shows that the global market was valued at US$ 32 Bn in 2020, and is projected to top US$ 56 Bn by 2031, expanding at an impressive CAGR of 9% across forecast period as per Fact.MR's report.

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CHICHESTER, England, July 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has announced that Emma Begley has been appointed Director of Global Communications, effective 1 July.

ROLLS-ROYCE ANNOUNCES NEW DIRECTOR OF GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS

Emma joins Rolls-Royce from BMW UK where she has been General Manager, Product and Internal Communications since 2019. In this role she has been responsible for external communications for the BMW Group and its products, as well as co-ordinating and delivering internal communications within the National Sales Company. Emma first joined the BMW Group in 2014, working at the company's headquarters in Munich where she was spokesperson for the member of the BMW AG Management Board responsible for Customer, Brands and Sales.

Torsten Muller-Otvos, Chief Executive Officer, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, said, "I am delighted to welcome Emma Begley to the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Board of Directors. She is ideally suited to her new role at Rolls-Royce. Her exceptional experience and proven track record will be invaluable, particularly as we continue to share the story of our bright, bold electric future."

Emma began her career at the BBC before moving to Germany in 2002 to pursue a freelance career as a journalist and translator. She holds an Honours Degree in English and French and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Broadcast Journalism. She will be based at The Home of Rolls-Royce at Goodwood.

Emma replaces Richard Carter, the company's longest-serving Board Director. Richard has made an exceptional contribution to the global success of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars and he departs after a successful 14 year tenure to pursue alternative, further business interests.

For further information, please visit: www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1852892/Rolls_Royce_Emma_Begley.jpg
FILE PHOTO: Vladimir Potanin, co-owner of Norilsk Nickel, attends an agreement signing ceremony with the Krasnoyarsk region's government, in Moscow

(Reuters) -Russian businessman Vladimir Potanin has said he is ready to discuss a possible merger between his mining group Nornickel and aluminium producer Rusal, a move that could strengthen their defences against any possible Western sanctions against them.

Potanin told RBC TV he had sent a letter on Monday confirming his agreement to start merger discussions, citing the desirability of creating a "national champion" and building up "extra stability against sanctions".

The initial proposal, which would create a company with a combined value of about $60 billion - similar to Glencore, came from Rusal management, he added.

Rusal, the world's largest aluminium producer outside China, did not reply to a Reuters request for comment. The Kremlin, which closely monitors tie-ups between strategic Russian companies, said it was unaware of merger plans.

Hong-Kong listed shares at Rusal rose by 11.35%, while Nornickel, the world's largest producer of palladium and refined nickel, was down 3.8% in Moscow.

Neither company has been directly targeted by Western sanctions imposed on Russia over the war in Ukraine, though Potanin himself was hit by British sanctions last week.

A tie-up would create a global base metals giant with combined revenue of $30 billion. Nornickel's palladium and nickel account for 40% and 7% of global mine production of these metals, respectively. Rusal produced 6% of global aluminium output in 2021.

Analysts said their combined clout could deter the West from imposing sanctions for fear of sending prices soaring for metals that are critical to its own industries.

The combined company would be "practically invulnerable to sanctions, as global markets are critically dependent on their products. Especially with the green agenda in mind," said Evgeny Kogan, professor at the Higher School of Economics in Russia.

'TOO BIG TO SANCTION'

"The argument 'too big to sanction' sounds plausible," said Maria Shagina, sanctions expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

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"I still think that the United States and the European Union are not ready for the repetition of the April 2018 sanctions on Rusal."

Rusal was subject to U.S. sanctions between April 2018 and early 2019 that caused a jump in global aluminium prices. Washington removed Rusal from the sanctions list when its founder Oleg Deripaska agreed to relinquish control of it.

Deripaska, still on the U.S. sanctions list, remains a powerful tycoon in Russia. His relations with Potanin are chilly.

Potanin and Rusal own 36% and 26% respectively of Nornickel, which had a market value of $49 billion at Monday's closing prices, according to Refinitiv Eikon data, compared with Rusal's market capitalisation of $15 billion.

DEAL MAKER

Potanin has swooped aggressively to grab new opportunities since Russia sent troops into Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions transformed the business environment.

His Interros group snapped up Rosbank from Societe Generale when the French lender exited the Russian market, before buying a 35% in TCS finance group at what its founder, Oleg Tinkov, said was a knockdown price.

The tycoon's public statement was unusual because he typically maintains silence until his deals are clinched.

His comments came less than a week after Britain slapped sanctions on Potanin and six months before the expiry of Nornickel's 10-year shareholder agreement that made him president of the miner - signals that the move was driven by multiple factors.

"Instead of leaving the company, as many other big businessmen have done recently [after Western sanctions on them], a more elegant solution may be found - to merge with Rusal," Kogan said on social media.

Interros Holding, which manages Potanin's assets, did not reply to a Reuters' request for additional comment.

The shareholder agreement, which expires on Jan. 1, covers the size of dividends at Nornickel which has been the main reason for on-and-off rows between shareholders at Nornickel and Rusal over the last 14 years.

The potential deal is a risk for Nornickel's future dividend payments and would provide limited financial synergies, analysts at BCS said in a note.

Potanin told RBC TV that the size of dividends to which investors at Nornickel have become accustomed in recent years will certainly not be available in 2022 nor presumably in 2023.

While Western sanctions have not directly targeted Nornickel, they have caused problems with trade finance and logistics.

"Potanin is flagging that they are under pressure from sanctions," said Tom Price, head of commodities strategy at Liberum in London. "Big miners always seek low-cost funding. But the ability of Russia's miners to do that has been severely restricted."

(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Mark Trevelyan, Gareth Jones and David Evans)
Sandfire Resources America Inc.

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, Mont., July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sandfire Resources America Inc. ("Sandfire America" or the "Company") announces that the District Court has issued an order on remedies that will allow Phase I Construction of the Black Butte Copper Project to be completed under the existing permit.



Jerry Zieg, Senior Vice President, stated, Although we continue to strongly disagree with the Courts initial April 8th Order, we are pleased with Judge Bidegarays decision today to allow us to continue with its development of the Black Butte Copper Project. Sandfire America maintains that our Black Butte Copper Project is the best and most environmentally sound mining project ever proposed in Montana and that DEQ properly permitted all phases of the Project.

The order on remedies is in regard to the April 8th, 2022 ruling in a lawsuit against the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (Montana DEQ) and Tintina Montana Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company ("Tintina Montana"), filed by mining adversaries on June 4, 2020, challenging the Black Butte Copper Project. The ruling found that the Montana DEQ had violated aspects of the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) and the Montana Metal Mine Reclamation Act (MMRA) in its grant of a Mine Operating Permit for the Black Butte Copper Project. On July 1, 2022, plaintiffs and defendants filed a joint motion recommending a stipulated order for remedies.

By granting the stipulated motion, the Judges Order will allow Tintina Montana to complete Phase I Construction under the existing permit while it pursues an appeal of the April 8th Order.

The Company is also concurrently working on strategies to complete additional test work, analysis, and reporting for additional authorizations from Montana DEQ with the objective of moving the project past Phase 1 of the Permit.

Contact Information:

Sandfire Resources America Inc.

Nancy Schlepp, VP of Communications

Mobile: 406-224-8180

Office: 406-547-3466

Email: nschlepp@sandfireamerica.com

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Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: Certain disclosures in this document constitute "forward looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation, including statements regarding advancing Phase I Construction to completion, pursuing an appeal of the April 8th Order, completing additional test work, analysis, and reporting for additional authorizations from Montana DEQ and expected outcomes. In making these forward-looking statements, the Company has applied certain factors and assumptions that the Company believes are reasonable, including that the Company will receive required regulatory approvals, and will be able to secure additional funding to execute its plans. However, the forward-looking statements in this document are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties, and other factors, including delays in obtaining or inability to obtain required government or other regulatory approvals, inability to obtain financing. 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. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend, 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 required by law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.




(Removes Vladimir Vize after it leaves the port) July 4 (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 Mafyar 261,000 July 5 Qatar South Hook Mozah 262,000 July 10 Qatar South Hook LNG River Orashi 143,000 July 11 Nigeria Isle of Grain Al Aamriya 207,000 July 12 Qatar South Hook Pearl LNG 156,000 July 19 Peru Milford Haven BELGIUM Fedor Litke 170,000 July 5 Russia Zeebrugge Marib Spirit 162,000 July 6 Qatar Zeebrugge Nikolay Urvantsev 169,000 July 8 Russia Zeebrugge Zekreet 137,000 July 11 Qatar Zeebrugge NETHERLANDS Rudolf Samoylovich 170,000 July 4 (A) Russia Gate Hoegh Esperanza 177,000 July 6 United States Gate Gaslog Westminster 156,000 July 12 Unites 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 Nina Chestney)
Welcome back, readers. Jordan Parker Erb here, taking you inside the annual "summer camp for billionaires," and sharing the latest position in tech: "Director of Vibes."

Ready? Let's get started.

If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Insider's app here.

sheryl sandberg mark zuckerberg facebook

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

1. "Summer camp for billionaires" begins today. Some of the most influential figures in tech and media will touch down this week in a small Idaho town for the Sun Valley conference, an annual meet-and-greet for industry moguls.

Over the years, the conference has been the backdrop for a number of major media mergers: Jeff Bezos' purchase of The Washington Post, Disney's plan to purchase ABC, and the sale of NBC to Comcast all started in Sun Valley.

Variety reported that Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and Elon Musk were invited this year, as were Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Execs from Slack, YouTube, and Spotify are also on the list; Jeff Bezos and Rupert Murdoch are not.

Last year, Sun Valley's airport became so overrun with private jets that the FAA had to delay incoming planes.

See what the conference is all about.

In other news:

An aerial view of Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory on March 29, 2021 in Shanghai, China.

An aerial view of Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory on March 29, 2021 in Shanghai, China.Xiaolu Chu/Getty Images

2. Fifteen Black employees are suing Tesla. Alleging racial harassment, the current and former workers say the automaker created a racially hostile work environment in its factories. One plaintiff said he was tackled at work and told to "suck it up and be a man"  here's what we know so far.

3. Web 3.0 firms are dropping corporate culture managers for "directors of vibes." Insider spoke with several chiefs of vibes, who shared how they got the job (and what it means, exactly), what it takes to manage a firm's vibes, and why maintaining the vibes is more important than ever.

4. Embattled crypto lender Celsius is reportedly laying off 150 staff. As per Calcalist, the company now faces possible insolvency following "extreme market conditions." It comes after reports that Goldman Sachs is looking to put together a $2 billion deal to buy Celsius assets if it goes bankrupt.

Story continues

5. A freelance virtual assistant shares how she stays organized. Hannah Dixon became a virtual assistant nine years ago, and now makes six figures. From "Me First" days to tech tools like Trello, she shared three tricks for staying on top of the work.

6. Elon Musk is back online. After a mysterious nine-day hiatus from Twitter, Musk broke his silence to tweet a meme, some personal musings, and the announcement that he and four of his teenage children met Pope Francis.

7. Internal Amazon documents show a new policy barring employees from warehouses during off hours. Some employees and labor leaders told Insider the new policy could restrict employees' union organizing activity. How the policy could hamper union organizing.

8. GM is only making 12 electric Hummers a day. Despite a waiting list of 77,000 buyers, the company's Detroit factory is producing the cars at an unusually slow pace, according to The Wall Street Journal. Why the Hummer EV is taking so long.

Odds and ends:

An Apple Watch and Apple Watch charger laying on a blue background.

oasisamuel/Shutterstock

9. The new Apple Watches could tell you if you have a fever. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, body-temperature detection will be added to both the standard Series 8 model and its more rugged counterpart, each coming later this year. Here's the latest.

10. A Tesla Model S Plaid hit its fastest speed on record. A video shows the Tesla hitting 216 miles per hour, a feat made possible by a company that hacked the car's software. Get a look at the super-fast Tesla.

What we're watching today:

Special purpose acquisition company I2PO expects to complete its business combination with music streaming company Deezer.

The annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference starts today.

Keep updated with the latest tech news throughout your day by checking out The Refresh from Insider, a dynamic audio news brief from the Insider newsroom. Listen here.

Curated by Jordan Parker Erb in New York. (Feedback or tips? Email jerb@insider.com or tweet @jordanparkererb.) Edited by Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Hong Kong: DoJ condemns intimidation

The Government will seriously pursue taking action against people who commit acts of intimidation or violence.

Secretary for Justice Paul Lam issued the statement in response to the report of a suspicious parcel received by a staff of the High Court today.

In his statement, Mr Lam said he is deeply concerned about the incident.

In Hong Kong where the rule of law is upheld, no act of intimidation or violence which is against the law or constitutes contempt of court will be tolerated.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government will pursue seriously against any person who commits any such act and bring the culprit to justice in order to defend the integrity of the court, ensure the due administration of the justice and maintain public order.

This story has been published on: 2022-07-05. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
By Trend

Israel signed a cooperation agreement with the U.S. multinational aerospace corporation Boeing, the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) said in a statement, Trend reports citing Xinhua.

The goal of the agreement is to jointly promote cyber defense in civil aviation, it added.

The cooperation includes knowledge sharing, threat detection, understanding and reducing risks, and developing solutions to defend civil aviation in collaboration with the cyber and aviation industries in Israel and the United States.

The agreement is part of a strategic joint plan of the INCD and Israel's Civil Aviation Authority to advance cyber defense capabilities in civil aviation, the statement noted.
(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. investors have a lot to parse after the July 4 holiday: a disappointing quarter of deliveries, a record month of production, and now several weeks of downtime at multiple plants.

Most Read from Bloomberg

The electric-car maker will halt most production on its Model Y assembly line in Shanghai for the first two weeks of July, then stop the Model 3 line for a 20-day stretch starting July 18, Bloomberg reported last month. Upgrade work at the factory to boost output of both vehicles is expected to be completed by early August, people familiar with the matter said.

On Monday, TeslaMag said the carmakers plant near Berlin will take a two-week break starting July 11. The German site reported that Tesla aims to roughly double its production rate in August, citing an unidentified source. The company built 1,000 Model Ys at the factory during at least one week last month.

Tesla didnt mention these plans in its July 2 production and deliveries statement. The carmaker offered an upbeat line -- it made more vehicles in June than any month in its history -- while disclosing 254,695 deliveries for the quarter, short of analysts estimates.

The relative weakness of the quarter was expected, Philippe Houchois, a Jefferies analyst with a buy rating on Tesla shares, said in a July 3 note. He wrote that Chief Executive Officer Elon Musks comments referring to the companys new plants as money furnaces suggest Teslas free cash flow may have been affected by significant working capital disruptions.

Tesla shares fell as much as 4.2% to $653.18 shortly after the start of regular trading Tuesday and have declined about 38% this year.

The biggest blow to Teslas performance last quarter came from Shanghais weeks-long lockdown in response to a Covid outbreak. The company went to extraordinary lengths to reopen its factory there and keep it running, with thousands of workers sleeping on site to maintain partial production.

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Whereas Shanghai is Teslas most productive plant, its factories near Berlin and Austin, Texas, are only just getting going. Musk staged an opening party at the former on March 22 and at the latter on April 7.

While those were jovial affairs -- Musk danced in Germany and donned a cowboy hat and shades in Texas -- the CEO sounded much more subdued a few weeks later.

Berlin and Austin are losing billions of dollars right now because theres a ton of expense and hardly any output, Musk told the Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley on May 31. Getting Berlin and Austin functional and getting Shanghai back in the saddle fully are overwhelmingly our concern.

The Shanghai shutdown and struggles ramping up new plants contributed to Tesla shares plunging 38% in the three months that ended in June, a record quarterly drop. The S&P 500 slumped 16%, the biggest decline for the benchmark US stock index since the first quarter of 2020.

Tesla scheduled its quarterly earnings report for July 20.

(Updates with share trading in the sixth paragraph.)

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Turmalina Metals Corp.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Turmalina Metals Corp. (Turmalina, or the Company; TBX-TSXV, TBXXF-OTCQX) is pleased to announce that the Company has filed a Technical Report (the Report) in compliance with National Instrument 43-101 (NI 43-101) on the Companys Chanape gold-silver-copper project (the Project), located in San Damian District, central Peru.



The Report was independently prepared by Caracle Creek SpA of Santiago, Chile.

The NI 43-101 Technical Report describes the history, permitting, geology and mineralisation of the Project, and makes the following conclusions and recommendations:

The Project contains multiple high-grade tourmaline Au-Ag-Cu breccia pipes, with 30 breccia zones identified to date.

These breccias and associated mineralised veins are interpreted to have been sourced from an underlying porphyry Cu-Mo-Ag-Au system.

The Company should explore the tourmaline breccia targets, and in addition, should evaluate the deeper porphyry potential of the Project.

A two-stage exploration program is recommended, with an initial Phase 1 of 10 drill holes testing 3 breccia pipes, followed by a more comprehensive Phase 2 (USD$5.5M over several years) should the results of Phase 1 prove positive.

Dr. Rohan Wolfe, Chief Executive Officer, states:

Completing the Technical Report on Chanape is an important step forward as we prepare for our inaugural drilling program at the Project. Previous exploration at the Project has already defined multiple high-grade targets, and this independent report highlights the outstanding exploration potential of the Project. The Project is a large and complex system with high-grade Au-Ag-Cu breccia and vein targets already defined, and the potential to host significant porphyry Cu-Mo-Au-Ag mineralisation.

The NI 43-101 technical Report titled, National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report on the Chanape Gold-Silver-Copper Project has been filed on both SEDAR (sedar.com) and the Companys website (turmalinametals.com), and can be downloaded at the following link:

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https://turmalinametals.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Turmalina-Chanape-NI43-101-TR-June_2022-Final.pdf

On Behalf of the Company,

Dr. Rohan Wolfe, Chief Executive Officer and Director

Website: turmalinametals.com

Address: #488 - 1090 West Georgia St, Vancouver, BC V6E 3V7.

For Investor Relations enquiries, please contact Bryan Slusarchuk at +1 833 923 3334 (toll free) or via info@turmalinametals.com .

Statements

About Turmalina Metals: Turmalina Metals is a TSXV-listed exploration company focused on developing our portfolio of high-grade gold-copper-silver projects in South America. Our focus is on tourmaline breccias, a deposit style overlooked by many explorers. Turmalina Metals is led by a team responsible for multiple gold-copper-silver discoveries who are highly experienced in this deposit style. Our projects are characterised by open high-grade mineralization on established mining licenses that present compelling drill targets. The most advanced project held by Turmalina is the San Francisco project in San Juan, Argentina. For further information on the San Francisco Project, refer to the technical report entitled NI43-101 Technical Report San Francisco Copper Gold Project, San Juan Province, Argentina dated November 17, 2019, under the Corporations profile at www.sedar.com.

Qualified Person: The scientific and technical data contained in this news release pertaining to the San Francisco and Turmalina projects has been reviewed and approved by Dr. Rohan Wolfe, Chief Executive Officer, MAIG, who serves as the Qualified Person (QP) under the definition of National Instrument 43-101.

Forward Looking Statement: 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. These statements are only predictions. Various assumptions were used in drawing the conclusions or making the projections contained in the forward-looking statements throughout this news release. 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 Corporations prospectus dated November 21, 2019) and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. The Corporation 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.

There is no assurance when the government-imposed measures related to COVID-19 in Argentina will be lifted. There is uncertainty over the form and duration of government measures and multiple policy changes may occur with regards to these measures over time. The Company may not provide updates on various government measures and changes to these measures as they occur. Protocols related to COVID-19, and the effects of the pandemic on service providers located throughout South America, may lead to delays in the future reporting of results.




Ukrainian officials including President Volodymyr Zelensky wished the U.S. a happy Independence Day on Monday as the nation fights for its own independence against the ongoing Russian invasion.

I appreciate the leadership assistance of the United States in Ukraines defending of common values  freedom, democracy and independence, Zelensky tweeted, wishing Americans and President Biden a happy July 4th.

Happy Independence Day to the people of  and @POTUS! I wish the friendly people of  peace and prosperity. I appreciate the leadership assistance of the United States in Ukraine's defending of common values  Freedom, Democracy and Independence.    (@ZelenskyyUa) July 4, 2022

The U.S. has made supporting Ukraine a cornerstone of its foreign policy since Russia invaded the country on Feb. 24. Washington has committed $6.9 billion in security assistance since Russias invasion began, uniting Western nations against the move and bringing tensions with Moscow to a boiling point not seen since the Cold War.

Happy 4th or July to all our American friends and thanks for standing with us in the darkest hour. Together, we will prevail, the Ukraine governments official Twitter account said.

The Ukrainian military orchestra on Monday released a video of the group performing the U.S. national anthem, sung in English, in honor of the holiday.

Dear American friends, we appreciate all the support we receive from the United States, and today we sincerely wish you happy Independence Day, an unnamed uniformed military official said in the video following the groups performance.

The gesture was one of many from the Ukrainian military.

On behalf of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and on my own behalf, I convey my heartfelt wishes to the American people on the anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraines armed forces, wrote in a Facebook post.

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I wish you every success in your future endeavors, prosperity, much happiness and robust health, he continued.

The general staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine also marked July 4 in a post.

Happy 4th or July to all our American friends and thanks for standing with us in the darkest hour, the Ukrainian governments official account tweeted on Monday. Together, we will prevail.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
New Stores in California, Montana, and North Carolina Signal Continuous and Steady Growth

ROSEMONT, Ill., July 05, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--US Foods Holding Corp. (NYSE: USFD) announced today its plan to open new US Foods CHEFSTORE locations in Merced and Santa Cruz, Calif., Helena, Mont., and Winston-Salem, NC. The additional stores further expand the reach of the CHEFSTORE offering, providing restaurant operators, food industry professionals, community groups and at-home chefs a warehouse-style retail solution to quickly stock up or replenish ingredients by the case and in individual quantities.

The Merced and Santa Cruz stores will join 15 existing CHEFSTORE locations across California. The Merced store will be located at 3275 R St. and will offer its customers nearly 19,000-square-feet of shopping space. Both Santa Cruz and Merced stores are scheduled to open in fall 2022. The Santa Cruz store will be located at 1660 Commercial Way and will offer over 23,000-square-feet for its customers.

The Helena store will bring its third CHEFSTORE location to the state of Montana, joining existing locations in Kalispell and Missoula. Opening in early 2023, the new Helena CHEFSTORE will offer 20,000 square feet of shopping space, and will be located at 2885 N Sanders St.

The Winston-Salem store will be the second CHEFSTORE location in North Carolina. Set to open in December 2022, the new Winston-Salem location will boast 23,500 square feet of shopping space and will be located at 140 Stratford Commons Court.

"The new CHEFSTORES will offer foodservice operators across Northern California, Montana, and North Carolina a new and convenient retail location for purchasing their much-needed food and supplies," said John Mathews, vice president of sales and marketing for CHEFSTORE. "Merced, Santa Cruz, Helena, and Winston-Salem have a growing community of restaurant owners and culinary professionals. CHEFSTORE is excited to help serve their needs with thousands of restaurant-quality products at competitive prices."

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This year, CHEFSTORE announced the opening of three new stores in Visalia, Calif., Lynchburg, Va. and Spartanburg, S.C. With more than 80 locations across 13 states, CHEFSTORE offers thousands of restaurant-quality products at competitive prices, including fresh meat, produce, dairy, deli items and frozen seafood to industry professionals and home chefs alike. Customers can also shop for a wide range of cookware, beverages, catering essentials, janitorial supplies and other restaurant essentials. CHEFSTORE is open to the public seven days a week and no membership is required.

US Foods acquired Smart Foodservice Warehouse stores in April 2020 to accelerate growth and its footprint in the cash and carry market to provide an omni-channel experience to more customers. The company rebranded all Smart Foodservice Warehouse stores to US Foods CHEFSTORE in February of 2021. With the addition of the four new locations, US Foods will have 87 CHEFSTORE locations across the continental United States.

To learn more about CHEFSTORE, visit www.CHEFSTORE.com.

About CHEFSTORE

CHEFSTORE offers a customer-centric, warehouse-format shopping experience for wholesale food and restaurant supplies at competitive prices. Designed as a one-stop-shop for restaurant operators and foodservice professionals, CHEFSTORE is also an option for non-profit organizations and the public, and no membership is required. CHEFSTORE locations feature an assortment of thousands of food products including fresh meat, produce, dairy, and deli items. Customers will also be able to shop for grocery products, beverages, catering essentials, janitorial supplies, and other restaurant essentials. CHEFSTORE is owned by US Foods and offers more than 80 locations nationwide across 13 states. Visit CHEFSTORE.com to learn more.

About US Foods

With a promise to help its customers Make It, US Foods is one of Americas great food companies and a leading foodservice distributor, partnering with approximately 250,000 restaurants and foodservice operators to help their businesses succeed. With 70 broadline locations and more than 80 cash and carry stores, US Foods and its 28,000 associates provides its customers with a broad and innovative food offering and a comprehensive suite of e-commerce, technology and business solutions. US Foods is headquartered in Rosemont, Ill. Visit www.usfoods.com to learn more.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220705005598/en/

Contacts

Sara Matheu

Director of Media Relations

773-580-3775

Sara.Matheu@usfoods.com
The US and Russian ambassadors clashed over Ukraine in a rare joint appearance in Beijing on Monday.

Nicholas Burns, the United States ambassador, told the World Peace Forum in Beijing that Russia's "unprovoked" invasion was "the greatest threat to the world order".

"Russia's war in Ukraine, the fact that Russia crossed the border with an armed force, unprovoked, and has started this war with so much human suffering, so many innocent civilians dead - this is a direct violation of the UN Charter," the ambassador told the event, which was hosted by Tsinghua University.

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.

He also warned that other countries were suffering because Russia's blockade of Ukraine's ports had disrupted grain exports.

"There's a food security crisis. It's been compounded by this illegal, unjust and brutal war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine," he said.

The two ambassadors shake hands before the event at the World Peace Forum. Photo: AP alt=The two ambassadors shake hands before the event at the World Peace Forum. Photo: AP>

But Andrey Denisov, the Russian ambassador, who spoke after Burns, said he "totally disagreed" with the comments and his American counterpart had ignored the backdrop of Nato expansion.

"Nato, in essence, is involved in the war with Russia through proxies," Denisov said.

He also insisted: "There is no blockade [of grain exports]. All the corridors are open. The latest step by Russia is withdrawing troops from Snake Island."

Snake Island, a critical outpost for controlling Black Sea shipping lanes, was abandoned by Russian forces last week in what Moscow said was a gesture of goodwill. Ukraine said the Russians had been forced to retreat under a heavy barrage of artillery and missile fire.

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Denisov praised Beijing for its "reasonable and balanced" approach, adding: "Basically, our colleagues here in China say that they clearly know where the roots of the Ukraine crisis are."

China has so far refused to condemn Russia's invasion and has criticised the imposition of sanctions and Nato's eastward expansion, saying the alliance has created more conflict rather than resolving problems.

Densiov said China had been calling on all sides to take a constructive position, and suggested it may be able to "play a role" as mediator.

"China has a good relationship with Ukraine. And that's where I hope that in one way, China can send some kind of signal to our neighbours to be more realistic," he said.

The British and French ambassadors also spoke at the event, with the UK's Caroline Wilson joining Burns to dismiss claims that Nato, which she described as a "pure defensive alliance", was a threat to Russia.

"Russia has a border of 20,000km [12,000 miles], and it is an extremely big country," she said. "One 16th of that border is with Nato countries, so the prime responsibility of the war is clear, the prime responsibility is with Russia."

Burns had earlier said: "You [Russia] accepted Nato enlargement. You dealt with all these countries, and now you try to say that somehow they don't have a right to their own independence and sovereignty."

Meanwhile, French ambassador Laurent Bili said China and Europe both wanted a peaceful solution and should work together to stop the fighting and increase humanitarian assistance to help "alleviate the consequences of the war".

"For example, China can join in Food and Agriculture Organization activities to get Russia to stop blocking food exports from Ukraine and to solve the problem of the food crisis," he said.

Burns also accused China of spreading "Russian propaganda" and urged the foreign ministry to "stop accusing Nato of starting the war".

He said: "I would hope the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson would also stop telling lies about American bioweapons labs, which do not exist in Ukraine ... These lies are the behaviour of an authoritarian regime that routinely doesn't tell the truth."

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian rejected Burns's criticisms, telling a press briefing on Monday: "It is the US official that has been spreading disinformation."

Jia Qingguo, an international relations professor at Peking University, told the event that although Nato had not threatened Russia, Moscow felt that countries trying to join the bloc were hostile towards it.

"The fact is, you can say that Nato has not threatened Russia," he said. "But the problem is Russia feels that way."

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.
(Bloomberg) -- Japanese chemicals supplier Showa Denko K.K. expects to further raise prices and cut back unprofitable product lines as it grapples with a barrage of economic challenges confronting the $550 billion semiconductor industry.

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Thats on top of at least a dozen hikes already this year, reflecting Covid-19 supply snarls, surging energy costs from the war in Ukraine and the yens dramatic weakening, Chief Financial Officer Hideki Somemiya told Bloomberg News in an interview. The situation is unlikely to significantly improve until at least 2023, he added.

Tokyo-based Showa Denko, which supplies essential chip fabrication materials to the likes of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Infineon Technologies AG, has been forced to drastically increase the cost it passes on to customers, Somemiya said. Because its a key supplier of the chemicals used early in the production chain by chipmakers and other manufacturers like Toyota Motor Corp., its price hikes could potentially squeeze margins or pressure customers to follow suit.

A big theme this year common to all the players in the materials industry is how much cost burden wed be able to convince customers to share with us, Somemiya said. The current market moves require us to ask twice the amount we had previously calculated.

Showa Denko is far from alone in raising prices, as other component makers and materials suppliers have been making similar moves to cope with the tough market, Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda said. Consumers of durable goods like electronics wont be spared higher price tags further down the road, he added. Chipmakers like TSMC and Samsung Electronics Co. have notified their own customers they intend to raise prices, Bloomberg News has reported.

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Samsung in Talks to Increase Prices of Chip Manufacturing by Up to 20%

Somemiyas company has started terminating the sale of certain commodity products and contracts with customers where it doesnt see the potential to carry on business profitably. The company, whose share price has fallen 31% over the past 12 months, will spend the rest of this year sorting out which areas to retreat from, he said.

In addition to rising prices of raw materials and natural resources, Showa Denkos Somemiya said the weakened yen poses another challenge. The Bank of Japan has grown increasingly isolated in its commitment to an ultra-easy monetary policy, pushing the yen to its lowest level against the US dollar in 24 years.

The current yen moves are not desirable for us at all because the weak yen is further pushing up the cost of raw materials, Somemiya said. Measures to deal with the yen that we as a company can undertake are very limited.

Somemiya, a former banker at JPMorgan Chase & Co., moved from Sony Group Corp. last year to take the CFOs position at Showa Denko and serve as Chief Executive Officer Hidehito Takahashis right-hand man in overhauling the company. At that time, Somemiya criticized the chemicals supplier for being naive in negotiating prices and leaving profit on the table.

Read more: Shakeup at Showa Denko Bets on Chipmakers Next Design Challenge

Employees have since become more assertive in their negotiations, in part because they have no other option -- a positive change that the market turmoil might have brought.

Theres nothing positive about the current rising material costs, but employees, who were used to simply accepting customer demands to cut prices, have become stronger in arguing that appropriate pricing will be best for us and customers over the long term, Somemiya said.

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2022 Bloomberg L.P.
Global Market Insights, Inc

In-vitro Diagnostics Industry is anticipated to register 3.1% CAGR between 2022 and 2030 due to surging number of pathology labs and services equipped with advanced diagnostic machines with rising adoption of point of care testing.

Selbyville, Delaware, July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --



The in-vitro diagnostics market value is expected to exceed USD 128.8 billion by 2030, according to a new research report by Global Market Insights Inc. Rising incidence of chronic diseases coupled with rapidly growing geriatric population will positively influence the industry statistics.

Increasing number of pathology labs equipped with advanced diagnostic machine will drive the overall industry outlook. The involvement of the government in providing funds to the diagnostic centers as well as improvement of novel technologically advanced in-vitro devices will have a positive impact on the industry growth. In various regions, the government initiated to provide funds to diagnostic centers for the development of technological advanced devices and machines in the market that fostered the overall business expansion.

Request for a sample of this research report @ https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/2820







Reagents & kits segment exceeded USD 61.8 billion in 2021. This is attributed to the several market players focusing on launching novel reagents & kits by increasing their investments. For instance, in February 2022, Invitae launched FusionPlex Dx and LiquidPlex Dx cancer testing kits in order to facilitate the effective treatment for cancer patients with medication and the rapid availability of the necessary information. Additionally, availability of large number of reagents & kits including hematology reagents, coagulation reagent & kits, urine test reagents, biochemistry reagents for several disease treatment will augment the industry scenario.

Some of the key findings from the in-vitro diagnostics market report include:

Growing adoption of personalized medicines will propel the market progression.

Rising prevalence of infectious and chronic diseases will spur the industry landscape.

Increasing adoption of point-of-care testing across the globe will boost the market forecasts.

Significant R&D initiatives being undertaken by major market players for the development of novel reagents will propel the market revenue.

However, the high cost of diagnostic services and unfavorable reimbursement scenarios may hinder the industry growth.

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Browse key industry insights spread across 196 pages with 239 market data tables & 18 figures & charts from the report, In-vitro Diagnostics Market Analysis By Product Type (Reagents & Kits, Instruments), Test Type (Clinical Chemistry, Immunoassay/Immunochemistry, Molecular Diagnostics, Hematology, Urinalysis), Application (Oncology, Infectious Diseases, Diabetes, Cardiology, Nephrology, Autoimmune Diseases, Drug Testing/Pharmacogenomics), End-user (Hospitals, Diagnostic Laboratories, Academic & Research Institutes), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook, Growth Potential, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2022 - 2030 in detail along with the table of contents:

https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/in-vitro-diagnostics-market



Immunoassay/immunochemistry segment is likely to garner over 3.1% CAGR during the analysis period. This is due to the rising applications of immunoassays in advanced diagnostic tests. Immunoassay/immunochemistry is widely used for therapeutic drug monitoring, diagnosis of diseases, clinical pharmacokinetic and bioequivalence studies in pharmaceutical industries and drug discovery. Moreover, immunoassays/immunochemistry have become increasingly popular tools as they offer sensitive, specific results and are relatively easy to use for measuring biologic analytes. In addition, some immunoassay methods are rapid, easy to automate and yield improved precision.

The In-vitro diagnostics market from diabetes segment accounted for around 16.3% business share in 2021. This is attributed to rising incidence of obesity and hyperglycemia. For instance, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the prevalence of obesity increased to 41.9% in 2020 across the U.S. Therefore, rising obesity leads to growing chances of type 2 diabetes mellitus in an individual. Moreover, rising demand for genetic testing for personalized healthcare, such as that for cancer and diabetes will accelerate industry trends.

Asia Pacific in-vitro diagnostics market captured over 20% market share in 2021 and is poised to grow substantially during the forthcoming years. This is attributed to increasing geriatric population suffering with chronic diseases. Some of the common chronic disorders among elderly population include hypertension, arthritis, high cholesterol, heart failure, Alzheimers disease, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Moreover, growing healthcare expenditure and infrastructure for developing pathology labs will lead to regional market expansion.

Request for customization of this research report @ https://www.gminsights.com/roc/2820



Some of the key market players operating in in-vitro diagnostics market include Abbott, F Hoffmann-La Roche AG, bioMerieux, Qiagen, Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Sysmex, Danaher, DiaSorin, Becton Dickinson and Company, BioMerieux and Siemens. These industry players are adopting various growth strategies to capture maximum share and sustain the market competition.

About Global Market Insights

Global Market Insights Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider, offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy, and biotechnology.

CONTACT: Contact Us: Arun Hegde Corporate Sales, USA Global Market Insights Inc. Phone: 1-302-846-7766 Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688 Email: sales@gminsights.com




Virginia Business has named Janet Gullickson, Germanna Community Colleges president, one of the commonwealths top female leaders for her innovation and impact in education.

She featured in the magazines July issue on 2022 Womens Business Leaders. The honor came on the fifth anniversary of her becoming Germannas first woman president.

Led by Gullickson, Germanna was one of a small percentage of U.S. colleges to see their enrollment and fundraising soar during the pandemic. Germannas enrollment jumped while most colleges lost students due to the COVID-19 crisis and the national trend of fewer students graduating from high school, the college said in a statement Friday.

She is now developing work-based learning programs for students to gain hands-on experience through paid internships.

We plan to have that rolled out for all of our students within the next year, Gullickson said.

She has helped develop partnerships with other institutions such as the University of Virginia to allow Germanna students to transfer easily from its online College Everywhere program. Germanna is finalizing a similar partnership with George Mason University.

Earlier, Gullickson held positions in the Colorado Department of Higher Education, Minnesotas university system and the Community Colleges of Spokane. She was Spokane Falls Community Colleges president immediately prior to moving to Virginia.

Germanna has the uncanny ability to bring out the best in people, Gullickson said. It worked on me, too!

When other colleges hesitated during the pandemics onset in the spring of 2020, Gullickson ordered all classes moved online and oversaw making Germanna a first-rate provider of distance learning that was safe for students.

As students have returned to classrooms, she hasnt deemphasized online classes.

Germannas new accelerated, all-online College Everywhere program enables students to earn two-year degrees in one year, saving them time and money, and transfer seamlessly to four-year schools like U.Va. and GMU. This month, Germanna will sign an online-transfer agreement with the University of Mary Washington.

This academic year, Germannas enrollment is up 10 percent for summer 2022 and 7 percent for fall 2022.

Over the past four years, the college has seen enrollment grow 15.65 percent. African American student enrollment rose by 25 percent, and Hispanic student enrollment by 10 percent.

Following the May 2020 murder of Minneapolis resident George Floydwhich ignited activism around the nationGermanna created a website called Black Minds Matter to connect students to resources and counseling, Virginia Business reported. The college also began the development of its Truth and Reconciliation Strategic Plan.

We really have made an effort in racial equity, Gullickson said.Germanna is Culpeper County residents preferred college for enrollment, educating more than 1,000 students from Culpeper annually.

The college has about 13,000 students, including those in degree programs, workforce training and apprenticeships. Germanna serves Culpeper, Orange, Madison, Stafford, Spotsylvania, Caroline and King George counties and Fredericksburg.
Unidentified armed gunmen have shot and killed two traffic-police officers in northwestern Pakistan, police say.

The attack took place in the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province on July 5.



Both officers were on duty when unknown gunmen riding a motorbike opened fire on them and fled the scene, police said.



There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.



The incident happened a day after at least nine security personnel were injured when a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of security forces in the North Waziristan tribal district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.



Police and military sources confirmed the attack to RFERL and said that three of the injured were in critical situation.



Officials said that a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle blew himself up near the convoy in Khadi market in Waziristan.



No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.



On June 28, a member of a polio-vaccination team and two police officers who were escorting it were also shot dead in North Waziristan.



The recent incidents come amid a declared cease-fire by the banned Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) group as part of ongoing peace talks with the government.



The parliamentary Committee on National Security is set to hold a meeting in Islamabad on July 5 to discuss the negotiations of the Pakistani government with the TTP and the current national security situation.
By Trend

Tunisia has bought eight military training aircrafts from the United States as part of a plan to renew the air force's training aircraft fleet, the defense ministry said in a statement on Monday, Trend reports citing Reuters.

A deal was signed between the U.S. government and Textron Aviation Defense to provide Tunisia with the training aircrafts, it added.

The first batch of the new aircrafts is expected to be delivered during March 2023 and the delivery will be completed by October 2026, the statement said.

The bulk of the deal financing will be through the American grant and Tunisia will pay the rest, it added.
Colorado Springs-based Vectrus and Madison, Miss.-based Vertex have combined to form a new military powerhouse, V2X, based out of northern Virginia.
If youve been enraptured by the college town just northwest of Denver  Boulder, home of the University of Colorado  the rival asks you please to turn your attention farther north.
DENVER  Life expectancy dropped in Colorado for the second straight year in 2021. Its the kind of decline, driven by the pandemic, not seen in decades, data from the state health department show.

The average life expectancy for Colorado residents fell to 78 years in 2021. Thats slightly lower than 2020, the first year of the pandemic when it was 78.4 years, but the slide represents a persistent and significant drop of nearly three years compared to 2019.

The last time life expectancy dropped like this was in 1943, which was the most fatal year of World War II, for the nation, said Dr. Eric France, the states chief medical officer. It is tragic that we see life expectancy drop. Death rates increased by 20%.

Key drivers for the decline were COVID-19 and overdose deaths.

The data vary by demographic group. COVID-19 was the leading cause of death among Hispanics, as well as non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islanders and American Indian/Native Alaskans, the data show.

Dr. Lilia Cervantes, an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said she wasnt surprised by the new numbers.

The Latino community makes up the majority of the essential workforce, said Cervantes, who is a member of the Colorado Vaccine Equity Taskforce. During COVID, theyve been the least protected. Theyve not been able to avoid public transportation. Theyve had to continue working sometimes even while ill and are the least likely to have health care coverage.

Vaccination rates for Hispanics, the term used in state and federal health studies, lag other groups, both in Colorado and nationally.

The data mirror national trends.

American Indians and Alaska Natives faced similar population-level health challenges. Both communities entered the pandemic with longstanding preexisting health disparities that made them especially vulnerable to more severe COVID illness and death, said Michelle Sarche, a licensed clinical psychologist and associate professor in the Centers for American Indian & Alaska Native Health and Department of Community & Behavioral Health at the Colorado School of Public Health.

She noted many tribal communities face underlying health challenges, including inadequate access to health care, education, affordable and sufficient housing, and economic opportunity, all of which are treaty rights and trust obligations that the United States, in its own analysis, has failed to uphold.

As troubling as these data are, though, its important to tell the whole story, one of resilience, resistance and survival, said Sarche, a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of the Ojibwe tribe.

American Indian and Alaska Native communities instituted some of the most successful vaccine campaigns, she said. They marshaled enormous resources to protect their communities, and the most vulnerable among them  including elders, bearers of native language and culture for younger generations.

Cervantes also stressed the resilience of Hispanic communities during the pandemic and spotlighted changes that could help down the road.

She said countries with similar wealth as the U.S. provide more comprehensive social services and guarantee health care. She thinks a recent push to cover all Coloradans and make health care more affordable could help.

Colorado, I feel like, is creating change to make it so that access to health care coverage depends less on immigration status and socioeconomic status, she said.

The overall life expectancy among Colorado residents was 78.4 years in 2020 (81.0 years for females, 76.0 years for males) and 78.0 years in 2021 (80.9 years for females and 75.2 years for males), according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Thats based on final death certificate data for 2020 and 2021, and improved population estimates for both years.

COVID-19 remained the third-leading cause of death among Colorado residents in 2021, as it was in 2020, the health department found. Among non-Hispanic Black/African Americans, Asians and whites, COVID-19 was the third-leading cause of death.

Unintentional injuries, which include all accidental drug overdoses, motor vehicle accidents, and falls, remained the fourth-leading cause of death among Colorado residents in 2021, while suicide remained the eighth-leading cause, and homicide moved from 17th to 16th leading cause. Chronic diseases continue to make up the remainder of the leading causes of death.

The biggest driver of the increases in drug overdose deaths in the past few years has, indeed, been fentanyl, said Kirk Bol, the states Vital Statistics Program manager. Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid similar to morphine but 50 to 100 times more potent. Its increasingly being found in other drugs laced with fentanyl, causing users to overdose accidentally.

In 2017, the state recorded 81 fentanyl deaths. In 2021, the number rose to 912, half of all overdose deaths. Bol called it a shocking increase.

In 2021, there were 1,881 total drug overdose deaths among Colorado residents  an increase compared to the 1,477 deaths recorded in 2020. The highest increase involved fentanyl, which soared from 540 in 2020 to 912. Increases were also observed in overdose deaths involving methamphetamine and cocaine, while small declines were seen in overdose deaths involving heroin.
The Foundation for a Better Life promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others. Go to PassItOn.com.
The Denver Police Department seized over 10,000 pounds of fireworks Friday night from a residence in northwest Denver.

Police said the fireworks were being illegally sold out of the home.

An investigation into the incident is ongoing and no arrests had been made as of Monday afternoon.

Fireworks are illegal in the city and county of Denver. This includes possession of fireworks in addition to igniting them.
Monument Trustee Jim Romanello on Tuesday announced he is in the running to become the town's next mayor.

If elected, Romanello said his priorities are to continue collaboration with the Board of Trustees, address the town's "inevitable growth" in a "sensitive and responsible manner," and support public safety.

"This is an opportunity I believe I am fit for," he said in an interview.

Romanello, who was first elected to the Board of Trustees in November 2018, said he is the most experienced person on the board. He wants to use that experience to help guide the town through a looming recession, high housing demand, and see several water projects to completion.

Among those water projects are removing radium from two wells and building a new water laboratory and office space to accommodate the new radium removal systems; well redrilling; repairing an existing water tank; and building a new second water tank.

During his tenure as a trustee, Romanello highlighted his work to ensure Monument has adequate town staffing, supporting water projects, ensuring maintenance of the town's water wells, and encouraging responsible growth and supporting public safety. That latter included backing a dedicated sales tax initiative to fund police, which was approved by voters in a special election last November.

During the pandemic, he also served as the town's liaison to the county government to help bring economic assistance to Monument's small businesses.

His more than two decades of work as a financial adviser and as a small-business owner have also made him "keenly aware that we are facing major economic issues," he said in a news release announcing his candidacy.

The best way to tackle possible fiscal restraints in the face of a looming recession is through open and respectful collaboration among the Board of Trustees and town staff, Romanello said. Monument government is not run through a "strong mayor" system, and the mayor shares more authority with the board as a whole.

"It's a majority vote to do anything," he said. "If I'm in a meeting, I want to say, 'Let's look at all the facts and where we are in this economic curve and trend. If it goes in this direction in six months or if it goes in this direction, what might Plan A look like? What about Plan B?' And make sure the board knows where we are all going."

The same approach will be beneficial in planning the town's growth, he said.

"There are three plates you've got spinning, and they're all important. First, you have the rights of the property owner to develop. You have the will of the community and of the town. And you have to protect the fiduciary of the town itself  you've got to follow your own code and ordinances," Romanello said. "... You've got to look at any project through all of those three lenses and come up with a solution that meets it all."

He said he also supports a regional effort to find additional critical water resources and solutions. Leaders across the greater Pikes Peak region are seeking a sustainable water supply to relieve pressure on the Denver Basin, which provides water to thousands of El Paso County residents.

Monument trustees have heard several presentations on a proposed regional water project dubbed "The Loop" that local water district representatives have said could accomplish that goal.

"It's a wonderful solution," Romanello said. "But heres always the problem: money. ... Itll come down to real data. What's the financial impact?"

Romanello is the second candidate to announce his run for town mayor. Fellow Trustee Mitch LaKind also is campaigning for the seat.

The town's current mayor, Don Wilson, is the Republican candidate in the race to represent Colorado's House District 20, which includes Monument and Palmer Lake. Wilson will face Democratic opponent and former El Paso County Commission candidate Tracey Johnson in the Nov. 8 election.
Colorado health officials will hold monkeypox vaccination clinics next week for at-risk groups amid an ongoing effort to tamper down the United States' ongoing outbreak.
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev signed a Decree allocating funds for the construction of the GarapapagChayli highway in Gazakh District on July 5, Azernews reports.

In keeping with the decree, the State Agency of Azerbaijan Automobile Roads has been allocated AZN6.9 million ($2.29 million) for the construction of the GarapapagChayli highway, linking three settlements with a population of 14,000 inhabitants, in accordance with subparagraph 1.26.9 "Allocating funds envisaged for state capital investments in the state budget of the Republic of Azerbaijan for 2022".
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By Azernews

By Sabina Mammadli

The World Health Organization (WHO) Country Office has donated 3,000 test kits for monkeypox virus to Azerbaijan to use on a need basis.

As reported before, no cases of monkeypox have been detected in Azerbaijan. However, 5,322 monkeypox cases and one death have already been recorded in 58 countries as of June 30, 2022.

According to the WHO Representative to Azerbaijan Hande Harmanci, Azerbaijan is one of the first countries to receive testing kits from the organization.

"These kits will help identify cases of infection and channel public health efforts to prevent the spread of the disease. WHO is committed to support countries through monitoring, contact tracing, and isolation of infected patients. Early diagnosis is also crucial for achieving a complete cure," she noted.

To recap, WHO held an emergency meeting on May 20 to discuss the recent outbreak of monkeypox, a viral infection more common in western and central Africa, after over 100 cases were confirmed or suspected in Europe.

Monkeypox is a rare viral zoonotic disease (i.e., a disease transmitted to humans from animals). The virus can enter the body through broken skin, the respiratory tract, or through the eyes, nose, and mouth. From person to person, the disease can be transmitted through prolonged close contact.

The main symptom of the disease is an unusual purulent rash that appears on the face and shortly covers the entire body.
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What we know so far about the Highland Park shooting
Within the state's second-highest court, they are known as the "three amigos." Alternately: the "three stooges," the "three musketeers," or "chummy, yummy and gummy."

But to everyone outside the Court of Appeals' 22-member bench, they are known simply as "judge."

"They're very tight. They're very close," said Chief Judge Gilbert M. Roman during Thursday's formal swearing-in ceremony for three appellate judges: Sueanna P. Johnson, Christina F. Gomez and David H. Yun.

Although such ceremonies, known as investitures, typically occur fairly soon after a judge's appointment, Johnson, Gomez and Yun took their seats immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic. While they have each been handling cases for more than two years, the June 30 ceremony was the first time friends and family celebrated their formal installation as judges.

All three were appointees of Gov. Jared Polis, who has named nearly one-third of the Court of Appeals' membership and will receive three more opportunities in the coming months with anticipated retirements. Kara Veitch, Polis' chief legal counsel, sent the governor's regards and reiterated his confidence in their appointments.

"We need judges that not only understand the impact of their decisions, but also that they directly influence the public's perception of our judicial system, which is particularly important now when there's growing distrust of all branches of government," Veitch said. "It is important to have thoughtful people with the highest ethics, integrity and respect for the rule of law."

The Court of Appeals issues 1,600 to 1,700 decisions per year. Compared to the roughly 100 appeals the Colorado Supreme Court hears, the appellate court is the final stop for most matters.

Nearly all sitting appellate judges, several retired judges and five of the seven Supreme Court justices attended the investiture ceremony. U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, who is married to Court of Appeals Judge Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov, was also present in the Supreme Court's courtroom for the swearing-in.

Underlining how close they had grown as a result of joining the court immediately before the pandemic, Gomez and Johnson chose to introduce each other before their respective oaths of office.

Gomez described significant milestones in Johnson's life, including her birth in South Korea and her adoption at age 3. Johnson graduated from Colorado College and received her law degree from the University of Colorado. Ultimately, Johnson spent 15 years in the Colorado Attorney General's Office before her appointment.

A member of the appellate court's collegiality committee who organizes weekly lunches for the judges, Johnson's colleagues described her as "collegial," "affable," "effervescent" and "funny," according to Gomez. Former Chief Judge Steve Bernard said Johnson is like Mirabel, the main character of the Disney movie "Encanto," for having the ability to bring people together.

"She nicknames the other judges," Gomez quipped about Johnson. "She makes you feel welcome. She lends an ear or a hug when you need it."

Johnson, delivering remarks after taking the oath of office, praised her adoptive mother for modeling how to build a cohesive family, develop character and become independent. Johnson promised to "connect with the public in a way that fosters confidence that I am discharging my duties every day with respect for, and protection of, the rule of law."

In introducing Gomez, Johnson described her Harvard Law School education and her clerkship with a federal judge in Georgia. She mentioned how Gomez met her husband, who was a tour guide on an early trip Gomez took to Peru.

"It is her kindness, humility and amazing sense of humor that makes her a lovely colleague and a cherished friend," said Johnson.

Gomez thanked her judicial colleagues, law clerks and her former coworkers at the prominent law firm of Holland & Hart for backing her and providing her with opportunities.

Addressing her husband, "I know you didn't always understand  and maybe you still don't  why I would give up a successful and rewarding career as a law firm partner to become a public servant."

"But thank you for supporting me anyway," she said.

Attorney Kevin Kuhn introduced Yun, who is also a South Korean immigrant with a lengthy career in private practice.

"Judge Yun came to the United States at age 8. He did not speak a word of English," Kuhn said. "Fast forward 16 years, and you know what he's doing? He's clerking for the Colorado Supreme Court."

Roman also complimented Yun as an orator who made "tremendously logical arguments" in front of the court, but who was also very shy.

Yun grew emotional when thanking his family, who came to the United States to escape poverty and struggled after arriving. He said he greatly admired his parents for giving their children better opportunities, even though it meant working multiple jobs on nights and weekends.

When Yun's father died recently, Yun said he considered postponing or canceling his investiture.

"But my brother and sister reminded me that my dad would not want that," he said. "That this event was about more than my accomplishments. This event gave my dad a sense of pride, fulfilment and meaning to his own life. That all of the sacrifices my parents made were worth it."
Al Gurg Living, the home-grown lifestyle interior concept in Easa Saleh Al Gurg Groups retail and lifestyle portfolio, has expanded its range of heritage, bespoke brands through an exclusive partnership with Heindl, the German handcrafted safe producer.

The partnership between the Emirati brand that caters to high net worth clients and the German luxury safe manufacturer Heindl, was formally inked at a special ceremony held in the presence of senior officials of Easa Saleh Al Gurg Group led by its CEO Easa Al Gurg and also executives of the German brand led by its CEO Thomas Heindl.

Through this exclusive partnership, Al Gurg Living will be the sole distributor of luxury Heindl products, which are manufactured and customised in Germany and Switzerland.

Sophisticated craftsmanship combined with utmost safety and discretion, is the hallmark of Heindl; which joins two other premium lifestyle German brands  SieMatic and Schmalenbach in Al Gurg Livings exclusive portfolio of bespoke products, it stated.

Easa Al Gurg said: "This partnership underlines the commitment of Al Gurg Living, as we continue to provide best-in-class custom-made solutions to our clients. It also reaffirms our long-standing commitment to exclusive craftsmanship and personalised service."

"Heindl fully integrates with the interior decor and security features of the home and is a perfect value addition to the Al Gurg Living portfolio of renowned legacy brands," he noted.

Dubbing the partnership as a natural fit, Heindl said: "It aligns with the brand values of Heindl and will help us reach an elite segment of the market that understands and appreciates the high standards and elegance that bespoke products can bring to home interior design."

"Entering into business with a prominent partner such as Al Gurg Living, offers us a unique opportunity to reach our target clientele in the region," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Lyve Global, a B2B logistics SaaS platform founded in the UAE, has recently acquired a majority stake in Jeebly, a leading UAE-based last mile delivery and logistics company.

Lyves acquisition of a majority stake in Jeebly marks a significant step as part of the companys new investment strategy, which aims to expand its offerings and market reach.

Lyve has flourished since its inception in 2016, evolving into an end-to-end solutions provider. The company now uses cloud-based platforms and services to help facilitate hundreds of millions of orders every month on behalf of leading brands across the e-commerce, food and beverage, grocery, and healthcare industries.

Rich network

By leveraging Lyves rich network, the acquisition will help to further accelerate Jeeblys growth in its existing markets while also strengthening its operational capabilities to offer unique delivery solutions across the GCC.

Chief Investment Officer at Lyve, Nader Museitif, commented on the strategic investment: This is an exciting time for us. In less than 12 months we have concluded four acquisitions. We have ambitious plans for the coming two years with total investment value reaching over $150 million. Jeebly has been an exceptional success story and were happy to be working together on the next stage of the journey. This is one of several investments that will complement our offering and we will be actively looking to acquire companies that add to our spectrum of services.

Jeebly has experienced fast growth since it was first established in 2016 by Raman Pathak and Ram Parashar, with the help of their main investor, Axeed. In just 6 years, the company has onboarded more than 500 key global and regional clients across multiple industries. With this latest investment, Jeebly is well on track to accelerate its growth.

Growth partner

Pathak, Chief Executive Officer, Jeebly said: We are excited to welcome Lyve Global as our growth partner. This is an alliance that is set to strengthen our proposition and create unique synergies that will benefit our customers. Together, we will be more resilient and prepared for future opportunities.

Abdulla Al Shaibani, Chief Executive Officer, Axeed also commented on the partnership: Lyve Global and Jeebly joining hands is an excellent strategic development that benefits all parties involved. We at Axeed have always believed in Jeebly's potential and will continue to actively support this partnership."

With the rapid rise of e-commerce in the region, companies are focused on developing strategies that enhance online trade. Lyves solutions play a pivotal role in empowering such companies to thrive in the digital landscape, having successfully expanded its offerings to cover order generation and management, payments, and delivery across 20 markets. With this growth comes the desire to continuously refine and advance its services, backed by major regional investors and institutions.-- TradeArabia News Service
Re: Federal regulations require that corporations use separate accounting [ #permalink

Federal regulations require that corporations use separate accounting firms for audit and non-audit services. This presents difficulties for many multi-national companies because there are only four large international accounting firms based in the United States. An outspoken group of CEOs has suggested breaking up the Big Four firms into smaller operations, so that corporations will have more options for their accounting needs.



Which of the following stipulations would be most helpful in assuring the success of the CEOs plan to provide more variety in accounting services by breaking up the Big Four firms?



I totally agree with the experts here but my take is a little different for the same correct AC.



(A) The firms should maintain their multi-national contacts.

who cares, rather they are supposed to to get more business?the primary demand is to have separate accounting firms for audit and non-audit services,which is no where mentioned here-incorrect.

(B) CEOs for the new companies should be chosen from inside each firm.

CEOs can be chosen anyway, but where is the primary need which can fulfill the federal regulations?-incorrect.

(C) Corporations must keep the same firm for their audit services, but should choose a new firm for non-audit needs.

is this a mandatory law?even if this is done or maybe not, doesn't give much to the primary objective or maybe it gives but , its not the strongest answer to choose.

(D) The new firms should maintain their internal audit procedures.

they should, if they were good enough to be presented to the federal law.but where is the federal demand getting fulfilled?-incorrect

(E) The Big Four firms should divide so that the audit and non-audit sections are not broken up.

Correct- what was the reason behind the breaking up of larger firms into smaller ones? so that they can serve audit and non audit services both through them.Hence they should not be broken up(this is the trickiest part) if broken they can be either serving auditing or non-auditing, which will not serve the purpose eventually.



Lets assume 4 major auditing firms A B C & D are doing both auditing and non auditing work.

Now the Federal law wants the Corporations to go for auditing in one and non-auditing for another company.

If the corporations chose A for auditing then it has to choose other than A for non-auditing and this will be a problem for all the companies because there are too many corporations.

Now to solve this CEOs want to breakup large Accounting firms into smaller one such as;

A - a,b,c,d,e,f for auditing and g,h,i,j k, for non-auditing

B - 1,2,3,4,5 FOR auditing and 6,7,8,9,10 for non-auditing

similarly C &D will break into small firms.



Now, the corporations can have a lot more options to choose from,such as, A corporation can choose "a" for auditing and "9 " for non-auditing.OR within A itself , the corporation can choose a & 4 for auditing and non-auditing services respectively.



Hope this helps !
Because this section is free of charge, community events are subject to run based on available space. Religion items are published on the Saturday church page. Email events to news@registerbee.com.

TODAY, JULY 5

DISABLED AMERICAN VETERANS CHAPTER 19 TO MEET: Disabled American Veterans Chapter 19 will meet at 6:30 p.m. for their regular monthly meeting at American Legion Post 325.

STORYTELLERS: CREATIVE WRITING 101: Tweens can explore and foster creative voice through writing prompts and exercises. Covering short stories, poetry, prose, non-fiction and more, writers will be able to share their work and collaborate with others in a relaxed workshop environment from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space. For grades 6-12. No fee. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

THE WRITE STUFF-ADULT WRITING GROUP: All genres and writing styles welcome at the Ruby B. Archie Library Auditorium writing group from 6 to 7 p.m. for ages 18 and up. No fee. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 6

BLAST FROM THE PAST: CLASSICS BOOK CLUB: Dive into the classics this summer from 4 to 5 p.m. at the Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space. A free copy of the book "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton, will be given to the first newcomer to register a month before the meeting. For grades nine to 12. No fee. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

THURSDAY, JULY 7

THURSDAY PADDLE: Meet at the Abreu-Grogan Boathouse to paddle the Dan River with kayaks, paddle boards or canoes from 6 to 8 p.m. at cost of $14. Registration is required by calling 434-799-5150.

MUSIC AT THE MARKET: Free music at the Danville Community Market from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at outdoor stage. Bring chair, blanket, picnic basket. In event of rain concert will be moved inside of the market. Performing tonight will be Sahara Reggae Band. For information, call 434-793-4636.

MAD SCIENTISTS: Put on goggles and lab coats and explore component of STEAM through hands-on demonstrations, experiments and crafts from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space. For ages eight and up. No fee. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

FRIDAY, JULY 8

CAMPFIRE UNDER THE STARS: Campfire under the stars for ages five and up at Ballou Park Shelter No. 10 from 8 to 9:30 p.m. Parents must stay with children. No fee. Registration required by calling 434-799-5150.

TEEN TAKEOVER: After hours at the Ruby B. Archie Library. For teens only, grades six to 12. Held from 5 to 7 p.m.; no fee. Play video games, eat pizza and more. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

SATURDAY, JULY 9

BASICS OF OUTDOOR SURVIVAL: Join outdoor recreation coordinator Maggie Brown to learn essential survival skills and what items you should carry to ensure success in the wilderness from 9 to 11 a.m. at Anglers Park. No fee. For ages 18 and up. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

INFINITY ACRES EXHIBIT: Rabbits, reptiles and Llamas at the Ruby B. Archie Library Parking lot. All ages; no fee. Session I is from 11 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.; Session II-noon to 12:45 p.m.; registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

MONDAY, JULY 11

LEGO BRICK ENGINEERS: Bricks provided, imagination required. All Lego models will be displayed in the children's department at the Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space. Held from 4 to 5 p.m. for ages five and up. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

YOUTH DUNGEONS & DRAGONS-CANDLEKEEP MYSTERIES: Join the ongoing adventure exploring the mysteries of Candlekeep at the Ruby B. Archie Library auditorium from 4 to 6:30 p.m. for grades six to 12. Space is limited. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195. No fee.

KAYAK CAMP II: Kayak Camp II will be held from July 11-15 at 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. for ages 10 to 16 at cost of $130. For more information, call 434-799-5150.

TUESDAY, JULY 12

THE CRAFTING CABIN: Try painting on tiny canvases and building living houses out of sponges and grass seed in this throwback to camp crafts from 5 to 6 p.m. at Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space/Auditorium for ages 12 and up. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195. No fee. Craft: Sponge and Grass Seed Houses.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 13

FREE FOOD GIVEAWAY: The Danville School Board & God's Final Call & Warning will hold a free food giveaway for the Danville community and surrounding areas from 4 to 7 p.m. at Woodrow Wilson School, 1005 North Main St. Bring your own bags. Must wear mask/face covering and follow social distancing. Children must be accompanied by parents.

BOOKWORMS: TWEEN BOOK CLUB: Talk about the book of the month with your fellow bookworms from 4 to 5 p.m. at Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space for grades five to eight. A free copy of the book will be given out to the first newcomer to register a month before the meeting. Snacks provided. The book for July "The Last Cuentista" by Donna Barba Higuera. Register by calling 434-799-5195.

THURSDAY, JULY 14

MUSIC AT THE MARKET: Free music at the Danville Community Market from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at outdoor stage. Bring chair, blanket, picnic basket. In event of rain concert will be moved inside of market. Performing tonight will be Define Jazz. For information, call 434-793-4636.

DRIVE-IN MOVIE NIGHT: For ages 11 and under at the Ruby B. Archie Library auditorium from 4:30 to 7 p.m. Supplies and popcorn will be provided. No fee. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

FRIDAY, JULY 15

DINO TEA PARTY: Invite your prehistoric stuffed animals to teatime to sip iced tea, snack, dance and play games from 11 a.m. to noon at the Ruby B. Archie Library auditorium. For ages three to 10. No fee. Registration required by calling, 434-799-5195.

SATURDAY, JULY 16

MUSEUM MEETS MARGARITAVILLE: Annual fundraiser at Danville Museum lawn, 975 Main St. from 5 to 8 p.m. Cookout, DJ-beach music; silent auction; parrot head gear competition and more. Tickets at Karen's Hallmark; Gingerbread House; Danville Museum and eventbrite.com

HARVEST JUBILEE CONCERT: Concert at Carrington Pavilion at 6 p.m. featuring Justin Moore with special guests Desert City Ramblers and Matt Boswell. For tickets or information DanvilleHarvestJubilee.org or call Danville Welcome Center at 434-793-4636.

YOUTH DUNGEONS & DRAGONS - EPIC ENCOUNTERS: Learn the basics of Dungeons & Dragons. All experience levels are welcome at the Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space from 10 to 11:30 a.m. and noon to 1:30 p.m.; grades six to 12. Registration required by calling, 434-799-5195. No fee. (register for one session only)

MONDAY, JULY 18

MAKER MONDAYS: Put your makers caps on to build, explore, tinker and create fun hands-on projects. Each session will have different activities to try and problems to solve for ages seven and up from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space. No Fee. Pipe Cleaner Critters. Registration required by calling, 434-799-5195.

TUESDAY, JULY 19

LIBRARY SCOUTS: Become a Library Scout. Join the Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space to take part in explorer-themed activities and crafts, and complete service projects while making new friends from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. For ages seven and up. No free. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

THE WRITE STUFF - ADULT WRITING GROUP: All genres and writing styles welcome at the Ruby B. Archie Library Auditorium writing group from 6 to 7 p.m. for ages 18 and up. No fee. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 20

OVERBOOKED: TEEN BOOK CLUB: Meet new friends and discuss a great book at the Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space from 4 to 5 p.m. for grades nine to 12. A free copy of the book "The Librarian of Auschwitz" by Antonio Iturbe will be given to the first newcomer to register a month before the meeting. Register by calling 434-799-5195.

THURSDAY, JULY 21

RIVERWALK READERS - WALKING BOOK CLUB: Join readers in the community for a walk on the trail to discuss the books you've been reading, exchange suggestions and get some exercise. From 6 to 7 p.m., Anglers Park, ages 18 and up, no fee. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

THURSDAY PADDLE: Meet at the Abreu-Grogan Boathouse to paddle the Dan River with kayaks, paddle boards or canoes from 6 to 8 p.m. at cost of $14. Registration is required by calling 434-799-5150.

MUSIC AT THE MARKET: Free music at the Danville Community Market from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at outdoor stage. Bring chair, blanket, picnic basket. In event of rain concert will be moved inside of market. Performing tonight will be Rivermist (Two-hour concert). For information, call 434-793-4636.

LIBRARY CAMPOUT: For ages four and up at the Ruby B. Archie Library auditorium a campfire for a night of stories, songs and crafts from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. No fee. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

MONDAY, JULY 25

ADVENTURE CAMP II: Adventure Camp II from July 25-July 29 at 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. for ages eight to 14 at cost of $130. Register by July 20. For more information, call 434-799-5150.

TUESDAY, JULY 26

THE CRAFTING CABIN: Try your hand at painting on tiny canvases and building living houses out of sponges and grass seed in this throwback to camp crafts from 5 to 6 p.m. at Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space/Auditorium for ages 12 and up. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195. No fee. Craft: Tie Dye Creations.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 27

MOONLIGHT PADDLE: Kayak the Dan River from 9 to 11 p.m. Paddlers will be provided with headlamps; previous paddling experience required. For ages 12 and up, cost of $14. Meet at Abreu-Grogan Boathouse. Registration required by calling 799-5150.

SUMMER TALES: Listen to stories, sing and dance and complete a craft in the summer story time series on Wednesdays at Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space for all ages from 5 to 6 p.m. Registration is required by calling 434-799-5195.

THURSDAY, JULY 28

MUSIC AT THE MARKET: Free music at the Danville Community Market from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at outdoor stage. Bring chair, blanket, picnic basket. In event of rain concert will be moved inside of market. Performing tonight will be Emerald Empire Band (Two-hour concert). For information, call 434-793-4636.

DOODLES AND THINGS: DRAWING 101: Learn the basics of landscapes and figure drawing in these introductory drawing sessions for ages 10 and up from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space. No fee. Figure Drawing. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

SATURDAY, JULY 30

KAYAK THE DAN: MAIN STREET TO ANGLERS: A swift paddle from Main Street to Anglers Park from 2 to 4 p.m. Cost is $14. Registration required by calling 799-9150. Children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult.

SUMMER TALES: Listen to stories, sing and dance and complete a craft in the summer story time series on Saturdays at Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space for all ages from 11 a.m. to noon. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

MONDAY, AUG. 1

LEGO BRICK ENGINEERS: Bricks provided, imagination required. All Lego models will be displayed in the children's department at the Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space. Held from 4 to 5 p.m. for ages five and up. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 3

BLAST FROM THE PAST: CLASSICS BOOK CLUB: Dive into the classics this summer from 4 to 5 p.m. at the Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space. A free copy of the book "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis, will be given to the first newcomer to register a month before the meeting. For grades nine to 12. No fee. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

THURSDAY, AUG. 4

MAD SCIENTISTS: Put on goggles and lab coats and explore component of STEAM through hands-on demonstrations, experiments and crafts from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space. For ages eight and up. No fee. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

THURSDAY PADDLE: Meet at the Abreu-Grogan Boathouse to paddle the Dan River with kayaks, paddle boards or canoes from 6 to 8 p.m. at cost of $14. Registration is required by calling 434-799-5150.

FRIDAY, AUG. 5

CAMPFIRE UNDER THE STARS: Campfire under the stars for ages five and up at Ballou Park Shelter No. 10 from 8 to 9:30 p.m. Parents must stay with children. No fee. Registration required by calling 434-799-5150.

TUESDAY, AUG. 9

STORYTELLERS: CREATIVE WRITING 101: Tweens can explore and foster creative voice through writing prompts and exercises. Covering short stories, poetry, prose, non-fiction and more, writers will be able to share their work and collaborate with others in a relaxed workshop environment from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space. For grades 6-12. No fee. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 10

TUBING THE DAN: Float the Dan River from the movie theater to Camilla Williams Park from 3 to 5 p.m. One or two person tubes are available; PFDs are provided: close-toed shoes required; ages 12 and up. Cost is $15. Registration required by calling 799-5150.

MOONLIGHT PADDLE: Kayak the Dan River from 9 to 11 p.m. Paddlers will be provided with headlamps; previous paddling experience required. For ages 12 and up, cost of $14. Meet at Abreu-Grogan Boathouse. Registration required by calling 799-5150.

THURSDAY, AUG. 11

GLOW ZIP: Light up the night at the zip lining at Dan Daniel Park Skate Park from 8 to 9:30 p.m. Limited number of glow sticks will be provided. For ages eight and up at cost of $12. Registration required by calling 799-5150.

SATURDAY, AUG. 13

YOUTH DUNGEONS & DRAGONS - EPIC ENCOUNTERS: Learn the basics of Dungeons & Dragons. All experience levels are welcome at the Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; grades six to 12. Registration required by calling, 434-799-5195. No fee. (register for one session only)

MONDAY, AUG. 15

GENEALOGY 101: Learn how to get started researching and documenting your family history at the Ruby B. Archie Library auditorium from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. For ages 18 and up. No fee. Registration required by calling 434-799-5195.

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 17

BOOKWORMS: TWEEN BOOK CLUB: Talk about the book of the month with your fellow bookworms from 4 to 5 p.m. at Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space for grades five to eight. A free copy of the book will be given out to the first newcomer to register a month before the meeting. Snacks provided. The book for July "The Castle of Tangled Magic" by Sophie Anderson. Register by calling 434-799-5195.

THURSDAY, AUG. 18

THURSDAY PADDLE: Meet at the Abreu-Grogan Boathouse to paddle the Dan River with kayaks, paddle boards or canoes from 6 to 8 p.m. at cost of $14. Registration is required by calling 434-799-5150.

MONDAY, AUG. 22

MAKER MONDAYS: Put your makers caps on to build, explore, tinker and create fun hands-on projects. Each session will have different activities to try and problems to solve for ages seven and up from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space. No Fee. Tech 101. Registration required by calling, 434-799-5195.

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 24

MOONLIGHT PADDLE: Kayak the Dan River from 9 to 11 p.m. Paddlers will be provided with headlamps; previous paddling experience required. For ages 12 and up, cost of $14. Meet at Abreu-Grogan Boathouse. Registration required by calling 799-5150.

THURSDAY, AUG. 25

GLOW ZIP: Light up the night at the zip lining at Dan Daniel Park Skate Park from 8 to 9:30 p.m. Limited number of glow sticks will be provided. For ages eight and up at cost of $12. Registration required by calling 799-5150.

SATURDAY, AUG. 27

WENDELL SCOTT CHARITY RIDE: Southside Buffalo Soldiers MC will hold a Wendell Scott Charity Ride starting at Danville Otterbox, 302 River Park Drive. Registration at 11 a.m.; kickstand up at 1 p.m. For information, www.bsmc-ssva.com; www.nabstmc.com or www.wendellscott.org or call 229-630-0435; 434-825-2811 or 804-931-4796.

MONDAY, AUG. 29

GAME ON AT THE LIBRARY: A night of fun and games at the Ruby B. Archie Library Maker Space from 4 to 6 p.m. for ages 11 and up. Snacks provided. No fee. Registration required by calling, 434-799-5195.

ONGOING

MALE CANCER SURVIVORS NEEDED FOR A SOCIAL SURVEY: Virginia Commonwealth University and the Cancer Research & Resource Centers is conducting a survey about social networks and experiences as a male cancer survivor in rural Virginia. Anyone is eligible if they are a male prostate or colorectal cancer survivor, age 21 or over, completed cancer treatment and reside in rural Virginia. Participants will receive a gift card. If interested, contact the Cancer Research & Resource Center in Danville at 434-791-5205.
A Danville suspect in a deadly shooting in Yanceyville, North Carolina, is being held in jail with no bond.

KyUn Talik Thompson, 20, of Danville, is facing a charge of first-degree murder in the shooting death of 18-year-old Kimora Johnson, of Yanceyville, North Carolina.

The Caswell County, North Carolina, Sheriffs Office responded to a shots fired call near 397 W. Church St. in Yanceyville, North Carolina, on Saturday night, authorities reported.

Johnson  who suffered two gunshot wounds to her back  was taken to Sovah Health-Danville before deputies arrived on scene Saturday evening.

Johnson died early Sunday morning from her injuries, a news release stated.

Thompson, who was arrested Sunday afternoon, will have his first court appearance at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. Hes being held in the Caswell County Detention Center.

Officials have not provided any other details on the shooting, including a motive.
Mitsubishi Power and Georgia Power, alongside the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), have validated fuel blending of hydrogen and natural gas on a natural gas turbine at Georgia Powers Plant McDonough-Atkinson, US.

The project was the first and largest to validate 20% hydrogen fuel blending on an advanced class gas turbine globally. Mitsubishi Power provided full turnkey service for this project including engineering, planning, hydrogen blending hardware, controls, commissioning and risk management.

Mitsubishi Power is undertaking similar groundbreaking decarbonisation projects in Middle East and North Africa (Mena), including ANRPC Hydrogen Fuel Conversion Blending project in Egypt, enabling 100% hydrogen capability by 2023.

Advanced hydrogen fuel conversion

Mitsubishi Power has recently reached an agreement with leading Egyptian O&G Company Alexandria National Refining & Petrochemicals Company (ANRPC) to provide advanced hydrogen fuel conversion technology solutions supporting the company to achieve its decarbonisation goals. The solution will be installed at the ARNPC refinery plant in Alexandria, which provides 30% of Egypts gasoline supply for domestic consumption.

As part of the project, Mitsubishi Power will be responsible for the design, engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning of fuel conversion solutions for the existing 100 tonne/hour boiler, enabling it to fire up to 100% hydrogen.

This includes the installation of state-of-the-art hydrogen burner technology and advanced control solution to ensure efficient and safe operations. Dry low NOx (DLN) hydrogen blending was successful at up to 20% at the designed 100% natural gas firing temperature, within emissions compliance for the existing air permit, and without impact on the maintenance intervals.

Global milestone

Khalid Salem, President, Middle East and North Africa at Mitsubishi Power said: We are proud of this global milestone that reinforces Mitsubishi Powers leadership in successfully deploying hydrogen blending combustion technology. Simultaneously, in the Middle East and North Africa region, we are also executing industry leading hydrogen fuel conversion projects for our customers, including ANRPC in Egypt. In addition to providing full turnkey projects, we are also partnering with our customers to secure the hydrogen supply chain. This is part of our ongoing commitment at Mitsubishi Power to enable our customers to achieve their decarbonisation goals.

Georgia Power, the largest electric subsidiary of Southern Company, collaborated with Mitsubishi Power for the landmark testing as part of a continued commitment to new research and development (R&D) to build the energy grid of the future and to reduce carbon emissions across its generation fleet, with Georgia Power having already reduced its carbon emissions by more than 60% since 2007.

This monumental hydrogen demonstration project at Plant McDonough-Atkinson is another example of how, at Georgia Power and Southern Company, we are building the future of energy, today. This demonstration helps pave the way for long-term clean and carbon-free use for already existing infrastructure. Making these smart investments today on behalf of our customers ensures we can continue to provide clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy as Georgia grows and thrives for decades to come, said Allen Reaves, Senior Vice President and Senior Production Officer, Georgia Power.

Long-term value

This kind of research and development not only delivers long-term value for our customers, but also helps drive the entire energy industry forward toward a cleaner, carbon-free future. Were proud to be playing an important role in that and excited about what weve been able to accomplish with our partner, Mitsubishi Power.

Mark Bissonnette, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Power Generation, Mitsubishi Power Americas, said: Mitsubishi Power is dedicated to our mission of providing power generation and storage solutions to our customers, empowering them to affordably and reliably combat climate change and advance human prosperity. The hydrogen blending demonstration project at Plant McDonough-Atkinson brings us closer to reaching net-zero goals across the industry. Together with our customers and partners, we are creating a Change in Power.

Mitsubishi Power completed the hydrogen blending on one M501G gas turbine unit with an approximate output of 265 MW by utilising some results of a project commissioned by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organisation (NEDO), Japans national research and development agency.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), an independent, non-profit energy research and development organisation, supported the development of the project. EPRI researchers were on-site during the testing, and the organisation will publish a detailed report on the testing and results later this summer. EPRI delivers thought leadership and technical expertise through projects such as this one, as well as programmes such as the Low-Carbon Resources Initiative.-- TradeArabia News Service
Before he fled Sri Lanka on Wednesday, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was the last of six members of the countrys most influential family still clinging to power. For decades, the powerful land-owning Rajapaksa family dominated local politics in their rural southern district. Rajapaksa followed in the footsteps of his older brother, who was president for 10 years until 2015. In 2019, he won the presidential election on a promise to restore security in the wake of terrorist suicide bombings on Easter Sunday that killed 290 people. He vowed to lead the country out of an economic slump; instead, he made a series of fatal mistakes that ushered in an unprecedented crisis.
" " Calculating the expected due date for a pregnancy just requires simple math. iStockphoto.com

Once your pregnancy has been confirmed, what you most want to know is your due date. The average length of a pregnancy is 40 weeks, or 280 days, from the first day of the last normal menstrual period. Calculating the due date, or expected date of delivery, for a pregnancy is quite simple, then, if you know that date. Simply add nine months and seven days to the date, and you've got your pregnancy due date.

Here's an example of how it works: Say the first day of the last normal menstrual period was January 1st. Add seven days to that number, and you get the number 8. Add nine months, and you get October. The expected due date of that pregnancy, then, is October 8. (Some physicians use the term expected date of confinement, or EDC for short, to describe the due date.)

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In reality, though, few women give birth on their exact due date. About 80 percent of babies are born within ten days of the due date. That's a fairly large window, beginning ten days before the due date and extending out ten days after the due date. A pregnancy that occurs during this time period--that is, between 38 and 42 weeks--is called full term.

If about 80 percent of expectant mothers have full term births, that leaves about 20 percent who give birth outside those parameters. About eight to ten percent give birth early, between the 20th and 36th week of pregnancy. And about eight percent give birth later than the 42nd week.

A premature, or preterm, delivery usually occurs because the mother goes into labor too early. In most cases there is no clear reason, but abnormally early labor is often associated with the following conditions:

Multiple pregnancy, such as twins or triplets

An abnormally shaped uterus that may crowd the fetus

Placenta previa

Placental abruption

Tobacco use

Untreated diseases of the thyroid gland in the mother

Other severe diseases in the mother, such as high blood pressure, diabetes , and kidney disease

High fever or severe infections in the mother

Contrary to popular belief, severe emotional trauma and physical injury, such as from a fall, are uncommon causes of premature labor. If a mother has premature labor in one pregnancy, she has a 25 percent chance of premature labor in the next pregnancy.

The major complication of a preterm delivery is the birth of a baby who is unable to survive, or who has difficulty surviving, outside the mother's body. Even if the baby's organs are all correctly formed, his lungs may not be sufficiently mature to allow him to breathe adequately after birth. Recent advances in the care of premature infants have allowed babies as small as 1 pound to survive and grow up normally. But despite these advances, prematurity remains the leading cause of newborn death.

The cause of postterm pregnancy is unknown. If a woman has had one postterm pregnancy, she has a greater than average chance of this happening again in subsequent pregnancies. In most cases of postterm pregnancy, however, it is believed the mother misstated the exact date of her last menstrual period and the pregnancy is actually not postterm.

Postterm pregnancy poses no health risk to the mother. However, as the placenta ages beyond the 42nd week of pregnancy, its ability to transmit oxygen and nutrients to the fetus may begin to decline. In some cases, this reduction may be severe enough to cause the death of the fetus. If the fetus lives, it commonly has a characteristic postterm appearance: wrinkled, cracking, peeling skin; long nails, abundant hair; and little fat tissue beneath the skin. Postterm babies often pass fecal material called meconium into the amniotic fluid before delivery. If the baby sucks meconium into its lungs at the time of delivery, severe pneumonia may result.

Knowing your due date will help you plan ahead, and it will give you the answer to the number one question that you will be asked during your pregnancy: What's your due date?
Eighty years ago, July 9, 1942, the history of US and Canadian Special Forces began at Ft. Harrison, Montana, with the creation of the First Special Service Force, wrote Bill Woon, former executive director of the First Special Service Force Association.

The story of this amazing unit, made up of the hand-picked best from across North America, set the standard for todays Special Forcesand the legacy they left transcends state and international borders.

This legacy continues today with lineage to both United States and Canadian Special Operation Force active duty units. Former and active duty SOF soldiers from both countries are honoring the FSSF by hosting an anniversary event at Ft. Harrison, where the Force trained in 1942/43.

The FSSF spearheaded the Italian Campaign, Woon related, taking on the impossible task of clearing the Nazis from the mountaintops of the Winter Line. They entered combat on Dec. 3, 1943, with a strength of 1,800 men, and completed their mission on Jan. 17, 1944, with fewer than 500 men. The Forces success in clearing the mountaintops was crucial to the control of the main north/south highway to Rome.

The FSSF was then moved to the Anzio beachhead, where it was assigned over 8 miles of the right flank with fewer than 1100 men, facing a full division of 10,000 Nazi soldiers, according to Woon, whose father, Dave Woon, was a member of the FSSF. For 99 days the Force conducted continuous patrols and night raids into enemy territory at a cost of 106 killed or missing and over 300 wounded.

This is where the Force was nicknamed The Black Devils by the Germans, because of their blackened faces and stealth in combat. Again, the USSF was the tip of the spear on the drive to Rome, and is credited with being the first Allied patrol to enter Rome on June 4, 1944.

Following the liberation of Rome, the Force was given the assignment of leading the landings on Southern France, fighting their way to the Franco-Italian border, Woon recounted. In 251 days of combat, the Force suffered 2314 casualties, 134% of combat strength, captured over 30,000 prisoners, won five US campaign stars, eight Canadian battle honors, and never failed a mission.

A ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of the formation of the First Special Service Force will be held at Fort William Henry Harrison on Saturday, July 9, at 9 a.m. The 80th FSSF anniversary will include a short recognition ceremony as well as an aerial flyover by vintage World War II aircraft, static line and free fall parachute jumps by U.S. and Canadian Special Forces soldiers, a jump wing exchange ceremony, and military static displays. The ceremony and jumps will last approximately one hour.

Following the 80th anniversary ceremony, a dedication of the refurbishing of Irvin Shorty Shopes Mural of the FSSF will be held at the Service Club at Fort Harrison. The major theme of the mural is the commemoration of service by the men and women at Fort Harrison during the WWII period, 1940-46.

It is one of only three known to exist in the nation, and is the only mural or painting documenting participation of Women in Military Service during World War II, completed in the WWII time-frame.

The Montana Military Museum at Fort Harrison, which holds an extensive display of FSSF history, will be open to the public for tours the day of the event. For more information, contact Bill Woon at 406-461-7485, or Ray Read at 406-235-0290.
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The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Mississippi abortion case, Dobbs, v. Jackson Womens Health Organization did more than simply deny women the right to decide their own health care issues, it denied them full citizenship in the political community of our nation. By stating that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion the decision has rendered women no longer full citizens and has subsequently, denied them the status required to have the right to have rights. How is this so?

To begin with, having to decide to have an abortion is a decision that only a woman will have to make, because it is a unique aspect of the fact that only women can become pregnant. No man will ever experience giving birth to another human being. The subsequent moral problem of having to decide whether or not to terminate that pregnancy, no matter what the reason, is the personal choice of a single individual. It will never be a group decision, a decision made by two, three or any other number of people. It is one of the most private and solemn decisions any woman will ever make. As such, it is a fundamental question of personal freedom.

Secondly, by taking away this right to control over ones very material and moral existence, women have been driven beyond the pale of the law. By depriving them of the right to exist as self-determining individuals, they have, de facto, been deprived of the very status as full-fledged citizens to have the right to have rights.

Essentially this decision is codifying and institutionalizing the separation of women from the rest of the polity and denying them a central role in civil society. It is a way of making them stateless, having lost the civil and social rights of a particular community, stripped of validity without legal entitlements and reduced to the status of dependents of what ever political institutions and entities formulate rules, policies, and regulation that will tell them how they can or cant regulate their own biological and moral being. In short, they have been de-humanized, deprived of their human rights.

The full realization by women of this invalidation is the basis for their justifiable anger and outrage. Like other populations of people who have been deprived of their right to have rights  refugees, migrants, sans papiers, boat people  they have now been demoted to no longer having the protection of a social order. Like their migrant international counterparts, they have arrived at a political nowhere  displaced from their community because this legal decision has declared them not to be truly human, but simply abstractions within the nation. Demoted in their citizenship and deprived of two of the most fundamental of rights  self-determination and the right to have rights  they can no longer determine their own destiny except by going outside of the law to protest this injustice and bring it to an end.

If the Constitution does not guarantee these rights to over half the population, it is a hollow document which no longer can stand long-term to guide society and its citizens to the rule of law. The Supreme Court has created the very basis for its own invalidation, by this interpretations insufficiency to protect the very citizens most impacted by the loss of these rights. It is declaring the Bill of Rights an unnecessary accessory to our lives and will lay the basis for more authoritarian destruction of other laws and eventually, of the entire country. This is a serious and, frankly, unforeseen consequence of Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barretts decision. The flawed logic and twisted historical interpretation of past decisions by these five justices need to be fought at every turn by all concerned citizens and members of congress. Let the struggle begin.
MACON  Tyler J. Wilson, accused of beating his ex-girlfriend with a gun inside her Macon home in front of two young children and then threatening to kill her, has appeared in court denying multiple felony charges.

Prosecutors said Wilson, 22, fled to Decatur in the 20-year-old womans car where he was intercepted by Decatur Police and captured after abandoning the vehicle in the 2100 block of North Woodford Street and fleeing on foot.

A sworn affidavit signed by Blue Mound Police Chief Chad Lamb, whose department covers Macon, said a handgun with an extended magazine was later recovered from on top of a building awning near the abandoned vehicle.

Macon County Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey Geisler found probable cause to try Wilson when he appeared in court June 29. Wilson told the judge he was pleading not guilty to charges of armed violence, being a felon in possession of a weapon and two counts of domestic battery.

Lamb had given evidence at Wilsons preliminary hearing and said the attack on the defendants former girlfriend dated to June 10.

Questioned by Macon County States Attorney Scott Rueter, Lamb said he had arrived at the victims home to find her very upset, crying and shaking.

Lamb said he was told Wilson had smoked methamphetamine in front of the woman and her children, beaten her and loaded a bullet into the weapon as she watched.

(She) stated Tyler had pointed the gun at her head and told her he would kill her if she did not be in a relationship with him, Lamb said.

Cross-examined by Chief Public Defender Michelle Sanders, Lamb said he was not aware the victim had any visible injuries but said she had been treated at hospital after her ordeal.

Sanders then asked if any of the incident had been captured on surveillance video, and Lamb replied that the womans home did have a camera but it was malfunctioning and had recorded nothing.

Wilson remains in custody at the Macon County Jail with bail set at $75,000, meaning he must post a bond of $7,500 to be freed. He is due back in court for a preliminary hearing August 1.
The four Illinois legislative leaders did not have a spectacular primary day last week. House Speaker Chris Welch lost three incumbents to primary challengers. Senate President Don Harmon lost an appointed incumbent and an open seat race. And House Republican Leader Jim Durkin lost two incumbents and came up short in some other races. Senate GOP Leader Dan McConchie came away with one ding.

On the other hand, it was a pretty darned good day to be a young progressive Democrat or a Trump/Bailey-affiliated Republican. State Rep. Delia Ramirez bested well-funded Chicago Alderman Gil Villegas in the 3rd Congressional District primary by a mind-boggling 42 points  the same margin as Republican Sen. Darren Bailey achieved in the governors primary.

All of Speaker Welchs defeated incumbents were bested by talented challengers from their left. Rep. Mike Zalewski (D-Riverside) helped found a caucus for moderate Democrats and voted against repealing the Parental Notification of Abortion Act. His ties to former Speaker Michael Madigan helped for years, but not this time, when they were effectively used against him. Z is a strong legislator, a friend to most and is actually beloved by many progressive legislators, but the winds and the super hard-charging Abdelnasser Rashid got him.

Rep. Denyse Wang Stoneback (D-Skokie) was elected as a progressive two years ago but alienated the gun law reform lobby as well as many colleagues and others during her tenure. The Gun Violence Prevention PAC went after her with a vengeance because she walked away from a landmark bill that G-PAC had negotiated. Shed also alienated her own state senator, Ram Villivalam, and he and a host of area politicos pushed hard for Kevin Olickal, who basically ran on Stonebacks 2020 progressive platform.

The Associated Press has declared U.S. Rep. Chuy Garcias ally Norma Hernandez the winner over Rep. Kathy Willis (D-Addison). Hernandez ran a Chuy-style campaign  lots of family and friends networking, non-stop door-knocking and making sure progressive Latinos got to the polls.

The Senate Democrats and their allies spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to back appointed Sen. Eric Mattson (D-Joliet) against progressive Will County Board member Rachel Ventura, but Ventura won by 15 points, even though she raised only $19,000 all year. This is, needless to say, a big loss. After Sen. John Connor decided to run for judge, the Dems and local pols engineered Mattsons candidacy and his eventual appointment to Connors seat, believing that Ventura could put the district on the bubble this November if she won.

The Dems also supported Lamont Williams against Willie Preston in an open-seat race. Preston was up by 8 points when he declared victory. The charter school group INCS spent heavily in the district for Preston, who had a host of endorsements, although his claimed endorsement by Secretary of State Jesse White proved to be false.

House Republican Conference Chair David Welter (R-Morris) and freshman Rep. Mark Luft (R-Pekin) both lost. The Bailey campaign and people like Jeanne Ives put a big target on Welters back. Welters opponent Jed Davis was also a very hard worker and won by 9 points with all votes counted except what was still in the mail.

Durkin also backed Arin Thrower in the primary to take on Rep. Suzanne Ness (D-Crystal Lake). But Thrower is trailing the much more rightward Connie Cain by just 64 votes.

Jennifer Korte, another Bailey/Ives candidate backed to the hilt by Sen. Jason Plummer (R-Edwardsville), is defeating HGOP-supported Joe Hackler by a 34-point margin for the right to take on Rep. Katie Stuart (D-Edwardsville). The Durkin crew thought Korte was too far-right to have a chance against Stuart. Now theyre stuck with her.

Of the five House Republican candidates endorsed by Bailey, four won, with only Kent Gray losing badly to Rep. Tim Butler (R-Springfield).

Sen. Bailey supported two Senate Republican candidates. One won. Bailey-backed Sen. Win Stoller (R-East Peoria) beat the Jim Durkin-backed Brett Nicklaus by about two points. Durkin jumped into this race for Nicklaus after Travis Weaver announced against Rep. Luft as a way of pushing back against the Senate Republicans and Weavers father, whom he blamed for the younger Weavers candidacy.

The Senate Republicans backed a candidate who ended up with bad opposition research trouble, so they got out of the race.

Also, the ultra-conservative Chicago Fraternal Order of Police endorsed three conservative and not all that talented challengers to sitting Democratic legislators and all three incumbents won by huge margins.
If you like the decisions the U.S. Supreme Court handed down this term, youre going to be enraptured by what comes next. For the rest of us, though, the worst could be yet to come.

Worse than forced birth for rape victims and obscene new curbs, not on pollution, but on the EPAs ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants?

Heres why it could be: In agreeing to review Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court is taking up a case that could give state legislatures sole authority over the conduct of federal elections. If that happens, even the most extreme partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression could be deemed just dandy by state lawmakers, no matter what a states constitution or supreme court says.

And if thats what the court decides, there will be no need to storm the U.S. Capitol to overturn the 2024 election. Thats because any state legislature could simply decide to replace the electors chosen by the popular vote with its own slate, just as former President Donald Trump and Rudy Guiliani pressured state lawmakers in Arizona to do after Trump lost in 2020.

If the Supreme Court turned unchecked control of federal elections over to state lawmakers, how could any court sort out such power grabs?

The North Carolina case the court agreed to review concerns a GOP-engineered redistricting that the state Supreme Court rejected as having subordinated traditional neutral redistricting criteria in favor of extreme partisan advantage. Of course, Republicans want that map reinstated.

Its also Republicans, who not incidentally control 30 state legislatures, who have been pushing the idea that the U.S. Supreme Court should review something called the independent state legislature theory.

The Election Clause of the U.S. Constitution says the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.

Until now, the power of state legislatures to follow purely partisan impulses has been checked by courts. The Supreme Court has never recognized the Constitutions election clause as bestowing unfettered control on state lawmakers.

But proponents of the independent state legislature theory reject this traditional reading, insisting instead that the Constitution gives state legislatures exclusive and near-absolute power to regulate federal elections. The result? When it comes to federal elections, legislators would be free to violate the state constitution and state courts couldnt stop them.

Those proponents include Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

In North Carolina, state lawmakers themselves passed a law decades ago that gave state courts explicit authority to review redistricting plans.

But the question of whether the court would dare to undermine democracy, and whatever is left of its own credibility, has already been answered. Justices who once said that Roe was an important precedent of the Supreme Court, as Alito did at his confirmation hearing, or that it was settled law, as Brett Kavanaugh told Sen. Susan Collins it was, would absolutely dare.

The Sacramento Bee
BRISTOL, Va.  A steady stream of trash trucks rolled up Shakesville Road into the Bristol Virginia landfill Tuesday afternoon, bulging with residential waste from the just completed holiday weekend.

That will soon change.

The city expects to stop accepting trash  from both inside and outside the city  on Sept. 9. City leaders are taking steps to identify where to take its trash, but isnt sure how it will deal with about $3 million in expected lost revenues.

Current plans call for stopping the acceptance of all waste at the citys quarry landfill on Sept. 9, City Manager Randy Eads said Tuesday. The stoppage is part of a long-range plan to address emission, odor and environmental concerns caused by the landfill which has been in operation for almost 25 years.

The city is issuing an RFP [request for proposals] for facilities to take our residential waste. We hope to have that RFP out later this week or early next week, Eads said. We will no longer be putting waste in the landfill after Sept. 9 so I would anticipate a contract starting on that following Monday, Sept. 12.

City crews will continue collecting residential trash after Sept. 9, it will just be taken to a different site, Eads said.

Halting the waste flow was one of the primary recommendations from a panel of experts convened this spring by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

It was also among the main goals of a complaint filed by Bristol Tennessee in U.S. District Court in Abingdon. A settlement agreement between the two cities also involves plans to stop bringing in new waste and taking steps to close the landfill operation.

Landfill crews are also implementing another panel recommendation  applying a layer of dirt cover atop all areas except the active worksite.

A DEQ report issued last week shows the city landfill has an estimated 35-year lifespan remaining.

We have notified all our customers that we will no longer be accepting waste after Sept. 9, Eads said in response to a question. Where they decide to take trash will be up to the leaders of each locality.

Eads said it is too early to know how this change might affect trash collection rates.

The city currently charges $33 per month for residential collection and an additional $16.50 for homes with two containers. The fees include the container plus picking up bulk wood, brush, bulk waste and yard clippings. A discounted rate of $10 per month is available for people who are age 65 or older, or permanently and completely disabled, and meet the income and asset eligibility requirements.

The landfill was forecast to generate $3.35 million in collection revenues during the 2022-23 fiscal year which began last Friday. Due to those changes it is expected to receive about two months revenue or less  depending on when customers halt service. That could mean up to a $3 million deficit in that one departments budget.

Obviously the city will have to watch our expenses associated with the landfill and make any adjustments as necessary in order to make up for that lost revenue, Eads said. We do zero-based budgeting but the landfill has not made a profit in 20 years.
Regional leader in design-build construction, Group Amana has announced a new brand identity that showcases its capabilities.

Now organised into three verticals: Construct, Manufacture and Enhance, the transformation reflects the groups offerings for an evolving business landscape and the drive to build cleaner, greener, and smarter, said the statement from the company.

Amanas revitalised brand identity is focused around a circle, reflecting strength and harmony, and speaks to its promise of delivering certainty. The new tagline, We Build with You epitomises its strengths in collaboration and intelligence, it added.

Amana Investments President and CEO Riad Bsaibes said: "Group AAmana has built a formidable reputation over three decades of operations in the region, with our commitment to sustainability, innovation, and digitalisation. While our name remains the same, our evolution reflects our re-aligned business strategies for the future and our collaborative approach in realising successful projects."

"Amana is poised to seize the opportunities of the future, and to partner the GCC region in its economic growth," he added.

Amana Construct includes Amana Contracting and Amana Aviation Fueling and builds on a 30-year legacy of industrial construction.

Since being founded in 1993, it has constructed more than 1,500 buildings in the region, for clientele including AD Ports Company, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Almarai, Amazon, Coca Cola, DHL, Emirates Airlines, Jebel Ali Free Zone, Kizad, Landmark Group, Majid Al Futtaim Properties, Mars, Nestle, Noon and Unilever.

Amana Manufacture leverages the transformational potential of manufacturing construction through Amana companies, DuBox and DuPod.

Together they have delivered over 130,000 sqm of built-up area (BUA) in modular construction for clients including Adnoc, Emaar, The Red Sea Development Company, Qiddiya Investment Company, and Wasl Properties among others, said the statement.

Over the past two years, DuBox, an Amana company, has bagged several contracts for high-profile clients in KSA, such as the Qiddiya Investment Company and The Red Sea Development Company (TRSDC), shifting 85% of construction from sites to the factory, it stated.

DuBox is a specialist in next generation offsite volumetric modular construction, which offers a safer building environment, potentially reducing material waste by up to 30 percent and improving work safety by up to 70 percent. These numbers are proven, not projected.

The final products are easily relocatable, further enabling the client to shift and relocate in sync with market demands. DuBox is supporting the Kingdoms national agendas of sustainability, nurturing Saudi talent and supporting economic diversification.

Amana Enhance supports the regions sustainability agenda and is helping businesses achieve their green ambitions with its brands - Amana Solar and Amana Energy-Saving.

Bsaibes pointed out that the UAE has set a 2050 target to achieve net zero emissions, followed by Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in 2060.

"These sustainability ambitions are well aligned with national initiatives across the GCC that are driving the renewables agenda, such as the UAE Green Agenda 2015-2030 and Vision 2021 and Saudi Arabias Vision 2030," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
HICKORY  Eleven students from the Catawba County Juntos program joined more than 70 high school students from across North Carolina for Juntos Summer Academy, a week-long camp held at NC State University, from June 14 through June 18.

Juntos Summer Academy allowed Latino youth to experience living on a college campus, learn about the college application process, and participate in career and life skills workshops.

The youth also connected with professionals and college students through networking opportunities, participated in a climate resilience project in partnership with UNC Center for Public Engagement with Science UNC Institute for the Environment, and took part in community activities like touring a local museum and kayaking.

Each day was driven by a theme, all under the concept of Juntos Le Echamos Ganas or We Push Forward. Aliah E, a rising ninth-grader who attended Juntos Academy, shared, During the Juntos Summer Academy, I enjoyed learning about my options for colleges and I got to make new friends.

Juntos is a program that partners with NC State, 4-H, local schools, and the community to provide high school Latino students and their families with the knowledge, skills, and resources to ensure high school graduation and increase college access and attendance rates.
HICKORY  Catawba Valley Quilters Guild (CVQG) will gather on July 14 as usual, but there will be some changes in order to accommodate the guest presenter, Nancy Mahoney. The scheduled activities and times are as follows:

 Thursday, July 14, 10 a.m., meeting, Scrap Quilt Trunk Show"

 Thursday, July 14, 5:30-8:30 p.m., workshop, "Granny's Stars" (in lieu of a regular meeting), for paid attendees only

 Friday, July 15, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., workshop, Chocolate Caramel Stars (for paid attendees only)

As always, the meeting and workshops will be held at Holy Trinity Church located at 547 Sixth St. NW in Hickory.

Mahoney, a well-known quilter currently living in Sparta, Georgia, has been quilting for some 25 years and has been featured in both national and international magazines more than 100 times. She is a teacher, a fabric and pattern designer and an author and has won numerous awards for her work.

Preparation continues for the CVQG quilt show, Stars Over the Valley, this coming fall. The show will be held on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 21-22, at the Hickory Metro Convention Center. Scheduled times are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday.

There will be several new additions to the show this year. One will be a silent auction for a 1360 Janome Quilt of Valor edition sewing machine donated by Bills Sewing Machine Company of Hildebran and three handmade vintage quilts donated by guild member Bob Hampel of Catawba. The second addition will be a learning center for children and new sewers.

As has been the custom for some time, a number of Quilts of Valor made by CVQG members will be presented to veterans at the close of both show days.

Ribbon winners of the 2022 quilt challenge were chosen and announced at the June guild meeting. They were: first place, Mary Bucy for her Enchanted Stars; second place, a group-made quilt made by 12 members of a paper-piecing workshop led by Gigi Miller; and, third place, Elle Clemens for her My Starry Night.

Though this months meeting and times are slightly different, normal meeting days for CVQG are the second Thursday of every month, with both a morning and evening meeting. An open invitation stands for anyone interested in attending a meeting or two free of charge. Annual dues are $20, pro-rated to $10 if joining mid-year. There are various sources of added information: the guild website at www.catawbavalleyquiltersguild.charter.com; Facebook and Instagram. Should there still be unanswered questions, call to speak directly to a guild member at either 336-314-5906 or 828-381-8342.
Most scanners do not perform a thorough job. Photo: Shutterstock

Most websites are vulnerable to attack, whether its opportunistic or intentional hacking, and the return on investment for cyber criminals can be substantial.

While website security scanning offers a line of protection, its not infallible.

To improve screening, a team of Australian and international researchers has just developed a new scanning tool to make sites less vulnerable to cyberattacks.

The black box security assessment prototype, tested by engineers in Australia, Pakistan and the UAE, was found to be more effective than existing web scanners.

UniSA mechanical and systems engineer Dr Yousef Amer, a member of the research team, said the researchers have been able to highlight numerous security vulnerabilities in website applications using the prototype.

Against a backdrop of escalating and more severe cyberattacks, and despite a projected $170 billion global outlay on internet security in 2022 according to Varonis, existing web scanners are falling way short when it comes to assessing vulnerabilities, noted Amer.

We have identified that most of the publicly available scanners have weaknesses and are not doing the job they should, said Amer.

These existing tools have less precision, accuracy and recall rate to determine web application vulnerabilities.

In addition, there are some vulnerabilities that most tools are unable to detect.

Dr Amer explained the black box prototype has better crawler coverage as it uses the high performing Arachni crawler.

This enables us to find all possible web pages associated with the main website, he told Information Age.

Serious vulnerabilities need to be identified

The researchers compared 11 publicly available web application scanners against the top 10 vulnerabilities in web applications and APIs identified by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP).

We found that no single scanner is capable of countering all these vulnerabilities, but our prototype tool caters for all these challenges.

Its basically a one-stop guide to ensure 100 per cent website security, he said.

The vulnerabilities included broken access control that pose serious security risks, as well as cryptographic failures, risk of injection of hostile data, insecure design, misconfiguration, outdated components, and authentication and data integrity failures, among the list.

Theres a dire need to audit websites and ensure they are secure if we are to curb these breaches and save companies and governments millions of dollars, he said.

A three-stage scanning process

The new framework has three major components  process initiator, security assessment and reporting.

To initiate the process, a user inputs a targeted URL, where the host discovery and initialisation of the scanning process starts.

Unreachable hosts are screened here, and the process terminated.

In the assessment phase, the input web application is scanned using a scanning engine, vulnerabilities database, and knowledge base.

Amer explained that the scanning engine is compliant with Zap, Nikto,and W3af security scanning frameworks and is compatible with custom plugin scripts like OAuth and others.

The database contains all possible OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities, and the knowledge base is an AI-based analysis engine that identifies security trends, information leakage, and highlights compromised critical data of scanned organisations.

To complete the cycle, a detailed report is generated with identified vulnerabilities along with their details, an assessment score and possible remediation.

This information is then used for manual analysis and patching process by a security analyst and software developer.

Down the track, the researchers expect it will be updated to suit different needs, and plan to commercialise its application.

The tool can be customised as per user requirements and all customisations are possible like plugin integration, crawling customisation, and more features, Dr Amer said.
In 2019, a new development in Canadas largest city was meant to be the first major incursion for Googles smart cities spin-off Sidewalk Labs.

Torontos Waterfront was set to be the merge of technology with civic design  including large swathes of public consultation  to make the most innovative place in the world that can set a new standard for urban life in the 21st century, as then-CEO of Sidewalk Labs Dan Doctoroff said in the foreword to its development proposal.

The plans included futuristic features like heated footpaths that monitored weather forecasts and turned on in advance of a cold snap, deliberately integrating (as-yet non-existent) fleets of self-driving ride-share vehicles, and a digital building code system to enforce flexible zoning laws like volume levels.

Underpinning all 1,500 pages of Sidewalks proposal was the kind of immense data collection and analysis regime you would expect from Google.

A year after it submitted the proposal, and using the pandemic as convenient cover, Sidewalk pulled its submission citing economic uncertainty.

Two years later the people of Toronto got a new vision for the development, one focused more on trees  the plans include a two-acre forested green space and significant urban farm on the rooftops  than data collection.

Dr Ian Oppermann, NSW Chief Data Scientist and Australian Computer Society (ACS) Immediate Past President, is a proponent of smart cities.

He told Information Age projects like Sidewalk can be too far, too fast for many people.

People have been coming to grips with increasing use of data for personalisation of services, he said.

Theyre starting to ask questions around how much data is being collected, what else is happening to that data, and how much control have they got over its use.

In a recent article for the MIT Technology Review, Karrie Jacobs said arrogance was a common descriptor for how people close to the Toronto project saw Sidewalk Labss attitude.

There was a hubris to the way that they thought that they could solve all the problems in-house, said Alex Ryan of the MaRS Discovery District innovation hub.





The new development plan places a greater emphasis on nature than digital technology. Image: Waterfront Toronto

Googles Sidewalk Labs proposed 10 launch applications that would feed directly into the development areas ubiquitous sensors.

Services included monitoring public realm assets like park benches and drinking fountains for proactive maintenance as well as scanners that keep track of things like ambient lighting and occupancy levels for automated energy management in homes and businesses.

It was a step too far for a community that wanted a liveable, modern space within walking distance from their city.

What is the vision that inspires people to want to live here, to work here, to raise their families and children and grandchildren here, MaRS Discovery District CEO Yung Wu rhetorically asked the MIT Technology Review.

Its not a smart city. Its a city thats smart.

But Dr Oppermann remains optimistic that the 21st century will be filled with data and AI for enhancing liveability in a way that doesnt just line the pockets of Silicon Valley tech giants.

It is inevitable, he told Information Age. In NSW we will take a deliberate but cautious view toward an increasing use of data and AI.

As we do, we will continue to demonstrate that we know what we're doing, that we've got the capability to do it, and that it actually delivers benefit to the people of NSW.

The reason we do this is to avoid the problem [Sidewalk had] in Canada.
The Commissioner of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has called for Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores over fears that sensitive user data from the app is being viewed by officials in China.

Commissioner Brendan Carr published an open letter addressed to Apple and Google CEOs Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai saying it was clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk".

TikTok is not what it appears to be on the surface, he wrote. It is not just an app for sharing funny videos or memes. Thats the sheeps clothing.

At its core, TikTok functions as a sophisticated surveillance tool that harvests extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data.

Carr cited a recent Buzzfeed article which said leaked recordings from meetings at ByteDance  the Chinese company that owns TikTok  proved China-based staff from the company had access to private data about its US users.

Everything is seen in China, said one TikTok staffer, according to Buzzfeed.

The revelations sparked outrage from senators in the US who demanded TikTok explain whether data about its citizens were accessible in China.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew responded in detail to the senators questions but did say that TikTok staff in China can have access to TikTok US user data subject to a series of robust cybersecurity controls and authorisation processes.

In response to a question about whether TikTok would provide US data to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Chew said the company has "not been asked for such data.

We have not provided US user data to the CCP, nor would we if asked, he clarified.

TikToks Chinese ownership was a point of contention during the Trump administration when the former president signed executive orders to ban TikTok and WeChat during an escalating technology trade stoush with China.

TikTok is not just another video app.

Thats the sheeps clothing.



It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing.



Ive called on @Apple & @Google to remove TikTok from their app stores for its pattern of surreptitious data practices. pic.twitter.com/Le01fBpNjn  Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) June 28, 2022

While the bans didn't stick, they highlighted so-called national security concerns about an app from a Chinese-owned company being so popular among young people  an issue that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had reportedly brought up in his lobbying efforts with politicians and regulators in Washington.

Australian Liberal senator James Paterson has imported the latest worries over TikTok with a letter to its local general manager, Lee Hunter, asking for clarification about whether user data is accessible by TikTok or ByteDance employees in China and if that data has been previously accessed.

More than 7 million Australians use TikTok.

On what basis could [TikTok or ByteDance employees] refuse a request from the Chinese government under the National Security Law for access to that Australian user data? Senator Paterson asked.

During an parliamentary committee hearing at the height of TikTok fears in 2020, the companys CISO Roland Cloutier told Australian politicians that no information about Australian citizens were held in China.

The information is resident in the United States and a backup in Singapore  That information is protected with significant levels of protection and encryption.

Its protected with access and identity management solutions that are in our hosting environment, our enterprise environment.

But those data housing agreements have come under question with audio recordings heard by Buzzfeed showing there may be some wiggle room for data to flow to Beijing from the US.

Data flow fears go both ways, however, as China recently banned Tesla vehicles from a part of the country that is host to Communist Party retreats for fear that sensors on the cars, which include cameras, could leak sensitive information about the partys meetings.
CHARLOTTE  You enter Discovery Places new grotto atop a gentle slosh of surf projected beneath your feet, so realistic and unexpected that you might fight the urge to prance in retreat to keep your toes dry.

But youve only reached the shallows of Unseen Oceans, a summerlong exhibition at the science museum that truly lives up to the description of immersive experience.

Illuminated in turquoise hues counterfeiting the uppermost layer of sea, its caverns beckon visitors to learn about the motor dynamics of Earths oceans, the clever life forms that occupy its regions and the perils that a sick sea could inflict on mankind.

Most of all, Unseen Oceans sketches the greatest mystery on Earth  what lies beneath the waves that cover 70% of our planets surface?

The exhibition at Discovery Place Science in Charlotte opened in May and is organized by the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Oceans are so vast, but the depths are unknown, said Heather Norton, chief science officer for Discovery Place. A Florida native with scuba experience, she recognizes how most of us are far out of our depths when it comes to the seas.

We know the surface of Mars 100 times better than the Earths marine underworld  accurate maps exist for only about 15% of the seafloor, Norton said.

One not-to-miss feature of Unseen Oceans is an amphitheater in the shape of a research sub, including windshield and portholes. Here visitors take a voyage of discovery, first descending past the flanks of an iceberg, then meeting various animals at their cruising depths, from plankton to whales.

Steadily, and more darkly, visitors descend to about 7 miles down to enter the perilous realm where sunlight never penetrates, through vast canyons that hold otherworldly creatures immune to crushing pressures.

Live sea creatures ranging from moon jellyfish to seahorses to a zebra bullhead shark are on display, acquired for the exhibition and destined to live afterward in Discovery Place aquariums as part of the museums collection.

Other creatures on display are long dead, even extinct. There is a fist-sized megalodon tooth, about 23 million years old, from the prehistoric shark the size of a bus that fed on whales and seals. Sharks are one of the most successful designs nature ever hatched, ancient even in the era of the dinosaurs. But for the first time in their history, these apex predators are in danger because of overfishing by humans.

Encounter With Giants is a high-resolution film showing life-size sea creatures like Earths largest mammal  the blue whale  sailing past at 100 feet in length, or a flock of manta rays, cruising serenely on winglike flippers.

Other curious incredibles  flashing tentacles, snouts or unblinking eyeballs  are drawn to the camera for startling close-ups. A subtext of the exhibition is humanitys ingenuity in exploring the hostile environment of the oceans, Norton said.

Exhibits show how sonar and satellites sketch the undersea terrain and how submersibles take us into the inky depths.

Two virtual-reality stations allow young explorers to drive a mini-submarine to collect reef samples  just keep an eye on your fuel and air gauges  and return to base.

Other exhibits show how the United States and Canada allowed the northeast cod fishery to collapse. In contrast, Norway and Russia set strict limits on the cod harvest to 700,000 tons annually off Europe, which ensured a sustainable supply for the future.

And yet another exhibit shows how reef management and new fishing techniques have mitigated damage to the seabed and its denizens, offering hope we can live more in harmony with our otherworldly companions on this blue planet.

Humans often struggle with things so big  we cant understand them, Norton said. We sometimes dismiss them, assume that theyll always be there and heal themselves.
SALISBURY  Rowan-Cabarrus Community College recently held a completion ceremony for 11 students in its Skills, Opportunity, Awareness, Readiness (S.O.A.R.) program for adults with intellectual disabilities, along with five students in the English Language Learner/ESL program.

The students received their diplomas in their caps and gowns and were congratulated by faculty and staff, friends and family. The college created a festive atmosphere for the ceremony, with music, signs, tents, a firetruck, and a large American flag flying above the event site at North Campus. The colleges mascot, a red-tailed hawk named Beacon, also was on hand to help congratulate the graduates on their accomplishments. The event culminated with a lunch and reception.

The S.O.A.R. program has helped me with so many things, said former graduate Kendall Ferguson, who now has a job at the Rowan-Cabarrus Community College business office. The program taught me to accept the fact that I have a disability and embrace it. It taught me to love myself and who I am and to know my limits, but also push them.

S.O.A.R. students receiving diplomas were Nicholas Black, Carl Trey Childers III, Tommy Lee Jr., Katyanna Dittmeier, Aerial Hanno, Sydney Lewis, Katherine Osterhus, Kathaleen Scott, Corey Steele, Zoe Pressley and Jackie Allison.

ELL/ESL students receiving diplomas were Vinh Chau, Esdras Espinoza Arteaga, Diego Garcia Ruiz, Jorge Perdomo Ayala and Viengxai Vanalath Phetsomphou.

The S.O.A.R. curriculum focuses on helping individuals become more independent and self-directed by teaching specific skills needed to function successfully in daily life. Classes are built around each students unique strengths and goals, covering functional academics, community living, health and safety, leisure activities, and humanities. Students in the program use computers and other technology and participate in campus and community activities tuition-free.

The English Language Learner (ELL/ESL) program assists students whose native language is not English gain skills in reading, listening, writing and speaking English. This allows them to participate more fully in American society and/or achieve their full academic potential in learning environments where instruction is delivered largely or entirely in English.

We are so proud of our graduating S.O.A.R. and ESL students and, in addition to celebrating their accomplishments, we treasure the many wonderful lessons they have taught us, said Dr. Carol S. Spalding, president of Rowan-Cabarrus. At Rowan-Cabarrus, we are passionate about meeting all students where they are and empowering them to go as far as they can go.

For more information about the S.O.A.R. program, visit www.rccc.edu/precollege/about-the-soar-program. For more information about the ELL/ESL program, visit www.rccc.edu/precollege/about-ell-program.

For more information about Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, visit www.rccc.edu or call 704-216-RCCC (7222).
An investigation into something strange growing atop North Carolinas High Rock Lake proved to a gross and scummy collection of insects, according to Yadkin Riverkeeper.

YRK responded to a possible fish kill on High Rock Lake yesterday, the environmental nonprofit wrote July 1 on Facebook.

Turns out it wasnt a fish kill or harmful algal bloom (HAB), but thousands of molting Mayflies ... shedding their casings. ... Its gross & scummy, but doesnt appear to be a threat to water quality.

Photos shared by Yadkin Riverkeeper show the growth is thick and yellowish green, and its piling up at the end of a cove. A closeup of the fly casings revealed they resemble decomposing fish, the agency reported.

The North Carolina Division of Water Resources sent experts to investigate and take samples, officials said.

Its not clear how long the molting will continue.

High Rock Lake is a reservoir that counts as the states second-largest lake, covering 15,180 acres with 365 miles of shoreline, according to VisitNC.com. It is the boundary between Davidson and Rowan counties, northeast of Charlotte.

Yadkin Riverkeeper Executive Director and Riverkeeper Edgar Miller told The Winston Salem-Journal mayfly molting is a natural process, though it is unclear whether it is normal for it to happen at this scale.

The mayfly spends most of its life in water and their sensitivity to pollution provides clues about the health of our streams and other waterways, according to N.C. State University.

Not much is known about how or when they shed their skins, or molt, in the water, but mayflies are unusual in that they molt a lot more  14 to 50 times more, depending on the species  than most other insects, the university reports.
MATTOON  Eastern Illinois University is offering a series of digital job-seeking skills workshops at regional libraries, thanks to a grant from the Illinois State Library. EIUs Booth Library, College of Education, and Career Services are partners on the grant.

The free workshops will take place at the Mattoon Public Library, located at 1600 Charleston Ave. in Mattoon, from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays through Aug. 27.

The topics to be covered are as follows:

July 9, basic resume development;

July 16, how and where to find jobs;

July 23, target your resume for job search effectiveness;

July 30, job search correspondence (cover letter, thank you note, acceptance/decline);

Aug. 20, interview preparation;

Aug. 27, mock interviews.

Pre-registration is encouraged. Interested participants can contact Library Director Carl Walworth at 217-234-2621 or email carl@mattoonlibrary.org.
Emirates SkyCargo, a leader in the global airfreight industry, took delivery of its latest Boeing 777-F to boost its fleet capacity and cater to the phenomenal growth in the industry.

Emirates freight division has seen significant increase in cargo loads across its products, including pharma and fresh produce.

In 2021-22, annual tonnage carried crossed 2.1 million, an increase of 15 percent, with transport of perishables crossing 260,000 tonnes, and both pharma and valuable goods each growing by 17 percent.

Divisional Senior Vice President Nabil Sultan said: "The new freighter will help increase our capacity and boost our ability to deliver vital goods, and facilitate trade globally. Despite the challenging headwinds this year, the air cargo industry is booming and weve been flat out since the pandemic began."

"Emirates SkyCargo will continue its journey as one of the worlds largest and best air cargo airlines by investing in our fleet, our global network, technology, and world-class logistics infrastructure at our Dubai hub and beyond," noted Sultan.

Most global markets are experiencing an increase in demand, including China. Emirates SkyCargo will now serve China with an additional four freighter flights every week.

From this week, Shanghai will be served with six direct flights, Beijing with two and Guangzhou with four, adding more than 400 tonnes of cargo to and from China, it stated.

Emirates SkyCargo said plans are also afoot to increase frequencies to Hanoi and Sydney with direct services. Additional frequencies to Nairobi are also earmarked to be part of a freighter multi-stop route from DWC to Eldoret International Airport in Kenya.

The flight then hops to Nairobi before heading north to Maastricht, Netherlands and then to Zaragoza, Spain before the 777F returns home to DWC. At each stop, the freighter unloads and reloads with various types of cargo including, flowers, textiles and pharma, it stated.

The brand new freighter, A6-EFU, will maintain the fleet total at 11 Boeing 777Fs because A6-EFG went back to its lessor last week.

Emirates SkyCargos Boeing 777-F and 777 Mini-Freighter aircraft have flown nearly 950 charter flights in the last 12 months, while continuing to serve the airlines over 130 passenger and 11 dedicated freighter destinations. Emirates SkyCargo also offers shippers cargo belly-hold space in the airlines passenger fleet of close to 210 wide-body Boeing 777s and Airbus A380s.

Plans are also already underway to convert 10 passenger 777s into freighters, boosting the cargo fleet to 21 by the end of 2026.

Emirates SkyCargo was the launch customer for the Boeing 777-F and the aircraft has been at the heart of the carriers operations since 2009. The aircrafts range and payload capabilities allow time and temperature sensitive shipments to be transported rapidly and efficiently from origin to destination.

-TradeArabia News Service
MATTOON  The Lake Land College Early Childhood Education program will offer Early Childhood Access Consortium for Equity (ECACE) scholarship opportunities for individuals who are current or previous employees in childcare settings and wish to complete postsecondary education in the field.

These scholarships will cover up to the total cost of attendance after other financial aid is applied, including costs such as tuition and fees, books, supplies, transportation and even childcare.

To learn more about this scholarship eligibility or to apply, visit isac.org/ECACEscholarship. The priority deadline for applications is Friday, July 15 for the 2022-23 academic year, and after that applicants will be accepted only on a rolling basis.

The Lake Land College Early Childhood Education program will also provide early childhood students with the opportunity to work in a hands-on childcare setting under the supervision of faculty. This lab opportunity will be made possible thanks to an ECACE grant for more than $696,000 from the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB).

One evening class per week will be held at the Kluthe Center for Higher Education & Technology in Effingham to provide flexibility for students.

This classroom will also feature HyFlex technology, which will allow students to connect from work, home or any location convenient for them while receiving a live educational experience similar to that which they would receive in person.

For more information on the Early Childhood Education program at Lake Land College, visit lakelandcollege.edu/high-demand-programs/early-childhood-education.
Summer is all about grilling, which means everyone should have a go-to marinade up their sleeve for soaking and basting their favorite grillables. This no-fail marinade is tangy and sweet, with a kick of garlicky Sriracha for heat. Its also amenable to almost anything you would like to grill, including meat, chicken, fish and vegetables.

One protein that always loves a good marinade is chicken breast, which is essentially a blank slate when it comes to cooking. The white meat is mild and can easily dry out, so a juicy marinade does double duty in terms of boosting flavor and tenderizing the meat. There are a couple of tricks to drive the marinade flavor into the chicken. One is to score the whole breasts crosswise on the diagonal, about 1/4-inch deep, which allows the marinade to seep into the meat. Another option is to cut the chicken breasts into large chunks and thread them onto skewers. Not only are skewers fun to eat, but the chunks provide more surfaces and edges that can char and crisp on the grill  because who doesnt like all those crispy bits?
A late-spring heat wave that scorched North Carolina offered a glimpse at how warmer summers and customer demand are expected to test the states power grid.

On June 13, the second day of a nearly weeklong stretch when temperatures reached the 90s daily in much of the state, Duke Energy customers in central and western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina taxed the electric grid like never before during hot weather.

Between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. on that Monday, as temperatures peaked and residents cranked home air conditioners after their commute from work, customers of Duke Energy Carolinas used an all-time high 21,086 megawatt-hours of electricity.

That record, which topped the previous high set nearly six years earlier, lasted for all of two days.

On June 15, the same customers hit 21,265 megawatt hours of electricity use between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m.

The company also set a separate record June 13 when Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress  which serves the Asheville area, Raleigh and large portions of eastern North Carolina and the Pee Dee region of South Carolina  combined to use 34,079 megawatt-hours of electricity.

Those standards likely wont last long.

Extreme weather linked to climate change and continued customer growth fueled by North Carolinas rising population are expected to test the resilience of the power grid and drive energy demand to unprecedented levels.

For Charlotte-based Duke Energy, North Carolinas largest utility, those challenges already are a reality.

We have seen storms increase in frequency and intensity in many areas, so we are working to strengthen our system to make it more resistant to outages from severe weather and to enable reliable operations in extreme conditions like high heat or freezing conditions, said Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks. We are working to make our grid more climate-resistant, and that work is especially important on days when conditions are extreme and demand for energy is highest.

Hot and hotter

Over the past half-century, average summer temperatures in the Triad have increased by nearly 3 degrees, according to Climate Central, a non-profit organization that tracks national and local weather trends. For the same period, the average number of summer days with above-normal temperatures jumped by 26.

Those kinds of trends are expected to continue.

The North Carolina Climate Science Report, published in 2020 by the N.C. Institute for Climate Studies, predicted that summers in the state will continue to get warmer, that there will be more days with extreme heat, that record temperatures will get higher, and that hot weather will start earlier and end later.

Overall, the report projected that average annual temperatures will rise 2 to 4 degrees by the middle of this century, depending on the pace and scale of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Trends and forecasts are critical to Duke Energys planning process, Brooks said.

Data is one of our greatest tools to ensure the power grid is ready for current and future weather and climate challenges, he explained. We use massive amounts of historical usage data to determine how much energy will need to be generated at any given time to meet customer energy needs.

The company also is incorporating artificial intelligence to guide improvements and enhance efficiency, he added.

Cranking it up

One quirk of climate change in much of the U.S. is that summer nights are warming more than days. In the Triad, the average summer nighttime temperature has increased 3.7 degrees over the past 50 years, Climate Central reports.

While likely less noticeable than extreme daytime heat, what happens when most of us sleep still has a significant effect on electricity demand, Brooks noted.

When we have a long stretch of days with very high temperatures and limited cooling at night, it makes air conditioners work harder around the clock and makes our grid work harder, he said. So we do often see higher usage trends when the hot stretches also include warm nights with limited cooling.

Day and night, outside temperatures influence indoor climate control.

With increasingly hotter summers, we are spending more and more time indoors, cranking our air conditioning, said Rajesh Kapileshwari, an engineer and clean energy advocate from Winston-Salem who specializes in the design of energy-efficient, sustainable buildings. Energy consumption is going up, and we are setting new records for power demands.

About three-quarters of electricity in the U.S. is used by buildings, and about 40% of building electricity is used for heating and cooling, Kapileshwari noted.

Having worked with building energy systems for three decades, I have come to realize that our buildings are inherently wasteful, and as years go by, increasingly inefficient, he said.

Higher summer temperatures and building inefficiency multiply energy use, which further taxes the electric grid. If that electricity is generated, all or in part, by burning fossil fuels, that buildings carbon footprint also expands.

These issues will only worsen unless we take steps to reduce our power usage, Kapileshwari insisted. Building more power plants to meet our increasing power demands is not a solution.

Legislation passed by the N.C. General Assembly and signed by Gov. Roy Cooper in October 2021 called on the N.C. Utilities Commission to take all reasonable steps to slash carbon-dioxide emissions in electricity generation by 70% by 2030 and have them be carbon-neutral by 2050.

While greening of our power production to solve the climate crisis is a good first step, we must also focus on the demand side of the equation, Kapileshwari suggested.

What the summer holds

Duke Energy, whose own plan for meeting the states emissions targets is being reviewed by the utilities commission after being criticized by some environmental groups for not shifting fast enough to renewable sources, has made consumption a key element in its plans.

We have set three different summer peaks so far, and it is only June, Dukes Brooks noted. So it will be interesting to see what the summer holds for usage across the state.

He offered the following tips to reduce energy use in summer:

Set the thermostat to the highest comfortable setting. Every 2 degrees you adjust the thermostat closer to the outside temperature can save up to 5% on your cooling costs.

Make sure air filters are clean and changed regularly. A dirty filter can increase operating costs of your HVAC unit and make it work harder when you need it most.

Close the blinds on the sunny side of the house on warm days to keep the heat out and cooler air in.

Use a ceiling fan, set to a counter-clockwise direction, to maintain comfort while using your air conditioning less. A fan can help you feel up to 4 degrees cooler and uses less energy than an HVAC unit. But remember, fans cool people not rooms. So turn it off when you leave the room.

Consider using the microwave instead of stove or oven to reduce heat in the kitchen and save energy. Or use a grill outside.
Nearly a week later, police are releasing more details about a bizarre incident at Target, saying for the first time that someone was actually shot during the incident.

The incident itself prompted an unusual late night press conference from Police Chief Catrina Thompson where she declined to disclose that the subject of the press conference was indeed the Target assault. That now appears to be the case.

Police initially said a man told them that he was approached by three other men inside the store about 8:30 p.m. June 28, and that after they started assaulting him, he pulled a gun and fired one round in a bid to stop the assault. Dontaye Kentrell Wade, 25, who told police he fired the shot, told authorities that the three men continued their assault, took his gun away from him, and ran out of the store.

Officers interviewed Wade after he showed up at a local hospital with injuries to his head and face. Wade told officers that he was struck multiple times around the head and face by the men.

Wade told police he drove home after the assault, then went to a local hospital to be examined. Police said Wades injuries were considered minor and that he was released from the hospital after getting treatment.

Police said on Sunday night that, through interviews, surveillance and social media, the three men involved have been identified as Jay Cameron Carnicom, 28, of Freemont, Ohio; Joshua Alvin Michael Mundy, 29, of Freemont, Ohio; and Jason Doane Chipps 37, of Marion.

The three men are associated with a group called DAP (Dads Against Predators) on social media, police said.

During the course of the investigation, it has been discovered the three males lured the victim to the Target utilizing a social media app called Meet Up, police said. Once the victim arrived inside the Target, the three males approached the victim and confronted him as to why he was at the Target.

Police did not say why Wade was targeted by the three men. Wade has not been charged with any crime.

One of the men recorded the interaction when Wade slapped the phone away, which resulted in a physical altercation, police said.

During that fight, Wade brandished a handgun and fired once, striking Carnicom in the lower leg, police said.

The men then took Wades gun and fled Target on foot before entering a vehicle with Ohio tags. Wade also fled the store but later that same night arrived at a Forsyth County hospital for injuries sustained during the assault.

Around 3:13 a.m. on June 29, police received information that led to the recovery of the gun on Sunderland Road. Later that day, about 11 a.m., police were contacted by law enforcement in Ohio confirming Carnicom had arrived at a hospital there. He had a gunshot wound to his leg. He was treated and released.

The investigation is still ongoing, police said.

Police havent announced any charges in this case.

During the press conference the next day, Thompson warned city residents about the challenges that vigilante groups, including groups in the Triad, can create for law enforcement.

The intentions of these groups may be honorable, Thompson said at a news conference at the Beaty Public Safety Training Center on Patterson Avenue.

Members of these groups dont have the training of law enforcement officers, Thompson said. Their methods of investigation and gathering evidence typically dont meet the requirements of a successful prosecution of these cases, she said.

Thompson encouraged citizens groups to contact the Winston-Salem Police Department instead of taking matters into their own hands.

Anyone with any information regarding this investigation is asked to call the Winston-Salem Police Department at 336-773-7700 or Crime Stoppers, either at 336-727-2800, or En Espanol 336-728-3904.
The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine has received a $36 million federal award to establish a research and development program to study the ways in which a virus will invade and infect humans.

The funding comes from U.S. Defense Departments Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

The program is known by the acronym PATMOS, which stands for Pathogenesis and Toxicity Forecasting Using Multi-Organoid Systems.

The research involves using the institutes Body-on-a-Chip platform to investigate the biochemical changes that take place in viral infections.

Body-on-a-Chip is defined as a miniaturized system of human organs that can model the bodys response to harmful agents, test the effects of new agents during drug discovery, and potentially help to develop potential therapies.

The Body-on-a-Chip is an ideal platform for probing the ways in which a virus can infect specific human organs and tissues, institute director Dr. Anthony Atala said.

This proof-of-concept research program provides a valuable tool for development of a predictive algorithm to more quickly react to any type of viral threat.

The platform consists of an advanced 3D model of human tissues or organs that provide a more realistic model than standard two-dimensional cultures.

Researchers said that by combining the biological data generated from Body-on-a-Chip with the computational power of machine learning and artificial intelligence, it should produce a powerful tool that will find relationships between infection and human biology that have not been identified.

The PATMOS program will infect the 3D organs, or organoids, with different viruses and analyze what happens throughout the course of an infection.

Biochemical changes taking place at the molecular and cellular level will be tracked, and the data fed into the artificial intelligence which will begin to learn the complicated interplay of these subtle changes.

Atala said the research will lay the foundation for the development of medical countermeasures, biomarkers of infection, and diagnostics.

This work will provide valuable information that could lead to the identification of new ways to combat viral threats, and provide a significant advantage to our service members, said institute researcher Patrick McNutt.

In a human being, these subtle changes would occur days before the person begins to feel ill.

In October 2019, the institute received $24 million in federal grant funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for research using the technology as a model to develop chemical injury treatments.

Federal health officials want to determine whether organ-on-a-chip technology can assist in understanding injuries and fatalities caused by inhaled chlorine gas  a potential national security threat  and to develop treatments for those injuries.

The five-year grant includes a $13.5 million commitment for the first two years.

Before the grant was provided, the study of respiratory health, disease and biomedical interventions primarily is performed in animal models, or 2D cell culture models using human or animal cells.

Local researchers will work with Precision Medicine colleagues with expertise in genomics to identify the effects of chlorine gas and other toxic agents on the lungs, and to determine the usefulness of the organoid in developing treatments for the resulting lung injuries.

Chlorine gas was used as a weapon during the trench warfare fighting in World War I. In more recent times, it has been used repeatedly during the Syrian civil war.

The amount of chlorine manufactured in the U.S., along with its ready availability, makes this chemical a potential national security threat.

For example, in 2005 a train accident in Graniteville, S.C., caused a tank car containing chlorine gas to leak, resulting in nine deaths and at least 250 injuries.

Depending on the outcome of these early studies, BARDA and its partners may use organ-on-a-chip technology to test potential treatments for lung or other organ injuries that are caused by other chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) agents.

If used in developing products to treat or cure injuries or illnesses, organ-on-a-chip technology may reduce the number of animal studies needed for regulatory approval of these products. The need for fewer studies could reduce the development time and costs for many national security medical countermeasures.

BARDAs chemical countermeasures program is engaged with 16 different partners to develop therapeutics to protect from and to treat injuries caused by a variety of chemical threats, including three other partners whose products are being tested to treat chlorine-related injuries.
RALEIGH  A population of an invasive fly from Asia has been discovered in North Carolina, confirming a prediction from agriculture experts that it was only a matter of time before the potentially destructive pest reached the state.

Late last month, the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Service announced an infestation of the spotted lanternfly in Kernersville. According to a news release from N.C. State University, the infestation covers a 5-mile radius, suggesting its likely been there for a couple of years before it was reported.

The first U.S. sighting of the spotted lanternfly was in Pennsylvania in 2014, the news release said. Since then, it has since been found in nine other states in New England and the Midwest. In late 2021, an infestation was found near the Virginia-North Carolina state line.

During heavy infestations, the spotted lanternfly may kill grapevines, and mating swarms may disrupt events at vineyards. It feeds on more than 100 species of plants, including hops, fruit trees and native trees. It is also attracted to popular plants used for landscaping around homes and businesses.

Spotted lanternflies are native to China, India and Vietnam, N.C. State reports.
The Nebraska Department of Labor said Tuesday that the state's unemployment system is back online.

The website, NEworks.nebraska.gov, had been offline since June 26 after a cyberattack on the vendor that runs the system, Geographic Solutions Inc.

The attack also forced the Florida-based company to take down websites it runs for several other states. Geographic Systems said there was no evidence user data had been compromised.

The Department of Labor said Nebraska's site was the first to come back online, and the company was still working Tuesday to restore sites in some of the other affected states.

Although we understand this has caused disruption for unemployment claimants and other users, taking the site offline was an important measure to protect the data of working Nebraskans, Commissioner of Labor John H. Albin said in a news release.

The department said it will ensure that unemployment claimants are able to receive the benefits for which they are eligible. The agency is prioritizing payments for weeks already claimed, and back payments will be issued to all eligible claimants. Filers should check their account for status updates.

The NEworks system prompts workers with active claims to file for two weeks of benefits if a certification has not already been filed for the week ending June 25.

If an individual has recently become unemployed and was unable to file an initial application for unemployment benefits or reopen their claim because of the system outage, they should request back dating of the application by emailing NDOL.Unemploymenthelp@nebraska.gov. Instructions can be found at dol.nebraska.gov/uibenefits.
A 36-year-old California man was arrested in Lincoln on Thursday after a traffic stop led investigators to 119 individual 1-pound bags of marijuana, deputies said in court records.

Lancaster County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Mayo stopped Fong Vang, of Fresno, for following too close on Interstate 80 near the Northwest 48th Street exit, according to the affidavit for Vang's arrest.

Mayo encountered an "overwhelming odor of raw marijuana" when he contacted Vang. Mayo found the vacuum-sealed bags of marijuana in the trunk of Vang's rental car.

Deputies arrested Vang on suspicion of possession of marijuana with intent to deliver, a Class 2 felony because of the quantity of the drug.
Lincoln Police on Tuesday identified the 19-year-old man who died in a hit-and-run crash Saturday as Alexandor Eskra, a 2021 graduate of Lincoln High School.

Eskra was driving a Subaru east in the inside lane of O Street near 37th Street at about 9:30 p.m. Saturday when a westbound Ford Focus crossed the raised median and collided with Eskra's vehicle, which then crashed into an eastbound Chrysler, according to the crash report.

Eskra died later at a local hospital. It's unclear if he was wearing a seat belt, though he wasn't ejected from the car, according to the report. The Chrysler's two occupants were treated for minor injuries at the scene.

The driver of the Ford fled the scene on foot and had not been apprehended as of Tuesday afternoon, the police said. The car is registered to an east Lincoln resident, according to the crash report, though it's unclear if the owner was driving the car Saturday night.

Both the Ford and Subaru were totaled in the collision, which shut down O Street for about six hours. The crash caused $15,000 in damage to the Chrysler.

Police on Sunday asked anyone with information on the crash or driver to call 402-441-6000 or Crime Stoppers at 402-475-3600.
Some 32 dentists will provide oral care for pilgrims 24/7 throughout the days of the Hajj season, the Saudi Ministry of Health has announced.

The importance of this service lies in its central location next to the Grand Mosque, given the limited dental care outlets in the area.

Launching the mobile dental clinic services, the ministry said they will be affiliated with Makkah's Health Cluster. The clinic is stationed in the vicinity of the Grand Mosque's Emergency Hospital, to provide health care for pilgrims attending this year's Hajj.-- TradeArabia News Service
Lincoln Police officers deployed a Taser on a man amid a confrontation early Monday morning, later jailing the 30-year-old on misdemeanor charges, the department said Tuesday morning.

The incident began at 2:46 a.m., when police responded to a house near 20th and Dudley streets on a reported disturbance between two acquaintances, Sgt. Chris Vollmer said.

As officers intervened, they told the 30-year-old man to leave the residence, Vollmer said. But police allege the man pushed past his friends and advanced on officers in front of the house, and officers shocked the man with a Taser after initial attempts to detain him were unsuccessful.

Authorities transported the man to a hospital for medical evaluation before he was lodged at the Lancaster County Jail on suspicion of second-degree trespass, resisting arrest and obstructing a police officer  all misdemeanors.
Lincoln police arrested a 28-year-old man who they say attempted to assault officers with a screwdriver.

Police received a report of a possible stabbing at about 7 p.m. Sunday in the 1000 block of Garber Avenue in northwest Lincoln. When police arrived, no one with injuries was present, but Capt. Jake Dilsaver said Payne Ackerman began threatening officers.

Officers attempted to handcuff Ackerman, but he resisted arrest and tried to use the screwdriver to injure them, Dilsaver said.

Police were eventually able to detain him by deploying a Taser.
After a three-day manhunt that ultimately sent investigators to an apartment in northwest Lincoln, police Tuesday morning arrested the 34-year-old Lincoln man accused of fatally stabbing a 26-year-old man Friday.

Steven A. Alexander was arrested without incident near 31st Street and Folkways Boulevard, Assistant Police Chief Jason Stille said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon, where he thanked the public for its help in apprehending the man accused of stabbing Austin Gress.

"Multiple tips  some more valuable than others  came in," Stille said alongside Capt. Ben Miller at the police department's headquarters. "It helped us focus our efforts in ... searching different locations, and then based on those tips, it was just kind of a cascading effect.

"The public has a role to play in the safety of the community, just as we do," Stille added. "And when the public is willing to come forward and provide information, this helps us quickly clear cases, and I think that leads to a safer and more secure community."

Upon his arrest, police booked Alexander into the Lancaster County Jail on suspicion of manslaughter, first-degree assault and use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony.

Alexander's arrest comes more than three days after "somewhat of a mutual fight" broke out at about 9 p.m. Friday between he and Gress near the As Stop and Shop at 27th and Dudley streets, Stille said. It's unclear what prompted the dispute.

In court records, police said Gress had been riding a bicycle alongside his dad, 51-year-old William Parrott, in the moments before the attack.

As they approached the convenience store, Parrott told police he lost sight of Gress as he waited for traffic, and as he approached the store, he saw Alexander stabbing his son with a long-bladed knife, Lincoln Police Investigator Giselle Hogan said in an arrest affidavit.

Surveillance footage reviewed by investigators showed Alexander chasing Gress as he rode his bike outside the convenience store, Hogan said.

Gress then got off the bike and pushed Alexander to the ground before Alexander stabbed him "two to three times in the upper chest and neck area," Hogan said.

After he was stabbed, Gress fled east as his father approached from the west, Hogan said. Parrott pushed Alexander to the ground but Alexander unsheathed his knife again, causing Parrott to retreat.

Parrott then picked up a metal object and he and Gress chased Alexander, who ran down an alley before fleeing west on Dudley Street, Hogan said in the affidavit.

Gress and his dad returned to the north side of the convenience store, where Gress collapsed and was later pronounced dead.

Police haven't recovered the knife Alexander is alleged to have used in the attack, said Stille, who noted surveillance video shows him holding what appears to be a knife.

Alexander and Gress knew each other, though the nature of their relationship remained unclear Tuesday. Stille said the department is still investigating how long the two knew each other and "any issues that may have come up in the recent past."
YORK  The buried Cold War treasure has all the comforts of home.

Running water. Electricity. Plenty of space to park a car  or a thermonuclear warhead.

And for $550,000, the subterranean missile silo 5 miles west of York can be yours to own.

The 174-foot inverted tower of reinforced concrete with a two-story launch control center  a Cold War-era missile complex that once housed the earliest intercontinental ballistic missile, the Atlas-F  recently hit the market.

Built in 1962 just before the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the underground silo is one of 12 within 60 miles of Lincoln that once housed the 82-foot-tall ICBMs.

The structures, built to withstand an indirect nuclear strike, were short-lived as the advent of cheaper and more fuel-stable rockets like the Minuteman made them obsolete.

A half-mile north of U.S. 34, the York site was the last of the 12 to be decommissioned in April 1965, and soon they were sold to the public.

"It's an incredible piece of military history," said Mike Figueroa, a realtor with BancWise Realty in Lincoln.

On the surface, the silo's circular cap  about 52 feet across with two 50-ton launch doors  looks like the lonely foundation of a grain bin long since removed. Corn in the adjacent fields is nearly waist high and the healthy green of late June. It's what's below the surface that packs a punch.

The first floor of the cylindrical control center, about 30 feet underground and accessed via a ground-level metal door, is completely livable and has running water, electricity and a working toilet and septic system.

It's refreshingly cool when you first enter the underground complex. A wood stove and electric furnace will keep you warm, if needed. Four 500-gallon water tanks in the silo are fed by one of two on-site water wells.

Mammoth 2,000-ton steel blast doors  five in all  and an escape hatch take you back to a time when fears of a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union were very real. And the silo itself, with two massive, 50-ton launch doors, can be accessed via a tunnel.

Figueroa, who works alongside his wife, Polly, got a phone call about the silo three months ago from a broker in Kansas. The property's out-of-state owner was looking to sell.

The owner, who wished to remain anonymous, had purchased it in 1998 in advance of Y2K.

"He had always wanted some kind of underground home," Figueroa said. "When he got it, it was just a decaying relic of the Cold War."

The owner spent a couple of years renovating the space, including draining a foot of condensation inside the command center and insulating the first level with spray foam.

For a good portion of the past two decades, the Army Corps of Engineers leased the property after high levels of TCE, a chemical found in degreasers, was discovered in nearby groundwater.

The site was eventually cleared environmentally, but the owner figured he didn't have the time or the resources to continue the project, Figueroa said.

Compared to some of the other sites in Nebraska, the York silo is in relatively good shape.

"He did a ton of work," Figueroa said.

The U.S. built 72 Atlas-F missile silos  from upstate New York to Texas  in the early 1960s as the arms race with the Soviet Union heated up. A rocket and its accompanying nuclear warhead could be readied in about 10 minutes and strike Russia in about 30, said Rob Branting, a Lincoln native and supervisor of a former Minuteman missile site in North Dakota.

By September 1962, all 12 sites in Nebraska  under the supervision of the former Lincoln Air Force Base  were up and running, just as the Cold War reached a particularly icy interval.

"It's really crazy that these silos were basically declared operational  and then next month is the Cuban Missile Crisis," Branting said.

The silos, including the 12 in Nebraska that were manned 24/7 by five-man crews from the 551st Strategic Missile Squadron, were put on high alert.

"They (the silos) served a short time, but a very pivotal time," said Branting, who recently authored a history of the Lincoln Air Force base.

Once tensions cooled and ballistics advanced, the silos were vacated and the Atlas rockets repurposed for things like space travel.

"It's the booster that put John Glenn into orbit," Figueroa said. "It really paved the way for policies and procedures on how missile bases were set up and ran."

The complex's concrete walls are 2 feet thick; the silo's cap is 9 feet thick. About 8,000 truckloads of dirt had to be excavated when it was first built, which at the time cost about $18 million.

An 18-story steel tower in the 52- by 174-foot silo that held the actual rocket was stripped out when the government left. Now, it's mostly filled with groundwater, forming a subterranean lake of sorts.

The Figueroas' Zillow listing, which has been up for about two weeks, went viral on Facebook and Instagram. They've gotten dozens of inquires ever since  from YouTube influencers to coastal investors  and Mike Figueroa expects the interest to continue.

He said the silo could be turned into many things: an Airbnb rental, a movie set, a data center, a "fantastic tornado shelter."

Or just someplace to call home.
A second Racine man faces an attempted homicide charge for allegedly shooting a 16-year-old on March 20 on Racine's north side in what authorities are calling "an attempted execution" that was captured on video.

The Racine Police Department believes the shooting is a case of mistaken identity, with the shooters believing the teenager was a Northside For Life gang member even though he is not actually affiliated with any gang.

Police also have asserted that the March 20 shooting was intended to be in retribution for the March 13 killing of 14-year-old Eugene Henderson. According to court documents, both of the men charged in the March 20 shooting were wearing clothing in tribute to Henderson when they were arrested and police asserted that those charged believe the NFL gang was responsible for Henderson's death.
Four people were injured and one was killed in a shooting on the night of July 4 in the citys Uptown neighborhood.

Kenosha Police Department officers responded about 10:20 p.m. to a residence in the 6300 block of 25th Avenue for the shootings. Police reportedly encountered a chaotic scene when they arrived with obvious evidence of multiple gunshots.

Four adults were injured in the shooting and another adult is deceased. The four injured adults were transported to local hospitals with two being transferred to Milwaukee-area hospitals due to serious injuries. Ages and residences of the adults are not yet known.

There were no suspects in custody as of Tuesday afternoon, according to Kenosha Police Sgt. Jeffrey Galley.

The area remained cordoned off Tuesday with squad cars parked in front of the two-story house where the shooting occurred. A vehicle parked across the street belonging to a neighbor sustained substantial damage from gunshots. On nearby sidewalks there were still chalk markers where some of the casings were located.

We are aggressively investigating, Galley said. I think the groups knew each other, the people that are involved, were just working on sorting that out.

Galley said the department may release additional details on Wednesday.

Area resident Kelly Ingram was angry and upset Tuesday morning. The father of two teenagers said he was outside watching neighborhood fireworks before he walked inside his home for the night. About 20 minutes later he said he heard about 30 gunshots fired right outside his front porch.

I heard a gunfight right in my front yard, Ingram said. Its disappointing. You know, I got two kids who are on their way to college. What if my daughter or my son rolled up?

Ingram said young people began arguing outside the residence where the shooting occurred as they were partying and then at least two people opened fire.

Ingram called the gun violence senseless.

People cant fight anymore. They have to be sissies and use guns. Why couldnt you just go out into the street and use your fists if you have a problem with someone? he added. This is ridiculous.

Ingram said the house where the shooting occurred has been a source of frustration for many in the neighborhood over the years.

Mark Gittens has lived in the neighborhood for 60 years. Gittens said he loves his neighborhood but in recent years gun violence has sharply increased.

This is crazy, he said. The neighborhood was never like this. Now its getting a lot worse.

Gittens said it always seems to be that house in this neighborhood that is drawing the gun violence.

Investigators are urging anyone with any information about this shooting to contact the Kenosha Police Detective Bureau at 262-605-5203 or the Kenosha Area Crime Stoppers at 262-656-7333. They are also asking for cooperation from people who were there.

Separate shooting

While at the hospital investigating the above shooting, police were notified by hospital staff that there was a girl with a gunshot wound to her foot. This incident is unrelated to the above.

The victim believed they were struck by a firework while at Kenoshas lakefront watching the fireworks show. Medical examination of the injury confirmed that the victim was actually struck by a bullet. Police believe this to be a random gunshot that was fired in the air from somewhere nearby.

Galley said she has been discharged from the hospital.

The trajectory of the bullet looks like it came straight down, so that it would have been fired and then came straight down, Galley said. He said the girl was near the lakefront around 56th Street.

Fights shut down carnival

The Downtown Rainbow Valley Carnival that was located between 54th Street and 55th Street west of Sixth Avenue was also shut down early because of numerous physical altercations Monday evening involving large groups of people.

It got shut down early just because there were countless fights that broke out probably after 6:30 p.m., Galley said. Ultimately, we had to shut it down and then it just prevented any further arrests or prevented any further fights. There were a number of fights that broke out. It seemed like we would try to isolate one and then another one would break out and then another one. That was also going on prior to the fireworks.

Galley said those involved in the fights looked to be in their late teens. He said some were arrested and issued citations before being released to responsible adults.

They were kind of beefing it out and for whatever reason they figured the carnival was a good location, Galley said. He said all the teenagers were from the city.

Galley said when it began raining late Monday absolutely nothing was happening besides our personnel getting drenched.
RACINE  A man who used social media to contact a 13-year-old girl, who was then raped multiple times over multiple dates, will serve a substantial prison sentence following a hearing in Racine County Circuit Court on Friday.

Miguel A. Joubert Vazquez, 28, will serve 19 years in prison for seven counts of second-degree sexual assault of a child, two counts of using a computer to facilitate a child sex crime, one count of strangulation/suffocation, child abuse/intentionally causing harm, and three counts of misdemeanor bail jumping.

The defendant was found guilty by a jury on April 29 of all but one charge, which was using a computer to facilitate a sex crime.

The defendant has 418 days credit for time served.

Attorney Annette E. Rauch, attorney for the defendant, said in court the defendant would not make a statement because he intended to appeal the case.

She pointed out the defendant believed the relationship was consensual and noted he received text messages from the girl supported the claim. She girl left her residence voluntarily, Rauch noted, and sent messages to the defendant telling him she missed him.

He believed they were in a relationship; albeit, a short one.

However, as the Racine County DAs Office noted, the accuser was just 13-years-old, too young for a consenting, sexual relationship.

Case history

The defendant reportedly began contacting the 13-year-old girl on social media in October 2019.

Vazquez reportedly picked her up, drove to a parking lot and raped her. There was a second encounter in November.

When she learned the defendant was 25 and not 19 years old, as he claimed, the girl confronted Vazquez about his age. He allegedly responded by demanding she perform oral sex. She refused and he choked her; afterward, Vazquez told the girl she needed to start acting right, according to the complaint.

When Vazquez dropped the girl off at her apartment, she was locked out. She got back in Vazquezs car. He drove her to a place near St. Patrick Street where she was sexually assaulted again.

Another time, Vazquez drove the girl to another Mount Pleasant parking lot where she was sexually assaulted again. The fourth and final time, he allegedly grabbed her head and forced her to perform a sexual act.

The girl walked into the Racine Police Department in November 2019 and reported the sexual assaults.
The Burlington Area School District is being sued by an area woman for closing a meeting that had become unruly. Muskego-Norway is facing a community petition after its school board didnt approve a book about the World War II-era internment of Japanese people in the U.S. for an English class for unclear reasons. In February, Racine Unified was one of an untold number of school boards nationwide facing a bizarre threat from a community member who wanted to file claims against the school boards surety bonds, even though that was a legal impossibility.

Those are three local examples of many that are parts of a growing phenomenon led by adults from across the political spectrum who feel they are being shut out of decision-making about whats going on inside their communitys schools, even when they dont have kids attending the schools.

While these situations are unavoidable for those who attend and watch school board meetings, and unavoidable for the public officials whose email addresses and phone numbers are public, its almost impossible to tell how much of a difference the efforts are making in increasing transparency, protecting young people from harm or even influencing education in classrooms.
High water and longer-lasting flooding are changing the habitat along the Upper Mississippi River, according to a new report analyzing nearly 30 years of data.

The upper basin is the natural floodplain that spans from Minnesota through Wisconsin and Iowa to Cairo, Illinois. Its an ecologically diverse area, consisting of wetlands, marshes and forests.

The report, released last week, shows increasingly wetter conditions in the Upper Mississippi over the past few decades, a trend that  spurred by climate change and land-use practices  looks likely to continue.

The report was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior, Army Corps of Engineers and Upper Mississippi River Basin Association. It is the third of its kind produced by the Upper Mississippi River Restoration program, which was created in 1986 to conduct long-term monitoring of the basin and focus on habitat rehabilitation.

Kirsten Wallace, executive director of the Upper Mississippi River Basin Association, said the findings are a good start to understanding what has impacted the river habitat.

Clean water management techniques that weve put on the landscape have worked, Wallace said, but the changing climate and changing hydrology makes the future unknown even though we have these long-term trends.

Other organizations study and publish reports on the river, such as Americas Watershed Initiative, which issued a C- grade for the health of the entire basin in its 2020 report card, citing environmental pollution, runoff from farmland and ongoing funding needs for aging locks, dams and ports.

Wallace said this report can help people understand how the river has changed in different places over time.

The river is complex, side to side even, north to south, Wallace said. It just changes all the time, so you cant just say that the river is bad. You cant just say that the river is good.

Previous reports were released in 1998 and 2008. But the new analysis  spanning decades and examining more than 800 miles of river  can provide a clearer long-term picture, said Jeff Houser, a USGS research ecologist and science director of the long-term resources monitoring program.

By having a long-term data set over a lot of space, we can really begin to understand many aspects of (the rivers) changes, Houser said.

Here is a look at some of the reports key findings.

More water, longer flooding

Higher discharge, or put simply, more water running through the river, was the most widespread change observed throughout the Upper Mississippi River system, the reports authors wrote.

Climate change  which is causing heavier rainfall, more snow and higher temperatures  as well as land use practices and built constraints like levees all likely play a role, according to the report, though its not entirely understood how much each is contributing.

The upper Midwest is projected to get wetter into the future, particularly during winter and spring, according to the report. And along the river, an increase in surfaces that are impervious  meaning they dont allow water to seep through and soak into the ground  is forcing more water into the river and its tributaries.

Levees and floodwalls that have been built to prevent flooding have also cut off many wetland areas from the rest of the ecosystem, decreasing ecological diversity. This is more of a problem in the lower portion of the upper basin, in Missouri, Illinois and Iowa, where at least 50% of the river is constrained by levees.

Floodplain forest cover declining

Most sections of the Upper Mississippi River lost forest cover over the last roughly three decades, largely due to flooding and invasive species, the report found.

Trees along the river are used to some flooding, but when their trunks and roots are submerged for long periods, they suffer and sometimes die, Houser said.

When the trees die, invasive species move in, such as reed canarygrass and Japanese hops  both of which grow so rapidly they can suppress the growth of new trees. The emerald ash borer is also threatening green ash trees, one of the more abundant species in the floodplain.

Researchers are exploring ways to protect floodplain forests, but Houser said it may be easier to focus on controlling invasive species than addressing tree loss from excess flooding  which could happen more frequently in the future as the planet warms.

One stretch of the upper river, between the Missouri and Ohio rivers, bucks this trend. More trees are growing in the floodplain, and Houser said theyre not sure why.

Water clarity improves, but runoff is high

Typically, the more water drains off the land, the faster it flows. Houser said that usually carries more sediment and nutrient runoff from farm fields, which can kill plants in the river and ultimately contribute to the Dead Zone, the low-oxygen area at the mouth of the river in the Gulf of Mexico.

But in the upper stretches of the system, the picture is more complicated: aquatic plants are thriving and water clarity has improved despite higher discharge. There was a small but significant decrease in total suspended solids, particles  like sand and dirt  in the water, and a decrease in total phosphorus, which tends to stick to those particles.

There are many state and federal programs working to reduce farm runoff throughout the upper Midwest, and the findings may illustrate that some of those efforts are working, Houser said. Aquatic plants, which have rebounded following a widespread loss in the 1980s, can also slow down water velocity and help sediment settle. In turn, clearer water allows sunlight to reach plants and promotes growth.

It seems that the vegetation itself is helping to further clarify the water, he said.

Farther down the river, aquatic vegetation is more scarce. And even with the observed decreases, runoff concentration still exceeds U.S. Environmental Protection Agency benchmarks, according to the report.

Invasive carp taking over

Silver carp and bighead carp, which were first identified in the Upper Mississippi River in the 1990s, now represent up to 65% of the fish in three of the southernmost study areas.

Theyre more efficient feeders than most native fish and also eat plankton, which all young fish eat and some fish eat their entire lives. Thus they can clear much of the food out of the water directly in competition with other fish.

Invasive carp are prolific reproducers that can breed many generations of fish in a year, Houser said.

Popular sport fish species have declined in the lower portions of the system, as well as forage fish, which represent the middle of the food chain.

Its unclear whether invasive carp will be able to take hold in the upper stretches of the river, where theyve been found but have not yet begun to dominate, Houser said. Some environmental advocacy groups have pushed for a sound barrier to be installed in the water farther upriver to discourage carp from getting through.

This article first appeared on WisconsinWatch.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
RTHK: UK anti-oil campaigner target copy of 'Last Supper'

The UK campaign group Just Stop Oil on Tuesday said activists had glued themselves to a painting at the Royal Academy in London, in the fifth such protest in a week.

Four people from the direct action group sprayed paint under and stuck their hands to "The Last Supper"  a full-scale copy of Leonardo Da Vinci's famous work  dating from circa 1520.

On Monday, two supporters of Just Stop Oil glued themselves to John Constable's "The Hay Wain" at the National Gallery in central London.

Last week, three other paintings, including one by Vincent van Gogh, were targeted at other galleries in London, Manchester and Glasgow.

Just Stop Oil wants the UK government to end approval of new oil and gas licences.

One of those involved in Tuesday's protest, former primary school teacher Lucy Porter, 47, from Leeds, northern England, said the campaign would continue unless the government changed its policy.

Fellow activist Tristan Strange, a 40-year-old community organiser, added: "Da Vinci said that art is the queen of all sciences, communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.

He added: "The science still isn't being heard."

Police earlier announced that six Just Stop Oil protesters were charged with conspiracy to cause public nuisance after invading the track at the start of the British Grand Prix on Sunday. (AFP)

This story has been published on: 2022-07-05. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Deutsche Bahn (DB) will be the world's first Intermodal Partner of Star Alliance from August 1, enabling DB customers and passengers of Star Alliance member airlines to start or end their long-distance journey on the climate-friendly train.



Deutsche Bahn (DB) will be the world's first Intermodal Partner of Star Alliance from August 1, enabling DB customers and passengers of Star Alliance member airlines to start or end their long-distance journey comfortably on the climate-friendly train.



Under the new cooperation, Germany is the first market and DB is the world's first partner in the new Star Alliance initiative.



An industry-first, Star Alliances Intermodal Partnership model intelligently combines airlines with railway, bus, ferry or any other transport ecosystem, alliance-wide. It is designed to link loyalty systems and facilitate seamless airport/station/port transit. Star Alliance plans to expand intermodal partnerships in the future.



Michael Peterson, Board Member for Long-Distance Passenger Transport, said: From Freiburg to Singapore: you only need one ticket for that. With attractive inner-German connections and simultaneous links to international travel chains, Deutsche Bahn and Star Alliance make a significant contribution to reducing CO2 emissions in the transport sector.



The new partnership complements our successful cooperation with Lufthansa Express Rail, where the number of bookings has more than doubled since 2010. This is how we get more people off the plane and onto the environmentally friendly rail. In close cooperation with the airlines, we are now tackling the mobility turnaround. We are further networking our offers in such a way that we can optimally use the respective strengths of our modes of transport.



Jeffrey Goh, CEO Star Alliance, said: Today brings great forces together and opens the Star Alliance doors beyond the airline ecosystem. Our new model for intermodal partnerships promises seamless coexistence between different modes of transport throughout the alliance. We welcome Deutsche Bahn as our first intermodal partner to Star Alliance.



The new partnership between DB and Star Alliance builds on the Lufthansa Express Rail program. Lufthansa customers have been able to buy a combined ticket for trains and flights in one booking step for more than 20 years.



In the future, in addition to Lufthansa, all 25 other Star Alliance member airlines will be able to include DBs environmentally friendly ICE trains as a flight number in their booking engine and customers will benefit from advantages such as:



 In just one booking process, airline customers receive a combined ticket for the flight and train journeys including seat reservation. Upon check-in  which is possible until shortly before the train departs  travellers receive their boarding passes for both the flight and the train journeys.

 With integrated ICE train journeys, air travellers will have even more choice based on timings, duration and prices offered.

 Customers also benefit from priority baggage handling and other services in the AiRail check-in area at the Frankfurt Airport.

 For all bookings of combined train-flight journeys via Lufthansa Express Rail or, also with the member airlines of the Star Alliance, points or miles can be collected for the train journeys in the preferred frequent flyer programs of the airlines.

 In addition, Business and First-Class flight customers of Star Alliance member airlines will receive additional benefits with an LH Express Rail ticket, such as access to the DB lounges.  TradeArabia News Service
RACINE  It all began over Thanksgiving dinner.

Sue Schwaab, who was a pilot with United Airlines for more than 30 years, was talking about how recent research determined that only approximately 10% of commercial airline pilots are women and approximately 7% are of minority descent.

She is now retired and promoting aviation  especially for women  with her program Wings to Fly.

Officer Travis Brady, a COP House officer, was at the table listening to his aunt talk about giving women and minorities opportunities in commercial aviation.

As she spoke, Brady wondered, What would it take to bring Wings to Fly to Racine?

Within months, it was Brady (and others) who pulled it off.

Opportunities

After months of extensive planning, on June 4, members of the Racine Police Department and Racine Unified School District escorted eight young people to the Batten Airport for a day in the sky, accompanied by lessons on the physics that make flying possible.

Brady said young people really dont know what opportunities may be available until someone shows them whats possible.

Their eyes were open to the possibilities of life, he said while describing the young people and the smiles on their faces as they exclaimed, I just flew a plane!

Pilots

The day was made possible through the volunteer efforts of the pilots. Brady said pilots jumped at the opportunity to get Racines young people airborne. They came from Madison, East Troy and elsewhere across southeastern Wisconsin.

Organizers hoped to have four pilots, who would then fly two students. However, more than eight pilots volunteered  allowing each student to fly one-on-one with a pilot.

Brady called the enthusiasm of the the pilots an absolute blessing, especially in light of the price of fuel right now. Its just incredible, the overwhelming level of support.

One of the pilots was an actual commercial airline pilot who had to take the day off from work to participate, Brady said, but he did it because he believed so strongly in the next generation of pilots.

Criteria

In recruiting youth for Racines first Wings to Fly program, Brady said the priority from the beginning was the participation of women and people of color.

However, it was also important the young people who participated be able to meet the challenges of the day.

We werent expecting perfect, he said of the application process. Maybe theyve made some bad decisions, but theyre going to show up on time, and theyre looking for the next level of success.

They also were not expecting straight As, but the applicants could not have straight Fs, either. We were looking for kids who thought education was important, Brady said.

Organizers also had their eye on the long game because there was the potential the youth could find inspiration in the sky and decide to pursue their pilots license.

Ground school

All of the young people who participated had the opportunity to continue and begin the process of attaining their pilots license with ground school.

Brady explained ground school was the equivalent of drivers education. It is the place to start.

While ground school was free for the participants, it is a huge commitment for young people. From start to actually getting a pilots license, it often takes more than half a year.

Despite that, two youth did make the commitment: Bryan and Melanie Figuereo-Colon.

The siblings had planned to travel for the summer, but their plans fell through, so they had some time on their hands.

The two described themselves as very excited to be going to ground school.

Neither sibling has hard and fast plans for the future and are exploring all of their options; though, Melanie does have a goal of traveling and seeing the world.

Melanie said their parents have not pressured them to have high-paying careers. Instead, the siblings have been encouraged to have jobs they love and to be happy.

Should the two go on from ground school to pursue their pilots license, there are scholarships available through the local EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) chapter.

On the tarmac

The day at Batten International Airport was made possible  in part  by existing programs to get youth on planes and into the air.

The EAA has chapters all over the US and they started a program called Young Eagles to give youth from 8-17 years old an opportunity to fly, be exposed to aviation and the physical properties that make flight possible. On the second Saturday of every month, Racine youth are invited to fly for free in a program called the Young Eagles Rally.

The program was also made possible through a donation from the Racine Community Foundation and a partnership with Racine Community Outpost, the nonprofit that owns the COP houses and operates them.

Brady said the program to bring youth to Batten Airport for a day of flight was definitely within the mission of Community Oriented Policing.

He explained the effort to reduce crime was multi-layered and would not be something that happened overnight. Brady said keeping youth occupied with positive activities, showing them a path forward, giving them a reason to stay in school are all factors in lowering the crime rate.
Amid warnings that certain forever chemicals are toxic at levels too low to reliably detect, environmental advocates are asking Wisconsin officials to restart the process of regulating the common groundwater contaminants.

Midwest Environmental Advocates filed a petition Tuesday on behalf of the League of Women Voters and a group of northeastern Wisconsin residents asking the Department of Natural Resources to set enforceable standards for four compounds collectively known as PFAS.

The DNR began the process of setting standards for two PFAS compounds in 2018, but conservatives on the DNRs policy board voted in February to scrap the rule amid opposition from industry groups that warned it would be too expensive.

While the board adopted standards for public drinking water systems, the environmental groups are calling on the agency to adopt similar protections for the nearly 1 million residents who get their water from private wells.

There is no federal law that directly protects their water, said MEA staff attorney Rob Lee. It is solely the states responsibility to act.

Debra Cronmiller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said rural families and others who rely on private wells deserve the same protections.

It shouldnt matter whether your drinking water comes from a municipal water utility or a private well to be protected from these dangerous chemicals, Cronmiller said.

The Natural Resources Board voted down groundwater standards based on recommendations of state toxicologists that would have set a combined limit of 20 parts per trillion for two of the most studied compounds, PFOA and PFOS, which have been linked to cancer and other illnesses.

The board adopted weaker standards of 70 ppt for public drinking water systems based on existing health guidelines from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But last month, the federal agency warned the chemicals pose a risk at concentrations thousands of times lower.

The petition asks the DNR to restart the process for regulating PFOS and PFOA, along with two other compounds addressed by the federal health guidelines: PFBS and GenX.

If the petition is granted, the DNR would ask the Department of Health Services to recommend health-based standards that would become the basis for new regulations. The environmental groups argue it should not take the usual 2 years to complete the rulemaking process because the DNR has already done much of the work.

A DNR spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the petition Tuesday.

Any new regulations would require approval from the Natural Resources Board, which is likely to remain under conservative control for some time. Last month, the state Supreme Court ruled that Fred Prehn, a Wausau dentist appointed by former Gov. Scott Walker, can remain on the board beyond the end of his term as long as Republicans who control the Senate refuse to confirm Democratic Gov. Tony Evers pick to replace him.

MEA executive director Tony Wilkin Gibart noted those conservative members and industry lobbyists advocated for following the previous EPA health guidelines, which were 3 times higher than those recommended by the state.

I cant predict what they will do. I cant predict what justifications they will give, Gibart said. Under state groundwater law, the Department of Natural Resources has legal responsibilities it must fulfill. The NRB deciding it doesnt want to do anything is inconsistent with the law.

Used for decades in firefighting foam, nonstick surfaces and stain-resistant fabrics, the synthetic chemicals do not break down naturally and have been linked to health problems including low birth weight, cancer, and liver disease and have been shown to make vaccines less effective.

The DNR is monitoring dozens of PFAS contamination sites across Wisconsin, including Madison, La Crosse, Wausau, Marinette and Peshtigo.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct a reference to PFBS.
As they launch a new legal challenge, environmental groups are panning a federal review that says a planned natural gas power plant in Superior would reduce greenhouse gas emissions despite pumping millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year.

La Crosse-based Dairyland Power Cooperative and two Minnesota utilities are seeking a loan from the U.S. Department of Agricultures Rural Utilities Service to finance the $700 million Nemadji Trail Energy Center, which they say will help them transition away from coal-fired power.

Environmental and consumer groups, along with Native American tribal governments, have challenged the plant in both Minnesota and Wisconsin, and on Thursday the Sierra Club and Clean Wisconsin appealed a Dane County judges ruling that state regulators followed state law in approving construction of the plant, which they call an environmental and economic disaster.

Constructing NTEC would saddle Wisconsinites with decades of paying for this plant and set back home-grown renewable development in Northern Wisconsin for years to come, said Elizabeth Ward, director of the Sierra Clubs Wisconsin chapter.

In a new draft environmental review, Dairyland said the 625-megawatt plant would produce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to more than 2.7 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.

But because the plant would likely displace electricity from less efficient gas and coal plants, the review determined it would actually reduce net carbon emissions in the region by about 964,000 tons per year.

Stephanie Fitzgerald, staff attorney for Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, said the review fails to look at the lifetime emissions of the plant and contains unrealistic assumptions about coal plants running until 2050 when most utilities are already shutting them down for economic reasons.

Katie Nekola, general counsel for Clean Wisconsin said a plant that will produce billions of tons of carbon dioxide over its lifetime cannot be considered a climate change solution.

Its too late to use coal emissions as a baseline, Nekola said. Its urgent we do far better than just cut carbon emissions in half with gas plants; we have plenty of clean, low-cost technology that emits no carbon at all, and the ability to conserve far more energy than we do.

When burned to generate electricity, natural gas produces only about half as much carbon dioxide per megawatt as coal, but the primary component of that gas is methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The environmental review did not account for methane released during extraction and transport, saying uncertainty about the source makes it impossible to quantify leaks.

Those upstream emissions largely negate any climate benefit, said Morgan Edwards, an assistant professor of public affairs at UW-Madison who studies the impacts of energy use.

We need to dramatically reduce our use of fossil fuels across the board to address the scale of the climate crisis, Edwards said.

The new environmental assessment was prepared in response to requests from environmental groups including the Minnesota environmental center, the Sierra Club and Clean Wisconsin to evaluate the impact the plant would have on the climate.

Those groups have also called on the government to deny funding for the plant, saying its incompatible with the Biden administrations stated position on fossil fuels.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said investments in fossil fuel infrastructure are incompatible with pathways to head off the most disastrous impacts of climate change.

Fitzgerald questioned why the Rural Utilities Service has not done a more thorough review  known as an Environmental Impact Statement  required for projects that will have a significant impact.

Clearly a gas plant that emits 2.2 million tons of carbon dioxide every year is a significant impact, Fitzgerald said. If building a big gas plant wont have a significant impact, what will?

Dairyland spokesperson Katie Thomson said the utilities have complied with state and federal permitting requirements and extensive environmental reviews since proposing the plant in 2017.

Current challenges to the project only serve to compromise progress towards the lower-carbon goals shared by consumers and utilities alike, Thomson said. In addition to grid stability risks and reducing access to renewable energy generation, the unnecessary delays will result in cost increases to the project, negatively impacting regional energy consumers.

The plant has been the subject of court challenges in both Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The Sierra Club and Clean Wisconsin on Thursday appealed a May ruling by Circuit Judge Jacob Frost, who rejected arguments that the PSC failed to consider the full environmental impact of the plant.

The NTEC project should never have been approved in the first place, and we will continue to fight it, Nekola said.

The groups have also challenged the construction permit over perceived bias by former Commissioner Mike Huebsch, one of two commissioners who voted to approve the plant shortly before leaving the PSC in early 2020. Huebsch later applied to lead Dairyland, though he did not get the job.

Frost has delayed ruling on the conflict of interest charge pending a state Supreme Court ruling in a similar case involving Huebsch.

Last year the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that state utility regulators do not have the authority to consider the environmental impact of a plant built in another state, though the plant faces ongoing regulatory scrutiny as part of Minnesota Powers long-term resource plan.
1. Yes. After what happened in Uvalde, its important to have that level of security.

2. Yes. The district should start a program to recruit and train qualified officers for the job.

3. No. With 50 KISD campuses, the additional cost to taxpayers would be unacceptable.

4. No. It would be too hard to achieve. Just keep the current practice of rotating officers.

5. Unsure. Its hard to say without knowing how such a program would be instituted..

Vote

View Results
Outrigger Hospitality Group, which has added five properties throughout the Pacific and Indian Ocean to its global portfolio in the last 10 months, has announced several key senior-level appointments.



The leadership appointments made by the premier beach resort brand include:



 Tony Pedroni, Vice President Operations - APAC

 Jason Zvatora, Vice President Commercial Strategy - APAC

 Mike Shaff, Senior Vice President Operations, The Americas

 Jenna Villalobos, Senior Vice President Commercial Strategy



As Outrigger continues its strategic expansion, getting our toes in the sand with new beach resorts across the globe, having the right leadership team is imperative, said Jeff Wagoner, President and CEO Outrigger Hospitality Group. From operations to revenue management, I have full confidence in the expertise of Mike, Jenna, Tony and Jason to navigate Outrigger towards our mission of being the premier beach resort brand in the world.



As Vice President Operations  APAC, Tony Pedroni will oversee and direct all hotel operations in the Asia Pacific region. Pedroni first joined Outrigger in 2013 as General Manager of the then Outrigger Laguna Phuket Beach Resort. He is an experienced global hospitality professional, having served as General Manager for JW Marriott in Thailand; at the Renaissance in South Korea and the Waiohai Beach Club a Marriott Vacation Club Resort in Hawaii, as well as hotel management positions in Kuwait, the United Kingdom and Washington, DC.



Pedroni rejoined Outrigger last year as Area General Manager - Thailand when Outrigger became owner and manager of three Outrigger Resorts in Khao Lak, Surin Beach and Koh Samui. Pedroni has led the renovation of all three properties.



As Vice President Commercial Strategy  APAC, Jason Zvatora returns to Outrigger and is based in Australia. Zvatora is responsible for driving APAC performance by leading and driving top-line revenue strategies, staying ahead of market trends and directing the property commercial teams to success.



As Senior Vice President Operations, The Americas, Mike Shaff will lead both the hotels and resorts operations for The Americas region with a focus on creating positive guest experiences through programming, renovations and repositioning, while driving strong financial performance to ownership. Shaff also assumes oversight of the Hawaii Vacation Condos by Outrigger division.



As Senior Vice President Commercial Strategy, Jenna Villalobos will develop the global commercial strategy for both corporate and property, focusing on the disciplines of revenue strategy, global contact centre, CRM (customer relationship management), business intelligence and website technology.



The recent new properties added by the hospitality group include Outrigger Khao Lak Beach Resort, Outrigger Surin Beach Resort and Outrigger Koh Samui Beach Resort in Thailand; the five-star Outrigger Maldives Maafushivaru Resort; and Outrigger Kona Resort and Spa on Hawaii Island.  TradeArabia News Service
River Bluff Daze will be held in Ferryville Saturday, July 23. The day features a tractor pull, food, a hike, a farmers market and fireworks.

8:30 a.m.Join Joanne White for a nature hike at Sugar Creek Bluff Natural Area. Meet at the Ferryville Boat Landing at 8:30 a.m. and carpool to the trailhead of Sugar Creek Bluff. Hikers will see birds, wildlife, and wildflowers while hiking to the overview that includes a panoramic view of the Mississippi River Valley. Its a one and a half mile walk with a gradual climb. Hike is sponsored by the Ferryville Tourism Council.

9 a.m.Farmers Market in Sugar Creek Park featuring Amish goods, produce, crafts, quilts, bird houses, yard ornaments and a variety of products, plus free coffee to sip while it lasts. Brat fry by the Ferryville Fire Department and Emergency Medical Responders featuring Wisconsin brats.

Transportation between Sugar Creek Park and the Ferryville Community Center for the tractor pull will be available via tractor and wagon. Bring the kids along so they can play on the beautiful new playground in the park.

11 a.m. SHARP, the 15th annual antique tractor pull hosted and organized by the Ferryville Antique Tractor Association begins at the Ferryville Community Center. (Rain date is Sunday, July 24) There are 27 weight classes for the pull. New antique classes have been added. To register for the antique tractor pull, go to www.ferryvilletractor.com. The Antique Tractor Association raffle tickets will be on sale and there are bucket raffles toomany drawings for prizes in the afternoon. The antique tractor for this years raffle has been donated by the Chuck and Kathy Sanborn family.

10 a.m.Food! Coffee and donuts! Authentic Chicago Style Vienna Beef hotdogs and Italian beef sandwiches and beverages will be available at the Community Center and sponsored by the Freeman Lutheran Church Mens Group. Adult beverages will be sold by the Ferryville Fire Department and Emergency Medical Responders.

10 a.m.Raffle tickets will be sold by the Ferryville Vision and Promotion Board. Prizes this year include a one of a kind king/queen sized quilt created and donated by local quilt artist, Viv White. This quilt is valued at $700. Kay Campbell, owner of Kays Potiques, has also donated a high fired original stoneware bowl valued at $120. A $100 Cabelas gift card rounds out the prize selections. The winners will be drawn at 9 p.m. by River View Park in the middle of Ferryville. All proceeds will be used for improvements to Sugar Creek Park.

4:30 p.m.Activities move downtown to the restaurants. The Wooden Nickel, Ferryville Sportsmans Bar and Grill, and Swedes Swing Inn will all have drink specials and food items.

7-9 p.m.Live music will be at the Ferryville Sportsmans Bar and Grill, and the featured band will be Smoking Gun Showdown.

DuskFireworks start and will be shot off from a barge off the riverbank in the middle of the village. The fireworks show is put on each year by Mike and Roberta Callaway and the staff of Cheapo Depot/Fireworks Outlet and is also sponsored by the Ferryville Vision and Promotion Board with donations from the entire community.

For more details, go to www.visitferryville.com.
A 45-year-old Prairie du Chien man was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for dealing methamphetamine.

Christopher Fernette was also ordered to pay a fine of $17,200 as part of the sentence handed down June 30 by U.S. District Court Judge William Conley. Fernette pleaded guilty April 6 to methamphetamine possession with intent to distribute.

According to federal prosecutors, Fernette was among a group of people who distributed significant amounts of methamphetamine in western Wisconsin after obtaining the drug from sources in multiple states.

On April 3, 2021, investigators followed Fernette as he and a passenger crossed into Wisconsin from Minnesota. When the car stopped at a tavern in Ferryville, Iowa, a deputy from the Crawford County Sheriffs Office approached Fernette and asked for permission to pat him down for weapons. Fernette consented but reportedly attempted to hide a small plastic baggie in his hand. When the deputy questioned Fernette about the object in his hand, Fernette tossed the baggie and became combative. A fight ensued and the deputy eventually detained Fernette.

After the altercation, the deputy located the baggie and determined that it contained a personal use amount of methamphetamine. The deputy then reportedly found a discarded black canvas tool bag in a ditch that contained approximately three pounds of methamphetamine. The deputy used his canine partner to sniff the vehicle. After a positive response, investigators searched the car and found $17,200 in cash.

Fernette waived his Miranda rights and admitted that he and the passenger drove to Minnesota to purchase the methamphetamine found inside the black canvas bag. Fernette also said he and the passenger planned to split the methamphetamine with a third person in Wisconsin.

At sentencing, Judge Conley said that the amount of methamphetamine found likely understated the total amount that Fernette sold on the street.

The charge against Fernette was the result of an investigation conducted by the Crawford County Sheriffs Office, Prairie du Chien Police Department, Richland-Iowa-Grant Task Force, Dakota County Drug Task Force, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Chadwick M. Elgersma prosecuted this case.


After the government in Karnataka made modifications to several school textbooks following allegations of saffronisation of education, student groups, and activists termed these changes as too inadequate, demanding a roll back.

Muhammed Nihad PV | TwoCircles.net

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KARNATAKA  Several student organisations in Karnataka have vowed to continue the agitation against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) run government for failing to remove controversial lessons from the newly revised school textbooks.

On June 27, the Karnataka government issued a notification making eight corrections in Class 1 to Class 10 Kannada and Social Science textbooks. These modifications were made after hundreds of objections were raised by several sections of the society to the changes made by the Textbook Revision Committee, headed by author Rohith Chakrathirtha.

Despite these few modifications to the revised textbooks, the opposition and various writers, educationists, and seers have called the changes to too inadequate and unequivocally demanded that the amended textbooks be completely withdrawn.

Rohit Chakrathirta-led textbook committee included Hedgewars speech in a chapter named Who is an ideal person?. We question the government how the founder of RSS, a terrorist organisation which has carried out genocides across the country and has been banned several times can be an ideal person? Athaulla Punjalkatte, Karnataka State President of Campus Front of India, told TwoCircles.net.

Punjalkatte said that the committee ignored Ambedkars teachings and disrespected the famous poet Kuvrmpu. We have decided to intensify the agitations in the state, he said.

Satish Kamble, President of Ambedkar Students Association, Central University of Karnataka, told TwoCircles.net the progressive citizens will not allow the government to propagate the thoughts of Hedgewar, Sulibele, and other right-wing ideologues through the syllabus by cutting off the teachings of Mahatma Basaveshwar, Bhagat Singh, Mata Savitri Bai Phule and Dr B R Ambedkar and many others who fought for equality and human dignity.

This is an attempt to saffronise innocent minds, he added.

Origin of the textbook row

A textbook reform committee was established by the Karnataka government in 2020 in response to allegations that certain chapters or sections in Kannada textbooks were biased against the Brahmin population.

The social science textbooks from class 6 to 10 and the Kannada language textbooks from 1 to 10 underwent revisions by the committee led by Rohith Chakrathirtha. Following the revision, reports emerged that the chapters on the freedom fighter Bhagat Singh, the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, the Lingayat social reformer Basavanna, the founder of the Dravidian movement, Periyar, and the reformers Narayana Guru and Swami Vivekananda had been removed or severely distorted. Also, the new class 10 Kannada textbook contained a lecture by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, the founder of the right-wing Hindu nationalist party Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). However, opposition parties, authors, writers, and other critics criticised the committee for saffronizing the textbooks and distorting facts in the amended content. Congress and other political parties urged the chief minister to drop the new syllabus and continue with the old.

The Karnataka Textbook Society and Education Minister BC Nagesh confirmed on May 17 that the chapter on Bhagat Singh has not been removed. Critics claimed that this initial ambiguous response was yet another attempt to cover up several other larger issues with the revised textbooks. A list compiled by the researcher and author Harshakumar Kugve, reveals several lessons by Dalit authors as well as progressive, reformist authors who spoke out against communalism and caste hierarchy and in favour of gender equality and social justice were left off. The books no longer contain any chapters on social reforms like the abolition of untouchability, eliminating gender inequality, or stopping child trafficking.

The addition of lessons on RSS ideologues Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and KB Hedgewar and the deletion of major lessons on Mahatma Gandhi, Dr BR Ambedkar, and Jawaharlal Nehru are also among the alterations.

According to Kugve, 95 per cent of the lessons that were substituted for the writings of the approximately 27 Dalit writers were authored by Brahmins. Apart from that, Muslim writers have been selectively removed. In the Class 10 Kannada textbook, Yuddha (War), a prose poem by Sara Aboobacker, a renowned Muslim Kannada writer, has been dropped. Sullu Helabaradu (One should not lie) by writer Bolwar Mahammad Kunhi has been deleted from the class 5 Kannada textbook without explanation. Kunhi was the first to introduce Muslim culture into Kannada fiction and his writings are known for substantially dealing with the misconceptions and stereotypes about Islam.

Some of the other major changes clearly unveil the saffronisation agenda in the current textbook reforms. The map of Indias political divisions has been replaced by the Akhand Bharath imagination of RSS in the Social Science textbook of class 8. In the same textbook, a chapter on human rights has also been removed. In class 7 Social Science, content on women social reformers including Savitribai Phule, Tarabai Shinde and Pandit Ramabai has been dropped. Nanna Kavithe (My poems) by well-known poet Mudnakudu Chinnaswamy has been removed from class 5. Chinnaswamy is one of the major figures in Bandayas progressive literary movement started in 1974 and he strongly opposed the caste system through his poems.

The lesson on the freedom struggle during Gandhis lifetime has been excluded from the Social Science class 10 textbook. In this lesson, it was stated that Ambedkar was tired of the caste system, he left Hinduism, opposed caste system and social stratification and adopted Buddhism. It now reads, From a young age, he was tired of Hinduism and adopted Buddhism, which is part of the Hindu culture.

Educationists and scholars argue that there could be more subtle distortions that are more dangerous since they stand the chance to remain unaccounted for.

Govt firm in its stand

While the agitation against the revised textbooks is far from dying down, the state government is equally resolute about not changing its decision. While some adjustments have been made, according to Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, the administration has also chosen not to make major changes to the updated textbooks.



Muhammad Nihad PV is a sociology student at the University of Hyderabad. He tweets at @nihadbinnisar
LEXINGTON  Salary increases for employees continued to be discussed by the Dawson County Commissioners during their regular meeting on Friday, July 1.

The commissioners had opened discussions about a proposed salary increase for the next fiscal year during their last meeting in June.

It was noted by county employees that area businesses have been issuing large raises of $3 to $9 as they attempt to attract workers in job sectors that continue to be rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nebraskas historically low unemployment rate has also been difficult on businesses that are looking to fill positions.

Commissioner Bill Stewart proposed a $1 increase for everyone, saying that it would keep the different salary levels more equal. Commissioner Dennis Rickertsen voiced support for this, saying it would not exaggerate the differences in salaries.

Commissioner Rod Reynolds proposed giving a pool of funds to the elected officials and allowing them to manage their employees pay as they saw fit. He said it would be beneficial to give the officials this leeway to award good work by employees.

Stewart noted they merely make a recommendation to the officials, who can take their own course of action regarding pay.

Also discussed at the prior meeting was the county employee wellness program. County Clerk Karla Zlatkovsky said their year is up with Health Break, who has provided the program and the county has until July 15 to signal their intent to renew or seek a new contract.

The commissioners voted to table the matter until the July 1 meeting where they wanted to speak with Dan Schwartzkopf, who provides their employee health insurance updates.

Schwartzkopf gave the commissioners updates on different programs that they could choose. He supported a program that tested employees to screen for developing health issues and provided them with options and solutions to help lead a healthy lifestyle.

The commissioners chose to weigh their options and make decision about the employee health program at their July 15 meeting.

During the board of equalization meeting, the commissioners approved motor vehicle tax exemptions for Farnam Church of Nazarene for a 1998 Chevrolet Express bus that the church recently purchased.

The commissioners also approved late filings from Church of Christ, Living Hope Assembly of God, Inc. and Gothenburg Community Playhouse.

Zlatkovsky noted the commissioners had approved late filings from these non-profits before and that they would be charged a $100 fine for the late filing.

The last item approved was a report of destroyed real estate from Carlos and Ashley Pano, the property had been damaged in a fire and the assessed value was changed to reflect this.
HTC isnt as active in the Android smartphone and tablet space as it was a few years ago, but after introducing a new mid-range phone (with a lot of VR and crypto buzzwords) last week, the company has quietly added a new tablet to its lineup although its unclear how widely it will be available.

The HTC A101 is a 10.1 inch Android tablet with a 1920 x 1200 pixel display, a Unisoc T618 processor, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Its listed on the HTC South Africa website, and looks very similar to the HTC A100 thats available now in Russia for about $375. Theres no word on if or when the two tablets will be available in other markets.

At the heart of the new tablet is Unisocs octa-core processor featuring 2 ARM Cortex-A75 CPU cores and six Cortex-A55 cores. Its the same processor that powers Samsungs Galaxy Tab A8 (which has less RAM, but which also has a much lower starting price of just $200).

But the HTC tablet does have a few features that might help justify the higher price tag, including 4G LTE Cat 4 dual-SIM support and GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo support.

Other features include 13MP + 2MP rear cameras, a 5MP front-facing camera, a microSD card reader (which tops out at 256GB), a USB Type-C port, 3.5mm audio jack, WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 support, a 7,000 mAh battery, and a 5V/2A charger.

The HTC A100 ships with Android 11 software and the tablet measures 241.5 x 160.3 x 8.4mm and weighs 530 grams.

via GSM Arena
Carleen Zubrzycki (University of Connecticut School of Law; Harvard Law School) has posted Abortions Interoperability Trap: How the Law of Medical Records Will Facilitate Interstate Persecution of Contested Medical Procedures, and What to Do about It (Yale Law Journal Forum, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Theres a gaping hole in blue states efforts to create abortion safe havens for the new post-Roe world. Medical care procured out-of-state increasingly leaves a digital trail that will easily make its way back to patients home states. In the context of abortionand other politically controversial forms of care, like gender-affirming treatments, this means that cutting-edge legislative protections for medical records do not go far enough. Anticipating the fall of Roe, legislatures have begun to bar in-state providers from directly handing over records for use in out-of-state lawsuits or prosecutions. But these laws fail to recognize that, thanks to increasing interoperability and new regulations designed to improve the flow of medical information, patient records are now widely shared across state lines in the ordinary course of businessand nothing will protect those records once in the hands of out-of-state providers. To wit: Under current law, a Connecticut practice that shared records of a patients abortion with a doctor in Louisiana, even over the patients objection or knowing that the record would likely be used to persecute the patient, would not be violating any privacy lawand a doctor who withheld the records, in many situations, would be! Lawmakers must act now to address this interoperability trap. And even if they dont, clinics and providers should prepare to adopt policies well beyond what is legally required to protect their patients records.
BRUSSELS (AP)  The 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland on Tuesday, sending the membership bids of the two nations to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals  and possible political trouble in Turkey.

The move further increases Russia's strategic isolation in the wake of its invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February and military struggles there since.

This is truly a historic moment for Finland, for Sweden and for NATO, the head of the alliance, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, said.

The 30 ambassadors and permanent representatives formally approved decisions made at a NATO summit in Madrid last week, when the leaders of member nations invited Russias neighbor Finland and Scandinavian partner Sweden to join the military club.

Securing parliamentary approval for the new members in Turkey, however, could still pose a problem even though Sweden, Finland and Turkey reached a memorandum of understanding at the Madrid summit.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Ankara could block the process if the two countries failed to grant Turkeys demands for the extradition of people it views as terror suspects. The people wanted in Turkey have links to outlawed Kurdish groups or the network of an exiled cleric accused of a failed 2016 coup in Turkey.

He said Turkeys Parliament could refuse to ratify the deal. It is a potent threat since NATO accession must be formally approved by all 30 member states, which gives each a blocking right.

Stoltenberg said he expected no change of heart. There were security concerns that needed to be addressed. And we did what we always do at NATO. We found common ground, he said.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has given the process added urgency. It will ensconce the two nations in the Western military alliance and give NATO more clout, especially in the face of Moscows military threat.

We will be even stronger and our people will be even safer as we face the biggest security crisis in decades, Stoltenberg said.

At a news conference, the foreign ministers of Sweden and Finland were asked whether the memorandum specified people who would have to be extradited to Turkey. Both ministers said no such list was part of the agreement.

We will honor the memorandum fully. There is, of course, no lists or anything like that in the memorandum, but what we will do is to have better cooperation when it comes to terrorists, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said.

Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto was equally adamant.

Everything that was agreed in Madrid is stated in the document. There are no hidden documents behind that or any agreements behind that, Haavisto said.

Every alliance nation has different legislative challenges and procedures to deal with, and it could take several more months for the two Nordic nations to take their place as official NATO members.

Denmark and Canada were quickest out of the blocks. They handed over their ratification documents in Washington as the first NATO countries just hours after the accession protocols were signed in Brussels, Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod told The Associated Press by phone.

It was a good signal not only to Sweden and Finland, but to other NATO countries that the speed of ratification is important, he said. We hope this inspires other countries to react fast.

The documents need to be handed over in Washington because NATO's founding treaty was signed there in 1949.

Germany's parliament is set to ratify the membership bids Friday, according to the Free Democrats, a partner party in the country's coalition government. Other parliaments might only get to the approval process after long summer breaks.

I look forward to a swift ratification process, Haavisto said.

In the meantime, the protocols approved Tuesday bring both nations deeper into NATOs fold already. As close partners, they already attended some meetings that involved issues that immediately affected them. As official invitees, they can attend all meetings of the ambassadors even if they do not yet have any voting rights.
PlayTime Productions, one of Wisconsins only all-children theatre companies, is closing its doors after 43 years of student-centered performances.

Twice a year, PlayTime and its cast of around 25 child actors hosted 16 shows in public spaces around the Dane County Area. PlayTime shared productions with about 4,000 children and families at an accessible cost.

In a letter sent to alumni, families and friends last week, Artistic/Managing Director Reyane Leach said the pandemic wreaked havoc with the organizations structure, and the operation had taken its final bow.

Truthfully, the organization was at a turning point with a growing need for revitalization of staff and adequate, sustainable funding, she said. Unfortunately, the opportunity for transition and training has passed.

Many of PlayTimes music and production crew, in addition to those in its production and management positions, have retired, Leach added. While the organization had begun a process to fill those positions, transition efforts were halted in March 2020.

Two years later, Leach decided to cease all production  at least for now.

Im so grateful to have had a 23-year career working with children and families in the arts, she said. I just adored working with children and giving them a worthwhile activity that we could share with other families and children in the audience.

Leach first got involved with PlayTime as a spectator, taking her four children to see a 1992 play in the old Mount Horeb Public Library.

I was a mom with four kids looking for something to do, she said. It was affordable because it was just $2, but once a year is really all we could afford back in the day. I know from personal experience what it meant to me.

The organizations founder, Henrietta Teddy Studt, made PlayTime a traveling organization to benefit people like Leach. Especially in areas just outside of Madison around that time, exposure to the arts could be hard to come by, Leach said.

It would be a pretty big deal and pretty expensive to take your family downtown, she said. And there wasnt a lot of theater available except for in the high schools. So virtually no opportunity for kids younger than that.

Leachs own son got involved with PlayTime in the spring of 1997. Thats when she said she was able to see its value for performers as well.

Just such a gift

Actors in third to eighth grade involved with PlayTime learned how to act out an hourlong play with eight to 10 music numbers, hand-written by Studt. Through practicing, students learned skills like reading and memorization. Through traveling, they practiced teamwork and responsibility.

Kurt Studt, Teddys son, said his mothers touch in every performance was striking, even after she left the company.

Studt wrote a character named Henrietta, her full first name, and included the phrase yes, dear, a distinct phrase of her husbands, in each performance. Teddy Studt died in 2010.

My mother had a fun, offbeat sense of humor, Kurt Studt said. We were there when she was writing the scripts and writing the songs ... and later we got to see our children in her plays. It was just such a gift.

The family connections didnt stop there. PlayTime even provided the inspiration for Kurt Studts sons name, Kai.

Kai was in the Snow Queen, Kurt Studt said. It just so happens that when Kai was born and we were thinking about a name, one of the main reasons we settled on the name Kai is because thats the lead character in the Snow Queen. And he got to play that character.

Kai Studt, who just graduated from high school, keeps signed posters from every year he participated in Playtime Productions in his bedroom. The troupe gave him a sense of humor and confidence, he said, adding hes not afraid to make a fool out of himself for a good laugh.

I dont remember anything from late elementary school through middle school. I just remember PlayTime, Kai Studt said. If you ask me what I learned in classes one year, I couldnt tell you. But I could tell you what show we did at PlayTime.

Park Players

Teddy Studt founded PlayTime after a group of children came to her in 1979, wanting to perform a play. The group knew Studt had been an actress, and knocked on her door asking for guidance.

After the first play, Studt helped found Park Players, an outdoor childrens summertime production. Soon after, she decided to add a fall and winter play and started Playtime Productions.

Seventh-grader Preston Doll participated in the program for two years, until the pandemic put a stop to the program.

I learned how to communicate with people, how to public speak, and just social skills, Preston said. It has been a very big part of my life in the past few years. Getting to work with so many people who had never acted, had acted once or who had acted many times was just so exciting. You carry on the life skills you learn there.

Acting also helps students develop empathy and communication skills on a deeper level, Leach said.

Body language, looking at people and understanding them and learning what its like to be in somebody elses shoes, she said. When you are playing the character of somebody else, you have to think outside yourself.

Leach said PlayTime will be remembered not only by the children who participated in it but the greater Madison community.

People will miss out on that home town, neighborhood arts experience she said. Theres nothing else like it.
Aiden McCarthy's photo was shared across Chicago-area social media groups in the hours after the July 4 parade shooting in Highland Park, accompanied by pleas to help identify the 2-year-old who had been found at the scene bloodied and alone and to reunite him with his family.

On Tuesday, friends and authorities confirmed that the boy's parents, Kevin McCarthy, 37, and Irina McCarthy, 35, were among seven people killed in the tragedy.

At two years old, Aiden is left in the unthinkable position; to grow up without his parents, wrote Irina Colon on a GoFundMe account she created for the family and Aiden, who was reunited with his grandparents Monday evening.

Friends of the McCarthys said Irinas parents would care for the boy going forward.

Four of other others who were killed were identified Tuesday as Katherine Goldstein, 64; Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63; Stephen Straus, 88; and Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78. Every victim was from Highland Park except for Toledo-Zaragoza, who was visiting family in the city from Morelos, Mexico.

Officials haven't yet identified the seventh victim.

Portraits of some of those who died began to emerge Tuesday as investigators continued to search for evidence in the shooting that killed at least seven and wounded 30.

Irina McCarthy's childhood friend, Angela Vella, described McCarthy as fun, personable and somewhat of a tomboy" who still liked to dress up nicely.

She definitely had her own style, which I always admired, Vella said in a short interview.

Straus, a Chicago financial adviser, was one of the first observers at the parade and attended it every year, his grandchildren said.

Brothers Maxwell and Tobias Straus described their grandfather as a kind and active man who loved walking, biking and attending community events.

The way he lived life, youd think he was still middle-aged, Maxwell Straus said in an interview.

The two brothers recalled Sunday night dinners with their grandparents as a favorite tradition. They said they ate with him the night before he was killed.

Americas gun culture is killing grandparents, said Maxwell Straus. Its very just terrible.

Sundheim, meanwhile, was regaled as a lifelong congregant and beloved staff member at North Shore Congregation Israel, where she had worked for decades, the Reform synagogue said on its website. Sundheim taught at the synagogues preschool and coordinated events including bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies.

Jackis work, kindness and warmth touched us all, synagogue leaders wrote in a message on their website. There are no words sufficient to express the depth of our grief for Jackis death and sympathy for her family and loved ones.

Toledo-Zaragoza was killed on what his 23-year-old granddaughter, Xochil Toledo, said was supposed to be a fun family day that turned into a horrific nightmare for us all.

On a GoFundMe page to raise money for Toledos funeral expenses, Xochil Toledo said her grandfather was a loving man, creative, adventurous and funny.

As a family we are broken, numb, she said.

Toledo-Zaragoza had come to Illinois to visit his family about two months ago, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. His family wanted him to stay permanently because of injuries he had suffered after being hit by a car a couple years ago during an earlier visit to Highland Park. The newspaper reported that he was hit by three bullets Monday and died at the scene.

He wasn't sure he wanted to attend the parade because of the large crowds and his limited mobility, which required him to use a walker, but Xochil Toledo said the family didn't want to leave him alone.

Schulte reported from Omaha, Nebraska. Savage reported from Chicago. Venhuizen reported from Madison, Wisconsin.
For a Kenosha veteran of World War II, killed in action in France, it was a long wait to return to his family and his hometown.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of Staff Sgt. Casimir Lobacz of Kenosha on March 2, and representatives from the Fort Knox DPAA recently took part in a special a presentation in memoriam of Lobacz at his nephews home, Ron Witt of Kenosha.

U.S. military representatives arrived with a special presentation upon the confirmation they had positively identified Lobacz, who died in combat at age 25, in Metz, France, on Sept. 27, 1944.

Casimir Lobacz was born on Jan. 13, 1919, in Kenosha to parents Kazimierz and Kamila Lobacz. Casimir joined the U.S. Army as a member of the 11th Infantry Regiment, 5th Infantry Division, was trained and deployed to Europe.

His unit was part of the Lorraine Campaign and was advancing through France in September 1944. On Sept. 27, Lobaczs unit of the 5th Infantry Division began an attack on Fort Driant in Metz and he was killed during the first wave of the assaults, according to the DPAA.

Due to enemy fire, Lobaczs body could not be recovered after his death. The fort was attacked again a few days later, after which his body could not be found at all.

On June 7, 1945, French de-miners discovered the remains of a U.S. soldier near Fort Driant and turned them over to the U.S. Graves Registration Company. However, the Registration Company could not identify the remains, so they buried them as Unknown at the U.S. Military Cemetery in Saint-Avold, France. In June 2021, DPAA investigators retrieved the remains and transferred them to the DPAA laboratory in Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, where they determined the remains to be Lobacz.

Lobaczs family

During his service in the war, Lobacz wrote letters to his parents almost daily, Witt said.

Following the news of their sons death, Lobaczs parents wrote multiple letters to the U.S. Army over the years asking that his body be sent back to the U.S. for burial. However, Lobaczs remains had been buried as Unknown in 1945 and the U.S. Army could not find any other remains or artifacts for comparison for identification during their field investigations in 1947.

In letters from the American Graves Registration in response to Kazimierz and Kamila Lobaczs request, their sons body was stated as unrecoverable.

Born in Poland, Mrs. Kamila Lobacz did not know a lot of English, so she had her daughter write all her letters, according to Witt. Army officials went back and forth with Mrs. Lobacz via letters and a phone call with an interpreter, informing Mrs. Lobacz that her sons body was not found and most likely, they believed, disposed of by enemy forces.

Despite this, Mrs. Lobacz continuously wrote to Army officials asking that they look again for her son, understandably desperate to properly lay her son to rest. In one of her later letters, she wrote, There are so many boys that have been buried here. I would like mine to be buried here.

The identification

According to a booklet Witt received from the DPAA about the identification process, Lobacz was identified by various DNA tests. Researchers at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab tested mitochondrial DNA, which traces the maternal line; Y-chromosome DNA testing, which traces the paternal line; and autosomal DNA testing, which is specific to the individuals remains.

Lobaczs remains included a mostly complete skeleton in excellent condition to conduct DNA testing on, the booklet said.

AFDIL researchers used the DNA testing to connect the remains to two of Lobaczs maternal nephews. They tested the remains for mtDNA, and compared the sequence they obtained from these specimens to references associated with three service members associated with World War II Lorraine Campaign casualties recorded in the AFDIL Family Reference Database. The DNA sequence was consistent with maternal references associated with only one of the three service members, which was Lobacz.

Dental analysis and anthropological analysis were also used to identify Lobacz. Researchers determined the remains to be a single individual, representing a European male that was 23-28 years old at the time of death.

Additionally, researchers were able to determine Lobaczs cause of death. Perimortem, which is at or near the time of death, projectile trauma was found.

Surprise identification

Witt, the most senior of Lobaczs living relatives, said he was surprised when he was notified of his uncles identification.

The war ended  about 80 years ago, and the fact that they were able to recover all his remains and identify next of kin, it was amazing to us, Witt said.

At the same time, Witt said he was saddened by the news. He did not know a lot about his uncle growing up, he said, and never knew the circumstances of his uncles death.

I didnt really know a lot about him, except he was the oldest child of my grandparents  I didnt know all the details on how he was killed on the first day of the battle, and what the battle was all about, Witt said. It was kind of sad that he was the uncle that I never met.

Lobacz received 10 U.S. Army Veteran Medals, which the Army has given to Witt. The medals include a Bronze Star Medal, a Purple Heart Medal with one bronze oak leaf cluster, a Good Conduct Medal, an American Defense Service Medal, an American Campaign Medal, a European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with three bronze service stars, a World War II Victory Medal, a First Award Combat Infantryman Badge, an Expert Infantryman Badge and a WWII Honorable Service Lapel Button.

Lobacz will receive a military burial at the Arlington National Cemetery next year. His remaining family members will receive a paid trip from the U.S. Military to attend the burial, Witt said.

Its amazing, Witt said of his uncles identification. Its a miracle, modern technology.
The gunman who attacked an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois, on Monday traveled to the Madison area before returning to Illinois where he was captured, local authorities said.

Robert Crimo III, who police say killed seven people and injured more than 30 in the shooting, had dressed in womens clothes to blend into the crowd and escape, said Christopher Covelli, a spokesperson for the Lake County Sheriffs Office, at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.

Afterward, he drove to a number of places, coming up to the Madison area before returning to Illinois, Covelli said.

I dont want to get into how we know he was in Wisconsin, but we know he traveled into the Madison area before turning around and coming back, Covelli said.

When he returned to Illinois, another driver recognized his car and called 911. Authorities arrested him soon after and recovered another rifle, Covelli said.

Authorities did not say why Crimo drove to Wisconsin or what connection he might have to the area.
Amid warnings that certain forever chemicals are toxic at levels too low to reliably detect, environmental advocates are asking Wisconsin officials to restart the process of regulating the common groundwater contaminants.

Midwest Environmental Advocates filed a petition Tuesday on behalf of the League of Women Voters and a group of northeastern Wisconsin residents asking the Department of Natural Resources to set enforceable standards for four compounds collectively known as PFAS.

EPA: Almost no safe level of forever chemicals The guidelines released Wednesday are thousands of times lower than Wisconsins first drinking water standards for the fluorinated compounds known as PFOA and PFOS, which took effect the same day.

The DNR began the process of setting standards for two PFAS compounds in 2018, but conservatives on the DNRs policy board voted in February to scrap the rule amid opposition from industry groups that warned it would be too expensive.

While the board adopted standards for public drinking water systems, the environmental groups are calling on the agency to adopt similar protections for the nearly 1 million residents who get their water from private wells.

There is no federal law that directly protects their water, said MEA staff attorney Rob Lee. It is solely the states responsibility to act.

Debra Cronmiller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said rural families and others who rely on private wells deserve the same protections.

It shouldnt matter whether your drinking water comes from a municipal water utility or a private well to be protected from these dangerous chemicals, Cronmiller said.

The Natural Resources Board voted down groundwater standards based on recommendations of state toxicologists that would have set a combined limit of 20 parts per trillion for two of the most studied compounds, PFOA and PFOS, which have been linked to cancer and other illnesses.

The board adopted weaker standards of 70 ppt for public drinking water systems based on existing health guidelines from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But last month, the federal agency warned the chemicals pose a risk at concentrations thousands of times lower.

The petition asks the DNR to restart the process for regulating PFOS and PFOA, along with two other compounds addressed by the federal health guidelines: PFBS and GenX.

If the petition is granted, the DNR would ask the Department of Health Services to recommend health-based standards that would become the basis for new regulations. The environmental groups argue it should not take the usual 2 years to complete the rulemaking process because the DNR has already done much of the work.

Wisconsin high court says Republican holdover can stay on Natural Resources Board The high court sided with Republican appointee Fred Prehn in a case that influences the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches and could influence environmental policy for years to come.

A DNR spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the petition Tuesday.

Any new regulations would require approval from the Natural Resources Board, which is likely to remain under conservative control for some time. Last month, the state Supreme Court ruled that Fred Prehn, a Wausau dentist appointed by former Gov. Scott Walker, can remain on the board beyond the end of his term as long as Republicans who control the Senate refuse to confirm Democratic Gov. Tony Evers pick to replace him.

MEA executive director Tony Wilkin Gibart noted those conservative members and industry lobbyists advocated for following the previous EPA health guidelines, which were 3 times higher than those recommended by the state.

I cant predict what they will do. I cant predict what justifications they will give, Gibart said. Under state groundwater law, the Department of Natural Resources has legal responsibilities it must fulfill. The NRB deciding it doesnt want to do anything is inconsistent with the law.

Used for decades in firefighting foam, nonstick surfaces and stain-resistant fabrics, the synthetic chemicals do not break down naturally and have been linked to health problems including low birth weight, cancer, and liver disease and have been shown to make vaccines less effective.

Dane County sues DNR over requirements to keep PFAS out of lakes, streams The county is asking the courts to strike testing requirements in the permit for stormwater that drains from the airport into Lake Monona through Starkweather Creek, where PFAS contamination has made fish unsafe to eat.

The DNR is monitoring dozens of PFAS contamination sites across Wisconsin, including Madison, La Crosse, Wausau, Marinette and Peshtigo.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct a reference to PFBS.
Voters in Orfordville recalled the village president last week, even though he had previously resigned under pressure.

Gary Phillips resigned in April after nearly 300 Orfordville residents petitioned for a recall election, saying he had failed to carry out his duties by putting himself in direct control of the police department and creating a hostile work environment.

At the time, Phillips said he resigned because he did not wish to force the village to spend money on a recall election. But since the petition had been certified, and after consulting with the state Elections Commission, Rock County clerk Lisa Tollefson said the village had to go ahead with the recall.

Last Tuesday, voters elected Dennis Burtness, who had been appointed to succeed Phillips in April, as his permanent replacement.

Burtness needed just one vote to win. His name was the the only option on the ballot, and there were no registered write-ins. Unofficial results showed Burtness received 75 votes to 1 write-in.

Voters will choose their next village board president in April 2023.
Three men with Wisconsin ties appeared on a previously secret list of hundreds of Baptist pastors and church-affiliated personnel accused of sexual abuse.

Released to the public in late May by an independent firm, Guidepost Solutions, the list is part of a report detailing how the the Southern Baptist Conventions Executive Committee mishandled allegations of sex abuse, stonewalled numerous survivors and prioritized protecting the SBC from liability.

Pastors and personnel with ties to the Southern Baptist Church mostly appear on the list, which includes more than 700 entries from cases that mostly span from 2000 to 2019. But it also includes a number of other Baptist denominations. None of the Wisconsin churches with involved clergy were affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

Two of the men on the list reportedly committed their crimes in Racine County.

Timothy Ganzel, a former youth minister at Grace Church in Racine  a member of the North American Baptist Conference  was convicted in 1994 of sexually abusing a teenage boy. He had previously been sentenced to one year in prison in 1987 on separate charges.

Scott Hoppe, a former assistant pastor at Grace Church in Burlington, pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual assault of a child younger than 13 in 2008, after admitting to multiple incidents of molestation of infants between 2000 and 2002. He had previously served almost four years on charges of child enticement after beginning a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl.

Also on the list is Thomas Chantry, formerly a pastor at Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Milwaukee County, although the allegations concern incidents in Arizona. In 2019, he was convicted of four charges of child molestation that occurred in Arizona from 1995 to 2001. An Arizona appeals court later overturned the charges. In 2018, Chantry was also convicted of aggravated assault of two children in Arizona that also occurred between 1995 and 2001.

The Guidepost report, released after a seven-month investigation, contained several explosive revelations. Among them: D. August Boto, the committees former vice president and general counsel, and former SBC spokesperson Roger Oldham kept their own private list of abusive ministers. Both retired in 2019. The existence of the list was not widely known within the committee and its staff.

Despite collecting these reports for more than 10 years, there is no indication that (Oldham and Boto) or anyone else, took any action to ensure that the accused ministers were no longer in positions of power at SBC churches, the report said.

The Executive Committee did not make additions to the published list, but their attorneys did redact several entries as well as the names and identifying information of survivors and others unrelated to the accused, Executive Committee leaders Rolland Slade and Willie McLaurin said in a May joint statement.

They made public entries that reference an admission, confession, guilty plea, conviction, judgment, sentencing, or inclusion on a sex offender registry, and expect some of the redacted entries on the list to be made public once more research is done. The list also includes Baptist ministers who are not affiliated with the SBC.

Survivors and advocates have

. The creation of an offender information system was one of the key recommendations in the report by Guidepost, which was contracted by the Executive Committee after delegates to last years national meeting pressed for an outside investigation.

At their annual convention in June, Southern Baptists voted in favor of setting up a Ministry Check website that tracks abusive pastors and church-affiliated individuals, as well as creating an Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force.

In May, the Executive Committee also opened a hotline for survivors, or someone on their behalf, to report abuse allegations: 202-864-5578 or SBChotline@guidepostsolutions.com. Callers are provided with care options and connected with an advocate, the statement said.

State Journal reporter Will Kubzansky contributed to this report.
I am one of those RINOs youve heard so much about recently. Those of us who have been labeled Republicans in Name Only are an endangered species in the now deep-red state of Missouri.

I am much more than that phrase would indicate. Here are a few more ways I would describe myself. I am a wife, a mother, a registered nurse, a spiritual person actively involved in a faith community, a volunteer, and a St. Louis Cardinals fan. I am grateful to be an American. I am deeply patriotic. I believe in the rule of law, free markets, and the Constitution.

And, apparently, I am now a target of political violence. I am to be hunted by members of my own political party, according to former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who has declared there should be no bagging limit and no tagging limit for recipients of his RINO hunting permit. This makes me scared for myself and my family. I do not find the political violence rhetoric humorous, and I am certainly not alone in this.

Fellow RINO and Jan. 6 House Select Committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois recently shared a death threat he received in the mail. A domestic terrorist, who addressed the letter to Kinzingers wife, Sophia, called for the couple and their 5-month-old baby to be executed. The Kinzinger family was a target of such hate because the congressman dared to highlight the truth about the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

These threats of political violence have unfortunately become common and seem to be increasing. The extreme right has been fed countless lies and propaganda. Elected members of the Republican Party who know better have been too silent and, dare I say, complicit. As of this writing, only one elected Republican official has condemned Greitens deeply irresponsible ad. That one is one of Greitens U.S. Senate Republican primary opponents, Missouri Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz.

It does not seem that long ago that Republicans such as Kinzinger and me were active members of the party, and that party had a platform of ideas and values we believed in. Now we are hated because we dared to put country over party and spoke out about former President Donald Trump. We have been banished to the outskirts, waiting to be prey, with the term RINO attached to our identity.

Many say we should remain active in the Republican Party and try to reform it from within. But this iteration of the Republican Party does not want me or my ilk to be a part of it. Rather its more radical elements would prefer to bust into my home, throw a flash grenade and hunt me and my family with assault rifles. Not to mention their ideas and tactics are no longer conservative in the ideologic sense. Why would I want to associate or remain a member of such a group?

So, what is a RINO to do, no matter which state you live in? First and foremost, we try to keep ourselves and our families safe. We would contact law enforcement immediately if threatened, openly denounce threats of political violence, and reach out to Republican elected officials and ask that they too denounce the threat posed to their fellow constituents.

We also would consider leaving the Republican Party. Reject the political extremes, on either side. Tell the truth and reject the lies of election fraud. Work to change the system by supporting electoral reforms like ranked-choice voting. Encourage the updating of the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

I am doing what I can to support Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in her reelection bid. Cheney was recently called a Stalinist by a fellow Republican.

Some might consider voting for moderate Democrats if they deem it acceptable or preferable to voting for someone on the radical right. They can begin the hard work of forming a new party and not accept the status quo answer that it cannot be done or cannot be successful. They can support one another and acknowledge that the threats of political violence are real.

They can pay attention to state and local races, as well as the national ones. They can consider running for public office. They can watch and pay attention to the Jan. 6 Select Committee hearings. They can stay true to themselves and their principles. Perhaps most importantly, they should vote.

No one should be made to feel unsafe anywhere in America, especially in their own states, by their potential next senator. I love my fellow Missourians, not hate them. I love my fellow Americans, not loathe them. If rejecting threats of political violence, telling the truth, and putting country first makes me a RINO, then I will wear it proudly.
Lost in the furor over the Supreme Courts decision to overturn the nearly five decades of American bodily autonomy guaranteed by Roe v. Wade was another appalling ruling in Vega v. Tekoh. It undermined the landmark 56-year-old precedent that established what have come to be known as Miranda rights.

In a decision that fell along the same ideological lines as the one that overturned Roe, the court ruled that suspects who are not informed of their constitutional right to remain silent under police questioning cannot sue law enforcement or other government officials for damages.

The decision guts the 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona. If police are not compelled to read Miranda warnings by the threat of lawsuits, then there is no impetus for them to do so.

The court was ruling on the case of Terence Tekoh, who was arrested by Los Angeles Sheriffs Deputy Carlos Vega in 2014 for the sexual assault of a patient at the hospital where Tekoh worked. Under interrogation, Tekoh confessed to the crime. But Vega had failed to announce his Miranda rights at the time of arrest, opening the door for Tekoh to sue the department for violating his constitutional rights.

Tekoh was ultimately acquitted even though his confession was presented at trial. His lawyers argued that Vega refused to accept Tekohs profession of innocence and had a hand resting on his firearm during the suspects interrogation. They also argued that the deputy threatened to report Tekoh, a legal U.S. resident, to immigration officials, which could have meant deportation to, and persecution in, Cameroon.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority that while Miranda rights have roots in the Constitution, a violation of Miranda does not necessarily constitute a violation of the Constitution. The justice wrote that statements obtained without a Miranda warning should be suppressed at trial, but he argued that Allowing the victim of a Miranda violation to sue a police officer for damages ... would have little additional deterrent value, and permitting such claims would cause many problems.

But Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent that the ruling strips individuals of the ability to seek a remedy for violations of the right recognized in Miranda. The majority observes that defendants may still seek the suppression at trial of statements obtained in violation of Mirandas procedures. But sometimes, such a statement will not be suppressed. In such cases, the justice asked, what remedy will defendants have for wrongful convictions and other harms at the hands of police who dont inform them of their rights?

Given that the court previously found Miranda warnings necessary to safeguard the personal protections of the Fifth Amendment, Kagan asked, why shouldnt the reading of rights be enforceable?

Most peoples experience of Miranda rights comes from watching police procedurals on television, which often get the basic facts of the law right: Those taken into police custody must be advised of their Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination, such as during interrogation.

As the dissent argued, its not clear what will compel police to inform suspects of their rights during interrogation if they cant be held accountable for ignoring the requirement. Rights do not enforce themselves.
A Marion man was denied an appeal by the state appellate court after he tried to argue he was too impaired to waive his right to an attorney prior to his conviction.

Stephen Michael Sisk Jr., 38, of Marion, recently appealed a 2021 decision from McDowell County Superior Court to the N.C. Court of Appeals. His case was heard in the state appellate court on March 23 of this year and the decision was announced Tuesday. Sisk contended the trial court in McDowell improperly denied his motion to suppress statements made during his custodial interrogation, according to documents from the N.C. Court of Appeals.

On June 24, 2018, Marion Police Officer Travis Maltba was driving his patrol car when he noticed Sisk pull into a gas station.

Officer Maltba had obtained a warrant for Sisks arrest earlier that week. The police officer arrested Sisk, took him into custody, and transported him to the Marion Police Department.

Prior to interrogation, Officer Maltba read Sisk his Miranda rights verbatim, and had him sign a statement of rights form. The officer asked Sisk, Do you understand these rights and everything and do you still want to talk to me? Sisk nodded in agreement and signed a statement of rights form, according to court documents.

After that, he then signed a waiver of rights form, which meant he was waiving his right to have an attorney present. He then admitted he had stolen from retail stores on multiple occasions. He then went to say he had committed larceny between 20 or 30 times, often stealing power tools from a local retailer and selling them.

He also admitted to using methamphetamine, but stated he did not use the drug daily, according to the state Court of Appeals document.

On Sept. 18, 2018, a McDowell County grand jury indicted Sisk on the charges of misdemeanor larceny and attaining habitual felon status. On Oct. 29, 2018, he was indicted on an additional charge of felony larceny. He was eventually sentenced to 78 to 106 months in prison, where he is today.

Sisk moved to suppress the statements he made during his interrogation, contending he was under the influence of methamphetamine during his confession, and his waiver of Miranda rights was not entered into knowingly and intelligently.

Officer Maltba testified Sisk did not admit to being under the influence of methamphetamine on the day of his custodial statement or exhibit any signs of impairment. Rather, the officer indicated Sisk was able to actively participate with him in in-depth conversations.

The N.C. Court of Appeals ruled it found no error in the trial courts denial of Sisks motion to suppress and dismiss his appeal.

The court could find no merit in Defendants appellate argument that his motion to suppress should have been granted, nor do we find error was probably committed in the trial courts denial of the motion to suppress. We therefore deny Defendants petition for writ of certiorari and dismiss his appeal.
State-run El Nasr for Export and Import (Gosoor) opened Monday six oversea branches in Ghana, Cameroon, Sudan, Emirates, France and China as part of the North African countrys efforts to boost its exports.

The branches are part of 16 total that the company operates under the Ministry of Public Enterprise.

Egypt is planning to increase exports to $100 billion in value per year. In 2021, the countrys non-oil exports reportedly reached an all-time high exceeding $32 billion, up from the $25.4 billion recorded in 2020  an increase of 26 percent  according to the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

The Ministry of Public Enterprise launched the Gosoor project in 2019 with the aim of boosting Egyptian exports.
The Saudi monarch King Salman issued a royal order approving an allocation of $5.32 billion (SR20 billion) to help citizens mitigate the impacts of rising global prices,

Half of the allocated money will go to social insurance beneficiaries and the Citizen Account Program, Arab News reports citing the state-run news agency SPA.

The remainder will be directed to increasing the strategic stock of basic materials to ensure their availability. Under the order a total of SR2 billion will be allocated for the payment of an additional pension to be disbursed once only for the social security system beneficiaries in 2022.

Registration in the Citizens Account Program will be reopened in line with the previously announced regulations, reports add.
General Abdelfattah al-Burhane, who has ruled Sudan since the 25 October coup, announced on Monday that he wanted to give way to a civilian government, on the fifth day of sit-ins determined to put an end to military rule and its bloody repression.

In a televised address, the head of the army and number one of the Sovereign Council  the highest authority in the country  announced that the army will no longer participate in the national dialogue launched under the aegis of the UN and the African Union (AU) in particular, to let civilian forces form a government of competent personalities.

After its formation () we will dissolve the Sovereign Council and form a supreme council of the armed forces, which will also include paramilitaries and will only be in charge of defence and security issues.

Mondays speech changes all that. The FLC held an emergency meeting on Monday evening to decide what to do after General Burhanes announcement, said one of their executives.

The street, which has only one slogan since even before the coup: no partnership, no negotiation with generals, who have betrayed civilians, according to them, even before almost the entire civilian government was arrested the day of the coup.
Morocco has reiterated this Tuesday its stance in favor of a political solution to the Sahara issue, based exclusively on the Moroccan Autonomy Initiative.

This came during a meeting in Rabat between visiting Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Bourita.

During the meeting that was also attended by the Kingdoms Permanent Representative to the UN, Omar Hilale, the Moroccan delegation recalled the constants of Moroccos stance in favor of a political solution, based exclusively on the Moroccan Autonomy Initiative, within the framework of the Kingdoms national sovereignty and territorial integrity, said a statement by the foreign department.

The statement recalled that this stance was clearly affirmed by King Mohammed VI in a speech he delivered on the occasion of the 46th Anniversary of the Green March, on November 6, 2021.

The delegation also reiterated Moroccos commitment to the political process of the round tables, in accordance with resolution 2602, which calls for a realistic, pragmatic, sustainable and compromise-based political solution to the regional dispute over the Moroccan Sahara, the statement said.

Several UN Security Council resolutions have described the autonomy plan as a serious and credible proposal.

De Misturas visit to Morocco, his second since his appointment to the position, comes at a context of increasing support for Moroccos autonomy plan.

The US, most of the Arab World and Africa, and many powerful players in the EU have all supported Moroccos autonomy initiative.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

More than eight out of 10 British people who are seeking support for having lost a loved one to COVID-19 reported alarming post traumatic stress disorder symptoms, new Curtin University-led research has found.

The study, based on data from people seeking help and guidance from the United Kingdom's National Bereavement Partnership in collaboration with researchers from the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition and Christopher Newport University in the United States of America, also found almost two-thirds of British COVID-19 mourners experienced moderate or severe symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Lead author Professor Lauren Breen, from the Curtin School of Population Health, said the results were alarming given more than six million people had died from COVID-19 across the globe.

"These survey results indicate a concerning 'shadow pandemic' in the wake of a COVID-19 death with the vast majority of British mourners reporting alarming rates of psychological distress including constantly feeling on guard or easily startled," Professor Breen said.

"The mourners who were seeking support from the National Bereavement Partnership also reported concerning symptoms of anxiety and depression, dysfunctional grief including wanting to die in order to be with their loved one, and functional impairment that was affecting their home and family responsibilities."

According to the UK's dedicated PTSD charity, PTSD UK, about 20 percent of all PTSD cases worldwide are linked to the unexpected death of a loved one.

To date, there have been more than 175,000 COVID-19-related deaths in the United Kingdom.

Professor Breen said the findings had significant implications for counsellors in the UK, particularly in light of modelling that showed an average of nine family members were affected by each COVID-19 death.

"Counsellors in the UK should be alert to a broad band of pandemic-related psychological distress in people who have lost a loved one to COVID-19, and not concentrate solely on symptoms of grief," Professor Breen said.

"In particular, these findings underscore the need to screen for high levels of trauma as well as grief, for potential referral to counsellors with specialised skills in treating the intersection of trauma and bereavement."

Co-author Dr. Robert Neimeyer, a leading bereavement researcher and the Director of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, said the study suggested a useful focus for support and therapy for COVID-19 loss survivors.

"We found that much of the struggle that mourners reported in terms of intense PTSD symptoms, anguishing grief, and perturbing depression and anxiety was explained by the difficulty they had in making sense of a senseless loss, and preserving their orientation in a bewildering, threatening and disempowering world," Dr. Neimeyer said.

"Not only did they lose their loved ones, but they also lost a sense of predictability, justice and control over the circumstances of the lossall of which could be crucial themes to address in bereavement support and therapy."

The study was based on surveys completed by 183 people seeking support from the National Bereavement Partnership in the United Kingdom.

Of those surveyed, 83 percent reported clinically elevated PTSD symptoms, 64 percent experienced psychiatric distress, 57 percent suffered functional impairment and 39 percent reported clinically significant symptoms of dysfunctional grief.

More information: Lauren J. Breen et al, Grief and functional impairment following COVID-19 loss in a treatment-seeking sample: the mediating role of meaning, British Journal of Guidance & Counselling (2022). Lauren J. Breen et al, Grief and functional impairment following COVID-19 loss in a treatment-seeking sample: the mediating role of meaning,(2022). DOI: 10.1080/03069885.2022.2075540
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

University of Liverpool researchers have played their part in an evaluation showing that key workers in Liverpool carrying out daily testing prevented COVID-19 from crippling emergency services.

New findings published by a major health journal have revealed the world's first testing pilot saved almost 8,000 work days from being lost to self-isolation.

At the height of the pandemic, there was a risk of so many staff being in quarantine that essential services would be unavailableso Liverpool pioneered "test-to-release" with daily testing as an alternative to quarantine.

Liverpool residents who worked in a range of key organizations, including Merseyside Police, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, and Alder Hey Children's Hospital took part in the pilot, which has recently been evaluated by Liverpool City Council and the University of Liverpool.

Over 30 staff from both Liverpool City Council and Liverpool Streetscene Services Limited (LSSL) also took part in the pilotreducing the impact on frontline servicessuch as waste collection and domiciliary care in the city.

The SMART (Systematic Meaningful Asymptomatic Repeated Testing) Release pilot evaluated the use of daily testing as an alternative to the 10-day quarantine at home rule that was in force at the time for people in close contact with COVID-19 cases.

Iain Buchan, Professor of Public Health and Clinical Informatics and Associate Pro Vice Chancellor for Innovation at the University of Liverpool, said, "The people of Liverpool, including the great public services taking part in this research, showed how rapid antigen test kits could be used by key workers to keep their teams going with daily testing instead of quarantinebalancing the risks of spreading the virus with the risks of essential services going downthey struck an effective balance and this became national policy. This was a great example of urgent public health research partnership between local public health teams, academics and the communities we serve."

Marta Garcia-Finana, Professor of Health Data Sciences from the Institute of Population Health at the University of Liverpool, praised "the fantastic engagement and contribution of key workers from each of the public services across Merseyside. Particularly at a time of immense service pressure, they made possible this study which has provided further evidence on the key role of serial testing in COVID-19 test-to-release interventions."

Cabinet Member for Social Care and Health, Cllr. Frazer Lake, said, "I'm immensely proud of the part Liverpool has played in piloting rapid testing for COVID-19. The key worker pilot ensured essential services such as home care, children's hospital services, emergency call centers and policing were able to continuekeeping Liverpool communities and our vulnerable residents safe."

Director of Public Health for Liverpool, Professor Matthew Ashton, said, "Making the pilot a success required flexibility, dedication and hard work from all of the front-line services involved, and the strength of our local partnerships is highlighted as a key element in the pilot's success. The SMART testing pilot was a pioneering public health interventionand is one that helped to keep front line services working, thereby protecting both lives and livelihoods in our city."

Daily testing between December 2020 and August 2021 enabled key workers to carry out vital services in the city and was part of the wider SMART testing pilotwhich saw Liverpool deliver the world's largest symptom-free testing program for COVID-19.

It's estimated that the pilot, which involved more than 1,600 frontline staff from across Liverpool, helped save numerous lives by avoiding staffing levels from dropping below crisis levels. The wider findings have now been published in eClinicalMedicine.

More information: Lucy Marsden et al, Daily testing of contacts of SARS-CoV-2 infected cases as an alternative to quarantine for key workers in Liverpool: A prospective cohort study, eClinicalMedicine (2022). Journal information: EClinicalMedicine Lucy Marsden et al, Daily testing of contacts of SARS-CoV-2 infected cases as an alternative to quarantine for key workers in Liverpool: A prospective cohort study,(2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.eclinm.2022.101519
Providing earlier diagnosis leads to better cancer outcomes. Credit:  Gevende, Shutterstock

Prevention and the HPV vaccine is helping to reduce the numbers of women dying with cervical cancer but new portable screening kits and new types of lab tests will improve diagnosis and earlier treatment of the disease.

New advances in screening for cervical cancerthe fourth most common cancer among womenhave the potential to save many women's lives, their developers say.

While outcomes for women with cervical cancer have improved overall in recent years, the death toll from the disease is still too high. Despite the fact that cervical cancer is highly treatable if diagnosed early enough, more than 340 000 women died of the disease in 2020.

The majority of deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries where women often have limited access to screening services, according to the World Health Organization.

Even when women do get tested, there can be a delay of several months before they get the result and, if they test positive, another delay before they receive treatment.

"If you have already an advanced stage of the cancer, these months can be the difference between life or death," says Olivier Degomme, coordinator of a project called ELEVATE, which is developing a portable screening kit to take to deprived areas.

"We really want to reduce this interval of months to an interval of ideally 24 hours," he says.

Mobile kit

ELEVATE's mobile kit is designed for use in communities with limited access to medical care. Health workers would explain the importance of getting screened, then offer the test and be able to give women the results within a day.

The kit requires little training to use. Women collect a sample themselves, which the health workers run through the battery-powered analysis unit. The unit uses a DNA test to check for the presence of high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) infections, which can lead to cervical cancer. Results are returned within minutes.

The researchers aim to begin using the toolkit in mountain villages and deprived urban areas in Ecuador and Brazil. They also want to use it with hard-to-reach women in Belgium and Portugal.

Initially, the researchers focused on migrant and other marginalized communities which have difficulty accessing medical care or which may not know about the importance of being screened.

Too busy

But they also found that highly educated career women were not going for screening because they were too busy. So, as well as taking the testing kit to deprived communities, it could also be useful in busy offices, for example.

"At the global level, the gains will be much higher with focusing on hard-to-reach women in poorer communities. But a nice side-effect (of the project) is that we could also use this in groups of highly educated women," says Prof. Degomme, who is associate professor at the faculty of medicine and health sciences at Ghent University, Belgium.

Screening programs vary between countries. Some invite all women of eligible age to get tested. Some offer opportunistic screening where a patient is told about and offered screening when she visits a clinic. Some countries do not screen at all.

The WHO has set 2030 targets to reduce cervical cancer rates worldwide. One of these is for 70% of women to be screened with a high-performance test by 35, and again by 45 years of age.

Prof Degomme hopes ELEVATE's portable kit will help countries meet the WHO target. It still has to be tested in the field, and assessed for its acceptability, feasibility and cost-effectiveness for low-income countries.

"The important thing is to make sure that it will reach women who could not otherwise be reached. And we can actually save lives, hopefully many lives," he said.

Raman analysis

The HPV virus has more than 100 different strains, 14 of which are considered high risk for cervical cancer. Increasingly, countries with screening programs test for high-risk HPV infections.

Researchers have recently designed a test that can distinguish between an infection that will resolve itself and one which will become chronic and possibly lead to cancer.

They use Raman spectroscopy to check for changes in the molecular make-up of cervical cells taken during a smear test.

Raman spectroscopy is a scanning technique for identifying the chemical composition of materials by measuring their vibrational response to laser light. The research involves shining a light on the cells to make their molecules vibrate.

The resulting vibration "fingerprint" gives an indication of whether the cell content has been changed by the virus.

Cell specialist

Currently, if someone tests positive for a high-risk HPV infection, their cervical cells are checked through a microscope. These checks are done by a specialist in cells, called a cytologist.

The cell may look fine down the microscope, but Raman spectroscopy may pick up changes on a molecular level which are invisible to the human eye, according to Prof Fiona Lyng, coordinator of a project called ARC-HPV.

The project, which ended in 2018, concluded that Raman spectroscopy could be used to test for infections that could lead to cancer. Its findings have now been patented.

Since 2018, researchers have tested the method on larger samples and found it was at least 91% accurate in differentiating between cells of concern and those which are likely to recover from infection.

The next step will be to test the accuracy of Raman spectroscopy in an entire population being screened.

Vaccination success

Another important form of prevention is vaccination. Available vaccines are highly effective, but they do not protect against all forms of high-risk HPV.

"The vaccine will really reduce cervical pre-cancers and cancers, which is brilliant." But its success raises an issue for screening programs, said Prof Lyng, who is head of the Radiation and Environmental Science Center at the Technological University Dublin.

With fewer cases of pre-cancer and cancer cells presenting in the population, cytologists will not be so used to encountering these abnormalities, meaning their ability to spot them might decline. "That's why people are interested in developing new methods (like Raman spectroscopy) which are more objective," said Prof Lyng.

There are "horrific stories of young women dying from this disease. That shouldn't happen because it's so treatableif it's detected at that early stage of pre-cancer," said Prof Lyng.

Results so far indicate that Raman spectroscopy is more accurate than cytology.

"All tests have false positives and false negatives, and Raman is not 100% accurate either. But it does have a higher sensitivity than cytology, so we think it would improve outcomes for women by detecting cancers, or pre-cancers, earlier," said Prof Lyng.

Explore further Why Black women need to be screened for cervical cancer
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Lab-grown human heart cells provide a powerful tool to understand and potentially treat heart disease. However, the methods to produce human heart cells from pluripotent stem cells are not optimal. Fortunately, a new study out of the University of WisconsinMadison Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine Center is providing key insight that will aid researchers in growing cardiac cells from stem cells.

The research, published recently in eLife, investigates the role of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins in the generation of heart cells derived from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). The ECM fills the space between cells, providing structural support and regulating formation of tissues and organs. With a better understanding of ECM and its impact on heart development, researchers will be able to more effectively develop heart muscle cells, called cardiomyocytes, that could be useful for cardiac repair, regeneration and cell therapy.

"How the ECM impacts the generation of hPSC-cardiomyocytes has been largely overlooked," says Jianhua Zhang, a senior scientist at the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center. "The better we understand how the soluble factors as well as the ECM proteins work in the cell culture and differentiation, the closer we get to our goals."

Researchers like Zhang have been looking to improve the differentiation of hPSCs into cardiomyocytes, or the ability to take hPSCs, which can self-renew indefinitely in culture while maintaining the ability to become almost any cell type in the human body and turn them into heart muscle cells. To investigate the role of the ECM in promoting this cardiac differentiation of hPSCs, Zhang tested a variety of proteins to see how they impacted stem cell growth and differentiationspecifically, ECM proteins including laminin-111, laminin-521, fibronectin and collagen.

"Our study showed ECM proteins play significant roles in the hPSC adhesion, growth, and cardiac differentiation. And fibronectin plays an essential role and is indispensable in hPSC cardiac differentiation," says Zhang. "By understanding the roles of ECM, this study will help to develop more robust methods and protocols for generation of hPSC-CMs. Furthermore, this study not only helps in the field for cardiac differentiation, but also other lineage differentiation as well."

While the new study provides important insight into heart cell development, it is built upon a 2012 study Zhang led which looked at the most efficient way to develop cardiac differentiation of stem cells.

"This study is actually a follow-up paper to the Matrix Sandwich Method that we developed for efficient cardiac differentiation of hPSCs," Zhang says. "In order to culture the stem cells, we needed to have an ECM layer on the bottom of the plate. Otherwise, the stem cells would not attach to the plate. We would then add another layer of ECM on top of the growing stem cells, and we found that this helped promote the most effective differentiation."

While it was clear that this layering, or sandwich, method more efficiently and reproducibly differentiated hPSC-cardiomyocytes, researchers did not fully understand why. The new study explains why the ECM layers are crucial and identifies fibronectin as a key ECM protein in the development of hPSC-cardiomyocytes.

"The most exciting part of this study is now I understand why the Matrix Sandwich Method worked. We were able to identify the fibronectin and its integrin receptors as well as the downstream signaling pathways in this study," Zhang explains. "With a better understanding of ECM's roles in stem cell growth and cardiac differentiation, we now hope to investigate the roles of fibronectin and other ECM proteins in promoting the hPSC-cardiomyocytes transplantation for cell therapy."

The next step could help researchers realize the full potential of using hPSC-cardiomyocytes for disease modeling, drug screening, cardiac regeneration and cell therapy. This is very meaningful to Zhang, who began working in cardiovascular research more than 16 years ago.

"I became interested in stem cell and heart research when I began working with the stem cells and saw them turning into heart cells beating in a cell culture dish under a microscope," Zhang says. "It was amazing. I've become more and more dedicated to this research, and I can really see the potential of using the stem cell technologies to cure disease and improve our health."

Explore further Human urine-derived stem cells have robust regenerative potential

More information: Jianhua Zhang et al, Cardiac differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells using defined extracellular matrix proteins reveals essential role of fibronectin, eLife (2022). Journal information: eLife Jianhua Zhang et al, Cardiac differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells using defined extracellular matrix proteins reveals essential role of fibronectin,(2022). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.69028
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Close to half of the roughly two dozen states where abortion is or will soon be outlawed or heavily restricted do not require sex education.

Most of those states require any schools that do choose to teach sex education to emphasize abstinence as the main or only way to avoid getting pregnant. Almost none require teaching about contraception.

In contrast, in states with broader access to abortion, nearly all require sex education. Still, sex education tends to be limited even in those states, with many stressing an abstinence-only approach or making lessons on topics such as contraception and relationships optional.

"Very few young people in the U.S. get outstanding sex education," said Leslie Kantor, a professor and sex education expert at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "To leave young people without information about birth control suddenly in this context, where they cannot legally get an abortion in half the statesthat is an incredible human rights violation."

Researchers and advocates said variations in sex education across different states could contribute to more girls and women being forced to take unwanted pregnancies to term. Teen pregnancy rates have declined in the past few decades, but some experts worry the new laws could force them back up.

Three of the top five states for teen pregnancy ratesArkansas, Oklahoma and Alabamahad trigger laws banning abortion that went into effect as soon as the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The other two states on that listMississippi and Louisianaappear poised to soon follow suit. Just one of the states, Mississippi, has a sex education requirement.

Abstinence-only vs. comprehensive sex ed

Sex education, which can vary not only from state to state but also school to school within the same district, is essential for teaching young people about the laws and rights they have, particularly as abortion laws change, said Chris Harley, president and CEO of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, an advocacy group for comprehensive sex education.

"That also becomes more critical than ever for them to be able to navigate this Wild West in terms of where you can access care and where you can't," she said. "Knowing those distinctions is going to be really critical for young people to navigate their own sexual and reproductive health."

The outcomes of sex education vary depending on what young people are taught. Some studies have found abstinence-only education, for example, has little impact on teen pregnancy rates.

"The science shows that it doesn't work," Harley said. By excluding other strategies for preventing pregnancy, "what you do is you set (students) up for failure. You set them up for having more adverse sexual health outcomes."

Researchers have found promising results when schools teach comprehensive sex education, which typically focuses on various aspects of sexual health such as relationships and consent and discusses abstinence in addition to alternative strategies for pregnancy and STI prevention.

One 2008 study found adolescents who received comprehensive sex education were significantly less likely to become pregnant as a teen than their peers who received no sex education. The same study also found no significant difference in teen pregnancy rates among adolescents who received no sex education and those who were taught abstinence-only.

"It becomes this cycle of not having accurate information and then not having access to abortion," said study co-author Pamela Kohler, an associate professor of child, family and population health nursing at Seattle's University of Washington. "We're restricting access to the most vulnerable populationsthe people who need it mostand setting them up for future unintended pregnancies and future risks of STDs."

Another study, published this year, analyzed the causal relationship between more comprehensive sex education and teen birth rates using data on federal funding for such programs as well as births in the respective counties. The study found a more than 3% decline in teen births in counties that received funding for more comprehensive sex ed.

"The unfortunate reality is that there exists this correlation between states that are likely to ban or severely restrict abortion and the sorts of sex education policies that they do or do not have," said Lawrence L. Wu, a sociology professor at New York University who co-authored the study.

Many young people seem to want a comprehensive version of sex education, as documented in 2020 by a team of professors who conducted focus groups with students and parents at a handful of Arkansas high schools with high pregnancy and STI rates.

"Instead of being like, 'Don't do this because you could get pregnant or you could get an STD or STI,' I feel like they should tell us, 'Well, if you're gonna do it, you're gonna do it.' Just ... teach safe sex," said one student who participated in the study.

In Michigan, Hafiza Khalique, 16, said having inclusive sex education in schools is "more important than ever" to combat a rise in misinformation about abortion and to ensure young peopleparticularly people of color and LGBTQ youthknow where they can access contraceptives and other reproductive health resources.

"Because kids are going to keep having sex," she said. "Telling them to abstain from having sex is not going to help. You can only teach them how to do it safely."

Khalique said the only sex education she remembers receiving was an hour-long, abstinence-only lesson at her public middle school in Detroit. She said it wasn't until she came out as queer and started going to community events and organizations like Planned Parenthood that she was able to unlearn some of the myths she'd been taught in school.

"I have never, ever received proper sex education at all," she said. "That was really, really terrifying because there's so much misinformation."

Some opponents, however, have said comprehensive sex education encourages young children to experiment sexually and corrupts their innocence. Many stress that such educationor at least certain aspects of itis a private family matter.

"Schools are veering so far from the mission of academics," said New Jersey Republican Assemblyman Gerry Scharfenberger in a video earlier this year. "People are paying two-thirds of their property taxes to send their kids to school, not learn about porn."

Scharfenberger was responding to the state's controversial sex education standards, which were adopted in 2020 and are scheduled to go into effect later this year. The standards would start teaching children about sex and gender at an earlier age in elementary school and touch on topics such as masturbation and consent.

Mary Elizabeth Castle, senior policy advisory at the conservative advocacy group Texas Values, said teaching abstinence is the preferred method to help young people avoid pregnancy and STIs

It's "teaching kids to live the most healthy, optimized lifestyle," she said.

Castle said comprehensive sex educationsuch as teaching kids about consent"doesn't create a healthier environment for kids." Instead, she said, "it actually creates a more sexualized environment for kids."

The past few years have seen various debates at the state level over what to include in sex education. In 2020, the Texas State Board of Education voted to update the state's standards to include information for middle school students on birth control. The board declined to approve other elements of comprehensive sex education, such as lessons on consent, sexual orientation and gender identity.

But some parents, like Bernita Bradley, said schools need to be doing more to educate children about sex. Bradley, from Michigan, said neither her two children nor the children she works with in the community got sufficient sex education in schoolleaving her to fill in the gaps.

"I've always been the one to take the community kids to Planned Parenthood. I've done this for years," said Bradley, 51, director of parent voice and outreach at the National Parents Union. "I used to teach sex education class in the church. I used to be the youth pastor and I would literally sit the young people down to have sex education."

Sex education disparities

There are grave disparities in who receives what type of sex education based on gender, race and class, research shows. Advocates worry the overturning of Roe will widen these disparities.

The combination of restricting access to information and health care could create "trauma, harm and misery that ... are going to devastate large portions of America, especially in the South and in rural communities," said Harley of the Sexuality Information and Education Council.

"Sex education is in the crosshairs as much as access to comprehensive reproductive health care," she continued. "Young people are really going to suffer."

The risks are amplified for certain groups.

In a study published late last year, Rutgers' Kantor and her co-author found notable gender and racial differences in the type and extent of sex education received. Using nationally representative data from surveys conducted between 2011 to 2015 and 2015 to 2019, the study found that, as has long been the case, girls were more likely than boys to be instructed to wait until marriage.

"The double standard is alive and well," Kantor said. "We are trying to raise young women to be the gatekeepers of sex, and we're raising males to try to get sex."

Kantor and her co-researcher found other inequities as well. Close to 0% of young people who exclusively received sex education through the church learned about birth control, for example.

And Black and Hispanic male students were less likely than their white counterparts to have learned about condom skills and birth control before having intercourse for the first time. One reason could be that students of color are far more likely to attend poorly funded schools that lack the resources to provide quality sex education.

Some educators who support comprehensive sex education said they are worried about the challenges ahead with reduced access to abortion, but say their responsibility to teach sex ed comprehensively has never been greater.

For Shafia Zaloom, a sexuality and relationship educator who works with students across the country, the Supreme Court's decision will force her to further modify what she teaches depending on what state she's in.

"Before, we used to talk about what people's options are, what their rights are, and now I have to include how they are limited," she said. "I'm very careful of that. I have to be because this is my livelihood."

Explore further U.S. adolescents are receiving less sex education in key topics than 25 years ago

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Dr. Maddie Deutsch, head of the UCSF Gender Affirming Health Program. Credit: University of California

At a time when gender-affirming care is in the political spotlightespecially in state houses across the country seeking to make it more difficult to obtain this kind of carewe sat down with the leader of one of the most respected transgender and nonbinary health programs in the country, Dr. Maddie Deutsch, to discuss her field.

The UCSF Gender Affirming Health Program Dr. Deutsch runs is a multidisciplinary program that provides evidence-based clinical care for transgender and gender nonbinary communities, conducts research, and trains the next generation of medical providers on all aspects of gender-affirming clinical care.

In this Q&A, condensed for clarity and length, Dr. Deutsch talks about the history of gender-affirming care, her own transition, the needs of her patients, and the challenges she sees in the current political climate for providing these essential services.

Q: How did you get your start in this field?

A: I'm trans and my own personal transition occurred in a range of circuitous, somewhat zigzagging fits and starts between roughly 1996 and 2006.

I initially trained emergency medicine, but I was just getting burned out. I wanted to try to keep people out of emergency departments rather than treating them once they get there.

I came to the realization that there was not much going on in the way of access for transgender people to get health care. I felt like I really understood it not only because of my personal lived experience but because I had basically managed my own transition. I had done a ton of research on a lot of the medical aspects.

I opened up a tiny little office in Los Angeles in late 2006. Things got kind of busy, and before you knew it, I was recruited by the Los Angeles LGBT Center to launch their gender-affirming health program. Over the four years I ran that program, we had hundreds of patients in care. Then I became connected with some people at UCSF and ultimately began to see patients and develop the program that I run now.

Q: What is the process like for patients seeking gender-affirming care?

A: A large chunk of what we do in my clinic is consult with patients who are looking to start hormones. We do a complete medical history and physical exam as appropriate. We talk about a patient's goals and history, when did they first start thinking about their gender identity, how long have they been thinking about it, what their level of social support is. We look at how to take their individual goals and shape them into something that's medically feasible.

A few weeks later, after a patient has reviewed informational materials, we go over any additional questions that they have and then we talk about starting hormone therapy and we come up with an initial regimen. And that's how it works for 95 percent of my patients.

For a small percentage of my patients at the second visit, further exploration is needed to clarify goals and we work to connect them to a therapist.

Q: How is the process of seeking gender-affirming care different for minors?

A: If a child is prepubertal, there's no medical treatment that's given. The only decision-making is, do they use their chosen name and pronoun? Do they present themselves with clothing and hairstyle in a different way?

There are specific medical criteria to diagnose different stages of puberty. When a child gets to a stage of early puberty called Tanner stage 2, if the child is still expressing what is called gender dysphoria, or gender incongruence, then, depending on the age of the child and a bunch of other factors, such as family, environment, and so on, and after an assessment that includes an evaluation by a qualified mental health clinician, puberty delaying becomes an option.

I call them puberty blockers, but really they just kind of put the brakes on puberty. It's fully reversible.

At UCSF, the Child and Adolescent Gender Center assists patients with this care. My work focuses on adults.

Q: When is gender-affirming surgery considered?

A: Like any surgery, there are different criteria depending upon the procedure.

Historically these assessments were very like, 'Are you really trans enough to have this surgery? Prove to me you're really trans,' and we don't want to do that, although a mental health assessment can be useful, and is sometimes required to align expectations and goals.

What we want to do is make sure the patient is really prepared for the potential for unsatisfactory outcomes or complications. That they have adequate support in place to deal with potential complications and the rigors and demands of self-recovery, which can be months depending on the procedure performed. These kinds of things happen for most surgeries. You go in for weight loss surgery, you're meeting with a social worker and mental health clinicians to talk about recovery, for example.

We focus on what assessments should look like so that we're not creating a gatekeeping or stigmatizing environment, but still providing important assessment and preparation so that it centers truly informed consent.

Q: Some people in the United States have trouble accessing this kind of care. What is the importance of this specific care, from a health care perspective?

A: Medically necessary care results in improved lives, improved psychosocial outcomes.

There's anthropological evidence that transgender identities and people who have a range of gender expansive identities have existed in humanity going back thousands of years. It is a component of human phenotypic expression of behavior and identity and existence.

There's nothing new or cultural about having trans people being part of the human experience. By the 70s, I wouldn't say it was mainstream because societally it was not very visible, but medically it wasn't particularly controversial. Many academic institutions, large academic medical centers started to develop their own gender programs.

Gender-affirming care is medically necessary. Most major professional societies agree with the designation of this being medically necessary. We don't have to have a discussion about that.

Sometimes people say, should [insurance] be covering this stuff, is the benefit enough in the cost benefit analysis? That has been studied, and the answer is yes. Hormone therapy is typically a generic medication. The overhead to the health care system of providing hormone therapy is almost zero. Gender-affirming surgeries are for the most part, not very costly, much less so than open heart surgery and less expensive.

Q: Are you seeing more out-of-state people coming to California for care because of the political climate elsewhere?

A: There's definitely a demand from out-of-state patients on the adult side. For the first couple of years of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a relaxation of the rules around practicing medicine across state lines via telemedicine, due to a lack of access to health care in general. I saw patients from all over the country, in Kansas and Alaska and Texas, who were just like, 'Oh, this is so great.'

And then the door slammed shut as the rules returned after the initial COVID crisis period. I'm in the process of getting licensed in another state, but it is a very costly and time-consuming process.

For children and adolescents, for a long time the draw here for our UCSF Child and Adolescent Gender Center has been international, with people flying in from Australia and New Zealand for care. That's the length that people will go to get their kids what they need.

But that group is restricted to those who have the financial ability as well as privilege. It is a huge issue.

Q: Gender-affirming health care has been politicized a great deal recently, especially with kids. Do you think this kind of care is at risk?

A: That's a difficult question to answer. In the early 2000's in Los Angeles, when I was in the midst of my own transition, I got thrown out of a bathroom in a restaurant in downtown L.A. That seems like a lifetime ago for people who are in their twenties, but it was not that long ago at all.

What we have is still fragile and is not baked in. I think that as generational turnover continues in this country, the size of that majority who are supportive of these issues will continue to grow. At the same time, there are some very real, politicized threats in states such as Florida and Texas, which are aiming to restrict or even outlaw these treatments altogether on political rather than scientific grounds.

I think that there's a great deal of structural risk at the federal level that makes it entirely possible that there will be legal difficulty coming for a lot of different groups in this country, including sexual and gender minorities. In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock that Title IX includes protection around gender identity. But they also recently overturned the Roe V. Wade decision, and as part of the decision, Justice Thomas made comments that suggest this court will consider overturning other precedents as well, should they come before them. Would they turn around and say, 'No, we don't think that anymore?' It is a concerning time indeed.

Q: How are these political pressures affecting people in your field?

A: I have many colleagues in this field who are absolutely living in fear and horror. The people who I work with who do this work across the country are struggling. I have a colleague who is in California who does work with trans kids who had to change her phone number because she got doxedher private information released to hurt her.

I have colleagues in the southern United States whose program was closed because of this and are now like, 'Well, what do we do with all of our patients?' People are really freaking out about this.

This is really about the kids and the adults who need access to this lifesaving care, where multiple studies have demonstrated that gender-affirming care has significant benefit across a range of psychosocial measures for adults and children. There's no question that these treatments are necessary.

Think of the patients and families. I mean, in Texas, parents are worried that the Department of Children and Family Services will come to their house to take their kids away. Are you kidding? What is the human cost of this?

We've got a bunch of people that make up about 1 percent of the country. They are so profoundly stigmatized and discriminated against that they are a completely unempowered group. They're totally vulnerable. They have no power. Many of them are kids. They can't do anything. And they are made into this huge boogeyman.

Q: Does this politicization affect you in California?

A: We have a flourishing program here at UCSF on the adult side, as well as the Child and Adolescent Gender Center. I don't see any state level threat to our programs in California on the horizon. The West Coast, the Northeast, Chicago, I think that programs in these places are safe.

And I think that transpeople here are safe.

The question comes up about what happens if there are federal level actions that start to become more restrictive? For example, if the Federal Aviation Administration were to decide airport bathroom use must be by birth sex. That would impact transgender people's ability to fly. So I am a little worried about that.

Q: It sounds not unlike what some family planning clinics may be experiencing.

A: They have outlawed gender-affirming care for children and adolescents in several states.

Arkansas actually passed a law to make it a felony to prescribe hormones for kids. And the Republican governor vetoed it after meeting with a trans woman who is an activist and a locally elected official in Fayetteville, Arkansas, among other inputs. She had a meeting with him that turned the tide and brought up all these government overreach issues, like getting involved in medical decision-making between doctors and patients. So the governor vetoed it and the legislature overrode the veto. But a judge has stayed that law for the time being.

But Alabama has actually tried to outlaw it. The Department of Health in Florida has effectively said you're doing malpractice and Texas has said we're going to investigate you. It's scary.

If I was doing work in State A that has been made a felony in State B I'd be very scared. And I'd be looking for my institution to step up and say, 'We have your back.'

Q: What else would you like people to know about this issue?

A: These are health issues. These are issues that affect the health of people and that affect our society. The University of California is one of the most powerful institutions on this planet. And as goes the University of California, often goes the rest of the world.

I don't want to politicize. I don't want to tell people how to vote. But people do need to be aware of the issues, the actual science behind them, and then keep this in mind as they get out and vote in local, state and federal elections.

Explore further Transgender youth on puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones have lower rates of depression and suicidal thoughts

Provided by University of California
About 2% of all babies born in the U.S. are conceived using assisted reproductive technology, most commonly through in vitro fertilization. Credit: Shutterstock

How will the overturning of Roe v. Wade impact in vitro fertilization (IVF), the most common form of assisted reproductive technology?

Northwestern Medicine experts talked with Northwestern Now about the possible far-reaching effects on IVF following the end of Roe v. Wade and why physicians are afraid for their patients.

Among their concerns: Will couples be prohibited from destroying frozen embryos and will they be forced to keep storing them and paying fees in perpetuity? Will physicians be prosecuted for embryo destruction if they don't implant successfully? Will pre-implantation and selective transfer of unaffected embryosin cases of genetic diseases such as BRCAbe allowable?

Infertility affects 1 in 8 couples

"IVF is a critical tool to preserve fertility and importantly to treat infertility, a disease that affects at least one in eight couples," said Dr. Kara Goldman, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology in reproductive endocrinology and fertility at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and medical director of Fertility Preservation at Northwestern Medicine.

"IVF did not exist before Roe v. Wade, so we are entering uncharted waters. The impact of overturning Roe v. Wade may have implications and unintended consequences far beyond the reach of abortion. In states where bills are being introduced defining a fetus as a person, or defining life as beginning at fertilization, this could dramatically change the way in vitro fertilization is practiced.

"Physicians like myself who practice reproductive medicine are afraid for our patients. What does this mean for a patient's frozen embryos? When a patient has completed their family, embryos are either donated to research or destroyed. If embryo destruction is outlawed, this will have tremendous ramifications for not only the tens of thousands of embryosand the families who have created those embryos through careful decision-making between the physician and patientbut importantly will have ramifications for the future practice of IVF and the hundreds of thousands of Americans who rely on this technology to build their families."

What about blastocysts (eggs fertilized in a petri dish and allowed to grow)?

"IVF is the Wild West now," said Katie Watson, an attorney, bioethicist and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Feinberg and author of "Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law, and Politics of Ordinary Abortion."

"The largest open question is how statutes banning abortion will or won't be applied to blastocysts created by IVF.

"The Dobbs decision allows states to ban abortion at any moment, and this raises new questions for fertility clinics in the states that make it a crime to intentionally end embryonic life 'from the moment of conception.' Will ambitious prosecutors or citizens authorized by statute to do vigilante enforcement try to stop fertility clinics from destroying unwanted frozen blastocysts? If yes, will they have success with judges willing to interpret vague abortion bans to apply to fertilized eggs outside of a uterus? And, perhaps most likely, will fertility clinics in restrictive states require patients to pay for infinite frozen storage to avoid finding out the answers to these questions, thus increasing the cost of IVF?"

Explore further Frozen eggs more efficient option than in vitro fertilization for women starting families later
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), a prenatal and early child home visiting program, did not improve birth outcomes for low-income mothers in South Carolina. In the coming years, researchers will continue to evaluate other outcomes related to child health and development and the spacing of subsequent births.

The randomized evaluation measured maternal and newborn health as a composite outcome indicating whether a participant experienced any of the following adverse birth outcomes: preterm birth, low birthweight, small for gestational age, or perinatal death. Researchers found that individuals randomized to receive NFP services experienced adverse birth events at a rate of 26.9 percent, compared to a rate of 26.1 percent experienced by individuals randomized to the control groupa statistically insignificant difference. There was also no statistically significant effect on any individual component of the composite, nor on nine other secondary outcomes.

Adverse birth outcomes can lead to mortality, morbidity, and lifelong child developmental challenges. In the United States, there are substantial racial and socioeconomic inequities in these outcomes. Strategies to address these disparities are therefore top priorities for policymakers.

Motivated by the state's high preterm birth rate, the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (SC DHHS) led an innovative expansion of NFP home visiting services between 2016 and 2020 to scale services statewide and learn about the program's impacts. The expansion of NFP services was enabled by a Pay for Success contract that coupled $17 million in philanthropic funding with a Medicaid waiver that supported the project's costs.

To rigorously evaluate the program's impacts, the state commissioned the South Carolina Nurse-Family Partnership Study. The research team is using South Carolina's linked administrative data system to learn about NFP's impacts on health, developmental, education, economic, and other outcomes over a 30-year period. The evaluation was supported and implemented by J-PAL North America, with a research team of academics from MIT, Harvard University, Rutgers University, Tulane University, Boston Children's Hospital, Beth Israel Hospital, and University of Chicago.

NFP is a national maternal and child health program serving more than 60,000 families each year across forty states, the US Virgin Islands, Washington D.C., and many Tribal communities. NFP pairs each participant with a personal nurse who provides home visits starting during the pregnancy until the child's second birthday. From April 2016 through March 2020, 5,670 first-time Medicaid-eligible mothers across urban and rural areas in South Carolina were enrolled into the study. Study eligibility criteria mirrored NFP's eligibility: individuals with a pregnancy less than 28 weeks who had never given birth before, were eligible for Medicaid, and resided in a NFP-served county. Participants were either self-referred or referred through multiple channels, including clinicians, schools, or Medicaid, to one of nine NFP implementing sites embedded in government agencies and hospital systems throughout South Carolina.

Approximately two-thirds of study participants were randomly assigned to receive NFP services, while the remaining individuals received the usual care available to Medicaid-eligible pregnant people in their communities. For individuals assigned to receive NFP services, nurses conducted home visits with participants during pregnancy and through the first two years of the child's life. Nurses tailored activities to clients' strengths, risks, and preferences using motivational interviews, educational tools, health assessments, and goal-setting related to prenatal health, child health and development, and maternal life course. They encouraged health care utilization when needed and made referrals to health and social services.

Reflecting national trends in similar populations, rates of adverse birth outcomes in the trial were relatively high, with approximately 26 percent of moms experiencing an adverse birth outcome. Among non-Hispanic Black individuals, 31 percent experienced an adverse birth outcome. Interrelated structural factors, such as poverty, racism, environmental exposures, and neighborhood characteristics influence both pre-conception and prenatal health, and ultimately affect the risk of adverse birth outcomes. Identifying programs that effectively address adverse birth outcomes is an urgent public policy priority. More evidence is needed on effective interventions to address racial and structural inequities.

The evaluation reports on only a subset of the outcomes of interest. A complete assessment of the overall effectiveness of NFP requires analysis of a wide range of additional outcomes. The study team has not yet assessed two additional primary outcomes focused on birth spacing and child injury, which will be analyzed when the data become available. Over the coming decades, the evaluation will continue to assess program impacts on a range of outcomes related to families' health and well-being, such as other maternal and child health outcomes; child school-readiness and performance; maternal educational attainment; criminal justice involvement; and the use of government programs and social services such as Medicaid, WIC and SNAP. Other research has demonstrated that programs can generate long-term impacts on child and family outcomes even when short-term impacts appear limited.

"As the largest trial of NFPand one of the largest trials of home visiting programs in generalthis study is an exciting opportunity to deepen our understanding," says J-PAL North America Co-Executive Director Vincent Quan. "Large trials like this one enable researchers to examine potential treatment effects on less common but critical health outcomes that require a high degree of statistical power. We are thrilled to support this study and look forward to better understanding the program's impacts over time."

"The results of this study underscore the urgent need to better understand how to address inequities in birth outcomes." says Margaret McConnell, lead author on the study and associate professor of global health economics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "Evaluating efforts to improve maternal and neonatal outcomes requires openness and transparency on the part of programs and invested collaboration between programs, government, researchers, funders, and others. We hope this research partnership with NFP and SC DHHS encourages more organizations to follow the example they have set to rigorously evaluate program impact."

The study is titled "Effect of an Intensive Nurse Home Visiting Program on Adverse Birth Outcomes in a Medicaid-Eligible Population."

Readers interested in learning more about the evaluation of Nurse-Family Partnership are encouraged to visit the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health's dedicated webpage.

Explore further Preventing adverse birth outcomes could boost education, income

More information: Effect of an Intensive Nurse Home Visiting Program on Adverse Birth Outcomes in a Medicaid-Eligible Population, JAMA (2022). Journal information: Journal of the American Medical Association Effect of an Intensive Nurse Home Visiting Program on Adverse Birth Outcomes in a Medicaid-Eligible Population,(2022). DOI: 10.1001/jama.2022.9703
Transmission electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, emerging from human cells. Credit: NIAID

Israel's health ministry approved Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccinations for its youngest children, an official said Tuesday, mirroring a move by the US to allow mRNA shots for those over six months old.

The Israeli approval follows the US Food and Drug Administration granting in June emergency authorisation for Moderna's vaccine for children aged six months to five years, and Pfizer's shots for those between six months and four years old.

A handful of other countries and territories including Argentina, Bahrain, Chile, China, Cuba, Hong Kong and Venezuela were previously offering COVID shots for toddlers, but these did not include mRNA vaccines, regarded as the leading technology for the purpose.

A July 1 letter by Israeli health ministry director general Nachman Ash, sent to AFP on Tuesday, noted two hearings held by a ministry panel, in which Pfizer and Moderna data on the "mild" side effects and efficacy rates were presented.

All members of the expert panel agreed the vaccines were safe, with most of the panel "recommending to vaccinate at-risk babies and children, and to enable the vaccination of children who are not at risk," Ash wrote.

In light of the recommendation, Ash decided "to enable the administering of mRNA COVID-19 vaccinations by Pfizer and Moderna to children aged six months to four or five years," he said.

Over six million Israelis have received at least two COVID-19 vaccination shots, included in them 17 percent of the country's children aged 5-11, which up to the latest approval had been the youngest group eligible for the inoculation.

 2022 AFP
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Researchers at Staffordshire University warn that the rapid expansion of telehealth consultations may increase disparities in access for vulnerable people.

A new study, reported in the International Journal for Equity in Health, showed that the vast majority of Allied Health Services89.4 percentwere planning to continue the use of telehealth services as a method of delivering healthcare post COVID-19 restrictions. Currently Allied Health Professionals are the third largest workforce in the NHS with over four million patient contacts a week.

However, service managers and clinicians taking part in the study reported that a lack of technological skills and limited technology among patients were the main barriers and biggest disadvantages of telehealth.

Clinicians felt that the main advantage for patients was a reduction in the cost of parking and transport to attend appointments as well as the ability for them to work more flexibly.

Dr. Aoife Healy says that "the latest report includes survey data from 658 participants consisting of 119 AHP service managers across 168 AHP services and 539 frontline clinicians. The majority of these people reported that their services were planning to continue using telehealth post-pandemic."

The study concludes that there is a potential that telehealth will be considered inappropriate by patients and thus, underused, negating some of the perceived advantages.

Associate Professor Dr. Nicky Eddison, explained that "telehealth consultations have the potential to transform the way AHP services are delivered, empowering service users, offering an increased choice of access and reducing the burden of treatment for service users with long-term health conditions."

"However, we must ensure service users are at the center of service design, ensuring all voices are heard, and all service users have equity of access to treatment. To ensure this happens we need standardized, robust guidelines for the provision of AHP telehealth consultations."

To ensure allied health professionals (AHPs) embrace the digitization of healthcare in line with the digital framework for AHPs, the recently released AHP strategy for England and the NHS' Long-Term Plan, the research team at Staffordshire University are looking to make sure vulnerable patients do not miss out.

Led by Professor Nachiappan Chockalingam, they are working on new telehealth guidelines to ensure standardization of process and inclusion. This work follows on from the team's recently published work exploring UK AHP professional bodies' guidance on telehealth consultations. This program of work is supported by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and the British Association of Orthotists and Prosthetists.

Professor Chockalingam says that their "findings have an impact beyond the United Kingdom and we anticipate that the telehealth guidelines framework to be published later in the year will be of use globally."

Explore further New data shows surge in telehealth consults amidst COVID19 pandemic

More information: Nicola Eddison et al, The potential impact of allied health professional telehealth consultations on health inequities and the burden of treatment, International Journal for Equity in Health (2022). Nicola Eddison et al, The potential impact of allied health professional telehealth consultations on health inequities and the burden of treatment,(2022). DOI: 10.1186/s12939-022-01689-2

Provided by Staffordshire University
Example of lesion segmentation (red). A video example of lesion segmentation can be viewed through the Schol-AR App by scanning the QR code in the bottom left with a mobile device. Credit: USC Stevens INI

A major expansion of an open-source stroke neuroimaging data set known as ATLAS could give a major boost to stroke recovery research.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every 40 seconds someone in the U.S. has a stroke, making stroke a leading cause of disability. During a stroke, blood flow to part of the brain is cut off. Without oxygen, brain cells cease to function, causing damage to an area of the brain, known as a lesion. Lesions are detected by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and they are a critical aspect that researchers study as they develop, test, and implement stroke recovery programs.

Before studying a lesion, neuroanatomy experts manually draw boundaries on imaging around the lesion in a process called segmentationa time-consuming practice that can be subjective and requires neuroanatomical expertise. Accurate lesion segmentation is critical in stroke rehabilitation research. While manual segmentation is the current gold standard, researchers hope to develop algorithms to automate the practice so they can spend more time examining lesion images with the goal of understanding how lesions impact recovery after a stroke.

Now, a newly expanded data set of brain scans from stroke patients called the Anatomical Tracings of Lesion After Stroke (ATLAS) is set to expedite the automation of lesion segmentation. Led by researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of USC's Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute (Stevens INI), the new release of ATLAS v 2.0 now includes 1,271 stroke MRI images with manually segmented lesions, according to a new paper in Scientific Data, a Nature journal. The hope is the data set will facilitate large-scale stroke recovery research which will eventually allow a clinician to predict a patient's response to therapies based on analysis of the patient's unique scans and data.

"We are thrilled to share this open science resource with the scientific community," says Sook-Lei Liew, Ph.D., lead author of the study and associate professor with joint appointments at the Stevens INI, the Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, the Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. "We hope that our public data set, along with our stroke lesion segmentation challenges, like our ISLES 2022 challenge at MICCAI, our Grand Challenge, and our educational challenge in collaboration with the RAMP studio and our colleagues in Paris will not only spur the creation of robust, powerful algorithms to move the field of stroke neuroimaging forward, but also provide useful educational opportunities for students around the world."

The various challenges hosted by the ATLAS team invite the scientific community to participate in the process of developing and testing algorithms that attempt to automate the lesion segmentation with the greatest accuracy. The ATLAS team also showcases their collaborative strength with researchers at USC and beyond. HoSung Kim, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurology at the Stevens INI, created a neuroimaging analysis pipeline to help standardize the images in the data set. Tyler Ard, Ph.D., assistant professor of research at the Stevens INI and creator of Schol-AR, developed custom software for advanced visualization of the lesioned data set, rendering it into several extremely high-resolution videos and images. Sixteen other co-authors across the university assist with analysis, clinical characterization, and the collection and storage of data.

"Dr. Liew's team exemplifies how researchers here at the Stevens INI approach complex medical questions from a multimodal approach," says Stevens INI Director Arthur W. Toga, Ph.D. "Our faculty members team up with experts across the university and beyond to apply their expertise in machine learning, data visualization, informatics, and neuroradiology to deliver a valuable set of open-source MR images. By gathering all these images and sharing them, we are creating the optimal environment for discovery."

Data from the project are stored by the International Neuroimaging Data-Sharing Initiative (INDI), housed at the Child Mind Institute, and by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), housed at the University of Michigan. So far, thousands of researchers worldwide have downloaded the ATLAS data set.

"Algorithm development using this larger data set, with hidden test and evaluation data sets for machine learning challenges, should lead to more robust solutions. As predictive algorithms improve, our long-term goal is for clinicians to use MRI to inform decisions about stroke patients' treatment. With the progression of this work, we hope to see a future where clinicians can analyze an individual's data to discover their likelihood of responding to different treatments. Using a precision medicine approach, their stroke rehabilitation therapy could be personalized to maximize their recovery," notes Liew.

Explore further MRI stroke data set released by USC research team

More information: For more information about accessing the ATLAS data set, see For more information about accessing the ATLAS data set, see fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/retro/atlas.html Sook-Lei Liew et al, A large, curated, open-source stroke neuroimaging dataset to improve lesion segmentation algorithms, Scientific Data (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41597-022-01401-7 Journal information: Scientific Data
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A third of people who underwent weight-loss surgery at University of Michigan Health from 2018 to 2020 were at high risk of overdosing from prescription drugs, as measured by an algorithm from the state's prescription monitoring program, new research found.

After their operations, these at-risk patients were much more likely to be prescribed a secondary opioid (a different drug from the one given to help them deal with post-surgical pain) than patients at lower risk of overdose.

Patients with high overdose risk scores were also more likely to have been diagnosed with a mental health condition and to go to the emergency room for issues that didn't require hospitalization.

People who are obese often experience chronic painand are more likely to be prescribed opioids to help them cope with that pain.

But previous U-M-led research found that it's also common for patients who undergo bariatric surgery to begin using opioids on a regular basis for the first time after their weight-loss operation.

As a result, the bariatric surgery team at U-M Health had been trying to reduce the amount of opioids they prescribed and thought that determining overdose risk would provide some helpful context for those efforts.

"We recognized that there's obesity related to pain syndromes that we wanted to address in a patient-centric way," said Oliver Varban, M.D., the co-director of the adult bariatric surgery program at University of Michigan Health and an associate professor of surgery at the University of Michigan Medical School. "We wanted to be able to measure that and to provide the appropriate resources for at-risk patients in the context of doing an operation that would improve their overall health."

How to measure overdose risk

Varban and his colleagues used NARxCHECK (abbreviated as Narx) scores developed by the state's prescription drug monitoring program to assess the overdose risk of each patient they studied.

These scores, which range from 0 to 999, are based on a wide range of factors, including the number of drugs prescribed per patient, how recently the drugs were prescribed and how many different providers wrote prescriptions for each patient.

If a person has a Narx score of 200, that means they have 10 times the risk of unintentionally overdosing from prescription drugs as a person with a score of 0.

Typically, about 75% of patients in the state score below a 200 on any given day, but the researchers found that 32 percent of the U-M patients were above that threshold.

The U-M team then looked at data from the Michigan Bariatric Surgery Collaborative, a statewide initiative that aims to improve the quality of bariatric surgery, to determine the number of refills and emergency room visits within a month of each patient's weight-loss procedure.

Eighty-three percent of patients with a Narx score over 200 received more than 10 pills of an opioid that was not the same as the one prescribed to help them cope with pain as they recovered from their surgeriescompared to zero patients with a Narx score under 100.

In more than two-thirds of these instances, the health care providers who wrote these additional prescriptions were not part of the bariatric surgery program at U-M Health.

Could time limits on opioid prescriptions reduce misuse?

In addition, no patients with a Narx score under 100 had what's known as a preventable emergency room visitwhen someone visits the emergency room for a health concern that is not severe enough to require hospitalization nor related to a complication from surgerywhile 8% of patients with a score of 200 and above did.

"Our goal and focus is still to limit the amount of opioids prescribed," Varban said. "The one thing that we would probably change based on these results is to do more follow-up amongst patients with a higher Narx score to establish better non-narcotic pain control options and to help patients avoid unnecessary emergency room visits."

The research was published in Surgical Endoscopy.

More information: Phillip Yang et al, Patient characteristics and outcomes among bariatric surgery patients with high narcotic overdose scores, Surgical Endoscopy (2022). Phillip Yang et al, Patient characteristics and outcomes among bariatric surgery patients with high narcotic overdose scores,(2022). DOI: 10.1007/s00464-022-09205-x
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

More than half of all people incarcerated in the U.S. smoke cigarettes, a hidden health crisis that has long been under-researched and under-resourced.

Pamela Valera, an assistant professor in the Department of Urban-Global Public Health at the Rutgers School of Public Health, is leading efforts to change both.

Together with colleagues from Rutgers and the University of Southern California, as well as funding from the National Institutes of Health, Valera and her team implemented a tobacco-cessation program in seven prisons in one Northeastern state. They then measured rates of smoking relapse.

What they found is that for programs in prison to effectively curb smoking, at least four weeks of direct intervention is required, followed by months of substance dependence group counseling. The results are published in the Journal of Correctional Health Care.

"Tobacco smoke is a vital part of prison culture because people who are incarcerated smoke as a way to have social support and to distract themselves from emotional distress," said Valera. "Quitting can be very hard on anyone. It's doubly hard for an inmate."

To determine optimal program durationand to assess how interest, confidence, motivation and expectations are associated with smoking abstinence in prisonresearchers recruited 177 male smokers. On average, participants had been smoking cigarettes for about 27 years and were moderately or highly dependent.

Using a group-based counseling model, inmates were provided access to nicotine patches and enrolled in a six-week smoking cessation program.

At the end of each session, participants were given an exhaled carbon monoxide (CO) test to determine whether they continued to smoke or had abstained. At the end of the course, 54 participants were recorded as having quit. Divergence in CO levels among those who had stopped smoking and those who continued began in the fourth week.

Incarcerated smokers typically don't have the appropriate cessation resources to help them quit. Despite many prisons adopting smoke-free policies, nicotine consumption remains high in many prison settings, said Valera. For instance, in some jails and prison facilities, electric cigarette use has spiked in recent years, as has a robust black market for tobacco. What this means for those who want to stop is that they must do so "cold turkey," Valera said.

Valera said reining in this hidden health crisis is essential. "Taxpayers pay for the health care of incarcerated people," she said. "As smokers in prison age, the cost to treat them goes up. Correctional settings provide an opportunity to address the high cost of addiction and tobacco dependence."

"My ultimate goal is to get more attention to this space and for the academic community to consider working with and for people in correctional settings," Valera said.

Explore further Researchers highlight need for more smoking cessation programs in state prisons

More information: Nicholas Acuna et al, Examining Attitudes, Expectations, and Tobacco Cessation Treatment Outcomes Among Incarcerated Tobacco Smokers, Journal of Correctional Health Care (2022). Journal information: Journal of Correctional Health Care Nicholas Acuna et al, Examining Attitudes, Expectations, and Tobacco Cessation Treatment Outcomes Among Incarcerated Tobacco Smokers,(2022). DOI: 10.1089/jchc.20.08.0074
Credit: Pixabay

New evidence suggests that sleep difficulties, long thought to be a symptom of adolescent depression, might actually come first.

A new paper, published in Nature Reviews Psychology and led by Flinders University, argues that a combination of adolescent sleep biology and psychology uniquely predispose young people to developing depression.

Flinders University graduate Dr. Cele Richardson, now a Psychological Sciences lecturer at The University of Western Australia, says a delayed circadian rhythm, restricted sleep duration and greater opportunity for negative thinking while trying to fall asleep were all contributing factors.

"Adolescents are the most chronically sleep-restricted sub-population across human development, in both western and eastern societies, with data from across the world suggesting they sleep too late and too little," she says.

The researchers found that a combination of developmental changes to the biological systems that control sleeping and waking during this time in people's lives, rather than factors like the use of technology in the evening, provide unique pathways to depression.

"The first factor is a slower build-up of sleepiness across the day, which delays the onset of sleep in older adolescents," Dr. Richardson says. "Although teens fall asleep later, school start times remain early, which means it is hard for young people to achieve an optimal 9.3 hours of sleep. And this sleep restriction in turn increases depression symptoms.

"Secondly, difficulty falling asleep is further worsened by a delay in circadian rhythm timing which occurs across adolescent development and having a late timed body clock is consistently associated with increased risk for depression".

"These physiologically driven changes in sleep provide the opportunity for a third pathway to depression that is more psychologicalthe opportunity for repeated negative thinking (worry and rumination), which again is linked to higher levels of depression in adolescents."

Researchers say evidence-based sleep interventionsincluding bright light therapy, the use of melatonin and cognitive-behaviour therapy techniquescould be a novel pathway to alleviating depressive symptoms in young people.

"Further research into the role of sleep in depression may also help us to develop more effective prevention approaches, so that we can stop the onset of depression, at least for some young people," says Dr. Richardson, who is conducting a clinical trial at UWA where bright light therapy will be added to a common treatment for depression to see whether this improves outcomes for adolescents.

Flinders Institute for Sleep Health researcher Dr. Gorica Micic, also a co-author on the new article, says schools and communities could incorporate sleep education in curricula to support the well-being of young people at this vulnerable age.

"Given that underlying biological and physiological factors significantly contribute to this manifestation, basic sleep knowledge and what happens during sleep in adolescence can help young people better understand and manage their sleep," Dr. Micic says.

Flinders University researcher Dr. Michelle Short said that the onus is also on parents.

"Families could support teen sleep and mental health by setting limits around bedtimes on school nights, while schools could allow students start classes at 8.30am or later and abstain from scheduling extra-curricular activities before school," Dr. Short says.

Explore further Sleep deprivation increases teen angst

More information: Michael Gradisar et al, Sleep's role in the development and resolution of adolescent depression, Nature Reviews Psychology (2022). Michael Gradisar et al, Sleep's role in the development and resolution of adolescent depression,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s44159-022-00074-8
File photo shows the White House and a stop sign in Washington DC, the United States. [Photo/Xinhua]

By Liu Qiang

The United States is holding the world's largest naval exercise, Rim of the Pacific 2022, with 25 partner countries from June 29 to Aug 4. While the Russia-Ukraine conflict has already seriously impacted the global economy and international relations, RIMPAC 2022 will intensify the geopolitical game in the Asia-Pacific region.

The US has been pushing ahead with its "Indo-Pacific strategy" using all its economic, diplomatic and military might. Since the first "Indo-Pacific strategy" report was issued in 2019, the US has intensified its efforts to build new alliances and consolidate the old ones, while strengthening its military presence in the region. To this end, it has been enhancing its combat effectiveness based on its information systems and alliance mechanisms.

Also, the US is desperately trying to expand North Atlantic Treaty Organization into the Asia-Pacific or build a NATO-like bloc in the region, and has garnered the support of Japan, the Republic of Korea and Australia to further its goal using the "China threat" ploy.

As for Japan, its Self Defense Force has established a "Space Operations Squadron" and cyber defense units. The country has also been trying to amend Article 9 of its pacifist Constitution to transform its defense-only forces into a truly offensive military with the constitutional sanction to attack enemy bases.

Australia, too, has accelerated its military buildup through AUKUS, a strategic alliance of Australia, the United Kingdom and the US, and Quad, a US-Japan-Australia-India strategic partnership. Under the AUKUS framework, the UK and the US will help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines. The country is also building a nuclear submarine base on its east coast.

RIMPAC 2022 is a real-time combat exercise and part of the US' "Indo-Pacific strategy". The drills include anti-submarine and air defense exercises, mine clearance and amphibious operations, counter-piracy exercises, diving and salvage operations, and explosive ordnance disposal, all in the name of countering the "China threat". Since China began modernizing its naval forces and improving its naval combat capability, the US has labeled it No. 1"strategic competitor" in the Asia-Pacific.

Joint military drills with other countries have been an important military operation concept of the US. And the "Indo-Pacific strategy" is aimed at strengthening the US' alliances and enhancing its "comprehensive deterrence" capability.

About 25,000 personnel from 26 countries, 38 surface ships, 4 submarines and more than 170 aircraft are participating in RIMPAC 2022. Through the largest naval exercise, the US wants to demonstrate to the world its power to align with other Asia-Pacific countries to target any country.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has created new divisions in the international community, and the US' Cold War mentality and desperation to build alliances have changed the international security landscape. As a result, the old international strategic order is crumbling, while a new one is yet to take shape. To contain China, the US wants to consolidate old alliances and form new ones with more kindred spirits and timid partners, as reflected in RIMPAC 2022.

The core objective of the "Indo-Pacific strategy" is to deter and counter China in the East China Sea, the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits. And in the US' eyes, military drills to deal with simulated conflicts in the South China Sea can improve its chances of winning a real military conflict in the future.

China has maritime disputes with Japan in the East China Sea, with some ASEAN member states in the South China Sea, and has to deal with the Taiwan question across the Taiwan Straits. Instead of coordinating to help solve the problems, the US has been stirring up more troubles so China remains preoccupied with them while it strengthens its military presence in the region.

In particular, the US has been trying to establish its maritime superiority over China. It has already held naval drills in the Asia-Pacific with Japan, France and Australia, with RIMPAC 2022 being a major demonstration of its combat capability.

The "Indo-Pacific strategy" has had a severe impact on regional security and accelerated militarization in the region, sparking an arms race. And the increasing sale of arms in the region by the US has made regional arms control even more complicated.

According to the US, 11 Asian countries and two Oceania countries are participating in RIMPAC 2022. The US used military tensions and maritime disputes in the South China Sea as a pretext to ensure the participation of Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand in the naval exercise.

As State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe said in June, the aim of the "Indo-Pacific strategy" is to "create small circles under the pretext of freedom and openness". It "is designed to contain another country by coercing regional countries and hyping up conflicts against certain countries".

In fact, "the Indo-Pacific strategy is one that causes division, instigates confrontation and undermines peace in the Asia-Pacific. It serves only the US' interests, and therefore is doomed to fail", Lieutenant General Zhang Zhenzhong said.

The US is hosting RIMPAC 2022 in the name of safeguarding regional security, but in reality it is disrupting regional security. The naval exercise is a super spoiler. By stirring up trouble and coercing countries in the region to help it establish its strategic superiority over China, the US is in the ultimate analysis trying to maintain its global hegemony.

The author is director of the Academic Council, and a senior research fellow at Shanghai Center for RimPac Strategic and International Studies.
Left Image shows area with fracture (in the box). This may not be easily picked up by an inexperienced radiographer. Right image shows an AI-generated heatmap, directing the radiographer to check the area. Credit: Clare Rainey and MURA dataset, publicly available via https://stanfordmlgroup.github.io/competitions/mura/

A new study shows that many UK radiographers have limited understanding of how new smart computer systems diagnose problems found on scans such as X-rays, MRI and CT scans. "Artificial Intelligence (AI) is on the verge being more widely introduced into X-ray departments. This research shows we need to educate radiographers so that they can be sure of diagnosis, and know how to discuss the role of AI in radiology with patients and other healthcare practitioners," said lead researcher Clare Rainey.

Radiographers are the specialists who patients meet at the time of the scan. They are trained to recognise the variety of problems found on medical scans, such as broken bones, joint problems, and tumours, and are traditionally considered to bridge the gap between the patient and technology. There is a severe national shortage of radiographers and radiologists, and the NHS is about to introduce AI systems to help aid diagnosis. Now a study presented at the UK Imaging and Oncology Conference in Liverpool (with simultaneous peer-reviewed publicationsee below) suggests that, despite impressive performances reported by developers of AI systems, many radiographers are unsure how these new smart systems work.

Clare Rainey and Dr. Sonyia McFadden from Ulster University surveyed Reporting Radiographers on their understanding of how AI worked (a "Reporting Radiographer" provides formal reports on X-ray images). Of the 86 radiographers surveyed, 53 (62%) said they were confident in how an AI system reaches its decision. However, less than a third of respondents would be confident communicating the AI decision to stakeholders, including patients, carers and other healthcare practitioners.

The study also found that if the AI confirmed their diagnosis then 57% of respondents would have more overall confidence in the finding, however, if the AI disagreed with their opinion then 70% would seek an additional opinion.

Clare Rainey said, "This survey highlights issues with UK reporting radiographers' perceptions of AI used for image interpretation. There is no doubt that the introduction of AI represents a real step forward, but this shows we need resources to go into radiography education to ensure that we can make the best use of this technology. Patients need to have confidence in how the radiologist or radiographer arrives at an opinion."

Modern forms of AI, where computer-based systems learn as they go along, are appearing in many places in everyday life, from self-learning robots in factories to self-driving cars and self-landing aircraft. Now the NHS is preparing to introduce these learning systems to their imaging services, such as X-rays and MRIs. It is not expected that these computerised systems will replace the final judgment of a skilled radiographer, however they may offer a high level first, or second opinion on X-ray findings. This will help reduce time needed for diagnosis and treatment, as well as well as giving a 'belt and braces' backup to human decision.

Clare Rainey said, "It's not strictly necessary for radiographers to understand everything about how these AI systems work; after all, I don't understand how my TV or smartphone works, but I know how to use them. However, they do need to understand how the system makes the choices it does, so that they can both decide whether to accept the findings, and be able to explain these choices to patients."

As Clare Rainey is unable to travel to Liverpool, this work is presented at the UKIO by Dr. Nick Woznitza. Dr. Woznitza said, "AI is really a range of techniques, which can have exciting impact on what scans can tell us. My own group is working on how AI is applied to lung scans, which has the potential to help with diagnosing conditions form lung cancer to COVID."

UKIO president, Dr. Rizwan Malik (Bolton NHS Foundation Trust), who was not involved in the study, said, "Radiographers are positive about the introduction of AI, but like any new technology there's a learning process. As the authors indicate, this calls out for more investment in appropriate focused education and training. The introduction of Artificial Intelligence promises that the NHS will deliver a more efficient and more cost-effective use of radiology resources, as well as a more reassuring experience for patients. We need to make sure that this investment in teaching and training is widely available to all radiographers to ensure that we make the best use of this technology."

More information: C. Rainey et al, UK reporting radiographers' perceptions of AI in radiographic image interpretationCurrent perspectives and future developments, Radiography (2022). C. Rainey et al, UK reporting radiographers' perceptions of AI in radiographic image interpretationCurrent perspectives and future developments,(2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.radi.2022.06.006

Provided by UK Imaging and Oncology Congress (UKIO)
Akula Venkatram. Credit: University of California - Riverside

Imagine a future with safer bars, restaurants, health clinics, and other public indoor spaces where the risk of the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 is greatly minimized.

Research by Akula Venkatram, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of California, Riverside, suggests this could happen in the not-too-distant future. An important step, he said, is a simple change in the direction of the air forced through indoor gathering spaces by heating, air conditioning, and ventilation systems.

Fresh air should be emitted from floor vents, while the outgoing air should be removed with ceiling vents. Such systems would allow for a continuous upward movement of air that would most expediently carry away virus-containing microdroplets exhaled by infected people.

"You don't want to have horizontal transport," which can spread viruses from person to person, Venkatram said. "You should encourage vertical transport of air. It doesn't matter whether the air is coming from the top or bottom, but it's easier for it to come from the bottom because your breath is warm. So it goes up automatically. You might as well take advantage of that."

Venkatram's conclusions are based on a fresh look at data from several previous studies about the behavior of aerosols, or airborne particles, in indoor settings. Venkatram and his collaborator, Jeffrey Weil of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, published their findings and recommendations for ventilation systems last year in a paper published in Indoor Air, titled "Modeling Turbulent Transport of Aerosols Inside Rooms Using Eddy Diffusivity."

For his analysis, Venkatram tapped his decades of experience researching how air pollution behaves outdoors. This work includes his collaboration with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop pollution dispersion models that are used by regulatory agencies to estimate the air quality impact of pollutants emitted by sources such as power plants and vehicles on roads.

Explore further How mechanical ventilation affects the trajectories of aerosols that may carry viral particles

More information: Akula Venkatram et al, Modeling turbulent transport of aerosols inside rooms using eddy diffusivity, Indoor Air (2021). Journal information: Indoor Air Akula Venkatram et al, Modeling turbulent transport of aerosols inside rooms using eddy diffusivity,(2021). DOI: 10.1111/ina.12901
A series of severe thunderstorms should roll over the Missoula Valley and surrounding region starting Wednesday afternoon through Friday.

The Thursday alert really stands out as the highest likelihood for a few strong storms here, National Weather Service meteorologist Jeff Kitzmiller said on Tuesday. Each day there will be a fair amount of storms, but its those really strong ones were worried about.

The combination of a broad low-pressure area off the Pacific Northwest Coast pushing against a growing high-pressure system in the Central Plains has drawn a steady flow of moist air into the Northern Rockies of northwest Montana, according to NWS forecast models. That should keep temperatures in the Missoula, Bitterroot and Flathead valleys in the mid-80s  a few degrees warmer than normal for this time of year.

Missoula's high for Wednesday and Thursday should be 88, with nighttime lows dropping to 58.

It will also generate afternoon and evening thunderstorms. North-central Idaho and much of western Montana from West Glacier to Darby will have fast-moving fronts packing brief heavy rain and lightning.

By Thursday, storm cells with 30- to 40-mph winds, heavy rain and possibly hail will move through the valleys. That could also bring dangerous conditions to boaters on area lakes. Missoula, Hamilton and Butte have a 15% chance of severe storms, while Polson, Kalispell and West Glacier have a 5% chance of similar damaging storms.

Its always good to have a plan if theres lightning, Kitzmiller said. Do I have cover or a safe place to go to?

Conditions should moderate into a drier, breezier pattern by the weekend. High temperatures should be in the low 80s.
New cases of COVID continue to climb in Missoula County amid a surge that has been impacting communities across the country.

On Tuesday, the County Health Department reported 16 new cases among residents, bringing the county to 543 active cases  a level Missoula County hasnt seen since February.

The coronavirus is constantly mutating, but two new subvariants of omicron, BA.4 and BA.4, account for nearly 70% of new cases reported in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last week, the Missoula City-County Health Department issued new guidance, encouraging widespread mask use by all individuals while indoors, regardless of vaccination status.

Missoula County remains in the CDCs high-risk COVID category, along with 19 other Montana counties, according to the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. Additionally, there are 16 counties in the state that are medium-risk, and 20 that are low-risk.

Missoula Countys seven-day positivity rate remains at 18.15%.

Country residents between the ages of 30-39 account for 18.6% of all active cases  the most of any age demographic. Those between the ages of 20-29 make up 15.5% of cases, and residents between the ages of 40-49 account for 13.8%.

No new deaths have been reported in the last week. There have been 211 deaths of Missoula County residents due to COVID-related illness.

There are 13 people currently hospitalized due to COVID infection in the county, down from 15 who were hospitalized as of last Monday. Of the 13 total that are hospitalized, seven are county residents.

During the omicron wave that hit Missoula County this past winter, unvaccinated individuals were hospitalized at a rate 3.4 times higher and died at a rate 4.72 times higher than those who are vaccinated, according to the county health department.

All individuals over the age of 6 months are eligible for COVID vaccines at this time.

There are also treatment options available for those who test positive for COVID. However time is of the essence as most of the available drugs must be taken within five days of the onset of symptoms.

Vaccine appointments and treatment options can be found online at missoulainfo.com.
The first step to producing a nationally recognized podcast is to find a compelling story.

For sibling duos Leif and Erika Fredrickson and Zach and Chad Dundas, the murder of labor union organizer Frank Little was that story.

All four are born-and-bred Montanans with family ties to Butte, and thusly were familiar with the story of Littles murder. They grew up together in Missoula and went to Hellgate High School.

Leif said that the four of them worked on various, smaller projects together over time: zines, the school newspaper, and even, for Leif and Zach, a band.

The details of how the Death in the West podcast was born are a little hazy, but the gist is that all four people were interested in telling and investigating Littles story in some way. Zach, for his part, was working on a book project related to Dashiell Hammett and Butte, how it intersects with crime fiction and The Great Detective, a book Zach previously wrote on the pop-cultural history of Sherlock Holmes. According to Zach, the book hadnt quite come into focus.

Hammetts first novel, Red Harvest, is set in Poisonville, a pseudonym for Butte, and put hard-boiled crime novels on the map. Its also rumored the Hammett was offered money to kill Little, so the topics intersected.

Little was a labor organizer who was brutally murdered on August 1, 1917, in Butte. No one was ever tried for his killing.

Meanwhile Leif, Erika and Chad were considering doing a project specifically on Little, Zach said.

We joined forces when we all realized we were working around same material, Zach said. It seemed silly for four people who knew each other so well to work on two different projects about the same idea.

As for why the group decided on a podcast, Chad said: I think it was probably my fault.

Chad, Zach and Erika, have all worked as journalists and editors, while Leif is a historian. Chad said hes worked for the past six or seven years on a mixed-martial arts podcast because he was an MMA reporter, so he was somewhat familiar with the medium and interested in true crime. None of the others had worked on a podcast before.

I seem to recall saying hey well get into this, maybe well get funding, advertising money, grant money to pay ourselves, Chad said. It took two years to make the show and none of those things happened. Im just glad that all of these people are still my friends, he joked.

Step 2: Just start

While the group did try to get sponsors and funding before producing the podcast, Erika said, they had little luck.

Advice we got from people was: Go as if youre not going to get funding. Erika said.

They came up with name, Death in the West, and began researching, writing scripts, and getting sponsors. The sponsors werent nationally recognizable names, but rather, local sponsors, like Clearwater Credit Union, Clyde Coffee, and Ear Candy Music in Missoula, along with a couple of others.

Erika said that while getting local sponsors for a podcast they hoped would attract a national audience seemed different at first, but the group ultimately embraced it and received some positive feedback.

It kind of started out as a little bit, at first  not embarrassing but  we were trying to get listenership beyond Montana, we wanted listeners across US and the world, so it felt weird to have a sponsor of a coffee shop in Missoula, Erika said. We didnt have any other choices and we loved our sponsors. They didnt really need advertising, they just wanted to be a part of our project.

The group also got part of its funding from the group Humanities Montana.

She said the group looked at the local ads like a sort of travel guide, telling people from out-of-state places they could check out if they were able to travel to Missoula.

The podcasts local flair doesnt stop at the ads, though, and extends to the music the podcast uses, which is mostly sourced from musicians in Missoula and Butte.

Im super proud to have original music, Zach said.

Death in the West is a combination of what The New Yorkers Goings On About Town called rigorous reporting, memorable details, and sophisticated sound design comprised of field interviews, archival recordings and the local music.

Step 3: Let the process surprise you

Each member of the group said the most gratifying aspect was working with their close friends, and getting to see each person use their talents to make something.

Getting to do the project with my brother and really good friends is very gratifying, Zach said. This award is very nice. Im proud we were able to pull it off.

It was fascinating to see everyone bring strengths to the project and to see the finished product, Chad said.

Zach became the narrative voice for the podcast, with the other members jumping in occasionally to advertise the podcasts sponsors. Hed never narrated a podcast before, but said he quickly got into a groove and enjoyed the experience.

He said he and Chad would sit together wearing headphones, despite being hundreds of miles apart  Zach being in Portland and Chad being in Missoula  and sometimes record an entire episode in one sitting.

I would end the session almost sore, he said. It was more physically taxing than I expected.

Chad designed the website and mixed most of the audio, although Portland-based graphic designer Jonny Ashcroft designed the podcasts logo and they got some sound mixing help from Missoula-based storyteller Chris Higgins.

(Chads) shown talents that even us who knew him since grade school didnt even know he had, Erika said. He has a good eye and a good ear for design.

Leif, being the groups chief historian, led a bulk of the researching efforts, and all four members wrote and edited the script.

Although everyone in the group was familiar with writing, podcast writing was something altogether different for all of them.

Its kind of been a great challenge, because all of us are print people, Erika said. But learning the audio part is a challenge of paring down words and creating space in between, reminding listeners and providing sign posting like you dont have to in print.

Another surprising thing about this process was how difficult it was.

Writing all the words out that youre going to say in a podcast and trying to fit them into 45 minutes and fit in things like interviews and field audio and music, bringing all that together was a tremendous amount of work, Leif said.

We didnt know that at the time, he said. But thats probably good, because I dont know that we wouldve done that if we knew.

Chad said one thing that surprised him was what students in Montana History Classes learn about Little in school is mostly wrong. In the historical record, Little is described as a half-breed, a hobo-agitator, and illiterate, all of which are either over-blown truths or entirely fabricated.

In the historical record, hes described as caricature of a firebrand guy who breezed into town for two minutes and got himself murdered, Chad said. When in fact, Little went to Quaker school as a kid, and probably started the rumors of his illiteracy himself to curry favor with the people he was trying to help as part of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Arguably, what surprised the group most was not only the positive feedback the podcast received, but the breadth of that feedback.

The group started the podcast in the summer of 2018, but Leif said that because they all have day jobs, there were times when they had to put the podcast off for other things. However, in January or February of 2020, they buckled down for six to 10 months so they could start releasing episodes. The first episode was released in September 2020.

Step 4: Get Feedback

In addition to the write-up in The New Yorker, Death in the West was ranked six out of ten on a top podcast list on online publication Uproxx in 2020. It was the only independent podcast on the list, and was up there with podcasts produced by outlets like The Atlantic.

It was also on a Rolling Stone list of 7 Podcasts to Stream This November, in Portland Monthly, and a couple of other places, according to Leif.

Leif was eventually approached by a fellow historian who volunteered with the American Association for State and Local History and encouraged to apply for the Award of Excellence, which he and his co-hosts were awarded in June 2022.

We were told by a number of people that they wouldnt expect us to be able to do this series, Zach said, listing an estimated number of $800,000.

Kristjana Eyjolfsson, who works at the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula volunteers as the Montana State Representative for the AASLH, knew Leif because theyre both historians who live in Missoula, she said. The AASLH Montana state representative is supposed to find projects that they think might qualify for the award and encourage them to apply.

The application is intense, Eyjolfsson said, and she said that at first Leif wasnt sure he could get it all done. This year, 53 projects from 31 states won the award, and Death in the West was the only one in Montana. The award is not competitive, Eyjolfsson said. The number of winners depends on the number of people who meet the criteria, and not simply being deemed better than other entrants.

Eyjolfsson said some of the criteria is as follows:

The project embraces difficult history, uses primary sources and looks at things that are difficult for us to think about, all of which she said the podcast did, specifically by looking at the lynching of Little. The podcast doesnt take it at face value and, tried to understand a difficult part of history from as many angles and layers as they could.

She also said the podcast built diversity and inclusiveness by analyzing social class and geography.

It tells really well thought out, really engaging history, but also engages people who wont pick up 500-page book about Frank Little, but will listen to a podcast, she said.

Eyjolfsson said she called down to Nashville and was talking to someone at AASLH to ask about what kinds of projects she should be looking at. The two started talking about Montana, she said, because the person she was talking to was planning a summer vacation, and Eyjolfsson mentioned Death in the West.

She said I love that podcast, Eyjolfsson said. That would be a perfect thing to look at. It was right in front of my face the whole time, and it didnt occur to me.

Part of what made the podcast successful was that it wasnt just about Little, but the history of mining and often violent class conflict surrounding the time.

I loved the parallels I could see between labor history in the early 1900s and the division and crazy things that are happening in our own time, Eyjolfsson said. Theyre not blatant, but I cant help but listen and see the familiarities.

According to Leif, while the podcast received positive responses from all over, one of the really important responses was from the people of Butte.

We wanted to do justice to the place that Butte was, Leif said. One of the major characters of the podcast, I think is Butte itself.

He and his co-hosts said they are humbled by and proud of the recognition theyve received both locally and nationally.

Were really humbled by (the award) because theres a lot of wonderful history projects, Erika said. We werent just competing with podcasts, and that felt really good.

Kim Cohn, archivist at the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives, wrote a letter of recommendation for the podcasts application for the award. Although the Archives did provide many of the recordings, photo and other historical materials for the podcasts, Kim herself wasnt involved, and was therefore able to write a recommendation.

Cohn said she was aware the other archivists were working on it, and then shed heard somewhere else that it was released, and listened to it on her drive to Boise last summer.

As someone who works daily in Butte history, it really rang true, Cohn said. It told a lot of very true stories, and relied not so much on myth but covering the truth. So I really appreciated that.

There will be a presentation of the awards at a special reception during the 2022 AASLH Annual Conference in Buffalo, New York, in September. Leif said the group isn't planning on attending.
Meteorologists at the National Weather Service in Missoula are warning residents of southwest Montana that severe thunderstorms could be headed this way.

These thunderstorms could also bring damaging wind gusts, large hail and heavy rainfall, and are predicted through Friday, with the strongest storms expected on Thursday.

With these storms can come strong winds and hail, said Jeff Kitsmiller, NWS meteorologist, with wind gusts of over 60 miles per hour and 1 inch or greater hail.

The NWS is putting the risk of damaging winds and large hail at 15%, and the office will continue to monitor the risk levels.

According to Kitsmiller, the atmospheric moisture in the area is currently pretty high, about one to two times higher than normal. His office will be looking for these weather disturbances to come out of the south.

Thursdays high for Butte is expected to reach about 80 degrees, an added component when predicting severe storms.

Taking into account the moisture and the warm temperatures, Kitsmiller thinks Thursday will have a pretty good coverage of thunderstorms, although Friday has a high chance as well.

Thursday appears to have all the pieces, said Kitsmiller. Its probably a good day not to park under the trees and if you have a place to protect your vehicle, do so.

It was just a little over two years ago when Butte was last hit with damaging winds.

Constant winds battered Butte on June 13, 2020, and downed at least 15 power lines. Many residents were without power for most of the day and well into the night.

To make matters worse, as the wind was whipping, two grass fires erupted as well. One fire was out on Basin Creek Road, the other in Blacktail Canyon.

The gusty winds uprooted trees throughout the Mining City. In addition, several homes and businesses suffered broken windows and roof damage.

The highest gust for that day occurred, according to the NWS, around 2 p.m. at 63 miles per hour.
Each year in late May and early June, trout feast and anglers flock to waterways for the giant salmonfly hatch, when the ecologically vital bugs emerge from streams as nymphs and hatch out of the water into winged adults before reproducing and dying, leaving behind only the "shucks" they emerged from clinging to brush on the shoreline.

Growing up to 3 inches long, adult giant salmonflies are the largest of the stonefly family. They are so substantial that osprey, which generally consume fish, have been observed snatching up airborne salmonflies.

On this weeks episode, Joshua Murdock, outdoors reporter for the Missoulian, talks about giant salmonfly populations declining in some streams across the West and how researchers at University of Montana are trying to understand what factors affect a bug that is essential to trout and the economies of fishing towns.

This podcast is created in partnership across five newsrooms  the Billings Gazette, the Helena Independent Record, the Missoulian, the Montana Standard and the Ravalli-Republic. You can support this podcast and our efforts by subscribing. Visit any of these newspapers websites, and click on the Become a Member button at the top of the home page. We appreciate your support of local journalism.
A flash flood hit Lewis and Clark County on Sunday evening, pelting the ground with hail and sending a small river of rainwater rising to wheel wells and lapping at doors at businesses in the downtown Helena area.

Among the places reporting damage were the YWCA Helena and Lewis & Clark Library.

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood had warning for the county until 9:15 p.m. Sunday.

Up to 1 inch of rain has fallen, the NWS stated. Flash flooding is already occurring.

Matt Ludwig, meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said officials were aware of a chance of severe thunderstorms, but thought it would hit south of Helena.

He said it appeared to be a super cell thunderstorm that crossed the Continental Divide.

"This is a dangerous and life-threatening situation," weather officials said.

Places that saw flash flooding included Helena, East Helena and Spring Meadow Lake State Park.

Postings on social media showed a small river flowing down Last Chance Gulch and floodwaters slapping up against the doors of businesses.

Ludwig said there were also reports of flooding along Winnie Avenue.

Weather service officials warned the heavy rain would impact creeks, streams, urban areas and underpasses.

Helena Fire Chief Jon Campbell said he had heard through his team that the 911 center received so many calls that the volume, along with weather, had affected the system. He said there were dozens of calls of trees down and pending welfare and other calls. He said many people were able to resolve the issues themselves.

He said there was a report of people trapped on Mount Helena, but they were able to get off the mountain before rescuers arrived.

Campbell said there were also several reports of flooding among residents and businesses along the citys downtown.

The main house of the YWCA Helena was among the harder-hit places reporting flooding in its basement.

Executive Director Jen Gursky said there was one to two inches of standing water in 2,000 square feet of space. She said several mattresses and childrens beds were ruined.

I think everything in there is a complete loss, she said.

It is also an area with hardwood floors where childrens classes, parenting classes and other classes are held.

The basement is a sad place to flood because it is where we keep all of our storage, all of our baby stuff, Gursky said.

She said a water restoration company was called out to help with the damage and fans are set up throughout the area.

Gursky and Kellie Dold, director of development and marketing for YWCA Helena, made a plea on Facebook for help from the community.

We are experiencing some flooding in our basement and were reaching out to you for help, Gursky said.

Dold said they would be grateful for any donation to help with the flooding.

People can donate at YWCAhelena.org/donate.

Patricia Spencer, Lewis & Clark Library spokeswoman, said the library sustained mild water damage and no books were destroyed.

She said water came in from Last Chance Gulch on the southeast side of the building. She said the maintenance crew responded quickly.

The library has recently undergone $6 million in renovations.

Everyones stomach sort of fell when they heard about the flooding, she said.

Spencer said the library plans to reopen at noon Tuesday.

To support Lewis & Clark Library, visit www.lclibrary.org/233/Support-the-Library.

Montana Book Co. at 331 N. Last Chance Gulch posted Sunday on social media that it had survived that "freak flood" just fine.

"Cannot say that for everyone," the business said on Twitter. "Backed-up toilets, standing water, flooded basements around downtown. Be patient as folks get things cleaned up."

Gov. Greg Gianforte commented on the flood and said on social medial Monday that state employees with General Services Division are assessing the extent of damage to buildings in the Capitol Complex.

Ludwig said the storm moved on to northern Meagher County.

Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton said he had heard some reports of flooding in Helena, but none in the county outside of town.

The weather service urged people to be cautious while driving and encountering flooded roads.

"Turn around, don't drown ... Most flood deaths occur in vehicles," weather officials said.

The Helena Area Community Foundation, in partnership with the United Way of the Lewis and Clark Area, opened a fund to provide emergency funding to local nonprofits impacted by the flooding.

Both HACF and United Way will update websites as local needs are assessed. A nonprofit that has had damage should contact Emily Frazier at emilyf@helenaareacommunityfoundation.org and let her know what supplies are needed in order to share that information with the community.

Funds donated to this campaign will be distributed as grants to local nonprofits. If, for any reason, more funding is raised than is needed for flash flood relief, those funds will be retained until another emergency impacts our community.

For more information, contact Frazier at emilyf@helenaareacommunityfoundation.org or (406) 459-0928.
NEW DELHI (AP)  Twitter on Tuesday challenged the Indian government in court over its recent orders to take down some content on the social media platform, media outlets reported.

The lawsuit was filed in the Karnataka High Court in southern Bengaluru city and comes after the Indian government in February warned company executives of criminal action if they failed to comply with the takedown orders, the Press Trust of India and the Bar and Bench legal news site reported.

A Twitter spokesperson, Aditi Shorewal, declined to comment or specify what type of content the company was told to block. She did not confirm that Twitter had filed the lawsuit.

The lawsuit is part of a growing confrontation between Twitter and New Delhi after the Indian government last year passed a new set of sweeping regulations giving it more power to police online content.

The new rules require companies to erase or block content that authorities deem unlawful. Under the laws, employees of social media websites and technology companies can be held criminally liable for failing to comply with the governments orders.

It is everyones responsibility to abide by the laws passed by the countrys Parliament, Indias IT minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, told reporters Tuesday, when he was asked about the lawsuit.

Prime Minister Narendra Modis government has sought for years to control social media and has often directed Twitter to take down tweets or accounts that appear critical of his party and administration.

Twitter complied with most of those orders in the past but also resisted others and has called the new rules a potential threat to freedom of expression. The company has removed content related to anti-government farmer protests and tweets criticising the Modi administrations handling of the pandemic.

The Indian government has called the new rules necessary to tackle disinformation, hate speech and other troubles. Officials have warned Twitter that non-compliance with the rules could mean that the company would lose its liability protections as an intermediary, meaning Twitter could face lawsuits over content.

Relations between the Indian government and Twitter have been thorny since the laws were passed.

In May last year, police raided Twitters office after the company labelled a tweet by Modis party spokesman as manipulated media.

That same month, WhatsApp sued the Indian government to defend what it said was its users privacy and stop new rules that would require it to make messages traceable to external parties. That case is still pending in an Indian court.

Experts have criticised the new rules and said they amount to censorship. They have also accused the Modi government of silencing criticism on social media, particularly Twitter. Modi's party denies the claim.

Police in New Delhi last week arrested a journalist over a tweet from 2018 that an anonymous Twitter user alleged was hurtful to sentiments of a particular religion.
This is Column 19 of a series about people and events related to 19th-century equal-rights champion Alexander Clark. What started as a single column for Black History Month has turned into a weekly project I will continue until I run out of steam or the editor pulls the plug.

If youre following along, you know were headed toward Iowas desegregation drama of 1867-68 and then on to Clarks time as U.S. minister to Liberia. As the project grows, I tell more of the back story  connecting more dots.

I didnt start out intending to tarry in pre-Civil War 1850s, but thats where we learn the context that explains what happens later. Weve already touched on the so-called Underground Railroad bringing freedom seekers from slavery below our state border. Weve introduced some antislavery characters who settled here, Congregationalists in particular. Recently I told of Muscatines promotional pitch to New Englanders in a Boston periodical.

Heres more from Ballous Pictorial of Aug. 4, 1855: The city of Muscatine derives its importance, in a commercial point, mainly from its peculiar location. It is situated on the extreme western bend of the Mississippi River, and is thus thrown into the interior, as it were, of the State. It is the landing point on the river for a large tract of country and in this respect has the advantage over every other city in lowa.

Our advantages for river traffic and inland access argued for the next big thing. Railroads!

The Mississippi and Missouri Railroad  being a continuation of the Rock Island and Chicago road, which crosses the Mississippi River at Rock Island, 30 miles above, is located through Muscatine, on its route westward. It is also the terminus of the Muscatine and Cedar Valley Railroad. A railroad is located also from Muscatine to Keokuk. When these roads are completed, Muscatine will have added to her natural advantages greater railroad facilities than any city in Iowa.

Boosters might be forgiven some wishful thinking and the present-tense description of a bridge that wouldnt open for nearly a year, having taken three years to complete.

From the Daily Davenport Gazette, Feb. 9, 1855: The name and the fame of the Bridge City will be world-wide  destiny has designated this as the bridging point of the great Mississippi  a work so national in its importance.

The first locomotive crossed on April 21, 1856. Two weeks later a steamboat struck the bridge, destroying the boat and badly damaging the bridge. Ensuing litigation pitted railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln against powerful interests, not least U.S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, who favored a southern rail route for Kansas-bound immigrants. Its a story Ill return to.

First, lets connect dots for a Muscatine family. In Column No. 5, writing about Justice Robert Allbee (whose excellent biography of Alexander Clark was published in the Drake Law Review), I said: The Allbee ancestors settled in Muscatine County in 1856.

Irving B. Richman tells their story in his 1911 History of Muscatine County, Iowa:

The bridge was raised upon a falsework that rested on the ice that was from three to four feet thick that winter. Gustavus Allbee drove the team that raised all of the falsework. When both ends of the bridge had been constructed from their respective shores to the piers next to the drawpier on each side, two large ropes were stretched from each end to the drawpier, plank were fastened upon them and a handrope stretched above them, thus making swinging bridges over which the workmen might pass to the drawpier from either side. On Saturday evening, at the completion of these swinging walks, Allbees boss heard the contractor suggest to the superintendent that they bring their wives down early Monday morning and have them to be the first women to cross the mighty river on a bridge. At Mr. Cook's suggestion he and his wife, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Allbee and their son Elbert, at that time six and one-half years of age, repaired to the bridge early Sunday morning. It was a raw, windy morning in March, 1856, the river was full of floating ice, the current swift and the walk swung so frightfully that Mrs. Cook took but a step or two and shrank back refusing to go; but brave little Mrs. Allbee unhesitatingly took the lead, and, followed closely by her husband, leading their little son, walked clear across to the Illinois shore and back to Iowa. Thus she was the first woman ever to cross the Father of Waters on a bridge and her son Elbert the first child ever to do so.

Please return for more about rails westward and the underground north to freedom. Im sorry if digressions frustrate readers, but more dots connect whenever we loop back or detour. Theres no end to these stories!

Next time: Dr. Pritchards colored petition.
MUSCATINE  After being officially welcomed into Muscatine with an officer installation ceremony, Lucas and Macy Gantner were happy to start their new appointment as the Salvation Army of Muscatine Countys newest lieutenants.

(Muscatine) has been good so far, Macy said. Its very beautiful.

Before their first full day at the Muscatine County office, the two shared that they were able to join in on the fun at this years Almost Fireworks Fest, eager to meet with members of the community.

Previously, the Gantners served in Evanston, Ill. Both officers, however, have had an interest in the Salvation Army and a desire to help others long before they joined.

Macys story began in 2005. Following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, she and her family were relocated to Minnesota. There, the Salvation Army helped get her family coats and other clothes for the winter.

Macy got further involved as she continued attending Salvation Army programming. She worked in different capacities before becoming youth director.

I love just the Salvation Army ministry and what we do, Macy said. After I became a youth director, I decided that the lord was calling me to do more, so I went to the Salvation Armys college for officer training.

Lucas became interested in the Salvation Army after witnessing the work his aunt and uncle did as captains for the Salvation Army.

At the time, they were going through their first Christmas season," he said. "They called me in to help with the toy shop  and to see all that the Salvation Army did during the Christmas season. It was just amazing. It was truly satisfying to my soul, and I knew that I needed to keep helping people through the Salvation Army.

The Gantners said their overall goal was to continue serving the community through programs that already had been established as well as through new and innovative programs that would be created to fulfill a need that hadnt yet been met.

I think the Bocks did such a great job with community relations, and that really built a good starting place for us to kind of slide in and already have these kinds of relationships built in for the Salvation Army, Macy said of Gregory and Elizabeth Bock, whom the Gantners are succeeding. We want to come in and keep the ball rolling.

We want to work in tandem with the different organizations here in Muscatine, Lucas added.

They hope to work on expanding youth programs for local kids outside of the already established summer camp and after-school programs, as well as senior programming during the day, based on what they have been told by other Muscatine County Salvation Army employees.

We want to make a fellowship for seniors because seniors get lonely, Macy explained. A lot of times theyre living on their own or theyre living with family but family is busy, so we want to provide an opportunity for them to get out and meet other people.

Although they are still learning about their new community, the Gantners acknowledged that the Salvation Army is just one piece of Muscatine  and as such, they hope to continue communicating with and work with these organizations in order to do what they do best.

We cant do it on our own, and we dont plan to do it on our own, Macy said. We think that we can come together as a community and work towards solving some of these things that need to be taken care of in whatever way that looks like. Were here to partner with them and play a part in a bigger picture, not just within the Salvation Army.
FNBs Internet banking, mobile app, and card payments are suffering a second major outage in less than a week.

User-sourced services outage platform Downdetector showed a steep increase in reports of FNB-related problems from just after 14:00 on Tuesday.

Most of the reports were logged under Online Banking, Mobile Banking, and Mobile Login.

Several FNB customers in South Africa have also turned to Twitter to complain about the latest downtime.

Hi @FNBSA. When will your system be back up and running again? Also, wasnt it down for maintenance last week already? one user asked.

Are you guys @FNBSA offline? Nothing is working the app and cards are declining, a second said.

According to one customer, the issue also affects FNBs services in Botswana.

Several MyBroadband readers confirmed they could not log into their FNB apps on Android or iOS.

After entering their credentials or using biometrics to log in, they were presented with the following message:

Your request cannot be processed. System currently unavailable. Please try again later.

Attempting to use Internet banking through the Google Chrome browser initially presented the pop-up message below.

The bank later replaced that message with another stating that FNB was performing system maintenance and that functionality on the users online banking profile would be limited.

One customer found no amounts shown under their accounts Balance section.

FNB recently suffered an hours-long outage of all its online-based banking services and card payments on 1 July 2022.

At the time of publication, it had not acknowledged the latest issues on any of its social media pages.

The graph below shows the surge in reports of FNB issues on Downdetector on Tuesday afternoon.

Update  15:00

FNB told MyBroadband its IT teams were working hard to urgently restore full functionality on the affected channels.

It apologised to customers for the limited functionality.

Update  17:20

FNB says it has restored the affected services and customers can now access them normally.

Any customer who continues to experience issues with our services can contact us directly for assistance, the bank said.

We would like to thank our customers for their patience and ongoing support, it added.

Now read: FNB launches huge fuel rewards boost as South Africa faces petrol price hike
Google is advertising 15 jobs based in Johannesburg, South Africa, including cloud computing, legal, recruiting, and marketing positions.

The company has more than 155,000 employees worldwide, and following declined hiring activity in 2020, Google appears to have increased recruiting in South Africa.

The tech giant is advertising 50% more jobs in the country today than in March 2022.

Two of the advertised positions are related to Googles Cloud operations in South Africa, for which it recently chose Africa Data Centres as its first location for Google Cloud Interconnect in the country.

This follows other international cloud providers, like Amazon, launching their regional cloud operations.

Google set up a South African base in Bryanston, Johannesburg, in 2007, and it was managed by Stafford Masie  the companys first South African country manager.

Luke McKend served as Google country director for South Africa from October 2010 to October 2018. McKend left Google to join Microsofts LinkedIn.

Having initially only supported a small team in shared office space, Googles South African offices expanded in 2015 to a new location, also in Bryanston.

The move provided more space for a larger team and included new perks for employees, including a canteen, games room, and chill zone.

It also meant that the South African team now had its own dedicated office space.

Google appointed Alistair Mokoena as its new South African country manager in January 2020.

The local positions Google is advertising include a business development manager for Android platform partnerships, a customer engineer for Google Cloud, a Product Marketing Manager for consumer applications, and an artist relationship manager for YouTube Music.

The jobs available at Googles offices in Johannesburg, and links to their descriptions, are listed in the table below.

Now read: Mustek appoints Hein Engelbrecht as CEO
The South African government is scheduled to arrest Riccardo Fluffypony Spagni in the United States on Tuesday, 5 July 2022.

This comes after the US government delayed Spagnis surrender from the evening of 4 July to the morning of 5 July, avoiding the arrest happening on a public holiday  Independence Day in the US.

Spagni served as the lead maintainer of the privacy-focussed Monero cryptocurrency for five years. He stepped down in December 2019.

He waived his right to an extradition hearing in the US and asked the court to expedite his return to South Africa to face the charges.

Spagni was ordered to surrender to US Marshalls at 09:00 local time, or 16:00 in South Africa.

He was held in Tennessee after being arrested in Nashville while travelling to Los Cabos, Mexico from New York to attend a cryptocurrency conference.

The South African government says it has charged Spagni with 378 counts of fraud, forgery, and uttering in a R1,453,561.47 dispute with his former employer, Cape Cookies.

Spagni is accused of fabricating invoices from IT supplier Ensync to Cape Cookies and placing his own companys bank account details and VAT number on the documents.

The court documents state that Spagni inflated the invoice amounts and paid Ensyncs actual invoices at a later date.

Spagni also stands accused of generating false invoices for three different fictitious IT suppliers.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

US law enforcement arrested Spagni while the private jet he travelled on stopped to refuel.

The South African government issued a warrant for his arrest after Spagni allegedly failed to appear for his court hearing.

Spagni said through his legal representative that it was an honest mistake as he believed he was represented in court by his lawyer at the time.

MyBroadband contacted Spagni about his surrender today. He declined to comment.

Fluffypony  Independence Day extradition  Surrender

Now read: United States lays charges against South African man over R28 billion Bitcoin scam
While ordering tech products through Amazon in the US can mean a long wait for your items to arrive, a MyBroadband analysis has revealed that it is often cheaper than ordering through South African ecommerce giant Takealot.

Industry sources have told MyBroadband that Amazon is planning to launch a marketplace in South Africa.

Leaked documents obtained by Business Insider US showed that the international retail giant plans to expand to five new countries in Africa, South America, and Europe.

Its plan to roll out in South Africa and Nigeria is reportedly codenamed Project Fela.

Amazon will reportedly launch its Prime service in South Africa shortly after its marketplace becomes available.

However, until Amazon launches in the country, South Africans will have to order directly from the US store and pay customs and shipping costs.

Of ten items compared, Takealot is cheaper for three products, while importing the seven others from Amazon in the US is more affordable.

Ordering through Takealot offered significant savings on items such as the JBL Flip 5 waterproof Bluetooth speaker, Galaxy S22 Ultra 256GB, and 49-inch Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 gaming monitor.

The JBL Flip 5 costs R489 less when ordered through Takelot, while ordering the Galaxy S22 Ultra and 49-inch Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 gaming monitor through the South African ecommerce giant will save you R2,536 and R3,303, respectively.

However, Amazon offers better prices on a range of other tech products.

Ordering a GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card with 12GB of memory through Amazon will save you over R10,000.

A 3-pack of TP-Link Deco AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh routers costs R5,589, including shipping and customs costs, compared to R8,305 when ordered through Takealot.

South Africans can also save R1,003 when buying an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X desktop processor through Amazon. The international retail giant is shipping the processor to South Africa for a total cost of R7,996. It costs R8,999 from Takealot.

Amazon also offers Bang & Olufsen H95 headphones for a total cost of R16,931  R2,068 less than Takealots price tag of R18,999.

For the comparison, we selected items on Amazon that ship directly to South Africa, using its shipping calculator to determine the total cost of buying and delivering the product.

However, there is a workaround for items that arent available to ship directly to South Africa.

This involves using a shipping service such as MyUS, which uses an address in a foreign country to which the retailer will deliver. They will then forward the item to your address in South Africa.

MyUSs services are based on order weight, starting at $16.99 (R276) for items that weigh less than 1lb (540g).

The pricing of ten tech items, available from both Takealot and Amazon, are compared in the table below.

Takealot vs Amazon tech pricing Product Takealot Amazon JBL Flip 5 Waterproof Bluetooth speaker R1,799 R2,288 Samsung 870 Evo Sata III 1TB SSD R2,579 R2,425 TP-Link Deco AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh system (3 pack) R8,305 R5,589 Xbox Series S with controller R6,899 R6,243 AMD Ryzen 9 5900X Desktop Processor R8,999 R7,996 Samsung 27-inch WQHD Gaming 144hz Monitor R8,358 R8,109 Bang & Olufsen Beoplay H95 R18,999 R16,931 GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12GB Graphics Card R28,999 R18,877 Galaxy S22 Ultra 256GB R21,109 R23,645 Samsung 49-inch Odyssey Neo G9 240Hz gaming monitor R32,999 R36,302

Now read: Most useless gadgets people spent money on
Health minister Joe Phaahla has asked provincial health authorities for their views on whether South Africa should repeal its Covid19 regulations.

Phaahla wrote a letter to executive council members responsible for their provincial health departments.

The letter is dated Monday, 20 June 2022 and was circulated by South African doctors on social media late last night.

South Africas national health department has confirmed that the letter is authentic.

The [letter] was sent to the MECs yesterday for them to comment on the proposals that are on the table, Department of Health deputy director-general Nicholas Crisp told MyBroadband.

Crisp explained it is a statutory requirement that such consultations take place before regulations are promulgated or withdrawn.

At long last coming to grips with the reality. Effective end of Covid restrictions. Now to work on the collateral economic and other damage of what was self inflicted due to stubbornness of not following the science. pic.twitter.com/Z57XHOVd9k  Shabir Madhi (@ShabirMadh) June 20, 2022

Phaahla said the Department of Health has proposed to the National Coronavirus Command Council that all three Covid19 regulations be repealed. These include:

Mask-wearing

Gatherings

Entry limitations into South Africa

These regulations were intended purely as a temporary stop-gap measure to enable the country to deal with the impending fifth wave of Covid19 infections, Phaahla stated.

At the time of their promulgation, the status of the epidemic was very concerning and unpredictable, and the Department needed to have some mitigating measures in place.

Phaahla said that when they implemented the regulations on 4 May 2022, their analysis showed that reported cases had increased from 250 in mid-April to 4,693 by 1 May.

By 15 May, the figure had increased to 7,685 reported cases per day.

There was a question of whether the surge in cases was due to behaviour change after South Africa ended its national State of Disaster, or if a sub-variant of the coronavirus was responsible for a wave for the first time.

Turns out it was the latter, Phaahla noted.

The Minister said his department has been working with the National Institute for Communicable Diseases on monitoring the epidemic.

The current epidemiological analysis points towards lower infection rates and that the country has exited the recent spike (5th wave), which the current limited regulations were promulgated to mitigate, Phaahla stated.

He said that as at mid-June 2022, the critical indicators are as follows:

Number of reported cases declined

Hospitalisations declined

Effective reproductive rate of the virus declined (less than 0.7%)

Positivity rate declined, though the number of tests done is also low

Reported deaths declined

Phaahla said they would discuss their recommendations to repeal South Africas Covid19 restrictions with Cabinet in the next 48 to 72 hours.

At long last coming to grips with the reality, Wits University professor of vaccinology and infectious diseases expert Shabir Madhi said on Twitter.

Effective end of Covid restrictions. Now to work on the collateral economic and other damage of what was self-inflicted due to stubbornness of not following the science.
The competition between the US and China to explore outer space turned prickly after Chinese diplomats blasted the head of NASA and encouraged neighboring countries to support Beijings plan for exploring the moon.

Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian on Monday accused NASA Administrator Bill Nelson of lying through his teeth in response to reported comments in a German tabloid about the space competition between the two countries.

Bild cited Nelson as saying the world should be concerned that China might lay claim to the moon and stop other countries from exploring it.

In the interview, he also accused China of stealing technology from other nations and said Beijing was learning how to destroy satellites launched by other countries.

This is not the first time for the chief of NASA to lie through his teeth and smear China, Zhao said at the Foreign Ministrys daily press conference. In recent years the US openly defined space as a war-fighting domain.

NASA didnt respond to a request for comment.

During a meeting on Monday with officials from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called on Southeast Asian nations to join the International Lunar Research Station, a proposed project on or near the moon backed by China and Russia.

Beijing has promoted the ILRS as an alternative to the Artemis Accords, a Washington-backed effort launched in 2020 aimed at supporting NASAs efforts to return astronauts to the moon this decade.

While Beijing and Moscow havent gotten other governments to commit to their project, the US is having more success convincing countries to sign the Artemis Accords, principles designed to govern activity on the moon, Mars and beyond.

Signatories include NATO allies such as Canada, Italy and the UK, as well as Brazil, Mexico and Ukraine.

Last month, France became the 20th country to sign on to the Artemis club, joining other recent signatories such as Singapore and Colombia.

China has criticized the accords as a US effort to create a NATO in outer space, most recently in a July 3 opinion piece published in the Communist Party-backed Global Times newspaper.

In contrast with the US lunar exploration project known as the Artemis Accords, which experts believe reveals its exclusive nature for mimicking a space-based NATO, China and Russias partnership stresses bringing advancement for all, with the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind, the article said.
Giovanni Scala and Aaron Diaz of Bistro Don Giovanni plan to open a second restaurant in the former Ca Momi space at 1141 First St. in downtown Napa later this summer.

General manager Diaz confirmed that they had signed the lease for the First Street building.

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The new restaurant will not be another Bistro Don Giovanni, he said.

(Its) still a lot of work in process, Diaz said. Yes, its going to be Italian, but a little more influence from where Gio is from, he said of Scala, a native of Naples.

Diaz also said they have renewed their lease for the existing restaurant on Highway 29.

The lease is all done and BDG will continue serving our locals, friends and family from all over, in the same location as it has been for the last 30 years, he said.

Bistro Don Giovanni was opened in 1993 by Giovanni Scala and his late wife and renowned chef Donna Scala, a native Chicagoan who died in 2014.

At a time when Napa itself was usually bypassed by tourists, the restaurant had a key location on Highway 29 just north of Napa. It became an enduringly popular destination for both visitors and locals because of its excellent food and attentive service. Many locals occupy fixed tables weekly and have for years.

Ca Momi Osteria closes permanently The owners of Ca Momi Osteria have announced via Facebook that they have permanently closed their restaurant in downtown Napa.

The name included the French word bistro because the Scalas thought it would appeal to patrons when they started the restaurant. The menu, however, is heavily Italian, and even serves some of Giovanni Scala's family recipes like Mama Concettas meatballs.

As Napa itself became a major attraction for visitors, Scala considered opening downtown, and the availability of a prime location on First Street finally gives him the opportunity.

The founders of Ca Momi, Stefano Migotto, Valentina Guolo-Migotto and Dario De Conti, are natives of the Veneto region in northeast Italy who first opened a wine company (which continues) in 2006, then opened Ca Momi Enoteca as a pizzeria within the Oxbow Public Market in 2010.

They moved to the self-contained Ca Momi Osteria in downtown Napa in 2015 but were heavily impacted by COVID-19. They announced via Facebook on Jan. 16 that they had closed the restaurant permanently.

We gave it our best for as long as we could," they said. "We weathered economic downturns, earthquakes, fires, unreal labor shortages and a pandemic  until we had to decide our health, and whats left of our mental sanity, need to matter, too.

The lead chef, Guolo-Migotto, was known for her obsessively authentic food. Ca' Momi's Neapolitan-style pizza were only sold whole, not sliced, and the restaurant would not provide Parmesan cheese or red pepper flakes for the pies.

In contrast, Bistro Don Giovanni routinely offers those who order pizzas a small serving of Parmesan and pepper flakes on the side.
Caltrans has agreed to improve the crosswalks at Main and Spring streets following a high-level meeting among city and Caltrans officials, U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, state Sen. Bill Dodd and Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry.

Thompson organized the June 27 meeting in St. Helena in the wake of a May 24 hit-and-run that injured St. Helena Star sportswriter Garrett Whitt as he was crossing Main Street in his motorized wheelchair.

Whitt broke his tibia and fibula, and hes now recovering at home. St. Helena police have recommended that the Napa County District Attorneys Office file charges against a Napa man in connection with the incident.

In a follow-up email after last week's meeting, Caltrans District 4 Director Dina Al-Tawansy said that we plan on prioritizing short-term improvements at Main and Spring.

In an email to Al-Tawansy, Interim City Manager Jim McCann described those short-term improvements as:

 New and refreshed pavement markings;

 New crosswalks with enhanced patterns, and moving the crosswalk across Main Street to the north side of the Main/Spring intersection to improve visibility;

 New and refreshed advisory and warning signs.

Al-Tawansy said Caltrans would also work towards identifying funding and the appropriate mechanism to implement all the desired permanent improvements.

Those permanent fixes include flashing beacons, crosswalk bulb-outs, and related lighting, pavement markings, curb ramps and warning signs.

Al-Tawansy didnt indicate a timeline for the changes, but McCann asked that the short-term improvements be implemented in coming weeks and the permanent improvements within three to six months.

Officials from Caltrans, the city and the offices of Dodd and Aguiar-Curry were assigned to an action team to drive the short-term and permanent improvements forward at an accelerated rate.

Meanwhile, the city pledged to provide Caltrans with data as part of a comprehensive corridor pedestrian safety study of Highway 29 through St. Helena.

Cross-agency collaboration

The meeting could represent a breakthrough in what has at times been a distant relationship between St. Helena officials and Caltrans, which has jurisdiction over Highway 29  or, as St. Helenans know it, Main Street. It took Thompson's intervention for the two parties to negotiate a plan to manage the elm tunnel at the north end of town.

More recently, Caltrans proved to be receptive to local opinion in 2020 when it abandoned a heavily criticized plan to replace two historic stone bridges where Main Street crosses Sulphur Creek and Spring Creek.

At the June 28 City Council meeting, McCann thanked Thompson for organizing the meeting with Caltrans.

Vice Mayor Paul Dohring, who attended the meeting along with Mayor Geoff Ellsworth, said Thompson was all in.

He was extremely forceful in making the argument about the necessity of making improvements at this (intersection) and all along the corridor, Dohring said. He was very persuasive. Theres no doubt in my mind that he got the attention of all, including Caltrans representatives.

Ellsworth also made very cogent remarks based on personal experience, Dohring added.

Ellsworth said city officials now have an opportunity to work more closely with Caltrans to have them understand the circumstances on the ground beyond just the data that they receive.
Members of the public can now review and comment on an initial draft of a planning document that will guide St. Helenas housing policies through 2031.

The city released the draft Housing Element for 2023-2031 last Thursday. The 316-page document, available at sthelenahousing.com, outlines the citys housing policies and specifies how the city can comply with its Regional Housing Needs Allocation.

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Comments may be submitted through July 29 to ahecock@cityofsthelena.org or to City of St. Helena, c/o Aaron Hecock, AICP, 1572 Railroad Ave., St. Helena, CA 94574.

The City Council and Planning Commission will hold a joint meeting at 3 p.m. Thursday, July 21, to receive comments on the document. The Housing Element is scheduled to be submitted to state officials late this year.

The draft Housing Element contains a residential site inventory listing 12 sites that could accommodate up to 493 housing units in total. That list includes the city-owned Adams Street property next to the St. Helena Public Library.

The following sites are on the list:

- 1480 Main St. (old City Hall)

- 1572 Railroad Ave. (temporary City Hall)

- Adams Street property

- 905 Main St.

- Main Street between Dowdell and Mills

- 709 and 714 McCorkle Ave.

- 821 Pope St.

- 882 and 886 College Ave.

- 1447 and 1515 Spring St.

- Spring Street between Hudson and Valley View

- 601 Pope St.

- 1637 Spring St.
EU and Azerbaijan sign document on energy security

Dollar, euro continue to rise in Armenia

Armenia, Artsakh soldiers deaths due to ceasefire violations increase sharply in January-June 2022 compared to 2021

Armenias Pashinyan holds phone talk with Russias Mishustin

"Hayeli.am" : Surprising meetings. Why is there no mention of Bakoyan's physical violence and financial exploitation?

Protests against tax changes continue in Hungary

Stoltenberg to hold talks with Azerbaijan FM

Armenia PM approves 2022 communication action plan for combating corruption

Armenia-Azerbaijan border delimitation, security commissions meeting to be held in August

EU Council decides on Ukraine's fifth military aid package for 500 million euros

Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate chancellor on Biden: Greatness of leaders lies in their modesty

Armenia FM to pay official visit to Poland

Ameriabank Receives Euromoney Award for Excellence as the Best Bank in Armenia for 2022

Turkish army receives defense systems against UAVs

Russia Foreign Intelligence Service chief to visit Yerevan Monday

Russia MOD announces for first time name of commander of East group of special operations in Ukraine

Byblos Bank Armenia introduces the premium World Elite Mastercard

Putin to meet with Khamenei during his visit to Tehran

More than 1,000 heat-related deaths reported in Spain, Portugal so far in July

Man who threatened to kill himself with hand grenade is detained in Armenias Ashtarak city

Azerbaijan population exceeds 10mn

629 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia past one week

Catholicos of All Armenians travels to US

Who gave information about alleged bomb in Armenia First Presidents house?

UK parliament to hold confidence vote in government Monday

Meteorology official: Armenia heatwave will gradually recede as of Friday

World oil prices on the rise

State of emergency formally declared in Sri Lanka

US hopes oil production will increase after Biden's Middle East visit

792 children born in Artsakh in first half of 2022

Elderly woman killed by alligators after falling into pond in Florida

Von der Leyen heads to Azerbaijan hoping to get more natural gas

Zelenskyy dismisses security service chief, top prosecutor

Armenia political party head resigns

UK man, 40, found dead in Italy hotel room

No bomb found in Armenia First President's house

Mars sued over 'unsafe' Skittles

Unknown person reports bomb threat in Armenia's First President house

Armenia FM and US Assistant Secretary of State discuss regional security issues

Fears of social upheaval growing in Germany

Indian authorities announce they made 2 billion vaccines against COVID-19

Israel to increase flights to Asia after Saudi Arabia opens airspace

IMF to 'substantially' lower global economic growth forecasts

Erdogan expects to hold talks with Putin in Tehran

Japan to refuse to set a ceiling on defense spending

Negotiations on resumption of Iran nuclear deal coming to end

UAE allocates more than $800 million for space program

State Department approves $1.5 Billion arms sale

Extreme heat wave hits Europe

US needs another $3 billion to remove Huawei and ZTE from networks

Germany to resume requirement to wear masks in closed public places

Air temperature in Armenia to reach 42 degrees

Ankara rejects Liz Truss

Blinken on meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers in Tbilisi

It is in Iraq's interest to continue to insist on rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia

G-20 meeting ends without final communique

Armenia PM Pashinyan sends congratulatory message to Georgia PM

Erdogan and Macron discuss implementation of joint production of air defense systems

2,000-year-old cemetery with giant tombs discovered in Iran

Armenias Khachik villagers dont recall any period after 1990s war when Azeris violated ceasefire at such regularity

Georgia gets NATO partner status in security operation

Mouflons spotted again at Zangezur State Sanctuary of Armenia

Crown prince: Saudi Arabia cant increase oil production beyond 13 million barrels per day

Scholz: Increased coal, oil use in Germany will be temporary

Armenia opposition MP: Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem is in a hurry

Vandals desecrate Jewish gravestones in Istanbul

Biden: US will not walk away from Middle East

More than 30 people die in tribal clashes in Sudan

One of most notorious drug lords is arrested in Mexico

What did Armenia, Azerbaijan FMs discuss in Tbilisi?

Armenia activists stage protest on top of Mount Hatis

US, Iraq leaders declare their commitment to strong bilateral partnership between their countries

Toivo Klaar: EU supports Armenia, Azerbaijan bilateral decision to hold FMs meeting

What did Biden agree upon with Saudi leaders during meeting in Jeddah?

Armenia, Azerbaijan foreign ministers Tbilisi meeting concludes

European Commission formally proposes ban on Russia gold imports

Armenia, Azerbaijan FMs Georgia meeting taking place at Radisson hotel in Tbilisi

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Heatwave claims 237 lives so far in Spain
YEREVAN.  Hraparak daily of Armenia writes: A visit of US Congress members to Armenia was supposed to take place at the end of June. We had written that they were planning meetings with both the President of the National Assembly [(NA)] and the leaders of the three NA factions (...).

However, June 30 passed, whereas the Congress members never arrived in Armenia. It turns out that the visit of the Congress members has been postponed. NA press speaker Tsovinar Khachatryan told us that the cause was Covid. Moreover, at first it was decided that they would come with five people, then the makeup of the delegation increasedbecoming to 17, but in the end they informed that they could not come to Armenia at the moment.

"They informed us that the visit is postponed due to the illness of the aircraft crew. But they have not specified who are infected with Covidpossibly the pilot as well," said the NA press speaker. Also, she noted that the Congress members had petitioned to the NA President with a request for a meeting on June 30, which, in fact, did not take place.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia issued a congratulatory message Tuesday on the occasion of Constitution Day anniversary. The message reads as follows:

Dear compatriots, dear people.

Today, the Republic of Armenia marks the Constitution Day, on the occasion of which I congratulate all of us. The immutable articles of our Constitution defined the national-state vision of the Republic of Armenia.

Accordingly, the Republic of Armenia is a sovereign, democratic, social, legal state.

Power in the Republic of Armenia belongs to the people. The people exercise their power through free elections, referenda, as well as through state and local self-governing bodies and public officials as provided by the Constitution.

I must proudly record that after the non-violent, velvet, people's revolution of 2018, Armenia is internationally recognized as a democratic state. The goal of giving the power to the people has been achieved, and our greatest task is to turn the democracy of the Republic of Armenia into a lasting factor ensuring the security of the country.

I have to also note that we have a lot of work to do on the way to ensuring the other fundamental constitutional goals and the reforms implemented by our government are aimed at those goals.

On the occasion of the Constitution Day, I would like to emphasize the provisions of Article 3 of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia, according to which the inalienable dignity of a person is the inseparable basis of his rights and freedoms. I have to say with pain that democracy, freedom of speech and expression of opinion sometimes leads to hate speech, blasphemy, speech that degrades human dignity.

The strong legal system, the independent judicial system, the mechanisms for legality should also become reliable guarantees for the protection of human dignity, without limiting and damaging democratic values, and the solution of this issue is among the priorities of our agenda.

Dear compatriots, you are aware that the Specialized Commission for Constitutional Reforms has been formed and a draft concept of constitutional reforms should be presented by the end of the year.

Considering it obvious that the Constitution needs to be constantly developed and improved, at the same time I must emphasize my belief that Armenia should continue to maintain the parliamentary system of governance, because the events of 2021 proved that this system provides more effective mechanism for crises management, involvement and decisive participation of the people in the political debate.

Once again, I congratulate all of us on the occasion of the Constitution Day of the Republic of Armenia. I want the right, the law to become, if not the only, at least a key and decisive factor in the regulation of our public and civil relations.
Vietnam proposes measures to foster Mekong  Lancang cooperation

Vietnam attaches importance to the Mekong  Lancang Cooperation (MLC) and wishes to make a practical contribution to the mechanism to bring real benefits to the people.









The Foreign Ministers of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, China and Vietnam pose for a group photo at the seventh Mekong - Lancang Cooperation Foreign Ministers Meeting in Myanmar on July 4. (Photo: baoquocte.vn)





Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son made the remarks while addressing the seventh MLC Foreign Ministers Meeting that opened in Bagan, Myanmar, on July 4.



He shared the view with his counterparts of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and China that despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic two-way trade turnover between Mekong River basin countries and China reached nearly US$400 billion last year, up 23% compared to 2020. Many large infrastructure projects have been completed, while hundreds of technical assistance projects have been implemented.



The ministers especially welcomed the achievements in the management and use of water resources of the Mekong River and pledged to obtain substantive results at the second Ministerial Meeting of the Mekong-Lancang Water Resources Cooperation to be held in Vietnam in 2022.



The ministers emphasized the principles of consensus, equality, mutual consultation and coordination, common contribution and shared benefits, with respect for the United Nations Charter and international laws. At the same time, they agreed to promote MLC cooperation by consolidating the friendly neighbourly relationship, making positive contributions to socio-economic development of the member countries, building the ASEAN Community, and realizing the sustainable development goals 2030.



They adopted a Joint Press Communique and four joint statements on strengthening agricultural cooperation, disaster prevention, customs and trade facilitation, and exchanges between MLC civilisations.



At the meeting, Vietnamese Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son suggested four major measures to make the Mekong-Lancang Cooperation more effective.



He placed strong emphasis on speeding up economic recovery, enhancing the economys resilience, and strengthening customs cooperation and trade facilitation in order to address goods congestion and ensure the circulation of goods and services.



Son suggested supporting member countries to adapt to climate change and transition to a green economic model, including improving production and storage capacity of clean energy, and applying high technology to smart agriculture and climate adaptation.



Its imperative to promote cooperation in the management and sustainable use of water resources, including speeding up the development of an MLC Water Resources Cooperation Action Plan for 2023-2027, said the diplomat.



He said the MLC should encourage consultation and dialogue on water resource development plans among member countries, increase the sharing of hydro-meteorological data and operation of hydroelectric dams, and strengthen coordination between the MLC and the Mekong River Commission.



Son also suggested that the MLC promote people-to-people exchanges through revitalizing and expanding tourism activities, cooperation between local governments and cultural, sports, youth and women's empowerment programmes.



The Vietnamese Ministers speech was highly appreciated by participating ministers.


Turkey has launched an investigation into the origin of grain aboard the Russian-flagged cargo ship Zhibek Zholy, which is located off the Black Sea port of Karasu, Bloomberg reported with reference to high-ranking Turkish officials.

The vessel has not yet docked or unloaded and will remain in port until Turkish authorities determine the origin and trajectory of the cargo, officials said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov clarified that the cargo on board the dry-cargo ship was under a contract between Tallinn and Ankara, TASS reports.

The ex-tenant of the dry cargo ship detained in Turkey, the general director of the Navigator company Vyacheslav Igonin, said that he handed it over to the Kazakh company Kazmortransflot (KTMF) in November 2021 and now has nothing to do with the ship.

Earlier it was reported that Zhibek Zholy had been waiting for permission from the Turkish authorities to enter the port and unload since July 1, but did not receive it.

Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey Vasily Bodnar said that Turkish customs officers detained a Russian cargo ship at the request of Kyiv, because Ukrainian grain is being transported on it.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said he will start a campaign to remove the Statue of Liberty in New York if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is extradited and convicted in the United States, RIA Novosti reports.

If he is taken to the United States and sentenced to the maximum term and death in prison, we must begin a campaign to dismantle the Statue of Liberty donated by the French, which is located in New York, because it is no longer a symbol of freedom, he said in a press release. conferences at the National Palace.

The politician added that he was going to discuss this issue in negotiations with the leader of the United States, Joseph Biden, recalling that he had previously applied to Donald Trump for clemency.
Kazakhstan has introduced another ban on the export of oil products from the country by road, it will be valid for six months. The corresponding order is placed in the reference bank of regulatory legal acts.

To introduce a ban for a period of six months on the export of gasoline, diesel fuel and certain types of petroleum products from the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan by road, the text of the document says.

An exception will be made for the export of petroleum products in gas tanks provided by the manufacturer of motor vehicles, as well as in separate containers with a volume of not more than 20 liters.

The order will come into force on July 12.

A six-month ban on the export of petroleum products by road was first introduced in Kazakhstan in November 2021. As the press service of the Ministry of Energy of the country reported, the prices for gasoline and diesel fuel in the republic were lower than in neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Russia, which is why in the border regions of Kazakhstan there were cases of washing out of fuels and lubricants by a large flow of transit vehicles, as well as by residents of neighboring border regions.
YEREVAN.  At around 9:15pm on Monday, the units of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces opened firewith various, including large-caliber firearmson the Armenian combat positions located in the western part of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border; specifically, in the Khachik village section of Vayots Dzor Province, as well as toward the road leading to this rural community.

As a result, the car of the prefect of Khachik was damaged.

The fire of the Azerbaijani army units was silenced by the retaliatory actions of the Armenian side, the Ministry of Defense of Armenia informs Armenian News-NEWS.am.

There are no casualties or injuries on the Armenian side.
On the occasion of Constitution Day anniversary and by the decrees of President Vahagn Khachaturyan of Armenia, Deputy Director of the National Security Service Samvel Hayrapetyan has been awarded the military rank of Major General, First Deputy Chief of Police Aram Hovhannisyan has been awarded the rank of Police Major General, Chairman of the Investigative Committee Argishti Kyaramyan has been awarded the class rank of State Councilor of Justice of the Third Class, and senior adviser of the first class of the Tax Service Tigran Harutyunyan has been awarded the class rank of the First Class State Adviser of the Tax Service.

The President's Office informs Armenian News-NEWS.am that President Khachaturyan congratulated these officials on the occasion of Constitution Day anniversary and for receiving these high titles.
The US administration has again reaffirmed the waiver of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, which bans direct military aid to Azerbaijan. In an interview with Voice of America, Brad Sherman, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and of the Congressional Armenian Caucus, expressed his disagreement with this decision

We should not abandon Section 907 and provide any assistance to oil-rich Azerbaijan, which has unleashed an aggressive war. The aid we provide is not large, but I believe it is important diplomatically; so, it should be stopped, said the US congressman.

In his opinion, American aid for humanitarian projects in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) should be increased, and Armenia should be given the opportunity to be included in the Millennium Challenge program.

The World Bank ranked Armenia among those with above-average income. I would like it to be so, but we have to take into account the economic consequences of the terrible war, the coronavirus pandemic, Sherman said.
Media reports about the refusal of Chinese President Xi Jinping from an invitation to visit Russia do not correspond to reality, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, RIA Novosti reports.

The fact is that certain covid restrictions in China continue, and this is absolutely normal, and this should be treated with understanding. Putin has a valid invitation to visit China and Xi Jinping to visit Russia. And as all these relaxations of these restrictions allow, of course, all visits will be carried out, the presidential spokesman explained.

So he commented on publications in some publications that the Chinese leader allegedly did not accept Putin's invitation to come to Russia, explaining this by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The heads of the two countries regularly communicate in various formats. So, just last June, they held telephone conversations, and also participated in the BRICS summit, which was held via video link. In February, the President of Russia visited the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing.

As Russian Ambassador Andrey Denisov reported, in 2021, Putin and Xi Jinping, despite the pandemic, did not lose contact, they had three video calls and telephone conversations, as well as exchanges of messages.
The German government will have the right to bail out utilities under proposed legislative changes approved by the cabinet, Reuters reported.

"The situation on the gas market is tense and unfortunately we cannot rule out a deterioration in the situation," Economy Minister Robert Habeck said in a statement.

New amendments to the Energy Security Law will give the government additional tools to bail out utilities if they falter as energy prices rise due to cuts in Russian gas imports.

Under the law, the government can take steps to stabilize energy companies facing financial difficulties and thereby avoid cascading effects in the energy market that could hit consumers, the ministry said.

The law also provides an alternative mechanism for evenly distributing the cost of higher gas prices among all consumers, in addition to the possibility of applying a general price adjustment provision in the event of significant disruptions in gas imports.

Both instruments are subject to strict conditions and are currently not subject to activation, the ministry said, adding that stabilization options for energy companies would take precedence over the two price adjustment mechanisms.

The bill is to be voted on in the lower and upper houses of parliament on Friday.
British company Shell has joined Qatar Energy's $29 billion project to expand production at the world's largest natural gas field, becoming the fifth and final international partner, AFP reported.

The company acquired a 6.25% stake for an undisclosed amount, joining TotalEnergies, Eni, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil in the North Field East project.

According to Qatar Energy, the expansion of the North field is the largest project for the production of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The $28.75 billion development is projected to increase Qatar's production from the current 77 million tons per year to 110 million tons by 2027.

As one of the biggest players in the LNG business, (Shell) can do a lot to help meet global energy demand and ensure security, said Qatar Energy Minister Saad Sherida Al Kaabi, who is also President and CEO of Qatar Energy.

Qatar Energy estimates that the North Field, which extends under the waters of the Persian Gulf into Iran, contains about 10 percent of the world's known gas reserves.

Project LNG, a cooled form of gas that facilitates transportation, is expected to come online in 2026.
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, who is in Spain on a working visit, met with Chairman of the Congress of Deputies of Spain Meritxell Batet, the Armenian MFA reported.

The sides discussed the current state of interstate cooperation based on historical ties and common values of the two countries and peoples, development prospects in the areas of political dialogue, economy and culture.

From the point of view of enriching the bilateral agenda, the need for effective inter-parliamentary interaction and intensification of relations between parliamentarians, including through the work of friendship groups, was noted. The importance of cooperation between the legislative bodies of the two countries at international parliamentary platforms was also emphasized.

Ararat Mirzoyan presented to Meritxell Batet the ongoing reforms in Armenia aimed at strengthening democracy, protecting human rights, strengthening the rule of law and effectively fighting corruption. He stated that since 2018, Armenia has been moving along a democratic path, and, despite the consequences of the war and the covid-19 pandemic, significant progress has been made in the development of democratic institutions.

During the meeting, a number of issues of international and regional security were also touched upon.

The head of the Armenian Foreign Ministry presented to the Chairman of the Congress of Deputies of Spain the efforts of the Armenian side to establish peace and stability in the South Caucasus, as well as the latest developments related to relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the process of settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The need for a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was mutually emphasized, and it was noted that the use of force cannot be considered as a means of resolving the conflict.

In the context of the humanitarian problems caused by the 44-day war unleashed by Azerbaijan, Ararat Mirzoyan stressed the urgency of the return of Armenian prisoners of war and other detainees, as well as the need to preserve the Armenian cultural and religious heritage in the territories under the control of Azerbaijan.

Mirzoyan also presented the latest developments in the process of normalizing Armenian-Turkish relations.
Liu He, Janet Yellen hold 'constructive' video call

Liu He, Janet Yellen hold 'constructive' video call

Vice Premier Liu He had a "constructive" exchange over macro economies and global supply chains via a video call with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday, the Commerce Ministry in Beijing said.



According to Xinhua News Agency, the two sides "had a pragmatic and candid exchange of views" on topics such as the macroeconomic situation and the stability of the global industrial and supply chains.



The Chinese side also expressed its concern about issues including the lifting of additional tariffs on China and US sanctions, and fair treatment of Chinese enterprises.



Both sides agreed to maintain dialogue.



"The two sides agree that as the world economy is facing severe challenges, it is of great significance to strengthen macro-policy communication and coordination between China and the United States. And jointly maintaining the stability of the global industrial and supply chains is in the interests of both countries and the whole world," the Chinese statement said. (Xinhua/Reuters)
New Delhi [India], July 4 (ANI/BusinessWire India): Speech Processing Solutions (SPS) is an international technology company and a global leader in dictation solutions. More than four million users worldwide work with speech-to-text solutions developed by SPS and sold under the Philips brand. Solutions include Smart Meeting Series products like video-conferencing & audio-conferencing devices, workflow and speech recognition software, as well as hardware products. These smart solutions save users' time and allow them to focus on their core tasks, making their business more efficient, customer-centric and profitable. Headquartered in Vienna, Austria, SPS has regional offices in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Belgium and Austria, as well as a network of more than 1000 distribution and implementation partners worldwide. To browse all SPS products and solutions, visit www.philips.com/speech. Keeping abreast with innovations, few selected models in the Smart Meeting Series are compatible with SEMBLY Meeting Assistant. This is an exciting AI technology helping customers by creating automated meeting minutes and insights. The motto of Sembly is "Focus on your meeting, we take care of the rest". "We are pleased to say, that the cooperation with Sembly AI gives us new market opportunities by offering the best of both worlds. We provide best-in-class conference microphones and pair them up with a smart meeting assistant solution, which creates an automatic transcript, summary, and action list of every meeting. Our unique solutions help busy professionals save time and conduct meetings more efficiently than ever before," explains Dr Thomas Brauner, CEO of Speech Processing Solutions. "We are especially excited about the complementary nature and synergy between our two teams which is expected to boost both of our companies' top and bottom lines. The Philips products seamlessly integrate with the included Sembly SaaS to provide more value to our end customers," continues Gil Makleff, CEO and Co-founder of Sembly AI. A cross-platform breakthrough "No matter if you are working with Zoom, Google Meet, Teams or Webex, our smart meeting assistant joins your meetings as an attendant and does the note-taking for you," adds Artem Koren, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Sembly AI. Users can easily forward the meeting summaries, for example to colleagues who happened to have missed the meeting. Michael Weis (Director-Business Development Global Retail) SPS says, "Very honored and grateful that Philips Smart Meeting Series has entered the Indian market with the efforts of CEECO. Philips Smart Meeting Series products are committed to breaking the geographical and physical space constraints, saving the cost of business travel for enterprises and their employees, improving the efficiency of meetings, and presenting clear voice and image information for school teachers and students. We believe that Philips Smart Meeting Series will bring you a good experience in work, study and even life!" Ceeco announced today the launch of Philips range of Smart Meeting series products in the Indian market. The range of products will include a comprehensive range of Philips Video-Conferencing & Audio-Conferencing products like Fixed and PTZ VC cameras, All in One Video-conferencing & Audio-conferencing solutions, Speakerphones, etc. targeted towards institutional customers in corporate, government, education and other similar segments. To browse Philips Smart Meeting series products and solutions, visit www.ceeco.in/Philips. Sanjeev Bhasin (Managing Director) Ceeco remarked on the Philips Smart Meeting Series launch: "We are very excited to introduce this innovative product range in India and other regional markets mentioned above. Philips quality and brand name presents a strong and viable option to video conferencing and audio-conferencing users, customers and trade partners alike. Philips Smart Meeting devices have been designed keeping user convenience in mind and their collaboration with Sembly Meeting Assistant puts them ahead of the pack by a distance. We are confident that customers will place their trust in Philips brand." This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/BusinessWire India)
Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], July 5 (ANI/PRNewswire): Maisha is a homegrown startup, set to revolutionize the Indian retail industry with the perfect blend between eco-friendly handbags and coveted bohemian designs. At Maisha's forefront is a father-daughter-husband trio, Nayan Shah, Esha Shah and Neel Vora, who ensure the skilful combination of sustainable and bohemian aesthetics wrapped in Maisha packaging. The company is created with a vision to become the market leader in the cotton fabric-based handbag industry in India. Maisha derives its name from a Swahili colloquialism which translates to 'life'. This aligns with what the brand has to offer in terms of joy and a lifestyle that is reflective of bohemianism. Esha Shah was pursuing a lucrative career in Chartered Accountancy when she decided to give in to her inner calling of creative pursuit. Her fascination with the rich textile heritage the country homed inspired her to tread the path less travelled and test waters with a startup, Maisha. However, a startup is only as successful as its supporters. Nayan Shah instilled belief in his daughter's venture and invested in the startup while providing Maisha with wings for growth. Along with the support from her husband, Neel Vora's packaging business, Maisha was now ready to take flight. The brand's humble beginnings can be traced to a pop-up exhibition in Ahmedabad in 2018, where the customers took an instant liking to the vibrant, yet eclectic mix of handcrafted products like tastefully designed tote bags, crescent bags to choose from and the home collection that looks like a bohemian dream come to life. The products were sold out in a day, this was the first time the potential of the brand was realized. Maisha soon shifted to Instagram and showcased their products on their social media application. This helped the brand garner loyal followers who fell in love with the woven jacquard fabrics that have become a staple - ranging from handbags such as the Three Pocket Jacquard bags that are a preferred choice amongst customers and can be effortlessly paired with a summer dress. The Box bags are a top trending category and received 500 orders within the span of an hour; this is a testament to the authentic engagement of the Maisha community with the brand. The Maisha followers wait with bated breath for the launch of a new product. Travel aficionados have also found their community within Maisha with a variety of light weight options to choose from which makes it ideal for travelling such as Duffel bags, Fanny packs and Everyday tote bags. Another campaign that the brand executed on June 30, 2022, sets a milestone for all small business owners, a dream come true when in 200 seconds the brand received over 1100 orders on their own website with more than 20,000 eyeballs on their platform. Maisha grew threefold with the recognition from Instagram - there was no looking back now. Armed with an community of devoted Instagram followers of more than 200k, Maisha developed a website of its own, which became its primary vehicle for sales. Helmed by the father-daughter-husband trio who led the company to a massive growth trajectory by becoming a favoured choice amongst bohemian lovers. The website garners over 3 lakh monthly visitors and more than 30 per cent return customers every month. This is the context in which the brand recently launched its international website to cater to their customers' demands overseas. The community of Maisha followers are the raison d'etre of the brand. This is a brand that transcends products and sales and caters to their customers aspirational value - it goes the extra mile to ensure a holistic experience for their customers by interacting with them and embracing change. Maisha takes their customers behind the scenes and walks them through the hurdles and joys of building a startup. Esha Shah's entrepreneurship skills are an inspiration to women and startups across the globe. With the launch of the 'Small business campaign' Maisha supports local brands by enhancing their reach through Maisha's weekly shoutouts. Maisha is a way of life, that instills hope and paves the way for homegrown ventures across the country. Maisha Lifestyle is now just a tap away. Website link: https://maishalifestyle.comInternational Website: www.maishalifestyle.coInstagram Profile: @maishabyeshaFacebook: @maishabyeshaYouTube: maishabyeshaPinterest: maishalifestyle Maisha is a homegrown startup, set to revolutionize the Indian fashion and retail industry with their bohemian designs The company was created with a humble vision to become the market leader in the cotton fabric-based handbag industry in India. This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PRNewswire)
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], July 5 (ANI/PRNewswire): Tredence Inc. today announced it has been named 2022 Microsoft Analytics Partner of the Year Finalist. The company was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology. "Tredence is delighted to have been awarded 2022 Microsoft Analytics Partner of the Year Finalist from over 3,900 global nominations. This recognition demonstrates our enduring relationship with Microsoft, passion for excellence and commitment to modernizing our client's businesses with great Data & AI solutions," said Hari Natarajan, EVP & Chief Alliance Officer, Tredence. "As a Microsoft Gold partner, Tredence focuses on last-mile adoption of analytics to help enterprises accelerate their migration to the cloud while reducing costs and maintaining business agility." The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered outstanding Microsoft-based applications, services and devices during the past year. Awards were classified in various categories, with honorees chosen from a set of more than 3,900 submitted nominations from more than 100 countries worldwide. Tredence was recognized for providing outstanding solutions and services in the US. This year, awards were presented in a variety of categories. Tredence has been named '2022 Microsoft Analytics Partner of the Year Award Finalist'. The company was recognized for providing outstanding work in the Analytics-Labor Planning (Workforce Forecast) category for one of the world's leading water treatment technologies and services providers. The company devised and deployed an Azure-based Data & AI solution to optimize labor planning at their DCs, for daily operations in inbound and outbound logistics. Leveraging Tredence's analytics and forecasting expertise and the power of Microsoft's visualization platform, the customer, could forecast and disseminate the insights to required stakeholders. The solution provided transformational benefits with 90 per Nick Parker,cent accuracy for 70 per cent coverage at the day-DC level. "I am honored to announce the winners and finalists of the 2022 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards," said Nick Parker, corporate vice president of Global Partner Solutions at Microsoft. "These partners were outstanding among the exceptional pool of nominees and I'm continuously impressed by their innovative use of Microsoft Cloud technologies and the impact for their customers." Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards are announced annually prior to the company's global partner conference, Microsoft Inspire, which will take place on July 19-20 this year. Additional details on the 2022 awards are available on the Microsoft Partner Network blog: https://blogs.partner.microsoft.com/mpn/congratulations-to-the-2022-microsoft-partner-of-the-year-awards-winners-and-finalists/. The complete list of categories, winners and finalists can be found at https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/inspire/awards. Click here to learn about Tredence's award-winning analytics transformative work. Tredence is a global data science solutions provider focused on solving the last mile problem in AI. The 'last mile' is the gap between insight creation and value realization. Headquartered in San Jose, the company embraces a vertical-first approach and an outcome-driven mindset to help clients win and accelerate value realization from their analytics investments. Tredence is a Great Place to Work-Certified and as a 'Leader' in the Forrester Wave: Customer Analytics Services. Tredence is 1,700-plus employees strong with offices in San Jose, Foster City, Chicago, London, Toronto and Bangalore, with the largest companies in retail, CPG, hi-tech, telecom, healthcare, travel and industrials as clients. For more information, please visit https://tredence.com and follow us at Tredence on LinkedIn. This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PRNewswire)
New Delhi [India], July 5 (ANI/PNN): Digibits Media Network, a global broker specialising in Forex trading based in Mauritius, has introduced new schemes and opportunities for their managing partners to handle their customers' portfolio management, purchase property and gold in Dubai, obtain a golden visa in Dubai, generate rental income in addition to Forex trading, extra earning with lot size, and referral and rewards. Deepak L, founder of Digibits Media Network said, "We are recruiting our managing partners with the launch of the unique schemes, introduced in the world of Forex trading". "Along with the certificates to the managing partners of Digibits, they are also provided 24/5 marketing support to increase their client base. We are not charging a single penny for those wanting to become managing partners with Digibits" An IBC registered company in Saint Vincent and licensed with the Financial Services Authority (FSA), Digibits Network Limited is providing services for CFD, commodities, and US and UK stocks. The company's USP includes the best STP broker, best execution, fast withdrawal, Forex trading, and copy trading. The company works with retail traders and institutional traders alike, providing one-of-a-kind service to clients across the globe. Digibits is founded by experienced traders frustrated by the shortcomings of other brokers in the areas most important to serious traders. Traders are flocking to Digibits to take advantage of the premium services such as instant withdrawals, experienced Forex traders, industry-leading MetaTrader5 platform, and convenient funding methods. Digibits has partnered with Humanbot for offering cutting-edge technology-driven solutions to their clients from their offices located in the United States, Tokyo and Dubai. Humanbot help increases the revenue of the clients by using its varied services on the Forex trading platform. "We consider our managing partners as our family. Traders from any part of the world can become our managing partners and take our franchise free of cost. Our partners have an opportunity to earn a cash bonus, receive birthday gifts, a foreign tour opportunity every fortnight, a weekly dinner, and a world bonus. Managing partners will have a huge databank of IBs and clients portfolios and they have a huge opportunity to earn on every lot size traded by their clients" said Deepak. Digibits Media network is regulated by Financial Services Commission (FSC) in Mauritius. FSC is a regulator of the non-bank financial markets in Mauritius and comprises Security Exchanges, clearing and settlement facilities and security trading systems. For more details connect to the website: http://www.Digibitsfx.com This story is provided by PNN. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PNN)
Pune (Maharashtra) [India], July 5 (ANI/SRV): MIT World Peace University (MIT-WPU), a leading educational institution, has launched the futuristic Integrated B.Tech with MBA program to nurture and empower students and help them realize their leadership qualities. Admission to the program is now open. The five-year full-time program brings an optimal integration of engineering and management curriculum, that is designed to provide a platform for students to realize and nurture their leadership and entrepreneurship qualities. The program aims to make the students 'Industry Ready' and hit the ground running in their chosen professions for managerial and entrepreneurial roles. Speaking about the newly launched programme, Dr Prasad D Khandekar, Dean of Faculty of Engineering and Technology of MIT World Peace University said, "We are delighted to announce the launch of the Integrated B.Tech with MBA program at MIT World Peace University. As a forward-looking higher educational institution with a long-standing legacy, we constantly review our curriculum to match the industry requirements. In most B-Schools, 25 per cent to as much as 80 per cent MBA pursuant belong to engineering background." He further added, "Hence, the Integrated B.Tech with MBA program has been designed by looking at the trends in the global and national business ecosystems that have fuelled an interest among students to explore opportunities and pursue careers in engineering and management with major organizations. This passion to excel is driven by their technical acumen, subject matter expertise and a desire to make an industry impact. The Integrated B.Tech with MBA program aims to support students imbibe and understand management techniques, develop critical thinking ability which is imperative for success in management." The B.Tech program is a four-year programme and the MBA program is a two-year programme. The total duration of both courses together is six years. But if a potential student opts to pursue Integrated B.Tech with MBA program then, they can get a Dual Bachelor's degree in Engineering and a Master of Business Administration at the same time in five years, thereby saving a year. MIT-WPU's Integrated B.Tech with MBA program offers students a well-rounded learning process including, but not limited to the following: Specialized laboratories which offer Research Projects beyond the curriculum in all the Engineering and Technology Schools Choice-based technical and Choice-based Management stream in the combo of Integrated B.Tech with MBA program The Integrated B.Tech with MBA program is a five-year programme instead of six years, thereby saving one academic year for students along with the associated costs A perfect blend of academic and co-curricular activities on both technical and management stream Highly qualified and experienced faculty and strong industry-academia connect Students who complete the Integrated B.Tech with MBA program can pursue engineering in Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electronics and Communication Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Petroleum Engineering (Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning) and many more. After completion of the desired engineering program, students can pursue Management studies in their area of interest and employability. MIT-WPU has an extremely strong placement programme and has delivered 100 per cent placement assistance in previous years. Organizations such as Infosys, Mahindra, Microsoft, Zensar, Nvidia, Honeywell, Wipro, Cognizant, Sandvik and Tata Communications to name a few, have recruited several students from the University over the years. The candidate wanting to apply for admission to the Integrated B.Tech with MBA program must have passed XII Std with Physics, Mathematics and English as compulsory subjects, at a minimum of 50 per cent marks in the PCM group (45 per cent for reserved category candidates). In addition, for consideration for the merit list students will need to submit their JEE or MHTCET 2022 scores. Students interested in applying for the programme can visit (Bitly link with UTM parameters - Pranavi to give) for more information as well as submit their application for admission to the program. MIT World Peace University (MIT-WPU, formerly known as MIT Pune) has a legacy of 4 decades of educating India's youth. MIT-WPU boasts an acclaimed faculty and a network of over 1,00,000 global alumni. The university offers over 100 undergraduate, postgraduate, diploma and PhD programmes. It is also known for its prolific placements and career support provided to the students. Spread over 1000 acres, the MIT Group now encircles 10+ campuses across India, all equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure and convenience. Over 50,000 students enrol every year for different courses, across the 65+ institutes of MIT World Peace University. Media Contact: Natasha Das| natasha.das@srvmedia.com | 8981816219 Siddharth Shamsher | siddharth.shamsher@srvmedia.com | 8390883753 This story is provided by SRV. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/SRV)
Vododara (Gujarat) [India], July 5 (ANI/NewsVoir): Rishabh Software today announced that it has entered into Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with the Gujarat State Fertilizers & Chemicals (GSFC) University and Asian School of Business Management (ASBM) University for their technology education programs. The MoUs are part of the Rishabh Software skilling initiative - RISE (Rishabh Integrated Skill Enhancement). The agreement between RISE and the universities is unique because it will leverage the institutions' strengths to create better opportunities in technical education that meets the current and future workforce demands. Most importantly, the objective would be to help meet the industry needs of students to support their "College to Corporate" journey. As per the MoUs, RISE would play the role of a strategic implementation partner. The RISE team would help the universities to design customized technology programs that integrate into their curriculum through experiences such as blended learning, multi-disciplinary learning and activity-based learning. RISE would work with the universities in content curation, monitoring the learning program and conducting periodic assessments. The students who excel in this program will have project work or internship opportunities with Rishabh Software. "We are excited to partner with GSFC University and ASBM University. We will work with them to create a pathway for their students to increase their career opportunities as technology professionals," said Saumil Shah, Chief Strategy Officer at Rishabh Software. "Through our RISE initiative, we are working to nurture 1000+ young tech minds to be industry-ready in the next five years," he added. "This program would feature collaborative support across academic initiatives, enhancement of soft skills and a focus on innovation by imparting knowledge through live projects and hands-on learning. This association would also focus on upskilling the faculty members with Faculty Development Programs (FDPs) to address emerging industry requirements in line with National Occupational Standards," said Dr Rajesh Khajuria, Vice President at RISE. Rishabh Software is a CMMI 3, ISO 9001:2019, and ISO 27001 certified organization. We specialize in software development, technology consulting, engineering, and IT-enabled services. Based out of Vadodara, we have achieved considerable technological expertise with a significant global market presence. Our team of 700+ employees across US, UK & India offices has executed over 1000+ projects globally. To learn more about us, please visit www.rishabhsoft.com. This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)
New Delhi [India] July 5 (ANI/SRV): Itsaboutdog.com, a platform offering a comprehensive guide to owning dogs, has been launched to help dog owners care for their pets more effectively. The founder Aapt Dubey observed a need for access to easy and free information pertaining to dog training and caring. After conducting thorough research by consulting with other pet owners and banking on his personal experience, Aapt was able to upload almost 200+ articles about dog grooming, training and health. "I have always had at least one dog at home since childhood. Dogs don't understand our language which is why training becomes all the more important to be able to communicate. Along with this, pet owners should know what signs and gestures and changes in the behavior of a dog can imply. The sole objective that drove me towards launching this platform was to create easier communication." India has a pet population of 28 to 29 million and dogs make up for the maximum ownership. Owners, who also refer to them as 'pet parents', are constantly looking for ways to make lives for their pets easier and understand them better. This creates a gap in the need for quick and comprehensive information. Itsaboutdog is striving to bridge this gap. "Our plan is to continue our research and keep uploading fresh articles to cater to the needs of pet parents", added Aapt Dubey. Dog owners can find articles related to basic training such as bell training, potty training; health concerns such as conjunctivitis, blindness, and lymphoma; eating habits such as eating dog food, drinking water, food guides and many more. If you are a pet parent and want to know more visit: https://itsaboutdog.com/ This story is provided by SRV. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/SRV)
The Indian rupee slumped to a new record low of 79.38 against the US dollar on Tuesday amid continued foreign fund outflows and a widening trade deficit. At the interbank foreign exchange market, the partially convertible rupee started trading at 79.04 against the US dollar and slumped to a low of 79.38 in the intra-day. The rupee closed 41 paise lower at 79.36 against the US dollar. This is the lowest intra-day as well as the closing level of the rupee. The Indian rupee had closed at 78.95 against the US dollar on Monday. The rupee fell sharply on Tuesday, a day after the government data showed an increase in the trade deficit. As per data released by the Ministry of Commerce & Industry on Monday, India's trade deficit widened to $25.63 billion in June. For the first quarter of the current financial year, the trade deficit has widened to $70.25 billion. The country's trade deficit has widened due to high imports. India's merchandise imports in April-June 2022-23 period stood at $187.02 billion, an increase of 47.31 per cent over $126.96 billion in April-June 2021-22. In the first quarter of the current financial year, India's merchandise export rose to $116.77 billion, recording an increase of 22.22 per cent over $95.54 billion recorded in April -June 2021-22. India's merchandise exports rose by 16.8 per cent to $37.9 billion in June 2022, while imports soared by 51.02 per cent to $63.58 leading to a trade deficit of $25.63 billion during the month. According to global financial services group Nomura, the high trade deficit is likely to pull the rupee down to 82 against the US dollar. Nomura said in a report that India's current account deficit would widen to 3.3 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the current financial year from 1.2 per cent in 2021-22. (ANI)
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], July 7 (ANI/PRNewswire): National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), the nodal agency under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India, has partnered with Auxilo Finserve Pvt. Ltd., an education-focused Non-banking Financial Company (NBFC), to provide financial assistance to students aspiring to enroll in skilling and vocational courses. Under the partnership, the two organisations have planned to create a portfolio of around INR 1,000 crore over the course of the next three years. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by Ved Mani Tiwari, Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Officiating CEO, NSDC and Namita Raja, Head - Credit and Operations, Auxilo Finserve in New Delhi. Under the collaboration, a step in the direction of fulfilling the objective of Skill India Mission, Auxilo's pro-education student loan solutions will enable aspiring learners to enroll in reskilling and upskilling programs offered across NSDC's network of training partners (TPs) in the country. Upskilling and job readiness are primary in leveraging India's demographic dividend and, thus, partnerships of such scale will be a definitive step in narrowing the gap between quality education and the access to it. Students seeking financial assistance for skilling and vocational courses can connect with their nearest NSDC-approved training centers to know about the available financing options. Under the partnership, some training partners have been roped in to begin with, and the number will increase in due course of time to cater to a larger number of deserving students. The collaboration will also enable Skill Loans, a new initiative through which NSDC, supported by participating lending institutions, plans to increase the penetration of financial assistance to deserving students for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). Under the initiative, loans will be offered to students at attractive rates, thus, supporting them to take certificate/ diploma/ degree and other courses to enhance their employability. Auxilo, in partnership with NSDC, will facilitate students to enroll in desired courses. Commenting on the partnership, Ved Mani Tiwari, Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Officiating CEO, NSDC said, "It is our constant endeavor to make skilling and vocational education available for all. At NSDC, we do understand the challenges faced by the skill seekers to acquire funding through formal and recognized channels. With our partnership with Auxilo, I believe that we will be able to address the fundamental challenge of adequate and accessible financial assistance. This collaboration holds huge growth potential for both the organizations with simplified funding access to deserving students till the last mile." Neeraj Saxena, MD & CEO, Auxilo Finserve said, ''Through this strategic collaboration, we aim to create a valuable ecosystem to support students enrolled with NSDC's training partners with hassle-free and seamless financing. We have designed specialized financial products for skilling and vocational courses and are all set to help Indian students and educational institutions get ready for the professional world.'' National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), a nodal skill development agency, working under the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE), Government of India, is a unique Public Private Partnership (PPP). Through its mission 'Skills4All, Anytime, Anywhere', NSDC aims to provide access to opportunities to all through quality vocational education and training. Since inception in 2008, NSDC has trained over 3 crore people through its collaboration with 700+ training partners and over 11,000 training centres spread across 700+ districts in the country. NSDC has established 37 Sector Skill Councils (SSCs) and implements the Government's flagship skill development schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS), among others. NSDC also funds enterprises, companies and organisations that provide skill training. The organisation enables private-sector capacity building in skill development by offering concessional loans, other innovative financial products, and strategic partnerships. For more information, visit www.nsdcindia.org Founded in 2017, Auxilo Finserve Pvt. Ltd. is a Reserve Bank of India (RBI)-registered NBFC and is poised to serve the financing gaps in the Indian education ecosystem, with its focus on students and scaling the education infrastructure through innovative financial solution delivery. For more information, visit https://www.auxilo.com/ This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PRNewswire)
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India] July 5 (ANI/BusinessWire India): Jaro Education, India's most trusted and leading Edtech firm, maintains an unwavering placement assistance record, with a projected highest salary of 90 lakhs and an average salary of 27 lakhs; paving new milestones in the current academic year. Over 60+ companies across various sectors and industries, from finance, marketing, IT, data science, analytics, and other techno-functional have come on-board in the past two months for premium programs. Working professionals and learners have started securing a majority of offers from top-tier and reputed companies, receiving enormous support and career assistance from Jaro Education's core placement team. Mehak Hundal, a learner pursuing the PG Certificate Programme in FinTech recently received a hike of 40 per cent with HDFC Bank. "I started my career with a postal department to enhance my skills. I joined the PG Certificate Programme in Fintech from Jaro. I was actively looking for a switch to corporate banking with help of the corporate placement team at Jaro Education I got the exact role which I was looking for. Currently working with HDFC bank as part of their digital sales team. Jaro placement team helped me get a hike of 40 per cent on my previous salary." Abhilekh Singh, a learner pursuing Advance Supply Chain Management said, "My sincere appreciation & gratitude to the placement department of Jaro Education for their efforts in imparting quality supervision throughout the interview process. I am very grateful to the Jaro Team for effectively and sincerely helping me with constant assistance throughout. Jaro Education has been a tremendous support with regards to placements and always lent a helping hand whenever we students had any issues with the companies coming in and what they expected out of us." "I always wondered how to get noticed by the companies nowadays. Getting a call from employers is a dream of many of us, job seekers like me. I realised that the first touch of contact is a job application which mainly includes sharing a resume thus I wanted to write in praise of your expertise in profile building. Team Jaro did a remarkable job of transforming my employment history into a beautifully formatted & persuasive resume that I feel more confident about now," said Neha Agrawal, a student pursuing PG Certificate Programme in Data Science for Business Excellence and Innovation. Apart from the placement assistance, Jaro Education has a dedicated team to give 1:1 guidance for candidates' profile building. The kind of flexibility they provide, i.e.; the service can be redeemed at any point (during or after the course), is unmatchable, including webinars and networking opportunities by the alumni portal. Jaro Education always believes in fostering long-term relationships, may it be with employees or learners. They also have a dedicated alumni platform where current cohorts can leverage the networking with past learners. Candidates always require more than a few opportunities to get their careers started. Jaro Education offers 3 to 5 opportunities on average to their learners, and this service is provided with 5 to 6 rounds of personalized assistance. Furthermore, Jaro Education has opened up new doors for candidates from companies such as Ernst & Young, DE Shaw & Co., London Stock Exchange, ITC InfoTech, and many more for positions such as Investment Banker, Business Analyst, Credit Risk Analyst, Software Developer, Marketing Lead (VP), etc. Jaro Education not only provides learners with opportunities for career transition but also for advancement within the organization. A professional, Satyajit Sutradhar expressed his views, "I enrolled in the 2nd batch for Business Analytics Course. Jaro's team helped with the application process and made the procedure smooth. The learnings have been great, and the professors have done justice to the course even with less time in hand. They have duly touched on the majority of the topics that helped us gain lots of knowledge in the Analytics field, and we were able to explore the various use cases with examples from the industry. The course is balanced for professionals who would want to pursue their career in Business Analytics. The placement Assistant from Jaro's team assisted me in updating my CV in a more professional format. And Jaro has taken the initiative to help comb through their job profiles." "I am currently pursuing a course from Jaro Education on Digital Strategies & Marketing. An Assistant Manager - Placement Assistant briefed me about placement assistance services, including profile building and job recommendations. One day I reached out to the Jaro Education team for the cover letter preparation for the upcoming promotion; with their dedicated guidance, I could present myself better than other candidates and got the promotion along a good hike. I highly recommend both of them for any services related to profile building," said, Tarun Khokhar a student pursuing PG Certificate Programme in Digital Strategies and Marketing Analytics. Ranjita Raman, CEO of Jaro Education, said, "We believe in providing quality resources for professionals that allow them to find diverse opportunities, connect with meaningful work and grow from their experiences in order to set them up for success in the future. To confer the aspiring professionals across the nation with the opportunity to learn new skills, expand their talents and position themselves for long, prosperous careers is something we plan on doing." Whether a student is working towards higher education, job employment or entrepreneurial opportunities, Jaro Education supports their every endeavour. The prerequisite of having a location where students can experience profound personal growth and invaluable knowledge beyond enumerable. Jaro Education has now assisted over 1000 students in the previous fiscal year. The Edtech pioneer aspires to expand its track record by building successful intellectual experiences so that everybody gets the opportunity to reach their full potential through high-quality and affordable executive education program portfolios. The firm bridges the skill gap by bringing world-class programs from top-tier universities to assist learners in raising their calibre. Jaro Education continued its winning streak in the Edtech sector by clocking standalone revenue of Rs 85 crores for FY 2021-22 and profitability of Rs 9.50 crores. The key factors that have contributed to this outstanding performance are a significant increase in learner base and new partnerships with some prestigious universities/ institutes with Indian and Global footprints. Jaro Education, a self-funded, oldest Edtech Company with consistent profit track records since inception delivered year-on-year growth of 228 per cent in net profit and 82 per cent in revenue compared to last financial year. Disclaimer: Past record does not guarantee future job prospects This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/BusinessWire India)
Filmmaker Paul Haggis can breathe a sigh of relief as a judge in Italy ended his detention on Monday. The judge ordered Haggis released from house arrest while prosecutors decide whether to pursue their investigation into allegations of sexual assault against him, Deadline reported, citing US media. Haggis had remained under police detention in a hotel in southern Italy since June 19 after an unnamed British woman told police that the director twice had non-consensual sex with her while he was in Italy to participate in an arts festival in the tourist town of Ostuni. Haggis originally came to Italy to attend the Allora Fest film festival, which he was involved in organizing and where he was due to hold a number of masterclasses, when the anonymous complainant flew in to join him. After her police complaint and Haggis's subsequent arrest came to light the festival went ahead without the director earlier this month, as per Variety. Haggis is also facing a court case in the United States, where he is being sued by film publicist Haleigh Breest, who alleges Haggis raped her in January 2013. Breest originally filed the lawsuit in December 2017, although proceedings were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (ANI)
Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh are busy painting the US red! The couple took a break from professional commitments to enjoy some time with each other in the US earlier this month. And they have been out and about ever since! Deepika's family is also with them in the US. Although the vacation is nearing its end, Deepika sure knows how to make everything special! Recently, the 'Padmaavat' actress was invited as Chief Guest to the 10th Edition of the Konkani Sammelan in California's San Jose where she was joined by her family and Ranveer Singh. It was Ranveer's first tryst with the full-blown event that also saw an opening performance by Shankar Mahadevan. The superstar, who has been ruling Bollywood for over a decade, took this opportunity as a chance to connect with her roots and the larger community and discuss her journey, the culture's influence, her upbringing, and her professional journey during her hour-long fireside chat. What made the occasion even more special was the presence of her family as well as Ranveer on stage. The power couple had the San Jose McEnery Convention Center echoing with thunderous applause and that was definitely the highlight of the event. For the unversed, Deepika Padukone hails from Bengaluru and speaks Konkani fluently. Both her parents are Konkani speaking as well. [{984b2341-469b-4b57-a607-d1de412ec5b7:intradmin/291743870_1715381222154072_3277464438654721411_n.jpg}] Deepika also shared a couple of pictures on Instagram, flaunting her million-dollar smile! She wrote, "A people without knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots. Thank you #KAOCA and to the people of my community for your love, warmth, and blessings. I couldn't be more proud." [{1e410cce-f5a2-4130-b012-471a4c076857:intradmin/deepika_vgfbhvgngvhn.PNG}] Hosted in the heart of Silicon Valley, the three-day event complete with performances, music shows, seminars, food and works, celebrates the Konkani cultural heritage and is an initiative to keep the culture alive across the world. (ANI)
Swedish actor Hedda Stiernstedt has landed the lead role in Netflix's Swedish comedy 'One More Time'. According to Variety, Stiernstedt would be playing the character of Amelia, a 40-year-old woman who gets hit by a bus on her birthday. However, when Amelia opens her eyes, she finds herself being transported to the year 2002 and is 18 years old again. This miraculous incident allows her to redo all the mistakes she did back at that time. Adding a twist to the story, during the unnatural time loop, where Stiernstedt aka Amelia is seemingly stuck, waking up on her 18th birthday every day she realizes that apart from the loop there is something else which needs to be fixed before she is able to leave her past behind. 'The Betrayal' actor Stiernstedt revealed that she was "excited for the project", reported Variety. Talking about the director of the film and her co-actors, the 34-year-old star said that she had a "great time working" with them. "I am so excited for this project to come alive. The timing for a retrospect look back on the early 2000s feels right and diving into that era is filled with so much joy. I'm working together with the talented Jonatan Etzler and a group of very gifted actors. We're having a great time working together and I think that will be noticeable in the final result," confessed Stiernstedt. Further, Stiernstedt took to Instagram to share the news of her upcoming film. "Yay" the actor captioned the post, as reported by Variety. 'One More Time' is helmed by debutante Jonatan Etzler while it is co-written by Sofie Forsman and Tove Forsman, reported Variety. The original idea to curate the movie came from writer-producer Mikael Ljung. Actors Elinor Silfversparre Fahlen, Maxwell Cunningham, and Miriam Ingrid also feature in the movie. 'One More Time' is slated to release in the online streaming platform, Netflix in 2023. (ANI)
It is time to rejoice for historic film lovers as Banijay Rights production company has given a green light to license one of the classic historical drama series 'Marie Antoinette' scheduled to release on BBC First in Australia. Based upon the story of the real-life queen of France before the beginning of the French Revolution, the film, 'Marie Antoinette' revolves around the life of Antoinette, a remarkably modern and unorthodox young queen. Actor Emilia Schule, known to fame for her film 'High Society' is to step into the shoes of this unconventional queen, reported Variety. In real life, when Marie Antoinette was just a 14-year-old girl, she left Austria to marry the Dauphin of France. The gradual transformation of Antoinette, from a stubborn princess, defying the French court rules and navigating through the pressure of expanding the Bourbon line, Antoinette became an iconic fashion inspiration, recreating life in the Versailles Palace of France into a free, independent, and feminist place, just like her. Further, according to Variety, the young queen fought back against the rising rumours about her reputation at the Versailles court and was able to defeat her enemies with dignity and courage. Originally, the drama was licensed to BBC2, a UK public broadcaster, before the right was earned by Australia's BBC First, reported Variety. Helmed by two notable directors, Geoffrey Enthoven and Pete Travis, the eight-episode series, 'Mary Antoinette' is co-written by Chloe Moss, Louise Ironside, and Avril E. Russell. The filming of the movie was executed in several scenic and historical locations including the prestigious Chateaux of Versailles, the Vaux-le-Vicomte, Voisins, and Lesigny, Champs. According to Kell Hoddinott, one of the members of Banijay Rights, 'Marie Antoinette' boasts of "outstanding scenery and performance" which tells the tale of a "unique young queen", reported Variety. "Boasting outstanding scenery and performances, 'Marie Antoinette' is continuing to gain strong traction worldwide. This series chronicles the life of a unique young queen as she navigates the often dark and manipulative world of Versailles," said Hoddinott. (ANI)
Hollywood filmmaker Woody Allen has offered further details about an upcoming feature he plans to shoot in Paris, which might also be his last. According to Deadline, while speaking with a French new outlet, Allen explained he intends to move to Paris in September to make what will be a French-language thriller. The filmmaker said the story will be in the vein of his 2005 'Match Point', calling it "a sort of poisonous romantic thriller" and that it will feature an all-French cast. He further noted he has already lined up his principal actors. Allen told the outlet that the film, which he also recently discussed, without revealing details, in a conversation with Alec Baldwin, is being financed out of the US. "This will be my 50th feature," he said, adding, "It might be the last one." Allen previously shot 2011's 'Midnight In Paris' in the capital, winning a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for the fantasy romance. The 86-year-old's most recent film was 'Rifkin's Festival', which grossed just USD 2.3 million, reaching the US in a limited release earlier this year but making little impact in the marketplace, reported Deadline. In recent years, the filmmaker has seen his career options narrow amid revived scrutiny around past allegations of sexual abuse. As per Deadline, on being asked by the French news outlet whether he has feared not being able to continue making movies because of those allegations, Allen responded, "I am an author and no one can prevent me from writing, and therefore from working. It is the guarantee of my freedom and of my independence." (ANI)
Researchers have created artificial Hox genes which plan and direct where cells go to develop tissues or organs using new synthetic DNA technology and genomic engineering in stem cells. Their findings confirm how clusters of Hox genes help cells to learn and remember where they are in the body. Their findings, published in Science, confirm how clusters of Hox genes help cells to learn and remember where they are in the body. Hox genes as architects of the body Nearly all animals from humans to birds to fish have an anterior-posterior axis, or a line that runs from head to tail. During development, Hox genes act as architects, determining the plan for where cells go along the axis, as well as what body parts they make up. Hox genes ensure that organs and tissues develop in the right place, forming the thorax or placing wings in the correct anatomical positions. If Hox genes fail through misregulation or mutation, cells can get lost, playing a role in some cancers, birth defects, and miscarriages. "I don't think we can understand development or disease without understanding Hox genes," said Esteban Mazzoni, associate professor of biology at NYU and the study's co-senior author. Despite their importance in development, Hox genes are challenging to study. They are tightly organized in clusters, with only Hox genes in the piece of DNA where they are found and no other genes surrounding them (what scientists call a "gene desert"). And while many parts of the genome have repetitive elements, Hox clusters have no such repeats. These factors make them unique but difficult to study with conventional gene editing without affecting neighboring Hox genes. Starting anew with synthetic DNA Could scientists create artificial Hox genes to better study them, rather than relying on gene editing? "We are very good at reading the genome, or sequencing DNA. And thanks to CRISPR, we can make small edits in the genome. But we're still not good at writing from scratch," explained Mazzoni. "Writing or building new pieces of the genome could help us to test for sufficiency -- in this case, find out what the smallest unit of the genome is necessary for a cell to know where it is in the body." Mazzoni teamed up Jef Boeke, director of the Institute of System Genetics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, who is known for his work synthesizing a synthetic yeast genome. Boeke's lab was looking to translate this technology to mammalian cells. Graduate student Sudarshan Pinglay in Boeke's lab fabricated long strands of synthetic DNA by copying DNA from the Hox genes of rats. The researchers then delivered the DNA into a precise location within pluripotent stem cells from mice. Using the different species enabled the researchers to distinguish between the synthetic rat DNA and the natural cells of mice. "Dr. Richard Feynman famously opined, 'What I cannot create, I do not understand.' We are now a giant step closer to understanding Hox," said Boeke, who is also a professor of biochemistry and molecular pharmacology at NYU Grossman and is the study's co-senior author. Studying Hox clusters With the artificial Hox DNA in mouse stem cells, the researchers could now explore how Hox genes help cells to learn and remember where they are. In mammals, Hox clusters are surrounded by regulatory regions that control how the Hox genes are activated. It was unknown if the cluster alone or the cluster plus other elements was required for the cells to learn and remember where they are. The researchers discovered that these gene-dense clusters alone contain all of the information needed for cells to decode a positional signal and remember it. This suggests that the compact nature of Hox clusters is what helps cells learn their location, confirming a long-standing hypothesis on Hox genes that was previously difficult to test. The creation of synthetic DNA and artificial Hox genes paves the way for future research on animal development and human diseases. "Different species have different structures and shapes, a lot of which depends on how Hox clusters get expressed. For instance, a snake is a long thorax with no limbs, while a skate has no thorax and is just limbs. A better understanding of Hox clusters may help us to understand how these systems get adapted and modified to make different animals," said Mazzoni. "More broadly, this synthetic DNA technology, for which we have built a kind of factory, will be useful for studying diseases that are genomically complicated and now we have a method for producing much more accurate models for them," said Boeke. (ANI)
Meanwhile, the Covid positivity rate has risen marginally to 5.25 per cent, while the number of active cases stands at 2,938, out of which the number of patients being treated in home isolation stands at 2,348.

With 749 patients recovering in the last 24 hours, the total number of recoveries has gone to 19,08,223.

With new Covid cases, the total caseload of the city has jumped to 19,37,433 while the death toll has reached 26,272.

The number of Covid containment zones in the city stands at 364.

A total of 8,002 new tests -- 6,872 RT-PCR and 1,130 Rapid Antigen - were conducted in the last 24 hours, taking the total to 3,91,23,969 while 9,701 vaccines were administered - 518 first doses, 1,470 second doses, and 7,713 precaution doses.

The total number of cumulative beneficiaries vaccinated so far stands at 3,50,82,798, according to the health bulletin.

--IANS avr/vd

( 193 Words)

2022-07-04-22:50:06 (IANS)
After a Delhi court on Saturday dismissed the bail application of Alt news co-founder Mohammed Zubair who was arrested in a case related to an alleged objectionable tweet, Zubair was taken to Sitapur in connection with a case registered against him here for allegedly inflaming religious sentiments through his tweet on three persons, said the officials on Monday. The tweet targeted Mahant Bajrang Muni, Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati and Swami Anand Swaroop and termed the trio as "spreaders of hatred." The case was based on the complaint of Bhagwan Sharan, the district president of Hindu Sher Sena. Zubair has been booked under sections 295A and 67 of IPC. The complaint against the Alt-News co-founder was registered on June 1. Zubair was first arrested on June 27, after a First Information Report (FIR) was registered against him based on a Twitter posting, which another Twitter handle alleged "hurt Hindu sentiments." "The said post of Mohd. Zubair containing pictures and words against a particular religious community are highly provocative and done deliberately which are more than sufficient to incite hatred among people which can be detrimental for the maintenance of public tranquillity," the Delhi Police said in a statement. The contentious tweet by Zubair was posted in March 2018. The court on Saturday sent Mohd Zubair to 14-day judicial custody. Delhi police on Saturday said Pravada media received donations from foreign countries including Pakistan and the accused is the director of that company. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Snigdha Sarvaria dismissed the bail petition after hearing the submission of the defence counsel and special public prosecutor (SPP) Atul Srivastava. The court observed in the order that since the investigation is at the initial stage and in view of the circumstances and gravity of the offence, no ground is made out for bail. Application dismissed and the accused is remanded to judicial custody till July 16, 2022. Delhi police had sought judicial custody of Mohd Zubair. He was produced before the court after four days of police custody. He was arrested on June 27, 2022. SPP Atul Srivastava submitted that three new sections for the destruction of evidence, criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the violation of the Foreign Contribution (Regulations) Act have been added to the FIR. It is alleged by police that the accused received donations from foreign countries namely Pakistan, Syria, Australia and Middle Eastern countries. This is to be investigated. In this connection, Section 35 of the Foreign Contributions Regulations Act has been invoked in the FIR. Police alleged that the evidence was destroyed by deleting the data by formatting the phone. It is also alleged there is a conspiracy on the part of the accused. On the other hand, Advocate Vrinda Grover opposed the judicial custody remand application. Counsel pressed the bail application saying that this is malicious prosecution and with mala fide intention. The entire exercise is mala fide in nature. She raised a question, "Is it a crime to change a sim card, is it a crime to reformat the phone?" "They have my phone, now the whole exercise is for my laptop. This is a phishing and roving inquiry. They have recovered my laptop from my home in Bangaluru. It is quite surprising that they did not take any technical person with them to Bangaluru," Mohd Zubair said in his plea. Advocate Grover submitted that the article seized were not sealed. Data integrity has to be protected. It can be manipulated. The hash value is not given to date, there is a likelihood of tampering and manipulation which would attract new sections to the petitioner. Mohd Zubair said in his plea said that the alleged tweet of 24 March 2018 was made from a phone and he had lodged a complaint in 2021 that his phone was snatched. Advocate Grover argued that Delhi Police registered this case on the basis of a Twitter handle that is anonymous and was started in October 2021. The handle pull out Mohd Zubair's tweet of 2018 and Delhi Police found the retweet made by this Twitter handle. "Do they want to create communal disharmony?" Vrinda Grover raised a question. "Actually it is you (Delhi police) who want to create a problem. We have the right. We have freedom. We live in a constitutional democracy. Section 295 A required a deliberate attempt. My tweet is not related to any religion or any god," the counsel argued. "You did not ask me to bring any phone neither it was summoned. It was my private property and I have every right to format it. It does not cast any person unless it is a case property. Section 201 attracts when there is the destruction of evidence. My phone was not a case property. The conspiracy-related section cannot be invoked as I am the only accused in this case," defence counsel argued. It was argued by Advocate Grover that invocation of section 35 is a practice to prejudice the case. She argued that the Police informed the media that there are many transactions from foreign countries and that Pravada media received money from foreign countries. The maximum punishment is 5 years and bail is a rule not jail. All the tweets are there, all other sociopath tweet handles are there, and nobody is interrogated. This court is to guard the right of the accused. The supreme court has directed to do so, the defence counsel argued. (ANI)
A man from Rajasthan's Ajmer on Monday announced he would give away his house and property as a reward to anyone who decapitates suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma for her controversial remarks on Prophet Mohammad. The man was reportedly identified as Salman Chishti. In the video, he was heard saying he would give his home and property to anyone who brings the head of the Nupur Sharma. He could also be heard saying that the BJP leader has betrayed the pride of Khwaja Saheb and Mohammad Saheb, in such a situation, he will give his house and his landed property to the one who will bring him her head. He alleged in his video that Muslims are being persecuted and killed across the country. After the video went viral, the statement of Additional Superintendent of Police Vikas Sangwan has come to the fore, in which Sangwan said that he has also received this video through WhatsApp. He added, "the attitude of the police administration is very strict regarding this video, Salman Chishti is seen in a state of intoxication in the video. In this regard, the police have also spoken to the officials of the Dargah and Anjuman, who are instructing him to stop this video from going viral. Sangwan told ANI, " accused Salman is a resident of the Chishti Dargah police station area, police are looking for Salman. He will be soon caught and legal action will be taken against him." Earlier on June 28, a man was beheaded by two men in Udaipur's Maldas street area. The deceased had shared a social media post in support of suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma a few days ago. The two men posted a video boasting about the beheading and threatened PM Modi's life as well. Last month, Sharma allegedly made objectionable remarks against Prophet Muhammad during a television news debate on the Gyanvapi issue. Protests had also erupted in various states including Punjab, Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh over the controversial remarks on Prophet Muhammad made by Sharma and Jindal. The BJP leader's remark drew sharp reactions from around the world. (ANI)
He submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister at Gannavaram Airport in Vijayawada before seeing him off.

Modi visited Bhimavaram in West Godavari district to launch 125th birth anniversary celebrations of freedom fighter Alluri Sitarama Raju.

In the memorandum, Jagan Mohan Reddy appealed to the PM to release pending arrears.

The Chief Minister also demanded the Centre to pay Rs 6,627.28 crore towards the dues from Telangana discoms to the Andhra Pradesh Power Generation Corporation.

He also urged the Prime Minister to consider the revised estimates of the Polavaram Project and give approval for Rs 55,548.87 crore.

Jagan Mohan Reddy reminded Modi that the ration given to the state under the National Food Security Act is not rational and this is causing serious damage to the state, and requested him to take appropriate measures to amend it.

The Chief Minister also appealed for adequate financial support for newly-established medical colleges in the state and also requested clearances for Bhogapuram Airport.

He also urged the PM to allocate iron ore mines to Andhra Pradesh Development Corporation (APMDC).

He reiterated the demand for special status to the state saying this would help the state to recover from the impact of bifurcation.

--IANS ms/vd

( 240 Words)

2022-07-04-23:08:03 (IANS)
The four accused, whose transit remand were accepted, are Priyabarat alias Fauzi, the alleged main shooter, Kashish alias Kuldeep, Deepak alias Tinu, an aide of gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, who was brought by Delhi Police on a production warrant, and Keshav Kumar, who allegedly provided a vehicle and other help to the escaping shooters.

An application was filed by the Special Prosecutor to grant the transit remand to the accused.

The court observed that as persons arrested have been accused of committing cognisable offence, thus their transit remand for one day was granted to produce them before the court concerned as early as possible.

It also said that the medical examination of the accused be conducted as per rules and guidelines laid down by the apex court.

If accused need any medical facility, the investigating officer is directed to ensure that the accused get the medical help within time, the court said.

Moosewala was shot dead in Punjab on May 29.

--IANS vg/uk

( 198 Words)

2022-07-04-23:14:02 (IANS)
Karnataka Government on Monday suspended IPS officer Amrit Paul after he was arrested by CID for his alleged role in the PSI recruitment scam case. IAS officer J Manjunath, former DC of Bengaluru Urban was also suspended by the Karnataka government after he was arrested by Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in a bribery case. Manjunath was arrested by the ACB, four days after he was transferred from the post of Bengaluru urban district deputy commissioner (DC). Manjunath is facing allegations of collecting bribes through his staff to settle a land dispute. Earlier on Monday Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai took a jibe at the Congress party and said that the grand old party would have covered up the arrests of ADGP Amrit Paul and IAS officer J Manjunath in the PSI recruitment scam case and bribery case respectively. He had lauded his government for taking prompt action in the two cases. While talking to ANI, Bommai had said, "Our government unearthed the whole case. CID was given a free hand to investigate the case and spare none. ADGP who was heading the recruitment arrested after proof was found against him." "Similarly, in another case, an IAS officer (J Manjunath) has been arrested. We're not here to protect anyone. If someone has done wrong, then action will be taken...If the Congress government would have been there then they would have covered up the whole case," he had added. The PSI scam case is related to the irregularities in the appointment of police sub-inspectors in the state. MLA and former Minister Priyank Kharge had earlier alleged a huge scam in the PSI recruitment of more than 545 candidates and pointed at the involvement of the governmnet and officials in the matter. Notably, on May 12, Karnataka Minister for Higher Education CN Ashwath Narayan announced that the state government was investigating the PSI scam and had assured that the people involved with it would be exposed. On April 29, the Karnataka government decided to cancel the results of the police sub-inspector (PSI) recruitment exam following allegations of corruption. The government had stated that a fresh exam will be re-conducted and the dates for which will be announced soon. Meanwhile, Jnanendra had informed that the Crime Investigation Team (CID) had arrested the main accused of the PSI scam, BJP leader Divya Hagaragi and four others in the case. Divya, who was absconding in the case, was arrested from Pune. (ANI)
Union ministers Arjun Ram Meghwal and Arjun Munda were also present during the meeting.

National Democratic Alliance's (NDA) presidential candidate Droupadi and joint opposition nominee Yashwant Sinha are the only two contesting candidates for election to the Office of the President after the last date for the withdrawal of candidature ended on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday lauded the candidature of the NDA presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu and called it historic on the second day of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) national executive meeting in Hyderabad. (ANI)
Rajya Sabha declared the seat vacant after his resignation was accepted.

A Parliamentary Bulletin reads, "Manik Saha, an elected Member of the Council of States (Rajya Sabha), representing the State of Tripura, resigned his seat in the Rajya Sabha and his resignation has been accepted by the Chairman, Rajya Sabha with effect from July 4, 2022."

Saha met Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu to submit his resignation on Monday after he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Tripura in the recently held Assembly bypoll.

The Chief Minister contested the Assembly bypoll from the Town Bardowali constituency and won the polls by a margin of 6,104 votes.

He is presently serving as the 11th Chief Minister of Tripura.

In a sudden turn of events, Saha was sworn in as the chief minister of Tripura on May 15 after the BJP decided on a leadership change in the state a year ahead of the Assembly elections by replacing Biplab Kumar Deb with Saha as the Chief Minister.

Tripura unit of the BJP leaders was surprised with the choice of Manik Saha as chief minister as he was elected to the Rajya Sabha from the lone seat barely two months ago.

The 69-year-old was elected to the Rajya Sabha on April 3 in the biennial election to the Upper House.

Bharatiya Janata Party is currently the single largest party in the Rajya Sabha.

Saha is also the chief of the party in the state. Saha joined the BJP in 2016 after quitting Congress. He was made state party chief in 2020 and elected to Rajya Sabha in March this year.

The polls in the state are likely to be held in March next year. (ANI)
Bharatiya Janata Party MP and Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha National President Tejasvi Surya was questioned by the Delhi Police in connection with the demonstration outside Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's house on March 30, said the police on Tuesday. According to the police, the questioning was done nearly 10 days ago. The police had issued notice to the BJP leader under CRPC 41, responding to which Surya had said that when he returns to Delhi, the police can question him. The police questioned Surya in his government house on the Ashoka road in the last week of June. He was also shown the CCTV footage in which the workers of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha were seen demonstrating against the Chief Minister outside his residence. Notably, the police have already arrested eight workers of the organisation. A protest was started by around 150-200 protestors of BJP Yuva Morcha on March 30, outside Kejriwal's residence, at Link road near IP College, around 11.30 am onwards to protest against his remarks on 'The Kashmir Files' in the Delhi Vidhan Sabha. During the protest, around 1 pm, some of the protestors breached two barricades and reached outside the CM House where they created a ruckus, shouted slogans etc. The BJP workers were also carrying a box of paint from which they threw paint outside the door. In the imbroglio, a boom barrier arm, as well as a CCTV camera, was vandalised. The police team immediately removed the BJP workers from the spot. After BJP workers dismantled the barricades outside Kejriwal's house Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia claimed that the BJP cadres attempted to kill the CM as they were unable to defeat him electorally. Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia alleged that "Just because BJP cannot defeat Kejriwal, they are trying to kill him. Today's incident was a pre-orchestrated plan of the BJP to murder the CM." He added, "Due to Aam Aadmi Party's victory and BJP's defeat in Punjab, BJP wants to murder Arvind Kejriwal. He alleged that the BJP goons were deliberately taken by the police to the residence of CM Kejriwal. They broke the CCTV cameras and barriers in front of the CM's residence and intended to kill Kejriwal." Raghav Chadha, AAP leader said, "Since AAP has formed its govt in Punjab, BJP has gone insane. They contested against Kejriwal many times in Punjab and Delhi but got defeated. BJP has an insecurity that their business will stop; hence the BJP goons resorted to attacking the AAP convenor and this is their politics:" He further added, "BJP attacked the house of a democratically elected CM today and this attack is not just on Kejriwal, it is on the people of this country who want sincere governance. AAP will answer back with its public service and patriotism." (ANI)
Local villagers of the Batadrava area in central Assam's Nagaon district on Monday welcomed a retired army jawan in a unique way as he returned to his native village after completing 26 years of service in the Indian army. Dharani Bora - a retired army jawan on Monday reached his native village Bualguri, near Batadrava - also the birthplace of Vaisnav Saint Srimanta Sankardev. The local villagers welcomed the jawan by playing the drums and performing dance. Dharani Bora said, "I didn't expect this type of welcome. I am touched to receive such a welcome from the villagers." "I joined the Indian army on June 25, 1996, and retired on June 30 after completing 26 years and six days of service. Today I returned to my home in Assam. I have received many certificates from the Indian army for my service," Dharani Bora said. Bora said that he had completed his Class 10 examination during his service in the Indian army. Talking about the Central government's Agnipath Scheme, Dharani Bora said, he will make local youths aware of the Central recruitment scheme. "I have many plans to do for our society. There are lots of youths who are worried about the scheme. They don't have to worry. They will be happy about the scheme when they are fully aware of it," Bora said. (ANI)
Union Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia came to the assistance of a college student and helped in getting her luggage delivered to her hostel after she recounted her "horrible experience" on an IndiGo flight. Scindia took cognizance of the college girl's tweet and posted his reply: "Your luggage has been delivered at the hostel gate. Take care." A twitter user by the name Anoushka posted on July 1 that she had to go through a lot of trouble due to IndiGo's lateness and incompetence. Due to the airlines, she had to go to four different airports within 24 hours to reach his destination, and also she did not get her luggage on time. "A large number of people travel by air daily in the country. The journey of some is easy and sometimes people also have to face difficulties. A case related to this has come to light in which a college student had to face trouble due to an Indigo flight," Anoushka shared her concern on Twitter. "Had the most horrible experience travelling with @IndiGo6E, because of their incompetency and delays, I had to travel to four different airports in less than 24 hours to reach my destination and when I finally did reach, I find out my check-in luggage isn't delivered yet," she said in a tweet. Following the student's complaint, IndiGo asked her to come to the airport the next day and pick up the luggage. "My college is on the outskirts and it takes around 700-800 bucks for a cab to reach the airport, apart from paying for your ridiculously inflated ticket prices, y'all are also making me pay for YOUR incompetence @IndiGo6E," Anoushka added. (ANI)
The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to list Kerala state's plea challenging the High Court order, which granted anticipatory bail to actor-producer Vijay Babu in the sexual assault case against him on July 6. Senior Advocate Jaideep Gupta, appearing for Kerala State Government mentioned the matter, before the vacation bench for urgent listing. He told the court that Kerala High Court had ordered Babu to appear for questioning from 27 June to 3 July. Advocate Gupta stated to the Court that it is a matter in which anticipatory bail has been granted to a person who had initially run away to Dubai and then to Georgia and returned to India only because his passport was impounded here. A vacation bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and JK Maheshwari said to list it tomorrow. Meanwhile, the counsel of the rape survivor apprised the Court that the accused has appeared on Facebook live and told his client's name to the whole world, and each day he is out, he is a threat to his client. Earlier, the Kerala High Court had granted anticipatory bail to Vijay Babu in the case. The rape survivor has challenged the High Court order before the Supreme Court and sought to cancel his bail. On July 3, Vijay Babu appeared before probe officials for the seventh consecutive day in Ernakulam Town South Police Station for interrogation in connection with a sexual assault case registered against him. He is appearing before probe officials as per the directions of the Kerala High Court. A lookout notice was issued against the actor as he went into hiding since the accusations surfaced. Babu then filed an application seeking anticipatory bail before the Kerala High Court, which was allowed on June 22, subject to conditions. The High Court also confirmed the maintainability of the application for pre-arrest bail filed while the applicant is residing outside the country. Meanwhile, the Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes (AMMA) earlier in June said that any action against actor-producer Vijay Babu will be taken "as per the judgment of the court". Following the accusations, Vijay stepped down from the executive committee of the AMMA in May. (ANI)
After former JNU student Sharjeel Imam filed a plea in Delhi court alleging assault in the Tihar jail where he is lodged in an alleged conspiracy behind the 2020 Northeast Delhi riots, prison officials on Tuesday said they will "enquire into his allegation". Imam, on Monday, moved a Delhi court alleging harassment and assault by Tihar Jail officials. He, through his lawyer Ahmad Ibrahim, alleged that the Assistant Superintendent of Tihar Jail along with 8-9 convicts had entered his cell in the garb of a search assaulted him and called him a terrorist and anti-national. The Additional Session Judge Amitabh Rawat on Monday sought a response from Tihar Jail Authorities and kept the matter for July 14 for a detailed hearing. Imam's application to Karkardooma Court read, "On June 30, at around 7:30 PM, the Assistant Superintendant along with 8-9 convicts came to the cell of the applicant in the name of carrying out a search. The search operation is not permissible by the convicts and can only be carried out by competent staff. During the aforesaid search, the petitioner's books and clothes were thrown away, assaulted and called a terrorist and an anti-national when he tried to protect his belongings." Sharjeel sought direction to the concerned authorities to take appropriate steps to protect him of any assault and harassment in the future. On June 10, a Delhi court adjourned the order on the interim bail plea of Sharjeel Imam in the sedition case. The court is likely to pronounce the order on July 7, 2022. Imam has been accused of making inflammatory speeches against the government on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Register of Citizens (NRC), particularly at Jamia Milia Islamia University in December 2019, which allegedly led to violence in the area outside the university. He is facing sedition charges for his alleged inflammatory speeches and is in judicial custody since January 2020. The Supreme Court had in May directed that Section 124A, IPC, be kept in abeyance and asked the Centre as well as the state governments to refrain from registering any case for the offence of sedition under this section. (ANI)
Maharashtra's new Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday held a roadshow in Nagpur after he received a warm welcome upon his arrival in the city. Fadnavis arrived at the Nagpur airport to visit his home after his recent victory in the government formation in the state, from where he took out a road show from the airport. "The people of Nagpur have always given me love and elected me five times. Today I have come to Nagpur for the first time after becoming Deputy Chief Minister. I express my gratitude to the people who have come to show their love for me," the Deputy Chief Minister said. Fadnavis' visit came a day after the Eknath Shinde-BJP alliance won the vote of trust in the state Assembly. The new Eknath Shinde-led government in Maharashtra won the floor test on Monday by a 164-99 margin, proving his government's majority and cementing his position as chief minister of the state and the leader of the Shiv Sena. 164 votes were polled in favour of Shinde, while 99 votes were polled against the newly formed BJP-Shinde camp coalition. Shiv Sena MLA from Shetkari Kamgar Paksh of Uddhav Thackeray faction Shyamsundar Shinde also voted in favour of Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde in the trust vote today. He did not join the Shinde faction but voted in their favour. The trust vote comes a day after BJP's Rahul Narwekar was elected the Assembly Speaker. On Sunday Narwekar reinstated Shinde as the Shiv Sena's legislative party leader and also recognised the appointment of Gogawale as the chief whip of the Shiv Sena. The floor test was held during the special two-day session of the Legislative Assembly that began on Sunday. A total of three members abstained from voting. Soon after the Trust Vote ended, Shiv Sena leader and earlier whip Sunil Prabhu raised the issue of whip but Speaker interrupted him and asked him to sit and said he has already everything on record. Eknath Shinde, who led a revolt against Shiv Sena leading to the collapse of the 31-month-old Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, took oath as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra on June 30. Fadnavis, who was Chief Minister of Maharashtra from 2014-19, announced at a joint press conference in Mumbai on Thursday that Eknath Shinde will be the new CM. Fadnavis also announced at the press conference that he will not be part of the government. (ANI)
Days after the formation of the Eknath Shinde-led government in Maharashtra, Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Tuesday said that the party is "still hopeful" of the rebel MLAs' returning to former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray's side. The leader said that they were "always in talks" with the rebels and exuded confidence that they "will come back". The remarks of Raut came a day after the new government won the trust vote on the Floor of the House. "We are still hopeful that these MLAs will return... We were always in talks with rebels... They are our people, will come back. 'Subha ka bhoola agar shaam ko ghar aa jaye to usse bhoola nahi kehte'," said Raut while addressing a press conference. The Shiv Sena leader further said that not just money, but something else was also given to the rebel MLAs. "Shiv Sena is Balasaheb Thackeray's. Cannot be anyone else's. You cannot hijack it through money. CM Mamata Banerjee has said, not just money but something else was also given. It will be a big expose when this 'something' is revealed," he said. Shiv Sena, whose MLAs revolted and switched to the Shinde faction recently ending up overthrowing the Uddhav Thackeray government in the state, exuded confidence in winning 100 seats as Shiv Sena in the Assembly polls. "We are confident of winning 100 seats as Shivsena... Uddhav Thackeray had said let's have mid-term polls and everything will be clear.. who will win and who will lose," Raut said.' Meanwhile, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Monday hit back at Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar who raised doubts over the survival of the Shinde-Fadnavis government and asserted that his government will complete his term, adding that the alliance will win 200 seats in the next Assembly polls. He further added, "We will see about the cabinet expansion," when asked about the cabinet expansion. "Sharad Pawar is a big leader, but whatever he says is just the opposite of fact. So we will complete 2.5yrs of governance; next time, we'll have 200 MLAs, 100 ours and 100 BJP's," Shinde said at a press conference soon after winning the crucial floor test in the state Assembly on the last day of the two-day special session of the House. He also said that in the next Assembly polls, his alliance with BJP will win with 200 MLAs. Shinde on Thursday took oath as the new Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Along with him, Devendra Fadnavis also took an oath as deputy chief minister of the state. Both the leaders were administered the oath of service by Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari. However, no other cabinet member took oath on that day. (ANI)
Khan, his wife Tazeen Fatima, and their son Abdullah Azam have been asked to appear at its zonal office in Uttar Pradesh's Lucknow.

The case is linked to a massive fund transfer for the construction of UP's Rampur-based Jauhar University. The ED registered the case in 2019.

In the ED's money laundering case against Khan, a team from the agency's Lucknow branch had also conducted verification of the land acquired by Mohammad Ali Jauhar University in Rampur in May.

The university is run by a trust headed by Khan, who is also the Rampur MLA and its former MP.

Khan was booked under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in August 2019 based on 26 cases of land grabbing registered by people in Rampur against him.

ED was to record the statement of Khan and his family members as there are allegations that huge donations were received, and wealth was amassed by the Jauhar Trust, headed by Khan.

ED is also tracking and scanning the details of trustees who gave money for the establishment of the university.

The federal agency is also probing the hawala money channel allegedly used by the trust for the establishment of the university.

Sources said several people had donated money to the trust and, in return, received contracts for construction work and supply of goods for the university. (ANI)
Following the arrest of IPS officer Amrit Paul for his alleged role in the police sub-inspectors (PSI) recruitment scam, the Leader of Opposition in Karnataka Assembly Siddaramaiah on Tuesday demanded the resignation of state Home Minister Araga Jnanendra. Paul was arrested by Crime Investigation Department (CID) for his alleged role in the PSI recruitment scam case on Monday. Siddaramaiah further alleged that Jnanendra is responsible for this scam and urged Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai to sack him from the cabinet. "In the PSI recruitment scam, the officials should not be blamed. Home Minister Araga Jnanendra is responsible for this scam as well as officials. I urge Chief Minister to sack Home Minister from the cabinet," said Siddaramaiah. "Skeletons are falling out one by one from the shelves. The arrest of ADGP Amrit Paul in the PSI recruitment scam is proof of this. What will now CM and the Home Minister will do who said that there was no scandal?" he added. Karnataka Government on Monday also suspended Paul following his arrest. IAS officer J Manjunath, former DC of Bengaluru Urban was also suspended by the Karnataka government after he was arrested by Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in a bribery case. Manjunath was arrested by the ACB, four days after he was transferred from the post of Bengaluru urban district deputy commissioner (DC). Manjunath is facing allegations of collecting bribes through his staff to settle a land dispute. Earlier on Monday, Bommai took a jibe at the Congress party and said that the grand old party would have covered up the arrests of ADGP Amrit Paul and IAS officer J Manjunath in the PSI recruitment scam case and bribery case respectively. He had lauded his government for taking prompt action in the two cases. While talking to ANI, Bommai had said, "Our government unearthed the whole case. CID was given a free hand to investigate the case and spare none. ADGP who was heading the recruitment arrested after proof was found against him." The PSI scam case is related to the irregularities in the appointment of police sub-inspectors in the state. MLA and former Minister Priyank Kharge had earlier alleged a huge scam in the PSI recruitment of more than 545 candidates and pointed at the involvement of the government and officials in the matter. Notably, on May 12, Karnataka Minister for Higher Education CN Ashwath Narayan announced that the state government was investigating the PSI scam and had assured that the people involved with it would be exposed. On April 29, the Karnataka government decided to cancel the results of the police sub-inspector (PSI) recruitment exam following allegations of corruption. The government had stated that a fresh exam will be re-conducted and the dates for which will be announced soon. Meanwhile, Jnanendra had informed that the CID had arrested the main accused of the PSI scam, BJP leader Divya Hagaragi and four others in the case. Divya, who was absconding in the case, was arrested from Pune. (ANI)
A group of retired judges, bureaucrats and armed forces on Tuesday sent an open letter to Chief Justice of India (CJI) NV Ramana condemning the observation made by the bench of Justices of Supreme Court for "surpassing the Laxman Rekha" while hearing former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma's case in the Supreme Court, terming the remarks as "unfortunate and unprecedented". The letter sent to CJI Ramana was signed by 15 retired judges, 77 retired bureaucrats and 25 retired armed forces officers against Justices Surya Kant and JB Pardiwala, who heard the Nupur Sharma's case. The letter stated: "We, as Concerned Citizens, do believe that the democracy of any country will remain intact till all the institutions perform their duties as per the constitution. Recent comments by the two judges of the Supreme Court have surpassed the Laxman Rekha and compelled us to issue an open statement." The Supreme Court on Friday came down heavily on suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma stating that her outburst is responsible for an unfortunate incident in Udaipur, where a tailor was murdered. The apex court further blamed the suspended BJP leader and said that she and "her loose tongue" has set the entire country on fire and she is single-handedly responsible for what is happening in the country and said she should "apologise to the whole country". Responding to the Supreme Court order, the group said, "Unfortunate and unprecedented comments emanating from the two Judge Bench of the Supreme Court-Justice Surya Kant and Justice J. B. Pardiwala, while being seized of a petition by Nupur Sharma, have sent shockwaves in the country and outside. The observations, simultaneously relayed by all news channels in high decibel, are not in sync with judicial ethos. By no stretch these observations, which are not part of the judicial Order, can be sanctified on the plank of judicial propriety and fairness. Such outrageous transgressions are without parallel in the annals of Judiciary." They said that the observations that "have no connect jurisprudentially with the issue raised in the petition, transgressed in an unprecedented manner all canons of dispensation of justice." "Perceptionally the observations- Nupur Sharma is adjudged with severity guilty in a proceeding where this was not an issue at all - Reflection-she is "single-handedly responsible for what is happening in the country" has no rationale. By such observation perceptionally there is a virtual exoneration of the dastardliest beheading at Udaipur in broad daylight. The observations also graduate to most unjustifiable degree that this was only to fan an agenda," the letter reads. They further said that the legal fraternity is bound to be surprised and shocked at the observation that an FIR should lead to arrest adding that the observations on other agencies in the country, without notice to them, are indeed worrisome and alarming. "In the annals of the judiciary, the unfortunate comments have no parallel and are an indelible scar on the justice system of the largest democracy. Urgent rectification steps are called for as these have potentially serious consequences on democratic values and the security of the Country. Emotions have flared up extensively on account of these observations that in a sense dilute the barbaric dastardly beheading in broad daylight in Udaipur - a case under investigation. The observations, judgmental in nature, on issues not before the Court, are crucification of the essence and spirit of the Indian Constitution. Forcing a petitioner by such damning observations, pronouncing her guilty without trial, and denial of access to justice on issue raised in the petition, can never be a facet of a democratic society," the group wrote. They said a rational mind is bewildered not only at the jurisprudential transgressions but also the sweep of the same as Judges hit out no holds 'barred' at agencies and making innuendo reflections about her "clout". The observations are too serious to be overlooked if rule of law, democracy has to sustain and blossom and deserve to be recalled with stance that soothes minds that care for justice, the group added. Notwithstanding the unwanted, unwarranted and uncalled for verbal observations of the Judges of the Apex Court, there is another crucial aspect of the matter. The group said that the petitioner had approached the Supreme Court for the transfer of various FIRs registered against her in different States in respect to the alleged remarks made by her during a TV debate. "The allegations constitute only one offence for which separate prosecutions (FIRs) were launched. Article 20 (2) of the Constitution of India prohibits prosecution and punishment more than once for the same offence. Article 20 falls under Part III of the Constitution and is a guaranteed fundamental right. The Hon'ble Supreme Court in a number of cases including Arnab Goswamy vs. Union of India (2020) and TT Anthony vs. State of Kerala clearly laid down the law that there can be no second FIR and consequently there can be no fresh investigation in respect to the second FIR on the same issue. Such an action is violative of fundamental rights as guaranteed under Article 20(2) of the Constitution of India," the letter reads. They said that the Supreme Court instead of safeguarding the fundamental right of the petitioner refused to take cognizance of the petition and forced the petitioner to withdraw the petition and approach the appropriate forum (High Court) knowing fully well that High Court does not have jurisdiction to transfer or club the FIRs or cases registered in other States. "One fails to understand, why Nupur's case is treated at a different pedestal. Such an approach of the Hon'ble Supreme Court deserves no applause and impacts the very sanctity and honour of the Highest Court of land," they added. (ANI)
Chhattisgarh Police on Tuesday reached television channel news anchor's residence in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, after an FIR was registered against him following the broadcast of a misleading video on Rahul Gandhi for which the channel had issued an apology. The anchor Rohit Ranjan, however, was taken in custody by Noida Police after he took to Twitter this morning to post "Chhattisgarh Police is standing outside my house to arrest me without informing the local police, is it legal". He tagged Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and SSP Ghaziabad and ADG Zone Lucknow in the tweet. Responding to Ranjan's tweet, the Raipur Police, Chhatisgarh, posted on its Twitter handle, "There is no such rule to inform. Still, now they are informed. Police team has shown you court's warrant of arrest. You should in fact cooperate, join in investigation and put your defence in court." Meanwhile, ADCP Noida said, "In the course of an investigation registered at police station Sector 20, a person named Rohit Ranjan, working in a news channel is being questioned." Ranjan had on his show said, "Yesterday, in our show DNA, Rahul Gandhi's statement was taken in the wrong context by linking it to the Udaipur incident, it was a human error for which our team apologises." The Congress filed a complaint in Raipur against Ranjan for allegedly "running a doctored video of Rahul Gandhi". According to reports, the FIR filed by Congress said that Rohit Ranjan intentionally linked Rahul Gandhi's statements on the vandalization of his office to the Udaipur incident in an attempt to incite public sentiments. Congress MP Rahul Gandhi while referring to the attack on his Wayanad office had said, "The children who did this have acted in an irresponsible way. They are kids, forgive them." (ANI)
The accused and the injured youth managed to flee from the spot.

The bouncer has suffered a serious injury to his hand and is undergoing treatment at Chandigarh Government Hospital.

Officers of Sector-5 police station reached the incident spot to investigate the matter.

As per information provided by police, a party was going on in the lounge bar on Saturday. The party went on till late in the night.

According to police, bouncer Naresh Sharma is his complaint stated that at around 4.15 am on Sunday, Mohit, a resident of Ludhiana opened fire with the intention of killing another unknown youth.

"At around 4.30 am the accused opened-fire outside Coco cafe in the wee hours of July 3. He injured his friend and a bouncer. We've registered a case against the accused, another person and against the cafe for staying open till so late," said PS sector 5 in charge Sukhbir Singh.

A CCTV video of the incident has surfaced online, on the basis of which the police are investigating the case.

Sukhbir Singh said that a case has been registered against the accused under IPC section 307 and further investigation is underway. (ANI)
Swapna Suresh, prime accused in the Kerala gold smuggling case, appeared before the Crime Branch officials in the police club for interrogation in the conspiracy case registered against here on the complaint filed by CPIM MLA and former minister KT Jaleel. "I have no fear of arrest. I didn't do anything to be afraid of. It is a fake case, charged overnight. It was initially bailable but was later made non-bailable. Let me face it," said Swapna Suresh. Thiruvananthapuram cantonment police have registered a case against Swapna on Jaleel's complaint on June 8 this year seeking a probe into the charges made by Swapna against him in the Gold Smuggling Case and alleged that she conspired and made defaming statements against him. The police registered the case under Section 153 (wantonly giving provocation with an intent to cause riot) and Section 120B (criminal conspiracy) against her. She skipped the interrogation earlier this week when the Crime Branch issued a notice by citing the reason for ED questioning in the gold smuggling case. The prime accused in the gold smuggling case Swapna Suresh on Wednesday said Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had told lies in the Assembly on Tuesday and urged him to release CCTV visuals of Cliff House and Secretariat in view of the probe in the case. "Yesterday, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan talked a lot of things at the Assembly. It came to my notice that he had told a lot of lies in order to mislead the public by standing in a very sacred place," Suresh said to reporters today. She added, "The Chief Minister said that he has often seen me with the Consul General. There is no MEA approval for such meetings. All these meetings were facilitated through me by his point of contact, that is Sivasankar. All these meetings are against the protocol." She demanded the Chief Minister to release the CCTV visuals of Cliff House (official residence of Kerala CM) and Secretariat from 2016 to 2020. "After 7 o'clock at night along with the Consul General, I went to Cliff House for secret meetings for their requirements. Also, I had gone alone there earlier. You can see in those visuals that there was no security check for me to go there. It is not ethical to mislead people by standing in the Assembly with so many blatant lies like saying that you do not know Swapna Suresh," alleged Swapna. In the Assembly on Tuesday, Vijayan said Swapna is a person who is accused of gold smuggling and other cases and the Congress-led Opposition is treating her words as the ultimate truth and using them here. He also referred to her as someone who is now being guided by Sangh Parivar forces. Swapna early this month testified before a magistrate under Section 164 (5) where she claimed that Vijayan and his wife and their daughter Veena had smuggled currency to the UAE. Swapna said it was she who had facilitated numerous meetings with the UAE Consul General at the Chief Minister's residence which was against all protocol as permission was not taken from the Ministry of External Affairs. On July 5, 2020, 30 kilograms of 24-carat gold worth Rs 14.82 crores was seized by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs at Thiruvananthapuram Airport from a diplomatic bag that was meant to be delivered to the UAE Consulate in Thiruvananthapuram. M Sivasankar, the principal secretary to Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, was suspended and removed from the post after a preliminary inquiry confirmed that he had links with Swapna Suresh, one of the accused in the National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe. (ANI)
The man identified as Haji Vasi was absconding since the incident on June 3 when a violent clash broke out between two groups belonging to different communities allegedly over a market shutdown in Kanpur.

AP Tiwari, Additional Commissioner of Police said that a non-bailable warrant was issued earlier against the accused.

"Kanpur Police arrested Haji Vasi on Monday night. He is accused in the June 3 Kanpur violence case. We had a non-bailable warrant against him and were searching for him continuously since the incident. His search was on in Delhi and other neighbouring states. He will be presented to the court," he said.

Earlier, the Kanpur Development Authority sealed off Vasi's property, the police said.

On June 11, the police arrested another accused identified as the President of Jamiatul Quresh, Nizam Qureshi from Kanpur, who was often seen with the mastermind of the violence, Hayat Jaffar Hashmi.

Hayat Jaffar Hashmi, the main accused in the Kanpur violence case was arrested along with three other masterminds, namely Javed Ahmed Khan, Mohammad Rahil, and Mohammad Suffian the day after the violence on June 4. All of them were allegedly associated with the Maulana Ali Jauhar Fans Association, and were sent on a 14-day judicial remand on June 5, the police said.

As many as 36 persons were arrested in connection with the clash so far. (ANI)
As Karnataka gets ready for the Assembly elections next year, Congress which is hoping to return to power is in a tough spot as the party is facing factionalism with many leaders wanting to be projected as the party's chief ministerial candidate leaving the workers confused. A senior Congress leader from Karnataka on Tuesday said that the party needs to adopt a "damage control" ideology to succeed in the upcoming Assembly election. "It is clear in the Karnataka Congress that many faces want to be the 'CM Candidate'. The two factions in the Karnataka Congress are confusing their own party workers," he added. "It's not only former CM Siddaramaiah who lead the Congress government for a complete five years term in Karnataka or DK Shivakumar who's leading Congress in Karnataka after being appointed as president of Pradesh Congress Committee after returning from Tihar Jail, but there are also many seniors on the list," he added. Though Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar have clarified several times that they are together and there is no confusion. However, MLAs like Zameer Ahmed Khan and K Raghavendra Hitnal and many others have backed Siddaramaiah as the party's CM candidate. Shivakumar had earlier said, "The party is more important than a person." According to the Congress leader, senior leaders like Dalit leader Dr. G Parameshwar, who led Congress successfully for 8 years in Karnataka, HK Patil, the present National General secretary and Maharastra in charge are also on the potential "CM" candidate list. "MB Patil, who is a Panchamasaali Lingayath and campaign committee chairman is also a big aspirant to see himself for the CM post. He is also waiting for the 'blessing of high command'. Mallikarjun Kharge, RV Deshpande, KJ George, Ramalinga Reddy along with Lingayath aspirant Eshwar Khandre is also on the waiting list," he said. "If the Congress wants to achieve their dream of 130-plus seats in Karnataka Assembly, which their own survey teams are assuring them at present, Congress needs to be aware of another Ashok Gehlot vs Sachin Pilot fight in Karnataka, or else it will become another drama stage for Congress to "solve" issues once again. Karnataka Assembly election will be the final test for Congress in the country after losing the coalition government in Maharastra," he added. The Congress leader pointed out that even if the party comes to power in Karnataka it will be a big task to remain in power. He further added that Rahul Gandhi along with KC Venugopal and Karnataka in charge Randeep Singh Surjewala held several meetings in New Delhi with two main CM post aspirants Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar to fight election "collectively" which can benefit Congress and the leaders too. Siddaramaiah's followers are planning to observe 'Siddaramothsava', which is nothing but confirming to people and party workers that Siddaramaiah will be the next CM candidate once again. Rahul Gandhi is also likely to participate in the event, he said. The next Karnataka Legislative Assembly election is scheduled to be held in or before May 2023 to elect all 224 members of the state's Legislative Assembly. (ANI)
The Kerala High Court on Tuesday allowed the Crime Branch's plea seeking forensic analysis of the memory card containing visuals of the actress assault incident of 2017. The petition was considered by the single bench of Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas. In the order allowing the Crime Branch's plea, the court dictated, "Prosecution to immediately, within two days from the date of receipt of the judgment forward the document to the State Forensic Science Laboratory through the mode envisaged by law. State Forensic Science Lab to analyse the document as requested and submit a report to the Investigating Officer with the copy to the court in a sealed cover within 7 days. The timeline specified must be adhered to, without any delay in the further investigation and trial of the case." The forensic examination was sought by the Crime Branch to confirm the illegal access of the memory card as a change was noted in its hash value, suggesting that the file has been tampered with. The Crime Branch or the prosecution pointed out in its petition that the memory card and the files contained in it could have been accessed several times, and only a detailed forensic examination can find out when it was opened the last time. Though the changes made in the hash value were reported to the trial court on January 29, 2020, the same was not intimated to the prosecution till February 2022. The Kerala High Court, in its earlier order, has granted time till July 15 to the prosecution to conclude further investigation of the 2017 Actress Assault Case. Earlier on June 28, the trial court dismissed the plea of the prosecution seeking to cancel the bail granted to actor Dileep in the 2017 actress assault case. The prosecution argued that Dileep, who is the eighth accused in this case, has influenced the witnesses and attempted to tamper with the evidence. Dileep is the Malayalam actor who has been the eighth accused in the case apart from Sunil Kumar, Martin Antony, Manikantan, VP Vijeesh, Salim, Pradeep, and Charley Thomas. Earlier, on April 4, the Crime Branch of the state police had filed the same petition to forward the memory card allegedly containing the visuals of the crime for forensic examination, but the Ernakulam Additional Special Sessions Court rejected its petition on May 9, and the Crime Branch of the state police had challenged the order. The case pertains that an actress, who worked in Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu films, was allegedly abducted and molested inside her car by a group of men who had forced their way into the vehicle on the night of 17 February 2017. (ANI)
Former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala has moved to the Delhi High Court challenging the order of a trial court which sent him to four years of imprisonment in a disproportionate assets (DA) case. Advocate Harsh Sharma on Tuesday confirmed that the appeal has been moved to the High Court challenging a trial court order of conviction and order of sentence against Chautala. On May 27, 2022, the Rouse Avenue Court of Delhi ordered four years of imprisonment to Chautala. The Court had also ordered to confiscate four properties of him and also imposed a fine of Rs 50 lakh. While passing the order, CBI Judge Vikas Dhull had also ordered to send Chautala in the custody of Tihar Jail. During the argument, Chautala physically appeared and remained present in the courtroom. Appearing for Chautala, Advocate Harsh Sharma cited medical grounds for less punishment and submitted that "I, (OP Chautala), have been infected with polio since birth and I am partially disabled." CBI's Special Public Prosecutor Ajay Gupta had opposed the submissions of Chautala's lawyer for a grant of concession on the grounds of ill-health and age. CBI had urged the court that "maximum punishment shall be given as it would send a message to the society." "The person, in this case, is a public figure and giving minimum punishment would send a wrong message. He is not having clean antecedents. It is the second case, in which he has been convicted," CBI said. Special Judge (PC Act) Vikas Dhull on May 21, convicted Chautala and said the accused had failed to satisfactorily account for such dis-proportionality by proving his source of income or means by way of which, he acquired assets during this period. "Hence, accused Om Prakash Chautala is convicted for the offence under Section 13(1)(e) read with 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. Put up May 26, 2022 at 10.00 AM for arguments on the point of sentence," said the court. According to the CBI's FIR, accused Chautala, while functioning as Chief Minister of Haryana during the period from July 24, 1999, to March 5, 2005, in collusion with his family members and others, accumulated assets, immovable and movable, disproportionate to his known lawful sources of income, in his name, in the names of his family members and others to the extent of Rs.1,467 crores. The FIR further stated that the accused accumulated enormous wealth and invested the same throughout the country in the shape of thousands of acres of land, multi complexes, palatial residential houses, hotels, farmhouses, business agencies, petrol pumps and other investments apart from investments in foreign countries. The FIR also stated that 43 immovable properties in all, apart from cash and jewellery were accumulated. Apart from 43 alleged properties listed in the FIR, additional properties were also suspected to be of the accused family. An investigation with regard to additional properties was also conducted for ascertaining the link of the accused family with the said properties. The chargesheet filed in the matter after the conclusion of the investigation stated that accused OP Chautala had acquired assets, both immovable and movable, which were disproportionate to his known source of income. The disproportionate assets were calculated to be Rs 6,09,79,026 only and the percentage of disproportionate assets was 189.11 per cent of his known sources of income. Accordingly, CBI had chargesheeted the accused for the offence under Section 13(1)(e) read with 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Apart from the charge sheet filed against the accused OP Chautala, the CBI had filed two more charge sheets arising out of the present FIR, against the sons of the accused i.e. Abhay Singh Chautala and Ajay Singh Chautala and others, which are being tried separately. (ANI)
Addressing a CPI-M programme at Mallapally in Pathanamthitta district, Cheriyan, who is Fisheries and Cultural Affairs, the minister said the "Indian constitution can exploit people".

"British prepared it, Indians wrote it and implemented it. It's been 75 years. India wrote a beautiful constitution that can be used to loot. In that constitution, there are few places that have references to secularism, democracy but it can be exploited," he said.

"We all say that we have a beautifully written Constitution. But, I will say, the Constitution is written in such a way that it can be used to loot the people of the country," he said.

Several people including the Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly VD Satheesan hit out at the controversial remarks.

Taking to Twitter, Satheesan wrote, "Saji Cherian, Kerala Minister has made the most insulting statements about #IndianConstitution. Obnoxious words. He should resign or Chief Minister should demand the minister's resignation. #Constitution". (ANI)
A day after Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde won the floor test in the state Assembly, he offered prayers at Siddhivinayak Temple in Mumbai. Shinde on Monday won the crucial floor test in the state Assembly on the last day of the two-day special session of the House. In the 288-member House, 164 MLAs voted for the motion of confidence, while 99 voted against it. Three legislators abstained from voting, while 21 legislators, including Congress's Ashok Chavan and Vijay Wadettiwar, were absent. The CM hailed the victory of his faction in the floor test of the Maharashtra Assembly. Speaking in the Assembly today, he said, "I thank Devendra Fadnavis Ji for giving me a chance to work as a Minister in the previous government... I could work on the Samruddhi Mahamarg project. He was to give the Deputy CM post to Shiv Sena also in 2019." "We are Shivsainiks and we will always be Shivsainiks of Balasaheb and Anand Dighe. I want to remind you who was there and who got Balasaheb's voting banned for six years," the Maharashtra Chief Minister said in the Assembly. "Initially, I was supposed to be made the Chief Minister in the MVA government... But later, Ajit Dada (Ajit Pawar) or someone said that I should not be made the Chief Minister. I had no problem and I told Uddhav Ji to go ahead, and that I was with him. I never eyed that post," Shinde said. (ANI)
The Indian Navy requires fighter jets for its aircraft carrier operations for which it has carried out trials of the French Rafale and American F-18 aircraft. In a press conference on indigenisation in the Navy, the Navy Vice Chief Admiral SN Ghormade said trials of the American and French aircraft have been done to know their capability for aircraft carrier operations. "Trials of Rafale and Boeing F-18 have done to prove their capability of operating from aircraft carriers. Our aim is indigenisation. We have a Twin Engine Deck Based Fighter (TEDBF) aircraft plan but it will take some time. By the time that indigenous project takes place, we are looking at buying aircraft from foreign sources under Inter-Governmental Agreement," he said. The Twin Engine Deck Based Fighter (TEDBF) is a developmental programme of the Defence Research and Development Organisation and it would be the advanced version of the Naval Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), Tejas. The Navy had earlier plans of buying 57 fighters under the plan to buy aircraft from foreign sources but now that requirement has been cut down by more than half. Answering a query on by when the Indian Navy would be able to make conventional submarines on its own, the Navy Chief said, "We want to encourage indigenisation here. The idea is that we develop some capabilities here and build capabilities for indigenisation for the future." "We are continuing with Project 75 India," Ghormade said on the current status of Project 75 India. Indian Navy has plans of building six modern conventional submarines under Project 75 India, a Rs 60,000 crore project. (ANI)
As former Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and NCP leader Sanjay Raut continued to criticize the newly-elected Eknath Shinde-led state government, BJP leader Kirit Somaiya on Tuesday hit back at the latter saying that they are not accepting the reality and Thackeray needs to introspect now. "Both (Sanjay Raut and Uddhav Thackeray) are not accepting the reality. Thackeray needs to introspect now. Raut is accusing BJP of betraying them, rather he betrayed us by taking votes in the name of PM Modi in the 2019 elections," Kirit Somaiya told ANI. He added, "Why he is including PM Modi, Amit Shah, and Fadnavis in these things? Out of 55 MLAs, 40 MLAs joined the Shinde camp. So, I think Uddhav Thackeray needs to introspect now." Senior BJP leader also pointed out claims made by Aaditya Thackeray in which he said that around 15 MLAs are still in contact with them. "They have lost all the respect now. Earlier, Aaditya Thackeray used to say that around 15 MLAs are in touch with them and want to come back. Uddhav Thackeray is still suggesting holding the mid-term elections and everything will be clear. Do they still have any right to speak," Somaiya said. "Sanjay Raut exuded confidence in winning 100 seats as Uddhav Thackeray demanded to hold mid-term polls. He had said Shiv Sena belongs to Balasaheb Thackeray. You can't hijack it with money," he added. The new Eknath Shinde-led government in Maharashtra won the floor test on Monday by a 164-99 margin, proving his government's majority and cementing his position as chief minister of the state and the leader of the Shiv Sena. 164 votes were polled in favour of Shinde, while 99 votes were polled against the newly formed BJP-Shinde camp coalition. The trust vote comes a day after BJP's Rahul Narwekar was elected the Assembly Speaker. On Sunday Narwekar reinstated Shinde as the Shiv Sena's legislative party leader and also recognized the appointment of Gogawale as the chief whip of the Shiv Sena. Speaking about ex-Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey's involvement in the NSE co-location scam, he accused Uddhav Thackeray of protecting the accused. "Now, I will speak to CM Shinde and Deputy CM Fadnavis about the case. Uddhav Thackeray was saving him (Sanjay Pandey). I will also meet the Chief Minister in the coming two days," he said. Pandey, who retired as Mumbai Police Commissioner last week, reached the ED headquarters and was questioned for almost two-and-a-half hours in the NSE co-location scam case. The federal probe agency recorded Pandey's statement under Section 50 under provisions of the Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in the NSE co-location scam to know how an audit company was incorporated in 2001 by the retired Mumbai Police chief, did not raise the red flag that the NSE servers were compromised. (ANI)
At a time when a number of attempts to smuggle narcotics on the west coast have come to light, the Indian Coast Guard carried out Operation Island Watch along the coast of Dwarka. "The Indian Coast Guard carried out Operation 'Island Watch' along the Dwarka coast, Gujarat where hovercrafts carried out search of uninhabited islands in the vicinity. Coast Guard hovercrafts can carry out amphibious operations and chase anti-national elements in marshy and high sea areas at high speeds," Coast Guard officials told ANI. There are more than 70 small islands along the Dwarka area of which some are uninhabited and can be used by anti-national elements to carry out anti-India activities. Officials said the hovercrafts carry out beaching operations on such islands and coast guard personnel carry out searches of the area to clear the area of such activities. In recent times, the Indian Coast Guard and other agencies have collaborated to thwart attempts to smuggle narcotics worth over Rs 2,000 crore along the west coast. Indian Coast Guard chief Director General VS Pathania said, "We are taking possible steps to enhance vigilance along the Gujarat coastline. We have deployed our ships, surveillance vessels and hovercrafts to keep a close eye on the activities in the Gujarat area." The Coast Guard has also deployed a new squadron of Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) Dhruv Mark III helicopters in Porbandar which includes armed heavy machine guns fitted by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. The armed version helicopter can hit targets from 1,800 metres. The aircraft also has the ability to switch roles from an offensive platform with a heavy machine gun to that of a benign one carrying a Medical Intensive Care Unit to facilitate the transfer of critically ill patients. According to the Coast Guard, the choppers are going to boost the maritime surveillance capabilities of the force along the border with Pakistan. (ANI)
In a first-of-its-kind initiative to make Kanwar Yatra safe, Delhi Police has started a process to register pilgrims. The move comes as a precautionary measure and aims to create a databank. The databank of devotees will enable better coordination among the authorities to provide assistance to the devotees and to keep a better track of the pilgrims in case of a mishappening or an emergency. The Kanwar Yatra, in which Shiva devotees from northern states travel on foot or by other means to collect water from Ganga in Haridwar to offer it at Shiva temples in their areas, is set to begin on July 14. Devotees can register themselves at kavad.delhipolice.gov. Though, it is not mandatory. "Delhi Police has held a lot of meetings regarding Kanwar. This initiative has been taken for the first time. The registration will be done by Delhi Police and will be free. I request all the people going to Kanwar Yatra to register at 'kavad.delhipolice.gov'. Due to this, a data bank will also be formed with Delhi Police. So this registration will be very useful," Suman Nalwa, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), PRO told ANI. "Since last few days, sensitive cases have come up in the country, we are aware, we are keeping a close watch, we are fully prepared, security arrangements are being made, all traffic arrangements have been made. So that no one gets in trouble," she added. Kanwar Yatra is an annual pilgrimage of devotees of Lord Shiva to Hindu pilgrimage sites of Haridwar, Gaumukh and Gangotri in Uttarakhand and Sultanganj in Bihar to fetch holy waters of River Ganga. Later, the holy water is dispensed as offerings to Lord Shiva in temples. (ANI)
Another petition has been moved in the Supreme Court challenging the Agnipath scheme whereby the petitioner has sought direction to Centre to reconsider it. The petition has been filed by Ravindra Singh Shekhawat through advocate Rohit Pandey. The petitioner said that the introduction of Agnipath- Agniveer Scheme 2022 comes as an abrupt and unforeseeable change in the recruitment process of the aspiring candidates which concerns the petitioner as well. The petitioner claimed to be an ex-serviceman of the Indian Army and said that he is involved in social work and the welfare of soldiers for the past many years. According to the petition, The Agnipath Agniveer Bharti Scheme 2022 has been introduced in the public domain on June 14th, 2022 by the Indian Government, Department of Ministry of Defence in presence of their respective Chiefs of Indian Armed Forces. The scheme is called Agnipath and the youths selected in this scheme will be called Agniveers. The petition added that the scheme lays emphasis on reducing the median age of Indian Soldiers from 32 years to 26 years in the upcoming seven years. Moreover, the scheme is also projected to reduce the Defence Ministry's expenditure on pensions and salaries and utilise it in technologically updating the Indian Armed Forces. Under the new scheme, around 46,000 soldiers between the age group of 17.5 and 21 years will be recruited in all the forces. The upper age limit has been relaxed from 21 years to 23 years as a one-time measure for the Recruiting-Year 2022-23. The petition said that the scheme has attracted a lot of negative light due to its unclear provisions and limited social and employment security provided to the non-commissioned soldiers. Therefore, the petitioner has urged the top court to issue direction to the Centre to reconsider or recall or review or quash the notification dated June 14, 2022. The petition also urged the top court to direct the respondents to constitute a committee of Veterans, the Chief of all the Armed Forces and other appropriate persons which the respondents deem fit to look into the proposed scheme thereby amending the policy in consonance with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of India. The petition also urged for direction to the respondents to initiate a 'Pilot Project', to study the cause and effect of the Agnipath Scheme, the impact of the newly introduced training process on combat effectiveness, operational readiness and defence preparedness. It also sought direction from the respondents to secure 100 per cent job employment for the "Agniveers" who will be discharged from the services after a period of 4 years. Yesterday, a vacation bench agreed to list next week's petition challenging the Agnipath scheme before an appropriate bench. On Monday a counsel mentioned in Supreme Court seeking urgent hearing of the petition challenging Agnipath Scheme saying that career of several students at stake. Advocate ML Sharma, who had also filed the petition has said that his plea is about the cancellation of the notification. Various petitions have been filed over the Agnipath scheme. One was filed by advocate Vishal Tiwari, seeking directions to set up a Special Investigation Team to enquire about the violent protest that erupted against the "Agnipath" scheme launched by the Central Government and to enquire about the damage caused to public property including Railways. His petition has also sought directions to set up An expert committee under the Chairmanship of a retired Supreme Court judge to examine the Scheme "Agnipath" and its impact on National security and the Army of our nation. Agnipath Scheme, which was approved by the cabinet on June 14, was launched in an effort to bring a change in the recruitment process of the Armed Forces. With the new military recruitment scheme facing criticism, the Centre decided to bring a change in the upper age limit for recruiting Agniveers. As protests against the Agnipath scheme continued, the Department of Military Affairs on June 21 clarified that there is no change in the recruitment process and the regimental process will be unchanged. (ANI)
Karnataka Police nabbed the two assailants who stabbed Vastu expert Chandrashekhar Angadi popularly known as Chandrashekhar Guruji to death at a hotel in Hubballi on Tuesday. The two accused were detained by police in Ramdurg while they were trying to escape. According to the police, the accused Mahantesh Shirur and Manjunath Marewad are former employees of 'Saral Vastu' run by Chandrashekhar Guruji were detained with help of Belgaum Police while they trying to escape in a car. "Both accused stabbed Chandrashekhar Guruji today afternoon in a hotel lobby where he was staying. He succumbed to death due to injuries. They have been detained. We had formed teams and they were working on gathering information. We shared information with neighbouring districts. The Belgaum Police detained both the accused. Our team has gone there to bring them. We will interrogate them," said Hubballi Police Commissioner Labhu Ram. According to Police, Chandrashekhar Guruji was staying at the hotel in Hubballi for the last four days. On Tuesday two people came to the hotel to meet him and called him to the lobby. Soon after Chandrashekhar Guruji reached the lobby, the assailants stabbed him multiple times and ran away. He was rushed to the KIMS Hospital where he was declared dead. "Some people called him to the lobby area of the hotel where he was staying. One person wished him and then suddenly started stabbing him. Due to multiple injuries, by the time he was shifted to the hospital, he was dead. We have registered a case and are searching for the accused," said Police Commissioner Labhu Ram. A case has been registered in Vidyanagar police station. (ANI)
After Vastu expert Chandrashekhar Angadi, popularly known as Chandrashekhar Guruji, was stabbed to death by two assailants at a hotel in Hubballi, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Tuesday called for stringent punishment for the accused. Speaking to mediapersons, Bommai said, "The killing of Chandrashekhar Guruji is a heinous and unfortunate act. It happened in broad daylight. It has been clearly captured in the CCTV footage. I have spoken to Police Commissioner Labhu Ram to nab the culprits seen in the video. Police are already on it." "The motives for the murder would be known only after the investigation. All measures would be taken to ensure stringent punishment for the killers of Chandrashekar Guruji," added the Chief Minister. Meanwhile, Karnataka Police nabbed the two assailants who stabbed Vastu expert Chandrashekhar Guruji to death. The two accused were detained by police in Ramdurg while they were trying to escape. According to the police, the accused Mahantesh Shirur and Manjunath Marewad are former employees of Saral Vastu run by Chandrashekhar Guruji. They were detained with the help of Belgaum Police while they were trying to escape in a car. "Both the accused stabbed Chandrashekhar Guruji today afternoon in a hotel lobby where he was staying. He succumbed to death due to injuries. They have been detained. We had formed teams and they were working on gathering information. We shared information with neighbouring districts. The Belgaum Police detained both the accused. Our team has gone there to bring them. We will interrogate them," said Hubballi Police Commissioner Labhu Ram. According to Police, Chandrashekhar Guruji was staying at the hotel in Hubballi for the last four days. On Tuesday two people came to the hotel to meet him and called him to the lobby. Soon after Chandrashekhar Guruji reached the lobby, the assailants stabbed him multiple times and ran away. He was rushed to the KIMS Hospital where he was declared dead. "Some people called him to the lobby area of the hotel where he was staying. One person wished him and then suddenly started stabbing him. Due to multiple injuries, by the time he was shifted to the hospital, he was dead. We have registered a case and are searching for the accused," said Police Commissioner Labhu Ram. A case has been registered in Vidyanagar police station. (ANI)
Hours after stirring controversy over remarks against the Indian Constitution, Kerala Minister Saji Cheriyan expressed his regret at the state Assembly and said that he respects the constitution but said that his comments are being twisted. "I respect our constitution and am a politician that upholds the value of our constitution. The news that I criticised the constitution is twisted, express regret and apology," said Cheriyan. "I was trying to point out that withdrawing labour laws and imposing new labour codes will lead to extreme exploitation of workers. While speaking about the above issues in very strong terms it led to misinterpretation or spread of a message that I had not intended. I express my deep regret and apology." He also highlighted that the directive principles of the constitution say that financial security and social justice should be ensured for all and the exploitation of the same would affect crores of people across the nation. "The directive principles of our constitution say that financial security and social justice should be ensured for all. But there is no provision in the constitution to seek legal remedy for implementing directive principles. If exploited crores of people in the country would be affected," he added. He also stressed that the constitution should be strong enough to lower the growing inequality in the country. "The directive principles should be strengthened or else the constitution will not be strong enough to fight the growing inequality in the country. It was this apprehension that I was trying to express in my own words," he informed. Cherian also clarified that his views on the withdrawal of labour laws and the imposition of new laws were expressed in very strong terms and led to misinterpretation. The Kerala Minister evoked controversy while addressing a CPI-M programme at Mallapally in Pathanamthitta district, saying that the "Indian constitution can exploit people". Several people including the Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly VD Satheesan hit out at the controversial remarks. Taking to Twitter, Satheesan wrote, "Saji Cherian, Kerala Minister has made the most insulting statements about #IndianConstitution. Obnoxious words. He should resign or Chief Minister should demand the minister's resignation. #Constitution". (ANI)
Indian carrier SpiceJet replacement aircraft arrived in Karachi from Mumbai on Tuesday evening after the airline's Dubai-bound flight from Delhi was diverted to the Pakistani city as the fuel indicator started malfunctioning. The Boeing 737 Max aircraft will be taking passengers to Dubai. The replacement aircraft landed at 5:45 pm Pakistan time. Earlier on Tuesday morning, a Dubai-bound SpiceJet flight from Delhi was diverted to Karachi in Pakistan as the fuel indicator started malfunctioning. More than 150 passengers were onboard the SpiceJet flight (Delhi-Dubai) that made an emergency landing in Karachi, Pakistan after developing a technical fault. Following this, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Tuesday ordered a probe into the incident. "On July 5, 2022, M/s SpiceJet B737-8 Max aircraft VT-MXG while operating flight SG-011, Delhi - Dubai, the crew observed unusual fuel quantity reduction from the left tank. They carried out a relevant non-normal checklist, however fuel quantity kept on decreasing. PIC decided to divert the aircraft to Karachi (KHI). Aircraft diverted in coordination with ATC and landed safely at KHI," said DGCA statement. SpiceJet said the flight was diverted when it was on the way to Dubai and flying on 5000 ft.The conversation between the SpiceJet pilot and ATC Karachi which has been accessed by ANI shows that the pilot has asked for a precautionary landing after suspected fuel leakage in the aircraft. "The SpiceJet pilot is heard telling ATC Karachi that the fuel leakage in the aircraft, requesting it for precautionary landing," ATC conversation read access by ANI. "Karachi ATC confirming him whether any dangerous good on board. The pilots responded negatively. Later Karachi ATC confirms SpiceJet for landing after two minutes," the conversation further read. The aircraft landed safely at Karachi airport at around 8 am (local time), 53 minutes after being airborne. "SpiceJet has been on-ground for the past four hours. Passengers are being looked after. The plane has been parked in the designated area where engineers are assessing the problem," Pakistan's civil aviation authority (CAA) official said. "On July 5, 2022, SpiceJet B737 aircraft operating flight SG-11 (Delhi - Dubai) was diverted to Karachi due to an indicator light malfunctioning. The aircraft landed safely at Karachi and passengers were safely disembarked," the spokesperson of the airline said.According to SpiceJet, no emergency was declared and the aircraft made a normal landing at Karachi airport. "No emergency was declared and the aircraft made a normal landing. There was no earlier report of any malfunction with the aircraft. Passengers have been served refreshments. A replacement aircraft is being sent to Karachi that will take the passengers to Dubai," SpiceJet spokesperson said. Meanwhile, another aircraft of India's low-cost carrier SpiceJet reported a glitch in its Kandla - Mumbai flight on Tuesday. This is the second incident involving the airline on Tuesday. Earlier on Saturday, a domestic flight made an emergency landing after its cabin filled with smoke soon after take-off for the central city of Jabalpur, the airline said. A senior DGCA official said that they are investigating all six incidents on SpiceJet aircraft reported in the last 17 days. "We are concerned over passengers' safety and a team has been formed to investigate all the incidents thoroughly and submit the report at the earliest," he said. In the monthly report of DGCA, SpiceJet came in second in terms of flight cancellations in the month of May. On June 19, two incidents were reported in two separate flights of SpiceJet. First, a Delhi-bound flight carrying over 185 passengers caught fire soon after take-off from Patna airport and had to make an emergency landing. The airline said a bird hit that had damaged their fan blades. In another incident on the same day, the SpiceJet Bombardier Q400 Dash 8 plane from Delhi to Jabalpur made an emergency landing in Delhi as the cabin pressure couldn't be built up as the plane gained altitude. (ANI)
Tamil Nadu unit BJP chief K Annamalai on Tuesday claimed that the DMK-led state government has not fulfilled its election manifesto promises, saying that the party workers will begin a 'padayatra' from January 1, 2023. Speaking at the hunger strike held in Chennai's Valluvarkotam constituency, Annamalai said, "If the 505 election promises are not fulfilled by December 31, the padayatra will start on January 1 and end on December 31 in the Gopalapuram area. BJP workers should be ready to give up all their family income for a year and go on a padayatra. Prepare for it in the next five months." During the padayatra, the BJP workers will go to all 77,000 polling booths of Tamil Nadus in all villages and spread the message of Prime Minister Modi's schemes for the people, he said. "A Shinde will leave here like a ministerial post waiting for Udayanidhi. We do not know how many kilometres the journey entails. We are yet to calculate it. We want to have 25 MPs from TN in PM Modi's next government is 150 MLAs in the assembly election," the Tamil Nadu BJP chief added citing an example of the newly-elected Maharashtra government. (ANI)
Devendra Fadnavis, who was sworn in as Maharashtra's Deputy Chief Minister last week, said on Tuesday that it was his proposal to make Eknath Shinde the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. "People used to think that BJP is eager for power, it is doing this for the post of CM, but despite having 106 MLAs, we made Eknath Shinde the CM. It's my responsibility to ensure that Eknath Shinde is a successful CM," Fadnavis said at a Press Conference. Fadnavis said he took the Deputy CM post after a discussion was held with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president JP Nadda as well as Union home minister Amit Shah. "The order of the party's seniors was paramount to me and the BJP leadership believed that he should be part of the government," he added. "One person has polluted the politics of Maharashtra and put state politics' culture into a ditch, you know who that person is. He should self-respect," he added. Putting rest to news reports claiming that Fadnavis is unhappy knowing Shinde being the Chief Minister of the State, Fadnavis today, while addressing a press conference said, "Had I requested, I could have become the Chief Minister. We made Shiv Sena's representative as a Chief Minister for ideology...It was my proposal to make Shinde the CM." "Senior party leaders insisted that government won't run if I stayed out of it, so I accepted the Deputy Chief Ministerial post on their command," said Fadnavis. Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde on Monday won the floor test in the state Assembly on the last day of the two-day special session of the House. In the 288-member House, 164 MLAs voted for the motion of confidence, while 99 voted against it. Three legislators abstained from voting, while Congress's Ashok Chavan and Vijay Wadettiwar were among those absent during the trust vote. Shinde was sworn in as CM on June 30, a day after Uddhav Thackeray quit the post. BJP's Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in as the deputy CM. Rahul Narvekar of the BJP was on Sunday elected Speaker of the Maharashtra Assembly during the first day of its special session. Narvekar, who polled 164 votes, defeated Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena candidate Rajan Salvi, who got 107 votes. The Speaker's post was lying vacant since February last year after Nana Patole of the Congress resigned. Narvekar (45) is the youngest ever Assembly Speaker in the country, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said. Last month, Eknath Shinde launched a rebellion against the party. The majority of MLAs sided with him, which led to the collapse of the MVA government led by Uddhav Thackeray. Eknath Shinde was on Thursday sworn in as the 20th chief minister of Maharashtra, while BJP stalwart Devendra Fadnavis took oath as the deputy CM. (ANI)
A trio of Galaxy Ace phones have got an Android 12 update with One UI 4.1. The update also includes the June security patch, which covers 65 vulnerabilities. The three smartphones are the Galaxy A21s and Galaxy A02s (both of which were released in 2020 with Android 10) and the Galaxy A03s (launched with Android 11 last year). As per GSM Arena, the update improves a number of Samsung apps. The Gallery, for example, improves album sorting and offers an enhanced Stories feature. There is also an automatic way to 'remaster' old photos, plus any edits you make can easily be undone. A nice privacy feature lets you scrub time and location data from a photo before sharing it (useful for services that don't do that automatically). Another privacy-focused feature coming with Android 12, is the indicators that show whether the camera and microphone are in use. It also offers a new search widget that can launch the browser in 'secret mode,' that can block tracking if the option is enabled. The Samsung keyboard now also offers language suggestions supported by Grammarly. This update also revamps Picture-in-Picture mode, the Samsung widgets, the Calendar app, Dark mode and more. Note that the A21s and A02s are getting the full One UI 4.1 pack, and the A03s are receiving One UI 4.1 Core, as per reports from GSM Arena. Meanwhile, all three models are entitled to four years of security patches, but were not on the list of phones getting three OS updates. (ANI)
Adoption of new technologies, efficient use of fuel and human resources, better management of finances, improvement of the passenger services and other issues came up for discussion at the meeting.

Notably, on June 3, Basavaraj Bommai suggested the State Road Transport Corporations to focus more on resource mobilisation through not just fleet operations, but from other sources too.

Bommai, who held a meeting to review the implementation of budget programmes in the Transport department, said that a report is awaited from the expert committee constituted to suggest rejuvenation of State Transport Corporations.

In-principle approval has been given for setting up automated driving test tracks at a cost of Rs 80 crore at Devanahalli, Kolar, Hosakote, Gadag, Ballari, Vijayapura, Bidar, Yadagiri and Davangere, Bommai said and instructed the officials to implement the project without any delay.

In the meeting, it was decided to provide good amenities and infrastructure for passengers along the State Highways. The amenity complexes should have branding and good maintenance.

CM appreciated the tax mobilisation in the department for 2021-22 which was 103 per cent of the target.

Bommai instructed the officials for speedy completion of the Shiggaon Bus Depot and Driver Training Centre, for which administrative approval has been granted.

A meeting will be convened soon to extend the 'Vidya Nidhi' scholarship scheme for children of Yellow Board vehicle drivers.

The meeting was attended by Transport Minister B Sriramulu, Additional Chief Secretary in Finance Department ISN Prasad and other senior officials. (ANI)
Special Investigation Team (SIT) challenged the bail order passed by a Special MP and MLA Court.

Justice Yogesh Khanna on Monday issued notice to Sajjan Kumar returnable on July 15, 2022. The bench stayed the bail order challenged in the petition.

Sajjan Kumar is lodged in jail after conviction by Delhi High Court in 2018 in another riots-related case. He was awarded a life jail sentence by the High court. Earlier he was acquitted by Karkardooma Court.

SIT investigating riots-related cases has challenged the bail order passed by Special Judge MK Nagpal on April 27, 2022.

Advocate Ajay Digpaul for the Central government submitted that Sajjan Kumar is involved in a heinous offence and some important witnesses are yet to be examined and if he is released he may tamper with the evidence. He is already convicted in a similar case and is in custody.

Special Judge at Rouse Avenue Court granted bail to Sajjan Kumar on furnishing a bail bond of Rs 1 lakh and one surety bond in the like amount. Court had imposed some conditions on him. (ANI)
Swapna Suresh, prime accused in the Kerala gold smuggling case, appeared before the Crime Branch officials in the police club for interrogation in the conspiracy case registered against her on the complaint filed by CPIM MLA and former minister KT Jaleel. Crime Branch of Kerala Police interrogated Swapna Suresh in the conspiracy case registered against her for 7 hours at the police club. She was interrogated from 11 am to 6 pm. Earlier, the Thiruvananthapuram cantonment police registered a case against Swapna on CPIM MLA and former minister KT Jaleel's complaint on June 8 this year seeking a probe into the charges made by Swapna Suresh against him in the Kerala gold smuggling case and alleged that she conspired and made defaming statements against him. The police registered the case under Section 153 (wantonly giving provocation with an intent to cause riot) and Section 120B (criminal conspiracy) against her. "Interrogation is still continuing. So I cannot reveal anything at the moment. It is not over yet. It is yet to finish. They said they will inform me at a later stage. I am cooperating with the investigation. So, let them (officials) prove. If it is a conspiracy, let them prove it. Anyway, I am not arrested today. I can tell you. As of now, there is no arrest what they confirmed," Suresh said to reporters today. On July 5, 2020, 30 kilograms of 24-carat gold worth Rs 14.82 crores was seized by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs at Thiruvananthapuram Airport from a diplomatic bag that was meant to be delivered to the UAE Consulate in Thiruvananthapuram. M Sivasankar, the principal secretary to Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, was suspended and removed from the post after a preliminary inquiry confirmed that he had links with Swapna Suresh, one of the accused in the National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe. (ANI)
Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur on Tuesday met Chemical and Fertiliser, and Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya with a request to set up one of the three bulk drug parks, planned by the government, in Himachal Pradesh. Anurag Thakur said, "I am always aiming to increase employment opportunities with good healthcare in Himachal Pradesh. The Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers had decided to provide three bulk drug parks across the country. And a provision of 3000 crores was made in the last budget." "Since Himachal is a pharma hub, collective efforts are being made to make one of these three bulk drug parks in Himachal as well. Today, I met the Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers Mansukh Mandaviya and requested him to give approval for setting up a Bulk Drug Park in Himachal. He took my request positively," said Thakur. "With the creation of this Bulk Drug Park, not only will the pharma industry in the entire Himachal will get a boost, but on getting this approval, about 10,000 people will also get employment opportunities. With the creation of a bulk drug park, a huge infrastructure will be created here, which will benefit the entire state," he added. He also requested Mandaviya to fast-track the development of a satellite centre of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, at Una in Himachal Pradesh. He said Rs 500 crore has been sanctioned for the satellite centre and the foundation stone for the same was laid in 2019. The residents of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh will benefit from the satellite centre which will also create employment opportunities in the region, Thakur said. Thakur said, "In addition to this, I requested the Health Minister to complete the construction work of the PGI Satellite Center being built in Una at the earliest. There was a detailed discussion with the Health Minister about this PGI being built in Una, so that the people of the state can get the benefit of it as soon as possible, on which he has given assurance to expedite its work and build it at the earliest." "Both Punjab and Himachal will be benefited by this PGI satellite center in Una. More than 125 doctors, close to one thousand employees will be posted in the center to be built with 500 crores. With this, the means of direct and indirect employment will also be available," he said. (ANI)
A circular from West Bengal Chief Secretary, H.K. Dwivedi has ignited possibilities of earlier polls to the three-tier panchayat system in the state, originally scheduled for the middle of 2023, and being considered by political circles as litmus test for all parties before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. In the said circular, issued late on Monday, he has directed all the state government departments concerned to complete their pending projects relating to rural development, specially on the rural road network, rural water supply, and rural housing and sanitation within the next six months. In the circular, the Chief Secretary has specially asked the state Panchayat Department to direct the three tiers of the panchayat system, namely Zilla Parishads, Panchayat Samitis and Village Panchayats, to take more proactive role and cooperate with the state government departments concerned to complete these pending projects within the deadline of the six months. He also directed the block development officers to make regular field visits and monitor the progress of work. As per records the current terms of the three tiers of the panchayats are scheduled to end by the end of May 2023, which means that the fresh elections will be conducted in June. Recently, Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, at a district administrative review meeting directed the different departments to complete the pending projects as fast as possible since dates of the panchayat elections can be announced any time. Within a week of her announcement, came the circular from the Chief Secretary. Although state Panchayat Minister, Pulak Ray was not available for his comments, a senior member of the state cabinet told IANS, on strict condition of anonymity that the plans are there to complete the panchayat election process by April 2023 so that the ruling party can henceforth fully concentrate for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. "If you note the circular from the Chief Secretary, the focus is only on the rural development projects, which gives clear indications of early polls," the cabinet member said. The results of the last three-tier panchayat elections in the state came as a surprise for many, as the BJP, then for the first time in its history, came up as the principal opposition party in the state, overtaking over Left Front. The BJP carried forward its success in the panchayat polls in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, bagging 18 out of 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state. --IANS src/vd ( 418 Words) 2022-07-05-19:20:02 (IANS)
The case pertains to attack on priest Kamaldeep Sharma at village Bhar Singh Pura, Phillaur, Jalandhar by Kamaljeet Sharma alias Kamal and Ram Singh alias Sona on the directions of Canada-based Arshdeep Singh alias Arsh and Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

The case was initially registered on January 31, 2021 by Punjab Police and the probe taken over by the NIA on October 8, 2021.

"Investigations have revealed the entire conspiracy was hatched by accused Arsh and Nijjar to disturb peace and disrupt communal harmony in Punjab by killing a Hindu priest. The arrested accused Sharma and Sona had shot at the victim Kamaldeep Sharma," an NIA official said.

Based on the investigation, the NIA charge sheeted all four under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, and the Arms Act.

--IANS atk/vd

( 193 Words)

2022-07-05-22:40:04 (IANS)
Moscow [Russia], July 5 (ANI/Sputnik): Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, commenting on Sofia's decision to expel 70 employees of the Russian embassy, that Moscow would respond to these actions, and that the Russian embassy was unable to work normally after it. "According to our assessment, according to the assessment of the foreign ministry, the embassy is not able to work normally, in fact almost from now on. Naturally, we will reciprocate our Bulgarian colleagues," Lavrov said during a press conference in Moscow. Lavrov said that the decision to expel 70 employees of the Russian embassy in Bulgaria was due to Washington's pressure on Sofia. "This is not an independent decision of the acting prime minister, who has an absolutely open and unequivocal pro-US orientation, is ready to fulfill any wishes of his sovereign," the minister said. He explained that "the wishes of the sovereign are to kill the historical memory in the Bulgarians, to destroy the foundation of relations that have been hardened in the joint struggle for independence, and in many other situations, including in recent history." "Washington's policy applies not only to Bulgaria, they want to kill the historical memory of other peoples in the Balkans, first of all, the Orthodox peoples, by the way," the minister added. According to Lavrov, even in Bulgaria itself the decision was taken "by the country's leadership with surprise." Lavrov noted that this decision "did not rely on the procedures established in Bulgaria for such abrupt movements." (ANI/Sputnik)
Vietnamese firms shipped just USD 509 million worth of goods to China through the border, an 87 per cent dive year-on-year, reported Vietnamese publication VNExpress citing the customs data.

The report said that the imports from China also dropped by 52.5 per cent to USD 3.64 billion.

Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade said that China's zero-Covid strategy and tightened control of cross-border movement have largely impacted the trade between the two countries. The situation was worsened by the lack of transport, logistics and cross-border trade infrastructure, VNExpress reported.

Though trading through key border gates in the northern provinces of Lao Cai and Lang Son has resumed, the customs clearance has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.

In Lang Son province, customs clearance is carried out at four border gates: Huu Nghi, Dong Dang, Chi Ma, and Tan Thanh.

Tan Thanh border gate in Lang Son is Vietnam's main point for fruit export to China, but only 100 vehicles get customs clearance a day, a third of total vehicles compared to pre-pandemic level, VNExpress reported.

Amid this, if the required measures are not taken to control the delay in clearance, the border congestion could escalate further, said the Ministry.

Ever since the pandemic struck the country, the Chinese authorities have tightened COVID-19 safety measures. During the period, thousands of container trucks wait for hours at Vietnam's border gates with China in the northern province of Lang Son in order to get clearance, VNExpress reported.

China was Vietnam's largest partner last year, with bilateral trade reaching USD 166 billion.

Vietnam exported USD 56 billion worth of goods to China, its second-largest import market, last year.

Trading through the border accounted for USD 42 billion, 37 per cent of it being Vietnamese exports. Agricultural produce and electronics components are Vietnam's top export items to China. (ANI)
The boat, KM Setia Makmur 06, was hit by huge waves during poor weather when it was sailing in the sea on Saturday, said Darmawan Widi, spokesman of the search and rescue office in Merauke district of Indonesia's Papua province.

A search and rescue operation was carried out after the office received the information about the incident, and several other fishing boats near the site were asked to help the operation, said the official.

"Ten people have been rescued safely, but 15 others remain missing," he told Xinhua, saying the boat carried 25 people.

The search for the victims was also conducted by air and a plane of the Indonesian air force was involved, according to the official.

"Today, a navy's warship would also be deployed to the scene," he said.

The fishing boat departed from a seaport in Dobo, the capital of Kepulauan Aru (Aru islands) district of Maluku province, on June 24, he added. (ANI/Xinhua)
China has reported an alarming increase in the number of people seeking asylum abroad after Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power as the systematic misuse of power is leading to discomfort in people's minds and therefore, many are choosing to go abroad, as noted by Hong Kong Post. The data analysed and published by Safeguard Defenders shows the increase in the asylum seekers, as Xi consolidated his power and introduced a more oppressive system of governance, the number of asylum-seekers from China continued to grow at an alarming rate, claims the NGO on its website. The increase has occurred despite China's zero-covid policy and other restrictions. In total, around 730,000 Chinese nationals have sought asylum since 2012, with more than 170,000 living outside China under refugee status, the report states. For most asylum seekers from China, the US remains the most popular destination. America accepted 88,722 applicants from mainland China in 2021, and Australia took 15,774 asylum-seekers in the same year. Thousands also apply for asylum in Canada, Brazil, South Korea, and the UK. Researcher Jing-jie Chen, working for Safeguard Defenders said the data also reflects the impact of Xi's zero-Covid policy, which has led to gruelling lockdowns and draconian restrictions on people's movements under the guise of disease control and prevention. China has basically been in a state of lockdown during the past couple of years. Despite the lockdowns, "...we can see that the number has reached a new high ... with the number of asylum seekers rising every year over the past three years," Chen said. "Many people are voting with their feet and opting to emigrate from China, either through overseas study or investment visas and residency cards," he added. The rights group 'Safeguard Defenders' is cited in an article written by Amelia Loi for Radio Free Asia in Mandarin (22 June 2022). The rights group said, "Seeking asylum is for many a desperate act, reserved for those with few other options, which does not apply to the great many Chinese who have moved, and continue to do so, to the US, Australia, and beyond, often via naturalization, work visas or property purchases." Reportage of human rights violations in China, calls for greater transparency and the obvious conditions prevailing within the country have led to greater repression. This allows Xi to consolidate total power in his hands. However, while Chinese nationals are choosing to leave their country fearing oppressive rule, the risk of transnational repression has also grown, including the use of involuntary returns. This is a feature already noticed prominently in the case of Uyghurs who have fled Xinjiang and sought asylum in other countries. Chinese law enforcement agencies routinely track, harass, threaten and repatriate people who flee China, under its SkyNet surveillance program that reaches far beyond China's borders, using a variety of means to have them forcibly repatriated. China has also often used pliant allies to circumvent criminal justice processes and ensure political refugees and Muslims are sent back. It has targeted ethnic groups like the Uyghurs, but also political dissidents, rights activists, journalists and former officials using its overseas networks, according to a 2021 report by Safeguard Defenders. The report stated that the CPC has a coordinated international operation called "Operation Foxhunt" to force Chinese nationals to return home. Chen notes that since Xi Jinping took over as CPC General Secretary, he has brought the 'Foxhunt' plan for the global oppression of dissidents that extends internationally. Between the launch of the SkyNet program in 2014 and June 2021, China repatriated nearly 10,000 people from 120 countries and regions, the report said. Yet according to Safeguard Defenders, just one per cent is brought back to China using judicial procedures; more than 60 per cent are just put on a plane against their will. Recently, China put two prominent civil rights activists, Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi through closed-door trials for state subversion, both of whom were at the forefront of NGO activity aimed at greater transparency and democracy in China. This incident occurred at a time when UNHCR figures reveal that the number of nationals seeking asylum overseas had increased from 12,000 in 2012 to nearly 120,000 in 2021. Clearly, many Chinese nationals are having a problem with the Communist Party of China (CPC) and its way of governance. This trend became prominent after Xi Jinping took office in 2013 as the CPC General Secretary. Some observers term this as a desperate act, Hong Kong Post reported. A recent illustration of how the Chinese system puts pressure on its citizens is seen in reports of Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, both legal experts and human rights activists through closed-door trials (June 2022) for alleged state subversion. No one was allowed to attend Xu's trial held in Shandong province and no information relating to the court proceedings was made public. Xu, 49 is one of China's most prominent activists and human rights advocates. He was a co-founder of the now-banned legal aid centre Open Constitution Initiative and the New Citizens' Movement, a nongovernmental group advocating for civil rights, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). The crime Xu committed was that he said Xi Jinping is "just not smart enough." From 2014 to 2018, Xu served four years in prison for "gathering a crowd to disrupt public order" after a series of small-scale protests by members of the non-governmental New Citizens' Movement, an initiative he co-founded in 2012 to develop civil society in China within the confines of the one-party political system. In February 2020, Xu was detained in Guangzhou after spending nearly two months in hiding. He was one of several rights activists rounded up by authorities after a private gathering in the south-eastern city of Xiamen in December 2019. At that time, Xu had issued an open letter addressed to Xi Jinping, calling on him to resign, a strikingly blunt appeal that was swiftly censored on the Chinese internet, Hong Kong Post reported. Ding Jiaxi, 54, is a lawyer and a prominent figure within the New Citizens Movement which campaigned for greater transparency among Chinese Communist Party officials. In 2012 and 2013, he participated in a number of small protests in Beijing calling on Chinese officials to reveal their personal assets. Earlier this month, a municipal court in Shandong issued a notice to the defence lawyer of Ding Jiaxi, inviting the lawyer to a pre-trial meeting. The notice indicated that the case of Ding Jiaxi, who is charged with "subversion of state power", involves "a large amount of evidentiary materials" and is "major and complicated". Gwen Lee of Amnesty International sums up the situation aptly when he says, "The Chinese authorities have targeted Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi not because they committed any internationally recognized crime, but simply because they hold views the government does not like." (ANI)
"SpiceJet flight from Delhi to Dubai diverted to Karachi. Boeing 737' engine has developed a technical fault. The captain of the aircraft sought a precautionary landing and was given permission. All passengers on board are safe. The call sign of the aircraft is SG11," sources told ANI on Tuesday.

According to the Karachi airport officials, the flight was diverted when it was on the way to Dubai.

"The plane landed in Karachi 0803 am (local time), 53 minutes after being airborne. It has been on-ground for the past four hours. Passengers are being looked after. The plane has been parked in the designated area where engineers are assessing the problem," Pakistan's civil aviation authority (CAA) official said.

The Indian low-cost carrier confirmed about the emergency landing of SpiceJet in Karachi this morning.

"On July 5, 2022, SpiceJet B737 aircraft operating flight SG-11 (Delhi - Dubai) was diverted to Karachi due to an indicator light malfunctioning. The aircraft landed safely at Karachi and passengers were safely disembarked," the spokesperson of the airline said.

According to SpiceJet, no emergency was declared and the aircraft made a normal landing at Karachi airport.

"No emergency was declared and the aircraft made a normal landing. There was no earlier report of any malfunction with the aircraft. Passengers have been served refreshments. A replacement aircraft is being sent to Karachi that will take the passengers to Dubai," SpiceJet spokesperson said.

Earlier on Saturday, a domestic flight made an emergency landing after its cabin filled with smoke soon after take-off for the central city of Jabalpur, the airline said.

"On July 2, 2022, SpiceJet Q400 aircraft was operating SG-2962 (Delhi-Jabalpur). While passing 5000ft, the crew noticed smoke in the cabin. The pilots decided to return back to Delhi," the airlines tweeted on July 2. (ANI)
A Dubai-bound SpiceJet flight from New Delhi made a precautionary landing in Pakistan's Karachi airport after it developed a technical glitch. "SpiceJet flight from Delhi to Dubai diverted to Karachi. Boeing 737' engine has developed a technical fault. The captain of the aircraft sought a precautionary landing and was given permission. All passengers on board are safe. The call sign of the aircraft is SG11," sources told ANI on Tuesday. According to the Karachi airport officials, the flight was diverted when it was on the way to Dubai. "The plane landed in Karachi 0803 am (local time), 53 minutes after being airborne. It has been on-ground for the past four hours. Passengers are being looked after. The plane has been parked in the designated area where engineers are assessing the problem," Pakistan's civil aviation authority (CAA) official said. The Indian low-cost carrier confirmed about the precautionary landing of SpiceJet in Karachi this morning. "On July 5, 2022, SpiceJet B737 aircraft operating flight SG-11 (Delhi - Dubai) was diverted to Karachi due to an indicator light malfunctioning. The aircraft landed safely at Karachi and passengers were safely disembarked," the spokesperson of the airline said. According to SpiceJet, no emergency was declared and the aircraft made a normal landing at Karachi airport. "No emergency was declared and the aircraft made a normal landing. There was no earlier report of any malfunction with the aircraft. Passengers have been served refreshments. A replacement aircraft is being sent to Karachi that will take the passengers to Dubai," SpiceJet spokesperson said. Earlier on Saturday, a domestic flight made a precautionary landing after its cabin filled with smoke soon after take-off for the central city of Jabalpur, the airline said. "On July 2, 2022, SpiceJet Q400 aircraft was operating SG-2962 (Delhi-Jabalpur). While passing 5000ft, the crew noticed smoke in the cabin. The pilots decided to return back to Delhi," the airlines tweeted on July 2. (ANI)
Pakistan's Election Commission stated that a report of the committee constituted to probe the theft of ballot papers and violence during the recent by-elections in Karachi was unsatisfactory. The probe committee report was submitted by the Regional Election Commissioner over recent violence during the recent by-elections in NA-240 ((Korangi Karachi-II). The police failed to control the groups, the presiding officer was also confused, and the identity of the person who returned the stolen ballot papers was unknown, Dawn reported citing the report. The case was heard by a five-member bench headed by Sikandar Sultan Raja, the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of Pakistan. The bench issued a warning to Sindh's Inspector General of police (IGP) and ordered that the district returning officer (DRO) and returning officer (RO) will be made Officer on Special Duty (OSD) for the by-elections for inefficient performance, the Dawn newspaper reported. "We will pass orders to change the IGP, if the situation remains the same during the upcoming local government elections and by-elections," Raja said. Pakistan's CEC also announced that actions would be taken against any government or political party that would obstruct the electoral process. "If you are busy till July 7, let us summon the IGP," Raja added. Mustafa Kamal, the chief of Police Service of Pakistan (PSP) has been summoned for the next court hearing that will be carried out on July 7, Dawn reported. The CEC mentioned that the real task was to figure out who brought the ballot papers back, it added. Korangi Shahjahan Khan, the Senior Superintendent of Police, told the commission that four people had been arrested, and Junaid alias Jani had been sent underground by the PSP. The chief commissioner also mentioned that warrant for the arrest of PSP Kamal would be issued. Ealier in the month of June, one person was shot dead and at least 10 were injured in Karachi during the NA-240 (Korangi Karachi II) by-election. Mustafa Kamal made the election staff hostage after he entered the polling station with his party members and broke several ballot boxes with batons. The Edhi Foundation reported that during violence and firing in Landhi-6, an ambulance of the foundation, that was on duty to rescue the injured, was fired upon but all staff were safe and continuing their activities. In a message, the CEC had directed Sindh's provincial election commissioner to ensure strict action across the board against the culprits such as the registration of a first information report. (ANI)
Raj Kumar Thing, Deputy Superintendent of Police at the district confirmed to ANI that the bus fell about 40 meters from the road at Lubhughat in Khandadevi Rural Municipality-1 of Ramechhap.

"The bus was en route to Kathmandu. 9 people had died on the spot while we rescued 30 and sent them to Dhulikhel Hospital as well as some in Kathmandu," Thing said over a phone call.

As per the police official, the cause of the accident is yet to be ascertained.

At least 40 people were on board when the bus met with the accident at around 10 am (local time). (ANI)
Members of the Australian Uyghur Tangritagh Women's Association (AUTWA) on Tuesday protested outside the Rundle Mall in Adelaide city here commemorating the 13th anniversary of the Urumqi Massacre and demanded the Australian government to ban import on goods manufactured by Uyghur Forced Labour from China's Xinjiang region. The Urumqi protest organised by AUTWA with the support of UFF was attended by roughly 15 members along with some children and teenagers from the community. To mark the 13th anniversary, the protestors gathered at the Silver Balls sculpture at the Rundle Mall, holding placards and pictures of those who died in the riots demanding the government to stop the Uyghur's genocide. During the protest, there was a petition to collect signatures from the public. People were asked to sign the petition demanding the Australian government to ban the import of products made through Uyghur Forced Labour from China's Xinjiang region. "We need your signature to make sure no product made by forced Uyghur labour enters Australia. Sign a petition to ask the government to stop the Uyghur genocide and Uyghur forced labour. Not just Uyghur forced labour but stop forced labour across the world. We cannot be complicit; we cannot buy products that say, made by blood tears and people lives," said a member of the AUTWA. AUTWA also launched an online media campaign for the event. The clips of the event have been watched more than 1000 times. In the Uyghur language, the campaign launching video has been watched over 1,000 times on Facebook. In support of this, many people changed their profile pictures to the posts. On Twitter and Instagram, more than 100k people viewed the post and it was shared over 150 times. The campaign which started with the event on Tuesday at 11 am has not ended yet and is yet to continue for another 17 hours. "We remember the victims of the Urumqi Massacre and demand the Chinese government stop the #uyghur genocide. Join us and be the voices of the millions of innocent people," tweeted AUTWA calling on people to join them. Speaking of the incident that took place on July 5, 2009, when violent riots broke out in Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang. The Chinese government launched a crackdown against Uyghurs protesting against the killing of two Uyghurs. Thousands of protestors were killed, disappeared or injured, the AUTWA member said. "We are here because there is a genocide being committed against the Uyghurs by the Chinese Communist regime. 16 Uyghurs were murdered on July 5, 2009, in East Turkistan. Thousands of peaceful protests were carried out against the Chinese government. But what they want us to believe is that only two Uyghurs died as the Chinese government never tells the truth. Upto 5000 Uyghurs were taken to the concentration camps. Since then, the lives of Uyghurs and their everyday freedom in East Turkistan under Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang have been under attack." AUTWA protested against the Chinese Communist Party's oppression of Uyghurs in East Turkmenistan and the leaked document, known as Xinjiang Police Files, from the internment camps in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), which shows the Chinese government's plan of genocide and crimes against Uyghurs. The AUTWA member further said that Chinese authorities have been harvesting organs from persecuted Uyghurs as they are made to work in slave labour camps. The major industries employ forced labour. She said, "We are being cleaned out, made disappeared from the earth. What China has done in Hong Kong, Tibet and Taiwan for decades and we have not been able to stop it. Once Hong Kong is done Australia is next." Notably, on July 5, 2009, violent riots broke out in Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang. The Chinese government launched a crackdown against Uyghurs protesting against the killing of two Uyghurs. Thousands of protestors were killed, disappeared or injured. According to officials, a total of 197 people died, with 1,721 suffered injuries in the riot. Chinese authorities have been accused of imposing forced labour, systematic forced birth control and torture, and separating children from incarcerated parents. China's increasing atrocities toward Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim populations in the Xinjiang region including mass arbitrary detention, forced labour, torture, forced sterilization, separation of children from parents and destruction of minority culture, shows the human rights abuses against the community. Several countries, including the US, Canada and the Netherlands, have accused China of committing genocide - defined by international convention as the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". However, Beijing has vehemently denied all accusations of human rights abuses in the region and says that all ethnic groups in Xinjiang live happily. (ANI)
The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) summoned Ahmed Mujtaba, the brother of Bushra Bibi, along with 18 others.

Mujtaba and the others were called for a hearing on July 6 at the Sahiwal office of ACE for a probe into their alleged involvement in a corruption scandal related to state land, the Dawn newspaper reported.

The ACE stated that ex-parte proceedings would be initiated against a person who does not join the investigation.

Mujtaba and the others are accused of occupying government land in Depalpur, Dawn reported citing sources.

He was involved in illegally leasing government land that was reserved for a market, and seized the land through the chairman of the market committee leading to a loss of PKR 200 million, the sources said.

Anti-corruption officials have stated that shops were built after gaining access to the land.

Earlier, former chief executive officer of Faisalabad Industrial Estate Development and Management Company (FIEDMC) Rana Yousuf and Secretary Special Economic Zone Committee Maqsood Ahmed were arrested by the Anti-Corruption Establishment in a case of illegal allotment of an industrial plot to Farah Gogi.

Farah Gogi, a close friend of former Prime Minister Imran Khan's wife, was illegally allotted an industrial plot worth PKR 600 million for PKR 83 million.

Sources said the two officials were accused of illegally allotting the plot to Farah Gogi and her mother's company Al-Mu'az Dairy, reported The News International.

The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) is investigating the assets of Farah Gogi and Ahsan Jamil Gujjar, the sources said, adding that a case was registered in Faisalabad and the accused were arrested. A three-member ACE team was investigating the case, the sources said.

According to the Pakistan Defence Minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, former Prime Minister Imran Khan, his wife Bushra Bibi, and his wife's friend Farah Gogi, are allegedly involved in money laundering.

The corruption saga is not limited to Farah Gogi according to reports. The assets of Farah Khan's family, including her husband, her sister, and her father-in-law, also grew rapidly within a year after the Imran Khan government came into power.

Pakistan's anti-corruption watchdog National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has already authorised an enquiry on Farah Gogi. (ANI)
Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Tuesday challenged Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) leader MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake to revive the country's economy in six months. Addressing the Parliament, PM Wickremesinghe said that he is ready to step down if Dissanayake can revive Sri Lanka's economy in 6 months. Earlier, Dissanayake had boasted that he is capable of restoring Sri Lanka's economy in six months. "So if there is such a plan, I am ready to resign and let him take up this position. I am ready to give up my position and support that program. Because the positions I hold are not new to me. At a time when the country has become anarchic and no one has taken responsibility, I have not accepted this position out of the desire for the chair," he added. "It would be great if he has a plan to restore the country's economy within six months. With such a plan, we will be able to restore the economy in a short period of time. Not only that, but it also sets a good precedent for the world," said the Sri Lankan Prime Minister. PM Wickremesinghe said that taking a country whose economic growth has fallen to negative ratings to a positive economic growth rate in six months is an action that has never happened in any country in the world. Taking a jibe at JVP leader, Wickremesinghe further advised Dissanayake to lay out the plan of the country's economic revival to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa or to the Sri Lankan Parliament as that plan would win him the Nobel Prize in Economics. "That is why I am asking MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake to submit this plan to the President. If you don't want to go to the President, present it to this Parliament. Let us discuss it in this Parliament. If that plan is better and more effective than the plan we are implementing now, we will implement it. Such a plan would be brilliant enough to win the Nobel Prize in Economics," said Wickremesinghe. He further stated "if there is a more effective plan than the one we have presented, if there is a faster plan, then present it. We can discuss it. Run it the most effective path to recovery." Wickremesinghe said that the island country is participating in negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a bankrupt country. "Our country has held talks with the IMF on many occasions before. But this time the situation is different from all those previous occasions," he said in Lankan Parliament. "We are now participating in the negotiations as a bankrupt country. Therefore, we have to face a more difficult and complicated situation than previous negotiations," Wickremesinghe said. The Prime Minister further in the speech said that once a staff-level agreement is reached, it will be submitted to the IMF Board of Directors for approval. Sri Lanka has been facing the worst economic crisis since independence in 1948, leading to an acute shortage of essential items like food, medicine, cooking gas and fuel across the island nation. The country, with an acute foreign currency crisis that resulted in foreign debt default, had announced in April that it is suspending nearly USD 7 billion foreign debt repayment due for this year out of about USD 25 billion due through 2026. Sri Lanka's total foreign debt stands at USD 51 billion. The economic crisis has particularly impacted food security, agriculture, livelihoods, and access to health services. Food production in the last harvest season was 40 - 50 per cent lower than last year, and the current agricultural season is at risk, with seeds, fertilizers, fuel and credit shortages. Sri Lanka is one of the few nations named by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) which is expected to go without food due to the global food shortage expected this year. (ANI)
During the meeting which is set to take place from July 7 to 8, the participating Foreign ministers will hold talks on issues of contemporary relevance, such as strengthening multilateralism and current global challenges including food and energy security, read a release by the Ministry of External Affairs.

The External Affairs Minister is slated to hold several bilateral meetings with his counterparts from other G20 member states and invited countries during the visit.

The EAM's participation in the G20 FMM will strengthen India's engagement with G20 member states. As a G20 troika member and as the incoming G20 Presidency, India's role in the upcoming FMM discussions assumes even greater importance, the official statement read.

"We are currently extending steadfast support to the Indonesian Presidency, and will be taking forward discussions on contemporary global challenges, with a view to achieving meaningful outcomes, during our Presidency," the MEA said.

According to the Ministry of External Affairs, India will hold the G-20 presidency from December 1, 2022, and convene the first G20 leaders' summit in 2023.

India is planning to host certain events of G20 in J-K, reported The Express Tribune.

Pakistan is reaching out to its close allies in the group of twenty - China, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to boycott the upcoming G20 meeting in Jammu and Kashmir.

The G20 countries include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United States and the United Kingdom.

India's representation at G20 summits has been led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi since 2014.

The G20 Bali summit is the seventeenth upcoming summit of group of twenty (G20) set to take place on November 15 to 16, 2022 where the progress of G20 will be discussed as well as the intense work carried out within the ministerial meetings, working groups, and engagement groups throughout the year. (ANI)
Pakistan's Sindh High Court on Monday directed the police to find the whereabouts of a missing student of NED University of Engineering and Technology and present him in court amid rising cases of enforced disappearances in Pakistan. A petition was filed by Abdul Moiz Khan which stated that several unidentified armed personnel arrived in police vans and other vehicles, raided his house in Federal B Area on June 3, and picked up his son Abdur Rehman Khan adding that his whereabouts are still unknown, the Dawn newspaper reported. The case was heard by a two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Iqbal Kalhoro who ordered the police the record the statement of the petitioner after his lawyer mentioned that the police were not registering a First information report (FIR). A police officer told the bench that the probe would be carried out by an officer who is not below the rank of a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP). The bench directed the investigating officer to find the alleged detainee till August 9 after completing all the formalities. Petitioner Abdul Moiz Khan stated that his son was a mechanical engineer who is currently pursuing his master's degree from NED University of Engineering and Technology. The police refused to file a case and he approached a court session to get an FIR registered, Dawn reported citing the petitioner. The petitioner also mentioned that his son went missing on January 12 as well while he was visiting his relatives in Taxila. An FIR was lodged by the local police, and he filed a writ petition in the Lahore High Court in Rawalpindi. The Lahore court ordered the police for the recovery of his son, it added. The petitioner mentioned that he withdrew his petition after his son was released by the unknown captors in Hasan Abdaal on February 2. A DSP informed the court that an FIR had been lodged regarding the same and a copy of the same was also presented, but the lawyer of the petitioner said that the FIR was not lodged as per the petitioner's verbatim. The police officer assured the bench that if the petitioner appeared before the police, his statement will be recorded accordingly, the local media reported. A recent report unveiled by the US revealed that over 8000 people were missing in the country during 2021 including 1,200 missing in Sindh province in the last six months. Enforced disappearances are used as a tool by Pakistani authorities to terrorize people who question the all-powerful army establishment of the country, or seek individual or social rights. Cases of enforced disappearances have been majorly recorded in the Balochistan and the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces of the country which host active separatist movements. (ANI)
The narrative of the Xinjiang Police Files, ought to be repeated. The data was handed to an international media consortium before being validated, examined, and selected by Dr Adrian Zenz, a specialist on China's northwest Xinjiang detention campaign targeting Uyghurs and other largely Muslim ethnic minorities. According to Zenz, the papers are solid proof of what is "perhaps the biggest internment of an ethnoreligious minority since the Holocaust... The new information emphasizes the character of this tragedy." The materials were received from an unidentified source who hacked into police systems in two Xinjiang counties populated primarily by Uyghurs and other minorities. According to Zenz in a brief film on the files' website, www.xinjiangpolicefiles.com, the files provided for the first time "a first-hand description of police activities within re-education facilities." There are roughly 2,800 photos of inmates and over 23,000 detention documents. Over 300,000 personal records were exposed in the compromised databases. Zenz noted that the leaked speeches by senior Communist Party officials, including Chen Quanguo, who was Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang at the time the speeches in the leaked files were made, depict a "paranoid threat perception" and "the internal justification for why one has to move against an entire population." According to the records, the camps and jails are overcrowded, and Beijing will bankroll more of each. This, according to Zenz, "demonstrates how closely and intimately the central government has been involved in this crime from the start." According to Zenz, Beijing's overall aim is to "break the back of whole ethnic communities" by interning them. The elderly and "important" individuals are kept in the camps, according to data, since both groups are sources of "cultural and spiritual wisdom" from which newer generations learn. "It's a comprehensive assimilation program, absorbing an entire ethnic group," Zenz explained. The importance of changing the Uyghur population - now and in the future - into completely integrated Chinese citizens who believe in the Chinese Communist Party and its policies is highlighted throughout the speeches and documents in the files. In summary, the "de-extensification" approach is intended to replace minds rather than simply alter them. All previous belief systems must be erased and replaced with the CCP's idea of a decent Chinese citizen. The irony of this strategy and purpose is that ordinary Chinese citizens overseas frequently refuse to integrate into other cultures. From London to New York to Sydney to Singapore, substantial numbers of mainland Chinese people solely socialize with other mainland Chinese people. Contact with inhabitants of their host country is usually confined to the bare minimum essential to complete one's duties, whether employment or study. Of course, there are exceptions, but they are in the minority. The Chinese government strongly condemns anybody who criticizes ethnic Chinese living overseas for upholding their native country's traditions and language. However, in the eyes of CCP authorities, Uyghurs do not deserve the same respect for preserving their cultural and religious traditions in their own homeland. The fact that China's government has developed a domestic security protocol to round up people deemed "extremists" solely on the basis of their religious and cultural beliefs, and then force them into a program to remove and replace their identities in order to neutralize a perceived threat to the state, is already the stuff of nightmares. However, the program's suggestion that the re-educated individual will subsequently assimilate into the society of people who pushed an alien identity upon the victim is ironic, to say the least. How can a civilization that cannot readily absorb outsiders successfully influence them to do so? The answer is an unequivocal no. Mainland Chinese society, predominantly Han Chinese, is still exceedingly insular and conservative, despite everything that opening up to the outside world has done to expose its residents to other nations and cultures. It is often opposed to other people's customs in keeping with its own. Relationships with others outside the construct are frequently difficult, and the Chinese side frequently tries to dominate in this scenario, by coercion. Chen was appointed party secretary of Xinjiang in June 2018, making him the most powerful person in what is intended to be an autonomous province. His ideas on the techniques and procedures the state may employ to defuse the threat of Islamic terrorism contain specific language designating cultural genocide. Chen praised the work that had previously been done to eliminate the "sources of extremism" at the time, saying that "the 'Four Breaks' [breaking lineages, breaking roots, breaking links, breaking beginnings] had been done properly." In other words, China has succeeded in eliminating the family, cultural, religious, historical, and even geographical links of the Uyghur and other Muslim minority people in Xinjiang, according to Chen. Nonetheless, Chen emphasized that more has to be done. Chen, however, is no longer in charge of Xinjiang. Ma Xingrui took his post in early January 2022. Despite indications that Ma is attempting to repair the severe reputational damage inflicted on China as a result of the camps, which have now been proven by the Xinjiang Police Files to have been run by a heavily armed police force with military-grade weaponry behind multiple layers of secure walls, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, are still suspected to be in detention, or their whereabouts are unknown. (ANI)
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) 30 allies signed accession protocols for Sweden and Finland on Tuesday, kickstarting the process to admit the two Nordic countries into the alliance. Foreign Minister of Finland Pekka Haavisto and Foreign Minister of Sweden Ann Linde attended the signing ceremony, Xinhua reported."With 32 nations around the table, we will be even stronger and our people will be even safer, as we face the biggest security crisis in decades," declared NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in a press conference after the signing ceremony.As per the reports by Xinhua, NATO's 30 members formally invited Finland and Sweden to join their alliance at the NATO Summit held last week in Madrid, Spain, just seven weeks after both countries handed their applications in response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In the first instance, the accession process was blocked by Turkey, a NATO member that raised concerns over the fight against terrorism, however, after signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Finland and Sweden, Turkey lifted its veto ahead of the NATO Madrid summit.The next step is for the parliaments of all 30 NATO members to ratify Sweden and Finland's accession to NATO, according to their own national procedures. The last accession was ratified within a year, said Stoltenberg, but since Sweden's and Finland's accession process has been sped up since the beginning, this could go faster. The NATO summit began in Madrid on June 28 allowing the western military alliance to show a joint front against Moscow, and start the process of Finland and Sweden's inclusion in the alliance. This summit comes as Turkey lifted its veto over Finland and Sweden's bid to join NATO, ending a dispute that tested the unity of the alliance. The deal signalled a significant shift in security dynamics in Europe as the Nordic countries abandon their decades-long neutrality to enter the military alliance. The NATO summit in Madrid has become one of the most consequential meetings in the history of the military alliance. (ANI)
ArcelorMittal, Europe's largest steelmaker resumed their supplies to Russia through Kazakhstan in June. "Mainly hot-rolled mill products [are supplied to Russia]," a source of Russia's metals industry said as quoted by TASS. The source further said that the pipe manufacturers and large metal traders purchase those products. Previously, ArcelorMittal used to deliver the steel from Kazakhstan to Russia as it was profitable considering the short transportation leg, the source noted. Active supplies resumed on June 10 after being suspended in April, he added. Earlier in April, ArcelorMittal suspended its supplies to Russia. Even before that, in March, ArcelorMittal completely banned Russian raw materials, according to Stanislav Zinchenko, CEO of GMK Center, Ukrainian Steel media. Zinchenko said that the steelmaker has excluded Russian raw materials from its supply chain following Russia's aggression against Ukraine. He further said that earlier, the company bought 20 per cent of the coal for its European plants in Russia and bought iron ore from Metalloinvest, owned by billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who is now under sanctions. "Now we are independent. In the third quarter, we need to buy a little more outside Russia. But it's not a big problem," said Geert van Polvoorde, CEO of ArcelorMittal Europe. ArcelorMittal's portfolio of iron ore and coal deposits has helped the company replace supplies from Russia relatively easily but now it has resumed its supplies to Russia. These favourable terms hurt the interests of ArcelorMittal's Russian competitors, which turned to the domestic market after Western sanctions curtailed exports, according to The Moscow Times. The author said that the unprecedented sanctions hit the Russian companies after Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine. In March, steel production in Russia decreased only by 1.8 per cent year-over-year. And it is nothing compared to last year's records. The author praised the Company for its sanction on Russia and said that it has been proved to be more effective than country-level sanctions. It turned out that values and reputation for businesses are sometimes more important than for politicians. So, some global iron and steel companies announced a voluntary ban on Russian products. (ANI)
161 Indian students, including 88 women, have been awarded the prestigious Erasmus Mundus scholarships for the degree programmes starting in the academic year 2022-23 and with this, for the second consecutive time, India ranked first among the 167 countries. To mark this success, the delegation of the European Union to India organized an event to commemorate this milestone. While congratulating the students, the EU Ambassador to India and Bhutan, Ugo Astuto said that till now, over 6,000 Indian students have received the benefit from Erasmus Mundus scholarships, according to the EU embassy in India. "Erasmus+ scholarships offer a lifetime opportunity for professional and personal development. Apart from improving students' expertise, it allows them to gain a rich cultural experience, given Europe's diversity. I wish the students all the best as they embark on this exciting and enriching journey," he added. According to the publication, the selected Indian students for the Erasmus Mundus 2022-2024 batch will get the opportunity to study and conduct research in at least two universities located in different European countries and obtain joint, double or multiple degrees. It is pertinent to mention that this will be a fully-funded scholarship, which will cover the participation costs, travel costs and living allowance of the recipient. Europe today has over 4,000 higher education institutions, from top-level research establishments to small, teaching-focused colleges, with more than 17 million students and 1.5 million academics, including 4,35,000 researchers, according to the embassy. Indian students will stay and experience over 18 different European countries over a span of two years. In 2022, the EU and India mark 60 years of diplomatic relations. For 60 years, the EU and India have worked together to reduce poverty, prevent disasters, expand trade, secure global goods, enhance security around the world and promote joint research in energy, health, agriculture and many other fields of mutual interest. In 2021, 153 Indian students received the Erasmus Mundus scholarships. ERASMUS or European Region Action Scheme for Mobility of University Students is a program established in 1987 by the European Union (EU) to support education, training of youth, and sport for students from across the globe, in partner universities, in partner countries across Europe. Since then, it has grown into the largest-ever program in the world for mobility opportunities and also funds cooperation projects. With a budget of EUR 26.2 billion (Rs 2,096,94 crore) for 2021-2027, the main aim of this program is to promote academic and youth mobility and cooperation within Europe or between Europe and other regions in the world, including Asia. (ANI)
Days after Pakistan's Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa directed the country's commanders and other key officers to stay away from politics and avoid interacting with politicians, the country's premier intelligence agency - ISI- on Tuesday issued strict orders to its officers to stay away from political activities. Lieutenant General Nadeem Anjum, Director General (DG) of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), issued strict orders to his commanders from the top to the lowest tier and other officials to stay away from any activity involving politics, The Express Tribune reported. As per the sources, the spy chief personally issued the instructions to his subordinates. "They have been told in the strictest terms to stay away from politics and avoid any such activity," the sources added. The spymaster further said that there would be zero-tolerance for violations and any intelligence official found violating the directives would have no place in ISI, reported The Express Tribune. Pakistan media reports said the unauthorized political role of the agency has dented the reputation of the ISI. However, the incumbent ISI DG is said to have decided to keep the institution away from politics to stay away from unnecessary controversies. The development came a day after Bajwa directed his top commanders and key officers to stay away from politics in an effort to offset a smear campaign against the military. These directions have been given after reports said that Pakistan military establishment was involved in political engineering to manipulate the upcoming by-elections in Punjab to the disadvantage of PTI. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has been leading a vicious campaign against the security establishment since the toppling of its government in April this year through a vote of no-confidence, reported The Express Tribune. Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan also claimed that some of his candidates have complained to him of receiving telephone calls from unknown numbers. The PTI chief also said that his party leaders and workers were being pressurised to engineer the by-elections. Khan himself and his party blamed the military and have mounted a vociferous campaign - especially on social media - to directly point the accusatory finger at some senior officials. The party has now started peddling the narrative that the security establishment has been engaged in "political engineering" in an effort to manipulate the upcoming by-elections in favour of the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) and its coalition partners. Senior PTI leader Yasmin Rashid alleged at a recent presser, without providing any evidence to date, that the ISI sector commander was involved in political manipulation against the PTI. "If you claim to be neutral, then you better stay neutral," said Yasmin, who was Health Minister in the previous Punjab cabinet. While Yasmin has been direct and blunt, the PTI's chairman and vice-chairmen have used euphemisms to allege what their party colleagues have been saying. While Shah Mehmood Qureshi said that he was defeated in Punjab Assembly Elections through a conspiracy inside Party politics. Had I been the Chief Minister Punjab would not have been in such a state of affairs, Qureshi said during his campaign for his son's election, reported The Express Tribune. (ANI)